Obama Is Correct, Climate Change Is Biggest Threat, But Only Because Official IPCC Climate Science Is Completely Wrong

benben, there is no argument about the radiation physics, or the fact that collisional decay of vibrationally excited CO2 dumps thermal energy into the troposphere. The question central to the issue is: what happens then? Climate projections assume all that energy goes to warm up the atmosphere and the ocean surface.
But convection is poorly modeled and the response of clouds remains mysterious. Both of those processes are fast responses and play a very large role in the dynamics of the climate. Years ago, William Gray pointed out that a couple % increase in tropical precipitation would remove all that excess energy, with no perceptible rise in air temperature. None of that can be modeled correctly.
So, whereas your description of the radiation process, etc., is correct, your certainty ignores the poorly modeled fast response channels of the climate; response channels that are known to be crucial actors in the energy budget of the climate.
With respect to climate models, I have another post here, showing that their climate projections are physically meaningless.
If you read through it, you’ll see why that diagnosis includes model hindcasts. That assessment rests on propagation only of the average ±4 Wm^-2 error made by CMIP5 models in tropospheric thermal cloud response. Total climate model error in Earth energy budget runs to several 10’s of Wm^-2. There is no way they can be used to respolve the effect of GHGs, which have an average annual impact of about 0.04 Wm^-2. The idea of climate models able to resolve the effect of such a small perturbation is ludicrous by mere inspection.
None of what I wrote is hyperbole. Any critical analysis shows the current claims concerning AGW do not survive the errors and uncertainties. The APS has seriously fallen down on the job; to the point where incompetent is the appropriate descriptor.
I can add from long-time direct experience here, that most commentators on this blog are very thoughtful, and many of them are far more expert than I in relevant disciplines.
Speaking as a working physical scientist, people who publish their work without any proper physical error analysis at all are either fabricating certainty or are incompetent. No middle ground. And AGW so-called science is rife with that failing.

Ben, what evidence is there to require we do something about CO2 emissions?
You know very well that anecdotal descriptions of seasonal variations is not evidence of human caused global warming. You are apparently trained in meteorology, so I’m at a loss to know why you’d even take recourse to that.
Let’s review: climate models cannot tell us anything about future climate or about what, if anything, CO2 emissions will do to climate. That means all those warming scenarios are not predictions. They are not based on anywhere near adequate physical theory. They are unfalsifiable, and so have no basis in verifiable fact. They are hardly more than conclusion by ad hoc assignment.
Whatever changes there are in the climate due to the modest warming since the LIA cannot be assigned to GHG emissions, and need not at all be viewed with alarm.
Even if there was some remarkable change in global patterns of weather (which there are not), there would be no way to demonstrate that they not due to natural variability. No way. None.
Therefore, assigning such changes to human GHG emissions is strictly analogous to assigning crop failures and teratogenic births to witchcraft.
Given the poverty of climate theory and the known intense natural variability of climate (think Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events), there literally is nothing presently in view that can, or should, give me rational cause to believe we should curtail CO2 emissions.
And please, nothing about,’If we wait, things may go beyond recovery..’ That argument is entirely tendentious. It assumes, and then asserts, the truth of what is in dispute. Let’s be clear about what’s in dispute. It’s not CO2 has some bad effect, we just don’t know how bad it’ll be, It’s that we have no idea whatever whether CO2 will do anything at all to the climate. No matter the gazillion climate model studies since Hansen 1988, not one of them had any physical meaning and not one of them provided any basis for alarm, huge weight of official authority notwithstanding.
The whole AGW thing is an epidemic of incompetence.

Ben, I’ll be as clear as possible: there is no perceptible climatological risk from current human emissions of CO2, methane, N2O, or other IR absorbing gases.
Climate physical theory cannot resolve such a small perturbation and cannot demonstrate, or even imply, that a significant climatological impact is physically possible. There are no observational correlates with an unnaturally perturbed climate.
The behavior of the climate, thus far, is entirely compatible with the idea that tropospheric hydrology (evaporation, convection, condensation, cloud formation) is easily able to compensate for the ~2.5 Wm^-2 of increased GHG forcing.
Terrestrial climate history, with its complete non-correlation with the very large past concentrations of tropospheric CO2, provides no support for the idea that CO2 or any other human-produced non-condensible gas, will seriously impact the climate.
As that is true, then your postulations about nuclear risk have no climate analogy.
We are well versed in nuclear theory and experiment, so that the risks are entirely quantifiable. That is not at all the case with climate theory and observation.
The combination of the very large errors made by advanced climate models, and the complete absence of any evidence that CO2 impacts the climate at all, remove any basis for your risk analysis. There is no evidence of risk. Why, then, should one be alarmed?
With respect to nuclear radiation, the risk was evident empirically even in the time of the Curies, from contemporaneous mouse experiments with radium, well before the development nuclear theory. Ditto is true with tobacco and cancer, well before biological theory could provide an adequate explanation. That sort of empirical evidence is entirely lacking with respect to CO2 and climate, despite intense efforts to find such evidence.
As I noted before, there literally is nothing presently in view that can, or should, give me rational cause to believe we should curtail CO2 emissions.
That all said, I did not assert, ever, that “it is categorically impossible to understand the climate.” You won’t find that statement, or anything implying that position, in any of my posts.
With respect to the NYT article, the statement of a $490 billion subsidy for fossil fuel fails to acknowledge the global mosaic of financial supports and therefore badly misrepresents the economics.
Some time ago, one of my brothers wrote to me about a paper Ottmar Edenhofer published in Science magazine, titled “King Coal and the queen of subsidies.” He claimed that in 2013 fossil fuels received $550 billion in subsidies. It didn’t take much research to show that claim is economically hollow. I’ll put that bit of research in a follow-up post for you.
As you’ll see in my follow-up, in the US the actual subsidies for fossil fuels are dwarfed by the subsidies for so-called renewables. If they were capable of replacing fossil fuels, it would have already happened here and in Europe.
The analysis will also show that the final statement you highlighted from the NYT article, that ““These subsidies on fossil fuels are a very good, transideological issue,” he said. “To the left, it’s a terrible act of environmental destruction. To the right, it’s crony capitalism. And both sides are true.”” is a misrepresentation of the international reality of fossil fuel subsidies.
Finally, I note that your argument has gone from GHG emissions will certainly heat the climate, to fossil fuels are environmentally bad and unfairly advantaged. In your every post in our conversation, you’ve systematically shifted your ground away from the crux of the debate.
You have not addressed a single one of my points.
Here’s the central issue: if climate models are demonstrably and utterly unreliable, and there is neither an implicate nor a deducible nor an observable impact of GHGs (apart from worldwide ecological greening), and there is no evidence whatever of any systematic and extraordinary climate phenomena, why should we be alarmed, why should we spend trillion$ to make energy expensive, unreliable, and unavailable, and why should poverty be a desirable end?

Ben, your discussion in terms like “50%” or “1%” betray a mind-set rooted in statistics.
That’s the wrong way to think about it. A physically valid climate model prediction is a well-bounded expectation value (EV). The bounds should necessarily be of smaller magnitude than the EV, and be determined by physical error propagated through the model over the entire range of the prediction.
A validly bounded centennial global temperature anomaly might be (3±1)C, where that ±1 C is the total physical uncertainty obtained by propagated error.
Such a result would be in the context of a climate model that has already been validated by successful predictions of changes in the climate, and one that has been verified in the engineering sense of demonstrating that was is claimed to be calculated is in fact calculated.
A result like that would be a true indication of a physically real outcome. One needn’t express the overall result in terms of percents.
A physically accurate climate model has serious credibility only after a history of avoiding falsification through successful predictions. It it then predicts a warming trend, we pay attention.
In that case the question would not be, ‘Is warming 50% or 90% likely?’ It would be, ‘Warming is 100% likely, and very likely to be about 3 C.’ This would give a physically real and reliable target for preparative action.
Successful predictions are not hindcasts with offsetting model errors. They are well-bounded EVs with consonant climate outcomes, where, again, the bounds are determined by propagated physical error.
Variation about a model ensemble mean is not propagated error. Variation about an ensemble mean is not physical error at all. It’s just model precision.
Physical error is the difference between EVs and observations. A full uncertainty evaluation includes propagated error and the uncertainties in the parameter values entering a predictive calculation. That is the common standard of physics and it is a very demanding one. It’s why, most of the time, physics proceeds slowly.
I do not think climate models “will never be reliable enough”. I have never posted that view.
Following from my own work, there is very good reason to think that climate models, including the CMIP5 versions, are very far from reliable enough to evaluate the perturbation of GHG emissions.
Present climate models are unable to demonstrate that CO2 emissions will impact any climate observable.
They are also unable to demonstrate that CO2 emissions will not impact any climate observable.
As a result, climate models are presently useless to demonstrate anything pertinent regarding the question of emissions.
It is for this reason that I reference the empirical non-correlation of CO2 and temperature through seriously deep time (not just the past 7 or so ice-ages), when appraising possible cautions. I see nothing there to foster alarm.
In my opinion, climate modelers have abandoned physical science. A serious modeler would be engaged in a reductionist research program to make a physically accurate model of some climate sub-system. When that is successful, that bit of model will be ready to play its part in a more inclusive physical model.
The reductionist program would be hard work, paying strict attention to physical detail, going back and forth with some climate physicist who actually studies some part of the climate and tries to express how it works in terms of a deductive physical-analytic theory. The modeler would work to incorporate the painstakingly improved physical theory into the sub-system model.
Going back-and-forth means paying attention to model errors by comparison with observations, and working to correct those errors with better physical expressions that come from studying the physically real climate.
As knowledge and expertise progressed, all the individual climate sub-system models, which would by then be demonstrably physically accurate, would slowly be incorporated into a global climate model. That is how physics works, Knowledge is bottom-up.
One doesn’t see much effort like that at all among climate modelers. It’s all just computer games. The pretty pictures and meaningless projections do impress the naïve, though.

Ben, you asked, “ If a model predicts that X causes Y, and there is 50% chance that this prediction is actually true. Is that good enough?”
Climate models do not predict that X causes Y. They don’t predict anything. You use “model” as though it meant ‘valid physical model..’ In your context, it doesn’t. So the 50% you add on to it is meaningless. A model that has no physical meaning cannot predict physical likelihoods.
Example: suppose I have a Bayesian religious model that is informed with the expert opinions of theologians. That model says there is a 90% chance that you’ll burn in hell for certain behaviors. Do you change your behavior? Or do you question the model?
The example shows there are models and there are “models.” Physically valid ones make physically real predictions. Other models only make the inferences that are coded into their assumptions.
Unqualified, “model” is a slippery term. Your use of it improperly and implicitly impostures the meaning of physically valid model. Climate models in fact are hardly more than Bayesian constructs elaborating expert opinions; opinions biased by pre-formed ideas about CO2 and climate.
Their so-called predictions are no more than inductive inferences. They don’t make predictions in any physically real (scientific) sense.
In short, your entire question is misconceived.
But to answer it taking your inductive approach: considering the non-correlation of CO2 and temperature over deep time and the invariable retardation of CO2 relative to air temperature over every single ice-age, then one is led by your logic to infer a statistical zero percent, 0%, likelihood that human CO2 emissions will cause problems for the climate.
And we can give no credibility to, This time it’s different! Special pleading is not allowed. It’s invalid statistically and within physics is neither verifiable nor supportable.

Ben, take a look at the uncertainties in the terrestrial energy budget, e.g., here. The uncertainty in the surface energy budget alone is on the order of ±15Wm^-2. That number is typical of all recent estimates.
No errors are propagated through the simulations in the paper you cited. No energy-flux uncertainties, such as that for the surface energy budget, qualify any of the simulations, the analysis, or the conclusions.
Were those errors propagated, the uncertainties would immediately be far greater in magnitude than the climate variables under simulation. Therefore: none of those simulations have any physical meaning.
Honestly, studies such as you cited are useless. They are “climate studies,” a liberal art decorated with mathematics that merely elaborates a subjective narrative. Lit-Crit theorizing. They are the sterile computer gamesmanship that has destroyed climate science over the past 25 years.
You find them convincing. I find that sad.

Ben, ±15 Wm^-2 annual uncertainty is very large when the annual effect you’re looking to resolve is ~0.035 Wm^-2.
Let’s see, that uncertainty in the terrestrial energy budget is about 400x larger than the perturbation you and your work partners claim an ability to resolve. Such a claim is ludicrous on its face.
It’s quite clear that you don’t understand physical error and uncertainty either. That qualifies you to be a climate modeler.
Your suggestion that, “I’m not really discussing with you my actual concerns because you are so incredibly sure of yourself that there is little point to it.,” is self-serving nonsense. If you had an argument that would refute my work, you’d post it. Your record here provides no evidence of any such argument.
But prove me wrong. Go ahead and refute the finding that propagated error entirely vitiates climate model air temperature projections. Let’s see the argument. Consider that a challenge.
On the other hand, I’m sure of myself, Ben, because I’ve done the work and I understand that work. The result is completely unequivocal: climate models are utterly unable to resolve the effect of GHGs on the terrestrial climate. I know that for a fact.
You wrote that, “modern climate models are doing quite OK, within the 95% confidence interval,” which ignores the point that modelers use parameters with off-setting errors to match past climate observables, most notably surface air temperature.
I dealt with exactly that point in the essay I linked in my first post to you. Except you didn’t read it, did you. It’s linked again below.
The climate model analysis I posted here at WUWT concerned the uselessness of CMIP3 models. Those are hardly “the climate models of ten years ago. I have since extended the analysis to CMIP5 models. They are no better. And why would they be? The ±4 Wm^-2 long-wave cloud error I propagated in that post is the average annual CMIP5 model error.
You have been unable to make a single cogent point. Everything you’ve posted has been argument from authority.
There’s no science in your position, Ben. You’re defending a façade. Whereever it was that you got your training, they betrayed you.

Ben, let’s leave it at that. I doubt we’ll get any further.
Good luck at Yale.
If you’re going as an undergrad and want to major in science, take as much physics and math as you can stomach.
And don’t forget to take a course that includes rigorous physical error analysis. Learn as much about that as you can do. It’ll keep you from making the worst sorts of mistakes.
Just to say, though, that dbstealey is correct about the log relationship of CO2 and forcing. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 is high enough so that absorption of the 15 micron band is saturated. Absorption therefore no longer follows Beer’s Law; IR absorption is no longer linear with concentration. Forcing is now linear with log[CO2]_atm.
The ms I’ve been trying to publish for, lo, these past 3 years, shows that the transition between linear and log forcing with [CO2]_atm occurs between 1 ppm<[CO2]<2 ppm.
See the paper by Myhre, et al, 1998 GRL 25(14), 2715-2718. You may be able to download the pdf here. That’ll give you the relationships presently used to calculate GHG radiative forcing.