by Judith Curry
Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate change — more realistic scenarios make for better policy.
The International Energy Agency has just published a document ‘NetZero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector.‘ This document provides a comprehensive assessment of the challenges of reaching NetZero carbon emissions by 2050, along with clear milestones for meeting this challenge.
The IEA report describes their analysis of the trajectory that our emissions is currently on. Policies that have actually been implemented (STEPS) versus the trajectory that would be achieved if all countries met their current commitments (APC) are shown in the diagram below. The implication of the IEA STEP scenario is that if policies that have already been implemented are maintained, the global carbon dioxide emissions three decades from now will be similar to what they are today.
How do the IEA emissions scenarios compare with those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their projections of future climate change? A brief description of the emissions scenarios used by the IPCC is provided here for reference.
The Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) are a set of four climate scenarios for the end of the 21st century. The RCPs were formulated for use in the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report and the CMIP5 climate model simulations, to reflect different potential climate outcomes – RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. The number (e.g. 8.5) reflects the additional radiative forcing (in Watts per square meter) in 2100 from greenhouse gas emissions and other factors, relative to pre-industrial times. To date, radiative forcing relative to pre-industrial levels is ~2.5 Watts per square meter.
For the forthcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and the CMIP6 climate model simulations, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are formulated from five socio-economic and technological trajectories that reflect pathways that the world could follow in the 21st century. Each pathway has a baseline in which no climate policies are enacted after 2010. Additional SSP scenarios are linked to climate policies to generate different outcomes for the end of the 21st century. A subset of SSP scenarios has been selected for the IPCC AR6, with radiative forcing of 1.9, 2.6, 3.4, 4.5, 6.0, 7.0 or 8.5 Watts per square meter in 2100. While the SSP nomenclature is more recent, the scientific literature and journalists continue to mostly use the RCP nomenclature.
In comparing the IEA scenarios with the IPCC scenarios, we see that the value for 2020 is higher for the IPCC (38 – 42 GtCO2/yr) than for the IEA (34 GtCO2/yr, which is the best available estimate for 2020). The IPCC scenarios – both for CMIP5 and CMIP6 – are higher than the IEA projections for RCP8.5, RCP7.0, RCP6.0 and RCP4.5. Out to 2050, RCP6.0 and RCP4.5 show similar, nearly flat trends that are comparable to the IEA STEP scenario.
The most striking aspect of the comparison between the IPCC and IEA scenarios to 2050 is the strong divergence of RCP8.5 from the IEA scenario, with RCP8.5 emissions values more than twice as high as the IEA STEP scenario at 2050.
RCP8.5 was formulated to explore an extreme outcome that is judged by energy analysts to be extremely unlikely. However, RCP8.5 is commonly referred to as the ‘business as usual’ scenario. Referring to RCP8.5 as ‘business as usual’ implies that it is probable in the absence of stringent emissions mitigation. The IPCC, the U.S. National Climate Assessment and a majority of published papers have centered their analyses on RCP8.5 as a reference scenario against which climate impacts and policies are evaluated. Further, RCP8.5 is being used by the insurance sector for projecting climate change impacts and also by state and local governments for regional adaptation planning.
Over the past several years, there has been substantial debate over RCP8.5 – whether it is plausible or even possible, and whether it should be used for policy-making purposes. The 8.5 scenarios can only emerge under a very narrow range of circumstances, comprising a severe course change from recent energy use. Both the CMIP5 and CMIP6 8.5 scenarios have drawn criticism particularly regarding assumptions around future coal use, requiring 6.5 times more coal use in 2100 than today – an amount larger than some estimates of recoverable coal reserves. A recent elicitation of energy experts gives RCP8.5 only a 5% chance of occurring among all of the possible no-policy baseline scenarios; the likelihood of RCP8.5 becomes much lower when recent and future commitments for policy actions are considered.
In evaluating these scenarios, it is important to recognize that predicting future emissions is inherently uncertain, particularly as the time horizon increases. Poorly understood carbon feedbacks (such as methane emissions from thawing permafrost) could lead to higher forcing levels. However, such speculative feedbacks are unlikely to arise from the relatively modest warming expected between now and 2050. Another source of uncertainty relates to emissions from land use change, which is estimated to account for 5-15% of total emissions. But even with these uncertainties, RCP8.5 is an extremely unlikely, if not impossible, scenario for the 21st century.
We should rightly approach projections far into the future with humility and acknowledge that there is a great deal of uncertainty. However, for 30-year projections to 2050, which is a key time scale of relevance to the insurance industry and for local adaptation, the range of plausible scenarios can be narrowed from the complete menu of IPCC emissions scenarios.
Climate impact assessments are being biased in an alarming direction by continued inclusion, and especially sole reliance, on RCP8.5. For climate change to 2050, RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 are the most likely of the IPCC scenarios, and should be the focus of impact assessments for the insurance sector and for local adaptation planning over the next several decades.
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References:
Previous blog posts:
Is RCP8.5 an impossible scenario?
What’s the worst case? Emissions/concentration scenarios
Non-technical articles:
Worst climate scenario probably wind happen, scientists say
Carbon Brief: Explainer: The high-emissions RCP8.5 global warming scenario
Global CO2 emissions are on the brink of a long plateau
Pielke Jr: In 2020 climate science needs to hit the reset button
How billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg corrupted climate science
If climate scenarios are wrong for 2020, can they get 2100 right?
Breakthrough Inst: A 3C world is now ‘business as usual’
Recent journal publications:
Hausfather and Peters: Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading
Ritchie and Dowlatabadi: Why do climate change scenarios return to coal?
Pielke and Ritchie: Systemic misuse of scenarios in climate research and assessment
Burgess et al. IPCC baseline scenarios have over-projected CO2 emissions and economic growth
Kriegler et al.: Fossil fueled development (SSP5): An energy and resource intensive scenario for the 21st century
Wang et al.: Implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis
Christensen et al.: Uncertainty in forecasts of long-run economic growth
Hausfather and Peters: RCP8.5 is a problematic scenario for near term emissions
Schramm et al. Reply: RCP8.5 is neither problematic nor misleading
Bauer et al.: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways of the Energy Sector – Quantifying the Narratives
O’Neill et al: The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project
Riahi et al.: RCP8.5 – a scenario of comparatively high greenhouse gas emissions
Riahi et al.: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas implications: An overview
Ritchie and Dowlatabadi: Defining climate change scenario characteristics with a phase space of cumulative primary energy and carbon intensity8
Van Vuuren et al.: Representative concentration pathways: an overview
Thank you Dr. Judith. It immediately reminded me of an excellent interview with an author of a booked titled ‘State of Fear:”, which details the reporting of the Covid pandemic using worst case numbers:
https://youtu.be/cHoCYXLYTRM
This is of course the fallacy of an appeal to a dubious authority. I have avoided much of the discussion of COVID. But is it now time to count the chickens?
In Australia there have been 29,991 cases and 910 deaths. That’s 3% mortality.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/aud-covid.png
NSW was the first state to be hit. Largely as a result of infected passengers from cruise liners being let loose. International travel was quickly shut down and internal borders closed. There were very short term limits on travel even within states. Community transmission was very quickly brought under control and effective contact tracing procedures implemented. Most of the cases happened in the second wave in Melbourne Victoria. They lost control of community transmission and ultimately needed to draw a cordon around the city. Things are on track and vaccinations are being rolled out.
Ellison:
If COVID “cases” were counted in Australia, as they were in the US, the data are not even accurate enough for a back of the envelope calculation. Making the 3% fatality rate VERY questionable. I agree with everything else you wrote.
For the first time in the US, starting March 2020, a new strain of flu was diagnosed based ONLY an an inaccurate PCR test, typically with a 35x cycle CT or more, WITH NO FLU SYMPTOMS.
The false positives had to be huge. Even Grouchy Fauci admitted the PCR CT was too high at 35x.
But NOW, ONLY for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept data achieved from a PCR test with 28 cycles, or fewer.
That is a deliberate decision to decrease the number of “breakthrough infections” after vaccinations being officially recorded.
Non-vaccinated people will continue getting inaccurate high CT PCR tests to create more false positives.
In addition, on May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported POST-vaccine “breakthrough” cases to focus on identifying and investigating ONLY hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause.
Previous POST-VACCINE case counts, last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only, and will not be updated.
Asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – post-vaccine patients will no longer count as a “COVID case”, but ONLY if they had been vaccinated.
False positives from PCR tests are the only logical explanation for SO MANY PEOPLE with no flu symptoms, who are declared to be COVID flu “cases”.
The government (CDC) bias was to make COVID seem worse in 2020, and now in 2021, to reduce reported vaccine failures, for vaccinated people.
Meanwhile, the adverse side effects from COVID vaccines is unprecedented in the 30 year history of the VAERS database.
No – I doubt that cases – or deaths – in Australia were counted incorrectly.
The only ‘logical’ explanation for false positives isn’t based on facts. Nor are adverse reactions to the vaccines all that problematic. Perhaps a couple of serious adverse reactions per million vaccinations at worst. The TGA are following up on 11,000 reported adverse reactions – overwhelmingly mild – after more than 17 million vaccinations.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-29/health-authorities-update-covid-vaccine-deaths-bood-clot/100105130
It more reminded me of a conversation with the author of a book called
“Climate Of Fear”, who was unhappy to find that climate hype had an
inconvenient basis in climate and radiative forcing data. Being a physician by training, Crighton, feared the reputation of his profession might fall prey to homeopaths like the ones John Maddox and James Randi caught red handed trying to import faked data into a secure lab in an effort to’prove’ that it took less than one molecule of a drug to work medical wonders.
Given the survival of homeopathy in the face of mere science, climate skeptics might follow their example by emphasising ever greater rhetorical returns on the increasingly dilute basis of their claims.
Of course, that could lead to pushback-
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/05/try-this-if-uncertainty-monster-eats.html
I can understand the insurance industry’s fear of getting caught with having to make large payouts such as major fire and storm events. By taking the worst case scenario, the industry can charge higher rates based on a ‘legitimate’ source even if everyone knows it is impossible. Is there any incentive to do otherwise? The likelihood of making larger profits is too tempting. The only downside is to say, 30 years hence, ‘Sorry, we estimated on the high side.’ And with amnesia, they won’t even have to apologize. Am I too cynical?
I believe that Property and Casualty insurance rates are set annually. The insurance industry makes long term investments in the form (for example) of loans/mortgages/bonds on construction and real property. Setting long term investment/loan rates with buildings and real estate as security could include climate projections.
Pingback: Projecting manmade climate change: scenarios to 2050 - HootNeoos
The belief that the world (or even the US) can achieve 100 % electric generation from renewables shows that the activists and climate scientists who promote renewables lack basic math skills and basic physical science knowledge. Which begs the obvious question – How can those how lack the intellectual capacity for basic math skills and basic physical science knowledge somehow possess the superior brain power to understand climate science.
Joe … it may get worse …
https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-leftists-try-to-cancel-math-class-11621355858?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
“For example, human additions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by the middle of the 21st century are expected to directly shift the atmosphere’s natural greenhouse effect by only 1% to 2%. Since the climate system is highly variable on its own, that smallness sets a very high bar for confidently projecting the consequences of human influences.” (Koonin)
Since you neglected to provide a link to the source for that quotation, I’ll offer Ken Rice’s rebuttal thereof from 2015:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/04/allegedly-unsettled-science-by-steven-koonin-et-al/#comment-431459
Steve Koonin… was also involved in initial attempts by the American Physical Society to draft a statement on climate science that Judith Curry discussed in a post a day or so ago. Judith seemed to think that his departure from the committee drafting the statement meant no one left understood things properly.
I pointed out that this seemed unlikely given how poor his article was.
https://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/scientists-flee-global-warming-hoax-scare-tactics/
Evenin’ Wagathon (UTC),
I’ll repeat myself yet again, for your benefit and the Popes’ and Dave’s. Here is a quotation from Steven E. Koonin’s new book:
The most prominent series of assessment reports is produced under the auspices of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was established in 1988. The IPCC issued its first assessment in 1990; the Fourth Assessment Report (termed AR4) was issued in 2007, the Fifth (AR5) in 2013, and the Sixth (AR6) is expected in the summer of 2021…
The assessment reports literally define The Science for non-experts. Given the intensive authoring and review processes, any reader would naturally expect that their assessments and summaries of the research literature are complete, objective, and transparent—the “gold standard.” In my experience, the reports largely do meet that expectation, and so much of the detail in the first part of this book, the science story, is drawn from them.
The starting point for any discussion of Koonin’s new book starts with the IPCC’s reports, not what Koonin wrote several years ago or whatever anybody else might have written if it isn’t referenced in the “gold standard” assessment reports.
Have you got that yet?
Koonin’s latest book–
“…both the research literature and government reports that summarize and assess the state of climate science say clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile. But these are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn directly from recent published research or the latest assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN:
•Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
•Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was eighty years ago.
•The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.
So what gives?”
“The earth has warmed during the past century, partly because of natural phenomena and partly in response to growing human influences. These human influences (most importantly the accumulation of CO2 from burning fossil fuels) exert a physically small effect on the complex climate system. Unfortunately, our limited observations and understanding are insufficient to usefully quantify either how the climate will respond to human influences or how it varies naturally. However, even as human influences have increased almost fivefold since 1950 and the globe has warmed modestly, most severe weather phenomena remain within past variability. Projections of future climate and weather events rely on models demonstrably unfit for the purpose.”
(Koonin, “Unsettled…” Pub. May 4, 2021)
As to the notion of a ‘gold standard’…
“The assessment reports literally define The Science for non-experts. Given the intensive authoring and review processes, any reader would naturally expect that their assessments and summaries of the research literature are complete, objective, and transparent—the “gold standard.” In my experience, the reports largely do meet that expectation, and so much of the detail in the first part of this book, the science story, is drawn from them. But a careful reading of the most recent assessment reports also reveals some elementary failures that mislead or misinform readers on important points. What those failures are, how they came about, how the media promulgates them, and what can be done to correct them is another dimension of the science story.” (ibid.)
Afternoon Wagathon (UTC),
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Somebody else here has actually read (at least some of) “Unsettled”!
So just as I said “The starting point for any discussion of Koonin’s new book starts with the IPCC’s reports”.
So why do you suppose that when Steve is discussing his second bullet point about “Greenland’s ice sheet” he doesn’t start with the IPCC’s most recent report on that topic?
And furthermore, why do you suppose that he doesn’t mention Arctic sea ice at all?
The West Midlands has become a Burgundy wine region so, now that British vineyards can grow Beaujolais, hopefully… English Seniors may stop burning books to survive cold winters, no?
Afternoon Wagathon,
I’m afraid I utterly fail to understand how your excursion to Burgundy answers my questions?
However please fear not, because Stefan Rahmstorf has ridden to the (partial) rescue!
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/steven-koonins-unsettled-greenland-ice-sheet-science/#comment-441948
Since Jason Box and William Colgan are world famous experts on the Greenland ice sheet, and are referenced several times in the Greenland ice sheet section of the IPCC’s SROCC, why did Professor Koonin make no mention of them in “Unsettled”?
Climatist science pushes a mythology that increased atmospheric CO2 causes all imagined problems despite evidence such findings are always at the small tail end of a probability curve showing the universe of all possible explanations.
https://evilincandescentbulb.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/global-warming-academics-say-stop-your-engines/
Evenin’ Wagathon (UTC),
Strange to relate, but that doesn’t answer my questions either. At the risk of repeating myself, repeating myself:
Since Prof. Koonin’s “gold standard” IPCC reports mention Messrs Box & Colgan numerous times in the context of the Greenland ice sheet, why does he ignore their work entirely in his magnum opus?
Given her Tweet earlier today, perhaps Judith would like to have a go at answering that one as well?
https://twitter.com/jim_hunt/status/1399827007953833988
The only case a global warming alarmist might make about Greenland is that it’s warmer than it would otherwise be compared to 1000 years ago when the Vikings settled there, not that it’s warmer than it’s ever been or was during the MWP, i.e., nothing more than an unprovable conjecture designed to promote fears about man-made climate change. See, definition of ‘fear-mongering’ (Urban Dictionary)
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fear%20mongering
Since they disagree so markedly, no more than one of them can be right. ~Steven Koonin, WSJ, Climate Science Is Not Settled
No, since all of them analyze the climate system as a Static Equilibrium Problem, that does not consider IR out in warm times that promotes cooling by ice thawing in the colder times that follow, none of them can possibly be right. Lysenkoism, CO2ism, whatever, will end in another generation, to be replaced by whatever new they find to scare people so they can tax and control the people.
Their correlations are not causation and people can fit a curve to any unrelated parameter if they work at it.
Science progresses: Succeeding studies are showing lower and lower ECSs while the UN IPCC CliSciFi climate models continue to inflate the number. Reality will win out over computer games eventually.
This climate war is not over until there is enough climate knowledge to end the war against fossil fuel and CO2. The people, many of them, understand this, but our leaders have, you scratch my back and I will scratch your back agreements that gives them public power and private wealth. Individuals cannot disagree with the mob and stay in influence.
If we could win the climate war and keep our wonderful fossil fuel that brought humanity out of dark ages into better times, they will find something else, they use climate change as one of their weapons, they will find other stuff. People with a comfortable life with fossil fuel energy for warmth and cooling and transportation and food and manufacturing, cannot be convinced to change their way of life to a more socialist and communist government in which we depend on the government for everything and therefore we support whatever they do.
The must destroy what we have and build it back their way
Reality will win out over computer games eventually.
No, that is gaslighting, they let you think everything will be ok so that you will not question what they do.
This whole exercise in climate wokeness is a fraud. Elitists never intend to eliminate fossil fuel energy, mainly because it is most economical and reliable. It’s all about power control and global population management. Since China already has complete power over its people, they do not need to play these games — and so they are free to follow natural science — as we should … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1Iu9D5RhqQ
“This whole exercise in climate wokeness is a fraud.”
Whether one agrees with this depends heavily upon your definition. I would say progressive activists and politicians actively take advantage of every problem in order to advance their global cause. “Climate crisis” is just a great catch all to convert every problem into a global problem, poor forest and rainwater management, poor building codes in tropical coastlines, regional conflicts and poverty in general,
Following the politics of solving problems (with technology) rather than using them (for control) is the next awokening — hopefully.
Anybody that believes we can predict the distant future with any degree of accuracy needs have their head examined; that includes the IEA.
Technology innovations arise, seemingly from nowhere, that can have profound impacts on the future. In the energy field, the emergence in the 1960’s of the combined-cycle gas turbine has significantly altered electrical generation. In other area, the ubiquitous I-phone.
My point is innovation and attendant evolutionary change can not be predicted. Long-range prognostications are more- or-less crap. Today’s policy makers would do well to significantly dial back their time frames.
Innovation compounds on itself. It grows exponentially and that is why our imagination is not fertile enough predict and see the next 30-50 years.
Climate science misunderstanding compounds itself if unchecked … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSSOnJgPpY
An interesting retweet:
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1394686122035277828
Glad that Denizens finally accept that we need 700% more renewables!
Nic Lewis has a much less costly analysis that shows that modest changes will suffice. In the process he corrects a number of errors most people make.
And Hausfather is just one guy too. Generally Nic has a very good track record. The fact that you cherry pick something from that scientific journal of record Twitter shows that you have little to offer.
Zeke is the BTI’s chief scientist. And the tweet contains numbers by the IEA. So no, David, this ain’t my guy against yours: it’s institutions against a single guy.
Willard, I think you have no idea what verification and validation really is. The Navier-Stokes equations are very accurate when modeling attached flows with an onset flow that is essentially free of turbulence and no shock waves. There are thousands of test results and billions of model runs that have demonstrated this fact. Separated flows are not well modeled or even well understood. Tropical convection is hopelessly inaccurate in climate models but its critical to understanding where the topopause is and what the radiation balance is.
Conflating the issue with weird generalizations that no model is truly validated is junk science.
I see, the same institutions (like science) that are increasingly wrong about most things. I suppose you want to keep schools closed too just as the CDC recommended up until very recently, despite the fact that the ongoing snipe hunt for classroom transmission kept coming up with almost zero. It’s an appeal to authority Willard and fallacious.
You no doubt saw that Hausfather tweeted approval of this very post by Judith.
> I think you have no idea what verification and validation really is.
You’d be surprised, David, but that’s irrelevant. What matters here is that Steve Easterbrook does.
Adults grasp the necessity of national defense. Adolescents and those who still depend on Mother for sustenance don’t.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/64/1/jas3824.1.xml
is an example of how models of chaotic systems can be affected by large numerical truncation errors that are always present.
Easterbrook is addressing an irrelevancy, the idea of formal software V&V which is not really applicable to most fluid simulations software. Far better are sensitivity studies to parameters and numerical choices. Zhou et al had a good paper on this regarding cloud microphysics parameters and showed that ECS could be engineered over a large range using plausible values of the parameters.
Basically, ECS from climate models is not reliable because its dependent on thousands of choices where there is either insufficient data or insufficient evidence to make the choice wisely.
That you introduce this irrelevancy Willard is part of your pattern of obfuscation and deflection.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/29/2/jcli-d-15-0191.1.xml
Link for Zhou et al
Well, the point is of course that these models are no where near a state where they are stable enough for formal V&V. But standard consistency and sensitivity checks are mostly not reported in the literature as they should be (even though that is starting to change) so Willis is partially correct. His instincts on this are largely correct.
Instead of the purely negative role you seem to like to play, you might actually read the papers I mentioned and try to make an adult contribution here. Games are for children (and Willard).
How is Hausfather going to generate 700% more from renewables (unreliables) while cutting gas 85% with or without CCS?
MD,
The IEA have also said recently
“A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas fired plant. Since 2010, the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of renewables has risen.”
“….. a concerted effort to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement….would mean a quadrupling of mineral requirements for clean energy technologies by 2040. An even faster transition, to hit net zero by 2050 would require 6 times more mineral inputs in 2040 than today.”
(from Executive Summary, ‘The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions’ IEA May 2021)
Eyeballing Zeke’s list and not having time to run the numbers, it does look as though we are on pace to actually satisfy Zeke’s list.
If only:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/exports/natural-gas-production-by-region-terawatt-hours-twh.svg
Notice coal and gas numbers rely on CCS?
Climate scientists cannot explain the temperature changes of the past, the whys and whens of the Roman and Medieval warm periods, the Little Ice Age and why it ended in 1700, or why it has warmed since then.
The IPCC itself said “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
None of the endless doomcasts of the past have come true.
And yet y’all want to convince us that you can tell us what the temperature will be in the year 2100 if you only can pick the right “scenario”?
It is to laugh.
w.
Yes Willis, I would say that climate science shares with viral epidemiology the prize for being a crude field dominated by primitive mechanistic narratives that lack rigorous quantification. Just think about clouds and their responses or convective storms.
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/19/projecting-manmade-climate-change-scenarios-to-2050/#comment-950114
This got posted in the wrong place.
Willard, if you claim that you can predict the future without being able to explain the past, I feel sorry for you.
If a man came up to you and said “I can predict tomorrow’s horserace outcome”, but he couldn’t explain why a single horserace winner in the past came in first place rather than third place, you’d laugh him out of town and rightly so.
And you can stuff your condescension up where the solar constant is zero.
w.
Willis,
Excellent quote. That belongs at the top, or on a masthead. I’m sorry that I missed it before — is there a link to that online?
DK_, the IPCC quote is here, section 14.2.2.2
w.
Willard | May 19, 2021 at 6:31 pm |
Averages of ensembles of unproven models with no V&V, models which can all accurately hindcast the past but give very different values for equilibrium climate sensitivity, models that have consistently run hot, are as accurate and useful as the Roman version:
Averages of ensembles of goat entrails.
Look, if you cannot predict the future climate as the IPCC says, then you can’t generate a probability distribution of it either. For example, there’s nothing in the climate record of say 0 AD to 1200 AD that says “a Little Ice Age is on the way” … and guess what?
If what they have to go on is history, the models fed on the history from 0 AD to 1200 AD will NEVER predict the Little Ice Age, no matter how many you might average … but it still happened.
However, the IPCC’s (and your) childlike faith in the Tinkertoy models’ ability to make probability distributions of chaotic phenomena is noted with some attendant hilarity.
w.
> Averages of ensembles of unproven models with no V&V
I too prefer my models proven, Willlis. Do you know any?
While waiting for your acknowledgment that you’re simply waving your arms:
https://www.easterbrook.ca/steve/2010/11/do-climate-models-need-independent-verification-and-validation/
I’ll add that one to my “but modulz” Bingo square.
Willis has never objected to climate impact models that equate a two hundred horsepower SUV with 29 hampsters.
Why don’t we see more of him on Tucker Carlson ?
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/05/decarbonize-economy-or-we-shoot-dog.html
Willard said:
So can I. And we can do it because we can both explain why there is a winter, and since we understand it, we can use that explanation to predict the future.
But can you predict when the next Dansgaard-Oeschger event will occur? Well, no, because we don’t understand what triggers them.
First, as far as the general populace is concerned, there is no difference between the two. That’s what makes them so useful for alarmists—when challenged, they can fall back on your excuse that “Gosh, I know the arctic summer ice never melted, but I didn’t PREDICT that, I just PROJECTED that”.
Second, projections are a subset of predictions. A “projection” is where we make a prediction of what will happen, but we specify in advance the values of some of the variables. So while predictions are not projections, projections are indeed predictions.
Say what? I don’t cite Steve Goddard, either directly or indirectly, because I don’t read what he writes. You need to stop pretending you can read peoples’ minds, it just makes you look foolish.
w.
> we can do it because we can both explain why there is a winter,
The converse is untrue, however. Which is why it’s important to realize that there’s a big difference between explanation and prediction.
Two dice suffice to refute most contrarians appeal to “but predictions.”
“First, as far as the general populace is concerned, there is no difference between the two. That’s what makes them so useful for alarmists—when challenged, they can fall back on your excuse…”
Mott and Bailey. Like the weasel. The assertion is flooding coasts, because Science. When it’s an inch a decade, what I said was only a projection.
A.KA. Having one’s cake and eating it too.
Good points, Willis.
However, I think there is an explanation for the 270 and 135 +/- 25 Ma million year cycles of icehouse phases that last tens of millions of years. We are currently near the beginning of the second deep icehouse phase during the Phanerozoic Eon (542 Ma). The previous one was during the Permian-Carboniferous, around 300 Ma ago. The cause is increased galactic cosmic ray flux as the Milky Way galactic density waves rotate at different speed than the arms of our galaxy. This causes the intensity of the cosmic radiation to decrease for tens of millions of years when the protection is reduced. The higher cosmic ray flux impacting earth causes slightly increased cloud cover, which, over long periods, causes Earth’s climate to cool.
Nir Shaviv, 2007, The Milky Way Galaxy’s Spiral Arms and Ice-Age Epochs and the Cosmic Ray Connection. http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
http://www.sciencebits.com/sites/default/files/pictures/ice-ages/fig1.jpg
“Figure 1 – The cosmic ray link between solar activity and the terrestrial climate. The changing solar activity is responsible for a varying solar wind strength. A stronger wind will reduce the flux of cosmic ray reaching Earth, since a larger amount of energy is lost as they propagate up the solar wind. The cosmic rays themselves come from outside the solar system. Since cosmic rays dominate the troposphere ionization, an increased solar activity will translate into a reduced ionization, and empirically, also to a reduced low altitude cloud cover. Since low altitude clouds have a net cooling effect (their “whiteness” is more important than their “blanket” effect), increased solar activity implies a warmer climate. Intrinsic cosmic ray flux variations will have a similar effect, one however, which is unrelated to solar activity variations.”
http://www.sciencebits.com/sites/default/files/pictures/ice-ages/fig4.jpg
“Figure 4 – The top panel describes our passages through galactic spiral arms. The second panel describes the predicted cosmic ray flux and the predicted occurrence of ice-age epochs. The third panel describes the actual occurrence of ice-age epochs. The fourth panel indirectly describes the variable cosmic ray flux. Due to the fact that the cosmic ray flux is the “clock” used to exposure date meteorites, the meteoritic ages are predicted to cluster around periods when the “clock” ticks slower, which is when the cosmic ray flux was lowest, as is seen in the data.”
http://www.sciencebits.com/sites/default/files/pictures/ice-ages/fig5.jpg
“Figure 5: Comparison between the reconstructed cosmic ray flux and the quantitative temperature reconstruction over the Phanerozoic: The top panel describes the reconstructed Cosmic Ray Flux variations over the past 500 Million years using the exposure ages Iron Meteorites. The bottom panel depicts in black, the reconstructed tropical ocean temperature variations using isotope data from fossils. The red line is the fit to the temperature using the cosmic ray flux variations. The notable fit implies that most of the temperature variations can be explained using the cosmic ray flux, and not a lot is left to be explained by other climate factors, including CO2. This implies that cosmic rays are the dominant (tropical) climate driver over the many million year time scale.”
I was under the impression that cosmic rays, from the sun or elsewhere, had been ruled out as a driver of climate change by the mainstream science community. Can you provide a link to a recent scientific paper or article which supports this idea?
I made a climate forecast in 1997, when I got interested in climate science, and it has been correct for the past 24 years, yet I have not won any prize: “Earth’s climate will get warmer, unless it gets cooler.”
I also have a prediction for 2100: In 2100, government bureaucrat scientists will still be predicting a climate crisis is coming “in ten years”.
From Willis E, quote “Climate scientists cannot explain the temperature changes of the past, the whys and whens of the Roman and Medieval warm periods, the Little Ice Age and why it ended in 1700, or why it has warmed since then.” Not quite so; the whens yes, the whys no, not yet.
That does not mean those cycles do not exist. In fact one can follow those cycles as far back as 6200BCE. And the ups and downs they brought to civilisations. See an old updated post here, bottom fig. : https://melitamegalithic.wordpress.com/2019/03/15/searching-evidence-update-2/
The cycles are close to 980 years. Yes, the driver is still elusive. It has been recorded in history in the old world, but for the New-Worlders they are beginning to learn, though maybe the ‘Natives’ know. See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EDSc2zmGoY @ 02:56 six generations have done without irrigation. Take it from the horse’s mouth.
Even Archaeology, while still clinging tightly to its gods and rituals, is coming round to accept these natural ‘changes’.
But that’s just a link to your site mm. The mainstream science community is washing it’s hands of past evidence of a millennial climate cycle. That’s the problem.
Alan; one is a link to my site. You won’t find that data anywhere else. The Holocene max earth changes can only be seen -clearly- from my findings. However the historical data is allover the net and easy to verify.
The youtube video is very telling. The important info is in what appears trivial comment. See it long-term.
I’m afraid I need to correct you Willis. Having been going through the IPCC docs with the proverbial fine tooth comb recently I can assure you that you have left a significant word out of your quotation from section G.2 of the Technical Summary to the WG1 report of their AR3 (AKA TAR), which should read:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.
See: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar3/wg1/
Would you not agree that the correct sentence conveys a rather different message than your version?
Yes Jim, That’s about as vague and meaningless as it gets. GCM’s can’t predict the patterns of SST change as everyone now acknowledges and that means they can’t predict ECS either. In fact, they can’t predict any of the patterns. Some of the CMIP6 models are pretty bad at hindcasting too because of unrealistic aerosol and cloud models. These models are simply not reliable for much and the “community” has sobered up to some extent and is now admitting it.
BTW, I do seem to remember Willis’ statement from a paper by Slingo and Palmer too. Or maybe the IPCC in a separate report or section. I think Jim this proof texting game of gotcha is not a good use of your time.
Mornin’ D (UTC),
“This proof texting game of gotcha is not a good use of your time”
Au contraire. It simultaneously keeps me off the Covid-19 ravaged streets of North Cornwall and highly entertained.
What’s more Willis should be aware by now that out of context “quote mining” is not a good use of his time?
Mornin’ Willard,
“I already quoted…”
In here? I’m blowed if I can see it, so I assume somewhere else. Unless my ageing eyes and ^F are deceiving me?
For sure the word ‘exact’ does make a difference but when we are talking in terms of a couple of degrees of, or a few degrees of Centigrade then how ‘not exact’ can you be and still get away with it?
I’d prefer to see models that go back in time and reasonably accurately follow what historic records tell us happened. Surely that should be the test of any predictive tool that it does track what you have already witnessed and observed. If it fails then at least you should have some idea of why it fails, and if it succeeds but not so exactly, then you can reason that out to.
The bottom line is that climate science needs to be trusted and there is a lot of evidence around that lies continue to be told to the public at large both about the problems and the solutions. IMO.
Mornin’ UKWL,
“For sure the word ‘exact’ does make a difference”
And so does “accidentally” leaving out the entire next sentence?
“There is a lot of evidence around that lies continue to be told to the public at large both about the problems and the solutions. IMO.”
There most certainly is!
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/tag/steve-koonin/
Steve [Koonin] is apparently well qualified in physics, so presumably he is able to comprehend these equations?
US ≠ Global
CSSR ≠ AR5
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20CRv3-US-T2max-1900-2020.png
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20CRv3-Arctic-T2max-1900-2020.png
‘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).’ https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
Bravo, Willis!
Indeed there is no historical or theoretical reason to suppose that CO2 is in charge of temperatures, at this time, at these levels. This is medieval.
I thought it was a dynamic coupled non-linear chaotic system. Oh well.
And wasn’t it a bit after 1800 that we emerged from the LIA (CO2 280ppm)?
And there’s no explanation for the Holocene Optimum either. Or the Younger Dryas, in both directions.
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Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
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Empirical evidence shows that global warming is beneficial for the world economy and ecosystems. Therefore, there is no valid justification for policies to try to reduce man-made global warming. The economic loss due to a reduction in global warming plus the huge expenses of actions to reduce global warming cannot be justified and should be stopped, asap.
And…
This report indicates a shrinking population for all but Africa by around 2050:
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/GlobalTrends_2040.pdf#page=27
Of course, it’s also breathless about climate change, so…
Willard: Explanation. Prediction.
Prediction is the best test of explanation.
Not really, Matt. It makes sense to speak of predictive skill. But we speak of explanatory power. They’re orthogonal concepts. All in all, we probably need both, e.g.:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02887-9
One could argue that explanatory power increases with predictive skill. That’s OK in theory. Reality is usually more complex
Reality is usually more complex.
That is why warmists are intellectually incapable of understanding the reality of climate. They feel safer being told how to think.
The fantasy that one can know everything all oneself usually subsides during adulthood, Kid. For some reason, Freedom Fighters never let go of it.
Next time you turn on a light switch or eat a fine restaurant meal, think about that.
It’s a pipe dream to think we will ever get to a restaurant, much less enjoy the food, without fossil fuel. Heat the house in higher latitudes with no wind and a no show sun.
And David Young –
All if your poimts were notably misleading, but this one may have been the best (hard to choose (for example, atandb later explained that he wasn’t aware of the wrong statements you had made leading up to my comment he responded to), but I’ll go with this one).
When you quoted Don132…
> Don132 | April 24, 2021 at 6:26 pm |
Joshua notes a logical problem:
Don later apologized for his error , after he went back to re-listen to the video and looked at what I said more closely.
It’s fascinating that you’d pick an example of where someone made a proveably incorrect statement about something that I’d said, and then later apologized to me for his error, as if somehow that’s evidence to support your false claims about things that I’ve said.
I have to give you credit. There are many things I’d never expect a renowned scientist such as yourself to do. I’d never expect a renowned scientists to fail to understand how risk from individual risk events can compound at the population level. I’d never expect one to fail to account for the lag in Sweden’s reporting of deatha after its been explained to him. Etc.
But lifting a quote where someone said I made a logical error, and then later apologized for getting it wrong to support an argument about me making errors is truly, truly something I’d expect no self-respecting renowned scientist to do.
You do some strange things, David Young.
Your repeated statements that responding to me and reading my comments is a waste of your time, only to them immediately turn around and read my comments and respond to them is a very strange thing to do.
Bit this latest example of your strangest behavior yet.
Maybe one day a renowned scientists such as yourself can explain those behaviors to me.
Explanation without rigorous quantification is not really science. Many weak sciences are little more than crude mechanistic narratives that lack quantification. Usually these sciences are totally incapable of predicting anything. The Navier-Stokes are rigorous and quantitative. Just saying “masks trap particles that can cause disease” is meaningless. Cancer chemo kills lung cancer cells in the lab. But lung cancer almost never responds to chemo when tested in double blind trials. Same with masks. And Willis is right about climate science.
dpy
“lung cancer almost never responds to chemo when tested in double blind trials”
I mean. Just one drug I’ve worked with (as a comparator).
“In TAX 317, 204 patients were randomized to receive either docetaxel 100 mg/m2 (D100) or 75 mg/m2 (D75) intravenously every 3 weeks, or best supportive care (BSC). Median survival was 9.0 months with D75 versus 4.6 months for BSC (P = 0.016); 1-year survival was 40% for D75 versus 16% for BSC (P = 0.016).”
Is there literally *nothing* you’re incapable of having a strong, yet demonstrably false opinion on?
Well what is usually measured is 5 year survival. Also, the stage of the cancer is important. I should perhaps have said late stage lung cancer. 5 year survival rate for stage 4 is 4.7%. Did you cherry pick the 1 year survival rate? You usually do that when you cite something. You need to provide more details for this to be meaningful.
The point remains that late stage lung cancer results in death in virtually all cases regardless of treatment, just as transmission of viruses doesn’t change much when masks are used.
Here’s an example from a previous post of your misrepresenting what I say. BTW, You essentially agreed that what I said was true just previously.
dpy6629 | April 29, 2021 at 5:39 pm |
Reading comprehension or something worse VTG?
Again what I actually said: “Any skill in outputs not used in tuning is accidental and caused by cancellation of numerical errors.” I usually phrase it as “outputs not directly related to those used in tuning.”
Your invention is “You asserted that models have no skill” and that’s quite different.
The global average temperature is related to top of atmosphere radiation balance and so is more skillful than the patterns. But any quantity not so related will have skill only by accident. That’s because the local numerical truncation errors are quite large.
You are right that I should have said late stage lung cancer. It was an off handed analogy. The main point was that Willard’s information was not dispositive of anything. Do you agree with that point? It was the important one.
But its your usual pattern of cherry picking and deflecting when challenged. I provided a very glaring example that seems to indicate you are not operating in good faith.
Your pattern is to misrepresent most things.
I’ll point out too that what VTG is doing here is a favorite technique of non-scientist activists to try to discredit top notch scientists. It happened to John Ioannidis. Some of it occurred here if memory serves from VTG himself.
In any case, the bad faith tactic is to comb a massive corpus of work and find a few stray and largely irrelevant statements that can be plucked out of context to show an “error.” It shows how you cannot trust anything from people like VTG. Their purpose is not to contribute or engage in a debate of an important issue. It’s to slime and slander those they disagree with.
David Young –
> it is fallacious to argue that because chemo kills all cancer cells in the lab, chemo must cure all cancer.
Once again it is surprising to see a renowned scientist display such a poor understanding of basic science.
No one argues that “because chemo kills all cancer cells in the lab, chemo must cure all cancer.”
Scoentists don’t make claims like that, and you seem very confused in thinking that scientists do say something like that.
It’s very similar to your misunderstanding about masks – where you think that because people say that masks may have the benefit of reducing transmission, they’re saying that masks prevent all transmission.
Which, of course, is a close cousin to your other misunderstanding, that because masks don’t prevent all transmission, therefore they can’t reduce transmission.
Which, if course, is closely related to your apparent inability to understand how a marginal reduction of individual risk events can compound at the population level.
Which, of course, is a close relative of your repeated failure to understand that before making claims about the trend of deaths in Sweden, you need to account for lags in reporting.
I certainly hope you don’t make similar mistakes in basic science in your field of work where you built your reputation as a renowned scientist. If you did, that might lead to unnecessary deaths.
What this exchange proves is that Willard et al are acting in bad faith because they quote out of context and show their goal is purely propagandistic. This will be obvious to any unbiased observer. But what would you expect from anonymous non-scientist inter net bullies who like their white robes and hoods.
Here’s a very clear example of how this works.
Here’s an example from a previous post of your misrepresenting what I say. BTW, You essentially agreed that what I said was true just previously.
dpy6629 | April 29, 2021 at 5:39 pm |
Reading comprehension or something worse VTG?
Again what I actually said: “Any skill in outputs not used in tuning is accidental and caused by cancellation of numerical errors.” I usually phrase it as “outputs not directly related to those used in tuning.”
Your invention is “You asserted that models have no skill” and that’s quite different.
A clear example of a lie repeated scores of times. A classic example of bad faith. No acknowledgement the lie was and is a lie.
No real exchange is possible with someone who is acting in bad faith as you have done for at least a decade. This is a conscious strategy on your part. Getting a life would help you get past this obsessive behavior that wastes people’s valuable life energy. That includes your valuable time. Is philosophy really so boring for you? Go back to the Hawkmoth discussion that at least is honestly wrong.
Joshua, You really need to stop the unethical mind reading. You don’t know what I understand or don’t understand.
You also should stop inventing things I did not say. I never said scientists say that because chemicals work in the lab, they will cure 100% of cancers. That’s another unethical practice.
The point is that just because masks trap some particles is largely meaningless in determining if they work in the real world. Your meanders about whether they might reduce transmission is not meaningful because its too general. There are many types of masks and many different situations. In some masks reduce transmission and in others they do not.
David Young –
> Joshua, You really need to stop the unethical mind reading. You don’t know what I understand or don’t understand.
I know what you argue. When you respond to a comment about the potential population level compounding of individual risk event mitigation with masks, with nonsense about vitamin C, you made it clear you didn’t understand.
I agree it’s quite surprising that a renowned scientist wouldn’t understand something so basic – but well, thee you have it.
It’s not unlike your nonsense characterization of what scientists say about the generalizability of lab results with chemo.
It’a not unlike your mistake in not accounting for the lag in reporting of deaths in Sweden – even AFTER the lag was explained to you – to Wei fly say that the rate of deaths there declined throughout March (when you were clearly wrong about that just as you were when you said that ICU admissions had declined).
It’s like when you said last summer that the spike in cases in the US wouldn’t cause a spike in hospitalizations and deaths (because you wrongly attribited the spike in cases only to increased testing and increased testing of young people).
It’s like when you wrongly characterized the relative rate of testong and cases in Florida compared to NY and Texas.
When you say things that are just tislly wrong David Young, you make it clear what you do and don’t understand.
> The point is that just because masks trap some particles is largely meaningless in determining if they work in the real world.
Of course it isn’t “largely meaningless.” it’s relevant information. It isn’t dispoaitce thst masks work in the real world, but in a situatiom of imperfect evidence and uncertainty, you work with what information you have and weigh the probabilities accordingly. You don’t just dismiss potentially relevant information. I’m surprised a renowned scientist would argue thst you should do so.
Anyway, Dacid Young, I quoted you. One of your funniest repeated arguments is when I quote you and you say that I lied about what you said.
It’s most as funny as when you day that reading my comments and responding to them is a waste of your valuable time, and then continue to read and respond despite pledging to stop doing so.
How many times has that happened? Why do you keep making that pledge only to break thst pledge?
What would explain that behavior?
Whaf would explain why you keep doing something that you have said many times is a waste of your valuable time?
Well, Josh you are being very unethical here and you are reading my mind. I well understand these issues that you say I don’t. That’s called a lie.
And drop the “disgtinguished” crap. It’s sarcastic and childish. But that’s you isn’t it?
And you need to stop the libelous lie about how I do my job. No one is going to die as a result and your suggesting this is just dispicable.
Every single thing you raised has been litigated and you were not really right about any of it. All were largely irrelevant anyway. Schoolyard bullies focus on that kind of thing.
BTW, Just on this thread (April 17, 2021) 6 others commenters have commented on Joshie’s cherry picking quotes out of context to support his narrative, egregiously cherry picking numbers to deceive about the overall shape of a curve, and cluttering up the thread with endless comments that are mostly long discursive speculations devoid of facts and data. These comments are reproduced below.
Joshua admits that he is spending vast amounts of time on something that is completely meaningless. This really does show something deeply disrespectful of other people’s time.
Joshua | April 23, 2021 at 2:38 pm |
> I assume they are important to you, but I just don’t see how they answer the big picture.
Not really. In the end, the fact that as an individual he makes statements that are obviously totally wrong is completely meaningless w/r/t the big picture. I just like tweaking David Young, because he’s so easily tweakable, and because it serves as a good example for how some “skeptics” get so far ahead of their skis when integrating uncertainty into their reasoning.
Robert I. Ellison | April 22, 2021 at 3:55 pm |
I have retired as Chief Hydrologist – people like Joshua couldn’t cope with it. I was apparently claiming to be authoritative. Joshua is of course a person with a habit of latching onto some point or other he imagines is telling and repeating it endlessly. I have on occasion replied without reading his comments. It makes no difference. Too funny.
Robert I. Ellison | April 22, 2021 at 3:55 pm |
It was of course the hiatus starting from the last Pacific Ocean climate shift in 1998/2000. Is there another climate shift under way now? The only unintended irony is that Joshua imagines that he has a point to make.From a decade ago on this blog.
atandb | April 22, 2021 at 12:44 pm | Reply
I have for a long time contended myself with reading rather than commenting. However, your use of statistics in the preceding comment is so egregious that I decided to comment. First of all you quote two numbers of an entire bicameral plot to prove your point, which is cherry picking in the extreme. A look at the entire plot without using any other information would lead to the conclusion that, at present that the death rate is a low for the graph.
atandb | April 22, 2021 at 1:24 pm |
As long as the graph is in the asymptotic decline, which it is, it is a decline. Does not matter what the average is, how much of the graph you want to select, etc. What you did was cherry picking. David Young’s assertion of “strongly declining” is correct, but not what I would have used. The asymptotic curve is still strongly declining according to statistics. I would not have used that description, but your objection to it is fallacious.
A few more just to show that Joshie is not fooling anyone but himself.
Joe – the non epidemiologist | April 23, 2021 at 9:54 am |
Context in the overall data (not the minutia) is far better to develop an understanding of the infection rate curves. As you stated, Sweden, in spite of much looser mitigation protocols, fared better than most other western countries, Josh on the other hand became so obsessed with proving nic wrong, that he lost sight of the broader picture. Classic case of cant see the forest for the trees.
Robert I. Ellison | April 22, 2021 at 3:49 am |
VTG has evidently learned nothing about the unfulfilled potential of models. And I know that Joshua is not capable of learning anything. They are as committed to empty posturing as any crazy contrarian curmudgeon.
Robert I. Ellison | April 22, 2021 at 6:18 am |
When Tim Palmer writes in the PNAS perspective about self reflection – he may not have has Joshua in mind. I suspect that Joshua is more the ‘congealed into the view…’ type. There has been little to no progress on the statistics of model families since this statement in the TAR. I could not let Joshua’s quotation that he imagines supports his congealed view slide.
jeffnsails850 | April 22, 2021 at 10:22 am |
To recap for any lurkers: Nic attempted to figure out when herd immunity would happen, using Sweden. His forecasts for reaching herd immunity were wrong- just like every other scientists forecasts for anything COVID related. This was probably due mostly to the discovery that “immunity” is time limited (the reason people are telling you that annual booster vaccine shots will be necessary) as well as controlled by viral load (and amount of antibodies- some who caught the virus are less immune than others). Because Nic’s examination of a real and interesting topic – herd immunity – produced an inaccurate but interesting thought experiment, Joshua et al declared all work by Nic to be utterly useless and politically motivated (just like all the thousands of inaccurate forecasts by climate scientists- ha, just kidding, their errors are pure!).
Josh posts numbers to attempt to convince you that Sweden
weathered COVID far worse than nations that locked down, that today their daily death rate is unusually high, and that this must mean Sweden’s goverment failed because they didn’t pick the preferred policy.
In reality, Sweden performed comparably or better than locked down democracies and, as a result have a daily death rate from Covid that is much, much lower than a great many western democracies that are still locked down.
Joe – the non epidemiologist | April 23, 2021 at 5:40 pm | Reply Josh – big picture – not minutia 1) Still havent learned about the hope-Simpson curve 2) India total cases is less than 1,200 per 100k vs a range of 8k to 10k for other industrialized countries which is substantially less than most all other industrialized countries Try not to get lost in the detail with your obsession trying to prove Nic wrong.
And just to complete the proof that Josh is disingenous and usually wrong.
Don132 | April 24, 2021 at 7:08 am | Reply
As for Joshua– as usual, irrelevant ad hominem attacks are interjected because he doesn’t understand how to stick to the actual argument.
Don132 | April 24, 2021 at 6:26 pm |
Joshua notes a logical problem: “With the clotting the deaths would necessarily be limited to those under 60 who are vaxed, but given the apparent very significant reduction to spread from vaxing, the under 60 cohort getting infected without getting vaxed would be transmitting the virus to vulnerable seniors.”
Nice try, Joshua. But your use of the word “necessarily” here shows that you haven’t paid attention to the argument. Maybe you should actually watch the whole video and read the complaint to the EMA? Because, you see, clotting deaths from the Covid-19 vaccines would in no way be limited to those under 60. You’d know that if you knew the argument.
And Jim2 addresses Josh’s extreme number of mostly valueless comments.
jim2 | April 24, 2021 at 12:27 pm | Reply I wish you guys would leave some space for Joshua to comment! Shame on you!
And finally my response to Joshie’s quoting Palmer and Stevens out of context is similar to Robert Ellison’s.
dpy6629 | April 21, 2021 at 4:59 pm |
I think Josh your reading comprehension problem is showing itself. This is about the models which have little to do with radiative physics and other fundamentals of climate theory. What you quote is just them explaining why it should be acceptable to admit that virtually all the detailed patterns in model results are not skillful. The obsessive need to use phony defenses of the models to “keep doubters from questioning the concensus” is harming the field. It’s about time someone said this and they finally did it. I don’t think they have been canceled yet.
This mountain of evidence proves pretty conclusively Josh that you are a pile of contradictions, poor reasoning, deliberate misrepresenting what others say, and obcession with your intellectual betters minor arguably mis-statements. Sorry you are the only one who doesn’t seem to realize it.
David Young –
David Young –
I know what you argue. When you respond to a comment about the potential population level compounding of individual risk event mitigation with masks, with nonsense about vitamin C, you made it clear you didn’t understand.
Here’s another example:
> > it is fallacious to argue that because chemo kills all cancer cells in the lab, chemo must cure all cancer.
Scientists don’t argue that, David Young
That you think they do is only evidence that you don’t understand what scientists say about the generalizability of lab performance of chemo to the real world.
It’s quite surprising seeing a renowned scientist wouldn’t understand something so basic – but well, there you have it.
It’a not unlike your mistake in not accounting for the lag in reporting of deaths in Sweden – even AFTER the lag was explained to you – to wrongly say that the rate of deaths there declined throughout March (when you were clearly wrong about that just as you were when you said that ICU admissions had declined).
It’s like when you said last summer that the spike in cases in the US wouldn’t cause a spike in hospitalizations and deaths (because you wrongly attribited the spike in cases only to increased testing and increased testing of young people).
It’s like when you wrongly characterized the relative rate of testong and cases in Florida compared to NY and Texas.
When you say things that are just tislly wrong David Young, you make it clear what you do and don’t understand.
> The point is that just because masks trap some particles is largely meaningless in determining if they work in the real world.
Of course it isn’t “largely meaningless.” it’s relevant information. It isn’t dispoaitce that masks work in the real world, but in a situatiom of imperfect evidence and uncertainty, you work with what information you have and weigh the probabilities accordingly. You don’t just dismiss potentially relevant information. I’m surprised a renowned scientist would argue thst you should do so.
Anyway, Dacid Young, I quoted you. One of your funniest repeated arguments is when I quote you and you say that I lied about what you said.
It’s most as funny as when you say that reading my comments and responding to them is a waste of your valuable time, and then continue to read and respond despite pledging to stop doing so.
How many times has that happened? Why do you keep making that pledge only to break thst pledge?
What would explain that behavior?
Whaf would explain why you keep doing something that you have said many times is a waste of your valuable time?
Sorry David Young –
This was mis-nested. I’ll repost it in the right place:
All if your poimts were notably misleading, but this one may have been the best (hard to choose (for example, atandb later explained that he wasn’t aware of the wrong statements you had made leading up to my comment he responded to), but I’ll go with this one).
When you quoted Don132…
> Don132 | April 24, 2021 at 6:26 pm |
Joshua notes a logical problem:
Don later apologized for his error , after he went back to re-listen to the video and looked at what I said more closely.
It’s fascinating that you’d pick an example of where someone made a proveably incorrect statement about something that I’d said, and then later apologized to me for his error, as if somehow that’s evidence to support your false claims about things that I’ve said.
I have to give you credit. There are many things I’d never expect a renowned scientist such as yourself to do. I’d never expect a renowned scientists to fail to understand how risk from individual risk events can compound at the population level. I’d never expect one to fail to account for the lag in Sweden’s reporting of deatha after its been explained to him. Etc.
But lifting a quote where someone said I made a logical error, and then later apologized for getting it wrong to support an argument about me making errors is truly, truly something I’d expect no self-respecting renowned scientist to do.
You do some strange things, David Young.
Your repeated statements that responding to me and reading my comments is a waste of your time, only to them immediately turn around and read my comments and respond to them is a very strange thing to do.
Bit this latest example of your strangest behavior yet.
Maybe one day a renowned scientists such as yourself can explain those behaviors to me.
David Young –
> I proved it.
Each of your comments was similarly flawed and misleading. As I said, atandb later said he wasn’t familiar with the baskstory of the previous comments you had made (although it was unclear exactly what he concluded from that).
But I love that you think quoting someone who said I was wrong and later apologized in the same thread to say that actually I was right, “proves” any of your nonsense.
So you took the time to surf through past exchanges with others to find criticism of me so you could quote it – and then either deliberately ignored the apology for the criticism, or didn’t even bother to take the time toook at the full context.
That’s very odd behavior for a renowned scientist, David Young. Especially since you’ve repeated so often your view that responding to me is a waste of time and thst my views aren’t worth consideration because I’m not a scientist. Why would you spend that time, wasting so much time, to (wrongly) use someone’s else’s (wrong) comment to supposedly de ink the credibility of someone you think is obviously not credible (in a way that you tho k is obvious to everyone)?
It goes to show that your approach to these issues is oddly sloppy and superficial. I can’t understand why a renowned scientist would (1) be so sloppy and, (2) be so casually dismissive of such a sloppy and obvious error, and (3) engage in so many behaviors so often he thinks is a waste of his time to convince people of something he thinks is is totally obvious anyway and, (4) include laugably wrong assertions in making that effort?
It’s almost as odd as your constant pattern of saying that you’re going to stop reading and respomding to my comments because you consider it to be a waste of your time, only to then continue reading and responding to my comments?
What explains these sloppy errors, and such a superficial analysis, and such repeated illogical and contradictory behaviors, from a renown scientist David Young?
Pingback: Projecting manmade climate change: scenarios to 2050 – Climate- Science.press
RCP8.5 is foundational to scaring the children.
For years we have been told that the IPCC does not perform science, it merely collects and displays the science of others.
Yet as Dr Curry noted above “The RCPs were formulated for use in the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment”.
It seem to me that the IPCC were playing at being scientists when they accepted the concept of the pathways and then made rules for future rsearchers to follow. Much damage has been done through this procedure, including trying to tell scientists what to do with science. Geoff S
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways are the degrees of negative economic impacts of various levels of emissions reductions.
Climate change impacts on the other hand, are an invention and a misattribution of the discrete solar forcing of extremes like heat and cold waves.
I don’t think that the BBC will respond to your entirely appropriate exhortations, Prof Curry.
If I were UK PM, I would introduce a mandatory fining system for all MSM outlets, whereby they would have a rapidly increasing set of fines for claiming worst-case scenarios were ‘expected’ ones. By projecting an image without explicitly stating it is worst case, the media are deliberately fuelling fear. That should be criminalised and fined. Fines should be 5% of annual revenues for the first offence up to 50% of net assets of the owner for a third offence. That would in effect bankrupt them if they did not comply with journalistic standards.
As for the State-owned BBC, I would simply freeze the pension fund and seize assets of the top 100 managers and all the Governors to ensure compliance. They think they are a law unto themselves: they would learn within 100 days that they were lawless unfundable bandits unless they learned to report rather than propagandise.
I believe in the USA that Fox News sued for the right to lie. That is something your Supreme Court should be encouraged to over-rule where climate is concerned. The right to lie should not trump the right to appropriate climate policy, after all. Politicians never stand up to media lying, after all.
If you ever want honest politicians representing you, they have to know that the Supreme Court will rule that safety from climate lying over-rules the right of the media to lie without punishment.
“In evaluating these scenarios, it is important to recognize that predicting future emissions is inherently uncertain, particularly as the time horizon increases. ”
Very well said!
Although it seems sensible to prepare for severe cases, have a look at what happened to temperatures in 1816 after Tambora erupted. OK most of us wouldn’t survive Yellostone erupting but ideas which cover all bases seem sensible e.g. reducing waste.
Does anyone believe the following???
1.About 12,000 years ago the oceans were at their highest. They began reflecting more radiant heat to the BLACK SKY than the earth retained from the sun.
2. To keep a constant average surface temperature Nature began removing heat from the oceans and dropping the frozen water on the frozen areas at the poles.
3. The 35-degree Fahrenheit water, in contact with the Ice Sheet, was melting the Ice Sheet. The Ice Sheet is sitting on the bottom of the ocean.
4. About 6,000 years ago the Ice sheet began breaking off. It is presently breaking off and melting adding heat to the earth equal to that lost to the black sky, thus the height of the oceans remains constant.
I guess there is no-one that believes simple High School science.
It depends on what sort of world you want. The high economic growth scenario when powered by fossil fuels – and I see no evidence that we are running out of them anytime soon – could result in atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the order of 1000 ppm – equivalent to RCP 8.5. Not a good idea in a ‘coupled, nonlinear, chaotic’ world – despite the immense volume of crap contrarian science found in these parts.
Economic growth is a good idea. Ultimately it stabilises population and creates resources for solving problems. conserving and restoring ecosystems, better sanitation and safer water, better health and education, updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health and environmental impacts, developing better and cheaper ways of producing electricity, replacing cooking with wood and dung with better ways of preparing food thus avoiding respiratory disease and again reducing black carbon emissions. Economic growth is powered by cheap energy. At the present time that is largely gas and clean coal in most of the world. With a limited role for existing nuclear and renewables.
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0959378016300711-gr1.jpg
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300711
Given fossil fuel supply and rapidly expanding demand for energy – in this decade factory produced fast modular nuclear reactors will come into contention. It is the only way to produce enough energy to provide electricity, industrial heat and transport fuel without the need for fossil fuels.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/medium/public/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png
There are a few other gases that are usefully being addressed – as well as particulates and sulphides. What we need to do to meet future food demand is to stop losing carbon – and restore some of what has been lost – from terrestrial systems.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/medium/public/2016-05/global_emissions_gas_2015.png
Falling population, which your chart indicates soon, means falling emissions.
Worse, before that, like perhaps now in the developed world,
( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S )
falling working age population means stagnant economies.
This will be an interesting century, however much of it we may witness.
Mr. Ellison
It is amazing how much you THINK you know about the future.
What does 1000ppm CO2 and RCP 8.5 really mean? There is already 40 years of evidence that ECR estimates are excessive, CO2 growth rates, especially RCP 8.5, are excessive, and as a result, climate model predictions have been nowhere near matching ACTUAL temperature observations.
Therefore, no one knows whether 1000ppm CO2 and the RCP 8,5 would be a climate disaster, or not.
The plant life on our planet will certainly grow better with 1,000 ppm. as any greenhouse owner already knows.
I suppose you believe nations must act now, with drastic, expensive changes to society, to prevent an imagined climate catastrophe in the future?
How about replacing a climate astrology vision of the future, guided by always wrong computer models, with calm observations of the ACTUAL global warming since the mid-1970s?
The warming since the mid-1970s has been mild and harmless.
The Earth is greening from more CO2 in the atmosphere.
ACTUAL warming has been highest in locations, and at times, when warming is GOOD news:
— Mainly in the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere,
— Mainly during the coldest six months of the year, and
— Mainly at night.
The “poster child” of the past 45 years of ACTUAL global warming:
— Warmer winter nights in Siberia.
You may love the always wrong computer game climate predictions of doom, while I prefer to live in climate “realityland”.
What will the climate be like in the next 50 years?
How about assuming similar to the past 50 years,
and then moving on to solve real problems, such as:
— Air pollution over many large Asian cities.
— One billion people with NO electricity?
— Two billion other people with unreliable electricity?
Those are real problems, right now.
But a coming climate crisis, predicted since 1957 by oceanographer Roger Revelle, is an imaginary crisis — always coming in the future — but it never arrives.
Human emitted greenhouse gases bias a chaotic system to a warmer state. There is implicit in chaos the risk of dramatic and rapid change in the Earth system – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and lithosphere. That much should be accepted as truth in line with Isaac Newton’s 4th rule of natural philosophy. There are of course those who don’t.
You should read my comment. I am not concerned with predicting the future but in charting a course to it as free societies.
RIE,
What actual examples, with data,can you reference to back your words that “updating the diesel fleet and other productive assets to emit less black carbon and reduce the health and environmental impacts”
That is, do you have solid evidence that the present use of diesel is producing a harmful quantity of black carbon; and can you point to any measurements that explicitly show that diesel black carbon has worsened the health of a single person? I have never seen any such data. Maybe I read the wrong papers.
You simply cannot wave your arms in cohort with other mass catastrophists and hope to retain scientific credibility. That type of conduct has been appropriated by a tennage girl. Geoff S
Diesels have come under fire for two particular reasons related to health issues. One is particulates in their exhaust, unburnt carbon of a micron size that is said to penetrated deep into lungs.
The second is high NOx emissions which are undesirables health-wise. The efficiency of the diesel engine is the result of high burn temperature, which also contribute to high NOx levels.
Both issues are shared with other types of burners as used in steam generators for power plant.
The cost of mitigation of both types of emissions, on both types of plant, need to be looked at at the design stage, and impact substantially on first costs.
Daisy drives a 1500 cc Suzuki turbo diesel that I introduced her to. Brilliant little car – it recently got a software upgrade. Technology exists – and it exists to stop turning city skies black with particulates. Still a problem in many parts of the world. In context – my comment was on economic growth providing resources for solving problems.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/diesel-bc.png
https://occup-med.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6673-9-6
REI this should be of interest
https://www.euractiv.com/section/transport/news/jeep-suzuki-models-face-eu-ban-for-breaking-emissions-rules/
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/suzuki-recalls-16-diesel-engined-cars-due-to-excessive-nox-emissions-107011.html
Actually what I had in mind were much larger brutes. But as it turned out both types have used ‘techniques – hardware and software’ to adhere to rules, as well as circumvent them. The devil is always in the details.
Some skirt (piston skirt!!) you would not like to crawl up, I assure you (nearly crushed my rib-cage 50 yrs ago). Did not last long. The emissions from those burns (detonations really) were something. Similar machines are still around in merchant shipping. https://www.flickr.com/photos/kecko/9240580488#
Depends on your definition of soon. And energy demand is shown increasing to and beyond the end of the century.
Interesting is the least of it. The singularity occurs on January 26th 2065 when an automated IKEA factory becomes self-aware and commences converting all global resources to flat pack furniture. Until then – endless innovation on information technology and cybernetics will accelerate and continue to push the limits of what it is to be human and to challenge the adaptability of social structures. New movements, fads, music, designer drugs, cat videos and dance moves will sweep the planet like Mexican waves in the zeitgeist. Materials will be stronger and lighter. Life will be cluttered with holographic TV’s, waterless washing machines, ultrasonic blenders, quantum computers, hover cars and artificially intelligent phones. Annoying phones that cry when you don’t charge them – taking on that role from cars that beep when you don’t put a seat belt on. Space capable flying cars will have seat belts that lock and tension without any intervention of your part. All this will use vastly more energy and materials this century as populations grow and wealth increases.
I have checked, but there are no observations yet from the end of the century.
“The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.” — William Gibson*
Extrapolating from social and technology trends – the future is cyberpunk.
https://miro.medium.com/max/768/1*mjrt4ER4pPBoZkhxp8QFPw.jpeg
* ‘William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as cyberpunk. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his early works were noir, near-future stories that explored the effects of technology, cybernetics, and computer networks on humans—a “combination of lowlife and high tech”[4]—and helped to create an iconography for the information age before the ubiquity of the Internet in the 1990s.[5] Gibson coined the term “cyberspace” for “widespread, interconnected digital technology” in his short story “Burning Chrome” (1982), and later popularized the concept in his acclaimed debut novel Neuromancer (1984). These early works of Gibson’s have been credited with “renovating” science fiction literature in the 1980s.’ Wikipedia
The Paris accord – if you read the fine print – locks in a 10% increase in electricity sector emissions by 2030. Railing against this pragmatic reality is a complete waste of everyone’s time.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/cmip-6-1.png
As is a target of 1.5 degrees C warming. All of these models have an envelop of divergent solutions. So the spread – and the uncertainty – is considerably greater the the means of individual models suggests.
‘Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability into the model. Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.’ https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
And although greenhouse gases should bias the climate systems to warmer states and risk tipping points in the ‘coupled, nonlinear, chaotic’ climate system – models capture neither internal variability or the proclivity to shift abruptly. The latter being the essence of chaos theory. Chaos having both the power to explain the nature of past shifts and to predict that future tipping points are inevitable.
Frankly I expect a more negative northern annular mode with a dimming sun this century and a cooling NH influence. Along with – for the same reason – enhanced wind driven Pacific gyre circulation and a multi-century return to a more La Nina like state.
I’d suggest a strategy rather than a target.
Warming tipping points, but cooling from a dimming Sun, how curious.
Negative NAM means slower trade winds and increased El Nino conditions, while positive NAM conditions from rising CO2 forcing should increase La Nina conditions. Which is why tipping points are unphysical.
Tipping points are ubiquitous in the climate system. 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).
The NAO is quite irrelevant to Pacific Ocean trade winds. These stem from Coriolis force and Bjerknes feedback.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/pacific-gyres.png
1998-2001, faster solar wind states causing positive NAM conditions, driving La Nina conditions. That’s the antithesis of a tipping point.
Robert I Ellison: The singularity occurs on January 26th 2065 when an automated IKEA factory becomes self-aware and commences converting all global resources to flat pack furniture.
An admirable sentence.
Bauer et al.: Shared Socioeconomic Pathways of the Energy Sector – Quantifying the Narratives
Dr. Curry, you said:
> For the forthcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) and the CMIP6 climate model simulations, Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are formulated from five socio-economic and technological trajectories that reflect pathways that the world could follow in the 21st century. Each pathway has a baseline in which no climate policies are enacted after 2010. Additional SSP scenarios are linked to climate policies to generate different outcomes for the end of the 21st century. A subset of SSP scenarios has been selected for the IPCC AR6, with radiative forcing of 1.9, 2.6, 3.4, 4.5, 6.0, 7.0 or 8.5 Watts per square meter in 2100. While the SSP nomenclature is more recent, the scientific literature and journalists continue to mostly use the RCP nomenclature.
Why would ‘they’ resort to socioeconomic categories instead of continuing to use the RCPs? These socioeconomic descriptions can be useful, yet their ability to support a narrative may overshadow any utility. It’s one thing to discuss a particular RCP and then give examples of countries, economies, energy usage, etc. Quite another when wed together from the get go. Bauer, et al seem to be saying they are attempting to ‘quantify the narrative’ in their title. I have the sense that it is justifying a narrative.
Like I said – choose your world.
‘SSP 5: This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development. Global markets are increasingly integrated. There are also strong investments in health, education, and institutions to enhance human and social capital. At the same time, the push for economic and social development is coupled with the exploitation of abundant fossil fuel resources and the adoption of resource and energy intensive lifestyles around the world. All these factors lead to rapid growth of the global economy, while global population peaks and declines in the 21st century. Local environmental problems like air pollution are successfully managed. There is faith in the ability to effectively manage social and ecological systems, including by geo-engineering if necessary.’ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378016300681
I’m all about choices. Just not loaded ones.
Remember way back in the seventies … appropriate technology. LOL! Depends on who defines appropriate? Appropriate for whom?
SSP1 – sustainability. Nice word. Maybe it has become the new appropriate? What are we sustaining?
They might as well just say, if you’re interested I have a nice bridge in Brooklyn for sale?
It would be better if they stuck to the hard science, with which they seem to have enough trouble.
Thanks for your reply.
‘We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage.’ Freidrich Hayek
https://harpers.org/2007/08/hayek-on-a-society-based-on-freedom/
I am not sure what bit of choose your world you didn’t comprehend. But you are either a freedom fighter or not.
RIE,
You wrote “This world places increasing faith in competitive markets, innovation and participatory societies to produce rapid technological progress and development of human capital as the path to sustainable development.”
I have no idea why you go public with your fanciful dreams about the future, but I do take exception to your incorrect attribution to ” … the path to sustainable development.”
Societies advanced in response to needs and economic factors long before anyone ever used the term “sustainable development.” Little of our future development will be sustainable, because a lot of it will follow the present pattern of consumption. Markets (and brains) get distorted when folk try to force synthetic, dreamy objectives onto real progress. Geoff S
We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia…a truly liberal radicalism…the main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals…. (F.A. Hayek, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” 1949)
Geoff – I fear we must look beyond your stultifying cognitive inertia to make any progress.
Robert … If I was going to fight it would be for clear information. And, my own choices, not pigeon-holed by political agenda.
As for society, from what I see and the data you have on occasion presented, it has been doing quite well. Using socioeconomic concepts to replace(?) the RCPs only inflames an already contentious scientific debate. We can already see the narratives adapting to the new terminology, cheerleading their ‘new’ mantra. It doesn’t take long, does it?
SSP 5 is likely an object lesson in what not to do. But there is no specific objection to be made unless you are not in favour of free markets and democracy.
Yes – SSP5 is loaded.
Speaking of scenarios:
OMB taking comments on the social cost of GHGs
By David Wojick
The beginning:
“Biden’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in OMB is taking public comments on the regulatory use of the world’s strangest numbers. These are the so-called Social Cost of Carbon and other Greenhouse Gases (GHG). The Social Cost is the supposed future climate change economic damage due to our near-term emissions. The numbers are huge because the Biden government projects endless damages for the next 300 years, from every ton of carbon dioxide, methane, etc., emitted now. Yes they have to go out 300 years to get the damages.
This opportunity to comment is important because the issue is the use of these looney SC-GHG numbers to justify massive climate change regulations that will govern our lives. Preventing these huge SC damages is presented as the benefits that justify the regulations in the required cost-benefit analysis. That SC-GHG is junk needs to be made clear, and stopped. It may be up to the courts to do this. One of the rules of the regulatory game is that if you want to ask the court to stop a regulation, you must have first put your objection on the record, in the comments. When the Agency ignores your objection, then you can sue them. This is called exhausting your administrative remedies.
So here are some objections that people might use. The more comments the better.
To begin with, the SC-GHG computer models are obsolete. The Feds use the results from three different “integrated assessment models” or IAMs. These models are now about 20 years old. The US alone has done something like $30 billion in climate change research since they were developed. The major climate models have been steadily upgraded, with a new generation every five years or so, but not the IAMs. Thus one could ask the Court to require the Agencies that want to use SCs in their cost benefit analyses to build new IAMs.
But it gets deeper than that, because some of the research calls into question the very feasibility of calculating a likely SC.”
There is a lot more in the article. See https://www.cfact.org/author/dwojick/
You do not have to be a US citizen or organization to comment. This is about the science.
The use of the worst case scenario may derive from the generally accepted use of the precautionary principle in environmentalism research. Is climate science environmentalism?
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-78N
The precautionary principle is one expression of the fundamental principle of risk management. Where there is a low probability of severe consequences then the risk is extreme. One doesn’t need complete knowledge to act on reducing the probability or the consequences. Is climate policy about risk management? I suggest that it is. Nor do we need silly environmental stereotypes tossed out to gain the favor of the peanut gallery.
Robert, you say:
I fear that that is very far from what the Precautionary Principle actually says. The PP is one of the most widely misunderstood “principles” I know of. I discuss this question in some detail in Climate Caution and Precaution.
w.
Willis Eschenbach: excellent article.
‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be
widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are
threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty
shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ Rio Declaration, 1992 – as you say,
https://watertechbyrie.com/2021/05/01/capability-browns-oblique-approach-to-climate-policy/
Thank you for your comment. Agree to disagree I guess.
Disagree about what the so-called precautionary principle actually is? Or just can’t see the point in conserving water and wildlife?
‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ Rio Declaration, 1992
Then the proportion of world GDP directed towards preventing an asteroid strike should be increased ten-fold immediately.
Not enough spent as it is?
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroid-watch
And apparently we are safe for at least 100 years.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-analysis-earth-is-safe-from-asteroid-apophis-for-100-plus-years
The precautionary theory is devious way for leftist governments to obtain more power and more control of the private sector
In complex scientific terms, it is political, not scientific, baloney.
After 64 years of predicting a global warming crisis is coming, we know with high confidence that humans can not predict the future climate.
We have 45 years of experience with ACTUAL global warming to know it has been mild and harmless. I can make a strong argument that it was beneficial for our planet.
The so-called precautionary principle, as used by climate alarmists, means YOU MUST DO WHAT WE SAY, whether we are right or wrong .
That is the thought process of every power hungry dictator.
For this subject, I use the term Climate Nazi.
Richard Greene
Bingham Farms, Michigan
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
‘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 TAR quote Willis struggled with. The rational policy strategy is evident.
‘The Paper therefore proposes that the organising principle of our effort should be the raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be.’
“The TAR quote Willis (and Robert) struggled with.”
At the risk of repeating myself:
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.
Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.
Read the “Advancing Understanding” section of the “Technical Summary of the Working Group 1 Report” at my IPCC TAR link if you don’t believe me.
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. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2011.0161
I quoted exactly from the TAR 14.2.2.2. But at the risk of repeating myself.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2021/05/01/capability-browns-oblique-approach-to-climate-policy/
Proof texting from the IPCC is not needed here. It is well known throughout computational fluid dynamics that predicting these things is not really possible given the ill-posed nature of the problem and the fact that all scales from global to a centimeter are important and influence other scales. Climate is modeled on tremendously coarse grids, numerical truncation errors are much larger than the small changes in energy fluxes that are being sought. It’s just hard to believe that serious scientists ever thought this would be possible.
I was hinting that the CMIP 6 opportunistic ensemble is not the same as perturbed physics ensembles – from which probabilities of future states might some day be quantified. Perturbed physics ensembles are a family of solutions starting from small differences in initial or boundary conditions – with Lyapunov exponential growth in phase differences over the simulation period. ‘Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.’ (McWilliams 2007)
Opportunistic ensembles are – as the name suggests – ad hoc and not at all exact.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/cmip-6-1.png
Simplistically, despite the opportunistic assemblage of the various AOS model ensembles, we can view the spreads in their results as upper bounds on their irreducible imprecision. Optimistically, we might think this upper bound is a substantial overestimate because AOS models are evolving and improving. Pessimistically, we can worry that the ensembles contain insufficient samples of possible plausible models, so the spreads may underestimate the true level of irreducible imprecision (cf., ref. 23). Realistically, we do not yet know how to make this assessment with confidence. https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
Robert, could you please provide a link to a “perturbed physics ensemble”?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/237010400_Broad_range_of_2050_warming_from_an_observationally_constrained_large_climate_model_ensemble
Pingback: Projecting manmade climate change: scenarios to 2050
There is increasing evidence that the GHG absorption bands are saturated, making the atmosphere opaque to IR at these wavenumbers. This makes the RCP obsolete.
Peter S … Please, for those of us in the peanut gallery, can you take that a bit further? Thank you.
https://skepticalscience.com/saturated-co2-effect.htm
Appreciate it, Willard. Can you please address comment 5, the contention of heat transfer at different wavelengths?
Also, if anyone has the time, when I think of saturation I think of full stop. Is there a diminishing capacity, or return, that is ruled out?
Not sure what you’re referring to, Bill, but here’s Eli’s simplest explanation:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2010/03/simplest-explanation.html
Willard … Thanks again. Please be patient with my unsophisticated interpretations below. I wish I could phrase them better.
My reply about comment 5 is from your first referral. That comment made a statement that CO2 only absorbs heat at a specific/range of wavelength. And, that heat is absorbed/radiated at other wavelengths. The implication, I believe, is that other wavelengths may show differing amounts of heat absorbed/radiated that aren’t being considered in the overall heat budget?
The next comment I made relates to CO2 having not so much a full stop saturation point, as a diminishing ability to absorb heat/IR.
> other wavelengths may show differing amounts of heat absorbed/radiated that aren’t being considered in the overall heat budget?
Unless I misunderstand your question, Bill, there’s only a limited range of wavelengths that matter. That does not imply one can saturate them by dumpling more CO2 into the atmosphere like that’s no tomorrow. This has been invalidated study after study.
Here is a key paper:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16465
The breakthrough is that standard approximate radiation by bands has been replaced with spectral line by line analysis, a new science. Turns out CO2 and water vapor forcings are “extremely saturated” (saturation is never complete). Thus future warming is extremely limited. The per molecule forcing is down to a few ten thousandths of that of low concentrations.
Thank you, David. The math is way, way over my head. But I understand the conclusions. So, if we assume there is some saturation, what is the effect on the RCPs? On the models, for calculation purposes?
Line by line radiative transfer is far from new science. The HITRAN database originated in the 1960’s with US Air Force radar experiments.
https://hitran.org/
Your source uses HITRAN to estimate an increase in forcing of 2.97 W/m2 with a doubling of CO2. Compare that to an estimate of 3.7 W/m2 – and the results are not as “extremely saturated” as you imagine.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/potency-of-ghg.png
Extreme saturation is their language, not mine. Sounds right for a reduced potency of ten thousand times. Line by line may have been around but all the climate science studies use band approximation to avoid extreme saturation. Turns out they are all wrong.
Note that with water vapor also extremely saturated there can be no large positive feedback, which is how the CMIP models get high sensitivity. Happer says he thinks sensitivity is around one degree, which means there can be no dangerous warming. This finding kills AGW.
That really is the difference between low concentrations in an optically thin atmosphere compared with current values. And not the change in forcing with a CO2 doubling. Check the numbers and not the language and you will fool yourself less frequently.
Here is a scenario. For the children: A dreadful picture of bird chopping windmills. Tax dollars at work. See and weep.
https://tinyurl.com/eukzxfjt
Please share this terrible picture of the truth. Unlike AGW, this is real and we are paying for it.
Incredible photograph – says it all.
I saw your comment that the picture should be in TIME magazine. There are lots of uncertainties about climate science. This is one of those rare situations where there is absolute certainty. The picture will never be in TIME. Graphic reminder of what is not said.
It should be on the cover of Time Magazine. Instead, we need to make it famous. I am posting it in comments everywhere I can and urge others to do the same. Just posted it on The Hill, which is green.
I agree it should be. If we had an honest, non partisan press it would be. But we don’t, so it won’t.
/ Well, the good ol’ days may not return
And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn
I’m learning to fly (learning to fly) but I ain’t got wings (learning to fly)
Coming down (learning to fly) is the hardest thing (learning to fly) /
https://youtu.be/s5BJXwNeKsQ
You have a knack for picking just the right songs. Kudos. Some I haven’t heard for years.
For those wondering why wind turbines kill so many birds and bats, see Explaining Wind Turbine Lethality.
w.
That Eschenbach article is worth reading. When I first read it my thought was: ‘everybody knows that’, so why was an article necessary?
I started referring the article to everyone I knew who was interested in alternative energy and climate science. And then I found out that almost no one knew why windmills kill so many insects, small birds. large birds and bats. And that nature’s ‘clean up squad’ eat so much of the fresh kill that there’s no accurate way to count the deaths, even if you assume all the deaths were near a windmill (which is not true for wounded birds who die later).
From the intermittent, unpredictable, sometimes zero power output, to the problems with infrasound noise, and bird and bat kills, it is INSANE to use highly variable output windmills for an electric grid, where reliable power output is the primary objective.
A power source needs to supply steady output (baseload) or it needs a fast, reliable startup for peak demand (natural gas peaker plants). Windmills do not do either. Windmills belong in museums.
Afternoon Willis (UTC),
In other news it’s a “Cat eat bird world”:
https://now.tufts.edu/articles/cat-eat-bird-world
Feral and free-roaming cats represent a global epidemic, and what to do about them is one of the most controversial and contentious issues in veterinary medicine and conservation biology today.
https://now.tufts.edu/sites/default/files/130708_cat_bird_L.jpg
Have you and/or David by any chance ever written an “Explaining Feline Lethality” article?
Jim, get back to us when cats kill as many Golden Eagles as wind turbines kill …
w.
Evenin’ Willis,
Far more Golden Eagles are killed by humans than by wind turbines in Scotland:
https://www.gov.scot/news/golden-eagle-deaths/
Almost a third of golden eagles being tracked by satellite died in suspicious circumstances, scientists have found.
The Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) research identified that the majority of cases were found where land is intensively managed for driven grouse shooting…
The report studied the movements of 131 young golden eagles over a 12 year period, and found more than 40 had disappeared in suspicious circumstances. It also found there was no link between fitting satellite tags and the disappearance of the birds of prey and ruled out any connection with the position of wind turbines.
I don’t suppose you happen to know how many humans are killed per annum by other humans’ fossil fuel “emissions” do you?
Pass. You started with a claim about cats. I pointed out that wind turbines kill far more golden eagles than cats kill.
Rather than having the albondigas to admit I’d made a very valid point, you went off about humans in Scotland and eagles disappearing in “suspicious circumstances” … so what?
I’m not interested in following you as you drag the goalposts all around the landscape. Go play Lucy for some other Charlie Brown.
w.
Willis – You seem to have already forgotten that your original comment referred to “so many birds and bats”, not “golden eagles”?
You’re the one “dragging the goalposts all around the landscape”.
Night, night (UTC)
I thought that cats were a part of “nature” and thus good. Just like small pox is a part of nature. This is why worship of nature is a very bad idea. Nature is quite dangerous and violent.
No worries, Jim. Recent studies show the diet of urban coyotes is heavy on feral cats: 13 to 45 percent of what they eat.
I have a greenbelt behind my property, I enjoy the howls and cackles of the local coyote population; there’s not a feral cat to be seen.
No worries JT?
Other studies reveal this:
https://res.cloudinary.com/engineering-com/image/upload/Comparative_bird_deaths_Source_National_Audubon_Society_djalbx.jpg
Looks like those coyotes have an awful lot on their metaphorical plate?
Perhaps a rebalance of natural predators is in order. Jim, it works in my neck of the woods.
At any rate, wind turbines are more of a threat to Golden Eagles specifically than feral cats. Eagles are more likely to eat feral cats for lunch if they’re hungry enough to go through the effort, as well as other predators. https://wildlife.org/golden-eagle-feathers-reveal-decades-of-island-prey/
But you may have established new targets for cancel culture: the elimination of all windows (this would fit nicely within New Green Deal sensibilities); and the liquidation of domestic cats, the source of feral cats. The Left has never flinched at liquidation of even humans given the right set of circumstances.
Mornin’ JT,
“The elimination of all windows… and the liquidation of domestic cats”
Which neatly reveals the absurdity of Willis’s position. He quotes “The Audubon Society” with apparent approval. Here’s what they have to say about “Wind power and birds“:
Audubon strongly supports wind energy that is sited and operated properly to avoid, minimize, and mitigate effectively for the impacts on birds, other wildlife, and the places they need now and in the future. To that end, we support the development of wind energy to achieve 100% clean electricity.
Wind power is an important source of renewable, carbon-free energy that is critical to replacing and reducing emissions from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas that cause warming of our planet.
All forms of energy—including wind power—have impacts on birds. Audubon’s role is to make sure that key species and high conservation areas for birds are protected as much as possible and in accordance with federal law.
https://nas-national-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/styles/article_hero_inline/s3/web_tundra-swans_turbine_donald-m-jones_minden_kk.jpg?itok=Fp9Ju1Pf
Tundra Swans. Photo: Donald M. Jones/Minden
Regards,
Lucy
Jim, was there some part of this that was unclear to you?
Regards,
w.
Mornin’ Willis (UTC),
It’s abundantly clear.
You’re an inveterate goal post mover.
J.
Good morning to you too, Jim.
Very nice.
So, if we get rid of the majority of windows, we lose less energy to the elements; thus requiring fewer wind turbines. For the greenies, this proposal effectively, uh, is like killing two birds with one stone.
Unfortunately I’ve heard of crazier proposals from cancel culture, actually the Left in general; I hate to hint at ideas here.
CO2 is saturated at ground level. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases the effective emission height in a warmer troposphere.
Climate change mitigation is about more than just CO2. So-called “short-lived climate-forcing pollutants” such as soot, methane, and tropospheric ozone all have harmful effects. Climate policy should be guided by a clearer understanding of their differentiated impacts.
It is common practice in climate policy to bundle the climate warming pollutants together and express their total effects in terms of “CO2 equivalence”. This ‘equivalence’ is based on a comparison of climate effects on a 100-year timescale. This approach is problematic, as IASS scientist Kathleen Mar explains in a new research paper: “The fact is that climate forcers simply aren’t ‘equivalent’ – their effects on climate and ecosystems are distinct. Short-lived climate forcers have the largest impact on near-term climate whereas CO2 has the largest impact on long-term climate.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210127122338.htm
The use of a 100-year time horizon as the primary basis for evaluating climate effects understates the impacts of short-lived climate-forcing pollutants (SLCPs) and thus undervalues the positive near-term effects that can be achieved by reducing SLCP emissions. https://www.eurasiareview.com/28012021-more-than-just-co2-time-to-tackle-short-lived-climate-forcing-pollutants/
https://www.climanosco.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Table1_revised_v2-1.png
https://www.climanosco.org/published_article/putting-the-brakes-on-climate-change-its-about-more-than-just-co2/
On the residence time of CO2 – Rattan Lal estimates that the carbon content of some 157 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils and vegetation by 2100 AD. Increasing agricultural productivity far more than CO2 in the atmosphere. This soil carbon store has been lost from terrestrial systems but can be renewed by restoring land. Holding back water in sand dams, terraces and swales, replanting, changing grazing management, encouraging perennial vegetation cover, precise applications of chemicals and adoption of other management practices that create positive carbon and nutrient budgets and optimal soil temperature and moisture. Atmospheric carbon is transferred from the atmosphere to soil carbon stores through plant photosynthesis and subsequent formation of secondary carbonates. The rate of soil carbon sequestration ranges from about 100 to 1000 kg per hectare per year as humus and 5 to 15 kg per hectare per year inorganic carbon.
There is a cost effective global project underway on many fronts.
The average residence time of our emitted CO2 is under three years. But given that AGW is false the entire chart is irrelevant.
The source of individual molecules is less significant than the mass balance in the carbon cycle. And you might in future find that the dominant climate science paradigm has moved on. Judith Curry is on board with it.
Anthropogenic climate change is superimposed on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics. There is implicit in chaos the risk of dramatic and rapid change in the Earth system – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere and hydrosphere. That much should be accepted as truth in line with Isaac Newton’s 4th rule of natural philosophy. There are of course those who don’t.
Pragmatic responses involve ‘raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be.’
“Adding CO2 to the atmosphere increases the effective emission height in a warmer troposphere.”
Isn’t this an argument for CO2 actually cooling the planet? Effective emission from a warmer troposphere?
No
We are witnessing a dam break in consensus change on the plausibility of the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s gain of function research being linked to the origin of SARS2.
May 21 – Matthew Crawford takes a hard look at the problem of politicization of science, witnessing what happened on the censorship of the lab origin hypothesis. The article is excellent and clearly applies to climate science. https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-scientists-sacrificed-scepticism/
May 14 – 18 top biologists sign a letter to the journal Science to investigate the lab origin of SARS2. The list includes Ralph Baric, the top coronavirus researcher in the world, the one who was working with the WIV on GOF SARS2-like chimeras from 2014-2019. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/13/1024866/investigation-covid-origin-wuhan-china-lab-biologists-letter/
May 2 – Nicolas Wade, NYT science reporter article on GOF and likely WIV origin of SARS2. Wade methodically compares the two theories and reveals forensic genomic clues that point to lab origin that are inexplicable under the natural origin theory. https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038
Jan 4 – Nicholson Baker’s article in New York Magazine is the first science writer to publish an article questioning the natural origin of Covid 19. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html
It’s about time. Crawford is a good find and worth reading.
A couple of paragraphs from Crawford about how modern science has become a concensus enforecement system.
“The yawning gap between the actual state of knowledge at the time and the confidence displayed in the two letters should have been obvious to anyone in the field of virology. And indeed, there were scientists from outside the guild, but in fields adjacent enough to speak competently, who said as much. The Lancet and Nature Medicine letters were in fact anti-scientific in spirit and intent. Yet the pronouncements had the effect of shutting down inquiry that was not only legitimate, but urgently needed.
Wade notes that “in today’s universities speech can be very costly. Careers can be destroyed for stepping out of line. Any virologist who challenges the community’s declared view risks having his next grant application turned down by the panel of fellow virologists that advises the government grant distribution agency.””
Wow, this piece by Crawford is really excellent.
This is consistent with everything we know from the sociology of science. With the centralisation and bureaucratisation of scientific funding, defection from a well-institutionalised consensus is even more costly now than it was when Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He showed that it is almost always from outside a research community that challenges arise. Progress happens when a prevailing scientific consensus is revealed to rest on the loyalties and intellectual affinities of an established research milieu, and not simply on correspondence with reality.
> quotes out of context
You really have no idea what that means, Sir David.
Let’s try with some non-authoritarian bold:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/08/geneticists-decry-book-race-and-evolution
Run away, Sir David, run away!
As minister of propaganda for THE SCIENCE, Willard, I guess you didn’t get the memo. Try reading Matt Crawford’s article. What you are doing instead it to cherry pick to discredit, a typical tactic of bad faith concensus enforcement.
Evolutionary biology is a highly politicized science with insane political ideologies often dominating the discussion. So, I don’t place any credance in your “letter.” It’s just blatant ass covering to make sure they don’t get canceled by the far left.
As Matt Crawford points out, the use of public letters by scientists to lie about facts on the ground is common, particularly about the virus lab idea about the origin or Covid19. It’s one of the death rattles of science as a credible institution.
THE SCIENCE is an increasingly failed institution in which concensus enforcement is increasingly dictatorial and arbitrary. In your role as Bagdad Bob, I would suggest that you are looking increasingly like a bad joke. Hint: American tanks are at the Bagdad airport.
Perhaps you missed “What you are doing instead it to cherry pick to discredit, a typical tactic of bad faith concensus enforcement,” Judy?
Final comment on this. You are spamming my blog with meaningless insults and pointless remarks, I assume this is ‘climate ball’ or something. I’m not interested, and I suspect not a single other reader of this blog is interested in reading this.
Love me some Nicholas:
https://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1609
Contrarians, contrarians everywhere.
Willard. You cherry picked again to deceive.
Your reference also says that the science in the book is basically correct. But it offended someone’s sense of politically correct science, so it must be condemned.
the points that he is trying to emphasize about human evolution are, in broad strokes, right. Human genetic diversity does mirror geography, as does much phenotypic diversity. While random drift likely accounts for most of both genetic and phenotypic variation, natural selection clearly has shaped recent human evolution, and there is the potential for cultural forces to impact genetic variation over relatively short timeframes.
“While random drift likely accounts for most of both genetic and phenotypic variation, natural selection clearly has shaped recent human evolution, and there is the potential for cultural forces to impact genetic variation over relatively short timeframes.”
It’s ironic that we have come full circle since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in rural Tennessee. Then human evolution the bane of conservative religious fundamentalists. Today it’s progressives who are religiously denying any natural variation in race or gender.
Clearly Wade’s main failing to is being fearless of establishments.
And it just so happens that you share Nicholas’ taste for hawt takes, Sir David.
Bertrand would be the first guy to call out journalists who would misrepresent his research, BTW.
Well, Given how political tripe and cancelation has invaded this field, my instinct is to give Wade the benefit of the doubt. Bret Weinstein is another evolutionary biologist who was canceled and fired for the offense of questioning the crazy critical race theory.
And finally, for our local concensus enforcers and Skeptical Science types everywhere, the final sentence is apropos.
If we want to revive the spirit of liberalism and adapt it to a technocratic era, it will require a similarly sceptical form of science journalism, based on the recognition that appeals to Science have become the basic idiom for the exercise of authority.
Spillover infections have happened with some regularity over the course of human history. But the spectre of powerful genetic technologies being widely available raises new questions.
Here’s the original letter. Read it and not sceptical science journalists with their tendentious memes. .
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6543/694.1
Robert, the letter is pretty powerful. It calls out the WHO and China and the investigators and demands a proper investigation and dispassionate science-based discourse.
I don’t believe they intend to imply that was an innocent oversight.
‘As scientists with relevant expertise, we agree with the WHO director-general (5), the United States and 13 other countries (6), and the European Union (7) that greater clarity about the origins of this pandemic is necessary and feasible to achieve. We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. A proper investigation should be transparent, objective, data-driven, inclusive of broad expertise, subject to independent oversight, and responsibly managed to minimize the impact of conflicts of interest. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public. Investigators should document the veracity and provenance of data from which analyses are conducted and conclusions drawn, so that analyses are reproducible by independent experts.’
Whistle blowers suffering for the integrity of their science? I agree the potential for a lab release should be taken seriously. But until there is some evidence a natural spillover seems more likely.
” a natural spillover seems more likely.”
Had the pangolin cov been a plausible precursor that would have been one supporting fact. Had there had been any bats or virus found in the Wuhan wet market that would have been another.
The pangolin cov spike is 97% similar to SARS2. Bingo. Except the rest of the genome is less a match to SARS2 than the 2013 bat virus genome put out by “bat lady” immediately after the outbreak. In other words the father of SARS2 can’t be genetically more distant from SARS2’s overall than a mutual distant ancestor.
The fact that there is absence of evidence that has been seen as a pattern in past cross-overs is evidence of absence. The fact that the pangolin cov and wet market cluster are not supported by collateral evidence makes them look like evidence that was possibly planted. But I will wait to see if Judith wants to do a blog on SARS2 origin before laying going any further.
Frankly – your absence of evidence is just that.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00865-8
This letter is a start even though I note the final paragraph is a politically correct genuflection to woke politics which has no place in such a journal. I personally think it is almost certain the Chinese government continues to this day to withhold and alter data. I don’t think scientists writing a letter is going to make a bit of difference either. This is the Chinese government that lied about how Hong Kong would be treated if Britain pulled out.
And why are we allowing “gain of function” research in the first place? Ron maybe you understand this better than I.
The final paragraph shows a sensitivity to the reality of idiots beating up Chinese people in the streets.
The fellow that Willard gives as a reference claiming that Nicolas Wade is just making up (wrong) stories, https://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1609,
equates Wade with “Climate Deniers”. So I guess Wade must be spot on.
Nice try, Lowell:
Science is mute; fallible human beings speak. Therein lies the illusion of truth.
Bindidon!
Thank you again, the Link you provided opened at last. It has exactly what I am searching for, the data of the Global average temperatures.
http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Global/Land_and_Ocean_complete.txt
Willard, you must admit that someone who says that “climate change is real”, in the sense that if you are one of those “climate change denialists” you do not understand science, is someone who truly is the one who does not understand science. Science entails questioning. This fellow is part of a large club which denies genetics if it intrudes upon their politics.
Now we are getting into semantics and malicious characterization. Almost as good as one religion attacking another for not knowing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. If they only had a computer to do a forecast. This thread should be put to bed.
Due to geography I did not reply to earlier comments in a timely manner.
The HItran database provides high resolution transmission data for molecular absorption. It allows us to obtain transmission data across a spectral range for a variety of gases or mixtures at different pressures and temperatures. In relation to climate, the transmission for greenhouse gases or mixtures at different altitudes and temperatures can be calculated.
The results show clearly that water vapour is dominant. Overlapping absorption bands mean that the presence of water vapour greatly reduce the potency of the other gases. The reduction of IR transmission for an increase in concentration is greatest at low concentrations and diminishes towards zero at high concentrations.
This is like adding black ink to a tank of water and observing the change in light transmission. There comes a point when the water is black and transmission is zero. Further additions of black ink will make no further difference. This is band saturation.
The data shows that the greenhouse gasses have reached that point. In other words, at these wavebands, the atmosphere is opaque to IR radiation and additional gas will make little difference. Our atmosphere is a fairly narrow layer and this is the transmission path length. The GH gases are potent absorbers and have already achieved a warming estimated to be 33 degrees. Transmission has reached the end of its curve. This is not surprising, the climate is hugely stable and that would not be possible if greenhouse warming was linear and unlimited as some climate scientists would like us to believe.
For example, CO2 concentrations of several thousand ppm were common millions of years ago while life on earth was evolving. Survival would not have been possible if the warming effect was linear and unlimited. It is interesting to ponder the chain of factors such as the size of the planet, gravity, thickness of altitude retained, lapse rate and absorption path length since these may influence the suitability of the earth for supporting life. But that is another story.
For more on band saturation read Happer, everywhere.
D. Schildknecht, Int. Mod. Phys B (2020)
B. M Smirnov, J. Atmos. Sci Res. (2020)
Peter S
> “This is band saturation.
The data shows that the greenhouse gasses have reached that point. In other words, at these wavebands, the atmosphere is opaque to IR radiation and additional gas will make little difference. Our atmosphere is a fairly narrow layer and this is the transmission path length. The GH gases are potent absorbers and have already achieved a warming estimated to be 33 degrees. Transmission has reached the end of its curve.”
1). “This is band saturation”
The conclusion is based on a mistaken assumption that planet emits IR EM energy according to the perfect Stefan-Boltzmann emission curve for the emission temperature 288 K.
a). Planet does not emit according to that perfect curve.
b). Planet does not emit at uniform surface temperature 288 K, therefore its IR emission cannot be compared to the perfect curve either.
c). The allegedly absorbed IR frequencies bands have never been emitted from the planet surface.
2). “The GH gases are potent absorbers and have already achieved a warming estimated to be 33 degrees.”
a). There is not any 33 oC GH gases warming in the real world.
b). The Earth’s theoretical radiative mean surface temperature
Tmean = 288 K.
For further information please visit my site:
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
I’ve updated the graphics to include CO2 and the Trend in Temperatures.
https://imgur.com/a/CDasqHH
In my opinion, this data set is undeniable proof that if you isolate the impact of CO2 on Temperature by controlling for the Urban Heat Island Effect and Water Vapor you can demonstrate that CO2 does not impact temperatures in the lower Troposphere.
These graphics also highlight how any causative relationship between CO2 and Temperature is basically non-existent, and if you place CO2 and Temperature in a Multi-Variable Linear Regression Modeling Program such as R, SAS, or even Excel you will get a non-significant R-Squared and coefficient on CO2.
Lastly, I put a regression line on Temperature. You can see that:
1) Some Months are (+) some months are (-)
2) The high volatility of the data makes the slope basically meaningless
3) Climate Alarmists have no answers for the evidence I’ve provided with these graphics. Even their nonsensical slope arguments are debunked with those charts. I have more (-) slopes than they have (+), but the fact that the same location has both (+) and (-) Slopes depending on the month pretty much proves regression slopes are useless in this analysis.
Here is the Evidence:
https://imgur.com/a/CDasqHH
Another reason global warming is good for you:
it improves your cardiovascular health.
After many violations of blog policy, Willards comments have been placed in moderation, so that they won’t appear on the blog unless I release them from moderation. WordPress.com has changed, so it took me awhile to figure out how to do this, but will save me much time in the long run in terms of blog moderation.
With regards to blog policy, make your comments about the arguments, not about the commenter. Do not waste our time with petty bickering; do your best to contribute constructively to the dialogue.
Dr. Curry,
There is much petty bickering. I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to run your blog. In fact, you do a great job! Every time I’m about to say that you’ve outdone yourself on the selected readings, you do it again. And although this blog isn’t meant for someone like me, it has helped me greatly.
Willard and I do not share the same political views. Yet, he has gone out of his way and helped me on occasion. Ditto for Joshua who I also disagree with politically. They do contribute with information and certainly with open debate. Can they clean it up, for sure. But, to be fair, so can the snarky condescending ones who never seem to yield on any point, nor genuinely try to understand a contrary point of view. It’s soooo tiring and child-like. And, in a way, that sort of behavior suppresses honest debate as much as ‘nasty in-your-face’ commentary. Michael Mann immediately comes to mind.
Just giving feedback.
Thanks for the feedback Bill. Joshua spent years in moderation on this blog; he was released when his comments became more constructive; I still delete alot them when the bickering begins. Willard’s more substantive comments are being let through. Too many comments that attack commenters on unrelated issues are a sure fire route to being put into moderation.
Thanks, Bill.
In fairness, I should know better than to participate in food fights. Moderating is hard and time consuming. We all have biases.
Sorry, Judy. From now on I’ll try to channel my inner Pekka.
THANK YOU WILLARD. Your participation is appreciated, but PLEASE avoid the food fights. Pekka is much missed.
Christos, you may be right. My mentioning of the 33 degrees was simply to make the point that most of the warming attributed to greenhouse gases took place in earlier times when carbon dioxide concentration was relatively low and the change in transmission was relatively high.
I am aware that there is much debate about the calculation of this warming. I simply used the figure because it the best known one. There is much in climate science that may prove not to be correct.
Peter, two years ago (Feb. 2019) I made an effort to theoretically calculate planet without atmosphere mean surface temperature. The results were beyond any expectations…
I checked the formula on the Earth case in order to estimate the greenhouse effect influence on the Earth mean surface temperature and suddenly it came out there is none. Or it is very small so it does not show in the theoretical estimation calculations.
Surely not the 33 oC.
There is the Planet Surface Rotational Warming Phenomenon – planet mean surface temperatures relate (everything equals) as their (N*cp) products sixteenth root.
The Φ = 0,47 or = 1 permitted to estimate correctly for the every planet the Energy in which is the IR emitted Energy out.
This formula calculates theoretically the planet mean surface radiative temperature.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The transmission of radiation through a concentration of absorbing molecules is at the heart of spectroscopy which is well established technology and not in doubt.
From a climate perspective, the more difficult part is to calculate how much of this absorbed energy is retained and manifested as warming and how much finds its way to space constituting cooling. I choose not to engage in this difficult part, I see how well (or badly) climate models perform in trying to do this.
But then, when the data shows that at current concentrations of the mixed greenhouse gases the transmission is approaching zero, there is no significant greenhouse effect and very little warming to worry about. The complexity just falls away, leaving the conclusion that the greenhouse effect has a limit and that limit has been reached.
Of course, UHI, ocean oscillations, cloud cover changes, and the myriad of factors that change albedo are all still active, not to mention poorly understood influences like solar cycles, so it may be some time before the lack of further warming becomes obvious.
It is more difficult to see how the alarmist community can deny simple spectroscopic evidence but I am sure they will try.
Peter,
> “But then, when the data shows that at current concentrations of the mixed greenhouse gases the transmission is approaching zero, there is no significant greenhouse effect and very little warming to worry about. The complexity just falls away, leaving the conclusion that the greenhouse effect has a limit and that limit has been reached.”
Earth’s atmosphere has only traces of carbon dioxide CO₂ gas content
CO₂ content in Earth’s atmosphere is measured to be some 400 ppm.
400 parts per million is one part per 2.500 (1.000.000 /400 = 2.500)
So we have one molecule of CO₂ for every 2.500 molecules of air.
Or to make it even more clear: 1 /2.500 = 0,0004 or 0,04 %
Now let’s compare the 0,04% CO₂ content in Earth’s atmosphere with the water vapor content of about 1% on average.
0,04% CO₂ /1% H₂O = 0,04
or one molecule of CO₂ for every 25 molecules of H₂O in Earth’s atmosphere.
One may say there are still too many CO₂ molecules.
But Earth’s atmosphere is very thin, it is an almost transparent atmosphere in both ways – in and out.
It is not only the CO₂% content in the Earth’s atmosphere general content that matters, but we have also to consider how many CO₂ molecules are in Earth’s atmosphere in total.
If Earth’s atmosphere was consisted from the actually existing CO₂ molecules only, the atmospheric pressure on the Earth’s surface would have been 0,0004 bar.
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Peter, the method I use is the “Planet Surface Temperatures Comparison Method”
The Earth’s atmosphere pressure at the sea level is 1 bar. It consists mainly of 79% N2 and 21% O2, and water vapor 1%, and CO2 0,04% and the other trace gasses.
Let’s compare Earth’s atmosphere with Venus’ atmosphere. Venus is almost the same size planet as Earth is. That is why Venus is called a sister planet.
The Venus’ atmosphere pressure at the ground level is 92 bar. It consists mainly of 96% CO2 and 4% N2, and other trace gasses. And Venus has a runaway greenhouse effect.
For someone living on Venus the Earth’s atmosphere appears to be thin. It appears to be very thin, very-very thin.
Compare the figures:
1 bar with 0,04% CO2 for Earth, and 92 bar with 96% CO2.
How much more CO2 Venus has?
Let’s calculate: 92 bar * 96% / 1 bar * 0,04% =
92*96*25 = 220.800 times more CO2 Venus’ atmosphere has compared to Earth’s.
So what we compare is 1 to 220.800 !
For someone living on the Venus the conclusion would be the planet Earth doesn’t have any CO2 in its atmosphere.
Tm.venus = 737 K
Venus’ Albedo 0,76 Bond.
Solar flux on Venus = 2600 W/m²
(1 – a)S = (1 – 0,76)2600 W/m² = 0,24*2600 W/m² = 624 W/m²
On Earth (less Albedo 0,306) it is 945 W/m²
Tm.earth = 288 K
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Peter … Thanks for your replies to my questions. David Wojick was also kind enough to reply and posted this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.16465
Curious what you thought of it?
Wijngaarden and Happe, 2021, says that Peter is incorrect.
‘Doubling the standard concentration of CO2 (from 400 to 800 ppm) would cause a forcing increase (the area between the black and red lines) of ∆F {i} = 2.97 W m−2 as shown in Table 2.’
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/potency-of-ghg.png
Robert, thank you. So, as a plain language summary, are you agreeing with Peter’s statement above:
>But then, when the data shows that at current concentrations of the mixed greenhouse gases the transmission is approaching zero, there is no significant greenhouse effect and very little warming to worry about. The complexity just falls away, leaving the conclusion that the greenhouse effect has a limit and that limit has been reached.
Sorry … disagreeing?
Sorry – I thought you imagined – like David – that this article agreed with Peter.
Robert … you said earlier today in response to David Wojick:
>Your source uses HITRAN to estimate an increase in forcing of 2.97 W/m2 with a doubling of CO2. Compare that to an estimate of 3.7 W/m2 – and the results are not as “extremely saturated” as you imagine.
Holding off on saturation, is that not a 20% reduction?
Using 800 ppm as a doubling of CO2, your potential reduction of 157 ppm accomplished through returning carbon to the soil, is also 20%.
Have I made a fruit salad here, comparing apples to oranges? Or maybe just Granny Smith to Red Delicious? Just trying to make sense of the information. Please break it down if you can.
You might in future find that the dominant climate science paradigm has moved on. Judith Curry – for instance – is on board with the new paradigm.
Anthropogenic climate change is superimposed on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics – fundamentally a chaotic system. There is implicit in chaos the risk of dramatic and rapid change in the Earth system – atmosphere, biosphere, cryosphere and hydrosphere. That much should be accepted as truth in line with Isaac Newton’s 4th rule of natural philosophy. There are of course those who don’t and never will.’
http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CO2-dependency-1024×602.png
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=8837
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/img/styles/figure2_5-992@2x.png
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/
Pragmatic responses – just in case you are wrong – involve ‘raising up of human dignity via three overarching objectives: ensuring energy access for all; ensuring that we develop in a manner that does not undermine the essential functioning of the Earth system; ensuring that our societies are adequately equipped to withstand the risks and dangers that come from all the vagaries of climate, whatever their cause may be.’
Robert
> “Anthropogenic climate change is superimposed on Hurst-Kolmogorov stochastic dynamics – fundamentally a chaotic system.”
Yes, exactly, I agree 100% !!!
I wanted to share thusvinformation widely, but was not able to copy the url.
“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate change — more realistic scenarios make for better policy. ”
Correction: stop using projected climate change to justify climate policy and actions. Instead, use the economic and environmental impacts of climate change — derived from empirical evidence — to justify policy and actions.
If this is done there is no valid justification for policy or actions to attempt to reduce global warming.
Bjorn Lomborg says:
https://mailchi.mp/lomborg/jbpl570n9d-623848
“As electorates and politicians remain unwilling to spend trillions on strict climate policies, activists have turned to a new strategy: shortcutting the democratic process through the courts.
The UN now counts at least 1,550 climate court cases in 38 countries. Germany’s Constitutional Court recently handed activists their biggest victory so far, when it issued a ruling that according to Bloomberg “changed the course of Germany’s politics, economy and climate strategy for the next three decades.”
But this trend of forcing climate action through the judicial system is highly problematic: it undermines democracy, opens a Pandora’s box for all sorts of special interest litigation, harms the poor and sidetracks us from smarter ways to fix climate change.”
But, we do not need to “fix climate change”. Global warming is beneficial for the world economy and ecosystems.
‘It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.’ But as Bjorn Lomberg has always said – putting a few billion into energy innovation – on the off chance that Peter L is wrong – doesn’t have a downside. Indeed in common with the Copenhagen Consensus smart development goals – there is a huge upside.
https://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus/news
“Putting a few billion into energy innovation .. doesn’t have a downside.”
Solyndra? Crescent Dunes?
Some new ventures work out spectacularly – some don’t.
The sad state of science
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-7dk
The sad state of science commentary more likely.
“Arctic sea ice is rapidly melting at rates faster than predicted by models”.
What a beautiful surprise. Models are running too cold!
What it means in that context is that there is a limited knowledge.
Indeed Robert. The “heat bomb” misnomer isn’t mentioned anywhere in the referenced learned journal paper. An extract:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/month-in-review-arctic-science-edition/
Unprecedented quantities of heat are entering the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait, particularly during summer months. Though some heat is lost to the atmosphere during autumn cooling, a significant fraction of the incoming warm, salty water subducts (dives beneath) below a cooler fresher layer of near-surface water, subsequently extending hundreds of kilometers into the Beaufort Gyre. Upward turbulent mixing of these sub-surface pockets of heat is likely accelerating sea ice melt in the region.
Yes I can read and I did go to the article – as well as the Scripps website. I generally limit myself to reputable sources – and that doesn’t include your site. The video provides a visualisation of a small part of the complex flow patterns that we are far from completely understanding.
Are you perhaps too caught up in semantics and not science?
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/heat-bombs-destroying-arctic-sea-ice
Yes I can read and I did go to the article – as well as the Scripps website.
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/heat-bombs-destroying-arctic-sea-ice
Bully for you! Do you suppose CJ did likewise?
You do realise that if you neglect to visit Snow White’s Arctic Emporium you might miss out on the latest academic Arctic news and even more exciting videos?
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/month-in-review-arctic-science-edition/#Ricker
The Alfred Wegner Institute (AWI) in Germany merge weekly CryoSat data with daily SMOS data to generate a weekly-averaged product every day.
As well as being used for forecasts, these combined data show that the volume of sea ice in the 2020-21 winter season was at its lowest since these sea-ice data products began in 2010.
Stefan Hendricks from AWI said, “The driver of this low volume of sea ice is the region north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago, where the thickest ice usually resides. Last winter, thick sea ice was almost absent. The rest of the Arctic sea ice is a mix of above and below average.”
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CS2-SMOS_volume_20210415.png
These daily to seasonal minutiae miss the broad sweep of climate science synthesis that is essential to creatively solve the puzzle. Do you never stop to ask yourself what it means?
Mornin’ Robert (UTC),
It’s not “daily to seasonal minutiae”. It’s the the latest “experimental” evidence of the long term negative trend in Arctic sea ice volume.
Do you never stop to ask yourself what it means?
I was asking you what probative value it had.
Climate Etc. is a court of law now?
Using George’s terminology it means that the IPCC’s “models are running too cold”. An extract from the SROCC SPM:
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SROCC_SPM1_SeaIce.jpg
Probative has a broader meaning. So what does this presumably partially copied graph prove?
Mornin’ Robert (UTC),
The graph is 100% cut’n’pasted from the IPCC’s SROCC. It shows Arctic sea ice extent rather than volume. If you’re familiar with the numbers it requires you to mentally bring the purple “observed” line up to date. I eagerly await the AR6 version.
Meanwhile it “proves” that previous generations of “climate models” struggled to get the Arctic right:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086749
We find that CMIP6 models produce a wide spread of mean Arctic sea-ice area, capturing the observational estimate within the multimodel ensemble spread. The CMIP6 multimodel ensemble mean provides a more realistic estimate of the sensitivity of September Arctic sea-ice area to a given amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and to a given amount of global warming, compared with earlier CMIP experiments. Still, most CMIP6 models fail to simulate at the same time a plausible evolution of sea-ice area and of global mean surface temperature. In the vast majority of the available CMIP6 simulations, the Arctic Ocean becomes practically sea-ice free (sea-ice area <1 × 106 km2) in September for the first time before the Year 2050 in each of the four emission scenarios SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5 examined here.
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Notz-CMIP6-2020.png
Each of these models in the CMIP 6 opportunistic ensemble have an ‘irreducible imprecision’ or ‘evolving uncertainty’ – however one wants to put it. Below is an example of a single model run 1000’s of times. The rest is a work in progress. Yet they somehow continue to insist on the verisimilitude of models.
So you are proving that models are not very good and worse at regional downscaling? We have discussed Igor Polyakov and his idea that the state of the Arctic is in transition. Based on observational programs such as the one at the top of this thread. Much more of that is needed and much less of models.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/cmip-6-1.png
The range of models in the latest IPCC opportunistic ensemble is shown in blue and yellow. Above and below the mean of means. Some models are run in centres with large computing facilities. Models can be run many times with slightly different initial conditions and wildly divergent solution trajectories. Some have more modest origins.
Each of these models in the CMIP 6 opportunistic ensemble have an ‘irreducible imprecision’ or ‘evolving uncertainty’ – however one wants to put it. The rest is a work in progress. And you want to convince me that models got it wrong? Join the queue.
Interesting that Russia is so much further ‘south’ than Canada.
Robert – I note that my “probative” reply seems to have reappeared!
Of course I am not seeking to “convince you that [the] models got it wrong”! As George Box allegedly said “Since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad.”
Getting back to the matter in hand, Elon Musk’s ambitions aside, there is no “Planet B”. As Mark Boslough (a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry no less!) put it in his recent review of Steven Koonin’s magnum opus:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/unsettling-koonin-critiques-continue/#Yale
If a pilot isn’t sure about having enough fuel to get you to your destination, if an astronomer isn’t sure that an incoming asteroid will miss the Earth, if your doctor isn’t sure if you have a terminal disease, if you’re not sure you turned the stove off: In each of these cases, the uncertainty is unsettling. Why does Koonin think that unsettled questions in climate science are any kind of comfort when the consequences of doing nothing can be catastrophic?
Such a hackneyed argument – Jim – embellished with flimflam.
Climate models have done one great thing – they introduced the world in the 1960’s to the third great idea of twentieth century physics – an idea that may still bring balance to the force.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/laws-of-physics.png
https://watertechbyrie.com/2021/05/01/capability-browns-oblique-approach-to-climate-policy/
Good afternoon Robert,
You’re referring to “one of the great statistical minds of the 20th century” as a purveyor of flimflammery?
Surely not!
Robert – My “probative” reply seems to have disappeared into Judith’s moderation queue. Here’s the gist of it.
100% copied. Roll on AR6!
Jim
Unprecedented quantities of heat are entering the Pacific sector of the Arctic Ocean through Bering Strait,
Unprecedented is on big word. Do you have a link that shows it was unprecedented? Even during the Holocene Thermal Maximum?
Mornin’ CK,
What do you suppose the sea level in the vicinity of e.g. London was “during the Holocene Thermal Maximum”?
See also: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03155-x
We therefore argue that the climate of the Holocene differed from that of the last interglacial period in two ways: first, larger remnant glacial ice sheets acted to cool the early Holocene, and second, rising greenhouse gas levels in the late Holocene warmed the planet. Furthermore, our reconstructions demonstrate that the modern global temperature has exceeded annual levels over the past 12,000 years and probably approaches the warmth of the last interglacial period (128,000 to 115,000 years ago).
Jim Hunt
I asked specifically about unprecedented levels of heat entering the Arctic from the Pacific. You reply with a reference to London and Global temperatures. Where are the studies about the unprecedented heat entering the Arctic from the Pacific?
We seem to be going around in ever decreasing circles CK? Here once again is my reference to the learned journal article that mentioned those “unprecedented levels of heat entering the Arctic from the Pacific”:
https://judithcurry.com/2021/05/19/projecting-manmade-climate-change-scenarios-to-2050/#comment-950482
You quibbled about the word “unprecedented”. Where’s your Holocene precedent hiding? If you fail to appreciate the significance of my “London sea level” enquiry please see this FAQ and then get back to me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
Ice free summers
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379110003185
Low frequency sea ice variability
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/15/4570
More ice free summers
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/42/26069
No wonder I had three layers of clothing on the other night. As the old saying goes, as the Arctic Ice Thickness goes, so goes my backyard.
http://polarportal.dk/fileadmin/polarportal/sea/CICE_combine_thick_SM_EN.png
Afternoon CK (UTC),
I see you’ve been busy! Thanks for those links, but as far as I can see they don’t answer my Doggerland question?
Are you aware that the DMI map you display is the output of a model? Here once again are some recent remote measurements of Arctic sea ice thickness:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/month-in-review-arctic-science-edition/#Ricker
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/W_XX-ESASMOS_CS2NH_25KM_EASE2_20210409_20210415_r_v203_01_l4sit.png
Jim hunt ‘s comment and citation to holcene study
Mornin’ CK,
What do you suppose the sea level in the vicinity of e.g. London was “during the Holocene Thermal Maximum”?
See also: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-03155-x
How credible is that study?
One of the deficiencies of the multitude of past climate reconstructions (Mannian et al) is the failure to reconcile the “approved” climate proxies and the reconstructions with other known but “unapproved” proxies. For example the retreating glaciers in alaska , the columbia ice fields, etc exposing the tree stumps. Those “Non-approved” proxies would show the greater holcene warmth than present day.
Another example is the yamal tree line – “The treeline series illustrated in Esper et al 2012 was derived from Hantemirov and Shiyatov Figure 2 (but excluding its Early Holocene portion). It showed mid-Holocene treelines extended approximately 30 km north of present treelines. However, this 30 km figure represented the northern limit of the survey, NOT the actual Holocene treeline. By the time of Hantemirov’s thesis in 2009, the survey – and the mid-Holocene treeline – had been extended nearly 120 km north of the current treeline (see middle panel). It appears that the Holocene treeline may have been even further north: in 1941, Tikhonov reportedly observed sub-fossil Holocene trees at 70N, approximately 275 km north of the present treeline. So, while Esper et al were right to note that Holocene treeline was further north, their diagram dramatically under-estimated the actual distance further north of the Holocene treeline, not just absolutely, but in respect to what was known in Russian literature at the date of their article.
Note that, in the 20th century, the Yamal treeline finally reversed its long march south, though still located far south of its Holocene location. This reversal corresponds to the 20th century reversal of the equilibrium line of Norwegian small glaciers – neither effect being apparent in the Esper et al figure.
See : https://climateaudit.org/2021/03/02/milankovitch-forcing-and-tree-ring-proxies/
Thank you very much for this very interesting information.
Afternoon Joe (UTC),
It’s an allegedly peer reviewed paper! One of many. Thanks for your link, but I’m afraid Mr. McIntyre isn’t one of my go to “review paper” authors. I’ll peruse his antediluvian suggestions when I have a spare 1/2 hour or so
Be all that as it may, neither you nor CK have addressed my previous question, so at the risk of repeating myself:
“What do you (or Mr. McIntyre?) suppose the sea level in the vicinity of e.g. London was ‘during the Holocene Thermal Maximum’?”
How activism corrupts science
https://wp.me/pTN8Y-7dk
The same all capitals missive with pictur8es of termites that are irrelevant to a harmless little study by a couple of post graduate students on an area of land transitioning from woodland to salt marsh. This sort of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of science is a clear and present danger to the process of science itself. The careful art of hypothesis testing and replication. Or at least the amassing of disparate data in a credible synthesis. To be replaced by arm waving dismissal on grounds of personal opinion. In this case – from his mother’s basement – it is clearly driven by not so much a clearly formulated ideology but a desire for the approbation of the CE peanut gallery.
“A more realistic scenario” is that manmade global warming is a default assumption without the consideration of new physics gravitational forcing:
….
Accumulating late-May snow is pummeling the higher elevations of the Western United States — the latest inconvenient real-world observation pouring cold water on the hot mess that is AGW.
..
There is no mechanism in which a warming world leads to late-May snow and record low temperatures.
….
https://electroverse.net/record-cold-and-late-may-snow-sweeps-western-us/
Unfortunately their mechanism of a Grand Solar Minimum affecting the jet streams is too simplistic and lacking scientific credibility.
And it ain’t ‘new physics’. The old physics of gravity in a warming atmosphere has something to do with it. As may solar intensity warming ozone or modulating the global electrical circuit.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/hgt.ao.cdas.gif
‘The daily geopotential height anomalies at 17 pressure levels are shown for the previous 120 days as indicated, and they are normalized by standard deviation using 1979-2000 base period. The anomalies are calculated by subtracting 1979-2000 daily climatology, and then averaged over the polar cap poleward of 65°N.
The blue (red) colors represent a strong (weak) polar vortex. The black solid lines show the zero anomalies.’
And the view at the 500 hPa level in almost real time.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-95.82,82.18,178
“And it ain’t ‘new physics’” says the master of word salad obfuscation himself.
You are not worth the effort Alan.
Alan
Thank you for bringing up the snow on May 23. Before reading your comment I counted 12 states that has snow this morning. To save me the usual it’s just weather comments I wasn’t going to mention it. But now I will.
I believe we are in a shift to a lower temperature trend that could last for a few decades. In theory that could mean late May snow becomes more common. Will a reduction in warming trends place more pressure on the IPCC to reevaluate its use of RCP8.5?
A rhetorical question not meant just for Alan.
Mornin’ CK,
In which case here’s my rhetorical answer:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/facts-about-the-arctic-in-may-2021/#May-23
The GFS Arctic snow depth forecast for the beginning of June:
https://greatwhitecon.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CCI-SnowMSLP-2021-05-2310d.png
CKid – it feels like it’s going to be ‘a year without summer’ here in the UK. The weather has gone from bad to worse, with heavy rain and winds from off the Atlantic.
Your prediction for a continuous cooling period could be correct, although I’m inclined to think it will be interspersed with very hot summers too. It’s very reminiscent of the cold snaps of the so called Little Ice Age.
As we speak, it must be putting enormous pressure on the IPCC and the climate models they use. It’s hard to imagine how this will all play out. It’s mindblowing.
Adrift to more meridional flow in the Artic vortex in a warming world and with a dimming sun suggests the potential for NH winter extremes.
A model.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8535
Observations.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024001/meta
Alan
“very hot summers..”
None of my comments is scientific. These are simply what sticks out in my memory of weather I’ve observed since the early 1950s. The hottest times and the coldest times that I recall were both in the “cooling” 1970s. I recall several days in the mid 90s to high 90s then, a rarity now. There were also extended periods of very cold in the 1970s, including a January that never exceeded freezing, and many days below 0 degrees F. That was an unexceptional occurrence. The coldest moment for me personally was when I tried to fix my carburetor with my barehands in -50 degrees F windchill. No thanks.
“..and with a dimming sun..” – RIE
That’s BS Robert.
Some people in the field of human endeavour seem especially clueless.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84830-5
Earth’s radiative mean surface temperature.
We can estimate Earth’s radiative mean surface temperature via the comparison with other planets satellite measured radiative mean surface temperatures.
Example:
Mars’ Tm.mars = 210 K
Earth /Mars comparison coefficient = 1,3746
We can now calculate Earth’s radiative mean surface temperature Tm.earth:
Tm.earth = 1,3714 Tm.mars = 1,3746* 210 K = 288,7 K
Tm.earth = 288,7 K !
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
I wonder how much site traffic will drop after the censure of Willard. Will Joshua and VTG stop comments.
Willard doesn’t understand why he was put in moderation.
Another Day In Paradoxical Plum Pudding
By Bruce J. Moran
© 05/18/21- 05/20/21
How Could This Forever Be For You & Me
In A Never Ending ‘Clever Endeavor’ Story Land
Heretofore Not Understood
Another Day In Paradoxical Plum Pudding
Statistical Paradigm Prevaricating Paradise
Marauding About With Mixed & Matched Bias
Thrown Around Like Nobody’s Business
Then Back & Forward With False Findings
What Of Reproducible Research
And Realistic Science Based Scenarios
Not With The Farmer In The Dell
Cherry Picking Plums For Cucumbers
With Inherently Uncertain Factors
In A Charlie Foxtrot “Multiple Testing” Arena
With A Broken “Multiple Modeling” Arrow
Pointing Perniciously To Peer Review
With Ominous Trajectories & Pathways
By Who & To What Extent Or Maybe Only A Few
Who Knew What Should Truly Be Explained
That Omit Predictors To Confound The Confounders
Unquestionably In Reverse Reciprocol Relationships
In A Topsy Turvy Selective Reporting World
Not Controlling The Original Confusion Confounding
While Neglecting The Interactions Among Variables
Within The Larger Omnipresent Holographic
Analysis Manipulaton Universe
Why Is Hard Science So Hard To Understand
Why Is Empirical Evidence Not Empirical
Where To Be Or Not To Be Exists
In Testing Model Assumptions
Is It Much Ado About Nothing
Practicing Manuevers On The
Convoluted Bridges To Nowhere
Lost In An Everpresent Time Event Horizon
Neglecting Exposure Uncertainties
Ignoring Or Downplaying Research
In A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Alas! No Significant Associations
Who Would Have Imagined
That A Practical & Sound Guess
Could Be More Reliable
Where We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges
For Accountability & Responsibility
What Of Scientific Consensus Building
Thrown Way Far Under
The One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Bus
Then Steam Rolled By Nurse Ratched On
The Carnivorous As Good As It Gets Highway
Eating Up Valuable Scientific Time & Energy
Why Produce Claims In Research
When One Can Corkscrew
By Obscuring The Insuring By Reassuring
Merrily Drinking To One’s Delight
With Any Data Set
Changing Fashionable Underwear
By Skewing Studies
As If There Is Nothing Wrong
Between The Highway Speeding Lines
With Bare Unsound Science Naked Facts
Making Unjustified Interventional
Causal Interpretation Of Regression Coefficients
Where Does This All Lead
Where The Beginning Has No End
And The End Has No Beginning
In A Statistical Paradigm Prevaricating Paradise
Another Day In Paradoxical Plum Pudding
Heretofore Not Understood
In A Never Ending ‘Clever Endeavor’ Story Land
How Could This Forever Be For You & Me?
Another paradox: Why can a poem be copyrighted but not a mathematical formula? Maybe the answer is in the eating of the plum pudding.
Test to see if all comments are in moderation
Rob:
Calliopi sends her best to you! Provincial Thinking Has Invaded This Planet! Aesthetics are fast being lost and forgotten!
Bruce
I’ve expanded my graphical list of sites that show no warming uptrend (volatility isn’t an uptrend, all these sites have recent temperatures at or near temperatures very close to values reached decades ago). Here is the evidence. This list is in my opinion the greatest evidence that CO2 doesn’t drive temperatures. These sites were specifically selected to control for the Urban Heat Island Effect and Water Vapor. Almost all will have a very low BI and are located in deserts or rural areas. There are some exceptions, but most locations were chosen specifically for their ability to isolate the effect of CO2 on temperatures. Others were chosen because of their long-term record.
https://imgur.com/a/CDasqHH
It is the South Pole. At least get that right.
That is exactly how the Chart is labeled. Don’t know how that is even relevant. A huge part of the earth shows no warming at all with a 25% increase in CO2. Care to provide an explanation?
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/pages.png
Sun has almost uniform temperature. Sun’s diffuse emission is uniformly distributed over the entire suns surface. Therefore sun has uniform surface emission temperature…
Planets do not have uniform surface temperature… and planets are always irradiated only on one side while the opposite side is dark.
The Sun’s emission temperature is estimated by matching the Planck curve vs. wavelength with the measured spectral radiant energy emitted by the sun, the best match was found for a temperature of 5777K.
Planets do not have uniform surface temperature as sun has.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/potency-of-ghg.png
“…The smooth blue line is the spectral flux from the surface at the temperature To = 288,7 K for a transparent atmosphere with no greenhouse gases.”
What I think is we cannot have the To = 288,7 K spectral flux curve as an etalon to compare with the spacecraft measured outgoing IR radiation from the earth’s system.
For the reason Earth does not have a uniform surface temperature To = 288,7 K.
Earth does not emit IR radiative energy according to
“smooth blue line is the spectral flux from the surface at the temperature To = 288,7 K for a transparent atmosphere with no greenhouse gases.”
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
The earth does have an average surface temperature. That is estimated to be 61degrees Fahrenheit. The earth is presently radiating more heat to the black sky than it retains from the sun. This is because water reflects radiant heat.
The Vostok ice core CO2 and DATE readings are correct even though the water was evaporated during the ice melting stage. They are readings from solids left behind during the melting of the vertical core.
eheh good luck with that!
We don’t want to reduce our energy production/waste/consumption so no matter the source of the energy the problem will always be the same, because no type of tech can generate the amount of energy we use/waste without causing unbalances in the global natural systems.
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The most basic problem with RCP8.5 is the population estimates chosen to prepare it.
This article includes a discussion of that aspect: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0149-y
“The scenario’s storyline describes a heterogeneous world with continuously increasing global population, resulting in a global population of 12 billion by 2100.” And by 2050, the date of interest in this essay by Dr. Curry, they estimate 10 billion (see Figure 4, upper right-hand chart).
Given the decreasing fertility rates in the large countries, these numbers cannot happen. Russia, Japan, Portugal, …, are already actually losing population, and China will do so by 2050 or even earlier unless their fertility rate goes up from its current 1.70 very soon.
I’ve been banging this drum for a while.
Eighty percent of global carbon dioxide emissions are from countries with lower than replacement fertility rates.
And before the inevitable total population decreases, the economic impact of decreasing working age population constrains growth.
Peter Zeihan writes about the geopolitics of demographic collapse.
In the developed world, only the US, New Zealand, and France don’t have a hole in their millennial population. The rest of the developed world enters a post growth phase where the non-productive elderly steadily increase in proportion to the working age population and drag on economies.
China is already experiencing this drag:
https://assets.weforum.org/editor/large_VfKzFAV9Rx9-uuNsUiZFm01E46-e4KEjdJmopRmzl10.png
While few countries had a big millennial generation, most countries did have a post WWII baby boom. The last of those boomers largely leave the workforce by 2022.
There are some very large and very predictable problems involving the economic stress and regional conflict.
It would appear that climate change is a comparative non-problem and whatever the effects of increased CO2, they will be constrained by falling population this century.
Thank you providing this information. Very convincing to me.
Regarding the land use and it’s evolution : is the global greening of the earth (Nature, 2016) a factor that suggests that the land use is perhaps in the direction of more CO2 uptake ?
Historically, the soil carbon pool has been a major source of atmospheric carbon dioxide with likely more than 78 GtC lost from grazing and cropping lands in the modern era. Or – according to rattan Lal – 500 GtC since the advent of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. The transfer of organic carbon to the atmosphere as CO2 has created a carbon deficit in agricultural soils. Soils now contain a lower organic content than before conversion to agriculture. In many regions it has led to a spiral of decline to desertification. The rich ecology of living soils – fungi, insects, bacteria, vegetation – in a highly productive symbiosis gives way to bare earth. Plants create sugars from carbon and sunlight and they feed organisms in the soil with exudate from the roots. Organisms which in turn create environments that break down soils and release nutrients – bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen. It is a living system that can become unbalanced and lose organic matter. The water holding capacity of soils is reduced. Infiltration of rainwater declines, runoff and erosion increase with more flash flooding. Groundwater stores decline, vegetation is more drought stressed, there is less dry weather flow in waterways. The spiral of soil and ecological decline continues. Elsewhere the productivity of cropping soils is sustained only by larger inputs of increasingly expensive fertilisers and poisons – which in themselves destabilise living soil and have impacts on broader environments.
Atmospheric carbon is being used to restore and conserve rangeland, forests, wetlands agricultural soils – cropping and grazing – and to reclaim deserts.
https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/
The current warming period of the current interglacial as a model for understanding interglacial temperature cycles.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/27/unnatural-humans/
For that projection, Biden relies on the EPA.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/27/the-biden-the-epa/
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Interesting data about the “hot” part of our planet: The average annual temperature in Central African Republic is 24.9 °C. The average annual rainfall in Central African Republic is 1343 mm/year. Central African Republic emits 0.1 metric tons per capita of CO₂.