Freeman Dyson speaks out about climate science, and fudge

Didn’t Michael Mann or another member of The Team refer to Dyson as a “mere physicist” once? Wish I could track down that quote.

This has been a really bad few weeks for the Alarmists. No wonder they are unusually cranky.

Not only lazy but very much infested with leftist leanings and a considerable amount of envy for those who are enterprising and make a good living from a bit of calculated risk-taking. Journalism in my experience attracts two kinds of people, those in it for the love of reporting and investigating and misanthropes, delighting only in telling their audience off. Most of the former turn into the latter under the yoke of publishers who only see them as a means to sell advertising while squeezing them for every penny of budget. The rest takes flight and becomes successful writing books or in other endeavors, reinforcing the cycle of envy for those left behind. And I say that as someone who has worked in the profession for over a decade.

My hero in science for many decades. A giant, fair and imaginative intellect now under attack from farcical anthropophagian midgets.

Dyson is my hero. I first heard about him when he was hired by NASA to investigate the Challenger disaster in the late 1980’s. They hired him because they knew he’d find the cause of the disaster and he wouldn’t sugar coat the findings. And that’s exactly what he did.

..and yet, no one questions why CO2 levels were so low, and stayed so low, to begin with…..
for the dimwits, there’s a reason, and it’s not a good one

Great article. Only mistake was missing Feynman’s tenure as most brilliant living physicist.

Was it Fermi or Bethe who said: “Give me four variables and I’ll let an elephant appear, give me five and he will wag with his trunk!” ?? R.Feynman told it in one of his popular books!

When one of the popular press skeptic organizations gives climate science a fair going over instead of dropping steaming warmist dogma in their readers’ laps, then all will know the end is at hand. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

A “Civil Heretic”? Oh, that was the kind article! There was this piece in the Atlantic a few years ago which more accurately expresses what the AGW fanatics really though of Prof. Dyson:
“In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel. “
—————
How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment?….
Really???
That really pissed me off when I read it. Apparently though, Dyson really didn’t care what this “journalist”, or what anyone else thought. He is indeed the smarter, wiser man, than his critics.

“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”
I’ve been explaining this point on web comments and blogs for years. Nice to have someone smarter than me put it out there as well.

Snake oil Baron: Could you explain (define) this for me. “Turing Palaver Into Gold Through Alchemy”. Or did I fall for some GIGO joke. Don’t mean to be a troll but, red herring hunting is how I put some things in perspective. Lets say, I know some humans who couldn’t pass a “Turing test” . . . . .a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of an actual human.

“I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.”
—
Actually, most journalists are content to pull the Greenpeace guy’s card out of their Rolodex, and get all their ‘facts’ from their ‘experts’, and call it a day. It’s a different kind of lazy.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/progressive-professor-demands-death-penalty-for-global-warming-skeptics-and-the-pope/
Here is the death penalty demand

Reblogged this on If You Voted For It — You Own It and commented:
I have been writing about the climate modeling fudge factors for years and now one of the smartest men on the planet reports that climate models are “full of fudge factors.” I have been vindicated!

John Parsons AKA atarsinc
klem says:
April 5, 2013 at 11:02 am
Richard Feynman was the physicist that had the insight as to the cause of The Challenger Disaster, not Freeman Dyson. JP

Here are two quotes from Dyson, which I have treasured over the years and shared when I got the chance. Nothing to do with climate, except as the second one is likely to increase the moisture level in your eyes – just a bit. A truly great man.
*****************************************************************************************************
Freeman Dyson in “Disturbing the Universe” (Basic Books, 1979) on becoming a (Naturalized) US citizen.
On Page 131
“By that time I had finally become an American citizen. The decision to abjure my allegiance to Queen Elizabeth might have been a difficult one, but the Queen’s ministers made it easy for me. An official lady in the Queen’s Foreign Office decided that my children were illegitimate according to British law. They were therefore not British subjects and not entitled to receive British passports. As a consequence of her decision, my family for a while consisted of five people with five different nationalities, one British, one German, one Swiss, one American and one stateless. Traveling around Europe with a stateless child is no joke. So it was with considerable relief that I went to the courthouse in Trenton and said the magic words that released me from dependence on any foreign prince or potentate. Bastards or not, the U.S.A. would at least give my children passports.”
Then on Page 135
“On the Fourth of July I went with my wife and our two youngest children to watch the fireworks on the Ellipse behind the White House. A big crowd was there, predominantly black, sitting on the grass waiting for the show. We sat down among them. Our children were soon running around with the others. Then came the fireworks. After the official fireworks were over, the crowd was allowed to let off unofficial fireworks. Everyone seemed to have brought something. The black children all had little rockets or Catherine wheels or sparklers and were shouting with joy as they blazed away. Only our children were quiet and sad because we had not brought anything for them. But suddenly one of the black children came up to us and gave our children a fistful of sparklers so they could join in the fun. That moment, rather than the ceremony in Trenton, was the true beginning of my citizenship. It was then that I knew for sure we were at home in America.”

Yeah, that’s all very well and good but where is he now? Just kidding… Freeman Dyson is great!

The fellow with the parameters and the elephant was John von Neumann.

Re: Alacran, 11:27am
Johnny von Neumann, but it’s complicated:
“Attributed to von Neumann by Enrico Fermi, as quoted by Freeman Dyson in “A meeting with Enrico Fermi” in Nature 427 (22 January 2004) p. 297″
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

He is so right:
“I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”
A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.
“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”
This is why models cannot even hindcast past climate variations. They treat the atmosphere between the surface and the top of the atmosphere where the radiation leaves the Earth as a constant. Which it is not. It is exactly here, through variations of the heat transfer, that huge variations in climate may happen and may explain the Bond events
“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”
yes, we meet them again and again trolling around…and not only…
“It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation,” Dyson said. “About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil.”
And considering we are 7 billion on this world that makes food for over 1 billion humans. That is what that 15% is.

Let us remember warmist ‘science historian’ Naomi Oreskes’ denigration of Freeman Dyson as being old, past his prime, lonely and just wanting attention, at an LA Book Fair covered by CSPAN, in reminder that it’s OK to denounce someone’s views based on their age (on national TV, no less) if they aren’t politically correct.
Somehow, I just don’t see Dyson ever getting so old as to drop to Oreskes’ level.
Oreskes’ Dyson remarks are at 50:55
http://www.booktv.org/Watch/12447/2011+Los+Angeles+Times+Festival+of+Books+Panel+Inconvenient+Truths.aspx

pesadia says:
April 5, 2013 at 12:27 pm
——-
Parncutt! Yes I remember that … mmm .. person. Since we are reminded of Parncutt I think it only fitting to take a moment out in silence gratitude to and appreciation of Viscount Monckton of Brenchley’s, who’s successful efforts forced Parncutt to retract his hate screed.

John Coleman – “At it’s peak “. No, it’s “At its peak”.

Well, the first paragraph is partly wrong, in that at the Institute for Advanced STUDY Freeman Dyson’s responsibilities have not included teaching (other than informally). But that’s an understandable error.
While on the topic of the Dyson family, John von Neumann, etc., I’ll share a book recommendation that will be of interest to more than a few. Last year i heard his son George Dyson give a fascinating talk about his book on the pioneering computer research conducted in the 1940’s and 1950’s at IAS, where many major breakthroughs — including the invention of RAM, as I recall — took place. I ended up buying the book for a friend, but did a bit of skimming on my own, and will thus vouch for it. http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Universe/dp/0375422773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365201182&sr=8-1&keywords=dyson+alan+turing

Simon says:
April 5, 2013 at 12:51 pm
“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can. ”
Simon, the Holocene has been warmer then it is now between 10000 bc and 4000 bc. The arctic was completely thawned and no runaway global warming happened.
It comes even better, the last 3-4 interglacials were all warmer then this one with a couple of degrees Celsius, and still no runaway global warming.
Still better, the Arctic and the Antarctic were completely melted millions of years ago and the content of CO2 in the atmosphere was double or triple to that of today but no runaway global warming happened.
On the contrary it is then, with double CO2 in the atmosphere that the Antarctic started to freeze. What mattered were the global ocean currents.
If we go further in the Earth history we find CO2 values going up to 10-15 times and more the mere quantiities we see today. Still no runaway global warming.
One of the coldest periods on Earth was when huge CO2 quantities were in the atmosphere.
The Earth is not flat and the Arctic does not get the same insulation as the Tropic does only in stupid models and scenarios. Please go and search water reflexibility, maybe you still can find something in the Internet, but it gets more and more difficult to find real measurement data. At 5° it is about 90% if I correctly remember. At 10° still about 30%.
But anyhow if with open unfrozen arctic & higher sun insulation the sea did not realease the CO2 and the methane, even with 3 times more CO2 in the atmosphere, therefore it will not start to do it now just to punish our sinns.
Then please search a bit about Bond events, the 8200 event, the Younger Dryas and so on. You’ll see the climate was not stable, it had huge variations that cannot be explained by the greenhouse theory. This will certainly help against the fear of runaway global warming.

Freeman Dyson was interviewed by a journalist called Steve Connor in February 2011
During the course of the article – an exchange of emails between Connor and Professor Dyson – it became clear that Connor exhibited none of that quality suggested by the title of the publication – ‘The Independent’
There were several gems from Professor Dyson, notably:
“ … My impression is that the experts are deluded because they have been studying the details of climate models for 30 years and they come to believe the models are real. After 30 years they lose the ability to think outside the models. And it is normal for experts in a narrow area to think alike and develop a settled dogma.”
“ … On a smaller scale, we have seen great harm done to poor people around the world by the conversion of maize from a food crop to an energy crop
When Connor says, “It seems to me that although there are still many uncertainties, much of the science of climate change is pretty settled, more so than you will admit to”, Professor Dyson gives up in despair, saying,
“The whole point of science is to encourage disagreement and keep an open mind. That is why I blame The Independent for seriously misleading your readers.”
Professor Dyson was once asked whether there exists an integer such that when you take its final digit and move it to the front, its value will be doubled. He responded “Oh, that’s not difficult,” then, a couple of seconds later, “but of course the smallest such number is 18 digits long”
This is why I’m more likely to be impressed by Professor Dyson’s arguments than those, say, of Michael Mann or Stephan Lewandowsky

We shouldn’t be suprised that Dyson and many other scientists were essentially pushed aside at places like Oak Ridge. There’s no chance that they would have knowingly supplied the thin patina of pseudo-science being sought by those holding the purse strings. During the last years of the Carter Administration nuclear and coal were going head-to-head to see who would replace oil as our primary fuel source for power generation. Billions were on the line. Nuclear could not compete on cost and then there was the messy unresolved problem of what to do with the waste. Enviromentalists favored renewables which simply weren’t viable. Coal won this fight on cost, nuclear went into the deep freeze, and renewables returned to the Whole Earth Catalog.
The coal generation plants would need expensive upgrades in 30 years. AGW which came to public notice too late to influence the first round was in full roar for the current round which nuclear and renewables are winning. These people are skilled, patient, and they play for big stakes.
A scientist of Dyson’s quality just won’t play ball. I know we have others here as well.

The “Australian” professor wouldn’t be the Austrian professor Richard Pamcutt, would it?

Our civilization will not be great until we learn to harness 100% of the suns output.

Simon says:
April 5, 2013 at 12:51 pm
“The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already.”
That statement expresses common, ordinary panic. All such statements should be treated as what they are, namely, wholly irrational.
There is no imaginable mechanism through which global warming could become self-sustaining.

DesertYote says: April 5, 2013 at 4:24 pm
Our civilization will not be great until we learn to harness 100% of the suns output.
————————————————————-
Are you waiting for someone to point out that Dr Dyson outlined how that could be done? Lots of SF readers know what a Dyson Sphere is. … more surface area than a Ringworld, and harder to build too.

Here is an example. A story written by a reporter working for The Canadian Press, which is Associated Press in the the north, a story now being repeated across Canada, by all news outlets. This is a straight up reporting job, pyramid style and the squeaky wheel gets heard Richard D whether you like it or not. Be the squeaky wheel. Otherwise, you forfeit the field to the opposition.
http://www.canada.com/health/Group+concerned+about+climate+change+proposes+warning+labels/8197532/story.html

Funnily enough, Freeman Dyson is not “officially” a Ph. D. He graduated with a
B.A. in mathematics, from Cambridge. I am quite sure by now he has been given
honorary Ph.D.’s from many universities.
I met him once. While a strong supporter of nuclear power, he is a fierce opponent
of nuclear weapons. It’s probably apocryphal that his idea of using nuclear weapons
for outer space propulsion–Project Orion–came about as his solution for what to do
with all the excess nuclear weapons!

RE: “I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said.
That is really the art of good science; trust nothing, verify everything and continue to be open to other possibilities.

At my http://cosy.com/y12/NewsLetter201212.html , which incidentally shows that for Venus’s surface temperature to be explained by the energy it receives from the sun , it would have to be 10 times as reflective in the IR as aluminum foil , I link to the “Most Brilliant talk I’ve seen in a long time : Freeman Dyson: Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xFLjUt2leM .

Simon, the difference in perspective between Dyson and Hawking is that Dyson, unlike Hawking, has investigated the subject matter and not relied upon the opinions of others.

Very recent research (abstract at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198) shows that “…the planet today is warmer than it’s been during 70 to 80 percent of the last 11,300 years.”

Seriously geohydro2011,
Have you been in a bubble the last few weeks?
Marcott’s paper is in the toilet.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=marcott

“andrewmharding says:
April 5, 2013 at 11:19 am
To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.
That really does say it all about the Warmist crowd doesn’t it? What is scientific about views like that?”
Nothing scientific about it, just the same as when some wanted Galileo tried as heretic.
It’s not exactly anti-science. It’s not about science.
It’s about the constant fear of any dictator [and the underlings] it’s about the
fear of losing power.
It’s controlling the message.
Science may require freedom of speech, so it’s anti-science in that sense,
but it’s anti-freedom of speech.
It’s about protecting the totalitarian regime.

geohydro2011 – the authors of the study you link to now admit that their 20th century temperature statistics are not robust.

Infidel heretics like Freeman Dyson deserve all that they get. 😉

@klem, atarsinc, Dan in CA, . . .
There is a video of Richard Feynman demonstrating how the O-rings behaved when put into ice cold water. There is another video where he explains how he was alerted or shown this while visiting Morton Thiokol, the contractor. The second video says more about Feynman than the first.
I just finished reading this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/05/uninvented-history/

Freeman Dyson raises a very important point about empirical experimentation. Empirical experiments are kryptonite to AGW believers, and they avoid them at all costs. Some will have seen Tyndal tube experiments with infrared cameras and containers of CO2 being heated with infrared lamps, but these experiments do not combine the radiative heating and cooling properties of CO2. Many readers here will remember the time Anthony replicated and totally trashed the CO2 “experiment” shown in Al Gores Twenty Four Hours of Tripe. So are there simple empirical experiments that could prove or disprove AGW? The answer is yes, and many WUWT readers should be able to replicate these for themselves.
Experiment 1. Effect of incident LWIR on liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool.
Incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of materials. Climate scientists claim that DWLWIR has the same effect over oceans as it does over land, and this is shown in many Trenberthian energy budget cartoons. Does the ocean respond to DWLWIR the same way as land?
– Build two water proof EPS foam cubes 150mm on a side and open at the top.
– Position a 100mm square aluminium water block as LWIR source 25mm above each cube.
– Position two small computer fans to blow a very light breeze between the foam cube and the water blocks.
– Insert a probe thermometer with 0.1C resolution through the side of each cube 25mm below the top.
– Continuously run 80C water through one water block and 1C water through the other.
– Fill both EPS foam cubes to the top with 40C water an allow to cool for 30 min while recording temperatures.
– Repeat the experiment with a thin LDPE film on the surface of the water in each cube to prevent evaporative cooling.
Here is an early variant of this experiment in which IR from cooling water samples was reflected back to the water surface – http://i47.tinypic.com/694203.jpg
Experiment 2. Radiative cooling properties of CO2
CO2 can both absorb and radiate IR. Some of the energy CO2 is radiating to space is from intercepted outgoing IR from the Earths surface. Most of the net energy CO2 radiates to space is acquired from latent heat from condensing water vapour and conductive contact with the Earths surface. Could the radiation of energy from the atmosphere to space acquired by surface conduction or release of latent heat balance the energy intercepted from surface IR?
– Build two EPS foam boxes 250 x 250mm and 100mm deep, open at the top.
– Make a small 5mm hole in the bottom corner of each box to ensure constant pressure
– Place an identically sized matt black 200 x 200 x 2mm aluminium target plate in the base of each box.
– At one side of the interior of each box position a IR and SW shielded tube 200mm long containing a small circulation fan to cycle all the gas in the box through the tube.
– Position a thermometer probe with 0.1C resolution in each tube.
– Seal the top of each box with a frame double glazed with thin LDPE film.
– At equal distances above each box position a 50w halogen light source with sealed glass face.
– Use small computer fans to cool the glass face of each halogen globe to minimise LWIR emission.
– Fill one box with air and the other with CO2
– Wait for box temperatures to equalise then illuminate each target plate with the SW source.
– Record gas temperatures during 30min of heating for each box.
– Switch off the halogens and record gas temperatures during cooling.
Here is image of equipment for experiment 2. Bike tyre inflater cartridges are an easy source of dry CO2 – http://i49.tinypic.com/34hcoqd.jpg
Experiment 3. The role of energy loss in convective circulation.
In describing convective circulation in the atmosphere the role of heating low in the atmosphere is often emphasised. Does cooling at altitude have an equally important role in convective circulation?
– Get a large glass container of hot water and mix a ¼ teaspoon of finely ground cinnamon into it.
– Wait until Brownian motion slows till the suspended particles are barely moving.
– Now suspend a beer can full of ice water in the top 50mm of the hot water to one side of the clear container.
– Observe any circulation patterns developing in the hot water.
Experiment 4. Convective circulation and average temperature in a gas column.
Most AGW calculations are for linear fluxes into and out of a static atmosphere. However the gases in our atmosphere move. Should these linear flux equations have been run iteratively on models with discrete moving air masses? The height of energy gain and loss in a gas column effects convective circulation. Does this effect the average temperature of a gas column?
– Build two sealed EPS foam boxes, 1000mm wide, 200mm deep and 1000mm high.
– Penetrate each box with a number of thin aluminium water heating and cooling tubes
– In box 1 position heating tubes on the lower right hand side and cooling tubes on the upper left hand side. Keep the heating tubes as close to the lower interior surface as possible.
– In box 2 position heating tubes on the lower right hand side and cooling tubes on the lower left hand side. Keep the heating and cooling tubes as close to the lower interior surface as possible.
– Make small thermometer probe holes in the face of each box in a number of different horizontal and vertical positions.
– Position 0.1C resolution thermometer probes in identical positions in each box.
– Start 1C water running through the cooling tubes in each box and 80C water running through the heating tubes in each box at around 1 litre a min. Record temperatures over 30 min.
– Cut water flow and equalise the temperature in each box. Reposition the thermometer probes and re run the experiment until a circulation pattern and average temperature can be obtained for each box.
Here is a diagram of the initial experiment – http://i48.tinypic.com/124fry8.jpg and an image of a later small variant in which the strength of cooling can be altered at the top and bottom of the gas column – http://tinypic.com/r/15n0xuf/6
Experiment 5. Surface to gas conductive flux in a gravity field.
Climate scientists have claimed that under an atmosphere without radiative gases the radiative cooling of the surface will be greater (see also experiment 1). Does this mean the conductive cooling of the atmosphere in contact will be significantly higher? Is it correct to model the conductive flux between the atmosphere and the surface with the atmosphere modelled as a single body without moving gases?
– build two small EPS foam tubes with internal volume 75 x 75mm by 200mm high open at one end.
– For tube 1 cover the open top with LDPE film
– For tube 2 cover the open base with LDPE film
– on each tube attach a battery pack and a small 5V computer fan blowing across the outside of the cling film.
– On tube 1 add small legs on one side to tilt it to around 5 degrees off vertical.
– On tube 2 attach 50mm legs to allow its fan to move air freely across the cling wrap base
– Make multiple thermometer probe entry points along each tube for K-type probes from a dual probe thermometer.
– Place the thermometer probe position equal distance from the cling film for each tube.
– Equalise the internal temperature of each tube to room temperature by turning each tube cling film down and running the fans for 15 minutes.
– Now orientate the tubes so tube 1 has cling film at the top and tube 2 has cling film at the base.
– Place them on a shelf in a refrigerator with the fans running and close the door with the thermometer units outside.
– Use the probe differential button on the thermometer to observe the temperature differential between the tubes develop as they cool from room temperature over about 2 min.
– Remove the tubes from the refrigerator and allow them to equalise to room temperature again, move the thermometers to new positions and repeat the cooling run. Do this a number of times to build up a picture of the temperature differential at various distances from the cling wrap in each tube at the 2 minute mark.
Build the tubes small enough to fit within your refrigerator. If you have wire shelves, place a plate under each tube – http://oi49.tinypic.com/akcv0g.jpg
Those that take the time to build an run these experiments as I have done will be able to answer the questions “Will adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability?” and “would our atmosphere be hotter or colder without radiative gases?”

Chris Edwards said:
“While you are in the north of England, take a look at Hadrians wall, up there you will find the remains of a Roman winery, now it is heather moorland, and the warmists try to say its hotter now than then?? Anyone who can read and has a reasonable memory should reject this warmist tosh, Im pleased to read this post, we are in great company!”
Hey, Chris, I can read and have a reasonable memory but it doesn’t go far enough back to remember drinking Chateau Hadrian’s Wall, or maybe that’s my problem, I drank too much of the stuff.

Simon says,
“It got me reading about other very clever people who don’t work in the field who have a bit to say. Stephen Hawking is very vocal in the other direction…”
I would wager that Stephen Hawking has never read a paper on climate science, or any blog or any book. How could he? He is unable to hold a book or journal, much less turn the pages. Even operating a computer must be a herculean task, requiring the assistance of others.
For Hawking to do any of these things would be like an able bodied person travelling round the world to personally talk to every climate scientist in person in order to get their opinions.
Hawking must channel his enfeebled body into the one area that matters – theoretical physics and his beloved Grand Unified Theories. This absorbs his every effort (apart from the occasional forays into the Simpsons – but hey, even Hawking needs some amusement).
How then, has Hawking formed the opinion that CAGW is real and is a problem that must be tackled? Hmm, tricky that. Could it be that he has simply restated what has been put out by the Royal Society, the Government scientists and the Met office?
Of course. Why wouldn’t he? He trusts the scientific process and scientists.
His trust however, is misplaced.

Isn’t it easy to spot a genuine scientist telling the truth.

Jim Clarke: The ‘media’ has no conscious.
Not much conscience, either.
: > )

Everything is a model. Your senses intercept radiation or pressure or chemical and the brain interprets those signals to recreate a model of what you sensed. Some models are better than others. More and more accurate data and better processing improve the accuracy of models. But even some of the CO2 forcing model simulations from the 1970s show a general upward trend in mean air temperature globally–something we see today in the air temperature record. Newer climate models are not showing cooling, rather they show warming from CO2 forcing.

Anthony on American journalists: “I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.”
Far, far too generous, Anthony. The industry is edited by far-leftists who would be perfectly at home, and willing workers, in Castro, Chavez, or Kirchner’s America, and they’ve mainly trained and promoted journalists of the same ilk, many of whom would be willing participants in a 1984-style re-writing of history to omit any inconvenient facts so as to facilitate the “disappearing” of all dissenters. Witness the lack of a journalistic response to the call for prominent skeptics to be, in effect, “disappeared.” Imagine the reaction of those same journalists if a prominent skeptic called for Al Gore to be…, well, you get the idea.
REPLY: Actually those aren’t my words, but that of the writer of the excerpted article, read carefully – Anthony

Now Hansen et al have shown using empirical evidence vis-a-vis model simulation results that mean summer time air temperatures recently have increased such that greater areas of the land are warmer than would expected due to chance alone. I have not seen Dyson refute Marcott or Hansen. Dyson is a theorist–still it would be great to have him examine the empirical results of Marcott and or Hansen.

Einstein showed by way of general relativity that the present and the future are coeval–I suspect many readers here today would deny such results. If Einstein’s work is true, the 2nd law of thermodynamics stands to be refuted due to the implicit notion of the commonly accepted idea that time flows from now to a future state (t0 to t1) in it’s mathematical expression and conceptualization.
[Reply: There are other terms beside ‘deniers’ that you can use. Read the site Policy. — mod.]

Meanwhile Mike MacCracken continues his shameless promotion of the IPCC on the yahoo group of fringe skeptics. The Director of the Climate Institute has of course little to offer, only a sugarcoated praise for the most wonderful enterprise that is called IPCC report. Obvioulsy this guy has never read Donna LaFramboise’s book… Take a look at the condescendence:
“Regarding your comments, the IPCC chapters the authors write typically go through 3-4 reviews—to say they are not peer-reviewed is just not the case, they are likely the most peer-reviewed articles of any kind.
As to the authors of chapters, the convening lead authors are chosen by the national member teams of each Working Group, so a selection process with a lot of consideration. Then they choose lead authors for particular sections. And then there are requests for input and based on participation and value of the contributions they choose contributing authors. In one of the assessments, I was invited to be a contributing author after writing an initial set of review comments suggesting so much reorganization and change that they invited me to be a contributing author—it is the value of the contribution.
And the convening and lead authors are the ones in charge of the chapter—which is much like a review paper. The nations and reviewers can offer comments during the review process but not demand changes—the national members of the IPCC accept the chapter, meaning that it has properly gone through the required processes, which means several reviews overseen by an independent review editor (or editors) that are separately appointed.
You other inferences are similarly inappropriate. The authors are not paid for this, and in many cases the authors are giving up time and opportunities to write papers and do the research that can earn grants—at least in the US, one does not get a grant for being an author nor a promotion in a university.
Mike MacCracken”
Sainthood is near for these authors… LOL

Often, we find that a system about to undergo a catastrophic change in state (from an unstable to more stable state) exhibits certain characteristics that can be statistically assayed looking at changes in variance or autocorrelation. Often there is a “critical slowing down” (meaning that it takes a longer amount for time for the system to return to stasis) in the data that sounds a tocsin of impending change–periodic air temperature measurements are one such data set that can be analyzed in such a manner.

Konrad says:
April 5, 2013 at 11:04 pm
———————————————————–
Please share your results. I do not have the expertise to evaluate your experiments completely. However I have long been curious about the cooling affects of CO2 and the capacity, or lack thereof, of LWIR to warm the oceans. I also think you may need to determine what portion of the energy in various parts of the atmosphere is from conduction with the earths surface. I think it is clear that any GHG element recieving conducted energy would accerate cooling, (IE, reduce the residence time of said energy in earth’s atmosphere.)

geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 7:24 am
“Newer climate models are not showing cooling, rather they show warming from CO2 forcing.”
Well, why would they give up. They earned fortunes with it and will try to continue with what worked for them in the past. The media has been under tight control in the past and will continue to play along. What event could disrupt this? A cooling? Oh please. It is easily explained away as local; Hansen or his successor fiddles a little with the temperature history to recreate the illusion of warming and off you go. Der Spiegel and NYT and BBC will give it the saintly touch of mainstream investigative journalistic truthfinding, and so it will be promoted to the shivering masses.
The only event that can disrupt this well organized machine is the Keynesian endpoint; the reflationary inflection point, the running out of Other People’s Money. As we see in Japan it is coming… and as we see in Cyprus, they will not go silently into the night but when their system is falling apart they will take what they can take, where they find it, no matter to whom it belonged.
CO2AGW is part of an all-devouring beast, the state.

When Dyson passes, the average IQ on Earth will drop notably…

geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 8:00 am
“I am a sceptic–I am skeptical of the data, the process, the model, the interpretation for just about all I apprehend. ”
You should be very skeptical of attempts at simulating a chaotic system into the year 2100. It helps to read up on the definition of “Chaos” in the wikipedia.

geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 7:15 am
“Have not seen an effective refutation of Marcott et al–it is what it is. ”
You haven’t looked far.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/16/the-marcott-shakun-dating-service/#comments
Notice that Shakun describes the uptick in the end as “not robust” in this video interview with Revkin:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/scientists-find-an-abrupt-warm-jog-after-a-very-long-cooling/#more-48664
Basically I would say that Shakun refutes any claim of the uptick being real himself. Then merrily goes on talking as if it where. Neither Revkin nor Shakun ponder how this fits to the temperature plateau of the last 15 years. No deep thinkers the two of them obviously.

Some seem confused as to the definition of informal fallacies such as ignoratio elenchi.

some of my friends here succumb to the “Monte Hall” problem where given new and updated information, a Bayesian would indeed change their initial choice based on the new information. Staying the course makes sense for some, not so much for others.

I suppose if you are going to “moderate” or censor, or, rather, withhold a valid comment made–a comment that does not attack but rather informs–then I have nothing else to say as my argument has been unfairly hampered.
[Reply: your comments are not being censored. — mod.]

There’s also a simple behavioural test of whether geohydro-man is a warmist or a skeptic.
As has often been demonstrated on this and other websites, one of the most obvious (and tedious) traits of the warmist or anti-skeptic is that he or she puts up posting after posting on a thread – as if he were trying to smother any counterarguments with the sheer volume of his output. (Anyone remember some classic examples from aphysicist?)
So, based on that duck test, it’s pretty clear which side of the divide geohydro-man falls on.
[Reply: endless, repeat commenting is called thread-bombing, and it violates site Policy. — mod.]

Oh, and could you bring Steven with you? I’m still trying to find out why I’m a racist.

I periodically reassess my understanding of climate science. For example, I wonder about the effects of the “biotic pump” hypothesis. I suspect that for many others, they do not do this, rather they uphold Ptolemaic theory. I suspect there are structural differences in the minds of those that believe versus those that don’t. Still, there is a statistically significant difference in mean annual (and or seasonal) air temperature for the latest climate period for very many weather stations. The tocsin will be a change in sign and or increased variance in the signal.

On the issue of belief, my mind is not closed on this subject. Nay, it is some of the readers here that are so committed to an opinion that they will not or can not admit that there is evidence contrary to their belief. So rather than seek my approval of a refutation or affirmation, I suggest that you examine the evidence, apply the proper tests and affirm or refute. You can always come to a new understanding based on new data.

Your comments reflect your belief system–not mine.

geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 1:04 pm
On the issue of belief, my mind is not closed on this subject. Nay, it is some of the readers here that are so committed to an opinion that they will not or can not admit that there is evidence contrary to their belief. So rather than seek my approval of a refutation or affirmation, I suggest that you examine the evidence, apply the proper tests and affirm or refute. You can always come to a new understanding based on new data.
———————-
Geo –
Let me explain what Stealey is looking for by stating my own answer. What would it take for me to accept that mainstream / IPCC views regarding CO2 and AGW are correct? I would accept as correct just about any reasonable AGW theory that made useful and accurate predictions. By reasonable, I mean, don’t tell me fairies and unicorns are behind it. Don’t blatantly violate our understanding of physics either like the slayers do. I would never have bothered to go looking into the science in the first place, except that I’d heard dire warnings of pending temperature rises and flooding due to expected accelerations in sea level rise for literally my entire life that never manifested. Now that I have looked into it, I understand why.
So, short and simple – if somebody ‘corrects’ the theory, and five, and ten, and fifteen years down the line the predictions made by the theory are confirmed by observations, I’ll be inclined to accept it.
This is the sort of statement Stealey is asking you for, I believe. Specifics. What would it take to persuade you to change your position.
Stealey, jump in and correct me if I’m wrong (I know you would anyway without being asked 😉 )

Climate is a period of weather. A prolonged energy imbalance in the Earth’s climate system will lead to either warming (or cooling) as the case may be, but not stasis, in climate, or at least not stasis until a new equilibrium is achieved. Thus we find flux in air temperature and moisture, in this case, fluctuations in weather. It is what it is. Warming of the Arctic and melting of Arctic Sea ice has led to changes in the jet stream leading to the crazy weather we are seeing today. Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.

An old post by ChiefIO about the wet Sahara / Sahara pump theory.
Sahara Heat pump, Hotter Sahara = Wetter Sahara
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/cold-dry-sahara-hot-wet-savanna/

Geohydro2011 says: “Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.”
Did someone on WUWT ever say the climate was not changing? Most questions are why, how much, and in what direction.

geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 11:05 am
climate is a long term record of weather–the current period of climate is statistically different from previous periods of climate.
Through what would it be statistically different from previous periods of climate?
You seem to have the common “warmista” approach to deny any climatic variations before industrialisation. Believing there could be only slow very slow, very very slow changes of 0.1 degree per century with Milankovitch cycles and nothing else.
Medieval Warm Period period is a good start if you want to learn for such changes:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.at/2012/11/new-papers-showing-medieval-warming.html
The arctic had less ice 6000 years ago:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm
Greenland was populated in several waves which disappeared when the cold returned.
http://climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm#General%C2%A0
Try to read about the 8200 event – that was fast climatic change (btw. you see nothing of it in Marcotts paper as the proxies do not have resolutions for such fast changes: abrupt 3°C cooling over a period of 100 years:
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html
Read here about fast climate changes:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html

Peter Gleick: Dyson’s position on #climate will forever tarnish and diminish his legacy. Smart people aren’t always smart about everything.
I’m speechless.

The amusing thing about all this is that Dyson’s has a pretty mild interest in climate change and spends very little time on it. When I visited him last year he was reluctant to even talk much about it. His opinions on the topic have been blown way out of proportion by the media.
By the Dyson himself has said that he finds the comparison with Einstein silly.

I do not know if this is possible but ask that you try to discern if geohydro2011 is a bot.
I, and I am sure others, would like to read opinion concerning Freeman Dyson, his work, life and views. Instead, the many and irrational posts from geohydro2011 are disrupting the thread.
And those posts show every indication of being a computer program and not a person.

I really object to the sly attempt to either get the moderators to censor a dissenter or to smear the dissenter and undermine his credibility through false means.
You cannot surely have read his or her comments and concluded it is a “bot”. You disagree, fine.
[Reply: no one is censoring geohydro2011 or anyone else here. — mod.]

Geo is making repeated broad assertions about others, and climate. He consistently does not list the name and time of the comment he is responding to, and does not quote them. His “science” assertions are broad based, and not spported by links.He may not be a bot, but he is somewhat mindless.

Just an awesome post and commentary. For a while I missed the old slower pace WUWT where a subject discussion often went a week or two…
But the faster pace of today has so much top shelf quality and freshness to it. Wish Wal~Mart sold time off our daily work for reading WUWT!

Geo, you are babbling non sense.

just because you say fail does not make it so–i suspect the word ‘fail’ is one that you are all too familiar with. look, i’ll make it easy for you, don’t cite the relevant literature that supports your argument–use your own words to argue and refute the work of Tyndall, Fourier, and Arrhenius on the efficacy of co2 on warming the atmosphere–you can not do it–at least not without disregarding the standard model. no, rather, you will ask me to affirm some level of evidence that shows causation. and i said before everything is a model and i would show that the axioms of Euclid are not proven (that’s why they are called axioms), that Goedel showed the folly of using mathematics to prove mathematics- indeed you can not show time exists as a physical entity nor can you prove that three dimensions exist. you can not show that i am real–it may very well be the case that you are hallucinating via your ‘user illusion.’ i digress to show that we can ‘one up’ ourselves to impossible levels of evidence. i say that the theory of co2 warming is correct, the empirical evidence showing warming is correct.

geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 6:56 am
As I suspected, the theoretical underpinnings of the effects of CO2 on warming have not been refuted. And Pielke and et al (senior not junior) have shown that humans are very capable of affecting the weather. I rest my argument.
You have brought no arguments to the discussion, you have answered no posts just babbled nonsense to the line that people come to think you are an “it”, a bot, due to the lack of logic in your answers.
It is great to see that sharp minds, as Dyson, are not deluded and trust themselves to name things by their name, even with the danger to be treated as heretics by the like you, who pretend to be sceptics.
You do not have to lie, you can tell you are a warmist and post here, from what I’ve seen moderation is light and alarmists posts come through.
You will find however that people argument with logic here. It is not a place where you win a discourse through noise. Screaming, spamming the thread is a typical alarmist tactic, you behave so typical troll, O/T but on message:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/19/josh-13.html
The warming stalled, spring is delayed in Europe, global ice is over the average but you still scream your “we are doomed” (to transpire to death) message.

I have mentioned many times that Dr.Dyson is a hero of mine. He has a great mind that is open an unencumbered by the limits of our current knowledge.

geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 8:23 am
” i say that the theory of co2 warming is correct, the empirical evidence showing warming is correct.”
Well that’s it then, Anthony. Might as well shut down WUWT? cause geo has posted conclusive proof.
Now I may not qualify, but WUWT? needs to require an I.Q. baseline to post.

sticks and stones
way too easy
so have at the syllogism
theory showing that co2 intercepts and re-radiates outgoing longwave radiation is valid
co2 is increasing whereas other climate forcing is static or decreasing
therefore there is an energy imbalance for the Earth’s energy budget due to increased levels of co2

Seriously, I just have to say that some of you have deduced I am a bot–bravo, and kudos to you, I applaud your attempts at logic. Sadly, you conclusion is wrong. If this is an example of how you reason, it is no wonder that you are mad that you are married to the position that human co2 does not warm climate.

I must leave now, I won’t be back today for I am violating my Sabbath, otherwise.
From the looks at some of your profiles, you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
Peace.
REPLY: Since you bring up personal profiles, what about yours in Corvalis, OR? Show us that you “walk it”. – Anthony

out of respect for you
since you allowed me to ramble
I saw the pixel tags
and wondered if true
my syllogism stands
a proxy for me
REPLY: So much for the Sabbath eh’ ?