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Skeptics Are Not Deniers: A Conversation (part 6)
This is Part 6 of my six-part discussion with Robert G. Brown on paleoclimate, climate dynamics, and global warming. Start with Part 1. *********** RB: I’m not sure how much this makes us disagree in the end. We both agree that CO_2 increases are very likely responsible for some fraction of the observed temperature increase […]
Skeptics Are Not Deniers: A Conversation (part 5)
This is Part 5 of my six-part discussion with Robert G. Brown on paleoclimate, climate dynamics, and global warming. Start with Part 1. Wait until next week for my response to the NOAA “greenhouse gases increased the chances of the Texas heat wave by a factor of 20″ study. *************** 5. To analyze the modern […]
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This guy seems to believe he has solved the mystery of clouds in all this chaos. I guess I’m a denier after all because I don’t believe it. I’m going to go watch some Feynman to clear my head.
You gotta love that Warmista mantra: ‘consistent with’
yeah, with whatever is their latest looney forecast
Nielsen-Gammon is just parroting BS. He is altogether invested too heavily in the catastrophic meme, and all his comments are dedicated to defend his extreme dug-in position.
Here is another article about problems with the scientific edifice in this country.
http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/07/13/12/Skeptical-Outsider-rescue-life-sciences-technological-torpor.html
traditional warmist-luke monotribe…this comment from Part 5
Simple Science Says: “It is extremely hard to simulate annual cycles of snow accumulation and melting with enough precision….ice sheet dynamics aren’t amenable to simple climate modeling.”
NON Simple Science Says: Truth and the Scientific Method are “not amenable to simple climate modeling” either. You have not and cannot do your homework. The reason the Glacial-Holocene forcing is important is that there can be NO HUMAN INVOLVEMENT in a cycle many magnitudes greater than any fictional AGW forcing.
Simple Science Says: “There are vast, serious forces at work here”.
NON Simple Science Says: FINALLY ! Let talk about those forces beginning with the variable solar output and the variable Earth fission rate.
BTW….My formal education has allowed me to distinguish between Verbosity and Veracity….and Brevity is the Soul of Wit.
thanks to N-G and RGB for allowing use of the romper room….
N-G bases a portion of his argument on the contention that there are people (whom N-G calls “scientists”} who fail to make their claims regarding the causation of global warming falsifiable. In particular, in IPCC Assessment Report 4, Working Group 1 fails to make its claims falsifiable by its absence of reference to the statistical population that underlies these claims.The nature of N-G’s argument underscores the necessity for identifying what one means by “science” and “scientist” in debating the legitimacy of global warming “science.” When the terminology is disambiguated, N-G’s “scientists” emerge as examples of pseudo-scientists.
The ice sheets amenability comment reminds me of a great saying: “This is hard – let’s do it wrong”.
N-G; I don’t think I would have minded 50 ppb above preindustrial. We passed that benchmark around 1970
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I presume N-G meant ppm, not ppb, but that aside, I’m disappointed that Dr Brown didn’t take that opportunity to point out that CO2 is logarithmic. We’re now closing in on 130 ppm over pre-industrial, with no noticeable signs of warming at all. Temps in the last 15 years flat or declining. Sea level rise at a crawl. All the alarmists are left with at this point is anecdotal evidence drawn from isolated one time events such as the recent heat wave in the US, while ignoring the fact that on average (and if the CAGW meme has any merit, it most show up in the AVERAGE) global temps have not changed much at all, in fact the stability of them is amazing. If 50 ppm over industrial has produced zippo for evidence in 42 years, and 100 ppm for about 20 years the same, what conclusion can one possibly draw other than the feedbacks are largely negative and the combined effect inconsequential?
N-G sounds more to me like he’s made up his mind and, unable to muster any logical or evidence based response to Dr Brown, throws up his hands about things he believes, and what he is “comfortable with”. I learned a lot from the discussion, but this theme of repeated wilfull blindness from those such as N-G when their belief system is exposed to be nothing but a house of cards is disturbing.
One has to give N-G credit however. He ventured where many warmists fear to tread, and that is into an honest and open discussion of the science. That part is refreshing, and he should be congratulated on that point, and urged to pursuade others with a warmist mentality that they should do the same. The more open and honest debate we get, the more the real science will rise to the surface.
Speaking personally, I thought John NG was quite reasonable throughout. He wasn’t speaking ex cathedra — he was stating his opinion and basis for it, and so was I. What’s wrong with that? I even agree that — depending on some numbers that I’m not sure either of us know and the correctness of his unstated hypotheses as well as his stated ones — that he’s right, one can make up a model where CO_2 and ice albedo balance are tipped neatly for one (warming) direction of the transition. Where we disagree — and where I don’t think his answer suffices — is on the cooling side. CO_2 and temperature rise very close together, close enough that one cannot properly resolve which one leads and which one follows. This makes good physical sense either way — if temperature leads CO_2 must surely follow as the ocean warms, and it can hardly provide negative feedback to the warming — it may not accelerate/sustain it much but it will certainly sustain it some. It might sustain and accelerate it a lot. And sure, melting the glaciers will eventually reduce the albedo and warm things still more. Both CO_2 and albedo reduction on melting favor a warming/melting transition, which doesn’t stop the cold/glaciation phase of the current climate from being 80-90% of the bistable cycle.
On the cooling side, however, there is a big split between cooling and CO_2. Temperatures drop significantly and quite rapidly in spite of both low albedo and high CO_2 (doubled from glacial lows). Even this high level of CO_2 is incapable of preventing runaway cooling. This split (to me) suggests that a CO_2 feedback dominant model is almost certainly wrong. CO_2 is literally overwhelmed by powerful drops in climate forcing that just don’t care. Nor can it just be albedo feedback, I don’t think. The actual growth of glaciation is rather inexorable and “too fast” (as is the melting) not to be driven by more than just albedo feedback.
I simply see at least one more powerful driver in this mix, and there is one obvious candidate — Mr. Sun and some fairly complicated orbital or “other” feedbacks, which might include geodynamic feedbacks that function as anything from triggers to actual drivers themselves. Tambora 200 years ago — at 800 Mt the moral equivalent of a good sized asteroid — could have served as a trigger to runaway glaciation if the macroscopic system was already cold-unstable. So might the Maunder Minimum (plus other volcanic events) 200 years earlier. Yet there are long time scale dynamic fluctuations in temperature with fairly clear, nearly periodic signals in the climate record — clarity confounded by multivariate factors so that nothing is “clean”, more indicative of chaos than simple driven oscillation.
But I could be wrong too. The problem is that one can almost certainly build heuristic models either way and “fit” (be consistent with:-) the observational historical data, although no models I know of can explain the full Pliestocene thermal history including the period shifts and deepening of glaciation. Saying “I’m not sure” is something John is definitely capable of, but he’s just as entitled to “however, I think” as anybody else and his thoughts are likely to be pretty well informed.
I do wish we could lose the rampant ad hominem on both sides, though. John was a gentleman at every turn in our exchange, and permitted me to look over and edit or suggest changes to my responses to his comments to my comment, elevated to an article, on Bain — none of which was actually written for this much scrutiny. While we clearly disagreed in places, we agreed in others. Given that I’m at best a well-educated amateur in his primary area of study, I thought he (and most of the other participants in the discussion) were remarkably respectful. And we both teamed up — to no avail, of course — when Mr. Olsen showed up to assert that some bizarre and utterly impossible process of fission is responsible for warming the deep oceans a tiny fraction of a degree which causes a huge climate change, or that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist. Which is nonsense in its entirety here or there on on his sky dragon site.
I’m interested in learning, and figuring out, the actual physics and dynamics of the climate and am happy to hear even iconoclastic hypotheses, but outrageous violations of the laws of physics and thermodynamics and common sense don’t work very well for me whether they are for or against the CAGW hypothesis. One more thing that I advise. When discussing AGW, even CAGW, it is always good to recite a little mantra to yourself whenever you make a pronouncement. That mantra is “…but, I could be wrong!” I think that CO_2 alone is inadequate to explain geological cycle ice ages or the relatively recent glacial oscillations (seriously, I do!) but I could be wrong! I doubt that we’ll see more than 1-1.5 C more total warming (and maybe not even that) by the end of the 21st century but I could be wrong! (and in any event, will be dead long before then).
Of course, it would be lovely if the other participants in the debate added the same mantra to their own pronouncements. Imagine Hansen proposing that we’ll experience 5 or even 10 C more warming by 2100 as the Earth passes a tipping point and we race towards boiling oceans but that he could be wrong! because nothing like that happened in the past when CO_2 levels were much higher and because we cannot be certain of the climate sensitivity or feedbacks. Mann saying that the latest round of tree ring studies, which include these trees but not those and which use the following ritual to determine which rings on which trees are “good” predictors of temperatures seem to indicate that there was no Little Ice Age but that he could be wrong because there is other evidence that confounds that.
It would be so very sublime. Civility, courtesy, and the open acknowledgement that climate science is difficult so that even a results one passionately believes can be mistaken.
Naaaah, it’ll never happen…
rgb
“You gotta love that Warmista mantra: ‘consistent with’
yeah, with whatever is their latest looney forecast”
It’s consistent with only one factor only, the political decided UNEP/UNFCCC (UN framework convention on climate change) established in Rio 1992. Since socialist and social liberals have invested billions in making climate science UNFCCC conform.
Read this page and get UNwell? http://unfccc.int/2860.php
So much waste of resources and money just to tax air and get world government? Throw UNEP and those behind it out of UN now!
I think this is a very interesting discussion, but it will not be of much use to the general public. If an MA (Cantab), PhD MBA has to take a deep breath every so often to remember what various bits of jargon mean, Joe Schmo will have given up after the first two paragraphs.
An exercise of global worth would come from translating this discussion into readable, non-jargon ridden English. It’s not something which should be pooh-poohed, because if you want the public to understand, they need to get the facts in simple, accessible ways.
I do think that discussions about stable states would be very valuable, as would discussions about what triggers transitions between them.
I also think discussions from eco-biologists may be valuable in explaining how adaptational forcings may produce contrary, surprising or unexpected results in certain systems. It’s not a given that warming will produce deserts and droughts, it may produce restoration of forests courtesy of rising carbon dioxide if conditions are right. Warming oceans may alter the phytoplankton populations which may affect the rate of absorption of solar energy. A combination of oceanic coolings, solar quitening and volcanic eruptions may have huge effects on polar ice.
If there’s one thing I’m tired of it’s this: ‘earth is predictable and this is what’s going to happen’ nonsense. Until you can predict solar activity, volcanic activity, oceanic activity and jet stream activity, I seriously doubt you can do that.
Even if you can do all that, I’d be interested to see quite how quickly the models turn into the impenetrable fog of ‘noise’.
I presume N-G meant ppm, not ppb, but that aside, I’m disappointed that Dr Brown didn’t take that opportunity to point out that CO2 is logarithmic.
You mean in my extensive discussion of how we should be expressing CO_2 changes in decibels? That the entire change from the minimum we can determine during the last glacial period to the present is around 3 dB?
I didn’t pursue his remark as far as I might because one of his replies got me thinking and I didn’t have time then to think it through (and still haven’t). The radiation physics here is laid out in Caballero, but Caballero doesn’t present a worked out example of the expected straight-up effect of another 3 dB of CO_2 on top of the one that was added since the low water mark of the last glacial period. Saying that CO_2 is saturated is all well and good (and true!) but that doesn’t give one an immediate sense of the actual curves. I may have to program up a solution to the differential equations or something to find out.
rgb
Sorry, RB, the stakes are too high for professiona/academic politeness. The AGW/CAGW enterprise is grabbing for all the marbles. It needs to have its fingers chopped off right up to the shoulder.
typo: professional/academic
rgbatduke;
You mean in my extensive discussion of how we should be expressing CO_2 changes in decibels? That the entire change from the minimum we can determine during the last glacial period to the present is around 3 dB?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sure, that too 😉
I tend to come at it from a simpler perspective. One of the things that I noticed when reading AR4 was that they constantly talk about the expected effects of CO2 doubling from pre-industrial levels. Then they zip back and forth in terms of time reference, talking about CO2 increases now, but in terms of pre-industrial levels. There’s very little point in my mind talking about pre-industrial levels of 278 ppm. We haven’t been at 278 for a century or more. Nor can we go back. Even if we reduce our emissions to zero, it is the CURRENT levels of CO2 that are relevant to the discussion, not the levels from a century ago.
So the point I try and draw attention to is that we are close to 400 ppm today. If human activity over the next 50 years increases CO2 concentrations by 100 ppm, that’s 400 +100 which, due to the logarithmic nature of CO2, has a completely different implication than 280 +100.
AR4 is written in terms of X amount of CO2 over 280. But 280 is meaningless. We cannot suck the CO2 out of the air! Point being that when we speak of X ppm of CO2 being contributed by human activity TODAY, which is 400 ppm, not 280, the effects that we would expect are far lower. Given that we are at 400 ppm TODAY, if one accepts direct affects of CO2 being 1 degree per doubling, we’d need to get to 800 ppm to achieve that one degree. Even with the likes of India, China and Brazil rapidly increasing their use of fossil fuels, we’re still talking on the order of a couple of centuries to get to just one more degree than we have now from CO2. Hardly a rate of warming that we cannot adapt to. Two degrees? That requires 1600 ppm of CO2. I don’t think we could generate that much over the next few centuries even if we tried deliberately to do so.
Understanding the logarithmic nature of CO2 also speaks in my mind to the issue of sensitivity. If sensitivity is low, then really, what are we so concerned about? The CAGW meme relies on sensitivity being high, very high. Some of the initial alarmist estimates were 6 degrees C or more for CO2 doubling. They’ve been revised downward steadily since then, now ranging from +3 to +4.5. OK, if that is true, then 280 +110 ought to result in warming of 2 degrees or more by now, and that is above and beyond natural variability (since we’ve been in a warming trend since the LIA). We’ve seen nothing of the sort, leaving the Trenberth’s of the world to argue that the warming is “in the pipe”. Sure, I know what a time constant is, and I’ll allow that the time constant for a planet could be rather large. But it would have to be awful large for the 280 +110 we have seen over the last century to leave no obvious impact on the general warming trend we’ve seen since the LIA. I think the CAGW meme falls down on this point also. To summarize:
1. Future impacts of increased CO2 levels must be predicated upon CURRENT levels of CO2. The law of diminishing returns requires that the impact of emissions also diminishes, even if we drastically increase them.
2. If sensitivity is low, we have little to be concerned with. If sensitivity is high, then either we should have seen a major impact to global temperatures by now, or we are dealing with a time constant so large that it makes the issue immaterial as we’re talking about a rate of change so slow that adaptation over a period of centuries makes far more sense than mitigation.
davidmhoffer says: July 15, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Good comments David – thank you.
_____________
No significant global warming means no significant climate sensitivity to increased atmospheric CO2.
We wrote in 2002:
“Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist.”
See http://www.apegga.org/Members/Publications/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm
Scorecard: No global warming in the decade since this article was written – Check!
In the same 2002 article, we wrote:
“The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
The economic and energy debacle of grid-connected wind and solar power is now imploding – Check!
In 2002 we predicted imminent global cooling, starting by 2020 to 2030.
Scorecard: No significant global cooling yet, but no warming either – a global temperature plateau – OK so far – Check!
(Like pride, a level global temperature plateau “cometh before the fall”.)
In ~2002 I received my first and only threat – Welcome to full-contact climate science! I suddenly found myself attributed with God-like powers, since I was allegedly responsible for the flooding of Prague! I took full responsibility for Prague, readily accepted my newfound powers, and told my assailant to “run along or I’ll do it again!” 🙂
Scorecard: Neutral – there is no check-box on the scorecard for “assume God-like powers”. Drat!
In 2008, I wrote that atmospheric CO2 does not primarily drive temperature, rather global temperature primarily drives CO2.
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
Following the usual ritualistic human sacrifice (Burn the heretic!) by both sides of the mainstream CAGW debate, my observation that dCO2/dt varies ~contemporaneously with temperature and CO2 LAGS TEMPERATURE AT ALL MEASURED TIME SCALES was accepted and promptly swept under the rug as a “feedback effect”, inconsistent with both “high-sensitivity” CAGW religion and its “low-sensitivity” skeptics’ counter-argument. This “feedback argument” was and is convenient nonsense, imo.
I arose like a phoenix from the ashes in 2011 with the publication of Murry Salby’s video in which he states the same temperature-drives-CO2 heresy.
In truth, I’m starting to find this whole ~27-year climate science experience rather amusing.
I’m also about 90% confident that I am correct – that both sides of the “mainstream CAGW debate”, the warmists and the skeptics, have confused cause and effect.
I accept that there is a ~10% chance that I am wrong. “To err is human”, and all that.
No, on second thought, this is just false modesty. I am correct! 🙂
I don’t know those two dudes, but I can judge the way the “conversation” runs. And I judge that this is not an honest “conversation” between a carbon cultist and a skeptic. This is a calculated Socratic dialogue between two devout carbon cultists to advance the interests of the cult.
Much like the “debates” between the “Republican”-brand Gramscians and the “Democrat”-brand Gramscians to advance the tyranny of Gramsci.
Dr. Brown, continental drift is a 50 year old term that changed 45 years ago to Plate Tectonics which is the correct scientific term. (Sorry but I am a geologist)
Extraterrestrial climate drivers are not all known and those we do acknowledge we do not fully understand. All are changing at different rates as are drivers of terrestrial origin, not all known or understood. This is one reason why climate models do not work.
I would like to add that the term Tipping Point implies a situation beyond which no recovery is possible. This cannot apply to any climate event since these cycle they do not trend. No tipping point has ever occurred over the past 500 million years.
It would seem that passage of the solar system round our galaxy, into and out of the spiral arms times ice ages but this may become poor information given more research. certainly the Ordovician ice age, one of the most severe, occurred when atmospheric CO2 levels were up to 8000ppmv. Some greenhouse. But the proposed ‘Ice House Earth’ when the planet was totally covered with ice, has been shown not to have happened. Drop stones found in sediments of that age prove that open water was abundant enough for icebergs.
“We both agree that CO_2 increases are very likely responsible for some fraction of the observed temperature increase from the LIA on.”
What a ridiculous statement ! Some fraction = 1/1,000,000
If I’ve done it correctly, a first-order calculation shows that opening a can of soda in a sealed, average-sized room (about 2000 cubic feet) and letting the CO2 in the soda (about 2.2 grams) dissipate into the room would approximately double the concentration of CO2 in the room. It’s difficult to believe that that miniscule amount of CO2 would have any detectable effect on climate.
@- Allan MacRae says:
“In 2008, I wrote that atmospheric CO2 does not primarily drive temperature, rather global temperature primarily drives CO2.”
Given the measurable fact from isotope ratios show that the rise in CO2 is due to the industrial burning of fossil fuels and NOT the rise in temperature this must have caused you some embarrassment.
Do you accept that CO2 is an active component of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ that keeps the surface ~30degC warmer than it would be without an insulating atmosphere?
If so, why do you assert it stops working at ~280ppm, even a logarithmic effect has an impact if the double the level.
Sorry, RB, the stakes are too high for professiona/academic politeness. The AGW/CAGW enterprise is grabbing for all the marbles. It needs to have its fingers chopped off right up to the shoulder.
The AGW/CAGW “enterprise” is political, mostly, and if anything is using the scientists to accomplish political ends. Also bear in mind that most of the scientists being used in this way are sincere! They are not “lying”, trying to be deceitful, greedy, or in any way unethical. A very small minority have perhaps been corrupted by their own fame and blinded by confirmation bias. John NG is absolutely not one of them. As he puts it on his own website, there really should be a string of “AGW” descriptors, ranging from Catastrophic AGW (5+ C of warming, held by most climate scientists to be unlikely at this point, catastrophic AGW (2-3 C) of warming effect somewhat positive, somewhat negative, likely to affect some “catastrophes” but not serious ones (most climate scientists are in this general category at this point, well down from previous times), and plain old (A)GW, perhaps 1 C of warming that is non-catastrophic and only partially anthropogenic. All are within “range” of the admissible climate sensitivities; the question is where on places one’s bets. In the George Mason survey, one climate scientist in 7 or thereabouts was in this category!
It hardly sounds like an enterprise “grabbing all the marbles”.
The problem is that uncivil discourse is no way to get anything done.
rgb
****
Robert Brown says:
July 15, 2012 at 10:39 pm
I simply see at least one more powerful driver in this mix, and there is one obvious candidate — Mr. Sun and some fairly complicated orbital or “other” feedbacks, which might include geodynamic feedbacks that function as anything from triggers to actual drivers themselves.
****
Doc, I agree it has to be something powerful. Why not some major oceanic-current change? Specifically in the N Atlantic. Seems like the Greenland ice-cores show more drastic changes than Antarctic, plus we know Greenland’s climate is quite variable given the large changes since the MWP & LIA. Temps today are said to have risen to MWP levels, but obviously Greenland was much milder back then than now.
I’m going out on a limb a bit, but I think there are oceanic changes that occur that we haven’t seen yet during recorded history. What causes that, I don’t know. But, as you say, it has to be something powerful to overcome the high CO2/low albedo features of the interglacials in just a matter of several thousands of yrs. The periodic D-O and Heinrich events during glacials seem to be of similar origins.
Our resident solar expert would prb’ly discount solar changes. He’s got alot of data/work/experience behind his opinion.
rgb: “Given that I’m at best a well-educated amateur in his primary area of study …”
That puts you well above many climate scientists. You probably have a better overall knowledge of the many, many fields that have impacts on our climate than those who actually believe they are climate scientists. To be a true climate scientist would likely take degrees in a dozen or more fields. I’d venture that absolutely no one who calls himself a climate scientist has this level of education and experience. What we have is true amateurs in most of those dozen fields trying to claim they are experts.
One of the best things about WUWT is it provides the experts in those fields to call out the sloppy science being pushed (and published) by non-experts. We see it every day here but the rest of the world does not. This is why we really need to get the national science academies to back off their position statements. They are accepting climate science as providing unassailable truth which we know is total BS.
Radiative cooling (a thief in the night that chaotically goes wherever it wants) is the single most important metric I know of and have experienced first hand (thunderstorms being second) that destroys the notions that 1. CO2 is well mixed, and that 2. CO2 is capable of globally strong continuous absorption and re-radiation of IR. Radiative cooling sucks heat from the ground up to the higher troposphere and sends it packing. We experience it here in NE Oregon and can be strong enough to kill garden plants during Summer months. Where it goes from there I am not sure but my hunch is that some heat dissipates in the stratosphere and some even manages to escape into space. Because it comes and goes, you need constant satellite surveilance to catch it and quantify it. I think that is where the missing heat is. Back into space and is the reason why Trenbreth cannot find it. It chaotically occurs in time and location along with thunder storms and thermals, and is hard to “capture” with our current satellite set-up. The CO2 hypothesis has yet to be proven. The null hypothesis still stands.
Radiative cooling is not very effective with cloud cover but water vapour is regardless. Convection carries WV and with it a lot of latent heat, that heat coming from the surface. this WV forms the clouds losing its latent heat which is then radiated to space.
@- Robert Brown
“I simply see at least one more powerful driver in this mix, and there is one obvious candidate — Mr. Sun and some fairly complicated orbital or “other” feedbacks, which might include geodynamic feedbacks that function as anything from triggers to actual drivers themselves.”
There is a glaring lack of evidence for changes in solar activity of sufficient magnitude to be a ‘powerful driver’ in the climate. The carbon dating calibration/correction curve would be much further from the constant decay trend if that were the case.
As you mention at the end of the paragraph, the climate is a chaotic {but thermodynamically constrained} system. A powerful driver is not required for large changes in state. Very small inputs can have very large effects, climate sensitivity is not likely to be linear function in a non-linear system.