by Judith Curry
“If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.”- Charles Manski
Twitter is great for networking. My recent article Climate Uncertainty and Risk engendered a tweet and email from Professor Matthew Kahn, Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California. Professor Kahn (and also Richard Tol) emailed me a copy of a new paper entitled The Lure of Incredible Certitude, by Charles F. Manski, Professor of Economics at Northwestern University.
The Lure of Incredible Certitude
Charles Manski
Abstract. Forthright characterization of scientific uncertainty is important in principle and serves important practical purposes. Nevertheless, economists and other researchers commonly report findings with incredible certitude, reporting point predictions and estimates. To motivate expression of incredible certitude, economists often suggest that researchers respond to incentives that make the practice tempting. This temptation is the “lure” of incredible certitude. I flesh out and appraise some of the rationales that observers may have in mind when they state that incredible certitude responds to incentives. I conclude that scientific expression of incredible certitude at most has appeal in certain limited contexts. It should not be a general practice.
Excerpts:
On principle, I consider forthright characterization of uncertainty to be a fundamental aspect of the scientific code of conduct.
I have argued that forthright characterization of uncertainty serves important practical purposes. Viewing science as a social enterprise, I have reasoned that if scientists want people to trust what we say we know, we should be up front about what we don’t know. I have suggested that inferences predicated on weak assumptions can achieve wide consensus, while ones that require strong assumptions may be subject to sharp disagreements.
I have pointed out that disregard of uncertainty when reporting research findings may harm formation of public policy. If policy makers incorrectly believe that existing analysis provides an accurate description of history and accurate predictions of policy outcomes, they will not recognize the potential value of new research aiming to improve knowledge. Nor will they appreciate the potential usefulness of decision strategies that may help society cope with uncertainty and learn, including diversification and information acquisition.
A typology of practices that contribute to incredible certitude:
- conventional certitude: A prediction that is generally accepted as true but is not necessarily true.
- dueling certitudes: Contradictory predictions made with alternative assumptions.
- conflating science and advocacy: Specifying assumptions to generate a predetermined conclusion.
- wishful extrapolation: Using untenable assumptions to extrapolate.
- illogical certitude: Drawing an unfounded conclusion based on logical errors.
- media overreach: Premature or exaggerated public reporting of policy analysis.
To cite some examples, over fifty years ago, Morgenstern (1963) remarked that federal statistical agencies may perceive a political incentive to express incredible certitude about the state of the economy when they publish official economic statistics:
“All offices must try to impress the public with the quality of their work. Should too many doubts be raised, financial support from Congress or other sources may not be forthcoming. More than once has it happened that Congressional appropriations were endangered when it was suspected that government statistics might not be 100 percent accurate. It is natural, therefore, that various offices will defend the quality of their work even to an unreasonable degree.”
For short, I now call this temptation the “lure” of incredible certitude.
This contention is nicely illustrated by the story that circulates about an economist’s attempt to describe uncertainty about a forecast to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The economist is said to have presented the forecast as a likely range of values for thequantity under discussion. Johnson is said to have replied “Ranges are for cattle. Give me a number.”
I first discuss a psychological argument asserting that scientific expression of incredible certitude is necessary because the public is unable to cope with uncertainty. I conclude that this argument has a weak empirical foundation. Research may support the claim that some persons are intolerant of some types of uncertainty, but it does not support the claim that this is a general problem of humanity. The reality appears to be that humans are quite heterogeneous in the ways that they deal with uncertainty.
I next discuss a bounded-rationality argument asserting that incredible certitude may be useful as a device to simplify decision making. I consider the usual formalization of decision under uncertainty in which a decision maker perceives a set of feasible states of nature and must choose an action without knowledge of the actual state. Suppose that evaluation of actions requires effort. Then it simplifies decision making to restrict attention to one state of nature and optimize as if this is truth, rather than make a choice that acknowledges uncertainty. However, the result may be degradation of decision making if the presumed certitude is not credible.
A third rationale arises from consideration of collective decision making. The argument is that social acceptance of conventional certitudes may be a useful coordinating device, preventing coordination failures that may occur if persons deal with uncertainty in different ways. This rationale is broadly similar to the bounded-rationality one. Both assert that incredible certitude simplifies decision making, individual or collective as the case may be.
Some colleagues assert that expression of incredible certitude is necessary because the consumers of research are psychologically unable or unwilling to cope with uncertainty. They contend that, if they were to express uncertainty, policymakers would either misinterpret findings or not listen at all.
I conclude that scientific expression of incredible certitude at most has practical appeal in certain limited contexts. On principle, characterization of uncertainty is fundamental to science. Hence, researchers should generally strive to convey uncertainty clearly.
Researchers may also express certitude with private objectives in mind. They may believe that the scientific community and the public reward researchers who assert strong findings and doubt those who express uncertainty. They may conflate science with advocacy, tailoring their analyses to generate conclusions that they prefer. These private considerations may motivate some researchers, but they do not offer reasons why society should encourage incredible certitude.
JC reflections
Manski’s article compliments the field of climate science:
Yet some fields endeavor to be forthright about uncertainty.
I particularly have in mind climate science, which has sought to predict how greenhouse gas emissions affect the trajectory of atmospheric temperature and sea level. Published articles on climate science often make considerable effort to quantify uncertainty. See, for example, Knutty et al. (2010), McGuffie and Henderson-Sellers (2005), McWilliams (2007), Parker (2006, 2013), Palmer et al. (2005), and Stainforth et al. (2007). The attention paid to uncertainty in the periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is especially notable; see Mastrandrea et al. (2010).
Monster simplification. Monster simplifiers attempt to transform the monster by subjectively quantifying and simplifying the assessment of uncertainty. Monster simplification is formalized in the IPCC TAR and AR4 by guidelines for characterizing uncertainty in a consensus approach consisting of expert judgment in the context of a subjective Bayesian analysis (Moss and Schneider 2000).
In my paper Reasoning about Climate Uncertainty, I further argued that a concerted effort by the IPCC is needed to identify better ways of framing the climate change problem, exploring and characterizing uncertainty, reasoning about uncertainty in the context of evidence-based logical hierarchies, and eliminating bias from the consensus building process itself.
The key climate science input to IAMs is the probability density function of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). The dilemma is that with regards to ECS, we are in a situation of scenario (Knightian) uncertainty—we simply do not have grounds for formulating a precise probability distribution. Other deep uncertainties in IAM inputs include the damage function (economic impact) and discount rate (discounting of futureutilities with respect to the present). Without precise probability distributions, no expected utility calculation is possible.
This problem has been addressed by creating a precise probability distribution based upon the parameters provided by the IPCC assessment reports (NAS 2017). In effect, IAMs convert Knightian uncertainty in ECS into precise probabilities. Of particular concern is how the upper end of the ECS distribution is treated—typically with a fat tail. The end result is that this most important part of the distribution that drives the economic costs of carbon is based upon a statisticallymanufactured fat tail that has no scientific justification.
Subjective or imprecise probabilities may be the best ones available. Some decision techniques have been formulated using imprecise probabilities that do not depart too much from the appeal to expected utility. Frisch (2013) suggests that such applications of IAMs are dangerous, because while they purport to offer precise numbers to use for policy guidance, that precision is illusory and fraught with assumption and value judgments.
In any event, it is good to see more serious consideration of uncertainties being considered by economists, with some fresh insights into the motivations for ‘incredible certitude.’
And this quote (pulled from a presentation by Manski reported via twitter) sums things up perfectly:
“If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.”
Dr Curry, an IAM can be run 1500 times to create an outcome cloud. However, what I found in actual practice is that we can’t model properly human behavior within the model equations.
For example, lets say we define a range of TCR between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees per doubling and assume a human behavior pattern (“Merkelian” for the EU, “Trumpian” for US, China and India). The case where TCR is 2.5 starts experincing more pronounced climate change, so that by 2050 we should see the “Trumpian” US become more “Merkelian”. But the gradual behavior change is difficult to model (the amount of behavior change is itself an unknown, and becomes a variable we can model).
I was involved in this sort of investigation about 25 years ago, and i threw my hands up. The surveys I ran convinced me that we humans arent rational enough to be modeled properly.
As examples of “incredible certitude’ go, our host’s belief in a mythical creature of her own invention– the Uncertainty Monster. rivals anything in The collapse of western civilization : a view from the future ,the dystopic fantasy thatOreskes & Conway published in Daedalus some years ago..
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2018/09/certainty-monster-haunts-swamp.html
Russell plugs into an unrelated comment to get a higher comment ranking – bad manners at best.
He characterizes metaphor as myth and uses this to disparage the proponent and again avoid uncertainty. Surprises are – you remember – inevitable. So this is the use of bad faith to avoid the reality of uncertainty and the resultant uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
Now that’s incredible, Mr. Elison.
The subject of the preceding comment is modeling, and Judith’s uncertainty monster has been devoured by normative science as surely as the Sky Dragon or, if you prefer a Biblical metaphor, the serpents deployed by Pharaoh’s conjurors.
Modelling in both comments is a fairly long justification for rudeness bow. Incredible or not. And Russ’ purpose was to deny uncertainty on truly ludicrous grounds. We can now add that last wiggle of the lame – the consensus claim.
But Russ’ problem is that there are massively too many pieces – quite a few of which are little understood enough to be a hurdle to modelling (Hurell et al 2009) – to fit in the 93% (Jiminy, 2018) exclusively CO2 and temperature barrel. The bigger problem on a paradigm level is that the sum is greater than the parts.
“Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.” Marcia Wyatt
Marcia Wyatt is a beautiful mind whose natural philosophizing is directed by curiosity. I don’t know what the consensus is but this is a very powerful idea in all of the natural – and even social – sciences. Climate is a wild beast to use a different metaphor.
Before moving further down the metaphorical food chain, take a look at the cartoon.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2018/09/certainty-monster-haunts-swamp.html
There are no disinterested parties in the climate wars, but if one reads the scientific record of the two decades since Mann’s Nature corrigendum started the normative process of scientific self-correction in this case, one finds that the proxy splice that started the ruckus has been corroberated by the broadening and refinement of both the proxy record and an instrumental record of ever growing depth.
What I get from this is that he still believes that the hockey stick means that history has ended. Technically – nonstationarity in the Earth system. A non-sequitur but wtf.
We aree all indebted to Mr. Ellison for so vividly illustrating the hazards of ignoring the climate science literature for decades on end.
fernandoleanme,
I don’t understand what you mean by the “Merkelian” and “Trumpian” human behaviours. I would have thought the most important behaviour to model is the one that occurs as awareness increases that global warming and GHG emissions are beneficial, not harmful, and certainly not dangerous. And that the world will be better off if it warms. Surely that is the most important behaviour to be modelled.
Peter, Merkelian refers to a political tendency to impose carbon taxes, subsidize renewables, reward electric vehicles with free parking, and similar policies we see in Europe. Trumpian means the opposite, emphasizing that coal provides resiliency against terrorist attacks, dismissing carbon taxes, and acting as if oil will last forever.
An example of Trumpian think is his recent imposition of sanctions on Iran, aiming to stop Iranian oil exports. What Trumpian thought doesnt factor is that oil markets are running with very little surplus capacity, oil stocks are dropping, oil prices are increasing, and we just arent in 1998, when OPEC could open a few valves and oil would come gushing out.
Regarding Jim’s comments about modeling technology change, we sure can do it, simply using a distribution of cost curves for alternatives, ranging from nuclear power to battery storage.
The current integrated assessment models are primitive clunkers because they use fixed rather than variable parameters. They are dominated by marxist top down command economy structures in which arbitrary regime policies are set which somehow all nations are supposed to follow, and this is sheer nonsense.
I realize that integrated model design is sort of firgotten in discussions about climate change, but most of you are very smart, and im sure that if you start thinking and flowcharting the system you will se that, thus far, most models are flawed (the Japanese have the best model I’ve seen, built for ICARUS, but even that one needs work).
You can’t model technological change either. What energy source will dominate in 20, 30, or 50 years? You have no clue. No one does. No one knows what farming methods will be used or how we will produce goods.
After several predictions of doom by “really smart” people, humankind is thriving as a species. Some folks are better off than others, but ALMOST all boats have risen.
jim, I’ve argued for many years that the only certainty about the future is that it will surprise us, it will bring unexpected challenges. So that whether or not the climate will warm further, and whether or not any warming would be net detrimental, our best approach is to increase our capacity to deal with whatever future emerges. That doesn’t mean reducing emissions, it means increasing our capacity, initiative, innovation, resilience, flexibility etc, which means a pro-growth, low-government, low regulation approach, the complete reverse of what is destroying the Australian economy and causing harm elsewhere.
At the risk of lowering the tone, my attention was inexorably drawn to this learned article from the Georgia Institute of Technology concerning the “replication crisis” earlier today:
http://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Failure-of-Academic-Quality-Control-Technology-of-Orgasm-Lieberman-Schatzberg.pdf
From the conclusions:
Our analysis of Technology of Orgasm fits into a growing critique of academic research and publishing. Peer review has come under increasing criticism from eminent scholars, who point to the inherent conservatism in a process that permits established scholars to act as gatekeepers for novel ideas. Prominent retractions of peer reviewed articles are widespread in the natural and social sciences.A recent study found that “a large portion” of peer-reviewed studies in psychology could not be replicated.
Discuss!
More on the “replication crisis” from this weekend’s Economist (probably paywalled):
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/09/01/experts-are-good-at-betting-which-scientific-experiments-can-replicate
Exciting results from a scientific study are in effect meaningless if they cannot be replicated. All too often, at least in psychology experiments, that seems to be the case. A new report by a scientist who looks at this area, Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia, has once again showed that a high proportion of psychology studies failed to replicate. And this time, Dr Nosek and his colleagues may have found a shortcut to identify which fall into this category.
The paper that The Economist neglects to link to can be found at:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0399-z
Re: “At the risk of lowering the tone, my attention was inexorably drawn to this learned article from the Georgia Institute of Technology concerning the “replication crisis” earlier today:”
The “replication crisis” wouldn’t be pertinent to much of the evidence on anthropogenic climate change, since there’s been paper after paper replicating the key results (ex: stratospheric cooling, radiative forcing from CO2, a large enough climate sensitivity for increase CO2 to have caused most of the recent warming, etc.).
The replication crisis would instead be more pertinent for the nonsensical work done by contrarians such as John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Richard Lindzen. For example, the following papers cover how Christy’s work failed when it came to passing replication:
“Clearly, the lower troposphere does not warm at night and cool in the mid-dle of the day. We question why Christy and Spencer adopted an obviously wrong diurnal correction in the first place. They first implemented it in 1998 in response to Wentz and Schabel (1), which found a previous error in their methodology: neglecting the effects of orbit decay”
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/310/5750/972?casa_token=SG3qRXrMHBoAAAAA:i78bYO1YXl4ShUo8hZOkZIu0v0VTzn6b3xdcYoA-BKMWksF8qRN9X909MiGc5TMqHvANt-ePzR_GaIsd
“It is incorrect to assert that a large model error in the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is the only or most plausible explanation for differences in simulated and observed warming rates (Christy 2015).”
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0333.1
“It has been posited that the differences between modelled and observed tropospheric warming rates are solely attributable to a fundamental error in model sensitivity to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases [by John Christy]. Several aspects of our results cast doubt on the ‘sensitivity error’ explanation.”
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/articles/articles/SanterEtAlNatureGeosci17.pdf
“The reproducibility of observational estimates of surface and atmospheric temperature change”
“Review of the consensus and asymmetric quality of research on human-induced climate change”, pages 4 – 6
“The effect of diurnal correction on satellite-derived lower tropospheric temperature”
“Effects of orbital decay on satellite-derived lower-tropospheric temperature trends”
“Removing diurnal cycle contamination in satellite-derived tropospheric temperatures: understanding tropical tropospheric trend discrepancies”
“A bias in the midtropospheric channel warm target factor on the NOAA-9 Microwave Sounding Unit”
“Reply to “Comments on ‘A bias in the midtropospheric channel warm target factor on the NOAA-9 Microwave Sounding Unit'”
“Stratospheric temperature changes during the satellite era”
“Sensitivity of satellite-derived tropospheric temperature trends to the diurnal cycle adjustment”
“Comparing tropospheric warming in climate models and satellite data”
“Tropospheric temperature trends: history of an ongoing controversy”
“A comparative analysis of data derived from orbiting MSU/AMSU instruments”
Same for Spencer:
“For instance, M15 cite (Spencer RW, Braswell WD 2011), which was shown to have made four errors which invalidated the conclusions (Trenberth KE, Fasullo JT, Abraham JP 2011; Dessler AE 2011).”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11434-015-0806-z
“Spencer and Braswell [2010] […] conclude that cloud cover plays a key role, further emphasized in Spencer and Braswell [2011]. Their methods have been tested by several research groups [Murphy, 2010; Murphy and Forster, 2010; Dessler, 2011; Trenberth et al., 2011b] and found to be without merit. In particular, Spencer and Braswell confuse causality and fail to recognize the appropriate relations between El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and energy balance [see Trenberth et al., 2011b].”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2014JD022887
“Issues related to the use of one-dimensional ocean-diffusion models for determining climate sensitivity
[…]
Through the use of a particular one-dimensional model as a case study, a number of shortcomings were identified in the formulation that invalidates [Spencer and Braswell’s] conclusions.”
Please include this paper in your reading list. It’s excellent.
Lahsen, M. (2005). Seductive simulations? Uncertainty distribution around climate Models. Social Studies of Science 35 (6): 895-922. DOI: 0.1177/0306312705053049
Hmmm….
The notion of ‘alienation’ in MacKenzie’s framework may hint at the impact of emotional commitments on perceptions of accuracy, but such an interpretation is somewhat undercut by the Marxist conception (alienation from the means of production) implied by MacKenzie’s usage.
Intriguing! Meanwhile Manabe and Wetherald.(1967) seems to have held up pretty well?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/prof-john-mitchell-how-a-1967-study-greatly-influenced-climate-change-science
The first quantitative estimate of the effect of doubling atmospheric CO2 on the mean surface temperature of the Earth was made by Svante Arrhenius in 1896….
However, in 1963 Fritz Möller found that the calculations of surface temperature changes due to a doubling of carbon dioxide were extremely sensitive to the model assumptions….
This is where Manabe and Wetherald came to the rescue in 1967 with their paper published in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences called ” Thermal Equilibrium of the atmosphere with a given distribution of relative humidity“….
Why is the 1967 paper so important? Manabe and Wetherald were the first to include all the main physical processes relevant to the problem, using a model that was no more complicated than necessary to achieve this. This led to much more realistic simulations and enabled the results to be explained in terms of processes which could be observed in the real world.
Per Richard Feynman 1974: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that. . . .”
“I’m talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to do when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.” https://bit.ly/1Omih1n
And, of course, he was not talking to you.
He was talking especially to all scientists.
I think that honesty and integrity are critical for all humans at all times, but those with power to push the world in various unhelpful directions have an even greater need for those qualities. They seem sadly lacking amongst many so-called scientists and politicians.
The English language press has ignored the scandal caused by Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister (President) Pedro Sanchez when it was revealed his economics doctorate (suma cum laude) included large portions of plagiarized material and chapters which appear to have been written for him by government employees. Given Sanchez’s autocratic personality, his mendancity and support by his socialists, the communists at PODEMOS and separatists, the scandal rages on, but he has said he would not resign, and continues lying openly about the thesis and how it was prepared.
The amount of lack of ethics, deception, and irrational behavior we see today regarding economic and energy policy is a normal for today’s culture, and this really needs to be factored in when running integrated models wich claim to forecast 80 years into the future. As i mentioned before I tried to model a group of managers’ response to future events based on an analysis of their actual behavior, and i found that a model had to include a description of their flaws and the lousy decisions they were likely to make.
For those who dont believe me, try to diagram what happened when the US decided to invade iraq in 2002, and the series of blunders which followed in sequence one after the other which led to 1 trillion dollars of wasted money, 40 thiusand US casualties, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, the rise of Isis, and the victory of Muqtada al Sadr’s party in the last iraqi elections.
“the progress of knowledge is less a matter of accumulating facts than a matter of destroying “facts.” The more ignorant a man is the more he knows, positively and indignantly.”
—H.L. Mencken
“Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever will be discovered.”
—H.L. Mencken
“There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
“What is inevitable is never obvious.”
“The truth has a horrible sweat to survive in this world, but a piece of nonsense, however absurd on its face, always seems to prosper.”
“The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.”
“Nothing, perhaps, is more painful than disillusion, but all the same, nothing is more necessary.”
“We are here and it is now: further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.”
—H.L. Mencken
Roger, those are great quotes. The mind craves answers and nature is most time way to complex for raw digestion. At every step of organization, classification and dissection choices are made. This is where truth can slip away. The scientific method, by removing those choices as much as possible by use the control, transformed civilization in a short time. It’s hard for lay person to appreciate how tedious and slow the actual working at the front line are. And it’s very easy to jump the gun on certainty.
Here are three more certainty-related quotations from H.L. Mencken:
The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. Why is the so-called science of sociology, as ardent young college professors expound it, such an imbecility? Why is a large part of economics? Why does politics always elude the classifiers and theorizers? Why do fashions in metaphysics change almost as often as fashions in women’s hats? Simply because the unknowable casts its black shadows across all these fields—simply because the professors attempt to label and pigeon-hole phenomena that are as elusive and intangible as the way of a man with a maid.
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
Just another example of manufacturing false doubt on well-evidenced, settled points. Nothing new about that; the tobacco industry did it for decades.
“Many of the strategies used by the opponents of both evolution and global warming are based on sowing misinformation and doubt. This approach is often called the “tobacco strategy”, because tobacco companies used it effectively to delay health warnings and regulation of smoking.”
http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/viewFile/71/64
“Studies of AIDS denialism in South Africa, the Intelligent Design controversies in the US, and the global climate change debate have focused on the techniques arguers use to manufacture purported scientific controversies in the public sphere (Ceccarelli 2011; Paroske 2009).”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jean_Goodwin/publication/225813438_Accounting_for_the_Appeal_to_the_Authority_of_Experts/links/55f3846508ae1d980394a125.pdf
“Any scientific theory is thus, in principle, subject to being refined or overturned by new observations. In practical terms, however, scientific uncertainties are not all the same. Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities [pages 21 – 22].
[…]
Most of the warming over the last several decades can be attributed to human activities that release carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere [chapter 2, page 28].”
https://www.nap.edu/read/12782/chapter/4#21
“Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.”
But those facts are not what climate contrarians pretend are uncertain, but rather how much of that “much” is manmade, and how much future warming can be expected, especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist. On that matter, and on certain other less crucial ones, contrarians are not merely dubious, but forthrightly disputatious.
On many other matters, to be sure, warmist beliefs are not so plainly wrong, but merely dubious, so it is appropriate to go no further than to argue that they are doubtful. Most claimant’s assertions, especially ones in a poorly documented and hard to document field like climatology, can’t be knocked down because they lack solidity—they have a certain plausibility. (E.g., a claim that polar bears are endangered.) All that can be done as a counterpoint is to show that they have a certain implausibility too.
Doubt-raising is an essential part of critical analysis of fuzzy and hard-to-predict and disprove matters, such as military actions, economics (e.g., investment choices), and political decisions, such as trying to mitigate CO2 emissions. Coming up with contrarian, red-team, worst-case scenarios, and giving them serious consideration, is responsible behavior. It is a mere smear to conflate such a necessary analytical strategy with its misuse in non-fuzzy matters, like the harmfulness of tobacco smoking.
disputatious, not disputations. (autocorrect at work)
Re: “But those facts are not what climate contrarians pretend are uncertain, but rather how much of that “much” is manmade”
Read what was quote again:
“Most of the warming over the last several decades can be attributed to human activities that release carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere [chapter 2, page 28].”
https://www.nap.edu/read/12782/chapter/4#21
And familiarize yourself with “skydragon slayers”; they contrarians who don’t think that CO2 (let alone anthropogenic increases in CO2) cause warming. So you can stop pretending they don’t exist, when even other contrarians have to debunk them
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/27/new-wuwt-tv-segment-slaying-the-slayers-with-watts/
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/skeptical-arguments-that-dont-hold-water/
https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/03/15/the-imaginary-second-law-of-thermodynamics/
Re: “especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist”
The term “warmists” is on par with flat-Earthers saying “round-Earthists” or creationists saying “evolutionists”; congratulations on coming up with a name for people who accept the evidence-based scientific consensus, and aren’t denialists.
I also suggest you go read up on increasing water vapor levels in the troposphere. The following should help get you started:
“The radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening”
“Construction and uncertainty estimation of a satellite‐derived total precipitable water data record over the world’s oceans”
“An assessment of tropospheric water vapor feedback using radiative kernels”
“Physical mechanisms of tropical climate feedbacks investigated using temperature and moisture trends”
Re: “Most claimant’s assertions, especially ones in a poorly documented and hard to document field like climatology, can’t be knocked down because they lack solidity”
Spend less time on baseless ranting, and more time reading the peer-reviewed scientific literature in which documentation is provided. You don’t get to claim a subject is “poor documented” and “hard to document”, when you clearly make little-to-no effort in looking up the documentation.
Re: “Doubt-raising is an essential part of critical analysis of fuzzy and hard-to-predict and disprove matters”
Manufacturing false doubt is needless and counter-productive. You’ve clearly shown that you don’t stay up-to-date on the relevant predictions and the evidence supporting them. So you’re in no position to make an assessment here.
Re: “especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist.”
That’s funny… and illustrative of the willful ignorance many contrarians display regarding the scientific literature.
In my previous response, I cited some research on tropospheric humidity trends. But since many people seem to like pretty pictures, I thought I’d post some of those as well:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgbqKNYXUAApALj.jpg
[from: “Construction and uncertainty estimation of a satellite‐derived total precipitable water data record over the world’s ocean]
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DgoC1w4X4AEdwdl.jpg
[from: “An assessment of tropospheric water vapor feedback using radiative kernels”]
Atomsk’s Sanakan: In my previous response, I cited some research on tropospheric humidity trends. But since many people seem to like pretty pictures, I thought I’d post some of those as well:
As the Earth surface warms, will the rate of energy transfer from the surface to the atmosphere via the hydrological cycle increase? Related, how much of the increase in total precipitable water winds up in an increase in precipitation? How much winds up in increased cloud cover?
Re: “As the Earth surface warms, will the rate of energy transfer from the surface to the atmosphere via the hydrological cycle increase? Related, how much of the increase in total precipitable water winds up in an increase in precipitation? How much winds up in increased cloud cover?”
You’re continuing your usual tactic of pretending that your irrelevant questions need to be answered, in order for science to be settled on a certain topic. That’s as worthless as pretending that I have to answer questions on cures of lung cancer, in order to present evidence that smoking causes cancer. So how about you drop your evasions and red herrings, and actually address the evidence that was cited to you?
Atomsk’s Sanakan: You’re continuing your usual tactic of pretending that your irrelevant questions need to be answered, in order for science to be settled on a certain topic.
The question is relevant to the question of whether climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is closer to 1C or 3C or 5C, an important topic that is not settled.
Re: “The question is relevant to the question of whether climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is closer to 1C or 3C or 5C, an important topic that is not settled.”
It’s irrelevant to the point you were actually responding to. Namely:
“In my previous response, I cited some research on tropospheric humidity trends. But since many people seem to like pretty pictures, I thought I’d post some of those as well:”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880007
So you can stop moving the goal-posts, in your failed attempt to avoid actually addressing the point.
MM, it turns out that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and very responsive to surface ocean temperatures, so a positive feedback is expected just from basic thermodynamics. Arrhenius knew this much 100 years ago, and yes it is very relevant to explaining why there is so much warming already.
Atomsk’s Sanakan: So you can stop moving the goal-posts, in your failed attempt to avoid actually addressing the point.
I am addressing a point you wish to avoid: granting what is known, that you cited, what is the quantitative relationship between the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and warming of the surface.
Jim D: MM, it turns out that water vapor is a greenhouse gas and very responsive to surface ocean temperatures, so a positive feedback is expected just from basic thermodynamics.
A positive feedback may be expected by those who ignore the dynamics of the nonradiative transport of heat and the effects of clouds. Whether the net effect of water vapor is indeed positive is debated (references Science and Nature magazine reviews have been provided, but I can look them up for you again if you wish.) The water vapor does not just sit there in an equilibrium suspension.
OK, so I hereby dub your side “Certs.”
And you, for balance, may call us “Perts’”
Which should be acceptable to both sides because:
Pert: saucy, forward, sprightly, lively;
Pertinacious: obstinate, stubborn, persistent.
MM, water vapor works as a greenhouse gas and accounts for most of the 33 K greenhouse effect today. It is also understood why it is 33 K, and therefore what adding a few percent more does to that. The laws of physics are fairly linear for small changes and adding a few W/m2 amounts to about a percent in the forcing. There are no new processes that kick into action with a 1% change, and we know the difference between summer and winter is much larger and also understood with the same physics. This is staying within the bounds of what is known.
Re: “especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist”
*sigh*
More grist for the mill.
“Thirty year trend analysis indicates an increase of upper tropospheric humidity in the equatorial tropics.”
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2010JD014847
One of those threads. Here’s something a little up to date for Atomski. Data is unlike wine – the newer it is the better.
http://images.remss.com/figures/climate/temperature_and_vapor_trop20_V4.png
“Figure 7. Time series of total column vapor anomaly and temperature anomaly, averaged over the world’s oceans, from 20S to 20N. The top panel shows the time series. The middle panel shows the running trend, starting in January 1988, and ending at the time on the x-axis. The bottom panel shows the ratio of the vapor trend to the TLT trend. Climate models suggest that this ratio should be about 6.2%/K. All combinations of satellite dataset show larger ratio, suggesting that either the measurements show too much moistening, or too little warming. The most recent version of the RSS TLT dataset is closest to expectations. This is Figure 13 in Mears and Wentz (2017).”
.
The problem of attribution – where the thread started – for Atomski is the great Pacific climate shift of 1976/77. But I guess it doesn’t exist.
Atomski’s Sanakan: So you can stop moving the goal-posts, in your failed attempt to avoid actually addressing the point.
People forecasting CO2-induced warming keep missing the same goal for reasons such as those I outlined: without accounting for the energy flows rates and changes in the energy flow rates, the quantitative temperature changes caused by increased atmospheric CO2 can’t be known. One simplifying assumption has been to account only for the change in upwelling LWIR from the surface, ignoring the substantial energy transport by advection/convection and evapotranspiration. The effect of the simplification is not minor, it leads to overestimation of the Earth surface warming necessary to rebalance upwelling and downwelling transfer rates.
MM, that’s the reason they don’t do the EBMs (or forcing) at the surface but at the top-of-atmosphere. Read Lewis and Curry for example. From that budget, the added forcing accounts for all the warming response with a positive imbalance to spare.
Jim D: that’s the reason they don’t do the EBMs (or forcing) at the surface but at the top-of-atmosphere.
That is why the temperature change at the surface is not known.
Re: ” Here’s something a little up to date for Atomski. Data is unlike wine – the newer it is the better.”
*sigh*
The paper you cited is not more up-to-date than mine, Robert, since the paper you cited came before the paper I cited. I know this, because I’ve read the paper you cited long before you cited it:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/925325969547780097
It’s amazing that people need to explain basic notions like “temporal order” to you.
This it the paper you cited:
From October 2017: “A satellite-derived lower tropospheric atmospheric temperature dataset using an optimized adjustment for diurnal effects”
This is the paper I cited:
From April 2018: “Construction and uncertainty estimation of a satellite‐derived total precipitable water data record over the world’s oceans”
Clearly, the paper I cited is newer than the paper you cited, though you pretend otherwise. Furthermore, the results of the two papers largely agree with each other. And that’s make sense, since both papers are largely from the RSS group using RSS’ analysis; hence RSS team members Mears and Wentz both being authors on those papers. Thus I don’t know why you’re bringing this paper up, as if it is a newer objection to what I cited. Are you confused?
So as I told you before:
“If you’re going to be smug, not directly address people, talk to yourself, etc., then please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about, Robert.”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880192
Re: “People forecasting CO2-induced warming […]”
That’s nice.
This is the point of mine that you were supposed to be responding to, based on your own initial comment:
“Atomsk’s Sanakan: In my previous response, I cited some research on tropospheric humidity trends. But since many people seem to like pretty pictures, I thought I’d post some of those as well:”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879903
Instead of addressing that point, you continue to move the goalposts. So I’ll ask you a direct question that pertains to what you’re supposed to be responding to; I’ll be more than happy to repeat the question as many times as it takes you to address it, no matter how many times you move the goalposts. The question is:
Question: Did tropospheric water levels (in terms of either specific humidity, or total column water vapor levels) undergo a post-1980s, multi-decadal increase, both globally and in the tropics?
And if you’re curious, the following source provides a useful explanation of why I’m responding to you in the way I am:
“Do not introduce new arguments while another argument has yet to be resolved.”
http://twentytwowords.com/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/
Re: “MM, that’s the reason they don’t do the EBMs (or forcing) at the surface but at the top-of-atmosphere.”
So MM is really repeating a mistake that’s been corrected in the scientific literature since the early twentieth century? If so, then that’s amazing. Someone should contact Ray Pierrehumbert:
“Infrared radiation and planetary temperature
[…]
A related saturation fallacy, also popularized by Ångström, is that CO2 could have no influence on radiation balance because water vapor already absorbs all the IR that CO2 would absorb. Earth’s very moist, near-surface tropical atmosphere is nearly saturated in that sense, but the flaw in Ångström’s argument is that radiation in the portion of the spectrum affected by CO2 escapes to space from the cold, dry upper portions of the atmosphere, not from the warm, moist lower portions.“
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/chapter4.pdf
From 6:38 to 29:40 :
Atomsk’s Sanakan: Instead of addressing that point, you continue to move the goalposts.
The goal has always been to understand surface climate change. The surface is where everyone lives, where human health ebbs and flows, where vector-born diseases occur, where civilizations rise and fall — even where James Hansen’s grandchildren live. The surface is where crops are grown, forests grow, savannahs grow, forest fires occur — and where Romps et al forecast that lightning ground strikes would increase in frequency. The surface is where the negative consequences of floods and droughts occur.
Water vapor is a GHG but it is only one state of water, which is a principal refrigerant of the Earth surface; water absorbs surface heat, vaporizes, and carries latent and tangible heat to the cloud condensation level and elsewhere in the atmosphere before falling again as rain to renew the refrigerating cycle. You can not have a full accounting of the Earth surface change without an accounting (at least full enough) of the changes in the water cycle, and the error that arises from ignoring changes in the water cycle has not been shown to be negligible. Ignoring changes in the water cycle biases the Earth surface climate sensitivity upward, possibly by an amount greater than the best available point estimate of the climate sensitivity.
For tractability only, ECS calculations do not separate the Earth Surface, Near Earth Surface, multiple pressure levels, the Cloud Condensation Level, North and South, land and water, and such. To believe that the calculated result applies to the surface, the Cloud Condensation level, and such requires a substantial leap of faith.
Re: “The goal has always been […]”
That’s nice.
To repeat myself (https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880196):
I’ll ask you a direct question that pertains to what you’re supposed to be responding to; I’ll be more than happy to repeat the question as many times as it takes you to address it, no matter how many times you move the goalposts. The question is:
Question: Did tropospheric water levels (in terms of either specific humidity, or total column water vapor levels) undergo a post-1980s, multi-decadal increase, both globally and in the tropics?
And if you’re curious, the following source provides a useful explanation of why I’m responding to you in the way I am:
“Do not introduce new arguments while another argument has yet to be resolved.”
http://twentytwowords.com/a-flowchart-to-help-you-determine-if-youre-having-a-rational-discussion/
“I’ll ask you a direct question that pertains to what you’re supposed to be responding to; I’ll be more than happy to repeat the question as many times as it takes you to address it, no matter how many times you move the goalposts.” Atomski
That’s what I was afraid of. The goal of climate science is not to indulge in Atomski’s talking past you points but to investigate a world. “The latter requires an investigative approach, where the goal is uberty, a kind of fruitfulness of inquiry, in which the abductive mode of inference adds to the much more commonly acknowledged modes of deduction and induction.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016WR020078 It is best done – for such a complex multidisciplinary problem with social, economic, environmental and humanitarian dimensions – in synergistic environmental science teams. And on the backs of giants.
But here is TPW – shown earlier, TPW
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880096
TPW changes with atmospheric temp – that changes for any number of reasons. Principally the Pacific state. Here’s a RSS map.
http://images.remss.com/graphics/cdr/vapor/v07/r01/medium/global/month/vapor_trend_map/rss.mw.cdr_1988-2017_month_vapor_trend_map_v7_r1.png
It raises more questions than it answers. Might not the mysterious polar anti-phase relationship – a seesaw of polar energy storage – shift again as it does every 1000 years or so? The data is not definitive – it cannot be over such short records – but the future looks interesting. Damn these goalposts shift themselves.
Atomski’s narrow question was answered. But let’s face it – the question is not about science but whether you are dumb as a bag of rocks or a sinister troglodyte.
Re: “That’s what I was afraid of. The goal of climate science is not to indulge in Atomski’s talking past “
You seem to not know (or pretend not to know) that Roger Knights initially brought this point up, not me. I simply responded. But don’t let that fact get in the way of your tirade:
from Roger Knights:
“especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879696
By the way, have you now learned that 2018 comes after 2017? Do I need to explain that to you again?:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880194
MM, the change of the surface temperature is known and is about a degree, 75% of which is since 1950. What you are saying is you don’t believe this at all. If you mentioned this before, I missed it. I see no purpose to an argument with someone who does not believe the temperature record. This puts you in a “special” category, let’s say.
MM, from the TOA EBM point of view, where the water cycle matters is in how much more water vapor there is to block the escape of heat. Any increase in water vapor is a positive feedback on how much warming is needed to offset the forcing change.
Is comparing global warming to tobacco a variation of Godwin’s law?
Godwin’s law (or Godwin’s rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
Godwin’s Law is pop culture nonsense usually employed as a thought terminating cliche.
It is the wrong comparison. It is fossil fuel vs tobacco.
But fossil fuel brings wealth and health, tobacco brings poverty and illness. The whole global warming scare is about the fear that poor countries growing rich could be harmful to the people living in them.
Both are unhealthy addictions. Immediate gratification with long-term harm.
Fossil fuels and tobacco is a false equivalency – one is the underpinning of so much human welfare and the other is a bad choice.
You are so sure climate science is settled. Yet the fundamental physics of turbulence, a key to heat movement and dissipation, has equations with no know method of solution and where the numerical methods have known problems. When you say settled, what exactly do you mean? If it is settled, why do the different models yield such different outputs, especially at regional scales and for precipitation? Are you sure that clouds stay fairly constant after warming, as models assume, and don’t act as a negative feedback?
Claiming premature closure is simply an attempt to get your opponents to shut up. It is a logical fallacy. Even in the case of evolution, contrarians have a purpose and have demonstrated jumping genes (Barbara McClintock), salamanders with asexual reproduction, hermaphroditic snails and other species, and the whole field of epigenetics (genes turned on and off, which may even be passed on to offspring).
There is also fundamental physics of energy conservation. The forcing exceeds the warming with an imbalance to spare.
Re: “You are so sure climate science is settled.”
Nope. I’m saying certain matters in climate science are settled by evidence, and this results in an evidence-based scientific consensus on these matters.
You’re basically using a nonsensical tactic, where you act as if everything needs to be settled in a scientific field, in order for some things to be settled in that scientific field. AIDS denialists (and other science denialists) use that same silly tactic as well.
For example, many AIDS denialists pretend that the science needs to be settled on a successful HIV vaccine, in order for the science to be settled on HIV causing AIDS. Of course, that tactic is silly, since the evidence on HIV causing AIDS doesn’t require one to answer questions on successful HIV vaccines. Your use of the tactic is silly for similar reasons. For instance, I simply do not need to answer the questions you invented, in order for me to present clear lines of evidence that humans (via their release of CO2) caused most of the recent global warming.
I suggest you drop your nonsensical tactic:
“Manufacture of doubt: Denialists highlight any scientific disagreement (whether real or imagined) as evidence that the entire topic is contested, and argue that it is thus premature to take action.”
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6950.full
Re: “Yet the fundamental physics of turbulence, a key to heat movement and dissipation, has equations with no know method of solution and where the numerical methods have known problems. When you say settled, what exactly do you mean? If it is settled, why do the different models yield such different outputs, especially at regional scales and for precipitation?”
Once again, none of that needs to be answered in order for it to be a settled fact that humans (via their release of CO2) caused most of the recent global warming. A recent review paper illustrates this point, by showing how matter on one scientific issue can be largely settled by evidence, while other issues aren’t:
“We find that almost two-thirds of the impacts related to atmospheric and ocean temperature can be confidently attributed to anthropogenic forcing. In contrast, evidence connecting changes in precipitation and their respective impacts to human influence is still weak. Moreover, anthropogenic climate change has been a major influence for approximately three-quarters of the impacts observed on continental scales. Hence the effects of anthropogenic emissions can now be discerned not only globally, but also at more regional and local scales for a variety of natural and human systems.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2896
Re: “Are you sure that clouds stay fairly constant after warming, as models assume, and don’t act as a negative feedback?”
And you, once again, bring up a question that does not need to be answered in order for it to be a settled fact that humans (via their release of CO2) caused most of the recent global warming. Try again.
Also, if you want to read up on the numerous lines of evidence for positive feedback from clouds, then I suggest you read papers such as:
“Evidence for climate change in the satellite cloud record”
“Clearing clouds of uncertainty”
“Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models”
“A net decrease in the Earth’s cloud, aerosol, and surface 340 nm reflectivity during the past 33 yr (1979–2011)”
“New observational evidence for a positive cloud feedback that amplifies the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”
“Impact of dataset choice on calculations of the short-term cloud feedback”
“Long-term cloud change imprinted in seasonal cloud variation: More evidence of high climate sensitivity”
“A determination of the cloud feedback from climate variations over the past decade”
“Observations of climate feedbacks over 2000–10 and comparisons to climate models”
Re: “Claiming premature closure is simply an attempt to get your opponents to shut up. It is a logical fallacy.”
You’ve shown no evidence of “premature closure”. And, ironically, you just committed a fallacy yourself: attacking a straw man. You haven’t shown any evidence of people trying to get opponents to shut up. You contrarians are free to say what you want, post on websites like this, hold public events where you misrepresent science, etc. And other people are free to point out that you are offering worthless objections to well-evidenced, settled science. Stating that is not the same thing as shutting you up, since you’re still free to voice your nonsense, just as AIDS denialists, flat-Earthers, anti-vaxxers, etc. are
Re: “Even in the case of evolution, contrarians have a purpose and have demonstrated jumping genes (Barbara McClintock), salamanders with asexual reproduction, hermaphroditic snails and other species, and the whole field of epigenetics (genes turned on and off, which may even be passed on to offspring).”
None of which rebutted well-evidenced, settled points in evolutionary theory. For example, natural selection still operates, as does genetic drift. Nothing about evolutionary theory says there cannot be inheritance of factors other than nucleic acid sequences. If you think otherwise, then please enroll in a introductory biology course. Don’t misrepresent biology to me in order to support your ideologically-motivated points.
Climate change science probably has a lot more in common with the saturated fat debacle than with tobacco. After all, every major world health organization condemned saturated fat as a major heart disease risk. Now, based on the science, I’m eating butter again and flying airplanes. Maybe I’d be a touch better off with olive oil and a bicycle but I’m definitely worse off with margarine and windmills.
Re: “Climate change science probably has a lot more in common with the saturated fat debacle than with tobacco. After all, every major world health organization condemned saturated fat as a major heart disease risk. Now, based on the science, I’m eating butter again and flying airplanes”
What debacle? And you really don’t seem to be familiarize with “the science” at all. I’ve noticed that contrarianism on both nutrition science and climate science seems to be spreading among many politically-conservative people. That’s rather sad. People should stop relying on folks like Rush Limbaugh and non-peer-reviews blogs / pieces for their medical information and information on climate science.
Anyway, the link between saturated fat with heart disease is well-evidenced. For instance:
“A systematic review of the effect of dietary saturated and polyunsaturated fat on heart disease”
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews: “Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease”
“Association of specific dietary fats with total and cause-specific mortality”
“Saturated fats versus polyunsaturated fats versus carbohydrates for cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment”
“Saturated fats compared with unsaturated fats and sources of carbohydrates in relation to risk of coronary heart disease: a prospective cohort study”
“Dairy fat and risk of cardiovascular disease in 3 cohorts of US adults”
“Saturated fatty acids and coronary heart disease risk: the debate goes on”
“Saturated fat and heart disease: The latest evidence”
It’s so well established that it’s still recommended that people limit saturated fat intake and eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible:
“Intake of saturated fats should be limited to less than 10 percent of calories per day by replacing them with unsaturated fats and while keeping total dietary fats within the age-appropriate AMDR.
[…]
As recommended by the IOM,[24] individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible while consuming a healthy eating pattern.”
https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/chapter-1/a-closer-look-inside-healthy-eating-patterns/#footnote-24
And vegetarian diets that limit saturated fat intake also improve heart-disease-related metrics. See, for instance:
“Vegetarian, vegan diets and multiple health outcomes: A systematic review with meta-analysis of observational studies”
“Vegetarian diets and blood pressure: A meta-analysis”
“Effects of vegetarian diets on blood lipids: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”
Jeepers. Are you at all familiar with this site? You sound like you think you know everything, but you are posting a lot of dubious stuff to some real experts here, including Dr. Curry.
This is a post on how people pretend to know everything when they don’t really. Why would you want to model that?
Re: “Jeepers. Are you at all familiar with this site? You sound like you think you know everything, but you are posting a lot of dubious stuff to some real experts here, including Dr. Curry.
This is a post on how people pretend to know everything when they don’t really. Why would you want to model that?”
Please stop pretending that someone needs to know everything in order to know about settled, well-evidenced science. And Curry’s claims aren’t particularly informative to me, especially when she fails to read the scientific literature on the topics she discusses. I don’t consider someone a “real expert” on a topic, when I have to cite the scientific literature they should have read to them, as I’ve had to do for Curry:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/01/16/sea-level-rise-acceleration-or-not-part-i-introduction/#comment-864647
Atomsk’s Sanakan: Any scientific theory is thus, in principle, subject to being refined or overturned by new observations. In practical terms, however, scientific uncertainties are not all the same. Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small.
On the other hand, the evolving roles of the hydrological cycle and clouds have hardly produced any agreement at all. Warmer will make wetter, except where and when it doesn’t, seems to be the message. Almost 3 years ago now Romps et al published a report that a certain process transferring energy from surface to atmosphere would have a rate increase of 11% per degree C. It would be nice if the procedure were applied to other parts of the world than the US between the Rockies an Appalachians plus Florida. A review of rainfall studies by O’Gorman and others gave a range of 4%-6% per degree C for the rates of rainfall increase. These are not negligible details.
Re: “On the other hand, the evolving roles of the hydrological cycle and clouds have hardly produced any agreement at all.”
You’re simply engaged in the same nonsense I addressed elsewhere:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879858
Once again:
Certain matters in climate science are settled by evidence, and this results in an evidence-based scientific consensus on these matters.
You’re basically using a nonsensical tactic, where you act as if everything needs to be settled in a scientific field, in order for some things to be settled in that scientific field. AIDS denialists (and other science denialists) use that same silly tactic as well.
For example, many AIDS denialists pretend that the science needs to be settled on a successful HIV vaccine, in order for the science to be settled on HIV causing AIDS. Of course, that tactic is silly, since the evidence on HIV causing AIDS doesn’t require one to answer questions on successful HIV vaccines. Your use of the tactic is silly for similar reasons. For instance, I simply do not need to answer the questions you invented, in order for me to present clear lines of evidence that humans (via their release of CO2) caused most of the recent global warming.
I suggest you drop your nonsensical tactic:
“Manufacture of doubt: Denialists highlight any scientific disagreement (whether real or imagined) as evidence that the entire topic is contested, and argue that it is thus premature to take action.”
http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6950.full
Also, if you want to read up on the numerous lines of evidence for positive feedback from clouds, then I suggest you read papers such as:
“Evidence for climate change in the satellite cloud record”
“Clearing clouds of uncertainty”
“Cloud feedback mechanisms and their representation in global climate models”
“A net decrease in the Earth’s cloud, aerosol, and surface 340 nm reflectivity during the past 33 yr (1979–2011)”
“New observational evidence for a positive cloud feedback that amplifies the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation”
“Impact of dataset choice on calculations of the short-term cloud feedback”
“Long-term cloud change imprinted in seasonal cloud variation: More evidence of high climate sensitivity”
“A determination of the cloud feedback from climate variations over the past decade”
“Observations of climate feedbacks over 2000–10 and comparisons to climate models”
Re: “On the other hand, the evolving roles of the hydrological cycle and clouds have hardly produced any agreement at all.”
I also suggest you go do some reading on the hydrological cycle, before you abuse that in your failed attempts at manufacturing false doubt. The following sources should help get you started:
“Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early models”
“Global water cycle amplifying at less than the Clausius-Clapeyron rate”
Atomsk’s Sanakan: “Observed heavy precipitation increase confirms theory and early models”
“Global water cycle amplifying at less than the Clausius-Clapeyron rate”
That’s nice. Selective quoting does not indicate “agreement”, However, since those two observations are important, the next question (I guess you call questioning “moving the goal posts”) would be how much precipitation increase can actually be powered by 4 W/m^2 increase in downwelling LWIR? It is an important scientific question that has not been accurately answered.
On the issue of increasing precipitation with increasing temperature I have referred to a review by O’Gorman et al and the pioneering work of Romps et al (the study on increased lightning ground strike frequency), which I hope other people emulate for other parts of the Earth surface. Is there agreement that the increased rate of the water cycle and increased precipitation produce increased cloud cover? Decreased cloud cover? Increase cloud cover in some spatio-temporal regions and decreased cloud cover in other spatio-temporal regions?
You generally want to focus on scientific issues and avoid policy questions (please forgive me if I have misstated your emphasis). When in science has directing attention to unanswered questions been “moving the goal posts”? The goals of science have always included answering the next answerable questions, and increasing the accuracy of the quantification of demonstrated processes.. A question that is the topic of much current work is “climate sensitivity”, with the confidence distribution on the magnitude of the effect of CO2 hardly changed in the last 30 years, though most recent estimates are closer to 1C than to 3C. There isn’t doubt is there that the 90% CIs are all wide, and a good research focus is to reduce them (“constrain the estimates”)? My questions about changes in energy transfer rates at the Earth surface relate directly to reducing the uncertainty on the climate sensitivity.
matthewrmarler, addressing Atomsk’s Sanakan: You generally want to focus on scientific issues and avoid policy questions
I have written about science and policy. In science, one always wants the answers to the next questions, refinements of current knowledge, reduction of current evidence, etc; as when Kepler adduced the elliptical shapes of planetary orbits; Newton adduced the inverse square law of gravitation; and Foucoult estimated the gravitational constant.
In policy changes and initiatives, one always wants to assess the balance of costs and benefits, as when in 2010 the Congressional Budget Office reviewed the economics of the proposed Affordable Care Act.
In discussions of policy changes relevant to AGW (PABW, anyone?), the cost/benefit analysis is undermined by a great uncertainty in the science: granting that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will (likely) warm the Earth surface, how much warming can be expected (say from doubling the CO2 concentration in 70 years)? With such uncertainty, the postulated costs of inaction, and benefits of particular actions are also subject to great uncertainty. Much evidence supports the proposition that warming since 1880 has been largely beneficial. But what about the future?
Re: “That’s nice. Selective quoting does not indicate “agreement”, “
I gave you the title of the papers, which is a common way to cite a paper. That which would be enough for a competent person to find the paper. If that’s a problem for you, then that’s an issue for you, not for me.
Re: “However, since those two observations are important, the next question”
Not interested in your moving the goal-posts, after your nonsensical claims were rebutted. You made a claim for which you provided no evidence. In contrast, I actually cited evidence for what I said. I’m not interested in what new issues you invent to dodge that point. Please learn to stay on topic; support the claims you made, or address the evidence that was cited to you. Anything else from you is simply your usual evasions.
Re: “When in science has directing attention to unanswered questions been “moving the goal posts”?”
You’re not doing science. You’re making up new questions, so that you can avoid admitting that previous questions were addressed by evidence. It would be like if you asked “what evidence is there that smoking causes cancer?”, I responded by citing evidence that smoking causes cancer, and you responded by asking “what’s the cure for lung cancer?”, without you ever acknowledging the evidence I gave that answered your first question. That’s not science; that’s evasively moving the goal-posts.
Showing a mere quarter-century of increasing tropospheric humidity data during a period of rising temperatures doesn’t begin to demonstrate any credible “feedback” let alone reveal the origin. Oceanic evaporation goes up exponentially with temperature and the presence of natural temperature cycles of multidecadal and longer scales renders the presumed anthropogenic connection logically fallacious.
Re: “Showing a mere quarter-century of increasing tropospheric humidity data during a period of rising temperatures doesn’t begin to demonstrate any credible “feedback” let alone reveal the origin. “
That’s nice. You should refresh your memory on the claim I was replying to. Namely:
“especially if the warmists’ hypothesized positive feedback mechanism via enhanced humidity in the tropical mid-troposphere doesn’t exist.”
I showed clear evidence that enhanced tropospheric humidity, including in the tropics. Your evidence-free opinions of what counts as demonstrating “credible feedback” is irrelevant to that point.
The Clausius-Clapeyron Equation is among the most basic of geophysics – in both senses of the word. Both simple and fundamental.
Atomski’s problem arises because there are other things happening in the Earth system.
More accurately “doubt based on manufactured evidence masquarding as settled points”. In one sense, you do have a point about the tobacco industry, which attempted to justify their product using nonsense in order to line their own pockets. Pretty much like the “green-religion”.
Science shows that organizations like Heartland have been promoting doubt and fake science to the unwitting masses for many decades. Heartland said smoking was OK for you, and continue to this day with “we lied about smoking, second hand smoke is OK for your family.” Heartland ALSO claims, but way of well-paid charlatan “scientists” that man is not warming the earth.
You call real science “green religion” which is terribly sophomoric. It is science, and in most ways science is the opposite of religion. If you’re going to pretend to know about Heartland and the peddling of doubt, then research this topic and learn that a lot of climate science is in fact settled. Also not that Heartland is still in this game lining their own pockets. They are peddling what you call religion.
The VERY SAME ORGANIZATION that learned people call out for their lies about smoking are now backing them for the lies about “green religion” as you call actual climate science. How long will it take for “skeptics” to realize that some of the very same people and organizations who duped them are now duping them again?
Yes, you are correct that the charlatans are lining their pockets. Look to the skeptic” organizations like Heartland for who is lining pockets. They get paid to lie, but real scientists must pass peer review.
When every science organization comes to the same general conclusions for the past several decades, it would be foolish to think that the few people paid by oil companies know what’s really happening.
Sad that people can call out Heartland for fake science regarding smoking, then say they they suddenly are paying the best scientists to call out the grand Chinese Hoax. The hoax that every single climate scientists is lying, and somehow that’s a possibility.
“The hoax that every single climate scientists is lying, and somehow that’s a possibility.”
Climate contrarians don’t dispute the near-universal consensus that AGW is real, but rather the less universal opinion that it will have catastrophic effects. A Wikipedia article [of a few years ago—I haven’t checked it recently] about surveys of scientists’ views on climate change includes this:
ALSO:
So they’re employing the tobacco industry’s doubt-spreading strategy!? /sarc
“Surveys of meteorologists repeatedly find a majority oppose or disagree with the alleged consensus. Only 39.5% of 1,854 American Meteorological Society members who responded to a survey in 2012 said man-made global warming is dangerous.”
FROM:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/30/the-myth-of-the-97-climate-change-consensus/
Re: “Climate contrarians don’t dispute the near-universal consensus that AGW is real, but rather the less universal opinion that it will have catastrophic effects.”
Don’t waste people time with your ill-defined, “catastrosphic” straw man:
“Another claim advanced by those who reject the mainstream scientific agreement on climate is that the consensus position consists of a claim of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming or the frequently used acronym CAGW […]. However, CAGW is rarely, if ever, defined or sourced to a mainstream scientific organization or study. Any scientific study’s result, or statement by a researcher, that does not fit a contrarian’s personal, flexible definition of CAGW can therefore be adopted as ostensibly supporting their view and refuting the mainstream, even when such results are actually consistent with the mainstream position on climate […].
[…]
Additionally, we find that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [CAGW] is essentially a term that is never used in the relevant scientific literature by mainstream sources. Furthermore, in the press it appears to be used exclusively by climate contrarians. The term is typically neither defined nor attributed to a mainstream scientific source. Our conclusion is therefore that CAGW is simply a straw man used by climate contrarians to criticize the mainstream position (50).”
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20161-0_3
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/30/the-myth-of-the-97-climate-change-consensus/
In what twisted reality is WattsUpWithThat a credible source? Are you kidding me; you’re going to rely on that garbage blog?:
“Unlike mainstream climate scientists, who publish primarily in peer reviewed journals, these critics typically employ a range of non-peer-reviewed outlets, ranging from *blogs* to the books we are examining. […]
The general lack of peer review allows authors or editors of denial books to make inaccurate assertions that misrepresent the current state of climate science. Like the vast range of other non-peer-reviewed material produced by the denial community, book authors can make whatever claims they wish, no matter how scientifically unfounded.”
http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/05/01/0002764213477096.full.pdf
Anyway, among AAAS (American Academy for the Advancement of Science) scientists with relevant expertise (PhD earth scientists current working), there’s a *95%* consensus that climate change was a serious problem and a *93%* consensus that recent warming is mostly caused by humans:
“Earth scientists views on climate change”
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/07/23/elaborating-on-the-views-of-aaas-scientists-issue-by-issue/
And in another survey, *~87%* of climate researchers thought that humans caused (or will cause) most of the recent (or near future) climate change, while *~86%* of climate researchers thought that climate change poses a very serious problem and/or a threat to humanity:
Figures 88 (v043) and 2 (v007) of: “The Bray and von Storch 5th International Survey of Climate Scientists 2015/2016”
https://www.hzg.de/imperia/md/content/hzg/zentrale_einrichtungen/bibliothek/berichte/hzg_reports_2016/hzg_report_2016_2.pdf
I write as a skeptic of climate alarmism for Heartland and CFACT. Here are well over 100 articles of mine, including many on the science:
http://www.cfact.org/author/david-wojick-ph-d/
What exactly are you claiming about my writing? That it is somehow dishonest? Or what?
Re: “Heartland said smoking was OK for you, and continue to this day with “we lied about smoking, second hand smoke is OK for your family.” Heartland ALSO claims, but way of well-paid charlatan “scientists” that man is not warming the earth.”
Well-said.
Lindzen’s antics on this are particularly ridiculous:
“The truth about global warming
[…]
Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He’ll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. […] he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.”
http://www.newsweek.com/truth-about-global-warming-154937
Page 251:
“If this sounds like a blueprint for climate change denial, it is because the denial machine not only learned from those who previously used the practice of *manufacturing uncertainty* successfully but some of its key actors learned the value of the strategy directly from their personal involvement in the “tobacco wars”.”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riley_Dunlap/publication/284128276_Climate_change_denial_Sources_actors_and_strategies/links/5650b68608ae4988a7ab9d45.pdf
“Arguments about the complex, multifactorial aetiology of CHD and cancer have long been used by the tobacco industry to dispute the epidemiological and other evidence. This approach to the evidence has also been documented in other industries, and the use of double standards in demands for evidence is a characteristic of many other fields. For example, car manufacturers fought the mandatory introduction of airbags and seatbelts in the 1960s as ineffective, and the alcohol industry and motoring organisations did the same with the introduction of the breathalyser to tackle drink driving in the 1960s. Demands for perfect evidence, while misrepresenting the existing evidence, can also be observed in climate change denialism.”
http://jech.bmj.com/content/71/11/1078
Happily your rants against Heartland (and me) are manifestly irrelevant. The lengths of your diatribes are inversely proportional to their substance. There is literally nothing to reply to!
Regarding mankind not warming the Earth, see my http://www.cfact.org/2018/01/02/no-co2-warming-for-the-last-40-years/.
Observation tells us there has been no CO2 warming since observations began. Unlike you alarmists, I do not rant. I observe. Call it science.
Last time I checked, the Heartland folks were not mandating the use of anything, unlike the “green religion”. However, my remarks were directed at the tobacco companies that clearly profited by peddling a dangerous product whose damage to health they downplayed.
Further, comparing the effects of tobacco with CO2 is utterly illogical. It is painfully obvious that filling your lungs with smoke is unhelpful. The same cannot be said with putting CO2 into the atmosphere, which is exactly what plants do.
Fact is, we simply do not known if additional CO2 is good or bad. Rather than waste vast sums of money on dopey “green-religion” activities, concentrate on more cost effectively/efficiently producing and using energy. Everybody ends up with more money and the environment is cleaner as a happy byproduct.
Re: Regarding mankind not warming the Earth, see my http://www.cfact.org/2018/01/02/no-co2-warming-for-the-last-40-years/
Observation tells us there has been no CO2 warming since observations began. Unlike you alarmists, I do not rant. I observe. Call it science.
Your article is nonsense on stilts.
For example, you ascribe the long-term warming trend to ENSO. Yet when one uses the multi-variate ENSO index (MEI) to remove ENSO-induced warming, most of the warming is still. So your claim is bunk. It’s sad that you’re able to mislead people with the nonsense you post on disreputable website.
Below is your assigned reading on this topic:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z2AiO55CPzw/WoYJXrkvF7I/AAAAAAAABOg/cLY6BDZa-Vo2QnK_Js5sTOCZV05s–fVQCLcBGAs/s400/MEI%2Bcorrected%2Btemperature.jpg
(“Global temperature evolution 1979–2010”)
“Lower tropospheric temperatures 1978-2016: The role played by anthropogenic global warming”
“Spectrally dependent CLARREO infrared spectrometer calibration requirement for climate change detection”
“Natural variability, radiative forcing and climate response in the recent hiatus reconciled”
“Equilibrium climate sensitivity in light of observations over the warming hiatus”
You have a severe problem separating fact and conjecture. The ill effects of tobacco and AIDs are facts whereas catastrophic global warming caused by man is a theory well beyond our ability to confirm one way or the other.
Try actually reading and understanding the “The Lure of Incredible Certitude”
Re: “The ill effects of tobacco and AIDs are facts whereas catastrophic global warming caused by man is a theory well beyond our ability to confirm one way or the other.”
Stop wasting my time with ignorant, evidence-free attacks on a straw man.
“Another claim advanced by those who reject the mainstream scientific agreement on climate is that the consensus position consists of a claim of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming or the frequently used acronym CAGW […]. However, CAGW is rarely, if ever, defined or sourced to a mainstream scientific organization or study. Any scientific study’s result, or statement by a researcher, that does not fit a contrarian’s personal, flexible definition of CAGW can therefore be adopted as ostensibly supporting their view and refuting the mainstream, even when such results are actually consistent with the mainstream position on climate […].
[…]
Additionally, we find that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [CAGW] is essentially a term that is never used in the relevant scientific literature by mainstream sources. Furthermore, in the press it appears to be used exclusively by climate contrarians. The term is typically neither defined nor attributed to a mainstream scientific source. Our conclusion is therefore that CAGW is simply a straw man used by climate contrarians to criticize the mainstream position (50).”
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20161-0_3
Atomsk’s “Global temperature evolution 1979–2010” graph is purely someone’s made-up graphics junk passed off as actual data from the listed sources..
For example, the real UAH global LT temp anomaly (v6.0) has 3 prevalent features.
1. A flat, oscillating temperature profile from 1979 to 1996.
2. A step change in 1997-2000 (the ’97 El Nino step change).
3. A flat, oscillating temperature profile from 2001-2015 (the Pause).
Compare those 3 features to the monotonically increasing ficticious “UAH” temp profile that Atomsk’s gives.
He’s trying to pass off obvious junk on people who know better.
Atomsk’s has No credibility.
Repeat, read and understand the article.
Your inability to separate fact from wishful thinking is troubling.
The old adage “follow-the-money” explains a lot of the “green-religion’s” zealot-like inability to rationally evaluate the issue without resorting to hysteria. Further pretty much a clear-and-present danger to intellectual freedom and leads rather directly to fascism’ s habit of resorting to fear, intimidation and violence to suppress those who object. Carefully consider the “science-is-settled” line of argument and numerous personal attacks routinely used by the “green-religion” crowd.
Re: “Atomsk’s “Global temperature evolution 1979–2010” graph is purely someone’s made-up graphics junk passed off as actual data from the listed sources..
[…]
Compare those 3 features to the monotonically increasing ficticious “UAH” temp profile that Atomsk’s gives.
He’s trying to pass off obvious junk on people who know better.
Atomsk’s has No credibility.”
If you’re bothered to actually read+understand the paper before you began ranting, then you’d know that the paper is showing the trends after removing the effects of ENSO (via MEI), changes in total solar irradiance (via TSI), volcanic effects via the AOD, etc.:
“Figure 4 shows the adjusted data sets (with the influence of MEI, AOD and TSI, as well as the residual annual cycle removed) for monthly data.
[…]
This is even clearer in the graph of annual averages of adjusted data in figure 5.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022/meta
Next time, actually read scientific papers before you comment on them.
It should have been obvious that this is what the graph did, since I showed the graph after I wrote this
“Yet when one uses the multi-variate ENSO index (MEI) to remove ENSO-induced warming, most of the warming is still [there].”
I even listed other sources that also showed most of the warming remaining, even after one corrects for ENSO. For instance:
“Lower tropospheric temperatures 1978-2016: The role played by anthropogenic global warming”
“Spectrally dependent CLARREO infrared spectrometer calibration requirement for climate change detection”
“Natural variability, radiative forcing and climate response in the recent hiatus reconciled”
“Equilibrium climate sensitivity in light of observations over the warming hiatus”
But hey, maybe you’re one of those paranoid denialists who think mainstream climate science is “junk” that’s part of a massive conspiracy. If so, then explain why John Christy (in his garbage paper, no less) also has most of the tropospheric warming still there, with a largely monotonic rise after he uses the MEI to remove the effect of ENSO (among other other ocean cycles and another parameter to correct for volcanic effects:
[Bottom panel of figure 1 on page 513:
“Satellite bulk tropospheric temperatures as a metric for climate sensitivity”
http://www.sealevel.info/christymcnider2017.pdf%5D
So if you’re going to object to what I cited, then congratulations: John Christy (who co-authored that UAH analysis you cite) is on on the “junk” conspiracy, too.
Lulz.
Atomsk’s,
your graph is just assumptions on top of assumptions to make those kind of subtractive corrections for ENSO. ENSO and the accompanying global effects are deeply embedded in the internals of climate system. Models cannot understand the internal variability, much less substract for it on a global scale, and then come up with a temperature graphic that is simply montomically increasing.
Trying to subtract that out with our human knowledge is a black art, that is pseudo-science. It’s just someone’s opinion masquerading as science.
Atomsk,
OK. If global warming does not lead to a catastrophic outcome we have no reason to expend huge resources trying to fix it. Let fossil fuel depletion take care of it at its own pace.
Re: “OK. If global warming does not lead to a catastrophic outcome we have no reason to expend huge resources trying to fix it. Let fossil fuel depletion take care of it at its own pace.”
That’s a silly response from you, and illustrates some of the motives behind you contrarians abusing the “CAGW” straw man.
Anthropogenic climate change does not need to be a “catastrophe” in order for it to have negative effects. After all, contrarians/denialists will make sure to shift around the meaning of “catastrophe” in such a way that climate change never counts as a “catastrophe”. It’s akin to how many creationists will shift around the meaning of their term “molecules-to-man” evolution, in order to misrepresent mainstream evolutionary theory (as including abiogenesis, for example) and to make sure nothing ever meets their personal definition of the term. You conveniently left out that point:
“Another claim advanced by those who reject the mainstream scientific agreement on climate is that the consensus position consists of a claim of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming or the frequently used acronym CAGW […]. However, CAGW is rarely, if ever, defined or sourced to a mainstream scientific organization or study. Any scientific study’s result, or statement by a researcher, that does not fit a contrarian’s personal, flexible definition of CAGW can therefore be adopted as ostensibly supporting their view and refuting the mainstream, even when such results are actually consistent with the mainstream position on climate […].”
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20161-0_3
Furthermore, plenty of things have negative effects that we focus on, without them being world-ending, human-species-ending catastrophes. For example: cancer, car accidents, gun violence, etc. These can be serious problems, without being world-ending catastrophes. So you’re offering a false dichotomy if you pretend that the only two options are “catastrophe” vs. “something positive or not harmful, that isn’t worth being concerned over”.
Re: “Atomsk’s,
your graph is just assumptions on top of assumptions to make those kind of subtractive corrections for ENSO. ENSO and the accompanying global effects are deeply embedded in the internals of climate system. Models cannot understand the internal variability, much less substract for it on a global scale, and then come up with a temperature graphic that is simply montomically increasing.
Trying to subtract that out with our human knowledge is a black art, that is pseudo-science. It’s just someone’s opinion masquerading as science.”
Your reply is just evidence-free waffling. You’ve shown no problem with the MEI as a metric for ENSO. You’ve shown no problem with using the MEI to subtract out the effect of ENSO. You’ve simply ranted about models, while citing no evidence to back up your claims.
Do better.
Hey, I also think your responses are silly and I don’t tell you. It is a matter of education.
The question is that nobody has been able to successfully decarbonize the energy and keep the lights on. France is the closest case but it is not a green example.
Recently the Prime Minister of Australia was ousted because electricity has gotten mighty expensive without any significant advance in decarbonization and an alarming trend in blackouts.
So you are asking for a huge effort with a steep price in terms of economic performance on the basis of a bunch of unvalidated models? Heck, then the cure can be more catastrophic than the disease. Let’s deal with the problems when they show up. Long-term, fossil fuel depletion will take care of it.
““There are three major camps, if you like, in the debate. There are what are often called the warmers: those are people who think that humans are changing the climate, and that this is dangerous.”
Need we say more? This is a quote from a mathematician, who writes about policy as though we don’t know that the earth is warming (it is) and we don’t know why (we do.)
How is it dangerous to KNOW that the earth is warming and KNOW that man is the primary reason? It is extremely dangerous to write like you do, duping people into thinking that your quote has any merit in a science discussion.
Re: “So you are asking for a huge effort with a steep price in terms of economic performance on the basis of a bunch of unvalidated models? “
Nope. I’m asking for people to address the science, not a “CAGW” straw man they make up and then attack to misrepresent the science.
Let me know when you finally learn the difference between “science” and “policy”.
(“Global temperature evolution 1979–2010”)
Works out to 2.0 C per century. One less thing to worry about. Now we can get back cutting taxes, cutting down trees and drilling for oil on the North Slope.
The science is teed up, supported by the highest institutions in the land. Endorsed by Democrats everywhere. Good job. Now how about working nuclear power to provide us low carbon base load power?
Ragnaar, if you’re extrapolating, it is 3 C per century for land and 5 C per century for the Arctic. But that misses the point. The damage is and will be at the extremes and their frequency increases by an order of magnitude because it is a moving bell curve. This is often missed when just looking at how much the mean changes which is a bit blinkered.
It is not me who is mistaking them, but the scientists promoting policies.
And regarding catastrophism, I don’t know if you have heard about James Hansen’s book “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
There you have a scientist that is promoting CAGW, and he is not any scientist. Head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for over 30 years and probably the best well known climate scientist with Michael Mann.
Atomsk’s Sanakan: That’s a silly response from you, and illustrates some of the motives behind you contrarians abusing the “CAGW” straw man.
What’s silly is the claim that the “C” in “CAGW” is a “strawman”. Plenty of catastrophes have been foretold, using words and phrases that are near synonyms of “catastrophe”. From the common use of the word “urgent” (and near synonyms) in the calls for action, we could refer to “Urgent AGW”. Do you prefer avoiding catchall words all together for the class of warnings that urgent expensive actions are required to forestall great losses?
How about “existential threat” for “catastrophe”?
https://www.pe.com/2018/09/01/its-time-to-act-on-climate-with-a-tax-on-carbon/
We could go with “ETAGW”.
Re: “What’s silly is the claim that the “C” in “CAGW” is a “strawman”. Plenty of catastrophes have been foretold, using words and phrases that are near synonyms of “catastrophe”. From the common use of the word “urgent” (and near synonyms) in the calls for action, we could refer to “Urgent AGW”. Do you prefer avoiding catchall words all together for the class of warnings that urgent expensive actions are required to forestall great losses?”
It’s a straw man for the reasons already explained to you multiple times. Once again:
1) It involves a flexible, ill-defined account of “catastrophe”, that contrarians/denialists shift around whenever they like to make sure that nothing [which has scientific evidence supporting it] ever qualifies as a “catastrophe”.
2) Contrarians/denialist use it as a caricature of the mainstream position, even though it doesn’t actually match the mainstream position.
Atomsk’s Sanakan: It’s a straw man for the reasons already explained to you multiple times.
For the reasons that I have cited multiple times, I disagree with the claim that “CAGW” is a straw man. I’d be willing to go with some other phrase such as “Tax and Spend AGW”, “Existential Threat AGW”, “End of Civilization AGW”, “Lots of Disasters AGW”, :Harmful AGW”, “Urgent Action Needed AGW” and so forth. All of these locutions occur, along with “catastrophe”, in the writings of scientists who insist that urgent action is needed to prevent climate-induced catastrophes. An example from Hansen’s book title is presented below.
Scientific evidence that warming to date has done more harm than good, or any harm at all counterbalancing the increased rate of growth of the biota, is sparse or totally absent. “CAGW” is as useful a rubric as any for claims that harms to date outweigh benefits; as for claims that harms will be worse than benefits in the future.
Atomsk’s Sanakan: 1) It involves a flexible, ill-defined account of “catastrophe”, that contrarians/denialists shift around whenever they like to make sure that nothing [which has scientific evidence supporting it] ever qualifies as a “catastrophe”.
What claim of harm due to CO2-induced warming has scientific evidence supporting it? And what is the counter-evidence, say that benefits outweigh the harms?
MM, your definition then is a policy one. Is it catastrophic enough to decide to do anything is your question? You question whether we should try to hold CO2 levels well below 500 ppm and flat, or proceed to values well in excess of 600 ppm and rising at 2100 by continuing burn fossil fuels, finding more and burning those too. Maybe you need it to be “catastrophic” by some definition of your own choosing to even do anything at all including international agreements.
Re: “What claim of harm due to CO2-induced warming has scientific evidence supporting it? And what is the counter-evidence, say that benefits outweigh the harms?”
No need for you to pretend that anthropogenic climate change is just CO2-induced warming. For example, there’s anthropogenic ocean acidification.
Anyway, your questions are moot, and are just your attempt at dodging what I said. If someone offers the CAGW straw man and claim that they object to it, then the burden is on them to define it. Let me know when you can meet that burden. When someone asks you what you mean by “X”, you’re engaged in a red herring if you ask them for evidence on something else.
Atomsk:
Trivial. I object to CAGW as is defined by James Hansen in:
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
He even talks about a runaway Venus syndrome if we burn all fossil fuels.
Am I bad person for enjoying Atomsk’s meltdown and total lack of sense for irony?
MM, if anyone has written anything at all about a 600-700 ppm world being better than a 300-400 ppm one, or a rapidly changing climate being better than a stable one, we need to see that. There’s a reason they haven’t tried to make that case.
Re: “He even talks about a runaway Venus syndrome if we burn all fossil fuels.”
It would help if you read the peer-reviewed scientific literature once in awhile, instead of using your “CAGW” idea to erect a straw man on mainstream climate science:
https://twitter.com/AtomsksSanakan/status/1034216506182184961
Atomsk’s Sanakan: Anthropogenic climate change does not need to be a “catastrophe” in order for it to have negative effects.
Are you in favor of policy changes and investments to prevent the negative effects you think will follow from CO2 increase?
It isn’t clear to me after reading all of your posts whether you do or do not wish to focus purely on the science.
Actually, right now you have 70 posts. I may not have read all of them. So if I missed a clear statement by you, I apologize.
Jim D: MM, if anyone has written anything at all about a 600-700 ppm world being better than a 300-400 ppm one, or a rapidly changing climate being better than a stable one,
I think you put the case backwards. No one has shown that the 600-700 ppm poses problems compared to the present 400 ppm, and no one has shown that the present post-1880 rate of warming poses insurmountable problems compared to the problems that we have now.
When problems are claimed, and expensive plans to prevent them are proposed, I generally find that the resources would be better spent on improvements to flood control and irrigation; but as we are always reminded, discussions of science are different from discussions of policy.
Another interminable thread signifying nothing. No one has shown even that the planet can get to 6 or 7 hundred parts in a million CO2.
The 21st century has seen things come to fruition in the coming of age of great agricultural and environmental revolutions. Driven from the bottom up – farmers, resource managers, architects and engineers – although the environmental scientist in me regrets how captured this has become by motivated activists. Restoring grasslands and forests, reclaiming deserts and enhancing productivity on agricultural – cropping and grazing – lands.
The pace of technological advance accelerates exponentially – across sectors and this inevitably reduces carbon intensity. In energy the holy goal is cheap and abundant power. This will inevitably emerge as either fossil fuels or something else. But I did note that the NRC accepted recently the TVA methodology for radically reducing the safety zone for SMR. Because they are inherently safer yet.
MM, you say it is backwards to defend a level of CO2 that we are headed towards without action. It is not. It is highly relevant to the future. The side about the negative impacts has been presented ceaselessly by the UN, economists, and many agencies and scientific societies. What is missing is any defense from the anti-action side for the climate state at 600-700 ppm. You will find that no one does that once they recognize the CO2 levels that go with growth as usual.
Oh Jiminy my Jiminy… the answer is technological innovation and more lately in the land use sector. Any inscrutable CO2 goal from on high is submerged by turbulent economics and politics in the global zeitgeist.
In the words of the hopefully immortal Bob Dylan the times they are a changin’.
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Re: “Are you in favor of policy changes and investments to prevent the negative effects you think will follow from CO2 increase?”
I’m not interested in policy, as I’ve told you on numerous previous occasions when you’ve tried to move the goalposts from science to policy. I’m interested in science.
So, for example, if you asked me what my stance was on cigarette taxes, then I would have no answer for you, anymore than I’d have an answer for you if you asked me what my policy stance was on carbon taxes. But I would have an answer if you asked me what my stance was on smoking causing millions of cases of cancer (it did), or my stance on whether anthropogenic CO2 increases caused most of the post-1950s global warming (it did).
Re: “Pretty much like the “green-religion”.”
Looks like you’re not only lifting nonsensical tactics from the tobacco industry, but from AIDS denialists as well. Nice job.
“Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma
Since the ideas proposed by deniers do not meet rigorous scientific standards, they cannot hope to compete against the mainstream theories. They cannot raise the level of their beliefs up to the standards of mainstream science; therefore they attempt to lower the status of the denied science down to the level of religious faith, characterizing scientific consensus as scientific dogma”
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256#s4
I am clearly linking a portion of “climate science” to religious-like zealotry that seeks to destroy those who disagree. Unquestionably linking man’s CO2 emissions to catastrophe is an act of faith. As such, just like a religion. Lucky for many of us burning folks at the stake is no longer allowed.
Fact is, we have no way of forecasting our distant fate.
Re: “I am clearly linking a portion of “climate science” to religious-like zealotry that seeks to destroy those who disagree. Unquestionably linking man’s CO2 emissions to catastrophe is an act of faith”
Let me know when you move beyond evidence-free ranting about a straw man you fabricated.
“Another claim advanced by those who reject the mainstream scientific agreement on climate is that the consensus position consists of a claim of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming or the frequently used acronym CAGW […]. However, CAGW is rarely, if ever, defined or sourced to a mainstream scientific organization or study. Any scientific study’s result, or statement by a researcher, that does not fit a contrarian’s personal, flexible definition of CAGW can therefore be adopted as ostensibly supporting their view and refuting the mainstream, even when such results are actually consistent with the mainstream position on climate […].
[…]
Additionally, we find that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming [CAGW] is essentially a term that is never used in the relevant scientific literature by mainstream sources. Furthermore, in the press it appears to be used exclusively by climate contrarians. The term is typically neither defined nor attributed to a mainstream scientific source. Our conclusion is therefore that CAGW is simply a straw man used by climate contrarians to criticize the mainstream position (50).”
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20161-0_3
“Catastrophic” is a term the skeptics never want to define either. I have asked them what they mean by catastrophic. It can be more specific. Do they consider 4 C of warming catastrophic? How about 2 meters of sea-level rise? How about 700 ppm of CO2? Some substance would be nice just to even start a debate on impacts. No response.
I am fascinated to read – again – that they don’t think it is groupthink and that they don’t think it is catastrophic.
OMG! We are doomed!
For crying out loud, take a chill pill and stop wrapping yourself in the blanket of “mainstream science” which is just a bunch of folks sewing panic to enrich themselves at everybody else’s expense. “Standards of Main Stream Science” Really? What astounding arrogance.
My position is we do not know what the future holds from CO2 emissions because it is too complicated to determine. Fact. The only entity that knows is “God” and he’s not talking.
Re: “For crying out loud, take a chill pill and stop wrapping yourself in the blanket of “mainstream science” which is just a bunch of folks sewing panic to enrich themselves at everybody else’s expense”
Looks like you’re, once again, using the same sort of nonsense attacks on mainstream science (and mainstream scientists) that the other denialists used, including those from the tobacco industry. Congratulations on following their playbook, by acting as if “mainstream science” is a money making hoax meant to exploit others:
“Conspiracy Theories and Selective Distrust of Scientific Authority
[…]
Deniers argue that because scientists receive grant money, fame, and prestige as a result of their research, it is in their best interest to maintain the status quo [15]. This type of thinking is convenient for deniers as it allows them to choose which authorities to believe and which ones to dismiss as part of a grand conspiracy. In addition to being selective, their logic is also internally inconsistent..”
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256
“For example, tobacco companies describe academic research into the health effects of smoking as the product of an ‘anti-smoking industry’, described as ‘a vertically integrated, highly concentrated, oligopolistic cartel, combined with some public monopolies’ whose aim is to ‘manufacture alleged evidence, suggestive inferences linking smoking to various diseases and publicity and dissemination and advertising of these so-called findings to the widest possible public’.”
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/19/1/2/463780/Denialism-what-is-it-and-how-should-scientists
Jim D: “Catastrophic” is a term the skeptics never want to define either. I have asked them what they mean by catastrophic. It can be more specific.
You can get a start here:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/catastrophe
A bunch of interesting catastrophes are listed on the Wikipedia page for catastrophe.
You can start an ostensive definition by listing all the untoward outcomes of CO2 induced warming that we have to spend lots of time, effort, and money preventing. An article I linked to above refers to tropical storm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and the recent Redding fire as untoward events (down turns, as in the Greek etymology) ; he advocates a tax to prevent them from happening again.
Perhaps TSAGW for “Tax and Spend AGW” would satisfy you? Omitting references to taxing, spending, and other increases in government control would restore AGW to its rightful place as a scientific problem, like say “cold dark matter”.
MM, so when the skeptics deny catastrophe, what is it that they are saying can’t happen? Remember, to not be a straw man, it has to be something that the IPCC predicts will happen.
Jim D: Remember, to not be a straw man, it has to be something that the IPCC predicts will happen.
It would probably be a good thing to restrict ourselves to what IPCC says in its scientific sections. But since that is seldom done, addressing IPCC is not the standard for straw man. There is this example, for example: https://www.pe.com/2018/09/01/its-time-to-act-on-climate-with-a-tax-on-carbon/ .
“Disasters” is close enough to “catastrophes” (which etymologically is derived from down turns, and has never been specific.).
As to fires like the Redding fire, the recent reviews show no increases in duration, extent, or frequency of fires. But CA in particular regularly pays for its policy of allowing forest deadwood to accumulate between fires by its fire suppression actions. And for building in and near the forests.
MM, OK, you quote activists (in this case a lobbyist) on the reasons they feel action is needed. If your argument is with the activists, you need to tell them why you are happy not to do anything and leave the science out of it, or write op-eds like they do making a case for doing nothing or what you would prefer to be done.
Re: “Scientific evidence that warming to date has done more harm than good, or any harm at all counterbalancing the increased rate of growth of the biota, is sparse or totally absent. “CAGW” is as useful a rubric as any for claims that harms to date outweigh benefits; as for claims that harms will be worse than benefits in the future.”
Congratulations; that’s one of your personal definitions of “catastrophe”, which doesn’t match definitions you’ve cited on other occasions. For example:
“You can get a start here:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/catastrophe
A bunch of interesting catastrophes are listed on the Wikipedia page for catastrophe.
You can start an ostensive definition by listing all the untoward outcomes of CO2 induced warming that we have to spend lots of time, effort, and money preventing.”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879910
““Disasters” is close enough to “catastrophes” (which etymologically is derived from down turns, and has never been specific.).”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879913
So you’ve already shifted between at least three non-equivalent definitions/accounts of “catastrophe”:
1) does more harm than good
2) has untoward outcomes that we have to spend lots of time, effort, and money preventing
3) disaster
This is an example of what I (and the source I cited) meant when I said you contrarians use your own flexible account of “catastrophe”. You use it to mean whatever you need it to mean at the moment, so that what you’re discussing doesn’t count as a “catastrophe”. For example, if I cited evidence to you on “untoward outcomes” from anthropogenic ocean acidification and thus met your definition #2, you’d likely just immediately shift to one of your other definitions. Similarly so for if I cited you evidence on the current anthropogenic mass extinction and CO2’s contribution to past mass extinctions. It’s akin to how a creationist can always shift around between multiple non-equivalent definitions of “molecules-to-man evolution”, to make sure no amount of evidence ever meets their definition.
Atomsk’s Sanakan: So you’ve already shifted between at least three non-equivalent definitions/accounts of “catastrophe”:
1) does more harm than good
2) has untoward outcomes that we have to spend lots of time, effort, and money preventing
3) disaster
Do you want to avoid all together a word or phrase to denote the wide range of outcomes that we have been urged to prevent? I have given a bunch of alternatives.
Meanwhile, “catastrophic” is good enough for subsuming 1, 2, 3, and others. It isn’t purely baseless like a straw man because lots of catastrophes, disasters, etc are regularly forecast. What makes the word useful is the large and diverse number of outcomes that policy advocates are calling on us to prevent. If this remained a purely scientific discussion without prominent scientists prominently advocating expensive new policies, then such a word would probably not be used. Would you like to suggest a word to denote all these outcomes, subsuming all the lesser categories like disastrous fires, cyclonic storms, and plagues? It’s handy to have such a word so that one can write things like: As a CA taxpayer and voter, I support building and maintaining improved flood control and irrigation structures before investing $tens of billions trying to prevent the catastrophes predicted to follow from AGW.
Re: “Do you want to avoid all together a word or phrase to denote the wide range of outcomes that we have been urged to prevent? I have given a bunch of alternatives.”
I want you to address the actual science, not a straw man you invented. Similarly, I wanted creationists to address the actual science on evolutionary biology, not their “molecules-to-man evolution.”
I think MM means that using one word for it all allows him to dismiss it all at once in a non-specific way. It’s easy to see how this is a useful trick to avoid any specifics.
Jim D: I think MM means that using one word for it all allows him to dismiss it all at once in a non-specific way.
What do I “dismiss”? It is a word that lumps all the severe warnings together.
MM, it can or can’t be catastrophic depending on whatever definition you have in mind at the time. It is too vague for any proper discussion. You should ask yourself whether 4 C is catastrophic or a few meters of sea-level rise, or other more specific risk changes in regions. One word can’t cover that.
Jim D:
Happy Labor Day.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/from:1979/trend
Simply taking GISS and the start year of 1979 as mentioned above, I get 0.7 C in 38 years which is think is 1.84 C in 100 years. Land only is:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1979/trend
or 2.9 C per 100 years. This is outside of the policy window. There are so many things that are more important than this 2.9 C.
Ragnaar, Happy Labor Day.
What I was pointing out is it’s not the mean that does the damage, but the shifting extremes. It may be bad enough that a really hot (1 in 100 year) mean summer temperature now becomes cooler than average with a 4 C rise, but the real problem is that those really hot spells during those hot summers go beyond norms anyone has seen in the affected regions, and these record breakers continue at a high rate with climate change.
Jim D:
I agree. The bell curve (my best guess) shifts to the right. So extremes on that side become more common. At the same time, people are becoming more insulated from such things. In the 1970s, my Grandma told it was 100 F out because that was unusual I suppose. One of the few places that had A/C was the nearby hospital. That was a big deal, a topic of conversation in that small rural town. Today I was visiting my Dad. It wasn’t that hot. He was running the A/C. Just about everyone has it. And electricity is cheap. So by just being capitalists, we insulated ourselves from the extremes. So as it’s worse, at the same time we are better.
That reminds me of one of Judith’s answers to the problem: Let them have A/C
This is just channeling Marie Antoinette, in my view.
That reminds me of one of Judith’s answers to the problem: Let them have A/C
They get that with the use of fossil fuels! The wind stops on some of the hottest days. The solar stops on all of the hottest nights. I hate trying to sleep when it is too hot.
Dr. Curry ==> Thanks for bringing the Manski paper to our attention. Absolutely marvelous.
Yes, maybe there’ll be some discussion of it.
Despite the allure of certitude, we simply do not know what the 21st century holds in store for us. Even so, I observe that nothing explains the level of certainty about AGW theory in the field of climatology that ultimately is not merely, cosmological.
AGW theory can never be reduced to a falsifiable hypothesis. It is interesting to see what the AGW mania has done to the economy and where it’s taking us. We need to read up on why some societies have problems while others do not.
Rather than inoculations to increase resistance to skeptics we should consider what causes Western scientists to require certitude. The cure is more good science to force the bad science out but we’re not getting that because government has something to gain from promoting bad science of Michael Mann, Al Gore and all of the UN-approved Eurocommies of anti-America, global warming alarmism.
“The cure is more good science to force the bad science out but we’re not getting that because government has something to gain from promoting bad science of Michael Mann, Al Gore and all of the UN-approved Eurocommies of anti-America, global warming alarmism.”
Let’s remember who “government” is. We hear a lot of Trumpism here and how good it is for the climate debate. But it certainly has not trickled down to research emphasis, at least to my knowledge.
Aside from Trump’s use of the climate issue as another arrow in his nationalism quiver, and some pushback against the regulation state, Trump seems to have little interest in the nuts and bolts of climate science, and I haven’t seen that anyone in his administration does either. I’m hoping that there’s a low profile effort to direct research money away from confirmation of the consensus, so that researchers testing orthodoxy will have a fair chance. If I’ve missed it someone let me know.
An interesting dynamic with the Trump administration was when General Kelly nixed the red-team-blue-team idea that Pruitt had. Pruitt was on the business side that sees climate change as something of an inconvenience to profit, while Kelly is in the military and knows from his background that it presents serious problems.
We’re actually funding global warming alarmism but some have a conscience– “At this point, the private sector seems like a more ‘honest’ place for a scientist working in a politicized field than universities or government labs — at least when you are your own boss.” ~Judith Curry
The “private sector” there was not the fossil fuel industry where Pruitt had his buddies.
Good stuff! Regarding the incentives for expressing unwarranted certitude. I offer the following: https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/government-buying-science-or-support-framework-analysis-federal-funding. Funding is an obvious incentive for reporting speculation as established fact, which is fundamental to climate change alarmism.
Regarding specific assumptions to generate a predetermined conclusion, here is a really good example: http://www.cfact.org/2018/03/01/circular-reasoning-with-climate-models/. First assume that the only significant forcings are human, then claim to have found that humans are causing the changes. How could it be otherwise?
Re: “Regarding the incentives for expressing unwarranted certitude. I offer the following: https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/government-buying-science-or-support-framework-analysis-federal-funding. Funding is an obvious incentive for reporting speculation as established fact, which is fundamental to climate change alarmism.”
Your logic is quite poor. For example, you’re going to engage in special pleading regarding who you apply your “funding” logic to. After all, all of the following people did government-funded research, yet you likely won’t claim they’re proponents of “alarmism”:
1) Roy Spencer and 2) John Christy:
“UAH version 6 global satellite temperature products: Methodology and results
[…]
This research was supported by *U.S. Department of Energy contract* DE-SC0012638.”
“The role of ENSO in global ocean temperature changes during 1955-2011 simulated with a 1D climate model
[…]
This research was supported by *NOAA contract* NA07OAR4170503 and *DOE [Department of Energy] contract* DE-FG02-04ER63841.”
“Time series construction of summer surface temperatures for Alabama, 1883–2014, and comparisons with tropospheric temperature and climate model simulations
[…]
Support for this paper was provided in part by the *Department of Energy* (DE-SC0005330) and by *USDA Grant* 2011-67004-30334.”
3) Richard Lindzen:
“On the observational determination of climate sensitivity and its implications
[…]
This research was supported by *DOE grant* DE-FG02-01ER63257 […]”
4) Willie Soon:
“Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years
[…]
This work was supported by funds from the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579), the *Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant* AF49620-02-1-0194) and the *National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant* NAG5-7635). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are independent of the sponsoring agencies.”
“Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: a reappraisal
[…]
This work was supported by funds from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-0194), the American Petroleum Institute (Grants 01-0000-4579 and 2002-100413) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG5-7635), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Grant NA96GP0448). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are independent of sponsoring agencies.”
5) Judith Curry and 6) Peter Webster:
“Role for Eurasian Arctic shelf sea ice in a secularly varying hemispheric climate signal during the 20th century
[…]
Judith Curry’s contributions to this paper were supported by a *DOE STTR grant.”*
“Climate science and the uncertainty monster
[…]
This research was supported by NOAA through a subcontract from STG (Curry) and Grant NSFATM (Webster).”
“Application of global weather and climate model output to the design and operation of wind-energy systems
[…]
*DOE AWARD:* DE-SC0007554”
7) Roger Pielke Sr.:
“Climate-relevant land use and land cover change policies
[…]
R. A. Pielke Sr. received support from *NSF Grant* AGS-1219833.”
“Impacts of land use/land cover change on climate and future research priorities
[…]
The paper also benefited from USDA Grant 58-6445-6-068, the DOE ARM Program (08ER64674), NSF CAREER-0847472, and NASA’s Terrestrial Hydrology Program.”
8) David Legates:
“Impacts of land use/land cover change on climate and future research priorities
[…]
The paper also benefited from USDA Grant 58-6445-6-068, the DOE ARM Program (08ER64674), NSF CAREER-0847472, and NASA’s Terrestrial Hydrology Program.”
“Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: a reappraisal
[…]
This work was supported by funds from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-0194), the American Petroleum Institute (Grants 01-0000-4579 and 2002-100413) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG5-7635), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Grant NA96GP0448). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are independent of sponsoring agencies.”
9) Craig Idso:
“Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: a reappraisal
[…]
This work was supported by funds from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1-0194), the American Petroleum Institute (Grants 01-0000-4579 and 2002-100413) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG5-7635), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Grant NA96GP0448). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are independent of sponsoring agencies.”
10) Anthony Watts:
“Impacts of land use/land cover change on climate and future research priorities
[…]
The paper also benefited from USDA Grant 58-6445-6-068, the DOE ARM Program (08ER64674), NSF CAREER-0847472, and NASA’s Terrestrial Hydrology Program.”
So congratulations on your paranoid, internally inconsistent reasoning. It certainly reminds me of something…
“Deniers argue that because scientists receive grant money, fame, and prestige as a result of their research, it is in their best interest to maintain the status quo [15]. This type of thinking is convenient for deniers as it allows them to choose which authorities to believe and which ones to dismiss as part of a grand conspiracy. In addition to being selective, their logic is also internally inconsistent.”
http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040256
Source of funding is a red herring in the climate debate, totally irrelevant. This is different from nutrition or pesticide research, when an interested private sector company is funding targeted research with the desire to prove their product safe. Grants from orgs like American Petroleum Institute or Institute for Energy Research (and from ‘green’ orgs) tend to be much general and investigator driven than say a grant from a food or pesticide manufacturer.
Atomsk’s Sanakan:
There’s you, those who are suggested to be deniers and the solution. The solution is lonely as you work on the deniers while ignoring it.
I called this meeting today so that two of you can argue but not offer up one thing we can implement to make things better, to improve our lot and that lot of society. Later, I’ll be meeting with the guy that fires people and a CPA to address the situation of how much some of you are contributing to the goals of this company.
Interesting viewpoint. If you are consensus alarmist or lukewarm alarmist, it likley is irrelevant. If you disagree with both of those, you are labeled a denier and not given funding, you have lawsuits filed against you and they even want to throw some of us in jail. It is not irrelevant for people who are truly skeptic.
Re: “Source of funding is a red herring in the climate debate, totally irrelevant.”
That’s a refreshingly interesting point from you regarding funding. You should share it with at least a couple of other people, so that they can also learn from it. For example:
Your past self:
“This advancement of their careers is done with the complicity of the professional societies and the institutions that fund science. […]
Further, the institutions that support science use the publicity to argue for more funding to support climate research and its impacts. […]
They are mainly concerned with preserving the importance of the IPCC, which has become central to their professional success, funding, and influence. […] Most don’t understand the policy process or the policy specifics; they view the policy as part an parcel of the IPCC dogma that must be protected and preserved at all cost, else their success, funding and influence will be in jeopardy.”
https://judithcurry.com/2010/11/03/reversing-the-direction-of-the-positive-feedback-loop/
David Wojick:
“I offer the following: https://www.cato.org/publications/working-paper/government-buying-science-or-support-framework-analysis-federal-funding. Funding is an obvious incentive for reporting speculation as established fact, which is fundamental to climate change alarmism.”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879702
That economist’s assessment of how creditably climate science deals with uncertainty may be affected by the vast gulf between the types of assumption weakness to which the different disciplines give rise. To many folks who have more exposure to physical sciences, the assumption weakness resulting from low population sizes may not seem to compare to weakness caused by model time and location resolution orders of magnitude coarser than what would be needed to capture, e.g., thunderstorm and tornadoes.
A recent Free Thoughts podcast by Rick Evans talked about open source modeling in economics.
U.S. fiscal policy influences how $3.8 trillion is spent every year and from whom $3.2 trillion in tax revenues are taken. Estimates of the effects of proposed fiscal reforms come from a variety of economic models, ranging partial equilibrium microsimulation models, to reduced-form econometric models, to large-scale general equilibrium macroeconomic models. All of the models used to analyze and predict the effects of new fiscal legislation have hundreds–sometimes thousands–of degrees of freedom. They are also all proprietary and closed source, except for a few new models that I will highlight.
[ … ]
With a renewed emphasis recently in the social sciences on replicability and transparency, open source methods provide an ideal way to help research meet those standards. Furthermore, open source platforms such as GitHub, BitBucket, SVN, and others provide a method of collaboration that should facilitate more efficient collaboration across coauthors regardless of whether the research is open source or closed source.
https://github.com/uchicago-computation-workshop/richard_evans
Evans sees immense potential in the methods, practices, and even workflows that computer engineers have implemented in their own discipline, and is working to bring those skills into Chicago economics
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/news/feature-story/economics-amplified-rick-evans-how-computer-science-transforming-economics
As he was talking about the size and complexity of econometric models and how tools like GitHub can allow economists and students to check, critique and improve each others’ work, I wondered if those methods could be used to improve climate models.
If I had wanted to use my BS degree
to study the climate, then there would
be a huge financial incentive to predict
a coming climate catastrophe, that needs
lot’s study, rather than telling the truth.
The truth is that the current climate is wonderful,
and no one has any idea what the future
will bring.
Climate models in the past 30 years,
that seem to say that CO2 levels
control the climate, with an ECS of +3.0 C.,
have made horrible predictions,
so it’s obvious humans can’t predict the
future climate, CO2 does not control the
climate, and the +3.0 degrees C. ECS
is nonsense.
Of course most “scientific” beliefs over
the centuries have proven to be wrong,
predictions of the future are usually
wrong, and some scientists will say
whatever they are paid to say (i.e.;
cigarettes are safe).
Real science has nothing to do with
consensus “votes” or computer games
(the so-called climate “models”
that make grossly inaccurate
average temperature predictions —
that adds up to self-serving junk science,
used for financial and political gain.
My climate change blog:
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
A chart for your collection. Let observations speak for themselves. 100 ppm per degree C equals 2.3 C per doubling.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1950/mean:12/plot/esrl-co2/scale:0.01/offset:-3.25
OMG
It’s tough to believe Jim is a real person.
Just the facts. What is there not to like about facts? You may not like models or the basic physics, but this is what it looks like when observations fully support AGW too.
Jim D,
even the IPCC and their consensus climate science acknowledges CO2 warming is NOT a linear relationship between CO2 concentration and △T.
Over short ranges like 100 ppm it is linear enough as you can see.
WW II South Pacific Fleet Admiral William (Bull) Halsey is said to have rebuked his meteorologist when told that long term weather forecasts (beyond 24- 48 hrs.) are practically useless due to the huge uncertainty: “I understand they are totally useless but I need them for planning purposes”.
He is also the guy who sailed his fleet into a typhoon (I believe a few times) and got a number of ships sunk. Also the guy who left a beachhead defended by just a few small ships to chase a decoy enemy fleet. Those small ships held-off the enemy at great cost with the survivors left adrift in the ocean for a few days. His zeal had a tendency to overwhelm common sense from time-to-time.
Well put essay and nice post. But I wonder how much certainty is needed. We are changing the atmosphere – itself an ambitious project – and the planet will evolve deterministically, dynamically complexly – in the scientific sense – as it always has. To my mind a definition of uncertainty.
But the anthropocene is ours to shape. And growing wealth, proliferating technologies and conserving and restoring ecologies is the optimum strategy. Building prosperous and resilient communities on soils and systems to which some of the 500 GtC lost since the advent of agriculture is restored. This works for not changing the atmosphere too.
But there is a certainty that exists in a group dynamic that marshals supporting evidence and rejects confounding. A psychopathology not amenable to treatment. Interacting rationally is neither possible or advisable.
“This works for not changing the atmosphere too.”
There is no reason not to believe that our distant descendants won’t thank us for rescuing the biosphere from near-CO2 starvation of the Quaternary. Thanking us for using this brief warmer period between major glaciations to create a technical society. A resilient technical society with the developed energy resources (nuclear, maybe fusion, maybe something else) able to withstand the reality that we live in an Ice-House epoch.
Descendants might or might not have thanked us – that question is not resolved for good reason – but the question seems unlikely to be put to them.
The pace in technological development in energy and other fields accelerates – and a much needed much more productive agriculture – both cropping and grazing – is coming this century. Using advanced techniques and technologies and based on increased soil organic content in living soils. Neither you nor I can stop it.
e.g. – top result from a past month google – https://www.agrighg-2018.org/fileadmin/shared/Excursion4_SOC_Management.pdf
They won’t thank us if we eke out the last drops of fossil fuels in the Arctic Ocean and Canada and pump up the climate with all its CO2, given that we knew the problems with that since the 20th century. They would thank us as the generation that went to renewable and sustainable clean energy and left those fossil fuels in the ground.
And again – they won’t thank us for stopping an unrealistic hypothetical. They will thanks us for a stable, peaceful, prosperous future.
A stable climate would be a good thing for sure.
A stable climate is pretty much off the wish list – it just never was. Best you can hope for Jiminy is resilience.
Stable is a relative term. For the last few millennia it didn’t change as much as a degree the whole time, so that is stable, but now we are looking at many degrees in a century – unstable. Sea level too, less than a meter to several meters.
Let’s get back to the reality of climate pootling along at 0.1C/decade in the postwar years. Benign but it may change.
And what sea level would you prefer?
The best sea level is the one we get – and enough wealth to adapt if needed. 3mm/year is not something on my alert list. On their list of course as a poster child for AGW catastrophe.
So 3mm/yr is what you prefer? You’re in for a disappointment.
Maybe or maybe not – actually I will be disappointed if it doesn’t change abruptly.
But even if 3mm is 100% anthropogenic – that’s about it. Get back to me in 50 years when the existing engineering safety margins are even marginally exhausted. .
Please note that the ” brief warmer period between major glaciations” is replete with cataclysmic destructions that have repeatedly ended abruptly established civilisations. The major jerks in the curves very well shown in WUWT link here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/04/paleoclimate-cycles-are-key-analogs-for-present-day-holocene-warm-period/ are those same events. Another link here: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2017/07/02/113/
It is a long hard perilous slog to the next ice-house, if we ever get there.
Robert – If you’re into “psychopathology” this may interest you?
http://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/05/why-its-so-hard-to-convince-pseudo-skeptics/
In a new study that just came out a couple of months ago they showed a single disgusting image, and one single disgusting image and measuring the brain activity and how the person responded to that was sufficient to allow you to identify if somebody was conservative or liberal. With a single brain image. With 95% accuracy!
In this case “a couple of months ago” was written three years ago.
More from Dr. Schreiber:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970
Liberals and conservatives exhibit different cognitive styles and converging lines of evidence suggest that biology influences differences in their political attitudes and beliefs. In particular, a recent study of young adults suggests that liberals and conservatives have significantly different brain structure, with liberals showing increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, and conservatives showing increased gray matter volume in the in the amygdala….
These results suggest that liberals and conservatives engage different cognitive processes when they think about risk, and they support recent evidence that conservatives show greater sensitivity to threatening stimuli.
” one single disgusting image and measuring the brain activity and how the person responded to that was sufficient to allow you to identify if somebody was conservative or liberal. With a single brain image.”
One imagines that this is descriptively wrong.
A disgusting image to a conservative, say Jimmi Hendrix or Hilary would not be able to be disgusting to a liberal. Conversely the Pope or John Wayne would not be disgusting to a conservative. Elvis might please nobody.
No, a single disgusting picture on its own would not be capable of allowing identification if its raison’détre was purely being disgusting.
I heard what he said. He must be misquoting the study or else using multiple pictures till the subject found one disgusting, in which case one would not need to measure brain activity , just ask them.
A second issue of course is if people who are liberal\conservative [choose your disgusting picture] can even be said to have any brain activity but…..
If you do your due diligence I think you’ll find that those are not the sort of “disgusting images” Dr. Schreiber had in mind!
“If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.”
That would be everything from seasonal to centennial changes through the Holocene. It’s all placed in a folder called ‘Internal Variability’ and left well alone.
Nassim Taleb (The BlackSwan author) describes systems that thrive on “anti-fragility” in his book by that same name. That is anti-fragile systems improve under stress and strengthen. Anti-fragile systems, in his description, love uncertainty, randomness, being stressed.
In the same vein as the Manski quote, Dr. Taleb argues in his book that anti-fragile systems, precisely because randomness, uncertainty, and chaos are always present in natural systems, you want to acknowledge and then use them. Taleb’s anti-fragile concept is beyond resilience and robustness. It is a concept of systems that get stronger in the face of adversity and stressors. This is what science must be — anti-fragile. Even if it means crumbling cherished theories.
Taleb describes top-down systems as generally fragile. Bottom-up systems as being generally anti-fragile. Bottom-up in science are the thousands of scientists toiling away in labs and computer screens, analyzing data, able to publish results, results that are even contrary to “consensus.” Top-down science is journal gate-keepers enforcing a dogma/consensus, blocking skeptical (heretical) views. Top-down climate science will eventually crumble due to its fragility, unable to withstand a storm of eventually unavoidable contrary evidence.
In a larger context, science must be anti-fragile. Anti-fragile by always ready to examine and tear up assumptions. By critically examining them, exposing flawed assumptions makes science stronger as flawed theories get tossed, new explanations (for observations) attempted, and assumptions revised.
Consensus climate science is fragile – it has become top-down directeed. The IPCC and the various climate science gatekeepers for the peer-review process have in this way (by avoiding stressors, i,e, skeptical views) created a paradigm around strong CO2-GHG effect theory that is highly fragile.
Climate science is now unable to withstand shocks of an open debate with informed expert skeptics; because of gate-keeping at journals, exclusion of contrary views from the literature, making outcasts of academic faculty that dissent from climate change consensus. All this serves to deprive climate science knowledge of stressors, and this has created major areas of conventional certitude: predictions that are generally accepted as true but are not necessarily true. Without naming names, we know who most these “protectors” are, keeping their climate science from experiencing the shocks that would make it stronger.
In summary, today’s climate science is fragile. This cannot continue as the uncaring march of time and reality are the ultimate stressors that will crumble this fragile science. And when it does crumble, how much of the rest of science will it take with it as collateral damage?
Manski is a scholar of the highest calibre. Taleb is not.
https://i.imgur.com/qmCY0CA.png
A great picture you found! Links are so yesterday.
Gavin won’t talk to you about climate change. Probably a good thing. We agreed once that 0.1C/decade was a reasonable estimate of the postwar warming rate. Might climate not pootle – to use the inestimable Jim Hunt’s term -along at this rate at most?
The answer to the question of course is deterministic dynamic complexity – in the scientific sense – in the Earth system. No it might not.
Thank you for your kind words Robert!
Or were you just experimenting with newly discovered irony?
Some things are too small to be seen. Measuring black holes may be possible – I have just read an article.
And if Jim has found any irony here – he is not doing it right.
Re: “Gavin won’t talk to you about climate change.”
Which Gavin?
If you mean Gavin Schmidt, then he’s talked to Curry about climate change on multiple occasions. For instance:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/08/ipcc-attribution-statements-redux-a-response-to-judith-curry/
Curry’s vapid response to Schmidt showed that Curry (not Schmidt) was the one who didn’t want a serious discussion:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/08/ipcc-attribution-statements-redux-a-response-to-judith-curry/#comment-588835
If you mean Gavin Cawley, then Curry’s been avoid having a serious talk with him for years, especially after Cawley rebutted Curry’s nonsensical promotion of Salby’s debunked claims on the recent CO2 increases being non-anthropogenic:
https://twitter.com/Gavin_Cawley/status/1033403469884010496
Re: “We agreed once that 0.1C/decade was a reasonable estimate of the postwar warming rate”
Take a look, for once in your life:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W51Sj1_-2wg/Ww7uI8kK6cI/AAAAAAAABms/GuST0gGkZpg4uGPzxbuFkZrqzhMMzAADgCPcBGAYYCw/s640/global%2Btemperature%2Bcomparisons.JPG
[from: “Recent United Kingdom and global temperature variations”]
“Human-induced warming reached an estimated 0.93◦C (±0.13◦C; 5–95 percentile range) above mid-nineteenth-century conditions in 2015 and is currently increasing at almost 0.2◦C per decade.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo3031/
If Atomski missed the twitter culture reference – it’s too late – you have to be there.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/swanson-et-al-2009.png
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/38/16120
Try to remove the 20th century wiggles and it is some 0.1 degree C/decade.
Re: “Try to remove the 20th century wiggles and it is some 0.1 degree C/decade.”
Your cited source is from 2009, does not cover include the recent warming (up to 2017) discussed by the source I cited, and does not include the multiple temperature analyses used by the 2018 source I cited.
As usual, you’re quite bad at staying up-to-date of the relevant peer-reviewed literature.
Do better.
He denies a minor 2009 study that discusses 20th century surface temperature because it too old? Apart from Kyle Swanson and George Sugihara – there is Emeritus Distinguished Professor Anastasios Tsonis. The blue team is looking a bit threadbare.
But whatever – this is on the front of Kevin Cowtan’s trend calculator page.
blob:https://wordpress.com/b65ff1e2-9a7b-4c97-8078-aa22d2a205af
Ahhh… Let’s try this.
https://i1.wp.com/watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/cowtan-trend.png
Or this?
http://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CW-1970-2018.png
HadCRUT4 plus kriging, since you asked.
You assume that was anthropogenic? There are no multdecadal climate? Which is why the longer timeframe is appropriate.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879812
There are geophysics that are a complete mystery to them.
Re: “We agreed once that 0.1C/decade was a reasonable estimate of the postwar warming rate”
“Ahhh… Let’s try this.”
Why are you citing a GISTEMP rate beginning in 1880, when your claim was for the “the postwar warming rate”? I get that some contrarians on climate science are elderly political conservatives with memory problems, but even they should know WWII ended decades after the 1880s.
WWII ended in 1945. So what are some of the post-war GISTEMP rates? Well:
Post-1880 trend (what you cited): 0.072 K/decade
Post-1946: 0.135 K/decade
Post-1979: 0.173 K/decade
Post-1997: 0.185 K/decade
Oh look, the post-war warming rate accelerated, based on the very data source you cited. So one of the sources I cited was corrected:
“Human-induced warming reached an estimated 0.93◦C (±0.13◦C; 5–95 percentile range) above mid-nineteenth-century conditions in 2015 and is currently increasing at almost 0.2◦C per decade.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo3031/
Now, I don’t expect any of this evidence to actually get you to change your mind, based on your past behavior. But maybe this discussion will be a useful exercise for rational, intellectually honest people
http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.proc.pl?dataset1=GISTEMP&dataset2=none&var=2m+Air+Temperature&level=1000mb&pgT1Sel=10&pgtTitle1=&pgtPath1=&var2=Geopotential+Height&level2=1000mb&pgT2Sel=10&pgtTitle2=&pgtPath2=&fyear=1946&fyear2=2018&season=0&fmonth=0&fmonth2=11&type=0&climo1yr1=1981&climo1yr2=2010&climo2yr1=1981&climo2yr2=2010&xlat1=-90&xlat2=90&xlon1=0&xlon2=360&maskx=0&zlat1=0&zlat2=90&zlon1=0&zlon2=360&maskx2=0&map=0&yaxis=0&bar=0&smooth=0&runmean=1&yrange1=0&yrange2=0&y2range1=0&y2range2=0&xrange1=0&xrange2=0&markers=0&legend=0&Submit=Create+Plot
[from: “Web-based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tool: Monthly/seasonal time series” https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl
“Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) for analysis and comparison of reanalyses and other datasets”]
This was what popped up on the page – but feel free to plug in some other year.
Re: “You assume that was anthropogenic? There are no multdecadal climate? Which is why the longer timeframe is appropriate.”
No, the longer timeframe was not appropriate. When you make a claim about a certain timeframe, then you should examine that timeframe. It’s not that hard to grasp. If you want to address multidecadal variability with respect to that timeframe, then examine the variability in that timeframe. You don’t get to act as if the rate for the longer timeframe is the same as the rate for the shorter timeframe.
Dear me, Atomsk’s
You thought he meant the Second World War, sometimes those Aussie accents can be quite thick, he meant the Second Boer War.
What Bob doesn’t know – inter alia – is that Atomski has lost this battle and the war.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880102
Re: “Let’s get back to the reality of climate pootling along at 0.1C/decade in the postwar years. Benign but it may change.”
“We agreed once that 0.1C/decade was a reasonable estimate of the postwar warming rate. Might climate not pootle – to use the inestimable Jim Hunt’s term -along at this rate at most?”
Not really, since the warming accelerated, as I explained to you elsewhere:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879880
Once again:
You cited a post-1880 GISTEMP trend to me:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879879
WWII ended in 1945, so why you started he trend in 1880 is beyond me. So what are some of the post-war GISTEMP rates? Well:
Post-1880 trend (what you cited): 0.072 K/decade
Post-1946: 0.135 K/decade
Post-1979: 0.173 K/decade
Post-1997: 0.185 K/decade
You can check that here:
1) http://www.ysbl.york.ac.uk/~cowtan/applets/trend/trend.html
2) “Web-based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tool: Monthly/seasonal time series” https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/testdap/timeseries.pl
“Web-Based Reanalysis Intercomparison Tools (WRIT) for analysis and comparison of reanalyses and other datasets”]
Thus the post-war warming rate accelerated, based on the very data source you cited. That matches one of the sources I cited to you:
“Human-induced warming reached an estimated 0.93◦C (±0.13◦C; 5–95 percentile range) above mid-nineteenth-century conditions in 2015 and is currently increasing at almost 0.2◦C per decade.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo3031/
The acceleration is also evident in the graph I cited to you before:
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W51Sj1_-2wg/Ww7uI8kK6cI/AAAAAAAABms/GuST0gGkZpg4uGPzxbuFkZrqzhMMzAADgCPcBGAYYCw/s640/global%2Btemperature%2Bcomparisons.JPG
[Figure 1b: “Recent United Kingdom and global temperature variations”]
There are many other things happening in climate in the hyper complex Earth system. Just not things that Atomski is across.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879812
Re: “There are many other things happening in climate in the hyper complex Earth system. Just not things that Atomski is across.”
Congratulations on your red herring, and attempt to move the goal-posts. Now that your mistakes on the rate of warming were corrected, you’re now moving the goalposts to the factors that affect the rate of warming. Sorry, but that evasion of your’s won’t work. You were wrong on what the rate of warming was; discussing the causes for the rate doesn’t change your error.
But since you seem committed to moving the goalposts to that topic, then here’s your assigned reading:
“Causes of irregularities in trends of global mean surface temperature since the late 19th century”
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/6/eaao5297/F1.medium.gif
To avoid cluttering up posts with needless repetitious. LOL.
But I should put it in the right place.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879919
And again I stuffed it up. It’s not funny any more.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879812
But I do appreciate the lectures on my intellectual inadequacies. And the certifiable proofs provided.
Although I wonder if Carl Wunsch’s – a well known non-denier – assertion that very little is proven might apply here.
Is this my thread? God forgive me. Atomski’s problem – inter alia – is that centuries of observation is need for any multi-decadal statistical power.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content.jpg
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
More salt in a Law Dome ice core is La Nina and more rain for Australia. But as emissions took off only post 2nd world war – and covering cool and warm Pacific regimes – my preferred method is to average warming over 1944 to 1998 period. Climate shifted again after that.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/cowtan-1944-1998.png
The residual – some 0.4 degrees C – may be anthropogenic. Then again the centennial record suggests a much longer term dynamic.
Re: “Is this my thread? God forgive me. Atomski’s problem – inter alia – is that centuries of observation is need for any multi-decadal statistical power.”
*yawn*
You apparently don’t understand the breadth of the data available, nor how to calculate statistical power. Your assigned reading is below:
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dqegYz8qFHk/Ww7RphGS7ZI/AAAAAAAABmA/SdtTYlY-K_QbhHf524pVzngKvjgLLYNZACLcBGAs/s640/global%2Bmulti-proxy%2Banalysis.JPG
[from: “A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era”]
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2J3kaSzzC1o/Ww7c6d5_QhI/AAAAAAAABmU/QDKA99XxgacIqG3BryW7EDN9B8Q40JAvwCLcBGAs/s640/MWP%252C%2Bnorthern%2Bhemisphere%252C%2Bsouthern%2Bhemisphere.PNG
[from: “Pacific ocean heat content during the past 10,000 years”]
“Tracking the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation through the last 8,000 years”
http://shoni2.princeton.edu/ftp/lyo/journals/Knudsen-etal-TrackingAMOPast8000yrs-Nature2011.pdf
I showed Atomski a 1000 year ENSO proxy – and decadal surface and satellite cloud observations. The warmer and cooler sea surfaces generate open or closed cell cloud in the tropics where most ocean warming happens (e.g. Koren 2017). It’s just geophysics Atomski.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/ArgoGlobalSummaryGraph.gif.
The AMO is regarded as being caused by ocean circulation changes induced by the NAO/AO. A symptom of enhanced meridional or zonal wind pattern emerging from the pole. With significant implication for NH climate. Solar UV may be implicated (e.g. Ineson et al 2015). –
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
And for surface temperature I just go back to PAGES 2013.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/pages.png
Emerging out of a centuries long cooler period – both ocean and atmosphere – with varying regional leads and lags? Anyone else bored with Atomski’s antics?
Besides I’m not sure Atomski appreciates – in both senses – the nature of the statistics that emerge from long climate series.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/nile-e1527722953992.jpg
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Demetris_Koutsoyiannis/publication/318226882_'Panta_Rhei'_and_its_relationship_with_uncertainty/links/595e153e0f7e9b1d9cde0719/Panta-Rhei-and-its-relationship-with-uncertainty.pdf
It is very on topic too. ‘Panta rhei and its relation to uncertainty.”
“Entropy ≡ Uncertainty quantified.
Re: “And for surface temperature I just go back to PAGES 2013.”
As usual, you’re out-of-date and uninformed on the relevant literature. I already cited the more recent PAGES results to you:
“A global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880116
If you’re going to be smug, not directly address people, talk to yourself, etc., then please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about, Robert.
“If you’re going to be smug, not directly address people, talk to yourself, etc., then please make sure you actually know what you’re talking about, Robert.”
Knowing what I am talking about is what distinguishes me from Atomski.
The difference between the 2013 and 2017 PAGES articles – and I have gone into both in some detail – is marginal in terms of the number and precision of proxies. The 2013 paper provided a regional analysis rather than just a global average.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/pages.png
There seems a pattern of mid millennia cooling and some patchy warming. It could be an accident. With lags and leads in the system. Note the modern polar anti-phase. Which is why I said I was going back to 2013.
If we deconstruct Atomski’s language on the other hand. I am out of date for referencing a 2013 paper – but is the data out of date? A few years in 1000’s? And I am therefore as usual an ignorant and arrogant SOB – guilty as charged – who sees no point in talking to him? Sound about right? ✨🤷♀️
Re: “If we deconstruct Atomski’s language on the other hand. I am out of date for referencing a 2013 paper – but is the data out of date?”
Looks like you’re talking to yourself again, and contradicting the standards you’ve applied before, as usual:
“Here’s something a little up to date for Atomski. Data is unlike wine – the newer it is the better.”
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880096
A few years added to the short satellite record makes a great deal of difference. Whether the millennial proxy data can be added to on such short periods is a question. This is more of Atomski’s motivated nonsense.
Re: “A few years added to the short satellite record makes a great deal of difference.”
It’s not my fault that you thought a paper from 2017 came after a paper from 2018. Just because I can tell time doesn’t everyone can.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880194
I showed the graph of TPW and tropospheric temp from a 5th of June 2017 paper. This – https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0768.1 from Atomski – comes from the 5th of June 2017. Another pointless Atomski p!!ssing contest? But Mears and Wentz (2017) have the updated version – I win.
The substantial point remains – discerning the differences between PAGES proxies over more than a 1000 years and the satellite records. Atomski lacks discernment.
Re: “I showed the graph of TPW and tropospheric temp from a 5th of June 2017 paper. This – https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0768.1 from Atomski – comes from the 5th of June 2017. Another pointless Atomski p!!ssing contest? But Mears and Wentz (2017) have the updated version – I win.”
*sigh*
“This is the paper I cited:
From April 2018: “Construction and uncertainty estimation of a satellite‐derived total precipitable water data record over the world’s oceans””
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880194
SMH. I don’t know what *sigh* means. Kiss sigh kiss? In his dreams.
This is what I referred to from the RSS site. See the whole page.
http://www.remss.com/research/climate/
“His” paper has the same TPW data from RSS – just far less pertinent information. I win again. Atomski is an utter waste of our time.
I don’t know what *sigh* means. Kiss sigh kiss? In his dreams.
This is what I referred to from the RSS site. See the whole page.
http://www.remss.com/research/climate/
“His” paper has the same TPW data from RSS – just far less pertinent information. less of it. I win again. Atomski is an utter waste of our time.
I started reading of the post with comments for good reason. To see certainty and uncertainty at work.
Atomski’s wriggle is manufacturing uncertainty about certainties. Global warming is real and dangerous.
Complexity in the Earth system is dispatched as inventions of sinister organisations. JCH’s wriggle is channeling a dead scientist. Jim Hunt went somewhere else.
Wow – I am following with interest.
I have often criticized people for hijacking Feynman, and other dead scientists.
JCH is certain they are all on his side.
Where the F do you get that? Feynman is invoked by climate skeptics a gob zillion times. I just point out he’s dead, and cannot defend himself against hijackers.
“Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.”
“I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.”
“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
“If you thought that science was certain – well, that is just an error on your part.”
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
If all these quotes seem to land rather firmly on a particular side of AGW, perhaps that has more to do with AGW than the people quoting him.
The counter to this article is manufactured uncertainty, e.g.
https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2008/11001/Doubt_is_Their_Product__Public_Health_and.58.aspx
Judith has had a lot of articles on this topic – not.
The counter to this comment is motivated certainty in a group dynamic.
An impossible illusion of certainty – whether believed or pretended – plays into pissant progressive, neo-socialist agendas. You know the fringe who supported Bernie Sanders. What a cruel joke Trump was for them.
Ironic then that the certainty of the complex deterministic dynamic of the Earth system reveals a deep uncertainty.
As I just posted elsewhere here, the basic observations support AGW too. Skeptics have to claim that is dumb luck rather than actual physics and energy conservation in action.
Jiminy’s 93% (sic) correlation with surface temp and CO2? The alternative is a complex deterministic dynamic system that changes with internal mechanisms quite separate to any mooted anthropogenic energy imbalances. Jiminy’s wood for dimwits graph supports nothing nearly as interesting as that.
This is an overwhelmingly powerful scientific paradigm – identified as such by the NAS as early as 2002 – relegated to outer darkness of uncertainty manufactured by sinister organisations? Conspiracy theory much?
That puts you firmly in the just dumb luck school of thought.
Jiminy’s science is limited to various misapplications of the most basic of geophysics. There is an advanced geophysics consensus that Jiminy cannot even contemplate. Why is that?
When you figure out an alternative to energy conservation, send it to the Nobel committee.
And the reason you bother us with this nonsense is?
I point out that the observations (and we have over 60 years of the Keeling curve now) support AGW (effective TCR=2.3 C per doubling) with a correlation of 0.93 and you’re having none of it. That’s for you to explain because I can’t.
I have already Jiminy – many times.
Energy conservation and the Nobel committee? I already know why the rest of your theory is junk. I
So you have settled in your mind that it 0.93 and not 93%. You can thank me anytime. But here we are again – such a stupendously improbable claim requires only an ordinary proof. Where would that be?
Percentages seem to confuse you, so I am avoiding that. If someone says something is 100% correlated, you would not have a clue what that means. I get it. It is not an improbable claim because the log relation is expected from basic physics. What is improbable is that you get 0.93 by chance with 60 data points and both are varying nonlinearly with time. What are the odds of that?
I think I covered percentages in engineering, hydrology or post graduate science. But none of this makes any sense at all. Jiminy claimed a stupendously impossible 93% correlation between surface temperature and atmosphere. I allowed as it might be a coefficient of determination rather than a correlation as such. Foolish of me – Jiminy doesn’t know the difference of course and then he argues mightily that it was my fault for not understanding percentages.
I got 0.83 from memory for things that are inextricably cause and effect in the Earth system. Ingoing and outgoing energy changes very substantially for numbers of reasons – and the Earth warms or cools. A bit like death and taxes or Jiminy’s unattractive attempts to wiggle out of admitting error.
A 0.93 correlation is still such an extraordinary claim by Jiminy and one that requires only an ordinary proof. Let me predict that it will never be forthcoming.
Take the last 60 years of global temperature, annual average, and CO2, annual average. Plot the log of CO2 against temperature (x and y), and find the correlation. This can all be done on Excel which also gives the gradient as 0.66 W/m2/K when log of CO2 is converted to W/m2 with a simple function.
Actually I meant 0.66 K/(W/m2), equivalent to 2.4 C per doubling.
I always think monthly because that’s where extreme variability is – but use yearly averages from say 1944 if you like – to get a true natural variability in there. I know how to do it in excel. You show us the graph with the correlation in the top left hand corner. An ordinary and simple proof and not more mere word salad is what Jiminy would need.
It was HADCRUT4 and a running 12-month mean of temperature and CO2 for the period covered by Keeling until 2018. If it was 0.93 would you change your mind about the effect of CO2 on climate? I thought not.
I’m game – I will change my mind that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
We could even say that a 0.93 correlation between temperature and CO2 forcing for the last 60 years is a level of certitude that you find incredible, right?
If you believe the correlation, you also believe the slope which is effectively 2.4 C per doubling. That would be a slippery slope for you, so to speak.
Your correlation? I don’t think so.
You have been caught out in a fabrication Jiminy. Wear it.
Even if I showed you all the numbers, you would not believe me until you did it yourself. The denial in you is strong. Come back when you have done it.
and we have over 60 years of the Keeling curve now) support AGW (effective TCR=2.3 C per doubling) with a correlation of 0.93
The warming into the Roman and Medieval warm periods correlated with this CO2 also, Oops, this CO2 was not part of the Roman and Medieval warming.
“Lean and Rind (2008) performed a multivariate correlation analysis for the period 1889–2006 using the CRU temperature data (Brohan et al 2006), and found that they could explain 76% of the temperature variance over this period from anthropogenic forcing, El Niño, volcanic aerosols and solar variability.”
It is obvious that Jiminy made it up and shamefully obfuscates.
Obviously they were not looking at the correlation between temperature and log CO2 over the last 60 years, so that’s apples and oranges. You seem very interested in this so here’s what I get using 60 years of annual averages (not running means as I did before).
BEST, r=0.934, gradient = 2.4 C per doubling
GISTEMP, 0945, 2.5 C
HADCRUT4, 0.918, 2.2 C
The high correlations make those gradients well constrained. This is a level of certitude that you find incredible, but it’s just what the observations show you.
No Jiminy – no more words – no more games – let’s see the graph, the data and the excel correlation for this impossible thing that you made up. Stop wasting our time and get on with it. .
RIE, your lack of belief is your problem, not mine. I gave you what I did. The raw data is here. Go to the Raw Data link at the bottom of the graph and copy and paste the numbers into your Excel program. That’s what I did.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/best/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/gistemp/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/every:12
Here’s the same data with CO2 rescaled to fit on the same plot. It is very clear that these are highly correlated and this is what it looks like when 60 years of raw observations supports a theory.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/best/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/gistemp/from:1958/mean:12/every:12/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/every:12/scale:0.01/offset:-3.25
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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On our menu this week, we have something to offend everyone.
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Entree
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Global warming – how long do we have left?
https://agree-to-disagree.com/global-warming-how-long-do-we-have-left
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Main
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Solving Global Warming is easy. _ (a do it yourself guide)
https://agree-to-disagree.com/solving-global-warming-is-easy
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Dessert
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If the earth was an apple pie… _ (a delicious global warming dessert)
https://agree-to-disagree.com/if-the-earth-was-an-apple-pie
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Do you understand that global warming is beneficial? If not, why not?
Peter,
like most things in life, global warming has its good points, and its bad points.
I don’t deny that there are some bad points.
But Alarmists deny that there any good points. And exaggerate the bad points.
I will stop mocking them, when they adopt a more balanced view.
They make such easy targets.
From a retired auto mechanic who spent thirty of my forty-five years wrenching diagnosing and repairing emission controls. I’ve followed this climate debate since the early 1970’s.
The article is over my head, to be honest with you, but I do know this. The alarmists are out of control, I know this from arguing the FACTS with them for hours a day in the local newspaper letters to the editor section.
That 97% consensus lie gets thrown around like a religious creed to these zealots. There is no reasoning with them.
Anyway, I enjoy the work you do…
The so called AGW era is over it ended in late 2017 . This year is the transitional year and cooler temperatures will be the rule moving forward.
This will be in response to the weakening of the solar/geo magnetic fields which has been going on for several years, and should continue moving forward.
Thus far since late 2017 overall global sea surface temperatures as well as global temperatures are trending lower.
As they say the climate test is on and now- next few years should be revealing.
The IPCC have a very clever approach to get around the problem that everything they are dealing with is uncertain. They say that everything is uncertain (satisfying Charles Manski’s main requirement), but then they mention no other possibilities. The reader is given one story only, and it is repeated so many times that the impression is given that the story must be true. So although they appear to do what Charles Manski advises, the advice they are actually following is that of Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”.
“If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.””
hmm. not so sure about that.
I understand why you’re not sure and that is why you believe what you do. The essence of the post is self evident and obvious. But only to those who are open to understand the obvious.
Emperor Mosh is correct in a roundabout, Machiavellian way – channeling Stephen Schneider as he seems to be. It’s perfect. They don’t even have to remember their lies. Their liturgy evolves at light speed on the internet. Where they rehearse at any rate at the feet of gatekeepers like realclimate, ATTP or hotwhoppethecowgirlfromupperbouledehilia – but what they say doesn’t really matter as long as they deny any uncertainty and make fun of troglodytes.
are you certain i am channeling schneider.
you would be wrong.
you forgot to list what you dont know.
it is so funny to watch you all be so certain about uncertainty.
you forgot to list what you dont know.
No, he didn’t forget. He knows everything.
And to be honest – I’ve forgotten most of what I did know.
Wow uncertainty is uncertain. Like blows my mind man.
I don’t know either, but consider me ambiguously amused.
Turbulent Eddy: I don’t know either, but consider me ambiguously amused.
If you ever admit to having been wrong, that will be held against you as a mark of your unreliability. Above, Atomsk’s Sanakan does that with Heartland Institutes admission that they were wrong about second hand smoke.
Way back a long time ago Ernest Rutherford had a strong influence when he said that no source of power existed to have pushed the continents apart, as hypothesized by Wegener. Of course, a truthful utterance would have been “If there is such a source of power, I don’t know what it is”.
So back to the quote that Steve Mosher is not so sure about: “If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.””
Has anyone ever won a public argument by being up front about what they do not know?
“And now time for the next monthly temperature reports, Snowing in Australia and Italy the last few days but fires everywhere the rest of the month. JCH quiet again.
Arctic Sea Ice blog very quiet.
Like the Stockmarket. Which way will it break?”
Ahh, now we know.
What a great lag effect from the wimpy La Nina.
How low can it go?
“The Version 6.0 global average lower tropospheric temperature (LT) anomaly for August, 2018 was +0.19 deg. C, down from the July value of +0.32 deg. C: ”
There should be a flattening out in the next few monthswith slightly warm tropics bu even so one can wish.
Certitude of Global warming being man made?
Bunkum.
Lol. Just lol. How low can it go? Not very low.
I believe there are currently about 5,000 electric vehicles in Australia, I would expect that almost all were bought by virtue-signalling green-left-leaning governments. The non-government demand for hybrids and ev’s is very low.
Arctic Sea Ice blog very quiet.
I take it that you missed the message about Neven’s “sabbatical”?
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2016/11/sabbatical-i-wish.html
If you’re suffering from withdrawal symptoms there’s always the Arctic Sea Ice Forum:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,3.0.html
Thanks , Jim. I do go over to the forum for the PIOMAS updates by Wipneus particularly the mid month one he puts up that most people seem unaware of.
I thought that you had had a little hiatus recently though making up for it now which is good. Yes saw Neven was away, I was referring more to his blog which gets 60-100 monthly with bad ice melts and 10-30 when the PIOMAS is misbehaving itself and increasing like now.
He could get more but bans some riff raff [sigh].
Keep posting.
I like reading different sites and ones like yours with different views to mine.
My alter ego did indeed suffer from a “brief hiatus”. That’s because in my professional capacity I have been rather busy spending a modest amount of Great British taxpayers’ money:
http://www.v2g-evse.com/2018/08/06/department-for-transport-invests-in-v2g-evse/
This is what the DfT had to say about our “Vehicle to grid controller with modular communications” project, seed funded by the Department for Transport in response to our “Transport Technology Research Innovation Grant Open Call” bid:
“Developing a prototype for a vehicle to grid electric vehicle charging station controller, which will enable optimal charging across multiple vehicles, managing energy demand. This will include modular communications which will provide information to a central system.”
jim
Good stuff on that link. Well done! I hope electric vehicles are the panacea sought. I have had an electric bike for years, which I charge via a small solar panel. The trouble is if it runs out of power at the bottom of a hill…!
Electric cars need to make the transition to a sensible first choice as a first-rather than second- car, available at a sensible price. That includes the times when its not ‘sunny south western England’ but its pouring with rain, its dark and cold and we are going over Dartmoor, up and down steep hills with four people, with headlamps, wipers, heater and radio on, without looking nervously at the gauge.
(full disclosure: My electric bike ran out of power at the foot of a hill this morning) :)
Sincerely, well done.
tonyb
Thanks for your kind words Tony. It makes a pleasant change to get some inward investment into the South West from Westminster rather than Brussels!
Given that our Glorious Government states that it intends to electrify both transport and heating it’s currently unclear to me where all the necessary generation is going to come from. It’s probably even less clear to them!
N.B. My own bike works on muscle power alone. Rain or shine. Summer or winter!
Jim Hunt
The trouble with relying on electric is that if it runs out then the bike and battery is EXREMELY heavy and it is impossible to cycle up anything remotely steep unless you’ve just returned from winning the mountain stages of the tour de france.
I have no idea either where the power for electric cars is supposed to come from. Things are very tight anyway without millions of vehicles-cars AND commercial vehicles- needing recharging.
tonyb.
Always charge your electric vehicle overnight, using abundant solar power. /sarc
George – I think you’ll find that there aren’t many charging stations in the Land of the Midnight Sun:
https://youtu.be/CjWAP3Okq68
Jim Hunt: http://www.v2g-evse.com/2018/08/06/department-for-transport-invests-in-v2g-evse/
Thank you for the link. My son is a fan of electric cars — that is, an enthusiast..
My pleasure Matthew.
Lahsen, M. (2005). Seductive simulations? Uncertainty distribution around climate Models. Social Studies of Science 35 (6): 895-922. DOI: 0.1177/0306312705053049
Highly relevant here; a must read. Free copy below.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-1891-2005.49.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiC3-aihJvdAhURXK0KHcGOCaAQFjAAegQIBBAB&usg=AOvVaw2EtTRepN36CLXxFqTsPDOF
Thank you. A very useful reference.
Uncertainty is the only certainty there is and learning to live with insecurity is the only security.
John Allen Paulo’s
Now, when uncertainty and insecurity are turned to fear by extremists, when they have no greater certainty, and a select few profit from that fear, when do those actions become criminally misleading.
Regards
The lag effect is nearly over but the overall anomaly is not that high and the tropics are not that hot. There may still be room for a few more surprises for JCH and if El Nino does not develop then the absolute temps cannot go that high and may continue falling into close to zero anomalies. If a proper La Nina all bets off.
Interesting to watch the contortions the ground stations will have to go through to cut off the good news.
Perhaps we will have to use ATTP’S 60 airport stations only to keep the falsehoods flying.
Reblogged this on Quaerere Propter Vērum.
“Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.” Marcia Wyatt
I bookmarked Atomski’s link – it looked instantly familiar. Comfortable as an old favourite. I like them a lot.
“Lean and Rind (2008) performed a multivariate correlation analysis for the period 1889–2006 using the CRU temperature data (Brohan et al 2006), and found that they could explain 76% of the temperature variance over this period from anthropogenic forcing, El Niño, volcanic aerosols and solar variability. The long-term warming trend almost exclusively stems from anthropogenic forcing. They also analyzed the geographic distribution of the temperature response. In a follow-up paper (Lean and Rind 2009) they applied their results to discuss the expected climate evolution over the coming two decades. Our regression analysis uses a similar approach to Lean and Rind, but is applied here to compare five different global temperature data sets over the past 32 years.”
I have been there and I have the t-shirt. A diffident as I always am I hesitate to quibble – but the treatment of the Pacific factor may be a little exploratory still.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/lean-and-rind.jpg
I juxtapose that with Clements et al 2009 COADS and ISCCP observations of cloud in the north-eastern Pacific.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/clement-et-al-e1512080464744.png
And Wong et al 2006 ERB satellite observations of toa outgoing radiant flux.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/wong-et-al-2006-e1510341656183.png
If real it shows low frequency variability in the climate system – and the equivocal factor for the IPCC was sporadic cloud observations of mainland America. The relevance of the latter may not be immediately obvious.
“In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.” https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html
So even when we have a collection of bits the complexity of even this sub-system is daunting. Are all the pieces even assembled? On this evidence – if real – something very powerful with less cloud over warm ocean surfaces in the Pacific was happening in the period. 21st century technology shines an even harsher light – it is happening. Koren (2017) – Exploring the nolinear rain and cloud equation – has a mechanism in Rayleigh–Bénard convection in a fluid heated from below.
But even with the parts the whole is greater still. This grand dynamic deterministic complexity – in the scientific sense – is a whole new uncertainty ballgame. I don’t know what the consensus is here but it is such a powerful idea in so many fields including climate and models. It was identified as a new climate paradigm by the NAS as long ago as 2002 – denying it now is like denying relativity or quantum mechanics. It was the third great idea of 20th century physics.
I note as well with a straight face that Brohan et al 2006 explained 76% of temperature variation in this natural warming regime. Because we know that Pacific regimes contributed to warming after the 1976/77 Pacific climate shift (NASA 2008) – or do we?
… explained (by CO2) 76% of temperature…
Two first thoughts.
1. Anon: There is always doubt. There is no doubt about that.
2. Those who understand and agree with the gist of the Charles Manski article and the Dr Curry thoughts are in a different group to the Establishment because they have a different understanding of uncertainty. It would be surprising to me to hear from any committed warmist who understands even a small part of the article, IMHO, many would start to read, then stop in distate. Sometimes I feel that we are evolving into 2 or more different tribes and never the twain shall meet. Geoff.
Scot Adams recently had a podcast discussing Trump’s alleged or factual untruthfulness. The upshot was that both dumb arguments and bad facts and good arguments and correct facts don’t work in persuasion for leadership.
The sweet spot for leadership being in the middle, something like good arguments and week facts.
Politics and advocacy don’t jibe well with science. Perhaps the IPPC should scrap the part for policymakers.
How uncertain to appear is a persuasion problem. Some degree of uncertainty makes you most believable and it’s a matter of finding it.
Science on the other hand is based on curiosity.
Reblogged this on I Didn't Ask To Be a Blog.
https://i.imgur.com/qmCY0CA.png
– authors include Manski
Good, this is topical.
The most egregious attacks have been on climate science. U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord leaves the U.S. isolated from the international community — the only U.N. member declining to participate in the accord.
“Attacks on science” is immediately cited in terms of policy, not science – interesting conflation.
Climate scientists have been prevented from speaking at scientific conferences. Some are forbidden from using phrases affirming the reality and seriousness of human-induced climate change, or from speaking to the press about matters directly related to their research.
When I was church going as a child, I was curious about the Affirmation of Faith. Religions affirm things, science tests things.
A serious current concern is the stated intention of EPA head Scott Pruitt to assemble a “Red Team-Blue Team” exercise to re-litigate all aspects of climate science. This call for a “do-over” ignores many previous assessments of climate science by highly qualified experts.
True scientific inquiry is happy to “do-over” – we call this reproduceable results. If the results fail to replicate, “science” is still happy, because we learn things.
These assessments have consistently acknowledged the reality and dangers of anthropogenic climate change.
I don’t think this is correct. Assessments have consistently failed to demonstrate danger. Assessments have demonstrated likely global warming, but conflating global warming with danger is most often an appeal to emotion. Weather and climate themselves are not particularly dangerous in the context of other dangers, often self inflicted, that humans encounter. Climate change is not large, so changes in these already small risks are similarly small. And there is no scientific demonstration that changes from global warming would increase rather than decrease or leave unchanged dangers from weather or climate.
Lol.
The Paris accord in a nutshell: The U.S. will finance all good governments in places like Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Syria, and North Korea among others. Signed single-handedly by President Obama. To refuse to provide that money is an act of aggression, just like stopping money for Hamas rocketry.
One wonders why it took 3 professors to write an opinion piece for the Mercury News about Trump policies. My guess is one is an activist who wrote the article and the other two are sympathetic to the cause and lent their names to the article to give it credibility. Looking at each’s cv I am guessing the writer is the retired astronomer turned climate justice activist. Here is a web page on his climate communication seminars held for climate scientists to become more politically active. https://www.aaas.org/news/communicating-climate-change-aaas-member-ray-weymann
There is not much to contribute to Manski’s excellent paper. Unfortunately there is more certitude about the predictable positions of many of the commenters here.
A stale debate at best.
No need for people to abuse Manski’s work to support their nonsense, contrarian views on climate science. After all, you clearly noted Manski saying this on mainstream climate scientific forthrightly addressing uncertainty:
“Yet some fields endeavor to be forthright about uncertainty.
I particularly have in mind climate science, which has sought to predict how greenhouse gas emissions affect the trajectory of atmospheric temperature and sea level. Published articles on climate science often make considerable effort to quantify uncertainty. See, for example, Knutty et al. (2010), McGuffie and Henderson-Sellers (2005), McWilliams (2007), Parker (2006, 2013), Palmer et al. (2005), and Stainforth et al. (2007). The attention paid to uncertainty in the periodic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is especially notable; see Mastrandrea et al. (2010).”
You disagree with Manski’s claim. But that’s your view, not Manski’s, and so Manski’s work should not be abused/misrepresented as supporting your position.
In any event, your trite comments on the IPCC have already been rebutted multiple times. For example, the IPCC’s tone tends to be more tentative and less “alarmist”, with sufficient attention paid to uncertainty, as shown in sources such as:
“Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” by J. A. Curry and P. J. Webster”
“Guidance note for lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on consistent treatment of uncertainties”
“The language of denial: Text analysis reveals differences in language use between climate change proponents and skeptics”
This fits rather well with the work of John Ioannidis. His work was abused on this blog as well, in order to manufacture false doubt about climate science. Yet Ioannidis notes that the evidence (and level of certainty) on anthropogenic climate change is on par with the evidence (and level of certainty) that smoking kills people:
17:17 to 18:22 of:
“RS 174 – John Ioannidis on “What happened to Evidence-based medicine?””
http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs-174-john-ioannidis-on-what-happened-to-evidence-based-med.html
So Ioannidis made an apt comparison between the science on “smoking causing cancer” and the science on “humans causing climate change.” He made this comparison because he recognizes that scientific hypotheses have increasing certainty as more and more research groups test the hypothesis using different lines of evidence, methodologies, etc., and keep finding that the hypothesis passes the tests.
Thus your appeals to uncertainty are moot, as per Ioannidis’s and Manski’s points; there are simply so many consilient lines of evidence on anthropogenic climate change, on how much of the warming is anthropogenic, etc. that appealing to uncertainty to cast doubt on this, is on par with appeal to uncertainty to cast doubt on smoking having killed millions of people. The National Academy of Sciences makes much the same point as well:
“Any scientific theory is thus, in principle, subject to being refined or overturned by new observations. In practical terms, however, scientific uncertainties are not all the same. Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities [pages 21 – 22].
[…]
Most of the warming over the last several decades can be attributed to human activities that release carbon dioxide (CO2) and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere [chapter 2, page 28].”
https://www.nap.edu/read/12782/chapter/4#21
“Essentially, this behaviour manifests that long-term changes are much more frequent and intense than commonly perceived and, simultaneously, that the future states are much more uncertain and unpredictable on long time horizons than implied by standard approaches. Surprisingly, however, the implications of multi-scale change have not been assimilated in geophysical sciences. A change of perspective is thus needed, in which change and uncertainty are essential parts.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02626667.2013.804626
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas seems clear since I read the FAR as a relatively young engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. But I was much more interested in multi-decadal – guess which – flood and drought regimes in eastern and northern Australia. An environmental scientist knows enough about everything to follow the synergistic flow of ideas in a multi-disciplinary setting and apply it to solve practical social, political, economic and environmental problems. So I don’t apologize for my natural philosophy – and don’t require Atomski’s motivated peer review.
What is the balance of intrinsic and anthropogenic in the dynamic deterministic complexity of the Earth system? I think we can find a greater diversity of opinion than that.
Dimitris Koutsoyiannis – in A random walk in water – redefined deterministic and random – just two words after all – as predictable and unpredictable. Climate is unpredictable.
“Fundamental barriers to advancing weather and climate prediction on timescales from days to years, as well as longstanding systematic errors in weather and
climate models, are partly attributable to our limited understanding of and capability for simulating the complex, multiscale interactions intrinsic to atmospheric, oceanic,
and cryospheric fluid motions.” https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/2009BAMS2752.1
Days and years are the best that can be hoped for. Longer simulations project far too much chaotic – in the scientific sense – uncertainty forward to be valid science. Multi-scale, initialized, decadal models – using 1000’s of times more computing power – would be of interest.
The divide between between believers and non-believers seems starkly predictable. Pissant progressives and conservatives according to some. Jim Hunt directs me to his site – life is too short – where apparently it is nature and not nurture. Two things come to mind. What about life-cycle transitions and what has this to do with science?.
“If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.” Winston Churchill
Somewhere in Atomski’s revolving commentary – amidst the copious conspiracy theories of sinister organisations creating uncertainty where there is none – is the 97% wiggle. Everything is known without a doubt by legions of earnest scientists. Jim Hunt finds evidence of ignorance or bad faith in scarcity of early data. A problem not confined to the HadCRU. And they all show the same thing. Vigorous decadal variability. Jiminy does a 360 with a half gainer blames me that the CO2/Temp correlation is not 93% or 0.93 or whatever the latest is – and I wouldn’t believe it if it was because I am such a denier. JCH is a sad case who imagines that LOL will convey his sneering contempt for whatever is being said. These are wiggles in defense of a collective meme set.
So certainty and uncertainty follow the political divide. This was OK for progressives while Emperor Mosh ruled – they could sweep uncertainty under the carpet and the public didn’t need to know. There’s no more cover now the Uncertainty Monster is in charge.
A random walk on water is interesting for the cherry picks, but the water is still going downstream. The river may meander, but it will not suddenly turn right and head up the hillside because of randomness.
Summer will be warmer than winter in the northern hemisphere, no computing power necessary. Initial conditions don’t apply as much as you think, and if they did the decadal trend would still be clear even if you could try something like add more water vapor one day. Larger trends gobble the smaller ones.
No matter how much chaos or uncertainly you demonstrate, the larger trends define the boundaries. Seasons trounce the small eddies. Climate is reasonably predictable within the scope of the issue of a warming earth, but if you’re looking for Earth’s average temp next July 20 in NYC, then you’re going to feel more comfortable on Heller or Watts’ site.
Is the earth warming? Yes. Is CO2 the largest forcing? Yes. Do we know what the average temperature for 2028 will be? No, but it will be warmer and we will still wish we had done more about CO2.
Koutsoyiannis is cherry picking? Koontz is wandering in the wilderness with his dog collecting aphorisms . And the answer is no – the golden summer is not necessarily warmer than winters that follow, the energy budget changes far more with ocean and atmospheric circulation than with CO2, the Earth system is characterized by abrupt and wild shifts and climate is not predictable. What they should do is broaden their horizons but that is not happening.
And I have several peer reviewed links just in this post.
“Koutsoyiannis is cherry picking?” No, why would he think he was? You were cherry picking, or more to the point using research on one topic and misapplying it to another.
“Dimitris Koutsoyiannis – in A random walk in water – redefined deterministic and random – just two words after all – as predictable and unpredictable. Climate is unpredictable.”
See that last sentence? That’s yours! You are pretending that there are no possible trends in dynamic systems. That is simply not true, and there are many examples of this.
Why are you still wandering in the woods with your dog? Has nothing to do with the fact that a dynamic system can still have trends, and you choose to pretend that those overarching trends do not exist.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you think that climate is so unpredictable that the past century of warming is a random result of a complex system, and not the work of forcings like CO2. That we could have been cooling just as easily.
You’re still not getting how complex systems can have deterministic properties.
And summers are always warmer than winters that follow in the timeframe we are discussing. You Gish Galloped the scale of the issue.
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of (perturbed physics) ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.” IPCC 2001
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system�s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.” Julia Slingo and Tim Palmer
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation (see ref. 26).” James McWilliams
The problem is their narrow focus and motivated bias that traps them in the shallow end of the geophysics pool,
“Lorenz was able to show that even for a simple set of nonlinear equations (1.1), the evolution of the solution could be changed by minute perturbations to the initial conditions, in other words, beyond a certain forecast lead time, there is no longer a single, deterministic solution and hence all forecasts must be treated as probabilistic. The fractionally dimensioned space occupied by the trajectories of the solutions of these nonlinear equations became known as the Lorenz attractor (figure 1), which suggests that nonlinear systems, such as the atmosphere, may exhibit regime-like structures that are, although fully deterministic, subject to abrupt and seemingly random change.” The Slingo and Palmer quote.
Deterministic dynamic complexity is the fundamental mode of operation of the Earth system. The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain.
It is only seemingly random (unpredictable in Koutsoyiannis’ terminology) as attested to by Slingo and Palmer. I have gone into detail frequently – but it is pointless with such as Koontz as he quite obviously lacks the intellectual framework to make any sense of it. But the NAS climate paradigm is the consensus.
“I have gone into detail frequently – but it is pointless with such as Koontz as he quite obviously lacks the intellectual framework to make any sense of it.”
This is what one expects from someone who studied chaos late in the game. Notice that Ellison never asked about my background, so he feels safe with his insults.
Your insults are more interesting when you realize I have a math degree and a computer science degree, from a high-ranking university, and received both more than a decade before you. I was reading chaos papers long before you knew what chaos was.
“he quite obviously lacks the intellectual framework” Let me guess: you’re a conservative.
Your modus operandi is to insult people. Carry on.
Scott
Did you ever think of getting a refund or been afflicted with buyers’s remorse.?
You and Atomskiyiyi make it so easy to ignore your intellect free comments. Skepticism never felt so right.
Well it wasn’t an insult – but do these people have no self awareness? They pootle about disparaging everyone and everything and take offence when they are not taken at their own estimation.
He knows everything about chaos apart from that it is a reality, it is the fundamental mode of geophysics and it is a common and powerful paradigm in climate science.
“The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation.” Wally Broecker
Facile analogies about dogs and fans inform my thoughts on Scott’s capacities.
“Did you ever think of getting a refund or been afflicted with buyers’s remorse.?”
Did you actually pay to use this site? I think you need to get your money back. Why would I have buyer’s remorse?
Hard to know what is an insult from you guys. You seem to insult yourselves quite often.
@Scott Koontz
“from a high-ranking university”
After having attended several it was impossible not to conclude that “high ranking university” defines a collective of the dumbest people on the planet alongside the smartest. It seems you did not figure this out, which places you in the former category.
This thread seems to have become a venue for hyperbolic alarmism, which is useful to see in its naked form. Speaking of which, the Atlantic has a new piece on what they consider lack of alarmist political progress in Australia and Canada.
This prediction strikes me as unbelievably extreme, but apparently they really believe it: “Simply put: This kind of failure, writ large, would devastate Earth in the century to come. The world would blow its stated goal of limiting atmospheric temperature rise. Heat waves might regularly last for six punishing weeks, sea levels could soar by feet in a few short decades, and certain fragile ecosystems—like the delicate Arctic permafrost or the kaleidoscopic plenty of coral reefs would disappear from the planet entirely.”
“Devastate Earth”!
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/a-global-rightward-shift-on-climate-change/568684/
I feel sorry for people who believe this stuff, but I also consider them to be dangerous. These are truly radical beliefs, which might justify all sorts of extreme behavior. Devastate Earth?
Speaking of alarmists losing political ground, I have this tidbit:
http://www.cfact.org/2018/08/30/coal-hits-the-political-fan-in-germany/
Re: “This thread seems to have become a venue for hyperbolic alarmism
[…] Speaking of alarmists losing political ground”
Let me know when you have some actual evidence for the nonsensical abuse of terms like “alarmism”. For example, the IPCC tends to under-estimate the impacts of climate change, which runs contrary to the charge of alarmism:
“Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction
[…]
A constant refrain coming from the denial campaign is that climate scientists are “alarmists” who exaggerate the degree and threat of global warming to enhance their status, funding, and influence with policy makers. The contribution by William Freudenburg and Violetta Muselli provides an insightful empirical test of this charge and finds it to lack support. […] They then present evidence that IPCC assessments have in fact understated the degree of subsequently reported climate disruption, supporting their argument.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-ipcc-underestimated-climate-change/
And this is some of the relevant supporting research on this point:
“Reexamining Climate Change Debates: Scientific Disagreement or Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs)?”
“Climate change prediction: Erring on the side of least drama?”
“Global warming estimates, media expectations, and the asymmetry of scientific challenge”
Furthermore, the IPCC’s tone tends to be more tentative and less “alarmist”, with sufficient attention paid to uncertainty:
“The language of denial: Text analysis reveals differences in language use between climate change proponents and skeptics”
“Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster” by J. A. Curry and P. J. Webster”
“Guidance note for lead authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on consistent treatment of uncertainties”
The IPCC got it wrong dammit. It’s much worse than they thought says the rigorous research of the Marxist sociology collective @wgaf…
Jim Hunr reckons it’s ugly photos. You can show ugly photos to me all day long. I’m not scared. This is what I see in the mirror every morning.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/werewolf.jpg
Robert,
This is the sort of “disgusting image” the psychoboffins had in mind:
http://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Disgusting_worms.jpg
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27437799
Can you by any chance provide us with a selfie along similar lines?
Do they imagine I give a rat’s arse about their backgrounds? Bizarre. As I said they pootle about portraying those not in the club as fools and troglodyte contrarions – and instruct us all in the right way of thinking on this certain and eternal science. Again and again usually. I tell Scott he doesn’t know – quite obviously – what he is talking about and there is this meltdown in which his background somehow matters. And Banton is the feather duster bringing up a discombobulated rear.
It amazes me what gets through moderation and what doesn’t. I have a comment with two quotes from peer reviewed science – and nothing else – in moderation – and this long winded rant from Banton filled exclusively with nasty invective gets through. I’m content to wait for it to disappear and can only encourage Banton to do the same.
Oh by the way here’s the quote in context.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/08/25/week-in-review-science-edition-85/#comment-879426
AtomsksSanakan: Let me know when you have some actual evidence for the nonsensical abuse of terms like “alarmism”. For example, the IPCC tends to under-estimate the impacts of climate change, which runs contrary to the charge of alarmism:
Actually, the burden of proof is on those who claim “the IPCC tends to under-estimate the impact of climate change.” Other than computer programs, there is no evidence of alarming climate change; particularly caused by anthropogenic CO2. Prophets of doom have always been with us and the only difference between the past and today is the computer which allows almost instantaneously misapplication of scientific principles. Good luck with that!
Re: “Actually, the burden of proof is on those who claim “the IPCC tends to under-estimate the impact of climate change.””
The evidence was cited:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879875
You just willfully ignore it. Do better.
The burden of proof falls on these making alarmist claims. Thirty years should have been ample time to come up with something other than handwaving, argumentation, and unsubstantiated claims, yet that is all you offer. Where is the data, where is the proof: it is not in the source you referenced.
It’s hard to prove the future. What do you suggest?
You read Atomski’s links? Do better.
The same as always Jiminy. You only need to ask.
“The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts.”
https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation
That 2011 article was ahead of Paris and sounds a lot like Paris. Why go back to a 2011 prediction? Did you approve of that, and therefore do you approve of Paris?
So Jiminy has said before. It is not the case that the Paris COP is anything like these series of papers that started with the LSE in 2009. This is not what the UNFCCC had in mind.
“The developing world is on a path to a high energy fossil future regardless of a “commitment” to the notion that it is a good idea to help it along. It is simply the affordable path and as such the only viable path out of poverty.
The developed world is already high energy and despite much weeping and gnashing of teeth, is projected to continue burning more fossil fuels at current rates into the foreseeable future. This highlights the patently obvious but constantly ignored nature of the problem.
To paraphrase James Carville “Its the economics, stupid.”
No matter if the problem is seen as climate change, energy security, resource depletion or poverty, the real problem is the economics. Energy is just too big a part of the world economy to triple its cost.
The only viable solution is clean sustainable energy at lower cost than fossil fuel energy.
The policy consensus is no such present or near future low cost technology exists. In its “Beyond Boom and Bust” report, this institute advocated better R&D focused energy policy to develop such technologies. Subsequently, no attempt has been made to advocate for any energy other than nuclear. This is inconsistent and brings motives into question. High minded concerns for the developing world prompt similar concerns.
The consensus that there is no possible low cost energy alternative is a self fulfilling prophecy if it leads to no attempt to search for such a solution.” https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
RIE, I don’t know if you’re quoting that because you disagree with it, but it all looks like a valid viewpoint to me. They know things need to be done and the technology is hard, but we should try anyway. I subscribe to all that.
I quote it because I disagree? Is this another level of oddness?
I have discussed endlessly the role of greenhouse gases as a control variable in a deterministic dynamically complex system. Like lots. But things get lost in translation by Jiminy – almost every comment. I feel that it is deliberate – or else inordinately careless. Whenever he tells me what I believe it is untrustworthy.
But I am glad he is in favor or unfettered access to fossil fuels for economic growth.
“unfettered access” is not what they say, but “reducing climate forcings” is. Maybe you misread something or quoted the wrong thing.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Our High Energy Planet advocates for the cheapest energy source – yet Jiminy does it.
“In the Moyhu NCEP/NCAR index, the monthly reanalysis anomaly average fell from 0.261°C in July to 0.194°C in August, 2018. This is a slightly greater drop than the previous month’s rise, and so makes August the coldest month since July 2015 in this surface record. In the lower troposphere, UAH also fell by a little more, 0.13°C, than the previous month’s rise.”
Thanks, Nick. I do not use your well laid out site often enough. But we need a much bigger drop over the next 5 years to restore the pause and reduce ECS range,
Keep working on it please.
This is like day trading, and you’re shorting the temperature stock *monthly* and applauding when a warm month follows an even warmer month, thus… cooling!
“But we need a much bigger drop over the next 5 years to restore the pause and reduce ECS range,”
The days of pause-watching are over, trounced by the obvious decadal trend, which should have put the “we’re about to cool, just wait for it” theories to rest. Send global temp graphs to high school students and ask 1) is the trend up or down, 2) can you find a “pause” or two and do they seem to have reversed the trend, and 3) do you think this trend is about to turn soon?
Every five years you “need” an even bigger drop to support your gut feelings. Of course you need a bigger drop because the trend is obvious. “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”
Jim Hunt asked what vigorous decadal variability would that be then. That would be 1944 to 1976, 1977 to 1998 and period since for instance. Each period has its own different temperature trajectory – but it never figures in the collective memes. And it is not just shuffling energy around the system. This can be seen easily enough in mainstream science – but somehow it just doesn’t sink in.
There are bulls and bears, the market is bearish at the moment. There is a breakout due, it seems to be on the upside for arctic ice. There are fundamentals like 60 year cycles for some. Random chaotic walks or black swans.
I have been day trading with JCH for the last 3 years, he is up heaps. At the moment I have a steady average 0.4 C monthly drop this year and he is struggling to cover his position.
I fully expect another 2- 3 months of small drops, hope for a La Niña and a big party with champagne at Xmas if that happens.
angech – Perhaps we might arrange a festive Arctic bet around a bottle of bubbly?
Or better yet, a Xmas hamper to a good cause?
The ENSO mean in a deep perspective suggests a return to more Nina like conditions. Theory and modelling suggest a linkage from solar UV production to polar surface pressures and ocean gyres.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vance2012-antartica-law-dome-ice-core-salt-content.jpg
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1
Could this have commenced with the 21st century plateau that started with the 1998/2001 climate shift? Another shift is due in this decade.
“I fully expect another 2- 3 months of small drops”
Gee, monthly drops. Sounds exciting. I’ve won every decadal bet I’ve made, but you can pretend that single months or even years are the concern.
Jim, you are a gentleman.
Scott, big journeys start with small steps.
I would be extremely worried if large changes were commonplace, as would any thinking person.
So I will take small any day.
But let us look at the Arctic.
On a day 2 weeks ahead of the usual minimum.
With a faster than average melting rate (extent not volume) in August.
With recent waves and hurricanes troubling the ice pack and warmer condions in large areas.
Yet it may be starting to refresh early and might end up only 8th lowest in the last 40 years.
Feedback from that will give a lead to slightly lower global temps in September.
Small steps .
What’s not to like.
Jim,
I wish I had not commented as any prediction tends to follow Neven’s and WUWT’s rule on arctic ice comments. Massive egg on face.
Re: “The days of pause-watching are over, trounced by the obvious decadal trend”
Yup.
“Given the results of this nuanced analysis, we conclude that claims that the global mean temperature has not changed in recent decades are not supported by evidence. In addition, our nuanced analysis gives much needed rigor to the claim that using 1998 as a reference year amounts to “cherry picking” [Leber, 2014, Stover, 2014], see also Supplemental Section for detailed discussions).”
https://statistics.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2015-16.pdf
“We find that the public discussion of time intervals within the range 1998–2014 as somehow unusual or unexpected, as indicated by terms like ‘hiatus’, ‘pause’ and ‘slowdown’, has no support in rigorous study of the temperature data.”
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6825/meta
“Satellite temperature measurements do not support the recent claim of a “leveling off of warming” over the past two decades.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5443760/
Comments here would be helped if writers refreshed the definitions of various classes of uncertainty, be they those given by Dr Curry in earlier threads, or others.
One cannot comment on overall system uncertainty in the same breath as measurement uncertainty, for example. More, the overall uncertainty is a type of combination of the sub types, but few commenters seem to have any idea of how the combination is performed, let alone formal concepts like the propagation of errors.
The IPCC in AR5 used alarming methodology by departing from mathematical combinations and introducing personal subjective estimates by experts. Atomwhatever quotes Manski within approval, “IPCC tends to under-estimate the effects of climate change”. In realty, one cannot make a valid comment like this, because it is dependent on the “truth” of the estimates. In this case, truth went out of the window years ago when the customary IPCC methodology revealed little understanding of how to properly observe, measure and express uncertainty. Much published work treats uncertainty at about high school level, leading to numerous past criticisms like not knowing the differences between accuracy and precision. And that is just for the subset of measurement uncertainty.
It is therefore futile and improper to present to the public, conclusions that for example the IPCC under-estimates uncertainty. The IPCC demonstrated gross ignorance when it introduced the expert circle jerk as a way to treat uncertainty. (“Trust me, I am from government and I am here to help you.”)
In summary, if the IPCC and other promoters of global warming had used formal, proper estimates of uncertainty from the beginning, global warming would have never got off the ground. Its destruction was guaranteed by its own data and its real uncertainty. Evidence for this comes from the near-complete absence of references in scientific papers to formal, established estimates of errors and uncertainties.
While these proper, formal methods are well documented and we’ll known by hard scientists, sometimes even legally required to be used, they have been almost completely ignored, in favour of subjective hubris. Geoff
It’s not uncertainty per se, but it is the concept of threats and risks, which is probabilities of bad things happening. For example climate change increases threats and risks, and these are usually stated. For example, wildfires, droughts, floods, surges, storms, diseases, pestilence, heatwaves, ecosystem loss, etc. I think you find a lot of this written about together with the detection of changes and trends that are already occurring in all these directions even under only 1 degree of global warming. IPCC WG2 is devoted to reviewing these studies.
Jim D,
I just wrote that it is about about uncertainty per se and your response is to say that it is not. What can your response possibly add to the debate? Try thinking about what I wrote, rather than trying to dismiss it.
Also, uncertainty is not just about “bad things happening”. It is also about good things happening, or less restricted, about things happening.
You claim that “climate change increases threats and risks, and these are usually stated. For example, wildfires, droughts, floods, surges, storms, diseases, pestilence, heatwaves, ecosystem loss, etc. ”
You have no idea about the topic. There is next to no evidence from the past that most of these have become worse, some evidence that some have improved. If past trends are towards improvement, how on earth do project project future disaster? Do you think you can change weather?
Geoff
I am pointing you to WG2 which addresses threats and risks, and yes there may be some benefits in there too. Uncertainty is too non-specific for anyone to discuss. You have to apply it to something. Each risk has its own weather parameters, and shifting probabilities also change the risks.
The largest uncertainty factor between now and 2100 is emissions. It could be anywhere from 1000 GtCO2 to 10000 GtCO2, worth several degrees of warming. Other uncertainties are small by comparison.
Epistemic uncertainty – ‘relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation’.
““Wunsch stressed that “very little is actually proven in this subject” and possible policy solutions are beyond the reach of science.
“It’s an extraordinarily complicated social, economic, political and scientific problem that we’re now reducing to sound bites,” Wunsch said.” https://www.cnbc.com/id/19090539
The delusion that there is not immense epistemic uncertainty in understanding of the climate system is wildly improbable but there it is.
You see what I did there. Skeptics want to talk in terms of uncertainties, but when you shift that to risks and threats they get uncomfortable because then it is like arguing on away territory for them to even recognize such things. It’s all in the framing of the discussion.
Risk is the product probabilities and consequences – and none of that is well known. What is certain is that extremes get more extreme the further back in time any Earth subsystem is examined. Tacking this with carbon taxes is misguided. Building of societal resilience with energy and production innovation and wealth creation is the rational course.
Obviously building for resilience has to account for climate change too. Otherwise you are just mitigating against repeats of past events. There’s a recognition of rapidly changing conditions needed to do that properly, and that the change depends on how much burning of fossil fuels we do in this century. Any less is doomed to failure.
Past extremes – including in hydrology – were much greater than those seen in the 20th century. CO2 is a control variable in a complex and dynamic system. But for him to believe that there is any handle on this is complete and motivated nonsense.
The future of atmospheric CO2 depends on innovation in the land use sector and technology. CO2 is a tertiary consideration at best. If faced with a choice of expanding emissions – and that is happening anyway – or taxes give me carbon dioxide or death. Beats dying of boredom from Jiminy.
Re: “In summary, if the IPCC and other promoters of global warming had used formal, proper estimates of uncertainty from the beginning, global warming would have never got off the ground. Its destruction was guaranteed by its own data and its real uncertainty. Evidence for this comes from the near-complete absence of references in scientific papers to formal, established estimates of errors and uncertainties.”
Your ignorance of the scientific literature (while you make ridiculous claims regarding it) is amazing. Your assigned reading is below, to get you started on remedying your lack of knowledge:
“Further exploring and quantifying uncertainties for Extended Reconstructed Sea Surface Temperature (ERSST) Version 4 (v4)”
“A review of uncertainty in in situ measurements and data sets of sea surface temperature”
“Assessing uncertainty in estimates of atmospheric temperature changes from MSU and AMSU using a Monte-Carlo estimation technique”
“The reliability of global and hemispheric surface temperature records”
“How accurately do we know the temperature of the surface of the earth?”
“Assessing the value of Microwave Sounding Unit–radiosonde comparisons in ascertaining errors in climate data records of tropospheric temperatures”
You bring up 6 papers that deal with uncertainty.
My claim was about a near-complete absence of papers dealing properly with uncertainty. I have read thousands of climate papers. Six in thousands fits the bill of near complete absence.
Why don’t you count the number of papers that fail the test? Then you might be able to propose useful remediation rather than the silly excuses for incompetent climate authors that you just gave. Geoff
Re: “My claim was about a near-complete absence of papers dealing properly with uncertainty.”
And you haven’t provided a shred of evidence for your claim. In contrast, I was easily able to cite several papers I’d read covering the topic, and that wasn’t even close to all the papers on the topic.
Next time, when you make a claim, actually have some evidence to back it up.
Geoff Sherrington can swim or sink.
To avoid cluttering up posts with needless repetitious.
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-879919
Dr Curry, thank you for bringing this essay to our attention.
“Extension of this analysis to the entire 20th century as shown in Figure 1 (bottom) reveals three climate shifts marked by breaks in the temperature trend with respect to time, superimposed upon an overall warming presumably due to increasing greenhouse gasses. Global mean temperature decreased prior to World War I, increased during the 1920s and 1930s, decreased from the 1940s to 1976/77, and as noted above increased from that point to the end of the century. Insofar as the global mean temperature is controlled by the net top‐of‐the‐atmosphere radiative budget [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007], such breaks in temperature trends imply discontinuities in that budget. Such discontinuities are difficult to reconcile with the presumed smooth evolution of anthropogenic greenhouse gas and aerosol radiative forcing with respect to time [Hansen et al., 2005]. This suggests that an internal reorganization of the climate system may underlie such shifts [Zhang et al., 2007].” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2008GL037022
So when the discussion turns to these other geophysics it just doesn’t penetrate. Why is that? This is where all the wonder is.
Robert this time is different because of the weakening solar/geo magnetic fields which were non players back then.
I am supposed to throw up my hands and say yes of course because you have so very little data and no goephysical theory?
Here is some info Robert and I will follow up with a few more.
Theodore White
The ‘mechanism’ Dave Burton is electromagnetic. All seismic activity such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are triggered by external pressures being forced on the Earth’s magnetic field.
The stress that is put on Earth’s magnetic field begins at the ionosphere, which can be observed by the appearance of luminous phenomena very close to regions showing tectonic stress, seismic activity or soon-to-be volcanic eruptions.
The connection between prolonged minimum and maximum solar phases to large magnitude earthquakes and increased volcanic eruptions is supported by overwhelming scientific evidence that is easily found online.
There is strong statistical data which shows powerful correlations between major volcanic activity and numerous earthquakes of 8.0 magnitude or more on Richter scale to the Sun’s Grand Minimum states.
Over the last several decades scientific papers began to appear that clearly show correlations between galactic cosmic ray and low solar activity with a rise of destructive geological events like earthquakes & volcanic eruptions.
This has been supported by statistical evidence that extend back centuries.
A 1967 study published by the Earth & Planetary Science Letters discovered that solar activity plays a significant role in the triggering of earthquakes.
Then, In 1998 a scientist from the Beijing Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Science, also discovered a correlation between low solar activity and earthquakes.
Additional research by The Space & Science Research Center found direct correlation between solar activity and the largest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions within the continental United States and other regions around the world.
The study examined data of volcanic activity between 1650 – 2009 along with earthquake activity between 1700 – 2009 while utilizing solar activity data.
The findings of study said that there was very strong correlation between solar activity and the largest seismic and volcanic events – worldwide.
The correlation for volcanic activity was larger than 80 percent and 100% for the greatest magnitude earthquakes measured with Solar activity lows.
Moreover, the findings concluded that there was proof of a strong correlations between global volcanic activity among the largest of classes of eruptions and solar activity lows; with 80.6% occurrence of large scale global volcanic eruptions taking place during the Sun’s minimums and 87.5% occurring for the very largest volcanic eruptions during times of major solar minimums.
We are entering such a period of a Grand Solar Minimum with the start of solar cycle #25 – due to begin anytime between now and the year 2020.
When I forecasted back in 2006 that the world would enter global cooling just before the Sun entered its Grand Minimum and would see an ‘increase in large magnitude earthquakes and numerous volcanic eruptions, some conventional scientists derided me by saying that there was no physical mechanism.
This, despite the fact that I named that mechanism – which is electromagnetic and penetration of galactic cosmic rays into our solar system.
Then, two years later, in 2008, NASA announced that a close link between electrical disturbances on the edge of our atmosphere and impending earthquakes on the ground below has been found.
The finding fell into agreement with additional scientific studies performed by other space research institutes.
For example, orbiting satellites above the Earth picked up disturbances that were 100 to 600 kilometers above regions that have later been hit by earthquakes.
Fluctuation in the density of electrons and other electrically-charged particles in the Earth’s ionosphere have been observed, and huge signals have been detected many times before large magnitude earthquakes struck.
These are climatic events which feature seismic activity connected to atmospheric disturbances caused by celestial bodies and the Sun’s quiescent phase, which is underway.
During times when the Earth’s axis rotation slows, in concert with the Sun’s minimum output and weakened heliosphere allows cosmic rays to enter our solar system and straight into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Planetary modulation relative to the Earth and the condition of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field (IMF) of outer space where our planet lives and transits – all play significant roles.
The fluxes of cosmic and solar radiation charges the Earth’s ionosphere.
The result means a rise in anomalies of the Earth’s geomagnetic field which produces Foucault currents – also called ‘Eddy Currents.’
Eddy currents are essentially loops of electrical currents that are induced within conductors by a changing magnetic field in the conductor. This is due to Faraday’s law of induction.
Anyway, eddy currents flow in closed loops within conductors, in planes that are perpendicular to the magnetic field.
The eddy current heats the rocks inside faults as the shear resistant intensity and static friction limit of the rocks decrease.
This is the physical mechanism that trigger earthquakes and volcanic eruption, but it is an ‘effect’ of what is happening where the Earth lives – and that is in outer space.
You see, during eras of solar minimums high energy cosmic radiation can and does penetrate deep below the Earth’s surface.
It is the reason why most earthquakes that occur during solar minimum are deep earthquakes.
The stress on the Earth’s Magnetosphere during solar minimum is higher because the Sun’s Heliosphere is weaker which allows the high-energy charged particles of cosmic rays to flood into our solar system.
For instance, on average, the flux of cosmic rays is 20 percent or more – higher during solar minimums.
Over the last 250 years consider the fact that these major volcanic eruptions took place during strong solar minimum and Grand Minimums:
*Grimvotn (Iceland) 1783/84 (14 km3)
*Tambora (Indonesia) 1810 (150 km3)
*Krakatoa 1883 (5.0 km3)
*Santa Maria (Guatemala) 1902 (4.8 km3)
*Novarupta (Alaska) 1912 (3.4 km3)
Correlations are inevitably suspect – and – like Jiminy’s correlation – inevitably merely eyeballed in.
http://www.icecap.us/images/uploads/Solar_Changes_and_the_Climate.pdf
Some more Robert.
I have read that long ago. Life is too short to read it again.
Short term solar data is of limited interest – but whatever is at work it is not TSI changes. With something more subtle you would need more subtle links to the Earth system. Until then any correspondence may be random. You can throw around words but it means sfa.
My working theory is the gyre hypothesis. Multi-decadal variability in the Pacific is defined as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (e.g. Folland et al,2002, Meinke et al, 2005, Parker et al, 2007, Power et al, 1999) – a proliferation of oscillations it seems. The latest Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2001 is linked to increased flow in the north (Di Lorenzo et al, 2008) and the south (Roemmich et al, 2007, Qiu, Bo et al 2006)Pacific Ocean gyres. Roemmich et al (2007) suggest that mid-latitude gyres in all of the oceans are influenced by decadal variability in the Southern and Northern Annular Modes (SAM and NAM respectively) as wind driven currents in baroclinic oceans (Sverdrup, 1947).
There is a growing literature on the potential for stratospheric influences on climate (e.g. Matthes et al 2006, Gray et al 2010, Lockwood et al 2010, Scaife et al 2012) due to warming of stratospheric ozone by solar UV emissions. “Models incorporating stratospheric layers – despite differing greatly in their formulation of fundamental processes such as atmosphere-ocean coupling, clouds or gravity wave drag – show consistent responses in the troposphere.” Top down modulation of SAM and NAM by solar UV has the potential to explain otherwise little understood variability at decadal to much longer scales in ENSO.
Incredible certitude:
The Titanic is unsinkable!
One of my favorite unremarked uncertainties is future anthropic ocean water usage (primarily desalination). If my BOE math is right, 1 cm of water level rise is 500 sq km x 1 = 5T cc = 5B liters. That appear to be roughly the daily capacity of currently operating desalination across the Persian Gulf. If we suppose that a single day’s capacity ends up being permanently shifted out of the ocean every time new desalination capacity comes online (this is not much more than a guess, mind you), it is not hard to imagine a world of 2118 in which the desalination needs of ~12B people living at the equivalent of median Americans today (100 gallons per day) might result in concern over falling sea levels (supposing 9 billion of them need new desalination sources, at one day’s storage that appears to lower sea levels by 681 centimeters, which is about twice the high IPCC estimates for sea level rise).
The United States consumes about 500 billion gallons (or 1.9 billion cubic meters) of fresh water per day. There are 360 trillion square meters of ocean on Earth. Every day, in your scenario, the US would suck down 5.3E-06 meters of sea level, or 1.9 millimeters per year. Current estimates of sea level rise rate are about 3 millimeters a year, so this would have an effect IF none of the water returned to the oceans. But all of it would.
If we could desalinate that much water, and recover the solids, they would yield 5,700 kg of uranium, and more specifically, 40 kg of U-235, per day. When fissioned, that would release about 1.2E18 J per year. Humanity consumes 5.7E20 J per year. So while the U-235 recovered would add a paltry 0.2% to our energy supply, it might be enough to run the desalination process.
Michael — right, my assumption is 100% of the water pumped goes back in the ocean, except for “one day’s storage” when the facility comes online (one day’s storage seems to be typical of water towers today). So may argument is that by 2118 we’ll probably need so much desalination capacity that that one day’s storage will lower sea levels beyond what IPCC is currently estimating as the high range of likely sea level rise. That ignores possibilities like groundwater replenishment efforts, of course.
Eventually the thorium may also be cost-effective to recover, and AEC estimates there are many thousands of years’ worth of fuel there.
Also, I think your “usage number” includes things like hydroelectric usage that aren’t really relevant. My estimate was an order of magnitude smaller because I assumed 100 gallons per person.
Actually though I see I should have used 500T cc, forgot there are a million sq meters in a sq kilometer. So probably closer to 1 cm sea level drop per billion people, or perhaps about 9cm.
As vtg pointed out, I also did the conversion from sq m to sq cm wrong, so the result is probably too small to be interesting, barring some enormous increase in storage per person.
Cost too much in energy usage and $s unless we get carbon nanotubes working. Right now they are too fragile and difficult to manufacture in big sheets for reverse osmosis.
Scott
My favorite is the increasing transport of water from ocean to land (especially since IR favors evaporation vs SW) and the increasing capacity for land and the biosphere to retain water. This will mitigate sea level rise, I think very significantly.
Big deal recently was that satellite (gravimetric?) measurement of water on earth did not match up with models. There was much more water in aquifers than calcs based on water usage, river flows, precip, etc. predict.
Water is not behaving as expected. Sea levels are not rising as expected or where expected.
Not really.
State of the art on sea level budget:
https://www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/10/1551/2018/essd-10-1551-2018.pdf
See section 2.7 for Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS)
https://media.springernature.com/original/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10712-016-9399-6/MediaObjects/10712_2016_9399_Fig1_HTML.gif
Sorry, I do notice in the original I should have said: “1 cm of water level rise is 500M sq km x 1 cm = 5T cc = 5B liters.” Most estimates of the ocean’s surface seem to be around 360M, as you say, so 500 is a bit conservative, but then there’s a ton of uncertainty in the usage estimates anyway.
Your estimate is, I think, 6 orders of magnitude out.
The current estimate of sea level drop due to water storage on land is c. 1.5mm, caused by the storage of 5,000 cubic kilometers of water.
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_06/
I think you used square km where you should have used square metres.
Thanks vtg, I eventually noticed that above. Sea area seems to be 5 quadrillion cm sq (500M sq km*1M m per k*10,000 cm per m), so 1 cm of rise is 5 quadrillion cc.
So, not actually very interesting.
I think if you put the numbers in correctly even your 9cm estimate above is still several orders of magnitude too high.
Yep, I was five orders off. Initially I thought it was 3 (km to m) but it was also another 2 for m to cm.
So we’d probably have to replenish groundwater or pump it into Antarctica for the anthropic effect to be interesting.
for the sake of completeness….
usage: 3785 cc per gallon * 100 gallon per person * 1 billion people = 3.78E+14 cc
1 cm sea level rise: 3.6 E+8 KM^2 = 3.6E+14 m^2 = 3.6E+18 cm sq = 3.6E+18 cc
Robert your theory(gyre hypothesis ) is part of the puzzle. he problem is how does it happen? Is it random or externally driven?
My theory is weakening magnetic fields.
“However, variability in ultraviolet solar irradiance has been linked to changes in surface pressure that resemble the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations (AO/NAO)8,9,10 and studies of both the 11-year solar cycle11,12 and centennial timescales13 suggest the potential for larger regional effects. The mechanism for these changes is via a stratospheric pathway, a so-called ‘top-down’ mechanism, and involves altered heating of the stratosphere by solar ultraviolet irradiance. Anomalous temperatures in the region of the tropical stratopause give rise to changes in the subtropical stratospheric winds, in geostrophic balance with the modified equator-to-pole temperature gradient. This signal then propagates poleward and downward and is amplified by altered planetary wave activity8 before being communicated throughout the depth of the troposphere in the Pacific and Atlantic basins14.” https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/ocean-gyre.png
The figure shows global “wind and gyre circulation changes hypothesized to be associated with multidecadal (a) warm and (b) cool phases of the North and South Hemispheres. White arrows indicate regions of enhanced wind and black arrows indicate areas of enhanced gyre circulation. The blue patches indicate the sinking waters in the North Atlantic. The zonal warm phase occurred from the 1910s to 1940s and 1970s to 1990s and is characteristic of strong westerly winds in the northern and southern hemisphere. North Pacific and North Atlantic subarctic gyre circulations enhance with sinking waters associated with the northern North Atlantic winter. In the Atlantic subtropical gyre circulations also enhance. Some surface waters travel from the Indian Ocean to the south Atlantic and join the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. The meridional cool phase occurring from the 1940s to 1970s and 1990s to present consists of equatorward winds over the continents and poleward winds over the subarctic and sub-antarctic oceans, resulting as Rossby wave formations. Intensified circulation in subtropical gyre systems enhances upwelling and productivity in the California and Peru systems. Strengthened easterly trade winds increase equatorial current circulation in the Pacific. The background global chlorophyll is from Yoder et al.” http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/3/4/833/htm
We MUST include solar/geomagnetic field strength when making predictions
By Salvatore Del Prete
Many do not seem to understand that the models do not incorporate the strengths of the solar/geomagnetic fields when making predictions, so here are my own predictions.
Earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or higher have increased more than 25% over the last few weeks. The latest geomagnetic storm (K7) may spur ) even more activity.
I’m waiting for THE ! volcanic eruption.
I said 2018 (the only one) would be a transitional year. Sure enough, global temperatures are down and overall oceanic sea surface temperatures are down.
They are going to continue down.
El Nino: Happy that is what the models are this year and were last year.
Forget Hurricanes/Tornadoes moving forward from here. They will continue trending down on a global basis.
Getting back to the models/analogs: The more extreme either way the solar/geomagnetic fields may be (in this case weakening), the more off those (inadequate) tools will be.
My simple theory is: Very weak solar/geomagnetic fields equate to lower overall global temperatures due to lower overall oceanic sea surface temperatures (less UV/NEAR UV light) and a slight uptick in albedo. The uptick will be due to an increase in major geological activity and an increase in global cloud/snow coverage tied to an increase in galactic cosmic rays. Those increases, in turn, will be in response to very weak magnetic fields.
In addition, there are threshold levels of magnetic weakness out there that could result in a major, as opposed to a slight, climatic shift. If one looks at the historical climatic record/ice core data, major/abrupt climatic changes show up more often than not.
Something is causing it, and it is not the slow gradual change of the ocean’s heat content. Besides, ocean heat content does not matter: it is the surface oceanic temperatures that matter when it comes to the climate and they can change fast.
In closing I say the so called AGW ended in late 2017.
None of the mainstream buy into this, even the ones who do not believe in AGW. They are all stuck and believe in their inadequate models, which are useless in this environment . Even Joe Bastardi, a non-believer in AGW, cannot get into this.
This is why this site (iceagenow.info) is so important, because it brings points of view similar to what I expressed and think is correct.
Salvatore Del Prete is publisher of https://climatebusters.org/
I said 2018 (the only one) would be a transitional year. Sure enough, global temperatures are down and overall oceanic sea surface temperatures are down.
They are going to continue down.
Nope, the Roman and Medieval Warm periods lasted longer than this. This warm period may get some interruptions but the Warm Period will last as long as previous warm periods, maybe some shorter or some longer, but in the same ball park. What has happened will happen.
Not relevant. What matters is now and I say it will be getting colder for the next several years.
” What has happened will happen.” Yes, history says so. But if nature shifts the goal posts back to the Holocene max, then humanity is headed back to the dark ages if it is not prepared. The very steep increase in technical development that occurred in the last 70 years, and which got us whee we are today, will disappear in an instant (and I remember well how it was then).
But if nature shifts the goal posts back to the Holocene max, then humanity is headed back to the dark ages if it is not prepared.
Yes, a cold period will follow this warm period, it always does.
The Vikings moved out of Greenland, but it was warm enough further south. Some people will adapt and others will move.
If we don’t ban fossil fuel, people will be much better able to adapt this next time. If we ban fossil fuel, we are doomed and it will not matter anyway. We have a few hundred years to get ready, that is about how long warm periods are lasting in this wonderful Holocene. We will continue breaking warm records, rainfall records, snowfall records until then. Sea level will start falling, enough to know, during this warm period, because the snowfall puts ocean water on land in cold places while oceans are warm and thawed.
Except, this warm period is an NH event, the SH climate cycles can be in phase or out of phase and the Antarctic ice cycle can make temperature and sea level changes in phase or out of phase with the NH cycles. Above, I was writing about the NH cycles.
This is simple stuff. This is fully supported by ice core data.
When oceans in cold places are thawed, evaporation and snowfall can replenish ice on land on Greenland and/or Antarctica and/or other cold places. When oceans in cold places are frozen, evaporation and snowfall does not happen and ice depletes until it retreats.
Of all the strangest climate uncertainty riddles I can see posed are the dual Arctic Antarctic mismatches of recent times and the recent massive change, now receding in global ice extent.
I have noted as a SH denizen that hot summers North have cold Winters South and vice versa.
But why one pole freezing more for 30 years while the other melted? No answer.
Worse, when they both melted in the last 3 years the global extent plummeted by a massive amount statistically.
But apart from cheering on one side and silence on the other not one comment on the statistical significance.
To go from outside the envelope of uncertainty on one side ( 3 SD) was it only 5 years ago to outside on th3 other (5 SD) was and is incredible.
Worth discussion.
Worth a post on its own.
We have no idea on the range of what is now proven as immense natural variability so how can we have rational discussions on CO2 change when we cannot see, recognise and discuss the rather large mote (giant log actually) in our eye?
Robert touches on it in his claims on how such seeming large shifts are possible in a short time. The problem is that a large shift to a human living environment range can be minute to someone looking at the system from the outside
If you studied ice core data, you could understand the answers to the questions you ask. Why does the NH and SH have warm and cold cycles that are out of phase with each other? Why does the NH and SH have warm and cold cycles that have different frequency? Why did major ice ages have close to the same period and frequency?
I have answered those questions before. When sea level is high and warm and thawed, it snows more and ice builds and advances and causes cold. When sea levels are low and cold and much is frozen, it snows less and ice depletes and retreats and causes warm. Major ice ages are coordinated because the oceans are deep and thawed in both hemispheres at the same time. Minor ice ages and warm periods in the two hemispheres are at different frequencies that are out of phase with each other because it snows and puts more ice on land in one hemisphere than the other and it takes longer for more ice to thaw. Minor ice ages and warm periods can operate mostly independently in the two hemispheres.
I’m not sure angech was focused on millennial differences. I believe he was looking at much shorter periods.
true but thanks to PCC for reminding re the land and especially height of antarctica. The distance of the sun from the earth is obviously another potential factor in the different seasons but does not explain wrongness of the North South fit.
In a post entitled The lure of incredible certitude the magnitude of the natural variation that can occur is still the biggest mystery.
OT but when you mentioned height of Antarctica it reminded me of a recent paper that found a greater isostatic rebound in West Antarctica than previously thought. That speaks to 2 points:inherent uncertainty in forecasting SLR and that science is on a never ending journey of new discoveries and rejecting previous assumptions.
I’m not sure angech was focused on millennial differences. I believe he was looking at much shorter periods.
The Roman and Medieval and Modern Warm Periods peaked about a thousand years apart. There were cold periods in between, Little Ice Ages. It snows more in warm periods because oceans are more thawed. Ice is replenished and an excess is formed. That ice advances and causes cold periods. It snows less in cold periods because oceans are more frozen. Ice is depleted and it retreats to end cold periods. This is documented in ice core data. Shorter cycles inside these ice cycles can have clear influence, but they do not start or stop the ice cycles, only ice can do that.
but does not explain wrongness of the North South fit.
The internal ice cycles in each hemisphere have acted independently for ten thousand years. The Polar Regions in each hemisphere independently have more snow fall in cold places when the oceans are thawed and less when ice shelves and sea ice are maxed. Cooling in the tropics is much more than the cooling in the polar regions, but the cooling in the tropics does not have the ice cycles and the cooling in the polar regions does have ice cycles.
This may be slightly off-topic, but I found this post to be an interesting read from an engineering perspective. For me (an engineer), it highlights differences between engineers and scientists in their respective dealings with uncertainty.
Designing systems/structures is a large part of engineering and a design always includes a series of very precise, science-based predictions. Uncertainty in the predictions will usually correlate with the novelty of the design. As the design evolves into a physical entity, tests are continually carried out to verify/validate as much as possible the initial predictions. If any of those predictions break down as a result of the testing, the design has to be revised.
At the end of the day, the physical entity is realized and operates according to the (possibly revised) design. This is a big advantage engineering has over science. Ultimately in engineering, the predictions are proven either true or false and incredible certitude doesn’t, or shouldn’t, be part of the process.
Interesting for me, Manski’s typology of practices that contribute to incredible certitude in science also seem to play a role in engineering.
Conventional certitude: This would normally apply to many of the engineering design’s initial predictions. These predictions would necessarily have to be verified/validated as the physical entity was being constructed. Any predictions that turned out false would be trashed and the design revised accordingly.
Dueling certitudes: Contradictory predictions are typically resolved through research and prototyping. If this isn’t possible, the design probably never gets off the ground.
Conflating science and advocacy: Not applicable to the engineering design process?
Wishful extrapolation: If the design is novel, there may be a few SWAGs involved and verification/validation testing would then need to be very comprehensive. At the end of the day, no untenable assumptions should remain.
Illogical certitude: Always a danger; cf. Tacoma Narrows Bridge.
Media overreach: The marketing department; cf. Dilbert.
engineer willb01
Years ago I studied both aeronautical engineering and science.
Today, with global warminbg, we have 2 strong camps, so we are in the realm of dueling certitude, of which you write –
“Dueling certitudes: Contradictory predictions are typically resolved through research and prototyping. If this isn’t possible, the design probably never gets off the ground.”
This is quite an important observation … never gets off the ground.
The solution to a number of contested global warming hypotheses is to NOT allow them to get off the ground, that is, into the arena of public policy.
At least one of tne of the hypothesis of ‘catastrophic anthropogenic global warming’, or the ‘beneficial outcomes will prevail’ hypothesis, if wrongly alloed to get off the ground, will crash and burn. They are so opposed that they cannot co-exist.
One is wrong. Both might be wrong.
None yet deserves any certitude, nor any policy decisions based on them. Geoff.
Yes, which is why I’ve long argued for increasing our capacity to deal with whatever (presently unknown) future befalls, rather than damaging our capacity and distorting our decisions through emissions reduction policies.
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Interesting that Manski gives a pass to the IPCC. I think this is also true of some of the people who are getting a name for heroically pointing out fields of study with a replication problem. Climate change is the sacred narrative that will give our lives meaning. Still, singling out economics as a field that is causing problems is fair: economists often talk as if they have the master science of politics–free trade, etc. Their results are paltry in comparison to their self-presentation. I love the LBJ story.
“Stable isotope proxies from ice cores show subtle differences in the climatic fluctuations of the Arctic and Antarctic, and recent analyses have revealed evidence of polar synchronization at the millennial time scale.” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259123704_Polar_synchronization_and_the_synchronized_climatic_history_of_Greenland_and_Antarctica
In the simple coupled nonlinear oscillator model it is driven mainly by the difference in heat storage between the two polar regions. In between there are presumably coupled fluctuations in Earth’s turbulent fluid flow field. Realistically there is little more than partial but suggestive data and a climate paradigm.
“Evidence is presented supporting the hypothesis of polar synchronization, which states that during the last ice age, and likely in earlier times, millennial-scale temperature changes of the north and south Polar Regions were coupled and synchronized. The term synchronization as used here describes how two or more coupled nonlinear oscillators adjust their (initially different) natural rhythms to a common frequency and constant relative phase. In the case of the Polar Regions heat and mass transfer through the intervening ocean and atmosphere provided the coupling. As a working hypothesis, polar synchronization brings new insights into the dynamic processes that link Greenland’s Dansgaard-Oeschger (DO) abrupt temperature fluctuations to Antarctic temperature variability.” http://www.ajsonline.org/content/312/4/417.short
It is – as Jose Rial says – a search for simple rules at the heart of climate complexity. This theory of synchronous chaos is a conceptual key to understanding how things work. It has important climate implications at the decadal to millennial scales.
“We construct a network of observed climate indices in the period 1900–2000 and investigate their collective behavior. The results indicate that this network synchronized several times in this period. We find that in those cases where the synchronous state was followed by a steady increase in the coupling strength between the indices, the synchronous state was destroyed, after which a new climate state emerged. These shifts are associated with significant changes in global temperature trend and in ENSO variability. The latest such event is known as the great climate shift of the 1970s.” https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288
In theory we thus have a mechanism – albeit a complex one – that better explains abrupt shifts in modern records than a paradigm of slow responses to changes in forcing.
The abrupt shifts in Pacific Ocean circulation involve changes in the PDO in the north-eastern Pacific and coincident changes in the frequency and intensity of ENSO events. Increased frequency and intensity of La Niña occur with a cool mode PDO and vice versa (Verdon and Franks, 2006). The change in ocean circulation is associated with changes in wind, currents and cloud that change the energy dynamic of the planet. Cool decadal modes cool the planet and warm modes add to energy storage.
The geophysics of the system are intrinsically interesting – but the theory suggests that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital eccentricities – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation more generally.
Climate is sensitive to changes in ‘control variables’ – and may shift abruptly and more or less extremely in response to the internal dynamic. But even if this is a problem – the rational response is to do more or what we are doing for diverse other reasons. Food security, environmental conservation and technical innovation in land use and productive technologies driven by the generation of wealth. They believe that we are in love with coal – truth is we are in love with cheap energy and it matters little the source. At this time – it is primarily coal and gas.
Despite recognizing the technically extreme risk – low probability/high consequence – well some of us – and having a plan – if you are not singing from the songbook it is ignorance or having sinister motives. This dynamic can easily be seen in the comments on this post. Trivial ‘questions’ are posed repeatedly. Jim is still insisting that I answer his HadCRU question. I have – it is trivial and misguided. As well as the wealth of supporting evidence for decadal variability – I would put the reliability of the source at something inestimably greater than Jim’s. Atomski whines that AGW is not catastrophic in the literature. What’s the problem then? Scott Koonz with his chaotic dogs and fans clearly has not a clue. It puts me in mind of Nick Stokes paint mixing. What they are trying to allegorize is entropy rather than chaos. Yet when I say he doesn’t have a clue there is immense indignation. I have insulted the collective. The unconscious irony is almost every comment from them has the obligatory denigration of outsiders. Scott Koontz’s slighted dignity insists that I failed to pay the respect due to his math and computing background. Guilty as charged. Tony Banton chimes in with the oddest – and somewhat disturbing – rant I have ever seen. In the mix are outright fabrications and persistent obfuscation. Never do they rise to a nuanced discussion. Never do they get beyond simplistic talking points collectively rehearsed in blogospheric echo chambers – in which there is no epistemic uncertainty.
The polar studies are for Angech – btw.
And Russel – it is not that the literature has been ignored. It is just not amenable to the monstrous simplifications of the likes of you.
That’s Simplification Monster – Uncertainty Monster’s evil twin.
Climate is sensitive to changes in ‘control variables’ – and may shift abruptly and more or less extremely in response to the internal dynamic.
The internal dynamic is everything. It is what actually happens. It snows when oceans are deep and warm and thawed and that happens in both hemispheres at the same time and that does cause ice volumes to increase in both hemispheres at the same time. It snows much less when oceans are low and cold and frozen and that happens in both hemispheres at the same time. Major ice ages and Major warm periods are mostly caused by snowfall and ice extent mainly in the NH and the depletion and retreat of ice mainly in the NH. The SH takes part because the oceans connect the hemispheres. Ice Core data shows this to be true.
Complicated, chaotic and random forcing are not important to the major dynamics of ice cycles. Massive systems have internal cycles with natural frequencies. External forcing has little influence on massive natural internal cycle frequencies. External forcing resonates with internal cycles and sometimes results in larger and sometimes smaller cycles, and little change to natural frequencies. Ocean water and ice on land are the masses and the snowfall rates and thawing rates determine the spring rate. In rocket science, one could use a POGO problem for a comparison.
We are almost in agreement Alex. Dimitris Koutsoyiannis suggested the terms predictable and unpredictable for deterministic and random. For practical purposes I agree. I have been sitting here trying to imagine random in eddies. Is it deterministic down to the molecule level? We may never know.
And ice and snow dynamics are an element in Earth’s dynamical complexity that gives rise to chaotic behavior.
Disagree I say all major climatic changes are driven by external forces which can have a zillion outcomes.
HOW THE CLIMATE MAY CHANGE
Below are my thoughts about how the climatic system may work. It starts with interesting observations made by Don Easterbrook. I then reply and ask some intriguing questions at the end which I hope might generate some feedback responses. I then conclude with my own thoughts to the questions I pose.
From Don Easterbrook – Aside from the statistical analyses, there are very serious problems with the Milankovitch theory. For example, (1) as John Mercer pointed out decades ago, the synchronicity of glaciations in both hemispheres is ‘’a fly in the Malankovitch soup,’ (2) glaciations typically end very abruptly, not slowly, (3) the Dansgaard-Oeschger events are so abrupt that they could not possibility be caused by Milankovitch changes (this is why the YD is so significant), and (4) since the magnitude of the Younger Dryas changes were from full non-glacial to full glacial temperatures for 1000+ years and back to full non-glacial temperatures (20+ degrees in a century), it is clear that something other than Milankovitch cycles can cause full Pleistocene glaciations. Until we more clearly understand abrupt climate changes that are simultaneous in both hemispheres we will not understand the cause of glaciations and climate changes.
My explanation:
I agree that the data does give rise to the questions/thoughts Don Easterbrook, presents in the above. That data in turn leads me to believe along with the questions I pose at the end of this article, that a climatic variable force which changes often which is superimposed upon the climate trend has to be at play in the changing climatic scheme of things. The most likely candidate for that climatic variable force that comes to mind is solar variability (because I can think of no other force that can change or reverse in a different trend often enough, and quick enough to account for the historical climatic record, and can perhaps result in primary and secondary climatic effects due to this solar variability, which I feel are a significant player in glacial/inter-glacial cycles, counter climatic trends when taken into consideration with these factors which are , land/ocean arrangements , mean land elevation ,mean magnetic field strength of the earth(magnetic excursions), the mean state of the climate (average global temperature gradient equator to pole), the initial state of the earth’s climate(how close to interglacial-glacial threshold condition it is/ average global temperature) the state of random terrestrial(violent volcanic eruption, or a random atmospheric circulation/oceanic pattern that feeds upon itself possibly) /extra terrestrial events (super-nova in vicinity of earth or a random impact) along with Milankovitch Cycles, and maybe a roll for Lunar Effects.
What I think happens is land /ocean arrangements, mean land elevation, mean magnetic field strength of the earth, the mean state of the climate, the initial state of the climate, and Milankovitch Cycles, keep the climate of the earth moving in a general trend toward either cooling or warming but get consistently interrupted by solar variability and the associated primary and secondary effects associated with this solar variability, and on occasion from random terrestrial/extra terrestrial events, which brings about at times counter trends in the climate of the earth within the overall trend.
While at other times when the factors I have mentioned setting the gradual background for the climate trend for either cooling or warming, those being land/ocean arrangements, mean land elevation, mean state of the climate, initial state of the climate, Milankovitch Cycles , then drive the climate of the earth gradually into a cooler/warmer trend(unless interrupted by a random terrestrial or extra terrestrial event in which case it would drive the climate to a different state much more rapidly even if the climate initially was far from the glacial /inter-glacial threshold, or whatever general trend it may have been in ) UNTIL it is near that inter- glacial/glacial threshold or climate intersection at which time allows any solar variability and the associated secondary effects, and or other forcing no matter how SLIGHT at that point to be enough to not only promote a counter trend to the climate, but cascade the climate into an abrupt climatic change. The back ground for the abrupt climatic change being in the making all along until the threshold glacial/inter-glacial intersection for the climate is reached ,which then gives rise to the abrupt climatic changes that occur and possibly feed upon themselves while the climate is around that glacial/inter-glacial threshold resulting in dramatic semi cyclic constant swings in the climate from glacial to inter-glacial while factors allow such an occurrence to take place. Which was the case 20000 years ago to 10000 years ago.
The climatic back ground factors (those factors being previously mentioned) driving the climate gradually toward or away from the climate intersection or threshold of glacial versus interglacial. However when the climate is at the intersection the climate gets wild and abrupt, while once away from that intersection the climate is more stable.
Although random terrestrial events and extra terrestrial events could be involved some times to account for some of the dramatic swings in the climatic history of the earth( perhaps to the tune of 10% ) at any time , while solar variability and the associated secondary effects are superimposed upon the otherwise gradual climatic trend, resulting in counter climatic trends, no matter where the initial state of the climate is although the further from the glacial/inter-glacial threshold the climate is the less dramatic the overall climatic change should be, all other items being equal.
The climate is chaotic, random, and non linear, but in addition it is never in the same mean state or initial state which gives rise to given forcing to the climatic system always resulting in a different climatic out-come although the semi cyclic nature of the climate can still be derived to a degree amongst all the noise and counter trends within the main trend.
QUESTIONS:
Why is it when ever the climate changes the climate does not stray indefinitely from it’s mean in either a positive or negative direction? Why or rather what ALWAYS brings the climate back toward it’s mean value ? Why does the climate never go in the same direction once it heads in that direction?
Along those lines ,why is it that when the ice sheets expand the higher albedo /lower temperature more ice expansion positive feedback cycle does not keep going on once it is set into motion? What causes it not only to stop but reverse?
Vice Versa why is it when the Paleocene – Eocene Thermal Maximum once set into motion, that being an increase in CO2/higher temperature positive feedback cycle did not feed upon itself? Again it did not only stop but reversed?
My conclusion is the climate system is always in a general gradual trend toward a warmer or cooler climate in a semi cyclic fashion which at times brings the climate system toward thresholds which make it subject to dramatic change with the slightest change of force superimposed upon the general trend and applied to it. While at other times the climate is subject to randomness being brought about from terrestrial /extra terrestrial events which can set up a rapid counter trend within the general slow moving climatic trend.
.
Despite this ,if enough time goes by (much time) the same factors that drive the climate toward a general gradual warming trend or cooling trend will prevail bringing the climate away from glacial/inter-glacial threshold conditions it had once brought the climate toward ending abrupt climatic change periods eventually, or reversing over time dramatic climate changes from randomness, because the climate is always under a semi extra terrestrial cyclic beat which stops the climate from going in one direction for eternity.
NOTE 1- Thermohaline Circulation Changes are more likely in my opinion when the climate is near the glacial/
inter-glacial threshold probably due to greater sources of fresh water input into the North Atlantic.
Good morning Robert (BST),
So you’ve taken to not answering my allegedly “trivial” question in the midst of an “essay” under an article on an entirely different topic.
That being the case let me rephrase it once again:
Anybody familiar with the relevant literature, would be aware of the “HadCRUT4 Arctic coverage bias” issue.
2) Are you familiar with the relevant literature yet?
1) Or not?
Sorry – a zillion and one.
Thanks Robert.
“The unconscious irony [ surely incredible certitude] is almost every comment from them has the obligatory denigration of outsiders.”
A perfect observation.
The comment on synchronicity occurring perhaps at longer time scales than humans can appreciate observationally and that such synchronicity can actually build up a lot of energy that can discharge or dissipate chaotically when the synchronicity breaks down seems a good way of explaining some of the problems of predicting climate and some of the rhythms that seem to appear.
JCH has not a clue about framing a point in English. But he seems to be the punchline.
It doesn’t work as humor.
I have to say that the name of this thread is exceptionally appropriate. “The lure of incredible certitude”. It is very evident the many look back on the past with the Certitude that extrapolating back will be under the same conditions as the present or as in the past two millennia. This is wrong.
The evidence is clear. The Holocene Max was a very destructive time geologically. Abrupt and extreme climatic changes were then collateral events. The evidence, where it survived, is very clear. So also tell the ancient texts, where some survived to tell.
The incredible certitude of extrapolations is a dangerous element.
If I may, please, be allowed to add further to the previous post; a link that shows the disastrous effects on humanity, based on fresh material. Link: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/searching-evidence-4-prehistoric-mass-burials/
I wonder how all of this matters (if at all) when the real decisions are being made in the courts of law. Has anybody heard of Juliana vs. the United States? Scary!
Despite Emperor Mosh’s Machiavellian misinformation intrigues – it seems that uncertainty is certain. Even if it weren’t we couldn’t model it. I like James McWilliams footnote.
“Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation (see ref. 26).”
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
Tell me he is wrong. Fair warning – I found this a very hard slog. This experiment has been done a gazillion times.
I am fascinated by an article about uncertainty and certitude, and the comments that followed demonstrating the very essence of the article.
Climate alarmists continue to claim that climate change is dangerous. They fail to distinguish between global cooling, which is dangerous, and global warming which in fact would be beneficial not dangerous.
Climate science and the uncertainties are complex. But the conducting a rational and relevant debate about the science is near impossible. It’s more a debate about religious beliefs than science. And it is irrelevant for policy anyway, because policy needs to be justified on the impacts and costs and benefits of the policies. The important discussion needs to be on the impacts, not the science. We need to focus on one key message: global warming, if it does occur, would be beneficial, not harmful and certainly not dangerous. Below are some simple, clear points to make:
1. Complex life began about 600-650 Ma ago
2. The Cambrian explosion (of complex life) occurred as the planet warmed from snowball earth to the Cambrian hothouse
3. Over the past 542 Ma, the average temperature of Earth (over multi-million year periods) has ranged from about 3 C cooler to about 13 C warmer than now
4. The fossil record shows life thrived when the planet was warmer than now and struggled when colder
5. The optimum temperature for life on Earth is during the so called ‘Greenhouse’ temperatures, which are around 3-7 C warmer than now (see Scotese (2016) Figure 15 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275277369_Some_Thoughts_on_Global_Climate_Change_The_Transition_for_Icehouse_to_Hothouse_Conditions
6. We are currently experiencing about the severest icehouse phase since complex life began
7. The last time Earth was nearly this cold was about 300 Ma ago. That icehouse phase lasted about 70 Ma.
8. We are currently about 10 Ma into the current icehouse phase.
9. There is negligible likelihood of exiting the current icehouse phase in less than tens of millions of years – so the glacial interglacial cycles we are currently experiencing will continue.
10. When the planet escaped from the Permian icehouse phase it took 20 Ma to warm to optimum conditions, and another 20 Ma to reach the peak of the Triassic Hothouse. So, there is zero probability of reaching dangerous temperatures in the foreseeable future (i.e. in less than tens of millions of years)
To understand what an unusual situation the planet is currently in, see IPCC AR4, WG1, Chapter 6, Figure 6.1. It shows the planet is currently in the rare situation of having polar ice caps. There have been no ice caps at either pole for about 75% of the past 542 Ma.
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/fig/figure-6-1-l.png
Source: IPCC AR4 WG1 Chapter 6 Figure 6.1 https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-1.html
Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) is currently 15 C. Average temperature in the tropics is about 26C, about -20C at the north pole, and about -55 C at the south pole (Figure 2). Humans operate at all temperatures from -50c to +50C.
From Scotese (2016), a 3C GMST increase is only about 1.3C at the equator. That is similar to changes that occur over a few years. These changes are not even noticed by inhabitants.
During the Cretaceous, temperatures at the equator were about 2C warmer than now. The average temperature at the N pole was about +10C and the S Pole about 0C (Figure 11). All these temperatures are far better than current for both humans and most life, and better for global agricultural production.
Palm trees and crocodiles lived in the Arctic circle.
Message 1: life thrives when the planet is warmer and struggles when colder than now.
Message 2: any global warming we can get this century would be beneficial, not dangerous.
Like many another this is a narrative – it can’t be anything else – whose moral is the virtue of CO2 assailed by dark forces reigned against it. With an impossible certitude as shaky foundation for a lessen plan. Come Peter that’s not responsible engineering.
Palm trees and crocodiles lived in the Arctic circle.
That land was in the tropics when Palm Trees and Crocodiles lived there, something moved that land to the Arctic Circle. Polar Regions could have never received enough solar energy to be tropical. If earth was that warm, the tropics would have boiling water. We know tropical stuff grew in the tropics. We know of no way tropical stuff could grow in polar regions, there was not enough solar in to accomplish that.
We can disagree about how tropical land moved to the polar region, but we cannot grow stuff without lots of solar in. That did not and could not happen.
Popesclimatetheory
Nope. That’s dead wrong. The latitudes where rocks and fossils were deposited are well know and well constrained.
Nope. That’s dead wrong. The latitudes where rocks and fossils were deposited are well know and well constrained.
That goes back to science is settled, 97% of scientists agree.
Tropical stuff grows in tropical latitudes, tropical stuff growing in polar regions is in the other 3%. They got it wrong, 3% of scientists agree, actually less than that, all real scientists are skeptical.
popesclimatetheory,
That is dead wrong too.
The average temperature during the Cretaceous was about 2C warmer in the tropics, 55C warmer at the South Pole and 30C warmer at the North Pole (compare Figures 2 and 11 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275277369_Some_Thoughts_on_Global_Climate_Change_The_Transition_for_Icehouse_to_Hothouse_Conditions ). Warm temperate almost to the North Pole (Figure 7).
The reasons were that both ocean and atmospheric circulations were quite different than than now. Look at where the tectonic plates were located. Climate models cannot reproduce the equator to poles temperature gradients that existed during the Cretaceous (see for example Figure 3 here): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2aee/e8766625b0dc837384e9cb1b25c429990538.pdf
Re: “We need to focus on one key message: global warming, if it does occur, would be beneficial, not harmful and certainly not dangerous. Below are some simple, clear points to make:
[…]
5. The optimum temperature for life on Earth is during the so called ‘Greenhouse’ temperatures, which are around 3-7 C warmer than now (see Scotese (2016) Figure 15 “
Your own source rebuts you, as I’ve explained to you on other occasions:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/15/week-in-review-science-edition-86/#comment-880831
Once again:
You cite “Scotese (2016)”. I’m familiar with much of Scotese’s work. This is the article from Scotese that you’re citing to make your politically-motivated points:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher_Scotese3/publication/275277369_Some_Thoughts_on_Global_Climate_Change_The_Transition_for_Icehouse_to_Hothouse_Conditions/links/5564088408ae8c0cab36f612.pdf
If you’re citing it, then you should have read it, and thus know that it says things like:
“But Nature may not have its way. Things have changed. We have changed things. The addition of CO2 to the atmosphere during the last 200 years of human industry has amplified this natural warming trend and the average global temperature has risen rapidly. […] Since 1880, [the average global temperature] has increased another .6˚ degrees to 14.4˚C (as of 2015). This rate of warming is ~50 times faster than the rate of warming during the previous 21,000 years”
“Extreme global warming was responsible for the greatest mass extinction of all time. 99.99% of all animal life was wiped out. We are fortunate that the mammal-like reptiles, our evolutionary ancestors made it through that climatic catastrophe!”
“These extremely warm polar temperatures were approached only a few times in Earth history, during the great Permo-Triassic extinction and during the warmest hothouse worlds (Cambro-Ordovician, Middle Devonian, Triassic, late Cretaceous, PETM, and middle Eocene)”
“The absorption of CO2 by the oceans resulted in the acidification of ocean waters and caused the widespread extinction of certain marine plankton […]. The amount of carbon injected into the atmosphere during the PETM (~4.5 trillion tons) is thought to be about equal to the amount of carbon (CO2 & CH4) that humans will release into the atmosphere during the next several centuries, as all fossil fuel reserves are inexorably consumed […].”
So your own source admits to anthropogenic global warming, and admits to warming-induced mass extinction. Your source also admits to ocean-acidification-induced extinctions, and compares that to ocean acidification in response to anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2.
You conveniently left these points out, making it easier for you to claim that warming would not be dangerous, and that warmer greenhouse temperatures would be optimal for life on Earth. Why did you do that?
Consistent with what Scotese said, increased atmospheric CO2 results in both warming and ocean acidification (due to ocean uptake of some of the excess CO2 from the atmosphere). Both of these factors likely contributed to the Permian extinction. See:
“Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction”
“Climatic and biotic upheavals following the end-Permian mass extinction”
“Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction”
“End-Permian mass extinction in the oceans: An ancient analog for the twenty-first century?”
“High-precision geochronology confirms voluminous magmatism before, during, and after Earth’s most severe extinction”
“Mass extinction events and the plant fossil record”, table 2 on page 549
CO2-induced warming and ocean acidification are also occurring now. Further discussion on the ocean acidification in the sources below:
Doney et al., 2009: “Ocean acidification: The other CO2 problem”
“A time-series view of changing ocean chemistry due to ocean uptake of anthropogenic CO2 and ocean acidification”
“History of seawater carbonate chemistry, atmospheric CO2, and ocean acidification”
“The geological record of ocean acidification”
“Detecting anthropogenic carbon dioxide uptake and ocean acidification in the North Atlantic Ocean”
Given the aforementioned points of mass extinctions from CO2-induced warming and ocean acidification in the distant past, this has interesting implications for how CO2-induced, anthropogenic climate change contributed to the current man-made mass extinction. For further context, see:
“Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction”
“Global biodiversity: Indicators of recent declines”
“Could a potential Anthropocene mass extinction define a new geological period?”
“Climate change and the past, present, and future of biotic interactions”
“Biodiversity risks from fossil fuel extraction”
A zillion and two?
“If you want people to believe what you *do* know, you need to be up front about what you *don’t* know.”- Charles Manski
Being up front about what you know you don’t know is not the major problem. What you think you know that is wrong is the problem.
Earth’s climate changed without mankind’s help for billions of years. Believing we can suddenly take over in a few decades is the major problem. If you don’t understand what happened over the past fifty million years, you don’t understand what happened over the past fifty years. Man got thermometers and computers and suddenly believed the calculations that came out of the computers when the thermometer data was put in and ignored the proxy data that people have worked to reconstruct that does give us enough information to understand what does cause climate change. The ice core data is the best treasures. Eight hundred thousand from the SH and one hundred and fifty thousand years from the NH. Ice accumulation is the most in the warmest times and then the more ice causes cold. Ice accumulation is the least in the coldest times and then the depleted ice allows warming. The internal ice cycles have natural frequencies that are determined by the amount of water that is available and used for forming ice. A warm period last as long as it takes to produce enough ice to advance and cause cold. A cold period lasts as long as it takes to deplete enough ice to allow ice retreat and warming.
Ice cycle frequencies changes as ocean circulations changed due to drifting continents and ocean levels and the amount of sequestered ice.
People believe the external cycles cause all climate change. Earth is a natural system with natural internal cycles. External forces resonate with and against natural internal cycles and sometimes the internal cycles resonate with bigger cycles and sometimes with smaller cycles and get changed a little by external forcing, but internal natural frequencies are determined by the mass of water and ice that are part of each cycle.
This is how basic physics works. You can drive a natural cycle at its natural frequency with small forces at the right time and direction. You cannot stop a natural frequency cycle with huge forces and force a different frequency unless those forces are really overwhelming. Climate deals with huge alternating forcing in the NH and SH with day and night, summer and winter, Milankovich Cycles. Two or Three watts per meter squared is tiny compared to what is dealt with from other causes. Any warming causes more evaporation and more rain and snow, The temperature that oceans freeze and thaw is the thermostat set point that thaws oceans and promotes snowfall and ice increase and freezes the oceans and promotes less snowfall and ice depletion and retreat.
This is presented to us for our education by the ice core data. We can extent that knowledge back to understand other proxy data that always shows natural cycles that changes due to ocean circulations and changes in the ice sequestering on land in cold places and ocean volumes. Big ice cycles used lots of water and ice. Little cycles now use much less water and ice. We have a new normal with smaller cycles because more ice is sequestered and that ice and water does not take part in Holocene cycles.
These videos pretty much sum up the value of overconfidence.
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/09/experts/
“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”
― Voltaire
I say it is not internal all external.
Massive systems cycle at natural frequency intervals. External forcing cycles energize internal cycles at internal cycle frequencies, sometimes they result in larger cycles and sometimes smaller cycles. Without overwhelming force, this is the only possibility. Changes are made to mass and spring rate to change internal natural frequencies. The balance between ice sequestered on land and water in the ocean are the adjustable masses. The circulation of oceans and the balance between open thawed ocean and closed frozen ocean surface determines the spring rate. Much warm thawed ocean surface results in more snowfall than ice thawing rates. Cold frozen oceans results in less snowfall than ice thawing rates. This is the adjustable spring rate.
Engineers and Scientists and Regular People understand these basic principals. They forget to consider this when they look for correlations with climate because these adjustments are made over longer term cycles than the cycles they model.
I disagree with this internal explanation ,but everyone has an opinion.
I say all of the internal changes are regulated by external changes, ranging from Milankovitch Cycles, to changes in solar activity itself, to changes in the geo magnetic field. Not to mention how a random asteroid impact ,and what a near by super nova explosion in relative terms could impact the climate.
While this is happening the exact outcome dependent upon the given state of the climate and ocean /land arrangements, mean land elevations at that given time.
Those zillions of combinations in my opinion set things in motion, which give a different climatic outcome, which at best exhibits quasi cyclicality.
Salvatore confuses control variables with a dynamic, resonant system response.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/bifurcations1.png
Every natural thing has internal natural cycles. I guess man took over the cycles, from nature, fifty years ago when man took over climate from nature. Natural climate change has ceased and it has been replaced with manmade climate change.
I do not subscribe to that. Modern climate cycles are still natural.
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The control variables set the dynamic resonant system in motion. Where it goes depends on countless other factors, some random.
But internal dynamics set the pace, direction and scope of change. It is unpredictable rather than random – in accord with Koutsoyiannis’ definition.
It is not unpredictable and not random. The internal dynamics set the pace, direction and scope of change. External forcing does cause some change but not very much compared to internal natural cycles.
So what causes internal dynamics to change in the first place? I emphasize in the first place. If you have an answer then what caused that to change in the first place. What started the process?
Climate change has always been happening. The formation of the Earth started the process.
The only time there was with no change was in computer models and they are known to be always wrong.
I say external forcing starts the process ,then once it starts internal dynamics can take it from there as long as the external forces remain constant for the time being.
In the words of Michael Ghil (2013) the ‘global climate system is composed of a number of subsystems – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere – each of which has distinct characteristic times, from days and weeks to centuries and millennia. Each subsystem, moreover, has its own internal variability, all other things being constant, over a fairly broad range of time scales. These ranges overlap between one subsystem and another. The interactions between the subsystems thus give rise to climate variability on all time scales.’
The theory – rightfully a fundamental law of physics – says that the system is pushed by greenhouse gas changes and warming – as well as solar intensity and Earth orbital eccentricities – past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift. Climate in this paradigm of abrupt change is an emergent property of the shift in global energies as the system settles down into a new climate state. The traditional definition of climate sensitivity as a temperature response to changes in CO2 makes sense only in periods between climate shifts – as climate changes at shifts are internally generated. Climate evolution is discontinuous at the scale of decades and longer.
In the way of true science – it suggests at least decadal predictability. The current cool Pacific Ocean state seems more likely than not to persist for 20 to 30 years from 1998. The flip side is that – beyond sometime in the next decade – the evolution of the global mean surface temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum (Swanson and Tsonis, 2009).
Yes Robert that is the correct thinking.
Well it is as correct as such a simple narrative can be. – without physical evidence and mechanisms it is little more than noise. You don’t have any do you?:
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift.
“climate sensitivity” implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift
Actual data implies the potential for a large push to initiate a shift that disappears in natural cycles.
These natural ‘cycles’ you imagine are the dynamics. And your simple story repeated so frequently is far too simple.
Occam told us to look for the simple answers, they are overlooked because everyone looks for complicated. The easy stuff slips by much of the time. The complicated stuff is real, but the simple stuff is not considered, except as a result.
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” attributed to Einstein
Massive systems cycle at natural frequency intervals. External forcing cycles energize internal cycles at internal cycle frequencies, sometimes they result in larger cycles and sometimes smaller cycles.
POPESCLIMATETHEROY SAYS ABOVE- I agree.
I think Robert, Pope, and myself all believe in natural variability determines the climate with some of us putting more emphasis and some putting more emphasis on internal.
more emphasis on external cor
Underneath, I think we “may” agree more than we disagree.
These exchanges of ideas help me, thank you both.
Internal natural cycles at natural frequencies are what happens, they must be excited by something or nothing would happen.
There are day and night, summer and winter, cloudy and sunny, ocean cycles in the different oceans, milankovich cycles, solar cycles, etc. These are studied in detail. There are cycles of warm ocean and more snowfall, cold ocean and less snowfall, cycles of more ice volume and ice advance and less ice volume and ice retreat. These cycles are treated as a result of warm and cold and not studied as having any part of cause. This is wrong. More ice extent causes earth to be colder with more reflecting and thawing. Less ice extent causes earth to be warmer with less reflecting and thawing.
You are agreeing, in general. But one important point is being missed (though RI Ellison pointed it out clearly in the ‘catastrophe theory’). The system is in general “Unstable”.
One can see evidence of that clearly at link: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/04/paleoclimate-cycles-are-key-analogs-for-present-day-holocene-warm-period/ fig1 and other figures. The saw-tooth shape. The jagged slope of the saw-tooth is chaotic friction, friction being the influence of smaller forcings that are or may be also unstable and/or non repetitive. (Example: 5500yrs ago the Sahara no longer remained below sea level and dried out).
Having said that, this site has provided to what I see as a crucial link/clue to a triggering mechanism of importance in the Eddy cycle. The source of that influence I have no idea. Link: https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/searching-evidence-update/
Yes I think we are on the correct path and it is sad that this facet of climate science is being overwhelmed by the waste of time being devoted to AGW. .
The system is in general “Unstable”.
Repeating cycles with the same pattern, and then changing to a different pattern show a “changing stable system” The mass and spring rate is adjusted and causes different frequency and magnitude of natural cycles.
Benefits of Global Warming:
Global Tree Cover Is Expanding Rapidly
Source: GWPF
“Global tree canopy cover increased by 2.24 million square kilometers (865,000 square miles) between 1982 and 2016, reports a new study in Nature. These new findings contradict earlier studies that reported a continuing net loss of forest cover. “
Yes, green things are growing more, using water more efficiently, due to more CO2. That is data gathered by the view from space that we now enjoy.
popesclimatetheory,
Did you see my reply to your second comment here: https://judithcurry.com/2018/09/01/the-lure-of-incredible-certitude/#comment-880251 ?
Did you read and understand the references I linked?
I read part of the link you sent. I stopped when I read:
Since 1880, it has increased another. 6˚egrees to 14.4˚C (as of 2015). This rate of warming is 50 times faster than what occurred during the previous 21,000 years. DID YOU READ THAT!
I have studied climate on most days for over ten years. I have talked to many scientists and engineers and many others. I have attended a lecture by Michael Mann, Graeme Stevens, many others. I have talked to and listened to Dr Neil Frank, Dr Bill Gray and others, in the US and foreign countries. I have attended conferences in multiple US and foreign cities. I have read the works of Maurice Ewing and William Donn who wrote the best theroy about how the ice cycles work, written in the 1950’s.
You write a lot of stuff I agree with, but you treat ice as a result and it is a major part of cause. The Holocene will last a really long time, it is the new normal. The major ice ages are done, the ice that is sequestered takes mass out of the ice age and warming cycles and not enough ice and water is available for a major ice age. Before you can form ice for a major ice age, you must thaw much of Greenland and some of Antarctica and put water back into the oceans and get the oceans deep enough and warm enough to evaporate and put ice back on the NH continents. There is enough warm ocean water available for the next little ice age, which will come after a few hundred years of more snowfall.
The Holocene IS THE NEW NORMAL! IT WILL LAST A LONG TIME!
It takes much water and energy to produce lots of ice. Polar oceans are covered with sea ice to prevent evaporation while oceans in the tropics and mid latitudes are filled with water and heated by the sun. When the oceans are warm enough and deep enough and contain enough energy, the polar sea ice is removed and evaporation occurs using the water and energy that has been stored in the oceans. Rain and Snow form in the clouds and release the energy picked up from evaporation as IR out that is removed from earth to get rid of the energy that was removed from the water vapor.
People don’t understand the ice cycles and the energy cycles that go along with them.
The ice then advances and causes cold and the reflecting and thawing keep it cold until enough ice thaws to allow ice retreat and warming.
It is a natural cycle and we do not and can not cause or stop it.
popesclimatetheory,
Thank you for demonstrating that you are a waste of time, a denier of the relevant facts, do not own up to and admit your errors, and change the subject rather than admit you were wrong. These are all signs of intelIectual dis-honesty.
Instead of learning and then admitting you were wrong you changed the subject to rate or warming. And that comment was ludicrous. If you are comparing rates of change you have to compare like with like – i.e. over similar lengths of time. You compared the rate of change over 135 years with the rate of change over 21,000 years. That’s like comparing the rate of change over a day with the rate of change over ~60 years.
correction: comparing rate of change over 135 years and over 21,000 years is same as comparing rate of change over 1 year and 155 years.
Thank you for demonstrating that you are a waste of time, a denier of the relevant facts, do not own up to and admit your errors, and change the subject rather than admit you were wrong. These are all signs of intelIectual dis-honesty.
When you have nothing, you resort to consensus statements.
Thanks, I don’t need to say anything else
You write reasonable stuff sometimes, you wrote:
Benefits of Global Warming:
Global Tree Cover Is Expanding Rapidly
The Holocene IS THE NEW NORMAL! IT WILL LAST A LONG TIME!
Says popesclimatetheory
You can’t say that because there are to many unknowns. .
You could have a Yellowstone Event, you could have an asteroid impact, super nova explosion near by, have the sun go into a very deep protracted period of inactivity, have the earth’s geo magnetic field collapse(right now decaying at the rate of 10% per decade) which would put the climate of earth into chaos.
So at best I think you could say with all things being equal (no extraordinary events) it looks like the Holocene has a long way to go based on your assumptions..
I must agree with you about that. extraordinary events make extraordinary changes.
Who knows that is what makes climate science so interesting. I for sure do not really know although I want to think I do.
But you are on the correct path. No doubt.
Earthquakes over last 30 days 4.0 mag. or higher up from around an avg. of 685 or so to 1000!
Seismic monitor web-site.
September 11, 2018 at 12:49 pm
Apophenia, thanks Joshua. Fits perfectly.
When I play the pokies I can sit for hours looking at little patterns that might lead to a win in the next 2 spins.
Note to all. Does not work. Fun trying and limits bet size.
Re hurricanes and 30 years. Well known with cyclones Southern Hemisphere.
Would be a simple reason.
Number of hurricanes per year, width of path of a cyclone on average means that at a particular latitude there would be a specific percentage chance of being in the zone.
Note to all professional hurricane watchers out there.
Can use this if attributed to ATTP and me.
Sure it has already been done .
“Your dog craves monotony” advises the old Yorkshire veterinarian to young vet James Herriot in “All Creatures Great and Small”.
The way to deal with uncertainty is to place temporal boundaries on the consequences of that uncertainty.
An obvious example from everyday life is a guy being attracted to a girl but being uncertain whether she is attracted to him. Despite a faint heart never winning a fair lady, many shy from the potential embarrassment of being rejected.
The pragmatic solution is to allow three rejections of interest before moving on to pastures new. It may or may not be the right answer, but it minimises emotional damage and resets the male interest back to the starting gate. And it does not spend too much time up a blind alley.
In business, the concept of tollgates and options analysis are used to manage uncertainty in many R+D scenarios.
So for example, I was part of a start up looking to provide diagnostics for selecting high quality eggs for IVF over a decade ago. I sold the seedcorn investment of £500k in two tranches, with £250k invested in retrospective analysis and computer algorithm development upfront. If and only if the results were good would £250k be invested in a forward-looking clinical trial. In business jargon Tollgate I involved evaluation of the diagnostic development and a GO/NO GO decision.
Options analysis requires a series of outcomes to be postulated and each one valued for if they succeed. The key uncertainty is the probability of each occurring. The usual outcome is something like: ‘if you think there is more than xx% chance of XYZ occurring, you should make the investment.’
The bigger the investments, the greater the consequences of failure.
That is why small scale derisking is often favoured.
My view is quite simple: if people cannot handle uncertainty, they should not work in finance, politics or basic research!
I may hate what Republicans did in the Middle East after 9/11, but I do respect greatly what Rumsfeld said about known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
They are the fundamental parts of due diligence every investor in science R+D should be comfortable evaluating….