Daniel Turner Contributor June 01, 2020 11:34 AM ET
It’s curious … SpaceX has all the money in the world, and they didn’t hire someone who could have accurately predicted the afternoon weather in Florida on May 27, 2020. Seems like a huge oversight, doesn’t it? And to think there are scores of nonprofit leaders and academics in Washington, DC who can accurately predict global temperatures 10, 15, even 50 years into the future.
Oh, stop it with the “climate isn’t weather” rebuttal. It’s trite and silly. The guys who says “food isn’t cuisine” is a food critic, and by default, haughty and obnoxious.
How about this one: science isn’t semantics.
We all wish we could predict the future. Intellectually, empirically, rationally, we know we can’t, but some still try. Throughout Washington, DC where I live, in addition to the elite intelligentsia, the kind who read their own books on the NY-bound Acela, are multiple Tarot Card readers and psychics offering their services of clairvoyance.
And we hear the stories. The buddy who picked a good stock because “he was sure” it would go up. Or the other guy who proclaims, “I just knew the Nationals would win the World Series.” It’s not true. Not possible. Not even logically defensible. It’s syntax, not truth.
We make decisions for the future, not based on preternatural intelligence, but data. Market trends and balance sheets guide stock picks, but there’s no certainty the price will go up. Wouldn’t we all be rich if that were the case? In baseball, injuries, rotation and roster, and team loyalty form our hunches, but there’s no guarantee your team will win.
No one “knew” the weather would cancel the SpaceX flight, but rather scientists used data to make the best educated guess which is part of the scientific method we learned about in third grade. And similarly, no one “knows” what will happen to the earth in 5, 10, 15, 50 years because of climate change. So quite frankly I’m tired of hearing about it.
Now I’ll answer that next question before you ask it: no, there is no data which says the world temperatures will rise to an uninhabitable level. There are models, and models are very, very human.
Climate change models are computer generated and the code is written by biased individuals. It’s not scientific following rigorous methodology; it’s prediction, based on available data, which may or may not be accurate. Remember the model which predicted 2.2 million deaths from Coronavirus?
Whoopsie.
Garbage in, garbage out, just like in every other computer-generated scenario. Maybe one day the Artificial Intelligence will actually be intelligent and correct the programmer, but for now, it’s just following the program as written by the very fallible human.
This is why the outrage at Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s comment “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Not because it’s stupid (it is), not because it’s wrong (it is), but because it’s so deliberately misleading. It is a perfect example of speculation turned into fact, and for the sole purpose of pushing a political agenda, which just makes it an affront to my wallet. It dumbs down discourse. It turns off reasonable people like me who do this for a living. There’s little point in having a conversation about climate change or mankind’s contribution or lack thereof to it. Yet, more and more government policy is crafted and tax dollars are spent based on this type of illogical thinking.
Climate is the great unknown, and politicians and the media love to scare the crap out of regular Americans by feigning some great insight into tomorrow making us quiver in our seats. Climate change will kill us. Paul Ehrlich in the 1970’s said that overpopulation would mean England would cease to exist by 2000. England! Poor Queen, like she doesn’t have enough on her royal plate. Al Gore 20 years ago predicted no Arctic ice, and he got an Oscar for it.
Last I checked both the UK and the Arctic ice are fine, shapes of both changing constantly. These were predictions of fact. They were models, based on data, meant to scare and push an agenda.
We can’t even predict a few weeks into the future. March 20th of this year the Washington Post predicted an “abnormally warm spring” across the entire country using models based on data (winter temperatures, polar vortex) presented as fact including an ominous “this may be a first.” Scary global warming type stuff. Yikes.
A month after that article ran, the same author in the same publication pointed out that DC had already been experiencing below average temperatures for two weeks, meaning the doomsday article couldn’t’ even foresee 2 weeks ahead. A few days later, the same publication acknowledged weather 1-2 degrees below average that was likely to continue.
Huh.
Then the same Washington Post puts out an article with the title “Exceptionally Cold Weather for May Arrives Tonight with Near Freezing Temperatures and Bitter Wind Chills.” The following day they wrote about Washington, DC hitting its coldest day in more than a decade and Baltimore its coldest day on record saying May had temperatures 25 degrees below average.
What gives? It’s simple: the first article, the scary, scary climate change article, was based on models (but presented as fact). The subsequent “holy crap it’s cold” articles were based on…facts. Which are not as scary, and not as much fun.
Will the world end because of climate change? I don’t know. Will the seas rise and the lakes boil? I don’t know. And you know what, neither does anyone else.
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In the first “Climate Change – The facts” book chapter 12 by Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong there’s an expert analysis about ‘forecasting’ and how it should be done. The corrupt IPCC follows only 17 of the 89 relevant principles of forecasting. The Golden Rule requires forecasters to be conservative . The corrupt IPCC’s performance in this area as in others is shameful.
All climate models are based on numerically integrating partial differential equations for very long periods of physical time. For those who believe these models are valid, usefully predictive and accurate, please list for me these differential equations along with the applicable boundary and initial conditions. Then prove that these equations have valid, unique physical solutions for the boundary/initial conditions employed over the time period of integration. Also note that the boundary conditions and all physicals submodels (including thermodynamic source/sink terms) are functions of time, so please show those formulations as well. Thanks!
Well, there is a thing which you can call global climate.
We are currently in an icehouse climate. You could call it an Ice Age.
I like to call it icebox climate or the Ice Age.
An Icehouse climate has a cold ocean and has polar ice caps.
A cold ocean is a ocean with an average temperature of between 1 to 5 C.
Our ocean currently has average temperature of about 3.5 C.
Next, there is some pseudo science and related what is called the greenhouse effect theory.
One thing you say about greenhouse effect theory is there is no author.
Most theories have authors. The idea or myth of greenhouse effect theory was developed by a
committee and as all ideas of committees it is idiotic.
The group of idiots explain Earth is 33 K warmer than what model would predict, and only reason
they can imagine why Earth is 33 K warmer is due to greenhouse gases.
And guess that water vapor causes a lot of this 33 K of warming but increase or decrease of water vapor follows rather than causes, and greenhouse gases such as CO2 or methane force increase in temperature.
And ways it is nonsense written by people who are uneducated.
But one say the ‘theory” is supported by the planet Venus, which has huge atmosphere of mostly CO2.
It’s not really supported by Venus, but idiots think it is.
The science is that we are in an Ice Age. And in our Ice age we have periods called interglacial periods and glacial periods. And scientists wondered what cause these glacial periods and some thought the lack of CO2 in the atmosphere caused cooling.
What is true is that during Ice Ages there does tend to be low levels of CO2.
Now this religion calls people, fathers of things. And the father of greenhouse effect is John Tyndall and father of greenhouse effect theory is Svante Arrhenius. Arrhenius predicted that industrial revolution would cause more CO2 to be in atmosphere, and the added CO2 would cause a significant amount warming. He regarded as another benefit of the industrial revolution. So he thought cause about 5 C of warming within relatively short time period, and he was wrong. And he thought the answer of what caused glacial and interglacial periods was changes in global levels of CO2. And was wrong about that.
As is known, now, what is “related” to glacial and interglacial period is what is called Milankovitch cycles:
Wiki:
“There is strong evidence that the Milankovitch cycles affect the occurrence of glacial and interglacial periods within an ice age. The present ice age is the most studied and best understood, particularly the last 400,000 years, since this is the period covered by ice cores that record atmospheric composition and proxies for temperature and ice volume.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
To keep it short, what predictive of global climate is the temperature of the ocean, and since our ocean is cold, we will continue to be in an Ice Age.
This is simply known.
Some think the elevated CO2 level that we have or could have in the future, will delay the eventual return to glacial period. Some claim it could delay it by 50,000 years.
Not say anything about such claims, other than it’s known we in Ice Age.
Or said differently only people clueless would say Earth is going to become too hot.
So the clueless like AOC probably don’t even think it could become too hot, but they might say it- because they are lying. Or AOC wants political power, and want promote idea that action is needed to prevent “climate change”.
Anyhow, the general idea of global warming is not about becoming too hot.
If you were worried about it becoming too hot, you might worry about Urban Heat island effects.
You could imagine UHI effect are caused by CO2, but you wrong.
Though water vapor can factor in UHI effects- but not radiant effect. And UHI effects are not global effect, they local effect. And mostly about the poorly designed build up of infrastructure of cities. So, politicians of cities could do something about UHI effects but they don’t seem to have much concern about it.
UHI effects are a long known problem related to how measure air temperature. Or if measure air temperature in asphalt parking lot, the air temperature can be higher- due to UHI type effects. Or trying to measure a city’s air temperature, you don’t measure it asphalt parking lot, because you measuring the temperature in an asphalt parking lot, rather an average temperature of a city.
If one wanted to measure temperature in asphalt parking lots, or say in cars with their windows rolled up, that might useful to know, but they aren’t the city’s or a region’s average temperature.
There is a reason why climate models work longer into the future than weather models do. Both are analogies to predicting what will happen with the output switching transistors of a Class D amplifier. The analog of a climate model is predicting the duty cycles of the switching transistors as a function of input signal and component values. The analog of a weather model is predicting a microsecond-by-microsecond schedule of their states.
The main problem with climate models is groupthink of ignoring multidecadal oscillations. The CMIP models are largely tuned to hindcast the 30 years before their hindcast-to-forecast transitions. With the CMIP5 ones, they’re largely tuned to hindcast 1975-2005. And they were tuned without consideration of multidecadal oscillations, which were upswinging and responsible for about .2 degree C of the warming from 1975 to 2005. So these models were tuned to have positive feedbacks to warming from increased GHGs accounting for about .2 degree C more warming than was actually caused by these positive feedbacks. As a result, they’re predicted more warming to have since occurred than actually happened, and they’re predicting more future warming than is going to occur.
My department. Our department. The one of many industries dealing with weather first hand.
Good thing weather forecasts have certainly somehow improved their accuracy, admitted without fight.
However, as those perpetually grumpy steam-gauges training captains never failed to thunder, we have very precise knowledge of how weather kills, the only unknown being when and where.
Followed by a well illustrated tirade on the utility of bulletins as diaper-liners when Zeus says “And now, hold my beer”.
And face it, that’s about all we know on how unpredictable weather is. Now, tell me how based on the same laws of physics that make weather, climate predictions could eventually work for events centuries ahead in time ?
Greetings
Can someone refer me to the best articles that destroy the 97% of scientists agree about man made climate change myth.
Thanks
97% of scientists agree that you shouldn’t wear face masks.
The “scientific study”was flawed.
And more flawed then most “scientific studies”.
Scientists rarely agree with anything.
If they appear to be agree about anything, it’s likely related to “political matters”.
Don’t ask scientists about political matters or Joe the Plumber knows more about it and he can say more valid things about it.
If you don’t know we are living in Ice Age, you lack education.
If think global warming is bad, you don’t understand that we living in Ice Age.
Whenever you in a Ice Age, global warming is a good thing.
Whenever you living on Earth, global warming is good thing.
15 C is cold.
Ocean average temperature is 3.5 C
India’s yearly average temperature is about 24 C
If you are tropical animal, 24 C is perfect.
The human is a tropical animal.
Canada is far too cold for tropical animal, as is Europe.
Are worried about polar bears?
Don’t worry.
Tropics have high average temperature- they aren’t hot.
Deserts in the daytime can be hot.
Hottest daytime temperature:
“highest temperature ever recorded was 56.7 °C (134.1 °F) on 10 July 1913 in Furnace Creek (Greenland Ranch), California,” in a desert- far from the tropics. And that highest air temperature more than 100 years ago, does not disproves global warming. Rather it’s a bit of evidence of global warming in last 100 years.
We currently having global warming- be happy.
I thought a big issue was predict vs project getting mixed up.
Short term weather is more about projection.
Long term climate is more about prediction.
“We project the current El Niño will get stronger.”
Vs
“We predict there will be stronger el ninos in the future”
Part of the problem here is that the alarmists models are *NOT* climate models. They are AVERAGE TEMPERATURE models.
The models can’t tell us what the temperature envelope will look like at any point in time and it is the ENVELOPE that determines the climate. A cooling maximum plus a warming minimum produces a far different “climate” than does a warming maximum and a cooling minimum even though both will give the same average temperature.
The temperature models can’t tell us what the sub-soil temperature and moisture will be a decade from now let alone at the end of the century. Yet both have a large impact on the climate. The temperature models can’t tell us what food production will be five years from now let alone at the end of the century. Average temperature doesn’t determine crop harvests, minimum and maximum temperatures do! And crop harvests are a big factor in climate, at least from a survival point of view.
Freeman Dyson pointed this out years ago. He was correct. It’s a shame that those who call them “climate scientists” don’t understand what climate is at all. They are no better than temperature wizards trying to scry something in their crystal ball.
“Part of the problem here is that the alarmists models are *NOT* climate models. They are AVERAGE TEMPERATURE models.”
Average surface air models, I would imagine.
Global average surface air, is controlled by global average surface water, which is 17 C.
Which is an average of tropical ocean surface water temperature of about 26 C and surface of rest of the ocean {40% tropical and 60% rest of ocean} of about 11 C.
Ocean warms land and mostly night time land surface air. Average land surface air is about 10 C.
Air surface land daytime temperature has small regional warming affect of upon nearby surface ocean air temperature. Global ocean surface dominates global air temperatures.
And high average tropical ocean surface temperature makes the tropical ocean the engine of the world.
Or you turn off this global engine by making the tropical ocean surface have a lower temperature.
But in terms of what occurs naturally, the tropical ocean surface maintains a near constant temperature whether in glacial or interglacial periods.
But interesting question is what happens if human were to deliberately cooled the tropical surface water?
All one have to do is mix warm ocean surface water with the cold ocean {water 1000 meter below the surface]. Doing this would be “global warming” and it results colder global surface air temperature.
In terms just numbers, if made the average of 26 C cool to 5 C:
40% at 26 C becomes 4 C
60% remains at about 11 C
660 + 160 = 820 giving an average surface ocean temperature of 8.2 C rather than 17 C
But most significant thing is the heat engine is dead. And turned off global air circulation.
Hadley cells stop, ie:
‘The Hadley cell, named after George Hadley, is a global scale tropical atmospheric circulation that features air rising near the Equator, flowing poleward at a height of 10 to 15 kilometers above the earth’s surface, descending in the subtropics, and then returning equatorward near the surface.”
That seems like an interesting thing to model. But in terms of not modeling it. If you could immediately cool the tropical surface- say cover entire tropical ocean surface with plastic and then put a 1 meter of cold water on top of plastic {or that should be quicker mixing the water}. Then you immediately changed global average air temperature, before it, globally actually cools.
Though one can imagine natural processes which could do something like this, say, 1 km diameter space rock impacting in the tropical ocean. Human could also detonate underwater nuclear bombs- but 1 km diameter space rock dwarfs the power [100,000 Megatons of TNT] of all existing nuclear weapons. And other natural events {volcanic} which exceed explosive power of 100,000 Megatons of TNT.
Thank you for your comment. Can I be a nuisance and ask that you share your source for the volcanic events, also whether it must be a single event or cumulative, and if cumulative, over what time period? I have noticed a marked increase in volcanic events being reported, inclusive of concerns over the Yellowstone super volcano…
I trust my weather rock. It may not predict the weather but it is 100% accurate.
The problem is climate scientists can’t distinguish between climate and weather. The first is a supposedly constant or a long-term or man-made trend. The latter is random – but over what timescale or distance?
The assumption is that the weather will average out over time and space, so if you average a single station record over a long enough time period, or average enough different station records over the same time, the random fluctuations should cancel. The problem is this does not happen as fast as climate scientists think. They do not appreciate that the fluctuations are chaotic, the temperature is a fractal and its dimension is less than 0.25. This means it averages to zero very slowly.
The result is that random fluctuations in mean temperatures per century are six times larger than most climate scientists would predict. Natural fluctuations in mean decadal temperatures are 3.5 times greater than they expect. So what they think is a warming trend is just long-term noise. See here:
https://climatescienceinvestigations.blogspot.com/2020/05/9-fooled-by-randomness.html