Essay by Charlie Martin
We know, with great certainty, that the overall average temperature of the Earth has warmed by several degreees in the last 400 years, since the end of the Little Ice Age. Before that was a period called the Medieval Warm Period; before that was another cold period, and back at the time of the Romans there was a long period that was significantly warmer — Southern Britain was a wine-growing region. What we’re a lot less certain about is why?
Of course, the “why?” here has been, shall we say, pretty controversial. It’s worth wondering about the controversy and about the social mechanisms through which science is done — I wrote about them during the Climategate controversy as the “social contract of science” — but that’s not what I want to talk about today. Instead, let’s talk about how a scientist thinks about these sorts of questions and arrives at new answers. Back in grad school we called that “doing science”, and it was something everyone liked doing and wished they could be doing instead of whatever they actually were doing, like faculty meetings and refereeing papers.
The process of “doing science” is something you usually learn more or less by osmosis, but there are some good hints around. One of the best is a paper from the 16 October 1964 issue of Science, “Strong Inference” by John R Platt. Let’s say we have some phenomenon of interest, like global warming, or high blood sugar, or that damned yellow patch in my lawn. We want to know why it happens. Platt’s strong inference describes the process we should use when “doing science” as:
- We generate a number of alternate explanations, hypotheses, that might explain the phenomenon.
- For each hypothesis, we come up with an experiment which will prove the hypothesis wrong. That is, not one that “proves the hypothesis”, but one which, if successful, would disprove or falsify the hypothesis. (Sir Karl Popper argued in his book The Logic of Scientific Discovery that this falsification was the core of scientific knowledge.)
- We do the experiments. If an experiment falsifies a hypothesis, we discard it ruthlessly. Then we go back to (1) and try again.
A lot of times, the rub — and the really creative thinking — comes in from finding the right experiment. Richard Feynmann was known for an ability to see right through a problem to a simple and elegant experiment that would disprove a hypothesis. He demonstrated this during the review following the Challenger disaster. You may remember that the launch happened on a very cold morning in January; less than two minutes after launch the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, killing all seven astronauts.
The question, as always, was “why?”
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But it would be really inconvenient and embarrassing to climb down from the pulpit of this new church, so Mr. Martin’s fine words are unfortunately going to be ignored for as long as the preachers can get away with it.
Asking such questions and searching for ways to disprove or falsify a theory sorts the scientists from the pseudo-scientists. That such questioning is “doing science” is not something the alarmists want the general public to know – they’ve already been told it’s done by consensus, and those alarmists are fighting tooth and claw to keep it that way. If it wasn’t so horrendous, I’d say it was sad.
It would take some one with immense integrity, gravitas and respect from the entire scientific community to stand up and say that the pro side could be wrong about cAGW. Finding such a person who would be looked on as both a leader and visionary from both sides of the debate just isn’t possible in my opinion..
“We generate a number of alternate explanations, hypotheses (, sic) that might explain the phenomenon.”
Ok; the much touted “Greenhouse Effect” simply delays the flow of energy (alternating as IR light, thermal energy, IR light, thermal energy, etc. etc.) through the complex Sun/Earth/Atmosphere/Universe system by a few tens of milliseconds (speed of light times a few miles of atmosphere). Since the period of the cyclic energy input (one day) contains about 86 million milliseconds the “Greenhouse Effect” does NOT “trap” any energy and has NO EFFECT on the average temperature of the Earth.
Furthermore, this delay (caused by energy making multiple trips through the system at very nearly the speed of light) is not the same as how a thermal insulator functions by slowing the velocity of heat though a system.
This delay simply causes the gases in the atmosphere to warm up slightly faster after sunrise (or the dissipation of clouds), alternatively this delay causes the gases in the atmosphere to cool down slightly slower after sunset (or the accumulation of clouds). The signature of the “greenhouse effect” is in the “response time” of the climate. This signature cannot be observed with “steady state” instruments like FLIR cameras or satellites, and it is not contained in the historical temperature records.
How’s that for an alternate hypothesis ?
Cheers, Kevin
Too many people with too many agendas of the pro cAGW side for them to admit that they where wrong.
Besides without a world wide scam/emergency what will the world be scared of next? Cold war – done and dusted, Climate Change – almost done and dusted, so what’s next – Zombie apocalypse, rouge meteors, falling space junk, alien invasions, asteroid mining will pull the solar system apart?
I still don’t get the CO2 making it warm thing.
We’re told atmospheric CO2 is increasing and that it’s a well mixed gas that gets warmer when it gets hit by the LWR bouncing off the earth. O K
If it’s true that it’s well mixed and the CO2 gets warmer, shouldn’t the temperature have increased everywhere by the same amount in unison?
Did a bunch of those CO2 molecules decide to leave Europe and meet up in NW US instead?
If the molecules are warmer and they’re everywhere, what happened?
cn
Charlie is using Ed Hawkins chart, which gives the impression that the models were doing pretty well until recently. I suspect that what we’re looking at is hindcasts, with lots of aerosols included to get models down to the actual temperatures.
Temperatures don’t warm, water or air does.
Nice essay, Mr. Martin. Excellent Feynmann anecdote!
The Climatology Cult Leaders play on two (at least) basic human weaknesses:
1) The Gambling Mentality
The odds of winning the Wash. State lottery are so small, that it is a foolish waste of money to spend even $1.00 on a lottery ticket. But, people do it. There are an awful lot of fools out there who think gambling, er, “gaming,” is a lot of fun. “Whoo, hoo! Look at me! I’m throoooowin’ my money away.”
The Humans-Can-Cause-Climate-Catastrophy peddlers play on this gambling mentality. There are just enough fools to make it a winning game for the peddlers. “Oh, yes,” they hiss greasily, “the odds of a global catastrophe may not be all that great, but you just never know, do you? The ‘payoff’ is ENORMOUS. And you just-might-‘win.’ ” If the victim, er, voter, hesitates, they scream, “Do it to save your children!”
And the “I’ll-bet-on-that-even-though-the-odds-are-tiny-because-the-payoff-would-be-so-HUGE-if-I-won” mentality wins the day for those who want to control the citizens and to steal their wealth.
The citizens will bet the farm. And they will lose unless more rational minds save them from their folly.
2) The Human Desire to be IN CONTROL
When some people are robbed, they get more angry at themselves than at the perpetrator. Why? Because the victim would rather feel stupid than helpless. They want to maintain the illusion that, if they just concentrated harder, they can control what happens to them. Thus, the thought that they can, by a few acts, control the climate of the PLANET, is irresistibly enticing.
3) The Human Need for a Religious Belief
Some of the Climatology Cult Members have no religion, so, the self-sacrifice (no barbecued burgers for you) and acts of holiness (like driving a Holy Car) fill this need.
YOU ARE SO RIGHT, Mr. Martin:
Doing nothing is the wisest thing one can do when one has no REASON to act.
Oh, and the cause of the Challenger disaster was well known at the time. We (the USA) where limited in our ability to launch rockets in cold temperatures due to an over reliance on segmented solid fueled rockets. This was considered a critical weakness in our national defense system. We did not want our enemies to know that we could not launch satellites when it was too cold. So this “secret” information was carefully “leaked” to Dr. Feynmann so he could “discover” the cause of the disaster without revealing national secrets.
The cause of the disaster was management that launched a rocket outside of its clearly defined performance envelope. Same as if you plug a 9 volt dc electrical part into a 120 volt ac system. Not going to work for long. You may get “lucky” a few times, but GOOD is always more dependable than LUCKY.
Cheers, Kevin.
Chuck Nolan – The warming from CO2 is not uniform, because IR from the surface is not unitform. The highest rate of IR is from the tropics, and the major part of the interception by CO2 occurs in the mid-troposphere, so most of the warming caused by CO2 occurs in the mid-troposphere over the tropics. It is better to look there than globally, for ‘doing science’. The place to look for the hypothesis is the IPCC report AR4 is Figure 9.1(c) and (f).
Roy Spencer of UAH has done the looking, comparing the models’ tropical mid-troposphere temperature forecasts with actuals:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/06/climate-modeling-epic-fail-spencer-the-day-of-reckoning-has-arrived/#more-87735
As Roy Spencer puts it : “Epic Fail”.
Charlie is using Ed Hawkins chart… .” [Geronimo! 9:52PM today]
Say, I’m glad you mentioned that. I thought that chart was a bit off. All the graphs I’ve seen of the climate models’ poor performance show a much more significant error margin. Mr. Martin needs to replace his graph with a more accurate one. He is actually helping the fantasy scientists a bit with that inaccurate visual aid.
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Re: my too-long post above, correction: “… Cult Leaders play on [three] (at least) basic human weaknesses… .”
“Aside: Now, just to try to forestall one of the usual threads of argument, there really is very little question the greenhouse effect actually exists — the natural temperature of a rock in orbit around the Sun at the same distance as the Earth is nearly -40°. So let’s not have the “but there’s no such thing” argument, okay?”
Where is your evidence that a rock at Earth distance is nearly -40° C {or F or K].
99942 Apophis is a rock and we have measured it’s temperature when it has passed Earth.
“Rotation period 30.4 h [hours]
Albedo 0.23
Temperature 270 K”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
So this space rock average temperature is about -3 C.
Second. The Earth is not a rock.
[Neither is the Moon, btw.]
Earth surface is mostly water.
Down to a depth in which one starts having geothermal heat affecting the temperature more than sunlight. So say to a 1 mile depth, the Earth is largely water.
So Earth in terms of any heating from the Sun is about 70% sea water, not rock.
Though the mass of earth could said be 99.9 % “rock”, it’s covered with thick enough layer of water, that “this rock” is not effected by the radiate heat of the Sun and is therefore irrelevant.
And it is the large and warm surface area of Earth’s ocean which largely affect global temperature.
And in terms masses which warmed from the sun, ocean is what is warmed- atmosphere on average is not very warm, nor massive in comparison to ocean. Rock [or air] has little to do with what is actually warmed by the Sun.
[[And whereas the lunar surface is made of rock, the lunar is mostly covered with powdery fluffy substance which is called regolith [uncompacted regolith] which thermally doesn’t act at all like a normal rock, it more similar the house insulation- except this regolith [particularly in a vacuum] insulates more effectively.
Stuart Elliot said:
June 25, 2013 at 9:06 pm
But it would be really inconvenient and embarrassing to climb down from the pulpit of this new church, so Mr. Martin’s fine words are unfortunately going to be ignored for as long as the preachers can get away with it.
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You are so right Sir. And the preachers and the politicians are getting away with it.
obama’s speech today in which he claimed that 2012 was the warmest year on record and that “In a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by the warming planet”, and his statement that the XL pipeline will not be built until it can be made to be carbon-neutral (which means never) are indicators of how right you are.
The warmunists are winning, I am afraid.
or to put it another way…
The warmunists are winning. I am afraid!
gbaikie says: June 25, 2013 at 10:22 pm
…
Where is your evidence that a rock at Earth distance is nearly -40° C {or F or K].
F, yes. K, no.
your Admiral Blair is in Australia tomorrow (27th June) for another CAGW fest, and the political opposition – who will/should win the Federal Election in September & remove the carbon tax – are well-represented by their Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage, Greg Hunt, the party’s former leader, John Hewson, & the party’s former Defence and Environment Minister, Robert Hill!
27 June 2013: National Business Leaders Forum on Sustainable Development
Venue: Main Committee Room, Parliament House, Canberra, Australia
Keynotes: Admiral Dennis Cutler Blair, former United States Director of National Intelligence, retired United States Navy Admiral.
‘The Future Global Security Agenda’…
SESSION 3: Security in a Warming Century – from Havana to New Delhi to Townsville (Australia): how do we build adaptive and resilient business models?
In a world that is 4 to 6 degrees warmer, heat waves, sea level rise and more intense severe weather events will threaten the security of our communities…
To mitigate future warming risks, we will need to adopt low carbon technologies as we adapt to our changing climate and create opportunities for future prosperity…
SESSION 5: Unlocking Sustainable Investing: security for the future…
http://www.nblf.com.au/2013-forum/program
it’s all about the money.
Chuck Nolan says:
June 25, 2013 at 9:42 pm
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Weather patterns,
Ocean currents, jet streams and the like influence how the ‘heat’ is distributed.
Then, of course, there is the feedbacks (if any).
Still it is surprising that large areas have not warmed, at all, and may even have cooled. For example, is the US cooler than it was in the 1930s/40s? We could answer that if only the records had not been so basterdised by continued adjustments and if we had a proper handle on UHI.
Most of the claimed warming appears in areas where we have little historical data and where quality control may not be that rigid.
gbaikie says:
June 25, 2013 at 10:22 pm
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Do we have a false perception of our own planet’s temperature?
We are in the middle of an inter glacial period. If glacial/inter glacial periods are not the result of fluctuations in GHCs, but instead orbital swings etc coupled with deep ocean temperature, then to measure the Earth’s temperature today gives a false impression.
Don’t forget that the deep ocean is only about 3degC. This is the largest internal heat source, and it is this heat source that comes back to bite in glacial periods.
Prof Bob Carter no longer at James Cook uni in Queensland behttp://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/jcu-caves-in-to-badgering-and-groupthink-blackballs-politically-incorrect-bob-carter/ cause he will not change is stance on global warming fraud
Just a quick reminder
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AGT.htm
that there is more to natural climate change than input from CO2.if any.
I seem to recall that, in the Roman warm period, far from grapes being grown only in southern England, they were grown near Hadrian’s Wall in the far north. The main fort + town on the wall was called Vindolanda. The climate there today is usually cold, windy and wet.
Grapes are grown in southern England today, but the vintners have lately been going more for sparkling wines because of the acidity.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/jcu-caves-in-to-badgering-and-groupthink-blackballs-politically-incorrect-bob-carter/
my other post web site not active
Did he really say that without the qualification, “in the contiguous US”? It was only the 10th warmest globally.
Reblogged this on In the Dark and commented:
A post about the doctrine of falsifiablity and its relevance to Climate Change….following on from yesterday’s post…
With regard to wine production in Britain, things are not as simple as some would like to believe :
“It is generally agreed that the Romans introduced the vine to Britain. It has also been inferred that the climate in Britain at that time was warmer. At the end of the first century AD, however, the writer Tacitus declared that our climate was “objectionable”, and not at all suitable for growing vines, which could suggest that someone had at least tried to establish vines, even if they had been unsuccessful.
Recent archaeological investigations in Northamptonshire have uncovered evidence to suggest that vineyards were established on a commercial scale during the Roman occupation.
By the time the Romans began to leave at the end of the fourth century, Christianity became more widespread and wine drinking, playing as it did an important part in Christian ceremonies, was more accepted. Whether this was of local or imported wine, it is hard to say. If there were vineyards, then they were undoubtedly attached to religious institutions such as monasteries.”
http://www.englishwineproducers.com/background/history/history-pre-roman-to-roman-britain/
As for Vindolanda, its name has nothing to do with wine :
http://www.proto-english.org/l9.html