Climate change - the POLITICAL debate. Vol 4

[LongQ]

turbobloke said:

dickymint said:

Mate of mine works for Alstom on offshore windymills. He told me of the scouring problem on a farm somewhere in the North Sea. They have to sort out the problem of them sinking. The last I heard He told me they'd thrown millions into it and hadn't got past the first one yet

Kerching!

Meanwhile freezing pensioners burn books to keep warm.

But in the future all they will have to burn will be Kindling.

Still, never mind. The UK will be warmer than <name somewhere that people think is always warm>.

[LongQ]

dickymint said:

robinessex said:

I wonder how many problems windmills are having, that are kept under the table ?

That type only work if you leave the dining room doors open to get a decent through draft

But there must be savings in the direct conversion of gas to a form of energy rather than going through all the hoops that others suggest to create, say, hydrogen gas first and then destroy it.


For some reason as I typed that this Bob Newhart skit came to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XDxAzVEbN4

Edited by LongQ on Sunday 19th February 20:04

[robinessex]

AAAS chief puts weight behind protest march

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-3902...

"The head of the world's largest scientific membership organisation has given his backing for a planned protest by researchers in Washington DC.
Rush Holt, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), said that people were "standing up for science".
His remarks reflect growing concern among researchers that science is disregarded by President Trump"

Ironic really, when you know that many scientists, who aren’t signed up to the CC bandwagon, are effectively suppressed by their OWN oranisations !!!

[robinessex]

Ice-locked ship to drift over North Pole

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-3902...

"It is being billed as the biggest single Arctic research expedition ever planned.
Germany is going to sail its 120m-long research vessel, the Polarstern, into the sea-ice at the top of the world and just let it get stuck so it can drift across the north pole.
The 2,500km (1,550-mile) trip, to begin in 2019, is likely to take a year.
Researchers hope to gather valuable new insights on the region where Earth's climate is changing fastest.
Last month the extent of Arctic sea-ice was the lowest ever recorded for a January (during the satellite era), with temperatures several degrees above the long-term average.
Prof Markus Rex will lead the so-called MOSAiC project:
"The decline of Arctic sea-ice is much faster than the climate models can reproduce and we need better climate models to make better predictions for the future.
"There is a potential that in a few decades the Arctic will be ice free in summer. That would be a different world and we need to know about that in advance; we need to know is that going to happen or will that not happen?"

Can't see this as not much more than a publicity stunt. I'm sure the data they claim they'll get can be obtained by a much easier, and less grandiose method. Keep the money rolling in though, all $64M of it, for the scientists year long jolly!!!

[mybrainhurts]

A ship full of Germans stuck in the ice for 12 months?

Sounds like a great cruise, fighting for sun beds and really funny jokes...ve haff vays off makink you laff, ja? Vhy did zer penguin cross zer road? I don't know, vhy did zer penguin cross zer road? Because he couldn't spell Reich. Ha ha ha...

Endless fun...

[johnfm]

Are climate 'scientists' any closer to actually measuring global temperatures accurately without having to make a number of 'adjustments'?

My guess is no.

[durbster]

Kawasicki said:

durbster

low fat diets are healthier
stomach ulcers are caused by stress
passive smoking is a major killer

these were all settled/consensus science, all have been now debunked

how could so many scientists have been wrong?

I understand your point but I would argue none of those examples were ever established as comprehensively as AGW. I think you're overstating the extent to which those things were accepted.

I'm sure the effects of passive smoking have always been contentious. Even the story from the other day might not tell the whole picture e.g. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-s...

And I recall the fat thing was always based on extremely limited research that simply wasn't investigated further until much later (I've always eaten fat so it clearly didn't get through to me ).

I think the smoking parallel is an interesting one. You had a very powerful, politically active industry running a market that was culturually embedded. If you look at the tactics used by the tobacco industry to disrupt and confuse the science of the health impacts from smoking, you can see the same games being played with climate science. It's all about making people think there's a scientific debate when there isn't, and delaying the inevitable for as long as possible.

Besides, do you not think your examples demonstrate how science evolves, and isn't afraid to change its views when new information becomes available?

Now we have more hard data on passive smoking, we understand it better and can update our understanding accordingly. The early computer models over-estimated the amount of warming because they hadn't included major cooling factors. They didn't ignore it and carry on regardless, they recognised it and updated the models accordingly as you would hope.

My main contention with your point is simply that AGW has been studied extensively for decades and has not been shown to be wrong. We have collated a vast amount of data since the theory was first put forward, and as far as I can see it has all supported the theory.

Which is not surprising because AGW is based on two quite fundamental scientific facts:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects of which have been studied for something like 200 years.
2. There are increasing levels of greenhouse gases - particularly CO2 - in the atmosphere, caused by burning fossil fuels.

If either of those are wrong, then we've got an enormous amount of other things wrong too.

Let's be rational - the science is not going to be debunked by unqualified people arguing on internet forums, or blogs financed by the fossil fuel industry, or articles in the Daily Mail, or Donald Trump's increasingly incompetent presidency. It'll only happen if (or when... ) somebody finds a scientific theory that better explains what goes on in our atmosphere.

If that day comes, I'll change my mind. Otherwise, I'm happy to accept the "official story".

[mybrainhurts]

durbster's epitaph said:

I'm happy to accept the "official story"

Praise be, everything forward and trust in the lord...

[robinessex]

Durbster wrote

……………I understand your point but I would argue none of those examples were ever ESTABLISHED AS COMPREHENSIVELY AS AGW. I think you're overstating the extent to which those things were accepted…………….

You off to claim the $100,000 AGW prize then ?

[mybrainhurts]

robinessex said:

You off to claim the $100,000 AGW prize then ?

Funny that no scientist has claimed it. Anyone would think they're afraid of their work being scrutinised.

[turbobloke]

mybrainhurts said:

robinessex said:

You off to claim the $100,000 AGW prize then ?

Funny that no scientist has claimed it. Anyone would think they're afraid of their work being scrutinised.

The lack of entries shows very clearly that these 'scientists' claiming to see an invisible signal know they will fail badly to see another invisible signal...outside of pal review with freedom to speculate while dressing it up as fact, and with nobody from The Team riding shotgun, they can be shown up instantly as getting it wrong in an open exercise. The implications for AGW being shown up as faith-based are also crystal clear. Not that this is news!

[Mrr T]

durbster said:

Which is not surprising because AGW is based on two quite fundamental scientific facts:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects of which have been studied for something like 200 years.
2. There are increasing levels of greenhouse gases - particularly CO2 - in the atmosphere, caused by burning fossil fuels.

I have highlighted the above because it’s clear you do not understand the current AGW hypnotises.

I am what you would term a sceptic but I agree with both the above statements.

So why I am I a sceptic? because we know CO2 is a very weak forcing agent so on its own CO2 will have minimal effect on the Climate.

To go from the above statements to a serious situation you have to add another.

Will increased heat in the climate from CO2 lead to an increase in water vapour (which is a strong forcing agent) so as to result in significant increases in temperature.

Only if this last statement is correct would we have a problem.

The fact is we have no idea about the last statement. Water vapour as a gas is a strong forcing agent however if it’s held as clouds then in may even cool the climate.

Since science know very little about how clouds behave on a global scale the models just guess.

[turbobloke]

Mrr T said:

durbster said:

Which is not surprising because AGW is based on two quite fundamental scientific facts:
1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effects of which have been studied for something like 200 years.
2. There are increasing levels of greenhouse gases - particularly CO2 - in the atmosphere, caused by burning fossil fuels.

I have highlighted the above because it’s clear you do not understand the current AGW hypnotises.

I am what you would term a sceptic but I agree with both the above statements.

So why I am I a sceptic? because we know CO2 is a very weak forcing agent so on its own CO2 will have minimal effect on the Climate.

To go from the above statements to a serious situation you have to add another.

Will increased heat in the climate from CO2 lead to an increase in water vapour (which is a strong forcing agent) so as to result in significant increases in temperature.

Only if this last statement is correct would we have a problem.

The fact is we have no idea about the last statement. Water vapour as a gas is a strong forcing agent however if it’s held as clouds then in may even cool the climate.

Since science know very little about how clouds behave on a global scale the models just guess.

Quite right about the now minuscule impact of additional carbon dioxide even within agw. Outside of agw there's no impact, given that carbon dioxide shifts always follow temperature shifts - demonstrated beyond experimental error on all relevant timescales - and that even so an insignificant transient delay in cooling is not the same as permanent dangerous warming.

As to feedbacks, we do know, both from historical data and from contemporary satellite data.

Overall feedback is negative, and water vapour feedback within it likewise. See snips below based on data not models and with my emphasis added to each for skim-readers with limited time.

Abstract 1
The upper-level negative trends in q are inconsistent with climate-model calculations and are largely (but not completely) inconsistent with satellite data. Water vapor feedback in climate models is positive mainly because of their roughly constant relative humidity (i.e., increasing q) in the mid-to-upper troposphere as the planet warms. trends in q as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative - that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Abstract 2
We explore the daily evolution of tropical intraseasonal oscillations in satelliteobserved tropospheric temperature, precipitation, radiative fluxes, and cloud properties. The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the oceanatmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds potentially supporting Lindzen's “infrared iris” hypothesis of climate

Abstract 3
Direct evidence for negative water feedback is found in CRUTEM4 station data by comparing temperature anomalies for arid regions (deserts and polar regions) with those for humid regions (mainly saturated tropics). All 5600 weather stations were classified according to the Köppen-Geiger climatology. Two separate temperature anomaly series from 1900 to 2011 were calculated for each region. A clear difference in temperature response is observed. Assuming the difference is due to atmospheric water content, a water feedback value of -1.5 +/- 0.8 W/m2K-1 can be derived.

[dickymint]

durbster said:

We have collated a vast amount of data since the theory was first put forward, and as far as I can see it has all supported the theory.

"We" eh? You part of that "We"? What's your occupation?

[turbobloke]

dickymint said:

durbster said:

We have collated a vast amount of data since the theory was first put forward, and as far as I can see it has all supported the theory.

"We" eh? You part of that "We"? What's your occupation?

The truly hilarious bit is the 'all', absolutely bonkers.

Forget Karl et al and similar nonsense.

Tropical troposphere hotspot still awol, they got windy but it blew over.
Stratosphere cooling not as agw-modelled.
Vertical heat distribution not as agw-modelled.
Antarctic polar amplification not as agw-modelled.
Jet stream diversion/altitude/strength not as agw-modelled
Feedbacks not as agw-modelled
Etc

It's a long list and this is the politics thread. All posted n times in climate threads in any case.

Edited by turbobloke on Monday 20th February 17:08

[turbobloke]

durbster said:

as far as I can see it has all supported the theory

Advice to fellow believers from warming activist Stephen Schneider said:

So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements...decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Sorry LongQ but needs must.

Any forced agreements on outcomes between models and reality are weak and monodimensional arising from fiddlefactoring. Suboptimisation will help one variable and harm others. The whole lot should work and there should only be one model needed not dozens.

Further to the abstracts, here are key failures in pictures.

Modelled troposphere hotspot (brown blob in model gigo not seen in the three data plots) note also the error in the size of stratosphere cooling (blue-purple bar).


Models get feedback wrong, ERBE satellite data top left, model gigo in the other charts.


Vertical profile model gigo failures against data alongside, only near the surface - left hand axis - is there any agreement (see earlier comment about suboptimisation and ask why fiddlefactoring at the surface is happening) also see below for the trend over time for more model gigo at the surface.


Buy Damart and candles.

[durbster]

I said all the data supports the theory. You're talking about the models.

[turbobloke]

durbster said:

I said all the data supports the theory. You're talking about the models.

And the models are based on the 'theory'. They reveal (!) what is expected, based on the 'theory', and it's not what's observed.

dickymint said:

durbster said:

We have collated a vast amount of data since the theory was first put forward, and as far as I can see it has all supported the theory.

"We" eh? You part of that "We"?

See above - not a chance, unless faking bad has been taken to unprecedented levels due to desperation.

[durbster]

dickymint said:

durbster said:

We have collated a vast amount of data since the theory was first put forward, and as far as I can see it has all supported the theory.

"We" eh? You part of that "We"? What's your occupation?

I already said I have nothing to do with the AGW industry. Flogging that dead horse is a total waste of your time.

We means us - all of us - since the knowledge is shared. I also said it in relation to smoking data.

[durbster]

Mrr T said:

I have highlighted the above because it’s clear you do not understand the current AGW hypnotises.

I am what you would term a sceptic but I agree with both the above statements.

So why I am I a sceptic? because we know CO2 is a very weak forcing agent so on its own CO2 will have minimal effect on the Climate.

But it's a minimal effect we're talking about.

The estimates are around a fraction of a degree per decade which is bugger all in a system that ranges in temperature of something like 100 degrees.

The issue is that as we are already seeing, that small upward trend can have a significant impact on things like ice levels. I don't buy the apocalyptic predictions but if we continue that trend it seems pretty clear we'll be hit hard by things like sea-level rise, for example. Most of the world's major cities are river based, after all.