By Andy May
I have a new op-ed in the Washington Examiner today that questions whether “climate change,” as commonly defined today, is a scientific concept. The op-ed is a very brief summary of a longer post on the topic here. The longer post contains all the references and links to supporting material, including a link to Karl Popper‘s famous book on the definitions of science and pseudoscience, called Conjectures and Refutations.
From the op-ed:
“Tornados, nor’easters, hurricanes, mid-winter thaws, 100-degree days, cold snaps, droughts, and flooding creeks all are presented as evidence of human-caused climate change, “proof” that human emissions of carbon dioxide are leading to an overheated planet.
However, Karl Popper, the famous philosopher, would say that these meteorological events do not support human-caused climate change because none of them can falsify the idea. If every event supports an idea, and no event can falsify it, the idea is not a scientific hypothesis.Washington Examiner.
Popper’s examples of pseudoscience included Marx’s theory of history. He observed on page 35 of his famous book, that “A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page, confirming evidence” for the theory. Freud’s theories were the same; every clinical case confirmed his ideas. A hypothesis that is not refutable by any conceivable event is not scientific.”
Andy, I think you’ve flat out ignored a large number of clear avenues by which AGW could be falsified, per Popper, were it actually wrong. A good number of predictions were made decades ago about how the climate would change due to human CO2 emissions. Most of them have been spot on correct. A few examples:
1- overall mean global temperature has followed quite closely the mean projections found in the 1990 and 1995 IPCC reports.
2- the lower atmosphere has warmed while the stratosphere has cooled
3- the tropopause and the effective radiating altitude has increased.
4- observed changes in the earth’s IR signature as viewed from the ground and from space have followed projections
5- there has been greater warming at the poles.
6- there has been more warming during the night than during the day
7- there has been more warming in winter than in summer
Every one of these predictions was made decades ago. Most of them would generally not occur with other “natural” climate change mechanisms. If a majority of them turned out to be wrong, AGW would be falsified. But most every one of them is turning out to be quite correct.
Not happening, so far. North Pole. South Pole.
What do you mean “not happening”, Chris? The data reference you just provided shows almost 2 degrees C warming in the Arctic since 1980. That’s two to three times more warming than the global average over that same time frame.
Yet another typical WUWT fail.
CO2 has been rising in the atmosphere since ~1880 whatever the cause, noting the temperature trend since 1980 is ‘cherry-picking’.
The time-series I posted are the longest instrumental series available for both N and S poles and neither shows any significant net warming over the periods covered.
80% of the total CO2 increase since 1880 was from just 1980 to the present. So no, no cherry pick at all. Just an honest look at the timeframe when most of the CO2 induced warming would be occurring.
Sorry, but yet another typical WUWT fail.
And what do you mean “no significant warming over the period covered”? That’s total baloney. If we’d had that same rate of warming (2 degrees per century) occurring since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, the oceans would all have boiled away by now.
As usual, you haven’t a clue what you are talking about. But that’s what WUWT does to people.
You mean the period from 1940-1970 (new ice ages scare) when cooling was very evident ?
Or do you mean the zero trend from 2000-2015
Or do you mean the zero trend for the last 9 or so years?
There is no evidence of any human CO2 warming anywhere.
Talk about a fail.. just look at every one of your posts.
They are just mantra regurgitation.. devoid of any science or comprehension.
b.nice sadly continues his willfully ignorant “Nuh Uh because I say so” policy of pretending away decades and decades worth of well established scientific facts.
Well, where are these “well established facts” that you are yapping on about.
Surly you, must have the scietific links at hand…
Or are you relying on just brain-washed non-science
We can wait.. bring science, not mantra….
Until them, just a massive MGC fail. !
Why did global temperatures actually fall between 1940 and 1980?
I tell you what Troll Bait, show us some individual temperature increases sufficient to offset those that don’t have any warming or even have cooling.
Don’t you wonder why studies and papers declaring warming only show the so-called Global Average Temperature. They never show regional temperatures, they just assume that everywhere on the earth is changing by the GAT. How wrong they are. Getting regional temps isn’t hard but must exceed their capabilities as it does yours.
Gorman says:
“they just assume that everywhere on the earth is changing by the GAT.”
Oh please. What an utterly ridiculous, laughably stupid falsehood. But that’s what WUWT does to people.
Global Average Temperature is just a quick, single valued way to easily observe the trend over time.
Local and regional temperatures are, of course, also all completely available. And of course there are many locations where warming is much higher than the global average. Attached is just one example.
Apparently Gorman is unaware of how easily this kind of local and regional data can be retrieved and examined. Not that this is any surprise. Gorman has demonstrated a tragic lack of awareness of so many well known facts already.
Funny how Iceland doesn’t have a “hockey stick” since the Arctic is warming.
My God, Gorman, why do you so constantly insist on playing the willfully ignorant rube?
The long term temperature trend at that station you reference is not only clearly UP, but it is also rising faster than the global average.
Yet another tragi-comical WUWT Gormanian FAIL.
Look at the dotted line dude. Do you think that is constant growth?
Sorry, but I just can’t believe what a brainwashed fool you are, Gorman. I’m truly embarrassed for you.
All you’ve done is show one particular cherry picked timeframe that happens to give a concave 2nd order fit. The overall trend is still obviously UP, as can clearly be seen in the graph I posted.
Just another tragic example of egregiously dishonest nonsense. Was it WUWT that vomited this disingenuous distortion into your empty skull? Probably.
Come on MGC, you must know the AMO rolled over from its cool phase to its warm phase starting in the late 70s. The cyclic changes in the Arctic are well documented. At the same time, the Antarctic has seen statistically significant cooling. The fail is yours, not WUWT.
Come on, Nelson, you must know that there’s been tons of evidence gathered since the 19th century that implicates increased CO2 levels in the air as a cause of warming. Why are you trying to pretend this evidence away with flimsy “bu bu bu bu what about AMO” excuses?
No, there is no evidence at all that CO2 causes warming
You have shown that by your absolute inability to produce any.
Sorry you aren’t educated enough to understand the effects of AMO, PDO etc etc
Forget the mantra you have been brain-washed with..
Go and find all this “evidence” that you say exists.
All that was discovered in the 19th century was that CO2 was a radiatively active gas.. anything else was pure conjecture / fantasy.
“All that was discovered in the 19th century was that CO2 was a radiatively active gas”
Another easily proven falsehood that yet again demonstrates your ignorance.
Arrhenius published research in 1896 which predicted reasonably accurately, even back then, the warming that would ensue from adding CO2 to the air.
As usual, your comments only continue to demonstrate, over and over and over again, that you haven’t any clue what you are talking about. None.
But that’s what WUWT does to people.
Which matches the early 20th century, and has, in less than a decade, fallen to half that value, and has had little impact at the other pole, as atmospheric CO2, presumably anthropogenic, has progressed.
Wrong..
Did you know the Arctic actually cooled from 1980-1994.
And that apart from the 2015 El Nino, all gone now… (and not caused by CO2)..
There has been no warming in the Arctic this century !
“almost 2 degrees C warming in the Arctic since 1980”
That HadCrud, one of the AGW priests from limited erratic surface data.
Notice how many temps than now were higher around 1940
Another MGC fail. !
And of course, there has been no warming in the Antarctic in the whole satellite era.
😉
Urban Heat Island Effect via Wiki:
‘The IPCC stated that “it is well-known that compared to non-urban areas urban heat islands raise night-time temperatures more than daytime temperatures”‘.’
The urban heat island temperature difference is not only usually larger at night than during the day, but also larger in winter than in summer’.
Nice try Chris. Yeah, it must be all those “urban heat islands” up in the Arctic creating all that warming up there.
Another epic WUWT fail.
Arctic is no warmer than it was around 1940.
Its part of the AMO cycle.
Another epic MGC FAIL !!
MGC, The Arctic did not warm until 1997, when a major climate shift took place.
As shown elsewhere The Arctic was actually cooling from 1980-1994. !
b.nice,
True, but I was talking about winter warming in the Arctic, the winters have warmed, but the summers/fall/spring are flat to cooling.
Graph includes winters, Andy.
Cooling from 1980-1994. That is what the data tells us.
Stratospheric cooling is not unique to GHGs, decreases in ozone caused by CFCs has the same effect.
Decreases in ozone cannot fully account for the temperature drop seen in the stratosphere. GHG forcing is playing a role as well.
Nice try again, but all in all, just another typical WUWT fail.
Neither ozone changes nor the laboratory modeled “Greenhouse Effect”, as CO2 emission has, presumably, been a progressive process, can account for the observed and estimated anomalies, suggesting that CO2 has a weak or misinferred correlation with temperature changes.
Sorry MGC, As shown in the plot above, the stratospheric cooling is decreasing.
Because of the positive temperature gradient above the tropopause, any natural solar forced warming must lead to stratospheric cooling at a set height. All depends on where you measure it.
“any natural solar forced warming must lead to stratospheric cooling blah blah blah”
Ridiculously false. An increase of solar heat influx would warm all layers of the atmosphere. Not to mention that the warming would be mostly during the day, but what has been observed is more warming during the night.
Even grade school children would realize such things … but not WUWT cultists.
MGC and b.nice,
It doesn’t matter, the lower troposphere is warming now, but the stratosphere has stopped cooling. The so-called “atmospheric fingerprint” has disappeared. It clearly has nothing to do with CO2 or solar warming. The stratosphere has different drivers than the troposphere.
“the lower troposphere is warming now,”
Well no, It isn’t
Its been cooling since the 2015/2016 El Nino.
The only warming in the satellite era has come at El Nino events.
Andy says: “the stratosphere has stopped cooling. The so-called “atmospheric fingerprint” has disappeared. It clearly has nothing to do with CO2”
Andy, you’re pointing to mere short term data in order to claim that it has “stopped”.
Gee, this sounds familiar. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeah .. it’s just like that old “bu bu bu bu bu THE PAUSE” excuse, now totally refuted by the latest upward warming step that started in 2016.
Sorry that you don’t have the scientific comprehension to understand basic science.
A massive fail on your behalf !
“GHG forcing is playing a role as well.”
There is no evidence of that whatsoever.
“There is no evidence of that”
Merely because I say so. Never mind that I’ve never bothered to actually check what evidence might exist in the scientific research literature.
You could bother providing a link to this non-existent science.
But you wont, because you can’t.
The ball is in your court..
Real scientific evidence…. except you need to figure out what that actually is, because at the moment, you obviously don’t have a clue.
More sadly typical WUWT lies. I’ve posted a multitude of research references throughout this comment stream. But this blind buffoon just keeps pretending otherwise.
That’s what WUWT does to people.
MGC, n.n, and b.nice,
Here is a graph from Judith Lean, 2017. The temperatures at 20 km are in the lower to mid stratosphere. Compare them to the surface or the 5km lower troposphere. As I said the so-called “atmospheric fingerprint” has disappeared as GHG are increasing. Compare also to the red ozone curve. There is little doubt the lower troposphere is warming overall, but that may not last long, I’ll grant you. Cooling may be on the way.
Andy says: “There is little doubt the lower troposphere is warming overall, but that may not last long, I’ll grant you. Cooling may be on the way.”
So-called “skeptics” have been making this same “cooling may be on the way” prediction for decades now. And they’ve also been wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong for decades.
There’s little if any rational reason whatever to believe them now.
Do you believe this UAH graph shows that temperatures have always returned to zero rather than continuous growth? Tell us what is really happening!
Gorman, what is it with you and your foolhardy hangup with the term “continuous growth” ?? No one ever claimed that temperature rise would not have any ups and downs along the way. Why are you trying to disingenuously pretend otherwise?
Yep, all in all, just another woefully ludicrous Gormanian “objection”, so easily ripped to shreds.
The IPCC First Assessment Report (FAR): ‘we predict: increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 °C per decade’.
The linear trend rise since 1990 is ~ 0.4C (UAH6.0).
Chris, you missed the fact that that 1990 FAR projection assumed much more rapid rises in ancillary greenhouse gases like methane, CFCs, etc…. which didn’t actually happen. So your point is (gee what a surprise) not valid.
And isn’t it convenient how you WUWT clowns always quote only the very lowest global temperature rise dataset.
You all used to quote only RSS satellite data. But RSS fixed their satellite drift errors and raised their temperature rise rates. So you threw RSS (and everyone else except UAH) under the bus, because all of their temperature rise rates don’t jive with your preconceived political propaganda mindset.
Such laughably transparent bias!
The temperature has been recorded as rising, falling, and, on a global average, paused, while CO2 emission has been asserted to be a progressive process, cannot explain the anomalies recorded and divergence from the models.
n.n.
Of course there are influences on the climate other than CO2 warming; but their existence is not a valid excuse to ignorantly pretend away the influence of CO2 warming.
A radiative effect proven in the laboratory, which may have a net-zero effect in the wild. The natural processes and phenomena can completely explain the temperature anomalies in local, and especially regional observation. Without a uniform forcing, the global statistic is meaningless, fit for marketing purposes.
“A radiative effect proven in the laboratory, which may have a net-zero effect in the wild”
The radiative effect has been measured and proven “in the wild”. Why am I not surprised that WUWT never apprised you of this fact.
Spectral signatures of climate change in the Earth’s infrared spectrum between 1970 and 2006
Chen et al Environmental Science 2007
“satellite observations of the clear sky infrared emitted radiation by the Earth in 1970, 1997 and in 2003 showed the appearance of changes in the outgoing spectrum, which agreed with those expected from known changes in the concentrations of well-mixed greenhouse gases over this period. Thus, the greenhouse forcing of the Earth has been observed to change in response to these concentration changes.”
“The natural processes and phenomena can completely explain the temperature anomalies in local, and especially regional observation.”
Merely because I, the great and powerful n.n, have decreed it to be so. Never mind that the overwhelming preponderance of the published scientific research literature demonstrates exactly the opposite:
A couple of examples:
Lean and Rind (2008) “None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures.”
Santer et al (2013) – “We present evidence that a human-caused signal can also be identified relative to the larger “total” natural variability arising from sources internal to the climate system, solar irradiance changes, and volcanic forcing. total natural variability cannot produce sustained global-scale tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling. Our results provide clear evidence for a discernible human influence on the thermal structure of the atmosphere.”
“The key features of this pattern are global-scale tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling over the 34-y satellite temperature record. We detect a “human influence” signal in all cases, even if we test against natural variability estimates with much larger fluctuations in solar and volcanic influences than those observed since 1979. These results highlight the very unusual nature of observed changes in atmospheric temperature.”
MGC => Nice references but don’t show what you claim.
Lean and Rind (2008)
Santer et al (2013)
This study uses models and the 8.5 growth pattern. Hardy har har!
The studies you show as “proof” are all comparative and do not have any causal mathematical basis. Statistics from the top to the bottom.
Lean and Rind’s study at 0.74C increase per century is less than catastrophic to say the least!
Gorman always has some flimsy excuse to disingenuously handwave away research results that are not congruent with his preconceived ideological viewpoint.
Bottom line is this, Gorman: none of your flimsy “objections” alter in any way the end result of these research studies, which is that natural influences alone cannot fully explain the warming trend observed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Show us a study that claims to have found a functional relationship between CO2 and temperature so that a scientific prediction can be made. Otherwise, everything you have shown so far is nothing more that inference and religious belief.
Thanks for yet another spew of woefully intentional ignorance Gorman. Such studies have been around for over a century. The first one was Arrhenius in 1896. Even way back then, that study made reasonably good estimates of the warming that would accrue from adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
Why is it that you ignorantly go on, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, foolishly pretending to yourself that such things don’t exist? Why? Answer the question.
“pretend away the influence of CO2 warming.”
One does not need to “pretend away” a fantasy.
You need to produce actual evidence, rather than regurgitated anti-science BS.
Warming by atmospheric CO2 has never been observed or measured anywhere on the planet.
Here’s b.nice once again ignorantly pretending that scientific research published in some of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world are merely “anti-science BS” and are “not” evidence. And how does he “justify” such statements? “BECAUSE I SAY SO”, that’s how!
Sorry, b.nice, but it is these kinds of comments you post that so totally demonstrate that you’re merely playing the willfully ignorant troll. A mindless buffoon just blindly parroting anti-reality talking point lies that have been vomited into your empty skull over and over and over again by your WUWT propaganda puppet masters.
I’ll likely not reply to too many more of your comments from here on. They’re just too juvenile, too willfully ignorant, too long proven to be false, and too laughably ridiculous to bother with.
“But RSS fixed their satellite drift errors”
RUBBISH, they still use the old wonky satellite, and then use “climate models” to adjust their once-was-data.
RSS has become another epic agenda-driven scientific FAIL.
Keep googling. You still haven’t shown a mathematical relationship between CO2 and temperature. Until you do, you have no proof, just conjecture.
Pauses of warming during increasing CO2 are falsification of your position.
“Pauses of warming during increasing CO2 are falsification of your position”
What a ridiculously stupid comment. Every bit as stupid as claiming that temporary outgoing waves are “proof” that the tide isn’t coming in.
Gorman’s “arguments” are such a shameful embarrassment. But that’s what WUWT does to people.
MGC =>
Nice ad hominem. You didn’t even show a reference or argument to the claim. That won’t get any points in debate.
Why don’t you show some math showing why pauses don’t falsify the claim that rising CO2 causes continuously rising temperatures.
If you cannot comprehend that simple analogy regarding ocean waves and the tides, Gorman, then there is simply no hope for you.
Outgoing ocean waves (“pauses”) are so obviously not “evidence” to falsify the idea that the tide is coming in. In the same way, temperature trend pauses are so obviously not “evidence” to falsify the idea of a rising temperature trend.
In fact, your pause “reasoning” is so ridiculously false, it wouldn’t even matter what the reason is that is causing the rising temperature trend. Because there is lots of “noise” in the climate system, pauses would not be “evidence” to dispute a rising temperature trend were it caused by CO2, were it caused by solar changes, were it caused by volcanic processes, or were it caused even by magical leprechauns.
I’m truly embarrassed for you that you can’t (or simply won’t) see what is so blindingly obvious.
First, there is no NOISE in the climate system. Noise is an extraneous signal that is similar to and interferes with the intelligence contained in a signal. Temperature does not have any interference from something that looks like temperature but is not temperature. The fact that it has variations in its analog life as a physical phenomena is something that must be dealt with just like the movement of the solar system bodies.
The fact is that climate scientists (and you) have tried to fit a periodic analog signal into a statistical domain that is designed to be used with discreet values that have discrete probabilities and use standard statistical techniques to deal with it. Things like linear regressions which are not designed to describe continuous time based periodic functions. Take a look at the attached UAH graph that shows a function that returns to zero and tell us how a linear regression truly describes such a phenomena.
To do this properly requires substantial work to develop an adequate representation of the temperature signal. What needs to be done is to use Digital Signal Processing techniques. All of a sudden things like Nyquist and sample rates become important. Read this document on DSP to get a smattering of knowledge about digitizing an analog continuous time varying signal.
The Scientist and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing Statistics, Probability and Noise (analog.com)
“there is no NOISE in the climate system”
Oh please. You’re just playing laughably ridiculous word games, Gorman. “Noise” in this context is the same as “variations in its analog life” which you admit exist.
“Take a look at the attached UAH graph that shows a function that returns to zero”
“returns to zero” is in this context is totally meaningless. What is called “zero” on a graph like this is purely arbitrary. One could just as well label the initial starting temperature value for this graph as “zero”, in which case, no it does not “return to zero” at all.
“What needs to be done is to use Digital Signal Processing techniques.”
What really needs to be done is to understand the physics of the processes that have created the underlying trend … something you steadfastly refuse to even consider, because to do so would rip your fairy tale “skeptic” dreamworld to shreds.
In this context, digital signal processing merely creates pseudo-scientific mathematical representations of the data that are not based on nor tied to any physical reality.
And oh, by the way, you’re also staking your “argument” on a totally false strawman statement “the claim that rising CO2 causes continuously rising temperatures”.
No one ever claimed “continuously” rising temperatures. Unlike you, wallowing in your cesspool of willful ignorance, science acknowledges the existence of random noise that will of course create temporary short term ups and downs in the overall long term warming trend.
Yet another shamefully dishonest Gormanian FAIL.
If you believe in only positive feedback, then the growth in temperature will never cease. An ever increasing power will be sent back to the input with nothing to prevent a constant rise. Why do you think speakers howl when positive feedback occurs? The only thing that limits the volume is the power the the supply is able to provide. Which by the way, is exactly one of the problems with your positive feedback theory. Tell us where the ever increasing power originates!
I was waiting for someone ignorant enough to bring up this “believe only in positive feedback” so-called “objection”. Why am I not surprised that it was Jim Gorman, LOL?
You actually answered your own question with your howling speakers analogy, Gorman, and didn’t even realize it, LOL. Yeah, the volume increases rapidly because of positive feedback but it is eventually limited. Same thing occurs with temperature rise. Positive feedback initially raises temperatures in earnest, but that rise is eventually limited.
Hey, here’s a thought: maybe do some genuine scientific research for a change, Gorman, and find out for yourself why the temperature rise from positive feedback is eventually limited.
Ok dude, you are so brilliant, so describe where the energy originates for the original GHG warming. That is supposedly from a positive feedback and therefore requires extra energy. Where does it come from? Why is it limited?
Why does more and more CO2 keep manufacturing more and more energy?
Do you even understand where the energy in an amplifier originates? Do you understand that there is no negative feedback that cancels the positive feedback?
You are doing a lousy job of explaining anything. All I see is word salad from you.
Gorman, the power limitation of the amplifier is in effect a “negative feedback”. The mic-speaker-amp system tries to keep increasing the volume, but it can’t because power is limited.
And I’m sorry, but I’m not your remedial science tutor. These other questions you are asking are all basic climate science. So stop wasting your time here posting inane nonsense and instead go actually learn some real science for a change. From real scientific sources. Not from pseudo-science peddlers like WUWT.
And really, the biggest question of all here is this: how can you be constantly trying to pretend away CO2 warming due to human emissions when you don’t actually even know anything about it?
“I KNOW the science is wrong, even though I don’t actually know anything about the science.”
OMG LOL! That’s YOU, bro. What a disgrace.
Just one more response to the troll.
Sorry dude, it is not a “feedback”. It is a limit on the amount of energy available to the system. It is just like the sun in that the sun is the energy source.
Show us the math used to analyze amplifier feedback where the energy source is included in the analysis.
Read this paper and tell everyone where Vcc enters into the analysis.
https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bora/publications/ISCAS98-Feedback.pdf
Gorman, you can play as many juvenile word games as you want. Doing so won’t change the fact that positive feedback which creates ever increasing volume in a mic-speaker-amp system eventually reaches a limit, and the volume stops increasing.
The same is true with climate change. Positive feedbacks which create ever increasing temperatures also eventually reach a limit, and the temperature stops increasing. Sorry that you are too willfully ignorant to know why.
And Gorman, you’ve never answered a question I’ve asked multiple times now:
How can you be constantly trying to pretend away CO2 warming due to human emissions when you don’t actually even know anything about it?
Your attitude is “I KNOW the science is wrong, even though I don’t actually know anything about the science.”
Answer the question.
1.. no, it hasn’t .. It is well below Hansen’s lowest “projection”
2.. No evidence of human causation, natural cycles and variability.
3.. Solar force warming will do that.
4.. OLR observations show big rise in OLR., that follows UAH data quite closely.. No sign of any human fingerprint
5.. Not the Antarctic.. Arctic is probably no warmer now than around 1940.
6.. Urban warming will do that, so will solar warming..
7.. Be very glad of less cold winters..
Yes, they knew about the AMO and PDO.. easy to make those predictions..
They also know that both are starting to turn downwards, as per their cycles.. hence the rabid attempt to get their agenda in place before cooling becomes even more apparent..
NONE of your points has anything whatsoever to do with atmospheric CO2
MGC,
1. Re Surface temperature on land, this is correct. According to AR6, SSTs are overestimated as well as mid-troposphere temperatures (page 3-24).
2. The stratospheric cooling has slowed a lot, not consistent with increasing emissions. Stratospheric cooling is now at the same rate as the middle troposphere. The “atmospheric fingerprint” has almost disappeared since the big climate shift in 1997. See attached plot.
3. True, this always happens when the surface warms, so what? It says nothing about the cause of the warming.
MGC,
4. The energy imbalance has decreased, not consistent with increasing emissions. See attached from Dewitte, 2019.
5. There has been greater warming at the North Pole, not at the South Pole.
6&7. Yes, the climate is now milder, again, what does that have to do with human emissions??
Remote Sensing | Free Full-Text | Decadal Changes of the Reflected Solar Radiation and the Earth Energy Imbalance (mdpi.com)
Andy, the authors of that remote sensing article you reference note that their results are influenced by the recent decrease of incoming solar radiation. So no, one cannot reliably conclude that their results are “inconsistent with increased emissions”.
Moreover, the authors also appear to admit from their textual statements and from the references they cite (going all the way back to Arrhenius 1896) that warming from human CO2 emissions is essentially a known scientific fact.
MGC,
CO2 is a greenhouse gas and all other things equal would raise surface temperatures about one degree if it doubled from 400 to 800 ppm. No one argues that one degree is a problem, it isn’t.
But everything else will not stay the same. So, the discussion is not about CO2 it is about the feedbacks to CO2 caused warming. Do the feedbacks help cool the Earth, as I believe? Are they neutral, as some believe? Are they positive feedbacks, as the IPCC believes? No one really knows, but most observation-based studies suggest they are negative to neutral. See the discussion here and in Part one of the series:
Climate Sensitivity to CO2, what do we know? Part 2. – Andy May Petrophysicist
“Do the feedbacks help cool the Earth, as I believe?”
Negative feedbacks make no sense whatever. If that were really true, then how was it that the earth was so much warmer during the dinosaur age?
“most observation-based studies suggest they are negative to neutral.”
Sorry, but completely untrue. In fact, the very first graph you present in your own referenced article shows most feedback values in the published scientific literature lie somewhere around 2 to 4, not zero and not negative.
MGC,
That’s easy, during the “dinosaur age” the world ocean could circulate in the tropics. The current ice age began when the Falklands opened, surrounding Antarctica with the Southern Ocean and Panama was created blocking the waterway from the tropical Atlantic to the tropical Pacific. The first event caused the Antarctic ice sheet to be created 30 Ma and the second formed the Arctic ice sheet 3 Ma. The world is unusually cold today. (Ma=millions of years ago)
Pacific freshening drives Pliocene cooling and Asian monsoon intensification | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
Sorry, Andy, but no. According to your prior comments, “negative feedbacks” should have inhibited that dinosaur age warming, regardless whatever handwaving cause for that warming that you want to trot out.
I’ll say it again: given the earth’s known climate history and the existence of much warmer conditions in ages past, negative feedbacks make no sense. If negative feedbacks were truly a reality, then those much warmer conditions should have been inhibited by negative feedback and should not have occurred, no matter what the cause of the warming influence.
But those much warmer conditions did occur. Negative feedbacks make no sense.
Moreover, the vast overwhelming preponderance of the scientific research finds positive feedbacks, mostly in the 2x-4x range.
It looks to me that you’re just trying to fool yourself into believing something that, almost certainly, simply ain’t true.
You really don’t have a clue do you? Without negative feedbacks just what do you think limits warming? If positive feedbacks is all that there is, what limits the growth of temps? Positive feedback continually “feeds back” ever increasing power from the output to the input, what limits that growth?
If it were not for negative feedbacks, none of us would be here today. For 600 million years the Earth has stayed between 11 and 28 degrees. Do you think that is by accident? It is all because of negative feedbacks.
Andy, really?
Of course, there is negative feedback which kicks in … eventually … to limit the temperature rise due to positive feedbacks. But those positive feedbacks can push things a pretty long way (much warmer dinosaur age temperatures being one example) before they are eventually limited.
There’s one limiting factor in particular that does most all the work. Anyone who understands basic physics should be able to identify it immediately. I won’t mention it just yet, as I’ve challenged Jim Gorman to do himself a favor, by going and doing some genuine research for a change, and find out for himself what it is.
What you are proposing is a cycle, up due to positive feedback and then down with negative feedback in a natural variation.
Can you show that has happened in the past? What is the process in mathematical terms?
If you know and understand basic physics so well then spit out the answer. Nobody plays guessing games here. If they know something it is asserted with references and data to see if others can poke holes in the assertion. You want to be a teacher, then teach, don’t play troll games.
Gorman says: “What you are proposing is a cycle, up due to positive feedback and then down with negative feedback in a natural variation”
First off, no, this is not “my” proposal. It is firmly established science, initially identified via experimental data way back in 1879.
Secondly, no, it is not a “cycle” and it is not “up then down”. It is up but further increase becomes progressively more and more limited, until the increase eventually stops.
“You want to be a teacher, then teach”
The best teachers prompt their students to teach themselves. I think you’ve been given adequate information to find what I’m talking about by yourself.
So stop wasting your time just blog chatting back and forth with some guy who you want to believe is just an ignorant troll anyway, LOL. Go spend some worthwhile time doing some real research instead!
More word salad with no content.
You are a troll.
I will no longer feed the troll.
Gorman sadly confirms his willful ignorance yet again.
“No content” ? Oh please. There were multiple pieces of relevant information provided. You’re just being too deliberately dumb to acknowledge them:
1- what we are talking about here has been known, experimentally verified science, since 1879.
2- what we are talking about here is not a “cycle” nor is it “up then down”.
3- what we are talking about here progressively limits temperature increase, until that increase stops.
Gorman still won’t do any genuine research of his own from any genuine scientific sources. He knows that if he ever did, his fairy tale dreamworld of denier delusions would be ripped to shreds.
So, you admit that the energy imbalance is not proof of human-caused climate change. We can agree on that. Besides, the estimate of an energy imbalance of ~0.5 W/m2, is an order of magnitude lower than the accuracy of our estimates, at least.
I would note that your original assertion was far stronger than “inconsistent with …”
Andy asks what points 6 & 7 (more warming during the night than during the day and more warming in the winter than in the summer) have to do with human emissions.
These effects are unlikely to occur via other natural warming mechanisms, such as changes in incoming solar radiation or release of heat from ocean cycles. They are more ancillary pieces of evidence that are congruent with human CO2 emissions being the primary cause of the current long term warming trend.
This is not true, see here:
Detection and Attribution of Man-Made Climate Change – Andy May Petrophysicist
I’m sorry Andy, but please identify to me where, if anywhere, in your referenced article you discuss more warming during the night than during the day and more warming in the winter than in the summer as possibly being caused by any natural mechanism. Those are the topics you have responded to with your reference.
Unless I’ve really really really missed something, I don’t believe you actually discussed either of these in your referenced article, anywhere at all. In fact, I key word searched your article. The words “winter” , “summer”, and “night” appear … nowhere.
Therefore, it appears to me that you’ve simply thrown out an irrelevant red herring. You’re just blowing more distracting tactics smoke.
Why am I not surprised?
MGC,
You are engaging in a classic strawman fallacy. I was clearly not addressing warming winters and nights, I was addressing your assertion that natural forces could not cause the weather to get milder, which is what is really happening. The latitudinal-temperature-gradient (LTG) is getting lower, due mainly to warming of winter and nighttime temperatures.
The most severe weather occurs in colder times like the Little Ice Age (aka the “pre-industrial”). These are times with high LTG. I am working on a post addressing warming winters and nights via natural processes with a friend as we speak, but it is not ready yet. Look for it before the end of the year.
“I was clearly not addressing warming winters and nights”
But those were the topics to which your comment was responding.
“I was addressing your assertion that natural forces could not cause the weather to get milder”
But the reference you provided did not address this either!
I’ll say it again: the reference you provided did not address the topic of discussion. Viewed from here, it had all the earmarks of an irrelevant red herring
Sorry, I did not realize that you are learning disabled, either that or you didn’t actually read the post I linked to, not sure which. A pertinent quote from the post:
“As part of their argument and to support their conclusion that man has caused most of the warming they write on page 869 [AR4]:
Wow! Talk about blatant and obvious cherry picking. A very similar rapid rise in global temperatures took place just over 1100 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period according to Richard Alley’s central Greenland temperature reconstruction here. Many other reconstructions also show similar dramatic temperature increases over the last 4000 years, see here. In fact, over the last 4000 years there have likely been several warming events similar to the one we are experiencing today in combination with an over-all declining temperature trend since the Holocene Thermal Optimum due to the Earth’s declining obliquity (see Javier’s Figure 9 here).’
Detection and Attribution of Man-Made Climate Change – Andy May Petrophysicist
Read before writing, you only make yourself into a fool.
Andy, the topic to which you responded for this particular thread was very specific: more warming at night and more warming during the winter as being earmarks of greenhouse effect influence (due to human emissions).
Yes, you addressed other possible indicators of human influence, and you made some general comparisons of current warming trends to prior warming episodes in your referenced article. But so what? These two very specific earmarks were not discussed.
Sorry if I did not make myself clear enough, but that was (and remains) my point.
MGC,
As I made clear previously, I am actively involved, with a friend, in researching natural causes for a milder climate, that is warmer nights and winters. I am not at liberty to discuss these issues here, but we will be publishing our results soon. Watch for my future posts, you will probably find them interesting if this is a topic of interest to you. I just cannot say more now, I wish I could.
Suffice it to say, warming nights and winters, at least in my opinion, are not evidence of human-caused global warming, quite the opposite. More later in the year. This applies double in the Arctic.
When you say “we will be publishing our results soon”, I assume you mean only in the blogosphere, not in the peer reviewed scientific literature.
There will be blog posts for sure. As for peer-reviewed journals, or other venues, that is unclear at this time. We’ll see. We aren’t at that point yet, still doing the research. We have a lot of material; it may be all of the above.
As far as I am aware, Andy, you’ve never actually published anything in the peer reviewed scientific literature in regard to climate change. I’m not sure if this is correct; but if it is, then it would seem unlikely that this new “research” would get published there.
Popper also said, “That which explains everything, explains nothing.” I think that sums it up pretty well.
Hello Andy,
By chance I am just reading Popper’s “Conjectures and Refutations” and also have his “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” to hand. But we must also remember Carl Sagan’s book, “The Demon-haunted World. Science as a candle in the dark.” Sagan’s book is, for me, the easiest to read, probably because its language is more colloquial and less steeped in the jargon of philosophy.
Keep up the good work.
Regards,
John.
This is a good, thought provoking article by Andy May. I believe the answer is that climate science is a composite of science and pseudoscience. To understand why this is, we must look at the evolution of its construction.
Maurice Strong, Boss of the UN environment Program in the Seventies, was concerned with the impact of capitalism on the poor and how to bring about the redistribution of wealth on a global basis. He recognised that the growing concern about AGW presented an opportunity for change. In simple terms, the rich created a climate emergency with their CO2 emissions, the poor were now suffering. The rich must reduce emissions by ending or changing their activities and must pay compensation to the poor. The UN embraced this idea. It fitted with their ambitions of global governance and control of global resources such as energy. Politically, it pleased the developing countries, socialist governments, environmentalists and green activists.
The IPCC was formed. The alleged warming role of CO2 was a given. Other UN agencies had a role, such as the WMO and WCRP. The latter includes management of the CMIP project that coordinates climate models.
The Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise published an account of how the IPCC operates. In effect, a huge literature review is conducted and its findings are distilled into a report. This provides scope for including alarmist material and excluding inconvenient stuff. Running parallel with this, governments get the advice for policymakers and academics receive funding from governments, as do the great and the good of the learned societies and institutions. The models they develop enter the CMIP program. In the UK, the Climate Change Committee digests the output from this process and advises the government on policy.
It seems to me that the IPCC science sausage machine produces a mixture of real and junk science having first filtered the ingredients to make sure they do not harm the project. This is how inconvenient science, e.g. the work of Happer and Wijngaarden can be prevented from entering the system. In theory, academia could stand up and blow the whistle, but I suspect that many are true believers, many need the job and the rest have been removed over the years.
In fairness, I need to declare that I am an observer, not an expert, but if the above description is about right, it explains the resilience of the IPCC campaign. The system is in place from the top of the UN to politicians. I can see only three vulnerabilities. The first is that the UN is becoming ridiculously alarmist. It is losing credibility, respect and authority. The second is that policies like net zero are raising public resentment and causing people to start questioning the justification. The third is that the science is being questioned by more and more people and sites like this are playing an educational role.
Sadly, those who oppose the alarmist science cannot seem to agree on a single alternative, as this site demonstrates regularly. We need to identify the things we agree on and then seek to resolve the issues that divide us.
One can not agree on a single alternative because there isn’t one. The world works on cycles of varying frequencies and phases. Until you begin to see trig functions based on varying magnitudes and phases, understanding climate is going to be nothing more than linear regressions showing correlations and never causation.
Thanks, Jim. You are right about that. I was thinking more about proposals about specific assumptions that can either be accepted or rejected. Some of these are potentially game changing (to quote their authors.) I refer to Monckton and his feedback theory, the work on saturation of the absorption bands by Happer et al. and the ideas of the Connollys.
I suspect that some rejection is based on NIH which is not invented here and grates on personal beliefs. Some rejection is linked to a blanket rejection of anything that accepts greenhouse theory. There are many other possibilities.
I suppose that my frustration is based on my belief that if the sceptical movement pinned its support on Monckton or Happer (for example) then we would stand a very good chance of challenging the IPCC position. While these ideas are rejected by many for whatever reasons, we remain governed by the IPCC via our governments.
Climate change is any change in climate, and if it isn’t defined like that, it isn’t climate change.
They adjust historical climate data to make their models look like they work, they don’t. So they take an average of all the wrong answers and call it the right answer. Strict BS.
How sad to see Craig blindly parrotting delusional conspiracy theory lies about “adjusting historical data to make their models work”. Delusional conspiracy theory lies that have been vomited into his empty skull by his WUWT propaganda puppet masters.
Ask a climate nut if they can provide any evidence that climate stasis has ever existed.
Essentially their predictions of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming have continually failed to come true from as far back as 1989 so climate change it had to become-
null | AP News
Now they find justification in every untoward weather event but not to worry net zero will fix all that just you wait and see. Only when net zero is achieved will the proof be obvious to us all with the weather and closure with their precautionary principle. You might think that’s somewhat ambitious but it’s not like they want to change the weather on the moon or the other planets and moons in our solar system is it Lloydo et al?
Psychotic delusion is what it is.
“A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page, confirming evidence” for the theory. Freud’s theories were the same; every clinical case confirmed his ideas. A hypothesis that is not refutable by any conceivable event is not scientific.”
But even Freud realized “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
The Church of Climate/Warming is just a denomination of the main religion of Secular Socialism, whose deity is the government. Climates scientists are little more than educated clergy and Al Gore is the Joel Osteen of faith.
Claims of human control of temperature fit the definition of pseudoscience, the real problem is that the term gives the liars too much credit.