Readers may recall this WUWT story: Nature’s ugly decision: ‘Deniers’ enters the scientific literature.
Meanwhile, the discussion continues at John Nielsen-Gammon’s Climate Abyss website on Skeptics are Not Deniers, with part 3 now posted. Part 4 will likely be at this link today
At Jo Nova’s she has a response from Dr. Paul Bain. She writes:
Dr Paul Bain has replied to my second email to him which I do most appreciate. (For reference, see the letter he is replying to here: “My reply to Dr Paul Bain — on rational deniers and gullible believers” ). He deserves kudos for replying (it’s easier to ignore inconvenient emails), and also for taking some action to improve the article he published. I will reply properly as soon as I can. For the moment, and for fairness’s sake, it’s here for all to see.
… No, I don’t think there is any scientific reason (or definition in the English language) that validates the term “denier”, but Nature is going to publish an addendum this time, and that will be noticed by other researchers in the field. That is progress. Though there is a long way to go. — Jo
Bain writes:
As we all know, after publication it quickly became clear that the “denier” label was causing offence, and I contacted the journal’s editors to canvass options for addressing this. As the article was already published, it was agreed that the most practical option would be to include an addendum to the paper where we publicly expressed our regret about any offence we caused. This will be appended to both the online and printed versions of the paper. As you said, you yourself did not mention a link with Holocaust denial (and I myself did not hold such a link), but this was by far the most common association made by people who took the time to write to me personally to express their offence. By doing this, I don’t expect this to resolve (or even reduce) any issues (I fear that the damage is done), but I thought this was an appropriate thing to do nonetheless.
Full story here at Jo Nova’s
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Ah docrichards, i now understand it. You are being fooled by Skepticalscience which is a Marxist disinformation route allied to RealClimate. Do not trust anything it says. One of the authors has been proven to have altered past comments to develop the fake science it promotes.
Remember this: the difference between 333 W/m^2 ‘back radiation’ supposed to come down from the atmosphere then to be included with the real 63 W/m^2 UP from the Earth’s surface, and the 238.5 W/m^2 supposed to come DOWN from TOA is 94.5 W/m^2.
This is completely imaginary, the result of the Big Mistakes made by Trenberth and colleagues. I say they are mistakes but it looks like a giant fraud to me because without the 333 and the 238.5, the rest of the energy flows balance and look genuine. Net result, a Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd Kind, 40% of the input energy [238.5] and 400% in the IR to the lower atmosphere completely changing the heat transfer to radiative, the core of the scam, the imaginary Sky Dragon breathing fire on the World, Houghton’s wrath of God.
Give up this SkS addiction, it’s doing you serious harm! Can’t you think for yourself? You’re old enough……
docrichard, don’t confuse someone accepting something as a possibility as an agreement. I think it’s more accurate to say that they accept that the added CO2 may have warmed the Earth as much as 0.8*C. It’s downright laughable to claim that “standard textbook physics” dictates this. It’s accurate to say that “standard textbook physics” doesn’t preclude such a possibility.
Did you not understand the analogy about a piece of paper falling? Certainly, the paper COULD fall to the ground at speeds dictated by “standard textbook physics”. Scientists that are skeptical of a larger argument might decide to accept the possibility that the time it takes the paper to fall could be t=(2d/g)^0.5. They might accept this as a possibility so that they could instead focus on claims related to the broader argument which have even less possibility of being true. Now, this acceptance doesn’t mean that “standard textbook physics” dictates that the paper will take t=(2d/g)^0.5 to fall. Quite the opposite. Standard textbook physics dictates that many other factors will affect the time it takes the paper to fall. So, someone that rejects the claim that the paper will fall in t=(2d/g)^0.5 isn’t denying standard textbook physics. So, it’s irrational for you to claim that someone asserting such a rejection is in a state of denial.
Now, it’s been explained to you that the same can be said about the 0.8*C issue. “[S]tandard textbook physics” dictates that so many factors (many of which haven’t been studied enough to properly model) influence this issue that it’s impossible to simply conclude that 0.8*C is the right answer. The smarter scientists know this.
Seriously, much effort has been put into carefully explaining this to you. If you don’t properly understand this issue by now, it’s because you lack sufficient understanding of science – which is ironic because you probably think that the opposite is true.
Here is Lindzen: “However, warming from a doubling of CO2 would only be about 1°C (based on simple
59 calculations where the radiation altitude and the Planck temperature depend on wavelength in
60 accordance with the attenuation coefficients of well-mixed CO2 molecules; a doubling of any
61 concentration in ppmv produces the same warming because of the logarithmic dependence of CO2’s
62 absorption on the amount of CO2) (IPCC, 2007).” http://www.masterresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Lindzen_Choi_APJAS_final.pdf
I will try to find Spencer’s quote. Michaels’ statement is on a video somewhere, but I will look. WE aim to please 🙂
Found one of Michaels’ statements: “It’s hardly news that human beings have had a hand in the planetary warming that began more than 30 years ago. For nearly a century, scientists have known that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide would eventually result in warming that was most pronounced in winter, especially on winter’s coldest days, and a cooling of the stratosphere. All of these have been observed…”
http://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-michaels
docrichards, both quotes are in-line with the detailed explanation that I provided you. Are you opposed to learning?
What do you think you’re showing? All three models are merely attempts to simulate what they are claiming to simulate. That doesn’t mean that they are actually simulating what you claim they are simulating. And it’s not surprising that a model has been developed to correlate well – the model was probably tweaked so that it would correlate well. That doesn’t mean that the confluence of factors that actually affect climate were properly modeled.
Do you seriously not understand this?
First, you need to torture logic in order to claim that forest fires are positive feedback.
Second, how are each of these positive feedbacks quantified in the existing models? Is there even half the amount of observational data available to accurately quantify each? How sensitive are the models to these assumed quantifications?
Third, have any of the models assumed any negative feedback mechanisms at all? Is so, how much? If not, why not – do the modelers deny that negative feedback mechanisms exist?
Finally, think about the implication of your claims for a minute. If positive feedbacks add a C to AGW, then what does that tell you about the stability of the earth’s climate system? Do you really think that the earth’s climate system is this unstable?
Hi Doc! Pat Michaels doesn’t understand sufficient physics to realise the IPCC’s claims about direct IR thermalisation are wrong! The metallurgical engineering data I presented are the only true arbiter. So, we have to explain the interaction of the thermal-emission, self-absorption phenomenon, purely statistical, and Prevost Exchange interaction with the IR source, the Earth’s surface, and it all comes together.
But I develop an entirely new physics’ concept for and you spoil it by appealing to the authority of a BIOLOGIST! I spent 6 years training and a decade working as an industrial metallurgist: everyone with my knowledge in all the steelworks and aluminium plants around the World agree the IPCC heat transfer is embarrassingly bad.
It’s because Houghton was at the least naïve and so are the present modellers for not understanding the IPCC’s claim that Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation can be applied at TOA is bunkum. It only applies at equilibrium and the changeover from convection to radiation to space in one direction is as far from equilibrium as possible.
[One way radiation is because direct thermalisation is impossible from quantum exclusion so most IR energy bounces around by pseudo-scattering until thermalised heterogeneously or goes to space, and as there are few heterogeneous sites at TOA, they spill over to space!]
I’ve already told you real GHG warming is ~9 K not 33 K haven’t I? Reduce the IR energy in the lower atmosphere by a factor of 5 by getting rid of imaginary ‘back radiation’ and you get a very different picture. Lindzen and Spencer are getting there. When they correct their IR mistakes, they’ll catch up!
I’m late arriving to this discussion, but must comment that I’m glad to see the psychiatrist “docrichard” put the psychological concept of “denial” out there to be thought about.
After all, Psychiatry is right up there with Climate Science, in the ranks of pseudoscience.
He might have mentioned “resistance” along with “denial.” It’s another tool, when a doctor wants to hide the fact his diagnosis has been incorrect, and the patient is getting worse and not better.
In what other branch of medicine can a patient complain he feels worse, and the doctor blames the patient and not the treatment?
Once the lawyers figure out how to sue psychiatrists the way they sue doctors who actually cure people, the scam is over, for the amount of malpractice is enormous.
In any case, the fact psychiatrists use the word “denial” just makes the word all the dirtier. It should not be used in polite debate.
Good questions, wobble.
Forest fires are positive feedback in that they produce more CO2, and maybe a short term negative feedback if they are intense enough to lift their soot the required levels.
How are each of these positive feedbacks quantified in the existing models?
As far as I know, models only quantify short term feedbacks – H2O vapour, clouds and albedo The other feedbacks are too long term and too uncertain to quantify. I may be wrong here.
Is there even half the amount of observational data available to accurately quantify each?
See above.
How sensitive are the models to these assumed quantifications?
If you mean what climate sensitivity to they come out with, it is pretty close to the sensitivity derived from paleoclimate &c.
Third, have any of the models assumed any negative feedback mechanisms at all? Is so, how much? If not, why not – do the modelers deny that negative feedback mechanisms exist?
I’m not sure on this point. They can be run with any parameter you wish. So clouds can be set to negative feedback instead of the accepted weak positive.
Incidentally, whatever the effect of clouds, positive or negative, the effect will become less in a warming world: http://greenerblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/cloud-cover-decreases-in-warming-planet.html
Finally, think about the implication of your claims for a minute. If positive feedbacks add a C to AGW, then what does that tell you about the stability of the earth’s climate system? Do you really think that the earth’s climate system is this unstable?
Good point. Given that the earth has not overheated in the past, there must be negative feedbacks that terminate the positives in the end. Or maybe we must rely on forcings – orbital changes that cool things off. I don’t know.
Thanks for these questions.
If I may just respond to Smokey: No, skeptics do have a hypothesis. It is that climate sensitivity is low. That is why Lindzen and Spencer have been trying to find evidence to back up the claim.
I am aware that the moderators may feel that I have overstayed my welcome. It has been interesting, I’ve learned a lot. I apologise for the offence caused by use of the d-word, and will try not to use it in discussions.
[Reply: As long as you post your scientific opinions and follow the site Policy, you will not get snipped. WUWT encourages all scientific points of view. ~dbs, mod.]
dorcrichard,
Although I tend toward Prof Lindzen’s view, I should point out that you are cherry-picking him, and leaving others out.
Other esteemed climatologists think the sensitivity number is substantially lower. Roy Spencer says 0.46ºC for a doubling of [harmless, beneficial] CO2. The three Drs Idso, whose specialty is specifically CO2, think the sensitivity number is ≈0.37. And Prof Ferenc Miskolczi states that the sensitivity number is 0.00ºC for 2xCO2.
They all have more climate knowledge than you do, doubled and squared. Who should we listen to? You?
Smokey, I think you may be confusing sensitivity with the amount of warming due to a doubling of CO2, a figure derived from physics – its forcing.
Sensitivity is the reaction of the whole climate to this given CO2 forcing (or any other temperature change).
docrichard says: “Smokey: No, skeptics do have a hypothesis. It is that climate sensitivity is low.”
Wrong. The climate sensitivity question is not empirically testable. If it was testable, the sensitivity question would be definitively answered, and we would have the number. But it is not testable, therefore it is a conjecture.
I have only one testable hypothesis, which I have posted here dozens of times:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere
No one has falsified that hypothesis per the scientific method. It is still standing. CO2 is harmless. It is beneficial. Deal with it, it is reality.
Do you understand the definition of feedback?
Just because something releases CO2 doesn’t mean that it’s feedback. In order for something to be defined as feedback it must first be established that it was caused by the mechanism being considered. A commonly used example of feedback that you should be familiar with is amplified sound from a speaker being inputted back into the microphone being amplified. The process of the sound coming from the speaker going into the microphone is defined as feedback. Sounds being inputted to the microphone from sources other than the speaker are not considered feedback even if it causes a higher decibel output from the speakers.
Your forest fires example is like ambient noise being inputted into the amplification system. In order to establish a forest fire as an example of either positive or negative warming feedback you would first need to establish that the fire was caused by warming.
You didn’t answer the question for these. How are they quantified? Do you know what is meant by quantified?
The question isn’t addressed above.
No, you’re confusing climate sensitivity with a models sensitivity to assumptions.
If you’ve never heard of the term “sensitivity analysis” then I recommend you use Google to familiarize yourself with it before you spend any more time defending climate models.
In short, since there’s no way for modelers to definitively know exact inputs for feedback mechanisms, they need to make some assumptions. I’m asking how sensitive the models’ outputs are to these assumptions. In other words, do small adjustments to these assumptions change the model outputs a lot or just a little. Do you know?
Wobble: a warm world means that forests are drier, so they tend to catch fire more easily, and fires are more extensive. That is what is happening, big time, in the USA right now.
It’s interesting that you definitively make a claim by extrapolating a single graph.
I respect your honesty here, but my question is a bit more piercing than you’re acknowledging. If the earth’s climate system was as unstable towards warming as it’s currently being modeled, then it would always have a propensity to catastrophically warm – not just once or not just on a few occasions – but often or almost always. In other words, if the aggregate feedback mechanism is a positive as claimed, then natural variability would be CONSTANLY causing catastrophic levels of warming. This simply doesn’t make sense from the perspective of systems analysis.
You don’t know this. This has merely been speculated. It most certainly hasn’t been established. It’s quite possible that warming conditions would cause more precipitation to more areas of the world thus reducing the number of forest fires.
No, it’s not.
Seriously, it hasn’t been established that forest fires are a positive feedback mechanism – even given the low threshold of establishment used by climate modelers.
wobble, I do not have the expertise to answer your questions.
docrichard says:
wobble, I do not have the expertise to answer your questions.
Do you still maintain that he is in denial?
I wrote this as a comment to a post on docrichard’s blog
http://greenerblog.blogspot.co.uk/
but there was a 4,096 character limit, so I made some changes and thought I’d share it with WUWT readers instead.
Hi Doc, I am glad to see a “warmist” willing to engage in debate and that you realize that “climate sensitivity” is the crucial issue, not whether man is having any effect on the climate.
Like you I am not a climate scientist or even particularly scientifically qualified to assess climate science. So what gives me the audacity to reject the pronouncements of an august body like the IPCC?
Contrary to what you might think my first suspicions were not aroused by reading anything by a “climate skeptic” -fossil fuel funded or otherwise. My doubts began with the words and deeds of (what I now call) the warmists. Specifically, when they claim that the current global climate is “unprecedented”, and they have hockey stick handles to prove it.
They say that melting in the Arctic is unprecedented, the threat to polar bears is unprecedented and that we are approaching a tipping point when positive feedbacks such as “methane releases from permafrost and clathrates” will result in runaway warming that will be unprecedented.
The current temperatures are not unprecedented or even exceptional, not just in the timeframe of earth’s entire history but in the very recent past i.e. the last 10 or 12,000 years since the last “ice age”, also known as the current interglacial, the Holocene or, in a geological timespan, now.
Not only was the previous interglacial, the Eemian, which ended about 114,000 years ago, warmer than this one (hippopotamus bathed in the Thames), there have been several episodes of warmth greater than today during the Holocene the last of them being the Medieval Warm Period.
That most warmists ignore these inconvenient episodes is cause to doubt their competence or integrity. That many of them actually deny their existence is cause to distrust anything they say.
But I’m not a scientist and my assertions carry no authority. I could give many examples and cite many authoritative sources to substantiate, but I will give just one.
Most climate reconstructions are based on proxies, such as tree rings or lake sediments. But they are, to some degree, open to different interpretations and there are many points of dispute. Tree growth, for example, is dependent on rainfall and many other factors beside temperature. So lay people, like you and me, have to choose which experts we believe. Some of the most important evidence comes from ice cores taken from the polar regions. As with layers of sediment or rings on a tree, ice can be dated. Again any interpretation beyond that is beyond the capability of most people.
But there is one feature of two little-mentioned ice cores, whose interpretation is, I think, unambiguous and easy for anyone to grasp.
The ice cores from Greenland are taken from nine sites. You can see a map of them at the website of the Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen.
http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/research/
You can click on the map for detailed information about each site. If you do this for the two most northerly sites, named Hans Tausen and Flade Isblink, you will discover that the intrepid scientists found something remarkable at a depth of 345m for Tausen and 600m for Isblink. They hit bedrock.
As the Copenhagen scientists make clear, this means that the ice cap at these two sites only started building up 3500 years ago at Tausen and 4000 years ago at Isblink. Or to put it another way, a large part of northern Greenland, which is now covered with 300-600m of ice, was ice free for 500 years or more in the (geologically) recent past.
The warmists cannot dismiss the evidence of these two Greenland ice cores as a local phenomenon as they base much of their claims for global climate on the evidence from the other seven.
So, how hot was it 3500 to 4000 years ago? Answer 1: Hot enough to melt 300-600m of ice over much of northern Greenland. Answer 2: Hotter than today. There was no runaway greenhouse effect from “methane releases from permafrost and clathrates”. Current temperatures and ice loss is not unprecedented. The extent of the warmists’ deceit and denial is, however, unprecedented
What’s up with that Doc?
Btw, even if what you say here is true, then only the INCREASE in forest fires could be considered positive feedback.
I appreciate your honesty and honest debate.
Docrichard wrote: “a warm world means that forests are drier, so they tend to catch fire more easily, and fires are more extensive. That is what is happening, big time, in the USA right now.”
Except the “big time” for forest fires in that part of the world (and probably elsewhere) was 700 to 1200 years ago.
———————-
ScienceDaily (Mar. 18, 2010)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100318093300.htm
“A 3,000-year record from 52 of the world’s oldest trees shows that California’s western Sierra Nevada was droughty and often fiery from 800 to 1300, according to new research.
Scientists reconstructed the 3,000-year history of fire by dating fire scars on ancient giant sequoia trees, Sequoiadendron giganteum, in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park. Individual giant sequoias can live more than 3,000 years.
[…]
The scientists found the years from 800 to 1300, known as the Medieval Warm Period, had the most frequent fires in the 3,000 years studied. Other research has found that the period from 800 to 1300 was warm and dry.”
———————–
“Known as the Medieval Warm Period” to CAGW skeptics and to CAGW proponents as the beginning of Mann’s hockey stick handle.
P.S. Despite the tone, I (and probably other WUWT regulars) appreciate you making the effort, Doc.
The topic of this thread is drifting towards “the science.” Actually I think this post was about something different than science.
One branch of the law is called “Civil Procedure.” In essence, is is all about how to fight, but to be civil about it.
Our two party system encourages debate. Debate is healthy. Having two views explains why we have two eyes. However the concept of a “consensus” is like the concept of a cyclops.
To call the opposition to your view a word such as “denier” is an attempt to skip the debate. It is an attempt to so belittle the opposing view that it isn’t even considered. It is “brushed off,” and no actual debate occurs.
To avoid debate is the action of a dictator. I like to believe we a capable of better behavior, in all areas, whether they be the halls of justice or the halls of learning.
If you read Churchhill’s old debates you will notice that even when the tempers grew hot, he called people (who he might have liked to strangle) things such as “the loyal opposition.”
We need to be loyal to civil procedure and the concept of the two party system. If we are loyal to that, we can have a jolly ding-dong fight, and rather than hurt everyone gets wiser.