Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The increasingly frantic efforts to “medicalise” criticism of climate orthodoxy has taken a new turn, with a claim that theories cannot be disproven in of themselves. Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.
The abstract of the study;
The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism
Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions—such as regulation or increased taxation—threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth’s climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.
Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-016-1198-6
This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted. “Something is wrong” with the current theory is a perfectly valid scientific position. A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.
This sounds like somebody trying to deflect and pin the blame for their failures on their opponents. Pretty standard stuff for socialists. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It never works, for very long, unless you have an oppressed populace. Even then, the populace knows the accusers are full of fecal matter, they just aren’t willing or are unable to do anything about it. Why do the socialists always think people are too stupid to think for themselves (other than it helps them to gain or keep power)?
When Eric Worrall said “This has got to be one of the most ridiculous claims Lewandowsky has ever promoted.“, it did sound reasonable. Well, the only way to disprove a theory is to test it (NB. the test can be active or passive). The obvious way of test Eric Worrall’s statement is to compare this Lew statement with Lew’s other statements. I’m not sure that his theory stands up – aren’t all Lew statements equally ridiculous? But I do agree with SMC – re: ‘deflect and pin the blame [..].
There is certainly a conspiracy of intent in promoting the AGW hypothesis. Some of it scientific, group thinking, some of it simply milking the golden age of climatology for grant money and personal career advancement and probably above all politically driven advocacy masquerading as science.
This last category is quite clearly what Lewandowsky and Cook are involved in.
Now when there is a very well funded intergovernmental body which has been having major international conferences every six months for the last 30 odd years pushing this agenda , one hardly needs to resort to “conspiracist ideation” as though anyone is suggesting some dark unseen forces at play that no one can quite identify.
Many of the most vocal and key scientists have openly admitted that they activists for the climate change “cause”. Climategate emails revealed some very unprofessional and dishonest behaviour by key actors and frequently referred to “the cause”.
No “ideation” there, just recorded fact.
Sorry , failed to close the blockquote tag. Try again:
There is certainly a conspiracy of intent in promoting the AGW hypothesis. Some of it scientific, group thinking, some of it simply milking the golden age of climatology for grant money and personal career advancement and probably above all politically driven advocacy masquerading as science.
This last category is quite clearly what Lewandowsky and Cook are involved in.
Now when there is a very well funded intergovernmental body which has been having major international conferences every six months for the last 30 odd years pushing this agenda , one hardly needs to resort to “conspiracist ideation” as though anyone is suggesting some dark unseen forces at play that no one can quite identify.
Many of the most vocal and key scientists have openly admitted that they activists for the climate change “cause”. Climategate emails revealed some very unprofessional and dishonest behaviour by key actors and frequently referred to “the cause”.
No “ideation” there, just recorded fact.
The coherent view is that most of the variability seen in the various climate records is natural variability which has always been there. Simple, coherent.
Since alarmists attempt to link ANY AND ALL variation of anything which happens on earth to rising CO2, challenging this incoherent mess of contradictory claims ( global warming causes colder weather ) is by necessity equally incoherent.
Nicely said Greg. It is not only simple and coherent – it is basic education (that climate changes naturaly). Warmist are the climate change deniers actually.
Except “natural” is not an explanation. It is an appeal to a higher power. Even natural events require explanation, and there are none on offer.
Seaice, none are required. IPCC AR4 itself said the temperature rise from ~1920-1945 cannot be explained by GHE so must be mostly natural. AR4WG1 SPM figure 4. True by continent, true for land, true for sea, true for combined. Just is. You demand an unnecessary explanation why.
That it is observationally so suffices for two things. 1. Natural variation is real. 2. The attribution of the essentially indistinguishable rise from ~1975-2000 to anthropogenic CO2 is false, as natural variation cannot be assumed to have magically disappeared despite the IPCC charter.
The opening statement ,”Science strives for coherence.” is a dead giveway he is still on his consensus drum. Bang it as much as he likes, as loud as he likes and as often as he likes, it is still wrong.
seaice1,
“Except “natural” is not an explanation. It is an appeal to a higher power.”
Then what is the claim that climate is naturally static? . . An appeal to magic?
Sea1ice:
Really!?
So events that do occur naturally, especially those events that are not unusual; just what explanation do you have for them?
Perhaps that evil gas CO2 has been causing all weather events for the last 4.5 – 5 billion years? Every natural event are actually unnatural events?
That logic fits right in with Lewserdopesky and Crooked John’s type of rationale.
Where NOAA and CRU torture data into confession, now Lewserdopesky and Crooked torture scientific rationales into twisted psychological conspiracies and depressions?
I wonder if GMU has received a copy of Cook’s contributions to psychology yet? I’m sure their psychology department would just love the kind of absurd irrationality that drives quality students to seek education elsewhere. The Virginia government representatives and senators should love that lack of quality joining the already tainted GMU team.
Sea1ice; you’ve reached new lows.
PS DMI has the Arctic sea ice above 2015’s while JAXA shows the 2016 trend about to enter ±2 Standard Deviation’s.
All of Lewandowsky’s claims are at maximum ridiculousness.
“Then what is the claim that climate is naturally static? . . An appeal to magic?”
I know of no such claim and have certainly not made such myself.
“Really!? So events that do occur naturally, especially those events that are not unusual; just what explanation do you have for them?”
The sun “rises” naturally. It is because the earth rotates. The seasons come and go naturally, it is because the Earth tilts and orbits the sun. All natural events must have an explanation.
Seaice1 says
“Except “natural” is not an explanation. It is an appeal to a higher power. Even natural events require explanation, and there are none on offer.”
I get what you mean. All changes have reasons, it does not matter what the source. Perhaps we should study natural climate change to explain it…. just a thought.
Oddly, the null hypothesis is turned upside down with you perspective. All change is caused by anthropogenic means, which of course is the wrong approach.
I love the way warmistas twist themselves into logical pretzels trying to pretend that they are doing science.
That a change is natural is an explanation. Real scientists have been working to find the reasons behind these natural changes for several hundred years. The problem is that climate is complicated, involving thousands upon thousands of parts. Parts that interact under complex and sometimes changing rules.
The fact that a consistent theory that is capable of explaning 100% of what is going on has not yet been come up with, is not evidence that we have to accept your nonsense.
All change is man caused.
May not be logical, but it does seem to be the belief system of many “environmentalists”.
La Lewny is the Timothy Leary of the CAGWarmists. He has drunk the Kool Aid and truly believes his mind was expanded. In my opinion he is actually psychotic. As for Cook well every naked emperor needs a fool, does he not?
+ many
Well what seaice is ignoring is that there is in this CAGW climate case, a perfectly rational alternative explanation, for which there is a simply overwhelming body of evidence, and it is replicated ever day, and by numerous researchers in many disciplines.
That alternative explanation: ??
We simply do not know what causes the weather and by inference the climate over time and space, to vary in random non-monotonic fashion that prevents us from predicting any future state of the system.
G
Corollary.
The failure to provide a rational explanation for some observed phenomenon, does NOT justify the blind acceptance of a completely irrational explanation.
george e smith, your alternative explanation is not an explanation at all.
I see that seaice is doubling down on the claim that unless we can prove conclusively that something else is cause the warming that may or may not be happening, that we have to accept his nonsense as the explanation.
“Why do the socialists always think people are too stupid to think for themselves (other than it helps them to gain or keep power)?” Because many socialists are.
Global warming adherents believe there is a conspiracy of oil companies. Guess it only counts if it’s not your own group with the conspiracy ideation, huh?
Lewandowsky is now ensconced in a sinecure in the British city built on wealth from slaves and tobacco, Bristol, and now with the full weight of Britain’s academic Marxist and ecofasc1st establishment elite behind him, makes his announcement with creamy smugness that the laws of logic and epistemology have just changed at his imperial command.
What an a55h0le.
If ever asked for proof of a conspiracy, point to Lewandowsky’s moon-landing paper and subsequent use of a peer-reviewed journal to humiliate people critical of the first paper, then his promotion to a chair of psychology instead of being kicked out of academia.
Breaking news! Did you hear Lewandowsky was just arrested? As God is my witness! Yep. Huh? Oh. Impersonating a scientist.
If Cook and Lewandowsky designed our legal system, it wouldn’t be enough for a defendant to demonstrate that he didn’t commit the crime — he would have to show who else did it!
I appreciate your intent, but it would be funnier if either Cook or Lewandowsky claimed they were scientists, rather than psychologists specializing in the cognitive science of decision-making (fooling all of the people all of the time; cointelpro).
“…..the British city built on wealth from slaves and tobacco….” So unlike the southern States of the US, and we didn’t have to fight a civil war to change things either.
The Meme, that if you oppose aspects of socialism you must be mad, is over a century old. The Bolsheviks constructed psychiatric hospitals for thousands in the Siberian hinterland for such people. Moral, don’t expect original thought from the warmunists..
It is not a ‘ fact’ that climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions.
It is not even a ‘theory’.
It is a mere ‘hypothesis’ as any competent hard scientist would agree.
One must not build policies on hypotheses.
Geoff
Have any of his clown heroes ever written a falsifiable hypothesis that pertain to his airhead musings.
I know the answer.
On a philosophical basis, this proposal of Lewandowsky is the end of falsifiability as a test of science.
I’m not sure anyone (ANYONE) but Lewandowsky is quite ready for that. Lewandowsky needs outing for this.
I think the hypothesis that “CO2 in the atmosphere drives climate change” IS a falsifiable hypothesis. In fact, I think it has already been mostly falsified by the long ice core records.
What the world saviors of the climate “team” are failing to do is to TEST and experiment for the express purpose of falsification. Their malpractice to science is tendentiously working backwards from their presumed conclusion, (eg. that CO2 drives climate change or that “deniers” are mental) and finding SOME evidence for their hypothesis, they then wrongly claim that they have “PROVED” their hypothesis. They need to be slapped down hard on this awful practice. This is NOT science. This is post-normal political propaganda. Lewandowsky should be fired before he publishes again. He should back to community college to learn a useful trade like automobile repair or plumbing.
Mickey,
Would you let him near your car … or your toilet?
Indeed, Mr. Sherrington. At BEST, AGW conjecture (lol, Phil, so true, it isn’t even a valid scientific hypothesis) is unproven.
And since CO2 UP, and NO SIGNIFICANT WARMING EFFECTS — ANYWHERE….
neither in heaven above
nor on the earth beneath
nor in the waters below ….
We’re left with only one logical conclusion:
(aside from the cynical enviroprofiteers/stalinists for whom it is simply a lie)
AGW is a religion.
(As has been said many and many a time on WUWT)
Well, Mr. Chantrill, I’m glad you had a good laugh. Now, for the facts.
1.
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/19/uah-and-enso-now-includes-july-and-august-data/ )
2.
(Source: Ibid.)
Read — it — and — WEEP:
CO2 UP. WARMING STOPPED.
Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaa!
#(:))
Christopher
Yes, three hundred years of coming out of the little ice age covers that instrumental record. So what has that natural event have to do with AGW? Your comment is just silly.
@ Mr. Chantrill:
1. So. What.
(apparently you have forgotten your AGW catechism — “in the heavens above there shall be a hot spot”)
2. To do your homework for you re: surface temp.:
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/19/uah-and-enso-now-includes-july-and-august-data/ )
@ ECB: The LIA ended officially in 1850 – 1900 (depending on the sources used) so it’s not even 200 years ago. the warming cycle towards a new optimum takes around 300 years to complete. Considdering this and with all the adjustments made we still are only “half way”.
seen the fact the MWP was around 2°C warmer then the LIA, we are nice half way and the temperature anomaly is on scheme with this warming.
Janice I left some mail, thanks.
Mr Cantrell the ‘instruments’ are basically measuring the temperature of concrete and bitumen exposed the sun. We may well have added a fair amount of CO2 to the atmosphere but we have alsp added millions of shiploads of concrete and bitumen to the earths surface in proximity to said instruments. The ‘instruments’ used for the ocean temperatures is just as compromised but for different reasons.
Pal, the ‘instrument’ record is not fit for the purpose of evaluating a meaningful global surface temperature.
And then there has been the addition of record levels of ‘adjustment’ not just in recent decades but just the last year or so…
What brand of Kool Ade are you drinking these days?
Christopher, your ignorance is palpable since you failed to learn that the IPCC reports have been for years now, projecting a per decade warming of .30C yet the Satellite data shows less than half that rate since 1979.
They also stated that the Hot spot area in the tropical atmosphere was supposed to warm by around THREE times the warming rate at the surface,when it is the other way around,since it is warming at a greater rate on the surface than in the atmosphere,which is barely warming at all.
This mean the key metric for the AGW conjecture is a total failure,so is the overrated Positive feedback that was supposed to cause a run away warming rate. The climate system is DOMINATED by negative feedbacks,something warmists seems to deliberately ignore.
Cantrill,
Perhaps before publically demonstrating your ineptness on the interwebs, you should have looked up the scientific definition of the term “significant warming”, emphasis on the word “significant”.
Then you should have examined the “instrumental” records for yourself, determined the limits of their accuracy, noted their scantiness, and repeated adjustments, and then formed an educated opinion for yourself rather than whatever you did instead?
Well! Good morning, WUWT! #(:))
ECB, Frederik, Patrick MJD, M Seward, Sunsettommy, Aphan (good to see YOU — missed your insightfully informed comments this summer — hope you were just enjoying a lovely vacation….), and co2isnotevil,
WAY — TO — GO!
Thanks for the back up! My little peep for the truth was followed by a mighty science realist ROAR!
(re: asybot and the mail, just in case anyone is curious — I’m now living about 1.5 miles from the Burlington, WA Cascade Mall where 5 people were murdered by a rifleman last night)
Janice – so sorry to hear. I know that’ll jangle your nerves, – I was living in the DC area when the sniper attacks were occurring. One of the attacks occurred at my regular filling station.
For three weeks, filling your tank was an exercise in watching traffic and keeping your head low. Not fun. Hopefully, they will catch the guy soon. But, be aware of your surroundings. Anyway, good to see you back.
Thank you, Bartemis. It will, indeed, be nice when they catch this guy, too. Glad YOU are here. Nine times out of ten, when I see your name in the Recent Comments, I click on it to see what you had to say — always worthwhile.
It really is fascinating the way people actually believe that bad data must be good, just because they are seeing what they want to see in the data.
CAGW is not even a viable hypothesis as it can be trivially falsified.
A 3C average increase in surface temperature increases average radiant surface emissions by about 16.4 W/m^2 and this is alleged to arise from the 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing said to arise from doubling CO2.
This means that 16.4 – 3.7 = 12.1 W/m^2 of new emissions must be replenished otherwise the surface will release stored energy and cool. The consensus claim is that these 12.1 W/m^2 comes from feedback recirculating surface emissions back to the surface and quantifies this with a model that they fail to acknowledge assumes an implicit, infinite source of power providing the gain.
Given that all 239 W/m^2 of accumulated forcing from the Sun only results in 390 W/m^2 of radiant surface emissions (per Trenberth) such that after all feedback are accounted for, each W/m^2 of forcing from the Sun increase surface emissions by 1.6 W/m^2, thus 3.7 W/m^2 of solar input increases surface emissions by about 4.4 W/m^2 and far less than the 12.1 W/m^2 required for a 3C rise. Believing that the incremental sensitivity can be nearly 4x larger than the average sensitivity is insane since the SB law tells us in no uncertain terms that each degree of warmth requires more input power to replenish its radiant emissions than the last, thus the incremental sensitivity must be less than the average and not nearly 4 times larger.
QED
I don’t believe a warmer surface requires an equivalent increase in average radiant surface emissions. My understanding is that the earth (including its atmosphere) remains at energy inflow/outflow equilibrium, but that certain phenomena (including decreasing albedo, increasing ‘greenhouse’ gases) can warm the physical surface. The key CAGW questions that I am conspiratorially ideating are 1, how much does each human-caused phenomenon contribute; 2, what is the expected net impact after incorporating natural phenomena like solar variability and volcanic activity; and 3, what, if anything, can and should be done to alter the expected net impact.
nasanine,
“I don’t believe a warmer surface requires an equivalent increase in average radiant surface emissions.”
Of course it does and even Trenberth acknowledges this. It’s the consequence of an immutable LAW of physics called the Stefan-Boltzmann LAW. Where do you think the 390 W/m^2 of surface emissions in his diagram comes from?
This is the very point Lord Monckton made recently in aWUWT post debunking the standard climate model estimate of feedback values.
Fred,
You said,
“This is the very point Lord Monckton made recently in aWUWT post debunking the standard climate model estimate of feedback values”
Yes, and I’ve been aware of this inconsistency since I read AR1 decades ago and this was the key contradiction that turned me into a skeptic. The more I’ve investigated since, the more errors I’ve found, including the significant errors in the theoretical basis supporting massive amplification from positive feedback that I talked about in the Feedback Fubar article a couple of weeks ago.
It’s perplexing that pedantic climate science denies the applicability of the SB law relative to establishing the effects of ‘feedback’. If Earth had no atmosphere, the surface temperature would be 255K and its emissions would be 239 W/m^2 (assuming constant albedo), or 1 W/m^2 of emissions per W/m^2 of incident energy. The atmosphere slows down surface cooling resulting in an extra 0.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions being recirculated back to the surface as ‘feedback’ causing it to emit 0.6 W/m^2 more and increasing the temperature from 255K emitting 239 W/m^2 up to about 287.5K emitting 390 W/m^2. How they can claim that this 0.6 W/m^2 of feedback is the zero feedback effect which is magically turned into 3.3 W/m^2 of feedback is indicative of more than just sloppy science, but is indicative of sloppy science supported by magic (i.e. creating energy out of nothing).
Nanasine,
There’s this law of thermodynamics that’s pretty popular-the more the temperature of a surface increases, the more radiation it emits. That radiation CAN increase up to the 4th power of whatever the temperature increase was, so it doesn’t always result in an “equivalent” increase, but it does always result in an increase.
As co2isnotevil points out, a surface emitting radiation is cooling itself. To release heat to the atmosphere, the surface of the planet by necessity has to cool and the atmosphere absorbing it has to be cooler than the surface that emitted it to absorb it. No matter how much CO2 is in that atmosphere, the only real “heat” source at play is the Sun. Everything else are just pinball machine bumpers that can keep it’s energy in play for a short time or longer time, but eventually the ball escapes back to space.
Aphan,
Yes, this is correct.
The reason so many are confused, including the IPCC and its followers, is the insistence that the sensitivity is quantified as a temperature change per change in forcing. After all, 0.8C per W/m^2 sounds plausible enough until you express it in the energy domain, where the nominal sensitivity would be 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing. If this was the case and each of the 239 W/m^2 of incident power resulted in 4.3 W/m^2 of surface emissions, the resulting surface temperature would be close to the boiling point of water.
Not to mention that the Earth is NOT made up of uniform materials (which means it absorbs and emits radiation differently everywhere) not the same height or distance from the Sun, and not exposed to a uniform atmosphere/climate. How do you quantify ANYTHING that complex to the degree required to insist that the “surface” of that thing is increasing in overall, global temperatures by hundredths of a degree C per year??????
“Everything else are just pinball machine bumpers that can keep it’s energy in play for a short time or longer time, but eventually the ball escapes back to space.”
Eventually. But, within the extra-time needed to do so, more energy is coming in from the Sun, so by the time that original photon leaves, more energy has been deposited.
It’s the same principle as a dam over a river. Once the water overtops the dam, and the flow is reestablished, the same amount of water is flowing below the dam as above it. But, water has pooled behind the dam. May the dam a little higher, and the outflow is delayed until it can overtop the dam again, at which point equilibrium is reestablished. But, the pool behind the dam has grown deeper.
However, that is not the whole story. The GHG dam is radiative. It slows egress by radiation only for photons that flow from behind the dam. But, there is another avenue for energy to flow past the dam, where it can release its photons unimpeded, and that avenue is convection. When heat is convected to higher level, it can be released to space without having to encounter the pinball machine bumpers. It is, to complete a painfully mixed metaphor, basically a spillway past the dam.
As a result, surface temperature is dictated by a complex balance between sunlight flowing in, and radiative and convective flows carrying heat away from the surface. Convective flows are immense, and increase with surface temperature, so they provide a negative feedback on radiative warming.
The data indicate that there is effectively no net increase in surface temperatures due to greenhouse warming from CO2 in particular in the present climate state. In the past 20 years, CO2 concentration has increased over 30% compared to its purported pre-industrial level, yet temperatures have languished. I expect it is because, for every new photon delayed by a new CO2 molecule, another is boosted to higher altitude from which it can escape to space unimpeded.
Bartemis,
“When heat is convected to higher level, it can be released to space without having to encounter the pinball machine bumpers.”
This is not the case. Convection has nothing to do with the radiant balance of the planet. Convection is primarily the heating of O2/N2 by the surface, causing it to rise. However, O2 and N2 have no emission lines in the relevant LWIR spectrum and thus have no direct contribution to the flux of photons leaving the planet.
The only indirect effect is from atmospheric water heated by convected air which can then radiate a Planck spectrum of power determined by its temperature. However, once atmospheric water starts condense, clouds develop and the water in clouds are broad band absorbers of surface radiation, thus direct surface emissions heat the water in clouds by far more than collisions of this liquid/solid water with convected air.
The energy released into space that doesn’t hit the ‘bumpers’ is the radiant emissions by the surface (and clouds) that passes through the transparent regions of the atmosphere’s absorption spectrum. In the clear sky, almost half of the surface emissions pass through these transparent windows and an even greater fraction of cloud emissions passes through owing to little water vapor between cloud tops and space.
You are missing the point. Heat that radiates from higher altitude has less chance of hitting the “bumpers”.
The tendency towards radiative-convective equilibrium is central to resoving the question of surface temperature sensitivity to GHG concentration. They just haven’t gotten it right, yet.
Bartemis,
“You are missing the point. Heat that radiates from higher altitude has less chance of hitting the ‘bumpers’. ”
I’m not missing the point at all.
The only ‘heat’ that radiates from higher altitudes is from GHG molecules returning to the ground state and from the BB radiation of the water and ice in clouds. Most of the atmosphere is completely irrelevant to either the path of solar energy from space to the surface or BB emissions from the surface to space.
And yes, GHG re-emissions have a lower probability of hitting another GHG molecule as the altitude increases and this is why we see only about a 3db reduction in emitted energy in bands that are otherwise absorbing all surface emissions and is also why only about half of what is absorbed from the surface eventually returns back to the surface as ‘recirculated’ energy, effectively slowing down its rate of surface cooling (of course, this is also dictated by geometrical requirements).
“The tendency towards radiative-convective equilibrium …”
This is a fundamental mistake of climate science, what they have wrong is considering that it has any significant influence on the radiative balance. The reason for the irrelevance is that you can not arbitrary conflate the energy transported by photons with the energy transported by matter.
If I fire a 11u high power laser into space (through the transparent window), are you trying to say that the completely transparent gas molecules between the surface and space will speed up to be in radiative equilibrium with the laser beam?
The convective equilibrium of the atmosphere is strictly a function of the surface temperature and the lapse rate. The radiant equilibrium of the surface is primarily a function of photons and that surface can not be further heated by atmospheric convection. What many fail to understand is that in LTE, heat rising from one place on the surface is always offset by cold air sinking somewhere else. To the extent that any rising heated air warms water in a cloud which radiates to space, convection would manifest a net surface cooling, and that cooling is already manifested by the average surface temperature from which radiant emissions are derived using the SB LAW.
I hate to quibble–and I may be comparing apples to kumquats–but 16.4 – 3.7 = 12.7, not 12.1. What am I missing?
” To the extent that any rising heated air warms water in a cloud which radiates to space, convection would manifest a net surface cooling…”
That is my point. It seems perhaps you mistook me. I was trying to explain to you and Aphan why the GHE is a real and actual mechanism for heating the surface. But, I was not coming down on the side of the warmists who argue that, that mechanism must thereby produce increasing surface temperatures for increasing GHG concentration in any climate state.
I was pointing out that surface temperatures are the result of a complicated balance of radiative and convective heat transfer, and the physics are complex. There is no guarantee that an incremental increase in GHG will necessarily result in an incremental increase in surface temperatures and, indeed, the data of the past 20 or so years contradict that premise.
Bartemis,
“GHE is a real and actual mechanism for heating the surface”
…
“complicated balance of radiative and convective heat transfer,”
Yes and even incrementally GHG’s will have a finite effect, most likely in the same direction as the change in concentration. The perceived complexity of the interactions between radiant and non radiant energy (convection is but one example) is largely an illusion that provides excess wiggle room to accommodate an otherwise impossibly high sensitivity. Regarding the fluxes of energy in the atmosphere, the only place where the paths of these 2 forms of energy intersect is in the liquid and solid water in clouds and at the surface where owing to the tight coupling between clouds and the ocean (surface) via the hydrological cycle, we can consider the two as one for the purposes of determining the LTE response to change.
The point I’ve been making is that the mistake made by consensus climate science is not that CO2 warms the surface, but that many think the mechanism is that CO2 warms the atmosphere which then warms the surface, when in fact, the GHG effect manifests direct warming of the surface by recirculating some fraction of the surface emissions back to the surface in the form photons of the same average energy as the photons absorbed and at about the same frequencies. The GHG effect is primarily radiative and the O2 and N2 molecules in the atmosphere are invisible to the LWIR involved with GHG absorption and re-emission.
I was surprised at how many times they cited their own papers.
Pal review and self review seem to be a common thread with alarmist views. “Its that circular logical fallacy problem..
Steve, don’t be. They are their only resources. 🙂
One version of Hanlon’s Razor:
“Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice”
My version on this topic:
“Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from conspiracy”
However Lew, since you brought up the word maybe you should have someone point you to the Climategate e-mails where your heroes are conspiring to rig the peer-reviewed literature. This would be conspiracy fact, not theory or ideation.
I LOVE IT!!!!
++ 9000 MUSKS!
Many of those that believe most strongly in CAGW are convinced that “Big Oil” and “Evil Corporations” and the “Koch brothers” are behind every bush. They are, in fact, true conspiracy theorists.
Yeah, when does it cross the line from brainwash to brain damage ?
So askith = philincalifornia
The fact is that CAGW is a religious belief.
And the 2nd fact is that there have been far, far more people that have been permanently committed to Mental Hospitals by the Courts because of their intense beliefs in/of the Bible and/or the Christian Religion.
Let’s extrapolate their suggestion… say the police have a theory that a person committed a crime. Their supposition rules out the possibility of reasonable doubt. Interesting that they suggest insane acceptance over rules reasonable doubt. Anyone with reasonable doubt must be pathological.
” Anyone with reasonable doubt must be pathological.”
or a witch.
She turned me… into a NEWT!
…
Well, I got better.
Only if they float. 🙂
Let me elaborate.
Suppose that said person can prove that he/she was in other state when the crime was committed.
What Lewandowski et al. are saying is that this fact or alibi does not matter, and the person should demostrate who the criminal is in order to be acquitted.
Yup, ask the Ramseys about that one. DNA was not theirs but that fact was overlooked and didn’t stop them from being suspects because they were not able to show who the DNA came from.
Tom,
…or a credible motive.
Who is claiming the globe is cooling at the same time it is warming naturally? I think most people are saying that the models are garbage because they predict a hotspot that doesn’t exist and also they can’t hind cast at all. They also question why the records seem to be adjusted to show more warming and why GISS, which is partly manufactured with model data is used instead of RSS data whenever it is convenient to illustrate the ‘Hottest Ever’. It’s dumbasses like these people that caused the Brexit and who will be responsible for President Trump’s victory, both of which will be good for freedom, so thanks morons.
+1
To lump Trump and BREXIT together ,get plus1?
I agree that’s wrong.
It should be plus Two Bob
A few random commenters on the internet, perhaps? Also, they can lump 1,000’s of different com mentor’s, some of whom will say “it’s cooling” and others who say “warmth is good” and conflate them into “people who oppose this body of knowledge”. Par for the course for this duo. And it makes perfect sense to say that it has not warmed that much (0.8 C since ~1880) and that this has been favorable. Not contradictory in the least.
And what most people forget, or neglect, is that it depends very much upon the time scale that you are talking about! Recall
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-climate-timeline/
It has been warmer, it has been cooler, there has been more CO2 in the atmosphere, and less, and sooner or later we’re headed into the next glaciation.
I think what they are claiming is that some say world is cooling and others accept warming, but they do not cite anyone about either claim so it is unsubstantiated waffle.
However, there are people who make such stupid, contradictory claims all in one breath. Holdren, for example on the official Whitehouse web site. Global warming causes colder weather.
Despite being the official POTUS climate tzar and using the official Whitehoouse web site to make the idiotic claim, they later tried to pretend that this was his “personal opinion”.
Looks like the Whitehouse is being inconsistent. They must being affected by “conspiracist ideation” too.
Remember the polar vortex to explain the record snowfalls, not so long ago.
… and the near record great lakes freezing extent, not so long ago, either.
Oh, it is much thinner than a waffle. I suggest that it is unsubstantiated crepe.
So their position is that the world must comply with demands because the world doesn’t think it’s even an issue worth wasting time on….
Good lord these (((leftists))) are stupid…
NO- you can only make sense of this b.s. by enlarging the context:
it’s phd trollery.
the entire point of it is to get ppl to spend time and energy discussing it so they do not spend that time doing anything useful to oppose the predation.
a troll wins based on the ROI, represented by how many words they get in return for the few they utter.
cookie and lew are grand masters
the only way to deal with them is name the game: trollery.
“it’s phd trollery.”
Very funny! 🙂
they produce very effective tarbabies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar-Baby
@ gnomish, 6:39 pm. Thanks for that link. Never thought of a “Tar Baby” as that. As I grew up 60 or so years ago. In those days there were completely different and racists comments and “explanations” about Tar babies, Thanks, enlightening.
When asked about the book, Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein), Einstein retorted by saying “Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!”
… and IPCC AR5 has not 100 but 102 different climate models.
Why 102 climate models?, If they were right, then one would have been enough.
32 models. 102 runs thereof.
OK. Thanks for the correction. I did not read AR5 I took the 102 number from some comments posted in here, I read AR4 though, and there were 22 models back then, one of them with 2 runs. 22 models with 22 different values for the climate sensitivity parameter. with a difference of over 100 % among them. If one model were right, the other 21 are necessarily wrong.
“No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” World renowned conspiracist, Albert Einstein
When that pair of clowns try to project their own T&C’s into the debate in order to fix what is or is not ‘allowed’ then it’s abundantly clear they’ve strayed a long way from neutral science and straight into politically-motivated activism. Point, laugh, ignore.
Oh I freakin LOVE it when Lew and Cook publish papers. It’s always a delicious irony to watch them behave in the EXACT cognitively biased, illogical, irrational manner that they are projecting on others.
In attempting to paint others as conspiracists, they have had to BECOME conspiracists themselves, and create a conspiracy amongst big oil, the Koch brothers, and unsuspecting idiots.
In attempting to paint others as “denying science”, they themselves must DENY that actual Scientific evidence, and often lack thereof, that proves them wrong over and over again.
In attempting to paint others as “crazy” or “delusional” they have resorted to crazy and delusional behavior (as well as completely unprofessional and unscientific) like making up new terminologies under which to stereotype and categorize people, and then acting like it is perfectly acceptable and ethical to presume to diagnose entire groups of total strangers accordingly!! My God, how far BACK these two alone have taken human progress, communication, tolerance, and psychology!!!
I find every word they say worthy of its own psychological study. But real psychologists probably view their papers much like readers view The Onion, or rotting fish. Either way, you’d have to get past the smell.
“…namely that “something must be wrong” with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation….”
How am I to react when the net result of the policy changes that advocates of “climate change” demand all converge on socialistic solutions? That these solutions all have the effect of reducing liberty, suppressing prosperity and justifying vastly increased government powers? It is no surprise when what passes for “science” always justifies this course of action and none of it calls this direction into question.
As for something being wrong, where I presently sit while I write this reply was under more than 1000 feet of glacial ice in the recent past. That ice melted. So, of course the climate is changing. It is continually changing. So what am I denying? I am denying that human activity has changed the climate in a harmful and material way.
+10^9
“… greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable …”.
====================
Lewandowsky ’forecasting the facts’.
Perhaps Lewandowsky and Cook are fearing political change, and doing their best try at a new career as trolls.
I read about 60% of the paper before giving up in disgust.
How The Royal Society has devolved to be funding this crap. Hooke, Newton and Halley would be appalled
True – Lew and his fan-boy perform a really lousy sort of logic if they write:
“Hence, claims that the globe “is cooling” can (“not with coherence” according to their following text) coexist with claims that the “observed warming is natural” and that “the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us.” ”
Why should these different claims be a coherence problem at all ???
– (Almost) nobody of the climate realists is claiming that a significant global cooling has already started. Instead some claim that a certain future cooling (or at least prolonged hiatus) could start soon if the solar activity stays at the current low level (see Svensmark effect and CERN’s CLOUD experiment) and if ocean currents like PDO and AMO cool further down.
– It is obvious (even for most IPPC followers) that a significant part of the global warming since the end of the LIA at about 1850 has natural causes. The question is only if the natural part is stronger or weaker than the human influence and this question is still open, because the observed warming until now is definitely within the natural variations of the Holocene era.
– The fact that “warming is good for us ” is historical proven without any doubt and has therefore no coherence conflict at all. It is simply a fact which can stated independent from any other viewpoint. During the Holocene climate optimum (about 2°C warmer than today), the Sahara desert was a green savannah and agriculture was invented in the Middle East. During the (also warmer than today) Roman era the first high-culture empires did flourish quite remarkably.
So Messrs Lew and Cook: Where is you own coherence in logical thinking?
Yes, you’re right: “Something must be wrong” – But that wrongness is in your own biased and pig-headed brains…
Recent observations prove that the theory of climate change due to the accumulation of greenhouse gasses CANNOT be correct, and that there is an irrefutable alternative explanation…
The alternative explanation, which is supported by temperature records, is that all of the warming that has occurred since the mid-1870’s to the present has been due to the removal of strongly dimming sulfur dioxide aerosol emissions from the troposphere, either due to reduced industrial activity as the result of business recessions, or to Clean Air efforts.
The evidence is as follows:
There have been 28 business recessions and two depressions since 1873. ALL coincided with temporary increases in average global temperatures. The temperature increases could only be due to decreased sulfur dioxide emissions due to the reduced industrial activity.
Global anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions into the troposphere peaked at 131 Megatonnes in 1972, and by 2011, due to Clean Air efforts, they had fallen to 101 Megatonnes.
Just as unintentional decreases in SO2 emissions during recessions caused warming, the intentional decreases also HAD to cause warming.
The climate sensitivity to their removal is .02 deg. C. of warming for each net Megatonne of reduction in global SO2 emissions. Use of this factor enables projections of average global land-ocean surface temperatures to me made to within less than a tenth of a deg. C. of actuality, leaving no room for any “greenhouse gas” warming.
If anyone can refute any of the above, please reply.
No need to refute your hypothesis. On the other hand, you need to post your data on tons of pollutants generated per year, their optical characteristics, and the coincident temperatures. Once you do that, we can do a critique.
ECB:
All of the requested data has been submitted to Anthony Watts in an essay titled “Climate Change Deciphered”..
Burl, sorry burl you need to post in the comment section. Who knows AW may not have gotten around to reading it and we need to know first hand what you base your theory on, give AW a break. And I for one cannot find your essay anywhere , so please help us out. Thank you.
Interesting hypothesis. Thanks.
Fred Ohr (and asybot):
Rather more than a hypothesis.
The temporary recession-induced warming is factual (and completely unrelated to any warming due to the accumulation of greenhouse gasses, which never decreases in the short term), and the model which it supports meets Karl Popper’s requirement that “scientific theories must be falsifiable (that is, empirically testable), and that prediction was the gold standard for their validation”.
The essay was submitted to AW about a month ago, has been read and discussed, but so far he is unwilling to publish it, although I have answered all of his objections.
If I knew how to upload data to this blog, I could give you something to critique.
Hi. If you want to make data available, why don’t you upload it to the cloud on Dropbox or similar and post the link where it’s accessible.Regards, Tony
Thanks,Tony.
I could give it a try . But other bloggers insert graphs, etc. There must be another way.
Have been thinking of putting it on Google Docs, but so far no time to do so.
Popper is rolling over in his grave
Low: “Science strives for coherence”.
Where is this man’s head? Science does not strive for anything. Science is not a thing, or a goal. Science is a process designed to reveal physical truth. Period. Coherence has nothing to do with anything, unless you are in laser science. There is no need to have multiple theories, or even multiple experiments to be the same to determine scientific truth. There is only one standard, and that is your theory/hypothesis/experiment must be validated with real world data not yet seen, or used to construct the experiment.
Add to dictionary self-serving contradictions explain why over 80% of psychology studies are wrong. Psychology as represented by Lewindowsky is not science, and, indeed, seems to be the hangout for present day phrenologists.
OOPS! Microsoft seems to know what I want to say more than I./
“Add to dictionary” should read, “Lewindowsky’s self-serving…”
lol, good ol’ computers….
But, then again, Bob, mebbe ol’ Microsoft is more saavy than you realized ….
“Add to dictionary under definition for Observer [B]ias: The distortion of evidence because of the personal motives and expectations of the viewer.” (Source: http://www.apa.org/research/action/glossary.aspx?tab=15 )
Curse the robots!
That has to violate at least one of Asimov’s laws.
“cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking”
Here’s an alternative scientific view:
Whatever the effects of (increased) GHG warming might be, they a clearly being totally swamped out by other more significant (natural) factors which affect/drive the climate. Evidence? See figure at top of page for ACTUAL history of “warming” (or lack thereof!)
And to think this clown Lewandowsky includes himself among “we scientists”. Sheesh! [shakes head]
Since when is the null hypothesis not an alternative view to CAGW?
David A.,
When Lewandowsky gets to pretend/imagine/assume that his OWN inability to comprehend the “standards of scientific thinking” is even remotely close to what is actually “conventional”. 🙂
I think we can expect to see a rapid rise in desperate CAGW sophistry like this as the Obamacene comes to a close. I imagine the Aztecs cutting out hearts finally got some pushback and did some even-more wacky things to keep a grip on the climate-ritual-sacrifice power struggle.
Let’s write an epitaph for the end of Obama’s Sophistrene period.
Here lies.
I saw what you did there.
ROFL
Thanks, Leo — very kind of you.
That was nice of Ipso Phakto to set that one up for us. I’ll bet some others will come up with an epitaph or two, lol.
‘Nuff said! LOL!
Here lies.
Oh, that was nasty!
+1000
That cannot be improved upon, Janice.
That’s the comment of the year, and by far! exceptional word play, I am proud of you Janice.
Or perhaps:
Hear lies…….
oh, niiiiiice.
and even suitable in mixed company.
Wow, you generously kind people above! Thanks! And from all 57 states (not counting Alaska and Hawaii….), too, Dean, heh.
Glad you are feeling well enough to comment, davidmhoffer.
Beautiful, Janice! (Yes, I’m days late to the party. The upside is I get to read all the good comments. The downside is that I’m way too late to add a comment myself – but I had to comment on your delightful and quick-witted response. Absolutely beautiful.) +1000.
Obamascene shortens to Ob’scene nicely.
” A demonstration that a theory is useless at prediction does not have to be accompanied by a settled alternative theory – simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough.”
Yes, if you can do it. But despite almost daily claims here of nails in coffin etc, that hasn’t happened. And despite the pronoucements here that “the burden of proof is on…”, it isn’t. People want to know what is happening. They don’t impose any particular burden of proof – it’s just an issue to be understood. And there the rule is – it’s hard to beat something with nothing. People are looking for the best available explanation.
People are looking for the best available explanation.
What needs explaining Nick? What is happening on planet earth from a climate perspective that needs explaining?
“What needs explaining Nick?”
What happens when you double the concentration if an important atmospheric gas by burning hundreds of gigatons of fossil carbon? And why there is the warming that people from Arrhenius on said would follow from stuffing the IR exit path.with GHGs? People want to know. Well, maybe you don’t, but lots do.
Nice try Nick. Bur that is a non answer and you know it.
My questions were, and I quote:
What needs explaining Nick? What is happening on planet earth from a climate perspective that needs explaining?
You didn’t answer the questions I asked. You asked questions of your own in response:
What happens when you double the concentration if an important atmospheric gas by burning hundreds of gigatons of fossil carbon?
Well you ducked my question, but I will answer yours. The earth surface warms up in direct response. Feedbacks are unknown.
And why there is the warming that people from Arrhenius on said would follow from stuffing the IR exit path.with GHGs?
C’mon Nick. That’s just your first question rephrased.
People want to know. Well, maybe you don’t, but lots do.
Well Nick, you’ve been hanging around here long enough to know that isn’t true. It isn’t like you to stoop to insults. You also know that the issues for most of us are total sensitivity after feedbacks, and the costs of mitigation versus adaptation.
But hey, you’re here defending a paper that attempts to paint skeptics as some sort of homogeneous group who believe that warming and cooling are happening at the same time. You’re defending a paper that claims that alarmists ARE a homogeneous group which is perhaps even sillier. In brief, you defend the indefensible, and for what reason I don’t know, because I’ve been hanging around long enough to know that you DO know it isn’t defensible. Valiant effort though regardless of your reasons. I call BS on bad skeptic science regularly, and you should hold your side accountable as well. This paper doesn’t rise to the level of drekk.
“You also know that the issues for most of us are total sensitivity after feedbacks”
There is the incoherence. I wasn’t defending the paper, which I haven’t read. I was taking issue with the head post, which said that “demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough”. But ‘total sensitivity after feedbacks”? Yes, that chimes in with Rud and his ECS of 1.65, and Judith and Nic Lewis similarly. But that isn’t refuting AGW. It’s saying that, yes, there’s a GHE, and CO2 causes warming, but we’ll argue about how much. And 1.65 is in the IPCC range anyway.
That’s the incoherence – there’s no agreement on what is actually demonstrated to be wrong.
That’s the incoherence – there’s no agreement on what is actually demonstrated to be wrong.
And there’s coherence on what has been demonstrated to be right?
ROFLMAO
People claim lots of things. For instance, Michael Mann is quoted as claiming global average temperatures would increase by 4-6 degrees F by 2020, (AP News, June 12 1986, Washington Post, Page 12). Has that claim ever been “walked back” by Mann? It’s difficult to discern the evidenced-based claims (highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence) with all the hyperbole embedded in all the forecasts, predictions, simulations etc., made by people such as Dr. Mann. Without the claims of impending doom none of us would be having this discussion.
“Michael Mann is quoted as claiming global average temperatures would increase by 4-6 degrees F by 2020, (AP News, June 12 1986, Washington Post, Page 12)”
Really? A quote is needed. Mann got his first degree (physics) in 1989.
Nick, Nick Nick,
You seem more sure of Arrhenius’s calculations that even HE was! Amazing. He revised his previous work in 1906 and admitted that a lot of things were still very uncertain.
On page 6 he says “In a similar way, I calculate that a reduction in the amount of CO2 by half, or a gain to twice the amount, would cause a temperature change of –1.5 degrees C, or + 1.6 degrees C , respectively.
In these calculations, I completely neglected the presence of water vapour emitted into the atmosphere.”
He later states on page 8:
“The calculations show that a doubling of the quantity of water vapour in the atmosphere would correspond to raising the temperature by an average of 4.2 degrees C.”
Clearly even Arrhenius could see that water vapor has far more impact on Earth’s surface temperature than CO2 does. A translation of the speech can be located here:
https://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
So Arrhenius wasn’t even really sure what he was warning us about, other than the possibility of a temperature increase, and even that was contingent upon all other things on this planet remaining equal since 1906!
“People want to know what is happening. They don’t impose any particular burden of proof – it’s just an issue to be understood. And there the rule is – it’s hard to beat something with nothing. People are looking for the best available explanation.”
Most people don’t care. And in the case of informed debate, the one making the declarations IS, in fact, under the burden to provide proof to support one’s declarations. If the “best available explanation” that science can offer has very little physical evidence, has been WRONG multiple times in the past 20 years, and is based on models that cannot even begin to simulate our planet correctly for more than 48 hours, then you don’t have a “whole lot of something”….to beat “we really don’t know yet” with. Sorry.
The earth has warmed by a few tenths of a degree. No increase in storminess. Droughts, heat waves, and such, all within the range of normal.
Once again, just what is it that need explaining?
MarkW:
You stated that “the earth has warmed a few tenths of a degree”
According to NASA’s Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index values, it has warmed by 1.0 Deg. C. since 1970, and this has been on a predictable trajectory which entails even more warming.
AGW warming is real, although it has nothing to do with CO2.
Asking for an explanation for *why* climate is changing is like demanding to know *why* a particular cumulus cloud drifted over you, rather than over a chap two miles from you. I mean, there has to be a cause. Climate can’t just “happen”, can it? And mother science is obligated to reveal the cause, in our science-worshiping society.
Environmentalism is a religion. Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Go back and review the articles here on chaos theory as applies to the climate.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=Chaos+theory
Sometimes there actually isn’t a discernible reason!
Indeed, and that would be people whose lives would be nothing without useless mental masturbation.
Real scientists stick with the null hypothesis Nick.
“it’s hard to beat something with nothing”
Nothing? Demonstrations of pre industrial warming equal or faster than today are nothing? That models tuned to CO2 run ridiculously hot is nothing? That Neogene CO2 follows temperature like a poodle on a leash rather than driving temperature is nothing?
It’s hard to beat superstition with contradictory data. The data do not yet suggest an alternate hypothesis.
Want an alternate superstition? Dark energy flux.
There. Nothing, meets nothing.
“And there the rule is – it’s hard to beat something with nothing.” Are you saying natural variation is nothing? Maybe one of these days someone can explain the RWP, the MWP, the Little Ice Age, the current warm period, etc. using well-reasoned science and not the present pie-in-the-sky CAGW hypothesis.
“Are you saying natural variation is nothing?”
For over a century, scientists have been saying that putting a whole lot of CO2 in the air will cause warming. And they explained why. Well, we did it. And got a whole lot of warming.
Now you can keep saying “natural variation” I guess forever, but people can put two and two together, and that refrain just won’t cut it. You need to actually grapple with the consequences of GHGs. Some here do, and say, well, it won’t be too bad. OK, that’s one argument. But it undercuts the “natural variation” chant.
Nick,
you said,
“For over a century, scientists have been saying that putting a whole lot of CO2 in the air will cause warming. And they explained why. ”
But they have yet to offer a reasonable explanation for the magnitude of the claimed effect. This is what separates the skeptics from the warmists. The warmist assert that an incremental W/m^2 of forcing increases surface emissions by 4.3 W/m^2 manifesting an average 0.8C temperature increase where 3.3 W/m^2 of this increase comes from mischaracterized feedback, while skeptics generally assert that each W/m^2 of forcing increases surface emissions by 1.6 W/m^2 where only 0.6 W/m^2 comes from feedback which is consistent with each of the 239 W/m^2 of solar forcing, each of which contributes 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions (0.6 W/m^2 more than it would for an ideal BB).
And got a whole lot of warming…..
ROTFL…..no we didn’t
All we got was a bunch of graphs with the scale blown up really big
So sayith – Nick Stokes
But, but, …. Nick Stokes, …… Americans have also been drinking Coca-Cola “For over a century”, ………. and drinking Coca-Cola began in 1886 and has increased each and every ear since…. which pretty much coincides EXACTLY with the increase in near-surface average temperatures as defined in/on the National Temperature Record that is maintained by the NWS.
Sooooo Nicky, ….. PHOOEY on your CO2-temperature claims …… because it is not only an obvious FACT, but an unquestionable FACT, …. that drinking Coca-Cola has exacerbated surface temperatures during the past 100+ years.
Yours truly, Eritas Fubar
Nick Stokes says:
For over a century, scientists have been saying that putting a whole lot of CO2 in the air will cause warming. And they explained why. Well, we did it. And got a whole lot of warming.
You seem to imply a connection between CO2 going into the air and some warming that occurred in the 80’s and 90’s.
Has a connection been established?
Following up on Billy Liar —
Mr. Stokes Edited for Accuracy:
Heh.
Sam Cogar,
I absolutely loved your response, because that is exactly the type of correlation they use in AGW theory, but then again….the agent known to make Coca-Cola sparkle….is…..CO2!!! Maybe consuming Co2 is causing humans to cause global warming! (grin)
But that isn’t refuting AGW. It’s saying that, yes, there’s a GHE, and CO2 causes warming, but we’ll argue about how much.
Well you conveniently truncated my reply which went on to say:
and the costs of mitigation versus adaptation.
We’re being asked to adopt mitigation strategies that will directly harm billions of people in the name of fighting something that MIGHT happen and MIGHT be bad and which we CAN adapt to for less harm to less people.
“you conveniently truncated my reply”
I’m arguing with the head post:
“simply demonstrating that the current theory is wrong is enough”
Of course there’ll be arguments about what to do and how much to spend, as there should be. But that isn’t demonstrating that the current theory is wrong.
But that isn’t demonstrating that the current theory is wrong.
The current theory doesn’t exist in the public discourse. The “current theory” espoused in the public discourse by charlatans such as the authors of this paper is that scientists all agree we need to destroy our societies in order to save them, and anybody that argues the point is insane, stupid, or incoherent. It is drekk Nick, and you know it. The head post could read Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and the paper would still be drekk. But you want to argue that the Tomatoes are red or green, never mind the drekk.
@ davidm, But you want to argue that the Tomatoes are red or green, never mind the drekk.
remind yourself david, you are talking to a melon,
Nick > But that isn’t demonstrating that the current theory is wrong.
===
Nick, if it’s right…why is it so easy for so many people to shoot it down?…and why is it constantly adjusted, tweaked, changed…if the science is settled?
…… the only “current theory” that could even remotely be considered right is…
CO2 might make it a little warmer.
It is called the null hypothesis.
“Yes, if you can do it. But despite almost daily claims here of nails in coffin etc, that hasn’t happened.”
—
Whether or not CAGW has been falsified by the evidence is precisely the point of contention. Does the divergence of prediction and unfolding reality that is illustrated in the (atrociously cluttered) head graph mean anything, or not? When the naked emperors of climate “science” refuse to acknowledge it, belittle it, or “explain” it by posing that the missing heat is hiding in the deep ocean; do we trust our own judgment and call BS, or do we genuflect?
If it gives you some sort of satisfaction, keep genuflecting. Maybe carefully time your point of departure so as to be neither early nor late, so that you will at all times be protected by the crowd (on top of your pseudonym, that is).
They are the ones who say that “The science is settled”
People are looking for the best available explanation….
Fine…
Global warming is only possible when the past temp history is re-written…current temps are adjusted…and algorithms are applied to adjust past temps every time a new set of temps is entered
You have to ignore the fact that as CO2 levels increase…it has less and less effect
You have to ignore things that disprove global warming…like hot spots
You have to cherry pick start dates to show temps rising
You have to ignore the fact that computer programs can not even duplicate the past, and not predict the future
You have to ignore the fact that night time temps were supposed to show the most increase…and ignore UHI
..and while you’re at it…ignore raw numbers…and only look at adjusted numbers
oh…and ignore the fact that the science is settled…
…while listening to daily excuses as to why it’s changed
And you have to ignore the scientifically derived data that is plotted on graphs like this, to wit:
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/1979-2013UAHsatelliteglobalaveragetemperatures.png
The above graph shows no correlation whatsoever between the yearly increases in atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities and the average yearly increases and/or decreases in the temperatures of the global lower atmosphere for the past 35 years.
Here is an alternate climate worldview. Monthly tropics troposphere temperatures back to 1958 based on ocean cycles, volcanoes and a very tiny CO2 warming signal.
This is as good as it gets folks (and especially Nick Stokes who has been around this game long enough to understand when he sees a good model of ).
Tropics Troposphere Temp = 0.288 * Nino 3.4 Index (of 3 months previous) + 0.499 * AMO Index + -3.22 * Aerosol Optical Depth volcano Index + 0.07 Constant + 0.4395*Ln(CO2) – 2.59 CO2 constant,
http://s16.postimg.org/iynkqumyd/UAH_RSS_Had_AT_Tropics_Model_Aug16.png
And the left-over Ln(CO2) warming trend of 0.029C per decade is about 7% of that predicted in the climate models for the tropics troposphere (technically not statistically significant as well so might as well just be ZERO).
http://s15.postimg.org/dw2h9wpff/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Tropics_Warming_Aug16.png
damn……………good post Bill
Impressive fit. What does the “– 2.59 CO2 constant” mean though? Is that a changing level of CO2 multiplied with a constant, or just another constant?
Yes, …. Bill E, …… a great post.
And what I would dearly love to see, iffen you would be so kind as to do so, is to plot the yearly mid-May maximum CO2 ppm quantities from 1958 to 2016, ….. as defined by the Mauna Loa Record, …… across a copy of the 1st graph you posted above, like was done on the graph that I posted above …… and then post said graph hereon.
Graphically displaying the increasing atmospheric CO2 ppm during the past 58 years …… that is claimed to be the “driver” of the increasing atmospheric temperatures during the past 58 years …… should clearly and explicitly portray and/or define the “truth” or ”falsity” of the aforesaid “claim” of ….. “CO2 causing Anthropogenic Global Warming / Climate Change”.
Bill Illis’s work on this equation predates mine by years. Somehow I missed his stuff and thought I had discovered something new – Haw!
My simpler equation using only Nino3.4 is:
UAHLTcalc (Anom. in degC, ~four months later) = 0.20*Nino3.4IndexAnom + 0.15
Data: Nino3.4IndexAnom is at: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices
Here is the plot of my equation:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1078059648938263&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Bill’s equation adds considerable value, especially wrt the impact of volcanoes El Chichon from 1982 and Pinatubo from 1991 (each for about 5 years).
Much (or all?) of the “apparent warming” from 1982 through ~1996 is due to natural recovery of the atmosphere from these two volcanoes.
Not sure how much impact the AMO has on Bill’s equation, but I agree with Bill that THE IMPACT OF INCREASING ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ON GLOBAL TEMPERATURE IS SO CLOSE TO ZERO AS TO BE MATERIALLY INSIGNIFICANT.
Bill’s equation helps to explain why the only “signal” apparent in the “temperature vs atmospheric CO2” relationship is the one I demonstrated in January 2008 – that dCO2/dt is closely correlated with global temperature T and its integral “atmospheric CO2 concentration” lags global temperature by about 9 months in the modern data record. See Figures 1 to 4 in my 2008 icecap.us paper
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
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
My conclusion was re-stated here in 2015:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS [Lower Tropospheric] temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
…
I remain reasonably confident that the future cannot cause the past (in our current space-time continuum). 🙂
Regards to all, Allan
Michael Palmer, the -2.59 Ln(CO2) Constant is really how much contribution CO2 provides in the greenhouse effect. Ie. Just 2.59C of the 33.0C (or more accurately 22.0C) greenhouse effect. Ie. if there were no forcing from CO2 in the Tropics Troposphere, how much would temperatures drop – just 2.59C. This is less than 10% of the 3.0C per doubling global warming theory.
Most people don’t understand that the forcing formula for CO2 actually contains a Constant.
TempC Change = TempC/W/m2 * 5.35 * ln(CO2curr/CO2orig) [is the theory math].
TempC Change = 0.81C/W/m2 * 5.35 * ln(CO2curr/280ppm) [is the theory math of the IPCC].
TempC Change = 0.81C * 5.35 * ln(CO2curr) – 0.81 * 5.35 * ln(280) [is another breakdown of this formula].
TempC Change = 4.33C * ln(CO2curr) – 24.42C [viola, the formula actually has a Constant].
–> this formula is actually the 3.0C per doubling of CO2 theory. Now you can plug any CO2curr number into that formula and you get what the theory thinks temperatures will change by. It produces a Logarithmic CO2 doubling curve. Most climate scientists have no idea their theory actually works this way and when this derivation was viewed by a Nick Stokes before or even someone from GISS, they lose it because they haven’t seen it before. It is just a normal mathematical contruct. Grade 11 math students should be able to do it.
My formula for the Tropics Troposphere based on what it has really done since 1958 is just:
TempC Change = 0.4295C * ln(CO2) – 2.59C [like less than 10% of the impact – this is supposed to be a hotspot]
Depicted below. Note that I said the fit for CO2 was NOT significant in the regression. I’ve also put some other temperatures on the chart from the Miocene, Holocene and the Last Ice Age on the chart. They also don’t fit. They don’t fit with the 3.0C per doubling theory and they don’t fit the Tropics Troposphere from 1958. It is almost like the correct fit is actually ZERO which it how it looks for CO2 and temperatures all through history going back 750 million years..
http://s21.postimg.org/76glgqug7/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Tropics_Log_Warming_2100_Aug16.png
And and a Zoom-in so one can see it a little better.
http://s15.postimg.org/f385jqfyz/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Tropics_Log_Zoom_Warming_2100_Aug1.png
Slight change in the charts (I hadn’t updated the formulae). Same look but more datapoints.
http://s15.postimg.org/dmkvhpr23/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Tropics_Log_Warming_2100_Aug16.png
http://s18.postimg.org/yuti2du6x/UAH_RSS_Had_At_Tropics_Log_Zoom_Warming_2100_Aug1.png
Bill, thanks for the explanation. So, since the — 2.59 * [pre-industrial CO2] is a constant, would it not be better to combine it with the other constant of 0.07? Gets rid of one term.
Is there any danger of circularity in the fit, that is, is the measured temperature contained in the AMO or ENSO indices? Naive but honest question, I’m not familiar with how these indices are calculated. Also, how do the respective contributions compare? Did, or if not, could you scale each component so that its anomaly is the same as that of the temperature, and use those scaled versions as components in the fit? One should then directly get the relative contributions to the whole.
Thanks again for this, most fascinating.
So stateith: Allan MacRae – September 25, 2016 at 6:37 am
Allen, if as you claim, that “atmospheric CO2 (ppm) LAGS [Lower Tropospheric] temperature by ~9 months” ……. then how do you explain the average 6 ppm bi-yearly (6 month) cycling (increases/decreases) of atmospheric CO2?
How can the atmospheric CO2 ppm be LAGGING the Lower Tropospheric temperature by 9 months when it is CYCLING an average 6 ppm every 6 months with an average 2 ppm increase each and every year for the past 58 years …..regardless of what the Lower Tropospheric temperature were or are?
As per the Keeling Curve graph, atmospheric CO2 …… DECREASES an average 6 ppm during the cold temperatures of the Southern Hemisphere wintertime and ….. INCREASES an average 8 ppm during the warm temperatures of the Southern Hemisphere summertime, ….. which it has been doing “steadily and consistently” for the past 58 years, …. as defined heron this modified KC graph, to wit:
http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af315/SamC_40/keelingcurve.gif
Further to my own question above, namely if the AMO and ENSO indices are themselves based on temperature: The NOAA web page on AMO states that it is indeed calculated from sea surface temperatures. For ENSO, temperature is one of 6 components whose variances are equally weighted. I take it that the others were selected to be meaningfully different from temperature.
So to a degree Bill’s fit seems to be circular; he fits observed temperature with components that also contain the observed temperature.
Samuel C Cogar wrote on September 26, 2016 at 6:13 am
“Allan, if as you claim, that “atmospheric CO2 (ppm) LAGS [Lower Tropospheric] temperature by ~9 months” ……. then how do you explain the average 6 ppm bi-yearly (6 month) cycling (increases/decreases) of atmospheric CO2? …. ”
Samuel, your question is not really relevant to my claims.
Of course there is a shorter time cycle (the seasonal “sawtooth” in the Keeling Curve), driven primarily by [spring&summer] photosynthesis and [fall&winter] oxidation (decomposition), dominated by the larger Northern Hemispheric landmass. The amplitude of this seasonal sawtooth is highest in the far north (about 16ppm at Barrow AK, as I recall) and near-zero at the South Pole. Note that in this shorter seasonal cycle, CO2 also LAGS temperature by weeks. Different cycle lengths, different lag times…
This Keeling curve has an upward slope at Mauna Loa of about 2 ppm/year. Note that, unlike some others, I am not claiming that this upward ~2ppm/year is caused primarily by increasing temperature, although that is possible. I suggest that other causes can contribute to this ~2ppm/year, such as fossil fuel combustion, land use changes, delayed effects of the Medieval Warm Period, or whatever. I do not really care to resolve this question at this time.
Please do the math used in my analysis. A simple description is in this equation.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1979/mean:12/derivative/plot/uah/from:1959/scale:0.22/offset:0.14
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1092009347543293&set=p.1092009347543293&type=3&theater
To account for the seasonal sawtooth, one calculates the annual change in CO2 in Month M as
delta CO2 (Year Y, Month M) minus (Year (Y-1). Month M)
= [CO2(Year (Y), Month M)] minus [CO2(Year (Y-1)), Month M)
This plot shows the strong correlation between the rate-of-change dCO2/dt and global temperature T.
The integral of dCO2/dt is atmospheric CO2, and this lags global Lower Tropospheric temperature T by ~9 months.
See also Humlum et al, January 2013, written five years after my icecap.us paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Highlights
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
A few people have suggested this is spurious correlation. That is extremely improbable.
I remain reasonably confident that the future cannot cause the past (in our current space-time continuum). 🙂
Regards, Allan
Michael Palmer wrote on September 26, 2016 at 10:44 am
“So to a degree Bill’s fit seems to be circular; he fits observed temperature with components that also contain the observed temperature.”
I expect Bill Illis will respond to you, but here are some comments.
I suggest Bill’s logic is not “circular”, because it is LINEAR IN TIME: Global temperature LAGS Nino3.4 temperature by about 4 months; or you could say Nino3.4 ocean temperatures PREDICT OR ARE THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF CHANGES IN GLOBAL TEMPERATURE. An intermediate step is Nino3.4 warming increases water vapour concentrations in the tropical atmosphere – this apparently drives atmospheric warming.
Bill’s work on this equation predates mine by years. My simpler equation using only Nino3.4 is:
UAHLTcalc (Anom. in degC, ~four months later) = 0.20*Nino3.4IndexAnom + 0.15
Data: Nino3.4IndexAnom is at: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/data/indices/sstoi.indices
Simply, the Nino3.4Index Anom is a temperature of the subset of the Pacific Ocean in the Nino3.4 Area, about 1% of the global surface area.
Lower Tropospheric Temperature LAGS Nino3.4 Temperature by about four months. This is the primary (dominant) factor in Bill’s equation.
Bill’s equation adds considerable value, especially wrt the cooling impact of volcanoes El Chichon from 1982 and Pinatubo from 1991 (cooling for about 5 years).
Here is the plot of my equation:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1078059648938263&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater
Regards, Allan
Allan M.R. MacRae – September 27, 2016 at 9:05 am
Why not? Your claim was that [increases/decreases] in “atmospheric CO2 (ppm) LAGS temperature by ~9 months” ……. and the Keeling Curve Graph (and/or Mauna Loa Record) specifically defines actual increase/decrease cycling in atmospheric CO2 ppm every 6 months …… but no 9 month delay or cycling.
What I am saying is, there is a “6 month signature” in the measured atmospheric CO2 ppm quantities …… but not a “9 month signature”. And iffen you plot the MLR May maximum CO2 ppm quantity across and atop of your temperature graph ….. you still won’t see any “9 mth signature” or any correlation to your plotted average temperatures.
Allan M.R., your claim for the “cause of” the seasonal “sawtooth” in the Keeling Curve graph is a biological impossibility …… that most any unbiased Biologists or Botanist will attest to, …… as well as will the United States Department of Agriculture and most any state or county Department of Public Health.
“DUH”, the quick oxidation (decomposition) of dead biomass, which is exacerbated by temperatures greater than 40 F, is the sole reason that refrigerators and freezers were invented (and the reason the USDA and DPHs mandates their use for storage of perishable foods).
And that is exactly why 90+% of all oxidation (decomposition) of nature’s dead biomass, …. in the Northern Hemisphere, ….. occurs during the “warm n’ wet” Spring and Summer seasons. The Fall season is to “cool n’ dry” to permit a great amount of microbial decomposition of the dead biomass. And the Winter season is far too “cold n’ wet“.
“Yup”, and that average 2 ppm/year increase …… that has been occurring every year for the past 58 years, …… and was surely also occurring for 80+ years prior to 1958, …… is also the result of an increase in temperature, ……. the temperature of the ocean water, that is.
Highly partisan proponents of the CAGW junk-science claim ….. and the remaining half-arsed believers in said, ……… really don’t want to recognize or discuss the above stated biological fact(s) simply because said fact(s) will likely negate a half-a-lifetime of work that they are so proud of.
S Cogar on September 28, 2016 at 4:32 am
You are spouting nonsense.
Since you can’t or won’t do the simple math, I cannot spend any more time on you.
So sayith: Allan M.R. MacRae – September 28, 2016 at 7:09 am
Shur nuff, Allan M.R. MacRae,
I should have expected a stupid-assed response such as that …… from someone that is utterly ignorant about the “biology” of planet earth.
Now it don’t interest me a damn bit …… but, Mr. MacRae, you can perform all your weeks n’ weeks of “fuzzy math” calculations to determine your hypothetical “global avg temperature” and after you plot them on graph paper ……… all you will have is a “snapshot” of something that happened several weeks prior ….. and will never happen again in your lifetime.
Cheers, Sam C, …. AB Degree, Physical and Biological Science, GSC 1963
Sam – you keep changing your position and write in first person accusatory tense. I conclude you are a troll.
BTW, it is not that critical what causes the ~6-8ppm seasonal sawtooth at Mauna Loa – it is BOTH ocean solution-exsolution AND the larger Northern Hemisphere landmass (vs the SH), but it is probable that the NH landmass dominates because the CO2 seasonal amplitude is ~16ppm at Barrow Alaska and near-zero at the South Pole.
Why don’t you just read the above comments and try to keep up?
Re the global CO2 annual sawtooth cycle:
This is interesting and recent. Video at 11…
http://www.blozonehole.com/blozone-hole-theory/blozone-hole-theory/carbon-cycle-using-nasa-oco-2-satellite-images
This is global CO2 animation is older, 2002-2008:
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
See http://climatechangepredictions.org/category/having_it_both_ways for coherence /sarc
If “People want to know what is happening.” then it seems the last place to look would be scientists and the peer-reviewed literature.
Well, said.
Yes, you a right, Nick.
People, intelligent people, wonder why CO2 increased for eighteen years and global temperature did not. which was Dooms Day predicted by each and every model.
How did 100% of the world’s most lauded, prominent and preeminent, climate scientists get it so wrong?
You are so right, Nick. You called them out.
People are right to distrust these Climate Charlatans and look for the best plausible explanations. like natural variability.
Good on Ya, Nick.
Nick Stokes says:
Yes, if you can do it.
Skeptics of the ‘dangerous AGW’ scare don’t have to do anything, because Planet Earth has already falsified the CAGW hypothesis: for close to twenty years global warming stopped (…’scuse me, it paused.) So even if the rise in CO2 causes global warming, the effect is extremely weak. In fact, it’s too weak to measure — or we would have measurements of AGW by now.
And if human CO2 emissions do cause any global warming it isn’t enough to falsify the Null Hypothesis, since no one has been able to show that the rise in CO2 has had any measurable effect. That leaves natural climate variability as the simplest and best explanation. Willie Ockham would approve of that, no?
Next, the onus (AKA: the “burden of proof”) is on those who put forth a scientific hypothesis. Saying that it’s just “an issue to be understood” is pure deflection. Epicycles were understood, too. But they were wrong.
You need solid, testable evidence to support the ‘dangerous man-made global warming’ hypothesis. But to just believe in the CO2=(c)AGW hypothesis, without solid evidence, is no different than the folks who believed in epicycles. In fact, there was much more evidence for epicycles than climate alarmists have for CAGW.
To move beyond mere belief, you need to produce verifiable, testable data (measurable evidence) that confirms the hypothesis that
epicyclesCO2=cAGW. But so far, no one has measured AGW (and I suppose it’s time for my usual disclaimer: I think a rise in CO2 causes global warming. But not very much, and most of the effect has already happened).So the “best available explanation” is not human CO2 emissions. It is natural climate variability, since current global warming does not exceed past parameters. No matter what time scale you use — whether it’s years, centuries, or hundreds of millennia — nothing observed now is unusual or unprecedented; current temperatures do not exceed previous parameters.
Furthermore, the global temperature record over the past century is a truly Goldilocks record, flatter (only about ±0.8ºC) than any comparable time period in the geologic record.
What the climate alarmist faction is doing is no different in principle than falsely shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater. The result is the same; people get hurt (carbon taxes; misallocation of resources, etc.). Anyone with a good moral compass would refrain from making such bold assertions without having verifiable measurements showing that the rise in CO2 (by just one part in 10,000 – over a century!) is the primary cause of global warming.
But you don’t have those measurements, do you, Nick? No one does. Not the UN/IPCC, or anyone else. What your side is doing is arguing incessantly — when all it would require are verifiable measurements showing that rising CO2 is the primary cause of global warming.
Where’s that cause and effect evidence, Nick? Skeptics can be convinced. All it requires is verifiable, data-based measurements quantifying AGW. Got any?
Excellent post db
Yes, excellent comment. Now watch Nick NOT answer – I’ve never them (Nick or his ilk) give an answer when the questions get too precise. When you get right down to the nitty-gritty, they have no option but to avoid the questions. +1000 to you DB.
@ dbstealey, ….. great commentary as usual, ….. but, me being a Devil’s Advocate for Believable Science, …… I just hafta question two (2) of your nurtured beliefs ….. in that it appears to me that they are directly contrary to one another, …… as denoted below, to wit:
dbstealey – September 24, 2016 at 3:55 pm, …… response to Nick Stokes
Paragraph #4
Paragraph #5
Wasn’t that kinda like telling Nick Stokes to ….. “Don’t believe what I believe,…. believe what I tell you to believe”?
Since nothing out of the ordinary is happening, why should anyone provide explanations?
An assumption of coherence sounds more like philosophy than science. Why assume coherence?
Mostly, with climate change adherents, it’s safe to assume incoherence…
As Dr. Murry Salby reports in this lecture (around 41:20):
Observed deviations of global mean (natural) CO2 deviate widely, sometimes more than 100%, from year to year, decade to decade – they are INcoherent with human CO2 emission rate, i.e, net global natural emission evolves independently of human emission.
Incoherence.
(and nice joke, too, Leo Smith)
JM, please do not rely on any of the three Salby youtube lectures. They are all very ‘off.’ So bad I did not think (nor did Judith Curry) that a formal rebuttal was necesssry. Perhaps it now is, in which case a draft based on 1 plus 2, but not 3, is already written and referenced.
Salby is a perfect example of incoherence. What exactly is the sceptic case? Is there one? Apparently not. If you’re presenting one, you need to decide if the CO2 came from unicorns or not.
What exactly is the sceptic case? Is there one? Apparently not.
Oh stop being so precious, you know better. Salby is just wrong. That doesn’t discredit every skeptic alive. If one scientist getting something wrong was a fair test, YOUR side would be in VERY deep trouble. Arctic not ice free yet? Hurricanes not increasing? SLR not accelerating? We’re not basing our opinions on the data, we’re basing them on the models….oops, no, models run too hot (hey, that’s not me, that’s the IPCC!)… or has it been changed again? Natural variability too small to account for warming…. oops, no, natural variability is swamping the warming (which is it this year?). Your side is the very epitome of incoherence.
The skeptic case is just that sensitivity appears to be much lower than claimed, and the actions being proposed in the name of mitigation have negative effects that far outweigh the benefits.
“If one scientist getting something wrong was a fair test”
It isn’t somebody getting something wrong. Wadhams doesn’t get too many defenders. There is a mainstream view. But Salby videos are cropping up all the time. The thing is, there is a coherent scientific case, in the literature, and collated by the IPCC. You need something to go against that.
There was the NIPCC, and the second of them, I think it was, looked like a reasonable start. But too reasonable, and was virtually ignored.
The thing is, there is a coherent scientific case, in the literature, and collated by the IPCC.
One of the easiest ways to demonstrate incoherence on your side Nick, is to walk people through AR4 and AR5.
Posts (excerpted) starting on September 12, 2016 at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/11/feedback-on-feedbacks/comment-page-1/#comment-2298039
______________________________
Allan wrote on September 12:
Hello Rud,
Re your above comment on Salby
My work predates Salby by several years and make fewer claims.
I have yet to hear a credible rebuttal of my conclusions.
If you want to comment, please email me via my website.
Here is a general reference, my 2008 icecap.us paper is referenced within. See points 1. 2 and 3 below wrt Salby.
Regards, Allan
EVIDENCE SUGGESTING TEMPERATURE DRIVES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 MORE THAN CO2 DRIVES TEMPERATURE
September 4, 2015
By Allan MacRae
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/13/presentation-of-evidence-suggesting-temperature-drives-atmospheric-co2-more-than-co2-drives-temperature/
Observations and Conclusions:
1. Temperature, among other factors, drives atmospheric CO2 much more than CO2 drives temperature. The rate of change dCO2/dt is closely correlated with temperature and thus atmospheric CO2 LAGS [Lower Tropospheric] temperature by ~9 months in the modern data record
2. CO2 also lags temperature by ~~800 years in the ice core record, on a longer time scale.
3. Atmospheric CO2 lags temperature at all measured time scales.
4. CO2 is the feedstock for carbon-based life on Earth, and Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are clearly CO2-deficient. CO2 abatement and sequestration schemes are nonsense.
5. Based on the evidence, Earth’s climate is insensitive to increased atmospheric CO2 – there is no global warming crisis.
6. Recent global warming was natural and irregularly cyclical – the next climate phase following the ~20 year pause will probably be global cooling, starting by ~2020 or sooner.
7. Adaptation is clearly the best approach to deal with the moderate global warming and cooling experienced in recent centuries.
8. Cool and cold weather kills many more people than warm or hot weather, even in warm climates. There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year in the USA and about 10,000 in Canada.
9. Green energy schemes have needlessly driven up energy costs, reduced electrical grid reliability and contributed to increased winter mortality, which especially targets the elderly and the poor.
10. Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of modern society. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die. That is the tragic legacy of false global warming alarmism.
______________________________
Rud wrote on September 12:
AM, I will take a look but need a couple of days. Blogging is not my full time job.
2, 8,9, 10 probably correct. At least 1, 3, 5 dubious. Have to look at your stats in light of autocorrelation problems.
IMO there are much easier ways to convincingly refute CAGW. No C except in models. Small a in aGW. Really simple incontrovertible stuff. Delta CO2 lags shorter than ice cores, sketchy. See essay Cause and Effect for a dissection of four different examples.
______________________________
Allan wrote on September 13:
RE #1 – Autocorrelation/”spurious correlation” was refuted in 2008.
The best the alarmists have come up with on the 9-month lag of CO2 after temperature is an alleged “feedback effect”, with zero supporting evidence – warmist cult nonsense, imo. See Figures 1 to 4 in my 2008 icecap.us paper 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
RE #I and 2 – different lags exist for different (approx.) cycle lengths. #3 is just a summary of #1 and 2.
RE #5 -” Insensitive” means ECS is less than 1C, and probably a lot less, because the only signal observable in the modern data record is as described in #1. Similar to your “small a in aGW”. I say ECS is so small it is materially irrelevant.
I am confident about #1, 3 and 5 and others – my only reservation in all 10 points is with #6 re imminent global cooling, and I hope to be wrong there – because of #8, 9 and 10.
Politicians may have brewed “the perfect storm”, damaging the electrical grid with costly and destructive green energy schemes to “fight global warming”, even as the climate cools.
______________________________
Allan wrote on September 13:
Rud you said: “IMO there are much easier ways to convincingly refute CAGW.”
I agree, but that is not my sole objective. Climate science interests me, and I suggest that both sides (warmist vs skeptic) of the global warming debate probably have “put the cart before the horse”.
Unlike some others, I do not say that temperature is the primary driver of increasing CO2, although that could be correct. Land use changes, fossil fuel combustion, etc could also contribute – but I do say that this increase in atmospheric CO2 is not harmful and is beneficial to humanity and the environment.
I am still reasonably confident that that the future cannot cause the past. 🙂
See also Humlum et al, January 2013, written five years after my paper:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
Highlights
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 11–12 months behind changes in global sea surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging 9.5–10 months behind changes in global air surface temperature.
– Changes in global atmospheric CO2 are lagging about 9 months behind changes in global lower troposphere temperature.
– Changes in ocean temperatures explain a substantial part of the observed changes in atmospheric CO2 since January 1980.
– Changes in atmospheric CO2 are not tracking changes in human emissions.
Best, Allan
______________________________
dbstealey wrote on September 13, 2016
WRT CO2/temperature causation, I agree with Allan MacRae based on real world observations. So far, I’ve found no credible data showing that ∆CO2 causes ∆T. It may, but when something is not capable of causing any observed changes following a particular input, then the Null Hypothesis has not been falsified even if CO2 causes some minuscule warming. In order to falsify the Null Hypothesis, it must be shown that rising CO2 causes a measurable change.
But all such observations show a one way cause-and-effect: ∆T causes ∆CO2. And while rising CO2 may cause a slight rise in global temperature, there are no corroborating, confirming observations.
Therefore, ∆CO2 can be disregarded; it is just too small to make a measurable difference.
______________________________
Allan wrote on September 21:
Hello Rud,
Are you working on a response as you stated? If so, kindly notify me when and where you post it.
You can contact me through my website.
Regards, Allan
Post Script:
I discovered the close relationship between dCO2/dt as a function of temperature T in late 2007 (and the resulting ~9 month lag of CO2 after T) and posted my paper in January 2008 on Joe d’Aleo’s site icecap.us. Some of my scientist friends warned me that I would be attacked, and they were right.
I recall the baseless attacks from both sides of the fractious “mainstream” global warming debate, both sides inextricably wedded to their hypothesis that CO2 primarily drives global temperature. They continue to argue about “how much warming will result from increasing CO2”, a little or a lot – aka “My ECS is bigger than yours!”. 🙂
The strong winds from all their frantic arm-waving have abated, replaced by a nervous calm, as few want to venture into the scary depths of this important question. Most just want to ignore it, play with their ECS’s and wave away Salby and Humlum or even slander them. I met Salby recently in Calgary and he seems like a decent guy, who bears all the bullying with dignity – maybe all of you should give him a break.
______________________________
Allan wrote on September 23:
Rud – I still have not seen your promised response.
A response to Salby will not suffice, because our claims are somewhat different.
I do look forward to a competent response to my claims as repeated above on September 12, especially #1. I have yet to see a competent rebuttal – just a lot of religious nonsense by both sides of the fractious CAGW debate. Their argument to date has been “We KNOW that CO2 drives temperature, therefore the ~9-month lag of CO2 after temperature MUST BE a feedback effect”.
I call bullsh!t. You don’t “KNOW” that, you just BELIEVE it, and it is unsupported by the evidence.
Regards, Allan
Jamal Munshi agrees with Murray Salby here.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jamal_Munshi/publication/281111296_RESPONSIVENESS_OF_ATMOSPHERIC_CO2_TO_ANTHROPOGENIC_EMISSIONS_A_NOTE/links/55d6280308aed6a199a4c330.pdf
When run by year, there is no correlation between industrial output and atmospheric CO2, an indication that the relationship is probably spurious, like the coke and temperature relation mentioned earlier.
davidmoffer wrote above at 10:53pm:
“Salby is just wrong.”
David, I enjoy many of your comments but want to challenge you on this one.
What, exactly, do you say Salby is wrong about?
I make the same challenge to you that I made to Rud several weeks ago, repeated on this page at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/23/lewandowsky-and-cook-deniers-cannot-provide-a-coherent-alternate-worldview/comment-page-1/#comment-2305891
I would prefer that you respond to my hypos, which make fewer claims and predate Salby by several years.
Thank you, Allan
high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions = a theory of positive feedback and no predicted hotspot found.
Ergo, by Lewandowsky, AGW shows clear signs of being loaded with ‘attributes of conspiracist ideation’
Lord, but the boy does bullshit most bafflingly
Never in the field of pseudo scientific pretension has so much polysyllabic piety been presented by such a precious little prick
Precisely. 🙂
Petite would fit nicely in the alliteration…
If we are going French, “Bijoux Bullshitteer”
Does he realise what a prat he appears to be, one wonders?
Time for a break. Here’s a little puzzle. Can you rearrange the letters in WHAT LYSENKO SPAWNED to make the name of a someone who calls himself a scientist?
Very good! +97%!
Stop beating my wife? Really? You gonna marry her? Dumb asses!
Excuse me, but climate skeptics do “Provide a coherent Worldview”.
The variations of the Climate are Natural. That’s our “Coherent Worldview”. What part of that don’t they understand?
That is the Skeptical standpoint. It’s up to the “Warmists” to show that there is an Anthropogenic effect significant enough to be called “Climate Changing”….. So far they haven’t, nor have they even come close to showing that they understand the climate system in all its complexity, let alone how humans can “Change” it.
natural variations of climate? nah for that fool Lewandowsky they don’t exist. all the glaciations and interstadials are caused by the cavemen their fires that poisoned the sky….. oh and the eocene optimum was caused by the methane farts of the dinosaurs….
(insert sarc tags but do i have to say that? 🙂 )
What the heck did he say? When you don’t have anything intelligent to say dazzle them with your footwork. In this case, with your academic gibberish. BTW, their argument is nonsense. If you are charged with a crime all you have to show is that you didn’t do the crime. You don’t have to show who actually did it, you just need to show that it wasn’t you.
In legal systems derived from British law, it is up to the accuser to show that you did commit the crime. You don’t have to prove that you didn’t. Helpful if you can, of course.
Correct. It is usually taken as a logical impossibility to prove a negative proposition.
No it isn’t. It usually taken as often being a pretty difficult thing to do. That is one of the reasons we tend to put the burden of proof on the positive claim. But some negative claims are quite easy to prove. I claim that the Prime Minister does not have a brain. This is a negative claim. I can prove it by slicing his head open and revealing that there is nothing in his cranial cavity except a bit of grey fluff and a disconsolate spider. (I’d have to get the Queen’s permission, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.)
Guilty until proven innocent is not British law – it is French!
RoHa, you assume he keeps his brain in his head.
If I don’t know what’s right, I can’t say something is wrong. I don’t know what the square root of 2,749.53 is, so if you tell me it’s 3, I can’t say you are wrong. Thank you, L and C, for this fascinating advance in epistemology.
“Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.”
Except that there are a whole lot of things that we just don’t know.
Note that you don’t just come up with an alternate theory, your alternate theory must be a settled theory. i.e. already written up by somebody else, published in journals and agreed with at by at least 97% of scientists.
This one statement of Lew’s is the absolute worst I’ve ever seen by anyone.
Not quite. If the theory is that humans are causing the earth to warm my inability to come up with an alternative theory of “why” does not relieve the proponent of the theory from providing evidence that the earth is warming. The burden of showing cause only arises after you have established the fact.
I read the entire article. Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong, while they all believe the same thing, so they must be right. They also try to show, by quoting people out of context, that prominent contrarians state contradictory things. This becomes laughably absurd when they quote Lord Monckton saying it would take thousands of years for the Greenland Ice sheet to melt, and also saying parts of Greenland were arable in the Middle Ages, both true statements, but appearing contradictory to Lewandowsky and Cook, who apparently never looked at a map of Greenland.
The real howler is the sentence, “Their [Thagard and Findley, 2011] computer simulation of belief revision came to accept the scientific evidence because it maximized coherence among the various pieces of evidence and explanatory propositions.” In other words, if we can program a computer to believe what we believe, it must be true!
“I read the entire article. Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong, while they all believe the same thing, so they must be right.”
Fifty million flies can’t be wrong.
Except that science is not about believing…
…and that they do not believe the same thing… for starters there are 102 different models presented at IPCC AR5.
This is no more and no less the logic of Kipling’s Bandar Log – the Monkey people.
“We all say it, so it must be true”.
The first Norsemen that came ashore didn’t call it “Greenland” to be pointlessly ironic. (Hipsters hadn’t been invented yet.) They really did find large tracts of green land perfect for a colony. Then the MWP ended and re-glaciation bit them in the nethers.
Ronald,
“Their main argument is that climate contrarians believe different things, so we must all be wrong”
The reason there’s so much disparity among skeptics is because there’s so much wrong with the warmists case. A single treatise can not address all of the errors at once, so its best to pick one and focus on it. Much of the work by skeptics tends to concentrate on the data, rather than the theory, but its the theory that’s fundamentally flawed and as far as the warmists are concerned, computer models based on ‘theory’ trumps data. Not that there aren’t errors among skeptical analysis, but much of that comes from accepting an error made by alarmists and adding a compensating error to counteract it, rather than addressing the original error in the first place. Consensus climate science also has many complicated errors that are dependent on more basic errors and addressing only the complicated error without addressing the basic underlying error is more easily dismissed.
The introduction about a “highly coherent body of knowledge” is a distraction and irrelevant.
The Ptolemaic model was a “highly coherent body of knowledge” but increasingly at odds with observations — sounds familiar.
“… risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable …”.
That’s just Lewandowsky’s and Cook’s shared opinion for which they have no evidence.
Even if one accepts that all the CO2 increase since (say) 1880 was due to ‘human activity” the result has been unequivocally beneficial whatever standard of the measurement of human welfare one uses.
The Ptolemaic system was a sophisticated mathematical model based on, and successfully accounting for, a large body of pretty precise observations. The model was pretty good at making predictions, too. It was only the superb data from the Danish space exploration programme that finally unseated the Ptolemaic system, in spite of Ibn Bajjah and Copernicus.
(And I can pronounce Tyge (Tycho) Brahe’s name properly.)
Tycho had a good nose for models, I wonder what happened to it?
Credit should be given …. to whom credit is due, ….. to wit:
Hipparchus of Nicaea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus
Aristarchus deserves a mention, as well, even though his heliocentrism was rejected. (And for pretty good reasons, too. The predictions made by the hypothesis seemed to be falsified.)
And perhaps a tip of the hat to all those Babylonians who collected the data and cooked up some of the maths.
You betcha. RoHa, the Babylonians were “way ahead of their time” and we of today still don’t know everything that they knew …. way back then.
Ells bells, the Babylonians may have known “who by”, “what for” and ”how” the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed. One thing for sure, the Egyptians neither had the tools or the technology to do it.
In it’s “heyday”, the Great Pyramid of Giza could have been used as a “reflecting telescope” for studying the “motion” of earth’s galaxy.
The AGW conjecture is seriously flawed. There is evidence that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. Despite all the claims, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. There is no such evidence in the paleoclimate record. There is evidence that warmer temperatures cause more CO2 to enter the atmosphere but there is no evidence that this additional CO2 causes any more warming. If additional greenhouse gases caused additional warming then the primary culprit would have to be H2O which depends upon the warming of just the surfaces of bodies of water and not their volume but such is not part of the AGW conjecture. In other words CO2 increases in the atmosphere as huge volumes of water increase in temperature but more H2O enters the atmosphere as just the surface of bodies of water warm. We live in a water world where the majority of the Earth’s surface is some form of water.
The AGW theory is that adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes an increase in its radiant thermal insulation properties causing restrictions in heat flow which in turn cause warming at the Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere. In itself the effect is small because we are talking about small changes in the CO2 content of the atmosphere and CO2 comprises only about .04% of dry atmosphere if it were only dry but that is not the case. Actually H2O, which averages around 2%, is the primary greenhouse gas. The AGW conjecture is that the warming causes more H2O to enter the atmosphere which further increases the radiant thermal insulation properties of the atmosphere and by so doing so amplifies the effect of CO2 on climate. At first this sounds very plausible. This is where the AGW conjecture ends but that is not all what must happen if CO2 actually causes any warming at all.
Besides being a greenhouse gas, H2O is also a primary coolant in the Earth’s atmosphere transferring heat energy from the Earth;s surface to where clouds form via the heat of vaporization. More heat energy is moved by H2O via phase change then by both convection and LWIR absorption band radiation combined. More H2O means that more heat energy gets moved which provides a negative feedback to any CO2 based warming that might occur. Then there is the issue of clouds. More H2O means more clouds. Clouds not only reflect incoming solar radiation but they radiate to space much more efficiently then the clear atmosphere they replace. Clouds provide another negative feedback. Then there is the issue of the upper atmosphere which cools rather than warms. The cooling reduces the amount of H2O up there which decreases any greenhouse gas effects that CO2 might have up there. In total, H2O provides negative feedback’s which must be the case because negative feedback systems are inherently stable as has been the Earth’s climate for at least the past 500 million years, enough for life to evolve. We are here. The wet lapse rate being smaller then the dry lapse rate is further evidence of H2O’s cooling effects.
The entire so called, “greenhouse” effect that the AGW conjecture is based upon is at best very questionable. A real greenhouse does not stay warm because of the heat trapping effects of greenhouse gases. A real greenhouse stays warm because the glass reduces cooling by convection. This is a convective greenhouse effect. So too on Earth..The surface of the Earth is 33 degrees C warmer than it would be without an atmosphere because gravity limits cooling by convection. This convective greenhouse effect is observed on all planets in the solar system with thick atmospheres and it has nothing to do with the LWIR absorption properties of greenhouse gases. the convective greenhouse effect is calculated from first principals and it accounts for all 33 degrees C. There is no room for an additional radiant greenhouse effect. Our sister planet Venus with an atmosphere that is more than 90 times more massive then Earth’s and which is more than 96% CO2 shows no evidence of an additional radiant greenhouse effect. The high temperatures on the surface of Venus can all be explained by the planet’s proximity to the sun and its very dense atmosphere. The radiant greenhouse effect of the AGW conjecture has never been observed. If CO2 did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused an increase in the natural lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. Considering how the natural lapse rate has changed as a function of an increase in CO2, the climate sensitivity of CO2 must equal 0.0.
This is all a matter of science
That sounds reasonable. Does everyone agree?
No
No.
No
Willhaas:
You wrote “The Climate sensitivity to CO2 must equal 0.0”
This is entirely correct. But as explained in my earlier post, AGW does exist, and is due to the removal of SO2 aerosols from the atmosphere due to Clean Air efforts.
The Climate Sensitivity to their removal is .02 deg. C. of warming for each net Megatonne of reduction in global SO2 emissions.
At current rates of reduction (about 2 Megatonnes per year), the 2 deg. C. threshold established by the 2015 Paris Climate Conference will be reached within 25 years or less.
There is indeed cause for alarm!
I was just getting ready to enter engineering school when the Apollo program ended. My dream was to work in the field of rocketry (which I do, after a fashion). But all around me were the cast off PhDs who had so gallantly taken humanity from the surface of this planet to the surface of another celestial body in 8 years; they worked in gas stations, as short-order cooks, in any kind of job they could get, because they had succeeded so well that they were no longer needed.
I think the people who have “settled the science” of climate change deserve nothing less than the same fate. They’ve done their job, and they are no longer needed. We have to devote the tens of billions of dollars that kept them in their phony baloney jobs to the bureaucrats salaries that will now be needed to destroy industrial civilization. We can’t afford to pay these superfluous eggheads any more. They have proven their point, and now need to go do something useful, like sustainable farming.
MfK September 23, 2016 at 10:16 pm —
The reason these PhD’s were thrown out on the street was Richard Nixon. When he became President he was annoyed to find that the space program started by his former opponent JFK was still going on full blast. In case you don’t remember, he lost to Kennedy in the 1960 elections. He and his supporters then grumbled that Kennedy only won because of cheating by a corrupt democratic machine in Chicago. Thanks to the assassination he eventually got a second chance and won. Kennedy had planned 20 moon landings. Apollo 11 had just landed after Nixon became president and work on Apollo 17 had started. It became the last one to be completed because Nixon then ordered the remaining three moon landings to be cancelled. The prime contractor for moon landings at the time was Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage, Long Island. They were told to fire all people whom Grumman no longer needed to build the lunar lander modules that were cancelled. As a result, Grumman was forced to lay off ten thousand people in January 1970. I was among them but fortunately I had taken ed. courses thanks to my wife’s “just in case” thoughts and could step into the science teaching field immediately. Those PhD’s you met were not so lucky.
Fasc1sts strive for coherence.
Libertarians say “vive le difference!”
The denial of difference is the root of oppression.
The denial of difference leads to borderless bathrooms.
This is just another attempt to stifle any public discussion.
Hogg wash and snake oil propagand according to the GIGA principle.
All former Sovjet Apparatchiks and Party Officials would have been proud of them.
“Theories can only be disputed by people who can provide a settled alternative theory.”
No, theories can ONLY be proven false when they make a prediction that is falsified.
Since there are very few (any?) predictions made by the current set of AGW modellers that have come true it is hard to see why they are calling people denialists for pointing that out.
Environmentalists appear to be anti-popperists.
Cargo cultists.
They keep having to make new excuses every time reality slaps them in the face.
Complete and utter climate bollocks.