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The Core of the AGW Science Defective


From the abstract,
Based on a massive ensemble of simulations with an intermediate-complexity climate model we demonstrate that known changes in the global energy balance and in radiative forcing tightly constrain the magnitude of anthropogenic warming.
I am sorry but empirical data is always better than the simulation.
If the measured data shows something different than the simulation,
then the simulation is incorrect!
 
The heat generated by burning of fuels and released into the atmosphere is canculated and then the weight of the Earth's atmosphere is calculated and then one calculates how many btu's generated will increase the weight of the atmosphere.

So as I have shown it has been significantly warmer in recent millenia than it is today . How do you account for that ?

Next, one calculates the increased storage of heat in this atmosphere caused by CO2. Simple conclusion: If you do not add heat to the atmosphere, tthe temp will not increase. If you add heat, it will increase. If you do not add CO2 to the atmosphere, it will not trap more heat and cause the temp to increase.

So how do they do that without empirical values for the climate sensitivity of CO2 .... that and virtually all the other major variables that go to make up a climate model ?

http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5c9415b970b-pi
 
So as I have shown it has been significantly warmer in recent millenia than it is today . How do you account for that ?



So how do they do that without empirical values for the climate sensitivity of CO2 .... that and virtually all the other major variables that go to make up a climate model ?

http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0120a5c9415b970b-pi

I don't have to account for that. I showed you empirical data and method of increased heat.

I don't have to give specifics on CO2 as it is documanted.

Two equally simple and empirical causative factors, unarguable, but you project enough disinformatioon to fill a hot air balloon,.
/
 
Non-scientists deciding that climate change is bull**** is subjectively applied guesswork formatted to arrive at a politically predetermined conclusion. The US is the only country in the world where AGW has been politicized and is even debated. The rest of the world accepts it as the scientific fact that it is, a lot like evolution. American conservatives are a phenomenon of ignorance and you'd do well not to value their feelings over science.

Actually it's not just politically motivated. There's a whole lot of money still to be made in fossil fuels, and there are entities with massive investments that provide incentive to keep consumption of that stuff up, and to squash alternatives. Interesting how the AGW deniers also rant against alternative fuels to fossil. I wonder why? (rhetorical, don't bother)
 
Henrik Svensmark is a Dane. Nir Shaviv is an Israeli. Jasper Kirkby is British. Jan Veizer is a Canadian-German dual national. None is politically conservative AFAIK.

Science is not cherry picking the 1% of "scientists" that agree with the position you made up while ignoring the other 99%.
 
I don't have to account for that.

Of course you do. What caused the climate to be significantly warmer than it is today in recent millenia ? Its a simple enough question

To make my point here are Greenland ice core temperature proxies for the last 4000 years (kobayashi 2011)

4000yearsgreenland_nov2011_gprl.jpg

I don't have to give specifics on CO2 as it is documanted.

Yes you do because it isn't

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Two equally simple and empirical causative factors, unarguable, but you project enough disinformatioon to fill a hot air balloon,.

What simple empirical causative factors and what disinformation would that be then ?
 
Actually it's not just politically motivated. There's a whole lot of money still to be made in fossil fuels, and there are entities with massive investments that provide incentive to keep consumption of that stuff up, and to squash alternatives. Interesting how the AGW deniers also rant against alternative fuels to fossil. I wonder why? (rhetorical, don't bother)

The big difference being that renewables dont even have to make power in order to make money

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wind-farms-that-lie-idle-and-get-millions-5kfgm8bd8
 
Science is not cherry picking the 1% of "scientists" that agree with the position you made up while ignoring the other 99%.

Uh huh and when were 99% of scientists ever asked what they thought about it then ?
 
Non-scientists deciding that climate change is bull**** is subjectively applied guesswork formatted to arrive at a politically predetermined conclusion. The US is the only country in the world where AGW has been politicized and is even debated. The rest of the world accepts it as the scientific fact that it is, a lot like evolution. American conservatives are a phenomenon of ignorance and you'd do well not to value their feelings over science.

I'm more in the camp of "I don't believe you can do what you say you can do" when it comes to predictions and claims of special expert knowledge of climate change. This goes double when a political agenda with $- signs is attached to it.
 
Interesting how the AGW deniers also rant against alternative fuels to fossil. I wonder why? (rhetorical, don't bother)

I know very few who rant against alternative energy. Ranting against spending extra money on them, now that's extremely common.
 
Boiling it all down, in my opinion there are at least two basic defects in AGW theory that render any further debate of its worth moot (until these defects are properly addressed).
Here we go


One is the fact that it is impossible to prospectively model the climate accurately because of unavoidable systemic errors in the models.
Incorrect.

There is no question that this poses challenges, and some of them can be quite perplexing. For example, one issue is that the more factors you include in the models (which makes it more realistic) also introduce new sources of uncertainty. This can make the models less accurate overall. In some cases, a model that is more simplified can in fact produce better predictions. I.e. "unavoidable systemic errors" -- which, unsurprisingly, you did not even discuss -- do not always mean that the models are doomed to wild inaccuracies.

It's routine to test the accuracy of models, by checking their predictions against historical data. At this point, we can also compare past predictions with more recent results. We should note that these models are not merely using past data to develop predictions; rather, they apply the laws of physics to known conditions to develop the predictions. Past data loses its viability to predict the future when conditions change too much, and can be of limited value.

There are some things we can't predict well at this time, such as whether the frequency of hurricanes will increase or decrease because of climate change. That doesn't stop us from knowing that the intensity of hurricanes will increase because of climate change.

Scientific modeling is hardly limited to climatology. Physics, chemistry, biology, epidemiology, satellite paths, interstellar travel, short-term weather predictions, hurricane predictions, fluid dynamics, protein folding, the list goes on. And yet, for some reason, the only form of scientific modeling that comes under scrutiny is.... yep, climate change. Hmmmmmmmm

Last but not least, we know enough about the various mechanisms involved to know the basics of the causality, and the basic trend we're facing. We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere generates a feedback loop, which results in more water vapor (the biggest component in trapping heat on the planet) in the atmosphere. We know that higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures is melting land ice, which results in higher sea levels, which makes storms more damaging for coastal areas. I.e. the predictions we've seen should not surprise anyone.


The other is the fact that published analysis of past climate data has failed to properly take autocorrelation of the data into account, and when autocorrelation is properly accounted for it's impossible so far to demonstrate any effect of CO2 atmospheric levels on the climate.
Oh? Which models don't account for it? What is a "proper" accounting?

Jim Milks gives an example of using a statistical function to compensate for autocorrelation on his blog. It makes very little difference. I'd also assume that other models do take this into account, though we'd need to inquire about the specific models in question.
Compensating for autocorrelation in global temperature data
 
I know very few who rant against alternative energy. Ranting against spending extra money on them, now that's extremely common.

I 'rant' against the colossal waste of resources renewables have been to date and that using them is niether clean nor green but it certainly is costly . Yet our political class remains committed to the fantasy that the emperor’s green clothes are perfectly magnificent.
 
You are correct, science denial on the right with AGW denial and evolution denial is very similar to the anti-vax and anti-gmo nonsense common on the left.

It seems geoscientists are more skeptical of AGW than are government employees.

apega02_zps9btv4xa5.png

 
Of course you do. What caused the climate to be significantly warmer than it is today in recent millenia ? Its a simple enough question

To make my point here are Greenland ice core temperature proxies for the last 4000 years (kobayashi 2011)

View attachment 67222979



Yes you do because it isn't

Global Warming: A closer look at the numbers



What simple empirical causative factors and what disinformation would that be then ?

If you continually add heat inside your house trailer, it is going to get hotter inside. If you add CO2 it is going to get even hotter, quickly. It is the rapid changes over a smaller relative time period that the current global warming exemplifies. It doesn't get any simpler.
/
 
Most geologists in the private sector work for the oil and mining industries.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

The full article is linked in the graph.
 
If you continually add heat inside your house trailer, it is going to get hotter inside. If you add CO2 it is going to get even hotter, quickly. It is the rapid changes over a smaller relative time period that the current global warming exemplifies. It doesn't get any simpler.
/

Explain to me empirically how an extra 0.01% of our atmospheric envelope (100PPM) being CO2 can possibly be doing all thats claimed for it given we have no idea what the correct value for its climate sensitivity is ?
 
...The US is the only country in the world where AGW has been politicized and is even debated. The rest of the world accepts it as the scientific fact that it is, a lot like evolution...

No, that's not true at all. The Japanese, Russians, and Chinese have always been very skeptical of AGW theory.

The rest of your post is an appeal to authority. Yes, we know what the AGW climate scientists say. We think they are wrong for the reasons indicated.
 
Explain to me empirically how an extra 0.01% of our atmospheric envelope (100PPM) being CO2 can possibly be doing all thats claimed for it given we have no idea what the correct value for its climate sensitivity is ?
First, there is no "correct" value. What we have are estimates of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before humans started increasing the amount of CO2. There are without doubt natural fluctuations, the presence and acknowledgment of which does not change the fact that human beings are putting massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn affects global temperatures.

Second, it is not difficult at all to point out that a very small amount of a substance can have a very big impact. As I need to remind people here, far more often than should be necessary: Somewhere around 135mg of cyanide is a toxic dose for for a 200 pound (90kg) human. That's roughly 0.00015% of the mass of a human being.

Similarly, if there was no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, we'd be in a permanent ice age; temperatures would likely be 30C below current averages.

Third, CO2 has a few particularly pernicious features. One is that it remains in the atmosphere for a long time, anywhere from 20 to 200 years. In comparison, methane is removed from the atmosphere in about 12 years; water vapor tends to last hours or days, as it is removed as precipitation.

Another is that it creates feedback loops. In particular, as CO2 retains more heat in the atmosphere, the oceans produce more water vapor -- which, as a greenhouse gas, in turn increases atmospheric and ocean temperatures.

Finally, we are just at the start of seeing the effects. We have seen some ocean levels rise, which is only starting to cause problems such as larger storm surges, or cities like Miami getting flooded, or islands like the Seychelles getting completely wiped out. We've seen the effects of warmer waters and more water vapor in the atmosphere, which makes storms like Harvey or Irma worse (but probably did not make them more likely to appear). Most of the alarms are about outcomes that are still decades in the future.
 
Here we go



Incorrect.

There is no question that this poses challenges, and some of them can be quite perplexing. For example, one issue is that the more factors you include in the models (which makes it more realistic) also introduce new sources of uncertainty. This can make the models less accurate overall. In some cases, a model that is more simplified can in fact produce better predictions. I.e. "unavoidable systemic errors" -- which, unsurprisingly, you did not even discuss -- do not always mean that the models are doomed to wild inaccuracies.

It's routine to test the accuracy of models, by checking their predictions against historical data. At this point, we can also compare past predictions with more recent results. We should note that these models are not merely using past data to develop predictions; rather, they apply the laws of physics to known conditions to develop the predictions. Past data loses its viability to predict the future when conditions change too much, and can be of limited value.

There are some things we can't predict well at this time, such as whether the frequency of hurricanes will increase or decrease because of climate change. That doesn't stop us from knowing that the intensity of hurricanes will increase because of climate change.

Scientific modeling is hardly limited to climatology. Physics, chemistry, biology, epidemiology, satellite paths, interstellar travel, short-term weather predictions, hurricane predictions, fluid dynamics, protein folding, the list goes on. And yet, for some reason, the only form of scientific modeling that comes under scrutiny is.... yep, climate change. Hmmmmmmmm

Last but not least, we know enough about the various mechanisms involved to know the basics of the causality, and the basic trend we're facing. We know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere generates a feedback loop, which results in more water vapor (the biggest component in trapping heat on the planet) in the atmosphere. We know that higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures is melting land ice, which results in higher sea levels, which makes storms more damaging for coastal areas. I.e. the predictions we've seen should not surprise anyone.



Oh? Which models don't account for it? What is a "proper" accounting?

Jim Milks gives an example of using a statistical function to compensate for autocorrelation on his blog. It makes very little difference. I'd also assume that other models do take this into account, though we'd need to inquire about the specific models in question.
Compensating for autocorrelation in global temperature data

Yes, they used the same sort of partial differential equations to model airflow over the wing of an airplane. But there is a significant difference between that and climate modeling, which is that the constraints in an aerodynamic model of a wing are very well characterized and model outputs can be immediately compared to the real world data. They don't even know and can't predict what the constraints might be in the future in climate modeling, and it will be 30 years before they can compare the model outputs to real world data.

Exactly the same kind of model is used to predict the 5 or 10 day weather forecast. The models are generally only accurate for 2 or 3 days. And the forecasters will tell you that the problem is that they don't have enough data on what the atmosphere is doing to make their models accurate for longer periods of time. Small systemic errors introduced into the models cause increasing overall error with time.

It's always struck me that the climate modelers can fit their models to known data, but can't predict future data. That indicates a fundamental systemic error in the model is at work, or perhaps just the post hoc application of fudge factors.

Autocorrelation means, in short, that no non-zero trend can be discerned from the climate data such as global atmospheric temperature data. I don't know how one would finesse that. The degree of autocorrelation is determined from the data. If the autocorrelation coefficient is around 0.9, as it is for global temperatures, then only an increase or decrease over time of the sort we've never seen before is going to produce a discernible signal. Attempting to put constraints on autocorrelation amounts to nothing more than speculation and begs the question of whether or not the theory is correct.
 
First, there is no "correct" value. What we have are estimates of the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere before humans started increasing the amount of CO2. There are without doubt natural fluctuations, the presence and acknowledgment of which does not change the fact that human beings are putting massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, which in turn affects global temperatures.

Second, it is not difficult at all to point out that a very small amount of a substance can have a very big impact. As I need to remind people here, far more often than should be necessary: Somewhere around 135mg of cyanide is a toxic dose for for a 200 pound (90kg) human. That's roughly 0.00015% of the mass of a human being.

Similarly, if there was no CO2 in the atmosphere at all, we'd be in a permanent ice age; temperatures would likely be 30C below current averages.

Third, CO2 has a few particularly pernicious features. One is that it remains in the atmosphere for a long time, anywhere from 20 to 200 years. In comparison, methane is removed from the atmosphere in about 12 years; water vapor tends to last hours or days, as it is removed as precipitation.

Another is that it creates feedback loops. In particular, as CO2 retains more heat in the atmosphere, the oceans produce more water vapor -- which, as a greenhouse gas, in turn increases atmospheric and ocean temperatures.

Finally, we are just at the start of seeing the effects. We have seen some ocean levels rise, which is only starting to cause problems such as larger storm surges, or cities like Miami getting flooded, or islands like the Seychelles getting completely wiped out. We've seen the effects of warmer waters and more water vapor in the atmosphere, which makes storms like Harvey or Irma worse (but probably did not make them more likely to appear). Most of the alarms are about outcomes that are still decades in the future.

So in sort you don't know .... nor does anyone else
 
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