Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[CapelDodger]

1. Because Jones wrote for publications that (officially) require making raw data available.

They do not require the release of data which is not the authors' to release. Property rights and contractual obligations are recognised by the publishers of journals (which are commercial enterprises).

2. Because politicians contemplate changes to environmental policy that
will have significant impact on energy costs.

Wild non sequitur. It does not relate to property rights and contractual obligations in any way.

Whatever, all the CRU data is available now (except Poland's). Disappointing, wasn't it? Better luck with that ice-core which hasn't been archived yet. And who knows, maybe there's something juicy in the stolen CRU emails which the thieves are still keeping to themselves. That's hidden data if ever there was any.

 

[CapelDodger]

There was no ad hominem in what I wrote. Since you clearly have no idea how to argue without insults, I am just wondering how you hope to arrive at an informed opinion.

a_unique_person has given his answer to your question. Any danger of you answering his now?

 

[BenBurch]

There was no ad hominem in what I wrote. Since you clearly have no idea how to argue without insults, I am just wondering how you hope to arrive at an informed opinion.

Malcolm, that wasn't an Ad Hom, in my opinion.

It was an observation.

I think you are absolutely smart enough to learn this, and it's not that hard at the level you need to get to, but you have to apply yourself and keep an open mind.

But it's an honest observation that you don't seem to have a command of this material at present.

You have been very attentive to other people's analyses of the situation, but in doing so, you have selected only those who have reached one particular set of conclusions.

Now, if you are game, I can suggest some learning materials.

-Ben

 

[a_unique_person]

You certainly won't learn anything about it at Climateaudit, where any real discussion of climate such as radiation physics is banned.

 

[Acleron]

We agree completely, except for the "climate denier" term. No one objects to the abstraction "climate" or to the assertion that climate changes over time. Here: "The clear distinction between a scientist and a climate denier (or indeed anyone who has pre-decided what they want) is that the scientist needs very good reasons for discarding or selecting data whereas the denier just needs to know what result they want" we agree completely. We just differ as to which people these words describe.

The group the denialists reside in is easily identified.

They don't know much science.

They are prepared to take out the bits of the data they don't like. Surely you remember the temp-time graphs that purported to show a steady increase in temperature as a drop.

They lie, like McIntyre.

When faced with incontrovertible evidence, they just ignore it and start trying to pick holes elsewhere.

Recognise any of this?

 

[lomiller]

1. Because Jones wrote for publications that (officially) require making raw data available.

Only applicable to data you collected as part of the paper. Not applicable to data obtained from third part sources. Clearly if Jones can get the data from these third parties others can as well

2. Because politicians contemplate changes to environmental policy that
will have significant impact on energy costs.

So?

Does this give you the right to demand others peoples property be stolen? If so what about McIntyre property, should not his financial records be opened up so we can see how his blog is financed?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

They don't know much science.

We've already established that this is not the case.
Freeman Dyson.
Consider also...Richard Lindzen, Harrison Schmitt, Ivar Giaever, David Evans (Whom I just found while seeking the Giaever video). I thought it was interesting that he observed (as I did in this discussion earlier) that the stability of the Earth's climate over long periods implies that dominant feedbacks must be negative (damping).

 

[jimbob]

We've already established that this is not the case.
Freeman Dyson.
Consider also...Richard Lindzen, Harrison Schmitt, Ivar Giaever, David Evans (Whom I just found while seeking the Giaever video). I thought it was interesting that he observed (as I did in this discussion earlier) that the stability of the Earth's climate over long periods implies that dominant feedbacks must be negative (damping).

They don't know much climate science or are contrarians, or have a strong agenda and might be dsihonest (Fred Singer springs to mind).

 

[jimbob]

By the way, complaining about a small number of posts that (in a certain light) can be viewed as ad hominem attacks, whilst ignoring the substantive questions, doesn't look good.

By the way,

Here is the data for central England from 1660-2005 (which was the newest data that was available when I did made this graph) that I have graphed using the cusum technique, which filters out noise:

It acts as a form of integration, so that constant gradients represent periods of constant average temperatures.


As Dinwar stated, we don't need to know what is causing the change (except in as far as that gives us a handle on what to do about the change) we just need to know whether it will be good or bad, and what we can do to reduce it.


It looks as if human intervention is causing the vast majority of the global warming, so human intervention can help reduce it.

 

[a_unique_person]

We've already established that this is not the case.
Freeman Dyson.
Consider also...Richard Lindzen, Harrison Schmitt, Ivar Giaever, David Evans (Whom I just found while seeking the Giaever video). I thought it was interesting that he observed (as I did in this discussion earlier) that the stability of the Earth's climate over long periods implies that dominant feedbacks must be negative (damping).

David Evans is a paranoid conspiracy theorist, who is not a climate scientist. We have already established that Dyson is no sort of authority on climate. Whenever he was pressed in that interview about the details of climate science, he ran away as fast as he could, and took refuge in general accusations of a 'party line'.

Lindzen has seen better days. He is just another relic of a time when AGW was not understood as well as it is now, now reduced to being an old contrarian. He has been talking about his 'iris' theory for years, but has yet to put out a paper that offers any evidence.

 

[a_unique_person]

They don't know much climate science or are contrarians, or have a strong agenda and might be dsihonest (Fred Singer springs to mind).

Singer is famous as a 'gun for hire' who sold his name to the tobacco interests.

 

[supaluminal]

I'm sure the "big" crowd of GW deniers in the "selfless" spirit that characterizes them perfectly can raise money in the order of millions of bucks to pay for both some forensic science experts to study a sample of old weather station registries looking for fakes and taking a sample of ice cores and tree rings to discover foul play.

That would be OK, unless the "there must necessary be hidden data" is something used just to hide there are no "selflessness" nor data missing or wrong in other way but scattered honest mistakes.

One of their own went and did that (backed by fossil fuel money no less). To be fair, the deniers thought Muller was one of their own, and when they all thought he was going to disprove warming, they couldn't wait for the results. Of course, everyone remembers what happened when Muller reported.

So much for hidden data or fakes. That whole episode showed us the difference between skeptics and deniers. Sure Muller was late to the party, and really only reconfirmed what we already knew, but that's not important. It shows why they don't go and do science to prove their case, because if they did, they would already recognise reality, or be forced back into denialism.

So it's back to hurling abuse and making ridiculous demands instead, it's all they've got.

 

[jimbob]

Singer is famous as a 'gun for hire' who sold his name to the tobacco interests.

Thanks for preserving that typo in the quote, but yes, I was thinking about the tobacco aspect.

The conspiracy theories proposed by some AGW deniers are slightly ironic. There is evidence of conspiracies within the AGW debate, but it points to the deniers. Exxon-Mobil, in particular has been documented in funding people promoting a (spurious) controversy.

When the science of global warming was beginning, vested interests did try to suppress it.

ETA: This blog has a fair number of references

Nine Out of Ten Climate Denying Scientists Have Ties to Exxon Mobil Money

And in Part two:

Professor Peter deMenocal, of the Earth Institute, Columbia University, told the Carbon Brief when asked about the inclusion of his paper on the list: [of papers supporting the case against the existence of AGW]

"I've responded to similar queries over the years. No, this is not an accurate representation of my work and I've said so many times to them and in print.

"I've asked Dennis Avery of the Heartland Institute to take my name off [another similar] list four times and I've never had a response. There are 15 other Columbia colleagues on there as well ... and all want their names removed."

 

[aleCcowaN]

Malcolm, are you going to answer about CO2 and the mental experiments you suggested? are you going to answer the questions we asked about the physical role of CO2 in the atmosphere?

There was no ad hominem in what I wrote. Since you clearly have no idea how to argue without insults, I am just wondering how you hope to arrive at an informed opinion.

That wasn't an ad-hom but the description of what you have shown to be capable and to be willing to do here. You know it wasn't an ad-hom because you had to edit the thread into your nested quotations to try to make it look like an ad-hom.

He described succinctly not only your lack of the needed pieces of knowledge by your lack of method to reason in the boundaries of your actual knowledge. Your attempts to deal with CO2 in the atmosphere as if its role relates with sensible heat is blatantly obvious. In fact, you have posted more than a fourth of all the posts in this thread during the last fortnight, more than anybody else, and said really few things but showed you wouldn't move on.

 

[Acleron]

We've already established that this is not the case.
Freeman Dyson.
Consider also...Richard Lindzen, Harrison Schmitt, Ivar Giaever, David Evans (Whom I just found while seeking the Giaever video). I thought it was interesting that he observed (as I did in this discussion earlier) that the stability of the Earth's climate over long periods implies that dominant feedbacks must be negative (damping).

Well, Dyson admits he doesn't know much in this area. Remember, you read that yourself.

But, I wasn't alluding to Dyson, rather McIntyre and yourself.

 

[aleCcowaN]

They don't know much climate science or are contrarians, or have a strong agenda and might be dsihonest (Fred Singer springs to mind).

David Evans is a paranoid conspiracy theorist, who is not a climate scientist. We have already established that Dyson is no sort of authority on climate. Whenever he was pressed in that interview about the details of climate science, he ran away as fast as he could, and took refuge in general accusations of a 'party line'.

Lindzen has seen better days. He is just another relic of a time when AGW was not understood as well as it is now, now reduced to being an old contrarian. He has been talking about his 'iris' theory for years, but has yet to put out a paper that offers any evidence.

Well, Dyson admits he doesn't know much in this area. Remember, you read that yourself.

But, I wasn't alluding to Dyson, rather McIntyre and yourself.

Dr. Evans was a new face to me, so i spent the time to watch the video. Apparently, he just repeats the long debunked climate myths.

Here's a quick runthrough:

....

Sure, but look at what you are doing: all of you contributed to the link popularity of both Giaever and Evans. I find very disturbing somebody saying "Evans is a paranoid" for it to stay almost just between us while boosting the internet-wide visibility of his original material and vision.

Have you ever thought why wattsupyourhat has 5 or 10 times the visits of realclimate or skepticalsience? (<--- look whose link popularity I am helping to boost) Well, certainly huge trays of sophisticated simpletonics well seasoned with assorted conspiracy theories and hollywood plots are always in popular demand, but in spite of what people don't usually know they are not so gullible and unwilling to learn as web statistics may suggest.

One fundamental reason of the "success" of wattsupyourhat and other web properties is some of their sympathizers spamming other web venues with their links. The Duracell bunny kind like you know who are particularly instrumental to this end as they not only provide a link cloud without spamming but they achieve their critics to further extend their promotion by reinforcing the link cloud with optimum density and variety of text chains and search terms galore.

I have discussed this topic here and via the private messaging system to no avail. It looks like poptech (the most successful case of what I am describing) was right when he said to me "some believe they are smarter than they are". I have to conclude that people is as blind to Page rank and other environmental (of the media) fundamentals like Malcolm is unaware of quantum physics and its relation with climate. It's only left to know if everybody is equally unwilling.

How much I'd like all of you to understand the deep meaning of "the media is the message/massage". Otherwise some will continue to wonder why "the truth triumph at last" really means "the truth triumph when it is too late". It's not just having the truth but having the needed diligence also.

Oh! I almost forget. There's another unpleasant side effect of this whole thing. I have participated in one thread here with an outcome of a woo website now having a new page where JREF is shown as indirectly promoting their woos. This is not an isolated occurrence and the constant pattern makes more easy for astray woo lovers to find these fora than real sceptics to reach them.

 

[Halsu]

David Evans

Dr. Evans was a new face to me, so i spent the time to watch the video. Apparently, he just repeats the long debunked climate myths.

Here's a quick runthrough:

- He admits it has warmed, and that our CO2 emissions cause global warming due to strengthened greenhouse effect. His main argument is about the degree of man made warming - a question of "how much". A sensible question in itself, though the ballpark is already pretty well established by mainstream science. So far so good.

- His first critical argument is about the climate models: he claims they only take into account CO2 and ignore all natural forcings. This claim is patently false: see i.e.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

- He next claims that only satellite temperature records are reliable, as thermometer record is contaminated by UHI. This is simply not true, which can be shown by comparing A) satellite measurements B) urban thermometers and C) rural thermometers. All give the same results. See i.e.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect-basic.htm

- Next he claims Hansen's 1988 predictions were totally off the mark. He shows a graph where he places the measured temperatures against Hansen's graphs, and it appears that even Hansen's lowest prediction is way hotter than the measurements. The problem is, he uses different base periods for these, artificially offsetting the temperature record to be about half a degree cooler than it should be. This is either a deliberate lie, or glaring ignorance. There's no third explanation. In reality, Hansen's prediction was a bit too high, but not nearly as much as Evans claims.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-1988-prediction.htm

- Next he repeats the same error with IPCC's 1990 report's predictions. Wrong baseline, wrong conclusions. Also, he shows the predictions as trends, but fails to show the measured trend - this further adds to the confusion he seeds. In real life, the" most likely" trend estimated in 1990 was still slightly higher than reality, but not by much. In subsequent reports, the predictions have been refined further, and they have been pretty much spot on since 1995.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

- Next he claims the ocean temperature data before 2003 is essentially worthless. This of course is not true, and his claims about the pre 2003 data being collected by buckets and only from a few routes in the northern hemisphere is simply a lie or ignorance - again. The data is not perfect, but still far from being "useless".
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/ocng_textbook/chapter06/chapter06_06.htm

- Next, he goes on to talk about how the ARGO data shows no warming. In fact, the period is so short that it means pretty much exactly "nothing". The other "worthless" measurements show the same plateau since 2003, but they also show the bigger picture - there's no reason to doubt that the oceans continue to warm as predicted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans-intermediate.htm

- Next claim is about seal level not rising as much as predicted. This repeats some of the earlier errors: cherry picking an insignificantly short period in the records, misrepresenting the models. In fact, the sea levels rise is following the predictions very well:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-intermediate.htm

- Next claim is about the centennial scale predictions of sea level rise. Trying to draw a straight linear trend from a few years of data (which he seems to suggest) is a rather laughable way to make predictions of future sea level rise. Bringing Al Gore to the argument is a bit like using the Nazi card (you lose immediately ) but let's look at that too - as far as i know, Al Gore didn't suggest drowning Florida is a likely result of climate change in this century. Instead, he showed that as the worst case scenario over hundreds of years. Evans doesn't only misrepresent climate scientists, he even misrepresented Gore.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-basic.htm

- The hot spot myth comes next. Unsurprisingly, the claim is in error: the "missing" hot spot is not actually missing. Again, ignorance of science or a deliberate lie are the only explanations i can think of:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/tropospheric-hot-spot.htm

- Now it's turn for the ERBE satellites / outgoing radiation myth: this one has been thoroughly debunked by a multitude of people. In essence, in the "major study" he refers to, Lindzen and Choi cherry picked dates that made it look like that upper atmosphere does not cool as predicted when the greenhouse effect intensifies, in short term. Okay. But simply by choosing other dates of observation, exactly opposite results can be found. The claim is bull, and Evans should know that.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Lindzen-Choi-2009-low-climate-sensitivity.htm

As a conclusion, none of Evans' claims hold water even at very cursory examination by an amateur like me. Based on this, my opinion of Dr. Evans is: new crook - recycled myths.

 

[Halsu]

Malcolm, could you please consider answering my questions about your thought experiment, and of course the basic science behind AGW?

I still fail to see how that relates to the question at hand. Unless you're trying to make some kind of an argument against the physics of the greenhouse effect? I thought we were already past that, that you accept the science?

This is somewhat confusing.

In order to make the discussion intelligible i once again ask you to clearly confirm that you understand and agree with each of the below baby steps, or if you disagree with some of them, tell us exactly which ones. That would be very helpful in my opinion, and i'd appreciate it very much if you took the time to tell us.

***

In the light of these clarifications, i would appreciate it if you could confirm you accept the french-lined baby steps, then answer the next two questions?

- You agree that the atmosphere traps heat.
- You also agree that there is a greenhouse effect as described by mainstream science and that changes in the strength of the greenhouse effect can change the temperature on earth.
- You seem to agree that there's an energy balance that will always seek a new equilibrium, when parameters change (this follows from the other points).
- You agree that a change in the composition of gasses (like increasing CO2) in the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect.

Here are the next baby steps: Do you, in the light of the above, agree that a rising concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause global warming? Do you agree that human activity is the main cause for the increase in atmospheric CO2?

 

[metzomagic]

Several of you above have lamented the fact that when you link to a contrarian site, it indirectly boosts their PageRank. Well, in HTML you can stop Google from following links for this purpose by setting rel="nofollow" in a link. But the JREF forums use BBCode in these comments, and there is no way to do this using the provided BBCODE [url] tag. But I just had a look at the BBCode reference for this site, and they do provide a special code for this purpose: nfURL! You use it like this:

[nfURL]http://climateaudit.org/[/nfURL]

Here it is in action, as a test:

[nfURL]http://climateaudit.org/[/nfURL]

I checked the generated source, and there is a rel="nofollow" in the link

Knock yourselves out! Unfortunately, the BBCode variant of a link that includes explanatory text does not seem to be supported:

[nfURL=http://climateaudit.org/]"nofollow" linky to McI's site[/nfURL]

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Malcolm, could you please consider answering my questions about your thought experiment, and of course the basic science behind AGW?

- You agree that the atmosphere traps heat.
- You also agree that there is a greenhouse effect as described by mainstream science and that changes in the strength of the greenhouse effect can change the temperature on earth.
- You seem to agree that there's an energy balance that will always seek a new equilibrium, when parameters change (this follows from the other points).
- You agree that a change in the composition of gasses (like increasing CO2) in the atmosphere changes the strength of the greenhouse effect.

Aside from minor issues with words, yes, mostly I agree. For example, since "temperature" of a vacuum means nothing, everything "traps heat". Greenhouses work by preventing convection from moving air that's heated in daytime away from the surface. That's not how CO₂ affects the relation between sunlight and shaded thermometers in open air. Parameters (e.g., the strength of feedbacks) change when the theory changes. Variables change when measurements (e.g., solar flux, CO₂ concentration) change. Equilibrium is a problem. This is a confession I made from the outset. Remember? "I'm still trying to understand how the temperature can depend on anything other than solar output and the radius of the orbit"? Obviously other factors matter (I can feel the difference between day and night, sea level and 13,000 feet, summer and winter). You'all insist it's "basic physics" as though only ignorance of elementary school science prevents me from accepting the theory, but Dyson, Giaever, Lindzen, et. al, certainly understand "basic physics" better than anyone in this discussion, so this insistence that "basic physics" implies CO₂ causes measured global warming looks like psychological extortion to me and it only discredites the voice of people who make that argument.

Here are the next baby steps: Do you, in the light of the above, agree that a rising concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere will cause global warming? Do you agree that human activity is the main cause for the increase in atmospheric CO2?

If ithe effect of increased CO₂ is not dominated by variations in the solar flux, yes. Dropping one additional heated BB into the swimming pool will raise the temperature in the pool.