Guest Post by Werner Brozek, Professor Robert Brown from Duke University and Just The Facts
Image Credit: Josh
In order for climate science to be settled, there are many requirements. I will list four for now, although I am sure you can think of many more. Then I will expand on those.
1. We must know all variables that can affect climate.
2. We must know how all variables are changing over time.
3. We must know how each changing variable affects climate.
4. We must know about all non-linear changes that take place as a result of changes to variables.
As for the variables affecting climate, Just The Facts has done a superb job compiling many of them on WUWT’s Potential Climatic Variables Reference Page.
If you have an hour, there is lots of good reading here. For now, I will just give the main topics, but note that all main topics have an array of sub topics.
1. Earth’s Rotational Energy
2. Orbital Energy, Orbital Period, Orbital Spiral, Elliptical Orbits (Eccentricity), Tilt (Obliquity), Wobble (Axial precession) and Polar Motion
3. Gravitation
4. Solar Energy
5. Geothermal Energy
6. Outer Space/Cosmic/Galactic Effects
7. Earth’s Magnetic Field
8. Atmospheric Composition
9. Albedo
10. Biology
11. Chemical
12. Physics
13. Known Unknowns
14. Unknown Unknowns
If you know some more that should be added, please let us know.
The above covers my point 1 above. As for points 2 and 3, for all of the items listed above, we need to know if the changes, if any, are linear, exponential, logarithmic, sinusoidal, random or some other pattern. For example, depending on who you talk to and the interval you are considering, our emissions of carbon dioxide could be exponential, but the increase in the atmosphere could be linear, but the effect could be logarithmic. Then there are asteroids which could be totally random. As for point 4 above, the easiest example would be to consider a ball with air at 30 C and a relative humidity of 90%. When this is cooled, the gas molecules do not simply slow down indefinitely. At a certain point, the water molecules move so slowly that the hydrogen bonds cause molecules to stick together after collisions to cause liquid water or ice to form. Further cooling causes the various gases to condense to their liquid states and then to freeze to their solid state.
Further to this last point, Professor Brown offered a very interesting response to a question on a previous post. His comment is reproduced below and ends with his initials rgb:
rgbatduke
October 2, 2015 at 10:36 am
t’s not a law of nature, but outside of Le Chatelier’s principle, a more modern version (in case anyone is still reading this thread) is Prigogene’s Self-Organization of dissipative systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organization
Self-organization as a concept preceded Prigogene, but he quantified it and moved it from the realm of philosophy and psychology and cybernetics to the realm of physics and the behavior of nonlinear non-equilibrium systems.
To put it into a contextual nutshell, an open, non-equilibrium system (such as a gas being heated on one side and cooled on the other) will tend to self-organize into structures that increase the dissipation of the system, that is, facilitate energy transport through the system. The classic contextual example of this is the advent of convective rolls in a fluid in a symmetry breaking gravitational field. Convection moves heat from the hot side to the cold side much, much faster than conduction or radiation does, but initially the gas has no motion but microscopic motions of the molecules and (if we presume symmetry and smoothness in the heated surface and boundaries) experiences only balanced, if unstable, forces. However, those microscopic motions contain small volumes that are not symmetric, that move up or down. These small fluctuations nucleate convection, at first irregular and disorganized, that then “discovers” the favored modes of dissipation, adjacent counter rotating turbulent rolls that have a size characteristic of the geometry of the volume and the thermal imbalance.
The point is that open fluid dynamical differentially heated and cooled systems spontaneously develop these sorts of structures, and they have some degree of stability or at least persistence in time. They can persist a long time — see e.g. the great red spot on Jupiter. The reason that this is essentially a physical, or better yet a mathematical, principle is evident from the wikipedia page above — Prigogene won the Nobel Prize because he showed that this sort of behavior has a universal character and will arise in many, if not most open systems of sufficient complexity. There is a deep connection between this theory and chaos — essentially that an open chaotic system with “noise” is constantly being bounced around in its phase space, so that it wanders around through the broad stretches of uninteresting critical points until it enters the basin of attraction of an interesting one, a strange attractor. At that point the same noise drives it diffusively into a constantly shifting ensemble of comparatively tightly bound orbits. At that point the system is “stable” in that it has temporally persistent behavior with gross physical structures with their own “pseudoparticle” physics and sometimes even thermodynamics. This is one of the things I studied pretty extensively back when I did work in open quantum optical systems.
There is absolutely no question that our climate is precisely a self-organized system of this sort. We have long since named the observed, temporally persistent self-organized structures — ENSO, the Monsoon, the NAO, the PDO. We can also observe more transient structures that appear or disappear such as the “polar vortex” or “The Blob” (warm patch in the ocean off of the Pacific Northwest) or a “blocking high”. Lately, we had “Hurricane Joaquin”. Anybody can play — at this point you can visit various websites and watch a tiny patch of clouds organize into a thunderstorm, then a numbered “disturbance with the potential for tropical development”, then a tropical depression, and finally into a named storm with considerable if highly variable and transient structure.
All of these structures tend to dissipate a huge amount of energy that would otherwise have to escape to space much more slowly. They are born out of energy in flow, and “evolve” so that the ones that move energy most efficiently survive and grow.
Once again, one has to bemoan the lack of serious math that has been done on the climate. This in some sense is understandable, as the math is insanely difficult even when it is limited to toy systems — simple iterated maps, simple ODE or PDE systems with simple boundary conditions. However, there are some principles to guide us. One is that in the case of self-organization in chaotic systems, the dynamical map itself has a structure of critical points and attractors. Once the system “discovers” a favorable attractor and diffuses into an orbit, it actually becomes rather immune to simple changes in the driving. Once a set of turbulent rolls is established, as it were, there is a barrier to be overcome before one can make the number of rolls change or fundamentally change their character — moderate changes in the thermal gradient just make the existing rolls roll faster or slower to maintain heat transport. However, in a sufficiently complex system there are usually neighboring attractors with some sort of barrier in between them, but this barrier is there only in an average sense. In many, many cases, the orbits of the system in phase space have a fractal, folded character where orbits from neighboring attractors can interpenetrate and overlap. If there is noise, there is a probability of switching attractors when one nears a non-equilibrium critical regime, so that the system can suddenly and dramatically change its character. Next, the attractors themselves are not really fixed. As one alters (parametrically for example) the forcing of the system or the boundary conditions or the degree of noise or… one expects the critical points and attractors themselves to move, to appear and disappear, to get pushed together or moved apart, to have the barriers between them rise or fall. Finally (as if this isn’t enough) the climate is not in any usual sense an iterated map. It is usually treated as one from the point of view of solving PDEs (which is usually done via an iterated map where the output of one time step is the input into the next with a fixed dynamics). This makes the solution a Markov Process — one that “forgets” its past history and evolves locally in time and space as an iterated map (usually with a transition “rule” with some randomness in it).
But the climate is almost certainly not Markovian, certainly not in practical terms. What it does today depends on the state today, to be sure, but because there are vast reservoirs where past dynamical evolution is “hidden” in precisely Prigogene’s self-organized structures, structures whose temporal coherence and behavior can only be meaningfully understood on the basis of their own physical description and not microscopically, it is completely, utterly senseless to try to advance a Markovian solution and expect it to actually work!
Two examples, and then I must clean my house and do other work. One is clearly the named structures themselves in the climate. The multidecadal oscillations have spatiotemporal persistence and organization with major spectral components out as far as sixty or seventy years (and may well have longer periods still to be discovered — we have crappy data and not much of it that extends into the increasingly distant past). Current models treat things like ENSO and the PDO and so on more like noise, and we see people constantly “removing the influence of ENSO” from a temperature record to try to reductively discern some underlying ENSO-less trend. But they aren’t noise. They are major features of the dynamics! They move huge amounts of energy around, and are key components of the efficiency of the open system as it transports incident solar energy to infinity, keeping a reservoir of it trapped within along the way. It is practically speaking impossible to integrate the PDEs of the climate models and reproduce any of the multidecadal behavior. Even if multidecadal structures emerge, they have the wrong shape and the wrong spectrum because the chaotic models have a completely different critical structure and attractors as they are iterated maps at the wrong resolution and with parameters that almost certainly move them into completely distinct operational regimes and quite different quasiparticle structures. This is instantly evident if one looks at the actual dynamical futures produced by the climate models. They have the wrong spectrum on pretty much all scales, fluctuating far more wildly than the actual climate does, with the wrong short time autocorrelation and spectral behavior (let alone the longer multidecadal behavior that we observe).
The second is me. I’m precisely a self-organized chaotic system. Here’s a metaphor. Climate models are performing the moral equivalent of trying to predict my behavior by simulating the flow of neural activity in my brain on a coarse-grained basis that chops my cortex up into (say) centimeter square chunks one layer thick and coming up with some sort of crude Markovian model. Since the modelers have no idea what I’m actually thinking, and cannot possibly actually measure the state of my brain outside of some even more crudely averaged surface electrical activity, they just roll dice to generate an initial state “like” what they think my initial state might be, and then trust their dynamics to eventually “forget” that initial state and move the model brain into what they imagine is an “ensemble” of my possible brain states so that after a few years, my behavior will no longer depend on the ignored details (you know, things like memories of my childhood or what I’ve learned in school). They run their model forward twenty years and announce to the world that unless I undergo electroshock therapy right now their models prove that I’m almost certainly destined to become an axe murderer or exhibit some other “extreme” behavior. Only if I am kept in a dark room, not overstimulated, and am fed regular doses of drugs that essentially destroy the resolution of my real brain until it approximates that of their model can they be certain that I won’t either bring about World Peace in one extreme or cause a Nuclear War in the other.
The problem is that this whole idea is just silly! Human behavior cannot be predicted by a microscopic physical model of the neurons at the quantum chemistry level! Humans are open non-Markovian information systems. We are strongly regulated by our past experience, our memory, as well as our instantaneous input, all folded through a noisy, defect-ridden, and unbelievably complex multilayer neural network that is chemically modulated by a few dozen things (hormones, bioavailable energy, diurnal phase, temperature, circulatory state, oxygenation…)
As a good friend of mine who was a World’s Greatest Expert (literally!) on complex systems used to say: “More is different”. Emergent self-organized behavior results in a cascade of structures. Microscopic physics starts with quarks and leptons and interaction particles/rules. The quarks organize into nucleons. The nucleons organize into nuclei. The electrons bond to the nuclei to form atoms. The physics and behavior of the nuclei are not easily understood in terms of bare quark dynamics! The physics and behavior of the atoms are not easily understood in terms of the bare quark plus lepton dynamics! The atoms interact and form molecules, more molecules, increasingly complex molecules. The molecules have behavior that is not easily understood in terms of the “bare” behavior of the isolated atoms that make them up. Some classes of molecular chemistry produce liquids, solids, gases, plasmas. Again, the behavior of these things is increasingly disconnected from the behavior of the specific molecules that make them up — new classes of universal behavior emerge at all steps, so that all fluids are alike in certain ways independent of the particular molecules that make them up, even as they inherent certain parametric behavior from the base molecules. Some molecules in some fluids become organic biomolecules, and there is suddenly a huge disconnect both from simple chemistry and from the several layers of underlying physics.
If more is different, how much is enough? There is a whole lot of more in the coupled Earth-Ocean-Atmosphere-Solar system. There is a whole lot less, heavily oversimplified and with the deliberate omission of the ill-understood quasiparticle structures that we can see dominating the weather and the climate, in climate models.
Could they work? Sure. But one really shouldn’t expect them to work, one
should expect them to work no better than a simulated neural network “works” to simulate actual intelligence, which is to say, it can sometimes produce understandable behaviors “like” intelligence without ever properly resembling the intelligence of any intelligent thing and without the slightest ability to predict the behavior of an intelligent thing. The onus of proof is very much on the modelers that wish to assert that their models are useful for predicting long term climate, but this is a burden that so far they refuse to acknowledge, let alone accept! If they did, large numbers of climate models would have to be rejected because they do not work in the specific sense that they do not come particularly close to predicting the behavior of the actual climate from the instant they entered the regime where they were supposed to be predictive, instead of parametrically tuned and locked to match up well with a reference interval that just happened to be the one single stretch of 15-25 years where strong warming occurred in the last 85 years. There are so very, very many problems with this — training any model on a non-representative segment of the available data is obviously likely to lead to a poor model — but suffice it to say that so far, they aren’t working and nobody should be surprised.
rgb
In the sections below, as in previous posts, we will present you with the latest facts. The information will be presented in three sections and an appendix. The first section will show for how long there has been no warming on some data sets. At the moment, only the satellite data have flat periods of longer than a year. The second section will show for how long there has been no statistically significant warming on several data sets. The third section will show how 2015 so far compares with 2014 and the warmest years and months on record so far. For three of the data sets, 2014 also happens to be the warmest year. The appendix will illustrate sections 1 and 2 in a different way. Graphs and a table will be used to illustrate the data.
Section 1
This analysis uses the latest month for which data is available on WoodForTrees.com (WFT). All of the data on WFT is also available at the specific sources as outlined below. We start with the present date and go to the furthest month in the past where the slope is a least slightly negative on at least one calculation. So if the slope from September is 4 x 10^-4 but it is – 4 x 10^-4 from October, we give the time from October so no one can accuse us of being less than honest if we say the slope is flat from a certain month.
1. For GISS, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
2. For Hadcrut4, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
3. For Hadsst3, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
4. For UAH, the slope is flat since May 1997 or 18 years and 5 months. (goes to September using version 6.0)
5. For RSS, the slope is flat since February 1997 or 18 years and 8 months. (goes to September)
The next graph shows just the lines to illustrate the above. Think of it as a sideways bar graph where the lengths of the lines indicate the relative times where the slope is 0. In addition, the upward sloping blue line at the top indicates that CO2 has steadily increased over this period.
Note that the UAH5.6 from WFT needed a detrend to show the slope is zero for UAH6.0.
When two things are plotted as I have done, the left only shows a temperature anomaly.
The actual numbers are meaningless since the two slopes are essentially zero. No numbers are given for CO2. Some have asked that the log of the concentration of CO2 be plotted. However WFT does not give this option. The upward sloping CO2 line only shows that while CO2 has been going up over the last 18 years, the temperatures have been flat for varying periods on the two sets.
Section 2
For this analysis, data was retrieved from Nick Stokes’ Trendviewer available on his website. This analysis indicates for how long there has not been statistically significant warming according to Nick’s criteria. Data go to their latest update for each set. In every case, note that the lower error bar is negative so a slope of 0 cannot be ruled out from the month indicated.
On several different data sets, there has been no statistically significant warming for between 11 and 22 years according to Nick’s criteria. Cl stands for the confidence limits at the 95% level.
The details for several sets are below.
For UAH6.0: Since December 1992: Cl from -0.009 to 1.688
This is 22 years and 10 months.
For RSS: Since March 1993: Cl from -0.014 to 1.597
This is 22 years and 7 months.
For Hadcrut4.4: Since January 2001: Cl from -0.048 to 1.334
This is 14 years and 9 months.
For Hadsst3: Since July 1995: Cl from -0.002 to 1.949
This is 20 years and 3 months.
For GISS: Since September 2004: Cl from -0.033 to 2.020
This is 11 years and 1 month.
Section 3
This section shows data about 2015 and other information in the form of a table. The table shows the five data sources along the top and other places so they should be visible at all times. The sources are UAH, RSS, Hadcrut4, Hadsst3, and GISS.
Down the column, are the following:
1. 14ra: This is the final ranking for 2014 on each data set.
2. 14a: Here I give the average anomaly for 2014.
3. year: This indicates the warmest year on record so far for that particular data set. Note that the satellite data sets have 1998 as the warmest year and the others have 2014 as the warmest year.
4. ano: This is the average of the monthly anomalies of the warmest year just above.
5. mon: This is the month where that particular data set showed the highest anomaly. The months are identified by the first three letters of the month and the last two numbers of the year.
6. ano: This is the anomaly of the month just above.
7. y/m: This is the longest period of time where the slope is not positive given in years/months. So 16/2 means that for 16 years and 2 months the slope is essentially 0. Periods of under a year are not counted and are shown as “0”.
8. sig: This the first month for which warming is not statistically significant according to Nick’s criteria. The first three letters of the month are followed by the last two numbers of the year.
9. sy/m: This is the years and months for row 8. Depending on when the update was last done, the months may be off by one month.
10. Jan: This is the January 2015 anomaly for that particular data set.
11. Feb: This is the February 2015 anomaly for that particular data set, etc.
19. ave: This is the average anomaly of all months to date taken by adding all numbers and dividing by the number of months.
20. rnk: This is the rank that each particular data set would have for 2015 without regards to error bars and assuming no changes. Think of it as an update 45 minutes into a game.
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.14ra | 5th | 6th | 1st | 1st | 1st |
| 2.14a | 0.188 | 0.255 | 0.564 | 0.479 | 0.75 |
| 3.year | 1998 | 1998 | 2014 | 2014 | 2014 |
| 4.ano | 0.482 | 0.55 | 0.564 | 0.479 | 0.75 |
| 5.mon | Apr98 | Apr98 | Jan07 | Aug14 | Jan07 |
| 6.ano | 0.742 | 0.857 | 0.832 | 0.644 | 0.97 |
| 7.y/m | 18/5 | 18/8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 8.sig | Dec92 | Mar93 | Jan01 | Jul95 | Sep04 |
| 9.sy/m | 22/10 | 22/7 | 14/9 | 20/3 | 11/1 |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
| 10.Jan | 0.276 | 0.365 | 0.688 | 0.440 | 0.82 |
| 11.Feb | 0.174 | 0.326 | 0.660 | 0.406 | 0.88 |
| 12.Mar | 0.164 | 0.255 | 0.681 | 0.424 | 0.90 |
| 13.Apr | 0.086 | 0.172 | 0.656 | 0.557 | 0.74 |
| 14.May | 0.284 | 0.309 | 0.696 | 0.593 | 0.79 |
| 15.Jun | 0.332 | 0.391 | 0.730 | 0.575 | 0.77 |
| 16.Jul | 0.182 | 0.288 | 0.696 | 0.637 | 0.73 |
| 17.Aug | 0.275 | 0.389 | 0.740 | 0.665 | 0.81 |
| 18.Sep | 0.253 | 0.382 | 0.786 | 0.729 | 0.81 |
| Source | UAH | RSS | Had4 | Sst3 | GISS |
| 19.ave | 0.225 | 0.320 | 0.702 | 0.558 | 0.81 |
| 20.rnk | 3rd | 4th | 1st | 1st | 1st |
If you wish to verify all of the latest anomalies, go to the following:
For UAH, version 6.0beta3 was used. Note that WFT uses version 5.6. So to verify the length of the pause on version 6.0, you need to use Nick’s program.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0beta/tlt/tltglhmam_6.0beta3.txt
For RSS, see: ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/monthly_time_series/rss_monthly_msu_amsu_channel_tlt_anomalies_land_and_ocean_v03_3.txt
For Hadcrut4, see: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/data/current/time_series/HadCRUT.4.4.0.0.monthly_ns_avg.txt
For Hadsst3, see: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/HadSST3-gl.dat
For GISS, see:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
To see all points since January 2015 in the form of a graph, see the WFT graph below. Note that UAH version 5.6 is shown. WFT does not show version 6.0 yet. Also note that Hadcrut4.3 is shown and not Hadcrut4.4, which is why the last few months are missing for Hadcrut.
As you can see, all lines have been offset so they all start at the same place in January 2015. This makes it easy to compare January 2015 with the latest anomaly.
Appendix
In this part, we are summarizing data for each set separately.
RSS
The slope is flat since February 1997 or 18 years, 8 months. (goes to September)
For RSS: There is no statistically significant warming since March 1993: Cl from -0.014 to 1.597.
The RSS average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.320. This ties it as 4th place. 1998 was the warmest at 0.55. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.857. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.255 and it was ranked 6th.
UAH6.0beta3
The slope is flat since May 1997 or 18 years and 5 months. (goes to September using version 6.0beta3)
For UAH: There is no statistically significant warming since December 1992: Cl from -0.009 to 1.688. (This is using version 6.0 according to Nick’s program.)
The UAH average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.225. This would rank it as 3rd place. 1998 was the warmest at 0.483. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in April of 1998 when it reached 0.742. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.188 and it was ranked 5th.
Hadcrut4.4
The slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
For Hadcrut4: There is no statistically significant warming since January 2001: Cl from -0.048 to 1.334.
The Hadcrut4 average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.702. This would set a new record if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.832. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.564 and this set a new record.
Hadsst3
For Hadsst3, the slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning. For Hadsst3: There is no statistically significant warming since July 1995: Cl from -0.002 to 1.949.
The Hadsst3 average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.558. This would set a new record if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in August of 2014 when it reached 0.644. This is prior to 2015. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.479 and this set a new record. The September 2015 anomaly of 0.729 also sets a new record.
GISS
The slope is not flat for any period that is worth mentioning.
For GISS: There is no statistically significant warming since September 2004: Cl from -0.033 to 2.020.
The GISS average anomaly so far for 2015 is 0.81. This would set a new record if it stayed this way. The highest ever monthly anomaly was in January of 2007 when it reached 0.97. The anomaly in 2014 was 0.75 and it set a new record.
Conclusion
After reading this article, do you think climate science is settled? If not, do you think it will be settled in your lifetime?
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A long name does not signify intelligence to us but the writing does signify stupidity.
Read RGBs script. I dare you
How many people drink what has settled to the bottom of the bottle?
(That’s where the Kool-Aid lives.)
Solar irradiance unquestionably provides the overwhelming bulk of energy that drives the climate system, with geothermal energy making only a very minor contribution. Thus it’s astounding to see solar energy relegated No. 4 in the list of climatic variables, while the earth’s rotation is listed as No. 1. The latter merely steers fluid motion on the globe through the Coriolis effect, rather than driving it, and is a factor only in the spatial redistribution of thermal energy.
100% correct. And no one mentions the repeated Ice Ages of the last 2 million years that come and go like clockwork.
But surely “not having the evidence that CO2 might be a problem, is not a reason for not taking action, as if it was a problem”. And therein lies the rub!
Obama has discounted the AGW discussion and Paris will do the same. Ultimately the Greens will be seen for what they are. Dangerous destroyers who would like to think it was better in the Middle Ages but they still drive Eco SUVs.
The Medieval Warm Period was warmer than now.
Yes it was but there were no SUV’s or electricity causing CO2 to rise!!!
You might consider approaching IBM and offering them your product. IBM is looking for products that add a lot of value and that smaller competitors can’t sell successfully.
Or, if not IBM, then some large and aggressive IT company that makes acquisitions, like Microsoft or HP.
I would suggest Computer Associates (CA). They seem to see a market and buy someone else’s product and sell it as their own. NetQoS is a good example.
The question of whether “climate science is settled” assumes a fact not in evidence. This is that climate “science” is a legitimate science. I say no.
Good point! Perhaps it would be better if we assumed “climate science” was a combination of dozens of different individual sciences.
Werner:
The “science” should be defined as the mutual information between the model’s condition-space and sample-space as this is the information that is available for the purpose of controlling our climate system. The mutual information aka science is nil. Thus, the climate system is uncontrollable.
Is climate science settled? Instead I say Is global warming a settled science? Basically because the natural variability components are not global in nature but they are more of local and regional in nature similar to general circulation patterns defined by systematic variations in climate change.
To answer this [1] IPCC must stop using climate change, that relates to all met parameters, to global warming, that relates to one met parameter, namely temperature; [2] IPCC must present quantitatively the trend in global average temperature estimated using reliable data series [not cooked up or manipulated data series]; [3] IPCC must then separate the component that contributing by human activity in global average temperature trend in quantitative terms; [4] IPCC must separate the trend due to anthropogenic greenhouses component created by greenhouse effect from the human activity component, which is known as global warming component; [5] Unless these are not answered, we cannot say global warming is a settled science and thus its impact on nature is real. Models may tell many things but they are hypothetical and not real.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Since even the IPCC says the range of climate sensitivity is from 1.5 to 4.5 per doubling, as far as I am concerned, this is an admission that the issue of global warming is not settled. Furthermore, the pause would indicate that even 1.5 is too high.
The climate sensitivity” aka “the equilibrium climate sensitivity” (TECS) is the ratio between the change in the global surface air temperature at equilibrium and the change in the logarithm of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Though the ratio between two variables is not generally a constant the ratio between these two variables is asserted by the IPCC to be a constant. This assertion cannot be tested because the value of the numerator in the ratio (the change in the global surface temperature at equilibrium) cannot be observed. Thus, TECS is scientific nonsense.
Werner
I am with you on that. As I said (richard verney November 6, 2015 at 10:56 am):
“If it was settled, there would not be some 90 or so Climate Models, but rather just 3 setting out predictions (not projections) for the 3 future CO2 scenarios. Being generous, there might be a total of 9 models producing predictions (not projections) as above but as varied with the 3 manmade future aerosol emission scenarios.
So one only has to look at the IPCC Reports themselves to know that the science is not settled.
Further, the most important aspect is the so called Climate Sensitivity. However, they are unable to put a figure on Climate Sensitivity, instead a wide range is set that has not been narrowed in some 35 years notwithstanding countless billions of dollars spent on the issue, and they are not even able to set out a consensus view on this topic.”
As regards the ‘pause’ it must be the case that the longer the ‘pause’ continues, the lower Climate sensitivity must be. I have often pointed out that if this current El Nino does not result in a long lasting step change in temperatures (as was coincident upon the 1997/8 Super el Nino), the high 2015/early2016 temperatures will simply be a temporary blip on the chart and a following La Nina will bring temperatures down and following that La Nina one may anticipate that temperatures will once again track the 2001 to 2003 anomaly level.
IF (and that is a big IF) that is the case then coming into AR6 the ‘pause’ will be more than 21 years in duration. Further one may reasonably expect many more papers published on Climate Sensitivity in 2017 and 2018 suggesting ever lowering figures for Climate sensitivity. As you suggest, it is likely that these papers will put a figure of less than 1.5 on Climate sensitivity.
How will the IPCC cope with that? The discrepancy between model projections and real world observational data will widen, with all the models being outside their 95% confidence bounds, and with recent papers putting Climate Sensitivity at 1.5 or less, which is not the required scary figure of more than 2degC.
Difficult times lie ahead for the IPCC unless this current strong El Nino results in a long lasting step change in temperature.
richard verney:
The theory that there has been a “pause” has the shortcoming that it defines the “global warming” in the interval of the pause in such a way as to make it multivalued. Thus in circumstances in which it is true that the “global warming” is nil it is also true that the “global warming” is not nil violating the law of non-contradiction. I’ve provided details in several posts to this blog.
Also, the theory that “the climate sensitivity” is a constant of Earth’s climate system has the shortcoming of lacking either theoretical or empirical support. That it appears to be a constant seems to have been achieved by placement of “the” in front of “climate sensitivity.”
IPCC AR5 text box 9.2 acknowledges a 15 year pause/hiatus/lull/stasis (at publication) and the GCMs disappointing failure to model it.
Robert G Brown is one of the few people I look up to, not because he has solved the problem of Climate (change) but because he accurately understands the almost complete impossibility of understanding it!
Years ago someone said to me that, faced with a problem that you didn’t know how to solve, you must go back to first principles. None of the theories and equations helping? start from scratch and develop new ones!
Robert G Brown reminds us that the ‘easy’ problems that we can solve with the application of linear differential equations (and in a sense, scientific theories are simply differential equations, like F=ma) have already been solved, and that what remain are the fiendishly hard problems, that, even if we can identify the differential equations that govern system behaviour, are practically incalculable because of the inherent non linearity of multiple terms, all of which affect each other.
In essence this approach – finding the underlying (partial) differential equations – won’t work, not because we get the raw science wrong, but because the integration of those partials over time leads us into sensitivity issues and chaotic behaviours that is essentially the nature of the beast. Larger and larger supercomputers merely extend the size of the area we can predict with some degree of accuracy, from the minuscule to the pathetically small.
And this is why even this brave attempt to identify all the variables, and even establish the correct partial differential equations based upon them will not result in a computer model that accurately predicts the climate.
The only approach that I have ever come across that partially works, is to examine the possible cases and eliminate those that are completely unstable – that is if we consider all possible climates in terms of stability, we will find that huge collections of them are so mightily unstable that should perturbation of the system by e.g. volcanic eruption or meteor strike or even releases of lots of lovely CO2, cause the system to enter such a region, the overwhelming tendency would be to revert back to a more stable region.
That is, we might be able to map climate into zones of possible quasi stability, and zones of impossible instability. If you like instead of working out what the climate will be, we could at least ascertain what it simply couldn’t be. And then leave the rest as ‘what it could and might be’.
This alone is probably what an organisation like the IPCC should be tasked with – what are the possible states of future climate, what are their potential probabilities, and impacts, and how should we meet the challenges – not by attempting to stop them happing, but by identifying the physical and social and economic changes necessary to adapt to them.
IN my time beyond engineering as a business man, I learnt a Golden rule. Do not expend effort on attempting to change that which is inevitable, nor attempting to solve that which is – for whatever reason, effectively insoluble: Rather use the techniques of pragmatism – as practised by both engineers, and oddly enough, the military,. and consider all the possibilities, do the research or reconnaissance to ascertain which of them are likely, plan accordingly,. make tentative steps forward, and as soon as it appears that the situation is not as it appeared to be, change the plan without shame.
IN other words, going back to first principles, as a putative agent of government, what the real question is, is not ‘where is the climate going’ but ‘where might the climate go, with what probability, and, given that its unlikely we can in all honesty stop it, what should be a meaningful response that preserves as much of civilisation as is practicable’?
I know that the flnal answer would be along he lines of :
‘Almost anywhere within a degree or two, a few cm or so of sea level, a few cms or so of rainfall, and indeed along the any of the lines that the historical record have already shown us is certainly possible’ and as to what we ought to do about it, the final answer there would be: ‘be prepared with a contingency fund, to meet whatever Nature sends, but dont waste a single halfpenny on trying to stop it or second guessing what its going to do, because frankly the mathematics is insoluble to that level of detail’.
And to PROVE that the ‘mathematics is insoluble to that level of detail.’ is the first step.
Its not just a matter of finding the right equations, don’t waste time on that. Because the simpler job is to prove that even if you did find them they wouldn’t actually allow the integration to a realistic and useful prediction, anyway.
All we need to do is to have enough of the relevant parameters to show that the problem is chaotic and non linear, calculate the size of computer needed to give an answer in real time, rather than hindcasting, and that will show that all climate science of the sort that is claimed is ‘settled’ is in fact completely useless.
Not that it will change a damned thing politically, because the mathematics to do that would be beyond nearly everyone – especially ‘climate scientists’ who are mainly, at best, third rate alchemists – and as we know, that which passeth all understanding, is in the end a matter of faith to those whom it passeth….
Leo says:
Robert G Brown is one of the few people I look up to…
I think the same of your comments, Leo. And quite a few others like Anthony, Willis, Drs. Spencer, Ball, Brown, and others here who argue the skeptics’ side of the story.
The people commenting here are credible for the most part, and as we know, skeptics are the only honest kind of scientists. All we’re doing is asking the purveyors of climate doom to show us where there is anything unprecedented, or even unusual happening. But they haven’t been able to do that.
“… In essence this approach – finding the underlying (partial) differential equations – won’t work, not because we get the raw science wrong, but because the integration of those partials over time leads us into sensitivity issues and chaotic behaviours that is essentially the nature of the beast. Larger and larger supercomputers merely extend the size of the area we can predict with some degree of accuracy, from the minuscule to the pathetically small. …”
The above quote is a small part of the very, very good comment. Having been guilty of teaching both calculus and physics to impressionable young people, I can not help but agree with this to the max. I can only add that if some of our beginning assumptions about how the system really works are wrong, then this problem becomes even more difficult than Leo Smith pointed out. In other words, if we had the “raw science” right it would be a massively difficult problem — and if we have the “raw science” wrong (as I believe we do) then the problem becomes impossible.
Thank you Leo for the great comment. By the way, I think Leo’s comment might well be one that should be elevated to a full post here to allow for discussion of these issues.
I agree! Perhaps I will use it in a future post if it has not been elevated by then.
Leo, I believe your approach is eminently doable and, in part, is done! How many kinds of weather are there anyway? In the polar regions, what, 2-3, in the temperate zones 5 or 6, and in the tropics 2-3. Empirically it has reached these temperatures, these rainfalls/snowfalls (or lacks thereof), these intensities and numbers of storms of a couple of types and the secondary effects – rates of sea-level change, droughts, fires etc. Also some physical, non weather stuff – volcanoes, tsunami, earthquakes, extraterrestrial bolides. We should be spending more money on tracking all the asteroids while we are at it and planning possible things that might be done.
I have a soft hypothesis -actually it might be better termed an axiom- that PREDICTIONS OF DOOMSTERS WILL NEVER COME TRUE. Such predictions are made using linear thinking of the kind discussed here for which a supportive legitimate mathematical expression is impossible. In the case of malthusian disasters, their predictions are even less possible because they miss out the confounding principal component of human ingenuity in their thinking. Our cities didn’t end up being buried in horse manure (Malthus), the industrial revolution didn’t starve itself out by 1900 because of the shortage of coal (Jevons), we didn’t starve to death by 2000 and run out of mineral resources (Club of Rome, Holdren, Ehrlich) nor did we freeze to death by that date with the imminent man-made new ice age on the way (by the same people). Saudi oil minister Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani said it best in a 2005 interview with New York Times discussing peak oil: “The Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.”
The Club of Rome’s 1972 “Limits to Growth” and others by the same group in recent years were totally blown away. We have doubled the 1972 world population and have 7B people living better and longer than the 3.5B of 1972. That there are still apparently well educated persons making such doomster predictions is evidence more of their misfit psychology than the application of sound methods. All these predictions are made by biologists and social scientists whose training and knowledge are linear and more akin to accounting than to creative science. Such disciplines give the air of erudition but they are precisely the least equipped to make such predictions. Knowing the sex rituals of the chameleon, which do not change over a very long time if at all, or counting tiger turds in the jungle to calculate population, are not the kind of skills required to properly attempt to forecast the future of mankind and the planet.
Mention should also be made here of the inevitability of unexpected consequences (themselves arising from the same kind of lack of unpredictability inherent in “doom” and climate science) that have and will abound in any action that might be designed by doomsters to correct the perceived fantasy. Some of their geoengineering ideas are downright scary and definitely not the work of engineers (although I guess you could buy one). These aspects definitely also brand doomster climate scientists as political activists and social scientists.
“There is absolutely no question that our climate is precisely a self-organized system of this sort. We have long since named the observed, temporally persistent self-organized structures — ENSO, the Monsoon, the NAO, the PDO.”
You are kidding yourself, NAO and ENSO variability is driven by atmospheric responses to solar plasma variations.
I envy you your certainty, sir.
I look at this all like a 10K piece jig-saw puzzle, with no accompanying picture to look at. We have the border assembled because those pieces are obvious. now we must begin to find where the assembled groups of similar colored pieces will be in the picture, which we have not seen, but from all indications is abstract and unpredictable in its composition.
“..but from all indications is abstract and unpredictable in its composition.”
That’s rather like the IPCC declaring the nature of what they have not yet understood.
(in case anyone is still reading this thread) it’s not the EPA. some bureaucracy. or sciensce sugardaddy.
“After reading this article, do you think climate science is settled? If not, do you think it will be settled in your lifetime?”
if i believe the idea skeptical vieuw: yes as they say in chorus the only “settled scientific point you can make about climate”: It changes and will always change and we don’t know which way it will change. We can go to a new optimum or dive down into an ice age. It even can go back to the eocene maximum. during that eocene maximum, trocical fish were swimming in the arctic oceans. or it can go to the snowball earth episode. We simply don’t know.
definitely it won’t be settled in our liftetime. We even don’t have a decent record to really know what happened the last 1000 years so how can we then even settle it in the coming 20-40 years?.
i would go back to my question i always ask: if we would have a reliable record of the length of the Vostok core (430.000 years) would we then label this warming we see as “abnormal”? i doubt this, i even would say nobody would care as then the abrupt climate changes from the past would have dwarfed what we see now.
“…the changes, if any, are linear, exponential, logarithmic, sinusoidal, random or some other pattern.”
or, and I may be going out on a limb here, myriad, continuous and utterly incomprehensible using current technology.
So yeah, lets panic, tax ourselves into the stone age and fundamentally transform our entire way of life to “fix” it before it’s too late!!!
The science is settled. The climate is stable. How do I know this? Observation. I would not be here as a human to ask the question if that were not true.
I started as an engineer using a slide rule. It was a matter of training to first simplify the problem by looking at the important variables and estimate an answer before starting the calculation so you can check that the results in case you made a mistake.
In the navy we were taught to observe the changes in nuke reactors power based on changes to the inputs to a simplified 6-factor formula. When living on a small ship, you do not have the luxury of computers to predict what is going to happen. Of course the design used science to make a stable system.
I have often observed some human are insecure about simple answers and feel a need to spend lots of money on computer time. I was brought on to a 6 month project with unlimited overtime to review thermo calculations. While waiting for the first calculation to be done, I found the 4 foot stack of IBM cards for the original calculation. My review showed the original model to be very conservative and validated by plant experience. We were done in two weeks. Worked myself out of nice contract. That is the commercial world.
Working for the government is different. Spend the money so you will get more next year. From experience, I know that spent nuclear fuel can be stored safely under 6 feet of water and the boil off rate is an easy calculation. It is a simple differential equation to show that the decay rate is greater than the leach rate, allow the water to meet safe drinking water standards. After a few years, the fuel can be air cooled in dry storage. After 300 years, the level of radiation is the same as dirt along the road in Nevada.
Having lots of money, the US Congress passed regulations requiring a geological repository be analyzed for 10,000 years. Thanks to watermelons, 10,000 was rule to be arbitrary. This was my first experience with environmental models that considered beyond 100,000 years. What I noticed is over millions of years the climate is a very stable system. We survived the little ice age. While the forcing function that caused it is just interesting theory, the climate returned to ‘normal’ and did not become unstable.
While I do not have anything against scientists, I setting the thermostat the same place where Dr Hansen and POTUS Obama set it. Where my wife is comfortable.
Thanks Kit. That was a great post. Expand it a little and submit it for a post — your story is that good.
Warmest Regards, Mark
I will be happy to work on it manana. Red meat and red wine trump AGW. That from the KISS (keep it simple stupid) culinary school.
To add to your list: The Earth Itself, how do we represent it, which earth geoid model should be used for climate studies, what “gridding” and infilling are doing to the end error, how to represent spatial error in climate data, etc.
End of global warming debate: http://realclimatologist.org
“There is absolutely no question that our climate is precisely a self-organized system of this sort.”
Should read “There is absolutely no question that our climate was precisely a self-organized system of this sort, until we dumped trillions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning sequestered carbon.”
Jack Dale:
The “sequestered carbon” was CO2 sequestered from the air and the burning is returning the “sequestered carbon” to the air as CO2.
Please explain why the climate
(a) was a “self-organized system of this sort” before the CO2 was sequestered from the air
and
(b) was a “self-organized system of this sort” while the CO2 was sequestered from the air
but
(c) ceased to be a “self-organized system of this sort” when some of the sequestered CO2 was returned to the air.
Richard
Jack Dale
Er, uhm, ahhhh. No. Not correct. However, we can extend your comment slightly and make it accurate
“There is absolutely no evidence at all for the claim that “There is absolutely no question that our climate was precisely a self-organized system of this sort, until we dumped trillions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning sequestered carbon.””
Are you suggesting that raising the CO2 from 0.028% to 0.040% has totally upset the Earth? The Earth has ways of coping and is doing very well with this extra CO2.
Werner Brozek November 8, 2015 at 4:01 pm
JM: Consequently when a water molecule has two bonds on its negative oxygen molecule the polarity is neutralized and the resulting force of the bond disappears (2∂ – 2∂ = 0∂). So, when there are two hydrogen bonds completed the positively charged hydrogen atoms just kind of float. The only thing holding them is that if they move away the charge returns pulling them back.
WB: You lost me here. The oxygen end of the water molecule is always negative and the hydrogen end is always positive.
JM: Is it? Are you sure about that? (These are just rhetorical questions.) I think it would be more accurate to say that the oxygen atom is always negative and the hydrogen atoms are always positive. (Why am I making this distinction? It’s not because I’m trying to be dogmatic. There is a reason, and I’ll do my best to explain below.)
WB: This is because of the large electronegativity difference between oxygen and hydrogen.
JM: Right, and it is how its H atoms are arranged (one half of a tetrahedral) that causes the H2O molecule to be a dipole (and to, therefore, have the lopsided electronegativity).
WB: There are strong polar covalent bonds between each oxygen and hydrogen of each individual water molecule in a liquid.
JM: Well, to be as accurate as possible, there are strong covalent bonds between the hydrogen atoms and the oxygen atom. But (as I am sure you realize) these covalent bonds are not “polar” is is how they are arranged (one half of a tetrahedral) that causes the whole molecule to be polar, or what they call a dipole.
WB: Furthermore, there are always attractions between the positive hydrogen end of one water molecule and the negative oxygen end of the adjacent water molecule. This is the hydrogen bond . . .
JM: I agree.
WB: . . . and it is never neutralized
JM: Well, wait a second. Hold this thought; Let’s take a step back. Consider the Methane molecule CH4. It consists of a carbon molecule surrounded by four hydrogen molecules arranged in a tetrahedral. Consider its similarity to the H2O molecule. But also consider it’s starkly different properties. It is very much NOT a dipole. For example, it’s boiling point is -164 °C (at 1 ATM).
Now let me ask you another rhetorical question. Even though it is impossible, if we were to be able to remove two of the the covalently bonded hydrogen atoms from the methane molecule (and assuming the remaining ones maintained their orientation, one half of a tetrahedral) would it not turn into a dipole, like H2O? And would it not, therefore, also have a high boiling point similar to H2O? And would it not, therefore, have all of the other quirky characteristics of H2O)?
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I’m going to wait for your response before I continue with this because it is critical that we are on the same page at this juncture.
The shape and the electronegativity differences are two completely different things. IF the electronegativity of hydrogen and oxygen were the same, there would be no partial charge and no dipole, regardless of its shape. The electronegativities of C, H, and O are 2.55, 2.1, and 3.44 respectively. So the difference between C and O is 0.45. However CO2 is linear, so even though carbon attracts the electrons less than oxygen, there is no negative end due to the linear shape.
If the electronegativity difference is 0, the bond is nonpolar. Between 0.1 and 1.6, it is polar. At 1.7 and above, it is ionic. With a difference between H and O of 1.34, the O-H bond is highly polar and close to ionic, but not quite.
It would have a positive and negative end, but much weaker than that of water since the electronegativity difference is only 0.45 instead of 1.34.
No and no, since the bond between an H of one molecule and the C of the next is extremely weak.
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 6:04 am
JM: It is how its H atoms are arranged (one half of a tetrahedral) that causes the H2O molecule to be a dipole (and to, therefore, have the lopsided electronegativity).
WB: The shape and the electronegativity differences are two completely different things.
JM: Well, of course. I never stated otherwise? So, I don’t see why you mention this.
WB: IF the electronegativity of hydrogen and oxygen were the same, there would be no partial charge and no dipole, regardless of its shape.
JM: Of course, but . . . isn’t this both obvious and irrelevant to my point?
WB: The electronegativities of C, H, and O are 2.55, 2.1, and 3.44 respectively. So the difference between C and O is 0.45. However CO2 is linear, so even though carbon attracts the electrons less than oxygen, there is no negative end due to the linear shape.
JM: Right. As you indicate, only when the electronegativity is lopsided will it be a dipole. If they are symmetrical it will not be a dipole.
JM: But (as I am sure you realize) these covalent bonds are not “polar” it is how they are arranged (one half of a tetrahedral) that causes the whole molecule to be polar, or what they call a dipole.
WB: If the electronegativity difference is 0, the bond is nonpolar.
JM: Right, it has to have BOTH. It has to have non-zero electronegativity AND it has to be non-symmetrical to be a dipole. If it doesn’t have both of these it is not a dipole and will, thereby, not possess the characteristics of a dipole. And the example that proves this point is the methane molecule. Surely you agree with this. Right?
WB: Between 0.1 and 1.6, it is polar.
JM: Wait, wait, wait. Don’t dismiss your earlier assertion. This is only part of the equation (as you indicated). If it is between 0.1 and 1.6 AND it is non-symmetrical it will be polar (remember methane). Again, if it doesn’t have both of these it is not a dipole and will, thereby, not possess the characteristics of a dipole. I don’t see how you could possibly not agree with this. Do you agree, yes, no? (Please answer this question.)
WB: At 1.7 and above, it is ionic. With a difference between H and O of 1.34, the O-H bond is highly polar and close to ionic, but not quite.
JM: I agree. And this is a really good example. (I’ve been trying to look up the boiling/melting point of OH. I couldn’t find it. Possibly it is not stable enough for this notion to be applicable. I don’t know. [Maybe you can assist.]) And the reason it is a really good example is that it is, like H2O, a polar molecule but it does not quite possess all of the quirky properties of H20. And so, there must be some explanation of this. And that is what I am working towards.) But that can only happen if we can stay on the same page. I’m hoping we will be there after this post. [But, then, that is what I thought on the post that preceded this post.])
JM: Even though it is impossible, if we were to be able to remove two of the the covalently bonded hydrogen atoms from the methane molecule (and assuming the remaining ones maintained their orientation, one half of a tetrahedral) would it not turn into a dipole, like H2O?
WB: It would have a positive and negative end, but much weaker than that of water since the electronegativity difference is only 0.45 instead of 1.34.
JM: I agree. And so its melting/boiling point and resulting quirkiness would not be as great as those of H2O however BUT THEY WOULD BE GREATER THAN THOSE OF METHANE. (How much greater is hard to say, since we are talking about a molecule that is hypothetical [it cannot actually exist].) And the reason would be because of the lopsided electronegativity. (Please tell me you get this and you agree. If not it is just about impossible to go on from here.)
JM: And would it not, therefore, also have a high boiling point similar to H2O? And would it not, therefore, have all of the other quirky characteristics of H2O)?
WB: No and no, since the bond between an H of one molecule and the C of the next is extremely weak.
JM: No? Well, .45 is about 1/3 of that of 1.34. And so, the polarity aspect woud be 1/3 of that of H2O BUT IT WOULD BE GREATER THAN FOR THAT OF METHANE. And the reason would be because of the lopsided electronegativity WHICH THE METHANE DOES NOT POSSESS. (Please tell me you get this and you agree. If not it is just about impossible to go on from here.)
JM: Thank you for being so explicit, unambiguous, and quantitative in your objections. I hope that continues.
James McGinn
Solving Tornadoes
I agree to here.
It should be: It has to have non-zero electronegativity DIFFERENCE AND…..
I agree.
An individual C-H bond in methane is extremely slightly polar since the carbon atom has a slightly larger electronegativity, but due to the symmetrical shape, there is no dipole. The same is true for CCl4. So if you had a slow flow of CCl4 for example, and you held a charged comb to the side, the stream would not get pulled over. But it does get pulled over with a stream of water.
OH is not a substance you can have in a bottle by itself. It is an ion with a charge of -1. So if you add NaOH to water, you get positive Na ions and negative OH ions in solution. Try HF for what you wish to prove. It is extremely polar if not ionic and has all quirky properties of water.
I agree, assuming everything else is the same such as the total number of electrons, otherwise we have to deal with different van der Waals forces.
You are welcome!
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 11:55 am
WB: It has to have non-zero electronegativity DIFFERENCE AND…..
JM: Good catch. Yes, I agree. It’s the difference in electronegativity that matters.
JM: And the example that proves this point is the methane molecule. Surely you agree with this. Right?
WB: I agree.
JM: You are a breath of fresh air.
WB: Between 0.1 and 1.6, it is polar.
JM: Wait, wait, wait. Don’t dismiss your earlier assertion. This is only part of the equation (as you indicated). If it is between 0.1 and 1.6 AND it is non-symmetrical it will be polar (remember methane). Again, if it doesn’t have both of these it is not a dipole and will, thereby, not possess the characteristics of a dipole. I don’t see how you could possibly not agree with this. Do you agree, yes, no? (Please answer this question.)
JM: The fact that you did not provide a direct response to this question concerns me somewhat. (Sorry to be a stickler. Over the years I’ve learned that one cannot be too explicit in these kinds of discussions.) So let me ask the question again: It has to have both an electronegativity difference between 0.1 and 1.6 AND it has to be non-symmetrical for it to be a dipole. If it doesn’t have both of these it is not a dipole. Do you agree?
WB: An individual C-H bond in methane is extremely slightly polar since the carbon atom has a slightly larger electronegativity,
JM: Right, as we discussed, the difference is .45 (which is well within the criteria [0.1 and 1.6] that you mentioned.
WB: but due to the symmetrical shape, there is no dipole.
JM: Right, being symmetrical it does not meet the second criteria to be a dipole. (Keep this point in mind. It has huge significance to my greater point.)
WB: The same is true for CCl4. So if you had a slow flow of CCl4 for example, and you held a charged comb to the side, the stream would not get pulled over. But it does get pulled over with a stream of water.
JM: Good example.
JM: I’ve been trying to look up the boiling/melting point of OH. I couldn’t find it.
WB: OH is not a substance you can have in a bottle by itself.
JM: That is what I suspected. (As dbstealey indicated, I am somewhat self-taught on a lot of this stuff. Or, at least, self-retaught. High school chemistry was not wasted on me.)
WB: It is an ion with a charge of -1. So, if you add NaOH to water, you get positive Na ions and negative OH ions in solution.
JM: Interesting. Like NaCl (table salt) I suppose. (I looked it up [When all else fails, read the instructions]: Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda . . .)
WB: Try HF for what you wish to prove. It is extremely polar if not ionic and has all quirky properties of water.
JM: Interesting, but actually it is, from what I can tell, tangential to my point. (Correct me if I’m wrong.) I was only addressing OH because you brought it up. Nevertheless that is very interesting. And I will look into it further.
JM: And so its melting/boiling point and resulting quirkiness would not be as great as those of H2O however BUT THEY WOULD BE GREATER THAN THOSE OF METHANE.
WB: I agree, . . .
JM: Fantastic! (I pretty much got you where I want you now–in a good way. Hopefully you will see what I mean by this very soon.)
WB: . . . assuming everything else is the same such as the total number of electrons, otherwise we have to deal with different van der Waals forces.
JM: Yes, I think we can assume this. This too is, from what I can tell, tangential to my point. (Van der Waals forces is something I’ve been meaning to look into.)
JM: Thank you for being so explicit, unambiguous, and quantitative in your objections.
WB: You are welcome!
JM: You are a superstar!
JM: I’m going to wait and see if you have any other objections before I continue. Are we on the same page?
Yes, I agree.
Yes.
Yes, with respect to polar molecules. But what do you think about the form of water in air with a relative humidity of 50%? Do we have H2O(g) or H2O(l)?
Werner Brozek:
Yes, I agree.
Yes.
Yes, with respect to polar molecules.
James McGinn:
Wow, I’m not used to getting these kind of honest responses. Are you new to the internet? 🙂
It’s almost intimidating.
Werner Brozek:
But what do you think about the form of water in air with a relative humidity of 50%? Do we have H2O(g) or H2O(l)?
James McGinn:
H2O(l). (That will pretty much always be my answer. The only exceptions being during meteor impacts or volcanic events. [Or, I suppose, if I was applying for a grant.])
Thanks for the rapidity of your response. I will need an hour or two to formulate my continuation of the argument.
Kindest Regards,
James McGinn
Solving Tornadoes
James McGinn November 9, 2015 at 3:26 pm
Werner Brozek:
Yes, I agree.
Once again, this thread is getting kind of long, so I responded at the bottom of this comment section.
To support Werner’s point S has an electronegativity of 2.58, almost exactly the same as C, it forms H2S an analogous molecule of the same shape as H2O. However because of the very low electronegativity difference between H and S the H-S bonds have very low polarity and therefore there is no H bonding and as a result H2S is a gas at room temperature.
WB: Between 0.1 and 1.6, it is polar.
JM: Wait, wait, wait. Don’t dismiss your earlier assertion. This is only part of the equation (as you indicated). If it is between 0.1 and 1.6 AND it is non-symmetrical it will be polar (remember methane). Again, if it doesn’t have both of these it is not a dipole and will, thereby, not possess the characteristics of a dipole. I don’t see how you could possibly not agree with this. Do you agree, yes, no? (Please answer this question.)
This refers to the polarity of the bond, all the bonds in methane are slightly polar as indicated by Werner but the molecule is not due to its symmetry. S and C have almost the same electronegativity and H2S has the same bent structure as H2O but because of the reduced bond polarity it does not form H bonds. Consequently it is a gas at room temperature (b.p. -60C)
dbstealey November 8, 2015 at 5:09 pm
DB: . . . because all of physics would collapse if he was right.
JM: I think you are being overly dramatic. Storm theory, a habitually ignored sub-discipline of Meteorology would collapse. But that is about it.
DB: Actually, if he just admitted what people educated in the hard sciences know – that water vapor is a component of the atmosphere – I wouldn’t have that much of an issue with it . . .
JM: Okay. I admit it. Moreover, I’ve never denied it.
DB: . . . (maybe I’d add his ridiculous conjecture that convection doesn’t affect weather).
JM: Barring reproducible evidence to the contrary, I’m going to maintain this belief.
DB: I doubt that the scales will ever fall from his eyes.
JM: I doubt that also.
DB: . . . (maybe I’d add his ridiculous conjecture that convection doesn’t affect weather).
JM: Barring reproducible evidence to the contrary, I’m going to maintain this belief.
Actually, this is too broad. Convection effects the weather in that it determines the structure of the atmosphere. But it does not play the active role in the weather that meterologists have assumed, IMO.
James McGinn :
You are spending far, far too much time posting here when you say you are fighting your re-election campaign as President of an organisation with the strange name Solving Tornadoes. Unless, of course, the only reason you are posting so much complete lunacy on WUWT is to advertise for the campaign funds that you said you are seeking.
Mr President, I admit that I am convinced your only reason for posting the lunatic nonsense with which your posts pollute WUWT is to fool gullible people into providing the campaign funds you said you are seeking.
Who was it you said are your electorate and when did they elect you President? Oh, sorry, I forgot you have refused to answer those questions possibly because it would distract from your fund raising.
Richard
richardscourtney November 9, 2015 at 1:53 am
James McGinn:
Convection (snip) does not play the active role in the weather that meteorologists have assumed, IMO.
richardscourtney:
. . . you are posting so much complete lunacy on WUWT . . .
James McGinn:
Richard, if you look into the history of science you will see that, time and time again, notions that we now accept as obvious were dismissed as, “complete lunacy.” For example, at one time it was considered complete lunacy to suggest that disease was caused by little organisms too small to see. It was only after the development of the microscope that we had evidence of these little creatures. Even then it took hundreds of years for the notion to be widely accepted.
If you have any empirical evidence of the agency of convection with respect to storms I will gladly consider it. I’ve been looking for about 7 years now. So far all the evidentiary support that I have seen does not amount to much more than somebody standing in a field, pointing up to a thunderstorm and stating, “Look convection.” And the only mitigation measures that I’ve seen with respect to problems related to severe weather and drought are about as effective as blood letting is to treating disease. We are trying to change that.
I think you should try to behave more like somebody that lives in the 21st century and less like somebody that lives during the middle ages.
Just a suggestion.
Thank you for your support.
James McGinn
President, Solving Tornadoes
James,
Your comparison with microbes is ludicrous.
Convection has long been directly observed. Its existence in the atmosphere is a scientific fact, as its role in storm formation. Like any other well established science, students are of course still learning more about it.
Had you ever studied meteorology, you’d know this. You could start educating yourself here:
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/Monograph/Overview.html
Who better to learn about tornadoes than from the U. of OK?
Gloateus Maximus November 9, 2015 at 2:03 pm
Your comparison with microbes is ludicrous. Convection has long been directly observed.
LOL. That people who have been treated with blood letting (or leaches) subsequently become healthy has been directly observed. That climate changes has been directly observed.
The fact that hot air baloons go up is not evidence that hurricanes, tornadoes and thunderstorms are caused by convection.
Get a clue.
Gloateus Maximus November 9, 2015 at 2:03 pm
GM:
Had you ever studied meteorology, you’d know this. You could start educating yourself here:
http://www.cimms.ou.edu/~doswell/Monograph/Overview.html
Who better to learn about tornadoes than from the U. of OK?
James McGinn:
Actually, Doswell is a crackpot:
Doswellian Lunacy Prevails in the Cult of Meteorology/Tornadogenesis
http://t.co/P9j4Mjjd1C
https://t.co/YbuFjtL0cC
Cult mentality of Meteorology
http://t.co/sbxxcOSbZN
I was eased into it while still teaching many years ago.
Yes, you have always said this. The quote below is from a different post that I will comment on.
Here is my perspective of the problem: When you say “water vapor” you are thinking “H2O(l)”. Is that correct? But Gloateus Maximus undertands water vapor to be H2O(g). Who is right?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor
Water vapor, water vapour or aqueous vapor, is the gaseous phase of water. It is one state of water within the hydrosphere. Water vapor can be produced from the evaporation or boiling of liquid water or from the sublimation of ice.
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 3:56 pm
See my post above with the title: James McGinn November 7, 2015 at 9:26 pm
By the way, I would include Wikipedia in the “peanut gallery.”
Special thanks to Werner for introducing the nomenclature of H2O(g) and H2O(l).
(Good luck trying to explain any of this to GM, DB, or RC.)
Regards,
James McGinn
President, Solving Tornadoes.
dbstealey November 8, 2015 at 9:37 am
What are the requirements for nomination and election. And finally I ask McGinn: isn’t it true that you fabricated being ‘elected’ as President, and that there was never any official nomination/election process?
If I’m wrong I will apologize. Just provide verifiable evidence that the process was done; when, where, and where were nominations and the election results published?
James McGinn:
It’s funny that you ask because I actually didn’t win the election at first. It was only upon recount that I (we) were victorious. It’s a crazy story. It involves a computer glitch and it involves a village in India, very close to the border of Bangladesh.
Most people realize that the place tornadoes are most prevalent is the US. But not a lot of people know that India is second. Especially in the far east, close to Bangladesh. The name of this village–a village so small it doesn’t show on any maps–is Node Bate. As you will see that name plays a big role in all that transpired.
All of our data indicated we were going to win by a landslide. And so, when the results were originally counted we were kind of in shock.
Anyway, when I get a chance I’ll tell the rest of this story.
Like the US, most of India is fairly ambivalent about tornadoes. In most places they hardly notice you. They might listen for a bit, nod their heads and be on with their day. But not Node Bate. When a researcher arrives its like a national holiday. Everybody in the village turns out to greet you. And there is a lot of fanfare, almost like a parade. You don’t have to check into a hotel because they have a place for you to stay, Tornado researchers never have to pay for a meal in Node Bate.
The valley in which Node Bate lay gets hit by more tornadoes than any place on earth. Why that is the case is not exactly clear–thus the reason so much research is conducted there. You may know that most tornadoes track from the southwest to the northeast. Well, in that one little valley the tornadoes do something unprecedented, they track from the northwest to the southeast! (On a clear day, standing on a rooftop in the center of Node Bate, one can see a peak of the Himalayas. I don’t know, but I’ve always assumed it must be mount Everest.) The atmospheric phenomena that takes place there is genuinely strange. It’s as if the tornadoes wait their turn at the mouth of the valley so that they can track right down it.
You might think that the reason that the people of Node Bate are so happy to see tornado researchers is because they see us as their savior from this deadly atmospheric phenomena, and in a way that is true. But not in the way you might think. There is actually something more banal about their eagerness to see the arrival of tornado researchers. Hell, I won’t mince my words: there is actually something sinister about it. You see, since research began there, starting in 1950, 13 tornado researchers have lost their lives in in Node Bate–in tornadoes!
More later.
Node Bate = No Debate. Trolling…
Yes, Wiki can be a problem, however do you have any source that says water vapor is H2O(l)?
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 5:00 pm
WB: . . .do you have any source that says water vapor is H2O(l)?
JM: I’ve said all I have to say on the subject. You should feel free to use whatever convention you wish. I would only suggest you do your best to be explicit and consistent.
It’s not a convention, lying lunatic ignoramus. it’s a physical observation of nature, that water exists as a gas, ie in single molecules, in earth’s atmosphere, which incontrovertible, scientific fact you continue to reject, despite all the evidence in the world.
All you had against my own and others’ demonstrations of this fact, was to call me a nitwit. What a twit. It’s beyond me why you haven’t been permanently ejected from this esteemed blog, like those whose name I dare not utter, despite their being less anti-scientific than you.
Gloateus Maximus November 9, 2015 at 7:19 pm
. . . water exists as a gas, ie in single molecules, in earth’s atmosphere, which incontrovertible, scientific fact . . .
James McGinn:
Evidence?
YHGTBSM!
You have been shown evidence here from every possible source.
As I’ve said, for instance, water vapor can be seen directly with lidar. But the fact of water vapor in the air has not been in doubt since before the chemical composition of water was discovered.
It is a scientific fact, ie an observation. Predictions based upon this fact invariably are validated.
You might as well claim that the moon is green cheese as assert without a shred of evidence that gaseous water doesn’t exist in the air.
Are you suggesting that I and others have not been explicit and consistent?
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 9:57 pm
You should feel free to use whatever convention you wish. I would only suggest you do your best to be explicit and consistent.
Are you suggesting that I and others have not been explicit and consistent?
James McGinn:
No. I’m only making a recommendation as to how one should proceed from this point on, assuming their goal is conceptual clarity.
James McGinn
By the way, just give the link next time. When I did ctrl + F, for your name, I got 107 responses.
This is often the case with many words. But if you can, I and others would like you to prove that “water vapor” is, or at least can be, H2O(l).
Does a rose by any other name not smell the same?
Werner Brozek November 9, 2015 at 5:13 pm
By the way, just give the link next time.
JM: Aha! I just figured out how to do that (click on the date/time stamp). Thanks.
Werner Brozek says:
…I and others would like you to prove that “water vapor” is, or at least can be, H2O(l).
He can’t prove it. That is McGinn’s belief; the onus is on him, but he has no proof at all.
McGinn’s belief, that gaseous H2O cannot exist in the atmosphere, is no different than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s belief that fairies lived at the back of his garden. When others claimed to see fairies, Conan Doyle became convinced. When he was shown pictures, he believed them; he thought the Cottingley fake photographs likely showed fairies.
Someone has convinced McGinn that H2O cannot exist as a gas in the air. He believed that, and now he is proselytizing that fantastic belief to everyone else, all across the blogosphere. This is just one of many places where he tries to sell people on his baseless belief system.
The only difference is that instead of fairies, McGinn believes that liquid H2O is the only way that water can exist in air. He says that only “clumps” of liquid water can exist. He has stated emphatically and repeatedly that single water molecules do not, and cannot exist in the atmosphere.
But that belief falls apart at first glance: if only liquid water is in the air, then where does McGinn draw the line? Does his liquid water begin when 2 molecules of H2O “clump” together? Is that where his “clump” of liquid water starts? And if so, why is it impossible to have a “clump” of one H2O molecule? McGinn doesn’t say. Or rather, his convoluted ‘explanation’ doesn’t umm-m… hold water.
Or maybe McGinn believes that a “clump” of water begins at some arbitrary number of water molecules. If so, where is that line drawn? Is it 10 molecules? Fifty? And who draws the line? Do we elect someone President, and he gets to draw that arbitrary line where “clumping” water begins?
To go one step further: if as McGinn claims, water cannot exist in air as a single molecule of H2O, could we observe his “clumps” of water when they get big enough? Maybe a few million molecules? What would stop a sheet of water from evaporating, and peeling off a person’s forehead all at once? But do we ever observe sheets of water clumps, floating off peoples’ foreheads?
No, we don’t. We never observe water evaporating from peoples’ heads, or from anything else for that matter, for the simple reason that water always evaporates one molecule at a time.
So now J. McGinn bows out with: “I’ve said all I have to say on the subject.”
Eventually, crank science always runs into insurmountable objections. People might believe something that turns out to be wrong — we all do at one time or another — but skeptics have a self-correcting mechanism: when the facts contradict what they believe, they go back and try to figure out why they were wrong.
The problem arises when someone’s belief is shown to be wrong, but rather than try to understand why, they keep coming up with new rationalizations to support their belief.
“If an honest man is wrong, after demonstrating that he is wrong, he either stops being wrong or he stops being honest.”
~Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
In the end, it’s really just an ethics test.
dbstealey November 9, 2015 at 8:06 pm
James McGinn:
Is your argument based on evidence or is it based on absence of evidence? (Or, even, absence of evidence to the contrary?) If it is the former I can only wonder why you have not provided a reference or, at least, some kind of substantive argument. If it is the latter, I can only inform you that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Likewise with absence of evidence to the contrary.) But I think it is most likely that you don’t know the answer to this question. So, see if you can at least answer this question, then go from there.
I hope that helps.
James Mcginn
President, Solving Tornadoes
McGinn says:
“Is your argument based on evidence or is it based on absence of evidence?”
I’m not arguing that water molecules cannot and do not exist in the air.
You are.
I have nothing to prove; the onus is on you to support your wacky conjecture.
McGinn contradicts what he previously wrote:
“THERE IS NO STEAM (GASEOUS H2O) IN EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE.”
~ James McGinn
People, don’t feed the troll. He’s simply on a wind up job. Nobody can be that stupid. He’s taking the p1ss.
Yoh! And to think that some people think the science is settled!
“All of these structures tend to dissipate a huge amount of energy that would otherwise have to escape to space much more slowly. ” I am amused by the denial of the climate modellers -they cannot model even a modest tropical cyclone, yet that cyclone dissipates more energy that humans produce during its short life. Take a really decent sized one, also not able to be modeled, and climate believers are out by an order of magnitude. To think, they sleep easy. They shouldn’t.