Bill Nye thinks science is about opinion polls — not about reason and evidence, and John Oliver (who’s he? A British/US comedian) thought they should take that fallacy and run with it.
Oliver couldn’t quite sort out his opinion polls from his facts. He seemed to think that when believers do key-word surveys of abstracts it’s “a fact”, but when 75 million Americans are skeptical of a theory (which only has key-word surveys to back it up) “who gives a s***?”
He goes on to say: “You don’t need people’s opinions on a fact”. Except the “fact” in question is just some other people’s opinions. Obviously what matters to him is not the number of people who believe something, but whether they are card carrying members of the right club. After all only 62 climate scientists actually reviewed the chapter that mattered in the 2007 IPCC report, but some 31,000 scientists, including 9,000 PhD’s, 49 NASA scientists and 4 Apollo astronauts, and 2 Nobel Physics Prize winners disagree. Other surveys show that skeptics are older, better with numbers and smarter. Two thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics. The obvious conclusion (if you think surveys matter in science, which I don’t) is that the recent warming is more natural than man-made, and that the young and gullible are easily fooled. But John Oliver, comedian with a degree in English, obviously knows more than Ivar Giaevar or Robert Laughlin right?
My point is not that skeptics are right because they are wiser, smarter, better scientists — which they are, but that Olivers method for finding scientific truth fails by its own criteria. The truth about the climate comes from the observations, not the surveys. If surveys mattered, Oliver would be a skeptic.
As a comedian John Oliver probably likes to think of himself as being a bit counter culture and someone who tests political bounds. (Oh boy is he in for a surprize.) Instead he went for the safe impress-my-friends soft form of propaganda — the establishment comedian. Parody for the paradigm. He’s an obedient servant of the climate cult.
Truth actually matters quite a lot in comedy. It just isn’t that funny if its a comment on a fantasy. The art of satire as a political tool depends on the satirist understanding the topic.
Memo to John: great comedians skewer the state sanctioned litany — they don’t produce free advertising. Why don’t you do something really risky and interview Buzz Aldrin, or Harrison Schmidt or Ivar Giaevar — these guys are real scientists. Bill Nye the science guy is the go-to guy for climate propaganda for a reason. The real climate scientists who believe a tax-can-change-the-weather can’t afford to debate skeptics — they have a reputation that matters and public humiliation would blow the facade completely. When Bill Nye bombs, who cares? He’s disposable.
Bill-Nye-the-propaganda-guy abuses science every time he whips out “the consensus”.
And for the sake of any Oliver fans who trip over this page (and for Oliver himself, go on, can someone email him?), when Oliver reels off “the evidence”, look out, he hasn’t noticed the big black hole of “cause and effect”. Nothing he can name shows that CO2 causes the warming, everything he lists is either the survey fallacy, or the effect of anything that causes warming. The shocking truth is that natural warming also causes temperatures to warm, seas to rise, and glaciers to melt. Oliver says “There is a mountain of research ” (yes, $80b dollars buys a lot of research, and none of it shows the climate models work or CO2 caused the warming.) Science-by-Oliver runs “Global temps are rising” — true, but it started long before CO2, and slowed as we increased our emissions. “Heat waves are becoming more common”. Well they would, wouldn’t they, it’s been warming for 300 years.
And as for “97% of papers endorsed global warming.” For a guy who’s is good at English this one has everything except accuracy, meaning, and relevance. Papers don’t endorse things, people do. The keywords in the study don’t measure the climate but hey, they are a good proxy for the language in government grants. (The 97% depends on the definitions, and by John Cook’s own definitions it was really 0.3%, not 97% — but whose counting?) Plus every one agrees the globe is warming, the question that matters is what causes it?
h/t waxing Gibberish.
From his point of view, given what he is told, it is funny in that ridicule is funny. When the President of the United States also
says it is categorically true, you have to believe him. After all, Global Warming is not a political point of view, is it?
So John wonders openly how 97% of (all) scientists say something is true and 3% say it isn’t but many people question it, even real scientists like
Max Teller, the father of the atom bomb who signed the Oregon petition with 32,000 scientists. So either the 97% is true, or someone is telling lies.
Frankly, it is surprising that they even had 3% from the group they selected, but even John Oliver might have been a little suspicious at 100% to 0%
Two lies really, as he says temperatures are increasing, which they are not. Even the head of the IPCC says it is not true.
No wonder Big Carbon has passed Big Tobacco in total turnover with even the President backing the scam.
So the question remains, would a ‘scientist’ or more correctly a science organization lie to you for fame and a truckload of money? Of course.
311
Your reference to 32000 scientists betrays your ability to reason.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/scrutinising-31000-scientists-in-the-OISM-Petition-Project.html
———————-
Go on. Do explain please. Otherwise I might think your link to SkS with no reasoning of your own, betrays your inability to think for yourself. – Jo
241
SkS… roflmao !!!……………. MIS-INFORMATION, LIES AND DECEIT !!!!!
264
And remember, that site is run by the failed cartoonist who fabricated one of the “97%” frauds.
Of course he doesn’t want the TRUTH to be heard,
And that truth is that there are a large number of REAL scientists who think the whole AGW story is nothing but a fairy tale,
made up to scare gullible little children… like you.
374
” it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether a veterinarian or forestry manager or electrical engineer should qualify as a scientist. If we remove all the engineers, medical professionals, computer scientists, and mathematicians, then the 31,478 “scientists” turn into 13,245 actual scientists”
SkS desperate to exclude anyone they can but not going after marine biologists, cartoonists, railway engineers or piezo-electricians..
150
Gosh, what a clever idea.
Step 1. Wait for a new post on the blog.
Step 2. Wait for the first comment on that post.
Step 3. Select a random statement from the comment.
Step 4. Refer to that statement, and make some inane statement that the author is wrong.
Step 5. Follow that up with a link to the site you wish to promote.
Step 6. Now go to the site, and measure the increase in visitor rate, as people flock to the referenced site.
Except for the flaw that sheep flock, and all of the sheep are already visiting the referenced site, so there will be no increase.
Nice try, though, even if the technique does pre-date the internet.
491
love your work
100
Thank you, kind Sir.
40
That strategy is as old as Methuselah, isn’t it Rereke?
In Tasmania we have an agricultural event similar to Mystery Creek, but smaller, (and more focussed, IMHO).
This year one of the exhibitors of water tanks had a huge barrel full of help yourself walking sticks made of a piece of PVC with a push on handle and a chair foot. Soon after the event opened, these sticks became obvious all over Agfest. Sure enough, the word got out that they were free, and the water tank peddler was inundated with visitors. Iv’e witnessed the same technique at Mystery Creek.
40
I notice that you got one down thumbs.
Proof you hit the mark!
LOL
20
Baaa!
baaa!
Skeptics in the main aren’t your average sheeple.
111
Michael!
If you want readers to go to skepticalscience, make it sound tantalising and attractive, not glum and boring. You may have to tell lies, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem.
161
@ Michael S
The article you link to @ SkS essentially argues that the petition project only represents a small percentage of scientists and is therefore invalid yet goes on to say:
”The IPCC AR4 WG1 report was written and reviewed by approximately 2000 scientists. If we assume that the 20,000 AGU members who claim to be atmospheric scientists, ocean scientists, or hydrologists represent the pool of potential experts in climate science in the U.S., then approximately 10% of all climate scientists were directly involved in creating the over 1000 page report.”
Disregarding SkS’s inability to distinguish between global and the US, their own argument discounts the IPCC report as valid by having too small a percentage of climate scientist participation.
How exactly does 10% know what 97% believe with respect to the nuances of the debate instead of broad statements like ”human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures” which many skeptics believe as well?
170
You might want to quote the schoolyard trick
I know something that you don’t know.
40
Perhaps Michael values ‘belief’ above ‘knowledge’.
40
Using a site where the members prance around in old N@zi uniforms as an authoritative source?
What next, quoting Goebbels to us?
160
Not only is SKS a conglomeration of disgusting ignorance, but it is the harbinger of the totalitarianism behind the AGW scam.
Isn’t it hard to imagine a university behaving like this?
60
They criticise the numbers involved in the OISM survey and then hypocritically quote the ridiculous Doran survey which slescted just 79 of the repondents to support their case !
10
Michael S, Skeptical Science is an oxymoron that has little readership and with my contribution you’ve personally received more responses in one day than that entire site does in a week.
Your science is not in and you evade answering questions and presenting facts.
Your statistics are inherently malleable and when human nature dictates that two human beings can’t even agree on the outcome of a football match that just ended your consensus is meaningless.
The earth will continue on through the void, the seasons will come and go in a regular pattern and the weather will change.
Life on this planet has somehow managed to adapt and survive.
The whole crux of your belief that we must take action to put the world in stasis defies the concept of evolution.
Adaptation is a highly desirable and fundamental survival trait.
Here’s the thing about the ability to survive, it is passed on in those who embrace change, and strengthens in the face of adversity.
So far links to SKS and youtube don’t seem to provide an impetus or thought provoking rational argument for me to worry about the future.
It’s your choice to be fearful just don’t expect the rest of us to follow you down the path of blind and unreasoning panic.
You’re on your own buddy, and you can take all the others that want to be victims with you.
Bunch of sooks.
180
The Oregon petition was created in 1998 after Kyoto in 1997, 16 years ago and at the point where the growth in temperatures was highest, at the point where the casual connection between temperature growth and CO2 growth made the most sense with or without global computer models and Mann was sticking pointy bits on the end of his hockey stick. Now we look back on those 16 years as absolute proof that the signatories were right, that you do not have to be a Climate Scientist to be right, or to be a meteorologist to read a weather map. The failure of the CO2 driven models is profound.
In hindsight it is only surprising that there was no real attempt to discredit the 3% who dared to disagree. Maybe they were useful fools who gave a little credibilty to an otherwise absurd result, so extreme that John Oliver found it funny? Surely those 3% are out of jobs by now. After all, a ‘climate scientist’ could be redefined to include only those who agree with man made Global Warming and we would have the 100%.
80
“It only takes one experiment to disprove my theory” (or words to that effect).
– A.A.
140
A.E.?
110
Since we’re being comedic, is it possible that we can just set fire to everything, right now, in unison, across the globe. Everyone join in and burn burn burn.
In doing so, we’ll accelerate past the warmists ‘Point of No Return’ carbon ‘death clock’.
After that, we are all going to die anyway right? So we can calmly continue to burn fossil fuels at our leisure, do some research and if it turns out the warmists are wrong, who cares?
At least we’ll be able to go about our daily lives without once being taxed, or threatened or abused.
And the best part, which will result in utopia, is that the left will have stopped breeding because they “don’t want their children and grandchildren paying for our recklessness”.
In summary, I think I have solved, through programatic specciccicfficty, possibly the greatest moral challenge, of our time.
160
I stand corrected.
I really have to stop that free-associating 🙂
50
I understand free-association is permissible, as long as proper precautions are taken, and all parties agree.
40
A Russian colleague of mine once told me that there is a Russian saying that goes something like this …
A good joke is 90% true and 10% joke.
Your comment has been peer reviewed and found to be valid.
181
Jolly good TS you made me giggle.
40
“Truth actually matters quite a lot in comedy”.
Well the other Bill Nye, well renowned British actor Bill Nighy, was very very funny in the popular comedy “Love Actually (2003)”. This move rates very high in the IMDB website – 7.7 out of 10. The best we could possibly rate Bill Nye in his area of pursuit is O.0001 (and that’s on a good day).
Clearly Bill Nighy, in comparison to his name sake, Bill Nye the Science Guy, is streets ahead in his area of human endeavour. Put simply – Bill Nighy is a giant in his field – Bill Nye a flea in his field.
90
Bill Nye comes across as a comedian to me. I’d rather take a 2-years old seriously.
50
Interesting point Peter,
So maybe Jo’s heading could have been: If only John Oliver knew what science was, Bill Nye could’ve been funny.
10
It’s the woozle effect.
Since the first report in 1990, nothing has advanced in IPCC ‘science’ except the rhetoric.
As nature continues non-cooperation, the alarmists’ belief that human CO2 emissions are causing dangerous global warming has become a self-referencing woozle hunt:
… a woozle effect, or a woozle, occurs when frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence mislead individuals, groups and the public into thinking or believing there is evidence, and non-facts become urban myths and factoids. The creation of woozles is often linked to the changing of language from qualified (“it may”, “it might”, “it could”) to absolute form (“it is”) firming up language and introducing ideas and views not held by an original author or supported by evidence … (Wiki).
Dangerous AGW aka climate change™ is developing into an urban myth.
260
Just another left leaning sycophant masquerading as an entertainer, when will these twits learn that people just want to be entertained and not have some political agenda thrown at them?, then again most sheeple don’t get the intended gist of the propaganda making the attempt at humor even sadder.
130
Are you sure? When only 10% of people go to university and 1% do science, you do not have a lot of people in the community who recognize this as rubbish, especially when people like Obama and our own Chief Scientist tell them it is a clear and present danger. The difficulty is that the independent individuals who are the visible sceptics can be put down by organizations like the IPCC, NASA, CSIRO, BOM, the Royal Society, the US Physics Association and so many more. As a busy member of the public, who would you believe? Even people who should know better get sucked in.
130
Fair points, however I’ve never concurred with “people don’t know any better” as an excuse for “I can’t be stuffed looking past the next 24 hours” mentality of most, I might sound harsh but from my experiences’ with people failing to stand up for themselves even at the last moment it simply is what it is.
FWIW I never went to university or studied science so maybe I’m an exception to the rule?
Yes consider me the idiot savant of science and problem with authority. 😉
90
Called street smarts, for those who don’t have the education. Same effect.
I can sympathise with regard to authority. They lie, cheat and made dumb ideas law. Authority is over rated in my humble opinion.
00
Woozle
love it, feel a T Shirt coming on.
Mike
60
One of the greatest fallacies – no a much better expression is shameless fraud – of supposed man made ‘climate change’ is this 97% figure. However, it is a figure that has become holy scripture amongst the gullible, ignorant and dodgy politicians.
I decided to randomly look at 20 papers on John Cook’s list; not one endorsed the position of climate change is/was/will be caused by rising carbon dioxide levels. There were however papers with references to global warming events in the far geological past, which had nothing to with changes in CO2 levels, there were also some papers which basically stated this, “If global warming happens, then our models show this”, and there were some papers with references so obscure the reason for their inclusion was a real stretch.
If anyone doubts this, do this exercise yourself. All the references are here – of the 20 I looked, there were two behind paywalls and only an abstract was available.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/media/erl460291datafile.txt
I assume there must be same papers amongst the ~27,000, which actually endorse the theory of man made global warming, but I guess their number is pitifully few.
If you can be bothered to lift up the stone – and that is the problem, most people cannot be bothered -and see what is really beneath it, as opposed to blindly accepting being told what is there by some dubious individual, then you see climate alarmism in its true light: A house of cards built on a foundation of shifting sands.
240
The warmering alarmists just don’t get it.
There is nothing funny about doomsday.
Well, there is, but, it is more about laughing at the mental state of the messenger, than the ‘message’.
70
” … and 4 Apollo astronauts.” ?
What about those florists too?
30
No…. florists are most like to be “AGW believers”. ie ignorant of any science what-so-ever.
42
little realising that the flowers they sell are probably grown in high CO2 conditions.
122
Australia’s first astronaut.
Philip K. Chapman, B.S. Physics and Mathematics, Sydney University (1956), M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1964), Sc.D. Instrumentation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1967), Physicist, Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (1958-1959), Engineer, Canadian Aviation Electronics Limited (1960-1961), British Polar Medal (1961), Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1962-1967), Astronaut, Apollo 14 Mission Scientist, NASA (1967-1972)
His comments in the Australian.
No Joe, can you find a florist who has science qualifications to convince me of the merits of CAGW.
—-
Thanks! – Jo
140
jo –
great essay as always. not nit-picking but, near the end, u say:
“The keywords in the study don’t measure of the climate”. u might like to fix that.
btw i get more of a laugh from the following articles than from anything Oliver might say:
15 May: Bloomberg/Businessweek: Matthew Carr: EU Carbon Permits Fall Most in
Three Weeks on Expanded Surplus
Permits for December dropped 6.8 percent, the most since April 25, to 4.81
euros ($6.60) a metric ton at 4:40 p.m. in London on the ICE Futures Europe
exchange. The contract slid as much as 8.5 percent earlier today. The
allowances dropped for a third consecutive year in 2013.
The glut swelled to more than 2.1 billion tons by the end of 2013 from
almost 2 billion tons a year earlier, the European Commission, the EU’s
executive arm, said yesterday. That exceeds the 1.9 billion tons emitted in
all of 2013 by factories and power stations covered by the market, according
to EU data published today…
“There’s going to be more downward pressure on the market,” as the surplus
is sold or given away, said Trevor Sikorski, an analyst in London at Energy
Aspects Ltd. Sales of allowances by traders to close out bets on gains
probably worsened today’s decline, he said by phone.
Falling natural gas prices are enticing some utilities to switch to the
cleaner-burning fuel from coal, cutting demand for carbon permits, Sikorski
said…
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-05-15/eu-carbon-permits-fall-most-in-three-weeks-on-expanded-surplus
what language is this that Hendricks uses? technocratic talk?
16 May: Bloomberg: Ewa Krukowska: Carbon Seen by Hendricks Set to Recover
Once EU Agrees on Reform
Carbon-permit prices in the European Union’s emissions trading system will
rebound once policy makers agree on a “sustainable” overhaul of the market,
according to German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks…
Hendricks: ”I am convinced that we will need to continue taking
distributional aspects into account when deciding the 2030
effort-sharing”…
”It is true that I suggested launching the market stability reserve already
as soon as 2016. From my point of view, this should also include to shift
the so-called backloading volumes into the reserve. Both measures would help
to strengthen the EU ETS quickly and sustainably”…
”According to what I hear so far from my colleagues in other member states,
there seems to be a lot of support for measures to strengthen the EU ETS
already before 2020. People seem to recognize that we cannot wait another
six years to reform this flagship instrument of European climate policy.”…
”The developments in the last years demonstrated the difficulties in
forecasting carbon prices for a number of years in the future. It is totally
clear current carbon prices are too low to spur investments in low-carbon
technologies. And given the existing surplus, it is highly unlikely that
this will change in the near future without a sustainable reform of the EU
ETS. Only such a reform can provide clarity for industry again to invest in
clean technologies. I’m sure that once we have decided on such a reform,
this will be quickly reflected in market prices…
”We definitely feel the impact of the Ukrainian crisis and the ensuing
energy-security concerns in the debate on a 2030 climate and energy
framework…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-15/carbon-seen-by-hendricks-set-to-recover-once-eu-agrees-on-reform.html
20
Roston’s always good for a laugh too:
13 May: Bloomberg: Eric Roston: Eureka! Point of Agreement Discovered
Between a Republican and Scientists
Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told ABC News this weekend he
doesn’t think that people are changing the climate, or that we can do
anything about observed changes that are occurring…
Rubio and the people he refers to as “the scientists” might agree that there
are many more things that we can no longer prevent. From the most recent
science assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
“A large fraction” of changes from manmade CO2 “is irreversible on a
multi-century to millennial time scale.” — IPCC …
It’s easy to be fatalistic about it. It’s easy to draw the back of your hand
to your forehead, swoon, and think there’s nothing to be done about global
warming. There is, for now.
And even if there’s nothing to be done, “a few centuries” is still plenty of
time to at least familiarize oneself with the utility, however occasionally
agreeable, of science.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-12/eureka-point-of-agreement-discovered-between-a-republican-and-scientists.html
surely Roston reads his own publication & can recognise reality when he sees it:
15 May: Bloomberg: Grant Smith: IEA Sees Higher Demand for OPEC Crude This
Year
Demand for OPEC’s crude will be higher in the second half of the year than
previously estimated as inventories in developed economies remain depleted,
according to the International Energy Agency…
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will need to provide an
average of 30.7 million barrels a day in the second half, or 800,000 a day
more than it pumped last month, the IEA said today. This calls for 140,000
more barrels of OPEC crude than the IEA forecast in April as
stronger-than-expected demand has kept stockpile levels “tight” in advanced
nations, the agency said. OPEC controls about 40 percent of global
supplies…
World fuel consumption will increase by 1.3 million barrels a day, or 1.4
percent, this year to average a record 92.8 million barrels day…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-15/iea-sees-higher-demand-for-opec-crude-amid-inventory-deficit.html
20
A ‘consensus’ where – as Lennart Bengtsson has recently reminded us – intimidation and peer group pressure are the order of day for anyone with ‘abnormal’ non-comforming thoughts.
A consensus maintained by groupthink and intimidation is no consensus at all.
The argument from expert opinion is a massive FAIL.
140
I’m happy to say that I’ve never heard of John Oliver, until now; he’s about as funny as looking out of your window and seeing a pyroclastic flow. Sorry, any Americans reading this, but you really are welcome to him, along with Martin Bashir and Piers Morgan (NO relation). Please don’t send any of them back. (By the way, could we possibly return David Axelrod, as the UK is a quite well populated already?)
That clip reminds me of a quite creepy, supposedly satirical television programme which I switched off in about 1998. Labour had won a huge majority in Parliament in ’97. With the two “comic” presenters already conspicuously left-leaning, their studio guest was a man who was asserted to have gone from satirical television to a Downing Street policy unit (judging from the mess labour made of the UK, the claim isn’t altogether implausible). The labour-supporting presenters proceeded to set up easy (and desperately unfunny) jokes for their labour-supporting guest, aimed exclusively at the Leader of the Opposition. That was satire in Blair’s Britain.
Like them, this John Oliver seems to be spectacularly missing the point about satire – and I may be the only person ever to have used the word “spectacularly” in the context of one of his performances.
142
“He’s about as funny as looking out of your window and seeing a pyroclastic flow.” That quote is a keeper! 😉
50
Right now in John Oliver’s career I think what matters to him (and rightly so) is ratings.
Like John Stewart he is primarily a satirist and while he often presents a thoughtful perspective on difficult topics and makes it funny, sometimes he demonstrates that he actually doesn’t care much what the so called truth is. He just wants to ensure its entertaining, I think this was one of those times.
Bill Nye is easy to poke fun at because he is a caricature by choice. I actually think he is much smarter than he appears to be from his espoused views on AGW. I believe he has seen the value of the gravy train on that side of the argument and how you can get a microphone shoved in your face as often as you like, provided you are prepared to shout that cow farts change the weather and money can change it back again.
Its a side show and a pretty tawdry one at that.
130
“if you think survey’s matter in science, which I don’t”
Jo, please dump the apostrophe in “survey’s”. It’s giving me hives.
—
Sorry! No hives intended. Will fix. – Jo
30
*** FLASH **** BREAKING *****
Scientists cover-up of “damaging” climate view
This is from the Times UK. Headlining on Drudge…
130
So? John Oliver (who he? – good question!) merely proved that 97 people can shout down 1 person. 100 real scientists tried to shout down Einstein – who were they? And, who won that argument?
Oh, and his obvious reliance on a canned audience shows how poor his humour is, too.
110
Einstein?
Einstein the patent clerk!
What a smuck – reads a few papers about this, about that – mostly about how to keep time on the railways, would ya know.
And what does he do – uh? Only goes and gets himself famous, that’s all. Like he’s a specialist in atoms or anything. He didn’t even seen one! Speed of light and all that, not real science like, er, er, like the weatherman knows!
/sarcoff
🙂
140
Comedians dispensing wisdom on AGW. We’ve come full circle. I wonder if they can laugh at themselves. I guess not, too earnest.
30
But once it becomes clear to the masses that global warming has gone and global cooling is here for the long term, then it would be funny to hear him explain (squirm) how he was so easily fooled into the co2 nonsense. There he is telling us how global warming is real despite the fact that all the terrestrial and satellite measurements of global temperature say otherwise up to 18 years now. Astonishing that the MSM are still trotting out this absurd nonsense.
11
IMO, Bill Nye is right for all the wrong reasons.
CAGW is not, and never has been about science. It has always been about politics and politics IS about opinion.
CO2 causing global warming is just a unsubstantiated hypothesis, 17 years of CO2 levels rising and the globe has stopped warming throughout that time. That is reality, a fact.
The so call comedian, John Oliver , not so much counter culture as over the counter joker. He’s just a very damp squib of a joker, and for me not very funny.
If he wanted a better and easier target then Patchy and the hidden power-brokers within the UN and IPCC. Just recount their statements, they are a joke.
Educate and make fun of them, it will deflate these hidden fat-ar5es. And when done right will get people to question themselves and their own beliefs.
50
It’s a sad state of affairs when people are expected to take seriously comedians on a science topic. What next? Comedians advising how to educate students, pilot planes, build bridges, perform brain surgery, etc.? This world is sick. But then it’s to be expected given the rubbish they teach at school these days.
70
What is it with comedians and climate change?
Wendy Harmer is always banging on about the ensuing climate catastrophe and Mandy Nolan gives it a fair shake as well.
On the other hand George Carlin has a different perspective on saving the planet. Worth a look on You tube.
40
Don’t worry about comedians. ABC radio interviewed Tim Costello about the budget yesterday. He started by saying “Australian budgets should primarily be about” then started listing topics, the second of which was “pricing carbon”. So the person who is charged with speaking on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged and advocating generous socialism sees his second biggest priority as increasing energy costs?????
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/budget-2014/champion-of-poor-reverend-tim-costello-calls-for-a-broader-gst-base-to-include-fresh-food/story-fnmbxsh3-1226919802048
But at least he was consistent in the interview in calling for life to get tougher on the poor. The only problem is he basically reversed every other position on taxation he has ever espoused. First he was against the GST, now hes for it. First he wanted food exempted now he wants all food taxed including fresh food so as it will “capture the rich”. If that’s not crazy enough, he advocates giving back some of the collected tax, proportionally to make it “fairer”. So lets get this straight, you tax, then you give it back to help those you taxed? The administrators will love it, everyone else will scratch their heads.
Im looking forward to the continuing hand wringing over what constitutes “poor” and “rich” when you have comments like this;
“I think it would be very difficult to live on $249 (a week),” he said. ”I’ve got a young family, I find it hard enough to make ends meet currently and I’ve got a job.”
Bill Shorten 2012 (salary $300,000+)
Truth is so much stranger than fiction and Tim Costello is stranger than truth or fiction.
41
I am very disappointed with Oliver whom I have found to be humorous as part of the Jon Stewart Show. Instead Oliver took the easy politically correct approach to humor and as a result, IMO, was not humorous. Maybe he should learn from the late great George Carlin
http://youtu.be/eGOBm2J4tn0
50
–
KR;..(below)..”the consensus is the result of the science”
–
=
Creationism makes the same claim!
30
The opening post is in many ways hilarious. But not because it’s correct.
The consensus on AGW is not science. Rather the consensus is the result of the science. The evidence is so strong that 97% of the scientists who actually look at the data are convinced of a dominant human influence upon recent climate change.
The consensus is an indirect indication of the evidence – but if you disagree, if you feel there are alternate explanations (for some reason all the alternatives come down to “it’s not us”, and that we don’t have to do anything – especially if it involves regulations), then argue those alternative hypotheses.
If your alternative hypotheses are supported (not contradicted, as so many are) by the data, if they provide a better, more predictive alternative to the consensus view, you will find those interested in evidentiary support will be convinced.
If, on the other hand, your alternative hypotheses are curve-fitting without cause/effect, are contradicted by the evidence, rely on linguistic twists rather than math, or requiring ignoring huge expanses of demonstrable science such as spectroscopy (all of which I have seen proposed on this topic), if your hypothesis is contradicted by the evidence, your hypothesis is wrong. And therefore fits in the same bin as abiogenic oil, animal magnetism, or the luminous aether. Or, if the hypothesis is particularly extreme, the same bin as Reptoids.
There are always a small percentage of scientists who hold minority views such as these for various reasons (often ideological). Their evidence is contradictory, missing, or nonsense, and as a result they are simply wrong. No evidence, no support, no truth – that’s reality.
—
If you feel that tens of thousands of scientists across the world are either deceptive or self deluded, you are a conspiracy theorist, and reason won’t penetrate. Which is sad. But if you are actually interested in a better understanding of the world, follow the evidence. And that evidence adds up to AGW.
224
Oh dear.
Never bothered to look at the predicted/’projected’ temperature increases v. the empirical data have we.
I guess that is too ‘simple’. Wot, when we ‘know’ that there is a causal relationship between co2 and temperature (how could there not be? It’s programmed into all the models and all the models predict it!)
As for the ‘consensus’ – no argument from authority will hold from a consensus that is grounded in groupthink, intimidation and peer pressure.
162
Are you referring to, perhaps, Dr. Spencers deceptively offset graphs? Or looking at the CMIP5 model runs that were run on projections, not the last few years of actual forcings such as solar, volcanic, ENSO? And ignoring statistical significance, and the lack thereof of short term trends?
A CO2/temperature connection is _not_ programmed into the models (you can check here), rather the observed physics of spectroscopic absorption and fluid dynamics show that relationship as a consequence of those physics. Your claim requires “ignoring huge expanses of demonstrable science such as spectroscopy”.
And by claiming that scientists the world over, from every ideology and society, are “grounded in groupthink, intimidation and peer pressure”, you are right in the conspiracy theory zone.
117
The models are SICK. They are useless. !
They massively over-estimated any warming, so much so that even after all the GISS and HadCrut data adjustments they STILL are way above REAILTY.
Its going to be hilarious watching even further divergence over the next few years as temperatures start to slide downwards slightly. 🙂
162
Typically flawed logic of the Slackbladder type.
So, no coconut for you and acolytes of the Holy Hockey Stick will be treated with the contempt they deserve here.
132
Sure, why not throw in some fudge factors to make the ‘projections agree with observations’… except that means they can /never/ be falsified.
Welcome to the Quinean web.
So a ‘CO2/temperature connection is _not_ programmed in’ it is rather a ‘relationship as a consequence of those physics’; this is meaningless verbiage on your part.
If there was a known ‘relationship as a consequence of those physics’ we would not have climate sensitivities ranging from around 2-6.
/Observational/ estimates of sensitivity put it at around 1.5. see:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/oversensitive-final.pdf
62
“Model/observational discrepancies are so large and growing. A few recent examples in print include:
– Fyfe, J.C., N.P. Gillett and F.W. Zwiers, 2013: Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years. Nature Climate Change, 3, 767-769, doi:10.1038/nclimate1972
– Swanson, K.L., 2013: Emerging selection bias in large-scale climate change simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 40, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50562.
– McKitrick, Ross R. and Lise Tole (2012) Evaluating Explanatory Models of the Spatial Pattern of Surface Climate Trends using Model Selection and Bayesian Averaging Methods. Climate Dynamics DOI 10.1007/s00382-012-1418-9.
– Fildes, Robert and Nikolaos Kourentzes (2011) “Validation and Forecasting Accuracy in Models of Climate Change International Journal of Forecasting 27 968-995.
– Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis & N. Mamassis (2010). “A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data.” Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55(7) 2010.
– McKitrick, Ross R., Stephen McIntyre and Chad Herman (2010) “Panel and Multivariate Methods for Tests of Trend Equivalence in Climate Data Sets”. Atmospheric Science Letters, DOI: 10.1002/asl.290”
via Ross McKittrick at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/16/the-bengtsson-paper-rejection-its-models-all-the-way-down/
50
KR:
‘Your claim requires “ignoring huge expanses of demonstrable science such as spectroscopy”.’
–
You need to show how and where this “ignoring” takes place. Stating it does not make it so. Creationists prefer your approach, but it doesn’t mean they are correct!
60
Dr. Spencers offset graphs? They are arbitrary 0 points, so he has lined them up to coincide. Look at the trends, you moron. That is what is important.
And what is it with the split second between graphs? To make it difficult to see that you’re spreading a huge whopper yourself?
71
“ignoring huge expanses of demonstrable science such as spectroscopy”.
What? The Beer-Lambert Law tells us how much warming we will get from a doubling of C666O2?
Another whopper because everyone here appreciates that certain wavelengths of LWIR are absorbed by carbon dioxide. Are you suggesting that “a carbon tax will stop the seas rising 100 m” is the next logical step?
60
What seems to be missing is that no one at any time has been able to DISPROVE the null hypothesis, that any observable changes in Earth’s atmosphere are in fact naturally occurrences.
Until someone can successfully demonstrate that the null hypothesis is not valid, it is hardly science to conjure up imaginary causes for imaginary effects.
20
My previous comment hasn’t made it out of moderation (too many links?) – there are three points I would like to make:
1. Projected temperatures (i.e., the models) match the measured data quite well – if you actually take into account recent solar, volcanic, and ENSO influences (see Schmidt et al 2014 for a discussion of this).
2. The relationship between GHGs and temperature is _not_ programmed into the models (see here for representative code), but is a result of modelling basic physics. You are “…ignoring huge expanses of demonstrable science such as spectroscopy”.
3. Your invocation of “groupthink, intimidation and peer pressure” distorting the science of 10’s of thousands around the globe, from every ideology and culture, is (IMO) a conspiracy theory.
07
Moderators – My apologies, my last message appears to have crossed paths simultaneously with the previous one… an unintentional duplication.
——–
Not at all. I’ll try to approve things faster now I’m up. – Jo
08
No they do not. Your very justification for why they do (which they do not, and there is no data supporting your thesis, only supposition) is that the models do not take any of those factors into account.
You can claim a stuck clock is working twice a day because it gives the right time. And that is what you are trying to do.
The models do not take into account Solar (directly dismissed by Schmidt and Mann), Volcanic or ENSO. So they are wrong. And will always be wrong.
That is science 101. just because you stumble upon a Willow Tree does not mean you knew how the bark relieved headaches.
12
The history of science is the history of the “consensus” being wrong.
Around 1950, the vast majority of geo-scientists “knew” that the continents had been fixed in their current locations since the cratons formed in the Early PreCambrian. There were just a few “heretics”, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, who clung ferociously to the idea that South America and Africa had once been joined together, and had somehow separated, and drifted apart.
Early 1960’s, J. Tuzo Wilson and Henry Hess, independently, published papers on what has become to be called, ‘continental drift’. I think you would be hard pressed to find a geoscientist today who will support the idea that the continental positions have been fixed for all Earth history.
As the rhetoric heats up, the hypothesis of human-caused climate change will soon find itself joining the “fixed-in-place-continents” on the ash heap of history. You are welcome to hold on to this hoax if you like, just as there were holdouts (including one professor of mine) who refused to accept any suggestion of plate tectonics.
A very good day to you, KR,
Mark H.
80
Mark – And what caused the consensus to change to plate tectonics? Two things: a hypothesis consistent with the physics (magma flows, not continents ‘riding’ on the seafloor) and supporting evidence.
Two things notably lacking in AGW counter-hypotheses. Assemble sufficient evidence, with a theoretic underpinning that is consistent with the data, and the consensus can be changed. No evidence – no change.
What has happened over the last 150 years (since Tyndall, Fourier, and Arrhenius) has been the accumulation of data and physics supporting AGW. Because that set of physics (including fluid dynamics, spectroscopy, etc.) works – resulting in the majority of climate scientists shifting consensus to AGW after WWII, due in part to detailed infrared spectroscopy. The examples of AGW, of plate tectonics, of bacterial causes of ulcers, are all examples demonstrating how a consensus can change.
And those very examples highlight why AGW counter-hypotheses have no traction – a lack of evidence or supportable hypotheses.
313
Firstly, there is no consensus as to catastrophic global warming/climate change/climate disruption, or whatever you may want to call it.
Secondly, the empirical data /does not support/ CAGW.
As for what causes changes in consensus, I suggest you dip into Kuhn and other sociological science writers (because humans are fallible and prone to groupthink and other disorders of logical soundness mere ‘evidence’ does not necessarily cut it.)
92
KR is not moved by evidence or more importantly, by the lack of evidence to support his favorite cause. Evidence is Greek to him.
72
KR: Go back up to Joanne’s article and click on ‘the observations’ in red.
61
PeterK
1. The missing heat is, indeed, in the ocean. Particularly below 700m. Note that vertical circulation (as per the ENSO and mid-ocean gyres) can exchange surface water energy with mid-ocean with deep ocean – increasing >700m temps with little change to 0-700.
2. A warming Earth releases more energy – but it is still less than was emitted before recent GHG increases, both spectroscopically and as per observed warming.
3. The ‘hot spot’ seems to be there in recent measurements, there are issues with consistency in older ones, but quite frankly there’s not enough of a signal to emerge either way from noise (yet).
4. Cloud feedback has uncertainties – but the range of those center on slightly positive feedback, and the range includes only (as an extrema) very small negative feedback. (Dessler 2010)
5. Unsupported assertion. Models are quite accurate on a global scale, reasonable at continental scale, and less accurate on small scales – as expected. That’s for long term _climate_, not short term weather.
6. Sensitivity estimates still run ~3C/doubling of CO2. There are a few (instrumental only, not including longer term feedbacks) with slightly lower estimates, but _nothing_ credible in the 0.4C range.
7. The evidence says yes, GHGs have warmed the last 50 years. (AR5, WG1 ch. 10)
8. Positive feedbacks, not negative, match with forcing changes and lags due to the thermal inertial of the oceans.
9. Assertions that models cannot deal with 1000 or more years ago are unsupported – they do a reasonable job within the limits of our data regarding forcings.
Yes, that’s a lot of different answers – but the list of questions is really a list of unsupported assertions, myths, and errors.
119
Here we go again.
70
I would in essence agree, Roy – arguing various evidentiary points can go round and round and round, with nobody agreeing that the evidence should change their previously held opinion. That’s rather the nature of blogs.
On the other hand: The consensus of scientists studying the evidence is AGW – and that isn’t going to change without both hypotheses consistent with the physics and supporting evidence. A consensus, to repeat myself, due to the overwhelming evidence for AGW.
Examining the consensus is important for public policy, but arguing about it says exactly _nothing_ about the actual evidence.
111
Isn’t the evidence that the 97% consensus is based on poor research enough for you to stop quoting it? Or do 97% of your friends agree with it so its not wrong?
71
So, KR, if it’s going to go round and round and round again, why not take a good look at how shaky your supposed evidence really is? Why not take a good look at the very solid case against you? Why do you keep on keeping on with the same old stuff that for very good reason, no one here believes?
I don’t get it.
71
And KR, as I remember temperatures were supposed to be much higher right now than they actually are. Sea level was supposed to be rising measurably if not disastrously. The Polar Bears should be declining.
What happened to these things, KR? The Polar Bear is thriving. Where is this AGW happening? Do you actually know of such places? Even President Obama says climate change is upon us, it’s happening now! But he says not a word about where.
So where is it?
52
And so it goes. No matter what the context, no matter how strident the troll, no matter anything — I am unable to get a single answer to, where is this climate change manifesting itself, where are the record temperatures recorded, where anything? Neither do they provide numbers for what they claim are record high average temperatures, much less the previous record so we could judge the seriousness of the new record. They have no empirical evidence to show that says CO2 can even do what they blame it for doing.
They cannot or dare not answer this direct challenge. So much for good faith. KR loses the debate by default 🙁
31
@Roy
The Polar bears are drinking the excess sea water, which is causing them to defecate more, which is reducing the reflectivity of the Arctic which is causing temperatures to not go up.
So where do I get my Nobel Piece prize?
00
Please provide the proof about the “missing heat” miraculously being in the ocean. As for the rest of your nonsense, let’s see: “GHG increases” (why not CO2, specifically?); “hot spot seems…not enough of a signal”; “uncertainties”; “Models are quite accurate” (no, they really aren’t); “sensitivity estimates”; “GHGs [again] have warmed the last fifty years” [Why the last fifty? What about the last seventeen?]; “thermal inertial” [sic]; “models…do a reasonable job within the limits of our data” [in other words: they’re useless, because the input data is so selective).
90
I want to know how the heat gets from the surface of the ocean to some holiday home, 700 meters below the surface, without being detected by Argo and his boys.
And I want to know why it matters that heat might be down there, if it stays down there, who cares? There is a lot of heat from under water vents, anyway. I little bit more won’t make much difference, will it, after all we are only talking about half a gnats hair in difference in temperature compared to the range of temperatures we could be worrying about.
140
It must be ‘quantum heat’, like Schrodinger’s Cat it both exists and does not exist at the same time (except here, it exists in theory, but not in a measured reality).
70
Ooo, Schrodinger’s heat. The cat will like that.
60
The ONLY warming in the last 50 years has been the Hansen/Jones “adjustments” and the 1998 Elnino event
If you discount the 0.25C jump caused by the 1998 ElNino (not a CO2 related event) then there has been ZERO warming in the whole of the satellite temperature record.
In FACT if you go back to records from before the AGW scam started and all the data got “adjusted”, you will find that around 1940 was about the same as the peak of the 1998 ElNino. So effectively NO WARMING for something like 75 years
112
Griss – Statistical significance fail on your part:
RSS trend 1979-1997 0.071 ±0.170 °C/decade, from 2001 -0.060 ±0.252 °C/decade (2σ) (computed here using a ARMA(1,1) autocorrelation estimate). Neither trend you graphed is significant WRT a null hypothesis of no warming.
Overall the adjustments make _very_ little difference_ (see Fig. 4 comparing raw/adjusted US temps).
I do hope you’re not claiming a conspiracy theory – that all the adjustments are deliberately deceptive? Because I consider that quite silly.
17
The Climategate emails make it quite clear that it was a combined effort between Giss and Hadley to “get rid of the 1940’s peak”
Its there min black and white.
And linking to SkS just makes you look like brain-washed fool… again.
And for them to say that it made no difference, when in fact it converted a NEGATIVE trend in to a massive positive trend is really quite bizarre.
12
What is SIGNIFICANT is that once the ElNino step of 0.25C is removed, the start temp at 1979 is barely distinguishable from the temperature now.
I repeat, since you addled brain-washed little mind has so little ability to comprehend…
Apart from the 0.25C step caused by the 1998 ElNino, THERE HAS BEEN NO WARMING IN THE WHOLE OF THE SATELLITE RECORD
12
Still!
0.07-0.17 = -0.10 (significant figures please Phil). That supports the null hypothesis. What are you actually trying to say? And don’t rely on SS to do the calculations of SD for you. They do not do it correctly. Look at the graph. Could a slope of -0.1 actual fit the red data well? Could a positive slope of 0.2 fit the blue data better than -0.06.
Use your brain KR.
22
Hi Vic,
Maybe you can help me out here.
Since when has the null hypothesis been that there is no warming?
As I understand it, there’s a natural warming effect, and some say, an anthropogenic warming effect. I’d have thought that the null hypothesis was that whatever warming occurs is above and beyond the natural warming.
00
With the error calculations from SkS, any hypothesis is supported. That’s all that I wanted to point out.
21
An ordinary least squares (OLS) fit to data includes two outputs – the trend and the uncertainty. Discussing one (over short time periods) without the other (whether there is statistically significant difference between that trend and the chosen null hypothesis) is only looking at half the story.
Temperature data demonstrates autocorrelation, memory – a cold month leads to other colder than usual months, and vice versa, unlike in a white noise signal where the next point is strictly determined by the trend and noise distribution. In particular, temperature data corresponds to an ARMA(1,1) process (Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, Appendix on Methods). AFAIK the SkS Trend Calculator is the only publicly accessible Web interface for computing ARMA(1,1) uncertainties for global temperature data – if you know of another, by all means tell me.
If the uncertainty range includes both the postulated trend (currently about 0.16-0.17C/decade) and your null hypothesis (generally that of zero trend in these discussions), you are simply looking at too short a time period to make a distinction between them, as your short trends may just be noise.
Griss’s trends are far to short for significance. Like the old Magic 8-ball says, “Cannot predict now/Ask again later”.
12
Bacon, without the ElNino…. THERE IS NO TREND. !!
Stop pretending to be so thick. !
22
Most programs just give you a coefficient and constant when you do a linear fit. The better ones will give you a standard deviation for each or 95% confidence intervals. The best ones give you a plot of combinations of the coefficient and constant that are within the 95% confidence interval. You still didn’t explain why you didn’t spot that the numbers were wrong.
21
vic g gallus – Why do you think the numbers are wrong? You have asserted that, but haven’t supported the claim.
Note that the wide standard deviations from short trends do _not_ (as you claimed above) support the null hypothesis, nor do they support the longer term trend.
Short trend estimates support neither the null nor tested hypotheses, as there is insufficient data from short trends to make a distinction between the two.
01
I did refer to the data and how a negative slope would not fit well to the first example that you gave. You ignored it.
I went into more detail here. When I calculate it from the scratch, use the regression analysis in Excel or use curve fitting programs on the net, I get a quarter of the values given by SkS. I’m insisting that you check and if anyone wants to know for sure that they check for themselves.
As Pat Frank has pointed out, you don’t get statistics at all. If the model is within the error range then its supported by the evidence. Not particularly useful if the error is large but still supported.
01
“9. Assertions that models cannot deal with 1000 or more years ago are unsupported”
9. Assertions that models CAN deal with even 100 year ago are unsupported.
As soon as anyone “matches” to the Giss or HadCRut pre-1979 temperature data.. you KNOW they are wrong anyway.
Because they use this highly manipulated data as a sort of hindcast, the models will ALWAYS have a FAKE positive trend built into them.
They will ALWAYS aim way too high compared to REALITY.
That has been proven by their current divergence from REALITY.
They have been proven WRONG by REALITY.
They are WORTHLESS.
81
KR;
‘1. The missing heat is, indeed, in the ocean. Particularly below 700m. Note that vertical circulation (as per the ENSO and mid-ocean gyres) can exchange surface water energy with mid-ocean with deep ocean – increasing >700m temps with little change to 0-700.’
–
This is your opinion, not science. You need to show evidence, in relevant time scales, that this supports your hypothesis. Stating something doesn’t make it so.
Note: referencing other peoples opinions is not evidence.
70
Or he could just make it up as he goes along 🙂
71
KR–
You tout models as if they are the end-all of global climate science.
Maybe you need to school us on them. For example, feel free to discuss the various “parameters” which all GCM’s set to zero, and, in doing so, explain how having that parameter set to zero is an accurate representation of the real Earth atmosphere. Use the ‘one-to-ten’ scale to tell us how a zero-parameter represents the Earth atmosphere, where ‘one’ means it does not represent the atmosphere, and ‘ten’ means it completely represents the atmosphere.
Let’s see, now I’ve lost track of the number of models I’ve done over my career (about 40 years, give or take), and I know one thing for an absolute certainty: the more complex the system being modeled, the less likely that the “model” accurately depicts the system.
In the case of the global climate system, we have a coupled, non-linear, dynamic system. It’s complexity is not subject to “modeling” by us poor humans. It boils down to this:
A coupled system can be modeled successfully, for a period of time, if all of the subordinate systems are well-understood, and well-behaved.
A non-linear system can be successfully modeled for very short periods of time; usually just a few seconds. As a pilot (11,000 hours PIC), I know why aviation forecasts are updated every three-to-six hours, because conditions have changed (chaotically) and the “old” forecast is obsolete. Heck, I’ve taken off with assurances of acceptable weather, and half-way there, being forced to turn back due to “unforeseen” circumstances at the destination.
A dynamic system can be modeled, usually for short periods of time, minutes at best. Again, it boils down to how complex the system is, and how well it is understood.
The key here is that AGW-believers believe (incorrectly) that the global climate system, that coupled, non-linear, dynamic system, is controlled by a SINGLE variable. Sorry, KR, that is impossible. No system that complex is EVER controlled by a single variable. I cannot be convinced that a trace gas (0.04% of the atmosphere) is the sole determinant of the global climate. That is complete nonsense. I do not look for single variables to control any system; variables influence other variables, and those variables interfere with each other in both constructive- and destructive ways (often alternating in their effect[s] upon each other).
So go ahead, KR, and tell us about the zero-parameters in all GCM’s, and relate those zero parameters to the real Earth atmosphere.
Do have a wonderful day; I look forward to your response,
Mark H.
80
” is controlled by a SINGLE variable.”
Which is particularly stupid when there is basically ZERO proof the it has any effect AT ALL !!
61
Agreed, but remember, this is the argument of the pro-AGW crowd. Steven Covey reminds us that first we must understand other’s positions or beliefs, before we can have our position understood.
I do enjoy your posts, Griss.
Hi Rereke!!!
30
That also suffers from random events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, et al. All of which have the potential to impact the climate in various unpredictable ways.
I wonder how the Climate Shamans account for the statistical noise created by such events?
30
KR, in science, the meaning of data is provided only by a falsifiable physical theory. In climate science, that theory is the physics encoded within climate models.
None of the climate models have anywhere near the resolution necessary to describe the effect on climate of the average ~36 milliWatt annual increase in forcing produced by GHGs.
Climate physics itself provides no way, even in principle, to calculate the effects of such a small change in forcing.
As a result, no unique cause can be applied to the climate warming observed since 1850. Because climate physical theory is so undeveloped, no explanations are presently possible. The climate has warmed, but no one knows why. No more than anyone knows why it cooled during the LIA.
That means … wait for it … there is no evidence whatever that human GHG emissions are affecting the climate. When no cause can be assigned, no specific causal meaning can be assigned to observations.
No one knows what the terrestrial climate is doing with that extra 36 milliWatts. Is it being rained out in the tropics? Has it increased convection? Is it radiating off into space from slightly more cloud condensation? No one knows.
The history of the embrace of AGW by the science establishment is the worst example of collective incompetence, ever.
161
Pat Frank – Small forcing changes are why (in the presence of short term weather) you need to examine sufficient time to see if a trend is occurring.
It is.
Climate science is as old as evolution science (starting with John Tyndall in the 1860’s), and is quite developed. As to the rest of your post, the evidence (the evidence that leads to the 97% consensus) disagrees.
—
Again – The scientific consensus changed _to_ AGW in the 1950’s/1960’s due to evidence and consistent hypotheses. It’s not going to change away from AGW unless sufficient evidence and hypotheses consistent with _all_ that evidence (and don’t require forgetting, say, spectroscopy) appear, and they have not.
014
Not correct, KR. There are multiple possible causes for any observed trend. Climate models can’t resolve the effect of a 35 mW annual forcing. They also can’t resolve the effect of a 5 W/m^2 annual forcing, either, but that’s another issue. But in any case, that means no causal meaning can be assigned to any trend.
Your analogy is also poorly conceived. Evolutionary theory was falsifiable right from the start. No mechanism of inheritance, no effect of natural selection. Genes predicted, genes found. The effect of small changes in CO2 on climate cannot even be predicted. Such an effect cannot have been found.
140
Pat Frank – I’m afraid you’re just presenting an Argument from Assertion.
See the mass of literature on climate change attribution. It is indeed possible to determine what changes come from what influence.
Causality comes from the physics, with falsifiable predictions – see Harries et al 2001 who confirmed the spectroscopic predictions, demonstrating empirical evidence of the effects of GHGs.
So yes, climate science is falsifiable, arguing otherwise is absurd. It has not been, which means the evidence supports the theory (not hypothesis, mind you) of AGW.
113
Not correct, KR. I’ve actually done the work and can show that climate models have no predictive value.
I’ve given a seminar on that work at Stanford, with climate scientists in the audience.
I also presented a poster at the AGU Conference last December in San Francisco. You, and anyone else, can download the poster here (2.9 mb pdf). Have at it.
I’ve discussed the work with climate modelers, and so far the analysis has survived unscathed.
Attribution studies include no propagation of model physical error. Such studies are pretty much physically meaningless.
I’m trying to publish a full paper. That has turned out to be a very interesting experience; unique in my many years of publishing other scientific work.
Outgoing LWR isn’t known to better than (+/-)3.9 W/m^2, by the way, even with today’s more advanced satellite observations. How is it possible, then, to have detected a small AGW-related change in 1997?
Further, the spectroscopic changes you mention are predictions of climate models that cannot resolve the effect they’re being used to predict. Their expectation values are presented with false precision. Whatever is observed can never verify a model that produces non-unique output.
192
Pat Frank – I looked at your poster (only briefly, sorry), and must say my first-pass reaction is to disagree.
Cloud forcing 2-sigma uncertainties are on the order of +/- 0.5 W/m^2, not +/- 4 (Dessler and Loeb 2013), temperature projections in GCMs are _not_ linear interpolations, although you can fit linear functions to some of the emergent output of those large scale fluid dynamics models.
Attribution studies _can_ use GCMs, but many do not, likewise with detection. Your claim that detection and attribution is impossible due to issues with models is therefore an overstatement – while useful for projections, climate models are not the basis of the science.
You also appear to be treating the GCM outputs as initial value questions with errors propagating foward through time, not the boundary condition models that they actually are. Your hypothesis appears to require increasing imbalances and errors over time, whereas under the maintenance of boundary conditions the further the divergence the larger the tendency to regress to the mean, to correct that error. There should be outer limits on a per-model basis as to how much error given a particular forcing.
That said, if you publish a peer reviewed article I would be very interested in reading it and seeing more details of your hypotheses. You might convince me, and far more importantly you might convince others.
113
KR, the paper you referenced concerns model cloud feedback, not model cloud forcing error. See Lauer and Hamilton, 2013. 1-sigma rmse CMIP5 cloud long wave forcing error is (+/-)4 W/m^2. Long wave forcing is the contribution clouds make to the thermal bath of the troposphere, where GHG forcing also appears.
See also Jiang, et al., 2012, who show that CMIP5 models average (+/-)12% error in simulated total cloud fraction.
Despite your claim otherwise, climate models are the only method for attribution, as they are the only way to determine how the physical climate partitions the available energy among the climate sub-states. Incorrect partitioning of energy means the sub-states are represented incorrectly.
Look carefully at the table in the poster. The pair-wise correlations of error among models indicates a theory-bias source. Theory-bias error propagates forward as the root-sum-square of the error in each step of a projection. Boundary value considerations do not solve a theory-bias error.
Further, because of theory-bias, initial value errors themselves are propagated forward into a calculation. The reason is that an incorrect theory will bias the initial errors further, and will deliver this further bias, of unknown magnitude, to the next iteration of the projection as new initial value errors.
The rsse uncertainty from these errors grows without bound. The model always delivers discrete expectation values limited by the boundary conditions. But the propagated uncertainty grows as the rsse. When the rsse uncertainty exceeds the bounds, the calculated climate state has no physical meaning.
This all means that detection and attribution of a human contribution to climate warming has been, and currently remains, impossible.
My experience is that climate modelers do not understand physical error analysis. You’d probably be amazed by some of the statements made by my reviewers. They reject the possibility of a “+/-” uncertainty because it implies that a model is wildly oscillating between hot-house and ice-house states. That’s a freshman undergraduate mistake, and I have it in black-and-white from more than one Ph.D. reviewer. With those kinds of reviews, getting past the submission stage is problematic.
112
KR:”Pat Frank – I’m afraid you’re just presenting an Argument from Assertion.”
–
You have made a claim, here, KR. However, showing that you know what “argument from assertion’ means, doesn’t mean that your claim is correct. Nor is it correct because you stated it.
If you make a claim, in the interests of progressing debate, you should ‘deduce’ that claim. Otherwise, it’s merely an argument based on your own presumption of your own authority.
You may or may not be impressed by creationism-type logic, but most readers here, I think, will not be.
70
I might clear something up here. Darwin came up with the most plausible explanation for the connections between species that we see today and those that we know of through fossils. There are Creationists who reject all this but don’t confuse them with those critical of evolutionary biologists. Some of the stuff that they come up with on the basis of the flimsiest of evidence would have 97% of scientists in the Physics tearoom pissing themselves (apart from the climate scientists).
30
KR:
Tyndall has nothing to do with Climate science.
He proved that CO2 absorbed and radiated Infra red. To go from that the claiming that he endorsed, or would have endorsed if still alive, the whole load of claptrap that is Climate Science is ridiculous.
Arrhenius thought that it would take 5% CO2 to cause a change from an ice age to an interglacial.
If you claim that CO2 controls the Earth’s temperature please explain how in the Eemian era (~125k years ago) had lions, giraffes, elephants and hippos in the Thames valley when those infallible climate scientists of yours tell us that the CO2 level was 280ppm. The same question arises about the Holocene optimum with people living in the well watered Sahara (as shown by the Tassili frescoes). Where did that warm, wet weather come from (if the CO2 was 280 ppm.)?
Passing over the Roman warm period we have the Medieval warm times for which there is wide spread evidence completely ignored by “climate scientists” because they won’t accept that their hypothesis might have flaws. The ‘evidence’ you claim as proof is only so because no other explanation is acceptable or even tolerated.
In future years it will be re-interpreted to mean something else. I have no theory on how the climate changes, beyond the obvious fact that solar variation is a probable cause, but that doesn’t mean that I have to believe a mishmash of waffle, supposition and contradictory statements is unchallengeable science, because “climate science” is not science.
142
But Graeme, Mickey Mouse showed using a tree ring that none of these warmer periods ever even existed. !
81
the Griss:
that is something I could have mentioned, the tendency of “climate scientists” to adjust the facts to fit the hypothesis. (I can’t call it a theory because of the lack of facts supporting it).
The claim made by KR that “the consensus is the result of the science. The evidence is so strong that 97% of the scientists who actually look at the data are convinced of a dominant human influence upon recent climate change” could well read ‘the science is the result of the consensus. Those that are convinced of a dominant human influence upon recent climate change look for evidence to reinforce their conviction’.
It’s not new, the believers in the Piltdown man accepted a cricket bat shaped bone implement of no discernible use as ‘proof’ of existence. The believers in the Phlogiston theory happily swallowed “negative weight” to explain away an inconvenient experimental result. Lavoisier proved that it had no weight at all, but negative volume corresponding (roughly) with the volume of oxygen in the air, whereupon all the previous (supposed) evidence was reinterpreted and the Phlogiston theory was never used again (except as a bad example).
I was listening briefly to the ABC recently and they had some psychologist explaining that people often lean towards theories that fit their world outlook or political leanings, and they were resistant to facts that contradicted their bias. Being the ABC sceptics were brought up as an example, but knowing that there are sceptics on both sides of the political debate I immediately realised that the analogy was better fitted to believers like KR.
90
“theory was never used again (except as a bad example).”
I wonder how many years until AGW also goes the way of the do-do !
Certainly it will be held up as an example of the abysmal abuse of scientific procedure.
60
“examine sufficient time to see if a trend is occurring”
Yes it sure is. Since the 1998 ElNino settled by the beginning of 2001 its been steadily downwards.
Even the sea temps are dropping
90
KR:…”It is”
–
You need to SHOW that “It is”. Your opinion, like those of creationists, may be interesting, but it is not conclusive fact.
–
However, you are quite entitled to believe that “It is”.
60
As a president of the USA once said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” but of course he never understood the meaning of truth. Just like some loud-mouthed ‘climate scientists’
30
I see now, KR. It’s only 97% of the scientists who actually look at the data. That really clarifies the whole problem a lot.
Now, when will they release the real, unadulterated data so the rest of us can look at it and possibly be convinced? No models, just the raw data so that we, the unwashed masses of scientists, amateur and professional can see what it really says.
Remember, CRU lost (or threw away) their original data and it’s hard to find any other unadulterated data to look at.
110
“if your hypothesis is contradicted by the evidence, your hypothesis is wrong.”
How true that is.. and very TOTALLY describes the AGW hypothesis.
ZERO evidence, dead hypothesis.
AGW has lost both its legs and arms…… but still fights on in a grotesque Monty Python kind of way.
100
Have you seen the actual evidence KR? I mean the actual raw data? The uncleaned, and unadjusted data?
Are you one of the privileged few who have touched it, and received enlightenment?
Or are you just taking Phil Jones word for it, that is really exists, and is actually related to the unadjusted, and entire, empirical measurements?
There is not a lot of difference between computer modelling and computer simulations. The math is essentially the same for both.
The difference is in direction.
With models, you start with raw data, and adjust the algorithms until you get an acceptable model of observed reality, and continue to do so over time. The algorithms then give you insight into cause and effect.
With simulations, you start with the effect you want, and then apply the maths to the raw data to produce that effect. The algorithms are actually what causes the effect. It can be done on any old data that you have lying around. But it is usually easier to start with data that is close to what you need, and then adjust it to suit. The problem with this approach is that reality starts to move away from the simulated results, so adjustments must be continually applied to the input data to compensate.
As such, simulations don’t give you many insights into cause and effect, but they are politically useful, especially when it comes to getting renewed funding.
The whole of the climate change scare is, in my opinion, an artifact of the project-based approach to research funding that has become politically fashionable over the last half century. If we could get the accountants out of the mix, and go back to a bulk funding model, where academia decided who would get funding and who would not, then we would not be wasting time on arguments over methodology.
132
KR,
Goodness me – consensus based on a handfull of papers that supported AGW from thousands of papers that did not support AGW hand picked by proponents of AGW and statistically moulded into 97% of the world’s scientists.
Hmmmmm… now if the “End of the World is Nye” why are so many of the leading proponents of Doom waiting around to get handshakes, awards and great, big, fat pay cheques I wonder.
71
James Bradley – If you go looking for papers supporting a particular point of view, you can certain find them.
If you want to see what percentage of papers hold particular views, however, you need to sample them from the entire set of papers available – the numerator to the field of work.
Cook et al 2013 sampled by looking at fairly large lists of papers, extracted ~12K relevant works, and examined the percentages. They found 97% of the papers that expressed an opinion held anthropogenic causes dominant.
If you can point to “thousands of papers that did not support AGW” I would have to ask you – how many you overlooked or discarded that did support AGW? Because I would expect, from demonstrated sampling percentages, not quite two orders of magnitude more papers in that category….
I suspect, based on the evidence, that “hand picked” directly applies to your “thousands of papers”…
02
No, KR, you pick holes in what is postulated. You do not need to propose another explanation to prove something is wrong. Just the one experimental result is enough according to some patent clerk. You linked to it, the models didn’t predict the steady temperatures this century despite the greater emissions of carbon dioxide than assumed in the models.
82
Thanks to KR for coming to Jonova with links, and, more than one, and, none to SkS.
Appreciate the effort. Credit due.
50
Yes, one does need some humour in one’s day.
Laughing at a clown is often a good start. 🙂
40
As soon as you mention the 97%, we all KNOW that you are a person who wilfully accepts lies and mis-information and fraud as part of your ideals.
Either that or you are totally ignorant and has never bothered to look at the maleficence and fabrication of the 97% fraud.
Everybody knows its a joke and a lie, but you have NOTHING ELSE, so you must keep using it.
60
Actually Griss, rather than saying, “Everybody knows it is a joke and a lie”, it is more correct to say that 97% of people know it is a joke and a lie. 😉
30
Yeah, but even “bacon” knows its a joke and a lie, he just uses it because he has nothing else.
I know many of them are pretty darn thick, but I’d be pretty sure that close to 100% of climate science cult KNOW its a fabrication.
They just use it as a propaganda stunt, but I don’t think they are fooling anyone except the really, really dumb (eg ABC , Fairfax reporters etc!!)
40
Oh dear
Tens of thousands of scientists across the world? Name them!
Name at least 10,000.
In other words like ‘climate scientists’ and the whole AGW sham you are also exaggerating; overstating your feeble case.
40
Jo the big news is UQ XXXX up threatening freedom of speech and Bergsson fiasco all over UK MAINSTREAM media
70
I don’t think that Buzz Aldrin can be classified as a scientist.
012
Buzz has a Doctor of Science from MIT in astronautics. I bet he can describe the scientific method better than the average climate scientist.
192
His life work mostly consisted of military aviation and then selection to the astronaut corps following his PhD.
I view his accomplishments in an engineering context.
Please delete my comment as it provided no insight into why I hold such an opinion.
08
There is an important difference between an engineering context and a climate science context.
Devices that are engineered must perform according to real world requirements or the engineering project fails and the design of the device must be changed. The scientific method is used to guide the design and its changes.
On the other hand, the simulation programs engineered by climate scientists don’t have to perform as the real world requires. In fact, the evidence is that they can be way off from real world performance and still be presumed to produce scientific data. In which case, it is reality that is held to be wrong by the climate scientists and the measured data must be corrected to match the simulation. It is a consensus of climate scientists that guides the corrections of the real world measurements. At least by the CAGW/CACC/CACD/CACW type of climate scientists.
Such is the conflict of the objective world of an engineer and the subjective world of a climate scientists. Reality doesn’t give a damn for the ideas, hopes, dreams, fantasies, and fears of either engineers or climate scientists. It simply is what it is and does what it does. If you go against what it is, you fail and often die. If you go with what it is, you often succeed and thrive.
The bottom line of this is if you want to succeed and thrive, you will follow an engineering context. If you want to fail and die, you will follow the climate science context. It is, in the long run, a matter of choosing life or death.
My choice is life.
Your choice?
90
I’ll take the engineering approach to things any day.
40
You are correct about Buzz Aldren. He is an engineer. But I maintain that any good engineer worth talking about is, in fact a scientist.
I can’t speak for any other country but all the U.S. Military Academies teach engineering and a degree from West Point or Annapolis is an engineering degree.
30
What is the difference between an Engineer, and an Applied Scientist, apart from semantics?
40
The difference is subtle.
An engineer practices science in order to design and make things that work. An applied scientists practices science in order to find out how to make things that work. In both cases, the science is the same. It is the purpose that drives the person that is importantly different.
For the engineer, his purpose is to make the things that work. The knowledge is only a precondition to achieving his goal. For the applied scientist, his purpose is to acquire the knowledge. Once obtained, he has achieved his goal. The making of the things that work is an optional extra.
50
You are right, the difference is subtle.
But I do see what you mean. I worked for a Research and Development department in a large organisation, for several years. We were finding out how to make things work and then using that knowledge to engineer things that would be robust enough to last for a reasonable period of time. I always conflated the two roles, but now you point it out, they were totally different objectives in what was being done.
Thank you.
10
You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts. The fact remains he is more qualified than 99% of the “consensus” scientists touted by the MSM and of course politicians.
80
I would say 100%, Phil.
Aldren put his life on the line with nothing to keep him out of trouble but his knowledge and the knowledge of the hundreds of others who supported that moon landing from start to finish. He didn’t know they had gotten it all done the right way until he splashed down in the pacific and was safely picked up by the U. S. Navy.
No climate scientist has ever put climate science to that kind of test. But of course, they want us to do as they say anyway. Aldren had years of successful incremental steps behind him that he could be sure had worked. What has climate science got to offer? Only models that can’t predict and therefore do not work.
90
Oh no! I accidently clicked on thumbs down rather than thumbs up! Sorry Jo.
40
That’s OK Chuck it’s just an example of a Random Error. 🙂
40
We will adjust for it in the next model run.
70
Can you adjust KR out of the next model run? That would be a great relief.
30
In Australia we have a pork products company called KR Darling Downs.
I see the initials KR , I can’t stop thinking, “bacon”.
Now I’ve mentioned it, all you fellow Aussies will also automatically think, “bacon” 🙂
Enjoy !
40
In fact, I think KR now has a nickname 🙂
40
Unless of course he is Jewish tG and then it wouldn’t be kosher. Still it is a logical progression. Beware 18C. And somehow “flat nosed sheep” just doesn’t sound right for a nickname. Kol tuv.
00
I am sure Jo is familiar with Mr. Nye’s background, but for readers who are not – Bill Nye is a local TV personality (local to me in Seattle, Washington, USA – that is). Prior to being the “science guy” on local children’s television, he was a cast member of a local comedy show, “Almost Live.” A very funny program, especially to people who live in this region as much of it’s humor was directed at local topics. His science training amounts to having a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. I also understand he worked at Boeing prior to being a cast member of “Almost Live.” Personally, I think this gives him the background to understand climate science, but he is by no means a climate scientist in the rigid definition of the term commonly employed (as needed to defend the faith, IMO) by the global warming establishment. I personally view him as a media personality & someone who promotes Science and Science education. If all this makes him a climate science expert, I can think of many others the establishment has vilified that have similar credentials. The wikipedia page on him, as far as i can tell, is accurate. Readers wanting more detailed information about him can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye.
20
It is time to add to the Bill Nye fiction.
Really his name is William De Nye.
But as an entertainer in the USA during the Bush era, he denied the De and scrubbed all evidence of his French connections.
Absolute rubbish of course, but as accurate as Bill Nye’s science.
90
Maybe people view Bill as a bit “Special” and are just being polite by not taking him to task?
Then again even the court jester was sent from the room when serious matters were to be discussed.
20
Jo, why not invite Bill Nye to post an essay here, detailing the evidence convincing him that human GHG emissions are warming the climate.
If he’s confident in his views, and has his AGW ducks all in a row, he ought to jump at the chance of finally having his way with skeptics.
Any scientist is eager to show his/her work. We all know why our conclusions are valid. 🙂 Bill Nye would be no different if he has the data.
So how about it? An essay at joannenova-dot-com-dot-au by Bill Nye. In one stroke, he converts Australia. Or not.
But by his lights, he’s right. He’s got nothing to lose and everything to gain. At the very worst, in his view, he’ll be able to say, ‘See? I fed them the undeniable facts, and they’re still denying it. Denialist nutcases, all’
On the other hand, posters here will provide commentary on Bill’s arguments. Bill gets to reply. Maybe he’ll prevail. But then again, maybe not. 🙂
But certainly: a fine time will be had by all.
90
Jo is currently drafting a reply; something along the lines of “get thee behind me…’
30
That is a seriously evil idea.
I like you already.
30
He’s been here as KR ?
10
Bill Nye the science guy? The only thing he is missing is a pair of big red shoes!
All he ever does is throw out the well-worn talking points and say that anyone who disagrees with him is in denial of the facts. Why someone doesn’t ask this buffoon to cite the “science” and the source of his “facts” rather than let him get away with his appeal to authority routine has puzzled me for some time.
100
He should take his big red shoes jump in his little red car and putt off to his green mates and save us all from witnessing his stupidity!
I think Bill is an example of a little information being a dangerous thing, only our host has combined science and entertainment successfully and a lot bloody better on the eyes at that.!
30
Well, what’s new here? Only that we now have an official White House report saying the disaster is upon us now. What else did you expect?
It’s here now! Now! Can’t you understand it, NOW!
It’s too bad we’re so stupid we can’t see the great danger right at our front door, a monster the likes of which we’ve never seen before, struggling to force the lock and get in to ravage our women, destroy the house and steal all that we have.
And since we can’t be made to believe it I guess we’ll just have to suffer the consequences.
I’d run and hide if I were you. Maybe the hall closet will be enough to protect us from our own demons.
30
“official White House report saying the disaster is upon us now”
That would be Obama… right ?
50
Someone working for him, yes. Obama couldn’t write anything coherent if his life depended on it. Without his teleprompter he’s a cooked goose.
30
Roy, I was actually referring to Obama being the disaster.. 🙂
30
Griss,
Yes, that too. I stand corrected.
10
I have a vision, in my head, of Bill Nye trying to ravage Mrs Whakaaro. The end of the Nye is whirled.
20
I’ve met some NZ women..
Well built, solid, Maori girls.
Did some timberwork in a Samoan church once too. 🙂
So I know exactly what you mean.. 🙂
Good bye matchstick Bob Nye !!
00
Gentlemen, I will stay away from that vision and also from my vision of what would happen should it come to pass.
I think we need not talk of such things here. Bill Nye would be spoken of in the past tense. Let that be enough. 🙂
10
By the way, I was being very over dramatic just for its effect. 😛
10
The scientific consensus regarding AGW is a direct result of the _evidence_ for it. And that consensus (which only began in the 1950’s/1960’s) isn’t going to change unless sufficient evidence and supportable hypotheses are presented.
There’s a good discussion of several of the proposed skeptic hypotheses (and why they don’t hold up) here.
110
The 97% scientific consensus is a fabricated lie. !
62
KR,
It is the obligation of the advocates of AGW, or whatever you want to call it, to prove the hypothesis. Those of us who remain unconvinced of the proofs offered have no obligation to propose and prove an alternate hypothesis. Our only obligation is to present the evidence behind why we remain unconvinced. We have done so on this blog in abundance for approximately a decade. I did so in other venues starting at least 20 years ago.
Proof does not consist of using almost all of the logical fallacies in your arguments. In particular, claiming as proof, the output of a computer programs who’s design is based upon the assumption needing to be proved. It is called the fallacy of circular reasoning.
It is also not proof to claim a consensus of climate scientists when a climate scientist is defined as one who holds the AGW hypothesis is true. This one is a twofer: it is an argument from a straw man authority. From there, the logical fallacies descend into the muck and mire of a vicious argument on a school yard playground without pretense of being founded upon reality.
Stand and deliver actual proof then we might listen with some respect. Until then, you should consider yourself lucky to be ignored and considered nothing more than a drive by troll.
142
Well put, Lionell.
But I think KR has heard all those arguments in one form or another and they don’t penetrate his thinking at all. You might as well be arguing with a fence post.
71
“no obligation to propose and prove an alternate hypothesis’
There is no need for a hypothesis at all. Everything is going along as usual.. warming , cooling , rain, shine, wind, no wind, wet, dry
Weather changes…. Climate changes…. The Earth changes…..
NO-ONE in their right mind expects any of these not to change. !
Change is NORMAL !!!!
62
You left out that the continents even move. Nothing seems to be immune to change.
So why worry about it? Well, because if you can get people to believe you then you can become a big man, powerful but
benevolentmalevolent, telling people how to savethemselves from troublethe Earth from trouble.10
KR: The assumption that the cause of global climate change(s) is the anthropogenic addition of CO2 to the atmosphere is a belief system.
The “evidence” supports this belief by correlating the temperature anomaly to the CO2 concentration only during select windows–the time from the Little Ice Age to the end of the 20th century. Now that we have satellite temperature data starting from 1979 the correlation is far weaker. Global lower troposphere temperatures don’t lend themselves to the incessant re-writing of history (re: United States Historical Climatology Network temperature adjustments, urban heat island adjustment, etc.).
The historical correlation (of CO2) is so poor it takes a charlatan like M.Mann to rewrite the peaks and valleys of the past 2000 years. And there is no correlation beyond this.
The “evidence” of sea level changes, arctic and glacial ice melting reflect changes in average temperatures which are more adequately explained by the null hypothesis that the changes are nature’s temperature changes driven by a combination of factors (solar insolation, chaotic/long period changes in ocean circulation, cloud formation and effects of muon nucleation and magnetic shielding from the EMF of sunspots, changes in surface albedo from land use, changes in green house gas composition, etc.).
As G.Schmidt likes to say, the general circulation models show considerable skill at displaying generic climate behavior. However, the fitting parameters (aerosols, clouds, feedback, etc.) make them very poor when used for any extrapolation into the future. These extrapolations end up as the basis for the CAGW dogma. More hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, tropical diseases, extinctions… Each of these extrapolations is not supported with data (often the data that exists contradicts the extrapolations).
Since the data do not support the AGW hypothesis, it remains far from proven or “settled”. The past 15 years would tend to refute this hypothesis. Certainly, the data do not support the IPCC confidence levels in the AR5 summary. Until valid data corroborates the projections of the models (rather than remaining outside the lower 5% confidence range).
Policy decisions based on this complicated but faulty approach are leading to expensive and very damaging decisions. Using grains for biofuel results in food price escalation and shortages in the poorer regions of the world. Trying to power the grid with windmills has resulted in the requirement for ever increasing reserves of idling (fossil fuel) generators. When the wind slows (or speeds up too much) the generators have to be on line and burning fuel while waiting. The cancellation of coal and nuclear power plants results in a predictable shortfall in capacity in many developed countries.
The argument that we should follow the “precautionary principle” in the off-chance that CAGW occurs is leading to an intentional risk of power, food and land shortages. These risks of created shortages will very likely (with a 95% confidence level, just kidding) result in manmade catastrophes far greater than any effect of a 2 degree temperature warming. I would suggest the prudent principle is to “look before leaping”. Drive the decisions with data (supported by modeling, as appropriate) rather than with conjecture fabricated from a model.
BTW, the consensus climatologists of the 60’s and 70’s was that we were heading for cataclysmic global cooling!
92
KR;”The scientific consensus regarding AGW is a direct result of the _evidence_ for it”
–
Can you definitively eliminate aspects like; vested interest, professional self-interest, commercial bias, ideological bias, moral intimidation, ambition, religious influences, populism – from the ‘consensus’.
Show your working.
–
Please list the ‘evidence for AGW’ as opposed to the evidence that supports the hypothesis for radiative atmospheric warming.
–
41
Well of course not – people are fallible.
Can you eliminate those from your skepticism, if you are going to throw the first stone in that regard?
As to the anthropogenic in AGW, isotopic ratios, the simple arithmetic of mass balance (increases in atmospheric CO2 are only half our emissions, nature is acting as a net sink), and the aforementioned Harries paper directly showing reduced IR to space at GHG spectra _just_ as predicted.
17
KR; ‘Well of course not – people are fallible.’
I think this puts your ‘consensus’ in a more realistic perspective, both in terms of its scientific integrity and its influence on policy-making.
–
KR; ‘Can you eliminate those from your skepticism(?)….’
Is there an evidence-based reason why I should? Analogising my personal skepticism to international policy-influencing consensi is like linking CO2 to Hiroshima Bombs.
–
Studies showing a deficit in the radiation budget at TOA (as predicted), do not translate that radiation necessarily into warming at the surface or Lower Troposphere (to my knowledge). And, unfortunately, satellite based records do not go back far enough to detect any change over time, so that a correlation (if any) between delta T (surface) and delta R (TOA) is not yet meaningful.
–
Any predicted rise in surface temps could be consistent with the emergence from the Little Ice Age. A human causation factor is likely, IMhO. Its size and importance are the focus of ongoing debate, with politics having overtaken and now dominating the science. The ‘consensus’ (essentially re. climate sensitivity) is a political construct rather than a scientific instrument (again IMO) for reasons I have tried to establish above.
41
I’ve played this game before , the situation must be desperate, looks like the AGW propaganda machine has sent in one of the handlers to play good cop.
62
“to play good cop.”
Don’t you mean “dumb” cop ?
32
Na, think about who KR replaced, BAD4 – now that was dumb cop.
No, KR is playing good cop, appearing solicitous, mildly patronising, seemingly patient and rational, not overtly confrontational or disrespectful, but doggedly pressing the meme:
“You know you want to believe AGW is real, just look at the facts, 97% of scientists agree, the hidden heat is in the ocean, the models prove that doubling CO2 will cause planet temperatures to increase sometime in the future, you know you want to believe this, you can be the saviour of all humankind, think of the future generations of children that will read about your heroic efforts in history class, all you have to do is sign here, just add your name to the list of eminent scientists and believers and all this will pain will just go away.”
Hint for KR – if your worried about the heat stop then doing it or you’ll go blind.
53
I guess I was thinking about the title of a movie…
What was it again.. Dumb and Dumber..
BA4 will always be the latter.
33
Yeah, very abrasive and confrontational:
BAD4 (paraphrased) – if you don’t believe the models then you’re all stupid and I’m smart cos I gots links to youtube and sks and that proves it beyond doubt.
On the other hand KR is subtle, soothing, almost delicate in the way he leads the reader into agreeing with the propaganda:
KR 9paraphrased) – well you know that the 97% consensus is endorsed by all the scientists who have examined the facts and they prove that the ‘missing heat’ is at 700m beneath the ocean surface. It’s clear that if you don’t believe the models have extrapolated form this evidence that the exponential warming of the climate due to the human production of CO2 that you need to understand the evidence that I just gave you.
Propaganda Technique Types:
1.Name calling: This techniques consists of attaching a negative label to a person or a thing. People engage in this type of behavior when they are trying to avoid supporting their own opinion with facts. Rather than explain what they believe in, they prefer to try to tear their opponent down.
2.Glittering Generalities: This technique uses important-sounding “glad words” that have little or no real meaning. These words are used in general statements that cannot be proved or disproved. Words like “good,” “honest,” “fair,” and “best” are examples of “glad” words.
3.Transfer: In this technique, an attempt is made to transfer the prestige of a positive symbol to a person or an idea. For example, using the American flag as a backdrop for a political event makes the implication that the event is patriotic in the best interest of the U.S.
4.False Analogy: In this technique, two things that may or may not really be similar are portrayed as being similar. When examining the comparison, you must ask yourself how similar the items are. In most false analogies, there is simply not enough evidence available to support the comparison.
5.Testimonial: This technique is easy to understand. It is when “big name” personalities are used to endorse a product. Whenever you see someone famous endorsing a product, ask yourself how much that person knows about the product, and what he or she stands to gain by promoting it.
6.Plain Folks: This technique uses a folksy approach to convince us to support someone or something. These ads depict people with ordinary looks doing ordinary activities.
7.Card Stacking: This term comes from stacking a deck of cards in your favor. Card stacking is used to slant a message. Key words or unfavorable statistics may be omitted in an ad or commercial, leading to a series of half-truths. Keep in mind that an advertiser is under no obligation “to give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
8.Bandwagon: The “bandwagon” approach encourages you to think that because everyone else is doing something, you should do it too, or you’ll be left out. The technique embodies a “keeping up with the Joneses” philosophy.
9.Either/or fallacy: This technique is also called “black-and-white thinking” because only two choices are given. You are either for something or against it; there is no middle ground or shades of gray. It is used to polarize issues, and negates all attempts to find a common ground.
10.Faulty Cause and Effect: This technique suggests that because B follows A, A must cause B. Remember, just because two events or two sets of data are related does not necessarily mean that one caused the other to happen. It is important to evaluate data carefully before jumping to a wrong conclusion.
Q. How many of these techniques can you recognise in the posts of KR and BAD4?
40
Yes, J.B.
And add to this the Saul Alinsky catechism, and you have Climate Change: The sociological and political phenomenon.
I have tendered elsewhere that, a proposition unsupported by falsifiable evidence, must rely on tactics and strategies to gain and maintain acceptance.
Controlling the narrative via ‘pal-review’ literature a compliant MSM has been a strategic success for the Climate Change Establishment. The tactic of using politically sensitive ad homs (‘denier’, ‘big oil shill’) has been useful in attracting a certain type of ‘followship’.
20
KR you are so funny. I hope you get paid well for this ’cause you so much funnier than the video above.
Thanks for all the laughs!
97% hahahahahahahahahah!
😆
52
The scientific consensus regarding AGW is a direct result of them being paid for it. Occams razor.
71
And the walls came down …
Mike Smith:
“Because the memory is so distasteful, I have never written about the incident at June 2013’s American Meteorological Society meeting in Nashville where I presented a scientific paper that questioned whether the data supported catastrophic global warming by comparing the IPCC’s forecasts of a decade ago to the then-current atmospheric measurements.
The room erupted in fury.
Name calling (literally) commenced.
My wife, Kathleen, who has been in the audience many times during my scientific career, had to bail out to the restroom, made physically ill by what was being said and the venomous tone.”
(Via notrickszone):
Leaked Memo On Climatology Exposes Growing Worry Within German Meteorological Society…”Unacceptable Unethical Developments”
The memo was authored by a group of dissenting DMG-member meteorologists and intended to be published in the DMG reports, but never saw the light of day.
It reveals a growing and widespread worry over the suppression of scientific views among German Meteorological Society members
70
Is AGW causing this???
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasas-hubble-shows-jupiters-great-red-spot-is-smaller-than-ever-measured/index.html
30
Somebody has to say it:
The red spot is getting smaller – perhaps it is healing.
20
More corruption and fraud from the stupid groupthinkers. Incredible to think that one deceptive unknown reviewer can stop the publication of a new study.
It seems it wouldn’t be helpful to the fraudulent GAGW cause. We are dealing here with deceptive con merchants, not reputable scientists.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warmist_scientists_hide_less_than_helpful_evidence_showing_little_warming_c/#commentsmore
50
This is a very good post from Steve McIntyre on the fanatics relgious faith when they deal with new studies based on proper observations.
http://climateaudit.org/2014/05/16/iop-expecting-consistency-between-models-and-observations-is-an-error/
When the fanatics have to choose between models and observation they choose their religious faith every time.
60
Irony squared? Is this sentence pointing out the irony of someone with good english badly mangling the meaning of these papers, … is it itself, does itself, mangled english ?
who’s is. = who is is.
While not wishing to detract from the very valid theme of the article, this trivial little nit was too ripe to not pick.
30
Irony cubed. I’ve mangled my criticism of the mangling of the criticism of the mangling.
30
comedy at the Beeb, no disclosing the background of these shills, Anderson & Aled:
16 May: BBC: UK “needs more home-grown energy”
In just over five years Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas, researchers have warned.
A report by the Global Sustainability Institute said shortages would increase dependency on Norway, Qatar and Russia.
There should be a “Europe-wide drive” towards wind, tidal, solar and other sources of renewable power, the institute’s ***Prof Victor Anderson said.
The government says complete energy independence is unnecessary, says BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin.
The report says Russia has more than 50 years of oil, more than 100 years of gas and more than 500 years of coal left, on current consumption.
By contrast, Britain has just 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal and three years of its own gas remaining.
France fares even worse, according to the report, with less than year to go before it runs out of all three fossil fuels…
Dr Aled Jones, director of the institute, which is based at Anglia Ruskin University, said “heavily indebted” countries were becoming increasingly vulnerable to rising energy prices.
“The EU is becoming ever more reliant on our resource-rich neighbours such as Russia and Norway, and this trend will only continue unless decisive action is taken,” he added…
However, Jim Skea, Research Councils fellow in UK Energy Strategy. cast doubt on the findings of the report.
He told BBC News: “This sounds very unlikely. What’s more, it’s irrelevant – the UK has a stable supply of imported energy, even if it is a good idea to increase our own supplies.” …
A Department of Energy & Climate Change spokesperson said the premise of the report was “nonsense”.
“The UK is one of the most energy secure countries in the world thanks to the combination of our own reserves, our diverse sources of imported energy and our focus on increasing clean, homegrown energy in the UK – which includes nuclear, renewables and carbon capture and storage.
“As well as attracting record investment into our energy security since 2010, the UK is leading globally on energy security, particularly through the G7 which has agreed to take global action to improve energy security, and in getting a deal in the EU to cut carbon emissions by 40% by 2030.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27435624
LinkedIn: Professor Victor Anderson
Economist at the Sustainable Development Commission (3 years) WWF (3 years)
Environment Advisor to Ken Livingstone (member of Mayor’s London Advisory Cabinet) ETC ETC
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/victor-anderson/5/8a3/25
Anglia Ruskin University: Dr. Aled Jones
Dr Jones also chairs a working group on climate finance within the Capital Markets Climate Initiative on behalf of Greg Barker, the Minister for Climate Change in the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). He regularly presents on climate change issues to corporates and governments and sits on the UNEP FI insurance sector working group…
Dr Jones was previously the Deputy Director at the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and was Director of the Climate Leadership Programme and Chevening Economics of Climate Change Programme (for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office). He was a founding member of the ClimateWise insurance principles, was facilitator for the P8 Pensions Group, 12 of the world’s largest public pension funds working collaboratively to address the problem of climate change and investments and set up the Banking & Environment Initiative. His work with the P8 Group has been recognised by the State of California…
Dr Jones leads a number of research projects in climate finance, energy and behaviour, and resource management. He is the author of 30 academic papers, six book chapters and several patents.
http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home/microsites/global_sustainability_institute/meet_the_gsi/dr_aled_jones.html
20
***”I, like any of you” ???
16 May: Guardian: Nafeez Ahmed: Murdoch-owned media hypes lone metereologist’s climate junk science
Absurd anti-science faux journalism flares up again – as usual, it’s Big Oil that’s set to benefit, not the public
This morning ***I, like any of you, was disappointed to see that the frontpage of The Times carried a story by the paper’s environment editor, Ben Webster, which read, ‘Scientists in cover-up of “damaging” climate view.’
Variations of the story had been plastered everywhere, spearheaded by Murdoch-owned outlets, repeated uncritically by others…
The “unbearable” scientific isolation that Prof Bengtsson experienced as a consequence of joining the GWPF, and submitting scientifically questionable material to a leading journal, should not come as a surprise. That the climate science community roundly rejects the GWPF’s denialist rantings, and found Bengtsson’s work in this regard unfit to publish, is evidence for the overwhelming consensus on climate change – not against it.
As an illustrative example of just how isolated Prof Bengtsson and his ilk are, consider the fact reported earlier this year by Scientific American that out of more than 2,000 peer-reviewed climate science publications put out over the last year from November 2012 to December 2013, the number of scientists who denied the role of human-caused CO2 emissions in current climate change “is exactly one.”…
Compare that to the number of scientific authors of those 2,000 plus papers – 9,136. So over nine thousand scientists over the last year agree that our fossil fuel emissions are principally responsible for contemporary climate change, and just one disagrees. The poor sod must be feeling pretty damn lonely, I imagine. Perhaps almost as lonely as Prof Bengtsson.
Such media misrepresentation is now par for the course…
What we’re seeing here, then, isn’t really journalism at all. Whatever its intent, in effect, it amounts to little more than glorified industry PR calling itself ‘news.’
The real story is how the IPCC’s projections and solutions are likely to be far too conservative, having been ‘diluted’ by pressure from the world’s biggest fossil fuel polluters.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/16/murdoch-media-hypes-lone-climate-denial-big-oil
Murdoch equals Bad, Dirty Money; on the other hand (or should i say ex-Goldman Sachs’ “Guy Hands”), this is
Good, Clean Money:
12 May: Guardian: Terry Macalister: Guy Hands: Ukraine crisis underlines importance of UK renewable energy
City financier calls on government not to ignore energy security after instability in eastern Europe
Guy Hands, one of the City’s most flamboyant deal-makers, warns on Monday that the Ukraine crisis has underlined the importance of the UK’s renewable energy sector, and attacks those wanting to phase out onshore wind subsidies.
The financier, who has close links to the Conservative party, says energy security cannot be achieved by markets alone and that the government needs to play a decisive role…
The intervention by Hands, who runs the Terra Firma private equity firm, comes at a time when instability in Crimea has been used as a major argument in favour of shale gas – most notably by a House of Lords committee last week.
Hands, whose best man at his wedding was the foreign secretary, William Hague, expresses astonishment that there has been speculation the Tory election manifesto could contain a commitment to end financial help for onshore wind, given it is the “most affordable” of all green power technologies.
Hands’s Terra Firma invests in onshore wind but also landfill gas and other green schemes through a business called Infinis…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/12/guy-hands-calls-for-government-action-on-renewable-energy?CMP=twt_gu
yes, this “Hands”. what laughs u provide, Guardian:
2009: NYT: British Financier Faces Scrutiny for Tax Haven Move
The panoramic view of the English Channel and Guernsey’s craggy western shore from Guy Hands’s new £6 million home is splendid. But the most renowned British private equity financier has not abandoned England just for the seaside splendor. What has mainly drawn him to Guernsey are its tax rates — 20 percent on income and zero tax on capital gains. The question, The New York Times’s Landon Thomas Jr. writes, is: Will he get away with it?
With his appetite for big deals and the limelight that surrounds them, Mr. Hands, 49, came to symbolize the boom years in the City of London, much as Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman of Blackstone Group, epitomized Wall Street’s own era of excess…
Tax experts point to the fact that his wife, who owns their stately home in the Kent countryside southeast of London, runs a hotel business that is based in Britain. Three of his four children still go to British schools and the majority of Terra Firma employees, about 60 in number, are based in its London office…
“We are a low-tax jurisdiction, not a tax haven,” says Lyndon S. Trott, the ebullient former foreign currency trader who, as chief minister, runs Guernsey.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/british-financier-faces-scrutiny-for-tax-haven-move/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
20
behind paywall, but the headline comes as no surprise. nothing showing up online of any FT reporting on Bengtsson other than this attack:
Global warming paper ‘was not suppressed’
UK Financial Times – 9 hours ago
The step was taken after an author of the rejected study, Swedish scientist Lennart Bengtsson, told The Times newspaper he suspected intolerance of dissenting views on climate science had prevented his paper from being published. IOP Publishing, the …
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/144aeafc-dd10-11e3-8546-00144feabdc0.html
20
97%? I still wonder at the glib acceptance of that absurd figure. There is no point in a survey unless you are surveying opinions, so the whole thing is surreal.
30% would not even return the survey. 5% would make a mess of the answers. Some would wilfully answer the reverse. Some would use the opportunity to write a paper on the back about why surveys are a waste of time. Others would take a political view regardless of the truth. Some would barrack for one side because they have friends and want to look cool. Others would just vote to please their boss or coworkers. Only on matters of absolute truth like 1+1=2 would you get this result and man made Global Warming is hardly that even to its rabid supporters. So it is surprising that 97% is held to be the absolute truth, instead of a survey on who likes Stalin, run by the NKVD and the real surprise would be that 3% disagreed.
50
I once saw a guy doing a survey on a type of biscuit.
He stood by the counters, waited for people who came through with that particular packet of biscuits, and then tried to survey just those people.
This is effectively what D and Z did. And Cook and Lewy later.
Selective surveying aimed at getting the result they wanted.
Its a farce and its a fraud.
70
Yes, the really unbelievable idea is that 97% of people agree on anything at all.
60
97% of a very small selected group is not far-fetched, though.. of, say, 77 people !
30
You know what’s really funny – a bloke standing at the supermarket counter asking only those people that had purchased original Tim Tams ‘if they liked them’ got 100% consensus.
John Cook only got 97% using the same method.
They could learn a lot from the North Korean Electoral Commission…
30
I have been surveyed three times since Christmas. Twice by political types, once for an anti-vivisectionist group.
On all occations I informed them at the start – “To be totally honest I always lie to surveys”. This has never stopped the survey or even provoked a comment from them.
20
The 97% meme is the “Godwin effect” of climate science.
As soon as they use it, they have lost any argument because it proves that they are ignorant and dumb and have no other evidence.
40
The Cook Effect
30
And it was “bacon’s” first line ! 🙂 DOH !!!!!
20
EU has something to hide? looking for an escape from the environmentalists?
16 May: Reuters: Campaigners say shortcomings in EU carbon permit data harmful
Investors and environmental campaigners have criticised the European Union for no longer revealing the types of foreign carbon credits each company is using to help meet emission regulations.
The lobbyists say the lack of access could discourage future investment in carbon-cutting projects and make it more difficult for companies to select schemes they judge to be more environmentally robust or that have additional benefits such as alleviating poverty…
Under new rules from this year, companies can no longer turn in the credits directly but must swap them for more expensive EU Allowances, the market’s staple currency.
This means the annual compliance data no longer links each credit to the company that used it.
“That (link) was useful information to help inform future investment decisions to determine demand for certain types of projects,” said Miles Austin, of the Climate Markets and Investment Association, which represents banks and venture capitalists who fund low-carbon projects worldwide.
An official from the European Commission declined to comment on whether the executive was considering publishing the company-level data in another form…
Environmental campaigners said the change in data also makes it easier for companies to conceal compliance costs and harder for lobbyists to pressure for reform.
“The Commission has just given a huge gift to those industry lobbyists who routinely exaggerate the costs the EU ETS poses to them,” Damien Morris of Sandbag Climate Campaign said…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/16/eu-carbon-data-idINL6N0O245720140516
politics rule:
16 May: Politico: Erica Martinson: President Obama’s big carbon crackdown readies for launch
The move could produce a dramatic makeover of the power industry, shifting it away from coal-burning plants toward natural gas, solar and wind. While this is the big move environmentalists have been yearning for, it also has major political implications in November for a president already under fire for what the GOP is branding a job-killing “War on Coal,” and promises to be an election issue in energy-producing states such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana…
Coal-state Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin have joined the criticism, echoing industry warnings that the fossil fuel was crucial to keeping the lights on in much of the U.S. during this past brutal winter.
“You have another polar vortex next year, how many people will lose their lives?” Manchin asked at a POLITICO energy policy forum Tuesday.
Other red-state Democrats like Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Senate race, have disavowed Obama’s EPA proposals — she denounced an earlier agency power plant rule as an “out-of-touch Washington regulation.” West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in November, complained last year that “this callous, ideologically driven agency continues to be numb to the economic pain that their reckless regulations cause.” And Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a top Republican target this year, has voted with Republicans to hobble the agency’s rules…
‘We can’t sit by silently’
It’s not just the coal industry that’s losing sleep over the rule. Manufacturers and industries like oil refining have been eyeing the power plant regulations as the starting gun for a process that will eventually lead to greenhouse gas limits for a wide variety of businesses.
“These regulations could reduce the diversity of our energy supply, increase electricity and compliance costs for American businesses and shrink our competitiveness,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president for energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers. “We can’t sit by silently while that happens…”…
Republicans have said they also intend to use Obama’s climate policies as a wedge in states such as Alaska, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Iowa — all places where the GOP has a chance to pick up a Senate seat now held by Democrats…
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/carbon-crackdown-barack-obama-106783.html
10
pat quotes here:
Have a look at this data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and here I’ll show you the coal fired percentage of total power generated for consumption, and keep in mind that this Polar Vortex kicked in during January and then February was just as cold across most of the U.S.
November (last Month of a basically benign Autumn) – Coal fired power 38.6% of the total.
December (First Month of Winter) – Coal fired 40.5%.
January – 41.9%.
February – 44.5%.
The last time coal fired power delivered more than 44% of total power was during late 2009, early 2010.
Whole of Year totals are:
2010 – 44.8%
2011 – 42.2%
2012 – 37.4%
2013 – 39.1%
Rolling 12 Months to Feb 2014 – 43.1%
Note how coal fired power reached its nadir during 2012, and has been rising since then, and is now almost back to the same power delivery percentage as it was 4 years ago.
There is absolutely no way in creation that the U.S. will turn off those large scale coal fired power plants, none of which have closed in almost 7 years now.
In fact, what is happening is this. All those tiny ancient plants (50 years plus) are closing, not because of CO2 emissions, but closing because they are time expired plus, and have been replaced, in more than their totality by Natural Gas Fired plants.
Now, there are considerably less coal fired power plants, and they are supplying more power, which indicates that they are now being asked to work harder and longer.
Isn’t it odd how data always tells you the truth, as opposed to the spin being delivered by those calling for CO2 reductions.
When electrical power is required ABSOLUTELY, only coal fired power and Nuclear power can actually deliver that power.
Incidentally, during that Month of the Polar Vortex, January, Nuclear power was running at a Capacity Factor of 97.5%. I know full well that Nuclear Power will never be an option here, but just think about the technology that enables a single 1100MW generator with a rotating component weighing up beyond 800 tons plus, being driven at 3000RPM, all that weight rotating at 50 times a second. Now that’s made you think, consider those big nukes have been doing that consistently now, and the youngest aged of those big Nukes is more than 35 years old. Reliable, proven, and safe.
Just ONE generator at a big Nuke generates ….. and delivers ….. more power over a 12 Month period than 1200 of the new large 3.3MW Wind towers.
When power is needed, who you gunna call?
Tony.
70
And what happens if 4 or 5 of those large coal fired plants are shut down next winter?
A presidential backflip, probably big enough to land him in the Bahamas until the Oval Office thaws out.
30
i would imagine Wolak provided this Op-Ed to more than LA Times, but this is the only coverage i can find. not that he’s a CAGW sceptic, but he has spoken out, at least:
16 May: LA Times Op-Ed: Frank A. Wolak: Memo to Stanford: Don’t attack coal, attack carbon — with a tax
(Frank A. Wolak is director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development and a professor of economics at Stanford University.)
Last week, Stanford’s Board of Trustees announced that the university would not directly invest funds from its endowment in coal mining companies…
Those who claim that Stanford is not dependent on coal or coal-derived products are flat wrong. Coal is a major component in the production of the steel that goes into all the buildings sprouting up around the campus and the cement used to make the concrete that goes into them. Many other items purchased by Stanford are produced using electricity generated from coal either in the United States or, more likely, in China, where more than 80% of electricity comes from coal…
Because coal’s negative attributes go hand in hand with important positive ones, and all of us are complicit in coal production and use, the moral equivalence with past divestment campaigns is a false one. In fact, I have serious concerns that making such an equivalence will only exacerbate the political divisions that have paralyzed Washington on climate…
Painting “evil” fossil fuel companies as the principal obstacle to a better future only keeps us from staring these hard realities in the face. And, in the process, it may alienate the very people we need to be part of the climate policy solution.
How, then, can universities take action on climate change in a way that plays to their research and educational strengths while helping to move the climate debate toward real action?
There is wide agreement that the most cost-effective way to reduce the carbon content of the energy services we consume is to set a price for greenhouse gas emissions…
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-wolak-stanford-divestment-carbon-20140516-story.html
10
***this might explain why Wolak’s piece is only in the LA Times:
Stanford: Frank A. Wolak – Biography:
…***He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)…
Wolak is also a member of the Emissions Market Advisory Committee (EMAC) for California’s Market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances. This committee advises the California Air Resources Board on the design and monitoring of the state’s cap-and-trade market for Greenhouse Gas Emissions allowances.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/fwolak/cgi-bin/
10
I accidently went to Melbourne during comedy week or whatever its is a few years ago. I’ve gone off comedians in general. Went into a pub where the guy made a lame crack about people from Perth being too dumb to get his jokes. At least we’re smart enough to live a good 2000 ks from inner city Melbourne.
I would guess that 97% of comedians are lefties, because PC media groupthink drives anything that doesn’t go along with the feel-good hater mentality, which is all about safety in numbers.
This is why they like to have comedians on Q&A – it hides the imbalance.
50
Stop, stop, you had me at “I accidently went to Melbourne”.
30
There are now something like 5-6 times as many responses as my posts – my sincere apologies, but I don’t have the time to respond to all of them. Nor, in the case of responses that are just rants, the desire to do so.
So I’ll try to summarize a bit.
—
* There is a scientific consensus regarding AGW, a broad agreement among those who study the topic. Shouting about it doesn’t change that fact.
* The consensus isn’t science, but rather is the result of it – the available evidence and connecting hypotheses are strong enough to convince most of those studying the topic. And that will not change unless sufficiently convincing evidence and hypotheses to the contrary appears.
* The scientific consensus has changed before (_to_ AGW about 50 years ago), just as with plate tectonics and the H. pylori/ulcer link. It’s not locked in stone, but rather will stand as long as the evidence does.
* So far contrary evidence and theory has not been forthcoming. There are a few papers every year claiming cyclical natural influences, or issues with the temperature record, or attribution to CFCs, or negative cloud feedback (such as yet another paper by Lindzen that doesn’t address criticisms from a decade ago) – and they have not held up to examination, whether due to math errors, inconsistency with large portions of the data, or simply due to ignoring significant parts of the science.
—
For those of you demanding evidence, I have linked a number of primary resources – quite frankly, if you want to see the evidence regarding AGW, look up the IPCC studies which consolidate thousands of papers. Replying to a comment where I have presented such evidence with “show me the evidence” does not encourage me to engage you, rather the opposite. I keep seeing the goalposts moving, the argument by impossible demands for certainty.
To those claiming that the evidence is rigged or distorted, or that the last 150 years of climate scientists are either paid off or idiots, _you are engaging in conspiracy theories_. Not reason. Something that is clear to anyone reading the discussion – and will therefore be dismissed.
It really comes down to data and physics, to hypotheses consistent with the entirety of the evidence. Shouting that the scientific consensus doesn’t exist, when it clearly does, is equivalent to shouting that the collected climate evidence doesn’t exist.
Pat Frank, not incidentally, is someone to be complimented – as he actually doing something in this regard: exploring the science, running the numbers, and presenting his data for consideration. Whether in the end his hypotheses hold up or not, the only way to convince the experts is with science. Not opinions.
05
KR, your glib responses are straight out of Propaganda Tequniques 101.
74
KR,
“…when different experiments give you the same result, it is no longer subject to your opinion. That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works.”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
but
“…when you give different results the same opinion, it is no longer subject to your experiment. That’s the good thing about consensus: It’s whether or not you believe in it that makes it true. That’s why it works.”
AGW World Wide Agenda
——————————————————————————–
——————————————————————————–
60
“look up the IPCC studies,” KR, and see if any of them — any of them — propagate error through their projections. Not displays of ensemble averages shaded by model variance; propagated error. You won’t find item one.
Nor do the usual suspects condition their projections with the error in the measurements they use to tune their models.
In any case, it’s an invalid argument to cite the IPCC AR as evidence, when it is the corpus of the IPCC output that is under challenge. To participate legitimately, one must either make an independent case or yield the challenge.
Thank-you for the compliment, though. You seem like a good guy, and you appear to have training. I have no doubt that if you ever critically examined ‘consensus climatology,’ you’d immediately note the neglect of real rigor.
For me, the realization came in 2003, with reading the 2001 paper by Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Sherwood Idso, K. Kondratyev and Eric Posmentier, “Modeling climatic effects of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions: unknowns and uncertainties.”
They discuss the huge errors of climate models, multiple 10’s of W/m^2, which made it immediately obvious that the touted confidence of a human impact was entirely misplaced. Their analysis applies just as well to the climate models of today.
Later, on reading Brohan, et al., 2006, “Uncertainty estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: A new data set from 1850,” I found that they do not even mention systematic temperature sensor measurement error. No one does, who compiles a surface temperature record. It’s as though the measurements were perfect, except for random error that is conveniently 1/sqrtN averaged away.
Assessing the pertinent literature revealed (870 kb pdf) a minimum (+/-)0.5 C uncertainty in the centennial air temperature record, that everyone has studiously ignored.
All the business of unprecedented rate and amount of climate warming since 1850 is, once again, all based on false precision.
One of the reviewers of my recent submittion, modelers all, literally scorned the distinction between precision and accuracy. That’s your window into IPCC-vetted science.
The entire output of the IPCC is a study in false precision.
As I observed above, it is the worst case of collective incompetence, ever.
41
Thank you for the references, that gives me a better idea of where you are coming from.
With respect to the Soon et al 2001 paper, I would have to agree with the replying Comment from Risbey 2002: the Soon et al paper is a laundry list of issues with climate models that lacks any analysis of whether those issues are (a) relevant to the projections derived, due to scale or focus, or (b) large enough to change the essential results. For example, the issue with poor prediction of ENSO is endemic to many models, and has been a topic of ongoing research – but the failure to emulate a particular variation does not invalidate the projections over time scales where that variation cancels out.
Your 2010 paper in E&E suffers from a different issue, namely that you appear to be conflating absolute value offsets with anomalies, and propagating offsets as accumulating errors. You appear to making the same error with clouds WRT to the models.
This conflation is IMO invalid as done in your paper – if the standard deviation of a measurement is nonstationary (changes over time due to say equipment changes) that can affect how long a measurement set is required to achieve statistical identification of a trend. But it has _no effect whatsoever_ on the trend itself. The only thing that could affect long term trend identification is a changing mean offset; and while there are certainly changes in mean offsets due to changing equipment, site locations, time of observation, etc, the correction for those changes is a core element of data validation for the temperature record. Whether by site metadata evaluation (as per NOAA) or breakpoint analysis (as per BEST), changes to mean offset are identified against the local group of anomaly records and corrected.
Note that barring equipment or observation changes the temperature record at any station is indeed stationary over time – a nonstationary process is one with a _memory_, diverging from previous values, but a simple thermometer has no memory, and cannot cumulatively diverge.
—
Your reviewer was quite correct in pointing out the difference between precision and accuracy, and the issues thereof in your paper. Temperature records may not accurately identify local temperatures in degrees Kelvin. But the precision with which they operate, and the law of large numbers across the temperature record, ensure very high precision in identifying anomalies. Your assertions in this regard are invalid.
—
You poster on clouds primarily assumes that a bias offset in absolute values for cloud forcings (not feedbacks) translates into an accumulating error in the models. It does not, because what is examined are anomalies, not bias offsets – GCMs and the temperature record are compared after baselining to a common period, removing offsets. Any scalar errors in feedbacks will result in scalar differences in computed sensitivities (TCS/ECS) from the models, but that is again a scalar offset, and will not change over length of GCM run once past sufficient time for ECS. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that different GCMs with a spread of baseline forcing levels (as described in your poster) result in a nondivergent spread of model outcomes – invalidating your hypotheses and approach.
Biases in absolute values do not, cannot, accumulate in anomalies from previous measurements. I would have to consider these errors fundamental issues with your approach.
23
My own work is “where [I’m] coming from,” KR. The Soon, et al., paper shows that climate models make errors in 10’s of W/m^2. In ordinary science, this would be a reason for serious work on the models themselves, and to regretfully set them aside as predictive tools.
On reading Soon, et al., the large errors catalogued made it obvious to me that climate models were unable to resolve the tiny forcing perturbation represented by GHG emissions. There could be no grounds for the certainties expressed by the IPCC and it’s coterie of climate scientists.
This realization is what inspired me to embark on my own analysis of error, and its consequences.
Risbey’s reply, which you like, is no more than a hand-waving dismissal. Underlying his critique is the assumption that large energetic errors in one part of a simulated climate have no effect on the fidelity of simulation of another part of the climate.
The total energy state of the climate is fixed by the solar input. That means energy is zero-sum. A simulation that mis-partitions the available energy in one climate sub-state must necessarily mis-partition the available energy everywhere. The climate simulation will evolve incorrectly, and such errors never average away.
Under those circumstances, the effects of GHG forcing, if any, will be completely unpredictable. More explicit analysis shows that model errors are more than 100x larger than the GHG effect they’re claimed able to resolve. This is beyond ludicrous.
Risbey’s objections are scientifically fatuous. You have made the same mistake.
Your analysis of my 2010 E&E paper displays no understanding of systematic measurement error. Such errors are not “offsets.” They are not removed by taking anomalies.
These errors arise due to uncontrolled and uncompensated environmental variables, acting on the temperature sensor.
Systematic sensor measurement error means the recorded air temperatures are wrong, and by an unknown amount. Those errors will influence any trend, but in an unknown way, and may even impart a fully spurious trend.
Error-contaminated data sets will be indistinguishable from physically correct data sets to any statistical test. Those who compile the air temperature record seem completely oblivious to this problem.
So do you.
The only way to deal with such errors is to field-calibrate the sensor, so as to discover the average uncertainty confidence interval due to uncontrolled variables. That confidence interval must be attached to every single air temperature reading.
The error I discuss is not due to site changes, or any of the other sources of error considered in the published global air temperature literature. It is due to environmental impacts on the sensor itself, at the time of measurement. The error due to those impacts enters into the record and never averages away. It is not known to be stationary. The error mean will vary with every new measurement entered into the record.
Your statement that thermometers have no memory is correct, but irrelevant. When combining individual measurements into an annual global average, non-stationary systematic errors do not diminish as 1/sqrtN. The individual measurement uncertainties enter into the average as the root-mean-square.
Your comment that, “barring equipment or observation changes the temperature record at any station is indeed stationary over time” is wrong. Uncompensated solar heating, wind-speed, and ground albedo effects impact the sensor and make sensor error non-stationary. See Hubbard and Lim, 2001, paper reference 42.
My paper discusses that problem extensively and very explicitly. How did you miss it?
Further, when taking an anomaly, the uncertainty in each anomaly is the Pythagorean sum of the uncertainty in the original measurement and the uncertainty in the average.
So there’s the rub, KR: when systematic error is present the uncertainty in an anomaly is greater than the uncertainty in the individual measurement or in the average.
This is all standard error analysis in the physical sciences; something consensus climatologists seem uniformly unable to grasp.
This post is long enough. I’ll discuss the rest of your mistakes separately.
31
In short, you assert that the Law of Large Numbers somehow does not apply to temperatures? That the random errors of thousands upon thousands of temperature stations do _not_ average out centered on ground truth? Poisson would be very puzzled by this assertion – a very ambitious claim.
Changes in error standard deviation will affect the convergence rate of the sampling, with the largest deviation setting the envelope – but by definition cannot change the mean value. Shifts in mean value due to station changes (equipment, enclosure, etc) are addressed by station metadata and by station homogenisation, taking advantage of the strong correlation in temperature anomaly over distance to identify station changes. This method has been tested and proven to work (Williams et al 2012).
This temperature record has been independently confirmed by non-thermometer paleo records (Anderson et al 2013), demonstrating that the math works, that the law of large numbers does indeed apply to the temperature record, and that the temperature data is reliable.
Errors do average away with multiple measurements, anomalies eliminate steady biases, and your assertions otherwise are unsupported.
01
KR, in short I claim that the law of large numbers does not automatically apply to systematic error. Systematic error is not random.
My entire post discusses the problem of systematic error contaminating the air temperature record. And then, your reply immediately turns to the irrelevance of random error. How did that happen?
Systematic error does not average away with multiple measurements. It may even increase with multiple measurements. This is not an obscure or mysterious point. In their paper evaluating error in non-linear numerical models, Velasquez and Whiting note that, “ Additionally, as pointed out by Shlyakhter (1994), the presence of [systematic] error violates the assumptions necessary for the use of the central limit theorem, making the use of normal distributions for characterizing errors inappropriate.”
Your appeal to random error is irrelevant.
So is your reference to inter-station correlations.
If you had actually read my paper, or referred to the work of Hubbard and Lin, you’d know that systematic sensor error is principally caused by solar heating and wind-speed. These are the environmental variables that also produce air temperature.
Systematic sensor error produced by weather variables will correlate over distance with weather, just as air temperature does. Such error is not revealed by pair-wise site-record comparisons.
No statistical comparison between stations will detect contamination of one trend or another by systematic sensor error.
Williams 2012 is just like all the other papers in the field: it doesn’t consider systematic sensor measurement error at all.
After studying the surface temperature literature, my impression is that none of the scientists involved have ever made an actual measurement and have never struggled with an instrument. They completely ignore the thermometer itself, and appear to accept the temperature numbers themselves as somehow canonical. It’s an undergraduate mistake.
I’ve already pointed out that systematic measurement biases are not known to be constant, so your assertion about error removal by differencing is another irrelevance. You’ve also ignored that taking differences necessarily combines the uncertainty of the measurement with the uncertainty of the mean.
None of your counter-claims survive scrutiny.
21
He reads from a play book, Pat. Hence an assertion then a citation to back it up. As I pointed out above and in another post, he couldn’t spot that the SkS site overestimates the standard deviation of its linear regression by about a factor of 4. And still couldn’t be bothered checking when it was pointed out.
12
Disappointing if true, Vic.
00
Vic doesn’t seem to understand that the standard deviations computed with an ARMA(1,1) autocorrelation [such as observed with temperature data] are larger than those computed for uncorrelated white noise. As I pointed out previously.
10
Here is the data that used for an example and the minimum value for the slope that you calculated in red.
You can drivel all that you like but you calculated the errors incorrectly. From what was written, it was a blatantly obvious incorrect application of equations then waffle to cover it up. The standard deviations are calculated assuming a distribution of the variations from the mean is a normal distribution, not random nor white noise. Like when I first pointed it out to Dr Brian many moons ago, the noise is not random but its close enough to a normal distribution for an estimate. Looks like it just inspired the SkS goons to come up with more drivel rather than correct themselves.
00
My apologies on the misstatement/mistyping – not the standard deviations (Vic is correct there) but the trend uncertainties are larger under ARMA(1,1) autocorrelation than under a simple uncorrelated white noise OLS computation.
I recommend you read Foster and Rahmstorf 2011, in particular the appendix on autocorrelation and trend uncertainties, before claiming error in those computations.
00
Systemic errors are by definition constant over time.
Additive errors (such as enclosure differences) are canceled out by the use of temperature anomalies, the differences from previous measurements.
Systemic scale errors are thermodynamically implausible, no thermometer will consistently read deltas half or twice the actual temperature change. And even in the unlikely case of the overall set of thermometers being miscaled (despite being checked against standards such as NIST) the only effect would be to scale the entire temperature record, which still allows us to see relative changes.
If the errors are constantly changing (such as your example of wind changes), and/or are different for each station, then they are random errors and subject to the law of large numbers and central limit theorem – they average out with the square root of the number of observations. In fact, if every station has different errors the error distribution will be nearly Gaussian from the start.
Your objections come down to either (a) mislabeling random errors as systemic or (b) not understanding that systemic errors do not affect anomaly measures.
—
In fact, the only kind of error that could distort the temperature anomaly records would be an error that trended in one direction or another over time, an error that is therefore neither random not systemic and constant. Your concerns do not meet that criteria – meanwhile UHI effects have been shown to have little or no effect, and adjustments due to corrections (time of observation biases having been studied for 150 years) or added stations have been demonstrated to be properly handled.
—
The temperature record is incredibly well supported, and wholly consistent with observed changes in the environment. Complaints that the climate isn’t warming, that climate change isn’t happening, are as absurd as the 2nd Law Slayers nonsense.
00
You made that up.
Systematic error. Its persistent error that doesn’t have a zero mean. An example would be a change in the predominant wind direction being SW to W over a century. An example with a thermistor would be a change in the calibration curve as components age.
01
You’re talking through your hat, KR. I linked the 2001 Hubbard and Lin paper for you. Here it is again.
Hubbard and Lin carried out detailed field calibration experiments on a number of commonly used sensor shields, each equipped with a Pt resistance thermometer.
They show that systematic air temperature sensor error varies with solar heating of the shield, with wind speed, and with ground albedo. The magnitude of sensor systematic error varies over time, depending on the environmental variables and the thermal time constant of the shield.
That systematic sensor error is not stationary, is not constant, is never a constant offset, cannot be removed by differencing, and in an anomaly combines with the mean error as the root-mean-square.
It’s your choice to investigate the published work, or not. But if not, don’t expect to have your uninformed declarations taken seriously.
10
Hubbard and Lin 2001 are concerned with _accuracy_, with obtaining the most accurate measure of temperature versus ground-truth.
The temperature anomaly record is on the other hand primarily concerned with _precision_, detecting changes over time. If a thermometer is consistently biased due to its enclosure construction, that bias is irrelevant to anomalies from previous measurements.
If the enclosure type causes high variations due to wind speed then the precision drops, and more measurements are required to reduce uncertainty. But that variation doesn’t change the mean from that of previous readings with the same equipment, and again variations around the mean do _not_ offset anomalies from previous measures.
Equipment changes do change the offset from ground truth temperatures. Hence the use of station metadata and of pairwise homogenization (Menne and Williams 2009) to detect such offsets against the cohort of local stationswhich have _not_ had simultaneous equipment changes, correcting those bias shifts to accurately (here the word is appropriate) track changes against previous anomalies. These corrections have been tested and confirmed to work.
Again, you are ignoring that steady-state errors are irrelevant to anomalies, that variations are only of import if they shift the long term mean, and that the temperature record is checked for any such offset shifts using 1-against-many homogenization.
—
Hubbard and Lin 2001 is an excellent paper investigating the causes of equipment inaccuracies against ground-truth temperatures. It is, however, largely irrelevant regarding anomalies against previous measurements, and equipment changes that may shift anomalies are already corrected by the homogenization procedures.
The errors you describe do not affect the temperature anomaly record, and most certainly are not cumulative errors. As with the model discussion, the lack of divergence seen between temperature stations disproves your claim of cumulative errors.
Again – claims that the temperature record is wholly inaccurate, which are essentially claims that climate change isn’t happening, are unsupportable.
01
Your understanding is wrong, KR.
From Hubbard and Lin 2002, “both average air temperature bias and three-sigma bias for each temperature system are as large as a few tenths of a degree. The non-aspirated radiation shield systems, including the MMTS, Gill, CRS, and NON-ES systems, had a bias ranging from a half degree to nearly two degrees…
Do you understand the difference between an “average bias” and a ‘constant bias’? You’re arguing the latter, while the reality is the former.
Differencing against an average bias does not remove uncertainty from an anomaly. It merely adjusts data for the average bias. The new centroid is not at zero error. The error distribution that is not normal to begin with does not magically become normal when an average bias is removed.
Your statement that, “If the enclosure type causes high variations due to wind speed then the precision drops, and more measurements are required to reduce uncertainty.” entirely misses the difference between systematic and random error.
Wind speed effects impact accuracy, not necessarily precision. Inaccurate temperatures are wrong temperatures. No number of wrong temperature measurements produces a right measurement.
Errors due to uncontrolled environmental variables are not “steady state” errors. They are varying errors. A histogram of steady state errors will produce a single stack at a constant offset. Figures 2 and 4 in Hubbard and Lin, 2002 show the errors are widely distributed — as expected from variable impacts — non-normal and multi-moded.
Your position is thoroughly refuted by real data, KR. Continued insistence of the obviously wrong will only be to your discredit.
I’ve already pointed out why pairwise station comparisons do not detect errors due to systematic weather effects.
You have been reduced to merely insisting on arguments already shown wrong.
01
KR you wrote, “Your reviewer was quite correct in pointing out the difference between precision and accuracy, and the issues thereof in your paper.”
You’ve got it backwards. My reviewer scorned the distinction between precision and accuracy; a distinction that in fact I made and emphasized as critical.
Your claim that “the law of large numbers” removes systematic measurement error is unfounded. There is no statistical justification for that supposition, and there has been no large scale evaluation of temperature sensor error envelopes to empirically ground the case. More hand-waving on your part.
Regarding my poster, the cloud forcing error is not a bias offset. It is a (+/-)W/m^2 average uncertainty, calculated from the physical errors made by CMIP5 models. Notice that the “+/-” immediately negates any notion of a constant offset bias. How did you miss realizing that?
This is a simple matter of uncertainty due to average physical error revealed by comparison of climate simulations with observations. We first learn about the meaning of such uncertainty as freshmen undergraduates, but it seems to escape the understanding of everyone who does consensus climatology. Now you’ve made the same mistake.
Figure it out, KR: (+/-) uncertainties are not removed by taking anomalies. They are increased by taking anomalies. For any anomaly a = u-v, the uncertainty in a = (+/-)da = sqrt[(du)^2+(dv)^2], and (+/-)da > (+/-)du, (+/-)dv, of necessity.
Systematic errors are not necessarily constant offsets; in fact they are rarely so. I showed that already, in my previous post, concerning the air temperature measurements.
GCM cloud error arises from theory-bias; i.e., from an incorrect theory that continuously partitions energy incorrectly into the simulated climate. Such error is also not known to be a constant offset. I’ve searched the literature for studies addressing that case, and have found nothing. Nor is there any mention in the 5AR that GCM errors can be removed by differencing.
Systematic errors do accumulate in the intermediate values of sequential calculations. However, their magnitude is always unknown. For that reason, known average error, obtained by comparison of simulations to observations, is propagated through a sequential calculation to obtain the uncertainty in the final value.
This is again a standard in physical science that has escaped the grasp of consensus climatologists. My experience is that climate modelers have no concept of propagated error.
Systematic errors in intermediate values can not be assumed removed by taking anomalies, because such errors are not known to be constant offsets. In a prediction, such as an air temperature projection, the level of error is entirely unknown because the future climate state is unknown.
The only way to evaluate such projections is to propagate known average model error through them, as an uncertainty. That uncertainty increases — accumulates — with each and every calculational step. That, too, is a standard of error analysis in the physical sciences that is obvious by its absence in consensus climatology.
You wrote, “Any scalar errors in feedbacks will result in scalar differences in computed sensitivities (TCS/ECS) from the models, but that is again a scalar offset, and will not change over length of GCM run once past sufficient time for ECS. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that different GCMs with a spread of baseline forcing levels (as described in your poster) result in a nondivergent spread of model outcomes”
Look at Figure 9.42(a) in the 5AR, KR. It plots ECS vs mean air temperature for some 22 CMIP5 models. The points are almost a random scatter. This is because they are getting about the same mean temperature despite very different ECS values. The only way they can do that is by employing anti-correlated parameters — offsetting errors in other words.
Expectation values that end up close to observed values due to offseting errors does not equal accuracy. It equals precision, and a false precision at that. The true picture of model accuracy is in the final uncertainty that is calculated from from the uncertainties in the offsetting parameters. But these uncertainties are never shown in IPCC-standard presentations. Were they shown, the uncertainty whiskers would extend well past the limits of AR5 Figure 9.42(a).
Figure 9.42(a), as presented, is physically meaningless. Your “nondivergent” simulations are physically meaningless for exactly the same reason: they are represented with without any physically meaningful confidence intervals.
All-in-all, KR, your approach just mimics the mistaken thinking standard in the field. Maybe it’s excusable in you, but it certainly is not among climatologists. Among them, that level of basic negligence is, at best, a sign of incompetence.
22
As noted in AR5:
Scalar feedback differences lead to scalar ECS differences, just as I stated before. And cloud feedback estimates, along with ocean heat uptake efficiencies in the models, account for the majority of the projection spreads.
Note: Temperature records are a case where the law of large numbers applies, and +/- errors average out over time increasing the certainties. That includes +/- mean errors for individual temperature stations – and unless you are asserting large-scale directionality in mean errors over time (which is unsupported by the data) those average out as well.
Models, on the other hand, are a case where balancing errors do cancel out, as in the cloud feedback estimates – allowing the models to replicate historical temperature evolutions. From AR5 section 9.5.3.1:
If the errors propagated in cumulative fashion (which quite frankly doesn’t make numeric sense) that would not be the case.
—
Your assertions regarding error propagation would, if true, require that _all_ climatologists (which includes physicists, ecologists, and many other disciplines) were in error about some fundamental statistics. If you think you have found some head-slapping simple error that invalidates everybody else, you should at least consider the possibility that you yourself are incorrect.
Because, quite frankly, it’s far more likely that one person makes an error than that thousands of people over more than a century have committed 2+2=5 mistakes.
01
KR, the IPCC’s “high confidence” is just expert opinion. It’s not a quantitative evaluation. Expert opinion is known to be unreliable.
In the linked book, “Research on Judgment and Decision Making,” CH 10: “The process-performance paradox in expert judgment: How can experts know so much and predict so badly?” describes tests of professionals showing that expert predictions are often poorer than naive judgments, in part because experts may be over-confident.
I’ve already pointed out that not one of the climate model depictions in the AR5 shows confidence intervals calculated as error propagated through projections. Significantly, you haven’t provided any examples in your reply. You’ve merely quoted the IPCC’s self-serving reassurances.
From where does the IPCC’s high confidence come, when they’ve never propagated physical error through their projections? The IPCC offers wishful thinking and calls it analysis.
I’ve also mentioned that I have in black-and-white that climate modelers suppose that a “+/-” confidence interval implies a claim that models oscillate between hot and cold climates.
For example, here’s a direct quote from one of my reviewers: “this [error propagation] analysis would predict that the models will swing ever more wildly between snowball and runaway greenhouse states.”
Does that statement reassure you that this Ph.D. climate modeler knows anything about error propagation or the meaning of a physically-based confidence interval? And that wasn’t the only so-mistaken review. And I have encountered it with virtually every single climate modeler with whom I’ve discussed the issue.
Your argument that, “Your assertions regarding error propagation would, if true, require that _all_ climatologists…” is just an argument from authority.
My analysis stands on its merits, and not on the views of others. That analysis is propagation of error through a sequential calculation that is standard in the physical sciences. The method is rock-solid. I’ve presented it in seminars before audiences that included physicists. They have not challenged it. The only objections I have gotten are from climate modelers, and more often than not it’s on the grounds of model oscillation.
If you can’t refute the argument analytically — and you can’t — an appeal to no number of authorities will save your case. I’ve gone through my reviewers’ arguments, now, too. Your authorities can’t refute the analysis either. Disparage, yes. Refute, no.
21
I can’t decide whether that’s scary, sad or infuriating.
00
Whichever it is, Vic, it shows why climate science is in such a mess.
21
The fact that the models demonstrably do not swing wildly between greenhouse and iceball states does in fact invalidate your error analysis. I am quite puzzled that you do not recognize this.
01
KR, notice the “+/-” associated with average errors and confidence intervals. Do you honestly think an energetic perturbation is simultaneously positive and negative?
If “+/-” average errors and confidence intervals are not energetic perturbations — and they’re not — how can their propagation through a model produce a state expectation value?
If propagated errors do not represent state expectation values — and they don’t — how can their meaning be that the model state is oscillating?
Error is not an energetic perturbation. Propagated error does not represent model expectation values; it represents a confidence interval. Confidence intervals are not modeled state magnitudes.
Expectation values are modeled state magnitudes. Error propagated through to that modeled state produces a confidence interval about the state magnitude.
Notice: model projection and error propagation, respectively, produce both an expectation value and a confidence interval. The confidence interval is separate from the expectation value; confidence intervals and expectation values are separate but associated.
Confidence intervals are an ignorance width. They convey that incompleteness or errors in the physical theory or model parameters imply that the state represented by any given expectation value is non-unique. They indicate the reliability of that expectation value; that predicted state.
When a confidence interval is large, the model expectation value conveys no information about the state of interest.
You needn’t be “quite puzzled that [I] do not recognize this [model oscillation].” The reason I don’t recognize that, is that it’s wrong. It’s not only wrong, it’s a naive undergraduate mistake.
If you plan a career in physical science, you’ll want to avoid misunderstanding propagated error the way my reviewers misunderstand propagated error.
Actually, you’ll want to avoid that even if you don’t plan a career in science.
11
A constantly broadening confidence interval such as you claim means that the +/- 1 and 2 sigma deviations from the mean will broaden, and that multiple runs of the _same_ model beginning from different initializations would diverge as well. Some of those divergent results would be iceball or hothouse Earths.
That does not happen, model outputs are subject to boundary conditions in terms of energy and do not diverge, hence your claim of cumulative error in projections is incorrect. QED.
00
KR: “Some of those divergent results would be iceball or hothouse Earths.”
That is not the meaning of confidence intervals.
10
That’s better. That’s how you argue with KR.
00
False. Their behavior is not a validation or invalidation. Their ability to model correctly IS. Since they failed, they are useless – except to show what not to do.
00
“It really comes down to data and physics, to hypotheses consistent with the entirety of the evidence”
If it came down to data, physics and evidence.. the AGW meme would have died a natural death MANY years ago.
YOU KNOW THAT, as do many other so-called climate scientists, but the deep money trough you all swill from doesn’t allow you to speak the truth.
It is very obvious from your posts that you don’t actually believe much of what you are saying, and are just working from the propaganda handbook.
By all means, keep hamming it up as you trying to persuade yourself, but please don’t think your porkies and crackling will gain any traction here.
Your bacon is well and truly cooked, and the sizzling panic as the temperatures start to drop is delicious to watch.
64
KR;
As I’ve pointed out a number of times on this thread; what you have stated is merely opinion. You haven’t DEDUCED your points and so they are, therefore, UTTERLY UNCONVINCING.
In particular, you admitted to the consensus being subject to a range of influences other than science, and yet you persist in your ‘result of the science’ meme. This is DISINGENUOUS and suggests that your other points are similarly, poorly predicated.
–
You, like myself, use a ‘nom de plume’ and so, have no checkable expertise. It is only through the logical integrity of our written words that we may gain the confidence of a thinking, rational readership. If you build a case using verifiable evidence and draw a conclusion from it, you will find that constructive discourse will follow. (Cherry-picking data and referencing like minded opinions will, most likely, be identified as such.)
Other posters here, Geoff Sherrington and Pat Frank for examples, enjoy a level of professional respect by virtue of their checkable expertise in their respective fields. You and I do not. I am, at least, aware of it; you should be too!
–
Perhaps you are hoping to influence gullible lurkers with a quasi-authoritative, ‘statement of fact’ approach. That’s fine, but don’t expect the skeptical posters here to acquiesce. You will be suitably taken to task, as I am sure you are learning.
–
It is your inalienable right to believe all that stuff that you have so diligently written, but without a logical framework, it appears very much like, as James Bradley so rightly points out, propaganda.
With respect, KR, you’re probably wasting your time on a skeptical forum if propaganda is all you have to offer.
–
44
Hmmmm; an interesting post.
Not big on information, but interesting. You come here with your standard (‘cut-and-paste’?) talking points, and when challenged, retreat back to the same “the science is settled; see for yourself here … “. Fine, you actually believe that the IPCC is a scientific organization. As stated above, you have the right to be wrong, and I will defend your right to be wrong.
First, I challenged you to be cautious of the “consensus”, which is just argument from authority. ‘The Consensus’ has been wrong in the past; the paradigm shift in the Earth sciences was based on data and evidence. That you refuse to accept the evidence against AGW and CAGW does not change it. You have the right to be wrong.
Second, I’m going to go out on limb here and guess that you had no clue that all GCM’s set a number of Earth-model atmospheric parameters to zero, did you? I dare say, you are unable to find some obtuse google reference that will tell you what they are, so in reality, you have put your faith in those “models” which have nothing to do with the real atmosphere where the rest of us live. You have the right to be wrong.
So prove me wrong. Please, school us on the “models”. Tell us why they are so perfectly accurate in all respects. Discuss those ‘zero’ parameters, and relate them to the real atmosphere.
I could be very wrong here (mods, please step in) but I believe Jo and her team have a policy in place that a challenge unanswered earns demerits.
And I have plenty of challenges, KR.
I bid you and yours a very good day,
Mark H.
24
As I stated in my first post on this thread, the consensus is not the science. It is, rather, driven by that science.
The scientific community will accept data and hypotheses contradicting AGW if and when they hold up. So far they have not. In fact, it was data and hypotheses supporting AGW that led to the current consensus.
I will accept solid evidence when it’s presented. I won’t accept curve-fitting without causation (anything by Scafetta), repeated papers that refuse to even consider the errors that have been pointed out (Lindzen), oversimplistic models that make non-physical claims (Spencer and ‘cloud forcing’), or statements based on insufficient data for statistical significance, noise about noise (too many short-term claims to enumerate). I have seen nothing which would cause me to reject basic physics.
Re: models – they aren’t perfect, nobody claims they are, no model ever is. They in general do a poor job with ENSO and the PDO, are of insufficient resolution to apply to local and some regional climates, and have made clear errors such as predicting far less decline in Arctic ice than has actually occurred. Your argument therefore is a strawman. But models can be accurate enough to be useful, and in my opinion (and those of most of the climate science community) the GCMs are imperfect but useful tools for exploring the science (which as per Tyndall, Fourier, and Arrhenius doesn’t require GCMs).
But your imagined claim that I consider GCMs perfect is a rhetorical misrepresentation.
33
Basic Physics? Like the basic Physics that says that as CO2 concentration goes up, the “warming” effect diminishes? Like that basic Physics?
You brought up models, not me. I don’t believe ANYTHING the models say — — they are total garbage, a waste of electricity (and last time I checked, AGW-proponents were in favor of more ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘less’ electricity use).
So I’m right! You have NO CLUE what parameters models set to zero! You have no capacity to tell us about GCM’s. Not perfect? THAT is the understatement of the millennium. You base anything on what a model says, and you trust in a sham.
You do not want to see the science against your belief(s). In case you didn’t know, Jo herself was once a “believer” in AGW — — until she started investigating. She managed to locate the science that contradicts AGW/CAGW. Jo didn’t have this blog, or WUWT as a resource; she felt so strongly about what she learned that this blog is the result, and she welcomes you to participate in forum discussions, but you can’t even answer a simple question.
What parameters do all GCM’s set to zero, Mr./Ms. KR? Answer, or go away.
(Hint: it takes someone with the cajones to say, “I don’t know”; it takes even bigger cajones to accept the answer. I shan’t hold my breath … … …)
Regards,
Mark H.
23
Yes, basic physics – the decrease in IR path length at any particular pressure with increasing GHGs, in conjunction with the atmospheric lapse rate, means that increasing GHGs will radiate IR to space at higher (colder) altitudes, in lower quantity. Which leads to an energy imbalance until the atmospheric column as a whole warms. It’s really that basic for direct forcing of GHGs.
The water vapor feedback to that, from the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, and the observations that global relative humidity is fairly stable (Dai 2006 and NASA measurements among others) roughly doubles that as a feedback – and you are most of the way towards predicted climate sensitivities without even considering other, longer term, feedbacks. Basic physics.
—
I have no issue whatsoever with stating that I cannot make sense of your post regarding GCM variables. Perhaps you could clarify?
GCMs are usually started well before the period of interest and allowed to stabilize their own behavior – and only then move forward with forcing data. Internally they parameterize phenomena at resolutions below their grid size, on the larger scale they are essentially large scale fluid dynamics models following the evolution of the climate via energy and mass flows.
Which parameters do you think are set to zero? And are they relevant? I’ll limit that question to after the run-up period, as dependent values are driven to steady-state during that period.
33
It is not a matter of, “think” they are set to zero; they are. And not a one of the them represents the real atmosphere, so any reference to a model of the Earth atmosphere with an impossible ‘parameterization’ is going to be false, and wrong, no matter what.
24
Again – Reference and relevance? Which parameters, and at what part of the GCM runs?
Without that information, you haven’t actually posed a question.
32
The decrease in concentration of GHG with altitude (per volume) means that the path length increases with altitude, and yet the temperature gradient is still what you would expect from the adiabatic lapse rate?
Do you appreciate that calculations of what all these effects end up to be is what modelling is? Do you appreciate that an exact description of what is known about the atmosphere is not in the models because its too hard to calculate, and there are a lot of unknowns on top of that?
I bet your text books are full of highlighted phrases, KR. To throw about these terms without any appreciation of what is required to put them together to calculate the effect of CO2 is rather childish.
21
KR< "I won’t accept curve-fitting without causation” But apparently you’ll accept curve-fitting with asserted causation. Because that’s what today’s climate models represent.
Asserted causation is all that underlays the so-called AGW consensus. The fact that the APS and such-like institutions have rolled over for this is possibly the most astonishing failure of the entire AGW-story.
If the APS and its physicists had been as skeptical of AGW as they were of cold fusion, we’d not be in such a mess today. Someday, I hope to see that conundrum explained. One supposes some sort of mass auto-hypnosis.
22
Lying about it does not create a fact. Doran Zimmerman was fatally flawed from every standpoint imaginable. It took 10,257 samples and culled it down to 77. That is not scientific.
Cook took almost 12,000 samples, excluded 2/3rds and then refused to release their data. And even in that their simple math was wrong. So it is not only non-reproducible, it is also non-scientific.
And the 70s were but 40 years ago. So your statement about 50 years is also false.
In short you have provided no evidence to support your thesis. But you have produced a lot of talking points. So either put up or shut up. Appeals to authority do not work on this site.
21
Regarding agreement on the science: Oreskes 2004, Doran 2009, Anderegg et al 2010, Cook et al 2013, and don’t forget James Powell 2012 – who examined 13,950 peer-reviewed articles and found a total of _24_ denying AGW. Those averaging about 5 citations, four have none, the most cited has 17. Powell notes:
Which hasn’t happened.
Argument by Assertion, as per your comment simply stating something that isn’t true, is a logical fallacy. I look forward to your paper on the topic of scientific consensus actually demonstrating the contrary. With supporting data. [Oreskes did her study on under 1000 papers, which is statistically useful without being out of range for an individual]
I will not, however, hold my breath waiting for you.
01
I’ll use my own example from chemistry. This particular field is important to industry so there are a lot of large research groups investigating it. It is almost as chaotic as the atmosphere so it was a great field for a computer modeller to excel in like my supervisor. He controlled that area of publication through harassment.
All the modelling in the peer-reviewed publications said that the particle number becomes constant early in the process and the particle size grows. I found that you get the exact opposite if you purify it thoroughly. My attempts at publishing the result saw me labelled a fraud and my career ruined.
The weight of peer-reviewed papers means nothing.
20
People are persuaded by the 97% fraudulent statistics, and or assume that AGW must be real because the mass media says so, and that despite the fact that evidence against AGW is persusive and no evidence exists to support the global warming argument.
Its a psychology thing and facts are impotent in the face of mass brainwashing. How do you un brainwash people. Ten or 30 years of global cooling will no doubt do it, hopefully no El Nino’s will interupt that process.
The trouble is, the kids of today are being very professionally brainwashed at their schools and other institutes of education where the co2 acolytes ‘educate’ the kids with an entirely one sided and no doubt unscientific view of AGW disguised with a label of ‘sustainability’.
Perhaps the next generation will try to decarbonise the earth even harder than the current crop of political fools, perhaps they will have been so succesfully brainwashed that they will do it regardless of temperatures that will be falling perhaps as far as the Dalton or lower. They will perhaps even blame the falling temperatures on the previous generation for increasing the co2 levels, perhaps they will explain this inconsistency by claiming the extra co2 made the earths climate unstable.
I guess to most people it is a boring subject and so they close their minds and just go with whatever the mass hysteria du jour is. What would open their minds, rapid cooling over several years, serious financial hurt caused by economic destruction which was itself caused by co2 counter measures such as wind turbines, though they actually increase co2 not reduce it.
Pray that the rapidly declining magnetic field of the sun will bring a tragic amount of cooling and soon, the Russians think we should start to see cooling in 2015. I don’t see how it can happen so soon, mid 2020’s would be more like it.
50
By the way, I still stand by every jot and tittle of my 2008 Skeptic article, on climate model error and its consequences.
For those skeptical of skeptics, that article was peer-reviewed by two climate physicists of Michael Shermer’s choosing. I had to respond to their reviews before publication.
40
Excellent analysis of the essential “arithmetic” that is missing from the “indisputable” output of the GCMs.
That coupled with our present partial ignorance of how Earth’s climate system works including the vital nature of the CO2/water vapor feedback, for any extra CO2 induced global warming to occur, is indicative of just how unscientific the alarmist sect of Climate “Science” really is.
20
The so -called climate models will always aim way high, because they partly rely on reproducing GISS or Hadcrut pre-1979 post Hansen adjustments.
Hansen used to show 1940’s temp to be around the same as the peak at the 1998 ElNino, but so much adjustment has been done to CREATE the warmist agenda that using this mangled data set, that now has a massive artificial trend built into it and is totally unrelated to reality, just makes their temperature projections even worse. Hindcasting to set the fudge factors, (oops, I mean “parameters”), drags this fake trend into the models and off they go into the stratosphere.
Its quite funny to watch them trying to find any explanation why their models are so horrendously WRONG, but until the go back to the raw data, which shows essentially no warming since 1900 or thereabouts, and recalibrate to remove the massive fake trend, their models can NEVER WORK.
I think we call that, “catch 22” or “stewed in their own juices”. 🙂
31
In reply to:
Not only could Brandon not reveal the details of how the abstracts were reviewed because they would sue him, but he could not even reveal the letter threatening to sue him, or they would sue him for that too — he would be double-sued.
William:
The warmist ‘scientific’ papers are so dodgy that have must have a legal team to block requests for their paper’s data (they appeal to the need for secrecy to protect the commercial value of the climate data that was gathered using public funds, the true issue is of course not the commercial value of the climate study data but rather the dodgy nature of the papers) which would enable an independent analysis to validate or invalidate their analysis and conclusion.
Clever warmist’s strategy ‘the double threat’, a threat upon a threat. The first threat is to stop analysis which would validate or invalidate the dodgy papers.
The second threat is try to hide the fact that the warmist’s scientists and the warmist’s support groups are using threats and intimidation (Climategate) to attempt to stop analysis and publishing of papers that show their papers’ conclusions are dodgy.
10