Climate Change - The Scientific Debate (Vol. II)

[Terminator X]

PRTVR said:

Lotus 50 said:

Nope you're wrong again. We have a very clear idea that CO2 is causing the Earth's surface temp to increase and that the impacts of these changes could be significantly damaging although there is uncertainty around the detail and timing of those impacts. In terms of the responses made to them it seems to me that, starting with Mrs T's Conservative Govt, successive governments in the UK have adopted proportionate and sensible responses in the light of those uncertainties.


and does anyone really take the 'win £100k' competition seriously?

Proportionate and sensible response, keep taking the tablets, you think it's sensible to shut down our few coal fired power stations when Asia is building massive numbers of them ?
You think it's sensible to convert some of them to run on wood transported half way round the world when the economics of wood only works with waste at a lumber yard, anything else and you might have just used the diesel from each part of the process, then we come to renewables, that don't work when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow so we have to have 100% back up with real power stations, it's even more idiotic when you consider the low amount of CO2 the UK emits.

The £100k prize, if you are so sure why not just go for it, my view is the science is lacking and will not stand up to examination.

Did I read somewhere that the CO2 released when burning wood is "ignored"? Seems strange to ignore one source and then pounce on others ...

TX.

[Terminator X]

durbster said:

Globs said:

This means that ALL climate models are a GUESS.
What don't people understand about this?

An educated guess.

But so what? Everyone knows the models aren't perfect and never will be. Your devastating revelation is already acknowledged and considered, and always has been.

If computer modelling isn't the best way of forecasting atmospheric conditions, what's your alternative solution?

How well have the models fared from 25-30 years ago when predicting today?

TX.

[jet_noise]

Terminator X said:

Did I read somewhere that the CO2 released when burning wood is "ignored"? Seems strange to ignore one source and then pounce on others ...

TX.

Because "sustainable".

[durbster]

Terminator X said:

How well have the models fared from 25-30 years ago when predicting today?

TX.

Probably not great. Computers 30 years ago weren't very powerful.

Why?

[robinessex]

durbster said:

Terminator X said:

How well have the models fared from 25-30 years ago when predicting today?

TX.

Probably not great. Computers 30 years ago weren't very powerful.

Why?

And the most poweful computer in the world still isn't powerful enough !!

[plunker]

Terminator X said:

PRTVR said:

Lotus 50 said:

Nope you're wrong again. We have a very clear idea that CO2 is causing the Earth's surface temp to increase and that the impacts of these changes could be significantly damaging although there is uncertainty around the detail and timing of those impacts. In terms of the responses made to them it seems to me that, starting with Mrs T's Conservative Govt, successive governments in the UK have adopted proportionate and sensible responses in the light of those uncertainties.


and does anyone really take the 'win £100k' competition seriously?

Proportionate and sensible response, keep taking the tablets, you think it's sensible to shut down our few coal fired power stations when Asia is building massive numbers of them ?
You think it's sensible to convert some of them to run on wood transported half way round the world when the economics of wood only works with waste at a lumber yard, anything else and you might have just used the diesel from each part of the process, then we come to renewables, that don't work when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow so we have to have 100% back up with real power stations, it's even more idiotic when you consider the low amount of CO2 the UK emits.

The £100k prize, if you are so sure why not just go for it, my view is the science is lacking and will not stand up to examination.

Did I read somewhere that the CO2 released when burning wood is "ignored"? Seems strange to ignore one source and then pounce on others ...

TX.

In theory (and hopefully in practice too but I don't know) wood isn't a source of CO2 like fossil fuels are, so long as it comes from sustainably managed forests. Obviously if in practice it leads to a net reduction in the amount of carbon tied up in biomass then it would be a source as it would increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

[Toltec]

plunker said:

Terminator X said:

PRTVR said:

Lotus 50 said:

Nope you're wrong again. We have a very clear idea that CO2 is causing the Earth's surface temp to increase and that the impacts of these changes could be significantly damaging although there is uncertainty around the detail and timing of those impacts. In terms of the responses made to them it seems to me that, starting with Mrs T's Conservative Govt, successive governments in the UK have adopted proportionate and sensible responses in the light of those uncertainties.


and does anyone really take the 'win £100k' competition seriously?

Proportionate and sensible response, keep taking the tablets, you think it's sensible to shut down our few coal fired power stations when Asia is building massive numbers of them ?
You think it's sensible to convert some of them to run on wood transported half way round the world when the economics of wood only works with waste at a lumber yard, anything else and you might have just used the diesel from each part of the process, then we come to renewables, that don't work when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow so we have to have 100% back up with real power stations, it's even more idiotic when you consider the low amount of CO2 the UK emits.

The £100k prize, if you are so sure why not just go for it, my view is the science is lacking and will not stand up to examination.

Did I read somewhere that the CO2 released when burning wood is "ignored"? Seems strange to ignore one source and then pounce on others ...

TX.

In theory (and hopefully in practice too but I don't know) wood isn't a source of CO2 like fossil fuels are, so long as it comes from sustainably managed forests. Obviously if in practice it leads to a net reduction in the amount of carbon tied up in biomass then it would be a source as it would increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Wood burning stoves are a bit 'diesel', good for CO2, terrible for real pollution. The CO2 monomania pushed by the CC adherents may help with climate change, but fks up the environment.

[LongQ]

Toltec said:

plunker said:

Terminator X said:

PRTVR said:

Lotus 50 said:

Nope you're wrong again. We have a very clear idea that CO2 is causing the Earth's surface temp to increase and that the impacts of these changes could be significantly damaging although there is uncertainty around the detail and timing of those impacts. In terms of the responses made to them it seems to me that, starting with Mrs T's Conservative Govt, successive governments in the UK have adopted proportionate and sensible responses in the light of those uncertainties.


and does anyone really take the 'win £100k' competition seriously?

Proportionate and sensible response, keep taking the tablets, you think it's sensible to shut down our few coal fired power stations when Asia is building massive numbers of them ?
You think it's sensible to convert some of them to run on wood transported half way round the world when the economics of wood only works with waste at a lumber yard, anything else and you might have just used the diesel from each part of the process, then we come to renewables, that don't work when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow so we have to have 100% back up with real power stations, it's even more idiotic when you consider the low amount of CO2 the UK emits.

The £100k prize, if you are so sure why not just go for it, my view is the science is lacking and will not stand up to examination.

Did I read somewhere that the CO2 released when burning wood is "ignored"? Seems strange to ignore one source and then pounce on others ...

TX.

In theory (and hopefully in practice too but I don't know) wood isn't a source of CO2 like fossil fuels are, so long as it comes from sustainably managed forests. Obviously if in practice it leads to a net reduction in the amount of carbon tied up in biomass then it would be a source as it would increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Wood burning stoves are a bit 'diesel', good for CO2, terrible for real pollution. The CO2 monomania pushed by the CC adherents may help with climate change, but fks up the environment.

Wood burning pumps large amounts of CO2. etc. into the atmosphere now and relies on human intervention via tree planting to, at least, ensure that natural regeneration is not outweighed by other forms of consumption (burning trees, not trying to prevent "natural" forest burns, the timber industry for construction and furniture, etc.) by deploying "plans" to control and manage the flora and fauna of the planet over the long term.

Historically one might suggest that such eco-management plans have not been terribly successful except on small and very localised scales. Maybe.

If anyone can come up with a different view that proves success and clear sustainability lets discuss the likelihood of the reality of "Carbon Neutral" wood burning.

As a secondary discussion how about Tipping Points and the apparent need for immediate reduction in CO2 output rather than some possible, if lucky, reduction that becomes potential reality 2 or 3 decades into the future? How does that fit with unlimited wood burning today?

[plunker]

LongQ said:

As a secondary discussion how about Tipping Points and the apparent need for immediate reduction in CO2 output rather than some possible, if lucky, reduction that becomes potential reality 2 or 3 decades into the future? How does that fit with unlimited wood burning today?

Unlimited burning of strawmen would be a good thing

[deeen]

Lotus 50 said:

deeen said:

I've just read this.

Here's a quote from their summary: "Thus, for this very simple model,
solar forcing does not appear to contribute to the observed global
warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy"

In other words, because they can devise a model that retrospectively fits the data, they choose to dismiss other explanations. Not impressed!

Edited by deeen on Saturday 1st April 21:27

That interpretation is wrong - the modelling is a relatively simple statistical analysis rather than a detailed climate model retrospectively applied to the data. It basically says that the factors explaining the temp change are volcanoes and CO2 emissions, the influence of solar forcing is too small to show in the analysis. Read the discussion not just the summary.

Have you looked at the other papers as well?

Thanks for taking the time to answer, again. Yes I did read the whole paper, it seemed "padded", and I couldn't see any point at which they considered the possibility that other (non-human related) factors could cause the variations in climate, as they have for most of the Earth's existence, and will continue to do. Instead they seem to start from the position that it's CO2 related, then see if we need anything else.

The summary does specifically use the word "model", not "analysis". Quote: "...the observed global
warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy". Well yes, but that's not science? I could make up a model based on the number of fireworks in Swindon, and then say "The entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy".

I also wondered, while writing this reply, have they cherry-picked the time since the Little Ice Age?


I haven't looked at any of the other papers (I spent 2 hours on the first one) as PH is a hobby, not a full-time job! If you are able to recommend one which takes a more scientific approach, I would be interested to have a read.

[Globs]

durbster said:

Terminator X said:

How well have the models fared from 25-30 years ago when predicting today?

TX.

Probably not great. Computers 30 years ago weren't very powerful.

Why?

You could have an infinitely powerful computer but it would still fail because we haven't even got the data inputs we need. For instance what affects clouds? Well we know what affects aurora and therefore possibly clouds and that's space weather, from the cosmos, from the galaxy and from the sun.

So until you know the relationship between space weather and earth weather - and can predict the drivers of space weather - you're still missing one of the primary inputs you require. It's only recently the retarded AGW crowd noticed that more CO2 caused more plants to grow and thus mitigated the levels of CO2. Skeptics were talking about this decades ago - so how retarded to climate 'scientists' have to be to miss this out from their models for so long?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-2960...


Too many unknowns for AGW, sorry. The 'science' of 'climate change' is bunk, the models are incomplete rubbish and the predictions couldn't have been worse if they'd tried. How's that Idiot Mann's 'hockey-stick' warming getting on?

[Lotus 50]

deeen said:

Thanks for taking the time to answer, again. Yes I did read the whole paper, it seemed "padded", and I couldn't see any point at which they considered the possibility that other (non-human related) factors could cause the variations in climate, as they have for most of the Earth's existence, and will continue to do. Instead they seem to start from the position that it's CO2 related, then see if we need anything else.

The summary does specifically use the word "model", not "analysis". Quote: "...the observed global
warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modelled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy". Well yes, but that's not science? I could make up a model based on the number of fireworks in Swindon, and then say "The entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy".

I also wondered, while writing this reply, have they cherry-picked the time since the Little Ice Age?


I haven't looked at any of the other papers (I spent 2 hours on the first one) as PH is a hobby, not a full-time job! If you are able to recommend one which takes a more scientific approach, I would be interested to have a read.

You have to remember that the primary purpose of the paper is to provide a longer-term temp record - hence the amount of discussion around how they constructed the temperature record. There's nothing sinister in them choosing to go back to the 1750s, the work is based on analysis of measured temperature records and they extended the temperature record back to a point at which they decided that they couldn't go further back as the available measured temp records that pre-date that are too few and the uncertainties in the analysis would be too great.

The paper looks at most of the natural factors that cause climate forcing within the 250 years(ish) time frame: volcanic eruptions (and the natural emissions of sulphates etc that cause cooling), changes in solar activity and changes in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (i.e. ocean currents) as well as the influence of anthropogenic emissions. Ok, it doesn't explicitly include orbital change (Milankovitch cycles etc) but orbital change influences could well have been included in the solar forcing - and would probably be insignificant over the time period being examined. In any case the statistical models used by the authors to explore the factors behind the changes in temperature found in the new temp data time series explain the variations to the extent that any additional influences on the temp record are small/insignificant. This is what they mean when they say that the variations in temperature can be modelled using volcanism and anthropogenic emissions - statistical analysis shows that changes in these two factors explain nearly all of the variation in temp over the time period considered.

Remember that there are several different kinds of models that can be used to analyse an issue. These include:
- physical models (i.e. where you produce a physical replica of something, usually scaled down in size, and then apply forces to it under lab conditions to see what will happen),
- statistical models where you take data series and use statistical analysis to compare the relationship(s) between them, and
- other numerical models where you represent the physical properties of something using an equation or equations and then change some of the input parameters to that equation to see what the effect is.

The Berklee paper we're talking about uses statistical models (as do the others I've referenced) to analyse the factors behind the temp changes over the 250 years or so being examined. This differs from the models used to provide climate projections in the papers summarised in work such as the IPCC reports which are based on numerical models. All types of model can be valid scientifically, I'm not sure what you mean by un-scientific here? Is the writing style and that the primary purpose of the paper was to show the development of the longer temp time series plus a summary of the work done to understand the factors associated with those changes? Most of the papers I linked to are from reputable peer-reviewed journals so the science in them should be robust, although there are one or two conference papers so I suggest you go with the journal papers first.

[robinessex]

Lotus 50 said:

deeen said:

Thanks for taking the time to answer, again. Yes I did read the whole paper, it seemed "padded", and I couldn't see any point at which they considered the possibility that other (non-human related) factors could cause the variations in climate, as they have for most of the Earth's existence, and will continue to do. Instead they seem to start from the position that it's CO2 related, then see if we need anything else.

The summary does specifically use the word "model", not "analysis". Quote: "...the observed global
warming of the past 250 years; the entire change can be modelled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy". Well yes, but that's not science? I could make up a model based on the number of fireworks in Swindon, and then say "The entire change can be modeled
by a sum of volcanism and a single anthropogenic proxy".

I also wondered, while writing this reply, have they cherry-picked the time since the Little Ice Age?


I haven't looked at any of the other papers (I spent 2 hours on the first one) as PH is a hobby, not a full-time job! If you are able to recommend one which takes a more scientific approach, I would be interested to have a read.

You have to remember that the primary purpose of the paper is to provide a longer-term temp record - hence the amount of discussion around how they constructed the temperature record. There's nothing sinister in them choosing to go back to the 1750s, the work is based on analysis of measured temperature records and they extended the temperature record back to a point at which they decided that they couldn't go further back as the available measured temp records that pre-date that are too few and the uncertainties in the analysis would be too great.

The paper looks at most of the natural factors that cause climate forcing within the 250 years(ish) time frame: volcanic eruptions (and the natural emissions of sulphates etc that cause cooling), changes in solar activity and changes in the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (i.e. ocean currents) as well as the influence of anthropogenic emissions. Ok, it doesn't explicitly include orbital change (Milankovitch cycles etc) but orbital change influences could well have been included in the solar forcing - and would probably be insignificant over the time period being examined. In any case the statistical models used by the authors to explore the factors behind the changes in temperature found in the new temp data time series explain the variations to the extent that any additional influences on the temp record are small/insignificant. This is what they mean when they say that the variations in temperature can be modelled using volcanism and anthropogenic emissions - statistical analysis shows that changes in these two factors explain nearly all of the variation in temp over the time period considered.

Remember that there are several different kinds of models that can be used to analyse an issue. These include:
- physical models (i.e. where you produce a physical replica of something, usually scaled down in size, and then apply forces to it under lab conditions to see what will happen),
- statistical models where you take data series and use statistical analysis to compare the relationship(s) between them, and
- other numerical models where you represent the physical properties of something using an equation or equations and then change some of the input parameters to that equation to see what the effect is.

The Berklee paper we're talking about uses statistical models (as do the others I've referenced) to analyse the factors behind the temp changes over the 250 years or so being examined. This differs from the models used to provide climate projections in the papers summarised in work such as the IPCC reports which are based on numerical models. All types of model can be valid scientifically, I'm not sure what you mean by un-scientific here? Is the writing style and that the primary purpose of the paper was to show the development of the longer temp time series plus a summary of the work done to understand the factors associated with those changes? Most of the papers I linked to are from reputable peer-reviewed journals so the science in them should be robust, although there are one or two conference papers so I suggest you go with the journal papers first.

And, at the end of the day, they are all MODELS

[Lotus 50]

robinessex said:

And, at the end of the day, they are all MODELS

And at the end of the day, pretty much all science and every development behind modern-day technology is based on modelling so your point is?

[robinessex]

Lotus 50 said:

robinessex said:

And, at the end of the day, they are all MODELS

And at the end of the day, pretty much all science and every development behind modern-day technology is based on modelling so your point is?

They're crap! Not been correct yet!

[Lotus 50]

robinessex said:

They're crap! Not been correct yet!

So you're saying that every physics, chemistry and engineering equation is crap and wrong?

[robinessex]

Lotus 50 said:

robinessex said:

They're crap! Not been correct yet!

So you're saying that every physics, chemistry and engineering equation is crap and wrong?

I'm refering to CC models obviously, you're getting like Durbster now !

[LongQ]

plunker said:

LongQ said:

As a secondary discussion how about Tipping Points and the apparent need for immediate reduction in CO2 output rather than some possible, if lucky, reduction that becomes potential reality 2 or 3 decades into the future? How does that fit with unlimited wood burning today?

Unlimited burning of strawmen would be a good thing

Burn the Tipping points prophecy?

I could not agree more.

[deeen]

Lotus 50 said:

robinessex said:

And, at the end of the day, they are all MODELS

And at the end of the day, pretty much all science and every development behind modern-day technology is based on modelling so your point is?

@ Lotus, I take your point about the difference between statistical and numerical models. However, a pure statistical model does not say anything about cause and effect, hence the argument that increased CO2 is caused by increased temperatures. The example I remember from school is that the number of babies born in the UK correlates closely with the number of domestic fridges, but this does not prove that babies come from fridges.

My point is that they might be able to find a combination of other factors that together would also correlate, (I don't remember them mentioning cloud cover, for example?), but because of their pre-conceived ideas, they found the correlation they described, and stopped looking. This seems to me to be un-scientific, as in not open minded.

Anyway, I think I'll read the same paper again, in the light of your comments.

[Lotus 50]

robinessex said:

I'm refering to CC models obviously, you're getting like Durbster now !

Well, if you post crass sweeping generalisations like your original post you should expect similar in return.

In answer to your question, no CC models aren't rubbish. Yes the uncertainties around them increase over time and with increased detail but they are still good enough to help decision making around policy etc. Again have a look at some of the science (google scholar?) directly rather than relying on WUWT and the like for your info - e.g. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-8...