Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
You’ve heard of “Post Normal Science”? I investigate “Para Normal Science”. That’s the kind of science that is based on the willing suspension of belief in the physical laws of nature. Continuing my investigation of para normal science, I find a group that takes the long view of sea level rise. They don’t mess about with decadal scenarios. They disdain looking a mere century into the future. The press release is here, the paper’s paywalled, abstract here. The press release is titled:
Sea levels will continue to rise for 500 years
Figure from the press release issued by the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. Estimates prepared for the purposes of alarmism only, not warranteed for any other application. © 2011 by BeVeRyScArEd Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Neal’s Boring Institute.
My favorite part of the press release about the paywalled paper was this:
Actual measurements. Not fake, counterfeit, false, ersatz, phony, bogus, pseudo, or imitation measurements. Actual measurements.
Whenever they say something like “based on actual measurements”, I can’t help but be reminded of Hollywood’s “Based on a true story”, and how far the Hollywood version always is from the actual story warts and all …
In any case, no matter how they designed their climate supermodel, scenarios five centuries long? I’m sorry, but that’s a complete wank. No one will be alive to see even the 200 year mark. It will make no difference to our current choices. Indeed, it will likely be forgotten before the year is out. It is probably produced specifically with the aspiration of receiving the honor of being entombed in the fifth IPCC assessment report, a fitting burial place for such work. It may be based on a true story, but the facts have been changed to protect the innocent, so much so that any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
But most of all, it is an exercise in projecting a simple curve into the future, which is a newbie error I was warned against in high school. You can’t just extend a curve out for 500 years, that’s a pathetic joke even if you do call it a “IPCC scenario”. Oh, wait, that terminology is so yesterday. The new IPCC bureaucratic scientese term is “Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenarios” … I kid you not.
But even if you call it a Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) radiative forcing scenario, still, five hundred years? Five centuries? Get real!
Para Normal Science at its finest.
w.
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Beth Cooper says:
October 20, 2011 at 9:37 am
Beth, I must say that, of all of the poems I’ve seen on this and other realted blogs, yours is by far the best I have seen to date! Love it!
Crispin-
Nicely stated (both posts). I hope Mr. Grinsted does return to the discussion.
One point I am unclear on; it is known that the increased “heating” effects of CO2 in the atmosphere decrease with rising levels of concentration. At least I’m unaware of any contention that is otherwise. Yet, the various curves from the abstract don’t appear to show such an effect.
Why? Is it assumed that there will be such an increase in “land-based” ice melt due to rising land surface temperatures that this will overcome the decrease in thermal expansion?
If so, then the curves must have been generated by a function with significantly more variables than a simple correlation of past (assumed) sea level rise as a function of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Maybe he can comment on that.
To Aslak Grinsted, please answer one simple question.
In light of this, what do you believe sea-level should be doing today?
[A] :: Increasing
[B] :: Remain static
[C] :: Decreasing
Beth Cooper says:
October 20, 2011 at 9:37 am
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Nicely done Beth!
A model walks into an error bar and yells to the bartender “I’ll have an IPCC report, on the rocks and hold the facts.”
It is ridiculous to write a paper calling for catastrophic sea-level rise over a period of twelve generations (to which currently there has been no sudden increase in the rate of sea-level rise and in a world where the in-danger areas are already below sea-level), introduce yourself to the thread as a coauthor of said useless paper and then disappear. It is not necessary to directly engage any of us deniers but you could post a simple summary of your paper for discussion. I for one am curious to know where all this water is coming from. The ice shelves? Greenland? Antarctica? Looking at my back of the envelope calculation I get an Antarctica land-mass melting of almost 10%. Martha, get the boats ready…the research grants are coming.
Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
“1) Increased CO2 -> Increased radiative forcing
2) stronger radiative forcing -> increased heat / warming
3) Heat/warming -> shrinks land-based ice, and expands the world oceans.”
1) and 2) are too simplistic, as negative feedbacks due to adaptation of the relative humidity does not occur in this simple reasoning; see e.g. Miskolczi’s theory.
Beenstock and Reingewertz have shown that CO2 concentration CANNOT Granger-cause the temperature anomaly – so there MUST be a negative feedback, otherwise your simple line of reasoning would hold.
see
http://economics.huji.ac.il/facultye/beenstock/Nature_Paper091209.pdf
I also have an opinion about publications like yours, Aslak, but I better keep it to myself.
Chris D and Steve from Rockwood,
I agree Beth’s piece was very good – but isn’t it a parody of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I am the very model of a modern major general”?
see from about 1:05 on.
Aslak Grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 3:21 am
Heck, that’s OK Aslak, we’re about even in that regard. I take no offense at the shabby quality of your work, because that is pretty much the level of science that I expect from AGW supporters (sorry, if that offends you).
I am uninterested in averages, they throw away valuable information. For example, although the average sea level has been rising, for the last few years it has been falling. Go figure. If you want my agreement, you won’t get it. Ocean heat content is no longer increasing. Sea level is no longer rising. Earth is no longer warming. Despite that, CO2 levels are still rising.
Any real scientist would be saying “What’s up with that?” Instead, because your model predicted none of those outcomes (except the rising CO2), you want us to look elsewhere, you are using the usual magicians trick of misdirection, ‘focus on the averages, don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain’ you say … no thanks. I focus on the observations.
Man up? You’re asking me to “man up”, you unpleasant person? Why do you AGW supporters always want to throw in allegations of blame? Can’t you just stick to the science, like a real scientist woul… … oh. Right. Sorry, I mistook you for someone else. Never mind.
In any case, to your questions. Increased CO2 increases forcing. In general, an increase in forcing is immediately followed by a large response involving clouds. See my work on the TAO buoys here and here for an example of the phenomenon. This immediately reduces incoming energy, as well as cooling the surface.
As a result, while #1 and #2 are kina correct, the additional forcing does not lead to more warming. The earth, not being the moribund system you assume, responds to the forcing by inter alia increasing the clouds and thunderstorms to maintain the balance. I’ve demonstrated it with the TAO data, as well as with a year’s worth of the weather satellite photos (here), and with the ERBE data as well.
I strongly dispute your implied jump from #2 to #3, that’s a bridge way too far. It assumes a dead system, one that doesn’t react to changes but slavishly and linearly follows them. You think the climate is linear and mechanistic. I think it’s flexible and responsive. However, that’s not why I think your projection is worthless.
Five century projections based on any tuned model are a joke, Aslak. Your tuned climate supermodel, even if it is the Elle McPherson of tuned climate models, is incapable of telling us why the sea level has been falling for the last year. If it could do that, IT WOULDN’T REQUIRE TUNING.
Let me state that again, it is important. Your model completely failed to forecast the last five years of changes in sea levels. I know your paper somehow failed to mention that, but I also know it’s true, and I’ve never even seen your model. Gosh, maybe I should go into the Nostradamus business myself … but I digress.
Perhaps you trust such a Tinkertoy™ model for a prediction say half a millennium out, Aslak. Me? I’ll just point and laugh when you make that claim. If you believe that, I have a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn I’ll sell you for a very cheap price …
Not sure what that has to do with me, I think “climate sensitivity” is a meaningless measurement, for reasons I detailed here.
Aslak, computer based models of anything are only as good as the theory they embody. No one has shown that computer based models of the climate are any better than random chance at predicting the climate. For example, we’re in about a 15-year hiatus in the warming. Not one single model (INCLUDING YOURS) was able to forecast that hiatus.
So … since your models have failed so miserably at that much easier task, when you come in and want me to believe it is inaccurate in the short run but by gosh, you are really, really sure it will be spot on for the long run …
Well, there’s not much left to do at that juncture except to get some beer and popcorn and wait for the crash, my friend.
All the best, thank you for having the integrity to come here to defend your work. Unfortunately, as my high school science teacher pointed out, that kind of model fantasy, using a bozo-simple model to simply extend a line from today’s changes out 500 years, is indefensible.
w.
Steve from rockwood says:
October 20, 2011 at 6:45 am
Coffee up the nose on that one, my friend.
w.
aslak grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am
Sorry I didn’t respond to you as quickly as you might have liked, Aslak. I went to bed at 3 AM after posting my piece, and since then I was doing this funny thing called “sleeping”.
However, you’ll no doubt be impressed by my claim that using my model to linearly extend my average number of hours of sleep five hundred years into the future, I can confidently state that by then I’ll have slept a total of nearly 120 years, and been awake for 380 years … I can hardly wait, I’ve been missing sleep lately and I could really use those extra years of snoozing right about now …
w.
I once had to prove (in the rigorous mathematical sense) to an engineer that (1) it is possible to create an infinite number of ‘models’ that can fit any arbitrary set of data points, (2) if one adds another finite set of data points to the original set, an infinite subset of the ‘models’ will perfectly accommodate the additional points, and (3) the original set of data points therefore becomes totally useless for extrapolation to estimates of new points.
The only practical use of mathematical models that ‘fit’ empirical data is to provide reasonable *estimates* of *interpolated* values.
Once the measurement has been made. all “bets” are off.
aslak grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 8:11 am
Only one very simple question for you: Do you stand by everything that was reported in the press release? Thanks.
Tom Davidson says:
October 20, 2011 at 12:06 pm
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Tom, I took a one day course on 3-D inversion with Doug Oldenburg of UBC (Vancouver, Canada). Dr. Oldenburg started the course by fitting a series of data points (perhaps magnetic measurements, I can’t recall) to a series of very different models, all to the same degree of accuracy (a least squares error). The first was a series of vertical zones, next horizontal ones, then arbitrary shapes with minimum gradient at the boundaries, then smallest volume and so on. All of these very different models fit the data equally well and all were just as valid.
The point of the exercise was that if you don’t know something about what you are modeling, you can get any outcome you wish. He went on stress honesty about what you do know and what you do not know. Great course, great man. Constraining your model was the most important step.
Interpolation is one thing, extrapolation quite another. I use polynomials for interpolation but they are very bad outside the boundaries of the data used to determine their coefficients.
Models that attempt to predict the future are a form of extrapolation. They are unbounded along the trend of prediction. That is why I made the error bar joke. We have about 50 years of accurate measurements on sea-ice, we barely know if Antarctica is growing or shrinking, we’re not sure if Greenland ice is stable and yet we can predict sea-level rise at 5.5 m in 500 years without a blush. Only stock pickers have more misplaced self confidence.
Sorry about the coffee Willis. Hope you like the punch-line.
Wasn’t this model modeled after the Lehman’s fiscal model for the ideal model of projected fiscal modeling of modeled leveraging?
/src off
Dear Aslak Grinsted,
You attribute sea level rise to CO2 in your press release.
Can you give us your evidence that this, or any sea level rise / lowering, isn’t natural?
Talkin’ ain’t walkin’ …and that is the problem.
MikeinAppalachia says:
October 20, 2011 at 10:13 am
Crispin-
Nicely stated (both posts). I hope Mr. Grinsted does return to the discussion.
One point I am unclear on; it is known that the increased “heating” effects of CO2 in the atmosphere decrease with rising levels of concentration. At least I’m unaware of any contention that is otherwise. Yet, the various curves from the abstract don’t appear to show such an effect.
========
Everybody — skeptic and warmer alike — has tacitly agreed to use Svante Arrhenious’ estimate that the greenhousing falls off with the natural logarithm of the GHG concentration. It’s probably included. If it weren’t the future lines would probably sail off to the right as straight lines of pretty much constant slope starting around 2100.
Willis, you are a marvel.
Every time you strike a match, there’s a bonfire!
Hi Willis
Thanks, for restating what you already said in yet another sarcastic way.
Why don’t you answer my questions instead?
Aslak Grinsted:
Where is the bulk of the sea-level rise coming from?
Thanks.
aslak grinsted says:
October 20, 2011 at 2:01 pm
It’s hard to explain the foolishness of doing a 500 year projection with a tuned model without being sarcastic, Aslak. Truly, my high school science teacher warned me about you, so it’s hard not to laugh when you show up all serious about knowing what will happen half a millennium from now, the perfect incarnation of his warning.
In addition, I did answer your questions. From memory I said that #1 and #2 were kinda true, and that #3 was not. I gave you references to studies that I’d done to back up my hypotheses.
So your specious claim that I am just “restating what [I] already said in yet another sarcastic way” is 100% bovine waste products. How about you respond to my ideas and my citations before you start whining about being ignored.
But I’ll give it another shot. Let me go find your questions, hang on.
w.
Gotta love the Willis.
Mr Grinsted.
You keep assuming that CO2 makes the sea level rise.
Since the level isn’t rising, and the CO2 level isn’t falling,
I do not know why you would persist in this belief.
The same goes for the warming. It isn’t, so when you say it is, I find that confounding.
Also I believe as others here do, that melting ice and rising sea level are normal positive
climate indicators as they have been for 8 millennia, even if today’s melting and rising
are actually rather feeble.
Maybe y’all should man up and make a 5 year prediction with a signed resignation filed, should your confidently touted predictions fail to come to pass.
At least regale us with some of your more successful, past prognostications
so that it might be possible for the less nuanced observers among us to judge your skill
before we put our beach homes up for sale, or otherwise inconvenience ourselves,
to favor your climate overlords.
Aslak, you’re going to have to give me some more clues. I went back to look, and I had indeed answered your questions, viz:
For you to come back now, after I have provided clear answers to all your questions and no less than four links that were not in the head post, and claim that I was just “restating what [I] already said in yet another sarcastic way” is … is a … well, let me describe it as being free of honesty, accuracy and good will and leave it at that. As you can see, I answered your questions straightforwardly and sincerely, provided new information, and cited a wealth of supporting data. At the very least, it is extremely misleading of you to claim otherwise. At the very most? Haven’t a clue, but none of it is pretty.
So if you have unanswered questions, you’ll have to pose them. I answered every one I found, as honestly as I could, as is my practice. Coming back to abuse me for not answering them doesn’t work. I answered them. You don’t like my answers. OK, we can move on now.
In any case, I’m not upset by your momentary ethical lapse or your attempts at misdirection, happens to us all at times, I’m more than happy to answer your questions in as much detail as you’d like. What questions would you like to ask?
w.
More work from Dr. A. Grinsted, and his vision on Geoengineering and See-level rice
http://www.nbi.ku.dk/ansatte/?id=132787&f=3&vis=medarbejder
Aslak a word to the wi….. well word to you anyway you will lose to Willis every time if you can’t be straight-forward and ready to admit that he might just be right on this ego is a very bad thing and you haven’t got the wordsmanship to keep up with Willis is a snark-off just be honest and sincere and let your mind be open and you might just learn something. great job on this again Willis.
Miichael Larkin, I kinda hoped someone would notice the Gilbert and Sullivan ‘model,’ metaphor abounds… Chris D and Steve from Rockwood, thanks for kind comments.