Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Daily Caller – The New York Times has provided one of the most inane reasons ever for why we should trust alarmist climate predictions.
Should You Trust Climate Science? Maybe the Eclipse Is a Clue
Justin Gillis
BY DEGREES AUG. 18, 2017
Eclipse mania will peak on Monday, when millions of Americans will upend their lives in response to a scientific prediction.
Friends of mine in Georgia plan to drive 70 miles to find the perfect spot on a South Carolina golf course to observe the solar eclipse. Many Americans will drive farther than that, or fly, to situate themselves in the “path of totality,” the strip of the country where the moon is predicted to blot out the sun entirely.
Thanks to the work of scientists, people will know exactly what time to expect the eclipse. In less entertaining but more important ways, we respond to scientific predictions all the time, even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations. We tend to trust scientists.
For years now, atmospheric scientists have been handing us a set of predictions about the likely consequences of our emissions of industrial gases. These forecasts are critically important, because this group of experts sees grave risks to our civilization. And yet, when it comes to reacting to the warnings of climate science, we have done little.
…
The scientists told us that the Arctic would warm especially fast. They told us to expect heavier rainstorms. They told us heat waves would soar. They told us that the oceans would rise. All of those things have come to pass.
Considering this most basic test of a scientific theory, the test of prediction, climate science has established its validity.
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I don’t ever recall hearing an astronomer claim that we should trust eclipse predictions because climate science is valid. But then, Astronomy enthusiasts probably don’t feel a burning need to cloak the failed predictions of their heroes with a shaky veneer of pan-scientific solidarity.
“… even though we have no independent capacity to verify the calculations.”
And that is exactly the difference – it really doesn’t take much to obtain the raw, unadjusted numbers for the paths of the sun and moon, and do one’s own calculations with reasonable accuracy.
When it comes to climate science, however, the raw numbers are difficult to find, while the adjusted numbers are splashed everywhere. The algorithms for those adjustments are similarly obscure and hard to find. When the adjusted numbers are plotted, they don’t present a coherent and consistent whole. There have been repeated incidents to cast doubt upon the validity of the numbers which are released (remember the GISS “October Surprise” of a few years ago?)
So, which one do you trust, right?
Get ready: agriculture is bad for the climate…
Thomson Reuters and the perennial CBC green mongers at work:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/agriculture-climate-change-1.4257023
I’m sure I could use the science of the eclipse to justify the theories of Charles Ponzi
I caught that article.
The comparison is like comparing 2 + 2 = 4 to a diffy Q equation.
The eclipses can only happen when the Moon crosses over the ecliptic AND is in conjunction with the Sun. That is one of the easier things in astrophysics. An ephemeris and knowing the GMT are all that is needed.
Compare that to the problems of reconstructing past climate and trying to project that forward, added to the problems of tree-ring’s Divergence problem, interpreting ice cores, etc. Every data point has a lot of wow in it. Every collection of such proxies is itself a wow – is it REALLY a proxy? (The Divergence problem puts the doubt into that.) Then add that they still have no reliable connecting mechanism – whether in physics or chemistry – by which humanity’s CO2 actually could do what they claim.
The BIG ‘greenhouse gas’ – water vapor – has anyone ever gotten that understood yet?
Compare these two pie charts: http://tiny.cc/4ofbny and http://tiny.cc/mpfbny – notice that one includes water vapor and one ignores its ~60% contribution to any possible greenhouse effect. My google hits show that 9 of the first 11 pie charts that come up ignore water vapor. That is the equivalent to saying that only 2 out of every 11 car crashes involve cars.
Anthony’s paper rating the raw data vs the adjusted data is the kind of science that SHOULD make up half of the science about climate.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs. – – – This has NEVER been demanded of climate scientists. They have gotten away with taking votes at one-sided conferences and one-sided online insider polls – polls that give votes to people who aren’t qualified, too.
No, this NYT comparison is invalid. But I long since tired of trying to explain in scientific terms to lay people who accept journalist assertions as science. 9 out of 11 of such discussions ended up with them arguing, “Well, what if they are right?” Which argument – as science – is a zero.
Amen to that!
Even if the numbers hadn’t been “adjusted” beyond recognition, they were questionable to begin with. Beyond the runway or parking lot the station was sited on, useless for any type of “Global” measurement.
The twisted rationale and delusional thinking of Justin Gillis.
Yes, astronomers, physicists, mathematicians both professional and amateurs have shared findings, checked each other’s analysis, analyzed, discussed every aspect of the findings; then verified their predictions by direct observations.
Einstein’s theory of relativity was put to a severe observational test during an eclipse. Proof or disproof is based on observation, not predictions.
Prediction after prediction coupled with consequences after consequences; non of which have verified any climate predictions.
Following the lead of Einstein and other scientists; global warming is disproved.
That climate scientists believe themselves above the scientific process and refuse to accept their failures to predict any portion of global warming; is convincing evidence that consensual climate scientists are frauds, equal to their predictions and false claims of consequences.
N.B. Justin’s loose rephrasing of the actual prediction!
Consensual climate scientists predicted that both poles would warm faster that the rest of the Earth.
Only the Antarctic is not warming, let alone warming faster.
Nor is it clear, thanks to a very short temperature record, that the Arctic is warming unnaturally.
Heat waves have not increased, let alone soar.
The oceans are not rising faster than last Century.
None of those things have come to pass; yet delusional NYT snake oil salesmen like Justin do not mind lying to the public.
CAGW advocates believe in noble cause corruption
Who but the dog brained idiot Mark Zuckerberg would turn to Sheryl Sanberg for advice on dental surgery, or a performing a ‘Jewish Blow Job” let alone … spark plugs for a ’58 Chevy!
Ha ha
I’m confused.
We should trust Climate Seanctist because fossil fuels caused the eclipse?
Yesterday’s eclipse gives a big insight into the effectiveness of so called GHGs.
GHGs impede the passage of photons of LWIR emitted from the surface finding their way to TOA and thence being radiated to the void of space. They do not prevent that journey. GHGs are not a brick wall creating a barrier that cannot be crossed.
Thus the issue is a simple one: Does the planet during the hours of darkness have sufficient time to shed all the energy that it received during the day? If there is not sufficient time during the hours of darkness to dissipate the energy received during the day, then temperatures will slowly rise.
Under the eclipse, temperatures fell by up to 20 deg F, with 10 to 12 degF being typical. The planet was able to dissipate and get rid of a lot of heat in a very short period of time. After all, totality only lasted approx 2 1/2 minutes.
The experience under the eclipse suggests that GHGs such as CO2 may change the temperature profile of the day, and put back slightly the timing of the coldest period of the 24 hour cycle. It may be that if there was no CO2, the coldest period would be say 02:30 hrs, but with CO2 it is 03:00. Perhaps with more CO2, it will become 03.20 hrs etc. But it would appear that there is no build up of temperature since the planet has sufficient time during the hours of darkness to get rid of all the heat generated during the hours of sunlight.
Of course further study of eclipses is required since these provide a real opportunity to test the effectiveness of GHGs as operating in the real world condition of Earth’s atmosphere. (not laboratory conditions)
@ur momisugly richard verney (Aug 23, 2017 at 2.26 am)…
“Does the planet during the hours of darkness have sufficient time to shed all the energy that it received during the day?”
As far as I can tell, our planet will never have “hours of darkness” — minutes, maybe, during the occasional solar eclipse, and even then, total darkness is severely localized.
Aside from that, it does appear that our planet has, for quite some time, been able to sufficiently dissipate heat from the side not facing the Sun to maintain a semblance of seasonal equilibrium.
The arctic has warmed faster. There are heavier rainstorms -notably in the UK. There seem to be more intense heatwaves. Oceans are rising – 4 out of 4 -good job!
“There are heavier rainstorms -notably in the UK.”
Yet another lie, you really should not misrepresent the climate/weather in the UK when there are contributors to the blog who are fully conversant with it.
You simply prove how mendacious you are.
Have you apologised to Dr. Crockford yet?
‘Climate scientists’ would be just as hard pressed to explain the Saros as they would be to derive the adiabatic lapse rate.
If the calculations for the path of the total eclipse were as accurate as the models for global warming the eclipse could have been seen anywhere from Paris to Tokyo and everywhere in between.
SLIGHTLY different. I can know the exact day I will have my next partial eclipse. What I don’t know is what the weather will be on that day. Nobody knows where the temperature will finish this year, let alone years out and even then, someone will change the data after, cos it was full of “errors” and needed “improving”
So, a more apt comparison would be “Sometime in the future there will be an eclipse. We don’t know when. We don’t know where it will be visible. But it will happen. We will also change the date it happened several years after, because the day you saw it was error prone and doesn’t fit model expectations”
Hurricanes will become more frequent and damaging……. Say once every 4400-5500 days or so.
So, Nostradamus and the “lead” authors of the Bible were Scientists by this logic and should be trusted… because some things they say could be interpreted as becoming reality. I heard someone was cured of cancer because they held some special crystals and chanted… must’ve been a scientists that told them to do that too.
Extraordinary that it can be announced in 2017 that: “Thanks to the work of scientists, people will know exactly what time to expect the eclipse”.
There’s very good reason to believe that the builders of Stonehenge knew about Eclipse prediction – see “On Stonehenge, Hoyle, Sir Fred, Heinemann 1977”.