by Judith Curry
A few things that caught my eye this past week.
Enviro Movement
Forbes has an article Four reasons why the environmental movement belongs on ‘The Biggest Loser’.
Keith Kloor has an article Environmental Groups are Flirting With Extinction.
Nic Lewis on Drew Shindell
ClimateAudit has a post Does “Inhomogeneous forcing and transient climate sensitivity” by Drew Shindell make sense? Shindell’s paper critiques the low estimates of transient climate sensitivity, and Nic critiques Shindell’s critique.
Cosmos
Have you seen the inaugural show of Cosmos? Some background in this MotherJones interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson, the host of the program.
The Atlantic provides some interesting context for the show, with this article Why Cosmos can’t save public support for science.
I hadn’t been paying much attention to the Cosmos buzz, although I did see it stream by on my twitter feed. Peter wanted to watch it, so we downloaded it on Wed eve. My first reaction was “Who is the talking head? He seems a bit too polished and dry.” I subsequently found out he was Neil Degrasse Tyson, who is apparently quite famous in the world of public communication of science. I thought the first 20 minutes or so was gee whiz pointlessness. The middle 20 minutes was more interesting. And then I really liked the history of science stuff.
The most interesting part of the show to me was the history of Giordano Bruno. Slate has an article Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Cosmos: there was one big problem with Sunday’s episode. The problem was that apparently Cosmos got much of the Giordano story wrong.
So, will the new Cosmos be as popular as Sagan’s version? A lot of this depends on Tyson – his personality, how he navigates controversial issues, and whether he can capture the je ne sais quoi of the present age in terms of capturing the public’s attention and imagination. Part of Sagan’s appeal was his passion and a slightly quirky personality (I didn’t get that from Tyson). Bottom line – I’ll tune in to watch the next episode.
Philosophy professor on denialists
Lawrence Torcello, Asst Prof of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, has a post at the Conversation entitled Is misinformation about climate criminally negligent? The author better hope that such misinformation is NOT criminally negligent, since his article contains plenty of it.
Steyn vs Mann
This is a category that is becoming a regular feature of Week in Review. Steyn continues to up the ante. He has a new post this week A change of climate. Steyn has filed an Amended Answer and Counterclaims to Mann’s Amended Complaint. WUWT calculates that Steyn is now suing Mann for $30M.
Of relevance to this case is the 50th anniversary of NYTimes versus Sullivan, in regards to the freedom and responsibility of the press. In particular, see this article in the National Review, who published the allegedly libelous statement by Steyn. National Review and Steyn clearly have different ideas on this, and it is not difficult to see why they parted ways in their defense against Mann’s lawsuits.
Quote of the week
It’s logical to throw this iron on the fire related to Problem Solving and Decision Making by Government.
Dr. Charles Kepner and Dr. Benjamin Tregoe started the corporation Kepner-Tregoe in 1958 but the initial research dates to their work in the early 1950s.
“Kepner-Tregoe was built on the premise that people can be taught to think critically. While working for the Rand Corporation in the 1950s, our founders, Dr. Charles Kepner and Dr. Benjamin Tregoe, conducted research on breakdowns in decision making at the Strategic Air Command. They discovered that successful decision making by Air Force officers had less to do with rank or career path than the logical process an officer used to gather, organize, and analyze information before taking action.”
See more at: http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/about-kt/company-overview/kepner-tregoe-history/#sthash.XzEtgDtf.dpuf
In this instance, Science Advisers delivered a process for subsequent Governmental decision making and problem solving.
With respect Dr. Curry, perhaps the best place to open dialogue to resolve post-normal science issues is a common process shared by Science Advisers globally — an insightful way forward?
PS: I really enjoyed the Cosmos series on Mars — fantastic production values. If we could only get NASA to get off the Global Warming diatribe to US classrooms…. : (
Disappointing to see that Scientific American reckons gleicks fabrications were entirely justified as it was noble cause corruption
Two questions. How scientific is Scientific American thes days, does it have credibility?
Second question ; is noble cause corruption rife or limited to just a very tiny number of scientists?
Tonyb
re; Scientific American
It’s fine if you take anything it has to say on liberal narrative “science” with a grain of salt. The liberal narrative sciences are mud-to-man evolution and global warming. That doesn’t count the associated cottage science industries associated with the latter usually couched with the term “sustainable” which are opportunistic but often have some good content for the engineer types.
Ethically Tonyb it isn’t disappointing its tragic Scientific America would conclude Gleick acted as anything other than a criminal. There is nothing Noble in a Con!
I find it amazing to discover so much integrity in Skeptics and the reverse on the other side of what should be a simple debate. Its as if the most acclaimed Scientists simply woke up one day possessed by an anti-[fill in the blank]. Its been a very disheartening situation for far too long. Yet, my hats off to Dr. Curry for the even handed inspiration.
Your second question doesn’t “compute”. Scientists in general do not cave to influence in Blind Analysis. They typically shake a head in disbelief when confronted with a poorly designed or leading question and either choose not to answer foolishness or choose None of the Above as a response. Scientists have never been the true cause of the foolishly advertised disinformation in this debate.
Here’s a question for you. Aren’t you sick to death of the constant diatribe over the nature of a problem and the lack of logical solutions that eliminates the need for further debate?
Newport mac
It seems that in most walks of life people talk a lot but defer action. politicians are especially guilty of this.
I would like to believe that most scientists are highly competent and not open generally to this form of corruption.
Tonyb
Tonyb,
Politics by Design are doomed to failure. It’s important to understand differing governmental systems to interpret the various players/roles but Politics are useless in a reasoned debate regarding to Scientific delivery to Industrial Design
and Engineering to benefit world cultures in an insightful and culturally appropriate way.
The key term in the dialogue is “Insightful”.
The UN abuse is a clear indication they are the Wrong source for Insightful Global Decision Making!
tony b
You ask:
No.
I stopped reading it after it published Michael Lemonick’s hatchet job on our hostess back in November 2010.
Max
Perhaps the decision statement should be:
– design a mechanism, method, or process to unify divergent cultures to address their true needs in a common and “Insightful” way.
Industrial Design 101: “meet the true needs of the end user in an insightful way”
…some help here would be appreciated from the bright lights ; )
The Rand Corporation and Robert MacNarama worked hand in glove, scientists and technocrats, running government policy and making sure that Vietnam and Cambodia would never fall to the communists.
You know if the US had spent 1/10 the amount the Vietnam war cost, on bribes, then Vietnam would be a staunch ally.
On Facebook, Nancy Pearcey observes:
Similarly, Hank Campbell further found: Five Things Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” Gets Wrong Science is cool. Should we care if it’s accurate? noting:
When a program does so poorly on fact checking I am seriously concerned over the rest of the program and will recommend against it.
The charges against Bruno were
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus;
holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass;
claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity;
believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes;
dealing in magics and divination.
No orbital theory and a lot of religious views the church was not keen on people questioning.
“Ethically Tonyb it isn’t disappointing its tragic Scientific America would conclude Gleick acted as anything other than a criminal. There is nothing Noble in a Con!”
And yet in fairness, if I somehow were able to conceive some brilliant con to expose the lie behind say, the supposed 97 percent consensus in such a way that would convince the liberal voters once and for all that Obama’s settled science is a fantasy, I don’t think I’d hesitate to do it. One could argue, and I’m certain many would, that I too suffer from noble cause corruption.
I can easily see why Gleick is considered a hero by many.
David Hagen,
Thanks for the link related to Cosmos.
excerpts:
“No, flawed science is flawed science and Sagan wanted to hear valid criticism, just as Tyson does now. Tyson knows valid criticism either forces him to hone his argument or it reaffirms his position. “Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid,” Sagan wrote in his famous Cosmos book, and Tyson will happily concede if you show him to be wrong about something.
“Tyson, like Sagan, believes that the mindset needed for a healthy science understanding is the same mindset needed for a healthy democracy – don’t just accept what authority tells you, as intellectual and moral docility is suicidal….”
Good luck getting any valid criticism in front of Tyson. He must be inundated by junk mail. I wonder where he actually looks for valid criticism.
The comment about healthy science is Skepticism’s credo?
pokerguy,
You raise an interesting point but the example is easy to debunk using fact without any spin/fiction. The claim is based on surveys with poor question design and inadequate response. 97% of an inadequate response % is essentially meaningless.
Means justify the ends undermines Credibility and Trust.
“Open” or “Closed” Science?
A foundational issue for Cosmos and Neil Degrasse Tyson are the presuppositions to “science”. Do we address an “open science” of evaluating the evidence against all possible causes – natural or intelligent? Or only allow “closed science” limiting all causes to only “nature” and excluding any intelligent causes.
Hey Mac,
Yes, easily debunked among those of a certain mind set. But the mind of the typical warmists is utterly impregnable when it comes to contrary information.. The consensus argument from the alarmists is the whole ball game. I don’t think I’ve ever read an alarmist screed which didn’t site the “settled science” meme.
If that could be overturned, it would be game over imvho, at least from a practical point of view.
I mean “cite.”
pokerguy,
I just did a search to see if I could find a source which cites the issues related to the surveys. I completely agree about the meme but it isn’t supported by the facts.
I ran across this which presents the issues but the source is likely to get shorts in a knot:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2672039/posts
The principal basis for the meme is the Royal Society. I’m uncertain if a valid survey is even possible in its case but response to a set of properly designed questions would be interesting.
pokerguy,
This is more current and based on 1,800 responses. Unfortunately, activists are likely to stick to the consensus meme at all cost.
AMS survey was conducted last year.
from Forbes (11/20/2013):
“Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/11/20/the-latest-meteorologist-survey-destroys-the-global-warming-climate-consensus/
Tyson claims: “Cosmos is offering viewers a way to reconcile science and faith: Don’t let your god be too small.” However, the script is systemically anti religious.
Thomas L. McDonald summarizes issues in “A Dishonest “Cosmos”
The program presumes CARL SAGAN’s blasphemous statement: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” Contrast Revelation 1:8
For an honest effort on issues of science and religion see Henry F. Schaeffer III,/a>, “Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?”
In reality, Tyson’s “god” – of chaotic/stochastic natural forces – is too small to accomplish the creative capabilities he attributes to them:
Formation of the cosmos with its incredible fine tuning of fundamental constants.
Abiogenetic origin of life.
Rapid formation of the large number of species.
Marks & Dembski at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab provide the mathematical rigor showing neoDarwinian search is no better than random – thus insufficient probabilistic resources (time & rate & number) to accomplish the claimed creative tasks. See publications.
Similarly, John C. Sanford‘s Mendel’s Accountant quantifies that genomic degradation accumulates – faster than clearing harmful mutations or developing beneficial mutations.
GISSTEMP is in for Feb 2014. 0.45 C compared with 0.70 C for Jan. I make it that Feb 2014 is the 19th equal warmest Feb in the GISSTEMP record. Presumably this also means that the Feb values for NOAA/NCDC and HAD/CRU will show a similar decrease compared to Jan.
Still no sign of warming global surface temperatures.
Continues the expected trend for GISS which I expect it to continue for at least the next year or so.
http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c274/richardlinsleyhood/GISSMonthlyAnomalieswithfullkernelGaussianlowpassfiltersofAnnual15and75yearswith15YearSavitzky-Golayextension_zps8227ceb7.pngpng
I expect it to go down a bit until about 2040 or so, with wiggles along the way.
DocMartyn
You posted your reasoning for a pause lasting to 2040.
Webby has commented here with his model, which would predict warming of 0.6C from today to 2040.
Based strictly on historical trends and cycles, I’d say your projection makes more sense than Webby’s, which is based on an exaggerated 2xCO2 TCS and underestimates the impact of natural factors.
But we’ll have to wait and see who is closer to the mark.
Max
If you do graphology, with a 60-year cycle, you get something like 1.7+/-0.4 degrees for 2xCO2.
The exact amplitude of the cycle is the big guess, we don’t have enough data of past cycles.
This is the HADCRU4 global temperature with 1976 moved to 1911; you can see that 1976-2014 is really, really similar in lineshape to 1911 to 1949.
http://i179.photobucket.com/albums/w318/DocMartyn/HADCRU41976in1911_zpse8c7011a.png
WHT “Look at the historical SOI record and you will find that average negative excursions of this measure can occur at any time of the year.”
meaning we don’t know what it will do .
in perfect agreement with Robert I Ellison, wow
“ENSO is a chaotic oscillator synchronously coupled with global sub-systems. There is no mean state over millennia that we know of – merely abrupt shifts and multiple equilibria. ”
and me elsewhere. paraphrasing
“natural climate and temperature fluctuations are the norm and chaotic enough to be beyond the scope of our current understanding.”
double wow.
RichardLH | March 14, 2014 at 6:01 pm |
“angech: So your estimate for the future during this year is what?”
1. go with the trend, as you know we are heading towards La Nina type territory. If we are anywhere today , now, it is closer to a La Nina than an El Nino [my prediction]
2. Reversion to the mean or random walk approach, So if we say today is the mean we are definitely more La Nina but you and WHT are right, once you go one way you will go back the other, sooner or later, to an El Nino. You just cannot say when that will be because it is chaotic.
Once in a thousand years it may be 30 years till the next El Nino.
posted wrong spot before
angech: There is a definite ~60 year cycle to almost all the climate data.
AMO, PDO, thermometer and satellite. It does look like that will continue in the near and medium term future.
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/combined/
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/amo/
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/pdo/
Richard
“angech: There is a definite ~60 year cycle to almost all the climate data. AMO, PDO, thermometer and satellite”
please, to have a definite 60 year cycle satellite data would have to be at least 500 years old. I doubt there is any serious satellite data over 60 years old to show a cycle.
and just because you want to see a cycle in other data doesn’t prove that the cycle necessarily exists, people can see patterns in chaos that are beautiful but accidental, perchance you are right, perchance not.
angech:
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/uah-global.png
Well it is possible to deduce that a cycle exists in the satellite data without having long enough data to do a full statistical analysis (your 500 years).
Simple filters are able to provide a decode of traffic with a lot less information that that.
The S-G filter projection by verified by comparison to the longer thermometer series.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters-1979-on.png
There is a LOT more to the world that statistics you know.
RichardLH | March 15, 2014 at 8:05 am |
Well it is possible to deduce that a cycle exists in the satellite data without having long enough data to do a full statistical analysis (your 500 years).
true
There is a LOT more to the world that statistics you know.
true.
But,
I know enough about statistics to know that there is a vast gulf between something being possible [It’s possible I might fly to the moon one day]
and something being provable or correct.
ie a true 60 year cycle in the satellite data with less than 60 years data.
You can huff and puff and bluster but no one who knows statistics will say that a true 60 year cycle can be proven in data that is that short.
Your statement is an affront to your credentials but if you wish to keep digging a hole go ahead.
angech: You would be almost right if I was basing this purely on the satellite record. Savitzky–Golay filters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitzky%E2%80%93Golay_filter) are a very well know treatment of short term data series which can produce valid outputs on very short data series indeed.
When a full kernel filter such as a cascaded triple running mean (see the other thread on here about just those filters and how to use them) is applied to the very much longer thermometer series it produces an ~60 year signal which can then be confirmed with an S-G to give a likely future trend.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/hadcrut-giss-rss-and-uah-global-annual-anomalies-aligned-1979-2013-with-gaussian-low-pass-and-savitzky-golay-15-year-filters1.png
So the validity of the trend is harder to refute as is it based on multiple sources, two satellite and two thermometer.
RichardLH | March 16, 2014 at 6:21 am |
angech: You would be almost right if I was basing this purely on the satellite record. thanks
saw your Cascaded Triple Running Mean (CTRM) filter on WUWT
? worth an article here
angech: It is just a restatement of Greg’s article on here already. With my take on how a 15 year corner frequency reveals surprising results in all the data sets at ~60 years in period.
That does kinda support the Stadium Wave paper and suggest that the ~60 years is most definitely present in all of the data, which means that most of the calculations need to be backed off a bit to take that natural ‘cycle’ into account which they mostly don’t.
Nature is reality. The hiatus is a triumph of reality over ignorance. Global warming alarmists have become irrelevant because we no longer need their models to know the real truth: the numbers speak for themselves.
Lawrence Torcello shame on you! Your intolerance of dissenting points of view and the right of others to financially support them is astonishing. One wonders how stifling it must be in your classroom.
Rochester Institute of Technology, what say you?
I recorded the COSMOS show, but could not stomach it. It comes out rather bombastic. An interesting grain time to time, but not enough to save the show.
It is nice to know that traditions are holding fast. Feynman writes about a “club of professors” at Cornell, which thought that Nazis weren’t so bad. “That was the beginning of my loss of respect for some of the professors in the humanities, and other areas.”
Judith: Cosmos is only available online inside the USA or so my browser tells me.
WHT “Look at the historical SOI record and you will find that average negative excursions of this measure can occur at any time of the year.”
meaning we don’t know what it will do .
in perfect agreement with Robert I Ellison, wow
“ENSO is a chaotic oscillator synchronously coupled with global sub-systems. There is no mean state over millennia that we know of – merely abrupt shifts and multiple equilibria. ”
and me elsewhere. paraphrasing
“natural climate and temperature fluctuations are the norm and chaotic enough to be beyond the scope of our current understanding.”
double wow.
RichardLH | March 14, 2014 at 6:01 pm |
“angech: So your estimate for the future during this year is what?”
1. go with the trend, as you know we are heading towards La Nina type territory. If we are anywhere today , now, it is closer to a La Nina than an El Nino [my prediction]
2. Reversion to the mean or random walk approach, So if we say today is the mean we are definitely more La Nina but you and WHT are right, once you go one way you will go back the other, sooner or later, to an El Nino. You just cannot say when that will be because it is chaotic.
Once in a thousand years it may be 30 years till the next El Nino.
AngieBaby, anharmonic is not the same as chaotic.
WHT: Surprisingly regular since the 1400s for an anharmonic oscillator, much closer to a harmonic one.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/pdo-reconstruction-1470-1998-shen-2006-with-gaussian-low-pass-30-and-75-year-filters-and-hadcrut-overlay.png
“AngieBaby, anharmonic is not the same as chaotic.”
might be wrong 3,170.000 times WHT on a simple google search anharmonic and chaotic.
About 3,170,000 results (0.25 seconds)
Chaotic States of Anharmonic Systems in Periodic Fields
Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1743 – Published 3 December 1979
B. A. Huberman and J. P. Crutchfield
It is shown that the nonlinear dynamics of anharmonically interacting particles in the presence of periodic fields leads to a set of cascading bifurcations into a chaotic state.
El Nino predicted for later this year. I have a stake in the ground for a maximum negative SOI value (peak El Nino) at the midpoint of 2015.
http://contextearth.com/2014/02/21/soim-and-the-paul-trap/
Ah but the question is not when do we get an El Nino but also how big it is.
I have a prediction for a small El Nino for later this year.
The real knowledge comes about when you realize that ENSO is an anharmonic oscillator that is both bounded and reverts to a neutral value over the long term. As neutrality resumes the underlying anthropogenic warming trend will re-emerge. Having any kind of El Nino is pushing the ENSO trend back to neutral long-term.
If it doesn’t happen and the average global temperature remains stable and the ocean stops absorbing heat over the next few decades, it will be the most significant fail of modern day scientific research.
WHT: You mean that the PDO is loosely bound oscillator? Or is the PDO not part of ENSO?
Either way the PDO appears to be surprisingly regular.
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/pdo/
and UAH tropics appears to be so similarly.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/uah-tropics.png
WebHubTelescope, unfortunately (for you) your prediction contradicts basic ENSO dynamics. ENSO events normally peak in December/Janaury or aren’t you aware of that? They’re tied to the seasonal cycle.
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/why-do-el-nino-and-la-nina-events-peak-in-boreal-winter/
Your “stake in the ground” is out of phase with a predicted El Nino event for the 2013/14 season…unless you believe that the SOI somehow lags equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies by 6 months. It doesn’t:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/figure-62.png
That illustration is from another post about ENSO basics:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/el-nino-and-la-nina-basics-introduction-to-the-pacific-trade-winds/
Or are you predicting a multiyear El Nino–one that peaks in the off season for ENSO events?
The real question is, will humanity’s CO2 cause a super El Niño that results in an ARcstorm that washes Southern California into the sea?
We will have to give you the inaugural “Must have a” prize along with RichardLH for predicting an El Niño this year with MM and 2000 others.
Remember to keep predicting it every year and you will be right eventually.
Please acknowledge receipt of the prize at Ignobel.com and we willl send
you winner’s mug with everyone’s picture on it.
Mind you, 2000 balding, bearded scientists (well not all scientists) holding broken hockey sticks is a big mug. Postage is 2000 US $.
angech: So your estimate for the future during this year is what? La Nina, La Nada, sit on the fence. Otherwise there is not much point in saying anything is there?
Webby – does your anharmonic oscillator have a well-defined period?
I share your feeling towards Southern California, especially Hollywood.
Wagathon
You forgot to add:
“…triggering an earthquake that results in meter-high tsunami waves, which polish off the rest of the state except for the drought-stricken Central Valley?”
Someone write a proposal to fund duck and cover drills in California’s public schools.
Look at the historical SOI record and you will find that average negative excursions of this measure can occur at any time of the year. The forcing of the oscillator is tied to multiples of a seasonal period but this has little effect on the resultant waveform, otherwise it would be much easier to predict when the peaks and valleys will appear. Sure, the SST measure may show signs of locking to a season, and since winter is warmest south of the equator, one can imagine that more heat will be transferred during that time.
This paper [1] also talks about end-of-the-year locking, and applies similar nonlinear anharmonic analysis that I am exploring:
[1]B. Krauskopf and J. Sieber, “Bifurcation analysis of delay-induced resonances of the El-Nino Southern Oscillation,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1109.2818, 2011. submitted to Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society
http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1109.2818.pdf
It’s just a matter of time before we figure this out and it will be done with math, I can guarantee that much.
ENSO is a chaotic oscillator synchronously coupled with global sub-systems. There is no mean state over millennia that we know of – merely abrupt shifts and multiple equilibria.
Theories of ENSO irregularity
Two main major mechanisms have been proposed and consensus has yet to be achieved on which dominates. To describe these it is useful to divide the tropical system into slow and fast components. The first is set primarily by the ocean while the latter by the atmosphere. Slow phenomena include things like oceanic internal waves (Kelvin and Rossby) and the annual cycle while the latter includes things like tropical ”weather” and the MJO. This is a
conceptual division to aid in theoretical description..
Theory 1: ENSO as a chaotic oscillation
In this theory the slow components of the coupled tropical system
interact nonlinearly producing a well known form of chaos.
Theory 2: ENSO as a stochastically forced oscillator
In this theory the fast components of the system are able to randomly disrupt the slow components of the coupled tropical system.’ http://www.pims.math.ca/files/kleeman_3.pdf
The chaotic oscillator operates on scales of years and longer decadal to millennial shifts in ENSO are driven by an external – although not necessarily random – control variable. That is – both theories have validity at some scale.
The external control variable predisposes the system to certain states over decades. The current mode – causing the hiatus – is for large and frequent La Nina and small and infrequent El Nino as seen from the mid 1940’s to the mid 1970’s.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/ts.gif
Trendology is all very good (actually it is all very boring) but unless there is a fundamental understanding of the system it is likely to prove misleading.
The Romper Stomper said:
This is typical of the response one hears from a young student who opts out of studying math. They will invariably say that “math is too boring!”.
Many of the seeming complexities of the world can be simplified, but unless you try, you won’t make any progress.
Remember these observations the next time this Aussie dude copies & pastes his usual dismissive diatribe.
As one who has studied math and numerical modeling to a high level – the methodological meanderings and tribal blather from the mouth from Minnesota means less than nothing.
He has no real answer and depends merely on the most ridiculous personalisation and the endless regurgitating of fundamental errors.
Robert: Enso may be fairly chaotic in the short term (less than 15 years) but the PDO seems to be fairly well defined in longer than that period i.e. ~60 years.
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/pdo/
Most of the recent heat has been in the Northern Hemisphere and suspect that much has been driven by the AMO. The AMO is going to go down and should bottom out about 2030-2035.
Doc:
The data says the AMO has already peaked and is now headed downwards and it is likely to bottom out in a continuing ~60 year cycle, so the data agrees with you.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/esrl-amo-monthly-anomalies-with-full-kernel-gaussian-low-pass-annual-15-years-and-s-g-years-filters.png
Richard – the Pacific is chaotic over millennial time scales. You are taking instrumental records and mistaking this for a longer term pattern. Even then – the periodicity ranges from 23 to 35 years.
WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) says: “Look at the historical SOI record and you will find that average negative excursions of this measure can occur at any time of the year.”
You’re obviously looking at weather noise, not the effects of El Niño processes. Decades ago, Trenberth discussed the problem with using the SOI for the study of El Niño and La Niña, WebHubTelescope. See Trenberth (1997) “The Definition of El Niño”:
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/clivar97/en.dfn.html
He wrote:
“Various versions of the SOI exist although, in recent years, most deal only with atmospheric pressures and usually only those at Darwin and Tahiti. In using the SOI based on just two stations, it must be recognized that there are many small scale and high frequency phenomena in the atmosphere, such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, that can influence the pressures at stations involved in forming the SOI, but which do not reflect the Southern Oscillation itself. Accordingly, the SOI should only be used when monthly means are appropriately smoothed (Trenberth 1984, Trenberth and Hoar 1996a).”
Have a nice day, WebHubTelescope.
Robert: Did you even look at the PDO page?
http://climatedatablog.wordpress.com/pdo/
That has the more modern jisao PDO along with the Shen rainfall reconstruction that goes back to the 1500s. And there is a fairly consistent ~60 year pattern to all of that time period.
http://climatedatablog.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/pdo-reconstruction-1470-1998-shen-2006-with-gaussian-low-pass-30-and-75-year-filters-and-hadcrut-overlay.png
Richard – your filter obscures the non-stationary nature of the time series which show abrupt shifts between regimes. These are not cycles but bifurcations.
Capturing with mathematics the nature of overlapping, moving, three dimensional swirling vortices that directly and indirectly affect each other on an oceanic scale will be at least as hard as losing belly fat…!
Robert: A low pass filter obscures nothing. It is a binary chop into two bins. Pass band/ stop band. All the data is still present in one or the other. The ~60 year wriggle/cycle/oscillation is still there no matter what you like to believe/disbelieve.
Has it wiggled to the top or is there still some wiggle left?
===================
Kim: Well it looks like we are on the top and wandering downward for a time from here on. Time alone will tell if that suggestion is correct or not.
I appreciate what the smartest skeptic Clive Best has to say about the Lewis approach:
So what Clive says is to replace Lewis’ difficult problem of estimating
TCR = F2×CO2 ΔT/ΔF
where F2×CO2/ΔF is model-based, with the much more tractable experimental estimate based on differential log(CO2) sensitivity
ΔT = TCR/ln(2) d[CO2] / [CO2]
Example of working this out:
http://imageshack.com/a/img27/2007/mkx.gif
TCR slightly above 2C. Lewis is low-balling the numbers.
How long does it take to measure an average temperature rise?
As you believe that Clive Best is the “smartest skeptic”, let’s see what he said at http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/ last week
Clive Best says:
March 7, 2014 at 9:41 am
The physics of the CO2 greenhouse effect is very well understood. Line by line radiative transfer calculations through the atmosphere using the measured absorption spectra of CO2 results in a TOA radiative forcing. Even I have managed to derive this !
DS = 5.3 ln(C/C0) where Co is the start value (280ppm) and C is the end value.
The surface layer warms until energy balance is restored. This is the Planck response which is DT/DS = 4*epsilion*sigma*T^3 which is roughly 3.6 W/m2 for a 1 degree rise.
Therefore Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is about 1C for a doubling of CO2 because DS = 5.3ln(2) = 3.7 Watts/m2. The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere = 400 ppm so the radiative forcing added so far is 1.89 W/m2 which predicts a temperature rise of 0.52C. Depending on what baseline you use the measured rise in temperature since 1700 is ~ 0.8C. This measures TCR rather than ECS.
However this does not take into account the probability of natural variations also being present in the data. Indeed there is strong evidence of a 60 year oscillation observed by many others – for example see http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=2353 The current hiatus in warming is likely due to the downturn phase of this oscillation which may last as long as 2030, after which warming will resume. If you now fit all this to a logarithmic dependence on CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa then you get an underlying temperature dependency :
DT = 2.5ln(C/C0)
This gives the value for TCR = 1.7C
Webby
And you and Clive Best are high-balling them.
Max
There aren’t many of these honest skeptics out there, and Clive Best is one of them. The same things that don’t sit well with him also don’t sit well with me. Read his blog and take notes.
His number for TCR of 1.7C is based on using HadCrut temperature data.
I get 1.8C for that dataset.
2.1C if I use GISS
2.0C if I use NOAA NCDC
1.9C if I use the recent BEST Land + Ocean
In general I get less than 2C when using data sets that depend on HadSST and greater that 2C if they use ER SST. HadSST has more calibration corrections than ERSST.
These are all greater than Lewis’ low-ball estimate of 1.35C and way above Loehle’s super low-ball of 1C.
Hold your damned horses there Web.
You get 1.8C using HADCRU4 and I get 1.7C using HADCRU4, and you call me a fake skeptic?
You know that the longer the pause continues, then the lower you will have to make the TCS and the larger you have to make your LOD amplitude. I know you know, because you will have played with your model and padded the end.
For shame Web, for shame.
Even using the last 30 years, half of which was in the “pause” you can get a TCR near 2 C per doubling by using the mean temperature trend and CO2 change. The number is fairly robust whether you use the last 30 or 60 years with HADCRUT4.
DocMartyn,
No the shame is on you for dissing Nic Lewis’ estimate of 1.3C with your estimate of 1.7C for TCR !
I do get 1.8C if I use HadCrut, but Cowtan&Way have since shown how HadCrut does not have full coverage, putting the TCR closer to 2C.
That’s the way this works. Someone like Lewis acknowledges the warming signal but then gives away the farm when the real scientists start to pick away at it. Give an inch and they will take a mile. Lewis probably made a huge mistake by acknowledging AGW in the first place.
BTW, the important number is still ECS, which is close to 3C based on the same analysis applied to land only.
Web, you are a believer in C&W’s modern Transubstantiation, where ice magically becomes land, where they want it to be land.
Amazing how I can pad the end when a training model that only uses data up to 1960 works as well as it does in predicting the natural variability in temperatures since that time:
http://imageshack.com/a/img812/74/abh.gif
And it looks like there is some divergence the last 3 years, which may have something to do with the Arctic warming at the expense of other regions.
So tell me again where I am padding the model?
BTW, the skeptic Chylek is using a similar approach:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059274/pdf
It appears that Chylek is changing his stripes from skeptic to realist.
Heh. 1.7 or 1.8C for TCR. It seems like everyone’s a lukewarmer these days and doesn’t even realize it. Why are we even talking about global warming as a problem anymore?
1. Because a TCR of 2C implies a ECS of 3C which is what the land is warming at and that is where people live,
2. Because an ECS of 3C implies that the higher land latitudes are warming even greater than this, and this will melt the ice that will displace the land that people are living on.
3. The science is interesting regardless of whether AGW is a problem or not. You should realize this is a science blog and these are the topics that scientists talk about.
So, in Manacker’s words, stop being so silly.
Jim D
Not so fast, Jim – let’s check that out.
IPCC says “most” of warming since mid-century can be attributed to increased human GHGs. Let’s equate that with CO2 increase and say that “most” = 75%.
HadCRUT4 warming over past 6 decades (1953 to today) was 0.69ºC.
CO2 increased from 313 to 395 ppmv
So that would equate to a 2xCO2 TCR of:
0.75 * 0.69 * ln(2) / ln(395 / 313) = 1.5ºC.
But why look at such a short “blip” in time, just because IPCC did?
Let’s look at the last 10 decades.
In 1913 CO2 was 300 ppmv.
Since 1913 temperature has increased by 0.74ºC.
So, assuming the same 75% we arrive at a TCR of 1.4ºC.
But, hey, why not look at the whole HadCRUT4 record since 1850?
In 1850 CO2 was 287 ppmv.
Since 1850 temperature has increased by 0.77ºC.
So, assuming the same 75% we arrive at a TCR of 1.3ºC.
Looks like the longer time frame (i.e. more data) we include, the lower the TCR estimate gets.
Maybe Lewis is right after all, with his estimate of 1.35ºC.
Whaddaya think, Jim?
Max
manacker, the trend from 1953-2013 is 0.012 C/yr. For 60 years this gives 0.72 degrees, which is one reason why your number is off. This gives a TCR of over 2.1 C per doubling. Also I don’t use your made-up 75%. It is actually just as likely to be 100% because the other GHGs and aerosols offset each other, and the sun has, if anything, dimmed a little in this period.
yea, JD. Look at the silly one trying to pull a fast one by pulling numbers like 0.75 out of thin air.
Let’s take his equation and divide by 0.75 because it is just as likely the CO2 is being compensated by man-made aerosols and so could be more than 100%.
So we get
0.75/0.75 * 0.69 * ln(2) / ln(395 / 313) = 2ºC.
Which is what close to what I get with a more sophisticated model.
And keep in mind that while a TCR of 2C dosn’t sound like much, the temp difference between now and the LGM was only 4-5 C.
People who say that TCR of around two means there’s not too much to worry about are delusional.
“…the temp difference between now and the LGM was only 4-5 C.”
The ground where New York City now sits was buried in glacial ice during the LGM. The temperature difference there between now and the LGM is a helluva lot more than 4-5 C.
Jim D
You write:
I’m looking at the HadCRUT4 record, Jim.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1953/trend
It tells me that the linear warming from 1953 to today was from -0.2C to +0.49C = 0.69C (that’s pretty close to your 0.012C/yr, so we agree on that.
Over this same period, CO2 increased from 313 to 395 ppmv
IPCC says “most” of warming since mid-century can be attributed to CO2. You ASS-U-ME “most” means “all”. I ASS-U-ME “most” means “most”, and that “most” is somewhere around 75%. Remember that “natural variability” (not programmed into the models) is now being blamed by some for totally overwhelming GH warming since the end of 2000, and we know that the strong 1997-98 El Nino played a significant role in the record hot year 1998, so it is reasonable to ASS-U-ME that this very same “natural variability” played a role in the 1953-2013 warming, right?
So that would equate to a 2xCO2 TCR of:
0.75 * 0.69 * ln(2) / ln(395 / 313) = 1.5ºC.
But (I repeat) why look at such a short “blip” in time, just because IPCC did?
If we look at the whole record, and still ASS-U-ME that “most” (= 75%) of the 0.77C warming since 1850 (arguably a high estimate, since the sun was definitely stronger in the latter part of the record than in the early part) came from the CO2 increase from 287 ppmv to 395 ppmv today, we arrive at
0.75 * 0.77 * ln(2) / ln(395 / 287) = 1.3ºC.
So let me repeat: It looks like Nic Lewis got it pretty close to right with his estimate of 1.35ºC.
Face it, Jim, the 163 year record does not point to a 2xCO2 TCR of 1.8ºC to 2ºC (as you ASS-U-ME), but rather to one closer to the estimate of Nic Lewis, at 1.35ºC.
And that was my point.
Max
manacker, the expected warming before 1950 would have been about 0.3 C, and after about 0.7 C based on a 2 C transient sensitivity. These are close to what actually happened. Arguably 0.3 C is a lot less certain because of the other natural variability that has an amplitude of 0.1 C, but the effect is easier to see in the last half century because its rate has doubled.
Jim D
Simply stating something does not make it correct, Jim.
I have shown you that based on the HadCRUt4 record since 1850 and the CO2 increase from 1850 to today, with the assumption that CO2 caused 75% of all the observed warming over the entire record, we arithmetically arrive at a 2xCO2 TCR of 1.3C, very close to that estimated by Nic Lewis.
You counter with:
Why break the warming down into pre-1950 and post-1950, Jim? Makes no sense. Look at the ENTIRE record.
20thC solar activity was at its highest for several thousand years, much higher than it was in the 19thC. Most recently, it has since slowed down significantly.
The 1980s and 1990s had several strong El Ninos, including the one in 1997/98 that led to a record hot year 1998.
So, based on these observations, we can conclude that there were other factors, beside human GHGs (or CO2), which influenced the observed warming trend of 0.77C over the entire period.
I’ve ASS-U-MEd that “most” means 75% (and arrive at a 2xCO2 TCR of 1.3C).
You ASS-U-ME that “most” means “all” (in order to arrive at 2C).
But even that is based on bad arithmetic.
ALL of the warming since 1850 would be equivalent to a 2xCO2 TCR of
0.77C * ln(2) / ln (395 / 287) = 1.67C
Still closer to Nic Lewis’ 1.35C than to your 2C, Jim.
Give up on this one, Jim. The actual physical observations do not support your 2xCO2 TCR claim of 2C.
Max
Enjoyed this insightful comment:
“Most environmentalists are so deep inside their own bubble that they have no perception that a plurality of Americans hates them.”
Webby – does your anharmonic oscillator have a well-defined period?
I share your feeling towards Southern California, especially Hollywood.
Quoting Feynman landed my 4:55 pm in moderation – 75 minutes so far. He uses a N-word.
Nadolf Nitler?
No, -azi.
It must be a tough one. 130 minutes.
–e.g., Western academia is fascist to the core?
Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Fresh Air beginning at about 33 minutes …
http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=283443670&m=283504131
Communication is more than talking and good communication is hard work.
There’s so much uncertainty involved in the business of estimating the temperature of the globe in 30-50 years. Michael Mann was uncertain about the existence of the MWP and LIA. Now, Mann’s hockey stick is viewed even by global warming alarmists as unimportant to the AGW argument. There seems to be uncertainty even now about the logarithmic effect that puts a lid on CO2’s contribution to global warming. And now — because global warming has stopped — there is considerable uncertainty about how much climate change is actually due to natural causes. It is uncertain how large the negative feedback of water vapor and clouds is. How large do uncertainties have to be to make estimates worthless?
This is an attempt to avoid a moderation for this comment. Please replace an underscore character “_” in the text with a letter N. Thank you.
March 14, 2014 at 4:55 pm
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
I recorded the COSMOS show, but could not stomach it. It comes out rather bombastic. An interesting grain time to time, but not enough to save the show.
It is nice to know that traditions are holding fast. Feynman writes about a “club of professors” at Cornell, which thought that _azis weren’t so bad. “That was the beginning of my loss of respect for some of the professors in the humanities, and other areas.”
There has been some interesting comments on John Coleman’s latest video here: youtube.com/watch?v=SyUDGfCNC-k
Some examples :-
>> drkstrong –
“+Stones .. The Spencer plot you are using is satellite measurements of the atmosphere at several km in altitude (up to 3 km). The satellites dont measure temperature directly but depend on a radiative transfer model and so the result depends on the model you use. Different groups get different results. The higher you go the less warming you see. So you are comparing surface measurements with atmospheric measurements which is why you are getting such low numbers. Apples with oranges.
<> drkstrong –
“The accuracy of the computer models depend on the assumptions made the most critical of which what is going to be emitted into the atmosphere, not only has co2 gone up but in recent years but there has been a large increase in cooling aerosol emissions. Also they depend on the El Nino / La Nina cycle which is not predictable many years in advance. Volcanic eruptions are not predictable and they cool too. So compare the models that had the most accurate assumptions and you will see a different result.”
<> Tony –
“+Stones .. You’re being somewhat creative with the “empirical scientific facts.” The trend is not level. We’re living through the hottest years in the entire record of global temperature measurements. If people are telling you the trend is level they’re simply wrong. Also you show your ignorance when you call the global temperature rise “less than one degree Celsius.” That’s exactly the massive rise we call global warming.”
<> Darkwing –
“+drkstrong .. [Quote:] “In the last century, the global temperature anomal[ies] have gone from -0.4C to over +0.6C. Unless you are using new math that is about 1C.” … Still less than the measurement error over that period. That’s the joke.”
<<
…. What one person says is a "massive rise", is a possible "measurement error" to another person. So, what is the true situation? How do we know if there has been a warming trend during the last 100 (or more) years if there could be measurement errors?
@ Peter Yates
Don’t forget, when calculating the ‘temperature rise’ of the last century or so the raw data (according to what I have read here, but with no personal knowledge) has been adjusted repeatedly, always in the direction that makes older data appear colder.
Also, I have seen NASA press releases citing the ‘Annual Temperature of the Earth (TOE)’ with millidegree resolution and in the same release, declaring that the TOE for the year referred to (I can’t remember the specific year) was the hottest year ever–by a few hundredths of a degree.
Does anyone actually believe that the ‘Annual Temperature of the Earth’ is a meaningful parameter and that we have an instrumentation system in place that can measure it with millidegree–or hundredths degree–precision? Or that the TOE measurements made today can be compared meaningfully with hundredths of a degree significance to TOE measurements calculated from data collected by the data acquisition system in place a hundred years ago?
Whatever you or I believe, Climate Science publishes such data regularly and cites it as proof not only of global warming, but as proof of global warming attributable to Anthropogenic CO2, and does so with such certainty that there are growing calls from the Climate Science community and its supporters (like the one linked by Dr. Curry above) to make public expression of doubt a criminal offense.
Bob Ludwick
You can’t prosecute ignorance.
Even ignorant fear mongering made at government expense cannot be prosecuted.
You have to demonstrate willful intent to deceive.
This seems obvious to the casual observer, but would be hard to prove beyond a doubt in a court.
All you can do is get your representative to vote to stop funding this nonsense (or change out your representative to one who will do so).
And that is a slow process.
Max
PS And those who want to prosecute “deniers” or “skeptics” have the same problem.
Well, if it’s a ‘massive rise’ it’s been a tremendous boon to the human race and to the whole biome. If it’s a measurement error, I’ll have to figure out a way to thank the Measurer.
================
I think the quote of the week should be one written in this post by JC re Professor Torcello: “The author better hope that such misinformation is NOT criminally negligent, since his article contains plenty of it.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2136.html
Counting all observations:
1. Who makes fewer assumptions, Lewis or Shindell?
2. Who leaves fewer exceptions unexplained, Lewis or Shindell?
3. Who has the more universally applicable explanation?
Go ahead, count up the numbers. Lewis comes out far behind, therefore Shindell’s is the more accurate or nearly true explanation.
Thanks for playing.
Playing: I make only one assumption about Bart R. It may be unprintable, but then it must be accurate or nearly true.
Here I analyse results from recent climate modelling intercomparison projects to demonstrate that transient climate sensitivity to historical aerosols and ozone is substantially greater than the transient climate sensitivity to CO2
there is NO proxy for historical stratospheric O3,you do understand that?
Bart R, I will raise you, there is a much simpler explanation will even fewer assumptions, only one in fact;
God did it
easy isn’t it
DocMartyn | March 14, 2014 at 9:49 pm |
Assumes God, and all parts of God, which are many sub assumptions. Saying “God” is saying “assume everything”. You haven’t simplified anything. You’ve declared everything an assumption and a special case, therefore an exception.
Curious George | March 14, 2014 at 8:22 pm |
You have the same problem as DocMartyn | March 14, 2014 at 9:49 pm |
maksimovich | March 14, 2014 at 8:28 pm |
There’s also no way to know what songs dinosaur’s trilled. Doesn’t mean we don’t know they existed.
Bart R, thanks for sticking to the subject and providing the link. I don’t know how one can can take up your proposition an assess the two when Shindell fails to archive data and provide full computer code. It’s a non-starter. Since the two corroborated in previous work, I don’t know why it’s even necessary to make a distinction. I don’t have problem with seeing the value of Shindell’s paper but certainly it can and should be critiqued as part of the scientific method of testing.
Your (not my) thesis is “fewer assumptions means more accurate or nearly true”. Please explain why I have DocMartyn’s problem. Make as many assumptions as you like. Thank you for playing.
ordvic | March 14, 2014 at 10:16 pm |
Shindell fails to archive data and provide full computer code.
In this day and age, if true, a very serious criticism indeed; I share the desire to see data archived and computer code open in the Sciences. But Shindell’s isn’t the only data, by far, and Shindell’s analyses as laid out work on the broader range of publicly available data than Lewis’, whose work pretty much only appears to work if you use only Lewis’ data. Hence, Shindell’s remains the more universal explanation, and Lewis’ explanation has more exceptions it does not explain.
Curious George | March 14, 2014 at 10:43 pm |
Explain why you have the same problem? DocMartyn | March 14, 2014 at 9:49 pm | makes assumptions of an all-knowing Being whom he has never met, never spoken with personally, has no direct knowledge of whatsoever, and whom no denizen has anything but pure speculation about. Every aspect of God, or me, is to you two an assumption, and far from simple.
Whereas about both of you we know you don’t know your assumptions from a hole in the ground.
Depends on how you count assumptions,
Lewis uses HADCRUT
Shindell uses Hadcrut with “bias corrections”
Now the assumptions in of these two is an order of magnitude greater than the assumptions in the former. order of magnitude
which one? and why? and what does counting assumptions tell you
Its pretty simple.
I will say the same thing about Shindell that I said about Scaffeta and Mann.
No code as run? no data as used?
I’m under no rational obligation to believe or to evaluate your work. Go away.
“Go ahead, count up the numbers. Lewis comes out far behind, therefore Shindell’s is the more accurate or nearly true”
Declaration by assertion Bart, sorry, I can’t play the game because you offer zero evidence of how you counted the assumptions or how you determined them to be unexplained or how you determine what is most universally true. I expect nothing less than a reply in which you twist the universally held belief that… showing your work is a prerequisite for gaining acceptance of how one reaches an answer… as an impediment to scientific progress.
Just give me a reason why I should give your comment any credit when it appears you are making up the rules to the game.
Since you insist: My assumption is that your thesis is an idiotic one. Simple.
Curious George | March 15, 2014 at 11:48 am |
As I said; assumes God.
Steven Mosher | March 15, 2014 at 12:48 am |
At some point, grown ups stop whinging that they don’t have the data or computer runs, and run their own. BEST did that. So, judging by your actions instead of your words, I’d have to suggest you know better than to raise as an objection the fallacy that Shindell’s misbehavior makes his ideas less true. IIRC, when BEST did apply the ideas of people with a bad record of sharing code and data, BEST found those people erred on the side of least drama, and by a wide margin.
If Shindell is as conservative, then we might contemplate his figures are too close to Lewis’ and ought be higher; indeed, our experience from the very project you are a member of tells us this is more likely than not.
John Carpenter | March 15, 2014 at 10:14 am |
“Declaration by assertion” is redundant.
Perhaps you are asserting (wrongly) a claim (by declaration) that I have produced a proof by assertion, a type of fallacy.
However, you’ve engaged in Argumentum Ad Ignorantium by discounting what information is clearly available from original sources; at best, you still fall afoul of argumentum ab silencio if you contend merely that because I don’t cart out the entire lists of all assumptions of Lewis and Shindell, ergo Lewis doesn’t have (patently) more assumptions.
Here is how you err: to have a proof by assertion, I must say “Lewis is wrong because Shindell is right,” or words to that effect. What I instead say is, “counting all assumptions, Shindell relies on fewer assumptions, ergo Shindell’s explanation is simpler and thus more accurate or nearly true.”
Do I _prove_ Shindell’s explanation relies on fewer assumptions?
Puhleeze, you appeal to infinite regress. Every time any list or argument is presented, you’ll just carry on with quibbles until it’s elephants all the way down.
Who wants to fall into that sort of trap?
Either you do know your assumptions from a hole in the ground, and can count, or you don’t and can’t. I’m not going to help you out with either of those. You’re on your own there.
“However, you’ve engaged in Argumentum Ad Ignorantium by discounting what information is clearly available from original sources; at best, you still fall afoul of argumentum ab silencio if you contend merely that because I don’t cart out the entire lists of all assumptions of Lewis and Shindell, ergo Lewis doesn’t have (patently) more assumptions.”
Word ploys Bart, forever word ploys with you. Everything except to answer simple questions posed. More rules to your game.
“Every time any list or argument is presented, you’ll just carry on with quibbles until it’s elephants all the way down.”
Yes, quibbles and elephants. Why should I show you my work when all you will do is find something wrong with it. You do know all the answers before any more questions can be posed.
Run away… Run away
Bart, I find when people resort to word ploys followed by ‘go do it yourself’, it often is the case they only did a cursory head count analysis… a mental scorecard as it were and not a true study. Nothing wrong with that. I expect that’s what you did. I understand you are just passing along what you have observed. But when challenged, why not just say so?
Bart’s got hotels on Park Place and Broadway, and all four railroads.
==============
Bullies don’t like it when they get pushback via the same rhetorical arguments that they themselves use.
Bart is running circles around the unscientific skeptical arguments and Team Denier does not like it.
John Carpenter | March 16, 2014 at 10:02 am |
By “word ploy”, it appears you mean facts and reason. I’m not going to apologize to you for bringing facts and reason to use against ignorance and irrationality. If you don’t like it, stop using ignorance and irrationality.
Either demonstrate that you understand what assumptions are and can count by naming the assumptions Lewis and Shindell make, and telling us all how many there are, or stop bothering us. Grown ups are talking here.
WHT,
Yeah, I’m a bully and a denier… Good come back.
Bart,
“Either demonstrate that you understand what assumptions are and can count by naming the assumptions Lewis and Shindell make, and telling us all how many there are, or stop bothering us. Grown ups are talking here.”
-Blink- Really? You’re going with that?
This is pretty much what I asked you from the start… interesting how you turned it around. You understand that was the initial challenge to you… Right? Now quit making this exercise about me.
Here is an opportunity for you to show how you arrived at your conclusion and demonstrate your intellect at the same time… Both of which you excel at. As a bonus, you may teach readers something new. This could be a win win win.
John Carpenter | March 16, 2014 at 4:08 pm |
‘Pretty much’ what you started with was “..how you counted the assumptions or how you determined them to be unexplained or how you determine what is most universally true. I expect nothing less than a reply in which you twist the universally held belief that… showing your work is a prerequisite for gaining acceptance of how one reaches an answer… as an impediment to scientific progress.”
Now, if you’re asking how to count, I recommend reading Halmos’ Naive Set Theory (http://getebook.org/?p=31240) as a primer. It also discusses the subject of the infinite, which is where we would go if we delved into the entire subject of counting from first principles, as you seem to be demanding before we can move on.
If you’re asking what counts as an assumption and how to determine whether a paper has made one, you know, I’m not going to help you with that infinite regress, either. You can’t figure out what an assumption is or how many were invoked by Lewis and Shindell respectively? Not my problem. See, I don’t care if you do or don’t believe me, or if you do or don’t shore up your reading with independent thought as a general rule, so I don’t feel a need to fall into your silly trap.
If you think “showing your work” infinitely to the point of absurdity is universally held, I refer you to http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/infinite_regress.html for the universally held distinction between “justified true” and impossible standards of perfection.
My justification for rejecting Lewis and accepting for the present Shindell is that Shindell’s current work better meets the measure set out by Isaac Newton 300 years ago. You aren’t contending at all that this truth is unjustified, you’re merely and childishly complaining that I didn’t waste my time showing you how to arrive at this conclusion step-by-step.
So, yeah, I’m freaking going with grown ups are talking. Come back when you’ve grown some.
“…so I don’t feel a need to fall into your silly trap.”
Well, I guess that says it all… the truth us finally out, I’m a trap setter (and a bully and a denier). Let that be a lesson to anyone else I challenge for information, I’m just looking for ‘gotcha moments’. That and apparently I have some more growing up to do. Well done Bart, you persevered. You found me out.
John Carpenter | March 17, 2014 at 9:20 am |
Sorry, haven’t been keeping track of you outside of our exchanges. Whom did you bully, and what are you denying?
Not that I care, but if it’s germaine to what we’re talking about, it’s common courtesy for me to feign interest.
Bart, further up thread Web Hub Telescope likened me to a bully and a denier wrt our dialogue. Not really germaine to our dialogue specifically but to this thread in general as I now have a number of character flaws I need to examine.
http://judithcurry.com/2014/03/14/week-in-review-16/#comment-490902
Thanks for asking
John Carpenter | March 17, 2014 at 9:29 pm |
Ah.
Character flaws are irrelevant.
I have zero interest in ad hominem.
Looks like Keith Kloor has it right about environmental groups being on the path of extinction.
And this appears to be happening even though most schools are trying to keep children “aware” of environmental concerns.
To our topic: The grossly exaggerated doomsday predictions of consensus climate science, coupled with the revelations of Climategate, Himalayagate, etc., have undoubtedly helped this movement self-destruct, and IPCC is arguably the main cause for the problem.
The pause in global warming has been another factor; early denial that such a pause even existed, followed by rather desperate rationalizations of why the pause does not mean warming has stopped, have both resulted in more skepticism.
Whether or not IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri could have done anything to avoid this path to self-destruction is an open question, but his actions certainly did not help.
Gone are the glory days of Oscars and Nobel (Peace) Prizes.
Political posturing, like Kerry’s silly remarks or the recent US Senate “climate change blabathon” only make the CAGW supporters look more desperate and out of touch with the rest of the world.
Sic transit gloria.
Max
Kinda ‘sick transit gloria ter ignomenia?’
A-serf-translation.
‘…per ignoramia’
Fellow serf Max
If it’s warming it is and if it’s cooling it is …
OUR FAULT.
http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/02/the-1970s-global-cooling-alarmism.html
Time to break the ice here, or make a few cracks about cracks in the ice in the Arctic. Las year we had a lot of cranks having cracks about record cracks in the ice [never been seen before etc] and it all disappearing only to have a very slow melt.At least the cracks have disappeared this year.
Wish there was more ice up there but it all seems to be in Canada. Perhaps it will still build up and be slow to melt again but it is very difficult predicting the Arctic.
Science deniers, science haters, Flat Earthers…Yet we are happy to use our cell phones!
Neill wonders: Are we going to wait till the map of earth has to be redrawn? Well, Neill, with sea level rise going so sluggishly since the 1860s we may indeed have to wait. But I’m sure that won’t stop a sciencey guy like you doing an anticipatory map. That’s almost as good as the real thing in these days of the non-Kardashian model.
For all round snobbishness and superficiality, Neill Degrasse Tyson is serious competition for you, Richard Dawkins. No, I mean it, Richard. Take this threat seriously. He’s going straight for your rationalist/luvvie demographic. And he’s on Fox, which people actually watch!
The Right Climate Stuff
The ex moon-shot NASA scientists and engineers are conducting an independent objective review of climate science. They have now published:
Executive Summary, Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014
Bounding GHG Climate Sensitivity for use in Regulatory Decisions February 2014
Summary:
Their development of Transient Climate Sensitivity and accounting for economically recoverable hydrocarbons are two key features.
Doiron et. al 2014 Fig. 5.1 p 74 constrain Transient Climate Sensitivity (TCS) by observation.
Otto et. al. (2013) provide a best estimate of TCR = 1.3 deg C with an uncertainty range of 0.9 – 2 deg C. This is in close agreement with our TCSGHG least upper bound of 1.5 deg C and conservative upper bound of 1.6 deg C derived in Section 4.4.
Shindell does not provide an upper bound to TCR and so appears seriously high.
Gallup Poll on Climate Change – American’s views in 2014
March 12, 2014 Climate Change Not a Top Worry in U.S. U.S. concerns with the quality of the environment dropped in 2014
ie. second last!
From the article:
Latest Well Results – Marquis Area
…
In the past two months, Sanchez Energy (SN) reported that it had success extending its highly productive Prost prospect in the Marquis area to the south. In addition to the Prost A, B and C units, first appraisal wells have recently been drilled in the Prost D, E, F, G, and H units, with strong results. Two additional units, Prost J and O, have been formed. According to state data, the five wells drilled on the southern acreage units tested with an average rate of 973 barrels of oil and 0.6 MMcf of liquids-rich natural gas per day. The wells exhibited strong flowing tubing pressure in the 3,000-3,700 psi range on 14/64-16/64 inch chokes. Early production results are impressive and are at or above Sanchez’s Prost type curve. The tables below provide well-by-well test data and production data for the most recent wells as well as earlier announced producers.
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2088113-sanchez-energy-latest-well-results-in-the-marquis-area
Going for fracked oil is comparable to a drunk that goes dumpster-diving in the hopes of salvaging a few drops from a discarded Jim Beam bottle.
Definitely bottom of the barrel stuff. About time to switch to the energy alternatives.
WHT – Nice try, but tight oil is more like the hose from which the conventional oil barrel was filled.
And with every year that goes by, production costs of tight oil go down significantly. Technology advances, kind of like in the semiconductor field.
WHT still deceives himself. Amazing.
That’s why I use diffusion algorithms lifted directly from semiconductor process math to estimate how quickly the Bakken wells will deplete. Let’s assume that geologists are dumb as rocks and the majority of them either (1) can’t figure this out or (2) don’t care, cuz all they want is a paycheck.
http://contextearth.com/2013/10/06/bakken-projections/
Everyone in the oilfield wants a paycheck. And everyone is getting a good paycheck there – they don’t really give a damn about diffusion theory – they see actual results – and are are liking it a lot.
Shows the dumbness. The oil in shale structure is maximally dispersed and has a high entropy. What you are saying is that perfume in a room can be put back in a bottle without much effort. That is plain dumb.
The fact of the matter is that conventional oil reservoirs have convenient salt dome structures which captured the migrating oil before it was fully dispersed. Try finding more of those … you can’t.
The Canadian tar sands are another example of maximally dispersed oil, as that came about as the Rocky mountains shifted around and turned the ideal oil reservoirs into mush. Not good, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, like I said.
We also have all the uranium we want but it is dispersed in sea-water. To collect that would take as much energy as we could get out of it.
Those are the correct analogies, not the dumb analogy you are providing.
You have it bass-ackwards Web. Unless you are one of those abiotic oil believers, and if you take a moment from scribbling equations and mumbling about entropy, you will realize that the oil FIRST formed inside rock under high temperature and pressure. In the case of shale, the high temp and pressure forces out some of the oil which accumulated in conventional reservoirs. And only some, not all, conventional reservoirs are salt domes.
That’s why shale is sometimes referred to as source rock.
From the article:
Reservoir rock
: A permeable subsurface rock that contains petroleum. Must be both
porous and permeable.
Source rock
: A sedimentary rock in which petroleum forms.
•
Reservoir rocks are dominantly sedimentary (sandstones and carbonates); however, highly fractured igneous and metamorphic rocks have been known to produce hydrocarbons, albeit on a
much smaller scale
•
Source rocks are widely agreed to be sedimentary
•
The three sedimentary rock types most frequently en
countered in oil fields are shales, sandstones,
and carbonates
•
Each of these rock types has a characteristic com
position and texture that is a direct result of depositional environment and post-depositional (diagenetic) processes (i.e., cementation, etc.)
•
Understanding reservoir rock properties and their associated characteristics is crucial in developing a prospect
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~petro/faculty/Adam%20H.%20571/PETR%20571-Week3notes.pdf
OK, then perfume in a room is source perfume. Try bottling that once it is sprayed around.
Good gawd, don’t these guys understand how the concept of entropy and dispersion works?
I do understand entropy and dispersion, but you obviously are clueless about petroleum.
From the article:
…
Summary
2014 looks like it may be the year that El Nino returns.
El Nino can have serious economic consequences, and greatly impact the earnings of some companies.
El Nino will likely drive “extreme weather,” which is certain to play into election year politics.
Public support for climate change legislation is critical for the survival of many “green economy” companies.
Scientific Background:
2014 looks like it may be the year El Nino makes its return to the Pacific to wreak havoc on the earth’s climate. Anyone who doubts that the earth’s climate is changing will be given irrefutable evidence if the El Nino Southern Oscillation, or ELSO, does in fact make a return. How the ELSO and its close cousin the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or PDO, are related to man made atmospheric CO2 is way beyond me, but you can be 1,000% sure politicians will use the ELSO warming as evidence for greater environmental regulations. The ELSO and PDO are natural phenomena that have been going on since long before the first oil well was drilled or coal burning power plant was built, and their behavior is infinitely more correlated with atmospheric temperatures than CO2.
PDO regimes prevailed from 1890-1924 and again from 1947-1976, while “warm” PDO regimes dominated from 1925-1946 and from 1977 through (at least) the mid-1990’s. Shoshiro Minobe has shown that 20th century PDO fluctuations were most energetic in two general periodicities, one from 15-to-25 years, and the other from 50-to-70 years
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2090043-investors-guide-to-el-nino-climate-change-and-summer-weather-forecast
I don’t know about the other things but it will play havoc with the “pause”, which will end in a step like the one that preceded it, which is all but forgotten, or mentally blanked out, 15 years later.
Yeah – I would actually bother reading someone who can’t even get the acronym right.
The PDO will remain negative – ENSO will continue to be biased to La Nina – the Sun is cooling for the decade and the century which will push the system further to La Nina.
ELSO was pretty bad given the misspelling was repeated several times.
It’s odd that a climate event which usually comes around several times a decade has taken on the status of pause-destroyer, gaia ex machina and denial dissipator.
The only oddity would be a long term absence of El Nino, and that would be merely odd, since El Nino did absent itself between the mid-1920s and 1940 (according to Australia’s BoM, though others may define differently). And since that period was lousy for drought and heat in eastern Oz, producing the world’s longest officially accepted heat wave at Marble Bar, I wouldn’t get excited if the Boy Child stayed away some more. (Mind you, I don’t enjoy his presence, and neither does moso bamboo.)
It’s wonderful that I still have something in common with every other human on earth, and even any who may be whizzing round in space. Namely, none of us has a clue what the climate will be doing a decade from now. In this, we are as one!
I was sloppy there. The Marble Bar heatwave was 1923-4, an ENSO neutral year preceded by ENSO neutral years and followed by La Nina. (Since ENSO is supposed to have its strongest effect in the north and east of the continent you might think it hardly matters, but it still is supposed to have effects elsewhere. Moreover I think the Marble Bar heatwave matters a lot, since it was about as extreme an event as you can get and it wasn’t just predicted or modelled: it, er, actually happened.)
But there was an El NIno in 1925-6 – the only one between 1920 and 1940. Yet the news for Australia in those 20 years was mostly drought + heat. The 1920s were dry for eastern Oz and the 1930s dry for all of Oz, the driest decade, in fact. But at least there was only one little Nino!
Lastly, it bears repeating that eastern Australia’s most lethal heat (with drought and catastrophic fire) occurred during a La Nina flanked by neutral years. The La Nina of 1938-9. Once again, Gaia forgot to check the index and read the instructions.
Gaia ex machina, mosomoso?
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12024&page=55
Identify which of the following in Earth’s recent climate history
are gaia ex machina events?
Medieval Warm Period
Little Ice Age
Early 20th century Warm Period
Mid 20th century Cool Period
Late 20th century Warm Period
21st century ‘Pause’
(5 points.)
The writer uses ENSO multiple times later in the article – I’m thinking the ELSO was a typo or other sort of problem.
Okay, serf, I’ll nominate 1791 as a star gaia-ex-machina turn. That was the monsoon failure/El Nino which devastated India and which nearly stopped Oz before it could get started.
Imagine a world without Australians!
Two points awarded fer effort, mosomoso
bts
The forecast for El Nino, I forget which forecast, is 50%. That’s not exactly what I would call in the bag. And even if one develops, it might be small and not have much effect. I wouldn’t count the chickens just yet.
The question that Professor Torcello’s column
https://theconversation.com/is-misinformation-about-the-climate-criminally-negligent-23111#comment_333276
raises is whether or not fascism has now become a serious problem in the halls of academia.
The fact that a professor of philosophy, no less, is advocating criminalizing differences of opinion in the debate on one of the most controversial issues of our time, is troubling, no?
There are so many to choose from today.
http://www.sesync.org/about/partners-and-advisors
Yes.
This just in from the D’oh! department.
From that well known limited government advocate, James Hansen:
“’An important point is that such legislation I think needs to be introduced by conservatives, because I’m afraid liberals will try to take part of the money to make the government bigger. Not one dime should go to the government. 100 percent should go to the public,’ said Hansen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/climate-scientist-liberals-will-use-carbon-tax-make-government-bigger
This is head poundingly stupid on just so many levels….
The real problem with the Navy drones is the chance they won’t make this info public – it is to be used to determine where to locate submarines. I have been a big advocate of collecting more data, but if it’s not public, it’s useless for climate studies.
Angech. Wrong again
” with models that do not work due to inputing CO2 forcing which is not happening in the real world.”
Sorry, I realise that CO2 forcing is happening in the real world.
My comment was on the models not working because the CO2 forcing [in my opinion only] is being counterbalanced by feedbacks like extra cloud formation.
The models are not inputing the actual real world temperature data is what I should have said [because they are inputing a temperature rise related to rising CO2 values rather than the actual temperatures]
cool
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/03/navy-submarine-drones-will-predict-weather-months-advance/80542/
Thanks for this link Steven. This type of research holds far more promise for the betterment of humanity and food production in general than the current preoccupation of climate science with CO2 and attempting to project the trajectory of global climate over the next 20 years or so.
Thanks for the link. Looks like a game changer.
Fine so far as it goes but
“The Navy plans to increase the number of those drones from 65 to 150 by 2015.”
is not likely to make much of a dent in what we do not know so far.
“Despite all this progress, weather data is a strategic advantage that we’re on the verge of losing, and not because of the machines in the water, but the ones in space. Six of NASA’s 13 earth-monitoring satellites will no longer be in operation by 2016. This will likely result in a gap of earth-monitoring capability that could persist through 2017 or even beyond. The budget request cuts spending for Navy satellite communications to $41,829,000 from $66,196,000 and the Navy Satellite Control Network $20,806,000 from $35,657,000.
The 2015 Air Force budget requests money to begin research on polar weather satellites to replace the current aging system. But the new satellites likely would not be ready until 2020.
So we’ll have more drones but fewer satellites, at least in the near term.”
More Super Computer models working on drone information with models that do not work due to inputing CO2 forcing which is not happening in the real world. The British experience over the last 5 years with their Supercomputer models would suggest the best course to adopt would be the reverse of whatever the computers say.
I believe they now refuse to guarantee a prediction more than 3-5 days out .
Thanks Steve, It is true the more raw data collected and given out to everyone the better we will be able to do rough predictions so I hope the drones and satellites are supported.
Richard LH how would u know
Angech. Wrong again
Steve:
“Richard LH how would u know”
Unless those added drones are capable of moving very, very quickly the increase from 65 to 150 by 2015 is not going to cover that much more ocean? That’s a very low density per square anything.
Richard you know nothing about the density required and nothing about how the drones will improve the forecast. Since these men are charged with protecting our freedom and you are a blowhard I will bet they are right and you are stupid
Steve: Thank you for your (ill) considered opinion. Do you have any idea of the number of these that will be deployed in the Atlantic, Indian Oceans, etc.?
Do you actually know how much ocean area they sample at present and how much more area will be achieved by the end 2015 – I thought not – all bluster and no clue.
Argo has a slightly higher density in number terms and that barely scratches the surface (pun).
Steve:
Not exactly fast movement by the Navy then either
http://swampland.time.com/2013/12/22/navy-underwater-drone/
“The Navy’s Sunday contract announcement added a scant $203,731 to a contract it has with Teledyne Benthos, Inc., for continued “research efforts” into its Slocum Gliders”
“In 2009, the Navy issued a $56.2 million contract for up to 150 of the “Littoral Battlespace-Sensing” gliders to be delivered by 2014.”
Beyond COOL! I needed to to think about it before commenting.
We have an army of wonderful characters predicting daily weather impacts on land. We now have the means to directly compare their daily event assumptions to events in our Water World.
It’s off the charts cool but sadly NOAA will pooch the puppy before it can be useful for science?
Who is monitoring NOAA related to the data exchange?
angech | March 16, 2014 at 6:56 am | should be in this thread ,sorry
Angech. Wrong again
” with models that do not work due to inputing CO2 forcing which is not happening in the real world.”
Sorry, I realise that CO2 forcing is happening in the real world.
My comment was on the models not working because the CO2 forcing [in my opinion only] is being counterbalanced by feedbacks like extra cloud formation.
The models are not inputing the actual real world temperature data is what I should have said [because they are inputing a temperature rise related to rising CO2 values rather than the actual temperatures]
AngieBaby, clouds are a positive warming feedback according to the physics. Warmer means more humidity which increases the ability of water vapor to act as a GHG. Clouds are a form of dense humidity which also acts as a greenhouse blanket.
“, clouds are a positive warming feedback according to the physics.” ? Warmer means more humidity which increases the ability of water vapor to act as a GHG. Clouds are a form of dense humidity which also acts as a greenhouse blanket.”
First the clouds increase albedo reflecting a lot more heat back to space before it gets to the ground. The little bit under the clouds is a bit warmer but the overall effect is less heat in, lower overall temp per 24 hours. The air always has water vapor in it but it is not always thick enough to form a reflective shield AKA as a cloud.
Wikipedia Cloud feedback ” More clouds cools the climate, resulting in a negative feedback.[8]”
don’t argue with the facts.
don’t argue with WSC.
Clouds are a warming positive feedback.
People who promote renewable fuels may find this interesting:
http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/351596/flying-without-fossil-fuels-need-high-energy-density?ref=popular_posts
In part it compares the power of a Boeing 747 in steady flight at cruising altitude with the power that could be provided by solar PV covering the wings. Then similarly with the power density of a wind farm. In short, PV can provide less than 1% of the power density required for cruising flight. He says:
Then he compares the energy density required for a jumbo jet and that available from batteries after a century of development.
Batteries for 1 Boeing 747 to take off would weigh as much as 50 fully-laden, fully-fueled Boeing 747.
Then he considers the biofuel and synthetic fuel options.
In short fossil fuels aren’t going to be replaced any time soon for air travel (or many other uses).
However, I’d point out for the sake of stirring up the usual suspects here, while the author says it won’t be practical for a long time to make jet fuels by sucking CO2 out of the air, he didn’t mention or didn’t seem to know about the US Navy research into making jet fuel from sea water. The US Navy is looking at this and has estimated the cost at $3-$6 a gallon on nuclear powered ships at sea (probably considerable cheaper on land).
This is probably one of the bigger problems. But first, we need to consider the much higher amounts of bi-carbonate in ocean water. As long as velocities are low, systems using large membrane areas for diffusion will not use much energy for pumping, and AFAIK the difference between sea water and air is minor.
Not necessarily. He’s assuming modifications of existing technology rather than new techniques based on bio-tech.
When it comes to solar PV, remember that the cost of this has been reducing in a roughly exponential fashion, and can reasonably be expected to continue.
Using 2000x concentration (as IBM has already demonstrated on the lab bench), even if the actual silicon costs 100 times as much as basic panels, it adds up to a 20-fold reduction in price per aperature square meter. Tracking technology doesn’t seem to add much to the relative structure price, and improvements in control technology will benefit from Moore’s “law” as applied to the silicon used for hardware. And software is infinitely replicable.
The entirety of inverter costs can be removed by using electrolysis to produce hydrogen, either with Nocera’s process or the new low-cost catalysts in electrolytic cells close to the concentrator assembly. For fuel, either methane or short-chain hydrocarbons, this hydrogen can be fed directly into bio-converters using anoxic reactions, which means an absence of reactive oxygen species from either oxygen photosynthesis or respiration.
Of course, some bio-tech will need to be done, probably along the lines of what Exxon is now starting out with. It’s highly doubtful that existing methanogens can be used without major gene surgery. However, the reaction works at a low enough concentration of CO2 that it can actually drive the extraction from sea water. Only the transfer mechanism between (aerated) sea water and the anoxic bio-reaction chamber needs any sort of “breakthrough”, probably in diffusive membrane materials technology.
And consider how quickly a million-dollar effort to sequence the human genome became almost routine gene sequencing. A similar time-frame from the current prototypes to routine major gene surgery is highly likely.
Unreasonably pessimistic, IMO. I’d guess 2020-2035 for cost parity, assuming oil prices don’t undergo any sort of massive reduction.
AK,
Enthusiasm and unbounded faith in a persons beliefs is essential for inventors, but is not what is required in policy analysts and policy makers. Policy analysts and policy makers have to deal with reality and with what is likely to be available, not the hopes and wishes and beliefs of inventors and those with extreme views. I’ve had a lot to do with energy inventors and their pleading for government money and abuse when their pet beliefs isn’t funded to the level they believe it should be. So, I’ve seen a lot of the sort of enthusiasm for beliefs like yours – here’s one example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_Solar_Power_Station
This point keeps getting reiterated over and over again by the solar power advocates. But it is irrelevant. Solar is far too expensive and not fit for purpose. Even with optimistic learning rates (cost reductions per doubling of capacity or doubling of output), solar will not be economically viable in the foreseeable future. The physical limitations preclude it.
The major technical issues that would have to be overcome for solar to be a viable supplier of a large proportion of electricity in the future are:
1. supply reliable power 24/365
2. fully dispatchable in a system with 99.8% reliability requirement
3. cost competitive with other technologies
To achieve these the capital, cost of finance, and operation and maintenance cost of all the following components combined in a system must be competitive with the alternatives:
1. widely distributed solar generators to minimise the effects of climatic conditions
2. transmission
3. energy storage
Solar generators must be widely distributed to minimise the effects of weather conditions.
Long transmission lines are required and these must be sized to carry the maximum output, not the average output from the plant.
Energy storage is required to provide 24/365 power supply. Because solar insolation is higher ins summer than winter, the energy storage capacity has to be optimised – e.g. sufficient storage capacity to supply full power for 1, 10, 90, or 180, 360 days, or more. Energy storage may be centralised or at the generator (or a mix). If it is centralised much less storage capacity is needed than if it is at the generators, but much higher transmissions capacity is required. If the storage is at the generators, then the transmission capacity has to be sized to carry the maximium power that can be supplied from the storage of every generator, even though the total capacity of the generators far exceeds the peak demand of the system.
If you want to see some examples of limit calculations (i.e. to book end the quantities and costs, but not intended to imply that such systems would ever be envisaged as a real solution) you may find these of interest:
‘Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs’
http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/peter-lang-solar-realities.pdf
’Solar realities and transmission costs – addendum’
http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/
You may find the comments on the two threads of interest, and more than likely issues you may want to raise have already raised (505 comments on the first thread and 322 on the second).
@Peter Lang…
IMO when “policy analysts and policy makers” go into denial over the course of technological development, they’re setting the stage for expensive, ridiculous, failures.
It’s hardly surprising that somebody locked into denial of technology would descend to such personal attacks. It just shows how little real substance you have for your “opinions”.
I’ve repeatedly made it clear that I support changes to intellectual property (patent) laws as the major method of implementation. Such changes would be far more general in application than any specific technology I might discuss. As would tax breaks aimed at incenting R&D. And I might point out that, as a libertarian, I regard all taxes as a form of organized theft.
My beliefs are based on observing the course of technological development over the last five decades. And I’m pushing the technology I am as a sort of (hopefully) “self-fulfilling prophesy”, somewhere in the grey area between simple technological projection and actual invention.
I’ve answered your more substantive arguments below, in the normal sequence.
‘“By 2020, we should be south of $100/MWh (in the US, Australia and elsewhere) and not reliant on any type of government subsidy or incentive program”, he says. That is key, because as Bloomberg New Energy Finance noted, new coal fired and gas fired plants are already more expensive, and will be well north of that figure by 2020.
And Georgis says the generation facility can participate in any kind of energy market. “If you have a flexible dispatch market, a storage market, or a capacity market, it can participate in all of those. It can even play in the merchant market with a robust price,” he says.
The Crescent Dunes plant will not be the first of its type, but it will be the biggest to date, and the first built to what Georgis describes as “utility scale”. The 18MW Gemasolar plant (pictured) has been operating in Spain for the last 18 months, and the 10MW Solar Two demonstration facility near Barstow in California’s Mojave Desert was operated by the Department of Energy in the 1990s.
SolarReserve has the exclusive worldwide license to the technology which was developed by Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of Aerojet, and perfected during various space programs. These include the algorithms for the solar trackers that move the heliostats, and the receiver, which uses proprietary metallurgy technology that allows it to expand and contract, and to resist melting.
The company currently has 7 projects in various stages of development the US, two of which have power purchase agreements (Crescent Dunes and Rice), and six projects in Spain, including one (the 50MW Cinco Casas project) with a PPA, although the Spanish projects are not progressing at the moment because financing is difficult to obtain in the current market. SolarReserve is pursuing contracts in Chile, South Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, China and Australia.’
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/07/06/concentrated-solar-set-to-change-how-we-think-about-energy-sources/#TFhOR7cbDCghTJ3k.99
Solar voltaic is likely to be cost-effective for 10 to 15% of electricity supply by 2020 – i.e for peaking and load following supply – local generation with no storage. Solar concentrator technology likely has a very similar timeframe for either peaking or baseload supply – depending on the configuration,
Two AP1000 – http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ap1000_ec.html – modular Gen III+ nuclear plants are under construction in the US.
There are dozens of potential pathways to non-fossil liquid fuels – something that requires hydrogen and CO2 obtained in one way or another.
Cost-effective solutions are likely in reach – but this is fact solves much less than half of the problem.
Robert I Ellison: I would like to share your enthusiasm. Ivanpah solar power plant just came online. Cost: $2.2 billion, of which I and other taxpayers grudgingly contributed $1.6 billion. That does not include the value of land, also graciously contributed by taxpayers. The estimated construction costs for this project ($5,561.00 per KW) fall between the construction costs for coal and nuclear power plants per Synapse Energy Economics, but that does not account for the much lower capacity factor of solar power{Wikipedia]. Prices are undisclosed, they are thought to be no less than the $0.135 per kilowatt-hour PPA price for SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes project in Nevada, far from DOE’s CSP target price of $0.06 per kilowatt-hour[Greentechmedia]. There are even estimates that with an inclusion of all costs the price might be around $2/kWh. Promises – even promises for 2020 – are a step on a way to redistribute taxpayers money to pockets of green enterpreneurs.
‘The Nevada project has a publicly disclosed power purchase agreement of $US135/MWh with NV Energy. The project is supported by cheaper finance from the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program, and tax incentives, but Georgis says it is also the first of its kind to be built at this scale and has extra margins and contingencies typical of a first plant.’
To restate the obvious – George – is to miss the point entirely. Energy innovation is the way to the future – to get there always has required some public investment. Strategic pubic investment – as indeed something that Lomberg or the Breakthrough Institute for instance suggest – is not the problem that taxes and caps might me. Do not confuse the two.
Curious George,
Thank you for your comment. You have a much better understanding of the facts and realities than the self-appointed greenie ‘experts’ who have decided to pretend they have some expertise in electricity systems, having read Wikipedia and a few other links posted by other commenters on earlier threads. Unfortunately these self appointed ‘experts’ don’t understand what they are reading, they cherry pick a few figures without understanding them and then write as if they’ve been experts in the subject all their life. They mix up cherry-picked figures without understanding what they mean or the assumptions that were used to derive them, and make no attempt to use comparable figures – a clear sign of lack of engineering judgement or engineering experience.
Now back to Curious George’s comment:
Here are some facts about Ivanpah, California that can be used to do a simple cost comparison between power plants where capital costs is the major component of the cost (such as nuclear, solar, wind power, but not fossil fuels or bio fuels):
Nameplate capacity is 370 MW peak electric.
1,000,000 MWh/year. This means an average power production is 114 MW electric.
Capacity factor is 0.31 or 31%.
US $2,200 million
That’s more than $19/Watt average electricity delivered.
This is around 3x the cost of some recent nuclear power plant builds that most environmentalists have accused of being prohibitively expensive.
The heliostats used in the project weigh in at 30,000 tonnes. That’s 262 tons of heliostats per MW electric average. That’s just for the heliostats, not even the foundations, not to mention the tower and power block.
The power plant area that had to be bulldozed over is much larger than a nuclear reactor 20x the average (real) capacity (twin unit AP1000).
Read more: http://bravenewclimate.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=energy&action=display&thread=360#ixzz2CYTzu2ws
http://www.ecc-conference.org/past-conferences/2012/BrightSource_ECC_Presentation_combined.pdf
And what about the widely promoted but seriously flawed “Zero Carbon Emissions by 2020” study by Beyond Zero Emissions. This study was supported by many high profile, famous, but gullible, people (politicians, academics and others)
Here is one critique done by Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang for example (there are many others): http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/12/zca2020-critique/
“We have reviewed the “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan” by Beyond Zero Emissions. We have evaluated and revised the assumptions and cost estimates. We conclude:
– The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan has significantly underestimated the cost and timescale required to implement such a plan.
– Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate.
– The wholesale electricity costs would increase nearly 10 times above current costs to $500/MWh, not the $120/MWh claimed in the Plan.
– The total electricity demand in 2020 is expected to be 44% higher than proposed: 449 TWh compared to the 325 TWh presented in the Plan.
– The Plan has inadequate reserve capacity margin to ensure network reliability remains at current levels. The total installed capacity needs to be increased by 65% above the proposed capacity in the Plan to 160 GW compared to the 97 GW used in the Plan.
– The Plan’s implementation timeline is unrealistic. We doubt any solar thermal plants, of the size and availability proposed in the plan, will be on line before 2020. We expect only demonstration plants will be built until there is confidence that they can be economically viable.
– The Plan relies on many unsupported assumptions, which we believe are invalid; two of the most important are:
1. A quote in the Executive Summary “The Plan relies only on existing, proven, commercially available and costed technologies.”
2. Solar thermal power stations with the performance characteristics and availability of baseload power stations exist now or will in the near future.
One of the quite serious errors in Peter’s analysis is to focus on one aspect of the problem. This goes to both to a blinkered view technology innovation and to the bigger picture of the problems of multi-gas emissions – aerosols – land use and population.
In this case – the focus seems to be on solar concentrator technology used in early plants of a specific design. The technology for this and other innovations proceeds from concept to prototype to full scale development to routine deployment. In product development costs come down – especially where designs are optimized in the light of early experience.
e.g http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/sunshot/csp_sunshotrnd_jpl.html
But the question is not whether one particular technology will work or not or provide cost competitive energy.
I mentioned as well the Westinghouse AP1000 units under construction.
Modular nuclear designs will benefit from reduced footprint, standardized design and factory construction. These costs will as well decline as new generation designs come on line.
Solar PV will most likely be price competitive this decade for dispersed generation of peak loads and load following. Helping to power daytime air conditioning needs for instance. The marginal cost of photovoltaic energy is next to zero making this source a preferred source when available . PV can conceivably generate 10 to 15% of energy requirements without storage. The assumption that all energy sources must be necessarily available 24/7 to be viable is incorrect. There are hundreds of serious contenders out there.
I will leave it at just one example.
‘The project uses a number of already-proven technologies in an innovative way to develop an affordable building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) product, which combines Australian steel roofing with international thin-film solar technologies’ – See more at: http://arena.gov.au/project/development-of-new-system-to-integrate-pv-solar-into-building rooftops.
A broad range of energy innovations is required early this century to meet growing global energy requirements. The social means of encouraging science and innovation is a central consideration. Nit picking – and fundamentally incorrect and misleading – disparagement of any and all emerging technology far less so.
‘Over the last few years, the prices of oil, food, metals, and raw materials of all sorts have shot up. Fresh water aquifers and rivers are being drained at a ferocious rate. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from our use of energy are heating up the planet. Over the next few decades human population will rise by another 2 billion and demand for water, food, and energy will rise by 50%, 70%, and 100%, respectively. Some look at these numbers and conclude that we’re headed for a sharp crash, or at least that we’re at the limits of the human population and human prosperity that the planet can bear.
But the planetary limits aren’t even close. The only real limit, indeed, is the speed with which we can innovate. That is the critical variable to our future prosperity.’ http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2013/04/15/nearly-unlimited-energy/
As I said – cost competitive non-fossil energy is in reach this decade. However – even accelerated deployment still resolves only a minor aspect of the broader problems.
@Peter Lang | March 15, 2014 at 7:20 pm |
This is nothing but blatant denial. Of course it’s relevant! If the cost of a product keeps getting cut in half every 18 months, or 4 years, the result will be massive changes to how the technology is deployed and used.
Moore’s “law” is an example: the observation that the cost of computing power (calculated in a non-rigorous, high-level way) had declined and would continue to decline at a rough rate of halving the cost every 18 months. At a point in the progress of computing power, producers and users of the technology began building the expectation into their plans, with the results seen over the last 3-5 decades.
People with such lack of foresight to regard such effects as “irrelevant” are sort of like people in the early ’80’s saying that “people will never be able to carry phones or computers around in their pocket. Computer chips are ‘far too expensive and not fit for purpose.’”
Of course, it can always be questioned whether Moore’s “law” will continue to hold past the deployment of technology currently on the lab bench. This is only rational. Even “yeast growth”, the original archtype of exponential growth, eventually levels off. But to simply assume, with no basis in fact, that an exponential price decrease that has been going on for decades is going to stop is just denial.
This is another of your frequent straw men. The process of technological development and replacement by superior technology is not the same thing as “learning rates (cost reductions per doubling of capacity or doubling of output)”. The latter applies to relatively mature technology, not to technology in the throes of rapid advance, such as semiconductor technology.
Or, IMO, solar PV technology. This is certainly open to debate, but, as with IT, to refuse to even consider that developments currently on the lab bench may well contribute to a continuing decline in price is nothing be denial.
I’m pretty sure you either haven’t bothered to read enough of my posts before answering them to understand what I’m proposing, unless you are deliberately raising more straw men.
The existing technology for storing and distributing methane (“natural gas”) is fully mature, widely deployed and understood. The capital costs of gas-fired generators are 1/3 to 1/4 that of coal, and even 1/2 that of coal for combined cycle (gas) technology. They are also around
1/101/9 the cost of nuclear.If/when solar generators are locally combined with technology for electrolysis and conversion of the resulting hydrogen to methane, they can feed an existing distribution system either at the local level, or concentrating for long-range transport and storage.
With this technology, it becomes economically feasible to site solar energy facilities wherever appropriate surface is available: there is no issue with “climatic conditions”. Only an annual average (with some extra margin for safety) needs to match the demand.
The cost/energy for transporting and distributing methane is orders of magnitude smaller than that for electricity (“a nit”). By combining this distribution system with smaller, local generator facilities and local networks, additional capital savings can be achieved by eliminating large, expensive long-distance transmission. In addition, much more rapid deployment is possible, because gas can be temporarily transported in vehicles while more static distribution facilities are built/enhanced, something not (currently) feasible with electricity.
As mentioned above, technology for storing methane (natural gas) is mature and widely deployed.
A quick look at the assumptions in your linked documents showed them to be more collections of straw men. You appear to have assumed there, as here, that energy transport must take place as electricity in large-capacity transmission lines, while my proposal is specifically intended to circumvent that problem by using the existing methane (natural gas) technology. You also appear to have assumed that storage will be using pumped hydro, although costs for compressed air storage appear (AFAIK so far) to be lower. (And, of course, the suggestions I’m proposing would circumvent the objections you’ve raised.)
Worst of all, you seem to be assuming no significant technological development. This may be appropriate for people who are in denial over the course of technological advance, but it means that projections based on those assumptions are extremely likely to be ridiculous failures.
Here we have Ellison’s usual pile of drivel and attempts to discredit the arguments I made by misrepresentations and strawman arguments. I didn’t get far into his comment before giving up. It’s the same dishonest and disingenuous nonsense he writes commonly, usually with a pile of pejorative statements included. He makes no attempt to show he’s understood what’s been stated.
Which analysis is Ellison referring to? I quoted a number of them (six in the comments above). I have no idea which one his dismissive, arm-waving assertion is referring to.
He says “One of the quite serious errors in Peter’s analysis is to focus on one aspect of the problem. This goes to both to a blinkered view technology innovation and to the bigger picture of the problems of multi-gas emissions – aerosols – land use and population.”. In some comments I talk about all GHG emissions and all sources. In some I talk about just fossil fuels. In some I talk about just one fossil fuel or one technology or sector of the economy. Sometimes I talk about stationary energy v others, etc. In some I talk only about electricity. And so on. If he read the links I’ve provided above and in the past and he’d know this. Ellison’s pejorative comments are a diversion to distract from the fact he is prattling on, trying to make out he is an authority on a subject in which he has no experience and no special knowledge – other than what he reads in Wikipedia and a few other links people have provided and he looks up but, having read them, he often cherry picks a few paragraphs or statistics without understanding what they mean.
This is simply a diversion i.e. avoid the issue discussed and broaden the field to muddy the waters. But his assertion is wrong. I’ve addresses multi-gas emissions and probably had far more to do with technology innovation than Ellison ever will – including selection for funding, monitoring and follow up analysis.
Regarding multi-gas, land-use and populations etc. refer to my past comments and links I’ve referred to, and including previous arguments I’ve had with Ellision on Climate Etc. threads. I start at the top and work down, but not every comment can cover everything about CAGW and energy … obviously! In previous comments and posts elsewhere I’ve addressed all GHG gasses, including the 23 Kyoto greenhouse gasses, as he is well aware having argued incessantly and while dishonestly misrepresenting what I’ve said repeatedly and then crying to the teacher repeatedly for being shown up. His comment that I do not consider all the gasses (when appropriate to the particular argument at the time) is another example of his dishonesty. I’ve addressed all sources of GHG emissions (not just fossil fuels) in previous comments and elsewhere. I’ve addressed all sources of fossil fuel generated GHG emissions. But the above comment was talking about the main relevant GHG, CO2, and about the alternative technologies for producing jet fuels and also electricity.
Regarding electricity generation technologies, I’ve been talking about the technologies that are most likely to be economically viable to meet the demand for electricity in the foreseeable future.
On policy I sometimes talk about policy needed from a global perspective and sometimes from an individual nation state’s perspective.
Ellison’s continual misrepresentations suggest he probably never was what he claims to have been.
I don’t believe anyone whose intentions were honest could have misunderstood and then misrepresented so badly what I’d said. If they had a genuine misunderstanding they would have asked – if their intentions were honest. But Ellison seems to be too pompous, arrogant and proud, to ask.
Obviously another ratbag rant that I am not going to bother reading. The assumptions are wrong – the analysis is the product of tunnel vision and the error is therefore total.
My emphasis is on energy innovation – and what social and technical models are appropriate for bringing that about. This is obviously not something that is on Lang’s radar.
My focus is on pragmatic policy, not pie in the sky ideas and beliefs from arm-chair ‘philosophers’ about subjects they no expertise in and no experience with.
Pie in the sky is precisely what is needed – along with a solid product development pathway from concept to prototype to full scale deployment and ultimately commercial deployment. There is a role for government in this and not all technologies will work.
There is no guarantee in any of this – but unless the effort is made it is bound to fail. At the very least technological spinoffs can be expected.
Lang seems to believe he has a lock both on future technology and future markets. I not so respectfully disagree.
Ellison seems to believe he has a lock both on future technology and future markets. I not so respectfully disagree.
Given he has had no experience or knowledge of the technologies, the markets, energy policy analysis or energy RD&D over the past 30 odd years, he rally has nothing more to offer than his beliefs, just like any other enthusiastic idealist.
Just had a lovely dinner of braised pork ribs with steamed Chinese greens and a hoisin, ginger and five spice sauce. Just fantastic.
The point really is not to preempt either technology or markets – attempts to do so will inevitably fail. It is the problem of the fox and the hedgehog.
‘People who rely upon the Hedgehog cognitive style need closure – a sense of finality, of “that’s settled, then” – in order to feel happy. That is, they need an unambiguous model to support their decision-taking, and the data against which to calibrate this. They like their model to be actually simple and conceptually parsimonious, decisive – that is, delivering a binary verdict, not a balance of probabilities – and repeatable. Hedgehog experts have a tendency to reach for formulaic solutions, for precedent and for the approbation of their peers, and to resent and resist challenge to their model. They prefer to capture a sub-set of the problem in a tractable form than to reach for a less precise, but perhaps more comprehensive, overview of the issues that are involved.
Experts who think in the ‘Fox’ cognitive style are suspicious of a commitment to any one way of seeing the issue, and prefer a loose insight that is nonetheless calibrated from many different perspectives. They use quantification of uncertain events more as calibration, as a metaphor, than as a prediction. They are tolerant of dissonance within a model – for example, that an ‘enemy’ regime might have redeeming qualities – and relatively ready to recalibrate their view when unexpected events cast doubt on what they had previously believed to be true.
In contrast to this, Hedgehogs work hard to exclude dissonance from their models. They prefer to treat events which contradict their expectations as exceptions, and to re-interpret events in such a way as to allocate exceptions to external events. For example, positive aspects of an enemy regime may be assigned to propaganda, either on the part of the regime or through its sympathisers. Tetlock makes the point that this is neither an exclusive characteristic of the political Left or the Right, but a feature of the Hedgehog ideologues within both.
Hedgehogs tend to flourish and excel in environments in which uncertainty and ambiguity have been excluded, either by actual or artificial means. The mantra of “targets and accountability” was made by and for Hedgehogs. Foxes, by contrast, use a style which works best where neither the interpretation of the operating environment nor the correct nature of or balance amongst targets is clear.’ http://www.chforum.org/library/choice12.shtml
Frankly – I have no patience for hedgehogs when it comes to futurology. I would in this regard see my own experience, education, breadth of understanding of technology and social and economic factors as far more relevant then Lang’s – but it is not a game I like to play. When it comes down to handwaving about their own authority – this comes from people who have nothing left to say.
The social imperative is to seed invest in a few or even many technologies – to develop robust prototypes and to explore cost structures and improvement through full scale deployment. This is in fact what is happening – and the Blue Scope Steel thin film solar integration into steel roofing I linked to yesterday is just one example. There are hundred or other examples both big and small. It makes it much more likely that energy innovations will emerge in the real future market.
Robert I Ellison: Enjoy your dinner. Unfortunately I can’t afford a comparable dinner because my electricity bill keeps rising. Do you live in California by any chance?
There is an important distinction between NYT v Sullivan and Mann v Steyn. The first was a news story the second a columnists opinion. Acting with malice would be key in both though. I would think Steyn did and still does think Mann set out to misinform but perhaps National Review is reeluctant to go there and perfers a narrower free speech tactic?
skeptics say, we need to dig for more information, and we don’t need to act until we figure things out.
alarmists say, we have dug enough, and we need to act. we need to spend, we need to lay-off, we need to shut down, we need to produce less, we need to increase the cost of energy.
how can the intent of a skeptic be held in an unfavorable light, to the intent of an alarmist?
by a professor of philosphy??
the concept is preposterous, immoral, and self defeating.
I couldn’t help but post on that article.
This is what I posted on the story about the philosophy professor….
seriously, No. this must be a joke!!
To put a person in jail, you have to have a trial. You have to prove a crime has been committed, beyond reasonable doubt, and you have to prove criminal intent!
The first problem the prosecution would have, would be to find a climate “expert” that could withstand cross examination. And as far as I can tell, that would just be impossible.
Put a climate expert on the stand, and ask them these questions:
1. What is a local interstellar cloud?
2. What are it’s properties from an electro magnetic perspective?
3. What is a heliopause?
4. How many billions of km/miles across is it?
5. What speed is the heliopause moving, relative to the local interstellar cloud?
6. What is the energy content of the space inside the heliopause to outside of it?
7. Where does the energy being “cleared” by the heliopause go?
8. Is there strong evidence that the energy collecting of the heliopause cause the “wave” in overall solar output that spans centuries?
9. Is there direct evidence that the wave and dips in it, have caused actual global cooling and warming, in amounts far exceeding that of CO2’s “potential”?
10. Can you define radioactive decay?
11. Is there a proven link between solar activity and radioactive decay?
12. What percentage of Earth’s heat is generated by radioactive decay?
13. Is there a proven link between the greenhouse potential of H2O and magnetic field strength?
14. Is there a proven link between solar activity, and geomagnetic field strength?
15. Is there a proven link between magnetic field strength and number of lightning strikes per year?
16. Is lightning a source of greenhouse gas?
17. Is there a relationship between lightning and global cloud cover levels?
18. Is there kinetic loss of energy from the Earth?
19. When you heat a gas, does it expand? When it expands, does it cool?
20. Is the earth a greenhouse with a glass roof? Or is it more like a convertible, with no roof at all?
20. At a ratio of 254 to 33, can internal heat, vs solar output, be ignored?
21. At a ratio of 1,200,000 to 1 by weight, is there evidence that Earths internal heat generation has a strong moderating effect on the atmosphere?
22. Is Earths internal heat generation a constant?
23. What is the potential of Earths internal heat generation, vs incoming solar radiation, to modify or moderate the climate?
24. Is the earths volume 1,080,000,000,000 cubic kilometers?
25. Is the earths atmosphere 50,000,000 cubic kilometers?
26. Does all of humanity, squished together, fit in a box 0.5 cubic kilometers?
27. Is HALF of all life on the earth in the form of bacteria? Including all trees, plants, people, animals, all of it adds up to just equal the mass of bacteria?
28. Do we call good natural food, “Organic”?
29. Does the term “Organic” mean carbon based?
30. Is CO2 pumped into some greenhouses to stimulate plant growth?
31. Is CO2 plant FOOD?
31. Is food production the number one factor in economic prosperity, and societal satisfaction and happiness?
32. Are depression and oppression linked to food shortage?
33. Does ice float?
34. When ice in a glass of water melts, even though the ice is no longer sticking out the top, does the water level rise, at all?
35. Is the albedo of the planet constantly changing slightly? any new islands pop up anywhere?
36. What is a hot spot? What causes them?
37. What are the auroras and what causes them.
38. Are coronal mass ejections thought to affect earth from a climate perspective?
39. Is there a proven link between coronal mass ejections and radioactive decay?
40. Are there links between coronal mass ejections and variations in cloud formation, and lightning strikes?
41. Do you understand the term “spectrum overlap”?
42. Is there spectrum overlap between H2O and CO2?
43. Is the ratio of H2O to CO2 in the atmosphere about 20,000ppm to 400ppm?
44. Is the average cycle time of atmospheric water 9 days? Meaning it falls to earth, and evaporates back into clouds about 40 times per year?
45. Is there heat energy transfer in the water cycle?
46. Is the water cycle directly linked to earths internal heat, moderating the atmospheric temperature?
47. What is a Higgs bosun?
48. How does magnetism work?
49. What exactly is a magnetic field of force? It’s not magic.
50. What are spin, charge, unified field, and string theories?
51. Can you actually say that you understand how the galaxy, solar system, sun, earth, and atoms work?
52. What caused the Hebrews to leave Egypt?
53. Why did they feel it was OK to return?
54. What is the number one threat used by Christianity to keep humanity in check?
55. How old is the bible?
56. Is there an home made Ark in YOUR back yard?
57. Can you say beyond a reasonable doubt, that CO2 is the cause of warming, and therefor climate change, and that there are no countering mitigating factors involved, no overshadowing effects, no massively moderating processes?
So, the challenge, before we can put anyone in jail for being a skeptic, is finding an expert climate witness that can answer these questions (with the right answers), and still believes CO2 caused warming, and therefor climate change, is a proven fact beyond all reasonable doubt.
And to convict a skeptic, you would also have to prove criminal intent. Motivation.
(( btw, if climate change has been proven, why hasn’t the term “global warming potential” been changed to “global warming AMOUNT??!! ))
And lastly, to be considered, is the actions of the crime. I have not heard a skeptic ask anyone to do anything other than dig deeper for the truth.
Alarmists ask for, and expect OTHER people to act, and spend resources based on their recommendation. to allocate resources. to spend billions, to lay off coal miners, and increase the cost of electricity, and oil. To burden mankind with tougher economic times.
Too many elements are missing for a successful case against a skeptic.
Alarmists on the hand, many of whom have profited enormously from the CO2 warming scare, don’t have the actual truth as a tool in their defense, because it has not been fully unraveled yet. They have the motivation. And they have the actions.
There will be alarmists in jail, before there is ever a skeptic in jail. (unless the skeptic is busted for pot smoking, and the alarmist is busted for crack smoking.).
Just sayin’ !!
“Are you now, or have you ever been,” a Skeptic?
McCarthyism trampled safeguards promised by the Constitution. Thankfully, no one takes Reid, Kerry and other Senators seriously on this issue.
How old is the bible?
Thats a good one. Which bible which books which versions.
I’m not a bible studier, but I believe the old testament is where the story about the hebrew’s leaving egypt because of prolonged drought, and lack of food. and they returned many years later, when the conditions changed again.
my point being, Climate Change IS a fact, has been for the history of humanity. well before extra CO2 was ever introduced into the atmosphere.
my guess is, it always will be. sometimes to the extent that percentages of the population here and there will have to migrate, like has been happening for 150,000 years.
The ice in the Arctic may not be too extensive yet but it is very thick [comparatively] and should be very slow to melt after it reaches its maximum sea ice area in 3 weeks.
angtech, you write “after it reaches its maximum sea ice area in 3 weeks.”
According to
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2013/03/annual-maximum-extent-reached/
the average date, 1979 to 2000, for maximum sea ice extent in the Arctic is March 10th. Where do you get 3 weeks from?
JC Um, it’s going up at the moment ,no?
Arctic sea Ice commentator Neven 7/3/2013 said “Although the ice will continue to thicken and the maximum volume won’t be reached until next month, winter is slowly coming to an end.”
his mate John Christensen said March 13, 2014 at 00:21
“The ice has been compacting on the side of Barents/Kara and even into the AO the past few days with possibly some melting even in Okhotsk, but with reduced winds and change of direction to have southern flow in Bering, I would anticipate max in area and extent to come in the next 7 days (at least on Arctic ROOS), but would also think it would be possible still to top the recent max on CT with the right conditions in place..”
I would hate to argue with experts who generally are on the side of melting
angtech, you write “JC Um, it’s going up at the moment ,no? “|
What is going up at the moment? I think you are muddling up sea ice area, extent, and volume. Arctic sea ice extent and area reach maximum in March. We do not have the methodology to measure sea ice volume with sufficient frequency to say when the maximum occurs. We get data from Cryosat 2 very infrequently, and a PIOMAS estimate once per month. So when sea ice volume peaks, I don’t think we really know.
I always find this Arctic Sea Ice url to be the most interesting. You can see not only any growth/shrinkage but also flows and wind pressures.
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticictn_nowcast_anim30d.gif
Doesn’t give a simple spreadsheet value but well worth visiting none the less IMHO.
Richard, you write “Doesn’t give a simple spreadsheet value but well worth visiting none the less IMHO.”
Interesting, I agree, but these are not measurements. They use some form of model to do forecasts. Do you know which model they use?
Time for ice bets
It’s from http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/arctic.html so CICE
The NIC sea ice extent dataset is here:
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/masie_extent_sqkm.csv
Angech, thank you for bringing up the sea ice schedule.
The sun’s poles took much longer to reverse in 2013, than during other reversals
The sun was extremely inactive leading up to this winter, due to the occurring pole reversal.
South of the arctic, our winter has been cold and hard and hsn’t finished yet.
Great lakes are frozen much more than normal.
Niagara Falls froze over for the first time in many years.
An hour North of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, we still have several feet of ground snow and ice, and we are just starting to experience intermittent periods of above zero temperatures. Often at this time of year, we have lost all of our snow, temperatures are regularly in the teens and spring is underway.
This is NOT a “normal”, or “average” year in any way shape or form, here.
I think it is safer to expect the same is true much north of us, instead of expecting it to be normal, average, or on schedule.
Solar activity it grossly underestimated as a climate factor by official bodies, who want to believe and limit it’s influence to .1 degree or something ridiculous like that.
The sun is obviously offended and punishing us for lack of faith.
A repeat of the Dalton minimum, which is likely, will at least have the side benefit of ending the debate over CO2 warming.
I think I need to move south!!
Alistair, you write “This is NOT a “normal”, or “average” year in any way shape or form, here.”
I have lived in Ottawa since 1954. You are correct in that this winter has been different from what we have been having in the last 30 or 40 years, but it is not that different from what winters were like when I first arrived in Ottawa. So, I suspect, it depends what you mean by normal or average.
hi jim,
Well I meant “normal” as was being used to represent when the arctic ice “normally” stops forming. My guess is that Mar 10th being used as a “normal” date, would not have applied to the winters when you and I were kids either. I can remember seeing the Falls either totally frozen, or pretty close to it. And that was decades ago. so “normal” was in the context presented above, and not MY definition of “normal”.
Better??
NOT that I adhere to putting any emphasis on years or even decades of data. the sample size in the grand scheme of things is WAY to small.
However, small sample sizes CAN work for deniers and skeptics, because warmists have to have reality follow their prediction, for their premise to hold true. One year of CO2 up, temp down, with no other redeeming factor, and the bag stops holding water. since none of the significant factors are going to change drastically (orbit, albedo, quanitity of life, geological formations (like the Bering Strait), this year, 2014, is looking good to be that year.
2015 will hopefully herald the end to the lunacy that is anthropogenic global warming fears, and the associated misdirection of government policy.
Jim, please forgive the lack of capital J in my comment. it is soooo cold, sometimes my shift key is sticky!! :-)
You didn’t recognize Neil deGrasse Tyson? That’s very surprising for anyone interested in the intersection of science and the public. I suppose it isn’t quite like you said “Who is Carl Sagan?” but it’s close.
So is this Tyson Chicken little or headless?
=============
There are no Eagle Alarmists or Hawk Denialists anymore; it’s just us chickens, now, little or headless.
=================
I rarely watch television, and virtually never for news or anything science, history, etc. By spending an hour reading and online, I can expose myself to more than an order of magnitude more info than by watching a television program. After finding out more about Tyson, I was also surprised that I didn’t recognize him, but there you have it.
To be fair I wouldn’t know the guy from Adam if he wasn’t a frequent guest on Bill Maher, The Daily Show, and the Colbert Report. There is no way you can independently get what’s on the mind of liberal America faster or more reliably than seeing what the scores of writers behind these programs come up with. Plus being online and listening to a cable TV talk show are not mutually exclusive so there’s no sacrificing one for the other.
Tyson has been more a PBS type of person until now, but Seth McFarlane, the producer, has been behind some of the Fox cartoons, so I guess that is why this is on Fox. McFarlane was on Maher’s HBO show last night and there was brief mention that one TV station lost the signal during an evolution part of the program. They attributed it to an outage, but McFarlane says the next episode will have more, so we’ll see then.
Judith:
“By spending an hour reading and online, I can expose myself to more than an order of magnitude more info than by watching a television program”
Absolutely agreed
At a small dinner gathering a while ago, one of the people present said she was a journalist from a well-known Aus TV organisation. In the ensuing discussion, I said with gentle manner something very similar to Judith’s quote
Completely affronted, almost speechless, she was :)
I have a TV I can see if I look up over the screen on my PC. I can surf the intertubes and listen to the TV at the same time. Is everyone able to listen to one thing while reading another or do I have some special talent being able to divide my focus like that?
This can be done by constantly switching from one medium to another and relying on information redundancy to fill the gaps as deaf people like myself do all the time. I doubt whether one can think about multiple things at once except perhaps subconsciously.
There needs to be more attention to research conducted by the Connollys and reported in their papers and discussions here: http://globalwarmingsolved.com/2013/11/summary-the-physics-of-the-earths-atmosphere-papers-1-3/
They investigated readings from radiosonde balloons, attempting to measure the impact upon the atmosphere’s temperature profile from increasing amounts of GHGs. The climate models include assumptions about tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling that are not supported by the observations. This should be a big deal, and reminds me of John Cristy’s APS presentation.
My wife and I have followed Neil Degrasse Tyson for years, and think very highly of him. We find that he is highly enthusiastic, in a quieter way than Sagan, and he’s got a positive personality, in addition to his exceptional knowledge. He is one of those people who was entranced with something scientific, as a kid. Tyson grew up in the Bronx, somehow got the astronomy bug, but being in the Bronx, never saw the Milky Way. As a youngster, he could’t understand why the textbooks said it existed in the nighttime sky, but he never saw it.
Then at age 13, he went to astronomy camp in Arizona, and realized in a highly emotional moment that the textbooks were right after all. Here is a snippet from his Wikipedia bio:
“From kindergarten through high school Tyson attended public schools in New York City, all in The Bronx… [including] the Bronx High School of Science (1972–76) where he was captain of the wrestling team, and editor-in-chief of the school’s Physical Science Journal. Tyson had an abiding interest in astronomy since he was nine years old, following his visit to Pennsylvania and seeing the stars, saying “it looks like the Hayden Planetarium”. He obsessively studied astronomy in his teens, and eventually even gained some fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the age of fifteen. Tyson recalls that “so strong was that imprint [of the night sky] that I’m certain that I had no choice in the matter, that in fact, the universe called me.” “
Another snippet from Tyson’s Wikipedia bio. Turns out he was one of the main people behind the idea that Pluto shouldn’t be classified as a major planet any more, that it belonged to a category of more numerous objects with commonalities. Astonishingly to me, he got a lot of hate mail. It also turns out that Benny Peiser was a prominent figure against reclassifying Pluto. Here is the snippet:
“As director of the Hayden Planetarium, Tyson bucked traditional thinking in order to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet in exhibits at the center. Tyson has explained that he wanted to look at commonalities between objects, grouping the terrestrial planets together, the gas giants together, and Pluto with like objects and to get away from simply counting the planets. He has stated on The Colbert Report, The Daily Show, and BBC Horizon that this decision has resulted in large amounts of hate mail, much of it from children. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) confirmed this assessment by changing Pluto to the dwarf planet classification. Daniel Simone wrote of the interview with Tyson describing his frustration. “For a while, we were not very popular here at the Hayden Planetarium.”
Tyson recounted the heated online debate on the Cambridge Conference Network (CCNet), a “widely read, UK-based Internet chat group” following Benny Peiser’s renewed call for reclassification of Pluto’s status. Peiser’s entry, in which he posted articles from the AP and The Boston Globe spawned from The New York Times’s article entitled “Pluto’s Not a Planet? Only in New York”. “
Sheldon, Tyson, and Pluto
JC says: “Shindell’s paper critiques the low estimates of transient climate sensitivity, and Nic critiques Shindell’s critique”, well, in the new version of my “Refuting IPCC’s claims …” I will critique Nic’s, Shindell’s and many many other climate sensitivity estimations.
JC says: “The problem was that apparently Cosmos got much of the Giordano story wrong”.
Answer: Yes, but … The new “Cosmos” got the story of Giordano Bruno wrong. But the old “Cosmos” (from Sagan’s book) says that Giordano Bruno was “the sixteenth-century Roman Catholic scholar who held that there are an infinity of worlds and that many are inhabited. For this and other crimes he was burned at the stake in the year 1600”. This latest Sagan’s sentence was wrong and from this mistake, Tyson’s version had a series of conceptual mistakes.
Climate change refugees?
From the article:
Dutch politician calls for “fewer Moroccans”
Associated Press
March 14, 2014 9:33 AM
AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders says “the fewer Moroccans the better” in the Netherlands.
Wilders, known internationally for his anti-Islam stances, elaborated on his anti-Moroccan feelings in an interview with national broadcaster NOS Friday.
“I say that because (Moroccans) are heavily overrepresented in criminality and welfare dependency,” he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-politician-calls-fewer-moroccans-133306367.html;_ylt=AwrBJR8QIiNTPjcAPszQtDMD
From the article:
Ex-Bush admin official: Internet giveaway weakens cybersecurity, opens door to Web tax
1:28 AM 03/15/2014
Giuseppe Macri
…
The U.S. government’s plan to give away authority over the Internet’s core architecture to the “global Internet community” could endanger the security of both the Internet and the U.S. — and open the door to a global tax on Web use.
“U.S. management of the internet has been exemplary and there is no reason to give this away — especially in return for nothing,” former Bush administration State Department senior advisor Christian Whiton told The Daily Caller. “This is the Obama equivalent of Carter’s decision to give away the Panama Canal — only with possibly much worse consequences.”
The U.S. Commerce Department announced late Friday it would relinquish control of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the organization charged with managing domain names, assigning Internet protocol addresses and other crucial Web functions — after its current contract expires next year.
…
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/15/ex-bush-admin-official-internet-giveaway-weakens-cybersecurity-opens-door-to-web-tax/
Tax, regulate, and speak no First Amendment.
==========
Dr. Curry,
Your “Week In Review” blog posts are ENORMOUSLY useful and helpful.
Try as I may, it’s impossible to catch everything that appears on the subject and you keep me from missing important things.
Here’s a big THANK YOU.
In the NYTvsSullivan decision, the Supremes cited a 1908 Kansas state supreme court decision. This should be required reading by anyone (e.g., Mann) who tries to silence anyone re the climate debate:
“It is of the utmost consequence that the people should discuss the character and qualifications of [electoral] candidates. The importance to the state and to society of such discussions is so vast, and the advantages derived are so great, that they more than counterbalance the inconvenience of private persons whose conduct may be involved, and occasional injury to the reputations of individuals must yield to the public welfare, although at times such injury may be great.”
Freedom of speech – especially freedom to debate public policy – is more important than anyone’s reputation.
‘BTW, the skeptic Chylek is using a similar approach:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059274/pdf ‘
webby
Chylek includes the AMO in the parameters in the multiple linear regression analysis and finds that 1/3 of post 1975 warming was natural. Although the rationale for the AMO as a dominant ocean influence on surface temperatures escapes me.
Eliminate the big transition between La Nina and El Nino in 1976/77 and the 1998 El Nino and the resultant residual warming is some 0.08 degrees C/decade.
Regardless of the source it is pretty obvious that a full warming and cooling multi-decadal mode happened between the mid 1940’s and 1998. The trend between 1945 and 1998 is some 0.07 degrees C/decade.
I have my doubts that this says anything fundamental about climate – for that good information on clouds is required.
Nor is there any expectation that the 21st century will resemble the 20th. What seems more interesting is the likelihood of no warming for decades given the propensity for climate shifts on decadal scales – and all that implies. What seems more important the development of practical and pragmatic responses .
JC SNIP,
Chylek did a dumb thing by using variates that are derived from temperature already. Both his ENSO and AMO come out of detrended SST readings. So of course he gets a good correlation.
With that caveat, his Fig 1F does show 0.8C of warming since 1900 attributed to GHG, which puts the effective control knob sensitivity right around 2C.
That’s what everyone seems to find if they do the natural variation compensation analysis correctly.
‘The annual average ENSO index is obtained by averaging monthly data from http://jisao.washington.edu/data/cti, and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index is an annual average of smoothed monthly values provided by the NOAA. A detailed description on how the AMO is calculated can be found at the NOAA website http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059274/full
Chylek uses sea surface temperature indices to see the influence on surface temperature? How dumb is that? Much better to use sea level pressure indices. Oh wait – that’s determined by sea surface temperature.
Let me do the math. The 0.8 degrees C since 1900 is less than 0.08 degrees C/decade – duh. Projecting this forward – we get zilch warming for decades followed by? Natural cooling certainly as the cooling Sun and centennial Pacific La Nina mode cooling kick in.
We could on that basis arbitrarily compare webby to Deuce Bigalow or Lloyd Christmas. Webby makes a habit of such comparisons. It is unbearably silly and juvenile.
Disappearing comments leaving nonsensical rejoinders.
Nice animation of Tropical cyclone Lusi over NZ at present.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-184.92,-34.12,640
From the article:
Summary
The respective shale oil and gas revolutions are long-lived and in the beginning stages.
The midstream space is expected to be an area of increasing capital flows within the industry.
Innovation in the exploitation, transportation and efficient use of natural gas and oil are investment themes intersecting all players on the supply and demand side.
Firms involved in deep-water and unconventional exploration and production could be early movers as Mexico opens its oil and gas industry to outside firms.
The Texas Energy Council held its annual symposium on Thursday, March 6th, at the Bush Presidential Library. The panel topics, panelists and oil and gas expertise presented offered an array of perspectives that is hard to find in one room in one day. A number of the panelists had recently attended the well-known IHS Cera conference in Houston. Undoubtedly, expected themes emerged, such as keeping regulation right-sized and with the states, the move toward using natural gas rather than diesel (or in combination) in drilling and production, and the industry’s need to communicate its value and contributions in a more compelling way. The following note, while not exhaustive, provides a modicum of developments on the minds of those invested in energy on this day.
…
Another theme that emerged from the morning panels was that North America – the U.S., Canada, and Mexico trifecta – is an energy powerhouse. But currently, the low price of natural gas is problematic and that exports are essential. The supply side isn’t the problem – it’s the demand side. Interestingly, in spite of Canada’s ample gas supply, U.S. Marcellus gas is making its way to Ontario. And we know that Texas natural gas flows to Mexico. These trade dynamics are also testaments to how U.S. shale energy has changed markets. Investors should pay attention to how firms are leveraging their strengths to be flexible when new opportunities arise. Independent E&P, Apache (APA) is hedged among the shale oil-gas interplay and across the borders of the U.S. and Canada.
…
Finally, were it not for the numerous independent firms that have paved the way for this energy event of the 21st century, oil prices would be much higher. This message of the costly absence of revolution, one I have been attempting to communicate in various formats, hits the pocketbooks of every American and citizens around the globe. Too bad it is under-appreciated.
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2087793-impact-of-u-s-oil-and-gas-shale-revolutions-wide-reaching
Jim, expect US production of iron and steel to exceed 100 million tons a year in the nest decade and rise beyond. Cheap natural gas make high grade cheap steel.
The Original Sin of Global Warming
It might seem strange to say it, but I am a global warming skeptic because of Carl Sagan.
This might seem strange because Sagan was an early promoter of the theory that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are going to fry the globe. But it’s not so strange when you consider the larger message that made Sagan famous.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/02/26/the-original-sin-of-global-warming/
How many people remember the peril of nuclear winter? Crichton shows how the entire concept was “from the outset the subject of a well-orchestrated media campaign” conducted for political ends. A Washington DC public-relations firm was paid $80,000 to publicize the research. The first appearance of the work in the peer-reviewed, scientific literature was in the December 23, 1983, issue of Science (Turco et al., 1983). But the dangers of nuclear winter had been heralded nearly two months earlier by Carl Sagan in the October 30, 1983, issue of Parade magazine, a supplement to Sunday newspapers (Seitz, 1986). By 1986, it was apparent that the conclusions of Turco et al. (1983) were suspect, and that the entire field of research was highly politicized. Writing in the January 23, 1986, issue of Nature, K. A. Emanuel (1986, p. 259) noted that “nuclear winter research…has become notorious for its lack of scientific integrity.” ~David Deming
1974
The Future of Humanity: a Lecture by Isaac Asimov
But notice the difference: once you want women not to have children, you’re going to have to give them something else to do! It is absolutely impossible to tell a woman that she can’t have children, and at the same time that she can’t do anything else either except maybe wash an occasional dish.
Because if you tell a woman that, she’ll figure out some way to have a baby.
I think I know the way, too!
Well then, in the world of the 21st century in order to keep the birth rate down, we’re going to have to give women interesting things to do that’ll make them glad to stay out of the nursery. And the interesting things that I can think of that we give women to do are essentially the same as the interesting things that we give men to do. I mean we’re going to have women help in running the government, and science, and industry…whatever there is to run in the 21st century. And what it amounts to is we’re going to have to pretend…when I say “we”, I mean men…we’re going to have to pretend that women are people.
And you know, pretending is a good thing because if you pretend long enough, you’ll forget you’re pretending and you’ll begin to believe it.
http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/future_of_humanity.html
I didn’t make it through the first 20 min of Cosmos. I was optimistic, and disappointed.
Cliff Mass, in a post titled, “Moses Versus Joseph: A Biblical Lesson in Communication about Climate Change” …
http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/03/moses-versus-joseph-biblical-lesson-in.html
Anybody seen this yet………today’s NYTimes. Makes me ill!
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/kerry-orders-u-s-diplomats-to-press-case-for-climate-action/?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion®ion=Footer&module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article
Well, it makes sense since climate change is disappearing airplanes.
=====================
This is mostly bad for mission personnel. No farting!
But Congress has to pass anything acid-head Kerry wants. I think this era of unilateral executive action is about to come to an end.
Mark, you write “Anybody seen this yet………today’s NYTimes. Makes me ill!”
You cannot expect a leopard to change it’s spots. Of course that is what Kerry is obliged to write. Luckily it is very unlikely to actually change anything. We will still go on using as much in the way of fossil fuels as we need, and government regulation in the developed world is going to do it’s best to make the use of fossil fuels as expensive as possible.
Plus se change, plus se le meme chose.
…”bush territory”
Which by my own thesis can’t happen. We’ll see though.
Obama’s approval rating per Gallup is 39%. Too many whoppers told in too little time.
“39 percent,” which when you think about it is pretty appalling. Consider that 40 percent or so will support Obama no matter what. That means he’s got virtually….or literally….no support outside his ever faithful base. A couple more points and he’ll be in George Bush territory,
Mike (Aesop) Hulme
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/11/climate-science-sociology/#comment-364265
Mike Hulme: Public Life of Climate Change, The First 25 Years
Mike Hulme, one of Making Science Public’s Honorary Associates, joined us in Nottingham today for a workshop about the role of scientific expertise and consensus in public life. Mike also gave a public lecture at lunchtime, which attracted a multidisciplinary audience from within the university, as well as members of the public from beyond the campus gates.
The lecture reviewed the ‘public life of climate change’ since 1988, when Margaret Thatcher gave her Royal Society speech on ‘climatic change’ and James Hansen gave his famous testimony to US Congress. Mike used Dan Sarewitz’s notion of ‘The Plan’ (£) to tackle climate change through global CO2 reductions as a means of exploring this history. The lecture is introduced by Brigitte Nerlich, (Director, Making Science Public).
https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2014/02/07/mike-hulme-public-life-of-climate-change-the-first-25-years/
And In the Beginning
There were Thatcher and Hansen
And it was Political
And they saw it was good.
”Climate change controversy gets air-time. Although controversies are allegedly about science, often such disputes are used as a proxy for conflicts between alternative visions of what society should be like and about who has authority to promote such visions.” ~Mike Hulme
When the Neil Degrasse Tyson article was linked on “Climate Progress,” I wrote the following comment-
Tyson apparently doesn’t understand climate science. If you understand the concept of climate sensitivity, you understand why the IPCC gives a very wide range of 4.5 to 1.5 C and why there is little possibility of narrowing this critical parameter soon because that will only be accomplished by future temperature data when a very few of the climate models will be supported by future data and most will be falsified- decades from now. The high end of the climate sensitivity range portends catastrophic warming; the low end , where most climate scientists are converging, is much less worrisome and probably benign. There is great diversity in climate science expectations based on climate sensitivity among other things. I teach a Global Warming/Climate Change class and find the ignorant are usually the most opinionated. Tyson needs to review his lessons from Sagan who didn’t demonize fellow scientists. I loved the original Cosmos and also last weeks initial Tyson episode. I will continue to watch, but there is no joy in an exploration led by a scientist who demonizes fellow scientists.
Actually I don’t understand the concept of climate sensitivity: “Climate sensitivity is the equilibrium temperature change in response to changes of the radiative forcing.” “Radiative forcing is defined as the difference of radiant energy received by the Earth and energy radiated back to space.”
How do we measure an equilibrium temperature change? I mean a real measurement, not a couple of numbers taken from a model, or an ensemble of models. How do we measure a CHANGE in radiative forcing when CERES has a 5 W/m2 unexplained imbalance in the radiative forcing itself?
Sorry, measurements of climate sensitivity are postponed. Come back in 15 years and tell us what part of the warming or cooling was caused by GHG forcings, black carbon and other albedo changes, solar forcings, the negative phase of the PDO, other ocean oscillations, unknown forcing #1 and unknown forcing #2 and- possibly we’ll be able to narrow climate sensitivity to … ah well, you say we won’t know the relative power of those forcings, then maybe…. perhaps- those darn water molecules- how does 4.5 to 1.5 sound? Measuring fairy dust would be easier.
Will The ‘Green Economy’ Trigger The Next Global Financial Crisis?
Mar. 17, 2014 2:21 PM ET | 5 comments | Includes: FUE, GEX, HECO, ICLN, KWT, PBD, PBW, PUW, PZD, QCLN, TAN
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More…)
Summary
The “Green Economy” threatens to trigger the next global financial crisis.
China’s first bond default was on a loan made to a solar company; a second solar company is likely to be next.
A global financial crisis would likely depress fuel prices, triggering even more “green energy” related bankruptcies and a possible bursting of the farmland bubble.
The “Green Economy” has created a greenhouse of cards.
…
Sure, some will blame unscrupulous mortgage lenders, predatory lenders, and others, but banking is by far one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world, and it was congress that wrote the rules that allowed the securitization of mortgage loans, passed the laws that “encouraged” banks to make sub-prime loans and built the foundation of the 2008 crash. As this article from 2000 proves, the eventual outcome was easy to see for anyone willing/brave enough to look.
…
Gold and Bitcoin, however, aren’t likely to result in another 2008-like crisis. Those bubbles are relatively well contained, and the damage will be limited to relatively few “true believers.” The most likely cause of the next 2008-like crisis will be the “green economy.” I’ve written many articles warning about the dangers of the inherent government dependancy of these industries. The economics are simply pure fantasy. Not only are the economics pure fantasy, the climate “science” that backs this entire political agenda is based upon a theory that the computer models can’t even make work. Nearly 100% of climate models over estimated current temperatures, most by statistically significant amounts.
…
The worst atrocities in the history of mankind have occurred as a result of the politicization of science, and the recent global warming movement has simply thrown the scientific community back into the dark ages. I simply choose not to become part of the climate inquisition, and that is why I write these articles.
I wouldn’t be writing this article, however, if I didn’t have evidence to back up my theory. We have been reading for years about “ghost cities” popping up in China. Communist governments are defined by their legendary ability to misallocate resources on a epic scale. Fear of a Chinese credit bubble has been making the headlines for years, and now they are claiming that it is bursting.
…
Very few of these “alternative” energy sources have any real chance of surviving without government subsidies, and like a sub-prime mortgage, will likely never be able to pay back the loans that built them. If China can’t do it in a totalitarian “state capitalism” economy where economics are secondary, these industries have zero chance of surviving in a truly free market. In the US, government regulations intended to kill the competition are the main source of what little success these “green” industries do have.
“As coal-fired power plants are set to retire and EPA uses every regulatory trick in the book to make sure no new plants are built, we are going to see increased uncertainty in energy prices, reliability, capacity and reserves,” Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an emailed statement.
This news comes as China approved 100 million metric tons of new coal production capacity in 2013, despite air widespread air pollution concerns in the country. This is part of the Chinese government’s plan to bring 860 million metric tons of coal production online by 2015 – more than the entire annual coal output of India.
Unlike the US however, China doesn’t seem willing to destroy one domestic industry to prop up another. It simply doesn’t make any sense to build 4 coal powered power plants a week, only to bankrupt them with taxes and regulations.
…
The world has become a greenhouse of cards. If the “green economy” does trigger the next major financial collapse, the real tragedy will be that it was so avoidable. The economics for wind and solar are years away, when real solutions exist right now. Coal and natural gas are abundant in the US. Infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL pipeline could create real jobs and transport commercially viable energy sources. Coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid technology exists right now and is being used elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, the politics have prevented true solutions from being developed, and the “solutions” chosen by the misguided “central planners” have now put us all at risk. Our well-intentioned efforts to save the earth may end up destroying civilization, or at least make it much poorer.
Unfortunately, trying to quantify the potential damage from “green economy” crisis would be like trying to quantify the eventual damage from mortgage before the Lehman Brothers failure. There are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and with any global systemic catastrophic crisis there are a lot of unknown unknowns.
That being said, what are the known knowns?
…
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2093263-will-the-green-economy-trigger-the-next-global-financial-crisis
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warning.
==================================
A national flood insurance measure was repealed. Now coastal property owners will have their flood insurance subsidized by the rest of us, as it was before. It was a bipartisan vote, but appears to move more in a socialist direction of the many subsidizing the few who choose to live at higher risk in coastal properties rather than have them pay for their true risk. It is an area where Republicans must be wrestling with reconciling their ideas about big government insurance: good or bad? Apparently good when it helps coastal homeowners who chose to live there, bad when it helps people with high-risk health issues who didn’t have a choice in the matter.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/congress-flood-insurance_n_4981226.html
At last! You and I agree! The Feds should get out of the flood insurance business completely! Mark your calendar!
jim2, now tell that to your congressman. It made sense that insurance reflects true risk when that is a risk of choice. It is the same reason as why life insurance premiums should be higher for racecar drivers. The repeal makes no sense.
From the article:
But today, a great deal of migration is no longer voluntary, as wars and climate change force people out of their homes – often with very little money. The collapsible woven shelters, which are conceptual but proven to work, would allow these people to carry their homes with them.
http://www.offgridquest.com/homes-dwellings/home-stylings/472-woven-shelter?showall=&start=2
From the article:
Airplane pilots hit by ‘nearly blinding’ glare from massive Calif. solar facility
…
http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/18/airplane-pilots-hit-by-nearly-blinding-glare-from-massive-calif-solar-facility/