by Judith Curry
[A] technique called direct statistical simulation dramatically reduces the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The process does a good job of modeling fluid jets, fast-moving flows that form naturally in oceans and in the atmosphere. The findings are a key step toward bringing powerful statistical models rooted in basic physics to bear on climate science.
Direct Statistical Simulation of Out-of-Equilibrium Jets
S.M. Tobias and J.B. Marston
We present direct statistical simulation of jet formation on a β plane, solving for the statistics of a fluid flow via an expansion in cumulants. Here we compare an expansion truncated at second order (CE2) to statistics accumulated by direct numerical simulations. We show that, for jets near equilibrium, CE2 is capable of reproducing the jet structure (although some differences remain in the second cumulant). However, as the degree of departure from equilibrium is increased (as measured by the zonostrophy parameter), the jets meander more and CE2 becomes less accurate. We discuss a possible remedy by inclusion of higher cumulants.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 104502 (2013) Full manuscript [link]
A post at futurity.org discusses possibilities re climate modelling. Excerpts:
The research shows that a technique called direct statistical simulation dramatically reduces the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The process does a good job of modeling fluid jets, fast-moving flows that form naturally in oceans and in the atmosphere. The findings are a key step toward bringing powerful statistical models rooted in basic physics to bear on climate science.
Direct statistical simulation is a new way of looking at climate. “The approach we’re investigating,” Marston says, “is the idea that one can directly find the statistics without having to do these lengthy time integrations.”
“Say you wanted to describe the air in a room,” Marston says. “One way to do it would be to run a giant supercomputer simulation of all the positions of all of the molecules bouncing off of each other. But another way would be to develop statistical mechanics and find that the gas actually obeys simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper: PV=nRT, the gas equation. That’s a much more useful description, and that’s the approach we’re trying to take with the climate.”
Conceptually, the technique focuses attention on fundamental forces driving climate, instead of “following every little swirl,” Marston says. A practical advantage would be the ability to model climate conditions from millions of years ago without having to reconstruct the world’s entire weather history in the process.
The theoretical basis for direct statistical simulation has been around for nearly 50 years. The problem, however, is that the mathematical and computational tools to apply the idea to climate systems aren’t fully developed. That is what Marston and his collaborators have been working on for the last few years, and the results in the new paper show their techniques have good potential.
For their study, Marston and Tobias simulated the jets that form as a fluid moves on a hypothetical spinning sphere. They modeled the fluid using both the traditional numerical technique and their statistical technique, and then compared the output of the two models.
They found that the models generally arrived at similar values for the number of jets that would form and the strength of the airflow, demonstrating that statistical simulation can indeed be used to model jets.
There were limits, however, to what the statistical model could do. The study found that as pace of adding and removing energy to the fluid system increased, the statistical model started to break down. Marston and Tobias are currently working on an expansion of their technique to deal with that problem.
Since completing the study, Marston has integrated the method into a computer program called “GCM” that he has made available for download via Apple’s Mac App Store. The program allows users to build their own simulations, comparing numerical and statistical models.
Marston expects that researchers who are interested in the field will download it and play with the technique on their own, providing new insights along the way. “I’m hoping that citizen-scientists will also explore climate modeling with it as well, and perhaps make a discovery or two,” he says.
There’s much more work to be done on this, Marston stresses, both in solving the energy problem and in scaling the technique to model more realistic climate systems. At this point, the simulations have only been applied to hypothetical atmospheres with one or two layers. The Earth’s atmosphere is a bit more complex than that.
“The research is at a very early stage,” Marston said, “but it’s picking up steam.”
JC comment: Exhilarating to see a new approach for climate models. The app looks extremely cool. I look forward to your thoughts on this.
Does this mean we can have faster, more efficient, unvalidated, inaccurate climate models that can’t properly account for all the various unknowns of Earth’s climate system?
+100
+1
My sediments exactly.
GaryM wrote: Does this mean we can have faster, more efficient, unvalidated, inaccurate climate models that can’t properly account for all the various unknowns of Earth’s climate system?
Frank adds: Touche! However, would you feel the same way if such a new model predicted a climate sensitivity of 1.5?
New models may be able to accurately represent convection on a scale that matches important convective phenomena. Unfortunately, limits on modeling convection are only one of the problems that plague current GCMs. The physical processes underlying cloud formation and precipitation (and probably vertical transfer of heat in the ocean) are poorly represented in today’s GCMs. And even if one eventually incorporated proper representations for all of the physical processes, we would still face the difficult challenge of proving that all of this physics is properly encoded in the software.
Judith: Is there any reason to think that properly representing small scale convective feature will produce dramatic improvements in model? Or are there so many issues that
Frank,
” However, would you feel the same way if such a new model predicted a climate sensitivity of 1.5?”
I would feel exactly the same regardless of what the model predicted about climate sensitivity or anything else, until it was shown to be able to accurately predict climate.
Similarly, I don’t think we can compute global average temperature with anything like the precision claimed. So I don’t get all worked up about a “pause” when I don’t think we know enough to know if it is warming, cooling or “pausing.” Particularly when the differences are within tenths of a degree per decade.
I may be wrong, but I’m consistent.
I would feel good about the model if it didn’t follow the same path as the real climate, since climate is chaotic. Of course, that wouldn’t be enough. It would have to show the same magnitude of variation over thousands of years. It would have to produce the same precip and temperature patterns, the same frequency of hurricanes, the same humidity and temp profile of the atmosphere and oceans, etc.
GaryM +1
Nothing better than to be wrong faster!
On first read, this sounds much like IPCC climatology.
Its is so much less effort, if you just make up the data you desire.
Very post normal science.
John Robertson
Yeah. And “normative” (i.e. “agenda driven”), too.
Max
I was looking at a paper on supervised learning approaches for statistical models. Way over my head, but it was interesting how the author compared a number of approaches.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAS-D-11-0194.1?journalCode=atsc
Non-linear neural networks, not your granddaddy’s climate model.
Well, for a start, they can set the two approaches competitively against each other and evaluate in which ways each performs better or worse.. A not bad verification step.
And for another, it brings the ability to run models one step closer to the realm of private individuals with a bit of computing skills and some time on their hands.
Yes, let’s compare one set of unvalidated, inaccurate, incomplete climate models against another set of unvalidated, inaccurate, incomplete climate models.
That’ll help.
Can I suggest another revolutionary leap forward?
How about comparing the output with those pesky things called ‘observations’, rather than just with each other? That might lead to some interesting insights…..
Gary,
You can then compare them to reality and see if they work better than current models. Also, the inability to model such currents and jets in the current models may be why they give poor results, so this could be a way to vastly improve the models. And, of course, once you say a new technique is better than the old, it invalidates or de-emphasizes the earlier models. Although reality seems to be doing a good job of that. This is how science is supposed to work. It’s just that some folks were a little too sure of their models and coupled this with their pre-existing tendencies/beliefs and became advocates and in the end guardians of the faith. This gives them a way out as now they can point to how they improved the models and now the science says “this and that” instead of the existing “that and this”.
“You can then compare them to reality and see if they work better than current models.”
Why compare them to reality to see if they work better than current models? Why not just compare them to reality to see if they work, period? Validate and verify.
But my comment was in (sarcastic) response to Bart R’s comment, which had nothing to do with comparisons to reality. Nor did the primary post above by the way.
But hey, if someone can come up with a climate model that can be shown to accurately predict global average temperature in 10, 30 or 100, years, I am all for it. I would also be willing to accept a stone that, when touched to lead, turns it to gold.
Everything helpful helps.
It may be that both types of models perform well against reality in the same ways, and otherwise poorly compared to reality (that’s “observations” for Latimer) in the same ways. This might imply something about the limits of models and the benefits. If both sets of models for example accurately profile 30-year trends but cannot match observed five-year temperatures, we might draw conclusions about not wasting our times comparing models to five year temperature levels.
It may be that one model performs markedly better, compared to observations (what else would we use as a basis of evaluating performance?!) in all ways and all cases. Or one of the models may prove useful in areas the other is weak.
Heck, there may even be a way to integrate both methods to produce a hybrid.
Or, as one is much faster and less computationally intensive than the other, if it produces essentially the same results where GCMs can reasonably be said to have meaningful outcomes, it may be a way to produce very much larger ensembles (useless though any average of ensembles is) to produce a meaningful set of statistics to explore.
Or they could when taken as a whole and altogether prove nothing, or even prove that each has no real valid output at all.
It’s all foregone conclusion to speculate so early on what they will do. But it’s clearly worth exploring what they might do.
There is really no “validation process” for models such as these but there most certainly should be an extended process of comparing the outputs of specific criteria that the models are designed to forecast vs. the observed conditions in order to ascertain within what margin of error these models can be expected to provide reliable results over what timescale.
Imo, one of the major failings of the current set of models is the lack of public data. Policy makers really do not know how well any specific model performs in forecasting what over different timescale. People talk about temperature change, but the models are designed to forecast far more than that alone and changes in things like annual rainfall are at least as important as changes in temperature. How well do they do over what time scale and where.
If we have data that would demonstrate a model is reliable there would be far less conflict on this issue. Users do not care how a model is developed, only that they know how well it performs for a specific criteria over what timescale. Using a model within its demonstrated capabilities to make policy decisions makes sense, using a model of unknown quality to make policy decisions with frequently lead to undesired outcomes.
Rob Starkey,
“There is really no ‘validation process’ for models such as these but there most certainly should be an extended process of comparing the outputs of specific criteria that the models are designed to forecast vs. the observed conditions in order to ascertain within what margin of error these models can be expected to provide reliable results over what timescale.”
There is no validation process for climate models, but we should have a process that compares their outputs to observed data. Uhhhh…isn’t that just a wee bit contradictory? You describe a process while denying there is one?
What else would validation mean, other than comparing the predictions to reality?
I am wondering, can this application of statistics tell me the probability that 1) a global carbon pricing scheme can be implemented and maintained for 100 years or more and 2) such a scheme will fix the climate?
no
I had been interested in the possibility of using models at different scales to simplify the modeling task. The problem as I understood it is that the atmosphere doesn’t deliver up obvious subsystems that can be partialed out for separate smaller scale analysis.
Notwithstanding the one possible construct introduced above (jets) I still suspect that attempting to do multi-decadal modeling is best done simply by trating the atmosphere as a black box and focus on the boundary/ies.
the lack of a theory of “macroturbulence” as discussed by Isaac Held and Tapio Schneider makes me wonder how useful this new technique can be, in the vein of what you say (subsystems). As I understand it, the statistical model still needs a physical principle to get behind.
It sounds like fluid dynamicists have finally entered the 20th century. They have been bogged down in the 19th century for quite a while now because they have always treated fluids as a continuum. As a consequence they never came to terms with the statistical behaviour of fluids in the way that physicists had done with thermodynamics. See here:
http://www.scienceheresy.com/2010_09/NavierStokes/index.html
Hopefully this new method will demonstrate the limitations of climate models. Values of important parameters such as eddy viscosity will no longer need to be fudged outrageously in order to keep models stable. As a consequnce a more realistic distribution in predicted states will be obtained. When this happens I will be surprised if climate models prove to be any more capable of prediction than the meteorological models on which they are based, i.e. out to a couple of weeks at the most.
Thanks for this.
:PV=nRT, the gas equation”
It is clear that if we used just the ideal gas law, we could never explain how a gas, CO2, comprising less than 1% of the atmosphere and with a specific heat marginally higher than O2 or N2 could have such a large effect on climate. Basically the equation can only erxplain the kinetic energy of the gas molecule and neglects the vibrational energy of its atoms which can be many times larger than the kinetic energy. This was implicit in the IPCC’s results re. CO2 but never admitted publicly by the IPCC. This failure has led to many errors in climate prediction because vibrational modes can be turned on or off by the molecule gaining or losing a photon of energy. See my website underlined above.
If CO2 truly is the culprit, then knowing when its vibrationnal mudes are present is crucial to predicting future temberature and climate. It is very non-linear becuse the acquisition and release of photons are themselves functions of temperature.
Alexander, you are seriously confused.
Firstly:
You can see how much energy difference vibrational modes make by looking at the specific heat of CO2 vs say N2
At 298K CO2 has a specific heat at constant pressure of 0.84 J/g/K
N2 is 1.0 J/g/k
It actually takes *more* energy to raise the temperature of N2 compared to CO2, per unit mass, not less. (You can look directly at the rotational effects by considering constant volume specific heat on a molar basis)
However, this is totally irrelevant to climate change. That depends on the relative interaction with IR (photons). Which brings us on to
Secondly:
Yes indeed! Happily, these are not only known they are numerically calculated and compiled, not just for Co2 but for many other gases in the HITRAN database, which is the basic input to heat transfer models used to calculated radiative forcing. All the individual spectral lines can been seen there. Your website suggests there is one line at 14 microns. You may have misunderstood what constitutes a “line”
For a great blog on how this can be used to build an atmospheric model, try scienceofdoom.
Thirdly:
Your website states that saturation limits the increase in temperature due to CO2. I suggest you try considering this at the tropopause.
Stand on the shoulders of giants. Read the basic physics. Don’t assume your questions are novel.
Thank you. This guy and guys like cripwell and springer are stunning in their unwillingness to read the fundamental science.
VeryTallGuy thanks for replying.
Your Firstly: Vibrational modes are very sharp, like tuning a radio. So you need to make sure that 298K is on the peak for the energy you quote to be relevant to this discussion, I agree that your 298K figure could be ‘totally irrelevant to climate change.’
Your secondly: ‘Your website suggests there is one line at 14 microns.’ No, ny figure 2 clearly shows four lines. But only the 14 micron line is close to the peak of the earth’s IR radiation so the rest are irrelevant to this discussion. Thanks for refering me to the HITRAN database, but is not available to the general public so I prefer not to use it To keep my area of disagreenwnt with the IPCC to a minimum, I try to use the same data which is from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, to which they agree.
Your third: ‘Your website states that saturation limits the increase in temperature due to CO2.’ Yes, indeed. Vital to my argunent. Unfortunately it appears that at least some members of the IPCC refused to consider the relevance of quontum theory to their problem, prefering to stick to classical thermodynamics which of course, is valid but can also be misleadind as it was if they used the standard gas law..
Mosher, I’m not the one who incorrectly described measuring pixel brightness for how satellites determine temperature. Microwave sounders don’t use CCDs they use antennas and the usual RF amplifiers and filters found in RF receivers. Anything you read in the area of physics or sensor hardware you obviously misunderstood. You’re out of your league. Way out of it.
Steven Mosher writes “Thank you. This guy and guys like cripwell and springer are stunning in their unwillingness to read the fundamental science.”
I know my limits when it comes to understanding fundamental science. I know there are things I just dont understand, and say so. But some things I do understand. I understand the vital necessity of having empirical data before discussing how likely hypotheses are to be right. It is you, Steven Mosher, who refuses to agree that there are no empirical measurements of how much global temperatures rise as a given amout of CO2 is added to the atmosphere from current levels. When are you going to be true scientist and admit that what I say is correct?
Having vented sufficient snark above, I will say that it seems to me that this idea would be more interesting with respect to modelling local weather – say flood risks from localized severe storms, etc.
It was the suggestion that better statistical analysis might improve climate models, whose major weakness is lack of sufficient knowledge of how the climate works, that seemed…well…unfortunate. Use of statistics to create ‘data” that doesn’t exist, ala Steig’s Antarctic warming scare, are one of the major flaws in “climate science.”
The best model in the world, using the best statistical analysis in the world, using the best computer in the world, programmed by the best climate scientist in the world, still won’t tell you what the global average temperature will be in 10, 30 or 100 years, because we just don’t know enough about the climate to model it with that accuracy.
The point of this kind of work is to reduce the cost of testing and playing with models so as to greatly increase the cycle of testing and improvement. If you can make 1000 runs in the time it used to take to do one, you can derive the consequences of your assumptions 1000 times faster. And many more people can play the game. It’s just a better tool that can be used for good or ill. Think of the pre- and post-computer spreadsheet days in business. Or the pre- and post-computer days in gerrymandering election districts.
Thus an advance like this could just lead to faster data mining and overfitting if the underlying models have too many free parameters relative to the data. But it could also be an aid to falsification if you can quickly say “nope, that idea of yours (or mine) won’t fit the data either.” It just enables a more thorough exploration of parameter space and a quicker testing of actual causal theories by speeding up the “derive the observable consequences” step of the scientific process (guess–>derive observable consequences of guess–>test consequences–>draw conclusion and ask new questions and make new guesses).
The first step in developing this type of approximation method is NOT to test it against messy real-world data but against exact simulated data for which you know for sure what the right answer should be. Then if it deviates you can see it and can figure out why so you can improve the approximation.
There’s a difference between skepticism and policy conservatism on the one hand and intellectual Phillistinism on the other.
A decent point, but the current problems seems to be at the ‘derive observable consequence of guess->test consequences’ step. Balking there makes ‘Faster, Jasper’ look tarentellic, or perhaps epileptic.
==================
Judith Curry
The Tobias and Marston paper sounds interesting.
I’m not a modeler, so can’t really comment on that part, but this sentence caught my attention:
I see a danger in this approach.
It starts with the assumption that our climate behaves in lockstep with “simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper”.
The empirical data show that some times it does not.
An example is the Clausius-Clapeyron Law, which tells us that water vapor content in the atmosphere should increase with warming to maintain constant relative humidity.
And this “simple law” has been cranked into the models cited by IPCC in AR4 WGI in order to predict global water vapor feedback with global warming.
Yet the empirical data show that the “simple” C-C Law does not apply directly for our atmosphere, but that tropospheric WV increases at a much smaller rate than that required to maintain constant RH.
So the models should not only be programmed with “simple laws” but, IMO more importantly, with actual empirical evidence from real-time observations.
This is arguably a weakness of the GCMs cited by IPCC.
In this case, the models should be programmed to show WV increasing at less than half of the theoretical value according to C-C, as the empirical evidence shows.
This is just one example where “simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper” do not apply for our climate system.
But I’m sure you will agree that there are others, where we already know that this is the case.
And arguably many more where we are uncertain whether it is or not.
Just my thoughts.
Max
1.
2. That’s incorrect. The C-C law applies only at equilibrium. Levels in the atmosphere are a kinetic (ie mixing) problem. But you know this, you’re a chemical engineer, right?
No it hasn’t, you just made that up. In fact it is an emergent property of the models, not an input.
No it doesn’t. Your cite?
Which would be difficult as that would require them to break the law of conservation of mass
They’re dead, vtg; you tell me why.
============
Perhaps reports of their death were exaggerated
blah blah blah Climate Models Are Good blah blah blah
Andrew
This new wonder drug, vtg, can do anything you like. Choose wisely, my friend.
============
Yes Andrew, it’s much easier to ignore inconvenient facts than process them. if fact there’s a word for that
Denial.
“Denial”
vtg,
I’m shocked and appalled and dismayed that you took so long to invoke the tribal chant.
Andrew
http://www.ncdr.nat.gov.tw/iccc2011/DAY2/2%20%E5%8A%89%E7%B4%B9%E8%87%A3/ClimateFeedback-NCCIP.pdf
Andrew. If the cap fits.
care to address the points at all?
“care to address the points at all?”
I did in my inital comment.
Care to present some evidence that they are worth spending time reading?
Andrew
Stephen, indeed
Andrew
“blahblahblah” = “addressing the points”
Quite. You’re refusing to address the points, simply ignore them.
You’re in denial. It’s not an insult, it’s a factual statement
2nd try:
Care to present some evidence that they are worth spending time reading?
Andrew
Andrew, address the points, or continue to shout your refusal to face inconvenient facts. Your choice.
Actually the point of the link was that the C-C Law is used in climate models and is not just an output. I’m not sure why anyone would think physics laws that pertain to the climate wouldn’t be included. You could argue that there are other factors that are also included. Things like theories, hypotheses, and SWAGs. The laws are pretty solid so I suspect they start with those.
nonetheless VTG is right about it being a kinetic problem.
VeryTallGuy: The C-C law applies only at equilibrium.
True, but respected presentations such as Raymond Pierrehumbert’s book assume that the equilibrium result is an adequate approximation to the non-equilibrium case.
Which would be difficult as that would require them to break the law of conservation of mass
that’s absurd. all that is necessary is the the evaporation rate be slow enough that the relative humidity decline as the surface heats up during the warming phase of the day. It’s a rate argument, not an equilibrium argument. For global averages, it is complicated by the inhomogeneity of the Earth surface.
steven, thank you for the link to the Liu and Shiu presentation.
Matthew
Not really. I’m not sure which part of RPhs book you refer to, but a common approximation used is that relative humidity stays the same. Not the same thing as saying that C-C applies throughout the atmosphere
No, actually, as the GCM models circulation, to impose a constraint on humidity would actually require water to disappear from the system, hence violating conservation of mass.
vtg, “No, actually, as the GCM models circulation, to impose a constraint on humidity would actually require water to disappear from the system, hence violating conservation of mass.”
Which system and over what time period? That is one of the main issues. You have continuously fluctuating systems with apparent bi-stability.; Pick a theorem. .The radiant impact requires some degree of radiant symmetry or it losses efficiency and internal fluctuations change that symmetry, the free energy and even can “sequester” mass over long periods.
VTG
You ask for references.
There are two independent sources of empirical data I can cite to show that Clausius-Clapeyron does not apply directly for our atmosphere.
One is the long-term NOAA data set on tropospheric humidity since 1948, which shows that, while short-term spikes seem to move synchronously, the long-term record shows tropospheric humidity decreasing with global temperature, rather than increasing in lockstep with C-C.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3343/3606945645_3450dc4e6f_b.jpg
Paltridge et al. 2009 have analyzed this record starting in 1973, at various altitudes, and have confirmed that water vapor does not increase with warming to maintain constant RH, as is assumed by the IPCC models cited in AR4.
http://www.theclimatescam.se/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/paltridgearkingpook.pdf
[Dessler and Davis have rebutted P2009 with a note, and Paltridge has rebutted D+D with another – yawn!]
A second independent data set is that from Minschwaner & Dessler 2004. This relatively short-term study over the tropics showed that tropospheric water vapor increased with warming, but that the increase was less than half that which would occur from maintaining constant RH, as is assumed by the IPCC models. Here is Fig.7 from that report, extended to show the amount of WV increase with constant RH.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3347/3610454667_9ac0b7773f_b.jpg
[So Dessler’s own data confirm that RH does not remain constant with warming – ouch!]
Hope this helps.
Max
Great cherry pick Max, as usual. I had assumed you were relying on Paltridge (2009) rather than the totality of data.
So, let’s look at Paltridge.
From the abstract
and
In other words, any conclusion is highly tentative. And of course this is just one paper of many on the subject.
Yet you rely solely on Paltridge for your conclusions. I wonder why that could be.
VeryTallGuy: as the GCM models circulation, to impose a constraint on humidity would actually require water to disappear from the system,
Are condensation and evaporation not included in the GCMs?
“Are condensation and evaporation not included in the GCMs?”
Yes, which means you can’t constrain humidity independently of them
VeryTallGuy: Yet you rely solely on Paltridge for your conclusions. I wonder why that could be.
Why did you write that when he cited several sources?
Garth Paltridge is one of those scientists that shoots from the hip.
The co-author of the Direct Statistical Simulation paper in the key post, Brad Marson, said this about Paltridge’s work on MEP:
Webby
What an utterly meaningless commentary.
In this case, Paltridge et al. simply took the long-term NOAA data set on tropospheric water vapor content and analyzed it.
They concluded that water vapor content has not increased with warming to maintain constant relative humidity, as the models cited by IPCC assumed (based on the false assumption that Clausius-Clapeyron would apply across our climate system)
That’s all.
No “shooting from the hip”, Webby.
Just analyzing the observed physical data.
Why get so excited about it, Webby?
If anybody “shot from the hip”, is was the guys that programmed in Clausius-Clapeyron into the computer models, which IPCC cited in AR4.
Max
RH is not assumed to remain constant in a transient climate, only when it reaches equilibrium. Clearly the ocean should warm less quickly in response to steady forcing (as it does in summer for example) lowering the global RH. I think you will find that the climate models do predict a reduction in RH in the early years of warming because they clearly have the land warming more.
Very Tall Guy
You haven’t disappointed me.
You asked for references showing empirical evidence that water vapor increase with warming does not maintain constant relative humidity, as assumed by the climate models cited by IPCC..
I cited two independent sets of data: the long-term global NOAA record of tropospheric water vapor content and the short-term Minschwaner & Dessler observations over the tropics.
I also cited Paltridge et al., who simply analyzed a segment of the long-term NOAA record, which I cited.
The conclusion of these physical observations is that the rate of tropospheric water vapor increase with warming is not sufficient to maintain constant relative humidity, as the IPCC models have assumed, and that the assumed WV feedback in AR4 is therefore too high.
Pretty straightforward.
So your knee-jerk reaction is:
Duh!
Then you proceed to argue about the findings of Paltridge et al.
The NOAA data set goes back well before there were any satellites. At that time it was entirely from radiosondes. More recently the data come from a combination of satellite and radiosonde data. It is the longest data set on tropospheric humidity and is still being published and updated regularly. It shows that the rate of tropospheric water vapor increase with warming is not sufficient to maintain constant relative humidity, as the IPCC models have assumed, and that the assumed WV feedback in AR4 is therefore too high.
M&D 2004 is a totally independent study based on satellite observations of tropospheric water vapor content over the tropics over a shorter time period. This study also showed that the rate of tropospheric water vapor increase with warming is not sufficient to maintain constant relative humidity, as the IPCC models have assumed, and that the assumed WV feedback in AR4 is too high.
Two totally independent data sets both show that the model assumptions were wrong. Paltridge examines a piece of one of these data sets and summarizes the conclusions.
Yet you make the rather silly statement:
As you see (if you open your eyes) I did NOT “rely solely on Paltridge for my conclusions”, as you erroneously claim.
VTG, use your head before you shoot off a comment – otherwise you just look silly, as you did here.
Max
Paltridge misapplied maximum entropy concepts and was called out by Marson, who said Paltridge’s agreement was fortuitous because Paltridge forgot to include the Coriolis force.
Now, Dessler calls out Paltridge for his spurious specific humidity reduction.
Two strikes and Paltridge is out. Yet Max continues to reference Paltridge. Bad move.
Jim D
“Equilibrium”?
Climate NEVER reaches “equilibrium” in real life, Jim (only in the models).
But back to WV increase and RH.
IPCC tells us (AR4 WGI, Ch.8, p.630):
IPCC further tells us (p.632)
But, Jim, it is precisely in the upper troposphere where both the totally independent references I cited showed that WV did NOT increase at the rate required to maintain unchanged RH.
Beating around the bush with hypothetical discussions of what might happen at a hypothetical “equilibrium” does not change the fact that two totally independent sources of empirical data show that constant RH is NOT maintained with warming.
Now to cloud feedback
We’ve already seen from recent observations, which I cited, that the net overall cloud feedback is very likely negative rather than strongly positive, as assumed by the IPCC GCMs.
Together, these two corrections to the predicted 2xCO2 ECS of 3.2°C from IPCC AR4 would result in reducing it by more than half.
And, violà!
Recent independent observation-based estimates of 2xCO2 show exactly the same thing! The latest estimates put 2xCO2 ECS at around 1.5°C.
Seems to make sense to me, Jim.
Max
Webby
You state that Dessler has “refuted” Paltridge.
Yeah.
Dessler critiqued Palridge et al. in a note
Paltridge responded to Dessler in another note.
Yawn!
Webby, that’s what these guys do – but it doesn’t mean anything.
Paltridge simply analyzed the long-term NOA record on tropospheric water vapor content and concluded from these empirical data that tropospheric WV at various altitudes was not increasing to maintain constant RH.
Dessler’s OWN independent data (Minschwaner & Dessler 2004) also showed that tropospheric WV in the upper troposphere was not increasing to maintain constant RH, but at less than half this amount.
So Dessler’s data has confirmed Paltridge’s conclusion.
Face it, Webby, IPCC overstated the WV feedback and, together with its other error on cloud feedback, grossly overstated the model-predicted 2xCO2 ECS.
Max
manacker, sometimes it looks like you are pretending to misunderstand the basic points, but perhaps you really believe the IPCC were referring to the instantaneous response to forcing when they talk about RH not changing. The instantaneous or transient response are much different from the final equilibrium response, which you realized is different and a long way in the future, but can’t seem to distinguish from the immediate response. As I said, the ocean warms more slowly, which should mean the RH won’t stay constant because if it gets warmer, but the water vapor stays the same, the RH goes down. I am surprised I have to explain this to you twice because it is quite basic, and I think most of the others reading this would have understood it the first time I mentioned it above.
manacker, re:cloud feedback. You say it is a negative feedback, so when it gets warmer, clouds should increase and when it gets colder clouds should decrease. If that is what you are saying, how do you explain the 90’s when it got warmer and clouds decreased? If you say that it got warmer because the clouds decreased (spontaneously, GCRs, or whatever), then why didn’t your negative feedback kick in and make it colder again?
Jim D
Let me address the points in your last two comments.
To your statement:
You keep talking about climate “equilibrium”. This is a theoretical construct. Climate is never in “equilibrium”, locally, diurnally, seasonally, regionally or globally. It is always changing.
The long-term NOAA record since 1948 shows no increase in WV content with warming.
Paltridge et al. 2009 took a portion of this record starting in 1973, and also showed that WV increase did not match maintaining a constant RH with warming.
Independent observations by Minschwaner & Dessler 2004 showed that WV increase did not match maintaining a constant RH with warming.
IPCC states in AR4 WGI Ch.8, p.635:
The empirical evidence cited above shows that this is not the case. Furthermore, there are lots of model studies, but no empirical data of which I am aware that show that WV increases with warming to maintain constant RH, as assumed by the IPCC models.
Regarding clouds you ask:
We have gone through this once already.
Pallé et al. 2005 showed that from the 1980s to around 2000 low cloud cover decreased, decreasing Earth’s albedo and allowing more incoming SW radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, thereby causing warming.
This trend reversed itself around 2000, and low cloud cover increased again, increasing Earth’s albedo and blocking more incoming SW radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface, thereby causing cooling.
Whether or not the increased cloud cover after 2000 was a result of a “negative cloud feedback” (as observed over the tropics over shorter time periods by Spencer & Braswell 2007), or whether it was the result of another not yet understood natural mechanism, is a moot point.
At appears from the empirical evidence cited, that IPCC is on weak ground concerning its model predictions of strongly positive net cloud feedback and WV feedback based on maintaining constant RH with warming. And that was my point.
Max
verytallguy
Yes Andrew, it’s much easier to ignore inconvenient facts than process them. if fact there’s a word for that
Denial.
The textbook example being denial of the Pause by the CAGW truebelievers.
manacker, the last sentence of that IPCC section has the following phrase, which is basically what I am talking about.
“Note, however, that humidity responses to variability or shorter time-scale forcing must be interpreted cautiously, as they are not direct analogues to that from greenhouse gas increases, because of differences in patterns of warming and circulation changes.”
The constant RH assumption during a rapid continental and Arctic warming phase, such as now, seems to be too simplistic.
Jim D
You say that the assumption of constant RH appears “too simplistic”.
I’d agree that it not only appears “too simplistic”, it has been shown to be incorrect by at least two independent sets of data.
We agree!
Max
manacker, but the difference is that it looks like you have denied that it can ever get back to the current RH again in a future warmer world, based on no particular theory that I can tell. The current RH is some kind of specially high value, is it?
Jim D
It appears that we are finally getting to the crux of our disagreement on whether or not RH remains constant with warming.
The record shows that it does not do so.
Yet IPCC bases its model-predicted water vapor feedback estimate on the premise that it (essentially) does.
You do not disagree with these observed data, but state:
No, Jim. I do not “deny” that it could “get back to the current RH again in a future warmer world”.
I simply point out that there is no empirical evidence that tells me that this is ever likely to happen.
Therefore it should not be the basis for the IPCC WV feedback prediction.
Max
Jim D
Your quote was truncated in my above comment. You actually wrote:
Max
manacker: Yet the empirical data show that the “simple” C-C Law does not apply directly for our atmosphere, but that tropospheric WV increases at a much smaller rate than that required to maintain constant RH.
Do you have a reference for that? I used to make a similar claim when debating someone about the accuracy of climate models, but my claim was that the degree of accuracy of C-C simply was not known.
Gedankenexperiment: if CC applies across all of the atmosphere all of the time, all of the atmosphere would be saturated all of the time. What’s wrong with this picture?
Matthew Marler
See my post #300886 above to VTG for references.
Max
Harold
I like your “Gedankenexperiment”.
You will undoubtedly get various theoretical dissertations backed by mathematical equations on why Nature SHOULD obey the known laws of physics (such as Clausius-Clapeyron), etc. BUT
That doesn’t change the observed fact that it ISN’T happening in real life.
It’s the old “soll-ist” discrepancy, with which IPCC and many of its supporters seem to have difficulty.
Max
Harold: if CC applies across all of the atmosphere all of the time, all of the atmosphere would be saturated all of the time.
I agree.
I was hoping for empirical measurements of the time course and magnitudes of the disparities.
Matthew Marler
For empirical data, which contradict the IPCC projection of constant RH with warming, check the NOAA tropospheric water vapor record, which I cited.
Paltridge et al. (2009) have analyzed a part of this record and have concluded that the “constant RH assumption” of IPCC is not reflected in the actual observations.
Minschwaner & Dessler (2004) have made a short term study of water vapor increase with warming over the tropics, and have also found that WV increase does not keep pace with constant RH.
I have seen no other studies on this subject based on actual physical observations.
Maybe there are some out there, but I just haven’t seen them (model simulations, yes – but no empirical data).Max
Max
Manacker, thanks for the references.
Might be a useful technology, but are you sure it’s appropriate for climate modeling? Replacing a slow, dubious model with a faster possibly even more dubious model doesn’t really seem all that beneficial.
Where I’d expect direct digital simulation to be more useful is in well understood problems where the quality of its results can be properly assessed and intelligent tradeoffs can then be made between speed and accuracy.
I think people have already covered my concerns. Until models have been validated, they are useless for making predictions. I dont see how this new approach addresses this problem. The phrase that caught my eye was “Conceptually, the technique focuses attention on fundamental forces driving climate “. This seems to assume we understand in complete detail precisely how the “fundamental forces” drive climate. We dont.
Interestingly their results suggest that far from equilibrium jets cannot presently be modeled.
Having snapped to the fact that finer and finer resolution isn’t getting closer to the answer, and that only finest(impossible) resolution might help, the workers with inadequate tools lay them down, and step back, and survey.
With this larger picture, it should become obvious to them soon where the errors in the assumptions lie. Will they be able to see them?
=================
kim, you write “With this larger picture, it should become obvious to them soon where the errors in the assumptions lie. Will they be able to see them?”
You are right, this is what they ought to do. But they wont, for at least one, very good, reason. They have too much baggage of what they claimed the models could do with past statements. So, to admit that the models are inadequate, and cannot be relied upon to make predicitons (which is now so obviously true), means that the statements made by the IPCC in the AR4 on the certainty of the conclusions in the SPMs, are just plain wrong.
And the IPCC will NEVER admit it was wrong.
Well, does it care to be wrong-footed, or is it steps ahead in the Tarentella?
=========
Well, the recent admission that it has not warmed much for the last X years by IPCC is a good start.
Jim Cripwell | March 7, 2013 at 9:11 am |
IPCC admitted errors:
1. Admission the Himilayan glacier retreat claim was an error sourced in gray literature and mainly hinging on transposition of two digits in the year 2350 to say 2035.
2. Admission the Arctic sea ice projections were too conservative.
3..
Every IPCC report points out errors, omissions, failings, and faults in previous IPCC reports. Frequently, the reports themselves point to doubt, uncertainty, unknowns and likely shortcomings in themselves.
Your turn. Tell us when you’ve been wrong.
Statistics is no replacement for data. In most cases, climatological data are too short in duration, too limited in spatial distribution, too affected by too many variables, and above all, subject to chaotic fluctuations.
Potentially powerful
The statistical mechanics methods are very powerful IF they start with accurate models.
Koutsoyiannis et al. have been advocating similar statistics based approaches, including Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics to account for persistence in climate that is woefully missing in current GCMs.
OTHERWISE – GIGO – Garbage In Garbage Out.
Cloud Models are Critical
The greatest weakness appears to be in the current lack of accurate models for clouds. Clouds contribute about 97% of total uncertainty. A few percent error in clouds is greater than all modeled anthropogenic CO2. Until we get clouds accurately modeled, all the rest is whistling in the dark with alarmists having heart attacks over wild projections caused by model inaccuracies.
Clouds in turn are impacted by solar and cosmic ray forcing – the quantitative impacts of which are very poorly known. The current exceptionally low Cycle 24 solar max is probably causing cumulative impacts on climate far greater than GCM models account for.
Empirical fits currently better
One approach to statistical modeling appears to be empirical non-linear fitting of available data. This appears to be giving more accurate intermediate predictions. e.g.
The Global Warming Prediction Project appears to be giving far better predictions that the IPCCs far more expensive GCMs.
So too Nicola Scafetta’s models.
So kudos for exploring rapid statistical methods – now the challenge of developing accurate statistical models!
I once had all the pleasure of presenting Ryan Maue’s graph of Accumulated Cyclone Energy to a literary group discussing Chris Mooney’s ‘Storm World’, moderated by a cloud modeler.
It can’t get much better.
====================
@kim
How long were you in hospital afterwards?
Sandy says ACE is a poor measure of the power of a storm.
Of course there is more to a storm than merely the energy within it. That was probably known before Arrhenius. Also, you’ve either missed or distracted from my point, which was that global total accumulated cyclone energy has dropped significantly lately. Surely you’ve seen the famous Ryan Maue curve? The Ladies’ Literary Auxiliary has.
============
bob,
Correct the stage of the moon is most important. And pointing out that most of the damage caused by Sandy was because of high tide is getting tiresome.
Doug then you should stop claiming that most of the damage from Sandy was due to tides, cause you are right it is tiresome as well as wrong.
Your inability to accept or understand the facts, does not change the facts.
Just the facts then,
Sandy was the second most damaging Atlantic basin cyclone, yet where is ranks in terms of ACE is fourth for season 2012, even though it was the largest and most energetic storm ever recorded in the Atlantic basin.
ACE apparently does not take into consideration the size of the storm.
“………….second most damaging within the Atlantic basin.”
Why do people continue to attempt to describe a storm’s uniqueness within nature by its effect on us? Yes, it was the largest ever recorded, but those records only go back to the beginning of the satellite era, e.g. it is not possible to know how big the New England hurricane of 1938 was. A hurricane that caused a larger storm surge and killed six times as many…….also hitting at high tide.
Since GH theory hypothesizes additional retained energy in the lower troposphere it seems logical that an index that measures energy should respond. If the claimed oversimplification of atmospheric dynamics were true.
The power of statistical methods is best shown by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLOT), as explained by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
The Nature of the Physical World (1927)
@Hagen
I tend to put first law ahead of the second. Nothing forbids a perpetuum mobile of the second kind. The second law is empirical but then again so is the first law. Conservation forbids a perpetuum mobile of the first kind (hence the name).
That said I do have great respect for the evidently inviolable nature of the second law. Indeed for me it’s the greatest single underpinning of Intelligent Design. If the law of entropy is true then the universe, at the moment of its birth some 14 billion years ago, was at its greatest state of organization and has only gone downhill in the meantime. All the information in the halls of congress, all our thoughts and actions, all this was encoded into the fabric of the universe at the instant of the big bang. If not then law of entropy is bogus or information was imported into the universe sometime after its birth and before the present time. Takes your choice. My question thus becomes from whence came low entropy state of the universe at its birth or if it wasn’t lower in entropy then where was the source of the imported information?
@Springer
+1
Statistical IN-Validation?
When can statistical evidence show current GCM models are not valid?
e.g., The Met Office stated:
Peterson, T. C., and M. O. Baringer, Eds., 2009: State of the Climate in 2008. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 90, S1–S196. pg 24/198.
Werner Brozek finds:
When will the populus recognize that “the emperor has no clothes”?
When will you realize that not significant does not equal zero?
Werner “found” nothing. He used a bad tool to promote a meaningless result.
droege & Mosher
1) Did the Met Office say that the model mean temperature not greater than zero for 15 years (at 95% level)?
OR the global temperature trend is less than zero (at the 95% level)?
2) Was the fifteen year global temperature trend from 1940 to 1975 significantly greater than zero?
3) Can you quantitatively show that the GCM’s mean temperature predictions are more accurate than Scafetta’s 2000 predictions?
4) Tthe GCM global temperature model means able to forecast/hindcast half of historical tempreatures given data from the other half of the period?
5) If not, why rely on the less accurate models?
6) On what statistical basis do you evaluate when GCM’s do/do not predict global temperature?
7) On what statistical basis do you judge that GCM’s are able to distinguish:
7.1) major anthropogenic warming from
7.2) minor anthropogenic warming from
7.3) the null hypothesis of natural change?
My eyeball comparison says the GCM’s are running way hotter than actual temperature.
Each of the IPCC’s last 4 temperature predictions trend much hotter than subsequent global temperature reality.
To me that evidences systemic Type B error.
8) How do you quantify the presence/absence of such systemic error of predicted trends rrunning far from the mean of subsequent actual temperature trend?
9) Is the last decade of SST trending upward at the IPCC’s 0.2 C/decade?
How about a reality check!
Models do not command nature!
@Hagen
+1
David
1) Did the Met Office say that the model mean temperature not greater than zero for 15 years (at 95% level)?
OR the global temperature trend is less than zero (at the 95% level)?
#############################
The Met office can say what it likes. They are apt to be as wrong as you about things. They are no authority for me. Appealing to them or demanding that I defend their mistakes is you barking up the wrong tree.
2) Was the fifteen year global temperature trend from 1940 to 1975 significantly greater than zero?
Define significant. Further, this has nothing to do with the false claims about no warming for the past 15 years. It is off topic relative to my point about your “claim”. Did you shower this morning is more relevant.
“3) Can you quantitatively show that the GCM’s mean temperature predictions are more accurate than Scafetta’s 2000 predictions?
1. Scaffetta’s predictions are incomplete and not reproducable. He refuses to allow and audit of his work. It is not science. The first comparison I would do is not a comparison on global average. I’d do a taylor diagram. Or I’d compare scaffetas prediction for SST or his land to ocean ratio. You see it is a simple trick to fit a model to a global average. its a simple trick to tune a physics model to a global stat. The only way to compare models that are influenced by a dataset is to compare them OUTSIDE that dataset. So, If scaffeta models the “climate’ and the GCMs model the climate– i compare them where they dont expect to be compare: like on precipitation or sea surface salinity or Polar Ice cover. Only a fool would compare them where they expect to be compared. When scaffetta decides to do science and make his claims reproduceable then one can test his claims independently.
“4) Tthe GCM global temperature model means able to forecast/hindcast half of historical tempreatures given data from the other half of the period?”
5) If not, why rely on the less accurate models?
######################
I’ll take these together. 1. They are not related to my claim.
2. If you have to choose between a model that has no code, no documentation, one output that is tuned to bogus inputs ( scaffetta)
and a comprehensive model, i’d choose the comprehensive one.
6) On what statistical basis do you evaluate when GCM’s do/do not predict global temperature?
##############################
simple. have a look at Lucia’s work. You should go back and read back to 2008. I lay out my thoughts pretty clearly.
7) On what statistical basis do you judge that GCM’s are able to distinguish:
7.1) major anthropogenic warming from
7.2) minor anthropogenic warming from
7.3) the null hypothesis of natural change?
##################################
the “null” you mention isnt a proper null. Its an unscientific unquantified null that is utterly confused. Second. I do not think attribution is important. Utterly beside the point. I would not waste any time trying to untangle the anthropogenic from the non anthropogenic. It is utterly beside the point for reasons that you will probably never understand
My eyeball comparison says the GCM’s are running way hotter than actual temperature.
Each of the IPCC’s last 4 temperature predictions trend much hotter than subsequent global temperature reality.
To me that evidences systemic Type B error.
##############
Gosh welcome to the lukewarmer club. Since the release of AR4 we’ve been looking at this over at Lucias and my main argument has been that the models appear to be running a bit hot. Not WAY hotter, just a bit,
8) How do you quantify the presence/absence of such systemic error of predicted trends rrunning far from the mean of subsequent actual temperature trend?
################
before I even began to asses that I would look at a few models in particular that really dont belong in the sample. Those with demonstrated input errors. Those with no volcanic forcing. Long ago, I suggested this. catch up.
9) Is the last decade of SST trending upward at the IPCC’s 0.2 C/decade?
###########
i would say it is off somewhat. Note this has NOTHING to do with my claim above about the bogus claims of a 15 year pause
How about a reality check!
sure. you dont know what you are talking about. you cite shit without reading
David L. Hagen | March 8, 2013 at 10:54 pm |
And how did Canute teach this lesson? Did he do it as you do, by telling stories and interpretting them howsoever he pleased? By quoting scripture? By pointing at the zodiac? By referring to the authority of other people?
Indeed, by the judgement of many who remain in denial, Canute left the water too early, as there’s no evidence the tide would have continued to its peak until Canute is drowned.
Better to see a bit late than never.
AGW is the best explanation of the data from among the available valid hypotheses, and rises to the level of proof. Scafetta’s fingoism and your irrational conclusions and fallacies are not valid, nor do they much convince that you’ve understood the point of your own fable.
David L. Hagen | March 8, 2013 at 9:44 am |
1) Did the Met Office say that the model mean temperature not greater than zero for 15 years (at 95% level)?
There is nothing in the construction of GCMs that constrains any future span’s trend to the specific years in which the span occurs. How could it?
Over the course of all the GCM runs conventionally referred to as the IPCC ensemble forecast, there were falling 15 year trends.
OR the global temperature trend is less than zero (at the 95% level)?
So we see that even if the global temperature trend were less than zero, that is perfectly consonant with the model projections.
2) Was the fifteen year global temperature trend from 1940 to 1975 significantly greater than zero?
As 1940 to 1975 is longer than 15 years, the answer is both:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:89/mean:91/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:89/mean:91/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/scale:0.00001/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend/plot/esrl-co2/mean:11/mean:13/normalise
3) Can you quantitatively show that the GCM’s mean temperature predictions are more accurate than Scafetta’s 2000 predictions?
Why limit ourselves to Scafetta?
Why not include other astrologers, people who read the innards of pigeons and goats, dowsers, and random writers of science fiction? There’s bound to be a few who based on some fabulistic standard were spot-on in their predictions.
4) Tthe GCM global temperature model means able to forecast/hindcast half of historical tempreatures given data from the other half of the period?
This focus on temperature level, this mania for holding models to an impossible standard, where does it come from? Do that many people have childhood trauma associated with thermometers?
Temperature level is not a valid metric of success for a GCM. Trend profile is. And yes, GCMs are validated against that metric.
5) If not, why rely on the less accurate models?
Here’s where we come to the advantage of actual scientific hypothesis over fingoism. With a clear understanding of the mechanism proposed in the model, the proponents can identify how accurate the models ought be, and especially how accurate they ought not be.
Scafetta’s produced a mystery-based voodoo fiction that is highly accurate, but not very convincing.
6) On what statistical basis do you evaluate when GCM’s do/do not predict global temperature?
Why waste time generating statistics measuring impossible success? GCMs can’t predict volcanic eruptions; until something can, there’s no way to predict global temperature level, regardless of the alignment of the planets or how accurate Scafetta’s horoscope appears for a brief moment if you squint favorably.
7) On what statistical basis do you judge that GCM’s are able to distinguish:
7.1) major anthropogenic warming from
7.2) minor anthropogenic warming from
7.3) the null hypothesis of natural change?
And why distinguish 7,.1 from 7.2? A trespass is a trespass whether it’s a toe or the whole hind end. There’s no difference to most of us whether someone peed into the well, ‘but only a little’, as to whether or not there’s an offense.
For 7.3, the profile of temperature trends with and without CO2 forcing is dramatically different in the model runs. 100% is a pretty compelling statistic.
My eyeball comparison says the GCM’s are running way hotter than actual temperature.
Each of the IPCC’s last 4 temperature predictions trend much hotter than subsequent global temperature reality.
To me that evidences systemic Type B error.
Or, evidence you’ve systematically applied the wrong metric of success?
8) How do you quantify the presence/absence of such systemic error of predicted trends rrunning far from the mean of subsequent actual temperature trend?
The fact that the actual profile of temperature trends (rather than just temperature levels) fits well the mix of trends seen in the ensemble (merely at a different date) shows that when the correct metric is used, the question of Type B error becomes less relevant.. But it is still addressed, over and over again, in the wider literature and research to seek consilience across multiple experiments.
9) Is the last decade of SST trending upward at the IPCC’s 0.2 C/decade?
Which IPCC 0.2C/decade would that be? The one come up with in a press interview by a spokesman who appears not to understand Bayes? And surely you must understand the difference between sub-decadal timescale and climate timescale.
Go ahead, explain to us your understanding of the effects of timescale in time series trendology.
All I wanted to say was that a measurement such as 0.126 +/- 0.135, while failing to be statistically significant is also not zero.
I would also like to see the models get the decline in Arctic ice a bit closer to reality, they are a miserable failure there too.
Steven Mosher
Re: “The only way to compare models that are influenced by a dataset is to compare them OUTSIDE that dataset.”
I agree. I recommend that you do so. Note that Scafetta takes HALF the data set and can forecast the OTHER HALF. Both Forecasting AND Hindcasting.
Then his 2000 predictions are remarkably more accurate compared to subsequent global temperatures than the IPCC’s GCM model mean.
When the trend from the GCMs is biased so far from the mean, as an engineer I will rely on models that are much closer to mean global temperatures in the predictions (even though not as “politically correct” as you like.) Scafetta published his method and results and gave public sources for the data. Others are welcome to test that.
Re: “And why distinguish 7,.1 from 7.2? A trespass is a trespass whether it’s a toe or the whole hind end. There’s no difference to most of us whether someone peed into the well, ‘but only a little’, as to whether or not there’s an offense.”
On what grounds is there any “trespass” besides worshiping nature with the presupposition that one must not change it at all?
Against what law is there the “offense”? You have to show harm to others. There may well be benefit for the next century with rising concentrations of plant food and increasing rainfall increasing agricultural productivity.
Coal and natural gas provide the “training wheels” for modern civilization to rise out of extreme poverty to help care for their people, improve health care etc.
We are commanded to care for the earth. Only the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was originally forbidden, not nature.
Regarding impacting versus managing the environment, I highly recommend Allan Savory TED Talk Mar 4, 2013: “How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change”. It is the most inspiring presentation I have seen recently. Savory shows how managing dense herds reverses the current widespread desertification of grasslands that has been the primary cause of long term climate change and degradation. Cattle trampling grass and providing manure covers the ground, reducing evaporation, and restores biodiversity. The conventional wisdom of reducing “overgrazing” by reducing cattle density or eliminating cattle actually increases desertification. Savory shows how a 4 fold INCREASE in cattle with careful management greatly improve the land, restoring vegetation and agricultural productivity. See his Feasta Annual Lecture, 7 November 2009, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
See the Savory Institute.
Mosher : I would not waste any time trying to untangle the anthropogenic from the non anthropogenic
Er…isn’t that kind of important?
In climatology, Not Garbage but Gospel.
Global Warming Prediction Project.. Frank Lemke’s ‘knowledge mining’ ensemble of ensembles of ensembles, built with the contributions of an electrical engineer, MA in photography and some computer researchers.. And no climatologists at all.
That’s cool. Metascience in a thing. Self-organizing approaches could produce meaningful — albeit impossible to validate and difficult to verify — results.
But you still have to know the right question to ask such a system.
Tune it to 30 years, not 3 years, and tell us what drivers the climate has on climatic scales.
The objective of 36 month ‘climate’ predictions is irrelevant, as what it appears is the goal isn’t a climate model but a weather meta-engine. We know this approach will produce spurious well-correlated prediction after spurious well-correlated prediction without advancing much the underlying understanding of what is happening. It will eventually play chess better than a grandmaster and win at Jeopardy every time, with enough computing power and enough data. And heck, it could even find spurious correlations with Scafetta’s zodiacal theory, or any other random fingoism, because that’s all it is: a mechanism for automating the generation of baseless fictions.
Bart R
All hail the mighty “Global Climate Models”! Able to use MEGAWatts of power at the flip of a switch. Able to haul the climate gravy train. Capable of striking fear into people sufficient to drive politicians to pay up!
They have the amazing ability to inspire Joel Achenbach’s prognosis on “Forecasts and probabilities”
Nature has “underperformed” by a factor of 3 over the last decade from the commands of the mighty GCMs. By contrast, Nature has meekly followed the prediction corral imposed by Nicola Scafetta‘s 2000 global temperature model. Graph vs IPCC’s. (See updated figure at the bottom of Scafetta’s home page.)
Scafetta’s model is ONLY sufficient to take each half the historic data to fit the model and hindcast/forecast the other half. By contrast, the CSIRO’s powerful GCM’s are able to invert past drought trends in Australia by current models overriding historic evidence!
Can those living in extreme poverty ever break out to feed their families and develop economically in the face of such powerful GREEN commitment to eliminate 80% of the world’s cheapest electrical power?
What right have lonely scientists to confront the CLIMATE CHANGE juggernaut driven by billions of dollars in fear raised offerings?
Electrical engineers only need to design their computers and software to be reliable to parts per trillion or better calculation accuracy. They only must satisfy the market with accurate reliable equipment. Lowly aeronautical engineers only need make sure aircraft fly very reliably based on validated models. By contrast, reknowned “climate scientists” are able to sweep away an entire Medieval Warming Period with the shaft of a hockey stick graph!
How can the scientific method survive such power and funding? Who dare stand for truth? Must we all now submit to this global power with its amazing prognostications? Will we ever learn the lesson of King Canute?
David L. Hagen | March 8, 2013 at 8:17 am |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeQVq7nqEK0
Canute, the one who thought just by saying things he could make them so, despite all the evidence of science, to the point he was willing to endanger his life and the lives of others?
Bart R.
Read the link I gave (desipite your link’s dismissal): King Canute was specifically teaching his court a lesson in humility and that he was not all powerful.
There have been “technical topics” discussed in various threads, but my guess is that this one is far more technical, or far more fundamental science, than any of the earlier.
It also clear that the concluding sentences of Marston must be taken seriously:
The approach may well be very useful for some problems that involve jets, but will it be useful in simulating the full atmosphere or other real world systems with complex boundary conditions is a very different issue. Let’s hope that it will, but I would be really surprised, if it could be used within five years to improve full scale atmospheric models.
But one thing we have already learned from this thread:
Some of the skeptics (like Max as one example) are ready to use anything as support of their skepticism. It doesn’t matter at all, whether the paper may have anything at all to do with their ideas. Neither doesn’t it matter at all whether they can understand a word of the paper.
Pekka Perila,
Perhaps you can explain for us poor low information skeptics how direct statistical simulation will answer the questions regarding known unknowns like water vapor, solar influence, and land use effect, not to mention inaccurate and incomplete temperature measurements and uncertain paleo data? Then perhaps you can explain how this new type of model would solve for the unknown unknowns, which combined with the known unknowns, make it impossible to accurately model the Earth’s climate?
Because if it can’t, then whether it can provide “better” climate models than we currently have is irrelevant for policy purposes. A ten year old is generally better at math than a five year old. But I wouldn’t let either one of them build a bridge. But then, I’m skeptical that way.
My point is that this paper adds absolutely nothing to the arguments. Pretending that some additional evidence has been obtained to support any conclusions about climate is just disingenuous. I picked Max because he uses the same disingenuous approach in his comments all the time.
(Thus I didn’t really learn anything new about him, I only got one more confirmation that this is his systematic approach.)
Gary,
Are you arguing with Pekka’s characterization of Max by agreeing with him about the model?
BillC,
My comment was a result of Pekka Pirila’s reference to “some” skeptics using anything in support of their criticism etc. Since there were less than 50 comments here at the time, it looked like a pretty broad brush. If the comment were just directed to Max, I would not have said anything, realizing he is quite capable of defending himself.
It was the attitude, and the broad brush, that elicited my response.
And I do not agree with Pekka on the models. He doubts whether the new type of model could improve existing models in less than five years. I don’t think the current models can predict anything of value because our lack of knowledge of how climate works, ie. they can’t be improved by any type of improvement in data “stimulation,” ever. Inefficient statistical analysis is not the primary flaw in the models. Lack of knowledge about the climate is.
GaryM,
I agree with both you and Pekka if that’s possible (typical wishy washy response by me). I think you identify as a skeptic or that’s my interpretation. If you look at the post from John Reid above, you will see that he sees merit in the new approach discussed, related back to the link he provided. Exploring that website further shows a (AGW) skeptical orientation (though I don’t buy the Hummel paper). Of course, this may just be another instance of 1) skeptics who are skeptical of all models about the subject vs 2) skeptics who propose alternate models. As you say, verification will prevail in the long term…
BillC,
Reading John Reid’s comment above is enough to see it is from a skeptical perspective (which is fortunate, because the article linked to is above my math grade). I read him as arguing that improving the statistics of the current models will remove one of the excuses for their wide ranging results (the broad spaghetti graphs of the ensembles). Doing that will just highlight the general inability of the models to predict future climate.
Since Pekka is a consensus supporter, and the consensus needs the models like a fish needs water, I doubt he will agree with Reid.
Pekka
In your last post you have just ASS-U-MEd that I do not understand what I am writing about.
This is OK in itself, but the BASIS for your ASS-umption is simply that I happen to differ with your opinion on some matters.
Seems like a bit of a high-handed and closed-minded approach, Pekka.
Not really one expected of a scientist.
Now, to get to this specific instance.
I have simply opined that simply ASS-U-ming that nature in fact actually “obeys simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper” can backfire.
I cited the example of the IPCC model ASS-umption that our atmosphere maintains relative humidity with warming in lockstep with the Clausius-Clapeyron Law, when actual physical observations show that this is not so.
If you want to attack my logic on specific statements I have made, by all means do so, citing your specific reasons.
But simply to pontificate from your high horse as a scientist is not worthy of your profession.
Max
Max
Well below the ideal, but typically systematic, Pekka. Remember, I highly value the scientist in you, and dearly fear the craven policy wonk in you.
==========
Pekka: Some of the skeptics (like Max as one example) are ready to use anything as support of their skepticism.
So becoming more and more like the IPCC and other activist groups. Very sad.
Oh WTF. Pekka, if you have time please take a look at John Reid’s link in the post above. I think there is something to it – I only have the background to have an inkling, not a detailed understanding. Perhaps there is a good, as yet undiscovered reason that Kolmogorov’s 5/3 power law holds, but the application of an “eddies form, or they don’t” stochastic bifurcation seems arbitrary as described. I’m not inclined to grant fundamentally stochastic properties to something that is above the scale of QM – but if there is a link down to a QM scale (e.g. eddy formation as a result of quantum molecular states) maybe (after lots of experimentation of the right sort) progress could be had along these lines.
BillC,
The limitations of fluid dynamic calculations are well known. This paper cannot add much to that. What the work may at best lead to is a new method that helps in solving better some of the problems that are presently either unsolvable or computationally too heavy.
The B effect and problems arising from both and F plane geometry are limiting as the limitations of dissipative structures with friction is a topological problem( mountains etc) .
In modelling the B effect however it can close some extent boundary problems by the use pf physical experiments such as the Grenoble turntable. Eg Galperin 2006.
http://www.nonlin-processes-geophys.net/13/83/2006/npg-13-83-2006.pdf
The flows which become zonostrophic regimes ie Banded latitudinal structures can increase the mesoscale description both on earth and on other planetary bodies.
The problems that arise however is the observational metrics that are used such as global or hemispherical T etc,whereas what is needed is banded T data.
I have always wondered what cumulant generating functions were good for, outside of probability courses. If the goal is to model the distribution of the climate variables across decades (and among regions) rather than the mean in a given year or place, this looks like a promising way to do so. The authors note that the method is not yet accurate far from equilibrium, so one naturally wonders if the Earth climate system is too far from equilibrium (or if no equilibrium exists at all) for the method to be accurate for climate modeling.
Don’t be impatient. They are far from a usable result.
One thing that’s a source of a lot of confusion is the difference between equilibrium and steady-state. Equilibrium is a thermodynamic abstraction that sometimes happens quickly, and often never happens. Steady state is when things find steady values, even though equilibrium can’t happen, because there’s a constant flow of mass or energy into or out of a system. The “equilibrium” that requires surface temperatures to rise in response to GHG isn’t thermodynamically an equilibrium; it’s a steady-state. Strictly speaking, neither happens in the atmosphere, but the long-term averages are assumed to reach steady-state in models.
Whether “equilibrium” in statistics refers to thermodynamic equilibrium exclusively, or also to steady-state, I don’t know, but I suspect that it does apply to steady-state. Equilibrium never happens in the climate system, and steady-state is constantly perturbed by natural variation. It’s not clear that these methods are applicable.
“The authors note that the method is not yet accurate far from equilibrium,”
There is a significant problem with statistical mechanics theory in far from equilibrium structures.There isn’t one.
So are they essentially claiming to use (quasi) 2-dimensional models to simulate a 3-dimensional system?
A system where everybody is currently most interested in the fluxes passing through the third dimension?
dynamical systems theory allows you to follow the trajectories with such tools as circle maps eg Ghil 2008
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/tcd/PREPRINTS/GCS-Climate_robustnes#F1B8B.pdf
With irrational winding maps the dissipative structures live on the 2d torus and you can model the limits that arise ie model when the temporal horizon becomes unpredictable
@Matthew R Marler: Great comment, which inspired me to check the Wikipedia page for cumulants, which had what looks like a very applicable paragraph: “In statistical physics many extensive quantities – that is quantities that are proportional to the volume or size of a given system – are related to cumulants of random variables. The deep connection is that in a large system an extensive quantity like the energy or number of particles can be thought of as the sum of (say) the energy associated with a number of nearly independent regions. The fact that the cumulants of these nearly independent random variables will (nearly) add make it reasonable that extensive quantities should be expected to be related to cumulants.”
These “direct” simulation predictions must be (eventually) be validated against experimental climate observations …
… and because recent paleo observations have strikingly affirmed the physical reality of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’, per Marcott, Shakun, Clark, and Mix “A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years“ — as can be seen with striking clarity in Figure S3 of the free-as-in-freedom supplemental material — we can look forward to a four-fold verification that James-Hansen’s worldview is scientifically correct:
• (1) verification with respect to the paleo “Hockey Stick”
• (2) verification with respect to (large-scale) thermodynamic theories
• (3) verification with respect to (mid-scale) direct statistical theories
• (4) verification with respect to (fine-scale) dynamical models
• (5) verification with respect to (predicted) “acceleration of sea-level rise this decade.”
Once this five-fold verification is in-hand, there will no doubt be very little (if any) remnant rational skepticism regarding Hansen’s scientific worldview!
This five-legged support is why scientific understanding is robust, eh?
Conclusion A key verification test for statistical models of climate is simply this: Do statistical-type climate models correctly reproduce the Mann-style ‘Hockey Stick’ that is strikingly evident in the paleo data?
Aye lassies and laddies … now that’s the key question, eh?
Fanny
Come back down to Planet Earth.
I can cite dozens of independent studies from all over the world using different paleo-climate methods, which all conclude that the MWP was slightly warmer than today.
Then there is the historical record from all over the civilized world at that time, extending across to North America via the Vikings.
And, on top of all of this, there is actual physical evidence, such as farms buried in the Greenland permafrost, carbon-dated remains of ancient trees found under receding alpine glaciers high above the tree line, etc.
The evidence is truly overwhelming (as long as you don’t have your eyes shut, Fanny).
Max
Fan, it is time for remedial work:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=richard+muller+michael+mann+you+tube&mid=852AD5F54C49DAF9B4C0852AD5F54C49DAF9B4C0&view=detail&FORM=VIRE5
Before venturing into predictions, verify acceleration term of actual sea level rise first, please.
In the last 2 decades it is -0.03 mm/yr^2. Yes, it is negative. Called deceleration.
LOL … Berényi Péter, if anything like the rate of sea-level rise that you posted is sustained in the coming decade, than it’s “game-over” for climate-change skepticism, eh?
Because no-one but Hansen (and his colleagues) saw the recent sea-level rise acceleration a-coming … did they?
Certainly WUWT‘s skeptics called it 100% dead-wrong!
And 18 months (as opposed to 20 years) is climate, in your vocabulary. I see.
I can assure you 18 months ago (early September 2011) it was much warmer at my location and there was way less sea ice in the Arctic. Is this marked cooling trend due to climate disruption or what? LOL
Breaking News Anthony Watts/WUWT accepts accountability
In the wake of recent research affirming the reality of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’, Anthony Watts’ well-known weblog WUWT has issued the following statement:
Oh wait. That WUWT apologia didn’t happen, did it?
Perhaps it will happen, eh Wagathon?
Or perhaps … it should happen … but won’t?
AFMD : Mann-style ‘Hockey Stick’ that is strikingly evident in the paleo data?
Mental typo, you obviously meant “absent” rather than “evident”.
Fan obliviously, if not delusionaliy writes: “… and because recent paleo observations have strikingly affirmed the physical reality of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’, per Marcott, Shakun, Clark…”
Fan, I’m sorry to say that you’ve finally squandered once and for all any shred of remaining credibility you might have had. You’re just as wrong as wrong can be. So wrong in fact, that I wonder if you’re just in this for trollish kicks. If that’s the case, you’re no longer taken seriously enough for anyone to get seriously bothered.
Time to reinvent yourself.
pokerguy
Don’t worry about Fan.
He/she is just a broken record, playing the same old song over and over again about Mann’s totally discredited hockey “shtick” being the gospel truth, ignoring the historical record, actual physical evidence plus several dozen independent studies from all over the world using different paleo-climate methods, which all concluded that the MWP was slightly warmer than today.
The evidence is truly overwhelming, but Fanny doesn’t want to be confused with the facts.
So be it.
Max
“They modeled the fluid using both the traditional numerical technique and their statistical technique, and then compared the output of the two models.”
Heh. They have forgotten to compare both models to reality, have they?
standard practice.
if you have high fidelity numerical codes that you test against reality, and you are trying to develop faster less complex models to replace them and eventually improve them, you do your first benchmarks against the thing you hope to replace. That allows you to do tons of testing off line before you set up for a real physical test. Pretty basic methodology. Tried and tested. Once you match the more computationally complex model, you then move on to more expensive real world validation. Crawl walk run.
In other words, it is not climate science, it is computer science. Fair enough.
And, as traditional computational climate models attempt to fit complex models to a single run of a unique physical entity, which is not science, fitting another computational model to them, requiring less computation, but also having an irreducibly lengthy description, is at least dubious.
(Genuine science fits simple models to multiple runs of a wide class of physical entities, “simple” meaning there exists a short description of the model [which GCMs don’t have] – see Occam’s razor)
On the other hand, had they not even mentioned terrestrial climate, but a wide class of non-equilibrium systems, some of which would have compact descriptions and be realizable under lab conditions AND they would have tested their computationally light theory against multiple experimental runs of several such systems, then I would be willing to call it a breakthrough.
n other words, it is not climate science, it is computer science. Fair enough
########################
wrong. computer science is the study of computing. This is physical science using models as a tool. dont be stupid
“, as traditional computational climate models attempt to fit complex models to a single run of a unique physical entity, which is not science, fitting another computational model to them, requiring less computation, but also having an irreducibly lengthy description, is at least dubious.”
######
wrong again. Wrong about what science is and wrong about how one builds tools
“(Genuine science fits simple models to multiple runs of a wide class of physical entities, “simple” meaning there exists a short description of the model [which GCMs don’t have] – see Occam’s razor)”
###########
wrong again. there is no such thing as genuine science. Second, you are not the arbitor of what counts as science. And third, occams razor is a practical TOOL, not a law of the universe. It is an assumption about how one should behave.
” the other hand, had they not even mentioned terrestrial climate, but a wide class of non-equilibrium systems, some of which would have compact descriptions and be realizable under lab conditions AND they would have tested their computationally light theory against multiple experimental runs of several such systems, then I would be willing to call it a breakthrough.”
############
Perhaps you’ve never worked on complex physics models and then had to test them. unfool yourself
Mosh, precis : if you are trying to develop replacement, faster less complex models, you do your first benchmarks against the thing you hope to replace.
So if the new fast ones are closer to reality/observations, but conflict with the older models, we’ll never know this and they’ll just be ditched ? Or corrupted till they toe the consensus line.
LOL … Manacker and Bob, what cherry-picking/abusive denialism mainly shows is “The plural of anecdote is not data!”
When we examine all the paleo data, then we perceive the true face of climate’s hockey stick graph.
That “true face of climate change” is mighty interesting, eh Manacker and Bob and Pokerguy?
“That “true face of climate change” is mighty interesting, eh Manacker and Bob and Pokerguy?”
Hey Fan,
I don’t know about Max and Bob, but I’ve been told my face most closely resembles my Italian Greyhound Jack. Long snout, hairy ears, skinny sting bean tail. You get the picture. No sense grossing everyone out anymore than necessary…
Fan, why don’t you look again. It is only 4 minutes or so.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=richard+muller+michael+mann+you+tube&mid=852AD5F54C49DAF9B4C0852AD5F54C49DAF9B4C0&view=detail&FORM=VIRE5
Why is it whenever a new paper comes out that supports a particular conclusion, people offer it as “proof” before the ink is even dry? What happened to examination, contemplation and disputation in science?
I suppose it’s pointless to ask though. After all, this guy did just say “all the paleo data” was used in a paper that used 73 proxies. Call me crazy, but I think there might be a bit more paleo-data than that.
a bit more? for the holocene? I read the paper a couple days ago. Nothing too surprising, biggest issue is probably questions about the high frequency losses.
The methods are all pretty well known, if you want to do more than 73, have at it
He didn’t say all paleo data back to the Holocene. He said all paleo data. There’s a huge difference. One of the biggest benefits of a multiproxy study is the ability to use data that covers different periods, especially as it allows for greater cross-validation examination. It even helps examine the issue of variance deflation.
Regardless, the point is he said things he doesn’t actually know to be true. He found a paper with results he liked, and he promoted it without even attempting to verify what he said.
The paper covers the holocene. You might be more charitable in your interpretations of what he means, or ask him a question rather than leaping to the conclusion that you do. Instead, you pick a point that allows you to attack him and avoid the substance.
Dont feel bad or get defensive we all do that.
Puh-leez. I did nothing of the sort. The discussion was in reference to Michael Mann’s work. Claiming to show results based on all paleo data while all the data used in Mann’s reconstructions was ignored is incredibly wrong. Pointing out such a gross distortion is not a tactic I used to attack him and avoid substance. It was a tactic to show his lack of substance and attack him for it.
The topic was reconstructions over a period of 2000 or fewer years. There is no legitimate reason to restrict “paleo data” to data covering a massively different period. Changing a subject like that is wrong.
You aren’t being charitable. You’re defending a gross distortion.
Inclusion criteria are explicit, and full public access to the data is available:
Brandon Shollenberger, if you can identify qualifying data-sets that were excluded, sufficient to alter the conclusions, then your criticisms have substantive merit.
Otherwise your criticism amounts to nugatory nit-picking, eh?
Conclusion The reality of the Mann ‘hockey stick’ is affirmed.
When people point out that other reconstructions have broadly supported the conclusions of Mann’s work we are often told that they can’t be considered truly independent as they are based on many of the same proxies (despite many of the criticisms of Mann’s work actually being to do with his statistical methods). So ISTM that a study using a completely different set of proxies which still supports his conclusions would be a good thing as it avoids that criticism. I guess one could argue that it doesn’t necessarily vindicate him personally, it’s still possible he got the correct result through sheer luck, but it should at least mean that there is less need for discussions about paleo reconstructions and the HS in general to just become all about Mann (although I bet they still do).
andrew adams, I have no problem with the fact that paper only used the 73 series it used. I haven’t criticized the paper itself. What I criticized was the claim that the paper used all paleo data when in reality it only used a small amount. That’s a criticism of the person describing the paper, not the paper itself.
I haven’t had a chance to look at the paper in much detail so I don’t have a strong opinion about it. The main thing I have noticed is they did quite a bit of comparison to Mann’s 2008 reconstruction. Some of those comparisons were used when examining the uncertainty in their data. That is wrong. Mann’s 2008 paper has known problems, and thus any examination of uncertainty based on it is inherently suspect.
The other thing I’ve noticed is their reconstruction has such a poor temporal resolution,any “confirmation” it may find has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Of course, the biggest question is the quality of data. Most reconstructions have used questionable, if not bad, data. That may or may not be true here. Too bad the authors didn’t do what C&L did and plot all their data series.
> Why is it whenever a new paper comes out that supports a particular conclusion, people offer it as “proof” before the ink is even dry?
More about the notion of proof over there:
http://planet3.org/2013/02/28/on-proof-and-denial/
Shaft smoothed, blade tacked on; what’s new in climate science? Don’t they know ‘Trix are for Kids’?
But, insofar as they have shown anything, they show us teetering on the edge of a vast crevass of ice.
=========
I have only seen the supplemental but it appears they have used a 20 year smoothing on data (not really data) with resolution of annual, 120 year and 160 year, and as much as 400 years. Of course the spike at the end comes from the annual resolution data, something that may be a fly in the ointment.
Fanny
You ask:
Yeah. It is interesting. The “true face of climate change” is actually a bit red with embarrassment right now:
– Climategate has revealed to the world that a small group of influential climate scientists have “fudged” the data going into the IPCC reports
– Further revelations have exposed untruths in the AR4 report regarding Himalayan glacier loss, crop losses in Africa, demise of the Amazonian rain forest, etc. allegedly due to AGW
– Closer examination has shown that estimates of increased future extreme climate events resulting from AGW are not based on formal studies, but simply on “expert opinion” – many are being questioned
– Recent observation-based studies show that 2xCO2 climate sensitivity is only around half of the previous model-predicted estimates.
– Attempts to get global support for AGW mitigation actions at international “Climate Summits “have failed miserably
– And, worst of all, it has stopped warming despite unabated human GHG emissions and concentrations reaching all-time record levels.
It’s an embarrassing for the CAGW faithful.
Max
–
LOL … perhaps it’s “time to end your membership with the American Geophysical Union (AGU)“, eh Manacker?
Oh wait … that little WUWT campaign from 2010 went nowhere, eh?
Instead AGU membership is up six-fold since the 1970s, and just this year, the AGU has elected Michael Mann to be a prestigious AGU Fellow for for exceptional scientific contributions to illuminate the causes of climate change and for a major breakthrough and paradigm shift.”
Good on `yah, AGU! Good on `yah, Michael Mann!
No wonder WUWT has joined with the AGU, in congratulating Dr. Michael Mann, “for his persistence during years of criticism, and for being proved scientifically right.”
Oh wait … no WUWT didn’t. But honorably speaking, perhaps WUWT does owe a sincere apology to Michael Mann, eh manacker?
Fan : Manacker cut-and-pastes “[six worn-out talking-points of climate-change denialism]“
For “worn-out”, read “something Fan knows full well is unanswerable”.
A point Fan drives home by failing to even attempt any answers, preferring to deflect attention elsewhere.
Sorry. “String.”
GW=n$
I think Fan must be on the payroll. There’s no other explanation.
To increase the credibility of the next generation of GCM modeling we should make it clear to the public that the Climatists we all come to respect and trust are improving reductionism with advanced zonation mechanics and computer-generated numerical simulations (i.e., gaming and the mathematics of chaos—e.g., numerology) to better capture anistrophically affected three dimensional atmospheric and oceanic swirling vortices and turbulent wave flows in the presence of the zonostrophy using subgrid-scale parametrization techniques to better model in three advancing to advance enstrophy conservation schemes while holding energy constant.
Yeah maybe on Heartland’s payroll to make the other side look bad. He surely isn’t being paid by anyone in the warmist camp.
pokerguy
I think fan is on something, but it “ain’t called ‘payroll'”.
Max
Wagathon
A good summary of the additional work that needs to be done (and funded by taxpayers, of course), but ya gotta get the terms, “equilibrium”, “unprecedented” and “increased confidence” into your brief.
“Confidence” is the most important (after all we’re talking about a multi-billion dollar “confidence” game here).
Max
Manacker,
You forgot the term “sustainable”. That term must be included too.
And:
– evil corporations
– immoral Republicans
– greedy rich people
Max oh Max,
How come some one with yore feeling fer language overlooked
the term ‘Suss- stain-able’?
Beth the serf.
What about those potted philosophy course terms to toss at people who don’t agree with you: “straw man” “ad hom” etc. These terms are applied to all those skeptic “cherry-pickers” who suffer from “cognitive dissonance”.
Meanwhile, on the side of climate bedwetters are reason, logic and science (adjusted for a species of “noise” called reality.)
mosomoso, when yer hafta’adjust fer a special noise called
reality’ I ‘d say yer really headin’ fer the slough of despond.’
Gaining some understanding of the Left’s English, the inconvenient truth is that reality plays no part in the logic of AGW theory.
Really, one sentence! WoW
Scott
But another way would be to develop statistical mechanics and find that the gas actually obeys simple laws you can write down on a piece of paper: PV=nRT, the gas equation.
This, rough, analogy is a mis-characterization. Statistical mechanics deals solely with inherent properties of the material of interest; generally, matter. Parameters related to states that the material has been observed to attain are not a part of the theory.
The DSS methodology, on the other hand, introduces parameters and other characterizations of states that the material has been observed to attain. Some of the parameterizations are tweaked so that closer correspondence of the calculated results with DNS results are obtained. My zeroth-order impression is that DSS seems to be following along a path that has proven to be useful, at an engineering level, for rough modeling of turbulent flows.
In contrast, all aspects of the flows would fall out of the calculations if the description is at the fundamental level corresponding to the statistical mechanics approach. The states that the material can attain, including all interactions at all temporal and spatial scales, would be determined by the fundamental equations. Post facto modeling and parameterizations would not be necessary.
There is so much the Left takes for granted; and, so much they should be held accountable for. If in the Left’s view of the world is there should be even more billions people without access to electricity, how can Leftist ideology be thought of as anything but Western hypocritical anti-humanism?
Shared values: ‘The greatest thing on earth is to have the love of God in your heart, and the next greatest thing is to have electricity in your house.’ ~Roger Pielke, Jr., February 26, 2013
Breaking News Anthony Watts/WUWT accepts accountability
In the wake of recent research affirming the reality of Michael Mann’s ‘hockey stick’, Anthony Watts’ well-known weblog WUWT has issued the following statement:
Oh wait. That WUWT apologia didn’t happen (yet), did it?
Perhaps it will happen, eh Wagathon? Or perhaps … it should happen … but won’t?
You’ve got the politics of AGW down pat. And, since AGW is about politics and not science everything you say is every bit as valid as something Al Gore would say which means you too could be awarded a Nobel.
That an article of faith … for denialists.
Yet Nature’s authority resides entirely in herself, eh?
And she affirms that the climate-change science of Mann/Hansen et al. is correct.
The Wichita Lineman is still on the line.
================
He must be a Penn State grad.
Naw. But he played on the junior football team.
Prawly a gorilla pitt.
=====
Fan seems to take a very dim view of America’s future.
Unless its citizens are gullible and fickle enough to buy the obviously rigged climate “science” produced by their goverment’s stooge scientists, and descend into EU-style totalitarianism of Obamacare etc, his prayers (dressed up as predictions, with all the finesse of lipstick on a pig), are that they will come to naught.
The right fought the construction of electrical lines to rural America.
Some of the freakin’ idiotic morons called it socialism.
… like fighting big sodas in NY? That’s liberal fascism not socialism. Running a sewer line to a fire lookout at Mt. Hood, now that’s moronic socialism. There is no end to the supposed good deeds you can come up with on someone else’s dime. As Margaret Thatcher said, “Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them.”
The Smart, it smarts.
========
Lol. Whatever you do, stay out of brown paper bags.
Some of the hyperventilators around here might find one useful.
================
Note, too, JCH, the yinyang; those demonizing CO2 are retarding rural electrification, those poor people.
==========
It’s probably true. If conservatives in 1930 got their way, CO2 would be around 350 ppm.
“The right fought the construction of electrical lines to rural America.”
The level of historical illiteracy around here is breathtaking. The opposition was not to construction of electrical lines, it was to the creation of a government owned utility specifically designed to give the government control over the broader energy economy.
The TVA was the CAGW of the 1930s.
Let’s see, government ownership of the means of production of electrical power. Nope, nothing socialist about that.
”
The level of historical illiteracy around here is breathtaking.
”
Perhaps, but it is insignificant when compared to the level of scientific illiteracy.
Blogs can be funny that way.
You are correct GaryM!
Few here on Climate Etc recall the foresighted conservative principles of Dwight Eisenhower:
Similarly today, rational conservatives can proclaim with confidence comparable to Eisenhower’s:
Thank you for the well-grounded lesson in science and history, GaryM!
Gary M
Well, now, the TVA had some positive sides, too, besides benefitting the population of a chronically underdeveloped region with jobs plus a reliable, low-cost source of energy (the lakes are beautiful, too).
Without it, there could have been no Oak Ridge, Manhattan Project, Hiroshima and WWII would have lasted another 6 months with several hundred thousand additional American deaths plus an estimated million added Japanese deaths.
That’s history.
Max
PS I am for minimum government involvement in the economy, but some very large projects are too big and have too long a payback period to be handled by private enterprise alone. Another example is the space exploration side of NASA (as opposed to the climatologists and associated computer jockeys that are eating up a good part of its budget today to frighten the US population).
JCH
You got your numbers backward, as far as the TVA is concerned.
TVA hydroelectric power generates around 14,000 MW electrical power per year; in addition TVA’s nuclear power generates around 6,900 MW. More recently, TVA also has a smidgen of wind power and other renewables, but this is negligible.
Let’s forget the nuclear, wind and other renewables and only consider the hydroelectric power.
And let’s make the WAA (assumption) that TVA has not resulted in any real increase in the TOTAL electrical power demand or economic development of the USA.
Over the life of TVA, the hydroelectric dams have arguably generated around 1 billion GWh of electrical power, which would otherwise have been generated elsewhere from coal.
Average CO2 emission is 1,000 tons CO2 per GWh generated from coal.
So this is equivalent to 1,000 Gt CO2.
Assuming that 50% of this added emitted CO2 would have “remained” in the atmosphere, as is currently the case for human CO2 emissions.
This would have added 64 ppmv to the atmosphere since TVA was started.
= (0.5 * 1,000 * 1,000,000 / 5,140,000) * (29 / 44) = 64 ppmv
Added to today’s 393 ppmv, we would be at 457 ppmv (and just above Hansen’s “dangerous” level of 450 ppmv) without TVA.
At the latest 2xCO2 climate sensitivity estimates of 1.5°C, this would have produced additional GH warming of:
= ln (457/393) * 1.5 / ln(2) = 0.3°C
The TVA has saved the planet for our (and Hansen’s) great-great-grandchildren!
(Just shows how you can prove any silly thing with numbers.)
Max
And what did Lenin say?
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/communism_is_soviet_power_plus_the/264519.html
Yes, providing access to power to allow billions to lift themselves out of abject power is exactly the same as letting millions starve while you focus on creating an industrial base that will support your dreams of world conquest.
Brilliant moral equivalency.
”
…dreams of world conquest.
”
Everybody wants to rule the world.
Last time I checked, Walmart and the People’s Republic of China were tied.
Yes, an American corporation that provides goods at a cost that raises the standard of living of the poor wherever their stores are located and over 2 million jobs in an economy being driven to collapse by growing government, is exactly the same thing as a communist government that kills its own people, forces abortion, enslaves whole countries and has built enormous ghost towns as a result of its brilliant central planning.
Glib, historically illiterate, moral equivalency at its best.
GaryM:
Where do you think Walmart gets 98% of its crappy inventory?
From Jesus?
Do you suppose that propping up Wall Street to the tune of a trillion dollars didn’t cost the American poor?
I’m not going anywhere near your “provides goods at a cost that raises the standard of living of the poor” – it’s just too creepy.
BTW – The USA kills its own people too. Sorry.
But I will concede this – You have firm grasp of moral equivalency.
Propping up Wall Street was the brain child of progressives, including Barack “Goldman Sachs” Obama. Who is still doing it through the Fed. But I am sure you knew that as well informed as you clearly think you are.
And yes, the death penalty for particularly heinous murderers in the U.S. is the exact same as killing political and religious dissidents and forced abortions.
Sometimes I think some of you people are dumber than you think we think you are.
So – Jesus it is, then.
Goldman Sachs, Obama, progressives? Too funny.
You must think Standard & Poor is full of communists.
Is there any contradiction that the conservative American brain cannot believe?
Oh well – the important thing is that you have someone to blame.
“Particularly heinous murderers” at least get a trial. CIA drones don’t care about due process – So be careful what you say when you travel, dude.
And have fun paying down all that Chinese-owned debt.
I was right, you’re dumber than I thought you were. You know who the architects were of the Wall Street bailout you hate so much? Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner, both Goldman Sachs alums. Both retained by Obama, Geithner still being the Treasury Secretary. The crony capitalism practiced by Goldman Sachs and Obama is typical of progressives. Just ask Woodrow Wilson, father of the American progressive movement and creator of the Fed..
And if you think Obama is not a progressive, well, it’s a waste of time talking to you. Good luck with the Kool Aid.
One of the marvelous ironies is so much of that borrowed money going to US solar ventures, now failing in a market captured by the Chinese. That one goes in a special exhibit. We’ll have a hologram of heinrich delighting the crowd with the details.
==========================
A bit of revisionism, GaryM. Why don’t we review who was the guy who laid the foundations of the financial bailout we hate so much for the US public by Sept. 24th of 2008:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/economy-watch/timeline/index.html
Hint. His name started with George and ended with Bush.
Pekka
You’re right.
Lenin said it best.
(“Lies”, “useful idiots”, etc.)
Max
kim
heinrich won’t get interested until those Chinese wind turbines are being sold at discount prices at Wal-Mart.
Max
Timothy Geithner never worked for Goldman Sachs. That I can see, Hank Paulson never worked for President Obama.
Naw. Timothy Geithner never had a non-government job, but his bio does tell us:
http://www.biography.com/people/timothy-geithner-391494?page=2
Bart R,
You are right, Geithner did not work for Goldman Sachs, his chief of staff Mark Patterson did though. As well as Geithner adviser John Thain. And yes, that progressive Republican George Bush did indeed implement the first bailout, with the approval of president elect Obama, who voted for it as Senator Obama. I never said Republican progressives don’t practice corporate capitalism.
Not to mention that Obama took Goldmans Sachs contributions of over $1 million before the 2008 election, and a total of approximately $42 million from all Wall Street firms.
So yes, Barack “Goldman Sachs” Obama still fits.
What a whacky world we live in.
Progressive Barack Obama on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Progressive George W. Bush and progressive Dick Cheney. That whole progressive Republican party and its progressive corporate communism and those progressive Koch brothers and the progressive banking industry.
Thanks for clearing up for me who is who.
Let’s have some fun. Go to this site and nominate Anthony Watts as a Climate Change Abolitionist!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/interactive/climate-change-abolitionists-fighting-sustainable-world
The strength of science resides in persistently extending the domain and range of good science … not in sharing the limelight with websites like “Fat Cyclist“.
Isn’t that right, Jim2?
Chew on this, Fan of More BS …
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/a-billion-tons-of-coal-a-year-for-3000-years-in-norway/
“The basic point is that there’s a heck of a lot of fossil fuels in the world. Loads of it. In 2005 they found 3000 billion tons of the stuff near Norway. Yes, it is under water and nearly impossible to mine at present. But technology changes. Whenever it is desirable enough, we can send small robotic mining machines down to get it.”
Thousands of years from now, alien archeologists will marvel at the astonishing technological cleverness of our collective suicide.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Hang down your head and cry.
Hang down your head, Tom Dooley,
Poor models, they all gonna die.
=============
“our collective suicide”
Oooooh the drama heinrich, the drama! I’m hanging on every word you type. Do it some more. ;)
Andrew
”
I’m hanging on every word you type.
”
Apparently, you are indeed.
The weather commies at the Guradian are crapping all over themselves and and like all AGW True Believers, “have taken leave of the realm of reality, preferring to seek meaning and momentum in the fantasy notion that they are fighting a hot apocalypse.
“Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask `Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted `no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand – ignoramuses that they are – is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.” ~Brendan O’Neill, ‘The icy grip of the politics of fear,’ 4-Jan-2011
According ter CAGW doom sayers, ‘snow crisis’ … ‘ ‘s no crisis.’
Cooling’s not the worry, ( post the 60’s/70’s cooling scare,) it’s been
replaced by ‘the oceans will boil’ worry. Hansen hisself says so:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2013/01/nasas-boiling-oceans-updated-empirical-evidence-confirms-absurdity-of-prediction.html
Sometimes when I come back to this thread, I misread the caption as Direct Statistical S[t]imulation, and have to block out the thought of some computer geek getting too involved with his computer, in an interpersonal kind of way.
GaryM is ignorant about anything to do with science. A stimulus is defined as a forcing function and is a very commonly used term in simulation and analysis.
http://www.google.com/search?q=simulation+stimulus
Say WHT, ‘Garry M is ignorant of anyhing ter do with science?’
Jest another on yer long, long list of those ter be be dismissed
fer failing ter ascribe ter the climate warming con -census.
Look ter the mote in yer own eye, WHT, and check yer lookin’
through the right end of yer telescope.
H/t Max.
Web,
Since you are a progressive, I know you have no sense of humor. But do you have to be quite so obvious about it?
Web,
And if that is the only definition of stimulus you know, I can see why you are so dour.
WHT – you aren’t an oil field professional and no differential equation in the world can anticipate what recovery techniques will be developed. Get used to it. In fact, maybe you can apply differential equations and model common sense for a change.
jim2 probably does not work in a professional realm, where business plans and technical plans are the rule. A significant part of a business plan is making projections based on a technical analysis, not on misguided hope. . So not only are you and your buddies anti-analysis, you are apparently business-deficient.
WHT talks about my profession as if he has a clue. I’m pretty sure that’s the level of certainty he has for most of his flatulations.
Often-times a good rejoinder to denialist irrelevancies is simply to point to good science.
Of which there’s no shortage nowadays!
Indeed, it’s darn impressive how well the pieces of climate-change science are fitting together!
Hi fan,
‘…darn impressive how well the pieces of climate change
science are fitting together!’ Hockey stick data, alarming
atmospheric warming and rising, incidence of extreme
events .. pieces kinda fit together like a Salvadore Dali
jigsaw.
http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79018
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/04/forthcoming-congressional-hearing/#comment-300445
——
More shenanigans:
——–
Yet Hansen continues his scaremongering predictions, which have been proved nonsense in the past:
—-
And why propose an energy tax on global warming when he admits there hasn’t been any?:
—————
So, why the continual scaremongering when he has shown there has been no temperature rises?
Hansen is a shill for industries anti coal, he always has been.
From this selection it’s clear that he is thoroughly unconscionable in his presentations predicting dire consequencies of global warming claimed to be driven by carbon dioxide while contradicting his own papers and his agreement that temperatures haven’t increased.
Here he is proven to be nothing more than a scam artist. He is not a scientist, he manipulates science to give his confidence trickery credibility. And that’s what he’s leaving as a legacy for his grandchildren.
It’s even more impressive the advance of technology in the energy industry …
“Over the past year, EOG has implemented a new completion design. It was first used in the Eagle Ford and Permian, and now it has found its way to North Dakota. In the Eagle Ford, EOG has used this and has a large number of short laterals with 24-Hour IP rates north of 3000 Bo/d. Its best completion, the Burrow Unit #2 produced 6331 Bo/d. In order to increase crude production it has not focused on long fracs but those that increase the surface area around the well bore. Essentially, it wants better fracs near as opposed to farther away as it allows the crude to flow in a radius around the well bore.”
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1253231-bakken-update-eog-resources-completion-technology-is-a-game-changer
Beth
Yew an Fanny are spot on.
Them scary pre-dic-shuns all do fit t’gether lahk a han an a gluv.
Only part that don’t fit is whut is reely happenin.
Its sposed ta be heatin up – BUT it aint gettin no hotter!
But ah spect that’s how it works in cli-mut science.
Reckon it mus be so COLD caus of global WARMIN.
(Maybe Fanny kin splain.)
Max
Max
Considering that this CE blog is more about science than technology, it is more impressive how well that I can model the depletion of these diffusion-limited flow wells. In terms of the physical process, when a volume is fractured, the previously trapped liquid tends to disperse in all directions. The flow will follow the cracks and fissures that were opened up by the hydraulic fracturing event. http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/841/diffusionalflow.gif
This is a one-time event that can be analyzed by solving the Fokker-Planck (F-P) equation for diffusion. What makes this relevant for the top-level post on DIRECT STATISTICAL SIMULATION is the stochastic approximations used in solving the F-P equation of this hydrodynamic system.
The F-P equation is normally cast as
but in the case of a random well and its locality, we do not know the value of the diffusivity D very accurately. About all we can guess at is the mean and then assume maximvariance about the mean. The same in terms of the collection volume — we know about how far the fractured volume extends but can only guess at how much it can vary (i.e the variance).
A transformation into a direct statistical simulation turns the Green’s function impulse response solution of the original F-P solution which is this:
Into a dispersed diffused solution as this:
Whete D is now a mean diffusion time and P0 is an expected cumulative production, which is directly solved in terms of a statistical model. The difference with DSS is that this is solved analytically instead of by a numerical simulation, which will more often be the case.
This square-root formulation fits the production curves of typical Bakken wells very accurately (green line is data, blue is model): http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/3997/bakkentypicalndiccontex.gif
of which the original data you can find from the state of NoDak DMR website and page 29 of this document: https://www.dmr.nd.gov/oilgas/presentations/EmmonsCoFB101512.pdf
I consider this an equivalence to the DSS approach being used by Tobias and Marston, because we are making assumptions on the moments of the underlying distributions (i.e. related to the cumulants of the characteristic functions) and thus simplifying the analysis. In this case, we are only keeping the mean of the diffusivity and the volume, and letting Jaynes maximum entropy principle determine the rest of the moments. This turns the potentially complicated solution into something extraordinarily simple.
My only issue with Tobias and Marston is that they do not apply their DSS formulation to some very simply problem like the hydrodynamic flow of oil, so we can more easily follow their approach.
BTW, the Bakken well production profiles are pitiful. The diffusion-limited growth provides an initial large transient but this transient disappears within a couple of years. Jim2’s stock-pickers do not know physics and are only trying to pick your pocket.
90$/barrel of oil support new production techniques. You don’t have to have a PhD in math to see how that works. The shale plays are playing havoc with your so-called predictions, WHT. I know it’s embarrassing, but capitalism and free enterprise will continue to amaze and warm us.
Jim2, It’s a science blog. Better get used to it.
In this case, people can use the science and make projections as to how many wells need to be drilled and how often they need to be replaced to meet the needs of our consumer society.
Myrhh, somehow you posted screens-full of second-hand pseudo-quotations … that included precisely zero verifiable references to any of Hansen’s scientific publications and/or or public testimony.
Does it bother you, that no objective means exists to distinguish second-hand pseudo-quotations from astro-turfed smear campaigns?
The world wonders!!!
After all, Hansen speaks plainly and clearly for himself, eh?
It appears to most folks, that James Hansen’s science and Michael Mann’s science both are looking pretty foresighted nowadays … whereas the folks who smear them, are not looking so good eh?
FOMD.
I love your emotes.
almost Kawaii !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=cXCs6QilvbE&NR=1
expert class below
@Fan
it’s darn impressive how well the pieces of climate-change science are fitting together!
Yes, especially the bit about CO2 going through the roof, and temperatures not budging for ~20 years. But that’s ok, the models say otherwise.
fan oh fan, yer hero worship of Mann oh Mann’s “selective”
bristle cone tree ring climate change ‘data’ is jest soooooo
surreal. Think Salvadore Dali, fan.
Beth t CG
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 8, 2013 at 9:40 pm |
Myrhh claims “[Hansen] is proven to be nothing more than a scam artist.”
Myrhh, somehow you posted screens-full of second-hand pseudo-quotations … that included precisely zero verifiable references to any of Hansen’s scientific publications and/or or public testimony.
You’re lying again as you did in our exchanges in another discussion, http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/04/forthcoming-congressional-hearing/#comment-300460
Since you repeat the lie here I no longer credit you with any excuse for missing it.
Does it bother you, that no objective means exists to distinguish second-hand pseudo-quotations from astro-turfed smear campaigns?
It does exist, we can show your spiels are nothing but astro-turfed smear campaigns against real science which has falsified AGWScienceFiction’s imaginary Greenhouse Effect from all angles and continually points out the duplicity of you and your ilk in attempting to hide this.
And your link to an entirely irrelevant paper is part and parcel of this duplicity – my collation is on Hansen’s papers and statements on temperatures where he shows himself unconscionable, his papers showing no warming and contradicting his shrill dire predictions of global warming with no scientific basis for the benefit of the media and time pressed/faithful. His predictions have been proven to be garbage.
You appear to think that by repeating a lie it becomes truth.. That, or perhaps you hope it is missed and so appears to stand unchallenged.
My conclusion re Hansen is sound: http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/06/direct-statistical-simulation/#comment-300996
A simple model of the climate should start with the energy balance, not the flow, because the forcing is what drives climate change. It leads to simple expressions of response to forcing as done first by Arrhenius and refined later. This is a closer analogy to statistical mechanics because that also looks at overall thermodynamic properties, ignoring internal flow details.
Jim D
Starting with the energy balance is a good idea.
But this should be based on empirical observations, rather than simply model simulations/predictions based on hypothetical forcing estimates.
Arrhenius is fine; physical observations are much better.
And this is where IPCC (and, hence, its CAGW premise as outlined in AR4) is weak.
Max
Physical observations are tying down the energy balance better each year. All we need is good satellite radiation and ocean heat content measurements, and they already constrain the numbers well enough to see things like volcanic effects and ENSO variations, so there is hope in the energy balance approach solving this problem.
JimD, “A simple model of the climate should start with the energy balance, not the flow, because the forcing is what drives climate change. ”
Good idea. Something like a static energy balance to locate typical sink values. Oceans seem like a good reference.
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=monoiv2.ctl&ptype=ts&var=sst&level=1&op1=none&op2=none&month=nov&year=1981&fmonth=feb&fyear=2013&lat0=-64&lat1=-44&lon0=-180&lon1=180&plotsize=800×600&title=-64+t
I am fond of absolute temperatures, though anomaly is so convenient.
“not just a random statistical fluctuation”
And your evidence for this is…
Andrew
You can work out the odds for yourself of the sequence of the globally warmest years of the last century all being recent ones.
Jim D | March 8, 2013 at 12:29 am | Reply
A simple model of the climate should start with the energy balance, not the flow, because the forcing is what drives climate change. It leads to simple expressions of response to forcing as done first by Arrhenius and refined later.
Hmm, how has Arrhenius been refined? By whom?
First of all let’s clear the air here, Arrhenius was trying to find a reason for the beginnings and ends of ice ages (as they were thought of then, glaciation periods as we think of them now) and without going into detail but see here for a start on Fourier (*1), Arrhenius managed to mangle work done by others and so began by completely misunderstanding the atmosphere, and, so enamoured was he with the idea of carbon dioxide driving these huge global climate changes out of ice ages, he was a chemist, he rejected out of hand any idea of these changes being caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit, ideas that were coming into discussions at the time.
We now know that carbon dioxide levels lag behind rises and falls of temperature at beginnings of glacials and interglacials by hundreds of years, conclusively falsifying Arrhenius’s claim that carbon dioxide is the driver – if one cannot understand that this completely debunks Arrhenius’s claim then one has no business thinking himself a scientist of any kind..
…only superstitious thinking could believe that carbon dioxide magically drives the rise of temperatures into interglacials eight hundred years before it deigns to show any increase in itself.
So, all that remains in looking at Arrhenius’s contribution is to see where he went wrong.
Although he knew the difference as a chemist between carbonic acid and carbon dioxide, his work is on carbonic acid not on carbon dioxide.
AGWScienceFiction likes to confuse here by claiming ‘that’s what they used to call carbon dioxide’, BS, scientists then knew the difference and, as far as I can see, the only reason Arrhenius would use carbonic acid and not carbon dioxide is to fool those at the time who didn’t know the difference, because at the time they knew that water vapour was a great absorber of heat, thermal infrared. Angstrom immediately debunked Arrhenius by pointing out that Arrhenius was not using carbon dioxide, but its mix with water which is carbonic acid, and, then Angstrom showed that carbon dioxide was of no significance whatsover.
MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW. JUNE, 1901
“The remainder of Angstrom’s paper is devoted to a destructive
criticism of the theories put forth by the Swedish
chemist, S. Arrhenius, in which the total absorption of CO2, ie
quite inadmissibly inferred from data which include the combined
absorption of CO2, and the vapor of water. On these
incorrect premises Arrhenius has founded an hypothesis as
to the cause of the Ice Age, attributing it to variation in the amount of atmospheric CO2,. The geologists who have adopted
Arrhenius’s views should recall that his hypothesis evidently
fails in the light of present knowledge of the absorptive
powers of carbon dioxid.”
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/029/mwr-029-06-0268a.pdf
[With thanks to James E for this line of history, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090930104221AAmeNrV
and Christ Knight for my conclusion that Arrhenius knew he was fudging data, on http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/13/6995/#comment-114704
(*1) http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/ for Arrhenius’s misunderstanding of Fourier]
Arrhenius did not know the fine details of the CO2 and H2O IR bands that we know now, nor did he know the global atmospheric temperature and humidity and cloud structure to the accuracy that we know now. This is what I mean by refined. The basic idea of 2xCO2 computations at constant RH remains the same.
Jim D, you write “The basic idea of 2xCO2 computations at constant RH remains the same.”
Precisely. What you, and all the rest of the warmists, will not admit to, is that the only numerical values for climate sensitivity have been derived from theoretical estimations. No-one, and I mean no-one, has actually measured how much global temperatures rise as a result of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels; and proved that the rise is actually due to the extra CO2. That is the basic truth that none of the warmists will admit to. And the fact that this is omitted from the AR4 means that the discussion of certainty and probability with respect to the conclusions in the SPMs, is completely and utterly wrong.
Jim Cripwell, the rise was predicted several decades before it happened based on physics. The test of scientific ideas is how much they can predict things. The gradual warming over the last century is explainable from the science with no big mysteries, and a similar thing occurs in paleoclimate with the same explanation, so I don’t see why people still doubt a theory that works in such a quantifiable way.
“the rise was predicted several decades before it happened”
Well, considering there are only two choices (rise or fall), and both inevitable, I’m not sure the “prediction” has the value you think it does.
Andrew
The rise is now several standard deviations above the previous variability and occurred steadily in just a few decades, and this is what was predicted, not just a random statistical fluctuation.
Jim D. you write “Jim Cripwell, the rise was predicted several decades before it happened based on physics.”
Fair enough, and, at this time, I wont discuss whether the predictions were in fact, accurate. But you still will not admit that NO-ONE has actually measured how much global temperatures rise as a result of adding CO2 to the atmosphere from current levels, and proved that the rise was, in fact, due to the increase in CO2 levels. I wonder why.
Jim Cripwell, you should give a method by which this can be done, other than by physics-based models that explain it by adding and subtracting CO2, otherwise you are saying something like we couldn’t prove the moon wasn’t made from cheese until we went there.
Jim D. you write “Jim Cripwell, you should give a method by which this can be done, other than by physics-based models that explain it by adding and subtracting CO2, otherwise you are saying something like we couldn’t prove the moon wasn’t made from cheese until we went there.”
Garbage. I have always said that CAGW is a very plausible hypothesis. I am not claiming that not being able to measure climate sensitivity proves that CAGW is wrong. What I am taking aim at is the IOPCC claim http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-7.html that they can esatablish probabilities and certainties to back up the conclusions of the SPMs. That issue you have deliberately avoided.
The IPCC, as you do, carefully omits to note that there are no measurements of climate sensitivity. If they really werre a scientific organization, this would be in the AR4. But it is not. Yet they still claim they can establish probabilities behiond their conclusions in the SPMs. That is what I am challenging, and that is what you refuse to admit, and discuss.
Jim Cripwell, I am glad you think AGW is very plausible. You didn’t say how you think it could be proved to your satisfaction other than waiting a longer time for the predictions to verify even more decades. You don’t like the IPCC “most” statement about CO2 and warming when everyone agrees with the radiative forcing from CO2 being easily the largest forcing over the last few decades and increasing into the future. It takes some twisted logic to deny that the largest future forcing translates to largest effect on future warming, so that should be the default position unless someone can show otherwise.
A concise interpretation of the Cripwell Criteria. This rivals the Girma Gobbles as an embarrassing milestone in propaganda commentary.
JIm D. you write “when everyone agrees ”
This discussion will never get us anywhere. I am not, and never will be, interested in what “everyone agrees”. I am only interested in hard, measured, empirical data. Since you are never going to discuss the implications of there being no empirical evidence that measures climate sensitivity, our discussions are useless.
Jim Cripwell, you have avoided saying what this “empirical data” needs to be to satisfy you. I think this allows you to move the goalposts every time someone gives you evidence, but maybe you have something in mind, and we have to play the game of guessing what it is.
Jim D
Before you assume WHY Jim Cripwell is asking for empirical evidence to support the CAGW premise, or accuse him of simply wanting to “move the goal posts”, why don’t you just simply ask him what empirical evidence he would like to see?
Seems so much more straightforward, doesn’t it?
Ask a straight question and you’ll get a straight answer.
Max
Jim D. you write “Jim Cripwell, you have avoided saying what this “empirical data” needs to be to satisfy you”
Obviously you have not understood a word I wrote. All I am saying is that the warmists, the IPCC, Old Uncle Tom Cobbly and all, have not produced ANY empirical evidence to support the hypothetical numbers that they quote for climate sensitivity. Zero, nada, zilch. So, CAGW will remain a hypoithesis, until someone actually measures climate sensitivity.
manacker, if you examine this thread, I have asked him several times, and I wish you luck in getting that from him too.
Paleoclimate provides a few hundred million years of empirical evidence of CO2-temperature correlations.
Jim D. you write “Paleoclimate provides a few hundred million years of empirical evidence of CO2-temperature correlations.”
Precisely. Correlations are not, and never will be, measurements. You clearly do not understand what measuring anything means. You add CO2 to the atmosphere, and, supposedly, global temperatures rise. You need to prove that the added CO2 actually causes the rise in temperature, and then you need to measure the rise as a function of how much CO2 has been added..
I will agree that, with current, terchnology, it is not possible to do this. This does not change the situation. The warmists cannot provide the empirical data that changes the status of CAGW from being just a hypothesis.
Jim Cripwell, paleoclimate provides examples of volcanic additions of CO2 followed by warming, and natural sequestration of CO2 followed by cooling. This is empirical evidence that they are tied and that show the causative agent to be CO2. Nature has already done the experiment you asked for.
JIm D. you write “Nature has already done the experiment you asked for.”
I disagree. Before you can claim this, you must produce a MEASURED value of total climate sensitivity (how much global temperatures rise as a function of how much CO2 is added to the atmosphere), with a +/- accurcay. Produce these values in a peer reviewed report, and I will agree you are correct. And I will claim ahead of time that these values do not exist. If they did, they would be front and center of any IPCC report, and I would not be arguing that CAGW is only a hypothesis.
Jim Cripwell, although you won’t like it because Hansen is the lead author, there is a published review article on paleoclimate and what it tells us about sensitivity. Search for -Hansen target CO2- for the PDF. The good thing about Hansen is that he writes very clearly, so this paper is very easy reading with lots of supporting data.
“Paleoclimate provides a few hundred million years of empirical evidence of CO2-temperature correlations.”
Paleo always brings with it the problematic issues of both orbital forcing,and evolutionary constraints on the biological proxies.
With the former in recent( the last 2k yrs) the forcing is a factor of 4 greater then CO2 since 1750 eg IPCC 2007
Jim D. you write “so this paper is very easy reading with lots of supporting data.”
I have read the paper, and it does NOT MEASURE climate sensitivity. It states that a sort of measure can be inferred from the data. I am sorry, but no-one has measured climate sensitivity. As I say, if they had, and it had as high a value as the IPCC claim, I would not be discussing this.
Jim Cripwell, I really don’t know what you mean by a distinction between measure and infer, but they have multiple proxies for both CO2 and temperature, so it seems you don’t believe it even when the proxies agree with each other for both temperature and CO2 that these can then be used with error bars to infer a climate sensitivity. This is a measurement with error bars, just as you asked for, but do you think it is less likely to be right than wrong?
In an entirely separate question, what do you think about people who are prejudiced against scientific conclusions because it conflicts with some belief system they have?
A minimum test of AGW :
1. Measure the balance of radiation at TOA
2. Measure CO2 levels.
3. See if they move in concert.
Simples.
But how close are we to doing this?
Not very, as I understand it, or the debate would long since have ended.
Jim D | March 9, 2013 at 10:56 am |
The rise is now several standard deviations above the previous variability and occurred steadily in just a few decades, and this is what was predicted, not just a random statistical fluctuation.
—
The rise was no more than that of the first half of the 20th Century, during which CO2 levels, though rising, were too low to have an effect according to current *mainstream* cagw thinking.
Jim D,
Every time you are asked for direct empirical evidence of CAGW, you deftly sidestep the issue by offering some tenuous, merely circumstantial evidence, eg Arctic Ice.
Let alone not having actual evidence, do you even have an idea of what form such evidence might take?
@Jim D
I have asked [Jim C] and I wish you luck in getting that from him too.
You have it backwards. It is you that is repeatedly being asked for an empirical measurement of actual climate sensitivity. And it is both Jim C and all the other readers, that are out of luck.
@Jim D
Paleoclimate provides a few hundred million years of empirical evidence of CO2-temperature correlations.
Yes. CO2 lags temperature by about 800 years.
Jim D –> Jim Cripwell, I really don’t know what you mean by a distinction between measure and infer
I think Jim D has admirably found the problem – his own failure to distinguish between proof and mere circumstantial evidence.
JIm D. you ask “In an entirely separate question, what do you think about people who are prejudiced against scientific conclusions because it conflicts with some belief system they have?”
That one is easy. They are not physicists.
As to the rest of the stuff sbout measurements. It has been an interesting discussion, but I think we have exhausted it. You are simply unwilling to admit that, with current technology, it is IMPOSSIBLE to actually measure climate sensitivity. You can go on finding proxies, correlations, inferences, etc. etc. for ever, but it will not alter the fact that climate sensitivity has not been measured.
Jim Cripwell, yes, it is called science. It is inference from known science and independent lines of evidence and only measurement when that is possible (which it isn’t always in many other fields of science too).
The good thing in climate science is that in 50 years we will have the measurements and the attribution to hand, and won’t be just predicting it.
Jim D routinely likes to forget that the alarmist climate science he so likes to defer to, is politically funded and hence politically motivated, and thus predictably comes up with conclusions that invariably favor further politicization of society. Which, I wager, chimes well with his own beliefs and motives.
“You can work out the odds”
I thought I asked for evidence.
Andrew
The warming is the evidence. The unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice is evidence. It is all happening as predicted, possibly faster in some cases.
Jim D. you write “The unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice is evidence.”
Unprecedented????? Really?????? We have proper measured data since around 1979. We have anecdotal evidence that the melting of the Arctic sea ice is NOT unprecedented. Total sea ice, Arctic and Antarctic has barely changed. And you call this “unprecedented”. I would love to see the reference that proves that the loss of Atctic sea ice in unprecedented.
You can check the 25-30 minute part of Jennifer Francis’s talk here. Looks like the sea-ice evidence goes back a lot further than satellites. This was linked by Bart R on a previous thread.
Jim D. you write “You can check the 25-30 minute part of Jennifer Francis’s talk here”
You call that a reference. I thought the warmists always insisted that any reference be peer reviewed. Where is there a proper reference that proves tha loss of ice is unprecedented?
She referred to Kinnard et al. (2011) for the 1450 year reconstruction (28:30 into the video). You can search for it. It was in Nature,
Jim –
Here’s Kinnard et al. (2011)
“…although extensive uncertainties remain…—both the duration and magnitude of the current decline in sea ice seem to be unprecedented for the past 1,450 years.”
And here’s Polyak et al. (2010):
“…ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities.”
Jim D
“The warming” is evidence of “the warming”.
“The loss of Arctic sea ice” is evidence of “the loss of Arctic sea ice”.
Neither is evidence of AGW, let alone CAGW.
You have to “try a little bit harder”, Jim.
Max
My name is Jennifer Francis.
I just said the recent Arctic sea ice loss is “unprecedented”.
Therefore, it IS “unprecedented”
Believe me, baby!.
Duh!
(We only have satellite records on Arctic sea ice extent since 1979.)
Max
manacker, Kinnard et al. (2011) say that the Arctic sea ice is lower now than in the last 1450 years. They have empirical evidence of it.
Jim D | March 9, 2013 at 4:45 pm |
manacker, Kinnard et al. (2011) say that the Arctic sea ice is lower now than in the last 1450 years. They have empirical evidence of it.
What evidence?
This is a typical example of the shrill scaremongering created to promote CAGW/AGW with a marvellous graph showing how disastrous it is – going back to 1979.., and the 1450 date gets a mention:
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/07-3
This following is a far more level headed look at the history which seems to have by- passed the education of the “experts” quoted in the above:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice-tony-b/
And try this one zoning in on the North West Passage history:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/08/natures-medieval-warming-melts-arctic-northwest-passage-sea-ice-but-modern-warming-does-not.html
“The Natural Medieval Warming Melts Arctic Northwest Passage Sea Ice, But Modern Warming Does Not
“Over recent years, the Arctic has warmed much like it did during the natural Medieval Warming Period – during prior warm phases, mother nature melted the Northwest Passage sea ice completely, but not yet in the modern era
“Canadian Arctic experts have conclusively determined that the Arctic’s Northwest Passage has frequently been devoid of sea ice during summer months.
“This lack of sea ice was the result of natural warming that produced excessive temperatures. They conclude that temperatures during the Medieval Period, and multiple earlier periods, were significantly warmer than modern temperatures – from 1 to 3 degrees warmer.”
So, what is this 1,450 year figure? The missing from the science fraud Hockey Stick, previous warming like the Roman and Medieval warm periods?
Well, we certainly have not got to that yet. Recently if I recall there were some greenie fanatics who bought into this “arctic melting unprecedented” and decided to row a boat there and had to turn back.
I haven’t had time to look into this in more detail, but I notice some arguments that there is less ice now than around 1940 – again, this ignores the history we do have as the first link gives background, but there’s also this:
“Arctic Warming” During 1920-40:
A Brief Review of Old Russian Publications
Sergey V. Pisarev
P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology
Russian Academy of Science
Moscow, Russia
http://mclean.ch/climate/Arctic_1920_40.htm
Which covers other phenomena noticed such as fish varieties and bird sightings, how this compares with today could be interesting.
LOL … readers of Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice weblog know that the recent Arctic ice-melt indeed is unprecedented in the last several thousand years.
Myrrh, whatever might be the source of your various professionally-crafted and cherry-picked disinformation narratives … neither you nor anyone else should trust that source any more, eh?
Because these cherry-picked denialist narratives haven’t much truth in them … have they?
Jim D | March 9, 2013 at 11:31 am |
The warming is the evidence. The unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice is evidence. It is all happening as predicted, possibly faster in some cases.
—
The CO2-driven tropospheric warming effect that stopped nearly 20 years ago? (Thus also ruling out CO2-driven warming of oceans).
And nothing other than warming that stopped nearly 20 years ago, can explain unprecedented loss of Arctic sea ice. Not winds or currents?
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 9, 2013 at 10:38 pm |
Myrrh proclaims “Greenie fanatics bought into this “Arctic melting unprecedented’
Ha ha ha – so you link to a story, not the one I recall but it will do, which doesn’t have an ending in success, if it had you would surely have found it.. And all you CAGW/AGWs would have been yelling about it as loud as you could. As the paper I quoted said, we haven’t reached the temps or ice melt which we know opened up the North West Passage, even in the last century.
Here, get yourself some real history:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-disgracefully-ignore-history
“Reports of Record Arctic Ice Melt Disgracefully Ignore History
By Noel Sheppard | September 08, 2007 |
“In the past couple of days, the media have reported “grim” melting of ice in the Arctic while disgracefully ignoring the history of the region prior to 1979 and explorations of the area as far back as 1903.”
“Why is 1979 important?”
..
“Getting the picture? Claims of “grim consequences” and “record low” ice levels are based on a satellite record which began in 1979, while routine monitoring of the region started in 1972.
“How can anyone make a claim with a straight face that ice conditions in the Arctic are either historically low or grim when we’ve only been monitoring these levels for the last 35 years? Is everything that happened in this region – in thousands of millennia since the Big Bang occurred – totally irrelevant?
“Such is especially the case given the history of successful sea-based explorations of the Arctic dating back as far as 1903.
“For instance, a name media would love for global warming alarmists not to know is Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who successfully navigated the Northwest Passage on August 26, 1905 (h/t Walt Bennett, Jr.):
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this Passage was clear enough of ice for a wooden sailboat, with a crew of seven, to successfully navigate it more than 100 years ago. How many times in the history of the planet do you think a similar – or even more ice-free – condition existed in this area?
“Not that the media cares, but this Passage was also conquered several times in the 1940s (my emphasis added):, etc.”
Got it? There is no record melting of the arctic at the present time, the screamin’ greenies don’t know what they’re talking about, and those that do know they’re lying for someone else’s agenda.
LOL … readers of Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice weblog know that the recent Arctic ice-melt indeed is unprecedented in the last several thousand years.
Oh, Ellesmere Island where they’ve just found camel bones..
Like arguing with jelly, never the same story twice. Is your claim that it is unprecedented since 1,450 years ago or thousands of years ago?
And the 1,450 years quoted without embarrassment regardless the CAGW crowd continue to deny the MWP..
Myrrh, whatever might be the source of your various professionally-crafted and cherry-picked disinformation narratives … neither you nor anyone else should trust that source any more, eh?
Because these cherry-picked denialist narratives haven’t much truth in them … have they?
You’re talking about yourself and you know it.
Pekka
There have been “technical topics” discussed in various threads, but my guess is that this one is far more technical, or far more fundamental science, than any of the earlier.
I agree with that.
I also agree with what Dan Hughes said.
This topic is part of a very large field of stochastical treatements of Navier Stokes that has been explored for more than 100 years.
RANS is a statistical method applied to N-S but any analogy to PV=nRT and statistical mechanics is deeply misleading.
Empirically it is known that N-S holds to microscopic (sub micron) scales – so N-S is the only way to say anything meaningful if one looks for universally valid statements.
I will reread carefully the paper and perhaps comment more specifically.
First impression is that this doesn’t lead very far because no invariant stochastical properties are known for full Navier Stokes.
There are some ad hoc exceptions like full turbulence with isotropy, homogeneity etc. See Kolmogorov looking at that 70 years ago.
Tomas furrows his brow bacause the technigue is applying aggregate mean value and statistical approximations to replace the full fidelity that he demands.
Nature is messy and the disorder in the parameters is greater than Tomas likes.
The one co-author Marston is from Brown University and likely has been influenced by the research of David Mumford. Stochastic approaches will solve many of the tougher nuts we need to crack. Superstatistics, MaxEnt, and other complexity-reducing arguments as advocated by Gell-Mann and others hold lots of promise.
So you would be applying approximations to a chaotic process. I think we know where that will lead.
How delusional. These are perturbations on top of the 288 K thermal bath we are residing in.
Statistical mechanics, which is what these approaches devolve to, essentially tell us what the ensemble of fluctuating processes average to.
Put this another way, if you were an electron in a transistor, you would think it very chaotic. Not so to an external measurement.
A guy on Mars measuring the earth would sense the same
Sunspots on the sun are chaotic but act as only a perturbation.
The goal is to look at the mean value change of the earth’s climate. Skeptics must have a mental block when it comes to thinking ensemble averages through.
I admit I have a mental block when it comes to decarbonizing the world economy based on the average of ensembles composed of incomplete, inaccurate, unverified, unvalidated climate models constructed by climate scientists who don’t even know how water vapor, solar influence and land use affect the global average temperature, among many other areas of ignorance. No matter how nifty the latest statistical method of massaging the incomplete, inaccurate data might be.
Webster, Delusional?
Playing with averages without knowing what time frames are likely is delusional.
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UBxvX6lsmd8/UToyXHiOxaI/AAAAAAAAHaM/mKm7oBxvAsg/s873/SS%2520energy%2520areal%252065%2520to%252065.png
That is a pretty simple illustrations. You can download the data and do it how ever you like. The southern oceans contribute about 240 Wm-2 to the atmospheric energy and the Northern oceans about 180 Wm-2. Every year the energy decays from the SH peak to the NH valley creating neat little ~4Wm-2 excursions that provide most of the power and variability to the atmosphere. So you want to average the noisiest part of the whole problem, the atmosphere that doesn’t even have a true “average” since 70% of the “average” surface temperature is based on the oceans period, no Tmax Tmin, just SST adjusted downward to compensate for a hundred years of less than ideal measurement?
Then you think you can estimate the diffusion of that guestimated Global Mean Temperature noise into the oceans which are providing the energy to begin with. I don’t think so. You start at a somewhat stable reference and work your way out. All the fancy statistics in the world cannot compensate for a bonehead frame of reference.
WebHubTelescope: Stochastic approaches will solve many of the tougher nuts we need to crack.
Maybe. They are certainly worth development.
Gary M@1.02pm says he has a mental block re decarbonizing
based on incomplete data from scientists who don’t even know
how water vapour affects global temperatures. I came across
this by Modran re back radiationat the Earth’s surface for values
of humidity from 0 to 90% and CO2 from 0 to 1000ppm. Notice
that at 10% humidity and above, no amount of CO2 does much
at all.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/08/07/epic-warmist-fail-modtran-doubling-co2-will-do-nothing-to-increase-long-wave-radiation-from-sky/
Edit, Modtran.’
So someone obviously tricked up Modtran. The average solar insolation of the earth is 250 W/m^2. Yet that graph shows close to 375 W/m^2 trapped infrared radiation that is bouncing back from the atmosphere. If this was near the equator OF COURSE it couldn’t get get any higher because it would violate the laws of energy balance. You can’t get out more than you put in.
Why even spend time on this stuff. If this was schoolwork and I was a TA, I would just place a big X over the whole thing.
Web conveniently forgets the butterfly effect.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/ClimateModels_Obs.jpg
How is this direct statistical simulation capable of doing better than current models?
“Conceptually, the technique focuses attention on fundamental forces driving climate, ”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/hard-evidence-of-co2-warming-inflated.html
And this http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-climate-warming-20130308,0,1220004.story
“In a study published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, researchers used eight indirect temperature indicators — such as pollen and shells from marine organisms — to chart long-term global warming and cooling trends. The research team concluded that temperatures in the last decade had not exceeded the Holocene’s steamiest periods from thousands of years ago. However, if current warming trends hold, those records will be broken by the end of the century.
“By the year 2100, we will be beyond anything human society has ever experienced,” said study leader Shaun Marcott, a postdoctoral researcher at Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.”
So they are finally having to admit that there were much higher, “steamier”, temperatures previously in our Holocene, and still they add the lie that ” if current warming trends hold” – because there has been no warming – and on this lie they continue to give dire prediction of temperature rise in the future too far ahead to be tested by us…
What are the fundamental forces going to be in this simulation?
@verytallguy
If the physics-based models are right there shouldn’t be any surprises in the observations. There are great surprises at every turn. Some might even say it’s a travesty. [ahem]
Here’s precious little surprises you may have missed re humidity. My emphasis for your convenience.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JD018551/abstract
Variability of the surface radiation budget over the United States from 1996 through 2011 from high-quality measurements
John A. Augustine, Ellsworth G. Dutton
NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory Global Monitoring Division, Colorado, USA
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres
Volume 118, Issue 1, pages 43–53, 16 January 2013
Sixteen years of high-quality surface radiation budget (SRB) measurements over seven U.S. stations are summarized. The network average total surface net radiation increases by +8.2 Wm−2 per decade from 1996 to 2011. A significant upward trend in downwelling shortwave (SW-down) of +6.6 Wm−2 per decade dominates the total surface net radiation signal. This SW brightening is attributed to a decrease in cloud coverage, and aerosols have only a minor effect. Increasing downwelling longwave (LW-down) of +1.5 Wm−2 per decade and decreasing upwelling LW (LW-up) of −0.9 Wm−2 per decade produce a +2.3 Wm−2 per decade increase in surface net-LW, which dwarfs the expected contribution to LW-down from the 30 ppm increase of CO2 during the analysis period. The dramatic surface net radiation excess should have stimulated surface energy fluxes, but, oddly, the temperature trend is flat, and specific humidity decreases. The enigmatic nature of LW-down, temperature, and moisture may be a chaotic result of their large interannual variations. Interannual variation of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) ONI index is shown to be moderately correlated with temperature, moisture, and LW-down. Thus, circulations associated with ENSO events may be responsible for manipulating (e.g., by advection or convection) the excess surface energy available from the SRB increase. It is clear that continued monitoring is necessary to separate the SRB’s response to long-term climate processes from natural variability and that collocated surface energy flux measurements at the SRB stations would be beneficial.
Yet more recent evidence that RH isn’t behaving as expected by physics models. My emphasis.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00003.1
Isaac, V., W. A. van Wijngaarden, 2012: Surface Water Vapor Pressure and Temperature Trends in North America during 1948–2010. J. Climate, 25, 3599–3609
Over one-quarter billion hourly values of temperature and relative humidity observed at 309 stations located across North America during 1948–2010 were studied. The water vapor pressure was determined and seasonal averages were computed. Data were first examined for inhomogeneities using a statistical test to determine whether the data were fit better to a straight line or a straight line plus an abrupt step, which may arise from changes in instruments and/or procedure. Trends were then found for data not having discontinuities. Statistically significant warming trends affecting the Midwestern United States, Canadian prairies, and the western Arctic are evident in winter and to a lesser extent in spring while statistically significant increases in water vapor pressure occur primarily in summer for some stations in the eastern half of the United States. The temperature (water vapor pressure) trends averaged over all stations were 0.30 (0.07), 0.24 (0.06), 0.13 (0.11), 0.11 (0.07) °C decade−1 (hPa decade−1) in the winter, spring, summer, and autumn seasons, respectively. The averages of these seasonal trends are 0.20°C decade−1 and 0.07 hPa decade−1, which correspond to a specific humidity increase of 0.04 g kg−1 decade−1 and a relative humidity reduction of 0.5% decade−1.
Feel free to produce some studies that find SH and RH are doing what models predict because at least over North America that ain’t the case and NH land-only temperature is where most of the so-called global warming was* happening.
*The 5-year global average temperature trend has been flat for the past decade according to James Hansen so I have to use the past tense about warming.
Steven Mosher, at March 7, 2013 at 9:18 am writes “Thank you. This guy and guys like cripwell and springer are stunning in their unwillingness to read the fundamental science.”
I know my limits when it comes to understanding fundamental science. I know there are things I just dont understand, and say so. But some things I do understand. I understand the vital necessity of having empirical data before discussing how likely hypotheses are to be right. It is you, Steven Mosher, who refuses to agree that there are no empirical measurements of how much global temperatures rise as a given amout of CO2 is added to the atmosphere from current levels. When are you going to be true scientist and admit that what I say is correct?
“. It is you, Steven Mosher, who refuses to agree that there are no empirical measurements of how much global temperatures rise as a given amout of CO2 is added to the atmosphere from current levels. When are you going to be true scientist and admit that what I say is correct?”
well, you are wrong. Did you finish the text book I pointed you at. ?
I figured not.
Steven Mosher, yoiu write “well, you are wrong.”
No, I did not read the text book you recommened; it did not cover the point I am making. Where am I wrong? Has someone MEASURED how much global temperatures rise as a result of adding CO2 to the atmopshere from current levels? Or have you admitted that no-one has actually done this? I am confused.
Steven Mosher,
I missed the post. What was the text book you pointed to?
I am genuinly interested. I read the older Pielke Sr Modeling book but that was cerca ’93.
What do you say about the 15 to 17 year pause in temperature rise that Hadley Met Centre acknowleged?
Scott
“the text book you recommened”
Sans evidence, “go read a book”.
Andrew
Stephen Mosher: Did you finish the text book I pointed you at. ?
What book was that? I do not see it in a post.
@Scott
Steven Mosher, … What do you say about the 15 to 17 year pause in temperature rise that Hadley Met Centre acknowleged?
I think he denies it. Seems he thinks they’re Deniers. Which they probably deny.
Myrrh,
Good point about the paper.
Why did they jump so far in the future with warming trends that have stalled for 15 or 17 years? They extrapulated way beyond the data.
Used to be palm trees in the arctic and Rhinos in England. That was surely warmer than now. The MWP and vikings in greenland show the variations and Tonyb with his CET tracks provide the recent history. Why do they do this? It is like making extravagent claims trumps the papers results.
Scott
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:101/mean:103/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:101/mean:103/derivative/normalise/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/scale:0.00001/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/derivative/normalise/from:1972/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend
Warming trends have stalled for 15 or 17 years?
Where?
There’s the graph of 17 year running means and their derivatives alongside 5 year running means and their derivatives.
On the single most aggressively rising four decade temperature gradient we know of in the past 10,000 years, the five year running mean had a negative derivative for seven spans; the three largest of these negative periods came and went without pausing the forty year temperature rise. It only got bigger and faster. The last four — the smallest in magnitude and duration — in this mythological “current pause” of the past fifteen years are far smaller than the first three, and far smaller relative to the positive spans of the fifteen year — and puny compared to the large positive span of the 17-year — “current cooling period”.
It’s warmer globally today than it was fifteen or seventeen years ago, based on the 15 and 17 year trend lines. The climate trends — that is trends 30 years or longer, predicted about 95% accurately by the 17 year running mean — cannot be measured past 1998 using the centerpoint, but they were up to that point steadfastly climbing and all indicators point to them continuing to do so, so far as we can predict.
We have good mechanical explanations for the shifts in the five year running global means, which are the best working hypotheses and easily meet the standards of scientific reason, that are entirely consistent with CO2E being the main driver of global warming, and anthropogenic causes account for essentially all CO2E at first or second order.
Warming trends have smacked into aerosol influences, mainly volcanic, in the past ten years as they have before in the previous thirty years, and the aerosol influences only mask but do not much delay climate response to CO2, as we have seen from the longer record.
Bart R
Figures from last November, showing that 2012 would be cooler than average for the past decade, had already indicated that global warming was slowing down.
Dr Peter Stott, Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, said at the time that the past decade had been the warmest on record.
But he pointed out that warming has slowed down since 2000, in comparison to the rapid warming of the world since the 1970s.
“Although the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record, warming has not been as rapid since 2000 as over the longer period since the 1970s,” he said. “This variability in global temperatures is not unusual, with several periods lasting a decade or more with little or no warming since the instrumental record began.
“We are investigating why the temperature rise at the surface has slowed in recent years, including how ocean heat content changes and the effects of aerosols from atmospheric pollution may have influenced global climate.”
Scott
try again
The Met Office has admitted that global warming has stalled.
Officials say that by 2017, temperatures will not have risen significantly for nearly 20 years.
They concede that previous forecasts were inaccurate – and have come under fire for attempting to ‘bury bad news’ by publishing the revised data on Christmas Eve.
Rise: The earlier Met Office predictions show a much sharper rise in projected global temperatures through to 2016…
Fall: But the new computer model predicts temperatures will stay relatively flat
Now a press release, published yesterday, has confirmed that over the next five years temperatures will be 0.43 degrees above the 1971-2000 average, instead of the previously forecast 0.54 degrees – a 20 per cent reduction.
Scott
Scott | March 8, 2013 at 3:56 pm |
What an interesting exercise in semantics.
You seem to be saying that “stall” means to continue, only not as fast as some previous expected value that was itself admitted to be uncertain and merely the center of a range of expected values.
If I’m ever pulled over for speeding, I’ll just explain that I couldn’t slow down, because that would cause my car to stall.
And oh the imaginative uses I could put such spun definitions as you apply to “admit” and “conceded”. Why, you could be speaking French, the way you use the English language.
Meanwhile, those of us who persist in using the words in their traditional sense will pay no attention to David Rose and this GWPF propaganda.
Point me to where on my graph what either the MET or I say is untrue according to the actual figures, or where when there is disagreement between what your claims and my claims make, the graph does not better support my case than yours.
Five-year running trendology is not climatology; there have been seven five-year stalls (as indicated by zero or negative derivative on the 5-year running mean) in the net rising climate since 1972. There is no evidence any of these 5-year running stalls reflects a stall in the 30-year climate trend.
If BEST is correct that only CO2 and stratispheric volcanic sulfate aerosols (see http://www.atmos.uwyo.edu/~deshler/articles/Deshler_08_AR.pdf for background) are needed to explain global climate trend, and BEST’s trends hold in future as they did in past, then we expect after the current sulfates in the stratosphere clear the global temperature trend will return to the same trajectory as it would have absent the volcanic influence (those sharp downward spikes in the BEST graph).
http://berkeleyearth.org/pdf/annual-with-forcing.pdf
Go ahead. Keep stalling.
Bart R,
This is not a controversy you and I can or should try to resolve. I enjoy looking at the links you provide for information. But our opinions don’t matter much. Lots of controversy about the stall or models showing impacts to clouds from increased temperatures and those increased cloud cover impacts feedback to temperatures. I read these back and forth with interest and watch as the data unfolds. No need for nasty comments between us, though. We both are concerned, is this CAGW or AGW and is sea level rising fast or rebounding from the ice age? I don’t think the observations are definitive yet and you may. That is ok.
Scott
Bart R
Definition of “stall”
v.intr.
1. To live or be lodged in a stall. Used of an animal.
2. To stick fast in mud or snow.
3. To come to a standstill: Negotiations stalled.
4. To stop running as a result of mechanical failure: The car stalled on the freeway.
5. To lose forward flying speed, causing a stall. Used of an aircraft.
Obviously, we are not discussing animals in stalls, being stuck in mud or snow, mechanical failure or aircraft stalls, so the definition is #3:
to come to a standstill
That is precisely what the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface and tropospheric temperature anomalies” have done over the past 12 – 15 years, after rising for almost 30 years.
Since the mid-1970s there have been short-term “blips”, but no equivalent “stalls” in the record.
IOW it is “unprecedented” (a word IPCC likes to use) since around 1970.
Whether this observed “stall” will continue until it has lasted 30 years is anyone’s guess.
But to simply deny its existence is foolish.
Max
So Bart too joins the ranks of increasingly desperate Pause Deniers.
So silly too, this Pause Denialism.
CAGW theory does not require an increase each and every year. Or even every decade.
Pause Denialism suggests overriding political motivation, and the subscription to entrenched, precommited conclusions it requires.
.
Vassily | March 9, 2013 at 5:03 am |
“CAGW theory does not require an increase each and every year. Or even every decade. Pause Denialism suggests overriding political motivation, and the subscription to entrenched, precommited conclusions it requires.”
A 15-year pause was, with 95% confidence, not supposed to happen if climate sensitivity is 1.5C or greater and CO2 level kept rising during the pause.
The GCM model ensemble was wrong. Sensitivity is lower than 1.5C if calculated by empirical measure instead of hypothetical physics model. How much lower? We don’t know yet. It depends on how long the pause continues. It hardly matters at this point because 1.5C is not only not catastrophic it’s beneficial. Warmists need sensitivity of 3C to make a plausible case for bad things happening.
CO2 is not only plant food it extends growing seasons and decreases the amount of fresh water plants need per unit of growth. In the quanities humans introduce into the atmosphere it’s a good thing. Write that down.
Scott | March 8, 2013 at 4:23 pm |
Controversy? What controversy?
Either the climate is warming or it is not. Let’s look at the actual data. It says the global temperature is rising reliably on running means longer than 17 years. We can resolve that for ourselves. Who better?
Either running global temperature means shorter than 17 years reliably mean something, or they don’t, with regard to global climate. Let’s look at the actual data. It says running five year means frequently run contrary to the climate trend and are not reliable predictors of global climate. We can resolve that for ourselves. Who better?
Why don’t we look at the clouds. Are they any better than five year temperature trends? Not so much, and in ways that tend to support the AGW argument. The people who say otherwise certainly exist; that’s not controversy. That’s people clinging to their foregone conclusions in the face of evidence contrary to their claims. They’re certainly not better people to resolve these questions than we ourselves are.
And who is saying CAGW? Such a loosely-defined term, so meaningless, I choose not to consider it a controversy but a red herring. It’s a straw man. For me, RAGW is enough. Risk is expensive. No one can call that statement controversial. Increased Risk is increasingly expensive. Does AGW lead to increased Risk? Yes, yes it does. There’s no controversy there. AGW costs me money by saddling me with Risk.
What do we call people who cost you money without permission, in violation of your rights, and with no compensation? Well, they’re thieves. There’s no controversy there, and if you’re shy of bluntly naming nasty thieves, that’s just too bad. I’m out money. The people whose lucrative carbon burning has increased my Risk due AGW are directly to blame, did not ask my permission, did violate my share of the carbon cycle, and are not compensating me. That’s uncontroversial.
I want my money from those thieves.
As for the whole rebounding from the Ice Age, what the heck does that even mean? The Holocene rebound from the last glacial period has seen higher temperatures than we experience during the past two millennia up to the present day AGW-caused levels. That’s uncontroversial. So this rise of the past quarter millennium can’t be attributed to rebound from the glacial phase. Indeed, the glacial phase can be ascribed to shifts in the tilt of the Earth, uncontroversially, as can the Holocene warm period of the past 11,000 years or so. We haven’t seen an accompanying new tilt — new cause of rebound — since the dawn of the Industrial Age. That’s uncontroversial. Do you mean a rebound from the LIA? Well, what was the cause of the LIA, that it’s suddenly being rebounded from? Solar activity? No evidence for that. Earth tilt we’ve already eliminated. What’s the best fit, the least controversial possible explaining factor based on Physics for this sudden sharp unprecedented spike, other than the sudden, sharp, unprecedented spike in CO2 level some 40% above the maximum of its range of the past millions of years? There is nothing less controversial than that CO2E explains global warming, and lucrative human activities cause CO2E rise.
And there’s no one I’d rather see work that out for themselves than everyone for themselves.
“Either the climate is warming or it is not.”
Wrong as it gets. Whether it’s warming or cooling, depends on the timescale and significance.
Fifteen years with no warming falls outside the “95%” confidence level of what’s possible when CO2 keeps rising the whole time. The low end of the infamous 1.5C – 4.5C climate sensitivity fell out on the low side i.e. observation indicates it’s something lower. How much lower we won’t know until a warming trend begins again. In the meantime the longer the pause continues the lower the empirically derived sensitivity gets. At this point we wait to see just how wrong the consensus bandwagon actually was becauise they’re more wrong with every additional year of no warming. Deal with it. You have no choice. Mother nature is the ultimate arbitor of climate science, not you, not me, not Al Gore, not Jim Hamsen, not Lindzen, not Curry, not Spencer, and not anyone else. Write that down.
Bart R
Again, you are sticking your head in the sand
“CAGW” is a commonly used expression for the anthropogenic global warming resulting from human GHG emissions, which are projected by IPCC occur over this century and which are expected to result in various potentially catastrophic changes to our climate and our environment, as outlined specifically in its AR4 report.
If you are interested in these specific IPCC claims, let me know. I can quickly summarize them for you.
IPCC has made the “CAGW” claim, and there is no point in denying it, Bart.
Max
PS If you don’t like the designation “CAGW”, then you can substitute the “anthropogenic global warming resulting from human GHG emissions, which are projected by IPCC occur over this century and which are expected to result in various potentially catastrophic changes to our climate and our environment, as outlined specifically in its AR4 report” (a somewhat longer way to say the same thing).
manacker,
Give Bart a break. Progressives are not allowed to concede error on anything. It’s against their faith. That’s why we still get defenses of Hansen’s 1988 predictions, Mann’s hockey stick, the cognitive dissonance of the “there is no C in CAGW, but the precautionary principle applies because of the potential catast…I mean severe weather disruptions…” arguments, etc.
“Fifteen years with no warming falls outside the “95%” confidence level of what’s possible when CO2 keeps rising the whole time.”
Not exactly.
15 years of increase in C02 is roughly 30ppm at the current rate.
going from 360 to 390 is roughly .4 Watts of increased forcing.
If all other forcings during the time period netted to ZERO, then this
extra forcing might get you a .2C of warming on a transient basis
So, to conclude that its outside the envelope you have to prove
1. That all other forcings netted to zero ( they haven’t)
2. That internal variability nets to zero ( it doesnt in this this time scale)
3. That sensitivity ( TCR.. not ECR) is on the higher end of things.
Yes, Mosher. Exactly. You have a short and/or selective memory.
http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/fig.jpeg
The above ends in 2010 and shows GAT projections for 34 models. At that time the observed temperature from both UAH and RSS fell below the lowest model projection. It’s only gotten farther below the lowest model projection since 2010.
You’re on the wrong side of this. Deal with it.
Bart wants to be compensated by fossil fuel corporations for the damage being done by the public’s CO2 emissions, and the public’s use of products built with their manufacturers’ emissions, to his own little share of the commons.
There are two problems with this :
(1) It is still far from clear that any significant damage is being done to the commons.
And indeed becoming steadily less clear, as previously concealed uncertainties begin to emerge; 17-year pause, 2xCO2 revised downwards, moderate warming actually seen as a benefit, etc)
(2) Even if CO2 emissions are damaging the commons as he wants to believe, the culprits/beneficiaries are not just the fossil companies, but the public in general.
Seen another way, if fossil fuel was taxed as he wants, fossil fuel companies would of course see costs rise, but would then just pass this on to their customers. So everyone would end up paying the fossil tax, and pretty much the same everyone would be compensated from this same tax for the commons damage done.
Net change in terms of damage and compensation: zero
Edim | March 8, 2013 at 5:24 pm |
Timescale is implicit in climate, by definition and by study of the behavior of its trends. 32 year running global temperature means form a reliable climate profile internally testable by statistical methods, are consistent with other global climate indicators, and closely match the 30 year definition of climate set out by the professional meteorological association our host belongs to.
Slipping shorter timescales may produce different results ‘depending’ on how invalid those results are compared to climate timescales, whether they significantly are in agreement with or not.
I would no more use a five-year running mean that agrees with the 32-year running mean as evidence the 32-year mean was right than I would that it was wrong if it disagreed. 17 year running means are reliable 95% of the time. If I have a few dozen disjoint 17 year running means I might use them to spot the outliers, but if I had a few dozen disjoint 17 year running means it would mean I had at least a dozen disjoint 32 year running means, which would be actually significant at a sigma five or better confidence level.
Climate is always warming AND cooling, depending on timescale.
Steven Mosher | March 8, 2013 at 6:30 pm |
While you’re not wrong, even if we get a few runs outside the 95%, what of it? One in twenty ought fall outside the 95%.
Moreover, what of there being some outliers; on the GCM runs over 80 years, there were so many falling spans that if we’re looking for frequency rather than linear rise as a rule, then we’d expect up to about one in three chance of being in a falling climate (32-ish year span, with regard to global temperature).
Those rates and ratios from GCMs and their correspondences (or lack thereof) in the actual record are interesting. Shame we have so many people stuck on equating falling five year means with the end of the discussion.
You’re a funny guy, Bart. The actual global average temperature is outside the lower bound of 1.5C-4.5C sensitivity but you shrug this off saying it’s just a matter of odds. I wonder if you’d have been as casually dismissive if GAT went outside the upper bound of model predictions. ROFLMAO
manacker | March 8, 2013 at 6:10 pm |
Who is saying Catastrophic, and who is saying Risk?
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter19.pdf
The concept of risk,which combines themagnitude of the impact with the probability of its occurrence, captures uncertainty in the underlying processes of climate change, exposure, impacts and adaptation.
Why, it seems the same people, in the same place, placing catastrophe in the context of risk, and further with focus not on what changes are catastrophic but which are “key”.
So, thanks for the offer, but I’m quite familiar with the IPCC claims. Which is how I know CAGW is a straw man beloved mainly of those seeking to misrepresent the IPCC case.
I’ll stick with either Risky AGW or Key AGW, which seem like the topic of productive discussion, as opposed to mere propaganda and fallacy preferred by those who seem only interested in CAGW.
Bart R
You ask me
IPCC in AR4 is saying BOTH. Let me be more specific.
“CAGW” is the IPCC premise that:
1. human GHGs have been the cause of most of the observed warming since ~1950 [AR4 WGI SPM, p.10]
2. this reflects a model-predicted 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of 3.2°C±0.7°C [AR4 WGI Ch.8, p.633]
3. this represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment from anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the range of 1.8°C to 6.4°C by the end of this century with increase in global sea level of up to 0.59 meters [AR4 WGI SPM, p.13]
4.resulting in increased severity and/or intensity of heat waves, heavy precipitation events, droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high sea levels [AR4 WGI SPM, p.8],
5. with resulting flooding of several coastal cities and regions, crop failures and famines, loss of drinking water for millions from disappearing glaciers, intensification and expansion of wildfires, severe loss of Amazon forests, decline of corals, extinction of fish species, increase in malnutrition, increase in vector borne and diarrheal diseases, etc. [AR4 WGII]
6. unless world-wide actions are undertaken to dramatically curtail human GHG emissions (principally CO2) [AR4 WGIII]
Sounds “catastrophic” (almost “biblical”) to me.
Max
CAGW is an accurate description of what the politically-financed and politically-motivated IPCC preaches, even if it lacks the integrity to so call it.
manacker | March 9, 2013 at 2:10 am |
Thank you for this classical illustration of the construction of a straw man.
Step one of straw man construction, overlook key elements of the claim: I did indeed ask — though not ask you — rhetorically the “who is saying CAGW” question. You can tell it was rhetorical, as I provided the answer. Which you promptly overlooked.
Step two, build a contrived scaffold partly erected from truth, careful to leave out contrary relevant detail: while your points 1. & 2. are contained within the report, chapter 19, they do not contain the central thesis of chapter 19 (discussion of risk and key vulnerabilities), but a mere thread within a wider discussion. That’s a bit like telling the story of Goldilocks and the one bowl of porridge.
Step three, go wide: not content to limit yourself to the most pertinent section of the IPCC case to the question of CAGW, as it would not support your red herring, you cherry pick every possible phrase and clause (trimmed down out of context to avoid that embarrassing revelation of how lacking in substance your straw man is) to build this faux evidence.
Step four, spring your trap: sounds to you? Sounds to you? You should know how it sounds to you, as you composed it to derive that sound, from samples that do not reflect the meaning of the whole.
Straw man. And even if it weren’t, even if the whole world but you and I were screaming catastrophe, it would not make a whit of difference to my own argument. See, I don’t generally talk about key vulnerabilities — sensible though the IPCC is about the topic — because for the most part the key vulnerabilities are distributed on the backs of people who are not me and whom I do not pretend to speak for. But Risk? Risk is something none of us avoid the expense of, including me. Risk is personal to me. I have lost something due this Risk being shoved unasked down my throat without compensation. Risk can be calculated in dollars and cents. That’s money taken from me. It’s my money. I want it back.
Why are you giving aid and comfort to thieves?
Bart R
Forget the hyperbole about “giving aid and comfort to thieves”.
And silly side tracks about a “straw man” or “key vulnerabilities [which] are distributed on the backs of people who are not me and whom I do not pretend to speak for”.
Your rather curious, self-centered rant below did not add anything, either:
I simply listed the IPCC “CAGW” premise, as IPCC has outlined it in its AR4 report.
– Is there any part of that, which you do not understand?
– Is there any part of that, which you feel IPCC has not claimed?
If so, get real specific, and don’t just come back with silly side tracks or personal rants.
Max
manacker | March 9, 2013 at 3:22 am |
Wow. Talk about grasping at straws.
I’ve identified my interest in RAGW, and my relative disinterest in KAGW with tacit agreement its conclusions are very likely correct, and my complete disinterest in CAGW.
What’s your interest in only talking about the least relevant and least interesting of these? What’s your personal tie to the thieves who impose Risk on me, and cost me money? What’s your stake in this discussion? What’s your standing to make an argument on any side?
Bart R
It appears that rational debate with you on the topic of CAGW as outlined by IPCC in AR4 is not possible, as you appear to get too emotional about “thieves imposing risk on you, costing you money”.
OK.
Let’s leave the discussion.
Wouldn’t want you to blow a fuse.
Max
Max, you just don’t get it. Bart fervently wants to duck the central issue of CAGW and the political escalation it promises, that he and others like him would like to engineer in stealth fashion. So be a good boy and accept his wool over your eyes with grace.
Memphis | March 9, 2013 at 4:29 am |
While Max’s quacking response waddles off into the tall grasses, perhaps you could explain who CAGW got to be central, in place of RAGW or KAGW?
There’s nothing in the IPCC reports that leads one to think, “Oh, the only reason for all this is to avert the Oilpocalypse, and if we can squeeze our eyes shut real tight and click our heels together three times and repeat ‘There is snow someplace so it’s not getting warm,’ then life will be alright for everyone.” Among the many impacts AR4 described, only some were catastrophes; the majority appear to have been (with typical conservative estimation already shown to be short of the mark) merely negative impacts on key vulnerabilities and an expensive increase in risks.
You want to read Harry Potter and conclude it was a novel about Dudley Durstley, by all means. The rest of the world read the other pages too.
Bart R,
“Among the many impacts AR4 described, only some were catastrophes….”
Translation:
Doctor to patient: “Don’t worry Mr. Smith, among the many impacts your disease, only a couple of them are paralysis, blindness and a massive heart attack.”
Also, since according to you, the IPCC doesn’t think AGW is potentially C, we can get rid of the whole precautionary principle thing, huh?
Don’t think about it too long though, I wouldn’t want you to get a headache. When a progressive is confronted with his embrace of cognitive dissonance, it is best to pretend you didn’t hear, change the subject, or better yet, attack whoever asked the question.
Bart R
You just won’t let it lie, will you?
IPCC has outlined the specter of the risk of potentially “CATASTROPHIC AGW” in its AR4 report, as I have briefly summarized.
That is what is commonly referred to as the “CAGW” premise.
I did not make up this term.
It’s out there, Bart.
All the silly terms, you are inventing, such as “RAGW” or “KAGW” are meaningless – nobody ever heard of them.
The point is simply that IPCC has made some claims that continued human emissions of GHGs will very likely have potentially serious (or “catastrophic”) negative impacts on human society and our environment. These claims, as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report and as I summarized briefly, are known as the “CAGW” premise (or hypothesis).
If you do NOT believe that these claims are valid and that the resulting risk could be potentially catastrophic (as I also do NOT), then we are in agreement.
If you believe that they are valid and that the resulting risk could be potentially catastrophic (which appears to be the case), then stand up for what you believe and don’t deny that they exist.
If you simply don’t like the designation generally given to this IPCC premise of a potentially catastrophic risk, take it up with someone else – I did NOT invent this name.
Max
Bart
Perhaps you’re new here and haven’t heard. CAGW is the central idea under consideration. Not the old ‘running out of oil’ saw, or Harry Potter (sorry, not in my early teens, so haven’t read those. Surprised you have, I must say)
It’s the notion pushed by politicians and their scientists in the IPCC – in essence, mankind is wrecking the planet, which means we can/must have more politics, more taxes, world governance, etc.
PS
What are these other -AGWs you mention? Your own creations? A Harry Potter reference?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/scale:0.00001/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend/plot/esrl-co2/mean:11/mean:13/normalise
When there is another pause, like the one between 1940 and 1970, I’ll gladly recognize the climate is exhibiting a stall in rise of global temperature increase. It just happens that there isn’t one.
When five year running means begin to meaningfully predict climate trends of 30 year, I’ll gladly accept them as proxies for the actual measure. It simply happens that there is no such property in running means below 17 years.
When “stall” comes to mean “continues”, and “pause” means “slows a bit”, sure, that’ll be fine too.
And none of that will have the least impact on evidence for or against AGW, either in the strict Bayesian sense nor as the GCMs project that even under the highest sensitivity we ought expect up to a third of the global temperature trend to have some falling spans.
Go ahead, spin that for a while and see what you can pretend you think it means.
Bart R
A “thirty year stall” qualifies in your mind as a “stall”?
Good. We are only around half-way there to date.
Let’s see what the next several years bring.
Max
GaryM | March 9, 2013 at 12:16 pm |
“Among the many impacts AR4 described, only some were catastrophes….”
Translation:
Doctor to patient: “Don’t worry Mr. Smith, among the many impacts your disease, only a couple of them are paralysis, blindness and a massive heart attack.”
Hey, what a neat straw man; especially so given that if you said “side effects of your medication”, it would be exactly what doctors do say to patients. At least, conscientious doctors bound to be truthful, as opposed to snake-oil salesman who promise their oil will cure all ills and have no ill effects whatsoever. Say, what British Lord does that remind you of?
You’re so panic-stricken by catastrophes, even though they are only the most minor component of the ill effects of AGW, that you can talk about no other negative outcomes? Or you merely know if you focus only on the thin edge of the wedge, you can divert attention from the pocket-picking of the lucrative carbon burners?
Also, since according to you, the IPCC doesn’t think AGW is potentially C, we can get rid of the whole precautionary principle thing, huh?
A far clumsier straw man. Where do I say this thing you claim? I say my vested and immediate interest is in Risk to me and what it costs me and in recovering my money from the pilfering ways of the carbon industries and their tightly leashed government lapdogs. How do the two sound even remotely similar in your mind? We can get rid of the who precautionary principle thing because it only applies to situations of unknowables, and we know plenty about the Risk profile, not because I’m not personally invested in going all jelly-legged over Oilmaggedon.
Don’t think about it too long though, I wouldn’t want you to get a headache. When a progressive is confronted with his embrace of cognitive dissonance, it is best to pretend you didn’t hear, change the subject, or better yet, attack whoever asked the question.
Nice ad hom driveby there. How do I sound like a progressive to you? I want my money. And how am I the one proposing to duck or change the subject? I’m quite fixated on my subject, which is my money. You’re the one who keeps plugging away repetitively at the Catastrophe Denial Big Lie.
It must frustrate you that so few are willing to dirty their hands in that fictitious muck you’re raking up over there in CAGW-inflationland, regardless of how much you echo the false refrain.
Bart R
Huh?
Are you losing it, Bart?
How much of your “money” have you lost to “the pilfering ways of the carbon industries and their tightly leashed government lapdogs”?
Are you referring to getting gouged at the gas pump by the OPEC price-fixing cartel?
Would you like to see this (internationally illegal but nevertheless tolerated) cartel broken, so the gas prices come back down?
Is that how you want to “recover your money”?
How would you propose to do this?
Get specific.
It seems you are simply on a rambling rampage.
I could see encouraging more exploration and development of local resources (incl. offshore, shale, etc.) as a way of “breaking the back” of the monopoly that is keeping prices high, for example. Is that what you are proposing?
I have a hard time figuring out a) why you are so angry, b) who you feel has taken away “your money” (and how) and c) what you propose to do about it besides just rant.
Max
I offered him a big stash of my Railroad Money, but nooooo….
============
Manacker,
You have to understand Bart R’s Alice in Wonderland view of economics. I got in an extended discussion with him a year or so ago, and he was getting basic economic terms completely backwards.
When he says “his money,” he is referring to the carbon taxes he wants government to impose on others, then redistribute to him. It is his money because CO2 is causing enormous damage to the world, and his share of the communal wealth that is the globe is thereby diminished.
He also calls it rent, because CO2 emitters are renting what he calls the “carbon budget” and he is not getting paid for his share of the diminished budget left after all those terrible polluters have destroyed the commons.
Bart R is the Cheshire Cat of Climate Etc.: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Those who oppose a confiscatory, redistributive carbon tax are socialists.
The tax itself is “rent.”
Those who support the government thus controlling the energy economy are capitalists.
Up is down. Black is white.
“Off with their carbon burning heads!”
> Bart R is the Cheshire Cat of Climate Etc.: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
Quoting Humpty Dumpty might not be the most convincing way to show that BartR’s the Cheshire Cat.
manacker | March 9, 2013 at 5:06 pm |
Still echoing the CAGW straw man?
IPCC has outlined the specter of the risk of potentially “CATASTROPHIC AGW” in its AR4 report, as I have briefly summarized.
That is what is commonly referred to as the “CAGW” premise.
I did not make up this term.
But did you have to so unskeptically accept the term? The catastrophic claim from chapter 19 of AR4 is the least significant thin edge of the risks and key vulnerabilities wedge. Focus on the catastrophic is missing the entire point of not just chapter 19, but all of AR4. Why would any person set out to misrepresent the case of someone so egregiously, if they had honest intent?
All the silly terms, you are inventing, such as “RAGW” or “KAGW” are meaningless – nobody ever heard of them.
No one heard of CAGW either, until the echo chamber started reverberating with this straw man. Risk and Key Vulnerabilities. Look it up. Why trust what you’re told third hand by people? RAGW is appropriate to AR4; KAGW is appropriate to AR4. CAGW wildly misrepresents AR4 when taken in isolation.
The point is simply that IPCC has made some claims that continued human emissions of GHGs will very likely have potentially serious (or “catastrophic”) negative impacts on human society and our environment. These claims, as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report and as I summarized briefly, are known as the “CAGW” premise (or hypothesis).
And the CAGW claims are the smallest portion and least easily verified of the claims of AR4. While many might be interested in engaging on them, I can’t imagine why, on either side, an honest person would do so while ignoring the far larger and more obvious issues of AGW Risk and Key Vulnerabilities. It’s wildly disproportionate and misrepresentative.
If you do NOT believe that these claims are valid and that the resulting risk could be potentially catastrophic (as I also do NOT), then we are in agreement.
If you believe that they are valid and that the resulting risk could be potentially catastrophic (which appears to be the case), then stand up for what you believe and don’t deny that they exist.
Again with the telling people what to do?
I believe I’d rather hear discussion of Risk, as that might get me back my money. I could tolerate a discussion of Key Vulnerabilities, but barely, so long as those most vulnerable had their voice in the discussion. You want to furnish only sideshow.
If you simply don’t like the designation generally given to this IPCC premise of a potentially catastrophic risk, take it up with someone else – I did NOT invent this name.
I simply despise dishonesty, whether from the original fabricator or from their minions.
Bart R
I “despise dishonesty, too”.
OK. Now that we have cleared that point, let’s move on.
I am not claiming the IPCC is “dishonest” or even “disingenuous” in it’s stated claims in AR4 of the risk of potentially catastrophic consequences from AGW.
I am simply pointing out that these are the specific claims IPCC has made. They are all there in writing in the sections of the report I have cited. These claims constitute what is commonly referred to as the “CAGW” premise.
I have honestly concluded, based on the data out there, that these claims are greatly exaggerated. The first, and IMO most important, exaggeration of IPCC is its model-predicted estimate for 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at equilibrium.
Latest observation-based (rather than simply model-simulated) estimates suggest that the ECS is around one-half the previous IPCC AR4 estimates.
I do not know whether or not you accept the IPCC claims all a priori, or whether you also feel that some or all of them are exaggerated.
You have not been willing (as yet) to come out with a honest statement on this.
Instead, you have hidden behind sidetracks and waffles about “strawmen”, “key vulnerabilities”, “getting your money back” from some unnamed “thieves” whom you accuse of having “stolen it”, etc., etc.
Where’s that “honesty” you are so keen about?
Tell me, honestly, do you accept the IPCC AR4 claims as outlined as “very likely to be correct” or not?
Yes or no?
Max
manacker | March 9, 2013 at 6:51 pm |
Bart R
I am not claiming the IPCC is “dishonest” or even “disingenuous” in it’s stated claims in AR4 of the risk of potentially catastrophic consequences from AGW.
I am simply pointing out that these are the specific claims IPCC has made. They are all there in writing in the sections of the report I have cited. These claims constitute what is commonly referred to as the “CAGW” premise.
See, this is the problem. I don’t care about the CAGW premise enough to debate it. The testability of catastrophe is extraordinarily complex and arcane, compared to the benefits that could be obtained from resolving it on its own.
The more testable, and far more economically important claims of the IPCC are about Risks and Key Vulnerabilities. There are far more of them out there than catastrophes, they are, counterintuitively, far more expensive than catastrophes, and they’re distinct from catastrophes.
I have honestly concluded, based on the data out there, that these claims are greatly exaggerated. The first, and IMO most important, exaggeration of IPCC is its model-predicted estimate for 2xCO2 climate sensitivity at equilibrium.
Latest observation-based (rather than simply model-simulated) estimates suggest that the ECS is around one-half the previous IPCC AR4 estimates.
Oh hey. That’s progress. This climate sensitivity estimate, which one are you talking about? There’s a number of them. Maybe if you started by linking to or giving a full reference to this latest observation-based estimate’s source? Does it have a title? Authors? Is it paywalled? Are the observations on any particular timescale, transient, lagged, what? Do they include feedbacks? How do they distinguish direct influences from feedbacks? How do they separate natural sources of variation from anthropogenic? A skeptical reader would want to know. Don’t you?
I do not know whether or not you accept the IPCC claims all a priori, or whether you also feel that some or all of them are exaggerated.
I really sound to you like the sort of person who accepts anything a priori?
Many of the things many people have said or written are exaggerated, mistaken, misleading, ambiguous, baseless, fallacious, invalid, weak, questionable or built on shakey premises. The many arguments countering IPCC claims I’ve seen largely fail to be superior to the original or even nearly their equal, with some notable exceptions. You could refer to what Mosher writes about the IPCC claims, as he’s generally scrupulously careful to avoid many of the traps dyskeptics fall into. Heck, you could even read the prefaces to the claims the IPCC itself publishes, as they directly admit uncertainties, flaws and limits.
You have not been willing (as yet) to come out with a honest statement on this.
Instead, you have hidden behind sidetracks and waffles about “strawmen”, “key vulnerabilities”, “getting your money back” from some unnamed “thieves” whom you accuse of having “stolen it”, etc., etc.
Where’s that “honesty” you are so keen about?
Honestly, 99.5% of what I see claimed to be ‘victories’ over IPCC catastrophe estimates are purest crap. It’s not my case to make, either way, so I’m not interested in putting forth much effort either way.
Tell me, honestly, do you accept the IPCC AR4 claims as outlined as “very likely to be correct” or not?
Yes or no?
What part of “I don’t care” is too hard for you to grasp?
The IPCC AR4 has by now been largely overtaken by AR5, which I believe has had drafts largely leaked; I can hold out to see if AR5 says something about catastrophes that changes my mind about caring when the final is published.
In the meantime, what AR4 said about Risks and Key Vulnerabilities by all appearances is all in all much too conservative. 88 of 190 insurance companies admit climate change has severe consequences for their business. Of the rest, either they aren’t much in climate-affected sectors, or they’ve laid off their climate risk to the 88, or they’re hiding their exposures to protect their attractiveness to investors. Of 195 nations, over 130 report they concur with the IPCC on key vulnerabilities affecting their populations, or say the IPCC was too conservative based on costs already incurred. Maybe they’re all liars. That’s possible.
But the far more likely conclusion is the IPCC AR4 was either right, or didn’t go far enough, on Risk and Vulnerability.
And Risk costs me money. I’m not kidding. I want my money.
Bart R
Thanks for your dissertation.
“Risks and Key Vulnerabilities” sounds like a good alias for CAGW, and you’ve just stated that, in your opinion, “what AR4 said about Risks and Key Vulnerabilities by all appearances is all in all much too conservative”.
This tells me that you have concluded that the potential threat to humanity and our environment as outlined by IPCC in AR4 (a.k.a. CAGW) has been understated by IPCC:
Thanks for clarifying your opinion on this.
It obviously does not agree with mine, but I suppose we simply have to agree to disagree.
Your last sentence leaves me puzzled, however:
How has this “Risk” cost you money?
Who has extracted this “money” from you and how?
From whom do you want this money back?
How are you planning to get it back?
(Just curious).
Max
GaryM | March 9, 2013 at 8:41 pm |
More GaryM revisionism:
You have to understand Bart R’s Alice in Wonderland view of economics. I got in an extended discussion with him a year or so ago, and he was getting basic economic terms completely backwards.
It’s true I did literally get one basic economic term diametrically backwards, having reversed the sign on Elasticity (which is still only a single term). I said as much the same day. I see GaryM is charging interest long after the principle was discharged.
When he says “his money,” he is referring to the carbon taxes he wants government to impose on others, then redistribute to him. It is his money because CO2 is causing enormous damage to the world, and his share of the communal wealth that is the globe is thereby diminished.
Let’s try that again. I’m referring to carbon cycle fees I want the government to enforce just as government enforces standards of weights and measures, standards of currency, and other fair market standards of transaction. Do yo see the difference?
What’s going on now, with the carbon cycle de facto nationalized and treated as an unpriced commons (although it is rivalrous, excludable, admistrably practical to privatize, and scarce, and thus has none of the properties of a commons) is the redistribution of the wealth held by all in the carbon cycle — the unalienable right of everyone who breathes air — to a few lucrative enterprises. That’s a subsidy of the few by the many, without compensation, or representation. It’s my money because I breathe. Damage to the world plays no part in my reasoning, however much GaryM sneers about communal wealth while so devoutly protecting shared commons treatment of private wealth.
And really, that’s about all the sneering misrepresentation of either myself or Lewis Carol any of us need be subjected to reviewing at one sitting.
“Let’s try that again. I’m referring to carbon cycle fees I want the government to enforce just as government enforces standards of weights and measures, standards of currency, and other fair market standards of transaction. Do yo see the difference?”
I see that that paragraph is completely incoherent. My apologies to Humpty Dumpty for the comparison.
And there was more than one fundamental economic term you got completely wrong. You only admitted to one though, that is true. But the admission was days later, after you tried again and again to defend your jumbled up notion of the meaning of, I think it was price elasticity of demand.
But while your labeling of carbon taxes as pigovian, or rents, or now apparently “carbon cycle fees” (wow, just wow) keep mutating, your demands that other people’s money be taken, and given to you, remain firm.
> I see that that paragraph is completely incoherent.
Or, as Chewbacca would say, Bart R makes no sense.
Memphis, you are a short step from denying that even the CO2 will increase any more.
Please give the cell no of your candy-man, I just gotta get some of that stuff.
GaryM | March 9, 2013 at 11:56 pm |
Your version of these events you don’t recall the date of, and are fuzzy on the details of, may be correct. As you can’t recall the details, and have a track record of such revisionism as attributing the bank bailout to the wrong president, I’m really not all that concerned, as you have already said I corrected myself on the sign of elasticity more than a year ago.
There’s still the issue of your wild misrepresentations of what I say on any day I say things in. I’m thinking this sounds like a personal vendetta on your part. Sure, my views change with time. What reasonable person doesn’t take into account new information and new ideas and moderate or reform their opinions and ideas?
I once saw no way around the patent inequities in the unbalanced market conditions than Pigouvian taxes. That’s clearly a failure of imagination on my part, and was clarified for me by re-reading Adam Smith and examining the situation from first principles, guided by modern Economic thought.
The upshot is, anyone can identify that the carbon cycle is a real resource. The reasoning is straightforward: without the carbon cycle, we would inevitably have an atmosphere of much less oxygen and much more CO2, and life would extinguish. No one’s proposing that this will happen. It isn’t a prediction. It’s just the absurd end of a line of reasoning that didn’t acknowledge the carbon cycle resource.
From there, one seeks to learn the qualities of the resource as an Economist requires: is it scarce or limitless? (Scarce) Excludable or not excludable? (Excludable) Rivalrous or mutual? (Rivalrous) Administrably practical or impractical? (Practical)
You can work those out for yourself. I’ve done it in the past on CE countless times. In Economic terms, there’s little to distinguish the carbon cycle from mobile phone bandwidths. And we know privatizing mobile phone bandwidths spawned a trillion dollar global industry in a short span of time.
So, GaryM, are you saying you think the mobile phone industry ought be treated like the carbon cycle, and nationalized?
20% into what Co2 increase Jim?
Oh, I get it – the CAGW increase that, since there’s nothing close to a proof of it, you’re blithely just assuming, since that fits your agenda and concomitant pre-comitted conclusions. An understandable but ruinously short-sighted habit I find in many of your fellow-travelers.
Memphis, you are a short step from denying that even the CO2 will increase any more. Current levels were last seen 20 million years ago. Not natural, but never mind. Can’t possibly do anything. Ignore all that paleoclimate evidence. Right? Must be warm and fuzzy in that protective shell.
Memphis, you are a short step from denying that even the CO2 will increase any more.
Actually look Jim, I can see you’ve put a lot of effort into this latest denial strawman, so why not just bring it out anyway? Maybe you’ll still get lucky and dupe a few neophytes and unthinking allies.
manacker | March 10, 2013 at 3:01 am |
“Risks and Key Vulnerabilities” sounds like a good alias for CAGW, and you’ve just stated that, in your opinion, “what AR4 said about Risks and Key Vulnerabilities by all appearances is all in all much too conservative”.
See, there you go, the first three classical steps in the construction of a straw man, right on queue.
This “sounds like a good alias” trick of yours, do you do it with other things too? Is anything that doesn’t sound German automatically English to your ears? Is anything that isn’t a polka automatically rock and roll? Is anything not red automatically blue, to your eyes?
This tone-deaf color-blind AGW-blind approach to categorizing anything that isn’t exactly like you therefore the same as the thing you decide you cannot tolerate approach to life, how’s it working out for you?
This tells me that you have concluded that the potential threat to humanity and our environment as outlined by IPCC in AR4 (a.k.a. CAGW) has been understated by IPCC:
“the far more likely conclusion is the IPCC AR4 was either right, or didn’t go far enough”
Thanks for clarifying your opinion on this.
And there’s step four, predictably.
I have zero interest in the CAGW debate. In particular, it’s a discussion that leads nowhere on our present ability to resolve it by observation, so it remains firmly in the land of fiction, fabulism and speculation. I can see why the IPCC felt compelled to include it in their report; I see no reason to be led by the nose into contemplating it futher than that.
It obviously does not agree with mine, but I suppose we simply have to agree to disagree.
Your last sentence leaves me puzzled, however:
“And Risk costs me money. I’m not kidding. I want my money.”
How has this “Risk” cost you money?
Who has extracted this “money” from you and how?
So, you’re agreeing to disagree with me that the Risk even exists, because CAGW may exist and you disagree with CAGW, therefore anything that isn’t disagreement with CAGW doesn’t exist, and you want me to explain how this thing you refuse to acknowledge works?
Really?
Glad to oblige.
I’m going to start with another guy who like you can’t tell the difference between a bad thing and a catastrophe:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/11/18/bernanke-offers-broad-definition-of-systemic-risk/
(See, you’re in pretty good company there.) Bernanke in that letter cannot distinguish systemic risk imposed by the system on all or most actors within it (such as shaking a table might risk all the teacups spilling a few drops) from systemic risk that destroys everything caused by all those under-regulated, misbehaving teacups making the table shake catastrophically.
The systemic risk, prior to Bernanke’s spinning the term so radically, had been a pretty useful phrase. It captures well an entire category of things one could do something about by managing the system better, or, ideally, less. The crash in 2008 could be easily foreseen as an outcome of increasing systemic risk as governments (primarily in the US) deregulated not industries or businesses, but themselves.
The reins were taken off of so many forms of government meddling and manipulation it would have been impossible for any Market to find its natural level. What couldn’t be foreseen, so blanket and systemic was the increase in government interference it was merely impossible to predict the exact timing and which sector would break first, which is a doubly damaging state of affairs as this systemic uncertainty on top of government caused systemic risk made it impossible to economically hedge against.
Sure, some deeply connected and well-funded investors could move things around in time right on the cusp of the breakdown, but by and large any strategy that had built-in hedges would so underperform in the long run as to be no better than absorbing the crash in a diversified portfolio.
So, to throw ourselves back to the age when governments were supposed to build the level table, maintain the level playing field, and from time to time stabilize the table not interfere in the teacups or portion out the tea or favor some over others during the game (to mix metaphors like cream and sugar on the line of scrimmage), let’s call systemic risk any risk caused by the system that must be absorbed by the businesses and individuals in the Market.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/businessrisk.asp#axzz2N9rdM95h
Clearly, what IPCC AR4 talked about in chapter 19, (aside from the scant sidebar on CAGW) as Risk is manifestly Systemic Risk caused by lucrative burning of carbon and lucrative CO2-increasing uses of land. Every business, every buyer, every seller, is at Risk of spilling a few more drops than otherwise, due to the favored few who enjoy private profits at this public expense imposed through the national carbon cycle commons that government has failed to nail to the table through privatization.
From whom do you want this money back?
How are you planning to get it back?
How do we even calculate the size of this Risk in the Market?
We can’t find any expert who could do this.
Only the genius of the Market itself, by the Law of Supply and Demand, could find the level of this Risk.
Only by privatizing the carbon cycle, and letting the price of CO2E float until it finds its equilibrium at the level where maximum revenues are returned as dividends to the owners of the carbon cycle (every citizen per capita, or every wage-earner, or however each nation deems fair share in the resource) can we know how much this Risk is. We see from the examples of nations that do price the carbon cycle as a tax without fully distributing the dividends that the price must be above $30 or $50 a ton, but we can’t very well expect socialism to deliver a very satisfactory answer, can we?
My back of the envelope calculations tell me that initially, until the Market does its job and efficiently allocates the carbon cycle resource, squeezing out latent waste as must happen when any nationalized system is privatized, inspiring technology innovation as must happen when privatization incentivizes the private sector, as the increased wealth of the whole Market due having this new industry created while old industries shed their up-to-now coddled losers, the average US citizen would see about a thousand dollars a year of dividend above and beyond their increased costs. That’s new money that never existed before, because the government is suppressing the carbon cycle sector to favor the most lucrative and least balanced sectors in the marketplace.
Of course, the first nation to establish fee and dividend, as the leader, will see the most gains and have the most bargaining power. So many idiotic claims float about that suggest pricing CO2E until the whole world does it first is unstable or untenable or costly that it boggles the mind. How is that thinking arrived at? Cherry picking only one side of the equation, and using the same sort of thinking as got us into this mess in the first place.
(Just curious).
Hey, curiousity’s a good thing. You should keep practicing it. It’s been my lifelong policy, and look at the good it’s done me.
Bart R, you have to realize that these people don’t want to discuss any risk or vulnerability in climate change (hence their blanket CAGW term which is a handy way to dismiss it all in one go). A good debate would include risks and vulnerabilities, but would also be a slippery slope for them to admit any exist anywhere in climate change.
What Jim D is struggling to deny here, is that, as most everyone realises, the lying IPCC and its cringing apologists like Bart are finding it steadily more difficult to cover up the uncertainties surrounding CAGW, the risks rationally associated with it are steadily being reduced.
Over-long, self-aggrandizing gibberish. Our old Bart is back on form!
Memphis, for a synopsis of risks and vulnerabilities, you can take a look at the World Bank report on 4 C warming, and see how many of those you can deny are possible outcomes. Do you have any optimistic reports you can point to, or is a complete lack of planning the best thing to do in your considered opinion?
Jim D
With nothing close to real proof of CAGW, 4 C or otherwise, that is just poltically-motivated puff, produced by a self-interested political organization. What you recommend is like ‘planning’ on how to deal with alien abductions.
Memphis, OK, so we are only 20% into the CO2 increase so far and you haven’t noticed any of its effects yet. An understandable, if shortsighted, attitude. Lots of people are like that, I find.
manacker | March 9, 2013 at 5:24 pm |
A “thirty year stall” qualifies in your mind as a “stall”?
Sure. So would a one year stall. Or a ten year stall. Or a 15 or 17 year stall. If there were one in the climate timescale. The distinction isn’t the length of the stall, it’s whether there is — based on the data — one at all. And at the moment, based on the data, there isn’t a stall in the rising global temperature climate trend.
Good. We are only around half-way there to date.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/scale:0.00001/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/from:1940/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/derivative/normalise/from:1940/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend/plot/esrl-co2/mean:11/mean:13/normalise
See, in the graph showing an actual stall in the rising climate trend, the one from 1940 to present, there is only one stall in rising climate trend. There are twelve stalls in five year running global temperature trends, which it appears you’re taking the most recent four together to call your ‘stall’; but if we look at all groups of four contiguous five-year ‘stalls’, and compare them to the actual behavior of the climate, we see two out of nine, or under one quarter, of such illusory clusters of four running five-year running ‘stalls’ correspond to an actual climate stall. Odds are only 2:9 in favor of you being right, based on this (admittedly faulty) extrapolation of the last seven decades.
Let’s see what the next several years bring.
What an excellent suggestion. Because if the warmest fifteen year period on record continues as the start of a longer period of temperatures warmer than has been seen on record, then it will be some two decades before we can appropriately use the word ‘stall’ for even one year. If the temperatures begin to deeply dip — which I agree is possible, even with AGW plugging away, if the GCMs are right since they predict that will happen about a third of the time — you may see the start of your one year stall sooner than twenty years from now. And then, you’ll be right to use words like pause and stall.
Until then, “slow-down” looks distinctly possible within the next several years. Unless there isn’t one, based on the next several years.
And until then, all conclusions, claims, reasoning and arguments founded on a stall remain puffery and invalid.
Memphis | March 10, 2013 at 1:07 am |
Perhaps you’re new here, so don’t know, denizens of CE are not obliged to believe something just because some politician says it.
We go to first sources, where provided, and talk about observed data, fact, what was actually said and by whom and on what basis, and apply reasoning and logic, skepticism and skill.
Well, at least, I try to.
You should try it too.
@Bart R
Perhaps you’re new here, so don’t know, denizens of CE are not obliged to believe something just because some politician says it.
So although new here, you’ve finally figured out now that CAGW is what CE addresses? Well done..
Now how about starting to take some of your own advice above? – rather than always just parroting and defending the official political correctness line? Try some independent thought..
Technically, that’d have been Lewis Carroll’s Through A Looking Glass, not Alice In Wonderland.
Memphis | March 11, 2013 at 3:00 am |
CAGW is a straw man. While IPCC AR4, indeed every IPCC report, contemplated catastrophe of one form or another, AR4 specifically formalized Risks and Key Vulnerabilities as separate and distinct from ‘catastrophe’, and illustrated how Risk and Key Vulnerabilities were expensive burdens on economies separate and distinct from catastrophe.
So, no. I’m not feeling the catastrophe ring in my nose. If the hair up your nose is about catastrophe and CAGW only, you have zero issue with me, as I have zero interest in it. I don’t care if some “politically funded” conspiracy is behind catastrophe claims or if some James Bond SPECTRE-style shadow government is looming in the dark planning to subvert Our Pure Essence by fluoridation of water. It’s not that I don’t delight in such pieces of fiction; it’s that I don’t have time to treat them as real. It’s not whether some catastrophe is linked to burning carbon or not, at present times with present technology, it’s that such links are too difficult to clearly prove by and large. Dr. Jennifer Francis has made an excellent argument that goes a significant way towards this achievement, but it’s still early days in that field.
Risks? Risks are long-proven and of obvious and immediate cost to me. 88 of some 190 insurance companies publicly say Climate Change Risks have increased the cost of their business, which is a huge and real impact due to grow with time. Key vulnerabilities? Dozens of nations have made specific budget claims documenting costs of climate change to vulnerable areas. Sarah Freaking Palin while governor of Alaska signed claims worth millions of dollars specifically attributed to AGW. Are you saying Sarah Freaking Palin is part of the Progressive World Government?
I can see why IPCC would be compelled to footnote catastrophe, due the beginning of insights into that topic as a field of research for the likes of Dr. Francis. I can’t see why anyone could possibly find a way to argue against CAGW given how little is established for it yet. It would be like arguing about whether hems are too high in the fashions of 2027.
You want to be taken seriously? Drop the C. Talk about Risk or Key Vulnerability, two areas with well-developed claims and understandings.
Insurance companies? They need not seek far for rationales for higher premiums. What, really, is the risk in a warmer world?
Consider the last two or so centuries of warming. That warming is on the same order as any warming we can apparently get from AnthroCO2 into the future. Quite clearly, those past benefits have exceeded the damages, as they will in the future, and a wholesome insurance company would return all premiums, but still couldn’t make up the deficit, because of efficiency losses.
Now, run the end of the Holocene past your merciful actuaries.
============
> CAGW is a straw man.
A scarecrow, to be more precise.
Hey, that’s my spot of schmata!
=======
Picked off some other poor beggar, no doubt.
=========
Bart
Catastrophe is clearly the driving notion in the whole debate, and the alarmism it engenders is what is used to justify massive further politicicization of society. This is why the idea is accurately understood as CAGW. With no threat of catastrophe, it would not be in the public eye to anywhere near this extent. That the mainstream proponents of CAGW lack the basic honesty to call it what it is, is just propaganda, a big part of the problem.
So if you want to start being taken seriously, you need to stop trying to deny, bury and obfuscate all this this.
Bart R
CAGW is a straw man
Clearly not, since it exactly describes what the IPCC et al are saying, and is the basis of the ‘advice’ to policymakers to ramp up CO2 taxes etc.
It’s true they don’t use the acronym, though, preferring a more stealth approach to give the illusion of objectivity. But that is not the meaning of ‘straw man’.
Sorry, guys. There’s nothing to C here. You’re at C with all this double C plus plus speak. I’m C-blocking you.
Address the Risks and Key Vulnerabilities, and don’t just kim around but form complete sentences, and possibly use paragraph structure. Because I see your C-note, and raise the standard of the debate.
Oh, and can you decide if it’s cringing self-agrandizement, or self-agrandized cringing? They’re kinda opposites, you know.
David Springer | March 10, 2013 at 8:37 am |
The actual global average temperature is outside the lower bound of 1.5C-4.5C sensitivity but you shrug this off saying it’s just a matter of odds. I wonder if you’d have been as casually dismissive if GAT went outside the upper bound of model predictions.
There is no rational argument based on any one global average temperature measurement or on any sub-17 year timespan of measurements that can be said to logically be “outside the bound” (upper or lower) of climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity isn’t a bound.
While a recent paper discussed elsethread illustrates that global temperature sensitivity (though they call it climate sensitivity) is extremely dependent on time scale (and generally increases as timescale increases in their study) and on influences of regional responses, a climate remains a climate, and statistical methods confirm that sub-17 year calculations of global temperature averages (or other samples) lack predictive power to indicate longer-term climate trends. And none of this suggests a bound.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/derivative/normalise/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/scale:0.00001/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/from:1972/plot/gistemp/mean:29/mean:31/derivative/normalise/from:1972/plot/gistemp/last:180/trend/plot/gistemp/mean:191/mean:193/from:1972
It doesn’t even take plotting the daily anomaly to show why the idea of “outside the bounds” is meaningless. Global temperature varies so widely and because of so many short-term, quickly passing influences with no lasting effect, that “bounds” is practically inapplicable.
Have you really fallen for Girma?
Smart guy like you?
More Bakken production improvements on the way – means more jobs to compensate for the economy-killing liberal initiatives …
“… As far as the density is concerned – obviously, we’ve got a lot of wells – we’ve got numerous wells that have been drilled in pairs of wells that are 660 feet offset: the Middle Bakken and the first bench well, and they are 660-foot offsets. And we’re not seeing any influence on IPs or even EUR. So I mean, there’s just a constant building of data set out here that’s saying that the pattern is not causing any kind of degradation in at least initial rates.”
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1248431-bakken-the-downspacing-bounty-and-birth-of-array-fracking
In brief, from the age of enlightenment we have emerged into the philosophy of post-modernism which sets aside evidence as the authority and asserts that the ‘truth’ is what you believe – if you believe it, then it is your ‘truth’. Importantly all opinions are to be given equal authority irrespective of the where the evidence may lie. These ideas have progressed to what is now called ‘Post Normal Science’. This holds that science is subservient to the story that must be told. The role of science is no longer about discovering new ‘truth’ but supporting the ‘story’ which is perceived to be the truth. This gives rise to the notion of “noble-cause science”, which allows scientists to ignore contrary evidence, or worse, manipulate the evidence, if the cause is noble. We have seen evidence of this in the climate change debate. (Doug Edmeades)
Wagathon,
I enjoy your posts thoughts but I can’t believe these scientists on the CAGW side consciously bend their reports to support the cause. But the paper above that identified data
” “In a study published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, researchers used eight indirect temperature indicators — such as pollen and shells from marine organisms — to chart long-term global warming and cooling trends. The research team concluded that temperatures in the last decade had not exceeded the Holocene’s steamiest periods from thousands of years ago. However, if current warming trends hold, those records will be broken by the end of the century.
“By the year 2100, we will be beyond anything human society has ever experienced”
interesting results if left at that shown in the data but going beyond by 78 years to extrapolate increases is incredibly arrogant. Speculative at best and an advocate position not a science one.
It is hard to understand what they were thinking to go so far outside the existing data and rashly predict the far future.
68 years ago we had the deep winter snows of 1945. Thinks change a lot in 50 years.
Scott
I understand where you’re coming from so this will be disappointing but I know you can take it. Medical science research lives by a far higher standard than climatology will ever be held. And yet, even in medicine, “most current published research findings are false.” (see—e.g., John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” in PLOS Medicine)
The UN is a political not a scientific body. The Eurocommies of AGW awarded their Nobel to Al Gore, the IPCC and Barack Hussein Obama II for their propaganda skill not for their scientific research capabilities. Obviously, the Left does have a great sense of humor. Outside of the west, however, climatology is compared to the ancient science of astrology.
Wagathon, I agree with you about the UN political agenda. Mostly they want western monies and guilt controls forcing reductions on our lifestyles. Without China and India no carbon plan can have meaningful impact. Imagine CHina cutting coal emissions to reduce temperature increases by some unknown incremental amount. Expensive and not sure of working. What is difficult to understand, is it seems scientists at the working level must be biasing results to come up with extrapolated projections. Controversy about UHI still not over even after BEST says they only make needed ADJUSTMENTS. Why the consensus is still claimed so strongly when outside observors see lots of room for challenges. Anyway, thanks. Your free market positions are rare.
Scott
Scott | March 8, 2013 at 7:00 pm |
“Wagathon, I agree with you about the UN political agenda. Mostly they want western monies and guilt controls forcing reductions on our lifestyles. ”
My emphasis.
Roger that.
“Conceptually, the technique focuses attention on fundamental forces driving climate, instead of “following every little swirl,” Marston says.”
Continuing on a theme by GaryM, Jim Cripwell, David Springer et al, that sounds like a grand idea.
I suggest that we start by publishing an exhaustive list of all fundamental forces driving the climate, along with a quantitative description, to the appropriate number of decimal points, of exactly HOW they drive the climate. Also useful, since we are interested in predicting future climate, would be precise measurements of the current value of those climate drivers, plus long term predictions, also appropriately precise, of how they will vary over the period for which the climate is to be predicted. Or are all the fundamental forces driving climate constant?
Having all this information compiled in one location would allow THE climate model to be developed in parallel by multiple individuals/teams and we should soon be able to stop all the silly bickering (see historical commentary on this site) over, for example, whether the ‘Annual Temperature of the Earth’ has increased .2 degrees, decreased .2 degrees, or flatlined over the last 17 years (or 15 or 19). And why we should care.
Bob Ludwick
Listing “all the forces driving our climate that we (think we) know” would be a good start.
Of course, this should be based on empirical evidence, following the scientific method, rather than simply based on hypotheses or model simulations.
But there are very likely several “forces driving our climate that we do NOT know yet”
And to quote Rumsfeld (and Nassim Taleb): there are the “unknown unknowns” (or “black swans”).
So when we start estimating attribution of global warming to specific factors, we have to be very careful NOT to fall into the “conclusion from ignorance” trap (i.e. “we can only explain X if we assume Y…”), but insist that attribution is only estimated by “conclusion from evidence”.
Kinda hard to do.
Max
PS Let me continue with part 2
Bob Ludwick
Here are two examples of empirical physical data, which we have:
– the IR absorption characteristic of greenhouse gases (principally H2O, but also CO2 and other trace greenhouse gases) has been experimentally determined – so we know that there is a GH “mechanism” and that CO2 is a GHG.
– the galactic cosmic ray cloud nucleation mechanism has also been validated at CERN under reproducible controlled conditions in the presence of certain naturally occurring aerosols – so we know there is a GCR “mechanism” that is directly related to solar activity.
In neither case do we have empirical data (based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation), which tell us the effect of this mechanism in our atmosphere – i.e. would this mechanism cause perceptible global warming of our atmosphere how much warming could this mechanism cause?
In the GCR case, added experimental work is planned at CERN under conditions simulating our planet’s climate to either corroborate and quantify the GCR effect on our climate (or falsify the hypothesis). This should give use some definite answers to the validity and impact of this mechanism on our climate.
Similar experiments could be designed for the GH effect of CO2, with or without water vapor, etc. The experiment might be more complicated, but I cannot imagine that it would be scientifically “impossible” to do, if we can send a roving probe to Mars.
Max
“Similar experiments could be designed for the GH effect of CO2, with or without water vapor, etc. The experiment might be more complicated, but I cannot imagine that it would be scientifically “impossible” to do, if we can send a roving probe to Mars.”
We are doing that experiment.
However, you need to understand how the GHG effect works.
adding GHGs raises the ERL. You cant do that in a lab.
You can do that in the lab we call earths atmosphere. In fact we are doing that experiment. Our best science says that experiment may not be safe.
I already suggested an experiment to test the CO2 effect. Large population centers exhibit elevated near-surface atmospheric CO2 concentrations. There were some studies about these artificial urban CO2 domes, but it was inconclusive regarding the CO2 radiation/warming effect effect (UHI…).
We could use already existing coal fired power plants, transport the flue gas further from the plant (pipe) to a desired point, far from other urban influences, which should create an artificial small scale CO2 dome. Flue gas can be cooled and filtered additionally. Then measure everything.
Steven Mosher
You say “we are doing that experiment” in our atmosphere. (And over the past 10-15 years, that “experiment” is showing no increase in global temperature despite unabated human GHG emissions and atmospheric CO2 levels reaching record heights.)
But I was referring to doing an experiment, under controlled conditions simulating our planet’s climate. to either validate and quantify or falsify the hypothesis that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations by a few hundred ppmv over the next decades really represents a potential threat to humanity from global warming or not.
Such experiments are planned under controlled conditions simulating our climate at CERN for the galactic cosmic ray cloud hypothesis of Svensmark et al., so I really cannot see why something similar could not be done for the GH effect from added CO2.
I can see that this could be difficult and costly, but it would certainly be less costly than doing the same experiment in our planet’s climate, as you suggest is being done. It would arguably be less costly than implementing some sort of mitigation or geo-engineering proposals (which are not even defined as yet). It would certainly not be impossible. Almost nothing is.
And it would answer, once and for all, the question of whether or not the LW absorption characteristic of CO2 really translates into a significant GH warming effect in real life in our atmosphere (a question, to which we do not as yet really know the answer).
So what is there to lose?
If the CAGW premise as outlined by IPCC in AR4 is corroborated, we know that corrective action is required, no matter how painful it may be.
If it is falsified, we know that this painful action is not required and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
Are the supporters if the CAGW premise afraid that their hypothesis might be falsified? Is this more about politics and policy decisions rather than about science?
Why else would anyone balk at trying to find out, with empirical data based on reproducible experimentation, whether or not CAGW is real?
Max
Is it possible to at least do an experiment to see if downwelling longwave infrared radiation can slow down the rate of heat loss in a body of water that is free to evaporate in response?
If DWLIR can’t significantly slow heat loss in the global ocean due to accelerating evaporation then the global warming narrative only applies to 30% of the earth’s surface in inverse proportion to the amount of surface water available to evaporate.
If it is found that DWLIR accelerates evaporation without a rise in surface temperature then we should expect to see the greatest levels of CO2 warming where there is the least amount of surface water available. The most prominent case of this would be in the winter in higher latitudes when the water on the surface is frozen and that is indeed what we observe – warming is generally greater over land than over ocean and is generally greater in winter than in summer.
This is experimentally testable using a mid-IR laser to illuminate the surface of one vessel of water and not illuminating a control while carefully controlling all other factors and allowing evaporation to proceed normally. One might ask why it hasn’t been done.
Bob Ludwick,
That’s the key question.
In fact, it really is the only question worth asking.
If we cant answer that question, then why are we arguing to spend (waste?) trillions of dollars of global wealth on what is very likely to be a futile exercise?
Pingback: Statistical physics applied to climate modeling | Watts Up With That?
Should this :
“A practical advantage would be the ability to model climate conditions from millions of years ago without having to reconstruct the world’s entire weather history in the process.”
be translated to :
” Finally a practical way rid of pesky those real observations that keep invalidating every model the climate scientists set forth = just have the model generate the “observation” and pretend they are real ”
That’s how it looks to me at least , and well I thougt it has benn common practice in some of the loudest the climate doomsayer camps for the past 2-3 decades. So what is new with this then?
correction – meant to say “Finally a practical way to get rid of those pesky real observations… ” , in my prior comment , instead of ” Finally a practical way rid of pesky those real observations…”
What statistics says about the climate of the last 160 years based on the datasets HADCRUT3, HADCRUT4 and GISS=>
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/compress:12/plot/gistemp/compress:12/offset:-0.08/detrend:0.04/plot/hadcrut4gl/compress:12/offset:-0.03/detrend:0.02/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:-0.2/plot/hadcrut3vgl/scale:0.000001/offset:4/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:252/offset:0.015/plot/hadcrut3vgl/mean:732/offset:0.015/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.003/offset:-1.03/detrend:-0.22/from:1982
Thank you for this fine question, Judith Curry!
Climate Etc readers who are well-grounded in dynamics (classical, quantum, and thermodynamical) will appreciate the striking visual resemblance of:
(A) The laminar-to-turbulent transition of liquid helium flow that appears on the front cover of the recent textbook by Le Bellac, Mortessagne, and Batrouni “Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Statistical Thermodynamics” (2004), versus
(B) The laminar-to-turbulent transition of jet flow that appears in Figure Two of the Tobias and Marston article “Direct Statistical Simulation of Out-of-Equilibrium Jets” (2013).
Not only is the underlying physics essentially the same in these two works, but even the plotting software is (apparently) identical. Amazing!
Integrated Conclusions Regarding Climate-Change Science
(I) The thorough review and clear exposition of Le Bellac, Mortessagne, and Batrouni’s textbook is commended to Climate Etc readers who are interested in the connexion between statistical methods and dynamical methods. Section 6.3.3 “Transport coefficients and the Navier-Stokes equations” particularly is commended for its rigorous exposition of this linkage.
(II) The Tobias and Marston results are not a revolutionary advance sensu stricto, but rather are representative of wide-ranging contemporary advances in dynamical physics, whose mathematical and physical foundations are well-reviewed in the Le Bellac, Mortessagne, and Batrouni textbook.
(III) Many climate scientists (most scientists? almost all scientists?) foresee that the coming decade will witness accelerating five-fold convergence of (1) Mann-style paleo data, (2) Hansen-style (simple) thermodynamical models, (3) Tobias/Marston-style (medium-scale) statistical models, (4) Le Bellac-style (fine-scale) computational models, as verified by (4) Hansen-style predictions of sustained global energy imbalance.
———————
The above five-front coordinated-progress scenario is the main-path by which practicing scientists foresee that rational climate-change skepticism will be (slowly) laid to rest, and how irrational climate-change denialism will (thankfully) be defeated. Thank you for introducing this illuminating topic, Judith Curry!
JANUARY 1907 . MONTHLY WEATHER REVIEW.
“IS NOT HONESTY THE WISEST POLICY?
“The weather, the mineral, agricultural and forest conditions,
and the health of the community are among those matters of
universal interest about which the whole truth should be
known as nearly as we can get at it. Every patriotic citizen
must rebel at the idea that a government for the people and
by the people shall not be permitted to publish an honest
report of data gathered by its own official observers for the
use of all the people.
It is wrong to mutilate or suppress the record of an obser-
vation of a phenomenon of nature, but it is also wrong to make
a bad use of the record. In fact, it is the misuse of meteorological
data, not the observing or publishing, that constitutes
a crime against the community. Observation and careful research
are to be encouraged as useful. Misrepresentations are
to be avoided as harmful. The (‘ Independent Press ’’ as the
‘I Voice of the People ” should be not only IC Vox Populi ” but
“Vox Dei ”, repressing all cheats and hoaxes, defending the
truth and the best interests of the whole nation as against the
self-interest of a few.-C. A.”
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/035/mwr-035-01-0007b.pdf
The inspired research of Tobias and Marston is exactly what climate science needs. It is no wonder that applying stochastic models to natural processes is one of the grand challenges in science.
DARPA put together a list of 23 mathematical challenges inspired by Hilbert’s list from many years ago:
http://science.dodlive.mil/2012/08/08/23-mathematical-challenges-and-you/
Mathematical Challenge 3: Capture and Harness Stochasticity in Nature
Address David Mumford’s call for new mathematics for the 21st century. Develop methods that capture persistence in stochastic environments.
Mathematical Challenge 4: 21st Century Fluids
Classical fluid dynamics and the Navier-Stokes Equation were extraordinarily successful in obtaining quantitative understanding of shock waves, turbulence and solitons, but new methods are needed to tackle complex fluids such as foams, suspensions, gels and liquid crystals.
Mathematical Challenge 7: Occam’s Razor in Many Dimensions
As data collection increases can we “do more with less” by finding lower bounds for sensing complexity in systems? This is related to questions about entropy maximization algorithms.
Mathematical Challenge 20: Computation at Scale
How can we develop asymptotics for a world with massively many degrees of freedom?
These are all about reducing complexity, which is completely at odds with the nay-saying arguments of Milanovic, Young, and the Chief on this commentary site.
A very representative phenomena of what stochastic processes are all about is the carbon cycle and the sequestering of CO2. Much work has gone into developing box models with various pathways leading to sequestering of industrial CO2. The response curve according to the BERN model is series of damped exponentials showing the long term sequestering.
Yet, by a more direct statistical interpretation of what is involved in the process of CO2 sequestration, we can model the adjustment time of CO2 decay by a dispersive diffusional model.
http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/8127/normalizeddecayofco2.gif
Note that this does not contradict findings of climate researchers, but it places our understanding on a potentially different footing. This footing may allow us to invoke simplifying formulations in the future.
As an example, we can take historical estimates of carbon emissions (from the Carbon Dioxide Analysis Center) and apply the impulse response of the diffusive sequestration model via a convolution. This is essentially a stochastic response to the impulse carbon stimulus over the years. The match to the CO2 measurements archived at KNMI Cimate Explorer is very good after the year 1900
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4829/bestco2model.gif
To get a sense of the climate sensitivity, the temperature response is shown to the right for a 3°C CO2 doubling. Temperature shifts are already observed in the early 20th century. Perhaps, the only real departure is a warming around 1940 not accounted for by CO2
Webster, “To get a sense of the climate sensitivity, the temperature response is shown to the right for a 3°C CO2 doubling. Temperature shifts are already observed in the early 20th century. Perhaps, the only real departure is a warming around 1940 not accounted for by CO2.”
Hopefully, the direct statistical simulation approach will figure out why that is off by a factor of three, since it is a complex N-S problem.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/cms-filesystem-action?file=user_files/a1g/deboer_jpo_feb-2010.pdf
That Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory has some brains working there. The ocean heat uptake diffusion thing you did, never did consider long term variability did it? In fact Hansen still believes that natural variability can’t account for more than a few tenths of a degree change in GMT.
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1324186/
Another paper that mentions ACC mixing caused over 3C decrease in temperature. That kinda make the ACC and Southern Pole the heat sink don’t it? What does MAXENT think about path of least resistance?
What does MAXENT think about path of least resistance?
Principle of least constraint eg Gauss. K41 theory
Mas
MAXENT is Maximum Entropy Modeling. http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/lzhang10/maxent.html
It is interesting and no doubt useful, but with anything you need to know all your initial conditions. Then you get into fluctuation theorems and a lot of stuff that gives me a headache.
http://iopscience.iop.org/0305-4470/38/21/L01/
To me, it is easier to focus on the main heat reservoirs and let the noise alone.. Webster confuses reservoirs with sinks though. The deep oceans have a range of about 2.5 C to 4 C for a reason.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-LJBB1vlg8C8/UTvgl1LfNdI/AAAAAAAAHa4/2mtd_OBrtXA/s912/45%2520to%252090%2520versus%252045%2520to%252045.png
The oceans seem to disagree with Webster.
Here is an analogy.
If you don’t attach a heat sink directly to the computer chip, the chip will still get hot. If the heat sink is attached by a lower thermal conductivity path, the chip will only reduce its thermal load by a relative amount.
Same thing with the land; it is not intimately attached to the ocean so the land will show warming more immediately. I chose to compare against BEST because that is transiently nearer the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) that is most frequently cited.
What probably should be done is generate a totally land-based temperature metric (which is available) and then a totally ocean-based metric. That would better represent the heat sinking characteristics of the earth. Then you get the transient and the slower equilibrium views instead of a hybrid.
Webster, “What probably should be done is generate a totally land-based temperature metric (which is available) and then a totally ocean-based metric. That would better represent the heat sinking characteristics of the earth. Then you get the transient and the slower equilibrium views instead of a hybrid.”
Yep. The current rate of ocean heat gain is on the order of 320 years per degree, but the longer term underlying trend could be half of that or more. The NH land is at an average altitude of roughly 2000 meters, so there is a big guess that has to be made about the actually energy involved in the T anomalies. Using Tmin for land with SST seems to make more sense, but BEST may have a different way to put things together pretty soon.
.
A couple of pages which might interest:
New version of the Hockey Stick analysed here: http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/03/10/the-hockey-stick-resurrected-by-marcott-et-al-2012/
and, Russian scientists may have found new life under Antarctic ice
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre92611l-us-russia-antarctica/
Jim D | March 10, 2013 at 11:50 am |
The good thing in climate science is that in 50 years we will have the measurements and the attribution to hand, and won’t be just predicting it.
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And so only then will we know whether / how much AGW is an issue or not, and hence also know whether / how much poorer we all need to be by virtue of a switch to vastly more expensive energy sources.