Climate change - the POLITICAL debate. Vol 4

[Silver Smudger]

durbster said:

The effect of CO2 is small and slow, so of course it won't show up as a spike in the data like a volcanic eruption. Nobody ever claimed it would - yet another strawman argument.

Is it a strawman argument to ask what in the data shows (or at least has convinced you) that AGW is Warming, Globally, with an Anthropogenic cause?

durbster said:

It's a good job the case for AGW doesn't consist solely of data then.

What else is the case based on then, if not measured data, and conclusions drawn from that evidence?

[turbobloke]

From the first link: As already noted in the Third Assessment Report11, unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with the climate system. Since that is not possible... The authors have fallen on their own sword rather early in the game. It's not just the white flag waving in the breeze that catches the eye but the readiness to capitulate. In terms of methodology, there's circular reasoning at work. The authors state that they've been working on ';data' but then cite Meinshausen M. et al. "The RCP GHG concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300" in Climatic Change. This is clearly not data as M et al use a carbon cycle climate model. The climate model specified assumes a carbon dioxide causative effect and Stips et al have successfully identified this assumption, a notable achievement for pseudoscience..

At the second link:we're told that ghg causal effects have been detected at levels greater than ENSO within the last 30 years or so, quoting tax gas at ~24% with ENSO ~12% in terms of relative contributions to Yet if the authors of this 2017 online publication had taken a look at UAH LTT data they would see by inspection that ENSO effects have been dominant. Then again they don't examine ENSO beyond 2005 so the choice of time interval mitigates against spotting the obvious and a starting point of 1984 is positively culpable. From circular reasoning to cherry picking and failing to 'look out the window'/

The choice of time interval for the third 'paper' by Dopp (this looks like a poster paper for a conference) is 1951 to 1980. Very convenient. It looks at Global Yearly Mean Temperature anomaly alongside Global Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration anomalies and Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions data. No attempt has been made to examine and eliminate other climate forcings. The presumption is that only the chosen variables are relevant. Within the Granger Causality approach as adopted by Dopp, timing is important. There's no attempt to eliminate effects on timing of climatic events within the period (using GMTA) due to volcanism (1951, 1963, 1980) or ENSO.(e.g. El Nino 1957, 1965, 1972), Was this peer reviewed?

Fourth link - the authors note without explanation that "the most likely interpretations of our results for the 6 to 8 years cyclic components of the variables are that during the period 1929 to 1936, CO2 significantly leads GTA. However, during the period 1960–2003, GTA apparently leads CO2, that is, the peaks (and troughs) in GTA are in front of, and close to, the peaks (and troughs) in CO2. Most likely! Beyond these self-defeating admissions (no unambiguous attribution with ambiguous ordering, even using most likely interpretations), note also the bias in terms of language: when the order of events matches preconceptions, the phrase 'significantly leads' is used, when the order of events is 'wrong' the phrase 'apparently leads' is used.

Next up is a paper with an abstract that simply needs a quick read of its intro to see that...there's nothing to see, certainly no invisible signal is visible: "We test for causality between radiative forcing and temperature using multivariate time series models and Granger causality tests that are robust to the non-stationary (trending) nature of global climate data. We find that both natural and anthropogenic forcings cause temperature change and also that temperature causes greenhouse gas concentration changes". Apart from that, there's more circular reasoning (models).

The paper at the sixth link is about correlation not causation.

Next is a rather neat attempt to get a desired result, where the authors "propose an alternative, data centric, approach that relies on actual measurements of climate observations and human and natural forcing factors". The IPCC's SPM authors ironically and unfortunately provide a key counterpoint as their report SPMs list natural forcings as having a low LOSU (level of scientific understanding). Two natural forcings are omitted completely, namely solar eruptivity via the Svensmark CRF-LLC-albedo mechanism and the Bucha auroral oval mechanism; the latter has been shown via empirical data to result in temperature rises in the troposphere. These omissions are expected, but fatal.

The eighth attempt deserves a re-read but before that, it appears to use a moving average (smoothing) technique on time series, which is a common error in this context: http://wmbriggs.com/post/195/

Past midnight. Nine and ten will be looked at later; we have more Granger and multivariate tests.

[turbobloke]

So far the Greens have doubled their councillor tally, woohoo Gaia be praised!

From one to two

Lucas and Bartley should go back to their ecologically sound and carbon neutral cave/tent/tree and prepare for government.

[Lotus 50]

wc98 said:

tenth post down https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
i wouldn't bother though. he is one of the utter cretins that thinks anyone that has been funded in the past by "big oil" cannot be a scientist. clearly forgetting that "big oil" provides a huge amount of funding toward many warmist organisations and universities with climate science departments . more than they spend on funding sceptics as it happens, but don't tell him, his watermelon like head would explode.

Hmm, your name calling says more about you and your responses to the discussion on the science thread than me.

Where did I say that anyone funded by oil wasn't a scientist? The point I was making was that there is evidence readily available that suggests the individual concerned may be publishing information that is biased towards those funding his work - and not disclosing those links. That the establishment he works may also publicly disagree with his research is interesting too. People on this forum are very keen to say the same things about scientists funded by government etc so what's wrong with me doing the same thing in the opposite direction?

Edited by Lotus 50 on Friday 5th May 09:09

[Lotus 50]

turbobloke said:

From the first link: As already noted in the Third Assessment Report11, unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with the climate system. Since that is not possible... The authors have fallen on their own sword rather early in the game. It's not just the white flag waving in the breeze that catches the eye but the readiness to capitulate. In terms of methodology, there's circular reasoning at work. The authors state that they've been working on ';data' but then cite Meinshausen M. et al. "The RCP GHG concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300" in Climatic Change. This is clearly not data as M et al use a carbon cycle climate model. The climate model specified assumes a carbon dioxide causative effect and Stips et al have successfully identified this assumption, a notable achievement for pseudoscience..

At the second link:we're told that ghg causal effects have been detected at levels greater than ENSO within the last 30 years or so, quoting tax gas at ~24% with ENSO ~12% in terms of relative contributions to Yet if the authors of this 2017 online publication had taken a look at UAH LTT data they would see by inspection that ENSO effects have been dominant. Then again they don't examine ENSO beyond 2005 so the choice of time interval mitigates against spotting the obvious and a starting point of 1984 is positively culpable. From circular reasoning to cherry picking and failing to 'look out the window'/

The choice of time interval for the third 'paper' by Dopp (this looks like a poster paper for a conference) is 1951 to 1980. Very convenient. It looks at Global Yearly Mean Temperature anomaly alongside Global Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration anomalies and Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions data. No attempt has been made to examine and eliminate other climate forcings. The presumption is that only the chosen variables are relevant. Within the Granger Causality approach as adopted by Dopp, timing is important. There's no attempt to eliminate effects on timing of climatic events within the period (using GMTA) due to volcanism (1951, 1963, 1980) or ENSO.(e.g. El Nino 1957, 1965, 1972), Was this peer reviewed?

Fourth link - the authors note without explanation that "the most likely interpretations of our results for the 6 to 8 years cyclic components of the variables are that during the period 1929 to 1936, CO2 significantly leads GTA. However, during the period 1960–2003, GTA apparently leads CO2, that is, the peaks (and troughs) in GTA are in front of, and close to, the peaks (and troughs) in CO2. Most likely! Beyond these self-defeating admissions (no unambiguous attribution with ambiguous ordering, even using most likely interpretations), note also the bias in terms of language: when the order of events matches preconceptions, the phrase 'significantly leads' is used, when the order of events is 'wrong' the phrase 'apparently leads' is used.

Next up is a paper with an abstract that simply needs a quick read of its intro to see that...there's nothing to see, certainly no invisible signal is visible: "We test for causality between radiative forcing and temperature using multivariate time series models and Granger causality tests that are robust to the non-stationary (trending) nature of global climate data. We find that both natural and anthropogenic forcings cause temperature change and also that temperature causes greenhouse gas concentration changes". Apart from that, there's more circular reasoning (models).

The paper at the sixth link is about correlation not causation.

Next is a rather neat attempt to get a desired result, where the authors "propose an alternative, data centric, approach that relies on actual measurements of climate observations and human and natural forcing factors". The IPCC's SPM authors ironically and unfortunately provide a key counterpoint as their report SPMs list natural forcings as having a low LOSU (level of scientific understanding). Two natural forcings are omitted completely, namely solar eruptivity via the Svensmark CRF-LLC-albedo mechanism and the Bucha auroral oval mechanism; the latter has been shown via empirical data to result in temperature rises in the troposphere. These omissions are expected, but fatal.

The eighth attempt deserves a re-read but before that, it appears to use a moving average (smoothing) technique on time series, which is a common error in this context: http://wmbriggs.com/post/195/

Past midnight. Nine and ten will be looked at later; we have more Granger and multivariate tests.

Thanks for the more detailed response and for stepping away from the politics.

A quick reply re the first paper, what's wrong with referring to the issues in demonstrating causality in the preamble to the paper (i.e. referring to the IPCC work) by way of setting out the issues and why researchers may not yet have demonstrated causality? Basically what they are saying is 'thus far researchers have had problems in showing this because of x, y, and z... we've come up with a new way of doing the analysis that gets round this and shows...'. It's standard practice to review past work in scientific publications not white flag waving. Also Meinshausen M. et al, used observational data from 1750-2005 to derive their 1765-2300 information. It is the observed data that's used in the Stips et al paper.

[turbobloke]

Lotus 50 said:

Thanks for the more detailed response and for stepping away from the politics.

A quick reply re the first paper, what's wrong with referring to the issues in demonstrating causality in the preamble to the paper (i.e. referring to the IPCC work) by way of setting out the issues and why researchers may not yet have demonstrated causality? Basically what they are saying is 'thus far researchers have had problems in showing this because of x, y, and z... we've come up with a new way of doing the analysis that gets round this and shows...'. It's standard practice to review past work in scientific publications not white flag waving. Also Meinshausen M. et al, used observational data from 1750-2005 to derive their 1765-2300 information. It is the observed data that's used in the Stips et al paper.

It's a mixed bag. It acknowledges reality in one sense but not another. Nature performs 'experiments' for us, albeit never totally under our control, and the climate community has determined that 30 years is a relevant timescale for such considerations when looking at the results of said 'experiments'. On this basis agw is indeed awol. Nowhere was there any analysis explaining how to identify and extract the invisible supposedly causal human signal.

In terms of Meinshausen et al, you did note the title of their paper "The RCP GHG concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300".and that "The Meinshausen historical forcing data cover the period from 1765 to 2005." Forcing data isn't temperature data unless the authors are deliberately misleading in their narrative (or incompetent).

I'm going to look at the last two links but the motivation to do so is slim, my abiding impression afrer working through eight of the ten is that concerns about the quality of peer review in relatively recent climate publications have a point.

[wc98]

durbster said:

The effect of CO2 is small and slow, so of course it won't show up as a spike in the data like a volcanic eruption. Nobody ever claimed it would - yet another strawman argument. It's a good job the case for AGW doesn't consist solely of data then.

the effect of co2 would appear to be non existent considering 35% or so of human generated emissions have occurred since the turn of the century .the result of this was a pause in global temperature rise.

[turbobloke]

wc98 said:

durbster said:

The effect of CO2 is small and slow, so of course it won't show up as a spike in the data like a volcanic eruption. Nobody ever claimed it would - yet another strawman argument. It's a good job the case for AGW doesn't consist solely of data then.

the effect of co2 would appear to be non existent considering 35% or so of human generated emissions have occurred since the turn of the century .the result of this was a pause in global temperature rise.

In addition, I'd like to see evidence that anyone on here has claimed that the invisible signal from carbon dioxide would look like a spike. It's invisible after all. Can't recall the term 'spike' being used in that context, ever.

There's no sign of a fast and furious causal human siignal and there's no sign of a slow and delberate signal. This is why rentapapers that try and fail to be "pausebusters" are finding that their hand jobs (the hand of man, on temperature data) are only ever an anticlimax.

[LongQ]

Lotus 50 said:

turbobloke said:

From the first link: As already noted in the Third Assessment Report11, unequivocal attribution would require controlled experimentation with the climate system. Since that is not possible... The authors have fallen on their own sword rather early in the game. It's not just the white flag waving in the breeze that catches the eye but the readiness to capitulate. In terms of methodology, there's circular reasoning at work. The authors state that they've been working on ';data' but then cite Meinshausen M. et al. "The RCP GHG concentrations and their extension from 1765 to 2300" in Climatic Change. This is clearly not data as M et al use a carbon cycle climate model. The climate model specified assumes a carbon dioxide causative effect and Stips et al have successfully identified this assumption, a notable achievement for pseudoscience..

At the second link:we're told that ghg causal effects have been detected at levels greater than ENSO within the last 30 years or so, quoting tax gas at ~24% with ENSO ~12% in terms of relative contributions to Yet if the authors of this 2017 online publication had taken a look at UAH LTT data they would see by inspection that ENSO effects have been dominant. Then again they don't examine ENSO beyond 2005 so the choice of time interval mitigates against spotting the obvious and a starting point of 1984 is positively culpable. From circular reasoning to cherry picking and failing to 'look out the window'/

The choice of time interval for the third 'paper' by Dopp (this looks like a poster paper for a conference) is 1951 to 1980. Very convenient. It looks at Global Yearly Mean Temperature anomaly alongside Global Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration anomalies and Anthropogenic Carbon Emissions data. No attempt has been made to examine and eliminate other climate forcings. The presumption is that only the chosen variables are relevant. Within the Granger Causality approach as adopted by Dopp, timing is important. There's no attempt to eliminate effects on timing of climatic events within the period (using GMTA) due to volcanism (1951, 1963, 1980) or ENSO.(e.g. El Nino 1957, 1965, 1972), Was this peer reviewed?

Fourth link - the authors note without explanation that "the most likely interpretations of our results for the 6 to 8 years cyclic components of the variables are that during the period 1929 to 1936, CO2 significantly leads GTA. However, during the period 1960–2003, GTA apparently leads CO2, that is, the peaks (and troughs) in GTA are in front of, and close to, the peaks (and troughs) in CO2. Most likely! Beyond these self-defeating admissions (no unambiguous attribution with ambiguous ordering, even using most likely interpretations), note also the bias in terms of language: when the order of events matches preconceptions, the phrase 'significantly leads' is used, when the order of events is 'wrong' the phrase 'apparently leads' is used.

Next up is a paper with an abstract that simply needs a quick read of its intro to see that...there's nothing to see, certainly no invisible signal is visible: "We test for causality between radiative forcing and temperature using multivariate time series models and Granger causality tests that are robust to the non-stationary (trending) nature of global climate data. We find that both natural and anthropogenic forcings cause temperature change and also that temperature causes greenhouse gas concentration changes". Apart from that, there's more circular reasoning (models).

The paper at the sixth link is about correlation not causation.

Next is a rather neat attempt to get a desired result, where the authors "propose an alternative, data centric, approach that relies on actual measurements of climate observations and human and natural forcing factors". The IPCC's SPM authors ironically and unfortunately provide a key counterpoint as their report SPMs list natural forcings as having a low LOSU (level of scientific understanding). Two natural forcings are omitted completely, namely solar eruptivity via the Svensmark CRF-LLC-albedo mechanism and the Bucha auroral oval mechanism; the latter has been shown via empirical data to result in temperature rises in the troposphere. These omissions are expected, but fatal.

The eighth attempt deserves a re-read but before that, it appears to use a moving average (smoothing) technique on time series, which is a common error in this context: http://wmbriggs.com/post/195/

Past midnight. Nine and ten will be looked at later; we have more Granger and multivariate tests.

[b]Thanks for the more detailed response and for stepping away from the politics.[/]

A quick reply re the first paper, what's wrong with referring to the issues in demonstrating causality in the preamble to the paper (i.e. referring to the IPCC work) by way of setting out the issues and why researchers may not yet have demonstrated causality? Basically what they are saying is 'thus far researchers have had problems in showing this because of x, y, and z... we've come up with a new way of doing the analysis that gets round this and shows...'. It's standard practice to review past work in scientific publications not white flag waving. Also Meinshausen M. et al, used observational data from 1750-2005 to derive their 1765-2300 information. It is the observed data that's used in the Stips et al paper.

It would be good to see this exchange furthered on the Science thread, however ...

... whether the papers and the motivation behind them is scientifically based or much more like political activism seems to be open to discussion.

[turbobloke]

LongQ said:

It would be good to see this exchange furthered on the Science thread, however ...

... whether the papers and the motivation behind them is scientifically based or much more like political activism seems to be open to discussion.

Agreed and understood on location but the science thread is pointless as climate isn't about science it's about politics. IPCC science isn't science it's junkscience with junkstats thrown in, consistent with the growing hopelessness of their one-sided advocacy role.

Following your post my view is that it's not wiorth continuing here or there, as the references cited are weak beyond hope, but not weak beyond expectation, and do not do what was claimed for them. The political activism behind such 'work' is a good point but it isn't sufficient to salvage anything for the purpose of this thread. HTH.

[Otispunkmeyer]

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/05/uh-oh-europ...

All that money. All those wind turbines, solar panels, tax incentives and infinitum in the name of CO2 reduction. And the result? Nothing. In fact worse now than in 2014 .

Good job everyone. Especially Denmark.

[turbobloke]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Keep the eye on the ball dinosaurs

A comment for Trade Union bigwigs via PH - curious.

[mondeoman]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Keep the eye on the ball dinosaurs

It's actually called business- the CO2 is convenient

At last, an admission of the truth

[Silver Smudger]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

One for Dickyfit

http://grist.org/article/the-first-u-s-offshore-wi...

Excellent job done - Switched off a diesel generator by building a wind farm - And connecting the island to the mainland power grid!

Headline - "The first U.S. offshore wind farm just shut down a diesel plant"

Article -
"Block Island officials on Monday switched on a connection between the island and a cable linking the wind farm to Rhode Island’s mainland power grid. The connection allowed the island’s only electricity source — a small diesel-fueled power plant — to shut down. The island’s 2,000 residents burned about 1 million gallons of diesel fuel annually. Until now, Block Island’s power grid was completely isolated from the mainland. The construction of the wind farm and its connection to the mainland allowed the island to connect to the New England power grid for the first time."

Would have been cheaper just to put the link cable in, I would have thought ?

[grumbledoak]

Silver Smudger said:

Would have been cheaper just to put the link cable in, I would have thought ?

That is certainly the way I read the article. Conflating the building of the wind farm with the grid link, and claiming the benefits are due to the windmills.

[durbster]

Here's one for a laugh - To save money, Kentucky Coal Museum turns to solar panels

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/04/kentucky-...

[turbobloke]

durbster said:

Here's one for a laugh - To save money, Kentucky Coal Museum turns to solar panels

https://arstechnica.com/business/2017/04/kentucky-...

A narrow perspective perhaps, which raises some questions.

Does the state of Kentucky offer tax credits and/or subsidies for renewable energy systems? How about any remaining federal subsidies from the fading Obama legacy of misinformation and daft policymaking? Who makes the most money from these subsidies, credits and rebates? Any signs of scandal yet as per Solyndra? Presumably you know all the details already to be a poster boy for the above scheme - it would be helpful and possibly a laugh if you shared your knowledge by replying to the above queries. TIA.

[durbster]

turbobloke said:

A narrow perspective perhaps, which raises some questions.

Does the state of Kentucky offer tax credits and/or subsidies for renewable energy systems?

Yes, they exchange them for anyone reporting commie-like behaviour to the authorities. If the coal police achieve a conviction, they award tax credits.

turbobloke said:

How about any remaining federal subsidies from the fading Obama legacy of misinformation and daft policymaking?

Federal subsidies are dictated by a tiny number of activists who infiltrated the US Government in 1978 and have been hiding in the Whitehouse ever since. They whisper through the Whitehouse walls when the President is nearby to tell them climate change is real and to throw money to renewable energy providers.

They are currently hiding in a cupboard in the Whitehouse basement until Trump's gone. He's immune to their powers because he's like, really smart. He's also had every kind of fan removed from Mar a Lago. Not because he thinks they're a waste of money, but because they mess up his hair.

turbobloke said:

Who makes the most money from these subsidies, credits and rebates?

The BBC gets half, but only on condition they give 10% to David Bellamy and 5% towards electing Mrs Brown in the next election. The Guardian gets the rest.

turbobloke said:

Any signs of scandal yet as per Solyndra?

Yes. And it gets worse - every single person involved in renewable energy has been confirmed as driving in the middle lane AND not replacing the toilet paper after using the last piece.

turbobloke said:

Presumably you know all the details already to be a poster boy for the above scheme - it would be helpful and possibly a laugh if you shared your knowledge by replying to the above queries. TIA.

Damn, you figured it out. I'm a poster boy for the a Kentucky Coal museum's energy provider scheme. They have paid me to promote this story in a British car forum, and I'm paid for every response I get. Much appreciated.

[LongQ]

This link, semi-reviewing the Varoufakis book, was posted a couple of days ago but I think it is worth repeating.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yani...

Read the second, third, fourth and fifth paragraphs if nothing else.

[turbobloke]

Paddy_N_Murphy said:

Best (pain free) post on here in a long time!

USA solar subsidy farming is rarely pain-free as the headlines show.


"Sungevity files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

"Verengo Solar files for bankruptcy!

"HelioPower files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy"

"US solar company SunEdison files for bankruptcy"

"Solyndra v SunEdison: 2 bankruptcies show how solar has changed"

"Pending Bankruptcy of Largest Solar Company Puts Alternative Energy Industry Into Full Meltdown Mode"


Fortunately another headline reveals that help is at hand when faithful individual investors get their hands sunburned.


"Bankruptcy USA - We Do it For You For Only $89?"

Hilarious!