Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The paper is Douville et al. (2015) The recent global warming hiatus: What is the role of Pacific variability? [paywalled]. The abstract reads (my boldface):
The observed global mean surface air temperature (GMST) has not risen over the last 15 years, spurring outbreaks of skepticism regarding the nature of global warming and challenging the upper range transient response of the current-generation global climate models. Recent numerical studies have, however, tempered the relevance of the observed pause in global warming by highlighting the key role of tropical Pacific internal variability. Here we first show that many climate models overestimate the influence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on GMST, thereby shedding doubt on their ability to capture the tropical Pacific contribution to the hiatus. Moreover, we highlight that model results can be quite sensitive to the experimental design. We argue that overriding the surface wind stress is more suitable than nudging the sea surface temperature for controlling the tropical Pacific ocean heat uptake and, thereby, the multidecadal variability of GMST. Using the former technique, our model captures several aspects of the recent climate evolution, including the weaker slowdown of global warming over land and the transition toward a negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Yet the observed global warming is still overestimated not only over the recent 1998–2012 hiatus period but also over former decades, thereby suggesting that the model might be too sensitive to the prescribed radiative forcings.
That’s something you don’t normally see from the climate science community.
[Thanks to blogger Alec aka Daffy Duck for the heads-up.]
An awakening…maybe slow in coming… but an awakening nevertheless.
Slow?, kinda like the morning after a bachelors party, ??? where am I??? I hope it leaves the same headache and foul taste in their mouths.
Nah, it’s just a mistake. I’m sure that Mann, Jones, et al will be furiously emailing each other, trying to get the editor sacked.
Re your comment, asybot:
I actually LOL’d.
“Where am I? What am I doing with a wedding band on my finger? Who the $#@!! is that in bed with me and what is her name!?! What the #@&! happened to global warming?
Whatever happens in Copenhagen and Cancun and Paris, stays in Copenhagen and Cancun and Paris.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
No, don’t hold your breath. However, such concessions are significance, especially over time. If nothing else, the climate wars have taught me the value of patience.
Or will some other CAGW alarmist come along and try to hedge and fudge inconvenient revelation away.
I have always found the term “hiatus” troubling, same with “pause”. This implies that they know that warming will resume, but it’s just a temporary halt. We as skeptics should not accept this implied inevitability as a given. It could very well be a “plateau”. It would be more precise to recognize the flat trend without assuming we know what is coming next. But it’s nice to see that more are at least admitting that the flat trend exists.
Calling it a pause or a hiatus gives away the semantic game, essentially conceding the argument to the global warming crowd. It is logically indefensible. It is far more correct to say that warming has essentially stopped at this time.
So true, luysii.
Unfortunately, there is a bit of peer pressure amongst the genuine scientists, too. You aren’t “cool” these days if you don’t use the mealy-mouthed “pause”/”hiatus” language. Those who use it are under the false impression that such language is “fair and balanced.” Given that there is, so far, NO evidence that CO2 drives climate on earth…,
… the only thing that such language actually is, as you pointed out,
is: inaccurate.
The professional scientists (paid for their work, I mean) HAVE to use such language to keep their jobs.
The highly qualified amateurs (simply means “for the love of,” i.e., not paid) then use it to fit into the scientific community.
Sad, but, true.
Thus, the root of this error is: money (and understandably so, for those whose livelihood depends on cowtowing to the NAS and the like).
But it’s nice to see that more are at least admitting that the flat trend exists
I’m sure the authors will soon be denounced as “flat-earthers”
Mentally ill as well…
Wait until temps start to cool. then it will be called a “bump” or a “blip,” still all they while convinced that the warming will continue.
Sadly you are probably correct, until they quietly move on to the next cause du jour that just so happens to also require world socialism/anti-capitalism/anti-Americanism as the solution, pursued of course with the same religious fervor, shamelessness and condescension.
@ william the next cause “du jour” will be the Geoengineering ( 2 articles on WUWT already!).
There is no satisfactory terminology at this stage, and personally, I see little benefit in getting side tracked over a debate as to what the slow down in warming, hiatus, pause, plateau etc should be called.
When does a plateau become a peak, or merely a step in what is otherwise an upwards projection?
It is only when the data is in for the next 10 to 20 years that we might know how properly to refer to this period.
The important point is the recognition that something is going on these past 15 (or so) years and the implication of that on CO2 sensitivity, future warming and model projections/predictions.
Let’s focus on the science, and let nature shed light on its mysteries.
Hmm, “suggesting” and “might”. Not exactly a bold statement.
If it’s not worth defending don’t say anything in the first place.
I don’t understand your objection. If you’re looking for certainty,, climate science is the last place to look. Which is not a bad thing. The bad thing is pretending otherwise.
It’s generally considered dishonest to overstate certainty. Way I think of it is this: science is the practice of becoming incrementally less wrong about our perceptions of reality than we were before. When I see “bold” statements in science, they actually come across as less credible than more.
You do too. What if I told you that the science of AGW is settled?
Nice double-bind you’ve set up here, hmm?
… or what pokerguy just said. Amen.
What if I told you that the science of AGW is settled?
It is, isn’t it?
Only according to politicians and certain activists who aren’t given to speaking in nuance. Doesn’t help when the opposition has a penchant for out-of-context quoting and creative interpretation. Which is everyone by the way, but I do have my own allegiances of course.
No Brandon, going full flappy hands about “nuance” and blaming politicians and activists won’t help.
The problem isn’t the degree of warming. The problem is the very claim of warming from CO2. The problem is claiming that adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere would reduce it’s ability to cool our solar heated oceans.
At the very foundation of the entire AGW hoax is a hideous mistake that can never be erased. Climastrologists treated the oceans as a near blackbody not an extreme SW selective surface. This means no warming from CO2. Ever.
Climastrologists claimed CO2 caused global warming. They got it utterly wrong. Claims of “nuance” just ain’t gonna cut it for a fist-biting mistake this big.
Konrad,
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_mon.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ico2_annual.png
Your “theory” appears to be the one with issues.
Brandon Gates
February 12, 2015 at 3:46 pm
/////////////////////////////////////////////
So sorry Brandon, you fail. Ocean temps have not risen sufficiently to account for the Trenbertian missing heat.
The oceans are a UV/SW/SWIR selective surface. If you had any understanding of what this meant, you would know that climastrologists totally underestimated the effect of cloud cover changes (which you avoid showing) and component TSI variation.
What solar radiation penetrates deepest into our oceans? UV. What solar radiation varies most between solar cycles? UV.
The oceans are an extreme SW selective surface. All of your inane AGW hoax rides on the assumption that they can be assumed to be a near blackbody.
If you claim that climastrologists did not claim that the oceans would freeze without DWLWIR you would be lying. If you claim that Climastrologists did not claim 255K for surface without radiative atmosphere you would be lying. If you claim that the oceans are a “near blackbody”not a SW selective surface (as climastrologists do) you would be lying. If you claim (as climastrologists do) that incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool you would be lying. If you claim you can use Stefan-Boltzmann equations on a material SW illuminated, SW translucent and IR opaque you would be lying.
Step up to the plate and have a swing Brandon. Are the oceans an extreme SW selective surface, or a near blackbody.
Simple physics question, simple answer.
Oceans an extreme SW selective surface or near blackbody?
There’s only one right answer Brandon. You got a 50/50 chance 😉
Konrad,
The subject isn’t Kevin E.’s missing heat, but your “theory” that solar irradiance explains warming of the oceans.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_mon.png
No secular trend from 1950 to 2008.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
Secular trend from 1955 to present. You lose.
The balance of your attempts to divert attention away from your “theory” with smoke and mirrors mercifully ignored.
No Brandon, you fail again. You tried diversion and avoided answering my direct question “are the oceans a near blackbody or an extreme SW selective surface”. This was of course the primary question raised by my very first comment on this thread.
Let me trash those diversions. First your little Alinsky effort with “your “theory””. Alinsky techniques don’t work on blogs, everyone is an individual. That’s why warmist blogs have to resort to constant censorship, their old leftist techniques don’t work on the web. Besides, the Alinsky techniques never work on me, after all I work as a contractor in design and engineering. I get paid to challenge consensus and groupthink. The result is engineering awards, and unique work exhibited in technology museums. I just laugh at commentators like you and “Trick” who used to bleat about “Konrad only” physics. (besides most of my experiments were already run back in 1965 at Texas A&M)
And the rest?
The subject isn’t Kevin E.’s missing heat, but your “theory” that solar irradiance explains warming of the oceans.
You are right, the subject you avoid is whether the oceans are a near blackbody as climastrologists claim, or an extreme SW selective surface. I only mentioned Trenberth because he is a complete fool who thinks that incident LWIR can slow the cooling rate of water free to evaporatively cool.
No secular trend from 1950 to 2008.
No good showing graphs of TSI, that only varies around 0.1%. Component SI is the issue, not total SI. To a selective surface all watts are not equal, frequency matters.
Secular trend from 1955 to present. You lose.
Care to plot that against cloud cover and UV variance at surface? Thought not -sniggers-
The balance of your attempts to divert attention away from your “theory” with smoke and mirrors mercifully ignored
Yes, you did ignore my simple and direct question “Are the oceans a near blackbody or an extreme SW selective surface?”. I suspect that’s because you fear the correct answer.
When you have enough spine to give your clear and direct answer you could move onto the far more interesting question –
“Given 1bar surface pressure, is the net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere warming or cooling of the oceans?”
Are you capable of answering those two very, very simple questions Brandon, or is it going to be full “flappy hands” again?
Konrad,
I of course noted that your alternative explanation for observed ocean heating (the Sundiddit) doesn’t hold water. Even more bizarre is your claim, “The problem is claiming that adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere would reduce it’s ability to cool our solar heated oceans.”
It would occur to a rational person that adding radiative gasses to the atmosphere would tend to have a cooling effect in both the atmosphere AND oceans which has NOT been observed, and that their argument was licked at that point. Yet you think I still need to answer your questions. Sorry, no thanks.
Except climastrologists, whom you seem to have a particular hard-on for. Does it hurt when you shoot yourself in the foot like that?
Brandon, again and again you fail. Two very basic physics questions that address the very foundation of not just the AGW hypothesis, but the un-proven radiative GHE hypothesis as well. But you go full “flappy hands” and refuse to attempt answering either. That really tells future readers all they need to know about those that supported the hoax doesn’t it Brandon? Faced with real physics questions you squeal and run away.
No Brandon, flappy hands about natural variability won’t work. Nothing in current climate conditions is outside previously observed natural variability, so pointing to meteorological observations can’t answer those simple physics questions, but empirical experiment does. (besides, the observations support the sceptics, as natural warming occurred, OLR increased. When temperatures flat-lined and began to drop, so did OLR.)
Yep, unless you are admitting defeat. Just two very basic physics questions Brandon –
“Are the oceans a near blackbody or an extreme SW selective surface?”
“Given 1 bar pressure, is the net effect of our radiatively cooled atmosphere warming or cooling of the oceans?”
Your clear and direct answers if you dare.
Oh dear, It looks like I own Brandon’s sorry warmulonian butt. Anyone want to trade? I don’t have time for “garage sale” posters taped on light poles. I’m flying interstate every week on design and engineering until now until I surrender.
One warmulonian, totally owned, going way cheap….
Where there’s smoke there’s [fire].
Ok, bad choice of [analogy], but sooner or later even the high priests of CAGW will have to recant their support of climate models tuned to be CO2 sensitive.
First = fire
Damn auto correct
Where there’s fire, there’s CO2.
Which ultimately reveals the nakedness of the eco-emperors. They are actually opposed to combustion, a process necessary to all life on Earth. Also, use of fire is one of the defining aspects of humanity, enabling us to develop into humans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans.
The enviromentalists [sic] see this as the apple of Eden. I salute our ancestors.
Might be? Even missing a few things would still be considered to make it oversensitive.
“the model might be too sensitive to the prescribed radiative forcings“, duh ya think?
What? The models might not 100% accurate? Not precise to 0.00000001degrees? I’m devastated! This destroys the very foundation of my world view. I shall now huddle in a corner, plucking at my sleeve and muttering disconsolately
At least you’re not chewing your fur RoHa
Thanks, Bob.
Yes, this overestimation is key to the failure during the global warming period that ended with the 1998 El Niño. But there are more fundamental problems, like the failure to model the oceans.
Correct. The surface temperature of Earth is nothing close to what is measured as “surface air temperature”. This is settled science of the eighth grade variety. The weight of the atmosphere amounts to the weight of 33 feet of water. Same as the height a suction pump can lift water. The heat in the oceans dwarfs the heat of the atmosphere to the point of insignificance. When climate scientists start talking of missing heat and looking for it in the oceans they are effectively admitting the models are incomplete. It appears that there is an underlying assumption in the models that exchange of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere is of a constant and stable nature. A moments reflection on the meaning of Newton’s Law of Cooling should tell anyone that this would not be true. The science of global warming is settled in the sense that it involves a large array of topics that are well understood, but that doesn’t mean the models have properly assembled the various aspects of the settled science into a cogent whole. There is now ample evidence that the models are incomplete and mistaken. Hence, I don’t deny the science of global warming, I just recognize that the models based on the science are not to be relied on for anything as important as public policy.
It changes nothing.
Because you assume that their goal actually has something to do with global temperatures.
Correct that assumption, and everything else becomes clear.
Does that mean they have to use proscribed radiative forcings instead?
“Outbreaks of scepticism” ???
I also noted this with some amusement. It’s like these climastrologists are praying “they’re just small outbreaks, they can be contained!”
They are standing on the beach wondering why the tide of their hoax is rushing out, oblivious the the building tsunami of public rage that is going to come rushing back in.
This paper will be retracted/corrected shortly and the authors banned to reading weather stations in Siberia. The ones that were abandoned when the USSR fell.
I wouldn’t hold my breath at all, I just got the fundraising magazine sent to alumni and parents of my son’s college, Skidmore College, whose motto is “Creative Thought Matters”, the cover has picture of an Iceberg and the headline says that inside there articles and pictures from Skidmore scientists and artists on how to raise the alarm about climate change. I throw it away. Clearly analytical thought doesn’t matter at Skidmore college.
Tom Trevor
No.
Don’t do that. The people (Big Education) who work for Big Government and Big Science will not find out you threw it away.
Pick it back out of the trash can. (Leave the coffee grounds on it if you wish, but then put it in a plastic bag before mailing.)
Tear it in half. Mail it back to the president of Skidmore. Tell him you will never donate again until they “Think” and no “Emote” their feelings.
But just throwing it away? Doesn’t get their attention. Coffee grounds will.
No, enclose used tea leaves. Reading them might provide better results than the current climate models.
I have a personal face to face lunch meeting tomorrow with a major gifts solicitor from my university. They came to me. The reason is I informed the President and the head of alumni giving in writing that there would not be another dime ever until their unscientific general stance on climate changed, and they did something about the abominable Oreskes hire. Suggest you do something similar. Tough love is sometimes needed. Universities are supposed to teach students how to think for themselves, not indoctrinate them. Climate science is a lot less settled than Newton’s laws.
‘major gifts solicitor’
Is he a lawyer or is he soliciting?
Lee, a she. We will find out tomorrow about the law part. Meanwhile, STFU here and elsewhere. Have you no decency? Want to live vicariously, grab a video game.
You have just proven why I should comment ever less, and when do with more irrefutable evidence and ever less personal ‘english’.
Major etiquete fail on your part. Unforgivable.
So, do you have an alma mater? If so what done as I have and recommend?
Mr. Istvan, I enjoy your posts. They are most informative. Please don’t post less and don’t let the pests deter you!
Rud, English generally defaults to the male pronoun when the person referred to is of unknown gender. Get off your high horse.
The last half of your post is sputtering and incoherent.
There does seem to be a pattern of placing earth-shaking assessments at the ending of climate science abstracts (either way), as though enough scrutiny falls away by that point in the reading to make a difference. Perhaps the tact should be to read from the opposite direction, at least for the low attention span era.
tack
Tact is diplomacy or sensitivity in speech.
Judith Curry has a
post on a Dutch PhD thesis. The guy spent years working with climate models and then concluded that they weren’t suitable for their intended purpose.
Mind you, as the science weakens, the politicians double down on the alarmism. Along with Steve Case and pokerguy, I am not holding my breath.
Curry’s post is a very interesting read.
Did you know that Congress has unanimously voted (left, right and center) that employers will be exempt from the various laws of ObamaCare with regards to returning veterans? I’m not sure if they realize it, but this is a concession that the ObamaCare laws hinder employment. If you are going to do that for veterans, then why not minorities? If then for minorities, then why not the disabled? Citizens? Non-citizens? … no wait… why not do it for everyone? A small concession can be a toehold for the counter-argument that cascades into a collapse for your entire position.
Similarly, this small concession should cascade into a big problem for CAGW science.
I realize of course, that both of these examples assume that people are paying attention and willing to let logic overrule dogma. That would be fatal assumption, so probably best to just plan for a national health care system and crushing global warming regulations on our economy.
What that means is that Veterans who already have VA coverage won’t count towards the total number of employees that a business hires to trigger the mandate. So a employer with 50 employees has to provide health care coverage but if one of them is a veteran receiving VA coverage the employer doesn’t have to provide coverage for any of its employees. That could make the veterans very unpopular with their fellow employees!
Or it means they can provide a better, cheaper plan that doesn’t include all the Fed mandated bells and whistles.
I would think that it would make the whole Obamacare boondoggle would be unpopular with all their employees.
That after all is what has raised the cost of medical care and insurance, beyond the ability of small companies to afford it for any of their employees. And it certainly has put a brick wall in the path of hiring any employees you can get along without.
When you tax something; you get less of it. When you tax it prohibitively, you make it prohibitive for anybody.
I just got a note from my insurance company telling me that come next billing period, my insurance will increase from $1281 per 6 months, up to $14, 381.59 per six months.
That’s affordability for you !
Bob, there is a partial workaround to the GRL paywall. Douville presented this finding at a Max Planck Institute workshop, indicating a paper was in preparation. The link to the presentation is:
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/atmosphaere/WCRP_Grand_Challenge_Workshop/presentations/GC_Douville.pdf
See page 17. They diddled SST per Kosaka and Xie (2013), and then added an ENSO wind diddle per England (2014), and the model still ran far too hot. Hence the last sentence of the abstract.
Note: both papers were seeking explanations of the pause. The England paper is particularly ridiculous. See essay Unsettling Science in my book for details.
Of course CNRM-CM5 still ran too hot, because parameterized to best hind cast from 1975 to 2005 per the CMIP5 ‘near term’ experimental design with an attribution assumption of all GHG and no natural variability.
Regards
Forgot to mention. The rest of the presentation is an even worse indictment of CMIP5, and from the inside. Clouds, precipitation…the complete fail laid bare visually by a CMIP5 modeler rising to the fail challenge. Pass the word. And, the link is good.
Someone should do a laymen’s version of that, Rud. Like you, maybe?
When an IPCC report has a temp graph without the extreme top temp projections, the end of CAGW will be near. Each of these studies implies this modification, but none make the implication explicitly. It should already have been done.
There is so much riding on the IPCC CAGW narrative, I think the IPCC will be absorbed into some other agency with a different style of report before any climbdown from CAGW will happen. There will never be a public admission of error. The farce will just fade away and become a non-pc subject of discussion. Everyone involved will have “meant well” and be immune from criticism. Like at the end of witchcraft: burning and stoning of skeptics will be remembered as an unfortunate and rare aberration of “other people”.
The global warming alarm has been successfully transmuted into any “extreme” weather event. “Global” is now whatever is im your backyard. True global changes are no longer necessary for the narrative.
The IPCC is clueless. The GHG effect is the result of the climate not the cause and this wil become more apparent as this decade proceeds.
They are full of it.
“Moreover, we highlight that model results can be quite sensitive to the experimental design.”
Did I miss something – an experiment, maybe?
Doug Proctor – my backyard is full of lovely and very cold snow. Headed back to double digits -F this weekend. Gotta reload my fire carbon (ash and maple).
What do they mean by “observed”?
New here. Great site! I am not a scientist (but I did stay in a Holiday Inn once) and don’t believe in AGW. There is a person that goes by the handle ‘Icarus’ that goes to many sites that have articles on AGW advocating it as an ABSOLUTE fact! Has he ever been here to ague his case. I know there are very knowledgeable people here who could refute some of the garbage he spouts.
George S.,
There was an “Icarus62” who used to post here, but I don’t recall him commenting since last year. That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often.
Icarus62 was last seen posting on this thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-extent-sets-new-record-pierces-20-million-square-kilometer-barrier
[Use CNTL+F to find his comments.] He also posted on the following threads, among others:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/18/open-thread-17
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/13/prof-bob-carter-warns-of-unpreparedness-for-global-cooling
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/15/fireworks-in-the-eu-parliament-over-the-pause-in-global-warming
Icarus62 finally gave up here because WUWT readers know the facts, and he can’t pull the wool over their eyes. No doubt he’s trying to do that on other blogs now.
If you want to get his goat, demand that he must post a verifiable, testable measurement quantifying the fraction of AGW, out of total global warming. That measurement must be acceptable to both sides of the debate, and it must show the specific fraction of AGW. How much is that? Is it 50% of all global warming? Is it 3%? Is it 0.02%? No one knows. Why? Because there are no measurements of AGW!
Without measurements quantifying how much of global warming AGW adds [if any], then AGW is just a conjecture. [A conjecture is fair in science. But without verifiable measurements, it is no more than an opinion.]
Have fun! But be careful: Icarus is a slippery eel.
“That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often. ”
Should be
.
“That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he are correcting his misinformation so often. ”
…
English 101 “readers’ is plural, requres “are”
db, Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it! Yeah, he claims that AGW can be proven because it is known what the climate should be minus the extra CO2. What hogwash!! He is slippery for sure. Thanks again, db!!
This is really telling:
“If you want to get his goat, demand that he must post a verifiable, testable measurement quantifying the fraction of AGW, out of total global warming. That measurement must be acceptable to both sides of the debate, and it must show the specific fraction of AGW. How much is that? Is it 50% of all global warming? Is it 3%? Is it 0.02%? No one knows. Why? Because there are no measurements of AGW!”
dbstealey does not know that observations and explanations are not the same. That explains a lot. Concerning dbstealey that is. Just to check: What kind of measurements dbstealey?
rodmol@virginmedia.com:
dbstealy’s original is proper English. The subject is “readers”; the verb is “corrected” (past tense, 3rd person plural). The phrase “more knowledgeable than he is” is a modifier applied to “readers”. This is an example of what I was taught is called an “elliptical phrase” where some words are omitted to avoid repetition. The full sentence would read:
The “he” above is understood by context to mean “icarus62”. You can see that while complete, it sounds awkward, so the extra word is omitted. It is also be common usage to omit “is”, so the sentence would read:
Past tense is correct because “Icarus62″ has not posted at WUWT more recently than last year.
George S.
February 11, 2015 at 2:13 pm
Hello George
The other day in another post was this other guy, with a same brilliant like explanation, shown in the copy-paste below:
—————
”
Teddi
February 9, 2015 at 10:13 pm
I have said for a long time in response to those riding the CO2 train of AGW that the sun is the obvious driver of our climate. Turn off the sun and see what happens to “your” climate ? Too simple ? Well, again, if you turn off the sun you won’t have to worry about the climate – therefore the sun IS the obvious driver no matter what lsvalgaard believes…
Likewise, what would happen to volcanic activity if you turned off the sun ?”
———————-
So, George, to whom do you think the “Noble prize” for trolling should go to, to your AGW guy or to the “sun” guy as per above!?
From my point of view it would not matter as to me it appears as one and the same guy, but even if not so, still is the same trolling trick, as far as I can tell…………… A trick of “innocent ” simplicity.
cheers
Alan Watt.
Thanks for that. I thought I was writing it correctly, but sometimes I understand clearly what I’m saying, but others don’t.
=======================
rooter says:
dbstealey does not know that observations and explanations are not the same.
rooter, I was only answering someone else’s question, but since you butted in I’ll be happy to correct you:
I said nothing about “observations”. Did I? No. The only thing I suggested was to ask for measurements of AGW. But you set up your usual strawman fallacy, and knocked that strawman down. Great job, rooter! But next time, please pay attention.
Also, instead of bird-dogging my comments every chance you get, try posting measurements of AGW yourself… what’s that, rooter? You don’t have any measurements quantifying the fraction of global warming supposedly caused by human emissions?
That isn’t surprising. Because if you did, for one thing, we would have a specific answer to the climate sensitivity number — and you would be on the short list for the next Nobel Prize. In fact, there are no measurements of AGW. [My usual disclaimer: I think AGW exists. But it is so minuscule that it can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
Next, rooter says:
Just to check: What kind of measurements dbstealey?
I’ve explained that numerous times here, rooter. Since you are fixated on my posts, you certainly must have seen my definition. So you’re just being a pest.
Hey, could Mr. rooter be ‘Icarus’? Stranger things have happened.☺
Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
The original sentence is incorrect.
I posted the correction.
The subject of the sentence is “readers” which is plural
Remove the clause “more knowledgeable than he” and you have “That’s probably because readers are correcting his misinformation so often.”
It is the readers that are correcting
rodmol@virginmedia.com:
We agree the word “readers” is the subject, but “corrected” is the proper past tense verb to apply. Since readers haven’t been doing any correcting recently it is both proper and more accurate to say:
than to say:
Either is correct grammatically, but the former more accurately places the activity in the proper time frame, which dbstealey opined was sometime last year.
Alan…
..
The original sentence is not grammatical…
I have highlighted the word that makes it gibberish….
“That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often”
If you want to retain tense, substitute “have” for “is’
If it’s an ongoing thing you use “are correcting”
In either case, use of the word “is” makes the original sentence bogus.
rodmol@virginmedia.com,
Of course, Alan Watt is correct: he agrees with me! ☺
Anyway, is that really so important? I still think I wrote it correctly, but if you don’t agree I see no need to argue. My meaning was clear; that’s what is important.
Something much more important, I think, is the fact that the Telegraph has been running the biggest reader poll they ever conducted, with more than 122,000 responses so far.
The result? Skeptics outnumber alarmists by about 12 – 1.
What do you think of that? It shows where the true “consensus” is, doesn’t it?
Another zinger ….
“Something much more important, I think, is the fact that the Telegraph has been running the biggest reader poll they ever conducted”
.
Try this instead…
“Something much more important, I think, is the fact that the Telegraph is running the biggest reader poll they ever conducted”
Rodmol:
Parse this for grammer:
GET LOST
rodmol@virginmedia.co
You are incorrect and stubborn, too.
more knowledgeable than he is.
It’s English.
If you want, you can say “more knowledgeable than he.” Or “more knowledgeable than he was” or a whole bunch of other stuff.
You don’t need the copula but it’s not ungrammatical to use it.
mebbe
The sentence ““That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often” Is not gramatical
..
The subject “readers” is plural
Using the word “is” is incorrect.
Either substitute “have” for “is” or substitute “are correcting” for “is corrected”
rodmol:
I’m curious where you studied English that you believe dbstealey’s original usage is incorrect?
The verb form “is” to which you take exception does not go with the subject “readers”, but is rather part of the adjective phrase “more knowledgeable than he is” which modifies the subject “readers” who are then asserted to have “corrected” poster “icarus64”. I suppose it might seem jarring to have two verb forms adjacent to each other but not making up a single verb phrase, but it is common usage.
I trust English pedants more knowledgeable than I am are prepared to offer their support.
“””””…..
rodmol@virginmedia.com
February 11, 2015 at 12:52 pm
“That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often. ”…..”””””
“”””…“That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than HE IS , corrected his misinformation so often. ”…..”””””
English 201.
…….HE …… IS singular !! As is HIS.
And commas are not approved of here at WUWT which is why dbstealey left that one out, he already had used up his comma quota earlier.
It’s not nice to grammatize dbstealey; or anyone else either. This is an adult friendly site.
G
Yes he could have left out the …is…. but then most people who do that ,would say ….more knowledgeable than HIM …
And that is why some of us deliberately put the IS in, to make it clear, that it IS HE , and not HIM.
English 301 !
Hi George,
I found a bag of commas, so now I won’t run out. Thanks for lesson 301; I love your wonderful and often inventive use of punctuation!☺
rodmol is right about the zinger, though, it was a stupid misteak, done during editing. Is there a grammar Nazi fine? I can add it to my donation next month.
I still agree with Alan Watt, though. The original sentence wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t wrong. And if you want to find grammar and spelling being misused, this site is a very fertile hunting ground. [Did you notice I started a sentence with “And”? That’s worth another critique, don’t you think?]
db, Sorry to see our comments hijacked by grammar police. I’m no expert in the English language! Far be it for me to criticize anyone else for their usage. As long as the point gets across all is good. You write perfectly fine from my perspective.
Any way, I looked at the comments you linked. Yeah, it is the same dude. He was accompanied by a couple other zealots. None of them argued effectively. I thought RichardCourtney was VERY good in his responses! Take care.
rodmol….
Obdurate and obtuse, by golly.
Alan Watt,
Agreed, except as regards the “adjectival phrase”.
By rights, a phrase is not entitled to a finite verb; i.e. a verb that is conjugated and has a subject.
So, it’s a clause.
As for commas, db was fine without one, since ‘readers more knowledgeable than he is’ is the subject and the subject should not be separated from its finite verb by a singe comma.
He could have used a pair of commas but that would have changed the meaning. “Readers, more knowledgeable than he is, corrected him…” implies that all readers are more knowledgeable than he is.
This turns out to probably be true! (split infinitive)
So Alan Watt pegged it exactly. Well almost exactly.
What dbstealey wrote means : “””””…..That is probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is knowledgeable corrected his misinformation so often. …..”””””
What is missing, and is necessary, is the comma ….. (,) …. after the SECOND “knowledgable” , OR after the “he is” (sans “knowledgable”) , OR after the “HE” which stealey originally wrote, and which rodmol proved himself to be completely incapable of understanding the meaning of, so he wrote all that gobbledegook about “the other readers” , which has nothing whatsoever to do with the he, or he is, or he is knowledgable.
Dr Richard Lederer, the world’s foremost authority on the English language, would tell everybody that simply adding the …. IS ….. even in your head, you immediately identify that the correct other word, is ….. HE …… and NOT HIM.
You wouldn’t say; ” than HIM is knowledgable.”
So dbstealey was absolutely 100 % correct in his original statement, and a comma would have clarified it.
Lederer teaches to put a comma ANYWHERE where you would naturally pause for breath in reading out loud. He says basically nuts to any other rule on the use of punctuation.
That’s English 401, which rodmol has not yet passed the pre-requisite for.
g
dbstealey found out that observations and measurements are completely different. Just to hide the fact that he did not know what kind of measurements he was asking for. Perhaps dbstealey could try again. What kind of measurements?
Sorry, rodmol@virginmedia.com. dbstealey is correct. “Is” refers to “he,” singular. Not “readers.”
So did Fowler & Fowler in The King’s English in the 19-aughts. 1906? 1907? I don’t want to get up and look at the book.
In fact, punctuation is musical notation. A comma is a quarter-note (of breath). A semi-colon is a half-note (of breath). A colon is a three-quarter-note (of breath). And a period is a full note (of breath), or “full stop,” as the Brits call it.
@rooter:
rooter, we’re discussing grammar now. Thanks to George, mebbe, Alan Watt, mpainter, George S, policycritic — and, also, rodmol, for the interesting discussion. I agree with the consensus, rodmol! [No offense intended.]
====================
Now, rooter, after a series of nasty, opinionated comments presuming that you know what I think, and what I understand, and what I ‘found out’, and what I don’t understand, etc., you can go and look up the definition of ‘measurement’ yourself. It seems that after any comment I make, you have the need to bird-dog it, and nitpick away. You’re fixated, rooter.
The definition of ‘AGW measurement’ is there, repeatedly. But you have been so unpleasant, so often, that I am not inclined to do anything that you demand.
Ask politely, rooter, without your usual insinuations, and I’ll probably try to help you.
George, (and anyone else that’s hanging around this trailing thread),
There is no second ‘knowledgeable’.
You and Dick Lederer imagined it and you shouldn’t have.
The whole story about the missing words is sophistry. It’s the way grammarians try to bludgeon people into compliance with prescribed use of language.
The verb “to be” is interesting linguistically because, semantically, it is always unnecessary, other than as a tense-marker.
“George knowledgeable about electromagnetic radiation” only leaves doubt in the realm of time; he is, or he was, or he will be. (We know better than to doubt!). Inflecting verbs (in this case, the copula) to indicate “tense” informs as to time, but nothing else.
English has evolved from German and French (before that, Latin) and it’s worth noting what those people do with that situation;
German…”mehr als ich” nominative “more than I”
French …”plus que moi” accusative “more than me”
Here’s my prescriptive advice on commas: Don’t separate, with a single comma, a subject from its verb.
Not only is it unnecessary, it’s confusing, and cannot mitigate other awkwardnesses in the sentence.
Sometimes subjects are much more than an article and a noun.
rodmol:
Grammar fail. You just misread the sentence: “readers more knowledgeable than he is” is a noun phrase. “Is” refers to “he”.
dbstealey says:
“The definition of ‘AGW measurement’ is there, repeatedly. But you have been so unpleasant, so often, that I am not inclined to do anything that you demand.
Ask politely, rooter, without your usual insinuations, and I’ll probably try to help you.”
Very well. I am asking politely. What are the “AGW measurements”?
rooter,
A measurement of AGW would specifically quantify the fraction of total global warming that is attributable to human CO2 emissions. Such a measurement must be verifiable and testable [per Popper], and agreed by a majority of scientists.
Keep in mind that if there were such a measurement, the question of the sensitivity number would be answered to a very high degree of precision. As it is, climate sensitivity has ranged from 6ºC [or more] per doubling of CO2, to under 1ºC [Lindzen, et al.], to zero [Miscolczi, et al.].
After more than fifty years of searching, by thousands of scientists, there are still no credible AGW measurements. Thus, AGW remains a conjecture [one that I agree with, FWIW].
“”””…..George, (and anyone else that’s hanging around this trailing thread),
There is no second ‘knowledgeable’……”””””
Nobody said there was.
In fact dbstealey stopped at … HE …
As I explained 9,999 out of 10,000 American English speakers, would have said … more knowledgeable than … HIM …. which is quite wrong.
And Dr Lederer’s point is that if you (mentally) put in the … IS … then you can see that indeed ‘he’ is correct, because nobody , even rodmol, would say … HIM IS …
and the meaning is NOT that …. HE IS BLIND ….. but …. HE IS KNOWLEDGABLE …
Yes it would be sophistry to write: ‘ more knowledgeable that he is knowledgable’ But that is exactly what is being stated.
Now dbstealey originally wrote : ” That’s probably because readers more knowledgeable than he is corrected his misinformation so often. ” There’s not a whiff of sophistry in that.
Now he had to have had a reason for saying that, and putting in the ‘is’ for clarity, but he could have left it out.
Without the comma, then you have readers rambling on …. he is corrected …..and suddenly you have hitched the ‘he’ to corrected, rather than …is knowledgeable.
And since you’re so good at it that you even challenge Dr Lederer, who has written maybe 250 books on the English language; would you mind giving us your learned explanation for the form …. had to have had …
Which I put in for an exercise for all our grammarians.
So why is that verb different from ….. had … ?? and how.
So you can tell us that it is a ‘pluperfect past participle of the first kind twice removed’ or whatever the heck your academic grammar books say it is.
Can you say …. exactly …. the same thing in Latin, or French, or German, which you say are the origins of our English Language ??
The purpose of language is to communicate; and any silly rules that get in the way of communication get rousted out of the language.
As Winston Churchill is reputed to have said; “That is the kind of nonsense, up with which I will not put. ”
g
george e smith disappoints!
I said ; ” There is no second ‘knowledgeable’
You said ; “Nobody said there was.”
But the reason I said there was no second “knowledgeable” was because you had said;
“””””What is missing, and is necessary, is the comma ….. (,) …. after the SECOND “knowledgable” ,”””””
Look at that! You even put SECOND in upper case.
——————
Then you say; “As I explained 9,999 out of 10,000 American English speakers, would have said … more knowledgeable than … HIM …. which is quite wrong.”
No, George, you are quite wrong. Our language is not a set of moral laws with one person in ten thousand the arbiter of linguistic rectitude. And if it were, you surely would not be that one.
What I called sophistry is the attempt to justify the claim that the pronoun “he” is obviously correct because …blah, blah, blah. That line is not an original of Lederer, it’s been foisted on people since at least the 19th. century. I don’t buy it.
The rest of your comment makes even less sense and you just seem to get snarkier.
You seem to be conflating things I said with rodmol’s confusion. Sneering at esoteric language like a drunk in a truck-stop doesn’t really add much to your credibility here.
Apparently, you want to ride Conan the Grammarian’s shirt-tail into uninformed pedantry. I have half a mind to toss Noam Chomsky at you.
Yes, I speak French and German and Spanish and have long been interested in linguistics, not just grammar. Oh yeah, 4 years of Latin in school, too.
I just LOVE the “spurring outbreaks of skepticism” phrase. Yes, like a disease, that darned “skepticism” arises in pesky outbreaks. I wonder what the vaccination for “skepticism” is. Is there a cure? These people reveal who they are in the most amazing ways, no?
“…spurring outbreaks of skepticism…”
Ethical scientists do not regard skepticism as a disease to be eradicated. Draw your own conclusions.
All the scammers are just looking for the next scam. They are fishing here, fishing there just see if they can get a bite.
That’s all fine, but what I’ve learned is that CAGW just pushes the date further out. A recent conversation, (today) which differs markedly from the gotta so something right now statements, but equally the same and I quote…. ” it won’t be in your or my lifetime, but with all the co2 the planet is getting progressively warmer, and poles are melting. ” Nothing has changed. I thought for sure that the last quite in the solar cycle and the sudden return of winter, the drought ending in the west US, would have at least caused them to think that MAYBE they might be wrong. They just plough ahead with the warming will return with a vengeance. I don’t think anything will change there minds, not even a return to a full blown little ice age ( or a big one) …. CAGW will have caused it.
Beg to differ. There will always be another cause, since there always has been. But I think it is possible to put a ‘stake through the vampire heart’ of this particular analogy to tulip bulb mania. Their resorting to the old ‘move the goalposts’ play is evidence.
What is so interesting, this is the first ‘global mania’ since internet and mobile access. On one side, UNFCC, IPCC, Obama, MSM like NYT, Guardian, and SciAm. Plus all the dirty climate science establishment tricks exposed by climategate. On the other side, a global rag tag guerrilla warfare band of bloggers, ‘renegade’ climate scientists like Lindzen and Curry, and capable citizens like Nic Lewis, Steve McIntyre, and Ross McKittrick. With a bit of help from Mother Nature, the rag tag guerrilla warfare side is now winning, and the ‘settled science’ side is self destructing—slowly.
Each of us on the guerrilla bands side can do our own things in our own ways to help. Like my link for Bob above, or the two last books. Pick up whatever ‘arms’ you have, and carry on.
Pushing the date further out, yes. They did that for the first several IPCC reports. Each report would offer models of what temperatures would look like over time based on the date they were released.
The problem, of course, is that the changes are small and it takes literally decades to accumulate enough of a temperature change to be able to test the success or failure of the predictions. If they update their models with every report, you can never actually test the validity of the models because the date at which you might have enough change accumulate to test them gets pushed further and further out.
Since they year 2000, they have now changed it so that each model must be tuned only up to the year 2000, and after that it is allowed to vary. The new problem is that the confidence intervals are ridiculously large. IF temps between now and 2100 go up by anywhere from 1.5 degrees to 6.5 degrees, they will fall into the confidence interval of most models. That’s like predicting that tomorrow the high temperature might be anywhere from 0C up to 37C. Even if it does hit that range, the prediction is meaningless because it’s so vague.
Rud Istvan
February 11, 2015 at 1:52 pm
/////////////////////////////////////////////
I too believe sceptics are winning and it is entirely possible to stake the AGW vampire through the heart.
You are right when you say their will always be another “cause”, but a number of factors have combined to force the fellow travellers in this sorry hoax to keep digging their collective hole deeper when they should have given up long ago.
Today the fellow travellers in the AGW hoax are no so much fighting for the cause, but fighting to save their own income, careers and reputations. They, like the authors of this paper, are praying for a “warming but less than we thought”soft landing for the hoax. The truth, CO2 does not cause warming it causes immeasurably small cooling, is too devastating to even contemplate.
The factors I see sustaining the hoax are –
1. The Internet. The lame stream media, complicit in the hoax, are no longer the gatekeepers of opinion or record. They can no longer erase the record of any fellow traveller’s involvement in the hoax. Every pseudo scientist, activist, journalist and politician involved has left a permanent, instantly accessible record of their inanity on the web. If the hoax goes down, so do they.
2. No good “next cause”. The leaked document from the UN meeting in Switzerland showed some of the next causes planned. They were Bio-Crisis, Sustainability and manufacturing a Fresh Water Crisis. The problem is that if AGW goes south, these new causes are no good. They are all eco crusades, and the public won’t by another from the same sprungers.
3. Politics. AGW was the ultimate “gottcha” for free market democracy. Every fellow traveller opposed to free market democracy dived into AGW boots and all. Every activist, journalist and politician of the left. If AGW is discredited, so too is an entire generation of the professional left.
4. Money. “If there happens to be a trough, there will be pigs”- Pushkin
The reasons for continuing the hoax have nothing to do with real concern with the environment. Now it is all about the self interest of the craven and venal.
Hope this threads correctly.
Konrad, yup. Read my first book, Gaia’s Limits, for confirmation.
WARNING. Even my son says is a bit of a data slog, not a beach read.
Second book arose indirectly from first. Addresses your points with multiple examples. Easier read; even the EPA’s Chevy Volt mpg is wrong! Regards
One can only hope. I saw today the watermelon people out there protesting the use of coal/ CoSpgs, CO. Of course it’s a mice day. I am hoping that the next – 18 F day they don’t turn the heaters on using electricity from that Drake fired coal plant. Or complain about the cost if they replace it.
Rud,
I have downloaded the essay, and will give it a read. However in reading the synopsis, I noted a somewhat “Malthusian” flavour.
In exchange for your (and amazon’s) $8.50, I would ask that you also view this excellent video –
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/
(Warning video does contain the incurable infection of foaming Climatitis (at the end) but is otherwise mathematically correct)
Wealth is the answer, to poverty, increasing population and pollution. If this is delivered by coal, who cares? The environmental benefit is so great. And, after all, adding radiative gases to our radiatively cooled atmosphere does not reduce its ability to cool our solar heated oceans.
Does this paper change the “97% Consensus” to ~96.7% ?
“current-generation global climate models”, yes the current models are wrong and all previous generation models are also wrong.
It bears remembering that the modelers have been “refining” their models since the 1960’s. Back then they had a good idea of what atmospheric CO2 levels were and a pretty good grasp of how they would increase over time. They had also calculated the experimental radiative forcing of CO2 to exquisite precision, even using computers to assist them.
But despite having a good understanding of these two most fundamental components of every global temperature model, they have completely and utterly failed to predict future temperatures. The Nixon White House discussed a 1965 report saying that by the year 2000 CO2 would rise by 25%, temperatures would rise by 7 degrees, and sea levels would go up 10 feet putting NYC and DC underwater.
If they can’t “refine” their models to accurately predict temperatures after more than 50 years, there is no way that CO2 is doing what they claim. If it was, they would have solved it long, long ago and current-generation models would be terrific at predicting future temperatures. Heck, they can’t even hindcast the known temperature record with much certainty after being tuned to reproduce it.
So if they fudge the models Wind Factors it is more accurate than fudging the wave factors.
This is called “backfilling” – an attempt to set up a plausible escape. “Oh darn, that model just put 27x on the “prescribed forcings”! Who could have known? We’ll change it in the morning to 0.0027x, which is where it should have been. My bad!” When many of these folks go to prison – real prison, not the Michael Milken spa – for defalcating the people of the USA, I will be satisfied.
The discrepancies between CAGW projections vs. UAH/RSS satellite temp data is now around 2 standard deviations and growing. By 2020, the discrepancies could well exceed 3 standard deviations, with almost a quarter of a century without a global warming trend….
It has now been almost 19 years with no global warming trend, Arctic ice is recovering, Antarctic ice is setting 35-yr records, polar bear populations are up 6 fold since 1950, no increasing trends of severe weather incidence/severity for 50~100 years, ocean pH stuck at 8.1, sea level rise stuck at 7″ per century, CH4 stuck at 1.7ppm, etc., etc., etc….
NONE of CAGW’s projections are coming even CLOSE to occurring. It’s only a matter of time before the discrepancies and inaccuracies of the CAGW hypothetical projections become so untenable, the drip..drip..drip of doubt expressed in this Douville et al. (2015) paper will soon become a steady stream, and eventually becoming a torrent of doubt.
I wish that your optimism is realised, but as this is now taking on the properties of a religion the abstract symbolism (the models) will be held in higher esteem than the measured physical reality Eventually, if it follows the track of the world’s great religions, the symbolism will so dominate that it will be the political actions in mitigation of the effects of a supposed evil that will be the centres of attention and the conversation about climate change, warming etc. will be forgotten.
Somehow I doubt this paper will be widely distributed.
I guess the remark about models can be linked to a observation of global dimming and global brightening.
Since 1985 northern hemisphere has received more sunshine due to less clouds.
(Martin Wild-American meteorological society January 2012)
Has anyone picked up the significance of “prescribed radiative forcings”.
I read into this that the authors want to hint that the ‘prescription’ is at fault but seem not to want to come out and say so explicitly – am I wrong in making tis inference?
Miti, you might misunderstand. The prescribed radiative forcing is the difference beween incoming sunlight, and outgoing sunlight (albedo reflection) plusinfrared. When infrared is ‘retarded’ by GHG (not really what happens-read essay Sensitive Uncertainty in Blowing Smoke for a clearer non-technical explanation) the planet should warm some. The present radiative forcing is measured by satellites at the top of the armosphere (again an oversimplification) and presently is on the order of 0.6w/m^2. It goes up as CO2 goes up in a logarithmic fashion; for CMIP5 a CO2 doubling from here takes it up to about 3.7w/m^2. That presumed future forcing path (for CMIP5 say RPG 8.5 doubling by some year) is prescribed to the models, which are then supposed to simulate what the Earth does in response. And the pause shows they are failing to get this correct. This new paper (see the link I posted upthread) says EVEN IF you fiddle the Pacific SST to a more NIno condition(Kosata pause explanation), and EVEN IF you also fiddle tradewinds to a more Nino condition (England explanation) the French GCM model still runs way too hot.
Well Rud, the problem with your definition of prescribed radiative forcing, is that it includes an assumption that the difference (that radiative unbalance “forcing”) all then becomes a part of the “heat” (noun) that is then made from that net radiation.
But that simply is not the case. Only part of that immediately becomes heat mostly stored in the ocean. Much of the rest does not become heat but becomes biological and other materials triggered and powered by radiation energy.
That’s why Trenberth can’t find that heat; it was never made in the first place. Remember we get NO heat and NO light from the sun. We make the heat here on earth, and the light is all in our heads.
Now of course that bio-mass does eventually reach a dead end, and somehow end up as “heat”. But in the case of a radiative forcing created tree that heat can be decades or centuries down the road.
And any time delay between radiation coming in and escaping in speed of light time frames, and the conversion of the remainder to heat, results in a net cooling effect.
Just as the very short time delays by which GHGs delay the exit of LWIR radiant energy emitted from the surface, results in a warming because more solar energy comes in during that delay; so too does a time delay between incoming radiant energy and its conversion to heat result in a net cooling.
And the bio-sequestration of incoming solar radiant energy, is a considerably larger cooling effect that GHGs are a warming effect, because the consequent delay from radiation to heat is very much longer than any conceivable GHG delays.
Trenberth can’t find the heat, because it isn’t ; it’s wood and salmon and seaweed.
g
The climate science community is in the process of bifurcation, between those with the integrity to follow the data wherever it leads, and those who choose the role of climate activists and advocacy researchers who will double down and become ever more shrill.
Its like a classic letter of criticism – Start off nice “all is well with the theory, blah, blah,……….and finish with the criticism….”Yet global warming is still overestimated”. I think Anthony should have a section called the “The Long Walk Back” because this is going to be a growing feature of the ‘debate’.
The reason the models matter is that they express the hypothesis of AGW as predictions. When they fail, it means the mechanisms postulated are wrong in some serious respect. Attempts to adjust parameters run the risk of setting up more and more unrealistic input assumptions, and make the models run “goofy” on output. And soon violate the hypothesis’ assumptions.
So we are observing death throes of a “theory” stretched beyond tolerance.
I confess that I might be singlehandedly responsible for the fiasco of the global climate models over-predicting temperatures; yes, I am partially joking but there is a substantial probability that I am right. All of it started in 1986 when I was working for a defense contractor on an atmospheric model that predicted brightness of the atmosphere in response to massive inputs of energy, such as from a high altitude nuclear explosion. This was necessary because the sensors for the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan’s Star Wars Program) were to be infra-red telescopes either in orbit or at high altitude. An increase in atmospheric brightness would limit the sensitivity of these sensors.
Just for background, a 1meter diameter sphere at room temperature emits roughly as much power as a 60 watt light bulb but it’s in the infra-red spectrum. So, these sensors are trying to see what is equivalent to a 60 watt light bulb against a background that may be very bright with a lot of structure. If the Soviets were to detonate a nuke up there with more re-entry vehicles in the same field of view, the sensor might never see them. In fact, one of the nightmare scenarios was the Soviets detonating a series of 1 Megaton bursts in a chain extending from Soviet territory over the N. Pole and down across Canada to blind the sensors.
To investigate the problem, large computer codes were written using the Air Force Geophysics Lab atmospheric model, the best available at the time. These codes tried to input the energy in various forms and then keep track of all the energy flow through the various chemical species and their absorption and re-emission of infra-red light. It used large numbers of coupled partial-differential equations and divided the atmosphere into a 3D grid and solved the system over time to predict the atmospheric radiance over a line of sight. It is pertinent that this code from 1986 is the basis of atmospheric models used for the climate models of today.
How could they know if the code was right in its predictions? It had to be tested but there is no way you could do nuclear explosions in the atmosphere to do so. However, in the early 60s, there was a US atmospheric test series in the South pacific with explosions at various altitudes. There were two aircraft with primitive infra-red telescopes looking through the burst area to determine radiance. They were not too sophisticated because at the time they were worried more about radar effects. However, it was my job to compare that old data with the predictions of the code.
At early times, say a few seconds after the burst, the comparison was good because everything was ionized but as the atmosphere cooled the difference between model and data was bad, really bad. If the sensors were this bad, there was no way to see incoming nukes in such a situation. However, the sensor designers said they were going to look in a narrow infra-red band where they said there were very few radiating molecules so these old broadband sets of data were not a good prediction.
Somebody had the good sense to say, “We still need to validate the codes with real data”. The only reasonable simulation of an upper atmospheric burst happens to be an intense aurora so a series of experiments were planned in which infra-red spectrometers would be rocket launched from Alaska into an intense aurora and look into the infra-red bands that were supposed to be clear. These experiments were partially successful but all the data showed the desired “window” to be filled with infra-red. The modelers couldn’t believe it and blamed the experimenters for designing flawed experiments. “The spectrometer was looking through air emitted from the spectrometer housing” they said so the next experiment pumped all the air from the housing. Next they said that “there was lower atmosphere air “entrained” with the rocket as it rose” so the next one had the spectrometer separate from the rocket before the spectrometer began looking. Every time they got a bit of data, the modelers pooh-poohed it saying, “There’s nothing up there to emit in that band”.
At this point it had become my job to compare the rocket spectrometer data with the models. The modelers thought that the only thing that would emit in that band was either H2O or OH or maybe O3 but there just wasn’t enough up there they thought. Right before one meeting, I found an interesting article concerning micro-comets made of mostly water and CO2 entering the atmosphere and NASA actually had some pictures of this happening. I brought the article in and said “Maybe this is your source of water”. For some reason, nobody liked this explanation but they all agreed that the model should be changed to input a higher level of water to see if it would predict the observed radiance. The modelers refused to do so and the experimenters weren’t familiar with the model so they made me do it.
It was just a few lines of code among many thousands and I didn’t bother to comment it. Basically, it fixed the amount of water at high altitude considerably higher than the modelers expected. It was to be run to see what was predicted and then changed back.
The model was to be run on the fastest supercomputer of the day and would take several days of supercomputer time so it was scheduled a month and a half later.
Now, I’m an experimental physics geek and hated this modeling, I wanted to get my hands on real instruments where I could turn the knobs. Suddenly, I was offered a job with a different contractor doing real experiments and I happily took it. My computer run with the modified Air Force Geophysics Lab Atmospheric model was in the quea to be run.
I don’t know if it was run but I did hear that the problem wasn’t water vapor. Because the modelers wanted nothing to do with this change to the code and the experimenters didn’t know the code and I never commented my changes, I doubt anybody but me knew any change had been made. I doubt it has ever been changed back unless someone went through the thousands of line of code line by line. Due to the classified nature of the program, I was not even permitted to discuss it with anybody to tell them to change the code back because my classification permission was changed to an entirely different type.
What this means is that if the same atmospheric model is used as the basis of the climate models (and I think it is) then it will over-predict absorption of infra-red emitted by the earth hence over-predict warming. I am responsible for the fiasco but nobody believes me.
Don’t feel guilty David. It is really hilarious.
I liked the use of ‘outbreak’ and ‘nudging’ in the abstract. Revelatory.
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