…
And so begins the list of errors. The conventional basic climate model (see post 1 for why it is important, post2 and post 3 for what it is) is based on partial derivatives of dependent variables, and that’s a No No. Let me explain: effectively basic climate models model a hypothetical world where all things freeze in a constant state while one factor doubles.* But in the real world, many variables are changing simultaneously and the rules are different.
Partial differentials of dependent variables is a wildcard — it may produce an OK estimate sometimes, but other times it produces nonsense, and ominously, there is effectively no way to test. If the basic climate models predicted the climate, we’d know they got away with it. They didn’t, but we can’t say if they failed because of a partial derivative. It could have been something else. We just know it’s bad practice.
To see an example of how partial differentials can produce quixotic contradictions in a normal and simple situation, see what happens when they are used with the Ideal Gas Law in this PDF from MIT.
Partial derivatives are useful when there are only independent variables. But in the climate paradox, there are a lot of variables and most of them are dependent. Partial derivatives might work, or they might blow up. For them to make sense we’d need to live in a world which can be held in a constant steady state while one factor does a step change. It’s a situation that probably hasn’t happened in the last 4.5 billion years.
The field of climate science draws on maths, but rarely draws on the leading mathematical minds. This first error of the three illustrates how people who may be well trained in geography or oceanography (or divinity) can miss points that professional mathematicians and modelers would not.
The big problem here is that a model built on the misuse of a basic maths technique that cannot be tested, should not ever, as in never, be described as 95% certain. Resting a theory on unverifiable and hypothetical quantities is asking for trouble. Hey but it’s only the future of the planet that’s at stake. If it were something more important, climate scientists would have brought in some serious maths guys.
This error is fairly easy to describe; the harder, bigger errors are coming soon, as we try to roll out the points as fast as we can. — Jo
________________________________________________
4. Error 1: Partial Derivatives
Dr David Evans, 26 September 2015, David Evans’ Basic Climate Models Home, Intro, Previous , Next, Nomenclature.
There are three significant errors with the conventional basic climate model (which was described in the basic climate model core part 1,and basic climate model in full part II). In this post we discuss the first error, the misapplication of the mathematical technique of partial derivatives, because it is the easiest of the three to describe.
By the way, noting that there are problems with the conventional model is hardly new even in establishment circles, but apparently itemizing them is a little unusual. For example, Sherwood et. al said in 2015 [1]: “While the forcing–feedback paradigm has always been recognized as imperfect, such discrepancies have previously been attributed to variations in “efficacy” (Hansen et al. 1984), which did not clarify their nature.”
Overview
The basic model relies heavily on partial derivatives. A partial derivative is the ratio of the changes in two variables, when everything apart from those two variables is held constant. When applied to the climate, this means everything about the climate must be held constant while we imagine how much one variable would change if the other was altered.
For example, how does changing the surface temperature affect how much heat is radiated to space (the outgoing longwave radiation, or OLR), if everything else — including humidity, clouds, gases, lapse rates, the tropopause, and absorbed sunlight — stays the same? (This particular partial derivative is the Planck sensitivity, central to the conventional model.)
Normally partial derivatives are employed when there are only a few variables, and those variables are independent of one another. For example, one might be on a hill and be able to measure height, latitude, and longitude. You could use the partial derivative of height with respect to latitude (how much height changes as you move north, i.e. the slope facing north) and the partial derivative of height with respect to longitude (the slope towards the east) to estimate the change in height as you make some move that is a combination of northerly and easterly moves. This works because you can move north or east independently of the other.
But in climate there are many variables and they are not independent — they form a rich web of feedbacks and indirect interconnections. As a rule of thumb, “in climate, everything depends on everything”. Consequently it is not possible to hold everything constant except for only two variables, as required for partial derivatives to exist. For example, warming the surface affects nearly every climate variable, not just the OLR.
The partial derivatives of dependent variables are strictly hypothetical and not empirically verifiable — like the proverbial angels on a pinhead. In climate, you cannot vary just one variable, hold everything else constant, and measure the change in the other variable of interest. Employing partial derivatives in climate therefore incurs unknown approximations — so it is unreliable.
One might argue that the partial derivatives are good approximations, maybe all we’ve got and better than nothing. But this is an unknowable assertion because the partial derivatives are with respect to dependent variables. One might argue that certain climate variables are almost independent, in which case partial derivatives with respect to those variables are only slightly unreliable — and you’d be on more solid ground. But you wouldn’t really know how solid, so any model relying on these partial derivatives would have to be tested against reality — and if the model turned out not to work too well, it may be because the partial derivatives have the wrong values, or it might be because they are conceptually inappropriate, or it could be for some other reason entirely, and you wouldn’t know because said partial derivatives are not empirically verifiable.
The conventional model relies heavily on the Planck sensitivity, a partial derivative in which everything except tropospheric temperatures (which all change uniformly) and OLR are held constant. Wouldn’t a model architecture that avoided the Planck sensitivity altogether be better? (“Better” as in more reliable, because the components of the model could be empirically verified.)
Partial Derivatives of Dependent Variables are Ambiguous
When a quantity depends on dependent variables (variables that depend on or affect one another), a partial derivative of the quantity “has no definite meaning” (from Auroux 2010, who gives a worked example), because of ambiguity over which variables are truly held constant and which change because they depend on the variable allowed to change.
So even if a mathematical expression for the net TOA downward flux G as a function of surface temperature and the other climate variables somehow existed, and a technical application of the partial differentiation rules produced something, we would not be sure what that something was — so it would be of little use in a model, let alone for determining something as vital as climate sensitivity.
The Required Partial Derivatives Do Not Exist
In the previous post on the conventional model, the net TOA downward flux G was a function of the surface temperature TS, n climate drivers, and m feedback variables. For brevity, let W denote all the climate and feedback variables, so G is a function of TS and W. The partial derivative of G with respect to TS at the initial steady state is defined as
But there is no such climate state where the surface temperature is TS,0+h and the other variables are still in their initial state W0, because the variables in W are all dependent to some extent on the surface temperature (indeed, each of the feedback variables depends directly on the surface temperature) and so have also changed. Thus the partial derivative does not exist, technically.
Cannot Hold Everything Constant Except for One Variable
The notion of “holding everything else constant” can be ambiguous or arbitrary in climate. Because the climate variables are so interconnected, it may be impossible to plausibly and unambiguously hold everything constant except two variables.
For example, when holding all else but the surface temperature and OLR constant, are stratospheric temperatures constant? (The mean tropospheric temperatures all change uniformly — see Held and Soden 2000 [2].)
- Perhaps stratospheric temperatures remain constant, because “all else” could be taken to include the stratospheric variables. This is the path taken by Soden & Held, 2006, p. 3356 [3] when they compute the Planck feedback. However it creates ambiguity around the tropopause — can temperature change on one side of the tropopause but not on the other? Is the height of the tropopause constant?
- If stratospheric temperatures are not constant but change uniformly with the tropospheric temperatures — because “all else” is understood to include all the lapse rates — at what height do the changes stop? Space does not warm, so the changes must stop somewhere, so lapse rates cannot be constant everywhere…
Another example. When holding all else but the surface temperature and OLR constant, in the troposphere the temperatures change in unison with the surface. Therefore the water-holding ability of the air changes. Are the specific humidities or the relative humidities held constant? (They cannot both be held constant.)
Related Blog Posts
Lucia’s first post on our posts, at the Blackboard: Questions to David Evans: What do you mean about partial derivatives?
Our response to Lucia’s first post: Lucia has a bad day with partial derivatives
Lucia’s second post, at the Blackboard: Held & Soden without “hypothetical partials”
Our response to Lucia’s second post: Lucia has a bad week on partial derivatives
*Originally the first paragraph started (until 10 Oct 2015):
And so begins the list of errors. The climate models, it turns out, have 95% certainty but are based on partial derivatives of dependent variables with 0% certitude, and that’s a No No. Let me explain: effectively climate models model a hypothetical world where all things freeze in a constant state while one factor doubles.
This lead to understandable confusion that the post was about GCMs, especially among those who hadn’t read the previous posts and didn’t realize this series was about basic models.
References
[1^] Sherwood, S. C., Bony, S., Boucher, O., Bretherton, C., Forster, P. M., Gregory, J. M., et al. (2015). Adjustments in the Forcing-Feedback Framework for Understanding Climate Change. AMS, DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00167.1.
[2^] Held, I. M., & Soden, B. J. (2000). Water Vapor Feedback and Global Warming. Annu. Rev. Energy. Environ., 25:441–75. http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/~ronda/GF3004/helandsod00.pdf
[3^] Soden, B. J., & Held, I. M. (2006). An assessment of climate feedbacks in coupled ocean-atmosphere models. J.Clim., 19, 3354-3360.
Good post. The biggest PD is that the climate was in balance before humans started emitting CO2; that is natural CO2 emissions and sinks were equivalent. AGW relies on that balance continuing while human CO2 upsets the applecart.
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The conventional models have in them bad physics originating from Carl Sagan. So, it doesn’t matter about the PDs. The heat transfer calculations are always broken**.
Another issue is that because the ratio of the cell size to 1 Atm. turbulent flow characteristic length is ~10^16, they cease to work after few simulated days because of chaotic deviation from reality.
**They mistake exitance, potential energy flux in a vacuum to a perfect radiation sink at Absolute Zero, for a real energy flux. This comes from Goody and Yung’s 1989 foul up. Yung with Wang et al (1976) assumed negative convection controls lapse rate; there is no such physics but they justified it with a bidirectional photon diffusion argument that breaches Maxwell’s Equations and the 1st & 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics!. Hansen’s claims in 1988 to US Congress appear to have been based on those mistakes, hence they were wrong. They need to start again.
Later on, the UK MO replaced it with a Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation approach and manipulate cloud physics to pretend the EGHE exists. As there is zero net surface IR, it does not exist. The positive feedback is from exaggerating evaporation in hind casting; using double low level cloud optical depth: quite a subtle [snip “trick”] that which is why it was only discovered in 2010.
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Great post TON; but I would like you to paraphrase it for us laymen!
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“Later on, the UK MO replaced it with a Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation approach and manipulate cloud physics to pretend the EGHE exists. As there is zero net surface IR, it does not exist. The positive feedback is from exaggerating evaporation in hind casting; using double low level cloud optical depth: quite a subtle [snip “trick”] that which is why it was only discovered in 2010.”
Andrew,
Quite nice! Actually there is a bit of surface IR exitance. Hard to measure. Not enough to consider, given all the atmospheric exitance all powered by insolation with absolutely no need for any surface anything!
The EMR effects of this atmosphere are analytical and grossly applicable. However, no one except the CAGW Clowns, consider the details such as CO2 level, or Cow farts, to be significant in any way.
Some identification of those behind the deliberate corruption of ‘what is known’, would be most appreciated!
All the best! -will-
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Seriously the climate was “in balance” before humans started emitting CO2.
I supposed you think Greenland has always been frozen?
If you bothered to read anything on the subject…..the earth has seen very extreme variations in temp and perhaps we owe our procreative success that the range has narrowed greatly.
But it is obtuse to make such a claim.
We know we have had hyper greenhouse and ice ages repeatedly and if the paper prove out well with peer review we shall likely find that Sun cycles as well as our changes in orbit were to explain the cycles.
Earth is 4.5 billion years old…..these cycles play out over huge amounts of time …..
What do we have to do with ICE caps melting on Mars…..oh wait ……we have a coal plant there…..we are such evil creatures.
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With all the resources of the IPCC, Climate Institutes, Universities etc, has nobody ever consulted a mathematician?
I can understand why the models are, in theory, so good. But this one post explains why they are so useless in the real world.
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Usefulness depends upon the goal you wish to achieve. They are useless if your goal is to predict the climate for some future time. Especially with a sufficient accuracy so that real people, armed with that knowledge, can protect themselves from bad climate and profit from the good. Clearly, they cannot be used and have not been used to reach that kind of goal.
They are good enough to bamboozle politicians into giving the makers of the models enough public funds to keep doing more of the same. They also have been good enough to convince the same politicians that the ancient and very primitive technology of windmills can extract enough energy from the wind to sustain a modern technological civilization. They were good enough that the worlds politicians feel justified to have have and are planning on spending many trillions on programs that can’t possibly work. The net result was, is and will be to destroy wealth, to impoverish the world’s economy, and to spread a fine mesh of authoritarian governance over every living human on earth.
The dirty little secret hidden behind all the synthetic panic over climate is that politicians don’t want their programs and policies to work. They fail by design. That failure is used as an excuse to grow government, increase spending, and to aggrandize ever more power and control into the hands of the central authority: the politicians. Hence, the most important attribute of the climate models is that they DON’T work. If they really did work, the politicians wouldn’t be interested in them.
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Lionel
“The dirty little secret hidden behind all the synthetic panic over climate is that politicians don’t want their programs and policies to work.”
As explained by a Brasilian researcher in the 80’s wrt drought – if they did the wouldn’t have the soapbox to stand on as they deliver more drought relief that doesn’t actually relieve drought.
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Brilliant
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
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It would not have taken anything even close to partial differential equations to bamboozle politicians. They can’t even understand the simple arithmetic it takes to know you can’t borrow and spend your way out of debt. We have promoted ourselves way above our level of incompetence with basic logic and arithmetic. I fear that the road back from the precipice won’t be unrolling in front of us like a red carpet just because David Evans exposes the flawed math assumptions of the climate science industry.
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LG, I’m not sure it is a ‘dirty little secret’.
After all, Christiana Figures (UNFCCC) is really quite clear and stated (the UN post-2015 development Agenda) has nothing to do with climate per se. Instead, the goal is the
ruinationtransformation the global capitalist economies (a model she and her cohorts have deemed to have failed for the usual array ofenvironmentaleco-marxist reasons) into the new sustainable model of ‘anchored production and consumption’ (see ‘Atlas Shrugged’ for the general idea). The committee predetermination of production/consumption (of resources) will be based on what the UN Economic and Social Council has determined is ‘sustainable’.It could be a cold dreary world, lit by the odd LED for all except the new age ‘illuminati’ at the UN. A comfort nevertheless remains, that their spirit crushing vision is of course by definition unsustainable.
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I would go further and say the models, in theory, are badly constructed. With many dependent variables one simply cannot use a bunch of partial derivative estimates and assume they lead to any sensible conclusions. A partial derivative is exactly like an economists ceteris paribus thought experiment. It seems like climate scientists lack the economist’s humility (yes, as an economist I am smiling wryly here for a variety of reasons) to acknowledge the obvious uncertainties of the complex systems they are studying. So to use a model that is only valid based on a set of point estimates and project it well beyond the limits of said estimates… Well I can only shake my head.
I have posted many times that my intuition that climate models suffered from the same sort of issues that economic models exhibit. There are simply too many interdependent parts. It also seems that building climate models from understood physical relationships at the micro level, introduces errors much like building macroeconomic models based on microeconomic theory, while simultaneously engendering a sense of certainty. While such relationships can be simple at the micro level, building up millions and billions such simple interactions, can lead to wholly unexpected outcomes.
Thanks Mr Evans for this excellent exposition. It will be interesting to see if other climte modelling errors are akin to understood problems in economics.
Still laughing inwardly about the concept humble economists… These things are relative, I guess…
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Keith
I was introduced to modelling in course work in the mid 1970’s and the hazards of indiscriminate modelling were well known then
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Right on!
ALL models must be tested in the real world before they can be called a “model”.
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Consult a mathematician? What for? They didn’t consult a statistician!
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Ceteris paribus gives problems again.
So easy to assume, so hard to comply.
David, you have sent me back to my third year pure maths, feeling foolish for not seeing it.
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Many thanks David and Geoff. I also was exposed to partial derivatives in my degree, but that was about 50 years ago, and I’ve not been near them since. So I don’t remember:
“Partial differentials of dependent variables is a wildcard — it may produce an OK estimate sometimes, but other times it produces nonsense, and ominously, there is effectively no way to test.”
But I do find it fascinating. And many thanks for your clear presentation.
Cheers,
Dave B
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I used to say in economics 101 classes that everything after ceteris paribus is usually BS. By ‘say’ I mean when I was teaching said classes. Of course, too many people drop the ceteris paribus when they shouldn’t…
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Ah yes Microeconomics and “ceteris paribus” – I did a BSc at UWA in the early 1970’s and detested Physics that much that in year 1 I studied Economics 10 together with the science subjects Chem 10, Geol 10 & Maths 10. As you say Bulldust everything after “ceteris paribus” was indeed “BS” – sort of reminds me of the “Theory of AGW”.
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In my experience everything after ceteris paribus is usually technically true but totally impossible to calculate and almost useless for predictions because ceteris parabus never holds.
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A key component of climatology is that it consists of a dogmatic group of people who have not taken on board insights from other areas. Jo has written dozens of articles on attempts to discourage or block other opinions and viewpoints, whether in “climate science” or in associated public policy-making.
It is therefore not surprising that the implications of ceteris paribus , a key part of the method of economic theory, has not been considered.
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Kevin Marshal, Upon reading Bulldust’s fine comment I was thinking the same thing.
How many times have we seen a paper where they mucked-up the statistics?
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Gai
Mucking up the statistics is something quite different. An implication of assuming “all other things are equal” is when testing the model. We may get quite good statistical verification of the model for a select group of statistics, as the model is actually quite a good representation of the real world for that sub-group of all data. But so much changes in the real world, the model breaks down for other data sets. This is quite different from chance correlation, though empirically you may not be able to tell the difference.
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Am I right in thinking that you’re saying, that a model is good within specific limits; go outside those limits and the model fails?
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errr…. That is “David”. [Corrected – Ed]
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Off topic. Volcano revealed as Europe’s biggest polluter.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/volcano-revealed-as-europe-s-worst-polluter-1-3896415#ixzz3mdshEOtO
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What exactly does it take to get the politicians and the sheeple to understand?
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A predator (anyone who expects a free lunch) does not concern himself with understanding. All he is interested in is his getting his next meal for free. Interestingly, people like you, me, and others are seen as a bottomless source of that next meal. As long as we let them feed, they will continue.
We will get their attention only when we stop feeding them and tell them no in such a way they cannot evade the message. The other alternative is the total collapse of the world’s economy after which no one will have meals to eat except for possibly eating each other. It is one or the other. There is no middle ground.
You see, it is a bit like the patient who asked his doctor, “What is the best way to stop smoking?” The doctor answered, “Voluntarily.” Meaning is that you WILL quit. The question is “Will you still be alive after the quitting?”
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Lionell, I think you mean parasite or freeloader, etc. Predators have to work hard to survive. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any prey.
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I don’t see any real difference. They all live off the lives of others and produce nothing of their own.
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Lionell, In this case we are talking of parasitic behaviour. Some people definitely live off the energy of others, but the aim is a continuous “free lunch” rather than a one off kill. Humans do kill other humans to reduce competition, but they don’t usually do it for the meal. (It’s “fun” this topic isn’t it?) Most of the time a parasite is better off if its host stays alive, whereas a predator is not. It can get messy – there is a blurry line between predator and parasite.
Predators kill their prey deliberately (it’s part of the deal) whereas parasites often don’t kill, but live off the host. Though parasites may kill the host, but it’s more an accident, or a byproduct, than an essential part of the strategy. Being biology, there are exceptions where a slow killing parasite may indeed be better described as a predator.
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It is a matter of degree rather than of motivation or intent. The motivation and intent is a lunch free of having to do the work of producing it. They are all predators in my book. It is the difference between a taker and a maker – a thug and a productive tradesman.
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Predators, are the thugs on horseback who figured out it was easier to raid farming communities that to grow food.
Then one of them got the bright idea of never leaving after the raid and forcing the farm folk to slave for him and his fellows. We now call them the Aristocracy and they rulled for thousands of years.
About three hundred years ago thanks to the industrial revolution we had the rise of the middle class. This resulted in various revolutions and the jumped up peasants told the thugs on horseback (aka Aristocracy) we ain’t your slaves no more — forcefully.
Ever since then the Elite have been trying to get the peasants to agree to being serfs/slaves again so they can get rid of the tiresome puppet show called elections. The parasites are the lazy bums the elite bribe to vote for them.
Karl Marx is the guy who came up with the plan to convince the masses they wanted to return to serfdom.
Fabian Socialist George Bernard Shaw said: “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
What the parasites don’t realize is what is in store for them once voting is no longer needed to keep the elite in complete control.
(If I quote it, I will end in moderation)
The Real George Bernard Shaw – Fabian Socialist and ….
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ
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Drat
My comment on Producers, Predators and Parasites got tossed into moderation.
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Gai,
We have would-be socialists here from an ex_PM down.
Try this from Bob Hawke.
http://geoffstuff.com/fabian.pdf
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Your insight into the problem is still up to its usual high standard. It’s political as it’s always been. So perhaps you’d like to put forth a recommendation for my vote for president next year? 😉
Keep in mind that the one candidate who would get my vote in the primary has dropped out of the race — proven ability to stand up to entrenched opposition and get politically based problems fixed is apparently not worth much after all.
Instead we get Trump. 🙁
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And Scott Walker did it in spite of a no holds barred no quarter given uphill fight all the way. There’s more political courage in his little finger than in all the other Republicans combined. But he’s aced out by a blowhard.
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Hi David
Its no surprise. Most politicians are smart alec lawyers who think that they are the smartest people in the room who brag about not suffering fools, probably never read a scientific paper in their life and are continually spoon fed tripe by their advisors.
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As a once-upon-a-time advisor, I object to that.
The opinions of politicians are determined by the group-think of their peers in formulating their political policies, vis-a-vis, their political opponents.
All politicians want to be seen as being closer to the majority of public opinion, than “the other lot”.
So one group of advisors research public opinion, and report their findings to whichever political party pays for the research. All political parties do it, and they all get much the same results, but they do get told the truth, regarding the research into public opinion.
Another group of advisors undertakes indepth research into what is, and what is not, happening in the every-day world, outside of politics, but including academia (which is also highly politicised).
When you get strong disagreement between the two groups of advisors – what the public has been told they should want, on the one hand, and what the public is actually getting, on the other hand – war breaks out. Politicans will often play it safe, and go with what public opinion dictates.
This is why there has been so much hype around climate change.
Those who stand to make a lot of money out of the scam, invested heavily in shifting public opinion, so that public opinion would shift the policy positions of all of the political parties. That was why Al Gore went on tour, and why James Cameron invested his own money in creating a series of “environmental” movies.
Having seen it done once, other people like Al Gore, will have a go, and we will all be living in a world that is constantly in fear of one bogyman or another.
Such a world has no room for rational researchers and advisors, which is why I no longer play that game.
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When the twilight of abundance is realised politicians will run for cover and she sheepie will be frightened and bewildered as the very cold conditions impact on human life and food supplies, and renewable energy fails to meet demand for electricity, even at a high price that lower paid people cannot afford.
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One of the problems in killing the absurdity of CO2 produced global warming, something which is transparently false and politically motivated, is that so many people want to express their expert view based on their background. Every manner of scientist wants their day in the sunshine, explaining how their particular skills in say studying the reproductive patterns of a specific insect are indications for or against CO2 drive global warming. This utterly confuses the punters.
What they see is expert against expert and the media love it. Talking heads abound from Tim Flannery to Barack Obama, expressing their concerns about the Barrier Reef for their children’s children. Unfortunately it is all counter productive.
If man cannot alter CO2 levels, it is all bunkum before we start. What the Greens/Communists/Labor have done is to vilify CO2, make it out to be very dangerous if not poisonous, an absurdity as everyone reading this is currently generating 3 tons of CO2 year by breathing. All life is built from CO2. In output a car is possibly only equal to a cow in that regard or the breathing of the people of China exceeds Australian’s entire output. Still Governments and bankers like Turnbull love the income and the votes as busy people just look for the right opinion. Look very concerned. Lower your voice. CO2 is the biggest moral dilemma of the century.
So while the feedback systems for CO2 driven, single input climate predictions are interesting,if CO2 warms the planet, should we do anything? Can we do anything? Is it anyone’s fault? The answers are no, no, no, no.
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In Chennai, India at present. An overwhelming experience, crows, families on a single motorbike weaving through traffic, heat, broken streets and buildings, people sleeping on the concrete as young women walk by in beautiful silks. The problem is not CO2.
Petrol engines were only invented 120 years ago and they have not done this. The world will run out of carbon energy soon enough, so the problem is self fixing, but is it the problem? How convenient for Western societies to agonize over their alleged guilt while half of Bangladesh is only 1 metre above sea level and reporting no problems? Sometimes in reading about Global Warming you have to wonder if the Western press has gone quite mad, but Man Made Global Warming was always an amazingly successful leftist fabrication, a scare tactic calling on compassion with other people’s money. Something needs to be done, but about what exactly? The world does not have enough fossil fuel to lift people out of poverty. So from Dubai, the world’s most unsustainable city with no food and water to a city with little fuel, debate on CO2 warming models seem quite irrelevant even in the medium term. That alleged problem at least is self fixing.
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Yes crows, but I typed crowds. You can see birds of prey circling over the crowds. Is India the model for the future? 34C today and I doubt they are worried about Global Warming.
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Ha! never thought of crows in India, and we have Indian Myna birds here, go figure. 🙂
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And they are a bloody nuisance next to pidgeons and seagulls.
I do have a great affection for the local magpies which are very smart and the Butcher bird which is extremely careful and not at all friendly like the Magpie.
The Minahs harass the magpie. It’s a bit like parliament only in our backyard.
KK
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I guess a even a MYNAHORITY parliament is a PITA for the bird wold also…… 🙁
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I see you’re a dedicated politics watcher there, KK. That does seem to be all that gets accomplished on both sides of the Pacific and the Atlantic too.
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Hi Roy
I mainly look at the “effects” of politics on my life and local area.
Very disappointing.
Was recently speaking to a Chicagoan, now living in Australia, who was based at Bear Cat. Assume he was at Ben Cat which we recently passed(about 15 miles away) while going out of SGN.
KK
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TdeF has it rained? Some years ago when I was there, water was in the streets (flat, only just above sea level and no drainage) and was advised never walk anywhere as the water could cause skin disease and you could come down with an infection that could kill you. Went most places in a motorised tricycle but the small diesel motor taxi were a revelation (clean & economical) Chennai used to be called Madras (of the curry fame)
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The rains are coming next month. Then you can swim to work. Meanwhile in some areas women are lining up to fill their buckets for drinking water. The place seems to be falling apart and the trash is amazing, lining the streets and canals. It may be a structural component of the city.
As for cleaner, efficient diesel, if VW have just taught us anything, engineers have swapped CO for NO and faked the results. (carbon monoxide for nitrogen monoxide) If BMW tests produce the same result, it is the end of diesel.
Diesel is just another slightly higher energy fraction from the original sludge we call oil. Higher compressions increase the efficiency along with temperature in any Carnot engine, but it increases the creation of NO, a far more deadly byproduct. This means HNO3 in water, nitric acid, even if that water is in your lungs. CO means carbonic acid, lemonade.
I doubt walking in the water here would do you any good, but pollutants from fossil fuels would be the least of the worries. Bacteria and viruses love humans. We are digestible.
So we in the West agonize over climate when half of humanity live like this, dreaming of fossil fuels. India must invest in Thorium power, as we should be doing. Carbon taxes are just indulgences and as much use.
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Do you have an idea of the actual problem of NO emissions from small Diesel, VW bug? Not the hype, but how that affects what in the country?
Used auto prices are dropping in the US. I wish to buy what the Porsche guys figured out how to do. 🙂
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“…an absurdity as everyone reading this is currently generating 3 tons of CO2 year by breathing.”
Breathing doesn’t generate CO2.
The CO2 you exale comes from
(1) CO2 in the air you inhaled.
(2) the carbon in the plants you eat, who took up carbon while growing, or in the animals you eat who themselves eat plants.
The proof: CO2 levels were basically constant for millennia before the industrial era, despite a great many people and animals breathing.
01
Proof?
Do you have that “proof”, or are you simply stating an opinion? Or perhaps you are indulging in the bandwagon fallacy, or to give you some creative credit; the fallacist’s fallacy. Which do you prefer?
Don’t bother replying to that question, I am simply making a passing observation regarding how bombastic you seem, in your knee-jerk response to a well developed hypothesis.
00
The data on atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Holocene are well known and widely available. Look them up.
10
But having data is not the same thing as having proof, is it David?
For one thing, there is the small matter of interpretation. People tend to see what they want to see, or what aligns with their hypothesis-du-jour. So if the data can be interpreted in a way that fits the fashionable hypothesis, it becomes a concensus of current opinion, I will grant you that. But a concensus is still not proof.
Einstein understood that. But apparently Appell does not.
11
The OP said humans generate CO2.
That is false.
[David, are you sure that what you wrote is what you mean? Humans most certainly do generate CO2. It is the byproduct of burning the hydrocarbon compounds we eat to produce the energy our bodies run on. The other byproduct is water. Do you need to go back to a basic human physiology text and bone up?] AZ
00
That’s wrong — our exhalation of CO2 comes from (1) the CO2 we inhale, and (2) carbon we eat from plants, and animals we eat, who themselves eat plants.
We recycle carbon, we do not generate any.
If we — and other mammals did generate CO2 — atmospheric CO2 concentration would not have have essentially constant during the Holocene, when trillions of mammals were breathing.
But it was, in fact, essentially constant.
00
David, are you trying to argue human bodies are carbon neutral because we dont eat coal or limestone, and only eat things that took the carbon from the sky?
Seems a bit nitpicky when we burn the coal to keep ourselves warm, and burn the oil to transport the food we eat (etc) but sure in a limited technical sense, we are carbon neutral like cows are.
In another sense when we burn coal we are just recycling carbon… 🙂
Your theory about the holocene is baseless speculation. Humans may have just replaced mega-fauna. Mammal biomass may remain similar. They breathe too? How would you know?
10
I’m simply saying that the OP was wrong — human respiration does not generate CO2. It recycles carbon, it does not create it.
If it did, atmospheric CO2 would not have been (essentially) constant during the Holocene, because untold trillions of mammals were breathing throughout it.
00
Endlessly repeating the assertion you made previously, still doesn’t constitute proof of anything.
It is your assertion of “a proof”, without any material evidence, that I am objecting to. You rely on a subjective circular argument, that is akin to the chicken and egg paradox. The problem is, that you cannot know what it is that you don’t know. You can have an hypothesis, but nothing more.
So your stating that something is “The proof: …” is ridiculous. Unless of course you were there at the time, and made empirical measurements, that could be independently corroborated.
10
Rereke: We know, from proxies, past atmospheric CO2 concentrations, especially during the Holocene.
This is such standard and accepted science I didn’t see the need to quote it. I still don’t.
10
Alas, no matter how much one tries to emphasize the issue, students never seem to remember the treatment of partial versus total derivatives in the one thermodynamics or stat mech course they are typically required to take. And they eventually forget about the equilibrium assumption that underlies everything they use, unless they specialize in statistical mechanics and are exposed to the vagaries of non-equilibrium.
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You cannot model the effects of increased radiative gases and hold all other climate variables constant, but this is just what the failed models try to do.
They typically try to invoke “immaculate convection” that does not alter speed in response to changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere. This gives the false impression that increased CO2 will cause near surface warming and high altitude cooling. The problem here is that the climastrologists are trying to write the known meteorology of “radiative subsidence” out of science.
Radiative subsidence is a critical component in maintaining strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation, the main transport of absorbed solar energy away from the surface. Warm air masses rise, then lose energy to space via LWIR and lose buoyancy and subside. You cannot model the effect of increased radiative gas concentration without modelling tropospheric convective circulation increasing in speed.
1717
That said, failure to model radiative subsidence correctly is not the most critical error in the Church of Radiative Climastrology’s modeling.
They have gotten the most “basic physics” of their “settled science” completely and utterly wrong. Empirical experiment shows radiative gases are not a positive forcing on near surface temperatures. Quite the reverse. Our radiatively cooled atmosphere is cooling the solar heated surface of our planet.
The most critical calculation which is the foundation for whole of the radiative GHE hypothesis is “average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere”. Climastrologists claim 255K for this figure and claim that radiative gases slow the radiative cooling of the surface raising this by 33K. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The 255K figure was derived by plugging 240 w/m2 into the Stefan-Boltzmann equation with emissivity and absorptivity set to unity. This effectively treats the oceans covering 71% of the planets surface as constantly illuminated, opaque to solar radiation and without convection.
But of course the Steffan-Boltzmann equation cannot be used to determine average surface temperature of intermittently solar illuminated liquid water that is free to convect. This would require empirical experiment or computational fluid dynamics. Because of their misuse of the Steffan-Boltzmann equation, climastrologists have a 80K error for 71% of the planets surface in the most critical “Average surface temperature without radiative atmosphere” calculation.
Our radiatively cooled atmosphere is cooling the surface from around 312K to 288K not warming it from 255K.
1120
Mass Transfer
Heat Transfer
And
Momentum Transfer.
You can’t ignore one or two whole sections and still have a MODEL>
KK
20
PUBLIC RELEASE: 24-SEP-2015
Scientists address potential Achilles’ heel in scientific study of climate change
“An important message came from this research, and that is that internal climate variability on decadal and longer time scales is so large that not properly accounting for it may lead to false estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing.” – C-.P. Chang, M. Ghil, M. Latif, and J. M. Wallace
With all the progress achieved in climate science today, two important challenges in understanding Climate Change remain:
1) How to delineate multi-decadal and longer time scales, when high-quality observational records available today only started being recorded and archived the last 100 years; and
2)How to separate variability due to anthropogenic forcing from natural variability?
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/ws-sap092415.php
20
Agreed,
Note my previous posting about how increasing CO2 must increase emission to space, assuming all else equal how can the stratosphere cool from this yet have the next layer down warmer without increasing total energy flow from surface to space thereby affecting the lapse rate. To have that happen the properties of the tropopause must change with respect to the rest of the atmosphere and that is non physical. So something else must happen!
This error is similar to the situation where multiple weather effects are claimed without regard to the energy consumption of the claimed effect eg the IPCC claim of 5 % more rain despite that costing about 5 watts per square metre, the partial derivative implies that temperature rise can be maintained simultaneous with the presence of 5 watts per square metre extra evaporation because evaporation is independent of temp ( part of all else being equal ).
The fact is in a real atmosphere all else is NOT equal
100
Bobl,
I always found it amusing how magic CO2 could cause enhanced evaporation from the oceans to produce increased water vapor, increased the frequency and severity of storms, produced higher energy and more frequent cyclones, melted large numbers of glaciers and caused ever-dwindling sea ice, caused more extreme weather events of every denomination, raised sea levels, caused significant thermal expansion of the oceans, heated the oceans at great depth, acidified the oceans, caused greater and stronger wave action, and all while CO2 caused heating of the near surface atmosphere to an alarming and unprecedented level.
It always seemed to me that this was an enormous amount of energy dispersed by a mere 0.6 watts per square metre, and seemed to suggest a lot of double and triple and quadruple accounting on the part of alarmist disciples.
What this post describes is the fact that the models are predicated on being inclusive of all these self same climate variables, the ones accounted for in the energy budget of the alarmists theoretical earth in such an unrealistic way, and seemingly to be held theoretically constant for the purposes of these models.
So there’s the rub, they are having it both ways, claiming all these effects but not accounting for them in their models so as to exaggerate the energy imbalance which by their own admission would be dispersed by the kinetic, chemical and physical work performed by this putative back-radiated energy from the Greenhouse Effect.
No wonder the missing heat is such a travesty, eh Bobl.
60
This has been my mainstay argument, that the energy of a small LED in a 1m2 10 km column of air, can cause all these effect (all of which consume energy) and still claim this energy warms the planet!
For example West antarctic melting costs about 15 Watts per square metre, but at that consumes all the energy (would be non causal) so at least 20W per squere meter is needed to cause the melting claimed by a well mixed gas that accumulates only 0.6W per square meter energy at the surface, add to that the IPCCs added evaporation costs 5W per square meter, total, 25. So far then we have +0.6W – 25 = -24.6 Watts per square meter energy flow from the climate into these effects over 2 million square km. 24.6 Watts more than the CO2 is accumulating – this is non causal, that is the energy required for the effects exceeds the energy available from the source.
Almost all the derivative science attributing effects to global warming suffer this problem – Why? Well 0.6W ( a small LED in a column of air of 10000 cubic metree 10km x 1m square) is such a piddling amount, your body heat alone is 360 times that at rest and VARIES by more than 200 times CO2 imbalance energy over the course of the day
There is no sense of scale in this debate, are you telling me seriously that the earth cannot dissipate the entirety of just 3.7W per square meter extra energy efficiently? Just 0.3% of peak insolation
Pull the other one, it plays jingle bells…
20
Oops -24.4W, got flu so head isn’t working well!
11
“Pull the other one, it plays jingle bells… “.
You should see the girls, after removing the mermaid outfit!! 😉
00
“are you telling me seriously that the earth cannot dissipate the entirety of just 3.7W per square meter extra energy efficiently? ”
A thought experiment.
Sun comes up feels warm in daytime during winter on occasion at our latitude.
Night time, no Sun but it is getting quite chilly.
Got that?
Now pretend that the Sun does not come up on schedule. Your cool night turns into a perpetual night until you freeze.
The only question is : How long will it take before th all residual energy is gone from your locality and you wind up as an icy statue looking for the Sun.
CO2 will not save you.
It’s the Sun.
In answer to your question Bob; yes the Earth can easily get rid of that energy and it does so very frequently at night.
KK
00
“In answer to your question Bob; yes the Earth can easily get rid of that energy and it does so very frequently at night.”
This is: Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments,and they wander off through equation after equation and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.” Nikola Tesla
31
The first two paragraphs explaining variables are easily understood by non-mathematicians such as myself – well done Jo! I always think that verbal explanations of the important points are essential, and this helps people to understand. Complex equations that only a mathematician can comprehend don’t help the general public.
There are parallels in other professions.
In my experience as a nurse many years ago, medical matters could easily be conveyed using a pencil, paper, and a diagram or two. A patient doesn’t need the anatomical and technical training of a surgeon to understand the essentials of their complaint, nor a knowledge of medical terms.
The difficulty to me seems to be that ‘climate change’ is a many-headed monster.
There’s a need for instantly and clearly obtainable material to counter each of the scares, such storms, acidification of the oceans, and so on. The scary ‘science’ monster is a well oiled machine, and every day there’s some nonsense in print.
As an example, here’s a sample from this week’s ‘Autocar’ magazine in the UK – according to the Ford Motor Company, ‘ increasing instances of extreme weather and deteriorating roads across Europe should see the 4×4 option becoming ever more popular’.
It seem that it’ll take a determined information counter-offensive to change things – full page advertisements in newspapers for example. And that needs money!
60
It also needs a honest MSM and that we have not seen in over a hundred years. J.P. Morgan and Assoc. bought out the important papers in the USA in 1915 for the express purpose of influencing public opinion.
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Andy Lacis, when confronted with the dynamic non-linearity of climatic elements, or partial derivatives, argument replied essentially that the derivatives were “near enough to be good enough”. From the viewpoint of practical outcomes, there is no point in reiterating that cyclic argument
AND:
Juxtaposing geology and divinity is gratuitously insulting and quite ignorant of geological science. Across any specified rock suite, there is almost an infinite variation in mineralogy, structure, stress, groundwater, gas, thicknesses, moduli and so on. Yet all need to be measured as best as may be done and estimated (modelled) for engineering purposes. Goal sentences may await those who deliberately fudge these requirements for profit or other motive – but I admit geological apostasy does not generally result in literally losing one’s head 🙂
30
“near enough to be good enough”. Maybe, but even in principle we cannot know because we cannot empirically verify the partial derivatives.
80
Yes, I wasn’t suggesting Lacis was correct, only that the standard NASA answer to the issue of partial derivates is just that – near enough is good enough. Attempting to revisit this will only draw scornful silence, I’m afraid
The issue of dynamic, non-linear elements, immeasurable but constantly re-combining in unknown (or at least unpredictable) proportions with unknown results is largely ignored in any case. Andrew Dessler constantly argues for an overwhelmingly positive and linear water vapour feedback. When Richard Lindzen pointed out the non-linear dynamics of feedbacks of unknown proportions, Dessler simply talked right past him – in the same lecture room debate
80
No, near enough is not good enough.
They are claiming that high positive feedbacks and runaway warming is possible, in this case small changes in forcing can cause large changes in atmospheric composition water content over very small temperature ranges. This would result in a a large change in the lapse rate. All things are not equal.
20
What I mean to say is that you can’t use partials and then claim tipping points based on those partials
30
OK, Ian, fair point. I was thinking of “oceanography” and “geography” but took those careers (geology and divinity) direct from the Climate Audit page summarizing the Wegman report that I linked too. It was a bit cheeky. No offense intended. But given the number of smart Geo’s that read here I will fix that.
FWIW: Held and Soden
Brian Soden
Professor of Meteorology and Physical Oceanography, RSMAS, University of Miami
Climate Change
Issac Held did an M.A in Physics at Stoneybrook, and a Phd in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at Princeton
40
Why is CO2 even of concern? Apart from little evidence of warming after coming out of a cold last 10,000 years (0.57C warming last 154 years and none in over 18 years) —-
And apart from the fact it is not a strong greenhouse gas —-
And apart from the fact warming is a GOOD thing even if it were happening —-
The anthropogenic load of CO2 in the atmosphere is less than 3.5%. It is a tiny proportion of what is already a trace gas—-
HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE OF RELEVANCE???
112
Ironically; the so-called “greenhouse gases” are the ones that cool the atmosphere. The other ones simply accummulate heat from the surface and tend to get very, very hot otherwise (assume an atmosphere made up of only N2 and O2).
Determining “boundary conditions”; the extremes that a system must satisfy; is one of the preliminary steps in Engineering (alas, often overlooked). Doing that often saves doing a lot of detailed analysis if the boundary conditions cannot be met. The classical; non-atmospheric, radiative model of Earth where a surface temperature is interpreted as a near-surface atmospheric temperature and then the discrepancy between theoretical and “measured” attributed to a single trace gas; is not useful as a boundary condition. One should, at the very least, give the planet an inert atmosphere with thermal capacity but lacking radiative (IR) capacity and then see what the theory predicts.
Theory predicts very, very hot temperatures akin to those of arid, flat desert region maximum temperatures on a still day.
Earth rotation somewhat lowers the near-surface temperature as conduction through the gas loses heat to the radiatively-cooled surface where/when insolation is less than radiation. The hotter gases remain more buoyant and therefore well above the surface. Absent cooling at higher altitude via “greenhouse gases” (or similar), vertical convection is only that of hotter gas rising from the surface that was heated by the sun. Such convection would be limited to low altitudes as the higher atmosphere would remain hot and more buoyant; unable to lose heat at a rate high enough to produce vertical convection.
40
“Absent cooling at higher altitude via greenhouse gases” (or similar), vertical convection is only that of hotter gas rising from the surface that was heated by the sun. Such convection would be limited to low altitudes as the higher atmosphere would remain hot and more buoyant; unable to lose heat at a rate high enough to produce vertical convection.”
The broad band emissivity of 120km of 78% N2, 21% O2, is sufficient for a very low temperature tropopause. How much higher temperature surface is unknown, and must remain as some untestable fantasy.
The whole CAGW mess, is academic meteorology purposefully blaming CO2 while knowing that to be false. This can no longer be claimed incompetence!!! 🙂
310
How could the higher atmosphere ‘remain hot and more buoyant’ in the light of adiabatic cooling as a parcel of air moves up the density gradient imposed by gravity ?
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” How could the higher atmosphere ‘remain hot and more buoyant’ in the light of adiabatic cooling as a parcel of air moves up the density gradient imposed by gravity ?”
Good old Stephen Wilde, with intent to confuse all, including himself, again offers such lawyerly tidbits:
He cannot/will-not define or explain higher, hot, buoyant, adiabatic, cooling, parcel, density, gradient, imposed, or gravity! Well done! any jury member is now asleep or dronk! 🙁
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Because the air that is notionally more buoyant due to surface heating loses the same “temperature” as the air already at that altitude. Conduction dominates heat transfer in gases while the buoyant forces are less than weight and viscous forces; so no natural (free) convection takes place. No volume displacement takes place if heat transfer is by conduction; i.e. heat is transferred more easily by conduction than by convection.
It’s a chaotic state. In the real world, a small perturbation in state may induce sudden convection in a small space where the viscous drag on proximate air produces a forced convection. You get e.g. “dust devils” in deserts triggered by micro-events; dare on say the beating of a butterfly’s wings?
00
“Conduction dominates heat transfer in gases while the buoyant forces are less than weight and viscous forces; so no natural (free) convection takes place. No volume displacement takes place if heat transfer is by conduction; i.e. heat is transferred more easily by conduction than by convection.”
Spontaneous vertical power transfer by conduction (delta T)is inhibited by gravity as is spontaneous mass transfer (delta P). Buoyancy (delta rho) is not not so inhibited. Positive buoyancy is generated both by molar mass change (evaporation) and/or heating (some molecules leave the volume).
EMR flux so far, seems unaffected by gravity, however some minor adjustments to apparent velocity may exist (unmeasurable, except by interference which is not necessarily velocity, ‘may be distance’).
011
Seriously? Thermal conductivity dependent on gravity? That makes no sense at all.
The thermal conductivity of N2 and O2 at 300K (and atmospheric surface pressure) are 0.0262 and 0.0268 W/m K, respectively. Conductivity improves as temperature rises and gets worse as temperature drops. The thermal kinetic model of temperature allows for molecular kinetics to transfer heat by collisions.; no bulk motion is necessary. The effects of gravity are negligible as the distance between molecular collisions is small (at 101.3 kPa).
Refer to the Nüsselt Number to determine if free convection is viable; the Nüsselt Number is based on the product of Grashof and Prandtl Numbers (also defined as the Rayleigh Number). The Prandtl number is the key “decider” for the material in question; being the dimensionless ratio of momentum vs thermal diffusivity; i.e. heat transfer by convection vs conduction. (Values of Pr for N2 and O2 are 0.713 and 0.709 respectively at the same condition)
00
Because the IPCC and their 97% of scientists say it is. And we can’t ask why when they say jump. We can only ask how high?
David’s exposure of their mathematical mistake will not move them. Neither will his solar theory. Their minds are made up and they can’t be bothered with such trifles as incorrect application of math or even the fact that their model doesn’t predict worth a tinkers you know what. There’s too much money, prestige, foolish pride and worst of all, power at stake.
00
Roy – “David’s exposure of their mathematical mistake will not move them.”
How do you know? You haven’t seen the exposure yet.
40
Now you’ve got me really intrigued…
Also, can you comment on how the peer review process is working on your paper?
Cheers,
Dave B
01
David-of-Cooyal: From the intro to the series:
40
Thanks David,
I had registered your earlier comment, but wondered whether you had received any updated estimate of a completion date of the peer reviiew since…
Cheers,
Dave B
10
David,
Of course I can’t know the future. But I have been through a lengthy history of their failure to be moved by the utter failure of their predictions to come true. This alone should have rung alarm bells long ago. And even when it did they persisted in trying to doctor data or the models to account for reality.
Jo’s original volume of The Skeptics Handbook was convincing about CO2. How many years ago was that?
00
Roy, from the intro (post 1):
The literature, posts, and general thinking on the establishment side frequently refers to the “basic physics” as the touchstone of their belief. They are obviously convinced of the dangers of CO2 because of the basic model (see here in post 3).
They are so convinced by the basic model that, for them, it overrides empirical evidence — they choose to doubt the evidence, not the theory.
You point out discordant empirical evidence, they think about the “basic physics”, then tell you that either your data is wrong or you have misinterpreted it or it doesn’t matter or …. we’ve all heard the list.
So Roy, empirical evidence has not swayed them.
In this series we point out the errors in their basic model. Not in the parameter values in the model — the usual (only?) point of attack by skeptics — but in the architecture of the basic model. There is a problem in the simplistic logic used to put together the basic model, and it applies to the GCMs too.
20
David,
Yesterday I was up against the deadline to get to a Sunday afternoon barbeque and some good music with the Old Time Fiddlers Association to which my wife and I belong (no we don’t play an instrument, we just love the music). But I wanted to say why I believe what I said is true. Today I have time to say several things, not that I haven’t said most of them before but I owe you a more complete statement about why I think as I do.
First, it’s in no way a judgment of you or your theory. I’m not qualified to be your judge. And frankly, when I saw your response to someone’s pointing out a flaw in your application of the Fourier Transform to the problem you tackled, you got my complete respect and confidence immediately.
Second, I’ve maintained for a long time that the problem is a political one, not a matter of science at all. There is too much prestige, power and money at stake for them to admit any fault or change their attitude. I conclude this from a long time of watching what’s going on. Frankly I wish I could believe I’m wrong about this but I’ve watched human behavior for too long to believe otherwise.
Third, Jo has exposed their faults over and over and the best they can do in response is to revise the severity of their predictions downward a bit and continue to beat reality with a hammer to get a nice round peg (reality) to fit into their awkward square hole (the theory you’re demolishing). All that sinks in is that they need to keep up the [self snip] about climate change while appearing to accommodate reality a little better. As you say, empirical evidence has not swayed them at all. They show no sign of having the resolve it takes to question their basic assumptions, their application of math to the assumed problem or anything else. Phil Jones was asking, where is the missing heat in some of the climategate 1 emails but seems never to have asked, is there really any missing heat or is the assumption wrong? By now I’m thoroughly convinced that the real science involved doesn’t even matter to them. The “reality” of AGW has taken on a life of its own and will not die until people wear themselves out worrying about this problem we don’t even have and finally quit paying attention to it. I don’t know how long that will take but I think it won’t happen just because you expose their mistakes in the model they hold so dear. I can hope I’m wrong about this but I’m hard put to believe I am.
In the meantime we have the model you’ve developed and we only need to wait and see what its predictive ability turns out to be. If you’re correct, that will finally be the proof that no one can ignore. At my age I’m not sure I can be around to see it happen but I’m going to do my doggone best to be here to see who has the last laugh about AGW.
00
Roy,
If AGW is to ever be brought down, the conventional basic climate model has to be shown to be wrong. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the demise of AGW.
If this series correctly shows the basic model is in serious error, then it will erode the belief in AGW among the scientists, which will eventually matter.
00
Roy, I hear you.
We need to battle on many levels, and this communication is the most high level, complex form — aimed at the scientific leaders on their side and the smart thinkers on ours.
In the long run, advancing science will be worth far more than all the political fog.
In a lot of ways we do this for the skeptical “team” — for ourselves. Because we are burdened with a need to be honest, we need to know and understand what we are talking about. If we can switch on the smartest layer and get them more passionate, clear thinking and across the flaws and alternatives, then we have achieved a lot. The smart layer is small in number but influential.
But absolutely we need the bumper stickers, the t-shirts, the cartoons as well, they reach the many. And we also desperately a need smart political strategy too.
00
Jo and David,
I stick around reading and learning from Jo Nova because I quickly learned that it was the single most worthwhile place on the Internet to learn and follow what’s going on. I keep reading and learning for the same reason you two keep going. No doubt in the end your work should prevail. But at this point it looks very much like a long protracted fight that as I said, can only end when climate change is worn out in the minds of the public and they quit paying attention to it from sheer boredom of hearing about it and not seeing the predicted problems. You country and mine are nations of people with little if any meaningful training in science, critical thinking and other necessary things required to catch on to the game being played, especially the young who are probably the most critical generation to convince. The same must be said for most of the world.
And yes, of course you have to keep this up just so it’s out there and visible when those who need it the most go looking for better information. I would be disappointed if you do anything but keep going. If you fight, you fight to win — a lesson from playing chess with friends so many years ago. It is an axiom among chess players that the game is won by the side that makes the next to last mistake. And therefore you keep fighting. But it applies equally to everything else.
00
PS:
If I turn out to be wrong you’re more than welcome to say, I told you so.
00
Why is CO2 even of concern? … HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE OF RELEVANCE???
…………….
It is a whip to drive people towards a totalitarian global state.
Lamy Also make it clear the EU was the template they tried out. link
I think the EU and the Soviet Union were two different experimental models tried out over the past 70 years. The hard line Communist model didn’t work well so the Soviet Union collapsed and China has modified to being closser to a ‘third way’ socialism.
60
Well if it is either cold war or hot war that is needed to help people stay focused I can think of a global hot war that is going to happen real soon. Well, it has already started but most Westerners (or at least our politicians) don’t see it yet…
70
well all models are wrong…that s not the problem with model, the problem is you don’t know how far a calculation is from reality… but well; that s not actually a problem for those who beleive models have some skills, because they assume circulation of fluids is a minor factor compare to “forcing”… and it is ok for me as long you say, it is an hypothesis and therefor you don’t know what the future will be… and having a bunch of models doesn’t much …
10
Interesting post about mathematics, but seemingly without a punchline for climate models. I might worry about this kind of thing for problems involving sudden phase transitions, or when walking near crevasses, when going East then North produces a different outcome to moving in both directions at the same time.
Still somewhat worried that the actual GCMs are not being discussed directly, the ones that solve the differential equations of thermodynamics, fluid flow and radiative transfer throughout the oceans and atmosphere.
30
I provide a specific climate model example in my post below. Dr. Evans is precisely correct and relevant.
50
At a constant speed, going East 5 minutes, then North five minutes will not take you to the same point on the Earth if you go NE for 10 minutes because it’s a sphere.
10
You know, there’s something about this that I really like.
The Maths is so far over my head, all I see are vapour trails, but the engine causing those vapour trails is what excites me.
Here we have someone who (quite obviously) knows what he’s on about, and instead of going with the establishment, he thumbs his nose at them. He’s also not part of a clique who has an inkling that something is not exactly kosher, but are absolutely scared witless that if they do say something they will be shredded by the establishment which goes along with it, which feeds off the money given to them, to support what has become something now entirely political in nature, both on the Science front and the actual political machine feeding them.
Why am I reminded of a slogan from a book I read ….. now three times.
“Who is John Galt?”
Dr. Evans. Congratulations Sir, and more power to you.
Tony.
170
The maths is fine and great for mechanical systems, even complex ones, but whether you can use such engineering models in a multivariate, complex and extremely thin and very turbulent system is unlikely. Basically in flying by jet, you will notice that the temperature at 10km is -60C. So the air is incredibly thin and there is precious little at 20km, the height of the Concorde where you can see the stars in a black sky.
Now add the monsoons, arctic vortexes, hurricanes, bushfires and volcanoes and that huge gas reservoir, the massive oceans which contain more air and specifically 50x as much CO2 as the atmosphere itself. It is in rapid exchange and plays a huge part in air temperatures.
So this modelling of a perfect static smooth gaseous only system alleged to have an acute sensitivity to one specific trace gas is just rubbish, except in tiny increments, maybe. We all know what a little rain can do to temperatures. In fact humans are slaves to the states of water from snow and ice to liquid to steam. The critical points of this one combustion byproduct dominate our lives.
The very conjecture that if CO2 increased 50%, temperatures would rise smoothly and simultaneously is not observed at all, so why do people insist it is true? Now that the evidence of 30 years of careful measurement is available, we have reached the point where the extreme single variable hypothesis is proven wrong,so people are to be intimidated, not convinced. Roll on Paris in December. We can only hope our new PM is not still a partner of those chief architects of the GFC, Goldman Sachs. If so, it will be time for the National Party to demand the return of straight talking and completely smarm free Tony Abbott.
131
So you think there is such a thing as an EX Goldman Sachs partner?. The folks who settled with the HIH receiver and Mal didn’t have to testify?
00
TdeF wrote:
“The very conjecture that if CO2 increased 50%, temperatures would rise smoothly and simultaneously is not observed at all, so why do people insist it is true?”
Who insists this is true?
I’ve never heard anyone say that temperature is a monotonically increasing function of monotonically increasing CO2. Ever.
10
Tony,
John Galt (Atlas Shrugged)should be essential reading, not so much for the solutions it provides as the problems that collectivism brings.
Guess I’ve read it 3 times now also.
60
Atlas Shrugged, 1984 and Animal Farm should be required reading to expose collectivism and the machinations of the political class to control everyone else.
60
They should be tied to a chair with their eyelids held open al la A Clockwork Orange.
20
Well said, Tony.
00
It’s over the heads of most of the people working on climate models. They just do stuff that “fits”; apply methods and equations that have the parameters available to them.
Understanding the limits of applicability of the mathematics seems to be the last of their concerns. They need pretty pictures and scary stories out of their climate models to get grants.
P.S.: FWIW: I also have to stand on a chair to reach those mathematics as I don’t use (or abuse) them regularly.
20
Thank you very much David & Jo for all your work. I am very much looking forward to the next installment. I will be most interested to hear how your work is being received and interpreted by ‘the establishment’.
80
In economic theory, the mainstream method is to build highly abstract models, holding everything constant except those factors under consideration. This has lead to many insights. But where economics has become unstuck is to forget that the insights are to an extent limited. This is particularly in the area of macroeconomics which deal with complex economic systems as a single entity.
David Evans is now discovering issues in climate models that would have been realized years ago if climatologists had drawn on the insights of studying complex systems in other fields where the underlying empirical relationships are constantly changing and for which we will always have very limited information.
100
Jo, David – are you planning on submitting this work for publication. The modelling community has to be confronted with these errors and forced to acknowledge them.
30
There needs to be comment on the “logarithmic effect’ and I just want to confirm that in my understanding of the Log effect, it is very real
and meaningful in relation to the very small part of the “greenhouse Effect” discussion that it relates to.
There are some physicists who say there is no point even considering CO2 on its own considering what
we know about the behaviour of gases.
All I am doing is responding to the claims about CO2 and that IF the heat absorption and transfer
mechanism for CO2 is to be analysed then we should do it accurately.
So, while the whole idea of CO2 controlling the atmosphere may be wrong I just want to comment on the
logarithmic effect.
My understanding is that CO2 absorbs in specific wavelengths and that water competes for some of this bandwidth.
Satellite readings show that a certain amount of the “expected” radiation at the top of atmosphere is “missing” and is presumed to have been absorbed by CO2.
The logarithmic effect derives from estimates of how much CO2 specific radiation would be absorbed if more CO2 was present in the atmosphere.
Adding more CO2 is estimated to produce increasingly smaller Gains in radiation absorption and this is the Log Effect.
Even now we are at a point where adding more CO2 is not going to absorb any significant amounts of outbound radiation so all this worry about doubling CO2 is physically a bit of a storm in a tea cup.
The behaviour of gases in a physical sense is never a mystery, it only becomes confusing when a million other factors are present as is the case of the Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere.
Until they quantify the “million other factors” involved in the Mass, Heat and Momentum balance of the
atmosphere, then warmers must be considered as deceitful scammers when they say that “CO2 controls the atmosphere”.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/#comment-1130422
KK
30
The logarithmic effect was touched upon by David in his 2nd post in the series and is also acknowledged and applied by the IPCC in their equation: ΔRF = 5.35xLn(C/Co) which gives us 3.7W.sq.m for a doubling of CO2 from 260ppmv to 560ppmv, or about 1C of warming.
I do feel that the explanations in this series have probably been overly-complicated for general readership so I’ll attempt to simplify things if that’s okay. To understand the direct effect of CO2 and the resultant feedbacks all we would need to really know are three equations.
This one
ΔRF = 5.35xLn(C/Co) (The direct effect of CO2 without feedbacks)
Which can be converted into a predictor of temperature increase with the S-B law as follows
ΔT = {[σT4 + 5.35Ln(C/Co)]/σ}1/4 – T (Applying this equation gives about 1C of warming from 3.7W/sq.m at the radiating temperature of 255K)
And this one
ΔT = λxΔRF (The feedback inclusive temperature increase after feedbacks have taken effect)
The ‘λ’ in the equation is known as the ‘climate sensitivity parameter’ (different paramaters can be prescribed depending on the feedbacks that one wishes to use) and a typical value is about 0.75 (otherwise known as the ‘Hansen Factor’) although Wikipedia gives a value of 0.8 here.
Thus we get a feedback inclusive temperature increase of 3.7×0.75 = 2.8C.
The first two equations Jo and David accepts, it is only the feedback equation that boosts the warming from 1C to almost 3C that they disagree with.
40
Hi Richard
I think if you have been reading my current posts they are disconnected from the actual work by David so I was not commenting on those items.
What I was responding to in a sense was this post:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/09/new-science-4-error-1-partial-derivatives/#comment-1747979
As you say: “the explanations in this series have probably been overly-complicated for general readership”.
I found that too but as previously explained David is going through the incorrect IPCCC Models from a mathematical view point.
A number of us have been concerned that the exercise has shown the classic Warmer Model, which we believe to be faulty.
Hence my other posts.
When I did models many decades ago we used diagrams to show the relevant factors at each stage of function of the system
I don’t believe that any of the modelers( except perhaps the Russians) have looked much past CO2 for the same reason that temperature records are being homogenised by BOM.
Laying out the interactive process is imperative otherwise you get lost.
In the case of warmer models we are being “lost” deliberately so we wont be able to work out that the models, don’t wok, can’t work and never will work.
KK
10
The feedbacks are progressively negative; S-B shows for instance that a 50C rise in temperature has a different change in radiated energy depending on the current value.
From 200K-250K radiated energy increases from 91-222 W/m^2 – an increase of 131 W/m^2.
From 300-350K radiated energy increases from 459-851 W/m^2 – an increase of 392 W/m^2.
Hurrah for T^4.
Very little is either constant or linear in nature.
62
KK,
After so many years of following this global warming fantasy I began to wonder if CO2 in the atmosphere could even do as they claim. It’s a far cry from what you can measure in a closed container of CO2 in the laboratory to what might be happening in the atmosphere which is so much more complicated. If CO2 can do anything at all its effect must surely be lost in the measurement noise. And to top it all off, the measurable absorption characteristic is indeed logarithmic and we’re already at a point where it can’t possibly do enough to be harmful. Log x to any base is “close” to asymptotic as x increases and we’re already well into the nearly flat part of the curve.
I have never understood worrying about the stuff once I understood what the ruckus was all about. Water vapor has more effect than CO2 but no one worries about water — perhaps because they can’t find an excuse to blame it given a planet nearly 3/4 covered with it.
20
Don’t laugh Roy.
Next year water really may become the target.
KK
30
KK,
These days I’m not laughing at all. Here in California water is a serious problem already, albeit for a different reason.
If you aren’t being hit from your right you’re being hit from your left. Life offers no rest, not only for the wicked but no rest for anyone.
10
KK You say
“My understanding is that CO2 absorbs in specific wavelengths and that water competes for some of this bandwidth.”
Does it not follow therefore that in the absence of CO2 as a competitor ,that water would absorb all the bandwidth of those specific wavelengths?
Would it not follow further then that CO2 is an irrelevance?
00
The biggest mistake that main stream scientists made in assessing the initial Global Warming claims was related to trust.
Scientists generally are entitled to assume that other scientists will adhere to a certain basic level of analysis, measurement and assessment and reporting.
Scientists assumed that the discussion on the micro mechanics of CO2′s part in Global Warming had been legitimately isolated as the controlling factor but have now discovered two things.
Their trust in Climate Scientists was seriously MISPLACED and that the behaviour of CO2 was the ONLY factor analyzed, not the final one.
The vast engineering problem of Atmospheric Temperature had not been touched at all.
This crap must rank alongside other famous green messes like NO Dams and No Backburning.
Social disruption at its finest.
KK
Look at the mess they have created.
61
Chaotic is a term and that’s all.
In modelling it probably shouldn’t be used except as a descriptor for situations that cannot be modeled.
Anyone who says they have created a model to deal with the entire Earthian atmosphere is stupid and there is no other way to describe it.
Anyone who has done modeling knows that you must define and quantify ALL relevant factors.
The fact that Climate Modelers spouted out about the results of their models before doing this shows how useless they are.
Until Climate Science allows itself to be “helped” by mainstream physicists, chemists and engineers there will be no credibility to the
attempt to model what I believe to be the UN-MODEL-ABLE.
There are too many input factors and many of the major ones, like orbital mechanics, have been totally and deliberately excluded.
A search for truth?
Don’t think so.
KK 🙂
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/#comment-1132950
30
The climate system will remain insufficiently deterministic for successful, physical modelling. By “insufficiently deterministic” I mean that the states of the components of the systems cannot simultaneously be know so that an exact physics can be applied to determine the future states. The inaccuracy in determining the states combines with the non-linear couplings of components so that the “deterministic errors” rapidly approaches the magnitude of the ranges of the variables describing the states. The results are inherently chaotic.
Further, the order in which one calculates such systems and their interaction also produces different results when the components are coupled. e.g. Applying change X to initial component A and change Y to coupled-component B, will produce a different result to applying Y to initial-state B and then X to coupled-A. Computations are not like the real world. Numerical analysis is fraught with limits of representation such as rounding and, significant for finite-element analysis, with small differences in iterations being smaller than the measurable accuracy of the physical quantity being represented. i.e. the results tend to disappear into the background noise.
100
“The results are inherently chaotic.”
“i.e. the results tend to disappear into the background noise.”
OK. I’ll pay both of those.
🙂 KK
30
Hi Richard
Had a look at the Model Description and I can see why you are so excited about it.
My basic approach to this has been not to bother looking at what the models do because I figured there
was no way anyone could build a model that would relate CO2 levels to Atmospheric temperatures.
I still believe that.
But looking at the range of factors that the Russians have tried to quantify in their No 4.0 it is
astounding. It’s a shame that Global Climate Modelling has been caught up in the Global Warming via CO2
thing because the model described is of great interest and value just on its own even without the
millstone of CO2 having to be carried along with it.
Having Pressure estimates related to wind speed and air temperature may even be useful for routing
passenger aircraft or ocean cargo vessels to avoid headwinds etc.
It may even be useful for farmers when a prolonged drought has occurred in the past they have just waited
it out; often with very damaging results for mental health and well-being.
Reasonably solid predictability may be used to guide people off the land for the 10 or 20 years of drought.
My comments are raw and not very accurate but I would hope that Governments would fund research into
Climate for its own sake and just leave the CO2 aspect as a predictor of potential crop growth and yield.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/#comment-1140737
KK 🙂
30
I hate to be a wet blanket, but I don’t find this post very satisfying.
Sure, I’ve puzzled over related issues. A popular definition of “forcing,” for example says it’s the radiation imbalance before anything but the subject variable, such as CO2 concentration, has changed–except that the stratosphere had somehow adjusted. But saying that there could be problems with the partials doesn’t establish that there actually are.
It would help to consider a particular partial and assign at least hypothetical numbers so we could get some sense of how likely it is that this error makes a difference. At least this reader is uncomfortable at the post’s level of abstraction.
21
Partial derivatives of dependent variables introduce unknown errors, that cannot be determined empirically, even in principle. Hardly a good way to model something.
It would be nice to avoid partials where possible, and in particular to avoid the heavy reliance on the Planck sensitivity. Our alternative model, later in the series, achieves this.
130
Fair enough, I suppose; I guess my impatience at the baby steps is poking through.
I just hope the punch line doesn’t prove disappointing.
20
I’d be amazed it you were disappointed by the punchline at the end of this series.
You might quibble with how we got there, ‘cos we’re not perfect, but we’re pretty confident.
60
Joe
An alternate approach:
IF CO2 could “cause” Global Warming.
At the core of the issue of the models is the claim that human origin CO2 causes Global Warming.
There is a very simple logical analysis that can be done to show something important.
Try this.
The so called man made – industrial age heating from 1860 is about 0.6 C deg.
The claim by warmers is that it was man made and that it is the proof that we are able to cause Catastrophic Global Warming.
It is not, as the following may show.
Some things to consider.
About 95% 0f the total greenhouse effect is water so this accounts for 0.57 C deg of the total change.
CO2, the other major player, is responsible for the other 0.03 C deg of Dangerous “Warming”.
But, human origin CO2 is only about 4% of all atmospheric CO2 so the human input, if this mechanism was real, is 0.0012 C deg.
We cannot even measure that change in temperature.
Blame water, but don’t blame mankind.
Blaming human origin CO2 has no quantitative basis even if the above mechanism was real and was the only mechanism at work.
There is no scientific basis for the CAGW scare.
As a side note, the freeze that bottomed in 1860 was no doubt caused by Solar variation or orbital variations; Not lack of CO2.
KK
30
Keith,
It gets even more interesting than that.
Ice cores from the Freemont Glacier show ‘abrupt climate change’ from Little Ice Age cold to Modern Warming warm in the ten years around 1850 — Naturally, without any help from my SUV.
Dr. Evans Solar Notch-Delay Theory predicts a delay of about 11 years from a change in solar conditions to a change in earth climate.
So what happened around 1840? Solar Cycle 8. It began in November 1833 with a smoothed sunspot number of 7.3 and ended in July 1843. Max sunspot number ~210. The prior Solar Cycle 7,began in May 1823 with a smoothed sunspot number of 0.1 and ended in November 1833. Max sunspot number ~105. And thus began the Grand Solar Maximum, highest in 3,000 years which has just ended.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycles1_24.png
In the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.” Their reconstruction of solar activity displays several “distinct features,” including several “well-defined Grand minima of solar activity, ca. 770 BC, 350 BC, 680 AD, 1050 AD, 1310 AD, 1470 AD, and 1680 AD,” as well as “the modern Grand maximum (which occurred during solar cycles 19-23, i.e., 1950-2009),” described as “a rare or even unique event, in both magnitude and duration, in the past three millennia.”
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V17/N32/Usoskinetal2014b.jpg
PAPER: Usoskin, I.G., Hulot, G., Gallet, Y., Roth, R., Licht, A., Joos, F., Kovaltsov, G.A., Thebault, E. and Khokhlov, A. 2014. Evidence for distinct modes of solar activity Astronomy and Astrophysics 562: L10, doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/201423391.
Also SEE: A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And in further news from Royal Astronomical Society (RAS):
“Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to ‘mini ice age’ levels: Sun driven by double dynamo.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 July 2015.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150709092955.htm.
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences finds that Arctic sea ice extent at the end of the 20th century was more extensive than most of the past 9000 years. The paper also finds that Arctic sea ice extent was on a declining trend over the past 9000 years, but recovered beginning sometime over the past 1000 years and has been relatively stable and extensive since.
http://research.bpcrc.osu.edu/geo/publications/mckay_etal_CJES_08.pdf
Mother Nature is just not cooperating with the Climastrologists theory.
20
Hi Gai
From all that it seems that we may be on the verge of going back to the 1750-1850 event.
I have not been able to get my head around David’s notch theory but should go back and retry.
KK
10
The notch-delay theory has been revamped — simpler, all known problems resolved, more powerful, less mathematical in presentation — and will be shown towards the end of this series of posts. We tie it into the alternative model, which builds on top of the conventional basic model after it has been fixed.
The previous exposition stands, except that a notch does not necessarily imply a delay — it seems that this erroneous belief was a lucky accident that led us to find the delay, which we can now show by other means.
30
Thanks David
I now have the beginning of what the notch is but still remain confused. Will go into it more after resting my brain a bit
KK
10
Perhaps that’s what’s missing from the analogy.
The blanket needs to be wet, as fluffy clouds are.
Wet blankets are much worse insulators(or better conductors of heat) than dry ones.
(That’s not to say anything about their radiative absorbing properties.)
20
More blasts from the past roughly on topic, well at least 97%
The sooner we divorce the United Nations Tumor the better.
It does no good in the World and sucks cash out of us to be used looking after diplomats in New York hotels at $2,000 per night.
If the UN was real, it would take over Somalia and install a UN administrator and save the 400,000 Somali people presently starving under their watch in refugee camps.
Like many charities in the Compassion Industry it follows the 80 20 rule; 80% of funding goes to admin costs (hotels, flights, secretaries etc) and 20% goes to the actual deserving target.
————————-
Ferdinand at 178.
I started to read the section re 175 and gave up.
Do You understand that what you are writing is scientific Gobbledegook?
Isotope ratios studies can be useful BUT only in the hands of a skilled engineer.
Lets sort the problem
1. Energy arrives from the Sun. We need to hold on to it. We wont survive without it.
2. Escape of this energy back to space can be delayed for a short time and this helps keep us warm.
3. Some of the energy is stored in chemical bonds in life forms on earths surface eg people, dogs, cats and lions. Vegetative matter is a good storage vehicle since it can be saved for use when we have our next ice age; we can burn it as wood or coal or oil.
4. The main danger to Earth is Global Cooling and NOT Global Warming. Earth floats in a Vacuum at minus 273.16 Celsius Deg.
5. CO2 will never lead to run-away-man-made-Global-Warming.
SORRY that’s the science..
I do, however, respect your right to follow any religious ideology that you choose – all of us need some sort of comfort in this harsh world and if you get that sense of oneness from the Church of Global Warming then I would never deny you that.
MFJ http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/breaking-australian-carbon-tax-legislation-released/#comment-412102
KK
31
KK your referencing of past posts and comments is very useful, it also reminds me of how search engines/functions on other websites are very handy to find answers for FAQ’s specific to the sites genre, often in those results the phrase “use the search button!” is one of the first responses and while some regulars may tire of the same questions there are variations that may alter the usual answer.
It also makes me think of this climate saga and the myriad of directions it has taken, from the consensus driven “use the settled science search button!” camp to the “answers are information needing more questioning” camp that won’t submit to a one size fits all explanation.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” Einstein nailed a large part the human psyche right there.
21
Yonnie .
After you wrote this I began thinking if there was better way of searching : I put my “Kinky” name plus Jonova plus a few relevant words into Google .
The search brings me some Jonova threads as options.
Not being very smart sometimes, I had failed to notice the Jonova internal search engine which seems to do very well.
You live and learn
🙂
KK
20
I have failed to notice it as well. Can you give directions?
20
Peter
Type in a few key words, top RH corner and then hit the comments button just below.
KK
20
Ditto
How long has that been there?
Thanks KK for the tip!
20
“4. The main danger to Earth is Global Cooling and NOT Global Warming. Earth floats in a Vacuum at minus 273.16 Celsius Deg.”
Earth does not float in a vacuum. A vacuum does not have a temperature. Temperature is only an expression of thermal expansion of mass. Temperature has no physical meaning.
You claim “Unicorn horn has straight flutes”.
I claim “Unicorn horn has spiral flutes”.
Those that think they know, will demand ‘peer reviewed articles’ as proof! 🙂
310
Will True .
My Error which appeared in this older post; has since been corrected to minus 271.56 deg C.
Just as long as both of our Unicorns actually have horns we are OK.
And I was only using the term “floats” because we were looking at a simplistic analysis of energy.
The Earth is actually held very strongly by gravitational forces and is quite disturbed by that experience.
KK
13
Ferdinand @ 201
I have a B.Sc. in Metallurgical engineering (earned some very long time ago and also a more recent BSc with Neuroscience, Psychology, Psychobiology majors and Stats.
The difference in our University experiences is probably the I did Geology as a compulsory.
Geology puts perspective on our Planets Mass, Heat and Momentum Transfer functions.
The stats is important in allowing perspective on correlation claims.
As to saving the human race I feel insulted by your inference that I don’t care. I love the bush, I love trees and abhor politician who preside over rampant chemical pollution of our world.
That said, CO2 is not a pollutant, does no real harm and cannot lead us to annihilation.
Maybe you could look at some more ideas on the real science of MM AGW. There are lots of good books, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter to start with.
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/07/breaking-australian-carbon-tax-legislation-released/#comment-412418
kk
41
Well written and well explained and actually quite like a gripping thriller but why, oh why, do you insert crappola like this?
It significantly reduces the perceived integrity of the piece.
18
Hi Gee – that was part of Jo’s intro, not part of David’s piece. Got to say it made me chuckle, though. 🙂
80
David,
It seems to me that you are engaging in voodoo science here. I suspect that your idea of a model is a spreadsheet approach where you assemble an algorithm cluster that you believe describes your experiment then you adjust variables to see what the effect is on parts of your test “subject”. This is the approach that one would use in determining the performance of a simulated electronic circuit. To that end you have looked at calculating partial variables and tree dependencies, and it has all become unmanageable.
Climate models do not work that way at all, as I understand it. Climate models are iterative. In engineering we use finite element analysis, a process that calculates operative outcomes based on the chain effect of vectors. Climate models perform iteratively in a cellular finite space fashion but for huge numbers of variables. The smaller the cellular space the greater the accuracy of the model. This is the only approach that works in a complex chaotic system as all dependencies are time based.
I guess we will see what you come up with, but if it is something that you are performing on your home computer, it can at the very best be a crude fudge.
19
Its gone a bit above you hasn’t it Bill. Read the post again.
David built the National Carbon Accounting Model that won the Eureka Prize of 2008. The press release was titled “Eureka! Carbon Modellers win top prize”.
Coincidentally, David appeared on 60 minutes as a skeptic the same month, and the prize named all the “researchers” and none of the modelers. ;- )
111
I’m not doubting David’s abilities, Jo, I’m questioning his methods. The carbon accounting model is an extremely light ended result when weighed against modeling the planet’s climate, and resulted in products such as this
https://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/greenhouse-gas-measurement/land-sector
5 megabyte program to assist in calculating emissions of various kinds. We are giving David the benefit of the doubt for the time being. But in order to achieve credibility the outcome of David’s “research” will need to be able to predict term climatic events, in advance, not just speculations of what might happen 30 years or a hundred years off. Climate modellers do indeed make long term projections, but their credibility is based on their ability to track near term events with reasonable accuracy.
Reliable accurate prediction of near term climate events is the least that we would expect from a superior climate modeller with superior knowledge, so let’s see how your David performs at this level.
27
Hey BilB, FullCam had a quarter of million lines of C++ code when David left.
Here’s some Bill-logic: the planet is bigger than Australia “therefore” the climate model is bigger than the carbon model. This is kindergarten reasoning.
FWIW Fullcam used a 25m x 25m size grids across the continent. The climate models are more like 100km. I’m not saying it’s “bigger” just that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Can’t wait for the day you hold your so-called scientists to the same standard you apply to real ones.
61
Do you really want to go down this path, Jo? What David achieved was admirable, no doubt and you are justifiably proud. But if you are going to use that achievement which was a team event as you say above to denigrate climate modellers and claim some kind of superiority of knowledge then you are going to be torn to shreds. A quarter of a million lines of code is very little in the grand scheme of things. I generate programmes larger than that to machine 3D parts on my machining centres, for instance. Most of that FullCam code is involved with formatting less than a third is to do with actual computation. In terms of the grid size there are 49,000 125 square meter grid squares per line of code, so each line of code doesn’t have much connection with each square individually. It is a programme that takes data about land cover from a variety of sources then performs a series of computations based on known properties of carbon in various land structures. As I said it is predominately an algorithm to process data and deliver a report in various forms for land users including the crown. for all of the potential complexity that could be built into such a programme, it is still only a tiny measure of the computational complexity of a climate model. I was just looking up the CMIP5 project to see what was involved in that, and from what I can see it is a huge undertaking. I am looking forward to forcast and hindcast comparisons between David’s new model, CMIP5 (and others), and the real environment. Good Luck.
35
Bill says: Do you really want to go down this path, Jo?
You mean, do I want to keep publishing Bil-the-anonymous’s ignorant remarks despite the fact that he contributes almost no insight, and doesn’t have the honesty to ever admit he was talking nonsense? Fair question. As long as it doesn’t waste too much of my time.
I was responding to Bill, who said: “…you are engaging in voodoo science here.”
I showed you are full of bluster, here to toss mindless insults without either honesty or integrity.
81
BilB,
No matter how the climate models are done, they provably do not work. And they don’t work because even their short term climate predictions disagree with measurements. If a model models a fantasy rather than reality it’s nothing but wasted time and energy, not to mention billions of dollars.
You would come off much better if you read what Dr. Evans has to say, ask questions if you need to and then, like the rest of us, wait patiently to see how that model actually performs.
110
BilB, you are half right. The GCMs are variants on FEA models. They use numerical methods and parameterizations where The computational intensity prevents numerical methods. But in principle they are computing exactly what Dr. Evans is describing. And having studied the publicly available technical notes to NCAR CAM3 (now evolved to CAM 5) I can assure you they are computing feedback/ forcing partial differentials by element. Read NCAR TN-464+STN (2004). The detailed guts of a major CMIP3 model. So from a formal math/logic analytic, the compact form which has been laid out is a precise generalized description.
130
I’ve no doubt, Rud, that computations are calculating partial derivatives of say x and y with respect to u and v, and that may seem to require holding other factors fixed, but I would expect that the parallel computation is for y and z with respect to v and w, along with every other factor for a given cell. Those results are passed through to adjoining cells, recalculated a number of times until the change nears zero, then the entire system rolls forward to the next unit of time and the process is iterated. Then the feed backs are applied and the entire system model is run again, as many times as it takes until the model definition has reached the maximum for the cell size. It takes a very big mainframe to pull off such a calculation in a timely fashion. Looking at individual computational elements will not reveal much about the outcome without a clear understanding of the computational process as well.
A friend of mine pioneered this computational approach for commercial dealings with as many as 24 variables, very long deal durations, variable scheduled factors, and multiple currencies, back in the 70’s using APL programming language (a kind of computational shorthand). Naturally he creamed the competition who were stuck with using complex fixed algorithms which could not possibly cope with the highly variable nature of the deals being evaluated.
You just cannot “dumb down” these computations, but analytical techniques would hold key factors static for a run to determine their importance to the entire system. I suspect that David is miss interpreting such process runs as being the approach for the final computed conclusions.
07
I keep telling myself I won’t reply to you but then along comes something like this. So…
Spoken like a true believer. I’m really proud of the way you stick to your guns in spite of being so obviously wrong.
If you think David has it wrong then isn’t it incumbent upon you to describe the final computations as they are really done in enough detail that we can all understand them better? After all, David has agreed that the parameters used are as the IPCC says they are. And funny thing about that… …the results are wrong compared with reality.
Have a great day.
01
Leading-in to this with talk of partial derivatives might make it a lot less accessible for most readers.
I have been trying to follow David Evans’ work, and it has been a great delight to see it, and to get this new update. ‘Good on yer, mate’, as I think you say down under.
But is the primary problem here the ignoring of interaction effects between factors influencing dependent variables. When Y = AX1 + BX2 +CX1X2, to give a simple example, the partial derivative of Y wrt X1 is given by A + CX2, where X2 is a second factor. If X2 varies appreciably during some period, then clearly that will change the value of the partial derivative during that period. Treating X2 as constant, or worse, assuming the partial derivative is just given by A, would be misleading.
As any statistically-trained engineer will know, interaction effects can be hard to pin down without carefully designed experiments, and they can also play havoc with systems in which their effects have been unknown or presumed to be negligible. If such effects are being ignored in GCMs, then that is a very serious problem given the known interactions amongst all sorts of factors in the climate system.
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I’m reminded of what one of my staff once told me in complete jest – “This is hard – let’s do it wrong”. We did it right, of course, and yes, it was hard. The subject was Y2K preparedness, and it was hard because could never be sure of our thoroughness or that our compliance criteria were complete or even accurate. It was chaotic – like climate. Unlike climate alarmism, our event clock stopped ticking at midnight after which we could analyze our effectiveness. Alarmism is more like a fear of goblins in the closet – even though goblins don’t exist it is easy to predict they will emerge from the closet some day – conveniently not in any mortal’s lifetime, but you’ll see, just you wait… Really. No model doesn’t predict it!
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For goodness sake, dp, there is no comparison between Y2K and climate models. Anyone with knowledge of embedded microcontrollers had no real fear of the millenium rollover, on the one hand, and the level of preparedness on the other hand certainly captured the handful of real event risks in advance. Of course it was a non event. For starters the risk was miniscule, and then awareness captured those situations where there was a potential failure.
However, had the skeptical approach been taken, “why spend money on a minor risk”, then the outcome could very well have been different. This is why skeptics are being ignored. “why spend money on CO2 abatement when it is only .04 % of the atmosphere?”. With climate there is a very huge proven risk that that tiny part of the atmosphere (a clock in a microcontroller is a very small part or its features) which only decisive action will deliver a Y2K outcome.
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David,
I like your approach.
Don’t know if you are aware of the field of “Transport Phenomena”. It is typically taught in a Chemical Engineering degree program as a “unifying course” that pulls together heat and mass transfer principles within complex systems.
The course book I used back in the 1970’s was by Bird, Lightfoot and Stewart. I think it is still in press, I found it at Amazon.ca, http://www.amazon.ca/Transport-Phenomena-R-Byron-Bird/dp/0470115394
The knowledge I gained from this course, and later applied as an engineer, is the reason I have had, and continue to have, zero faith or trust in the GCM’s. I do mean zero from fundamental principles and not just the displayed empirical model failures.
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I still have my copy of “Bird, Stewart and Lightfoot” but never open it.
It just reminds me of my education and past life.
KK
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This is most certainly correct. A huge core model problem.
A specific climate model example is Lindzen’s adaptive infrared iris (2001 paper), which has to do with cirrus and water vapor feedback. When newly added to a climate model, lowered model sensitivity halfway to energy budget observational. For a full discussion with reference links, see my and Judith Curry’s complementary posts on this at Climate Etc. on May 26, 2015.
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In order to convey the complicated interdependence of the climate variables, the following graphic may be of some use. I believe it is originally from Dr. Tim Ball, who got it from a textbook.
Obviously the variables are not independent, which makes taking partial derivatives problematic. However, it may be the case that the variables depend only “slowly” on each other. In which case, it may be a reasonable approximation to assume that some can be regarded as constant while others are varied.
The proof, of course, is always in the pudding. The pudding, in this case, is the output of the computer models. The divergence between the output and observations means that something about the pudding is dodgy. Investigating the assumptions underlying the partial derivatives may bear fruit (or better pudding).
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Unfortunately, the graphic did not come out. The URL is
[Edited to make the image work. Commenters who can’t put in images should post the url and email support AT joannenova.com.au so the mods or I can make it work. — Jo]
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Nice chart. Does not explain much.
Estimates are that Atmospheric Navier-Stokes partials would number 200 with less than 10 independent variables. 100 years for one solution using all combinations of all computers. 🙂
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good
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So, if the “kernel” of the climate system can’t be modeled analytically, using partial differential equations, then even this “simple” piece would have to be modeled using numerical methods.
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The model I analyzed in detail (NCAR CAM3) does use numerical methods. But the large grid scale imposed by computational constraints means those methods also fail, and parameterization is substituted. The parameterizations are wrong because the anthro/ natural attribution cannot be resolved for at least another 30 years. See my recent guest post on models at WUWT for specific illustrations. Essay Models all the way Down. In my ebook has additional examples beyond the simple WUWT critique of grid scale.
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Hi Rud, I appreciate the difficulties here.
One other point is that to have any chance at all of creating even a simple model, one must understand how the previously supposed independent variables influence one another.
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By parameterization, I assume you mean an approximation was used. Parameterization is used in multi-variate calculus and is a valid technique.
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Model parameterization is a bit different. Let me give you Lindzen adaptive infrared iris/Eschenbach tStorm regulator eample. Tropical thunderstorms are convectiins cells physically obeying Navier Stokes partial differential equations. They move latent heat of evaporation into the upper troposphere, where the temperature lapse rate causes water/ice comdensation. The freed laten heat,is,higher, so has an eqsierr time escaping to space. Thatmos a GHG negative feedback. Some of the condensed water falls as precipitation. That lowers troposphere water vapor positive feedback is another negative feedback. The resolution at which numerical merhods can begin to compute these things (simple TStorm convection cells) from first primciples is on the order of 1.5-4 km. UK Met’s newest regional weather model is 1,5 km, out for a couple of days only. Due to computational contraints on climate models the best feasible in CMIP5 is 110km. Impossibly gross. So instead of a calculatd simulation, the big grid cell used a ‘guess’ as to the ‘average’ TStorm result for the much bigger area. That guess is a parameterization. Exact Illustrations, plus discussion of how those parameter guesses are actually made (with references), in my recent guest post on models at WUWT.
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If I understand correctly the posited mechanism of CO2 warming, I don’t understand how temperature sensitivity to CO2 can be a log function of CO2 concentration. There’s only so much electromagnetic energy in the relevant band to reradiate, so it seems like the curve of climate sensitivity as a function of CO2 concentration should have an upper limit. Once more than 50% of the relevant energy is reradiated, how can the warming effect double again as CO2 increases? What am I missing?
Thanks for any help you can provide.
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It never saturates af an upper limit because the effective radiating surface can always rise higher in the atmosphere. That creates a larger but colder effective surface.
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… and the concept of TOA ?
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Top of atmosphere is far above the statistical mechanics layer where the average ‘statistical mechanics’ ‘fog’ clears. It is something above the layer at the ‘top of atmosphere’ where none of this matters any more. Roughly 150 KM up. Although that still matters for stuff like drag orbital decay. Read up more, please.
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You be more accurate with your statements ! And less boring with your vanity, thank you
End of Story, the “effective radiating surface” has a finite and measurable limit
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David L. – see http://www.chemguide.co.uk/analysis/uvvisible/beerlambert.html
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jim2 September 27, 2015 at 10:07 am
“David L. – see http://www.chemguide.co.uk/analysis/uvvisible/beerlambert.html”
If you try to run an absorption spectrometer with the radiant source at the same temperature as the gas, what kind of absorption do you measure? Do the absorption lines ever appear? This is what this Earth’s atmosphere is doing!
A CO2 molecule absorbing a 14.6 micron 0.07ev, wavelet, absorbs that 0.07 ev, increasing its elongation rate and temperature by 1/10^20 kelvins. Yet a 2 meter column of dry atmosphere at 101kPa, 273, Kelvin atmosphere
would have a spectral radiance at 14.6 microns that matches the Planck 273 Kelvin curve at that wavelength. Just what is being absorbed?
All the best! -will-
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How does this compare to Christopher Essex’s talk where he showed a real green house with radiation a calculable variable and convection held to zero by the glass on the greenhouse roof. And then he showed the atmosphere with the escaping radiation being limited by the green-house effect with convection not being held to zero and being incalculable because Naiver-Stokes equations describing convection are not generally solvable? Does this pretend partial differential solution just a way of pretending that they can solve the Naiver-Stokes equations even though they can’t?
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The folk at both MIT, and CalTech; are trying to solve the compressible fluid continuum dynamics of a spinning sphere with a gravitationally contained atmosphere! So far by carefully altering viscosity and Reynolds number, they can now barely produce the three observable hemispheric, Hadley, Ferrel, and Polar convection cells. With no thermal, H2O, or Solar spot heating. That comes way way later! After meteorology is buried, with wooden stakes and silver whatever else is needed! 🙂
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There are two issues here that you may be confounding. First, there are no exact solutions to NV, and muchndepends on boundary conditions. See, for example, the famous Feynman lectures on physics, Volumme two, chapter 41’Wet water’ ( which follows chapter 40, ‘Dry water’. The distinction makes Evans point is Feynman’ sdisrinction between wet and dry water.
What Essex refers to are the computional scales at which numerical methods for solving these differential equations work or fail. Basically, themhigher the resolution, the ‘better’ they work. The grossest workable resolution for tropical convection cells is SEVEN orders of magnitude beyond todays most powerful supercomputers. Illustrated in a recent guest post on climate models ar WUWT.
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Sorry about fat finger iPad typos. Clear enough, though.
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Why no clear admission of abject stupidity?
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Simple. Cause Idevice typos are not abject stupidity. Just abject fat finger stupidity. Why not check out my blogs and books, rather than my admitted fat fingers? You might learn stuff.
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Hi Rud
Have found your posts intersesting as your opinion :
“grossest workable resolution for tropical convection cells is SEVEN orders of magnitude beyond todays most powerful supercomputers”
My own observation is that if computers need to be that big then maybe there is something drastically wrong with the assumption that there can be a solution.
Just a mental image of rising cells of air, laden with various amounts of water and dreaded CO2, interacting with spent or exhausted cells in the process of dissipation and then piling all that into the Diurnal Flux.
Man, the IPCCC can’t do it and neither can any one else.
The best description for the churning atmosphere would be ORGANIC.
A plant is organic. You can very clearly specify the cellular composition of a plant but on a macro scale you just never know how or in which direction it will grow, although it will grow towards the Sun.
KK
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KK, check out my calcuation of that magnitude at my recent guest WUWT post on climate models. Is so simple,is embarassing. And the model illustrations are equally embarrassing.
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Jo
Under discussion here
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/9/26/great-evans-above.html
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A comment worth reading:
Sep 26, 2015 at 6:20 PM | Unregistered Commenter Nic Lewis
[http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/9/26/great-evans-above.html]
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Thanks,
That comment from RickA is a real keeper:
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The RickA link is the same one that David provided.
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Jo
Somewhat suprising for BH but, reading the comments, I don’t think that they’ve clicked to this being a series.
Check and a quick response?
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David,
Some may find the inadequacies of Eq. 1 more evident by asking why should the flux at one surface point be wholly a function of the temperature at some other point? And, of course, it isn’t. It is a function of T(x,y,z) and dependent on temperatures at all points (perhaps in W?). It is a basic tenet of CS that T depends only on z with an invariant gradient, aka convective equilibrium. Of more mathematical interest is the realization that the variables of classical vector thermodynamics define non-divergent functionals permitting reduction of volume integrals to surface integrals, e.g. Carnot’s Eq., and a variational condition then follows. The constant gradient becomes a constraint, inevitably leading to higher surface temperatures. Relaxation of this constraint can reduce changes nearly two-fold when additional degrees of freedom (convection?) are allowed.
There is a lot more basic math involved in climate sensitivity than one would imagine based on CS literature. I’ve never understood the absence of interest of those with even modest backgrounds in mathematical physics, Chris Essex excepted. Looking forward to stakes 2 and 3.
q
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Won’t the outputs of equation 1 settle down after a number of iterations, with inputs held constant in turn?
IE we know the starting value of all variables, if we ‘run’ eq(1), feedback the updated values, will it not settle down to a final calculated value?
If not, then Dr. Evans is onto something big.
I suspect a rewrite of these equations to make them suitable for use in a simulation?
If so this could have a benificial knock on effect into other fields.
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I am reproducing here in large part a post of mine on Bishop Hill to permit David to respond on either blog…
A number of literate individuals with skills in applied maths and numerical modeling in particular all find this post unpalatable, despite the fact that most of us, I believe, would support the view that the GCMs are wholly inadequate for the task of predicting climate with any degree of confidence.
If you are going to criticize the GCMs on the basis that there is an error of formulation or solution routine, then you really do need to spell out the formulation actually used and the offending interaction(s). The model which you set out in your “Post 3” is not a formulation used by any of the GCMs, although I accept from my own studies that for some but not all of the GCMs your model does a very fair job of emulating aggregate behavior. If you wish to argue that in fact it is isomorphic with a particular GCM formulation (i.e. it forms an aggregate governing equation for some GCM), then go ahead and prove it by derivation from an actual formulation, and then present an argument that the interactions are not dealt with correctly. I am very happy to read and learn.
As it is, your post leaves the impression that there is a generic problem in numerical analysis that means we cannot solve non-linear systems where there are dependencies amongst the variables of interest. As a generalization, this , as you are no doubt aware, is pure BS and I am willing to accept that this is not what you intended to convey. However, I am STILL at a loss to understand what you are trying to say.
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Paul, your comment is based on misinformation by commenters on BH, who introduced a straw man.
“If you are going to criticize the GCMs on the basis that there is an error of formulation or solution routine,…”. I didn’t.
How much plainer can I make it? In post 1 I explained why the conventional basic climate model is of significance, in post 3 I analyzed the basic model and showed all its equations in the full case (post 2 was the simplified case), and then post 4 is about misuse of the partial derivatives by the basic model. Post 4’s overview begins “The basic model relies heavily on partial derivatives.”
Note the absence of statements about GCMs, the Navier Stokes equation, and grids. The GCM details were injected into the conversation at BH by commenters at BH; they did not originate here. Perhaps you were being misled. Hence my exhortations at BH to read the posts 🙂
Later in this series I will point out that the GCMs do indeed share some of the same architectural shortcomings as
GCMsthe basic model, but as it happens, use of partial derivatives is not one of them. (I think I have also made the architectural shortcomings point about GCMs in comments already.) If you are interested, please stick around.You found this post unpalatable because it was misconstrued at BH. It takes a fair bit of imagination or mischievousness to read my posts and think they mean that “there is a generic problem in numerical analysis that means we cannot solve non-linear systems where there are dependencies amongst the variables of interest.” It wasn’t you that made this leap initially at BH, but it would have helped if you’d checked by reading the posts.
To summarize what I am saying: the partial derivatives used by the basic model do not, technically, exist, and they are not empirically verifiable — so they are a poor basis for a model. We will use this clue in later posts to construct a better basic model.
Does that make sense?
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David, was reading your reply (42.1) to Paul, and noted the following you may wish to edit/correct/clarify: “I will point out that the GCMs do indeed share some of the same architectural shortcomings as GCMs.” I suspect you had meant to say “the GCMs” share some of the same shortcomings as “the basic model.” Yes?
Best Regards, TMB
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Ah yes, ahem, that’s true too. Thank you Tracy. Corrected.
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David – Thank you for taking the approach of going back to the basic model and analyzing that as a first step. I believe you are correct that people like “and then there’s physics” hold their unshakable belief in CAGW because they believe the basic model is correct physics. No empirical evidence will get through to them because “the physics prove it must be true.”
Keep going. This work must be done.
By the way, “the sky is falling” crowd will do everything in their power to prevent your papers from being published in a peer reviewed journal. I hope you succeed. But it will be an uphill battle.
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[…] a series of essays on what he sees as their faults. You can see them on Jo Nova’s website, here, for example. I won’t be able to comment on them for about a month, but those interested in […]
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David: I read your posts with deep interest, but suspect you may have the basic situation wrong. GCMs don’t calculate radiative fluxes and feedbacks from partial derivatives. The output from GCM’s and/or observations can be analyzed to determine such ratios and “explain” climate change in terms of forcing and feedback.
More importantly, we are interested in the SIMPLE DERIVATIVE of net inward radiative flux (G) with surface temperature (T) – dG/dT – NOT the partial derivative – pdG/pdT. The simple derivative tells us how much the surface of the planet needs to warm or cool to eliminate a given radiative imbalance. This ratio is called the climate feedback parameter and its reciprocal is ECS. If we know ECS, we have a theory of AGW. The simple derivative is ALL we need for a theory of AGW, but climate scientists have tried to explain factors that contribute to dG/dT as shown below. These factors are poorly understood, which why is why the IPCC reports a 15-85% ci for ECS (for 2XCO2) of 1.5-4.5 degC. This uncertainty doesn’t invalidate any theory of climate change – it simply makes it impossible to use the theory to make USEFUL predictions about the future. Climate models don’t tell us what ECS for the real planet must be, nor do they usefully constrain the possible range of ECS. Ensembles of simple models with only six perturbed parameters give values of ECS ranging from 1 to 11 degC. (Stainforth, 2005)
pdG/pdT is the reciprocal of the no-feedbacks climate sensitivity. If there were no feedbacks and if the planet acted as if it were a homogeneous blackbody at 255 degK (the temperature needed to balance 240 W/m2 of incoming post-albedo SWR) the S-B eqn allows us to calculate that pdG/pdT is -3.2 W/m2/K. As you note above, the real world doesn’t act this way, but our knowledge of blackbody radiation allows us to predict what would happen under this scenario.
Climate sciences sometimes calculate dG/dT using the following equation with partial derivatives, where H is humidity, L is lapse rate, C is clouds and I is snow and ice on the surface of the planet. In some of these terms, G is only SWR (G_SWR) or only LWR (G_LWR), but I have omitted this for simplicity. Remember, this equation isn’t a fundamental part of climate theory. Only dG/dT is.
dG/dT = pdG/pdT + (pdG/pdH)*(pdH/pdT) + (pdG/pdL)*(pdL/pdH)*(pdH/pdT) +
(pdG/pdC)*(pdC/pdT) + (pdG/pdI)*(pdI/pdT)
We believe we have a fair idea of what some of these terms should be and we can abstract average values for all of them from the output of GCMs. For example, absolute humidity at equilibrium rises about 7% per degC, so the same percentage rise in humidity is often assumed to occur everywhere – even though water vapor in the atmosphere is far from equilibrium in many places. This produces a value for pdH/pdT.
GMST rises about 3.5 degC (before taking anomalies) every year because the NH has a lower surface heat capacity than the SH. Satellites measure seasonal dG (and dT for SST) and separate LWR from SWR and clear skies from cloudy skies. The planet as a whole emits about 8 W/m2 of LWR through clear skies when GMST is 3.5 degC warmer (-2.3 W/m2/K). Since clouds and surface albedo aren’t relevant to emission of LWR through clear skies:
dG/dT = pdG/pdT + (pdG/pdH)*(pdH/pdT) + (pdG/pdL)*(pdL/pdH)*(pdH/pdT)
-2.3 W/m2/K = -3.2 W/m2/K + 0.9 W/m2/K
From this we can conclude that the combined water vapor and lapse rate feedback is about +0.9 W/m2/K (for seasonal, but not necessarily global warming). A similar value can be obtained for both seasonal and global warming using climate models and they tell us the lapse rate term is about -1 W/m2/K and that the direct reduction of G is about +2 W/m2/K due to absorption and emission of LWR by water vapor. The models do a poor and inconsistent job of predicting the observed seasonal changes in SWR reflected from the surface through clear skies (seasonal snow albedo feedback) and both LWR and reflected SWR from cloudy skies. Therefore, there is no reason to assume that GCMs will accurately predict feedbacks from during GHG-mediated global warming. The only feedback that is too slow for seasonal warming is the albedo feedback from melting glaciers. For more see Manabe (2013):
http://www.pnas.org/content/110/19/7568.full.pdf
I cite this information merely to demonstrate that the partial derivatives that describe feedbacks have some basis in reality. On average, they have a reproducible value for the planet as a whole during seasonal warming. That makes them different from the examples you cite, where a partial derivative can have multiple values (or is indeterminate).
(The planetary response dG/dT is produced by the response in dG/dT at all locations on the planet. Different amounts of warming in different locations can produce a different dG/dT for the whole planet.)
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Frank,
I think I have the situation correct, but perhaps you aren’t paying sufficient attention to what has been said?
“GCMs don’t calculate radiative fluxes and feedbacks from partial derivatives.”
That’s not relevant to these posts, strictly speaking. Look at the sources, Held and Soden 2000 (http://www.dgf.uchile.cl/~ronda/GF3004/helandsod00.pdf, from p. 448) or Pierrehumbert (http://cips.berkeley.edu/events/rocky-planets-class09/ClimateVol1.pdf, pages 135 – 138). They derive the basic model using partial derivatives, and the partial derivatives are intrinsic to their derivations. Like in my posts, they are not talking about partial derivatives in GCMs. The GCM-partial-derivatives topic was introduced into the conversation by commenters in BH. I have also said nothing, for instance, about the applicability of using PDs of dependent variables to find numerical solutions to Navier-Stokes — different ballgame, those solutions can be verified by other means.
The reciprocal of dG/dT is not the ECS — presumably you inadvertently omitted the proportionality of the ECS to the amount of radiation imbalance that is created by doubling CO2, which in this context is the 3.7 W/m2 of D-sub-R,2X — see Eq. (18) of post 3.
“The simple derivative tells us how much the surface of the planet needs to warm or cool to eliminate a given radiative imbalance.”
Yes, that’s how the conventional architecture works, both in the simple model and in the GCMs (we get to this connection with the GCMs later in the series). See fig.2 of post 3 — that simple derivative is the “Response” (the yellow box), which multiplies the radiative balance delta-I. See also the “Interpretation” section of post 3 (though that is before feedbacks). So we are on the same page here.
The first display equation in your comment is Eq. (2) of post 3 (except I think you need simple rather than partial derivatives for the second part of each terms involving feedbacks variables). Notice that it involves pdG/pdT, the Planck feedback, and a bunch of other partial derivatives of G with respect to feedback variables.
You may feel confident about the values of those PDs, and you may even be correct, but the point I made in post 4 is that these PDs are not empirically verifiable by direct means — one can never, even in principle, measure the Planck feedback pdG/pdT — so we’ll probably never know how correct your values are. I feel like I “know” the value of the Planck feedback because I calculated it from first principles using a spreadsheet calculation (later in series) and got the same answer as in AR5 (yipee!), but that value is not empirically verifiable and we might all be fooling ourselves. We do not know how much error we are introducing by using this approach. Also these PDs do not technically exist, and by assuming they exist we incur some unknown error, which is unsatisfactory. There is no alternative to using them AFAIK, but we can reduce (though not eliminate) the dependence of the basic model on them — the alternative model/architecture is coming up soon in the series.
“I cite this information merely to demonstrate that the partial derivatives that describe feedbacks have some basis in reality.”
No doubt they do. With a changed architecture, the models might be able to use those values to better effect — you might be interested in what is coming up in the series. By the way, note that, as mentioned in posts 1 and 2, we accept the feedback values in AR5. Nonetheless, fixing the architecture leads to a much lower estimate of ECS.
I don’t see anything in your comment to substantiate your statement that you “suspect [I] may have the basic situation wrong”. I suspect you didn’t read the posts carefully enough, and simply recited your knowledge of basic models — which is a weak way to join a conversation. But you are welcome anyway.
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Very nice Dr. Evans. I look forward to more! 🙂
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David: It is possible to simplify your model and thought processes by separating forcing from feedback. The surface warming due to current GHG forcing and the changes in G they produce after feedbacks are far too small and too slow to be reliably observed. However, the surface warming and feedbacks associated with the 3.5 degC seasonal cycle in GMST are huge and easily and repeatedly detected from space. We can focus on the rapid response to surface warming – the climate feedback parameter, dG/dT – instead of the slow equilibrium response to forcing, dT/dF. Since most feedbacks are fast, we get a good idea of ECS by looking at dG/dT. In other words, initially we don’t care what forces a change in surface temperature – all we need to do is measure dG/dT to characterize the behavior of the system (except slow albedo feedback from glaciers). To some extent, El Nino represents a slowing of upwelling of cold water off the coast of South America and downwelling of warm water in the Western Pacific Warm Pool. El Ninos aren’t “forced”, but we can still think about the dG/dT associated with them.
Once you recognize that a surface temperature change doesn’t have to be “forced”, you can limit your thought process and diagrams to the Planck response and other feedbacks that follow a change in surface temperature within one or several months. When we know how G responds to changes in T (Planck response modified by fast feedbacks with a correction for slow glacier albedo feedback), we know the essential features of our climate system. If a forcing creates a radiative imbalance and we know dG/dT, we know how much temperature will eventually change before that radiative imbalance is eliminated. By focusing on the climate feedback parameter (dG/dT) instead of climate sensitivity (dT/dF0, we don’t need to sum the infinite series or worry about heat transfer into the deep ocean that delays reaching a new equilibrium temperature for at least a century.
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Very interesting points. Much to ponder! Thank you.
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Frank,
“It is possible to simplify your model and thought processes by separating forcing from feedback.”
Please read post 3. Feedbacks and forcings are given different symbols, have different definitions, and are distinct in fig. 2. It’s not my model; it’s the conventional model. Do you even read the posts?
This model is for transitions between steady states, so seasonal phenomena are not relevant. Using your own terminology instead of that in the post is unhelpful. I don’t see much that requires an answer here Frank. Please see my reply to your comment here.
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Nothing in my second comment was meant as a criticism of what you wrote. I simply find the full description of the conventional model needlessly complicated, not wrong. Feedback is much easier to understand if you postulate an unforced temperature change and ask or observe how G responds to that temperature change within a month or so.
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Frank, the conventional basic climate model defined here is the standard one (Held and Soden, Pierrehumbert), and I reckon its description of forcings is about as simple as possible.
Note that basic models are for moves between steady states (so that ASR = OLR), so temperature changes over months are not relevant.
00
David wrote: “Note that basic models are for moves between steady states (so that ASR = OLR), so temperature changes over months are not relevant.”
In the IPCC’s GHG-centric world, climate is moving between two steady states. In the real world, CERES shows swings of about 10 W/m2 in OLR and reflected SWR every year and GMST rises 3.5 degK. These phenomena and the clearest evidence for feedbacks disappear when anomalies are taken. ENSO perturbs climate every few years. Many skeptics are trying to attribute change to the solar cycle – with little success. The AMO has a significant impact on the Atlantic half the world every 65 years and the PDO on the other half. Then we have the unexplained and bigger swings of the LIA, MWP, RWP, etc. And ice ages. The planet is changing on many time scales, but we chose to call only some changes “climate change” and the IPCC is focused only on GHG-mediated change.
The same four major feedbacks (WV, LR, cloud, albedo) develop in response to all surface temperature changes. All but glacier surface albedo feedback develop in a month or months. Peak emission of OLR occurs in the same month as peak surface temperature. Peak reflection of SWR from clear skies (due to snow cover in the NH) doesn’t lag the lowest surface temperature. Only ice caps respond slowly and the IPCC reports a low value for total albedo feedback. Neglecting slow changes in ice caps is a reasonable first approximation.
The best evidence that feedbacks exist comes from observing the seasonal cycle. The best evidence that the IPCCs models do a poor job with some feedbacks comes from their inability to reproduce feedbacks in the seasonal cycle. Even worse, when you divide feedback into clear and cloudy skies and LWR and SWR, the models fail different ways – they are mutually inconsistent. See Manabe (2013).
Admittedly, seasonal hemispheric warming and cooling is an imperfect model for global warming. The hemispheres are very different. The SH is cloudier on the average than the NH, so the net cloud feedback that develops seasonally may be different than the feedback that develops from global warming. There is little seasonal snow in the SH to reflect SWR through clear skies.
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Frank,
Good point.
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Climate models aren’t designed to do seasonal projections (and they don’t do predictions at all) — they calculate the final equilibrium state.
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David A: AOGCMs are initialized (spun up) and allowed to evolve in 15 minute increments 24 hours a day 365 days a year for a century or two. Of course, they predict seasonal changes. Read Manabe PNAS (2013), a developer of the GFDL AOGCM.
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If partial derivatives do not work in climate science, then please explain why they work in electromagnetism (say, in the derivation of the wave equation from Maxwell’s equations) or in general relativity, where there are scads of PDs, all of which are taken in a certain spacetime-mass configuration where the metric g-mu-nu is a nonarbitrary function of the stress-energy tensor.
After all, in the wave equation the magnetic field B is not independent of the field E or its partial derivatives — they must together satisfy Maxwell’s wave equation.
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Partial derivatives of independent variables work fine. And even for mildly dependent variables when the error incurred can be later found by other means, such as testing a solution found using said partial derivatives. Did you read the post?
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The magnetic field in an electromagnetic wave isn’t an “independent” or “mildly dependent” variable — given the electric field, it must satisfy Maxwell’s wave equation. That is a tight constraint.
Same for general relativity. The metric tensor is not arbitrary — given the stress-energy tensor, all its components are constrained by Einstein’s equations. By your logic, the partial derivative therefore makes no sense.
Yet both these models agree with observations. How does that happen?
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The partial derivative in Maxwell’s equations are with respect to x, y, z (three spatial dimensions) and t (time), which are independent.
Time wasting FUD.
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I don’t know what “FUD” means, but these variables are NOT independent, in the sense you are trying to apply to climate models.
A solution to Maxwell’s equations — say, an electromagnetic wave — is a 2-tensor F whose elements are components of the E and B fields. E and B are functions of spacetime. The time and space coordinates are related by the wave equation, just as in climate science the energy fluxes are related by the two-stream equations.
There is no difference at all what partial derivatives mean or how they are treated between these two physical theories, or any other physical theories like Lagrangian classical mechanics, general relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, or quantum field theory. None.
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David A: I Googled “FUD” and got lucky.
Sorry, but you are bringing in a heap of irrelevant nonsense. The post was written so a beginner can understand: the basic model depends on partial derivatives, such as the Planck feedback, which are of dependent variables and do not, technically exist because it is not possible to hold “all else constant”. These partial derivatives are not empirically verifiable, and estimating them and using them incurs unknown errors. Not a great thing on which to base the application of basic physics — see post 1 for why this matters.
Chain rule, Maxwell’s equation, Einstein — all irrelevant FUD.
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“(indeed, each of the feedback variables depends directly on the surface temperature) and so have also changed.”
Nonsense, ENSO response to a given solar change will be similar across a range of surface temperatures.
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Ulric, by definition the feedback parameters in the conventional basic model (see post 3) directly depend on surface temperature. In the context quoted the surface temperature changed, so each feedback variables also changed.
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David,
Any corrupt radiative Basic model can only express surface temperature and final radiative exitance to space. This Earth ‘and’ its atmosphere is nowhere dependent on surface temperature for atmospheric final radiative exitance to space! All insolation radiative transfer to space is done entirely within this atmosphere. Surface temperature is strictly determined by the current atmospheric lapse rate at that location. Not the other way around as is claimed by those that also claim to know! Plants love the 0.5-0.7 micron leftovers to grow, critters love to munch on plants in this nice warm!
All the best! -will-
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So then you believe that CO2 doesn’t absorb infrared radiation?
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Look, I think there are many, many things wrong with nearly all aspects of climate science.
However, I think that David needs to address the critiques of his work over at Lucia’s “The Blackboard”
This a serious, honest site and is certainly not supporting the consensus.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2015/questions-to-david-evans-what-do-you-mean-about-partial-derivatives/
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hunter: Sadly Lucia obviously hasn’t read the series and has taken post 4 out of context. Near the top of her post she says:
As readers here will know, this series of blog posts is about basic climate models, the application of “basic physics”. The importance of this is described in post 1, and the conventional basic climate model is fully described, as per the leading textbook and papers, in post 2 and post 3.
The post and conversation at Lucia’s flows from there, unfortunately, so the response from me would merely be a lot tiresome “read the posts” comments, like at BishopHill. If they wish to discus it with me they know where I am. Time is too short to chase all over the web.
I know Lucia’s is a serious, honest and skeptical site, having often read stuff there. But I wish people would read, instead of skipping the reading and simply assuming everyone else is ignorant and foolish, then criticizing what they didn’t read. There was some pretty bad cases of that last year too, when the notch-delay theory was introduced.
[We have put up a blog post on this: http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/lucia-has-a-bad-day-with-partial-derivatives/
David E.]
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You cite Auroux, but take him out of context. As Nick Stokes has pointed out, on the next page Auroux explains how to handle the problem. Here is what Arnoux says *after* the quote you supplied:
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Kevin, on the contrary, I cite Auroux properly and in context when he points out that a partial derivative of a function of dependent variables “has no definite meaning” because, as I said immediately after quoting Auroux, “..because of ambiguity over which variables are truly held constant and which change because they depend on the variable allowed to change”.
You might also note that I applied Auroux’s Eq. (3) when taking the total differential in Eq. (2) of post 3. (You might point that out to Lucia, who garbled things up terribly and has made several technical errors.)
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Why isn’t Nick Stokes pointing that out here? Why isn’t Lucia? Perhaps because they know Dr. Evans will destroy the Strawman argument they are using?
David Appell had the ERrrr, male anatomy, to come on this website and deal directly with Dr Evans. He even said that he did because there is no censorship of serious questions.
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2015/09/new-science-4-error-1-partial-derivatives/#more-44775 […]
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Dr. Evans:
The GCMs have the failing of making “projections” rather than “predictions” where a “prediction” is a kind of proposition but a “projection” is not. In this way the global warming climatologists have decoupled their field of study from logic. Thus, I’d be happier if your paper did not imply that the GCMs make “predictions.”
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Thanks Terry. I was aware of the distinction. However I make “predictions” (see later in the series) and I’m going to go with the plain English for the climatologists too.
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David:
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Plain English has the downside of supporting applications of the equivocation fallacy by climatologists that dress up global warming pseudoscience to look like global warming science ( http://wmbriggs.com/post/7923/ ). This has led policy makers to the false belief that they can control the climate on the basis of the outputs from the AOGCMs when these models provide the would be policy maker with no information about the outcomes from his/her policy decisions. Provision of information requires assignment of values to conditional probabilities of outcomes of events but as probabilities are defined on propositions and as there are no propositions there can be no probabilities. For avoidance of this phenomenon “prediction” should be reserved for a kind of proposition and “projection” for a kind of non-proposition. Under this convention the AOGCMs make projections not predictions.
This terminological convention was introduced to global warming climatology circa 2007 by Kevin Trenberth in a post to the blog of Nature. At first, it was widely ignored. Today it is observed by most climatologists including amateurs as well as professionals. Policy makers and journalists don’t understand that there is a distinction to be made thus failing to understand that that the climate cannot be controlled using the AOGCMs. We have to teach this to them or all is lost.
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