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.
Gene Selkov says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:54 pm
A somewhat sad and totally inevitable consequence of learning is that your frontier with the unknown expands
A somewhat marvelous consequence is that you can help push that frontier further out, i.e. widen what is known.
Silver Ralph says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:18 pm
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.)
Silver Ralph: You have to remember that folks such as Mr. Carter or Peter Sinclair suffer from Skeptical Science Syndrome. We can only recommend that they see a qualified optometrist very soon, as the print and image world are very blurry to them.
You have shown increased yields of major food crops throughout the world. This is a factual increase as WASDE reports confirm this supply and demand trend.
Alan Millar says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:55 pm
I must admit I have not checked out his quoted sources but he says one of his graphs uses your TSI data.
Not the one he showed
People should be honest.
But he is not
Seems like most people want the adulation immediately and again I am mainly pointing the finger at alarmist scientists not Vukevic
Vuk has an immense dose of self-adulation
Steven Mosher
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. Playing with data to manufacture correlations with no hint of a possible mechanism is self delusion.’
Indeed it is and the world leading experts in this are Mann and ‘the Team’ done in the name of ‘the cause ‘ and supported in such acts by those to who ‘the cause’ cannot and should not be challenged given its ‘self evident truth ‘
lsvalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 4:20 pm
“Then you did not even read the link I provided. Go there again and check paragraph [125]”
That was my point but it only refers to heat generation from the crust and not how the tidal effects from the ocean could have caused the ice not to form or creating more water vapor. Also the rotation of the earth was faster then causing more tidal effects. I think the issue of a large amount of methane is the most plausible since the creation of O2 was later to remove the methane while the sun was getting brighter.
Jim Arndt
Steven Mosher says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Quite! – except that pretty much everything you wrote applies EQUALLY to the AGW mantra and IPCC science!
I personally don’t give a wet slap what the final outcome is – science is science and cannot be fecked with in the final analysis (although we know that many try!) – though I’d rather that my gut feelings that CO2 is relatively insignificant is shown as correct in the final ‘proof’ but in the meantime drastic action based on flawed or incomplete science is morally wrong.
Anybody spouting the precautionary principal crap, etc – is living in a dream world – until facts and PROOF are shown, any action is dangerous, indeed, potentially ‘fatal’ if you take it to extremes such as crazy geoengineering!
If you really want to be precautionary – why are these same folk not advocating complete removal and destruction of all weapons? after all, weapons DO kill people, and that’s really not nice! (yet allowing them to keep breathing and keeping them warm using whatever fossil fuels available is far more wrong, according to the alarmists!)
Honestly, sometimes I despair at the obvious idiocy of mankind and worse, the ability of a few individuals to be allowed to influence the lives of so many without so much as a ‘by your leave’.
Silver Ralph says:
December 17, 2012 at 9:52 am
“If a solar event or cycle can influence the high latitude jetstreams, so that they move in an equatorial direction..”
Again, the solar wind speed and its effects on the AO and NAO. Look at the low velocity in the last few seasons: http://snag.gy/FY1mH.jpg
jimarndt says:
December 17, 2012 at 4:57 pm
Also the rotation of the earth was faster then causing more tidal effects.
Then you might find this paper [published a couple days ago] of interest:
“Faint young Sun problem more severe due to ice-albedo feedback and higher rotation rate of the early Earth”
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2012GL054381.pdf
Leif, interesting comment about Earth’s cycles (and I use that word “cycle” VERY loosely). My hunch is that we will know that we are in a cycle when we are in it and not before if these cycles turn out to be unpredictable events, with unpredictable severity, and of unpredictable duration. I believe this is what Tisdale postulates. If this turns out to be the case, no supercomputer will be able to predict what we should do with tax dollars from now till 50 years hence.
That said, my grandma seems to have been more like the super computers than I would have guessed. She always, and I mean always, prepared for the worst case scenario. One afternoon trip in late July or early August up the canyon to pick huckleberries meant just-in-case packing for at least two nights and three days in the wilderness under frigid cold weather conditions. The essential difference? She was loath to tell someone else that is what THEY should do.
lsvalgaard says:
December 16, 2012 at 9:23 pm
Bill H says:
December 16, 2012 at 9:10 pm
The Sun is essentially a huge ball of gas tipping back and forth from a solid state to a gas state. The reaction of fusion causes the gas and the solid to vibrate at differing wave lengths.
No, the Sun is an almost perfect gas throughout and at all times.
++++++++++++++++++++++
A fission reaction must have at its core a solid or semi-solid mass of expended material. As the fission reaction progresses the burned particles (bonded) are pulled to the magnetic center. As they get closer to this center the pressures break many of the bonds and the molecules rise back to the surface. This circulation causes sun spots and surface mixing.
The reaction has seasons. The solar cycle is the culmination of a set of seasons. As a cycle builds the excitement level of the gas is increasing leaving little of the center. During maxima the core begins to slow and thicken slowing the flows to the surface and as the expended gases coagulate The pressures begin to build which break the bonds of the molecules. this is minimum and as more molecules break bonds the cycle begins again. The progression of sun spots is essentially bubbles from the last cycle rising to the surface. As the sun rotates and gravity reacts with them, they pull to the magnetic center.
My point is simple. While the output of the fission reaction is fairly stable the wavelengths of UV radiation and the magnetic influences on the earth change significantly. its the differing wavelengths produced that are the key to how this all works on earth.
It is simply the absorption on the surface of the earth which causes heating or cooling of our climate. Lower UV bands carry less total heat to the surface of the earth. Higher UV bands carry higher levels. Lower UV levels bounce off sea water while higher levels penetrate and warm algae and other particles in the water. (not unlike a dark fiber reacts to a high UV laser)
I have read most of your work and agree on some points but I also have major concerns with areas such as this. in example; A dark fiber optic line, when the right wavelength is used, can double the transmission length.using the same total power over a clear optic path. In general as the wave length lengthens (slows) the total distance covered shortens with the same amount of power. The sun can remain fairly consistent but minor changes can have massive effects at distance.
Bill
Bill H says:
December 17, 2012 at 7:35 pm
A fission reaction must have at its core a solid or semi-solid mass of expended material. As the fission reaction progresses the burned particles (bonded) are pulled to the magnetic center…., etc
No Bill, that is not the way it works. And BTW, the Sun is using fusion, not fission, and is a gas throughout. The rest of your comment is generally wrong as well.
What is truly astonishing to me and is evident is that none of the authors, reviewer and the political staffs at the IPCC and UNFCC possess the ability to comprehend the lectures of Richard P. Feynman.
Had this been Not The Case, then the IPCC would never have authored nor posted their Principal #2 of their ‘Defining Statement.’
Let us read,”The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation. IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy, although they may need to deal objectively with scientific, technical and socio-economic factors relevant to the application of particular policies.”
Wow ! The presumptions of the assertions of this statement are to me mindless ! Ha !
I laugh.
That phrase, “application of particular policies” is I would say defining to the IPCC and UNFCC !
I posit that in the minds of the UN, UNFCC and IPCC, Humans are Guilty !
Rising CO2 in the atmosphere is due to … Humans.
Rising CO2 causes temperature to … rise !
Rising CO2 causes more extreme weather !
Rising CO2 causes … Droughts …. Floods … Rising Coastal Sea Levels … Lowering Coastal Sea Levels … CLOUDS … Clear Sky … the crash of the Hong Kong Stock Market … babies with blue eyes.
Yes. It is true. The writers, reviewers and editors of the IPCC AR5 do not have the ability to comprehend … i.e. comprehension … in any language !
Were Richard P. Feynman here today … he would be a very lonely soul.
Our world is a chaos, a Babylon … billions of voices crying out … none heard … and none understood.
The ultimate end that the IPCC seeks is the killing on a global scale of … humans … homo sapiens.
Why ?
In the mind of the IPCC, Climate changes because of humans … to stop climate change … kill humans ! Simple.
The events in Connecticut give assurance to the IPCC and the UNFCC and the UN that they HAVE chosen the correct path … kill humans … reduce climate change. Simple.
No doubt that the staff at the IPCC and UNFCC were dancing in the halls when news of the killings reach them !
Their ‘Model’ is justified, validated and verified.
Bonne Appatite IPCC.
Steven Sherwood’s big problem is that down in Australia, blood circulation runs the other way, so his brain is running oxygen starved and CO2 rich….
Anthony wrote
quote
Look at UV and phytoplankton response. Huge sea surface albedo change is the result.
unquote
I’ve been unable to tease out the results of enhanced UV on the overall phytoplankton community: does DMS change? If so there might be a UV up –> DMS response –> cloud change signal which is correlated with, but not caused by cosmic rays. It might not be sufficiently rapid in its response to show up after a Forbush event, though, and I’m not sure if the direction of the response is correct. I’ll think about it.
JF.
For rgbatduke
Re a previous thread
Please check http://marinas.com/view/inlet/1668_Beaufort_Harbor_Inlet_NC_United_States and admire the second image. Do you see it?
Also, re why the blip: see http://i39.tinypic.com/2igd1mr.jpg Why the blip?
I am researching the absence of ‘rainbow’ interference fringes in films of thickness 5* 10^-10 m, one of your other points. I think I’ve got an idea which might be relevant…
JF
If the Sun is such a constant tell me why NASA’s own Sun observation satellite is called the Solar DYNAMICS Observatory? Which thanks to a great link on this site has the most awesome single webpage on the Internet http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/SDO_Self_Updating_6.htm just a few days watching this you will soon realise the Sun is anything but constant.
The TSI varies by ~1W/sq m over the Solar Cycle http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png this doesn’t sound like a lot but for argument sake lets say just 0.4W/sq m of that difference is the amount that makes it to ground level (Cloud cover, ground incidence to the Sun, Aerosols, Albedo etc)
The Earths surface is 510,072,000,000,000 sq m of which it presents 1/2 to the Sun constantly 😉
So the difference is 255,036,000,000,000 * 0.4W= 102TW/h
For a bit of perspective on a really cold day in the UK Winter the electricity demand gets up to 76GW/h
So that difference (that apparently makes no difference !) is enough to power the UK in Electricity 1342 times over during it’s worst case scenario (and that’s just the difference over the Solar Cycle)
..and living in the UK… I wouldn’t want to have to pay that Electricity Bill 🙂
It’s like turning on 51 Billion 2KW fan heaters over 5.5 years and then turning them off again over the next 5.5 years – and you tell me this doesn’t make a difference
and then throw in the “Unknown TSI amplifier” which I have an inkling might just be http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/research/CLOUD-en.html 😉
and there you have it. We should have enjoyed those lovely days in the late 20th Century when the Sun was more active, instead of jumping up and down claiming “We’re all doomed”. The outlook is not good http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/
Which you can see reflected here http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/graphs/HadCET_graph_ylybars_uptodate.gif from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
The Sun is a constant – Pah!
Dave
lsvalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 4:28 pm
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. Second, the magnetic field at the south pole has nothing to do with the sunspot number or with the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.
Dr. Svalgaard and Alan Millar
Look at the link
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
Here are brief answers:
1. because it is about solar magnetic field as IPCC quoted
“ TSI reconstruction by Wang, Lean, and Sheeley is based on a flux transport model to simulate the long-term evolution of the closed solar magnetic flux”
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-7-1-2.html
2. Dr. Svalgaard conveniently bypassed correlation quoted against his own data as stated in the same article further down, in the same article.(see graph 4) reproduced here,
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LS-TSI.gif
shows even better correlation than with Wang &Lean. “Alternatively the most recent reconstruction of TSI by Dr. L. Svalgaard (Stanford University) offers TSI reconstruction with a near zero up-trend since 1700. Comparing the Svalgaard’s TSI data with the Antarctic’s MF (after re-trending to match the trend of the Svalgaard’s reconstruction of y = 0.0007x) for period 1700 to date shows also good correlation.”
3. Second, the magnetic field at the south pole has nothing to do with the sunspot number or with the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.
Magnetic field at south pole is a indelible part of the Earth’s magnetic dipole. The other is in the north pole. And what we have there: best ever correlation between the geomagnetic field and the Arctic (Northern Hemisphere) temperatures:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
Self adulation: oh yes, indeed, very often expressed in various ways, often shown by condescending attitude to the other ordinary mortals. I made numerous mistakes and correct errors in calculations if found. Opinions are different matter.
Vukcevic has been described by Dr. S as: astrologer, pseudo-scientist, posting nonsense, cyclo-maniac, man of superior ignorance, ‘danger to society’, suffers from Denning-Kruger mental aberration, and when all that fails most recently ‘his data are fake and he is a fraud’.
Could a person of such failures possibly suffer from self adulation, possibly.
It is a bit of a game in the field of science, so as we find far too often, those on the loosing end when unable to disprove the facts, resort to personal deformation attacks, but that really doesn’t bother me in slightest.
On further reading I noticed that some other comments are made:
2. Scale is exaggerated, hence he is dishonest:
For personal (visual) reasons I always present large graphs with curves filling the most of the available space.
Don’t see what is dishonest about that, but again you are entitled to your opinion, I am not going to change the way I do it, since I consider it is important that the detail is visible.
Alan Millar says:
December 17, 2012 at 3:55 pm
I must admit I have not checked out his quoted sources but he says one of his graphs uses your TSI data.
Not the one he showed
I just downloaded Svalgaard’s TSI from
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI%20(Reconstructions).txt
and updated the graph, if there were any differences I hope they are now eliminated.
Here is updated Svalgaard’s TSI graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LS-TSI.gif
I think correlation is pretty good despite protestations of it being spurious
Graph taken from: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
Leif Svalgaard says:
December 17, 2012 at 11:50 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. Second, the magnetic field at the south pole has nothing to do with the sunspot number or with the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.
I attempted to answer above but the post never appeared
Here it is again:
1. because it represents solar magnetic flux variations
:” A new reconstruction of solar irradiance based on a model of solar magnetic flux variations (Y. Wang et al., 2005),.” IPCC
2. Earth’s magnetic field as found at the south pole is representative of one half of the indelible magnetic dipole, the other half is found in the Arctic (Northern Hemisphere).
Arctic temperature change has close correlation to the average magnetic field found there:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CO2-Arc.htm
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
So if you put two above links together it could be assumed (correctly or otherwise) that solar magnetic field has direct input into the temperature variability, further reinforced by
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
not to ignore:
Jean Dickey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena:
“One possibility is the movements of Earth’s core (where Earth’s magnetic field originates) might disturb Earth’s magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds. This could affect how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet. Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously.”
In the article the Alec is a bit free with the term “theory” when what he really means is “hypothesis”.
The original “guess” is the hypothesis. This is challenged by experiment or evidence and if the latter does not agree with the hypothesis then the hypothesis falls at the first hurdle. A theory is what you get after your hypothesis agrees with experiment.
Dear Mr. Sad-something-something,
Your comments have crossed the line in my opinion. They not only appear to be quite empty of substance, you mix tragedy from one universe with that of a separate and unconnected universe to the detriment of both. A fool is soon known by his words. Your first comment convinced me of that. I hope your last comment above is truly your last here.
I guess belief trumps data. Once again I am flabbergasted by the willingness of armchair climate/weather enthusiasts to throw in this and that unknown solar amplifier, or worse, to ascribe tilt and rotation of the EARTH (reference to the winter cold mentioned above) to solar variation. The math involved in your various solar theories is worse, WAY worse then that used for CO2 and its water vapor “amplifier” (cough-cough) dialed-in constant. You do what you hate the most in the opposition. How pray tell can that be better?
****
davidmhoffer says:
December 17, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Could you expand on the Jupiter thing? My presumption is that you are talking about Jupiter’s effects on Earth’s orbit?
****
David, surely you understand this. Jupiter tugs alittle at Earth each conjunction. The effect is tiny, but my WAG is that it’s not insignificant after 100s of millions of yrs. After all, Jupiter pushed the outer planets outward (via orbital resonance w/Saturn) while itself drifting a bit inward over the solar-system lifetime.
vukcevic says:
December 18, 2012 at 1:49 am
Here is updated Svalgaard’s TSI graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LS-TSI.gif
I think correlation is pretty good despite protestations of it being spurious
Comparison shows precisely why it all is spurious [made up, dishonest, etc]:
http://www.leif.org/research/Spurious-Vuk.png
The increase in TSI on the left is an artifact from using the flawed Group Sunspot Number, yet it ‘matches’ the real increase of magnetic field at the South Pole. Removing the real trend in Bz is claimed to match TSI with the artificial trend removed and to yield ‘and even better correlation’.
The Earth’s field comes from the core of the Earth [which is effectively a superconductor at the frequencies of solar magnetic fields] and cannot be influenced by magnetic fields of the Sun, so there are physical reasons for the ‘correlation’ being spurious.