Guest post by Bill Gray Professor Emeritus, Colorado State University
(AMS Fellow, Charney Award recipient, and over 50-year member)
June 2011
I am very disappointed at the downward path the AMS has been following for the last 10-15 years in its advocacy of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis. The society has officially taken a position many of us AMS members do not agree with. We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCMs) results and the four IPCC reports do not realistically give accurate future projections. To take this position which so many of its members do not necessarily agree with shows that the AMS is following more of a political than a scientific agenda.
The AMS Executive Director Keith Seitter and the other AMS higher-ups and the Council have not shown the scientific maturity and wisdom we would expect of our AMS leaders. I question whether they know just how far off-track the AMS has strayed since they foolishly took such a strong pro-AGW stance.
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) was founded in 1919 as an organization dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge of weather and climate. It has been a wonderful beacon for fostering new understanding of how the atmosphere and oceans function. But this strong positive image is now becoming tarnished as a result of the AMS leadership’s capitulating to the lobby of the climate modelers and to the outside environmental and political pressure groups who wish to use the current AMS position on AGW to help justify the promotion of their own special interests. The effectiveness of the AMS as an objective scientific organization is being greatly compromised.
We AMS members have allowed a small group of AMS administrators, climate modelers, and CO2 warming sympathizers to maneuver the internal workings of our society to support AGW policies irrespective of what our rank-and-file members might think. This small organized group of AGW sympathizers has indeed hijacked our society.
The AMS should be acting as a facilitator for the scientific debate on the pro and con aspects of the AGW hypothesis, not to take a side in the issue. The AMS has not held the type of open and honest scientific debates on the AGW hypothesis which they should have. Why have they dodged open discussion on such an important issue? I’ve been told that the American Economic Society does not take sides on controversial economic issues but acts primarily to help in stimulating back and forth discussion. This is what the AMS should have been doing but haven’t.
James Hansen’s predictions of global warming made before the Senate in 1988 are turning out to be very much less than he had projected. He cannot explain why there has been no significant global warming over the last 10-12 years.
Many of us AMS members believe that the modest global warming we have observed is of natural origin and due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in the globe’s deep ocean circulation resulting from salinity variations. These changes are not associated with CO2 increases. Most of the GCM modelers have little experience in practical meteorology. They do not realize that the strongly chaotic nature of the atmosphere-ocean climate system does not allow for skillful initial value numerical climate prediction. The GCM simulations are badly flawed in at least two fundamental ways:
- Their upper tropospheric water vapor feedback loop is grossly wrong. They assume that increases in atmospheric CO2 will cause large upper-tropospheric water vapor increases which are very unrealistic. Most of their model warming follows from these invalid water vapor assumptions. Their handlings of rainfall processes are quite inadequate.
- They lack an understanding and treatment of the fundamental role of the deep ocean circulation (i.e. Meridional Overturning Circulation – MOC) and how the changing ocean circulation (driven by salinity variations) can bring about wind, rainfall, and surface temperature changes independent of radiation and greenhouse gas changes. These ocean processes are not properly incorporated in their models. They assume the physics of global warming is entirely a product of radiation changes and radiation feedback processes. They neglect variations in global evaporation which is more related to surface wind speed and ocean minus surface and air temperature differences. These are major deficiencies.
The Modelers’ Free Ride. It is surprising that GCMs have been able to get away with their unrealistic modeling efforts for so long. One explanation is that they have received strong support from Senator/Vice President Al Gore and other politicians who for over three decades have attempted to make political capital out of increasing CO2 measurements. Another reason is the many environmental and political groups (including the mainstream media) have been eager to use the GCM climate results as justification to push their own special interests that are able to fly under the global warming banner. A third explanation is that they have not been challenged by their peer climate modeling groups who apparently have seen possibilities for similar research grant support and publicity by copying Hansen and the earlier GCM modelers.
I anticipate that we are going to experience a modest naturally-driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years. This will be similar to the weak global cooling that occurred between the early-1940s and the mid-1970s. It is to be noted that CO2 amounts were also rising during this earlier cooling period which were opposite to the expected CO2-temperature association.
An expected 15-20 year cooling will occur (in my view) because of the current strong ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) that has now been established in the last decade and a half and ought to continue for another couple of decades. I explain most of the last century and-a-half general global warming since the mid-1800s (start of the industrial revolution) to be a result of a long multi-century slowdown in the ocean’s MOC circulation. Increases of CO2 could have contributed only a small fraction (0.1-0.2oC) of the roughly ~ 0.7oC surface warming that has been observed since 1850. Natural processes have had to have been responsible for most of the observed warming over the last century and a half.
Debate. The AMS is the most relevant of our country’s scientific societies as regards to its members having the most extensive scientific and technical background in meteorology and climate. It should have been a leader in helping to adjudicate the claims of the AGW advocates and their skeptical critics. Our country’s Anglo-Saxon derived legal system is based on the idea that the best way to get to the truth is to have opposite sides of a continuous issue present their differing views in open debate before a non partisan jury. Nothing like this has happened with regards to the AGW issue. Instead of organizing meetings with free and open debates on the basic physics and the likelihood of AGW induced climate changes, the leaders of the society (with the backing of the society’s AGW enthusiasts) have chosen to fully trust the climate models and deliberately avoid open debate on this issue. I know of no AMS sponsored conference where the AGW hypothesis has been given open and free discussion. For a long time I have wanted a forum to express my skepticism of the AGW hypothesis. No such opportunities ever came within the AMS framework. Attempts at publication of my skeptic views have been difficult. One rejection stated that I was too far out of the mainstream thinking. Another that my ideas had already been discredited. A number of AGW skeptics have told me they have had similar experiences.
The climate modelers and their supporters deny the need for open debate of the AGW question on the grounds that the issue has already been settled by their model results. They have taken this view because they know that the physics within their models and the long range of their forecast periods will likely not to be able to withstand knowledgeable and impartial review. They simply will not debate the issue. As a defense against criticism they have resorted to a general denigration of those of us who do not support their AGW hypothesis. AGW skeptics are sometimes tagged (I have been) as no longer being credible scientists. Skeptics are often denounced as tools of the fossil-fuel industry. A type of McCarthyism against AGW skeptics has been in display for a number of years.
Recent AMS Awardees. Since 2000 the AMS has awarded its annual highest award (Rossby Research Medal) to the following AGW advocates or AGW sympathizers; Susan Solomon (00), V. Ramanathan (02), Peter Webster (04), Jagadish Shukla (05), Kerry Emanuel (07), Isaac Held (08) and James Hansen (09). Its second highest award (Charney Award) has gone to AGW warming advocates or sympathizers; Kevin Trenberth (00), Rich Rotunno (04), Graeme Stephens (05) Robert D. Cess (06), Allan Betts (07), Gerald North (08) and Warren Washington and Gerald Meehl (09). And the other Rossby and Charney awardees during this period are not known to be critics of the AGW warming hypothesis.
The AGW biases within the AMS policy makers is so entrenched that it would be impossible for well known and established scientists (but AGW skeptics) such as Fred Singer, Pat Michaels, Bill Cotton, Roger Pielke, Sr., Roy Spencer, John Christie, Joe D’Aleo, Bob Balling, Jr., Craig Idso, Willie Soon, etc. to ever be able to receive an AMS award – irrespective of the uniqueness or brilliance of their research.
What Working Meteorologists Say. My interaction (over the years) with a broad segment of AMS members (that I have met as a result of my seasonal hurricane forecasting and other activities) who have spent a sizable portion of their careers down in the meteorological trenches of observations and forecasting, have indicated that a majority of them do not agree that humans are the primary cause of global warming. These working meteorologists are too experienced and too sophisticated to be hoodwinked by the lobby of global climate modelers and their associated propagandists. I suggest that the AMS conduct a survey of its members who are actually working with real time weather-climate data to see how many agree that humans have been the main cause of global warming and that there was justification for the AMS’s 2009 Rossby Research Medal (highest AMS award) going to James Hansen.
Global Environmental Problems. There is no question that global population increases and growing industrialization have caused many environmental problems associated with air and water pollution, industrial contamination, unwise land use, and hundreds of other human-induced environmental irritants. But all these human-induced environmental problems will not go away by a draconian effort to reduce CO2 emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant but a fertilizer. Humankind needs fossil-fuel energy to maintain its industrial lifestyle and to expand this lifestyle in order to be able to better handle these many other non-CO2 environmental problems. There appears to be a misconception among many people that by reducing CO2 we are dealing with our most pressing environmental problem. Not so.
It must be remembered that advanced industrial societies do more for the global environment than do poor societies. By greatly reducing CO2 emissions and paying a great deal more for our then needed renewable energy we will lower our nation’s standard of living and not be able to help relieve as many of our and the globe’s many environmental, political, and social problems.
Obtaining a Balanced View on AGW. To understand what is really occurring with regards to the AGW question one must now bypass the AMS, the mainstream media, and the mainline scientific journals. They have mostly been preconditioned to accept the AGW hypothesis and, in general, frown on anyone not agreeing that AGW is, next to nuclear war, our society’s most serious long range problem.
To obtain any kind of a balanced back-and-forth discussion on AGW one has to consult the many web blogs that are both advocates and skeptics of AGW. These blogs are the only source for real open debate on the validity of the AGW hypothesis. Here is where the real science of the AGW question is taking place. Over the last few years the weight of evidence, as presented in these many blog discussions, is beginning to swing against the AGW hypothesis. As the globe fails to warm as the GCMs have predicted the American public is gradually losing its belief in the prior claims of Gore, Hansen, and the other many AGW advocates.
Prediction. The AMS is going to be judged in future years as having foolishly sacrificed its sterling scientific reputation for political and financial expediency. I am sure that hundreds of our older deceased AMS members are rolling in their graves over what has become of their and our great society.
[duplicate text removed ~ ctm]
As I read through the dialog from and to Chris Colose several things occurred to me.
First, Chris Colose, you came here for this post with a pre-determined low opinion about the qualitiy of WUWT. You appeared to act in a condescending and consensus fawning manner that you knew (from previous visits here) would create the response you got. Chris, you have done this before at WUWT. Why did you come here? Did you really come here in an open search for knowledge and open debate or for emotional kicks?
Secondly, Chris Colose, I was thinking of you when I encountered one of Mark Lynas’ comments at Judith Curry’s site on the subject of Lynas starting to be attacked by his old Consensus/AGW friends/colleagues because of his recent critical position on blatant IPCC conflict of interest. This following quote from Lynas may give you food for thought regarding your consensus acceptance of climate science per se.
Good luck in you climate science career.
John
“Theo Goodwin, skeptics are even denying what Arrhenius says, as he included the water vapor feedback in his estimate too. You don’t have to go beyond Arrhenius to make the argument that prevails today.”
—
Regardless of how many people decided to add water vapor, there still isn’t a shred of evidence that more CO2 leads to more water vapor.
It’s not denialism to when what you are denying is untrue.
A statement of the the Scientific Method and the Scientific Computer Modeling Method:
The Scientific Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a hypothesis that possibly explains the phenomenon.
3. Perform a test in an attempt to disprove or invalidate the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is disproven, return to steps 1 and 2.
4. A hypothesis that stubbornly refuses to be invalidated may be correct. Continue testing.
The Scientific Computer Modeling Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a computer model that mimics the behavior of the phenomenon.
3. Select observations that conform to the model predictions and dismiss observations as of inadequate quality that conflict with the computer model.
4. In instances where all of the observations conflict with the model, “refine” the model with fudge factors to give a better match with pesky facts. Assert that these factors reveal fundamental processes previously unknown in association with the phenomenon. Under no circumstances willingly reveal your complete data sets, methods, or computer codes.
5. Upon achieving a model of incomprehensible complexity that still somewhat resembles the phenomenon, begin to issue to the popular media dire predictions of catastrophe that will occur as far in the future as possible, at least beyond your professional lifetime.
6. Continue to “refine” the model in order to maximize funding and the awarding of Nobel Prizes.
7. Dismiss as unqualified, ignorant, and conspiracy theorists all who offer criticisms of the model.
Repeat steps 3 through 7 indefinitely.
Chris Colose says:
June 16, 2011 at 11:43 pm
“This only leaves me to conclude that those, such as KevinUK who claim that the greenhouse-based physics underlying modern global warming is not solid, are only doing so based on unfamiliarity with the literature. ”
Well, Chris, it may take you some decades of experience to realize that physics questions are settled not by what appears in the literature, but by what appears in the real world. On the other hand, you might just languish in the ivory tower of empty ideas forever.
Roy Tucker says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:31 pm
“The Scientific Computer Modeling Method
1. Observe a phenomenon carefully.
2. Develop a computer model that mimics the behavior of the phenomenon.
3. Select observations that conform to the model predictions and dismiss observations as of inadequate quality that conflict with the computer model.
4. In instances where all of the observations conflict with the model, “refine” the model with fudge factors to give a better match with pesky facts. Assert that these factors reveal fundamental processes previously unknown in association with the phenomenon. Under no circumstances willingly reveal your complete data sets, methods, or computer codes.”
You have made a noble effort here, but I want to suggest some corrections.
3. Select some output from the model and declare that it represents some natural phenomenon, whether that be a natural process on Earth, such as La Nina, or one originating in the sun, such as various kinds of radiation.
3A. Repeat step 3 until you have covered either all natural processes that interest you or all the output sets that
strike you as fitting together.
3B. Make more runs (simulations).
3C. Rejigger the natural processes and output sets until you have something of beauty – in your exalted opinion.
3D. Continue as long as you have grant money.
4. Present selected results to the MSM and call them evidence, though they are evidence for no one but you and
have no bearing on anything but the computer model itself.
4A. Alert the MSM to the fact that your computer model (actually, selected parts of it) indicates increasing
temperatures on Earth into infinity or something of that sort.
4B. Bash your critics. If anyone should state that the facts on Earth differ from the output of your computer model
then label them deniers and shout that they do not understand computer modeling. On the latter point, you
cannot be wrong because, as a matter of fact, no one but you understands your computer model.
4C. Write Op-Ed pieces in which you bash the public as rubes who have no understanding of science. Ignore
the fact that what you say about your computer model and its output has no bearing to science except in
your imagination.
Mark Wilson says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm
“Theo Goodwin, skeptics are even denying what Arrhenius says, as he included the water vapor feedback in his estimate too. You don’t have to go beyond Arrhenius to make the argument that prevails today.”
And what, pray tell, did Arrhenius have for evidence? How did he measure water vapor feedback? What tools did he use to get readings at 0, 5, or 10 miles above the Amazon rain forest? The answer is that Arrhenius failed to create one or more physical hypotheses which could explain and predict the behavior of clouds or other kinds of water vapor in an environment of increasing CO2 concentrations. Also, do not forget that when Arrhenius was active there was only an eeny-teensy bit of manmade CO2.
John Whitman says:
June 17, 2011 at 1:59 pm
This following quote from Lynas may give you food for thought regarding your consensus acceptance of climate science per se.
Mark Lynas said: “ I think part of the problem for Greenpeace is that they (and their supporters) actually see everything they do as being good for the planet, ergo justifiable in principle. . . . Same with all the greens attacking me now – they just ‘know’ they are saving the planet, so anyone who makes a criticism is worthy of very harsh responses.”
This could be a direct quotation from Lenin or one of his minions, though he was urging others to hold this view that the end justifies the means. Everyone should read Bertolt Brecht’s “The Measures Taken.” Yes, Brecht was a communist and this is a play, but Brecht really nailed the problems with Lenin’s doctrine.
Theo Goodwin says:
This is why it often becomes impossible to discuss climate change. Theo has just denied nearly two centuries of basic physics – yet not one regular commenter on this blog attempts to correct him. Fourier is a scientific giant – but Theo dismisses his work and everyone here moves on without comment.
It’s fine to argue that sensitivities are too high or too low; that the dataset is too small to be predictive; or any of a hundred different arguments based on SCIENCE. [Snip. First and last warning. ~dbs, mod.]
I suspect that most readers of this blog know that the theory of GHG is settled science. Without GHG we’d be living on ‘snowball Earth.’ The fact that atmospheric water vapor, CO2, methane, et al create a feedback system that warms the planet is not an admission that the AGW hypothesis is true, but apparently some like Theo must think so – else why would he deny or dismiss 200 years of basic physics? And it’s an interesting question why no one here would tell him he’s full of bovine excrement. If an AGW supporter made equally ludicrous statements here, there’d be umpteen dozen posts ridiculing his/her position.
An honest debate or argument is a good way to learn – but it’s impossible to even have a good argument amidst this type of herd mentality.
Any good scientist should also be
Pamela Gray says:
June 17, 2011 at 10:13 am
I’m not sure who this “student” is but I am sure he knows very little about noisy, chaotic data somehow being capable of revealing “trends” related to AGW CO2. This stuff I know, finding signals within chaotic noise. Done it. Published it. I studied noisy natural data. I added a controlled high-frequency artificial input signal under lab-controlled conditions, and then tried to find that signal in the natural noise by mathematically averaging out the natural noise. Found it. It’s called the high-frequency auditory brainstem response. Others have found it as well. The input signal resulted in an artificial (as in not chaotic) response that mechanistically and mathematically was exactly as predicted. It is a very robust finding. It is predictable and repeatable across subjects.
This “warming signal” is another kettle of fish entirely. Natural CO2 has been said to affect weather, since it is a greenhouse gas. So it is a natural part then of weather, not an artificial input, and weather cares not one bit how the CO2 got there or who owns which part. If that is true, you will not be able to say with confidence whether or not the signal you find is an AGW CO2 signal or a natural signal, if all you have is natural weather data to study, of which greenhouse affects are a natural component.
In general then, the consensus has failed to prove an artificial response to an artificial input, within the lab or in observations.
=============================
Repeated for effect. Brilliant. I love Pamela’s style.
She is lady-like….but don’t cross her. Don’t cross her. Would you cross a lioness with her young? NO.
The indirect “I’m not sure who this student is”….is rather indirectly direct.
I love it.
Beyond that…the meat of what is being said here…is incontrovertible.
Why not give it a try, Chris C?
Bet you can’t make a noticeable nick.
Bravo Pamela. Keep it up.
Chris (M)
Norfolk, VA, USA
Theo Goodwin says: June 17, 2011 at 6:54 am
Ammonite: “James Hansens 20+ year old model yields a climate sensitivity of +4.2C per doubling of CO2…”
It shows that Hansen was dead wrong.
Hi Theo. Hansen was correct that temperature would rise, but it seems highly probable that his model has over-estimated transient climate sensitivity. So what? Others have built upon his work, as is the way of science.
Pamela Gray says:
Absolutely correct. Who could disagree with that? And since we know how the system responds to ‘natural’ CO2 and we also know that the system doesn’t discriminate between natural and ‘artificial’ CO2, then we know how the system responds to ‘artificial’ CO2.
Thanks for elucidating the point.
…and thank goodness the climate system does not respond at all to variances in CO2’s concentration. Always amazes me how some who call themselves scientists just ignore the real data that has been out there in proper papers for years… must have a thumb in the pie.
Hi Mark.
Mark Wilson says @ur momisugly June 17, 2011 at 2:26 pm “Regardless of how many people decided to add water vapor, there still isn’t a shred of evidence that more CO2 leads to more water vapor. It’s not denialism to when what you are denying is untrue.”
Ouch – I thought the d-word was off limits here.
Anyway I guess it depends on how you define “shred”, but this would seem to be some evidence, no?
‘Data from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager
(SSM/I) show that the total atmospheric moisture content over
oceans has increased by 0.41 kg/m2 per decade since 1988. Results
from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of
this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a
formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results
from 22 different climate models, the simulated ‘‘fingerprint’’
pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is
identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data.
Experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually suggest
that this fingerprint ‘‘match’’ is primarily due to human caused
increases in greenhouse gases and not to solar forcing or
recovery from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. Our findings
provide preliminary evidence of an emerging anthropogenic signal
in the moisture content of earth’s atmosphere.”
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/39/15248.full.pdf
Re Tyndall and ‘if there was no water vapour in the atmosphere the Earth would be freezing’
Deserts anyone?
AGWScience is a set of beliefs about the physical nature of the world we see around us, it is science fiction. It cannot debate real world scientists because its base premises are fantastical and not real.
AGWScience has created its science fiction world by mixing and mis-matching properties and processes and taking laws out of context from the real physical world, even though very well-known and taught and in continuing real world physical applications, and given them a twist which has created an impossible world, an Alice through the looking glass world of being able to believe any number of impossible things before breakfast. Those defending AGW memes are doing so from a distinct body of work, an entity in its own right with its own particular and distinct beliefs about the properties and workings of the world, and, these beliefs have been introduced into the education system over the last few decades to the point where even those sceptical of AGW claims from knowledge of their own science disciplines, applied and theoretical, will take ‘on trust’ an AGWScience variation when not in their field.
In AGWScience’s world, for example, the molecules of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide are given the qualities of of ideal gas, therefore there is no sound in this world and they can’t hear arguments from real physical disciplines which actually know the difference, why no real gas obeys ideal gas law. However, for example, there are ‘skeptics’ who take seriously the AGWScience fiction claim that no thermal infrared reaches the Earth’s surface and that it is instead the short wave visible reflective radiation, light, and the short wave either side which converts to heat the land and oceans of the Earth, as per the claim in the Keil/Trenberth 1997 energy budget. Thermal infrared has been taken out of the equation in the downwelling of the budget.
What Tyndall failed to take into consideration in his equation is the Water Cycle’s main role of taking heat away from the Earth. Without the Water Cycle, ‘vapour in the air’, the Earth’s temp would be 67°C. Think deserts.
The ‘freezing’ Earth, would be one without the atmosphere altogether, which is the real ‘Greenhouse’ around the planet, the fluid and voluminous and weighty gas Air without which the Earth temp would be -18°C.
The confusion created here is subtle, for an example of an attempt at deconstruction of the AGWScience presentation having to ‘adjust’ for the missing half of the Water Cycle please see my post http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/30/skeptic-strategy-for-talking-about-global-warming/#comment-673855. I’m quite sure the majority here could improve on it.
What I have seen in all these discussions is the failure of real science and scientists to make any impact on the core problem here, that AGWScience as a whole needs to thoroughly debunked, in its manipulations of the basics, by a co-ordinated effort from the many disciplines involved; as Lucy Skywalker has proposed re her wiki set up.
I see lot’s of folks praising Bill Gray’s article here. I don’t want to spend too much time tearing apart his whole letter but let’s look at some context here and at lease analyze one sentence in the first paragraph:
“We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCMs) results and the four IPCC reports do not realistically give accurate future projections.”
1. Science is not based on belief, it’s based on math and physics and the CI.
2. The GCM’s are not accurate.
3. The GCM’s are not accurate because they are models and models can’t be accurate because they are just models, but they can be used to test observations to see if they represent reality in a meaningful manner.
4. Who cares if the models are not perfect? They are not even needed to see that AGW is occurring. All you really need is the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, the radiative forcing potential the negative albedo calcs., the amounts of GHG’s at various altitudes and to test the vertical pattern of warming along with changes in outgoing LWR to see if it fits with the physics and observations… Well fancy that, It does.
So Gray’s claim that the AMS leadership is capitulating to the lobby of the climate modelers is incorrect. Climate models are only one single line of evidence among many.
– The vertical pattern of warming fits
– The changes in the Hadley cell fits
– The increase in atmospheric. moisture fits
– The decrease in soil moisture fits
– The increase in sea surface temp fits
– The increase in atmospheric temp fits
– the increase ice mass loss fits
– the heat trapping capacity of a specified amount of increased GHG’s fits with the increase of radiative forcing and the industrial aerosols negative albedo fits
– The isotopic signature fits
– The horizontal pattern of warming fits
– the land sea temperature profile fits
– The seasonal pattern changes fit
– the latitudinal pattern changes fit
– The changes in outgoing long wave radiation fit
I could of course go on and the list is very very long, especially when you add the physical basis for paleo comparison. But the point is, we simply don’t need models to see that this particular global warming event is human caused. So Gray’s argument is false because he apparently doesn’t know the whole story, while simultaneously claiming, or inferring that he does; which is very confusing because some choose to trust him because he is a professor even though he has no scientific basis in his argument on this subject. This is referred to as argument from eminence, but it is not a scientific argument.
Does he deserve a seat at a table arguing with scientists that actually do know how these mechanisms work and the relative confidence levels in the constituent aspects of related science? Not really. It’s like letting a whiny kid get what he wants just to shut him up. That’s not science, it’s bad parenting.
It ‘seems’ the non, or less, scientific crowd view will always complain that they are being shut out of the argument, no matter how many times they repeat points without relevant substance. But in science, if they want to be heard, they need to publish a paper. And if your physics don’t stand up to the stronger, higher confidence level of science, and you can’t get published, it’s not because you are being shut out because you think other scientists are wrong, it’s because your assertions are not supported by the science. This is apparently the category that Gray falls into.
The AMS has not been infiltrated by liberals. it is drawing conclusions based on the known physics and observations. Science truly doesn’t care about my, your, or anyone else’s opinion.
Roy Tucker says:
June 17, 2011 at 2:31 pm
“The Scientific Computer Modeling Method” . . . . .
Gee Roy . . . . where I come from the is the epitome of one of the “Huckster” strategies . . .
Is that the Mark I or Mark II Huckster Model?
Theo Goodwin and others here are asserting that as the oceans warm, and they cover 70% of the earth’s surface, this has no effect on the total water vapor in the atmosphere. Does this sound correct from the physics standpoint? Should not the atmospheric boundary layer maintain water saturation near the surface that would increase water vapor amount with temperature? To say water vapor does not increase as SST does flies in the face of known physics. Arrhenius, as a physicist would, realized a hundred years ago that the relative humidity is a better approximation to what is preserved, not the water vapor amount, hence the water vapor feedback.
John P. Reisman says:
“Who cares if the models are not perfect? They are not even needed to see that AGW is occurring.”
Thanx for expressing your true beliefs, but there is misrepresentation in the first sentence. The models are crap. They can’t predict their way out of a wet paper bag. The only way they come anywhere close to hindcasting is by endless tweaking after the fact, and they all fail at forecasting. Not a single GCM predicted the flat to cooling global temperatures over the past decade+.
Your second sentence is based on belief, not on measurable, testable evidence, because there is no such evidence. The rest of your post is just as easy to debunk. Your “fits” disregard the null hypothesis, which has never been falsified, and they are simply an Argumentum ad Ignorantium: “Since we can’t think of any other explanation, then AGW must be the cause.” That is simply an evidence-free conjecture.
The fact is that despite CO2 steadily rising, global temperatures are not following as has been endlessly predicted. When you have empirical evidence of global harm from CO2 per the scientific method, wake me. Until then, the only sensible conclusion is that CO2 is harmless.
As Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his 1961 “military industrial complex” speech: “Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashon, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of the domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Jim D,
The problem with your argument is that global relative humidity is declining.
Jim D says:
June 18, 2011 at 8:49 am
To say water vapor does not increase as SST does flies in the face of known physics.
=====================================================================
Then either the physics is wrong, temperature measurements are wrong, our understanding of climate/computer models is wrong, ……………something ain’t right
Because relative humidity has been going down in direct proportion to CO2 going up………..
Smokey, you are probably aware that the column water vapor is dominated by that near the surface, which is controlled by ocean temperatures, and the total is increasing, and that is what matters for the greenhouse effect. I was answering people who seemed to think the water vapor wasn’t increasing in total. At least your figures show it is because for a 1 degree increase RH would have to drop 7% in the whole column to compensate and keep water vapor constant.
Latitude, see my reply to Smokey.
Actually in a transient CO2 increase phase, RH might drop because the land warms faster than the oceans. This is not necessarily a good thing, because it can lead to more frequent droughts and heat waves.