"Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 3 42

[jmw]

At 273 posts I guess the time has come to request the old thread archived and continue in a new thread and it is in this thread that I think the latest news has its proper place.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?
Actually, perhaps we'd better not answer that because I suspect the answer is that in any profession there are complete f***-ups who will never be brought to book simply because the credibility of the people who have believed them for so long is also at risk and once one goes then the domino effect comes into being.

I guess that it is only when NASA closes that we will see and end to the career of this fine purveyor of temperature data but we can be sure he will turn up in some other role on the IPCC or as an acolyte of Nobel Laureate, Al Gore.

Success, it seems, depends not on getting it right but on notoriety and why else would so many deadly politicians earn so much on the speaking circuit once they have finally left office and while their dark deeds are still fresh in everyone's mind?


You know I can't help wondering, if it weren't for those "Chads" I wonder what sort of a condition the world would be in now? And, if we are in dire financial straits now, what kind of position would we otherwise be in?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[LCruiser]

I was requested to elucidate my objections to Holdren's work here:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/uploads/2007_11-6_Forum_(NXPowerLite).pdf

and thought I'd post up some comments, in case b2theory or anyone else wants to actually talk about the subject.


P 5 Uses Hansen's subjectively "corrected" temperatures instead of the objective satellite temperatures.

P 6 Uses the fallback to illiteracy in discussing solar influence - talks about solar "input" change vs. galactic cosmic ray (gcr) influence. Cosmic rays are not even mentioned in the document.

P 8 Presents as fact the assumption temperatures are driven by CO2, when temperature change *leads* CO2 change in the record.

P 9 Presents assumed global temperatures from 1950's as fact. Before satellites we knew nothing about Antarctic temps, for example. Others also based on Hansen's subjective interpretations.

P 10 (and throughout) again presents unproven theory as a "matter of fact" reason for changes. Solar modulation of cloudiness could be causing this change, as could be land use changes in China.

P 11 Again (still) ignoring potential for land use and gcr changes.

P 12 UHI and black carbon effects are particularly extreme in the Arctic, but not mentioned. In fact he goes on to ignore that fact throughout.

P 16 Ignores increased reporting and encroachment onto flood plains.

P 17 Ignores the reason there are more intense fires is because we keep putting them out instead of letting them burn to clean out the underbrush and thin out the forest.

P 18 Again ignores increased reporting as a reason.

P 19 Back to China, ignoring land use changes.

P 21 The most egregious - blames "global warming" on deaths that might have occured anyway, and ignores fertilization effect of increased CO2 which has no doubt decreased starvation in other cases.

P 23 Heat waves kill the infirm. Mortality rates decline after a heat wave. Cold, however, is an equal opportunity killer.

P 26 Drought projections are from simplistic models that don't even calculate, for example, convection, or increases in flora from CO2 fertilization. Note he does not say "possible" he states this graph (and others based on simplistic modeling) as fact.

There are a few. I have skipped several.

 

[btrueblood]

"One thing I have learnt to be very wary of is the dangers of extrapolation, "

And that from fairly mathematically well-posed models, probably without any in-built chaotic behavior, unlike any real climate model (which any good gas dynamics major will tell you is the quintessential problem to define the term "ill-posed"). To take any chaotic system, and attempt to predict its future behavior based upon numerical simulations is folly of the highest order (no matter what number of such simulations by no matter what number of fools). Even the best NASA scientists won't predict orbital motions of planetoids beyond a certain point, because the system (Newton's laws) is chaotic for the general n-body problem.

I see a lot of arm waving when it comes to the discussion of errors from these numerical simulations of our climate, all of which boil down to "it predicts the past climate quite nicely". Right, but the system itself is unpredictable in its behavior, so there is very real uncertainty in any extrapolation, and that fact gets glossed over by the media, and our objections to the pronouncements from the code jockeys seem to keep being ignored.

 

[cranky108]

But with extrapolation you should be able to get a range of possibilities, and certenty factors when deveating from the norm of the prediction.
No where on the common news has anyone given a range and certenty factors. We are expected to be like sheep and believe what is said (uck bad taste).

Even if the journals are correct, that's not what is being told to the common public.

 

[btrueblood]

Sorry, Greg, realized after re-reading your post you'd already pointed out most of the ideas in mine...

 

[jmw]

LCruiser,
It appears we are out of date, the Terms global warming and its successor, climate change are now obsolete. Prof Holdern prefers "climate disruption":

http://climatespin.blogspot.com/2008/08/words-matter-call-it-climate-disruption.html

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SnTMan]

Even what it's called is continuously changing! I wonder if the models predicted....

Regards,

Mike

 

[LCruiser]

Hmmm. I wonder if "climate disruption" will convince people that weather itself (which *is* "climate disruption") is caused by man and we need to donate even more to the collection plate of the carbon broker preachers. No doubt, since there is more weather coverage now than ever before and every "disruption" makes the headlines...

 

[cranky108]

Does more weather disruption = more wind power? Makes one wonder.

 

[jmw]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...e-under-Obama-presidency-says-Lord-Stern.html

Oops!
I like the picture that accompanies this which is of Obama and Gore.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

Yes, the mutually clasped hands looks like they both went to the same charm school. Also its too bad about all that damned snow and ice. What the world needs now is a pic of a frozen polar bear.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[cranky108]

Oh great. Watch you wallet.

 

[jmw]

Do clasped hands signify a "done deal", mutual understanding?


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[SnTMan]

Yeah, now the debate is REALLY OVER.

Regards,

Mike

 

[rb1957]

hey, at least whilst they're holding each other's hand, that means they've only got one free to plunge into our wallets ... i'd prefer to see a good old bear hug ... keep them there hands where we can see them !!

 

[cranky108]

News article on Drudge, they want to tax cows at $175 per head.

What next a tax on breathing?

 

[SnTMan]

cranky108, well, yeah, we have to get people to minimize the CO2 emitted when exhaling.

Its a dangerous pollutant, you know. A permit needs to be required.

Regards,

Mike

 

[jmw]

White is the new Green!
Sorry to borrow from the fashion world's silly statements but apparently a "scientist" suggests that making our roads and buildings white would solve the global warming problem.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...-to-tackle-global-warming-scientist-says.html

"I just don't see a downside to this idea. It benefits everybody and you don't have to have hard negotiations to make it happen."

I guess he hasn't asked anyone for input. Let's see, that will take a shed-load of paint (which contains resins) and a huge amount of Titanium Oxide.

I would also guess that we'll all go blind (Actually, I'd guess this guy has shares in Polaroid Sunglasses).

Incidentally, note on this page the link to an article claiming that the atmosphere was warm in the ice age - I may have to read that, it is not something that would have mediately occurred to me.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[davidbeach]

One theory on ice ages holds that it is the loss of the arctic ice cap that triggers ice ages. Open water in the arctic ocean allows a significant increase in snowfall in the northern latitudes such that one winter's snow doesn't all melt before the next winter's snow begins and it "snow balls" from there. Eventually there is enough snow coverage to reflect enough heat back into space that things cool down enough for the arctic to freeze over again removing the moisture source, reducing the snow fall to less than what will melt over the summer. Warming of the oceans can easily lead to an ice age.

 

[jmw]

Er, let's see.
If we cover the planet with snow and ice the albedo is such that a lot of energy gets reflected back into space and hence we stay cool.

Disguising the planet as a snowball is supposed to mimic this.
However, if we believe the other theory then maybe we will actually get hotter?
Now the earth has been in a snowball phase, at least once, and the only way we got out of this, (according to the TV show so what do they know?) was due to a massive volcanic event that would today be considered an extinction level event. Pretty much what Yellowstone is expected to do one day but in this case it was in what is now Siberia (?)

According to this warm ice age theory CO2 could act to reflect heat. So, CO2 is now not a greenhouse gas but a climate change gas. I'm glad we got that cleared up.
Of course, they don't say where all this CO2 came from in the ice age but never mind.
This is the Baked Alaska approach to earth sciences and climate change but who knows, all things are possible.

I'm just waiting for the fossil evidence to show that the dinosaurs has an industrial society that makes us look like tree dwellers still and that they were responsible for their own extinction.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4332784/Despite-the-hot-air-the-Antarctic-is-not-warming-up.html

Well, the lack of data doesn't really say it either way but the invention of data for weather stations that don't exist is interesting.
This article is of course by a critic of global warming but it does beg some questions, not least about the continuing credibility of Michael Mann.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7228/extref/nature07669-s1.pdf

is a source for information on "reconstructed temperatures".
Now with all these reconstructed temperatures etc what they are reporting is 0.1degC rise per decade over the last 50 years.
Or, 0.5degC over 50 years or 0.01degC per year.






JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com