Dr. Leif Svalgaard on the New Scientist solar max story

tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 2:59 pm
the EMPIRICALLY OBSERVED drop in cloud cover by dragging Svensmark’s HYPOTHESIS into the discussion. It’s obviously a tactic, because he knows the ~1.6% drop in cloud cover since 1971 fells AGW on the spot.
It also kills the GCR-hypothesis. Both GCR and AGW are dead as causes of climate change. Perhaps you still do not believe that AGW is dead and see AGW as a way of rescuing the GCR-hypothesis. I, for one, do not. Perhaps you should cut-n-paste that statement into your collection of quotes to bring out at appropriate times.

davidmhoffer says:
September 29, 2012 at 3:31 pm
I can take it. I hadn’t expected anything else. A small part of me is hoping Mosher is a mole for our side, but just a small part.

richardscourtney wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1094970

Firstly, your unjustified and unjustifiable assertion that “that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have become the dominant climate driver on a multi-decadal and centuries time scale” needs to be substantiated by you because it is pure, superstitious belief.

Considering that the IPCC Report 2007 compiled and synthesized the state of knowledge about Earth’s climate system, including the role of greenhouse gases in it and all the scientific evidence for it, which has been accumulated over decades of scientific research, published in many hundreds peer reviewed studies, I can call your statement nothing else than a statement of extreme ignorance.
When are you going to study the scientific literature? You can start with the IPCC report, because it’s overall a very good compilation of the available scientific papers,, although only until 2007. A new report is going to be published next year. You can work through all the peer reviewed papers referenced at the end of each chapter in the report.
The truly superstitious and religious ones are the ones who reject any results from scientific research, as soon as those are in contradiction to the own preconceived political or ideological views. For instance, that would be creationists (or followers of the “intelligence design” crap) with respect to the biological sciences, or people like you with respect to climate science.

The “committed warming” predicted in the AR4 for the first two decades of this century has disappeared.

You are endlessly repeating the same falsehoods. I’m not going to reply to it anymore, because it just would be a repetition of my previous replies.

Jan P Perlwitz
Nice job in hijacking a thread on solar activity to rattle on about greenhouse gasses being the dominant driver of temperature. I’ve had a quick read through your blog and I have noticed how you have Insulted and actively encourage insults of how unscientific people who are comment on WUWT. Your behaviour can be likened to a spoiled child throwing his toys about in a tantrum because he didn’t get his own way. Grow up! The thread is about “Dr. Leif Svalgaard on the New Scientist solar max story” Not about you! You made it about you when you went off topic, being a very unpleasant and distracting character making a big scene. I don’t know you but your attitude stinks BTW Thanks for showing the world just how much of a snotty know-it-all type of bully you really are. If there’s one thing I dislike, it would be Bullies. You nasty little piece of work!! Grrrr! 🙂

D Böehm wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1095057

He believes he’s right — but without any empirical evidence to support his belief,

Empirical evidence is plentiful. But anyone who refuses for political or ideological reasons to make him/herself knowledgeable about the matter, e.g., by reading the scientific literature where the evidence is provided, will never know the evidence, and will continue to claim there was “no evidence”. The use of dubious, non-scientific sources to maintain the world view, which is threatened to be shattered by the results from real scientific research is complementary to the rejection of the scientific sources.

Sparks wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1095138

Nice job in hijacking a thread on solar activity to rattle on about greenhouse gasses being the dominant driver of temperature.

Why are you faulting me? You have to admit that everyone has been piling on me, after I replied to some initial comment here. Why don’t you blame them? Most of my following comments were in reply to people who piled on me. And I haven’t even been able to answer to all of them, which has been very hurtful. And now you pile on me, too, and you promptly triggered another reply by me. What can I do?

richardscourtney wrote in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/28/dr-leif-svalgaard-on-the-new-scientist-solar-max-story/#comment-1094167

I assume you are paid to tell such egregious lies.

I am not telling lies. You are making a malicious accusation. Or provide the evidence for your accusation, according to which I was lying.
I think you are absolutely clueless with respect to climate simulations.

It is a falsehood that “Climate projections are predictions of the change in the statistical properties of the whole population, when the boundary conditions change.” That could only be true if the boundary conditions were known and specified to defined accuracy and precision. And they are not.

Logic fail. The question to what accuracy the boundary conditions are known doesn’t have any relevance for the question how climate simulations are conception-ally designed and set up.
There are two types of numerical integrations in the field of meteorology/climate. Initial value problems and boundary value problems. Weather forecasts with numerical weather prediction models are initial value problems. The weather forecast simulations are started from a set of initial conditions that are derived from measurements and assimilated. The data that comprise the set of initial values should be the best possible approximation of the real world. 100% accuracy is not possible here either, though. Starting from those initial conditions, the purpose is to predict the future chronological succession of weather events, i.e., one single trajectory from all possible trajectories weather can follow, as accurately as possible.
In contrast, climate simulations start from an arbitrary set of initial conditions, e.g., a standard atmosphere setup. If one wants to carry ensemble climate simulations, the initial conditions are randomly perturbed. It guarantees that each individual realizations from the ensemble takes a different path, even though the boundary conditions are exactly the same for all ensemble members.
Already by this setup, it is clear that there is no purpose here to match the exact chronological succession of weather events in the real world with climate simulations. The models are run, for instance to some equilibrium state for 1XCO2, 2XCO, 4XCO to study how the climate variables in the model statistically change for different CO2-concentrations. Or for climate simulations to reproduce the historical climate and for future predictions, state-of-the-art Earth system models, with various coupled components, are run into equilibrium for a fixed set of boundary conditions, e.g., as control simulations for pre-industrial times. Those simulations take many hundreds or thousands of model years, until the equilibrium is reached, at least approximately. It’s a pure boundary condition problem that is being numerically integrated here. The climate variables can only be statistically described for such a problem. Then, if one wants to study climate change, one branches off simulations from the control simulation. In the branched off simulations, the boundary conditions are allowed to vary with time, and it is still a pure boundary condition problem that is being numerically solved. Then the statistics of the changed climate are compared with the statistics of the control simulations. Similarly, it doesn’t make any sense to compare the exact chronological succession of events in climate simulations with the chronological succession of events in the real world. Only comparisons based on statistics between climate simulations and real world are really meaningful to evaluate the skill of a climate model to reproduce past or present climate.

Indeed, the main “boundary condition” varied in the models is the forcing from GHGs, mostly CO2. But, as my post explained, and I again quote Kiehl’s words for the explanation
The cited range in climate sensitivity from a wide collection of models is usually 1.5 to 4.5 deg C for a doubling of CO2, where most global climate models used for climate change studies vary by at least a factor of two in equilibrium sensitivity.

And how exactly does the fact that different models have different climate sensitivities to a doubling of CO2, refute my statement that climate simulations, e.g., for CO2-doubling, are boundary value problems, which are being numerically solved? There is no logic here in your quoting of this statement from the Kiehl paper.

Jan P Perlwitz says:
“And the reason he is telling lies is that the truth is very inconvenient. Their ‘theories’ don’t make testable predictions that they are willing to document and stand behind as criteria of falsifyability.”
Your assertion is a falsehood. All aspects of the physical theory behind the prediction of global warming due to greenhouse gases are testable.
My assertion is not false. I didn’t say your theories can’t make testible predictions. I said they don’t. Feel free to make some. Then stand by them . This last bit would include holding to all components of the prediction, including:
1) the limited scope of the parameters you choose to define the prediction, and
2) the breadth of the error bands you have to invoke to demonstrate “consistent with”
I shall not hold my breath awaiting the day when the above are practiced by the people who pull the “projection is not prediction” routine every time one of their predictions is shown to be untenable.
(I do not appreciate if someone accuses me of lying, i.e., of deliberately making factually false statements, without providing evidence for such an accusation.)
Yeah, but you likely don’t care for it much when you are called out for ignorantly making factually false statements, either. So, your sensibilities aren’t of much use in deciding which way to respond to your smarmily delivered factually incorrect statements.
The evidence for accusation of deliberate falsehood is the fact that you make false statements and frequently use false reasoning here, of the sort that a person who holds your position should have the knowledge and skills to avoid as mistakes. Deductive logic doesn’t demand that conclusion, but parsimony suggests it.
You could negate that circumstance, by owning up to your errors when they are pointed out to you – another event for which I will not postpone respiration in anticipation. You tend to double down with fingers firmly planted in ears, as you are doing now.

dmh
How about you explain the CET in the context of your own wording regarding the effects of CO2?
JanP
I don’t really know what you want from me. The CET time series can’t be explained solely with CO2.
REPLY: Oh. So CO2 isn’t the dominant factor after all? Or it just isn’t the dominant factor in that region? Gee, I thought dominant meant DOMINANT!
JanP
But I don’t see what the alleged contradiction to the theory, which is asserted, is supposed to be.
REPLY: Since you won’t give us a straight answer as to what your theory is, we really have no idea what you do or don’t mean about just about anything you say. But you were pretty clear that CO2 is currently the dominant (your words, not mine) factor in climate, yet when someone produces a 350 year temperature record called CET you claim there are other factors, and that you don’t even know whaty they are. If you don’t know what the other factors are for THIS region, then you don’t know what the other factors are for ANY region, and hence, you cannot claim to know what the dominant factors globally are.
dmh
You never drive a stake in the ground as to what it is you are claiming in the first place,
JanP
I reject this claim. I have made many clear statements what my views are. You apparently just can’t deal with them, and you don’t know how to refute them, although you don’t like them, because they contradict your preconceived views.
REPLY: About the only claim that you have made is that CO2 is the dominant factor in climate…. except in the region represented by the CET, and you claim to not know why. But you claim to know it is true everywhere else.
dmh
So please state, in plain English, what you believe the effects of increasing CO2 are,
JanP
So you want me to explain how the whole climate system works? In a comment here? How long is this comment supposed to be? You already complaint that I had become too wordy.
Why don’t you read the IPCC report? Then you know what my views are. Essentially. And you can criticize them using scientific arguments, if you don’t agree with the scientific arguments laid out there.
REPLY: I have read IPCC AR4. It is what convinced me to become a skeptic in the first place. But since you have advised that this is more or less representative of your views, I would like to draw your attention to IPCC AR4 WG1 Chapter 2, specificaly 2.9.1 Uncertainties in Radiative Forcing which ranks no less than 14 factors and the LOSU (Level of Scientific Understanding) of each of them. Of the 14 factors listed, only LLGHG are credited with a “high” level of scientific understanding. Stratospheric and Tropospheric Ozone are ranked as “medium”. Direct Aerosols and Surface Albedo (land use) are ranked “medium to low”. Stratasopheric water vapour from CH4, cloud albedo (all aerosols), surface albedo (black carbon), persistant linear contrails, solar irradiance, volcanic aerosols, stratospheric water vapour from other than CH4, tropospheric water from irrigation, aviation induced cirrus, cosmic rays, and “other surface effects” are all rated either “low” or “very low”.
So I take it Dr JanP, that as you have stipulated to the IPCC reports being representative of your views, that you are stipulating to the fact that when it comes to earth’s radiative balance we actually know very little about most of the factors and so have no idea at all how CO2 stacks up against them? Sorry, but that’s what the IPCC report you claim represents your views actually says. (Ain’t it a bi*ch when it turns out that some of us great unwashed can actually read?)
dmh
BTW, you have still failed to provide a direct answer to the issues brought up by richardscourtney regarding the broad range of values used for aerosol forcing amongst the various models,
JanP
What is the question? I have addressed the aerosol issue in models in my reply to Tom Murphy. The aerosol forcing has a relatively large spread between the models because that’s the range of uncertainty regarding this forcing.
REPLY: Thanks for admitting that the range of uncertainty regarding this forcing is very large. Since we are so uncertain as to the proper value, we cannot claim that CO2 dominates it, can we? More to the point however, the range of uncertainty of the value of aerosol forcing is quite a bit larger than the range of uncertainty when model results are compared to each other. In other words, the model results having a lower range of uncertainty when compared to each other than the range of values being used for aerosol forcing is proof positive that aerosol forcing values are being used to introduce adjustments that cancel out other errors in the models. In other words, they are being used exactly as the fudge factor richardscourtney claims. Is this were not true, if the values were simply best estimates, our expectation would be that the broad range would cause the model outputs to diverge instead of converge.
dmh
the inability of the models to make a prediction that has been born out by future observations,
JanP
I don’t understand this statement. We don’t have observations from the future.
REPLY: You know very well what I mean. Model outputs that were run in 1980, when compared to today’s temps, were wrong. Model outputs from 1990 when compared to todays temps were wrong. Model outputs from 2000 when compared to today’s temps were wrong. Model ouputs from just a few years ago failed to predict the current lack of warming. At no point have any of the models made predictions a decade or two or three out and then been proven right ten or twenty or thirty years later. Yet you continue to claim there is a reason to believe that what they predict ten or twenty or thirty years out from now is accurate.
dmh
you’ve not provided a cogent answer to the point that natural variability makes it so hard to isolate the warming signal from CO2 that no rational person would conclude anything other than it is so small as to be insignificant,
JanP
What are you talking about? Your statement is just not true. The signal is very clear for a multi-decadal time scale. The signal to natural variability ratio is large on such a time scale. A recent scientific reference for this is Santer et al, JGR, (2011), doi:10.1029/2011JD016263.
REPLY: And yet, here we are, with no warming for 15 years and Santer now claiming 15 years isn’t the right time frame, it is really 17 years. Or is is 19 now? Ooops, I thought you said CO2 was dominant. Yet no warming at the highest levels of CO2 we have ever had. And we don’t understand why, because according to the IPCC (and hence by your own assertion, you) there are feedbacks and other factors that we don’t yet understand which are clearly as large or larger. Hence your claim that CO2 is dominant just doesn’t hold up.
JanP
“It is principally not possible to make predictions of an individual realization beyond a certain time horizon, since the individual realizations diverge exponentially with an arbitrary small perturbation of the initial conditions.”
dmh
pretty much falsifies the value of the models in the first place.
JanP
Why do predictions of changes in the statistical properties of climate variables, i.e., the average weather and its variability, in the future due to changing climate drivers have no value? Ask, for instance, the insurance industry what they think about your assertion.
REPLY: By your own assertion that your views are in accordance with the IPCC, it is clear that of the variables considered by the IPCC, almost all have either a low or a very low Level of Scientific Understanding. As a consequence, any statistical properties forecast (predicted, projected, use any term you wish) based on those poorly understood factors produces a model result of no particular value and cannot be relied upon for decision making of any sort. The insurance industry deals with this matter simply by being smart enough to not offer insurance products in such circumstances.
The insurance industry, Dr JanP, is smart enough not to make a fool’s bet. If they haven’t good quality properties upon which to base their model, they choose not to make a fool’s bet. The problem here Dr JanP, is that you are making a fool’s bet, but you are doing it with my money, not yours. You want to throw my virgins into your volcanoe. You cannot understand the danger, the damage, and the billions of lives that will be lost if you make the bet that you want us to. All you can see is the billions of lives you think will be saved based on climate models that have repeatedly failed to produce results born out by observation over time and which are based on properties affecting earth’s radiative energy balance which you admit to having a poor understanding of, and which you admit can only result in model outputs with error variances so large as to be meaningless. Yet still you insist on making that bet.

tallbloke says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:17 pm
the decade happens to include the sun going quiet, and cloud increasing, consistent with the Svensmark Hypothesis.
Not at all consistent: http://www.leif.org/research/Cloud-Cover-GCR-Disconnect.png
Heh. It was too ludicrous to reply to.
It is no more ludicrous than the other excuses you come up with, so you still include AGW as a possible excuse.
“Both GCR and AGW are dead as causes of climate change”
good to see that you agree.