Climate Change - The Scientific Debate

[IainT]

Gandahar said:

People don't want to wait, far too impatient, not when it's light entertainment nowadays for a lot of folk rather than the tele !

I think the excitement in the alarmist sphere focusses on these points:

1. If models guess El Niño/La Niña correctly then they model change correctly.
2. El Niño/La Niña cancel one another out over loner time periods.
3. Therefore over longer time periods the GCMs get it right.

I'm not aware of proof that the assumption in 2 is valid and having picked only models that get certain periods right by luck there's nothing proving the models get eh bits they do get right by anything other than luck.

Until we have models that successfully fore and hind-cast taking into account all drivers of the climate they're pretty worthless - the recent manipulations to make their divergence from observations are pretty desperate to my mind.

[hairykrishna]

IainT said:

hairykrishna said:

What they showed that was that the model underestimates the European warming trends from 1980-2012 if the aerosols are excluded. They point out that this may have implications when looking at models for the whole world given that large parts of the world (China, India) have increased aerosol production.

Interesting, my reading was that the reduction (i.e. reversion back to naturally occurring levels due to emissions controls) of aerosols caused 'brightening' and greater heat energy to reach the surface - i.e. there's extra warming from that effect in the temp records that outweighs and modelled raise due to GHGs.

Guess I read it wrong.

You are quite right - lower aerosols leads to a hotter surface. That's why the model they were using predicted a colder europe than is actually observed (1980-2012 trend) without them in and fitted the trend better when they included them. I think their point about China etc is that they may currently be colder than predicted because their aerosol output has increased.

[Variomatic]

Nore trouble for the models. New paper comparing modelled troposphere to reality. This has been published on before and, again in this paper, reality keeps getting it all wrong:

http://climateaudit.org/2014/07/24/new-paper-by-mc...

Note that it's an open access paper so all can read, digest, and evaluate for themselves rather than relying on Dana Nuttella & co's take on it - assuming they don't simply put their fngers in their ears and sing "la la la" because arguing statistics with a professional statistician is above their pay grade :

Edited by Variomatic on Friday 25th July 12:10

[TransverseTight]

AA999 said:

I don't think it requires such in depth knowledge to realise that Al Gore, pro-green and government policies around the theory of Man-Made-Global-Warming were not set up based on science, but rather fear implementation for a tax grab and to further investment in green business interests.

CO2 input from humans still has not been demonstrated to lead any observed global temp rise. Even after all these years.

A simple 'flow chart' being : Human CO2 emissions --> into very complex chaotic global system ----> gives no detectable rise to global temp change

The first and last part being the MMGW theory..... which has 'till now been shown to be false.

The middle part of that 'flow chart' is where the knowledge comes in....but outside that its 'simple' so to speak.

The thing is this misses some basic physics which have been known for over a century. I.e the greenhouse effect and that increase CO2 does raise temperature. I'm not sure if a lot of people keep forgetting that basic fact. But Ok - it's harder for us all to agree what happens to climate, not a jar in a laboratory!

I did a speakers corner a few years back, just because I could. Was originally going to talk about solid wall insulation on Victorian properties, but thought it was a bit too boring. So went and got some numbers about emissions instead. Things like how much stuff we burn and what that is in relation to annual biomass growth. Basically the amount of oil gas and coal we use is equivalent to about 13,000 years worth of EVERYTHING that grows on the planet in a year. I'm not really an Eco fluffy bunny type person (although I prefer holidays in wild locations as opposed to cities) But what that number told me is we can't keep relying on this abundant supply of energy, and the sooner we can find an alternative the better. There's enough sun falling across the African deserts today, to power the worlds energy for a year. That night be a good place to look!

Now the CO2 bit is also interesting. I can't prove it affects climate, but there are raw figures that on their own should be worrying. Like the 30 billion tonnes of C02 we emit each year. There's only 3000 billion tonnes there to start with. That amount increase the total concentration by 0.5% a year (it would be 1% but plants absorb half). Now before anyone chips in and says that a small percent of of not a lot. It's enough to make the world warmer than it would otherwise be. Forget percentages - if you have a graph that has gone from 250 to 400 in the last few centuries, surely it would make you think what is the outcome going to be. I've always thought it was important to people in the contrarian camp to prove there is no risk, before saying we can stand down green policy. Though as I said earlier fossils won't last forever. More importantly I think oil and gas are the main problem. Especially for the UK with our fast dwindling reserves which we gorged ourselves on for 40 years.

The final bit - which isn't really about science is that there are more forces in industry with more money than climate researchers get from government, all putting out their bits of pseudo science. As a oil/gas/coal company exec you have a duty to shareholders to make sure you can sell your product for as long as possible a the highest price possible. IF you can delay for a couple of months, you might make an extra billion in profits. That's why I agree with an earlier poster about really it's all about the politics and not the science, because only a few thousand people in the world understand it, and even then they have their niches. Carbon dating, dendrochronology, ice cores, temperature measurement etc.

So I guess my politics is based on the fact I think we can do better than using fossil fuels. To me the climate debate is a moot point. There are so many other bad things fossils do that focusing on the impact from CO2 is just 1 part of the problem. We got here with them and shouldn't forget they freed us from poverty and hunger, but it's time to move on to the next sources of energy, which will free us from the grid and stop us going back into poverty and war. And that's what science is for, materials tech, energy storage, molecular chemistry (to work out to make hydrogen from sunlight). And so on.

Whatever.

[jshell]

TransverseTight said:

As a oil/gas/coal company exec you have a duty to shareholders to make sure you can sell your product for as long as possible a the highest price possible. IF you can delay for a couple of months, you might make an extra billion in profits.

Without getting into the whys and wherefores of GW, your take on the oil/gas/coal industries is so very wide of the mark you should not base beliefs or politics on them. Many oil companies love carbon floor pricing, for example, as it makes gas competitive with coal, and extraction is as accelerated (in the majority of cases) as possible. Cash today is worth more than cash tomorrow for a variety of sound reasons!

[Jinx]

TransverseTight said:

The thing is this misses some basic physics which have been known for over a century. I.e the greenhouse effect and that increase CO2 does raise temperature.

No it doesn't. All other things being equal you may get a difference in temperature profile and it will effect the overall heat capacity - but temperature is only a proxy for the energy in the system.

TransverseTight said:

I'm not sure if a lot of people keep forgetting that basic fact. But Ok - it's harder for us all to agree what happens to climate, not a jar in a laboratory!

The thing about basic facts is they are seldom basic and rarely facts.

TransverseTight said:

I did a speakers corner a few years back, just because I could. Was originally going to talk about solid wall insulation on Victorian properties, but thought it was a bit too boring. So went and got some numbers about emissions instead. Things like how much stuff we burn and what that is in relation to annual biomass growth. Basically the amount of oil gas and coal we use is equivalent to about 13,000 years worth of EVERYTHING that grows on the planet in a year. I'm not really an Eco fluffy bunny type person (although I prefer holidays in wild locations as opposed to cities) But what that number told me is we can't keep relying on this abundant supply of energy, and the sooner we can find an alternative the better. There's enough sun falling across the African deserts today, to power the worlds energy for a year. That night be a good place to look!

Did you include things that grow in the oceans? You may need to adjust your figures somewhat.

TransverseTight said:

Now the CO2 bit is also interesting. I can't prove it affects climate, but there are raw figures that on their own should be worrying. Like the 30 billion tonnes of C02 we emit each year. There's only 3000 billion tonnes there to start with. That amount increase the total concentration by 0.5% a year (it would be 1% but plants absorb half). Now before anyone chips in and says that a small percent of of not a lot. It's enough to make the world warmer than it would otherwise be. Forget percentages - if you have a graph that has gone from 250 to 400 in the last few centuries, surely it would make you think what is the outcome going to be. I've always thought it was important to people in the contrarian camp to prove there is no risk, before saying we can stand down green policy. Though as I said earlier fossils won't last forever. More importantly I think oil and gas are the main problem. Especially for the UK with our fast dwindling reserves which we gorged ourselves on for 40 years.

If you had a graph that showed 0.0002 to 0.0004 over 200 years does sit make you think anything about the outcome?
Fracking and coal should last us for the foreseeable future - add a bit of nuclear to the mix and we'll be fine for a very long time.

TransverseTight said:

The final bit - which isn't really about science is that there are more forces in industry with more money than climate researchers get from government, all putting out their bits of pseudo science. As a oil/gas/coal company exec you have a duty to shareholders to make sure you can sell your product for as long as possible a the highest price possible. IF you can delay for a couple of months, you might make an extra billion in profits. That's why I agree with an earlier poster about really it's all about the politics and not the science, because only a few thousand people in the world understand it, and even then they have their niches. Carbon dating, dendrochronology, ice cores, temperature measurement etc.

So I guess my politics is based on the fact I think we can do better than using fossil fuels. To me the climate debate is a moot point. There are so many other bad things fossils do that focusing on the impact from CO2 is just 1 part of the problem. We got here with them and shouldn't forget they freed us from poverty and hunger, but it's time to move on to the next sources of energy, which will free us from the grid and stop us going back into poverty and war. And that's what science is for, materials tech, energy storage, molecular chemistry (to work out to make hydrogen from sunlight). And so on.

Whatever.

Oil is not a fossil fuel. CO2 is plant food. By increasing the amount of CO2 in the air we are greening the planet earth and if it is making the earth a little bit warmer than all this is doing is offsetting the next ice age. Forgoing cheap energy on the poor science of eco-nuts and aligning with a poorly thought out UN agenda 21 is only going to increase the chances of a civilisation destroying war. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Otispunkmeyer]

This may have been posted previously but CBA to look through all these pages.

http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/v...

This guy puts forward a very simple theory that the temperature differences seen between earth and venus are exclusively down to distance from the sun. He picks temperature at 1000 mbar on earth and 1000 mbar on venus and using simple heat transfer and radiation relationships (i.e. inverse R^2 etc) says that at like for like pressure, temperature on venus should be 1.176 times what it is on earth (in degrees Kelvin).

Lo and be hold, if he takes average temp on earth at 288 K then 1.176*288 is 338K. On the data for venus temperatures, temperature at 1000 mbar (about 50km up in the atmosphere mind) is .... you guessed it, around 338 K. And this is regardless of cloud, albedo, whatver... the sole major function is distance to the sun. Remembering that earth has 0.04% CO2 and Venus 96%+ CO2.

On the one hand this seems beautifully simple and convincing. On the other hand.... can it really be that simple? Its like when somethings too good to be true. I am familiar with all the theories he used and the maths is right, but have the theories been applied correctly? are they over simplifying to the point where its meaningless...i.e "only valid for spherical chickens in a vacuum" (for those who watch big bang theory!)

[IainT]

hairykrishna said:

You are quite right - lower aerosols leads to a hotter surface. That's why the model they were using predicted a colder europe than is actually observed (1980-2012 trend) without them in and fitted the trend better when they included them. I think their point about China etc is that they may currently be colder than predicted because their aerosol output has increased.

Ah, a paper that applies to only one model, not all of them? Gotcha.

[hairykrishna]

Otispunkmeyer said:

This may have been posted previously but CBA to look through all these pages.

http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/v...

This guy puts forward a very simple theory that the temperature differences seen between earth and venus are exclusively down to distance from the sun. He picks temperature at 1000 mbar on earth and 1000 mbar on venus and using simple heat transfer and radiation relationships (i.e. inverse R^2 etc) says that at like for like pressure, temperature on venus should be 1.176 times what it is on earth (in degrees Kelvin).

Lo and be hold, if he takes average temp on earth at 288 K then 1.176*288 is 338K. On the data for venus temperatures, temperature at 1000 mbar (about 50km up in the atmosphere mind) is .... you guessed it, around 338 K. And this is regardless of cloud, albedo, whatver... the sole major function is distance to the sun. Remembering that earth has 0.04% CO2 and Venus 96%+ CO2.

On the one hand this seems beautifully simple and convincing. On the other hand.... can it really be that simple? Its like when somethings too good to be true. I am familiar with all the theories he used and the maths is right, but have the theories been applied correctly? are they over simplifying to the point where its meaningless...i.e "only valid for spherical chickens in a vacuum" (for those who watch big bang theory!)

It would appear to be over simplification to the point nonsense although I confess I haven't read it all. A starting issue, from the stuff in your post, would be 'regardless of albedo'. The earth actually absorbs more energy from the sun than venus, despite the relative distances, due to venus's enormous albedo. This would seem to shoot some holes in the idea that venus is hotter because it gets more solar energy.

[AA999]

TransverseTight said:

I can't prove it affects climate,......

TransverseTight said:

....It's enough to make the world warmer than it would otherwise be.

This is the leap of faith that is often referred to that makes current political meteorology in to the religion that it has become.

Science is not about making 'leaps of faith', otherwise why do we have the "scientific method"?

[Jinx]

hairykrishna said:

It would appear to be over simplification to the point nonsense although I confess I haven't read it all. A starting issue, from the stuff in your post, would be 'regardless of albedo'. The earth actually absorbs more energy from the sun than venus, despite the relative distances, due to venus's enormous albedo. This would seem to shoot some holes in the idea that venus is hotter because it gets more solar energy.

To get the equivalent pressure (1 bar) in a Venusian atmosphere the altitude would be much closer to TOA than the surface - albedo at 1 bar may not have the reduction to solar insolation to offset the proximity to source as you are expecting. Given the Venusian surface receives little to no visible light I would not expect the temperature profile to mimic the earth's at all - probably find the atmosphere is responsible for warming the atmosphere unlike on earth where the surface is responsible.
Given the thickness it may be more reasonable to treat the Venusian atmosphere as more akin to the oceans (cool at bottom, warm at top) - than as the Earth's (warm at bottom, cool at top)

[grumbledoak]

Otispunkmeyer said:

On the one hand this seems beautifully simple and convincing. On the other hand.... can it really be that simple? Its like when somethings too good to be true. I am familiar with all the theories he used and the maths is right, but have the theories been applied correctly? are they over simplifying to the point where its meaningless...i.e "only valid for spherical chickens in a vacuum" (for those who watch big bang theory!)

It is worth remembering that Mars' ice caps were shrinking too. That does not prove that global warming is not happening on Earth, but it is always worth remembering that the Sun alone is enough to account for the vast majority of what we observe on three planets...

[Otispunkmeyer]

hairykrishna said:

Otispunkmeyer said:

This may have been posted previously but CBA to look through all these pages.

http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/v...

This guy puts forward a very simple theory that the temperature differences seen between earth and venus are exclusively down to distance from the sun. He picks temperature at 1000 mbar on earth and 1000 mbar on venus and using simple heat transfer and radiation relationships (i.e. inverse R^2 etc) says that at like for like pressure, temperature on venus should be 1.176 times what it is on earth (in degrees Kelvin).

Lo and be hold, if he takes average temp on earth at 288 K then 1.176*288 is 338K. On the data for venus temperatures, temperature at 1000 mbar (about 50km up in the atmosphere mind) is .... you guessed it, around 338 K. And this is regardless of cloud, albedo, whatver... the sole major function is distance to the sun. Remembering that earth has 0.04% CO2 and Venus 96%+ CO2.

On the one hand this seems beautifully simple and convincing. On the other hand.... can it really be that simple? Its like when somethings too good to be true. I am familiar with all the theories he used and the maths is right, but have the theories been applied correctly? are they over simplifying to the point where its meaningless...i.e "only valid for spherical chickens in a vacuum" (for those who watch big bang theory!)

It would appear to be over simplification to the point nonsense although I confess I haven't read it all. A starting issue, from the stuff in your post, would be 'regardless of albedo'. The earth actually absorbs more energy from the sun than venus, despite the relative distances, due to venus's enormous albedo. This would seem to shoot some holes in the idea that venus is hotter because it gets more solar energy.

He did say he was asked about the albedo thing and re-worked his theory only to get much the same answer.

I do think he is on the right track as regards the suns output being the deciding factor as to whether we get hotter or colder. (Though the earth is closest to the sun during our winter.... that's to do with tilt though right?)

[hairykrishna]

Otispunkmeyer said:

He did say he was asked about the albedo thing and re-worked his theory only to get much the same answer.

His re-working seems to consist of him asserting that they absorb the same fraction i.e. have the same albedo and that the calculation is therefore not different to if the albedo was zero. They don't have the same albedo.

That's really nitpicking though when, to be honest, the whole calculation is mental. Without the greenhouse effect I'm pretty sure the atmosphere(s) would be more or less isothermal. Why does it have the temperature profile it does if there's no greenhouse effect? Why is Venuses profile different from Earths? Why does the outgoing EM spectrum have a big hole in the black body curve corresponding to the IR absorption bands?

Edit to say, of course the sun is the ultimate driving factor in any climate system. You can't explain the differences between Venus and Earths climate purely through how far away from the sun they are though! Guys like this pollute the debate just as much as Friends of the Earth type fruitloops who assert that the sky is falling with just as little understanding.

Edited by hairykrishna on Friday 25th July 19:49

[TransverseTight]

AA999 said:

This is the leap of faith that is often referred to that makes current political meteorology in to the religion that it has become.

Science is not about making 'leaps of faith', otherwise why do we have the "scientific method"?

But before climate change and the threat to driving V8s and selling oil came along no one was disputing this. Now debating it is a national sport. I expect it to be in the 2020 Olympics based on the fact that some people get so wound up about it it's certainly more of a energetic sport than bowls.

[PRTVR]

TransverseTight said:

AA999 said:

This is the leap of faith that is often referred to that makes current political meteorology in to the religion that it has become.

Science is not about making 'leaps of faith', otherwise why do we have the "scientific method"?

But before climate change and the threat to driving V8s and selling oil came along no one was disputing this. Now debating it is a national sport. I expect it to be in the 2020 Olympics based on the fact that some people get so wound up about it it's certainly more of a energetic sport than bowls.

If you feel something is wrong is it not right to voice an opinion on it ? It would appear that you would prefer to have debate silenced , typical watermelon , you talk of changing our energy use and getting away from oil, but why and will the alternative work, its a big risk, the rise in debate for me started with climategate, that for me showed that the science was being driven by political and green agendas, MMCC was and is just a tool to achieve their ends.

[Gandahar]

IainT said:

Gandahar said:

People don't want to wait, far too impatient, not when it's light entertainment nowadays for a lot of folk rather than the tele !

I think the excitement in the alarmist sphere focusses on these points:

And denialists sphere also, but sides get too excited.

In the modern age nobody is prepared to wait to see, we want it here, right now. Especially if it proves someone else wrong.

Anyway, back to the Arctic melt .... now there is something that is worth watching over many years.

[Gandahar]

Variomatic said:

Nore trouble for the models. New paper comparing modelled troposphere to reality. This has been published on before and, again in this paper, reality keeps getting it all wrong:

http://climateaudit.org/2014/07/24/new-paper-by-mc...

Note that it's an open access paper so all can read, digest, and evaluate for themselves rather than relying on Dana Nuttella & co's take on it - assuming they don't simply put their fngers in their ears and sing "la la la" because arguing statistics with a professional statistician is above their pay grade :

Edited by Variomatic on Friday 25th July 12:10

In his summary he said

"In my opinion"

Surely scientific fact should not be preceded by "In my opinion" he should just state what he has shown and let others have an opinion on it

What are the peer reviews surmising about this ?

[LongQ]

Gandahar said:

Variomatic said:

Nore trouble for the models. New paper comparing modelled troposphere to reality. This has been published on before and, again in this paper, reality keeps getting it all wrong:

http://climateaudit.org/2014/07/24/new-paper-by-mc...

Note that it's an open access paper so all can read, digest, and evaluate for themselves rather than relying on Dana Nuttella & co's take on it - assuming they don't simply put their fngers in their ears and sing "la la la" because arguing statistics with a professional statistician is above their pay grade :

Edited by Variomatic on Friday 25th July 12:10

In his summary he said

"In my opinion"

Surely scientific fact should not be preceded by "In my opinion" he should just state what he has shown and let others have an opinion on it

What are the peer reviews surmising about this ?

Oh dear.

Some years ago, a few weeks after the Fukushima problem in Japan, I was in general discussion about related subjects with a fairly recently retired senior police officer. I suggested that the scale of the problem, given what had happened, could have been very much worse and it was some comfort that even 50 year old human planning capability had come up with a result that exceeded what might have been planned for at the time.

He averred that he had it on good authority that hundreds and possibly thousands of local people had died as a result of the tsunami and its affect on the power station. I suggested that he might be misinformed based on what public information had been made available to date. His response was "Let me tell you [that I am right]...." with absolutely no allowance for there being any other view or information to contradict what he said. He never did divulge his "source". I suspect he did not have one - just didn't like his opinion facts being questioned.

He was bigger and more aggressive than me and it was not my social gig to spoil so I left it at that.

The sad thing about his assertion was that it was not accompanied by "In my opinion.." Nor any attempt to point to the "facts" that he alleged he was referring too - presumably sources that a retired police officer had access to but mere plebs with just the Internet available to them did not. Or at least that was the impression he gave.

It was a brief but subsequently interesting conversation for a number of reasons. But the single most interesting observation was just how much people who have no facts at their disposal will go to make it sound like they know something that is "confidential" and not public knowledge in order to justify their claims. The information, no matter that it will, if it exists, have been passed on and misinterpreted many times, is still presented as "fact". It should never, ever, be taken at face value nor with any automatic acceptance of its validity.

[Variomatic]

Gandahar said:

In his summary he said

"In my opinion"

Surely scientific fact should not be preceded by "In my opinion" he should just state what he has shown and let others have an opinion on it

What are the peer reviews surmising about this ?

Well, it clearly passed peer review or it wouldn't have made it into a journal.

Sadly for "the Team", the journal concerned is a specialised statistical publication, with a 25 year history, associated with the International Statistics Institute which has a 129 year history.

So it's a serious journal and it's fair to assume that its peer reviewers will have been selected for their statistical knowledge rather than their adherence to "the script".

No doubt some team members will put out a rebuttal, but that will almost certainly be published in one of the "general purpose" journals, such as Nature, where the reviewers could be from any field with statistics being a minor sideline to their expertise.

They're far more likely to swallow the teams stock "It's no just Statistics, it's Climate statistics!" excuse for mangling and misapplying methods than a specialised journal would be.

It's also useful to note that, unlike with most Warmist papers, all data and code used in the work has been provided freely from the outset to everyone rather than hiding behind claims of proprierory interest / data protection / academic privilege etc as the Team invariably do to prevent anyone really checking the work



eta: Incidentally, the "In my opinion" that you objected to is from the informal blog post linked, not from the article itself.

I linked to the blog because it's more of a layman's explanaion of what the paper addresses so is more user friendly for most people. Within that informal setting it's entirely proper and appropriate to provide his own opinion or interpretation of the significance of conclusions reached in the paper.

The full journal article is clearly linked in the introducion to the blog post, but I've added the link below to avoid more confusion:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/env.229...

Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 29th July 20:48

Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 29th July 20:52

Edited by Variomatic on Tuesday 29th July 20:54