Teaming up with Jo Nova to answer The Team down under: “Professor Sherwood is inverting the scientific method”
Guest post by Alec Rawls
My leak of the draft IPCC report emphasized the chapter 7 admission of strong evidence for solar forcing beyond the very slight variance in solar irradiance, even if we don’t know the mechanism:
The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link.
One of the fifteen lead authors of chapter 7 responded that the evidence for one of the proposed mechanisms of solar amplification, GCR-cloud, indicates a weak effect, and proceeded as if this obviated the IPCC’s admission that some such mechanism must be having a substantial effect:
[Professor Steven Sherwood] says the idea that the chapter he authored confirms a greater role for solar and other cosmic rays in global warming is “ridiculous”.
“I’m sure you could go and read those paragraphs yourself and the summary of it and see that we conclude exactly the opposite – that this cosmic ray effect that the paragraph is discussing appears to be negligible,” he told PM.
Sherwood uses theory—his dissatisfaction with one theory of how solar amplification might work—to ignore the (admitted) evidence for some mechanism of solar amplification. Putting theory over evidence is not science. It is the exact definitional opposite of science (see Feynman snippet above).
Since Sherwood is Australian, it seemed a visit Down Under was due, so Jo Nova and I teamed up to issue a reply on her website.
Jo knows Sherwood
Here is Jo Nova’s take on Sherwood’s shenanigans:
The IPCC are now adding citations of critics (so they can’t be accused of ignoring them completely), but they bury the importance of those studies under glorious graphic art, ponderous bureacrat-speak, and contradictory conclusions.
When skeptics point out that the IPCC admit (in a hidden draft) that the solar magnetic effect could change the climate on Earth, the so-called Professors of Science hit back — but not with evidence from the atmosphere, but with evidence from other paragraphs in a committee report. It’s argument from authority, it’s a logical fallacy that no Professor of Science should ever make. Just because other parts of a biased committee report continue to deny the evidence does not neutralize the real evidence.
Alec Rawls pulls him up. Sherwood calls us deniers, but the IPCC still denies solar-magnetic effects that have been known for 200 years. This anti-science response is no surprise from Sherwood, who once changed the colour of “zero” to red to make it match the color the models were supposed to find. (Since when was red the color of no-warming? Sure you can do it, but it is deceptive.) That effort still remains one of the most egregious peer reviewed distortions of science I have ever seen. — Jo
Earlier this week Nova posted about Sherwood’s glowing support for recent claims that the IPCC’s predictions of global warming have been accurate. Obviously Sherwood needs to take a closer look at the Second Order Draft which, in particular the following graph (SOD figure 1.4 on page 1-39, with a hat tip to Anthony):
Absolutely NOT falsified says Sherwood, but guess what he thinks IS falsified?
Steve Sherwood, Co-Director, Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales said the paper showed “that if you take natural year-to-year variability into account in any reasonable way, the predictions are as close as one could reasonably expect.”
“Those who have been claiming ad nauseum that the climate models have been proved wrong, should read this paper, even though for most of us it is not very surprising,” said Dr Sherwood, who was not involved in the Nature Climate Change paper.
“Though there is no contrarian analogue to the IPCC, individual contrarians have made predictions over a similar time frame that the warming would stop or reverse. The data since then have probably falsified many of those predictions (which the deniers continue to make today).”
Predictions that warming would stop have been falsified? By what? By the fact that, according to HadCRUT4, there has been no statistically significant warming for 16 years? Falsification in Steve Sherwood’s dictionary: “whatever preserves Steve Sherwood’s presumptions.” Just what we’d expect from a definitional anti-scientist.
My own response to Sherwood gets into the back-story on the Second Order Draft. Readers might be interested to know that the SOD admission of substantial evidence for solar amplification seems to be in response to my submitted comments on the FOD. I had charged them with, you guessed it, inverting the scientific method. That’s why Sherwood, in pretending that the new admission never happened, is also inverting the scientific method. He’s reverting to the FOD position. Well, some of his co-authors are apparently not willing to go there any more, and hopefully they will speak out.
My guest post at Jo Nova’s:
Professor Steven Sherwood inverts the scientific method: he is an exact definitional anti-scientist
My submitted comments on the First Order Draft of AR5 accused the IPCC of committing what in statistics is called “omitted variable fraud.” As I titled my post on the subject: “Vast evidence for solar climate driver rates one oblique sentence in AR5.”
How vast is the evidence? Dozens of studies have found between a .4 and .7 degree of correlation between solar activity and various climate indices going back many thousands of years, meaning that solar activity “explains” in the statistical sense something like half of all past temperature change (citations at the link above).
Solar activity was at “grand maximum” levels from 1920 to 2000 (Usoskin 2007). Might this explain a substantial part of the unexceptional warming of the 20th century? Note also that, with the sun having since dropped into a state of profound quiescence, the solar-warming theory can also explain the lack of 21st century warming while the CO2-warming theory cannot.
Now take a look the radiative forcing table from any one of the IPCC reports, where the explanatory variables that get included in the IPCC computer models are laid out. You will see that the only solar forcing effect listed is “solar irradiance.” In AR5 this table is on page 8-39:
Why is the solar irradiance effect so tiny? Note that Total Solar Irradiance, or TSI, is also known as “the solar constant.” When solar activity ramps up and down from throwing wild solar flares to sleeping like a baby, TSI hardly varies a whit. That’s where the name comes from. While solar activity varies tremendously, solar irradiance remains almost constant.
This slight change in the solar radiation that shines on our planet is known to be too small an energy variation to explain any substantial change in temperature. In particular, it can’t begin to account for anything near to half of all past temperature change. It can’t begin to account for the large solar effect on climate that is evidenced in the geologic record.
Implication: some other solar effect besides TSI must also be at work. One of the solar variables that does vary when solar activity ramps up and down, like solar wind pressure, must be having some effect on climate, and this is certainly plausible. We in-effect live inside of the sun’s extended corona. When the solar wind is going full blast the earth’s immediate external environment is rather different than when the solar wind is down, and even if we don’t know the mechanism, we have powerful evidence that some solar effect other than the slight variation in TSI is driving global temperature.
This is what the IPCC admits in the Second Order Draft of AR5, which now includes the sentence in bold below (page 7-43, lines 1-4, emphasis added):
Many empirical relationships have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Dengel et al., 2009; Ram and Stolz, 1999). The forcing from changes in total solar irradiance alone does not seem to account for these observations, implying the existence of an amplifying mechanism such as the hypothesized GCR-cloud link. We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol and cloud properties.
Sherwood’s response is to consider only one possible mechanism of solar amplification. He looks at the evidence for Henrik Svensmark’s proposed GCR-cloud mechanism and judges that the forcing effect from this particular mechanism would be small, then concludes that a greater role for the sun in global warming is “ridiculous.”
Hey Sherwood, read the added sentence again. It says that the evidence implies the existence of “an amplifying mechanism.” Presenting an argument against a particular possible mechanism does not in any way counter the report’s new admission that some such mechanism must be at work. (Guess he didn’t author that sentence eh? Since he doesn’t even know what it says.)
Sherwood is trying to use theory—his dissatisfaction with a particular theory of how solar amplification might work—to dismiss the evidence that some mechanism of solar amplification must be at work. The bad professor is inverting the scientific method, which requires that evidence always trump theory. If evidence gives way to theory it is not science. It is anti-science. It is the exact opposite of science.
The new sentence was added specifically to avoid the criticism that the authors were inverting the scientific method
My submitted comments on the First Order Draft ripped the authors up and down for inverting the scientific method. They were all doing what Sherwood is doing now. Here is the same passage from the FOD. It lacks the added sentence, but otherwise is almost identical (FOD page 7-50, lines 50-53):
“Many empirical relationships or correlations have been reported between GCR or cosmogenic isotope archives and some aspects of the climate system, such as SSTs in the Pacific Ocean (Meehl et al., 2009), some reconstruction of past climate (Kirkby, 2007) or tree rings (Dengel et al., 2009). We focus here on observed relationships between GCR and aerosol- and cloud-properties.”
The first sentence here, citing unspecified “empirical relationships” between cosmogenic isotopes (a proxy for solar activity) and “some aspects of the climate system” is the only reference in the entire report to the massive evidence for a solar driver of climate. Not a word about the magnitude of the correlations found, nothing about how these correlations are much too strong to possibly be explained by the slight variance in solar irradiance alone, and almost nothing (“many”) about the sheer volume of studies that have found these correlations. And that’s it: one oblique sentence, then the report jumps immediately to looking at the evidence for one proposed mechanism by which solar amplification might be occurring.
The evidence for that particular mechanism is judged (very prematurely) to indicate a weak effect, and this becomes the implicit rationale for the failure of the IPCC’s computer models to include any solar variable but TSI. Readers of the FOD have no idea about the mountain of evidence for some solar driver of climate that is stronger than TSI because the report never mentions it. A couple of the citations that were included mention it (in particular, Kirkby 2007, which is a survey paper), but the report itself never mentions it, and the report then goes on to ignore this evidence entirely. The enhanced solar forcing effect for which there is so much evidence is completely left out of all subsequent analyses.
In other words, the inversion of the scientific method is total. In the FOD, the authors used their dissatisfaction with the GCR-cloud theory as an excuse for completely excluding the vast evidence that some mechanism of enhanced solar forcing is at work. Theory was allowed to completely obliterate and remove a whole mountain of evidence. “Pure definitional anti-science,” I charged.
At least one of the co-authors seems to have decided that this was a bridge too far and added the sentence acknowledging the evidence that some mechanism of solar amplification must be at work. The added sentence declares in-effect, “no, we are not inverting the scientific method.” They are no longer using their dissatisfaction with a particular theory of how enhanced solar forcing might work as a ruse to pretend that the evidence for some such mechanism does not exist.
So good for them. In the sea of IPCC dishonesty there is a glimmer of honesty, but it doesn’t go very far. TSI is still the only solar effect that is included in the “consensus” computer models and the IPCC still uses this garbage-in claim to arrive at their garbage-out conclusion that observed warming must be almost entirely due to the human release of CO2.
One of the reason I decided to release the SOD was because I knew that once the Steven Sherwoods at the IPCC realized how the added sentence undercut the whole report they would yank it back out, and my submitted comments insured that they would indeed realize how the added sentence undercut the whole report. Now sure enough, as soon as I make the added sentence public Steven Sherwood publicly reverts to the FOD position, trying to pretend that his argument against one proposed mechanism of solar amplification means that we can safely ignore the overwhelming evidence that some such mechanism is at work.
We’ll find out in a year or so whether his co-authors are willing to go along with this definitional anti-science. Evidently there is at least some division. With Sherwood speaking up for the FOD position, any co-authors who prefer the new position should feel free to speak up as well. Come on real scientists, throw this blowhard under the bus!
In any case, it is good to have all of them stuck between a rock and a hard place. They can invert the scientific method and be exact definitional anti-scientists like Steven Sherwood, or they can admit that no one can have any confidence in the results of computer models where the only solar forcing is TSI, not after they have admitted strong evidence for some mechanism of solar forcing beyond TSI. That admission is a game changer, however much Sherwood wants to deny it.
He piles on with more of the same at the ridiculous “DeSmog Blog” (as if CO2 is “smog”), and is quoted front and center by the even more ridiculous Andrew Sullivan. Sherwood has become the go-to guy for the anti-science left.
The two dozen references documenting strong correlations between solar activity and various climate indicies
Jo wanted to include references so I sent along the list of citations that I had included in my FOD comment. Worth seeing again I think:
Bond et al. 2001, “Persistent Solar Influence on North Atlantic Climate During the Holocene,” Science.
Excerpt from Bond: “Over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial time scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a distinct interval of variable and, overall, reduced solar output.”
Neff et al. 2001, “Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago,” Nature.
Finding from Neff: Correlation coefficients of .55 and .60.
Usoskin et. al. 2005, “Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 years: does it Correlate with Climate?” Proc. 13th Cool Stars Workshop.
Excerpt from Usoskin: “The long term trends in solar data and in northern hemisphere temperatures have a correlation coefficient of about 0.7 — .8 at a 94% — 98% confidence level.”
Shaviv and Veizer, 2003, “Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?” GSA Today.
Excerpt from Shaviv: “We find that at least 66% of the variance in the paleotemperature trend could be attributed to CRF [Cosmic Ray Flux] variations likely due to solar system passages through the spiral arms of the galaxy.” [Not strictly due to solar activity, but implicating the GCR, or CRF, that solar activity modulates.]
Plenty of anti-CO2 alarmists know about this stuff. Mike Lockwood and Claus Fröhlich, for instance, in their 2007 paper: “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature” (Proc. R. Soc. A), began by documenting how “[a] number of studies have indicated that solar variations had an effect on preindustrial climate throughout the Holocene.” In support, they cited 17 papers, the Bond and Neff articles from above, plus:
Davis & Shafer 1992; Jirikowic et al. 1993; Davis 1994; vanGeel et al. 1998; Yu&Ito 1999; Hu et al. 2003; Sarnthein et al. 2003; Christla et al. 2004; Prasad et al. 2004; Wei & Wang 2004; Maasch et al. 2005; Mayewski et al. 2005; Wang et al. 2005a; Bard & Frank 2006; and Polissar et al. 2006.
The correlations in most of these papers are not directly to temperature. They are to temperature proxies, some of which have a complex relationship with temperature, like Neff 2001, which found a correlation between solar activity and rainfall. Even so, the correlations tend to be strong, as if the whole gyre is somehow moving in broad synchrony with solar activity.
Some studies do examine correlations between solar activity proxies and direct temperature proxies, like the ratio of Oxygen18 to Oxygen16 in geologic samples. One such study (highlighted in Kirkby 2007) is Mangini et. al. 2005, “Reconstruction of temperature in the Central Alps during the past 2000 yr from a δ18O stalagmite record.”
Excerpt from Mangini: “… a high correlation between δ18O in SPA 12 and D14C (r =0.61). The maxima of δ18O coincide with solar minima (Dalton, Maunder, Sporer, Wolf, as well as with minima at around AD 700, 500 and 300). This correlation indicates that the variability of δ18O is driven by solar changes, in agreement with previous results on Holocene stalagmites from Oman, and from Central Germany.”
And that’s just old stuff. Here are four random recent papers.
Ogurtsov et al, 2010, “Variations in tree ring stable isotope records from northern Finland and their possible connection to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Ogurtsov: “Statistical analysis of the carbon and oxygen stable isotope records reveals variations in the periods around 100, 11 and 3 years. A century scale connection between the 13C/12C record and solar activity is most evident.”
Di Rita, 2011, “A possible solar pacemaker for Holocene fluctuations of a salt-marsh in southern Italy,” Quaternary International.
Excerpt from Di Rita: “The chronological correspondence between the ages of saltmarsh vegetation reductions and the minimum concentration values of 10Be in the GISP2 ice core supports the hypothesis that important fluctuations in the extent of the salt-marsh in the coastal Tavoliere plain are related to variations of solar activity.”
Raspopov et al, 2011, “Variations in climate parameters at time intervals from hundreds to tens of millions of years in the past and its relation to solar activity,” JASTP.
Excerpt from Raspopov: “Our analysis of 200-year climatic oscillations in modern times and also data of other researchers referred to above suggest that these climatic oscillations can be attributed to solar forcing. The results obtained in our study for climatic variations millions of years ago indicate, in our opinion, that the 200- year solar cycle exerted a strong influence on climate parameters at those time intervals as well.”
Tan et al, 2011, “Climate patterns in north central China during the last 1800 yr and their possible driving force,” Clim. Past.
Excerpt from Tan: “Solar activity may be the dominant force that drove the same-phase variations of the temperature and precipitation in north central China.”
Saltmarshes, precipitation, “oscillations.” It’s all so science-fair. How about something just plain scary?
Solheim et al. 2011, “The long sunspot cycle 23 predicts a significant temperature decrease in cycle 24,” submitted astro-ph.
Excerpt from Solheim: “We find that for the Norwegian local stations investigated that 30-90% of the temperature increase in this period may be attributed to the Sun. For the average of 60 European stations we find ≈ 60% and globally (HadCRUT3) ≈ 50%. The same relations predict a temperature decrease of ≈ 0.9°C globally and 1.1−1.7°C for the Norwegian stations investigated from solar cycle 23 to 24.”
Those two dozen there are just the start. Scafetta hasn’t even been mentioned. (Sorry Nicola.) But there is a lot in those 24.
It seems that there is a simple ‘formula’ to predict global climate.
Global climate is equal to the solar tide functions of the planets plus the terrestrial spectra of ONI (Ocean Nina Index).
http://www.volker-doormann.org/images/had4_minus_oni.gif
This is to recognize from the time intervals of low ONI values, when the reconstruction of the global climate is excellent.
CO2 is a dead horse
V.
I look at the data and present what I find.
We don’t need to go further back than 1900 to show conclusively that sun controls the climate. From the sunspot and geomagnetic data it is absolutely clear that the by far largest part of the 1920-1950 and 1980-present warming and 1950-1970s cooling is due to solar activity.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GSC1.htm
The Excel file calculation emailed to Dr. Svalgaard made him denounce it as :
What you describe is a perfect example of fake data, selected and made up to fit the best, based on invalid physics. That you call the ‘data’ is deceptive in the extreme.
Then Dr. S. proceeded with salvo of questions, which of course are pointless if what he said few hours earlier is either true or what he himself actually thought of the calculations.
It appears to be more a strong indication that the carefully constructed ‘sun has nothing to do with it’ edifice is crumbling down.
I appreciate that Dr. Brown made a point about the Earth’s magnetic field changes as point worth considering:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/a-rebuttal-to-steven-sherwood-and-the-solar-forcing-pundits-of-the-ipcc-ar5-draft-leak/#comment-1175089
since that is one of the main premises in my article, still only known to five scientists
Responses are: Dr. S. very negative, one positive, two neutral and one no reply.
Tom in Florida
Hi
Yes the Polar jet is the zone where the warm and cold air meet.
Now if the jet stream forms a neat circle around the NH then it limits the amount that both warm and cold air can move to the north or the south. But if the jet makes a more wave like pattern to the north and the south, then this increases the rate of which both the warm and the cold air can flow to the north and the south.
RobertInAz says:
December 16, 2012 at 10:37 pm
Since the solar spectrum seems to be the greatest bit of variability, I wonder if how dependent ocean absorption is on spectrum…..
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Graph 1
Graph 2
Keith AB says:
December 17, 2012 at 1:54 am
….For a site that calls itself skeptical it is quite odd that they have no wish to even puzzle about what the amplifying effect could be…..
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“Skeptical Science” was named that to round up any of the sheeple herd that might get curious and stray. It has nothing to do with Skepticism or with Science and everything to do with promoting Propaganda aka ‘The Message’
BillD says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:27 am
I have to say: When I submit a scientific paper for publication and one of the reviewers misunderstands my meaning for a key point, what do I do? (This has happened to me and it’s a common occurrence). Of course, I work hard on the revised paper to be absolutely clear. Right now Rawls is arguing with Sheffield (the author) about the meaning of what Sheffield wrote….
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Stop right there. Sheffield is not THE author, he is AN author.
The sun is estimated to have a lifetime on the order of 10 billion years. We have accurate data for maybe 100 of those years. In human terms that is the equivalent to about 30 seconds out of a human lifetime.
From 30 seconds of data from a human lifetime, how accurate a picture of that person’s past, present and future could be compiled? Now add a second person, the earth, and 30 seconds of data from its lifetime. Predict how the two will interact over their lifetimes.
Are we to believe that the earth-sun combination is somehow less complex and more predictable, that our knowledge is somehow more complete about the sun and earth than it is about our own species?
Richard M says:
December 17, 2012 at 5:22 am
I was reading an article that graphed the current temperature data. The article was from the early 1970s. In that article the temperature at the end of the period was just slightly warmer than the early 1900s. In addition, there was no UHI effect contemplated at that time. Therefore, it is distinctly possible that the 20th century really wasn’t all that much warmer than the 19th…..
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A rather interesting alternate view of 20th C climate by decade
Graph of Climate Boundaries
I just don’t see a Solar function capable of being involved in long term measurable (outside the noise of intrinsic variation) temperature trends. If Tisdale is right, then you must look at whether or not Solar functions are capable of forcing a series of El Nino’s (which bring a variable pattern of warm temperatures to land and thus sensors) AND slowing release of ocean heat such that the next El Nino continues to force heat onto land surfaces. Temperatures are forced upon us by weather. Temperature trends are forced upon us by weather pattern variations stuck at a certain set of parameters. Therefore, any such extrinsic driver, be it CO2 or Solar, must be capable of driving weather away from normal variations and into a direction it does not want to go. Imagine how much energy that must take! I just don’t see Solar or CO2 having that much potential energy to override intrinsic weather trends and drive a trend up OR down outside of the whims of nature.
REPLY: Look at UV and phytoplankton response. Huge sea surface albedo change is the result – Anthony
“RES says:
You patently cannot look past your prejudice and even read and comprehend the content of the article in the Mail.”
You do have a good line in unintended irony, don’t you?
“The article cites the data contained in HadCRUT4 and it is that to which the author is referring.”
So why didn’t he refer to the original peer reviewed data and analysis rather than a tabloid publication renowned for find reason, any reason, to cast doubt upon the science?
“You and your colleagues will not even start to sway me to your position in this debate until you cease and desist from such infantile soundbites and back up you claims with facts.”
More irony. If it’s “the sun stupid” someone has to explain why the 40% rise in CO2 over the past 150 years hasn’t done what the laws of physics says it must do: retain heat. Infantile soundbites from the deniers doesn’t change that basic problem. Neither does cherry picking dates to show the warming has “stopped”: you still have to explain why it hasn’t warmed.
“Graham W says:
OK, don’t listen to the Daily Mail, don’t listen to The Guardian, don’t listen to Skeptical Science, don’t listen to WUWT, don’t listen to anybody’s opinion. Opinion is irrelevant when the data is readily available and you can decide for yourself. Here’s a link to a tool hosted by an impartial website ”
How about this impartial website: http://berkeleyearth.org/results-summary/
And you do realise that anyone can put anything on the web. So, what makes you decide that you trust some of that content in preference to others? I’ll tell you what makes me trust some; Those that follow the scientific method and the laws of physics are more likely to be trustworthy than those that don’t. And the fact you don’t agree with the consequences of those is not prima facie evidence that the scientific method has broken down or been corrupted. Neither is “candid” correspondence between scientists (read the Double Helix for past examples or the correspondence between Newton, Hooke and Leibnitz).
We already know that long-term climate is tightly correlated w/the Milankovitch cycles. If there was any other significant, independent “forcing”, that correlation would be disrupted & decreased. It isn’t.
Milankovitch cycles don’t control short-term changes (LIA & MWP). But those brief changes are minor in the ice-core records — wait until there is a Heinrich, D/O, or Bond event. Now you’re talking big changes. What causes those? Don’t know, but I seriously doubt they are caused by internal solar changes — there’s no evidence for 1500 yr or otherwise, internal solar cycles. The relative localization in the N Atlantic of the D/O, Bond events suggests a major ocean-current shift there, perhaps eventually influencing much of the globe (thru ice/albedo positive-feedback?), like the onset or end of a glacial cycle.
Bottom line, other than the causes for Heinrich, D/O & Bond events & the already established Milankovitch cycles, I find the other postulated causes increasingly uninteresting and irrelevant — GCR effects, lunar tides, internal solar cycles of any length, CO2, etc, etc.
lsvalgaard says:
“But the sun nuts that push the sun as the cause of climate change, seem to know enough to do so, or do they push the sun without knowing anything about it? Would you call THAT science; ascribing something to an unknown mechanism operating on stuff we don’t know anything about.”
Surely the Sun nuts are those that solely focus on TSI as a means to dismiss solar forcing, and then delay many others from looking in the right direction for the best correlations. Which shows the effectiveness of such propaganda, as the best correlations were staring everyone in the face years ago with the history of the geomagnetic aa index.
I call science being thorough, and examining all solar metrics in respect to atmospheric teleconnections as it will answer many unknowns in such phenomena. And more importantly, examining the solar-planetary linkages, as that will pose some of the most important questions, and give the best clues as to the nature of solar activities and their variations.
How many drafts of this article did you write before publishing? this is the purpose of a full review process. To iron out flaws and check correctness. maybe next time you should publish a first draft of an article and see if you talk in circles. I don’t expect you to publish this comment because it probably doesn’t support your cause.
you broke the terms of the review. shame on you.
Dr. S:
Whom do you consider sun nuts? Svensmark? Kirkby?
Did you happen to attend Dr. Kirkby’s presentation at SLAC (where he worked, 1972-84, before going to CERN) in January 2012? It’s unfortunately not available on Youtube, but there is this from April 2011:
He could not then present all his data, as pre-release is a big no-no with Nature. After his paper was published in Aug 2011, he could provide his findings in detail.
Speaking of SLAC, they used to (years ago) have a good Website on cosmic rays, but it has now apparently been taken down as politically incorrect. The old link takes you to a generalized research category page.
Is it your opinion that solar magnetic flux does not affect cosmic rays reaching earth, that these particles don’t affect cloud condensation nuclei, or that these phenomena occur, but have no appreciable or negligible effect on terrestrial climate (or that of other solar system bodies)?
Please also kindly state your opinion on possible climatic effects of the recent finding that while TSI remains nearly constant, UV can fluctuate significantly & opposite to visible & IR spectra. Sorry if you have already done so.
Thank you.
Total Mass Retain says:
So how about explaining the following?
1. The length of the arctic Melt season is DECREASING link
2. The fall (October) snow cover is INCREASING link
3. Why isn’t this listing of all the exceptional winter weather never covered in the MSM but CAGW/warm weather is always hyped? link
4. Why are all the ‘corrections’ to the actual temperature data ALWAYS UP for recent data and DOWN for past data? link 1 and link 2 and link 3
5. The 1990 -2000 decade is close to the average for the 20th C but the 1970’s are way colder link 1 and link 2
6. The number of daily US temperature readings over 40C, recorded at all 595 HCN stations continuously active since 1900 shows the above climate boundry graph is not ‘off’ link
7. So does the US Heat Wave Index link
Total Mass Retain:
Your post at December 17, 2012 at 6:55 am indicates that your skull has failed to retain its contents.
I won’t bother to refute all your post – it only contains nonsense – but, as illustration, I will address this copy-and-paste from some warmunist propaganda blog.
I don’t know if the Sun is responsible for observed climate changes or not. But I do know your post consists entirely of ignorant and irrational nonsense.
There has been no “cherry picking dates to show the warming has “stopped”.”
The present time is now. And over the most recent 16 years there has been no change in global temperature discernible at 95% confidence while atmospheric CO2 concentration has continued to increase.
That gives warmunists a problem. It doesn’t give a problem to those who doubt warmunist claims.
Warmunists claim increased atmospheric CO2 concentration causes global warming. They need to explain why their predictions of warming have failed. Those who are sceptical of warmunist claims don’t need to explain anything.
And the laws of physics do NOT say CO2 must “retain heat”. A CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon by rising to a higher rotational or vibrational state. It then discharges by emitting another photon or collisionally. It seems you are unaware that the IR absorbtion of CO2 in the atmosphere is constrained to only two narrow bands with almost all being in the 15 micron band. These bands are so near to saturation that they only increase their absorbtion by band broadening.
Think of light (i.e. visible radiation) entering a room through a window. If you put a layer of dark paint over the window then much light is absorbed by the paint and, therefore, does not enter the room. Add another layer of paint and more light is absorbed by that layer, but not as much as by the first layer. Similarly for each additional layer of paint.
The IR emitted from the Earth’s surface is trying to pass the ‘window’ of the atmosphere to enter space. Adding more CO2 to the air is like adding more paint on the window that has seven layers of the paint. Each unit addition of CO2 has less absorbtion than the previous unit addition: this reducing effect is logarithmic.
So, at present levels of atmospheric CO2 increases to the CO2 have no significant effect on global temperature. Also, the feedbacks in the climate system are negative. Therefore, any effect of increased CO2 will be probably too small to discern because natural climate variability is much, much larger. This concurs with the empirically determined values of low climate sensitivity.
Empirical – n.b. not model-derived – determinations indicate climate sensitivity is less than 1.0deg.C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 equivalent. This is indicated by the studies of
Idso from surface measurements
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/Idso_CR_1998.pdf
and Lindzen & Choi from ERBE satelite data
http://www.drroyspencer.com/Lindzen-and-Choi-GRL-2009.pdf
and Gregory from balloon radiosonde data
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/OLR&NGF_June2011.pdf
Indeed, because climate sensitivity is less than 1 .0deg.C for a doubling of CO2 equivalent, it is physically impossible for the man-made global warming to be large enough to be detected (just as the global warming from UHI is too small to be detected). If something exists but is too small to be detected then it only has an abstract existence; it does not have a discernible existence that has effects (observation of the effects would be its detection).
To date there are no discernible effects of AGW. Hence, the Null Hypothesis decrees that AGW does not affect global climate to a discernible degree. That is the ONLY scientific conclusion possible at present.
Richard
The even more simple argument is this.
Science is theorise, predict, and test.
We have the theory. The graph contains the predictions. We can do a meta analysis (take a consensus from the predictions). We then find the actual temperatures are outside the range predicted by the consensus. Hence the theory is falsified.
I guess it don´t matter at all to talk about all past potential solar warming/cooling events. Now is now and the current situation have to be addressed. We need to know whats going on now. I can´t see how several of the papers describing past events would shed any light on the current warming. With less CO2 etx drivers in the atmosphere solar forcing absolutely can have a larger impact. But for now It just does not add up. Research will continue of course, but it does not seem to be the likely cause at all.
ferd berple: Interesting and also a relevant thought. Here is a continuation of that thought. Lets say we first get 30 s to see a shoeshine garbage picking street child in back alley New Delhi and then 30 s to see a upper class New Delhian rolex and stuff. I guess 30 s would really say a lot right there and then. Of course “wohoo” can happen to the first child and “dang” can happen to the second and roles are changed. But how likely is that?
Kind of aside, but still solar related, the newest emerging sunspot-group on the southern hemisphere looks quite close to the solar equator. Getting closer to “max”. The ~11 yr solar cycle doesn’t affect climate IMO, but I do find it interesting in of itself….
Total Mass Retain:
Who is saying that rising CO2 has no effect on atmospheric temperature? No one other than warmists, who make such statements and attribute them to skeptics. The science, on which every educated person agrees, indicates that the effect of this CO2 warming is SMALL, roughly about 1 degree C for a doubling of CO2, all else being equal. Of course, almost nothing else is equal, so the net effect may be more or less than one degree, and that is where the debate lies. So knock it off with the strawman arguments. No one here doubts the physics of CO2 warming. If your science is so robust, you shouldn’t need to resort to such tactics.
(PS Is your handle from ‘Close to the Edge’ by Yes? Fantastic classic Rock!)
ferd berple says:
December 16, 2012 at 9:56 pm
lsvalgaard says:
December 16, 2012 at 2:28 pm
…….
What percentage of everything there is to know about the sun do you estimate you know today? Do you estimate you know 50% of everything there is to know? I estimate that while you may indeed know more than me, you and I know pretty close to 0.0000000% of what there is to be discovered in total.
========================
You’re old school. The “Consensus Church” is certain of everything that’s infallibly pronounced by the Cardinals of Climate Change. /sarc
Seriously, CliSci needs a little of the sort of humility you articulated, in order to avoid wasting time on pet hypothesis tainted by political ideology.
Steven Mosher says:
December 16, 2012 at 7:53 pm
“3. Do they have a physical mechanism
.
.
.
What the solar proponents need to do to be taken seriously is propose testable hypothesis.
“we think THIS parameter matters for the following physical reason” propose tests
in advance and then do the test. Lets take GCR. There you actually have a proposed mechanism. More GCR is more clouds. When I asked Solar proponents to suggest at test for the effect after Forbush events ( I found no effect on clouds ) I got silence. Nobody wants to propose and live by a test of their ideas.”
Science is both process and product. The products are well confirmed physical hypotheses. The processes consist of empirical research undertaken in accordance with scientific method. We often confuse process and product when we talk about science. The IPCC’s charter gives it a bias in favor of products and against process. The IPCC is to survey the literature and report results. What it reports are confirmed hypotheses but not research in process.
Your emphasis on physical mechanisms and your criticisms of GCR (Svensmark and Kirkby) illustrate the bias in favor of product. Svensmark or Kirkby might have well confirmed hypotheses in years or decades but the empirical research that each is undertaking amounts to an impeccable example of scientific method in practice. To criticize them for not having well confirmed physical hypotheses at this time is simply to push the IPCC’s bias in favor of products over process. However, this bias leaves much of the interesting science on the IPCC’s cutting room floor.
As long as you are demanding “mechanisms” of scientists you are implicitly demanding well confirmed hypotheses; that is, you are demanding products. Of course Svensmark and Kirkby have some ideas about the mechanisms that they pursue but neither has conducted anything near the amount of research that can nail down a mechanism. There might be no testable hypotheses for years or decades yet their science is impeccable.
What you and the IPCC must do is become aware of the importance of process. To do that you need to embody explicit descriptions of scientific method at work in practice. Svensmark and Kirkby offer excellent examples for you to cut your teeth on.
The confusion between process and product has made all claims about consensus ambiguous. When you say that there is consensus among climate scientists, are you saying that it is a consensus about what research is worthwhile (process) or about what physical hypotheses are well confirmed (product)? To the genuine scientist, the products are well known and boring; everything interesting is found in empirical research.
The scientist who insists that TSI tells us everything we need to know about the influences of sun on earth might be entirely correct as regards the products of his science but has chosen to ignore the processes of his science.
total mass retain:
“deniers” is an offensive term. Please do not use it. We call ourselves skeptics.
Also, “infantile soundbites from the deniers” is perjorative and unnessary if you really wish to discuss issues of science.
You keep saying “laws of physics”. Well those same laws tell us that once saturation is reached, the effect of CO2 is much diminished. So there is an explanation for the temperature record of the last sixteen years, given in terms which you respect. But now you say that is cherry-picking. Well, stick around for ten more years, because the warming will not resume. It may turn cooler, but not warmer. The climate models are a collossal failure, and that failure is due to the misapplication of your cherished laws of physics. And please, do not thank me for furthering your understanding. I would do it for anyone.
beng says:
December 17, 2012 at 7:06 am
….wait until there is a Heinrich, D/O, or Bond event. Now you’re talking big changes. What causes those? Don’t know, but I seriously doubt they are caused by internal solar changes — there’s no evidence for 1500 yr or otherwise, internal solar cycles….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Not exactly true.
This does not mean that solar is the only possibility under consideration as you have correctly pointed out.
I think that last sentence is the real take home comment. “…can be seen to contain the evidence of combined forcing mechanisms, whose relative influences varied during the course of the Holocene….” This is what the IPCC is ignoring.