UPDATE: Annan now suggests the IPCC “is in a bit of a pickle”, see below.
UPDATE2: Title has been changed to reflect Annan’s new essay, suggesting lying for political purposes inside the IPCC. Also added some updates about Aldrin et al and other notes for accuracy. See below.
Readers may recall there has been a bit of a hullabaloo at Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth of the New York Times over the press release I first carried at WUWT, saying that I had “seized on it”.
Purveyors of climate doubt have seized on a news release from the Research Council of Norway with this provocative title: “Global warming less extreme than feared?”
I beg to differ with Andy’s characterization, as I simply repeated the press release verbatim without any embellishments. My only contribution was the title: Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity. It turns out to the surprise of many that the subject of the press release was not peer reviewed, but based on previous cumulative work by the Norwegian Research Council. That revelation set Andy off again, in a good way with this: When Publicity Precedes Peer Review in Climate Science (Part One), and I followed up with this story demonstrating a lack of and a need for standards in climate science press releases by the worlds largest purveyor of Science PR, Eurekalert: Eurekalert’s lack of press release standards – a systemic problem with science and the media
It turns out that all of this discussion was tremendously fortuitous.
Surprisingly, although the press release was not about a new peer reviewed paper (Update: it appears to be a rehash and translation of a release about Aldrin et al from October), it has caused at least one scientist to consider it. Last night I was cc’d an exceptional email from Andrew Revkin forwarding an email (Update: Andy says of a comment from Dot Earth) quoting climate scientist James Annan, who one could call a member of the “hockey team” based on his strong past opinions related to AGW and paleoclimatology.
Andrew Revkin published the email today at the NYT Dot Earth blog as a comment in that thread, so now I am free to reproduce it here where I was not last night.
Below is the comment left by Andy, quoting Annan’s email, bolding added:
The climate scientist James Annan sent these thoughts by email:
‘Well, the press release is a bit strange, because it sounds like it is talking about the Aldrin et al paper which was published some time ago, to no great fanfare. I don’t know if they have a further update to that.
Anyway, there have now been several recent papers showing much the same – numerous factors including: the increase in positive forcing (CO2 and the recent work on black carbon), decrease in estimated negative forcing (aerosols), combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable. A value (slightly) under 2 is certainly looking a whole lot more plausible than anything above 4.5.’
And this is what many have been saying now and for some time, that the climate sensitivity has been overestimated. Kudos to Annan for realizing the likelihood of a lower climate sensitivity.
The leader of the “hockey team”, Dr. Michael Mann will likely pan it, but that’s “Mikey, he hates everything”. I do wonder though, if he’ll start calling James Annan a “denier” as he has done in other instances where some scientist suggests a lower climate sensitivity?
UPDATE: over at Annans’ blog, now there is this new essay expounding on the issue titled: A sensitive matter, and this paragraph in it caught my eye because it speaks to a recent “leak” done here at WUWT:
But the point stands, that the IPCC’s sensitivity estimate cannot readily be reconciled with forcing estimates and observational data. All the recent literature that approaches the question from this angle comes up with similar answers, including the papers I mentioned above. By failing to meet this problem head-on, the IPCC authors now find themselves in a bit of a pickle. I expect them to brazen it out, on the grounds that they are the experts and are quite capable of squaring the circle before breakfast if need be. But in doing so, they risk being seen as not so much summarising scientific progress, but obstructing it.
Readers may recall this now famous graph from the IPCC leak, animated and annotated by Dr. Ira Glickstein in this essay here:
Yes, the IPCC is “in a bit of a pickle” to say the least, since as Annan said in his comment/email to Revkin:
…combined with the stubborn refusal of the planet to warm as had been predicted over the last decade, all makes a high climate sensitivity increasingly untenable.
UPDATE 2: Annan also speaks about lying as a political motivator within the IPCC, I’ve repeated this extraordinary paragraph in full. Bold mine.
Note for the avoidance of any doubt I am not quoting directly from the unquotable IPCC draft, but only repeating my own comment on it. However, those who have read the second draft of Chapter 12 will realise why I previously said I thought the report was improved 🙂 Of course there is no guarantee as to what will remain in the final report, which for all the talk of extensive reviews, is not even seen by the proletariat, let alone opened to their comments, prior to its final publication. The paper I refer to as a “small private opinion poll” is of course the Zickfeld et al PNAS paper. The list of pollees in the Zickfeld paper are largely the self-same people responsible for the largely bogus analyses that I’ve criticised over recent years, and which even if they were valid then, are certainly outdated now. Interestingly, one of them stated quite openly in a meeting I attended a few years ago that he deliberately lied in these sort of elicitation exercises (i.e. exaggerating the probability of high sensitivity) in order to help motivate political action. Of course, there may be others who lie in the other direction, which is why it seems bizarre that the IPCC appeared to rely so heavily on this paper to justify their choice, rather than relying on published quantitative analyses of observational data. Since the IPCC can no longer defend their old analyses in any meaningful manner, it seems they have to resort to an unsupported “this is what we think, because we asked our pals”. It’s essentially the Lindzen strategy in reverse: having firmly wedded themselves to their politically convenient long tail of high values, their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “la la la I can’t hear you”.
Oh dear oh dear oh dear…
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Let’s actually do the calculation: We’ll use the 1 W/m^2 (although a more accurate value is more like 0.5 W/m^2) and we’ll use an ocean mixed layer depth of 100 m (although the ocean heat content measurements typically go down to 700 m, and it has recently been argued that one has to look down to 2000 m to really see the full view of ocean heat content increase).
Ah, but this mixing presumes that there is time to equilibrate and mix. However, you are dumping 1 W/m^2 into each square meter of surface at the surface!. This means that it is absorbed approximately within the skin depth, which of course varies depending on the wavelength. IR, for example, is absorbed within the top millimeter or so. Visible light isn’t uniformly absorbed in the first 100 meters, it exponentially attenuates by frequency. Those papers you refer to very clearly show a diurnal cycle of heating not of the first 100 meters, but of the first meter to meter and a half by sunlit day, followed by cooling at night, so that sea surface temperature remain roughly stable. The temperature variation is significant — roughly 2.5 C — and almost entirely confined to the top meter with only a small tail stretching down to 10 meters or so.
Dumping an extra watt per meter into this layer will not cause it to magically skip the entire surface interaction that held the sea surface in equilibrium before and penetrate straight down to 100 meters, or 2000 meters, or wherever you would like to hide the heat. It will directly heat the surface water by some additional, quite small, amount. That water will then do what it already does — lose all of that heat back to the atmosphere from that top layer by means of radiation from the top surface itself, latent heat of evaporation, and direct surface conduction. Where in good time it will be radiated away to space. A tiny, tiny piece of it — perhaps 0.01 W/m^2 — will penetrate past 10 m, and yes, over geological time it will warm the oceans, although it is now of the same order as the geological heating at the ocean bottom from the Earth itself and it will be hard to tell.
You also neatly sidestepped the 1 W/m^2 surplus delivered to the land. I was indeed sloppy — it was a fermi estimate after all — and the sun doesn’t shine 24 hours a day and so on (or rather I was assuming that the 1 W/m^2 was a diurnal average) but you are also asserting that this is the imbalance on forest land, farm land, city streets, lakes. I mean this is an atmospheric effect, right, measured at the top of the atmosphere so everything gets that extra watt, or half watt, all day or half a day or something.
Once again, the assertion that the Earth absorbs one more watt per square meter on average, every second of every day is utterly absurd. The effect of 1 W/m^2 extra forcing is simply to make the surface temperature increase a bit until the Earth is once again in dynamic equilibrium, losing as much heat every day as it gains. The variations in mean temperature occur across decadal time scales (if not centuries).
After all, insolation varies by far more than 1 W/m^2 over a very short timescale, every day. In the morning the sun hits obliquely. At noon it comes straight down. A cloud covers the sun. Yet every night, by four AM, the ground and air return to almost the same temperature they had the day before. The Earth is radiating heat away almost as fast as it absorbs it by day, slowly warming. It is radiating heat away faster than it absorbs it by night, slowly cooling.
And you are right, I was “excessive” in the assertion that the oceans would boil, although my reference there was poking fun at a statement by Hansen to that precise effect that I read a few years ago (it’s probably discussed on this list somewhere). I mean, this is the guy that is the lead man on the science of this issue? He’s a nut! And I mean that with all due respect for the many non-nut scientists in the world.
I also did not intend to call Trenberth an idiot — I doubt that he is. I also doubt that he would claim that the Earth is exhibiting a radiative imbalance of a watt per day. What he might claim is that the solar forcing has increased by a watt per day. Those two statements are not the same thing, and you should try to appreciate the difference.
rgb
Richard: I think this is a good direction to take the discussion in…I’ll be interested to hear Joel’s answer to your question.
richardscourtney says:
Sorry, but that statement just pegs my irony meter! I defy anybody to go back and read the five points that I wrote and then what you said in response and think that you have displayed any ability to think critically about your interpretation. Let’s just look at a few facts:
*You have insisted that “rule out” can only mean what you think it means and that to say something is ruled out at a 95% confidence level is an oxymoron. You have been presented with direct evidence that this statement is precisely what is used in talking about the search for new particles in high energy physics. Your response: You just refuse to even address this and simply continue to say the only way that the statement can be interpreted is your way.
*I have carefully considered the implications of your interpretation: Does your interpretation of what they said make sense in certain cases? When I have demonstrated how it does not make sense, your response has been to refuse to even address this and simply continue to say the only way that the statement can be interpreted is your way.
Consider my irony meter pegged a second time! First, a point of fact: I have spent only the last 3 years in academia. Before that, I spent 13 years in industry, so your whole theory falls apart already.
However, the real irony is the inversion of the idea of arrogance that I see within the AGW skeptic community whereby the following behavior is not arrogant:
* Coming to climate science with very little scientific background (e.g., advanced study of a closely-related physical science).
* Reading very little by way of textbooks or papers in the field.
* Nonetheless believing that you know better than the experts in the field.
By contrast, the following behavior is arrogant:
* Coming to climate science from advanced study in a closely-related physical science.
* Nonetheless accepting the fact that you have a lot to learn and thus reading textbooks and papers in the field to try to get up to speed.
* Even having done this, still not making claims that you understand or know better than experts in the field but, rather, mainly using your knowledge to communicate and explain what these experts have concluded through their studies.
(1) Take the data set they used (HadCRUT?) and follow the procedure that they reference to remove the effects of ENSO.
(2) Measure the observed empirical trend in the data over a 15 year or more period. (There is no need to compute the uncertainty in this trend estimate, which primarily represents not measurement uncertainty but simply the uncertainty in extracting the underlying trend from data that has trend + variability. What we are interested in here is the actual trend that was observed, not what it says about the underlying trend once variability is removed, which we can most easily ascertain by comparing the observed trend to the whole envelope of trends seen in the modeling runs.)
(3) If that empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero over 15 year or more period, then there is a discrepancy at a 95% confidence level. That is to say, you have observed something in the real world that happened less than 1 time in 20 in the model simulations and is thus unlikely to have occurred by chance if the real world is behaving as the models predict.
There are admittedly some subtleties in here: One is what led me to state that you should use the same data set that they did. If you are allowed to “shop around”, you are more likely to find a 1 in 20 outlier. After all, with 20 independent data sets, seeing a 1 in 20 outlier becomes much more likely than not! Different global temperature records are certainly not completely independent data sets; They are highly correlated. Still, this sort of “shopping around” would certainly increase your chance of seeing a 1 in 20 outlier to greater than 1 chance in 20. [A similar statement applies to “shopping around” by carefully choosing your exact starting and stopping point, although hopefully the data with ENSO removed would be less sensitive to such things.]
joeldshore;
but when nobody around here besides me seems to recognize these mistakes…and in fact blindly defends them…it really doesn’t say good things about your objectivity.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seriously? I knew what he meant the first time around though the poor wording made me stop and go “huh?” for a moment. He’s since responded and clarified. Shall we list the “poorly worded” statements you made in this thread that were wrong to the point of being absurd and sent you back pedaling with “that’s not what I meant” statements or which you just ignored altogether rather than admit being wrong? (Please say “no”, that’s more time for copy and paste than I have today)
fwiw, I’ve asked rgb some pretty tough questions, one of which prompted a response from him along the lines of “I don’t know, but that’s a helluva good point”. I outright told him he was wrong in the way he was handling a disagreement with Monckton. You think we just fawn over every word rgb says? Simply not so Joel.
joeldshore;
However, the real irony is the inversion of the idea of arrogance that I see within the AGW skeptic community whereby the following behavior is not arrogant:
* Coming to climate science with very little scientific background (e.g., advanced study of a closely-related physical science).
* Reading very little by way of textbooks or papers in the field.
* Nonetheless believing that you know better than the experts in the field.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Seriously Joel, shove it. You’ve not only made a complete fool of yourself in this thread, you are now accusing the people you are arguing with in this thread, me, richardscourtney, and rgbatduke of having little scientific background andhaving done little reading in the field. You’ve demonstrated a poor grasp of the physics, made several rather obvious errors in regard to both the IPCC and current literature, and so end with an argument to authority. YOU haven’t got the science right, YOU aren’t up to speed on the official literature, YOU make one mistake after another, and so you end your argument with an Appeal to Authority.
You’re just greg house with phd.
I would just like to point out that you all are missing the point entirely.
To claim that an increase in the atmosphere caused by 0.01% in CO2 causes warming you must first come up with decent test methods (not calculations) that would prove that
a) the cooling effect of CO2 by re-radiation (back radiation to space = cooling) of incoming sunshine (5525K) @ur momisugly 1.6 – 2.3 um and 4 – 5 um and and in the UV (between 0.21 and 0.19 um and between 0.18 and 0.135 um and between 0.125 and 0.12 um)
is smaller than
b) the warming effect of CO2 by re-radiation (back radiation to earth = warming) of outgoing earthshine (255K) @ur momisugly between 14 and 16 um
CO2 also causes cooling by taking part in the life cycle. Plants and trees need warmth and CO2 to grow – which is why you don’t see trees at high latitudes and – altitudes. It appears no one has any figures on how much this cooling effect might be. There is clear evidence that there has been a big increase in greenery on earth in the past 4 decades.
From all of this, you should have figured out by now that any study implying that the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, must exhibit a balance sheet in the right dimensions showing us exactly how much radiative warming and how much radiative cooling is caused by an increase of 0.01% of CO2 that occurred in the past 50 years in the atmosphere. It must also tell us the amount of cooling caused by the increase in photosynthesis that has occurred during the past 50 years.
There are no such results in any study, let alone in the right dimensions.
So, all of your talks and chats and arguments have no value whatsoever and brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
Have a nice cooling (off) time.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/01/24/our-earth-is-cooling/
“You’re just greg house with phd.”
Ooh. Major burn! But well deserved.
joeldshore:
Thankyou for attempting to answer my question to you which I presented at February 5, 2013 at 1:49 am. Unfortunately, I am disappointed that you have not answered it.
I am noting the fatuous twaddle which precedes your attempted reply to my question in your post: onlookers can assess that, and I would not wish to hinder their amusement at your expense. However, I observe that you say you worked in industry until three years ago. If your response to my question is any indication of how you answer direct questions then I can understand why you are no longer employed in industry.
Your attempt at an answer is in your post at February 5, 2013 at 6:29 am.
I stress that I am disappointed you have not answered my clear and simple question.
I remind that the question was
You have not said what you think would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”.
Instead,
(a) you have described a procedure which was not stated – or even hinted at – in the NOAA document,
(b) which has to use data which NOAA did not state (and you say you don’t know when you write “(HadCRUT?)” but which you say is critically important to avoid “an outlier”),
(c) and which has to use an ENSO adjustment method which NOAA did not specify but merely referenced as example.
The nearest you get to answering my question is when you say
I could debunk that ludicrous method which you have dreamed up, but that debunking would only incur another round of your long-winded, knit-picking evasions. So, I refrain from the temptation to argue with the method you have imagined. Your flight of fancy does not answer my question and is ridiculous (e.g. it determines “empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero” but has no specified confidence limits).
So, I refuse to be side-tracked into discussion of your imaginary method.
Instead, I ask you to provide a clear and succinct answer to the question; viz.
According to your understanding of the quoted statement from NOAA, what would be “a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate”?
Richard
Joel says: Richard M: I presented evidence that what Annan stated in terms of climate sensitivity in early 2006 aligns extremely closely with what he is stating now. If you have evidence to the contrary, perhaps you can present it rather than just insisting that his views have obviously radically changed without providing any quantitative statement of what the shift in his belief has been.
I already provided the obvious evidence to the contrary but you are in serious denial of reality. One can only feel sorry for you. I suspect you are so immersed in your rationalizations that you will eventually end up with major problems. There was a time when I thought you had a somewhat open mind. Now, that is gone. You will scratch and claw at everything until you can imagine something that supports what you want to believe. You are the epitome of a person in denial. I’ve seen gamblers who behave exactly like you are doing. One rationalization after another. At least they have Gamblers Anonymous.
rgb says:
People are measuring this. And, yes, the heat content in the oceans is increasing consistent with an ongoing energy imbalance of about 0.5 W/m^2 (over the last decade or two, I believe…Somewhat lower rates if you look over the entire past ~60 years.). You give a detailed description of the processes by which the heat is absorbed, transferred, and re-radiated…but your net claim comes down to this: You are claiming that over long timescales (years to decades), the amount of the ocean participating in the warming process is such that the effective heat capacity of the Earth system is very small. This is simply not what is observed to be true.
No…What is being said is that the surplus averaged over the Earth is about 0.5 W/m^2. It does not mean that it is this value everywhere. There are massive transfers of heat going on in the system. The extra heat, at least 90% of it as I recall, ends up in the oceans and I think much of the rest is accounted for by melting ice. Very little of it is in the atmosphere and in the land surface. We can probably find more accurate breakdowns somewhere.
davidmhoffer says:
Not everything in my broad description about the inversion of the concept of arrogance by the skeptic community applies to every person, but the point is that you guys think you know better than scientists who have been working in the field for years to decades…and you continually demonstrate that there are basic things that you don’t know. And yet, I am the one who is arrogant?
joeldshore:
At February 5, 2013 at 7:51 am you ask davidmhoffer:
In kindness, I strongly suggest that you don’t press that question.
David M Hoffer was being considerate in suggesting your behaviour displays arrogance. As your question suggests, there are alternative explanations of your behaviour, but they are all more negative than that you are “arrogant”; e,g. stupid or dishonest would also explain it.
Richard
joeldshore;
Not everything in my broad description about the inversion of the concept of arrogance by the skeptic community applies to every person,
But that is precisely what you said, and of people you know full well go out of their way to correct bad science on both sides of the debate.
but the point is that you guys think you know better than scientists who have been working in the field for years to decades…
Bull. Aside from being another appeal to authority, that is bullsh!t. What I think is that I have questions about the science that the people working in the field don’t have credible answers for, and I think claims that are being made can’t be substantiated by those self same people which becomes readily apparent when they are asked the tough questions.
and you continually demonstrate that there are basic things that you don’t know. And yet, I am the one who is arrogant
What I continually demonstrate is that I do know the basics and that you have gigantic holes in your knowledge of the IPCC and related literature. Nor was it my intent to imply that you are arrogant. Foolish was what I was after.
You really should take a few days off and cool down.
Joel says:
“If that empirically-observed trend after adjustment for ENSO is less than zero over 15 year or more period, then there is a discrepancy at a 95% confidence level. That is to say, you have observed something in the real world that happened less than 1 time in 20 in the model simulations and is thus unlikely to have occurred by chance if the real world is behaving as the models predict.”
The only problem is, as before (in the other thread), Joel is excluding “near-zero-but-positive” trends. The NOAA clearly state that “near zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations…”
So, by “near zero and even negative trends” it’s clear they are talking about, as regards the simulations output, any and all trends ranging from slightly positive (i.e. near zero but positive) all the way through the mythical exactly zero trend, and into the negative trends. This is all in the sentence immediately preceding the one with the (at the 95% level) and all the unnecessary controversy there. This is the immediate context for that sentence.
Yet in Joel’s answer to what he would need to see in order for the present day warming trend to be at odds with the model projections (and in other words for the models to be wrong), the observed trend must be negative, “less than zero”. That’s all he will accept. The “near zero” context from the sentence immediately leading into the disputed one is immediately forgotten (conveniently) and ONLY NEGATIVE TRENDS WILL DO, in Joel’s version.
What is the explanation for that? Why does that “near zero and even negative trends” context disappear completely when it comes to the very next sentence? It must do in Joel’s mind, for in his interpretation of their overall statement (incorporating both sentences), somehow the result is that only an observed negative trend of 15 years or more will do to falsify the models output.
P.S: I started my previous comment with “the only problem is…”
I should clarify that this was a mistake. I need to be clearer with my words. It’s not the only problem. It’s specifically the problem I wanted to address in that particular comment, but it’s not the only problem. I just feel if I don’t clarify this now Joel will suddenly declare I’ve proved him right again somehow.
Graham W:
I want Joel Shore to provide a clear answer to my question. That and only that. And after we have that clear answer then we can discuss his answer.
Discussing Joel’s evasions is how one gets dragged into his wild and whacky world. Please remember how you got trapped in there on another thread.
Yes, all you say is right in your post at February 5, 2013 at 9:40 am. And there are several other blatant errors in the evasion that Joel wrote, too.
However, I fear your answer may be a fall into the wierd and whacky world of Joel Shore. Like me, you have been there and it is not nice.
Richard
– – – – – – –
rgbatduke,
Your whole comment on February 4, 2013 at 8:57 am was some pretty explicitly stated heavy lifting. Thanks. : )
I quoted just part of it to set up a thought scenario that I would like your comment on.
My Thought Scenario: There is a possibility that there are no fundamental physics restrictions on the sensitivity to doubling CO2 from being zero for either direct effect or feedback or for the combination of both. Further, the scenario is meant to also apply to either the system condition of transient or approximate equilibrium or approximate steady-state. All of that is offered with the caveat that all conditions in the complex earth-atmospheric never are equal or remain constant on any timescale.
Given that Thought Scenario, I have a question for you:
rgbatduke, can my Thought Scenario have a possibility of plausibility wrt fundamental physics?
Thanks for participating at WUWT.
John
P.P.S: So, in order for them to have got anywhere near to what Joel thinks they said, they would actually have needed to write the following:
Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations (at the 95% level) rule out negative trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed cooling of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.
Richard: My questions at the end of my main comment were rhetorical, I’m not expecting nor will I accept any response from Joel that doesn’t begin with an apology. Therefore he’ll be wasting his time trying to talk to me (he’ll never apologise), and in any case by his own way of looking at the world you are the only person he needs to converse with about this since you’re a scientist and therefore a valid human being. In Joel’s mind, my being a layperson renders me subhuman.
So rest assured that the only course Joel can take is to properly answer your question. If he does anything but that, all onlookers will see it as dishonesty and evasion and rightly so.
Graham W:
re your post at February 5, 2013 at 11:24 am.
My comment to you (at February 5, 2013 at 10:19 am) hoped to achieve focus on getting Joel Shore to reveal his misunderstanding to himself by forcing him to answer my question. It was NOT intended to dissuade you from contributing to the discussion in any way.
Please be assured that in a scientific discussion the value of a comment is assessed on its merits and not on the basis of who or what person presented it. What Joel thinks of a person is his business and not relevant to anything. Remember, a Patents Clerk revolutionised physics and he was only later acknowledged to be a scientist.
You demolished Joel Shore on the other thread. You are as worthy to engage with him as anybody else, and if I implied otherwise then I apologise.
Richard
richardscourtney says:
There is no substitute for going through the process that I have outlined. If you don’t want to go through the process, that is fine. But, then don’t make the false claims that you have been making in regards to whether the criterion outlined for determining whether there is a discrepancy between the models and the temperature record has been satisfied. You have not done the calculations to reach a conclusion either way (and, on the basis of what we see in the record not adjusted for ENSO, I very highly doubt that the criterion for a discrepancy has been reached). And, of course, it is patently ridiculous to believe that “rule out” means that you can say something about a statistical issue with 100% confidence.
Graham says:
That is not what I said and absolutely not what I meant. Richard started this whole thing by launching into a whole tirade that I was suffering from “academic arrogance”, so I was just noting the bizarre world around these parts in regards to what is considered arrogant and what is not. You guys are awful sensitive…and at least some of you (you less than others) dish out quite a bit of abuse on me, but then get all upset when I even mildly turn it back on you.
And (especially after Richard’s last post to you), you might want to read (or re-read) “King Lear” for some insight into who your real friends are. They are not always the ones who tell you things that you want to hear. Frankly, I have too much respect for your intelligence and others reading this thread to ever engage in the sort of sophistric arguments that Richard has here.
davidmhoffer says:
I hardly think that I am the one losing my cool. But, I may follow your advice to some degree, not least of which, because some serious family matters have come up that may swamp my time and energy. I also think that little can be gained from further discussing the NOAA criterion thing. I think people can read it and decide for themselves who is bringing serious arguments to the table.
[rgb: I would still be interested in discussing the issues that you have raised, although again, work and family issues may make my response times slower.]
Richard, no need to apologise, I know you weren’t saying I couldn’t comment. You know I will anyway…! I was just trying to say that I still think Joel should have another go at answering your question and there’s little point him replying to me in what I was saying; they were just possible points of interest, maybe.
Of course I exaggerate (a lot) for – hopefully -comic effect when I say things like “Joel considers lay people subhuman”, naturally it’s nowhere near that extreme. There is just sometimes a little inkling of a suggestion that points of view aren’t necessarily registered or considered as much by Joel if they don’t come from a place of authority. But what do I know I only have these discussions to go on I don’t know Joel or anyone here personally so it’s hard to say.
Overall I’m just fascinated to see if any of the arguments on this thread can possibly be resolved or if we’re all just churning the same ideas through our heads over and over and getting nowhere. There must be some way to reach some kind of agreement on things!
joeldshore:
At February 5, 2013 at 1:31 pm in response to my clear question which was
You have replied
So, you say you cannot define the “discrepancy”, you can only relate a “process” which you have imagined out of whole cloth.
Joel, the NOAA criterion defines the discrepancy. Try to understand that if you cannot state the discrepancy then you do not understand the NOAA criterion.
You may be concealing your lack of understanding from yourself, but you are not hiding it from anybody else. Wake up to reality.
I will again quote NOAA’s definition, then paraphrase what the “discrepancy” is, then state what I understand your misinterpretation of the “discrepancy” to be.
The NOAA falsification criterion is on page S23 of its report at
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf
It says
To any rational person, that says:
The climate model simulations (which do not show ENSO effects) often show trends near to zero for periods of 10 or less years, but the simulations do not permit there to be (i.e. “rule out”) such trends for 15 years and, therefore, a difference (i.e. a discrepancy) between the simulations of the models and reality would exist if reality were to provide (at 95% confidence) trends which cannot be discerned as being different from zero for 15 or more years when effects of ENSO are removed.
But, you assert that it says the “discrepancy” is something which cannot be defined except as a process which you have dreamed up.
Richard
Graham W:
At February 5, 2013 at 2:14 pm you say to me
Sadly, not with bigots. That is why they are bigots: their views are fixed and cannot be altered by reason, logic and/or evidence.
Instead of addressing a point a bigot will say somethings like, “I cannot define what I am talking about so, instead, I will assert it is a process and others must agree that I am right”.
Richard
February 1, 2013 at 10:48 am Steven Mosher said:
“…numerous factors…combined with stubborn refusal of the planet to warm…”
Forget those factors. For a scientist, sixteen years with no warming ought to be enough to tell him that the experiment has failed, that the attempt to cause warming by putting carbon dioxide in the air just does not work. This is in accord with Miskolczi’s analysis of radiosonde measurements. He showed that atmospheric absorption of long-wave radiation was constant for 61 years while at the same time carbon dioxide increased by 21.6 percent. This substantial amount of carbon dioxide did not increase IR absorption by the atmosphere by one whit. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. This explains exactly why the planet refuses to warm And it settles the sensitivity issue too: without that imaginary greenhouse warming the true sensitivity for doubling of carbon dioxide is exactly zero.