Best wishes from a white land
Just a quick note, today, to say "best wishes" to everyone about to celebrate Christmas or some other winter festival.
Here in London, it's been refreshing (in more ways than one!) to see snow on the ground and kids out playing in it - a reminder of childhood days.
For me, it's time to put the laptop away for a few days after the most intense reporting assignment I've ever had, and remember that there are other things in life besides the politics of climate change.
On that note, you'll doubtless have seen that rumblings and recriminations about the outcome of COP15 go on apace - who's to blame, how did it happen, etc. Roger Harrabin and I have contributed final analysis pieces for the BBC website, and you may also like to read Mark Lynas's account from inside the negotiating room in the Guardian.
The climate beat is going to be a somewhat lonelier place next year following the retirement from news reporting (on the final day of the Copenhagen summit) of probably the finest correspondent on the issue in the English-speaking world, Andy Revkin of the New York Times. Here's his account of why he's stepping down and what he's planning.
Not everything Andy has written pleased everybody - that goes with the territory. But as someone who broke a raft of stories during the Bush presidency, always set climate change in the context of other issues such as the growing human population, and regularly offered tantalising titbits of thought and analysis, he contributed to the understanding of climate change more than he probably realises - and his departure leaves a huge hole.
So best wishes to Andy - and best wishes to all of you too. The debates on this blog are almost always feisty, and sometimes phrases are used that I suspect wouldn't be employed if you were all meeting face-to-face... but I hope that amid the harsh words, we do sometimes find sparklings of new insight.
Happy Christmas.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~43~RS~)
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Merry Christmas everyone
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Best wishes to everyone, raise your eggnog in the air, turn up the heating and put plenty of logs on the fire. Oh and enjoy the repeats.
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Many people would disagree with your assessment of Revkin, but have a nice Christmas everyone, including Revkin
xxx
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Season's greetings to you too Richard. Here's hoping that next year the BBC will throw away the biased reporting and that the repercussions of Climategate will be told by the BBC. I sense that more and more physicists are starting to criticise the bad soft science that has been fraudulently passed as climate science. Let's hope that the rest of science will be allowed to recover from the climate change scam. Let's also hope that you examine the evidence and draw better conclusions than you have in the past.
Here's a toast to a good 2010.
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On another note I would shake all your hands, but it would cost you $1200 for the privelege :)
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\\\ Anniversary Blog ///
It has been a year to the day since I first gathered around Richard Black's virtual campfire. A fine year - a rewarding year.
I see a collection of some twenty-five scientific articles, from some of the finest scientists in the world, and all for the price of a bit of color printing. I believe in hard copy. The marvellous internet is one of those highly sophisticated pieces of infrastructure, and as such vulnerable to disruption on a number of fronts, including monetary and technical.
I am sipping on a very small glass of Drambuie, in memory of one of my uncles (Anthony), who had seen much of both the best and worst in the world, and could still find the time to visit with his nephew, act in a movie or two, sing, and generaly be a good and responsible man.
I am reminded in this 'Western Way' time of celebration - of "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men," that there is little enough of peace for most of the world, that Western Man has been more or less continually at war for the last five hundred years, and not to exclude anyone, that this propensity for conflict is not relegated in either time or place to either Western Man, or the Western Way.
Sitting on my desk as I write this, with our cat Ghost keeping me company at 4:30 am in Calgary, is a copy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's "Peace Speech" of June 10, 1963, given a few months before his untimely assassination, and almost a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, when I was an impressionable lad of just twelve years.
Despite JFK's extensive knowledge of history, and of the privelege of power, he apparently still thought true peace not only a worthy and realistic objective, but a necessary one, as mankind the technical genius had now in his hands the power, so to speak, of the universe.
I am reminded that three men, men of merit, men in the true sense of the word, both capable of responsible conduct, and in the final analysis, able to walk the talk, were perhaps responsible in a very real sense for us being here today, instead of in the aftermath of nuclear winter.
I lift my glass to Nikita Krushchev, then leader of the Soviet Union, submarine commander Vasili Arkhipov, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
I would like to close with a few words from JFK's Peace Speech:
"...In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
- Merry Christmas from Manysummits, Underacanoe, and Cloudrunner -
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Christmas Cheer to All.
"At Christmas play and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year."
:-)
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A spector is haunting Europe. It's the spector of a coming ice age, the consequence of global warming. The timing could hardly have been more prophetic.
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Will you be reporting on this or should I say, will the BBC
allow you :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/
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Richard Black.
"The debates on this blog are almost always feisty, and sometimes phrases are used that I suspect wouldn't be employed if you were all meeting face-to-face... but ... we do sometimes find sparklings of new insight."
cheers to that, and a peaceful holiday season to all.
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MarcusAureliusII #8.
"spector" -- spectre? as in spectral.
a peaceful holiday to you.
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Happy Holidays to all.
Although we may disagree upon the real environmental issues which need be addressed, I believe it safe to say that we all care.
Lets all hope for a more peaceful and environmentally friendly decade to come.
Cheers.
Kealey
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Thanks Richard for your really excellent reporting through the year. Enjoy the brief rest!
@6. manysummits: a nice summary at the top of your post. And thanks for the reminder about Arkhipov. I too will raise a glass to him. Your story of your uncle reminds me of a relative of mine, born 1925, a good and responsible woman, who tells me she has been lucky enough to have lived at the best possible of times. She believes life was much harder before and will be much harder after her. While I worry about the future, I usually gently disagree with her about the latter.
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I concur with the sentiments expressed by Flatearther and manysummits.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ....and let the debate continue in 2010
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For that Mr.Black may I wish you and your family a very merry christmas and a happy New Year.
To the people such as Manysummits, davblo and simon-swede etc the same for being basically polite in the debate, there are others of course.
For the climate realists 2010 will be the year AGW dies. Science will win over the politics have no doubt, the writing is not on only the walls but the roof and the garden.
Merry Christmas and stay warm
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Merry Christmas Richard and everyone
As the cold spell continues and over 100 people die from the cold in Europe, I suspect many will still be skeptics next year too!
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#12 LarryKealey
It amazes me that we can look at the same information and come to such different conclusions. But I must say if everyone agreed with me on every point it would be an extremely dull world! I guess the fact we're all still here proves we all care.
Keep up the good work Richard.
Happy Chritmas to all, and let's hope for wise decisions from our leaders in 2010.
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"sometimes phrases are used that I suspect wouldn't be employed if you were all meeting face-to-face."
there's a thought. i wonder how many would turn up if richard booked a bbc meeting room for regular posters? i dare say some prejudices would shattered :o)
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5 p.m. Just listening to the news that the US Senate has voted in favour of more universal healthcare - must mean a better New Year for many American citizens.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you, Richard, many thanks for all your hard work in digging up all the environmental revelations, I'm a retired BBC employee and I know that working for the BEEB isn't very easy these days.
And likewise greeting to all those contributors who have suppoted my posts.
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Streetphotobeing at 9.
Why is everything ‘sceptics’ write done in such a demeaning manner?
In fact the BBC have written on this issue over many years if you google it.
If they cover the subject I’m sure they would do it in a balanced way (unlike commercial news networks) and include current thinking:-
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11651
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090511122425.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080403083932.htm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/
However, I look forward to the results of the CERN CLOUD experiment with great enthusiasm.
Paul Kerr at 16 says:- ‘As the cold spell continues...’
Not everywhere Paul. 15 degrees C in Vienna on Christmas day and very warm in Bethlehem.
A very Merry Christmas and happy New Year to everyone across the globe, even those we disagree with.
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First, thank you Richard for your reports. In my opinion you have explained the "political" situation as it progressed and regressed very well. The "scientific" situation (both sides) is there for all to see if one cares to do the homework.
Secondly.........with all the comments on this blog........I bet the Beebs ratings have gone up somewhat!
Thirdly, yes most of us care and there appears to be much agreement that this world does need better care from all of us than it has previously had. The argument is in the detail.
Fourthly:-
20. At 7:06pm on 24 Dec 2009, thinkforyourself wrote:
"Not everywhere Paul. 15 degrees C in Vienna on Christmas day and very warm in Bethlehem."
And extremely hot in Australia!
15. At 3:36pm on 24 Dec 2009, Kamboshigh wrote:
"For the climate realists 2010 will be the year AGW dies. Science will win over the politics have no doubt, the writing is not on only the walls but the roof and the garden."
Eat your heart out! Care to open a book on it and give me 100 to 1 now?
Finally:-
Merry Xmas and happy New Year to everyone!!!!!!!!Let battle recommence some time down the track!!!!
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"Why is everything ‘sceptics’ write done in such a demeaning manner?"
Maybe it's because we've been likened to Holocaust deniers for years, and we're getting a bit fed up?
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To all those who have the opportunity to enjoy Christmas, I wish you a very good one.
Meanwhile, to all the rest, I hope the future brings promise of a more just and enjoyable life; I really do.
All the best; davblo
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For what it's worth -- not much in climate terms -- I look forward to sunshine and unseasonably high temperatures over the next three days. At least my solar panels mean I won't be paying out for energy.
I wonder if anyone else has seen the latest news reported news? It looks like 1998 was not necessarily the hottest year on record -- it might have been 2005. More at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091218b.html
For those, like me, without the relevant science to follow the argument in detail there's an interesting commentary at...
http://www.skepticalscience.com/1998-is-not-the-hottest-year-on-record.html
Quote; "GISS and NOAA both find 2005 is the hottest year on record (with 2009 possibly on track to pip 1998 as the second hottest year on record)."
Merry Christmas from my Devon farm. Regarding AGW; let's hope for some conclusive proof either way in 2010.
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"..."best wishes" to everyone about to celebrate Christmas or some other winter festival." Really, have you heard anybody qualify their Christmas greetings like this in the "real world"? Afraid of leaving the druids out perhaps? The usual political correctness so evident in BBC programming and writing. Oh, Merry Christmas (full stop).
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A Merry Christmas to all. And I hope 2010 will be positive for the climate.
A new technology is able to capture CO2 and CH4 from air and water. See: http://www.keshepowercells.com , and that good news!
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#26 Re: "M T Keshe"
The man behind this 'technology' bears all the hallmarks of a scammer. I can find no evidence he has any qualifications and he seems to operate outside the scientific community. Let's wait until he's peer-reviewed before we talk about 'good news'.
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I'm waiting for Underacanoe and Cloudrunner to wake up on this Christmas morning here in Calgary. Naturally I've checked the BBC headlines whist sipping a delicious coffee.
Times have changed, and although I am personally very happy this morning, there are matters which will not wait, oblivious as they are to human happiness or suffering:
Blizzard warnings as holiday storms hit central US
"The capital, Oklahoma City was hit by 14in (35cm) of snow by Thursday night, eclipsing the record of 2.5in set in 1914."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8430482.stm
-------------------
"There's a problem with the convenient shorthand of 'global warming.' If your local climate were to change by only a degree or two, you'd probably think, 'Who would notice?' or 'Why would anyone care?'
The big story is the extremes. The big story is that we are increasingly seeing these extremes reach limits that are right up against the system boundaries that we've designed into our agriculture, our socioeconomic systems, and our infrastructure, to make them safe. They are no longer safe."
- James McCarthy, lead author IPCC 2001 report on societal impacts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._McCarthy
- From the book "Thin Ice", by Mark Bowen, 2005, pp. 389 & 390 (hardcover ed)
- McCarthy JJ, Canziani OF, Leary NA, Dokken DJ, White KS
(eds) (2001) Climate change 2001: impacts, adaptation,
and vulnerability. United Nations Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change.
------------------------
- Manysummits -
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Nos 20
'In fact the BBC have written on this issue over many years'
Did a search here on : 'CERN CLOUD experiment' on here, seemed logical.
A few results came up : -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7092655.stm - interesting read
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/leadingedge_20061026.shtml
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Here is a new website which will provide continually updated information directly from one of the world's leading climatologists:
"Drs. Makiko Sato and James Hansen are constructing a web page, Updating the Climate Science: What Path is the Real World Following? In addition to updating graphs in the book Storms of My Grandchildren, this page will present updated graphs and discussion of key quantities that help provide understanding of how climate change is developing and how effective or ineffective global actions are in affecting climate forcings and future climate change." (from Dr. Hansens columbia website)
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
--------------------------------
I've taken a quick look - this is going to be a winner, I believe!
- Manysummits -
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I have just written to Dr. Makiko Sato, thanking her and the GISS team.
I note that there is as yet no viable replacement for the 'GRACE' gravity satellites, and that Dr. Hansen has been lobbying for many years, without success, for a satellite which can acuurately measure 'aerosols' in our atmosphere, the big unknown parameter in doing the physics of our planet's energy imbalance. (Hence the reliance on paleoclimate data, the instrumental temperature record, and empirical observations of the melting of the glaciers of the world, etc...)
I think it is time to begin campaigning for these new satellites, while we still have the money.
- Manysummits -
PS: For those interested, here is a copy of the note I just sent to GISS: (mhs119@columbia.edu)
---------
"I have just posted your new webpage on the BBC Environmental weblog @:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/12/best_wishes_from_a_white_land.html?s_sync=1#comments
I wish also to express my own and my family's gratitude to Dr. Hansen and all those at GISS working to provide 'us' with the information we will increasingly need re climate science and this new world we are all entering.
Heartfelt Best Wishes to All of You !!!
My name, B.Sc. ('Manysummits', and my wife 'Underacanoe' and five year old son 'Cloudrunner' - blogging names)
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I'm looking over this new site in more detail.
This is dynamite - exactly what we needed.
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
- Manysummits -
PS: Click on everything !
- Manysummits -
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@rossglory
Perhaps the reason we reach differing conclusions from looking at the same information is because of our differing experiences and studies.
First, the whole one issue 'CO2' is THE PROBLEM is based upon a 'casual' relationship between CO2 and temperature. To suggest that temperatures would not have risen in the last couple hundred years if we did not have the industrial revolution is quite ignorant in my view.
Second, to suggest that we have models which can accurately predict the future climate states is outrageous. The Earth's climate system is an incredibly complex, non-linear, chaotic dynamic system. One about which we know so very little. One of the main characteristics of Chaotic dynamic systems (like Earth's climate system) is that while they are deterministic, they are also unpredictable by nature. That is to say, we can influence the system with inputs - but we cannot predict the affects of such inputs upon the system.
Thirdly, when there is no transparency in science, it is no longer science. Likewise, when skepticism is not tolerated, it is not science, it is faith - faith in a religion. Why is it that the raw data, correction algorithms and models are all so 'super secret'? It smells really bad. It is transparency in science which keeps scientists honest. I will continue to dismiss any predictions or projections made, as well as the conclusions drawn, from research which is not reviewable.
Additionally, this is no longer science - its politics. The IPCC is not a scientific body, but a political one. Monies for research are directed by politics - those who do not support the 'appropriate political view' receive no funding.
As one who has studied and modeled chaotic dynamic systems for more than 20 years, I know enough to know that we have no hope of accurately modeling earth's climate system - much less 'control climate change'.
Copenhagen was about nothing more than redistribution of wealth and implementation of mechanisms which would not even address the perceived problem - only make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Whether you believe it or not, I do care very deeply about the environment and the people whom we share this planet with. I have to wonder why all the 'old environmental and humanistic' issues which have been around since I was a child are still there - unaddressed. There were droughts and famine in Africa when I was a child. It is certainly easy to predict that these will become worse if nothing is done - but not because of CO2 emissions - but because of continued population explosion, continued environmental rape, desertification, traditional pollution.
Please tell me how many wells in the third world have been poisoned by CO2? Now please tell me how many have been poisoned by 'traditional pollution'? Answer the same question related to farmland in the third world.
We know so little about what really drives earth's climate system as to be laughable. We do know enough about many of the 'old environmental issues' to have a real impact.
Handing 'free money' to third world governments will not solve any problems - only allow them to buy more weapons and increase corruption. The more the money, the greater the corruption.
Why is it that Europe burns African coal and yet blocks every attempt for African nations to obtain financing to build plants to burn their own coal?
Perhaps I could respect the 'climate change gang' if a) they were not mostly hypocrites and b) they did not have so much money to gain by climate legislation.
Look at the great spokesman Al Gore, worth only a few million (because of his daddy) at the turn of the century, now worth about one hundred million and poised to become the first 'climate change' billionaire should the legislation he is pushing be adopted.
I am a realist. The 'solutions' put forth for this 'supposed problem' are not realistic. Yet there are many realistic solutions to many real problems which are much better understood. Why do these issues remain ignored - as they have my entire life?
Next time you obtain information - or climate predictions - as for the raw data, correction algorithms, corrected data, margin of error, assumptions and models. When you get these - which you won't - the data will have been lost (perhaps to hide cherry-picking - who knows), the model will be 'propriatary information', the assumptions - none of your business...lol. As long as there is a lack of transparency with regards to this 'science' - and I use the term very loosely here - I will be very skeptical.
I personally think that land use has been the main driver for 'man made climate change'.
I am perfectly capable of analyzing data as well as models - why can't we see them?
There are so many real issues which need to be addressed in the world today - we don't need 'made-up' ones.
Do the world a favor - go plant a few trees...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@manysummits
If the science is 'settled' - why does this new 'wonderful' website you have found point to so many uncertainties? How can the authors suggest that the 'science is now settled' and the turn around and point out so many 'uncertainties'? (read the section on the first page about ice sheets and how poorly understood the mechanisms associated with them are).
If you really care so much, why not direct your efforts toward issues which are much better understood? Ones with which we can have a real impact? Like deforestation, over-fishing, traditionally pollution, starvation, poverty, desertification and the biggie of course: over-population.
The climate is going to change - it has always been changing. The 'millions at risk' on the Ganges River Delta are not at risk from rising sea levels, nor climate change - but because they have developed on land which is unsuitable for development. The land is sinking...because of the development - when you drain a wetland or bog and develop on top of it, it compacts. Why do you think New Orleans is ten feet BELOW sea level. New Orleans was not doomed by climate change or stronger hurricanes, New Orleans was doomed when some moron built a city on top of a peat bog - which has subsided fifteen feet in the last hundred years.
We have enough real issues without the 'man-made-up' issue of climate change.
As for Hansen - I won't even go there. Please give me one good reason why I should give credence to anything he has to say. If you really believe what you say - take your family and move to Africa, live in a hut, burning dung, tires, wood and whatever else you can scavenge to keep warm and cook the meager meals obtained from using stone-age farming techniques....but don't sit there in your cozy chair sipping your favorite liquor and spouting all this hypocritical non-sense.
Merry Christmas.
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Streetphotobeing at post 29.
My point exactly (post 20). A very balanced piece from 2007 on the ‘cloud’ controversy - and the author?
Richard Black.
I suppose this puts to bed, once and for all, claims that BBC reporting is biased on the climate change issue, doesn’t it.
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Re LarryKealey 33 and 34.
As much as I agree with every single word you say regarding man's stewardship of this planet.......our ONLY home (and if we were to find another, we would probably trash that in the same way), you have missed the point entirely.
In the minds of every scientist, the "science" is NOT settled.
If it were, the IPCC would not claim >90% Probability, they would state 100% Certainty!
If it were, the scientists being funded to research in this discipline (or multitude of disciplines) would have no further work to do.
However, in the MINDS of (almost) every one of the 193 "decision makers" (ie Governments/Politicians) who attended at Copenhagen and are responsible for policymaking, the "Science" is SETTLED! Or....to be more precise.......is SUFFICIENTLY SETTLED to demand that action be taken.
In other more simple words, the IPCC have won the battle.......SO FAR!
Of those "decision makers" at Copenhagen, there were many who do not want the IPCC disproved. As you (and so many others put it so succinctly) there are those "governments" who find this a convenient means of levering more funds from the "developed" nations.
Then there are those within the "developed nations" who intend to make vast fortunes out of Carbon trading! They, too, obviously have a vested interest in maintaing the IPCC position.
But the vast number of "decision makers" represented at Copenhagen come from Democracies where every so often their position of power, not to mention their comfortable income, is at risk from the public at large at the next election! And one way to annoy the public is to instigate unpopular policies such as increasing taxes and other such actions that make lives more uncomfortable.
The point I'm making is that, contrary to most opinions, most "decision makers" (politicians that make up governments etc,) would be only too happy if the whole "climate change" issue would go away.
There's only one way that will happen. That's for you and other like-minded scientists (of which I believe there are many), to convince the "decision makers" that IPCC have got it wrong! Tall order but there it is.
You won't do it by arguing with Manysummits and Rossglory et al. on this or any other blog.
So, Happy New Year, get your team around you, prepare your case and put it to the "decision makers" and if you can convince them, I and many others will be full of gratitude.
Then perhaps we can pressure them to do something about all those other probelms you spoke of, most of which they all agreed to deal to at the 1992 Rio Accord and which, as you so eloquently point out, they have done didddly squat.
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"... based upon a 'casual' relationship between CO2 and temperature."
If you an illiterate person who has so far failed to see a difference between the following words, I suggest you take a closer look at them now:
C_A_S_U_A_L
C_A_U_S_A_L
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Re 33:
"First, the whole one issue 'CO2' is THE PROBLEM is based upon a 'casual' relationship between CO2 and temperature."
No it's casual, as in there is overwhemling scientific evidence that raising co2 in the atmosphere causes warming. On that issue the science is settled.
"Second, to suggest that we have models which can accurately predict the future climate states is outrageous."
They don't accurately predict anything, but the range of possible results they provide all show significant warming from a doubling of co2.
"The Earth's climate system is an incredibly complex, non-linear, chaotic dynamic system. One about which we know so very little. One of the main characteristics of Chaotic dynamic systems (like Earth's climate system) is that while they are deterministic, they are also unpredictable by nature. That is to say, we can influence the system with inputs - but we cannot predict the affects of such inputs upon the system."
You characterize chaos incorrectly in relation to climate, but in any case the elephant in your room is that while the models show uncertainty, they all show significant warming from doubling co2 - which is a result reflecting the outcome of over 100 years of scientific study on the subject.
We could go on forever wishing the science would be overturned and doubling co2 was found to not cause significant warming. But until that happens many people are going to work with the science we have, not the science we wish we had.
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I have spent quite some time looking at the CERN CLOUD experiment and agree with the others posting here that this is very interesting and the results could be earth shattering. Interestingly, in one of the supporting proposals for the experiment, a senior scientist states quite categorically that current global warming IS cloud related and is linked to the level of Galactic Cosmic Rays. Interesting stuff.
I am staggered at the correlation between GCR intensity and global temperatures and the total lack of such correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures. This is shown very clearly in the CERN presentation on page 15 of:-
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
This illustration is shouting out a message loud and clear.
I was interested to read Richard's piece on this from 2007.
Thinkforyourself (post 35) thinks Richard's coverage here should convince us all that the BBC is unbiased.
Well, I confess I was surprised to find this post, however it is skewed very much against the GCR theory - lots of negative comment from "scientists".
To support an unbiased stance, we need to see a balanced article with equal space given to the pro and anti - that is not the case here.
Furthermore, alternative viewpoint articles from the BBC are extremely rare. A simple analysis of the reporting over the last six months shows an avalanche of pro IPCC reporting, some might say done deliberately in order to sway public opinion.
Richard concludes his article by saying there could be many red faces if this theory is proved to be accurate. I agree. It also might result in quite a few BBC journalists enjoying a career change.
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Unfortunately the moderators appear not to want you to see the CERN presentation slides as my link to them has been removed.
The link is given in note 4 of the Wikipedia entry for CLOUD at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD.
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Apologies - the link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD (no full stop)
Including the full stop takes you to the wrong item in Wiki.
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Richard Black:
Thanks for the extending of the holidays wishes......
=Dennis Junior=
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Nos 35
Yes but that seems to be it - one post and as brazenearlybird says :
"A simple analysis of the reporting over the last six months shows an avalanche of pro IPCC reporting, some might say done deliberately in order to sway public opinion.'
Here are some of the 'deniers' : -
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/environment/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71&k=0
Here is Dr Jasber kirkbys experience :
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=975f250d-ca5d-4f40-b687-a1672ed1f684
Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski view on ice core measurments of Co2 :
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=25526754-e53a-4899-84af-5d9089a5dcb6
Nos 41 if you havent already seen it you may find the first link on my Nos 9 interesting.
Its also very interesting to me that Joanna Haigh states that the UV output of the Sun can vary by 1 to 10 percent :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7092655.stm
'Joanna Haigh from Imperial College, London, UK. She realised that although the Sun's overall energy output changes by 0.1%, it changes much more in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.
"The changes in the UV are much larger, between 1% and 10%," she says. '
"And that primarily has an impact in the stratosphere (the upper atmosphere) - UV is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere and also produces ozone, and this warms the air."
10 percent - that is significant ! Have we also been hearing about a rise in skin cancers from UV ? Think we need to find out more about this UV output.
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@JRWoodman #21 RE:2005
I REALLY distrust the tiny tweaks of the temperature record as of late by the various organizations...especially Hansen. GISS is now questionable at best. In the 2000's Hansen has "adjusted" the record two or three times...each one increasing linearity. The records highs of the 2000s have each been accompanied by an "adjustment"...but their warming is statistically insignificant...VERY insignificant (about .05C off of 1998 temps)
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@manysummits #31 RE: James Hansen
Except I wouldn't trust James Hansen any farther than I could comfortably spit a dead rat...for reasons stated above
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@xtragrumpymike2 #36 RE: IPCC "certainty"
The thing most people seem to miss about IPCC's certainty is that its a bit...recursive. It ASSUMES it's correct first and then works out the uncertainty...which is a bit daft. Their uncertainty levels are LITERALLY the certainty that they're right about X amounts of warming...but only on the assumption that they're right that it causes warming in the first place. They skipped ENTIRELY over the point of showing any causal relationship. They just show some VERY short term correlations and then spend the rest of their time rationalizing how it must be so.
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@infinity #38
"No it's casual, as in there is overwhemling scientific evidence that raising co2 in the atmosphere causes warming. On that issue the science is settled."
Well it's "overwhelming" in the sense that there's some math that was clearly not intended to work on a dynamic atmosphere full of a phase changing liquid that deals with 30% of the earth's energy budget...that suggests SOME energy might be delayed. Unfortunately when put in that proper perspective it becomes clear that it would never have the full impact suggested by the math, if the math even described the process by which the atmosphere reaches its gradient (which it most certainly does not). But sure, if we put on the specially issued AGW blinders it looks a lot like there's "overwhelming" evidence. Now if we apply the slightest bit of thought to the problem though it becomes laughable.
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Winter Arctic sea ice recovery still not proceeding well.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.anom.series.html
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#33 LarryKealy
i understand that you have personal views about what causes certain environmental issues. from my perspective i have been 'aware' of the potentialities of co2 emissions for some time and eventually felt the issue crucial enough to complete a degree in environmental science. i know there's a circulating meme that this is a trivial degree scientifically comparable to sociology or such like, but that is rubbish. what is more there was a large module on esms and i even dabbled a bit myself (my background is computing).
anyway, from my studies and other reading i have come to a completely different view. all that is quid pro quo. what is not, however, is that your conclusion flies in the face of the scientific consensus. if i was in your position on any subject, i would have to feel very, very confident about my position to think that i could legitimately attack science in the way you do. and i'm really not sure where your confidence comes from (and that's a general not personal commnet btw).
but growing (native) trees is something we can both agree on. haven't planted any for a while so i can feel a new year's resolution coming on.
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#39 brazenearlybird
the gcr stuff has been banging around for ages. don't get too excited.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Just a quick 'Hello', and a link to the new website by Doctor's Makiko Sato and James Hansen.
In looking over my past years's notes and scientific articles on the state of the planet, I was looking for one graph, or graphs, to grace the front cover of my first binder. I think I will be using 'Figure 12' from the new website's "Updated Figure's Page', possibly with the graphs depicting the accelerating loss of the ice from 1)the Greenland Ice Sheet; 2)the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; and 3)the world's mountain glaciers.
For those interested, here is a link to 'Figure 12', which is for me very powerful. Note that the Goddard Institute for Space Sciences uses 1951 to 1980 as a base climatological period (30 years), for the anomalies depicted:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/UpdatedFigures/
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Hello 'rossglory' - I'm off for an early morning java,
- Manysummits -
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@rossglory what's not to get excited about?
Just in the last few days:
Study shows CFCs, cosmic rays major culprits for global warming
http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8012
Earth's upper atmosphere cooling dramatically
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34479085/ns/technology_and_science-space/
Looks like there are some really interesting bits of the climate puzzle coming into view for 2010.
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manysummits. Your link:-
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/UpdatedFigures/
Very interesting. It seems that if there were a strong correlation between solar irradiance and global surface temperature then, on incoming energy alone, we should be in a cooling phase, which, clearly we are not.
Furthermore, on the cloud issue, a reduced solar wind would allow greater incidence onto the Earth of ionising cosmic rays. The theory goes, from the cloud scientists, that this higher ionising radiation would increase cloud formation and thus, the Earth’s albedo. This would produce yet further cooling - and yet we see further warming.
For this reason scientists believe that both solar forcing and cloud albedo effects are small relative to the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2.
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\\\ A Personal Note ///
I just returned from a 'Boxing Day' coffee. It's clear calm and cold here (-13 C going to -2), and the Rockies were just starting to glow on the western horizon.
I had hoped to climb Packer's Peak today with a new found friend, but he is 'shopping' for gear instead. Interesting that - when you could be doing the real thing. We don't have a car, so no mountain for Poppa. Options are surprisingly limited. Tenzing of Everest spent many years away from his beloved mountains. I know how he felt.
I rushed back here to blog before the family wakes, after reading the year end revues in our local national newspaper.
What stood out was the 'descent of the decades,' I'll call it. Translation - 'things are getting worse.'
Christmas isn't even the same. The coffee shop I went to stayed open yesterday, Christmas Day, and the owner was just telling me all about it. He and his family took care of the shop, and the place was packed!
Obviously Christmas is not the same for many!!
The book revues for the decade came out with Cormac McCarthy's 2006 book "The Road" as a strong contender for representative of the decade. It wasn't long ago that we three watched Kevin Kostner's "Waterworld," and "The Postman."
Hollywood, artistic as always (or is it often?), is ahead of the curve, as is usual for the artistic community (along with a few climatologists).
"Storms of My Grandchildren" by James Hansen fits right in with this genre of apocalyptic future-gazing, as does my own situation - that of an aging late-in-life father of a vulnerable and dependent five year old (Cloudrunner), facing an especially uncertain future.
"A Separate Reality" by Castaneda was another of my recent reads, and the title seems appropriate for our discussions here on this blog.
Which version of reality do you believe in?
Regardless, it is time to choose, or perhaps to make the time to inform oneself so that one can choose.
Yesterday Underacanoe, Cloudrunner and I set off on a three hours sojurn to Turtle Hill to test out Cloudrunner's new sled. The day was perfect - mild, calm and clear, and the Rockies to the west were inviting to say the least. We had fun, especially the walk back, Old Sol having just set. Underacanoe & Cloudrunner were complaining of cold hands and fingers, and so I showed them the age-old mountaineer's trick of placing bare fingers and hands up against a bare warm stomach, mine in this case.
It was remarkable how appreciative were Underacanoe and Cloudrunner, not only of having newly warmed hands, but of 'learning' this trick.
'Passing it on down', I guess, would be the way I felt, a hint of the way it has always been for beings - on this planet anyway.
There is little time left. As such I will hit the new decade running - if time and circumstance permit.
I don't know what I will be doing in the New Year and Decade ahead. In some ways I'd like to make my living fighting for the ascendancy of both science and of feeling in our collective way of life. I don't even know what that means - it just came out!
The human being's history is mixed - much good, but at least equally as much bad. So it appears to have always been, and perhaps always will be.
But there are times when you must win, and this is one of those times.
We need some new satellites. Some to replace the aging 'GRACE DUO', and a brand new one to measure the aerosols in our atmosphere - a combination interferometer/polarimeter, if I remember correctly.
Who will build these and launch them?
- Manysummits, Calgary, Alberta, Canada -
(December 26, 2009 AD; 59 years, 360 days after the radiocarbon era)
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Scud Lewis at 50.
Your MSNBC post link actually gives further evidence for AGW from CO2 emissions. In fact I wouldn’t describe it as good news. The article states lower down:-
‘...This same cooling effect (in the earth’s outer layer of the atmosphere - my words) is expected to happen (somewhat counterintuitively) as carbon dioxide concentrations increase from emissions at Earth's surface. So understanding the natural variability of this layer is important to detecting any changes from carbon dioxide increases.’
We really need to get very serious about reducing GHG emissions. We can’t cling to the hope that the ‘cloud’ experiment is going to let us off the hook.
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@thinkforyourself - I'm not trying to get anything off the hook. Just interesting to see the field of climate science being explored to it's fullest.
You make an interesting point about the 'cloud' idea:
"this higher ionising radiation would increase cloud formation and thus, the Earth’s albedo. This would produce yet further cooling - and yet we see further warming."
Rather than make my own point - this New Scientist article made some useful points:
"Just as there's more than one way to heat a house, so there's more than one way to heat a planet." (and likewise for cooling?)
"Models suggest that rising greenhouse gases, including CO2, explain about 40% of the warming as the ice ages ended." (the natural bit / everyone agrees CO2 is a GHG)
"The ice ages show that temperature can determine CO2 as well as CO2 driving temperature. Some sceptics - not scientists - have seized upon this idea and are claiming that the relation is one way, that temperature determines CO2 levels but CO2 levels do not affect temperature." (I am not one of those sceptics)
"Finally, if higher temperatures lead to more CO2 and more CO2 leads to higher temperatures, why doesn't this positive feedback lead to a runaway greenhouse effect? There are various limiting factors that kick in, the most important being that infrared radiation emitted by Earth increases exponentially with temperature, so as long as some infrared can escape from the atmosphere, at some point heat loss catches up with heat retention" (now this is the bit that really fascinates me)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html
Here's to finding out more in 2010!
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To 'thinkforyourself' #51:
There is a full discussion of solar forcing/cosmic ray effects etc... in Jim Hansen's new book "Storms of My Grandchildren."
It is always helpful to remember that James Hansen is a planetary scientist who cut his teeth on atmospheric investigations of Venus' atmosphere, and only in the late 1970's did he turn his already considerable atmospheric physics knowledge towards our home planet.
At his Columbia website are many of his scientific papers, all available as 'pdf's, for those interested in the peer reviewed literature - an invaluable resource, if heavy reading unless one is a physicist. But he always takes great pains, it seems to me, to make these articles readable for those of us without the high-powered mathematical and geophysical education which would of course be necessary for a detailed analysis of these papers.
As is usual, one has to decide who is credible, and who is not. It helps that the various national academies of science around the world have weighed in with their considered opinions.
It has always seemed to me slanderous to impune the reputation of scientists such as James Hansen without due diligence. But this is the blogosphere, and like a great mountain, one has to be able to adapt to
circumstance and think on one's feet.
Holiday Greetings,
Manysummits
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Thank you for the report, the pretty picture, and the links, Mr Black.
Clearly, there will be no let-up in intensity, even as we all profess our yearning for a proper break for celebrations, rest, family, friends... It seems to me a spark has been ignited, at Copenhagen, that is taking this process to a whole new level, regardless of anyone's distress, objections or lamentations. I am part of that, too: I 'must' work on the next novel, the other novel, the book, the play, the production... And yet. And yet. There is this elephant in the room: The Climate. Obviously, there is still resistance to sanity. How can that not keep us in overdrive, whether we like it or not?
Some thoughts on the links: My favourite line in Mr Lynas's piece is this one: "Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken." OK, please start breaking it, then.
There should be no "iron rules" that are never to be broken in reporting or analysis. Sometimes, an investigative report may be weak or flawed because of distorted or missing information. (That's why I become so upset about declining education, notably in the US: you teach a bright kid from a badly skewed history book, then the kid becomes a reporter or analyst, and s/he is not operating from a full deck. The high school texts, at that most impressionable age, have systematically undermined perceptions about how we arrived at the present state of affairs, at these perceived distributions of power, real or imaginary.)
Really, we have to get away from the idea that there are any ideological sacred cows when it comes to teaching people healthier ways to live, to extend life & health -- which is what we are actually trying to do in this climate change mitigation effort.
While I accept Mr Lynas's "eyewitness account" & accord it some weight, I also know there were the serious errors in the handling of the Chinese delegations credentials. Such a serious misstep would have required considerable compensatory gestures. Had it been my mistake, I would certainly not have hesitated to grovel (literally) in abject apology before the offended delegation. Those kinds of mistakes are really inexcusable at a major event, and to me almost suggest actual sabotage -- someone's deliberately underhanded snub, an exceedingly foolish (not to mention juvenile) tactic.
What else might have gone wrong? I doubt very much Premier Wen traveled all the way to chilly Copenhagen specifically to torture others with his absence. That no one succeeded in figuring out what was happening that was offending the Chinese suggests further failures on the part of the Protocol Team. The answers could lie in something as banal as the way the accommodations were fitted out, or anything that might have caused the Chinese to feel particularly hostile -- for example, surveillance. If I know anything about Americans, it's that they would have used all kinds of tactics to gain a negotiating advantage -- instead of just allowing the talks to play out -- and, frankly, half the time the work they do is just clumsy & annoying.
You also have to consider the impact of the translations & interpreting. Yes, the UN had its translation team there. Are these the best linguists & translators available? Frankly, no. With all due respect for my colleagues in this arcane field, the very best interpreters won't work for the UN. Why? Because they don't really want to live in NYC, or they have better offers & more interesting careers elsewhere.
Obviously, if Premier Wen is there, he will have his own Chinese interpreting team with him. But how good were they? How good were their opposite numbers from the hosting side? Mandarin is a richly-nuanced language. How good was the oversight? Was there an additional layer of interpretation security -- basically, a supervising linguist whose job is not to translate at all, but just to listen to everyone who is speaking & translating AND MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO ERRORS, OMISSIONS OR UNFORTUNATE CHOICES OF WORDS. Anytime you have a serious negotiation going, you need that extra layer, because it is, indeed, very demanding work to be listening with your ears & translating into a different language with your lips at the same time, and stretching your memory at the same time to omit nothing.
I know: I do this all the time, people. I am as good as it gets in this field.
This ties directly in to something Andy Revkin says, about "translation algorithms." Sorry: won't fly. These do exist; they are lousy -- dangerous, because they lull you into a state of complacency -- and there is no getting around the fact that Translation is an Expert Qualification that very few people actually possess.
You do actually have to have a Human Brain present & engaged to deliver an accurate translation. No algorithm will ever accommodate the near-infinite number of ways to say "Yes, No, Maybe" in diplomatic, formal, intricate X-ese, or Z-ish. In fact, something worse happens: authentic language becomes degraded as people with slight or partial knowledge of a second or third language begin to forget the exact equivalencies in their own. Misunderstandings then proliferate like a nasty virus... Spreading into reports, documents, analysis and ultimately -- again -- those explosive textbooks that then reiterate, based on "primary source: eyewitness Lynas: 'China killed COP15.' " And we are back to Square One.
It is not "translation algorithms" we need, but better recognition, at an early age, of those children who are indeed extremely articulate, with advanced linguistic communication skills, and a facility for foreign languages. We then need to train them to the hilt & protect them as vital assets to the whole global diplomatic process. We think we are doing this now: not by a long shot. Imagine you take a Mozart and then confine him to a Suzuki school method of music-learning. That is what our schools now do: we have (in the EU at least) a "standard" method for teaching languages to "average gifted students." But the average gifted students are NOT going to be your language experts. They are not "Mozart."
You need to find those linguistic Mozarts & build them a curriculum all their own, put them in completely separate schools where the orientation is 100% Language-driven -- as we actually do pretty successfully for math & science & engineering prodigies -- and really let them swim in the stuff, guided by the inclinations & propensities of their own powerful little minds, instead of by existing outdated methodologies. Basically, they need to Read & Write & Speak about Everything (including, of course, Grammar!), in all the languages they use. That's the curriculum for training a language expert.
I am inclined to think at the core of it, even as simple a thing as correctly translating "binding" could have created all kinds of mental blocks. Most English-speakers don't even think about the deeper meaning of the words they use half the time. But to be a successful diplomat, you have to be a trained semanticist as well. What was meant by "Binding"? What does it mean to you? What kind of "Binding"? The kind that was practiced in pre-Communist China, when the parents would crush a little girl's feet with rocks, inflicting lasting agony, and then "bind" the cut & wounded feet with strips of cloth, effectively crippling the child forever?
And if our own lingua franca -- English -- was being used, can we be completely sure the Chinese delegation correctly understood the terms? Did anyone ask? Did anyone take the time to explain how they imagined "binding targets" would work? Was there a rush to push through a document? Was enough time given to mull things over?
If AGREEMENT is actually important, sufficiently important to bring together 110 Heads of State or Heads of Government, deliberations have to be what they are called: very deliberate.
As we know just from the glancing interactions on this blog (and I agree with your assessment that we would all be more civil if we were in person: would love to try that sometime!), "everyone" has made up their minds, and those of us that made up our minds long ago (as I did 26 years ago this coming 31 Dec.) are in a huge hurry to get this thing "done."
So I say this, in response to Mr Lynas, not to provide "excuses for China" but to suggest that seasoned negotiators, committed to a goal (as certainly Angela Merkel, Gordon Brown and others were) should have considered modifying their situational approach, rather than just focusing on the language & process. The fact that we arrive at the USBASIC document known as "The Copenhagen Accord" shows that China was more comfortable in a Small Group, where it felt less exposed & less defensive.
That tells me two things: the key players should have been willing to shoo everyone out of the room, and have, say a four-way meeting (Brown, Merkel, Sarkozy, Wen), plus or minus the UN SG, and of course Obama once he finally arrived. The EU could also have made better use of Medvedev. Russia has an EXCELLENT rapport with China, and Russia's position -- if anyone had bothered to take a close look at it & weigh its value as further arguments that might sway the Chinese -- was an effective bridge between the EU & China.
For one thing, the Chinese see the Russians, legitimately, as friends, and would have felt more comfortable if they had seen someone who was an Obvious Friend present. For another, Russians have fantastic language experts specifically for Mandarin. I have met some of their Sinologists: truly impressive.
But, of course, it would be anathema for the US State Dept to consider having a three-way meeting between Obama, Wen and Medvedev -- even though it might have accomplished more. US State hates to look like they are weak. And that is in fact their greatest weakness. That is why they ARE weak.
Sticking to old habits at the most crucial diplomatic effort in all of human history was probably not a wise move. It is easy to see how & why it happened, but it is also unfortunate (if the purpose is to lament what was not achieved at COP15, instead of to celebrate whatever actually was: a public declaration that we must stop these old habits from killing us). By not thinking harder -- perhaps because of the fatigue, administrative stresses complicated by pushy advocacy from NGOs, and no doubt the cold as well (plus the Chinese would be seriously jet-lagged, something also to consider in questioning where Mr Wen was) -- the EU leadership probably missed a few 'subtle' steps they could have taken to make the meetings easier.
Remember: we all have our biases. The EU bias today is that EU comprises 27 members. You are used to having meetings involving two dozen leaders. You are habituated to your own multiculturalism. China is a monolith. Their top leadership does not usually have meetings of "50 to 60 equals." There is a Hierarchy, and when there is a Party Conference, the Uppermost Leadership is not on a footing of any kind of "equality" with the ministers, much less journalists or rank-and-file. However you may feel about that kind of system -- considering the size of the population, you would have a lot of rank-and-file to contend with if you were as casually "democratic" & "informal" in your power politics as most Americans traditionally are -- THAT IS THE LANDSCAPE GIVEN. One has to plan & adapt accordingly.
How many meetings did Kanzlerin Merkel have on her own with Premier Wen? Or PM Gordon Brown?
And how did they explain the word "binding"?
Because, as the case of Canada has demonstrated, there is no ultimate "binding" anything about trying to reverse emissions rates. No one is going to go to war. Probably more reassurance was needed about the fact that this was not an attempt to put anyone at a commercial disadvantage -- just a process to start reversing damage done previously by profoundly flawed practices in industry & foreign trade.
Enjoyed all your reports, and Roger Harrabin's, enormously. Let's make COP16 another -- bigger -- step forward, but not limit it to that meeting a whole year away, by any means.
Happy Second Day of Christmas, and keep the revels & the juices flowing...
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Thinkforyourslf #51
"we should be in a cooling phase, which, clearly we are not".
But we are in a cooling phase, albeit just beginning. The GCR theory supporters are now suggesting we are on the brink of a long term downward temperature trend - there is talk of another "Dalton Minimum" in prospect.
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Rossglory #47
Yes, I appreciate this has been around a few times and gets a bit of a thrashing from Real Climate, but the CLOUD experiment is something very different. They are expecting definitive results in the very near future. That to me indicates there is something real in prospect.
Looking at background info from Jasper Kirkby, I am encouraged that this is not just a whim.
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To 'thinkforyourself' - a few more thoughts:
Reading Maria Ashots post #56 reminds me how narrow is my own worldview.
I grew up watching Alan Shepherd and Nasa take their first steps into space, and Neil Armstrong land on the Moon.
I am of course aware, more than aware, of the funadamental contribution of the great Wernher von Braun to the American space program, and lest we forget, the work of the Russian Constantin Tsilokoskvy to rocketry and space flight.
I concentrate on GISS at NASA because they are familiar to me personally, and because in a wider context I see the Hadley Center in the UK and GISS as two of the most reliable organizations in the field of climatology.
But I have the Russian release on the state of the climate in their country, and it seems to this observer to confirm in spades all significant findings of both the Hadley Center and GISS.
I wish I knew more. The Danes are great in the field, their names legend. But I am only human, and must stick to what I know best on this weblog, which is in English. The report from the Stockholm Resilience Centre was a breakthrough in thinking, I believe, and hopefully there is more to come, perhaps from unexpected quarters.
At heart my love is the outdoors - it is where I 'live.' Hence my concentration on the mountain world and the cryosphere.
With few exceptions, every glacier in the world is in retreat, and often at extraordinarily alarming rates. This includes the Greenland Ice Sheet, above sea level and in the North, and the most vulnerable, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, our only remaining Maritime Ice Sheet.
As James Hnasen repeatedly points out, 90 percent of the planet's current energy imbalance is going into the ocean. Why should this be surprising? The World Ocean covers some 70 percent of our planet's surface, and has a low albedo.
As for Copenhagen and politics, here is a thought from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense", ca 1776:
"Society in every stste is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst stste, an intolerable one."
I'm afraid I am even a little doubtful of "society," for as the Vedas tell us:
"In the society of men, the best man becomes a sinner."
Hence my admiration for your chosen blogging name!
- Manysummits -
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Nos 56 -
'"everyone" has made up their minds'
Sorry to inform you but, nope. However that was a very informative piece. There are more fundamental problems. For me the meeting was based on paranoia and what is seen in a ponzi scheme - 'affinity fraud' type behaviour rather than good science. Lets get the good science before we get a bit toasty over what is meant by 'binding'
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Interesting Christmas climate puzzle set by our BBC host Richard Black.
He mentions these people:
Roger Harrabin
Mark Lynas
Andy Revkin
Richard Black
The puzzle is which is the odd man out?
1) They are all on-message. No skeptics on the list so it's not that.
2) They are all m-m-m-men. A bit like those grumpy old right wing skeptics he described last week in his ill-tempered filler. So it's not a gender issue.
3) Science qualifications? Not sure if any of this gang of 4 has any qualifications in science at all. Not that.
4) The answer is ... Mark Lynas is the odd-man out because he is not sending nor getting nor even mentioned in the ClimateGate emails. All the others are senders, CCed, and mentioned in the emails.
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poitsplace #44
I fear your reading ability is somewhat impaired, (deliberately?)
No where in my comment (#36) do I link IPCC with CERTAINTY.
Please, if you wish to quote me again, first "peruse" my contribution using the correct definition of "peruse".
Alternatively, you could change your "blog" name. How would "Poeticlicence" do for a starter?
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No. 6: Manysummits, Underacanoe, Cloudrunner:
Beautiful, well-said, and so apt. Thank you. Happy Anniversary. And Cheers!
And "Cheers!" to you too, everyone!
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Jack Hughes, No. 61: Fascinating, but not ultimately relevant to the state of the climate.
Look at it this way: There are Two basic versions of reality to examine here:
(1) Climate is safe as is. Sub-thought: "Climate is Invincible."
(2) Climate has been destabilised as a direct result of some human activities that can be changed, with mitigating effect.
If you adhere to Position (1), then there is nothing to worry about. Who cares who was a sender or receiver or a CC addressee?
Let's assume a concern might be: it will be harder to make ends meet after "they" get through with "us."
On the other hand, there are so many other ways "they" could ruin "us" if such were the goal. How many of "us" have any kind of control over the economic landscape in our country?
The global financial meltdown alone did massive damage to just about every bank account on earth -- not to mention those even without accounts. Were any of "us" able to stop the financial meltdown?
So if you believe that "the climate is fine as is" there is really nothing to argue about; you can just go merrily about your business... unless, of course, you are in fact representing Big Business (and not the "little person" at all), in which case we are entitled to make your life difficult. We -- the other side of this debate -- perceive Big Business to be the cause of the problems we accept as indicators of a climate that has become dangerously unstable because of mismanagement of resources & processes by... Big Business.
And those of us who are aligned with Position (2) are not going to be swayed in any way by your attempts to implicate any of the persons you have named in anything bearing the ridiculous, US-centric designation of "ClimateGate." The very word itself exposes the "scandal" as a cheap, tinned, pre-fabricated, half-baked "wag-the-dog" kind of diversionary tactic.
Notice it is not sticking. So give it up. If you have an actual "argument" to make, let's hear it.
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rossglory, No. 18: Agreed. But there's probably some House Rule against it, so we will have to make our own arrangements, I suspect.
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To everyone heartened by the "cooling trend": let's just see how long this lasts, OK? If the sakura blooms by Valentine's Day, I would say all bets are off...
What does the melting of the ice sheets accomplish: cooling. Exactly as physics says it will.
And once the ice is all gone, what do we get? A warm bath where the ice cubes used to be...
Cooler at night, warmer in the day, hot at noontime: basically uncomfortable.
Permafrost crisis, water crisis, drought, crop failures, bee colony collapse & diseases: you are not going to wriggle off this hook, no matter how long you imitate the ostriches.
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Larry Kealey, No. 33 inter alia: You are obviously a highly intelligent person of integrity, and value both. You understand Chaos and use it as an argument.
How can you fail to connect all the true problems you enumerate, that we all agree are Problems with how things are today, and, as you correctly say, remain unaddressed after decades of worry about them -- and not see that these very problems translate into Pollution, which is to say Emissions, which includes, of course, rates of Carbon Dioxide saturation of the atmosphere, and Oxygen levels, and so forth?
How can you admit that we have erred not to address the problems, yet not see that the deteriorating quality of ambient air -- which is ultimately what the AGW "climate change gang" (as you call us) is calling attention to -- is a direct result of that failure?
OK, you don't see that it is possible to build an accurate model of the planet's climate. To a degree, that is a true statement: building a 100% accurate model would require essentially replicating the planet in terms of its complexity. But at the same time, reliable oxygen level metres are gadgets we do have; water composition tests are not even complicated, in scientific terms; bee colony collapse is being studied, because we have the necessary tools to examine its causes... And temperature measurements, which the IPCC and all their scientific colleagues inevitably averages out, are hardly difficult to accomplish.
Why should we ignore the data? Because, in terms of aeons, "Life Goes On?" How does that help me, and my children, in a landscape packed with phthalates & methyl bromide?
Were phthalates & methyl bromide a problem 200 years ago?
Can you, such a highly intelligent person, actually sit there and assert that the rubber industry did not change how we live, the quality & the content of the air we breathe?
BBC Newsnight has a wonderful 17-minute report about how Russian old-growth hardwood timber is being harvested by North Korean slave labour (what it really is) under an agreement that dates back to the times of Brezhnev. Was any of that possible 200 years ago?
This shameful enterprise benefits some powerful Britons as well, notably Peter & Leo Hambro of Peter Hambro Mining. And of course there are Russian criminal interests, corrupt government officials, Chinese timber barons, attendant intermediaries and international export firms all in the mix.
Do you in fact not see any link between the McMansion explosion in North America (and evidently also Australia) of the past decade, the passion for high-end furniture, fine cabinetry and exquisite hardwood floors, and the loss of irreplaceable forest?
Chaos Theory never suggests that if you take a key element out of a system, the system won't change.
A tree living in the Russian Far East, breathing and metabolising, accomplishes much more than the same tree reduced to planks, veneer and paneling in some classy pub or bar -- or Board Room. They are not equivalent values.
And why do you conclude that those of us who wish to see human beings moderate their habits, modify their ambitions and Think More as they engage in enterprise are ipso facto advocating a return to living off the land, using dung for fuel or any of the other absurdities you impute to us?
How on earth is expecting clean drinking water a sign of backwardness? All I want for Christmas is my nanofiltering system for the water I drink and use. That is an upgrade -- not a downgrade -- of our current lifestyle.
So our parents' generation did not succeed in addressing its most urgent problems. Maybe the facts of World War Two had something to do with that failure. Maybe the legacy of WW1 and the Great Depression contributed.
Does that mean we are not allowed to address these Problems now?
And if we were to be allowed to address them, and were in fact addressing them, how do you imagine that process would unfold? What would it look like & sound like & smell like? Do you think we would have instant consensus and no obstructionism?
Because I think what we have, what we see, what we hear & argue about is in fact precisely that: Problems long neglected finally being Addressed. Even in Copenhagen. And even with respect to emissions, 'safe' pollution levels for health, and climate.
It seems that even getting people to agree that "We Reject Pollution in Principle" has been a pretty big first hurdle to clear. Would be nice if some of the next few hurdles were a little easier.
If you don't really believe they are even hurdles to consider clearing, why bother trying to stop the rest of us?
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\\\ In the Moon ///
Just back from another sledding expedition, this time at our close-by mountain view park. Another perfect day, complete with one of Emily Dickenson's "molten blue" skies.
The hill we were using faces West, and the Rockies were in full view, smaller than sometimes, no doubt due to the differing refractive properties of the atmosphere on different days. The golden Sun was in full view as it made its inevitable descent behind the mountains, and as the aspect of the hill was West, climbing back up it, sled in hand, the rising quarter Moon was in full view.
And I thought, there, at the southern end of the terminator, must be the Shackleton Crater, possible site of a future Moon-base, and there at the northern end of the terminator, must be the Hermite Crater, which currently holds the record as coldest place in the Solar System, at some 26 deg Kelvin (-249 deg C - Wikipedia).
And then I thought, as images of Emily Dickenson "leaning against the Sun" ran through my head - that I could not see one extra molecule of CO2 in our atmosphere, nor could I detect unambiguous signs of global warming in the six inches of powder snow we were sledding over.
And then Manysummits the Pilot thought - how like instrument flight!
Total dependence and faith in one's instruments, for better or for worse.
Man the technological whiz-kid could not have built the aircraft or the rocket, nor the means to measure accurately the Earth's global temperature and the CO2 content of the air, without also have built the factories and coal-fired power plants, the hydro-electric dams and the nuclear reactors, and The Bomb, etc...
But now we know something of the cost of all this marvellous technology.
And what are we doing now that we know, beyond reasonable doubt?
We are squabbling - that's normal - but we are not going to the Moon, nor seriously making plans to exploit the Solar System's stores of energy and materials.
Too busy killing each other over the last drops of oil, I guess.
What a waste, what an inexpressible tragedy.
Let's dispense with the 'poor me' syndrome, and get on with it.
- Manysummits -
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Thank you, Manysummits -- so evocative...
And I was just looking at Ben Schott's "Vocabularist" weekly column in the NYTimes, online: a "Christmas Competition" full of gorgeous poetry & other delectable submissions. A most delightful effort shepherded by another Londoner, Ben Schott.
Remarkable, how people rise to the occasion, when given the means to express the contents of their souls.
Curiously, when it comes right down to what matters, most of us are in agreement about almost everything; so why do we quarrel about the rest?
Another pathetic extremist tries to blow up a bunch of people & winds up being treated for his wounds by the very people he sought to destroy. Must feel pretty stupid, for starters. He has a kindred spirit in a similar situation in Ft. Hood, Texas.
The BBC are doing a beautiful report on the Soviet military assault on the Kabul palace, 30 years ago tomorrow. They interviewed the man who gave the command, and a child who survived.
But no one interviews the butchers in the Soviet leadership who actually decided to commit this atrocity. Their families are all wealthy. Their descendants are still around. Why can't the descendants of the victims of a war crime sue the descendants of the perpetrators -- the actual perpetrators, not their powerless agents -- for reparations?
Ah, now that would really upset the world order, wouldn't it?
And to think some people find what we are trying to do -- impose some sense of decency & accountability on industry & commerce -- controversial!
They should count their blessings. They are only being asked to provide the minimum of reform that their own children will require, to continue enjoying themselves.
No one has even mentioned litigation against the chief polluters, with a demand that they pay our medical bills, or reparations for harm done!
Will it have to come to that, before they throw in the towel?
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I thought the ice was supposed to be melting at a catastrophic armagedon like rate?
Artic sea ice monitor
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
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I was surprised that so many of you found the time to blog at christmas. Yesterday was a double shift of preparing and eating a boxing day meal for one part of the immediate family, followed by a second boxing day meal with other close members of the family.
We didn't do the big turkey christmas dinner as it can be wasteful. We chose instead, a small piece of venison that cooked quickly, served up with a range of seasonal vegetables. This year the resolution starts, I am not waiting until Jan 1st. My personal resolve is to use more locally grown foods, buy less food, waste less, compost more and recycle more.
My christmas present was a new oven because I have been without one for some time. I dismantled the old oven to see if there was anything I could make from the components. The inner oven component has an insulated jacket surrounding it. I wonder if I could make an emergency outdoor oven from this. Most of the other bits of metal can be recycled. Any ideas?
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@Thinkforyourself #53 who wrote...
‘...This same cooling effect (in the earth’s outer layer of the atmosphere - my words) is expected to happen (somewhat counterintuitively) as carbon dioxide concentrations increase from emissions at Earth's surface. So understanding the natural variability of this layer is important to detecting any changes from carbon dioxide increases.’
Only this same cooling effect occurred VERY suddenly and as the sun's magnetic field collapsed. Obviously CO2 is not the cause. These layers get most of their heat from interaction with the sun's UV output. The sun's UV output varies substantially during the solar cycle...and is now at EXTREMELY low levels.
Something most people don't realize, the amount of variation in UV is actually greater than the total variation in the sun's overall output. Most of the energy is still emitted but it is instead emitted in mostly frequencies of visible light...and as such, is more likely to be reflected. Its not a huge difference but it means the sun probably has about twice the (direct) impact that the IPCC assumed since the IPCC just assumed there was only the .1% variation in overall energy output.
================================
@XtraGrumpyMike2 #62 who wrote...
No where in my comment (#36) do I link IPCC with CERTAINTY.
in #36 he'd written...
"If it were, the IPCC would not claim >90% Probability, they would state 100% Certainty!"
You'll have to (Or not) excuse the loose paraphrasing of the AGW movement. The message was merely inspired by your comment. You will note that nowhere in my comment to you...do I actually say it is about you. In that spirit I return your unnecessary comment as I'm sure you can find someone else it actually applies to :P
"I fear your reading ability is somewhat impaired, (deliberately?)"
================================
@Manysummits #59 who wrote...
"As James Hnasen repeatedly points out, 90 percent of the planet's current energy imbalance is going into the ocean."
And as I (and other skeptics) have pointed out...this warming is ALSO insufficient to even account for CO2's supposed "forcing", much less the supposed feedbacks.
================================
@Maria Ashot #66 who wrote...
"And once the ice is all gone, what do we get? A warm bath where the ice cubes used to be...
Cooler at night, warmer in the day, hot at noontime: basically uncomfortable.
Permafrost crisis, water crisis, drought, crop failures, bee colony collapse & diseases: you are not going to wriggle off this hook, no matter how long you imitate the ostriches."
Ummm...I don't think you know what the heck you're talking about there Maria.
First off the main greenland/antarctic ice sheets (Ice sheets are ones that generally don't move about...unlike glaciers) are QUITE stable. Only the GRACE satellite data shows that they might be losing mass, but GRACE uses gravity data and is not really something we can trust at this point...especially with ALL OTHER MEASURES showing the main sheets actually thickening. Anyway, their temperature NEVER gets above freezing so they're not "melting".
In fact, if you would look up the mass of the ice sheets you'd find that the rates of loss they're talking about are trivial and would take so long that even at 10X the current rate that CO2 would have long since peaked and declined again before even the greenland ice sheet could have melted. But again...since the temperature isn't ever getting above freezing on the main ice sheets.
Sea ice on the other hand, isn't really a big issue. It gets in the way of just about everything. Life in general is hindered by sea ice and for that matter...permafrost. Loss of permafrost is not a "crisis" except to the small number of people that use it as a foundation for their homes. You COULD make some claim trying to link permafrost and methane levels, but with a half-life of only a decade there is no real chance for methane to be a feedback. Basically whatever increases in methane we've had from the warming of the 80s and 90s is just about all we could ever have.
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#71 @sensiblegrannie
In case your old oven is lined with asbestos, I'd leave it well enough alone if I were you!
However, these dark winter nights of overeating can be the perfect opportunity for experimenting with more benign chemicals...
You've finished your candlelit dinner of reheated venison with turnips, parsnips, sprouts, marrows, swedes, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, and the other indigestible plant matter that can grow in freezing rain. Time for the bicarbonate of soda, and time to put the candles out. Do it in a fun, odorless way with our old friend, carbon dioxide!
Put about a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into a glass, and add a splash of vinegar. It will fizz and bubble as carbon dioxide is released. If you leave the glass on the table, the CO2 will collect inside, because it's heavier than air. Then fold a piece of paper to make an open chute, and hold one end over the candle flame, as if to pour water down the chute onto the flame. Now "pour" the carbon dioxide from the glass down instead. The gas is invisible but heavier than air so it will oblige, although it takes a few seconds, and it will put the candle out. Not only that, but because the wick is thoroughly extinguished, it won't release more toxic stuff as it smolders (which is why smoldering candles smell bad).
Children enjoy this -- it's a bit of a conjuring trick, only honest because it's genuinely scientific!
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bowmanthebard,
I think you are right, the wrapping around the oven does look like asbestos. I shall carefully dispose of the offending item. Asbestos is still everywhere, lurking in unexpected places and with the potential to cause asbestos related cancer.
I had a go with your experiment and accidently set light to the paper. The vinegar in the glass poured out with the bicarb and made a fizzling sound as it reacted next to the flame's heat. How long do you leave the glass standing? How much vinegar should you use, 1/4tsp or more? Does the hight and width of the glass make a difference in the experiment?
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"Its not a huge difference but it means the sun probably has about twice the (direct) impact that the IPCC assumed since the IPCC just assumed there was only the .1% variation in overall energy output."
In which case due to the solar cycle alone we could expect 0.2C cooling since 2003. Yet we've only seen half that amount of cooling, which is evidence of an ongoing background warming trend of about 0.2C/decade.
"but GRACE uses gravity data and is not really something we can trust at this point...especially with ALL OTHER MEASURES showing the main sheets actually thickening"
Either you accept sea level rise is contributed from decline in these ice sheets, or you have to believe all the sea level rise is due to thermal expansion and that the heat content of the upper ocean has risen faster than is currently understood.
As for sea ice there is already evidence that the loss of sea ice in summer months is changing weather systems in the Northern Hemisphere:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1398
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To Maria Ashot:
Thank you for the kind words.
You have mentioned several times your impression that the US school system is deficient in important respects.
I am reminded of the late Carl Sagan, who saw it as the 'dumbing down of America.'
You are an artist, Carl was a scientist, but I have heard it said that at a certain level, art and science are one. And I believe this to be true.
In the days of the Cold War, the days of my youth and early adulthood, there was at least a sense of purpose, and the energy flowed.
Today I see only a nightmare phantasmagoria of a people without purpose.
Is Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" to be our legacy?
- Manysummits -
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summit-up
"To Maria Ashot:
.....
You have mentioned several times your impression that the US school system is deficient in important respects."
It may not be as bad as all that. The terrorist who tried to blow up the plane in Detroit had been a mechanical engineering student in Britain for 3 years. Between him and his collaborators all they managed to produce was a dud which started a small fire that was quickly extinguished, the explosives he carried never detonated. Paradoxically we hear stories of vast munitions dumps in places like Russia where entire stockpiles detonate due to one malfunction. Last I heard, American engineered and built bombs invariably explode when they are supposed to and don't when they aren't supposed to. Proof our schools are doing a fine job where it really counts :-)
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@rossglory
Regarding the so-called scientific consensus, I suggest you start with Bray and von Storch, who conducted surveys in '96, '03 and another, to be released. They show very clearly, the 'consensus' as described does not exist.
As for my position, it is based upon over twenty years of modeling of chaotic dynamic systems - first at Texas A&M, the for the Navy, the Air Force as well as a number of commercial entities. My undergrad and graduate studes were in Aerospace Engineering & Mathematics, with my specialty being dynamics and controls, specifically related to chaotic dynamic systems. In my view, and I am not alone in this - there is far far too much unmodeled bias in the current climate models.
We know so little about the chaotic dynamic system we call Earth's Climate System as to be laughable. Why is it that the 'models' are all pretty much secret? I can create a model to produce any result I desire - as demonstrated by MBH98. We are not even aware of many of the processes, feedbacks and mechanisms which drive the climate - a climate which has always been changing. We also have so very little data to work with.
In truth, I am not so concerned with the 'CO2 issue'. It is very poorly understood. Without feedbacks - which are very poorly understood, doubling of CO2 would produce very little warming. CO2 absorbs infrared wavelenghs within a very limited spectrum. All the estimates for feedbacks associated with CO2 are what I would term 'SWAGs'. As a scientist and engineer, I also believe that feedback associated with CO2 is not a constant as used in so many models and reported by the IPCC (TAR). Feedback associated with CO2 would depend upon a great many factors and certainly would not be linear. In some regimes, the feedback may be positive, in others, negative. We simply don't know.
We do know that overpopulation is straining our planet and its resources. We also know that modern farming techniques require roughly one-tenth of the land to produce the same amount of food as do the 'stone age' agricultural techniques employed in much of the third world.
I also believe that one coal plant produces less CO2 and is much more efficient than a couple hundred thousand families in Africa burning dung, tires, wood and whatever else they can find to stay warm and cook.
Why is it that Europe happily burns coal from Africa, yet refuses to allow financing for building coal plants in Africa? Why are African farmers denied tractors and fuel to til the land - why must they do it by hand with stone age implements?
There is a natural CO2 cycle in the biosphere, each year approximately 600 B tonnes are emitted by natural sources, roughly the same amount is absorbed by natural sinks. Man emits approx 26B tonnes of CO2 each year - a very small percentage of the natural cycle. Also note, this natural cycle is never in complete balance, so CO2 concentrations are never 'constant'. I think it very arrogant to believe that we can 'control' this natural process.
Additionally, as I pointed out in the preceding paragraph, there are two sides to the CO2 equation - sources and sinks. It is unrealistic to focus on the man-made portion of CO2 emitted. The technology is simply not there. Should we not focus on the other side of the equation, if it really is so important? Think of all the forests, rain forests, wetlands, savannahs, bogs, etc that we have destroyed. Would our efforts not be better spent on preserving and restoring those natural environments - would that not address many more issues.
Simply a matter of fact: not one of the mechanisms which has been put on the table since Kyoto will be effective. Cap and trade schemes will not work - it is simply too complex to implement and regulate. Neither will carbon taxes.
Back in the late seventies, I spent two seasons climbing trees with a chainsaw - why? Because of the energy crisis and the price of heating oil, a great many people installed wood burning stoves to heat their homes. Do you really want to see this happen again?
Handing free money to corrupt governments in the third world is not a viable solution either - it will only breed more corruption and laziness.
The answer to many of our problems lies with development of the third world with cheap energy and cheap food. Development has been shown to be the only 'answer' to curbing population growth.
We also need to crack down on what I would term 'traditional pollutants' - as I do not consider CO2 to be a 'pollutant' - it is a naturally occuring trace gas. The UN's CDM mechanism actually rewards some of the worst traditional pollutors with huge sums of money for installing GHG scrubbers, while they continue to spew out noxious and poisonous chemicals - do a little research on that.
I have also considered myself to be an environmentalist for my entire life. While I do not subscribe to the so-called 'concensus' theories around CO2 and global warming - I do believe that if we addressed many of the 'old environmental issues' - we would in fact be addressing the CO2 issue at the same time. Just think of all the wetlands and bogs (read CO2 sinks) which have been filled in for development. All the forests which have been cut and burned. It amazes me, millions of acres of tropical forests in Indonesia, slashed and burned - to make palm oil plantations for alternative energy. I'm sorry if we don't see things the same, but this makes no sense to me at all. I can recall being in Jakarta, a thousand miles from the burning forests and having to wear a surgical mask just to breathe.
The issues I have watched go unaddressed my entire life will not be solved by building windmills nor by shutting down coal plants. They will be addressed by providing cheap energy and the enhanced ability to grow food in the third world - allowing for more land to be preserved and even restored. Education will follow, and as people become more prosperous, fewer children will be made - addressing the root cause of most of our environmental and humanistic issues.
At least we can agree on planting a few trees...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@manysummits
Regarding the 'science is settled' - we do agree that it is NOT. However, I have heard the phrase uttered so many times I want to vomit. Al Gore, Prince Charles, Obama's Environmental "Czar" (her name fails me - but she is an Accountant - no scientific background), James Hansen, the list goes on and on...
Science is never settled - and science NEVER proves anything, only disproves. Those theories which are currently accepted are those which have yet to be disproven. Newton's Laws provide a good example - they lasted hundreds of years before being disproven by Einstein.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Maria Aston
As a scientist and engineer, I find your complete belief in these theories to be quite interesting. Is climatology now a 'liberal art'? Given the lack of transparency with regards to the 'science' - it would appear that perhaps it is now a 'liberal art' or soft science.
Also, please cite some source for Oxygen levels in the atmosphere being an issue or problem. You demonstrate your complete lack of knowledge with regard to science with your citing of this 'issue'.
Kindest regards.
Kealey
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@Maria Ashot wrote: (excerpts from her post to me)
How can you admit that we have erred not to address the problems, yet not see that the deteriorating quality of ambient air
And temperature measurements, which the IPCC and all their scientific colleagues inevitably averages out, are hardly difficult to accomplish.
Chaos Theory never suggests that if you take a key element out of a system, the system won't change.
All I want for Christmas is my nanofiltering system for the water I drink and use. That is an upgrade -- not a downgrade -- of our current lifestyle.
------------------end of excerpts------------------
First, regarding the quality of ambient air - Actually, I have seen the air quality improve dramatically in the last thirty years - at least in the 'developed world'. While carbon-monoxide and oxone are still issues, acid rain is no longer a major issue in North America or Europe. Do you recall when the Black Forest was 'doomed' because of air pollution - it has recovered quite nicely.
I agree we need to improve air quality - particulary in the third world. We need to require the same pollution controls on plants in these countries as we do our own - and we can easily do this with trade sanctions - if no one buys the products from these plants - the plants will be forced to shut or upgrade.
With regards to temperature measurements, you are so far off it is not funny. We cannot even agree on what is the 'average' temperature of the earth, much less measure it accurately. Temperature data from some reporting stations goes back a hundred years or more - data from most only dates back fifty years or less. Let us also consider that three-forths of the Earth's surface is covered with water. There are very few stable instrumentation stations for measuring air temperature on the ocean - and none of these are more than thirty years old.
We have so very little data to work with. It is like being given 2 pieces of a puzzle with 2500 pieces and trying to deduce what the picture looks like.
With regards to Chaos Theory - please spend about five years or so studying chaos theory before you comment. Have you ever heard of the 'Center Manifold Theorem'? It states that the dynamics of a system can be preserved, while greatly simplifying the system by reducing it (the system) to its center manifold. Chaos theory also tells us, that while we can provide inputs to the system - we have no way of predicting the results of said inputs.
Oh and as for your water filtration system - think of all the energy that went into creating the technology for such a device. Why should you have such a thing when billions of people in the world don't have potable water supplies? How selfish of you - why don't you take that money and drill a well in Africa, so many people can have water to drink and grow food with?
Cheers.
Kealey
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@manysummits, @extragrumpymike
regarding post number 80, my apologies, it should have been directed to xtragrumpymike rather than manysummits.
Cheers.
Kealey
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LarryKealey,
I'm in full agreement with you regarding the environmental and pollution issues you raise, though I find the evidence for AGW more compelling than that against. Consequently, on balance, I believe we would be wise to play it safe.
Given your suggestion that providing cheap energy to developing countries is a solution to environmental issues, I'd be interested in your thoughts about peak oil. The latest reports seem to suggest that oil supplies are finding it increasingly difficult to meet demand and we can thus expect a rapid increase in costs for energy production as the world pulls out of the current recession. Arguably this will take us back to where oil prices were in July 2008; along with the return to food riots and the other effects that we started to experience then.
Your thoughts?
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5521#more
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83. At 6:03pm on 27 Dec 2009, LarryKealey wrote:
@manysummits, @extragrumpymike
regarding post number 80, my apologies, it should have been directed to xtragrumpymike rather than manysummits.
Cheers.
I doubt that manysummits requires an apology and regarding your post #80, once again we are in total agreement.As is the case with so many of your (and others) concerns over the general state of the environment.
However, you miss my point entirely.So ........to repeat myself.
IN THE MINDS OF THE "DECISION MAKERS"........the Science is settled! Which of course is not the same as.........IN THE MINDS OF SCIENTISTS!
Now...you are not a "decision maker" and neither am I (nor for that matter, anyone else on this blog!)so whatever (collective) WE say on this blog means absolutely diddly squat in the big wide world.
We are all entitled to our opinions and in our "enlightened democratic" world we are entitled to express those opinions which we do regularly on this topic on this blog.
In so doing, many facts and many theories get muddled up in many opinions.
So here's a few facts.(None of them "scientific")
193 Governments ("decision makers")were represented at Copenhagen.
The vast majority of those have been convinced that "the Science is settled"..........by the IPCC predominantly.(there are however, many other scientists outside the IPCC who agree with IPCC findings)
The vast majority of those("decision makers") agree that "something" has to be done! Of course, they disagree on "what has to be done"!
This scenario will continue until either:-
(a) some "political accord" is settled among most of them. Any bets on that? or
(b)we just continue doing what we are doing, until Nature proves the current (pro AGW) theory right or wrong. Not really an acceptable option. or
(c)(and this is the preferred option) the Anti-AGW lobby, and here I refer to genuine scientists who disagree with the currently accepted pro-AGW theory, present sufficient data in an appropriate manner to the "decision makers" to demonstrate that IPCC have got it wrong.
Not an easy task! But since the Rio Earth Summit, 17 years have gone by and NO-ONE individually or as a respectably acknowledged lobby group has managed to topple the IPCC.
Can you explain why?
In my opinion, the last few hectic months has seen most of the activity since Rio from the anti-AGW lobby who have resorted to what I would describe as "guerrilla" tactics.
It hasn't worked. You need to change your tactics otherwise option (a) above is a forgone conclusion.
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Re 79:
"As for my position, it is based upon over twenty years of modeling of chaotic dynamic systems - first at Texas A&M, the for the Navy, the Air Force as well as a number of commercial entities"
...
"I can create a model to produce any result I desire"
Are you claiming that in your 20 year career you were justing producing results you desired? No constraints on your results whatsoever?
I guess I could have come along and provided a model which showed objects fell upward and it would have been just as valid as the models you've worked with? Is that what you are saying?
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\\\ Voices ///
There are many voices being heard these days, many of them on this weblog. All are important. Who can say which voice carries the message which will endure?
James Hansen is a planetary scientist, a member of the United States National Academy of the Sciences, the Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Science, which is in turn a part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which put men on the Moon, and is itself a part of the United States Government, the most powerful country on Earth, and of all time.
And even Jim cannot get a simple satellite launched to monitor and quantify the aerosols in our atmosphere, which would help the modelling of our atmosphere, and our collective understanding of global climate change.
I wonder why he cannot?
I posed this question to Underacanoe earlier this morning. "Too many Bushes in the world" was my wife's reply.
Short, succinct, and probably entirely accurate.
The denialist lobby is crying 'Wolf.' They do not want this satellite launched. Using an instrument to study the atmosphere of Venus, or Mars, or Titan is one thing, but to study our home planet, home also of the fossil fuel lobby, this is what separates Venus, Mars and Titan from planet Earth.
Ditto for the aging GRACE gravity satellites.
Seventy-five billion a year to maintain control of the Middle-East oil - no problem. A trillion to bail out the financial industry - no problem.
But health care, or a few inexpensive satellites - Problemo Grande!!!
I wonder why?
Let's see - a healthier population, not cringing as much before their new slavers, the modern corporations, and accurate incontrovertible evidence of the effects of aerosols in our atmosphere - that would be what?
Subversive I suppose? A communist plot perhaps?
Luckily there are geologists, like me, who study the past. But that it arcane stuff - ice cores, deep sea sediments - cave icicles - tree-rings - we can poke fun at that, can't we - and who will care.
But an aerosol satellite, whizzing overhead and beaming down real time information on exactly what the aerosols are composed of, and a map of their exact distribution in time and space - that might be harder to ridicule. Of course we'll find a way - the public is gullible, aren't they?
Remember the adage - "a sucker born every minute."
- Manysummits -
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@79. LarryKealey wrote:
"Why is it that the 'models' are all pretty much secret?"
The NASA/GISS Global Climate Model is available from their web site. This is the actual code (FORTRAN), data and documentation on how to build it and run it, change it, get diagnostics, debug it. The documentation is copious, detailed, helpful and easy to understand if you are familiar with software modelling.
The full details of the NASA/GISS surface temperature analysis, software, documentation, papers etc. are also publicly available on the same site.
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Sorry for the tirade in #87 - it just happened.
How about this?
\\\ From "Thin Ice", by Mark Bowen (2005) ///
"In Sanskrit, Himalaya means "abode of snow," but as crops and people die from lack of water while watching the highest mountains on earth turn from white to black, that name may soon seem grotesquely inappropriate." (p. 392, hardcover ed.)
"The Worldwatch Institute reports that the eastern Himalaya have lost one-fifth of their glaciers - two thousand in all - over the last century, and that the rate is accelerating. According to the Swiss-based International Commission on Snow and Ice, "Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world..." (p. 391)
And finally, from Lonnie Thompson himself:
"The world's ice is providing the most visible evidence there is for global warming, and the changes are incredible. To me it's so straightforward." (p. 393)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonnie_Thompson
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- Manysummits -
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To Ken Appleby, and company:
'Men work together', I told him from the heart,
'Whether they work together or apart.'
- Robert Frost (The Tuft of Flowers)
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Hasta Luego,
Manysummits
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\\\ Ice Sheet Disintegration ///
Since post #89 was on mountain glaciers, here are the great ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica to balance things out:
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"Ice sheet change is expected to be a "slow" climate feedback. How rapidly ice sheets can disintegrate is one of the most uncertain and imporant climate issues. The dominant physical process causing ice sheet disintegration may be absorption of heat by the ocean (due to an increasing greenhouse effect), resulting melting of ice shelves, and thus an creased rate of discharge of ice from the ice sheet to the ocean. Once this process gets well underway, it may be difficult to prevent accelerating ice sheet disintegration under its own impetus."
Note from Manysummits: View the following graph if you will (link below) - the description of this figure 2 is immediately below, and there is a higher quality 'pdf' graph available on the link posted:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/IceSheet/
"Figure 2 [above link] shows the rate of mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, based on a recent publication of gravity satellite data. The rate of mass loss from Greenland has increased during the past 2-3 years, as it has from Antarctica. This is one of the most important geophysical measurements being made, so it is important to get a follow-on gravity satellite into space. A planned European gravity satellite is not sufficiently capable to yield accurate ice sheet mass change, and a planned NASA follow-on gravity mission is low on NASA's priority list." (bolding by Manysummits)
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/ (see 'Ice Sheet Disintegration' section)
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- Manysummits -
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GRACE cost about $130 million dollars, although $30 million of that was picked up by the german space agency. Not cheap, but yes important in order to track ice sheet mass change and so help in identifying where heat is going.
Cryosat 2 is scheduled for launch this february and in part that should be able to take over from GRACE, at least afaik. We will also get better coverage of sea ice. Just to think if the original had made it, it would have been in place to observe the 2007 summer melt.
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\\\ Ice-Age Man (Discussion) ///
The geologic epoch we are in is usually called the 'Pleistocene' (last ~ 2.5 million years), and we are currently in one of its interglacials, usually called the 'Holocene' (the last ~ 11,700 years; +/-) (see Wikipedia).
During the Pleistocene ice age, mankind evolved, as the story of evolution would have it. Our brains became considerably larger, we used stone tools of increasing sophistication, learned the use of fire, then of iron and steel, of explosives - we then harnessed the power of the atom in moderated nuclear chain reactions, and the power of stars in an uncontrolled thermo-nuclear, 'Hydrogen' bomb.
We are currently attempting to control the fusion reaction for commercial purposes, so far with limited success.
We have visited the Moon, and our robotic emmissaries have surveyed much of the inner Solar System; the Oort Cloud, if it exists, awaits our explorers.
In short, the waxing and waning of the great continental ice sheets, driven by our glacial/interglacial cycles, is the backdrop to 'us', homo sapiens sapiens.
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If you have been following the last few posts, and the new website under construction by Makiko Sato and James Hansen, and have kept track of developments in the world of ice these last few years, you will have seen that the ice is melting everywhere, with the few exceptions serving only to prove the rule.
Both of the remaining polar ice sheets are losing mass, at an increasing rate; Arctic sea ice in the northern summer is almost gone already, and what is left can often be driven through at over ten knots.
All of the world's mountain glaciers are in retreat, save a few special cases, both in the tropics proper and in the mid-latitudes.
The ocean is warming, at least the upper 750 meters. The world ocean is where the heat from our hypothesized planetary energy imbalance was 'supposed' to go, and measurements indicate that is exactly where approximately 90 percent of the heat is going.
How to sum this up in a meaningful way?
We are about to leave the ice-age, the 'Pleistocene,' the epoch in which resides virtually all of our collective memory.
I'm finding it hard to put in words, not knowing my audience.
No one has ever experienced what we are about to experience - an ice free world.
This generation will not see it, of course, but a few more generations will serve, unless we change how we live rather soon.
This new world looks absolutely inimical to the survival of anything even remotely approaching our current numbers, some 6.7 billion people.
The details are still being worked out, but the overall picture is crystal, and is best described in Biblical terms.
If you are new to science, perhaps this is the time to make good that deficiency, or, at the least, to decide who to believe.
Looking back, the recent December Copenhagen Conference, or Accord, is viewed by this observer as the continuation of a process which began some 17 years ago. No country has moved decisively to correct the perceived planetary energy imbalance, but virtually every country in the world is now - 'aware.'
It is time to take the next steps.
- Manysummits -
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Manysummits @93.
You determine: "It is time to take the next steps".
Lead the way my friend. (6.7 billion people)-(1)=6,799,999,999,999ish. It's a start but I would encourage you think again; I'm sure Undercanoe and Cloudrunner will be more than a trifle upset.
Watch and pray. Take the lead with your family Manysummits and prepare to adapt in any way which way and how. It’s how it's always been. Nothing new in heaven or earth here.
Happy New Year............
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Whoops. That should have been: 6,699,999,999,999ish.
But I hope you get my point!!
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@manysummits #87
The denialist lobby is crying 'Wolf.' They do not want this satellite launched.
If you have any kind of proof (not a silly work of fiction please) that there is an actualy "denialist lobby" and they don't want this satellite launched, perhaps you would be kind enough to post a link or withdraw this ludicrous statement - please note, just because your heroe says it's true doesn't count.
@manysummits #89
It seems the IPCC broke their own rules when telling the world that Himalayan Glaciers would disappear by 2035:
http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/atmosphere.html?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621&plckPostId=Blog%3a54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621Post%3aa2b394cc-5b5f-47ad-8bb5-c1aec91409ad&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present
500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005)." (IPCC AR4 WG2 Ch10, p. 493)
Read the full story and then follow the links for proof that the IPCC broke their own rules and the claim that Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035 is false
@manysummits #91
You're a geolist, please explain how the ice sheets in Antarctica are expected to melt when when the temperature is around -50C Thanks in advance
@manysummits #93
Both of the remaining polar ice sheets are losing mass, at an increasing rate;
First of all - that's not true, and secondly, how does this prove AGW?
Both of the remaining polar ice sheets are losing mass, at an increasing rate;
Not for another 350 years at an absolute minimum according to the Himilayan projection, and of course there is that pesky -50C in Antarctica to deal with
Of course, i don't expect you to actually respond to my post, when has the truth ever affected your belief system and worship of false gods?
/mango
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Thanks Richard! Best wishes to you for 2010!
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Second quote from manysummits #93 should have been:
All of the world's mountain glaciers are in retreat, save a few special cases, both in the tropics proper and in the mid-latitudes.
not:
Both of the remaining polar ice sheets are losing mass, at an increasing rate
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@manysummits RE:your propaganda
\\\\ As always, what's up with this junk? ////
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Anyway, you wrote "The denialist lobby is crying 'Wolf.' They do not want this satellite launched"
Actually...MOST of the skeptics would LOVE for us to launch an inexpensive satellite instead of foolishly spending trillions on immature technologies to avoid a "problem" that has never shown any hint of being anything like you claim.
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RE:Grace satellites
In case you're of limited capacity for understanding such things. It is extremely difficult to work out anything tangible with gravity satellites. The data is largely ambiguous and can be interpreted in numerous ways. This is why its used by the AGW groups...they LOVE ambiguity. Anything that could be taken in many ways can be cherry picked and then backed up with "consensus" instead of anything tangible.
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"Luckily there are geologists, like me, who study the past. But that it arcane stuff - ice cores, deep sea sediments - cave icicles - tree-rings - we can poke fun at that, can't we - and who will care."
Well, I'd say you'd have to be a pretty bad scientist in general to look at those records and see ANY sort of significant driving force by CO2...but then you tossed in tree-rings while talking about geology so...
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RE:thin ice #89 and #91
Yeah, ice melts when it gets warmer and it has warmed some. Its been warming since before CO2 could have been blamed. Of course moisture balance also plays a role. I've never seen you mention the whole issue of balance before. Its one of the great lies of omission by the AGW groups...the idea that the glaciers are almost static and can ONLY be "melting" because it's warmer. It could be colder but with less snow in winter...and glaciers would still shrink.
None of this of course addresses the FACT that you people cherry pick EVERYTHING to show warming. You use the GRACE satellites because they show shrinking ice sheets. You ignore the fact that both the main ice sheets are sitting in a bowl (ice sheets...are indeed fairly static), have NEVER gone above freezing in recent times (or close to it) and that they keep having to dig out and raise the weather stations on them. Yeah, ever-increasing ice in ALL measures on the main ice sheets EXCEPT for GRACE so you go with gravity satellites instead of laser altimeters, GPS, etc.
Oh, and BTW...there is some perspective missing from your charts...at those rates it will take tens of thousands of years. If we burned every last bit of coal and oil known to exist, CO2 levels would spike about about double of pre-industrial levels...and then begin falling rapidly. The melting of the ice sheets, however...would take tens (or hundreds) of thousands of years at current rates. Even at 10X current rates they couldn't melt before CO2 levels fell again. Each cubic kilometer weighs a gigaton (assuming metric tons) and there are 30million cubic kilometers of ice in the antarctic ice sheet.
Of course, when you say "The dominant physical process causing ice sheet disintegration may be absorption of heat by the ocean (due to an increasing greenhouse effect), resulting melting of ice shelves, and thus an creased rate of discharge of ice from the ice sheet to the ocean" it kind of hints that you haven't really studied WHY the main antarctic and greenland ice sheets are there in the first place. They're basically stuck there by the slope of the terrain.
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@infinity #75 who wrote...
"In which case due to the solar cycle alone we could expect 0.2C cooling since 2003. Yet we've only seen half that amount of cooling, which is evidence of an ongoing background warming trend of about 0.2C/decade."
Well that's generally what it does. The sun didn't switch off until more recently though. Cycle 23 was still extremely active. Right now the only thing holding us up is that we've been in an extended El Nino...which still hasn't managed to get us all that warm. All in all it looks like the base-line has dropped the last few years but it's difficult to say anything on such short scales with any certainty.
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"Either you accept sea level rise is contributed from decline in these ice sheets, or you have to believe all the sea level rise is due to thermal expansion and that the heat content of the upper ocean has risen faster than is currently understood."
Have you actually studied the information??? That's EXACTLY where we expect the sea level rise to come from. Levels are only rising at about a foot per century. Even if you use the GRACE figures...you'd only end up with an additional .5mm per year. Whatever the melt rate, of course...it is included in the sea level rise anyway.
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@Xtragrumpymike2 #85 who wrote...
"(b)we just continue doing what we are doing, until Nature proves the current (pro AGW) theory right or wrong. Not really an acceptable option."
The case for catastrophic AGW is terrible. The problem is that you're not just betting on a long shot being the LIKELY outcome (the mind boggles), you're betting on a long shot offshoot of that long shot being the likely outcome as well. Even assuming the 2C-4C warming suggested by the IPCC were possible (with a .5C/century warming rate?)...the additional suggestion of an apocalyptic result from such warming is laughable. Essentially all of the warming would be in regions that are COLD limited. The increased water vapor and loss of permafrost/ice would HELP most life on this planet...including man.
I am perfectly content with Plan B because its cheaper, because there's little evidence we are or will experience the kind of warming suggested by the IPCC, and because even if they were right by some fluke...from what we can make out from the past, the earth is better off warmer. For some bizarre reason many in the global warming camp seem to think this way of looking at things is that of someone "in denial" but it is the warming camp that is in denial on these. Both are valid reasons in their own right to not engage in costly and probably unnecessary actions. Together they show the AGW camp's demands of immediate changing to new, expensive and unreliable energy sources to be utter insanity.
It is likely most of our warming was natural and due to the fact that alternative involve largely up-front costs...premature switching just locks you into immature technology's prices (and lower reliability) for the next 20 years.
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\\\ Alaska - "Thin Ice" ///
ca 2004 - Mark Bowen conversation with Lonnie Thompson in the book "Thin Ice" (2005), p.393, hardcover ed.:
"Lonnie tells me that the U.S. Geological Survey is tracking two thousand Alaskan glaciers right now, and all but thirteen are retreating."
Lonnie Thompson is a world renowned mountain glaciologist, whose team, a very interesting team, successfully pioneered the intact retrieval of ice-cores from the world's high mountain glaciers, repositories of climatological history to the trained eye and the right instruments.
Lonnie heads up the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group at the Byrd Center at Ohio State University, and I see he has just recently been elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
http://bprc.osu.edu/
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more from "Thin Ice", with regard to denialist posts above:
"Hansen [Dr. James Hansen] points to evidence that the polar ice sheets have disintegrated rapidly in the past: various records show that about fourteen thousand years ago, as the Wisonsinan [ice-age]was coming to an end, a pulse of meltwater from the disintedrating polar ice caps sent sea levels up at the rate of three feet every twenty years for five hundred years." (p. 394, hardover ed; bolding by Manysummits)
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I am looking forward to the New Year - what choice is there?
- Manysummits -
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#99 Poitsplace
I am astonished by your absolute confidence in your position.
Would have us believe that the world's politicians in every almost every country -- even those with fundamental ideological differences -- are being deceived into believing that they should take expensive action on climate change by nothing less than a conspiracy of the world's climate scientists? But to what end; where's the mileage in it for these climate scientists who have the ear of the politicians?
Surely if climate scientists know that what they are saying is not true then they would realise that in the end this will lead to their being discredited and their careers destroyed? To me this is simply stretching credibility too far. Consequently, I can only assume you must mean that the world's climate scientists who have the politicians' ears are incompetent because they cannot understand the flaws in the data, how it is collected or how it is interpreted. But, clearly, you think you can... and that stretches credibility even further.
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Post Script to my # 101:
A geologist studies the past history of the Earth, and in modern times, of the other planets. As such he, or she, will use all viable means for unravelling our history. I would like to point out that it is not only rocks that are of interest, in fact, life is the primary interest of many geologists.
I have a beautiful article from Scientific American, April 2008, titled:
"The Color of Plants on Other Worlds", by Nancy Y. Kiang, which combines astronomy, astrophysics, solar and stellar physics, paleontology and exo-biology.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds
It is nothing for a geologist to include tree rings in his or her extensive, wide ranging and eclectic tool kit.
Science is science, and in the final analysis, art and science are joined. The official title of a highest level scientist is "Doctor of Philosophy."
From Wikipedia:
"A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid and liquid matter that constitutes the Earth and terrestrial planets. Geologists usually engage studying geology, and approach this using physics, chemistry and biology as well as other sciences..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologist
- Manysummits -
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Post Script to #103:
How come you didn't know that?
- Manysummits -
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"We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time, i.e., that the GRACE observations are better represented by a quadratic trend than by a linear one, implying that the ice sheets contribution to sea level becomes larger with time. In Greenland, the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. In Antarctica the mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr2 in 2002–2009. The observed acceleration in ice sheet mass loss helps reconcile GRACE ice mass estimates obtained for different time periods."
Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE
Geophys. Res. Lett., 36. 2009
Psuedoskeptics who try to falsely claim GRACE is too inaccurate to show anything are simply in denial. Do they have any studies to back up their claims? No. Just a load of hot air.
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#102 JRWoodman wrote:
"nothing less than a conspiracy of the world's climate scientists?"
I share your incredulity. I'm sure that the scientists, politicians and their many followers in the churches and the mainstream media are almost all being completely sincere. In my opinion, that's part of the problem. Only moral fervor makes people feel justified in neglecting their job descriptions on such a grand scale.
The New Scientist neglected to report the current solar inactivity, scientifically remarkable though it is, because they thought it would create doubt about AGW. The BBC neglected to report the corrupt emails for the same reason. Moral fervor creates blunts the critical faculties and blinds people to facts.
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#106 Bowmanthebard
But, I repeat, to what end are organisations -- such as, as you claim, New Scientist and the BBC -- taking part in a global conspiracy? What are they trying to achieve? Does what you're proposing make any sense?
With regards to New Scientist, you're accusing them of NOT reporting something, and then providing a reason why they haven't reported it as if it's a statement of fact. That is one of the clearest examples of an irrational 'conspiracy theorist' mind set I've ever come across.
Furthermore, I've not seen any evidence that the BBC neglected to report on the CRU emails. It was on the BBC website that I read of the story first. It was on the BBC radio and TV news; I heard many discussions about it on the 'Today' programme (R4), Newsnight, 'Costing the Earth', 'Material World', as well as further discussions about it on the BBC website. If you mean that they didn't keep on flogging a dead horse once all that was newsworthy was said, then you're probably right.
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To infinity #105, re GRACE & Oct/09 Geophysical Research Letter:
Very nice!
I am wondering why no scheduled replacement for these satellite has made it to the 'highest' priority list, given the funding for research which the Obama administration has supposedly made available?
That's not a rhetorical question - perhaps someone from NASA would care to comment?
- Manysummits -
PS: Graphs depicting the loss of ice from both Greenland and Antarctica available on the web @:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/
(see section 'Ice Sheet Disintegration')
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\\\ Speaking of President Obama ///
From Eric Margolis' column in the Sunday paper (Dec 27/09):
"President Barack Obama does not walk on water...
Afghanistan, graveyard of empires, may also become the graveyard of Obama's presidency."
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I was hopeful in the days before the election of Barack Obama, and I wanted to see him succeed against all odds.
I am still hopeful, but less so now.
I toured the White House with my family in the days when John F. Kennedy was president. My father was an American Marine, stationed on Maui, during the final days of WW II. And my father's cousin was special aide to JFK, hence the 'special tour' of the White House.
In 1994 I visited Arlington National Cemetery to view the grave of the President. It was one of the most moving experiences of my life.
I have some sense of the pressures and obligations that President Obama is up against, but I would rather he resign than give in to them.
It is not necessary that he become the victim of an assassin's bullet, and deprive his family of his presence, nor is it necessary that he alone save the world.
It is time for 'us' to do that, each in our own way.
- Manysummits -
- Manysummits -
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\\\ Albert Einstein ///
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."
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from "The Wayfinders" (Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern Word),
by Wade Davis (2009); chapter four.
- Manysummits -
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Re post 64, Marie Ashott and others who seek to down play the ´climategate´ e-mails
I will try and explain why I find the issues raised by those e-mails so worrying. In the British Police Force (and others I am sure) corrupton could be very broadly categorised nder 2 types. The first was relatively straight forward, a corrupt police officer would receive some kind of finanial gain and as a result do or not do something. I do not believe this was wide spread.
The far more corrosive form of corrupion was ´noble cause corruption´.This was where police officers honestly believed an individual was guilty of a crime. However the evidence was not quite good enough to prove in court beyond all reasonable doubt. They would then internalise that the needs of justice meant it was okay if they perhaps with held evdence from the defence which make a conviction less likely. Especally if that evidence could not be easly explained away. Such cases came back to bite the police service many years later and high profile miscarraiges of justice still blight the image of the British Police Service to this day.
Now fast forwad to ´climate gate, a group of well meaning scienist are absolutley certain the science is settled about man made global warming. They therefore can see no wrong in with holding evidence that does not support the view pont of man made global warming. In fact they appear to relish in this deception. Not only that they send the e-mails to large numbers of other people who appeared to take no action and so condoned such actions.
Putting my cards on the table I believe global warming is probaly happening and man is probably a significant factor in this. However ´climate gate´has made me reassess this position and even doubt it. Unless and unil all the person invloved in this affair are dealt with by way of rigorous investiation and dismissl if found to be culpable, I will continue to have doubts about what I hear from such bodies.
Further any one who recieved such an e-mail and failed to take action to confront such malpractise should be similarly investgated. The police service learned that there can be no place for corrupt indivduals and try to get rid of them. However well meaning they scientists were, the climate science world needs to take simialr action.Otherwise the corrosive effect of these e-mails will continue to cause doubts for years to come, we cannot afford this.
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#107 JRWoodman:
"Furthermore, I've not seen any evidence that the BBC neglected to report on the CRU emails"
It's WHAT they reported that bothers me - culminating with the blatant lie about mobile phone conversations from Prof. David King on Newsnight:
“Let me also make this allegation for the first time in public. It’s an extraordinarily sophisticated piece of work to hack into all of these emails and mobile phone conversations, right? What agencies have got the sophistication to manage that? I leave you to think about that.”
And they talk about sceptics being "conspiracy theorists"!
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To J R Woodman,
While it is very easy to identify organisations promoting climate alarmism - apart from the New Scientist and the BBC, the roll call includes the Royal Society, Scientific American, Realclimate, Wikipedia and so on - it is normally hard as outsider to say what their motivations are or whether they are acting individually or as part of a "global" conspiracy.
In the case of the New Scientist it can be traced to a change in editors - and indeed one of the best known sceptics is a former New Scientist editor. Similarly in the Royal Society it can almost certainly be traced to Martin Rees.
Occasionally one finds key personnel with links with organisations like WWF or Greenpeace which are of course true believers to a man.
Wikipedia is a good example of this. I couldn't understand for a long time why Wikipedia should be on the list but then learned of its Greenpeace/Realclimate link.
Apparently William Connolley, a former Greenpeace activist and a member of the nine man Realclimate "team" specifically targeted Wikipedia. Starting in Feb. 2003 he re-wrote all of the Wikipedia articles on Global Warming and on subjects such as the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period and so on. He also re-wrote the biographies of all well known sceptics - generally in terms that were less than complimentary.
In total in this he created or rewrote more than 5,000 unique Wikipedia articles, had himself appointed as website adminstrator and from this position removed articles and as he saw fit barred the offending contributors (more than 2,000 at last count).
The BBC is not of course comparable in its rigour with the likes of Wikipedia, but Richard himself was complimented in one of the Climategate emails for doing such a fine job in "holding the (warmist) line" - not the kind of accolade a supposedly unbiased public subscription organisation should welcome.
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#99 poitsplace
if you take the time to understand the science you'll find it's not cherry picked and it covers just about everything you throw in here. but of course it;s much easier to just pick up the memes thrown out there to cast doubt (and do i believe there's a conspiracy?....nope, just groups protecting their vested interests, hardly surprising since they've done it many times before).
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#100 poitsplace
"The case for catastrophic AGW is terrible." - i disagree as do virtually all climate scientists - but i'm sure you have some special knowledge not accessible to these guys.
"Essentially all of the warming would be in regions that are COLD limited. The increased water vapor and loss of permafrost/ice would HELP most life on this planet...including man." - now the evidence for that is terrible. still, i'm sure you're accessing some secret stash of data the thousands of ipcc scientists have missed.
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@infinity
"Are you claiming that in your 20 year career you were justing producing results you desired? No constraints on your results whatsoever?
I guess I could have come along and provided a model which showed objects fell upward and it would have been just as valid as the models you've worked with? Is that what you are saying?"
-----------------------------------------end of comment-----------
No, thats not what I am saying at all. In fact, I am pretty darn insulted by the insinuation.
Yes, you could create a model in which things 'fall upwards' - but that does not mean your model has a basis in reality.
I created the basic model and control system for AFOSR, for SDI, which ended up forming the basis of the adaptive control system for the ISS - which is happily still in orbit and functioning very well.
I designed and built a 'ray-tracing' model, used by the US Navy to design propellers and submarines. It allowed the designers to predict the cavitation envelope for a given design as well as predicting the specific refraction zones for which sound waves would converge and a submarine would be detectable.
I designed a built a climate (temperature and precipitation) database and set of models used by a major corporation to make decisions regarding the pricing of climate options. Developing this database and model made very clear to me, the lack of quality with regard to US temperature and precipitation data for the last one hundred years. I designed the algorithms used to 'fill-in' all the missing data and correct anomolous readings.
I also worked on dozens of other projects. I never compromised my integrity with regard to modeling.
Now, lets take a look at MBH98 - which after years of FOI requests, the code was finally released. It has been clearly demonstrated by McIntyre, et al, and others - that no matter what data is fed into the model, the result will be a hockey stick. In fact, data generated using the 'Monte Carlo' method will produce a hockey stick.
Why should I put any stock in any of these models? Short answer: I shouldn't. A climate model would have to incorporate thousands of variables - but lets just say that a model had only one hundred variables - if each input and constant was accurate to within ten percent, then the accuracy of the model would be about zero...
Why is it that everyone thinks CO2 is the only first order driver for temperatures? I wonder if CO2 is even really a first order driver. There are so many inputs, feedbacks and drivers associated with this system as to be mind-boggling. To even think we are aware of all these inputs and drivers is ridiculous.
Clouds, in my view - are significant drivers of climate - they both reflect radiation upwards (back into space) and downwards, back to earth. We know so little about clouds it isn't even funny. How do these models handle clouds? It's called unmodeled bias - meaning they stick something in the model and tweek it until they think they have it 'right'.
Again, I believe that anyone who believes they can even marginally accurately model Earth's Climate system is quite arrogant (and ignorant) indeed.
I won't go into all the details on why it is impossible to predict climate using today's technology, data and models - the list is just too long, and you probably wouldn't understand most of it. But please tell me why the 'only driver' that is talked about is CO2? Do you believe that the Earth's climate is driven solely by a trace gas?
Additionally, it has been reported many times that scientists have been pressured to overstate their results and understate their doubts. Why should we believe them?
Happily, in the US, we have seen support for AGW theories erode significantly in the last two years - let us hope this trend continues.
Cheers.
Kealey
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99. poitsplace wrote:
"the main ice sheets are sitting in a bowl (ice sheets...are indeed fairly static), have NEVER gone above freezing in recent times"
96. MangoChutneyUKOK wrote:
"You're a geolist, please explain how the ice sheets in Antarctica are expected to melt when when the temperature is around -50C"
They're not. The mechanism is that the ice flows from the centre towards the edges, not that it melts in situ. The Antarctic is drained of ice by its glaciers.
Whether Antarctica loses or gains mass depends on the glacier flow velocities. Ice shelves form mechanical barriers which restrict glacier flow, and where the ice-shelves have collapsed, for instance Larsen A in 1995 and Larsen B in 2002, the upstream glacier flows increased by factors of two to eight and have continued since. This particular ice loss is restricted to the Antarctic Penninsula. Larsen B had been stable for 10,000 years prior to its collapse, so it is likely to take some time for that imbalance to be corrected by the increased flows.
Recent studies of ice flow dynamics (not the GRACE results) showed that Antarctica is thickening slightly in the middle and thinning at the edges. The West Antarctic is losing mass. Nobody knows whether the East Antarctic is losing or gaining mass, because not enough surveys have been done. Longer-term it is predicted that edge-thinning is more likely to dominate than centre-thickening.
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@xtragrumpymike wrote:
IN THE MINDS OF THE "DECISION MAKERS"........the Science is settled! Which of course is not the same as.........IN THE MINDS OF SCIENTISTS!
-----end of excerpt---------------------------
I have not missed your point - would you call James Hansen a scientist? He has stated repeatedly that 'the science is settled' - how about Micheal Mann - again, the same - although I would hardly consider either of them to be 'great scientists' (or even 'good scientists for that matter).
Lets talk about all those nations lined up in Copenhagen. If you were a poor country, would you not be there if someone was telling you that your woes are the fault of the US? and there is free money to be had?
Lets talk about one in particular: Tuvalu. On the one hand, leaders of Tuvalu are told that their islands are being inundated by rising sea levels because we have coal plants and cars in the US - and they deserve to be compensated. On the other hand, the same leaders have been told that the islands are naturally eroding, as they have been since the geological activity which produced the islands migrated westward. And that this erosion has been exacerbated by unsuitable development and over-tapping the watertable. So, the leaders have to decide who they are going to believe. On the one hand, they can blame the US and demand 'reparations'. On the other hand, they can accept the second theories and responsibility for their own actions. Which would you do as a politician?
And, please, riddle me this: If Tuvalu is being inundated by rising sea levels, why do we not see the same on the barrier islands along the US coasts? How about other low lying areas? We don't. I have visited tide markers which were set by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the first half of the last century - some over one hundred years old - they are not inundated by the 'rising sea levels' and actually still accurately mark the high tide line.
There are so many other problems - that we do agree on - that we can address.
Even if you think CO2 is the 'culprit' - nothing put on the table so far is realistic nor achievable without world wide dictatorial rule. And that just ain't gonna happen.
You want to reduce CO2 - go plant some trees, for the first part of its life, a forest is primarily a carbon 'sink'.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Manysummits
Albert Einstein also said that the more I learn, the more I realize what I don't know...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@JRWoodman
Regarding 'peak oil' - it is a fantasy. There is more oil in the tar sands of Alberta and the Northern US than in all of the Middle East.
Let us not forget that the US is the "Saudi Arabia" of coal. Massive deposites of low sulphur 'clean' coal. Its too bad that of the one hundred and seven applications for permits to build coal plants in the US during 2007, all but three were rejected - or dropped because of the constant barrage of lawsuits. Funny, at the same time, no one gives a darn about the environmental impact of all those windmills.
Lets talk about windmills - Texas, where I live, has more windmills than ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD - and they are already causing problems with the power grid here. Texas is unique in the US as it has its own power grid - the rest of the US is divided into East and West.
Let us also note that a single coal fired plant here in Texas produces more electricity that ALL the windmills. One coal plant on about ten acres of land, vs over one hundred thousand windmills - on how many acres?
Hydro power is also pretty good, however, the environmental impact in so many places is just too great. In the Northwest US, hydroelectric dams are being torn down to restore the 'natural environment'.
Hey, I am all for alternative energy - but lets be smart about it. Neither solar nor wind or tidal sources are viable replacements at this time. Nuclear is filling the gap, but we will continue to need coal for at least another fifty to one hundred years.
Instead of spending $9B a year to subsidize ethanol production (mostly in Obama's home state of Illinois), we should be spending that money on research and development of viable alternatives.
In the meantime, how about letting Africa burn some of its own coal? Europeans happily burn African coal, yet deny financing for any coal plants in Africa. Go figure...
Cheers.
Kealey
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@116. LarryKealey wrote:
"Clouds, in my view - are significant drivers of climate - they both reflect radiation upwards (back into space) and downwards, back to earth ... How do these models handle clouds? It's called unmodeled bias - meaning they stick something in the model and tweek it until they think they have it 'right'."
This is not a fair description of the GISS global climate model, which models clouds, including brightness temperatures and optical thickness.
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#107 JRWoodman wrote:
"But, I repeat, to what end are organisations -- such as, as you claim, New Scientist and the BBC -- taking part in a global conspiracy?"
I'm agreeing with you that there is no conspiracy! There are far fewer conspiracies than is generally believed, I think, outside of political intrigues and attempts to blow up aircraft, etc..
However, I would argue that the New Scientist, BBC, Archbishops et al in effect "agree" not to give much or any coverage to alternatives to the standard AGW story. They do that because they think it's immoral to think otherwise -- they think that merely entertaining the alternatives threatens to destroy the world.
That's why sceptics feel a bit like blasphemers of old. As a present-day "blasphemer", I think the standard story is really quite unintelligent -- scientifically illiterate, conceptually confused about the consequences of climate change even if it is actually happening, and so on.
But I repeat: I agree with you that there's no "conspiracy" -- that's ridiculous. I wish my fellow sceptics would stop letting the side down with that stuff! There's no significant profit motive in either side's opinions, if you ask me.
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I meant to add: the general public are much less defensive about the "standard view" than the church dedicated to its defence, much as in the old days they cared much less about blasphemy than the church authorites!
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@Ken Appleby
If you believe GISS accurately models clouds, much less Earth's Climate System - more power to ya. I don't - and I have a lot of reasons not too.
First, we don't even know enough about clouds to model them. You know, the basic physics of formation, dispersion, precipitation, etc. We don't really understand the dynamics of actual heat content variations associated with clouds in the atmosphere. What sort of feedbacks are associated with clouds? How do they very under different conditions?
...and that is just one aspect of a great many which form part of Earth's Climate System - just too many variables and too many unknowns.
And lets not forget, it (GISS) was developed in the 80's. Its predictive capabilities have not been proven out by accurately modeling the past. It is an ugly hodgepodge of ugly code, which is in my view, contrary to your post - not well documented. It is difficult even to get it to run - and that confession comes from a Sr. Developer on the team. In his estimation, it would take two years and additional resources to upgrade the code to adhere to basic industry standards. Why would I trust substandard code which dates back almost thirty years?
It was also only released after a great many FOIA requests and a number of lawsuits forced Hansen to release his 'model'. Gee, I wonder how much of it was lost over the years?
I actually worked on the team that developed and implemented the first finite element model in a parallel processing environment - this type of modeling forms the basis of pretty much all climate models in use today - as well as most dynamic engineering models. This was done on a 1024 CPU's nCUBE, each processor similar to an intel 8088. With this machine and algorithms, we blew the doors off a Cray-2. Hansen had already designed his 'models' at this point - it was much later that parallel processing was 'retrofitted' into the model - rather than designing a newer, better model.
The list of reasons goes on and on...the models are useless. They can grossly predict the results of a very gross (by gross, we mean large) input, such as a meteor impact or very large volcanic eruption (like the size of Yellowstone, 600,000 years ago...
As far as predicting the effects of doubling a trace gas, yeah right...I'll believe it when I see it.
With so many other problems, we don't need to be wasting our time and monies on 'man-made-up' problems, like AGW.
Cheers.
Kealey
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\\\ "The Road" - Our Newest Myth? ///
This 2006 book, written by Cormac McCarthy, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007, and so joins James Michener's "Tales of the South Pacific" and Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" in the list of legendary tales of Man and His World.
I have been reading the first chapter, and I would like to tell you what I found, because it so surprised me!
The book is set in post-apocalyptic America, and I was prepared for this, but a few pages and I thought - "He's talking about me and my son Cloudrunner, about other men and their sons, today!"
Of a sudden it struck me - this is a book of timeless truth, and thus it was elevated in my mind to the status of "Mythology."
True, the landscape around Calgary is not devastated in the same sense as depicted in Cormac's novel - or is it?
I feel as did the mythical father towards his son - "each other his world entire," or close enough, given poetic license.
When the son asks, "What would you do if I died?", the father answers, "I would feel like dying too." The son says in turn, "So that you could be with me?" "Yes."
------------------------------
I sensed the power of this book before I read any part of it, or the movie, which I have not seen, from the reviews and unexplainable 'intuition.'
What has this to do with climate science, with the Environment?
Everything!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road
- Manysummits -
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Yes,Larry, you have missed my point entirely!
From many of your most recent contributions I gather you have considerable expertise in the field. As I have repeated on many occasions, I have absolutely no expertise in "climate science" whatever that may be and the more I read on this blog the more I wonder exactly what qualifications one needs to call oneself a "climate scientist".
However, I do have 35 years experience in Risk Management associated with hazardous chemicals together with the "decision making " process that is intended to bring all the variables together to make a workable package so we don't go around mishandling these materials and generally causing mayhem. (incidents like Union Carbide in Bhopal for example).
For many of those years I ran a consultancy with a colleague who in 1991 was seconded to government (to the detriment of our own business at that time) for 7 years to architect our own Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act which was intended to conform to the (proposed) Global Harmonised System, arising out of Rio Earth Summit.
So, while admitting I know nothing about "climate science" and while acknowledging that "climate science" is far more complex than hazardous substance management, I do know a heck of a lot about the decision making process which happens to be applicable to both.
So, my point is that you are choosing not to follow the appropriate "decision making" process and I ask.......Why?
Let's put it another way.
Currently, here in NZ, there is a case before the courts (Law) in which the accused has been given "name suppression".
A "blogger" has disregarded the court's authority and deliberately identified the accused on an internet "blog" site.
Obviously the "law" is somewhat concerned about this and the "blogger" is in hot water.
The proper process is for the accused to be tried in a court of law. Not by the media and certainly not on an internet blog site as I am sure you would agree.
The same applies here. There's a proper place to demonstrate your scientific prowess and it's not here.
There's a proper arena to challenge other scientists such as Hansen and Mann but it' so much easier to insult them here where they can't answer back.
Go and ask your fellow Texans why they are investing so heavily in windpower rather than coal rather than blab about it here.
Why does Duke Energy support a "cap and trade" system and begin to invest in alternative power such as wind and solar?
Does Duke Energy and Texas see the writing on the wall or do they just have too much money to throw away?
Believe it or not, Larry, we didn't all come down in the last shower of (acid) rain and we don't all kow-tow to your Cassius Clay syndrome.
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@124 LarryKealey
"If you believe GISS accurately models clouds ..."
You keep shifting your argument. Firstly you claim that climate models are "secret". You are wrong. Admit it.
Then you claim that they don't model clouds. You are wrong. Admit it.
You mock things that you clearly have not taken the time to look at. It's the "make a caricature and ridicule it" method of argument again, only flawed by lamentably poor technique. Your caricatures are flimsy because you put no effort into examining what you lampoon. At least not until after someone pulls you up on the point.
The cloud models in the GISS ModelE1 look to me to be far beyond your simplistic "formation, dispersion, precipitation."
You give us, uninvited, your personal curriculum vitae then tell us that you decline to offer your arguments because we are all incapable of understanding them. We should just follow your preachings because of who you are. Then you proceed to dismiss a large community of scientists as "arrogant" and "ignorant". I mean, really. Look at yourself.
As it happens I also am very skeptical of the accuracy and value of these climate models. I am not completely convinced of the significance of CO2. I try to find out the truth behind what the main players say. But the physics is very complex. The cultural aspects are very complex.
I suspect you could add things of value to the discussion but it's all lost in the glare of an incandescent ego. In my opinion.
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125. manysummits
Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
manysummits I enjoy what you write here, but I can't agree with you about this book. It reads like a pot-boiler to me. And I think it has nothing at all to do with global warming.
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Re 124:
"Yes, you could create a model in which things 'fall upwards' - but that does not mean your model has a basis in reality."
More to the point it wouldn't be modelling at all would it? Because if you abandon physical constraints, you aren't modelling you are just scripting some pre-determined output. Which is why the argument that models can be written to say anything is a fallacy and this was the thrust that my last post was moving towards.
Once you accept that model results are constrained by physics then you have to accept that the results have meaning.
For example one consistent result is that climate models show significant warming from a doubling of co2. None of them show no warming, or just 0.5C warming. So high warming from co2 is clearly an outcome of physical constraints, not some political edict.
"First, we don't even know enough about clouds to model them. You know, the basic physics of formation, dispersion, precipitation, etc."
Such uncertainty means looser constraints on how clouds are represented in the models, not that they cannot be included. There are still constraints from physics and observations that prevent "things falling upward" kind of nonsense with respect to clouds.
With loose constraints it's possible to get a wider spread of results from the models. In fact clouds are one of the main reasons why the model spread for a doubling of co2 is so wide.
Yet that wide uncertainty doesn't cover negliable warming from doubling co2. No model has shown such behavior. The evidence climate models present is clear - our current knowledge of physics is incompatible with doubling co2 having little effect on temperature.
"And lets not forget, it (GISS) was developed in the 80's. Its predictive capabilities have not been proven out by accurately modeling the past. It is an ugly hodgepodge of ugly code, which is in my view, contrary to your post - not well documented. It is difficult even to get it to run - and that confession comes from a Sr. Developer on the team. In his estimation, it would take two years and additional resources to upgrade the code to adhere to basic industry standards. Why would I trust substandard code which dates back almost thirty years?"
You are confusing GISTEMP, a surface temperature reconstruction analysis - not a climate model - with GISS ModelE a climate model. Besides you first claimed it was all secret, but in fact the source code is public on google code.
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#126 xtragrumpymike2 wrote:
"I do have 35 years experience in Risk Management associated with hazardous chemicals together with the "decision making " process that is intended to bring all the variables together to make a workable package so we don't go around mishandling these materials and generally causing mayhem"
With your expertise in risk management, you'll know all about "expected value" of alternative courses of action. Would you be kind enough to explain to the rest of us non-experts how this works with the question of taking action against AGW?
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#129 infinity wrote:
Re 124:
"it wouldn't be modelling at all would it? Because if you abandon physical constraints, you aren't modelling you are just scripting some pre-determined output."
Inasmuch as this isn't pure B-S, it's false. Every model is faithful to some but not all features of what it models. For example, most children's models are faithful to shape but not size. (For example a doll's house is shaped like a real house but it is has "abandoned the physical constraint" of being the same size as a real house.
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#129
If you believe that cloud physics are accurately modeled, then perhaps you should read "from the horse's mouth", so to speak:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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The GRACE experiment looks very interesting and I want to learn more about it. How long has the experiment been running and what is it expected to reveal in the future?
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#127 Ken Appleby wrote:
"But the physics is very complex."
This is a good reason to disbelieve it. The best theories are simple.
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I found the publication about the GRACE experiment
http:www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/publications brochure
this makes me think:
If gravity on the earth is altered by the gravity of other bodies in outer space
If gravity is not evenly distributed around the planet.
If gravity readings are not constant in any particular place all of the time
If gravity changes according to where bodies of water change from ice to liquid or gas.
If the earth's crust bounces upwards when glaciers melt
If the earth crust bounces upwards it must move coastlines up or down in different places
If global warming is happening, for whatever reason it will alter gravitational fields
It appears to me that we are deluded if we think that the planet surface will remain steady and well behaved all of the time.
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@infinity #129 who wrote...
"For example one consistent result is that climate models show significant warming from a doubling of co2. None of them show no warming, or just 0.5C warming. So high warming from co2 is clearly an outcome of physical constraints, not some political edict."
The IPCC is largely political edict. It was set up to investigate what would happen if CO2 sensitivity was high and that's what they've done. It is remarkable how closely a correlation or model can match reality...until it suddenly stops. For instance, if the dominant scientific theory in the past had been that climate was almost purely caused by solar forcing (I don't believe it) and that solar cycle length was the main indicator...then right now everyone would be TERRIFIED of the up and coming "little ice age".
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/sunspot-lenght-&-teperature-2009.gif
Likewise, climate models COULD have been wrapped around this concept instead of CO2. It would have been VERY successful and would have even predicted the recent dips in temperature. They'd be saying "oh, but this is just weather" about the current El Nino conditions and continuing their never-ending propaganda campaign about how NOW we were about to go into the most terrible cold spell seen since the 1600's.
They would even point to the increasing, extreme winter weather events and saying how that was just an aspect of the change to our new climate. They'd say glaciers just take time and need a larger mass of snow to build up before they surge forward (true). They'd say that thermal inertia of the oceans could be stopping the fast change and preventing sea ice (potentially).
BUT...all of that would be a steaming pile based on an incorrect assumption. The problem with the IPCC's models is that they don't even know THE SIGN on the values of many of the forcings and feedbacks. They show high sensitivity because that's what they were modeling. The models were wrapped around the assumptions, using the large number of unknowns in the climate system.
For all of the history of the weather record the temperature has been more or less rising...just like CO2 levels and just like the rate of solar cycle changes. Its relatively easy under those circumstances to fit the models to reality. Pick the wrong driver, or possibly any assumed driver at all, and those models work great...until they don't.
Never forget...the models are not reality! If the models were reality they could use the models themselves to eliminate the uncertainty in the forcings and feedbacks. If they can't use the models to eliminate the uncertainty then the models must not model reality...but an assumed reality.
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@infinity #105
Psuedoskeptics who try to falsely claim GRACE is too inaccurate to show anything are simply in denial. Do they have any studies to back up their claims? No. Just a load of hot air."
Why don't you explain to me how you can work out (through changes in the gravitational field) to great accuracy the thickness of an ice field on world in which the rock its self moves.
Pseudo-intellectuals are unable to understand the dubious nature of gravity data. Yes, if we ASSUME that the interior and crust of the earth are immobile and inflexible stone...we could perhaps work out some of the ice field changes. But GPS measurements, laser altimeters and the fact that the we keep having to dig out the weather stations every couple of years...all indicate that the main mass of the ice sheets are GROWING. After all, the temperatures on the ice sheets themselves are NOT going above freezing...and we're not seeing the ice magically squirt out through the glaciers...or the glaciers would be advancing to handle the large outflow of ice.
It is more likely that the researchers are simply misinterpreting the deformation of the crust that is represented within the gravity data...and all the other, (more direct) measures of the ice sheet thickness are correctly showing an increase in thickness.
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#114 rossglory wrote:
"if you take the time to understand the science you'll find it's not cherry picked"
As an understander of science, you'll be able to provide other examples of science in which they start off with "data" then get a model to fit them, right?
Fire away.
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@rossglory #115
(reply to me saying "Essentially all of the warming would be in regions that are COLD limited. The increased water vapor and loss of permafrost/ice would HELP most life on this planet...including man.")
"now the evidence for that is terrible. still, i'm sure you're accessing some secret stash of data the thousands of ipcc scientists have missed."
LOL, an appeal to authority without even looking at what the authority says. Try again only...only this time, go dig up some IPCC reports that show AGW happening pretty much equally across the whole surface...instead of mostly in the high latitudes (ie, warming the most where its the coldest).
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To Ken Appleby # 128:
We once had a blogger on this site, perhaps eight months ago (rough estimate), and he was a geologist going after his Masters or PhD.
A very knowlegeable geologist on paleoclimate.
But he had a point to make, and he chose me to make the point.
His contention was that many, perhaps most of those who blog on climate change (pro-AGW), were driven to do so because they had a young child.
He claimed to have anecdotal proof of this, and I have no reason to believe he didn't.
His style was confrontational, but I was finally forced to admit he was right, at least in my case.
Hence "The Road."
The bond between father and son is what the book is all about, at least on one level.
The ramifications of this bond make the modelling of clouds look simple in comparison, but of course this is beyond the purvue of modern science, at least as I understand it.
I have often stated that the real problem in climate change is psychological. Easier said than explained.
Perhaps it is not explainable in rational terms - hence my frequent digressions into the world of feeling and art, and my quote from Albert Einstein, who appears to also have had inclinations that the world of reason is only one of perhaps several.
In my own musings during my Year of the Pilgrim in 1994/95, I came to the conclusion that reason was like 'impuse power' (Star Trek), and feelings were 'Warp Drive,' where the real power resides.
I have never changed that view.
We may overcome the problems we find ourselves surrounded by, i.e., global warming, environmental degradation, political corruption etc..., but if we do, I think it will be because a wave of feeling will sweep through mankind, and we will then do whatever is necessary to survive.
In all that turmoil, which will undoubtedly be very ugly - what will hold the world together?
Perhaps the simple bonds between individual human beings, as depicted in "The Road."
- Manysummits -
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#140 manysummits wrote:
"I came to the conclusion that reason was like 'impuse power' (Star Trek), and feelings were 'Warp Drive,' where the real power resides."
According to David Hume (and me) reason can't be a source of motivating "power" at all: "Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them"
In other words, the "passions" decide what you want, and "reason" tells you how to get it.
Everyone wants what's best for their children, and what's best for the planet, and all that. As far as our "passions" are concerned, we do not differ. What we differ about is how best to achieve what we want. So we have to focus on our respective reasons for taking this or that action to achieve what we all want.
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Re your 136, Poitsplace
I am actually rather worried that the great length of Solar Cycle 23 and the cooling this may imply is be a real concern. The Armagh observatory in Northern Ireland for example with records going back to the 18th century shows a good correlation between cycle length and temperature. You seem knowledgeable and I agree with much of what you say. Was this just a throwaway or was it a considered opinion?
Also LarryKealey,
Please do not give up. It is good to have someone with actual knowledge of climate models to explain why they are not to be trusted.
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I hope everyone has had a lovely christmas (i did!) and has a fantastic 2010.
I hope we can all come together and start fighting the real environmental, social and spiritual battles in this world, and worry a little less about co2(airbourne fertilizer)!
The best of luck to everyone.
TOOF
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#134 bowmanthebard
"the best theories are simple" ..... but as einstein said, 'make things as simple as possible but not too simple'. some good theories just have to be complex.
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#144 rossglory wrote:
"some good theories just have to be complex."
But the more complicated they have to be, the less they deserve to be believed, and thus the less we should trust them to guide public policy.
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@xtragrumpymike writes: (to me...)
Go and ask your fellow Texans why they are investing so heavily in windpower rather than coal rather than blab about it here.
Why does Duke Energy support a "cap and trade" system and begin to invest in alternative power such as wind and solar?
-------------end of excerpt---------------------------------
First, the investment in wind power is due to all the federal subsidies associated with it. Here you can buy 'green power' if you want - but you will pay twice the price. Once the ridiculous subsidies are expired, we will see wind decline. Additionally, the use of wind has caused a number of issues and problems, forcing the ISO (independent system operator) to 'shed load' - in other words - drop industrial customers off the grid - because the wind dies - as it commonly does in much of Texas as high pressure systems move in. I have a few friends in the energy business, and a couple who work for the ISO, all believe wind is not viable for baseload power and should be limited to specific applications.
As for Duke Energy - I actually worked for them for fourteen months, I left just after their merger with Cinergy. Duke Energy supports cap and trade because it is good business for them - do a little research and you will find that Duke has a very large portfolio of Nuclear assets. They would like the legislation shaped so that they recieve massive credits, which they can sell, because they have nuclear power. If the legislation is shaped in their favor, they stand to win very big - why don't you look at just how much money they are spending lobbying for such a program?
Cheers.
Kealey
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@infinity writes (quoting me in the first paragraph)
"Yes, you could create a model in which things 'fall upwards' - but that does not mean your model has a basis in reality."
More to the point it wouldn't be modelling at all would it? Because if you abandon physical constraints, you aren't modelling you are just scripting some pre-determined output. Which is why the argument that models can be written to say anything is a fallacy and this was the thrust that my last post was moving towards.
------------end of excerpt-------------------------
Thank you, you make my point quite nicely. This (your statement) is what our esteemed climate modelers are doing - they are not 'modeling earths climate system' - but scripiting a pre-determined output. Which leads to the notion that we can 'limit' the rise in earth's temperature to 2C - like, hey, we just need to turn the thermostat...lol
Don't work that way my friend. To look at 20 years or 50 years and draw a trendline and conclude we are all going to fry is a bit foolish. The earth's climate is affected by a number of natural cycles and mechanisms, most poorly understood. If you believe that it can be modeled accurately and you buy into all this, more power to ya - when my heating bill goes through the roof, I will burn wood to stay warm - as will many other people - that, I see as an ecological disaster.
Save your childred, build coal fired power plants in Africa.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@xtragrumpymike
The appropriate decision making process leads me to believe we should focus our efforts on realistic programs which will have a real impact - not pie-in-the-sky fantasies, like shutting down all the coal plants.
The root cause (you are familiar with root-cause analysis, are you not) of most all of our environmental and humanistic issues is overpopulation - would you argue with that?
How do we address this problem? The only solution I have seen that works is development - with cheap energy and cheap food. Less wood, tires, etc will be burned, less land required to grow food, more environments can be preserved and restored...getting the picture?
Cheers.
Kealey
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@bandythebane #142 who wrote
I am actually rather worried that the great length of Solar Cycle 23 and the cooling this may imply is be a real concern. The Armagh observatory in Northern Ireland for example with records going back to the 18th century shows a good correlation between cycle length and temperature. You seem knowledgeable and I agree with much of what you say. Was this just a throwaway or was it a considered opinion?"
Most of it is throwaway. While I have some small concerns in the back of my mind that there could be some massive, climate-driving potential that we haven't found...I doubt very much that the sun has THAT kind of potential (not from these sorts of fluctuations). Between the solar maximum and a grand minimum...I doubt the sun has over .4C worth of driving capability. Heh, using Armagh is a bit of cherry picking IMHO (I know you aren't the one that picked that specific site and its correlation).
My main point was to get infinity to see that there can be something that has a truly verified impact on temperature (the sun does...how much is the question, just like with CO2) and that the correlation can be incredibly good... and that you could justify it with all kinds of other anecdotal "evidence"...
BUT it can still be very wrong.
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@infinity #129 who wrote...
"For example one consistent result is that climate models show significant warming from a doubling of co2. None of them show no warming, or just 0.5C warming. So high warming from co2 is clearly an outcome of physical constraints, not some political edict."
---------------------------
No, it shows that high warming from CO2 is clearly an outcome of the models, regardless of the physical constraints and has nothing to do with reality.
Cheers.
Kealey
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LarryKealey #124: "If you believe GISS accurately models clouds, much less Earth's Climate System - more power to ya. I don't - and I have a lot of reasons not too. First, we don't even know enough about clouds to model them.
93. We don't even know enough about clouds to model them
Is that the Royal "We", or are you speaking for the entire scientific community?
I find both possibilities equally incredulous.
/davblo
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@davblo #151
List of ways Davblo responds to skeptics' criticisms (this should be short)
#1 Parrot back whatever the skeptic said or something similar
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poitsplace #137: "It is more likely that the researchers are simply misinterpreting the deformation of the crust that is represented within the gravity data..."
94. The GRACE researchers are simply misinterpreting the gravity data
You really are wasted blogging here when you know more than all the researchers put tohether.
/davblo
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poitsplace #152: "List of ways Davblo responds to skeptics' criticisms (this should be short). #1 Parrot back whatever the skeptic said or something similar"
Do you have something against being quoted?
I think most people would be flattered and honoured to be quoted.
Are there different principles involved in being a pseudo-sceptic?
/davblo
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I made this one up myself; I think it captures the "essence"...
95. There is more scientific expertise on this blog than amongst the climate researchers
/davblo
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Oh, oh ... may one just say: Best Wishes for 2010?
Or is this seen as frivolous ...?
Another year "in your company" would be great!
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'and remember that there are other things in life besides the politics of climate change.'
like the psuedoscience it's based on perhaps?
davblo, i think most (psuedo)sceptics feel it is an honour to be included in such a definitive and unbiased list as yours that serves only to spread knowledge and understanding and is in no way an offensive rhetorical device, at all. i know that when you start calling sceptics just 'sceptics' you'll have turned a corner. and in the process you'll have faced the fact that all genuine scientists are in fact profound sceptics in the dictionary sense. is the list your magnum opus? its not a great contribution to the debate (the science is settled, the science is settled etc).
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Solar energy panels. environmentally friendly? well not really. You see the pollysilicon used to make them has a byproduct of -- silicon tetrachloride.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html
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136. At 10:57am on 29 Dec 2009, poitsplace wrote:
"The IPCC is largely political edict. It was set up to investigate what would happen if CO2 sensitivity was high"
Models were showing high climate sensitivity from doubling co2 before the IPCC even existed. The IPCC were set up to evaluate the risk of climate change after climate modelling results started suggesting that the risk existed.
"For instance, if the dominant scientific theory in the past had been that climate was almost purely caused by solar forcing (I don't believe it) and that solar cycle length was the main indicator..."
A theory cannot become dominant on such a whim. The reason such a solar forced theory is not dominant is because knowledge accumulated to present contradicts it and so scientists have by and large not been convinced.
"Likewise, climate models COULD have been wrapped around this concept instead of CO2."
Such concepts are outputs of models, not inputs which are wrapped around. Scientists build models of climate based on knowledge of the day about how sub processes within the climate work and then see how the modelled climate as a whole reacts to different changes.
In regards to solar cycle length, there was never any proposed mechanism, let alone a way of calculating it's effect, so it could never be put into a model. Modern climate science demands a mechanism as correlation alone is prone to coincidence. The Lassen graph of solar cycle length which diverged from temperature after 1980 is a case in point.
"The problem with the IPCC's models is that they don't even know THE SIGN on the values of many of the forcings and feedback"
1) The IPCC doesn't own models. The IPCC does not do original research. The IPCC reports on research published in scientific journals. The models belong to climate research groups in various countries around the world. If someone wants to join in and contribute to climate modelling by publishing results based on their own model, the IPCC would have to report it.
2) Even if the sign is uncertain for particular forcing and feedback that doesn't mean the sign of the sum of forcings or feedbacks is uncertain. In fact in both cases the uncertainty range of the sum is above zero.
3) AR4 figure 2.20 shows the sign of most forcings is known. Stratospheric ozone is the only one which could cut either way, either slightly negative or slightly positive.
AR4 figure 8.14 depicts model climate feedbacks. It shows surface albedo feedback is positive in all models, as is water vapor feedback. Cloud feedback could be either positive or negative, as could be lapse rate feedback.
"They show high sensitivity because that's what they were modeling."
No they were modelling climate. High climate sensitivity is a result which climate modellers cannot seem to avoid. I think that speaks for it being a robust feature of our understanding of the mechanisms of climate. Ie if climate sensitivity is low it'll probably be for a reason that is currently unknown to science.
"The models were wrapped around the assumptions, using the large number of unknowns in the climate system."
And yet the large number of unknowns in the climate system don't seem to be enough to provide a way of getting low climate sensitivity out of model.
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Re 137. poitsplace wrote:
"Why don't you explain to me how you can work out (through changes in the gravitational field) to great accuracy the thickness of an ice field on world in which the rock its self moves."
Possibly the movements of the rock itself are known by other means and taken into account. Possibly such movements are insignificant to the mass changes measured anyway.
"But GPS measurements, laser altimeters and the fact that the we keep having to dig out the weather stations every couple of years...all indicate that the main mass of the ice sheets are GROWING."
Which studies contradict the gravity derived mass balance results? Digging out weather stations just means snow build up in the interior, it is no measure of the mass balance of the entire sheet.
"After all, the temperatures on the ice sheets themselves are NOT going above freezing..."
Then how is ice observed to melting on the greenland ice sheet? Glaciers have also been observed to be accelerating. In terms of temperature there is also the temperature of the water where ice sheet meets sea.
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147. LarryKealey wrote:
"Thank you, you make my point quite nicely. This (your statement) is what our esteemed climate modelers are doing - they are not 'modeling earths climate system' - but scripiting a pre-determined output."
So in over 40 years of modelling climate, everyone has done it dishonestly? Quite a conspiracy involved there.
More likely your objections are simply wrong.
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@infinity writes:
"So in over 40 years of modelling climate, everyone has done it dishonestly? Quite a conspiracy involved there."
----------end of excerpt-----------------------------------------
Interesting how you put words into my mouth - as you do to so many others.
I did not say that. I would say that in the last fifteen years or so, the 'science' and 'reality' has left the world of climate modeling. There is no room for skeptics - in fact the term is not even used anymore - anyone who is not a 'true believer' is branded a denier or worse. Wake up - this isn't science - it's a religion. Why don't you just start branding all those who are not 'true believers' heretics?
You might find my position to be arrogant, but I suggest you consider looking in the mirror for a change. There is no room for skepticism nor doubt in your realm. I find you and those like to you to be arrogant, ignorant, hypocritical fools. To think you can not only predict nature, but actually control it. We, in the real world, have a term to describe such behavior - its called megalomania. The "God" complex of humanity. To imagine that you have the power to control mother nature. One thing is very obvious - you have never been on a boat on the ocean during a hurricane, nor huddled in a house, two blocks from the ocean as mother nature unleashes her fury.
I suggest you do some reading regarding one of the early climate modelers - some say the 'father of both climate modeling and chaos theory'. His name was Ed Lorenz (Distinguished Professor, MIT). His believe was that we would never have the ability to predict climate with any accuracy. His reasoning is just as sound today as it was over forty years ago. {I would suggest James Gleick - Chaos, the making of a new science). This system is so complex, so poorly understood, we cannot even begin to derive a set of equations with which to describe it - which is the current goal of computer modeling - a complete fallacy.
The computer models have their use - they can help us realize things we don't know - help point us to mechanisms and processes which we are oblivious to at this point in time - not predict the future. The models can lead us to new avenues of research, we can see effects which are not predicted by the models and that can lead to field research and new discoveries about this wonderful world we live in. For love's sake man, we didn't even know the PDO existed until ten years ago. How many other major drivers of climate change are out there, which we are completely oblivious too?
This last week, Dr. Lu presented a theory which would seem to indicate that the main drivers for climate change have been CFCs and cosmic rays. His 'discovery' came by accident - he was not even studying global warming, nor climate change. His data fits the climate changes of the last hundred years much better than the casual relationship between CO2 and warming of the last hundred years. This puts CO2 as a main driver "out of the game".
What new discovery will come next week? next month? next year? ten years from now?
Let me be clear - I am skeptical - I don't believe 'we know'. I think the whole CO2 game is a waste of time - regardless of whether it is the great evil you believe it is. Realistically, what are you going to do about it? Tax fuel to the point where everyone has to burn wood or whatever else they can find? Redistribute the wealth of the developed world to corrupt dictators in two-bit third world countries? You think that will help the starving bellies in Africa?
I do believe that there are a lot of environmental and humanistic issues which we do have the ability to address - and while we can't do everything - there certainly is a lot we can do, which will have a real impact.
Lets say I'm wrong and you are 'right', one hundred percent. How are you going to stop China and India from developing? The economy of China has developed to the point where they can actually internalize growth. Trade sanctions will have some effect, but will not prevent its economy from growing at a rapid rate - and its emissions of CO2 with it. Richard Black hails China for coming to the table with a 45% cut in 'carbon intensity'. China has to do this anyway - and even with this cut in 'intensity per unit of GDP', China's emissions increases will more than make up for even the deepest cuts we could possibly make in the West. What you put on the table is unrealistic. Oh, and of course, its all America's fault, so America should pay...yeah, right.
So, we all band together and go along with your agenda. In completely rebuilding all the infrastructure in the developed world AND handing out trillions to the developed world, our economies will be wrecked, the environment will continue to be raped, in the old ways - we will just have less CO2 emissions.
What then do we have for your child?
Lets say your wrong - and instead of all this carbon non-sense, we devote real effort and energies to all the 'old environmental and humanistic' issues. We build refineries and supply tractors to Africa, build coal plants, with today's technology, to supply cheap energy for things like cooking, heating, irrigation. We focus upon raising the standard of living and restoring environments. We purge corruption. We attack disease and poverty.
If you are right - all those things won't matter - as we will all burn because of CO2. But, if you are wrong, the world will be a better place for most all. Are you so sure of yourself?
The climategate emails are just the latest episode in the unraveling of the whole global warming religion. It is obviously apparent from the emails that there was in-fact conspiracy on a grand scale. This was allowed to happen because of a lack of transparency, one which would not be tolerate with any other hard science.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't know - and the first to argue that there is no way that 'we know', with regards to the real impacts of increased CO2 upon this planet. Being realistic, I would also argue that it doesn't really matter what you or I believe, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and emissions will rise for quite some time to come, no matter what you do.
There was a time when scientist had to be very careful, not to contradict the teachings of the church. Now, it is 'political correctness' that scientist must be very careful of. While they really don't have to worry about being burned at the stake, they do have to worry about their careers - if they don't follow the 'party line'.
I am not suggesting there is a 'grand conspiracy' - it is much more subtle than that. It is a sickness, which needs to be purged. How many papers have been 'rejected' by Nature because they did not 'tow the party line'? How many professors denied tenure? We will never know.
I do know this - there ain't a darn thing you can do about CO2 emissions, period. People will not go back to living in the stone age - and even if they did -emissions would rise.
Why be Don Quixote? Why not make a real difference in the world?
You may not respect me or my views - and I was pretty harsh in this post - but believe it or not, I care very deeply, as deeply as you about this world, the natural environments, the human condition.
I have a pretty good idea of what the 'new world order' would look like if the CO2 'gang' got their way - and I don't like it. I don't think most would benefit - I think most would lose. Lets face it, this thing has become so convoluted that all it is about is money anymore.
You believe what you want. I'm glad you have it all figured out. I, on the other hand, believe there are many more urgent and pressing issues which need be addressed. Unfortunately, though we both obviously care very deeply, we will, I expect, both be deeply disappointed, and the worlds environments, ecosystems and poor will continue to be abused.
Cheers.
Kealey
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Davblo #151:
"We don't even know enough about clouds to model them"
Read Chapter 8 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report - you'll find that they say much the same thing.
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Infinity #160:
"Glaciers have also been observed to be accelerating."
But we are told that the Greenland glaciers are retreating.
You can't have it both ways.
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Larry you ask, am I getting the picture?
If by that you mean "are your arguments changing my point of view?" the answer is still ..No.
Where to begin?...Subsidies.
During the "war" (1939/45 vintage) the American Government susidised R$D for industry to come up with a viable alternative to natural rubber as supply from Malaya had dried up after the Japanese invasion. The result was a product GRS (Government Rubber Styrene) and after the war the benefits were seen in the accelerated development of other synthetics that make up our modern "synthetic" world. (Remember the words of that song? ."everything is going to be plastic one of these days!"?
So I don't have a problem with subsidies.....frequently they are a way of accelerating development of new technologies.
Nuclear Power?.........no problem there from my perspective. It's not cheap. It is still based on a finite resource but who can tell what the future holds with respect to future development. I don't have the same phobia as many regarding "safety".
Coal? No problem there either.providing it is clean and here we do disagree and will probably have to agree to disagree. America has high dependency on coal (as does China) and correct me if I've got it wrong but I understand that there are over 75 operations in America alone working on CCS R&D. An awful lot of money being spent on " pie-in-the-sky fantasies, like shutting down all the coal plants." and to the best of my knowledge it's only the very far right environmentalists who advocate the "shutting down" policy (and none of the "decision makers" are listening to them so in my opinion, that comment of yours falls into the "alarmist" category)
CCS is a technology I am very familiar with having personally used it for other gases (hydrocarbon by nature) and which is currently used elsewhere for CO2 in other industries, particularly when there is a market for the product like as used in fire extinguishers.
Obviously all that is very small scale and current work (R$D) is directed at the enormous task of upscaling and viability.
Just a bit of personal experience from my far distant past. As a polymer science student in the 1950s I was taken on a field trip to a small laboratory in South London where there was a pilot plant producing Carbon Fibre. The production rate was incredibly slow and the cost was incredibly high. That was then. Now you are making high-tech aircraft from it!
Without the investment in technology we would still be living in caves (hyperbole!)
So, I certainly see a future (not tomorrow but certainly in the foreseeable future) for CCS and really clean coal as a base-line power source backed up by many other "new technologies" each of which will be improved in time. The most rapid advances have occurred when vast sums of money have been chucked at projects and that usually occurs when there is a perceived need.
Do I consider "over population" a serious problem? Yes...of course I do. But exactly what is meant by "over population"?
On a city scale? In my personal opinion all major cities suffer from "over population"! even in the most developed and educated countries. And yet, most of these cities are still expanding and becoming even more "over populated" (congested). Got any solutions to that?
On a Global scale? How much research has been done to evaluate just what size population the world can comfortably tolerate? Whose perception of "comfortable".
From a mathematical perspective, population growth is currently displaying a positive exponential growth. Being as we are living on a finite planet, resource availability is exhibiting an exponential decline! Long before the two intersect, there will be massive social disorder. The signs are already only too apparent.Even in the cities of your so-called developed nations.
So I perceive your solution to population growth as being somewhat simplistic.
Root causes? One wouldn't have spent the years I have in Risk Management without some knowledge of root causation. And here i don't think you have "dug" down deep enough.(pun intended!).
THE root cause is summed up in just ONE word. GREED.
Lets just pop back to your population solution.
When the first "white man" (for want of a better word) landed on the shores of the Americas they found it already populated (unfortunately!).No-one would suggest the country was "over populated" and their lifestyle seemed to suit them and was sustainable.
Not a problem, these poor "savages" need educating so we sent in the Missionaries. When that didn't work, we sent in the Army to subdue them. Guns versus bows and arrows the outcome was never in doubt.
Did anyone ever bother to ask these indigenous people whether or not they wanted to be educated into "white man's" ways and have their lands "developed" in "white man's" ways? So....who benefited from all this? "White Man" of course!
Ditto in Australia and New Zealand.
Funny isn't it how "White Man" decides what's best for those we consider "less endowed" than ourselves!
So, whenever I see someone suggest that "developing" another country or nation, I always get somewhat suspicious of the true motivation.
Alan Watts, the great philosopher, once wrote (with an interesting cartoon to depict his meaning) quote:-
"Let me help you " said the monkey to the fish, lifting it out of the water and placing it "safely" in the tree.
When we dispense with greed, the insatiable accumulation of wealth in all it's forms, I will begin to see light at the end of the tunnel.
I'm not holding my breath!
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Re 162 LarryKealey wrote:
"Interesting how you put words into my mouth - as you do to so many others."
Claims have consequences. When those consequences are ridiculous they should be raised because it bears on the credibility of the claims themselves.
"I did not say that. I would say that in the last fifteen years or so, the 'science' and 'reality' has left the world of climate modeling. There is no room for skeptics - in fact the term is not even used anymore - anyone who is not a 'true believer' is branded a denier or worse."
Well that is a conspiracy afterall. You might want to avoid using the word but what you describe above is a conspiracy.
The conspiracy is implausible. There is nothing stoping someone from building a climate model to demonstrate how low climate sensitivity can work under current understanding of climate. Furthermore and more importantly, scientists are naturally skeptical and I think that if a scientist already involved in modelling today could demonstrate low climate sensitivity in a model they would jump at the chance.
"There is no room for skepticism nor doubt in your realm"
Yes there is, I've made it clear in past posts that the models are based on current scientific understanding of climate processes which means that future understanding may be different in a way that future models show low climate sensitivity.
Climate models are showing a consistent result of high climate sensitivity and logically therefore it is the result which current scientific understanding of climate processes leads to. Furthermore the spread in uncertainty does not find low climate sensitivity very likely.
The valid skeptical approach is that our understanding of climate will change as more is learnt and maybe future understanding will turn the tables and low climate sensitivity will become the robust result instead.
However this approach recognizes what current science is saying - that high climate sensitivity is very plausible from what we know and alas therefore this valid skeptical approach is not sufficient for those who want to dismiss AGW.
Those who want to dismiss AGW can't argue that the science might change one day, they need to claim AGW is bogus today.
So they make excuses to dismiss climate models. But because they aren't doing it rationally, they make a lot of mistakes in doing so. A lot of arguments are levelled at models, some contradicting each other.
A common argument is to appeal to the models being too uncertain, but of course that's wrong as per above because the models consistently show high climate sensitivity and the range of uncertainty doesn't support low sensitivity.
Another common argument are variants on "models aren't reality". An appeal to models in general being rubbish and not good for anything, GIGO, etc. This again is contradicted by the models showing a similar result. If it was all GIGO then concievably scientists could make the models show anything.
Chaos theory is another. But under chaos theory even chaotic systems have predictable statistics and it's widely thought that global temperature over decades is predictable from applied forcings.
Then there are the claims that climate models falsify AGW, because they don't match observations. This is jumping the gun, while observations could falsify AGW that situation is not yet.
Then there is of course the conspiracy that runs through all of these - that scientists are deliberately making models fit AGW, and because models can be made to say anything they make them show high climate sensitivity. The idea being that if only it was done right low climate sensitivity could be achieved.
Note the last two contradict each other. If the models falsify AGW then scientists cannot have made models fit AGW. Doesn't make sense. But then an irrational approach to simply attempt to dismiss the implications of climate models easily leads to such a contradiction.
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@infinity re:models showing low sensitivity
Here's what I'd like you to do. I'd like you to make a computer model predicting what global temperatures would CURRENTLY be without all that additional CO2 and what climate will be in 100 years. Now...when you figure out why it would be stupid to even attempt that, you'll know why its just as stupid to make a model showing low sensitivity.
and in 160 you wrote...
"Then how is ice observed to melting on the greenland ice sheet? Glaciers have also been observed to be accelerating. In terms of temperature there is also the temperature of the water where ice sheet meets sea."
Ok, first off that's my point...the ice sheet IS NOT observed to be melting. Glaciers at the edges of greenland are melting. This is an entirely different concept. And as someone else has already pointed out, accelerating glaciers would be the OPPOSITE of retreating glaciers. You obviously have no original thoughts in your head. You only regurgitate what authority figures tell you. Congratulations on your new religion. Forget about that silly old concept of falsifiability...who needs it. EVERYTHING is evidence of warming to you. Warming, static temperatures, cooling...it's all warming. Glaciers retreating and ice melting is warming. Ice accumulating and glaciers surging is due to warming. More rain, less rain, same rain, snow, sleet...heck you'd probably blame warming caused by CO2 for liquid nitrogen falling from the skies.
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To Asterionella #156:
Best wishes!
Perhaps I could address this post to you?
\\\ To understand and protect our home planet ///
(Former first line of NASA Mission Statement - now the first line of Nasa's 'Vision'???
http://naccenter.arc.nasa.gov/NASAMission.html
------------------
In reading James Hansen's "Storms of my Grandchildren" (2009), I finally came across Jim's version of the 'mysterious case of the disappearing mission statement.'
"The Nasa mission statement had been arrived at years earlier, under administrator Dan Goldin, with great fanfare. A committee was set up at headquarters, suggestions were sought, and there were iterations with all NASA employees. The resulting mission statement, almost everyone agreed, was inspiring."
- Jim Hansen, p.135, hardcover ed.
on the disappearance in 2006, Michael Griffin now administrator:
"I checked with more than a score of people at headquarters, Goddard management, scientists, and people at other NASA centers, and nobody knew what had happened...
Another disappearance occurred simultaneously... 20 percent of the NASA earth science research and analysis budget." (Jim Hansen, p. 135)
from Mark Bowen's book, "Censoring Science" (2008)
"A high insider at headquarters told me that Michael Griffin rewrote the mission statement..." (from p. 136)
The NASA Inspector General's Office did a formal investigation on the censorship issue at the prompting of fourteen U.S. Senators. The mission statement had been used by Jim Hansen to support his communication of global warming information to the public.
The Inspector General's report was supposed to take a few months - instead it took almost two years, appearing just a few months after the publication of Mark Bowen's book, "Censoring Science."
(The case of the magically appearing report!)
The report:
"Regarding Allegations that NASA Suppressed Climate Change Science and Denied Media Access to Dr. James E. Hansen, a NASA Scientist"
"...confirmed the allegations and placed the blame several layers higher than suggested by the New York Times article and Congressman Boehlert...
...they [The Report] concluded that "the preponderance of evidence supported claims of inappropriate political interference in dissemination of NASA scientific results." (p. 134, "Storms...)
--------------
There's more, of course, but I think the point has been made, and those wishing to know more can read the Inspector General's report in full, or obtain a copy of Mark Bowen's "Censoring Science," or of course, James Hansen's new book - his first! ("Storms of my Grandchildren")
I have "Censoring Science." If Mark tires of climate change, I think he has the investigative skills of a first rate lawyer. The case as outlined in his book is meticulously detailed and documented.
While the Mission Statement has 'magically' been transformed into a 'Vision,' I am sad to report that according to Dr. Hansen (in "Storms..."), much more needs to be done to ensure that NASA scientists are free to do their job as prescribed by the Constitution, and not by the Public Affairs Departments of either NASA or the President.
As I mentined previously Asterionella, I intend to hit the New Year running!
- Manysummits -
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\\\ "The Road" - continued /// (from #140)
In metaphysics and in mythology, the road is often used as a metaphor for the journey we humans are so summarily committed to from the moment of conception.
To read a work of art too literally is perhaps to miss the fullness present there.
I look around, and with a little imagination I see here and now a devastated landscape. An institutionalized society, with so many chronically ill that the dentists and doctors are kept busy enough to make health care costs a 'bank-breaker' in the not too distant future.
Socially, the land of the Yuppie, who must check with his or her Blackberry to see if time is available, or postpone a decision, on say, supper at a friend's or in-laws, in case something of higher priority comes up in one's busy little life.
A billion people hungry today!! - NOT US - read NOT ME!
When James Hansen talked to Larry King of television fame (America), and suggested he could speak on the ramifications of climate change, Larry King said, upon learning that this would only happen decades ahead: "Nobody cares about fifty years from now," and declined.
Why switch to solar and wind when you have oil and coal?
Is there intelligent life in the world?
What do you think?
- Manysummits -
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It seems there aren't many bloggers from western North America.
Here in Calgary it is 10 pm.
George Monbiot seems less than sanguine about Copenhagen - I just read his Dec 21 post on his website:
"Requiem for a Crowded Planet"
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/21/requiem-for-a-crowded-planet/
Here is a new phrase, I believe. Something did come out of Copenhagen after all:
"climate breakdown", as in:
"This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation; either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown."
-------------
I am reminded of James Lovelock's extremely pessimistic outlook in his most recent book.
George Monbiot points out in his article, that new talks are ostensibly scheduled for next year in Mexico, "the place where failed negotiations go to die?"
------------
From my post #89:
"The world's ice is providing the most visible evidence there is for global warming, and the changes are incredible. To me it's so straightforward."
(Dr. Lonnie Thompson, U.S. National Academy of the Sciences;
p. 393, "Thin Ice", by Mark Bowen, 2005, hardcover ed.)
----------
I see clearly, or rather 'feel' the invective in the denial lobby when ice is brought up. The lengths gone to to 'debunk' the melting of the ice know no bounds.
Incredibly - people are still apparently confused.
Of course, not many people live where the ice is melting, do they?
So if you are not actually standing on a melting glacier or ice sheet, you are not sure.
- Manysummits -
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Thank-you for the reports and the clarity you gave to issues that seemed multi-faceted and so incomprehensible to a simple bear of little brain such as myself. I am able to take part in my local FOE debate with authority because of your columns.
Peace and relative prosperity for the New Year
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Richard - thanks for all the hard work and, to be honest, some of the least biased of the 'environment' reporting.
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#155 davblo wrote:
95. There is more scientific expertise on this blog than amongst the climate researchers
Edmund Burke, “father of modern conservatism”, had a relevant insight here: that the more technical, specialized or complicated a bit of thinking is, the less belief-worthy it is. And the less belief-worthy it is, the less we can trust it to guide public policy.
Burke spoke dismissively of “philosophers and economists” as examples of people who should not be allowed to make big political decisions (as they unfortunately did just after the French Revolution). Specialized, abstract, complicated thinking is generally guided by theories/ideologies that have not been tried in practice, and therefore cannot be trusted in practice.
So although “climate scientists” are bound to be more familiar with the details of climatology than non-specialist bloggers on this forum, that very specialization undermines their entitlement to guide public policy. As anyone who has done a little real science or studied the history of science knows, the very best scientific theories are quite capable of being spectacularly wrong. I would argue that climatology consists of the very worst scientific theories – untested computer models so half-baked that it would be a miracle if they were even approximately right. So they’re not entitled to guide public policy at all at all.
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#170 manysummits wrote:
"When James Hansen talked to Larry King of television fame (America), and suggested he could speak on the ramifications of climate change, Larry King said, upon learning that this would only happen decades ahead: 'Nobody cares about fifty years from now,' and declined."
There is good reason for this. The further away a goal is, the less confident we can be that we can achieve it. And the less confidence we can have in our ability to achieve a goal, the less we should invest in the assumption that we can achieve it.
For example, you are probably not bothering to save up for your great-great-granddaughter's college education, because you don't know if you will have a great-great-granddaughter, or whether she will go to college, or whether her evil husband will run off with the money and blow it all on research and development for "Big Oil".
You should pay a bit more attention to Larry King. He's expressing the mood of the general public who have grown weary with apocalyptic pronouncements from people who seem to think they live on Planet Woodstock and whose other pronouncements seem like the ramblings of the brain-damaged-by-LSD.
More importantly, Larry King was applying a sound principle of rationality.
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\\\ French Carbon tax ruled unconstitutional, 2 days before taking effect.///
France’s Constitutional Council says the country’s proposed carbon tax is illegal. This is a severe blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to fight climate change.
The government will now have to find another way to come up with about 4.1 billion euros in revenue that was expected from the tax.
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French constitutional body rules against carbon tax
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE5BS1FB20091229
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\\\ Senior AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi would like the Hadley centre to explain this winters predictions ///
http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp
"I have NOTHING against the Hadley Center, but I will be very curious as to what their outlook is for the rest of the winter and how they will explain what is going on. I think in light of what is going on, with a arrogance of authority in the climate and weather wars obvious (There is no human, or human-made, "authority" that holds the future in their hand and dictates events),"
"What is facing the major population centers of the Northern Hemisphere is unlike anything that we have seen since the global warming debate got to the absurd level it is now, which essentially has been there is no doubt about all this. For cold of a variety not seen in over 25 years in a large scale is about to engulf the major energy-consuming areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The first 15 days of the opening of the new year will be the coldest, population weighted, north of 30 north worldwide in over 25 years in my opinion. "
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For those gullible enough to think that China is going to cut emissions.
\\\ UPDATE 2-Oil-thirsty China to raise Kuwaiti imports by 50 pct ///
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTOE5BT06Q20091230
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Infinity #167:
"Well that is a conspiracy afterall. You might want to avoid using the word but what you describe above is a conspiracy"
When the editorial in "Nature" describes sceptics as 'denialists'
When Prof David King lies on Newsnight about mobile phone conversations
When Al Gore says on television that the interior of the Earth is several million degrees
When Dr Pachauri attempts to pour scorn on Indian glaciologists who dared to suggest that the Himalayan glaciers aren't melting that fast, when the IPCC paper incorrectly stated 2035 instead of 2350 (the figure in the original paper)
...the list goes on and on
What would you call that?
A conspiracy of ignorance and dogma, perhaps?
And you wonder why people are sceptical.
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The all seeing MET office and its way off predictions.
Not so long ago they predicted in November 2009 that there was a 50% CHANCE OF A MILD winter with the help of their £30 Million Super computer.
\\\ Forecasters say El Nino will bring mild winter as Prince Charles pays tribute to flood victims ///
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1231668/Forecasters-predict-mild-winter-Britain-Prince-Charles-visits-flood-hit-Cockermouth.html
But of course just a month later the MET office have revises their super computer modelling predictions to reflect the ACTUAL weather.
45% colder, 30% near average, 25% MILDER
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/seasonal/2009/winter/?zoneid=79042
So are we to put our faith/money into models that can't even predict a month in advance, let alone 50-100 years?
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The Met Office seasonal forecasting is even worse than Al Gore suggests. Not only were they wrong about this winter, but it followed on from the "barbecue summer" before it. Before that the 2008/2009 winter was forecast to be "warmer than average" when in the outcome it was the coldest for at least 14 years.
In fact if you look at the Met Office forecasts since 2007, they have all been spectacularly wrong.
I think the sad explanation for this is that the Met Office actually believes its own view of the ever rising trend, Each time it is cold it assumes that this is an anomaly and forecasts that this will soon "correct" itself.
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167. poitsplace
"Ok, first off that's my point...the ice sheet IS NOT observed to be melting. Glaciers at the edges of greenland are melting. This is an entirely different concept."
In a sense you are right. But it's not as simple as that. Antarctica is not a single ice-sheet. It is a continent with a varied topology on all scales. Each section of it is behaving differently. The problem is that it is so vast that changes to even one small part of it can cause significant sea-level rises. It doesn't all have to change.
A glacier is a moving stream of ice. In Antarctica the ice to feed the stream comes from the ice-sheets. Faster glaciers in the West Antarctic mean that less ice is contained in the upstream ice-sheets. If you set up a tank of water with a pipe delivering water into it and a drain allowing water out, the water in the tank will reach some stable level. The depth of water will increase until the outflow equals the inflow. If you then open up the drain a bit more, the level in the tank will drop until the flows are equal again. The tank holds less water. Antarctica holds less ice. The ice that is no longer in the ice sheets is in the oceans, which therefore rise.
One relatively small (but still vast) area of West Antarctica, Pine Island Bay, where glaciers have accelerated, has the potential to raise sea level by 1m.
There is a positive feedback to the ice-loss. Some West Antarctic glaciers are sensitive to small changes in sea level and temperature because they are held back by extensive ice-shelves that are part floating, part grounded. These can disappear rapidly as a result of small changes, as have Larsen A and Larsen B. This releases the upstream glaciers leading to more ice moving from ice-sheet to ocean.
"accelerating glaciers would be the OPPOSITE of retreating glaciers"
I think you are confounding Antarctic glaciers with mountain glaciers elsewhere.
The West Antarctic glaciers that have accelerated have changed shape in many ways, including thinning, broadening and lengthening, but it's the mass loss of the ice-sheet that is of interest.
Mountain glaciers and ice-caps elsewhere are shrinking. In China, for example, overall glacier area loss is estimated at 20% since the 17th Century. In Tien Shan and Pamir mountain ranges the area loss has been about 30% in the twentieth century.
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bowmanthebard:
"So although “climate scientists” are bound to be more familiar with the details of climatology than non-specialist bloggers on this forum, that very specialization undermines their entitlement to guide public policy"
You are saying that ignorance is a superior form of knowledge. Not many rational people would agree.
"I would argue that climatology consists of the very worst scientific theories – untested computer models so half-baked that it would be a miracle if they were even approximately right."
Which models? Why do you say "untested" and "half-baked?" Have you looked at them and understood them? If you haven't then you are ignorant of what you are ignorant of.
Oh, and please remind me which philosopher advocates name-calling as a means of getting at the truth.
Happy New Year by the way.
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#181 bandythebane wrote:
"Each time it is cold it assumes that this is an anomaly and forecasts that this will soon 'correct' itself."
Apart from the lousy science, this is a nice illustration of "the gambler's fallacy" (also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy). Heads and tails are equally likely when tossing a fair coin -- even if the coin has built up an "imbalance" of heads, say, it isn't more likely to come up tails to "correct the imbalance".
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Once in a Blue Moon !
New Years Eve - Blue Moon (see spaceweather dot com)
------------
On Abraham Lincoln (as there is a BBC aritcle on him):
It is more revealing sometimes, I think, to listen to what someone has to say 'off-topic' in order to gain insight into who that person is, or was.
Here are a couple of Lincoln quotes which I have always liked:
"If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class."
"In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares... I have had experience enough to know what I say."
------------------------------------------
- Manysummits -
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Re 167 poitsplace:
"And as someone else has already pointed out, accelerating glaciers would be the OPPOSITE of retreating glaciers. You obviously have no original thoughts in your head. You only regurgitate what authority figures tell you."
This only betrays your ego. To imagine that you have original thoughts on a topic of science, which experts in that field haven't even considered is the height of arrogance.
I am not a climate expert, so I don't expect any of my thoughts on the issue are original. What I am doing is reading the findings of climate experts to understand how things are in climate.
There's something very 1984ish about this concept of "original thought" as a method of analyzing the science by non-experts. I can imagine a world of complete ignorance where scientific organizations have been shut down because of a political decree that citizens should instead be able to figure out knowledge through "original thought" themselves. Whole schools without textbooks as the kids are asked to think up what's real themselves.
The current anti-intellectual streak running through western civilization may partly owe itself to too many people empowered to incorrectly think they know more about subjects than experts.
Id rather take info from scientific sources than do what you are proposing which is to think your "original thoughts" override whatever conclusion the science has reached.
Case in point, your "original thought" about glaciers is wrong. Accelerating doesn't mean advancing. Glaciers can be both retreating and accelerating at the same time. One example from a few years back:
http://currents.ucsc.edu/05-06/11-14/glacier.asp
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I see one blogger has taken to imitating my \\\ ///.
I have heard it said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - so thank you, I guess?
----------
Larry King certainly was successful in his own way, and doubtless understood the public enough to make his show very popular.
And his refusal to air James Hansen is perhaps indicative of this.
The Iroquois of eastern Canada were a large and powerful and very well organized group (the Six Nations). Apparently their councils would look seven generations ahead.
But that is all history now. As we enter this new decade, I really think that the human being's limitations (ability to look ahead), is one of our weak points.
Looking ahead is difficult, no doubt.
Failure to look ahead seems a recipe for disaster in the case of climate change, population growth, and environmental destruction of our resource base, i.e., of our economy.
Mankind, caught up in the day to day, wherever that may be, whatever that might mean to different groups in different situations, is not typically forward thinking in the conventional sense. Our cerebral cortex is not designed well for this.
There is the possibility that our emotional response to the world is better suited to this type of dilemma.
Does one 'feel' that there is a problem?
Does one have the 'courage' to act on that feeling?
I learned long ago, much to my dismay, that 'advice' is a sign of immaturity. So I stick to stories and questions, and even observations.
I believe I once even said, "Never confuse an issue with the facts."
- Manysummits - out of focus -
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#183 Ken Appleby wrote:
"You are saying that ignorance is a superior form of knowledge. Not many rational people would agree."
I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm saying that the more narrowly focussed one's area of speculation, the more speculative and less certain it becomes. In other words, the less confident we can be in what it seems to tell us. We can be most confident about our speculations when the focus is broad rather than deep, and "everything seems to hang together" properly.
It's interesting that you would read me as saying "ignorance is a form of knowledge", as I am expressing an idea of Edmund Burke. Most academics seem to be constitutionally incapable of grasping what Burke said -- and the mistrust was mutual!
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"To imagine that you have original thoughts on a topic of science, which experts in that field haven't even considered is the height of arrogance."
I suggest you read Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Almost all of the great scientific revolutions and advances are set in motion by "outsiders" or newcomers to the field who can overturn the orthodoxy because they are less indoctrinated by it than members of the establishment.
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Ken Appleby #183:
"Oh, and please remind me which philosopher advocates name-calling as a means of getting at the truth"
Well, when "Nature" starts referring to sceptics as 'denialists', then it's quite clear that name-calling has become an 'acceptable' part of science.
Infinity #186:
"Glaciers can be both retreating and accelerating at the same time. One example from a few years back:"
If you read the article you linked to properly, you would have seen that it's accelerating because it's growing thinner - just like a shallow river flows faster than a deep one - and receding for the same reason - at the point where it meets the ocean the water gets deeper and so the now-thinner ice breaks off more easily.
The point is, because it's thinning, it isn't now draining the ice sheet any faster than it was.
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'Why do you say "untested" and "half-baked?"'
I call a theory or model "untested" when it hasn't been asked to get over the hurdle of predicting something observable.
I call climate change theory "half-baked" because its practitioners and supporters seem to suppose that science works by applying induction to pre-existent data instead of testing hypotheses. I have said that repeatedly, and notice that none of climate change theory's supporters seem capable of even addressing the question, let alone rebutting my criticism.
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@infinity #186 who wrote...
"The current anti-intellectual streak running through western civilization may partly owe itself to too many people empowered to incorrectly think they know more about subjects than experts.
Id rather take info from scientific sources than do what you are proposing which is to think your "original thoughts" override whatever conclusion the science has reached."
Unfortunately your attitude is the embodiment of the anti-intellectual steak you're talking about. You've given up on thinking for yourself, at least on anything related to AGW. You have given little to no consideration to any of the numerous, valid points that skeptics have brought up here. One cannot assess the truth of anything by (as you seem to do) blindly accepting what they are told. Your own original thoughts are (or would be) all that stand between you and a conman with a good story taking your money.
Look at this nonsense you've linked. It says, "Warming air and sea temperatures in the area likely caused the glacier to speed up." That is conjecture, not established science. Is this the same sort of "evidence" on which you based the assertion... "Psuedoskeptics who try to falsely claim GRACE is too inaccurate to show anything are simply in denial." All you seem to care about is propping up your new AGW religion. Just mentioning the name of the satellite was enough to get SensibleGrannie to look it up. THAT is how you learn things. If you'd taken the time to look, you'd have seen the GRACE data is questionable at best.
Should we assume all of your "facts" are as well researched as this? Should we assume all of your dismissals of skeptical claims have been given the same amount of "thought"?
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\\\ Is there intelligent life on Earth? ///
I think so, but it is rare, like the "courage and strength" of Cicero's "noble and invincible spirit."
Knowing this intuitively, perhaps even genetically, the human being has always relied on leaders.
-------------------------
Onward...
Since this is very near the close of the decade, I thought to indulge in reminisce.
In the month of February of the year 2000, I and my backcountry skiis trekked out to Skoki Lodge in the Canadian Rockies back of Lake Louise's Ski Resort to celebrate my fiftieth birthday - alone.
Skoki is a log cabin, heated by a wood and coal burning firplace, and I had booked accomodation for one night. Newfound friends sang around the piano to my luck in having made it thus far - friends for a day, so to speak.
The year previous I had dedicated myself to the climbing of mountains as a full time occupation, without realizing that I had done this. I sold my condo to keep climbing soon after, I think, and moved into the apartment in which I am keying this message, wondering, as always, if it will sink into the sands of time, or be immortalized in song and memory.
It is very near the year two thousand and ten, and another decadal birthday. Our cat Ghost is beside me - Underacanoe (wife) and Cloudrunner (five year old son) are sleeping in the other room.
Because I followed my heart.
Rather than metric the airwaves and cyberspace with details of global warming, I was wondering if any on this weblog would care to relate their musings on this past decade?
It would be a nice treat!
- Manysummits -
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\\\ Dumb as a Hammer... Connect the dots... ///
- Manysummits -
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\\\ Sorry ? ///
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Should Trees Have Standing? (Christopher Stone) - continued
This classic article by Christopher Stone was discussed at some length many moons ago on this weblog.
George Monbiot makes specific mention of the continuation of this line of thought in his Dec 18/09 post "Scramble for the Atmosphere."
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/18/scramble-for-the-atmosphere/
--------------
I see that the lead author of this new thinking at COP15 was Polly Higgins, who voiced a prelude on Dec 10, 2008, in an article in The Ecologist:
http://www.theecologist.org/how_to_make_a_difference/wildlife/360285/enshrining_legal_rights_for_the_planet.html
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Here is her Declaration, as given at COP15:
http://www.treeshaverightstoo.com/
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Here are two passages from the Ecologist article that I thought nicely sum things up: (by Polly Higgins)
"This planet we call Earth is no longer a place of honour. We have depleted fossil fuel reserves, we have created escalating emissions, we have polluted, poisoned, damaged, destroyed, and caused the extinction of numerous species...
Christopher Stone in his seminal article ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’ argued that natural objects should have at least three basic rights: the right to institute legal action at their own behest; the right to have injuries to them taken into account in determining legal relief; and the right to benefit from that relief."
Perhaps it is time to pursue the legal avenues on climate change, the political process having produced little?
- Manysummits -
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I was the first member of my family to gain a university degree and I achieved it at the beginning of this decade. From this almost impossible summit for me, I have gone on to achieve a post graduate certificate in education. To gain a degree when you are older, you have to do a crash course in learning to gain sufficient qualifications to be allowed a place at university. The crash course involves taking four subjects at A level and taking GCE Maths and English if you do not have them either. I had to take the lot, and thankfully passed. Luckily I managed to get all of the basic stuff done in one year.
Education is important. It takes one to a new level of thinking but it has it's price. I don't know if you have noticed this but, not many people care a toss about the environment nor would they even comment about it in general conversation. Conversation outside of the blog spheres becomes a bit boring and predictable and it is not socially acceptable to talk about religion, politics, environment or any other touchy subject. The blog environment is the only place I know of, where one can safely ask questions about our future and get answers. I do find it difficult when people insult or ridicule others for their lack of knowledge or lack of education as it closes the door to an enquiring mind.
I know that I am not always grammatically correct and that without a dictionary to hand, I cannot spell some of the most basic words, but I have found this space to be a place to continue communicating and to continue learning. To those of you who do not have the education but have enquiring minds, do not give up. Do not allow others to put you off asking questions. You will find that the clues given by the scientific community on this blog will lead you to sources to further your own enquiry.
So I ask this of the scientific community. Help us learn more and in turn we will educate our families, our friends and the wider community. After all, it is the will and determination of the general population who will influence the outcomes of all scientific enterprise. The population make choices, and the population makes choices based on information and knowledge generated by the media. The population also make choices, based on disposable income, the needs of their own families and social acceptance in their own communities.
I enjoy the range of voices on this blog. It is good that there are people communicating from all social strata's and that perhaps, some of the voices on this blog are famous and hiding behind a blog name. I find the idea of that thrilling. I know it is naive and a bit cheesy to some of you, but I find the idea of someone important reading and responding to my enquiries, the most empowering thing in my life.
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I hope everyone had a nice christmas, even Mango.
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"9. At 1:43pm on 24 Dec 2009, streetphotobeing wrote:
Will you be reporting on this or should I say, will the BBC
allow you :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD"
Including that the CLOUD experiment has not found any effect that will work to moderate warming..?
Or would that be biased reporting?
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"As the cold spell continues and over 100 people die from the cold in Europe, I suspect many will still be skeptics next year too!"
And 35000 europeans who died in one summer did nothing to change your position?
100 die in winter 35000 die in summer.
And you think this proves AGW is wrong???
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bowman plays the martyr card:
"Maybe it's because we've been likened to Holocaust deniers for years, and we're getting a bit fed up?"
Uh, let's have a look.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/denial
root of the word is "denial". Origin of that 1250.
WWII happened nearly 700 years later...
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bowmanthebard:
191. I note you don't answer the first question I posed: "which models?" It's not reasonable to describe something as "half-baked" and "untested" when you haven't even identified what it is you describe.
Imagine someone comes up with a quantitative theory that predicts global temperature at a resolution of, say, 100 years. Imagine also that this theory is a simple equation, which has two input parameters, whose values are derived from ice-cores, one constant, estimated by different independant means, an independant variable (time) and a dependent variable (temperature). No complicated software modelling, just the one simple equation.
How would you test this theory? You could wait 100 years. We're doing that. You could also gather information about global temperature in the past and see how well the theory fits. What is "half-baked" about that?
188. 189. To describe climate science as "narrowly focussed" is erroneous. It encompasses a wider variety of disciplines than most others.
Of course some scientific advances come from "outsiders." You don't need to read Kuhn to know that. Are you saying that all "outsiders" are therefore correct? If not, which ones do you reject and which ones do you listen to? Or is everything all relative and ultimately unknowable? To take this idea and deduce that bloggers are more worth listening to than all scientists in one field is untenable.
Do you also claim that outsiders are not specialists? That Marshall and Warren, Peter Mitchell, Heisenberg, Einstein were not specialising when they did their revolutionary work?
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"# 34. At 4:54pm on 25 Dec 2009, LarryKealey wrote:
@manysummits
If the science is 'settled' "
What do you mean by "the science"?
The science of forces in the macro human world (F=ma) is settled.
So what do you mean by "the science"?
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Moe:
"As far as predicting the effects of doubling a trace gas, yeah right...I'll believe it when I see it."
But you haven't believed it even when you've seen it.
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"'Joanna Haigh from Imperial College, London, UK. She realised that although the Sun's overall energy output changes by 0.1%, it changes much more in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.
"The changes in the UV are much larger, between 1% and 10%," she says. '"
And UV gets stopped in the upper stratosphere by O3 (Ozone). Where the optical depth toward the ground is greater than it is to space. Which way will the energy go? Against the gradient?
This doesn't really make a lot of difference to the earth SURFACE temperatures, really.
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"# 70. At 10:19am on 27 Dec 2009, Al Gore wrote:
I thought the ice was supposed to be melting at a catastrophic armagedon like rate?
Artic sea ice monitor"
Fake Al Gore here showing again he doesn't have much of a grip here: The Arctic is in the Northern Hemisphere, where (just in case he missed it) we're having a WINTER.
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"I call a theory or model "untested" when it hasn't been asked to get over the hurdle of predicting something observable."
Then Rejoice. For nearly 30 years a climate model which uses those scientific theories HAS predicted something that is observable.
Hansen's 1988 model shows the prediction of what a large volcanic eruption would do to global temperatures if it occurred.
How long it would last, how deep the cooling and the shape of the temperature deviation all predicted.
Pinatubo occurred and though it occurred on a time different from the one modelled and was slightly bigger than the model volcano, the depth of the cooling was appropriate, the length was mostly invariant with size and was as predicted, as was the shape of the temperature change.
Of course, this is not going to be accepted as observable and most likely ignored.
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"In fact if you look at the Met Office forecasts since 2007, they have all been spectacularly wrong."
Please show us how you looked at this and proved that statement, bandy.
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197. sensiblegrannie
Congratulations! I have a close relative who did something very similar as a "mature" student in her 40s and I know the amount of tears, toil and exhilaration is involved. She achieved a 1st class honours degree from a standing start in 5 years.
I very much agree with your sentiments, but I find most people I talk to in person care more and more about the environment.
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#207:
"Hansen's 1988 model shows the prediction of what a large volcanic eruption would do to global temperatures if it occurred"
Where's the evidence that it got anything else right?
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Re 190. Peter317
"If you read the article you linked to properly, you would have seen that"
I would have seen that Peter317's claim that glaciers cannot both retreat and accelerate was bogus. And then if I read you latest post I see that you are trying to change the subject.
I think we can see now why nature would run an editorial describing certain skeptics as deniers.
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@U14260427 wrote:
Hansen's 1988 model shows the prediction of what a large volcanic eruption would do to global temperatures if it occurred.
How long it would last, how deep the cooling and the shape of the temperature deviation all predicted.
Pinatubo occurred and though it occurred on a time different from the one modelled and was slightly bigger than the model volcano, the depth of the cooling was appropriate, the length was mostly invariant with size and was as predicted, as was the shape of the temperature change.
Of course, this is not going to be accepted as observable and most likely ignored.
----------end of excerpt-------------------------------------
As I wrote in an earlier post, modeling the cooling effects of a volcano or 'nuclear winter' is pretty easy - as the event becomes the only first order driver for climate (temperature) change.
Additionally, this type of phenomenon has been studied very extensively (large volcanic eruption, asteroid impact & massive nuclear explosion all cause the same effect: massive amounts of debris ejected into the stratosphere).
A system with only a single first order driver is pretty straightforward and easy to model. Not so with the Earth's Climate System - in the absence of such "events".
If you take such a model as 'evidence' or 'validation' of the validity of the current crop of climate models - I think you are being a bit optimistic there bro...
Cheers.
Kealey
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#202 Ken Appleby wrote:
'I note you don't answer the first question I posed: "which models?" It's not reasonable to describe something as "half-baked" and "untested" when you haven't even identified what it is you describe.'
It's the methodology itself that I object to. Induction -- the move from "all of the swans I've seen so far have been white" to "all swans are white" -- is only reliable if the so-far-observed instances (in effect, what climate change science treats as "data") are genuinely representative of the larger class.
It's OK to extrapolate from "all of the swans I've seen so far lay eggs" to "all swans lay eggs", because egg-laying is a universal feature of birds -- unlike color. But this sort of reasoning is generally extremely untrustworthy. Yet climate change science seems to assume that this is the way to proceed.
The right way to proceed is with tests -- i.e. predictions, followed by checks to see whether the predictions come true. For that reason, I am impressed with this from U14260427:
"Then Rejoice. For nearly 30 years a climate model which uses those scientific theories HAS predicted something that is observable.
"Hansen's 1988 model shows the prediction of what a large volcanic eruption would do to global temperatures if it occurred."
Thanks -- I welcome that, and I look forward to finding out more about it!
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208. At 6:02pm on 30 Dec 2009, U14260427 wrote:
"In fact if you look at the Met Office forecasts since 2007, they have all been spectacularly wrong."
Yet another one of "bandy's" statements that can best be described as "hyperbole" a tactic they use when all else fails.
202. At 5:16pm on 30 Dec 2009, Ken Appleby wrote
"How would you test this theory? You could wait 100 years. We're doing that."
That, Ken, is exactly what the anti-AGW lobby are recommending.
Manysummits points out that the Iroquois Council planned for Seven generations ahead. Politicians (the so-called "decision makers" in our modern form of democracy)) can only see as far as the next election. Which probably has a lot to do with the lack of a firm commitment at Copenhagen.
Which is par for the course. Most of the same governments were there at Rio in 1992 and signed the Rio Accord. How much of that has been adhered to in the past 17 years?
However, it is now New Years Eve "down under". The weather is fantastic....could do with some rain, though.......some Ozzy fires are still raging out of control in the heat there but I gather my relatives in the UK are having a bit of a cool time so it may be hard to accept that the planet is slowly but positively warming. (note......I am not pre-determining as to why that is happening.....I'm no climate scientist as I have so often said) so as Manysummits also points out........."if you're not standing on the ice , how do you know it's melting?"
So it comes down to "Who do you (choose to) believe?"
So.....one last question for Sensiblegranny. How do you tell the difference between a genuine scientist (no matter which side of the argument) dressed in camouflage and a "rebel-rouser" dressed in camouflage?
And now.... a very happy New Year to all of you.
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Again, suppose that these 'models' are accurate? [a belief which I do not subscribe to - with regards to prediction] What are you going to do? What is anyone going to do? Emissions are going to continue to rise, without a doubt, no matter what anyone does.
Be realistic here - China is producing cars and power plants with thirty year old technology at an unprecedented rate. That is not going to change. The US cannot simply change out all its infrastructure overnight - it ain't gonna happen. Worry all you want, throw all the money you want at it and you won't do anything at all to reduce the emissions of CO2 - short of massive nuclear bombardment.
Use cap and trade schemes and carbon taxes to curb the use of fossil fuels, and people will turn to cheaper alternatives - like wood. Is that what you want? That is what happened during the energy crisis of the late 70's.
In the meantime, the rain forests are still being cut, fishing in most places continues at an unsustainable rate and will do so until those fisheries collapse, wetlands and bogs are still being filled in for development, people are still hand carrying water to irrigate crops on hand tilled plots of land in Africa, bellies are empty at night...
All these issues continue to go unaddressed - as a bunch of loons focus all environmental efforts on a hopeless cause.
Now suppose the models are not accurate - with all efforts focused on CO2 - all the other environmental and humanistic issues continue to go unaddressed. What a world you leave for your children, glad I don't have any.
Cheers.
Kealey
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212. At 7:15pm on 30 Dec 2009, LarryKealey wrote:
"A system with only a single first order driver is pretty straightforward and easy to model. Not so with the Earth's Climate System - in the absence of such "events"."
Fair comment and I doubt that even Hansen would disagree.
However.......in the absence of "certainty" as I understand it, we have only "modeling" to go on.
In essence, Hansen claims his modeling is right, you claim his modeling is a load of garbage.
So....if you were a "decision maker" responsible for establishing policy on a national scale which may also have an impact on the Global scale:-
"what action would you take?"
Would you (as Ken Appleby infers)
(a) hang around for the next 100 years in the hope that Larry got it right and Jim got it wrong?
or
(b) initiate (or attempt to) a policy or policies that ameliorated the perceived problem?
Please remember, I'm asking this as though you were "a decision maker".
However, as Larry Kealy you still have the other choice:
(a) Put together a powerful enough lobby (the counterpart to IPCC), gather together all the data and other evidence that is available to counter the IPCC theory, take that to the respective "decision makers" and convince them that IPCC have "got it wrong"
or
(b) continue pontificating on this "blog"
Which do you think would be the most productive approach?
Would you follow a policy that attempted to remedy the
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Fake Al Gore at post 177 links us to the Joe Bastardi website that in turn links to the Chinese Meteorological office talking about how cold it’s likely to be for some days into 2010.
However, if you go to the Chinese Meteorological office’s website and look at their predictions for the global climate to 2100 you see that their models are also predicting alarming warming over the next 90 years. They cover 2011 to 2040, 2041 to 2070 and 2071 to 2100 for the A2 and B2 emissions scenarios.
Scroll down to A2 scenario 2071 to 2100 and you are looking at 6 degree C to 10 degree C temperature increases in the higher latitudes! See here and scroll through:-
http://bcc.cma.gov.cn/Website/index.php?ChannelID=36&NewsID=127
So no cooling or ‘plateauing’ in temperatures from the Chinese climate models either.
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Re 192. poitsplace
"You've given up on thinking for yourself"
I cited a scientific paper that found ice sheet mass balance could be measured using GRACE data. There are at least 3 papers on the subject. You concluded the opposite - that GRACE data cannot be used for measuring ice sheet balance.
How did you come to this opposite conclusion?
Are you an expert in this field of science? No.
Are you perhaps refering to a different scientific source? No. You didn't cite any scientific source that supports your conclusion.
Your conclusion seems to be based entirely on your concept of "original thoughts". This is the concept that you were so shocked I wasn't using. Let me tell you that noone should be using such a method - it's a bogus method that I think is put forward for one purpose only, so that you can dismiss scientific results you don't like. It works like this - you express your own ignorance of a subject in the form of a question:
"Why don't you explain to me how you can work out (through changes in the gravitational field) to great accuracy the thickness of an ice field on world in which the rock its self moves."
This is just a question. You can't conclude something unless you know the answer. You don't. I don't. Therefore neither of us can conclude anything based on this open question. But you do anyway. You conclude that GRACE data cannot be used to measure ice sheet mass balance, which must logically mean you have blindly assumed an answer to the above question. And so this is what "original thoughts" are, you shun the scientific literature in favor of illogically concluding things based on your own ignorance.
"Look at this nonsense you've linked. It says, "Warming air and sea temperatures in the area likely caused the glacier to speed up." That is conjecture, not established science."
You are using your ignorance to form a conclusion again. Highlighting the word "likely" as if that proves it's all conjecture is assuming that the word likely is incorrectly used.
"Just mentioning the name of the satellite was enough to get SensibleGrannie to look it up. THAT is how you learn things. If you'd taken the time to look, you'd have seen the GRACE data is questionable at best."
If you had looked it up too you would have known GRACE is actually composed of two satellites. SensibleGrannie just listed a number of questions. Unlike you she wisely did not draw a conclusion from her lack of knowledge about an answer.
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xtragrumpymike2 @ post 214
I believe a real scientist would continue to search for better answers and continue to find better models to explain a perceived situation. I do not believe a real scientist would stop at one solution to a problem and I do not believe a real scientist would be happy with one side of an argument. I think real scientists never stop investigating and that they continue to update their knowledge and understanding all the time. Anyone who staunchly states that their particular argument is the correct one and that everyone else is wrong cannot be a real scientist (unless they are held captive as wage slaves and are forced to state a particular line of propaganda)
Are you the earlier grumpy mike with a blog name change? If you are, I hope you are getting better now.
BEST WISHES
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"as a bunch of loons"
Larry.......when you resort to comments like this I loose all patience with you.
If you believe Hansen and Mann are a "bunch of Loons" have the guts to tell them so FACE TO FACE.
Debate the issue with them at a Peer to Peer level which would be the behaviour of a genuine scientist.
Until then you have little credibility. A vast amount of your previous contribution amounts to nothing more than sheer "alarmism".......exactly what you complain the pro-AGW lobby are doing.
I certainly can't recall the whole world burning wood as happened (according to you) "during the energy crisis of the late 70's."
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Peter317 #163: "Davblo #151: 'We don't even know enough about clouds to model them'. Read Chapter 8 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report - you'll find that they say much the same thing."
Thanks for your advice.
I located the document (a pdf) and searched for the word "cloud".
No occurrences at all.
Could you be more specific? (I assume you've read all 74 pages yourself.)
/davblo
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206. At 5:28pm on 30 Dec 2009, U14260427 wrote:
"# 70. At 10:19am on 27 Dec 2009, Al Gore wrote:
I thought the ice was supposed to be melting at a catastrophic armagedon like rate?
Artic sea ice monitor"
Fake Al Gore here showing again he doesn't have much of a grip here: The Arctic is in the Northern Hemisphere, where (just in case he missed it) we're having a WINTER.
___________________________________________________________
In case you missed it the graph shows business as usual throughout the year not just winter (or did you FAIL to grasp that), please indicate to me on the graph the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice that we are being told is happening.
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Fake Al Gore at post 222.
Your graph from IARC-JAXA only contains the ‘warm decade’ years 2002 to 2009. It does not show the 1979 to 2000 mean that the Arctic sea ice is being compared to by the NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Centre):-
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Notice the summer sea ice extent in September 2009, to which U14260427 was referring, was about 2 million square kilometres (about 27%) below that 1979 -2000 mean. It was not quite as bad as 2007 which is so far the lowest extent but the trend is clear. See:-
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
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"As I wrote in an earlier post, modeling the cooling effects of a volcano or 'nuclear winter' is pretty easy - as the event becomes the only first order driver for climate (temperature) change."
Uh, how do you figure that?
How fast the sulphur comes out depends on the uplift in the atmosphere in that region, what the rainfall patterns are like and how the winds move the cloud about.
How is that so easy when you refuse to believe that the same process happening with CO2 is impossible to determine?
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""How would you test this theory? You could wait 100 years. We're doing that."
That, Ken, is exactly what the anti-AGW lobby are recommending."
And this is the same result as having accepted the anti-AGW group are right.
When we don't know if something is safe, do we drink it because it COULD be fine or do we stop?
Stop the stone-age burning stuff and get into the 20th century. Leave the fossil fuels there and if it turns out in 100 years the AGW science is proven wrong, then all that easy-to-retrieve fuel is still available.
It's not so easy to sequester CO2 and undo the feedbacks if the AGW science proves right.
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"In case you missed it the graph shows business as usual throughout the year not just winter (or did you FAIL to grasp that),"
Fake, you FAIL.
You posited that the glaciers were increasing and posted only the Arctic.
Nothing else.
Just that.
The counter to that bare statement is PRECISELY the one I made.
If you want to change your argument again, then please show how you prove that the trend is "recovering" for the area.
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"I believe a real scientist would continue to search for better answers and continue to find better models to explain a perceived situation."
We still use Newtonian gravity. It's good enough for working out how to shoot probes to Jupiter.
Even though scientists are continuing their search for better answers to gravity's effects.
Likewise the science is answered well enough with no room for any current denying theory to fit in the place of AGW science to allow us to know we need to reduce CO2 production.
We didn't halt the launch of the Apollo missions because we were searching for a better theory, did we? Even though we knew it was incomplete.
Why do so now?
Because Black Gold has a lot of money flowing into a few hands.
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""Why don't you explain to me how you can work out (through changes in the gravitational field) to great accuracy the thickness of an ice field on world in which the rock its self moves."
This is just a question. You can't conclude something unless you know the answer."
You CAN however ask yourself how quickly does rock move.
I've sat on a cliffside ALL DAY and not seen a millimeter movement.
Rock is pretty stiff.
Much stiffer than ice.
So when ice and rock can move and produce an effect, which do you think is going to be the bigger contributor?
PS Note that Northern Europe is STILL undergoing isostatic rebound from the end of the last big ice age.
Glaciers are as lightning compared to that speed...
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Compare:
"215. At 7:25pm on 30 Dec 2009, LarryKealey wrote:
Again, suppose that these 'models' are accurate? [a belief which I do not subscribe to - with regards to prediction] "
With
"212. At 7:15pm on 30 Dec 2009, LarryKealey wrote:
As I wrote in an earlier post, modeling the cooling effects of a volcano or 'nuclear winter' is pretty easy - as the event becomes the only first order driver for climate (temperature) change."
So models are fine for climatic changes of volcanoes (not AGW).
Yet models are worthless for showing AGW.
Strange, huh?
Maybe someone else is posting under Larry's name...
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Very interesting discussion on BBC Radio 4 ‘Listen Again’ from Andrew Marr’s ‘Start the Week’ on Monday 28th December 2009.
The discussion with Professor John Shepherd, who is a Fellow of the Royal Society, concerns Geo-Engineering in relation to Climate Change. Here is the link:-
Note: You have to go to the link below and slide forward to minute number 30:07 / 43:00.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pfp8j/Start_the_Week_28_12_2009/
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#216 xtragrumpymike2 wrote:
'in the absence of "certainty" as I understand it, we have only "modeling" to go on.'
Science is neither modeling nor certainty but guessing and testing.
"Would you (as Ken Appleby infers)
(a) hang around for the next 100 years in the hope that Larry got it right and Jim got it wrong?
or
(b) initiate (or attempt to) a policy or policies that ameliorated the perceived problem?"
IF I saw a problem, I would say wait a while and see what happens. In other words, do what every rational person does if they see a wet patch on their ceiling, or smells burning, or whatever.
BUT your phrase "the perceived problem" is parochial. YOU perceive a problem, but I see no problem apart from some 1960s fools getting into a scientifically ignorant tizzy.
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And for graphs on how models have done with predicting:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
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I googled cloud and got a result which at least gives you access to peer reviewed papers, some of them free and some you have to pay for. You will need to do a specific search to answer your particular questions. There are also plenty of links to related subjects. Happy hunting would be scientists.
www.sciencedirect.com
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226. At 9:27pm on 30 Dec 2009, U14260427 wrote:
"In case you missed it the graph shows business as usual throughout the year not just winter (or did you FAIL to grasp that),"
Fake, you FAIL.
You posited that the glaciers were increasing and posted only the Arctic.
______________________________________
Oh please, you encapsulate 'the debate is over' brigade so cleanly with the way you respond and talk to people.
No wonder the public are stearing away from the propaganda being shoved down their throats.
The most amusing thing is you even add words like 'recovering' as though I had written it in my original post.
You certainly have the gift of massaging a one sentence post into a completely different context.
Thanks for the showing me your true colors.
#223 thinkforyourself
Thanks for the links, very civil of you, much obliged for the info.
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Oh, and another view on that inscience web link earlier.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/12/if-you-got-hammer.html
NOTE: they used a model there too...
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
From bard to worse:
"Science is neither modeling nor certainty but guessing and testing."
Nope, it's MOST CERTAINLY modelling and certainty.
Einstein did gedanken experiments ("thought experiments"), where a model comes up and is applied to a situation to determine if the model simulates the real world correctly, to within experimental limits. And how is that "within experimental limits" managed? With the assessment of certainty.
Bohr model of an atom: a model.
Keplerian model of the solar system? A model.
Laser excitations? Model.
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@236: Nancy, stop whining.
And I'm not mark, no matter how much your insanity insists.
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"Oh please, you encapsulate 'the debate is over' brigade so cleanly with the way you respond and talk to people."
Uh, how?
You're wrong.
It's not a debatable point any more than someone who thinks that Obama is a muslim has a debatable point.
"The most amusing thing is you even add words like 'recovering' as though I had written it in my original post."
Actually, you're doing what you accuse me of, Fake Al Gore. I said "as if".
Or were you making the Beckian Gambit ("I'm not saying anything, I'm just asking the question")?
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"IF I saw a problem, I would say wait a while and see what happens. In other words, do what every rational person does if they see a wet patch on their ceiling, or smells burning, or whatever."
Or a car bearing down on you in the road.
Or someone walking toward you with a gun in their hand.
Or someone talking to your child and offering them some sweets.
Or the increase in Islam in the west.
Or WMD in Iraq.
Or the nuclear power production in Iran.
Oh, hang on, no you don't wait then, do you.
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Meanwhile in Western Australia:-
‘Wildfires are common during the summer, and experts had warned that this year's fires could be particularly bad after one of the warmest winters on record.’
‘Some parts of the country have also been suffering from years of drought, making them more susceptible to fire damage.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8434336.stm
‘Australia is still recovering from "Black Saturday" in February, when 173 people died and more than 2,000 homes were lost in the state of Victoria in the country's worst natural disaster of modern times.
In the aftermath of "Black Saturday", officials issued a new level of "catastrophic" fire warning.
Parts of Western Australia were given this "catastrophic" rating earlier on Wednesday.’
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bowmanthebard:
I think the correct induction would be "all swans are white on one side".
You keep retreating into philosophy. That would be okay if you stayed on your own ground, but jumping out occasionally and firing an arbitrarily aimed blunderbuss of demeaning terms at climate scientists is offensive and unjust.
I really am trying to understand your point of view but it's difficult because you don't answer my questions or respond to challenges which arise directly from previous things you say. It's not possible to make predictions about, or criticise others' predictions about the near future of the planet sitting in an armchair, closing your eyes and reasoning from first principles.
Income tax and rice pudding are perhaps different matter. :-)
There is some truth in many things you say. I agree that there has been a problem with "establishment" in science holding up advancement of knowledge. It's a perfectly valid, common and uncontroversial opinion. But using this as your only argument for dismissing something you don't understand is weak, unconvincing.
Are all "outsiders" correct? Were Marshall and Warren not specialising when they made their breakthroughs? Please answer these challenges.
You say things like "'peer-review'" is the single greatest corrupting force in academia in general, and in climate science in particular" [earlier page of this blog]. When challenged for an alternative to peer-review as a means of informing ourselves reliably you remain silent.
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213. bowmanthebard:
On Methodology and Induction.
138: You challenged rossglory: "As an understander of science, you'll be able to provide other examples of science in which they start off with "data" then get a model to fit them, right? Fire away."
Here's one you kindly supplied yourself:
You said that the nucleosynthesis of iron in stellar interiors (my terminology) is "mainstream physics".
The theory of stellar nucleosynthesis uses computer models which are tested against the observed abundances of the elements.
Please explain how this is "mainstream" while a quantitative theory that is tested against measurements of ancient global temperature is "half-baked."
You are contradicting yourself about "methodology" aren't you?
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@U14260427 RE:35000 dead
That is a GROSS overestimate. They tied any death theoretically possible to the heat waves. In contrast you ignore then MILLIONS hospitalized (and tens of thousands killed) every year for conditions tied to cold weather...like influenza, pensioners freezing to death, etc.
-------------------
Also later you comment on the UV output of the sun changing, saying...
"And UV gets stopped in the upper stratosphere by O3 (Ozone). Where the optical depth toward the ground is greater than it is to space. Which way will the energy go? Against the gradient?"
That's funny...because that's EXACTLY what you AGW people are claiming from CO2...that it will cause the heat will go AGAINST the gradient.
-------------------
Later still (I forget the number) you comment in another post...
"It's not so easy to sequester CO2 and undo the feedbacks if the AGW science proves right."
Actually...
CO2 uptake by the oceans appears to be incredibly high when it's not simply driven by the temperatures of the oceans (which is what NORMALLY drives CO2 when the earth is (relatively) geologically stable).
And the feedbacks ARE easily undone. That's actually crucial to your whole argument of high feedback. According to you folks the feedbacks will turn on a dime. SURELY you're not suggesting they're one-way? That would be incredibly stupid considering it was significantly warmer during the holocene optimum and warmer still during the previous interglacial. No, if the feedbacks were indeed operating as you claim...the temperature would drop again within a few years of us running out of (or no longer burning) fossil fuels. Granted, the world doesn't seem to operate by the rules you people are suggesting anyway so
-------------------
@infinity #218
"You can't conclude something unless you know the answer. You don't. I don't. Therefore neither of us can conclude anything based on this open question. But you do anyway. You conclude that GRACE data cannot be used to measure ice sheet mass balance, which must logically mean you have blindly assumed an answer to the above question."
LOL, the problem is that even the "experts" don't know. Its new technology and the data its self is difficult to work with. Its not like there's any directionality to the data. Every single atom on the earth pulls the satellite. Some places are more dense than others, but its EXTREMELY difficult to work out what mass distribution the satellites are being pulled by. If you read the (very few) papers on actually using the data (mostly PDFs so no links here) you'll find that they all talk about reliability or incredibly complex measures they need to take to get remotely useful data...and then the earth has this terribly annoying habit of undulating and moving the continents around. Keep studying.
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evening peeps, no insomnia for the guilty, what?
Mr Appleby can be safely ignored regarding contradiction (no offence Mr A.) as he has demonstrated his profound ability to self-contradict in an earlier discussion with myself regarding Lovelocks blatant anti-humanism, or has he forgotten so fast?
i have to say i have nearly infinite respect for the sceptics willing to go round in almost infinite circles with the utterly bigoted true believers on this blog. poitsplace, bowman, mr mango, mr kealey, flatearther et al: props unto thyselves; you are a credit to common sense and patience.
i got sick of the rhetorical question blended with ad hominem routine that is the staple argument of the ecozealots a while ago. fight the good fight and fear not, the public has woken up! IMO i was underestimating my species before and in my cynicism deemed them far more susceptible to the proAGW brainwashing than they are. over christmas i exposed myself (naughty TOOF/get a sense of humour (predominantly lefty cos you know you lack in this regard) people) to some popular viewing on the gogglebox and conversation with random folks and alas it seems everyone except those fully invested (for financial or psychological reasons) in the 'It's all mans fault' meme is now asking some pretty probing questions or simply doesn't care one way or the other. bad luck for the ecofascists neh?
the mask has been stripped away. the french recently found sarkozys carbon tax unconstitutional (vive la france! and good luck filling the budget deficit mes amis) so now the ozzies and the french have backed off from the idea. 2 dominoes down thus far.
loath as i am to try to predict the future (unlike some) i believe more dominoes will tumble soon; elections are coming up here and elsewhere and green dave will suffer just as badly as green gordon or our pro(unreformed)EU and rabidly green lib dems. vote in accordance with your conscience people, don't fall for the 'if you don't for one of the big 3 you waste your vote' idiocy.
bedtime for me so i bid you all good night.
PS the real al gore (not our sceptic friend on these blogs) is a racketeer scaremongering to increase his profits! he (and his ilk) will get his/their just desserts just you wait!
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UI4260427 at post 240,
Interesting!
I think a bit of preparation in advance would be more useful than acting blindly on instinct. You could be so wrong and do more harm than good. It is better to have plans for different types of perceived emergency. Plan and rehearse possible emergencies and read up expert opinion on how to deal with emergencies.
examples of possible outcomes of blind instinct;
wet patch on ceiling - oh my god a roof leak! Quick, up into the loft, check the roof, check the flat upstairs - only to find out your brat has just done a water 'experiment' with his drink bottle, which went wrong and now there is drink everywhere.
smell of burning- panic, call the fire brigade - only to find you have a window open and someone two doors away has a smelly bonfire.
car bearing down on you - jump out of the way into the path of an oncoming car coming from a different direction.
someone coming towards you with a gun - you start running only to find out that it was only undercover police on duty and now they instinctively think you are the villain.
someone talking to your child and giving them sweets - you go up to the person, start screaming the odds, cause a scene, frighten your child, only to find out that your kid had just dropped his bag of sweets and the stranger had kindly returned them.
Islam in the west - how about your fellow countrymen in other countries - doasyouwouldbedonebyasyoudid
WMO IN Irac - what? I know what I think about this but I ain't going to say it
nuclear power in Iran - what about nuclear power everywhere else?
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"Tears of our forefathers" at #245 wrote "the french recently found sarkozys carbon tax unconstitutional (vive la france! and good luck filling the budget deficit mes amis)".
France's Constitutional Council doesn't have a problem with a carbon tax per se - rather it requires one to be broadly applicable and effective. It rejected the carbon tax proposal because it was not sufficiently comprehensive. As reported, the Constitutional Councial said the "large number of exemptions from the carbon tax runs counter to the goal of fighting climate change and violates the equality enjoyed by all in terms of public charges". Apparently the proposal will be redrafted.
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245. tears of our forefathers
Is this the post you are refering to? I ignored it partly because it has no bearing on the subject of the blog and partly because I don't understand what you are saying. I'm not trying to be clever or lay traps here. I genuinely don't understand what you mean. What exactly is the contradiction? And what is "profound" about it? We just disagreed about a book, I think. In fact we agreed on some aspects of it.
But that has nothing to do with the subject of the blog, and I don't think anyone else will be interested in bringing it out in the open again here. I am willing to continue the discussion somewhere else if you want and can set up some other web venue.
None of my questions you refer to are rhetorical.
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#243 Ken Appleby wrote:
'The theory of stellar nucleosynthesis uses computer models which are tested against the observed abundances of the elements.'
'Please explain how this is "mainstream" while a quantitative theory that is tested against measurements of ancient global temperature is "half-baked."'
We test hypotheses and models by getting them to predict something observable.
What you call "measurements of ancient global temperatures" are not observable. They hardly count as "measurements" at all. So-called "proxy" data are the result of a theory-inspired conjuring trick rather than genuine measurement, and the models are specially made to fit them rather than honestly tested "against" them, as you put it (rather well, if I may say so). That is grossly dishonest.
Any models in the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis are used in a completely different way from the models used in climate change science. First, the theory stands on its own wholly independently of any models used to predict observations. They are incidental to the entire enterprise. Second, induction is unreliable when it involves extrapolation from a subclass whose members are unrepresentative of the larger class, as with white swans. But atoms of heavy elements are similar to each other in a relevant way -- e.g. all iron atoms have the chemical number 26, so any group of them is genuinely representative of all of them, at least in that respect.
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"246. At 09:06am on 31 Dec 2009, sensiblegrannie wrote:
I think a bit of preparation in advance would be more useful than acting blindly on instinct. You could be so wrong and do more harm than good."
Uh, you sure you're talking to the right poster?
There's no instinct on AGW, the fact that so many people have proclaimed that the science must be wrong for very simple-minded "reasons" shows that, if anywhere, blind instinct is being made to deny AGW.
And what so much harm would be done by mitigating now? The trillions of dollars of oil will remain in the ground and can, if science says it is better used, still be used.
But what harm is done by burning oil and coal? CO2 is very hard to retrieve but so easy to make.
Blind instinct? Not here. Look to poit et al. Look at davblo's 95 list. You'll find instinct and "common sense" there.
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'the fact that so many people have proclaimed that the science must be wrong for very simple-minded "reasons" shows that, if anywhere, blind instinct is being made to deny AGW.'
You appealed to consensus when you had it, but now the tide has turned it's a sign people aren't thinking!
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"So-called "proxy" data are the result of a theory-inspired conjuring trick rather than genuine measurement,"
Uh, reading a thermometer is not a genuine measurement of temperature. It is a proxy. It seems among your lack of accomplishments, metrology is one.
As one example of proof: ask yourself why you use a platinum resistance thermometer to measure the temperature of incandescents, rather than, say, Iridium?
It is because the platinum resistance thermometer is calibrated so that a certain luminance is asserted to be a certain temperature. Outside that range, you use different thermometers because the platinum response to temperature is not temperature measuring and not linear and so falls outside the calibration.
And how are the proxies you decry measured?
With real measurement.
You make a fake argument from personal ignorance so that you can refuse any evidence you like.
"Any models in the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis are used in a completely different way from the models used in climate change science."
In what way?
In no way are they different.
You don't even run such models and simulations yourself, so how do you know this? Answer: you do not.
Just an example of the Big Lie.
"First, the theory stands on its own wholly independently of any models used to predict observations."
And so does AGW science.
In what way do they differ?
They do not..
"Second, induction is unreliable when it involves extrapolation from a subclass whose members are unrepresentative of the larger class, as with white swans."
This is not pertinent to GCMs. They are not swans and they don't require extrapolation from a subclass either.
"But atoms of heavy elements are similar to each other in a relevant way -- e.g. all iron atoms have the chemical number 26, so any group of them is genuinely representative of all of them, at least in that respect."
And CO2 is made of atoms in just the same way.
Photons are made of photon energy in all the same ways.
Etc.
This is no difference that invalidates climate models whilst leaving the models you have agreed are good untouched.
But you state things as if they are fact and promote a Big Lie.
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PS "car bearing down on you - jump out of the way into the path of an oncoming car coming from a different direction."
So you stand like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
No, very few people do that except in cases where they AREN'T thinking.
Strange you should use that as an example of avoiding bad action by using worse INaction. After all, jumping out the way you can SEE another car and, oh, I dunno, not jump that way? If you jump to one side, even if the car swerves, likelihood is better than 50-50 that you both go the same way and therefore increase the separation because you're looking in opposite directions. And it's possible that it would be impossible to move or brake to avoid you if you do not move. That's not the case even on jumping the wrong way into the moving vehicle's path.
It reads rather more like you are proposing inaction by continuing the bad action, rather than inaction to avoid making the wrong choice.
WE ARE STILL BURNING FOSSIL FUELS.
That is an ACTION.
This is like running into the path of a car and then you saying "well, to stop running you have to change what you're doing, so that is an action and that involves choice and that can be the WRONG choice, so we shouldn't choose, yes?".
No.
Inaction is as much a choice as action.
Inaction is the choice of those who wish to be slaves to another. Let THEM make the moves, "I'm just the victim" becomes the martyr cry.
And what we are doing is not inaction anyway, so that is not a choice available if you count the act of stopping to be an action.
/Professor Monckton
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"And CO2 is made of atoms in just the same way."
I suggest you consider what you are extrapolating from, and which larger class you are extrapolating to.
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TOOF wrote on the previous blog at #245:
‘Mr Appleby can be safely ignored ……’
Well it was established quite a while ago that Mr. TOOF is a young public relations proxy for big oil in the states and his contributions are often rude, aggressive and meaningless. His terms of engagement are only to create doubt. His sole objective, confusion. He adds nothing.
He can be safely ignored.
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@infinity #105
“Psuedoskeptics who try to falsely claim GRACE is too inaccurate to show anything are simply in denial. Do they have any studies to back up their claims? No. Just a load of hot air.”
Antarctica's Ice is Growing Not Melting
http://themigrantmind.blogspot.com/2009/10/antarcticas-ice-is-growing-not-melting.html
The article puts forward convincing arguments using graphs and quotes from published work to conclude that Antarctica's ice is growing not melting.
It contains a good section on Grace Satellite data and the inherent problems of using this for accurate ice thickness measurements.
It seems pretty obvious, even to the non expert, that there are too many unknowns to use gravity measurements for ice thickness.
The authors of published work acknowledge the uncertainty in the method.
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U14260427 at post 253,
Interesting!
Your response to my reply reads as a little bit childish. You have taken the car scenario out of the context of the argument where I attempted to suggest that one should prepare for emergency action. When you are working in the laboratory, you have to risk assess the activity you propose to do. When I did a brief stint in a laboratory when I was a teenager, I had to pour neat sulphuric acid from a large, heavy, bulbous glass jar into a smaller vessel. There is no way I would have agreed to do this without precautions at the ready, eg cold tap running, protective equipment on, chemical neutralizer close by etc etc. These days health and safety would have a fit if they saw such a thing and there would be further safety requirements.
I have to risk assess every day to protect those around me from harm. I have had to do that all of my life in the variety of roles that a woman has to undertake. If I were walking along a road, my mind is 'reading' the behaviour of the traffic just as if I were driving. If I saw a dangerous road situation then I would automatically become aware of which way to jump should a vehicle go out of control. Knowledge and understanding of a situation enables one to act accordingly.
I understand your counter argument has more to do with the general situation of global warming, and is used as an analogy of what is happening globally.
It is a shame you had to state,
'Inaction is the choice of those who wish to be slaves to another. Let THEM make the moves, "i'm just the victim" becomes the martyr cry.' Your arguments are perfectly good without sarcasm.
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Grannie, your reposte seems somwhat unthought and infantile.
And
'Inaction is the choice of those who wish to be slaves to another. Let THEM make the moves, "i'm just the victim" becomes the martyr cry.'
Is not sarcasm. I would suggest you check up the meaning of the word.
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And, Grannie, THAT was sarcasm.
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Re 256:
There is uncertainty in all measuring techniques and scientists will note that uncertainty. However they clearly are not saying such uncertainty precludes obtaining ice sheet mass balance from GRACE, or they wouldn't have done just that! AR4 contains a diagram showing the various estimates over time for ice sheet mass balance:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-4-18.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch4s4-6-2-2.html
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haha and thinkforyourself is a truth seeker not a narrowminded true believer who simply spouts on message rhetoric and calls for people he disagrees with to be silenced!?! rofl sorry, thinkforyourself, did you see the bit about getting a sense of humour?
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@261, have you considered getting a personality?
ROFL.
;-)
LOL
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"Antarctica's Ice is Growing Not Melting"
No it isn't.
It's sliding off the land and so extending further.
Or do you think that since a small swipe of butter covers maybe 3 sq cm of area and I can then spread it over 150 sq cm of bread that I have created 50 times the amount of butter I used?
But I guess if you repeat a lie often enough, some people will start to believe it's true.
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@262
i hear they are over rated and i notice most people seem to manage without one!
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ADMac #: "Antarctica's Ice is Growing Not Melting"
Sorry; we've already got that one...
85. Antarctica is gaining ice
/davblo
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PS: "It seems pretty obvious, even to the non expert, that there are too many unknowns to use gravity measurements for ice thickness."
How does this mean that the measurements you take mean the OPPOSITE of what they read, then?
Why can these uncertainties mean that the ice is even thinner than the measurements suggest?
Funny how your errors are always in your favour...
/professor monckton
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Larry, so which team did you work for when you developed finite element computer modelling?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method
We have a Larry Richard with Courant and nothing else. Alexander Hrennikoff doesn't appear with a Larry at all. larry keeley and University of Stuttgart only seem to appear related to a book rather than any numerical work. Ray W Clough doesn't get any matches with you either and you didn't have anything to do with NASTRAN.
/professor monckton
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@xtragrumpymike
FYI, I am American Indian and Irish. Your history is a bit biased in my view. Actually, it did start with white man educating my ancestors, and providing new technologies to those tribes who were greedy.
People like to paint Pre-Columbian America as peaceful, with Native American tribes living in harmony with Nature and each other. This is a falsehood. Tribes were constantly warring - even then, over 500 years ago, Greed was a driving force. The white man had unity, technology and numbers. After a few wars amongst themselves, they enlisted allies amongst indian tribes, to make war on others - just as Indian tribes and peoples had already doing for thousands of years - amongst themselves. After the initial 200 years of contention between mainly the French and English, the American Colonies were established and independence followed.
It was the unity of all these peoples into one nation which brought power, and allowed them to conquer the Americas. The Indian tribes only banded together infrequently, and thus were picked off one by one. At that point, the US did not have a great technology advantage - the Indians had horses and guns - if the tribes had banded together, the Americas would be very different then they are today, but they could not put aside their differences, and fought each other when not fighting the white man.
Also, how do you reconcile the Inca, Mayan and Aztek Empires? They were called Empires for a reason.
Same is true of Rome and Gaul, Iberia and Britannia. If all the tribes of Gaul had united, Roman Legions could have been held off. Julius Gaius Caesar used the same strategy. He was able to conquer by making alliances with specific tribes, already at war with others...picking them off one by one.
I would agree that GREED is a driving factor, but the root cause is still overpopulation. Greed is supported by corruption - which runs rampant in the undeveloped world. Development is again the only answer which I see as viable - with it will come education, corruption will be reduced and greed held in check.
Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians with a bag of 26 shiny baubles. Who was greedy there? Did not the 'white man' take advantage of the greed of the Indians?
History is a very interesting thing. Orson Scott Card said it pretty well, I think:
"History is never proved, only supposed. No matter how much evidence one collects, your always guessing about cause-and-effect and assuming things about dead people's motives, since living people don't understand their own motives, we're hardly likely to to any better with the dead.
Keep testing your guesses against the evidence. Keep trying out new guesses (hypothesis) to see if they fit better. Keep looking for new evidence, even if it disproves your old hypotheses. With each step you get just a little closer to that elusive thing we call 'the truth'. With each step, you see how much farther away the truth is than you ever imagined it to be."
In my view, science is much the same...
In any case, Happy New Year to You, Mate.
-Kealey
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U14260427 wrote:
And how are the proxies you decry measured?
With real measurement.
You make a fake argument from personal ignorance so that you can refuse any evidence you like.
---------end of exerpt---------------------------
In a sense, everything is measured through proxies. We have used the expansion of mercury in a thermometer to make measurements of temperature of a long time. We are not actually measuring the temperature, but the expansion (or contraction) in volume of mercury in response to changes in temperature - a proxy.
Some proxies are better than others. More direct proxies are generally better than indirect proxies, such as tree rings. Ancient tree rings are terrible proxies for temperature, regardless of Mann's opinion. It is not just temperature which determines the size (growth) of tree rings, but the total environmental effects upon a particular species of tree. There are many factors which determine tree growth in a given year. It may be competition for water from nearby trees, blights and bugs, precipitation, fires, etc. To infer 'factual temperature reconstructions' from tree proxies is quite simplistic and naive - as has been shown. I don't know if Micheal Mann was too stupid to realize this - or just so focused on seeing what he wanted to see when he created his temperature reconstruction - but it is useless.
Cheers.
Kealey
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U14260427 wrote:
Larry, so which team did you work for when you developed finite element computer modelling?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_element_method
--------end of excerpt-------------------------------
First, my reference of choice would not be wikipedia...nonetheless
Please read my post again - I worked on the team that developed and implemented the finite element method (by the way, the wiki description of the finite element modeling method is very poor, in my view) in a parallel processing environment. Finite Element Modeling had already been around for quite some time - however, it was limited due to the massive number of computations required to solve complex problems
We designed and implemented the first parallel processing implementation of the finite element method - at Texas A&M University, principle investigator: Prof. Emeritus John Junkins (my mentor in grad school, and still a dear friend, and still a professor at A&M, even though he will be 70 next year). I worked on one of his teams with Dr. Andrew Kurdila, who I believe is now a full professor at Georgia Tech, in Aerospace Engineering.
This allowed us to solve the multitude of boundary equations in parallel, rather than sequentially - as had always been done before, greatly reducing the time required to solve complex problems and greatly expanding the realm of complex problems which could realistically be modeled - as I mentioned, we blew the doors off a Crey-2 with an nCUBE. nCUBE was founded by a number of former Intel scientists who were disappointed with Intel's lack of interest in parallel processing machines. They created the first massively parallel processing machines in '85. We did our work on one of their first second generation machines, in '89/'90.
Please feel free to contact Dr. J and ask about 'Kealey' - but do a little research on HIS CV first. I don't expect you will like his opinions regarding the current crop of "AGW" theories.
Cheers.
Kealey
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Well done, Larry. In post 269 you managed to repeat what I said outside a quote and thereby imply that you said it.
"Some proxies are better than others"
Does not mean "some proxies are useless because others are better".
"Ancient tree rings are terrible proxies for temperature, regardless of Mann's opinion."
Says Larry's opinion...
Seems like dendrocrinologists disagree with you Larry. They use such proxies all the time. How do you know better than them?
And where do you get "Mann's opinion"? He probably listened to experts in the field. Unlike you who form your opinion from..?
"To infer 'factual temperature reconstructions' from tree proxies is quite simplistic and naive - as has been shown."
And you were shown this how?
Funny how, despite being simplistic and naive, such proxy reconstructions agree with those better reconstructions (including 90 years or so of real thermometer measurements). But I guess you were shown how this isn't the case, yes?
/professor monckton
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Regarding GRACE, there as been much discussion with one side claiming it is breaking ground on measuring the ice sheets, the other claiming it cannot be possibly accurate.
I would add this - I would err on the side of caution with regard to the data collected by GRACE and how it is interpreted. It is a very complex device and the FIRST of its generation. I suspect that it (GRACE) will reveal more regarding the instrument package and how to improve it - as well as interpretations. Perhaps after a few iterations of satellites of this type, we will have meaningful data.
Please see the story, I think it was here, on the BBC, regarding a recent study of the land mass under the Ice in a significant mountain range, under the Ice in Antarctica. It reveals many details about what is under the ice, and its thickness in many areas which are only now coming to light - very interesting read - don't have the link, but should be easy enough to find - it appeared during the last week or so.
GRACE is certainly a step forward - but it is a 'first generation technology package' and as such, should be taken as such. I suspect it will take years of trial and error to get to the second and third generations - in other words, it is really a 'test' platform - not the 'answer machine'. I suspect that in ten years time, the technology will have significantly improved along with our understanding...
I do not believe that this first generation technology can accurately measure ice sheet thickness and loss/gain. I do believe it is a valuable step forward. If, the measurements are followed up with field studies, the technology will improve and future generations may perhaps provide an accurate estimations. Lets see how this technology changes and proves out over the next ten years...
Cheers.
Kealey
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"I do not believe that this first generation technology can accurately measure ice sheet thickness and loss/gain."
But why would your belief be correct?
People believe the earth to be flat and 6000 years old.
You need more than belief if you want to do science.
"Lets see how this technology changes and proves out over the next ten years..."
And why not mitigate in the meantime? After all, if you're wrong that's more expense and much greater risk to undo the compounded error. If you're right, all that liquid gold is still there to exploit.
/professor monckton
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@tears of our forefathers
Thank you for the praise. But you don't understand:
"When you have The Truth, then anyone who opposes you is either ignorant or evil. You rule over the ignorant and lock up or kill the evil. Then you run the world according to your 'Perfect Truth'".
-Empire, Orson Scott Card
This is the battle we fight. Truth is such an elusive thing - in reality it does not exist. Those things we all hold as truths are our beliefs. When others try to impose their belief system upon us, we must rise up or be subjugated. Although my life shall not continue for long, I am surprised to be seeing this decade begin tonight, I have no desire to see the further subjugation of our freedoms. If these people who believe so much in AGW actually believe, then let them 'do what they think is right' - but to try and force their beliefs upon others is just wrong.
Its like the vegetarian argument - vegetarians have 'given up' meat - they have sacrificed, and feel that since they have sacrificed, so should everyone else - regardless of whether they share their beliefs or not.
If so many believe in AGW, let them practice what they preach - if enough do so, civilization will collapse. But this will not happen - they wish to obtain power over others and enforce 'Their Truth' upon others. But, the reality is they are hypocrites - they do not practice what they preach.
Lets take manysummits, who I believe is genuinely a 'good guy' who cares and believes in this 'stuff'. But let me ask - living in Alberta, how does he stay warm? He obviously has electricity - where does it come from? Does he have a car - or does he grow all is own food, make all the products he uses? I think not. (sorry to 'pick on you infinity') In my view that would make him a hypocrite.
My father used to have a saying: "Do as I say, not as I do" - it didn't work so well, even though he meant the best. That is what we hear from so many proponents of AGW, as they fly around the world in their private jets and live in giant mansions or palaces - like Prince Charles and Al Gore.
Emissions will rise, regardless of anything we attempt, for quite some time to come. As long as population rises, so will energy consumption and thus emissions. Why attack windmills (speaking metaphorically, when we could plant trees? restore wetlands? Restore fisheries? End poverty? Reduce corruption? So many important issues which need be addressed, all ignored for the white elephant in the room: global warming.
The truth is, these liberals need the poor and starving people in the world - they need them to use as 'poster children'.
Tell me, what is really worse for the environment: burning trees or burning coal in a coal plant? The answer, in my view is very simple - burning wood is much worse - it is ecologically unsound and also much less efficient.
Cheers.
Kealey
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@Larry: "If so many believe in AGW, let them practice what they preach - if enough do so, civilization will collapse."
Please prove this is the inevitable consequence of mitigating AGW.
You make the claim: prove it.
/professor monckton
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@U14260427
And why not mitigate in the meantime? After all, if you're wrong that's more expense and much greater risk to undo the compounded error. If you're right, all that liquid gold is still there to exploit.
------------------------------------------------------
And how would your mitigate? The schemes I have seen will not solve the 'emissions problem', but will cost trillions and include the greatest redistribution of wealth in history.
My opinion is formed by reading the science. My beliefs are shaped by my interpretation of the science.
It is my believe that the first prototype of a new technology generally leads to development of better and more accurate iterations. In order to infer the thickness of the ice sheet from gravitational effects, the underlying geology must be understood in detail - it is not.
I do believe this technology shows promise - but will also be developed further. Do you think that there will not be a more 'accurate' and better iteration of this technology?
This is the nature of science - science proves nothing, only disproves. Those theories we currently 'accept' are those which have not yet been proven wrong. A 'good scientist' looks for data which contradicts his theory, and develops a better theory. We don't seem to see this with AGW - it appears that data which does not support the theories is ignored or cherry-picked, only supporting data is sought.
Regarding tree rings, there have been numerous papers presented which support my position - do the research...
Cheers.
Kealey
PS - I'm off to the next blog...hasta la vista
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249. bowmanthebard:
Your response is a refreshing one, because you raise substantive subjects that can be argued about. (I hope to do that separately.) But it does not meet the challenge, rather side-steps it.
The original challenge was "examples of science in which they start off with "data" then get a model to fit them."
Nucleosynthesis is one example: data on elemental abundances in stellar spectra were available before Hoyle & Co developed the theory to explain them. Data from the sun's spectra were available from the 19th C.
Here are some more:
- the positions of the planets were measured before Newton explained them.
- Faraday and others measured electromagnetic forces before Maxwell explained them.
- Mendel collected data on inherited characteristics before genetics was developed.
- the photoelectric effect was measured in detail and baffled people before Einstein came along an explained it.
- mountains data were collected on the behaviour of elecrons in matter before quantum theory explained them
- the interaction of light with matter was a mystery until quantum electrodynamics was developed.
I could go on and on. It's just a normal way of doing science. In all of these, data, in terms of experimental and observational measurements came before explanations, or "models".
You issued your original challenge as a way of criticising the validity of climate science. I don't think it works.
And you still haven't said what your alternative to peer-review is.
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Larry "And how would your mitigate?"
Efficiency changes. 20% reductions just from minor changes to expectations (WALK to the shops if they're a mile or two away) and for the US a replacement of expensive tumble dryers with a new invention called "the washing line" would make a huge difference.
Renewables. They can replace closing fossil fuel stations.
Electric cars, public transport and taxing of the externalities (to, for example, pay for carbon sequestration schemes).
Not these alone, but there are examples.
"My opinion is formed by reading the science."
Apparently not. Dendocrinologists think that tree core data are good proxies. They use science. And "by reading the science" says nothing. You can read the science in Fortean Times. Healing power of crystal energy...
"It is my believe that the first prototype of a new technology generally leads to development of better and more accurate iterations."
Your belief is not pertinent. This isn't the first prototype any more than the steel rule was a prototype of a new measurement. It was just a steel version of the wooden ruler.
And that doesn't mean the first prototype is no good, either, though you state it as if it does.
"In order to infer the thickness of the ice sheet from gravitational effects, the underlying geology must be understood in detail - it is not."
Uh, scientists who work on this sort of thing disagree. Why is your belief right and their scientific work wrong?
Answer: it isn't.
"This is the nature of science - science proves nothing, only disproves."
Then why haven't you managed to disprove AGW to a level that stands up to scrutiny and must instead make bold statements about the invalidity of measurement when you don't like the answers in a field where you have no experience.
(PS I note you haven't said where you worked on the first finite element modelling... Is this why you're off?)
"Those theories we currently 'accept' are those which have not yet been proven wrong."
And we act on those theories until they are proven wrong.
Normally.
But not in the case of AGW because lots of money in the fossil fuel industry is at stake.
"A 'good scientist' looks for data which contradicts his theory, and develops a better theory."
OK, either you're a bad scientist or you've never been a scientist.
This is NOT what a scientist does.
A scientist looks for testable results and an experiment that will prove (as in the old meaning of the word: to test, not the modern meme of "show it's true") the theory.
He doesn't go looking for data to disprove a theory. He looks for an experiment that will show the consequence of that theory.
Denialists look for data that disproves someone *else's* theory because they aren't scientists looking for the truth, but political hacks looking to kill debate and obfuscate the truth to avoid conceding to a result they do not want to acknowledge.
"Regarding tree rings, there have been numerous papers presented which support my position"
One of which (from Steve McIntyre) has been proven to have serious and debilitating errors which negate any conclusion. Do the research and, if you really believe science is looking for data that disproves your theory, how about looking for data that disproves your theory that tree rings don't work as temperature proxies.
Oh, and there are plenty more papers showing how tree rings can be used as temperature proxies successfully.
/professor monckton
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249. bowmanthebard:
[I would like to be able to give a more considered response, but unfortunately I am not able to at the moment due to family commitments and other things. In the meantime here are my first reactions. I'm sorry it's so long. I don't have the time to make it shorter, as someone once said.]
Do you claim then that all theories that depend on proxy data for their testing are invalid? If so, it would be interesting to do an inventory of such knowledge and see what you are left with! Certainly not "mainstream" nucleosynthesis.
Universal abundances of the elements are obtained by "proxy" data. We can't physically count particles in intergalactic space, globular clusters, the interior of stars, or planets or more than a few kilometers below the Earth's surface, for example. The latter are extrapolated from models which are based on the planet's thermal (interior, not climate!) history, which is in turn based on models of the Earth's formation. This is the proxy data that used to test nucleosynthesis, among other theories. Are these a conjuring trick?
By comparison, the theory behind using oxygen isotope ratios as a proxy to measure temperature over the ages seems relatively simple: O18 evaporates less easily than O16 because it is heavier. They are as close to being "observables" as elemental abundances.
"the models are specially made to fit them." Which models do you mean? This is the question you still refuse to answer. I am willing to concede the point in the case of particular models that you may be able direct me to, but it's certainly not universally true. This may be the crux of the disagreement.
The statement may be no more true of theories that predict global temperature than it is of nucleosynthesis. If I remember correctly, the cross-sections for particle interactions involved in nucleosynthesis were not known at the time the theory was developed, so the coefficients were set by adjusting them to the current observations of the abundances.
The white swan argument: One O18 atom is identical to all the other O18 atoms. No two stellar interiors are identical in, e.g. chemical composition. How does this argument distinguish the two theories? I think this kind of argument is tenuous in the context of the blog subject.
To calculate from theory the abundance of, say, oxygen, the thermodynamics of the interiors of different types of star have to be worked out in great detail, stellar evolution, the recycling of matter through sequential generations, and the multiplicity of possible nuclear paths and interactions has to be modelled and computed. The theory as a whole is a huge set of interdependent chains of reasoning of great complexity and length, full of extrapolations and approximations. It is far more complicated and sophisticated than any climate model and surely further removed from "lay" understanding. It was assembled using peer-review as the means of validation. Yet it is still "mainstream?"
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#277 Ken Appleby wrote:
“the positions of the planets were measured before Newton explained them”
Indeed, and by many different civilizations the world over, most of whom were doing nothing that deserves the name “science”.
Newton’s theory wasn’t arrived at by extrapolating from data collected before him, nor were any of its predecessors such as Kepler’s theory or the Ptolemaic system. These were all theories in their own right - ideas which had to earn their belief-worthiness through passing tests. Newton’s theory was the product of Newton’s genius, and it was tested through its ability to predict future positions of the planets, indeed the actual existence of as-yet-undiscovered planets. The idea was not to simply make something that was consistent with data that were already collected, but to predict new data – and to unlock the secrets of the universe while we're at it!
“Faraday and others measured electromagnetic forces before Maxwell explained them.”
No one is denying that measurements are made, and that people speculate, imaginatively casting about for anything that might explain what we can see. But nothing that deserves the name “theory” exists till there is a coherent guess at the structure of reality. Not only is there nothing to believe, there is nothing like a reason to believe it until it has passed a few real tests.
“Mendel collected data on inherited characteristics before genetics was developed.”
But Mendel was a pioneer in the development of genetics because he had a theory of sorts, which he tested by looking at the proportions of peas that had this or that characteristic. He didn’t simply extrapolate from what he saw. In growing and counting peas, he was testing his theory of proportions in heritable traits.
“the photoelectric effect was measured in detail and baffled people before Einstein came along an explained it.”
That’s my point – just extrapolating rather than honestly trying to explain and test our predictions gets us nowhere. It hardly ever gives us a reliable reason to believe anything.
When Einstein explained the photoelectric effect, he opened up whole new avenues of inquiry, and new ways of testing his new theory. He certainly did not simply extrapolate from pre-existent data. That is painting by numbers, not science. Einstein was a creative genius, not a painter-by-numbers!
“I could go on and on. It's just a normal way of doing science.”
What you’re describing is perhaps a common or normal way of doing something “pre-theoretical”, but it’s not genuine science, because it delivers no theories nor decent reasons for believing any theories. All sorts of peoples all over the globe measured the position of the Sun and planets, but few of them were doing anything remotely like science. (Perhaps one of the reasons why the word ‘science’ nowadays is applied to any old rubbish is that it’s politically correct to say that every society throughout the world had its own science. – Well, I say they didn’t!)
“In all of these, data, in terms of experimental and observational measurements came before explanations, or "models".
Let’s not confuse genuine theoretical explanations – theories – with what are essentially just (attempted) computer “simulations”.
“And you still haven't said what your alternative to peer-review is.”
I did say that journals have to have an initial screening process, and also that journals are looking increasingly obsolete as a medium for the exchange of ideas. They’re mostly for fattening CVs. So no one should regard a peer-reviewed paper as being more worthy of belief simply because it has passed the process of peer review. It just fits the current orthodoxy better, that’s all. My alternative to “peer review” would be “no peer review” in the sense that people shouldn’t pay any attention to it. The best new ideas are spread by word of mouth, as always.
Have a happy New Year!
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"But nothing that deserves the name “theory” exists till there is a coherent guess at the structure of reality."
Then what is the coherent guess at the structure of reality (whatever that means) with Faraday's work and why is the coherent guess at the structure of reality behind the physical models the IPCC cite?
The science is there. You just refuse to see it because you don't like it.
/professor monckton
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@ Ken Appleby:
I too am in the middle of New Year family-and-work juggling, and intend to address further questions of yours later, but here's a quick answer to a quick question:
"Do you claim then that all theories that depend on proxy data for their testing are invalid?"
No. But the proxy data add very little -- or perhaps less-than-nothing -- as evidence for the theory, because they are too seductive and too theory-dependent to be reliable. I'm strongly inclined to say that the real evidence for a scientific theory is its explanatory and predictive power, plus a few other peripheral hints that "the key is turning in the lock" such as its simplicity, its fruitfulness, and so on. Of course there may be examples of reliable proxy data I haven't thought of yet, so I hope I remain open-minded. But the real test of a theory is its ability to get over an "unseen" hurdle, rather as the real test of a translator is the ability to translate unseen passages of a foreign language!
So the (fairly) recent warming trend may indeed be the greenhouse effect of human emissions. But the proxy data that are supposed to convince me of this do not in fact do anything to convince me. I find the (more) recent cooling trend (or at least apparent level-ish temperatures) much more convincing when understood as a "failed test".
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"But the proxy data that are supposed to convince me of this do not in fact do anything to convince me."
This doesn't prove anything about the data: you haven't analysed it.
It does say a lot about you.
"I find the (more) recent cooling trend (or at least apparent level-ish temperatures)"
And this says even more.
Nope, there's no recent cooling trend. There's no support for level-ish temperatures.
But you believe the data shows it.
Why so agreeable with that data and not with the other data?
That was a hypothetical question.
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"Why so agreeable with that data and not with the other data?"
Because I'm interpreting one set of data as the result of a test, the other as the basis for an induction.
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@bowmanthebard
"explanatory and predictive power..." Yes, agreed. This is the accepted canon of science. I think your views on science in this respect at least generally coincide with mine. I disagree with you on some of the points, but I am not sure my disagreements are very relevent to the original argument. There is just too much ground to cover here, so I apologise for not expanding on them.
"Let’s not confuse genuine theoretical explanations – theories – with what are essentially just (attempted) computer “simulations”.
Yes, let's not. We are, however, getting closer to the answer to the "which models" question. A global climate model, if that's what you mean by simulation, is not good enough for predictive purposes, at least none that I have looked at. So we agree there as well.
James Hansen also agrees. He says climate models are not good enough to give reliable information on climate sensitivity. He also says they never will be, because we don't know what we don't know. He uses paleoclimate studies to draw conclusions. As ManySummits has said, it is very much worth reading chapter 3 of his book to get a good idea of the science he uses.
One of the theories he develops is extremely straightforward in its simplest expression. It predicts variations in global temperature over the last 400,000 years. It contains only two input parameters, just two degrees of freedom, and so can't be adjusted to fit all the observations over that period. The only computation involved is an addition and a multiplication for each output data point.
You have to accept the validity of the datasets that go into it, of course. These are measurements of sea-level and abundancies of warming gases in the atmosphere. Hansen does not generate these datasets himself. He gets them from various publically available sources. There is a chain of reasoning behind sea-level values, as there is with elemental abundance data, but they are corroborated via other geological studies. The gases are measured directly from ice cores. The sea-level values are used to infer aggregate ice-cover and therefore albedo.
There are also two fixed coefficients that are derived from separate lines of reasoning, but he gives good justification for the values of these. The result is a simple theory that makes a prediction of what the global temperature has been over the past 400,000 years. When matched against the proxy temperature measurements it fits remarkably well.
The theory, then, says that global temperature and the amount of warming gases track each other. A premise is that CO2/CH4/N2O etc cause raised temperatures. Having thought about his and others' explanations of how such gases warm the planet for some time now, and having a degree in physics to assist me, I personally accept it as solid. I can explain the physics in detail, at least to my own satisfaction.
The beauty of Hansen's theory is that it incorporates all possible feedback mechanisms, known and unknown, with all response times. This includes the feedback that warming causes CO2 emission from oceans. All the combined effects of feedback mechanisms are integrated in the one value.
One claim I make about this is that you can't refute this theory by reasoning about induction. It is predictive, not inductive. You can query the data, methods and reasoning behind it, as with any other theory. But to do that you need to have very specialised knowledge in a lot of disciplines. And this is where we come to the other part of your argument. I don't have that knowledge. I have therefore to take a lot of it on trust or spend a large part of my life educating myself and going over the details. I am almost certainly not going to do it because I don't have time. I rely on a community of other people who are informed in the necessary disciplines to do it. How do I know those individuals know what they are doing? I don't, not with certainty, but the balance of probability is that enough of them do because of the process of peer-review. There are thousands of people involved and most of them will delight in proving the other one wrong in any way.
In other words, closer inspection of the theories used in climate science leads to the realisation that a blunt dismissal of it all from such a distance as yours is not supportable.
On the subject of recent warming/cooling/staying-the-same, recent temperature measurements are not "proxy", they are direct. I have taken the GISSTEMP and HADCRUT3 data myself and done some basic analyses, such as finding the slope of annual temperatures over the preceding 5, 11 and 25 years for each year. A steady warming is not obvious from the 5 and 11 year slopes, but it is from the 25 year slopes. The slope has been positive for the last 24 years, and there is no other period in the 150 years of data where that has happened. The 9 highest values are the last 9. The highest of all is the last one. It persuades me.
I won't be posting any more to this blog, except perhaps a thanks to the hosts later. The main page has become like watching a chav street-brawl. Thanks for the exchanges, I have enjoyed them and have been informed and stimulated by your considered responses. As you said earlier, we will just have to agree to differ. I will of course read any reply you make to this.
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"Science is neither modeling nor certainty but guessing and testing."
Why do you say this? Science IS modelling.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Keshe space is a scam website. His claims are all false. NASA and other space organisations do not recognise him.
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