Guest essay by Barry Brill
I’ve had it with tax-funded over-educated fools like Lewanadowsky presuming to categorize me on the basis of his own delusions. And I don’t appreciate Cook & co locating people in a 3% minority on the basis of infantile spin-driven surveys.
The debate over climate change is not, and never has been, divided into two monochromatic tribes who have been brainwashed into unanimity . There are as many different opinions are there are participants in the discussion. (“quot homines tot sententiae” as Christopher Monckton might say).
For those who insist upon a tidy taxonomy, I offer the following first draft:
[Note: this table was updated at request of the author on 10/9/13 to correct decimal point placements in the first three rows]
Whilst there are quite large numbers of people who are unconvinced that human activities can have any material effect on global average temperatures, the “Principia Scientific International” consortium, aka “Slayers of the Sky Dragon” strongly reject the enhanced greenhouse effect theory (AGW) which underpins mainstream climate science.
I’ve appropriated the term “Skeptics” to cover the broad tent of opinion which accepts that there has been some global warming since the LIA, to which human activities would have made some (probably trivial) contribution, through increased GHG emissions.
There is a collective view that average temperatures would increase by about 1°C if atmospheric CO2 concentration were to double from 280ppm (pre-1950), but a wide disparity of views regarding the sign and amplitude of net feedbacks. Most believe warming will be beneficial in the foreseeable future and none believes it poses a significant threat.
Lukewarmers are a subset of skeptics, who believe net feedbacks from warming to be slightly positive.
The ‘Breakthrough’ label is borrowed from the “Breakthrough Institute” but covers all who favour (limited) Government action other than emission-mitigation. This grouping broadly accepts IPCC temperature projections but believes the impacts have been exaggerated. They consider that an element of future threat arises and would combat this by promoting Government-sponsored breakthroughs in energy technology.
The IPCC, which presents “official” or “governmental” views, covers the broad tent which believes AGW is dangerous and should be combated by expensive emission-reduction programs. Its main controversial drivers are a belief in large net feedbacks (high ECS) and the use of unlikely scenarios to supply worst-case impacts.
Alarmists believe that irreversible and abrupt climate change is much more likely than indicated by Table 12.4 of AR5WG1, re-interpret the SREX report, and blame AGW for numerous other current or potential ills. They see climate change as a great moral challenge and believe decarbonization of the global economy is inevitable. This group (along with activists) controls a host of spin levers and secures a hugely disproportionate share of mainstream media attention.
Activists are usually members of groups which make a living from public donations and whose success depends upon maximising public fears. A sizeable proportion are malthusians or doomsayers who are philosophically opposed to economic growth/capitalism. Other members are lobbyists for commercial interests such as suppliers of renewables, carbon traders, consultants, gas producers, re-insurers, foresters and (until recently) bankers. They ignore all scenarios except the most extreme and are now adherents of the new RCP8.5.
The futility of consensus-seekers such as Cook and Oreskes is clear from the fact that the majority of almost all groups accept some 20th century warming (although now aware of “the pause”) as well as AGW theory. The dividing lines lie elsewhere.
The most visible division between climate opinion groups is the value they ascribe to equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). This, along with the associated transient climate response (TCR), is the key determinant of future temperatures and the extent of future threats, if any.
For 20 years or more, there has been a clear gap between the ‘most likely’ positions held by mainstream (3°C) and skeptic (1°C) groups. But the WG1 report of AR5 largely bridges that gap, and there is widespread expectation that the gap will close further when post-cut-off papers are brought into account.
AR5 recognises that those who calculate ECS at 1.5°C and/or TCR at 1°C are now mainstream scientists. An IPCC scientist modeling RPC2.6 and applying the lower end of the IPCC’s TCR will project warming of 1°C to be reached by about 2083 – of which about 0.8°C has already occurred. That result would not differ from the expectations of Skeptics. With warming much lower than last century, this science, now mainstream, clearly doesn’t justify anxiety or precipitate action.
We are now all part of the orthodoxy, separated only by a tendency to prefer higher or lower segments within the IPCC’s accommodating ranges.
At the Stockholm 4-day meeting of politicians/bureacrats, the AR5 scientists were directed that no ‘likely’ value for ECS/TCR was to be disclosed to the public. But everybody already knows the answer and the Stockholm ‘finger in the dyke’ manoevre will buy very little extra time.
The cut-off date for the 2013 WG1 was in February. A few weeks later[1], The Economist reported two peer-reviewed Norwegian papers, one finding a most likely ECS of 1.9°C and the other a 90% likelihood of a 1.2-3.5°C range. It declared there was “much less controversy about the TCR. Most estimates put it at 1.5°C with a range of 1–2°C”.
In August, the Otto et al paper (whose author list includes several IPCC notables) found that TCR was 1.3°C and ECS was most likely 2°C but the 90% range should should extend down to 1°C. Pat Michaels has listed[2] a raft of other authoritative papers which agree.
It is only a matter of time (and not much time) before the ECS is repositioned to 1-3°C and the TCR to1-2°C. At that point, many more people who are near the upper end of the ‘Sceptics’ grouping with join with those multitudes who are at the lower end of the ‘Mainstream’ grouping to form a new “Orthodox” group.
This merging could be an uncomfortable time for both parties. Kuhn argues in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” that rival paradigms are incommensurable—that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival paradigm. Will that remain the case when views of TCR are only a fraction of a degree apart?
If further science grants are extended to Lewandowsky and his voyeuristic ilk, they should analyse the new minority groups – the alarmists and activists – not those who are now barely distinguishable from the mainstream.
[1] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions
[2] http://www.cato.org/blog/still-another-low-climate-sensitivity-estimate-0
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Barry,you are indeed brill(iant) .that would make a fantastic post over at SKS. pity they wouldnt allow it. i have to agree with magicjava with respect to climate “science”. i cannot for the life of me see where the actual application of the scientific method occurs. creative modelers would be a better term.
Gail Combs says:October 8, 2013 at 11:12 am
…Plants use all of the CO2 around their leaves within a few minutes leaving the air around them CO2 deficient, so air circulation is important. As CO2 is a critical component of growth, plants in environments with inadequate CO2 levels of below 200 ppm will generally cease to grow or produce… http://www.thehydroponicsshop.com.au/article_info.php?articles_id=27
Thank you Gail. Interesting.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1395118
(PLANT) FOOD FOR THOUGHT
CO2 is such a scarce and excellent plant food that it is gobbled up very close to the source during the growing season.
In urban environments like Salt Lake City where CO2 is emitted, it is gobbled up so quickly by plants that there is NO DISCERNIBLE HUMAN SIGNATURE IN THE DAILY CO2 RECORD.
For proof, see http://co2.utah.edu/index.php?site=2&id=0&img=31
Recognizing the CO2 is NOT that well-mixed in the atmosphere..
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
… this may be where the “Mass Balance Argument” (fossil fuel combustion is the certain cause of atmospheric CO2 increases (NOT)) falls apart.
Let’s suppose that humanmade CO2 from fossil fuel combustion is quickly gobbled up by plants close to its (usually urban) source. The rest of the world and its carbon cycle just carries on, unaware in every way that humankind is burning fossil fuels. It also may be that humanity IS causing the observed increase in atmospheric CO2, but that increase may be due to other causes such as deforestation, agriculture, etc.
Fossil fuel is just a convenient bogeyman – everyone hates the oil companies when they gas up their car – it’s just that the alternatives are worse.
Regards, Allan
I understand why there’s some confusion about the RCP value of 2.6 in the first five categories. The 2.6 refers to the expected forcing amount measured in W/m^2.
One can get to a 2.6 forcing many ways, but two important ones are, a relatively high ECS values, coupled with significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. This is what is generally assumed by the IPCC, which will lead to confusion when viewing the table.
However, another way to get to 2.6 is to assume that greenhouse gas emissions are not severely curtailed, but that the ECS value is much closer to 1.0. This second scenario is what I believe Brill intends; he doesn’t mean to imply that the first five groups are expecting or proposing drastic emission reduction.
Steven Mosher says:
“Model answers fall within the range established by observations.”
Steve, did you really say that?
I suggest, with due respect, that the climate models cited by the IPCC are crap (pls see Engineering Handbook for technical definition of “crap”).
Regards, Allan
Here is the evidence:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/28/models-fail-land-versus-sea-surface-warming-rates/#comment-1432696
Reposted below regarding evidence of aerosol fudging of climate models, from DV Hoyt, for Pamela:
Best personal regards, Allan
Please also see
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/reactions-to-ipcc-ar5-summary-for-policy-makers/#comment-1431798
and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/19/uh-oh-its-models-all-the-way-down/#comment-1421394
[excerpt]
…– the (climate) models have probably “put the cart before the horse” – we know that the only clear signal in the data is that CO2 LAGS temperature (in time) at all measured time scales, from a lag of about 9 months in the modern database to about 800 years in the ice core records – so the concept of “climate sensitivity to CO2” (ECS) may be incorrect, and the reality may be “CO2 sensitivity to temperature”
I think you would agree that the use of “CO2 sensitivity to temperature” instead of “climate sensitivity to CO2” (ECS) would require a major re-write of the models.
If you wanted to stick with the ECS concept, then you would have to (as a minimum) delete the phony aerosol data, drop ECS to ~~1/10 of its current values, add some natural variation to account for the global cooling circa 1940-1975, and run the models. The results would probably project modest global warming that is no threat to humanity or the environment, and we know that just would not do. Based on past performance, the IPCC’s role is to cause fear due to alleged catastrophic global warming, even if this threat is entirely false, which is increasingly probable.
Meanwhile, back at the aerosols:
You may ask why the IPCC does NOT use the aerosol historic data in their models, but rather uses assumed values (different for each model and much different from the historic data) to fudge their models (Oops! I guess I gave away the answer – I should not have used the word “fudge”, I should have said “hindcast”).
.
[excerpt from]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/15/one-step-forward-two-steps-back/#comment-1417805
Parties interested in the fabrication of aerosol data to force-hindcast climate models (in order for the models to force-fit the cooling from ~1940 to ~1975, in order to compensate for the models’ highly excessive estimates of ECS (sensitivity)) may find this 2006 conversation with D.V. Hoyt of interest:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=755
Douglas Hoyt, responding to Allan MacRae:
“July 22nd, 2006 at 5:37 am
Measurements of aerosols did not begin in the 1970s. There were measurements before then, but not so well organized. However, there were a number of pyrheliometric measurements made and it is possible to extract aerosol information from them by the method described in:
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. The apparent atmospheric transmission using the pyrheliometric ratioing techniques. Appl. Optics, 18, 2530-2531.
The pyrheliometric ratioing technique is very insensitive to any changes in calibration of the instruments and very sensitive to aerosol changes.
Here are three papers using the technique:
Hoyt, D. V. and C. Frohlich, 1983. Atmospheric transmission at Davos, Switzerland, 1909-1979. Climatic Change, 5, 61-72.
Hoyt, D. V., C. P. Turner, and R. D. Evans, 1980. Trends in atmospheric transmission at three locations in the United States from 1940 to 1977. Mon. Wea. Rev., 108, 1430-1439.
Hoyt, D. V., 1979. Pyrheliometric and circumsolar sky radiation measurements by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1923 to 1954. Tellus, 31, 217-229.
In none of these studies were any long-term trends found in aerosols, although volcanic events show up quite clearly. There are other studies from Belgium, Ireland, and Hawaii that reach the same conclusions. It is significant that Davos shows no trend whereas the IPCC models show it in the area where the greatest changes in aerosols were occurring.
There are earlier aerosol studies by Hand and in other in Monthly Weather Review going back to the 1880s and these studies also show no trends.
So when MacRae (#321) says: “I suspect that both the climate computer models and the input assumptions are not only inadequate, but in some cases key data is completely fabricated – for example, the alleged aerosol data that forces models to show cooling from ~1940 to ~1975. Isn’t it true that there was little or no quality aerosol data collected during 1940-1975, and the modelers simply invented data to force their models to history-match; then they claimed that their models actually reproduced past climate change quite well; and then they claimed they could therefore understand climate systems well enough to confidently predict future catastrophic warming?”, he close to the truth.”
_____________________________________________________________________
Douglas Hoyt:
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 am
MacRae:
Re #328 “Are you the same D.V. Hoyt who wrote the three referenced papers?”
Hoyt: Yes
.
MacRae: “Can you please briefly describe the pyrheliometric technique, and how the historic data samples are obtained?”
Hoyt:
“The technique uses pyrheliometers to look at the sun on clear days. Measurements are made at air mass 5, 4, 3, and 2. The ratios 4/5, 3/4, and 2/3 are found and averaged. The number gives a relative measure of atmospheric transmission and is insensitive to water vapor amount, ozone, solar extraterrestrial irradiance changes, etc. It is also insensitive to any changes in the calibration of the instruments. The ratioing minimizes the spurious responses leaving only the responses to aerosols.
I have data for about 30 locations worldwide going back to the turn of the century.
Preliminary analysis shows no trend anywhere, except maybe Japan.
There is no funding to do complete checks.”
Hi, I’m Rich, I’m a lukewarmer, and my model says the ECS is 1.74K. So please make sure that your range at least includes that. I don’t think you can call it lukewarming if your estimate of ECS is above 2.5K, and even that’s pushing it a bit. 2.0K limit? Just my opinion of course.
Rich.
Funny – seems to me ECS is zero. Or 100. Or whatever, but whatever it is does not matter. By my observation CO2 is not the climate driver, it’s not even A climate driver. Whatever may or may not change with CO2 levels is quickly and efficiently compensated for and overwhelmed by water vapor, which is THE climate driver.
I also predict that in years to come, as this “CO2 drives climate” myth is dismantled, people will wonder what it was that caused them to believe this. There is no correlation. CO2 levels continue rising as temperatures don’t. At some point the lack of correlation HAS to overwhelm confirmation bias and blind stubbornness. Even the most smug of the smarter-than-you crowd will see that CO2 DOES NOT DRIVE CLIMATE, in spite of what 56 million professional climate scientists plus wikipedia have determined unequivocally.
Looks like the ‘lukewarmer’ ECS should perhaps be “0.1-1.0” to allow for the missing range between 0.2 and 1.0
It would be interesting to expand the -columns- in this table.
1) “What confidence does this group have that the Little Ice Age was real, global, and plausibly responsible for some significant slice of the observed warming somehow as ‘rebound’?”
2) “What confidence does this group have that the surface temperature measurements are actually within their error estimates of the “True” Global Mean Surface Temperature?” (Which needs an engineering description something like ‘All cubic meters of 99+% gases that are within two meters of the solid surface, high-T + low-T averaged daily’)
3) “What confidence does this group have in a global, significant MWP?”
4) How about Mann’s Method?
Barry, that’s an interesting first cut on a taxonomy. However, you left out “heretics”. I reject entirely the fundamental climate paradigm, that global temperature changes are a linear function of global forcing changes. That makes me a heretic.
Instead, I say that emergent thermoregulatory climate phenomena such as thunderstorms, El Ninos, and others act in concert to keep the global surface temperature within narrow bounds ( ± 0.3°C over the 20th century).
Equal representation for heretics! Our slogan is, One Heretic, One Vote!
You need to carve out a new block, right at the top, for heretics who reject the church doctrine and have a viable, observationally supported alternate explanation for how the climate works.
All the best,
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
October 8, 2013 at 6:01 pm
I concur with Willis that there should be a category for those who reject, for whatever reason, the validity of the concept of ECS.
That is IMO actually a more defensible position than the Slayers’.
Among the Heretics might also be included those who reject the common Skeptical view that climate, like financial markets, have secular & cyclical trends & counter-trends, but is essentially chaotic, at least upon certain time frames.
I don’t think these categories or the corresponding numbers work. “Skeptics” is a broad term, not a narrow one. It basically means anyone who thinks the ECS is below 2.0 at this point. So there’s some overlap with the mainstream.
Likewise, Lukewarmers means anyone in the 0.5-2.0 range. Maybe you could reduce that slightly to 0.5-1.5, which is Richard Lindzen’s position, for example.
Deniers would be those who say there’s simply no net climate effect at all from CO2.
No one uses the name “Principia” in climate discussion, so that category means nothing.
There’s no need for the category “Orthodoxy”, since any form of skepticism at this point is unorthodox. At this point it could only refer to the mainstream IPCC views.
Also, the alarmist and activist categories overlap. Alarmists mean anything over 2.5, and activists can also stretch down that low, but with an emphasis that even that much warmer will prove disastrous (which should remind us that it’s not all about ECS, but also about the expected effects from any given amount of warming).
It may matter what people believe, but Michael Moon is right that it’s not (scientifically) interesting.
It’s really silly to try to pigeonhole opinions on empirical questions according to ‘beliefs’. This is perhaps the most pointless post I’ve ever seen on WUWT. The issues are what we do and do not know about the Earth and its climate(s), not what we ‘believe’ might or might not be the case. Taxonomy is for plants and animals, not for scientific ideas.
/Mr Lynn
I agree that people like Lewanadowsky need to be slapped around for their public views.
The table is perhaps trying to compartmentalise too many ideas all at once.
Why for example is warming either happening, or paused? Can it not be cyclic, random, dependent on wind cycles, other.
AGW yes/no. I believe we have an effect on our localised area, not that the atmosphere is not itself affected in any way. The temperature stations measure temperature at a height of 1.5m. The atmosphere is 40km height?
The remedy column looks to be representative, no comments.
On a hot day, we get storms in the evening. Convection is a cooling agent; CO2 cannot compete with a cooling rain.
If two categories are insufficient, eight (or nine Willis) is still insufficient. Fifty shades of climate may start to reach an appropriate taxonomy.
The chart is hugely biased with a category called ‘Remedy’ when some, for many different reasons, say bring warming on! Response may have been a better word.
I for one think that dry bulb air temperature is the wrong yardstick (pun intended) for measuring heat. And heat content in the atmosphere is minuscule when compared to heat in the ocean. Come back when we have a half a dozen decades of reliable world wide ocean temperatures and we can talk.
I consider myself a lukewarmer, but my estimate of climate sensitivity is a lot more than .2 – it’s more like 1degree C per 2xCO2.
“I’ve appropriated the term “Skeptics” to cover the broad tent of opinion which accepts that there has been some global warming since the LIA, to which human activities would have made some (probably trivial) contribution, through increased GHG emissions.”
and this group:
…[L]ukewarmers are a subset of skeptics, who believe net feedbacks from warming to be slightly positive.”
Are the same people. If you believe carbon dioxide can heat the atmosphere however trivially you are in fact a luke warmer,and there are of course, in fact, degrees of that set.
SKEPTICS are those who are SKEPTICAL: i.e do not accept,
the story that
(1) the atmosphere heats the earth,
(2)a specific component – atmospheric infrared resonant gas(es) is responsible for the handling of nearly ALL the heat.
All the rest of you are warmers: from Luke Warm to Hair On Fire Zealots.
You either believe the earth’s atmosphere heats the earth or you don’t.
If you do, you’re a warmer.
95% of you are afraid of an experiment I showed my wife just now as I explained your article and comments to her.
She’s an engineering scientist in bridge and roadway design, managing the software suites the engineers who design bridges and roadways through various terrains from cliffside oceanic to swamp. She’s scientific method savvy and I use her as my stand-up comedy audience as I make fun of, ridicule, and mock warmers who can’t fathom which way a thermometer goes, even when THEY DO THE EXPERIMENTS.
The level of scientific grasp among warmers really is past abysmal and here’s how bad it is:
I was speaking to my wife about this subject of various divisions.
I pointed out to her that 95% of you people here,
believe the atmosphere,
is responsibe for warming the earth.
So she was in the bathroom sitting on the toilet, trying to tweeze a little hair that had turned back and grown in, along a crease in her knee. I was in the next room sitting in front of the computer and I saw a sorta ovid shaped, an egg-shapped jar, of hand creme she buys to put on our dog’s paws so the dogs don’t scratch stuff they do launches onto and off around the house.
There was a milk crate, you know, a plasti milk crate, just like all of em, sitting in the corner of the bathroom where she sometimes sits or I do, when bathing these dogs.
I picked up the hand creme and walked to the tub. I sat the hand creme in the floor of the tub, and I told my wife, “THAT’S the EARTH.”
I turned on the shower, with the water, warm, and we have a kinda cool one where there’s a big round face on the shower head the size of a sunflower: like 6 inches across, and I turned this
warm water, representing sunlight slamming into the earth,
and I said THAT’S the SUN.
I told her “there’s a gas atmosphere around the planet which blocks, prevents from getting to earth, about 40% of all the sunlight otherwise to impinge against the planet’s surface.
I picked up the milk crate which of course has it’s squares and various triangular bracings to make it sustain holding cartons of liquid, yet remain lightweight: like the earth’s atmosphere, the crate, makes a screen: that BLOCKS some 20 or 30% of the WATER, from hitting the cold-creme plastic egg-shaped container.
I said to my wife, “95% of the people at the world’s most popular science site,
CAN’T FIGURE OUT THE CRATE STOPPING SOME of that HOT WATER from HITTING
that HAND CREME JAR,
COOLS
that
JAR.”
She’s in engineering software management and only deals with real scientists, who do real work, where real science makes things stand up, or real people, die in accidents,
so she understands what a scientific illiterate sounds like, and will fall for.
She said to me “They don’t understand that?
“Who are these people? ”
=====
Who these people are folks, are you guys.
=====
If a man cant take a hand creme jar,
spray it with hot water,
then put a milk crate over it and ask you the queston
“Is the milk crate causing the temperature of the jar, to RISE, or FALL?”
and get the right answer: the crate blocks about 20 or 30% of the water so the heat energy impacting the jar is LESS, therefore the milk crate COOLED the jar,
then that’s the I.D.E.N.T.I.C.A.L.. position persons wishing to conduct scientifically accurate conversation with warmer religionists faces.
You can’t even call warming warming, and cooling cooling.
Your field of pseudo-bigfoot science calls adding screen blocking thermal input, HEATING it.
Not COOLING it.
So where is your credibility vis-a-vis the real sciences of the world were we don’t tolerate that kind of drivel passed off as reality based thinking?
Sadly it puts climate scientists into the absolute bottom of the bin. They’re the LAST people you expect to answer ANY question correctly.
Here’s another one from the real skeptics to the warmers – you here who – by virtue of stating outright you think the atmosphere heats the planet, are definitionally at LEAST a lukewarmer –
If you have a mass and you are irradiating that mass with a light, the mass, will have a temperature it eventually reaches.
If you then, place a second, smaller mass, in direct physical contact with that mass – say it’s a black marble – and you attach ANOTHER MASS, that the LIGHT can’t HEAT, but that can remove, through direct physical contact, – lets say you put that black marble into a pool of water that is contained below and on the sides in glass, the top’s open, and at first you heat the marble, and arrive at a temperature for it – this is the earth, without any atmosphere –
you read a certain temperature for the marble.
Now: you lower the marble, AND the light, THREE INCHES, until the MARBLE, is IMMERSED in the DISTILLED water WHICH THE LIGHT CAN NOT HEAT to anywhere NEAR the level it can the marble –
In REAL SCIENCE the question ‘WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TEMPERATURE of the MARBLE when the ADDITIONAL MASS of the COOL FLUID BATH surrounds it?”
the answer is “THE MARBLE is COOLED by the FLUID BATH it is IMMERSED in.”
====
Here, where magical thermodynamics rules the local world, that marble is WARMED by the FRIGID FLUID BATH the marble’s immersed in.
——
Do those of you who come here for science really believe that when you place a screen between a heat source and a marble, blocking 40% of the energy that would otherwise warm the marble, the screen WARMS the marble?
If you do,
you understand, that nobody’s ever going to take you serious anywhere but the Magic Gais-o-sphere, right?
You’re not going to try to take this kind of perversity and sell it on the free marketplace of ideas because you’re going to be mocked and ridiculed so tersely you’ll wonder if maybe the Hari Krishnas at the airport would be a more popular science group for you to join.
Don’t just say ‘Yes, I believe,”
just because there seem to be 14 million dimwits on the internet who’ll say it first.
Yes, S.R.V. the atmosphere reflects some incoming energy that would otherwise enter the system, but that doesn’t negate the atmosphere slowing the cooling of the surface. To continue your analogy to simulate the Earth a little better you’d have to alternate between water being on and water being off since the Earth rotates, the sunlit side is being warmed while the dark side is cooling. When the water is off the cold cream should sit in the crate (turn the crate over and put the cold cream inside), thus when the water is on the crate blocks some water, but when the water is off it serves to retain some water.
The Earth would be like the Moon without the atmosphere, really hot during the day and really cold during the night.
The atmosphere both cools the Earth and keeps it warm.
Multidimesional scaling questions to a broad sample defining the aforementioned taxonomy of belief systems would work well and possibly define further categories of what is out there.
Agree, pretty much entirely.
But… it’s “reined in”. Horses, not kings. 😉
SRV
Having had a quick look at Wikipedia (liberal pinko institution that it is 😉 i think you might need to revise your hand creme bottle/milk crate model with a piece of Goretex
Light, is not like water. Water molecules are all the same size. Light waves are not. Or, if you prefer “electromagnetic radiation” – of which visible light is just a sub set – is not all the same “size”. It has different wave lengths. Or “sizes” if we want to take a particle model approach to this (like you seem to want to)
So (from Wikipedia) the light (or electromagnetic radiation/EM) coming in is short wave or “small”. Some of this is reflected back (“bounces off”). But that that gets through, is absorbed by (“hits”) the earth that hence becomes a bit hotter (“agitated”). Now in a more agitated state the earth emits long wave radiation (i.e. not visible, not “light” but still EM radiation ) that by your model is now LARGER balls than first arrived. Some of these balls (n.b. there are lots of sized balls coming off the earth, its called a spectrum!) hit the atmospheric “net” that is made up of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, H20 etc)
Now unlike the smaller balls that came down from the shower head/sun that mostly got through the gaps, a lot of these bigger balls get snarled up in the greenhouse gases (this gets a bit fiddly as it is the bonds within these molecules that get pinged by the big balls, not some sort of “net” between them). Now, having been joslted by the big balls, the green house gases are more agitated and ping off balls in all directions themselves. A lot of these goes up and away (think steam rising in your shower and out of the window) but a little less than half “drips back down” onto earth making it a bit wetter/hotter again.Hence – tara – the Greenhouse Effect.
So much like Goretex, that only lets moisture travel one way through its layers, similarly the greenhouse gases are more permeable to incoming short/small wave radiation and hold up large/long wave radiation. (I believe that Goretex does this by having tiny holes that allow tiny gaseous water moelcules (steam) through but are too small to allow big clumpy water droplets through. But that is Pinkopedia again).
What matters, of course, (think the difference between single, double and pinko-scandinavian-grade triple glaze, in our windows) is how thick the layers are. The suggestion is that adding to the thickness of the CO2 layer (e.g. 400 vs 280ppm of CO2) makes the earth warmer as it keeps in more of the long wave radiation/big balls bouncing back up/sweat in your waterproofs.
So your model with water is fine if you put a layer of Goretex in there, to summarise.
Hope that help you and your wife.
This is where I sit, science is a process by which you examine the world around you, ask questions, propose explanations, and then test those explanations while also seeing if any predictions made are accurate.
Correlation=Causation fallacies and using what the general public may as well consider magical black-box modeling to levy pressure on politicians and push absurd malthusian nonsense is not science, it’s like the worst parts of zealotry and election season mudslinging mixed up into a big ball of smart sounding stupid, which then stomps off and gets angry at the air while blaming everyone else for what it supposedly did, but didn’t actually do!
I tried to express the logic of that taxonomic table in much simpler terms.
Suppose you asked a hypothetical representative of each the eight groups these four questions:
– Has there been warming in the last two decades?
– Can man-made CO2 cause some warming?
– Have you a fairly confident assessment of roughly how much man-made warming will be caused?
– Given your assessment of roughly how much man-made warming will be caused, how do you assess the consequences?
Then most of the answers could be ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or for the fourth something brief like ‘unclear but unlikely to be seriously bad’. Those questions and answers could be put into a table that would expose the distinctions between the eight groups. It seemed to work, but I can’t show my table on this comments system.
Something as straightforward as that might make an impression on journalists, politicians and other non-scientists who are under the impression that a 97% consensus exists.
The tiny proportion of CO2 in our atmosphere creates more of a smearing effect than a heating or blocking or trapping effect. It’s clear the rate of energy transfer in from the hot ball in the sky is fast and the rate of energy transfer out from cool water is slow. That’s great for our comfort, but has nothing to do with 400PPM of CO2.
“Im sorry to go off topic here but this is so hilarious I was wondering if anyone else had heard it- apparently global warming will be responsible for a future jellyfish invasion??”
Can a dual-qualified biologist and climatologist (for example, Tim Flannery if you’re reading this) explain to me why:
– plants and animals that are either aesthetically pleasing or commercially important (coral, polar bears, seals, wheat etc) are SOOOOOOOO fragile that even given decades to accommodate / start growing 200km closer to the poles they will suffer mass extinctions, BUT
– every animal we hate (jelly fish, mosquitoes, cockroaches, drop bears etc) will absolutely prosper in a warmer / more acid / dryer / more cyclone-prone environment??
Thanks in advance.