Guest post by Andi Cockroft
One cannot help but notice the events of the past few weeks (nay months if you include Climategate II), and the ad hominem attacks on both sides.
Fred Singer in his recent post here would have us place Climate Science advocates into three groups; deniers, sceptics and warmistas – but why the need for demarcation?
Way back in 1879, it may not have been evident to Pauline and Hermann that their new-born son would progress through his teenage years as a school drop-out – using a forged Doctor’s note to do so. Although later in life at the age of 16 he did enroll in a Polytechnic – but again failed in just about every subject.
At 17, he and his sweetheart enrolled again at the Polytechnic, stimulating the interest he held about electromagnetism
Married, divorced, married again, he couldn’t even get a job teaching, so ended up working as a clerk in the local Patent Office reviewing patent applications pertaining to electromagnetism. But boredom led to many thoughtful reflections on life, the universe and everything.
In 1905, by thesis, he obtained a Doctorate, and that same year published not one, but 4 ground-breaking papers.
His name of course is Albert Einstein – the amateur who proclaimed to the world the nature of matter, energy and relativity.
OK, so what has this little biography got to do with Climate Science – well I say it should teach us 2 things:
Firstly, an amateur working as a clerk is just as able to present the truth as the most gifted professional. The truth is the truth no matter who presents it. The unwillingness of many main-stream “Climate Scientists” to engage with alternate viewpoints sets them apart from “Science”. To many the science is not settled, and needs a full open and honest public debate.
Of course building on Einstein’s work, a humble Belgian priest Le Maitre (another gifted amateur) proposed a theory now well established regarding an expanding universe. I well remember a revered astronomer from my old school in Yorkshire, England – a certain Fred Hoyle who unwittingly creating a phrase bandied about to this day – in an attempt he states never meant to mock relativity and/or expansionism – he jokingly referred to a “big bang”. That particular phrase seems to have stuck with us somehow.
More recently, over on the Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) produced some unexpected results when Neutrinos were observed to be apparently travelling faster than light – something Special Relativity states is impossible.
Although I saw some rejection of this notion in various Fora, I saw no ad hominem attacks – simply a startled disbelief and a raging curiosity – could we be wrong after all these years? Do we have to rewrite the physics?
As we now know, a computer cabling glitch has been blamed for the neutrinos apparent haste – but hey – for a moment there it looked real cool – most physicists I know were both incredulous and incredibly excited at one and the same time.
So, my second point – true scientists – in this case physicists – are willing to be sceptical. They are willing – nay eager – to look at new possibilities and alternate explanations.
Compare that to the theatre that is “Climate Science”
One tiny quibble: the use of verify (prove to be true) rather than corroborate (strengthen). The former creates the certitude that leads to dogma.
Utterly granted. Sorry.
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Robert Brown says:
March 1, 2012 at 8:29 pm
The Newtonian equations also have a problem when acceleration is large. When this is so, a fourth term, the rate of change of acceleration with time, (called “jerk” by engineers I believe) must be added to the mathematical description. This came to light when the acceleration/deceleration sled experiments were done following WWII in preparation for space flight. I have always felt that this indicated that the Newtonian equations were likely Taylor Series expansions of the “true” relations truncated at the second order term. Since Newton’s formulas work in most non-quantum cases, they have been, and still are, exceedingly useful. As an aside to Mr. Brown’s comment about the utility of Newton’s formulation, one of my instructors said when I was first studying quantum mechanics more than 50 years ago, ” I have been working with this stuff for ten years and I am not sure that I understand it. I do know that when I apply these principles in the laboratory I get the results I expected. Thank you Mr. Brown.
Andi says:
Nothing in your narrative supports this. Einstein developed his theory after years of study and education, not while he was working in the patent office.
The diffence between reality and virtual reality is summed up nicely in his quote from Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:”
They…summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true. The judges concurred, and in a moving speech held that Life itself was in contempt of court, and duly confiscated it from all those there present…
“Firstly, an amateur working as a clerk is just as able to present the truth as the most gifted professional. The truth is the truth no matter who presents it. The unwillingness of many main-stream “Climate Scientists” to engage with alternate viewpoints sets them apart from “Science”. ”
This claim is easily testable. Would this author care to submit a paper reviewing the work of Dr. Halton Arp which shows quasars of high redshift all over the sky are associated in pairs with active galaxies? The evidence is simple and ubiquitous that redshifted objects are not racing away, but in some cases even have bridges of material attaching them to low redshift active galaxies. It is over. The Big Bang is falsified. And yet, it is assured he will not have a career in any field of astronomy or astrophyics if he does not affirm the Big Bang.
Basically no better than chance or a guess. I can guess that 3 days from now in the Seattle area it will be overcast, drizzly and in the 40s, and have an excellent chance of being right. But I’m not really predicting anything, I’m just going with the odds.
The models are actually trying to run through scenarios, and most will be horribly wrong. Why they’re still considered is beyond me.
I am still coming to terms with…….
the correct theoretical answer, recall, is a solution to a set of coupled non-Markovian Navier-Stokes equation with a variable external driver and still unknown
feedbacks in a chaotic regime with known important variability on multiple decadal or longer timescales
…….but, give me time 🙂
So am I. So is everybody. You can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations
but it is not for the faint of heart. But at LEAST one for the ocean, one for the atmosphere, both open (gaining and losing energy from several sources) and with modulators that I don’t even see how to properly add — like clouds.
The point is that the system is really seriously complicated. I mean, so complicated that it is probably not computable, certainly not computable at anything like high precision. All people can do is simplify the hell out of it by throwing away complexity until it gets down to something computable — but now incorrect — and hope that they didn’t literally throw the baby out with the bathwater.
They don’t do too badly with some of the ensemble models and short time frames. For example, hurricane predictions aren’t completely terrible, and weather forecasting is far better than it was forty years ago, often good a week or more in advance. However, we’re talking about the accumulation of thousands of tiny taps all over the world that supposedly move the world itself, in a milieu where we cannot directly compute those taps and where the effect they have by hypothesis depends on the hypothesis used to compute them.
We’ve seen how much we can argue about whether or not the DALR is a static or dynamic feature of equilibrium air in other threads here and on Tallbloke’s blog. The correct answer is dynamic, because it arises from a non-turbulent quasi-static solution to the N-S equations including slow transport of “parcels” of air. This is an easy question, one that can actually be answered within the theory and yet there is substantial confusion because the N-S equations are just too damn difficult to get one’s head around. Hydrodynamics is one of the most difficult subjects we attempt to study and work with, because it is full of nonlinearities and rife with emergent self-organized phenomena that pop in and out of existence at different scales, often influenced by tiny (usually ignored) variability in the problem or constraints, and those phenomena can completely alter the character of the solutions. Indeed there is no “solution” — not one that is stable against all of those damn butterflies beating their wings in Brazil.
As a single example, there is evidence that from time to time the Great Conveyor Belt of oceanic heat and salinity transport in the Atlantic diverts itself south so that the Gulf Stream no longer warms the Arctic and northern Europe or the upper east coast of North America. When that happens, really amazingly bad things happen to the climate.
We cannot predict the circumstances that might lead this current to make a macroscopic fluctuation. They could occur tomorrow and take effect next year or the year after, or a decade from now. They might already have occurred and we could be waiting for the N-S shoe to drop via a massive ongoing internal restructuring.
Nor can we predict the occurrence of things like the Dust Bowl drought of the early 20th century. We know with certainty that droughts like this happen — one hit the Eastern US and nearly wiped out the Jamestown colony because tree rings tell us that it almost didn’t rain for seven years straight in NC — but we don’t know why and are utterly unable to prevent them. We like to have the illusion of knowledge and control, but as far as the climate is concerned, we are really quite helpless and ignorant. We are an easy decade, maybe two, from having anything like a working understanding and even then I wouldn’t be surprised that its long range predictive capabilities are highly restricted, given that a lot of the drivers are effectively unpredictable.
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Robert Brown Thank you!
I hope your long reply gets raised to its own post here. There are so many bits in it worthy of comment. No, more, it was like reading poetry at times. I really warm to so much of what you were saying.
Having said which, we have had opportunities here at WUWT to pick up real gold, that have been missed or misunderstood. I’m working on one of them backstage right now, to improve the communication. Stay tuned.
G. E. Pease says:
March 1, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Hoyle was almost certainly mocking “expansionism” when he dubbed the Expanding Universe hypothesis “The Big Bang.” Hoyle is best known for his Steady State Universe hypothesis, which contends that the universe is neither expanding or contracting.
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Much in the same way Einstein was mocking Quantum Mechanics when he stated that “doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting a different result” was the definition of insanity!
Robert:
I appreciate the relatively measured tone of your post and scientific acumen. However, I’d like to point out how easy it is, even for a rational and learned person such as yourself, to inadvertently bungle language and perpetuate the deplorable level of discourse currently plaguing The Great Climate Debate.
You said:
I’m not certain who ‘they’ is meant to be here but let’s assume that the IPCC represents the gravitational center of the establishment’s scientific thought on this matter: From IPCC (2007)*, page 10:
I’ve bolded two mentions of uncertainty: most (>50%) and very likely (>90% probability; IPCC, page 121.). Now, perhaps you were just speaking in shorthand, but I’ve seen many AGW supporters have their feet held to the fire on this blog, and others, for such mis-statements. I’m sure Anthony and the denizens of WUWT would agree that precise language is important, particularly with respect to quoting The Other Side. Now as with any qualitative estimate of uncertainty, arguments can be made one way or the other regarding accuracy. But they did estimate it to be non-zero (and/or >5%) so characterizing the climate science community at large as ‘certain’ is a misleading generalization.
Also, one could argue that comparing climate science to ‘bench’ science is apples-and-oranges. As you correctly point out, observational data of climate are wrought with uncertainty, and increase at the mind-numbingly slow rate of one data point per year. Other more applied scientific disciplines lend themselves to repetitive experimentation on much shorter time scales, permitting continuous refinements of methodology, exploration of alternate hypotheses, etc.
Again, thanks for your post.
* IPCC, 2007. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of the Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Yea verily Dr. Brown.
I submit: “settled science” is a CONTRADICTION IN TERMS.
If it is settled, it is not science. If it is science it is not settled.
If CO2 is the main driver of climate, per the warmistas, why is it getting colder as CO2 increases?Better yet, how does a singularity grow in mass, since it is of infinite density, infinitely small and time stops in its presence? If not, what happens to the mass falling into a black hole? Theoretically, the event horizon grows. But how can it with time at nearly a standstill even at that location near a black hole? Since gravity supposedly slows time, what do we really see when we observe stars moving in very rapid orbits near the supposed black hole in the center of a galaxy? In my reference frame they are moving. But in theirs, time is much different. How about some answers from any of you relativity people? And this stuff is easy compared to quantum physics and wave functions collapsing due to “observation”, entangled particles instantaneously communicating and quantum jumps of particles. Not much settled science that I can see anywhere I look.
There’s a thread here I want to sketch out, very loosely:
Einstein –> E=MC2 –> Manhattan Project –> Atomic bomb –> Scientists regret, fear the weapons created from their ideas –> Post Normal Science.*
This is not to blame Einstein for PNS, it’s to show how scientists began to regret how their work was being applied. As we moved away from a world at war (WW2) and into the Cold War, more and more scientists began to question the military using their ideas and inventions to create bigger and deadlier weapons.
This helped to create PNS, which is as concerned (or more) with the moral and ethical ramifications of science and technology than with facts and objective truth.
* I skipped the H-bomb, nuclear winter, etc., in the interest of brevity
Robert Brown said @ur momisugly March 2, 2012 at 7:32 am
No need for sorry Robert. It is a pleasure to be able to assist you in your excellent prose. There is but one writer the Git knows of who could write flawlessly from start to finish: Bert Russell. The rest of us need editors. Some of the writers the Git has edited required almost as much effort as the writer expended. Most required less, but it is a certitude that editing your prose would require the least; your intent was utterly clear. You are a master.
Robert Brown says:
March 2, 2012 at 7:53 am
“.Nor can we predict the occurrence of things like the Dust Bowl drought of the early 20th century.”
The peak temperature deviation conditions for drought are broadly, cooler than normal in the winter and warmer than normal in the summer, are largely externally forced by short term solar variations.
The astronomical nature of these variations, when understood well enough, allows a huge look-ahead at least at a monthly scale.
Zeke said @ur momisugly March 2, 2012 at 7:50 am
Arp seems to still be working at the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik.
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/institute/members/popups/IMZKgQxLtmNsM.html
Like Graphite (Graphite says: March 2, 2012 at 2:15 am), I too usually skip over long comments. However, I don’t know a comment is “long” until I have clicked on the “screen down” button a few times. In Dr. Brown’s case, the text was so mesmerizing that for the first few clicks I wasn’t even aware I was reading an extraordinarily long comment. About half way through Dr. Brown’s comment, I scrolled down the screen to determine the comment’s length–not because I hoped the comment was short and would soon end, but rather because I hoped the comment would continue almost indefinitely. Congratulations Dr. Brown. Your words agree almost precisely with my perception of science and climate science(?). I wish I had your eloquence. Thank you!
Anthony, I like others would like to see Dr. Brown’s comment elevated to a higher level. Exactly what I don’t know, but something higher than comment status.
[REPLY: Already done. -REP]
Jim G,
Most all of those questions are discussed in Harvard physics professor Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality and The Fabric Of The Cosmos. The first book is the most recent. You can probably find it on Amazon used for a few bucks. Very readable, with almost no math at all [although his extensive footnotes contain the underlying math].
Bob says:
March 2, 2012 at 7:41 am
“The Newtonian equations also have a problem when acceleration is large. When this is so, a fourth term, the rate of change of acceleration with time, (called “jerk” by engineers I believe) must be added to the mathematical description.”
Jerk is controlled or limited via feedback to make things work smoothly, but it does not change the Newtonian equations. Newton’s equations are essentially a tautology – the derivative of momentum is proportional to force, and force is any outside influence which proportionally causes accumulation in momentum. It is a convenient framework merely because, in the absence of an outside influence, momentum is constant, so change in the state of the system comes about by something which affects the time derivative of momentum.
High acceleration can be a problem for computing numerical solutions, but it presents no theoretical problem until you have accelerated into the relativistic domain. Here, the Newton tautology still holds, you just have to redefine your terms and expand your dynamical space.
Halton Arp lost all of his telescope time at CalTech and in the US, Pompous Git. That is why he is now in Germany.
“The Committee feels that it is no longer reasonable to assign time to Arp to persue researches aimed at establishing the association of quasars with nearby galaxies.”
Zeke said @ur momisugly March 2, 2012 at 11:51 am
I am aware of that Zeke, but there is a large world outside of the US. Claiming that Arp “lost his career” sounds like a denigration of the Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik that it surely does not deserve.
Smokey says:
March 2, 2012 at 11:16 am
Jim G,
“Most all of those questions are discussed in Harvard physics professor Brian Greene’s The Hidden Reality and The Fabric Of The Cosmos. The first book is the most recent. You can probably find it on Amazon used for a few bucks. Very readable, with almost no math at all [although his extensive footnotes contain the underlying math].”
Thanks, Smokey, but are there any answers? Just kidding, as I know there are not, but it sounds like an interesting read for what “might be” some of the answers..
To Robert Brown:
Excellent post. I have long wondered why “climate scientists” thought the data they were using was worth anything more than a cow-plopper and therefore why their result/predictions were worth any more than a cow-plopper also. Thanx for nailing it.
To edit your post and to have a copy of your own can you not create in it PDF and then copy & paste into the reply box? I do that with MS Word occasionally, but my replies are not only much shorter than yours but have much less meat!
Why did Dr. Singer choose the pejorative term “denier” when a less inflammatory word could have been used instead? Surely Dr. Singer knows the origin of the term “climate denier” and the implications of that insult.
The LHC is behaving badly, so as of late, their predictions have not come to pass 😛