Readers may recall this story: Nobel laureate resigns from American Physical Society to protest the organization’s stance on global warming.
He’s back.
From the Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting: From the Big Bang to the Big Controversy (aka Climate Change)
Ivar Giaever, who shared the 1973 prize for work on tunneling in superconductors but was to offer a skeptical take on climate change, Molina said that critics aren’t usually the experts. Listening to them, he added, is like going to your dentist when you have a heart problem.
As he took the stage for his turn, Giaever’s immediate remark was, “I am happy I’m allowed to speak for myself.” He derided the Nobel committees for awarding Al Gore and R.K. Pachauri a peace prize, and called agreement with the evidence of climate change a “religion.”
In contrast to Crutzen and Molina, Giaever found the measurement of the global average temperature rise of 0.8 degrees over 150 years remarkably unlikely to be accurate, because of the difficulties with precision for such measurements—and small enough not to matter in any case:
“What does it mean that the temperature has gone up 0.8 degrees? Probably nothing.”
He disagreed that carbon dioxide was involved and showed several charts that asserted, among other things, that climate had even cooled. “I pick and choose when I give this talk just the way the previous speaker picked and chose when he gave his talk,” he added. He finished with a pronouncement:
“Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.”
h/t to Marc Morano of Climate Depot
mydogsgotnonose says:
July 4, 2012 at 1:42 am
Your mention of McAdams rang a bell with me. I saved a third edition copy from my graduate school days. Another usefull text book I saved is Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot’s “Transport Phenomena”. “Climate Science” is a post modern science that does subjective research. There are likely to be few “climate scientist” that have ever read these books. The “true believers” would likely rewrite them to fit their agenda.
To put it politely, IPCC’s 0.2C / decade “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” (aka “climate change” by equivocation) is “Not Proven”! On common understanding of this evidence, the IPCC’s mean 0.2 C/decade “global warming” prediction would typically be considered “invalidated” or “rejected”!
That’s a slight overstatement. Not proven, absolutely. Proven not, by no means.
This is a very important difference.
That’s the reason I am a skeptic in this matter. The claims of 90% “certainty” are openly offensive in the context of climate science. They are absurd. They are “big lies”, lies so huge that one has to go back to the propaganda mills of the large totalitarian regimes to find their like.
However, there is strong (IMO no brainer) evidence for warming post-Dalton minimum, and reasonable evidence that humans have contributed to and continue to contribute to that warming. That is a long ways away from “proven not”.
Otherwise in general I agree with your post, and agree that the APS had absolutely no business getting involved with the CAGW debate. It will yet come back to haunt them.
rgb
It is a religion with believing in things that aren’t real. Funny how many atheist who say there is no God will use global warming as their religion. They will say there is no God even though everyone’s instincts tells them there is. Then they will believe in computer climate models that have no evidence in the real world that they are reliable.
Anyone that takes the time to look into global warming for themselves will find it is striped with doubts.
G. Karst
Stephen Hawkings own errors harm Stephen Hawking. For an extensive examination of one of Hawkings most well known errors read (or listen to) the book The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Hole-War-Mechanics/dp/1433243687/ref=tmm_abk_title_0
@jpfife says:
>…There’s also the possibility of calling it Ponzi Science as the ‘temperatures’ only ever go up.
Well said. Let’s look at this. If the meme is that ‘temperatures are rising inexorably’ then all one has to do is record them and sit back waiting for research grants to flow to the watchman who raised the alarm.
If the temperatures do not rise much, you simply leave out some rural stations and count on urban heat islands to inflate the numbers. All Ponzi schemes rely in an increase that continues, and ultimately an increase in the rate of increase.
When that method stalled, they reviewed the past and ‘corrected’ the past temperatures lowering them slightly to make the current temperature look it has risen more. But 7 times in 10 years?? That is pure Ponzi with a historical twist.
After that trick runs out, one needs to start homogenising and interpreting data and changing the number of steps needed to ‘get the real temperature’ which on paper, has to continue to rise in order to keep the money flowing into the system. Remember that if at any time the temperature actually droped, it is akin to a drop in the funds a Ponzi scheme has coming in, resulting in a serious cash-flow problem that self-exacerbates.
To maintain confidence when the temperatures start falling, the PR starts, just like in the Ponzi scheme: “There is a small delay in getting you your (temperatures/money) due to the exterme interest and the number of processing steps required to get the true answer.” “Don’t listen to those guys heckling on the sidelines – they are not serious (investors/scientists) and are just losing out.”
After the temperatures fail to climb and cannot be openly adjusted any further without giving away the entire plot, choose diversion, arm waving, attack the messengers, bring out a totally new system of evaluation that is more opaque and more easily manipulated – all done hoping that the money continues to flow and the temperatures (eventually) respond as predicted by the (economic/climate) model.
CAGW is quite literally ‘Ponzi Science’ – a form of confidence scheme. It is a way of making money from people on the promise that something will continue to rise indefinitely. That could relate to money, fear or temperature. When things start to go wrong, the explanations become curious and curiouser as the schemers start to filddle the data.
Each subsequent fiddle requires that it be on an even greater scale than the last. All Ponzi schemes collapse when the public wakes up to the fact there was nothing backing the initial premise other than a little seed money.
Skeptic: Persuade me that what you are doing is science.
Believer: You’re not an expert, so you’re not even qualified to question this work.
The believer has to resort to ad hominem fallacy and appeal to authority fallacy rather than debate the challenger. Chris Monckton has already covered this ground but it always bears repeating for the benefit of the open-minded readers who come here.
Actually, I think physics is irrelevant to ideology…
It looks like the pendulum of public opinion may have started to swing back in favor of the “received opinion” on climate change according to a recent Gallup poll report. As yet the recovery is minor over the past year with a three percent increase in those who say it is already began and a three percent decrease in those who say it will never happen. The sharp decrease earlier was probably due to the ‘Climategate Effect’ which is now fading ever so slowly. I judge, from the tone of the report, that the author is disappointed by the minimal recovery so far observed.
March 30, 2012
In U.S., Global Warming Views Steady Despite Warm Winter
Just over half say effects of global warming are now evident, similar to 49% last year
by Lydia Saad
Ref: http://www.gallup.com/poll/153608/Global-Warming-Views-Steady-Despite-Warm-Winter.aspx
Molina said: “…the science community increasingly finds it more likely that instances of wild weather (such as floods, fires) could be associated with climate change. ‘The scientific evidence is really overwhelming. Most experts agree; maybe two or three in 100 disagree.’ He added, ‘I know who they are and why they are wrong.’ ”
In his appeal to un-named authorities, Molina ignores the 31,400+ co-signers of the OISM Petition, who flatly state that rising CO2 levels are harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere. Those co-signers are named. Every name has been verified. And all co-signers have degrees in the hard sciences, including more than 9,000 PhD’s.
Molina is winging it. He presumes to speak for “the science community”. But where is his evidence? The number of alarmist scientists is not very large. They have repeatedly attempted to put out their own anti-OISM counter-petitions, but they have failed badly, getting only a very small percentage of the OISM’s numbers.
Thus, Molina’s fabricated “consensus” does not exist. If it does, Molina needs to provide the names of the scientists who are willing to agree in writing with what he claims in his first paragraph above [“Most experts agree…”].
davidmhoffer I think you will find that the moon periodically goes behind the Earth and is totally shielded from the sun where the Earth is always basking in the sun enough to make a vast difference in insolation.
and so the time it spends closer outweighs the time it spends further than the Earth. Overall, the moon loses at most 0.1% of the insolation it might otherwise receive because it “goes behind the earth”. This makes almost no difference to the average temperature and for all I know is omitted from the estimates altogether; the estimates are a lot more likely founded on “normal” moon conditions exclusive of eclipses.
Occasionally somebody says something so — well, dumb — on this list that it leaves me slightly flabbergasted, and usually says it in an officious and authoritarian way.
This is one of those times. The only time the moon is “totally shielded from the sun” by the Earth is during lunar eclipses. Lunar eclipses — partial or otherwise — occur two to three times a year, and darken any given part of the moon at most a few hours. If we are generous and say an average of four hours and three times a year, parts of the surface of the moon — say an average of 2/3 of the surface are shielded from the sun by the earth roughly 12 hours — half a day — out of the year. Say one part in 700. The overall moon is less, of course.
This is not “vast”. Also, the moon gains a bit because the intensity of sunlight varies like
Of all the people to harass on list for bad science, David Hoffer is not a good choice. Generally, his science is excellent, and AFAICT he can do actual math. Something you should think about practicing…
Cordially Yours
rgb
Science Police Squad (SPS)
I am not a climate scientist, but it seems to me that average temperature of the earth is not the meaningful number of interest when attempting to determine the effect of greenhouse gases on surface temperature. The only way the earth and its atmosphere can cool is through radiation into space. Since radiated power is a function of the forth power of absolute temperature I would think the proper way to arrive at the equivalent temperature of the earth as a radiating body would be to take the fourth root of the mean of the sum of the forth power of temperature rather than their average. Similar to an RMS (root mean square) measurement except using the forth power rather than the second.
It is an interesting number. However, your observation is quite correct. Global climate models do take this sort of thing into account, and there are some averages that work with fourth powers. The most important thing to take out of this is that hot places on the Earth’s surface radiate a lot more energy per unit area than cold places, so thermal inhomogeneity (for any given temperature) favors cooling. There is an inequality associated with this that states that the minimum radiation rate (for a given average temperature) occurs when the temperature of the radiating sphere is uniform. Otherwise, every square meter that is (say) 30K warmer radiates much more energy than you lose in every square meter that (balancing it) is 30K cooler, precisely because of that fourth power.
The “greybody temperature” is the temperature that would precisely balance all known insolation input (with albedo accounted for) with the output of a planetary sphere at a uniform temperature. Since this is the minimum radiation rate, one expects an inhomogeneous sphere — one that is hotter some places and cooler in others for a given average temperature — to radiate more efficiently, and hence be (on average) cooler for a given insolation.
Things that warm the planet relative to this include: Heat capacity — If the surface heats quickly and cools quickly, it maximizes temperature differences and hence is net cooling. If it heats slowly and cools slowly (and hence remains at a more uniform temperature) it is net warming, moving the planet closer to greybody behavior and temperature. The Greenhouse Effect — yes, this is quite real, directly observable in top of atmosphere spectroscopy compared to ground level spectroscopy. The Earth’s surface absorbs energy in the visible range roughly 70% unblocked/unreflected by the atmosphere and surface including clouds and icepack. It reradiates in the IR range, but the atmosphere is diffusively opaque in a wide band of the IR range until you reach the top of the troposphere. Because it is quite cold there, the intensity in the blocked bands is substantially reduced (fourth power of temperature) and surface radiation in the unblocked wavelengths has to be more intense to maintain detailed energy balance, which means that the surface temperature has to increase and does (fourth power of the temperature again). Finally heat transport makes a difference, usually net warming of the average by making temperatures more uniform.
This is all very crude still, and neglects e.g. latent heat effects, the substantial buffering and heat transport effects of a multi-kilometer deep water ocean, and the modulation of insolation due to clouds. Which is why climate science is difficult, and numerical modeling leading to long term predictions rather questionable. Climate models do try to take all of these things into account, but the underlying physics is highly nonlinear and nonlinear differential systems are notoriously, shall we say, “temperamental” and tweakable.
rgb
Of all the people to harass on list for bad science, David Hoffer is not a good choice. Generally, his science is excellent, and AFAICT he can do actual math.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Well thanks! (I just clued in that rgbatduke and Robert Brown are the same person.)
To: davidmhoffer:
Make sure you get your facts straight! You state that: “Consider that Mercury doesn’t spin at all…”
This wrong on two levels.
First: If Mercury “didn’t spin at all”, its orientation would always be the same, with respect to the so-called “celestial sphere”. This would mean that as Mercury ORBITED, it would present all parts of its surface in turn to Sunlight. What you are mis-stating is the ancient belief that Mercury’s rotation was tidally locked at 1:1 to the period of revolution (orbit), so that Mercury always would keep one face presented to the Sun, while the other would experience perpetual night.
Second: It was proved by radar measurements in 1965 that Mercury’s rotation was NOT tidally locked at 1:1, but rather at 3:2–meaning that Mercury’s period of rotation is 58.6 days, so that when it has completed 2 revolutions (orbits), it has rotated three times on its axis.
Make sure to express yourself correctly as well as plainly or else your point could be lost in the face of objections that have nothing to do with the main thrust of your argument!
Chris R.
Your objection is duly noted, and I agree with your explanation. At day’s end, the rotation is so slow that the side currently facing the Sun gets super duper hot and the side facing space gets ugly ugly cold. The main point is that despite getting less insolation, the AVERAGE temperature on Venus is higher than the hottest temps on Mercury. If that doesn’t show that atmospheric gases result in warmer surface temps then no gases, then I’m stumped.
83 year old world leader in quantum tunnelling claims that all the experts in some other field of physics are wrong, despite over 100,000 papers having been published in the field.
Who to trust, one Nobel Laureate, or all the others?
Seth:
Regarding the question of whether global warming “science” is a pseudo-science, this question is resolved by the non-existence of the statstical population that underlies the models’ claims. It’s a pseudo-science.
Seth~ could you list those papers, and what they refer to, please? Links to each one would be fine.
To Seth,
I put my trust in what the data tell me and the data sides with the 83 year old. The IPPC bible is far from trustworthy.
Seth says:
July 4, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Who to trust, one Nobel Laureate, or all the others?
Why trust either one? Look at the facts and decide who the facts support.
For example, right now, the ppm is about 390 and it went up from 280 to 390 and it is going up at about 2 ppm per year. At that rate, the doubling for another 170 ppm would occur in 85 years or around 2100. Since it is presumed the temperature went up by 0.8 C already, it would have to go up by another 2.2 C in 88 years. This amounts to 0.25 C per decade or about 0.38 C in 15 years and 7 months. But look at what happened to the RSS temperatures in the last 15 years and 7 months.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.83/plot/rss/from:1996.83/trend
OK. I cherry picked that one. But the maximum slope that Phil Jones found was 0.166 C per decade. This is by “cherry picking” the best possible slopes of the last 100 years and it is still way short of 0.25 C/decade.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm
100,000 papers Seth? Really?
Took 100 physicists to try and discredit Einstein, and they failed miserably. As he remarked, if he had been wrong, it would have taken only one. Quantity doesn’t equal quality, even if your number had a shred of reality to it. Nice try though.
Seth: Exactly what does the fact he is 83-years old have to do with anything?
Mike Smith,
I think Seth is trying to tell us that post-modern subjective science invalidates us old school scientists.
‘convection method of heat transmission’ to where?
How does the energy ‘leave the planet’; where’s your ‘sink’ (in engineering terms)?
Same Qs to you mydogsgotnonoose …
You guys ever see how/when dew forms? You know, like dew on grass or ‘dew’ on a car’s rooftop? Ask yourselves, why no dew on cloudy nights .. get back to me with an answer-any answer …
.
_Jim ,
You observe that clouds are controlling the rate of radiation energy loss to space. Now try to think about how clouds are formed and how convection is controlling their rate of formation. Thunder clouds transport a lot of energy to the TOA where there are no clouds to slow down energy loss to space. So the rate of convection becomes the rate controlling factor. Go back and read some of Willis’s posts on “thermostat”.
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
― William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
As far as I can tell, the only way to detect a change in climate is through MEASUREMENT, and the analysis of those measurements. Ivar Giaever, Lubos Motl, , Henrik Svensmark, Nir Shaviv, and Steve McIntyre may not be experts on climate, but each knows how to analyze measurements, and they have a lot more expertise in following mathematical arguments than
so called “climate scientists”.
While my dogsgotnonoose may be able to repeat a pat phrase, that would seem to be the extent of the ‘depth’ on the subject; just beyond reach are molecular ‘stretching and bending and resonating’ (like a tuning fork) on polar molecules which are EM respondent (like H2O and CO2), both being able to absorb EM energy as well as re-rad it back … whereas most non-polar molecules are transparent to EM energy (no ‘dipole’ moment to respond to the EM energy!) …
For a back-grounder, look up IR spectroscopy for a wealth info and practical applications of same, even for gases with their specific bands of absorption and radiation spectra.
.
bregmata says:
July 4, 2012 at 5:09 am
Calling it a pseudoscience is just hard-science snobbery. Climate Science is simply an a post-hoc science, just like anthropology, sociology, and economics (among others). You will notice hard-science snobbery looking down on all of those fields, and notice how they are all infused with doctrinaire approaches and political positioning.
I don’t think calling names will earn respect for any side of a debate, though, and that was clearly the intent of the use of the word ‘pseudoscience’. Please try to keep to the high ground.
No, bregmata, “Climate Change” IS a pseudoscience. Real science is based on honest observations and successful predictions. Climategate 1 and 2 revealed pal review, computer geeks unable to find the raw data in the database MESS, getting people fired from jobs because of allowing publications and on and on, not to mention “Mike’s Nature Trick.” McKittrick proved that Mann mishandled statistics in a way that would always produce hockey sticks. Mann has since produced more hockey sticks–which is correct prediction on McKittrick’s part.
The infamous “climate models” are notorious for being wrong almost all the time, a key fact in determining that this is pseudoscience. The 31 000 skeptical scientists led by the group in Oregon said that climate change was largely driven by solar activity. Predicting solar activity in advance has gotten better, but that is another scientific discipline than climate. Since the skeptic prediction was made, the sunspot cycle has been very weak–and the climate has failed to warm. It has not actually gotten any cooler, but the skeptic prediction has been closer to reality than the alarmist one.
Therefore, the skeptics are more scientific.
“…Anticipating the next speaker, physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973, who shared the 1973 prize for work on tunneling in superconductors but was to offer a skeptical take on climate change, Molina said that critics aren’t usually the experts. Listening to them, he added, is like going to your dentist when you have a heart problem…”
And that’s always been one problem with “climate scientists”. Their total lack of ability to tell us exactly what scientific disciplines make up the core of the “climate sciences”. Do we listen to mathematicians? Physicists? Statisticians? Chemists? Chemical Engineers? English Lit majors?
Is he saying that because this critic has a PhD in Physics (and shared a Nobel Prize in Physics), he shouldn’t be listened to, but someone who has a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics (James Hansen) is the real expert?
What makes a person with a PhD in math more of an expert in “climate science” than a geologist?
What makes someone listed as an environmentalist, author, and journalist (Bill McKibben, 350.org) more of an expert than an ex-Vice President (with an undergrad degree from Harvard, climaterealityproject.org). For that matter, what makes either McKibben or Gore more of an expert on the climate than a first-year meteorology student?
So, to one can imagine the statement made by the esteemed Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez (bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Doctoral degree in Chemistry, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry) as applying to McKibben and Gore: “…Listening to them, he added, is like going to your dentist when you have a heart problem…”