Global Warming

[IQS.RLOW]

Sounds like Prof Aitken is talking about someone here...

http://donaitkin.com/as-warming-slows-d ... ion-grows/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So the orthodox [warmists] go on waiting impatiently for the warming to return, and becoming even louder and more aggressive in their contempt for those of us who ask for good argument and good data and point out what seem to be problems in the orthodoxy… So to the first of [two recent] articles, which is by Rod Lamberts, Deputy Director of the ANU’s National Centre for Public Awareness of Science. What do you think of this?


The fact is that the time for fact-based arguments is over. We all know what the overwhelmingly vast majority of climate science is telling us. I’m not going to regurgitate the details here, in part because the facts are available everywhere, but more importantly, because this tactic is a core reason why climate messages often don’t resonate or penetrate. If, like me, you’re convinced that human activity is having a hugely damaging effect on the global climate, then your only responsible option is to prioritise action.

I don’t think that what he proposes is at all a ‘responsible option’. The most responsible surely would be to look hard at what you think are the facts. Like Bernie Fraser, however, of whom he speaks well in this essay, Mr Lamberts knows what ‘the vast majority of climate science’ is telling him, though he won’t tell his readers.. We don’t need any more facts, he says, we need action. Nor is it clear what sort of action he has in mind, other than noisy behaviour. But then we get this: What we need now is to become comfortable with the idea that the ends will justify the means.

That really worries me, and it should worry anyone. That is not how democracies should behave, and indeed it is what people object to about people who think they know The Truth: they are always telling the rest of us what to do. Mr Lamberts says that deniers should just be disregarded. Ignore them, step around them, or walk over them. I object to this sort of talk, especially from an academic at the ANU, from which I have my PhD. It is stormtrooper stuff, and has no place either in universities or in a website funded by universities.

The second essay is by Lawrence Torcello, an American academic who teaches philosophy in the USA. It ... is certainly another good illustration of the aggressive style which you can find from the ‘believers’. Here is a sample:

We have good reason to consider the funding of climate denial to be criminally and morally negligent. The charge of criminal and moral negligence ought to extend to all activities of the climate deniers who receive funding as part of a sustained campaign to undermine the public’s understanding of scientific consensus… What are we to make of those behind the well documented corporate funding of global warming denial? Those who purposefully strive to make sure “inexact, incomplete and contradictory information” is given to the public? I believe we understand them correctly when we know them to be not only corrupt and deceitful, but criminally negligent in their willful disregard for human life. It is time for modern societies to interpret and update their legal systems accordingly.

Nowhere in this is any attempt to define anything; apparently it’s not needed by philosophers like Mr Torcello, though I would have thought ‘climate denial’ at least needs some kind of explanation if funding it is to be regarded as criminal behaviour. As I’ve said a few times, I am simply unaware of any funding that flows to me or to the others with whom I discuss AGW…

No matter. Any innocent reading this will come away with the view that ‘climate deniers’, whoever they are, should be jailed. It’s different stormtrooper talk, and just as objectionable.

The derangement and unhinging is palpable

[Rorschach]

I find myself using the word innumerate more and more. Anything to do with climate change is about the numbers — how much will the planet warm? How much will it cost to change the weather? How much useful electricity do wind turbines produce? The arguments of everyone from trolls to Naomi Klein, to Sir Paul Nurse avoid the numbers. And the only time Greenpeace discuss numbers, they seem to pick the wrong kind — dollars instead of degrees. Then they miss the biggest dollars in this debate anyway (but only by a factor of 3,000). Numbers are just not their strong point.

Some people avoid the numbers strategically, — because it’s a debate they can’t win. Sir Paul Nurse hopes we don’t notice that he doesn’t even make an argument, he just declares his side “won”. He tosses a red herring about CO2 being a greenhouse gas. (Which is not what the debate is about. Perhaps he’s heard of feedbacks? He doesn’t say.) Otherwise, he declares the majority “know the cost benefits are worth it”, which is a/ a logical fallacy, b/ a lot like a car advert, and c/ completely wrong. The last UK poll I saw, showed more than 60% of Brits didn’t even believe in a man-made climate, let alone approve the cost of trying to “fix” it. Now Sir Paul is probably very numerate (being a Nobel in Medicine, and President of The Royal Society), which begs the question of why he seems so scared of talking about climate numbers? Perhaps he’s anxious?

[IQS.RLOW]

A reply from Monckton to the taxpayer funded "The Conversation" who refuse to publish a rebuttal to an article libeling Monckton.

I wonder why they would refuse to publish? When will you open your eyes to facts SN? When will you open your eyes to the subterfuge and the ignorance of the left?

Rod Lamberts argues that in the climate debate opinion should supplant fact: “The time for fact-based arguments is over”.

He echoes the chair of the Climate Change Authority in suggesting that sceptics – whom he implicitly compares with Holocaust deniers by labelling them “deniers” – are circulating “deliberate misinformation”.

He says: “Forget the Moncktonites, disregard the Boltists, and snub the Abbottsians. Ignore them, step around them, or walk over them.”

So much easier than answering us fact for fact.

Since Mr Lamberts names me, albeit in honourable company, let me reply with a dozen key facts.

Fact 1. There has been no global warming for up to 17 years 6 months.

True, one might argue that the mean of all five major global-temperature datasets shows no warming for only 13 years; or that no uncertainty interval is shown; or that the warming lurks in the deep ocean; or that natural cooling temporarily overwhelms manmade warming. Yet for well over a decade the atmosphere has not warmed, notwithstanding CO2 increases unprecedented in 800,000 years. No model predicted that as its best estimate.

Even Dr Pachauri, the IPCC’s climate-science chair, admitted the 17-year “pause” in Melbourne last year.

Fact 1 casts doubt on models’ predictive skill, leading to Fact 2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for which I am an expert reviewer, has explicitly substituted its own “expert assessment” for the models on which it formerly relied, cutting its predicted warming over 30 years by almost a third from 0.7 to 0.5 Cº. It has moved significantly towards the sceptics whom Mr Lamberts disfiguringly excoriates as “deniers”.

Fact 3. The uncertainty intervals in all the key climate datasets are uncommonly large. In physics, every measurement is subject to uncertainty. The uncertainty in the RSS satellite temperature dataset is so great that there may have been no warming for 25 years.

Fact 4. Likewise, we cannot measure ocean heat content precisely. Since the atmosphere is not warming, the ocean – 1000 times denser and right next door – is probably not warming much either. On such measurements as we have, it is warming at one-sixth the model-predicted rate.

Fact 5. By the same token, we cannot measure whether the ocean is becoming less alkaline. All we can say is that mean pH is 7.8-8.4, with still wider coastal variations. The acid-base balance cannot change much: the oceans are overwhelmingly buffered by the basalt basins in which they lie.

Given measurement uncertainties, any assertion that “the science is settled” is meaningless.

It is trivially true that returning CO2 to the atmosphere whence it came will – other things being equal – cause warming. But the central question in the climate debate is “How much?” The answer, so far, is “Very little”. The world has warmed by just 0.7 Cº in the 60 years since 1954.

Yet in the previous 60 years, when our influence was negligible, the world had warmed by 0.5 Cº. The supposedly massive influence of Man has pushed up the warming rate by the equivalent of a third of a Celsius degree per century, and that is all.

In central England, a good proxy for global temperature (over the past 120 years the warming rate in the region was within 0.01 Cº of the global rate) the warming rate was equivalent to 4 Cº per century from 1695-1735.

Fact 6, then: the rate of global warming since we might first have influenced it in the 1950s is far from unprecedented.

Fact 7: Two-thirds of the global warming once predicted by the now more cautious IPCC arose not from greenhouse gases directly but from “temperature feedbacks” – forcings that may arise in response to direct warming.

Though the IPCC once tried to claim that the values of these temperature feedbacks were well constrained, they are not. The most important feedback is from water vapour. By the Clausius-Clapeyron relation, the atmosphere is capable of carrying near-exponentially more water vapour as it warms. But just because it can there is no certainty that it will. On some measures, column water vapour is declining. Measurement uncertainty again.

Fact 8 follows. The equation by which models represent mutual amplification of the feedbacks they take as net-positive comes from electronic circuitry, where at a loop gain of unity the voltage transitions instantly from the positive to the negative rail.

However, this singularity has no physical equivalent in the climate. Accordingly, a damping term is required, to allow not only for the fact that positive feedbacks such as the water-vapour feedback cannot, as voltage can, suddenly reverse their effect when the loop gain exceeds 1 but also for Fact 9. Global temperature is remarkably homoeostatic.

For the past 420,000 years, absolute mean global surface temperature has varied by little more than 1% from the long-run average. It is very difficult to warm the world. Our changing 1/2500 of the air from oxygen to plant food on business as usual over the next 100 years may well prove irrelevant. Any realistic damping term in the feedback-amplification equation removes the global warming problem altogether.

So to Fact 10. An increasing body of papers in the reviewed literature is following my own 2008 paper in Physics and Society in finding climate sensitivity very much lower than the models: perhaps below 1 Cº.

Fact 11 follows. Climate scientists know these uncertainties. The widest survey of scientific opinion ever conducted found that only 0.5% of 11,944 climate papers published from 1991-2011 had said most global warming since 1950 was manmade. Given the uncertainties, Mr Abbot’s government should enquire whether it is cost-effective to mitigate today or to adapt the day after tomorrow.

Fact 12. The economic literature overwhelmingly concludes that it is vastly cheaper to adapt the day after tomorrow than to act today. Even if the science were settled, Dr Lamberts is wrong to say the ends justify the means. For the game may well not be worth the carb0n-emitting candle.

[Rorschach]

I particularly liked...

Yet for well over a decade the atmosphere has not warmed, notwithstanding CO2 increases unprecedented in 800,000 years. No model predicted that as its best estimate.

Fact 3. The uncertainty intervals in all the key climate datasets are uncommonly large. In physics, every measurement is subject to uncertainty. The uncertainty in the RSS satellite temperature dataset is so great that there may have been no warming for 25 years.

Fact 4. Likewise, we cannot measure ocean heat content precisely.

Given measurement uncertainties, any assertion that “the science is settled” is meaningless.

Yet in the previous 60 years, when our influence was negligible, the world had warmed by 0.5 Cº. The supposedly massive influence of Man has pushed up the warming rate by the equivalent of a third of a Celsius degree per century, and that is all.

Fact 6, then: the rate of global warming since we might first have influenced it in the 1950s is far from unprecedented.

Fact 9. Global temperature is remarkably homoeostatic.

Our changing 1/2500 of the air from oxygen to plant food on business as usual over the next 100 years may well prove irrelevant.

Fact 11 follows. Climate scientists know these uncertainties. The widest survey of scientific opinion ever conducted found that only 0.5% of 11,944 climate papers published from 1991-2011 had said most global warming since 1950 was manmade.

Fact 12. The economic literature overwhelmingly concludes that it is vastly cheaper to adapt the day after tomorrow than to act today.

[DaS Energy]

How many tonnes of Carbon can be placed between the earth and the sun, before the day becomes dimmer, how tonnes before the weather is effected?

[Neferti]

How many tonnes of Carbon can be placed between the earth and the sun, before the day becomes dimmer, how tonnes before the weather is effected?

I have no idea.

I wouldn't be too worried about the day becoming dimmer, either. Happens daily, I thought, something to do with the sun sinking in the West? Plus it isn't the day becoming dimmer one has to worry about, it is the nutcases wearing Alfoil hats or protesting about something or other. The World is chock full of nutters.

[Rorschach]

not to worry Nef... the DaS Valve will magically save us all from everything?

[DaS Energy]

How many tonnes of Carbon can be placed between the earth and the sun, before the day becomes dimmer, how tonnes before the weather is effected?

I have no idea.

The post was rhetorical. Dimming is already charted. Putting billions upon of tonnes Carbon not there before into our closed climate system is like mixing talcum into the flour, wont make a difference no not all.

[DaS Energy]

not to worry Nef... the DaS Valve will magically save us all from everything?

It cant, Greg Hunt has it concealed to save himself.

[Super Nova]

Someone questioned the "Royal Society" as a keeper of the one true faith. How about what the America’s premier scientific society AAAS (or Arse to the deniers) has to say this week.

"The scientists said they were hoping to persuade Americans to look at climate change as an issue of risk management" exactly what I have been saying. I love it when greater minds than mine agree with me.

Climate change is putting world at risk of irreversible changes, scientists warn
Tuesday 18 March 2014 09.53 GMT

AAAS makes rare policy intervention urging US to act swiftly to reduce carbon emissions and lower risks of climate catastrophe

The world is at growing risk of “abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes” because of a warming climate, America’s premier scientific society warned on Tuesday.

In a rare intervention into a policy debate, the American Association for the Advancement of Science urged Americans to act swiftly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – and lower the risks of leaving a climate catastrophe for future generations.

“As scientists, it is not our role to tell people what they should do,” the AAAS said in a new report, What we know.

“But we consider it our responsibility as professionals to ensure, to the best of our ability, that people understand what we know: human-caused climate change is happening, we face risks of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes, and responding now will lower the risks and costs of taking action.”

The United Nations’ climate science panel, the IPCC, will gather in Yokohama, Japan next week to release the second in a series of blockbuster reports, this time outlining how a changing climate is affecting rainfall and heat waves, sea level and the oceans, fisheries and food security.

But the AAAS scientists said they were releasing their own assessment ahead of time because they were concerned that Americans still failed to appreciate the gravity of climate change.

Despite “overwhelming evidence”, the AAAS said Americans had failed to appreciate the seriousness of the risks posed by climate change, and had yet to mobilise at a pace and scale needed to avoid a climate catastrophe.

The scientists said they were hoping to persuade Americans to look at climate change as an issue of risk management. The society said it plans to send out scientists on speaking tours to try to begin a debate on managing those risks.

The report noted the climate is warming at almost unprecedented pace.

“The rate of climate change now may be as fast as any extended warming period over the past 65 million years, and it is projected to accelerate in the coming decades,”

An 8F rise – among the most likely scenarios could make once rare extreme weather events – 100-year floods, droughts and heat waves – almost annual occurrences, the scientists said.

Other sudden systemic changes could lie ahead – such as large scale collapse of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, collapse of part of the Gulf Stream, loss of the Amazon rain forest, die-off of coral reefs, and mass extinctions.

“There is a risk of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes in the earth’s climate system with massively disruptive impacts,” the report said.

The risks of such catastrophes would only grow over time – unless there was action to cut emissions, the scientists said.

“The sooner we make a concerted effort to curtail the burning of fossil fuels as our primary energy source and releasing the C02 to the air, the lower our risk and cost will be.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... tists-aaas