Quick post, I’m in between sessions here in Washington DC.
Dr. Richard Lindzen just gave a keynote talk on climate sensitivity and the state of climate science. Here is the powerpoint below:
Powerpoint link, “hot off the press” so to speak, minutes old.
More later
Excellent summary. Now lets get on with living.
Good points, well made!
Any link to life audio or video feed/webcast?
Love that ad showing an X over a jet contrail that’s ah Water vapor.Like Algore’s steam-out of the cooling towers in his movie…
This may be a good time to see some reason in DC…
The thing that makes the AGW argument withstand criticism is the fact that the theory is combined with a plausible mechanism complete with mathematical equations, computers, elaborate models, funding, and media coverage. With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power. Falsifying it without coming up with anything else is like trying to destroy a tank with a hammer. That little phrase “What else could it be?” becomes a clanging bell extolling a default AGW win if we cannot come up with an equally plausible elaborate mechanism and overriding theory. The default hammer, “The system is very complex and we don’t know much about it.” will not provide a foothold on the beach. It has to be tank for tank.
The feedback equation used is similar to a “voltage-series” feedback model used in electronics. But there are other kinds of feedback such as “voltage-shunt”, “current-series”, and “current-shunt” in electronics. Are there analogues to these in climate theory? Also, these feedback models assume that the feedback connection does not significantly load the circuit and is one-way. How realistic are these assumptions for climate? We can safely asuume that the earth does not affect the sun, but what else can we assume? Just a few random thoughts.
I don’t think there is any “it”, but I do understand your point. So far no one has shown that we’re seeing anything out of the ordinary. But the AGW clique says we need to disprove them and come up with a valid “explanation”. I don’t see anything that needs explaining.
Pamela Gray (07:16:02) :
NO positive feedback because air CAN NOT hold heat enough time (comprende?). CO2 which is a very small part of air 0.038 % = 3.8 per ten thousand just heats up and cools down. (check air volumetric heat capacity vs. water volumetric heat capacity)
Do you hallucinate your “prophet” being a scientist with more knowledge than NIELS BOHR? See:
http://www.giurfa.com/gh_experiments.pdf
What GWrs. say is equivalent as to say that you can warm your feet with a bottle filled with air instead of water, it would mean, also , that a baloon filled with hot air and a lot of CO2 (from the combustion of propane in burner) will not fly!!!!!!. Do you know why it flies up and away?…Because it is eager to give off its heat up above, to get rid of it.
There is no such a thing as “green house effect” but “trapped heat”.
Last but not least: The earth it is not covered with a bowl shaped glass on it, it is open to sky, and its atmosphere it is not infinite as to avoid cooling up there next to space.
RE: Pamela Gray
I agree. Until people become sensible in thought and the press stops with its sensationalist nature, ‘Climate Change’ will always be in greater presedence than its nemesis.
Or the earth will have to start cooling drastically, which I have doubts about. In all probability, the earth with bobble back and forth from warm to cool in the next 30 years…toying with our minds to figure out if it will indefinitely warm or cool. At least by then, models will be well outside of 95% ‘robustness’ and credibility to modelers will be non existent.
Pamela,
The “tank” you seek is ridicule. When people become aware that the “scientific” studies relied upon by AGW alarmists are never audited (much less replicated) because the authors of the studies refuse to make their data and code available, they will see that the emperor has no clothes. When they understand that the climate models have never been validated, same thing. When people realize that the hockey stick (completely changed understanding of global temperature history) was accepted without question, they will laugh out loud.
Everyone who works somewhere can relate to the idea of a young guy coming in and saying “Hey, I’ve done a study. Everything you thought you knew about our business is completely wrong!” The public knows that there is no way in hell that everyone at work would shrug shoulders, say OK, and change the business without bothering to check this new “study”. When they learn that the hockey stick was accepted that way, they’ll roll their eyes.
Imagine the response of the typical voter when they learn for the first time that close to 90% of the US temperature sites fail to meet basic scientific standards and ours are the best in the world. And none of the so-called “scientists” ever bothered to check.
The AGW war will be won by making fun of the alarmists — by pointing out how sloppy and unserious so much of the work is.
OT (sort of) but if penguin populations are key global warming indicators then surely the discovery of ten new colonies made up of ‘thousands of birds’ demands a rethink though of course the science is settled)?
“Emperor penguin populations are a useful climate change indicator due to the birds’ reliance on sea ice. They are the least common Antarctic penguin, with an estimated 200,000 breeding pairs.”
At the very least the ‘estimated 200,000 breeding pairs’ needs a rethink.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/02/wildlife-poles
Unfortunately , I fear Pamela is correct . Note how this month’s conference has gotten no coverage in the media , even Fox . Our only real hope is to delay any political action until the failure of the AGW models becomes readily apparent .
One question –
Why does the SST data end at 2000?
And, more rhetorically speaking, why do scientists have such a lack of spelling, punctuation and grammar skills? At the very least, could he not have hired a proofreader?
Anyone know if the ERBE plot is the latest after recent updates to correct for various things like drift?
This is good stuff, well done.
I wish that true science was the rule, it’s not. Junk science is devloped to attach and implement agendas. Let it be a warning to all you politicans, the people will only put up with so much and they will turn on you. You think you have power, you’ll see how much power you have when you turn on Cap and Tax and they vote you out on the street and maybe worse. You better take notice to what Thomas Jefferson has written, people are talking now.
Why is it that the people who are clearly rampant liars, in the pay of big oil, gas, & coal companies (fact), & of no technical significance within the Climate Change non-debate, always present their cases in such a calm, reflective, authoritive & considered, yet gentle manner? ;-))
Why are those who tell us the truth, the whole truth, & nothing but the truth, absolute experts in the field of Climate Science, always do so shouting from the highest steeple, procaiming impending doom & disaster & catastrophe, thumping the AGW bible at the pulpit, demanding that we repent of our sins against Gaia? :-((
Excellent piece! Looking forward to more soon!
It appears that Dr. Lindzen’s tolerance for fools is diminishing in his advancing maturity, for which we should all be thankful.
Pamela Gray writes “That little phrase “What else could it be?” becomes a clanging bell extolling a default AGW win if we cannot come up with an equally plausible elaborate mechanism and overriding theory.”
There is an extremely plausible alternate hypothesis. I dont understand the physics, but the idea is that high clouds warm the earth, and low clouds cool it. High clouds are inhibited by ions, and low clouds are more numerous with nuclei produced by galactic cosmic rays (GCRs). When the sun is active magnetically, bursts of the solar wind sweep ions from the top of the atmosphere, and we get more high clouds. The sun’s magnetic field keeps GCRs away, so there are fewer low clouds; result a warming world. When the sun is magnetically inactive, there are more ions at high altitude, so fewer high altitude clouds. With lots of GCRs, there are lots of low level clouds (?Asperatus). Hence a cooler world. The correlation with historical data is better and over a far longer time span than that of AGW. But neither hypothesis has much in the way of experimental data to support it. AGW has a lot more PR “spin”, and the unquestioning support of the mainstream media.
Why is there a second ICCC conference just a few months after the last ICCC conference? I cannot find any explanations. Isn’t this abnormal?
OT, but the sun’s sure cranking it up. Not only is there a significant SC24 sunspot group in the NH, but there’s now an SC23 sunspeck in the SH.
To add to Pamela Gray’s comments the AGW movement has also entwined themselves into the Energy Debate so they have the fallback position of even if we are wrong on the whole Global Warming stuff the solutions will solve the perceived energy problems. A second line of defense as it were.
I personally believe that the two are mutually exclusive, because we have parts of the solutions and are not implementing them because the constant whining of enviromentalists. What is wrong with incremental progress? New coal power stations are cleaner than the 40 year old ones that they could replace, the aging Nuclear reactors all need to be replaced with much more efficent and safer installations. They have blocked progress in electricity for decades.
Then the imaginary link between solar and wind to oil. It is made up. Does nto exist. Displacing DOMESTIC COAL does not help with IMPORTED OIL. There is a leap of faith into transportation that does not exist, which is the electrification of the fleet. While it may happen one day it will require a much more stable and robust electirical grid than what we have and what we are planning with our wind farms and solar arrays.
There is a simple fact that cannot be denied … If the current solar trends continue, and most say it will, then it will soon be so cold, the snow piled so high, the ice growing so thick, that Al Gore will be the only person left on planet earth who does not KNOW Al Gore is a kook.
Patience. In Canada they already refer to this winter as “the winter that never ends”. We have friends who are right now visiting relatives there.
Now is a good time to think, does anybody actually know how a glaciation ice age begins? Because we are overdue …
Tarpon
An Ice age begins with a heat wave that ends. Right now here on Canada’s wet coast we are in the declining phase of a heat wave. The clouds are begining to build up contrary to the forcast. We can expect to go into the deep freeze by the weekend.
Excellent summary. One wonders why Professor Linden lends his name to the
MIT Center for Global Climate Change.
Pamela Gray is most perceptive. When [the powers that be] finish using East and West Coast elites headed by a teleprompter-guided, ineligible, Chicago-way President to shut down energy development, manufacturing, and industry in the U.S., who will be minding the store? Where has the money come from that has bought all forms of mass media (except the internet thus far) and that is buying our academies, e.g., MIT’s “independent-of-department-and-faculties’-scholarly/scientific-overview” Center for Global Climate Change, for this purpose? CGCC is headed by Robert Prinn who not only chooses to use computer models that cannot predict past climate, much less the future, but also publishes research about “sniffing out” any whiff of new or old greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in order to stop their manufacture. He also appears to use faulty physics of these gases to make his points. When he and other pseudo-scientists are finished demolishing reality, there will be no transformation of raw materials into productive (and profitable) outcomes in the U.S. and the “West”.
Just where do you think all this funding might be coming from? I am all for tanks, but at least we might build bigger and bigger hammers as we catch onto the program. Perhaps they might make these tanks inoperable.
Though I am a foreigner, I am beginning to suspect that there is something else behind those who adhere to global warming/climate change, something a bit emotional. Perhaps if they are liberals, which obviously is their right, they feel they are obliged to believe in such theories, but they are not, they still can be good liberal citizens without the need to believe in that non-scientific crap. Be free!, nobody obliges you to believe in that non-sense and let science to those who really know it.
pyromancer76 (09:18:07) :
Perhaps they might make these tanks inoperable.
Ha. Shows you have never been in a repressive regime that used tanks. The way to make tanks inoperable is to throw sugar in the reservoir :). Old lessons, like making molotofs. 🙂
Pamela, I agree in the result but not the content. It is not the physics or scientific arguments that carry the day, but the politics and politicians behind them.
The same people would easily be behind creationism, with the same argument : it is the only theoretical solution that God made everything, what else is there?
I’ve taken out what seems to be the key graph of Dr Lindzen’s presentation at my blog.
http://www.di2.nu/200906/02a.htm
A fine overview that should not “offend the educated classes and the East and West coasts.” No more than Nicolas Sarkozy appointing an eminent alarmist-turned- skeptic to the French environmental leadership position.
As Pamela notes it is a battle now between a machine and good science. Truth and fabrication. The machine has money, media, alarmism and a political agenda. They drown out the truth with ever-increasing hype and exaggeration. But in so doing, they make themselves and others fools. Penn and Teller (Being Green, “Bullsheit” on Showtime) did a show on how easy it is to shame people into buying carbon credits. Armed with a clip board and calculator a charming woman (a shill) stopped shoppers and offered to calculate the “carbon footprint” of their purchases. Shoppers were then given an opportunity to purchase carbon “credits” to offset their greed.
Two out of three shoppers bought credits on the spot. Thus creating two groups in need of lampooning. Alarmist pols, scientists and MoveOners. And the general public for being so easily shamed and duped. All in all great material for comics and satirists. Stan notes we might do well to lower the slide rules for a moment and skewer the absurd behavior of people buying the AGW propaganda. It is a machine, and therefor a simple well-placed monkey wrench can bring it to a halt. That wrench is healthy skepticism, good science, and the sword of humor.
NormD writes “Why is there a second ICCC conference just a few months after the last ICCC conference? I cannot find any explanations. Isn’t this abnormal”
I assume you are referring to the UNFCCC conferences, building up to the big one in Copenhagen this December. Yes, holding so many conferences is highly unusual. However, the explanation is quite simple. Before the Copenhagen conference takes place, if there is to be some form of international agreement, the basic outline of what the agreement is going to has to be in place long before the conference starts. Otherwise, there is no time for governments to agree the final communique. At the present time there is simply no agreement on what should be concluded at Copenhagen. The differences between the developed world, and the developing world are, quite simply, too huge. So there are lots of meetings to try and sort out the differences. However, far from bringing the sides closer together, all that is happening is that they are getting further apart. So we can expect even more meetings. What has happened is that the developed world has painted itself into a corner. By loudly proclaiming that there is a crisis because of AGW, they have implicitly agreed that the developed world is the cause of the problem. The cost to reduce CO2 emissions is absolutely enormous, and we cannot afford it. But the developing world is demanding that not only must we solve the problem, but we must also pay to help the poorer nations come up with part of the solution. A doubly whammy we simply cannot afford. Hence the major disagreement. Hence all the conferences.
“………. the very foundation of the issue of global warming is wrong.”
“……… but global warming/climate change – – – has a life of its own – quite removed from science.”
That is why I’ve said for years, we (who ever WE is) are fighting the wrong battle. (Yes, “we” need to prove the junk “science” wrong. But that was done years ago.) It’s NOT about science, it’s NOT about power, it’s NOT about control/freedom, and it’s NOT even about politics – directly. It’s about MONEY and ego! And it’s about who can lie the best to get more money; the NASA “scientist” who has staked his high paying job on AGW to the point of having to modify the history of temps, the “politician” who so desperately needs to stay in the limelight to get high(er) priced speaking engagements that he’ll not even publically admit the main chart in his PP presentation is wrong, much less debate the whole issue in public, the “professor” who has built his department, staffed with under-grads and post docs, on federal grants and wants more funds to continue his “work” even though he KNOWS they will NEVER be able to create a workable computer model of the global environment, the BIG energy company CEO who knows it was NEVER about CO2/oil/coal but argues for “more” of X while “working” under the table with “the powers that be” to assure that HIS company is the ones providing the “new” energy, the oil sheik, the global financer, the politician, the MSM editor/reporter, the environmentalist, Etc., Etc. It’s a whole industry onto itself.
And Pamela you’re right (again) but the money train of AGW has grown so large there is no stopping it, regardless the size of any real “science tank” we can field. Cap-and-trade is NOT coming, it’s here! Obama and his GLOBAL friends have already set-up a massive energy brokerage organization. Hell could freeze over and it would still be blamed on CO2/human activities/anything but natural causes, so as to make US pay (more) for energy. All the good science in the world isn’t going to change that. It’s a done deal. What we need to be doing is spending our personal energy on independence from “them”, not trying to prove them wrong, scientifically. And by “independence” I mean food, water AND energy.
MKE Bob
AGW’ers are the new religionists. The old religionists took anything they couldn’t understand and laid it at the feet of the Gods. The new religionists take anything they can’t understand and lay it at the feet of man.
My favorite alternative is “change in albedo”. One can explore the details of why or not, but everyone can understand cloud cover and reflecting sunlight and how cloudy days are cool days.
BTW Is that a small cycle 23 spot forming just South of the Solar equator, referring to location and magnetogram.
Excellent Lindzen’s talk; I would like to have heard his talk. I got stunned when I read from science magazine how a pair of “scientists” “debunked” the observations and experimentation of Svensmark on the correlation between cosmic rays and Earth’s climate by giving more credit to models than to reality. That means that AGW proponents take models more seriously than the nature itself. That’s not science, but fantasy; it’s like playing Nintendo.
It is not “their” science to be debunked but their system of beliefs. It is not a matter of scientific arguments but of a kind of theological discussion.
Their “prophet” is not a messiah after the merchants in god’s temple, but one of the merchants. 🙂
Well it will take me some time to try and digest all of those data graphs the good professor has presented to try and understand them; but there are two points that I am totally uncomfortable with; which convince me beyond any reasonable doubt, that Lindzen is correct when he says the standard global warming theory is wrong; of course it is wrong.
My first alarm bell goes off with his feedback formula which is fairly well known to people in the climate field; and is breathed like the daily oxygen by any analog circuit design engineer; such as me for example.
The equation Lindzen uses is a static equation; it has no time or frequency variables in it, and in any real feedback system; both the forward gain amplifier, and the feedback networkalways have a propagation delay.
The signal output doesn’t happen till some time later than the signal input, and the fedback signal summed into the input is also delayed from the output signal.
As a result, any real feedback system has a frequency response that depends on all of those delay processes; and in physical systems involving transport of thermal energies (heat flow), the delays are almost universally longer than the inherent speed of the forward amplifier itself, and they routinely lead to thermal; oscillation. The stability analysis of feedback systems is well understood, and they are known to be unstable if the loop gain is greater than one (and other conditions).
Well one of the tenets of climate feedback theses; particularly the water vapor feedback scenario, is that the feedback is the dominant factor.
If CO2 caused atmospheric and surface warming, were only enhanced by 5-10% by “water vapor positive feedback”, that would be entirely inconsequential in practical climate concerns; but the believers, think that the water vapor feedback is THE dominant effect; giving an effective amplifier inpur signal much greater than the initial CO2 driver.
Any such system, with the built in time delays, is pretty much guaranteed to be an oscillator and not an amplifier. So I simply don’t believe those feedback models, or the climate would be switching wildly between two limit saturation states of extreme heat or extreme cold.
My second discomfort is the very subject of Prof Lindzen’s talk; “climate sensitivity” which evidently is a creation of Arrhenius himself, who blessed us with his CO2 global warming thesis.
CS is (apparently) the increase in surface temperature (maybe lower troposphere ?) caused by the “forcing” due to doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Well the forcing mechanism, is the capture by GHG molecules of surface emitted long wave infra-red radiation, which for the CO2 component, is in the 13.5-16.5 micron wavelength band; nominally 15 microns.
So the model is very simple. Surface emits IR generally following some roughly black body spectrum; probably grey or colored by spectral emissivity; but generally following a fourth or fifth power of surface temperature (K). The CO2 absorbs some fraction of that depending on its abundance, and eventually conveys the energy to the atmospheric gases; which in turn re-radiate back to the surface, as well as out into space; and that extra blanketing effect results in a higher surface temperature by the “sensitivity” number.
So now we have a problem. The driving power for climate sensitivity is that original infra-red radiation from the surface, and over the surface of the earth, and with time during the year, that surface radiant emittance varies by more than an order of magnitude; over 12:1 in the extremes.
So doubling the CO2 does NOT raise the atmospheric temperature or surface temperature by any fixed temperature; it depends on where on earth you are.
So the “climate sensitivity” over Antarctica is as little as 12 times smaller than the “climate sensitivity” over the hottest North African tropical deserts; and everything in between.
Then it also depends on the nature of the surface terrain, and the particular thermal processes that occur there. Ocean, rain forest, alpine meadows, dry deserts, all react differently and so emit different amounts of Infrared , so the effect of CO2 doubling is a function of location and terrain, and lots of other factors.
To offer such a mechanism, as a global constant factor in the guise of “climate sensitivity”, is sheer nonsense; it’s not even vaguly scientific.
Worse yet, since it is time and place dependent, then even some sort of average or mean global value to slip in as a proxy for local climate sensitivity requires an eleaborate global sampoling process to derive some fictitious global mean. Please don’t ignore the Nyquist sampling theorem while doing that global sampling to determine the mean “climate sensitivity”.
“Climatology” will be doomed to remain kin to “economics” and “ancient astrology”, so long as this farce called “climate sensitivity” persists in being presented as the center piece of global warming climate science.
But I still want to understand all those fancy graphs and computer model outputs in Prof Lindzen’s Keynote speech.
George
RE Pamela’s point, well, we do have some artillery on our side. We can pick apart their “science” and various claims. Anthony has done ( and still does) a heroic job on that one, pertaining to the atmospheric temperature measurements.
There are dozens of AGWers’ predictions that have failed, and we can press those issues.
My small efforts on sea levels resulted in this post:
http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/05/sea-level-surprises-at-hilo.html
It appears that the rise in sea level off the coast of Miami, FL is also suspect.
My post was sniped… I don’t know why.
Pamela, it’s not science anymore, it’s faith.
“The great trouble with religion – any religion – is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason – but one cannot have both.”
RA Heinlein
I prefer reason, even though it leaves me with more questions about this world and our existence than there are answers for, but I doubt that most of the population agrees with me.
Ah dear William, but there you are wrong for making that assumption. Man, I gotta tell ya, I just hate assumptions. More often than not, an assumption gets you in to trouble.
Consider, the Earth (as with all planets in our solar system) has a gravitational pull on our Sun. This fact is how we are able to detect planets around other stars. Given that, can you really assume we have no affect on our Sun? We obviously have some affect. But to what limits do we affect our Sun? And in turn, can the affects we have on our Sun affect the Earth back again?
Assumptions are BAD! Never assume anything! Assumptions are precisely why the AGW topic even exists.
“”” NormD (08:47:43) :
Why is there a second ICCC conference just a few months after the last ICCC conference? I cannot find any explanations. Isn’t this abnormal? “””
Well science is not like the Olympic games. There are always new audiences, and new scientific results to report on.
So its 3 months or so since the last ICCC international conference; take a guess how many hours it has been since the last President Obama, Major News Teleprompter Reading, announcing his Bankrupty Restructuring Program (BRP) for Fly by Night Donut Industries ?
George
Ice ages begin when snowfall exceeds snowmelt each year.
One of the things we need to understand is fanatics don’t have time on their side. They need to push the belief that the enemy is at the gates. Any enemy will do so long as the propaganda pushes the urgency that doom is imminent if the fanatics warnings are not heeded.
Life goes on for non-fanatics and more mundane things fill their day such as their childrens health, paying their bills, food in their stomachs and a whole host of things that beset our human condition.
When the population realises that it is not the imaginary enemy at the gates that have deprived them of a tolerable existence and a reasonable expectation of life but the fanatics solutions to their own manufactured fear that has deprived them of all they can reasonably expect, they become cynical and mocking.
When the fanatics taste this they become even more convinced that their twisted ideology is not getting through to the ignorant peasants. They ramp up their propaganda with ever more absurd claims and threats to those who mock them.
The trouble is that it’s those “ignorant peasants” they wish to dominate that are doing the mocking.
Milwaukee Bob ,
Yes , it is all about the money . However , not much can happen without the political will to pass “green” legislation . If we stand up and shout we will be heard – not necessarily listened to , but heard . If we shout loud enough , others will hear us as well . Master Resource has a post regarding pro cap and trade efforts in Texas . Perhaps if we try those same tactics , we can get enough people on board – doing nothing will end in economic disaster .
Pamela Gray, Your comment: “Falsifying it without coming up with anything else is like trying to destroy a tank with a hammer” made me laugh. Here is an excerpt from my upcoming novel, The Austin Gun Club, where the hero tries exactly that. It’s partially based on an actual event at the battle of Salerno in 1943. Have faith.
Seemingly in one motion, Perkin slung his Thompson over his shoulder and pulled the heavy ten-kilogram sledge hammer from its clip on the side of the tank. Walking quickly to the front of the moving tank, he stood with one knee on the turret and one foot on the tank’s deck. The Texan raised the sledge high above his head and with great violence brought the hammer arcing down hard on the driver’s visor. The thick glass of the visor shattered and amid shouts from inside the panzer, the tank immediately spun wildly to the right and began to head back towards the other tanks. Perkin dropped the hammer on the deck of the tank and pulled his Thompson off his shoulder. He slammed the barrel of the weapon into the cracked visor, pulled the trigger and held it down. The Thompson bucked hard in his hands – it tended to climb but the barrel was wedged into the visor and wasn’t going anywhere. When the magazine emptied, Perkin could hear screaming and more shouts from inside the tank – he also noticed he was now exposed to the German gun line. As the German gunners saw him on the tank and began to fire at him, he slung his Thompson, grabbed the sledge again and scampered over the turret to the right side of the tank. He smashed the massive hammer down hard onto the coaxial machine gun. He thought that the barrel bent slightly from the force of the hit, although he knew that was unlikely – one more to go. He was about to smash the other machine gun when he heard the commander’s hatch opening. Perkin spun around and saw a hand with a Luger in it begin to emerge from the open crack of the hatch. As the Luger fired wildly, Perkin swung the sledge hammer down again, this time hitting the hatch lid as hard as he could. The tank commander screamed and dropped his pistol, his hand nearly severed at the wrist. Perkin dropped the hammer on the deck of the tank and was reaching for a grenade but the tanker, rightly believing that his crew’s survival depended on quickly securing his hatch, withdrew his mangled hand and slammed the hatch shut. Perkin grabbed the Luger and stuffed it down the front of his jacket before reaching for the handle of the sledge hammer again. It was almost time to leave – they were getting to the end of the American line and too close to the other tanks….
George, the reason that Prof Lindzen uses the feedback equation is that it’s the same one that Jim Hansen uses in his 1984 paper. Just Google “Hansen 1984” and it will come up with a NASA link where you can download the paper. It has remained essentially the same from this time on.
Quite so, Adolfo. It’s always been about emotion. I mean, how could one not want to “save the planet”? With that little phrase, they’ve setup the “us against them” paradigm, so that if you don’t agree with anything they say, you’re out ot destroy the planet. That’s not reason, that’s emotion.
Mitchel44 (10:15:16) :
I prefer reason, even though it leaves me with more questions about this world and our existence than there are answers for, but I doubt that most of the population agrees with me.
So do I. Faith doesn’t answer any questions, it just pretends to.
Bob, you could not be more correct! You are absolutely right on this! We need to remove ourselves from “them”, and let “them” bring themselves down.
Well said Bob!
Squidly (10:16:07) :
Consider, the Earth (as with all planets in our solar system) has a gravitational pull on our Sun. This fact is how we are able to detect planets around other stars. Given that, can you really assume we have no affect on our Sun? We obviously have some affect. But to what limits do we affect our Sun?
What you describe is that the planets have an influence on the orbit of the Sun, not on the Sun itself [except for sub-millimeter tides]. This is a very different thing.
MartinGAtkins (10:36:24) :It took 72 years to communism to end in soviet Russia…so, once you change for bad, it takes time to do the round trip, even the earth freezes they will blame it to “climate change”, that’s why they changed the name from “global warming” to “climate change”…they are not fools.
Squidly (10:16:07) :
Assumptions are BAD! Never assume anything!
Assumptions are good, even vital, as long as you know what they are and that they are assumptions. We may, for example, say “assuming that General Relativity holds, we calculate such and such..”. Nothing wrong with that. Or an example closer to my own field: “assuming that the solar polar fields control the size of the next sunspot cycle, we predict that it will be a small cycle”. The outcome determines whether the assumption was reasonable and whether we should use the assumption again later.
Politics is emotional and local (as in each indivual).
Peaple, (individuals) respond to significant emotional events.
Undesired events are met with;
A. Denial
B. Anger
C. Negotiation
and finally,
D. Acceptance
Should Cimate Change result in Cooling, acceptance will occur when peaple find themselves cold, wet, and hungry.
The more dangerous of outcomes IMO.
Pamela’s Tank remark has some validity.But we don’t need a Tank but a good
anti tank weapon like a Bazooka,shaped charge, a track bustin’ landmine.
The unexpected can get results-like this blog…
Margaret Thatcher said: “Socialists have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited.”
Socialist = AGWer = Sci-babble
What could be more timely, now that AGWers are searching for new labels for the bottles of snake oil.
Pamela Gray is correct regarding seemingly plausible nature of AGW. Although you can’t kill a tank with a hammer, you can kill it with a Molotov cocktail.
It is time for AGW opponents to make their rhetoric incendiary. Stop being nice, be blunt. No more platitudes, say what you intend without any gift wrapping,e.g. the claim that CO2 is a pollutant is a lie, not a mistake or misapprehension. Mocking helps too.
Hi,
OT
Mr Watts and the Commenters. I’d like you to focus your attention to truly intellectual adventure, me the layman, have found in Mr Bob Tisdale’s text:
“RSS MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plots…” (…Show Climate Responses That Cannot Be Easily Illustrated With Time-Series Graphs Alone)
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
Best regards
“…global warming/climate change has developed so much momentum that it has a life of its own – quite removed from science.”
Well said!
The mainstream media doesn’t report on the science but rather the alarmist claims of negative impacts. If you only read the mainstream media accounts you would have to come to the overwhelming conclusion that any and all warming has only negative impacts on man and the planet. But I keep reminding people that a little warming is MUCH better than a little cooling!
Those who can’t or don’t want to open Office:
http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dcmx5dt6_457dxp28nff&skipauth=true
OT: Editorial: Cooling down with global-warming data
U.S. and world temperature records are compromised by monitoring station errors.
An Orange County Register editorial
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/temperature-stations-global-2433763-heat-watts
If fighting global warming may cost the economy $9.6 trillion and more than 1 million lost jobs by 2035, as the Heritage Foundation forecasts, it’d be a good idea to be sure there’s a sound basis before making such a massive sacrifice.
We’ve noted before that climate change is occurring as it always has, but the claim that man-made greenhouse gases will cause catastrophic temperature increases is based on questionable science and projections. Man’s contribution to greenhouse gases is minuscule. There are some theories but no convincing proof that increased emissions cause increased temperature.
Now another serious doubt has been raised concerning how much of the 1-degree centigrade increase over the past century allegedly caused by escalating emissions has even occurred.
“We can’t know for sure if global warming is a problem if we can’t trust the data,” said Anthony Watts, veteran broadcast meteorologist, who for three years organized an extensive review of official ground temperature monitoring stations, in conjunction with Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and professor emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric Science at the University of Colorado.
The study, recently published by the free-market Heartland Institute, inspected 860 of the 1,221 U.S. ground stations that gauge temperature changes. The findings were alarming.
They found 89 percent of stations “fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements” that say stations must be located at least 100 feet from artificial heat sources.
“We found stations located next to the exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering hot rooftops and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat,” Mr. Watts reported.
Many stations also had added more sensitive measuring devices, heat-generating radio transmission devices and even latex paint to replace original whitewash, resulting in greater heat retention and reflection.
At one location, Mr. Watts said when he “stood next to the temperature sensor, I could feel warm exhaust air from the nearby cell phone tower equipment sheds blowing past me! I realized this official thermometer was recording the temperature of a hot zone . . . and other biasing influences including buildings, air conditioner vents and masonry.”
These influences produce readings higher than actual ambient temperatures, Mr. Watts said. Moreover, the research revealed “major gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors.”
These inflated, error-prone, tinkered-with temperature recordings are one of several measurements cited by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as evidence man-made global warming is a threat. But the Heartland study concluded, “The U.S. temperature record is unreliable. And since the U.S. record is thought to be ‘the best in the world,’ it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.”
Before devastating the economy to fix a problem that may not exist, we ought to get the numbers right.
@ Pamela Gray (07:16:02) :
That is not how science is supposed to work. You don’t have to have an alternate hypothesis to falsify the AGW hypothesis. You just need to show how the AGW hypothesis does not match actual observations.
The AGW-mongers and the MSM are trying to mislead people when they insist otherwise.
Here’s another AGW biased prediction, the NCDC forecasts a sizzling summer for much of the U.S according to USA today with the only truly cool spot being in the north central region. Then I look as WXmaps today and the forecast anomaly for the US over the next week and seeing a lot of average to below normal anomalies forecast for the East and what doesn’t look like sizzling to me in the West, the only real ‘hot’ spot anomaly-wise in North America is Alaska with cooler than normal temps. forecast for much of Canada, no doubt the media will just want to focus on there right now and not much of anywhere else in the country.
Sites like IceAgeNow often show coldwave stories to remedy burnout from CNN and friends feeding heatwave stories to you, you’d go to both (and then there’s this site) if you want both sides of the coin.
I though most Americans (gallup polls) do not believe in AGW anymore am I right or wrong?
Douglas DC (11:13:20) :
Pamela’s Tank remark has some validity.But we don’t need a Tank but a good
anti tank weapon like a Bazooka,shaped charge, a track bustin’ landmine.
You are assuming you have weapons but chances are that you won’t in that case you will be crushed down by those tanks 🙂
OT: Brazillian newspaper tries to associate AF447 tragic accident with Global Warming!!!
There seems to be no limit for news nowadays…
Ecotretas
Richard S. Lindzen
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
One can reasonably expect that opportunism of the weak will lead to efforts to alter the data (though the results presented here have survived several alterations of the data already).
This is it in a nutshell. Sensor data and sensor
performance, which affects data, can be manipulated.
Given the amount of money involved, agenda driven
science, and a willing media, how can you how can
defend against it? Ridicule! Every time one of the pillars
of their argument is destroyed, the people, media and
politicians, must be crushed as well. Anything less, will
have the effect of complicity. I know this sounds harsh,
but this is a high stakes game where our freedom and
way of life is in the balance. They are not going to control
my life….Yours?
@ Paddy (11:16:01) :
Be very careful in quoting Margaret Thatcher in support of your anti-AGW stance. If you do some research, you will find that it was she who turned AGW into an international policy issue! For example Google “Margaret Thatcher Global Warming” and you will find “Global Warming: – How It All Began” by
Richard Courtney:
“Then, in 1979, Mrs Margaret Thatcher (now Lady Thatcher) became Prime Minister of the UK, and she elevated the hypothesis to the status of a major international policy issue.”
Can we get away from the conservative versus liberal US dogfight and stick to the science? As a liberal UK citizen with a scientific education I am a confirmed AGW sceptic who is delighted with WUWT’s excellent work!
Stoic
Yes. The money. Consensus. Groupthink. Mass hysteria. The Madness of Crowds. Versus the truth.
Scientists, the media and politicians. The three forces in play if you include the totality of activism within the political set and disregard those who fall into more than one, such as celebrities, the Governor of California and the odd (astro)physicist.
Truth. The media don’t know the meaning of the word. They get paid irrespective of what science or politics says or does. Politicians are “economical” with it and exist solely to play with it, fix it around policy and spin it for their “backers” and the media.
The modern-day scientist looks at his fellow players and something leaps out of the morass and hits them in the eye. Lies of Omission, derailment, confusion and obfuscation pay. Well. You too can aspire to the accumulation of wealth beyond the dreams of ancient kings. All you have to do is as thy peers do. Tell a few porkies, fibs and white lies. Exaggerate a little. Smudge some paperwork. Smear a little data here and there. Take a seat guy. Look over there….
Oh so human. Predictable. Tragic.
On the whole, climate science is young. Climate scientists are young. Climate scientists wish to feed and clothe their young. They imagine sending their young to the very institutions that produced them. Do not be surprised when they wish to defend their young, or their ability to provide for them.
Several posts make the point that AGW is a secular religion, and there is support for that at the green-agenda website,
http://www.green-agenda.com
which features extensive quotes from leading AGW figures, and essays by the author.
I would like to add a general psychological comment. Scientists and engineers are trained (or brainwashed) to think of a problem as ‘something to solve’, and are puzzled when rational analysis and solutions are ignored by political and cultural leaders. In the mind of a high cultural or political leader, problems are ‘something to exploit’, and all the well informed technical commentary on this website is naive. If one of the higher figures quoted on the green-agenda site actually bothers to read this site, they would be mildly amused by the earnest comments from former straight-A students.
An example: the Petition Project has collected more than 30K signatures against the Kyoto Treaty, and the public impact is … zilch. Another simple example: the basic numbers, such as the 0.04% level of carbon dioxide and the one-hundredth-of-one-percent expected increase, etc, have not penetrated to the public level.
If the rational side expects to make any impact, they will have to learn a lot more about psychology, politics, economics, and so on. They could at least try to recapture some of the scientific organizations that are still in the AGW camp. I might add that ‘capture’ is a standard term in social science; the Wikipedia has an article on Regulatory Capture, for example. The AGW leaders are working on a world capture, in effect.
The thing that makes the AGW argument withstand criticism is the fact that the theory is combined with a plausible mechanism complete with mathematical equations, computers, elaborate models, funding, and media coverage. With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power.
This is what I don’t understand. There is an equation that governs how the increase in CO2 effects the absorption lines and from what I have seen, the sensitivity to CO2 is an order of magnitude less than what is claimed from Hansen’s empirical relation. I would really like to know why this has not been presented or at least show me where I am wrong.
Anthony: I have a guest post for you on the Levitus 2008 ocean temperature paper–an anomaly due to data source switching. Contact me and I’ll send it.
Reply: emails sent ~ charles the moderator
“With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power. ”
So, someone like FoxNews needs to “buy in” and promote this.
Why the 3rd International Climate Change Conference? To release the 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change – NIPCC Report
See: Climate Change Reconsidered
News: The Climate-Change Report the UN Failed to WriteNews Releases > June 2009
etc.
George E. Smith (10:09:46)
The entire notion of feedback in the climate system stems from a fundamental miscomprehension in “climate science” of what that term really means and what it analytically implies. They think that any nonlinear response is “feedback,” and constantly seek power-amplifying mechanisms to explain their misconceptualizations. They don’t even understand that power can’t be reused and that independently-powered operational amplifiers are used in control systems to maintain bona fide feedback. Say “impedance” to them, and you’ll get a blank stare.
You’re right. Thermalization of insolation is what drives the climate system. Atmospheric backscattering of LW radiation is a power-redistribution, rather than a power-generating mechanism, and that’s all that’s involved in the “greenhouse effect.”
Got more serious matters to attend to. Keep them honest, George.
Hi,
I’m looking forward to the rest of this thread. In the meantime I admire the sense of humour displayed in the Ads added by Google. Some wit must have been programmed into their search engine: Just now I have these adds:
Carbon & Energy Tracking
Environmental Carbon Software Green IT & Green Data Centers
http://www.csrware.com
MSc Carbon Management
with Glasgow University Apply Now for 2009/2010
http://www.carboncentre.org
Climate Change Jobs
Recruiting specialists in Climate Change across the globe.
http://www.acre-resources.co.uk/climate
Reduce Environment Impact
Help Combat The Climate Crisis Assess, Reduce and Offset Your CO2
http://www.carbonbalanced.org
Even if you tried, you would have difficulty making it up and add these to articles on a blog like WUWT. Or am I wrong and am I just Don Quixote shouting at evil environmental windmills?
Cheers!
“The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) has released an 880-page book challenging the scientific basis of concerns that global warming is either man-made or would have harmful effects.”
For a no-cost PDF copy, go to:
http://www.nipccreport.org/
Pamela Gray (07:16:02) :
“Falsifying it without coming up with anything else is like trying to destroy a tank with a hammer. That little phrase “What else could it be?” becomes a clanging bell extolling a default AGW win if we cannot come up with an equally plausible elaborate mechanism and overriding theory.”
Jeff Alberts (07:46:04) :
“I don’t think there is any “it”, but I do understand your point. So far no one has shown that we’re seeing anything out of the ordinary. But the AGW clique says we need to disprove them and come up with a valid “explanation”. I don’t see anything that needs explaining.”
While I understand the sentiment here I disagree very strongly. Just because we don’t have a much better explanation does not mean a wrong one should be accepted until we get a good one. Expecially not when you consider the incredible cost in terms of the economy and human welfare.
It is the theory that has the burden of proof, that is the way science works. It is not required that the experiment providing falsification also produce a new theory and in fact it would be unusual if it did.
As it stands now, natural variation is a more plausible explanation than catastrophic AGW, with assuming the value of feedback being much smaller than IPCC assumptions also being a better fit to the data than either.
>Ed Reid (08:35:27) :
>It appears that Dr. Lindzen’s tolerance for fools is diminishing in his >advancing maturity, for which we should all be thankful
I read an interview of Richard Lindzen that he saw James Hansen’s testimony before Congress in 1988 on the day it happened. He knew Hansen was speaking with certainty about things that were not certain. Richard Lindzen seemed to go on to say that he has not been fully willing to speak up about this global warming thing but that he felt it was the right thing to do anyway. I suppose I am like that too. I’d rather go do something less responsible, especially since doing it would be so much more easy. But “the easy way leads to destruction”.
I really do admire Richard Lindzen.
“”” Pamela Gray (07:16:02) :
The thing that makes the AGW argument withstand criticism is the fact that the theory is combined with a plausible mechanism complete with mathematical equations, computers, elaborate models, funding, and media coverage. With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power. Falsifying it without coming up with anything else is like trying to destroy a tank with a hammer. That little phrase “What else could it be?” becomes a clanging bell extolling a default AGW win if we cannot come up with an equally plausible elaborate mechanism and overriding theory. The default hammer, “The system is very complex and we don’t know much about it.” will not provide a foothold on the beach. It has to be tank for tank. “””
Pamela, as a schoolteacher, you are supposed to make hinks easier to understand; not more difficult.
You ask; “what else could it be ?”
The right answer is; What the heck are you talking about; what else could WHAT be!? There is nothing to BE, or to be discussing. The climate is always changing; always has, always will, and there hasn’t been anything happen in recent memory, to be even talking about.
Yes we know it was a little warmer a decade or so ago for a few years, and before that it was colder, and it is colder now; but that will change also, and the fact that CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily, since they started measuring it at Mauna Loa is somewhat irrelevent since no significant climate trends have been established as a result of that change. Even if 100% of that CO2 change is due to human activities of some kind; it still doesn’t do anything of any consequence.
There isn’t any climate anything, to be, regardless of what it is that isn’t causing anything to be !
George
>tarpon (08:56:43) : Now is a good time to think, does anybody actually know >how a glaciation ice age begins? Because we are overdue …
Are you talking about a Little Ice Age type of cooling or a major glaciation?
I believe I’m a healthy skeptic, by which I mean that I’m open to the concept of AGW, provided that the evidence backs it.
There’s a lot of folks out there saying that the current evidence doesn’t back it (I think I agree with them, but still worry that skeptics might distort data just as AGWers do).
It seems to me that, if the case of skeptics is failing, it is failing due to lack of political advocacy, promotion of sensible environmental policies like not destroying the Amazon, building energy-efficient buildings and develolping a long-term holistic multi-sourced energy policy for the post O+G era.
Is it the case that this has in fact been done, but the media don’t report it?
If so, then this is purely a political power play…..
If not, then I would advise you guys and your political friends to arm yourselves with policies and go sell them to the healthily skeptical general public……..
>Pragmatic (09:45:30) : Two out of three shoppers bought credits on the spot.
Actually this is sad.
With just a little time of investigating for yourself, like I have done for myself, like so many here commenting at this blog have done for themselves, you could see what the truth is about global warming. In other words, ‘buyer beware’.
Re: Earth affecting Sun
Tidal effect
Of course, if this is true for the Earth, it must also be true for other major bodies in the solar system.
vg:“I though most Americans (gallup polls) do not believe in AGW anymore am I right or wrong?”
You are wrong, a plurality of Americans are now AGW skeptics, but a majority don’t think AGW is a serious threat. The AGW crowd has never convinced a majority that AGW is a serious threat,
>John K. Sutherland (10:27:28) :
>Ice ages begin when snowfall exceeds snowmelt each year.
Nice tidy definition. By it then we are heading in to a type of Little Ice Age. I’m not going to venture to say how severe. I will however be watching Arctic melt this summer. The unexpected thinkness measered (Eisdiken–sp?) and persisting cooler tempseratures should make this summers melt less than last summers—I say should.
“”” Leif Svalgaard (10:58:15) :
Squidly (10:16:07) :
Consider, the Earth (as with all planets in our solar system) has a gravitational pull on our Sun. This fact is how we are able to detect planets around other stars. Given that, can you really assume we have no affect on our Sun? We obviously have some affect. But to what limits do we affect our Sun?
What you describe is that the planets have an influence on the orbit of the Sun, not on the Sun itself [except for sub-millimeter tides]. This is a very different thing. “””
Yes tis true that the planets have a gravitational effect on the sun. Lots of other things do too, and also on the earth as well.
Did you know that you can actually wigh the earth; the whole kit and kaboodle, and do it in your own bathroom, with nothing more than an ordinary bathroom scale.
Besides the scale you need a small sturdy box that is somewhat smaller than the scale, and capable of supporting the weight of the earth; and also a small flat mirror.
You place the mirror face up on the floor alongside the box, then you place the scale on top of the box upside down with the readout over the mirror so you can read the weight of the earth; which of course is now sitting on your bathroom scale. You will probably get a very low reading if any, because most bathroom scales have very low gravity.
Well you can climb up on top of the back of the bathroom scale to increase its mass and gravity; and now you will be able to see that you can now read the wight of the earth on the readout, that is visible in the mirror.
When I do it, the earth weighs in at 178 pounds. It’s a good thing it isn’t any heavier, or it could do some real damage to your bathroom scale.
George
“Paddy (11:16:01) :
Margaret Thatcher…”
You may not believe this but Margaret Thatcher had a key role in the Genesis of global warming becoming this monster.
>vg (11:47:37) :
>I though most Americans (gallup polls) do not believe in AGW anymore am I right or wrong?
Those who are ‘Democrat’ are the only segment of the population who firmly believe. Republicans, for a large part, do not. Independents are split almost 50/50.
If a few documentaries like Great Global Warming Swindle, The Cloud Mystery, or Moncktons presentaion, were played on tv here I am certain those numbers would change. If I had the money I would have already paid for prime-time blocks of time to have them aired.
“”” Micky C (MC) (10:50:24) :
George, the reason that Prof Lindzen uses the feedback equation is that it’s the same one that Jim Hansen uses in his 1984 paper. Just Google “Hansen 1984″ and it will come up with a NASA link where you can download the paper. It has remained essentially the same from this time on. “””
First off, I am not being critical of Professor Lindzen; who I think is being very brave to stand out in front of his peers and say what he is saying. And I realize he is not the origin of that equation in the climatology field; and in his speech he really only uses it as a vehicle to explain some of the limitations on our knowledge of the “Climate sensitivity”.
I too am an admirer of Dr Lindzen; and nobody should forget that.
George
promotion of sensible environmental policies like not destroying the Amazon
Promotion?. I will tell you what such a “promotion” of first world moron’s NGOs is doing right now in the peruvian amazon jungle:
Our government issued a law to regulate the rational exploitation of amazon resources, not including neither the indians’ lands nor the reserved areas (national parks), however that “promotion” from NGOs told the indians their land was going to be stolen , which is absolutely wrong and it would be unlawful, and they have taken by force the gas pipe which connects the gas fields with cities, industries and power generators.
The government can not do anything because other first world moron’s NGOs would cry aloud if they are but touch with a feather…”that would be a crime against humanity”
Tell me, what would you do?
Jeff Alberts (07:46:04) :
“I don’t think there is any “it”, but I do understand your point. So far no one has shown that we’re seeing anything out of the ordinary. But the AGW clique says we need to disprove them and come up with a valid “explanation”. I don’t see anything that needs explaining.”
We don’t need to disprove anything. A hypothesis isn’t considered ‘proven’ until found otherwise. They have it backwards. This is the nullification of the scientific method.
Re: latest spots from http://spaceweather.com/
The sunspot’s two dark cores are each about the size of Earth, and they are crackling with B-class solar flares. During years of Solar Max (e.g., 2000-2002) we would consider such activity minor, but now, during the deep solar minimum of 2008-2009, it merits attention.
That little phrase “What else could it be?” becomes a clanging bell extolling a default AGW win if we cannot come up with an equally plausible elaborate mechanism and overriding theory.
The real problem with this requirement is that in all likelyhood there is no “it”. The climate at any moment is the resultant of a multivariate equation in which all the many variables may act to support or repress the others, and sometimes both at the same time. I suspect that the trends that appear in the phenomenon of the climate are created by random synchronizations of the cyclic behaviors that are present in almost all the variables involved. If these synchronicities and cycles are not random, the list of suspects that might be creating and driving them is small. It would have to include the Sun, against which a fair amount of circumstantial evidence for responsibility has been amassed, but at this point barely enough to support a charge of aiding and abetting. The present effort to place all the blame upon humanity is analogous to the police arriving at the scene of a liquor store robbery where the owner was shot and observing a baby in a stroller with a water pistol and immediately placing him under arrest for the crime.
The real difficulty is that in the present scenario, events are being driven by members of the political class who have absolutely no interest in any of the scientific aspects of the situation and for whom the results of the last election have granted such concentrated power that they feel themselves completely removed from any need to respond to the wishes of their constituents, except of course, for those that financed their ascendancy. At this point the voice of God himself announcing that humanity was not responsible for changes in the climate would be unlikely to dislodge them from the dismal path they’ve chosen for us.
Gene Nemetz (13:25:29) :
>Pragmatic (09:45:30) :
“Penn and Teller (Being Green, “Bullsheit” on Showtime) did a show on how easy it is to shame people into buying carbon credits. Armed with a clip board and calculator a charming woman (a shill) stopped shoppers and offered to calculate the “carbon footprint” of their purchases. Shoppers were then given an opportunity to purchase carbon “credits” to offset their greed.
Two out of three shoppers bought credits on the spot. Thus creating two groups in need of lampooning. Alarmist pols, scientists and MoveOners. And the general public for being so easily shamed and duped.”
According to its website British Airways was the first airline to introduce a voluntary passenger carbon offsetting scheme in 2005.
Many of my friends and relatives fly frequently on British Airways. I have yet to meet any person who has bought a carbon offset when buying a British Airways ticket (from the privacy of their own computer, in the absence of a threatening woman with a clipboard and calculator). Perhaps airlines such as British Airways, which offer their customers this supremely voluntary tax, should be asked what proportion of their customers choose to pay it.
Stoic
I love the powerpoint though I must admit some of it I had to break down the math for ( what can I say I don’t use equations that consist of feedback effects on some days ) however I appreciate how in simplistic term the whole issue was presented.
As for whether truth triumphs I fear we must be patient. Right now we have a belief that our science and understanding have turned into crystal balls. We have become sure of cause and effect to the point that we always know the cause ergo we can determine the effect. Unfortunately this means that until there is no way to deny the results the results will be denied. One of the reasons that Global Warming gained notoriety is that Hansen went before the world and said… “It’s going to get warmer” which according to even the satellite data it has indeed gotten warmer since 1984. Now it took almost 16 years before the momentum of this finally caught up in a fashion that has bloomed to the current levels of fanaticism. Technically it is hard to ‘disprove’ something that has not been proven yet. It is even harder to disprove something that has anecdotal evidence to support it especial when it was never ‘proven’ to begin with.
Unless there is a significant drop in global temperature for a sustained time it will be VERY difficult to show that CO2 is nothing more then a red herring. Much like communism in that movie “Clue”.
Just my thoughts on the matter… So for those that think the CO2 is an immense waste of time we lose if temperature does not drop… If it does then we lose because that is a somewhat bad thing anyway. Unfortunately skeptics are in a no win situation.
Dave Wendt (14:11:20) :
At this point the voice of God himself announcing that humanity was not responsible for changes in the climate would be unlikely to dislodge them from the dismal path they’ve chosen for us.
Unless that GOD would be HIM (the fat one) 🙂
George E. Smith (13:38:07) :
That seems a bit involved. I’d like to tell people “My gravitational field is so strong it attracts the Earth with a force of 178 lbs.” Alas, I have to say “nearly 200 lbs.”
But…once more, what did cause the temperature surge of the 97-98 El Nino?
Was it the TSI jump of 0.86 watts as recorded by ACRIM in 1989?…or am I pressing some sensitive corns?
NormD (08:47:43) :
> Why is there a second ICCC conference just a few months after the last ICCC conference? I cannot find any explanations. Isn’t this abnormal?
Well, it is the third ICCC, so they aren’t too set in their ways. I think one reason is to have it in Washington, which has the greatest concentration of influential people who need to be influenced themselves. There may also be a dose of there wasn’t enough time in March for all the people with something worthwhile to say to have time to say it.
There may also be timing issues of wanting to get a conference before the next Copenhagen conference and wanting to announce the NIPCC report.
Pamela Gray (07:16:02) :
“The system is very complex and we don’t know much about it.” will not provide a foothold on the beach. It has to be tank for tank.
In some cases an ‘anti-tank weapon’ can also be effective. For example, an attempt launched by Anthony Watts to prove that the land-based instrumental temperature record is unreliable can have a significant effect on the ongoing debate if the results are well presented. As far as we know the IPCC WG1 reports and even climate models only rely on dubious surface measurements and they completely ignore the satellite data provided by UAH and RSS.
One of the main arguments of climate modellers is that their modells can ‘reproduce’ the observed temperature trends by backcasting, so they must be accurate and can provide reliable forecasts until the end of the 21st century (sometimes even further). The second one is that the results only gained with the combination of ‘natural’ and ‘anthropogenic’ forcings match with observed global temperatures, confirming the theory of man-made global warming.
Of course the latter one is a classic circular argument: global climate models assume that man-made CO2 is the major driver of climate change, amplified by a huge amount of positive feedback – mainly increasing atmospheric water vapor, decreasing surface albedo because of snow/ice melt and ocean outgassing caused by warming temperatures. These are the main ingredients of a catastrophic warming prediction. The second main point is that these climate models rely on an assumption that natural variability can have only a negligible effect on global temperatures. Most of them include only three or four severe volcanic eruptions in the past 100 years and their effect as a form of natural variability, but don’t include solar variation or the role of important multidecadal oscillations such as the PDO or AMO. Most of the model simulations only with natural forcings come out with cooler temperatures for the 1971-2000 period that the early 20th century, which is plain nonsense when we all know that solar acivity had shown an increase during the last 100 years.
All in all, any model which is completely relying on the theory of man-made global warming and some related assumptions while ignoring other possible causes, can not be used as ‘proof’ for the very same theory. This is purely Petitio Principii. I don’t even have to mention that the main endogenous variables in GCMs are getting adjusted in order to produce results which are matching closely with the observed surface temperature trends.
The second statement can be falsified easily but the first one shows to be much stronger than the latter one. If we can demonstrate that the surface temperature record used by the IPCC and climate modellers is unreliable we remove one of the most important cards from the house of cards of AGW. Without a temperature record which shows significant and accelerating warming the whole global warming theory becomes very-very unstable. The recent flat/cooling trend already did half of this work by erasing the continuous warming, the second half is yet to be done by proving that the warming of the last 100-150 years have been overstated because of large-scale UHI contamination and microsite biases.
Hungarian former NASA scientist Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi tried to “shake the table” where the house of cards of AGW is located, but the table seemed to be too large and robust. Maybe examining the reliability of the surface temperature record can be a more effective way to challenge the theory of man-made global warming.
Regards,
Adam Soereg – a Hungarian AGW skeptic
Innocentiousxii (14:23:27) :
Unfortunately skeptics are in a no win situation
The humble will inherit the paradise (think WUWT next winter), don’t lose your faith 🙂
AGW is a religion, and we’ll soon be taxed for it the same way that all citizens were taxed to support Crusades in the 13th Century.
There were plenty of people who didn’t want to go traipsing across Europe to reclaim the Holy Land in somebody else’s name. I suspect there were a good many who weren’t even terribly devout Catholics. But they still had to pay their Crusade tax and give it up (fiscally and verbally) for the “elites” (to use Lindzen’s term) who survived by pandering to the Holy Fathers.
How does one speak to a crowd of people whipped up into a frenzy of self-righteousness, fear and (sometimes) hatred?
Cold logic? Soothing calm? Stentorian command? Ridicule?
Or do you just ignore the rhetoric, pay your subsidies, keep your heretical views to yourself… and let the zealots Crusade themselves silly?
Whatever people choose to do, the foundations for the Crusade are being laid: the penitential power companies have confessed, the “preaching friars” are in the field, giving “absolution” and taking new vows. The Evil is unprecedented, and our duty clear.
re: Pamela Gray
The real problem is that most people in America have no idea about any of the science regarding AGW. They do not know what is true and what isn’t, they do not know what has been proven and what has been debunked. And, sadly, they could care less. Most will agree with whomever is speaking to them in order to mask their own ignorance. The tactic of the AGW side is to speak to them often enough so the masses will just accept those words without question, all in the name of not appearing to be stupid.
Adolfo Giurfa (11:03:04) :
We must above all else be willing to protect our democratic right to determine the nature of the government that manages our affairs even if this could cost our lives. The people of the EU have failed in this regard and have lost all control of the institutions that should serve the people. The result is poverty.
The EU will collapse for the same reasons that all bureaucratic dictatorships do.
Without funding from democratic capitalist countries the UN becomes nothing more than the yapping dog of failed states and unhinged minorities.
Time is not on their side.
From slide #7:
“What was done, was to take a large number of models that could not reasonably simulate known patterns of natural behavior (such as ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation), claim that such models nonetheless accurately depicted natural internal climate variability, and use the fact that these models could not replicate the warming episode from the mid seventies through the mid nineties, to argue that forcing was necessary and that the forcing must have been due to man.”
Does anyone have a reference, preferably to part of an IPCC report, that supports the claim this was actually part of the stated reasoning of the IPCC?
I have no professional experience of the subjects discussed on this site, but I have become an addict and appreciate that there are many realists out there who find this site their family home. Well done, it is good to have such a forum.
My niaive view is that there are two sources of heat in this solar system as far as the earth is concerned. One is the sun, which is totally dominant, the other is the relatively minor but more local geothermal effect and the latter has a local influence such as in volcanic regions and a more general effect which is probably influenced by the gravitational and magnetic fields of the sun as well as those of the earth.
The solar effects will include radiation at all frequencies. I’m not convinced that we understand all the possible relationships between radiation frequency and climate. Then we have the solar wind with its charged particles, the changing magnetic fields, the possible relationship between solar cycle duration and climate and the influence of radiation from deep space. Do we understand all of these? I promise not to bring that massive component, dark matter, into the discussion.
Then we have the debates. I doubt if climatologists can agree on anything. But I do agree with Pamela when she says that a hot water bottle filled with hot air or CO2 will be useless compared with one filled with water. The GHG role of CO2 does not sound very credible compared with other possibilities.
I tend to think that there are masses of cyclical trends and every now and then the positive ones are in sync with each other and then with time, a more random pattern takes over. If we take temperature data from the nineties we could ‘prove’ that the sales of mobile phones give a strong correlation with global temperature and therefore the phones caused global warming. (All that hot air.) It is easy to take linear parts of cycles and assume relationships and cause and effect, but it is probably not correct.
Computing did not really take off until the CP/M operating system about 20 years ago and then windows 3 around 1993. It is amazing that computers have been around for less time than we think. So the seriously large databases must be much younger than that. Computer modelling has not been around for very long in climate timescales and neither has the data. Then we have the question about the reliability and the quality of the data, including misleadingly simple things like temperature measurement. Against that background, it is amazing that an entire industry has grown with people typing algorithms into machines that produce predictions of climate timescale magnitude on the basis of a relatively few dodgy numbers with even more questionable assumptions.
In my experience, the big, obvious causes are usually the cause. The sun is the likely culprit where warming is concerned. I would look at the additive effects of cyclical events. Also, I have heard a lot about mini ice ages when we have prolonged solar minima, what about mini heat waves when we have a quick succession of hyperactive cycles?
“”” William Sears (07:21:54) :
The feedback equation used is similar to a “voltage-series” feedback model used in electronics. But there are other kinds of feedback such as “voltage-shunt”, “current-series”, and “current-shunt” in electronics. Are there analogues to these in climate theory? Also, these feedback models assume that the feedback connection does not significantly load the circuit and is one-way. How realistic are these assumptions for climate? We can safely asuume that the earth does not affect the sun, but what else can we assume? Just a few random thoughts. “””
William, in electronic feedback systems, in the simplest cases, there are four possibilities. The feedback signal can be either picked off (proportional to) the Output VOLTAGE, or picked off (porportional to) the Output CURRENT, and it can be fed to the system input either as an input VOLTAGE, or an Input CURRENT, giving the four possible simple cases. I say simple cases, because no feedback amplifier, has either zero or infinite input or output impedance, although near infinite input impedance (resistive), is relative practical, and near zero output impedance is relatively practical.
But any real amplifier has finite input and output impedances, and I say impedance because they both are certainly frequency sensitive; so it is never possible to get a pure sample of output Voltage, or output Current, and since the input impedance is also finite and non zero; then you can’t feed in either a pure Voltage or a pure current.
The problem gets even more apparent when you consider feedback amplifiers at RF frequencies, such as might be used for a T&V antenna gain amplifier. Now you may have a system with both 75 Ohm input impedance, and output impedance, so you really are talkign about sampling output power, and injecting an input feedback power signal.
Now I shudder to think what is analagous to any of these electronic systems, in the physical world of climate (or weather).
But remember they aren’t even dealing with the time delays; so asking what the impulse response of the GHG feedback system is, is somewhat like spitting into the wind; or similar activity.
I forgot to mention, that electronic feedback amplifiers, usually are operated only in a linear mode; we don’t have a lot of logarithmic non linear feedback electronic systems. Good luck with that CO2 doubling log response.
George
Maybe this will not be welcome on a scientific blog but I think the main point between AGW and its dectractors is this:
AGW makes humans the center of the universe, a rather perverse ending to the Copernican revolution, but fittingly so. GW is our fault, goes the theory, so we can end it. We can do something, if we all band together (all 6 billion of us) as one. It’s an intoxicating thought and I can see the appeal. But it is ultimately vain. All of human ingenuity combined across the globe for decades and decades would do little to blunt the overriding and episodic power of the natural world in which we live. This theory, therefore, essentially amounts to humanity worshipping itself, to which end it has employed that most human of endeavors: the quest to know (science). Thus behold the unstated mantra of AGW: “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!” If we just had the right people, in the right place, doing the right things, at the right time – goes the theory – all our problems would disappear and paradise would slowly unfold before our eyes. But that is not not so, nor will it ever be. That is, in fact, the cry of every fascist/statist/communist/etc. leader throughout all of history. Humans have remade the world, after a fashion, but they cannot remake themselves.
Principles about human nature, which some call religion, are not subject to science and its laws. Science can shed light on their periphery, but ultimately it is beyond the aim and scope of science. And that is also true of AGW, though it professes to be rooted in science. It is not. But as it cannot call itself a religion, that other of most human endeavors, it must remain as cloaked as it can in science. That is why explanations using strict scientific methodology usually succeed in stripping it bare, but cannot answer sufficiently the overwhelming propagandic effect that making humans the center of the universe has on the human mind or soul. Whatever the religious beliefs of its detractors, they remain rooted (for now) in the idea that humanity is not the be-all and end-all of all of our problems. They may differ as to the answer to them, but they recognize that humanity and the sciences we have developed do not answer all the questions there is about life. In essence, they know that humanity is not the center of the universe, and thus (as is often found on this blog) are more prone to be faithful to the principles first established by the Copernican revolution, which was more of a revolution in human world-view than it was in science itself.
Now we are slipping back into the darkness of those pre-Copernican days, except that the packaging is different. Then it was the church’s teachings. Now it is political-scientific consensus. Ultimately, they both amount to the same thing. It’s all about power, order, and control.
Listen to this from Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism: “About ten years ago I went on a junket to Switzerland and attended a talk with the CEO of Nestlé. Listening to him, it became very clear to me that he had little to no interest in free markets or capitalism properly understood. He saw his corporation as a “partner” with governments, NGOs, the U.N., and other massive multinationals. The profit motive was good for efficiency and rewarding talent, but beyond that, he wanted order and predictability and as much planning as he could get. I think that mindset informs the entire class of transnational progressives, the shock troops of what H. G. Wells hoped would lead to his liberal-fascist “world brain.” And then he also says this: “contemporary progressivism is a political religion with its roots in German state theory, sharing a close family resemblance to fascism. Among the anatomical and genetic similarities: cult of unity, sacralization of politics, philosophical pragmatism, corporatism, relativism, Romanticism, hero-worship, collectivism, and so on. And out of nowhere comes a guy who campaigns as a secular messiah, spouting deeply spiritualized political rhetoric, claims the Progressives as his inspiration, and proudly sees himself as carrying out FDR’s mission. I haven’t counted them, but I’d guess I’ve received a couple hundred e-mails from readers telling me how they thought the whole book was written with Obama in mind, even though I finished it before he was even ahead in the Democratic primaries.”
And that is what the game is all about, ladies and gentlemen. As the bard would say, the game is afoot.
Stoic (12:06:57) :
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
Thanks for reminding everyone that Mrs Thatcher played a very big part in all this AGW nonsense.
I forgot to mention, that electronic feedback amplifiers, usually are operated only in a linear mode; we don’t have a lot of logarithmic non linear feedback electronic systems. Good luck with that CO2 doubling log response.
Low open loop gain amplifiers with bipolar inputs. But we do try to limit the segment of the input curve used to avoid as much as possible the log response. Which is also temperature sensitive. Heh.
But in general you are correct.
LarryD (13:28:47) :
According to their explanation, the distance between the Earth and sun is growing because the sun is losing its angular momentum.
This is a real effect, but takes billions of years to play out [as the authors well know and acknowledge], so we need not consider it for now.
George,
The simple model using a “climate sensitivity” for the surface temperature addresses secular changes on a long timescale for a climate which is otherwise assumed to be stable (a highly damped oscillator, if you prefer to think of it that way).
Nature doesn’t care whether you try to shoehorn its description into linear circuit theory because that’s how you prefer to think about it, so arguing semantics about “proper” feedback topologies is way beside the point.
Douglas DC (11:13:20) : Pamela’s Tank remark has some validity.But we don’t need a Tank but a good anti tank weapon like a Bazooka,shaped charge, a track bustin’ landmine. The unexpected can get results-like this blog…
Don’t know if it’s an RPG or just a fire cracker, but I was pondering scrubbing CO2 with plants:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/of-trees-volcanos-and-pond-scum/
And came to the conclusion that a forest of “fast species” could completely deplete all CO2 in the atmosphere today using about 1% of the earth surface in about 50 years. Now assuming I didn’t leave out a couple of orders of magnitude on something…
The conclusion I come to is that more CO2 is not a problem, if it were proven to be a problem we can suck it out fast, and the real problem is that plants must have sucked the CO2 level down to starvation level some time ago, so more is a major feature to the biosphere.
BTW, again if I got the assumptions and math right, a 1% of the planet surface being pond scum (can use salt water…) could suck atmospheric CO2 to zero in about 5 years…
Would that work as an RPG?
kmye (15:36:48) wrote: “Does anyone have a reference, preferably to part of an IPCC report, that supports the claim this was actually part of the stated reasoning of the IPCC?”
Dr. Lindzen was, and I believe still is, an IPCC scientist and is as good a reference as you can get.
I have the greatest admiration for Richard Lindzen. There is probably no one, with the possible exception of Michael Mann who arguably deserves it, who has been the subject of more personal attacks in the field of climate science. LIndzen has stood up to the attacks well and has not let them intimidate him.
PeterS (15:37:16) : Really great! LOL
If we take temperature data from the nineties we could ‘prove’ that the sales of mobile phones give a strong correlation with global temperature and therefore the phones caused global warming.
Wait. Did HE invented the mobile phone, as did with the internet?
Correction: Dr. Lindzen worked on the 2001 IPCC report only. My assertion stands, however, that he is as good a reference as you can find on what the reasonings of the IPCC are. You will probably find that the IPCC describes their reasoning differently than Dr. Lindzen has, but I would trust his description over theirs, given their record and obvious investment in creating a sense of urgency over a problem that now appears to be dissipating.
And in Victori in Australia, there will be more “fire days”…
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/climate-report-warns-of-more-fire-days-20090603-buvr.html
More scaremongering.
Indeed Rick. At least we now have one politician that is prepared to listen to both sides of the argument:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25579732-5013871,00.html
I hope presenters at the Washington conference were convincing and lifted their game over some of the presentations I saw from the Heartland Institute March conference. As some-one pointed out earlier – it not so much the content, it now about SELLING the message and scientists are not always the best people to do this.
Can anyone explain what we are seeing on slides 18, 19, and 20?
PeterS (15:37:16) :
Well, a few notes:
Leif and I were making our livings off of computers well before CP/M showed up. The CP/M command language was inspired by DEC’s RT-11, which was inspired by the operating system for the PDP-10.
IBM had a Terabyte magnetic tape array in the 1960s. I’m not sure how many were sold, but it made a TB the holy grail of storage. Now you can buy a TB disk for less than $100.
The computer revolution was driven by main memory technology. Before solid state RAM, core memory was really what opened up modern computing, especially when the price dropped to $1/byte.
Big computers took up the floor space of a basketball court. They still do. CP/M systems were never big.
And if you really want to be shocked at how briefly some stuff has been around, my grandmother’s next-door neighbor and best friend, Marion Oser, died in 1965 when I was 14 or so. Several years earlier she gave me a kid oriented biography of her father, Thomas Alva Edison.
I think global warming is caused by the huge computers we use to forecast weather. I’m going to need a bigger computer to prove it, though…
“Perhaps most important, these results will of necessity ‘offend the sensibilities of the of the educated classes and the entire East and West Coasts,’ and who would want to do that.”
Lovely!
Ric Werme (18:06:17),
Check out the rad new computer: click
P Walker (08:20:11) : Our only real hope is to delay any political action until the failure of the AGW models becomes readily apparent .
Or maybe deflect the worst of the political action into building pond scum facilities that can easily be converted into biofuel or shrimp farms once the truth is figure out…
I do think that it would be hard for the True Believers to walk away from a plausible solution that would work within 20 years or so while “cleaning up the planet” (via feeding them sewage ‘fertilizer’) at little personal inconvenience.
So we sink some money into feasibility and siting studies, maybe some more into moving dirt around to make ponds near sewage plants and Coal Fired Power Plants; and feed a bit of R&D money to some algae biologists. Much better than all that Cap and Tirade stuff…
I know, it’s settling for 1/2 a loaf (let them declare victory but avoid the worst of the impact); but I’ll take 1/2 a loaf of consequence mitigation now and work on the other 1/2 a loaf later …
M. Simon (13:55:03) :
I finally believe these are spots Galileo would have actually seen.
“” Innocentiousxii (14:23:27) :
I love the powerpoint though I must admit some of it I had to break down the math for ( what can I say I don’t use equations that consist of feedback effects on some days ) however I appreciate how in simplistic term the whole issue was presented.””
This is one reason why I wish a full length documentary featuring Richard Lindzen would be made and aired in America—because he knows soo much and is smart enough to make what he knows simple to understand for the average person.
Does anyone reading this comment have enough money to fund such a documentary? If so you could try to contact this man, Lars Oxfeldt Mortensen, who directed the excellent documentary featuring Henrik Svensmark, “The Cloud Mystery” :
http://www.thecloudmystery.com/The%20Director.html
FrancisT (09:41:38) : I’ve taken out what seems to be the key graph of Dr Lindzen’s presentation at my blog.
http://www.di2.nu/200906/02a.htm
Thank You! Those of us with a house full of Macintosh and Linux boxes but sans Micro$oft Powerpoint appreciate being able to see what this posting is about ….
Just Want Truth… (18:38:15) :
It could also feature Roy Spencer.
Regards,
The commenter formerly known as ‘Just Want Truth…’
George E. Smith (10:09:46) : My second discomfort is the very subject of Prof Lindzen’s talk; “climate sensitivity” which evidently is a creation of Arrhenius himself, who blessed us with his CO2 global warming thesis.
CS is (apparently) the increase in surface temperature (maybe lower troposphere ?) caused by the “forcing” due to doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Well, my discomfort begins right at the word “forcing”. When I took physics there was no force, energy, whatever named “forcing”. What thing is it? As soon as the word “forcing” hits the stage, we are subject to the preconceived notion that it can not be resisted, whatever it is. Personally (while I know it’s too late to ever be done) I would just love to purge the whole debate of the word “forcing” and “force” people to speak in terms of defined energies and properties of matter…
Just what, exactly, is the physical property that is “forcing”?
There isn’t one.
The New Zealand May figures are out, supporting what several of us have observed anecdotally in a number of posts. The forecast is for yet another snow event in the next few days. Most unusual. Dunedin has recorded some record rainfall totals and several stations report precipitation of nearly three times the ‘long-term average’.
“Much of New Zealand shivered last month in the lowest recorded May temperatures.
The national average temperature of nine degrees was 1.6 degrees below the long-term average for May.
NIWA says extremely low temperatures, between two and 2.5 degrees lower than normal, were recorded over most of the South Island, lower parts of the North Island, King Country, Waikato, Auckland and parts of Northland.
Most other locations experienced well below average temperatures between 1.2 and two degrees lower than normal.”
It felt like it!
Full story here.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/record-cold-in-may-and-more-chill-come-2766669
May 15th climate outlook till fall on this site
http://www.capecodweather.net/climate/198-climate-forecast-system/810-may-15th-climate-forecast-system-outlook
Not much global warming for the rest of the year, the model shows below normal temps. forecast for June/July/August in the central US, the May 1st Forecast showed above normal temps. in Alaska until that all changed with the latest revision, above normal temps. are forecast for the southwest, after the summer there won’t be much deviation from average over much of North America
I think there is another “it” but it is decidedly lacking in blood (no Sun and no CO2) and therefore will not get a front page cover. The Sun is romantic and has far more front page”ness” than, say, the Earth-bound quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) of the mean zonal wind, which in turn is thought to be sourced from equatorial wave events like the Kelvin Wave, equatorial Rossby, Rossby-gravity, or inertia-gravity waves, as well as mesoscale gravity waves. What is not clear, but is being investigated and reported on, is the relative distribution of these various drivers on the QBO. This is a plausible mechanism that can be followed like a crumb trail to ENSO, PDO, Jet stream behavior, and weather pattern variation. All these drivers of drivers of drivers of weather pattern variations are by and large a self-contained system of variation and oscillations. Yes, the Sun provides a constant energy source and a very small amount of energy variation (so small that it is not necessary to include the mathematical equivalent in the equations being proposed). But it is the Earth and its complex system of drivers that is begging for discussion, and has the chops to stand up against the far weaker AGW theory.
But if we want to go there, it won’t be easy. The article I am reading is HEAVY READING and I will likely need a tutor just to get past the introduction. Or maybe even crayons.
Squidly (10:55:36) :
Milwaukee Bob (09:51:23) : … What we need to be doing is spending our personal energy on independence from “them”, not trying to prove them wrong, scientifically. And by “independence” I mean food, water AND energy.
Bob, you could not be more correct! You are absolutely right on this! We need to remove ourselves from “them”, and let “them” bring themselves down.
Well, at the risk of starting a competition for my local yard waste… Every time it’s trash day I see all the power I need for the whole house just sitting around waiting to be fed to a home brew gasifier…
http://www.gekgasifier.com/
has an “open source” project to do just that and has a car powered by one. I have the sporadic fantasy of a car with one of these in the trunk with a well painted white filler spout poking up labeled “Mr. Gasifier” 😉 with me filling up at the neighbors yard waste pile…
There is even case law that says once trash is set out it belongs to no one (you have no right to privacy in your trash…)
In this picture:
http://www.gekgasifier.com/wp-content/gallery/v3-0/gekv3_fullfrontw_auger.jpg
The white thing in the background is a Capstone Microturbine generator from the looks of it. I think it’s a 30 kW job and takes darned near any quality gas. So you can power you home and business with one if you wanted to… (Capstone also sells a combined heat and power kit along with a ruggedized version for use at sea on oil platforms. I have no idea the cost, I just own a bit of their stock from time to time and think they have a cool gizmo).
So, ball is in your court. Energy independence is yours if you want to buy / build it. Well proven technology and readily available parts. Again, I don’t know the cost; but old style gasifiers were not much more than an iron tube with a grate, some fire brick in it and a fan or two.
The old way: http://www.gengas.nu/byggbes/index.shtml
I just walked in the house from the Heartland Conference today where I heard the guys speak! And I walk into the Earth 2100, WOW!
Adolfo Giurfa (17:21:59) :
PeterS (15:37:16) : Really great! LOL
If we take temperature data from the nineties we could ‘prove’ that the sales of mobile phones give a strong correlation with global temperature and therefore the phones caused global warming.
Wait. Did HE invented the mobile phone, as did with the internet?
OMG! plot the growth of the internet vs AGW !! IT’S ALL GORE’S DOING!!!
Clearly the internet causes AGW! 😉
Wait a minute. This gasifier thing. My great-grandfather had one! But for some reason his was tucked away in the hills. It produced gas for the car and his afternoon cocktail.
I just walked in the house from the Heartland Conference today where I heard the guys speak! And I walk into the Earth 2100, WOW!
I watched bits and pieces of that while my mate channel surfed. What a crock.
Purakanui (19:08:09),
Degrees C or F?
MattN (12:51:02) :
“With media coverage added to the mix, any attempt to falsify AGW, no matter how well done, will have little power. ”
So, someone like FoxNews needs to “buy in” and promote this
Most of the media is just interested in a ‘good’ story in order to sell newpapers etc. The AGW camp has been giving them what they want, nothing sells better than a good disaster. Most of the media is not going to be interested in the sceptic side which is saying, the climate is normal there’s nothing to worry about. Until we can find some scandal to report e.g. getting someone high up in the IPCC to admit privately that it’s all a con, then the media won’t be that interested.
Meanwhile, it looks like our pets are doomed as well!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5429593/Climate-change-could-kill-your-pet-warns-the-RSPCA.html
Jumping to the ground, almost with one motion, Perkin shoved the head of the sledge into the track gear of the tank; the tread stopped suddenly, and as Perkin leapt out of the way, the tank swung around in place, unable to move forward. . .
The problem, for the Realists, is that there is an armada of Alarmist tanks, and only a few, poorly-armed Perkins.
However. . .
Surely there are a few rich Realists and/or friendly organizations (like Heartland, AEI, etc.) who could start ponying up some bucks to get Realist climate programs on TV, on a regular basis, enough to start to counteract the flood of alarmism. The message has to be:
“Man is not affecting the climate. It is a FALSE ALARM! CO2 is good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you! The Alarmists are trying to steal your livelihood, and the future of your children! Don’t let them get away with it!”
Enough exposure to this message, and people might start to question their representatives. It would be the equivalent of putting sledge hammers in the treads of a lot of Alarmist tanks.
But would it be enough?
A dire prediction indeed. But although the Alarmist armada appears overwhelming, there is still a chance for the Realist resistance to stop it. It will take a concentrated campaign, and it needs a prominent leader, a spokesman whom the media cannot ignore.
Who will step up?
/Mr Lynn
It’s summer.
It’s summer in California.
It’s summer in California and it’s supposed to be 80F and dry with the AC going.
I just pulled the patio furniture in and did the check for what’s closed up.
Why?
It’s 59F at a bit before 9pm and it’s started to sprinkle. You know, start of rain. We just don’t DO that here, now.
You want to know what’s the bazooka that will take out the AGW thesis? Folks scrambling from rain and snow, when it supposed to be warm and dry in California and not yet snowing in New Zealand.
When the average Joe & Jane Sixpack is saying WTF is this doing messing up my day? It sure isn’t warm. It has a visceral impact…
GW my wet patio! Now I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn into a hard rain and stays a trace / sprinkle… (And I was all set to go out and enjoy a nice Radeberger Pilsner watching the sun set… )
How did Anthony’s presentation go? And all the others? I’ll look for a thread on it tomorrow. All will be at this page eventually :
http://www.heartland.org/events/WashingtonDC09/proceedings.html
Regards,
The commenter formerly known as ‘Just Want Truth…’
Smokey (18:25:53) : Tell me that’s not photoshopped!
Pamela (lots): I guess the other thing that would be useful is a theory that defined every Jan01 to be exactly the same as every other Jan01 second by second and so on throughout the days of the year….oh, wait hang on,,,damn leap year…. ok ok I’m sure we can work this out… etc etc 🙂
E.M.Smith (19:05:30) :
It’s the thing on the other side of a nonhomogenous differential equation. That’s the “forcing,” which usually corresponds to the “force” that drives the system.
A note or two on the Orange County Register piece.
Since the publication of the City Heat piece last August,
I have been working with the OCR on controlling the
publication of AGW fantasies. The various editors there
know all three OC temp. stations are bad, and that the
main Santa Ana station is among the worst anywhere.
About a month or so ago I got an agreement that the
OCR would publish something like all of you saw today.
My most recent suggestion, but no agreement yet, is
for a followup piece this coming August. Suggested
title is “City Heat: Not So Hot”.
Working with the OCR is not so hard. Now the
LA Times, that is another thing.
In the interest of fullest disclosure:
I am both a customer of and a supplier to the OCR.
Occasionally they even publish some of my writing.
E.M.Smith (18:39:10) :
> FrancisT (09:41:38) : I’ve taken out what seems to be the key graph of Dr Lindzen’s presentation at my blog.
> http://www.di2.nu/200906/02a.htm
> Thank You! Those of us with a house full of Macintosh and Linux boxes but sans Micro$oft Powerpoint appreciate being able to see what this posting is about ….
http://www.openoffice.org/ has gotten fairly good at handling PowerPoint, it handled Lindzen’s .ppt fine for me.
——
slowtofollow (21:27:12) :
> Smokey (18:25:53) : Tell me that’s not photoshopped!
It is, and is from a competition. It’s actually a submarine console,
see http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/computer.asp
Mr Lynn (20:34:11) :
A dire prediction indeed. But although the Alarmist armada appears overwhelming, there is still a chance for the Realist resistance to stop it. It will take a concentrated campaign, and it needs a prominent leader, a spokesman whom the media cannot ignore.
I must admit to being overly pessimistic at times, but array of forces who’ve got glowing dollar signs in their eyes from the potential profits of carbon demonization is large and firmly in control of the process. 33,000+ scientists dissenting from the prevailing view have barely made a ripple. At this point the only response that might have a chance at derailing this thing is a presentation by coalition of comedians like Drew Carey, Penn & Teller, and others that would highlight the ludicrousness of investing trillions of dollars and large aspects of our personal freedoms and financial prospects on the slim chance that we might save people a hundred years from now from some bad weather. Fighting this in the arena of peer reviewed science and logic is like going allin against a cold deck. They control all the cards. But the pomposity, hypocrisy, covetousness, and hysteria of Gore, Hansen and the political class on this is rife for ridicule and if the presentation is made funny enough, they will be hard pressed to keep it from receiving wide exposure. On the other hand, people have been making fun of political correctness for many years and it still hangs like the Sword of Damocles over every aspect of our lives, but there I go again….
Excellent talk by Lindzen. Excellent comments, sparked by Pamela.
Rebutting the “science” of AGW is important. WUWT is very good at that. Ditto “getting the message out.”
But the problem is essentially a political one. There is only one effective way to deal with political problems (unfortunately), and that is to organize political opposition.
Good science can be helpful, media efforts like this blog can be helpful, but the bottom line is that political power grows out of organized (unified, single-voiced) people. There need to be groups formed and meetings attended. Small numbers will not suffice. There needs to be a critical mass of organized opposition.
I think there is a root problem infesting the whole of Science. It’s never been absent but over recent years it’s got a lot worse and has affected Climate Science most of all. And you see it in Wikipedia’s handling of anything “fringe”. Abuse, misrepresentation, personal attacks of anyone challenging “the System” – all the really interesting material gets this treatment. Thus I realized that even here at wonderful WUWT, certain topics were off-limit (probably, quite reasonably, to protect the Climate Science material which is already under enough fire). CSICOP has a lot to answer for in this respect. But CSICOP just represents the tip of the iceberg.
Those who realize the materialistic dead-end into which Science has been painting itself, go through private, individual paradigm-shifts – and go into the desert like Moses, or disappear elsewhere into one of these “fringe” areas – like Rudolf Steiner, or what Lynne McTaggart writes about in “The Field”. Brilliant scientists there.
Meanwhile, we all see a “dark age of Science” gradually encroaching what used to be fertile pastures. And yes, Thatcher had a big hand in this… by cutting research grants from everything except research promoting AGW… in whatever field it might happen to be.
My own skeptics’ Climate Science primer (click my name) was written to stem this tide. But after a year of doing Climate Science, I’m now convinced we need the Solar System Barycentre thesis on board if we are ever going to understand the driving forces of Climate (not Weather) – and I now think that we cannot understand the mechanisms whereby the SSB works without a paradigm shift into hyperdimensional physics (Zero Point Field stuff). But that’s TWO paradigm shifts away from WUWT, keeping company with even more heretics, and I haven’t written it up because other work calls!
Purakanui (19:08:09),
Degrees C or F?
C, we have been wholly metric for many years now
Innocentiousxii;-)
It’s called “Climate Change”! So if the climate system warms, they’re right, if the climate system cools, they’re right! Heads I Win Tails You Lose! However I do agree that a significant cold spell will concentrate the grey cells of all concerned.
Adam Soereg;-)
If we show that the surface temperature record is flawed, we remove THE most important card from the house, beacuse the satellite data show little or no warming in the lower troposphere!
Lief Svalgaard;-)
Interesting comment about Solar angular momentum & the fact that this phenomenum will take billions of years to take effect. It’s similar to the observations that the Moon, which keeps us on our angular tilt, is moving away from the Earth at a rate of 50mm per year, (no one has said whether this could be a cyclical motion – excuse the pun) & some clever chap has calculated that in 2½ billion years, the Moon will be so far away that the Earth will either tilt to the vertical, of turn horizontal. As if I am worried about that, or the Solar angular momentum issue at that time frame.
Adam Soereg:
“Any model which is completely relying on the theory of man-made global warming .. can not be used as ‘proof’ for the very same theory. ”
So true.
K.R. Frank
If we are looking for targets to lampoon, what about Generation Investment Management LLP? This business was set up by Al Gore and David Blood a former Goldman Sachs asset manager to exploit the fears about AGW which Gore promotes.
The company should be called “Blood and Gore”. Let’s call it that!
Regards
Stoic
For some insight on the NGO capture of the process check this link:
The Greenpeace Institute for Climate Change at Potsdam:
http://forum.junkscience.com/index.php?topic=288.0
Humour is a great weapon.
Take the fight to the enemy – with humour.
Click on one of above ads for the cop15 climate-fest in Denmark (dk) – then join up and comment on their blog. Comments go up right away and are only lightly moderated.
Or follow this link to their blog:
http://en.cop15.dk/news/view%20news?newsid=1397
I have a habit of checking temperature outlooks at wxmaps.org. There is a almost constant cool anomaly over central south america:
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp8.html
Its been like that (more or less) for as long as I´ve checked out the site. Whats up with that? Just a stupid question from a total nobody.
Comments?
I agree entirely. I have written to Mitt Romney (who to my knowledge has never endorsed the AGW mythology), expressing the hope that he might want to take the lead in opposition to the rush to ‘climate change’ legislation in the USA. But I have not even received an acknowledgment from his staff. So I guess it is up to us little folk. Anyone here have experience organizing political groups? I have none, but would be willing to participate.
/Mr Lynn
nofreewind:
I just walked in the house from the Heartland Conference today where I heard the guys speak! And I walk into the Earth 2100, WOW!
M. Simon:
I watched bits and pieces of that while my mate channel surfed. What a crock.
I managed to sit through the entire thing. The saying “know thine enemy” comes to mind. The entire purpose was to frighten, as people who are fearful are more easily manipulated. It had just about everything the AGWers have been screaming about, in epic proportions, (with the strange exception of wildfires), including floods, drought, famine, disease, species extinction/migration, and eventually massive migrations, civil unrest and breakdown of law and order, and massive die-offs of human populations on the order of some two thirds. All because of “evil” coal and oil. Laughably, whenever they showed coal plants, they made it look as though thick, black smoke was pouring out of the smokestacks.
They then showed a possible scenario where we “come to our senses” in time, and switch over to wind and solar energy, and live happily ever after.
This is what we’re up against. It isn’t science but rather, pure emotionalism disguised as science.
Alan the Brit (01:48:44) :
Interesting comment about Solar angular momentum & the fact that this phenomenon will take billions of years to take effect. It’s similar to the observations that the Moon, which keeps us on our angular tilt, is moving away from the Earth at a rate of 50mm per year, (no one has said whether this could be a cyclical motion – excuse the pun) ….
Not cyclic – the Earth’s tidal bulge is accelerating the moon and hence lifting it to ever higher orbits. Perversely, the higher orbit means the moon has more potential energy and it gets it from kinetic energy, and the net result is that the moon is slowing down.
Ultimately the Earth and Moon will phase lock with each seeing the same face until the sun expands into a red dwarf and destroys both.
I guess the Sun is doing the same thing to the planets, but the geometries involved may make it a much slower process and the planets have effects on each other helping mask and confuse the situation.
I don’t have problems with removing time from the equations, this is a common approach. I have problems with slide 14. In the equations, we have the quantities delta-Q, delta-T, F, G0. Then delta-flux is thrown in. There are 3 possible quantities with the units of W/m2, the input, the feedback, and the input plus the feedback that is multiplied by G0. So what exactly is delta-flux, and how does it relate to these other quantities?
Feedback systems usually have the feedback subtracted from the input, rather than added. This is purely convention. G0 * F is conventionally termed the “loop gain”, not the “feedback factor”. The term “feedback factor” suggests the F term.
Also why have F and f. Having two different quantities with the same phonetic symbol makes it hard to follow. Because of the inadequate exposition, or perhaps my own ignorance, I am stuck at slide 14.
Anyone who might have missed Prof. Lindzen’s recent paper on the problems with the climate peer-review process should take a few minutes to read it: click
I think we have to get away from the notion that the overly smoothed or even linear trend line is somehow showing a different forcing than the noisy data. In some signals, that IS the case. For example, when providing the ear a steady pulsing signal designed to excite the auditory brainstem pathway into a steady pulsing response, one can “see” it by mathematically removing all the other electrical EEG (and presumably random) pulses in the brain that are picked up by the electrodes on the skin. We deliberately make the system pulse and then look for that pulse by removing random responses. If the input pulse matches the output pulse we know that the response is due to the input into an otherwise random brain response.
The weather noise and the trend are not like that at all. At least not yet. The noise creates the statistical and artificial trend curves and lines, and will continue to be the case until all the variables are known and mathematically duplicated. For example, the assumed CO2 input cannot currently be found in the output. There is no match. So either our assumption is wrong about the the amount of CO2 input, its effect, or the way in which the noise is being canceled out. One reason why we can’t find it is that maybe the weather noise is not random.
There is a steady supply of quietly working, highly qualified scientists who are working on these non-random, natural, Earth-bound variables and drivers. I wish we were putting their work here and discussing it.
Interesting slides. I have read this argument somewhere else. Is there a paper behind this? I’d like to know what potential issues or errors there might be in the ERBE data set.
Taking Richard’s presentation at face value (accepting that ERBE data is accurate and does not suffer from any drift), the measurement evidence from satellite suggests that the feedback factor in our atmosphere is negative.
I am glad to hear this. Negative feedback adds stability in a system and intuitively a reasonable person might surmise that this is by far the most likely behavior for a somewhat stable natural system: after all, if the feedback factor was positive and close to 1 then surely the entire atmosphere would have boiled off already (easily plausible given a billion years or so). Surely the negative feedback factor might explain why our planet is so beautifully in equilibrium (sure there is an ice age here or there but this is benign compared to other planetary atmosphere examples in our solar system)
>> Ric Werme (05:31:26) :
. . . and the net result is that the moon is slowing down. <<
I think you mean that the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. The basic principle is that angular momentum is conserved, so due to tidal friction on the Earth, the momentum of the Earth’s rotation is transferred to the momentum of the Moon’s revolution.
>> Ultimately the Earth and Moon will phase lock with each seeing the same face . . . . <<
This will only be true if the Moon remains within the Earth’s sphere-of-influence (SOI). However, I’ve not compared the actual calculated numbers, so you’re probably right.
>> . . . until the sun expands into a red dwarf and destroys both. <<
Red dwarf stars are low mass, main sequence stars usually in the “M” spectral class range. (The Sun is main sequence, yellow dwarf star in the “G’ spectral class range—specifically G2.) You probably mean “red giant.” Stars, like the Sun, eventually leave the main sequence and enter the red giant phase when they start to fuse helium—also called the helium sequence.
Jim
Re Mike D.’s post (00:02:57) on the need for political organization to combat the Alarmist onslaught, maybe we should think about marketing to the youth, as the Alarmists do, and as Obama did during the election, even to kids 12 and under (get your parents to vote for Obama!), well-described by a 17-year-old:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_12501963
Perhaps the focus should be on CO2. “They want to take away our CO2!” “They’re coming for your CO2!” “Our plants need CO2! Don’t let the politicians take it away!” I.e., terms kids 12 and under can understand.
Other ideas welcome.
/Mr Lynn
Lucy Skywalker (00:54:09) :
I now think that we cannot understand the mechanisms whereby the SSB works without a paradigm shift into hyperdimensional physics (Zero Point Field stuff). But that’s TWO paradigm shifts away from WUWT
Guess we’ll have to stick with Svensmark for now Lucy 😉
Smokey (06:27:49) :
Anyone who might have missed Prof. Lindzen’s recent paper on the problems with the climate peer-review process should take a few minutes to read it:
Thanks for this link. That paper really helps with understanding the problem with these scientists that are caught up in the Money, power grab going on with AGW.
Just got to love the puppy picture. All it is short of is a photoshopped little frown and some flames in the background. Are there any depths that the MSM won’t explore to sell a story?
“”” tallbloke (08:18:08) :
Lucy Skywalker (00:54:09) :
I now think that we cannot understand the mechanisms whereby the SSB works without a paradigm shift into hyperdimensional physics (Zero Point Field stuff). But that’s TWO paradigm shifts away from WUWT
Guess we’ll have to stick with Svensmark for now Lucy 😉 “””
I think Lucy spends too much time listening to Art Bell’s Dreamland program; along with Richard C Hoagland. I’d like a dollar for each time someone mentions hyperdimensional physics or zero point energy, or string theory.
How the hell can a “string” be fundamental; or anything else that has shape or vibrations or any other properties that dictate that it must also be structured of something even more fundamental.
And people actually get paid to come up with this rubbish.
“”” peter_ga (06:04:46) :
I don’t have problems with removing time from the equations, this is a common approach. I have problems with slide 14. In the equations, we have the quantities delta-Q, delta-T, F, G0. Then delta-flux is thrown in. There are 3 possible quantities with the units of W/m2, the input, the feedback, and the input plus the feedback that is multiplied by G0. So what exactly is delta-flux, and how does it relate to these other quantities?
Feedback systems usually have the feedback subtracted from the input, rather than added. This is purely convention. G0 * F is conventionally termed the “loop gain”, not the “feedback factor”. The term “feedback factor” suggests the F term. “””
Well how do you determine whether a feedback system is stable or unstable, if you remove time from the equations.
A needle standing gravitationally vertical on its point, is “Static”, but it isn’t “stable”, because any perturbation from that position; no matter how small (within quantum limits), will cause it to tip over. It may take forever to tip over, but it will tip over, and you can only determien what happens by leaving time in the equations.
As for subtracting the feedback from the input rather than adding; that is simply a sign convention. If the feedback always subtracts from the input, the feedback must always be negative, so positive feedback could never occur if the feedback always subtracts form the input; and you can’t determine that without involving time.
And in ordinary feedback systems, it is generally assumed that the feedback link is unidirectional. Nobody spends much time thinking about the feedback network conducting in the reverse direction.
Translated to the climate/weather scenario, that problem results in the absurd claims that cloud feedback can be positive; because when you have high clouds (at night), the clouds “trap” outgoing infrared radiation so it warms up the surface.
When the sun goes down; the temperature always falls with time; provided that new air masses don’t move in from some other location that is hotter.
It never warms up at night it cools; clouds or no clouds, and those clouds are there (if they are) BECAUSE it is balmy and warm and humid. And the balmier and warmer it is, the higher the moist air has to rise before those clouds form, when the dew point is reached.
And when it is cold and low humidity, you don’t have massive amounts of moisture being carried into the atmosphere, so you don’t get clouds formed.
When the atmosphere is devoid of water vapor, and it is cold, the CO2 is still fully functional, and intact; yet it fails miserably to do its greenhouse gas thing and warm the surface up by absorbing surface emitted IR radiation. And it fails to instigate water vapor positive feedback even when there is available surface water all over the place.
Clouds never produce warming; they are there because of the warming and the moisture.
What passes for feedback in climate circles is largely an inability to solve simple problems. That is often a consequence of multiple choice examinations in what passes for learning institutions these days.
Anyone can make a one out of five guess, and fill in a dot with a #2 pencil. You actually have to learn something and remember it, to be able to solve a problem without being given the answer. Lazy teachers breed lazy pupils, and the whole of society suffers as a result.
George
Nick Yates (20:24:44)
Meanwhile, it looks like our pets are doomed as well!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5429593/Climate-change-could-kill-your-pet-warns-the-RSPCA.html
I think I have an anti-CO2 proposal that even the most skeptical here can get behind. I suggest that what the world really needs is a global moratorium on Global Warming/ Climate Change conferences, especially those funded on the public nickel. The amount of energy wasted jetting various UN bureaucrats, Gore sycophants, and other celebutards off to Bali and other exotic locales to discuss better ways to teach the rest of us how to wipe our a**es in the most environmentally friendly fashion would certainly offset the carbon output of any number of small countries. If we can’t get them to cease entirely, we should at least demand that all future conferences be held in Detroit, so that they can witness first hand the kind of Utopia you end up with by following the all knowing economic dictates of leftist politicians. All catering to be provided by White Castle.
Here’s the disproof you have asked for:
http://www.mises.org/story/2795
Here’s some more real Thermodynamics/Physics:
1. Heat always rises.
2. Heat transfer from different surfaces or spacial areas i.e. from clouds to earth, requires a temperatures difference, whether or not the transfer is radiative and depends on the 4th power of the temperatures or simple transfer by conduction or convection requiring a temperature difference.
Clouds (solid phase vapor) can ‘reflect’ heat. Gases, like CO2, cannot.
3. Since the atmosphere, where this ‘heat’ is austensibly trapped, or stored, by CO2, is colder than the earth’s near surface/surface temperature, the transfer of the heat must always be from the warmer to the colder, not the reverse.
If this is ignored, it is a violation of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. it is called a perpetual motion machine. that is what the climatologists have created by ignoring this principle. You CANNOT transfer heat from a colder to a warmer area without mechanical work, as in a refrigerator.
4. The relative stability of the global temperature is dependent upon gravity and the weight of the atmosphere. It is no accident that our near surface average global temperature remains about 15 deg. C. and that the rate of decrease of the temperature with altitude can be calculated accurately, as can atmospheric pressure. In stable (adiabatic) atmospheric conditions this data can be calculated using the Pv^k =Const and Tv^k-1=Const Thermodynamic laws.
Climate models are nothing more than heuristic games. You can get any result you wish simply by changing a few parameters until you get the answers you want.
To truly provide real models would require Fourier 2nd order differential equations not solvable with either todays or with any future computers. There are just too many variables.
To illustrate my point about the future we face if we follow the plans Obama and the Congress are trying to foist on us, using Detroit as an operative example please check the following:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/04/average-home-price-in-detroit-falls-to.html
If you live in Detroit you can buy yourself a new Toyota Prius or for about the same money pick yourself up a couple of houses.
Mr. Lynn, first we need a name. How about Climate Realists of America? Or, just to be inclusive, The International Society of Climate Realists (TISCR, pronounced tsk-er)?
Great idea Mike. I like TISCR! And thanks for the info Dave Wendt and George E. Smith. Been looking for just those points to add to my explanations to the less informed.
And to Ric Werme (18:06:17) and PeterS (15:37:16) : and anyone else still on this thread –
Very good points Ric, but slight disagreement –
The CP/M OS was developed by Gary Kildall, of Microcomputer Applications Associates, (later Digital Research of Santa Cruz, CA) in 1974 for Intel 8080-based systems that were around during the mid-70s. So 35 years ago? However there were numerous other significant operating systems (for micro/small) computers around at that time, most were named DOS (Disk Operating System) something or other and most proprietary to the company/machine they were sold with. Of course many of the machines didn’t use an OS as there wasn’t a “system” to control – it was 1 processor, doing 1 function, at 1 time – at least at the micro level.
In the mini and mainframe arena there were many OSs of significance, as you pointed out Ric, well before that, yes in the DEC line but also IBM, Honeywell, Univac, RCA, etc. Was CP/M a derivative of the PDP OS? Mmm, probably was much as much as PDP OS was of IBMs mainframe OS. All systems need one but…. And one of the best wasn’t even “software” it was a hardwired “OS” in the System 10 from Friden/Singer. BTW, CP/M stands for: Control Program/Monitor or Control Program for Microcomputer or Control Program/Microprocessor – depending on who you ask of us that were around at that time. Early on Gary (rest his soul) called it the first one – not that any one was asking.
That said, neither operating systems nor real memory (or delay-line, tape, drum, disk, etc.) memory capacities or types (or hardware of any type) have ever been the drivers of the computer/electronics industry or usage thereof. That distinction belongs 80% to “applications software” (including the controlling System Design Analysis) and 20% to the “programming languages” (my figures based on 50 years of experience) that the applications are derived from. All the hardware, firmware, drivers, operating systems, networks, etc. put together from the beginning of digital time are not worth a bucket of spit compared to applications software. I, and I doubt anyone else can, can not think of one case where the app. S/W has been “enhanced” by anything down the OSI model. To be sure, technology at the H/W – OS levels has given system analysts/programmers greater freedom/opportunity to deliver “results” to the human end of the model. But the quality of those results are 100% a derivative of the app S/W!
And back on topic, take for example the application software of the Global Atmospheric Model sub-class, Gamcephalus. These have been around since the 1950s and now total around 2 dozen. The results produce from their beginnings are, shall we say – legendary? But no need to go in to that here because the point is the “hardware” (and associated OSs) over that period of time that these have been run on, while expanding in power (the capacity to do the same digital function in a shorter period of time) have done absolutely nothing to enhance the “applications”.
And while the S/W continues to expand, as a result, the analysis of the system (The Real Global Environment) and the data available about it (TRGE) continues to be so woefully lacking that I (if I were CFO of the world, being King is a lazy mans job) would burn the paper these system designs are drawn-up on before allowing them to be converted into software! None of us will be above the grass at the point in time when our offspring are actually capable of predicting what will happen the next day, week, month, year climatically. And that has NOTHING to do with the power of the available computers.
Opps, forgot – SEMPER GIGO!!
Milwaukee Bob,
I have the honor of having designed the I/O board for the World’s First BBS and that is more or less how I remember it. XMODEM by Ward and Randy (or was it just one of them – I could look it up) was a real breakthrough in terms of passing information between hackers (a white hat term back in the day). Any way that is more or less how I remember it.
So I guess you could say I had more to do with the Internet than Al Gore. And how about the FIDO Net days? I used to stay up until 3 or 4 AM waiting for the BBSes to update so I could get the latest gossip/conversation/programs. I was a Blue Wave guy back when those wars were important.
And just to keep slightly on topic.
I posted on this subject at Who Ya Gonna Believe? with graphs from here and the Olive Tree and acknowledgments all around including Lindzen.
George,
“Well how do you determine whether a feedback system is stable or unstable, if you remove time from the equations.”
Stability analysis involves recasting the equations to the frequency domain so time is factored out in effect. If I know my system is stable at all frequencies, then I know it is stable for all time. Ignoring time is the same as analyzing the system at a frequency of zero. Another way of looking at it is to “open the loop” and analyze that system. If the loop gain at any frequency has a magnitude greater than unity when its phase shift is 180 degrees, then the system is unstable. This rule is completely different if the loop feedback sign is positive rather than negative, and trying to invert it hurts my brain. This is how they developed radar controlled anti-aircraft guns in WW2 thereby winning that conflict.
Looking at the OT problem, consider the “feedback factor” which is the negative of the loop gain. To put time in, analyze this factor at all frequencies. If at any frequency, it has a phase shift of zero (rather than 180) and a magnitude of unity or greater, then it is unstable.
So ignoring time is OK, but inverting the feedback sign is not, even if Hansen has done it already. He probably did it to confuse everyone.
Not bad, Mike. We might also consider re-conquering the emotional high ground that the enviro-whackos have captured, e.g.: The International Society for Progress and the Environment (TISPE). After all, it’s about more than climate, though that is the current focal point. A shorter name wouldn’t hurt, either. How about Eco-Progress International?
/Mr Lynn
Anyone here have experience organizing political groups? I have none, but would be willing to participate.
I have been very successful in getting the word out on Polywell Fusion and have had a hand (according to the researches who would know) in getting it funded.
Steps:
1. Set up a Google Alert on terms you would like to respond to
2. Make up a text file of standard responses including links (you can do this as you go along)
3. Make sure to always start your response with a comment about the piece posted.
Have at it.
It will not get you instant results. It took me about a year to have an effect. Keep grinding away. Enlist others. This blog (or another) could serve as a clearing house i.e. “an argument is getting hot at xxx blog, any one care to provide reenforcements?”
The fact that WUWT provides moderately moderated comments that are timely when the moderators are awake is very helpful.
Eventually some one will start a blog or a board focused on counter arguments. Topics might include Thermodynamics, Feedback, Data, Peer Review, etc. Such a place should be loosely moderated but membership only to keep out the spammers, rabid crazy warmists, etc.
Note to self – more sleep, more coffee, and don’t post in the morning anyway!]
Jim Masterson (08:00:59) :
>> Ric Werme (05:31:26) :
. . . and the net result is that the moon is slowing down. < I think you mean that the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. The basic principle is that angular momentum is conserved, so due to tidal friction on the Earth, the momentum of the Earth’s rotation is transferred to the momentum of the Moon’s revolution.> . . . until the sun expands into a red dwarf and destroys both. < Red dwarf stars are low mass, main sequence stars usually<
I can't believe I said red dwarf. I'm not even much of a fan of Red Dwarf! You're right of course, I meant to say red giant.
in the “M” spectral class range. (The Sun is main sequence, yellow dwarf star in the “G’ spectral class range—specifically G2.) You probably mean “red giant.” Stars, like the Sun, eventually leave the main sequence and enter the red giant phase when they start to fuse helium—also called the helium sequence. <
Milwaukee Bob (14:07:14) :
That’s about right. I started working on PDP-10s in 1969, the PDP-11 came out a year or two later, several OSes came out for it that we didn’t use at CMU. When I joined DEC in 1974 I quickly fell in with the RT-11 developers as maintained the PDP-10 they used for a lot of their work.
Here’s a good old mention from http://www.inwap.com/pdp10/jargon.html RSX-11 and RSTS are very unlike the PDP-10 Monitor, OS/8 is a PDP-8 OS I should’ve mentioned. The PDP-6 was the predecessor to the PDP-10.
PIP
/pip/ [Peripheral Interchange Program] vt.,obs. To copy; from the program PIP on CP/M, RSX-11, RSTS/E, and OS/8 (derived from a utility on the PDP-6) that was used for file copying (and in OS/8 and RT-11 for just about every other file operation you might want to do). It is said that when the program was originated, during the development of the PDP-6 in 1963, it was called ATLATL (`Anything, Lord, to Anything, Lord’).
Ric Werme (17:59:57) :
[Wow – that post got trashed something glitched during submission or from open angle brackets, let me try again, fortunately a copy was on my system]
[Note to self – more sleep, more coffee, and don’t post in the morning anyway!]
Jim Masterson (08:00:59) :
>> Ric Werme (05:31:26) :
. . . and the net result is that the moon is slowing down. <<
> I think you mean that the Earth’s rotation is slowing down. The basic principle is that angular momentum is conserved, so due to tidal friction on the Earth, the momentum of the Earth’s rotation is transferred to the momentum of the Moon’s revolution.<
I apologize for not being clear with units and concepts. The Moon has a fair amount of angular momentum due to its orbit around the Earth. Good grief, I’ve forgotten the formula, umm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum is okay, proportional to distance times tangential component of linear momentum, and that’s where the vast majority of the angular momentum lives.
Let me give a better example of what I meant by energy transfer that boosts an orbit slowing things down.
Imagine a satellite in a circular orbit 10,000 miles (or Km) above the center of the Earth. Its potential energy (the energy it took to lift it up there) is one value, and its kinetic energy (the energy it has from zipping along at several miles (or Km) per second. Suppose we accelerate itquickly and enough so it’s in a new orbit, now with a low point (perigee) at 10,000 miles (I’ll skip the Km) and a high point (apogee) at 20,000 miles. The acceleration increased the KE and the satellite starts climbing. As it does, KE gets transferred to PE and the satellite slows down all the way up to 20,000 miles. At that point it’s going so slowly that it begins to fall back to the perigee and where the acceleration ended. However, suppose we accelerated it right at the apogee enough so it’s in a circular orbit at 20,000 miles. It turns out the satellite will still be going slower than at the lower orbit. A circular orbit is one where the acceleration downward due to gravity equals the centrifugal force. The former is Newton’sF = G x m1 x m2 / r^2 (force = gravitational constant times mass of Earth times mass of satellite divided by the square of the distance between them). The latter is F = 1/2 m x v^2 (force one half mass times the square of the velocity).
So doubling the radius of the orbit means we have 1/4th the gravitational force, and that means we need 1/2 the velocity.
So, bringing things back down to earth, err, up to the Moon, the Earth’s tidal bulge accelerates the Moon, and as the Moon spirals away the Moon will still approximate a circular orbit and it will slow down.
Hmm, orbital angular momentum would stay the same (twice the distance times half the speed), and that’s a problem because the Earth’s spin has to slow down. I guess the answer is that the Earth actually orbits the center of gravity (the barycenter) of the Earth/Moon system and that distance will increase for both Earth and Moon. The Earth is so close to the barycenter we might not be able to treat it as a point so I hope the Earth manages to gain some angular momentum due to the orbital motion. Please straighten me out if I’m confused.
Another wart is that tidal friction means that some of the Earth’s kinetic energy is getting turned into heat, so figuring out the end state through conservation of momentum would be the way to go.
>> . . . until the sun expands into a red dwarf and destroys both. <<
> Red dwarf stars are low mass, main sequence stars usually<
I can’t believe I said red dwarf. I’m not even much of a fan of Red Dwarf! You’re right of course, I meant to say red giant.
Sounds like a good idea for spreading the word, but I think what Mike D. and I were talking about was actually organizing groups of people, an organization (if not a movement) that would be able to exert political influence in favor of a Realist approach to issues of energy, climate, environment, and the future of humanity, an organization to counter the intense propaganda and lobbying of Alarmist organizations like Greenpeace, the WWF, etc.
Obviously there are groups or organizations today that promote Realist ideas and values (e.g. Heartland, or Fred Singer’s SEPP), but they seem small and scattered. I suspect that is because they do not market themselves to a broad membership base the way the enviros do. It is essential to promote such an organization with positive messages: not just that the Alarmists are wrong, but that we must band together to save civilization and yes, even “the planet,” from their destructive and anti-human, anti-ecological (plants including crops need ample CO2!) schemes.
The Alarmists have succeeded in painting skeptics and Realists as a small band of self-interested, greedy, flat-earthers. Well, turnabout is fair play. We can paint the Alarmists as head-in-the-sand Luddites and Marxists who are intent on taking us back to the Stone Age, putting a halt to the progress our children and grandchildren are entitled to expect.
The point is to get strong enough to inoculate world legislatures against the mad virus that has them careening toward a self-inflicted environmental and economic catastrophe. Given how short the time is, that will take some doing. The Alarmists have a big head start. And I have no real idea how to catch up. But I’ll bet there are some here who do.
/Mr Lynn
Not a fan of Red Dwarf?? Then there is truly something wrong with you! 😉
>> Ric Werme (18:41:24) :
Please straighten me out if I’m confused. <<
I don’t think I can. It’s too late.
Jim
Mr. Lynn and others interested in pursuing political organizing of environmental realist groups — please click on my name, examine my site, find the Contact applet, and contact me to begin private discussions.
That way we don’t veer WUWT into directions the host may not desire (on his site, at this time).
George E. Smith (09:58:50) :
I think Lucy spends too much time listening to Art Bell’s Dreamland program; along with Richard C Hoagland. I’d like a dollar for each time someone mentions hyperdimensional physics or zero point energy, or string theory.
I’ve never heard Art Bell’s programme. Actually most of my education recently has been on this website which I adore; I love hearing what you say George, and generally (not always) I agree with you. But I also like to think for myself.
I put those (provocative) remarks on this thread because I have enormous respect for Lindzen and I want to see decent Climate Science again: sometimes spiking the conversation brings in needed energy. Yes, how do we hit back as “climate realists” and keep integrity? NIPCC is an essential document. IMHO a skeptics’ climate science wiki would also help turn the tide. That’s also why I wrote my primer (under my name) and, George, if there’s anything there that’s not ok science by you, please let me know and I’ll change it until it’s ok with you. Hopefully it passes already.
Mr Lynn
Some weeks ago I suggested we need to do some better marketing/publicity in order to counter the prevailing AGW view which has a much wider currency than ours. A variety of people agreed and several ideas were given so that sceptic material would be picked up by say Google.
A good example of apparent lack of marketing was the first Heartland conference earlier this year. It got very little publicity, but whether that was because details were not sent out to the media in an adequate fashion, or it was ignored by them I can’t say. Probably the latter, but perhaps Anthony could comment.
I think it is up to us to counter misleading views when we come across them (say in a letter in our local newspaper or in an article) but that requires a situation whereby a scientifically literate response can be given.
Perhaps more important is that rather than just responding we need to take the intitaive and set the agenda ourselves so we are not always on the back foot. Again Heartland is attempting to do this with the release of the latest document (highlighted on another thread) but this organisation is not perceived as being an objective or credible organisation in the eyes of some media.
I think we need to be more proactive and put over our views in a more concerted manner, but to do that we need access to a resource of literate and credible material (WUWT amongst others) and a group of knowledgable people who can ensure that any crafted response (to say an article) does make scientific sense. This material then needs to be sent to key media in a planned campaign. (all this has time and resource implications!)
However it is easy to be smeared so it is essential that any such organisation distances itself from fringe groups, politically motivated viewpoints or vested interests.
Arguably this activity is something the Heartland institute does, but like it or not, as soon as that organisation is mentioned credibility is compromised in some peoples eyes.
There is also an important corrollary to the scientific arguement that we don’t tend to address adequately. I was part of a small Govt agency meeting yesterday (in the UK) which was dealing specifically with carbon reduction, where everyone just accepted the AGW hypotheses as factual.
Afterwards someone said when I made my views known ‘ but even if AGW is wrong there is no disbenefit to doing what it says we need to do as it will help man and the planet.’ So even if AGW is wrong it is right.
Saying our taxes will increase if we follow the current path when ‘the earth is in danger’ seems pretty mean spirited. So there is a scientific arguement AND a ‘moral’ arguement. Both are equally important, but I don’t think we discuss the ‘moral’ arguement enough.
Personally, I think Man has great difficulty in keeping more than one ball in the air at any one time, and whilst we focus on ‘fixing’ AGW (which doesn’t need fixing in the first place) there are far more important and urgent things that can be fixed that DO need fixing!
We need to be clearer as to what the ‘disbenefits’ of following the AGW agenda are, and ensure our arguement is well rounded -it isn’t just about the science in many activists minds-AGW is just the convenient banner-this is an environmental battle that would still be fought even if AGW was proven to be wrong.
Any suggestions from anyone as to what the counter arguements should be?
Once that is in place we can be more proactive in demolishing AGW from the safe vantage point of the scientific AND moral high ground.
Tonyb
Alan the Brit (01:48:44) :
Adam Soereg;-)
If we show that the surface temperature record is flawed, we remove THE most important card from the house, beacuse the satellite data show little or no warming in the lower troposphere
RSS (0.16 deg per decade) shows pretty much the same warming as the surface records. UAH (0.13 deg per decade) has a slightly lower (though not significantly different) warming trend, but the discrepancy appears to originate in the pre-1992 period when UAH temperatures were higher than RSS. Since 1992, UAH and RSS have virtually identical trends of +0.22 deg per decade, while the surface trends of 0.24 & 0.20 for GISS & Hadley respectively are also remarkably similar.
I agree with Pamela Gray. We need a something equivalent to a “tank” to counter the momentum the alarmist have achieved.
I say we need a “rock star”. Get a Brad or Angelina or Oprah in our corner.
I was at the conference. Snator Inhof had the most prescient comment: “.. the battle that is winnable is the “economic” one.” We have a narrow window at the moment to slow the momentum but but once the econmomy recovers (and it will) people will become guilty again and re engage the myth. The “science” argument is over everyone’s head. The avergae person has “trusted” sources for this and most beleive what Bryan, Katie and Charlie tell them.
We need a ROCK STAR and I didn’t see any at the conference.
>> John Finn (03:34:20) :
RSS (0.16 deg per decade) shows pretty much the same warming as the surface records. UAH (0.13 deg per decade) has a slightly lower (though not significantly different) warming trend, but the discrepancy appears to originate in the pre-1992 period when UAH temperatures were higher than RSS. Since 1992, UAH and RSS have virtually identical trends of +0.22 deg per decade, while the surface trends of 0.24 & 0.20 for GISS & Hadley respectively are also remarkably similar. <<
These numbers don’t support the GHG model. Using a standard GHG feedback model (similar to Dr. Lindzen’s), the atmosphere MUST warm faster than the surface. There is no leeway here. If the atmosphere doesn’t warm by at least 129% of the surface, then the surface warming isn’t caused by a GHG. If you also consider latent and sensible heat fluxes and how the atmosphere responds to GHGs by altering its upward-downward radiation ratio, then the atmosphere has to warm by at least 160% to 190% of the surface. This is a mandatory requirement of the model.
If you lower the albedo (make the planet darker), then the same model requires that the atmosphere only warm by about 70% to 90% of the surface. This, interestingly, is exactly what we see.
Notice that if you combine both effects (GHG and albedo), then the atmosphere warming is closer to 200% of the surface.
Jim
I agree, and have e-mailed you via your very interesting website. Anyone else reading this thread and interested, please do so as well, so we can begin to assemble a kernel of concerned folk.
How about, “The International Society for Progress and the Environment”?
Truer words were never spake. A friend was there as well, and reports:
“A most interesting conference, alas, preaching to the choir.”
The choir has to get MUCH bigger!
Was there any press? I haven’t seen any.
/Mr Lynn
TonyB (02:35:48) :
In my opinion the lack of publicity is due to the extreme right-wing slant that Heartland has (either perceived or real). Like Fox News, they are ridiculed over and over again for their sometimes silly views.
I’m a political fence-sitter. I think both major parties have something to offer, and a lot of baggage to get rid of. But since perception is reality, the perception in most of the media of Fox and Heartland isn’t good.
RE: Jim Masterson (06:26:09) :
Good point. Also noteworthy that the upward trend in the satellite record match the time period of positive PDO and AMO. Now that the positive phase of PDO has ended (too early to tell about AMO), the upward trend has stopped. In fact, May 2009 is reported in as .043 for UAH. Certainly the trend over 30 years is no basis for alarm! The 0.13 decadal trend is the result of an OLS process that is suspect where oscillations dominate.
John Finn,
I am not an atmoshperic scientist so thank you for the correction. I was merely using information written by atmospheric scientists that implied that the AGW signal would be seen in the lower troposphere above the tropics. If this is in correct then apologies!
AtB
How about the choir individually writing to the internationally influential London-published Financial Times which today, 4 June 2009, published the letter below headed:
“Climate study is open to criticism”
Published: June 4 2009 03:00 | Last updated: June 4 2009 03:00
From Prof David Henderson and Dr Benny Peiser.
Sir, Your report “Climate study counts human costs” (May 30) refers to “swiftly growing human costs”, while twin panels in the text refer to “300,000 lives lost each year” and an “annual cost to the global economy’ of $125bn”. Your report also quotes an assertion by Kofi Annan that “climate change is causing suffering to hundreds of millions worldwide”. These are remarkable statements, and the study has already been referred to by one leading expert, Professor Roger Pielke Jr, as being “worse than fiction, it is a lie”.
As in many other instances, there is no hint in your report that the alarming conclusions of this study might be open to question. On past experience any criticisms of the study, however well founded, will not be noticed in your columns.
This chronic bias is characteristic of all too many newspapers.
In the treatment of climate change issues, you owe your readers a higher standard of objectivity and concern for the truth.
David Henderson,
Westminster Business School.
Benny Peiser,
Cambridge Conference Network
Liverpool, UK”
The email address for the editor of the FT is letters.editor@ft.com and you should include your daytime telephone number and postal address.
Jeff Alberts
I agree-I was trying to be diplomatic 🙂
Organisations seen as extreme right wing (whether justified or not) tend to be easily dismissed because of a perceived ‘big business’ agenda, Its a shame as some of the Heartland stuff is good. What I was saying is that if any organisation got off the ground as a result of the exchanges here I would feel more comfortable for it to be apolitical, scientifcally based and to recognise there are wider environmental issues that appeal to people that AGW has highlighted.
Tonyb
“”” Lucy Skywalker (02:21:46) :
George E. Smith (09:58:50) :
I think Lucy spends too much time listening to Art Bell’s Dreamland program; along with Richard C Hoagland. I’d like a dollar for each time someone mentions hyperdimensional physics or zero point energy, or string theory.
I’ve never heard Art Bell’s programme. Actually most of my education recently has been on this website which I adore; I love hearing what you say George, and generally (not always) I agree with you. But I also like to think for myself.
I put those (provocative) remarks on this thread because I have enormous respect for Lindzen and I want to see decent Climate Science again: sometimes spiking the conversation brings in needed energy. Yes, how do we hit back as “climate realists” and keep integrity? NIPCC is an essential document. IMHO a skeptics’ climate science wiki would also help turn the tide. That’s also why I wrote my primer (under my name) and, George, if there’s anything there that’s not ok science by you, please let me know and I’ll change it until it’s ok with you. Hopefully it passes already. “””
Well My Dear Lucy; please accept that my comment was very much tongue in cheek; and no offense was intended. But if even a smidgeon was felt, then please accept my apology. It’s actually good to see you here rather than some of those other places, I ran across you and felt we were both wasting our time.
But “Hyperdimensional Physics” which seems to be a joint creation of Richard C. Hoagland and Dr Michio Kaku, is one of those red capes to El Toro, along with zero point energy. The nonsense that Maxwell’s four equations of electromagnetism, are actually just a subset of ten or eleven equations, and that suddenly each equation becomes synonymous with a physical “dimension”, six or seven of which are rolled up so tightly in the concept of string theory or some other neo-religious baloney; keeps me warm at night when I would otherwise freeze.
My understanding of zero point energy is very little, and some 50 years in the past; but I believe it relates to a quantum theory concept of Absolute Zero; where in classical Physics all motion would cease, there being no thermal energy to cause any; but in quantum mechanics some residual “zero point energy” persists even at absolute zero; and since it truly is absolute zero; that miniscule zero point energy is totally inaccessible; science fiction notwithstanding.
Another favorite of science fiction which may have more validity is the concept of the energy of the vaccuum; whereby particles (matter and anti-matter pairs) can simultaneously appear out of nowhere; and by inference a kaboodle of energy along with that. This of course is right up Anna V’s alley, rather than mine.
I believe the origin is the lesser known form of Heisenberg’s principle of uncertainty (unbestimmheit (mit ein umlaut)) where the product of positional uncertainty, and momentum uncertainty (delt_p * delta _x) is greater than (h/2pi) where (h) is Planck’s constant. So we can never know exactly the position and momentum of even a single particle simultaneously; which means the laws of physics can not predict its future position and momentum better than a certain accuracy level.
In the alternative form the product is (delta_E * delta_t) ; energy times time.
This uncertainty evidently allows a certain amount of energy to suddenly appear out of nowhere; but maybe for only a brief instant of time.
I have often commented whimsically that the “big bang” was nothing more than the bottom end of the 1/f noise spectrum; so named because the noise amplitude increases inversely with the frequency; which is a problem because it implies that the noise can get infinite in amplitude at very low frequencies. Sanity returns, once we show that for any 1/f noise spectrum, the amount of energy in any frequency octave is a constant, so even though the amplitude may seem to increase without limit at low frequencies; the power does not, and in order to observe those larger and larger amplitudes, you have to wait a hell of a long time, so the apparent huge energy level is actually spread over that long time. And of course (so far as we know) the big bang only happened once; but it was a doozy when it happened.
So not to Worry Lucy; I was just taking advantage of the opportunity presented to yank your chain; but really I do still believe in Chivalry.
George
“”” peter_ga (16:31:49) :
George,
“Well how do you determine whether a feedback system is stable or unstable, if you remove time from the equations.”
Stability analysis involves recasting the equations to the frequency domain so time is factored out in effect. If I know my system is stable at all frequencies, then I know it is stable for all time. Ignoring time is the same as analyzing the system at a frequency of zero. Another way of looking at it is to “open the loop” and analyze that system. If the loop gain at any frequency has a magnitude greater than unity when its phase shift is 180 degrees, then the system is unstable. This rule is completely different if the loop feedback sign is positive rather than negative, and trying to invert it hurts my brain. This is how they developed radar controlled anti-aircraft guns in WW2 thereby winning that conflict.
Looking at the OT problem, consider the “feedback factor” which is the negative of the loop gain. To put time in, analyze this factor at all frequencies. If at any frequency, it has a phase shift of zero (rather than 180) and a magnitude of unity or greater, then it is unstable.
So ignoring time is OK, but inverting the feedback sign is not, even if Hansen has done it already. He probably did it to confuse everyone. “””
Well Peter I made the mistake of assuming (there’s that word) that the cognoscenti would understand that frequency and time (period) are just two aspects of the same thing. You can do the analysis in the frequency domain or in the time domain as you wish.
As I grew up in the Tektronix Academy where frequency was regarded as a mental aberration; it was not to be used in technical discussions of Oscilloscope circuitry. It was of course Tektronix who first built an oscilloscope, with that radical idea of a triggered Timebase, which was calibrated to read cm/second rather than frequency of a free running; and not too damn linear “horiontal deflection”.
When Tektronix first introduced their model 511 oscilloscope in 1947, an early visitor to their show booth was an old geezer who stayed for hours all through the show, playing with the knobs, and saying nothing.
Finally at the show’s conclusion, Howard Vollum, one of Tek’s two founders approached this geezer and asked him what he thought of the instrument. Well it is quite fancy said the visitor; but nobody will ever pay $1000 for an oscilloscope.
That old geezer was Allen B. Dumont; who had just witnessed the instant demise of his whole oscilloscope universe. No-one serious, would ever again buy a scope with a horizontal fequency knob on it; or one without a vertical amplifier not calibrated in Volts per cm, instead of a variable gain pot.
Tek’s shunning of the frequency domain eventually got to bite them in the butt; when Hewlettt Packard introduced a one GHz sampling oscilloscope; with a sampling head that was designed by Microwave engineers, in the Frequency Domain, in the form of a Microwave Magic Tee, that completely bamboozled the Tek engineers; who ultimately came to respect what those HP guys had done. Frequency is no longer a swear word at Tektronix; who never theless still make the best Oscilloscopes.
I’m kind of partial to the old model 547; the first Horizontal Sweep Switching Oscilloscope. I designed that first Horizontal sweep switching circuitry; although I did not invent the concept; we were already doing alternate and chopped vertical signal switching anyway.
So frequency domain or time domain; you still need to know the dynamic response of the feedback circuitry to know whether you have an oscillator or an amplifier.
And if their really was a feedback going on in the greenhouse climate system; it most assuredly would be an oscillator and not an amplifier.
Maybe somebody should sketch the Pole/Zero plot for a typical atmospheric GHG feedback model. But I think that would just terrorize the Gavin Schmidts of the world.
Believe me; water vapor can do all the feedback it wants to; sans CO2 to set it off.
George
As for winning WW-II with radar controlled anti-aircraft guns; the Germans are believed to have fired 5000 rounds out of those mighty 88s, for evey B-17 they brought down with flak.
Far more important was the Proximity fuze, which the US Navy developed, and only belatedly allowed the US Army, and the British to have. Neither Germany or Japan ever caught on; or the war’s outcome could have been a whole lot different. It was used with devastating effect in the battle of the bulge.
TonyB (02:35:48) :
I agree entirely that the Realist (vs. AGW) viewpoint requires much better marketing than it has heretofore received.
And yes,
As for the ability of a Realist organization to distance “fringe groups, politically motivated viewpoints or vested interests,” as you put it, that’s a complex matter.
First, you have to realize that any anti-AGW movement is going to be slandered as ‘fringe’, made up of ‘kooks’, allied with ‘greedy oil and coal interests’, ‘crackpot science’, and so on, and so forth. Yes, it’s vitally important to establish scientific bona fides, but you know how easily those are dismissed by the AGW orthodoxy (‘not peer reviewed’, meaning by the correct peers). The objective has to be to gain public credibility, and that’s where the marketing comes in, because as Senator Inhofe said (above), the science is over most people’s heads.
Second, because AGW has become a political issue more than a scientific one, the AGW crusade has be stopped in the halls of Congress and Parliament, and that means some kind of political action. You may be able to avoid identifying with other issues (social questions, foreign affairs, etc.), but there’s one you can’t dodge, and that’s the economy. The ‘remedies’ that the Alarmists propose are all top-down, statist measures, and the way to combat them in the public mind is to emphasize how much they will curtail economic growth and individual freedom.
Notice, BTW, that the Alarmists’ affiliations with extreme leftwing ‘fringe’ groups and with avowedly leftwing and socialist political parties has done nothing to marginalize them or damage their effectiveness. The reason is that, as you point out, they have taken the moral high ground, with rhetoric like “Saving the planet.”
You are absolutely right that we have to recapture the moral high ground. I think the way to do this is not by shouting “Fire!” in the theater, as the Alarmists do, but by shouting “Water! Quick!” The lesson has to be:
What the Alarmists want to do, with or without good intentions, is to stop Civilization and Progress in their tracks. But economic growth, which means cheap and abundant energy, is essential for progress, and contrary to the Alarmists, the CO2 that might produce is good, good for plants, good for the Earth, and good for you. They offer a dead and dying Earth, with everyone cowering in fear; we promise a bright future of development for all people on the planet, a planet of beautiful cities and fields and gardens, fueled by abundant energy.
That’s the form the debate should take, as I see it.
Anyone interested in a Realist organization, and in discussing these ideas further, please go to MikeD’s website,
http://westinstenv.org/ and click on the Contact link.
Apologies to Anthony if this is going to far afield, but TonyB raised important questions, I hope of some general interest.
/Mr Lynn
George E. Smith (16:10:12) :
> … Tektronix; who never the less still make the best Oscilloscopes.
Indeed. Do they still have fun with the schematics? I haven’t had the need (damn things never break) to look at many, but I remember things like a cartoon figure of a washerwoman cleaning the display tube, probably a school bus traveling along a wiring bus, amusing stuff like that.
> Maybe somebody should sketch the Pole/Zero plot for a typical atmospheric GHG feedback model. But I think that would just terrorize the Gavin Schmidts of the world.
One could build a case that climate systems analysis is too important to be left to the climatologists and should be given to the engineers. 🙂
Almost thirty years ago we had a very large earthquake (6.9 richter) about 70 km as the crow flies from Athens. This had not happened since 1928 , and in the time between, Athens had become a huge city with a lot of badly built houses, many of them illegally, i.e. without submitted and approved city planning.
The whole place became an upturned ant hive. For about a month it was like living on a shaking tree from the aftershocks, and for a long time after that people were sensitized to earth quakes. This means that every scientist and his cousin became amateur seismologists.
And this is where the connection comes with PR and AGW. A young physics instructor measured the tellurian currents , these are earth currents that are observed to change during quakes, and decided he could predict the next quakes.
The media took off on it, his politics was with the governement of the time so he got his grants, and the whole thing took off.
No matter if scientists pointed to statistics, statistical errors in space and time : predictions take a third of Greece, and Greece is a quake prone area, and 2 sigma on a 1 richter scale error is within everyday shakes, etc. etc. Science could not convince the feeling that pushed the research and the desire of the public to have a prophet. Even now, the group comes up with @#$%^ predictions with three month sigma and a third of the greek land as target, and they still get publicity, though they have cried wolf too often.
It is similar with AGW. It will be like Hydra, unless the gods are good to us and the icebergs start moving . Can you hear them creaking?
George E. Smith (15:29:07) :
Hi George. I have to speak up for strings :). It is the only theory at the moment that we have that can unite all known forces , including gravity , in a simple system of equations. Elegance has a lot to do with theoretical preferences.
The reason that they are attractive, which keeps you warm at night
The nonsense that Maxwell’s four equations of electromagnetism, are actually just a subset of ten or eleven equations, and that suddenly each equation becomes synonymous with a physical “dimension”, six or seven of which are rolled up so tightly in the concept of string theory or some other neo-religious baloney; keeps me warm at night when I would otherwise freeze.
is that this unification of known forces except gravity had already happened with the three forces : gauge theories, molded after Maxwell’s equations, are very successful in describing elementary particles. String theories are a step further, trying to incorporate gravity too.
I do not know if they will be the theories of the future, but they have a simple origin: the multidimensional harmonic oscillator, an ubiquitous approximation for any solution of problems in many quantum mechanical cases. They have elegance in concept, but I agree that all that curling up reminds of hair :).
Now zero point energy, if we take the ubiquitous harmonic oscillator solutions, is the ground state energy. This does not mean that the ground state has 0 absolute energy ( even +/- heisenberg’s principle). It could very well be that our earth is in a position of the galaxy where we are sitting at very high potential energy, and that is our zero point energy. If there are other physical forces than the four we know, it is possible that , in a similar way we get energy from waves in the sea by using one way valves under platforms, a smart inventor in the future could tap the vacuum sea :).
For people who are interested to read a bit about strings, here is a lecture by a prominent theoretician for the CERN summer student program
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=a054096
Description: After having outlined the difficulties that Einstein and others have encountered in trying to unify our understanding of macroscopic/classical and microscopic /quantum physics, I will explain in simple terms how the latest particle theory revolution, string theory, may finally offer a surprisingly simple realization of these long-standing dreams. Einstein thought that his difficulties stemmed from a clash between the classical and the quantum. Yet, paradoxically, superstrings appear to realize his dream thanks to -and not against- quantum mechanics.
Note: Some knowledge of quantum mechanics and special relativity is needed. Having followed previous courses of the school should provide a sufficient background.
George E. Smith (09:58:50) :
How the hell can a “string” be fundamental; or anything else that has shape or vibrations or any other properties that dictate that it must also be structured of something even more fundamental.
Ah, the problem with Maxwell’s theory in a nutshell. At a time when people needed an ether for electromagnetic waves to propagate that was the something structured, but when special relativity came in, bang goes the ether. So the electromagnetic waves structure themselves in space, that is what the equations tell us. Grand Unified Theories extended this concept to include the weak and strong force. Strings include gravity, all by the same mechanism as with Maxwell’s equations.
And people actually get paid to come up with this rubbish.
Yes, isn’t that great 🙂 . It might be that your great grandchildren will be using the technology that will have come out of this rubbish, the way now we are using Maxwell’s “rubbish” to communicate over thousands of miles. Or if not exactly strings, something somebody will come up with trying to fit or refute strings. That is the story of scientific advancement, not engineering.
Now I could confuse the issue further by bringing in ether by the side door, but I will not do it.
Oh TEKs do sometimes blow up you know.
Many, many years ago when I was doing something or another I could not get the display to stabilise, twiddle as I might. And I twiddled mightily to no avail.
Everyone else in the lab with their tea and bickies, it was elevenses, was standing around watching with interest to see when I would notice the smoke and flames pouring out of the back.
Kindest Regards
>> Ric Werme (18:41:24) :
Hmm, orbital angular momentum would stay the same (twice the distance times half the speed), and that’s a problem because the Earth’s spin has to slow down. I guess the answer is that the Earth actually orbits the center of gravity (the barycenter) of the Earth/Moon system and that distance will increase for both Earth and Moon. The Earth is so close to the barycenter we might not be able to treat it as a point so I hope the Earth manages to gain some angular momentum due to the orbital motion. Please straighten me out if I’m confused. <<
Now I’m awake enough to do this calculation. We need several formulas. Angular momentum is the vector cross product of distance with the linear momentum. We can ignore the vector arithmetic and just do the scalar math. LM = REM*PM = REM*MM*VM. (Where LM is the Moon’s angular momentum, REM is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, PM is the Moon’s linear momentum, MM is the Moon’s mass, and VM is the Moon’s velocity.) I’ll just assume that the Moon’s orbit is circular so we can use the formula for centripetal acceleration: a = v2/r. If we multiply through by the Moon’s mass we get the formula F = MM*VM2/REM. We need Newton’s gravity formula F = G*m1*m2/r2. Substituting for our case, we have F = G*ME*MM/REM2. (Where G is Big G, ME is the mass of the Earth, and so on.) If we solve for the Moon’s angular momentum we get LM = MM*((G*ME*REM)(1/2)). So if we increase the distance of the Moon four-fold, then the angular momentum doubles.
Jim
[I see it’s a waste of time to use sup and sub HTML tags on this blog. I’ll re-post it without trying to be fancy.]
>> Ric Werme (18:41:24) :
Hmm, orbital angular momentum would stay the same (twice the distance times half the speed), and that’s a problem because the Earth’s spin has to slow down. I guess the answer is that the Earth actually orbits the center of gravity (the barycenter) of the Earth/Moon system and that distance will increase for both Earth and Moon. The Earth is so close to the barycenter we might not be able to treat it as a point so I hope the Earth manages to gain some angular momentum due to the orbital motion. Please straighten me out if I’m confused. <<
Now I’m awake enough to do this calculation. We need several formulas. Angular momentum is the vector cross product of distance with the linear momentum. We can ignore the vector arithmetic and just do the scalar math. Lm = Rem*Pm = Rem*Mm*Vm. (Where Lm is the Moon’s angular momentum, Rem is the distance from the Earth to the Moon, Pm is the Moon’s linear momentum, Mm is the Moon’s mass, and Vm is the Moon’s velocity.) I’ll just assume that the Moon’s orbit is circular so we can use the formula for centripetal acceleration: a = v^2/r. If we multiply through by the Moon’s mass we get the formula F = Mm*Vm^2/Rem. We need Newton’s gravity formula F = G*m1*m2/r^2. Substituting for our case, we have F = G*Me*Mm/Rem^2. (Where G is Big G, Me is the mass of the Earth, and so on.) If we solve for the Moon’s angular momentum we get Lm = Mm*((G*Me*Rem)^(1/2)). So if we increase the distance of the Moon four-fold, then the angular momentum doubles.
Jim
There is a problem with Dr. Lindzen’s equations. It does not change his conclusions, but actually supports them more emphatically. The feedback gain formula on slide 14 does not work if the system is unstable, i.e., if the feedback is positive. In this case the instability is self-sustaining, and the system quickly diverges until it reaches a boundary or oscillates between boundaries in a wildly fluctuating limit cycle.
This, fundamentally, is why the climate system cannot be dominated by positive feedback. Positive feedback is pernicious and assertive. It does not lie in wait for a trigger. It feeds off itself like a cancer and marches forward relentlessly until the patient is dead.
If our climate system were dominated by positive feedback, it would long ago have spiraled out into a runaway greenhouse, and the Earth would be like Venus already, indeed, eons ago.
>> Bart (17:43:14) :
. . .
If our climate system were dominated by positive feedback, it would long ago have spiraled out into a runaway greenhouse, and the Earth would be like Venus already, indeed, eons ago. <<
This is one of the strongest arguments against AGW. Long-lived systems aren’t inherently unstable. I’ve made this statement many times, and it seems to fall on deaf ears. Apparently the believers in AGW that I’ve dealt with can’t process the statement and have little understanding of the realities of feedback in systems. Of course, I’m not a climatologist, so my opinion has little value.
Jim
I have been in contact with Dr. Lindzen on this matter. He has clarified that the model is in discrete time, so the usual connotation of “positive” and “negative” feedback that everyone in the world but climate modelers, apparently, understand 🙂 as the delineating line between stability and instability in a continuous time system does not apply.
The model essentially assumes that the change in flux due to temperature is instantaneous, so if the factor “F” in Dr. Lindzen’s presentation is positive, the effect of the delta heat added is amplified.
I will have to contemplate if I can find any other weaknesses in this argument, but for now, I would have to withdraw my previous comment. In any case, it is Dr. Lindzen’s position that the “F” factor is, in fact, negative, hence there is attenuation rather than amplification.
Did Lindzen use up-to-date data this time? Or did he use old data like he did for http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/ ?