Story submitted by Eric Worrall
How do we prove climate alarmists are wrong? Let us count the ways
If the temperature goes up, this is just what the models predicted – watch out because …
…soon it will get a lot worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
If the temperature goes down, the deep ocean is swallowing the heat – even though the heat can’t be measured, we know it must be there, because that is what the climate models tell us. Global warming prevails! http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pacific-ocean-and-climate-change-pause/
If the global temperature crashes, its because global warming induced melting of arctic ice shut down the ocean currents. http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/
If the snow disappears, this is just as models predicted – snowfall is a thing of the past. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
If there is an unusually heavy snowfall, this is just as models predicted – global warming is increasing the moisture content of the atmosphere, which results in increased snow cover. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/10/2010-snowmageddon-explained-sans-global-warmingclimate-change/
If there is a drought, that is because of global warming. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/21/causes-of-midwest-drought-2012_n_1690717.html
Except of course, when global warming causes heavy rainfall. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/13/global-warming-the-incompetent-politicians-excuse/
No matter what the observation, no matter how the world changes, we can never falsify alarmist climate theories. Any possible change, any possible observation, can always be explained by anthropogenic global warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/22/occams-razor-and-climate-change/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dear Professor Ryan,
When a late Venezualan Socialist Dictator turns up at Copenhagen in December 2009, & stands before 4000 delegates at a UN meeting on Climate Change, & proclaims “Capitalism has caused Climate Change!”, & he gets a standing ovation, we know just how scientific the science of AGW really is! When African dictator Robert Mugabe turns up & stands before the same rent-a-mob, & proclaims that “Western Countries have caused Climate Change!”, & he gets a standing ovation, the science is definitely settled!!!! If the “final solution” to manmade global warming is the creation & establishment of a Global Government (as French President Mitterand admitted after the Kyoto agreement at the time), run by the UN, on Socialist lines, an overly bureaucratic, un-elected, undemocratic, unaccountable, & unsackable, GUVMENT, then we know just how settled the science really is! I have nothing against true Socialists, they want equality all round, it just depends upon who the OCD manipulating control freaks are who claim they’re Socialists who end up running things, enriching themselves at everyone else’s expense! Tony Blair is doing very nicely thank you, & he’s a lawyer by training, go figure!
Please provide evidence of the problem we are supposed to have, once you have fully explained the exact range of Natural Variability of the Earth’s Climate, with a totally complete & infallible explanation of how the Sun works, & it’s small & or large affects upon the Earth’s Climate, with absolutely no “may”, “could”, “possibly”, “potentially”, “likely”, & with absolutely no “unknown”, “uncertainty”, & “just don’t knows”, please don’t leave anything out, & I will listen to any argument you wish to put forward, willingly! Long live the bloodsucking lawyers & the Precautionary Principle!
Yours sincerely
Alan Hannaford, CEng, MIStructE
” Not quite true I’m afraid. We know the earth is absorbing more energy than it is emitting back to space. This is observational evidence and of that there is no reasonable doubt. By the law of the conservation of energy it is going somewhere. “
Of course it never occurs to those grant funded scientists that there may be an error in their measurement…
Prof Ryan, you say “We know the earth is absorbing more energy than it is emitting back to space. This is observational evidence and of that there is no reasonable doubt”
How do we know this? When, where and with what precision were the measurements made, and are the measurements continuing as we speak.
Evidence of the Earth’s Radiation Imbalance (ERI) seems to lacking according to NASA. “ERI is too small to be measured by previous, current or planned future space assets,” says co-investigator Warren Wiscombe, a climate scientist at Goddard.” here. http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/2013/131210.asp
Professor Ryan. I am not an academic. However, I do have a good working knowlege of a thing known as the scientific method. And, correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it, for any scientific theory to remain valid, it MUST conform to the strict rules of that scientific method.
Your being a professor means that you should be very very well aware of the scientific method, but the piece you wrote above strongly suggests that you have forgotten it.
I only say this out of respect, but in applying my area of expertise, martial arts, I can tell you from experience that I have seen lots of people with black belts who practice very shoddy martial arts.
They begin as a white belt. they learn the beginners Katas (a series of martial techniques applied in a pattern to demonstrate martial ability) and as they progress up through the ranks to try to master martial arts, they literally forget to apply what they learn at the higher levels, to the “beginners stuff”. A really competent martial artist will always go back and re-learn the beginners stuff, applying new knowlege and skill to that, to master those beginners techniques as well.
I feel too many academics get too focused on the intricate, complexity of their research study that they forget to apply the most basic, simple test. Does this still comply with the scientific method?
Clearly, in climate science where observation does NOT match prediction, the sceintific method is not being applied, or if it does, you are not asking “why?” or “Is this still correct?” or “What else could be causing this?”. IF there is a problem with some observations not matching, ie the “energy imbalance is not showing up in the global temperature measurements” then you MUST question the assumption about the energy imbalance. Is it being observed or measured correctly? are the global temperature measurements being measured correctly?
There are so many assumptions being made, which may be wholly incorrect. The whole CO2 driven global warming hypothesis, is built upon a massive collection of assumptions which are then modelled in many different ways, which may be utterly incorrect too. Then scientists (who have a financial stake) in promoting the alarm, are placing way way WAY too much certainty on the output of those assumption based models. The earth has not warmed for almost 2 decades in a direct contradiction of the hypothesis, so alarm funded scientists are gripping desperately to the “energy imbalance” assumption.
It is time to look again at all the assumptions, because it is clear that the scientific method demands that the actual observation of the earth NOT warming up, trumps the hypothetical models upon which the false certainty of global warming alarm, currently rests.
The energy balance is total energy in V total energy out as measured from space, Within the system there is no ”balance” and this causes weather as the energy tries to balance
There are a lot of simpler questions you can ask.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/why-would-anyone-believe-a-single-word-coming-out-of-their-mouth/
Pointman
Eric Worrall pulled his punches. I mean by this that he made his point that AGW cannot be falsified without saying what this signifies.
Karl Popper said, “The criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations.”
.
Richard Feynman said something like this in different words, “No matter how smart you are, who you are or how beautiful your theory, if data doesn’t support your theory, it is wrong.”
I prefer Karl Popper’s elaboration. In his Conjectures and Refutations (1963), Popper said
“The problem which troubled me at the time was neither, “When is a theory true?” nor “When is a theory acceptable?” my problem was different. I wished to distinguish between science and pseudo-science; knowing very well that science often errs, and that pseudoscience may happen to stumble on the truth.”
By the criterion of Karl Popper, much of climate science is pseudoscience.
Here’s a new one:Latest excuse: global warming causes no global warming
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/latest_excuse_global_warming_causes_no_global_warming/
No point attacking Professor Bob Ryan on what he wrote because he is essentially correct. More CO2, more warming. Maybe there are negative feedbacks and maybe they manage to reduce the effects of CO2 instead of enhance them. It’s possible. Although it’s likely that the feedbacks are at least slightly positive. But that’s not the point. Maybe we get 1.5C of extra warming over the next 100 years, all else being equal. You have to argue that’s a bad thing, which is not an easy thing to do, although the IPCC has tried very hard. In the grand scheme, 1.5C is likely meaningless. We’ve already seen .5C-1C of warming over the last century and all the effects appear to have been positive.
Professor Bob Ryan on August 15, 2014 at 12:50 am
Says: We know the earth is absorbing more energy than it is emitting back to space. This is observational evidence and of that there is no reasonable doubt.
These stetements are quite incorrect.
We can’t and don’t accurately measure the balance between downwelling and upwelling radiation.
We DO measure atmospheric CO2 levels, and we attempt to measure lower atmospheric temperatures world wide, and we very recently have begun measuring a substantial slice of the upper 2000 metres of the oceans with Argo bouys…..
…… And then ‘the imbalance’ is theorized from knowledge of raditive physicsand from those sparse measures, and ‘substantiated’ from modelled but largely unknown feedback and requlatory mechanisms and their interactions.
Will Nitschke:
The first two sentences in your post at August 15, 2014 at 2:54 am are each wrong.
You begin
People have been correcting – n.b. not “attacking” – Professor Bob Ryan on what he wrote because he is plain wrong. And he did not say, “More CO2, more warming”: in fact, he did not mention CO2.
Please make your points without misrepresenting other people.
Richard
Any professional scientist or engineer can show the models are false just by looking at the energy balance. The key is the false assumption, by Hansen et al in 1981, that OLR comes from a single upper atmosphere source at -18 deg C. That in turn predicts with 360 degree emission, as much down as goes to Space; negative heating in the two-stream approximation.
So the energy balance is 238.5 W/m^2 SW thermalisation + 333 W/m^2 ‘back radiation’** – 238.5 W/m^2 = 333 W/m^2. 100×333/238.5 = 140%: that’s right folks, the scam has existed for 33 years – a 40% increase in energy to the system, a Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd Kind.
They then do fine tuning using c. 30% extra low level cloud albedo in hindcasting. This offsets the extra warming in excess of the imaginary latent heat needed for the ‘hot spot’ and the extra lapse rate warming.
This has been criminal fraud. Leave out the science fraud bit; it was always to boost careers and enrich carbon traders like Gore.
@Will Nitschke: today’s Arctic Ice is near the 1979 – 2000 mean. By 2020, the Arctic will be frozen solid. There is no CO2 – AGW. By 2045 we’ll be -1.5 K and 100s of millions will starve as Canada and northern Europe cease to be able to grow grain.
@ur momisugly feridinant Re: makeup and models Most models also have very little flesh on them.
I am surprised we have not heard that climate is dead, dying or in a coma to explain the pause i warming.
You forgot to mention the most important form of “climate change”, the most prevalent and violent of them all, the only one that in fact exists, namely the one that affects no one but alarmists.
Could you please supply a reference.
Tree rings providing temperature proxies is just like the punch line of the old joke about a CEO interviewing for a CFO. When asked the question, “How do you compute profit?”, the candidate replied “What would you like it to be?” By this gauge, tree rings are perfect!
Obtw, this has been pointed out several times on over the the years and underscores the adage “it’s not what’s reported but what’s repeated”. This is only repeated at sites like WUWT.
Willis did a good post on the difficulties of computing energy imbalance from ocean temperature measurements. According to Willis, amount of heating claimed by James Hansen translates to an ocean temperature change of 0.0016c / year.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/30/losing-your-imbalance/
Even if you convince yourself that one argo float per 100,000 square kilometres (the average area measured by each float) can provide a meaningful representation of the temperature of such a vast area (not to mention volume) of sea water, a precision of 0.0016c / year is beyond credible.
My belief is it will be the fraudulent adjustments to historical temperature records around the world that will eventually bring them undone.
In Australia Jo Nova and her independant team have uncovered substantial evidence that our records have been adjusted to enhance the fraud.
In some sites turning a cooling trend in data to a warming trend.
Probably the biggest expose by her would be that if you were to remove those adjustments.
You would nearly halve the alleged temperature rise of 1.3(C) last century in Australia.
Which in turn would leave our temperature at nothing more than natural temperature variation.
No big deal, except for the billions these fraudsters have pocketed.
the ever-amusing Readfearn has his “facts” to prove a sceptic wrong. the comments tell u a lot about the climate expertise of his readers:
15 Aug: Guardian: Graham Readfearn: Fact check: How Maurice Newman misrepresents science to claim future global cooling
Picking over the climate science denialist claims of Tony Abbott’s top business advisor
Maybe Maurice Newman was hoping nobody would check…
Given we’ve been here before, I’m starting to think that Newman might actually have written some clever computer code that first scrapes climate science denial blogs for conspiracy theories and common misrepresentations and then turns them into 950-words for The Australian newspaper…
When you start to test Maurice Newman’s claims you find the whole case is about as sturdy as a house made of playing cards placed on a poorly constructed raft made of rolled up copies of The Australian floating on the ocean… in a tropical cyclone…
I apologise for the length of this post by the way and some of the overly technical stuff, but every once in a while I think it’s worth picking at the claims made by people in influential positions…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/aug/15/fact-check-how-maurice-newman-misrepresents-science-to-claim-future-global-cooling
“We know the earth is absorbing more energy than it is emitting back to space.”
Absolutely we do NOT know that. It is NOT a ‘fact’ of observation. True, last ‘calculation’ of the earth’s ‘energy budget’ I’ve seen showed a .6 w/m^2 ‘excess’. The only problem with that ‘observation’ is the error range that went along with it —– +- 17 w/m^2. Yes, the error range was roughly 28 times the ‘measurement’, which, as far as I’m concerned, makes it no measurement at all.
Like any religion, it explains all, but predicts nothing.
Monty Python created a whole character, Sir Bedevere the Wise, for the logic the alarmists have now recycled in cAGW. Prof Ryan obliged us a classic example by assuming Earth’s energy to be measurable in all it’s forms at all times. No wonder the alarmists seem to be in a quest of the elusive perpetual motion machine.
More generally speaking, if Earth emitted more heat into the space than it receives, it would be a star and not a planet. So what are these measurements trying to prove exactly?
David Schofield says:
August 15, 2014 at 12:22 am
“Spherical chickens in a vacuum. Says it all”
——————————————————–
Ah ze old phyzics joke…
Well, personally I prefer the ‘phyzics’ joke
Why didn’t the quantum chicken cross the road?
Because he was already on both sides…