The simplest explanation is usually the correct explanation
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Professor Keven Trenberth once campaigned for the scientific world to accept the alarmist view of climate change as the “null hypothesis”, the baseline theory against which all other theories must be measured.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/03/trenberth-null-and-void/
The reason Trenberth faced an uphill battle to have his view accepted, and ultimately failed, is that the simplest explanation of contemporary climate change does not involve Anthropogenic CO2.
As Professor Phil Jones of the CRU once admitted in an interview with the BBC, the instrumental record contains periods of warming which are statistically indistinguishable from the 1990s warming – periods of warming which cannot have been driven by anthropogenic CO2, because they occurred before humans had made a significant changes to global CO2 levels.
Between 1860 and 1880, the world warmed for 21 years, at a similar rate to the 24 year period of warming which occurred between 1975 and 1998. There was simply not enough anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere to have driven the 1860s warming, so it must have been driven by natural variation.
So how does Occam’s Razor apply to this observation?
According to the definition in Wikipedia, the principle of Occam’s Razor states “that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.”
From Wikipedia, the reason why Occam’s razor is important:
“To understand why, consider that, for each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there is always an infinite number of possible, more complex, and ultimately incorrect alternatives. This is so because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypothesis. Ad hoc hypotheses are justifications that prevent theories from being falsified. Even other empirical criteria like consilience can never truly eliminate such explanations as competition. Each true explanation, then, may have had many alternatives that were simpler and false, but also an infinite number of alternatives that were more complex and false. However, if an alternate ad hoc hypothesis were indeed justifiable, its implicit conclusions would be empirically verifiable. On a commonly accepted repeatability principle, these alternate theories have never been observed and continue to not be observed. In addition, we do not say an explanation is true if it has not withstood this principle.
Put another way, any new, and even more complex theory can still possibly be true. For example: If an individual makes supernatural claims that Leprechauns were responsible for breaking a vase, the simpler explanation would be that he is mistaken, but ongoing ad hoc justifications (e.g. “And, that’s not me on film, they tampered with that too”) successfully prevent outright falsification. This endless supply of elaborate competing explanations, called saving hypotheses, cannot be ruled out—but by using Occam’s Razor.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor
In other words, if we reject the principle of Occam’s Razor, we open the door to accepting theories of arbitrary, ultimately infinite complexity. A theory created by researchers who do not accept the principle of Occam’s Razor cannot be falsified, because the theory can always be tweaked in arbitrary ways to avoid falsification.
So why does applying the principle of Occam’s Razor force us to reject the theory that anthropogenic CO2 is the main driver of contemporary climate change? The reason is that nature has produced periods of warming similar to the recent warming, without any significant contribution from Anthropogenic CO2.
So we have two competing hypothesis for what is driving contemporary climate change:-
1. Observed natural variation, which has produced periods of warming statistically indistinguishable from the warming which ended in 1998.
2. Observed natural variation + an unproven assumption that Anthropogenic CO2 is now the main driver of Climate Change.
Clearly the second hypothesis fails the test of Occam’s Razor. In the absence of compelling evidence that anthropogenic CO2 has overridden natural variation, we have to accept hypothesis 1 – that observed climate change is the result of natural variation.
The climate is not hotter than it was in the past, periods such as the Holocene Optimum, or looking further back, the Eemian Interglacial. The warming which ended in 1998 was not faster, or of significantly longer duration, than similar natural warmings which occurred in the recent past.
Nothing about the current climate is outside the bounds of climatic conditions which could reasonably be produced by natural variation – therefore, according to the rules of science, we have to reject hypothesis which unnecessarily embrace additional unproven assumptions, unless or until such assumptions can be tested and verified, in a way which falsifies the theory that natural variation is still in the driver’s seat.
Wow. That’s quite an (implicit) accusation! So you actually have to be ‘insane’ to claim that ‘CO_2 concentration is likely to have zero effect on the climate’?!
In comparison to an otherwise identical atmosphere with no CO_2 at all? I think so. The radiative coupling of CO_2 in the LWIR bands that dominate Earth temperature radiation is an established fact. The absorption and re-emission of thermally emitted LWIR energy from CO_2 in its absorptive bands by the atmosphere is a direct observational fact, verified by numerous TOA and BOA spectrographs.
What is at issue is two things. One is the marginal effect of additional CO_2 once the atmosphere is well past the point where it is effectively optically opaque in the CO_2 bands with a comparatively short mean free path for optical photons in those bands (compared, especially, to the distance from the Earth’s surface to the heights where the atmosphere becomes exponentially transparent to the radiation). The second is the coupled effect of nonlinear stuff in the atmosphere to that marginal effect — positive and negative feedbacks. It is IMO moderately unlikely that the negative feedback from what is almost certainly going to be a positive partial derivative of global temperature with respect to CO_2 concentration is going to completely cancel the positive contribution or override it with all other things equal on average although the Earth is a chaotic nonlinear system and is capable of being kicked out of orbit around a warm phase attractor by at least some trajectories created by transient positive gain from CO_2. It is certainly possible that marginal changes of CO_2 concentration could for some comparatively short periods of time have no discernible effect on the climate because of lucky cancellations, but it is not certainly not “likely”.
To put it yet another way, AR5 persists in wanting to attribute over half of the latter 20th century warming to CO_2 with “high confidence” in spite of having no defensible quantitative basis for making any claim of confidence for any particular fraction of warming. I agree — and I think most people who understand the radiation physics agree — that CO_2 has had some effect (whether or not it is “anthropogenic” or the largest effect humans have hand on the climate). I agree that the effect is probably relative warming, but the probability here is lower — there are plausible arguments that suggest that natural feedbacks cancel the bulk of any direct warming — and it is very difficult indeed to know how to partition any climate shift into CO_2 linked change and everything else, because change is strongly coupled and because we have no method to predict what the temperature would have been outside today if there had been no increase in CO_2.
At the moment, AR5 and increasing numbers of papers are dropping the most likely effect by the end of the century to be no more than 2.5 C, and a surprising number are down now to under 2 C total warming (simply because there hasn’t been any warming at all in the 21st century). The longer it stubbornly refuses to warm, the lower CO_2 linked climate sensitivity should be, in Bayesian terms.
rgb
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Kristian says:
March 22, 2014 at 5:57 am
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Kristian,
yes it is the simplest explanation, but it is not just lgl who will reject it, but every lukewarmer as well.
While empirical experiment shows cumulative SW/UV heating of water results in equilibrium temperatures 98C higher than blackbody calcs, empirical results must be rejected as this would indicate the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling.
The gospel of the Church of Radiative Climatology is very clear on this, without DWLWIR the oceans would freeze. To challenge the dogma of the climastrologists by claiming that atmospheric cooling is preventing the oceans rising to over 80C you would need to invent some truly bizarre cooling mechanism. Something like vaporising the top 100mm of the oceans into the atmosphere to vastly increase radiative cooling area. However extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence….
Hey what are those white things in the sky? What are they made of and where did they come from?
Sarc/
Jeff Patterson says:
March 22, 2014 at 7:33 am
“As such, the amount of energy contained in the ocean is sensitive not just to the TSI, but to asymmetry in the TSI.”
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With regard to asymmetry in TSI and its effect on ocean temperatures I would recommend this marine biology related paper –
http://www.biblioteca.uma.es/bbldoc/tesisuma/1663844x.pdf
Figure 3.(d) has plots showing power of the higher solar frequencies compared to ocean depth in w/m2. These are the frequencies that vary most between solar cycles. UV-A is shown as still providing 10 w/m2 at a depth of 50m.
The heat went into the deep oceans, snowfalls are no more, more cold and snow does not contradict CAGW but re-enforces it etc. etc. Just what would it take to be able to throw the main claims of the IPCC regarding the global surface temperature warming since 1950? I throw this question out as a challenge for everyone.
Jimbo says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:50 pm
IMO, nothing.
If the world warmed with CO2 going down, some other human activity would be blamed. If it cooled with CO2 going up (as is actually happening), then excuses will be made, such as otherwise it would have cooled even more & the heating threat will return with a vengeance, or people are causing the dangerous cooling, too. And of course the past temperature “record” is almost endlessly fungible to an extent that satellite-era observations are not. The past is a construct, as under Communism.
As an anti-scientific religious faith, CACA is not falsifiable. Just as Christianity changed when Jesus did not return in the 1st or 2nd centuries, which early adherents expected, CACA or its latest transmogrification will adjust (so to speak).
rgbatduke says:
March 22, 2014 at 3:24 pm
IMO the GC models will remain worse than worthless until based upon actual observations of the water vapor feedback response to changes in CO2 levels, & upon realistic cloud assumptions, among other needed improvements.
Does anyone know how high latitude water vapor has responded to the alleged increase in globally well mixed CO2 from 280 ppm in the 19th century to ~400 ppm in the 21st? If an extra CO2 molecule (up to five from four during the next 50 years) per 10,000 dry air molecules over a polar region raises its spring or fall high temperature from 31.9 to 32.1 degrees F, then the water vapor feedback there might be positive, thanks to an increase from, say, four to five H2O molecules in the same volume of dry air. But maybe not. Release of the extra molecule from surface ice might have a cooling effect. I don’t know but would like to.
How about low latitudes? The same increase in CO2 in an environment with 400 water vapor molecules per 10,000 of dry air instead of four arguably might have a cooling instead of a warming effect, ie a negative feedback. Again, I’d like to know, but suspect that climate modelers don’t have the observational data upon which to model such feedbacks. Instead, they make GIGO assumptions.
A science in its infancy needs more & better observations & less unjustified certainty based upon obviously blatantly failed model predictions.
Occam’s razor does not tell us anything about what is true. It tells us the most efficient way to look for what is true. The fewer assumptions, the simpler the experiment required to test those assumptions. Also, assumptions that cannot be tested are useless. Experiment tells us what is true — at least to the extent that we are able to identify the variables involved.
John Day
I don’t buy your must be rejected. So Einstein made his theory more complex to account for relativistic effects, but we don’t “reject” Newton’s theory. It was all we needed to get our astronauts to the Moon and back safely. Both theories are useful, and both are “as simple as possible” in their respective realms.
😐
The difference is Einstein’s theory created a better explanation of observed phenomena. Adding an assumption that CO2 dominates natural forcings does not create a better explanation of observed climate change.
Newton’s theory does a perfectly adequate job where you and the observer are in a similar frame of reference (e.g. throwing a baseball to your buddy), but at the time Einstein proposed his theory, there were several niggling examples of physical observations which Newton’s theory could not explain, such as the failure of Newtonian calculations to correctly predict the orbit of the planet Mercury.
My argument RE climate is that there is nothing unprecedented or unique about current climatic conditions which requires new assumptions be added to the theory that natural variation is driving climate change. Current climatic conditions are not warmer than the past, and the rate of warming is not faster than warming events which have occurred in the very recent past.
Therefore, unlike the situation which gave rise to Einstein’s theories, in which there was compelling evidence Newton’s theories weren’t the complete picture, there are no compelling discrepancies between observations and theory, which requires the addition of new assumptions to create a better theory of climate.
clazy
Occam’s razor does not tell us anything about what is true. It tells us the most efficient way to look for what is true. The fewer assumptions, the simpler the experiment required to test those assumptions. Also, assumptions that cannot be tested are useless. Experiment tells us what is true — at least to the extent that we are able to identify the variables involved.
Exactly my point. The last paragraph of my post was:-
“Nothing about the current climate is outside the bounds of climatic conditions which could reasonably be produced by natural variation – therefore, according to the rules of science, we have to reject hypothesis which unnecessarily embrace additional unproven assumptions, unless or until such assumptions can be tested and verified, in a way which falsifies the theory that natural variation is still in the driver’s seat.”
I am not ruling out the possibility that CO2 will be demonstrated to have a significant influence on climate at some point in the future. What I am saying is there no compelling reason to accept such a theory now, based on current observations, because current climate is not unprecedented in any measurable way – it is not warmer now than the peak of past warnings, and recent periods of warming are not measurably different to past warming events, when CO2 cannot have been the driver of said past warming.
Occam’s Razor is not an answer. It is a challenge.
The fallacy here is that CO2 impacts can never be demonstrated because there will always be something be some climate/ocean chemistry variation that was hotter, colder, wetter, drier in the geological record.
The logic is false because this fallacy is combined with several other false assumptions to create a circular argument designed to reverse the burden of proof.
The whole is then clothed in some false scientific ‘respectability’ using a inverted reference to Occam’s Razor.
It turns the burden of proof upside down. We know by theory and experiment that CO2 acts as a heat trapping gas.
We know that global radiation in is greater than radiation out.
We know that the global ice mass balance is dropping. We know that most of the world’s glaciers are reducing in depth and moving uphill. We know that the earth’s oceans are gaining heat. We know that thousands upon thousands of terrestrial and marine species are changing their range and are also changing their phenology. We know that global sea levels are rising. In other words, all the things you would expect with increased heat are occurring.
(And puhlease don’t give me atmospheric-temperatures-are-steady meme as if it is terribly significant in the global heat budget).
Of course, CO2 forcing is on top of natural drivers, so we are getting, as we would expect, some ups and downs there and there.
Knowing from laboratory experiments that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas, what Occam’s Razor really means in this case is that you would have to demonstrate that the current climate variations are driven solely by natural drivers.
You can’t.
It is why Skeptic Memers are forced to keep talking about things like it has all happened before, it is undersea volcanoes, it is cosmic rays, it is natural cycles, it is clouds and the like without ever being able to demonstrate that their meming delivers anything like a global ‘natural’ heat budget unamplified by CO2 forcings.
Let’s face it, rather than blame third world governments for the treatment of their citizens they are happy to blame us, diverting attention and creating hate towards industrial countries. Most famines are caused by faulty mono cropping, and soil degradation or political upheavals. Of course their are genuine crop failures due to drought and then we provide aid. The illegal asylum seekers we are handling at the moment, many are economic refugees, looking for a new and easier life in Australia. Not genuine refugees. When they are turned back you should have heard the response. One had already been rejected and sort to enter illegally. He was furious and sent threats that were televised, ‘Remember 9/ll we will kill Tony Abbott’
I knew years ago when Al Gore got the Nobel prize for peace, I was disgusted. I saw all the other opportunists get on the gravy train, but my studies had always suggested that we could head for another ice age, that would be more dramatic on human kind. It is pollution created around large areas of population and we can clear that all up easily. Ban all motor vehicles that use petrol or oil, and planes, electricity plants (?) and humans from these areas. Stop polluting our water sources with fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides. Become Vegan. Now that would not change the weather but it is a good start (sarc). But it would be a leveler with third world countries.
climateace
The fallacy here is that CO2 impacts can never be demonstrated because there will always be something be some climate/ocean chemistry variation that was hotter, colder, wetter, drier in the geological record.
…
It turns the burden of proof upside down. We know by theory and experiment that CO2 acts as a heat trapping gas.
Yes, but this does not say anything about how much impact CO2 has on climate.
We know that global radiation in is greater than radiation out.
Wrong, the measured radiation imbalance is impossibly large, so the value is “tweaked” to bring it inline with models. Not really a measurement then, is it?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/30/accuracy-precision-and-one-watt-per-square-metre/
We know that the global ice mass balance is dropping. We know that most of the world’s glaciers are reducing in depth and moving uphill. We know that the earth’s oceans are gaining heat. We know that thousands upon thousands of terrestrial and marine species are changing their range and are also changing their phenology. We know that global sea levels are rising. In other words, all the things you would expect with increased heat are occurring.
The fact the world is warming is not evidence that CO2 is driving the warming.
Of course, CO2 forcing is on top of natural drivers, so we are getting, as we would expect, some ups and downs there and there.
Knowing from laboratory experiments that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas, what Occam’s Razor really means in this case is that you would have to demonstrate that the current climate variations are driven solely by natural drivers.
No, if you want to claim there has been a regime change, that CO2 now dominates climate change, you have to show something has changed – that there is a CO2 “fingerprint” has made some kind of difference to climate metrics, which is unlikely to be due to natural variation.
You can’t.
Nothing about the warming which ended in 1998 is any different to warming periods which occurred earlier in the instrumental record, during periods which could not have been driven by CO2 forcing – there was simply not enough anthropogenic CO2 to produce the earlier warmings.
If you insist that the 1998 warming was due to CO2, then the burden of proof is on you to show that whatever the natural warming mechanism was which produced similar warmings in the past, was not responsible.
It is why Skeptic Memers are forced to keep talking about things like it has all happened before, it is undersea volcanoes, it is cosmic rays, it is natural cycles, it is clouds and the like without ever being able to demonstrate that their meming delivers anything like a global ‘natural’ heat budget unamplified by CO2 forcings.
Let me know when you have some evidence to support your hypothesis.
Sad that once again Occams Razor is dragged into play as if it had something to say about truth or otherwise.
William of Ockahm and his contemporaries understood something that we have forgotten.Theories are not facts. Theories are not, never have been and never will be ‘true’ in the way that ‘facts’ are true. They are explanatory constructions with predictive power. Their quality lies in their predictive power only. If reality conforms to prediction, the theory is good.
What Ockham was saying is that if two theories are equally good at predicting the future, but one is more complex than the other, it makes no sense to use the complex one. Nowhere did he ever say that this makes the theory into a fact.
The classical example is Galieo’s and Copernicus’ ellipses with the sun as a major point, rather than the epicycles of the Greeks. You can get there with epicycles, but the math is a lot simpler with elliptical orbits. All you are doing is effecting a transformation between co-ordinate bases from anthropcentric to heliocentric – a fact that the Church understood and Galileo did not.
His insistence on the truth content of his theories was what got him into trouble, and rightly so.
Unfortunately the stupidity persists today with people casually talking about ‘scientific truths’ as if the term had meaning: It does not, it never did and it never can.
What we have is a hierarchy of knowledge from raw perceptions, that we assemble into ‘facts’ using metaphysically agreed cordinate systems. That is, we agree that the flash of perception before our eyes actually is the ‘fact’ of a ‘bird’ ‘flying’ ‘through’ the ‘air’. Until and unless that process of culturally accepted reification of perceptions into objects in space-time can take place we have no ‘facts’..
So facts are in themselves unknowable, but are rendered known by the processes of the mind into an array of what is termed ‘phenomena’. Facts are phenomenal truths, couched in terms of the metaphysics of the day. But facts themselves are already one step removed from the perceptions that lead to their being accepted.
What theories about facts then are, are descriptions of the flow of events: we preseuppose that everything that happens is ’caused’ by the total set of all the phenomena that preceded it. If we are lucky we can find phenomena whose behaviour is overwhelmingly related to a very few things that preceded it, and we can then arrive at mathematical or generic descriptions of the sort ‘event A always CAUSES event B’.
But these descriptions are two steps removed from reality. They are neither the perceptions themselves nor ar they the crystallization of perceptions into phenomena, they are abstractions… they are stories about the things we make our mental worlds out of, the things themsleves only being our way of talking about our perceptions..And that is the point that Wiliam of Ockham understood. When making up stories, to explain phenomena, keep the stories simple. They are still stories, they have no inherent truth content, nor were they ever meant to have: their value never lay in their truth, but in their UTILITY.
And that is why in the end we discard the myths of anthropogenic clinmate change, not because they are complex – we are already aware that they are in fact almost certainly not nearly complex enough – but becaiuse they have no utility. They utterly fail to produce any reliable predictions of the future state of climate.
What prompted Karl Popper to write his treatise on the philosphy of science, was an alarming suspicion that a lot of what people were claiming was science, was in fact metaphysics. Arbitrary constructions with no basis in fact and no predictive power whatsoever. To believe in the ‘truth’ of science is to fall into a pit that lays one open to attack by such as the creationsts and the warmists: They quite rightly point out that science has no handle on the truth, and that truth is ultimately a matter of personal belief and opinion where theories arre concerned. To cry ‘scientific fact’ is no defense againts them. Neither is Occams razor.
What is defense, is to make the simple point that if we can agree on the facts – facts being the actual measurable phenomena – that, say the world warmed by X degrees between such and such dates, then we are as SCIENTISTS duty bound not only to construct a theory that fits those facts, but one that predicts to better than random chance, where the climate will go next.
Such a theory has no truth content as such, but if it proiduces a useful result that conforms to measurable phenomena, it is a USEFUL theory.
However the IPCC theories have produced no such predictions: they have utterly FAILED to predict even vaguely the changes in climate in the last 20 years.
That alone is enough to condemn them to to the dustbin of history. Worse, we have been told that the precautionary principle is one we must follow ‘always hold on tight to nurse for fear of something even worse’. WE must destroy a world economy IN CASE it’s doing something bad.
If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything is the creed. If you can’t predict what might happen, don’t do anything. And yet it can be shown logoically that in the absence of certain knowledge, all possible decisions must have equal weight. WE may end up far worse off trying to stop CO2 emiissions than to continue. Nothing anywhere gives us any actual reason to make any particular decision.
So we attack AGW entirely from the philsophical point: NOT usiong Occams Razor, but using Poppers criteria for a good theory. Simple or complex, if it doesn’t do predictions its a rubbish theory. AGW is a rubbish theory. If those who uphold it even if its admittedly rubbish ‘in case’ it might be true, are listened to, carefully, then they too are guilty of unscientific behaviour. We should burn carbon ‘in case’ stopping it produces some far more probable effects like the collapse of western civilization…
There is a profound need when tackling these faith based pseudo scientists to understand and correct our own philsophical shortcomings: this article is bad because it makes no real case against AGW, in fact it gives further ammunition to its protagonists. It behoves us to understand the philosophy and metaphysics behind science, or we are truly no better than those who use emotional arguments to justify illogical actions and promote fake science that we cannot distinguish from real science. IN short we need the philoosphers badly here.
AGW fails not becaise its too complex, but because it fails to predict: to remedy that we may well have to introduce far far MORE complexity. Occam did NOT say ‘simple is true’ he said something much more akin to ‘entities should not be introduced beyind necessity’ meaning that once you get to a decent theory that works, stop. Don’t embroider it with unneeded decoratons. But the key fact is ‘necessity’. Necessity to Occam was that the theory WORKED. If we apply Occam to AGW theory it tells us immediately that necessity forces us to introduce MORE to it in order to make it work at all. First get a theory that works THEN apply Occam to refine it.
Don’t throw it out beacause its complex. Stuff IS complex.
So please, if you want to introduce philosophy, take the trouble to understand the philosophy, or end up with egg on your face. Occam is no way a refutation of AGW, quite the reverse. Occam shows us if anything that AGW theory is far too simple. Necessity forces us to add more to it. That doesnt make it ‘wrong’ . What makes it wrong is the simple fact of its total inability to predict climate change in the last 18 years. CO2 cannot have zero effect on the climate, that much is certain, but what we need to know and AGW has totally failed to tell us, is how much.
And by focussing solely on Carbon dioxicde, we may have missed somethimg that is far more relevant. In fact its patently obvious that we have. We HAVE seen as yet unexplained climate change, this decade/ the last 50 years/ and the last 5,000 years,We still have no explanation for the broad global variations in climate since man first appeared on the planet and before. We have SOME idea, but nothing like a complete picture: what we do know is that it wasnt all or even mostly driven by carbon dioxide.
climatease, where did you go to school, or university? Clouds trap heat reflected from the earth. That is why frost doesn’t form if it is overcast, and temperatures drop dramatically at night in desert areas. The ice caps are not melting, sea ice does come and go, and undersea volcanoes and ocean currents do control with other variables our climates. Non of these can be controlled by humans. Pollution can be controlled though, but it costs money. And if you research water vapor is the biggest component of Greenhouse gases. We can not control the weather and that is what kills us, not CO2, plus volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes and cyclones, just to name a few. Then there is the bubonic plagues, small pox, Spanish flu, AIDs that kills or has killed millions, plus wars of course. But what has CO2 got to do with this? Be interested in your answer. Just remember 75% of our air we breathe is nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 3 % CO2, and 1% is trace gases. So we are nitrogen junkies eh?
Depends on your education, political views and life’s experience to spot a con. I am an environmentalist, but I am not a Vegan or vegetarian, but I lean towards free range meat etc., non GM vegetables etc., and have a Diploma in Organic Agricultural production (Australia). Plus two degrees majoring in Archaeology and palaeoanthropology and Ancient history. Sustainability is very important, and this does not include solar or wind power. It is growing our food for starters and combating life saving diseases. Plus trying to combat extreme weather events.
Climatease, Data collection may not be factual or representing an open ended argument. And theories are hypothesis or hypotheses that have been proven by experiment. If you place a thermometer next to a fire, it will increase, but place it outside it will reduce. So what, a twit knows this! If by chance you could remove 3% of our Greenhouse gases, (CO2) it would kill all living creatures on this earth, as we are carbon based organisms. We know that. Pollution is a different scenario. Polluted water is one of the primary vectors for most deadly water born diseases. Unsanitary conditions, poor nutrition lowers one resistance against disease and course some fatal conditions. SMOG dispatched thousands of Londoners in the 50s, And poisonous gases killed millions in concentration camps during the WWII. (So we object being labeled Holocaust deniers and Nazis) as most will accept climate change happens, but it is the causation factor or factors we challenge, from which some have financially benefited and still do.
…to be sure temp rises are driven by the Sun, whats interesting is that CO2 levels will rise as a consequence. The Modern Maximum which began around 1900 heated the Earth but ended around the year 2000 so CO2 levels could drop below 400ppm now that the New Minimum has begun.
bushbunny
Where I went to school or the nature of your formal qualifications or whether you are an environmentalist are totally irrelevant.
Physics theory says that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations will add heat to the globe.
Laboratory experiments confirm the Greenhouse effect of CO2.
Satellites measure more radiation entering the globe than leaving it.
Measurements of the oceans demonstrate that the earth is gaining heat.
Global sea level height is increasing.
Global ice mass balance is decreasing.
Permafrost is retreating.
Thousands of species are changing their range and/or their phenology.
Of course there are natural variations, natural drivers and natural oscillations forcing climate.
But natural variations can no no longer carry the sole explanation for climate variations.
Applying Occams Razor, the simplest answer is natural variations plus CO2 greenhouse effect.
In response, Skeptic Memers need to demonstrate that current climate trends are not due to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations on top of natural variations, but to something else.
This is exactly the reverse of Worrall’s position, above.
L Smith
The true utility of AGW is that it alters a suite of global risk proposition. The fact problem is by how much, when, for how long, where and who will wear the consequences, good and bad.
There is no utility in sticking the head in the sand and the bum in the air.
There is no utility at all in ignoring the actual and/or potential consequences of CO2-forced changes to ocean chemistry, ocean heat and ocean currents.
Nor is there any utility at all in steadfastly ignoring possible consequences of range and phenology variations of thousands of species, including pathogens and other pests.
For a single example of the devastating consequences of a single range extension of single species, check out Dutch Elm Disease.
climateace
But natural variations can no no longer carry the sole explanation for climate variations.
Why not?
As I pointed out, there is no metric of current climatic conditions which is significantly different to past climatic conditions.
Global temperature is not warmer today than it was in the past.
The most recent warming, which ended in 1998, is almost identical to the warming which occurred between 1860 – 1880, well before the atmosphere contained significant anthropogenic CO2.
So we have proof that natural variation can produce warmer temperatures, and similar periods of warming to the alleged anthropogenic warming.
Where is your evidence that we are seeing anything other than natural variation?
Martin says:
March 22, 2014 at 12:28 am
From the article that Eric Worrall linked to:
D – Do you agree that natural influences could have contributed significantly to the global warming observed from 1975-1998, and, if so, please could you specify each natural influence and express its radiative forcing over the period in Watts per square metre…..
Surely this is assuming right at the start that the changes were not geological or biological ones. This is the problem with all climate studies that they assume the changes are the ones they can make research grants from. Anyone with eyes can see that looking at the NASA sea anomaly data there are huge five degree plus anomaly local heat sources dotted around the world with particular emphasis on the areas where warming is greatest. Thermodynamics laws preclude any global cause for higher temperatures barring a giant heat pipe taking sea water from the equator to the poles.
Money needs to be transferred from atmospheric studies to the two other possible causes and also include historical departments to look for examples of climate information in reliable historical documents. In short they would receive a 75% cut in their budgets if the job of climate studies is to be done in a balanced way.
climateace
But natural variations can no no longer carry the sole explanation for climate variations.
Why not? What is unique or different about current climatic conditions, which requires an assumption that CO2 is significantly influencing global climate?
Climatease: If you feel my academic qualifications have no bearing on my judgements of AGW protesters like you, then you are way off the mark. But troll if you like, I don’t care but I know my judgements are supported through not only learned science but also on paleaoclimatology. As
soon as I knew Michael Mann was basing his argument on dendrochronolgy (study of tree rings) I knew he could not be right in his hypothesis and hockey stick. Tree rings indicate the growth of the tree. And there are times when a tree doesn’t grow well, because of environmental causes, one being lack of rain. If the tree rings are close together, the tree has a normal annual growth.This is good for the tree and it has nothing to do with Co2 increasing, the tree does this itself. But the primary reasons for this growth are not an increase of CO2 as the tree will normally transpire this anyway. It is because the conditions for this tree were favorable for its growth. I can’t understand you don’t agree with this? And then connect it with CO2 that is a natural transpiration of a tree or plant.
Years ago, hospitals would pull out flowers from wards, because they feared it would increase C02 in the wards. They have stopped that now.
Cheers
Patricia from Oz
Eric Worrell but you and me are talking to those who wish to disagree with science per say.
The nitrogen content in the air also helps plants to grow. But rain does encourage all plants to grow. I keep bonsai, and I know that a bit of natural rain does them more good than if I just water them with pure rain water. Thunderstorm bring down gases and this helps too.
He he :-). Bushbunny, there is a hilarious Climategate email in which one of Michael Mann’s pen pals describes a science experiment conducted by his kid which falsifies the use of tree rings as global temperature proxies.
http://www.ecowho.com/foia.php?file=0682.txt
“Also, stationarity is the key. Let me tell you a story. A few years back, my son Eirik did a tree ring science fair project using trees behind NCAR. He found that widths correlated with both temp and precip. However, temp and precip also correlate. There is much other evidence that it is precip that is the driver, and that the temp/width correlation arises via the temp/precip correlation. Interestingly, the temp correlations are much more ephemeral, so the complexities conspire to make this linkage nonstationary.”