by Judith Curry
The American Physical Society (APS) has a new Topical Group on the Physics of Climate (GPC).
From the GPC website:
The objective of the GPC shall be to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge concerning the physics, measurement, and modeling of climate processes, within the domain of natural science and outside the domains of societal impact and policy, legislation and broader societal issues. The objective includes the integration of scientific knowledge and analysis methods across disciplines to address the dynamical complexities and uncertainties of climate physics. Broad areas of initial scientific inquiry are described in the Areas of Interest below. These are expected to evolve with scientific progress, while remaining entirely within the domain of natural science.
The focus of the Topical Group on the Physics of Climate (GPC) is on the physics of climate processes and measurements. It is not intended to encompass the wider scope of physics associated with other environmental issues. The intended product of the GPC is physical insight and understanding of value to members of the Topical Group, APS members as a whole, and the broader scientific community concerned with climate issues. It is not concerned with matters of policy, legislation, or regulation. It is intended to be a mechanism for physicists with relevant skills, backgrounds, and interests to interact, to present research insights, to learn about and exchange views on the science, and to generally advance the physical understanding of climate.
Five specific initial areas of focus are listed below. These are based on the current perceived needs of climate science and are likely to change as that science progresses.
- Climate as a complex dynamical system, leading to a better understanding of the natural modes of the climate system, their coupling to each other and to exogenous forces.
- The physics of climate influences, leading to a better understanding of the mechanisms, magnitudes, and timescales by which anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic processes affect climate, including for example, greenhouse gases, solar variability, and unforced influences such as internal modes of variability.
- Insight into the nature, magnitude and timescales of climate sensitivity, arising from feedbacks including clouds, water vapor and the hydrological and carbon cycles, at the surface, in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
- The physics of proxies used to infer the properties of past climates for which instrumental records are not available, leading to a better understanding of past climates and their relation to the present climate.
- The computational physics and statistical analysis of climate model and measurement systems, leading to a better understanding of the methods, capabilities, and limitations of climate models and climate simulation predictions.
Specific natural science areas underlying these issues include fluid dynamics, modeling of nonlinear systems, the physics of complex systems, gas phase physics and chemistry, radiation/heat transfer, phase transitions, measurement science, computational physics, statistics, and biological physics.
Executive Committee
- Chair: James Brasseur Penn State University
- Chair-Elect: Robert Behringer Duke Univ
- Vice Chair: John Wettlaufer Yale Univ
- Secretary/Treasurer: Ken Minschwaner New Mexico Tech
- Member-at-Large: Judith Lean Naval Research Lab
- Member-at-Large: John Marston Brown Univ
- Member-at-Large: Warren Warren Duke Univ
- Member-at-Large: Judith Curry Georgia Inst of Tech
- Member-at-Large: Daniel Rothman MIT
I (along with Daniel Rothman) are the newest members of the Executive Committee. Note all members of Executive Committee are elected by the GPC membership. Some background on my own involvement in this. About 18 months ago I was contacted by Roger Cohen about the new GPC. He encouraged me to join. I was sufficiently intrigued to join the APS and the GPC. Soon after, I was invited to give a Plenary talk at the APS April meeting (2012) on the topic of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. I was subsequently nominated to be on the ballot for Member-at-Large, and was elected to this Committee a few months ago.
Background
The motivation for the formation of the GPC is tied up with the controversy surrounding the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change:
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.
If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
There was controversy surrounding this statement, including Correspondence published in Nature by Fred Singer, Hal Lewis, Will Happer, Larry Gould, Roger, Cohen, and Robert Austin entitled Petitioning for a revised statement on climate change (note can’t find an online version with active link). WUWT has followed the controversy, here are some of the links:
- Hal Lewis: my resignation from the APS
- APS Responds! Deconstructing the APS response to Dr. Hal Lewis’ resignation
- Nobel laureate resigns from the APS to protest the organization’s stance on global warming
In 2010, the APS did provide an addendum to their statement.
History and context of the GPC is summarized in the first Newsletter (March 2013), which was prepared just prior to March APS meeting. With regards to the March meeting (held last week in Baltimore):
A great deal of discussion within the Program and Executive Committees lead to the development of two excellent sessions as described below. In addition, the chair of GPC was invited to join the organization committee for the Kavli Plenary session, and two speakers were invited to speak on the physics of climate.
It should also be mentioned that the process of choosing invited speakers for the GPC March meeting sessions was not without argument. The aim by both the Nominating Committee, charged with driving the effort, and the Executive Committee, who worked with the Program Committee in both developing and discussing potential speakers, was to strive for excellence in scientific research, a theme continuously emphasized. Unfortunately, disagreements arose that led Roger Cohen to resign. Roger was one of our members-at-large and a major contributor to the organizational process from the beginning. It was with great regret that he left the GPC Executive Committee and it is our hope that evolution of the GPC will realize the goals that we all had in its creation: a strong emphasis on quality scientific research outside the public debate. We feel that we have made a good start in that direction with these inaugural events.
See the newsletter for the list of speakers. Unfortunately, none of the presentations are publicly available other than the Kavli lectures (Graeme Stephens and Lonnie Thompson). I was invited to give a presentation at the APS meeting last week, but unfortunately was unable to attend.
WUWT has two posts on Roger Cohen’s resignation:
- More turmoil at the APS over global warming issue
- The APS Topical Group on Physics of Climate: reply to Roger Cohen, by Warren Warren.
Jim Brasseur, Chair of the GPC, was interviewed on APS TV last week, the youtube video can be found here.
JC comments: So why am I participating in the GPC? I am hoping that the different ‘culture’ of the APS is more conducive to taking an unbiased look at the science, stimulating more physicists to get involved in climate science, and focusing on challenging issues at the knowledge frontier. A corollary to this statement is that I am concerned that the American Geophysical Union has gone too far over into the land of advocacy, and is rewarding scientists for their ‘alarmism.’ The GPC is a work in progress; I hope that by serving on the Executive Committee that I can influence the objectives and outcomes of the Committee.
Here is my advice to the GPC: First, drop the APS Statement on Climate Change. The timing and content of the 2007 statement indicates that it is entirely derivative from the IPCC AR4, albeit more ‘alarming.’ The 2010 addendum doesn’t add much. So what is the point of the statement? Apparently, to ‘inform the public’ on this controversial issue by appealing to the ‘authority’ of the society. Does anyone pay attention to the APS statement as their primary source of information (e.g. rather than the IPCC or the NRC)? I suspect that no one paid any attention to the APS statement until Happer et al. started complaining about it, resigning, etc. All this detracts from the scientific and public credibility of the APS.
Second, focus your efforts on the knowledge frontier, e.g. the controversies, the uncertainties, the known unknowns. Too much climate research is focused on taxonomy, and not enough on fundamental physics-based research. This is where the APS CPG can have its greatest impact. Graeme Stephens’ Kavli talk is presented in this spirit: focusing on what we don’t know in terms of the Earth’s energy balance, and discrepancies between models and observations. And make these presentations publicly available (e.g. for the invited speakers, make the public availability of their ppt a condition for their travel reimbursement).
I remain optimistic that the APS GPC can have an important impact on climate research. So far, I am enjoying my interactions with this group. Time will tell. In the mean time, I am hoping that more members of the APS will join the GPC, and that physics-minded non-APS members will consider joining. Climate research would greatly benefit from a larger infusion of physics and physicists.
There was controversy surrounding this statement..
Dr. Curry is too modest. One of the earliest and strongest critics of the statement was Dr. Curry, IIRC.
How then does this position jibe with taking an unbiased look at the science?
Isn’t the best we can hope for a balance of participation from several equally biased parties?
“It is not concerned with matters of policy, legislation, or regulation. ”
Well, now that’s out of the way what other bias do we need to be concerned with from the participating biased parties?
Here is my advice to the GPC: First, drop the APS Statement on Climate Change. The timing and content of the 2007 statement indicates that it is entirely derivative from the IPCC AR4, albeit more ‘alarming.’ The 2010 addendum doesn’t add much. So what is the point of the statement? Apparently, to ‘inform the public’ on this controversial issue by appealing to the ‘authority’ of the society. Does anyone pay attention to the APS statement as their primary source of information (e.g. rather than the IPCC or the NRC)? I suspect that no one paid any attention to the APS statement until Happer et al. started complaining about it, resigning, etc. All this detracts from the scientific and public credibility of the APS.
Second, focus your efforts on the knowledge frontier, e.g. the controversies, the uncertainties, the known unknowns. Too much climate research is focused on taxonomy, and not enough on fundamental physics-based research. This is where the APS CPG can have its greatest impact. Graeme Stephens’ Kavli talk is presented in this spirit: focusing on what we don’t know in terms of the Earth’s energy balance, and discrepancies between models and observations. And make these presentations publicly available (e.g. for the invited speakers, make the public availability of their ppt a condition for their travel reimbursement).
These sound like foregone conclusions, rather than open-minded will to investigate, examine and draw conclusions based on the facts found through the process.
Now, if they were just questions, such as:
1.) What are the merits and drawbacks of the case to drop completely, drop and replace wholesale, or amend the APS statement as of 2010?
2.) What value does an APS statement add, given the IPCC reports, without overlap, seeking to substitute the judgement of the APS for the IPCC in matters more properly within IPCC mandate, mere repetition, disinforming or obscuring the science?
3.) What is the best role in informing the public for the APS in regard to climate.
.. See how that works?
You do science to find answers, not to assert them.
And, as our unsatisfied Latimer told us last week, you do op-ed to assert things.
“You do science to find answers, not to assert them.”
I don’t see her asserting any ‘science’ in the statements she made. What assertions of the ‘science’ did she make? She advised to drop the APS statement and to focus effort on knowledge frontiers. These are examples of asserting science? Sure, she gave some opinions on why she thinks the APS should take her advice, but to stretch that to asserting science… I don’t see it. I think she is trying to say… take the ‘controversial’ statement off the table (for now)….and… do some science in areas that are more under-represented. I will add a third part… after taking an ‘unbiased’ look at the established as well as the less established work, re-visit the statement.
Perhaps, to you, her statements look like foregone conclusions… but that is precisely the argument she is making to the APS on why it might be advantageous to take the current statement off the table for now…(it’s a statement that makes biased policy recommendations) and why looking at under-represented areas of climate science frontiers might be healthy and a little more ‘open minded’.
It appears all you are doing is turning here argument around back on to her instead of understanding what she is trying to say.
The way you framed the questions are certianly the way I would expect the issues to be presented within the committee.
John Carpenter | March 25, 2013 at 2:02 pm |
..focus your efforts on the knowledge frontier, e.g. the controversies, the uncertainties, the known unknowns.
It’s been my experience of the sciences that “the controversies” and “the uncertainties” and the “known unknowns” are seldom, marginally and infrequently productive areas of exploration.
In 1900, the view of some was that everything that could be known in Physics was, and all that remained was to add decimal points of precision to observations. This focus on known unknowns was utterly wrong, as Einstein showed by discussing not the controversial but the interesting questions.
More often, focus on “the controversies” is elevation of inferior alternative explanations — not as universal, not as parsimonious, not as straightforward, not as well supported by the evidence, not as a response to observation of new phenomena not previously explained — to equal footing with dominant established theory. It’s fingoism. It is an unsound approach we are well warned against. And it is not science.
More often, “the uncertainties” is code for polemics. Climate Science has irreducible uncertainties. The causes of the mathematical uncertainties in the equations is well understood by mathematicians, who can identify when an equation is linear and when it contains elements of nonlinear response. These are uncertainties that dominate over error bars and doubts about the reliability of data — which, though they’re good to consider, seldom take more than a small amount of study to reveal. Some error bars, likewise, are not practicably reducible. If the observations weren’t originally made and proxies must be substituted, there’s just no way to recover a higher fidelity. These things will NEVER respond to more examination, and it’s simply a waste to wish otherwise or promise some committee is going to wave a wand over it and make it all better.
No. Dr. Curry’s pre-conceived views as stated before even attending a single group meeting are pure nonsense and bafflegab, as stated.
“It’s been my experience of the sciences that “the controversies” and “the uncertainties” and the “known unknowns” are seldom, marginally and infrequently productive areas of exploration. ”
Yeah Bart, I can just imagine how Max Plank would have thrown away investigating an explanation to black body radiation (a known unknown, a controversial phenomenon to classical physics that threw uncertainty into then current world views) had he been of a similar opinion as you.
John Carpenter | March 28, 2013 at 9:23 pm |
I can just imagine how Max Plank would have thrown away investigating an explanation to black body radiation (a known unknown, a controversial phenomenon to classical physics that threw uncertainty into then current world views) had he been of a similar opinion as you
Let’s examine this statement:
David Wojick promotes “teaching the controversy”, a theme that fits well with emphasis on controversial phenomena.. but not in particular with the emphasis on new Physics; indeed David’s approach regressively seeks to lock in the beliefs and methods, systems and points of view of a world before the time of Planck as regards understanding of climate.
Have you reviewed lately Planck’s work on Kirchhoff’s 35-year old formulation of intensity, frequency and temperature in cavity radiators? Some stirring controversy, that, hot off the presses for only a mere 35 years. Of Planck’s 5-year quest to force the observations to fit conventional uncontroversial thinking of the period, which had never in four decaded advanced understanding?
Of how Planck advanced thinking and moved forward?
How does this in the least match the concept of “teaching the controversy”?
Planck wasn’t working on something well-understood with a solid hypothesis explaining the majority of observations. And he didn’t fret over the uncertainties, to quash them. He ended up accepting the uncertainty as the IPCC has accepted the complex and chaotic aspects of climate.
The knowledge frontier of 1894 was not Kirchhoff’s cavity radiator problem: in 1895 that frontier was identified as getting more decimal points of accuracy in readings of temperature, frequency and intensity. What a waste had Planck kept chasing that frontier.
Wojick’s teaching of controversy is more of that negative logic that these guys seem to enjoy (or get paid to do).
The gormlessness, too:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/19/playing-hockey-blowing-the-whistle/#comment-306193
Bart, you’re attempting to insert words into my mouth. Your shifting the goal posts. Your changing the conversation to one of your own little hobby horses. I never said anything about ‘teaching the controversy’ and AFAICT, Judith didn’t either. Red herrings and David Wojick aside… just because you believe investigating controvesial subject matters, trying to figure out known problems that currently aren’t well described (known unknowns) or trying to determine degrees of uncertianty, is unproductive and uninteresting doesn’t mean most or even a few other scientists would agree with you. If your looking for the hail Mary pass of a grand new theory by epiphany… god bless you and good luck. You might recieve a Nobel prize someday. Don’t expect one for coming up with new words like ‘fingoism’. But for you to appear to not understand that this is the way scientific behavior works…. endeavors to try to clean up the loose ends even if it proves to be in vain or to work on known unknown types of problems… is a bit curious to me. Why did Max Plank look at the black body radiation problem? Because he was commisioned to do so. Someone wanted to know where the maximum amount of light could be produced with the least amount of energy. It was a known unknown. Did he just set out one day to figure out quantization of energy? No. He was asked to solve a known unknown. What happened? He couldn’t solve that porblem using known classical physics no matter how he tried. That unfruitful endeavor of trying to solve a known unknown only led to the whole field of quantum physics, go figure.
The argument you are presenting amounts to nothing but belittling what JC is doing. The premise that because she holds a bias (as does everyone including you) towards the wording of the APS statement is somehow in direct contradiction with the idea of looking at science in an unbiased way is disingenous at best. I could argue the APS statement is akin to the late 1900th century thinking about physics, that we know everything we need to know about our warming climate and CO2 is the only answer, it’s just a matter of filling out those decimal places.
Bart and WHT:
and
While I understand the reasons for the criticism, I still have to disagree. Teaching controversy can be a way to explore and appropriately build hierarchies of knowledge. Just because sometimes “teaching controversy” can abuse the scientific process doesn’t mean that it necessarily does so. In fact, I think that appropriate teaching, necessarily, focuses on teaching controversy so as to teach analytical skills in context.
John Carpenter | March 29, 2013 at 9:54 am |
I apologize unreservedly to yourself and Dr. Curry for any implication linking you to David Wojick’s vigorous assault on the educational system. Such was not my intention.
My subject is the management and administration of scientific endeavor of a group, not educational endeavors; and not of the endeavors of individual scientists.
..investigating controvesial subject matters, trying to figure out known problems that currently aren’t well described (known unknowns) or trying to determine degrees of uncertianty, is unproductive and uninteresting doesn’t mean most or even a few other scientists would agree with you.
It isn’t the investigation of controversial subject matters that is unproductive or uninteresting. It’s the identifying subject matters to investigate by controversiality that is unproductive and uninteresting. You want to generate productivity and address interesting subjects? Then select them by how productive and interesting, not how controversial, they are.
Look at religious controversies such as from time to time crop up in the conversation at Climate Etc. Are they in any way productive where resolving questions of climate science are concerned? No, they are not. Nor are they very interesting here.
Controversiality derives from conflicting levels of acceptance of conclusions, not from the merit of the conclusions themselves. Investigating the controversy serves mainly to pile superfluous evidence wastefully on top of evidence that suffices, where it does not serve just to obfuscate and delay.
Problems that lack current explanation or well-formulation? Sure, absolutely those are interesting. Identifying complete lists of such problems itself is an exercise in infinite regress, and invariably a waste of time. By their very nature, these questions are not susceptible to committee categorization and management. Scientists working on problems of this sort are admirable and move science forward. But you can’t program them or administer the unknown.
Trying to reduce uncertainty is laudable, until you begin to try to reduce irreducible uncertainty. We know there are irreducibles in climate studies. We even know were many of them are, and in great detail, and why. Yet we see — because the vast unwashed want certainty — repeated attempts to reduce the irreducible by supposed practitioners of science.
Three month long weather regional predictions accurate in terms of temperature and precipitation? Really? Lorenz demonstrated the impossibility of this due irreducible uncertainty decades ago. At the same time, time scale and size are highly important when determining irreducibility of some types of uncertainty; at twenty years a prediction of global mean temperature is reliable nineteen times in twenty while at thirteen weeks the local temperature cannot be reliably guessed better than random chance. Anyone who doesn’t understand this doesn’t belong in a discussion of the next declaration of a science organization about climate.
If your looking for the hail Mary pass of a grand new theory by epiphany… god bless you and good luck. You might recieve a Nobel prize someday. Don’t expect one for coming up with new words like ‘fingoism’. But for you to appear to not understand that this is the way scientific behavior works….
John, you’re attempting to insert words into my mouth. You’re shifting the goal posts. You’re changing the conversation to one of your own little hobby horses.
I’m perfectly okay with the theories of Arrhenius, amended as necessary to account for new phenomena and the work of Lorenz where necessary to adequately explain, most parsimoniously, simply and universally — which they do — observations.
If you have observations that call for investigation into amending Arrhenius, present it by all means. Many have, and our knowledge frontier has moved forward for it.. while failing to falsify the central hypothesis.
I observe what Newton condemned as fingoism (I regret your Latin leaves you thinking this is a made-up term; the world ought not lose the language Newton wrote) the elevation of alternate hypotheses for no other reason than to feed controversy without improving our knowledge, such zodiacal claims as “It’s the movement of Saturn and Jupiter,” or “Solar activity explains all,” absurdly wasting the time of talented Physicists, and I am scandalized.
You can prove on the back of an envelope in two minutes why Scafetta errs. Why anyone continues to extend any courtesy at all to such fingoism in Physics circles is shameful.
You can confirm the sixteen decade correlation of Solar activity to global mean temperature ended by 1960 with simplest chartsmanship. This requires an explanation, and Arrhenius furnished that: CO2E and the Greenhouse Effect.
These are the freaking ‘controversies’ embraced by objectors to the APS statement?! That’s embarrassing.
endeavors to try to clean up the loose ends even if it proves to be in vain or to work on known unknown types of problems… is a bit curious to me. Why did Max Plank look at the black body radiation problem?
It’s Max _PLANCK_. Please.
Because he was commisioned to do so. Someone wanted to know where the maximum amount of light could be produced with the least amount of energy. It was a known unknown.
That’s a funny way of phrasing, ‘Light bulb manufacturing was competitive and technicians were looking for ways to make better bulbs.’
Did he just set out one day to figure out quantization of energy? No. He was asked to solve a known unknown. What happened? He couldn’t solve that porblem using known classical physics no matter how he tried. That unfruitful endeavor of trying to solve a known unknown only led to the whole field of quantum physics, go figure.
Indeed, we have a fundamental difference in how we look at the years Planck spent wandering in the wilderness of treating incandescence as a known unknown before he assembled what was known from Mathematics and throughout science — you are aware Planck didn’t just pull his ideas out of thin air, right, but from established Mathematical bases? — and connected this information through his brilliant decantation. You think he just buckled down and drilled into an unknown; I know he built on the best of what was known to figure out how it all fit together.
Which simply means your analogy is inappropriate to the case at hand.
The argument you are presenting amounts to nothing but belittling what JC is doing.
That’s hardly a fair assessment. It’s laudable that JC is involved, interested, and working hard. I’m seeking to help her steer away from the pitfalls that it appears to me based on my prior experience she will surely face.
Whereas one may observe no other effect from your comments than belittlement.
The premise that because she holds a bias (as does everyone including you) towards the wording of the APS statement is somehow in direct contradiction with the idea of looking at science in an unbiased way is disingenous at best. I could argue the APS statement is akin to the late 1900th century thinking about physics, that we know everything we need to know about our warming climate and CO2 is the only answer, it’s just a matter of filling out those decimal places.
You could argue these things. I’ve demonstrated you’d err to argue them, but you could. We clearly don’t know everything about climate — though we know enough to act and have known enough to act for some time now yet continue to fail — and that exciting space wherein our science might advance is a treasure to a true scientist.
Is global climate a truly chaotic system? Will the equilibrium global mean temperature be the same for the same CO2E level (all other things held the same), or might there be multiple equilibrium temperatures for some CO2E levels? That’s an interesting question. It makes a huge difference. But it’s not very controversial, and examining it will not necessarily reduce uncertainty. It fails as a valid question on two of JC’s three criteria, yet it is the key to what many claim is the most important question in climate science. (Not that I agree with that assessment.)
No committee can draw a map of that space and point to where to concentrate most productively. That view predates Newton, and Newton showed how it erred.
Joshua | March 29, 2013 at 10:03 am |
When I was a child, my formal education in Science covered a quick survey of the history of musty old controversies ranging from Ptolemny and Plato to phloegiston to wave vs. particle, and I can say it was all a historian’s fabrication, untrue to what really happened, praising many unpraiseworthy deeds and elevating many underhanded polemicists.
Did you know this Aristotelean approach allowed the Platonic view of science to dominate all scholarship for centuries.. and where it did, Science always withered? The same Plato who taught in his Republic that leaders must lie to the masses to keep them in line?
It’s a timeworn method, and it’s crap.
Students ought learn methods to cope with controversy; they ought not be taught closemindedness. But they don’t need to be taught to elevate inferior explanations to equality with established hypotheses.
Echoing what Bart said, David Goodstein (disciple of Feynman) has argued:
Say you had a group of students and wanted to teach them about controversial topics. If you were really lazy, the easy way out to teach the controversy is to direct them to listen to Coast2Coast AM every night as homework. Or you can tell them to read WUWT every day, which after all got voted Best Science Blog (and Best Blog too!). Or tell them to read the propaganda that Wojick spews.
The next day, you can spend all class hour dissecting why people believe weird things. For those with further interests, they can do a report on a book by Michael Shermer, David Goodstein, or Robert Park, or other writers on the topic of voodoo science.
I would love that teaching job, but, alas, it is better suited for people that have already reached a certain level of jaded cynicism, and not for young minds. That is what Bart is getting at, and what Goodstein was arguing about. Forget Svante Arrhenius and his original analysis, and move on.
Bart –
I disagree most strongly. In fact, the arguments such as you make here are the type that make me feel some sympathy for the arguments of many “skeptics.” Can’t respond in-depth now, though, and won’t be able to until Sunday. Check back then if you’re interested.
Bart,
Let me see if I can generate a more conciliatory reply so as to wrap up this discussion.
“You want to generate productivity and address interesting subjects? Then select them by how productive and interesting, not how controversial, they are.”
I agree to a point. Address the productive and interesting controversial topics. I think we are having a bit of a disconnect based on what is considered a ‘controversy’ worth looking at. Perhaps we are in better agreement than I thought here.
“Controversiality derives from conflicting levels of acceptance of conclusions, not from the merit of the conclusions themselves.”
I can’t disagree with that.
“Trying to reduce uncertainty is laudable, until you begin to try to reduce irreducible uncertainty.”
So what is the level of uncertainty we should assign to natural variation? Is this worth further investigation? How can we determine the level of A in AGW if we don’t have a real good grasp of the baseline? I’m sure you’ll tell me.
“(I regret your Latin leaves you thinking this is a made-up term; the world ought not lose the language Newton wrote)”
mea culpa.
“It’s Max _PLANCK_. Please.”
again, mea culpa
“you are aware Planck didn’t just pull his ideas out of thin air, right, but from established Mathematical bases? — and connected this information through his brilliant decantation. You think he just buckled down and drilled into an unknown; I know he built on the best of what was known to figure out how it all fit together.”
Why would I have the idea he pulled the idea out of thin air? I think I understand how you misunderstood my ‘grand theory through epiphany’ statement now. You know we both just said the same thing don’t you?
“Whereas one may observe no other effect from your comments than belittlement.”
Other than the ‘fingoism’ comment… I don’t see where I belittled you in the least.
I appreciate your last comment as it did clarify your position better. I have nothing more to add.
John Carpenter | March 29, 2013 at 3:03 pm |
I’m extremely glad we’ve had this exchange.
It was productive and interesting, and through hammering away at what appeared to be controversy until we both communicated more clearly, we have each had our knowledge (I hope) a little advanced by the other.
I look forward to the next time we bring our disagreements to a forum to resolve, mainly as your approach is reasoned, insightful and maintains focus on what interests me: ideas.
I hope you’ve found this as rewarding as I did.
> I’m extremely glad we’ve had this exchange.
John is one the few reasons left to read this blog.
Too bad he won’t comment much anymore.
ya willard, it would be a waste of time for him, although others might gain value from it.
Bart, It was a good exchange, thanks for participating equally in a thoughtful manner. Regards.
I agree, John Carpenter remains remarkably neutral. Remarkable, because this controversy naturally polarizes.
=============
John and Bart,
The issue of, how to choose the subject to study is interesting, but there’s an additional observation
Looking at what scientists do in practice we see often that they keep themselves occupied studying problems that are not so great and unlikely to lead to major scientific breakthroughs. That’s unavoidable and that’s not as bad as it may sound. Unless scientists were behaving like that they would never have the change of realizing something nobody couldn’t predict. Many great breakthroughs are byproducts of studying something else, mostly something related to the breakthrough, but quite often not even that.
Scientific research is not project work like an engineering project that aims at a precisely defined goal. Most science is exploratory work that includes projects, but is not at the most fundamental level a project. Progress in science does not mean that the ultimate goal is any closer, rather the goal keeps on moving as fast as the progress brings as closer to the previous goal.
Applied research is a different issue. Atmospheric sciences are a combination of pure science and applied research. The goals may be as practical as a better 7 day weather forecast – or firmer understanding on the influence of CO2 on the temperatures. These are questions of applied research, but solving them needs support from pure science.
The pure atmospheric sciences must be free to choose the subjects of study based on their curiosity interest and on each scientists judgment on where he might be able to gain significant insight. The related applied research can be directed to answer as directly as possible the questions of highest relevance for the present decision making.
Willard and Steve, I’m flattered you think that, thanks for reading.
Pekka, I’m highly amused by ‘the pure atmospheric science must be free to choose the subject of interest.’
==================
Pekka, “The pure atmospheric sciences must be free to choose the subjects of study based on their curiosity interest and on each scientists judgment on where he might be able to gain significant insight.”
That may be true, but climate science needs a great deal of grunt engineers, statisticians and bookkeepers to tidy up after the more creative characters.
That’s the applied research part that I mentioned as well. In many fields applied research uses more resources than pure science.
Pekka, I agree with what you say. Since I come from more of an engineering scientific discipline, I tend to look at problems more like specific projects. It has been a long time since I did pure research where investigating a problem did not necessarily have a specific direction. Though it was interesting, I did not see my work contributing to society in a meaningful way. I did not choose to stay in the academic environment, though I do work with colleagues in academia. I currently enjoy doing applied research that contributes directly with problems engineers face with surface engineering. I tend to identify more with those who look at understanding the climate as a project that needs reliable answers in order to help make good pragmatic decisions now. It is more of an engineering viewpoint.
yeah Bart, do everything but keep the statement and then try to disprove it. so that folks like you can still claim that the original statement was essentially correct,
DEEBEE | March 25, 2013 at 6:32 am |
I don’t argue on the correctness of the original statement one way or the other.
Isaac Newton does.
The ‘original statement’ in science is always ‘accurate or very nearly true’ once the evidence is sufficient to decide on its truth and it is amended or supplanted to a statement that most parsimoniously, simply and universally explains all observed phenomena, until new observation requires new amendment or formulation.
Anything else — including dropping established statements or considering many unproven substitutes to have equal footing with established statements — is simply not science, but denialism or fingoism. Anyone practicing mere denialism or fingoism is not doing science in such cases.
While I’m sure you can find APS members who dispute Isaac Newton, I’d bet that on the whole the organization rather tends to prefer the groundwork laid 300 years ago over, say, “dropping Newton”.
Dropping the ‘original statement’ as amended to explain all observed phenomena, before new phenomena are observed, is equivalent to dropping Newton.
Bart,
You state that ” … the uncertainties” and the “known unknowns” are seldom, marginally and infrequently productive areas of exploration.)
Does this mean you think further research into how clouds work in the climate system is unwarranted?
What about further running down the uncertainties which limit the ability (or more accurately, contribute to the inability) of GCM’s to work on a regional basis? Is this a waste of time?
What garnered my attention to the issue in the first place were statements to the effect that “the debate is over” and the science is settled”. Add to this knowingly misleading statements, such as “97% agree”, and a reasonable person should start hearing alarm bells. Your comments appear to be going down that same track. There are no controversies. Any uncertainties are likely to be a dead end or waste of time so quiet down and be good little boys and girls and do as we tell you.
The problem is that even if one were inclined to agree that the “experts” are more informed and therefore should be given the benefit of doubt, we then get told stuff like the following:
The seas will rise 10 meters by 2100.
There will be 50 million climate refugees (date to be revised as necessary).
300,000 people a year die due to climate change.
More drought.
More floods.
More storms.
Bigger storms.
Extreme weather.
Spreading of tropical disease.
Mass extinctions of species.
Nations going to war.
Snow being a thing of the past.
Disappearance of Arctic ice.
Lots and lots of dire warnings, but with one exception, none are backed up by real evidence. In some cases the evidence goes the other way. So with such a track record (getting it right 1 time out of 13), where does our confidence in your crediability come from?
+1
timg56 | March 27, 2013 at 11:47 am |
Does this mean you think further research into how clouds work in the climate system is unwarranted?
I somehow doubt clouds qualify as denizens of the knowledge frontier. Though I find a great deal of the spending on some cloud questions a sad frittering of resources where more obvious and far lower cost field work recommends itself. I’d rather 500 pertinent and reliable studies addressing relevant and impactful questions than a single cloud chamber tossing out a few cosmic rays at the same price, for an effect that was previously well-enough understood.
What about further running down the uncertainties which limit the ability (or more accurately, contribute to the inability) of GCM’s to work on a regional basis? Is this a waste of time?
Yes. Absolutely it is a waste of time.
Irreducible uncertainty means exactly that: IRREDUCIBLE
Where there’s a mathematical proof that you can’t do any better, then you should cease spending money on scam artists claiming they can do better.
Spend the money instead on producing good quality PDFs of huge numbers of very long GCM runs that can be validated not against the behaviors we can’t reduce the uncertainty for (like temperature level) but against the behaviors we already have (like distribution and frequency of trends or extremes).
What garnered my attention to the issue in the first place were statements to the effect that “the debate is over” and the science is settled”. Add to this knowingly misleading statements, such as “97% agree”, and a reasonable person should start hearing alarm bells. Your comments appear to be going down that same track.
My comments are a bit more nuanced than your hearing of what people say. You appear to be confusing actual claims such as “the time for debate is over, it is time to act”, with the historically proven absurd claims of over a century ago that “all that remains to debate is the next decimal point.”
Sure, you could if presented a jaundiced, cherry-picked outtake from the original speech calling for policy response due to the evidence rising to the level of triggering action (which evidence has risen a hundredfold or more since the days that policy change was called for), be excused for thinking what you thought, then.
However, you’ve had ample opportunity by now to more adequately inform yourself. And I’m sure you agree — whatever direction and detail the change — it’s past time to stop acting like it was still 1968.
There are no controversies. Any uncertainties are likely to be a dead end or waste of time..
Of course there are controversies. Where is all that tax money that Spencer and Christy have had pumped their direction in terms of satellite building and launching and monitoring only to produce a leaky and unreliable temperature record? Where is all that tax money spent on hurricane monitoring that the USA had to be warned of Frankenstorm Sandy by the freaking Europeans?! How could our government have so mismanaged that critical infrastructure, doing more damage to the US economy than terrorism has all decade?!
Where are the returns to the US taxpayer from all the corn subsidy and oil subsidy and coal subsidy of the past eight decades?
Where is the accountability and traceability of private funds spent to line the pockets of public officials and to amplify their election advertising, when so many lobbyists hide behind anonytrusts?
Why does congress let its ear be bent by 48% second-rank science commentators, and 50% discredited scammers, and only 2% of its testimony from the 100 most influential climate scientists?
..so quiet down and be good little boys and girls and do as we tell you.
What about my posts has ever led you to think I am in favor of quieting down? Is that really what I sound like to you?
The problem is that even if one were inclined to agree that the “experts” are more informed and therefore should be given the benefit of doubt, we then get told stuff like the following:
The seas will rise 10 meters by 2100. By which specific expert, please? This is five times the projections I’ve heard from any actual experts. Cite?
There will be 50 million climate refugees (date to be revised as necessary). I agree the morons who put this out ought to be pilloried for their loose terminology and poor methods. It’s impossible to say whether or not climate is causing a person to be a refugee, or something else.
300,000 people a year die due to climate change. Cite? Because I seem to recall this claim was documented pretty specifically, so it’d be irresponsible to dismiss it just because of some innumerate kneejerk response to a six-digit figure.
More drought.
More floods. And you doubt the USA has experienced extreme droughts and floods? Sure, they’re not the only droughts or floods ever, and not all droughts or floods can be attributed to AGW, but it’s even more lunatic to imply that the past existence of drought or flood somehow means AGW — with detailed study of how the changes in the jet stream lead to drought and flood — isn’t the culprit. That’s like saying, “Your honor, people were shot before my client shot the victim, therefore you can’t find my client guilty of this shooting.”
More storms.
Bigger storms. I thought it was just more big storms?.. though Frankenstorm was the largest storm system ever documented.
Extreme weather. That one’s mathematically certain.
Spreading of tropical disease. That’s a real risk, and key vulnerability. What is your basis for proving it isn’t?
Mass extinctions of species.
Nations going to war.
Snow being a thing of the past.
Disappearance of Arctic ice.
Lots and lots of dire warnings, but with one exception, none are backed up by real evidence.
Oh come off it. Of the warnings you list, only one that I can see isn’t amply supported by substantial evidence.
So I say to you, about your ludicrous claim that though In some cases the evidence goes the other way. So with such a track record (getting it right 1 time out of 13), where does our confidence in your crediability come from?
I would agree with Bart that timg made quite a few non-sensical assertions.
When I read Bart, it’s like watching someone like Buckley going after a second-rate high debate squad.
And as far as the technical stuff we discuss, the skeptics are like the hapless Washington Generals competing against the Globetrotters.
‘Despite some advances in the understanding of the physical processes that control the cloud response to climate change and in the evaluation of some components of cloud feedbacks in current models, it is not yet possible to assess which of the model estimates of cloud feedback is the most reliable. However, progress has been made in the identification of the cloud types, the dynamical regimes and the regions of the globe responsible for the large spread of cloud feedback estimates among current models. This is likely to foster more specific observational analyses and model evaluations that will improve future assessments of climate change cloud feedbacks.’ AR4
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ AR4 3.4.4.1
Sure – if real low frequency climate variability was the cause of all recent warming.
Clouds are of course the significant known unknown in climate and the secular changes in cloud seem quite unknown many. In fact a great deal is known from data – MODIS especially – but this doesn’t seem to be the right data.
While we can devise a mathematical proof that deterministic chaos creates irreducible imprecision in models – we have yet to actually estimate the imprecision .
‘In each of these model–ensemble comparison studies, there are important but difficult questions: How well selected are the models for their plausibility? How much of the ensemble spread is reducible by further model improvements? How well can the spread can be explained by analysis of model differences? How much is irreducible imprecision in an AOS?
Simplistically, despite the opportunistic assemblage of the various AOS model ensembles, we can view the spreads in their results as upper bounds on their irreducible imprecision. Optimistically, we might think this upper bound is a substantial overestimate because AOS models are evolving and improving. Pessimistically, we can worry that the ensembles contain insufficient samples of possible plausible models, so the spreads may underestimate the true level of irreducible imprecision (cf., ref. 23). Realistically, we do not yet know how to make this assessment with confidence.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
Droughts and floods are well within historic limits. And really – if all warming was natural everything is moot.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/how-does-sandy-stack-up-against-the-worst-storms-in-world-history/264304/
But be prepared for bigger droughts and bigger storms because they populate the proxy record.
Some actual science from bart and webby would be nice – but we can’t expect miracles.
1.Climate as a complex dynamical system, leading to a better understanding of the natural modes of the climate system, their coupling to each other and to exogenous forces.
‘In a truly nonlinear setting, indeterminacy in the size of the response is observed only in the vicinity of tipping points. We show, in fact, that small disturbances cannot result in a large-amplitude response, unless the system is at or near such a point.’ (Another look at climate sensitivity
Zaliapin and M. Ghil 2010)
The question to be resolved is how close the system is to a hot or cold tipping point. In every sense linear sensitivity is a misleading idea and should be as dead as a dodo.
2.The physics of climate influences, leading to a better understanding of the mechanisms, magnitudes, and timescales by which anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic processes affect climate, including for example, greenhouse gases, solar variability, and unforced influences such as internal modes of variability.
The central question here is how well TOA radiant flux is measured. There are obvious issues with this going back many years. Perhaps the least important being the inability to determine absolute values – as we are more interested in variability at any rate. This data seems to be accepted in some contexts – missing energy notably – but not in others and it is a mystery why this should be so. Without dependable data here we are left with severely limited means of analysis of sub-components of a complex and nonlinear system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVkfh89iyeU
3.Insight into the nature, magnitude and timescales of climate sensitivity, arising from feedbacks including clouds, water vapor and the hydrological and carbon cycles, at the surface, in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
‘Recent, somewhat abrupt climate changes add to the collective concern that larger future nonlinear changes pose a significant risk to societies [2]. Furthermore, recent assessments place such ‘large-scale discontinuities’ rather closer to the present state of the climate [3]. By definition, such events imply significant impacts on societies or on other living components of the Earth system. Hence, if an early warning of a climate tipping point can be achieved, then it could be of considerable value to societies, at least in helping them build an adaptive capacity to cope with what is approaching.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1962/1185.full.pdf
Again – the linearisation of a fundamentally nonlinear system is misleading and further emphasis on the identification of climate tipping points – preferrably before they happen – is a higher priority.
4.The physics of proxies used to infer the properties of past climates for which instrumental records are not available, leading to a better understanding of past climates and their relation to the present climate.
‘Now imagine that you have never seen the device and that it is hidden in a box in a dark room. You have no knowledge of the hand that occasionally sets things in motion, and you are trying to figure out the system’s behavior on the basis of some old 78-rpm recordings of the muffled sounds made by the device. Plus, the recordings are badly scratched, so some of what was recorded is lost or garbled beyond recognition. If you can imagine this, you have some appreciation of the difficulties of paleoclimate research and of predicting the results of abrupt changes in the climate system.’ NAS – Abrupt climate change: inevitable surprises
Regardless – there is limited information that can feasibly be recovered. There is much that is of interest but little that is definitive. It seems unlikely that this will change soon – especially as a result of the efforts of physicists.
5.The computational physics and statistical analysis of climate model and measurement systems, leading to a better understanding of the methods, capabilities, and limitations of climate models and climate simulation predictions.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.’ TAR s14.2
‘The richness of the El Nino behaviour, decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict. It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. It is also a classic demonstration of the need for ensemble prediction systems on all time scales in order to sample the range of possible outcomes that even the real world could produce. Nothing is certain.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
The need is for probabilistic estimates across rigourously designed model families – as opposed to solutions chosen on the basis of a posteriori solution behaviour of the opportunistic ensembles. We could start by educating the public on the realities of climate modelling
You wrote: Climate research would greatly benefit from a larger infusion of physics and physicists.
As one among the: http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/ group, I would think that Climate Research would greatly benefit from a larger infusion from many areas of knowledge.
I can’t but help think that an influx of statisticians would be far more useful. Biostatisticians have a lot of experience looking at episodic systems that one has very little control over.
Well their poets all stink and their superheroes are wont to display big red ‘S’s on their chests, instead of slamming the ‘S’ out of a racquetball court.
=============
squash
Nazi POW Kommandant: Und now, for ze amusement of ze prrisoners, ve vill play a game of skvasch.
Sergeant Shultz vill drive ze schteamroller.
Yikes, dare I show my face over there again?
============
Epidemiologists for climate scientists – but they are not interested in having them / using them. Much like the medical profession, they only want them when they have no personal stake in the outcome – when they do have such a stake, they don’t need some overly clever stats guru to tell them, they KNOW!
Judith, you write “I am hoping that the different ‘culture’ of the APS is more conducive to taking an unbiased look at the science, ”
I am afraid it looks like the fix is in. The Five specific initial areas of focus are listed below.
I find
3. Insight into the nature, magnitude and timescales of climate sensitivity, arising from feedbacks including clouds, water vapor and the hydrological and carbon cycles, at the surface, in the atmosphere and in the oceans.
It seems to have already been assumed that clouds and water vapor are feedbacks. I would suggest that this needs to be altered before you start any work.
Jim, in that they do likely respond to forcings, I don’t think the idea that they’re feedbacks is really much in question. It’s in the nature and balance of their strength, and even their sign, that there is much consternation and little certainty. I think recognition of advocacy as an inappropriate influence on the debate is laudable.
It may not all be perfect quite yet but there is an opportunity for science to take the front seat in the climate debate here – something that certainly hasn’t happened for a long time in climatological circles. Anything that has as one of its stated goals to distinguish between the scientific case and policy implications is a step in the right direction, if it can be held to that.
Simon, you write “Jim, in that they do likely respond to forcings, I don’t think the idea that they’re feedbacks is really much in question.”
I am in total disagreement. What scientists should be looking at is how the atmosphere responds to an increase of CO2 from recent levels. The approach should not be prejudiced by looking at the hypothetical and meaningless concept of forcings and feedbacks. This concept of something being a forcing, and something else being a feedback, is one of the monumental errors that the IPCC made. The whole concept of no-feedback climate sensitivity, which seems to be implicit in this area of focus, seems ot bias the whole way any scientists would approach the vital issue of climate sensitivity.
The only proper way to look at climate sensitivity is how the atmosphere responds to more CO2. Period.
“The only proper way to look at climate sensitivity is how the atmosphere responds to more CO2. Period.”
Wrong.
Climate sensitivity is defined as the change in temperature for a change in forcing. It is defined INDEPENDENTLY of C02 forcing.
Lets give you some examples.
1. A volcano erupts. The sky is filled with particles. Sunlight is reflected
The Watts IN ( forcing ) go down. The temperature goes down.
The relationship between the delta Watts and the delta C is
the climates sensitivity to changes in forcing.
2. The little ice age. We know that the sun had few spots. We can infer
from the relationship between spots and TSI ( total solar irradiance)
the Watts IN from the sun were lower. And as we understand the temperature was lower. The climate is sensitive to changes in inputs.
you can understand climate sensitivity without know a damn thing about c02. Look at Lindzens work, Spensers work, sensitivity is measured without a single reference to C02. That because sensitivity is a SYSTEM metric. how the system responds to ANY change in forcing.
We already know that doubling C02 from 280 to 560 will produce an additional 3.7 Watts. what is unknown is how the climate system responds to an additional forcing of 3.7watts.
Of course, sensitivity to “forcings” is really just a proxy for much more complicated things. A change in TSI is not perfectly comparable to a change in CO2 levels or volcanic responses. We just approximate relationships between various changes in the system to a measure of “forcings” to make things simpler.
I point this out because it is important that in the process of simplifying things, we don’t oversimplify them.
Why use terms like ‘forcing’ and ‘feedback’ at all?
A ‘forcing’ is a rather odd term, being that average amount of energy, per unit time, bombarding the Earth over an average year.
Feedback means whatever people want it to mean; there is no definition of what a feedback actually is, lots of arm-waving, no mechanistic principle and mathematics.
Lastly, what about ‘equilibrium’? A perfectly fantastic thermodynamic concise definition of a state, being applied to non-equilibrium conditions?
Steven Mosher | March 24, 2013 at 8:39 pm |
“The only proper way to look at climate sensitivity is how the atmosphere responds to more CO2. Period.”
Wrong.
Climate sensitivity is defined as the change in temperature for a change in forcing. It is defined INDEPENDENTLY of C02 forcing.
————————————————————————
I’m afraid that’s not how the IPCC defines sensitivity, Steven.
From the horse’s mouth (or the other end if you’re a less charitable person than I):
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/annex1sglossary-a-d.html
Steven Mosher: Climate sensitivity is defined as the change in temperature for a change in forcing. It is defined INDEPENDENTLY of C02 forcing.
Is there only one definition and do you have an authoritative source for it? No less a scientist than Isaac Held has written about the transient climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2; have you shown him the error of his ways?
The climate sensitivity that matters for fossil fuel policy is the climate sensitivity to CO2.
Wrong again David
‘I’m afraid that’s not how the IPCC defines sensitivity, Steven.
From the horse’s mouth (or the other end if you’re a less charitable person than I):”
I am discussing the sensitivity NOT ECS which is what your quaote is talking about. write that down
Sensitivity: the climate response to a change in forcing
ECS: the climate response to a doubling of C02
AGAIN because you are dense:
1. Sensitivity: the climate response to a change in forcing.
2. ECS: the climate response to a doubling of C02
Again, because you are really really dense
1. Sensitivity: the climate response to a change in forcing.
2. ECS: the climate response to a doubling of C02
Its pretty easy. If you change the solar forcing by 1 watt and the
temperature changes by .75C you have a sensitivity
of .75. If doubling C02 gives you 3.7 more watts.. well you go figure out the response.. is multiplacation too hard for you?
############################
here are some resources for you:
start here
“Climate sensitivity is a measure of how responsive the temperature of the climate system is to a change in the radiative forcing.
Although climate sensitivity is usually used in the context of radiative forcing by carbon dioxide (CO2), it is thought of as a general property of the climate system: the change in surface air temperature (ΔTs) following a unit change in radiative forcing (RF), and thus is expressed in units of °C/(W/m2). For this to be useful, the measure must be independent of the nature of the forcing (e.g. from greenhouse gases or solar variation); to first order this is indeed found to be so[citation needed].
The climate sensitivity specifically due to CO2 is often expressed as the temperature change in °C associated with a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere.”
If you want to quote Ar4 you have to follow the citations. To understand where ECS comes from. The section you refer to cites Cubasch 2001. Go there. you dont even know what this is a reference to do you?
“. The response of the climate system to a given change in forcing is broadly characterised by its “climate sensitivity”. Since the climate system requires many years to come into equilibrium with a change in forcing, there remains a “commitment” to further climate change even if the forcing itself ceases to change.”
or section 6.2 ( symbold get a bit botched here)
6.2.1 Characteristics
As discussed in the SAR, the change in the net irradiance at the tropopause, as defined in Section 6.1.1, is, to a first order, a good indicator of the equilibrium global mean (understood to be globally and annually averaged) surface temperature change. The climate sensitivity parameter (global mean surface temperature response Ts to the radiative forcing F) is defined as:
Ts / F = (6.1)
(Dickinson, 1982; WMO, 1986; Cess et al., 1993). Equation (6.1) is defined for the transition of the surface-troposphere system from one equilibrium state to another in response to an externally imposed radiative perturbation. In the one-dimensional radiative-convective models, wherein the concept was first initiated, is a nearly invariant parameter (typically, about 0.5 K/(Wm-2); Ramanathan et al., 1985) for a variety of radiative forcings, thus introducing the notion of a possible universality of the relationship between forcing and response. It is this feature which has enabled the radiative forcing to be perceived as a useful tool for obtaining first-order estimates of the relative climate impacts of different imposed radiative perturbations. Although the value of the parameter “” can vary from one model to another, within each model it is found to be remarkably constant for a wide range of radiative perturbations (WMO, 1986). The invariance of has made the radiative forcing concept appealing as a convenient measure to estimate the global, annual mean surface temperature response, without taking the recourse to actually run and analyse, say, a three-dimensional atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (AOGCM) simulation.
Steven Mosher: 1. Sensitivity: the climate response to a change in forcing.
2. ECS: the climate response to a doubling of C02
I get it. “Sensitivity” without modifiers refers to a response to a change in forcing.
“Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” (and also “Transient Climate Sensitivity”), because it has the modifiers, is the response to a doubling of CO2 concentration. Our mistake is to drop the modifiers for simplicity, because everyone else except you knows that we are discussing ECS and TCS, and that because CO2 is what we (perhaps) control directly.
yes mathew, it has been a horrible source of confusion and there are important reasons for distinguishing betwen the two.
Steven, Since it is clearly impossible for either climate sensitivity or equilibrium climate sensitivity to be actaully measured, we will never be able to deteremine what the values of either of them are, or how accurately they can be measured. So it is impossible to determine whether CAGW is actually occurring, and impossible for the IPCC to declare with any certainty what effect adding CO2 to the atmopshere from current levels has.
And the warmists pretend this is science. The mind boggles.
Jim sensitivity is easily measured.
u measure temp and change in forcing. u can do so daily monthly annually or over millenia
MattStat, I don’t get the reason for the distinction you and Mosher are making. Why should “sensitivity” refer to radiative forcing and “transient climate sensitivity” refer to CO2? A change in CO2 causes a change in radiative forcing. A sensitivity for CO2 is a sensitivity for radiative forcing. Here is how I see it:
Where a and b are variables (or rather, functions) that handle the translation between CO2/forcing and forcing/temperature. We start with a change in CO2. That gives us a change in radiative forcing. That gives us a change in temperature.
Why should “equilibrium climate sensitivity” refer back to the first line while “sensitivity” refers to the second? That seems completely arbitrary.
Knowing what the words refer to is important for communication, but not otherwise. It’s, however, useful to note that measuring the sensitivity may be based on other forcings like solar variability. The value does depend on the type of forcing, but not very strongly.
sensitivity is easily measured.u measure temp and change in forcing. u can do so daily monthly annually or over millenia
Hmm in the annular mode (the poor mans climate model) in mid latitude stations in the SH,the solar forcing is 2 magnitudes greater (120wm^2) then the AGW observed forcing(1.6 wm^2)Sell that.
Steven, you write “Jim sensitivity is easily measured.”
Reference please. Where can I find the numerical and +/- measured values for both CS and ECS for CO2? They do not appear in any IPCC report, or at least I have never found them. Please note that the radiaitvie forcing of CO2 has only ever been extimated, and can never be measured, so I cannot see how CS for CO2 can ever be measured.
Brandon Schollenberger: MattStat, I don’t get the reason for the distinction you and Mosher are making.
Mosher made the distinction, I attempted a clarification, and Mosher confirmed my clarification. I think that it is absurd. However, in writing it won’t be that hard to write “sensitivity to a doubling of CO2” and “sensitivity to a radiative forcing change”. How exactly a change in CO2 will change radiative forcing is, I think, incompletely known.
Oh, gotcha. Now that I reread your comment, I see you weren’t agreeing with Mosher. I missed the subtext of your comment.
I don’t think it is silly to agree on definitions for good communication.
I would point out for accuracy however that “climate sensitivity” and “transient climate sensitivity” both conventionally have units of temp per unit of forcing; they are not specific to CO2.
On the other hand, ECS and TCR (the latter being “transient climate RESPONSE”) have units of temperature and are specific to CO2 forcings.
Judith
Re item 3. This at least has the proper emphasis on clouds as the greatest uncertainty.
Roy Spencer highlights that we know very little on which is the cause and which the consequence. i.e. which comes first, the chicken or the egg.
Are clouds the driver of climate change via solar/cosmic rays affecting albedo, or the followers via temperature – humidity feedback?
e.g. see I’ve Looked at Clouds from Both Sides Now -and Before
Similarly, David Stockwell finds that global temperatures LAG the solar cycle by Pi/2 (90 deg).
As possible, may I recommend proposing the following change to 3.
Jim, feedbacks can be either negative or positive. There’s no doubt the water cycle has a multiplicity of feedbacks both positive and negative. The problem is in determining polarity and magnitude. Theoretical assignments are error prone. Clouds are likely neutral to slightly negative instead of positive as evidenced by the tropical desert climate type having the highest mean annual temperature of any climate type. Another example is lapse rate feedback which is a negative feedback that occurs from more water vapor in the column causing clouds to condense at a higher altitude and therefore cooling more efficiently while at the same time less able to keep the surface war was higher than model assumptions. We are just beginning to gather data on global average aspects of the hydrologic cycle like cloud height and type, relative and specific humidity, enthalpy, and so forth. Lots of surprises for warmists in preliminary findings. No surprises for me in them. They’re just confirming what I’ve been harping on for the last year or two – greenhouse gases have little effect on surface temperature when the surface is wet and free to evaporate in response. In that case the excess energy is transferred insensibly to higher cloud tops where it radiates more freely to space and less freely back towards the surface. Anthropogenic global warming is only significant where the surface doesn’t have ample water available for evaporation which especially includes land surfaces in the winter in sub-freezing temperatures.
What are “unforced influences such as internal modes of variability”. Is unforced the same as uncaused? Is it possible to give an example of such an occurrence? Would it not be more accurate to describe it as a variation whose cause we do not yet understand?
docrichard | March 24, 2013 at 5:58 pm |
What are “unforced influences such as internal modes of variability”.
In a three-body problem, internal modes of variability lead to differences from linear or predictable motion, and happen without any outside influence.
Forced influences would come from something other than the three bodies and their intrinsic properties. A fourth body zooming into the system like a comet, a surge or push or removal of part of the system, each would be an external forcing if they had some influence on the motion of the three bodies.
For example, some volcanoes, some massive land use changes and cumulatively large anthropogenic CO2E emission would be external forcings.
“In a three-body problem, internal modes of variability lead to differences from linear or predictable motion, and happen without any outside influence”
But framing these changes as UNFORCED is sleazy, skip-de-doo propaganda. This is meant to characterise forces OTHER than the three-body state as un-natural. A volcano (eg) is NOT un-natural, nor is the current atmospheric CO2 concentration. Homo sapiens is NOT un-natural
If the initial frame is a sleight-of-hand, deliberative results will always finish in the current tedious, endless repetition of entrenched positions. This is how politicians work, not scientists
You misinterpreted what Bart is describing when you say this:
Signal versus noise is the fundamental issue.
Physicists try to separate out the noise to understand the underlying behavior.
This is a basic stochastic differential equation
dX=b(X)dt+dW
the dW term is the noise and b(t) is some forcing function. The formulation looks simple enough, but there is a deeper context which we can apply to many natural and artificial processes. For example, the quants on Wall Street used it to model all sorts of “artificial” financial behaviors.
What is natural and what is artificial? People use short-hand to describe the distinctions case-by-case but much of the mathematics is universal. Separate the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise.
It’s always fascinated me how the human species sometimes is and sometimes is not an intrinsic part of the earth depending on the spin.
If you’re an evolutionary biologist then humans naturally evolved along with the rest of the planet. However if you an eco-loon or mainstream climate scientist the human species is like some alien invader doing unnatural things to the planet.
Non-sequitur.
Good description of forced and unforced but I’d say the more common definition is “forced” is things that humans do and “unforced” is things that humans don’t do. For example surface insolation changes due to changes in the sun are not forcings but surface insolation changes caused by human emission of gases and particulates are forcings.
Unforced would be things like changing ocean circulations that are just part of a chaotic fluid behavior, especially as it is coupled to the atmosphere. ENSO is a perfect example of an unforced variation.
Oh I see. Right. Thanks, thats very helpful. The influence of ENSO and AMO on the surface temperature record is perfectly clear.
Cannot see any relevance of the three body problem to climatology. Sorry.
Start here.
http://web.mit.edu/lorenzcenter/about/
If you have questions about the relation of the three body problem to climatology, then the Lorenz Center may be able to help you out.
Oh here we go. Mentioning Lorenz will get Chief Kangaroo Skippy “Sybil” Ellison all wound up about chaos theory and climate.
Lorenz applied chaos theory to weather not climate. Sybil doesn’t seem to understand that climate is not chaotic.
Lets say we have a pot of water on the stove. As it heats up to boiling we can’t predict exactly when and where the convection eddies and bubbles will happen. That’s weather. However, we know that the water generally convects from bottom to top and that if we turn the flame up the whole pot warms faster and if we turn the flame down it warms slower. That’s climate. Weather is chaotic. Climate isn’t. The demarcation is important.
David, Climate is still chaotic, just different time scales and smaller variance. Include a +/- 2 C uncertainty and you can assume it is not chaotic, but with natural frequencies of 1,2 3 5 11, 30, 60, 150, 401, 1070, 1220, 1470, 1700, 4300, 5000, 5800, 14000, 21750, 41,000, etc. years it fits the chaotic model. If you know where you are at on any of those recurrent pseudo-cycles, you can make a reasonable prediction. If you don’t know, it can prove interesting, especially if the predicted change in climate is less than the normal variance.
Consider the shift from 41ka events to ~ 100ka events. That was a shift from an obliquity dominate regime toward a precessional dominate regime. Now precessional dominance can lead to a 21ka world. There will still be ice ages and interglacials, but likely not as deep or as long.
Or with the rate of ocean heat uptake, how long would it take to reach a 1.5C high average ocean temperature with 30 and 60 year natural variation cycles?
If you predict 30 years in the future and the AMO shifts, how far off would your estimate be?
CaptDallas re; climate is chaotic
Au contraire.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/chaos.htm
Weather is chaotic. Climate is not. If we set pot to heating over a flame the eddies and bubbles are chaotic. That’s weather. If we turn the flame up or down the temperature change will accelerate or decelerate. That’s climate. A butterfly’s touch will change the eddies and bubbles. That’s weather. A butterfly’s touch will not prevent the water from getting warmer if we turn up the flame. That’s climate.
Please put a little more thought into differentiating the chaos of weather and the regularity of climate. They are two very different things. Thanks in advance.
Parts of what David Springer says are bang-on, like the weather-climate difference. If only he’d realize that CO2 is like putting a lid on that pot, he would see how CO2 fits into the boiling pot climate analogy. That’s the bit missing. Yes, climate is not affected by chaos, but there are some bi-stable states as we see from the Ice Ages.
Oh crap. I don’t know whether to be flattered or mortified.
I was looking for other discussions of climate and chaos in addition to the AIP article and I ran across this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/11/chaos-and-climate/
Chaos and Climate by James Annan and William Conneley
I created an analogy with a pot of water heated by a flame to better illuminate the difference. It was wholly my creation having never seen it elsewhere. Lo and behold look what Annan & Cannoli had to say:
Of course my analogy far better as I also worked in how a butterfly’s caress could change the course of a bubble but couldn’t change the course of the water getting warmer.
My analogy was superior mostly because I’m just a naturally grate righter. Be that as it may Annan and Cannonlilly have a commendable grasp of the difference between chaotic weather and regular climate. A grasp that appears to be somewhat lacking amongst the usual suspects on Climate Etc.
I have used the boiling pot analogy here and elsewhere too, once quite recently as I recall.
Re: boiling pot. March 18th I posted this to ksd.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/16/open-thread-weekend-11/#comment-303330
David Springer
Of course you are correct: weather is chaotic, and therefore, hard to predict.
Climate is no different.
Jim D has fallen into the “roll of the dice” reasoning trap, whereby making a prediction for next year is allegedly more difficult than one for an integrated average 100 years in advance. Weather and climate is much more complex than a roll of the dice, and we don’t even know all the reasons why this is so (= “uncertainty”).
If we cannot predict the weather two years in advance (because of “uncertainty”), we sure as hell can’t predict it two decades or centuries in the future, as IPCC would have us believe.
This is even more the case if we are myopically fixating on human GHG emissions as the principal “climate control knob” and ignoring all the rest – especially the “uncertainty” (i.e. the unknowns).
Nassim Taleb shows us why this is so (and it is so simple it hurts).
In making predictions, it is not so important what “experts” know, writes Taleb. It is what they do not know.
The current lack of warming despite unabated human GHG emissions (and IPCC predictions of 0.2C per decade warming that never materialized) is a case in point.
Max
Jim D,
Actually CO2 isn’t much like a lid. That’s a physical barrier preventing convection. CO2 is more like a gate in a dam. In this case it controls how fast mid-infrared radiation can flow through the atmospheric pipeline. Adding more CO2 is like closing off the gate a little bit. In response the water behind the dam (analogous to solar energy absorbed by the earth’s surface) rises in level. As the water rises the head pressure at the gate increases and total flow is restored. Head pressure is analogous to temperature.
However, rising temperature isn’t the only way energy can move from surface to space. Nor is a gate the only way water can traverse a dam. There’s also a spillway. If we close off the gate when the water is already flowing over the spillway it will rise just a tiny bit because the spillway is huge compared to the gate. Analogously evaporation is like a spillway. The response of dry land to insulation by CO2 is a temperature rise. There’s no spillway on that dam. The response of water to insulation by CO2 is evaporation. That dam has a spillway.
This is a situation mirrored in all kinds of physical systems. In fancy terms it’s called equipartition or equal division. I like to call it the path of least resistance. It’s basic to plumbing and electricity. Say I got a pipe with a few small holes in it. Most of the water will flow through the pipe because that’s the path of least resistance but some of the water will flow out of the holes. In the lower troposphere, where there’s a lot of water on the surface, the pipe is evaporation and the smaller hole is mid-infrared radiation. If we make the hole a little smaller the main pipe will just start to flow faster. Since the flow through the hole wasn’t much of the total to begin with it closing it won’t constrict the total flow but a commensurate fraction. Over dry land radiation is the pipe and there ain’t no hole in it so when we we constrict the opening at the end of the pipe with more CO2 the only possible response is an increase in pressure. Temperature is analogous to pressure.
The model dam the warmists built doesn’t have a spillway. So when the gate closes the pressure rises commensurately. That’s the response of dry land but not for the ocean. Evaporation and convection is the path of least resistance so constricting radiative cooling of the ocean has very little effect on ocean temperature. Near as I can figure it results in higher cloud tops and more rain which is being proven out in the global average by more sophisticated satellites that can measure relative humidity, specific humidity, and cloud height all over the globe at once (or at least once per day). So for climate sensitivity modeled at 1.5C-4.5C I think we’ll find the range is about one third of that which reflects the ratio of land and ice to liquid ocean surface. Global average climate sensitivity is thus 0.5C-1.5C. Empirical measurements are coming in within that range. And you can model the pause with it too. Everything makes sense in light of discounting greenhouse warming over the ocean including global average sensitivity and regional distribution of the greenhouse warming which is predominantly over dry land.
Just sayin. Only time will prove me right or wrong. Knock on wood I got the time. Another ten years to reasonably prove I’m right or less to prove me wrong. If global warming doesn’t resume with vengeance by 2020 I’m declaring victory and if it does resume I’ll admit defeat. Fair enough?
David I would say you should be mortified :) Think of Chaotic as how well you can use the past to predict the future. Your buddy JIMD mentions that CO2 can produce large amounts of warming because in the paleo-data for the JIMOCENE, you can pick any period, globally it was umpteen degrees warmer and CO2 was at a higher value. Is he right?
Since we live on a water world, I tend to doubt that CO2 all by itself was capable of creating that umpteen degrees. Currently there are oscillations not explained by CO2 and solar forcing so it is likely there are other oscillations also not explained by CO2 and solar forcing. They may be caused by some random extra-terrerstial impact, but following whatever caused the change, there is no reason to believe that the system will respond the same following the event. The Drake Passage opened the Panama gap closed, the Antarctic grew a massive Ice cap, things are different. Just because it may take 25,000 years or more to find out how different, doesn’t mean that climate is not a slow chaotic process.
If you base your assumptions on it not being a chaotic process, you would tend to be over confident in your predictions.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=423
That is a link to SS pooh poohing the thermostat hypothesis. They use the Eocene SST temperatures as some kind of proof that the current ocean current configuration would allow the same results. Since climate is not chaotic in your opinion, then dissenting views like this, http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1324186/ have to be wrong, because climate is predictable based on past performance. Since the Drake Passage could be blocked by the loss of the Western Antarctic ice sheet or the thermal equator could continue to advance northward or since the Chander wobble has slowed to nearly nothing, future climate can be much different than the past.
Jim D | March 25, 2013 at 4:46 pm |
I have used the boiling pot analogy here and elsewhere too, once quite recently as I recall.
Jim D | March 25, 2013 at 4:50 pm |
Re: boiling pot. March 18th I posted this to ksd.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/16/open-thread-weekend-11/#comment-303330
————————————————————————
Okay so you, me, James Annan, and Wilhelm Cornholey all instinctively reached for the same analogy proving that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with it. That’s assuming you don’t religiously read RealClimate. I religiously avoid it for the most part on general principle.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | March 25, 2013 at 5:24 pm |
“David I would say you should be mortified :) Think of Chaotic as how well you can use the past to predict the future.”
Ok. Based on the past I’m going to predict it will snow in Buffalo, New York next January.
Thanks for making my point for me. I think that’s what some people would call an ‘own goal’.
Thanks for playing but please don’t make my goals for me because it takes all the fun out of it.
Jim D
Not to get into a long discussion about the chaotic nature of nucleate boiling, but your “pot” analogy is a poor fit for our climate.
This is so simply because there are no “unknowns” (or “uncertainties”) in the “boiling pot” analogy. Heat in, heat out, latent heat of vaporization, etc. are all well defined. Putting on the “lid” (analogous to the GH effect of added GH gases) simply slows down the loss of energy out the top (until something explodes).
But our planet’s climate is not so simple.
If we knew all the many factors that impact our climate, it would still be a daunting task to crank these all into a model. But we don’t. We are aware of a few things that we do not know, but there are the “unknown unknowns”, we don’t even have a clue about.
This leads to the high level of “uncertainty” in explaining past climate change, and the even higher level of “uncertainty” in predicting future climate change.
On top of all this, we have an agenda-driven myopia on human GHGs as the cause of most of the past and future climate change, which is driven by the IPCC consensus process.
People like you actually believe that they can forecast the globally and annually averaged temperature X years in advance, simply based on an estimated increase in atmospheric GHGs (principally CO2). This is absurd, Jim, as the current decade is showing us.
To quote the Bard:
– Hamlet (1.5.166-7), Hamlet to Horatio
Max
David, How many inches? Hansen in crew are predicting 4 C of warming while ignoring a +/- 2 C range of natural variability. In fact, Hansen thinks it is impossible for natural variability to be significant. Hansen is convinced that H2) will double CO2 sensitivity. Will it?
That’s the difference. What is the real range of uncertainty.
manacker | March 25, 2013 at 5:17 pm |
“David Springer
Of course you are correct: weather is chaotic, and therefore, hard to predict.
Climate is no different.”
No, climate is different. The usual warmist suspects aren’t wrong becauise they’re trying predict the response of a chaotic climate. They’re wrong because they don’t know enough about a non-chaotic climate.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | March 25, 2013 at 6:01 pm |
“David, How many inches? Hansen in crew are predicting 4 C of warming while ignoring a +/- 2 C range of natural variability. In fact, Hansen thinks it is impossible for natural variability to be significant. Hansen is convinced that H2) will double CO2 sensitivity. Will it?”
How many inches of snow in January is asking me about the weather. I can describe the climate in Buffalo in January. Expect snow. I can’t describe the weather in January. Maybe a little snow maybe a lot.
You’re backpeddling now. That’s good. You’re talking about margins of error which can be refined by better understanding and instrumentation of the system under study. If the system is bounded chaos then no refinement would be possible. I think a lot of refinement is possible through greater understanding, correction of fundamental misunderstandings, and better instrumentation.
I think you’ve quite thoroughly misrepresented Hansen. The usual suspects are predicting 1.5C-4.5C per doubling with 95% confidence. And try to stay on topic. We’re talking about chaos and climate. Is the amount of feedback from water vapor chaotic and unpredictable? Of course not. If Hansen is wrong it’s because he didn’t get the physics right not because it’s unpredictable.
manacker, climate is simple in the sense that heat in equals heat out over the long term, becoming more accurate in W/m2 balance the longer you take. Even a 1 W/m2 persistent forcing either warms the upper ocean 0.1 degrees per decade to absorb it or increases the effective surface temperature by 0.2 degrees to cancel it (excluding H2O feedback), or a combination of the above. So this level of accuracy in observations is becoming a good constraint because CO2 forcing almost doubles that already, and should be very measurable in surface temperature and ocean heat content changes.
David Springer, you bring up the other analogy that I have a version of, which is the faucet, basin, and plug-hole analogy. The faucet provides water (solar energy), the plug-hole provides a way to escape (IR radiation), and the water level represents the temperature (David Archer’s Long Thaw has this analogy). Partially blocking the escape/plug-hole increases the water level (temperature). We seem to agree on this part. Your only difficulty is that you don’t see that water surfaces are just as blocked as land surfaces when it comes to the IR effect of CO2.
So how come we’ve had less than 0.1 deg ocean warming over the past 50 years?
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
I repeat this bcause it bears on the idea of predicabiity of the seasons. If there is 16 degree change in a decade the loal season is going to look very different. It goes to droughts and floods as well – these vary season to season, decade to decade and across millennia.
The climate shift of 1998/2001 involved cloud changes that influenced the energy budget of the planet. – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ReflectedSW-1998to2001climateshift_zps263e8ae9.jpg.html#/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/ReflectedSW-1998to2001climateshift_zps263e8ae9.jpg.html?&_suid=1364251134278038936875076513266 –
The 1976/77 shift seems to as well – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Clementetal2009.png.html?sort=3&o=23#/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Clementetal2009.png.html?sort=3&o=23&_suid=136425168599202564152779713511
It is hypothesized that persistent and consistent trends among several climate modes act to kick the climate state, altering the pattern and magnitude of air-sea interaction between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean. The middle panel in Figure 1 shows that these climate mode trend phases indeed behaved anomalously three times during the 20th century, immediately following the synchronization events of the 1910s, 1940s, and 1970s. This combination of the synchronization of these dynamical modes in the climate, followed immediately afterward by significant increase in the fraction of strong trends (coupling) without exception marked shifts in the 20th century climate state. These shifts were accompanied by breaks in the global mean temperature trend with respect to time, presumably associated with either discontinuities in the global radiative budget due to the global reorganization of clouds and water vapor or dramatic changes in the uptake of heat by the deep ocean. Similar behavior has been found in coupled ocean/atmosphere models, indicating such behavior may be a hallmark of terrestrial-like climate systems [Tsonis et al. 2007].’ S&T09
So the silly little narrative about next winter being cold is just that – it misses all of the nonsationary nature of climate time series. The planet is ikely to remain in a cool mode for a decade or three following the198/2001 climate shift – but there are factors that go well beyond evaporation as a determinant.
phatboy, ocean heat content has it that the absorption of heat has averaged about 0.5 W/m2 in the last ten years, so if the surface isn’t warming, other depths are.
JimD
Can you please clarify the mechanism whereby the heat bypasses the upper layers of the ocean and ends up in deep and Abyssal water?
tonyb
David, “You’re backpeddling now. That’s good. You’re talking about margins of error which can be refined by better understanding and instrumentation of the system under study. If the system is bounded chaos then no refinement would be possible.”
nope,not back peddling, the uncertainty involved with degrees of chaotic behavior have to be considered. You can’t make an apples to apples comparison of past climate without considering the range of possible impacts due to the chaotic nature. The average range of the tropical climate has been about +/- 1.5 C for the past 800 k years.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fa_IDVMYqrM/UHBo7G5aA1I/AAAAAAAAESc/DW9qH5j3RSo/s912/past%2520few%2520million%2520years%2520of%2520tropical%2520ocean%2520temperatures.png
Annan & Hargreaves last glacial maximum paper indicates the global average temperature may have only changed 4 C, so there is “weather” like climate issues, which would be chaotic. North America can get a glacier while Siberia has lush forests. If you try to predict climate based on the tropics, you have a smaller margin of error. That is why there is a focus on regional sensitivity.
I think some parts of climate are very predictable within a reasonable limit and others are not. That is why I tend to focus on the oceans and the moist air part of the planet. If you pick the highest variability regions, you are doomed to fail IMO, because they are wicked chaotic.
climatereason, I can give my take, which is that there is always upwelling of deeper water which is colder, and this can counter the surface heating over periods of time, such as now. It depends on the upwelling strength and temperature. The warmer water may be deepening, while not spreading in other regions, such as the west Pacific where the El Nino recharges before this deeper warm water comes to the surface in the next outburst.
JImD
Surely if we have this massive sporadic and chaotic upwelling of cold water from the depths, any temperature taken in the ocean betweeen the depths and the surface is going to differ to another reading when the upwelling has abated. It doesnt seem very sound science
tonyb
tonyb, this is exactly why I don’t think surface temperatures are very meaningful unless they are first averaged over at least a decade to average out the ENSO and solar variability. Decadal temperatures are much less sensitive to fluctuations as only long-term ocean effects are left and their global-averaged amplitude is only 0.1 or so degrees which won’t matter much when we see degrees of warming.
Jim D | March 25, 2013 at 6:59 pm |
“David Springer, you bring up the other analogy that I have a version of, which is the faucet, basin, and plug-hole analogy. The faucet provides water (solar energy), the plug-hole provides a way to escape (IR radiation), and the water level represents the temperature (David Archer’s Long Thaw has this analogy). Partially blocking the escape/plug-hole increases the water level (temperature). We seem to agree on this part. Your only difficulty is that you don’t see that water surfaces are just as blocked as land surfaces when it comes to the IR effect of CO2.”
Excellent analogy if radiation was only way for surface to cool. There are two other ways so you need two more drain openings. Label one the conductive (thermal) drain and the other the latent (evaporation and convection) drain.
If the evaporation drain is wide open and it’s big then putting a plug in the radiation drain hole does very little. The size of the evaporation drain hole varies. It’s big over the ocean and tiny in deserts and frozen landscapes. The thermal drain hole is small overall but important in places where the ground temperature is way different than air temperature in contact with it. Air is a piss poor conductor so thermal is the path of most resistance in all cases.
This is what is missing at least in my opinion. The warmist model has water vapor amplification over the ocean and I say that water vapor amplification only happens over land and not even CO2 warming occurs over land because ocean doesn’t play the radiative cooling game and in all greenhouse gas warming the mechanism is radiation.
The missing heat is never absorbed by the ocean. It’s rejected insensibly by evaporation and convection from the surface to the cloud deck and the cloud deck itself is higher in altitude. A higher cloud top that radiates more efficiently because there’s less greenhouse gas above it sends that extra energy packing into outer space more efficiently than the lower cloud deck could and the increased greenhouse gas between higher cloud and ground lessens reemission that makes it back to the surface.
Clouds are the problem for the models. Heck the water cycle in general is a problem for the models. Those models are grade A prime for radiation and thermal which is high school science fair kind of stuff with well mixed non-condensing greenhouse gases. They screw up big time with evaporation, convection, and clouds which are not at all well mixed and very complex. And clouds, due to being able to block out 90% of sunlight, have an awful lot of control over how much of the sun’s energy makes it down to warm the surface.
typo
and not even CO2 warming occurs over
landocean becausesorry I really should proof read BEFORE hitting post button
David Springer, I have been over this before and I don’t have the patience to do it again. Evaporation over the ocean is not a free variable. It is tightly constrained by the temperature and Clausius-Clapeyron. Besides that, it is not an energy loss mechanism for the earth, and clouds are inefficient emitters being cold-topped. No, the oceans respond to added CO2 blanketing the same way anything else does, and can only increase their emission by increasing their surface temperature. If you could just free yourself from this mental block about evaporation, you would be a warmist.
JimD, C-C is not a tight constraint. There is a new atmospheric thermodynamic measure called convective triggering potential, developed at GFDL. http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/kirsten-findells-thesis-papers
Which is was developed in studies of soil moisture impacts on convection, it appears to be valuable in other areas like marine boundary layer convection. Instead of convection being initiated at the surface it can be initiated in the mid-troposphere. http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/7745
Imagine that, just out of the clear blue sky, convective clouds form producing a negative feedback.
captd, and how do you imagine CO2 creating mid-level convection or is this one of your red herrings, captain? The surface air above the ocean is close to saturated. Can evaporation increase if you bombard it with IR, no, because C-C requires the temperature to increase first, unless you can figure a way the IR also dries the air out to make way for the new vapor from any added evaporation.
JimD, evaporation is dependent on surface water temperature, saturation vapor pressure of the air over the water and the wind speed. H2O positive radiant feedback is dependent on that water vapor remaining in the air. With increased deep convection and this increase in mid to upper level convection, the water vapor is not staying in the air. While you mention that is likely due to limited water availability over land, increased mid-troposphere convection over the oceans is not part of the C-C estimation. Clouds appear to be providing a negative feedback.
There is this issue related to the convective triggerring potential, it happens to be roughly equal to the 88 Wm-2 of global latent heat loss in the newer more accurate energy budgets. The models underestimated latent heat flux per much like Dr. Curry thought some time ago.
captain, so yes the evaporation can’t stay in the air because of C-C, so there is no net evaporation increase, and you are in fact disagreeing with David Springer. It was hard to get that out of you.
David Springer: .”..Sybil doesn’t seem to understand that climate is not chaotic.
Oops, better get your paper into the IPCC Dave, they’ve got it wrong too.
” … In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC TAR, Section 14.2 “The Climate System”, page 774.
thanks…I lost the source of that quote and have been looking for it for years…puts things into perspective nicely…
Is climate chaotic? The proposal for the MIT Lorenz Center (see Bart R’s link) lists a number of critically-important climate science questions, worthy of establishing a research institute to address. The first question:
“Are two or more statistically stable climate states possible for the same climate forcing (solar radiation,atmospheric composition, configuration of continents)? This is a problem of great inherent intellectual interest and potentially enormous practical consequences as well. At present, we do not know whether the real climate has multiple equilibrium states.
If there are multiple equilibrium states, then climate has the potential to be chaotic, not deterministic. The pathways that lead from one equilibrium climate state to another will almost certainly be chaotic, just like the pathways between El Nino and La Nina climate states and the Ice Ages that occur every 40,000 or 100,000 years. .
The two obvious states have to do with concentration of atmospheric co2. If we have no or very little co2, the earth will be on average below the freezing point of water. With sufficient co2 it is above freezing.
If one injects more co2, the upper setpoint rises.
This is the theme of the co2 control knob paper by Lacis.
Th 2 obvious states are the ice extent in glacials/interglcials Ice feedbacks drive descents into glacials and most probably the recovery and CO2 is a feedbck of that.
1) The troposphere, and 2) and 3), its upper and lower boundaries (or bounding regions).
But the system is broken, and the GPC is just another conglomeration of incompetent scientists.
david springer
I hate to take this risk, but I am going to go out on a limb, too.
I forecast that January 4, 2014 will be colder in Buffalo, NY than in Houston, TX.
There.
I’m on record.
Max.
Does that apply to the measured temperature or to the adjusted temperature?
After normalization, altitude adjustment and homogenization of Houston with Vostok I somehow doubt it.
‘Climate as a complex dynamical system, leading to a better understanding of the natural modes of the climate system, their coupling to each other and to exogenous forces.’ APS
‘The global coupled atmosphere–ocean–land–cryosphere system exhibits a wide range of physical and dynamical phenomena with associated physical, biological, and chemical feedbacks that collectively result in a continuum of temporal and spatial variability. The traditional boundaries between weather and climate are, therefore, somewhat artificial.’ Hurrel et al 2009
‘In principle, changes in climate on a wide range of timescales can also arise from variations within the climate system due to, for example, interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere; in this document, this is referred to as “internal climate variability”. Such internal variability can occur because the climate is an example of a chaotic system: one that can exhibit complex unpredictable internal variations even in the absence of the climate forcings discussed in the previous paragraph.’ The Royal Society Climate change: a summary of the science I September 2010
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.
Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly. Thus, greenhouse warming and other human alterations of the earth system may increase the possibility of large, abrupt, and unwelcome regional or global climatic events. The abrupt changes of the past are not fully explained yet, and climate models typically underestimate the size, speed, and extent of those changes. Hence, future abrupt changes cannot be predicted with confidence, and climate surprises are to be expected.
The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ NAS Committee on Abrupt climate Change.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both. In this paper, after a brief tutorial on the basics of climate nonlinearity, we provide a number of illustrative examples and highlight key mechanisms that give rise to nonlinear behavior, address scale and methodological issues, suggest a robust alternative to prediction that is based on using integrated assessments within the framework of vulnerability studies and, lastly, recommend a number of research priorities and the establishment of education programs in Earth Systems Science. It is imperative that the Earth’s climate system research community embraces this nonlinear paradigm if we are to move forward in the assessment of the human influence on climate.’ Rial e al 2004
JC SNIP
Spr..ger is profoundly ignorant and proud of it. He is the king of the totlly irrelevant in a style of self aggrandising, bombastic, tedious, repetitive nonsense. Who am I supposed to believe? Some dimwited, obsolete gamer with a compulsion to be the smartest dips…t in the room or the APS, The Royal Society, the NAS, etc. Utterly pathetic almost covers it.Well, when Paul Nurse speaks for the Royal Society, I’ll prefer to listen to D. Springer. Now, I know that’s not what you meant.
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Chef Hydrologist | March 25, 2013 at 6:29 pm | Reply
Spr..ger is profoundly ignorant and proud of it. He is the king of the totlly irrelevant in a style of self aggrandising, bombastic, tedious, repetitive nonsense. Who am I supposed to believe? Some dimwited, obsolete gamer with a compulsion to be the smartest dips…t in the room or the APS, The Royal Society, the NAS, etc. Utterly pathetic almost covers it.
Is there a moderator on this blog?
I put a SNIP warning on the post, let’s see if that is sufficient to deter.
Speaking moderately, I find great value in both of you. That value is entirely separate from what you two are arguing about, which I don’t understand.
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I think the Chef shouldn’t do personal attacks even on targets that have done them in the past. Rise above.
Obviously not.
Address the science springer – instead of whining that your habitual rudeness is reciprocated.
Predictability has nothing to do with it at all – complex, dynamic nonlinear system = deterministic chaotic system = chaotic dynamical system = abrupt climate change. The fact that it is the result of multiple feedbacks is precisely the point. It is exactly the same behaviour as the 3 body problem.
‘AOS models are members of the broader class of deterministic chaotic dynamical systems, which provides several expectations about their properties (Fig. 1). In the context of weather prediction, the generic property of sensitive dependence is well understood (4, 5). For a particular model, small differences in initial state (indistinguishable within the sampling uncertainty for atmospheric measurements) amplify with time at an exponential rate until saturating at a magnitude comparable to the range of intrinsic variability. Model differences are another source of sensitive dependence. Thus, a deterministic weather forecast cannot be accurate after a period of a few weeks, and the time interval for skillful modern forecasts is only somewhat shorter than the estimate for this theoretical limit. In the context of equilibrium climate dynamics, there is another generic property that is also relevant for AOS, namely structural instability (6). Small changes in model formulation, either its equation set or parameter values, induce significant differences in the long-time distribution functions for the dependent variables (i.e., the phase-space attractor). The character of the changes can be either metrical (e.g., different means or variances) or topological (different attractor shapes). Structural instability is the norm for broad classes of chaotic dynamical systems that can be so assessed (e.g., see ref. 7). Obviously, among the options for discrete algorithms and parameterization schemes, and perhaps especially for coupling to nonfluid processes, there are many ways that AOS model equation sets can and will change and hence will be vulnerable to structurally unstable behavior.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
Again – climate is in that broad class of ‘deterministic chaotic dynamical systems, which provides several expectations about their properties ‘. It is the properties we are interested in – slowing down and noisy bifurcation especially. e.g. http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1962/1185.full.pdf
The absolute values of incoming or outgoing radiation cannot be determined with a couple of Watts/m^2. It is impossible to determine a radiative balance at a point in time. However – the changes in radiant flux – expressed in anomalies in the case of outgoing radiation – gives with much more accuracy the trends and quantum of changes in radiative energy. Most useful information used for instance to determine that there was ‘missing energy’.
‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’
The above refers to ERBS and ISCCP-FD and CERES provides an order of magnitude improvement. The trick is to understand and use the data in appropriate ways and not get hung up with absolutes.
And Jim is quite right on one thing – ciimate depends only on the radiant imbalance at toa.
d(W&H)/dt = power in – power out
Where W&H is work and heat – perfectly defines the energy budget of the planet.
This changes all the time mostly in the short trm as cloud height and cover changes.
– http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-LWCERES.png.html?sort=3&o=35 –
And seems to have a bit of an association with ENSO. Climate spontaneously reorganises – emergent behavior in the terms of the theory of dynamic complexity – with changes in snow, ice, cloud, dust, biology etc.
One quibble. power in = power out, implies that the rate is instantaneously balanced. I would say energy in = energy out, if you average over long enough periods.
another quibbler – one is not happy with energy and one not happy with power.
It is a differential – so time is at the core and Watt = J/s
If the planet s not warming or cooling – d(W&H)/dt = 0 – and energy in = energy out.
Not all that common it seems and it is really d(W&H) we are interested in.
CH, anyway a more useful expression is
dF = dH/dt + lambda*dT
where now all the terms are in W/m2.
dF is a change in forcing (from an equilibrium), H is a heat content and dT is the surface temperature change needed to rebalance the dF with lambda being the climate sensitivity. A simplification is to say that H is proportional to T, but that doesn’t hold over short time periods with internal variability, as is the case now with H increasing but T not.
I have quoted several of the most reputable sources above about chaos in climate. Science has moved beyond ideas of simple cause and effect – to the idea of abupt change efined as change that exceeds the rate and is out of proportion to size of the initial forcing. This you agreed to just yesterday. I appreciate that changing your mind is a sign of maturity – but I feel quite confident that these sources do have a point and that weigh of science is inexorably shifting behindthis idea. Indeed it is called the new climate paradigm by the NAS>
In a choatic climate sensitiviy is one of the things that needs to be radically rethought. The situation is scematically as follows.
http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/bifurcations.png.html?sort=3&o=14
Climate dosn’t change much until it hits a tipping point – an abrupt change in MOC for instance – and then shifts rapidly. The sensitivity is high at the point of bifurcation but not otherwise.
‘Recent, somewhat abrupt climate changes add to the collective concern that larger future nonlinear changes pose a significant risk to societies [2]. Furthermore, recent assessments place such ‘large-scale discontinuities’ rather closer to the present state of the climate [3]. By definition, such events imply significant impacts on societies or on other living components of the Earth system. Hence, if an early warning of a climate tipping point can be achieved, then it could be of considerable value to societies, at least in helping them build an adaptive capacity to cope with what is approaching. In general, for a system approaching a threshold where its current state becomes unstable, and it makes a transition to some other state, one can expect to see it become more sluggish in its response to small perturbations [4].
Mathematically speaking, for systems that can be characterized as gradually approaching a (co-dimension 1) bifurcation point in their equilibrium solutions, their leading eigenvalue tends towards zero, indicating a tendency towards infinitely slow recovery from perturbations. This is referred to as ‘critical slowing down’ in dynamical systems theory. This phenomenon has long been known about [5,6], but it has only recently been applied to climate dynamics [7,8].’
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/370/1962/1185.full.pdf
At toa, however, my simple energy budget is perfect in one sense but limited in another. Conceptually – it perfectly describes the energy budget. Realistically – the data limitations mean that the interpetation is only broadly quantitative.
Thus we know the sign of d(W&H)/dt from ocean and atmopsheric monitoring and the change within reasonable error bounds. We know with some precision the change in energy in and energy out if not the absolute values.
Thus we know that the change in TSI is not hugely significant – and indeed was declining in the SORCE period. We know that long wave out varied with ENSO as clouds formed in La Nina and dissipated with El Nino – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-LWCERES.png.html?sort=3&o=35#/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Loeb2011-LWCERES.png.html?sort=3&o=35&_suid=136426072565907609199636549699 – without an observable trend in the period.
We know also that short wave changed with a decadal trend in cloud – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=49#/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/CERES_MODIS-1.gif.html?sort=3&o=49&_suid=1364260897505014999157657388795
I would attribute much of the cloud changes to the persistance of warm surface water in the Pacific – but expect this to change as the PDO+ENSO intensifies.
The simple energy budget is a simple way of thinking about inputs.
Chief Hydrologist | March 25, 2013 at 7:13 pm | Reply
“And Jim is quite right on one thing – ciimate depends only on the radiant imbalance at toa.”
Is that chaotic too? Do tell.
TOA imbalance is on the order of a half watt per square meter depending on how accurate you think ARGO is because the ocean is the only reservoir that can hold much energy. Land just gets warmer and spits it back out right most riki tik.
I don’t believe ARGO is that accurate for one. The ocean was cooling a tiny bit until Josh Willis flip-flopped (under pressure is my guess) and said it was warming a tiny bit instead. Games like that with data over a value so close to zero the polarity is in question doesn’t give me any warm fuzzy feelings about the data quality.
A 0.5W/m2 imbalance at TOA is enough to raise ocean temperature 0.2C in 100 years. Not exactly scary stuff even if it’s both accurate and persistent.
The scary thing is that all the ocean below about 1000 meters is a not very friendly 3 degrees centigrade. Brass monkeys beware of those depths. If the mix rate between surface and vast bulk of the ocean increases substantially brass monkeys will need fur lined jockey shorts on the surface too. The average global ocean temperature is a warning shot across the bow. We have a warm world due to a shallow layer of warm water on the ocean surface. If it were to mix downward faster we’re in a world of hurt.
One might also ask exactly how the ocean’s average temperature got to 4C in the first place. That’s an even scarier question because near as I can figure that must be the average of the surface temperature over very long spans of time like say the last few million years. The ocean might equilibrate top to bottom very slowly but it doesn’t take forever.
correction
The scary thing is that all the ocean below about 1000
metersfeet is a not very friendly 3 degrees centigradeChief Hydrologist | March 25, 2013 at 9:36 pm |
“Indeed it is called the new climate paradigm by the NAS”
Well the old climate paradigm certainly isn’t working out very well.
What a grand coincidence it is that the new paradigm chaotic climate is doing exactly what some of us predicted – not warming while cool multidecadal ocean oscillations get their turn at bat. I guess we just got lucky, huh?
By the way, where exactly does NAS talk about his new climate paradigm? As far as I know they’re on about abrupt paleoclimate change. Just because the climate can change abruptly doesn’t make it chaotic. Positive feedback can flip a semi-stable state in the blink of an eye. In fact that’s how a logic circuit called a flip-flop works. It’s about as chaotic as an earthquake fault line. Exactly when the fault is going to slip is chaotic like the weather. But as tension builds it will eventually slip and that’s like the climate. Just like a slow steady squeeze on the trigger of a gun ends in a fast explosion. It isn’t chaos just becuase it happens fast.
@ Ellison
‘In principle, changes in climate on a wide range of timescales can also arise from variations within the climate system due to, for example, interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere; in this document, this is referred to as “internal climate variability”. Such internal variability can occur because the climate is an example of a chaotic system: one that can exhibit complex unpredictable internal variations even in the absence of the climate forcings discussed in the previous paragraph.’ The Royal Society Climate change: a summary of the science I September 2010
Since the Royal Society Report is the only that is the only quote you gave that characterizes climate as chaotic I’d encourage everyone to read the whole thing.
http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294972962.pdf
It is a production by an appointed committee of Royal Society members including policy makers and non-scientists. No independent scientific reviewers endorsed it which is made explicit.
The conclusions don’t even hint at the climate being chaotic but merely restate the same old crap we’ve all heard a million times about uncertainty making prediction of global warming somewhere between very bad and the end of life on the planet.
I quote the conclusions which are no new paradigm at all but the same old narrative that’s been around since Hansen turned off the airconditioners in 1988.
I can’t imagine what you think is implied by for instance Rial et al – NONLINEARITIES, FEEDBACKS AND CRITICAL THRESHOLDS
WITHIN THE EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM.
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
‘According to the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change of the National Research Council:
There are essentially two definitions of abrupt climate change:
In terms of physics, it is a transition of the climate system into a different mode on a time scale that is faster than the responsible forcing.
In terms of impacts, “an abrupt change is one that takes place so rapidly and unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to it”.
These definitions are complementary: the former gives some insight into how abrupt climate change comes about ; the latter explains why there is so much research devoted to it.’
The first one being more technical is the one to concentrate on – a shift to a different mode. This is what happens in chaotic systems. The system hits a tipping point and the components interact in what is known as ‘dragon-kings’ or noisy bifurcation – before settling into a new mode.
This happens because of feedbacks in snow, ice cloud, dust, biology etc. I am clueless as to what you falsely imagine deterministic chaos to be but there are a number of terms. Nonlinearity, dynamical complexity, tipping points, catastrophe in the sense of Rene Thom – if it makes you feel any better.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both.’
I suggest that you actually read Rial et al 2004 – because really I am not here to engage in long winded discussions with someone who clearly doesn’t have the faintest clue and refuses to learn. One webby is quite enough.
As for radiant imbalances – for ERBS Wong et al 2006 is the place to go – http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
For CERES – Loeb et al – Advances in Understanding Top-of-
Atmosphere Radiation Variability from Satellite Observations – google it – is the best I have found.
It matters little that you understand ARGO without looking at causality in the radiant imbalances. I have discussed these in detail elsewhere on the post. Beyond that you can start to look at why cloud changes and it is indeed chaotic.
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in
those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the
great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of
the size and complexity of the climate system.’ https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
This is a good place to start to look at chaos in the instrumental record.
You might then move onto – ‘Has the climate recently shifted’ Swanson and Tsonis 2009.
‘It is hypothesized that persistent and consistent trends among several climate modes act to ‘kick’ the climate state, altering the pattern and magnitude of air-sea interaction between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean. Figure 1 (middle) shows that these climate mode trend phases indeed behaved anomalously three times during the 20th century, immediately following the synchronization events of the 1910s, 1940s, and 1970s. This combination of the synchronization of these dynamical modes in the climate, followed immediately afterward by significant increase in the fraction of strong trends (coupling) without
exception marked shifts in the 20th century climate state. These shifts were accompanied by breaks in the global mean temperature trend with respect to time, presumably associated with either discontinuities in the global radiative budget due to the global reorganization of clouds and water vapor or dramatic changes in the uptake of heat by
the deep ocean.’
I know you think that deterministic chaos equates to randomness – but that’s just stupid.
Chief Hydrologist | March 26, 2013 at 4:45 am |
I can’t imagine what you think is implied by for instance Rial et al – NONLINEARITIES, FEEDBACKS AND CRITICAL THRESHOLDS
WITHIN THE EARTH’S CLIMATE SYSTEM.
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
‘According to the Committee on Abrupt Climate Change of the National Research Council:
There are essentially two definitions of abrupt climate change:
In terms of physics, it is a transition of the climate system into a different mode on a time scale that is faster than the responsible forcing.
In terms of impacts, “an abrupt change is one that takes place so rapidly and unexpectedly that human or natural systems have difficulty adapting to it”.
These definitions are complementary: the former gives some insight into how abrupt climate change comes about ; the latter explains why there is so much research devoted to it.’
The first one being more technical is the one to concentrate on – a shift to a different mode. This is what happens in chaotic systems. The system hits a tipping point and the components interact in what is known as ‘dragon-kings’ or noisy bifurcation – before settling into a new mode.
This happens because of feedbacks in snow, ice cloud, dust, biology etc. I am clueless as to what you falsely imagine deterministic chaos to be but there are a number of terms. Nonlinearity, dynamical complexity, tipping points, catastrophe in the sense of Rene Thom – if it makes you feel any better.
‘The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual, and multiple equilibria are the norm. While this is widely accepted, there is a relatively poor understanding of the different types of nonlinearities, how they manifest under various conditions, and whether they reflect a climate system driven by astronomical forcings, by internal feedbacks, or by a combination of both.’
I suggest that you actually read Rial et al 2004 – because really I am not here to engage in long winded discussions with someone who clearly doesn’t have the faintest clue and refuses to learn. One webby is quite enough.
As for radiant imbalances – for ERBS Wong et al 2006 is the place to go – http://www.image.ucar.edu/idag/Papers/Wong_ERBEreanalysis.pdf
For CERES – Loeb et al – Advances in Understanding Top-of-
Atmosphere Radiation Variability from Satellite Observations – google it – is the best I have found.
It matters little that you understand ARGO without looking at causality in the radiant imbalances. I have discussed these in detail elsewhere on the post. Beyond that you can start to look at why cloud changes and it is indeed chaotic.
‘We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in
those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the
great climate shift of the 1970s. We also find the evidence for such type of behavior in two climate simulations using a state-of-the-art model. This is the first time that this mechanism, which appears consistent with the theory of synchronized chaos, is discovered in a physical system of
the size and complexity of the climate system.’ https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/aatsonis/www/2007GL030288.pdf
This is a good place to start to look at chaos in the instrumental record.
You might then move onto – ‘Has the climate recently shifted’ Swanson and Tsonis 2009.
‘It is hypothesized that persistent and consistent trends among several climate modes act to ‘kick’ the climate state, altering the pattern and magnitude of air-sea interaction between the atmosphere and the underlying ocean. Figure 1 (middle) shows that these climate mode trend phases indeed behaved anomalously three times during the 20th century, immediately following the synchronization events of the 1910s, 1940s, and 1970s. This combination of the synchronization of these dynamical modes in the climate, followed immediately afterward by significant increase in the fraction of strong trends (coupling) without
exception marked shifts in the 20th century climate state. These shifts were accompanied by breaks in the global mean temperature trend with respect to time, presumably associated with either discontinuities in the global radiative budget due to the global reorganization of clouds and water vapor or dramatic changes in the uptake of heat by
the deep ocean.’
“I know you think that deterministic chaos equates to randomness – but that’s just stupid.”
What did I say to make you believe that’s what I think? I don’t believe ANYTHING in the universe is truly random. I believe in the clockwork universe of Einstein and that God does not play at dice with it. I would appreciate it if you would make a note of that and not accuse me again of thinking that chaos is randomness. Chaotic systems are deterministic non-linear systems that exhibit sensitive independence. The latter two characteristics typically make prediction of future states from the present state intractable and the lack of predictability gives the appearance of random behavior and abrubt state changes with no apparent causation.
I dispute the assertion that the climate exhibits this kind of behavior to any significant degree. Weather does but not climate. We can’t predict how much snow fall in Buffalo, New York in January of any given year but we can almost certainly predict there will be snow because snow in January in Buffalo is a reliably repeating pattern and we know the cause of the frozen precipitation – sources of moisture in the air and not enough insolation in January to keep temperature above freezing.
Such predictability is not characteristic of chaotic systems. There is no sensitive dependence on any variable that determines whether conditions will be amenable to snowfall in Buffalo, New York in January. There would have to be freakishly large change in some variable to bring about a January without snowfall in Buffalo, New York and it is unlikely we would not be aware of what happened to cause it.
Being unable to predict the behavior of a complex non-linear dynamic system isn’t necessarily because it is chaotic it may simply be because you don’t know enough about it or know enough about the dynamics of each individual component in the system. For instance I often can’t predict when my car is going to break down but in hindsight there’s invariably a discernable reason for the breakdown. The car is a complex non-linear dynamic system but in this case I simply don’t have sufficient information available about each component to predict when and where and how it might fail. The point is that its behavior is predictable most of the time despite it having some sensitive independence to microscopic flaws and despite it being a complex non-linear dynamic system. It has some characteristics of a chaotic system but mostly it isn’t.
Weather is generally viewed as a chaotic system but for most scientists climate has some characteristics of a chaotic system but like the automobile for the most part it’s viewed as non-chaotic where cause and effect become apparent with sufficient instrumentation and understanding of the system dynamics.
I realize there is disagreement about this but I belive the weight of the evidence is that with proper understanding and sufficient information climate is largely predictable i.e. it’s gonna snow in Buffalo in January unless something readily apparent happens to change that situation.
Resubmitted because I inadvertantly forgot to snip what I wasn’t addressing. I only meant to dispute the assertion that I thought chaos was randomness, clarify my understanding of what constitutes a chaotic system, and describe why don’t believe climate behavior is diagnostic of a chaotic system.
Chief Hydrologist | March 26, 2013 at 4:45 am |
“I know you think that deterministic chaos equates to randomness – but that’s just stupid.”
What did I say to make you believe that’s what I think? I don’t believe ANYTHING in the universe is truly random. I believe in the clockwork universe of Einstein and that God does not play at dice with it. I would appreciate it if you would make a note of that and not accuse me again of thinking that chaos is randomness. Chaotic systems are deterministic non-linear systems that exhibit sensitive independence. The latter two characteristics typically make prediction of future states from the present state intractable and the lack of predictability gives the appearance of random behavior and abrubt state changes with no apparent causation.
I dispute the assertion that the climate exhibits this kind of behavior to any significant degree. Weather does but not climate. We can’t predict how much snow fall in Buffalo, New York in January of any given year but we can almost certainly predict there will be snow because snow in January in Buffalo is a reliably repeating pattern and we know the cause of the frozen precipitation – sources of moisture in the air and not enough insolation in January to keep temperature above freezing.
Such predictability is not characteristic of chaotic systems. There is no sensitive dependence on any variable that determines whether conditions will be amenable to snowfall in Buffalo, New York in January. There would have to be freakishly large change in some variable to bring about a January without snowfall in Buffalo, New York and it is unlikely we would not be aware of what happened to cause it.
Being unable to predict the behavior of a complex non-linear dynamic system isn’t necessarily because it is chaotic it may simply be because you don’t know enough about it or know enough about the dynamics of each individual component in the system. For instance I often can’t predict when my car is going to break down but in hindsight there’s invariably a discernable reason for the breakdown. The car is a complex non-linear dynamic system but in this case I simply don’t have sufficient information available about each component to predict when and where and how it might fail. The point is that its behavior is predictable most of the time despite it having some sensitive independence to microscopic flaws and despite it being a complex non-linear dynamic system. It has some characteristics of a chaotic system but mostly it isn’t.
Weather is generally viewed as a chaotic system but for most scientists climate has some characteristics of a chaotic system but like the automobile for the most part it’s viewed as non-chaotic where cause and effect become apparent with sufficient instrumentation and understanding of the system dynamics.
I realize there is disagreement about this but I belive the weight of the evidence is that with proper understanding and sufficient information climate is largely predictable i.e. it’s gonna snow in Buffalo in January unless something readily apparent happens to change that situation.
On satellite observations of imbalance in earth radiation budget at TOA.
Give me a break. The solar constant changes both predictably and unpredictably. It has an *approximate* average of 1361 kW/m2 and that approximate average was recently changed downward from 1366 kW/m2. Many references still state the old figure. If average incoming solar power is subject to errors of 5 Watts, and noting that incoming power far easier to measure than outgoing power, then it seems rather naive to suggest we can with the same instruments detect an imbalance between incoming and outgoing power of a mere 0.5 Watts. Prima facie evidence suggests we can’t get that kind of resolution on incoming power
so say nothing of multiplying the uncertainty by subtracting outgoing power from it to reach an imbalance figure.
The ~0.5W imbalance is actually calculated mostly from OHC change as measured by ARGO instrumentation and then refined by estimates of less significant heat reservoir changes like latent heat of fusion in reduced global ice mass.
Hansen and colleagues explicitely spell it out here in a January 2012 science brief which I shall quote from:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/
If you think TOA energy imbalance estimated down to hundredths of a Watt with an error bar of plus or minus 15 hundredths of a Watt is derived in any other way than the above you are mistaken, Ellison. It’s derived exactly as I described and I’ve know how it was derived for years because ARGO data has been its primary source for at least several years.
typo
“It has an *approximate* average of 1361 kW/m2 and that approximate average was recently changed downward from 1366 kW/m2.”
I had initially quoted it as 1.361 kiloWatts then decided to quote it in Watts instead and removed the decimal point without removing the kilo designation. Normally I wouldn’t bother with a correction like that but the climate here in these comments makes it necessary lest some jagoff make an issue out of it.
David Sp…er,
“We used other measurements to estimate the energy going into the deeper ocean, into the continents, and into melting of ice worldwide in the period 2005-2010. We found a total Earth energy imbalance of +0.58±0.15 W/m2 divided as shown in Fig. 1.” Your Hansen Quote.
“In light of compilations of up-to-date surface and satellite data, the surface energy balance needs to be revised. Specifically, the longwave radiation received at the surface is estimated to be significantly larger, by between 10 and 17 Wm−2, than earlier model-based estimates” Graeme Stephens et al.
Is 17 bigger than 0.15?
I’d like to talk a little more measuring global energy imbalance because this is vitally important and is the proverbial bottom line in whether the earth is warming or cooling and by how much.
Measuring incoming energy at TOA is not all that difficult because it comes from a point source and we can insert a satellite in a fixed position such that always stays between the sun and the earth. After that it’s just a matter of having instrumentation that can accurately measure power across the significant power spectrum of the sun which is to say from ultraviolet through near infrared. Not easy to cover the entire range with precision but doable.
Outgoing power is a different beast for a number of reasons. First of all the spectrum which must be measured is far broader. The earth reflects a significant fraction of UV through near infrared but also absorbs and remits much energy as mid-infrared. Mid-infrared is not so easy to measure accurately as it typically requires super-cooled optics to obtain the image.
But that’s not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that outgoing radiation can’t be monitored like incoming from a single point source. The earth radiates over a very broad frequency range in all directions requiring an array of satellites to monitor achieve just partial coverage. One satellite can only look at one hemisphere at a time and not even that much because looking straight down on the equator doesn’t provide a good enough viewing angle to measure either of the poles nor the horizon. We don’t have an array of capable satellites in orbit so we have to guesstimate what’s happening outside the current view angle.
This difficulty in obtaining an accurate measure down to hundredths of a Watt per square meter in outgoing radiation is one of the main reasons for deploying an array of 3,000 buoys that periodically dive to 2000 meters depth (which is still only halfway to the average bottom depth) measuring temperature to the thousandth of a degree during the dive and reporting results when it surfaces. As of now that’s the only practical means of obtaining energy imbalance numbers with sufficient accuracy and precision to figure out what’s happening in the imbalance domain of interest (less than 1W/m2). Even so ARGO misses any ocean water covered by ice and any ocean below 2000 meters. The buoys also tend to cluster due to getting caught up in ocean gyres which round them up like a cow dog does with a herd of cattle. So ARGO misses well over half the ocean and that’s the best we got which is far better than anything we had more than 10 years ago but even so the coverage is still ‘iffy’ as we have to interpolate, assume, and guess about the majority of the ocean volume that escape measure. Then the instruments themselves, thousands of them, are subject to drift away from factory calibration and development of other defects that commonly occur in electronics. So it’s really a bit of a mess but we work with the data we have not the data we wish we had.
On top of ARGO’s problems there is even less reliable information about other heat reservoirs such as global ice mass and energy absorbed by the earth’s crust. Together these other reservoirs ostensibly, according to Hansen et al, account for about half as much of imbalance storage as the ocean. ARGO, such as it is, indicates 0.41W/m2 is being stored in the ocean 24/7 and another 0.16W/m2 is getting stored in ice melt (heat of fusion) and in the earth’s crust below the surface and these are not instrumented anywhere near as well as ARGO instruments ocean heat content changes.
I don’t know about others but I’m not inspired to a high level of confidence in energy imbalance figures accurate in the hundredths of watts. There’s far too much room for error if you ask me. But even if we presume it’s accurate an 0.5W/m2 imbalance would only warm the global ocean volume by an average of 0.2C over the course of a century. Global average temperature in the lower troposphere is largely determined by ocean temperature as there’s only an average of 1C difference in ocean surface temperature and air temperature immediately above it. Counter-intuitively the ocean is 1C cooler not warmer. That’s because of evaporation. The atmosphere is mostly warmed by condensing water vapor which any competent climate scientist or meteorologist will be quick to tell you – the atomosphere is heated by rain not by radiation or conduction.
captdallas2 0.8 +/- 0.2 | March 26, 2013 at 10:48 am |
“In light of compilations of up-to-date surface and satellite data, the surface energy balance needs to be revised. Specifically, the longwave radiation received at the surface is estimated to be significantly larger, by between 10 and 17 Wm−2, than earlier model-based estimates” Graeme Stephens et al.”
“Is 17 bigger than 0.15?”
Is an apple an orange?
David spr,./er, I agree that a high level of precision can be obtained at the TOA. as far as absolute values go, but since the range of imbalance TOA can be 1Wm-2 for half a precessional cycle, how much good is that precision?
The “surface” is another can of worms. That is why I think using (Isc/pi)cos(lat), just like I would designing a solar pond, is a better way of estimating the “sub-surface” or blackbody energy. Since clouds are a response to surface temperature and not a fixed albedo, the two estimates, one for the blackbody and the 0.7*TSI/4 for the radiant shell provide a bracket range. That gives you a black body energy of 334.5 Wm-2 (the 4C oceans) versus 240 Wm-2 (~15C) shell.
Variations in cloud response would produce most of the drift between the two estimates with the oceans providing the best reference for future climate. There is still +/- 8 to 10 Wm-2 of “drift” because of the THC, but you are at least in a reasonable ballpark.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Mglu4cSVBOA/UVDiJQEtNaI/AAAAAAAAHlk/09lOSlgkGAY/s912/5%2520atlantic%2520reconstructions.png
The Atlantic, because it is most influenced by THC, provides a reasonable uncertainty range. That appears to be the direction that the GFDL is headed.
David, i have another comment in moderation but, “Is an apple an orange?”, is what you should ask Hansen. TOA you can get that kind of accuracy, but he is combining surface values and assuming he can compare those to TOA. That is why Graeme Stephens got involved and did his own budget.
Is this the right place? The thread is impossible.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/24/american-physical-society/#comment-306233
‘Chaos is just a code word for inability to predict system response due to intractible complexity of the system under study. It’s analogous to the n-body problem n in the thousands. We can’t solve it but nature solves it every moment of every day. To us perterbations appear chaotic but this is simply an illusion borne of ignorance.’
No you were simply arguing we were imagining that deterministic chaos was something other than dterministic. That is the simplest of the ideas of chaos – a trivial observation.
‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.’ TAR s 14.2
‘Figure 12 shows 2000 years of El Nino behaviour simulated by a state-of-the-art climate model forced with present day solar irradiance and greenhouse gas concentrations. The richness of the El Nino behaviour, decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict.’
Cars are not complex dynamical systems in the sense of theoretical physics. That you assert this merely attests to planet sized gaps in your understanding.
Chief Hydrologist | March 26, 2013 at 7:29 pm |
“No you were simply arguing we were imagining that deterministic chaos was something other than dterministic. That is the simplest of the ideas of chaos – a trivial observation.”
Great. Now you’re defining my arguments for me. I’m going to bow out as it appears I’m unnecessary here. You make my arguments then shoot them down then unilaterally declare victory. And then call me a bunch of names at the end which Curry spanked you over like one would a petulant child.
You talk to yourself from now on. God knows you’ve got enough different names you use here to make it look like a crowd of agreeable voices. Pffffffffffffffffffffffft!
You are talking to yourself anyway springer – and nonsense at that. All the long winded rubbish about cosmic determinism, the digital universe or the lack of quantum indeterminancy. How is anyone to decide what you don’t know about the theoretical underpinings of dynamical, deterministic chaos. lmost everything apparent, Just a mouth engaged with little regard the niceties of actualy knowing somethng. There is little more absurdthan a facile intellect with half an idea about nothing much at all.
Do you think I will miss your science free narratives,self aggrandising anecdotes, juvenile jibes or pahetic whining? So by all means go away – I have had more than enough of our nonsense.
Jim D | March 26, 2013 at 12:22 am |
“The surface air above the ocean is close to saturated. Can evaporation increase if you bombard it with IR, no, because C-C requires the temperature to increase first, unless you can figure a way the IR also dries the air out to make way for the new vapor from any added evaporation.”
Whoever told you the air was saturated over the ocean lied to you.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/model-data/reanalysis-1-reanalysis-2
70-80% between 45N and 45S latitude. 80-90% over most of the rest of it. Plenty of room for more water vapor.
It’s 100% at the surface it’s called fog. Fog happens but not a lot.
If the GPC is serious, it will have “sceptical” scientists as well as “mainstream”. Otherwise, the uncertainty specialist Judith Curry will be fighting a lonely battle to get them to recognise that there is even a shred of uncertainty.
So I started searching the group’s names to find out – starting from the bottom of course.
It seems that the group does indeed include a “skeptic”: From Jo Nova: “See for example Daniel Rothman, PNAS 2002 for a chart of pCO2 for the past 500 my. He says the chart show NO correlation between temp and CO2 levels.” http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller/
But a search for the next name, Warren Warren, indicates that the inclusion of Daniel Rothman may be in token only:
From “Reply to Warren Warren” by Roger Cohen, referring to the GPC speaker program as organised b y Warren Warren: “First, after all is said and done, the fact remains that non scientific activities were routinely used to exclude proposed speakers whose findings do not support climate doctrine, while known public advocates were given a pass, and that consequently the program reflects this imbalance. Whether it was religious belief, or an endorsement of the “wrong side” in a newspaper OpEd, or the vague charge that a person was simply “too adversarial,” any stick that could be used to beat on an opposition speaker was suitable ammunition to exclude that speaker. This despite the fact that the science in question had been peer reviewed and published. But advocates sailed through without so much as a question. Indeed if notable IPCCers such as Susan Solomon and Kerry Emmanuel had not declined their enthusiastically proffered invitations, the advocates would have run the table. In that case Israeli physicist Nir Shaviv, who finds results in opposition to the doctrine, would not have made the roster from his position as “back up speaker.” Even so, he is the only one of seven invited speakers chosen by GPC whose science does not conform to the doctrine, and even he was proposed under the condition that he present “both sides,” a requirement not applied to any other speaker. The old saying applies here: “If it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then… it’s a duck.” Plenty of quacking in the GPC.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/25/reply-to-warren-warren/ (Warren Warren’s original statement is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/24/the-aps-topical-group-on-the-physics-of-climate-reply-to-roger-cohen/)
The next, John Marston, appears not to be a “skeptic”. He is involved in making “recommendations about sustainable adaptation to climate change in the region [Turkey] over the next few hundred years”. http://bu.academia.edu/JohnMarston
I didn’t look any further. OK, it could be worse, but it really doesn’t look good. The resignation of prominent “skeptics” indicates that (a) they have no faith in the ability of the group to be unbiased, and (b) the “mainstream” will be even more able to dominate.
+1000
Somebody said:
Marston wrote an interesting paper called “Looking for new problems to solve? Consider the climate,” Physics, vol. 4, p. 20, 2011.
This is one of those call-to-arms pieces that implores scientists from other physics disciplines to consider looking at climate problems, and especially to those scientists familiar with stochastic or statistical processes.
It works as a pretty good motivator to consider climate science from different perspectives, and I referenced him in a recent blog post here:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/stochastic-analysis-of-log-sensitivity.html
Marston was also the co-author of the Direct Statistical Simulation paper which was highlighted on a blog post on CE recently.
Hint: The guy is a real scientist.
Cripes, I just clicked on the link that Mike Jonas made to John Marston and it gave me a start. It points to some archaeology dweeb from Boston University, and not the physicist John Marston from Brown University.
I thought I made a mistake and got trigger-happy when I saw Marston’s name mentioned, but then realized that Brown’s John Marston is exactly the guy you want to participate in this APS activity.
To Jonas: Another case of shoddy “skeptic” research. Par for the course.
Look again, Webby. The John M. Marston at Boston U is now at Brown. There are two John Marston’s now at Brown. John M. and John B. John M. the archeologist has expressed interest in climate change:
http://brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/people/past/marston.html
John B. Marston the physicist at Brown has no expressed interest in climate change:
http://brown.edu/Research/ECI/people/facultypage.php?id=10392
So your research is just as shoddy as the guy you accuse of shoddy research and my research is, of course, much better.
As to which John Marston of Brown University is the one on the list Curry sites is unknown at this point but if I had to guess from context I’d guess the physicist not the environmental researcher. I lean that way because the thrust is to get more physicists involved. But it was still negligent of you to not discover there were two John Marstons at Brown and only one of them, the non-physicist, is explicitely interested in how changes in the environment effect human civilization.
Thanks for playing but please try harder next time.
Correction. John M. Marston moved to Boston University (from Brown) in July 2012. So he’s currently at Boston.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/macmarston
Yes, it took me a second to see the bu.edu address and I knew it was Boston U.
Take a look at the archaeologist dude and you see a young version of Bill Nye the science guy. He’s got the bow-tie and everything.
I thought John Marston the archeologist was a dead ringer for John Sidles (aka fan of more discourse) the ideologist. Same bow tie, same chit eating grin. Looks can be deceiving though. Marston might not be a such a toomler. :-)
“some archaeology dweeb from Boston University”
Mea culpa.
“dweeb” is perhaps a bit rude. It was my fault, not his, that I got the wrong person.
It would have helped a lot if the links to the people in the original article led to information about them instead of to a log-in screen.
Brown University’s John B Marston appears sometimes to be called Brad, and John M Marston to be called Mac. The GPC John Marston is John B Marston – http://tinyurl.com/bmk3q5x – so I did have the wrong one.
Brad Marston has a strong intterest in climate modelling, but there is no sign of any scepticism of “mainstream” climate science.
http://www.theskyscrapers.org/brad-marston
http://phys.org/news124463227.html
http://www.futurity.org/earth-environment/basic-physics-may-speed-up-climate-modeling/
http://www.consequencesofglobalwarming.com/colleges/brown-university.html
http://brown.edu/Research/ECI/people/facultypage.php?id=10392
http://research.brown.edu/pdf/10392.pdf
If I wanted to be really cynical, I would say he is simply advocating a method of making the same mistakes faster.
So yes, I made a bad mistake, but correcting it doesn’t make the GPC look any better.
Judith
Compliments on your patience and efforts to uphold and extend the science based on sound physics.
In light of your forte on uncertainties,
Emphasize what we don’t know, and expose arguments from ignorance.
Emphasize evaluation of ALL the evidence, especially regarding clouds.
Compare the predictive skill of ALL models, not just GCMs.
Look at both stochastic methods and determinative models.
Examine evidence of solar/cosmic influences as well as anthropogenic effects. Simpler models that cover many orders of magnitude appear more credible than current GCM’s that have very poor skill over shorter periods.
e.g. The relationship between thunderstorm and solar activity for Brazil from 1951 to 2009 Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2013.03.010
Climatic variability over time scales spanning nine orders of magnitude: Connecting Milankovitch cycles with Hurst–Kolmogorov dynamics Surveys in Geophysics, 34 (2), 181–207, 2013.
Multi-scale harmonic model for solar and climate cyclical variation throughout the Holocene based on Jupiter–Saturn tidal frequencies plus the 11-year solar dynamo cycle
So there is supposed to finally be a debate about CAGW among climate scientists? From the already politicized APS? Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.
One question will tell the tale. Is there a genuine skeptic (not a faux skeptic like Mueller) among the members of the executive committee?
+1000
“Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”
Somehow I can’t see someone who now claims that the IPCC properly stated the risk, and understated the degree of certainty as to attribution, can be a skeptic under my definition.
But I will say this is the first time I have seen you say you are against taxation and regulation of CO2 to limit emissions. Welcome to the “team.”
This was supposed to be in response to Steve Mosher 10:57 am below.
> by virtue of the principle quality of the word economy […]
The auditing sciences have an important stake in that sphere of the economy.
“Mr. Mosher, if this is what you believe, then what has kept the earth’s temperature in such a narrow band throughout history, even when CO2 has been much higher than today? Doesn’t there have to be a negative feedback that acts to lower the temperature? Otherwise wouldn’t the CO2-temperature feedback always spiral out of control given that the oceans will outgas CO2 as they warm?
This is a serious, not snarky, question.”
##########################
Narrow band? hardly. you’ve been reading Willis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
dont forget that the response to C02 is a log response.
start reading here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Steven Mosher | March 26, 2013 at 11:24 pm |
Yeah, that Willis, pointing out things like the fact that over the last century the temperature has been flailing about in a “wide band” … a wide band of ± 0.3°C. Per century.
This, of course, means the system is stable to on the order of ± 0.1%, a tenth of a percent.
Are you truly calling a stability of plus or minus a tenth of a percent in a natural system a “wide band”, Steven? If so, I fear you’ll have to justify that with more than you’ve provided to date.
w.
An interesting definition:
Again, with our emphasis.
Compare with this:
http://judithcurry.com/2013/03/24/american-physical-society/#comment-306259
Again, our emphasis.
Gary. what does a real skeptic believe? how do you know one when you meet one?
A “real skeptic and believe” in one sentence is an oxymoron I believe…
I believe the short answer is a real skeptic “believes” empirical evidence; and is skeptical of that as well.
Steve,
I would say that a real skeptic in terms of the climate debate, the one that is the reason blogs like this garner so much attention is – a person who does not accept that the risks of increased warming/severe weather, as a result of anthropogenic CO2, justify decarbonizing the economy.
There are many reasons for rejecting CAGW; doubts regarding climate models, paleo records, current temp records, known unknowns, unknown unknows, the “pause,” uncertainty, etc., etc. But the common thread as the term is used in the larger debate is rejection of the CAGW “consensus” on the ultimate question.
This is why Mueller was never a “real” skeptic to other skeptics. I have never seen anything he wrote or said before BEST (or after), that suggested he rejected the consensus, rather than some of the methods used by the climate cognoscenti..
A real skeptic is skeptical of his skepticism.
“A “real skeptic and believe” in one sentence is an oxymoron I believe…”
a real skeptic believes in the scientific method
a real skeptic believes in logic
a real skeptic believes in thinking before he writes.
next.
Gary
I would say that a real skeptic in terms of the climate debate, the one that is the reason blogs like this garner so much attention is – a person who does not accept that the risks of increased warming/severe weather, as a result of anthropogenic CO2, justify decarbonizing the economy.
#########################
Oh. I believe that C02 will warm the planet
I believe that sensitivity is around 2-3C
I dont accept that the risk of increased warming severe weather
justify decarbonizing. That makes me a skeptic? hardly.
and you might be surprised about Muller’s view on those things.
You think that everyone who realizes that C02 is a danger accepts the solution of de carbonizing. Sorry, you are wrong.
Yes, I am also of the view that decarbonizing realistically won’t happen. Muller points to China and India, and I agree, as not being about to change their ways and other countries are on the up-ramp in energy usage per capita too. The realistic view is that change is coming. I think if we use all our carbon that change could exceed 6 C (possibly by a lot if you consider paleo evidence and wait long enough for the permanent ice to melt which also raises the sea level). We have to start saving now to prepare for change because it will be more expensive to raise money the longer we wait, or to tax people to pay for damage that could have been prevented. Economic sense is to spread the costs over time and plan ahead.
Most physicists realize that some type of decarbonizing is happening anyways, independent of climate change politics. See crude oil depletion and read Mueller’s books on the topic of resource depletion.
Physicists are also keenly aware of non-renewable resource depletion, such as is the case with Helium reserves, vital to experimental physics and medical research. A bill to prevent a global helium shortage just passed the House a few days ago:
http://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=324811
Key point to remember here is that helium was easily extracted as a by-product of conventional natural gas reserves, but with the advent of hydro-fractured unconventional supplies, a traditional source of helium has disappeared. Helium has no place to accumulate in tight shale, and the large fields of natural gas supply are depleting, and with that the helium. That is what has caused current and pending shortages.
The Federal Helium Reserve is scheduled to close this year, which was located in huge underground salt caverns (containing more than a billion cubic feet of storage). The feds probably want to clean their hands and let the market be accountable.
I hope Bart R will comment on this because the solution bears some resemblance to what he has suggested — to let the free-market bid up the price of valuable natural resources so that we all share the sacrifice as those become more and more scarce. The bill says to “provide American taxpayers with a fair return for this resource”.
The same goes for thermal pollutants such as CO2, bid up the price of valuable hydrocarbons that are owned by the commons, so that we can all share in the decisions being made that may impact the future. These aren’t easy problems to deal with and the solutions aren’t any easier.
Jim D
You state that warming of 6C is likely to occur some time in the future due to increased human GHG emissions.
This is silly, Jim.
Even using the IPCC AR4 mean 2xCO2 ECS of 3C, this would require a quadrupling of atmospheric CO2 (to 1472 ppmv)!
At the latest ECS estimates of around half this value, it would take an eight-fold increase (to 2944 ppmv)!
WEC 2010 estimates tell us that in 2008 the “inferred possible recoverable fossil fuel resources” remaining on our planet represented 85% of the total original amount (i.e. we had only used up 15% to 2008). Most estimates (Hubbert et al.) put the remaining resources much lower, so this is probably an upper estimate.
Using the WEC estimate means that the >maximum ever possible CO2 level from combusting all the remaining fossil fuels on our planet is:
385 + 0.85*(385-280) / 0.15 = 980 ppmv
NOT 1500 to 3000 ppmv
Come back down to Planet Earth, Jim, and forget these totally exaggerated projections – they just make you look silly.
Max
Steven Mosher
You captured it succinctly with your three bullet points.
I agree 100%
Max
Steven Mosher
For those who object to the use of the word “believe” in connection with “a real skeptic” (viz. the Bible story of “doubting Thomas”), your three bullet points could be modified slightly, as follows:
– a real skeptic
believes infollows the scientific method– a real skeptic
believes inuses logic– a real skeptic
believes in thinkingthinks before he writes.OK?
Max
Max says that 980 PPM is the correct number to use, as we will likely not combust any of the tremendous amounts of oil shale, methane hydrates, lignite, and peat moss that will remain unexploited (thank goodness).
At 3C sensitivity, we have already have had 1.25C warming as we moved from 295PPM to 395PPM. That is substantiated by the data from BEST land temperature records, which is faster to reach equilibrium. One can check my model here:
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2013/03/stochastic-analysis-of-log-sensitivity.html
As we reach 980PPM, we will see another 4C of warming using the same 3C sensitivity, bringing the total to 5.2C.
So Max is correct with his conservative, scientifically established number of 5.2C warming.
Max, how is 5.2C warming not a “dire” prediction, but JimD’s number of 6C is considered “silly” ?
Or is this another example of that relentless manipulation of numbers that you are becoming infamous for?
Steve,
“You think that everyone who realizes that C02 is a danger accepts the solution of de carbonizing.”
If I thought that, or more importantly wrote that, then I would be wrong. But I don’t, and I didn’t, so I’m not.
As to whether or not you are a skeptic, that is in the eye of the beholder. Ask Schmidt, Hansen, Trenberth et al. what they think of your position. Those who do see a danger to the planet from ACO2, the ones controlling the levers of power, seem to take the nuanced position of “lukewarmer” as a distinction without a difference.
But I am aware of the “lukewarmer” position. Dr. Curry, for instance, also believe CO2 emissions are a danger, but do not warrant decarbonizing. And her post clearly indicates that she is a member of the executive committee. Since I asked whether a skeptic had been appointed, I think it was clear I did not include lukewarmers in the definition. Though I should have used a more precise definition once you asked. (It was late, so sue me.)
So I will revise and extend my remarks to say a skeptic is – a person who does not accept that the risks of increased warming/severe weather, as a result of anthropogenic CO2, justify decarbonizing the economy, or otherwise extensively taxing and/or regulating CO2 emissions.
Comment?
I don’t care if “de-carbonizing” ‘the economy’ is a solution to climate problems or not, or at least not principally.
Clearly, economies can and have undertaken changes as large as or larger than fully “de-carbonizing” (which simply by itself is not the optimal ‘solution’ per se to CO2E levels). How many buggywhips are made today for uses unrelated to 50 Shades of Grey? The idea that it can’t be done is simply false.
Clearly, economic systems — by virtue of the principle quality of the word economy — will not only not experience switch from carbon-burning as a cost, but as a growth opportunity generating massive new opportunity if left to find their natural response to “de-carbonizing”. So the whole “costs m/b/trillions” line of claims is an Uneconomic idea.
I care principally that the Market is being manipulated due the whole “cheap energy” argument in a way that everyone understands is patently unfair, and an unfair Market is the worst possible outcome. It’s contractionary. It’s demotivational. It’s inequitable. And it isn’t working.
Various socialists and corporate communists and government fiat capitalists see the “cheap energy” promise as a road paved in gold, to make the lives of the poor better — well, that demonstrably has not worked; to stimulate prosperity for business — well, that demonstrably has not worked except for the Free Riders directly receiving subsidies (which they deny they get while rolling in taxpayer funds!); to grow the economy — well, that demonstrably does not work.
The largest component of the “cheap energy” mistake is failure to price inputs from the carbon cycle. Once upon a time, this failure was due to administrative impossibility and ignorance. Now, it’s simply the lobbying of Free Riders who suckle on the Commons through CO2E emission without paying for the benefit they receive to the owners of the resource, and in a much smaller way who create a need for massive research efforts that they ought be paying for on the principle of tort.
CO2E pricing is administrably feasible. The carbon cycle is rivalrous, scarce and excludable. By every Economic principle of equity it must be privatized on this basis.
Does my solution of this Market problem, requiring the government to enforce the standards of weights and measures of CO2E to allow its private owners to reap the rewards of the use of their portion of the carbon cycle, also fully “de-carbonize” industry? No. It just means the Law of Supply and Demand applies again.
You may argue about climate and regulations and costs all you want, but until the Market is fair, until prices are explicity and governed by the Law of Supply and Demand, everything said about the costs of ‘solutions’ is either baseless or socialist.
“For those who object to the use of the word “believe” in connection with “a real skeptic” (viz. the Bible story of “doubting Thomas”), your three bullet points could be modified slightly, as follows:
– a real skeptic follows the scientific method
– a real skeptic uses logic
– a real skeptic thinks before he writes.”
##############
Nice try.
why does a skeptic follow the scientific method? why does he use logic
why does he think before he writes?
or put another way, does he believe these actions are better than their alternative.
Having said all those things, I believe you are not a skeptic.
“So I will revise and extend my remarks to say a skeptic is – a person who does not accept that the risks of increased warming/severe weather, as a result of anthropogenic CO2, justify decarbonizing the economy, or otherwise extensively taxing and/or regulating CO2 emissions.”
Then I’m a skeptic and so is Muller. case closed.
manacker,
The problem with the Mosher/Max definition of skeptic, for purposes of the climate debate, is that there is no one in the debate, consensus, lukewarmer or skeptic, who would not claim to fit that three part definition. Gavin Schmidt for one. in his writings, clearly embraces all three. So does Steven Mosher. And you. So since we are all skeptics now, I guess the debate is over and we can just shut down all the blogs.
Progressive activists love to redefine words to the point of meaninglessness. That is why the constant switch in framing from global warming, to climate change, to climate disruption. It is a huge mistake to allow them to start redefining terms.
CAGW is a political movement. So any definition has to take that into account. Otherwise it obscures, rather than furthers, the debate.
It may come as a shock to some, but words often have multiple meanings depending on their usage:
“Oh dear, my dear aunt bought her coat cheap but sold it dear.”
The reason activists fight against terms like CAGW and skeptic is that they make it easier to discuss the underlying issues. Another word for labels is nouns. And it’s hard to have a discussion without them. Which is the point. That is why “fairness,” “for the children,” and “social justice” are the credo of the left. No one knows what the hell they mean, so how do you argue against them?
So Steve Mosher’s definition of skeptics, as modified by you, is a perfectly serviceable one. I just don’t think it’s terribly useful in the CAGW/AGW/we need more government climate debate.
“Next….”
Hang on Mr. Mosher, I know you have a bomb-proof trust in your own infallibility, however belief/ve is too much associated with faith, religion etc., therefore unsuitable for using it together with the word “skeptic”.
I prefer the corrected version of manacker above. I surely hope that, in your own field, you’re a skeptic as well?
manacker, the high unmitigated scenario for AR5 is 8.5 W/m2, equivalent to over 1300 ppm by 2100, but some of this is other GHGs. This is more than two doublings from 280, so 6 C is an underestimate based on that and 3 C sensitivity. You can read the justification paper on this scenario (Riahl et al., 2011) at
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0149-y
Steven Mosher | March 25, 2013 at 1:18 am |
Oh. I believe that C02 will warm the planet
I believe that sensitivity is around 2-3C
——–
Mr. Mosher, if this is what you believe, then what has kept the earth’s temperature in such a narrow band throughout history, even when CO2 has been much higher than today? Doesn’t there have to be a negative feedback that acts to lower the temperature? Otherwise wouldn’t the CO2-temperature feedback always spiral out of control given that the oceans will outgas CO2 as they warm?
This is a serious, not snarky, question.
Steven Mosher | March 25, 2013 at 10:57 am |
“Then I’m a skeptic and so is Muller. case closed.”
Case reopened. Nobody appointed you to be the judge.
David,
Gary wanted to play the game of who is the real skeptic. ameBy his definition, I count as one, as does Muller.
If you would like to play the game, offer your definition of what a true skeptic believes.
Everybody wants to be a skeptic. I declare we won.
============
This is one of the reasons why I’m a sceptic: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/25/climate-change-means-britons-greater-weather-_n_2947021.html?utm_hp_ref=uk
No True Skeptic
I just got an idea for a reality TV show. Stupid Fallacy Tricks. I hope you boys aren’t camera shy.
This response (with minor efdits) to Steve Mosher from yesterday got misthreaded.
“Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.” Richard Mueller from his NY Times op-ed.
Somehow I can’t see someone who now claims that the IPCC properly stated the risk, and understated the degree of certainty as to attribution, can be a skeptic under my definition.
But I will say this is the first time I have seen Mosher say he is against are against taxation and regulation of CO2 to limit emissions. Welcome to the “team.”
Mueller is in no way a skeptic as I defined it.
manacker | March 25, 2013 at 9:35 pm |
The CAGW hypothesis, as specifically outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report, has not yet passed that threshold. It has not been falsified, nor has it survived falsification attempts, nor has it been corroborated with empirical evidence, so it is still an uncorroborated hypothesis.
Could you cite, specifically, the ‘CAGW hypothesis’ from AR4?
I’ve been all through the report, and simply cannot find anything labelled ‘CAGW hypothesis’.
So I’m skeptical it exists, as the claim fails on the element of empirical evidence.
Whereas almost everything that I did find in AR4 has been subject to and survived multiple documented attempts to falsify, and is for the vast majority overwhelmingly corroborated with empirical evidence.
SO WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
(Hoping this is the good place, this time:)
> by virtue of the principle quality of the word economy […]
The auditing sciences have an important stake in that sphere of the economy.
Still wrong gary
Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.” Richard Mueller from his NY Times op-ed.
Somehow I can’t see someone who now claims that the IPCC properly stated the risk, and understated the degree of certainty as to attribution, can be a skeptic under my definition.”
################################################
easy.
1. your definition had to do with taxation.
2. I agree with everything Muller said above
a) its about the PAST rate of warming
b) humans are the cause
3. His statement says NOTHING about the RISK of future warming
“But I will say this is the first time I have seen Mosher say he is against are against taxation and regulation of CO2 to limit emissions. Welcome to the “team.”
Mueller is in no way a skeptic as I defined it.”
#########################
well, since he does not think taht taxation is a way to solve the problem
and since he is dedicated to helping China develop its fossil fuels, he’s probably more of a skeptic than you are.
Next, Ross McKittrick, as skeptic, has proposed a carbon tax, so where are you with that?
Hoi:
Hoi Polloi | March 25, 2013 at 11:19 am |
“Next….”
Hang on Mr. Mosher, I know you have a bomb-proof trust in your own infallibility, however belief/ve is too much associated with faith, religion etc., therefore unsuitable for using it together with the word “skeptic”.
I prefer the corrected version of manacker above. I surely hope that, in your own field, you’re a skeptic as well?
##############################
1. skeptics typically challenge knowledge and argue that one only has belief, not knowledge.
2. You prefer manakers formulation. Fine. do you believe in it?
3. why do you believe it?
4. are you sure?
Steve,
Now you’re just being disingenuous.
You said:
“1. your definition had to do with taxation.”
What I actually said:
“a person who does not accept that the risks of [CAGW] justify decarbonizing the economy, or otherwise extensively taxing and/or regulating CO2 emissions.”
You said:
“3. His statement says NOTHING about the RISK of future warming”
What Mueller actually said:
Mueller’s op-ed began with: “Call me a converted skeptic.” Converted to what? Well, look further down in the op-ed:
“What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.”
Gee, he actually used the words “future” and “warming.” Imagine that.
But again, if you are saying you do not favor taxation and regulation of carbon based energy, then you are indeed a skeptic as I defined it.
But then, you haven’t actually said that anywhere I have seen. So why not take the opportunity to say you oppose the taxation and regulation of energy for the purpose of limiting CO2 emissions.
And if you can cite to a quote from Mueller saying he is against taxation and regulation of energy to limit CO2 emissions, then I will concede that he is one too.
But absent statements to that effect, no skeptic cigar for either of you.
Steve,
As to Ross McKitrick, when I read what he wrote about his pigovian style tax, he was not proposing it as a good idea, but as a less bad idea compared to a straight out carbon tax. I haven’t read it in a while, but I remember him claiming that, if we were going to be stuck with a tax, it made more sense to have one that actually attempted to be tied to actual warming of the climate. While I think his proposal was a bad idea, it did not make him a consensus advocate.
Pfah, Muller is a sceptic of Michael Piltdown Mann. With respect to most else about climate he is a true believer in CAGW, even to the extent of believing in his own absurd attribution for warming.
moshe, where would we be without the warming that Muller attributes to man?
====================
moshe, you could ask Muller what he thinks about the Marcott shenanigans. I’m not talking about the way it was presented to the media, rather about Steve’s auditing. Ask, also, in particular, how he likes the latest hockey stick?
========================
‘J’accuse!’
H/t Voltaire.
My definition of a real skeptic … some one who’s
not dead.
a genuine skeptic
A genuine skeptic, following the skeptical process, has an obligation to regard any conclusion which has survived due skepticism to be accurate or very nearly true until new phenomena require amendment or reconsideration.
Anyone who neglects this obligation is no skeptic, but merely a denier.
Bart R
A “rational” (or “scientific”) “skeptic” is, by definition a person, who insists on empirical evidence before accepting the validity of a proposed hypothesis (Feynman).
For example, hypotheses such as “creationism” or “intelligent design”, which are not supported by such empirical evidence, are rejected by the “rational skeptic”.
If there have been repeated scientific attempts to falsify the hypothesis (Popper), and these have all failed, the hypothesis gains credence.
Then it becomes the obligation of the skeptic (as you write) to acknowledge that the hypothesis has survived falsification attempts and to accept it provisionally until new empirical data can be presented, which falsify it.
The CAGW hypothesis, as specifically outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report, has not yet passed that threshold. It has not been falsified, nor has it survived falsification attempts, nor has it been corroborated with empirical evidence, so it is still an uncorroborated hypothesis.
It is quite possible that falsification attempts will be made of the CAGW hypothesis (if someone can figure out how this hypothesis could be falsified), and it is conceivable that the hypothesis could survive such attempts.
In this case the hypothesis would gain credence and rational skeptics (including myself) would have to acknowledge this and provisionally accept the hypothesis.
But we are not there yet, Bart.
Max
manacker, is it true that the only empirical evidence they will accept is warming by several degrees over a period of a century, or would it take less time to accumulate the empirical warming evidence needed? We are already close to the one degree mark, which is clearly not enough yet.
Jim D
You fall into a basic logic trap of equating observed warming with a validation of the premise that AGW is a significant driver of our climate.
There is a missing link, which you replace with a leap of faith (but faith has nothing to do with science, Jim).
We know it is warming (at least it was until the end of the 20thC).
We have a hypothesis that this warming was caused largely by increased GH gas concentrations.
We have model simulations, based on the “laws of physics”, which tell us that this could be the reason for most of the past warming.
We have measurements that tell us that atmospheric concentration of CO2, the second most important GH gas (after water vapor) has increased over time.
We also know that human activity causes the emission of large amounts of CO2 (plus smaller amounts of other trace GH gases).
We even have a defined mechanism: the IR absorption capacity of CO2 (and other GH gases).
We postulate that this mechanism results in a significant greenhouse warming effect.
We postulate further that this GH effect is amplified three-fold by strong positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds.
From these estimates, we predict that a doubling of CO2 concentrations will lead to mean warming of around 3C, and that warming from human greenhouse gas emissions will reach potentially catastrophic levels (the “CAGW” premise, as specifically outlined by IPCC in AR4).
But we do not have empirical evidence to support these estimates or to tell us why it is warming.
We see that it has warmed since the modern temperature record started in 1850, long before there were any significant human CO2 emissions – the long-term rate of warming has been around 0.6C per century
Upon closer examination, we see that the correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature is anything but robust – the temperature seems to follow a random walk instead.
There are multi-decadal periods of warming followed by periods of slight cooling in half cycles lasting ~30 years, which have nothing to do with CO2 concentrations.
We have just completed the last of these warming cycles and appear to have started a cycle of slight cooling since around 2001.
There have been many rationalizations for these cycles, but no real explanations.
There is no empirical evidence linking the observed warming with the increased GHG concentrations, and certainly none to corroborate the “CAGW” hypothesis..
So that is where we stand today, Jim.
We have entered a period of no apparent warming (in fact slight cooling), but it is anyone’s guess where we are headed.
As a rational skeptic, I am of the personal opinion that we will soon either validate or falsify the premise that human GHGs (primarily CO2) are a principal driver of our climate, and hence the “CAGW” hypothesis.
If we see a continuation of the present lack of warming (or slight cooling) over another decade or two, despite unabated human GHG emissions and concentrations reaching record levels, the empirical evidence will essentially have falsified the “CAGW” hypothesis.
If, however, the warming of the late 20thC should resume and continue for another decade or two at that rapid rate, the empirical evidence will have given strong support to the validity of the “CAGW” hypothesis.
And while this still may not be empirical evidence, it will go a long way toward corroborating the “CAGW” hypothesis.
That’s how this rational skeptic sees it, Jim.
Max
manacker | March 25, 2013 at 9:35 pm |
“For example, hypotheses such as “creationism” or “intelligent design”, which are not supported by such empirical evidence, are rejected by the “rational skeptic”.”
Living cells are the most complicated bits of machinery in existence. Incredibly complex with construction and operating instructions digitally coded in millions or billions of base four digits in what can only be described as like the old paper tapes used for computer program storage.
There only analog to machines like this were created by people. Abstract codes known to exist in the universe either came from a human mind or the source is unknown. Complex machines wth many interdependent moving parts working together to serve some specific function known to exist in the universe came from either a human mind or the source is unknown.
So all the complexity in the universe similar to that found in living things is either unknown in origin or came from the human mind.
In other words we know of NO source for this kind of complexity except intelligent design. And you think there’s no evidence for intelligent design? I say to you sir there is no evidence EXCEPT intelligent design.
So there.
David Springer
Not to get into an argument over a side issue here.
I picked “creationism” and “intelligent design” as two hypotheses, which have a wide following, but neither of which has been corroborated by empirical evidence.
You say (and so did Einstein) that there must have been some all-powerful force behind the creation of our universe. Makes sense.
But just like the CAGW hypothesis (that human CO2 is dramatically changing our climate and thus represents a serious potential threat to humanity and our environment) it has NOT been corroborated by empirical evidence.
Also, just like CAGW it has not been falsified.
So both premises remain uncorroborated (and also unfalsified) hypotheses.
That’s how I see it, anyway.
“Intelligent design” will probably never be falsified (I doubt that it even is “falsifiable”).
BUT I am convinced that CAGW would be falsified if we have another 15-20 years of essentially no warming despite continued unabated human GHG emissions, because it would become evident that something else is driving our climate beside human GHGs.
Max
manaker:
“A “rational” (or “scientific”) “skeptic” is, by definition a person, who insists on empirical evidence before accepting the validity of a proposed hypothesis (Feynman).
####################################
no that would be an empricist. second please dont appeal to feynman when arguing for empiricism or skepticism. he’s no authority, and if he was, appealing to him would not be skeptical practice and thirdly he did not believe what you attribute to him.
“For example, hypotheses such as “creationism” or “intelligent design”, which are not supported by such empirical evidence, are rejected by the “rational skeptic”.
If there have been repeated scientific attempts to falsify the hypothesis (Popper), and these have all failed, the hypothesis gains credence.
Then it becomes the obligation of the skeptic (as you write) to acknowledge that the hypothesis has survived falsification attempts and to accept it provisionally until new empirical data can be presented, which falsify it.
#############################
wow, another appeal to authority to define skepticism. How about you test your definition scientifically. Guess what very little of what popper says is actually factually empirically how science works.
no theory is simply falsified. Popper of course would agree with this. so again you cant get your appeal to authority correct. So much for your theory of skeptcism
############################
“The CAGW hypothesis, as specifically outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report, has not yet passed that threshold. It has not been falsified, nor has it survived falsification attempts, nor has it been corroborated with empirical evidence, so it is still an uncorroborated hypothesis.
It is quite possible that falsification attempts will be made of the CAGW hypothesis (if someone can figure out how this hypothesis could be falsified), and it is conceivable that the hypothesis could survive such attempts.
In this case the hypothesis would gain credence and rational skeptics (including myself) would have to acknowledge this and provisionally accept the hypothesis.
But we are not there yet, Bart.
#################################
much better. The question is what would somebody have to show you to change your mind?
be specific, and no appeals to sham authorities.
Max
manacker, you started out by disagreeing with me, but then affirming what I said, which is that empirical evidence to you would be continued warming, like the late 20th century for the next few decades. So you don’t have any sort of empirical evidence that can help you decide the validity of AGW until then. You have rejected paleoclimate as empirical evidence when it correlates all the warm periods with high CO2 and cooler periods with low CO2 and gives high sensitivity corroborating the ideas of AGW. You have rejected GCMs that can explain current global climate zones will still work when perturbed by a 1% increase in radiative forcing as with doubling CO2 when they can represent much larger local changes with latitude or annual cycle, typically a 30 C temperature range in each case.
Where I reside, a local station broadcasts a radio show about the paranormal for 1 hour each night of the week. It has been running for 5 years now. The hosts of that show and the listeners are skeptical about the fact that ghosts and space aliens don’t exist. Tonight they talked to the author of a book claiming that the existence of a 1200 ton cut stone in Lebanon proved that man descended from space aliens. The old guy could barely talk and create a coherent thought, yet the host was unperturbed. You see, he had his substantiating empirical evidence negating the negative, AHA!
There is another very popular nationally syndicated radio show about UFO’s that runs for 4 hours each night. The hosts of that show are equally skeptical about the fact that space aliens don’t exist.
The “skeptics” on this commenting board are no different than the skeptics that flock to these kind of shows. In particular, they need to hear confirming voices which negate the existence of man’s impact on the environment.
On the other hand,
A real skeptic questions whether adding 2 PPM of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere every year is such a good idea.
A real skeptic questions whether we should continue depending on finite fossil fuels without considering alternative energy options.
Whereas,
A fake skeptic questions why the real skeptic is asking these questions.
You see the fake skeptic believes in ghosts, and space aliens, and infinite fuel, and safe pollution, and asserts a conspiracy to cover up these hidden truths. They also need to redefine the term skeptic to mean exactly the opposite of what science says it means in order to create a logical facade. And they pull in the ghost of Feynman to help reinforce this worldview …. how very apropos.
Note how this classification of fake skeptic also works to describe the Intelligent Design believer.
These guys are skeptical about the fact that reality wasn’t designed by a superior being. In first-order logic, this is referred to as “negation as failure” and is well known in practical AI applications. Unless you put in a fact that states “universe_not_designed_by_intelligent_entity” , someone semantically querying “universe_not_designed_by_intelligent_entity” will get back false, and therefore conclude that “designed_by_intelligent_entity” is true.
This all sounds kind of silly, but people have trouble reasoning about negative logic in general, and are silly putty in the hands of the charlatans that no how to use negative and circular logic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance
Everything on this commenting site follows from this observation. We’ve got your Chewbacca, the Cripwell Criteria, the Girma Gobbles, MiniMax falsification, Dave S the Devi’s Advocate, the Chief of Chaos from Down Under, Captain Gibberish, etc.
Negative logic from top to bottom.
This also explains why Willard has a field day every day.
Mosh
You may know a lot about a lot of things, but I sure as hell don’t need a lecture from you about the meaning of “rational skepticism” or “what Feynman really meant”.
You can check out Wiki:
AND
From “Authority of Experimant”:
https://classesv2.yale.edu/access/wiki/site/chem124_f08/authority_of_experiment.html
‘Nuff said, Mosh.
Max
PS Model runs are not “experiments”, Mosh, and they do not provide “empirical evidence”.
Jim D
A tip: improve your reading skills.
You write:
But this is not what I wrote. I wrote (bold type added):
Got it this time? Another decade or two of warming at the rate of the late 20thC still may not be empirical evidence [to support the “CAGW” hypothesis], but it will go a long way toward corroborating it in my opinion, until real empirical evidence comes along to either falsify or validate it.
In the same post I wrote:
Would you agree with this statement?
Now to paleo-climate studies.
You write:
Jim, you and I both know that these are extremely dicey for many reasons. I consider them not much better than reading tea leaves, because one can essentially get any answer one is looking for by cherry-picking the appropriate time period in our planet’s distant geological past, relying on subjective interpretations of dicey proxy data, ignoring unknowns and uncertainty and applying the argument from ignorance, “we can only explain X if we assume Y…”.
And to model simulations you write:
Climate models are great, Jim, and I certainly don’t “reject them” as good background information, but they do not provide any empirical evidence, because the output is only as good as the programmed input (GIGO).
Empirical evidence, as insisted on by the rational (or scientific) skeptic is based on actual physical observations or reproducible experimentation. And, Jim, this is lacking so far for the “CAGW” hypothesis as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report.
I’m not changing my view on that, even if I have stated that a decade or two of warming at the late 20thC rate with warming approaching the rate forecast by IPCC of 0.2C per decade would get me personally to re-evaluating my position provisionally, at least until empirical evidence is presented to either falsify or validate the “CAGW” hypothesis. (IOW, the “science is NOT settled”, in my view.)
I hope I’ve made myself clear, and I’d appreciate an answer from you on whether or not you would accept that the “CAGW” hypothesis has essentially been falsified if global average temperature continues not to warm over the next decade or two despite unabated GHG emissions.
Max
Max,
ID is as falsifiable as mud-to-microbe evolution by law & chance is demonstrable. ID’s main tenet is that law and chance is insufficient for the task of creating complex machinery of life and abstract codes contained therein in a finite universe. Demonstration that law and chance is sufficient then constitutes falsfication. It’s not actually demonstrated that ID wasn’t how organic life came to exist if another means is demonstrated but it makes intelligent design unnecessary. Application of Occam’s Razor culls the unnecessary.
It’s already demonstrated the intelligent agents can design intricate machines and abstract codes de novo. The computer you’re using is proof positive of that as is the library of congress, the space shuttle, and any number of other constructions that are next to impossible in a finite universe without an intelligent mind to conceive and agency to construct.
What remains undemonstrated is that the same order of complex machinery and abstract codes can appear by law and chance alone in the same finite universe. So far intelligent design is the only proven-capable source of such things.
I don’t how I could possibly be more objective. Only one means of creating complex machinery and abstract codes is demonstrated. I don’t understand how the only proven method could possibly not be the null hypothesis. Please explain why the law and chance hypothesis should be the null hypothesis if you disagree. I’ve never seen a defense for it that holds water but who knows maybe you could be the first. The usual response is humans are the only agency that does it and humans didn’t exist billions of years ago. How that proves human agency didn’t exist billions of years ago in a galaxy far far away is beyond me and it’s also beyond me how that proves no other agency ever existed. Then we move along to the who designed the designer gambit. How should I know? Who made the material in materialism? Two can play the infinite regression game so that’s a stalemate.
I’ve heard it all but I always like to give noobs a chance to say something that might not have been said before a million times.
Max,
As always your definition of rational skeptic is one that uses all tricks to make his views look something that they are not. He makes is own false interpretation of how scientific evidence is obtaining accepting only those methods that are too powerless for leading to results and rejecting all progress in science. He refers to big names like Feynman making a caricature of him and interpreting his words out of context to imply something that they have never meant.
Rational skeptic? you? Pah! You are a propagandist, not a rational skeptic.
Pah, Pekka, we see the propagandists stretch the bounds of reason to maintain a narrative of disastrous warming. You’ve seen it yourself. Is that OK?
======================
Pekka,
Have you thrown your hat in the ring with the trolls?
Your last sentence to Manacker with slight rewording would apply to you and the others doomsayers:
Objective scientist? “you? Pah! You are a propagandist, not an” objective scientist.
Once a scientist becomes an advocate for a cause he/she is no longer a scientist.
Good grief, Pekka. Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning to put you into such a foul mood? I couldn’t determine if there was any substance mixed in with that stream of invective at Manacker. Did I miss something?
Pekka
I am surprised that someone who claims to be a scientist would write such a silly comment as you’ve just written me, with the accusation.
The definition of a “rational (or scientific) skeptic”, which I posted is not my definition, but that of Wiki.
It appears to me that you, a scientist of all people, are trying to weasel out of the need for empirical evidence to support a scientific hypothesis before it can be corroborated and accepted as reliable scientific information, according to the scientific method.
That empirical evidence is lacking for the “CAGW hypothesis”, as specifically outlined by IPCC in AR4, Pekka, and you know it.
Otherwise you would cite it.
Stick with discussing the science, Pekka, rather than attacking others.
It doesn’t look good for a scientist.
Makes you look like you aren’t objective.
Max
david springer
To your last comment.
I haven’t done much thinking or reading on the ID question.
I know that Einstein is said to have remarked that a “higher power” must have been involved in the creation of the universe.
And I’ve seen articles stating that ID could neither be falsified or corroborated with empirical evidence.
For this reason, I used it as an example, similar to CAGW .
But I don’t want to get sidetracked into a specific discussion of ID.
Max
WHT –
Check it out:
Coast to Coat AM, baby.
That’s the negative logic I am referring to. It makes the brain hurt just trying to process it. The “skeptics” gobble it up, however. They don’t care, as it’s just more FUD that they welcome in their quest to avoid reality.
That’s the negative logic I am referring to.
“Rational skepticism” = We can’t prove that “human agency didn’t exist billions of years ago in a galaxy far far away.”
I’m an agnostic and my coffee spewed when I read that one. I had to check the radio to make sure it wasn’t on and somehow I confused reading Climate Etc. with listening to Coast to Coast, AM.
Hey, Pekka; is that OK?
========
@Joshua
Agnosticism is the only rational position based on pure reason. I am agnostic as well. But just because you don’t know for sure doesn’t mean you can’t lean one way or the other. I know a lot about computers. As I studied the machinery inside living cells it became immediately apparent that cells are doing a lot of digital information processing. The construction of protein resembles nothing so much as a “pick & place” machine that robotically assembles printed circuit boards. The DNA molecule is a serial stream of base-4 digits where triplets encode stop and start bits plus a 20 character alphabet of amino acids. This resembles nothing so much as morse code. It’s abstract. DNA is the cell’s non-volatile storage and is organized like a tape drive. Strings of these characters hundreds of symbols in length specify the construction of 3 dimensional building blocks called proteins and enzymes. When a specific protein is needed a signaling molecule starts a sequence of events where the tape is spooled to the proper storage location and copy of the needed data is made in a another serial storage format called RNA. RNA is the equivalent of volatile storage. The copy of the data encoded into the RNA molecule is transported to the pick & place machine called a ribosome. The RNA tape feeds through a reader in the ribosome and as each character is read off the machine grabs the specified amino acid and adds it on the polymer it is constructing which spits out the other end. This just about exactly how industrial pick & place machines work.
Now when somebody tells me that something as complex as a pick & place self-assembled from a random dance of atoms I question either their sanity if they’re informed about how micro-molecular machinery works in living cells or otherwise assume they’re just ignorant.
“Is there a genuine skeptic (not a faux skeptic like Mueller) among the members of the executive committee?”
Daniel Rothman? From Jo Nova: “See for example Daniel Rothman, PNAS 2002 for a chart of pCO2 for the past 500 my. He says the chart show NO correlation between temp and CO2 levels.” http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/muller/
Mike Jonas: Did you retract the John Marston boo-boo you made?
The statement by the GPC is encouraging and I do wish the group well.
Reblogged this on grumpydenier.
Judith Curry,
I applaud your intent and effort. I am sure your voice will be heard…although not paid attention to.
It seems that the purpose of the gathering is to bring the known physics to the discussion.
Pardon me if I remain skeptical. The pre-supposition is that the physics of climate science is known. As an instance, others have pointed out, our sun’s output, most currently UV, is just being explored on its impact upon the Stratosphere, and such influence upon the Tropopause and such influence upon the Troposphere etc. That is, exploring a top down approach vs a bottom up approach that the current physics enjoys a welcoming reception.
To me, there is not enough known. We will have yet another pronouncement from an “expert panel.”
I believe we need more exploration and not a summary of the known physics. If exploration is your message, I welcome that message.
RiH008, one has to believe that W/m2 is W/m2 and so it makes no difference if the photons reaching the Earth are the near uv or IR solar output is flatter than a pool-table. You are not allowed to even thing that different solar spectra can change the Earth in any way what so ever.
2 W/m2 of IR is identical in all ways to 2 W/m2 of blue or red light.
Never mention differences in the location where energy is absorbed or what albedo means across the spectral range.
“Here is my advice to the GPC: First, drop the APS Statement on Climate Change. The timing and content of the 2007 statement indicates that it is entirely derivative from the IPCC AR4, albeit more ‘alarming.’ The 2010 addendum doesn’t add much. So what is the point of the statement? Apparently, to ‘inform the public’ on this controversial issue by appealing to the ‘authority’ of the society. Does anyone pay attention to the APS statement as their primary source of information (e.g. rather than the IPCC or the NRC)? I suspect that no one paid any attention to the APS statement until Happer et al. started complaining about it, resigning, etc. All this detracts from the scientific and public credibility of the APS.”
Does anyone pay attention to the statement? All the people complaining about it seem to think it’s pretty important.
Maybe you should tell Happer et al to STFU if it isn’t that important.
The statement is not important, and only a small number are complaining about it. Well, that figures.
I suspect the complainers aren’t important too.
Max_OK
And the same goes for the defectors, right?
Sounds like Pope Leo X, when he heard of Martin Luther (what the hell, just a bunch of crackpots and malcontents – it’ll never amount to anything!).
And then there was good ol’ King George III (who are those insolent complainers over there? Tax ’em!)
Max_CH
Max_Ch, I think I know why you are comparing the APS protestors to Martin Luther. Luther thought lying was useful. He advised Philip I to tell a good strong lie.
Max_OK
You stray from your original premise, namely that the “complainers” (and defectors) “aren’t important”.
That’s where Leo X and George III were both wrong.
And you may turn out to be just as wrong.
Max_CH
Max_Ch, I can understand how it makes you feel good to believe the APS is going to be coerced, but you may be setting yourself up for disappointment.
Max_OK
I have no opinion on whether or not the (current leadership of the) APS will be “coerced”.
Leo X was also not “coerced” by Martin Luther, believing until his death that this “Reformation thingy” was just a bubble, and that the “complainers weren’t important”.
George III believed the same about those pesky colonists, who were complaining about a tea tax.
But both turned out to be wrong.
Max_CH
Max_CH, you are making me laugh. The American Revolutionaries were never employed by ExxonMobile, nor were they associated with a right-wing think tank. I believe it’s also safe to say few were old guys in their 80’s.
BTW, I am a descendant of a Revolutionary War veteran. He got some land for his service.
“The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”
It is the cobination of “incontrovertible” with the present tense that makes the above statement objectionable to this scientist. It is equally incontravertible that past evidence shows the on again/ off again nature of global warming (past tense). It is this strange behaviour that requres more investigation by science.
Congratulations, Judith, on being a member of the executive of the GPC.and I submit my own paper on Climate (see my website above) as a possible solution to the problems raised by the APS paper and the Hal Lewis resignation letter. It is clear to me that further research is requred to understand the om/off nature of climate change.
Nobel Laureate Dr. Ivar Giaever observed:
I find the IPCC’s projections of “global warming” to be an unverified, unvalidated argument from ignorance with little understanding of or attention to scientific forecasting.
e.g., see the pragmatic perspective of reknowned aerospace engineer Burt Rutan from a lifetime of practice in evaluating ALL the available evidence.
We look forward to the APS exploring the full range of physics involved in climate and quantifying all the related uncertainties involved. Hopefully it will then recognize how great an embarrassment it is has been to physicists to claim that “(major anthropogenic) global warming” is “incontrovertible”.
JC
I (along with Daniel Rothman) are the newest members of the Executive Committee.
Congratulation JC.
That is great news.
First, Judith, my congratulations on your participation in the GPC. I’m sure that your being there will be productive. Also congratulations on the invitation to make a presentation to the APS, although you weren’t able to accept.
However, I was saddened to see that the reigning Prince of Non-Archiving of Publicly Funded Data, Lonnie Thompson, was selected to give one of the Kaevli lectures. It let me know that you are just a token player. If Lonnie Thompson is their chosen lecture boy, then I fear little has changed, the fix is already in.
Ah, well, the story continues. Again, my congratulations.
w.
You mean the Lonnie Thompson with the recent heart transplant?
Give it up for the guy. Kudos, Lonnie.
WebHubTelescope | March 25, 2013 at 1:50 am
While I wish any man well after an operation, why on earth would Lonnie’s health problems be of the slightest interest to the question at hand?
In any case, it’s not clear that the transplant succeeded, because Lonnie still heartlessly refuses to archive his taxpayer-funded data. The climate orthodoxy refuse to comment on this … so he continues. You seem to approve, Webbie … and he continues.
Me, I disapprove, whether he has a new heart or not. The NYT slobbers all over him in their hagiography, viz:
This is what passes for reporting, some high school girl’s breathless description of her man?
Yeah, he did all of that. He got to take mountain vacations on the taxpayer’s dime to collect the data he claims is so important … and then the prick REFUSED TO ARCHIVE THE DATA. If he dies it may all vanish. Grey versions are in circulation. These are irreplaceable records, and he wants to squat on them, and just gives the finger to everyone who asks him to archive.
So no, I have no respect for the man at all. And the idea that he is picked by the APS to give their lectures proves that they don’t give a damn about scientific ethics and honesty.
We paid him to collect the data, he flat-out refuses to archive it, and the APS honors him???
Then screw him, the APS, and the heart transplant he rode in on, Webbie … I can see why people are resigning from the Society in protest.
w.
Regarding Lonnie Thompson, Willis says “Then screw him, the APS, and the heart transplant he rode in on, Webbie … I can see why people are resigning from the Society in protest.”
_______
Sounds like you had some unsatisfactory dealings with Thompson. I would like to hear his side of the story.
How many of the 50,000 APS members resigned over the organization’s statement on climate? I suspect it was less than one-tenth of one percent (less than 50 members), and it wouldn’t surprise me if the number was even lower.
Anyway, the APS is better off without these cranks and weirdos.
Are you a member of any organizations? If so, please let me know what they are, because if I belong to any of ’em, I am canceling my membership.
Yes, I would much rather hear the heart-warming story of how Willis recovered from the klap after an unfortunate encounter with three contagious subjects. Kudos to Willis and congratulations on overcoming that near-death encounter.
“Lonnie still heartlessly refuses to archive his taxpayer-funded data.”
Well, Willis, I went over to the NOAA Ice core archive and found this impressive collection. Is there something you particularly wanted?
Nick Stokes, you’re easily impressed. For some information on what has not been archived, read these two posts. A relevant quote:
Brandon sez:
That’s odd, because I am easily impressed by Nick Stokes. The guy is a genius, seriously. He knows his physics inside-and-out, and that interactive web server of his is an amazing piece of work.
Brandon,
That’s 12 icecore items out of a total archived by NOAA of 181. Yes, I think that’s not bad. And it’s only the ones where his name comes first.
But Willis clearly has his heart set on something missing. I’m just wondering what it is?
Scientific adviser to Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. He missed on the title, shoulda been ‘A Convenient Untruth’.
He could deny responsibility for the errors, he could do almost anything. Behind every good man, there is Kodachrome.
=================
Kim re Gore’s ‘A Convenient Untruth” is herewith awarded
a triple plus one. Lol.
Heh, Beth, I’ve been using that one for so long I’ve forgotten whether I invented it or stole it. The odds are I stole it, because most of my stuff is.
=============
Nick Stokes, you say you’re “just wondering” what something is, but when I attempted to give you information about it, you… ignored it. I can’t imagine you’re that curious. If I’m wrong, and you actually care to read what people say to you, we can discuss what data Thompson has archived and whether or not it’s sufficient.
In the meantime, I’ll just point out one thing. Included in the “12 icecore items” you referred to are archives like this one. It has two columns, 100 rows each. Thompson received a sizable grant to gather data at a site, and that is what he archived. And he archived that only when forced.
You might be impressed by behavior like that. It’ll put you in the minority.
WebHubTelescope | March 25, 2013 at 9:26 am |
“I am easily impressed by Nick Stokes.”
My bold.
Well Michael I’m not sure about WE but it sure fits WEbby. :-)
“In the meantime, I’ll just point out one thing. Included in the “12 icecore items” you referred to are archives like this one. It has two columns, 100 rows each. Thompson received a sizable grant to gather data at a site, and that is what he archived. And he archived that only when forced.”
The archive is the data that formed the basis of a paper in Science (2000) and Climatic Change (2003). Somebody thought decadal resolution of a millenium of Himalayan glacier record was important. He archived it in 2004. Who was forcing him?
So Nick, 12 out of 181 is sufficient for you? Ge, maybe I should only pay 12 out of every 181 tax dollars I owe, especially because my wife’s name is on many of them.
This attitude of yours, Nick, is why, in spite of the fact you probably are a smart guy, I have no respect for you.
Come out to the ral world where accountability is not only important, it’s mandatory.
Not only am I impressed with Nick’s scientific and software skills, I am impressed with his statistical and math skills.
Climate science is really an applied science field and the more that you can bring to the table, the more you can accomplish.
Here’s the URL that was hidden under one of Chebacca’s title:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/
Notice the title:
Lonnie and Ellen, A Serial Non-Archiving Couple.
That is all.
Yup.
A very big THANK YOU to the Auditor.
k,
“So Nick, 12 out of 181 is sufficient for you?”
You seem to take pride in indifference to the facts. We’re told:
“Lonnie still heartlessly refuses to archive his taxpayer-funded data…
He got to take mountain vacations on the taxpayer’s dime to collect the data he claims is so important … and then the prick REFUSED TO ARCHIVE THE DATA.”
and yet on checking the archive more fully, he has 15 contributions. It’s a big field and a big archive. But the next most prolific contributors are Parrenin and Pedro, each with five.
Roger thankfully comments:
http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/01/lonnie-and-ellen-serial-non-archivers/#comment-341767
Righteous hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Nick Stokes, you have to be delusional or willfully obtuse to think a decadally averaged series “is the data that formed the basis of [the] paper.” That’s fitting as you yet again ask a question while ignoring the sources that answer it. You asked, “Who was forcing him.” The second link I provided includes this paragraph:
The fact you flagrantly ignore other people’s contributions to discussions wastes everyone’s time. It also makes you look like a fool.
WebHubTelescope, can you read any better than Nick Stokes?
Brandon, so I have to learn to read. OK, lesson 1
” And he archived that only when forced.”
means he archived the data that he actually used in a timely way in accordance with the new Journal policy
And
“the prick REFUSED TO ARCHIVE THE DATA.”
means that his archive did not satisfy Steve McIntyre. Well, what would?
my suggestion is that you should not listen to people about archiving data who have no verifiable experience or expertise in archiving data.
Another way to put this is as follows. Don’t listen to Nick or Willard, they are the skydragons fighting against what is well known about the importance of archiving data and providing code.
Instead listen to Victoria. she kicks ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZIxzTsvWhw
Or read these guys
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/supportingyourinstitution/researchexcellence/researchintegrity.aspx
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/supportingyourinstitution/researchexcellence/managingyourresearchdata.aspx
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Even Boulten is learning:
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/26/boulton-on-scientific-practice-and-malpractice.html
or these guys
> Don’t listen to Nick or Willard, they are the skydragons fighting against what is well known about the importance of archiving data and providing code.
Black hat marketing at work.
Dark shadows in transparencies.
===========
TWO CASE HISTORIES
Assessment 1: In retrospect, the APS was largely right on the science (e.g., cancer risk associated to electromagnetic fields)
Assessment 2: In retrospect, the APS was largely wrong on the engineering (e.g., Japan/TEPCO’s reactor safety proved to be gravely deficient).
Conclusion: Trust Hansen’s AGW analysis, but don’t trust BP’s economic analysis!
If the clear majority of the membership believe the globe is warming incontrovertibly, I think that statement is OK. If a small minority object, and think the earth is not warming, despite the evidence that it is, should they modify their statement to be less certain? No, the society would look foolish if they say the earth may be warming or not, and there would be no point in a statement. How about if one or two out of thousands object to a statement, do they have to hold back on it? Where is the bar? I am sure the APS has some cranks who would object to some obvious truths in many fields of physics. Do they have veto power? If statements by the APS can be majority statements, and not necessarily unanimous, that would be useful in itself.
The APS can’t be accused of “buttering their own bread”, however, as they have nothing to gain from asking for more climate research funding, and possibly could even lose out in their own areas in tight budget situations. I certainly hope that they do ask for more funding due to the remaining level of uncertainty, as this could influence the NSF and other agencies in their priorities. In science funding terms, uncertainty is your friend.
Jim D | March 24, 2013 at 8:01 pm
Since none of these oh-so-august societies seem much interested in actually polling their members, your question can’t be answered.
However, one can answer the question “Are the learned societies interested in actually polling their members?”, and draw whatever conclusions one wishes from that fact …
w.
The way it worked previously is that they issued a statement, and a few members objected loudly or resigned. It would be an improvement if this GPC could come up with a statement and put it for review to the APS before issuing it. It won’t solve it because people in a small vocal minority could still object and hold it up, which is where the acceptance of a majority statement gets past this roadblock.
The reason they don’t poll their membership is because the activists who have worked their way up to a position of influence don’t want to allow the “dumb” membership to influence the outcome of what the activists ‘know’ is the correct policy.
Jim D | March 24, 2013 at 9:11 pm |
There is a third possibility, which is that they could actually poll their members and find out what they think, instead of the present situation where a handful of people claim (with no evidence) to speak for the whole. A poll, with carefully considered and nuanced questions, would actually be of interest. It would particularly be of interest if it were used in more than one scientific organization.
However … no “scientific” organizations seem interested in doing that, instead a few of the leadership issue a “statement” reflecting their beliefs, biases and prejudices.
And as to a “statement”, I don’t see why so many organizations feel obliged to make a statement about the climate. What is a statement from a handful of people at APS supposed to add to the discussion? What do we gain from it?
Finally, although you propose changes, you still seem to want to shut out disagreement. You still want “acceptance of a majority statement”.
But even the Supreme Court has a Minority Opinion. Trying to squelch that minority view is sadly typical of AGW supporters. If there is a consensus statement from some hypothetical majority of AGW supporters, there should also be a minority statement or statements from those who don’t think that CO2 is the secret knob controlling the climate …
To me, though, the vague handwaving nature of the “statement” is the main crime being committed here. The statements of learned societies on climate have generally been tasteless pabulum. Try this one:
Global warming over what period of time? A decade? A millennium? Without that, “global warming is occurring” is MEANINGLESS. It’s a crime against science to pass that off as a falsifiable, scientific statement.
And how about “Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate.” That’s not the question. Every change affects the climate to some degree. The question is, how much? So again, this is just a comforting anodyne, not a scientific or physics based statement in the slightest.
w.
Willis, the problem with polling their members is you don’t know how much thought they have put into the science versus some political knee-jerk reaction.
On the global warming is incontrovertible part, the context was evidence of GHG effects. The warming itself is incontrovertible, and it is evidence for a GHG effect (not incontrovertible proof, but evidence). This was too subtle a shift for some to grasp and led to a lot of fall-out.
JimD, are you truly unable to believe that statements from a few members of a society who have deliberately pursued leadership positions, ones typically won via a network of similar thinkers, might just be politically, rather than scientifically motivated?
That seems very naive to me.
Organisations writing on the AGW issue do not seem to question the scientific underpinnings of the AGW hypothesis but rely more on assertions about consensus which are clearly unsupported by significant sections of their own membership.
Twenty years late, but, in spite of the many reservations in earlier posts, a potentially positive move to advance scientific understanding. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We should encourage such initiatives rather than be immediately sceptical of their merits. I’m sure that the work will be subject to strong external scrutiny, at least in the blogosphere.
@JimD – physicists especially know that scientific results are not determined by consensus, so the “clear majority” test is insufficient. Beyond that, most members of the APS are not likely to be informed enough of either the field of climatology or the specifics of AGW to be able to offer any worthwhile opinion. Do we care about the opinion of a string theorist unless that person has also studied meteorology, climatology and its related subspecialties?
This is the fundamental problem with many of the X% of scientists support CAGW. Most scientists are not able to give an informed opinion, but that doesn’t stop them from doing so.
There is always a call for an independent review of the AGW theory, so from this perspective it is a positive step. They will have invited speakers who will probably explain the science behind their thinking and answer questions, some of which may be very basic. If they are not satisfied with the answers they can probably offer their view to the GPC. It seems to be a route for dialog that otherwise would not exist, and it is especially good that they want to keep policies out of the discussion. That removes a lot of the histrionics we see here.
@JimD – I was referring to the current state of APS as a whole as applied to their controversial statement.
As for having physicists review the field, that’s a fine idea.
I see. This comes down to whether the APS should issue a climate science statement at all if (say) 90% of their members don’t care or know enough about the science to form an opinion. With climate policy statements, I would expect they have a greater percentage interest as it affects people directly, and many non-experts issue corporate policy statements, witness Apple, Google and Exxon, for example.
Jim D,
Are you saying the GPS should issue a political statement? Or should they issue a statement that assures their customers that the APS is a good bunch of people and the public should continue buying their product? Or perhaps they should issue a statement of faith since some of their more vocal members believe?
The problem with GPC issuing a policy statement is that these typically only come from the top executives where private industry does it. They would not add anything to the debate by doing that as they are no more expert than the members of the Google board in that area. Where they can add something is to have sub-panels that review the climate physics and make a statement based on which parts of that they support or which parts need more work, which I guess is where the GPC comes in.
Was the evidence incontrovertible when they made this statement: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/11/a-note-from-richard-lindzen-on-statistically-significant-warming/
Wasn’t what we had in the years leading up to that statement a concerted effort to hide the stall in warming which must have been known very well by all the key players during those many years?
And all that time we were bombarded with scare scenarios based on the lie that there was global warming, and all the accompanying shenanigans..
It’s only now that the Met has admitted there hasn’t been any for years and years and years and years..
The APS has sadly shown itself fully part and parcel of that propaganda campaign by that statement, whoever instigated it originally and which has involved other main science institutes, so, if this group has been formed in response to the criticism the APS has received and acknowledges the criticism justified, then this could be a game changer for all involved in climate science. But call me cynical, I’ll wait and see if this group can live up to its billing.. “within the domain of natural science and outside the domains of societal impact and policy, legislation and broader societal issues.”
I’d like to see some real physical backing to the “The Greenhouse Effect” claim -I have never seen quantified, never been shown the experiments which I’m continually told exist, to prove that water and carbon dioxide are able to do what they say in either of AGW/CAGW’s two claims made for these (blanket/backradiation).
Good luck with it, really.
Watching THE INNER LIGHT (which many consider to the greatest of Star Trek episodes) has motivated this:
What do Climate Etc folks think? Is this a fair summary statement of contemporary climate-change science?
Now, back to The Inner Light (video excerpts) … which beautifully illuminates a society that is wrestling responsibly with the scientific, economic, and long-term moral implications of climate-change.
Highly recommended!
And here I was thinking that I was the only one who thinks that ‘The Inner Light’ is the best star trek episode ever. Nice to know I’m not alone ;)
I think this is a good consensus statement, but many including me hold intermediate views like wanting immediate changes and incentives to encourage evolving away from fossil fuels (fuel efficiency, electric cars, alternative energy) while preparing for inevitable climate change impacts on food, water and energy resources, and national security, and this is what is happening in some advanced countries that are actually thinking ahead with the assumption of climate change. So, in addition to your waiters and mitigators, we have adapters.
The above (draft) Climate Etc consensus statement is excerpted (verbatim!) from the APS 1996 POPA report The Current Energy Situation & Background Papers
Perhaps not too many Climate Etc folks have read it?
What have we learned since 1996 about climate-change?
Other than that James Hansen’s 1981 worldview is broadly correct, that is?
The world wonders!
Fan,
I don’t see what “Inner Light” has to do with Climate Change. The death of the planet was naturally occouring. And Piccard was simply making the observation. He didn’t blame the people or their technology for causing a naturally occouring phenomenon. He didn’t try to force others to sacrifice their standard of living to fix a problem with no evidence that the scrifice would help. He didn’t profit by selling people indulgences. He didn’t propose a tax scheme that would allow him to control the lifeblood of society.
The episode was about life and death and legacy. It was about love and family and relationships. It was a beautiful episode.
Of course, if you are a member of the collective, it was about climate change, everything is about climate change, resistance is futile.
Dennis, how much more tragic would be The Inner Light if the inhabitants of Kataan had brought planetary-scale catastrophe upon themselves?
The Bible reminds us of how Jacob unwisely sold his birthright to Esau — for the cheap price of a bowl of beans — simply because Jacob was hungry one afternoon..
Similarly, do short-sighted folks in our generation selfishly seek to sell-out our planetary heritage, solely for cheap carbon energy?
It is well to reflect soberly upon these lessons, eh Dennis?
I see, so what solution do you propose? what imeadiate action? lower standard of living? indulgences? control through taxation?
Oh, I know a hippi music festival, where we can wave our hands in the air to show the world that we’re ready to take action on climate change!
Fan, I concede that CO2 may be a problem and I’m ready to act now. We can start building nuclear power plants any time you’re ready. Other energy solutions are a distraction.
A fan of *MORE* discourse | March 25, 2013 at 3:11 pm | Jim D argues “I think this is a good consensus statement”
What have we learned since 1996 about climate-change?
See my post above Myrrh | March 24, 2013 at 9:34 pm
We’ve learned that there has been no global warming since 1995 so from 1996 we’ve learned that the global warming scare has been deliberately contrived to deceive us,
Other than that James Hansen’s 1981 worldview is broadly correct, that is?
contrived and promoted by shysters passing themselves off as climate scientists of which Hansen is example.
What should we make of those like you who continue to loudly and persistently promote the con?
“A risk-averse viewpoint argues for mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible to avoid the possibility of harm.”
This is only true if there is no risk of harm to humanity from the mitigation process. Otherwise, one has to balance the risks of both sides. Just as the climate is a complex dynamical system, so is human society. Since negative economic “forcing” is strongly shown to affect human happiness, wealth and survival, this is not a trivial point. If one is to apply the precautionary principle, it should be applied to all involved systems.
So far, large quantities of money have been diverted in the name of reducing emissions, and it is easy to show that this spending has been economically harmful (future or accrued basis), we are currently on the negative side of the ledger in terms of the overall impact on humanity.
This sort of thing is why scientists should stick to the science unless they have equal competence and expertise in human systems, which is unlikely since it’s not clear such competency exists anywhere.
Very clearly stated. I wonder why so many people don’t understand this.
The Australian ETS would cost $10 for very $1 of projected benefit to 2050. But the projected benefits would not be achieved because they are dependent on world agreeing to a global carbon price and near 100% participation (and no cheating) and that will not happen. Of course, the projected benefit also assumes that the damages would be as bad as the IPCC projections if the ETS is not implemented.
I forgot to add… I’m glad Dr. Curry will be on this panel. Congrats and I hope it turns out well.
+1 meso… well stated.
Good luck Dr. Curry,
At the very least I hope you have as much fun and education as I do when I read your blog.
The Supreme Court of the US all hear the same evidence and arguments, but rarely vote 9-0. Dissenting opinions are often written by SCOTUS members in the minority. In the American Chemical Society of which I am active- with a Public Policy Statement similar in spirit/orientation as APS, I have long argued for a minority report (without success so far). ACS has never polled membership prior to issuing policy statements. This would be an intellectually much more honest approach.
It is not as if the ACS has commissioned or conducted any independent research. The committees of the ACS involved in global warming policy just look at other peoples data, mainly the IPCC, and slap on a rubber stamp of approval after some period of discussion. We have all been in those sorts of meetings….
Obviously the best we can hope for is greater interest in physical and cosmological theories and less emphasis on human affairs.
Judith Curry says: “Here is my advice to the GPC: First, drop the APS Statement on Climate Change.”
_______
Nah !
Max_OK
Our hostess says APS should, “drop the statement”.
APS has already watered it down considerably (see my comment #305777 below), although it still remains a sales pitch for the IPCC CAGW premise, as outlined in AR4.
Our hostess has simply stated that, even with the modifications, the statement is still too “normative”, rather than being fully objective, because it understates the large uncertainty that exists today and suggests solutions, which may be totally ineffective.
An organization like APS should bend over backwards to retain scientific objectivity, and even the watered down version does not do this.
So, scientifically speaking, I’d have to agree that our hostess is right.
Max_not from OK
Scientific objectivity my foot! It’s easy to see this is an attempt at muddying the waters by pushing doubt and uncertainty, which is what the George Marshall Institute wants. Judith Curry should be leaning over backwards to show she’s not in bed with Marshall.
It would be a sad day for science if the APS let itself be bullied by right-wing organizations. I have too much respect for the APS to see it happening.
Max_OK
Baloney.
Objectivity in science is paramount.
Dogma has no place in science.
Rational skepticism is an integral part of the scientific method.
“Normative” science has no place in the APS.
And these guys have no earthly notion or expertise when it comes to policy recommendations, so they should avoid getting into this discussion.
Max_CH
Apparently, you like wishy-washy scientists who won’t threaten your sacred cows. That’s why you are more comfortable with those who aren’t sure about anything, unless of course they are sure about something you like.
I’m not like you. I admire scientists who have backbone, who will tell it like it is, who will put their reputations on the line. That’s why Hansen is my favorite.
‘Figure 12 shows 2000 years of El Nino behaviour simulated by a state-of-the-art climate model forced with present day solar irradiance and greenhouse gas concentrations. The richness of the El Nino behaviour, decade by decade and century by century, testifies to the fundamentally chaotic nature of the system that we are attempting to predict. It challenges the way in which we evaluate models and emphasizes the importance of continuing to focus on observing and understanding processes and phenomena in the climate system. It is also a classic demonstration of the need for ensemble prediction systems on all time scales in order to sample the range of possible outcomes that even the real world could produce. Nothing is certain.’ http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751.full
I think Tim Palmer is a lot smarter.
Max _ who thinx he’s OK
and thinx his favoorite climatologist is _OK too…hmm.
Dr James Hansen may be a doctor of dis-astrology,
warnin…I mean ‘hypo_thesisin’ ‘ about warmin’ …
*First the glaciers retreat …* next poly bears die of the heat.
…*Then we run out of oil …* then the oceans begin ter boil.
But, yer know, history shows that naycher jest ain’t ammenable
ter Cassandra – doomsday viisions of the fewcher.
Hansen is stuck, what with the warmin’ pause,’ …
kinda’ between a rock and a hard place.
… Ouch
Beth, are you too young to remember the previous pause? You know, the one that had some say we were going into another icy age.
Max_OK
I remember tjhe cool late 60’s, 70’s in Melbourne and the first
warm mid Autumn coinciding with the arrival Halley’s comet.
Out comet gazing my family noticed the unusual warmth of
the evenings. Max -OK the point ter note is not the change
from cool ter warm but that climate is variable and the 20th
century temp record shows three distinct periods, warm, then
a cool mid century period which has been observed ter be of
longer duration than the 85/98 warming period. Now, a 21st
century ‘pause’ in warming. This variation doesn’t seem ter be
accounted for as I understand.
A serf.
Not as sad as the day it let itself be taken over by left-wing ideologists.
Oh No! Springer, is on to us. He knows about the conspiracy.
Max_OK
So you “like scientists who tell it like it is (even if it really isn’t that way)”?
Good for you.
I prefer scientists that are objective (like our hostess here) to scientists who are advocates for an agenda.
But, hey, everybody can pick the scientists they like best. It’s a free world.
Max_CH.
Hey Max_OK, you seem to be confident that the *climate pattern* we are in now is only a pause. So how much of your annual salary are ou willing to bet on that?
I don’t have a salary. I don’t wager, I invest.
> [S]cientifically speaking, I’d have to agree that our hostess is right.
Right about what? Here, with emphasis:
> APS should “drop the statement”.
Science. Should. Hmmm.
Y U not play fair, MiniMax?
Hmmm. Normative or non-normative?
You make the call.
Hey, Max. So you are an investor. How much of your portfolio is in wind and solar energy?
My investment in stocks is limited to broadly-based mutual funds. I don’t invest in sector funds .
> their ppt a condition for their travel reimbursement
https://speakerdeck.com
here is some more black hat stuff
“20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”
nice quote.
I hope they invite some paleo people like Richard Alley, because the last time we had 1000 ppm, the evidence is that the oceans were 10 C warmer, and they could do with an expert on this subject. Also he gives a good talk to a general audience as shown a couple of years ago at the AGU.
Jim D
Yeah. Alley gave a great sales pitch for the “CO2 control knob” premise.
The AGU talk a couple of years ago had a few weak spots and boo-boos in it, though.
Throughout his pitch, Alley used the “we can only explain it if we assume…” argument from ignorance, always pointing to CO2 as the culprit by elimination.
Alley used several (“cherry-picked”?) periods of our planet’s distant geological past, plus the argument from ignorance cited above to “prove” that CO2 was the “control knob”.
He did not attempt to explain the long-term temperature decline, which began at the end of the Cretaceous despite very high starting CO2 level, and which played a significant role in ensuing mass extinctions due to extreme cold.
Alley then cited the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum interval as proof of CO2 as cause for rapid temperature increase estimated at around 6°C, during which period an estimated 6,800 Gigatons of carbon (as CO2 equivalent) were released into the ocean and atmosphere (roughly three times the amount contained in all the “inferred possible fossil fuel resources” on Earth today, according to a 2010 report by the World Energy Council), but he did not attempt to explain why temperatures began to drop again as atmospheric CO2 levels had reached their highest levels.
Incidentally, the PETM does not provide very convincing support for Alley’s claim of a 2xCO2 equilibrium climate sensitivity of 3°C upon closer examination. Atmospheric CO2 rose by an estimated factor of around 8 (to 2,400 ppmv), assuming all of the carbon released was CO2, while temperature rose by an estimated 6°C. This would translate into a 2xCO2 ECS of around 2°C, all other things being equal. However, the carbon release is believed to have occurred primarily in the form of methane (from clathrates) rather than CO2, so the calculated ECS would be even lower.
Alley was unable to explain the lag of several centuries between past global warming and CO2 levels in the 450,00-year ice core record (in particular the observation that temperature starting sinking when CO2 levels were at their highest and started rising when CO2 levels were at their lowest.
So, instead of addressing the issue, he sidetracked to a discussion of his credit card!
In the Q+A part, Alley claimed we could reach over 1500 ppmv CO2 if all fossil fuels were consumed (WEC 2010 estimates on remaining fossil fuels put the absolute limit at 980 ppmv, or around half the increase required to reach 1500 ppmv).
Alley made up for the holes in his science with his enthusiasm and conviction, but I did not come away convinced. There were too many holes. But there is no question: Alley is convinced of his story and he tells it enthusiastically. He is a good salesman.
Max
Max,
I don’t see how you can possible have included shale oil. You give a total 5.1 trillion barrels for all oil, when the report on p 98 says:
“The total world in-place resource of shale oil is estimated at 4.8 trillion barrels. This figure is considered to be conservative in view of the fact that oil shale resources of some countries are not reported and other deposits have not been fully investigated.”
Nick Stokes,
Can you provide a link to an authoritative source for estimates of the total quantity of fossil fuels, please?
“Can you provide a link to an authoritative source for estimates of the total quantity of fossil fuels, please?”
No. That’s why I was all ears when Max said WEC 2010 had provided one. But alas…
Max the Manipulator once again does his tricks with the data. Like almost all skeptics, he pays no heed to uncertainties.
FIRST, The uncertainty in climate sensitivity on the high side has to do partly with potential outgassing from thermally unstable sources of GHG’s such as frozen peat bogs, methane clathrates, and other positive feedback mechanisms. These are included in the climate sensitivities as subjective Bayesian priors, only because we can’t do controlled experiments on such a huge mass of material.
SECOND, The potential human-combustible hydrocarbon reserves has a significant uncertainty attached with it. Granted, we are more certain about the trio of crude oil, coal, and natural gas resources. As Max states, it may be true that only 15% of the amount has been combusted until now.
http://www.tececo.com/images/graphics/climate%20change/Hansen3FossilFuelReserves.gif
However, this does not even touch on the potential reserves of shale oil, tar sands, dispersed oil and gas, and methane hydrates available shown in the graph. These are all unconventional sources of hydrocarbons and will also take tremendous amounts of overhead energy to process . This overhead energy becomes waste energy and is produced alongside what is necessary to keep the economies humming along.
The other wild card, which is studied by David Archer, is if there is some point at which the sequestering of CO2 becomes more difficult as the excess CO2 enters the carbon cycle and saturates the sequestering paths.
These are all uncertainties that Max conveniently avoids discussing. Perhaps fitting considering that his previous life was as an industrial plant manager who had to manipulate waste and emission data.
Jim D
You write that Richard Alley claimed 10C warming at 1000 ppmv CO2 level.
This is patently absurd (and I assume that Alley is smarter than that)..
Alley claimed paleo support for a 2xCO2 ECS of 3C (as IPCC was selling in AR4)
At this ECS the warming would be 4C (not 10C).
3C * ln(1000/393) / ln(2) = 4C
And besides, 1000 ppmv is more than all the fossil fuels on this planet contain (according to WEC 2010 estimates the absolute maximum would be 980 ppmv, when they are all 100% used up).
Max
Plus the 1.2C already baked in.
Just like Max to manipulate the numbers.
Web,
I thought APS said we were at 0.74C or is there more baked in?
> Plus the 1.2C already baked in.
Y U not play fair, MiniMax?
The 0.74C is not baked in yet and is still on the rise. The 1.2C is closer to equilibrium as the land responds much faster due to the lack of a heat sink. This number is close to the BEST value.
Assume 3C sensitivity to get to where we are now:
1.2 = 3.0 * ln (395/295)/ln(2)
plus we add this to get to MiniMax’s 980 PPM
4.0 = 3.0 * ln(980/395)/ln(2)
to get 5.2 C total
Through the magic of logarithms:
3.0* ln (395/295)/ln(2) + 3.0 * ln(980/395)/ln(2) = 3.0*ln(980/295)/ln(2)= 5.2C
I use a baseline of CO2 of 295 PPM but others use 280 PPM.
In that case it is 5.4 C.
This is close to JimD’s 6C considering that he assumed a higher CO2 target than the 980 PPM.
It really is not “silly” as Max likes to call it.
Webby
I’v just shown that the future greenhouse warming we’ll see is constrained by the limitation on fossil fuel reserves to around 2C, using the latest estimates for 2xCO2 ECS.
You chime in with:
“Plus the 1.2C already baked in”
Huh?
We have recorded warming around 0.7C since measurements started in 1850.
And you are adding in an additional hypothetical 0.5C from 1750 to 1850?
OK. I’ll go along with your silly game.
But, hey man, we have already seen (and enjoyed) that warming, and are doing just fine. It’s history, Webby.
So don’t try to play me for a sucker by adding it back in to the future GH warming we will hypothetically see. (That’s double-accounting, Webby, and in other fields gets you into jail).
Duh!
Max
Webby
Get some data points into your head.
– WEC 2010 estimates that the remaining inferred recoverable resources represent 85% of all the fossil fuels that were ever on our planet. Other estimates (Hubbert, etc.) are much lower.
Using the WEC 2010 estimate, there are enough fossil fuel reserves left on our planet to last us around 300 years at present consumption rates.
At future rates based on sharply reduced projected population growth plus an increase in per capita use, these would last us 150-200 years.
Burning 15% of the total fossil fuel resource got us from 280 ppmv (estimated pre-industrial CO2 concentration) to 385 ppmv (measured in 2008)
So the remaining 85% will get us to an absolute maximum CO2 level of 980 ppmv when they are all 100% used up
= 385 + 0.85(385-280)/0.15 = 980
Whether this will happen in 150 years, 300 years or never is anyone’s guess.
But, when it does happen, the CO2 from the total remaining fossil fuels will theoretically have warmed our planet by 4C using the old model-predicted IPCC AR4 2xCO2 ECS estimate of 3C, which you prefer, or 2C using the newer observation-based estimates of around 1.5C, which I prefer
That’s it, Webby.
Ain’t no mo’
You can toss out all the hypothetical figures in the world, but they are meaningless unless you consider the real-life constraints that exist.
(And adding in past warming is cheating, Webby.)
Max
“WEC 2010 estimates that the remaining inferred recoverable resources represent 85% of all the fossil fuels”
WEC 2010 was a conference and I’m sure lots of people said lots of things. Do you have a more detailed reference?
Nick Stokes
Link to WEC 2010 report:
http://www.worldenergy.org/documents/ser_2010_report_1.pdf
Max
Max, I’m familiar with that report. It has chapters on various energy classifications. But I couldn’t find any statements about total fossil fuel reserves.
WEC is the World Energy Council that organizes World Energy Congresses and produces surveys like WEC 2010
http://www.worldenergy.org/publications/3040.asp
The WEC surveys presented once the best known and most highly valued estimates on energy resources. They may have lost that status, but remain one of the best known sources.
Pekka,
Yes, but on individual sources. I can’t find any statement on overall fossil fuel reserves. Can you?
Here we go again:
> My model makes no assumption of the ocean or biosphere, simply that the same amount of the CO2 emitted by humans will continue to “disappear” out of the atmosphere somewhere (we do not know where).
My model makes no assumption of the ocean or biosphere, simply that the same amount of the CO2 emitted by humans will continue to “disappear” out of the atmosphere somewhere (we do not know where).
Y MINIMAX NOT PLAY FAIR?
Da reference, vintage 2012:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/12/04/multidecadal-climate-to-within-a-millikelvin/#comment-283762
Nick,
I didn’t find such a summary either. Furthermore I don’t think that their approach could produce particularly good overall estimates as they seem to rely too directly on information provided by third parties. IEA does more analysis and is a better source. Their full reports are, however, not openly available.
Max
Yr estimate (2008) of remaining 85% of recoverable fossil
fuels means maximum ever CO2 levels from combusting
fossil fuel’s at 980ppmv is reassuring in a sober way, though
we can never be too complaissant about climate change
when we consider the complex interations of the ‘whether’
and the possibility of black swan events.
And while > temperature and CO2 do not correlate but
wouldseem ter walk randomly together, data estimates
of 2xCo2 sensitivity around 2degrees C don’t require
punitive policies fer control.
Fer sequestration of the dreaded CO2, there’s Freeman
Dyson’s arguments fer sequestering by increasing soil
biomass thereby also improving crop productivity. And
of course, there’s more …what with human technical
inventive ingenuity.
jest – a -serf.
Nick Stokes
You have to go through the report. “Inferred possible recoverable resources” are given for all the major producing countries, as are the “proven reserves” (which are smaller).
Proven reserves are:
Coal: 900 Gt
Oil: 1,300 billion bbl
Gas 180 trillion cubic meters
Total inferred possible recoverable resources are:
Coal: 1,900 Gt
Oil: 5,100 billion bbl
Gas: 490 trillion cubic meters
(Note that this is higher than most estimates I have seen.)
These would generate 9,290 GtCO2 when consumed, based on the following unit ratio (GtCO2 per unit):
Coal: 3.3 per Gt
Oil: 0.4 per billion bbl
Gas: 2.0 per trillion cubic meters
Based on other sources we’ve burned a total of around 450 Gt carbon to date ~1,650 GtCO2
So the remaining fossil fuels represent ~85% of the original total.
The first 15% got us from 280 to 385 ppmv (in 2008)
The next 85% will get us roughly to:
385 + 0.85(385-280)/(0.15) ~ 980 ppmv.
Hope this helps.
Max
Beth
Thanks from one serf to another.
There seem to be two Damoclean swords hanging over the heads of all of us serfs:
– Peak oil – and its extension, peak fossil fuels (when the lights all go out)
and
– AGW – and its dreaded extension, CAGW (when we are all fried – or drowned – as a result of greenhouse warming)
The two are mutually exclusive, however (although Webby hates to look at it like that, ’cause he likes ’em both so much).
I’m not really worried about either one.
But I’m just trying to calm down some folks that seem to be getting hysterical about both of them at the same time.
And your points about human ingenuity plus the specific ideas of Freeman
Dyson’s for CO2 “sequestering by increasing soil biomass thereby also improving crop productivity” are good examples of why we should be looking at positive solutions rather than fretting about imaginary hobgoblins we can’t do anything about anyway.
Your fellow serf,
Max
Max,
You’ve been saying over and over, for weeks, things like:
“WEC 2010 estimates that the remaining inferred recoverable resources represent 85% of all the fossil fuels that were ever on our planet.”
But they didn’t. Instead its some hairy arithmetic you’ve done, using some of their numbers. That’s misleading.
You haven’t included shale oil, for example. And it’s not clear that unconventional natural gas is covered. And they specifically said:
“In addition, the Questionnaires sent to WEC Member Committees requested information, as available, on undiscovered resources of the principal fossil fuels, in terms of the estimated additional amount in place and the amount recoverable from such resources. The information received in this regard is reported in the Country Notes on coal, oil and natural gas, but overall was insufficient to form the basis of a worldwide summary table.”
> [W]ith more than 0.5 Tt C released already since pre-industrial times, it may well turn out that we can only afford to release less than the same again, possibly much less, with many times that amount in fossil-fuel reserves remaining underground.
https://edit.ethz.ch/iac/people/knuttir/papers/allen09nrcc.pdf
Y U NO PLAY FAIR?
http://memegenerator.net/instance/36705532
Nick Stokes
You asked me for my estimates based on the WEC 2010 report, which I posted for you.
You write:
Shale oil and gas is covered, Nick, so what you have ASS-U-MEd is wrong.
Some advice for you, Nick.
Rather than just shooting from the hip, if you are going to discuss the WEC 2010 report.
1. Read it in detail, as I did.
2. Go through all the estimates that are in there for both a) proven reserves and b) inferred possible recoverable resources.
3. Take all theses data to arrive at totals for both categories.
4. Do a “sanity check” on these totals, by comparing them with other published estimates that are out there.
Once you have done all that, get back to me.
But leave off the “that’s misleading” crap.
OK?
Max
Well Max, the bottom line is that you have said many times things like:
“WEC 2010 estimates that the remaining inferred recoverable resources represent 85% of all the fossil fuels that were ever on our planet.”
And they didn’t.
Nick Stokes
You got it wrong, Nick.
The “bottom line” is this:
Once you’ve gone through the WEC 2010 report in detail as I suggested, you can make intelligent comments on what the estimates there indicate regarding the remaining fossil fuel resources on our planet.
Before you do, you cannot,.
Max
Max,
I don’t see how you can possible have included shale oil. You give a total 5.1 trillion barrels for oil, when the report on p 98 says:
“The total world in-place resource of shale oil is estimated at 4.8 trillion barrels. This figure is considered to be conservative in view of the fact that oil shale resources of some countries are not reported and other deposits have not been fully investigated.”
Webby
Can we have some of the baked in 1.2C please?
We seem to have lost it here in Britain
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/
tonyb
Willard
Thanks for chiming in with
Looks the estimate you quote on the amount of carbon released to date checks fairly closely with the 450 GtC (or 1,650 GtCO2), which I cited.
It also looks like your “many times that amount in fossil-fuel reserves remaining underground” also checks with the WEC 2010 estimates (roughly 15% used to date with 85% left to go).
So we are in agreement on the fossil fuels.
However, I’d have to take issue with the statement that “we can only afford to release less than the same again, possibly much less”.
And here’s why, Willard.
So far we’ve gotten from 280 to 393 ppmv CO2.
Releasing “the same again” will get us to 393+113 = 506 ppmv
At the IPCC AR4 mean model-predicted 2xCO2 ECS of around 3C, this would give us warming of 1.1C
And at the newer observation-based estimate of around 1.5C, it would result in warming of 0.55C.
Gimme a break, Willard. That’s peanuts, either way.
Who ever wrote that statement needs to check his arithmetic. It’s really not that complicated.
Max
Nick Stokes
Rather than singling out one sentence, read the whole report and make your own estimate of the total, based on the estimates included there.
When you do this, be sure you differentiate between total inferred possible resources and total inferred recoverable resources.
Come back to me when you’ve got your estimate of the total inferred recoverable fossil fuel resources.
Then, based on the generally accepted estimate that roughly 450 GtC have been burned to date, estimate what %-age of the original total is still in the ground.
Max
Max
You seem to be the only one here that has actually calculated the useable reserves and their possible effect on co2 concentrations. It will be interesting to see the alternative estimates from the other experts posting here, such as Nick Stokes, Mr Web Hub Telescope and Willard
tonyb
“It will be interesting to see the alternative estimates from the other experts posting here”
Tony, Max’s figure was not offered as something from an expert posting here. It was offered as an estimate from WEC2010, and it isn’t. I’m not going to offer my own rough arithmetic. I believe that the WEC does not in fact make such an estimate for very good reasons – the information needed is not in their report. They acknowledge, for example, that they just don’t have information to estimate future discovery.
Heh, Nick Stokes defends Marcott. An advocate, though a sharp one.
================
Nick Stokes
It almost sounds to me like you are copping out.
There is a gold mine of data in WEC 2010 on both “proven reserves” and “inferred total recoverable resources” of global fossil fuels.
You have to spend some time digging it out, but it’s there.
If you are unable or unwilling to take the time to go through it in detail, and then to check the figures against other sources, so be it.
But then don’t criticize my estimate based on the contained data.
Unless you have a better estimate based on more reliable data, just admit that you don’t have one, that’s all. Easy enough.
Bye for now.
Max
There certainly are no definitive answers for the ultimately maximal use of fossil fuels. Making some plausible assumption we get numbers that are in the range Max has presented or even lower. Making some other assumptions the result is much higher. The most important issues concern the future use of shale oil and and low quality coal resources.
My own view is that the availability of fossil fuels is really a strong constraint for the maximal carbon releases for many decades to come. It’s possible to develop technologies that expand the technically and economically available resource base but doing that and putting that into large scale use takes time. There may, in addition, be more persistent constraints on the achievable production rates. That could mean that the rate of production would be so slow that removal of previously added CO2 from the atmosphere would proceed faster than new CO2 is added. That would lead to a lower but more persistent peak in CO2 atmospheric concentration.
The rate of future CO2 removal from atmosphere is also a badly known factor. People have tried to model processes involved in that, but the uncertainties are very large.
The scenarios of highest CO2 releases are built by purpose to be on the high side of plausible range. It’s likely that the actual releases will be much lower. China, India, and other growing economies will be decisive in that, and it’s likely that the availability of energy will be one of the impediments for their growth. Their fossil fuel consumption has been growing at a rate that cannot be sustained whether the climate issues are taken into account or not.
Pekka @ 5.34, good points.
All: off the net for 12 days from tomorrow.
From the Introduction:
Let’s put my previous quote from Allen & alii 2009 in context:
> Meinshausen et al. argue that emission levels in 2050, or cumulative emissions to 2050, are robust indicators of the probability of temperatures exceeding 2 °C above pre-industrial values by 2100. Allen et al. take an even longer view, exploring the impact of CO2 emissions over the entire ‘anthropocene’. They argue that keeping the most likely warming due to CO2 alone to 2 °C will require us to limit cumulative CO2 emissions over the period 1750–2500 to 1 trillion tonnes of carbon.
https://edit.ethz.ch/iac/people/knuttir/papers/allen09nrcc.pdf
Here’s the previous quote:
> [W]ith more than 0.5 Tt C released already since pre-industrial times, it may well turn out that we can only afford to release less than the same again, possibly much less, with many times that amount in fossil-fuel reserves remaining underground.
This last sentence is backed up by this reference IPCC, Carbon Capture and Storage, which I believe is over there:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/ch4s4-3-6.html
This last sentence refers to what remains to be burned until we get to 2C.
There is many times that amount in fossil-fuel reserves remaining underground.
***
You are being played, folks.
A quote from the CCS page:
Interestingly, MiniMax does not show much concerns for this kind of uncertainty.
Even more interestingly, MiniMax now accepts an argument from the best explanation.
And that’s notwithstanding the linear and the non-delay tricks in the “arithmetic”.
willard is playing at playing.
===========
Here’s the **Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage** report:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B1gFp6Ioo3akWFVURndxRU5xU1E/edit?pli=1
Chapter 6 ought to be an interesting read.
Meanwhile, here’s a relevant paragraph, this time unwrapped and in the proper thread:
That’s on page 75 of the srccs_whole.pdf.
Arithmetic might very well be as important for discounting than it is for counting.
Plants capture CO2 and given the right conditions, can store it virtually indefinitely. And don’t think they won’t.
=========
Indeed, this is why mavericks are proposing we invent CO2-sucking trees.
***
There are interesting figures in table 4.2 of this report:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-chapter4.pdf
Page 264, I believe.
And of course we can count on phycisists and engineers and geologists to do the bean-counting of carbon emissions. Read papers and books by David Rutledge and David Goodstein of CalTech, Tad Patzek of UT, and Richard Muller of UCB.
Goodstein was a student, colleague, and biographer of Feynman so you skeptics have no excuse. Goodstein is not a ghost.
Speaking of David Goodstein, here’s David Archer, vintage 2005:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/03/how-long-will-global-warming-last
Seems that MiniMax uses the same kind of implicit assumption.
Hey, JimD, if it was all due to CO2, then why didn’t it runaway? I mean the warmer oceans = more CO2 outgassing, which means hire temperatures, …
So why are we here to discuss it today? Didn’t the planet melt back then?
Ugh *higher. I hate autocorrect.
ksd, the numbers don’t support a runaway effect. You have to raise ocean temperatures 25 C to double the CO2. I think the current warming adds about 10 ppm per degree, small compared to the anthropogenic input.
JimD, nice evasion, but if more CO2 = more warming = more CO2 from the oceans, please tell what stopped the temperature from continuing to climb.
You can work it out. It is a cycle with diminishing returns.
KSD doesn’t want to work it out.
I on the other hand feel compelled to work it out, and support what JimD said. It’s a mild positive feedback effect.
k scott Denison and Jim D
Jim D has guess-timated that every degree of global warming would increase atmospheric CO2 by 10 ppmv, due to added net ocean degassing,
IOW the ocean would lose 10 ppmv to the atmosphere on a net overall basis and thus become more alkaline in the process.
I have not heard this particular theory before, but let’s assume that Jim is right.
All the fossil fuels left on our planet could get us to 980 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere when they are all 100% used up.
And, at the latest observation-based estimates of 2xCO2 equilibrium climate sensitivity of around 1.5C, this added CO2 would cause a global warming of 2C.
But wait!
We’ve got to add in the net “extra” CO2 that Jim says will come out of the warmer ocean.
According to Jim this is 2*10 ppmv = 20 ppmv
This increases the total (maximum ever theoretically possible) CO2 from 980 to 1000 ppmv, and this would theoretically raise temperature by another 0.04C
Webby calls this a “weak positive feedback”.
IPCC AR4 gives it the fancy scientific-sounding name of “climate-carbon cycle feedback”, but concedes that the understanding of this effect is too limited to assess the magnitude.
I’d say it’s sort of a nice-sounding pipe dream.
Max
Yeah Max,
hunan ingenuity and the ‘heritage of The Enlightenment’.
Herwith a poem repeat on same though I know I’m up
against heavy comp-e-tishun here, poetry wise I mean.
O we are creatures of the light, of enlightenment.
Drawn to the light flickering on the river,
The riffling silver threads disturbing its opacity.
Drawn to the litter of stars that spark
In the dark abyss of night, to the harvest moon,
Palpable as globed fruit, forgetting
Its light’s reflected from the sun.
Shine on, o shine, harvest moon!
Seeking through poetry and science, to probe
The secrets of the heavens and deep ayss,
We yearn fo honey from the golden hive,
Enlightenment – o.
BC
+1
Beth
+1
You nailed it again, with a “mighty purty pom”.
(Enlightenment is so enlightening)
Yer feller serf Max
It wasn’t Alley that claimed it was 10 C warmer, but other more recent paleoclimate papers show the Eocene oceans to be 14 C warmer 50 million years ago when CO2 was about 1000 ppm, but possibly higher. This works out as a high climate sensitivity that includes albedo effects due to no ice and changes in vegetation darkening northern latitudes (alligators at high latitudes and all that), so this is why the sensitivity appears higher. You can also work out at least 10 C per doubling if you look at the temperature and CO2 change since the last Ice Age, but we know that was partly albedo because of the retreat of the northern glaciers because CO2 only increased 50% and can’t account for that by itself. In this case the CO2 was a feedback to the Milankovitch effect, which is why it lagged and the ocean can only release it slowly as it warms accounting for the lag. I am fairly sure Alley knows all this and can explain it to the GPC.
If the ocean was 10 or 14C warmer, what caused it to cool? How did the CO2 concentration dissipate then? Why won’t it do the same in the future?
Paleoclimate says that carbon can be sequestered into the soil and rocks. This especially happens during continent building but also happens in the oceans with carbonate sediments from life. It is a slow process, but it happened and cooling went along with it.
Jim D
Thanks for clarifying that it wasn’t Alley who came up with the ludicrous 10C warmer number based on 1000 ppmv CO2.
As pointed out to Webby, we could theoretically only get to 2C to 4C warmer than today be burning all the fossil fuels remaining on our planet (and getting atmospheric CO2 up to just under 1000 ppmv).
So 10C warmer than today is a pipe dream.
Sure “you can also work out at least 10 C per doubling” if you use crazy hypothetical assumptions or subjective interpretations of dicey paleo-climate proxy data of carefully cherry-picked periods of our planet’s geological past and apply an argument from ignorance to guess-timate CO2 attribution by difference.
But it doesn’t mean anything, Jim. It’s no better than reading tea leaves (you can get any answer you want.)
Actual observations show us the 2xCO2 ECS is very likely to be around 1.5C – not 10C.
And, on that basis, the maximum GH warming we could ever see from burning fossil fuels is around 2C
And nothing to get your knickers all twisted about.
Max
Peter Lang and Nick Stokes
It takes a bit of digging, but there are figures in the WEC 2010 report of both world-wide “proven fossil fuel reserves” and “total inferred recoverable fossil fuel resources” (a figure that is much higher). The highest figures are for “total inferred possible resources”, but it is cautioned that a good part of these estimates may not ever be recoverable.
The WEC estimates of various pieces have been cited elsewhere (ex. Wiki cites recoverable shale oil resources based on the WEC 2010 report).
It pays to double-check all the figures against other sources that are out there.
In checking all this out, I’ve found that most sources give lower estimates than the totals I’ve extracted from WEC 2010, and I have seen no source with higher estimates.
But I’m waiting for Nick Stokes to go through WEC 2010 in detail and give us his estimate of what’s in there so we can compare with my estimate.
Be back in about a week, but will try to check in during my absence..
Max
Judith Curry
As I read it, the 2007 APS statement as modified in 2010 now reads as follows:
“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the
atmosphereEarth’s energy balance on a planetary scale in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include, in order of importance, water vapor, carbon dioxide,as well asmethane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes as well as from natural sources.While there are factors driving the natural variability of climate (e.g., volcanoes, solar variability, oceanic oscillations), no known natural mechanisms have been proposed as yet that explain all of the observed warming in the past century.
The evidence is
incontrovertiblecompelling: Global warming is occurring. The observational data indicate a global surface warming of 0.74 °C (+/- 0.18 °C) since the late 19th century.If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. Such predicted disruptions are based on direct measurements (e.g., ocean acidification, rising sea levels, etc.), on the study of past climate change phenomena, and on climate models.
We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.Even with the uncertainties in the models, it is increasingly difficult to rule out that non-negligible increases in global temperature are a consequence of rising anthropogenic CO2. Thus given the significant risks associated with global climate change, prudent steps should be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now while continuing to improve the observational data and the model predictions.Climate models calculate the effects of natural and anthropogenic changes on the ecosphere, such as doubling of the CO2-equivalent concentration relative to its pre-industrial value by the year 2100. These models have uncertainties associated with radiative response functions, especially clouds and water vapor. However, the models show that water vapor has a net positive feedback effect (in addition to CO2 and other gases) on global temperatures. The impact of clouds is less certain because of their dual role as
scatterersblockers and reflectors of incoming solar radiation and as greenhouse contributors. The uncertainty in the net effect of human activity on climate is reflected in the broad distribution of the predicted magnitude of the consequence of doubling of the CO2-equivalent concentration. The uncertainty in the estimates from various climate models for doubling CO2-equivalent concentration is in the range of 1°C to 3°C, with latest estimates at the lower end of the rangeBecause the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Sounds a bit less “normative” (and a bit more “informative”) than the original statement.
Max
Max, but still normatively assumes with no evidence that mitigation costs will have net benefits. It infers policy action which is beyond its competence.
Faustino
Agree with everything you write.
Our hostess has apparently voiced the opinion that the whole statement should be scrapped.
There is still way too much “certainty” in the scientific part.
And the APS should not even get into the policy part, for the reason you state.
Max
Contrast “The objective of the GPC”:
With the 2007 APS Statement on Climate Change::
The GPC objective looks good. Will it be followed? Glad JC is on the committee.
But I hope that St Peter’s current representative does not join JC on this panel.
Judith Curry
Forgot to mention this above, but
Congratulations on your appointment and lots of success in bringing a highly qualified and objective viewpoint on the ongoing scientific and policy debate surrounding climate change to the group.
Max
To turn to something much more serious for a moment – we have decided to invade New Zealand and annex the New Zealand cricket team. Desperate times demand desperate measures.
It’s a pity mosomoso has banned me from mentioning cr*ck*t, given that I’m an Indophile Pommie whose first exposure to television was days 4 and 5 of the Oval test in 1953, when my hero Dennis Compton hit the winning runs as England regained the Ashes. But I think we are less desperate than you.
“There was controversy surrounding this statement, including Correspondence published in Nature by Fred Singer, Hal Lewis, Will Happer, Larry Gould, Roger Cohen, and Robert Austin entitled Petitioning for a revised statement on climate change …”
________
Some of those guys are so old it makes me wonder if they are out of touch with the science. Age takes its toll.
Fred Singer born 1924 age 87
Hal Lewis born 1923 died 2011 at age 87 RIP
William Happer born 1939 age 73
Larry Gould B.S. in 1964, so estimated age 70
Roger Cohen, retired, age not found
Robert Austin, age not found
Perhaps, as you grow up, you’ll learn math.
==========
Not likely. I will still have only the same number of fingers and toes.
If you are an old hag or witch, I didn’t mean for my post to be offensive.
Some of those guys are so old it makes me wonder if they are out of touch with the science.
That is wrong.
It is the reverse.
They are not any more worried about their careers so they are able to speak the truth as Simpson stated:
Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly. […] The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models.
Girma, if that were the case, more older scientists would be speaking out. The protestors are but a drop in the bucket. Every large organization has a few old cranks.
Max OK, you complain about age. I was under the impression that pissant progressives usually don’t discriminate, especially about age. Your delusional if you think any of the people you cite deny the Tyndall effect, deny S-B. What they deny is the only thing any rational scientist would contest, the sensitivity to CO2 forcing. You see Max, without a positive feedback, the whole of CAGW falls on its face. What these brilliant people you denigrate think is that with 1-3 degrees of warming you might get with a doubling of CO2 is no big deal. Can’t hurt, might even help. Put an end to your obnoxious discrimination.
Bob, I’m not complaining about age. I hope to get to be as old as Singer and Lewis. And if I am that lucky, I don’t expect to be as sharp mentally as I am today.
Max_OK | March 25, 2013 at 6:33 am | Reply
Some of those guys are so old it makes me wonder if they are out of touch with the science. Age takes its toll.
——–
When and if you grow up, Max, you’ll understand the sheer stupidity and arrogance of this statement. You may be bright, in spite of what you write here, but you are certainly not wise.
BS, I’m wise enough to know the mind and body deteriorate with age. We all have it coming.
Max, you may be able to judge people based soley on their age, but I need to know their race, gender, religion and sexual orientation before I make judgements.
People age regardless of race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation. Age-restricted retirement communities are legal. I doubt a similar restriction based on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation would be legal.
Justify your prejudice any way you choose. I know a lot of very sharp old people.
The GPC focus blurb makes no mention or even a hint of scientific debate or controversy. This is the pile of knowledge model of science but the frontier is a land of controversy not knowledge. There is very little agreement as to what is known about the climate system. It is not just a question of uncertainty but rather of active disagreement. The GPC needs to find a way to openly express scientific disagreement. Otherwise it is probably a waste of time.
+10
+1
Here is the last sentence of the APS policy statement on climate change.
“The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm
To please deniers, the APS could replace it with the following:
Reducing greenhouse gases might be a good thing, a bad thing, or neither. We can’t say one way or another. It’s all so complicated, so complex, so confusing. You figure it out. Just leave us alone.
Or simpler, physics can’t figure out policy.
=======
Physics, not ideology, should drive policy. You can depend on physics, but ideology will get you in trouble.
Max Ok
Entirely agree with you. But will it?
tonyb
I cannot imagine what depending on physics means? Do you mean depend on physicists? Suppose they do not agree? Then what should policy do? That is the question.
BTW between chaos theory and dark energy physics is as unsettled as it has ever been. This is good because science is not a pile of facts.
Climate science is about as far from bench physics as one can get. Here is a simple question. Which is more complex, the climate system or the human body? Prizes will be awarded.
Easy, since the climate system contains human bodies.
=====
physics cant drive policy. physics can inform policy, but in the absence of knowledge and even in the face of scientific controversy, policy is still decided, even if that policy is BAU. Nothing follows from physics or the lack of physics
1. C02 will cause 3C of warming.
2. so what?
The so what involves concepts where physics is silent.
True to a point Kim because climate modeling is driven in part by emission scenarios which depend in part on technology and economic forecasts, etc., which are predictions of human stuff. But I am looking for a science of complexity that will do for the 21st century what thermodynamics did for the 19th, namely measure and compare apparently different systems. So not so easy. Putting a person in a wheelbarrow does not increase the complexity of the wheelbarrow.
Mosher: The pertinent problem is not that physics cannot do #2, rather it is that #1 is controversial within physics. Thus “so what?” cannot yet arise. Physics is not silent it is alive with debate.
Well, David, I’m curious what in climate can be analogous to imagination.
And the human in the wheelbarrow is already directing its voyage, somewhat drunkenly, for sure.
=================
david it doesnt matter that #1 is controversial in science. The presence or absence of controversy tells you nothing.
A rational policy maker can very easily defend using physics that is controversial to make a policy. There is nothing preventing that. Any policy maker can decide that he will or will not listen to one side or the other. Controversy is a wheel that doesnt turn. In the case of C02, the controversy makes a decision even more important.
‘True to a point Kim because climate modeling is driven in part by emission scenarios which depend in part on technology and economic forecasts, etc., which are predictions of human stuff. ”
For SRES this was true. For RCPs it is less true. Update your reading David.
Second it doesnt matter that these are predictions of human stuff, we predict human stuff all the time when we pass laws. Uncertainty and controversy are not impediments to action, in fact action can often resolve uncertainty. Thats called an experiment. So,
1. Some people want to continue the experiment of dumping C02 in the air when there is uncertainty about its effects.
2. Some people want to experiment on the economic system by imposing taxes to cut C02 when there is uncertainty and controversy.
Note how neither party is constrained by uncertainty in their policy proscriptions. basically, the physics matter less than you think
Mosher, you seem to be objecting to points I have not made so I do not know what you are saying. But I am pretty sure that science does matter in policy making. You seem to be suggesting that it does not.
Steven Mosher | March 25, 2013 at 12:44 pm |
1. C02 will cause 3C of warming.
2. so what?
The so what involves concepts where physics is silent.
The “CO2 will cause 3C of warming” involves producing empirical evidence where the physics of AGW/CAGW pushing faux scientists is silent.
Where are the industries utilising the amazing unproven claims for CO2 being able to raise the temperature of land and water by back radiation or blanketing? Quickly now, the cost of my home heating oil goes up even as I write..
And they’d be right.
“the clear majority of the membership believe”
A comforting notion for any pastor.
Andrew
BREAKING NEWS
Summary
• Climate-change skepticism has fallen to global heat-balance analysis.
• Willfully ignorant free-market ideology has fallen to the tragedy of the commons.
• Shortsighted selfishness is falling to foresighted science-guided morality.
Conclusion An APS summary statement *IS* in order.
So climate-change isn’t complicated, is it, eh Climate Etc readers? The short summary is, that James Hansen’s 1981 worldview has proved to be scientifically, economically, and morally correct? So that skepticism, ignorant ideology, and short-sighted selfishness all are falling? That’s the sum of it, right?
So the missing heat is where the buoy network is unable to accurately measure temperature. Shock news from Trenberth then.
DENIALISM’S DESPERATE TENETS
• the ARGO energy-budget data is wrong, and/or
• the scientists (Trenbarth et al) are corrupt, and/or
• the Three Laws of thermodynamics are wrong.
DocMartyn, you have publicly committed to the first two tenets of denialism!
Uhhh … maybe … just maybe … all three tenets of climate-change denialism are wrong?
Perhaps climate-change denialists should seriously consider that possibility, eh DocMartyn?
It could be one of those three, or the fourth, Trenbarth et al are not making things up as they have a time machine and so are able to measure the heat content of the oceans from 1955 to 2007.
2007 was the initiation year for the Argo Network, before this there was no method to measure the heat content of the Oceans; we know this to be the case as this lack of data was one of the reasons the Argos Network was funded.
So Trenbarth et al MUST have access to a Blue colored police box and us this to go into the past and measure the ocean heat content.
If they do not have a time travel device then it shows that Geophysical Research Letters is no longer a peer reviewed science journal.
I hope we can have a main post topic based on this ocean heat content paper (Balmaseda, Trenberth and Kallen, 2013). Back to science and observations that counter the so-called pause which is central to the skeptical argument these days. Seems quite relevant. Just observations, no models.
Jim D | March 25, 2013 at 12:49 pm | Reply
Since BTK didn’t analyze actual observations, but instead they analyzed the output of a computer model, in fact it’s ALL models and NO observations …
However, I’m sure that their results and conclusions apply to similarly modeled planets all over the world …
w.
yes i have flagged this paper for a post, hopefully will get something posted in a day or two
“central” really? So all those pre pause skeptical arguments just up and disappeared themselves?
It’s close to 1.3 w/m^2 heat absorption rate which is greater than 80% of the excess due to the 3C climate sensitivity.
The missing heat seems to be accounted for according to their OHC chart.
Indeed it is a reanalysis where observational constraints are imposed on an ocean model as it runs. Can a reanalysis lead to biases given that the observations control it, and with Argo that is a big constraint? I don’t see how, but this should be a useful debate on reanalyses and data assimilation.
LOL … prediction time has arrived, Willis Eschenbach (and other skeptics/denialists)!
• If the ocean warming as assessed by Kevin Trenberth and colleagues continues unabated, then sea-level rise (from heat-induced water expansion) will continue unabated too.
• If the ice-melt as assessed by satellite gravimetry accelerates, then sea-level rise (from the ice-melt) will accelerate too … as predicted by James Hansen and colleagues.
To make the same point another way, ain’t Kevin Trenbarth’s ARGO calorimetry independently affirmed by GRACE gravimetry and JASON altimetry?
A Simple Question Willis Eschenbach, what is the *skeptical* prediction for sea-level rise — as assessed by altimetry, calorimetry, and gravimetry — in the coming decade?
Because if climate-change skeptics are right, ain’t we already a few years overdue for sea-level rise-rates to flatten and/or decline?
The world (rightly) wonders, eh Willis Eschenbach?
So here is the missing energy.
Does it matter that it is all in SW? Of course it does except to the agenda driven.
Fanny
You ask Willis:
That’s the wrong question, Fanny.
All these measurement techniques haven’t been around long enough to get a meaningful record, especially for decadal rate of sea level rise, which has varied from -1mm/year to over +5mm/year over the 20th century, as measured by tide gauges.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/3144596227_545227fbae_b.jpg
The average rate over the 20th C was ~1.7 mm/yr. The rate was ~2.0 mm/yr over the first half of the 20thC and then decreased slightly over the second half of the 20thC to ~1.4 mm/yr.
In addition, in the case of satellite altimetry, the errors have been greater than the rate of increase, according to the NOAA scientists making the measurements.
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU04/05276/EGU04-J-05276.pdf
So let’s reword your question so it makes sense:
I can’t speak for willis, but my prediction would be “within the range observed during the past century, i.e. somewhere between -1 mm/year to +5 mm.year”
You can write that down.
Max
Jim, a model of vertical heat transfer in the oceans that descibes one of its weaknesses as large surface salinity errors. Make sure you hard boil the eggs before you put them in that holey easter basket.
A reanalysis is a way to use data over time more effectively. An analysis has observation points at a given time and interpolates between them to get volume data. A reanalysis brings previous observations forwards in time with a gridded model to help fill gaps between new obs. By such a reanalysis cycle the model can combine data over long time periods using the flow of the currents. This is the gist of data assimilation methods.
Jim D |
I don’t have access to the paper, but here a look at it:
Hot water rises, cold water sinks.
Direct radiant heat from the Sun, that is, the real heat from the Sun which is thermal infrared aka longwave infrared, heats both land and ocean, (visible light from the Sun cannot heat land and water, therefore plays no practical part in heating the ocean, that is, in physically raising the temperature of the water by moving water molecules into vibration).
So, let’s stick with real heat transfer by convection and radiation. If the oceans warming so far down is “unprecedented” (have they taken out a copyright on this term?), it will be because the ocean is being heated up more from the bottom.
For pity’s sake, get a grip on yourselves, you’re supposedly scientists..
That you’ve managed to fu the education system systematically with this fake fisics designed to sell the illusion of The AGW Greenhouse Effect is to your collective shame.
You don’t even know the difference between heat and light. You have sod all to say about climate because this means you don’t even know how we get our weather.
A fan … wrote, “LOL … prediction time has arrived, Willis Eschenbach (and other skeptics/denialists)!”
Ewwww. This is gonna hurt. Take it away, w.
Thanks Fan,
Glad to know that the heat is being dissipated into the deep ocean. This will give us several thousand years before the problem gets serious. Plenty of time to study it and make sure there really is a problem.
Gad, if we could only time its release for when we need it. Oh, well, in Gaia we trust.
=============
Interesting to see James Hansen’s 1981 paper vindicated.
He described the diffusion of heat in exactly the way it is playing out. Draw Fick’s law right through the layers and you have it captured. They can then estimate the effective diffusion coefficient.
Heck, I might try that.
Or equivalently:
Bill, although your “solution” to the accelerating reality of AGW is economically sound, some authorities regard encumbering future generations by despoiling the earth for profit to be
• morally dubious, and
• socially dubious, and
• scientifically dubious.
Are you entirely certain that you’ve thought through all the implications of your economic scheme, Bill?
If James Hansen described diffusion of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans I would be surprised. This instead is a bizarre misconception peculiar to webby.
Looking at the actual data – the ‘missing heat’ is entirely the result of albedo change.
So here goes the undergrad-level thermal physics analysis. In other words, the following mathematical explanation is the way a physicist would interpret the data presented in Balmaseda, Trenberth, and Källén (BTK) to a first-order approximation.
We have three depths that we are looking at, in addition to the surface layer. These are given as depths to 300 meters, to 700 meters, and down to infinity, as charted on the SkS site :
http://www.skepticalscience.com//pics/BTK13Fig1.jpg
An application of Fick’s Law is to approximate the amount of material that has diffused (with thermal diffusion coefficient D) at least a certain distance, x, over a time duration, t, by
For greater than 300 meters, Q/Q_0 is 13.5/20 read from the chart at SkS
For greater than 700 meters, Q/Q_0 is 7.5/20
Where Q_0=20 is the baseline for the total heat measured over all depths (i.e. between x=0 and x=infinite depth) reached at the current time. No heat will diffuse to infinite depths so at that point Q/Q_0 is 0/20.
First, we can check to see how close the value of L=sqrt(Dt) scales, by fitting the Q/Q_0 ratio at each depth..
For x=300 meters, we get L=763
For x=700 meters, we get L=713
These two are close enough to maintaining invariance that the Fick’s law scaling relation holds and we can infer that the flow is by an effective diffusion, just as was surmised by Hansen et al in 1981.
We then use an average elapsed diffusion time of t=40 years and assume an average diffusion depth of 740, and D comes out to 4.5 cm^2/s.
Hansen in 1981 used an estimated value of diffusion of 1 cm^2/s, which is within an order of magnitude of 4.5 cm^2/s
This is a scratch attempt at a first-order solution. As a more elaborate solution, what we really need to do is work the temporal profile out more accurately, assuming a growing thermal forcing function. The simple analysis described above is the equivalent of generating a unit step function 40 years ago and watching that evolve. Instead we need to apply a modulated forcing function and compute the convolution against the thermal impulse response (i.e. Greens function) and evaluate it that way.
In any case, this is essentially a homework assignment that Prof. Curry would hand out in her class. The TA would look at the logic of each student’s solution and grade it and then the class would move on to the next topic. In the back of physics textbooks, there are many harder problems to solve — this is a run-of-the-mill problem for a book on thermal physics.
This is the article that predicted what we are now seeing:
J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell, “Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,” Science, vol. 213 (4511), pp. 957–966.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1981/1981_Hansen_etal.pdf
Reading Hansen and looking at the BTK paper’s results nothing looks out of the ordinary compared to conventional thermal physics. Upthread, I noted that the total heat absorbed by the ocean is very close to that expected by a 3C doubling sensitivity. BTK has done the important step in determining the amount of total heat absorbed, which allows us to estimate the effective diffusion coefficient, by evaluating how the heat contents modulate with depth. I like to add a maximum uncertainty modifier to the coefficient to model the disorder in diffusivity (some of it eddy diffusivity, some vertical, etc), but that is not necessary to get a ballpark number.
Why do the skeptics think that this particular situation would violate textbook thermal physics? We will probably never know.
Webster, so you come up with 4.5 cm/s. Starting at the tropical 20C thermocline? Perhaps you started in the North Atlantic at the 4 C? How many years does that work out per degree C increase in average ocean temperature? 600 or so?
Cappy Dick sez:
That’s not the correct dimensionality for a diffusion coefficient. It’s 4.5 cm^2/s, not 4.5 cm/s. I still don’t have a clue whether you have any background in physics.
You just seem to throw an empty hook out there to see if anyone will bite. Sorry Charlie.
Webster, Whether you unit area is cm^2, M^2 or furlongs squared, the heat still has to travel some distance to fill the volume. How long would it take to fill the volume with enough joules of energy to increase the temperature 1 C degrees? If you are assuming that the average rate of diffusion over the entire surface is 4.5 cm^2/s I would guess you are wrong since the surface temperature of the oceans in the tropics is not warming. If you are assuming the heat is entering at both poles, i would say you are wrong, the southern oceans are cooling while the north Atlantic is warming.
You keep throwing out numbers with no time frames. since the current rate of OH uptake is on the order of 0.5×10^22 joules per year, I figure about 500 years per degree. Since SSW events are on the same order of magnitude, it will likely be long since they are in the NH where most of the warming is occurring.
This is describing the mean-value physics.
Read Hansen’s 1981 paper. and you will see that the heating of the ocean suppresses the globally averaged warming.
I have a post here that describes much of this in more depth but lacking the BTK paper, I didn’t estimate D
http://theoilconundrum.blogspot.com/2012/01/thermal-diffusion-and-missing-heat.html
Also get a book on thermal physics. I would suggest Reif’s “Fundamentals of Thermal and Statistical Physics”.
Groan. It is physically unrealistic because heat does not diffuse from the atmosphere to the oceans.
Over oceans the flow of energy is from the sun to the oceans and thence as IR to the atmosphere and back to space. When greenhouse gases increase – it results in a warmer atmosphere almost immediately. This changes the net radiation in the top microns of the oceans reducing the heat loss from the ocean to the atmosphere. Sunlight warms the oceans to a hundred metres or so and this heat is then emmitted as IR from the surface and as convection and – to a much lesser extent – conduction. Declarations to the contrary notwithstanding – this is well known and included in all of the energy budgets. Slowing down of heat loss causes the oceans to warm and losses in IR, conduction and convection to increase. Ultimately, the ocean energy losses are equal to inputs and the ocean stops warming. The atmosphere is at this stage again at a conditional radiative balance at toa.
Technically – a function that is not physically realistic – conceptually modelling this as effective diffusion of heat from the atmosphere to the oceans for instance – is known as a black box model and requires good data to mean anything at all. It must be calibrated to data and in this case is quite pointless as one may as well refer directly to the data itself.
You can do all the baby physics and make all the assumptions you like – in the end it must fit to the curve and tells you nothing about the real physical processes going on. The result is mathematical gobbledegook that webby passes for realistic analysis. Is he serious? Is FOMBS serious with the wildly irrelevant functions thrown into the mix? I don’t know – but if you believe them it could be seriously misleading.
To make any sense of it at all you need to look at data. Here for instance is Fig 7 from – Wong et al 2006.
It shows the net change in ERBS and ocean heat content. What I find interesting is that OHC follows the trajectory of changes in toa radiant energy flux. Does this imply that the oceans don’t have much of a memory at all but simply warm and cool as dictated by the radiative imbalance at toa? Net ERBS was composed of 2.1W.m^2 warming in shortwave and 0.7 W/m^2 cooling in IR between the 80’s and 90’s. Cloud radiative forcing then increased a couple of Watts/m^2 in the 1998/2001 climate shift – seen here in ISCCP-FD data but also in ERBS and Project Earthshine.
Assuming that radiative imbalance at toa changes solely as a result of greenhouse gas changes is incorrect. The perils of using a 30 year old paper is that the concepts, data and methods are radically out of date. With ARGO since 2003 and CERES since March 2000 a new generation of instruments is available for elucidation.
The ocean warmed in ARGO data? I see no reason to dispute this but from CERES we can be sure that the primary cause was changes in cloud radiative forcing. It bothers me that this is not explicitly stated. They may assume that these are positive cloud feedbacks but this assumption needs to be exposed.
This is how real scientists work webby. We use data to explore concepts – and do not fit data to preconceived notions while ignoring the inconvenient.
Wong Fig. 7 – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=91
Webster, “Also get a book on physics..” Tiplers has done me well
That is why I started looking at meridional flux by region.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-nRhQv7fGGdA/UU0R5LD-cyI/AAAAAAAAHjQ/0VEltDOk-dM/s800/sst%2520energy%2520flux%2520with%2520thermal%2520equator.png
The ACC is the location of the majority of the deep ocean heat uptake. The southern pole is thermally isolated, the ACC pumps water to the partially isolated northern hemisphere, the heat uptake looks a little more complex than a simple diffusion application. Once you get into time scales over centuries there is a lot of factors involved. My estimate seems to fit the GFDL ocean model rates, but for some reason my magnitude is about 1/4 of Hansen’s using absolute SST data.
Since the minimum temperature is fixed by the heat of fusion of salt water to a range of -2.3 to 0 C with -1.9 the rough average, to open water between 0c and 4C seems to be the main point of entry or heat sink region. That region is dominated by turbulent mixing and the area of the region varies with sea ice extent and local winds.
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1324186/
Looks like there is a relative importance in considering the meridional and zonal SSTs in this modern era.
Truth be told, the reason I started commenting to this blog a few years ago was because I thought it was a science-based blog, yet I saw all sorts of misinformation being propagated. In particular, I noticed something very peculiar about this commenter known as the Chief Hydrologist, and so my first comments (as I recall pretty clearly) were directed at his misleading suggestions as to how best model physics. I thought to myself: This is modern hydrology? … oh my god, please no.
So I figured I could add something to the discussion by introducing my own style of simplifying stochastic and statistical physics arguments that have been gaining traction over the years. One can see this in the approaches advocated by Marston, Mumford, Lovejoy, Christian Beck, and in many of the maximum entropy style arguments governed by uncertainty that are in vogue. Importantly, I am not advocating anything that is contradicting the established climate physics set forth by the stalwarts in the field such as Hansen, Lacis, Pierrehumbert, etc, but simply trying to frame the arguments into first-order representations that could reduce complexity. These kinds of formulations are important to physicists, see the AIP’s American Journal of Physics, for an illustration on how important teaching is to the field of physics. Very apropos for the subject of the top-level post.
So here we are a couple of years later, and still we have the Chief Hydrologist mucking things up and and arguably trying to act as nothing but an agent provocateur or prankster trying to mock authority. Well, I am still just as fed up with the Chief now as I was the first day I commented here and will continue to point out how misguided and damaging his attitude is in making forward progress to the climate science field.
Some would ask why not just ignore the Chief, or whatever sockpuppet names he adopts? Well, that is a good question, and all I can volunteer is that the APS has had a longstanding history of dealing with kranks. During their spring and fall meetings, the APS have always allowed members to submit an abstract, no matter how twisted. It was up to the members of the APS to decide what was good stuff and what was bad. No different here, we just need to have somebody point out what the horrible stuff is. Someone’s got to do it, because this is science education, after all.
That is also why this committee that Curry, Marston et al are involved in is so valuable. They have a group of people behind them, the APS and the AIP, that actually care about the science, and don’t treat it as a big freaking joke.
‘Atmospheric and oceanic forcings are strongest at global equilibrium scales of 10^7 m and seasons to millennia. Fluid mixing and dissipation occur at microscales of 10^−3 m and 10^−3 s, and cloud particulate transformations happen at 10^−6 m or smaller. Observed intrinsic variability is spectrally broad band across all intermediate scales. A full representation for all dynamical degrees of freedom in different quantities and scales is uncomputable even with optimistically foreseeable computer technology. No fundamentally reliable reduction of the size of the AOS dynamical system (i.e., a statistical mechanics analogous to the transition between molecular kinetics and fluid dynamics) is yet envisioned.’ http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.long
The problem with webby is that his reductions of the size of the dynamical system are fundamentally unreliable.
Let me be as clear as I can. Webby has a conceptual model of heat moving by ‘effective diffusion’ from the atmosphere. I briefly described the real energy dynamics above – and I am sure most of you understand how energ moves through the system.
It must be apparent even to webby that the model is by no means physically realistic so can not provide insights into how things work in reality.
The second point is that he then uses data – and I wont discuss the quality of the data – to determine an effective rate of warming. In doing this all the detail of the data is lost – the interannular to decadal and longer variabilities that are of great interest. Such that information is lost and not gained and there seems no apparent point to the exercise.
He pretends to simplification in ways that are far from what is deemed reaonable in mainstream science. No one but webby is suggesting that a statisitics of climate equivalent that of thermodynamics is yet feasible.
Here again is the Wong et al 2006 Fig. 7 – http://s1114.photobucket.com/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=91#/user/Chief_Hydrologist/media/Wong2006figure7.gif.html?sort=3&o=91&_suid=1364380335283035157579451685733
It uses real data on ocean heat content and net toa radiant flux to provide real insight into how things work. Ths is real science.
Over the years I have referenced hundreds of scientists and hundreds of papers. What I mostly get in return is arm waving narrative. Webby drops a few names and apparently has read Hansen’s 30 year old paper.
I have very little knowledge. I have written abut environmentl law and policy and have studied hydrology for decades. This is clearly a core climate competency. My formal education includes chemistry, physics, mathematics, material science, hydraulics, computing, hydrology, economics, environmental economics, geography, fluvial geomorphology, biology, etc. Can anyone have any depth in all of these? Of course not – but these are just the things that are covered in enginering and environmental science and I know more about any of these over thirty years and especially hydrology than webby can even imagine. His claim abut modern hydrology leaves me unimpressed because it is not as if he actually knows anything about it – or much else in terms of broade science.
I am however quite bored with the repetitive nonsense about cranks and clowns and whatever else he feels is an appropriate mode of dicourse. I am a real scientist – webby is a pretender with a line in pretentious and garroulous cr@p.
Chief Hydrologist proudly proclaims of himself:
That is so true. Take a bow.
Oh webby you take the most obvious and juvenile opening. Climate science is one of those things where there is still is a great deal to be learned and understood and a little intellectual modesty is a good thing.
I have sometimes described it as being a humble worker in the vineyards of science.
Just what we need. Another bureaucratic committee to hand down their politically motivated assertions based on inadequate review of grossly inadequate data
Good luck Dr Curry. While reading the comments thread above, it seems that a lot of people think (or talk like they think) that institutions such as the APS are somehow inhabited by noble scientists more so than Nobel scientists. But as with any if not all groups that have a human membership, the APS is large enough and old enough to have a leadership order metastasized around image, patronage, cliques, and other arcane rules and relationships (seen and unseen). The result is that there will be leading members in and around the top echelon who ascribe to Machiavelli principles more so than any devotion to the scientific method. Thus, I applaud your appointment while also urging caution. As others have said, it is the minority dissent that must be heard, no matter how unpalatable that small voice might be or how obnoxious the message the minority intends to convey. And to my mind, that is why the APS statement hurt the APS. It was fealty to the majority view with no deference to alternate ideas or possibilities. And to make matters worse, the APS seemed incapable of comprehending its misstep for what it was. An appeal to authority based upon an appeal to consensus. Very unscientific for a group that purports to be the opposite.
Excellent statement
Second, focus your efforts on the knowledge frontier, e.g. the controversies, the uncertainties, the known unknowns.
Sounds good to me. Here’s hoping.
” Simon Hopkinson | March 24, 2013 at 6:30 pm | Reply
Jim, in that they do likely respond to forcings, I don’t think the idea that they’re feedbacks is really much in question.”
“Mosher | March 24, 2013 at 8:39 pm | – That is because sensitivity is a SYSTEM metric. how the system responds to ANY change in forcing.”
Given that the geophysical record record shows a consisntent picture that the earth’s climate has been stable for the last ~2,000,000 years consisting of ~100,000 years of extensive glaciation intersperesed with warmer periods of ~12-15,000 years, is there enything to indicate that the climate system is actually changing in a way that will interrupt this cycle?
Since the current climate system is a complex, chaotic system the bistable character indicates that it has had two quasi stable modes for several million years. With this in mind, are the internal varaiblities of the climate that cause these changes also “forcings”?
I think the whole concept of “forcing” and “sensitivity” in a chaotic system is an illusion since no one as yet has come up with any method for distinguishing between “forcings” such as increased insolation, changes caused by chaotic behavior in the system, and what the proper metrics are for a chaotic system. Certainly a construct such as Global Average Temperature is not a metric because is doesn’t measure anything. It takes a calculated equilibrium assumption and applies it chaotic system driven by processes that are not at equilbirium.
Carry on.
You very much have the right idea. Physical comprehension of the complex climate system is not advanced by simplistic notions that fail to distinguish between conservative extensive metrics (energy) from nonconservative intensive ones (average) temperature or changes in system response due to increased CO2 from true forcings that introduce more energy.
Which is rather different from saying it’s conclusive. One cannot help but wonder whether the authors might be aware of the distinction, yet hopeful that most of the readers are not.
Now, APS says the evidence is compelling. I like “compelling” better than “incontrovertible,” because compelling evidence is evidence that calls for action.
Max_OK
compelling [kəmˈpɛlɪŋ]
adj
1. arousing or denoting strong interest, esp admiring interest
2. (of an argument, evidence, etc.) convincing
Yeah, I’d say that fits better than:
incontrovertible [ˌɪnkɒntrəˈvɜːtəbəl ɪnˌkɒn-]
adj
incapable of being contradicted or disputed; undeniable
Still an overstatement, but less so than before.
Whaddaya think?
Max_CH
I think you didn’t use Webster. He says compelling means
a : forceful
b : demanding attention <for compelling reasons
Attention is an action.
“Attention is an action.”
Yeah…uh…no. Attention is a noun/thing. Attend is a verb/action. One clue is the inclusion of the word “noun” in Webster’s entry for the word attention.
Max_OK
“attention is an action”.
Huh?
(Maybe in OK – although I doubt it – but not anywhere else.)
at·ten·tion
/əˈtenSHən/
Noun
1.Notice taken of someone or something; the regarding of someone or something as interesting or important.
2.The mental faculty of considering or taking notice of someone or something: “he turned his attention to the educational system”.
Synonyms
care – heed – regard – notice – consideration
Having a hard time finding any “action” in there, Okie.
Max_CH
You are having a hard time finding it because you go about this the same way you go about climate, seeing only what you want to see.
Take a look at Webster’s synomyms for “attention:
a : the act or state of applying the mind to something
b : a condition of readiness for such attention involving especially a selective narrowing or focusing of consciousness and receptivity
2
: observation, notice; especially : consideration with a view to action
Now, when I apply my mind to something, I am performing an action. You may be different. Perhaps when you apply your mind, nothing happens.
No, there can be compelling evidence that nothing is happening. No action required.
Good luck on selling that one.
Max_OK, you made a general statement about “compelling evidence,” as did I.
Semantics: the study of the meaning of words. It seems to me that even when discussing the colour blue, we all perceive something a bit different.
It therefore seems to me that regardless of the topic at hand, complete concensus would always be problematic.
Hence climate science has severe problems because even the basic underlying physics is not fully understood let alone the interpretation to be placed on observed phenomena.
Faustino, I have been talking about what I interpret the APS to mean by “compelling.” I think it means the organization is calling for action reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. To see why, read the last sentence of the APS policy statement on climate, quoted below.
“The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”
I have asked many times why the bottom of the ocean is colder than the top and have been told many time that melting polar ice flows to the bottom of the oceans carrying chilled oxygen rich water.
As we all know, global warming has increased the rate of polar ice melting and so has increased the rate at which frigid waters speed to the ocean depths.
So, if the ice-caps are melting, where did all the missing cold go?
Doc,
I am a bit perplexed. The top of the ocean is warm because warm water floats. Below that there are processes of turbulent mixing of warm surface water into the water below and bouyant convection that carries warm water to the surface layer.
In some areas in the polar regions some water is saline and cold enough to sink initiating global scale currents in the deep ocean. Melting ice reduces surface salinity and thus deep water formation.
Ice will melt at 0 degrees C without changing temperature – but I don’t think that is the question you are asking?
The question is this. why should the Oceans, below about 300m, warm at all?
We know the majority of the oceans are far closer to polar meltwater temperatures than they are to the surface.
We are told the amount of meltwater is rising, but changes to the surface temperature are tiny.
Why arn’t the oceans cooling?
Last month NOVA ran a show on sattelites and what they are telling us about our planet. One of the items was how the annual melting of Anarctica ice appears to drive ocean currents worldwide. (Note: I believe much of what they showed was derived from modelling.)
Another interesting point – one I never hear about – is how scientists were amazed by how fast and how big ocean planckton blooms are. I seem to recall the figure 45 billion tons, though I can’t remember the time frame (it doesn’t exceed a year). I had the distinct impression that no one w