Sounds pretty good to me. Polls can obtain highly reliable statistical results by sampling a much smaller % of a population.
Polls are supposed to get highly reliable results because their samples are representative. This isn't to say polls give us any highly reliable trends - for example, although we may know Obama's approval rating went from 47% to 45% in one month, we cannot simply extend the linear trend and assert eventually he'll get to 0%.
But again, by your assertion, we could have one temperature station in the pacific, one temperature station in the Mojave, and measure CO2 atop Mauna Loa, and have plenty enough information to determine both the global climate today, and any significant trends. Think about how silly that sounds.
It is a myth that volcanos emit anything approaching the CO2 released into the atmosphere by man
Look closer at the graph you're citing -> the spikes are pretty significantly higher than the low rumbling that goes on usually. I'm certain if you looked at the geologic record, you'd find spikes even higher than pinatubo, which should be a good test of the "magical added CO2" theory of lag or lead.
There were about 280,000 such readings, covering most of the world's oceans. With that many readings, you'd expect the means to be pretty accurate and precise.
Seriously? This again? 280,000 readings, all filled with completely unquantified bias can magically give us an accurate and precise *what* exactly? Spread that over years, seasons, days, and even over hours, and you're dealing with a lot less useful readings than you think. In a single day, the temperature somewhere can differ by 10C, and seasons are even greater some places.
You may have an accurate measure of "average temperature of oceans over 150 years", but you sure as hell don't have a good measure of "average temperature of oceans in 1812", much less considering the inherent bias of location along shipping lanes.
Any fixed bias cancels out in determination of a trend. Try it yourself. Take a set of x,y values, do a linear regression. Then add a fixed value to all of the y values and do it again. You'll find that the slope of the fitted line does not change at all.
Here's your question - take a set of x,y values that has no trend. Add small fixed values for low y values, and large fixed values for high y values. You'll find that you've created a slope where none existed originally.
In other words, you are engaging in exactly the same reasoning as the creationists, pointing to "gaps," and trying to suggest that current theory would be unable to account for the unknown contents of those gaps
BZZZT. The creationists are pointing to gaps and insisting they have the answer, the same way you point to gaps and insist you have the answer. I'm simply pointing out gaps and asserting ignorance, not causation.
[regarding CO2 saturation] This was an error in early modeling which has been known to be mistaken for half a decade.
To have even minimal credibility, you need a mathematical model showing that it is possible to reasonably model historical and prehistorical climate change and the climatic effects of "natural experiments" such as volcanos without a high sensitivity to CO2
BZZZT. Popper called again and he wants his science back. I think we can safely assume that pre-human history, anything that happened was "natural", and to assert we have to have some mathematical model of it before we can accept the pre-historical record as "natural" is beyond silly, it's obtuse.
That being said, historic CO2 sensitivity can be address
Of course it does. That's how it is modeled. Do you really think physicists would assume that there would be a preferred direction of radiation? Of course, a photon radiated upward from the upward levels of the atmosphere is more likely to escape into space rather than being reabsorbed (and possibly re-radiated downward) than a photon radiated upward from the lower layers of the atmosphere.
You didn't read the link did you? Here it is again:
The photons that escape into space don't have a memory of whether or not they started off in the lower atmosphere or upper atmosphere.
The prediction is a mathematical consequence of these falsifiable assumptions.
It isn't a prediction at all - it's a tautology. If you observe a lag, you assert it is because there wasn't any "added CO2" to trigger it. If you observe a lead, you assert it is because there was "added CO2" to trigger it. Nothing falsifies your prediction because you've got no proof that there was "added CO2" other than your assertion that it must have been based on your observations.
Put more simply, how would you observe a moment where there was "added CO2", but you still had a lag (in contradiction to the model). Or how would you observe a moment where there was no "added CO2", but you had a lead? You've built a model which no evidence can falsify -> essentially a completely useless prediction.
Moreover, the model predicts that if CO2 lags warming, then something else must have changed to initiate the warming, so this is a prediction that can be tested by looking for evidence that there is another source of warming.
That's the argument of "gaps" -> if you don't have evidence of another source of warming (or a fossil showing a transition between species), you automatically assume that man/god did it. That's simply not science, and I suspect that behind your knee-jerk defense of the church of global warming, you can probably admit this to yourself.
The source of the error was the failure to properly consider transfer of energy among layers in the atmosphere.
Your proposed model defies basic physics. When CO2 "re-radiates", it does so in all directions, not just down towards the earth. Here's a more thorough explanation:
Because there is a positive feedback between CO2 induced warming and release of CO2 from the oceans, it is necessarily the case that if they oceans are warmed by some factor other than CO2, then CO2 is increased after a delay
You're making an unfalsifiable assumption there. Any observation supports your theory without showing that it has made an accurate prediction. A tautology is useless insofar as it's predictive value (i.e., AGW is real if CO2 lags by 800 years, AGW is real if CO2 leads by 800 years, AGW is real no matter what the lag or lead of temp changes). You've ad hoc asserted causality without any way of testing your hypothesis.
Let's take exercise and obesity, for example -> you could assert people who exercise are not obese because they exercise. You could also assert people who are obese do not exercise because they are obese. Saying that both are true doesn't give us any insight as to the mechanisms of obesity, though - they are ad hoc rationalizations that give us no predictive value.
On the other hand, if you assert that people who eat carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels, which cause increased insulin levels, which, in insulin resistant people, causes fat cells to hold onto fat, you've got a falsifiable hypothesis. You can test carbohydrate intake, and prove causality rather than just correlation.
AGW's "CO2 can lag or lead depending on if it lags or leads" is not a prediction at all. The whole concept of "added CO2" is a red herring, since all CO2 is "added" from some source.
You've got a good point, of course, but GlacierGate is just one issue of many in IPCC AR4. The reliance on "grey literature" is probably the worst part of it, but let me be clear -> I'm not trying to say everything in IPCC AR4 is wrong, I'm just saying that enough of it is wrong to doubt assertions that calamity awaits us if we continue increasing CO2 emissions. I guess I kind of see it like a rube goldberg device, where if any one link in the chain breaks, you just don't get to the end, rather than something like shooting arrows at a target where even though one may miss, the other 20 all hit the bullseye.
Anyway, thank you again for the conversation. Your comments have been well worth the read:)
In the present, we are directly releasing CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. This didn't occur 800 years ago.
First of all, let's stop using the term "fossil fuels". Petroleum products aren't made out of dead animals (just think about all the methane atmospheres on various moons in our solar system, and ponder how a "fossil fuel" got there without life).
Second, the fraction of CO2 that humans contribute through their activity is vanishingly small compared to natural sources. The argument being made is that somehow the climate system is so sensitive that even small changes can cause a "tipping point"...one, that you may be glad to know, never shows up in any of the proxy record.
Climate is generally insensitive to CO2 concentrations, and contains negative feedback loops ignored by the models which assert high sensitivity.
Even if it didn't, adding additional CO2 has other negative effects.
Like increasing plant growth. Yeah, real negative there if you like trees.
Make an economic case why doing nothing is better than something.
Sure, I'll grant you that -> a warm world is a better world for humans. The medieval warm period and other climate optimums in the past were times of prosperity for humans, and if we could increase the temperature of the higher latitudes, crop yields and arable land mass, we'd be better off.
So I've got two beefs with catastrophic AGW -> 1) they're overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2 and 2) they're completely wrong about the effects any warming would have on humanity.
If you want to harm humanity, reduce temperatures. Fear the coming ice age.
Moreover, as you add more CO2 to the atmosphere, you increase CO2 at upper altitudes where CO2 is still below the saturation point.
Perhaps you misunderstand saturation. Only specific frequencies are absorbed by CO2. Only a certain amount of those frequencies are sent out by the sun. Once those frequencies are completely absorbed, no further absorption is possible, because no further frequencies of that sort exist. It is not as if CO2 is a sponge that cannot hold any more water, it's that CO2 has a specific range of frequencies it can absorb, and after it's done blocking those frequencies, additional CO2 doesn't block anything additional.
Imagine sunlight coming into your room. You put up an opaque sheet 5cm thick, and it blocks out all visible light. Put up 5cm more, and you're not blocking any additional light - it was already blocked by the first 5cm. Granted, x-rays may pass right through, but the spectrum in question has been dealt with.
Not sure why you see this as a problem, as this is what the models predict.
That's not a prediction, that's an ad hoc rationalization. If you see CO2 lagging, you assume that there was no "CO2 added directly to the atmosphere" (even though, no matter what the source, human, ocean, plant or otherwise, it's still "added"). If you see CO2 leading, you assume that the CO2 as "added directly". You haven't built a falsifiable model because neither lead nor lag (heads or tails) can tell the difference between whether or not your model was right or wrong.
Put another way, we could simply state that CO2 lagging meant that plankton were having a massive die off, and CO2 leading meant that plankton were having a massive bloom -> you haven't made the case that plankton had anything to do with anything, you simply asserted that any observation must be explained in this arbitrary manner.
When you talk about the AR4's "devastating" projections are you taking into account the time frame?
Well, I'm sure you've heard of GlacierGate (2035, and all the glaciers in the himalayas were supposed to disappear). Yes, I know these errors have been already admitted, but they're sort of what IPCC AR4 ended up representing as highlights...which the sensationalist press took on as gospel truth, which when debunked got trumpeted from the rooftops by every right wing kook that thinks evolution is wrong, so on and so on.
When it comes to the rate of change, I'm not convinced that we're looking at accelerating changes from 2000 years to 200 years -> my bet is that climate sensitivity is actually low enough and filled with enough negative feedback effects that our contribution is negligible. Of course, I could be wrong, but from what I can gather of the poor proxies that we have to look at in the past, we've already seen historical abrupt changes before.
On top of that, I'm of the firm belief that if global warming was real, and was happening due to CO2 emissions of man, we should encourage it -> a warm world is a better world for humanity in general, and since even though we might see a dramatic shift in 200 years, the upper bounds for any positive feedback effect will stop it from being a runaway situation. If we could re-enter the medieval warm period tomorrow, and stay there for thousands of years, it would be beneficial to humanity, especially considering the poles end up doing most of the warming -> we're not talking about los angeles become 120C year round, we're talking about the upper latitudes going from 40C to 60C...further, I think there's a pretty good argument that our increased global average isn't because of higher maximums, but more from higher minimums (that is to say, our winter months are getting hotter, not our summer months).
Anyway, in 20 years, you can buy dinner, and I'll buy the drinks:) Thanks for the interesting conversation:)
The warming trend is 0.14deg/decade, define "catastophic".
Well, the screaming from the greenies is usually 2C over a century...so 1.4C/century is probably worth ignoring for all practical purposes...unless you believe that 1.4C/century will cause 10m sea level rises, more hurricanes, the loss of all glaciers, etc, etc.
For AGW you can falsify it by showing Fourier's spectral analysis techniques don't work and therfore throw out much of astronomy, cosmology and quantum mechanics as a side effect.
What? How about something a little more directly related to AGW -> spectral analysis techniques don't mean that human created CO2 is causing catastrophic warming. Even though spectral analysis techniques may be necessary for AGW, they are not sufficient. Try a useful falsification.
Here's a hint -> You don't need a supercomputer to calculate the forcing from CO2.
Of course we don't -> we don't have a realistic model of forcing from CO2 that takes into account all of our known positive and negative feedbacks, but we can make a really naive model and calculate *something*. It just won't be true.
I think that's what bugs me the most about this whole catastrophic AGW thing in the first place -> climate is a stochastic system with variation along time scales we simply do not have good data for. Proxies are fine and dandy for guessing, but I've got no faith in them if we have to hide the decline when proxies go "bad".
If the earth can go into ice ages and thermal optimums all by its lonesome over periods of thousands of years, what the hell does climate care about 20 years, or even 200? It's like we've seen 1nm^2 of skin of an animal, and we're ready to call it Fred, born in Madison, Wisconsin, February 10th, 1934, suffering from a bad cold at the moment and cranky about his bitter coffee. The claims being made seem nearly as incredible.
But YMMV. Hopefully you're still around in 20 years, I'll buy you lunch if the trend is anywhere near as devastating as IPCC AR4 said it would be.
And how do you know just what distribution is required without a theory?
C'mon, really? You're going to sit there with a straight face and accept that not measuring 75% of the earth's surface temp is fine and dandy?
Can you identify any point in history before that time in which large amounts of CO2 were so suddenly introduced into the atmosphere?
Sure. Volanoes. Yes, yes, I understand we get some SO2 blocking stuff out as well, but since that doesn't stick around as much as CO2 (if you would believe those AGW folks who say CO2 is dangerous because it accumulates), you can drop that out of the equation.
The existing models reproduce the historical sequence of temperature changes and CO2 changes, as well as the modern timing.
They reproduce it by hard coding it in, not by actually running the simulation. Have you seen the ad hoc adjustments in the computer models?
when you are measuring climate change, fixed biases cancel out.
Okay, we're looking for some statistics vocabulary word here...maybe systemic bias? When you've got a sparse data set (a limited number a measurements which cannot possibly be increased since that time has passed), and some unknown and unquantified systemic bias, you're not in such a good position. Yes, in the 1800s ships took temperature readings of the ocean. And just how accurate, precise and numerous were those readings?
Not really. The statistical models show that this sort of thing cancels out.
I love Fermi as much as the next guy, but a systemic bias isn't going to "cancel out".
Who is the one arguing that if there were not gaps in the density of our measurements of temperature, or in the historical climate record, then the conclusions might be different?
I'm arguing that the default here is an assertion of ignorance, not an assertion of culpability. Identifying gaps does not mean I've got a better idea, it just means that your idea isn't as good as you think it is.
so you can go on these flights of fancy, imagining that any positive feedback whatsoever, even in a system that also has negative feedbacks, will result in temperature increasing indefinitely.
And here's the rub -> negative feedbacks. Is climate highly sensitive to CO2, or insensitive? And here's where your basic physics kick AGW in the nards -> CO2 has a specific maximum spectrum it can absorb, after which, you get no additional warming. Any honest model of CO2 induced warming would show an upper bound, not a hockey stick of exponential increase.
How much data do we have from the 1800s, or any non-modern age, of cloud cover? Isn't this an important negative feedback to note?
Look, in the end, if you're really thinking like a scientist here, tell me what evidence, either in the various proxy records or in direct observation, would convince you that the climate is not highly sensitive to CO2?
Mod parent up. The destruction of original data by CRU was arguably a crime against humanity if you actually believe AGW is true. It'd be like destroying the original stone tablets the 10 commandments were on, except you can't just go back up the hill and get more after smashing the golden cow.
Precisely that, is what peer-reviewed scientific journals are for. Have you been reading them?
Look, let's stop bandying about "peer review" as if it represents some sort of SCOTUS of science. Peer reviewers don't have to look at the actual data (as Phil Jones so graciously offered, they never asked him for it), don't have to agree with the conclusions, and aren't judging whether or not a paper is TRUE or not, they're simply deciding if it's worth publishing.
You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?
Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years. Not sure exactly what the world looked like 800 years ago since we only have proxy data, but there you go.
Now, if CO2 actually LED temp increases, maybe you'd have a point (although not such a strong one if the lead was something like 800 years...that's a long time to adapt). In any case, despite the creative reasoning of some modelers (hard coding in scenarios where CO2 can lead and lag, based on some mythical "trigger" and an absence of any explanation of how the positive feedback loop of runaway warming is stopped), the statistical analysis of anything might lead to correlation, but not causality. For causality, you're going to have to build a falsifiable hypothesis, not a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.
I've always seen it as the other way around. Tell me if you're familiar with this one:
"After taking into account all of the natural warming, we still can't account for the observed warming in the 20th century, therefore, all additional observed warming must be created my man-made CO2."
"After taking into account all of the fossil record, we still can't account for gaps in between fossils, therefore, all changes we can't observe must have been created by an intelligent designer."
Seriously, if you believe AGW (and let's be specific here and call it out as Catastrophic AGW, because frankly, nobody gives a rats ass if human CO2 causes an increase in temps of 0.1C/century), give me your falsifiable hypothesis.
Here's a hint -> for evolution, you can falsify it by finding a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian era.
Don't know about others, but my favorite was having two key rings, each on the end of a length of 550 cord that could drape around my neck like a maile lei. With enough keys on each end, it made for a fairly good improvised weapon as a striking instrument, and could also be used as a garotte (yes, I understand that that could go both ways if you kept it hanging around your neck.
It wasn't directly connected to the body, so if you needed to give your keys to someone without fiddling with something, you could. Worst case scenario, you could fit it in your pocket. The clinky clinky of the keys against your chest was a constant reminder that you still had your keys, and when you needed to use them, it was a simple grab and go -> no fiddling with pockets or unchaining something from your belt loop.
Since those halcyon days of yore, I've greatly simplified my keys so they just fit on one key ring in my pocket, but back in the day of a bazillion keys, 550 cord worked wonders.
Deal. Putting an upper limit on how long it can override a suspected signal is a falsifiable prediction.
That being said, I would expect that if 20 years from now, the global temperature trend has been flat or negative while CO2 at Mauna Loa continues to rise, the assertion will be that 20 years isn't enough, since we've obviously had things like glacial periods that occurred over thousands of years. But maybe, just maybe, in 20 years with flat or decreasing temps in the face of increasing CO2, people will say, "Damn. I guess the man-made CO2 signal is an order of magnitude weaker than we thought. I guess we don't have to destroy humanity by avoiding cheap energy and prosperity brought by petroleum products."
The more measurements you have the better your accuracy.
I think tgibbs indicated the term "resolution" as being the term I was searching for -> and resolution doesn't increase the more measurements you have.
Furthermore, the additional variables at play here (everything from UHI, to what time a person bothered to record a temp, how they rounded it, how it violates the NOAA principles of station siting, etc) poison the well. GIGO, no matter how many times you measure the garbage.
But this is not what current models predict--they are designed to predict large-scale changes, not fine spacial detail, so you don't need a dense distribution of temperature measuring stations to test them.
I'm asserting that they need a denser distribution than they already have, especially given the biases (a simple case, for the vast majority of temperature records, the sea is not included...which is 3/4 of the surface of the earth). You're correct that they don't need a specifically denser distribution (i.e., putting 10,000 temperature stations in your house), but the need one that has more stations in the right places. Of course, we can't go back in time to put them there, which leads to a great deal of uncertainty about global temperature averages in the past.
But this also is not true--climate models predict slow, multi-decadal trend, so any thermometer has the temporal resolution to test the models
The problem is that the earth undergoes temperature changes on a dramatic basis every day - 20 degrees swing from night to day means that if you measure the temp at 2:00pm one day, and 3:00pm on another day, you have some comparability problems. Any slow, multi-decadal trend is easily overwhelmed by this kind of error (as pointed out once regarding a satellite temp record showing dramatic cooling).
God-of-the-gaps criticism--simply trying to find flaws or gaps in the existing model--has historically been scientifically worthless at best, and more often an impediment to genuine science
That's my point -> you're simply using a straw man "any other model", and asserting that any gaps in our understanding mean that your hypothesis is true. It is scientifically worthless, and a typical warmist retort.
Witness, for example, your own confusion over the idea that CO2 can either lead or lag temperature depending upon conditions. Your intuition told you that that could not happen unless CO2 was "magic," and yet construction of a model shows that this is exactly what is expected.
I'm sorry, but your explanation on that one was dubious at best. If CO2 is a positive feedback force, no matter what the trigger, it should continue to increase indefinitely. Put another way, the model you've created requires hard coded assumptions that all prior lags were due to natural triggers, and your current assumption of lead is unique in the historical record. Can you identify any point in history before say, 1850, where CO2 led temperature change?
For example, if the temperature were changing on a time scale of seconds, and the thermometer required minutes to reach a stable reading, then the thermometer would be said not to have the temporal resolution to measure such rapid changes in temperature. Of course, this is not the case for the measurments relevant to climate change.
Change your resolution definition to spatial, and perhaps you can understand the issue better. Further understand that there is also a temporal category - helped by automated weather stations, but unhelpful to old data captured by humans. Further understand that there is also an actual temperature category - humans recording data before automated weather stations often recorded only to the degree, not 10th of a degree (that does match your resolution criteria, correct?).
Simply attacking a model and trying to find flaws is the hallmark of the crank, whether it is creationists or global warming deniers.
Um, you've mistaken your analogy again. Creationists and global warming *supporters* are in the same boat -> they insist that barring any alternative explanation, they must be correct. This is, as you say, the hallmark of a crank.
But it is important to remember that Galileo did not merely attack flaws in the geocentric model--he evaluated it relative to an alternative model, the heliocentric model.
Think carefully about what you're saying here. The fact that Galileo found an alternative model that worked better does not mean that his refutation of the geocentric model could not have stood on its own. You're conflating the two inappropriately.
The crank asks, "What is wrong with this model?"
Wrong. The scientist asks, "What is wrong with this model?" or even better, "What is wrong with MY model?" The crank is the one insisting that barring any other competing model, their model must be true.
Although your desire for a competing model is certainly understandable, it is not necessary in order to show any other arbitrary model is false. It might not be emotionally satisfying for you, but that's science.
We were talking about the precision of measurement, not resolution.
Thank you, I was asking that question earlier, and I think I understand where your misapprehension came from. Let me rephrase from the top: the surface station temperature record does not have enough resolution to assert the kinds of of trends they are asserting. This is true both in terms of area covered per station, as well as the resolution of the measurements themselves.
The crux of your error, though, still lies in your concept that without an alternative model, no arbitrary model can be shown to be false. We got digressed into statistics nomenclature, which was an interesting tangent, but not as important as your misapprehension of basic scientific method.
So the statistical principle is valid, just not practicable in this ridiculously extreme instance. So you haven't refuted anything.
Really? You're really trying to assert that I simply have to observe the yard stick 10^14 times, and I'll be able to fine a 1nm change in length? Can we also assert that given 10^14 observations of let's say, a far away star with the naked eye, we'd be able to resolve features of a 100 meters at a distance of 10 LY?
Is there any limit to this statistical magic which allows us to use crude measuring instruments to resolve the finest details?
Which part of "or any plausible error distribution" did you not understand?
The part where you can suddenly get more resolution out of a data set simply by looking at the sensor again.
The assertion that natural variability can override the warming signal is the ultimate defense for a failed prediction, though. You could use that defense for any definition of warming signal -> number of twinkies produced in the US, disruption of ocean currents by naval traffic, pick your poison, and that defense is airtight.
The challenge is to come up with a theory that has falsifiable predictions. Create a theory that has a defense against any observations, and you've really created nothing.
It sounds to me like you are just trying to divert the discussion from your statistical misunderstandings by carrying it to a foolish extreme.
What I'm trying to do is bring your attention to the problem of what you call "error of measurement". As you note, on a yardstick, it's on the order of a millimeter. The fact that you assert that it could be done in principle (although you bring into the fold an electron microscope, which I think you're asserting "in principle" isn't necessary), simply doesn't hold.
You said earlier, "by taking a sufficient number of measurements you can get your errors down as low as you want". I'm asking you to justify that blanket assertion with an example that I believe refutes it quite cleanly, even though I take the example to an extreme to prove the point.
Then you generate simulated measurements at various times by calculating x,y pairs from the linear equation, and adding a random error (using the normal distribuition or any plausible error distribution) to each of your y values. This simulates measurments made with an instrument with some degree of statistical error.
You've once again added in the unjustified assumption that all random errors must have a normal distribution. What part of that aren't you getting?
1) Basic logic -> we do see CO2 rising without temperature rising in the record. It lags by about 800 years, so when a turn going south in temps occurs, CO2 can still be rising due to an earlier lag.
2) The problem with the CO2 positive feedback effect hypothesis is that the historical record doesn't support it. With a positive feedback effect, you'd expect ever increasing temperatures once CO2 started increasing -> and we don't see this in the historical record. There is no tipping point at which we hit runaway warming, or it would've already happened. If you're asserting that CO2 has an upper limit of feedback (that is, it is somehow mitigated by some other negative feedbacks that stop the runaway positive feedback), then let's state that limit, and not just assume a tipping point.
3) The whole point is that simply because you cannot account for a recent rise in temperature, does not mean that it is due to CO2 from man. That's the essence of the problem with AGW -> it simply asserts that ignorance is a support of the theory, the same way creationism looks at gaps in the fossil record as proof of their claims.
Having this argument in other threads, but suffice it to say that one does not need an alternative model in order to falsify an existing one, in the same way only only needs an airtight alibi for oneself to avoid a murder conviction, not a more likely suspect for the murder in question.
Slashdot Mirror
You didn't read the link did you? Here it is again:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
The photons that escape into space don't have a memory of whether or not they started off in the lower atmosphere or upper atmosphere.
It isn't a prediction at all - it's a tautology. If you observe a lag, you assert it is because there wasn't any "added CO2" to trigger it. If you observe a lead, you assert it is because there was "added CO2" to trigger it. Nothing falsifies your prediction because you've got no proof that there was "added CO2" other than your assertion that it must have been based on your observations.
Put more simply, how would you observe a moment where there was "added CO2", but you still had a lag (in contradiction to the model). Or how would you observe a moment where there was no "added CO2", but you had a lead? You've built a model which no evidence can falsify -> essentially a completely useless prediction.
That's the argument of "gaps" -> if you don't have evidence of another source of warming (or a fossil showing a transition between species), you automatically assume that man/god did it. That's simply not science, and I suspect that behind your knee-jerk defense of the church of global warming, you can probably admit this to yourself.
Your proposed model defies basic physics. When CO2 "re-radiates", it does so in all directions, not just down towards the earth. Here's a more thorough explanation:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/
You're making an unfalsifiable assumption there. Any observation supports your theory without showing that it has made an accurate prediction. A tautology is useless insofar as it's predictive value (i.e., AGW is real if CO2 lags by 800 years, AGW is real if CO2 leads by 800 years, AGW is real no matter what the lag or lead of temp changes). You've ad hoc asserted causality without any way of testing your hypothesis.
Let's take exercise and obesity, for example -> you could assert people who exercise are not obese because they exercise. You could also assert people who are obese do not exercise because they are obese. Saying that both are true doesn't give us any insight as to the mechanisms of obesity, though - they are ad hoc rationalizations that give us no predictive value.
On the other hand, if you assert that people who eat carbohydrates increase blood sugar levels, which cause increased insulin levels, which, in insulin resistant people, causes fat cells to hold onto fat, you've got a falsifiable hypothesis. You can test carbohydrate intake, and prove causality rather than just correlation.
AGW's "CO2 can lag or lead depending on if it lags or leads" is not a prediction at all. The whole concept of "added CO2" is a red herring, since all CO2 is "added" from some source.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html
You've got a good point, of course, but GlacierGate is just one issue of many in IPCC AR4. The reliance on "grey literature" is probably the worst part of it, but let me be clear -> I'm not trying to say everything in IPCC AR4 is wrong, I'm just saying that enough of it is wrong to doubt assertions that calamity awaits us if we continue increasing CO2 emissions. I guess I kind of see it like a rube goldberg device, where if any one link in the chain breaks, you just don't get to the end, rather than something like shooting arrows at a target where even though one may miss, the other 20 all hit the bullseye.
Anyway, thank you again for the conversation. Your comments have been well worth the read :)
First of all, let's stop using the term "fossil fuels". Petroleum products aren't made out of dead animals (just think about all the methane atmospheres on various moons in our solar system, and ponder how a "fossil fuel" got there without life).
Second, the fraction of CO2 that humans contribute through their activity is vanishingly small compared to natural sources. The argument being made is that somehow the climate system is so sensitive that even small changes can cause a "tipping point"...one, that you may be glad to know, never shows up in any of the proxy record.
Climate is generally insensitive to CO2 concentrations, and contains negative feedback loops ignored by the models which assert high sensitivity.
Like increasing plant growth. Yeah, real negative there if you like trees.
Sure, I'll grant you that -> a warm world is a better world for humans. The medieval warm period and other climate optimums in the past were times of prosperity for humans, and if we could increase the temperature of the higher latitudes, crop yields and arable land mass, we'd be better off.
So I've got two beefs with catastrophic AGW -> 1) they're overestimating the sensitivity of climate to CO2 and 2) they're completely wrong about the effects any warming would have on humanity.
If you want to harm humanity, reduce temperatures. Fear the coming ice age.
Perhaps you misunderstand saturation. Only specific frequencies are absorbed by CO2. Only a certain amount of those frequencies are sent out by the sun. Once those frequencies are completely absorbed, no further absorption is possible, because no further frequencies of that sort exist. It is not as if CO2 is a sponge that cannot hold any more water, it's that CO2 has a specific range of frequencies it can absorb, and after it's done blocking those frequencies, additional CO2 doesn't block anything additional.
Imagine sunlight coming into your room. You put up an opaque sheet 5cm thick, and it blocks out all visible light. Put up 5cm more, and you're not blocking any additional light - it was already blocked by the first 5cm. Granted, x-rays may pass right through, but the spectrum in question has been dealt with.
That's not a prediction, that's an ad hoc rationalization. If you see CO2 lagging, you assume that there was no "CO2 added directly to the atmosphere" (even though, no matter what the source, human, ocean, plant or otherwise, it's still "added"). If you see CO2 leading, you assume that the CO2 as "added directly". You haven't built a falsifiable model because neither lead nor lag (heads or tails) can tell the difference between whether or not your model was right or wrong.
Put another way, we could simply state that CO2 lagging meant that plankton were having a massive die off, and CO2 leading meant that plankton were having a massive bloom -> you haven't made the case that plankton had anything to do with anything, you simply asserted that any observation must be explained in this arbitrary manner.
Well, I'm sure you've heard of GlacierGate (2035, and all the glaciers in the himalayas were supposed to disappear). Yes, I know these errors have been already admitted, but they're sort of what IPCC AR4 ended up representing as highlights...which the sensationalist press took on as gospel truth, which when debunked got trumpeted from the rooftops by every right wing kook that thinks evolution is wrong, so on and so on.
When it comes to the rate of change, I'm not convinced that we're looking at accelerating changes from 2000 years to 200 years -> my bet is that climate sensitivity is actually low enough and filled with enough negative feedback effects that our contribution is negligible. Of course, I could be wrong, but from what I can gather of the poor proxies that we have to look at in the past, we've already seen historical abrupt changes before.
On top of that, I'm of the firm belief that if global warming was real, and was happening due to CO2 emissions of man, we should encourage it -> a warm world is a better world for humanity in general, and since even though we might see a dramatic shift in 200 years, the upper bounds for any positive feedback effect will stop it from being a runaway situation. If we could re-enter the medieval warm period tomorrow, and stay there for thousands of years, it would be beneficial to humanity, especially considering the poles end up doing most of the warming -> we're not talking about los angeles become 120C year round, we're talking about the upper latitudes going from 40C to 60C...further, I think there's a pretty good argument that our increased global average isn't because of higher maximums, but more from higher minimums (that is to say, our winter months are getting hotter, not our summer months).
Anyway, in 20 years, you can buy dinner, and I'll buy the drinks :) Thanks for the interesting conversation :)
Well, the screaming from the greenies is usually 2C over a century...so 1.4C/century is probably worth ignoring for all practical purposes...unless you believe that 1.4C/century will cause 10m sea level rises, more hurricanes, the loss of all glaciers, etc, etc.
What? How about something a little more directly related to AGW -> spectral analysis techniques don't mean that human created CO2 is causing catastrophic warming. Even though spectral analysis techniques may be necessary for AGW, they are not sufficient. Try a useful falsification.
Of course we don't -> we don't have a realistic model of forcing from CO2 that takes into account all of our known positive and negative feedbacks, but we can make a really naive model and calculate *something*. It just won't be true.
I think that's what bugs me the most about this whole catastrophic AGW thing in the first place -> climate is a stochastic system with variation along time scales we simply do not have good data for. Proxies are fine and dandy for guessing, but I've got no faith in them if we have to hide the decline when proxies go "bad".
If the earth can go into ice ages and thermal optimums all by its lonesome over periods of thousands of years, what the hell does climate care about 20 years, or even 200? It's like we've seen 1nm^2 of skin of an animal, and we're ready to call it Fred, born in Madison, Wisconsin, February 10th, 1934, suffering from a bad cold at the moment and cranky about his bitter coffee. The claims being made seem nearly as incredible.
But YMMV. Hopefully you're still around in 20 years, I'll buy you lunch if the trend is anywhere near as devastating as IPCC AR4 said it would be.
C'mon, really? You're going to sit there with a straight face and accept that not measuring 75% of the earth's surface temp is fine and dandy?
Sure. Volanoes. Yes, yes, I understand we get some SO2 blocking stuff out as well, but since that doesn't stick around as much as CO2 (if you would believe those AGW folks who say CO2 is dangerous because it accumulates), you can drop that out of the equation.
They reproduce it by hard coding it in, not by actually running the simulation. Have you seen the ad hoc adjustments in the computer models?
Okay, we're looking for some statistics vocabulary word here...maybe systemic bias? When you've got a sparse data set (a limited number a measurements which cannot possibly be increased since that time has passed), and some unknown and unquantified systemic bias, you're not in such a good position. Yes, in the 1800s ships took temperature readings of the ocean. And just how accurate, precise and numerous were those readings?
I love Fermi as much as the next guy, but a systemic bias isn't going to "cancel out".
I'm arguing that the default here is an assertion of ignorance, not an assertion of culpability. Identifying gaps does not mean I've got a better idea, it just means that your idea isn't as good as you think it is.
And here's the rub -> negative feedbacks. Is climate highly sensitive to CO2, or insensitive? And here's where your basic physics kick AGW in the nards -> CO2 has a specific maximum spectrum it can absorb, after which, you get no additional warming. Any honest model of CO2 induced warming would show an upper bound, not a hockey stick of exponential increase.
How much data do we have from the 1800s, or any non-modern age, of cloud cover? Isn't this an important negative feedback to note?
Look, in the end, if you're really thinking like a scientist here, tell me what evidence, either in the various proxy records or in direct observation, would convince you that the climate is not highly sensitive to CO2?
Mod parent up. The destruction of original data by CRU was arguably a crime against humanity if you actually believe AGW is true. It'd be like destroying the original stone tablets the 10 commandments were on, except you can't just go back up the hill and get more after smashing the golden cow.
Look, let's stop bandying about "peer review" as if it represents some sort of SCOTUS of science. Peer reviewers don't have to look at the actual data (as Phil Jones so graciously offered, they never asked him for it), don't have to agree with the conclusions, and aren't judging whether or not a paper is TRUE or not, they're simply deciding if it's worth publishing.
You also know that CO2 has a maximum absorption limit, right? And that after that saturation point, it cannot possibly contribute to more warming, right?
Look, your big problem here is the lag time in the ice core record. CO2 increases lag temp changes by about 800 years. Not sure exactly what the world looked like 800 years ago since we only have proxy data, but there you go.
Now, if CO2 actually LED temp increases, maybe you'd have a point (although not such a strong one if the lead was something like 800 years...that's a long time to adapt). In any case, despite the creative reasoning of some modelers (hard coding in scenarios where CO2 can lead and lag, based on some mythical "trigger" and an absence of any explanation of how the positive feedback loop of runaway warming is stopped), the statistical analysis of anything might lead to correlation, but not causality. For causality, you're going to have to build a falsifiable hypothesis, not a "heads I win, tails you lose" proposition.
I've always seen it as the other way around. Tell me if you're familiar with this one:
"After taking into account all of the natural warming, we still can't account for the observed warming in the 20th century, therefore, all additional observed warming must be created my man-made CO2."
"After taking into account all of the fossil record, we still can't account for gaps in between fossils, therefore, all changes we can't observe must have been created by an intelligent designer."
Seriously, if you believe AGW (and let's be specific here and call it out as Catastrophic AGW, because frankly, nobody gives a rats ass if human CO2 causes an increase in temps of 0.1C/century), give me your falsifiable hypothesis.
Here's a hint -> for evolution, you can falsify it by finding a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian era.
Don't know about others, but my favorite was having two key rings, each on the end of a length of 550 cord that could drape around my neck like a maile lei. With enough keys on each end, it made for a fairly good improvised weapon as a striking instrument, and could also be used as a garotte (yes, I understand that that could go both ways if you kept it hanging around your neck.
It wasn't directly connected to the body, so if you needed to give your keys to someone without fiddling with something, you could. Worst case scenario, you could fit it in your pocket. The clinky clinky of the keys against your chest was a constant reminder that you still had your keys, and when you needed to use them, it was a simple grab and go -> no fiddling with pockets or unchaining something from your belt loop.
Since those halcyon days of yore, I've greatly simplified my keys so they just fit on one key ring in my pocket, but back in the day of a bazillion keys, 550 cord worked wonders.
Deal. Putting an upper limit on how long it can override a suspected signal is a falsifiable prediction.
That being said, I would expect that if 20 years from now, the global temperature trend has been flat or negative while CO2 at Mauna Loa continues to rise, the assertion will be that 20 years isn't enough, since we've obviously had things like glacial periods that occurred over thousands of years. But maybe, just maybe, in 20 years with flat or decreasing temps in the face of increasing CO2, people will say, "Damn. I guess the man-made CO2 signal is an order of magnitude weaker than we thought. I guess we don't have to destroy humanity by avoiding cheap energy and prosperity brought by petroleum products."
I think tgibbs indicated the term "resolution" as being the term I was searching for -> and resolution doesn't increase the more measurements you have.
Furthermore, the additional variables at play here (everything from UHI, to what time a person bothered to record a temp, how they rounded it, how it violates the NOAA principles of station siting, etc) poison the well. GIGO, no matter how many times you measure the garbage.
I'm asserting that they need a denser distribution than they already have, especially given the biases (a simple case, for the vast majority of temperature records, the sea is not included...which is 3/4 of the surface of the earth). You're correct that they don't need a specifically denser distribution (i.e., putting 10,000 temperature stations in your house), but the need one that has more stations in the right places. Of course, we can't go back in time to put them there, which leads to a great deal of uncertainty about global temperature averages in the past.
The problem is that the earth undergoes temperature changes on a dramatic basis every day - 20 degrees swing from night to day means that if you measure the temp at 2:00pm one day, and 3:00pm on another day, you have some comparability problems. Any slow, multi-decadal trend is easily overwhelmed by this kind of error (as pointed out once regarding a satellite temp record showing dramatic cooling).
That's my point -> you're simply using a straw man "any other model", and asserting that any gaps in our understanding mean that your hypothesis is true. It is scientifically worthless, and a typical warmist retort.
I'm sorry, but your explanation on that one was dubious at best. If CO2 is a positive feedback force, no matter what the trigger, it should continue to increase indefinitely. Put another way, the model you've created requires hard coded assumptions that all prior lags were due to natural triggers, and your current assumption of lead is unique in the historical record. Can you identify any point in history before say, 1850, where CO2 led temperature change?
Change your resolution definition to spatial, and perhaps you can understand the issue better. Further understand that there is also a temporal category - helped by automated weather stations, but unhelpful to old data captured by humans. Further understand that there is also an actual temperature category - humans recording data before automated weather stations often recorded only to the degree, not 10th of a degree (that does match your resolution criteria, correct?).
Um, you've mistaken your analogy again. Creationists and global warming *supporters* are in the same boat -> they insist that barring any alternative explanation, they must be correct. This is, as you say, the hallmark of a crank.
Think carefully about what you're saying here. The fact that Galileo found an alternative model that worked better does not mean that his refutation of the geocentric model could not have stood on its own. You're conflating the two inappropriately.
Wrong. The scientist asks, "What is wrong with this model?" or even better, "What is wrong with MY model?" The crank is the one insisting that barring any other competing model, their model must be true.
Although your desire for a competing model is certainly understandable, it is not necessary in order to show any other arbitrary model is false. It might not be emotionally satisfying for you, but that's science.
Thank you, I was asking that question earlier, and I think I understand where your misapprehension came from. Let me rephrase from the top: the surface station temperature record does not have enough resolution to assert the kinds of of trends they are asserting. This is true both in terms of area covered per station, as well as the resolution of the measurements themselves.
The crux of your error, though, still lies in your concept that without an alternative model, no arbitrary model can be shown to be false. We got digressed into statistics nomenclature, which was an interesting tangent, but not as important as your misapprehension of basic scientific method.
Really? You're really trying to assert that I simply have to observe the yard stick 10^14 times, and I'll be able to fine a 1nm change in length? Can we also assert that given 10^14 observations of let's say, a far away star with the naked eye, we'd be able to resolve features of a 100 meters at a distance of 10 LY?
Is there any limit to this statistical magic which allows us to use crude measuring instruments to resolve the finest details?
The part where you can suddenly get more resolution out of a data set simply by looking at the sensor again.
The assertion that natural variability can override the warming signal is the ultimate defense for a failed prediction, though. You could use that defense for any definition of warming signal -> number of twinkies produced in the US, disruption of ocean currents by naval traffic, pick your poison, and that defense is airtight.
The challenge is to come up with a theory that has falsifiable predictions. Create a theory that has a defense against any observations, and you've really created nothing.
What I'm trying to do is bring your attention to the problem of what you call "error of measurement". As you note, on a yardstick, it's on the order of a millimeter. The fact that you assert that it could be done in principle (although you bring into the fold an electron microscope, which I think you're asserting "in principle" isn't necessary), simply doesn't hold.
You said earlier, "by taking a sufficient number of measurements you can get your errors down as low as you want". I'm asking you to justify that blanket assertion with an example that I believe refutes it quite cleanly, even though I take the example to an extreme to prove the point.
You've once again added in the unjustified assumption that all random errors must have a normal distribution. What part of that aren't you getting?
1) Basic logic -> we do see CO2 rising without temperature rising in the record. It lags by about 800 years, so when a turn going south in temps occurs, CO2 can still be rising due to an earlier lag.
2) The problem with the CO2 positive feedback effect hypothesis is that the historical record doesn't support it. With a positive feedback effect, you'd expect ever increasing temperatures once CO2 started increasing -> and we don't see this in the historical record. There is no tipping point at which we hit runaway warming, or it would've already happened. If you're asserting that CO2 has an upper limit of feedback (that is, it is somehow mitigated by some other negative feedbacks that stop the runaway positive feedback), then let's state that limit, and not just assume a tipping point.
3) The whole point is that simply because you cannot account for a recent rise in temperature, does not mean that it is due to CO2 from man. That's the essence of the problem with AGW -> it simply asserts that ignorance is a support of the theory, the same way creationism looks at gaps in the fossil record as proof of their claims.
Having this argument in other threads, but suffice it to say that one does not need an alternative model in order to falsify an existing one, in the same way only only needs an airtight alibi for oneself to avoid a murder conviction, not a more likely suspect for the murder in question.