UPDATE: 11:30AM 4/12/12 Predictably, Andrew Revkin from the New York Times joins in with the poo-pooing consensus saying it is “utterly unremarkable ” (yet he writes a article about it – go figure). From Revkin’s shuttered in world of living in the woods (he didn’t even know what the TV show Seinfeld was until I brought it to his attention in Climategate2), that’s probably true, but Andy, here is one of your favorite consensus buzzphrases that can be applied: it is an unprecedented letter. There’s no denying that. – Anthony
==========
From the Daily Caller, in my opinion, a load of “hooey” from NASA’s chief scientist, particularly since James Hansen doesn’t bother with peer review much anymore, he just publishes opinions and protopapers to his Columbia University website and a compliant MSM repeats them as if they were in fact peer reviewed. Further, Hansen has never accepted an offer to debate, and he probably won’t. Clearly NASA’s chief scientist is clueless about what is going on.
NASA swipes back at former astronauts over climate change
NASA is swiping back at a group of nearly 50 of its former scientists and astronauts who wrote to accuse the space agency of advocating the “extreme” position that global warming is the result of man-made carbon dioxide.
In a March 28 letter addressed to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, 49 former employees said the “unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
But NASA responded on Wednesday by saying they don’t “draw conclusions and issue ‘claims’ about research findings.”
“We support open scientific inquiry and discussion,” NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdalati said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller.
“If the authors of this letter disagree with specific scientific conclusions made public by NASA scientists, we encourage them to join the debate in the scientific literature or public forums rather than restrict any discourse,” Abdalati said.
He added: “NASA sponsors research into many areas of cutting-edge scientific inquiry, including the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate.”
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I think Scottish Sceptic has gone off on his own wee pathway on this one and I can understand Kadaka’s response, but believe me I think you will find that here in the UK the vast majority have immense respect for both NASA and the NHS.
The issue is ‘climate change’ and the response from NASA to the accusation from some of its own highly regarded and respected retired scientists astronauts and engineers that NASA is not being
objective in its advocacy of human produced CO2 being the main cause of ‘global warming’.
No, Scottish Sceptic, NASA is not a ‘laughing stock’ and as for your assertion that the moon landings ‘were pure PR’, what planet are you on! (no pun intended). Your comments questioning ‘the need for government spending on a space agency’ and suggesting it would be better spent on ‘universal health care’ serves no justice to NASA or the NHS. I liked the first three words of your post…… ‘I didn’t comment’…… if you had just stopped there.
Please accept my apology for our compatriot from ‘North of the border’, perhaps the malt season was good this year!
Kadaka, your reference to Benny Hill as an example highlighting the difference between NHS and private care put a smile on my face. I hope you are not proposing that the Benny Hill ‘Nurse’ uniforms are ‘smarter’?
Bill Tuttle wrote :
These “models” are the laws of physics, Bill. Increase CO2 in the atmosphere, and laws of physics (radiative transfer theory, Stefan Bolzmann equation and the Clausius-Clapeyron relation) predict that the surface temperature will go up.
Do you always discard any model, including the laws of physics, for any prediction, as “evidence”, or only when it comes to the effects of the waste product of the $ 4 trillion fossil fuel industry ?
So who is this guy Leighton Steward any way, who apparently wrote this letter, without providing a single piece of scientific evidence in it’s support, and then got 50 retirees to sign it ? Sourcewatch reports :
OK. That explains a lot…
Rob Dekker says: April 14, 2012 at 11:38 pm
Well, no doubt the CO2 will have some effects Rob, but for CAGW we need the effects of a positive water vapour feedback. And no-one is too sure about the overall effects of clouds, water vapour and cosmic rays….
Youmight be sure, but even the IPCC is not too sure how all that pans out:
http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-9-1.html
Listing 10 of the 15 from that page – Now the IPCC is pretty certain all of these are important, but there does seem to be a distinct lack of consensus and understanding:
Showing consensus ( 3 is lowest) and ‘scientific certainty’ as high, med or low:
Stratospheric water vapour from CH4: 3 Low
Stratospheric water vapour from causes other than CH4 oxidation: 3 Very Low
Direct aerosol: 2 to 3 Medium to Low
Cloud albedo effect (all aerosols): 3 Low
Surface albedo (land use): 2 to 3 Medium to Low
Surface albedo (BC aerosol on snow): 3 Low
Solar irradiance: 3 Low
Volcanic aerosol: 3 Low
Cosmic rays: 3 Very Low
Other surface effects: 3 Very Low
Rob Dekker says:
April 14, 2012 at 11:38 pm
These “models” are the laws of physics, Bill.
Those “models” are exactly that — models. Computer simulations. They may be based on physical laws, but they are not *the* laws of physics. They’re the product of computer programmers, and after reading the notes “Harry” made when he examined the simulation program at HadCRU, a lot of the code the programmers write is garbage.
Increase CO2 in the atmosphere, and laws of physics (radiative transfer theory, Stefan Bolzmann equation and the Clausius-Clapeyron relation) predict that the surface temperature will go up.
Arrhenius predicted that, too. He made a mistake in his math. If an increase in CO2 will always cause an increase in temperature, why does the geological record show that temperatures dropped precipitously at the beginning of each glaciation in the past while CO2 continued on its merry way upward — for roughly 800 years *after* the temperature dropped? There are more factors affecting atmospheric temperatures on Earth than CO2 — the computer doesn’t exist that’s capable accurately modeling them all.
Do you always discard any model, including the laws of physics, for any prediction, as “evidence”, or only when it comes to the effects of the waste product of the $ 4 trillion fossil fuel industry ?
Again, computer models are *not* the laws of physics. And when a computer program produces simulations which do not agree with observational data, that program is garbage, so, yes — discard it and start working on one which will produce decent results. By the way, one of the waste products *you* produce is carbon dioxide — thank you for helping the plants grow.
Bill said Those “models” are exactly that – models. Computer simulations.
Yes, Bill, computer simulations implementing the laws of physics.
Before computers, we wrote these laws down on paper, and derived temporal effects using a concept called mathematics.
Now we write them in computer programs and run them numerically as “computer simulations”.
Still get the same results, since both are an implementation of the laws of physics.
In fact, we implement the laws of physics in computer programs all the time, for everything from predicting energy distribution after the first microsecond following the Big Bang, to predictions of how long our sun will last, and what happens at the end of her days, to the models that predicted that the microprocessor in your computer would work as intended even before a single one of these chips was manufactured.
Here is one such example prediction, and how it came about :
NASA claims that on February 15, 2013, Asteroid 2012 DA14 will miss Earth will pass within about 3.5 Earth radii of the Earth’s surface.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news174.html
Now how do they know that ?
Well, they build a model of the solar system, enter the locations, masses and velocity vectors of the known objects therein at some initial time point, including what we know about Asteroid 2012 DA14, implement Newton’s law of gravitation (possibly with a General Relativity correction), and calculate what will happen in the future in a numerical computer program.
Do you dispute such a prediction of a “computer simulation” ?
Or only the one that conflict with your pre-conceived beliefs ?
Rob Dekker says:
“…we implement the laws of physics in computer programs all the time, for everything from predicting energy distribution after the first microsecond following the Big Bang, to predictions of how long our sun will last, and what happens at the end of her days, to the models that predicted that the microprocessor in your computer would work as intended even before a single one of these chips was manufactured.”
But as usual, 95% of everything is crap. That applies to climate computer models, in spades. This is Mr Commonsense, Prof. Freeman Dyson, on climate models:
Bingo. These jamokes end up believing their models like witch doctors believe their amulets. Wake me when the models accurately predict anything on a consistent basis. Models are are simply grant magnets, nothing more.
markx,
With all these uncertainties that you point out, climate sensitivity may very well (5% probability) be at the high end of the NASA/GISS/IPCC/NAS/etc 1.5-4.5 C per doubling of CO2. So how can these NASA retirees claim (so far unsubstantiated) that a (also unsubstantiated) “catastrophic” impact on global climate change is NOT substantiated ?
Rob Dekker says:
April 18, 2012 at 2:21 am
Now we write them in computer programs and run them numerically as “computer simulations”.
Still get the same results, since both are an implementation of the laws of physics.
There you go again, equating all computer simulations with the laws of physics. A computer simulation working with variables based on assumptions will produce different results from one working with variables based on observations .
Do you dispute such a prediction of a “computer simulation” ?
Or only the one that conflict with your pre-conceived beliefs ?
That particular simulation was based on known quantities — known previous positions, known masses, known vectors, known rates of acceleration, and known velocities, which were obtained from a multitude of direct observations — which, barring unfoeseen circumstances such as a collision with another asteroid or a dropped decimal point — should result in a pretty accurate prediction of Asteroid 2012 DA14’s path. Everything based on *knowns*.
Computer climate simulations don’t even take all the known factors influencing climate into account, let alone the unknowns. Until someone writes a computer program which takes all those factors into account and until someone creates a computer with the power to run it, then yes, I’ll dispute the predictions of climate simulations.
So, let’s turn the question around: why would you defend a computer simulation of future events that’s incapable of accurately reproducing past events?
Rob Dekker,
May I re-phrase? Thank you:
5% probability = 95% improbability. A 3°C rise is extremely improbable [even though it would be a net benefit to the biosphere]. Such an improbable event would hardly be a credible reason to reorder Western society, would it? And it does not make a believable case that NASA former employees, with hundreds of man-years of rigorous experience are wrong. In fact, they are correct. They are simply pointing out the obvious: CO2=CAGW is a repeatedly debunked conjecture, which is being falsified by the ultimate authority, planet earth.
Bill wrote And when a computer program produces simulations which do not agree with observational data, that program is garbage
You let us know when GCMs produce simulations that are significantly different from observational data, OK ?
Ah. I know one : Arctic sea ice. GCMs are indeed statistically significantly underestimating the rate of reduction of summer Arctic sea ice extent.
Any other discrepancies between GCM results and observational data that you can think of ?
Rob Dekker says:
“You let us know when GCMs produce simulations that are significantly different from observational data, OK ?”
Who do you think you’re kidding? GCMs cannot even hindcast accurately, much less forecast accurately.
Bill That particular simulation was based on known quantities – known previous positions, known masses, known vectors, known rates of acceleration, and known velocities, which were obtained from a multitude of direct observations
Bill, nothing in science is “known” to absolute accuracy.
In the case of 2012 DA14, the inaccuracy of the “known” input variables extrapolate to a probability of 3.5 Earth radii.
In the case of climate change models, the inaccuracy of the input variables extrapolates to 1.5-4.5 C per doubling of CO2.
Do you accept that inaccuracy ?
And which part of that range do you think that the NASA retirees considered “catastrophic” ?
And which knowledge do they have that we apparently do not have, that part of the range of uncertainty is “not substantiated” ?
So, let’s turn the question around: why would you defend a computer simulation of future events that’s incapable of accurately reproducing past events?
Until you define “accurately” it is not even clear which “computer simulation” you are talking about. Would you care to show an example of which “computer simulation” was “incapable” of reproducing past events ?
Smokey said A 3°C rise is extremely improbable
Where is your scientific evidence to support that assertion ?
Rob Dekker says:
April 18, 2012 at 3:43 am
Bill That particular simulation was based on known quantities – known previous positions, known masses, known vectors, known rates of acceleration, and known velocities, which were obtained from a multitude of direct observations
Bill, nothing in science is “known” to absolute accuracy.
Some back-pedalling there. You keep implying that your computer simulations *are* accurate, since they are “the laws of physics” and “implementing the laws of physics.”
Would you care to show an example of which “computer simulation” was “incapable” of reproducing past events ?
Sure.
A. “Cold events are reproduced reasonably well, warm events less well: in particular, the 1982/83 hindcasts failed to produce a warming.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0870.1994.t01-2-00008.x/pdf
And that was working with *knowns*.
B. “The first thing that’s obviously different is that the frequency and magnitude of El Niño and La Niña events of the individual ensemble members do not come close to matching those observed in the instrument temperature record. Should they? Yes.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/05/an-initial-look-at-the-hindcasts-of-the-ncar-ccsm4-coupled-climate-model/
C. “But based on the model mean, the CMIP5-based hindcasts of the 20thCentury are:
1. not able to simulate the rate at which global surface temperatures cooled from 1944 to 1976 (Figure 11),
2. incapable of simulating how quickly global surface temperatures warmed from 1917 to 1944 (Figure 12), the observations warmed at a rate that’s more than 3 times faster than simulated by the models, and,
3. not capable of simulating the low rate at which global surface temperatures warmed from 1901 to 1917 (Figure 13).”
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/preview-of-cmip5ipcc-ar5-global-surface-temperature-simulations-and-the-hadcrut4-dataset/
“Conclusion: Climate modeling failure will always be significant and will never provide accurate climate predictions until they are finally cleansed of the CO2-biased parameters imposed/dictated by the UN’s own IPCC’s political-agenda.”
http://www.c3headlines.com/2012/04/climate-modeling-failure-of-ipccs-newest-climate-models-still-worthless-after-all-these-years.html
I’d list all 385,000 hits for “climate model hindcast failure” but the mods would spank me for link-bombing…
Rob Dekker says:
April 18, 2012 at 3:43 am
Until you define “accurately” it is not even clear which “computer simulation” you are talking about.
The definition of the adverb “accurately” is independent of the subject: computer climate simulations fail to match the observed historical observations.
Bill,
Thank you for your response and your exxamples. the examples where “computer simulation” was “incapable” of reproducing past events.
Which one of these examples was so convincing for you that the statements by NASA such as “Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come,” are “predictions based on the projections of models that can’t even *hindcast* accurately”?
Bill Tuttle quotes Bob Tisdale when he wrote :
Bill, did you the notice Bob Tisdale’s choice of breakpoints (1917, 1944) in the 1901 to present day record ?
Did you notice that if he would have chosen 1915 and 1950 instead of 1917 and 1944, that the rate of warming over each fragment and over the entire record is exactly the same ?
Do you also see that Bob Tisdale picked 1917 and 1944 because these are the years that the model variability and HADCRUT4 variability show the MAXIMUM difference ? And that the mismatch between CMIP5 hindcast and HADCRUT4 temp record is simply short-term noise ? Do you realize that Bob Tisdale is using statistically insignificant outliers in variability to make an argument, which is otherwise known as “cherry-picking” ?
And finally, I hope you realize that your conclusion :
computer climate simulations fail to match the observed historical observations.
thus is based a blogger (Bob Tisdale) deliberately cherry-picking data points in the noise…
Rob Dekker says:
April 19, 2012 at 2:00 am
Bill,
Thank you for your response and your exxamples. the examples where “computer simulation” was “incapable” of reproducing past events.
Which one of these examples was so convincing for you that the statements by NASA such as “Scientists have high confidence that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come,” are “predictions based on the projections of models that can’t even *hindcast* accurately”?
None of those three particular examples — and you only asked for one — was in itself a convincer, however the documentation of climate simulations failing to hindcast for conditions are more numerous (and increasingly so: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/15/new-awi-research-confirms-climate-models-cannot-reproduce-temperatures-of-the-last-6000-years/ ) than those documenting success, except for over a very limited time span and for a very limited number of variables. As I’ve said before, the computer program which takes all the variables affecting climate into account hasn’t been written, and the computer with the power to run it hasn’t been created.
BTW, NASA’s perfectly up-front in saying that those scientists’ statements are based on simulations.
Rob Dekker says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:42 am
And finally, I hope you realize that your conclusion :
computer climate simulations fail to match the observed historical observations.
thus is based a blogger (Bob Tisdale) deliberately cherry-picking data points in the noise…
And speaking of cherry-picking, I notice you chose not to address the other two examples I gave you.
Rob Dekker says:
April 22, 2012 at 12:42 am
And finally, I hope you realize that your conclusion :
computer climate simulations fail to match the observed historical observations.
thus is based a blogger (Bob Tisdale)…
I hope you realize it’s foolish to dismiss someone just because he blogs…
Bill Tuttle said And speaking of cherry-picking, I notice you chose not to address the other two examples I gave you.
I asked you which example you found most convincing, and you did not answer.
I then debunked the example that you were most elaborate about (Bob Tisdale’s cherry picking in the one-hundred year record).
Of the remaining two example, the first is about ONE model from 1994. That was when 3D climate models were just starting to be able to re-create ENSO events (El Nino and La Nina) spontaneously (which is pretty darn amazing by itself), and the paper finds that ‘cold’ periods (La Nina) were fairly well reproduced, but ‘warm’ periods (El Nino) not yet. Besides the fact that ENSO effects have very little to do with CO2 concentrations, this is a model assessment from almost 2 decades ago. So you may want to ask yourself how valuable this example is as an argument to sustain your beliefs.
The second example is another Bob Tisdale extravaganza. I already showed you how Bob Tisdale is disingenuously cherry picking in the one-hundred year record in the third example. So can I leave a ‘skeptical’ analysis of this Bob Tisdale publication up to you this time ? Please let me know your findings.
Bill Tuttle wrote :
None of those three particular examples – and you only asked for one – was in itself a convincer, however the documentation of climate simulations failing to hindcast for conditions are more numerous (and increasingly so:
Where you mention a WUWT analysis of this paper :
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/8/1005/2012/cpd-8-1005-2012.html
Now, this is actually a very interesting paper, in that it shows how self-proclaimed “skeptics” go 1 inch deep and a mile wide, and shoot themselves in the foot if you look at the science objectively.
The paper compares paleo-climate findings with GCM (model) simulations over the past 6,000 years.
The first thing to note is that CO2 is not considered an issue over that time period (concentrations were some 280 ppm over the entire time period (until Industrial period started) and are assumed constant at that level in the GCM simulation).
However, there was another source of radiative ‘forcing’ change :
During the past 6,000 year time period, the Earth experienced slight re-distribution of solar radiation due to milankovitch cycles. In effect, solar intensity moved from higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere summer southward, and from Southern Hemisphere winter northward.
Now here is the interesting find : BOTH paleo-climatic reconstructions as well as GCM simulations match rather well in spacial re-distribution of warming/cooling across the various regions of the planet. That’s a good indication that models are correctly simulating qualitative climate changes over the millennia and over region of the planet.
However, it turns out that the models UNDER-estimate the AMPLITUDE of temperature changes that this change in forcing produces. As Sebastian Lüning on the WUWT page reports :
Now, the question is, why are the GCM simulations underestimating the trend ?
The paper itself goes to great lengths to address this issue. For starters, they address the issue of the paleo-climate findings itself. Yhey consider many variables that affect the ‘recorded’ temperatures of the foraminifera. For example, they consider the annual growth periods and oceanic depth at which planktonic foraminifera form in detail. In doing so, they are able to explain about half of the difference between models and ‘observations’. Half of the paper is dedicated to analysis of such uncertainties, but in the end they still are faced with a steeper trend in the reconstructed temperatures than the model trends. With few other opinions left over to explain this difference, they cautiously conclude that models may UNDER-estimate climate sensitivity. Thus, that a small change in radiative forcing (solar in their 6,000 year case) MAY cause larger changes in surface temperature than the models predict. If that is true, the radiative forcing that our CO2 emissions cause may have MORE of an influence than GCM simulations project.
So if we discard “model simulations”, then the actual paleo-climate observations show that climates across the planet may be MORE sensitive to CO2 emissions than the models predict.
Interesting to note is that WUWT’s reaction (by Sebastian Lüning) makes two arguments against this conclusion (of a much more sensitive climate system) :
(1) There’s a lot that indicates that some important factors have been completely under-estimated (e.g. sun).
Here, Sebastian Lüning does not give any reference to indicate that the sun’s radiative output has decreased over the past 6,000 years (and thus also no indication that it may have increased, making matters of sensitivity even worse).
And, :
(2) A series of ad-hominem attacks and conspiracies against the authors of the paper, which Sebastian Lüning then withdraws : Added: “SL wants to apologize to the authors of the discussed article for the lack of scientific preciseness in the retracted sentences.”
So, there you have it.
If you discard all models then climate reconstructions suggest that our planet’s climate is more sensitive to radiative forcings than physics suggest. And if you accept the models than climate change will happen as projected by the IPCC.
This was YOUR reference to evidence.
You choose which of these two options you want to believe.