First published at American Thinker
By Norman Rogers – November 27,2021
Climate change prophecy hangs its hat on computer climate models. The models have gigantic problems. According to Kevin Trenberth, once in charge of modeling at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “[None of the] models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate [of the Earth].” The models can’t properly model the Earth’s climate, but we are supposed to believe that, if carbon dioxide has a certain effect on the imaginary Earths of the many models it will have the same effect on the real earth.
The climate models are an exemplary representation of confirmation bias, the psychological tendency to suspend one’s critical facilities in favor of welcoming what one expects or desires. Climate scientists can manipulate numerous adjustable parameters in the models that can be changed to tune a model to give a “good” result. Technically, a good result would be that the climate model output can match past climate history. But that good result competes with another kind of good result. That other good result is a prediction of a climate catastrophe. That sort of “good” result has elevated the social and financial status of climate science into the stratosphere.
Once money and status started flowing into climate science because of the disaster its denizens were predicting, there was no going back. Imagine that a climate scientist discovers gigantic flaws in the models and the associated science. Do not imagine that his discovery would be treated respectfully and evaluated on its merits. That would open the door to reversing everything that has been so wonderful for climate scientists. Who would continue to throw billions of dollars a year at climate scientists if there were no disasters to be prevented? No, the discoverer of any flaw would be demonized and attacked as a pawn of evil interests. Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer come to mind. There are many more skeptical scientists keeping quiet in varying degrees.
Testing a model against past history and assuming that it will then predict the future is a methodology that invites failure. The failure starts when the modeler adds more adjustable parameters to enhance the model. At some point, one should ask if we are fitting a model or doing simple curve fitting. If the model has degenerated into curve fitting, it very likely won’t have serious predictive capability.
A strong indicator that climate models are well into the curve fitting regime is the use of ensembles of models. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) averages together numerous models (an ensemble), in order to make a projection of the future. Asked why they do this rather than try to pick the best model, they say that the ensemble method works better. Why would averaging worse models with the best model make the average better than the best? This is contrary to common sense. But according to the mathematics of curve fitting, if different methods of fitting the same (multidimensional) data are used, and each method is independent but imperfect, averaging together the fits will indeed give a better result. It works better because there is a mathematical artifact coming from having too many adjustable parameters that allow the model to fit nearly anything.
One may not be surprised that the various models disagree dramatically, one with another, about the Earth’s climate, including how big the supposed global warming catastrophe will be. But no model, except perhaps one from Russia, denies the future catastrophe.
There is a political reason for using ensembles. In order to receive the benefits flowing from predicting a climate catastrophe, climate science must present a unified front. Dissenters have to be canceled and suppressed. If the IPCC were to select the best model, dozens of other modeling groups would be left out. They would, no doubt, form a dissenting group questioning the authority of those that gave the crown to one particular model. With ensembles, every group gets to participate in a rewarding conspiracy against humanity.
Fitting the model to climate history comes up against the fact that past climate history is poorly documented or unknown. There are scientific groups that specialize in examining and summarizing the vast trove of past climate history. Their summaries improve on the original data in ways that always seem to support global warming catastrophe. The website realclimatescience.com specializes in exposing this tampering with climate history.
Because so much of climate history is unknown, for example, climate influencing aerosols, the modelers have to make up the missing history. Each modeler is free to make up his own history, so the various models fit different assumed past climates. It would be very surprising if modelers weren’t manipulating their fabricated climates to make their models behave better.
Scientists are always cautioned not to fall in love with a theory or method. If they do, they will lose their objectivity. Facts that support their love will be celebrated, facts that cast doubt on their love will be ignored or forgotten. But if you spend years, or decades, married to a modeling methodology, divorce becomes less and less likely.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization in Washington, DC that touts itself as the science advisor to the government. Their advice has some common threads. They never criticize the scientific establishment and they always promote spending more money on science. Like the teachers’ unions, they pretend to support the common good but actually promote their constituency’s special interests.
The Academy sponsored a report on the future of climate modeling. They apparently saw nothing wrong with staffing the study committee with professional climate modelers. The report advocated more money for climate modelers and urged hiring professional public relations people to present results to the public.
The purported climate catastrophe ahead is 100% junk science. If the unlikely climate catastrophe actually happens, it will be coincidental that it was predicted by climate scientists. Most of the supporting evidence is fabricated. There is no out-of-the-ordinary climate change taking place. The constant comparisons of the current climate with preindustrial climate are nonsense because according to climate theory and the models, the effect of CO2 was extremely minor before 1975. Since 1975 nothing points to a climate catastrophe or a new long-term trend.
The fake climate catastrophe has spawned a fake energy paradigm – replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar electricity. Wind and solar are claimed to be cheaper than traditional sources of electricity but non-fake accounting reveals that wind or solar electricity costs five or even ten times more than traditional electricity, exclusive, of course, of government subsidies and mandates. The reason it costs so much is that the erratic nature of wind and solar requires maintaining the traditional electricity generating system intact and ready to operate when wind and solar fail. Solar fails every night, every cloudy day, and more often in winter. Wind fails at random times, or somewhat predictable times, and often has a seasonal cycle. If the renewable energy advocates were logical, they would be advocating for nuclear. Nuclear is reliable and does not produce CO2.
Climate change and wind and solar electricity are a snipe hunts, diverting the country from serious problems in favor of imaginary problems with imaginary solutions that enrich the promoters and their political friends with status and money.
This commentary was first published November 27, 2021 at the American Thinker
Norman Rogers spent 10-years studying climate change and climate change scientists. He is the author of the book Dumb Energy, about wind and solar energy. He is on the board of the CO2 Coalition and was formerly on the board of the National Association of Scholars. He holds a master’s degree in physics.
Climate modeling is like Socialism/Marxism. “This time we’ll get it right”.
Didn’t Communist Marx say that socialists are useful idiots?
Actually, climate science is reminiscent of the “science” behind Jurassic Park.
Its DNA is a mix of context-deficient historical snapshots and the “frog DNA” of extrapolated predictions based upon computer modeling and outright assumption, all assembled to form a T-Rex of a narrative that is always “finding a way” to bite us.
A narrative, promoted as a cult belief by people who are out to Save the World and Stick It to All the Proper People as they jam their total socio-economic morality down our throats … forgetting that consensus is not conclusive proof, having regard neither for individual liberty nor their own human perceptual limitations … never realizing that “first, do no harm” is not just for doctors.
Believers in renewable-energy tech as the instruments of our salvation, demanding that it immediately replace the energy tech that provides the 24/76/365 power behind the highest standards of living and productivity in human history … when the state-of-the-art simply can’t support that replacement, requiring virtually watt-for-watt backup by the same Icky Brown/Neutron Blue sources that are on the To Be Stuck List.
A cult with a continually-changing eschatology … announcement after announcement of The Next Big Thing that will Make It All Work. As someone who works with similar, established technologies and makes them work for applications that justify the cost and living with their limitations, my response is simple: I’ll believe it when it hits my receiving dock in production quantities, at a price that a free market will support.
Cultists, who can’t even live up to their own hype … otherwise they would insist upon holding their conferences via Zoom, insist upon the development of nuclear power (one of the Proper People To Be Stuck), and insist upon more use of natural gas in the short term.
And who will even subordinate all of the above to the tenets of their desired social technocracy, if that will advance those tenets:
> Put elites on pedestals of worship and trust.
> Trust “non-profit” entities over those who admit they’re out to make a HONEST buck.
> Replace thoughtful consideration with more and more “rules”.
> Subordinate individual rights to “the common good”, as defined by the Pedestaled.
> Consider the proximity-informed, common-sense insight of ordinary people – including themselves – unqualified to challenge the above … and therefore expect nothing more from themselves and their neighbors than to just go with the flow of the status quo.
In this context, Climate Change Cultism is a symptom of the greater problem: the desire of those who Know Better™ to lord it over the rest of us in self-righteous hubris.
Yes, we just need more money this time.
More like “We ARE getting it right and you are not allowed to think any differently”
“enrich the promoters…”
That’s a key message that’s largely been missing in the discussion about ‘climate change’. Here in Ontario, some of the biggest promoters are closely linked to the Liberal party, the party that has made the climate scam their top priority. This point needs to be hammered home. It’s the biggest scam the world has ever seen.
That really is a shame about the climate crisis promoters’ parasitic abuse of their fellow Canadians, while the actual easing of nightly low temperatures that is nearly all that has demonstrably occurred can only bring them some relief from the bitter cold. Of course nothing of that sort of systematic larceny could possibly loot trillions from working U.S. citizens for generations to come, except on second thought . . .
Government officials channel vast sums of taxpayer money to close associates. The close associates in turn make sure a sizeable chunk of that money is channeled back to the politicians. It’s an incestuous relationship. It’s also an inevitability whenever you have government passing out money.
Many friends and donors of McGuinty became board members for companies operating wind farms.
Harry? Harry? READ ME!
For the uninitiated, some comments from the harry read me.txt file:
““Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)”
That’s funny!
We have spent, and are planning to spend, Trillions of dollars based on this kind of sloppy science.
That’s *not* funny.
This Sloppy Science is where the bogus, instrument-era Hockey Stick chart originated.
The Hockey Stick temperature charts that tell us CO2 is a problem have no credibility.
And Dr. Pat Frank PhD.
CAGW is the devil of a secular religion, and required by their theology.
CAGW is the devil of a secular religion, and required by their theology.
___________________________________________________________
And via the first amendment of the United States Constitution, it should be treated as such.
Unfortunately, the founders left out a clause in the 1st amendment “that the central government shall not be deified”.
Secular lucre, certainly. An ostensibly “secular” religion.
Theo- as in mortal gods and goddesses, philosophers, instructors. Religion as in behavioral protocol (e.g. morality in a universal frame, its relativistic sibling “ethics”, its politically congruent cousin “law”).
Separation of [Cargo] Cult and State. Freedom from [Cargo] Cult. No mandates by consensus or force.
Follow the science. Follow the Constitution (less the Twilight Amendment). Take a knee to your beloved, once, in proposal to matrimony, then reconcile as men and women do ’til death do us part.
It reads like an epic poem, from a more romantic time.
M – M – Mortal!?
Good Lord, I hope not!
n.n.
Have You fallen in love recently.?????????
That’s why the Pope is the head cheerleader.
Something else for Catholics to be proud of.
Good summary. The dozens of large-grid, discrete-layer, step-iterated, parameter-tuned models possess no diagnostic or predictive authority about the effect of increasing GHGs. None. But sadly, that seems not to have been the purpose.
No demonstrated skill to hindcast nor forecast, let alone predictive.
Yes. The models are they only “evidence” for CAGW, and so lacking in skill that they are not evidence at all. It’s a house of cards built on super complex computer algorithms, that all “predict” excessive heat, in liner proportion to increasing CO2. I say that experiment is over. We added a bunch of CO2 over more than 100 years, which were, by far, the most successful hundred years in the entire history of humankind, and the planet got a degree warmer. If all that warming were to occur, instantly, in the room you sit in as you read this, most humans would not be able to detect it.
Also, temperature is not a measure of atmospheric heat content.
In the nineties I was questioning the value of models …since then there has been no improvement. Outcomes predicted then are far different than reality … even in 2010 we were told we would have a warm by more than 1 degree C by 2020. . Not even close …. Alarmists have quit looking for information in favor of affirmation . I believe the people have caught on to this hoax. At least in the United States, and despite the hype, Climate change doesn’t make the list of top ten problems .
To achieve a warming, we can use models or historical data. Historical data are routinely “adjusted”, cooling the past to give an impression of warming. I especially like “homogenization” which brings nonexistent data to life.
It only makes the last numbers of the top 30 when the pollsters include it as an absolute choice.
When adults living in the real world; as opposed to basement dwellers, eternal students and live at the parents dependents, volunteer their concerns, climate change doesn’t make the list.
Climate modelers are like conmen who have been given control of their very own bank! They will continue to push their scam until the money runs out, or Mother Nature shows their lies to be too obvious!
With the global push for total control under the gentle leadership of Big Tech and the drug companies, both could be delayed for decades!
They will push their lies until they find another better lie to push. If it get’s cooler that will just be CO2 causing the polar vortex to break down, or the atmosphere to flip, or some other such nonsense. The only power we have over such magical thinking is to educate the masses, and we are losing that battle even worser.
Climate science (a discipline that is only a few decades old) has been corrupted beyond all repair. It will take centuries intil it collapses from the weight of reality. In the meantime itt will be an ugly period on earth, probably full of violence and even wars as interests battle over the financial stakes. As in most things… follow the money.. . .
Alarmist climate science might collapse over a couple of decades of cooling.
If past history is any guide, such as the period from 1940 to 1980, where the temperatures cooled by 2.0C, after the temperature highpoint of the 1930’s, we are due for a cooldown in temperatures in the coming years.
The cycle we are in shows it warms for a few decades, and then it cools for a few decades, and repeats this process, within an upper and a lower limit, since the end of the Little Ice Age. We have warmed for a few decades recently, so guess what comes next if history is our guide?
If it does cool down to 1970’s levels, the CO2 crisis theory will obviously be blown out of the water, since CO2 will have been increasing during that time, but the temperatures cooled instead of warming.
Oh, Happy Day!
♪ ♫And he’s oh, so good,
And he’s oh, so fine,
And he’s oh, so healthy,
And he spouts the party line
He’s a well respected climatologist,
Writing science papers so progressively.♫ ♪
Kinky.
C’mon Moshe, talk to me about ‘best science’.
===========
Ha! Moshe does drive-bys. He drop in, insults and name calls, then fades away just before it becomes clear to any fool that he’s losing the argument. I once asked a psychologist if there is a cure for narcissism. She said, “Yes, but it’s against the law.”
The cure involves kidnapping, restraints, and patient teaching.
That is one of the more humane approaches.
Haha!
He knows better, and yet, and yet, how know the contents of his heart?
His mind is ingenious but I don’t know how he reconciles the corruption of climate science and the greed of the renewable crowd, the horrifying politicization of climate and energy discussions.
He’s as mad as the pitiful willard with this three card monte of climateball.
One finds it hard to believe he was ever a skeptic.
Maybe he wasn’t, rather just on the make.
Well look what little moshe has made in the rhetoric laboratory. And wasted away in the ethical circus.
===========
One of the saddest things about the CAGW delusion is the extent that it has diverted industry and government attention from real (and solvable) problems. That money could be spent providing clean drinking water and proper sewerage to undeveloped regions. That alone would save countless lives and increase the living standard of innumerable people.
WRT nuclear, if Jimmy Carter and the ecofreaks had not all but shut the industry down in the ‘70s we could be on Gen VIII or maybe even Gen X by now.
So much wasted opportunity. Everything the government touches turns to crap, but there is no shortage of aholes calling for more government.
It’s a double-edged scalpel, potentially dual use, dual purpose.
Reliable, affordable electricity would also obviate the necessity for millions of poor households to cease using smoky cooking fires, which (when I last read about it at the WHO site), contributed to around 3 million premature, horrible deaths per year.
(Note – these households need electricity after the sun goes down and the wind is not blowing.)
Shouldn’t that last sentence read, “there is no shortage of aholes calling for more aholes???
“if Jimmy Carter and the ecofreaks had not all but shut the industry”
Odd with Jimmy being a nuclear engineer.
He was NOT a nuclear engineer. He went to nuclear power school in the navy, but never finished. He was never even qualified to operate a nuclear reactor much less design one. But yes, he is the one that banned recycling nuclear fuel and it was under his watch that federal research moneys were shifted from advanced nuclear designs to wind and solar.
I love it that Carter pronounced ‘nuclear’ as ‘nukular’ for which pronunciation Dubya Bush was ridiculed.
==========
He was a “nukiar” engineering officer, which means he checked the reactor in the morning and if the red light was blinking he called someone to fix it.
“…climate science must present a unified front. Dissenters have to be canceled and suppressed. If the IPCC were to select the best model, dozens of other modeling groups would be left out. They would, no doubt, form a dissenting group questioning the authority of those that gave the crown to one particular model. With ensembles, every group gets to participate in a rewarding conspiracy against humanity”.
Thank you for the precise explanation, I had the “dissenters must be canceled” part, but the how and why were foggy (Ensembles: Good for “all the players in the cause”), and (dissenters wouldn’t be quiet and discussion would destroy the 97% façade).
The cause: Perpetuating the “conspiracy against humanity”, for personal and professional gain, follow the money.
Having multiple models makes of only one being criticized impossible. If so many groups are doing it, it must be important, and there is weight in numbers. It’s a form of consensus, look we all agree that is going to warm, but by how much, there is a range.
Ensemble modeling is like a concoction composed of 107 different medical treatments and the doctor telling you that at least 106 are wrong but one may be right so drink up. And be sure to pay the receptionist before you drink.
“Climate Science” or “COVID Response”, it has all been junk “science” to enrich & empower the same left illiberal politicians and their billionaire cronies. All lies all the time—just like CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, and Bezos Post.
“Imagine that a climate scientist discovers gigantic flaws in the models and the associated science. Do not imagine that his discovery would be treated respectfully and evaluated on its merits.”
Sounds he is talking about me! The funny thing is, not only does the orthodoxy have little pleasure over me busting their CO2 narrative. The “critical side” is not amazed either, exactly for the reasons named. If you are into “climate science” for years and were not able to figure out those gigantic flaws, then certainly you have some issues.
In the meanwhile it is pretty funny confronting G. Schmidt and D. Archer with their own work, LOL. It is specifically easy these days, as Schmidt is blogging on Archer’s “realclimate.com”. In fact Archer’s uchicago modtran and Schmidt’s GHG attribution is all it takes to perfectly outline the issue.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/11/net-zero-not-zero/
And of course the gigantic flaws straight on:
https://greenhousedefect.com/the-holy-grail-of-ecs/a-total-synthesis-the-ecs-estimate
on that “net-zero-not-zero” site I see the following
“But some activists have (rightly) pointed out that large-scale CO2 removals are as yet untested, and so reliance on them to any significant extent to balance out emissions is akin not really committing to net zero at all.”
There is a movement picking up speed now by the climatistas (especially with ivy league intellectuals) to lock up all forests on the planet- thinking that the extra sequestering of carbon will be the magic solution for “large-scale CO2 removals”. What they fail to realize is that if that happened- there is nothing that can replace wood as a low carbon footprint raw material for construction, furniture, paper products, etc. And, forest owners (many of them) will, if the can’t profitably manage their forests with periodic harvests, sell their forest to developers who will destroy the forest to install solar “farms” and/or urban sprawl. And, the forests can only hold so much C. And, with exceptionally good forest management (that will save the forests as forests) and harvested wood being put into products that will last for centuries, just as much C can be “stored”. As if C mattered- and I don’t believe that! :-}
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice they are not.
That is only theoretical practice, unlike practical theory.
Theoretically the way to Carnegie Hall is practice, practice, my boy.
===========
It was for the Nazis. In the early ’70s I read, “The Theory and Practice of Hell” about the holocaust.
At no other time in human history has the common man been so content, that our institutions, globally, can incentivize stupid, and nary a majority voice is raised in protest. It’s a wonderful time to be alive. A time of wasted capital but, none the less, a wonderful time and a historic experience which I don’t imagine we will see again for another millennium.
In most times, most people only revolt when their families are starving.
A tax revolt may become necessary if this cagw nonsense carries on for much longer.
Disciplined science should matter most. Taxpayer funding should demand that, especially when scientist are found disposing of the ethics of scientific discipline.
I saw Pete Hegspeth, a co-host on Fox News Channel, this morning refer to the new aerosol study that came out recently claiming the Climate Models had aerosols all wrong, and Pete said this new study means there are big questions about Climate Change Science.
I think Pete must be reading WUWT because he seemed to be up to speed on current events and to understand what they mean.
There’s a ray of hope. A trickle of insight from one person on tv might become a torrent.
Not to take anything from FOXNews but, I’d be more comforted if all of legacy news broadcasting adopted a less politized take on cagw, and injected some well-founded skepticism into their cagw reportage. The world would be better off.
I agree with you, but I don’t think the Leftwing Media will become less politicized any time soon.
From Hegspeth’s tongue to the ears of hoi polloi.
============
A small truth…
97% of what you are being
told about Climate Change
is Bullshit.
97% of what you are being
told about is Bullshit
no, a big truth!
Já, the Big Lie.
===========
The zombie chart that never dies. Tropical mid-tropospheric irradiance proxies of temperature are not the same as surface temperature CMIP predictions. Apples, oranges. Hind-casting CMIP6 model prediction match surface temperatures very well.
The irrational climate modeling infatuation baloney never dies.
What you claim is false anyway since the “Tropospheric hot spot” still hasn’t showed up after 20 years of modeling for it to exist and the Positive feedback loop never seems to be found anywhere outside of modeled fantasies created for it.
By now most rational people would say AGW is at best a 50% failure which means no run away warming is possible.
Simon misses the point. Even if they do match, they’re still worthless. A model that has to be parameterized is no model at all. It’s a curve fitting excise, with, by definition, no predictive skill.
Which is all they promised years ago when they offered this little bit of wisdom:-
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. IPCC TAR
The first part is concise and quite straight forward. It’s the second part (in italics) that becomes word salad. In essence it means, ‘never mind reality and trust us to clump a whole bunch of useless projections together, average them and then pretend it equals a scientific prediction’.
Hint, Simon has no idea what the point is.
Yo CN-LCS! Long may the system roll and rule. Eternally unpredictable, she keeps on rolling, rolling along.
==============
Did I read somewhere that estimated clouds and aerosols are used as the main variable elements to “tune” hind-cast climate models?
That’s even more true when most of the values being chosen for parameterization, are made up entirely.
It never dies because it’s still true.
If you think barely staying within 2 sigma is very well, then no wonder you are so eager to buy into a lie.
The only thing worse than being wrong is being right for the wrong reason. If the model predicts a hot spot that does not exist, then even if the model otherwise appears to be right, it is at best coincidental and not a reflection of the sk!ll of the model.
Hind casting surface temperature works “very well” because the models are tuned to history. Actually, I’m surprised that they don’t do better.
because historic temps are “adjusted “
The Climate Models are hindcasting science fiction, since the global temperature record is science fiction.
So just to summarise it is all a giant conspiracy to get money from the science funding
agencies. And all climate scientists are in on in and when they are not busy faking their climate models they are busy manipulating the past as well.
Very insightful of you Izaak.
Summed up perfectly.
A conspiracy would have required that the players got together, at the outset, to plan the outcomes we now observe. In that respect no conspiracy existed. However, there were numerous separate conspiracies, not the least of which was ‘climategate‘ and unending complicity as the fraud got traction. As governments awakened to the enormous political possibilities, the financial stakes grew exponentially. The fraud became a money machine … a trillion dollar international industry, far too big to admit malfeasance from the beginning.
“numerous seperare conspiracies”? Just how many? Is it one per country that signed up to the Paris accord which would make about 180 distinct conspiracies or are there more than that?
Probably more than that. But hey, can you tell Al Gore the Arctic is still frozen.
Izaak, I’m betting you have never invested the time & effort to read through the sordid email exchanges that were exposed as “Climategate”.
Like Dr. Judith Curry, reading through these was the tipping point for me and millions of other cogent people around the world.
The perfidy that was exposed by this disgraceful cabal in their efforts to deceive was more than a kitchen variety conspiracy of thieves.
It was a betrayal of honored scientific principles of honest conduct.
By now, climate change “
science” fraud has become a growth industry; infesting all three levels of government world wide and every university, not to mention thousands of corporations. There is no way of separating the number of true conspiracies from complicity (going along to get along). However the number must be in the 10s of thousands.Your denial of these facts is hilarious to watch and really quite pathetic.
Izaak, please read Rory’s comment immediately above in its totality.
Which one? The one where he claims there are 10s of thousands of conspiracies? Just how many conspiracies do you think there?
Ther are no conspiracies, only group think. And you are part of it,
Group Think … The ultimate conspiracy!
Think of it as a con. The more suckers you rope in the less likely they are going to admit they fell for a con. They therefore become willing participants in the con. And as we all know politicians are always open for a new con. You’re the guy standing on the corner with an envelope full of bill sized pieces of cut up newspaper.
Obviously the most recent.
I must say your skills at ducking and dodging are getting almost as good as Nick’s.
It is a conspiracy in that the higher education hegemony has programmed new “scientists” to believe the fact that CO2 is a bugaboo. They then proceed from that assumption to try and make models that confirm that. Most never take the high level courses in mathematics, physics, and chemistry that allow them to do detail work on just how CO2 works. It’s all about generating computer programs that will curve fit CO2 to temperature.
How many climate scientists can take Planck’s thesis on heat and deal with the vector calculus contained within it? Electrical engineers do so because they must deal with Maxwell’s equations for radiation.
Why do you think the folks with physics backgrounds and good reputations aren’t involved in doing this work? And, the ones that do like Dr’s Soon and Happer are ridiculed for their findings.
Why do you think that the folks who have broad statistics backgrounds using data in the medical and market dynamics never put their two cents in?
How about engineers and quality control who understand measurements and cringe with how measurements are handled in climate science?
Why do so many CAGW adherents on this site never quote references to accepted textbooks or internet sources for their assertions? What textbooks have the climate scientists like Michael Mann published describing in detail how the physics of the atmosphere works to let CO2 cause CAGW?
Why do you never quote references for your assertions?
Its a bit like saying that the mediæval Church was millions of different conspiracies, selling indulgences, supporting priests and so on, and becoming extremely wealthy. It’s not so much a conspiracy as a bandwagon that various people have jumped on, for different reasons.
You need look no further than the rise of Fascism in the 1930s along with eugenics, Lysenkoism, and so on to see how, given a neatly tailored false narrative, people will not only believe it, but cheer it all the way to its ultimate horrific conclusion.
Everybody loved the narrative, and it did no harm – until they started shutting down nuclear and coal and trying to run on wind and solar…
“becoming extremely wealthy”
Biggest landowner on this planet with vast, often hidden wealth. What’s all the art worth in the Vatican? Christian principles are fine- but a church that spends fortunes building temples and buying land while many people are starving and without health care is an organization wanting to stay in business for the long term- like the Chinese communist party.
You don’t believe the church should own the land the church sits on?
Yuh, but how much would that come to? I don’t know how much they own but I’ve read the church owns a vast amount of land. Smart investment too. And it’s nice that they Church sponsored so much art- but much of it is the same. All artists were required to follow the Church party line- much like climate scientists.
There are at least hundreds of thousands of churches all over the world. Many of them also have schools associated with them. Full K-12. That’s a lot of land. As to the Vatican’s art collection, I agree with you. However the same argument could be made for every government owned art museum.
But the church isn’t a government- it should in theory be superior to any government. It’s a shame that it could sell one of its Leonard DaVinci paintings and feed a million starving people for a year with the proceeds. I googled this subject and found that the Church owns 177 million acres. Reminds of one day as a kid in church- my mom gave me a quarter to put in the basket- I decided to keep it so I faked putting it in the basket- a nun was sitting behind me about 2 rows back and noticed my bad behavior- so she stood up, walked over to me, and announced to the entire church that I stole the quarter from the Church- at the time I didn’t know about the vast wealth the Church has. OK, OK, this is way off topic.
Bravo Leo!
I can add that the environmentalist NGOs use CC to raise funds some of which go to politicians who once elected, direct public funds back to the NGOs which recycle back to the politicians ad infinitum.
The same sort of funding loop exists with politicians getting contributions from big business and then once elected, the politicians pass laws to subsidize and mandate products that the businesses make, with some of the profits going back to the politicians.
The activist NGOs also demand funding for research that funds grants to researchers who are associated or aligned with the NGOs.
University faculties need grants to support the cost of research, but in the ecosystem described above, the only substantial funding available is to study preconceived “problems” caused by CC. No administrator is going to want an institutional reputation of doing research that undermines the CC narrative, even if they had endowments that could fund such research. It could cut them off from future grants. Even if the grant makers do not actually retaliate in this way, the fear that they might is sufficient incentive.
No researcher is incentivized to do anything but seek grants to study CC as a problem. They see the cautionary examples of Peter Ridd or Judith Curry to remind them that the mortgage and car payments won’t pay themselves. So whether they are well-compensated or struggling to make ends meet, they all have a strong incentive to conform to expectations.
And sure, just to address the conspiracy angle, there are left-wing activists who do all they can to ride the CC agenda to advance their global socialism goals. Probably nefarious state actors who fund groups like Extinction Rebellion to attempt to destabilize western countries. They don’t have much control over the process but they can exert some influence.
Ruch, Bravo!
Rich!
Izaak
So are you saying, ALL climate scientists are committing a crime?
Calling for drastic changes in our civilization based on a phony science should be a crime.
“Deceit” may be a more appropriate term than “conspiracy”
Yes but I am not writing the article. The author states that “With ensembles, every group gets to participate in a rewarding conspiracy against humanity”
“Conspiracy” is Mr. Roger’s term not mine.
“Conspiracy” need not be read literally.
Izaak will read anything in a manner that best supports what he is trying to push.
Oddly enough ‘conspiracy’ is – and despite the permeation of US English, we still have the plural case – is in fact the singular. So there is only one ‘conspiracy‘ being claimed, according to your quote above.
I see Izaak is getting better at finding semantic loopholes to hide in.
Izzy thinks that if he implies a conspiracy then checkmate.
Of course people who are not trapped in The Narrative are capable of understanding that individuals can and do respond independently to the incentives that they see. No coluuuuuuusion needed.
Rich,
Mr. Roger’s is not just implying a small conspiracy but one that includes every climate scientist around the planet, with no dissenting voices pointing out that the data is fake or that the models are deliberately set to be wrong. And since many of the models used are open source and available to download from the web if there was a deliberate programming error then that would be easy to point out thus providing proof of the conspiracy. If you think about the scale of the conspiracy that Mr. Roger’s is alleging then it is extremely unlikely that nobody would have come forward as a whistle blower by now.
Dissent is punished with cancellation. The remainder are in a conspiracy of silence, driven by fear of cancellation and loss of livelihood.
Izaak,
You’re completely wrong. For example, there are plenty of whistle blowers such as Peter Ridd and some scientists who worked for the IPCC and realised how corrupt it is. In a sense nearly all sceptical scientists are whistle blowers, because they tirelessly point out how bad and unreliable the science is – particularly the climate models. Whoever released the Climategate emails was the ultimate climate whistle blower. Did you not realise this? In the long run, whistleblowers often turn out to be right.
The problem is that all sceptical scientists have been cancelled and silenced by the mainstream media such as the BBC. Many more sceptical scientists keep quiet because they are afraid of being attacked and of losing their livelihoods, Peter Ridd being a perfect example.
“Conspiracies” can be quite subtle. On one extreme, a group of people might sit down one day and plan a conspiracy. But probably most conspiracies are not planned. They may happen slowly without any specific organisation. It may work by thousands of small decisions tainted by some perceived self interest. In the case of climate scientists it’s obvious that alarmism is very profitable in terms of jobs and government money. It’s also very profitable for global organisations such as Greenpeace and the UN.
I tend not to use the word “conspiracy”. I think words such as “corruption”, “fraud” and “scientific malfeasance” may be more suitable, partly because they can often be proven. If the original Mann hockeystick paper was not outright fraud it was certainly scientific malfeasance, and Steve McIntyre was able to prove it.
I think that the extreme climate alarmism we see today is not just wrong, it is utterly immoral. Because the “conspiracy” has no literal central organisation, it is far more difficult to fight. But fight it we must.
Chris
Some have breathed together but for most it is a just a widespread popular delusion and a madness of the crowd. The sad suckers have their money, their lives, and their freedoms, yea, their rationality raked from them by the profiteers, the power mad and those desiring fame without merit.
There are many souls aimed at the Inferno, absent sincere repentance, which is near to impossible given the gains piled up by serving evil.
========
You should talkto some of them face to face. Their voices go lower, their eyes swivel sideways “I have a job, a wife, a family and a mortgage and a career and I need funding: You simply don’t go against the flow”.
Look at the way universities have bent to the woke brigade. It’s more than their existence is worth to challenge the Left Lunacy that is permeating the West.
In 1930s Germany you simply didn’t get a job – and jobs were scarce – if you didnt believe, or profess to believe, in the Jewish Problem.
Green, Left and Woke is the new Fascism. Climate Change is the new Jewish Problem.
regarding “the Woke”- yuh gotta watch Bill Mahar
New Rule: Bill Maher the Messaging Czar
For decades the UN IPCC CliSciFi models have been proven to be crap, yet nothing is done by the modeling community nor the government funders. And the new CMIP6 models have piled the crap higher and deeper. The UN IPCC AR6 had to deny the hottest models, but still accepted the remining high-ECS models against all observational evidence of lower probable ECSs.
Climate change fearmongering leaders (especially those running the ICPP) have publicly stated that the worldwide movement is based on engineering Leftist/Marxist ideology into our societies. Widen your information sources, Izaak, to get a fuller picture of what is going on in CliSciFi.
Izaak, you seem to be unaware of the many whistleblowers that have actually been coming forward for years now. They are prevented from publishing in the CliSciFi journals by the “Team” gatekeepers. Whistleblowers are viciously and personally attacked by academia, government and the media and are boycotted from the IPCC process.
With limited exceptions of notable malfeasance such as the examples from ClimateGate, it is mostly not a conspiracy at all, Izaak. Leo gave an excellent recitation of the incentive scheme to which I just added more detail above.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/28/the-profound-junk-science-of-climate/#comment-3398852
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/28/the-profound-junk-science-of-climate/#comment-3399622
It is not so much that the models or data are blatantly false, or that there is some formal collusion to bias the research as that only the data that gives the desired answer gets published. Rather than testing a hypothesis by trying hard to find evidence that would falsify the hypothesis, the exercise is to seek out data that makes the hypothesis seem correct. There are no incentives to do skeptical research and plenty of barriers to it.
There are also plenty of examples of whistleblowers calling into question the data and not a few who have been canceled. So I’m not sure how you deny that.
The conspiracy is fed by trying to create a model that emulates the temperature trends. Far too many so called climate scientists have accepted that curve fitting is an honorable goal. And, actually it might be if real world physics were being done to quantify the the inputs and reactions. Without that real world research they are willing participants in the conspiracy.
There is a Global Conspiracy of Breathing. It’s a lie, but everyone believes in it.
actually most are just gullible. one wonders how many PhDs will be revoked when the global warming hoax crashes and burns
The very first one revoked should be that of Mikey Mann!
then move him from Penn State to the State Penn
They are not gullible. I know many people in the scientific/academic community. They know what is going on, but they are helpless to stop it, until they retire, and then they have no platform
Exactly zero I suppose, but not because they shouldn’t be.
For the most part that’s true, and has been amply demonstrated over and over again.
The only thing you missed were the scam artists getting rich by making and selling win and solar.
Izaak, would you agree that U.S. government policy affects its funding decisions? If not, please explain your evidence to the contrary.
Anyway, please see my comment below.
If nothing else, it is a vast conspiracy of silence. Almost no climate scientists ever call out others for making ludicrously unfounded wild claims about thermageddon (this road will be underwater, the Arctic will be ice free, the oceans will boil, cities will be flooded by 10m of SLR, etc). When they do, they are swiftly cancelled, like Judith Curry and Peter Ridd.
That’s an obvious conspiracy. Your examples are not omnipresent, but have been proved to have occurred, and have obviously skewed the foundation of the research in doing so.
So the answer is “Yes, that’s a part, but there’s a great deal more.”
No conspiracy is necessary. All it requires is for academics to be working for their own self interest.
Have you ever known an academic not to turn away the opportunity to stab a colleague in the back? And if they can do it by showing that their colleagues are wrong and they are right you can be pretty sure that they will do it.
Not if doing so risks closing down the whole grants trough.
Academics have certainly stabbed their dissenting colleagues in the back (Drs Peter Ridd and Susan Crockford come to mind).
and they do that with the hope of more rapidly climbing the career ladder- but challenging the climate disaster mantra will have a different result
Actually I have known many such academics. Not everyone is a venal as the crowd you run with.
Secondly, if said “stabbing in the back” results in instant termination, not many would be willing to do so.
Academics do their catfighting in the halls of academia. No academic department head will allow any public dissent that would threaten their massive government subsidies. Get real, Izaak.
Yes, it is a potential conundrum. However, challenging the prevailing paradigm runs the risk of killing the goose that laid the Golden Egg. It would not be in their best self interest to do so. When some do, they experience the kind of persecution that Peter Ridd has. Even most alarmists are bright enough to understand that winning the battle and losing the war is not a good strategy. It is only those with principles who will forge ahead without regard for consequences. As you have pointed out, there are few academics with principles.
The way you denounce someone in a totalitarian society like academia is to accuse them of deviating from The Narrative, but I’m sure you already knew that.
It isn’t about personal Animus. Do you think as an engineer I go out and test the silver or copper content of wires that I use? Do I replicate experiments that prove Maxwell’s theories everytime I design something? There are things that are simply accepted as taught by your professors.
Climate science is no different. Students are taught that CO2 is the cause of CAGW, end of problem. They are taught the real problem is trying to find the piece parts that fit together to model the atmosphere’s reaction to CO2. End of story, and the conspiracy continues. Do you think many climate scientists have the training in physics or chemistry or mathematical ability to do the basic physical research to validate how these parts work together? I certainly don’t. They are wanna be computer jockeys trying to do curve fitting when a plane old French Curve would suffice!
we see what happened to Socrates when he told the young to challenge the prevailing wisdom- he was canceled!
Yes, but he was wise enough to understand what the price would be, and old enough to not care. [Legend has it he was married to a fishwife.]
I’m reminded of the T-shirt that says: “Don’t piss me off! The older I get, the less deterrence the treat of prison has.”
No Conspiracy. Just basic economics.
There were very few climate researchers because it was a backwater subject.
Then there were lots of climate researchers because it was saving the world.
Then it was obvious that the hype had gotten ahead of the science and 97% of climate researchers needed to retrain and apologise to their post-grad students as we re-set to the starting point of vey few climate researchers.
But for some reason, without collaboration, they all decided to not lose their jobs instead.
(Well, not all but all of those who didn’t quit do something more important; self-selection).
yes, that about sums it up nicely. But its not money from the science funding agencies, Its trillions from consumers to pay for ‘green energy’ and the like.
They created a whole industry that has even less purpose than twitter, and made its products compulsory.
Al Gore worked for Enron.
Enron
soldwas trying to sell gas.“The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) averages together numerous models (an ensemble), in order to make a projection of the future. Asked why they do this rather than try to pick the best model, they say that the ensemble method works better.”
**********
If you take the average of 10 or 20 wrong numbers, do you get a right or wrong number? If it is not known whether a set of 10 or 20 numbers is right or wrong, of what value would the average of those numbers be?
I am not a scientist, but I see a logic problem here.
…and if the climate modelers keep altering the model parameters in hindsight, on what basis do they claim that the models of any skill of foresight?
Hell, even with the tuning the modelers exaggerate past surface and atmospheric warming by about 60% to 100%.
It’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That aside, yes, averaging SWAGS (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses) is meaningless.
Well, if you take the average phone number in a Chinese phone directory, you will be likely to get a Wong number…
Groan.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To get the Chinese newspaper. Do you get it?
Well, no.
Neither do I, neither did the chicken. That’s why he crossed the road.
============
Groan.
Oh boy, that’s terrible. I’d add to that, but
Two Wongs don’t make a White
Groan.
Trenberth’s atmospheric power flux graphics are based on an unrealistic global model that divides discular 1,368 ISR by 4 to create a spherical 342 TOA average and is arithmetic and thermodynamic rubbish.
63 W/m^2 appears twice and the 396/333/63 GHG “extra” energy loop appears out of thin air.
DANGER! Crank at work.
Maybe, but averaging radiation is as bad as averaging temperatures. You end up under estimating what is happening in real time. 1368 divided by 4 won’t give you the right answer for temperature, convection, etc., at those locations that receive more or less than the average.
Simple arithmetic just won’t suffice. When have you seen any trig based calculus on how the sun’s energy is distributed and what the differential effects are? Read Planck’s treatise on heat to see how a real math based description of physics works.
Thank you for your well-founded overturning of the use of established radiation physics; your Nobel Prize awaits. [Note: I didn’t say CliSciFi physics.]
I am not overturning anything dude. Using averages such as this is one reason people have the mistaken conclusion that everywhere is warming the the same. Instead, they should be recognizing that temps should be soaring, say by 5°C at the equator and 0.25° C at the poles if radiation is the sole determination of temperature. This no different than calculating the heat dissipation curve across a heat sink. One can burn up semiconductors by relying on ‘average’ wattage and radiation figures.
All climate science is funded by central governments, climate modeling especially so. Western governments established policies long ago stating that adding unrestrained amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere will result in dangerous warming. Over time they developed large bureaucracies and well funded programs aimed at reducing their countries’ CO2 emissions, the latest being the Net Zero craze. It is foolish to believe that politicians and bureaucrats will willingly give up the money and power associated with those policies, bureaucracies and programs; history says they won’t.
Whole industries and ideological crusades have developed around central governmental funding of the myriad programs and expensive subsidies to favored people, entities, industries and subordinate governmental bodies. Unrelated “intersectional” ideologies and pet peeves have attached themselves to the well-funded climate propaganda. Everyone involved has grown dependent on central government policies, bureaucracies and funding. They will fight tooth and nail to keep the largesse and propaganda flowing.
Climate change research organizations, academia and the people they employ rely almost entirely on central government funding, including for massive overheads supporting and growing the entire structure. They do all they can to keep the money flowing and, hopefully, increasing. They try to do nothing that could potentially upset the politicians and bureaucrats. Funding proposals are tailored for existing policies and prejudices and will not question current memes.
The incentive for individuals and organizations to support existing central government climate change policies is obvious. It takes great individual courage to point out that projected CO2 emissions would have minimal impact on future warming and that any reasonably projected warming would have net benefit for peoples around the world.
All official estimates of future warming are based on general circulation climate models produced in central government labs or facilities totally funded by governments. Data has consistently shown for the past few decades that the models run too “hot.” The governments funding these models, however, have not forced the model developers to fix obvious problems. On the contrary, since the models support governmental alarmist policies, they are greeted with open arms.
Scientists pointing out the many failings of current climate change science are labeled “deniers” by the politicians, bureaucrats, organizations and individuals benefiting from the fountains of money provided by taxpayers. Media “click-bait” incentives and activists’ ideology push the practice of exaggerating and sensationalizing each wild claim. True science has no place in the current “debate” and the public is grossly misinformed by institutionalized propaganda.
This will not end well.
I seriously doubt that any head on contradictory analysis will gain any traction against the united front. What is need it a totally new way of looking at the issue. Something simple enough for all to understand yet compelling enough to raise doubt. I have what may be such an analysis. I know its long (1500 words) and I apologise for that but it is at least easy to read and understand. PLEASE consider it carefully and see if I have made a mistake.
AN ALTERNATIVE POINT OF VIEW REGARDING “GLOBAL WARMING”
Earth’s atmosphere generates mechanical work. It raises water to high altitudes powering hydroelectric generators, while wind can blow down trees, raise waves and drive wind turbines. This is powered by thermal energy coming from the sun. The earth’s surface and atmosphere are converting thermal energy from the sun into mechanical energy; the exact definition of a heat engine. Heat engines are very well understood, the requirements for their operation were first described by Sadi Carnot (1796-1832).
There are 2 requirements for a heat engine which are relevant to this discussion. Firstly, 100% efficiency of conversion of thermal energy into mechanical energy is impossible. There must not only be a point in the cycle where the working fluid gains thermal energy (the hot junction) but there must also be a point in the cycle where the working fluid loses thermal energy (the cold junction). For example, in a power station the boiler is the hot junction and the cooling towers are the cold junction.
Secondly the hot junction must be at significantly higher pressure than the cold junction. The working fluid heated at the hot junction expands as it moves from the hot to cold junction doing mechanical work in the process. At the cold junction the working fluid loses energy (cools) which means it takes less mechanical energy to recompress it back to the hot junction pressure than was released in the expansion. In power systems there is often a phase change at the cold junction although that is not essential. The mechanical work done is the difference between the thermal energy absorbed at the hot junction and the thermal energy lost at the cold junction.
For the atmosphere, the hot junction is Earth’s surface where the surface, warmed by absorption of solar energy, in turn warms the atmosphere. The cold junction must be at a point of lower pressure and the only possibility is high up in the atmosphere typically the tropopause. Since energy is conserved, losing energy means transferring it to somewhere colder (second law of thermodynamics) and for air at the tropopause the only place colder is space. The only available mechanism of significant heat transfer in that case is by radiation in the thermal infrared (wavelengths between about 4 and 50 microns). Temperatures in our atmosphere preclude significant radiation at other wavelengths (Planks law). But, by definition, any gas capable of radiating in the thermal IR band is a greenhouse gas. That means energy loss to space and thus the existence of a cold junction relies on the presence of greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse gases there cannot be a cold junction and without a cold junction the heat engine that defines our weather and climate could not function. In practical terms the atmosphere warmed at the surface rises but, having risen, it needs to cool in order to descend again completing the convective loop. If there were no greenhouse gases the air could not cool and thus could not descend again.
The lapse rate in our atmosphere is created and maintained by convection. Without convection it disappears and the entire atmospheric column would eventually end up at a uniform temperature (a vertically isothermal atmosphere). Without the air movement driven by convection there would be no wind (wind implies mechanical energy and without a heat engine there is no source of mechanical energy). Water vapour would not condense because condensation requires losing energy and without greenhouse gases there is no way for it to do so, hence no clouds would form. Without condensation the entire atmosphere would become saturated with respect to water vapour and then net evaporation would also stop. Without convection there would be nothing to raise surface dust and what dust was in the atmosphere would eventually precipitate out so the air would become extremely clear. In short, there would be no weather, no clouds, no wind, no rain no dust. Without clouds, dust or greenhouse gases (a transparent atmosphere) the average insolation at the surface would be very similar to the insolation in near space averaged over the rotating globe ie: around 340 watts/sqM (not the current 234 watts/sqM). The surface would radiate this back out to space as close to a black body giving a global average temperature of 278K or +5C. (Stefan Boltzmann equation)
As an aside, it is also worth noting that, without the possibility of radiative heat transfer (no greenhouse gases), when the surface is warmer than the atmosphere, heat can be transferred to the atmosphere by surface contact plus convection (up until equilibrium is established) which is fast, but, when the surface is colder there is a temperature inversion precluding the warmer air descending, only allowing the atmosphere to transfer heat to the surface by conduction which is extremely slow. As a result, the temperature of the atmosphere rises to close to the maximum temperature of the surface not the average temperature of the surface (although with possibly a steep temperature gradient near the surface).
While the average insolation would be 340 watts/sqM the actual insolation at any point on the surface will vary with latitude, season and time of day. In the tropics, for example, insolation would reach around 1340 watts/sqM at noon and down to of course zero at night. The actual surface temperature would vary as insolation varies, with the degree of change depending on the thermal time constant of the surface. Our own observations of just how fast beach sand or a concrete path or even dry ground heats up on a summer’s day tells us this time constant on land (without evaporative cooling) , is very short compared to Earth’s 24 hour day – typically less than 1 hour. From the Stefan Boltzmann law, at 1300 watts/sqM noon tropical temperature would be close to 116C while night time temperature would be far below freezing. 116C is above the boiling point of water but large bodies of water have far longer time constants so would not reach these temperatures. Away from the tropics it would not be quite as extreme but even at latitude 37, insolation at noon in summer is around 1200 watts/sqM corresponding to 110C, while insolation at noon in midwinter is around 620 watts/sqM corresponding to 50C. The situation would be similar to the surface of the moon which reaches 127C during the “day” and minus 173C during the “night”. Although because the lunar day/night is longer than Earth’s (28 days vs 1 day) the result on Earth would not be quite as extreme.
A practical example much closer to home is a closed car out in the sun. It heats up because convection and evaporation are reduced (although not entirely suppressed), similar to the situation without the atmospheric heat engine that is our climate. The temperature inside the car can easily and rapidly rise above 70C, which is why there are laws against leaving children in closed cars.
Of course, all this is hypothetical, after all we do have greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. So, is the analysis significant? Well, yes it is, for two reasons. Firstly, even though the claimed warming impact of greenhouse gases, derived by applying the Stefan Boltzmann equation without feedbacks, is 33C, the actual impact is more likely to be around 9 degrees – due mainly to changes in cloud shielding. This suggests feedbacks in our climate (and particularly cloud feedback) are negative not positive as claimed by warmists.
Secondly; it’s far more major effect is to reduce the high temperature extremes and increase the low temperature extremes. In short to significantly moderate the daily and seasonal temperature excursions, making the climate more equitable. Yet the climate models claim the incremental impact of rising greenhouse gases will have exactly the opposite impact, exacerbating the extremes. If the incremental impact of a parameter is in the opposite direction to the total impact, it means that at some point there has to be a point of inflection, a point where the action of the parameter reverses and that needs to be clearly demonstrated. What would cause that for our climate and which side of the point of inflection are we currently at? After all, the energy relevant to a heat engine is energy coupled into the working fluid (direct radiation from the hot junction, such as from an uninsulated boiler, is simply energy lost from the system). If, with more CO2, there is less direct surface radiation and thus more energy coupled into the atmosphere, the heat engine is intensified and this is what moderates temperature extremes in the first place. Why would not the small incremental greenhouse gas impact due to rising CO2 further moderate the extreme temperatures even if it caused a small rise in “average” temperature? And would such a change really be catastrophic or even disadvantageous?
Further, once a greenhouse gas concentration reaches the point where absorption at the line centre saturates, the incremental impact of further increases becomes logarithmic (because the line broadens) – the incremental impact decreases with increasing overall concentration. The major greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, water vapour 1st and carbon dioxide 2nd, are both many doublings beyond saturation (about 10 doubling for CO2 – at 400 ppm, CO2 absorption for the atmospheric column at line centre is around 3000 absorbance). One additional doubling should give about 1/10 of the total impact of CO2. If the cumulative total impact of all greenhouse gases is 9C of warming how could one doubling of CO2 concentration alone give rise to incremental warming of 3 – 4.5 C.
Way too complex for any “Real” “Climate Scientist” to understand!
/sarc.
OK Peter, I understand your /sarc but is the analysis correct or wrong? Are all these blogs just a talk fest to give under employed people something to do or are they a genuine attempt to explore the science? I now strongly suspect the former in which case, what is the point? Under employed yet the 5 minutes it takes to read a 1500 word descriptive essay is way too much work? How unreasonable of me! For whom did you say the analysis is too complex? So what is the point, oh yes of course, to give underemployed people something to do. Got it.
What do you mean by “direct surface radiation”? GHGs have no impact on shortwave incoming radiation and the back-radiation increases longwave incoming. So an increase in GHGs should be more incoming radiation and a higher surface temperature resulting in more outgoing longwave. Whether you mean incoming to or outgoing from the surface, both will increase with increasing GHG.
You assert that GHE theory claims that GHGs will exacerbate extremes. But my understanding is that standard theory predicts less cooling at night (less extreme cold).
I also don’t follow your argument for why the GHE is only 9K rather than 33K
I don’t think your discussion of lapse rate being dependent on convection is accurate either. While a parcel of buoyant air will rise, expand, and cool, if convection ceases the temperature gradient will not disappear. What would warm the gas high in the atmosphere or cool the gas lower?
Sorry I gave it a shot but don’t see what you’re trying to say.
Most of what you say I agree with. The biggest GHG is H2O. It does absorb the near IR from the sun and it never heats the surface. Why climate science ignores water vapor, I don’t know. It is by far the (1000 times) largest GHG.
The charts of CO2 versus temps should be H2O vs temperature. Try to find articles researching the heat released from water vapor when clouds form! What does this heat do? Does anyone ever ask why there is a large dip in outgoing radiation at CO2’s frequency while H2O has a large value. Is it because CO2 is cold or is it because CO2 is radiating very little? Climate scientists will tell you it is because only the high altitude CO2 radiates and it is at a low temp! Hmmm? Could it be that most of the heat is transferred elsewhere before radiating, like to N2 or O2, thereby reducing the amount radiated?
Hi Jim; I assume your comments were in regard to what I wrote rather than Rich Davis’s comments. GHG’s absorb radiation at their line wavelengths but they also emit according to Planks law at these wavelengths. In essence the absorptivity and the emissivity are linked. If the gas column absorbs say 90% of the incident radiation ( 1 absorbance) at a particular wavelength then it will emit 90% of what a black body at the same temperature would emit at that wavelength. So throughout the atmospheric column there is continuous absorption and emission of energy at the GHG wavelengths. It is only the very top of the GHG column that can radiate to space. (about the last 1 -2 absorbance – 1 absorbance is the amount of gas that absorbs 90% of the incident light, 2 absorbance absorbs 99% of the incident light and so on) To give you an idea, at 400ppm CO2 the atmospheric column has an absorbance at the CO2 line centre of about 3000 abs. So the last 1/3000 of the CO2 column emits 90%of what a black body would emit to space at 14.7 microns. The last 1/1500 emits 99% of what a black body would emit to space. In essence all the CO2 emission to space occurs from the last 1/1500 of the CO2 column. That’s a pretty thin layer even at the pressure prevailing at the tropopause. Anything emitted from lower down will be reabsorbed before it can escape.
The CO2 emission is low because it comes from the tropopause or low stratosphere where the temperature is very low. The emission from water vapour is higher for 2 reasons, firstly some of the lines are reasonably weak so that emission is coming from lower in the atmosphere where it is warmer secondly (and more importantly) water vapour has a huge number of very closely spaced lines. So closely spaced that most plots don’t resolve them. The result is then more or less an average of surface emission between the lines and high altitude emission on the lines giving an apparently higher emission temperature. This is why the emission versus wavelength profile looks so ragged or noisy.
How energy is distributed and passed between species within the atmosphere is really quite unimportant to the overall effect we are considering. What matters is the energy entering and leaving the system. You are right that water vapour is the most significant GHG and I think everyone admits that. The warmists get off on CO2 because they argue that water is so prevalent on earth that humans cannot affect it, if we release water vapour it just means a little less evaporates naturally.
Hi Rich Davis and thank you for having a look at what I wrote. To try and answer some of your questions. Direct surface radiation is in relation to what the surface radiates to space not about what radiation the surface received from space. It is long wave radiation not short wave radiation. With clouds and green house gases, much of the energy radiated by the surface is reabsorbed within the atmosphere and thus does make it out to space. But if the atmosphere does not absorb then all the energy radiated by the surface will escape to space.
As regards temperature extremes, the warmists claims are that with increasing CO2 there will be more extremely hot days – days over 40C. What I was trying to show was that without GHG’s every day in the tropics would have a temperature peak above 100C and even at mid latitudes the peak would be near 100C in summer and 50C in winter. Hence my claim that the presence of GHG’s reduces daytime peak temperatures (and raises night time minimums).
GHE of 9C. The earth on average absorbs 234 watts/sqM. Warmists claim that without GHG’s the surface can radiate freely to space ie: all the radiation emitted by the surface escapes to space. According the the Stefan Boltzmann law a black body emitting 234 watts/sqM will have a temperature of 254K. Since the average surface temperature is currently 287K (+14C)that is 33C colder than at present. However without GHG’s there will also be no clouds and clouds reflect around 100 watts/sqM of incoming solar energy back out to space. Without clouds this will not be reflected back out to space but will instead reach the surface. So without GHG’s the average solar energy reaching the surface will not be 234 watts/sqM but more like 340 watts/sqM and according to SB law the surface temperature required to radiate 340 watts/sqM is 278K or +5C which is only 9C colder than the current 14C.
Your point about lapse rate. Remember one of the laws of physics is that energy is conserved. That means energy cannot just miraculously appear disappear, it can only be converted from one form to another (such as when we burn a fossil fuel) or sent from one place to another when it is say radiated out to space. Since Earth is surrounded by vacuum, the only way the planet can lose energy to space is by radiation. Now consider, the air at the tropopause is colder than the surrounding air. Heat flows form hot to cold so how does air at this altitude remain cold. It can only do so by radiating energy away to space which is exactly what it does via GHG’s. But without GHG’s this is impossible so the tropopause will absorb energy from the air below by conduction and warm up. If there is no way for the upper atmosphere to lose energy, heat carried up by conduction from lower down will raise the temperature of the upper atmosphere until it matches the temperature of the air near the surface. The issue of importance is that for a convective loop the fluid at the top of the loop has to cool in order to descend. More accurately, it has to lose energy since the air at the top of the loop is cold due to expansion but if it did not lose energy, as it descended it would be compressed and thus warmed again until back at the surface it would be back to its original temperature. Without GHG’s it cannot lose energy so it cannot descend. This is exactly why a heat engine requires energy loss from the point of minimum pressure ie: a cold junction.
Hope this answers some of your questions. Regards.
It does lose energy because work is being done to move the mass of air as it rises. You must expend energy to do work, i.e. joules. The temperature isn’t cooler only because the pressure is lower, e.g. from expansion.
I take you point Jim but remember when the gas descends the gas it compressed again. The work done by the gas as it expands would have to be done to the gas as it is compressed so unless one accepts the need for energy loss at the cold junction you end up describing a perpetual motion machine. Its why heat engines cannot achieve 100% efficiency.
By the way one can see clearly the result of compressive heating in our atmosphere. The Hadley cell consists of rising warm air at the equator (more accurately the Inter tropical convergence zone ITCZ) and falling air at around +-30 degrees latitude. This falling air started off as very cold dry air at the tropopause (dry because most of the water precipitated out during the rise) but by the time it reaches the surface it is hot and dry (a permanent ring of high pressure at Earth’s surface) which gives rise to most of the deserts on Earth.
I totally with compression heating. PV = NRT is alive and well. But you must also agree that work is done overcoming the force of gravity so that a given volume of air can rise. That energy can not be replaced solely by gravity causing compression. That is why convection is not a perpetual motion machine. As energy is lost through work the temperature falls, the temperature change is not totally dependent upon an increase in volume and a loss in pressure.
from the get go, this has always been about who OWNS the oil companies. this is a hostile takeover.
I strongly suspect that the average Joe and Joanna own the oil companies, like most profitable publicly listed companies. Now, the question of who controls all of their investments is another matter. Giving that kind of power to a few large investment companies is foolish in the extreme. It’s way more sensible to do it yourself, and quite easy these days. Unfortunately people are way too lazy, and the big investment companies love the 2% they skim, and the power they gain.
You know that petroleum is a commodity, right? That it’s value, that is to say it’s cost, depend on market forces, right?
What it costs to extract oil from the ground has nothing to do with market forces.
I love the fella who said that petroleum is found in the human imagination and reserves are found in the tax code.
He showed up once after I posted that and identified himself as the author.
But, I’ve forgotten again.
So, no attribution for that lovely thought, though well deserved.
=============
That has nothing to do with who owns the companies that produce it
Of course, the worst case scenario is that the models and CAGW advocates lead us down a path that is precisely wrong for what actually happens.
Remember this day
thats all.
just remember
The models may not agree but the modelers can agree they got paid well for building them.
markl:
Well done!
Your comment is an excellent demonstration of of how to troll a thread.
In the very first comment you have side-tracked rational discussion of the above article with irrelevant political clap-trap!
Congratulations!
Richard
Well. To be fair, “Climate Science” relies an awful lot on its political clout. Grifters gotta grift. AmIright
The entire Covid ‘industry’ has closely followed the success of the climate industry. There is a hierarchy- a priesthood. And there is the dogma. Follow the science. Even when it’s not actually science, but manipulation of information. And there is the chorus of true believers. Whatever comes out of the priesthood is The Word and The Word is to be followed- despite the evidence of your senses.
None of this is surprising. When models could not predict the past, they were parameterized, so the output could be changed at will. Models that work do not have this “feature”. Can you imagine building an airplane using a stress model that does not work?
Well put, especially the part about a rewarding conspiracy against humanity with the few opportunistic enriching themselves over the fraud.
The conspiracy is far reaching into the lives of the average individual and family because it denies them prosperity, freedom and a say in representation when government makes decisions of great magnitude without their consent.
This false alarm is a war on the poor and the powerless.
Enough said, get right with your conscience.
==========
“Because so much of climate history is unknown, for example, climate influencing aerosols, the modelers have to make up the missing history. Each modeler is free to make up his own history, so the various models fit different assumed past climates.”
Considering we have about 170 years of actual weather records, at least in the US, and the rest of climate/weather history is a SWAG at best and fabrication at worst, one has to wonder how anyone came up with models that work. How many ran some hindcasts without them failing miserably? (I have to interject that 170 years of data is a blink of the eye when it comes to climatological timescales.)
Out of all the models out there, there has been one that appears to be better than most of the others, a Russian model if memory serves, the only issue being that it has an offset, something that can be compensated for in the model. The rest haven’t even been close.
UN IPCC CliSciFi models have average global temperatures that vary by as much as 3 C between the models. They aren’t even modeling the same physics.
I downloaded the Russian model data here and compared it with the BEST dataset here from 1979/01 to 2021/08. The RMSE was 0.16 C as compared to the 0.10 C for the CMIP5 mean for 13 month centered averages. In addition the warming trend was +0.10 C/decade as compared to the +0.23 C/decade for the CMIP5 mean and the +0.19 C/decade for BEST. In other words, the Russian model is less skillful than the CMIP5 mean and no where close to the best model in the CMIP5 suite. In fact, it is among the worst.
Distinctly possible. That’s the problem with relying on memory when one posts on the spur of the moment. I didn’t look at some of the info I have to double check my recollection.
Thanks for the follow-up!
Please look at the charts of the scatterplot of the UN IPCC CliSciFi temperature series (CMIP5 or CMIP6) from 1997 compared to the satellite and radiosonde data.
I’ve already done that.
what I’ve never understood is why its alright to use the sea surface temperature of the oceans and the air temperature above land to decide a global temperature … thats completely apples and oranges … we should measure the air temp at 3 feet above the ocean to add to the air temp 3 feet above the land … or measure the temperature of the soil to join with the sea surface temp … but mixing mediums (water vs air) is just bad science …
From the article: “Fitting the model to climate history comes up against the fact that past climate history is poorly documented or unknown.”
Or bastardized by unscrupulous people.
From the article: Norman Rogers spent 10-years studying climate change and climate change scientists. He is the author of the book Dumb Energy, about wind and solar energy”
I like that title! Dumb Energy! Perfect!
I’ve long noticed that the word ‘smart’, stands for the pain of the whipping administered to the serfs by those technocrats who would rule us.
=============
If you believe in the Big Bang Theory, then you must also believe that every moment in time is unique because the universe has never been in that position before.
Therefore, no one can predict the future. You cannot model what can’t be known.
Think about that for a moment. Anyone who says they can model the future is a science denier of the first order. You can only model what has happened in the past.
Ensemble models often perform very well–better than any single model (it’s the modeling equivalent of Francis Galton’s 1906 averaging of nearly 800 guesses by visitors to a county fair of the weight of an ox; the average guess was off by only about a pound and closer than any individual guess). But they aren’t always better and the so-called “wisdom of crowds” is more perspicacious when the estimates are independent and diverse, making use of local knowledge…none of which appears to be characteristic of the Climate Mafia.
This is definitely true for atmospheric processes. Ensembles like GEFS and EPS have about 1 day more of useful skill than there singular counterparts GFS and ECMWF. And blending models like the GFS, ECMWF, and UKMET has been shown to provide superior skill than any one of them alone. It’s the same with tropical cyclone forecasting. The IVCN consensus, which is a blend of 5 different models, consistently outperforms any single model in both track and intensity skill. The ensemble suites for climate modeling work in much the same way accept that they are even more diverse and independent. The CMIP5 mean not being perfect by any stretch of the word still has only an RMSE of 0.12 C for monthly global mean temperatures from 1880 to 2020 which is surprisingly good considering how complex the climate system is to model.
Weather models generally have very good records of accuracy over their applicable time periods and are thusly useful. The UN IPCC CliSciFi models’ track records for past surface and atmospheric temperatures differ from observations (IIRC) by about 50 to 100% over the satellite era. Their modeled average global surface temperatures vary by 3 C; they are not modeling the same physics. Mashing together different modeling teams’ wild guesses has no predictive value. The Canadian high-ECS model is in no way comparable to the Russian low-ECS model and cannot be averaged to produce “information.”
Testing of this post goes thru?
Yes it did. I was trying to post and kept getting the message “nonce is invalid!” Whatever that might mean
The Church of Climate/Warming is just a denomination of the main religion of Secular Socialism whose main Gospel is destruction of free market capitalism. Destroying cheap and available energy is the primary reason that the Climate Clergy can only find CO2 as the cause of any effect in the weather.
Permit me to summarize: “G.I.G.O”
That’s just the job for me.
I get paid more for getting it wrong.
The sign of a really woke industry, failure is success.