Reposted from the Fabius Maximus website.
By Larry Kummer, Editor / 13 December 2019
Summary: Yesterday I proposed that we try new ways to end the climate policy gridlock. Today I explore why we have not yet done so, and probably won’t do so. The reason why reveals something important about America.
“When I was sixteen, I went to work for a newspaper in Hong Kong. It was a rag, but the editor taught me one important lesson. The key to a great story is not who, or what, or when, but why.”
— Elliot Carver, in Tomorrow Never Dies(1997).
Climate science marching into the future.
ID 51961474 © Rangizzz | Dreamstime.
The public policy debate about climate change first caught my attention as an example of America’s ability to see the world, evaluate what we see, and collectively make decisions (our national OODA loop). An effective OODA loop is necessary for our prosperity amidst the hazards of the 21st century. Perhaps even for our survival. What I found is all bad news.
Yesterday’s post recommended that climate scientists try new ways to break the three-decade-long gridlock in the climate change policy debate – and gave a specific suggestion. Today’s post asks why we won’t do that and why the policy debate has run in circles for so long – as participants on both sides repeated tactics that consistently failed. It is an immense story of failure by key groups and institutions across America. This posts hits a few of the high spots.
(1) Phase one: tit for tat, not science
“A genuine expert can always foretell a thing that is 500 years away easier than he can a thing that’s only 500 seconds off.”
— From Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.
There are some obvious but shallow answers. We have seen this situation many times in books and films since the publication of When Worlds Collide
“In response to a request for supporting data, Philip Jones, a prominent researcher {U of East Anglia} said ‘We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?’”
– From the testimony of Stephen McIntyre before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (the July 2006 hearings which produced the Wegman Report). Jones has not publicly denied it.
This happened repeatedly during the long debate since 1988. Questioners (and later critics) were rebuffed and insulted, a mind-blowingly counter-productive tactic that screamed “climate scientists have much to hide.” In reaction to this rose the legions of denialists. Not skeptics, but people denying the “greenhouse” effect and anthropogenic warming. The mainstream skeptic community contributed to the poisonous gridlock by embracing deniers (handling fringe elements is a challenge for all political movements).
(2) Phase two: playing politics while the world warms
Once the climate policy debate fragmented into two opposing teams, inevitably they become adopted by the major political parties.
The Left saw climate policy as a means to gain the power to restructure the US economy and society to their liking (e.g., journalist Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Much of the Right easily incorporated denialism into their worldview, along with creationism, denial of Keynesian economics, and belief in faux history about the Civil War and Thanksgiving.
The reaction of both sides is pitiful, but that of the Left is also weird. Thirty years of playing politics and nothing to show for it. I discussed yesterday’s post with a physicist, whose rebuttal to my recommendation for more science was No, we need more politics – vote for Bernie! That was the thinking of WWI’s generals. There was always one more “over the wire into battle” before victory. There was no need to work together with their foes to find solutions. Now we see them as madmen who brought disaster on Europe. Future generations might see us as crazy people for the same reason if the climate wars end badly – either from climate change or a repeat of past extreme weather (the policy gridlock prevents preparation for either).
That is not only bad tactics, but it is also bad politics – if you care about climate change (vs. just cynically using it as a cover story). Politics in a successful society (e.g., not Somalia) is the search for agreement. That means finding steps that can gain majority support. Climate change is unlike slavery, as it offers many opportunities for everybody to work together. There are two obvious ones. First, preparing for the repeat of past extreme weather (which resilience also helps for climate change). Second, testing the models (both sides are confident of the result, and so should be willing to support funding for the test).
But we live in ClownWorld, so climate debate resembles a food fight in a grade school cafeteria.
(3) Why not test the models?
Model validation is a well-established field, since computer models are used in thousands of critical applications. Climate scientists ignore most of this, instead giving us endless backtests – a weak form of validation due to tuning.
Some of the evidence given as validation would be funny, if we were discussing something other than the future of humanity. Perhaps the best-known attempt at model validation concerns the forecasts in “Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model” by Hansen et el. in the Journal of Geophysical Research, 20 August 1988. Its skill was evaluated in “Skill and uncertainty in climate models” by Julia C. Hargreaves in WIREs: Climate Change, July/Aug 2010 (ungated copy). She reported that “efforts to reproduce the original model runs have not yet been successful”, so she examined results for the scenario that in 1988 Hansen “described as the most realistic”. How realistic she doesn’t say (no comparison of the scenarios vs. actual forcings); nor can we know how the forecast would change using observed forcings as inputs. Sorry world, the dog ate my model.
Another equally weird example is “Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections” by Zeke Hausfather et al. in Geophysical Research Letters (in press). They use complex mathematics to avoid re-running the models, as Dr. Hausfather explained in a Tweet.
“Our implied TCR approach effectively accounts for mismatches between models and observations without the need to dig through punch cards and FORTRAN 77 code.”
With the fate of the world at stake, they did not want to bother “digging through” old records. But such shortcuts do not work, as Paul Krugman said in “What have we learned since 2008“ (2016).
“Some annoying propositions: Complex econometrics never convinces anyone. …Natural experiments rule. But so do surprising predictions that come true.”
Where have the skeptics been in this debate? Lots of mockery (imitating their opponents), bickering about the accuracy of the global temperature datasets (which are dilapidated, but not substantially), and complaining about the IPCC (deeply flawed, one of the best science institutions ever, and better than we deserve). The few skeptics (they often dislike that label) with meaningful challenges to the science (e.g., Roger Pielke Sr. and Jr., Judith Curry) get applause but little support.
The most common response to my proposal
“It won’t work because of XXX or YYY or ZZZ.”
This is the most common response to Every Single Reform Proposal on the FM website, from people on both Left and Right. This confident defeatism is the fun easy path to national disaster. We are a successful nation because the Americans before us tried and tried and tried again, defying the odds. Most of our problems are like climate change: building a consensus about how to use our fantastic national power to solve our problems. If we cannot relearn how to do this, we are finished.
Conclusions
In military theory, the key to victory is understanding the schwerpunkt – the key point at which the battle is decided. Breaking the climate policy gridlock requires identifying that point and focusing relentlessly on it. I believe that is model validation. Others will have different ideas. We need to try as many of them as possible as soon as possible. It is up to us to demand action.
If you have not yet read it, see part one:
After 30 years of failed climate politics, let’s try science!
For More Information
Ideas! For your holiday shopping, see my recommended books and films at Amazon. Also, see a story about our future: “Ultra Violence: Tales from Venus.”
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information about this vital issue see the keys to understanding climate change, and especially these …
- Paul Krugman shows why the climate campaign failed.
- Fix the mistakes that killed the climate change campaign!
- Scientists show us why the climate change campaign failed – so far.
- A crisis of overconfidence in climate science.
- About the corruption of climate science.
- The noble corruption of climate science.
- A demo of why we do nothing about climate change.
- Climate science has died. The effects will be big.
Activists don’t want you to read these books
Some unexpected good news about polar bears: The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened
To learn more about the state of climate change see The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change
What is missing here (IMHO) is any sizable, influential and formal scientific panel, committee or other scientific structure or mechanism to properly apply the scientific method to the CO2-induced CAGW theory. The panel, committee (whatever) needs to have the backing of the federal govt (and govts of the world) to happen. As long as the U.N. and many of the world’s govts continue going along with the scare and believe they have vested political and financial interests in this scare, it will keep going back and forth without end.
As long as the climate alarmists feel they are making progress with local, state and federal govts, they have every reason to keep going as long as there is no large, formal organized challenge to the alarmist narrative other than on the internet with blogs like WUWT. With no govts interested in getting to the truth (which they never seem to be anyway), the climate scare can and will go on indefinitely.
CD,
“What is missing here (IMHO) is any sizable, influential and formal scientific panel, committee …”
This post is “missing” a thousand and one things, because a l-o-n-g book could be written about this. This post was already too long, so I did not discuss operational details.
That said, such a group would become essential at some point in the reform process. A model would be the groups directing and monitoring biomedical research.
“As long as the climate alarmists feel they are making progress with local, state and federal govts, they have every reason to keep going as long as there is no large, formal organize”
That is backwards. More accurately: so long as there are no large groups opposing them, climate alarmists will continue to gain strength – and see no reason to change.
“With no govts interested in getting to the truth”
Governments are policy-setting mechanisms, reflecting the people they govern. They are not truth-seeking entities like Plato’s academy. So long as alarmists’ voices dominate the universities, news media, ngo’s, and (increasingly) mega-corps – then the govt will respond accordingly.
“the climate scare can and will go on indefinitely.”
That’s possible. But I believe that fear of climate change has become a moral panic, much like the 1980s-1990s belief in massive Satanic ritual sacrifices. I had a front-row seat to that (the hysteria, not to an actual satanic sacrifice). Authorities – such as police, churches, and health care professionals – took it seriously. As did much of the public.
After the fit passed, everyone had amnesia about their beliefs. My guess is the climate hysteria will pass in a similar manner. The question is if the Dems will make effective use of it while it lasts.
My next post will discuss this.
“Today’s post asks why we won’t do that and why the policy debate has run in circles for so long – as participants on both sides repeated tactics that consistently failed.”
It is the consistently scientific skeptical input that has kept the other side in check. They have not failed, they are succeeding because they are trying to style a religiously and apolitically motivated group. Nature will win out and the lack of warming and actual cooling will eventually bite the alarmists in the rear. WE just have to hold them back long enough. The skeptics are the most cost effective group there is today. With virtually no finding, compared to the government funded alarmists, skeptics have been effective in countering alarmist propaganda with real science and facts, which the alarmists are constantly trying to alter or fabricate.
CD in W, panel, committee, or whatever, a theory in science is only the starting point. Any theory, no matter how elegant or logical, must have specific, focused, and controlled tests put against it to see if it appears valid. If it appears valid you might proceed with some caution as you will undoubtedly encounter complications that also need testing. How to test the chaotic, ever-changing earth climate? How to isolate one aspect of this chaotic system and only test that part? Geologists have an advantage here because they are familiar with millions of years of preserved climate cycles, and the little twitches Greta et al are shouting about are ridiculous.
Before y’all ask me to regress to an 11th-century “lifestyle,” please show me real-world, real-time, undoctored actual observed evidence that the miniscule warming of the past 150 years is indeed human-caused as opposed to natural variability seen historically many times before. They cannot. Right now this is a weak theory with the weight of evidence heavily freighted against it.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Lacking that, the world is about to tell them to go pound sand.
To me, the why? is simple. MONEY.
Too many dependent academic careers, grants, and intangibles like global travel to COP and IPCC for warmunists to ever engage skeptics on a science basis.
Too many renewables providers totally dependent on subsidies that only flow if warmunists are ‘right’.
Too many journalists practicing ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ to sell papers and ads. Warmunism bleeds—polar bears die, Miami drowns, and all the lurid rest. Skepticism doesn’t.
Rud,
“To me, the why? is simple. MONEY.”
That’s right, but only in a narrow sense.
The alarmists have the money because they have spent the last 30 years organizing – which includes obtaining funding. Skeptics had access to source of funds just as large – businesses, conservative foundations, etc. But they did not build the organizations capable of credibily requesting or using big money – and, more importantly, lacked a plan for its use.
This is, in a sense, Darwinian evolution. The alarmists have been smart and patient, and worked hard. Nature (or, as Jefferson said, Nature’s god) rewards that. Time will tell how this all plays out, with so many variables in motion..
got to be more than just money…
every climate scientist knows the UN put a policy in place so China could increase their emissions…and hopefully get paid to do it
every climate scientist knows how much China has increased it’s emissions…and knows it’s ground zero
and there’s not one damn word about China ever….much less the rest of Asia and the developing world
the whole thing has $c@m written all over it
1000 upvotes.
“every climate scientist knows the UN put a policy in place so China could increase their emissions…and hopefully get paid to do it
“every climate scientist knows how much China has increased it’s emissions…and knows it’s ground zero
“and there’s not one damn word about China ever….much less the rest of Asia and the developing world”
I think they’ve blocked this out of awareness or haven’t read about it in the green media and sites they consume. But in the past year it’s becoming too obvious to ignore, and the news about coal’s resurgence in the developing world is seeping in from the fringes.
This is skepticism’s winning card. Emissions globally will relentlessly increase, making whatever “we” do not only futile and footling, but suicidal as well. No-regrets adaptation (plus nuclear) is our only rational course.
Istvan
Brillliant comment.
Tobacco companies bought cigarettes are safe “science”.
Government money buys whatever “science” they want.
They want a coming climate crisis.
So they hire people willing to predict a coming climate crisis every year, and declare the current year was a few hundredths of a degree C. warmer than the prior year, without laughing.
The left-biased media ignores same wrong climate predictions repeated every year, for over 30 years, so far.
Leftists know they must never let a crisis go to waste (every crisis is an opportunity to ramp up government spending and power).
The crisis can be real or fake, as long as most people believe in it.
The coming climate crisis, on the way for over 60 years, is a fake crisis,
but enough people (mainly leftists) have been brainwashed to believe in it.
The ONLY good news about a fake crisis, is that at any time “leftist leaders” can declare that the “crisis” is over, because THEY saved the planet !
The recent 4 years have been the warmest on earth ( worldwide averages ) than the previous 100 years. The uptrend started ramping up during the industrial revolution and especially after 1970 as the graphs show. The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade. Why do people keep putting on blinders and not accept Scientific data? I get it – Republicans don’t like science and don’t believe in it – but, come on! https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hottest-global-years-on-record. I realize this is unpopular by the Climate Deniers – but, just thought I’d put in my opinion from what I see from various Climate sites.
James, have you ever heard of garbage in, garbage out? … the temperature data you refer to is, as they say, fake data. Even the people behind it fessed up in their climate gate emails they were fudging it. But it keeps getting put out and people like you keep accepting it at face value.
To me this is the whole crux of the matter. The satellite data has warmed some but nothing exceptional. We’ve had warming not doubt, but that is after a couple decades of a very active Sun. The Sun is quiet now and in the next decade or so we will see just where we stand. The Earth warms and the Earth cools.
I read alternate history (i.e., a sub genre of science fiction) – and evaluate the quality of that by the imagination and biases of the writer; the events depicted are what the writer believes SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
I ignore alternate temperatures – as Mosher so well stated yesterday, they are the same as alternate history – they are what the “scientist” believes they SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
100 years in a 4.5 billion year history of climate changes. That trend is supposed to scare us.
10 hottest years in the instrument measurement record. Again the geological record shows much hotter periods and certainly much colder periods and we are still around. The Holocene maximum was still hotter than this 10 year time frame. Sorry if I don’t give into the fear you are trying to sell.
The only one rejecting science is you. Since you ignore everything before the last 100 years.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Poor science.
JF
“The recent 4 years have been the warmest on earth ( worldwide averages ) than the previous 100 years. The uptrend started ramping up during the industrial revolution and especially after 1970 as the graphs show. The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade.”
Everything you said above may be true, but it becomes irrelevant when you learn more about the Earth’s climate. The reason the last 4 years have been the warmest is because we have had about 200 years of warming (most of it happening before CO2 started increasing). But if you look at the ice cores, it becomes obvious that most of the Holocene was warmer than it is currently, and that our current warming trend is a little wave on a general cooling trend that started 8,000 years ago. The same perspective is helpful when looking at Arctic Sea Ice. Alarmists put on blinders and only look at the historical climate that supports their preconceived notions, which is just a tiny portion of the available data, and a microscopic portion of the Earth’s climate history.
Science looks at all the data. Activists pick and choose the data that fits their narrative. Now, who is wearing the blinders? Who is denying climate?
Yes, it warmed before CO2 could have an effect, then after the WWII expansion, it cooled for about 4 decades, then warmed, then stalled and warmed at a low rate to today.
Seems like CO2 is a spectator most of the time. Certainly, nature has a mind of her own.
“Why do people keep putting on blinders and not accept Scientific data?”
Because the scientific [temperature] data has been bastardized by unscrupulous characters with a political agenda.
Here is an example. The link immediately below is to an unmodified (actual temperature readings) US surface temperature chart:
As you can see, this chart shows the 1930’s to be just as warm or warmer than the temperatures today. So for the United States, the last four years have not been “the warmest on Earth”. The year 1934 was 0.4C warmer than the warmest year of the 21st century.
Now, look at the next chart. It is another US surface temperature chart after it has been bastardized by the Data Manipulators. They put a chart that looks like the first one with the 1930’s showing to be just as warm as today, into their computer and out comes the bastardized Hockey Stick chart that promotes the “hotter and hotter” scam. The bastardizaton of the temperature record is the only reason someone can say the last four years were the warmest on the Earth. And that is one of the purposes of the bastardization.
Here’s the bastardized US surface temperature chart:
The bastardized chart now shows that the current day temperatures are the warmest in recorded history. This is the Big Lie that has been foisted on the world by the unscrupulous Data Manipulators who are promoting human-caused climate change.
If you look at all the other regional temperature charts from around the world, you will see that they all resemble the unmodified US surface temperature chart profile where the 1930’s was as warm as today. None of the unmodified charts look like a “hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart.
The Data Manipulators have done this same manipulation/bastardization to just about all the surface temperature charts from around the world.
The Data Manipulators are changing the temperature record from actual temperature readings to computer games that favor their political agenda which is to promote the idea of human-caused climate change with the idea that the Earth is currently experiencing unprecedented warming. But their claims fall apart if we look at the original temperature charts which show it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today, and that means we are not experiencing unprecedented warming and that means the CO2 is at most a minor player in the Earth’s atmsophere. It is certainly not overheating the Earth.
That’s why the Data Manipulators manipulated the temperature data. They wanted to give the false impression that CO2 was causing unprecedented warming on the Earth, but the historic temprature charts, read and written down by human beings, puts the lie to that tale.
Someone ought to ask the NASA Data Manipulators for the reasons why they changed the actual US temperature readings. We should have an explanation for why they first show the 1930’s to be as warm as today, and then after then put the data into their computers, the 1930’s becomes insignificant. It appears the Data Manipulators *want* the 1930’s to appear insignificant. There’s lots of money, prestige and power in it.
I think I’ll ask my U.S. Senator, Senator Inhofe, if he will inquire of NASA and ask them to explain the discrepancies between the unmodified and modified US surface temperature charts. Fortunately, Senator Inhofe will actually know what I’m referring to. Senator Inhofe has considerable knowledge of the climate change debate.
“The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade.”
The odd thing is that it hasn’t. It dwindled from 1979 to 2007, but has been essentialy static since then:
http://www.cpom.ucl.ac.uk/csopr/seaice.html?show_cell_thk_ts_large=1&ts_area_or_point=all&basin_selected=0&show_basin_thickness=0&thk_period=0&select_thk_vol=select_vol&year=2019&imonth=4&season=Spring
tty
I agree – the claim that these iceareais the lowest (in a while, anyway) is trivially true, but not helpful for a longer term analysis.
Global sea ice extent is no longer going down. Why not? It seems the CO2-based melting theory has a problem. There’s lots more CO2 but a lot less influence. If it was my theory I’d be worried about its validity being successfully challenged.
Think of it this way: if my house of cards was built on a foundation of Jello, any vibration will bring it down. Cli-Sci isn’t on solid ground precisely because it uses unvalidated models. At present the projections are not acceptable as policy-relevant contributions. It will remain like that until they are validated.
There is some allowance which can be made for the Russian climate model that has shown a consistent skill at forecasting the global temperature. It predicts cooling in the near future.
Worldwide averages, like made up numbers?
“James December 14, 2019 at 1:21 pm
Why do people keep putting on blinders and not accept Scientific data?”
I don’t wear blinders, I leave that to “Climate Believers”. If you can provide data, that is not the output of a computer simulation and is actual observed data that has not been adjusted, please show it. In all my years following the climate “issue” I have experience cold and warm times, some colder than others, some warmer but mostly fairly flat on average (I don’t like using that term but it is fitting in this reply) but never ever constantly increasingly warmer and warmer every year with ever increasing CO2 concentrations. When, in the late 80’s, I saw “climate” become a blatantly political issue, I knew global warming, climate change, climate emergency etc was nothing but hot air. Then in 2010, we were told climate policy is nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with wealth redistribution and global govn’t. control
Warming up since the little ice age. Is there a problem with that? What part of the warming is natural? The warming since the little ice age has been benign and beneficial. More CO2 makes for happy plants. Alarmists like James are trying to turn a slight warming into a four alarm fire. Then James makes friendly by calling us that most moronic of insults, “climate deniers”.
James, you know what else happened around the start of the industrial revolution? The end of the Little Ice Age.
Which means all the terrifying warming of the last ~150 years has put us back where we were some 800 years ago. Oooh! Scary!
During this period, humankind has flourished. But ‘the science’ tells us another such rise in temperatures over the next century is a threat to civilisation? Please.
James,
What does it mean to talk about the worldwide average temperature of the Earth? You realize that the average temperature of something can increase without it ever being any warmer, if the average low temperature isn’t as low as before.
How many weather stations actually report their warmest year ever for each “warmest year ever”? You said the most recent 4 years have been the warmest on Earth in the last 100 years. Yet I have the November data set from NOAA’s GHCN v4 Monthly summaries, with 27380 stations reporting. The record contains historical data back to 1728 (a station in Denmark).
If I query that mass of data to get each station’s warmest year, only 451 stations show 2018 as its warmest year. Below is the list of the first ten years selected by the most stations as its warmest year from that data set:
Year #stations listing as warmest on record
—— ————————————————
2012 2119
2015 1741
2016 1304
1998 1260
2014 1083
2017 959
1987 949
2010 788
2007 720
1990 694
2018 doesn’t appear until #18 on the list.
This is a very simple metric. No anomalies were used, no least-squares were calculated. No error bars were forged, no standard deviations were deviated. All that was done was that each station was individually interrogated as to what its temperature had been doing over its lifetime, with no regard for what any other stations were doing, and no attempt to compare how much or how little it was warming or cooling with other stations.
I recognize that this is not calculating “the warmest year ever”, but doesn’t it seem odd that recent years are supposed to be so warm, but so few stations record them as their warmest years?
Finally, staying with the best station series — a full 360-month record between 1989 and 2018, with no missing data nor any quality issues — there are 1095 stations that have the full record, and 78 of them, a full 7%, way above statistical significance, have flat or negative trends.
When I see this, I wonder how something that is supposed to be warming the entire atmosphere, and planet, can account for the existence of these cooling stations.
Maybe it’s something besides CO2? A true scientist should wonder about that.
James, a little knowledge, which is your situation, can lead to wrong conclusions.
Let me explain to you that the climate of our planet is always changing, and has done so for 4.5 billion years.
In the past 10,000 years, we have had many multi-hundred year periods of mild cooling, followed by multi-hundred year periods of mild warming.
People liked the warm periods, and disliked, or hated, the cold periods.
I’m NOT talking about the 100,000 years cycles, where our planet gets colder for 90,000 years, and warmer for 10,000 years — we happen to live in one of those roughly 10,000 year long warm periods, called the Holocene interglacial.
I’m just talking about mild climate cycles within an interglacial.
A multi-century cool period reached the coldest point in the 1690s, which people at the time hated, especially those affected by the famines in Europe.
We’ve had pver 300 years of intermittent global warming since then.
Then something new happened — people started real time measurements and compilation a global average temperature DURING that warming trend.
Unfortunately, there was almost no Southern Hemisphere data before 1920, and not much until WWII ended. So we have non-global temperature data until around 1950, but we live with that fact.
ALL global average compilations were made DURING a warming trend.
That means MANY new “highest on record” temperatures are EXPECTED until that warming trend ends.
Each “highest on record” temperature is EXPECTED news, not surprising news, and not bad news.
New highest on record temperatures only tell us our planet is continuing to warm slightly from the unpopular Little Ice Age period, that was coldest in the 1690s.
In fact, warming is great news, because the ONLY alternative is cooling — our planet’s temperature does not stay constant.
According to Antarctica ice core studies, no warming trend on our planet has ever been permanent — a cooling trend has always followed a warming trend.
In fact, our planet has been uncomfortably cold for roughly 90% of the past one million years, with Canada under a mile+ thick ice glacier just 20,000 years ago.
You should try to enjoy the current climate, which is the best for humans in 800 to 1,000 years (before the Little Ice Age centuries).
Your life in 2020 would not be ruined if every day happened to be one tenth of a degree warmer than in 2019.
By the way, Arctic sea ice has been stable for the past 12 years, and it would not matter if all of it melted — floating ice does not raise the sea level when it melts.
James, I’m a Libertarian, not a Democrat or Republican. I only voted for one Republican in my entire life — Reagan in 1980.
I certainly accept science, and have a BS degree too.
But I want you to know that very little science is involved with the coming climate crisis predictions — they are nothing more than wild guess, always wrong, predictions of the future climate — WRONG PREDICTIONS ARE NOT REAL SCIENCE !
The only real science is closed system infrared spectrocopy lab experiments, using artificially dried air, that suggest CO2 is a mild, harmless greenhouse gas.
Exactly what CO2 does in the actual atmosphere, where the strongest greenhouse gas, by far, is water vapor, is a mystery
Of the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s existence, only 30 years had a significant rise of average temperatures and CO2 levels at the same time — 1975 to 2005.
The rest of the 4.5 billion years had lots of climate change — but from natural causes, not man made.
In the past one 500,000 years, based on ice core studies, temperature peaks happened hundreds of years BEFORE CO2 level peaks — the evidence shows that temperature changes CAUSED CO2 level changes.
Much of real science is unanswered questions.
Only junk science has “all the answers” — always confident, but always wrong !.
The coming climate crisis, predicted since 1957, but never shows up, is junk science.
People who claim they KNOW the future climate, and claim future climate change MUST BE bad news, are not real scientists.
We have had 325 years of global warming since the cold 1690s, that has been 100% good news all the way.
Past warming = all good news (fact)
Future warming = all bad news (speculation)
That the future MUST be bad news makes no sense !
I’m afraid you have been brainwashed by climate alarmists, which is sad, because the climate of our planet rarely gets better than it is today for humans, and animals who live outdoors.
And you will be unable to enjoy our wonderful climate.
I have a climate science blog, with over 50,000 page views, but my impression is that you have bought into the “Climate Change Religion” of the leftists, who you think can predict the future climate, which they have been trying to do since 1957 (Roger Revelle), …
while grossly over predicting global warming — predicting roughly 3x actual warming,
being unable to logically explain why CO2 increased, but there was global cooling from 1940 to 1975, and
being unable to explain why there was global warming from 1910 to 1940, in spite of a very tiny CO2 increase.
YOUR TEAM is unable to explain the past climate change, makes grossly inaccurate climate predictions, and you think they can predict the climate 100 years into the future ?
If you do believe that, you are a climate science DING DING DING bat, James (I never claimed to be polite ! )
I suggest you download the data from BerkeleyEarth. Go to the raw data section and grab it. Process the data into a format that will work and then plot it. (Be careful with Excel, there are more than 1,000,000 rows of data). When I did this, I plotted the data by location and started looking at the individual plots. There are a lot of plots. The Berkeley people tell me that 2/3 of those plots show an upward trend. If 2/3 of them do show an upward trend, I should be able to find ones that do by clicking on 1000 of them. I ran into a sticky problem.
The charts never really showed an upward trend. Three values are in the dataset, TMAX, TMIN, and TAVE (those who have plotted the data can tell you why I am wrong, but they will also recognize that TOBS is less often in the set). If you look at TMAX, the numbers really don’t increase. TAVE doesn’t increase. Even TMIN, doesn’t really do much unless you are in really cold places.
PLOT all fo the data on one chart and then lay the Anomaly chart on top. It caused me to pause. The anomaly chart does not look out of place on top off all the data. What I noticed was “HOLY F, it is cold in some places; Yep it is hot in others, but it isn’t really getting hotter. At least not in the ‘Scientific’ Data”.
Then I take a kayak trip around Tampa bay and I look at the infrastructure in place for boats on the water. It is fascinating how short the ladders are and how old the docks are. Plot the tide data and you find out that the mean sea level might be increasing out in the ocean, but the actual sea level on the shores seems to not be responding the way the alarmists are telling us. Some places are little higher, some places a little lower.
Getting people to look at the data is not easy though. They will download the adjusted data that has 0 points that are not quite 0 points. The sea level does not keep the history of sea level in context. The climate destruction does not keep people in harms way in perspective.
I am a stick in the mud. You can get me to change. I will not change just because some newly minted science major believe the hype he has been taught. All the gray haired old men who used to be in the sciences are mostly gone and the sensibility they beat into their students has been removed. Excel used to default to range plotting. On a good note, they now seem to start at 0, how many charts in the general news-sphere start at 0. (VERY VERY FEW).
Rud , I doubt if many would disagree with you , but there is something about the whole alarmist campaign that does not make sense.
The “climate crisis” scare is fuelled by the traditional media and the social media such as Facebook and Google. Both types of media consume large amounts of money, not adequately recompensed by individual subsriptions or “pay per view”.
What sustains them then? Advertising .
What sustains advertising ? The ability of consumers to pay for products and the ability of manufacturers or entrepreneurs to supply said products.
What policies do the media organisations promote so enthusiastically and constantly ? A vast array of taxes to remove families’ disposable income, a sharp reduction in products created from petrochemicals , rationing of foodstuffs and a wholesale reduction in agricultural produce and restriction of personal transport to those rich enough to afford Tesla – type products.
So what effect will that have on advertisising when people have no money to buy goods and there are no goods to buy? Disastrous I suggest.
And then how will Facebook , Google , NYT , the Guardian . the Telegraph (UK) ,etc, etc and numerous commercial TV stations survive? They won’t.
The only conclusion that makes sense is that the people who run these organisations know all this and intend to decamp with their gains long before the policies they promote destroy their organisations.
mikewaite,
Agreed that advertising is guilty. Important point.
Societies like USA, Britain, my Australia, are awash in a sea of commercials.
He have slogans like “Gamble Responsibly” as Madison Ave continues to educate the public that the impossible is the normal.
Few people seem to realise how much junk they now accept as normal. Astrology, fad diets, alternative therapies, acupuncture, homeopathy, organic farming, veganism, renewable energy – the list is long.
Until “Climate Change” is given proper Science validation, until its advertising is ceased, it is on that list. Big time.
Larry, there is no need for scepticism of poor science to be wound down. It is not politics, economics, virtue signalling ot any passing fad. Hammering poor science is a proper, proven responsibily with a long history – and it needs no advertising.
Geoff S
It is not only money, but also young emotion, the same that drives people accept an Wikipedia article that describes Fox News pushing conspiracy theories. The split between people who believe in pee tapes existing, and people who describe Steele as a foreign tool for the DNC, is large, growing and the real Russian threat. That Americans are not united.
Yes, Tomorrow Never Dies was rather prescient, tho for some the media-corruption has been obvious for many decades. The US Founding Fathers noted media-corruption hundreds of years ago.
beng135,
” media-corruption”
Got to love how so many Americans apply high standards to the news, but few are willing to pay for news that meets those standards. I too love “money for nothing and chicks for free.”
In the real world, the news business has always been brutally and difficult way to make a buck, and sensationalism and partisanship SOP. That’s how Jonathan Swift (of Gulliver’s Travels) played the game in 1700 (quite well). That’s how it is done today.
High minded people seeking to provide fact-rich neutral news tend to go broke. When we pay for that kind of news, we’ll get it. It’s the free market in action.
Larry:
”media-corruption”
Open your eyes. It’s far worse today in the US than ever (and has far more worldwide influence). The US media today puts Joseph Goebbels & also the old Soviet Pravda and TASS to shame regarding propaganda. Result of generations of below-avg-intelligence, easily indoctrinated communications majors from liberal-arts schools taking over almost all of the media, while smarter people went into actual productive jobs.
Where have the skeptics been in this debate? Lots of mockery (imitating their opponents), bickering about the accuracy of the global temperature datasets (which are dilapidated, but not substantially), and complaining about the IPCC (deeply flawed, one of the best science institutions ever, and better than we deserve).
Let’s get some facts straight first:
1. Hypocrisy deserves mockery when valid criticism doesn’t work.
2. The global temperature datasets may be (euphemism alert) “dilapidated” but it’s the fiddling with them that provokes the (euphemism alert) “bickering.”
3. The IPCC was not constituted as as “science institution.” It is a political body on a one-idea juggernaut intended to redistribute wealth. We deserve much better.
Now the real problem with this proposal is that human can’t evaluate risk very well and think emotionally rather than rationally in most cases. At least the emotional thinking is the first resort (see Daniel Kahneman’s work for an explanation) and often short-circuits the critical thinking part. You will need to reduce these two barriers to get your to work.
Gary,
“Hypocrisy deserves mockery ”
Which of the stone tablets was that on? Still, good to have The Word about this. I thought that was an ineffective political tactic (which the skeptics have provided ample proof of).
“it’s the fiddling with them that provokes the (euphemism alert) “bickering.””
Blah blah blah. Perhaps another 30 years of making that claim will work, even if its done zip in the first 30 years.
” It is a political body ”
Since large science institutions seldom descend from the sky amidst angelic trumpets, they are pretty much all political institutions – with the usual limitations of such. The question is how well they operate – not if they’re perfect (when you die and go to Heaven, you’ll find perfect institutions).
The IPCC has done good work in a difficult field amidst contentious politics. The rumors about AR6 suggest that era is ending. No surprise, since the almarmists have been taking instiutions like Sherman crossing Georgia.
Larry,
Rose to the bait, didn’t you. See how hard it is to get people to get past the emotional thinking. My serious point is that people are hard-wired to react that way. You’re going to have to get the sides past that if you want a serious, productive discussion. Secondly, it’s the fear/uncertainty/doubt syndrome that makes it so difficult to correctly gauge the level of risk. People tend to panic first and think later. Serves us well when there’s a tiger lurking in the bush, not so well when we’re hunting the rabbit.
Keep trying; we’re all in this together.
I have to agree with you Gary. I am not a scientist, but I rely on the work of scientists to have an idea of how the world works and how I will be affected.
Now I hate labels, a person’s political stance seems to shut down a conversation pretty quickly these days, or inflame it in a hostile way.
As a leftist, you are backed up by powerful marketing. The message is reinforced over and over. Of course the individual doesn’t even realise that this is how propaganda works. Largely, all forms of media backs you up, you think you can trust them. The education system will largely back you up too right through university, you ought to be able to trust them!
There are so many people starting exciting groups and rallies such as Getup (here in Australia) and Extinction Rebellion, you might get on telly! They reinforce all that you’ve been taught throughout your life, all that you know to be true. Why is the rest of the world so stupid you say, why can’t they see? We can set them straight, we need to tell them repeatedly what idiots they are. The groupthink is kicking in. These groups will point you in the direction you know you have to go! It’s what you’ve grown up with. With your help they can influence the world, maybe even save it! You don’t need to know the details, just get the message out there. The scientists look after the details and 11,000 of them wouldn’t lie! The marketing for an ideology with a view to attain utopia is phenomenal.
True story, out here in ‘ordinary people land’. There are of course exceptions but on the whole leftist people truly believe that they ‘know stuff’, because it has been reinforced into their very being. They may have zero, zilch, nada, actual knowledge of anything remotely scientific, but that doesn’t matter because “the science is settled”! I’ve been told that so may times, a friend of mine was asked, ‘how would her life would change if she accepted it’?
Now people right of centre seem to be less influenced by ‘groupthink’ and in regards to how they digest information. Again, there are exceptions to the rule but in my observations this is how things seem to be.
I have been uncomfortable with the speed at which wind and solar energy has been growing globally. It seemed so sudden, a common comment I used when it came up in discussion was that I felt like it hadn’t been thought through. Six months ago I decided to do some research and it’s been a steep learning curve.
If wind and solar renewables had been properly researched by scientists, before diving in the deep end, then the global community could have saved itself alot of money and serious ecological damage. Then of course if they’d researched it all properly then it would never have even gone ahead in the first place. That money could have made a difference on so many levels in so many countries. Too many scientists were influenced by groupthink.
So getting back to Gary’s comment, yes we are all in this together. Can the scientists who have got caught up in ‘groupthink’ please rise above it, you are better than that. Can scientists in general please put politics at arms length when you are ‘at work’. Can everyone get past the petty name calling and get back to proving that the ‘theory’ is right or wrong and not make it seem like a personal vendetta.
This shouldn’t be about how good (it’s certainly been effective) the other guys marketing is, you are scientists, it should be about truth! Find a way to work together and tell the politicians to butt out. We, the ordinary folk depend on you the scientists to come up with answers that won’t destroy the world. Please don’t let egos or propaganda get in the way!
Let’s talk about ‘facts, and it would be good if you used ‘real’ and ‘actual’ data. I understand that predictions and modeling have their place. Surely the modeling needs to be not only proven and consistent, but fed ‘honest’ data too. You are scientists, not creative accountants.
Put the politics at arms length, they will always drag you down to their level. I get that your job could be on the line, Peter Ridd and others have paid the ultimate price. They are blackmailing you for telling the truth. If ‘groupthink’ scientists aren’t willing to return to the ‘scientific method’ then they have sold out the whole science community. Their work is reduced to opinion, worse than that they have ‘sold out’ on the entire global ecology and economy.
The hysteria ‘headlines’ will be asking, how could we let this happen? Only they will be talking about the wind and solar renewables disaster!
The ordinary folk deserve to know the details, why isn’t information educating the whole population by way of documentaries and such? Set on repeat so the even the ‘groupthink’ folk can get some balance.
You need to get the truth out there somehow!
Larry,
“Which of the stone tablets was that on? Still, good to have The Word about this.”
https://youtu.be/nXeTsWGPT0w
It was on that one.
There is some here that I would agree with but much I would not. “ Legions of denialists” is a term lifted from the climate alarmist camp which is intended to be hugely defamatory and often a fully inaccurate reflection on the views of sceptics. Are there “legions” of people denying the greenhouse effect or that humans may have had some unquantified impact on global temperatures? I don’t think so but would be happy to see the evidence. As far as I can tell those studies that attempted to assess the consensus of scientists all basically show that the vast majority agree there has been warming, greenhouse gases played a part and some of the increase in greenhouse gases is derived from human activities.
The argument for more study and validation of models makes sense. I would be wary of how far this goes and how many resources are committed to this however as I don’t see the evidence there is a significant problem that should “steal” resources from more worthwhile activities. It reminds me of the liberation therapy debate for MS. There was never any evidence nor a plausible explanation to support the idea that dilating veins in the head would improve MS, yet advocates, profiteers, politicians and the media all conspired to make it seem like a valid theory that required government-sponsored study. Not only were a lot of resources and time wasted that could have been dedicated to more useful research, but MS patients were often injured, defrauded and sometimes killed undergoing a procedure which (not surprising) was found to have no beneficial effect on MS. All the supporters of this research including the media neglected to apologize or even come clean about their erroneous advice.
If the above example is a lesson, then I think there is an onus on the climate alarmist community to first show clear, accurate observational data that there is actually a problem with the climate before we dedicate a whole lot more resources to the question of how much human activity and the greenhouse effect is contributing and what if any changes society should adopt in response. The last IPCC report, I’m perfect though it is, did not describe any significant adverse trends in climate that would keep anyone awake at night except those with an ingrained anxiety complex.
Just screaming louder that the world is about to end and global socialism is the only answer is an absurd and destructive behavior that will put much of science into disrepute.
Second last sentence: “I’m perfect though it is” should be “imperfect though it is”
Admirable proposal, but model validation is precisely what the data denial, ad hominem attacks, “consensus” and other attack tricks being used by the climate establishment – seeks to prevent.
The other problem is time frames. It seems unlikely that any meaningful validation can be accomplished before another 10 years goes by – at which point the panicmongering cases, if real, would be too late to stop.
It is TINA all over again (There Is No Alternative), which is why the folks opposed to the climate panic policies fight it every way possible.
This coming climate crisis, which I trace back to Roger Revelle in 1957, has almost nothing to do with real science.
We have over 100 years of adding CO2 to the atmosphere, with intermittent harmless warming (warming that could have had 100% natural causes — no one knows).
In fact, we have had 325 years of global warming since the 1690’s during the Maunder Minimum.
The gradual warming since then was 100% good news, and our current climate is better than it has been for humans and green plants since the Little Ice Age began.
If the Climate Change Crisis Cult can not realize the current climate is wonderful, and they have no idea life on our planet has flourished when it was warmer, and had a higher CO2 level than today, then how can “science” ever change their minds?
The Climate Change Crisis Cult is a secular religion, and religions are based on faith and emotions — they can not be refuted by real science, logic and data.
Then add their irrational “precautionary principle” — the climate alarmists declare they are right, even if they are wrong (do what we say because we are right, and do what we say, even if we are wrong, because there’s no time left to prove us wrong).
Kummer, you are not equipped to deal with the irrational people of the Coming Climate Change Crisis Cult. That’s not a bad thing — no logical person is equipped to deal with religious belief.
And real climate scientists are not yet equipped with enough detailed climate physics knowledge to create a real climate model that makes accurate predictions — perhaps in 20, 50 or 100 years they’ll have the answers.
Not much progress has been made since the 1970s.
Climate modelers can only use their personal OPINIONS about climate physics to create their climate computer games.
And there are so many climate computer games that one or two of them may appear to be accurate … by chance.
The only way to defeat a religion without violence is to encourage it to become radical … to the point that their beliefs will turn off most people.
The good news is The Climate Change Cult) is already moving in that direction on their own, giving us an opportunity to push them to become even more radical.
In the past two years, they came up with the UN’s 12 years to go nonsense (we should encourage them to reduce the years to 6, or 2),
Then AOC promoted the Green Party’s “Green New (or)Deal (most of which reads like a Communist Manifesto — most GND proposals are social engineering that have nothing to do with CO2 emissions).
Now we have an always angry high school dropout with a mental disease (extreme anxiety) who claims she can see CO2 gas (Thundering Greta Thunberg).
How can a real scientists deal with idiocy like that ?
My answer is to push the climate alarmists to becoming so radical they start looking crazy (they’ve looked crazy to me since the 1990s, but I’m an exception).
I’ve recently heard someone claim we have only 18 months to change our ways.
Let’s encourage wild 18 months claims .. better yet, 12 month claims !
Let’s encourage “climate leader children” much younger than Ms. Thunderberg.
Let’s encourage a $2.00 a gallon national gasoline tax to fund wind mills and solar panels.
Let’s encourage a $30,000 tax credit for purchasing an electric car that weighs less than 1,500 lbs.
By the way:
Adding CO2 to the atmosphere, which is greening our planet, and the slight warming (mainly in the higher latitudes of the Northern Peninsula), have been great news for our planet.
I think anyone who considers this planet to currently have a climate problem is a science denying, reality-denying f-o-o-l.
Mr. Kummer, you appear to be in that category — you seem to think climate change is a problem, but I doubt if you have any evidence of that, other than the usual, always wrong, wild guesses, of the future climate.
The real problem, which you completely miss, is the gross overreaction to a non-existent problem ( the IMPROVING climate of our planet ! )
We live in an improving climate (for 325 years so far) that is good news for green plants, humans, and those animals who live outdoors.
Scientists can’t solve the “climate problem” because there is no climate problem to solve.
Politicians won’t solve any problem, they specialize in wasting money and making problems worse:
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx
The word “Peninsula” in the comment
should have been “Hemisphere”.
I blame Russian hackers.
Richard,
+1! You perfectly capture the essence of our situation. We’re in ClownWorld.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/07/17/clownworld-the-last-meme/
Richard Greene: +1,000,000. Totally agree. I have yet to find anyone who can show me the bodies, cities under water, mass migrations, or other dire consequences of “climate crisis”. But I know many people who’ve moved south (Phoenix, Tucson, Fort Meyers, Pensacola etc.) in retirement. Have yet to meet anyone moving North to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Vermont, etc. to retire to beat the heat, drought, storms or other bad effects of climate doom. When I ask people who are true believers (almost everyone I know) how they’ve personally been affected I only get responses about what scientist say will happen and virtually it’s always to someone else somewhere else.
When I look at Roy Spencer’s comparison of CMIP5 models to actual observations, my reaction is 30 out of 32 models are wrong. Their authors should be thanked for their efforts, given a participation trophy and then have their funding revoked and their super computers taken away and put to work on some real problem. And Greta Thunderbug should go back to school and get try to get an education.
There has never been any “debate”. Evidence contrary to the CAGW position has been ignored or mocked. Meanwhile governments continue to push the UN anti-civilization agenda without pause The governments know the facts (how could they not?) which are plain for all to see, but they are not interested in facts. They are interested in the globalist agenda that they are being well paid to carry out. As for the scientists themselves who contribute to this I suggest you acquaint yourself with Lee Smolin’s “the trouble with Physics” which explains, admittedly in reference to theoretical physics but the arguments apply equally to climate science, the several factors which lead to groupthink in the inCrowd and demonization of the outCrowd. It’s never been a question of a reasoned debate.
As for the models they have already been falsified by the actuals. No more verification is needed.
How anyone could believe that warming out of the Little Ice Age is a bad thing is beyond me.
Scissor,
Also look forward, not just back – just as you drive on a highway.
The relevant question is about weather during the rest of the 21st century, not what happened in the 19th and 20th.
Larry,
You can’t look forward without looking backward when you are trying to understand climate.
If the problem doesn’t exist, human caused catastrophic climate change, how exactly would anyone arrive at a good policy preventing it? Many of the people, scientists among them, pushing end of life as we know it catastrophe unless we stop, now! our evil ways, are cranks. Once upon a time they burned witches.
There is no talking to them.
If AGW is small, we don’t need to do anything in particular.
If CAGW is large, like 10 years left kind of large, there’s no hope.
If DAGW is on the goldilock zone, what we done so far does nothing, and drastic, destructive measures will always cause more damage than good.
We are left with no regrets policies, which in no case will have such an effect they would help us significantly.
There is am embarrassing anti-intellectualism and one-eyed prejudiced to this whole environmental catastrophicism, ignoring economic development, employment, and environmental results. Too many media reporters who don’t know jack.
Media reporters simply mostly pretend.
Why can’t we build out USCRN globally. Cheap, accurate new baseline of actual temps.
Warfplant,
“Why can’t we build out USCRN globally.”
I agree. That’s the second of my recommendations, low-hanging fruit in getting the guidance that policy-makers need. I cut it from part one (posted here yesterday) because it was already too long.
The pretense that the surface temperature data is reliable is daft. The quality assurance process is rudimentary. And the data! If I was running a poor African nation, funding a network like USCRN would rank at two zillion on my list of “To Do’s.” If the Westerns are so big on this, let them pay for it.
Not only has Philip Jones not denied that quote but the original was published with the Climategate emails. ‘I’ve written some really awful emails’ was his admission.
Susan,
Thank you for that pointer! I’ll look it up, and use that as the cite.
Once Phil Jones put on his academician hat, he could no longer function as a scientist. I’ll say no more.
In reply to:
“Conclusions
In military theory, the key to victory is understanding the schwerpunkt – the key point at which the battle is decided. Breaking the climate policy gridlock requires identifying that point and focusing relentlessly on it.”
Nah.
Fighting and arguing is zero help in solving scientific problems.
The solution to the climate wars is to solve the unexplained piles of earth paradoxes and anomalies that are unexplainably correlated in time and which lack a physical cause which is impossible, a hard paradox.
It is a fact that there is cyclic planetary temperature change (recent and past), that unexplainably correlates with other large planetary changes on the planet (large planetary changes that are happening now without explanation) and to solar changes.
This is the most interesting problem in science.
William,
(1) “Fighting and arguing is zero help in solving scientific problems.”
There are two answers to this. First, my reference to the schwerpunkt was NOT about fighting. It was about organization and planning. Focus is a key to success in both, since neither time nor resources are even unlimited.
Second, this post is about politics. Let’s replay the opening:
“Yesterday I proposed that we try new ways to end the climate policy gridlock. Today I explore why we have not yet done so, and probably won’t do so. The reason why reveals something important about America.”
(2) “The solution to the climate wars is to solve the unexplained piles of earth paradoxes”
If you saw a hurricane coming, would you not react until scientists fully understood its dynamics? To better understand this, I suggest looking at part one of this series:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/12/12/try-climate-science-not-politics/
Strategy should and does change depending on what is the scientific reality or what you believe the scientific reality is, if the two are different.
In addition to the scientific reality (See my comment) there is the political and propaganda success reality.
We are losing the political and propaganda ‘war’.
I agree there is an urgent crisis to stop CAGW the cult, to stop CAGW the movement, to stop CAGW the belief, and so on.
The cult of CAGW are very organized, government funded, and highly connected politically.
The cult of CAGW now have control of our education systems (every developed country) and most universities.
Most news organization have daily pieces to push the cult of CAGW agenda. Many news organizations will not carry news stories that challenge CAGW.
There is outside funding to push CAG. For example, there is a free daily paper in my city that daily pushes CAGW and the UN/IPCC view, discusses Mann’s lawsuit, to push an agenda. Greta came for visit, so there of course is supporting piece with pictures. There is obviously a network to distribute and push CAGW.
The cult of CAGW are using our legal system and legislation to force us to spend money on ‘green stuff’ that will shut down our economies and do nothing to change atmospheric.
Science:
We are not in agreement concerning the science as I have seen observations and analysis which you have not seen that kill CAGW.
The observations and basic physical constraints can be used to prove what caused the recent temperature rise which has followed by the plateau was not caused by CO2.
I am saying we can change people beliefs/minds about reality. There are hard observational paradoxes that are only possible as we have made absurd physical errors.
The recent 4 years have been the warmest on earth ( worldwide averages ) than the previous 100 years. The uptrend started ramping up during the industrial revolution and especially after 1970 as the graphs show. The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade. Why do people keep putting on blinders and not accept Scientific data? I get it – Republicans don’t like science and don’t believe in it – but, come on! https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/the-10-hottest-global-years-on-record. I realize this is unpopular by the Climate Deniers – but, just thought I’d put in my opinion from what I see from various Climate sites.
James,
“The recent 4 years have been the warmest on earth ( worldwide averages ) than the previous 100 years.”
The world has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century.
“The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade.”
Ditto.
Neither of those facts is useful for the public policy debate. The answers needed from climate science are “how much” and “when.” With those forecasts, however rough, resource can be allocated in comparison with the many other critical problems we face.
Hence the central role of models, and the extreme need to have them validated. As described here:
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/12/12/try-climate-science-not-politics/
The answer needed is to the question “so what?”
“especially after 1970 as the graphs show.”
Not true.
There has been 2 periods of no warming , with El Nino events in between and at the end.
“The extent of arctic sea ice has dwindled significantly in the last decade.”
Not true,
There has been basically zero trend in Arctic sea Ice extent in the last decade
Why do leftist and socialists always rely on lie and mistruths. ?
Thread-bomb much, James?
Absolutes, no. Anomalies, perhaps. Average, is an impractical number, without a uniform distribution. Perhaps if you restricted speculation to a limited frame of reference, local, or maybe regional. The models are hypotheses, that have demonstrated little skill to hindcast, let a lone forecast, and certainly not predict. They are based on incomplete or insufficient characterization and computational unwieldy, thereby require regular injections of brown matter to reach a consensus with reality. The historical record is limited, inferred from physical proxies, and extrapolated from sparsely distributed, poorly sited stations in the first-world and a worse state world-wide. There is a question of cause and effect. There is a question of efficacy of a mechanism characterized in isolation then inferred in the wild. There are statistically insignificant changes in catastrophic conditions not accounted for by human choices, and even the latter has been mitigated through development and better choices. The climate activists deny the depth and breadth of the missing links, matter, heat, etc. that form the foundation of their beliefs.
One of the problems I see is that the climate debate ( a misnomer , because alarmists won’t debate) is that the burden of proof is bizarrely put on to the sceptics to disprove the AGW theory and dangerous global warming rather than on the alarmists who deny the natural cycles of climate. If they cannot replicate models, with empirical evidence without a myriad of excuses then QED the theory has failed. By changing the target crisis from warming to climate change they changed the theory from a proveable hypothesis ( It either warms or it doesn’t ) although the degree ( literally ) of warming is also critical, to a non disproveable theory climate change because every weather occurrence represents climate change.
The part that is debatable is not whether it’s happening or not but whether what is happening is unprecedented or dangerous . When sceptics point out that recent claimed records, are in fact not records , that the medieval warm period , 1880s , the 1930s were all periods of higher temperatures the warmists airbrush history and adjust actual data to accord with their narrative. If the sides can’t debate and agree on what the climate record is for the relatively recent past ( where you have absolutely accurate records) how does one expect that a proper debate or discussion can take place. About the future.When an ever increasing number of media outlets are complicit in presenting misleading information by deliberately ignoring verifiable facts that don’t fit their preferred narrative the suggestion that a middle ground can be found is overly optimistic. The reality is that we have now a generation of home grown sceptics indoctrinated by unknown global influencers who have an agenda to use this well entrenched fear of the end of the earth to impose global controls over people in the guise of energy policy. There has been too much commentary by crucial players in the exercise talking of one world government, redistribution of wealth, the problems with capitalism to brush off these views as being the furtive imagination of a few nut job sceptics. The forces behind the global warming scam will use every means possible to eradicate dissenting voices. It actually takes courage to stand up against the mob that has been indoctrinated by years of formalised and ever constant brain washing. Ironically if it wasn’t for the prospect of Trump getting in again with a confirmed mandate, then the future for sceptics would be quite unsure .
Zigmaster,
“is that the burden of proof is bizarrely put on to the sceptics to disprove the AGW theory and dangerous global warming rather than on the alarmists”
Exactly. That was the subject of part one in this series.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/12/12/try-climate-science-not-politics/
” who deny the natural cycles of climate. ”
No, they don’t. They just say that the warming since roughly 1950 is mostly anthropogenic.
1. The warming in the 1980s and 1990s was mostly due to global decreases in cloud cover which allowed more sunlight through to the surface. This decrease ended in the late 1990s; so did the warming.
2. The USA shows no warming since the 1990s, evidenced by the USCRN.
3. Take world land surface temperatures for the past 120 years. Split them according to geography in ocean air sheltered, OAS, and ocean air affected, OAA, regions. One finds no warming in the OAS regions since 1950! See Lansner and Pedersen, 2018.
Note:
3a. If CO2 was warming the earth it would not discriminate between OAS and OAA regions.
3b. Consider: 95% of people live in just 5% of the land, human occupied areas are predominantly OAA areas too, human occupied areas are most subject to the urban heat effect, UHE. Much 20th century warming, which isn’t explained by reductions in cloud can be explained by UHE.
When one has no good science to support one’s ideas, one should be skeptical. IPCC climate models are not science. They are thought experiments done with computers. Does anyone here really believe humanity should rebuild world energy systems at a cost exceeding $100 trillion – based on untested, non-validated climate models?
Apart from the IPCC models there is no ‘evidence‘ of dangerous man-made climate change. The IPCC models are not evidence.
Your first sentence pretty much said it all, Zigmaster. One has to recognize which, if any, opponents are actually interested in a debate. Most are not. They are only interested in winning, which usually means you doing what they say.
Some of them may pretend to engage in a debate if they think it gains them a tactical advantage. If they feel like they lost the debate then it will be declared invalid.
A bit like having a referendum on Brexit. We have effectively now had three “debates” where it was clear what the people were voting about and, for better or for worse, Brexiteers won . But I’m sure some of the Remainers will still be shouting loudly and getting free publicity from the BBC. Boris should now take the opportunity to follow through on his public musings about BBC funding because the BBC will be campaigning on the global warming alarmist side right up to the day the government says they are no longer funding their ability to do so.
Why is gridlock on this subject a bad thing?
It seems to me the correct thing for Congress to do about client is nothing. Which is not exactly what they’ve done so far, but anything they’re likely to enact now would do more and thus make the problem worse.
I would love to see them repeal at least the CAFE requirements of the Clean Air Act because of the lives they now cost, but that would have to be sold to the voters first.
The first mistake made by many commentators is always to assume that the warming we are seeing that comes out of the Little Ice Age is in any way other than a blessing saving us from deadly low temperatures and large ice coverage of the habitable World that accompanies it. All that comes after that mistake is buit on foundations of soft mud.
Why is gridlock on this subject a bad thing?
It seems to me the correct thing for Congress to do about climate is nothing. Which is not exactly what they’ve done so far, but anything they’re likely to enact now would do more and thus make the problem worse.
I would love to see them repeal at least the CAFE requirements of the Clean Air Act because of the lives they now cost, but that would have to be sold to the voters first.
Let’s do real science and let those who claim there is a climate crisis provide the evidence that there is one. Models are not evidence. Establish there’s a problem via scientific method first before looking for policy solutions. Doing otherwise is just agenda-driven chicanery. The socialist left agenda is climate policy for political power. The “capitalist” right agenda is climate policy for financial gain (e.g., Buffet leveraging federal wind subsidies for massive wind farm build out; market investors long on renewables, etc).
Capitalism = free market, any climat policy = against the free market and thus anti-capitalist.
That’s why I put capitalist in quotes. Call it crony capitalism if you like, but don’t be fooled: “capitalism” is the other side of the climate policy coin. The Green New Deal was first developed by the Green New Deal Group in the UK about 2008 as a means to revitalize capitalism.
https://caucus99percent.com/content/marxist-critique-green-new-deals-and-extinction-rebellion
I “crony capitalism” plain and simply corruption.
something like the Berkley Earth project, perhaps? Another skeptic funded attempt to verify temp series and prove/disprove warming?
remind me what that found?
Larry,
What does it mean to “End the climate policy gridlock”? The debate is not about what climate policy is best. The debate is over the need for a climate policy at all. Agreeing to work towards a good climate policy is conceding the argument that one is needed and would be beneficial, but those asserting a problem have provided very little evidence that one is needed, and get very agitated when asked about evidence. The question is further muddled with the realization that the climate issue is a smoke screen for an attack on Western Civilization, culture and economics.
Please pardon the analogy, but you sound like Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938.
I am genuinely curious about your vision of a future without climate policy gridlock. What does that look like? How will it be beneficial, and to whom? Are you arguing for weather resilience? If so, why attach that worthy goal to a notion that we must now try and control the climate? How should skeptics have to behave to bring about a resolution? How should scientists, politicians, activists and the media have to behave to bring about a resolution in climate policy? How do leopards change their spots?
It is clear to me that we are in the waning millenias of the Holocene. Temperatures have been cooling for 8,000 years, and will likely continue to cool until we enter the next glaciation. Long before that happens, slight cooling in the next 3-4 decades will put an end to the need for an AGW climate policy! Until then, the goal should be preventing the fear-mongers from doing much damage, and I don’t see how that happens by appeasing them with negotiations.
Larry is still making the fundamental mistake in his assumption that Climate Change is about the science. And thus his belief that science can still solve the policy problem is hopelessly wrong.
Joel,
“Larry is still making the fundamental mistake in his assumption that Climate Change is about the science.”
I suggest that you re-read my posts. Especially this one. You appear to have totally missed what I wrote. The message is to find key issues we can agree on – such as preparing for repeat of past extreme weather – and questions that both sides agree provide critical information testing the warnings. And for the public to demand action. All of those things are politics.
Also, your sentence makes no sense. Climate change is climate change. It’s not “about” anything. Perhaps you refer to the debate about the best public policy response to climate change.
Lastly – as Willis wisely asks, please respond to direct quotes.
Larry,
Of course I’m talking about the politics and policy of climate change. Both no longer need nor are based on science. It hasn’t been about science since the hockey stick 20 years ago.
They are running on propaganda now because the scientists not in the alarmist camp have been silenced and/or cowed. A few like Cliff Mass still believes his science can carry the day while they work on pushing him out of his faculty job. Ask Judith Curry or Peter Ridd how that works out.
Until someone demonstrates experimentally that increasing CO₂ is significantly increasing atmospheric warming, and quantifies how much warming it causes, I’m a skeptic. Call me a denialist if ad hominem attacks are your thing.
So far I haven’t seen any experiments that try to measure how much warming is caused by CO₂ in an atmosphere of mixed gases: 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% water vapor, 0.93% argon, 0.0408% CO₂, and trace amounts of neon, helium, methane, etc. The only experiments I’ve seen show the wavelengths of infrared radiation absorbed by CO₂, water vapor, and other gases, and identify wavelengths of CO₂ absorption that overlap with water vapor, the most potent “greenhouse gas”.
The obvious question is, in the presence of water vapor, does CO₂ trap any significant heat, or is it overwhelmed by the amount trapped by water vapor? Please show me the experimental data that quantifies this and I will happily reconsider my skepticism that the contribution of CO₂ to “global warming” is anything more than virtually non-existent. So far I have seen no data to verify this, only (ridiculous) computer models based on (unverified) math about the heat-trapping capability of CO₂ in a mixed-gas atmosphere.
All the hysteria about global warming is founded on those computer models. Measurements of global temperatures and sea level rise show nothing to support the hysteria, and certainly nothing that should cause policymakers to adopt measures beyond simply adapting to a slowly changing local environment.
“Much of the Right easily incorporated denialism into their worldview, along with creationism, denial of Keynesian economics, and belief in faux history about the Civil War and Thanksgiving.”
It really is sad how those on the left actually believe the lies they tell each other.
Denialism: Noting that the disasters being predicted aren’t happening isn’t denialism. Of course the left never has been good about accepting that reality refutes their beliefs.
Creationism: Once again, you have to lie about what other believe in order to prove to yourself how smart you are.
Keynesian economics has failed completely where ever it’s been tried.
As to faux histories, the right can’t hold a candle to the left in it’s abilities to re-write history.
It’s ironic that certain theistic philosophies advise to recognize a separation of logical domains, while certain “secular” philosophies normalize a conflation of logical domains and a deference to mortal gods.
As the ONLY proven system for arriving at the truth in matters pertaining to the workings of nature such as the Climate, the Scientific Method should have been strictly adhered to.
That didn’t happen. One side went immediately on offense and tossed out the traditional rule book as part of its offensive plans. The Climate topic was political from its beginnings. The meritorious CO2 hypothesis was quickly declared to contain certain knowledge of future disasters. It was a perfect political tool and it took off running almost of it’s own accord.
The scientific method was abandoned from the start…because the potential political gains far outweighed any trifling losses from collateral damage…like the truth.
Second, testing the models (both sides are confident of the result, and so should be willing to support funding for the test). But we live in ClownWorld, so climate debate resembles a food fight in a grade school cafeteria. (3) Why not test the models?
—
Does author Larry Kummer even realize that actual global climate-change occurs on the scale of a minimum of 250 years, and as much as 500 years of observations to unambiguously detect a global climate trend change? That’s presuming a change even occurs within that interval – which it may not. And if it does not it would take as much as 1,000 years to see an unambiguous global change of climate trend (warmer or cooler).
Does Larry Kummer also understand that a test can only be observational, after the fact?
Nothing else is an actual test of a model’s prediction. So testing is not even possible on the scale of actual global climate trend change. This is what makes them a fools-errand, they can’t be tested or improved on. All you can do is forever make more model (why there are so many), and these also will forever remain beyond actual science untestability.
Do not confuse calibrations to curve-fit with actual testing of observational results, Larry.
These untestable models even run hot even on the shortest possible multi-decadal time span, of weather cycle noise trends! But you still want to pretend these things can be “tested” on the scale of actual climate-change?
Does Larry realize the concept of climate-change emerged from geology? That in geology things are seen to occur rather slowly, compared to the span of a human life? That the smallest scale of unambiguous climate-change occurs on a scale of about 10 generations of consecutive human lives? Larry, this does not occur in the span of half of your life – if you were told it’s possible, you’ve been lied to.
If you don’t understand that much you’re of course going to buy into the idea that climate-models offer a quasi-scientific crystal-ball on trends. They can’t, they don’t and they never will because they are observationally untestable, and thus not amenable to empirical Science methods.
Weather models are scientific models because they can actually can be observationally tested and measured, everywhere and every day. But climate models can not be observationally tested in any useful or practical way. They are fundamentally different due to this and your testing proposal is completely out.
If you want to test climate models Larry first you need to invent a time-machine, but then you don’t need to test the models, because you will already know the future of the climate and can verify it without even reference to a model. So the ‘climate’ models will never be tested, no real Scientist would accept less than observational testing because there’s literally no other kind of confirming Scientific test possible.
If you can’t even accept that Scientific reality you’re already lost.
Much of the Right easily incorporated denialism into their worldview, along with creationism, denial of Keynesian economics, and belief in faux history about the Civil War and Thanksgiving.
The right, in America, is libertarian (i.e. natural reconciliation). The center is conservative (i.e. moderate). The left is progressive liberal (i.e. monotonically divergent). Then there is a left-right nexus of totalitarians and anarchists. The weird thing is the conflation of logical domains by what are purportedly “scientific” or “secular” people, the indulgence of diversity that judges and labels people by classes based on color, not character, and proliferation of supporting institutions, organizations, and businesses, in what can be presumed is an evolutionary tactic to avoid cancellation, occupation, etc.
The South was motivated by political, social, economic considerations, as well as slavery. The North was motivated by political, social, economic considerations, as well as slavery.
The “native Americans” or the diverse nations and tribes were not a monolithic entity either internally or otherwise. Their treatment, their native conflicts, their alliances, foreign and domestic, complicated relationships between indigenous nations, tribes, and later with native Americans.
The guilty ones preventing good policy about [political] climate change and faux… complex science and history… and contemporary wicked and marginal solutions.
Increasing CO2 has been a boon to mankind. Whatever warming over the past 150 years also a boon.
No one has given us the name and address of a “global warming” casualty.
Where I live the low temp today is 78F and the high will be 85F. People here are thriving and reproducing like rabbits. Food is abundant. Sea levels are about where they have been for 100 years.
Life is good here on Subic Bay, PI.
Get a live climatistas!
Time will tell if AGW actually is real or not. It is impossible to tell right now the true sensitivity of co2. Even if a person came up with the true sensitivity their methods would be debated forever from reliable sources on both sides. So even if that person were correct the truth would not make it to the public ( especially if the sensitivity was low ).
Doesn’t matter. Any harm from a realistic warming is not proven, and the costs of battling CO2 is prohibitive anyway.
More Fabius Maximus fantasy masquerading at red herring strawman.
Nice words. They mean squat! Those words are mouthed by an actor playing a fictional character using words dreamed up by script writers to meet their needs for a fictional story. Script writers who never wrote for newspapers or ignore what they learned, if they did.
The strict rules of writing for newspapers, in use for well over a hundred years, are the questions “Who” What? When? Where? Why? How?”.
It doesn’t matter how the reporters questioned their sources, the writing order is essential and critical to newspapers. With the least important answers to questions written last, allows an editor to easily trim a story from the bottom and to still get the most important questions answered and in print.
More fantasy based upon total fiction!
1) Samuel Clemens learned the hard way to not believe or buy into multiple terrific buys, inventions and predictions! That is because Samuel Clemens lost a great deal of money supporting baseless predictions and worthless inventions.
2) Samuel Clemens did state directly, not part of a fictional work;
3) Samuel Clemens described his writing “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”:
http://www.twainquotes.com/CYknight.gif
4) Samuel Clemens addresses statistics and lies:
Later the quote source was corrected as belonging to Leonard H. Courtney, not Disraeli.
The problem I see is that skeptics demand a scientific answer to a political/legal problem. Politics and law often can not wait for science to settle a scientific question. That being the case, politics and law will always chose to go with the most popular explanation of the scientific question, especially when there is no popular refuting explanation.
Look for things to be status quo until a popular theory refuting CO2 emerges.
Larry, you seem to be alarmed about something.
As Anthony has demonstrated, the temperature monitoring system (and resulting data) is not merely “dilapidated” but execrable and totally unfit to purpose. The satellite data has the potential to be fit for purpose, but the official record keepers keep adjusting it to match the surface station data, thereby begging the question of actual measurable warming.
Dr Michael Connolly and Dr Ronan Connolly analysed data from 20 million Radiosondes. They plotted molar density against pressure to discover equations of state for the troposphere & tropopause.
— Dr Michael Connolly. youtube | paper
As this relates to the denier insult, Michael and Ronan Connolly are scientists. The author of this baiting piece is not a scientist.
There are a very large number of ways in which the greenhouse gas effect can be modelled. None of these are settled science. Because none have ever been tested nor validated. When tests are done, they should certainly include tests proposed by red-team members and skeptics. Off the top of my head, I recall 3 ways to model the effect of radiative gases which show no significant temperature rise.
Larry,
What I find missing from all the discussions on climate change is any challenge to the idea that a warming planet is a BAD thing. I can not see how anyone wins the argument that we would better off if we were cooling…and any idea that we can achieve a steady state climate is just absurd.
John,
A vast – gigantic – body of research shows that rapid big warming has net ill effects. IMO, too much attention has been devoted to this. The relevant question is what are we likely to get, how fast?
In general, rapid changes in conditions are destabilizing for societies. That is, the rate of change is the key factor – not the specific kind of change. 50% inflation is lethal if occurring in a year, but trivial if over 50 years.
It’s not so much the climate, it’s the change.
Notice how they stress climate change?, and their slogans:
— Fight climate change.
— Stop climate change.
In a sense it does not matter to them what direction the change is so long as they can blame change on people and propose a way to stop change.
The problem as I see it is that nature controls the climate, not humans (humans have a small part to play mostly from land use changes), and the climate community has VERY poor understanding of nature, it’s history, and all the processes that affect the climate.
Just a little example, the sun’s activity as it cycles, causes Earth’s temperature to vary. This is obvious but the IPCC and the modelers assume that the sun’s activity is too low to be of any real consequence to the climate. This assumption by the IPCC et al. is built on the laughable idea that we measure and understand all the effects that solar activity has on the planet. The same can be said of variations in ocean currents, cloud cover, and a host of other parameters that are just approximated by the climate community.
” In reaction to this rose the legions of denialists. Not skeptics, but people denying the “greenhouse” effect and anthropogenic warming. The mainstream skeptic community contributed to the poisonous gridlock by embracing deniers ..”
Pulled this out of somewhere?
A dark warm recess?
Legions of Denailists?
Can you name one?
Who denies a Defined Greenhouse Gas Effect ?Or A specified amount of Anthropogenic Warming?
Just how much of the current recovery from the little ice age is down to the works of man?
Mocking an unspecified Doom is not denial.
Until the “Concerned Ones” start using the scientific method,they have nothing but belief .
I ain’t buying that religion.
Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming caused by mankind increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is not even a thesis,pure speculation that is contradicted by the geological record.
How can one deny Climate Change?
Define this “Climate Change”
None of the Concerned ones will define what that term means to them.
Climate has changed.
So we need to reestablish the Laurentian Ice Sheet?
Cause “Climate Change is Bad”.
Finally the “Cause” is not winning.
President Trump is the most obvious example of failure.
No USA Money,no UN rip off.
No Climate Accord.
Saint Greta,the Magic Retard, is an act of desperation and insanity.
As well as being child abuse of the lowest kind.
This is your idea of winning?
The Cult of Calamitous Climate has peaked and is going down.
Tough for the bureaucracies who staked their futures on it.
And even tougher for the politicians who claimed the Cloak of Green for themselves.
Gang Green will be remembered, as similar to the Witch Burners.
What makes the IPCC “one of the best science institutions ever” ? Do they have real scientific luminaries, i.e. people whose work would be appreciated outside of climate science? I know Lindzen gets credit for explaining the quasi-biennial oscillation, which is impressive to me as a different kind of physicist, but he hasn’t been in the IPCC for many years. Who else at the IPCC has produced science of general interest?Let’s exclude global warming, since that is the topic whose importance is being debated.
“Breaking the climate policy gridlock requires identifying that point and focusing relentlessly on it. I believe that is model validation.”
Larry, I don’t think you know much about models or their validation. There is indeed a well established process for validation, which basically ensures that a program performs according to specs. IOW it does what it was designed to do. GCMs generally do that, else they crash. One merit of having so many independent efforts is that if they agree, you can be fairly sure that there isn’t a big problem of invalidity in that sense.
People here tend to want to test them in ways that amount to successfully forecasting weather. But they weren’t designed to do that, as anyone concerned will tell you. So there is no point in pinning validity on something they aren’t designed to do. If you think they should be designed to do that, that is a separate argument.
So if they are correctly implementing the physics that is specified, the question is whether that physics is appropriate or not. That is not a computer code validation issue. The best test is the kind that Zeke and Hansen have done – where there is enough record to test a climate projection, having regard to scenario provisions, how did they do?
Models are validated, against what criteria/measure?
Nick,
I’ve been a s/w developer for over 35 years, and your statement “…validation, which basically ensures that a program performs according to specs. IOW it does what it was designed to do,” is only half of the answer. An engineer could hand you specs that say steel melts at 105°C and concrete has the hardness of diamond, and you could duly write code that applies those principles. Would you consider that the code was validated just because it parroted back those answers? Your building, or bridge, or whatever collapses, but the fact that the code “did what it was designed to do” means everything’s cool?
A computer model of some process that is not completely understood is not a “model”; it’s a guess.
James,
“An engineer could hand you specs that say steel melts at 105°C and concrete has the hardness of diamond”
In a normal engineering model, these properties will be supplied by the user. What is the melting point of steel? The hardness of concrete? You shouldn’t be hard coding these things in to a program.
Whether the user supplies the correct data for their application isn’t a computer model validation issue.
“Nick Stokes December 15, 2019 at 12:18 am
You shouldn’t be hard coding these things in to a program.”
Unless they are climate models, right?
Again, you know nothing about climate models. Like all other such models, they will have a database of physical constants which the user can vary depending on the application. They are not hard coded.
I know and understand about validation in computer coding and physical engineering (To +/- 2 microns AND the programming of CNC machines), and how to validate results. Please explain how coding in computer models is different?
“Nick Stokes December 15, 2019 at 1:02 am
Again, you know nothing about climate models. Like all other such models, they will have a database of physical constants which the user can vary depending on the application. They are not hard coded.”
I know coding! Constants that vary are called variables! I am glad you do not model aircraft as they would have fallen from the sky before they got off the ground.
“Nick Stokes December 15, 2019 at 1:02 am
Again, you know nothing about climate models. Like all other such models, they will have a database of physical constants which the user can vary depending on the application. They are not hard coded.”
A “user” of climate models is usually a Govn’t, used to set a policy. So, the “user” can change any PHYSICAL constant, in a database (What database, who knows?), depending on the “application” when using computer models. In effect, the output of the model is what is desired by the “user” and “application” by changing “physical constants”.
In other words making sh!t up! Thanks for confirming that.
Nick,
“There is indeed a well established process for validation, which basically ensures that a program performs according to specs.”
I am astonished at the consistency with which you provide misinformation in these comments.
Model validation is the process by which model outputs are systematically compared to independent real-world observations to judge the quantitative and qualitative correspondence with reality.
As said in one of the early big works about this: “For this reason, what we actually seek to establish is a high degree of face validity. Face validity means that, from all outward indications, the model appears to be an accurate representation of the {real world} system. From this standpoint, validating a model is the process of substantiating that the model, within its domain of applicability, is sufficiently accurate for the intended application.” (Schlesinger, 1979)
For more about this very basic question, Wikipedia provides a wealth of links to authoritative sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_model_validation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verification_and_validation_of_computer_simulation_models
Also see this, which would be a good starting point for climate science’s validation of its models – rather than the ad hoc methods they now use.
3X theoretical CO2 warming through water vapor and cloud interactions is not physics, Nick – its speculation. With the absence of the model-specified tropical tropospheric hot spot, the whole game falls apart.
You heard it here first folks. Computer model coding uses constants that vary, as required by the user and application in that coding. Ok, apply your variable constant in your computer climate models for gravity given gravity affects the weight of the atmosphere and pressure! D’uh!
I think he meant physical input parameter weighting (fudge).
Even so, Nick appears to thinks observational climate change trend testing of such models can be performed on a human timescale rather than on a geological time scale of sediment deposition layering, which makes a mockery of a duration as short as the era of coal use for electrical power generation.
They’re not testable Nick. However, they largely don’t even track the weather cycle noise in periods less than 30 years – which is not the scale of actual climate trend changes, sorry if you were told it is but the planet strongly disagrees, and in such situations it’s the planet that’s always right.
He didn’t say that. He is wrong, or ambiguous, on almost every count in my experience in coding. Maybe in my industry, lives actually matter. Computer simulations are just that, rubbish! Testimony to that is the tail plane on the A380, worked well in a computer model, failed in reality. So too the Boeing 777X, failed in reality.
Having said that, these days, all of my computer coding development happens in virtual machines. I do not let my code “out in to the wild” without through verification and testing. QA. Computer model coding seems not to require any of that.
My experience in computers and coding extends to keeping people alive with medical devices. I don’t see any models, and variable constants, in that coding work. Does not pass the sniff test IMO!
Voodoo science.
The sooner we eliminate the deniers and their God, eliminate those that disagree with Keynes’ math for economic purposes, adapt a worldview of Hansen that the world cannot sustain current populations, well then we can garner the power of the nations on this thing.
I think your missing a key observation here. That being AGW is a religion. It is not a scientific discipline following the scientific method. It is clearly obvious that it doesn’t follow scientific rigor.
AGW is not like a religion that many became familiar with in the course of our modern times if you grew up in a free country. It not like an obscure cult. It is a religion melded with the state as in a feudal society. It has its own ministers in the courts of the governments and kings. It is universal. It is orthodox. It has it own doctrines and dogmas that those ministers use as guidelines to advice the nobles. The policies of the state and the religion are married. It has its own cathedrals in the form of university ivory towers. The institutions and the professional clergy of AGW are supported by the public teat. Heretics are punished via excommunication -at least so far. It has its courts of inquisition. The choice to not believe is not an option to the professional clergy of AGW, nor to those that consider themselves the nobles. Enforcement is sought in the form of “climate action.” It has its own scriptures in the form of the models and academic papers. Those scriptures are not open to interpretation, but the clergy of AGW must tell the ordinary folk what they really mean. Papers and models and hypothesis outside the institutions of the AGW clergy (consensus) and gate keepers are considered apocryphal at best.
That is why it has not made progress in the USA like it has elsewhere. The USA threw off such shackles with the American Revolution.
KT66.
That is the best explanation of the Doom by Catastrophic Climate meme,I have read so far.
Thank you.
Anthony,that may be a posting in its own right.
For the nebulous nature of this Climate Argument is its number one advantage,neither fish nor fowl it is hard to argue a subject that is not science nor completely political,however as defined by KT66 a truer shape emerges.
It is not a religion. It is a political movement written in the language of pseudoscience. The shock troops and hard core are activists. IPCC pseudoscientists are careerists and mercenaries. Take away their funding and the pseudoscientists will go elsewhere. Their only motivation is money. They do not believe in this so-called religion.
No. Because the whole IPPC process is a bad joke. Stressing the importance of good science is the least one should do. Yet because standards sunk so low they can simply move elsewhere and ignore everything one says about models, failed projections, data manipulation. The only route which might work is the red/blue team process proposed by William Happer. Followed by withdrawal of all funding for climate pseudoscience.
It began as a political problem. Scientists have shown themselves incapable and unwilling to tackle it. It is best solved by politics. US withdrawal from the IPCC after a red/blue team reevaluation is a good start.
The IPCC once said, “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.”
Oops. Can’t tell the truth! Hide the decline! Were they lying then, or are they lying now?
Good talk, worth watching: Peter Ridd on peer review and the replication crisis, and when it matters.
I believe in common sense and what I’ve seen with my own eyes for 49 years …climate alarmists are the most stupid walk of life on earth ..
“if the climate wars end badly – either from climate change or a repeat of past extreme weather ” This one sentence proves what a fool you are Mr. Kummer.