Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
James Hansen has taken time off between being arrested to produce another in the list of his publications. It’s called “Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications“. This one is listed as “submitted” …
Normally these days I prefer to only deal with scientific papers, which of course leaves activist pleadings like Hansen’s stuff off the list. But in this case I’ll make an exception. Here’s my sole reason for bringing this up. Hansen’s paper says the following (emphasis mine):
The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).
I bring it up because it is climate science at its finest. Since the observations were not of the expected range, rather than figure out why the results might be wrong, they just twisted the dials to “reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models.”
And curiously, the “imbalance suggested by climate models”, of some 0.85 W/m2, was actually from Hansen’s previous paper. That earlier paper of his, by coincidence called “Earth’s energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications“, gave that 0.85 W/m2 figure as a result from Hansen’s own GISS climate model … but all this incestuous back-slapping is probably just another coincidence.
Of course, you know what all this means. Soon, the modelers will be claiming that the CERES satellite results verify that the GISS and other climate models are accurately duplicating observations …
You can see why Hansen’s “science” gets left off my list of things to read.
w.
PS—Upon further research I find that according to Loeb et al., 2009, they didn’t just tweak the dials on the CERES observations to get the answer they wanted, as I had foolishly stated above.
No, they didn’t do that at all. Instead, they used…
an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty to remove the inconsistency between average global net TOA flux and heat storage in the earth–atmosphere system.
I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that it wasn’t just twisting dials, they actually used an objective constrainment algorithm to adjust their Procrustean Bed …
UPDATE: Some commenters have noted that my article implies that Hansen used those CERES satellite results in the study in question. Hansen did not use them, stating correctly that the uncertainties were too great for his purposes. —w.
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A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Willis said:
“Adjusting satellite observational data to agree with James Hansen’s climate model is absolutely no problem because …”
I’m guessing here, but it’s an educated (CG2.0) guess: because…. something about “THE CAUSE”?
I personally do not know what to believe about predicting climate, but I do know that no model should ever give rise to “scientific consensus” when it comes to a system like the climate. I understand that we need to take caution with problems predicted by science, but I feel like this “cause” is killing the debate on the tough question a lay person like myself would like to see answered… Too much “nothing to see here” for me to get the gist of why seemingly legitimate criticism is being called “denialism”. For instance: I am shocked by the amount of reasonable questions being “boreholed” at RC even though, of course, much of what ends up in the “borehole” is utter crap…
Will, on reviewing your twelve most recent post, it seemed (to me) that not a single point made in any of these twelve posts had any concrete bearing upon Hansen’s choice of data, analysis methods, results, or conclusions.
Everyone understands that you perceive lots of problems. It’s less clear that the problems you perceive have any concrete bearing upon Hansen’s article.
What’s impressive is that Flohn foresaw in detail, decades earlier than anyone else, that CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change, that these two mechanisms would compete, and that the latter would have a short atmospheric lifetime. All of which in later decades became main themes of James Hansen’s research (and many other climate change scientists too).
Willis Eschenbach says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:05 pm
“Let me leave you with Loeb’s description of how they handled the large errors in both longwave and shortwave fluxes. He says they used an
‘objective constrainment algorithm to adjust SW and LW TOA fluxes within their range of uncertainty in order to get their desired result …’
So you can believe that is all solid science if you wish. I think it is up there on a par with your citation of Mann 2008 as an exercise in futility. Neither one is solid science to me.”
If someone is serious about defending Loeb’s work then they must explain and defend the “objective constrainment algorithm.” Without such a defense, there is no argument at all.
A physicist writes “There’s good news, Willis … you’ll sleep even better as you learn more about how NASA actually calibrates its satellite data.”
And another important takehome from that exercise is the importance of empirical measurement vs theoretical calculation. This must apply to all aspects of science. And in my books models dont even rate as highly as theoretical calculations.
It is recommended reading at RC actually.
Nick Stokes says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:55 pm
davidmhoffer says: December 21, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“The “problem” seems to be that you and Nick don’t understand the problem.”
Well, do you? Care to explain, carefully, and without getting excited?>>>
Alas, I cannot. How it is that the two of you cannot understand the blatantly obvious is beyond me.
Nick Stokes;
Let’s stick just to what Hansen said on this occasion, since Loeb’s paper is hard to access.>>>
Since doing so doesn’t change the problem at all, I don’t see that it matters one way or the other. The problem remains the same, which is that you don’t see the problem.
A physicist;
What’s impressive is that Flohn foresaw in detail, decades earlier than anyone else, that CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change>>>
This is a different problem than the one I alluded to earlier, which is that you don’t understand the problem. Let’s call this one Problem2. To illustrate Problem2, we need to break it down into Problem2a and Problem2b.
Problem2a is that citing Flohn in this case is akin to magic. In magic, a member of the audience is asked to pick a card at random from the deck and pulls out the five of diamonds. The magician smiles, reaches within his cloak, and produces an envelope. Inside the envelope is a piece of paper upon which is written “five of diamonds”. As the audience applauds, the magician discards his cloak for another, lest someone in the audience spy inside it and notice that there are pockets with another 51 envelopes within them…. Predictions about what will be dominant and what not are of little value unless they are backed up by precise formulas that can be tested against. Einstein was well before Flohn, and his work is remarkable in that decades after he lived, the mathematical formulas he developed have been borne out by experimentation. Flohn’s “impressive” vision was no more than to pick two variables, which you now cite. Had the two variables you believe to be important been other than CO2 and aerosols, you would have been citing a completely different paper by a completely different author. There are enough to choose from that there would be one or more that were “magically” correct when all you require of them is vague predictions.
Problem2b is that you have presumed CO2 and aerosols to be the dominant drivers of climate change and that this has been proven, thus showing Flohn’s prescience. You’ve assumed facts not in evidence. If CO2 was one of the two main drivers of climate change, then we would see pronounced effects from CO2 increases, but instead we see an almost insignificant change in the opposite direction to that predicted from CO2. The notion that aerosols are “masking” the effects of CO2 is equally bankrupt. In the 70’s and 80’s jokes like “itz the smog…I swallowed a piece” and “I shot an arrow into the sky….and it stuck there” were common, as were frequent smog alerts in major cities around the world. No more do we have this problem, and the notion that China is producing more smog today than Europe and North America cleaned up since then just doesn’t add up. In brief, it is another version of the magic trick that you’ve pulled off. Instead of 52 envelopes within the magician’s cloak, there is only one. The deck on the other hand, contains 52 five of diamonds.
The surprise is not that the daisy chain of reasoning goes on and on. The surprise is that some defend the perverse practice.
A physicist;
Everyone understands that you perceive lots of problems. It’s less clear that the problems you perceive have any concrete bearing upon Hansen’s article>>>
There was only ever one problem (in Hansen’s article). There were many explanations of the problem, which, unfortunately, you cannot seem to understand. So, to summarize, we can refer to the problem in Hansen’s article as just “the problem”, your inability to see “the problem” as Problem1, and that you’ve picked the five of diamonds out of a deck of cards and matched it with a paper from 30 years ago mentioning the five of diamonds as Problem2.
If you wish to refute any of these, please be certain to specify which problem it is that you are addressing since there seem to be several (which is amazing unto itself given the simplicity of “the problem”)
davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2011 at 4:30 pm
You are spot on. “A physicist” and others such as he are amazed by simple parlor tricks. The things they think are jaw-snapping coincidences which make for compelling arguments quite simply aren’t.
Theo Godwin says:
The Keelings (father and son) never claimed that their measurements were global, just the best possible for a single site… and more recent satellite measurements do show that there is some spacial variation around the globe, in the range of 20 ppm from min to max. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100629112030.htm for a typical distribution, about 375 to 395. Not perfectly mixed, but not wildly variable either.
Doug Jones, “The Keelings (father and son) never claimed that their measurements were global, just the best possible for a single site… and more recent satellite measurements do show that there is some spacial variation around the globe, in the range of 20 ppm from min to max. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100629112030.htm for a typical distribution, about 375 to 395. Not perfectly mixed, but not wildly variable either.” Click on my name and let me know what you think about my analysis of of CO2 data.
Doug Jones says:
December 21, 2011 at 5:06 pm
“The Keelings (father and son) never claimed that their measurements were global, just the best possible for a single site… and more recent satellite measurements do show that there is some spacial variation around the globe, in the range of 20 ppm from min to max. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100629112030.htm for a typical distribution, about 375 to 395. Not perfectly mixed, but not wildly variable either.”
Thanks for your helpful response. I do not mean to pick on you but I have to point out that, from the point of view of scientific theory and especially one that aspires to being global, saying that the measurements were “just the best for a single site” is tantamount to saying that “our measurement of the half-life of uranium in Dallas Texas is the best for a single site.” At some point, the climate science frauds have to face up to the standards of science and those standards have always been the same. If you claim that your science is global then you must be able to state the measurements for all sites on the globe.
Finally, you did not address my complaint about the assumption that CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere. When the Keelings made their measurements they assumed that CO2 is well mixed. That is my half of my complaint. The other half is that the scientific fraud that goes by the name climate science has never undertaken actual experiments in the atmosphere to confirm that assumption. There is no empirical science of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The work simply has not been done.
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:30 pm
“What’s impressive is that Flohn foresaw in detail, decades earlier than anyone else, that CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change…”
Sir, you undermine yourself. The claim that “CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change” has no detail in it and cannot be used for prediction at all. Yet you say that Flohn foresaw it in detail. In science, “in detail” means rigorously formulated hypotheses that produce predictions that can be tested against unique empirical observations.
What you might be thinking is that Flohn foresaw that climate scientists, so-called, would claim that CO2 and aerosols are the two main agents of climate change. That is not a scientific claim. But that is the level of detail at which you are working.
davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Excellent analogy! Bravo!
A physicist says:
December 21, 2011 at 3:22 pm
“Will, on reviewing your twelve most recent post, it seemed (to me) that not a single point made in any of these twelve posts had any concrete bearing upon Hansen’s choice of data, analysis methods, results, or conclusions.”
That is because it is you who are off topic, “A Physicist.” Willis’ article is about the following quotation from Hansen’s article:
“The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009).”
You have steadfastly refused to address this quotation. The quotation says in the most straightforward language that they did not like the satellite data so they introduced some instrumentation calibration factors to bring the satellite data in line with their models. In simple and plain language, that says that instrument data that disagreed with the models was changed to agree with the models. Now, will you deal with that quotation or will you once again change the subject?
“A Physicist,”
Given what everyone knows about the models, anyone who would change satellite data or data of any sort to bring it in line with the models is either a fool or a crook. The models have zero credibility and they have earned every bit of it.
davidmhoffer says:
December 21, 2011 at 2:41 am
crosspatch;
At first glance at the Loeb paper, it seems to me that the adjustments are reasonable. They are due to instrumentation and optical issues though I am not an expert with optics.>>>
“Reading through the excerpts you’ve posted, it seems to me that the reason that adjustments are needed is sound. But are the adjustments themselves sound? My impression remains that they applied adjustments based on matching model results.”
Oh My God! Crosspatch, all of the adjustments described are “could bees.” That is, this “could be” the case, that “could be” the case, and so on. Nothing in the paper establishes or gives any reason to believe that some adjustments must be made. If adjustments are necessary, they are to be made not on the basis of the need to reach a particular conclusion in a particular article, Hansen’s, but on the basis of a systematic review by the instrumentation people themselves.
Seriously, what is that problem?
Is it the way Loeb calibrated his satellite data?
No, that can’t be it. Hansen criticizes Loeb’s calibration severely:
And of course, Loeb’s article itself never claims that these calibration methods are adequate for energy balance analysis. Rather, Loeb adjusts (essentially) one parameter: the product of the instrument gain and the solar constant. All of the spatial and temporal variation in the satellite data is left unaltered (variation that for many research purposes, but not for Hansen’s, is what mainly matters).
To me, one plausible explanation is that Willis Eschenbach simply misunderstood Hansen’s article, and then never read Loeb’s article at all, and that’s why Willis’ reasoning is hard to understand.
Hopefully, everyone is happier now that these matters are clearing up!
To my mind it does. For example, the part about having the aperture ahead of the view limiter or behind it makes sense for me. But the point is that Hansen rejects those adjustments, according to the way I read things. So the Loeb adjustments are moot. Hansen basically says “I can’t trust the raw data because so many adjustments have to be made to it and because it is so wildly different from all other measurements that have been made before, I’m just can’t use it”
So whose confirmation bias is correct, yours or his? I would tend to go Hansen’s way if it were me. I would look at this data, say that there must be something really out of whack with it because it varies so wildly from everything before and from what the calculations say it *should* be, I can’t trust it. If his model numbers are in fairly close agreement (or closer agreement) to what had been measured in the past, that would tend to give me confidence in using my model numbers.
Now don’t get me wrong, I think Hansen is generally discredited in a lot of what he said in the past and I don’t mean to say I am marching in lock-step with everything he says but even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
A physicist says:
What’s impressive is that Flohn foresaw in detail, decades earlier than anyone else, that CO2 and aerosols would be the two main agents of climate change, that these two mechanisms would compete, and that the latter would have a short atmospheric lifetime. All of which in later decades became main themes of James Hansen’s research (and many other climate change scientists too).
decades?? really decades?? centurys from now we may well say “your name is Physicist”…as in your name is MUDD (the doctor who fixed up John Wilkes Booth) cause we aint talking decades…gonna change your name to A WEATHER MAN NAMED PHYSICIST we talking CLIMATE CHANGE OVER CENTURYS AND MILLINIUM…sorry for yelling your short sighted ness just pisses me off…1970s they said ICE AGE A COMMIN… now shittakke mushrooms if it aint Global Warming, cripes aint noone lives long enough to see the trends, you thing all the virgins killed in southAmerica stopped climate change in the 1200 to 1500s?????
Call me whenn humans live a couple a hundred years.
A physicist;
To me, one plausible explanation is that Willis Eschenbach simply misunderstood Hansen’s article, and then never read Loeb’s article at all, and that’s why Willis’ reasoning is hard to understand.>>>
Nope. The more plausible explanation is Problem1, which is that you don’t understand “the problem”.
Another more plausible explanation is that you are being deliberately obtuse, which I suppose we could now refer to as Problem1 V2.
Theo
“The quotation says in the most straightforward language that they did not like the satellite data so they introduced some instrumentation calibration factors to bring the satellite data in line with their models.”
You muddle things with pronouns. Hansen said that Loeb introduced calibration factors. So what has Hansen done?
What he said, that you’re not dealing with, is, immediately following:
“There can be no credible expectation that this tuning/calibration procedure can reduce the error by two orders of magnitude as required to measure changes of Earth’s energy balance to an accuracy of 0.1 W/m2.”
So whatever Loeb was doing, Hansen is very explicitly saying that such an adjustment is not to be used here. So what’s the problem again?
Look, climate always changes. We know with absolute certainty that we can survive a 2 degree rise because we survived one for nearly 4,000 years earlier in the Holocene and we know we can survive a 5 degree rise because the last interglacial was about 5 degrees warmer than now.
So “catastrophic” environmental impact is right off the bat irrational hysteria that is disproved by events clearly in the historical record, that isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the subject of this thread.
“Grey lensman says:
December 20, 2011 at 8:38 pm
As i understand it, energy can neither be created nor destroyed only transformed. Thus in energy, terms the earth energy budget, must be in balance all the time.”
No, earth does not have to sustain an energy balance because of the First Law. This widely used fairy tale is convenient for the warmista to proclaim the existence of a simple one on one energy in-out rule. Why call it a balance then?
As far as the First Law is concerned, energy can accumulate on Earth until it is as hot as the Sun. Energy will still be conserved right? The First Law is just a bookkeeper in case of energy conversion, but because all we have here is radiation it’s obsolete here.
It is the Second Law that determines what energy fluxes will do depending on temperature gradients. It does not act over some in-out radiation balance, the Second Law does not care about that. This law just wants to reduce temperature (as effect from increasing entropy, T = dQ/dS).
The key difference is that the Second Law works step by step from within Earth system and not over some TOA balance outside. When energy from the Sun enters we get a cascade of interacting processes ruled by the Second Law, all with different speeds (lag time in energy distribution). SW photons interacting with the solid surface leave quickly as LW photons, but this is just a little part of the energy. Most of the energy has to find a way out through and participate in all the (thermodynamic) processes and cycles in the ocean and the atmosphere, mostly ruled by the Second Law resulting in different energy holding times.
And then you don’t even know which part of the energy over a time frame has gone out to space or is still at work somewhere, and you don’t know what part of this energy is sensible heat, and you will certainly never find out measuring radiation going out.