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.
@Reef Swindlegard
I can’t help but notice you seem to be arguing from a position of higher authority and greater understanding, but I haven’t seen any convincing arguments from you other than a citation war. That said, I am not saying the solar supporters have it all figured out but I want to ask you a test question for objectivity purposes.
Many global warming alarmists equate the denial of the 300% positive feedback fairy with denying evolution. Dr. Svaalgard, do you admit that the belief in transitionals fossils is a leap of faith? I’m sorry but anybody who thinks that a whale came from a land mammal is a fool. Dr. Svaalgard, the pictures drawn of transitional fossils are based on leaps of faith, correct? If not, how do you test it? It’s really nice to draw a fossil of animal nobody has seen and make it look like another animal, but that in itself proves nothing. That you and your colleagues have created a consensus that the past 6 billion years of climate is irrelevant is an opinion. The hard fact is, earth is almost always warmer and averages higher atmospheric co2 concentrations than we have today. It’s really just ignorance. We have a group of liberal elites who think they’ve unlocked the secrets hidden for billions of years in the span of just 2 centuries.
“In the decade, we have figured out how to derive solar wind properties from the geomagnetic record. The bottom line is that the solar wind in the 20th century has not been significantly different from that in the 19th and 18th centuries. Neither has solar UV. In particular solar activity [and solar wind] at present is very much like it was a century ago. So the Sun has not varied enough to cause a significant climate influence, regardless of all the papers mentioned.”
dr. lumpus spookytooth, phd. says:
December 17, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I’m sorry but anybody who thinks that a whale came from a land mammal is a fool.
Yes, you have lots to be sorry about.
@lsvalgaard
just curious, do you think the radiative forcing chart is complete? I’m not a scientist sir but to think that they aren’t going to be adding 5 more variables to that chart seems to be a bit denialist to me.
dr. lumpus spookytooth, phd. says:
December 17, 2012 at 1:38 pm
The hard fact is, earth is almost always warmer and averages higher atmospheric co2 concentrations than we have today.
And yet over those billions of years, the Sun was much less radiant than today, so a cooler sun compensated for by higher CO2 would explain the warmer Earth [according to you].
Here is what science says: http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011RG000375.pdf
“[1] For more than four decades, scientists have been trying to find an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in paleoclimatology, the “faint young Sun problem.” For the early Earth, models of stellar evolution predict a solar energy input to the climate system that is about 25% lower than today. This would result in a completely frozen world over the first 2 billion years in the history of our planet if all other parameters controlling Earth’s climate had been the same. Yet there is ample evidence for the presence of liquid surface water and even life in the Archean (3.8 to 2.5 billion years before present), so some effect (or effects) must have been compensating for the faint young Sun. A wide range of possible solutions have been suggested and explored during the last four decades, with most studies focusing on higher concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, or ammonia. All of these solutions present considerable difficulties, however, so the faint young Sun problem cannot be regarded as solved.”
…
“[131] Given the continued interest this important topic enjoys, the next decade might bring us closer to finally answering the question of how water on early Earth could have remained liquid under a faint young Sun, certainly one of the most fundamental questions in paleoclimatology.”
dr. lumpus spookytooth, phd. says:
December 17, 2012 at 1:38 pm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr. Svaalgard is a Solar Physicist. http://www.leif.org/research/
However there are other PhD Physicists who also comment here.
Dr R. Brown: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Dr. Nicola Scafetta http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/
for example.
It’s my belief that the climate change/ global warming debate will continue to go back and forwards until the realities regarding Weather Modification are exposed There are many people that think man hasn’t the power or tech’s to interact with the atmosphere Well what sort of weather modification can be created by doing this. http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/64/49/PDF/angeo-16-1212-1998.pdf
http://www.weathermodification.com/projects.php Clients and projects
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3436120/UN-1976-Weather-Weapon-Treaty Why bother if it can’t be done.
And do you see a link to heating and free electron release by this process http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/5/2/3 What changes are made to the energy of the Tropopause This pathway is open 24/7 We us electrical energy (watts) to push the data and the electrons are released as waste (pollution) into the atmosphere Hence a more energenic atmosphere.
John
FAO D Böehm
‘The recent rise in CO2 has been entirely harmless’
So how do you explain this?
Please go back and read Jim Clarke at 9:12 AM who begins, ” This is all very simple and I am amazed that we have to go through such contortions and decades of contentious arguing, because of this blatant attempt to obfuscate the obvious:
Did the climate change periodically over the last 4,000 (and more) years? Yes
Did the CO2 change to any significant degree over all but the last 100 of those 4,000 years? No
Therefore, something else must be operating that produces significant climate change!
A small child could understand this.” Read the rest!
If you disagree with the above, let’s hear it. I want to add some science history to his argument that understanding the mechanisms for other forcings is not required. It is utter nonsense for climate scientists, climate modellers, or the IPCC to claim that CO2 is the dominant forcing because the mechanism of other forcings (or even the forcing itself) is unknown. This is among other things, an argument from ignorance and would be laughable in any science that was not dominated by a modelling mentality. Understanding mechanisms is neither required nor historically pre-requisite to scientific understanding. For example, Newton did not understand gravity and was absolutely clear about his lack of understanding and frustration for same, but that did not prevent his mathematical and observational genius from discovering many of the effects of the mechanism he did not understand. The understanding (theory) of gravity came much later as part of Einstein’s relativity theories. Another example. Darwin is the giant in my field, and his observational genius, inferences about causality, (and courage) are carefully explained in one of the best written, carefully crafted, and modest (in the sense of proposing all alternative explanations and asking others to do their best to invalidate his theory). Darwin acknowledged in all his books and writings that he did not understand the mechanism whereby natural selection was transmitted from one generation to the next. Ironically, Gregar Mendel published his discoveries in 1866 but they went largely went unrecognized until much later.
The book to read is The Origen of Species, published 1859, even today a refreshing look at how data and evidence are the building blocks of hypotheses (models), how hypotheses are invalidated by non-confirming evidence, and how ignorance of the mechanism is no excuse for ignoring the or forcing itself.
lsvalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:52 am
“A spurious correlation is not a ‘strong link’. First, the ‘sunspot number’ you show [converted to TSI – why?] is not what solar activity has looked like. There has been no trend over the last three centuries”
I agree that we need to be careful when we look at various factors as if you look at enough of them you will find correlations and most will indeed be spurious.
Vukevic does post a correlation, there is no doubt about that. However, only time will tell whether is it spurious. It probably is as just looking for correlations, then attempting to theorise about them is not really the way you should go, though he may have got lucky.
The main point of this thread though is that it is possible to have a correlation without being to be able to show or prove the process.
You obviously believe that the ‘Milankovich Cycles’ are responsible for our glacial and inter glacial periods in the current ice age.
You believe this. not because the process by which the small changes in TSI drive these has been proven but because the correlation is so tight. Milankovich himself knew that the calculated changes were far to small to achieve the effect it had to be some other connected feedbacks or processes in the Earth’s climate system that were the deciding factors. To date we have only hypotheses about these processes, nothing has been absolutely proven.
This is the point! Science accepts that tiny overall changes in the energy received from the Sun can drive significant climate change.
Seeing as Climate Science and accurate measurements are in their infancy we are not in a position to reject all correlations that have no process proof behind them.
I remain skeptical and so should all true scientists. I will certainly consider correlations, outwith proof but they had better be tight, like the Milankovich Cycle before I become a true believer. CO2 doesn’t even correlate to temperatures for the majority of the time since we have had fairly accurate temperature measurements.
Certainly increased CO2 increases the Radiative Forcing on the Earth. However, what is the long term effect of increased RF?
. Check the Earth’s temperature about 500 million years ago, when most of our major climatic processes were established, life on land, plate tectonics, similar atmosphere etc and then check what has happened to the temperature since, with an increase of about 65 Wm2 at the TOA.
Alan
Carter:
Your post addressed to D Böehm at December 17, 2012 at 2:28 pm shows you have reading comprehension problems.
D Böehm said,
“The recent rise in CO2 has been entirely harmless”.
He did NOT say,
“Kevin Trenberth has been entirely harmless”.
Richard
dr. lumpus spookytooth, phd. says:
December 17, 2012 at 2:03 pm
just curious, do you think the radiative forcing chart is complete? I’m not a scientist sir but to think that they aren’t going to be adding 5 more variables to that chart seems to be a bit denialist to me.
We add what we know about, and there are likely millions more with ever-decreasing size [and relevance].
dr. lumpus spookytooth, phd. says: December 17, 2012 at 1:38 pm
I’m sorry but anybody who thinks that a whale came from a land mammal is a fool.
_____________________________________________
Que? You do jest, surely.
So why do whales have a pelvis eh?
Perhaps female whales think that a pelvis with no legs looks kinda sexy, and this drove the evolution of a whale’s pelvis. Perhaps the whale has always longed to be a land animal, and is willing itself, bit by bit, to grow a pelvis and some legs. Or was this proto-pelvis a 21st century evolutionary response, so that whales would have somewhere to clip their mobile ‘phones onto?
http://www.darwinisdead.com/HMPBK02.JPG
Please do enter the civilized world at any time of your own choosing, but preferably before entering congress or running for the presidency. We have had enough of those jokers on either side.
.
Doug Allen says:
“Therefore, something else must be operating that produces significant climate change!”
1. Define “significant”
2. Learn about the climate Null Hypothesis
3. Accept the fact that the planet has been much warmer during the Holocene, when CO2 was much lower
Then draw your conclusions based on science, not on wild-eyed hand waving.
Carter says: December 17, 2012 at 2:28 pm
‘The recent rise in CO2 has been entirely harmless’
So how do you explain this? (Crop yields will decrease with greater warming.)
____________________________________
A warmer climate, if we have one, does not seem to worry US crop yields.
http://www.agbioforum.org/v12n2/v12n2a02-f1-lence.jpg
A warmer climate, if we have one, does not seem to worry UK, French or Egyptian crop yields.
http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/graphs_tables/update92_yields.PNG
A warmer climate, if we have one, does not seem to worry Asian rice yields.
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/SE-Asia-rice-yields.JPG
In fact, grain production seems to love more CO2.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/WheatandWarming1.png
.
But Alarmist Warmists never were good with data. Give this data to the CRU, and they will soon get it to decline, they are good at that sort of thing.
Doug Allen says:
December 17, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Therefore, something else must be operating that produces significant climate change!
Every complex enough non-linear system has internal stochastic fluctuations, this probably includes the Earth’s climate system. If you deny this and claim the cycles are in the Sun, then you have just moved the focus. Now you would have to explain why the Sun has all those [long-term] cycles. Again, those might just be internal stochastic fluctuations. Possibly both the Sun and the Earth have such ‘cycles’. The observed solar variations do not seem energetic enough to make themselves felt in our climate, and may not even be needed as the Earth has it own ‘cycles’.
Alan Millar says:
December 17, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Vukevic does post a correlation, there is no doubt about that. However, only time will tell whether is it spurious.
For once, what he claims to the the sunspot number is already wrong. Recent work [see slide 8 of http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Petaluma–How%20Well%20Do%20We%20Know%20the%20SSN.pdf ] shows that there is no long-term trend over the past three hundred years, so no need to ‘let time tell’.
Ha.
Well, its good to see that no sun nut had the stones to step up and make a prediction about the relationship between forbush events and cloudiness. Man I tortured that data looking for something for quite a while. Nada. Nothing. No effect.
Maybe i should add a lag? maybe smooth it? maybe divide the GCR by the mass of Jupiter and add the square root of sunspots and wham.. I find a correlation. And because I’ve found a correlation I am then justified in saying ” look! this is how science operates. You make a correlation happen and then you ask for funding to discover the mechanism. The mechanism is simple. you tortured the data in countless ways until you found something.. a correlation to glaciers, to lake levels, to local temps, to global temps, To CET, to the ring widths of trees, to plankton, to the size of hail stones, to diurnal range, blah blah blah. There is so much we dont understand about the sun, it must be the cause. Hey i dont understand women, maybe they are the cause of global warming.
Saying that there is so much we dont understand about the sun is not science. it is a statment about our ignorance. Pointing at our ignorance as an explanation is not science. Playing with data to manufacture correlations with no hint of a possible mechanism is self delusion.
lLsvalgaard,
Are you D Boehm under a different handle? Please read what I wrote, and what I quoted.
ferd berple says (to lsvalgaard):
> 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.
A somewhat sad and totally inevitable consequence of learning is that your frontier with the unknown expands and ties itself in weirdly shaped knots. This realisation, when it first occurs, scares most people, especially those who have invested heavily in their learning or have well-defined goals.
lsvalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:26 pm
For once, what he claims to the the sunspot number is already wrong. Recent work [see slide 8 of http://www.leif.org/research/Solar-Petaluma–How%20Well%20Do%20We%20Know%20the%20SSN.pdf ] shows that there is no long-term trend over the past three hundred years, so no need to ‘let time tell’.
I must admit I have not checked out his quoted sources but he says one of his graphs uses your TSI data.
Again he uses a scale on his graphs which completely overemphasises the scale of change in TSI.
It annoys me when people do this and it is just as common, if not more so, on the alarmist side.
People should be honest. There is no way the miniscule change in RF can be the cause of the observed temperature change on its own. If he doesn’t have a physical theory to back it up he should be honest and say so and just put it out there as a unproven correlation. Nothing to be ashamed of in my opinion, Milankovitch’s tiny changes are unproven but noone thinks he is an idiot. Only trouble with this is, is that even if he is correct it will take centuries to produce a sufficiently tight correlation to be generally accepted a la Milankovitch, unless he can come with a physical theory to back it up in the meantime.
Seems like most people want the adulation immediately and again I am mainly pointing the finger at alarmist scientists not Vukevic.
Alan
Mosh:
Your description sounds like AGW theory.
lsvalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 2:08 pm
“A wide range of possible solutions have been suggested and explored during the last four decades, with most studies focusing on higher concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, or ammonia. All of these solutions present considerable difficulties, however, so the faint young Sun problem cannot be regarded as solved.”
I have not seen any mention of the Moon’s effect on the early Earth. The tidal effects on the crust not to mention ocean tides that where 100s of feet in height. The must have been a large amount of water vapor present from these effects.
Jim Arndt
Doug Allen,
Sorry, at first I read Clarke’s comment as yours. My mistake, and I agree with your response.
Doug Allen says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Please read what I wrote, and what I quoted. …
how ignorance of the mechanism is no excuse for ignoring the or forcing itself
Darwin documented carefully and extensively his findings and the conclusions he drew from those. The same cannot be said for the current crop of sun enthusiasts. True, there are thousands of papers out there, but none of them is convincing to the degree of Darwin. If they were, we would not have this discussion. Now, I’ll grant that for some people [about half of Americans – e.g. lumpus spookytooth] Darwin did not prove a thing, so what does that do to your argument?
Jim Arndt says:
December 17, 2012 at 4:13 pm
I have not seen any mention of the Moon’s effect on the early Earth.
Then you did not even read the link I provided. Go there again and check paragraph [125]