Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Once upon a time, the meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos were gatherings of free-market economists and entrepreneurs. Not any more. Predatory corporatism and pietistic étatisme have moved in and captured the Davos event. Their dismal handmaiden, the Thermageddon cult, was not slow to follow.
This year’s WEF annual “insight report” on global risks bizarrely rates “climate change” and “extreme weather events” as two of the three global threats with the greatest combined impact and likelihood (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: As the “climate crisis” fades to a record low, the imagined threats from “climate change” and “extreme weather” have soared to a record high (top right) among the profiteers of doom in Davos.
As climate science becomes frozen in record Antarctic ice, as The Pause grows ever longer, and as the IPCC (another international bunch of crooks for which the racketeer-influenced criminal organization that is modern Switzerland provides a jurisdiction-free safe haven) slashes its near-term predictions of global warming to a record low, the Thermageddon cult has silently captured the World Economic Forum.
Remarkably, the date of the capture is highly visible (Fig. 2). Before 2011, environmental “threats” did not figure among the WEF’s top five global risks by impact (top) and likelihood (bottom). From 2011 onward, the green panels marking supposed environmental “risks” startlingly proliferate.
Figure 2. The WEF’s top five global risks by impact (top) and by likelihood (bottom) have been dominated by imagined environmental catastrophes (green panels) since 2011. Diagram based on the WEF’s 2014 Global Risks report.
Yet there was no particular reason for alarm about our effect on the climate in 2011. What had happened? Perhaps the usual suspects, having failed in their big push for a total shutdown of the West at Copenhagen in 2009, looked around for new international bodies to capture and eventually lit upon the politically-naïve World Economic Forum.
I use the word “naïve” advisedly. For the Davos risk report, even by the low standards set by climate-change bed-wetters everywhere, is an exceptionally hysterical and overblown document. The WEF has gone full stupid.
Its pompous global-risks report says: “Environmental risks also feature prominently in this year’s list, appearing as three of the top 10 global risks of greatest concern.
“Water crises, for instance, rank as the third highest concern. This illustrates a continued and growing awareness of the global water crisis as a result of mismanagement and increased competition for already scarce water resources from economic activity and population growth. Coupled with extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, which appears sixth on the list, the potential impacts are real and happening today.
“Climate change, ranked fifth on the list, is the key driver of such uncertain and changing weather patterns, causing an increased frequency of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.”
Now, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report makes it quite plain that one cannot yet attribute any extreme-weather event to “global warming”. It specifically states that there is no discernible additional risk of cyclones, storms, droughts, and floods. And analyses such as Dr. Ryan Maue’s Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index confirm this. Yet the report wails, “Typhoon Haiyan took a heavy toll on the Philippines, even as global leaders debated climate change in Warsaw in November 2013.”
It moans on: “Climate change features among the five most likely and most impactful risks. Among other environmental risks, extreme weather events are considered the second most likely, and water crises also appear high on the list.”
And the solution? “This suggests a pressing need for better public information about the potential consequences of environmental threats, given that collective action will need to be based on common understanding.”
Here we go again. The Davos Thermageddonites blame the continuing failure of the West to shut itself down on insufficient propaganda to convince the public that global warming that has not happened caused extreme weather that has.
The fashionable nonsense continues with a whine about third-world countries being most at risk: “Drought and flood could increasingly ravage the economies of poorer countries, locking them more deeply into cycles of poverty.”
The report winds itself up into the usual mannered frenzy with a panel luridly entitled “An Emerging Spectrum of Catastrophic Risks: Existential Threats”, contributed by the “Global Agenda Council on Catastrophic Risks”, of which more in a moment
“Climate change”, says the Global Armageddon Commissariat, “could tip into a self-reinforcing, runaway phase of rising temperatures.”
Er, no, it can’t. I’m not sure that even the holy books of IPeCaC have ever suggested that runaway temperature feedback is even a possibility. In any event, elementary considerations in the mathematics of feedback amplification make runaway feedback an impossibility.
Figure 3 shows the plot of the IPCC’s 2007 estimates of climate sensitivity at CO2 doubling: y axis) against loop gain γ (x axis). The IPCC’s 3.26 [2.0, 4.5] K interval of estimated sensitivities is marked, showing its implicit loop gain values 0.64 [0.42, 0.74].
Figure 3. Climate sensitivity at CO2 doubling (y axis) against feedback loop gains γ = λ0f on the interval [–1, 3] (x axis), where λ0 is the Planck sensitivity parameter 0.31 K W–1 m2 and f is the sum in W m–2 K–1 of all unamplified temperature feedbacks. The interval of climate sensitivities given in IPCC (2007) is shown as a red-bounded region; a more physically realistic interval, consistent with Lindzen & Choi (2009, 2011) is bounded in green. In electronic circuitry, the singularity at γ = +1 has a physical meaning: in the climate, it has none. In the climate, therefore, the feedback-amplification equation requires a damping term that is absent in the models.
Process engineers designing electronic circuits intended not to oscillate adopt a maximum value γ = 0.1 for the loop gain (and usually an order of magnitude below this). Thus, in a stable circuit, everything to the right of the blue line is designed out.
For the past 750 million years, the climate has behaved as a stable circuit. The temperature-feedback loop gain cannot much have exceeded +0.1, for throughout that time, according to Scotese (1999) (and see Zachos, 2005), global mean surface temperature has varied by only 8 K, or 3%, either side of the long-run mean.
In the past 420,000 years the near-constancy of global temperature has been still more impressive (Fig. 4). Absolute global temperature reconstructed from the Vostok ice cores fluctuated by less than 3 K, or 1%, either side of the mean.
Figure 4. Global temperature reconstruction over the past 420,000 years derived from δ18O anomalies in air trapped in ice strata at Vostok station, Antarctica. To render the anomalies global, the values of the reconstructed anomalies (y axis) have been divided by the customary factor 2 to allow for polar amplification. Diagram based on Petit et al. (1999). Note that all four previous interglacial warm periods, at intervals of 80,000-125,000 years, were at least as warm as the current warm period. Data source: Petit et al. (1999).
Indeed, the feedback-amplification may be the wrong equation altogether. For in an electronic circuitry the striking singularity at γ = +1 describes a physical reality. At that point, the voltage – which had been striving to reach positive inifinity – flicks from the positive to the negative rail. In the climate, however, no such transition is possible. Temperature feedbacks that have been as strongly net-positive as the IPCC fancifully imagines they are cannot suddenly drive global temperature down rather than up. Besides, there is such a thing as negative voltage, but there is no such thing as negative temperature.
In short, a damping term is necessary to permit the Bode feedback-amplification equation to be applied to the climate at all. But any value sufficient to keep the loop gain well shy of the singularity would limit climate sensitivity to the interval marked “Probable” in green on Fig. 3, implying little more than 1 K global warming per CO2 doubling. There is, therefore, no climate problem: and, even if there were, the runaway feedback eagerly imagined by the WEF cannot exist, does not exist, and has shown not the slightest sign of having existed in the past 750 million years.
The WEF rants on to blame the war in Syria on global warming: “For example, while there is no doubt a number of reasons caused the devastating civil war, recent research is unearthing the hidden role that climate change, extreme weather events and a water crisis also played in Syria. Between 2006 and 2011, up to 60% of Syria’s land experienced one of the worst long-term droughts in modern history. Together with the mismanagement of water resources, this drought led to total crop failure for 75% of farmers, forcing their migration and increasing tensions in urban cities that were already experiencing economic insecurity and instability.”
That passage nicely illustrates the problem posed by the lack of anything that our ancestors from the late Middle Ages to the Second World War would have recognized as an education on the part of the “world leaders” who flatter themselves by attending the Davos junket.
For if every drought is blamed on global warming, and every flood is blamed on global warming, and every heatwave is blamed on global warming, and every circumpolar-vortex cold snap is blamed on global warming, two conclusions follow. First, that global warming has been relentlessly increasing for 4567 million years, entirely accounting for every climatic event that has ever occurred, is now occurring, or will ever occur. Yet if global warming has been increasing for that long, how can we tell whether the small warming that ceased 17 years 4 months ago was anything much to do with us?
Secondly, if every change in the weather is held to be our fault, how can the hypothesis that manmade warming is a problem be falsified? A hypothesis that cannot be falsified is little more than a curiosity. It is not science, and no policy action may legitimately be taken on the basis of unless and until it is first modified to make it testable and is then tested and not disproven.
At least the Davos dirge admits, albeit in a roundabout way, that its take on climate science goes beyond even that of the generally extremist IPCC: “The risk multiplier that climate change presents to water shortages, biodiversity loss, ocean damage and deforestation also creates a complex ‘heterarchy’, rather than a simple hierarchy, of environmental risks, often with non-linear patterns of change and self-fuelling feedback mechanisms. This heterarchy is not contained within IPCC models, but could encompass the greatest economic risk of all from climate change.” Runaway feedbacks again.
The report maunders on: “Climate change could tip into a self-reinforcing, runaway phase of rising temperatures”. Runaway feedbacks for the third time. It ain’t gonna happen. Back to Process Engineering 101, boys!
But the Wild Extremists and Fanatics are not done yet. They go on to talk of climate change as threatening “to make the Earth increasingly uninhabitable”. Oh, pur-leaze! Some 90% of the world’s species of flora and fauna live in the tropics, where the last time I looked (on a recent visit to the avian paradise that is Colombia) the weather is somewhat warmer than at the poles, where around 1% of the world’s species live.
An elementary knowledge of high-school geography ought to have been enough to make the Davos dunderheads think twice before musing that the Earth would become “increasingly uninhabitable” as it warmed.
The “Global Agenda Council on Climate Change” contributes a second box to the report, this time entitled “Poor Countries Are Losing Ground in the Race to Adapt to a Changing Climate”
It says: “The year 2014 is likely to be crucial for addressing climate risks, a point made by United Nations (UN) climate chief Christiana Figueres at the Warsaw Climate Change Conference. Countries made only limited progress on issues such as emissions reduction, loss and damage compensation, and adaptation. Greater progress is urgently needed to create incentives and mechanisms to finance action against climate change while efforts are made to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.”
There is no scientific basis for the notion that global temperature in 1750 was ideal and that anything more than 2 Celsius degrees above that temperature is less than ideal. What is the ideal global temperature interval, and on what scientific basis is that interval determined? The WEF fails to enlighten us on either question.
Who has captured the World Economic Forum? One clue lies in the membership of the “Global Agenda Council on Climate Change”, a title that sounds uncannily like one of the thousands of KGB-funded front groups furtively set up throughout the West by the Soviet Union as its sock-puppets to peddle disinformation in the bad old days.
The members of the Commissariat are Swiss Re (a reinsurance broker as notorious as Lloyds of London for exploiting non-existent global warming to talk up premiums); Notre Dame Global Adaptation Institute (taxpayer-funded me-too academic rent-seekers); Yvo De Boer, KPMG International Cooperative (he once ran the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change); Yara International (“sustainable agriculture”); Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (taxpayer-funded); Carnegie Institution for Science (me-too); Christiana Figueres, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (’nuff said); Connie Hedegaard, European Commission (’nuff said); Tokyo Institute of Technology (taxpayer-funded); HSBC Asia Pacific (me-too); Deutsche Bank (long-term global-warming fanatics); Aecom Technology Corporation (architects and builders “Dedicated To Making The World A Better Place”); Qatar Foundation (they hosted the 2012 UN climate summit at which I inadvertently represented Burma); Ministry of Water and Environmental Affairs, South Africa (taxpayer-funded); Federal Ministry of Germany for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (taxpayer-funded); Baker & McKenzie (“Global Corporate Sustainability” law firm); World Bank (unelected international racket profiteering from every fashionable scare); and Climate Group (the usual suspects, including New York State).
This rogues’ gallery is a revealing illustration of the convergence of large corporations and taxpayer-funded groups who have adopted an extremist stance on the climate question not because it is scientific but because it is fashionable.
Finally, Fig. 5 gives the list of the Top Ten Global Risks as imagined by the World Economic Forum.
Figure 5. The WEF’s Top Ten Global Risks. Its report says: “Climate change, ranked fifth on the list (see Box 1.4), is the key driver of such uncertain and changing weather patterns, causing an increased frequency of extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. It is important to consider the combined implications of these environmental risks on key development and security issues, such as food security, and political and social instability, ranked eighth and 10th respectively.”
It is difficult to decide whether the authors of this childishly extreme document genuinely believe the anti-scientific fantasies and fatuities they peddle or whether the global classe politique has at last realized that global warming is never going to occur at anything like the previously-predicted rate. If CO2 goes on rising and the temperature goes on not rising, everyone will know the governing class was wrong when it told us it was 95% confident it was right. So its best escape route is to bully scientifically-illiterate governments into vastly reducing global CO2 emissions and then to claim that the continuing failure of the world to warm is their noble achievement rather than what would have happened anyway.
Somebody probably had the bright, if not obvious, idea to bring climate change into the front to improve their image. Having a big role on the official agenda doesn’t guarantee anything — who knows where the real action is.
Gordon brown is in attendance – talk about dummying down.
Corruption less likely than extreme weather?! Go read the newspapers.
Social unrest less impact than climate change? Go tell the Ukrainians (and Egyptians, Thais, Sudanese, Chadians etc etc)
I think Bjorn Lomborg and his Copenhagen Consensus has a much better method of setting agendas for discussion – perhaps the Davos mob should consult with him next time.
2011 as a start strongly suggests it ain’t climate change going on top of world’s agenda, rather Davos’ WEF approaching irrelevance
Hugely entertaining, your Lordship. When the following phrases can all be found in the first paragraph, one knows one can settle in for a good read:
“Predatory corporatism”
“pietistic étatisme”
“Their dismal handmaiden, the Thermageddon cult.”
Extremes? Like millennial deluges in Asia, like heatwaves, dustbowls, cat 5 hurricanes and coldwaves in North America, like killing heat and drought in Oz?
Save us from the 1930s!
Boorish, overly long, poorly edited, mischaracterizations. Can’t you get someone who can write?
The WEF rants on to blame the war in Syria on global warming: “For example, while there is no doubt a number of reasons caused the devastating civil war, recent research is unearthing the hidden role that climate change, extreme weather events and a water crisis also played in Syria.
BOGGLE!
Climate alarmism has now escalated to climate jihad? Are these people insane?
Dean Boulding says:
January 24, 2014 at 12:47 am
Boorish, overly long, poorly edited, mischaracterizations. Can’t you get someone who can write?
Because presentation trumps content? That’s your counter argument is it?
At least, by using the expression “Failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation”, there is no pretention to attribute changes exclusively to human activities. This is why CAGW activists are disappointed.
Cosmic rays (grows at low solar activity) is not evenly, as it depends on the magnetic field of the Earth.
http://daedalearth.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/image-722.jpg?w=550&h=343
You can see that during the winter, can strongly affect the ozone over the Arctic Circle.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/atmosphere/radbud/gs19_prd.gif
No mention of a (major) Carrington Event I see. But isn’t knocking out the world’s electricity supply network for a couple of years at least a threat of any kind? Personally, I see this as THE biggest threat to our civilization.
Sounds like Davos is on the ball.
•Fiscal rises in key economies
•Water Crises
•Unemployment and Underemployment
•Extreme Weather Events
•Income Disparity
These are the worst things that realistically could harm us.
But Climate Change?
Other than “Extreme Weather Events” that could happen anyway – what’s the risk?
Not sure what “Global governance failure” means though. Failure of the GATT talks, maybe?
Thank you, Monckton. You are a machine.
Budget Deficits and Foreign Debt (or Debt Service Ratio) did not make the top ten list at a world economic summit.
Lord Monckton, semi hysterical ranting, while entertaining, does nothing to enhance the importance of your message. Please tone it down in future.
The positive feedback claims of Hansen et al are ludicrous and always were so. They depend upon the assumption that the Earth’s surface emits real net IR energy to the local atmosphere as if the surface were in a vacuum and in radiative equilibrium with a sink at absolute a zero.
This mistake was made initially by Arrhenius then disinterred by Sagan in the 1960s. Both were absolutely wrong because they failed to distinguish between the Radiation Field of an emitter and the real net energy flux, set by the vector difference of that RF with the RF in the opposite direction from the emitter.
There can be no thermalisation in the gas phase of GHG-absorbed IR energy – fundamental statistical thermodynamics. The idea of ‘back radiation’ requires remedial physics for those so afflicted.
Do you get it now? Instead of 157.5 W/m^2 being absorbed by GHGs and heating the local atmosphere, you have 23 W/m^2 absorbed by GHGs then scattering to Space or to cloud droplets. There is no ‘back radiation’, no ‘loop gain’. If there were no other processes, greater pCO2 would cause surface heating with 1.2 K climate sensitivity. However, other processes do intervene and CO2 climate sensitivity is near zero.
Strange (or perhaps not) that their list of global threats completely omits what is far and away the greatest threat to humanity today, namely, the continuing existence of a worldwide crust of arrogant, parasitic “technocrats”. These people self-evidently have lost all contact with reality, yet still presume to tell everyone else what they must do to implement global feudalism, run, of course, by and for themselves. Such egregious fact-blindness renders their “analysis” worthless, except perhaps to future historians investigating the total collapse of an earlier civilisation.
This kind of stuff is ok course why we have democracy, so we can shove off politicians who want to live and impose their loopy fantasies on everybody else.
It is also of note that despite the historically recent 20th century’s greatest cause of misery-that of the rise and imposition of one or other bureaucratic ideologies stemming from the academic-bureaucratic complex-such doesn’t even get a mention on the list at all. Perhaps because it is from such people as the WEF that these sort of ideologies of convenience come from anyway. History just keeps repeating itself.
Forecast polar vortex on 28 January.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat_a_f/gif_files/gfs_t100_nh_f120.gif
Wonderfully illustrated & well put, as always, Sir!!!! I am thinking about joining the warmistas, I need the money, don’t care where it comes from, private or taxpayer, but taxpayer is the best bet me thinks! 😉
M Courtney says:
January 24, 2014 at 1:08 am
“Not sure what “Global governance failure” means though. Failure of the GATT talks, maybe?”
Failure to achieve the Fabian Socialist’s desired global government. You should know that.
thingadonta says:
January 24, 2014 at 1:55 am
“This kind of stuff is ok course why we have democracy, so we can shove off politicians who want to live and impose their loopy fantasies on everybody else. ”
Yeah, you can always vote for a party that is not member of
http://www.globeinternational.org/
Good luck finding one.
“Lewis P Buckingham says:
January 24, 2014 at 12:38 am
Australia is chairing this.”
And we have Abbott there. Go Abbott, don’t give in to the alarmists! He is being slaughtered here in the Aussie MSM on the illegal boat people issue that Indonesia, and the former ALP/Greens govn’t, has ignored for the last 6 – 7 years. Indonesia is claiming a “border breach” by the AU Navy, shame they have ignored “border breaches” for the last 6 – 7 years with local authorities “unwilling” to stop a problem at the source.
In this case, I hope Abbott is undiplomatic as he likes.
All bluster…
http://www.afr.com/p/national/jakarta_ready_for_clash_over_border_QLab8tN4m2fsrZe5CgBUZK
Indonesian foreign minister in Switzerland, with Abbott, backs down from threat!
Am I the only one thinking there must be a way to use this financially? Britain’s ignoble exit from the ERM cost the UK purse a lot but many individual’s did pretty well out of it. So if the WEF are betting on climate change and world governance surely the knowledge that CAGW is as likely as a unicorn farming explosion there should be some way to leverage their delusion?
I agree, Climate Change is very likely to happen! Now in which direction, by how much, and when, I don’t know. Personally, I feel the greater risks and probability are in rapid cooling events, rather then gradual warming. One thing I am fairly certain of: CO2 has nothing to do with it.
‘Guest essay by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley’
What has Lord Baron Christopher von Monckhausen said now?
See from his own his own mouth, ‘We are curing people with…….HIV, malaria, multiple sclerosis‘……at about 44:00….’it sounds barking mad’. yes it does, does it not?
The myths of Baron von Munchhausen!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen
DirkH January 24, 2014 at 2:22 am
“Yeah, you can always vote for a party that is not member of
http://www.globeinternational.org/
Good luck finding one.”
I’ve just followed that link and looked at the UK Parliament Chapter’s page: talk about a hall of infamy. If any of you who are not Brits would like to put faces to some (horribly) familiar names in AGW-sceptical blogs, try this link (WARNING: strong stomach required):
http://www.globeinternational.org/index.php/countries/europe/united-kingdom
I note that the chair of the chapter is Graham Stuart MP, who I knew as a sportsman many years ago. In those days he never showed the least concern for environmental matters, preferring to roar around in his Golf GTI – but even then it was clear (IMHO) that he was both deeply misanthropic and rather keen on money. Which may explain his new friends.
My top two are:
– Fundamentalism aimed at world domination (the ‘Caliphate’),
– Abuse of climate science aimed at world domination (the ‘global government’).
alongside these two the others don’t add up to much, but national expansionism is now appearing on the radar screen as a potential major future threat.
It’s all about power/greed/domination. Like climate, humans never really change much.
The WEF is a circus for preening egos.
Just have a look at the news coming out of that champagne fuelled schmoozefest.
Matt Damon says this…
Bono says that…
The world is being handed over to the monkeys.
Monckton of Brenchley: “For in an electronic circuitry the striking singularity at γ = +1 describes a physical reality. At that point, the voltage – which had been striving to reach positive inifinity [sic] – flicks from the positive to the negative rail.”
While it is true that positive feedback in electronic circuits tends to result in oscillations, I’m told that the reason usually is that the loop imposes a frequency-dependent phase shift. In the absence of this (in electrical circuits, essentially unavoidable) feature, wouldn’t the output just be pinned to one or the other rail?
There may be some value in tightening up the quoted passage.
It is not all doom and gloom …
7 Global Governance Failure
We can only hope …
CM: “Secondly, if every change in the weather is held to be our fault…”
I tend to the theory that if CAGW can be blamed for everything that goes wrong then nobody need be held responsible for things that do go wrong. It means that no-one need be held liable: it is always the fault of the bogey-man – CAGW. (As an example, just think of the flooding in the UK. The EA doesn’t really have to do anything except wring its hands and blame CAGW. Job done.)
Your characterization of Switzerland is offensive (“the racketeer-influenced criminal organization that is modern Switzerland”). The world’s most democratic, peaceful, stable and quite possibly among the most successful countries in the world. I have no idea why you should brandish it “criminal”? Take a closer look at your home turf, with tax havens in the Caribbean and Channel Islands before you judge others.
Shame on you Lord Monckton. Shame.
@John Campbell … January 24, 2014 at 1:01 am
Quote: “No mention of a (major) Carrington Event I see. But isn’t knocking out the world’s electricity supply network for a **couple of years** at least a threat of any kind? Personally, I see this as THE biggest threat to our civilization.”
So what makes you think the *world’s network would be down for “a couple of years” ?
The ‘Carrington’ geomagnetic storm in 1859 was only on September 1st and 2nd, and only affected telegraph systems in North America and Europe. …. Data from Greenland ice cores show that events of the Carrington magnitude occur approximately once every 500 years, with events at least one-fifth as large occurring several times per century. .. It seems there is no evidence that storms can have a *larger magnitude than the Carrington event.
“The most damaging emissions from big storms travel slowly enough to be detected by sun-watching satellites well before the particles strike Earth. ‘That gives us (about) 20 hours to determine what actions we need to take’…”
“In a pinch, power companies could protect valuable transformers by taking them offline before the storm strikes. That would produce local blackouts, but they wouldn’t last for long.”
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/110302-solar-flares-sun-storms-earth-danger-carrington-event-science/
The biggest telltale sign to me of the shift in 2011/2012 being political is not the climate alarmism jumping in. If that movement were REALLY about truly being worried about the planet, it could be misguided but genuine. But couple that with the fact that suddenly a new block hits the top that never existed in the prior years in the graphic — “Severe Income Disparity” and the politics is clear. Climate change politics has really always been about redistribution. Only now the redistributors no longer hide their intentions. Envy used to be one of the seven deadly sins. Now envy is a badge of political honor. Instead of it being a question of everyone having enough, and fidning efficient ways to feed the hungry, etc, it is all about envy that someone else has a lot more and the misguided notion that it is somehow better for everyone to have less equally than for a everyone to have more unequally by growing the economic pie. I suppose at least as the climate alarmists more frequently admit their real agenda it is less dishonest.
“If CO2 goes on rising and the temperature goes on not rising, everyone will know the governing class was wrong when it told us it was 95% confident it was right.”
If?
What do we say ‘if’ the temperature starts rising again?
Kurt: Re: Switzerland being ‘racketeer-influenced etc’. Is it not possible that CM has a point when one considers the enormous amount of foreign aid that has found its way into the Swiss numbered bank accounts of some of the world’s most horrible tyrants? I’d like to think that Switzerland’s prosperity was not conditional on people like the thug *Mugabe having billions of $ locked up in its banks.
(*pick your own tyrant – it’s a very long list).
So even the IPCC is being left behind by the AGW extremists and hypesters.
I would second the respectful call for the author of this piece to tone down his future writing and to focus on just the message. It is not helped when presented in such an over wrought manner.
Pop some delegates in a helicopter and take them to the upper Engadin valley (only a 15 minute flight, probably.
Then get them to measure the snow depths at Maloja, St Moritz and Samedan. 175cm at Maloja, well over a metre at the other two. That’s the valley floor, not on the mountain tops. OK it’s 1750m – 2000m at the top of the valley, but……..
Jolly deep for places which won’t see snow if climate alarmism has any truth to it……….
Well done Lord Monkton! Your assessment of the WEF in Davos ,is highly entertaining and full of your usual remarkable insights. I seriously do not know how you find the time to research and dispute at every angle , (for those who think i,m brown nosing, I had a personal reply of 3 a4 pages to an inquiry I put onto one of his sites) .
Just a note for the thermaggedons, last time i looked at my greenhouse, it had a roof on it and was not exposed to -90c stratosphere.
Kurt Myrhagen 3:48 am:
“I have no idea why you should brandish it “criminal”?”
Don’t take it to heart. Sir Christopher is free and easy with his insults and personal attacks – I’m not sure he knows the meaning of half the words he uses. For example:
“They are not merely bad scientists — they are crooks. And crooks who have perpetrated their crimes at the expense of British and U.S. taxpayers”
http://www.infowars.com/lord-monckton-prosecute-the-climate-change-criminals/
We can only hope someone will clip his wings and this will drag his debating tone out of the gutter
Lord M,
I’m sorry, but I wish you would get your process engineering right – The climate is a multitude of closed loops both negative and positive, but looking at the physical mechanisms they are all lagged by different amounts. Your estimate of the loop gain are based on a scalar assumption which is Naive in the extreme, it assumes that all gains due to all the feedback causes can be added as scalars and that their magnitudes are always the same. You have effectively only calculated the DC operating point and gain/feedback, and ignored AC feedback. You cannot assume that all the feedbacks are acting in the same way all the time and in all places. For example clouds suppress radiation negative feedback emission through the atmospheric window (ie clouds stop frost).
Because of this you must consider the feedbacks separately. The negative feedbacks reduce the temperature effect of CO2 by about a factor of 5, now to acheive an overall gain of +3 one must apply a positive feedback gain of 15 – Now consider a situation (worst case scenario) where none of the Negative feedbacks are acting, the momentary gain in the climate is +15 – A loop gain of about 0.95. – I probably don’t need to explain why this can’t be – especially with time lagged feedback
Also, as I have considered this analogy, the power rails of an amplifier are the power source IE the electrical supply – The climate also has a power source, the sun. We know that near the equator the climate reacts non-linearly as temperature rises – that is the system begins to saturate as the moisture in the air condenses and at this point the negative feedback rises enormously to the point at which the gain is essentially 0. Increasing average temperature would have the effect of widening the tropical zone in which this happens and increasing the frequency of occurrence. This will limit global insolation, in such a way that the gain (IE Climate sensitivity ) MUST FALL as temperature rises, climate sensitivity is NOT a constant.
The problem here is that the scalar models try to solve climate without the dynamic terms, electrical engineers know you just can’t do that, the behaviour of an amplifier with lagged feedbacks is very different to that which the DC analysis would imply. Time is important, and frankly, you can’t average it out.
Syria’s land experienced one of the worst long-term droughts in modern history
==============
The uplands of northern Syria have miles upon miles of abandoned “dead cities”. ghost towns from more than 1000 years ago, when Antioch was at the height of its power. Climate change and drought is nothing new.
1. fiscal crises in key economies
9. failure of a major financial mechanism/institutiion
Cart before horse.? cf Lehman Bros failure. 9 is far more likely than 1, given that there has been almost NO progress on financial system reform
Harry Passfield: Thanks for your comment. The numbered account thing is a myth. Although there has been such accounts, it has always been and remains a fringe activity in Switzerland. Most tyrants with money in Switzerland have found their assets frozen after they were ousted. You should try to open a Swiss bank account next time you visit. I bet you will not succeed, it has become extremely difficult.
The problem has been that there were very strong laws in Switzerland protecting the integrity of the normal citizen. For instance, the Swiss tax authorities were not allowed insight into anyone’s bank account. This has now changed after pressure from the outside (Germany, France and the US) and Switzerland is now moving towards a European main stream whereby authorities are allowed to collect information about your financial position. Germany at one point actually threatened with an invasion (Peer Steinbrück’s famous “cavalry” speech) which was extremely unpleasant for all Swiss for obvious reasons.
Whether or not the financial sector is the basis for Swiss wealth can be debated, but it only contributes to less then 5% of Switzerland’s GDP. Switzerland is a highly industrialized country with a number of highly successful global companies.
I am not saying that Swiss banks are 100% clean, there certainly has been a lot of dubious things going on. However, if I compare with the current state of affairs in the UK where it seems OK to maintain tax havens in the Caymans, I can only laugh. This is just perfect hypocrisy.
Village Idiot:
Thankyou for confirming the effectiveness of Lord Monckton with your rant at January 24, 2014 at 4:24 am.
Richard
I don’t know where this motivation comes from to state that climate warming would not be a major thread. I am a climate researchers and my supervisor one of the IPCC lead authors. I can tell you for sure that climate change is already a major thread which links to and reinforces numerous global conflicts. The nature of science is to face uncertainty and opposing evidence, thats why it is important to replicate and to consider the overall outcome of research. Spreading the attitude that climate change is not happening like you do simply comforts people who want to continue business as usual, by driving their big car, wasting electricity or water. I have to say such behaviour will surely not help to solve our global problems!
Notice how in Fig 1, corruption and crime are listed as having only moderate likelihood, with moderate to low impact. Problems with literacy and public health and sanitation, don’t even get noticed.
name 1 country with good public health and sanitation, good education, low corruption and low crime that people would not want to live in.
now name 1 country with poor public health and sanitation, poor education, high corruption and high crime that is considered a good place to live.
If you get the basics right, the rest of the problems all fall into place.
Mr. Born raises the following question: “While it is true that positive feedback in electronic circuits tends to result in oscillations, I’m told that the reason usually is that the loop imposes a frequency-dependent phase shift. In the absence of this (in electrical circuits, essentially unavoidable) feature, wouldn’t the output just be pinned to one or the other rail?”
The answer is No. The type of oscillation caused by the loop gain transiently exceeding unity is mandated by the feedback-amplification equation. The overall feedback gain factor is the reciprocal of the difference between unity and the closed-loop gain. I was interested to know whether the singularity evident at a loop gain of unity represented a physical reality, so I consulted a doctor of process engineering, who in turn consulted textbooks and scientific papers to confirm his understanding that as the feedback increases above unity the current flicks from the positive to the negative rail.
There is no equivalent physical reality in the climate. For instance, if column water vapor were to increase sufficiently to push the loop gain above unity, the positive forcing caused by the additional water vapor would not suddenly become a negative forcing. Accordingly, though feedbacks exist in the climate, they are not correctly modeled by the Bode mutual-amplification equation. Though that equation is neatly derived in Hansen (1981), Hansen failed to notice that the singularity in an electronic circuit has no analogue in the real climate. It is the wrong equation.
The snidely pseudonymous “Village Idiot”, who calls itself an idiot and spares me the need to do so, says that calling for criminal penalties for scientists committing criminal offenses is a debating tone in the “gutter”. But why should scientists who have caused massive losses to the poorest by arguing relentlessly for increases in their fuel and power charges, so that people in cold countries are dying of the cold because they can no longer afford to heat their homes, be immune from prosecution for fraud?
One or two other commenters have said my style is too vigorous for them. If the best malt whisky gives you a hangover, don’t drink it. If you do drink it, don’t whinge about it.
“Temperature feedbacks that have been as strongly net-positive as the IPCC fancifully imagines they are cannot suddenly drive global temperature down rather than up. ”
Yes they can.
By their models cutting CO2 *below* long term level SHOULD result in catastrophic descent into an ice age and snowball earth,
Keywords Impact and Likelihood should trigger the recall of the Pareto Distribution.
Steve has it right. The biggest risk is the people and institutions represented at Davos. What a meaningless bag of wasted wind and news print. Other than a free ski trip what good is being done at these confabs. I nominate Dennis Rodman as chair.
Ed Hinton Says
Severe Income Disparity” and the politics is clear. Climate change politics has really always been about redistribution
Ed, don’t fall for this – the aim is nothing short of world subjugation under the UN via energy policy – it is absolutely not about redistribution – that would be virtuous, that too like climate change is simply an excuse to impose the preferred government, an unelected socialist world government. If redistribution to the poor was the aim, exactly why would they have us pouring billions into burning food in our cars or squandering billions on solar panels instead of feeding the poor and building cyclone shelters? Climate change and social injustice are also the excuses the UN uses to siphon Billions from nations in order to fund it’s world governance campaign.
Naively of course it all sounds wonderful, – world peace under a environmentally sensitive socialist world government, at last – until you wonder what might happen if you don’t happen to like socialist world government, exactly where do you go?
I think the UN needs to be dissolved and then rebuilt – and completely rethought in the process, it needs a constitution and rules, instead of the current lawless morass.
@DirkH – Thank you very, very much for that link to http://www.globeinternational.org/. Turpitude so thick that I had to run for the sick bucket. Ugh.
“This illustrates a continued and growing awareness of the global water crisis as a result of mismanagement and increased competition for already scarce water resources from economic activity and population growth.”
Water is local. What they want is global management of water. They imply they can do a better job of it. Billions will die.
The greatest risk to Man is these people trying to sell communism to the world. The climate change boogeyman is intended to get us to accept turning power over to them.
Tony Abbot’s speech at Davos.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-23/tony-abbott-delivers-keynote-speech-at-world/5216324
Mr. Mynhagen is uncomfortable at my calling modern Switzerland a racketeer-influenced criminal organization, and points out how radically democratic it is. I agree on its wonderful democracy and consequent political stability, and have been trying for many years to persuade my fellow-countrymen that a similarly radical democracy would be the right thing for Britain (albeit that while we remain in the European tyranny-by-clerk democracy is altogether denied to us).
However, when I was on my honeymoon in Barbados, my lovely wife took a call from the British police, wanting to ask about my Swiss bank account. She replied that I had not told her about it and she would be asking me questions about it too. She summoned me from the swimming pool where Anthony Eden had spent the summers in his later years and handed me the phone.
The police told me a bank account in my name existed at Credit Suisse in Zurich. I asked how much money was in the account (of whose existence I was unaware) and whether I could spend it all at once. I was told there was $17,000 in it, and no, I couldn’t have any of the money because the account was not mine. I suggested that the police should investigate a City of London regulatory authority that I had recently heavily defeated on behalf of consultancy clients.
Sure enough, a rogue regulator had opened the account in the hope of discrediting me. The entire regulatory authority was shut down – permanently – a few months later, and its functions were transferred to what is now the Financial Services Authority.
I wrote a furious letter to Credit Suisse in Zurich, asking the bank to make every detail of the account available to the authorities. A curt letter came, signed by two directors of the bank, refusing to hand over any information to the authorities. Their pretext for this refusal was that the account was not mine. They did not apologize for having failed to make even the most elementary checks before allowing the account to be opened.
Ever since then, I have had no trust whatsoever in any Swiss bank or regulatory authority, and still less trust in the Swiss Government, which has relentlessly looked the other way in the face of organized financial crime for decades. Geneva remains the best place in the world for international criminal organizations to establish themselves. For instance, the IPCC is headquartered there. Many of its findings are not merely matters of scientific dispute but outright fraud. Consider, for instance, the temperature graph from 1850-2005 with four successively steepening trend-lines on it and the bogus conclusion that the rate of warming is accelerating and we are to blame. A barrister whom I consulted informed me that, in the light of the IPCC’s refusal to correct this graph, its conclusion was unquestionably fraud. I reported the matter to the Swiss authorities and did not even receive so much as an acknowledgement.
Switzerland is the one country in the world that can be absolutely relied upon not to investigate frauds perpetrated by criminal gangs such as the IPCC that are headquartered in its territory. If Mr. Mynhagen would like to convince me that Switzerland is no longer so indulgent of criminal activity that it is, in effect, an accessory after the fact, perhaps he would have a go at persuading the Swiss authorities to investigate the particular instance of IPCC fraud that I have drawn to their attention.
That graph also indicates chronic diseases as having the lowest (combined) impact and likelihood.
These people are sick.
All this dangerous man-made global warming alarmism is never going to go away until the UN and various international governments have achieved their goal of international controls over fossil fuel energy use, which I believe will now be accomplished with the support of President Obama who does not give a damn about the implications or consequences.
In our little canton we keep working for another 1989. “When the world woke up from history” The job of human liberty is never done.
Kurt Myrhagen brings up an important point, “Take a closer look at your home turf, with tax havens in the Caribbean, Cayman and Channel Islands before you judge others.”
Over here the Republicans have proposed the first plank for their 2014 campaign platform, the repeal of the law closing the overseas tax havens that the billionaires use. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act passed in early 2010 has been repeatedly delayed in implementation, and might go into effect by the end of this year. Republicans are adamant that this FATCA will not happen despite the $300b annual cost to taxpayers, and probably will try to get it further delayed or crippled. Billionaires have made off with trillions over the years this way so you can see why the fiscal conservatives want to keep from plugging this drain. Billionaires are on their way to becoming trillionaires because Conservatives are ‘Perfectly Okay’ with it.
The Davos list of priorities ought to consider the following parameter:
For all the problems foreseen, one should consider whether human action has a reasonable chance of success: actually addressing or mitigating the calamity itself.
Let’s assume there is an atmospheric Climate Sensitivity to doubling of atmospheric CO2 > 0ºC (most would agree this is the case). If we can go 15+ years with record CO2 emissions and unabated increase in CO2 concentration, yet have zero statistically significant atmospheric warming, then we can also have a reduction in human CO2 emissions (equivalent to the increase over those 15+ years) without any measurable effect on climate either. The longer the hiatus, the greater the uncertainty inherent in any “mitigation policies.”
That this is apparently not even brought up in the discussion demonstrates how much of an Emperor’s New Clothes dilemma the entire Climate Policy discourse has become. Reducing one’s “Climate Footprint” is an element of Green Religious Dogma, nothing else. Not paying lip service to it would be akin to failing to genuflect to Gaia.
Kurt in Switzerland
When they say “Global governance failure” is the no. 5 risk, are they acknowledging that the idea of global governance is always destined to fail? Nah, probably not.
On the long answer of the Lord to Mr. Mynhagen:
it’s somehow disappointing that an argument ad anecdotum(is being used: I’ve had one bad experience with one Swiss bank therefore the whole country is full of racketeers.
It sounds like: temperature has risen once, therefore climate change is going on.
Strewth, what a rogues’ gallery.
Between them, not the financial acumen to run a whelk stall, nor the probity to be trusted to be sent for the fish and chips with the correct change.
How much longer are we going to have to put up with these buffoons?
How did we manage to stitch ourselves up with them in the first place?
Michael says:
January 24, 2014 at 4:51 am
Well, since YOU personally and deliberately are responsible for the excess deaths of 25,000 innocent elderly and low-income people in the UK last year who died due to YOUR preferred energy policies of restrictive use and high prices,
and, because YOU and your boss personally benefit from the wages and travel money and laboratories and computer time and bureaucracies formed specifically because of YOUR fear of potential future beneficial climate warming, perhaps YOU personally should go live in a cave using nothing but the flint and deadwood you personally can gather from the forest floor.
YOU are the ones who claim climate change is “not happening” (blaming what is “not happening” on CO2 alone in your hatred and fear of today’s world) in our natural world of constant change. It is today’s climate realists who point out that YOUR equations and projections and fears have proved false every time under every circumstance.
What then is this “major threat” you fear from climate change? Loss of your job?
Phil says, “Budget Deficits and Foreign Debt (or Debt Service Ratio) did not make the top ten list at a world economic summit.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-biggest-myths-in-economics-2014-1
The US government is running out of money and must pay back the national debt.
The national debt is a burden that will ruin our children’s futures.
The Fed was created by a secret cabal of bankers to wreck the US economy.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-biggest-myths-in-economics-2014-1
Debt is really only important when the billionaires that own Standard & Poors wants to punish a country for raising taxes on the rich. Lest the peasants figure out that a ‘New Deal’ would work great about now.
What is Hyper-Inflation really? It is the printing of massive amounts of money, and distributing it to people who will spend it to buy goods and services that are in ever shorter supply. This drives up prices in a fantastic way, but only if you keep printing money in ever increasing amounts. That’s a problem we don’t have. There is really downward pressure on wages and that inhibits spending even if the workers have some money. We have far more goods than people can buy, you should expect prices to actually fall some before long. When you start seeing empty shelves at big box stores then you can worry.
Most of the $75b (was 85b) per month in new money that the Federal Reserve (a private bank) is printing is going to people that already spend millions each month to maintain their ‘lifestyle’. Buying a new large Italian yacht or new French helicopter isn’t going to produce any inflation. Most likely the rich just launder their increased cash flow through a Cayman Islands bank that they may even own & that is really held in New York so as to not pay any taxes, but not actually buy anything.
The real goal of the Fed is to convince the super rich that the Fed is printing sufficient money so that it will lead to inflation and cause their wealth decline in real terms. The idea being that the rich will need to actually get out and ‘make’ some money, to engage in some sort of real commerce that will ‘inadvertently’ do us ‘little people’ some good.
Kurt Myrhagen: Thank you for your polite response. As with everything on the blog, it has improved my education. I do take your point about other tax havens and, when they are supporting the kleptocracy of tyrannical despots (tautology?). I am as strongly against them as those Swiss functions (that are left) that also give them aid.
HSBC stands for Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation… Boy this guy really really does not like HSBC. link There may be some tidbits of truth among the dreck.
Dean Boulding says….
It is a BLOG for goodness sake not a world literature class.
Phil says: @ January 24, 2014 at 1:14 am
Budget Deficits and Foreign Debt (or Debt Service Ratio) did not make the top ten list at a world economic summit.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is quite interesting is it not?
It is AMAZING that the World Economic Forum swept under the rug the biggest story in economics this year and instead presented the world the rotting corpse of a seventeen year dead ‘Cause’ especially when the IMF hastily changed their meeting date to coincide with the closing of the US government
Here are a couple of articles on the report from that meeting:
Another article says:
IMF REPORT: http://cdn.freedomoutpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/fm1302.pdf
Peter Kirby says: @ January 24, 2014 at 1:21 am
Lord Monckton, semi hysterical ranting, while entertaining, does nothing to enhance the importance of your message.
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If we don’t laugh at the antics of our would be Masters we might be tempted to gather up feathers and tar.
DirkH says: @ January 24, 2014 at 2:22 am
Yeah, you can always vote for a party that is not member of
http://www.globeinternational.org/
Good luck finding one.
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Oh, MY!
I knew it was bad but I didn’t realize it was THAT BAD.
Thanks for the information.
Abe had the guts to tackle the real threat. Nuclear armed illiberal totalitarian states can actually kill directly. The world is barking up the wrong tree.
blackadderthe4th says…..
You link to the William Connelly aka The Stoat’s WIKI as a fair and even bio?
HAHAHA… ROTFLMAO
blackadder you sure are a British sitcom!
Michael:
re your post at January 24, 2014 at 4:51 am.
Yes, climate change is happening. Climate always has changed and always will change.
If you and/or your supervisor manage to find a way to alter how climate changes then please do all possible to avoid your finding being reported to those meeting at Davos. It would provide them with the most powerful weapon of mass destruction ever imagined.
Richard
I fogot, despite the Soviet Union being NO MORE, the “Harvard Soviet Economists” still have a yearly orgy to celabrate their ill gotten riches, where they all get drunk and spew more vile stuff than Linda Blair in Exorcist One!
Michael says: @ January 24, 2014 at 4:51 am
I don’t know where this motivation comes from to state that climate warming would not be a major thread. I am a climate researchers and my supervisor one of the IPCC lead authors. I can tell you for sure that climate change is already a major thread which links to and reinforces numerous global conflicts…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I will agree that ‘climate change’ can be a threat but the threat is NOT GLOBAL WARMING, the threat as many have identified is the descent into another Ice age. And if, as is becoming more probable that is where we are headed then wiping out cheap sources of energy is criminally insane.
Here is a recent paper from fall 2012.
As Dr Brown has mentioned many times climate is a chaotic open bistable/multistable dynamical system
WHERE THE REAL DEBATE IS:
1.) Most scientists on both sides of the debate agree with the Milankovitch cycles. Gerard Roe did a recent modification that took care of the objections SEE: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html and http://culter.colorado.edu/~saelias/glacier.html
2. ) Most scientists on both sides agree we are near the half precession point and solar energy at the earth surface in high summer at 65N is declining.
3.) The sticking point is what minimum level of solar energy in summer at 65N is the threshold for the descent into an ice age. The latest I have seen is “Comparison [of the Holocene] with MIS 19c, a close astronomical analogue characterized by an equally weak summer insolation minimum (474Wm−2) and a smaller overall decrease from maximum summer solstice insolation values, suggests that glacial inception is possible despite the subdued insolation forcing, if CO2 concentrations were 240±5 ppmv (Tzedakis et al., 2012) “ link
4.) The fourth point that no one is talking about is how unstable the weather becomes near that threshold. The general point of view is the climate has two stable states, warm and cold. That is it is bi-stable like a sail boat that is right side up or upside down. When it is in the in-between state the climate can swing wildly. This means approaching that threshold point can be as bad as crossing it. Note the steep inclines and declines in temperature in the geologic record. – graph
Even Woods Hole Observatory warned about wide temperature swings a few years ago and that politicians maybe barking up the wrong tree.
Even your side of the debate can see glaciation is possible.
it at ten times the current concentration for the entire period the ice age lasted….”
Nice post Me Lud. Yet there is a ray of hope penetrating the BS.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/dont-miss-the-eu-transformation-on-renewable-energy/
Actually, if we interpret the value of feedback as corresponding to deviation of the slope of outgoing radiation from what it would be if emissivity and albedo were constant with temperature (that is, independent of temperature, not changed by temperature). f>1 corresponds then to negative slopes. If we then interpret the sensitivity as some reference forcing divided by the slope of outgoing radiation, we discover the surprising result that a sufficiently “strong feedback” actually results in negative sensitivity. This surprised me to when I found it, but it arises as a result of the way f is defined. Why? Think of it this way. With in the positive x postive y quandrant of a graph, you have a straight line with positive slope that corresponds to f=0. The way we define f, rotation of that line about the origin clockwise corresponds to slopes of “positive feedbacks,” and rotation of that line about the origin counterclockwise corresponds to lines of “negative feedbacks.” But that line rotated far enough counterclockwise will correspond to the same slope as if it had be rotated clockwise a certain amount: this is just rotational symmetry. It turns out that as long as the slopes remain in the positive x positive y quandrant, the notation definition of f is intuitive, but outside of that (that is, when slopes become negative) the definition of f becomes rather counter-intuitive.
Of course, this is largely a moot point since the slope is clearly positive in reality.
A portion of Mr. Monckton’s argument assumes the existence of the climate sensitivity aka the equilibrium climate sensitivity (TECS). TECS is a ratio in which the numerator is the change in the global surface air temperature at equilibrium. The denominator is the change in the logarithm of the CO2 concentration. That TECS exists implies this ratio to be a constant. However, as the global surface air temperature at equilibrium is not an observable feature of the real world, when a numerical value is assigned to TECS, there is not a way in which this assignment can be tested. It follows that TECS does not exist as a scientific concept. Another shortcoming of TECS is that it provides no information to a policy maker about the outcomes from his/her policy decisions; this follows from the definition of the mutual information as the information theoretic measure of a relationship between observables.
A science of global warming would have to be built upon observables. The global average surface air temperature when averaged over a specified finite interval in time is one candidate.
Related to this interesting posting, I have noticed that there has been a large number of items in recent weeks on the CBC (radio and probably TV), Globe and Mail (newspaper and their monthly “Report on Business Magazine”), our local newspaper, and probably other news outlets that I don’t recall on the subject of insurance companies and recent “extreme weather”. The message has always been that the insurance companies are carefully analyzing our weather and “extreme weather” events have led to increasing losses for them; it looks to me like a clever way of preparing us for increased insurance rates (or refused policies).
I don’t recall any articles dealing with the fact that increasingly expensive construction has been undertaken on the coasts, where Man meets Ocean. Nor for the fact that there has been no increase in the number of hurricanes and cyclones, etc., in recent years. Of course Sandy is always portrayed as a strong hurricane and the fact that a blocking high prevented an “ordinary” storm from moving eastward, the way most of them have done, is rarely mentioned. (There is also little mention of Hurricane Hazel, which was also forced west- and north-ward; how often do we hear about the similarities between Hazel and Sandy?)
Ian M
Et tu, Coca Cola?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/science/earth/threat-to-bottom-line-spurs-action-on-climate.html?ref=world
Ed Mertin says:
January 24, 2014 at 6:01 am
…. Billionaires are on their way to becoming trillionaires because Conservatives are ‘Perfectly Okay’ with it.
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Ed, you completely missed the point. America’s Rulling Class is not on our side no matter what sheepskin they are hiding under.
You forget that the present financial mess can be laid at Clinton’s door. He signed the five banking laws that among other things did away with the depression era laws design to prevent another depression while allowing the market for credit default swaps to go unregulated. This set of laws gave the USA “Too Big To Fail” banks, unqualified buyers and the AIG/Bank bailout.
Clinton also pushed the ratification of the World Trade Organization and then worked tirelessly to bring China into the WTO and gave China “most Favored nation” trade status. He changed how the government reports unemployment and therefore hid our present 23% unemployment rate caused by shipping of US jobs overseas, again leading to the present and continuing financial crisis in the USA.
Do not make the mistake of Republicans = Conservatives. The dislike of both parties is why the Tea Party came into existence. Remember that Ron Paul, the darling of the tea party is rabidly anti-banker. Sen. Daniel Webster, during the debate over the reauthorization of the Second National Bank of the U.S. in 1832, summed up why.
The Tea Party beat the Occupy Wall Street crowd to this understanding by a couple of years. Interesting that despite this general agreement of USA voters, NO ONE IN CONGRESS HAS KILLED THE FED. Heck Ron Paul could not even get Congress to pass a bill to AUDIT the Fed. A list of the Democrat and Republicans who voted and the story of the bill is HERE.
The Fed was finally made to show where the bank bailout money went after years of fighting. Seems it went to Europe to bailout EU banks.
Judicial Watch Sues Federal Reserve for Records Detailing U.S. Taxpayer Bailout of European Banks
The US Federal Reserve bailout of Europe: Who knew?
“Michel” says, “it’s somehow disappointing that an argument ad anecdotum is being used: ‘I’ve had one bad experience with one Swiss bank therefore the whole country is full of racketeers.’
The correct name for the logical fallacy of which “Michel” accuses me is the argumentum a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter, or in English the argument from converse accident, where the perp argues inappropriately from the particular to the general.
I respond thus to the charge. The opening of a Swiss bank account in my name, albeit that it was almost 25 years ago, was not the sole episode. There was the subsequent failure of one of Zurich’s leading banks to provide information to the authorities at my request, and the further failure of the authorities to require the bank to respond. That triple error is evidence of a systemic failure, further compounded by the more recent refusal of the appropriate authorities in Switzerland, the splendidly-named but useless Bureau de l’Escroquerie, to respond to my well-evidenced complaint that the IPCC has committed the criminal offense of obtaining a pecuniary advantage by the deception of pretending that the rate of global warming has been accelerating over the past 150 years on the basis of a bogus statistical technique.
The unfortunate truth is that the Swiss make a great deal of money by allowing international rackets like the IPCC to be headquartered there. In the UK I’d have had the IPCC in court by now, for England and Wales (unlike Scotland or the United States) allow private prosecutions of public authorities: but the IPCC, safely headquartered in the one jurisdiction that can be absolutely relied upon not to lift a finger however much money the IPCC makes by those of its climatic findings that are outright falsehoods, knows that it can get away with any amount of deception with total impunity.
This is a symptom of a growing problem. As more and more power and wealth are transferred from elected hands in those countries still fortunate enough to have democracy to unelected hands in various international unelected bodies, the growing influence and power of these bodies is untrammelled either by any law or by any electorate. Switzerland, in providing cover for a goodly proportion of such organizations, and in simply ignoring the pleas of those who wish to draw its attention to criminalities perpetrated by such organizations, is doing the world a serious disservice and will, in due course, be punished for its aiding and abetting organized crime worldwide.
PaulH says: @ January 24, 2014 at 6:27 am
When they say “Global governance failure” is the no. 5 risk, are they acknowledging that the idea of global governance is always destined to fail?
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Pascal Lamy, former Director-General of the World Trade Organization Answers that question.
The key is the word Interdependence based on this Clinton handed China US trade and military secrets. If Clinton and the other Globalists are wrong we could be in more trouble than anyone could imagine. China BTW is NOT interested in interdependence.
China’s Agricultural Engagement in Latin America: As has been the case since the Mao era, self-sufficiency in staple foods is a primary objective of the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese Farms Go Global: China is buying up land around the world.
China is also not interested in curbing their economic growth: How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
Back to Interdependence
Of course that without a free-market you can’t have a free-market gatherings . It is not snow but freedom that is something from the past.
Mr. Oldberg misunderstands the mathematics of feedback amplification. He assumes that my argument assumes the existence of equilibrium climate sensitivity. It assumes no such thing. It is the IPCC, not I, that assumes there is such a thing as equilibrium, and hence such a thing as equilibrium sensitivity.
Nor is Mr. Oldberg correct to say that (in the IPCC’s understanding) equilibrium sensitivity is a ratio. It is instead the product of the logarithmic CO2 radiative forcing, the Planck parameter, and the overall feedback gain factor, which increases over time as the IPCC’s imagined net-positive feedbacks gradually come to bear, canceling the logarithmic effect of the CO2 forcing at the sub-centennial scale and producing a near-strictly linear temperature response.
However, Mr. Oldberg is correct to imply that, since equilibrium sensitivity is not observable, any hypothesis as to its eventual value is untestable and purely speculative and is, therefore, of no interest either to science or to policy-makers. There is no scientific basis for doing anything at all about global warming, and no small reason for the absence of that scientific basis is the modelers’ incorrect use of the inapplicable Bode feedback-amplification equation in their attempts to determine climate sensitivity.
@Monckton of Brenchley on Switzerland allowing criminal racket.
As you speak so badly of my country you may understand that I don’t like this type of wide accusations, even if instead of one anecdote you have three to tell. But this is a side issue, of little interest for this blog. Que chacun balaye devant sa porte.
Neither don’t I like what IPCC is promoting.
But let’s remember that IPCC is a governmental institution (UN) funded by public money from various UN members. So if a complaint needs to be made it needs to be addressed to your government. A prosecutor in Switzerland or in any other place will not move one finger against an institution on which he has no jurisdiction. And if individuals are committing criminal activities then the complaint needs to be made against these persons.
If everytime that a UN institution is twisting the truth or outwardly lying a criminal prosecution would be opened then the New York and the Geneva Prosecutors offices would have an extremely intense biusiness.
Robertv says: @ January 24, 2014 at 9:48 am
Of course that without a free-market you can’t have a free-market gatherings . It is not snow but freedom that is something from the past.
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Like everything else the politicians and bureaucrats touch. The meaning is opposite that of the dictionary meaning.
Free Market? What a laugh.
You can not have a free market when entrepreneurs are strangled by red tape and international corporations are writing the regulations and stuffing the bureaucracies that enforce them with their puppets. You do not have ‘capitalism’ when banks print money out of nothing and hand it to their friends who use it in ‘Leveraged Buyouts’ to gain control of well run mid-sized corporations. these Corporate Raiders then dismantle and sell off the assets that at times took generations to accumulate. It is called eating the seed corn not capitalism and it has totally wrecked the industry in the USA.
Statistics (courtesy of Bridgewater) showed in 1990, foreign ownership of U.S. assets amounted to 33% of U.S. GDP. By 2002 this had increased to over 70% of U.S. GDP. http://www.fame.org/HTM/greg%20Pickup%201%2010%2003%20report.htm
étatisme! I learned a new word so it is a good day. And étatisme sounds classier than the expression a friend of mine’s old Swiss grandfather used: social-ee-sta sons a beech-ah.
Don’t ask me what that means, I don’t speak any Swiss language.
“This year’s WEF annual “insight report” on global risks bizarrely rates “climate change” and “extreme weather events” as two of the three global threats with the greatest combined impact and likelihood (Fig. 1).”
Hm….
From economic point of view that makes perfect sense. Only the EU budget has hundreds of billions of euros dedicated to combat these two. That makes billions of lost money = opportunity lost. As if the EU would have too much of those…
On the other side of the Atlantic I hear that the EPA is closing the coal plants, further down there Australia has billions as carbon tax still there, but they seem to want to remove those.
So I guess, “they” are right, even if “they” come from the wrong reasons, “they” still get the right result.
However, with all their efforts, these loses do not yet compensate for the natural benefits of climate change:
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-probable-net-benefits-of-climate-change-till-2080.aspx
“Overall, Prof Tol finds that climate change in the past century improved human welfare. By how much? He calculates by 1.4 per cent of global economic output, rising to 1.5 per cent by 2025. For some people, this means the difference between survival and starvation.”
Lubos calculates that the additional food due to CO2 so far is about 15% – which in numbers means food for 1 billion of the 7 billion of earthlings.
(He calculates it as to what the removal of 30% CO2 would cause for a drop in food production)
http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/01/ipcc-wg3-plans-to-suck-excess-co2-and.html
“If we use k=0.7 i.e. the decrease of CO2 by 30 percent, it is a tolerable estimate to say that the total yield would decrease by 15 percent; note that 0.7−−−√≈0.84. Now, the humans don’t really produce “too much excess food”. This is particularly true in the poor countries. Such a decrease of available food will mean that 15 percent of the population can’t be fed. Simple arithmetics implies that if the yields are reduced by this coefficient, about 1 billion out of 7 billion on the Earth will starve to death.”
GB_Dorset says:
January 24, 2014 at 12:32 am
Gordon brown is in attendance – talk about dummying down.
Hahaha! Genuinely made me laugh out loud! And so true.
Hijacking in Davos is going a bit overboard on word choice. That over-priced carbon fest with opinion mongering should not be confused with democracy or work ethic. There has never be a recorded instance of hijacking a ship of fools. Well, there was that recent incident of nature doing it in Antarctica, but not a human-caused case.
Reading various blogs I get the impression that the main problem in the world is Corruption. This is where the elite of many [many] countries syphon off the wealth and become billionaires. Just the sort of people at Davos.
Sorry what I meant to say is : ‘THE WORLD IS DOOMED, GIVE US YOUR MONEY, GIVE US COMPLETE CONTROL, AND WE MAY BE ABLE TO SAVE YOU’.
Wow; what a lot of information to absorb; sounds like the termites have been pretty busy, judging by your report, Lord Monckton. I really like your figure 4. If I stand back and look at it, I get the distinct impression, that I can see some kind of regular pattern developing. Have you noticed that Christopher; or am I just seeing things ?
I was a trifle disappointed though that you did not let us in, on what kind of caper, you were able to pull during this festival. Were you dis-invited, or did security remove all the vacant and open microphones ?
Well thanks again for an extensive report; a lot to digest and contemplate.
anticlimactic says: @ January 24, 2014 at 11:40 am
Reading various blogs I get the impression that the main problem in the world is Corruption….
>>>>>>>>>>>>
And the lust for power.
The greenies are almost right except they left off one key word …global warming and climate change ALARMISM represents one of the biggest global risks to future economic well being. Maybe it was a typo!
When we come out of a full-glacial period, we come out at a very fast pace melting miles of ice in only a few thousand years. Positive feedback is clearly very strong during the temperature rise. The rise stops very abruptly though (on a dime if you will). This is not typical of most systems and usually only occurs if one reaches saturation (we’ve hit the limit of the system). The other option is a new MUCH stronger negative feedback mechanism kicks in. I’m dismayed though that few (none?) consider that one of these scenarios MUST be the case (what else could stop warming in it’s tracks like that?).
My theory is the strong positive feedback is albedo. The snow and ice melts revealing an much darker absorbing layer. Temperatures rise as a result, more snow and ice melts … and so on. Saturation would occur when there is no more ice, but we never get to that point though anymore (Earth in the past probably did).
The strong negative feedback must be clouds. At a certain threshold temperature clouds start to appear as a new source of light reflection. A small temperature increase is now met with higher albedo. One can theorize as much as they want how clouds might be positive feedback or negative feedback, but in order to stop the rise of temperatures out of a full-glacial period the MUST be negative feedback, and very strong negative feedback at that.
If this is true then global warming is necessarily limited and a non-issue. Does anyone have a third possibility that explain the shapes of ice-age temperature graphs?
When I was designing feedback amplifiers for a living, it was fashionable to sum (with correct polarity) the “feedback signal” as a sample (perhaps modified by some linear process (filter)) , with the “input signal” to get an effective input the actual amplifying gain system.
To build a climate analog of such a system, taking atmospheric CO2 as the “sampling” means that gathers a sample of the “climate output”, namely the “global Temperature” and its resulting surface emitted LWIR radiant emission; one would then sum that effect, with the original system input signal, that causes the earth surface temperature to rise above some very cold temperature; and that input signal would be the sun input. It certainly would not be the LWIR radiation, that might be returned to the surface, from that CO2 sampling process.
But when one looks for a CO2 feedback to the solar input, one can only find a miniscule CO2 absorption of incoming solar spectrum energy, I seem to recall in the 2.5 micron region.
Now water vapor is also a GHG absorbing means, and surface warming leads to more atmospheric water vapor (7% more per 1 deg C warming, per Frank Wentz) but water vapor absorbs significant incoming solar energy starting around 700 nm, and that absorbed solar spectrum energy never makes it to principally, the deep ocean energy storage pool. Instead, it gets down shifted to the LWIR region and emitted isotropically, so only half of it even returns to the surface, where it has little chance of adding to the deep ocean storage.
So viewed in this way, it seems to me that H2O is the real feedback to the solar input, and not CO2, and the feedback is definitely negative, since more solar input energy, leads to more water vapor, which absorbs more solar energy, which thus tends to cool the surface.
I can’t fathom, why someone would build a feedback amplifier, where the output signal (surface temperature) which leads to more LWIR radiation, that is sampled by the feedback mechanism (CO2), but the feedback signal (LWIR radiation) is sent to someplace other than the input (the solar input, or its energy storage pond; the deep oceans.)
No; sounds like a lousy amplifier design to me.
Ian Schumacher says: @ January 24, 2014 at 11:56 am
A set of linked posts:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/d-o-ride-my-see-saw-mr-bond/#comment-44196
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/lunar-cycles-more-than-one/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/lunar-resonance-and-taurid-storms/
And a paper
http://ansatte.hials.no/hy/climate/defaultEng.htm
Or two
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/can-the-moon-change-our-climate-can-tides-in-the-atmosphere-solve-the-mystery-of-enso/
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/03/the-moons-influence-on-the-australian-climate/
more explanation: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Saros_cycle
Well you did ask :>)
Gail Combs January 24, 2014 at 12:25 pm
Yes I find the theory of ‘super tides’ interesting, and while it may explain the synchronization of Milankovitch cycles and ice-ages, it doesn’t address the temperature graph shape exactly. No doubt the steep rise of temperatures could be ‘triggered’ by super tides, and the onset of an ice-age could be ‘allowed’ by it’s disappearance, but this wouldn’t explain the very linear temperature rise out of a full-glacial period, or the sudden abrupt temperature cutoff at the end.
HT from Small Dead Animals blog:
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21595032-whos-magic-mountain
Funny, on another WUWT thread, we learn that climate science is disproportionately from the rich west, but what do we know of this summit:
“Of the 2,622 hobnobbers invited to this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, just 15% are women. Two-thirds of the delegates hail from Western countries that are home to just 12% of the world’s population.”
“Michel” says that if a prosecution were initiated every time the UN or the IPCC told a lie the courts of New York and Switzerland respectively would be kept busy. Well, the way it works in the UK is that if a supranational entity headquartered on its soil commits an offense it is treated just as though it were a national entity and can face prosecution, unless there is some treaty by which it is granted immunity.
A few years ago, I reported Rajendra Pachauri and a bogus charity of which he was the chief trustee to the Charities Commission in England because there was a very large discrepancy between the income reported by the “charity” and the grants given to it by the UK Government. Pachauri was furious that he had been caught out in what appeared to be false accounting, and made various uncomplimentary references to me in several speeches shortly after I had reported him. However, I had given him fair warning that he would be reported for his personal defalcations unless he showed willing to address the bogus graph about which I eventually had to complain to the Bureau de l’Escroquerie. The Commission did not prosecute anyone as it should have done, given that the evidence of erroneous accounting in circumstances that could not by any stretch of the imagination be accidental was clear, but at least it responded to my complaint within 48 hours and subsequently ordered Pachauri to present accurate accounts in future. Several of the trustees were sacked.
Now, I have no idea whether Switzerland has signed some kind of treaty that exempts the IPCC from prosecution for its crimes. If it has, it should not have. My concern is that Switzerland provides a safe haven for far too many questionable supranational rackets which rely not only on the commendable stability of its political system and its famous international neutrality but also – alas – on its willingness to look the other way when the institutions from whose presence it profits perpetrate serious crimes. I have watched close members of my own family shivering in homes they can no longer afford to heat, and a very large part of the additional cost they face is in various levies to subsidize useless windmills and other such nonsenses that are indulged in by a scientifically-illiterate government because the IPCC has lied and lied and lied again, and the Swiss Government has – as usual – buried its head in the snow.
I’m sorry, but I do hope “Michel” appreciates I’m not simply trying to be rude about his country. Switzerland’s international reputation suffers very greatly because it simply does not deal with crookedness on the part of the international rackets to which it gives a home. I have twice spoken to the Swiss point of contact for the IPCC to explain its wilful deception on the important matter of whether the rate of global warming is accelerating (hint: it isn;t), but he, like the Bureau de l’Escroquerie, did absolutely nothing about it. So,”Michel”, do get in touch with the authorities in Switzerland and see whether you, as a Swiss national, have any more success than me at persuading them to break the habit of inaction and actually investigate a crime by the IPCC. If they do not even reply to you, you will begin to understand why it is that I and many like me hold your nation’s prosecuting authorities, and your government, in contempt.
@Monckton of Brenchley
Governmental institutions like the IPCC cannot be prosecuted in criminal matters. I don’t know if civil laws (tort and the like) can apply to them. I don’t know if its representatives are protected by diplomatic immunity, some are.
But you can’t put to jail an institution, only individuals.
And it’s futile to try to go this way since the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. Someone following such path behaves like a querulous complainer.
On Switzerland:
We are getting used, and tired, of the kind of assertions that you make. In making them repeatedly, exactly as warmists do in the climate issue, one will be led to believe that all of it is true.
And it’s not.
Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose.
This change in focus at WEF in 2011 may well be because the Norwegian Borge Brende was appointed as Managing Director of the organisation in that year, a post he help until he was made Norway’s Foreign Minister late last year when a new Conservative government was formed.
One of his previous actions, while a Member of the Norwegian Parliment was the nomination of Al Gore and the IPCC for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Borge Brende was Norway’s Enviromental Minister from 2001 to 2004 under the previous Conservative government.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B8rge_Brende
The Greatest Threat To Humanity = the stupidity and hubris of marginally educated, monied, position-of-power-occupying, political class narcissist ideologue elitist Morons.
As the evidence mounts that climate is less sensitve to CO2 forcing than assumed in most models, the decibel level has climbed with it. With the facts evaporating before them, climate alarmists have taken to shrieking ever louder and demonizing ever stronger.
What will the history books say about this one hundred years hence?
Agree Børge Brende is lost and cauth deep in an environmental radical political agenda.
If the rest of the “Høyre” party, supposed to be right side, follows they will pay dearly in the next election.
rabbit says: @ January 24, 2014 at 2:14 pm
…What will the history books say about this one hundred years hence?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It depends on who wins. History is written by the winners not the losers and they have the MSM. money and power on their side.
I know of two separate events where I and/or friends were at ground zero and the “Official History” you find on the web and in books bare no resemblance to what actually happened.
In this case since a lot of people know the history it might not get buried. But don’t bet on it. They are already erasing the Ice Age scare of the 1970s.
Just a word to the numbskulls who still use the redundant, information-free phrase, climate change. We have climate. Tha’s it! That includes all changes all cycles for all eternity, Now shut up about the friggin’ climate change.
Timetochooseagain, Terry Oldberg and george e. smith:
Your posts at January 24, 2014 at 8:48 am, January 24, 2014 at 9:00 am and January 24, 2014 at 12:20 pm, respectively, provide new perspectives on the subjects of climate sensitivity and its determination by feedbacks.
I feel sure that many would be pleased if you were to further the development and promotion of your individualistic ideas by the three of you debating and synthesising them together. And I am certain that very many would be delighted if you were to report back to WUWT to present the results of your deliberations after they are completed.
Richard
A couple more risks for WEF to worry about:
– the economic and social costs of anti-carbon policies (a) while they are being actively pursued, and (b) when their futility and irrelevance is recognised and they begin to be dismantled.
– the reputational impact on typical WEF participants (politicians, bankers, UN, EU and other apparatchiks, international miscellaneous economic and ‘environmental’ gurus, etc) of (b) above…
@richardscourtney- Hm, really? I mean, I probably do have some ideas to suggest…Well, if anyone else is interested in such a discussion, I’d be willing to engage in one.
David G. The reason they do not shut up about it is because it brings in unlimited amounts of money. Bad weather has now changed to extreme weather, just changing the word bad to extreme also brings in unlimited amounts of money. Money for old rope.
Ed Mertin says:
January 24, 2014 at 6:01 am
###
And what univerese do you live in? Does Spock have a beard?
“””””…..richardscourtney says:
January 24, 2014 at 3:38 pm
Timetochooseagain, Terry Oldberg and george e. smith:
Your posts at January 24, 2014 at 8:48 am, January 24, 2014 at 9:00 am and January 24, 2014 at 12:20 pm, respectively, provide new perspectives on the subjects of climate sensitivity and its determination by feedbacks……””””””
Richard, I’m happy that you found my post of interest. It is an idea, that I have written about several times here at WUWT, but never quite like the one today.
All the talk about water (cloud) feedback being a positive feedback, because clouds reflect (no they actually absorb and re-emit) LWIR back to the surface and cause warming (or slowing of cooling) has always bothered me; including the claim that the higher the clouds, the greater the warming (Meteorology 101).
The text book (famous one) says that low altitude clouds cause cooling, mid level clouds cause neither cooling nor warming, and high level clouds cause warming, and the higher, the more warming. 6PM weather report: “It will be warm and muggy tonight because of the high clouds.”
No ! it was jolly warm and humid today, so by late afternoon clouds started to form, often at vapor trail altitudes, as all that moist air rose to the level of the dew point.
And the hotter it was today, the higher will be the dew point altitude, because of the usual lapse rate. And if the humidity was a bit lower today, then the dew point will also be lower, and hence at a lower altitude..
So the warm night and the high clouds at night, are CAUSED by a hot day with plenty of moisture; but it will still cool down at sunset, and be colder still by sunrise. the clouds DID NOT cause the warm balmy night. And the water droplets or ice crystals in clouds, are generally big enough that 300K LWIR wavelengths are completely absorbed, as the reflected radiation is still going to be in the few percent range.
But by far the biggest effect of ANY cloud is the daytime reflection (actually refractive scattering) of solar spectrum energy, back into space as a diffuse, virtually isotropic source (of SOLAR SPECTRUM energy (albedo).
Remember, when talking about THE CLIMATE EFFECT of clouds, we aren’t talking of LAST NIGHT’S WEATHER. We are talking about a CHANGE for some climatically significant period of time (why not 30 years) in the total global cloud cover. So no fair talking about more clouds tonight when the sun is asleep, but no more clouds in daylight. it’s a climate change in cloudiness; and it has to cause cooling, by reducing SURFACE INCIDENT (ocean) solar spectrum energy.
@george e. smith-“But by far the biggest effect of ANY cloud is the daytime reflection”
Not true. One can measure the effects of particular clouds. For example:
http://climate.ewha.ac.kr/paper/Choi2006GRL.pdf
“The cloud radiative effect (CRE) shows a positive sign for optically thin cirrus (total-column cloud
optical depth: t 10), regardless of the region and season”
In other words, one can explicitly *measure* the fact that the net effect of sufficiently optically thin effects is *dominated* by the longwave “greenhouse” effect, not their albedo effect.
But putting that aside, there is no reason to think *all* clouds would respond the same way to a temperature change, *or* that said effect would necessarily involve increases. It is certainly true that the total cloud forcing for *all* clouds negative, though. So that, *if* one presumed that clouds would increase with warming, and basically maintain their various proportional properties, that would, in fact, constitute a cooling effect and a negative feedback.
But with regard to the optically thin clouds that would cause a warming effect by increasing, it doesn’t look like they do (or if they do, something else must be canceling it out) with increasing temperatures.
Ugh, apparently including less than and greater than signs messed up that quotation. Well, you can find it in the abstract, anyway.
Ed Mertin:
I believe you need to educate yourself on the impact FATCA is having on ordinary Americans who live overseas – altho the law was “intended” to catch U.S. persons resident in the U.S. “hiding” money offshore. Suddenly we find ourselves accused of this even though our banks are onshore for us – maybe just down the street. Although we cannot open bank accounts anymore, let alone get mortgages, etc. We also are not allowed accounts in the US.
The costs of compliance are far higher than the amount of tax considered to be recoverable – the 300 billion is vastly overestimated – and then there’s the matter of turning sovereign nations into an enforcement arm of the Treasury Department and the FBI.
Here are some websites to start you off: americansabroad.org (aca.ch), le lobby des citoyens: lldc.ch and a real eye-opener is the Isaac Brock Society in Canada – not exactly a tax haven: isaacbrocksociety.ca.
Everyone I know who has dual citizenship, as I do, is renouncing U.S. citizenship. Everyone who is a USP (an acronym probably unknown to you but very well-known to us in the last couple of years, as is a CLN. The former is short for U.S. Person for Tax Purposes, an extremely broad category; the latter is Certificate of Loss of Nationality – the acquisition of which brings sighs of relief) is divesting themselves of that category. We are not wealthy people. We do not owe any taxes – at least as long as there is an Earned Income Exclusion or Foreign Tax Credit – which some of the same who are pushing FATCA also are in favor of abolishing – hello, double taxation. But we cannot afford several thousand dollars for specialists (keeping in mind the specialists themselves often make mistakes for which we are liable). A simple mistake on one of the endless forms can carry a fine of 10,000!
The irony is that the real Fatcats (haha, Fatca, geddit?) can afford the best accountants and lawyers. Those who wish to evade taxes will still be able to afford the advice on how to do it. So the whales will be fine but us minnows are to be soaked. Heard of FBAR? OVDI?
There are some 6 to 7 million of us overseas. We were the goodwill ambassadors on the ground, no matter our politics. Now we are embittered. We have been demonized and – yes – criminalized. Declared traitors for living abroad, enemies of the state even.
What about those who work for U.S. companies or represent U.S. products abroad? What happens to your trade balance then?
I haven’t renounced yet – I was once a patriot and I still have a very strong emotional attachment to the U.S. Oh, and there’s a “small” matter of the punitive 450 fee. Well, for the time being, I get by on cash handouts from my husband and the use of his debit card. If he dies before me and I haven’t renounced, I suppose I can keep any small inheritance under the mattress and hope inflation isn’t too high.
Nice article Lord Monckton of Benchley. Thank you. It is nice to know what the world’s elite of rock stars, grafting politicians, and other burdens to the working class are up to. If we were to describe the real potential problems it would either be over their heads or against their leftist beliefs.
Many Swiss would agree with Monckton. Switzerland has been dominated politically by the Liberal Party (old school liberal) in the past, which valued economic gain above moral purity. Many crooks still set up camp in Switzerland today , as the fractured political system and small-town political-judicial cozyness often make prosecution difficult.
Nevertheless, one would be hard up to find a better place to live in, as long as one is willing to ignore the dreadful TV, etc., etc..
Well, what a revelation from Sir Christopher! There’s corruption in the world’s institutions! Shock!!
“I have twice spoken to the Swiss point of contact for the IPCC to explain its wilful deception on the important matter of whether the rate of global warming is accelerating (hint: it isn;t), but he, like the Bureau de l’Escroquerie, did absolutely nothing about it.”
The thought ever crossed your mind that they (and others) may consider you a time-wasting court jester?
re timetochooseagain.
“””””…..re timetochooseagain
“””””…..But putting that aside, there is no reason to think *all* clouds would respond the same way to a temperature change, *or* that said effect would necessarily involve increases. It is certainly true that the total cloud forcing for *all* clouds negative, though. So that, *if* one presumed that clouds would increase with warming, and basically maintain their various proportional properties, that would, in fact, constitute a cooling effect and a negative feedback…….”””””
July 7 2007 Science Wentz et al; “How much more rain will global warming bring.”
From actual remote sensing satellite measurements.
A 1 deg C increase in global surface / lower troposphere temperature gave a measured increase in total global evaporation of 7% . Also the GCMs agree with this measurement. Apparently the Clausius Clapeyron equation is behind this.
Also the total global precipitation increases by 7%. The GCMs agree.
Precipitation must equal evaporation, so that we don’t end up with the oceans overhead.
The total global atmospheric water content increases by 7%. For some reason, the integral of a linear function increases by the same amount as the slope. Fancy that !
BUT the GCMs claim the total atmospheric water content only increases by from 1 to 3%; NOT 7%
So computer models disagree with measured facts by as much as a factor of 7.
Not mentioned in the Wentz paper; but postulated as a likelihood (by me), was and still is, a suggestion, that in most civilized places, it is traditional to have atmospheric precipitation, be accompanied by the simultaneous presence of clouds. NO, not optically thin cirrus clouds, but “precipitable” clouds that generally are NOT optically thin. And a seat of the pants guess would be that those clouds would increase also by; say about 7% (in area, optical density, or persistence time)
When I look at the typical remote satellite global photos of earth, similar to the lunar earth rise photo, I don’t see much in the way of optically thin cirrus clouds; through which, I would be able to see either the ground, or the blue sky that hides the black ocean. I see mostly bright highly reflective (80% at solar spectrum frequencies) precipitable clouds. NASA/NOAA claim that global cloud cover averages about 62%. Only Al Gore has ever seen a daylight photo of the earth that is completely devoid of clouds (which he published). Nobody else has ever observed such a phenomenon.
Now I realize that if the higher and more ethereal clouds are the ones that the text books claim warm the surface; that would make noctilucent clouds, the worst offenders. Doesn’t seem to me that the lowest density coldest clouds can be the greatest absorbers of outgoing radiation from the surface.
But I’m quite happy to amend my ALL clouds statement, and restrict it to precipitable clouds, and exclude optically thin cirrus clouds.
But that still leaves the clouds (and water vapor) that absorb or reflect incoming solar spectrum radiant energy, and block it from reaching the deep ocean storage pool, DO increase (by 7% per degree C rise), which results in negative feedback cooling of the earth surface.
Now I also agree that this warming increased atmospheric H2O , that absorbs more incoming solar energy DOES warm the atmosphere, which causes it to radiate more (isotropic LWIR ).
Only half of that is directed earthwards; it’s still a net energy loss to the surface.
Even in clear air cloudless skies, the TSI irradiance of 1,362 W/m^2, becomes about 1,000 W/m^2 at the surface. That loss is a combination of the diffuse blue scattering (isotropic) and the H2O, O3, CO2 and other GHG components of the atmosphere, as well as whatever O2 and N2 absorb.
So even without clouds, water vapor gives a large negative feedback coupling directly to the incoming sunlight. Your cirrus cloud radiation to the surface, is not where the energy change is happening; it is directly at the solar input end.
Your optically thin cirrus clouds, are just as leaky for LWIR, as they are for solar spectrum frequencies; but they are a small component of the 62% global cloud cover
@Lewis P Buckingham
In a financial war against my tiny country the US IRS has the upper hand.
If fraud is made against the US IRS it is done by US citizens, US residents, and Green card holders.
The assistance, active or passive, of banks does not change this primary fact.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. Matthieu 7:5
Village Idiot:
At January 24, 2014 at 11:56 pm you ask Lord Monckton
Of course not!
Only an idiot could entertain such a thought about Lord Monckton.
Perhaps you could do everybody a favour and stop wasting space on WUWT with your idiocy?
Richard
This reminds me of the recent and now dying effort to get flat earthers onto school boards so that curriculum adoptions were weighted towards creationistic text books. The global Watermelon agenda has been for like-minded entities to invade world scientific, policy, and governing bodies in order to weight decisions towards their version of a new world order. It is a house built of cards and will fall upon itself at the slightest breeze. Problem is, when the fall happens, many will lose and hard-fought faith in these groups will disappear. Collateral damage will even be felt by groups not involved at all in these shenanigans. The text books now replete with images of kids cleaning up rivers and streams will seem like children playing in their cribs. My kids and grandchildren will be left with this global financial mess. And they thought all they had to do was clean up the environment a bit.
Dear Richard,
Thank you for your sarcastic comment:
“Only an idiot could entertain such a thought about Lord Monckton.” 😉
Space doesn’t seem to be at a premium here on the Village notice board. Just consider the fact that I add to the number of comments the Master can crow about at the end of the year 🙂
And this site does have a certain beguiling entertainment value (“What will they dream up next?”)
I’m surprised “global governance” was so far down the list. Clearly it is their primary goal. They’re a little slow on the uptake of using !!!Thermageddon!!! to achieve it though.
The NCSE is one at-risk organization:
Village Idiot says:
January 24, 2014 at 11:56 pm
“Well, what a revelation from Sir Christopher! There’s corruption in the world’s institutions! Shock!!”
Wait, so you hold it as self-evident that UN and UNIPCC are corrupt. Yet, you sound like a warmist. Somehow this doesn’t rhyme; as for warmists the IPCC is gospel.
So you claim to believe in the pontifications of a corrupt organisation. Obviously this makes you a dishonest person; one who uses lies to advance his agenda. Are you a rent-seeker in climate alarmism? Does your livelihood depend on a continuation of the scam?
Lord M says:
The answer is No. The type of oscillation caused by the loop gain transiently exceeding unity is mandated by the feedback-amplification equation. The overall feedback gain factor is the reciprocal of the difference between unity and the closed-loop gain
This is wrong, in the absence of a time lag a amplifier will indeed just pin to a rail. The mechanism is described in my previous post. Any small perturbance will drive the amplifier in one direction until it hits the limit defined by the input power (power supply current and voltage limits) the amplifier saturates and its effective gain is near zero, It takes a rather large forcing to reverse that saturation.
There are two preconditions for oscillation, a loop gain of 1 and a time lag between the output and the feedback input both of which the climate has. Dr David Evans can help you with this if you don’t want to talk to me
Contraception key in climate change fight: Gore and Gates
Stopping overpopulation is one way the dangers of climate change can be mitigated, according to two of the most prominent believers in global warming.
Former Vice President Al Gore and Microsoft founder Bill Gates said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that contraception is a key in controlling the proliferation of unusual weather they say is endangering the world.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101361600
“Michel” says governmental institutions like the IPCC cannot be prosecuted for crimes. Governmental institutions can be prosecuted, for they are legal persons. In civilized jurisdictions (which in this respect notoriously do not include Switzerland), governmental entities are not immune from prosecution as legal persons for sufficiently serious crimes, such as the IPCC’s serious fraud.
However, the IPCC is not a “governmental institution”. As its name states, it is intergovernmental and, therefore, answerable to no national jurisdiction, and especially not to the indulgent Swiss jurisdiction in which it is headquartered. Switzerland regrettably harbors, indulges, and protects many such institutions that would be subject to prosecution were they headquartered elsewhere.
I note that “Michel” is not willing to try to get the useless appendage that is the Swiss Bureau de l’Escroquerie to investigate the IPCC’s frauds, such as its flagrantly bogus but very influential diagram of 2007 falsely purporting to show that the rate of global warming is accelerating when the method it used demonstrated no such thing. The method was deliberately wrong, was persisted in when complained of, and was accordingly a serious crime aggravated by the IPCC’s refusal to redress it.
No doubt “Michel” is unwilling to make any complaint to the Bureau de l’Escroquerie because he knows perfectly well that it is just as corrupt as the rest of the Swiss financial and investigative system. He knows full well that it will not lift a finger to pursue any organization from whose presence Switzerland profits in return for giving that organization effective protection from any crimes it commits, regardless of how many are made to suffer by – for instance – the very large and very unnecessary increases in fuel and power prices that the IPCC so relentlessly and baselessly advocates.
“Michel” also says one cannot jail an institution. Actually one can, by freezing all its assets in Switzerland and then expelling it, having incarcerated those of its personnel who were directly involved in deliberate deception of governments for profit.
“Michel” whines that I have repeated my assertions about Switzerland. On the contrary, this is the only time I have complained publicly about the corruption in the Swiss bank that allowed a false account to be opened in my name without even the most elementary checks; the further corruption by which it refused to hand over details of the bogus account it had created to the authorities when I asked it to do so; the still further corruption by which the Swiss authorities failed to do anything about the bank’s crimes; and the yet further corruption by which the Swiss government failed to require the police and the prosecuting authorities to do what in any civilized jurisdiction would have been their job.
Switzerland’s unsavoury reputation as a racketeer-influenced criminal organization rather than a proper nation is, therefore, thoroughly justified, and it is further confirmed by Switzerland’s harboring the corrupt, profiteering IPCC and the refusal either of its fraud office or of its IPCC point of contact to do anything when a plain instance of fraud that would have any company director behind bars is drawn to their attention.
“Michel’s” own indifference to the IPCC’s crimes illustrates precisely the Swiss mentality that allows the IPCC to go on damaging the economies of the West by fraudulently misrepresenting climate science to governments.
“Michel”, who seems to have a penchant for bromides, trots out one of the oldest: “Calomniez, calomniez, il en restera toujours quelque chose”. The mud sticks on Switzerland because that benighted nation is an accessory before, during, and after the fact of criminal activities not only by its banks, as I know to my cost, but also by the corrupt IPCC, which it improperly permits to be exempt from its jurisdiction – to the world’s cost not only in treasure but in lives.
@ george e. smith-Okay, lots to comment on here. To begin:
First, I believe you have mixed up your discription of Wentz’s paper. The models are *not* correct, according to it, on the magnitude of precipitation/evaporation change with warming.
Second, that a precipitation increase implies a cloudcover increase, or at least an increase in clouds associated with precipitation, *might* be true. It might even be nicely proportional. I don’t think I know enough to know for sure.
I do think clouds probably act as a negative feedback. But I think your picture of how that happens is excessively simplified.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Christopher Monckton,
Your essay was provocative. Within the opening paragraph of your essay, which I quote above, is the story which you should have told; it is one that fundamentally addresses the intellectual issue of the modern world; which is also the key issue for the last 2500++ years of Western Civilization.
Why? If there was a radically fundamental transition, which to me is still reasonably arguable, then why the transition within the WEP and in broader society? In the ideas of intellectuals during the timespan, there had to have been an intellectually fundament kind of prime mover type of idea that lost against another opposing intellectually prime mover type of idea. Examining the ideas and their premises back to the most basic fundamental of concepts . . . . why did one win and the other lose . . . . lose so far that is, because the intellectual dialog isn’t over . . it is never over.
Why? Why the transition? That is important compared with your essay story.
NOTE: I think the why is to be found in the many thousand year duel intellectually between the idea of observed reality as a basis of metaphysics / epistemology versus ideas of dual realities as a basis of metaphysics / epistemology.
John
I wish the bossily pseudonymous “bobl” would get its process engineering right. Whether it likes it or not, the Bode feedback-amplification equation is as I have described it, and it is the equation specifically cited by the IPCC, and by James Hansen, and it is the reason for the singularity that causes the type of oscillation caused by the loop gain transiently exceeding unity. Bobl’s introduction of the question of time-lag is all very interesting and dully standard (though of great relevance to the determination of climate sensitivity, as a forthcoming paper by me will show), but it is beyond the scope of the head posting, which merely made the point that runaway feedback of the type thrice referred to in the head posting cannot arise in the climate – a point that “bobl’s” own analysis tends to confirm.
In reality, “bobl” is not criticizing me: it is criticizing the IPCC, which – to take just one of the many points at which its analysis differs from “bobl’s” – determines the climate sensitivity parameter as a function of the feedback-sum, without taking account of negative feedbacks first and positive feedbacks second as “bobl” would prefer.
I do wish that the likes of “bobl”, whoever or whatever it is, would stop bossily telling me I don’t understand the relevant science when I merely outline the IPCC’s version of that science and then point out that it is wrong. Since I have cited the IPCC’s science merely to point out that it is wrong, “bobl” ought not to take me to task for describing it.
If “bobl” wishes to learn more about process engineering as the IPCC understands it, it may like to start with the admittedly Sibylline footnote on p. 631 of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007), where it will learn that the IPCC’s understanding of how to handle the feedback sum differs from its understanding.
And, if it would like to understand how process engineering really works (as opposed to the IPCC’s messed-up version), it may like to sit at the feet of Dr. David Evans.
Finally, a polite word to the moderators. It is not really satisfactory that pseudonymous posters like “bobl” to direct personal criticisms at those of us who have the guts to say who we are. If “bobl” is so spineless as not to reveal its true identity, then let it not criticize me personally, and bossily, and inappropriately, for misunderstanding how process engineering works. One suspects that “bobl” and countless other cowards like it would be considerably less smug if they had the backbone to reveal who they are.
In future, comments from behind cringing pseudonyms should be snipped wherever they make personal (and, in the present instance, inept and inapt) attacks on named individuals.
[Reply: What say you, “bobl”? Do you wish to raise your credibility by identifying yourself? ~ mod.]
“””””…..timetochooseagain says:
January 25, 2014 at 3:35 pm
@ george e. smith-Okay, lots to comment on here. To begin:
First, I believe you have mixed up your discription of Wentz’s paper. The models are *not* correct, according to it, on the magnitude of precipitation/evaporation change with warming.
Second, that a precipitation increase implies a cloudcover increase, or at least an increase in clouds associated with precipitation, *might* be true. It might even be nicely proportional. I don’t think I know enough to know for sure……”””””
Well yes , time to chooseagain, I did mix them up.
As I recall, Wentz said that a 1 deg C rise, resulted in a 7% increase, in global evaporation, a 7% increase in atmospheric moisture, and a 7% increase in global precipitation; well I might have reversed the last two; but they obey the commutative rule of typing. Switching the order in which statements are typed, does not alter their meaning or validity.
Then Wentz said that the GCMs agreed on the evap-precip pair, at 7%, but claimed only a 1 to 3% increase in total atmospheric water; maybe I got that reversed. I can’t recall if Wentz et al mentioned that evap and precip have to match; it’s been maybe five years since I last read it. I first read the paper in the week of July 7 2007, when it appeared in SCIENCE. I am no longer a subscriber.
So in my post above, I did interleave (“mixup”) my citation of the claims; but as I said; they obey the commutative rule, so mox nix if I mixed them up.
And I don’t recall the paper citing the Clausius-Clapeyron eqation, as the basis for the theoretical modeling of evap. That is simply a conjecture of mine. I know less than zero about the physical models of the GCMs. With 13 (or is it 17) competing models; I presume they range from “Simpson’s Rule” all the way to Quantum Chromo-dynamics.
As for the cloud increase; another wild arse guess of mine. But I’m an open minded guy.
I’m quite happy to believe that global cloud cover, can remain at exactly the same 62% or whatever of the global area; and that the optical density of them remains completely unchanged, and the clouds persist (in existence) for exactly the same period of time; but they precipitate 7% more rain, snow, sleet, and hail. I just need some cloud expert to explain the physics of how that happens. It just seemed to me those factors collectively might increase by around 7% in the sum of their effects.
As for my conjecture being simple; I seem to recall, that Albert Einstein told us, that physical theories, should be as simple as possible ; but no simpler !
What sort of augmentation flourishes, would you like me to add ??
Well gee whizz, I did flip them.
7% increase in total atmospheric moisture; same as Wentz measured; but only 1-3% increase in evap-precip rate.
Now there’s a pretty kettle of fish. The evap sposed to increase by 1% but the amount in the atmosphere goes up by 7%; yet the precip stays the same as the evap.
So what would happen if this was all linear, and you start it off from zero water in the atmosphere ?
In any case; Wentz et al observed as much as seven times the evap, that the GCMs claim can happen. I tend to go with what happened, rather than what is supposed to happen.
But I’m dying to hear how one gets more precipitation, from the same amount of clouds; and its warmer, so the moisture should be happier staying up there.
And I got the date wrong too, it was July 13 issue, not July 7. Every five years, you should go and re-read everything you ever read, so you don’t forget it.
DirkH 1:22 pm:
What a black and white word you live in! You should try to get out of this little isolated Village a bit more and widen your horizons.
Name for me an institution in the world that does not have some level of dishonesty. Even the barbers in our town fix the price of a short-back-and-sides between them – but I still get a haircut 😉
(Part-time warehouse worker – so my snout’s in a different trough!)
@@Monckton of Brenchley
Charte des Nations Unies
Article 105
1 L’Organisation jouit, sur le territoire de chacun de ses Membres, des privilèges et immunités qui lui sont nécessaires pour atteindre ses buts.
2 Les représentants des Membres des Nations Unies et les fonctionnaires de l’Organisation jouissent également des privilèges et immunités qui leur sont nécessaires pour exercer en toute indépendance leurs fonctions en rapport avec l’Organisation.
3 L’Assemblée générale peut faire des recommandations en vue de fixer les détails d’application des paragraphes 1 et 2 du présent Article ou proposer aux Membres des Nations Unies des conventions à cet effet.
Village Idiot:
At January 25, 2014 at 5:36 am I wrote to you saying in total
At January 25, 2014 at 9:55 am you have replied to me saying
Only an idiot could think my comment was sarcastic.
Given that you proclaim yourself to be an idiot, I will refrain from demanding an apology.
Richard
george e. smith:
At January 25, 2014 at 11:02 pm you say
Well, it is good that you admit your ignorance and inability to think the matter through. Perhaps you would have suffered less embarrassment in this thread had you been similarly reflective before posting all the errors, misunderstandings and things you failed to remember which you admit.
It is not relevant if the “moisture should be happier staying up there”.
The issue is the rate of the cycle. The amount of rain clouds is constant when the rate of their formation equals the rate of their loss. And they are lost by creation of precipitation. If the two rates adjust by the same amount then the precipitation rate also changes but the amount of cloud does not.
It is your assertion that this is not possible, but your only stated reason for this is your assertion concerning the happiness of moisture. I doubt the possibility of moisture being “happier”, and wonder if it has a party when it gets happy enough.
Richard
“Michel”, finding yet another pretext for not inviting the Swiss authorities to investigate the IPCC’s crimes rather than furnishing official-looking cover for them, cites the Charter of the United Nations as granting immunity to its officials.
However, the IPCC is not a UN organization, though one of its joint founders, UNEP, is part of the UN system. Though the UN General Assembly, in December 1988, resolved to endorse the founding of the IPCC, it did not incorporate the IPCC into what it calls its “system”.
Accordingly, the IPCC enjoys no immunities under the UN Charter, and its officials in Switzerland enjoy only those immunities that the Swiss authorities have so unwisely granted.
Now that “Michel’s” persistence in resistance to the idea of asking Switzerland to start cleaning up its act by addressing the crimes of the IPCC has reminded me of how little can be expected from the Swiss government or, it seems, from its people, I have decided to bring forward a project that I have long had in mind: to invite the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court – by which Switzerland is bound – to investigate not only the crimes of the IPCC but also of the nation that gives its crimes such impenetrable cover.
The IPCC, in being reckless as to whether that fraction of its scientific proclamations that is bogus may kill millions by pushing up the prices of fuel and power beyond what they can afford, may well be guilty of what the Court’s founding document describes as “extermination”. If it is guilty, then the Swiss authorities that have given it cover and have refused to investigate even the plainest instance of its criminality are also guilty as accessories after the fact of extermination.
And, before “Michel” pleads that the Swiss Government is immune, it is not. Under the Court’s founding document, every such immunity is set aside (except, of course, the immunities enjoyed by the judges and officials of the Court itself).
Some 31,000 excess deaths were recorded in the United Kingdom in the cold winter of 2012/13, a 30% increase on the mean excess in the previous five years. During those five years, prices of fuel and power rose by almost half in the UK. A substantial fraction of the price hike arose from policies to deter people from using fossil fuels to heat their homes – policies that the UK Government justifies, over and over again, by citing the documents of the IPCC.
I shall submit to the Prosecutor (as any Peer may do) that there is a statable case that the IPCC’s refusal to correct a serious and influential error was made in the knowledge that one consequence might be premature mass deaths. Before devoting time and treasure to submitting the full case, I shall naturally have discussions with the Prosecutor’s office to ensure that he would dare to act against so once-fashionable and once-powerful an organization, and that none of the get-out-of-jail-free clauses in the Court’s founding document will exempt the IPCC and the handful of its individual pseudo-scientists who have wilfully bent and distorted and misrepresented data and results, as well as its aider and abettor the Swiss Government,.from facing the massive financial and custodial penalties that will be in order if the case be found proven.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
January 26, 2014 at 7:13 am
Good luck with that. How about pursuing the fraudsters as individuals, too?
There has been much nonsense promulgated about positive feedbacks in climate mechanisms. An example is that “positive feedback systems are unstable”, which is commonly parroted by IPCC-believers. I do think, however, that the counterarguments presented in the present Posting could be much improved. I think that the arguments made by reference and analogy to electronics are not needed, sometimes are incorrect, and weaken the main argument.
I am a PhD scientist who has designed and operated feedback systems, many electronic with intentional net positive feedbacks. I have not studied writings about climate feedbacks by James Hansen, but if he did predict that the climate could break into oscillation or be driven to negative temperature changes by positive feedbacks applied to warming, then he was wrong.
As some previous replies, e.g. Bobl at 04:37 on the 24th, have noted, it is difficult to discuss feedback systems without including the time-dependent aspects that are described as “damping” or “leads and lags”. Analysis describing frequency content and transients requires Fourier, Laplace or differential equation techniques, and we cannot go into their mathematics in a Replies list. Nevertheless, some reasonable generalities can be made from a discussion using only real numbers and only conclusions about final states, rather than transients.
I start with Figure 3 in the Posting. The usual equation describing the IPCC curve is 1/(1-γ), as was used by Lord Monkton. If γ >1, then the prediction is for a negative gain, and the gain flips from + to – infinity as γ traverses zero. The problem is that the equation breaks down as a description of the physics at γ =1 because at that value the derivation “divided by zero”. It is not unusual for the domain of a physical derivation to be limited. The IPCC graph is meaningless at γ>=1.
In electronics, 1/(1-γ) becomes irrelevant when an otherwise linear system “saturates” or “rails” at the largest possible voltage of either sign. In climate, the system as a whole will breakdown at some point short of infinite temperature! Lord Monkton’s assertion “Temperature feedbacks that have been as strongly net-positive as the IPCC … imagines …. cannot suddenly drive global temperature down rather than up” is correct. His assertion that an electronic circuit “flicks from the positive to the negative rail” at γ = 1 is, however, incorrect. Particular gain and phase shifts in the loop equation are required for such flipping, and in general they do not happen. An electronic circuit generally will fail by railing at one polarity or the other and staying there. Joe Born made this point at 03:35 on the 24th. This is not to say that there are not failures in nominally negative feedback systems with where loop lags sum to 180⁰ of phase shift, thus making γ=1 at some frequency, and the system oscillates.
The non-physicality of negative end-point gains at γ>1 can be illustrated by a discrete-time series model. This model is fairly descriptive of a system with a dominant single first-order lag rate-constant (as is common). Suppose that a system with unity gain (λ in the IPCC language) feeds back γ (=f in this case) of its output for many discrete feedback cycles. Suppose that the input and output begin at some value X. After one feedback cycle the output is (1+ γ)X; after two cycles it is (1+ γ+ γ 2)X; after three it is (1+ γ+ γ 2+ γ 3)X, and so on. This result is the well-known geometric series, and it converges to X/(1- γ) for γ=1. The convergence equation for the geometric series has the same form as the IPCC feedback expression, and its origin is similar. The IPCC equation and erroneous application of the geometric series convergence equation both falsely predict a negative final output for γ>1 and positive drives.
The statement in the posting “Process engineers designing electronic circuits intended not to oscillate adopt a maximum value γ = 0.1 for the loop gain” is incorrect. Stable and useful systems with γ in the range of 0.6 to 0.7 at a designed frequency point abound. One can Google the design coefficients for Butterworth and Chebychev filters, for instance. One can see (via translation the different languages involving “Q” and “s”) that stable, useful and common filter stages have γ-values in the range of 0.65.
Another device with billions of applications, the Schmitt trigger, clearly shows that electronic amplifiers do not generally oscillate with strong positive feedback. The Schmitt trigger employs a high gain amplifier (called a “comparator” in this application) with heavy positive, frequency-independent feedback. The output switches from one “rail” to the other at separated switching points of the input. If the device did oscillate between the rails, it would fail totally as a trigger. If one writes the differential equation for the trigger with a usual amplifier having a transfer function with one dominant pole, one sees that the time derivative of the output has only one sign if γ>1. The output voltage changes unidirectionally until it goes as far as possible in one direction, and then it sticks there. This common, simple positive feedback system with γ>1 does not flick back and forth.
The original posting says, incorrectly, “For the past 750 million years, the climate has behaved as a stable circuit. The temperature-feedback loop gain cannot much have exceeded +0.1….” This assertion is based on the rule-of-thumb given by a consulted process engineer that 0.1 is a reasonable γ cutoff for stable designs. Maybe that rule is useful for what the consultant does, but it is not broadly true. The previous two paragraphs provide concrete counter-examples. It is not true that a stable climate must have had γ<=0.1. Therefore, the IPCC estimate of γ near 0.62 is not refuted by the existence of a fairly stable paleotemperature record.
Just how “unstable” with fluctuating net feedback are the scalar positive feedback systems that IPCC showed on their figure? Analysis using derivatives of logarithms shows that the fractional change in output of the fed-back system varies with the change in net γ in the same manner as does the fed-back gain, i.e., 1/(1- γ). So, a change in net warming feedback of 0.01 would result in a 2.6% change in warming at the IPCC value of γ = 0.62. This change is significant, but it by no means implies instability.
The World Economic Forum first named European Management Forum in 1971, right after Nixon stripped the US dollar from the Gold Standard has been one of the driving forces behind the COR BS and the climate scam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Economic_Forum
To claim the World Economic Forum has been hijacked by AGW activists is just a practical joke is it?
Some more “opinion’ about the World Economic Forum aka Screw The World:
http://www.maxkeiser.com/2014/01/kr554-keiser-report-endless-fiat-money-supply/
Note also stuff missing from their risks diagram:
Another Carrington Event, solar flare – a decent chance within the next 70 years, say bout 1/4, and catastrophic for an electricity using civilisation.
Krakatoa level volcanic eruption – similar odds, large deaths, year without a summer worldwide.;
Asteroid hit – odds go down with size but risk goes up to total extermination as the dinosaurs found.
(Whereas “biodiversity loss” is one of their prime risks, all of these unmentioned ones have biodiversity loss as minor secondary effect)
The pseudonymous “Al F” muddies the waters about feedbacks, but does so interestingly. He is wrong to describe my graph of the singularity in the feedback-amplification equation as the IPCC’s graph. It is my graph. He is also wrong to assume that merely because the value of the overall feedback gain factor is undefined where the loop gain is unity it is also undefined where the loop gain exceeds unity. He is wrong again when he suggests that the existence of components capable of withstanding a feedback loop gain on the IPCC’s implicit interval [0.42, 0.74] negates my point that process engineers intending circuits to be stable design in a maximum loop gain of 0.1 (and, in practice, usually an order of magnitude below even that). He is also wrong when he says that the voltage does not transition from the positive to the negative rail in an oscillating circuit when the loop gain is driven transiently above unity: the papers consulted by the process engineer whom I consulted specifically stated that that is precisely what happens.
The components of which “Al F” speaks are designed to operate in circuits where the loop gain is permanently on a narrow interval, and specifically where that interval does not encompass unity. The existence of such components does not in any way invalidate the point made by the process engineer that in a typical circuit manufactured with mass-produced components or intended to operate in a variety of environments great care is taken to keep the designed loop gain very low to avoid precisely the crossing of the singularity that, in the real climate, has never occurred, as far as we can tell, in 750 million years. It follows that the very high interval of loop gains implicit in the IPCC’s climate-sensitivity interval is implausible, to say the least.
There does seem to be a positive feedback system for cooling – we see a number of ice ages involving really fast, in geological terms, step changes in temperature and ice coverage. In one case (almost) the whole globe was ice covered. This is assumed to be driven by the positive feedback of lowering albedo.
However the visible existence of this phenomenon makes it all the more obvious that there is no history of such a feedback for warming above that caused when these ice ages melt.
This is a response to the “Monkton of Benchley” post of 27 Jan 13:34
There are basically two points in your original post.
1a. An anonymous process engineer says that he designs for positive loop feedbacks generally <<0.1 for stability.
1b. The world temperature has been fairly stable for more than the entire Phanerozoic.
1c. Therefore, the world temperature loop gain must be less than +0.1.
It is not a compelling argument.
A. The statement of the process engineer is reasonable. All designers design for loop gains 0. If one is stuck with a slight positive loop gain (say 0.1), the stability suffers negligibly.
B. Typical engineering practice for process or circuit stability does not imply that the climate has been engineered in the same way.
C. I gave the equation for the fractional variation in loop output with loop gain changes. The fluctuations in loop output from fluctuations in loop gain is fairly benign for nominal loop gains well above 0.1,and into the region claimed by the IPCC. I showed a representative number and the equation,
2a. Circuits oscillate when the loop gain passes through +1.
2b. The climate system has no mechanism to reverse the sign of output as the loop gain passes through 1.
Here, again, we are in an unfortunate situation of comparing partial knowledge of circuits with climate. All of this is being done without any knowledge or mathematical treatment of the frequency description of the loop gain.
A. Circuits do NOT, in general, oscillate when the loop gain reaches or exceeds unity. I gave two common examples: the behavior of a Schmitt trigger, and a finite-time-step analysis of the simplest realizable positive feedback system with one dominant time lag.
B. The Schmitt trigger is made to stick at one limit (“rail”) or the other except for rapid changes that are a function of the input. It has positive loop gain >1 for every frequency (or,in the real world, every frequency up to the limiting behavior of its embedded amplifier).
C. The finite time equation for a single-lag fedback system solves as a geometric series. It has the same equation, 1/(1-gamma), that you used. The usual solution for the geometric series and the given finite-time-increment model for the circuit both predict a reversal in sign of the output if gamma>0. The geometric series (not its solution for gamma =1 that do not oscillate.
Finally, I think that Lord Monkton has done a lot of good in battling climate nonsense. I do not think that the poorly specified large net positive climate feedbacks that are bandied make sense. I just do not think that there is a good case made here.
Al F: “Finally, I think that Lord Monkton has done a lot of good in battling climate nonsense. I do not think that the poorly specified large net positive climate feedbacks that are bandied make sense. I just do not think that there is a good case made here.”
Lord M. had adumbrated this particular argument before, but, at least as far as I had noticed, not previously in enough detail to demonstrate so conclusively how poorly grounded his understanding of it is. I commend you for your valiant effort to wave him off, but my experience at similar attempts gives me little basis for hope that you will be successful. (This explains why my attempt above was so half-hearted.)
On a more-impressionistic level, though, I find the argument attractive. True, there’s no reason in principle why positive feedback could not result in a stable system. But intuition suggests that stability means negative feedback is much more likely. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen a very rigorous argument to that effect. Still, the following post by Lubos Motl may be of interest in this connection: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/11/le-chateliers-principle-and-natures.html.