by Judith Curry
The Fifth Assessment has been a particularly turbulent period for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). . . but the pace at which the world changes is stepping up, and we can be sure that the IPCC must adapt to these changes if it still wants to retain significance in the future.
The IPCC is soliciting input from participating nations regarding the future of the IPCC. This submission from Netherlands is being discussed in the skeptical blogosphere, lets take a look at some suggestions that I find particularly good:
The IPCC needs to adjust its principles. We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human-induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a crucial part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change.
JC comment: While I loudly applause a suggestion for more focus on natural climate change, this may be a mismatch for the IPCC given its imprimatur fromthe UNFCCC and UNEP.
The IPCC needs more transparent, focused and up-to-date assessments. The use of the internet continues to expand. It would be easier to keep IPCC assessments up to date if they would be fully web-based. Digitalisation also increases the transparency of the reports.
The assessment should be more dynamic by regular updates of the chapters, with only one round of expert review, and by shortening the assessment cycle. The reports are currently perceived to be quite dated already a few years after they have been published. We suggest two working groups instead of three. For example, it is possible to expand WGI to include WGII subjects that are closely connected to the information in WGI. An example is the SREX special report, where climate extremes and risk-based information are combined. WGIII would then include adaptation and mitigation measures and their environmental impacts. In this way there would be two working groups, which would shorten the cycle but will also to improve the consistency in the assessment cycle and facilitates the synthesis.
JC comment: More effective use of the internet and hyperlinks is a no brainer. I particularly like two working groups instead of three, for the reasons given above.
The IPCC should reconsider the regionalisation of the assessments, aiming for an efficient division of work among relevant organisations. We are aware of the relevance of regional information, particularly for vulnerable regions in developing countries with limited resources. However, we believe organisations such as the WMO should strengthen the position and the resources of the Global Framework of Climate Services (GFCS) in line with the Nairobi work programme. The main goal of GFCS is to enforce the resilience of vulnerable regions by facilitating the access to tailor-made climate information on spatial scales that are more useful to stakeholders than IPCC can ever provide. This does not diminish the possible role there is to play for the IPCC in providing guidance for interpreting regionalised climate information and also building capacity in this respect in developing countries.
The other UN climate organization
Here is a riddle: What do you get when you take the UNEP out of the IPCC?
Answer: IPCC – UNEP = WMO(GFCS)
Lets take a look the UN WMO Global Framework of Climate Services (GFCS). From their mission statement:
“Enables better management of the risks of climate variability and change and adaptation to climate change, through the development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice on the global, regional and national scale.”
Four priority areas of the GFCS: Agriculture and Food Security, Disaster Risk Reduction, Health and Water
From the GFCS, the Intergovernmental Board on Climate Services (ICBS) was launched with its first meeting last week. The overall initiative is outlined in this Special Issue of the WMO Bulletin.
From the article What do we mean by Climate Services?:
As indicated by the well-known adage “climate is what you expect and weather is what you get” used to distinguish between the climate and weather, climate information prepares the users for the weather they actually experience. For most users climate and weather are mutually interchangeable. It is, therefore, imperative for climate and weather services to operate in close tandem, so as to be seamless to the end-user. The seamless delivery of services from the long- to short-term time scales is critical to ensure effective and consistent use of information for various real-world decision-making contexts. Timescales are key in understanding climate services.
The end-users perspective is a key in the tailoring of climate services. The “end-users” are in fact a heterogeneous mix of stakeholders from the national, sub-national and community levels. Each user can derive a benefit – potential or actual – in using climate services.
However, not all users are end-users. Some recipients of climate information, such as trend projections and forecasts of various climate and weather parameters, interpret, analyze and process it in light of sector-specific knowledge in order to produce a useable, tailored and integrated climate service that can be communicated to end-users. For example, agricultural experts employed by departments of agriculture may receive 10-day rainfall forecast bulletins (climate information) to which they overlay information based on their knowledge of the growing season for farmers in a given region of the country, such as stage of planting, plant phenology, etc (sector-specific knowledge), in order to produce a tailored rural advisories (climate services).
These “intermediary users” are the partners of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) in producing climate services. They work hand-in-hand with forecasters to transform climate information into a climate service. They are, in practice, the national stakeholders in charge of processing climate information (input) to produce sector-tailored climate services (output).
Intermediary users or service co-producers are different from the final end-users of climate services who often do not need climate information/data, but a finished useable climate advisory service or product that they can input into their decision-making. The latter category encompasses farmers, fishermen, vulnerable communities, etc., as well as national decision-makers and planners who need finished climate information products at longer timescales (climate projections).
Titles of the other articles in the Special Issue provide additional perspective on what this is all about:
- Localizing climate information for agriculture
- Weather and climate resilience
- Reducing and managing risks of disasters in a changing climate
- The application of climate science to benefit society
- Clim-Health Africa
- Reconciling post-positivist and post-modern worldviews in climate research and services
- Addressing the potential climate effects of China’s Three Gorges Project.
Nowhere in any of the documentation I have read on the GFCS have I seen the words carbon mitigation. This effort seems to be focused adaptive management of climate change, whether the cause is natural and/or anthropogenic.
GFCS on extreme weather during 2001-2010
In preparation for the inaugural session of the IBCS, a document was prepared entitled The Global Climate 2001-2010: A Decade of Climate ExtremesIPCC SREX. The findings are broadly consistent with the IPCC SREX , although the analyses are more superficial. Excerpts:
Many of these events and trends can be explained by the natural variability of the climate system. Rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, however, are also affecting the climate. Detecting the respective roles being played by climate variability and human-induced climate change is one of the key challenges facing researchers today.
There were fewer deaths, even while exposure to extreme events increased as populations grew and more people were living in disaster-prone areas. According to the 2011 Global Assessment Report, the average population exposed to flooding every year increased by 114 per cent globally between 1970 and 2010, a period in which the world’s population increased by 87 per cent from 3.7 billion to 6.9 billion. The number of people exposed to severe storms almost tripled in cyclone-prone areas, increasing by 192 per cent, in the same period.
While the risk of death and injury from storms and floods declined, the vulnerability of property increased. This is because the expansion of socio-economic and infrastructural assets led to an increase in the amount and value of property exposed to weather and climate extremes.
While the report is relatively sensible, he press release from the WMO heavily spins this report along the story line of CO2 alarmism.
JC summary: As the relevance of the IPCC is waning, the relevance of the ICBS seems to be rising. While the IPCC is about the nexus of climate science and raw politics associated with energy policy, the ICBS is an emerging nexus between climate science and the national bureaucracies of the weather/hydrological services and end users. I have no illusions about challenges facing the ICBS, but it seems to be time/effort/funding better spent at this point than pursuing additional IPCC reports.
http://www.knmi.nl/research/ipcc/FUTURE/Submission_by_The_Netherlands_on_the_future_of_the_IPCC_laatste.pdf
“The IPCC should reconsider the regionalisation of the assessments […] regionalisation significantly increases the volume of the assessment, makes it more difficult to read and causes an almost unmanageable writing process. It becomes more vulnerable to uncertainty, inconsistency and the existence of potential errors. Consequently, regionalisation puts more pressure on the contributors. It also complicates the synthesis of the assessment.”
unacceptable, evasive self-contradiction
“For most users climate and weather are mutually interchangeable. It is, therefore, imperative for climate and weather services to operate in close tandem, so as to be seamless to the end-user.”
Translation: we have blown our credibility, but everyone acknowledges the importance of short term weather information. So we want to clothe our wolfish drive for decabonization of the global economy in the sheep’s clothing of weather services.
This comment: “Nowhere in any of the documentation I have read on the GFCS have I seen the words carbon mitigation,” just shows that the bait and switch has a good chance of working on those in the muddled middle.
Mitigation/decarbonization is still there.
““Enables better management of the risks of climate variability and change and adaptation to climate change, through the development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice on the global, regional and national scale.”
Management of the risk of climate …change” clearly encompasses “mitigation.” Notice the “and adaptation.”
And “The application of climate science to benefit society” is big enough to drive a truck through.
This is just organizational reframing. Same policies, but they hope without the baggage of the discredited IPCC.
GaryM | July 5, 2013 at 5:09 pm | “For most users climate and weather are mutually interchangeable. It is, therefore, imperative for climate and weather services to operate in close tandem, so as to be seamless to the end-user.”
Translation: we have blown our credibility, but everyone acknowledges the importance of short term weather information. So we want to clothe our wolfish drive for decabonization of the global economy in the sheep’s clothing of weather services.
Which reminds me that a while ago there was a drive to both discredit weathermen/women as sources of information on climate and to penalise those who refused to toe the AGW line.
Watch for the bait and switch to ‘Agenda 21’. Agenda 21 started at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. It is being used by UN and NGO’s to drive their ‘sustainability’ agenda from the bottom up. They are getting local councils all over the world to sign up to its objectives which are to make everything we do, think, eat and say ‘sustainable’.
Australia intends to hold a referendum at or coming federal election to change Australia’s Constitution. the purpose is to allows the Federal Government can give money directly to local councils instead of it being passed through the states. The funds would be tied grants to make the local councils do what the central government wants them to do. This is dangerous. It would increase the power of the central government enormously. Progressing Agenda 21 is a major thrust of the Progressives and Greens. When the Progressives are in power, Agenda 21 will be rolled out across the country at the local government level.
That is the new thrust. Watch out for the bait a switch from climate mitigation to Agenda 21.
GaryM wrote:
(July 5, 2013 at 5:09 pm)
“bait and switch”
“This is just organizational reframing. Same policies, but they hope without the baggage […]”
–
Agree. Fundamentally false assumption of separability.
Contemptuously portraying nature as a cancerous growth that needs to be cut off and swept under a rug is devilish.
If they follow through with this, the gulf of mistrust widens.
Scrap it. Do science the same way as every other scientific field, ie. various bodies, loosely arranged, driven (eventually) by research and evidence.
When the IPCC implements the last set of recommendations wrt conflict of interest and special interest group infiltration, further inquiries might be taken more seriously.
I can only echo what Marcel Crok wrote
Quote
@@@
Skeptics
So in general I am very happy with the advise and I am convinced that the IPCC would greatly improve if all these points will be brought into practice. The only thing I am really missing is the explicit advise to involve skeptics in the process. This was actually the main advise in my book: add two skeptics to each lead author team to keep the mainstream scientists honest. This simple advise is the only way IPCC can ever become more balanced and objective. However, congratulations to the Dutch government for taking this critical stance.
@@@
” add two skeptics to each lead author team to keep the mainstream scientists honest”
Would that the Royal Society and the American Physical Society followed Marcel’s advice as well.
“add two skeptics to each lead author team to keep the mainstream scientists honest. ”
there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters. For the chapter that I review I can only think of one skeptic.
The problem with “adding” an author is that in the end somebody still has to make a decision.
There are better ways.
There’s all kinds of skeptics, it takes a heap of knowing.
All perspectives in the wind, away they go a-blowing.
========================
You’re not yourself knowledgable enough to judge knowledge level in others, Mosher.
Steven, you write “there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters. For the chapter that I review I can only think of one skeptic.”
That is your OPINION. But is it fact? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I think there are more reliable ways of deciding who is, or who is not, competent, than yourself.
and it’s not you
Steven Mosher
You make the mistake of assuming that “there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters”.
You have absolutely no earthly notion of how many “knowledgeable skeptics” there REAL:LY are, so how can you make such a silly statement?
Being a “knowledgeable skeptic” requires a basic understanding of the scientific method and the principles involved plus a well-honed “BS meter”, not in-depth knowledge of how the whole story was fabricated.
Max.
“You make the mistake of assuming that “there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters”.
1. its not an assumption, its based on evidence.
2. I’ve yet to meet, talk to, or read a skeptic who is competent to
author the chapter I review. They could of course assist and make
suggestions, but they lack the fundamentals: mastery of the entire
field.
###################################
You have absolutely no earthly notion of how many “knowledgeable skeptics” there REAL:LY are, so how can you make such a silly statement?
1. Notice the qualification. I know of one
2. You cannot name a single skeptic who meets my simple criteria
a) published in the field he is writing a summary for
b) mastery of the published literature
c) good writer.
3. Lets make this a specific challenge. Suggest a replacement for Peter Thorne. Since I have experience with him and his work, I’ll gladly tell you
why your suggestion as a co author fails to meet my criteria.
############################
Being a “knowledgeable skeptic” requires a basic understanding of the scientific method and the principles involved plus a well-honed “BS meter”, not in-depth knowledge of how the whole story was fabricated.
1. Wrong. The job is to write a SUMMARY of the science. This is not practicing science or understanding the scientific method.
2. You know the scientific method. You have a good BS meter. You could
not replace peter thorne and neither could you help him. Therefore your criteria fail. Your criteria fail to produce a candidate who could do what was suggested : co author the chapter.
3. You could obviously raise questions. Any idiot can. But the job is NOT to raise questions. The job of a summary writer is to summarize the state of the science.
Max.
David Springer | July 6, 2013 at 4:55 am |
You’re not yourself knowledgable enough to judge knowledge level in others, Mosher.
#################
1. I’m published in the field: 3 papers.
2. I know what I dont know. This is simple. When you read the chapter you say “gosh I didnt know that?”
3. I know what I havent read and what I have read. So when a skeptic blathers on about some topic and I ask them if they read X, and looked at data Y, and they say “no”, then I have a good proxy for their knowledge.
4. Remember the job of a chapter author is to summarize the state of the science. Its hard to summarize what you havent read or what you dont understand. So, when I look through the bibliography and I see a bunch of stuff I havent read, I get a good sense of how much I have to learn. When I talk to people like you who have read less and pretend to know more, I am re assured.
Its pretty simple. In my field I have interacted with host of skeptics. As I pointed out I can think of ONE who might be qualified to co author the area that I am published in. I would not be qualfied to co author. That recognition gives me some insight.
Jim
“Jim Cripwell | July 6, 2013 at 6:40 am |
Steven, you write “there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters. For the chapter that I review I can only think of one skeptic.”
####################
That is your OPINION. But is it fact? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I think there are more reliable ways of deciding who is, or who is not, competent, than yourself.
###########################################
Well, that is your opinion.
Understand what the job is. The Job is writing a summary of the science. The job is not to DO SCIENCE, but rather to write a summary of the science.
My criteria would include
. Published in the field.
Since I have read a great portion but not all of the papers that are summarized in the chapter I review, I can say that there are 5 candidate
skeptics in the field. of those 5 I would say 1 has the chops to be a co
author and contribute something of merit. the other 4 might be good for a
paragraph each.
You see the problem with skepticism as a method and practice is that most skeptics focus very narrowly. They dont synthesize knowledge they attack what others have done on narrow points. If you ask them to help build a document of what they know, they cant. They can only attack what others have built on narrow grounds.
NOTE: this role of skepticism is important BUT its different than writing a summary of what we know. They simply lack the ability to synthesize.
Mosher I think you are correct, but overly generous when you include a skeptic or yourself or any fellow ‘climatologist’ who is knowledgeable enough to contribute.
The truth is the field is not mature enough to have any competent scientists in it who understand it. And any ‘scientist’ like yourself or any of the other posers who have the audacity to make predictions or even hind casts are LOL Charlatans and Con Men.
Mosher: “scientific method ”
You, before
that’s it’s only what scientists do
science itself is only what scientists do
so any scientist is qualified
Steven Mosher | July 5, 2013 at 8:51 pm | Reply
there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapters. For the chapter that I review I can only think of one skeptic.
The problem with “adding” an author is that in the end somebody still has to make a decision.
There are better ways.
_______________
And those better ways are?
Because the current method is a fool-proof recipe for group think results.
Steven Mosher,
It would be hard to find a more arrogant person than you.
Mendacity backed by billions of reserach dollars is still mendacity. If you believe that CO2 emissions controlled by humans will cause some kind of catastrophe you should produce convincing evidence.
You failed to do that. All you have is derision for your opponents.
Springer, Cripwell, notgood, manaker,
Bush league comments.
Mosher’s comment only concerned the area he is involved with. While the qualifications for being a reviewer are not strenuous, it is still a reasonable assumption that Mosher is familiar with main critics in his area. And while it is certainly only his opinion, it is also reasonable to assume it to be an informed opinion.
You guys ought to be embarrased.
timg56 said | July 8, 2013 at 3:10 pm |
Springer, Cripwell, notgood, manaker,
Bush league comments.
Mosher’s comment only concerned the area he is involved with. While the qualifications for being a reviewer are not strenuous, it is still a reasonable assumption that Mosher is familiar with main critics in his area. And while it is certainly only his opinion, it is also reasonable to assume it to be an informed opinion.
You guys ought to be embarrased.[/quote]
Oh, I don;t know about that. Who bothers to read what I wrote? I bothered to read what you wrote and it’s wrong. You should have bothered to read what Mosher wrote
““add two skeptics to each lead author team to keep the mainstream scientists honest. ”
Mosher reply
there are not enough knowledeable skeptics to contribute to more than a couple chapter”
You don’t need skeptics on any panel. You need scientists who are not driven by politics. The field of climate science” is too far gone to provide them.
There is simply no way to do any “assessment” under the auspices of the UN, or any of the numerous governments, NGOs and academic institutions that are so heavily invested in the CAGW movement.
all scientists should be presumed as being political. poltical bias isnt something you can get rid of by choosing scientists differently.
It’s worse than that. What’s needed is final cut by people with no conflicts of interest. No climate scientists, no environmental activists, no one connected to energy sector in any way, no politicians… the list of who should be out of the loop is legion. Meterologists with no history of taking sides would be good and they should have a budget to pay for consulting from disinterested physicists, geologists, statisticians, and so forth.
It’s common enough practice in industry and in my experience is called a “clean room”. It’s sort of like a jury where anyone who’s seen or heard pre-trial publicity about a case is barred from serving on the jury and they must be kept in the dark during the trial too. In the computer business when one company wants to produce a product that is functionally identical to another company’s product (called a “clone”) the team who designs the clone can’t have any insider knowledge or other exposure to the product to be cloned (software or hardware) to avoid lawsuits. The team gets a specification but can’t actually have the other product in its possession. A lot of freshly minted computer science majors get jobs by not knowing too much.
Whatever crew has final cut should also be paid but they can only work on one report then they too are dirty.
A slightly different way to go is to solicit stakeholder and have a non-biased final arbitor to sort out a fair compromise between the vested interests. I see this kind of setup in Texas government with regard to usage of public reservoir water and in particular the lake where I own property along and beneath it. Various people with conflicting interests are solicited for input into usage decisions including waterfront homeowners, businesses connected with the lake or river downstream including farmers using it for irrigation, environmentalists representing species that might be threatened or harmed, cities who discharge treated wastewater, power generators, and so forth. They all get a seat at the table and have their voices heard.
It’s gonna be messy and suspect to some degree any way you slice it or dice it but the current way it’s done is like having the foxes or the chickens, but not both, work out the security specifications for the henhouse.
“It’s worse than that. What’s needed is final cut by people with no conflicts of interest. No climate scientists, no environmental activists, no one connected to energy sector in any way, no politicians… the list of who should be out of the loop is legion. Meterologists with no history of taking sides would be good and they should have a budget to pay for consulting from disinterested physicists, geologists, statisticians, and so forth.”
1. everyone has a potential conflict of interest.
2. everyone has connections to the energy sector, since they use energy.
3. Meterologists lack the training and skills to do a science review.
4. and so forth is your best idea.
The document is supposed to be a summary of science. The notion that you can somehow pick and choose people who will be free from bias is beyond naive. You can have processes to diminish bias but thats about it. The notion that this is anything remotely close to a clean room operation says a lot about your understanding of clean room operations and writing science summaries.
The question isn’t whether you can pick scientists without any bias, political or otherwise. The question is why pay any attention to an “assessment” where scientists were chosen by politicians, specifically FOR their political bias, for the purposes of producing a political document, that would justify the political policies favored by the politicians?
The only rational answer – there isn’t.
Bias isn’t an unintended flaw in the climate industry. It is the sine qua non of admission to the tribe.
GaryM | July 6, 2013 at 8:32 pm |
The question isn’t whether you can pick scientists without any bias, political or otherwise. The question is why pay any attention to an “assessment” where scientists were chosen by politicians, specifically FOR their political bias, for the purposes of producing a political document, that would justify the political policies favored by the politicians?
_______________
I don’t believe the scientists are chose by the politicians. In fact, it’s quite worse than that: they “self-select” into the roles and are “confirmed” by their “peers”. This means there is a real bias to politically motivated, “government is the only answer” thinkers.
Perfect recipe for “group think”.
Well then Steven I’m afraid you’ll (well not you because you’re a nobody but you know what I mean) be forever plagued by credible accusations of conflicts of interest. Climategate Steven. Caught red handed. Sullied the whole field. And dipthongs like you refusing to take reasonable steps to repair the damage. I love it. With friends like you climate science doesn’t need enemies. Carry on.
k scott dennison,
“I don’t believe the scientists are chose by the politicians. In fact, it’s quite “worse than that: they ‘self-select’ into the roles and are ‘confirmed’ by their ‘peers’”.
The IPCC disagrees.
“IPCC reports are prepared by international experts selected by the Bureau to serve as IPCC Lead Authors.”
http://www.ipcc.ch/activities/activities.shtml#.UdnyUm20QXR
The IPCC Bureau members are political appointees of political appointees. Who then pick the scientists.
Mosher,
1. everyone has a potential conflict of interest.
2. everyone has connections to the energy sector, since they use energy.
3. Meterologists lack the training and skills to do a science review.
1) maybe in a general sense, but this doesn’t preclude establishing a screening template to eliminate some of the more obvious conflicts.
2) this isn’t even worthy of a response. (Did you have someone ghost write it?)
3) Exactly what is so difficult about doing a science review? And why do you lump all meterologists into a single mold?
“The IPCC needs to adjust its principles. We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human-induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a crucial part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change.”
Bravo, KNMI.
Yes, and it we need to put more effort into analysing the opportunities, not just the downside risks.
but note how they contradict themselves — be wary…
Paul Vaughan: Is it a contradiction or emphasis? To me it reads that in order to understand human-induced climate change one also has to understand natural climate change.
Bob, devil’s in contradictory details.
Dutch Treat, double tricky and sticky.
=========
double tricky indeed…
They appear to be fishing for an easy way to engineer a false facade of administrative defensibility that will (in naive theory) provide deeper cover for ongoing intransigent maintenance of darkly ignorant &/or deceptive failure to sufficiently appreciate, explore, and understand nature.
Paul Vaughan,
I hadn’t previously seen that statement by Sir Humphrey Appleby :
http://www.jonathanlynn.com/tv/yes_minister_series/yes_minister_episode_quotes.htm
Bob
The Met Office are also looking harder at natural climate change than they have in recent years. Unnatural climate change can not be identified unless natural climate change can be identified first.
tonyb
caution: timid ignorance warns of bait.
tonyb wrote:
(July 6, 2013 at 4:38 am)
“The Met Office are also looking harder at natural climate change […]”
That’s what they want you to think.
Suddenly awarding naive trust to veteran dark agents of ignorance &/or deception is neither prudent nor sensible.
Since you’ve so easily disarmed, eagerly volunteering the submissive knee-jerk acceptance for which they angle, we can be sure they’ll be playing golf instead of doing serious work.
Paul Vaughan
The Met Office are being provided with data on natural variability by a number of people including myself, MP’s have asked that they look at natural variability, their minutes say they are looking at natural variability and during my visits there I am told they are looking at natural variability.
Curiously, out walking on upland Dartmoor yesterday I came across a Met office scientists looking at the Bronze age standing stones and HE was also interested in natural climate variability.
So I think we can reasonably say they are taking more notice of the subject, a conclusion helped by the fact that the portion on their web site that claimed current temperatures were due to man/co2 was removed last year.
They may be subject to group think but I do not think they are liars.
tonyb
+ 1000
Here! Here!
Tony,
Naive, darkly ignorant leadership is hazardous. So far I’ve seen absolutely no evidence that they possess sufficient competence to do anything more than look. They don’t even possess sufficient competence to recognize and sufficient integrity to acknowledge what has already been clearly shown to them. Frankly, they’re not qualified to assume a leadership role.
There’s only one thing that will change my mind…
Paul Vaughan
This wide spread notion that ALL climate scientists are incompetent and that the hundreds of top scientists employed by the MET office fit that criteria as well, means that sceptics often have a higher trust in our own competence than is warranted.
We need to raise our game and point out the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the narrative proposed by warmists.
. We won’t do that by believing a phd educated alarmist is automatically inferior to sceptics who may not have reached that level.
These people are neither uneducated, foolish or liars, although a few unfortunately have their judgement clouded by ‘noble cause corruption’ overlaid with politics.
We need to make more effort to produce peer reviewed material but unfortunately sceptics are a disparate bunch with no overall strategy.
tonyb
tonyb,
“These people are neither uneducated, foolish or liars, although a few unfortunately have their judgement clouded by ‘noble cause corruption’ overlaid with politics.”
I have no problem with this comment, with the exception of the word “few.” Among the climate scientists there have been and are those for whom integrity is an annoyance, to be ignored when necessary. Gleick and Stephen Schneider come readily to mind. But group think and noble cause corruption are endemic in the climate industry.
A quick way to see the point:
List all climate scientists who actually approached the CAGW “consensus” with anything other than complete acceptance since 1988.
List all published papers since 1988 that treated CAGW as anything other than revealed truth.
It is not that the consensus scientists failed to have a debate when requested by skeptics. It is that the question of debating the flaws in the science BEFORE jumping on to the political band wagon never occurred to them.
There have always been the hints of doubt here and there when they thought no one else would know. The doubts of Briffa and Trenberth come to mind. But the political unanimity and lock step uniformity of the climate industrial tribe would make the Spartans green with envy. (pun intended)
I’ll believe the Met Office has abandoned their place among the climate Borg when they actually take a position that shows they are actually engaging in critical analysis, of their own positions. Off the cuff, off the record remarks by individuals don’t qualify.
GaryM
I have already confirmed there is group think and noble cause corruption. You have named two people-that is surely a definition of a few? Lets accept for the sake of argument that there may be dozens or even hundreds. That is still a ‘few’ compared to the numbers involved in climate science ranging from the huge number of middle ranking people right up to the very few at the top of the tree.
Add in politics and ideology to those with noble cause corruption and group think, to those not having a good grasp of all the mechanics involved but a very good grasp of their small piece of the jigsaw, and you have a bunch of good scientists with a few that are promoting an agenda but most who aren’t, but may automatically think the answer to any climate related question is co2.
tonyb
tonyb,
“…you have a bunch of good scientists with a few that are promoting an agenda but most who aren’t, but may automatically think the answer to any climate related question is co2.”
This is the nature of modern progressive politics. A point I make all the time. Most climate scientists are not fire breathing progressives. They are what I call default progressives. This does NOT make them apolitical. It just makes them reflexively political.
A “bunch of good scientists” wouldn’t keep regurgitating the mantras of their political leaders.
A “good scientist” would…do good science. I ask again, how many of these supposedly large number of good scientists have published anything contrary to the political dogma of CAGW? How many of them have spoken out about the dishonesty and zealotry of their leaders? How many of them have rejected the funding that goes along with their government jobs or government funded research?
The progressives who lead the CAGW political machine would be powerless if the very large number of their followers did not provide ancillary research, and respond to polls indicating their acceptance of the consensus.
Those who acquiesce in the behavior of the Gleick’s, Trenberth’s Hansen’s Mann’s and many more, do not get a pass in my mind, just because all they want to do it join in the gravy train.
A “good scientist” questions the consensus. And when they see something wrong, they say and do something about it. They don’t go along to get along.
They are the drivers of the get away cars. They may not be the ones robbing the banks, but the robbers could never get away with it without them.
And if the claim is they are not aware of what is going on in the bank? Baloney. These are indeed for the most part educated, intelligent people. There is no excuse for their silent complicity in the CAGW movement.
Gary, you write “Those who acquiesce in the behavior of the Gleick’s, Trenberth’s Hansen’s Mann’s and many more, do not get a pass in my mind, just because all they want to do it join in the gravy train.”
Although not quite in the same class, may I suggest the list also includes out hostess.
Tony, it appears you’ve resigned yourself to playing right into the enemy’s divide and conquer strategy. I see no reason to discuss this further with you. Adios.
I say again: The IPCC was never set up as a scientific research organisation and it shows to this day. While it employs some outstanding scientists, they all suffer from that same setting up mistake.
A major early mistake of the IPCC was to assume that the modern era of climate began in about 1961, when it is obvious that significant anthropogenic change began in 1910 or earlier. This meant they failed to learn the dynamics of early change and that failure has dogged their efforts ever since.
One consequence of that is their failure to recognise and understand the on/off nature of climate change. Despite that such on/off or discontinuous behviour is a natural consequence of Quantum theory and the CO2 molecule. Understanding the excitatation modes of CO2 and how they change in the atmosphere is is basic to sucb a study
I say again. Nothing about the IPCC or how it has preformed was a mistake. It was designed, staffed, funded and run to generate scientific gloss to a political agenda. It has performed exactly as planned. And it will continue to do so. There is nothing to suggest the people, the process, or the climate industry have been in the least de-politicized.
Put a fork in the IPCC. It will continue to issue chicken little assessments so long as it exists. So will any off shoot that is created, funded, staffed and controlled by the same people.
+1
+1 more
Amen!
I’ve been sayin’ all along, ‘Git rid of the IPCC.’ It’s a closed shop.(
Bts
+1
Let’s go further and use it as a practice run for getting rid of a number of other UN program and agencies.
“Which reminds me that a while ago there was a drive to both discredit weathermen/women as sources of information on climate and to penalise those who refused to toe the AGW line.”
That is still in progress — as recently as last week at the American Meteorological Society’s broadcaster’s meeting in Nashville. They had a spokesman for “Forecast the Facts” there to continue its pressure on television meteorologists who don’t toe the line (see: http://forecastthefacts.org/weathercaster_watch/ ).
I believe the politicization of atmospheric science is highly unfortunate.
It’s primeval, or primordial. Well, medieval at any rate.
=================
Thanks for the link to forecastthefacts – appears to have been organised recently as the hub for the targetted attack on the integrity of those not toeing the party line, which the AMS promotes, and Soros organised.
They, the weatherpeople, had been recognised as key players in the communication war about climate from a survey done in 2010:
http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/images/files/TV_Meteorologists_Survey_Findings_(March_2010).pdf
“Our findings confirm that TV weathercasters play – or can play – an important role as informal science educators. Nearly all of our respondents (94%) said they work at stations that do not have anyone else covering science or environmental issues full-time. This number verifies other research showing that only about 10% of TV stations have a dedicated specialist to cover these topics. By default, and in many cases by choice, science stories become the domain of the only scientifically trained person in the newsroom—weathercasters. Two-thirds of our respondents report on science issues once per month or more frequently and one-third would like to report on science issues more frequently. Topics they cover range from astronomy to zoology, and many weathercasters have become the point person for expertise on plate tectonics in local TV newsrooms on the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.”
And the push to make these weathercasters the actual science authority on local stations comes from the AGW scam compromised AMS:
“TV weathercasters embrace the idea of expanding their role beyond forecasting to becoming “station scientists,” a proposal advanced by the AMS to make the weathercasters the “go to” person in a TV newsroom on a variety of science topics.”
Here Heartland’s run in with them: http://fakegate.org/the-heartland-institute-replies-to-forecast-the-facts/
The AMS statement page linked to on the forecastthefakefacts page says this:
“[This statement is considered in force until August 2017 unless superseded by a new statement issued by the AMS Council before this date.]”
Any reason for that caveat and that particular date?
Perhaps we could rewrite it for them…? My suggestions in [..]
‘Climate Change
An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society
(Adopted by AMS Council 20 August 2012) [and corrected July 2013]
‘Why is climate changing?
‘Climate is always changing. However, many of the observed changes noted above are [not] beyond what can be explained by the natural variability of the climate. It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of [temperature fraud and unscientific modelling on] atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide. The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is [not] rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation [as natural sources such as volcanic activity are not accounted for, and which still remains a trace gas which lags temperature rises]. While large amounts of CO2 enter and leave the atmosphere through natural processes, these human activities [of fraudulent science modelling on fake fisics and manipulations of temperature data] are increasing [the scaremongering about] the total amount in the air and the oceans. [For example claiming that] “Approximately half of the CO2 put into the atmosphere through human activity in the past 250 years has been taken up by the ocean and terrestrial biosphere, with the other half remaining in the atmosphere” [as we previously published under duress, shows abyssmal ignorance of basic physics about carbon dioxide, which as a real gas, and not the imaginary massless ideal gas used in the AGW scam The Greenhouse Effect Illusion, is incapable of accumulating in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is one and a half times heavier than air under gravity so will always spontaneously separate out displacing air and sink to the surface where the world’s flora expect their dinner to be delivered, and of course, carbon dioxide is being continually washed out of the atmosphere in the Water Cycle in the 8-10 day residence time of water in the atmosphere].’
From: forecasthefakefacts front page: http://forecastthefacts.org/
“A recent study found that 27% of TV meteorologists call global warming a “scam,” while over half deny that humans are the cause. Communities being devastated by increasingly severe weather deserve to know that there’s a culprit—a warming world and an increasingly unstable climate. This campaign aims to make sure that happens.”
A while back the AMS site included in its teaching meteorology pages a statement that carbon dioxide had no effect on driving temperatures, there was a brief flurry of posts about this and then the information was taken down a couple of days later..
There’s no doubt about the wording here, not a disingenuous figure as usually produced by such ‘surveys’ by manipulative wording of the questions. 27% call it a scam, call it for what it is.
Makes me wonder about the others though.., do they know how the AGW fake fisics has taken convection out its energy budget and is missing the Water Cycle for example? If more real scientists in all the varied disciplines would look at the actual contortions of their own physics in the AGW Greenhouse Effect Illusion’s claims ..
p.s. forgot to put in the link to the AMS page I offered correction: http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2012climatechange.html
“discredit weathermen/women as sources of information on climate ”
Rightly so. Most of them are pig ignorant about the subject.
lolwot,
When one considers that the “average” meterologist can likely run circles around you on the topic of climate change, what does this make you?
Let’s see how well the IPCC adapts to economic downsizing. As for the national AGW industry, the credibility of the numbers are on a par of reading on a glass thermometer to the 100s of a degree in a closed garage with a hot car in it.
What I see buried under all that word salad above is the intent to still control world energy by imposing controls on greenhouse gases. My bold.
From Judith’s post.
===================
http://unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/nairobi_work_programme/items/3633.php
Quote from the Nairobi Work Programme
===================
http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6399.php
Quote from the SBSTA.
+1
Thanks for posting that info.
The ants go marching four by four, hurrah, hurrah!
The narrative parades full bore, hurrah, hurrah!
The ants go marching to the store, hurrah, hurrah!
Mulberry Street is closed before
The ants are baffled aft and fore
And they all go marching in time to the lore, horrore!
=============================
a whole busload of IPCC members direct to Alcatraz!
The Whomping Willow,
Chitty chitty bang bang it.
Take the magic bus.
=============
A policy that everyone MUST agree with:
I propose instead that the best way to proceed would be to put a small tax on CO2 emissions, and tie its subsequent evolution to a suitable measure of atmospheric temperatures. If temperatures go up, so does the tax. If they do not, the tax does not change. In this way everybody will expect to get the policy they think best, and whoever turns out to be right deserves to be so. Sceptics who do not believe in global warming will not expect the tax to go up, and might even expect it to go down. Those
convinced we are in for rapid warming will expect the tax to rise quickly in the years ahead. Companies managing factories and power plants will have to figure out who is more likely to be right, because billions of dollars of potential tax liabilities will depend on what is going to happen. Nobody will benefit from using false or exaggerated science: instead the market will identify those who can prove they understand the climate well enough to make accurate forecasts. And policy-makers will be guaranteed
that, whatever the tax does in the future, the policy will turn out to have been the right one.
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2013/07/McKitrick-Carbon-Tax-10.pdf
Why start with a small tax? Better to start with no tax and if the temperature goes down start rebating to the public the cost of all those emission credits they sold.
I do not agree with it. Any carbon pricing scheme has all the problems of any carbon pricing scheme: distorting unless every country and every GHG emissions source is included, very high compliance cost if it is to be non distorting, increases costs of energy, damages economies, therefore reduces human well being compared with the case if energy was cheaper, and unlikely to make any measurable difference to the climate. It would be high cost for n o demonstrable benefit – all pain no gain.
There is a much better way. ‘No Regrets’. Potentially no cost or negative cost. Why not consider it?
No regrets? Come, there must be confession and repentence before absolution.
========
Peter
If you start with small tax of about $1 for a one ton of CO2 emission and increase it if the global mean temperature increases is an evidence based policy. It is a much better policy than that with no linking to the temperature.
Girma,
You have not considered the compliance cost of measuring, monitoring, reporting, administering, upgrading systems and legacy data that is essential if you are going to price carbon. If the C tax is low as you suggest, the compliance cost would be more than the tax revenue.
“The ultinmate compliance cost of the ETS” provides some perspective on this, evne though it is abnout the compliance cost when carbon pricing is fully implemented to the standard that woul ultimately be required.
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578
And this gives you some perspective on the compliance cost for one type of carbon abatement – soil carbon:
Peter
I think you are right with the compliance cost.
Girma,
Thanks. It’s really great when someone acknowledges a point in a web blog. It’s rare. I appreciate your reply.
Another real world example of the compliance cost of carbon pricing:
Comment by an engineer, Graeme3:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13578#235297
Graeme 3 posted about four other interesting comments on the subject and finally this one:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=13578#235415
These comments reveal the real compliance costs of carbon pricing. It’s important to recognise that once carbon pricing is begun it will grow and grow and grow. Eventually, when full international carbon pricing is in pace, every emissions source in every country will have to be measured – precisely and accurately.
[Beth note reference to serfs and barons :) ]
People amaze me in their naive belief that there is some way to compromise with those who are still trying so desperately to take (more) control of the global energy economy.
A “small” initial tax? A “revenue neutral” tax? Who precisely do you think is going to be implementing any carbon tax? The 5% of lukewarmers? The 7-10% of libertarians? Virtually every western government is headed by progressives. The only thing stopping them from wholesale decarbonization is the remnants of a democratic process in most of their countries. There is still a fear of what voters will do if they give in to their lust for power in one fell swoop.
Let’s all keep pretending that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ragendra Pachauri, James Hansen, Michael Mann,and every other progressive member of the climate industry will suddenly stop being so damn progressive, if we just give them half of what they want.
Some of you folks really need to crack a history book or two.
Yes, but it should be based on a 30-year running average climate, because shorter periods oscillate too much and make it impractical or awkward to apply. For example, you don’t see the pause in the 30-year average, because the pause isn’t part of climate.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:360/plot/gistemp/mean:360
Hmmm, your graph stops in ~1999. Is that due to needing a 15 year window on each side of the averaged year? Or are you just having fun?
I would say 30 years is too long a time as you would always be responding to things that had happened fairly far in the past. Maybe a 15-20 year average. Too short is very problematic. Too long has its problems as well.
Yes, it is centered on the averaging window. The last 30 years is attributed to 15 years ago, but it includes the whole pause. The pause didn’t make much of a dent because before the pause was a rapid rise that is less often talked about.
When an IPCC Report contains a Hockey Stick that gets thrown out before the next Report, there is something really Wrong going on in the IPCC. When the IPCC makes agreements in which the countries who are part of the agreement can not and will not abide by or radify, then the agreements are not acceptable. The IPCC should be abolished. It is worse than useless.
You want to see a Hockey stick? Here’s a real hockey stick!
Number of illegal immigrants in detention since the Labor-Green (‘Progressive’) government scrapped out border protection and invited a free for all arrivals by boat:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_gives_fake_excuses_for_his_boat_people_disaster/
The IPCC already consider natural variability (aka paleoclimate). It is seen that the largest natural variabilities have to do with atmospheric composition and surface albedo, so we learn a lot from that.
Freeman Dyson said, “any good scientist ought to be a skeptic.” Does Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, believe that? No but interestingly, even Pachauri finally concedes there has been no global warming over the last 17 years. The problem is, like global warming alarmists, Pachauri and the IPCC are only skeptical of anything that conflicts with their preconceptions that they can accurately determine the average temperature of the globe and accurately tease a trend in the data and simply know without proof that increasing atmospheric CO2 is the proximate cause for that trend and that it is a crime that humanity does not admit its guilt for causing the very CO2 that tips the scales from normal Earth to a glacier-melting, polar bear-drowning, ocean rising, specie-killing, snowless Earth.
“even Pachauri finally concedes there has been no global warming over the last 17 years”
No he doesn’t.
It’s true, Pachauri understands it is impossible to live in the past and now believes there is little future in simply continuing to deny reality.
Coming to understanding
Like train track in need of tending.
=====================
@Wagathon: even Pachauri finally concedes there has been no global warming over the last 17 years.
When climate skeptics are reduced to putting words in the mouths of climate scientists it shows just how desperate they’ve become in finding anything that will support their case.
Pachauri never said any such thing, it’s a pure fabrication of The Australian journalist Graham Lloyd. Lloyd’s fabrication is a great example of something that constant repetition in an echo chamber can make true.
15 years would be reasonable, but if you actually look at the last 17 years you’ll see global temperature increasing dramatically during the first two of those years, reaching an extraordinary peak in 1998.
You must be channeling Michael Mann.
The IPCC has been in existence for 25 years. For 15 of those (60%) there was no global warming. The IPCC did not notice. They did not even bother to look out of the window.
Says it all about their credibility.
+100
The argument is well known to be wrong.
0.072 +- 0.127C/decade is not “no warming”
lowlot uses a yardstick to measure the thickness of a hair
“For 15 of those (60%) there was no global warming”
Can you back that claim up?
Answer: No you can’t.
Of course he can back it up for the argument is well known. There is no need to repeat it.
Conversation circular, ho,
News is so much fresher, so.
==============
Yep. Temperatures in 2012 were same as 1998.
If there is no difference in temperatures there has been no warming.
To show warming would need to show that T(today) was greater than T (15 years ago). It is not, hence no warming.
And please don’t witter on about the highest decade ever etc etc. The absolute magnitude of a variable is not related to its rate of change (first derivative). Or, more prosaically, when I get to the top of a mountain I am high up, but I am not still going up.
“Temperatures in 2012 were same as 1998”
Well that’s not correct.
Here check out the warming:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1970/mean:10
You are wrong to say it hasn’t warmed in 15 years. The data does not support that claim.
lolwot,
You and your dueling graphs.
2013 – 15 gets you 1998, not 1970. Use that as a starting point and it is impossible to argue that temps are higher today than 15 years ago.
But since 2013 isn’t finished, lets move the date back a year to 1997.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1997/mean:10
Still not much in the way of warming.
Seriously lolwot, dueling graphs is a useless exercise.
Timg56 – why not just do 180 months (15 years)? You pretty much get Van Storch’s number.
180 months
JCH,
180 months is fine with me. As I’ve said, it is an exercise in dueling graphs.
+1
Unless IPCC dramatically changes its approach in its forthcoming AR5 report (which is highly unlikely) it will have lost all remaining relevance.
The efforts to rationalize away or ignore the past 15 years of no warming only add to its lack of credibility.
No matter what IPCC gets replaced with, it will not regain that credibility unless it drops its myopic fixation on CAGW.
And, since this fixation has been the direct result of a preconceived political agenda of decarbonization, this is unlikely to occur.
The best solution is probably just to let IPCC (and CAGW with it) die a natural death as the reality of naturally changing climate and the myth of CAGW become apparent to everyone.
Max
Compared to the NIPCC report , the IPCC has enjoyed very smooth sailing indeed- the usual suspects should put away their rubber graph paper and return to the policy debate.
The metastatic cancer of politics is untreatable in the UN body. Donna Laframboise in “The Delinquent Teenader” has clearly and devastatingly demonstrated why the IPCC should figuratively be taken out behind the barn and shot.
According to a Dutch analyst (Theo Wolters), the document incorrectly uses the world “crucial” in the following statement, which in Dutch has a somewhat different meaning than in English.
“We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human-induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a CRUCIAL part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change.”
(emphasis added)
Most likely the authors probably meant something like “very important”. That gives this statement a different meaning.
Do governments ever plan for the long-term? If so, how long is “long-term” in the usual government perspective? We often definite climate to be the average weather over at least 30 years. Do governments ever plan for more than 30 years? If not, then there may be no need for “climate services”, only weather services. (Models, of course, currently can’t make useful projections about regional climate change.)
As best I can tell, almost all government spending is justified by needs for the next 30 years or less. Facilities such as roads, schools, buildings, and harbors (dredging) are almost always designed or intended to meet the needs for the next 10-30 years. Unless the project is federally-funded, bonds are issued to cover the costs of major capital projects and eventually repaid through increased through the increased revenue the projects are expected to generate. The net present value of increased revenue generated more than twenty years in the future is small and contributes little to the cost benefit-analysis of any project.
Do some projects have a longer planning horizon that might be helped by climate services? Large scale water projects (for agriculture, people and flood control) probably do. For example, the people of the Western US could build new infrastructure today that is capable of meeting projected water needs through 2060, but they might only do so if at least some of the new capacity is need before 2020. If you don’t need something for a decade or more, let the next generation pay for it. In a decade, the people will have a better idea of what they need and how much they can afford to pay for it. (This is precisely why alarmists constantly exaggerate the effects of climate change today.)
The link I posted here may be interesting to you. Some areas like Miami already have ongoing issues with sea-level that they know will only get worse. Unfortunately the view from the state government is to not do anything and eventually the federal government will have to step in when it gets to be an emergency.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/07/05/open-thread-weekend-24/#comment-340575
Jim D: The article you linked reminds me of a PBS special when I was in graduate school in the Bay Area in the 1970’s called “City Waiting to Die”. When the current rate of sea level rise is about 1 foot per century (roughly the same as the 20th century) and worst-case projections are for more than 1 meter per century (and Al Gore has us worried about 5 m), our knowledge of how fast SLR threatens Miami is about as accurate as our ability to predict how soon the next big earthquake will hit San Francisco.
Instead of scaring Miami with worst-case scenarios about SLR, we would do better to explain exactly what problems and threats Miami faces today; for example if another hurricane Andrew were to strike the city more directly. That threat is bad enough and another few inches of SLR over the next 2-3 decades isn’t going to change it much. The routine problems of flooding are bad enough today and another few inches of SLR over the next few decades isn’t going to change that much either. The environmental problems in South Florida are bad enough, and another few inches of SLR will make them more somewhat more challenging over the next few decades. South Florida needs to make plans and investments to protect itself from today’s real threats and problems. Those plans should include contingencies to speed up investments if today’s rate of SLR should accelerate modestly from today’s 1 inch/decade to 2 inches/decade. Worst-case scenarios call for more than 40 inches/century, but we aren’t going to be seeing 4 inches of SLR in the NEXT decade. If Miami responds properly to CURRENT threats and problems for the next two decades, the death of Miami envisioned in the article you linked probably won’t occur. Throwing the red meat of CAGW to rabid right-wingers isn’t going to reasonable politicians make sensible decisions, but a conservative realistic presentation of those problems might.
Katrina destroyed large sections of New Orleans because governments ignored current problems and known risks, not because GHGs had caused an extra inch or two of SLR and warmed the Gulf less than 0.5 degC. In 1985, we should have invested money in protecting New Orleans because of the real threats that existed then, not because of Jim Hansen’s warnings worst fears have come to pass.
Jim D –
Please reconcile the NOAA trendline of 9 inches for the last 100 years for Key West and the same for Miami for the last 40 years with the hysterical projections in the Rolling Stones piece. The NOAA data show no increase in the trend and without one, by 2100 both areas should be 9 inches above where they are today. Sorry but the recent data dont support the doom and gloom you link.http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?stnid=8724580
Not specifically about Miami, but isn’t the most recent satellite data showing SLR going from 3 mm/year down to 1.5 mm/yr?
Earth’s temp with full real gas atmosphere of predominately nitrogen and oxygen: 15°C
Earth without any of this atmosphere: -18°C
Compare with the Moon without any atmosphere: -23°C
Earth with atmosphere but minus water: 67°C (think deserts)
The AGW Greenhouse Effect of “greenhouse gases warming the Earth from -18°C to 15°C is an ILLUSION.
There is no connecting physical logic in the AGW fake fisics of its Greenhouse Effect.
It is the real gas atmosphere of around 98% nitrogen and oxygen which is the real thermal blanket around the Earth, not the trace gas carbon dioxide which is practically 100% HOLE in the atmosphere.
Get real here. This is a con created by science fraud. There is no physics in the Comic Cartoon of KT97 and ilk – just more AGW fake fisics which has not only missed out the Water Cycle which cools the Earth by 52°C, but posits a COLD Sun, of 6,000°C by some weird “planckian” sleight of hand calculated on the 300 mile wide thin visible light atmosphere around the Sun – http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-340397
There is no real world physics in any of this AGW Greenhouse Effect – it is all sleight of hand and science fraud, changing basic physics.
And it begins by attributing the -18°C figure to the temp “without greenhouse gases” – this is SCIENCE FRAUD.
Created for the same reason the IPCC was created.
Why isn’t this bothering those AGW/CAGWs here?
Myrrh | July 6, 2013 at 5:07 pm said: ”Earth’s temp with full real gas atmosphere of predominately nitrogen and oxygen: 15°C”
Myrrh, you are the only one who make sense here… why don’t you try to explain on Facebook and tweeter; where people with open mind are. here getting trough to a Zomby is like telling a 3y old that Santa is not real; because they know about Rudolf also
I’m posting here because this is a climate science blog run by someone who has actual credibility in the climate science world, and so I can hope is being read by people of like ilk, it is certainly being read by people who have an interest in the subject and the intelligence to take on board what I’m saying, whatever science discipline they come from or have interest in – this is a science problem first and foremost. It is the corruption of basic science that concerns me most, because it has been introduced into the education system.
The 27% of weathercasters who say this is a scam are not finding any backing for their reasoning in these blog discussions generally, because this view does not get an airing for the most part, because posts get censored on other climate science blogs when they get as specific as those I make. We are in the ridiculous situation where one the most popular such ‘science’ blogs has made the word “gravity”, taboo.
I have given, for example, the teaching from traditional science on the heat we get from the Sun being longwave infrared, which contradicts the basic AGW Greenhouse Effect claim, from a NASA page which has now been removed from its site (Nick Werme claims he had something to do with getting it removed). This is clear censorship at the highest levels of science.
There appears to be a great fear about discussing the basic premises on which the AGW Greenhouse Effect claims are based. Singer called us deniers and distanced himself from us, Monckton wanted all such discussions confined to a ghetto on WUWT and not allowed into the general arena and so on because any discussion on the validity of the physical claims used as AGW basics rocks their boat too much, actually capsizes it. Here JC allows such posts, so I post.
What I’m asking is why doesn’t this clear science fraud bother the AGW/CAGWs here?
Stefan – I’ve posted this and am waiting to see if it appears:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/07/witchcraft-on-catalyst-scary-weather-is-coming-its-all-our-fault-be-afraid/
There is no science in the AGW Greenhouse Effect claims, as your link clearly shows:
That you can’t see anything wrong with it is the real problem here – visible light from the Sun is not capable of heating the Earth’s surface, it is not powerful enough to move the molecules of matter of land and water into vibration which is what it takes to heat something up.
AGWScienceFiction fisics is what this is, it does not describe the real world around us.
AGWSF fake fisics claims that there is some “invisible barrier at Top of Atmosphere (TOA), preventing the entry of longwave infrared from the Sun – where is this invisible barrier? What is it made of? How does it physically prevent the great heat from our millions of degrees hot Star the Sun from entering? It is unknown to traditional science teaching.
I was told by an AGW that this was the CAGW argument, that the AGWs said the Sun produced insignificant amounts of longwave infrared so insignificant of insignificant reached us.
How come the millions of degrees hot Star the Sun produces insignificant amounts of longwave infrared, which is radiant heat, aka thermal infrared?
This was given to me as the ‘more sophisticated’ AGW science answer – and the reason they say this is because they have calculated the heat of the Sun from the 300 mile wide thin atmosphere of visible light around the Sun, by some weird “planckian” reasoning – and they have concluded that the Sun is only 6,000°C. In their more sophisticated science they have a cold Star for their Sun.
I hope you can see how ludicrous that is..
So, both AGWs and CAGWs say that there is no direct heat from the Sun which is longwave infrared – this means that in the AGW/CAGW world there is no heat from the Sun at all..
There is no heat direct from the Sun in the AGW Greenhouse Effect because visible light from the Sun cannot heat matter and they have excised the real direct radiant heat longwave infrared from the Sun.
Now, there is a reason for this fake fisics – it is to pretend that any real world measurements of downwelling longwave infrared are attributed as “coming from the atmosphere backradiating from greenhouse gases” – because where else could it come from if there is no direct radiant heat from the Sun?
It’s a science fraud. Unfortunately for us, it has now been so completely infiltrated into the general education system in the last decades that no one so educated sees any reason to question it..
This is not real physics, as still taught by some, though you won’t be able to find it mentioned much anymore because the scam has been so successful. Here is a page from traditional physics from NASA:
Do you see how this completely contradicts the “Greenhouse Effect” energy budget as depicted in that cartoon you’ve posted?
There is no invisible barrier at TOA preventing the great heat from our real millions of degree hot Star the Sun from entering.
Our real Sun is a Star millions of degrees hot and not the cold 6,000°C claimed by the AGW fake fisics.
Visible light from the Sun is not thermal, not hot, we cannot feel it as heat and it cannot physically heat us up.
(Visible light from the Sun works on the tinier electronic transition level, because it is very small, and not on the bigger more powerful molecular vibrational level. Also in real the real world physics as still traditionally taught, water is a transparent medium for visible light, it is not absorbed at all but transmitted through unchanged, etc.)
Now, you can either deal with this or not, but if you have any interest at all in real science then you cannot ignore that the information I have given comes from traditional science as it used to be taught in the general education system and given here by what used to be a very well respected leading science body, NASA.
http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html
This used to be elementary teaching about heat and light from the Sun, two completely different electromagnetic waves, with different properties and processes. That is why in traditional physics teaching the heat waves are called thermal, shortwaves are not thermal (they are classed as Reflective not Thermal). In traditional physics infrared is divided into thermal and non thermal, reflective, as NASA describes here – shortwave infrared in not thermal, it is not hot, it is not radiant heat.
The AGW/CAGW Greenhouse Effect is fake fisics. That is a real science fact.
I hope you can deal with this. Because, at the moment any thinking the AGW fisics is real world have no idea of the difference between heat and light, and so, it must appear to them as witchcraft that there are numerous manufacturers of glass and film for windows for use in hot countries who have designed their windows to maximise the entry of visible light and to minimise the entry of the great longwave infrared heat from the Sun to save on airconditioning costs.. Think about it…
I asked you this on another thread, but you didn’t reply, so I’m asking here again:
What elements in the Sun emit strongly in the longwave? And by what mechanism?
Also, how do the oceans warm when water is to all intents and purposes opaque to longwave? Have you ever tried to heat water from the top?
phatboy | July 7, 2013 at 2:58 pm | I asked you this on another thread, but you didn’t reply, so I’m asking here again:
What elements in the Sun emit strongly in the longwave? And by what mechanism?
Also, how do the oceans warm when water is to all intents and purposes opaque to longwave? Have you ever tried to heat water from the top?
I’ve just finished answering your post there: http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-341773
@Myrrh: That you can’t see anything wrong with it is the real problem here – visible light from the Sun is not capable of heating the Earth’s surface, it is not powerful enough to move the molecules of matter of land and water into vibration which is what it takes to heat something up.
Since roughly half of the Sun’s heating energy is in the visible portion of its spectrum, i.e. light (the other half being mainly near-infrared), I’d be fascinated to see how Myrrh shows that visible light has no heating energy.
The basis for climate skepticism would appear to be garbage physics of this kind.
“The basis for climate skepticism would appear to be garbage physics of this kind.”
Really? This is the best skeptical argument you could find to lump in all the other skeptics with?
@steven: Really? This is the best skeptical argument you could find to lump in all the other skeptics with?
Not all, merely most.
Assuming you’re agreeing with me that visible sunlight heats the Earth every bit as much as infrared sunlight, then certainly the skeptical argument that the former doesn’t heat the Earth is far from the best one.
But how often do you hear a climate skeptic attack an argument supporting their side on the ground that it’s a weak argument?
When a supporter of proposition P attacks someone proposing an argument for P on the ground that the reasoning is weak, you know you’re dealing with a serious scientist. A hallmark of “skeptical science” is the rarity of this sort of response to illogicality, greatly undermining any claim it might have to legitimacy.
Vaughan, many skeptics have tried to convince him he is wrong. I suspect those that are regulars have given up. I am still waiting for an explanation of why color makes a difference to how warm an object gets if only infrared can cause warming.
I’m trying again with this post, taking out some links –
Vaughan Pratt | July 9, 2013 at 8:53 am | @Myrrh: That you can’t see anything wrong with it is the real problem here – visible light from the Sun is not capable of heating the Earth’s surface, it is not powerful enough to move the molecules of matter of land and water into vibration which is what it takes to heat something up.
Since roughly half of the Sun’s heating energy is in the visible portion of its spectrum, i.e. light (the other half being mainly near-infrared), I’d be fascinated to see how Myrrh shows that visible light has no heating energy.
Actually, the AGWScienceFiction meme on this is that the majority of the energy received is visible light, a small percentage of the shortwave uv one side and 1% near infrared. Most descriptions don’t bother with the uv and near infrared, the general AGW meme is that it is “visible light from the Sun which heats the Earth’s surface”, land and water of the ocean.
Some examples:
So either they say mostly visible or simply visible – this has been the AGWScienceFiction’s teaching for some decades now and as it has been introduced into the general education system it is now ubiquitous… But please note – it is not taught in traditional physics which still makes stuff that works, like maximising visible light through windows to keep rooms cool..
The AGWSF meme here is “shortwave in longwave out”. Sometimes this visible is just called “Solar”..
..I’d be fascinated to see how Myrrh shows that visible light has no heating energy.
Visible light from the Sun cannot physically move molecules of land and water into vibration which is what it takes to heat matter, it interacts with matter on the much tinier electronic transition level, and, water is a transparent medium for visible so it cannot be heating the water in the ocean because it is not even absorbed on the electron level. I’ve posted more on the difference between heat and light from here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-340397
The basis for climate skepticism would appear to be garbage physics of this kind.
The garbage in comes from the AGW Science Fiction’s fake fisics meme producing department – by various sleights of hand it changes traditional physics teaching of properties and processes of matter and energy, and history.
These memes are simply a collection of magic tricks, to make you think you are seeing something which isn’t there. They are clever and subtle and fast and they cannot be seen unless you have knowledge of what real world physics says.
Here’s an example of the tricks: http://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html
“Climate Science timeline, 1820-1930, created by jg”
And here from the wiki page on William Herschel – “On 11 February 1800, Herschel was testing filters for the sun so he could observe sun spots. When using a red filter he found there was a lot of heat produced. Herschel discovered infrared radiation in sunlight by passing it through a prism and holding a thermometer just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum.”
Do you see the trick? How can climate scientists not mention Herschel on a page about the history of heat from the Sun? This is the greatest discovery of our age about heat and light from the Sun and they have deliberately left him out because Herschel contradicts the AGW “shortwave in longwave out”.
Now, what you also need to bear in mind is communication speeds at that time.., how this affected the spread of knowledge among the scientists. Before Herschel it was thought that the visible light from the Sun was the heat, after Herschel’s great discovery of invisible heat from the Sun spread to further this became better known among the scientists of those beginning explorations into light and heat. Did Fourier know about Herschel’s finding? Was this a selective quote from him? In context or out? Was it a quote from him at all?
There’s an immense amount of deceit in AGW’s presentation of history here in order to push the Greenhouse Effect Illusion – look at the Tyndall quote – but if you go to Tyndall’s work he actually tested Herschel’s findings for himself and his conclusion was that visible light was only useful for seeing because all the great heat of the Sun was in the invisible rays and the amount of heat in the visible insignificant compared with that.
We have moved on a long way from that..
We now know about photosynthesis for example.., so not quite as useless as Tyndall thought.
We now know through the continuing great work done by our real scientists that visible light isn’t hot at all – Herschel’s and Tyndall’s measurements were still too crude to see that the bigger invisible was overlapping into their measurements of the visible, giving a false reading of visible.
We now know that the invisible is also divided into thermal and non thermal. The near infrared is not hot at all, it is not an electromagnetic wavelength of heat energy, it is classed with light and not with heat.
You will not be able to see the con trick that AGW fake fisics is playing on you unless you make some effort to take on board what real physics says about this.
You may not like the NASA quote I’ve given from traditional physics which knows the difference between light and heat, but it is real physics, and, it is still taught by some.
AGWScienceFiction is doing everything it can to eliminate all mention of real physics on this subject. So you have to apply your own intelligence in sorting through the subject.
p.s. I’ll post the misssing links separately if you require them.
Myrrh, What you fail to realise, is that CAGW is a very plausible hypothesis. No-one, and I mean no-one, including yourself, can prove that it is wrong. The fact that no-one can prove that it is right, is irrelevant.
The argument as to whether, as we add more and more CO2 to the atmopshere, global temperatures are going to rise inexorably, will only be settled by the empirical data. We can argue and discuss the issue on Climate Etc., other blogs, the peer reviewed literature, the MSM, etc. and the discussions will get us nowhere. In the end, the empirical data will prove which side is correct.
In the meanwhile, the universe is unfolding as it should. The political attempts to control the use of fossil fuels will never work, because the global economy only thrives when there is lots of cheap energy. Any attempt to limit the use of cheap fuel will not succeed. At least, that it my hope, and is backed up by what is happening with the UNFCCC conferences.
So explain how it is a plausible physical hypothesis..
You keep making that claim without ever giving any detail. I on the other hand have given a lot of physical detail to explain why it doesn’t exist..
And please, don’t wave generally in the direction of “Arrhenius and there are lots of experiments to prove it”, fetch. Let’s examine the detail of your hypothesis.
Myrrh, you write “So explain how it is a plausible physical hypothesis..”
The reason is the empirical data. I dont want to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs, but the way science progresses has been elegantly described by Richard Feynman. You observe something (stage 1), you guess what causes it (stage 2), and you then go out and get the measured data to support your guess (stage 3). Etc. Etc.
The warmists, including our hostess, have, very elegantly and at immense expense, done stages 1 and 2. They have established CAGW as a hypothesis. With the global atmosphere being a non-linear, chaotic, uncontrollable, etc system, we are unable to do stage 3; get the empirical data to prove or disprove whether CAGW is right or wrong. It is impossible to design a laboratory type experiment on the atmnosphere where everything is chaotic. With the third stage unresolved, CAGW will remain a viable hypothesis.
If we wait long enough, the empirical data will come, since there is no practical way that we can control how much of fossil fuels are used; assuming this is the cause of the increased CO2. So CO2 levels are almost certainly going to go on rising, and we will see what happens.
As I say, the universe is unfolding as it should.
Maybe I should add, Myrrh, that the main problem does not lie with the hypothesis of CAGW. There are two far more important issues. The first, lesser issue, is the IPCC claim that the hypothesis has established that certain things about CAGW are “extremely likely”, or “very lilkely”. There is no science to support these claims, and the warmists refuse to discuss them.
The vital issue is that the learned scientific societies, led by the Royal Society and the American Physical Society, have endorsed the hypothesis as proven scientific fact. Nigel Lawson tweaked Paul Nurse’s nose sufficiently that Paul offered to brief the GWPF on the science of CAGW. Paul named a group of eminent Fellows of the RS who would brief the GWPF. Paul was obviously surprised by the GWPF response, when they named an equally eminent gorup of scientists, including an FRS, to hear the briefing. Now my guess is that Paul is desperately trying to find an excuse to call off the meeting. Unfortunately one aleady exists. We will see.
Very nicely said, Jim Cripwell. I am going to save these posts so I do not have to reinvent the wheel in explaining to the credulous scientifically unwashed how CAGW is an hypothesis and not a proven theory.
So.. you have no detail of your CAGW hypothesis? You say empirical data but provide none to show on what your hypothesis is built. You may well impress some, but I asked you for the detail of your hypothesis.
Spell it out. Write out your hypothesis in detail, so we can look at it together, step by step.
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_hypothesis.shtml
Myrrh, you write “Spell it out. Write out your hypothesis in detail, so we can look at it together, step by step.”
I dont need to. The IPCC has done a magnificent job of spelling out the CAGW hypothesis, in enormous detail in 4, soon to be 5, reports. Together with thousands of pal reviewed articles in learned scietific journals. These give you all the details you require. The only thing the warmists have not done, and cannot do, is to provide the empirical data to show that the hypothesis is correct. If you want to go over the IPCC reports in detail, sorry, I dont have the time to waste discussing an unproven hypothesis. And I cannot provide the empirical data that is not there.
Jim Cripwell | July 7, 2013 at 2:37 pm | Myrrh, you write “Spell it out. Write out your hypothesis in detail, so we can look at it together, step by step.”
I dont need to. The IPCC has done a magnificent job of spelling out the CAGW hypothesis, in enormous detail in 4, soon to be 5, reports. Together with thousands of pal reviewed articles in learned scietific journals. These give you all the details you require. The only thing the warmists have not done, and cannot do, is to provide the empirical data to show that the hypothesis is correct. If you want to go over the IPCC reports in detail, sorry, I dont have the time to waste discussing an unproven hypothesis. And I cannot provide the empirical data that is not there.
But you began:
Jim Cripwell | July 7, 2013 at 7:40 am | Myrrh, What you fail to realise, is that CAGW is a very plausible hypothesis. No-one, and I mean no-one, including yourself, can prove that it is wrong. The fact that no-one can prove that it is right, is irrelevant.
I can’t prove it wrong because you have not given me a hypothesis, give me the hypothesis you claim exists and we’ll take it from there.
What you have given me is a notion, an idea, which is not what a hypothesis is in science. In the real discipline of science.
Here:
“Scientific Hypothesis: A scientific hypothesis is a testable explanation about some phenomenon. This could range from an explanation as to why apples fall from trees to why homo-sapiens walk on upright on two legs and well beyond. As long as it attempts to explain something and it is testable it is a scientific hypothesis. There are good and bad hypotheses and the quality of ones hypothesis is likely going to be intricately connected to the original question and the quality and extensiveness of the background research and relevant background knowledge of the individual generating the hypothesis. The key difference between a hypothesis as used in day to day discord and a scientific hypothesis is that a scientific hypothesis is necessarily testable. Hypothesis testing is a whole other issue that I may tackle in the future but for now lets leave it at that.” http://lofalexandria.blogspot.ie/2013/01/fact-vs-theory-vs-law-vs-hypothesis-vs.html
So, “The key difference between a hypothesis as used in day to day discord and a scientific hypothesis is that a scientific hypothesis is necessarily testable.” If it is not testable it is not a hypothesis.
You do not have an hypothesis which is testable.
What you have is a series of claims about the properties of matter and energy on which your notion is built which are not known in real world empirically well tested and understood real physics as traditionally taught.
For example, the claims that “carbon dioxide traps heat”, “carbon dioxide accumulates for hundreds and thousands of years in the atmosphere”, “carbon dioxide is well mixed”.
These are gobbledegook in real world science.
And, that’s besides the fact claimed by AGW/CAGW that “the hot spot proves the AGW/CAGW hypothesis” – which has been show empirically to not exist, so the “CAGW hypothesis” has failed where it was loudly claimed it would be proved.
So now you, generic I take it since you have at least one supporting your version of hypothesis, say that there is nothing that can be tested. Gosh how convenient..
You have a notion built on fake fisics about properties and processes and you say it can’t be tested.
What you are failing to realise is that your is that CAGW is a not a plausible hypothesis at all.
Avoiding that reality by imagining excuses for this failure is not the mark of a scientist.
Myrrh, You write ““Scientific Hypothesis: A scientific hypothesis is a testable explanation about some phenomenon.”
CAGW, in theory, is a testable hypothesis. If, and it is a mighty big if, but if we could prove whether any particular rise in global temperatures was definitivity caused by rising CO2 levels, we could prove whether CAGW is right or wrong. The issue, is not whether the hypothesis is theoretically testable, but whether it is testable in practice.
Because we cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, we cannot test the hypothesis of CAGW. So we cannot prove whether it is true or not. That is all I am trying to say. You are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Jim Cripwell | July 7, 2013 at 4:32 pm | Myrrh, You write ““Scientific Hypothesis: A scientific hypothesis is a testable explanation about some phenomenon.”
CAGW, in theory, is a testable hypothesis. If, and it is a mighty big if, but if we could prove whether any particular rise in global temperatures was definitivity caused by rising CO2 levels, we could prove whether CAGW is right or wrong. The issue, is not whether the hypothesis is theoretically testable, but whether it is testable in practice.
The claim is that carbon dioxide drives global warming. The claim is that that manmade contribution drives global warming, AGW. The claim is that manmade contribution drives catastrophic global warming, CAGW.
These are huge claims for which you have yet to provide any physical means by which carbon dioxide can do any of those. The “theoretical” is what I’m requesting.
From the link I gave earlier:
“Key Info
•A hypothesis is an educated guess about how things work.
•Most of the time a hypothesis is written like this: “If _____[I do this] _____, then _____[this]_____ will happen.” (Fill in the blanks with the appropriate information from your own experiment.)
“•Your hypothesis should be something that you can actually test, what’s called a testable hypothesis. In other words, you need to be able to measure both “what you do” and “what will happen.”
“Hypothesis
“After having thoroughly researched your question, you should have some educated guess about how things work. This educated guess about the answer to your question is called the hypothesis.
“The hypothesis must be worded so that it can be tested in your experiment. Do this by expressing the hypothesis using your independent variable (the variable you change during your experiment) and your dependent variable (the variable you observe-changes in the dependent variable depend on changes in the independent variable). In fact, many hypotheses are stated exactly like this: “If a particular independent variable is changed, then there is also a change in a certain dependent variable.””
Note particularly: “After having thoroughly researched your question, you should have some educated guess about how things work. This educated guess about the answer to your question is called the hypothesis.”
You do not have an educated guess about how things work, your claims for carbon dioxide are unknown in traditional science, so how can you have a hypothesis?
The claim is that rising carbon dioxide levels cause rising temperatures and you can neither show how carbon dioxide can physically do such a thing, your “theoretical”, nor how you claim it can be tested.
The closest AGW/CAGW got to making a hypothesis was predicting the hot spot on rising carbon dioxide levels, it doesn’t happen. Your carbon dioxide drives global warming hypothesis has been falsified. So the AGW and your CAGW have been falsified in that.
What it actually showed was that carbon dioxide does not do what was claimed it would do, and this is the basis of the CAGW/AGW claims. This is a FAIL.
The ice core data shows carbon dioxide lagging by 800 years – no one calling himself a scientist can turn that into ‘a hypothesis’ that carbon dioxide drives increases in temperature. That is, quite frankly, irrational. To continue claiming carbon dioxide drives temperature increases turns that irrational thought into something else, an irrational fixation on some claimed ‘magic powers’ of carbon dioxide to drive temperature increases 800 years before it begins increasing does not show the mind of a scientist, who should be able to tell the difference between cause and effect.
“•Your hypothesis should be something that you can actually test, what’s called a testable hypothesis. In other words, you need to be able to measure both “what you do” and “what will happen.””
Cause and effect. That is science. That is how we have the wonders of science working all around us, because real scientists understand cause and effect.
Where are the experiments, that I’m being continually told exist, which show carbon dioxide is capable of doing what your hypothesis says it will do?
Because we cannot do controlled experiments on the atmosphere, we cannot test the hypothesis of CAGW. So we cannot prove whether it is true or not. That is all I am trying to say. You are making a mountain out of a molehill
You haven’t yet got a hypothesis, because you cannot show, have not yet shown, that carbon dioxide is physically capable of doing what you say it will do. Until you can show that you have nothing on which to build your hypothesis. Do the experiments in the lab.
Or go to traditional science which understands the properties and processes of carbon dioxide and which says that your descriptions of carbon dioxide are not physics. That’s the first step to building a hypothesis, get the facts.
Show how increasing the carbon dioxide in my attic space heats my attic floor by backradiation.
Saying it can’t be tested because you can’t do controlled experiments of the atmosphere is a cop out, take the first baby steps, show carbon dioxide is capable of backradiating and raising the temperature of my attic floor. Get to the lab.
We joe public are being screwed by this claim – you have no right to keep repeating it is “plausible” when you cannot even show that carbon dioxide has the properties you claim it has.
Until then, I’ll go with real scientists who have an actual grasp of the physical realities of properties of matter and energy and have produced various materials for attics to slow heat loss by conduction..
So, you can’t even show carbon dioxide is physically capable of doing what you say it can do, let alone show how a small percentage of that trace gas gives AGW let alone CAGW. There is nothing plausible about your claim.
Firstly, and this bears repeating, the claims AGW/CAGW makes about the physical properties of matter and energy are nonsense, that immediately falsifies your claim. So, you have nothing plausible on which to build your hypothesis. You can’t build a real science hypothesis on claimed physical properties which don’t exist.
Carbon dioxide is a trace gas, it is not a heat source. Carbon dioxide has practically zilch heat capacity, which means it absorbs and releases heat practically instantly, it cannot store/trap heat. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air so will always separate out and sink displacing air and, it is washed out of the atmosphere in the 8-10 day residence time of water in the atmosphere in the Water Cycle, so, it cannot accumulate for hundreds and thousands of years. Carbon dioxide is not well mixed, because it is heavier than air and is in all the precipitation in the Water Cycle, it separates out and is variable, as is water.
And that is besides the unknown to traditional science claims you make about nitrogen and oxygen and the great powers of visible light from the Sun heating the Earth’s land and water and no heat from your cold Sun…
You are attempting to reduce the mountain of these facts against your “hypothesis” not to a molehill, but to nothing. So you do not have to face the fact that your hypothesis is built on nonsense physical properties.
This is the problem I have with CAGW and AGW both, you cannot show the claimed physical properties on which you base your hypothesis actually exist.
I’m really sorry you don’t see this as a problem..
@Myrrh: Show how increasing the carbon dioxide in my attic space heats my attic floor by backradiation.
Myrrh makes a good point here. For planets whose atmosphere is the thickness of an attic, CO2 isn’t going to provide much thermal insulation..
However for planets like Earth with an effective atmosphere thickness on the order of 10 km, even 0.1% CO2 can make an appreciable difference.
For planets like Venus with an effective atmosphere thickness on the order of 100 km along with more than 95% CO2, one can expect even more heating, even after allowing for the greater proximity of Venus to the Sun.
It looks like ice isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
“While the Inuit argue it is the time of the most polar bear, CO2 advocates suggest they may soon go extinct, implying the loss of thick, multiyear ice in September is denying the polar bears the icy platform from which they hunt seals. In reality, less summer ice has a negligible effect on normal hunting, but a decisively positive effect on the bears’ main prey. Recent periods of more open water in the summer have undeniably benefitted the whole food chain.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/06/why-less-summer-ice-increases-bear-populations/
Professor Curry:
I am writing to inform you that you have precisely ZERO right to put on molecule of carbon dioxide on my property. I hereby demand that you either
1: Cease any activity that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, specifically including the purchase of any product or commodity that is not certified by independent third parties as carbon neutral, and with the exception of any carbon dioxide whose carbon atom was removed from the atmosphere within the last year
or
2: Purchase high-quality carbon offsets to cover 110% of your estimated carbon dioxide emissions from all sources except those whose carbon atoms were removed from the atmosphere in the last year. “High-quality” sources are herein defined as coming from Terrapass, CarbonNeutral, NativeEnergy, or the Nature Conservancy. Other sources may be possible upon mutual agreement.
I expect documentation of your compliance within 30 days. Thank you in advance for respecting my property rights and your cooperation in this matter.
Chad Brick, PhD
Are you Bart incognito?
I’m going with “it a joke son.”
No. I hereby inform YOU that you also cease violating my property rights, and abide by the same terms that I offered Professor Curry. You have 30 days to respond.
I am sure as a strong supporter of property rights, that you will immediately desist in violating mine. Thanks again in advance.
You may inform all you like – it is not your property to dispose of. It is a common pool resource – or at least an open access resource – and that is not about to change your silly posturing notwithstanding..
chad – I forbid any trees on your property to consume my CO2. Be warned.
You own nothing – the sky is a common pool resource amenable to management by business, government and civil society for the common good. The ludicrous charade of a pretense of usurping the commons notwithstanding – you can take your carbon offsets and shove them.
if you want to talk rationally about management options – by all means – but I doubt that you have the capacity.
Robert I Ellison
Be(Hons), MEnSc, CPEng, MIEAust, RPEQ
Chief Hydrologist
chadbrick | July 6, 2013 at 9:32 pm | I specifically made an exception for that. Your breath is carbon-neutral, unless you eat coal and drink oil.
Why should anyone care what exception you made? You are producing 6.5% carbon dioxide for every intake of breath you make, you exhale 4% – by moving off your property you are polluting someone else’s air with every breath you make.
With all due respect (none, actually) people in the United States have property rights above the ground. For instance a utility company must obtain an easement to string a telephone or electric wire over your property.
I’m not sure what the general rule of law is but US Civil Aviation rules require aircraft to maintain a minimum safe altitude of 500 feet above any person, structure, vessel, or vehicle.
There’s a big row brewing over whether drones have to obey Civil Aviation rules.
chadbrick,
Stop breathing, you’re polluting my atmosphere.
Sorry, but you are grossly misinformed about the law, Robert Ellison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Causby
I do in fact own the airspace immediately above my property. I hereby inform you that you have no right to put one molecule of carbon dioxide in it, under similar conditions as above in my post for Professor Curry.
You have thirty days to respond to my request and document your compliance with my rights.
Thanks, and have a nice day.
I specifically made an exception for that. Your breath is carbon-neutral, unless you eat coal and drink oil.
chadbrick | July 6, 2013 at 9:32 pm said: ”I specifically made an exception for that. Your breath is carbon-neutral, unless you eat coal and drink oil”
. chadbrick, lots of coal and oil has being burned, to produce your cornflakes
” lots of coal and oil has being burned, to produce your cornflakes”
Again, I specifically stated that the CO2 in your products and commodities must be offset, except for the ones made from carbon recently pulled from the atmosphere. So you have to offset anything going into the production of your Wheaties, but not the Wheaties themselves. This really isn’t hard to understand.
Holding:
“Cujus est solum ejus est usque ad coelum et ad inferos has no legal authority in the United States when pertaining to the sky. A man does not have control and ownership over the airspace of their property except within reasonable limits to utilize their property. Airspace above a set minimum height is property of the Masses and no one man can accuse airplanes or other such craft within of trespassing on what they own.”
The guy in case above was damaged in that his chickens with a tangible, easily determined market value were harmed.
Let’s ignore the fact that you can’t possibly demonstrate the source of the CO2 molecules in the air over your property which in and of itself dooms any hope you have of recovering damages from anyone.
How exactly have you been damaged by the picogram of CO2 you accuse another individual of placing over your property without consent or compensation?
You’re an idiot. A stupid idiot. Normally I’d say that’s redundant but not in your case.
It is you who is wrong on law – http://onthecommons.org/magazine/texas-judge-rules-sky-belongs-everyone
The question of the most rational response to rising CO2 is different question entirely. However, rational doesn’t seem to apply to you. So I repeat – you can shove it.
I believe it still comes down to billions when you take the average volume of a house, e.g. 1000 cubic meters, so even if you define property as just the inside of his house, that would be a case made.
You don’t own the water that flows over your land – not a molecule. The molecules change all the time of course – so which one could you possibly own.
People downstream are entitled to an undiminished flow. This is usually modified to allow either informal or formal usage rights bestowed by government on behalf of the owners. Us.
Of course – you could always put a dome over your house, create your own oxygen and sequester your own carbon dioxide. We don’t want it – we have enough problems.
Ellison, do you understand the difference between the US Supreme Court and a county judge in Texas?
If not I can fill you in on which is the ruling opinion, dumbass.
You got no clue about precedent Jabberrwock? Based on common law precepts on water?
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/07/11/texas-judge-rules-atmosphere-air-public-trust/KidpxrAyYllPPnrijt3OjI/story.html
In the United States, Ellison, water rights vary by state. In Texas it’s generally based upon appropriation i.e. ‘first in time, first in line’ and downstream users have no rights to undiminished flows. Now you know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_right#Appropriation
You should really check your facts before you write them down if have any interest in not looking like such a huge boob.
Jabberwock
The water is managed by government theoretically as a trust for water as a common pool resource.
This was the thrust of the Texas ruling that extended this concept to the atmosphere.
Water rights are dispersed by government.
Not understanding the distinction between ownership – US citizens – and the right conferred by your representatives to use water?
I am not surprised – perhaps you should consider not commenting on legal or technical issues – you are really not very good at it.
‘An owner or possessor of land that abuts a natural stream, river, pond, or lake is called a riparian owner or proprietor. The law gives riparian owners certain rights to water that are incident to possession of the adjacent land. Depending on the jurisdiction in which a watercourse is located, riparian rights generally fall into one of three categories.
First, riparian owners may be entitled to the “natural flow” of a watercourse. Under the natural flow doctrine, riparian owners have a right to enjoy the natural condition of a watercourse, undiminished in quantity or quality by other riparian owners. Every riparian owner enjoys this right to the same extent and degree, and each such owner maintains a qualified right to use the water for domestic purposes, such as drinking and bathing.
However, this qualified right does not entitle riparian owners to transport water away from the land abutting the watercourse. Nor does it permit riparian owners to use the water for most irrigation projects or commercial enterprises. Sprinkling gardens and watering animals are normally considered permissible uses under the natural flow doctrine of riparian rights.
Second, riparian owners may be entitled to the “reasonable use” of a watercourse. States that recognize the reasonable use doctrine found the natural flow doctrine too restrictive. During the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, some U.S. courts applied the natural flow doctrine to prohibit riparian owners from detaining or diverting a watercourse for commercial development, such as manufacturing and milling, because such development impermissibly altered the water’s original condition.
In replacing the natural flow doctrine, a majority of jurisdictions in the United States now permit riparian owners to make any reasonable use of water that does not unduly interfere with the competing rights and interests of other riparian owners. Unlike the natural flow doctrine, which seeks to preserve water in its original condition, the reasonable use doctrine facilitates domestic and commercial endeavors that are carried out in a productive and reasonable manner.
When two riparian owners assert competing claims over the exercise of certain water rights, courts applying the reasonable use doctrine generally attempt to measure the economic value of the water rights to each owner. Courts also try to evaluate the prospective value to society that would result from a riparian owner’s proposed use, as well as its probable costs. No single factor is decisive in a court’s analysis.
Third, riparian owners may be entitled to the “prior appropriation” of a watercourse. Where the reasonable use doctrine requires courts to balance the competing interests of riparian owners, the doctrine of prior appropriation initially grants a superior legal right to the first riparian owner who makes a beneficial use of a watercourse. The prior appropriation doctrine is applied in most arid western states, including Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and requires the riparian owner to demonstrate that she is using the water in an economically efficient manner. Consequently, the rights of a riparian owner under the prior appropriation doctrine are always subject to the rights of other riparian owners who can demonstrate a more economically efficient use.’ Wikipedia
So we have natural flow qualified by reasonable use incorporating superior legal rights. The basis is still that water is still a common pool resource.
I did say that somewhat more succinctly.
‘People downstream are entitled to an undiminished flow. This is usually modified to allow either informal or formal usage rights bestowed by government on behalf of the owners.’
chadbrick | July 6, 2013 at 10:11 pm said: ”So you have to offset anything going into the production of your Wheaties, but not the Wheaties themselves”
Does that apply to everybody; or only to the Warmist. that have being brainwashed that: the essential molecule of CO2 is evil gas?
carbon polluters wish to pollute your air.
they gonna clean up that mess?
nah they say. that would inconvenience us.
Chadbrick,
I will be happy to comply as soon as you prove my CO2 molecules are entering your airspace in measurable quantities.
RobertinAz.
One gallon of gas, when burned, release approximately 10^26 CO2 molecules. The surface area of the earth is approximately 5*10^14. Each gallon you burn puts BILLIONS of molecules on my property.
Precisely zero of which you have the right to place there.
You just polluted my computer screen with stupidity which you had no right to place there. Expect to be hearing from my lawyer.
I agree Springer.
With all the concern over people being offended, where is the concern over my being offended by generally stupid people?
I looked Chad up on google.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chad&defid=4228871
I will not quote the entry, leaving it to others to decide whether Chad is doing a caricature of Bart R, or….
Poe’s Law strikes again?
GaryM | July 7, 2013 at 7:21 pm |
It appears he’s Canadian. Or something.
But I’ve never met him when I’ve been there.
Chad,
Lose out on that clown job?
The IPCC can run but they cannot hide.
The IPCC set itself up for failure by picking sides in the debate. It was predictable that a time would come when the weather would not cooperate with predictions because the climate and weather are both variable. Given the lack of skill in the climate models they should abandon predictions (The Met learned this the hard way) and simply offer suggestions for all valid ranges of climate. With 4 billion years of climate history behind us it should not be too difficult to say we’re in for a cooling spell, or in for a heat wave, advise the crop seed people who have a need to know (well, maybe they should just listen to the crop seed people and pass it on). Thus far the IPCC has not been a factor in anything except tax policy in the world’s green belt.
It is past time we began focusing on global norming – that would be the needs of the population given the climate we’re living in today. Future generations won’t care what we did or didn’t do to make their lives better any more than we care a wit about what has come before. Humans are too damn arrogant to accept the state of current world as being a gift of the previous generation and that is why waves of political change sweep around the world at generational intervals.
“The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.” ~Richard Lindzen
@Wagathon (quoting Lindzen): The influence of mankind on climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.
Lindzen has a point here. Assuming 280 ppmv of atmospheric CO2 before humans started increasing it, that represents 280 * 44/28.97 * 5.14 = 2196 gigatonnes of CO2. (44/28.97 converts volume to mass, while 5.14 is the mass of the atmosphere in millions of gigatonnes.)
For comparison 7 billion humans with average weight somewhere near 70 kg collectively weigh a mere half a gigatonne or only 0.02% of the mass of preindustrial atmospheric CO2.
What Lindzen is ignoring here is the ability of humans over time to accumulate an amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that is many times their body mass. The added CO2 comes to (400 − 280) * 44/28.97 * 5.14 = 937 additional gigatonnes, or around 134 tons of CO2 per human. And that’s counting the billions of humans for whom firewood represents the bulk of their consumption of carbon based fuel.
Adding around 2000 times our body mass in CO2 to the atmosphere is hardly “numerically insignificant.” Moreover CO2 emission is increasing not in proportion to population but closer to the square of population, a consequence of the fact that per capita CO2 emission increases with increasing per capita consumption of energy. We’re therefore looking at a larger factor than 2000 during the coming century.
We’re well on our way to doubling preindustrial CO2. That we now have the technology to do this in a timespan on the order of a century is hardly “numerically insignificant.” While there are other species of comparable mass, for example the ocean’s half a gigatonne of Antarctic krill, they don’t have anywhere near our impact on the atmosphere.
Dr. Happer testified before the US Congress that by comparison the Earth’s atmosphere is CO2-deficient, currently.
“If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” ~Hans von Storch
The above is a math test of sorts that any prospective teacher should be required to pass if we are to feel safe entrusting the nation’s children into their custody.
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It is sufficient to note that the WGIII is in preparation in parallel with WGII’s work, which is contemporaneous with WGI, to know that the entire operation is a put-up job. That WGI authors and findings are at the bottom of the editorial totem pole, instead of in control of QC and verification, is irrefutable proof. The entire process, by design, is bass-ackwards.
“a prolonged period of self-
reflectionjustification”FIFY
The climate system is made of 5 separate subsystems, each with it’s own set of complexities and uncertainties, which, I don’t think any scientist claims to understand fully, much less the complexities around the interactions of these 5 separate subsystems. Add to that the external variables like the sun, gravity, polarity, cosmic rays and probably countless others that have or have not been identified. Thus the description of climate as a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear, coupled system. To me, it defies any kind of logic for anyone to claim that despite our incomplete understanding of each of the individual subsystems, their interactions, the effect of the external variables, the real possibility of a large number of unknown unknowns, that they can claim any certainty, much less 100% certainty that a trace gas is the dominant driver of climate, and that the increase of Co2 caused by man, which according to who you want to believe ranges from close to 0 to the full difference between pre-industrial times to now (about 125 ppm) will lead to catastrophic global warming, climate change or whatever it is you want to call it today. That degree of certainty is hubris at it’s worst.
Also having read that in the geologic history of the planet, Co2 levels have been far higher than today, why was it not catastrophic then? That there have been other times in pre-industrial history where abrupt and violent climate change occurred. Do we understand what caused those changes? Do we have an explanation for the RWP, MWP, LIA, etc?
Add to that the overall behavior of many of the scientists supporting the catastrophic theory (Climategate, and later Gleick), and the behavior of the IPCC itself (read the Delinquent Teenager).
The reality of the IPCC process is that the SPM is the portion that gets read most widely and is what the media and politicians reference when discussing the latest report. But, the SPM is not written, reviewed, or approved by scientists. It is written by political appointees of 150 countries who effectively “negotiate” the language that will best serve their purposes – see http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/06/13/the-ipcc-politicizing-science-since-1988/.
Re: AR3, besides just the hockey stick, Lindzen stated that the IPCC clearly uses the Summary for Policymakers to misrepresent what is in the report and gave an example from the chapter he worked on, chapter 7, addressing physical processes.
The 35-page chapter, said Lindzen, pointed out many problems with the way climate computer models treat specific physical processes, such as water vapor, clouds, ocean currents, and so on. Clouds and water vapor in clouds, for example, are badly misrepresented in the models. The physics are all wrong, he said. Those things the models do well are irrelevant to the all-important feedback effects.
“The treatment of water vapor in clouds is crucial to models producing a lot of warming,” explained Lindzen. “Without them [positive feedbacks], no model would produce much warming.”
The IPCC summarizes the 35-page chapter in one sentence: “Understanding of climate processes and their incorporation in climate models have improved, including water vapor, sea dynamics and ocean heat transport.”
That, said Lindzen, does not summarize the chapter at all. “That is why a lot of us have said that the document itself is informative; the summary is not.”
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2001/06/01/ipcc-report-criticized-one-its-lead-authors.
Likewise, in AR4, from http://www.amlibpub.com/essays/ipcc-global-warming-report.html the SPM was written several months prior to “the 1600 pages of scientific information underlying their summary” . Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC work, states “Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the working group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policy Makers or the Overview chapter”. In other words, the “science” will be adjusted to agree with whatever politicians and bureaucrats want it to say.
The first and second assessments had similar problems. So far, by my count, the IPCC is zero for four in producing an SPM that is a valid summary of the science. Moreover, the much of the ”scientific” information provided in the detailed reports comes from questionable or politicized sources – again see “The Delinquent Teenager”. In short, the IPCC has been shown to be almost purely political and the SPM produced is worse than valueless. If governments act on the SPM, real economic harm will be the result, and the climate will continue to operate as it always does – that is, in ways we cannot possibly predict or control.
In business, when something fails it is permanently shut down, not renamed. The UN cannot keep the peace, does not moderate the worst inclinations of the most obvious tin pot despots, and has no business being involved in scientific inquiry. The IPCC should be disbanded, and nothing need replace it. The funds would be better used trying to finish global polio vaccination over the objections of radical fundamentalist Muslims.
Not permanently. For instance I lost track of how many times expert systems have been killed and reanimated.
Plus one thousand… and one.
Bts
Finally a comment I can support.
Best path, IMO, is to abandon/decommission/dissolve the IPCC and the AR process. Given that the process is UN-driven, it will naturally attract many individuals with very specific political and scientific points of view: that the UN and governments are the solution to the “problem” of climate change. How can it be any other way?
Compare, for example, the IRS in the US. A very large organization, yet about 95% of all political contributions in the 2012 presidential election went to the Democrat candidate. Why? IMO, because the IRS (and more broadly, government) attracts people who believe that government is the solution to all our troubles.
IPCC is, and cannot be, any different.
Giv that man 1000 and one 2.
Bts
Another comment I can support. Get rid of the IPCC and IRS.
Most of our lawyers and accountants would have to find honest work if a flat tax was imposed, so they will lobby for the IRS no matter what.
The IPCC should be given more funding. In particular contributing scientists should be paid for their work and given more resources for the reports, including updates to them.
Iolwot
That was satire wasn’t it?
Contributing scientists are paid for their work as it is done under the auspices of their employers, such as CRU or the Met office.
tonyb
tony,
I don’t believe lolwot is capable of satire.
At least not intentionally.
Abolish IPCC. Reallocate its huge budget to private and state universities doing climate research in UN member countries. Divorce science and policy. Leave science to scientists in the academe and policy to politicians in governments.
Dr Strangeglove :)
Yew are spot on.Divorce
is the only rational option.
Bts
But they have been divorced from the outset. The iPCC does not do the science, it serves to communicate the science to the policy makers. Furthermore its budget is five to six million dollars a year, tiny compared to that of the billions spent on the science.
@Dr. S: Leave science to scientists in the academe and policy to politicians in governments.
Are you proposing that the politicians read the papers in the technical journals to figure out what to do? Lots of luck with that approach.
The corrected message and postscript to the Space Science & Technology Committee of the US House of Representatives is available here:
http://omanuel.wordpress.com/
Although we usually cannot see the cosmic rays and gamma rays emitted by the Sun’s pulsar core – they are absorbed and reemitted thousands of times as lower energy radiation before finally appearing as visible light at the top of the photosphere – solar images taken with different energy filters reveal evidence of an energetic substructure, the “Father of Sunlight”, lurking beneath the Sun’s photosphere.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/multimedia/Solar-Events.html
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Re the Dutch call for IPCC to adjust its principles, KNMI means that the IPCC’s mandate should be made more in line with what is already common practice for years, ie assessing both natural and anthropogenic changes.
See also http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/the-dutch-view-on-the-future-of-the-ipcc-what-it-does-and-what-it-does-not-say/ (incl a quote from a KNMI representative confirming the above)
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