Warwick Hughes writes:
Thanks to The National Business Review in New Zealand we have this rare article on Steve McIntyre while he was visiting downunder.
Full article here, but the web version doesn’t have the same headline: http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/too-much-hot-air-about-global-warming-says-researcher-rv-1
h/t to reader Bob Koss
I think people are overblowing the “incontrovertible” thing. I have seen data that supported AGW, but when I look at it more closely, I see that it was “adjusted to conform to the model”. Data is what is measured. What they are charting is a result of data being manipulated by a model.
To me incontrovertible proof is something like this: I use Einstein’s General Relativity equations to calculate the curvature of space-time around the sun, Then I go out during an eclipse and I measure the apparent positions of stars compared to their known positions when their light doesn’t pass through the sun’s gravity well and note that they are displaced by precisely the number that Einstein’s equations predicted. Then I go out at the next eclipse and the next, then I send an observatory out into solar orbit that can block the solar disk and measure these apparent positions continuously and note in all cases that I get the predicted result. Einstein’s theory is not proven by this, but the support for the theory is pretty “incontrovertible”. If it wasn’t, we spent a lot of unnecessary money in the Air Force for processing power to correct GPS readings for the Earth’s space-time curvature. Of course if any of my experiments turn up data that disagrees with General Relativity and any lab in the world could replicate the experiment and get the same result, I’d be lining up for my Nobel in a few years.
The problem for AGW is there is no experimental proof to be had. We try to analyze a mish-mash of unrelated readings all secondarily associated with energy content and try to claim that the sky is falling. The real problem is we say it is a logarithmic relation between CO2 and temperature, but the amplitude constant out front has never been “incontrovertibly” shown. Then we ask people to spend a [self-snip] of a lot of more money then we spent on the fairly “incontrovertible” General Relativity correction when we haven’t even shown the value of that one constant to within 50% of its value – less than 1 to 4.5 is a $^#%@ur momisugly large range!
Oh and on that amplitude constant – they haven’t even shown me “incontrovertible” proof that it is a constant and not some function of a lot of other factors that will swamp out the CO2 signal. The log thing came from a very simple early model.
NOTE: This post is spam:
Mike Jennings says:
February 8, 2013 at 4:53 am
Steve is da man.
I’m with Steven Mosher. The comments threads here often go completely emotional against any suggestion of warming, with zero reference to the facts. Change a few words in each comment and you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the AGW pages.
oldfossil says: February 8, 2013 at 4:06 pm
I’m with Steven Mosher. The comments threads here often go completely emotional against any suggestion of warming, with zero reference to the facts. Change a few words in each comment and you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the AGW pages.”
What would you say is the strongest and most definitive fact in support of AGW?
Mosh, always a pleasure to see you posting and watch you slide from lukewarmer to panic stricken believer. The seminal paper on all this was the Charney Report of 1979, the one that first introduced the still used “hundreds of independent lines of investigation” (one you’ve used yourself I believe) and introduced a sensitivity of 1.5 to 4.5, which, after $100Bn of research money having been flung at climate science remains at 2 to 4.5, the increase to 2 being made in AR4, presumably to get the expected sensitivity to a scarier 3.3. But I digress, you mention Feynmann in your cursing of sceptics, and indeed Feynmann has become one of my heroes, I particularly liked his lecture when he described the formulation and testing of a theory as going through three stages;
1. Guess
2. Compute
3 Observe.
Very simple and insightful, now perhaps you could tell us what the “compute” part is for the hypothesis of CAGW and we can go and “obseerve” because I’m buggered if I know what it is. And that’s what makes me a sceptic.
Wasn’t the sea-ice broken by the great cyclone in the early summer? I thought it was.
And why is the Arctic, which everyone knows has lost its sea ice in the past on regular occasions, the new poster child for global warming?
I like the ending, paraphrased: ‘It’s either not very bad or we’re adapting well to it.’
==============
Rod Vaughan reckons
Vilified by global warming zealots, Canadian
———
Vilify: To make vicious and defamatory statements about; to say vile things about
Who and how many?
Generally Steve is regarded with contempt but I ain’t seen much vilifying going on. Maybe some theories why Steve behaves badly.
As I have no doubt amnesia has set in I will remind you all that Steve “the gentleman Canadian” was behind associating people he has contempt for with paedophilia and pornstars. Just in case you want to feel sorry for poor little Steve.
REPLY: OK that’s it, you are banned, permanently. Get the hell off my blog. I won’t tolerate this sort of hateful crap from you anymore, Mr. Rothwell. – Anthony Watts
LT, what are you talking about?
Please explain your assertion that “generally, Steve is regarded with contempt.” By whom? Generally, most people have never heard of him, so you should be able to specify the subgroup that, according to you, regards him with contempt.
Grateful if you could also explicate your statement that Steve M. “was behind associating people he has contempt for with paedophilia and pornstars”. It is true that an ABC program in Australia allowed someone to claim that disagreeing with CAGW is like promoting kiddy-fiddling, but this is a new one on me.
Hi Steven Mosher,
the funny thing about discussing artic sea ice is that scepticism towards GHG as the main culprit may have been well warranted. Even at wikipedia you may now find surprising research:
“Black carbon emissions from northern Eurasia, North America, and Asia have the greatest absolute impact on Arctic warming.[81] However, black carbon emissions actually occurring within the Arctic have a disproportionately larger impact per particle on Arctic warming than emissions originating elsewhere.[82] As Arctic ice melts and shipping activity increases, emissions originating within the Arctic are expected to rise.”
So it may be black carbon in the first place, but another overlooked role is played by the increasing number of climate scientists polluting the arctic through the smoke stacks of their vessels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
oldfossil says:
February 8, 2013 at 4:06 pm
I’m with Steven Mosher. The comments threads here often go completely emotional against any suggestion of warming, with zero reference to the facts. Change a few words in each comment and you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the AGW pages.
I do not recall hearing any emotional comments here over warming. Do you have some examples? I am open to proof of your claim here myself. But just saying something does not make it true. (Its funny on 4 blogs I have said that on every one just today in fact.)
As for lazy, good riddance. I don’t say that often, but something that hateful has no business being on any blog let alone the internet. Someone should take away his internet privedges for a week, spank him a few times for good measure and then allow him back if he promises to be a good boy. I know quite a few warmists who would probably behave a lot nicer if they just got spanked a little more often when they told lies.
IPCC calls tranparency-opaque. Sort of new meaning, they will have it in the dictionary of computer modelling shortly.
Darn. Lazy got hiself banned. There
goes the comedic relief!
Snaparooni writes “What would you say is the strongest and most definitive fact in support of AGW?”
For me the only relevant fact is that CO2 absorbs IR energy radiated from the surface and transfers it to the lower atmosphere. More CO2 has greater probability of just *catching* that IR energy at non-optimal wavelengths at the edges of its capability to do so and therefore transfers more energy into the atmosphere.
Its also a fact that we as the “A” in AGW are responsible for putting CO2 into the atmosphere. That part is incontrovertible, I do it myself. Whether the CO2 levels are what they are because of that is less certain IMO.
Those two facts together *should* imply some sort of warming and people like Mosher hold this to be true. People who support AGW go on to believe the worst with most aspects of the atmosphere enhancing warming. They dont have the same intuition as I do I suppose.
I’m of the opinion that our measurements so far tend to support Mosher’s point of view but I personally believe we haven’t seen all the atmosphere’s capability to deal with the increased temperature gradient and so sensitivity could easily be closer to 1C and I personally dont rule out a negative sensitivity over a significant time scale.
LazyTeenager = Donald R Rothwell, Professor of International Law and Deputy Head of School at the ANU College of Law, a consultant or been a member of expert groups for UNEP, UNDP, IUCN, the Australian Government ?
http://cci.anu.edu.au/researchers/view/donnald_rothwell/
Interesting….
REPLY: NO, not the same person as LT – Anthony
TimTheToolMan says:
February 8, 2013 at 11:13 pm
Is this a “fact”?
It is not so much the “A” part of AGW that is the bone of contention, it is also the GW part of the story. It gets worse when people insist in putting “C” at the beginning, too.
I do not understand how a gradient that has flat-lined can be described as “increased”.
Perhaps your intuition regarding “facts” needs to be reconsidered.
Perhaps you would agree with the response to one comment I made on another thread: “Global warming is happening; I can accept that. The planet has warmed and cooled in the past, without any help or hindrance from humans; why is this particular period any different?”
The response: “Because this time humans are doing it. Duh.”
It is a logic that cannot be argued with, because it follows no logic at all.
TimTheToolMan says:
February 8, 2013 at 11:13 pm
Not neccessarily.
In a process control loop, you can easily have, say
– Constant or varying inputs with
-Propotional gain factors, with feedback to the input
-Derivate gain factors, with feedback to the input.
-Integral part with feedback to the input.
You can also have many loops, which could be coupled. And the feedback gains might not be linear…..
The propotional part, with a gain, or the integral part, could easily overcome results of the change of the input, otherwise the system wouldn’t be stable. The derivate part will decide whether the system dampens out easily, or is oscillating.
History shows that the system is highly stable, and that the feedback parts are therefore negative over time. Otherwise it would have run away a long time ago, me thinks.
So one can imagine a system where you pump up some input, say the amount of CO2 increase from 0.028 % to 0.05% , and via some mechanism, like convection, evapouration change the cloudlayer, and, voila, the temperature is the same…..
Nothing has shown that this isn’t the case yet, except the models. So, according to Feynman, as Mosher seems to like to quote lately, the models must be wrong.
It’s unfortunate that LazyTeenager was banned just as his cloak of anonymity was lifted. It would have been fun seeing his professional life picked apart for awhile. I think you have unfortunately done him a favour.
MichaelS says:
February 9, 2013 at 8:09 am
It’s unfortunate that LazyTeenager was banned just as his cloak of anonymity was lifted. It would have been fun seeing his professional life picked apart for awhile…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He is interesting: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/rothwell-dr#biography
A tad bit of vested interest there.
TimTheToolMan says: @ur momisugly February 8, 2013 at 11:13 pm
………….For me the only relevant fact is that CO2 absorbs IR energy radiated from the surface and transfers it to the lower atmosphere. More CO2 has greater probability of just *catching* that IR energy at non-optimal wavelengths at the edges of its capability to do so and therefore transfers more energy into the atmosphere………….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You are missing the fact that there is a day and a night and incoming solar energy as well as outgoing long wave very WEAK IR. graph
A look at the actual wavelengths for energy interaction with CO2: Graph shows both CO2 and H2O interact with wavelengths in the solar as well as the earth-shine bands. SEE Chart from http://irina.eas.gatech.edu/EAS8803_Fall2009/Lec6.pdf for actual wavelengths
Therefore the actual effect is to modify the temperature by making day time temps cooler and night time temps hotter. We see this if we compare desert vs tropical rain forest.
comment 1
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“LazyTeenager = Donald R Rothwell, Professor of International Law and Deputy Head of School at the ANU College of Law”
Amazing! And here I had thought from Lazy’s lame, drive-by style and information deficient posts that he was actually a pimple faced but idealistic teenager angry at his elders for allegedly destroying his future.
REPLY: No, that’s not the same Rothwell as the Lazy – Anthony
Radical Rodent writes “Is this a “fact”?”
Yes, this part can be measured in the lab and is independent of any “atmospheric effects”.
He goes on to write “I do not understand how a gradient that has flat-lined can be described as “increased”.”
I agree in the sense that the atmosphere can flatten that increased temperature gradient. But increased temperature gradient is what the physics predicts and that part is reasonably straightforward “with all else being equal” which it isn’t.
And then writes “The planet has warmed and cooled in the past, without any help or hindrance from humans; why is this particular period any different?””
I agree which is why I dont believe that CO2 is necessarily responsible for the warming, may be responsible for a small part of it and I dont rule out the possibility that it essentially isn’t responsible for any of it.
Nevertheless, the physics behind the prediction of warming is sound “with all else being equal”.
Gail writes “You are missing the fact that there is a day and a night and incoming solar energy as well as outgoing long wave very WEAK IR.”
I’m not missing anything Gail. You’re adding more and then knocking it down. That is a classic strawman argument.
TimTheToolMan says:
February 9, 2013 at 1:25 pm
I would agree that part of your original statement is correct, but not the whole:
Is it a fact that the energy is transferred to the lower atmosphere? At what height does the “lower atmosphere” stop? Why not the upper levels?
Well… erm… yes… However, it was predicted to rise in conjunction with CO2 levels, yet hasn’t. Why is the so-far-failed prediction suddenly expected to be correct, “all else being equal,” which they aren’t (not that I fully know what “all else” might be)?
That’s about as far as I can understand your answer, I’m afraid.