I think this is the first time you said global warming may be right in this forum at least.MSimon wrote:All the bleating about climate consensus is a smoke screen. The consensus may be wrong about AGW. It also may be wrong about the path to fusion power. It also may be right. The only way to be sure is to allow opposing views and see where the arguments and evidence lead.
Global Warming Concensus Broken
I'll take your word on the water vapour multiplier not being known and the like. But stating that only 1/5 of CO2 emmitted comes from humans, without mentioning that the natural CO2 is cyclical while the CO2 emmitted by humans ias cumulative, is downright deceptive.MSimon wrote:Are you telling me that TV weathemen haven't studied climate? That is a stretch.
BTW I'm retired and fusion is rather far afield for me. And yet there are folks who are intimately connected with the field who think I have made a valuable contribution or two.
In addition I have studied AGW extensively and was at one time convinced CO2 was a problem. Now I think the weight of evidence is against it and that weight is getting stronger as time goes on.
Biggest hoax going. Well other than "socialism is a good way to run an economy". Over 100 years of evidence against it and yet the ranks of the believers are hardly thinned.
I don't dispute that. Much. Except for the "heat pipe effect". What I dispute is the water vapor multiplier. That is where the Climate "Science" magic is done. Now the IPCC admits they don't even know the sign let alone the magnitude of the water vapor effect. It is assumed.It is pretty clear that the more CO2 is in the atmosphere, the longer it takes heat to escape back into space.
And the sun is awful quiet these days and the sun's magnetic field is declining. There have been a number of papers that show from different points of view how the solar magnetic field affects climate. I posted one above and Svensmark has done interesting work in that area from a physics point of view.
Let me add that human additions to the CO2 level are about 1/5 of the natural sources adding to the level.
A wallet extraction scheme.
Its also worth remebering that many techniques used to mine fossil fuels such as coal can destroy hundreds qnd hundreds of square miles of natural beauty. Although carbon sequestration (something I am opposed to) won't change that, actually it will increase the rate of destruction by ~30%.Nanos wrote:So my thought is, dunno if Global Warming is an issue or not to worry about, but lets build a sustainable lifestyle anyhow, which just happens to include all those things that would make Global Warming people happy too.. Then if they are right, I'm ok, and if they are wrong, I'm ok too.
I think its quite possible we can have a win win situation, rather than a win-lose one.
Maui,
One might just as easily argue many of the pro-AGW people are espousing positions for their own economic reasons -- Al Gore, for instance, stands to make hundreds of millions if his arguments are accepted.
1) How about the fact CO2 increase lags temperature increase? That suggests CO2 cannot be driving climate change.
2) In 2006, we were told 2007 would be the hottest year on record. That didn't happen.
3) The CO2 warming theory requires that certain portions of the atmosphere show warming, but they don't. That argues CO2 is not causing warming.
4) It's been shown numerous times that there are huge problems with the GISS data. As if the well-documented surface station location problems and near-total lack of data validation (see the Russian duplicate data last month) wasn't enough, Hansen applies "adjustments" to the data that make older temps colder, which you can clearly see for some stations turns a cooling trend since 1920 into a warming trend.
5) Newpaper accounts from the 1930s find that global warming was being encountered then as well, with vessels coming within a few hundred miles of the North Pole in December 1938. Given that we are supposedly at the top of a huge spike in global temperature, this should not have been possible.
The major problem with arguing against AGW is that the theory centers around questionable data and what a bunch of computer simulations expect to happen over the next 100 years based on that data, which simulations almost certainly fail to accurately model climate -- note that nearly all of the simulations from 1998 have been wrong for the past ten years' data. But they just make new simulations that say massive warming is right around the corner. It's non-falsifiable.
One might just as easily argue many of the pro-AGW people are espousing positions for their own economic reasons -- Al Gore, for instance, stands to make hundreds of millions if his arguments are accepted.
Sure they have.And the skeptics have not produced any work that creates any major problem for the theory.
1) How about the fact CO2 increase lags temperature increase? That suggests CO2 cannot be driving climate change.
2) In 2006, we were told 2007 would be the hottest year on record. That didn't happen.
3) The CO2 warming theory requires that certain portions of the atmosphere show warming, but they don't. That argues CO2 is not causing warming.
4) It's been shown numerous times that there are huge problems with the GISS data. As if the well-documented surface station location problems and near-total lack of data validation (see the Russian duplicate data last month) wasn't enough, Hansen applies "adjustments" to the data that make older temps colder, which you can clearly see for some stations turns a cooling trend since 1920 into a warming trend.
5) Newpaper accounts from the 1930s find that global warming was being encountered then as well, with vessels coming within a few hundred miles of the North Pole in December 1938. Given that we are supposedly at the top of a huge spike in global temperature, this should not have been possible.
The major problem with arguing against AGW is that the theory centers around questionable data and what a bunch of computer simulations expect to happen over the next 100 years based on that data, which simulations almost certainly fail to accurately model climate -- note that nearly all of the simulations from 1998 have been wrong for the past ten years' data. But they just make new simulations that say massive warming is right around the corner. It's non-falsifiable.
jmc,
Your missing the water vapor multiplier says that you are really not up on the field. If that is the case how can you be so certain? Are you a believer or are you science based?
And what is the time scale for natural CO2 to be cyclic? And why is it cyclic? And why can't human produced CO2 be cyclic as well? After all it was once in the atmosphere. Or the ocean if you accept that heating caused by the sun has caused CO2 to evolve from the oceans. If solar output is declining all the CO2 that humans have evolved may soon wind up in the ocean and subsequently get turned into limestone. Good for mollusks. Bad for trees.
In any case if the water vapor (WV) multiplier is close to one as some scientist posit and we will be off fossil fuels between 2065 and 2100 due to technology advances we have nothing to worry about. Even if the WV multiplier is 3 or 4 (very unlikely) we have nothing to worry about. Crippling technological advance by crippling the world economy is not smart in any case.
And as long as we are on science - what is your knowledge of solar variability? As weak as your knowledge of climate models? That would be most disappointing.
All I can say is this - I was a believer until I looked into climate science. Now? I'm a luke warmer. Some heating from CO2. Not enough to worry about given the rate of technological advance.
Your missing the water vapor multiplier says that you are really not up on the field. If that is the case how can you be so certain? Are you a believer or are you science based?
And what is the time scale for natural CO2 to be cyclic? And why is it cyclic? And why can't human produced CO2 be cyclic as well? After all it was once in the atmosphere. Or the ocean if you accept that heating caused by the sun has caused CO2 to evolve from the oceans. If solar output is declining all the CO2 that humans have evolved may soon wind up in the ocean and subsequently get turned into limestone. Good for mollusks. Bad for trees.
In any case if the water vapor (WV) multiplier is close to one as some scientist posit and we will be off fossil fuels between 2065 and 2100 due to technology advances we have nothing to worry about. Even if the WV multiplier is 3 or 4 (very unlikely) we have nothing to worry about. Crippling technological advance by crippling the world economy is not smart in any case.
And as long as we are on science - what is your knowledge of solar variability? As weak as your knowledge of climate models? That would be most disappointing.
All I can say is this - I was a believer until I looked into climate science. Now? I'm a luke warmer. Some heating from CO2. Not enough to worry about given the rate of technological advance.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
-
Josh Cryer
- Posts: 526
- Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:19 am
MSimon, RealClimate.org discusses the "water vapor multiplier."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.p ... use_effect
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... ter-vapor/
This stuff is 3-4 years old, it's a really tired argument.
Still looking for a question posed to RealClimate that they haven't eventually gotten to. I mean they actually humored some guy who had almost no credentials a few months back, made the blogosphere's head explode (generally, as with the Hoaglandists, ignoring is the easiest option, as science doesn't *require* you to respond to just anyone).
Note that TallDave illustrates the denier position quite well, if one thing isn't enough, then it's another thing, until finally you just say the data is wrong from the get-go. It starts with denying certain things and ends up with denying everything.
With no actual counter-evidence.
TallDave,
1) Says nothing about whether or not CO2 drives climate change (but wait, in 4 you say the data is wrong anyway).
2) There was no consensus to that effect, and the words were "may" or "could" not "should" or "will." (But since the data is wrong it doesn't matter.)
3) If you're talking about William Gray's complaints they have been thrououghly debunked. (But since the data is wrong, who cares!)
4) Well darn! Not a whole lot can be said if the data is wrong.
Mind you guys, I don't think global warming is that big of a deal (the planet has seen far worse as far as climate is concerned, and humans are a smart bunch, anything bad happens we should fix it). But I'm not going to pretend there are other unseen variables to account for data that is very real. Generally I stay out of these debates because they are no more insightful than abortion debates, or socialism vs capitalism, or circumcision, or AIDS or gun rights any plethora of trivial concepts that have "for people" and "against people," on either side. But c'mon! The arguments being used here are so stale.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=142
http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.p ... use_effect
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... ter-vapor/
This stuff is 3-4 years old, it's a really tired argument.
Still looking for a question posed to RealClimate that they haven't eventually gotten to. I mean they actually humored some guy who had almost no credentials a few months back, made the blogosphere's head explode (generally, as with the Hoaglandists, ignoring is the easiest option, as science doesn't *require* you to respond to just anyone).
Note that TallDave illustrates the denier position quite well, if one thing isn't enough, then it's another thing, until finally you just say the data is wrong from the get-go. It starts with denying certain things and ends up with denying everything.
With no actual counter-evidence.
TallDave,
1) Says nothing about whether or not CO2 drives climate change (but wait, in 4 you say the data is wrong anyway).
2) There was no consensus to that effect, and the words were "may" or "could" not "should" or "will." (But since the data is wrong it doesn't matter.)
3) If you're talking about William Gray's complaints they have been thrououghly debunked. (But since the data is wrong, who cares!)
4) Well darn! Not a whole lot can be said if the data is wrong.
Mind you guys, I don't think global warming is that big of a deal (the planet has seen far worse as far as climate is concerned, and humans are a smart bunch, anything bad happens we should fix it). But I'm not going to pretend there are other unseen variables to account for data that is very real. Generally I stay out of these debates because they are no more insightful than abortion debates, or socialism vs capitalism, or circumcision, or AIDS or gun rights any plethora of trivial concepts that have "for people" and "against people," on either side. But c'mon! The arguments being used here are so stale.
Or it simply validates one of the positive feedbacks that cause GW models to come up with the results they do. Do you disagree that the more CO2 is in the atmosphere the warmer it will become? If so, does your point not make this fact scarier? If in the past warming triggerd an increase in CO2 doesn't that seem to verify that as the Earth warms in response to the CO2 we've put up there that positive feedbacks will trigger nature to compound the problem?TallDave wrote:1) How about the fact CO2 increase lags temperature increase? That suggests CO2 cannot be driving climate change.
Come on now, Dave. Surely you understand that climate is not defined by one year. I would argue that 5 or 10 years may even be to few to make any statements about the long-term direction of the climate. But if you want to talk about 2007, why not mention that it was the second hottest year on record? Doesn't sound like a global warming buster to me..2) In 2006, we were told 2007 would be the hottest year on record. That didn't happen.
Link?3) The CO2 warming theory requires that certain portions of the atmosphere show warming, but they don't. That argues CO2 is not causing warming.
Sure, there are differences in the measurments different agencies make. For instance the WMO calls 2007 the 6th warmest year instead of the second warmest. (Gasp! An ice-age commeth!4) It's been shown numerous times that there are huge problems with the GISS data. As if the well-documented surface station location problems and near-total lack of data validation (see the Russian duplicate data last month) wasn't enough, Hansen applies "adjustments" to the data that make older temps colder, which you can clearly see for some stations turns a cooling trend since 1920 into a warming trend.
) Please show me one credible agency that disputes the overall warming trend.This is a single data point. I think you might be referencing this in which it is discussed that the reasons for the smaller cap are not understood (may relate to gulf stream, etc). Who is to say it shouldn't have been possible? What is safe to say is that while the polar ice cap extent for a single year, or the world's average temp over a single year, or a multitude of other datapoints can't gives us an accurate picture of the climate on their own, examining a wide array of data can. And none of the studies I have seen that have done this dispute that the Earth's temperature has, in general, been rising over the past century or more. Can you point me to such a study that disputes the warming trend?5) Newpaper accounts from the 1930s find that global warming was being encountered then as well, with vessels coming within a few hundred miles of the North Pole in December 1938. Given that we are supposedly at the top of a huge spike in global temperature, this should not have been possible.
They have? In the validations I have seen they have done well. For example, the IPCC was high with their 1990 report, but since 1995, they've validated quite well:The major problem with arguing against AGW is that the theory centers around questionable data and what a bunch of computer simulations expect to happen over the next 100 years based on that data, which simulations almost certainly fail to accurately model climate -- note that nearly all of the simulations from 1998 have been wrong for the past ten years' data.
EDIT: This is a scaled down version of the image on this post since the original was annoyingly big to be imbedded in the message.
Do you have a link showing where respected models are not validating well?
The fact that a well known phenomenon like the PDO was left out of the climate model tells me that the modelers are not being honest.
The fact that the modelers admit that they don't even know the sign let alone the magnitude of the WV multipliers says that that whole area is shaky.
The fact that RC discussed it 3 or 4 years ago is of no concern if there are no numbers for the phenomenon.
In addition the grid cells used in climate models are 125 mi on a side (IIRC). To adequately handle "heat pipe effects" (vertical convection) the models would need grids .1 mi on a side. So the effect is parameterized. But the exact parameters are unknown.
And none of the models predicted the no heating for 10 years we have had. Nor did they predict the cooling phase we are entering.
Models without predictive power are garbage.
So what do the modelers do? Well they readjust their parameters every time the climate does something they haven't predicted. But that is really no help.
Give me four adjustable parameters, and I can fit an elephant, give me five, and I can fit the tail.
The models have 100s of parameters due to the inadequacies of computer power. Most of what goes on in the models is a curve fitting exercise. I have done that with well understood phenomenon and with 5 parameters I have gotten the error from the real curve below 1E-5. With a very limited domain that makes sense. With a domain like climate it is nonsense. Because it has no predictive value unless you understand everything. And you know we are still learning stuff.
My understanding is that there are no solar scientists on the modeling teams. Huge hole.
The fact that the modelers admit that they don't even know the sign let alone the magnitude of the WV multipliers says that that whole area is shaky.
The fact that RC discussed it 3 or 4 years ago is of no concern if there are no numbers for the phenomenon.
In addition the grid cells used in climate models are 125 mi on a side (IIRC). To adequately handle "heat pipe effects" (vertical convection) the models would need grids .1 mi on a side. So the effect is parameterized. But the exact parameters are unknown.
And none of the models predicted the no heating for 10 years we have had. Nor did they predict the cooling phase we are entering.
Models without predictive power are garbage.
So what do the modelers do? Well they readjust their parameters every time the climate does something they haven't predicted. But that is really no help.
Give me four adjustable parameters, and I can fit an elephant, give me five, and I can fit the tail.
The models have 100s of parameters due to the inadequacies of computer power. Most of what goes on in the models is a curve fitting exercise. I have done that with well understood phenomenon and with 5 parameters I have gotten the error from the real curve below 1E-5. With a very limited domain that makes sense. With a domain like climate it is nonsense. Because it has no predictive value unless you understand everything. And you know we are still learning stuff.
My understanding is that there are no solar scientists on the modeling teams. Huge hole.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
-
Josh Cryer
- Posts: 526
- Joined: Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:19 am
I find this debate fascinating. Josh - Simon is not (in the recent post at least) saying that. He is claiming:
(1) (implicitly) solar heat input has a dominant effect on global temperature trends
(2) IPCC views this as irrelevant. To be fair, given we have been Ok for a few thousand years it is reasonable to assume solar input, whatever the short-term changes, will cancel out and effect (or lack of it) of greatly increased CO2 in atmosphere as result of anthropic effects is what needs to be understood for prediction of risk 50-100 years out.
(3)Simon is also arguing that historic temperature trends are primarily due to changes in solar output (which happen at many different time scales, not just 7 year sunpot cycle). That without factoring these in any extrapolation in models will be wrong.
(4) Simon is arguing that existing models over-fit data and have little predictive power. looking at your (not his) graphs the 1995 extrapolation fits future observations up to 10 years, the others either don't or have not yet been tested due to lack of time for prediction to be tested.
(5) Re the two data series Simon is arguing that recently we have entered a cooling trend which is not predicted by the models and which will cause divergence over next few years.
In other words he is looking at very recent data.
Of course, his argument here is equally unsubstantiated. AGW is about trends 50-100 year away. 10 years gives some (not much) idea of whether models are correct on this timescale. 1 or 2 years gives effectively no information.
So we can as Simon thinks be in for a solar-induced cooling period without in any way invalidating long-term trends. Yes. The other side of this is do the existing models try to factor in variation in historic solar radiation? This is a certainly a large determinant of global temperature variation, so without accurately doing this models must be less certain.
My guess is that they don't because they can't (too many unknowns histrically) or they do, and Simon's implication that they don't is misleading.
Best wishes, Tom
(1) (implicitly) solar heat input has a dominant effect on global temperature trends
(2) IPCC views this as irrelevant. To be fair, given we have been Ok for a few thousand years it is reasonable to assume solar input, whatever the short-term changes, will cancel out and effect (or lack of it) of greatly increased CO2 in atmosphere as result of anthropic effects is what needs to be understood for prediction of risk 50-100 years out.
(3)Simon is also arguing that historic temperature trends are primarily due to changes in solar output (which happen at many different time scales, not just 7 year sunpot cycle). That without factoring these in any extrapolation in models will be wrong.
(4) Simon is arguing that existing models over-fit data and have little predictive power. looking at your (not his) graphs the 1995 extrapolation fits future observations up to 10 years, the others either don't or have not yet been tested due to lack of time for prediction to be tested.
(5) Re the two data series Simon is arguing that recently we have entered a cooling trend which is not predicted by the models and which will cause divergence over next few years.
In other words he is looking at very recent data.
Of course, his argument here is equally unsubstantiated. AGW is about trends 50-100 year away. 10 years gives some (not much) idea of whether models are correct on this timescale. 1 or 2 years gives effectively no information.
So we can as Simon thinks be in for a solar-induced cooling period without in any way invalidating long-term trends. Yes. The other side of this is do the existing models try to factor in variation in historic solar radiation? This is a certainly a large determinant of global temperature variation, so without accurately doing this models must be less certain.
My guess is that they don't because they can't (too many unknowns histrically) or they do, and Simon's implication that they don't is misleading.
Best wishes, Tom
Simon,
I have just realised a problem with your "more detailed" graph. How are you curve fitting?
It looks to me as though the last 2 years (which undoubtedly show a cooling trend) are over-fitted when compared with intermediate years.
If you try any unbiassed curve fitting on this data which assumes all points have equal merit you will not track the very recent cooling blip anything like so closely!
this is a mathematical, not a scientific, comment. If you give me your curve fitting algorithm we can be more precise.
Mathematically, if you curve fit with a spline etc to an interval of points the endpoints can end up being over-fitted in a statistical sense - they are not priviledged in reality but are here because of the data set chosen to fit the curve.
Best wishes, Tom
I have just realised a problem with your "more detailed" graph. How are you curve fitting?
It looks to me as though the last 2 years (which undoubtedly show a cooling trend) are over-fitted when compared with intermediate years.
If you try any unbiassed curve fitting on this data which assumes all points have equal merit you will not track the very recent cooling blip anything like so closely!
this is a mathematical, not a scientific, comment. If you give me your curve fitting algorithm we can be more precise.
Mathematically, if you curve fit with a spline etc to an interval of points the endpoints can end up being over-fitted in a statistical sense - they are not priviledged in reality but are here because of the data set chosen to fit the curve.
Best wishes, Tom
tom,
However, The IPCC now predicts cooling until 2015 so I didn't think it was too much of a stretch re: the "consensus". The important point I think is that when you look at the longer time scale it is unwise to project out to infinity the data from a decade or so.
A very wise observation. I was wondering if any one would catch it.It looks to me as though the last 2 years (which undoubtedly show a cooling trend) are over-fitted when compared with intermediate years.
However, The IPCC now predicts cooling until 2015 so I didn't think it was too much of a stretch re: the "consensus". The important point I think is that when you look at the longer time scale it is unwise to project out to infinity the data from a decade or so.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.