By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Professor Shaun Lovejoy, as he continues the active marketing of his latest paper purporting to prove that “the world desperately needs to drop the skepticism and change course – humanity’s future depends on it”, writes in a hilarious op-ed at livescience.com:
“The majordomo of this deniers’ hub [Watts Up With That] is the notorious Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, who – within hours [fast on his feet, that Viscount is: strong in him the Force must be] – had declared to the faithful that the paper was no less than a ‘mephitically ectoplasmic emanation from the Forces of Darkness’ and that ‘it is time to be angry at the gruesome failure of peer review’.”
The Professor describes this as “venom”. No, sir, it is eloquence in the service of truth. Perhaps he would prefer a scatological rather than an eschatological metaphor. Happy to oblige. The scientific merit of his paper is aptly described by the third, eighteenth, first, and sixteenth letters of the alphabet, taken sequentially. Or, if he prefers it up him palindromically, the sixteenth, fifteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth.
Let me put on my major-domo’s tails, white starched wing-collar, maniple, and white gloves, polish up the nearest silver salver, and, Jeeves-like, shimmer in to address some the fashionable pseudo-physics in Professor Lovejoy’s latest Technicolor yawn.
After deploying the hate-screech word “deniers”, he wheels out Svante Arrhenius, who, “toiling for a year, predicted that doubling CO2 levels would increase global temperatures by 5-6 Cº, which turns out to be close to modern estimates”.
The Professor is perhaps unaware (for he does not seem to be aware of all that much in the realm of physics) that Arrhenius is known to have made errors in his line-by-line calculation of the warming effect of CO2 (actually performed at intervals over the long Arctic winter, not over a whole year). He had, for instance, relied on defective lunar spectral data.
Furthermore, Arrhenius – a chemist and not a physicist – had not at that time come across the fundamental equation of radiative transfer, which would greatly have simplified his calculations and made them more accurate.
However, in 1906, in Vol. 1, No. 2 of the Journal of the Royal Nobel Institute, he recanted and divided his earlier climate-sensitivity estimate by three:
“Likewise, I calculate that a halving or doubling of the CO2 concentration would be equivalent to changes of temperature of –1.5 Cº or +1.6 Cº respectively.”
So few of the F. of D. are aware of Arrhenius’ recantation that I am happy to provide a facsimile (Fig. 1) of the quotation from his 1906 paper, published in German (which perhaps explains why the largely English-speaking F. of D. are unaware of it).
Figure 1. Detail in facsimile from Arrhenius, S., 1906, Die vermutliche Ursache der Klimaschwankungen (“The possible cause for climate variability”). Meddelanden från K. Vetenskapsakademiens Nobelinstitut 1: 2, 1ff.
It is also important to note that Arrhenius confined his analysis to radiative transports only. He did not take account of all the numerous non-radiative transports – afternoon convection in the tropics, baroclinic eddies in the extratropics, evaporation everywhere, etc. – that militate homeostatically against any sufficiently small perturbation of the natural climate (such as doubling the tiny concentration of CO2 in the air).
Nor did Arrhenius take account of the biggest unknown in the climate – the behavior of clouds. All other things being equal, returning plant food to the atmosphere from which it came will cause some warming. But we do not know that all other things are equal.
Professor Lovejoy is also incorrect to say that Arrhenius’ original estimate of climate sensitivity was “close to modern estimates”. IPeCaC clings to a sensitivity interval of 1.5-4.5 Cº, entirely below Arrhenius’ original estimate and almost entirely above his revised estimate.
Many “modern estimates” point to a climate sensitivity well below IPeCaC’s interval. We may even see less than 1 Cº of global warming per CO2 doubling (Monckton of Brenchley, 2008, 2010; Douglass & Christy, 2009; Paltridge, 2009; Lindzen and Choi, 2009, 2011; Spencer and Braswell, 2010, 2011; Loehle & Scafetta, 2011, etc.).
Next, the Professor says that in the scientific method “no theory ever can be proven beyond ‘reasonable doubt’”. It would be more correct to say that some hypotheses (though few in physics and very few in climate physics) can be demonstrated definitively.
For instance, it is possible to demonstrate the Theorem of Pythagoras. My own simple proof by inclusion is at Fig. 2.
Figure 2. Demonstration of Pythagoras’ Theorem by inclusion. The boundary contains either the square on the hypotenuse (red) and two congruent right triangles or the squares on the other two sides (blue, green) and two more congruent right triangles. Subtract on each view the two right triangles. Then the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Q.E.D.
Professor Lovejoy sets out his stall thus:
“Climate skeptics have ruthlessly exploited this alleged weakness, stating that the models are wrong, and that the warming is natural. Fortunately, scientists have a fundamental methodological asymmetry to use against these skeptics: a single decisive experiment effectively can disprove a scientific hypothesis. That’s what I claim to have done. Examining the theory that global warming is only natural, I showed — without any use of GCMs — that the probability that warming is simply a giant natural fluctuation is so small as to be negligible. He compounds this point later by saying “skeptics dismiss the models”.
Well, are the models right? A single experiment demonstrates that, on the central question how much global warming should have occurred since 1990, the modelers’ hypothesis that the trend in global temperature would fall on their predicted interval (the orange region in Fig. 3) has been demonstrated to be false. Skeptics doubt the models not least because the modelers’ confidently-made predictions have been demonstrated, time and again, to be wild exaggerations.
Figure 3. Near-term projections of global warming (IPCC, 1990: orange region), compared with observed outturn taken as the mean of the RSS and UAH monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies, 1990-2014.
Professor Lovejoy says that his “CO2 proxy … predicts with 95 percent certainty that a doubling of CO2 levels in the atmosphere will lead to a warming of 1.9 to 4.2 Cº”. He prays in aid Fig. 4.
Figure 4. “This figure visually shows the strong linear relation between the radiative forcing and the global temperature response since 1880 … showing the 5-year running average of global temperature (red) as a function of the CO2 forcing surrogate from 1880 to 2004. The linearity is impressive; the deviations from linearity are due to natural variability. The slope of the regression line is 2.33±0.22 degrees Celsius per CO2 doubling (it is for the unlagged forcing/response relation).”
I do not pretend to understand this graph. For a start, it seems to show (albeit in exasperatingly non-standard units) that just about half the CO2 forcing since 1750 occurred before 1960, when CO2 concentration last stood at 316 ppmv. However, the official story-line (in standard units) is that the CO2 forcing from 1750 to 1958 was 0.7 W m–2, whereas that from 1958 to 2014 was greater by four-fifths, at 1.2 W m–2. Makes a bit of a mess of the claimed “linearity”, that.
Secondly, the linear trend on the global temperature anomalies since 1880 is 0.87 Cº, (Fig. 5), in response to 1.9 W m–2 of CO2 forcing. A doubling of CO2 concentration would give 3.7 W m–2 of CO2 forcing, according to the current official method.
Therefore, if there were a linear relation between CO2 forcing and temperature change (which there is not), and if all of the warming since 1750 were anthropogenic (which it was not), and if there were no major natural influences on temperature over the period (which there were) the warming in response to a CO2 doubling would be just 1.7 Cº, not the 2.33 Cº suggested in Professor Lovejoy’s caption.
Figure 5. The least-squares linear-regression trend on the mean of the HadCRUT4, GISS, and NCDC monthly mean global surface temperature anomalies from 1880-2014 is 0.87 Cº. The linearity is not particularly remarkable: the correlation coefficient is only 0.69. The oscillations of global temperature following the 60-year period of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation can be clearly seen.
There is demonstrably no linear relationship between the CO2 forcing, which increases monotonically, and global temperature change, which is stochastic. Global temperature change is more closely related to changes in the great ocean oscillations in the short term (Fig. 6), in total sunlight hours at the surface in the medium term (Fig. 7), and in total solar irradiance in the long term (Fig. 8).
Figure 6. The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature change since 1890, showing the two periods of global warming that coincided remarkably with the two positive phases of the naturally-occurring Pacific Decadal Oscillation over the period.
Figure 7. The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature change in the South China Sea, 1880 to 2008, tracking a remarkable non-linearity in the number of sunshine hours in Japan. Not all pyrometer records show this correspondence: but the Japanese record is the longest we have, and one of the most meticulously kept.
Figure 8. The remarkable non-linearity of the sunspot record, 1600-2003, from Hathaway et al., (2004). Inset: The remarkable non-linearity of global temperature trend, 1659-2010. The first and most rapid of the three periods (red) of global warming since 1659 (1694-1733) occurred as solar activity began to recover at the end of the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715). The other two periods (1925-1946 and 1977-2000) occurred at the solar Grand Maximum (1925-1995).
Next, Professor Lovejoy makes the startling assertion that the probability that what he calls “rare, extreme fluctuations” in global temperature such as those of the 20th century were natural is 1:1000 to 1:10,ooo.
This is where his omission of any reference to the Central England Temperature Record, or to the Utrecht or Prague temperature records, or to the historical circumstances (the freezing of the Thames, of the Dutch canals, of the Hudson in New York), is so reprehensible.
The rapid warming at the transition from the Maunder Minimum to a more normal climate occurred well before the industrial revolution began. It was not our fault.
Or Professor Lovejoy could have gone back to 1421, at the time when global temperature began to tip downward into the Little Ice Age. An interesting letter in the Vatican archive from the Papal Legate in Greenland to the Secretariat of State reported that the Legate regretted that he could not take up his appointment because “the ice is come in from the north”. Suddenly, ships could not reach Greenland.
By now, anyone who has studied the climate ought to have realized that what Professor Lovejoy calls “rare, extreme fluctuations” are neither rare nor extreme. They are the norm, not the exception.
Moreover, the entire interval of global temperature change since 1750, from the depth of the Maunder minimum to the acme during the Great El Niño of 1988 represents a movement of just 0.9% in absolute mean global surface temperature. By contrast, the change between midday and midnight at one location can be as much as 20% of absolute mean temperature. And the interval between the hottest and coldest places on Earth represents close to half of absolute mean temperature.
Next, the Professor says: “But what about Medieval warming with vineyards in Britain, or the so-called Little Ice Age with skating on the Thames? In the historical past, the temperature has changed considerably. Surely, the industrial-epoch warming is just another large-amplitude natural event?”
He answers his question in the negative, saying large-scale changes can only occur over periods much longer than a century. He would have gotten a nasty surprise if he had been around at the end of the Younger Dryas cooling event 11,400 years ago. At that time, according to the ice cores, the temperature in Antarctica rose by 5 Cº in just three years. As Professor Ian Plimer puts it, “Now, that’s climate change!”
Next, Professor Lovejoy writes: “My result focuses on the probability of centennial-scale temperature changes. It does not exclude large changes, if they occur slowly enough. So if you must, let the peons roast and the Thames freeze solid, the result stands.” No, it doesn’t. Just look at the warming of 1694-1733: 1.7 Cº in just 40 years, a rate equivalent to 4.33 Cº/century.
The Q&A that Professor Lovejoy has issued to prop up his paper says that he regards any change of more than 0.25 Cº over 125 years as exceptional, and likely to occur only 10% of the time. No, it isn’t. As I pointed out in a previous posting, more than a third of all 125-year periods predating the onset of anthropogenic influence on climate in 1950 show warming or cooling of more than 0.25 Cº.
Figure 9. Left: The misleading propaganda claim made by “Skeptical” “Science” that 97% of scientists agree we are the cause of global warming. Right: The true position exposed by Legates et al. (2013): 99.5% of 11,944 climate-science papers did not say we are the cause. They did not even say we are the primary cause.
Next, Professor Lovejoy says IPeCaC has “strengthened its earlier 2007 qualification of ‘likely’ to ‘extremely likely’ that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” Yes, it has, but it has done so not only on no evidence but in the teeth of the evidence.
As Legates et al. (2013) demonstrated, 99.5% of 11,944 scientific papers on climate published between 1991 and 2011 did not say that most of the global warming since 1950 was caused by us (Figure 9).
Besides, since Professor Lovejoy’s paper plays with statistics a great deal, he should know that no recognizable statistical process performed on any actual dataset (unless science now recognizes a show of hands among scientifically-illiterate, rent-seeking representatives of governments) generated IPeCaC’s “95-99% confidence” value.
Next, the Professor asserts that “skeptics … insist that warming results from natural variability”. No, we don’t. We assert that in the present state of knowledge it is impossible adequately to distinguish between natural variability and anthropogenic influence.
The Professor digs his hole ever deeper: “The new GCM-free approach rejects natural variability, leaving the last vestige of skepticism in tatters.” Here is an honest version of that sentence: “I reject natural variability aprioristically, so I bished and bashed the numbers till they fitted my preconception, leaving the last vestige of my scientific credibility in tatters.”
Yet he rants blithely on to the effect that the Canadian government has “axed climate research” (hurrah!); that it gave him no funding for his research (so he got more than he deserved); that it has “shamelessly promoted the dirtiest fuels” (but CO2 is not dirty, it is the stuff of life); that it has “reneged on its international climate obligations” (no, it took lawful and timeous advantage of the opt-out clause in the Kyoto Protocol and, therefore, has no “international climate obligations”); that “two decades of international discussion have failed to prevent emissions from growing” (along with crop yields and net primary productivity of trees and plants, thanks to CO2 fertilization); and, finally, that “the world needs to drop the skepticism and change course – humanity’s future depends on it” (but, as T.H. Huxley said, to the scientist “skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin”, and whenever someone says humanity’s future depends on something he means his income depends on it).
Lord Monckton’s latest straw-man is to claim he has distinguished math and science all along while claiming both are subject to the scientific method. Yet, to refute my contention that math is not falsifiable by experiment or observation, a key component of this method, every example he gave was in science, not mathematics. Now, having realized how absurd and dishonest his arguments have become, he claims I’ve changed his statements.
Mathematics is distinct from science in part because it is not subject to falsification by experiment or observation. That LM continues to hold that it is shows a real gap in his math education.
Philip Lee says:
April 24, 2014 at 1:27 pm
Chrisikins wins the Miss Uncongeniality to Reality consolation prize.
Sorry about the foot though.
jeremyp99 says:
April 24, 2014 at 10:00 am
@Larry Geary says: April 23, 2014 at 12:53 pm
“the notorious Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley, who – within hours…”
Don’t discount the viscount!
====================
‘Cos the Lord won’t be floored
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Interestingly, I did have a little chuckle to myself when I had the great pleasure of seeing Viscount Monckton speak at Sacramento State University a couple (?) of years ago. The young aspiring politico who introduced him did actually pronounce “Viscount” like “discount”.
I guess they never had too many Viscounts in California, either the human version, or the aircraft.
…. and while I’m here, why, in 2014, would any Professor anywhere feel the need to publish such a pathetic POS paper? Just taking a bigger picture view. The actual data doesn’t speak for itself, does it, 30 years of BS and 50% (logarithmically speaking) into a doubling of CO2?
This parrot is deceased. It is a late parrot !!!!
David Ramsay Steele: His lordship has not really answered the main point pressed by Mr Mosher and Mr Lee.
fwiw (usually not much, but maybe others agree with me this time), I thought that Mr Mosher and Mr Lee wrote vaguely, in need of interpretation; given their vagueness, I think His Lordship’s rebuttals are pertinent. I don’t agree that Mr Mosher and Mr Lee are trolls, but really nobody cares for my opinion on that. Lord Monckton made his case to his satisfaction.
Someone else up above wrote it approximately this way: in mathematics you can prove that results follow from assumptions, or don’t follow from assumptions, or in some cases are not even decidable. But given a mathematical expression, you can not literally prove that nature acts that way. You have to test many ways, and accept that the expression fits actual data within some approximation error (or, as with GCMs, that the approximation error is so great that the mathematical result is useless.).
Muddlemharlani continues to whine about my passing reference, in a comment, to the notion that we are 5000 years overdue for the next Ice Age. I said that the current interglacial had endured for 11,400 years [at or above today’s temperatures]. The three previous interglacials, according to the reference I gave, had endured at or above today’s temperatures for 9000, 5000 and 8000 years respectively, an average of 7300 years. On that basis, we are around 4000 years overdue for temperatures to start heading south.
The intervals between the peak temperature of each of the four past interglacials and the beginning of the precipitous drop that marks the end of each interglacial are 5000, 3000, 2000 and 7000 years respectively, an average of 4000 years, while the peak of the current interglacial was 9500 years ago, indicating that we are 5500 years overdue for the next ice age.
It seems to me that, given this evidence from the ice cores, it was not unreasonable to conclude that we are 5000 years overdue for another ice age. And I adduced one of many possible papers in the literature that has explicitly considered the question why the overdue ice age has not yet occurred.
As I said earlier, no doubt there are papers that disagree with the ice cores, in which event there is a conflict of testimony, mouldiharlani is entitled to his view and I am entitled to mine. But in these circumstances it is plainly inappropriate for him petulantly to shriek, troll-like, over and over and over again, that I am wrong. Time to grow up, mate.
jauntycyclist says:
April 24, 2014 at 2:05 am
so when people say ‘you are not a climate scientist’ which bit of unscientific thinking is that?
Do i need to be a mechanical engineer to say the car won’t start? Or a chemist to say the milk is off? should probability phds be the only ones allowed to play the lottery or cross the road?
————————————-
You can always try:
”
Who is to be the judge of skill?
Presumably, either the expert, or the nonexpert.
But it cannot be the nonexpert, for he does not know what constitutes skill (otherwise he would be an expert).
Nor can it be the expert, becuase that would make him a party to the dispute, and hence untrustwworthy to be a judge in his own case.
Therefore nobody can be the judge of skills.
”
-Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians, p29-31 (Loeb, Trans R.G. Bury)
And if that dsoesn’t work: CAGW is a hypothesis. A hypothesis isn’t a sound basis for an argument from expert opinion.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 24, 2014 at 2:25 pm
Glad to see you grow up enough at least to try to respond, for which I thank you. But I can see why you were so reluctant, since you’re plainly wrong.
“The three previous interglacials, according to the reference I gave, had endured at or above today’s temperatures for 9000, 5000 and 8000 years respectively, an average of 7300 years. On that basis, we are around 4000 years overdue for temperatures to start heading south.”
This conclusion is unwarranted. We aren’t overdue, even on the basis of this way of looking at interglacials because they vary so much. You also conveniently overlook the longest one, which is also the one our current interglacial most resembles in terms Milankovitch parameters, MIS 11. Two of those you cite (MIS 7 & 9) were unusually short, in one case because it was the double dip I cited, while MIS 5 is of course the Eemian, longer & warmer than the Holocene.
“The intervals between the peak temperature of each of the four past interglacials and the beginning of the precipitous drop that marks the end of each interglacial are 5000, 3000, 2000 and 7000 years respectively, an average of 4000 years, while the peak of the current interglacial was 9500 years ago, indicating that we are 5500 years overdue for the next ice age.”
As noted, they all have different patterns, but peak warmth is usually early on. The Holocene had a lengthy Optimum, so it’s hard to say when during its thousands of years was the hottest.
Maybe your conclusion was “not unwarranted” based upon ice cores, but that’s hardly the same as the bold, unadorned assertion you made. Students of interglacials compare them based upon orbital mechanics, insolation & other objective parameters, not an average of the three most recent ones, which in any case is an insufficient number given the length of the record & variations in orbital mechanics.
So on these bases, I’d say that a verdict of “wrong” is abundantly warranted. Calling me a troll & refusing to discuss the issue was IMO equally unjustified. You may think your statement was not very relevant to your argument & in passing, but it seemed more important than that to me. If wanting you to justify your position on a scientific basis is trolling, then how dare anyone ever question you?
But thanks for your response, however belated. It beats simply being dismissed & called names. I apologize for being nastier than possibly necessary to encourage the courtesy of a reply on an issue which seems relevant to me.
Hope you mend soon & are able to enjoy the heather in the finest Holocene weather, long may it wave.
Mr Lee, who does not know how to quit when he’s behind, continues to suggest, on no evidence whatsoever, that I had said or implied that math and science are the same thing. A logician of my experience, famous for exercising care in the choice and definition of terms, would hardly do anything so daft, and it is silly of Mr Lee to pretend I did.
Next, he makes the startling and manifestly false statement that I had given examples from science only, and not from mathematics, to show that mathematical conjectures, just like physical hypotheses, are sometimes falsifiable empirically.
Sigh! I began with Pythagoras’ Theorem (applied mathematics in a physical plane); I discussed the Wiles theorem (pure mathematics), explaining that a single counter-example empirically discovered would have been sufficient to overthrow what was for 350 years a conjecture; I mentioned the Goldbach conjecture (pure mathematics), explaining that a single empirically-discovered counter-example would be sufficient to falsify the conjecture, which remains a conjecture to this day; and, finally, I referred Mr Lee to W.W. Rouse Ball for many further conjectures (all of them in pure mathematics: there’s an interesting one by Fermat concerning the Mersenne primes) that were overthrown when a single counter-example was empirically discovered.
It is really not very adult of Mr Lee to go on shouting that conjectures in mathematics are not capable of empirical falsification and that my math education is lacking, when I am able to produce all these examples from mathematics, and he is not able even to recognize that they are from mathematics rather than from the physical sciences.
As many other trolls here have found out to their cost, it is unwise of him to assume that he knows more math than I do because he has a doctorate in whatever he has a doctorate in and I have a Cambridge Masters in, among other things, the early history and philosophy of mathematics and science.
One concludes that Mr Lee is either incapable of reading or incapable of comprehending what he reads or incapable of telling the truth, or perhaps all three. He is certainly incapable of keeping a civil tongue in his head, which is why I have dealt with him rather more severely than I should normally do, though far less severely than his combined arrogance, ignorance and dishonesty deserve.
In my previous two short comments about his attempted dishonesties, I did not, as he now asserts, claim he had changed what I had said. I simply showed what had been said upthread together with what Mr Lee had said had been said upthread. I left it to readers to decide for themselves whether Mr Lee was telling the truth.
Since he now invites comment on the matter by being unwise enough to raise it again, on both the occasions I highlighted – one in each of two previous short and pointed postings – he was manifestly not telling the truth, as is painfully evident to all who have read the telling side-by-side comparisons I provided. Checkmate, one feels.
My objection to LM’s paper at the top began with his objection to: ‘Next, the Professor says that in the scientific method “no theory ever can be proven beyond ‘reasonable doubt’”. ‘ Without re-fighting my original objection to his switch from science to math to “correct” the professor, let me note that LM cited Popper several times in his arguments with me. So, I know LM will be pleased to see me note that Popper held “A theory in the empirical sciences can never be proven, but it can be falsified . . . ” see http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-4072388266 and many other places.
So, Popper, who LM cites against my arguments, agrees more with the professor than does LM.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 24, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Not that I consider advanced degrees dispositive, but I’d point out that Oxbridge & Dublin MAs aren’t awarded in the same way as in other universities in the world. An applicant supplicates for promotion from BA to MA after seven years, unless the process has changed since when I was up.
IMO there’s nothing wrong with this system, as it recognizes continued work in the relevant field. In your case, the Eternity Puzzle certainly qualifies, although it came along more than seven years after your leaving Cambridge.
IMO what matters is what a disputant can support by evidence & reason, not based upon an argument from authority, as you have so well expressed in the past.
Millipedeharlani continues to whine, this time to the effect that I had not previously answered his assertion that I had been incorrect to make what was a passing reference to our being 5000 years overdue for a new Ice Age. I had of course referred him over and over again to Petit et al., 1999, and had outlined what the relevant graph showed. He had nevertheless continued to shriek that I was wrong, rather than reading the paper, and to do so in the most inappropriately impolite terms.
He now realizes I was largely justified in what I said, and is reduced to picking nits to the effect that we don’t know when the Holocene climate optimum was. Well, Petit shows it as having been about 9500 years ago, and nearly all reconstructions show that there was considerably greater warmth than today between 6000 and 10,000 years ago.
And it is no good his wittering on about how long the Eemian interglacial was, because I had made it plain from the outset that I was dating the interglacials not from the glacial minima but from the onset of temperatures at or above today’s – i.e., 11,400-11,700 years ago. The Eemian interglacial, like it or not, did not endure anything like that long at or above today’s temperatures. My reason for this choice of measurement was that if temperatures start to fall precipitately below today’s, which is what has happened in each of the past four interglacials, billions will die, for we are entirely unprepared.
And, contrary to what he says, the normal pattern in recent interglacials is for temperature to fall sharply following the interglacial maximum temperature. The present interglacial is in this as in many other respects untypical.
Be that as it may, it was thoroughly discourteous of muddlefuddleharlani to attack me for being wrong when he had not bothered to check the references I gave. The best he can now maintain is that the authorities are divided on the matter, but that of course allows me the freedom to rely on the ice cores rather than on the less satisfactory reconstructions that are available.
We do not really know what triggers interglacials: new theories come along every minute. But of all the potentially catastrophic threats Man faces, from asteroids via supervolcanoes or Canary-Island land-slips and megatsunamis to self-inflicted nuclear holocaust, potentially the most damaging is the onset of another Ice Age. And all the steps we are taking to try to make global warming go away are exactly the wrong steps to be taking as we prepare for the next Ice Age.
Let us hope that the Maunder Minimum – a 70-year drop-off in solar activity unprecedented in the entire Holocene (Solanki et al., 2005) – was not the first flicker of a hitherto-unsuspected cycle of solar decline that will drive us – perhaps even in our own lifetimes – into the next Ice Age.
LM continues to fail in distinguishing math and science. Math is logic and counter examples are used in math, but what LM fails to understand is that no theorem properly derived in math is overthrown by experiment or observation. The same isn’t true in physics.
Basically, mathematics isn’t subject to the scientific method no matter how LM wishes to insult me, twist his arguments or make vague references to authorities such as Popper which LM appears to not understand either.
Of course, LM could cite a modern mathematician talking how they are conducting experiments to refute a math theorem — not some unproved conjecture.
Mr Lee continues to wade ever further out of his depth. He crows that Popper said that in the empirical sciences a theory can never be proven, though it can be disproven. That, of course, is central to the Popperian notion of the scientific method, which – in the absence of definitive proof – proceeds by attempted falsification in accordance with the algorithm that I had already described in some detail upthread.
But what Professor Lovejoy had said is that no theory in the physical sciences can be proven “beyond reasonable doubt”. That is not the same thing as definitive proof. It is of course possible to demonstrate various matters in physics beyond reasonable doubt, though, as Professor Lewin used to say, every result in physics is based on measurement, and every measurement is subject to some uncertainty, so every result in physics – if only for this reason – is subject to some uncertainty.
And it is possible, albeit rarely, to reach what is all but indistinguishable from definitive demonstration even in the empirical sciences, in those areas where theory and mathematics can be brought to bear. For instance, Stefan determined the fundamental equation of radiative transfer empirically, but his Austrian pupil Ludwig Boltzmann was able to demonstrate it quasi-definitively by reference to Planck’s blackbody law. Likewise, the Clausius-Clapeyron relation is quasi-definitively demonstrated (though the IPCC scandalously misapplies it).
These and many other results in physics are indeed demonstrated “beyond reasonable doubt”.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 24, 2014 at 3:12 pm
Being scientific is not whining.
You were not largely right. The paper was a totally insufficient basis upon which to reach the conclusion you did. How can you cherry pick three out of so many interglacials & claim we’re overdue based upon the average of such a small & specifically unrepresentative & relevant sample? You left out the fourth most recent one, the peak warmth of which occurred tens of thousands of years before its end. What does that do to your average? As a student of statistics, I’d have thought the problem with your methodology would have been obvious.
I did check your reference & found in it no basis for your conclusion. That’s why I wanted an explanation of how you could have reached this conclusion, when it ignores MISs 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, etc.
The whining & whinging is your continued obfuscating & distracting from the simple main point. There is no valid statistical or physical basis for claiming that the end of the Holocene is overdue. As I’ve repeatedly observed apparently without your grasping this salient fact, the Holocene’s orbital mechanics most resemble MIS 11, which means the Holocene very well could last tens of thousands of years more. Or it might not, since the correspondence isn’t 100% & other factors might enter in anyway. But what you are most certainly unjustified to assert is that we are overdue.
I share your concern that we might be descending into another Maunder or even just Dalton Minimum. The ~3000 year trend in global T is down, with each warm period peak & cool period trough lower than the preceding since at least the inaptly named Minoan Warm Period, if not indeed the Holocene Optimum, which ended about 5000 years ago. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet quit retreating three millennia ago.
This is why I think the Holocene is not going to be a repeat of the Hoxnian (to use the British appellation for MIS 11), but there are important arguments against this pessimistic (for humanity) conjecture of mine. For starters, some Milankovitch parameters argue against it. No one is sure however which orbital mechanical parameter will rule, along with other factors.
But the upshot is, your methodology for concluding that the end of the Holocene is overdue is not even shoddy. It’s completely inadequate, hence you were “wrong”. All you had to do to recognize this fact is factor just one more interglacial into your average, the one that happens to be the most relevant, as I kept trying to help you to realize.
Mathematics of Reality
Mathematics versus RealityJohn
Mr Lee has now been brought to the point where he recognizes that the example conjectures that I had cited as having been refuted by the empirical identification of counter-examples were mathematical conjectures and not science conjectures, as he had previously and either ignorantly or mendaciously asserted. Strike one.
He now accepts that “counter-examples are used in math”. Strike two.
And he now also accepts that a single counter-example can refute a conjecture by contradiction. Strike three. Inch by inch, he progresses towards a working knowledge of the elementary philosophy of science.
However, his ignorance of mathematics is so profound that he is unaware that the search for counter-examples of a conjecture is by definition an empirical process. One can even use experimental equipment – the obvious example being the calculating-engine, or computer – to assist in the search.
Indeed, some modern proofs in mathematics – the demonstration of the four-color theorem being a good example – depend for their success on considering all possible relevant conformations of a network by an exhaustive empirical search by computer.
Anyone sufficiently well versed in modern mathematical developments would know this, and would also know that a lively debate rages between the purists, who would prefer an entirely inductive or deductive process of demonstration, and the modernists, who are prepared to use brute-force empirical methods in an attempt to prove or to disprove a theorem.
But, as I have already tried to explain to the wilfully obtuse Mr Lee, whether the method of settling a conjecture in math or a hypothesis in physics is empirical or theoretical the scientific method is applicable to both disciplines. The iterative algorithm that he will find in Popper, GP TT EE GP …, is manifestly and by its definition and its nature as applicable to conjectures in mathematics as it is to hypotheses in the physical sciences. I have given plenty of examples from early and from modern mathematics.
In mathematics, there is a better chance of terminating the algorithm with a proof or disproof than in the physical sciences, and many proofs in mathematics are more definitive than in the physical sciences, but in both disciplines the possibility of proof beyond reasonable doubt exists, and the iterative process of speculation and falsification and the crabwise accumulation of knowledge in the hope of attaining or refining such a proof are very much the same for the one as for the other.
Mathematics is applied reasoning about something that is physical.
The physical things it reasons about are: ‘quantities of things’; their ‘measurement validation process’; and ‘relations between quantities of things’.
Mathematics is systematically applied and integrated into a body of knowledge.
Therefore mathematics is a physical science. And it is as much of a physical science as is physics and is just as physical as any physics proposition.
The notion of mathematics as an abstract or ‘ideal’ science is a kind of Platonic imagery.
The notion of mathematics as an art is valid in some very limit respect as it is valid in some very limited respect that physics is an art.
John
Miaowmiawoharlani, in his routinely discourteous fashion, continues to perpetrate the elementary high-school errors for which he is becoming notorious. He says, for instance, that I “cherry-picked” three interglacials. No, I took the most recent three, for the following reasons:
1. The most recent interglacials are more likely to indicate what is likely to happen today than earlier interglacials.
2. The resolution of the ice-cores is better for the recent than for the earlier interglacials, and the problems of both resolution and gas diffusion are less severe.
3. The astronomical conditions are likely to be closer to today’s conditions than in earlier periods.
4. The conformation of the continents, the distribution of ice sheets and other terrestrial factors are likely to be closer to today’s conditions than in earlier periods.
5. The second of my two tests would be little affected by the inclusion of the fourth interglacial, but the resolution in that part of the data was very poor and the record was incomplete.
And let us put this in perspective, something that mumblebumbleharlani is not good at. I made a single, glancing reference to our being 5000 years overdue for a descent into the next ice age. I did so on the basis of my knowledge of the ice-core data, for which Petit et al. is an important original source. And that paper provides more than enough evidence to justify what was no more than polite support for a point made by a commenter.
For heaven’s sake, do try to keep things in proportion. You’ve already been called out by other commenters for having been gratuitously, disproportionately impolite. Iif you’re obsessed with previous interglacials, write a scientific paper about them rather than blubbing and sniveling here. More perspective, more science, more courtesy, and less prejudice, please.
Mr Whitman makes an interesting point about applied mathematics being a physical science. At the very least, it is the lingua franca of the physical sciences. Of course, there is pure mathematics too – perhaps the highest exercise of the human intellect.
Monckton of Brenchley: But what Professor Lovejoy had said is that no theory in the physical sciences can be proven “beyond reasonable doubt”. That is not the same thing as definitive proof. It is of course possible to demonstrate various matters in physics beyond reasonable doubt, though, as Professor Lewin used to say, every result in physics is based on measurement, and every measurement is subject to some uncertainty, so every result in physics – if only for this reason – is subject to some uncertainty.
That is astute. I had missed the significance of the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt”. I think it has been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that Newton’s laws with his gravitational law are really, really accurate, as they have been successfully relied upon in the guidance of interplanetary probes and circumnavigating satellites. By the late 19th century it was known that the tiny inaccuracy in the model of the precession of the perihelion of Mercury was beyond measurement error (what we now call “statistically significant”), and then Einstein’s model produced a much smaller approximation error (and without a consistent bias, if I remember aright.)
I think that it has been demonstrated “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the bias in the GCM models of global mean temperature render them useless for policy and planning purposes.
oops, “bias” should “render” not “renders.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 24, 2014 at 4:27 pm
“1. The most recent interglacials are more likely to indicate what is likely to happen today than earlier interglacials.”
You can’t be serious. Do you really believe this? The three most recent interglacials are less likely to indicate what is going to happen. In case you haven’t noticed, glacial cycles are largely under orbital mechanical control, which varies in such a way that the more recent configurations are less likely to be applicable. That’s why those who study them for a living know that MIS 11, the one you so studiously avoided, is a better simulacrum than the Eemian, or especially the two unusual interglacials that preceded it.
“2. The resolution of the ice-cores is better for the recent than for the earlier interglacials, and the problems of both resolution and gas diffusion are less severe.”
The resolution can’t possibly be so much better for MIS 9 than MIS 11 to make up for such a huge difference in duration.
“3. The astronomical conditions are likely to be closer to today’s conditions than in earlier periods.”
Wrong, as even you should know. Solar output gains only about one percent per 110 million years, & the grand orbital mechanical arrangements repeat on long cycles.
“4. The conformation of the continents, the distribution of ice sheets and other terrestrial factors are likely to be closer to today’s conditions than in earlier periods.”
The continents have not moved significantly over the past million years. Glaciations have varied in extent based largely upon the very orbital mechanical parameters that now have come around so that the Holocene more resembles the Hoxnian than MIS 7 or 9.
“5. The second of my two tests would be little affected by the inclusion of the fourth interglacial, but the resolution in that part of the data was very poor and the record was incomplete.”
MIS 11 record is just about as good as for MIS 9. Try to find a reputable source which hasn’t shown that the Hoxnian was very long.
“And let us put this in perspective, something that mumblebumbleharlani is not good at. I made a single, glancing reference to our being 5000 years overdue for a descent into the next ice age. I did so on the basis of my knowledge of the ice-core data, for which Petit et al. is an important original source. And that paper provides more than enough evidence to justify what was no more than polite support for a point made by a commenter.”
No, it doesn’t. The mere fact that adding one more interglacial completely changes the average should show you that.
“For heaven’s sake, do try to keep things in proportion. You’ve already been called out by other commenters for having been gratuitously, disproportionately impolite. Iif you’re obsessed with previous interglacials, write a scientific paper about them rather than blubbing and sniveling here. More perspective, more science, more courtesy, and less prejudice, please.”
As you have been. Frequently. You could definitely do with more science & courtesy & less prejudice. Can you possibly be this unaware of your own behavior. I know that like Madonna & Lady Gaga your schtick is self-promotion by outrageousness, but that doesn’t play well on a science blog, although it has its place in public performances.
LM’s claims about what I’ve said are being twisted by him faster than I can respond. So, let me note, for now, his new claim: “It is of course possible to demonstrate various matters in physics beyond reasonable doubt,” With this statement LM has just left the realm of physics for that of religion. Even LM’s cited Popper would not agree with this one. Perhaps I should be kind and just believe LM is again confusing math with physics, but he claims not.
Physics is no more beyond “reasonable doubt” today than it was in Newton’s day and every part of it is a vulnerable to being cast aside by measurement or observation as Newton’s law of gravity.
LM and Whitman are wrong that applied mathematics is a science. Though many physicists like to think they are mathematicians it depends on the rigor of their mathematics whether they are. The only difference between pure and applied mathematics is the source of the problem attacked.
milodonharlani says:
April 24, 2014 at 5:15 pm
The three most recent interglacials are less likely to indicate what is going to happen.
============
nonsense.
Monckton of Brenchley says:
April 24, 2014 at 3:41 pm
in both disciplines the possibility of proof beyond reasonable doubt exists
=============
correct. absolute proof remains a problem in an infinite universe. beyond reasonable doubt depends on how reasonable your doubts are.