And there are multiple mechanisms that produce long-term variation as well, not to mention the problem of causality. You're hedging your bets again, asserting that you have no need of predictions
It is a mathematical causal model that makes hard predictions, global warming being one of them. So what predictions does your model of "multiple mechanisms that produce long term variation" make...oh, that's right, you don't have one.
Really? You're still holding onto Venus? It's clear that Venus's temperature is well within the range of temps expected by solar input and atmospheric pressure levels
Once again, the notion of applying the ideal gas law, which is restricted to the case of a perfectly insulated container of fixed volume, is idiotic. You can't ignore the fact that reality violates the assumptions of your theory, and try to argue that it sort of holds--you need a model that is consistent with reality--like the models that are used to describe climate.
This is the sort of thing that one discovers when one subjects one's ideas to the discipline of mathematical modeling instead of just throwing out equations and ignoring the assumptions upon which they are based. Pressure does not produce warming, except briefly when a gas is first compressed, but that heat radiates away quickly unless it is in a perfectly insulating container. This is an inescapable consequence of the First Law of Thermodynamics. The CO2 partial pressure is important because it is a measure of the number of molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere. The temperature of a planet ultimately boils down to the amount of energy it receives (primarily from the sun) and how efficiently it is able to radiate that energy away. Lots of CO2 makes a planet an inefficient radiator, which means that it has to be at a higher temperature to radiate away all of the energy it receives.
Look, let's get back to "a model cannot be its own proof".
Scientific theories cannot be proved, only disproved. One way of disproving a model is by mathematical modeling to show that it is inconsistent with observation. So a theory that has survived the challenge of mathematical modeling has a much higher level of evidence than one that has not--as evidence by the fact that global warming critics still have not been able to come up with a coherent mathematical model that is consistent with observations, not just one Earth, but on other planets as well, without including a warming effect from CO2.
So which are you going for then, pressure driving temperature, or a "greenhouse effect" that is terribly named? You assert Earth doesn't look like Mars because the pressures are different
Mars does not experience as much warming from CO2 as earth, because the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere, as measured by partial pressure of CO2, is much, much less.
That's because measuring cloud cover is incredibly difficult, and we've got no proxies for it
You can see the cloud cover of Venus through a telescope. Venus has 100% cloud cover. Yet Venus is hotter than Mercury, which is closer to the sun and has no clouds. So much for the great protective effect of clouds.
The satellite measures are calibrated based on the surface temp record
No they aren't. I'll bet you read this on some crank website. I challenge you to quote any scientific paper in which calibration of satellite measures based on surface temperatures is described.
Didn't read the IPCC links, did you? Here's another one...Of course, the IPCC predicts a wide range of things (just like you, they bet on black and red on roulette), but yes, they have many a mention of runaway global warming
Oh, I see, rather than honestly admitting your error you are trying to move the goalposts. Previously you said that the IPCC predic
How about "unknown quantity". The common refrain of catastrophic AGW folks is that any "left over" warming after accounting for other natural drivers and their magnitudes is that human created CO2 is therefore responsible for the rest.
As emotionally appealing as this story may be to you, the facts, established by an extensive publication record is that the theory of CO2's effects on climate predated global warming, and was successfully applied to understanding temperatures on other planets well before modern global warming became a concern. The theory makes no distinction between "human created" and "natural" CO2, which you could readily verify by inspecting the code of the models, or the algorithms provided in many publications or websites. However, I can confidently predict that you will do neither of these, but will continue to get all of your info from crank websites such as "Wattsupwiththat," which is the global warming denial counterpart of evolution-denial websites like Uncommondescent. Just as the creationist websites embrace any argument, no matter how irrational, that supports its members emotional need to believe "Goddidit," while shielding them from exposure to actual science, Wattsupwiththat similarly support the need of its readers to believe in the denialsist plaint, "It's not our faaaaault."
The prediction doesn't match the observations. Continually increasing CO2 has not been lock step with temperature increases
And of course, if you'd actually read the science, you would know that a "lock step" relationship is not predicted, because there are multiple mechanisms that produce short-term variation around the long-term trend imposed by CO2 increase.
You're confusing cause and effect here, and ignoring the external heat source.
This is progress of a sort. Just as creationists habitually ignore the sun to invoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics--a law whose validity is restricted to isolated systems--global warming deniers have tried to inoke the ideal gas law, which is similarly restricted to isolated systems, and loses applicability once you have energy from the sun. The next step in understanding is to realize that Venus is much warmer than would be expected from solar radiation based upon blackbody physics. To date, nobody has managed to come up with a model consistent with the climate of Venus that does not invoke the CO2 greenhouse effect. But of course, greenhouse deniers carefully avoid the intellectual discipline of constructing detailed mathematical models, because this would force them to confront the logical flaws of their hand-waving arguments.
Doesn't really matter? Wow, way to hedge your bets:) Look, positive feedback working when CO2 increases following warming if solar output increases will cause further warming, so it should look just like warming caused by "added" CO2 -> in both cases, you're going to see a lead, in fact an ever increasing lead.
Yes, I can see how one could form that kind of misunderstanding, if you carefully avoid the intellectual discipline of doing the math to see what the models really predict.
Okay, pick one and stick with it. You're arguing my point now -> it's about pressure, not ppm of any given gas.
Yes, it's about partial pressure of greenhouse gasses. That's what the models say, as you'd already know if you'd bothered to learn the science instead of creating this "ppm" strawman.
It's called negative feedback effects like cloud albedo.
Yet, somehow, nobody has managed to get this to work in an actual model. But you have so much more freedom when you just wave your hands about, and don't bother trying to get the math to work.
The modeled effects are derived from the assumption that any unknown drivers must be due to human emitted CO2. Again, the model cannot be its own proof.
Repeating a falsehood does not make it true. When the ability of CO2 to produce global warming was predicted more than a century ago, well before the big rise in CO2 and the warming that accompanied it, it is ridiculous to refer to this as an "unknown driver."
Historical climate data shows increase of CO2 in response to warming, not the other way around. Your prediction does not match the observations.
See the reference cited above. The prediction that an increase in CO2 would warm the climate long predates the big rise in CO2 and the modern warming.
Wrong. RTFA again
Read it. ROFL. For some comments from people who actually understand elementary physics, see here and here
Regardless if an atmosphere is a insulated container or not, the pressure versus temperature relationship of an atmosphere still holds - gravity acts as your container here
Only if you are inside a black hole does gravity prevent heat from escaping in the form of electromagnetic radiation. So the notion that the temperature of Venus can be explained by adiabatic heating is in violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation of Energy).
Now, have fun explaining how Mars has 95.2% CO2 atmosphere, but never had any runaway global warming. Have fun, think hard, it helps.
Think hard? This is pretty trivial. This sort of thing is confusing only if you don't actually do the math. It's not the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 that determines the warming effect, but the partial pressure. The partial pressure of CO2 in the Martian atmosphere is over four orders of magnitude lower than on Venus, because even Mars's atmosphere is mostly CO2, there is less CO2 than in the Earth's atmosphere.
Which model is your favorite?
Doesn't really much matter, since they are all based on the actual physics, without the flights of fancy you've been advocating. All have a positive feedback between CO2 and temperature, so that CO2 will follow warming if solar output increases, and warming will follow CO2 if CO2 is added to the atmosphere (e.g. from combustion). And none of them give a runaway greenhouse with anticipated levels of CO2.
Look, if you can accept that the model is simply a sanity check and not proof, you're half way there.
Yes, so far all we have is a theory that passes the sanity check of mathematical modeling (which none of the objections to CO2 induced global warming have managed to do) plus a prediction, over a century old, that increased CO2 would produce warming, and observed warming that matches predictions, plus a large mass of historical and prehistorical data that also is consistent with the theory.
It's not surprising that the anti-AGW people avoid coming up with an actual model, because they probably know, subconsciously (and I suspect in some cases consciously) that it would sound ridiculous. It would have to go something like this:
1. There is some, as yet undiscovered, mechanism that limits the warming effect of CO2 on the atmosphere.
2. The apparent increase in average temperatures that has accompanied the modern rise in CO2 is either
a. The result of multiple separate statistical errors in land measurements, sea measurements, and satellite measurements; the fact that they all seem to show warming is sheer coincidence, or
b. The result of some as yet unidentified (but NATURAL!!) warming mechan
That's not true, and you know it. The standard AGW talking point is that after taking all known drivers into consideration, we cannot explain all the observed warming, therefore it must be due to man.
On the contrary, the observed warming is consistent with the known and modeled effects of CO2 on climate, so it is not unexplained. Indeed, nobody has yet managed to come up with a model that is consistent with historical climate data and does not predict warming in response to such an increase in CO2. Other data--the chemistry of combustion, statistics on energy derived from combustion, changes in the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, confirms that the increase in CO2 is attributable to human activity.
PV = nRT. The temperature on Venus has nothing to do with runaway global warming, it has everything to do with atmospheric pressures.
You aren't seriously trying to explain the temperature of Venus based on the ideal gas law, are you? That is scientifically illiterate. Yes, if you compress a gas, it will warm up, but it will not stay warm unless it is in a perfectly insulated container. Venus is not in a perfectly insulated container--it radiates energy to space, so its temperature must be described by an energetic steady state--and there is no way to explain the high temperature of Venus other than the greenhouse effect of CO2. Once again, you have been led astray by a handwaving argument. This is the sort of flagrant error that people fall into when they do not subject their ideas to the "sanity" check of a detailed mathematical model.
I would caution you against getting information from a crank site like wattsupwiththat. It is a laughing stock among scientists, because it frequently publishes this kind of scientifically illiterate nonsense, and because it censors any criticism from real scientists, it is easy for nonscientists to be fooled. To anybody with a basic understanding of thermodynamics, pV=nRT as an explanation of the temperature of Venus is pretty funny.
Again, a model cannot be its own proof.
Mathematics can prove a theory wrong--such as your own belief that "If CO2 has the same effect no matter where it comes from, you can't have lags -> CO2 emitted, whether from oceans in response to solar changes, or from supervolcanoes or model T fords, always acts as a positive feedback effect and raises temperatures. Lags wouldn't exist if CO2 amplified the increase in temperature, since whatever triggered the initial CO2 release, you'd end up with a positive feedback effect."
You can inspect the actual models, and run them yourself. You will find that they do include this positive feedback, do not make some sort of magical distinction between "natural" and "human" CO2, and do not necessarily result in "runaway" warming. What you are expressing is an example of the sort of error that people fall into when they do not subject their thinking to the discipline of careful mathematical modelling.
The major role of modeling in science is not to "be its own proof," but rather to help to provide a sanity check to detect errrors. There are many ideas that sound superficially plausible, but can readily be shown to be false mathematically.
But I've just spent this entire time trying to explain to you that establishing a parameter based on historical data precludes the notion that you are "predicting" the historical data.
Any valid model must be consistent with historical data, so historical data offers a critical "sanity check" on climate models.
Either you can use the historical data to validate the parameter, or you can use the parameter to validate the historical data.
It is validation in the sense that it demonstrates that the model's equations are consistent that data. This is not necessarily the case for a physical model. Physical models are not infinitely malleable. For example, you cannot fit historical data on planetary orbits if you assume that the Law of gravity obeys an inverse-cube relationship, even if you allow G to be a free parameter. Moreover, one does not necessarily need to use all of the historical data for parameter estimation; you could use one subset for parameter estimation and another subset for testing.
So it is meaningful that nobody so far has been able to come up with a physical climate model that manages to retain consistency with historical and experimental data, yet does not predict serious warming in response to CO2 released by humans.
Let me continue the analogy for you for warmists - no matter how many natural drivers you show them, they always insist that the evidence is not strong enough, because there is "unaccounted for warming."
The concern is not "unaccounted for warming," but rather the warming that is accounted for and expected.
Of course science != consensus. But here's a refutation of the whitewash
You are citing the notorious Wegman report as a "refutation" of a report by the most respected independent scientific societies in the nation, if not the world? Are you joking?
So you didn't look at any of their graphs? Here, try page 792-793.
Nothing about "runaway global warming" there, either, just projected increases of a few degrees. That certainly will have serious consequences, but nothing approaching what you would get with runaway global warming such as is seen on Venus.
If CO2 has the same effect no matter where it comes from, you can't have lags -> CO2 emitted, whether from oceans in response to solar changes, or from supervolcanoes or model T fords, always acts as a positive feedback effect and raises temperatures. Lags wouldn't exist if CO2 amplified the increase in temperature, since whatever triggered the initial CO2 release, you'd end up with a positive feedback effect.
There is a positive feedback effect. Fortunately, there are also negative feedbacks that dampen this effect to some extent, at least for CO2 increases anticipated for plausible scenarios. Again, your misconceptioin on this matter simply illustrates how easy it is to fool yourself by making handwaving arguments about systems containing multiple positive and negative feedbacks. This is why models are so crucial--they serve as an invaluable "sanity check." Note that code for a number of models is publicly available, so you can even try them out yourself to verify that the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the model is as described, without the need to postulate absurdities like "CO2 memory"
No, I'm really trying to argue that a model cannot be its own justification. A model which takes measurements from 1000 stations cannot be its own justification, just as a model which takes measurements from 1 station cannot be its own justification. This is why Popper's falsifiability criteria is so crucial to determining causality.
Obviously, a model which is tested against actual measurments is not "its own justification." However, if you want to argue that the measurements taken are inadequate, you need some justification other than the fact that you would rather not believe the conclusions. No matter how much data is provided, one can always demand more, so without some sort of theoretical justification it has little meaning. This is what the creationists do--no matter how many fossils you show them, they always insist that the fossil evidence is not strong enough, because there are "missing links."
I'm sorry, but the appeal to authority argument falls flat here.
Yes, I can underestand that McIntyre and McKitrick would prefer to believe that their work is something more than a technical criticism that turned out to be irrelevant to the basic conclusions. It is human nature to want to believe that your own work is something more than a footnote. But here is what the NRC actually said:
"A second area of criticism focuses on statistical validation and robustness. McIntyre and McKitrick (2003, 2005a,b) question the choice and application of statistical methods, notably principal component analysis; the metric used in the validation step of the reconstruction exercise; and the selection of proxies, especially the bristlecone pine data used in some of the original temperature reconstruction studies. These and other criticisms, explored briefly in the remainder of this chapter, raised concerns that led to new research and ongoing efforts to improve how surface temperature reconstructions are performed. As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in Chapter 9. In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press)...."
"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes the additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and documentation of the spatial coherence of recent warming described above (Cook et al. 2004, Moberg et al. 2005b, Rutherford et al. 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press) and also the pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators described in previous chapters (e.g., Thompson et al. in press)."
So Mann made some techincal errors, but they were largely irrelevant to his basic conclusions, which have since been validated by other studies that do not share those technical flaws. This remains the scientific consensus.
Check out the page, and text search for "runaway". You'll find it somewhere towards the middle of the page.
In a list of references. Perhaps you don't understand what a list of references is. A list of references is simply a list of the material that was referred to. Inclusion of a paper in a reference list does not constitute any kind of endorsement or incorporation of that paper's conclusions. The challenge was not a scavenger hunt to find the words "runaway greenhouse" somewhere, regardless of cont
No. McIntyre and McKitrick had a technical complaint about a novel method of statistical analysis used in the Mann paper, and argued that under certain conditions it could overestimate the statistical significance of the result. A subsequent review by the NRC concluded that McIntyre & Kitrick's techincal objection was correct, but that it did in fact produce an incorrect result in the case of Mann's data. Subsequent studies using other statistical methodology and datasets have supported Mann's conclusions.
But that's exactly the problem -> the model is the proof of the model. Any arbitrary model can claim to be its own justification.
You were talking about a model that is tested with a single data point. That has no relevance to actual global climate models, which have been evaluated against many thousands of measurements. You seem to be trying to argue that "if one measurment is not enough, then however many you have can't be enough either." That makes no sense.
Shame on you. That whitewash should be patently obvious to someone with such a iron grip on statistics.
Oh, so now the NRC is involved in some sort of "whitewash?" This is an independent peer-review panel of the US National Academies of Science, the most respected independent organization of scientists in the nation, if not the world. If you are going to accuse them of some kind of malfeasance, you need some grounds better than not liking their conclusions.
They call it the "runaway greenhouse effect" -
Yes, I know what it is called. I asked you to "Kindly quote the section of the IPCC report that predicts runaway warming as a consequence of anticipated levels of CO2." That shouldn't be too hard, if your claim is true, as the entire report is online--yet the best you could come up with is a list of references. Once again, quote the text from the IPCC report in which this claim is made
And here's the refutation
Aren't you getting a bit ahead of yourself? You haven't even established that IPCC actually made a prediction of a "runaway greenhouse."
This behavior is of course ad hoc. CO2 has no memory, and the climate system cannot distinguish between "added" CO2 and "non-added" CO2
And global climate models assume that every molecule of CO2, wherever it came from, has the same physical chemistry and the same impact on climate. No such memory is assumed.
As devil's advocate, I'll assert that the AGW defense of that would be the assertion that aerosols like SO2 balance it out. But I'll keep in mind that you'll accept that evidence as a falsification of AGW.
Such a claim would have to be supported by evidence that the aerosols were present. The point is that none of these are arbitrary ad hoc assumptions, but rather testable predictions.
Perhaps. But measurments will never be perfectly distributed, so insisting that the distribution is not good enough is empty handwaving--unless of course you can support it with a model that demonstrates that a more uniform distribution gives different conclusions.
And what about the model of just one temperature station -> that model is pretty simple, and based on that model you could judge that it is of sufficient density.
I see no value in such a contrafactual assumption. Perhaps if you have a mathematical model of climate for which you can show that only one station would be sufficient then that would be worthy of discussion.
That's simply not true. Although average volcanic activity is usually very low, catastrophic events that occur on the range of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, can certainly quantifiably influence atmospheric CO2.
If you want to argue that millions of years ago a volcano made a significant contribution to CO2 and climate, I'm willing to look at the evidence, but I don't see the relevance to our discussion of global warming in the modern era.
Riddle me this -> is it possible to find a trend where none exists? You seem to postulate that any set of measurements, if they are large enough, will be perfectly accurate and precise. You still haven't answered the resolution problem either.
You haven't provided any evidence of a "problem." You need to postulate some fairly contrived circumstance to generate an artifactual trend--as evidenced by the fact that you have not yet managed to come up with a scenario that would do it.
Read the article and the comments -> it's a thought experiment that reduces the theory of AGW down to its conceptual limits.
I've read the article. It is a toy model that omits so many of the factors that influence climate in the real world as to be of no relevance. Certainly a model that does not include CO2, much less its absorbance, emission, and solubility properties, cannot address the effect of CO2 on climate. And a static model obviously is not relevant to climate change.
Have you seen Mann's hockey stick?
Yes. I've also read the NRC peer-review report that concluded that Mann's conclusions are essentially correct.
Have you heard the IPCC fear-mongering about runaway warming and tipping points?
No, I haven't read anything of the sort in the IPCC report. Kindly quote the section of the IPCC report that predicts runaway warming as a consequence of anticipated levels of CO2.
You're still avoiding the issue with the ad hoc nature of your rationalizations, and fail to offer any opportunity for observations to possibly contradict your theory. If you see a historic record where CO2 is leading, you'll assert that it's due to some sort of "added" CO2.
You are the one who asserted, incorrectly, that the fact that CO2 lagged temperature change when there was no introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere, and led temperature increase when there was verified release of CO2 constituted a problem, apparently unaware that this behavior is not at hoc, but a necessary consequence of the well established physical chemistry of CO2. It is certainly possible to determine past CO2 levels, e.g. from ice core data, so a temperature rise due to increased solar activity that was not followed by a rise in CO2 would be a problem for the model. You have insisted that there are examples of massive releases of CO2 due to volcanoes. If you can find evidence of this, without a temperature increase following, then this would be a problem for the model.
You said most critical parameters are well known from other data, that is not true
So show some evidence that crititcal parameters are not well constrained from other data. It should be easy if they are as unconstrained as you imagine. Just take one of the publicly available climate models and show that you can alter the conclusions by changing one of the parameterizations without losing consistency with established physics or historical data.
Considering all of the effort that has gone into attacking the theory of climate change, isn't it surprising that nobody has yet succeeded in doing this?
I'm not saying we shouldn't try to model the climate, I am saying that we don't currently know how to model the climate from first principles. You were the one who said models didn't use parameterizations. You were wrong.
Please cite where I supposedly said that models didn't use parameterizations (actually, I cited to you an article that described the parameterizations and how they are done). But parameterizations are still constrained because they have to be consistent with observations. Nobody to date has been come up with a parameterization that alters the overall conclusions of climate models. And considering how many wealthy interests stand to lose from efforts to limit emissions, it is a safe bet that it is not from want of trying.
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.
If you have a model, then you have a basis for judging what density of recording stations you need to detect a trend. But you don't have a model, do you? You just insist that whatever they have must be inadequate because you don't like the conclusions--a God of the Gaps argument: "if you took more measurments, you would see that I am right."
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.
You miss the point--the impact of the volcanic eruptions on atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be undetectable. Here's yet another plot showing the absence of any detectable blip from volcanic eruptions.
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.
Wow, you really don't understand statistics at all, do you? You really should try these things before you pontificate about them. What you describe will increase the mean, but the slope will still be within error of zero. And the more points you create like that, the closer it will get to zero.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/17/the-steel-greenhouse/ [wattsupwiththat.com] - Your model is still wrong.
I beg your pardon? This is a not a climate model at all, but a toy model that does not even attempt to consider the physics of CO2 or water vapor. It is assuming a fixed and unalterable greenhouse layer made of steel! It has nothing to contribute to the topic at hand. If that is the closest thing to a model that anti-AGW advocates can muster, it is truly pathetic.
That being said, historic CO2 sensitivity can be addressed with a simple thought experiment based on the historic CO2 record -> any highly sensitive system would already have had runaway warming due to a positive feedback effect. Of course, you can ad hoc your way out of that by saying that some magical negative feedback effect in the past stopped runaway warming, but that this magical negative feedback doesn't work when it's humans "adding" the CO2, but that's an assertion, not science.
Once again, we see the folly of conducting "thought experiments" without the discipline of carrying out a "sanity check" with actual calculations. You assert that the models would cause runaway warming, yet the existing models do not exhibit this effect, and they don't have to assume "magical negative feedback" to prevent it--only careful modelling of known physical mechanisms.
You are missing my point. So many here use the excuse to not listen to someone *regardless* if its not towing the AGW party line. I know plenty of National Academy of Science folks that don't tow the line
Big waves washing over cites like some high budget hollow flick is "mostly right". Perhaps you should read the peer reviewed stuff, where the scientists are required to back sweeping statements like "unprecedented" change. You get a different picture entirely, and they in fact don't use such language since the data doesn't really support it.
I don't think that anybody has claimed that the projected temperatures are unprecedented if you include prehistoric times, although such a massive injection of CO2 probably is, since we know of no natural source capable of this.
Here's a statement from the US NAS investigation of the "hockey stick," one of the most eminent peer-review groups every constituted:
"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies."
"Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified."
Al Gore should be totally trusted
I don't think that anybody should act on the basis of trust in any politician. But in this case, it turns out that Al Gore is merely repeating what the most authoritative scientific sources worldwide have already concluded.
You do know that there are many mechanisms "climate science" readily admits to not being able to model?
While there are some phenomena that may not yet be modeled in detail, there is no reason to believe that there hides a "God of the gaps" waiting to leap out and save us at the last minute from CO2 induced global warming.
There's no causative connection, whatsoever, between any one thing in "climate" (historic or current) that we're unable to model and the climate as a result of that being "unstable".
The most likely explanation is of course that the MWP was local, not global, as current scientific opinion holds. But if in fact there are unknown factors that could warm the globe substantially, in addition to established ones such as CO2, then there is the risk that this unknown factor could unexpectedly kick in and add to CO2 induced warming perhaps making a difference between the dangerous but survivable warming that we now expect and a true disaster. This is certainly an argument for even greater efforts to control CO2
I am convinced that such policies--and knee-jerk "zero tolerance" policies in general--contribute to crime, because they teach impressionable children that rules and laws are arbitrary, unreasonable, and unfair, and that the people who create and enforce them are fools who are unworthy of respect.
Of course it is ultimately about profits as far as Apple is concerned. Apple is, after all, a business, with primary responsibility to its shareholders. But what is it that makes this a profitable move for Apple? If there were really a strong public demand for Flash on portable devices, Apple would be busy trying to help Adobe put Flash on Apple products, also in the interests of Profit.
The reason that Apple can get away with it is that large numbers of users are themselves pretty fed up with Flash--it crashes or hangs up their browsers, and it is responsible for irritating ads that animate without being asked to, or worse, "escape" from their sidebars to get in the way of content. For every user who loves Flash games, there are several more who find a Flashless web to be a pretty nice place.
This is the problem that Adobe needs to solve if they want Flash to survive.
The simple fact is, that if a technology is good, and absolutely needed, it will be placed where demanded, or the vendor refusing to will simply shrivel and die.
I agree. I don't actually think that Adobe needs any cooperation from Apple; all they need to do is clean up their own house.
Step 1. Produce a Flash plug in for Macs (and Windows) that doesn't crash or allow excessive usage of memory or CPU cycles.
Step 2. Produce a Flash plug in or Flash-enabled browser for Android that does not run down the battery excessively or demand excessive system resources. Develop a set of standards for Flash apps that are both mouse and touch compatible. Provide user interface options, accessible from any Flash app, to block intrusive Flash applications (e.g. anything that runs or animates automatically without some sort of authorization from the user).
If they can do this promptly, they may rescue Flash, and Apple will eventually fall into line due to user demand and competition from Android. But the window is rapidly closing. I expect that Adobe has maybe 3 months before the window for saving Flash closes forever.
'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?
Sounds pretty good to me. Polls can obtain highly reliable statistical results by sampling a much smaller % of a population. Do you have any evidence that 75% is insufficient? For example, a model in which sampling 75% of the earth's surface yields substantially incorrect conclusions?
Yes, in the 1800s ships took temperature readings of the ocean. And just how accurate, precise and numerous were those readings?
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. Unless, of course, you have some kind of model that demonstrates that more readings are required?
I love Fermi as much as the next guy, but a systemic bias isn't going to "cancel out".
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.
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.
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. When you assert with no theoretical basis that the number, accuracy, and precision of measurements is inadequate to evaluate climate change, you are making just such a "gap" argument.
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.
BZZZT! False. This was an error in early modeling which has been known to be mistaken for half a decade. See here, here, and here. But just like creationists, who are still trotting out arguments that were debunked in the time of Darwin, anti-AGW debaters continue to trot out ancient fallacies. For estimates of climate sensitivity derived from a wide variety of observations, see here.
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?
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
Your proposed model defies basic physics. When CO2 "re-radiates", it does so in all directions, not just down towards the earth.
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're making an unfalsifiable assumption there. Any observation supports your theory without showing that it has made an accurate prediction.
What is unfalsifiable? The temperature dependence of CO2 solubility? Easily tested in the lab. The spectral absorbance and radiation characteristics of the CO2 molecule? Also testable in the lab. The prediction is a mathematical consequence of these falsifiable assumptions.
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).
Not true. All mathematical derivations are fundamentally tautological. Very often, the consequences of a tautological transformation of a theory will tell you how the theory can be tested.
However, it is not true that any lead time will be consistent with the model, because the kinetics of these processes are modeled and predicted also. 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.
Unless folks here disagree with the statement. Then they are not climatologist and should be ignored.
Members of the National Academy of Science are not random folks--they are people who have a lifetime of experience evaluating scientific data, and major scientific accomplishments attesting to their skill.
So while the professional climatologists are doubtless the most qualified to evaluate scientific data and methods, if for some reason you doubt their ability or honesty, the NAS (and similar independent scientific societies of other nations) are the next most authoritative source.
As for Al Gore, he has no particular qualifications in climate science, he is just a skilled communicator who listens to and reports what the real scientists are saying. But climate scientists who have reviewed Mr. Gore's movie have concluded that while there were some minor errors, he got it mostly right.
Some guys claim that the data cannot be reanalyzed and compiled. Meanwhile other guys are simply doing it. Clear Climate Code is an independent group that is analyzing the publicly available GISTEMP data set, and also reviewing their analysis software and rewriting it for greater clarity.
So far, their results have been in good agreement with published work.
timesonline got it wrong. CRU does not produce original data, and never even had the originals of the raw data in their possession. The original raw data is owned and retained by the various national meteorological services that obtained it. They don't send out their originals to anybody. Copies of the data were loaned to CRU for purposes of analysis. There is no particular reason for CRU to retain those copes after the study was completed and the results published. Scientific etiquette and common decency demands that raw data should be requested from the group that obtained it. Besides, any real scientist who wanted to check their conclusions would go to the source for the most authoritative, up-to-date data.
While some meteorological services charge a fee for access to the data, much of it is available to the public for free. A useful index to the available data, both raw and processed, is available here
I have to wonder why so many in the AGW camp are not concerned that data and methods have been lost.
Because they have actually looked into these claims and have discovered them to be false. The raw climate data is retained and archived by the various national meteorological services that obtained and owns it
Climate science is actually one of the more open fields of science, and a great deal of the data, methods, even code for computer models is publicly available.
The claim is that there was a global warming period that was not do to any of the mechanisms of warming that have been identified by climate science. This implies a fundamental instability in global temperature. If global climate is really that unstable and unpredictable, then we should be even more concerned about the fact that we are currently involved in a massive perturbation of climate.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a mathematical causal model that makes hard predictions, global warming being one of them. So what predictions does your model of "multiple mechanisms that produce long term variation" make...oh, that's right, you don't have one.
Once again, the notion of applying the ideal gas law, which is restricted to the case of a perfectly insulated container of fixed volume, is idiotic. You can't ignore the fact that reality violates the assumptions of your theory, and try to argue that it sort of holds--you need a model that is consistent with reality--like the models that are used to describe climate.
This is the sort of thing that one discovers when one subjects one's ideas to the discipline of mathematical modeling instead of just throwing out equations and ignoring the assumptions upon which they are based. Pressure does not produce warming, except briefly when a gas is first compressed, but that heat radiates away quickly unless it is in a perfectly insulating container. This is an inescapable consequence of the First Law of Thermodynamics. The CO2 partial pressure is important because it is a measure of the number of molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere. The temperature of a planet ultimately boils down to the amount of energy it receives (primarily from the sun) and how efficiently it is able to radiate that energy away. Lots of CO2 makes a planet an inefficient radiator, which means that it has to be at a higher temperature to radiate away all of the energy it receives.
Scientific theories cannot be proved, only disproved. One way of disproving a model is by mathematical modeling to show that it is inconsistent with observation. So a theory that has survived the challenge of mathematical modeling has a much higher level of evidence than one that has not--as evidence by the fact that global warming critics still have not been able to come up with a coherent mathematical model that is consistent with observations, not just one Earth, but on other planets as well, without including a warming effect from CO2.
Mars does not experience as much warming from CO2 as earth, because the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere, as measured by partial pressure of CO2, is much, much less.
You can see the cloud cover of Venus through a telescope. Venus has 100% cloud cover. Yet Venus is hotter than Mercury, which is closer to the sun and has no clouds. So much for the great protective effect of clouds.
No they aren't. I'll bet you read this on some crank website. I challenge you to quote any scientific paper in which calibration of satellite measures based on surface temperatures is described.
Oh, I see, rather than honestly admitting your error you are trying to move the goalposts. Previously you said that the IPCC predic
As emotionally appealing as this story may be to you, the facts, established by an extensive publication record is that the theory of CO2's effects on climate predated global warming, and was successfully applied to understanding temperatures on other planets well before modern global warming became a concern. The theory makes no distinction between "human created" and "natural" CO2, which you could readily verify by inspecting the code of the models, or the algorithms provided in many publications or websites. However, I can confidently predict that you will do neither of these, but will continue to get all of your info from crank websites such as "Wattsupwiththat," which is the global warming denial counterpart of evolution-denial websites like Uncommondescent. Just as the creationist websites embrace any argument, no matter how irrational, that supports its members emotional need to believe "Goddidit," while shielding them from exposure to actual science, Wattsupwiththat similarly support the need of its readers to believe in the denialsist plaint, "It's not our faaaaault."
And of course, if you'd actually read the science, you would know that a "lock step" relationship is not predicted, because there are multiple mechanisms that produce short-term variation around the long-term trend imposed by CO2 increase.
This is progress of a sort. Just as creationists habitually ignore the sun to invoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics--a law whose validity is restricted to isolated systems--global warming deniers have tried to inoke the ideal gas law, which is similarly restricted to isolated systems, and loses applicability once you have energy from the sun. The next step in understanding is to realize that Venus is much warmer than would be expected from solar radiation based upon blackbody physics. To date, nobody has managed to come up with a model consistent with the climate of Venus that does not invoke the CO2 greenhouse effect. But of course, greenhouse deniers carefully avoid the intellectual discipline of constructing detailed mathematical models, because this would force them to confront the logical flaws of their hand-waving arguments.
Yes, I can see how one could form that kind of misunderstanding, if you carefully avoid the intellectual discipline of doing the math to see what the models really predict.
Yes, it's about partial pressure of greenhouse gasses. That's what the models say, as you'd already know if you'd bothered to learn the science instead of creating this "ppm" strawman.
Yet, somehow, nobody has managed to get this to work in an actual model. But you have so much more freedom when you just wave your hands about, and don't bother trying to get the math to work.
In the ocean? In the satellite measures? (
Repeating a falsehood does not make it true. When the ability of CO2 to produce global warming was predicted more than a century ago, well before the big rise in CO2 and the warming that accompanied it, it is ridiculous to refer to this as an "unknown driver."
See the reference cited above. The prediction that an increase in CO2 would warm the climate long predates the big rise in CO2 and the modern warming.
Read it. ROFL. For some comments from people who actually understand elementary physics, see here and here
Only if you are inside a black hole does gravity prevent heat from escaping in the form of electromagnetic radiation. So the notion that the temperature of Venus can be explained by adiabatic heating is in violation of the First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation of Energy).
Think hard? This is pretty trivial. This sort of thing is confusing only if you don't actually do the math. It's not the percentage of the atmosphere that is CO2 that determines the warming effect, but the partial pressure. The partial pressure of CO2 in the Martian atmosphere is over four orders of magnitude lower than on Venus, because even Mars's atmosphere is mostly CO2, there is less CO2 than in the Earth's atmosphere.
Doesn't really much matter, since they are all based on the actual physics, without the flights of fancy you've been advocating. All have a positive feedback between CO2 and temperature, so that CO2 will follow warming if solar output increases, and warming will follow CO2 if CO2 is added to the atmosphere (e.g. from combustion). And none of them give a runaway greenhouse with anticipated levels of CO2.
Yes, so far all we have is a theory that passes the sanity check of mathematical modeling (which none of the objections to CO2 induced global warming have managed to do) plus a prediction, over a century old, that increased CO2 would produce warming, and observed warming that matches predictions, plus a large mass of historical and prehistorical data that also is consistent with the theory.
It's not surprising that the anti-AGW people avoid coming up with an actual model, because they probably know, subconsciously (and I suspect in some cases consciously) that it would sound ridiculous. It would have to go something like this:
1. There is some, as yet undiscovered, mechanism that limits the warming effect of CO2 on the atmosphere.
2. The apparent increase in average temperatures that has accompanied the modern rise in CO2 is either
a. The result of multiple separate statistical errors in land measurements, sea measurements, and satellite measurements; the fact that they all seem to show warming is sheer coincidence, or
b. The result of some as yet unidentified (but NATURAL!!) warming mechan
On the contrary, the observed warming is consistent with the known and modeled effects of CO2 on climate, so it is not unexplained. Indeed, nobody has yet managed to come up with a model that is consistent with historical climate data and does not predict warming in response to such an increase in CO2. Other data--the chemistry of combustion, statistics on energy derived from combustion, changes in the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2, confirms that the increase in CO2 is attributable to human activity.
You aren't seriously trying to explain the temperature of Venus based on the ideal gas law, are you? That is scientifically illiterate. Yes, if you compress a gas, it will warm up, but it will not stay warm unless it is in a perfectly insulated container. Venus is not in a perfectly insulated container--it radiates energy to space, so its temperature must be described by an energetic steady state--and there is no way to explain the high temperature of Venus other than the greenhouse effect of CO2. Once again, you have been led astray by a handwaving argument. This is the sort of flagrant error that people fall into when they do not subject their ideas to the "sanity" check of a detailed mathematical model.
I would caution you against getting information from a crank site like wattsupwiththat. It is a laughing stock among scientists, because it frequently publishes this kind of scientifically illiterate nonsense, and because it censors any criticism from real scientists, it is easy for nonscientists to be fooled. To anybody with a basic understanding of thermodynamics, pV=nRT as an explanation of the temperature of Venus is pretty funny.
Mathematics can prove a theory wrong--such as your own belief that "If CO2 has the same effect no matter where it comes from, you can't have lags -> CO2 emitted, whether from oceans in response to solar changes, or from supervolcanoes or model T fords, always acts as a positive feedback effect and raises temperatures. Lags wouldn't exist if CO2 amplified the increase in temperature, since whatever triggered the initial CO2 release, you'd end up with a positive feedback effect."
You can inspect the actual models, and run them yourself. You will find that they do include this positive feedback, do not make some sort of magical distinction between "natural" and "human" CO2, and do not necessarily result in "runaway" warming. What you are expressing is an example of the sort of error that people fall into when they do not subject their thinking to the discipline of careful mathematical modelling.
The major role of modeling in science is not to "be its own proof," but rather to help to provide a sanity check to detect errrors. There are many ideas that sound superficially plausible, but can readily be shown to be false mathematically.
Any valid model must be consistent with historical data, so historical data offers a critical "sanity check" on climate models.
It is validation in the sense that it demonstrates that the model's equations are consistent that data. This is not necessarily the case for a physical model. Physical models are not infinitely malleable. For example, you cannot fit historical data on planetary orbits if you assume that the Law of gravity obeys an inverse-cube relationship, even if you allow G to be a free parameter. Moreover, one does not necessarily need to use all of the historical data for parameter estimation; you could use one subset for parameter estimation and another subset for testing.
So it is meaningful that nobody so far has been able to come up with a physical climate model that manages to retain consistency with historical and experimental data, yet does not predict serious warming in response to CO2 released by humans.
The concern is not "unaccounted for warming," but rather the warming that is accounted for and expected.
You are citing the notorious Wegman report as a "refutation" of a report by the most respected independent scientific societies in the nation, if not the world? Are you joking?
Nothing about "runaway global warming" there, either, just projected increases of a few degrees. That certainly will have serious consequences, but nothing approaching what you would get with runaway global warming such as is seen on Venus.
There is a positive feedback effect. Fortunately, there are also negative feedbacks that dampen this effect to some extent, at least for CO2 increases anticipated for plausible scenarios. Again, your misconceptioin on this matter simply illustrates how easy it is to fool yourself by making handwaving arguments about systems containing multiple positive and negative feedbacks. This is why models are so crucial--they serve as an invaluable "sanity check." Note that code for a number of models is publicly available, so you can even try them out yourself to verify that the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the model is as described, without the need to postulate absurdities like "CO2 memory"
Obviously, a model which is tested against actual measurments is not "its own justification." However, if you want to argue that the measurements taken are inadequate, you need some justification other than the fact that you would rather not believe the conclusions. No matter how much data is provided, one can always demand more, so without some sort of theoretical justification it has little meaning. This is what the creationists do--no matter how many fossils you show them, they always insist that the fossil evidence is not strong enough, because there are "missing links."
Yes, I can underestand that McIntyre and McKitrick would prefer to believe that their work is something more than a technical criticism that turned out to be irrelevant to the basic conclusions. It is human nature to want to believe that your own work is something more than a footnote. But here is what the NRC actually said:
"A second area of criticism focuses on statistical validation and robustness. McIntyre and McKitrick (2003, 2005a,b) question the choice and application of statistical methods, notably principal component analysis; the metric used in the validation step of the reconstruction exercise; and the selection of proxies, especially the bristlecone pine data used in some of the original temperature reconstruction studies. These and other criticisms, explored briefly in the remainder of this chapter, raised concerns that led to new research and ongoing efforts to improve how surface temperature reconstructions are performed. As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions. A description of this effect is given in Chapter 9. In practice, this method, though not recommended, does not appear to unduly influence reconstructions of hemispheric mean temperature; reconstructions performed without using principal component analysis are qualitatively similar to the original curves presented by Mann et al. (Crowley and Lowery 2000, Huybers 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Hegerl et al. 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press)...."
"The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes the additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and documentation of the spatial coherence of recent warming described above (Cook et al. 2004, Moberg et al. 2005b, Rutherford et al. 2005, D’Arrigo et al. 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006, Wahl and Ammann in press) and also the pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators described in previous chapters (e.g., Thompson et al. in press)."
So Mann made some techincal errors, but they were largely irrelevant to his basic conclusions, which have since been validated by other studies that do not share those technical flaws. This remains the scientific consensus.
In a list of references. Perhaps you don't understand what a list of references is. A list of references is simply a list of the material that was referred to. Inclusion of a paper in a reference list does not constitute any kind of endorsement or incorporation of that paper's conclusions. The challenge was not a scavenger hunt to find the words "runaway greenhouse" somewhere, regardless of cont
No. McIntyre and McKitrick had a technical complaint about a novel method of statistical analysis used in the Mann paper, and argued that under certain conditions it could overestimate the statistical significance of the result. A subsequent review by the NRC concluded that McIntyre & Kitrick's techincal objection was correct, but that it did in fact produce an incorrect result in the case of Mann's data. Subsequent studies using other statistical methodology and datasets have supported Mann's conclusions.
You were talking about a model that is tested with a single data point. That has no relevance to actual global climate models, which have been evaluated against many thousands of measurements. You seem to be trying to argue that "if one measurment is not enough, then however many you have can't be enough either." That makes no sense.
Oh, so now the NRC is involved in some sort of "whitewash?" This is an independent peer-review panel of the US National Academies of Science, the most respected independent organization of scientists in the nation, if not the world. If you are going to accuse them of some kind of malfeasance, you need some grounds better than not liking their conclusions.
Yes, I know what it is called. I asked you to "Kindly quote the section of the IPCC report that predicts runaway warming as a consequence of anticipated levels of CO2." That shouldn't be too hard, if your claim is true, as the entire report is online--yet the best you could come up with is a list of references. Once again, quote the text from the IPCC report in which this claim is made
Aren't you getting a bit ahead of yourself? You haven't even established that IPCC actually made a prediction of a "runaway greenhouse."
And global climate models assume that every molecule of CO2, wherever it came from, has the same physical chemistry and the same impact on climate. No such memory is assumed.
Such a claim would have to be supported by evidence that the aerosols were present. The point is that none of these are arbitrary ad hoc assumptions, but rather testable predictions.
Perhaps. But measurments will never be perfectly distributed, so insisting that the distribution is not good enough is empty handwaving--unless of course you can support it with a model that demonstrates that a more uniform distribution gives different conclusions.
I see no value in such a contrafactual assumption. Perhaps if you have a mathematical model of climate for which you can show that only one station would be sufficient then that would be worthy of discussion.
If you want to argue that millions of years ago a volcano made a significant contribution to CO2 and climate, I'm willing to look at the evidence, but I don't see the relevance to our discussion of global warming in the modern era.
You haven't provided any evidence of a "problem." You need to postulate some fairly contrived circumstance to generate an artifactual trend--as evidenced by the fact that you have not yet managed to come up with a scenario that would do it.
I've read the article. It is a toy model that omits so many of the factors that influence climate in the real world as to be of no relevance. Certainly a model that does not include CO2, much less its absorbance, emission, and solubility properties, cannot address the effect of CO2 on climate. And a static model obviously is not relevant to climate change.
Yes. I've also read the NRC peer-review report that concluded that Mann's conclusions are essentially correct.
No, I haven't read anything of the sort in the IPCC report. Kindly quote the section of the IPCC report that predicts runaway warming as a consequence of anticipated levels of CO2.
You are the one who asserted, incorrectly, that the fact that CO2 lagged temperature change when there was no introduction of CO2 into the atmosphere, and led temperature increase when there was verified release of CO2 constituted a problem, apparently unaware that this behavior is not at hoc, but a necessary consequence of the well established physical chemistry of CO2. It is certainly possible to determine past CO2 levels, e.g. from ice core data, so a temperature rise due to increased solar activity that was not followed by a rise in CO2 would be a problem for the model. You have insisted that there are examples of massive releases of CO2 due to volcanoes. If you can find evidence of this, without a temperature increase following, then this would be a problem for the model.
So show some evidence that crititcal parameters are not well constrained from other data. It should be easy if they are as unconstrained as you imagine. Just take one of the publicly available climate models and show that you can alter the conclusions by changing one of the parameterizations without losing consistency with established physics or historical data.
Considering all of the effort that has gone into attacking the theory of climate change, isn't it surprising that nobody has yet succeeded in doing this?
But perhaps you will be the first.
Please cite where I supposedly said that models didn't use parameterizations (actually, I cited to you an article that described the parameterizations and how they are done). But parameterizations are still constrained because they have to be consistent with observations. Nobody to date has been come up with a parameterization that alters the overall conclusions of climate models. And considering how many wealthy interests stand to lose from efforts to limit emissions, it is a safe bet that it is not from want of trying.
If you have a model, then you have a basis for judging what density of recording stations you need to detect a trend. But you don't have a model, do you? You just insist that whatever they have must be inadequate because you don't like the conclusions--a God of the Gaps argument: "if you took more measurments, you would see that I am right."
You miss the point--the impact of the volcanic eruptions on atmospheric CO2 is so small as to be undetectable. Here's yet another plot showing the absence of any detectable blip from volcanic eruptions.
Wow, you really don't understand statistics at all, do you? You really should try these things before you pontificate about them. What you describe will increase the mean, but the slope will still be within error of zero. And the more points you create like that, the closer it will get to zero.
I beg your pardon? This is a not a climate model at all, but a toy model that does not even attempt to consider the physics of CO2 or water vapor. It is assuming a fixed and unalterable greenhouse layer made of steel! It has nothing to contribute to the topic at hand. If that is the closest thing to a model that anti-AGW advocates can muster, it is truly pathetic.
Once again, we see the folly of conducting "thought experiments" without the discipline of carrying out a "sanity check" with actual calculations. You assert that the models would cause runaway warming, yet the existing models do not exhibit this effect, and they don't have to assume "magical negative feedback" to prevent it--only careful modelling of known physical mechanisms.
I think that if the elite independent scientific academies had come out stating that there is reason for doubt about the reality of global warming, there would be substantial basis for doubt. But the reality is that virtually every major National Academy of Sciences has endorsed the view that CO2 induced global warming is a real problem.
I don't think that anybody has claimed that the projected temperatures are unprecedented if you include prehistoric times, although such a massive injection of CO2 probably is, since we know of no natural source capable of this.
Here's a statement from the US NAS investigation of the "hockey stick," one of the most eminent peer-review groups every constituted:
"It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies."
"Less confidence can be placed in large-scale surface temperature reconstructions for the period from A.D. 900 to 1600. Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. The uncertainties associated with reconstructing hemispheric mean or global mean temperatures from these data increase substantially backward in time through this period and are not yet fully quantified."
I don't think that anybody should act on the basis of trust in any politician. But in this case, it turns out that Al Gore is merely repeating what the most authoritative scientific sources worldwide have already concluded.
While there are some phenomena that may not yet be modeled in detail, there is no reason to believe that there hides a "God of the gaps" waiting to leap out and save us at the last minute from CO2 induced global warming.
The most likely explanation is of course that the MWP was local, not global, as current scientific opinion holds. But if in fact there are unknown factors that could warm the globe substantially, in addition to established ones such as CO2, then there is the risk that this unknown factor could unexpectedly kick in and add to CO2 induced warming perhaps making a difference between the dangerous but survivable warming that we now expect and a true disaster. This is certainly an argument for even greater efforts to control CO2
I am convinced that such policies--and knee-jerk "zero tolerance" policies in general--contribute to crime, because they teach impressionable children that rules and laws are arbitrary, unreasonable, and unfair, and that the people who create and enforce them are fools who are unworthy of respect.
Of course it is ultimately about profits as far as Apple is concerned. Apple is, after all, a business, with primary responsibility to its shareholders.
But what is it that makes this a profitable move for Apple? If there were really a strong public demand for Flash on portable devices, Apple would be busy trying to help Adobe put Flash on Apple products, also in the interests of Profit.
The reason that Apple can get away with it is that large numbers of users are themselves pretty fed up with Flash--it crashes or hangs up their browsers, and it is responsible for irritating ads that animate without being asked to, or worse, "escape" from their sidebars to get in the way of content. For every user who loves Flash games, there are several more who find a Flashless web to be a pretty nice place.
This is the problem that Adobe needs to solve if they want Flash to survive.
I agree. I don't actually think that Adobe needs any cooperation from Apple; all they need to do is clean up their own house.
Step 1. Produce a Flash plug in for Macs (and Windows) that doesn't crash or allow excessive usage of memory or CPU cycles.
Step 2. Produce a Flash plug in or Flash-enabled browser for Android that does not run down the battery excessively or demand excessive system resources. Develop a set of standards for Flash apps that are both mouse and touch compatible. Provide user interface options, accessible from any Flash app, to block intrusive Flash applications (e.g. anything that runs or animates automatically without some sort of authorization from the user).
If they can do this promptly, they may rescue Flash, and Apple will eventually fall into line due to user demand and competition from Android. But the window is rapidly closing. I expect that Adobe has maybe 3 months before the window for saving Flash closes forever.
Sounds pretty good to me. Polls can obtain highly reliable statistical results by sampling a much smaller % of a population. Do you have any evidence that 75% is insufficient? For example, a model in which sampling 75% of the earth's surface yields substantially incorrect conclusions?
BZZZT! Wrong. It is a myth that volcanos emit anything approaching the CO2 released into the atmosphere by man . But it is true that one way in which climate models are tested is by examining whether the predicted climate effects of volcanos match observations.
BZZZT! Wrong again
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. Unless, of course, you have some kind of model that demonstrates that more readings are required?
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.
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. When you assert with no theoretical basis that the number, accuracy, and precision of measurements is inadequate to evaluate climate change, you are making just such a "gap" argument.
BZZZT! False. This was an error in early modeling which has been known to be mistaken for half a decade. See here, here, and here. But just like creationists, who are still trotting out arguments that were debunked in the time of Darwin, anti-AGW debaters continue to trot out ancient fallacies. For estimates of climate sensitivity derived from a wide variety of observations, see here.
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 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.
What is unfalsifiable? The temperature dependence of CO2 solubility? Easily tested in the lab. The spectral absorbance and radiation characteristics of the CO2 molecule? Also testable in the lab. The prediction is a mathematical consequence of these falsifiable assumptions.
Not true. All mathematical derivations are fundamentally tautological. Very often, the consequences of a tautological transformation of a theory will tell you how the theory can be tested.
However, it is not true that any lead time will be consistent with the model, because the kinetics of these processes are modeled and predicted also. 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.
Members of the National Academy of Science are not random folks--they are people who have a lifetime of experience evaluating scientific data, and major scientific accomplishments attesting to their skill.
So while the professional climatologists are doubtless the most qualified to evaluate scientific data and methods, if for some reason you doubt their ability or honesty, the NAS (and similar independent scientific societies of other nations) are the next most authoritative source.
As for Al Gore, he has no particular qualifications in climate science, he is just a skilled communicator who listens to and reports what the real scientists are saying. But climate scientists who have reviewed Mr. Gore's movie have concluded that while there were some minor errors, he got it mostly right.
Some guys claim that the data cannot be reanalyzed and compiled.
Meanwhile other guys are simply doing it.
Clear Climate Code is an independent group that is analyzing the publicly available GISTEMP data set, and also reviewing their analysis software and rewriting it for greater clarity.
So far, their results have been in good agreement with published work.
timesonline got it wrong. CRU does not produce original data, and never even had the originals of the raw data in their possession. The original raw data is owned and retained by the various national meteorological services that obtained it. They don't send out their originals to anybody. Copies of the data were loaned to CRU for purposes of analysis. There is no particular reason for CRU to retain those copes after the study was completed and the results published. Scientific etiquette and common decency demands that raw data should be requested from the group that obtained it. Besides, any real scientist who wanted to check their conclusions would go to the source for the most authoritative, up-to-date data.
While some meteorological services charge a fee for access to the data, much of it is available to the public for free. A useful index to the available data, both raw and processed, is available here
Because they have actually looked into these claims and have discovered them to be false. The raw climate data is retained and archived by the various national meteorological services that obtained and owns it
Climate science is actually one of the more open fields of science, and a great deal of the data, methods, even code for computer models is publicly available.
A good index can be found here
The claim is that there was a global warming period that was not do to any of the mechanisms of warming that have been identified by climate science. This implies a fundamental instability in global temperature. If global climate is really that unstable and unpredictable, then we should be even more concerned about the fact that we are currently involved in a massive perturbation of climate.
Except that the ocean data and the satellite data agree with the surface data. And multiple analyses of the biases in the surface measurements have found that the errors are unable to account for the measured trend.