By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: The vital public policy debate over climate change is deadlocked. This is the sixth in a series about ways to restart the debate — and resolve it. This post gives Milton Friedman’s advice about using predictions as the gold standard for validation of theories. This implies that the key to policy action is testing climate models, the only means to give a majority of the public confidence in their forecasts.
“For such a model there is no need to ask the question ‘Is the model true?’. If ‘truth’ is to be the ‘whole truth’ the answer must be ‘No’. The only question of interest is ‘Is the model illuminating and useful?’”
— G.E.P. Box in “Robustness in the strategy of scientific model building” (1978). He also said “All models are wrong; some are useful.”
The debate about public policy for climate change has deadlocked. There are many factors at work, but two stand out as unnecessary problems — as “own goals” by scientists. First they didn’t provide information about data and methods to their opponents (there are always opponents to such large public proposals). Second they didn’t provide compelling proof that climate models’ predictions are reliable — often ignoring the large literature about validation of theories and models.
This series suggests that we restart the debate by better using our knowledge about the methodology of science — especially about models, the embodiment of theories. Box’s insight above applies strongly to debates about policy, where decision-makers are seldom masters of the subject — and so must rely on scientists’ insights.
Previous chapters looked at suggestions about testing models from Paul Krugman, Daniel Davies, and Karl Popper. This post examines a seminal essay by Milton Friedman about the use of theories. Like Karl Popper, he sees predictions as the gold standard for validation of theories. Theories’ value lies in their ability to make accurate predictions, not the degree of their fidelity to nature. That is, abstractions and simplifications are useful if they improve predictions; additional complexity or detail is not useful if it fails to enhance predictions.
Friedman was discussing economics, but these excerpts apply with equal force to climate science.
“The Methodology of Positive Economics“
by Milton Friedman
From Essays in Positive Economics
(1966)
Excerpts. Headers and red emphasis added.
Defining Terms
In The Scope and Method of Political Economy![clip_image003[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image00311.gif "clip_image003[1]"){kind=small}
(1891) … John Neville Keynes distinguishes among “a positive science … a body of systematized knowledge concerning what is; a normative or regulative science… a body of systematized knowledge discussing criteria of what ought to be … a system of rules for the attainment of a given end”; and comments that “confusion between them is common and has been the source of many mischievous errors”.
The vital role of positive science in public policy debates
… Any policy conclusion necessarily rests on a prediction about the consequences of doing one thing rather than another, a prediction that must be based – implicitly or explicitly – on positive economics.
… differences about economic policy among disinterested citizens derive predominantly from different predictions about the economic consequences of taking action – differences that in principle can be eliminated by the progress of positive economics – rather than from fundamental differences in basic values, differences about which men can ultimately only fight.
Testing theories
… The ultimate goal of a positive science is the development of a “theory” or, “hypothesis” that yields valid and meaningful (i.e., not truistic) predictions about phenomena not yet observed.
… Viewed as a body of substantive hypotheses, theory is to be judged by its predictive power for the class of phenomena which it is intended to “explain.” Only factual evidence can show whether it is “right” or “wrong” or, better, tentatively “accepted ” as valid or “rejected.” As I shall argue at greater length below, the only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of its predictions with experience.
The hypothesis is rejected if its predictions are contradicted (“frequently” or more often than predictions from an alternative hypothesis); it is accepted if its predictions are not contradicted; great confidence is attached to it if it has survived many opportunities for contradiction. Factual evidence can never “prove” a hypothesis; it can only fail to disprove it, which is what we generally mean when we say, somewhat inexactly, that the hypothesis has been “confirmed” by experience.
To avoid confusion, it should perhaps be noted explicitly that the “predictions” by which the validity of a hypothesis is tested need not be about phenomena that have not yet occurred, that is, need not be forecasts of future events; they may be about phenomena that have occurred but observations on which have not yet been made or are not known to the person making the prediction.
… Evidence cast up by experience is abundant and frequently as conclusive as that from contrived experiments; thus the inability to conduct experiments is not a fundamental obstacle to testing hypotheses by the success of their predictions. But such evidence is far more difficult to interpret. It is frequently complex and always indirect and incomplete. Its collection is often arduous, and its interpretation generally requires subtle analysis and involved chains of reasoning, which seldom carry real conviction. … It renders the weeding-out of unsuccessful hypotheses slow and difficult. They are seldom downed for good and are always cropping up again.
The value of theories
… the relevant question to ask about the “assumptions” of a theory is not whether they are descriptively “realistic,” for they never are, but whether they are sufficiently good approximations for the purpose in hand. And this question can be answered only by seeing whether the theory works, which means whether it yields sufficiently accurate predictions.
Conclusion
Economics as a positive science is a body of tentatively accepted generalizations about economic phenomena that can be used to predict the consequences of changes in circumstances.
—————————- End excerpt —————————-
What can we get from Friedman’s insights?
Friedman has lessons for both sides in the climate wars. Many skeptics have unrealistic expectations for models, which this essay can help reset.
More important for the policy debate is Friedman’s emphasis on validated predictions, something potentially of great power in the public policy debate — but which climate scientists have largely ignored (preferring hindcasts and appeals to authority).
Friedman specifically refutes the common rebuttal by climate scientists — that they cannot test climate models’ forecasts vs. future data. He says that forecasts can be validated by “observations … not known to the person making the prediction“. Climate scientists can test the models used in the past IPCC Assessment Reports by running them with current data — not vs. scenarios, as originally done, but vs. observations made after their publication.
About Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (1912 – 2006) was an American economist. He received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. See his Wikipedia entry for more information about his work.
Friedman was an advisor to Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, advocating for policy emphasis on free markets with minimal intervention. He considered his role in eliminating conscription in America as his proudest achievement. In Capitalism and Freedom![clip_image003[2]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/clip_image0032.gif "clip_image003[2]"){kind=small}
(1962) he recommended adoption of a volunteer military, floating exchange rates, abolition of medical licenses, a negative income tax, and school vouchers (he founded the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice) — far he’s 2 for 5.
For another perspective on Friedman’s essay see Julian Reiss’ excellent review. See a preview of Capitalism and Freedom here.
Other posts about the climate policy debate
Criticism of alarmists is not enough: positive proposals are needed to resolve this debate so we can more on (at least to prepare for the almost inevitable return of past extreme weather).
- How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.
- Climate scientists can restart the climate change debate – & win.
- Thomas Kuhn tells us what we need to know about climate science.
- Daniel Davies’ insights about predictions can unlock the climate change debate.
- Karl Popper explains how to open the deadlocked climate policy debate.
- Milton Friedman’s advice about restarting the climate policy debate
- Coming: Gavin Schmidt and Steven Sherword explain the policy gridlock.
- Coming: Why the policy debate is deadlocked. How we can restart it.
It’s not a debate. You can’t debate with people who believe.
And the belief is Marxism. And it has poisoned any debate on climate and nature.
“”This post gives Milton Friedman’s advice about using predictions as the gold standard for validation of theories.”
I agree.
Please see point #11 below:
“11. The global warming alarmists, including the IPCC, have a negative predictive track record, since every one of their scary predictions has failed to materialize.
– So why does anyone listen to these misguided fanatics?”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/10/the-profiteers-of-climate-doom/comment-page-1/#comment-2143323
A few more questions:
11. The global warming alarmists, including the IPCC, have a negative predictive track record, since every one of their scary predictions has failed to materialize.
– So why does anyone listen to these misguided fanatics?
12. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales, from ~9 months in the modern data record to ~800 years in the ice core record on a longer time scale.
– If atmospheric CO2 is the primary driver of global temperatures as the IPCC alleges, how does the future cause the past?
13. The Excess Winter Mortality Rate equals about 100,000 deaths per year in the USA, up to 50,000 in the UK and several million worldwide, even in warm climates.
– If global warming is such a threat, why is there a huge Excess Winter Mortality Rate, but NO significant Excess Summer Mortality Rate?
14. The global warming alarmists falsely predicted millions of refugees and deaths caused by global warming.
– So where are these alleged victims of global warming?
15. The global warming alarmists say they want to shut down energy production from fossil fuels and move to “green energy” schemes like wind power. Trillions of dollars have been squandered on green energy schemes that are not green and provide little useful energy.
– So why do we keep subsidizing these useless green energy scams?
Regards to all, Allan
I actually think that is both a little unfair and, more importantly, unhelpful.
One of the ways that the Alarmists “fool” the public and the politicians is by encouraging the belief that science is a genteel, objective, even-handed thing, where scientists are always open and honest and listen carefully to each other. Thus when sceptics are noisy and rowdy, that shows that they are outside the saintly sanctum of true science.
Science of course is not, and never has been, like that. The history of science is littered with personal feuds, the fabrication of data to support a long held position, political maneuvering to exclude other views, refusals to release data and to consider evidence that runs contrary to a view and so on. In other words, climate science today looks like many other disciplines, both current and historical.
What we need to do is to get the public and politicians to understand this, to stop treating scientists as saints without the normal human faults of arrogance and ambition. We need them to understand that scientists have their own motivations, and that they can be just as strong as those they claim for others. Simply saying it is a “belief” problem is not the answer, as the belief problem exists across swathes of science.
Science is a wonderful thing but not because scientists are wonderful human beings!
You certainly can’t debate with people who firmly believe you are stupid, brainwashed or evil.
none of this is relevant without a correlation between fossil fuel emissions and warming because agw serves only as a rationale to cut emissions.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
My agreement here is complete. I see your work as underlining Salby’s and removing any pretense for expecting controlling emissions to control warming. You can’t predict the effect of cutting emissions if there is no correlation between it and the desired effect. All the “beautiful” physics in the models that give us projections that are not predictions seem to be based on the assumption that there is a strong correlation where none exists. How any expenditure on a policy to cut emissions can be defended in light of this fact strains my credulity.
I am totally in agreement. We all know that correlation doesn’t not necessarily mean causation but I think it is impossible to have causation without correlation.
Yet here we are enduring the fallout of this infatuation our political class is having with “climate” scientists of a particular persuasion. When this little love affair is broken the ensuing spat will be epic.
Hello Jamal and thank you for your paper..
You may find this post of interest.
Regards, Allan
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/12/15/voxs-david-roberts-consilience-or-just-plain-silliness/comment-page-1/#comment-2098864
This is the dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship I was referring to above. See my 2008 paper at:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
or this plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
There are several observations about this striking dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship:
1. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is remarkably strong for a natural global phenomenon.
2. The integral (of dCO2/dt) is atmospheric CO2, and it LAGS temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. CO2 also LAGS temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record. Thus CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales. Thus the global warming hypothesis assumes that the future is causing the past. Thus the CAGW hypothesis fails.
3. This close dCO2/dt vs temperature relationship indicates that temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
4. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is the only detailed signal I have found in the data – there is NO evidence that CO2 LEADS temperature or that increasing atmospheric CO2 significantly increases global temperature.
5. Furthermore, global temperature declined from ~1940-1975, increased from ~1975-2000, and has stayed flat (or cooled slightly) since ~2000, all while atmospheric CO2 increased; so the correlation of temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2 has been NEGATIVE, Positive, and Near-Zero. I suggest Near-Zero is the correct estimate of the sensitivity (ECS) of global temperature to increasing atmospheric CO2. There is and never had been a manmade global warming crisis – there is no credible evidence to support this failed hypothesis.
6. With few exceptions including some on this blog, nobody (especially the global warming alarmists) wants to acknowledge the LAG of CO2 after temperature – apparently this LAG of CO2 after temperature contradicts deeply-held beliefs about global warming dogma.
7. While basic physics may suggest that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the overwhelming observational evidence indicates that the impact of increasing CO2 on global temperature is so small as to be insignificant.
8. In summary, observational evidence strongly indicates that the manmade global warming crisis does not exist.
9. Finally, atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high; in fact, it is dangerously low for the survival of terrestrial carbon-based life on Earth. Plants evolved with about 2000ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, or about 5 times current CO2 concentrations.
10. In one of the next global Ice Ages, atmospheric CO2 will approach about 150ppm, a concentration at which terrestrial photosynthesis will slow and cease – and that will be the extinction event for most or all terrestrial life on this planet.
11. More atmospheric CO2 is highly beneficial to all carbon-based life on Earth. Therefore, CO2 abatement and sequestrations schemes are nonsense.
12. As a devoted fan of carbon-based life on this planet, I feel the duty to advocate on our behalf. I should point out that I am not prejudiced against other life forms. They might be very nice, but I do not know any of them well enough to form an opinion. 🙂
Regards to all, Allan
No, CO2 does follow temperature. That’s not the issue, the issue is that there is a mountain of evidence showing that causation, but there is no evidence showing that changes in CO2 cause changes in temperature.
ALL of the evidence supports the causation: ∆global T causes ∆CO2. NONE of the evidence shows that CO2 causes ∆T.
Draw your own conclusions.
Thank you for confirming what I wrote: ∆CO2 is caused by ∆T.
The WFT graph you posted is a simple overlay, but certainly the rise in CO2 has not caused the endlessly predicted global warming.
1old – please re-read this and actually look at my charts – you are talking nonsense.
This is the dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship I was referring to above. See my 2008 paper at:
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
or this plot:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
There are several observations about this striking dCO2/dt vs. temperature relationship:
1. The dCO2/dt vs. temperature correlation is remarkably strong for a natural global phenomenon.
2. The integral (of dCO2/dt) is atmospheric CO2, and it LAGS temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. CO2 also LAGS temperature by about 800 years in the ice core record. Thus CO2 LAGS temperature at all measured time scales. Thus the global warming hypothesis assumes that the future is causing the past. Thus the CAGW hypothesis fails.
3. This close dCO2/dt vs temperature relationship indicates that temperature drives CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature.
Allan MacRae,
That fakir just doesn’t understand. He says:
Exactly the OPPOSITE ∆CO2 causing ∆T.
There is a mountain of empirical evidence and observations supporting the fact that ∆T is the cause of ∆CO2. I have plenty of charts showing that effect. But there are no charts (except overlays, which don’t count) showing that changes in CO2 levels cause subsequent changes in global T.
That’s because almost all of the warming effect happened within the first few dozen ppm. But now, with CO2 steadily rising, global T has remained flat for many years.
So, who should we believe? The alarmist contingent?
Or Planet Earth?
Because they cannot both be right.
i don’t want any stinkin witch doctors controlling the weather.
i don’t want any redistributors stealing.
i don’t want my rights violated or anybody else’s.
i don’t want any debate on it.
no soup for u.
tea in the bay.
It has become abundantly clear that the CAGW activism resisting debates has worked against the interests of the warmistas. Why on earth would we want to have a debate now? The global warming advocates are loosing the public opinion war. Why ruin a winning pattern? Why debate? Rhetoric works fine.
One is never going to convince a true believer by any argument. However, real true believers are a decided minority–it is the casually interested persons who can be persuaded. My own conclusions on AGW were initially a matter of prejudice against the proponents, greens who by then had a twenty year history of making unfounded predictions. I do not have a firm trust in may prejudices, so I sought more evidence, which reinforced my initial judgement.
The problem is that I know damn well I am strange, and arguments that work on me often do not work on others. The goal is to find arguments that do work on the casual reader.
why does somebody need to have someone else convince him of something? are you an evangelist?
what makes that your goal? illuminating the benighted?
isn’t there enough pointless exhortation in the world?
what if true believers are the vast majority? what if only the minority buys the liberal narrative that activism is a real industry rather than vanity gone insipid. i double dog dare you to come up with any evidence to the contrary.
in which corner of your tent show do you focus on the only thing that does matter: defending your rights rather than cede them through negotiation (misnamed ‘debate’)?
you want to debate instead of repudiate… with friends like you, you don’t need enemies.
arghh- correction:
what if only the minority buys the liberal narrative that activism is a real industry rather than vanity gone insipid
should be
what if only the minority DENIES the liberal narrative that activism is a real industry rather than vanity gone insipid
No, gnomish, I don’t think I am an evangelist. I just want my side to win, as I think following the path of the green blob is nearly suicidal.
are you quite clear that fighting and winning are two entirely different things?
Easier said than done Tom. The average Joe on the street [God bless him] is subject to the subtle yet constant bombardment of subliminal CAGW propaganda. This has been happening since at least Hansen’s 1988 congress speech. That is a lot of catch-up football that we have to play.
gnomish said February 29, 2016 at 6:24 pm
“i don’t want any stinkin witch doctors controlling the weather.
i don’t want any redistributors stealing.
i don’t want my rights violated or anybody else’s.
i don’t want any debate on it.
no soup for u.
tea in the bay.”
Absolutely spot on. Someone get the pitchforks and torches.
Well that’s all as clear as mud.
When exposed to an overwhelming myriad of information, we need a explanatory model no matter what the discipline. But models should never be confused with reality. The validity of a model depends on how well it simulates the past and predicts the future. When the model does a poor job of either, the model must be adjusted or abandoned.
The problem with adjustments has plagued modelers for 2 thousand years. When Aristotle’s geocentric model failed to explain retrograde motion of the planets, modelers pledged allegiance to geocentrism and invented epicycles. Epicycles were imaginary constructs, but reliably explained the motion of the planets. Epicycles explained astronomical motion so well, epicycles are still recreated in the gearing of planetarium lights to reproduce the realistic illusion of stars and planets moving across the ceiling. It was small contradictions like Galileo’s observation of the phases of Venus that forced modelers overtime to dispatch each illusory epicycle to a point where geocentrism was finally abandoned.
The only difference between those geocentric models and todays climate models, reasonable scientists realized the singular contradiction of the phases of Venus was enough to challenge geocentrism. In contrast, today observations of the phases of Venus would be dismissed as cherry picking, and alarmists will cling to a faulty global warming model despite a boatload of cherries.
+10. The “quants” were the unwitting engineers of the last economic meltdown because they believed the false magic of their models . The Carbon epi cyclists treat CO2 entirely incorrectly in their models, and create yet more epicycles to explain the failure. The common denominator is the sanskrit used to insulate their ideas from scrutiny. Delta Q in the case of climate models. A simple log 10 function they set at initial condition of 1, but which should have started at 100 or 1000.
Albert had an amazing way of dealing with this. His equations were all stunningly simple. If you can’t explain it to a barmaid…
“Many skeptics have unrealistic expectations for models, …”
I think it is more correct to say that Many More warmists have unjustified faith in models.
My fav Milton Friedman story.
“At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.””
Such was Friedman’s wit in seeing through the lies of socialism.
The Canadian government had similar job creation programs during the Great Depression. They would have workers repair a road by the river and the river would wash it away. Then the next day they would go back and repair the same road again, and again, and again. Needless to say the workers were very happy at the progress that they were making and it was a real boost to moral.
Under the Keynesian economic hypothesis/models, it makes “perfect sense” to have one group of workers digging a ditch, and another group of workers filling up the same ditch at the same time… Complete insanity…
Keynesian economics is one of the reasons the world economy is in such shambles, because it fails to realize the unseen economic benefits (read Basiat’s “Broken Window Fallacy”) if these same ditch diggers and ditch fillers where gainfully employed creating real wealth/services/products in the private sector as: engineers, doctors, farmers, researchers, lathe operators, machinists, computer programers, factory workers, construction workers, architects, dish washers, etc.
The reason Keynesian economics is still so popular is that it creates a false justification for HUGE wasteful government spending/bureaucracies and government command and control economies/societies…
Just let the free-market work it out and leave the government to protecting the life, liberty from government oppression, and individual property rights.
No, Keynes is popular because he allows the Left to resist cuts to public spending during downturns.
Oddly those same people forget about Keynes during upturns, because Keynes said that governments should run surpluses then.
Keynes quip about digging a hole and filling it in overnight was not meant as a serious proposal..
However, we ARE reaching the point where fewer and fewer people are needed to actually do these jobs: “engineers, doctors, farmers, researchers, lathe operators, machinists, computer programers, factory workers, construction workers, architects, dish washers, etc.”
Piper Paul
The tractor put 98 percent of the American work force out of jobs 120 years ago, it did wonders for our economy and way of life.
My understanding was Keynesian economics was about creating inflation. This was accomplished by having the Government go into deficit spending (decrease tax revenues and increase spending) and put more money into the economy. Back in the 30’s during a depression caused by a massively deflated economy would have been a good thing. The corollary is to cause deflation the government should take money out of the economy by paying down the debt and increasing tax revenues, In the 70’s during we had a recession in an inflationary period and then President Carter misapplied Keynesian economics by increasing deficit spending which greatly increased the inflation and prolonged the recession.
in short
Inflation is high, pay down the debt with cheap inflated money,
little inflation keep the budget balanced
deflation is high, increase the debt and buy lots of goods and services with the valuable borrowed money.
Politicians are real good at increasing spending, but real bad at reducing it.
So that is why Cambodia’s communists forced the people to use spoons to dig (an allusion to all the many who died being worked to death).
Bob boder:
But we didn’t have machines that replaced human thinking then. Many farm jobs were replaced with white collar office jobs and we’re now seeing how many of those were not really needed due to expert systems software. And the notion of building and maintaining automated systems providing enough work to take up the slack doesn’t make any sense either. We’re in for some “interesting times” I’m afraid.
Piper Paul
Just because you don’t see where the jobs will be doesn’t mean they won’t be there. The jobs that came after the tractor came because there was excess labor and new wealth created by the sudden shift in the economic system. There were renching busts but ultimately it raised much of the worlds out of poverty. Do you think the laid off farm hand saw what was coming? You can’t stop it anyway even if you want to you either advance or get left behind ssTe
I was fortunate to be a student in the last class Milton Friedman taught at the University of Chicago. What a great lectururer and a man of principle. He was marginalized through much of his career for challenging the economics consensus on the positive role governments policy play in managing economic cycles. Fortunately, his persistence gave us Reagan and Thatcher. As I noted in a different post, I keep praying for a similar intellectual to emerge on climate change.
Didn’t Friedman say the only business of business should be business? It was paraphrased by everyone else as “ethics be damned.”
Unethical businesses eventually go out of business because of competition.
If an unethical business produces an inferior or harmful product, consumers will simply purchase better products from ethical companies with excellent reputations..
if an unethical business initiates harm on a third party, then the plantiff can sue the unethical company for damages. The judicial system doesn’t always work, but the risk of justice is sufficient to discourage unethical business behavior.
Unfortunately, government involvement in the economy often creates monopolies or removes risk from high-risk decisions or restricts free-market competition from excessive rules, regulations and mandates…
It’s actually unethical for companies to divert stockholder equity to charitable work, because corporations are about maximizing profit, not diverting profits to charities.
Charities are what individuals should do if they feel so inclined. The more efficiently corporations maximize their profits, the more people they can employ, the more new technologies they can develop, the better their products can become and the more money individuals will have to give to charities…
See how that works?
It also is not in a corporation’s best interest to treat their employees poorly or under pay them because employees will simply work for another competitor that offers a better working environment at a higher wage…
Um, business goes to where the labor is cheapest and the product passable, not best. Ahem. Note how the US has ceased being a top manufacturing power and imports most of what we use today. The free trade business the Chicago School pushed has worked great…FOR COMMUNIST CHINA. Not the US.
You know who doesn’t need charity? A person who has a job or business. You know how a business creates jobs? By turning a profit.
You know how how many people have been raised out of poverty by charity?
Zero.
You know how many people have been raised out of poverty by business?
Everyone that is not in poverty.
EMSNEWS,
US businesses are forced to waste $2 TRILLION/yr on mostly useless and counterproductive government rules, regulations and mandates, which is almost equal to the entire GDP of India, a country of 1+ billion people…
The US businesses also are forced to pay the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which drives businesses overseas.
The US Federal, State and Local governments now devour 40% of GDP, compared to 7% in the 1900’s, yet STILL managed to run up a $19 TRILLION national debt and $100 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities.
If you want to know where all the US jobs went, re-read what I just wrote…
Climate change (meaning CAGW) has already regressed in the popular mind to the level of the boogeyman under the bed. People worried about their kids, their jobs and paying their rent don’t really spend much time obsessing over the “big picture” changes of world history–ice ages, asteroid strikes, and when we’ll finally get roasted by the Sun. These things are abstractions, primarily of interest to academics.
Politically, if the GOP takes the White House this thing is going to simply Go Away as a matter of policy we have to curtsey to, and I believe Republicans will waste no time in publishing skeptical evidence in spite of the leftist press choking on the words.
Larry Kummer
Wrong.
The burden of proof has never shifted from the AGWers to the science realists. The AGWers have yet to make even a prima facie case for their conjecture that human CO2 emissions cause climate shifts in the system called “earth.”
Dr. Robert Carter, March 11, 2009
(emphasis mine)
***************************************
Dear Mr. Kummer,
Courage. Climate changes slowly. We can adapt in time. (sound of people from 2,000, B.C. and 800 A.D…. and 1740 A.D….. and 1978….., laughing out loud)
There is no need for a debate. Only for public education. Just this one fact will do: CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
AGW is OVER.
Rejoice!
Janice
” Criticism of alarmists is not enough: positive proposals are needed to resolve this debate… ”
Larry Kummer
Wrong.
The burden of proof has never shifted from the AGWers to the science realists. The AGWers have yet to make even a prima facie case for their conjecture that human CO2 emissions cause climate shifts in the system called “earth.””
Completely correct and can not be said enough… this whole “positive proposals” directly translates into “If global warming is wrong how can we steal huge sums of money from people and create massive oppressive government you need to come up with a new con for us to run”.
Sometimes the correct attitude to express is amused contempt, as in how could anyone believe that silly notion. I am too wonky to carry that sort of attitude off, as I will quite literally argue religion with Jehovah’s Witnesses. There is a difference between being right and being persuasive, and I know I lack that skill.
Sometimes, dear, earnest, Mr. Halla, the right response is to turn and walk away and just make sure they don’t fool anyone else by educating those outside the cult about the facts. For instance, with the JW’s, that John 1:1 ACTUALLY says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” They add one letter, “a” (was “a” god) and create a l1e. And remember John’s admonition in his second letter, II John, verses 10 and 11 to not parlay (more than a few sentences) with those who twist the teaching about who Jesus was.
The key with AGW is public education. E.g., the CFACT billboards about polar bears. Only the TRUTH will set one free. A muddied version as presented by Kummer will only create a quagmire in the end.
This Kummer guy is pushing an ulterior agenda, not sure what it is exactly, but it is not wise. It is clear that he is not dealing with pure science facts, but a watered-down, half-truth, version of the facts.
We have plenty of disaster insurance and public programs in place to deal with (or adapt to) disaster. Entire government agencies are devoted to disaster relief, etc… . Conceding ANY ground on AGW to enhance what is currently in place is not necessary to get our leaders to do the right thing about risk management/disaster policy.
Kummer is ignoring facts and twisting facts to push his agenda… whatever that is….
And, no, Mr. Kummer, I really do not care. You simply need to be refuted, for YOU are not open to persuasion.
Janice,
(1) Surface atmosphere warming has slowed. It has not stopped.
(2) This is a political debate. It’s not over until one side has quit. Now the warmists hold the high ground in many powerful institutions. Nature or fortune alone have frustrated them, but it’s premature to declare victory. They need only win once. A large extreme weather event — a series of hurricanes, one or two unusually warm years, etc — might tip the balance to allow passage of key elements of the warmists policy prescriptions.
Many conflicts have been lost due to premature complacency.
(3) This gridlocked policy debate has also frozen policy measures to prepare for the almost inevitable repeat of past extreme weather — as Tropical Storm Sandy showed. Any resulting damage and loss of life will be a cost of the gridlock. It might be high.
“It might be high”
It might be 100 degrees across the whole of the arctic circle tomorrow…
You mention sandy but I happen to know a good bit about how “effective” sandy was vs NYC. NYC had a full of complete report on its desk for over 6 years I believe, explaining in detail what would happen if a more typical storm hit them instead of the nice weather we’ve been having the last decade or two… THEY COMPLETELY IGNORED IT. They still to this day have not only ignored that report that was highly accurate aka proven by sandy…. but they have done nothing more then more of the same… aka demand socialism, US citizens turn in all their guns and bow before the UN.
The ONLY people holding up any policies to deal with weather are cultists… because that prevents the greatest propaganda events from happening… nothing pushing the global warming agenda better then dead bodies except maybe dead children. Until global warming is completely proven wrong on the policy side of the house to match the science side, you will NEVER see acts to mitigate weather events because that action hurts the global warming agenda.
“the almost inevitable repeat of past extreme weather”
Inevitable. Entirely, because there is ample evidence of extreme events at anthropic interglacial (hollowscene) scale. Back it off a big notch to Paleogene scale and bets are off.
Tell me, what would you bet would be more extreme, the Pleistocene, or the Pliocene? Maybe it was just more pliable, but there is this haunting property of the energy of light. Energy is proportional to wavelength (short is higher energy) and the inverse of amplitude…
(1) Surface atmosphere warming has slowed. It has not stopped.”
IMO incorrect.
There are two temperature cycles currently readily visible in the Earth’s temperature.
One is a ~1,000 – 1,200 year cycle responsible for the Minoan, Roman and Medieval Warm Periods and the concomitant cold periods such as the Dark Ages and the Medieval Warm Period. Currently we are part way through the latest positive phase of that cycle, which is at a point with a gradient of around 0.5°C per century.
Overlaid on that is a ~60 – 65 year cycle which correlates with – but is not necessarily in precise phase with – the North Atlantic Oscillation. That cycle peaked around 1998 – 2002 and is currently around half way through its negative phase, which will finish ~2030 at a level ~0.2°C – 0.3°C lower than the temperature at the peak of the cycle around 2000.
The positive phase will recommence around 2030, peak around 2060 at a temperature ~0.2°C -0.3°C higher than 2000, and then enter the next negative phase.
So the Earth’s temperature is presently cooling at a rate of ~0.1°C per decade, as will become so evident that even the most ardent CAGW enthusiast will be forced to acknowledge it quite soon now.
Basically, mankind is no more capable of significantly altering the Earth’s temperature than of significantly altering the time the Sun rises and sets.
That is not to assert that man has zero effect on the climate – that would truly be denial as even gravitational effects caused by convection currents in the atmospheres of nearby stars will have someinfluence, but to assert that any effect we have is well below our ability to differentiate it from the incalculable system noise we attribute to “climate variability”.
As to the climate models, anyone who claims that a purported
computer gameclimate simulation of an effectively infinitely large open-ended non-linear feedback-driven (where we don’t know all the feedbacks, and even the ones we do know, we are unsure of the signs of some critical ones) chaotic system – hence subject to inter alia extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, strange attractors and bifurcation – is capable of making meaningful predictions over any significant time period is either a charlatan or a computer salesman – quite possibly both.Ironically, the first person to point this out was Edward Lorenz – a climate scientist.
You can add as much computing power as you like, the result is purely to produce the wrong answer faster.
Aw, c’mon, Janice, you wouldn’t want to end the Scary, Scary Movie, would you? Everyone knows that elevated cortisol levels make people max their credit cards. And how ever would the NPR crowd get to feel superior? You can only pretend to eat so much kale . . . 😉
The scientific debate on global warming being real ended over 60 years ago when eugenics was at last put down. Sadly it did not stay dead and global warming another of the many hydra heads of eugenics is back.
The whole global warming “debate” has been nothing but propaganda from the start. The science is clear not only is not evidence of man-made global warming, you have huge some of evidences proving it is bogus.
I fully support having SCIENTIFIC debating with the doomsday cultist crowd… the issue is that it must be SCIENTIFIC not a doomsday/luke warm doomsday cult circle jerk.
That means starting with basic science from the very start…. aka first laying out in brutal detail the hypothesis of global warming. Until that is set in stone no “debate” should happen. The death cult has for decades been ever moving the goal posts or in most cases refusing to even say a hypothesis even exists. You can’t prove “nothingness” wrong.
Once you have a true set in stone hypothesis then its simply and easy to debate and crush the doomsday cult. Which is the exact reason why they refuse to lay one out. No scientific debate can start until a hypothesis is set…. and then you need to start defining term so every ones on the same page and then and only then can the death cult ATTEMPT to prove its hypothesis. Further before this attempt is made it should be brutally clear to the full retard level that doomsday cultist must PROVE the hypothesis true not anyone else having to prove its wrong.
Or in simpler term…. USE THE GAD DAMN SCIENTIFIC METHOD.
temp at 7:31
Well said.
All the pretence of science, yet none can articulate the “theory” of CAGW.
Lots of conjecture and handwaving.
Science?
Adjust the data.
So if there is a “DEADLOCK’ in the discussion of CAGW it is fairly simple.
There has been no debate.
Just posturing, even the Team IPCC ™ admit this, Their “science communicators” were bemoaning the fact that progress was impossible while the “skeptics” remained hung up on science and using the scientific method.
Which is impossible to move on from.
No science equates to nonsense.
No theory.
No measured manmade warming.
No DEFINED TERMS.
Intelligent discussion is possible ?
Sorry Fabious, there has been no policy debate to become “deadlocked”.
Just an unapologetic policy imposition, benefiting fools and bandits.
Mass hysteria.
CAGW hypothetical model-mean projections vs. reality already exceed reality by 2+ standard deviations for 20 years, which, under the rules of the Scientific Method, are sufficient disparity and duration to disconfirm the CAGW hypothesis:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
Rather than accepting the reality that CAGW is already a disconfirmed hypothesis, CAGW alarmists adjust the RAW DATA (KARL2015 one of the worst examples) to avoid hypothetical disconfirmation…
In real science, the HYPOTHESIS is adjusted to match reality. In climatology, the opposite occurs, with CAGW alarmists adjusting raw data to meet hypothetical projections…. That’s not how science works…
ALL of CAGW’s projections are clearly wrong: ocean pH, sea level rise, severe weather projections, CH4 projections, Antarctic land ice decrease, Arctic ice extent projections, etc.– all of them. PERIOD! (TM)
It only gets worse from here as both the PDO and AMO enter their respective 30-year cool cycles and as solar cycles progress to a possible Grand Solar Minimum event, which seems likely to occur from around 2035.
All the physics and empirical evidence seems to suggest doubling CO2 has the gross potential of increasing global temps by only 0.5C~1C by 2100, (5~10 TIMES less than model projections) plus or minus whatever the sun and other natural variables do over the next 84 years.
There are many astrophysicists predicting global temps may actually fall by 2100 if a Grand Solar Minimum event occurs…
It’s time to toss this disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis on the trash heap of failed hypotheses, right along with the flat-earth hypothesis…
“Truth is the daughter of time.”~Sir Francis Bacon
Samuri,
“It’s time to toss this disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis on the trash heap of failed hypotheses, right along with the flat-earth hypothesis”
It’s a political policy debate. They are won by work, not by wishing.
It is, indeed, “political.” The answer is simple: elect science realist leaders. Appeasing or dealing with those sold out to AGW/Enviroprofiteer interests is futile; they must simply be removed from office. It is a matter of political power, not of debate.
The facts are what matter. Facts are what drive policy. AGWers are dealing in l1es about human CO2. There is no point to debating with them. Only in educating the voting public.
End of story.
You are willfully blind if you cannot see the sense in what SAMURAI and several others have said, here.
I only write on here to prevent you from misleading the uninformed.
Scientists outside the field of climatology will eventually come out in droves against this silly CAGW hypothesis to save the integrity of science, AND to free up $BILLIONS of government grants that are currently being wasted on the disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis.
It’s in their short and long-term best interests for all respectable scientists to become whistleblowers against this failed CAGW hypothesis.
The average voter is also losing faith in CAGW scam. As soon as CAGW becomes a political liability, politicians will eventually have to stop supporting the CAGW cause if such support costs them reelection… Again, it’s in their on self interest to toss CAGW in the trash and make pro-CAGW scientists the scapegoats…. Don’t worry…. Politicians will come up with another scam to justify more wasteful government spending…
There will be a point of singularity where the demise of CAGW will occur much quicker than many believe possible, and I think that point is probably around 5 years, when the disparity between CAGW hypothetical projections exceed 3+ standard deviations for a quarter of a century. No self-respecting scientists outside of climatology will allow such an obviously disconfirmed hypothesis to continue, because it is not in their best interest to do so…
The answer is simple: elect science realist leaders.
If you win the public debate, it doesn’t matter who gets elected.
Unfortunately, the public have little choice in the leaders that they elect, because most potential leaders put up to a vote, are career politicians with no experience in business, still less in science.
One of the major problems with western democracy (such as it may be) is the political class and those offered up for election. Nothing significantly changes from one government to another, because the candidates are all much of a likeness.
One of the true low points in this saga was this:
John Stossel interviewing Pat Michaels and Gavin Schmidt about global warming. But Pat Michaels had to leave the stage before Gavin Schmidt would walk out and talk. He “refused to debate.” Probably was afraid that Michael Mann would kneecap him backstage.
How weak must the science be if they aren’t willing to debate. Open and spirited debate is at the core of who we are and what it means to participate in civil society. It really does help us arrive at a consensus. Even if there was not yet a consensus on the science, we could have reached some consensus for initial actions to take, the lower cost measures. But that never happened, and now, everything is deadlocked, and will remain deadlocked until we have many public debates. That would engage the public in a way that they are not being engaged right now.
“positive proposals are needed to resolve this debate”
Pure squish if you ask me. And don’t even get me on the people who testify at congressional hearings.
So, even if fossil fuel is a problem, what are the acceptable options for 7 Billion people?
Lost in the fray…… inevitable reality….
If there were a problem with CO2 causing catastrophic global warming, then the market would switch to the cost efficient alternative energy source available.
Wind and solar are certainly NOT economically viable alternatives because the costs simply cannot justify the potential benefits.
The most logical alternative would be conventional light-water nuclear reactors or new promising technologies like thorium Molten Salt Reactors or perhaps even nuclear fusion.
Just let the market decide the what and the when. We don’t need feckless and incompetent government hacks picking winners and losers because they SUCK at it.
Samurai. “If there were a problem with CO2 causing catastrophic global warming, then the market would switch to the cost efficient alternative energy source available.”
Have you heard of the Tragedy of the Commons? It explains why the market will not result in switch to the alternative source.
Basically, if the damage occurs to an un-owned resource (such as the atmosphere or climate, or indeed the common) then there is no incentive for any individual to switch. If they do, then they get only a small benefit and bear all the costs. The only way to save the common is through a non-market based agreement.
The market might work if the atmosphere were owned. The owner would proably then charge a fee for dumping carbon intoi the atmosphere, as a hedge against future damages claims.
seaice1
True. However, your statement (your conclusion) REQUIRES the assumption that there is actually going to be some sort of “damage” to the earth’s environment caused by (1) an increase in man’s release of CO2 (2) that release of CO2 will cause an increase in global average temperature AND (3) that projected increase in global average temperature will cause damage!
NONE of those assumptions are valid. ALL evidence actually shows that
(1) man’s use of fossil fuels has had a tremendous increase in people’s health, in people’s life styles, in how long people are living to ever-longer lives, and the number of people living those longer lives, and the well-being of those who DO use fossil fuels properly.
(2) The increase in plant life, crops, fuel, food, fodder, and feedstock worldwide is a benefit, not a problem, of increased CO2.
(3) The current increase in temperature from 1650 is a benefit to the world, and future increases are a benefit.
Your CAGW restrictions and requirements caused by your fears of a “potential” do NOTHING to slow ANY future global average temperature increases, but DO kill millions of people in the short term and harm billions in the long term.
RACook – Samurai said “If there were a problem with CO2 causing catastrophic global warming, then the market would switch to the cost efficient alternative energy source available.”
There is nothing in my reply that requires there actually be any damage form CO2. It follows from Samuria’s If…then construction. Clearly if there were no damage, then Samurai’s statement does not suggest that the market would make any adjustment.
That is a good presentation, but he should have mentioned that coal and oil are also free. Many people do not understand that probably because they know a sack of coal or a barrel of oil has a price.
Anything that already exists, without the need to manufacture it, whether this is sunlight, or coal, is free. It is the cost of extraction and turning the product into something useful that costs money.
The presentation whilst noting that in Germany the use of fossil fuels has not declined as a result of Germany using wind and solar, failed to emphasize the point that follows, namely that the use of wind or solar do not result in the reduction of CO2 emissions.
It is important to note that solar and wind do not result in any significant reduction in CO2 emissions since the raison d’etre for their use is to reduce CO2 emissions. They are not being used because they provide more reliable energy, or the energy they provide is cheaper than coal or gas. So if renewables fail on their primary objective, ie to reduce CO2 emissions, what is the point of them? It only has negative consequences making energy more expensive and the grid unreliable.
“The scientific debate on global warming being real ended over 60 years ago when eugenics was at last put down. Sadly it did not stay dead and global warming another of the many hydra heads of eugenics is back.”
I’ll put it right for you: Global warming is one of the many hydra heads of not practicing eugenics. That’s what you get in a situation where for generations the morons were not only not hindered but actively helped (by all kinds of “social” programs) to survive and have offspring, all of whom are now voters.
yes we must enforce eugenics to save the world from eugenics….
Who would want to save the world from eugenics? If you do, there might be a reason – you would probably be in danger if it became law, and are yet arrogant enough to demand a life…
…Say what ?? Put that bong down boy !
“For instance, with the JW’s, that John 1:1 ACTUALLY says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” They add one letter, “a” (was “a” god) and create a l1e. ”
O-ho, John wrote English?! There’s no “a” present or absent in the Greek text last time I looked, which can thus be read this or that way according to what the translator thinks is right. Not that it matters for any reader worth to be called a “homo sapiens”, as it is obvious from what follows that this John was either raving mad of pulling our collective leg. Shame on you to put value in putrid old-wives’ tales like this….
Wow, comparing economic principles with those of science. Historical observation provides that in general economic predictions usually fail because the human factor for cheating is rarely taken into account. Reagan was responsible for dereg of savings and loans without oversight rules even when warned. The result was a massive fraud and monetary rip off with 800 plus going to jail and a taxpayer cost of over 100 billion. Then the fed & Greenspan finally kicked the last leg out from under Glass Steagall which soon resulted in a bank fraud feeding frenzy resulting in the 2008 crash and a multi-trillion dollar bailout. People going to jail: nearly none. Many calls for letting the banks go under (and this was nearly world wide) which would only have shut down the economies instead of punishing and taking back the money from the CEO criminals. It’s probably not over since Greenspan with the aid of congress acted to prevent any oversight of derivatives at all which account for around 333 trillion and many of the holding banks are ones that defaulted before; makes sense, not punished once so they feel fairly impervious now.
Perhaps in one way the globull warmists can be compared, in that they have no integrity or ethics and are intent only on drawing their paychecks, dam*d be the expensive consequences.
http://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-execs-went-to-prison-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/22856-charles-keating-and-the-lessons-of-the-sl-crisis
http://www.globalresearch.ca/five-banks-account-for-96-of-250-trillion-in-outstanding-us-derivative-exposure/27127
In any model of physical reality, the only requirements of such a model is that it reproduces the measured data set it was designed to simulate and has some range of validity within which the model may be used to predict future measurements. A simple example of this is the paraxial ray approximation in optics where the simplifying assumption is that the sine of the angle is equal to the value of the angle in radians. This works for ray tracing within about 10 degrees of the optical axis. The radiative convective climate models have no range of validity and were never intended to be used to predict the Earth’s climate. The original radiative-convective equilibrium model as developed by Manabe and Wetherald (M&W) in 1967 was nothing more than a mathematical platform for the development of atmospheric radiative transfer algorithms using rather primitive computers.
The assumptions used by M&W were clearly and honestly stated in their original paper. They are as follows:
1) At the top of the atmosphere, the net incoming solar radiation should be equal to the net outgoing long wave radiation.
2) No temperature discontinuity should exist
3) Free and forced convection, and mixing by the large scale eddies, prevent the lapse rate from exceeding a critical lapse rate equal to 6.5 C km-1.
4) Whenever the lapse rate is subcritical, the condition of local radiative equilibrium is satisfied.
5) The heat capacity of the earth’s surface is zero
6) The atmosphere maintains the given vertical distribution of relative humidity (new requirement)
As soon as these assumptions are made, the modelers leave physical reality behind and enter an imaginary world of computerized climate fiction. Furthermore, the M&W assumptions by definition create global warming as a mathematical artifact of the model. An increase in CO2 concentration must increase the LWIR flux and the surface temperature and this must in turn be amplified by ‘water vapor feedback’ because of the fixed relative humidity constraint. Normally, such simplified models would be corrected by later work. Unfortunately, the M&W global warming artifact created an imaginary problem that could be used to justify additional funding. The need for funding became more important than the need for scientific honesty and integrity. President Eisenhower’s warnings about excessive government funding have come true.
Two additional levels of fraud were subsequently added to the M&W model. First, an ‘ocean layer’ was added to the model without any consideration of the surface heat transfer. The ocean layer had heat capacity and some form of thermal diffusion transport. However, the fact that the LWIR radiation could not penetrate more than 100 micron below the ocean surface was conveniently ignored. Any small increase in surface temperature that is produced by an increase in LWIR flux from CO2 absorbed in the ocean surface layer is obliterated by the much larger variation in the wind driven surface evaporation. Second, it was realized the increase in LWIR flux from an increase in any ‘greenhouse gas’ could create the same type of global warming artifact as CO2 using the M&W model. This gradually led to the concept of radiative forcing constants. It was empirically assumed that an increase of 1.5 W m^-2 in LWIR flux from CO2 produced an increase in ‘surface temperature’ of 1 C. All one had to do was calculate the increase in the LWIR flux from any greenhouse gas and multiply by 2/3 to get a ‘surface temperature’. This is all fraudulent pseudoscience. The whole radiative forcing routine of heating the stratosphere and waiting for the troposphere to equilibrate is nothing more than a ritual mathematical act of worship to the gods of global warming. The whole idea that global circulation models can simulate climate change is arrogant nonsense. The engineering expression is that such models could not predict their way out of a wet paper bag.
A series of external events also occurred in the 1970’s, including the end of the NASA Apollo (moon landings) Program in 1972 and the nuclear reactor accident at 3 Mile Island in 1979. These meant that a lot of NASA and DOE employees were looking for work. In addition, following the ‘Club of Rome’ report on overpopulation, a bunch of environmental nutcases started to use global warming as a backdoor way to control energy and population beginning in about 1974. Once the Charney Report on global warming was published in 1979, reality was left behind and the quasi-religious cult of global warming began to emerge. The fraudulent equilibrium flux equations of M&W had become the justification needed to obtain research funds for climate ‘modeling’. Climate ‘studies’ degenerated into model comparisons of the effect of doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration. The correct answer is of course zero. There is no climate sensitivity to CO2 and there has not been any, at least for the last half a billion years.
In reality, the ‘surface temperature’ was the weather station temperature measured with a thermometer placed in a ventilated enclosure at eye level above the ground. It is simply impossible for the approximate 2 W m^-2 increase in LWIR flux produced by the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration to have any measurable effect on the surface temperature under the weather station let alone on the thermometer in its enclosure. The dominant trend recorded in the average weather station record is the change in ocean temperature produced by the ocean oscillations, principally the AMO. During the 1970s there was ‘global cooling’ as the oceans cooled. A warming trend began to be observed in the mid 1980’s and the ocean oscillations reversed. Following the creation of the IPCC in 1988, the global warming scam took off. Early support was provided by Margaret Thatcher and the Climate Research Unit at the University of E. Anglia. The Earth has now started to cool again, which is why the climate models have obviously failed. They are fraudulently ‘hard wired’ to predict ‘surface temperature’ from the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The starting point for any realistic discussion of climate change is the surface flux balance. The surface is heated by the solar flux and cooled by a combination of net LWIR emission, sensible and latent heat flux and subsurface thermal transport. All of these terms are dynamic or time dependent and the cooling terms all involve some form of thermal gradient or humidity gradient. The Second Law of Thermodynamics plays a major role in setting the surface temperature. The oceans and the land surface behave rather differently and must be considered separately. The major contribution to climate stability and climate change is the energy balance between the ocean solar heating and the wind driven evaporative ocean cooling. In addition, the troposphere splits into two independent thermal reservoirs. Almost all of the downward LWIR flux at the surface originates from within the first 2 km layer of the troposphere. Most of the atmospheric LWIR emission to space is from the water bands in the middle troposphere. The LWIR emission to space is largely decoupled from the surface temperature.
When the real physics of the atmospheric energy transfer is included in the climate models, CO2 induced global warming must disappear. Unfortunately, our so called climate modelers are trapped in a web of lies of their own making. They have to believe in the divinity of their own computer model creations that have superseded the Laws of Physics.
References
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http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=3217&JournalID=69
Clark, R., 2013a, Energy and Environment 24(3, 4) 319-340 (2013) ‘A dynamic coupled thermal reservoir approach to atmospheric energy transfer Part I: Concepts’
Clark, R., 2013b, Energy and Environment 24(3, 4) 341-359 (2013) ‘A dynamic coupled thermal reservoir approach to atmospheric energy transfer Part II: Applications’
Hansen, J. et al, (45 authors), J. Geophys. Research 110 D18104 1-45 (2005) ‘Efficacy of climate forcings’ http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha01110v.html
Hansen, J.; D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind and G. Russell Science 213 957-956 (1981), ‘Climate impact of increasing carbon dioxide’
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Manabe, S. and R. T. Wetherald, J. Atmos. Sci., 24 241-249 (1967), ‘Thermal equilibrium of the atmosphere with a given distribution of relative humidity’
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm6701.pdf
Ramanathan, V. and J. A. Coakley, Rev. Geophysics and Space Physics 16(4) 465-489 (1978), ‘Climate modeling through radiative convective models’
Yu, L. (2012), http://oaflux.whoi.edu/images2_flux/EV_50a.jpg
Yu, L., J. Climate, 20(21) 5376-5390 (2007), ‘Global variations in oceanic evaporation (1958-2005): The role of the changing wind speed’
Yu, L., Jin, X. and Weller R. A., OAFlux Project Technical Report (OA-2008-01) Jan 2008, ‘Multidecade Global Flux Datasets from the Objectively Analyzed Air-sea Fluxes (OAFlux) Project: Latent and Sensible Heat Fluxes, Ocean Evaporation, and Related Surface Meteorological Variables’ (Available at: http://oaflux.whoi.edu/publications.html )
A lot of interesting information.
You state:
Even the figure of 100 microns is too large.
As you will note from the plot set out below, only about 17% of LWIR can penetrate vertically as deep as 100 microns, and 60% is absorbed within 3 microns. But of course, DWLWIR is not a vertical source, but rather it is omnidirectional, and this has a significant impact upon its penetration in a vertical column.
Much of the DWLWIR is interacting with the ocean not vertically, but at a grazing angle of say 10deg and less, or 20deg or less, or 30 deg or less. This means that about 80% of all DWLWIR is absorbed within a vertical depth of just a few microns.
Ocean overturning, is a diurnal phenomena, and does not operate 24/7, the action of the wind, waves, swell are slow mechanical processes especially in light wind conditions (say BF3 or less) and it is difficult to see how these slow mechanical processes can mix and sequester to depth, the DWLWIR absorbed within the 3 micron layer, and hence to dilute that energy by volume, at a rate which would prevent the rapid evaporation of the surface layer brought about the energy that is being absorbed within the 3 micron layer. It is difficult to see how increased DWLWIR can effectively warm the oceans given that it would appear that it drives evaporation at the surface, and therefore if anything it goes to cool the surface layer.
R. Clark
Thank you for providing a detailed description of your concerns. Your comments highlighted areas in the descriptions of traditional “climate modeling” that appeared to me, as a chemical engineer, to lack scientific rigor. In particular, a certain lack in the disciplined application of thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and mass transfer. (To many unexplained simplifying assumptions, apparent contradictions, and unsatisfying explanations).
However, I hadn’t been able to pull the full puzzle apart. Your perspective both validated my original concerns, provided the necessary structure to examine my concerns, and provided a rich list of publications to examine and ponder.
Dave
Having originally trained as a chemical engineer myself, one of the things I find most baffling about so-called climate “science” is the way it entirely ignores the concept of entropy – the calculations concerning which were the bane of my life for several years.
How there can be any discussion of what amounts to a giant, highly complex heat engine without a single mention of entropy-enthalpy diagrams for example is entirely beyond me.
But, given the exceptionally hard work involved in mastering the concept, I have my suspicions…
Larry Kumner:
You remind that Milton Friedman wrote,
“All models are wrong; some are useful.”
Yes, that was one of his lesser mistakes (i.e. lesser because it could not be used as an excuse for e.g. the horrors of ‘Thatcherism’). But it was a serious mistake.
A scientific model is right when it makes predictions that agree with observed reality to within the inherent errors of the observations.
A scientific model is wrong when it makes predictions that fail to agree with observed reality to within the inherent errors of the observations.
Scientists amend or scrap wrong models and NEVER USE wrong models as predictive tools.
Richard
..You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig !
I think it was Robert Heinlein, who introduced me to the concept that “The rigor of a science is the index of its ability to predict.” Of course his other famous quote is “Get the facts!” It amazes me that shamans and soothsayers have made Byzantine complexity out of something so simple.
Exactly. To flip it around, if your hypothesis doesn’t produce accurate predictions, then you don’t have a useful hypothesis.
Further, this is from IPCC working group I – executive summary: “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
It appears we have a serious Whiskey Tango Foxtrot factor here.
IPCC 1 already told us all we need to know about models. The nature of the climate system prevents prediction from first principles given current mathematical knowledge. The best you can hope for is a projection, which has no predictive value.
that single finding from the IPCC should have been enough to end further debate. All the climate models since then have proven the IPCC to have been correct on this one point.
Just me or has anyone else wondered when was the last time religion ,science and politicians were all in agreement ?
But, but, but, the science is settled!!
So why isn’t there one climate model that all AGW proponents agree has all the predictive answers?
Then we could all help to validate the model, or correct it as appropriate based on the evidence.
What really matters is that the US deindustrialized itself during the last 30+ years and this is TOTALLY ignored by all political parties and this has occurred during a period when the left that traditionally supports unions and workers has chosen to fret about warmer weather and demand draconian cuts to energy use which kills what is left of industrialization in their home states like the USA.
The right wing pushed for the death of industrialization to kill unions. They got their wish and now our nation is much weaker and deep in debt due to our trade deficit which no one seems to mention during this election cycle.
Ideology leads to grave mistakes, both left and right and history shows this very clearly.
If truth actually did matter, the alarm would be dead, Unfortunately, the interested alarmists have their own version of “truth” and constantly seek to manage and promote it in ways big and small and stark and subtle..
Belief trumps data every time. Period. End of discussion. Fighting against belief is likely the most difficult task one will ever be tasked with. Those that tackle it can be admired, respected, and even lauded in history books as being right. But did you catch that? Only in HISTORY books. What this means is that we are all, in present time, susceptible to the draw of belief and are only shown we are wrong sometime after we are dead.
So what is it that endures this basic tenant of humanity and its strangle hold on us, causing us to repeat holocaust after holocaust after holocaust?
In the face of ball-bold pronouncements of “Believe me we will be great!” I don’t know. I seriously don’t know.
Pamela said a mouthful! In a world where otherwise “intelligent and educated” people will tell you with a straight face that they believe literally in virgin birth, walking on water, the dead rising from the grave etc., not to mention being pretty invested in the End of the World, AGW belief’s a natural! Facts ARE irrelevant.
Goldrider, all of that in your post is so much more meaningful when given metaphorical depth. And ancient Roman culture was awash in metaphor. That some take those precious thoughts as some kind of observable fact miss the depth of spiritual thought entirely. There is a reason why it was penned that “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Funny that. Fact is not mentioned. Why?
This post is exactly what I have been saying. For a debate you need two sides. Currently we only seem to have one. If we are to compare theories, we need an alternative theory, and so far these are few and far between, and do not seem to have produced much in the way of prediction.
Th IPCC have been procucing predictions for decades. Surely there must be some alternative theories out there that produced predictions 10 or 20 years ago?
Asking for prediction here, I have had some firm ones – that cooling should start by 2017 and definitely by 2020.
There was a post about a paper recently here
C:\Documents and Settings\haroldv\My Documents\Backup\Global warming and other blog resources\Scaling fluctuation analysis and statistical hypothesis testing of anthropogenic warming – Springer.mht
That has predictions with confidence limits similar to IPCC type reports.
I posted a few others in an earlier post.
We should be able to compare these different approaches as time goes on to see which is matching the reality better.
But there are still no predictions from a decade ago predicting what would be happening now. Anybody have examples?
Only one alternate hypothesis is needed to debate, the null hypothesis. There is no need for a competing view because their isn’t just one. They are many and they might all be wrong or reality might be a combination of many. That is why a competing view is not a required. Dangerous AGW should stand on its own or be tossed into the dustbin of science.
The null hypothesis is not an alternate hypothesis. It is the absence of a hypothesis. It has also been rejected by at least one analysis.
seaice1,
Do you remember, just a few years ago, how you had no inkling of global warming and all its many splendours?
And then, you came to be convinced. Was there a debate that you lost at that time? Did you have an alternate theory or was your mind a tabula rasa, free to be filled with hockey sticks and spaghetti graphs?
You say “We should be able to compare these different approaches as time goes on to see which is matching the reality better.”
That is not debating, that’s waiting to see who’s right. A debate involves making detailed points and listening to points made by the opponent. The only debate I’ve seen was the Intelligence Squared one with Lindzen et al vs Gavin and crew. The skeptics won handily.
Mebbe, you have just negated Larry Kumar’s argument, not mine. He is calling for predictions.
These need not be about what happens in the future, but could be about results about things that happened in the past. For example, we might say that sediment cores from a particular place will show a particular pattern if such-and-such a theory is correct. It is the observation you are predicting, not the future. Although they observation may be in th efuture. That is in contrast to seeing the results of the sediment core, then explaining them.
The climate models on which the entire Catastrophic Global Warming delusion rests are built without regard to the natural 60 and more importantly 1000 year periodicities so obvious in the temperature record. The modelers approach is simply a scientific disaster and lacks even average commonsense .It is exactly like taking the temperature trend from say Feb – July and projecting it ahead linearly for 20 years or so. They back tune their models for less than 100 years when the relevant time scale is millennial. This is scientific malfeasance on a grand scale. The temperature projections of the IPCC – UK Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them have no solid foundation in empirical science being derived from inherently useless and specifically structurally flawed models. They provide no basis for the discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money. As a foundation for Governmental climate and energy policy their forecasts are already seen to be grossly in error when tested against reality and are therefore worse than useless.
A new forecasting paradigm needs to be adopted.
The general trends of the coming cooling are easily estimated, to a useful precision, by reference to the millennial natural cycle plainly obvious in the temperature data, The millennial cycle peaked in the RSS data at about 2003, Coincidently,the equally obvious 60 year cycle peaked at about the same time. The amplitude of the millennial cycle is about 1.8 degrees and the next minimum will be in about 2650.
See http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-epistemology-of-climate-forecasting.html
and http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2014/07/climate-forecasting-methods-and-cooling.html
for data and methods used.
In Capitalism and Freedom Friedman also advocated abolishing occupational licensing.
Trying to convince politicians that the climate models have been wrong using science is not the going to work. They don’t know science and could care less. You must address politicians in the only language they know………..polls.
So let’s ask them these questions:
If you hired a polling company to tell you which way the wind is blowing on issues and their results keep missing the mark, wouldn’t you stop believing them and hire a different company that gives you more accurate results?
So why do yo still believe in the results of the climate models?
I’m afraid that Uncle Milty’s theory of free enterprise gives equal weight to the pirates as is does entrepreneurs, That is a clever misuse of the benefits of capitalism by people whose only connection to business is the same as Shylock in the play so long ago. Further, if his most important policy role was ending conscription, then damn him! I can think of nothing that has done more to unhinge American youth from reality and their responsibilities as citizens than that move. In my view what is required is universal conscription at age 18 two years if in the military 3 years if if public service, everybody through boot camp. Citizen soldiers around a core of professionals is the way you have a strong military without risking tyranny. It also provides youth with a hurdle to adulthood that is clearly marked and insists that they grow up and pay attention.
I strongly oppose a drafted military. Mercs have always been the better choice throughout history and today. Drafting is the way left-wing governments can draw large numbers of people to oppress their own people. Drafted armies are responsible for the worst crimes against humanity ever known and really should be banned under international law. In the US we had once upon a time had the best mix for this. The patriot movement and the teaching of both firearms and the founding fathers ideas in high schools meant not only did you have a combat ready force that was knowledgeable with firearms but would refuse to oppress or destroy the US Constitution. Their is a reason why as the US government has moved further and further left that the knowledge of both firearms and the founding principles of the country are removed from the education system.
well temp I don’t know what country you grew up in because we have had a draft from the civil war until the creation of the all volunteer army in 1973. I was raised rurally and had the advantage you claim so important in education… still not the same thing. I have to wonder as well about your observation about war crimes and which history texts these reports come from. Seems to me every kid that was raised in the US and educated the way you proscribe learned that the Hessians during the revolutionary war were especially evil for being mercenary and committed war crimes including the slaughter of innocents and the murder of POW’s. There is a reason that the very word mercenary is a synonym for brutal, soulless, self serving action.
“I have to wonder as well about your observation about war crimes and which history texts these reports come from.”
Try any history book…. ever. German, russian,chinse, japanese….. just those alone total up into the billions and were talking just the last 100 years or so.
” Seems to me every kid that was raised in the US and educated the way you proscribe learned that the Hessians during the revolutionary war were especially evil for being mercenary and committed war crimes including the slaughter of innocents and the murder of POW’s. ”
I never got taught anything that expressly stated the hessians were any worse or better then standard brit line troops. However then again I tend to be much more immune to “side ways” propaganda.
” here is a reason that the very word mercenary is a synonym for brutal, soulless, self serving action.”
Yes the reason is well known…. its called propaganda. Mercs are well hated by governments because they are less willing to follow orders that they don’t agree with… aka the whole “self serving action”. A far better term would be “loyal to ones own beliefs”. Meaning they won’t willing go out and rape and murder just because they are ordered to…. unlike draft armies that are perfectly happy to do anything they are ordered to do. This “disloyalty” and “self serving action” is not looked favorable upon by government.
temp ….just so you understand impressed into the military is not the same as drafted to national service. I know, it seems like a small difference but it is huge. Military at war tend to reflect the cultural bias of their country of origin, lots of that is brutal. That mercenary’s could be thought of as trustworthy representatives of republican democracy is too absurd a proposition as to defy all reason. Without the pledge of fidelity to the constitution the US military would be no different from third world autocracies.
fossilsage
March 2, 2016 at 6:17 pm
“temp ….just so you understand impressed into the military is not the same as drafted to national service. I know, it seems like a small difference but it is huge.”
I agree its a huge difference… when the government starts impressing non-citizens into the military its a whole different ball game. However its insanely rare even back in olden times for that to happen because of the very hard to control nature of an unloyal and now very angry slave.
“Military at war tend to reflect the cultural bias of their country of origin, lots of that is brutal.”
I generally agree more so when talking about drafted armies.
” That mercenary’s could be thought of as trustworthy representatives of republican democracy is too absurd a proposition as to defy all reason.”
Ummm yeah maybe you should read the sentence you wrote right before this “reflect the cultural bias of their country of origin”. In the US we have a long and very strong merc tradition…
“Without the pledge of fidelity to the constitution the US military would be no different from third world autocracies.”
Your understanding of how the US military work is a bit off… while its true that the US Military has a showy event where a pledge is said… Under both the UCMJ and Federal courts that pledge is not only non-binding but has zero legal standing at all.
This goes back to the whole merc part “reflect the cultural bias of their country of origin”. Many in the military and those that plan to join the military already ready strongly believe in the US Constitution… Far stronger then US Courts and most elected officials. You talk about trust but I’ll trust a merc over 90% on congress members any day of the weapon.
Computational climate models are not embodiments of any theory. They’re just that, computational models. They are not relying on first principles, but on unexplicated parametrizations.
They are not simple. They consist of million lines of code, which can never be generated from a small set of propositions. On the other hand, true theories can be expressed in a single mathematical equation.
If computational climate models were theories, then contradictions between models were treated in the same way it is done for true theories. That is, if two models contradict each other, at least one of them is wrong, so one starts to look for an empirical way to decide which one it is. Once the wrong one is found, it is thrown away and gets forgotten fast.
However, with climate models contradictions are swept under the rug, and each one is considered as a legitimate member of the ensemble. Then people proceed to ensemble averages, as if average of a set containing wrong numbers could somehow come out right.
They are so preoccupied with the computational modelling paradigm, that opportunities for actual theoretical progress are missed.
For example, annual incoming short wave radiation at ToA (Top of Atmosphere) is the same for the two hemispheres. It is not even too remarkable, because it is a simple corollary of the geometry of Keplerian orbits. However, annual reflected short wave radiation is also the same for the two hemispheres, in spite of the huge difference in their clear sky albedoes. For the Southern hemisphere is much darker under clear sky conditions, than the Northern one, due to prevalence of oceans there. It can only reflect as much short wave radiation back to space as the other hemisphere, if its cloud cover is higher by just the right amount.
No one knows how can that be. What process regulates cloudiness on a global scale so accurately?
Computational climate models fail to show this symmetry, so it is futile to look into them for an answer.
All symmetries found in nature so far turned out to have deep theoretical explanations and far reaching consequences. This one is hardly an exception.
I reckon a true theoretical explanation can be found, not even restricted to the climate system alone, but general to all non equilibrium quasi stationary thermodynamic systems.
I have no idea how that theory is supposed to look like, but it it would be a theory, and once found, would put severe constraints on all subsequent models, I am sure of that.
One thing that is critical to winning the AGW debate is for the skeptics do develop a forecasting model that is superior to he IPCC models, in fact, I’m shocked no one has done that yet. We can’t beat the warmists with nothing, we have to create better models. Their no models beat the skeptic’s no-models hands down. WUWT needs to team up with Exxon and promote an X-Prize for an open-source Climate Model.
co2islife:
You say
Many alternative climate forecasting models have been adopted. For example, a popular one was that witches are altering the weather to damage harvests. But there is still no possibility of a climate forecasting model capable of providing useful forecasts for periods of one or two human lifetimes because there is insufficient knowledge and understanding of the climate system and its behaviour(s).
There would no benefit from “winning the AGW debate” by continuing the distortion of climate-related policies. Replacing the existing climate models which don’t work for other models that also don’t work is NOT a good debating tactic: any such replacement would provide the same problems of policy distortion that are now provided by use of the climate models. And the replacement models having ‘won’ the debate would increase the difficulty of stopping their use as policy guides.
The best available climate policy remains to recognise the Null Hypothesis and to adapt to whatever climate changes occur as, when and where they occur. Responding to predictions of any climate models is the same mistake as adopting expensive and pointless actions intended to avoid harm predicted by horoscopes.
I am shocked that anybody would suggest now developing “a forecasting model that is superior to he IPCC models”: have you learned nothing from the AGW-scare?
Richard
The debate about public policy for climate change has deadlocked.
Not really.
Wait and see what happens on November 8.
If Trump or Cruz win, all bets are off.
What Milton meant was that all models are approximations of reality. They are therefore wrong to the extent that they make approximations to allow more simple analysis. But that simplification is necessary because the more complex a model is, the more difficult it is to derive a useful prediction.
Computer models were developed to analyze the UK economy for instance. They were quite complex and quite useless because you could never get a prediction that could be verified. All those independent variables waggling the trunk, so to speak.
Hivemind:
Whatever Friedman may have meant, he was wrong when he made the untrue and misleading statement, “All models are wrong; some are useful.”
As I explained above and repeat here, useful scientific models are right and wrong ones are not useful.
Richard