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A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm[W:43]

Jack Hays

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This is a devastating critique of the "settled science" claim.


A veneer of certainty stoking climate alarm

Posted on November 29, 2017 | 89 comments
by Judith Curry
In private, climate scientists are much less certain than they tell the public. – Rupert Darwall
Continue reading

In private, climate scientists are much less certain than they tell the public. – Rupert Darwall

Rupert Darwall has written a tour-de-force essay “A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm“, which has been published by CEI [link to full essay].
Foreword
I was invited to write a Foreword to the essay, which provides context for the essay:
While the nations of the world met in Bonn to discuss implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Trump administration was working to dismantle President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and to establish a climate “red team” to critically evaluate the scientific basis for dangerous human-caused climate change and the policy responses.
The mantra of “settled science” is belied by the inherent complexity of climate change as a scientific problem, the plethora of agents and processes that influence the global climate, and disagreements among scientists. Manufacture and enforcement of a “consensus” on the topic of human-caused climate change acts to the detriment of the scientific process, our understanding of climate change, and the policy responses. Indeed, it becomes a fundamentally anti-scientific process when debate, disagreement, and uncertainty are suppressed.
This essay by Rupert Darwall explores the expressions of public certainty by climate scientists versus the private expressions of uncertainty, in context of a small Workshop on Climate organized by the American Physical Society (APS). I was privileged to participate in this workshop, which included three climate scientists who support the climate change consensus and three climate scientists who do not—all of whom were questioned by a panel of distinguished physicists.
The transcript of the workshop is a remarkable document. It provides, in my opinion, the most accurate portrayal of the scientific debates surrounding climate change. While each of the six scientists agreed on the primary scientific evidence, we each had a unique perspective on how to reason about the evidence, what conclusions could be drawn and with what level of certainty.
Rupert Darwall’s essay provides a timely and cogent argument for a red/blue team assessment of climate change that provides both sides with an impartial forum to ask questions and probe the other side’s case. Such an assessment would both advance the science and open up the policy deliberations to a much broader range of options. . . .





 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Opinion
[h=1]A must read: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm[/h]In Private, Climate Scientists Are Much Less Certain than They Tell the Public By Rupert Darwall* Foreword by Judith Curry, President of the Climate Forecast Applications Network and former Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology While the nations of the world met in Bonn…
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Opinion
[h=1]A must read: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm[/h]In Private, Climate Scientists Are Much Less Certain than They Tell the Public By Rupert Darwall* Foreword by Judith Curry, President of the Climate Forecast Applications Network and former Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology While the nations of the world met in Bonn…

So it appears scientists agree there is a problem happening, but many on the right seem to think that because there isn't a consensus on why, the answer is to.....just do nothing. If you see a storm approaching and you don't know how bad it will be, do you just leave your windows and doors open and hope for the best? No, of course not.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

So it appears scientists agree there is a problem happening, but many on the right seem to think that because there isn't a consensus on why, the answer is to.....just do nothing. If you see a storm approaching and you don't know how bad it will be, do you just leave your windows and doors open and hope for the best? No, of course not.

I think a better analogy about the disagreement among scientist,
is that one group is looking at the horizon and worrying about a storm because they see a line of clouds,
and the other group knows the line of clouds is an illusion caused by parallax,
it may be cloudy later, but no storm is coming.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

I think a better analogy about the disagreement among scientist,
is that one group is looking at the horizon and worrying about a storm because they see a line of clouds,
and the other group knows the line of clouds is an illusion caused by parallax,
it may be cloudy later, but no storm is coming.

Sorry but yours is an incorrect analogy because the scientists AGREE there is a problem. They just don't agree on the cause. So there "IS" a storm, they just don't know why.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Sorry but yours is an incorrect analogy because the scientists AGREE there is a problem. They just don't agree on the cause. So there "IS" a storm, they just don't know why.

Not so much. If CO2 is not the primary driver of climate then there is in fact no problem. There is a credible scientific argument that other drivers are more important than CO2, so longview has it right.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Not so much. If CO2 is not the primary driver of climate then there is in fact no problem. There is a credible scientific argument that other drivers are more important than CO2, so longview has it right.

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Not so much. If CO2 is not the primary driver of climate then there is in fact no problem. There is a credible scientific argument that other drivers are more important than CO2, so longview has it right.

No, there isn't. There is something close to certainty amongst climatologists that the sharp rise in the Earth's temperature over the last 150 years is primarily due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) in the atmosphere. No other theory comes anywhere near explaining it.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Sorry but yours is an incorrect analogy because the scientists AGREE there is a problem. They just don't agree on the cause. So there "IS" a storm, they just don't know why.

The problem, and there is one, is that science at present does not understand climate sufficiently to correctly define any particular problem of the magnitude they currently claim. They simply don't know, and all one has to do is read an IPCC summary to reach that conclusion.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

The problem, and there is one, is that science at present does not understand climate sufficiently to correctly define any particular problem of the magnitude they currently claim. They simply don't know, and all one has to do is read an IPCC summary to reach that conclusion.

I will agree there is not a consensus on why, but the solution the right has come up with is....do nothing. That is not a reasonable answer either.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

I will agree there is not a consensus on why, but the solution the right has come up with is....do nothing. That is not a reasonable answer either.

The solution is more research, and not alarmism over incomplete understanding and unproven theories. That is far from doing nothing. The record for the past 30 years strongly suggests that many of the current conclusions are in error. One can hope that researchers would be investigating exactly why climate behavior doesn't reflect their conclusions.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Sorry but yours is an incorrect analogy because the scientists AGREE there is a problem. They just don't agree on the cause. So there "IS" a storm, they just don't know why.
Have they surveyed Scientist and asked if there is a problem?
The Surveys I have seen, carefully side step that question.
What Scientist agree on is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and will cause some warming.
Weather that warming is good or bad is not questioned.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

I will agree there is not a consensus on why, but the solution the right has come up with is....do nothing. That is not a reasonable answer either.
Who is advocating doing nothing? Humanity has some very real problems , it just is not the climate,
it is energy, followed closely by fresh water.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.

We know nothing of the sort about "problems due to climate changes" and there's no evidence that "storms/hurricanes are gaining strength."
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

No, there isn't. There is something close to certainty amongst climatologists that the sharp rise in the Earth's temperature over the last 150 years is primarily due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) in the atmosphere. No other theory comes anywhere near explaining it.

1. Climate debate at the Cambridge Union - a 10 minute summary of the main problems with the standard alarmist polemic



3. Cosmic rays, clouds and climate - Europhysics News
https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2015/02/epn2015462p26.pdf
by H Svensmark - ‎2015 - ‎Cited by 5 - ‎Related articles
COSMIC RAYS, CLOUDS AND CLIMATE l Henrik Svensmarkhsv@space.dtu.dk – DOI: 10.1051/epn/2015204 l National Space Institute – Technical University of Denmark – Elektrovej, Bygning 328, 2800 Kgs – Lyngby, Denmark. The most profound questions with the most surprising answers are often the simplest to ask.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

No, there isn't. There is something close to certainty amongst climatologists that the sharp rise in the Earth's temperature over the last 150 years is primarily due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) in the atmosphere. No other theory comes anywhere near explaining it.

International Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
Volume 2017 (2017), Article ID 9251034, 30 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/9251034Research Article
Radiation Transfer Calculations and Assessment of Global Warming by CO2

Hermann Harde
Experimental Physics and Materials Science, Helmut-Schmidt-University, Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany
Correspondence should be addressed to Hermann Harde
Received 29 June 2016; Revised 3 October 2016; Accepted 1 November 2016; Published 20 March 2017
Academic Editor: Bin Yu
Copyright © 2017 Hermann Harde. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract


We present detailed line-by-line radiation transfer calculations, which were performed under different atmospheric conditions for the most important greenhouse gases water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone. Particularly cloud effects, surface temperature variations, and humidity changes as well as molecular lineshape effects are investigated to examine their specific influence on some basic climatologic parameters like the radiative forcing, the long wave absorptivity, and back-radiation as a function of an increasing CO2concentration in the atmosphere. These calculations are used to assess the CO2 global warming by means of an advanced two-layer climate model and to disclose some larger discrepancies in calculating the climate sensitivity. Including solar and cloud effects as well as all relevant feedback processes our simulations give an equilibrium climate sensitivity of

= 0.7°C (temperature increase at doubled CO2) and a solar sensitivity of

= 0.17°C (at 0.1% increase of the total solar irradiance). Then CO2 contributes 40% and the Sun 60% to global warming over the last century.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

1. Climate debate at the Cambridge Union - a 10 minute summary of the main problems with the standard alarmist polemic



3. Cosmic rays, clouds and climate - Europhysics News
https://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2015/02/epn2015462p26.pdf
by H Svensmark - ‎2015 - ‎Cited by 5 - ‎Related articles
COSMIC RAYS, CLOUDS AND CLIMATE l Henrik Svensmarkhsv@space.dtu.dk – DOI: 10.1051/epn/2015204 l National Space Institute – Technical University of Denmark – Elektrovej, Bygning 328, 2800 Kgs – Lyngby, Denmark. The most profound questions with the most surprising answers are often the simplest to ask.

Yes, those are two theories that come nowhere near to explaining the recent rise in the Earth's temperature.

Sunspot activity, for example, which is a proxy for solar output, has recently fallen to its lowest level in 200 years or so after reaching a peak in the 1950s. Yet the Earth's temperature continues to rise. This pretty much scuppers the solar forcing theory. And the cosmic ray theory is even more tenuous.

Tell me, Jack, have you heard of Occam's Razor?
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

Yes, those are two theories that come nowhere near to explaining the recent rise in the Earth's temperature.

Sunspot activity, for example, which is a proxy for solar output, has recently fallen to its lowest level in 200 years or so after reaching a peak in the 1950s. Yet the Earth's temperature continues to rise. This pretty much scuppers the solar forcing theory. And the cosmic ray theory is even more tenuous.

Tell me, Jack, have you heard of Occam's Razor?

The solar/GCR hypothesis is actually one theory, not two.

How Might Climate be Influenced by Cosmic Rays? | Institute for ...

https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/shaviv-milky-way


Nir Shaviv. Our galactic journey imprinted in the climate—when Earth's temperature (red dots warm, blue dots cold) is plotted as a function of time (vertical axis) and as .... This inconsistency and indirect evidence for dark matter was also advocated by John Bahcall, who for many years was a Faculty member here at the IAS.

. . . The idea that cosmic rays may affect climate through modulation of the cosmic ray ionization in the atmosphere goes back to Edward Ney in 1959. It was known that solar wind modulates the flux of cosmic rays reaching Earth—a high solar activity deflects more of the cosmic rays reaching the inner solar system, and with it reduces the atmospheric ionization. Ney raised the idea that this ionization could have some climatic effect. This would immediately link solar activity with climate variations, and explain things like the little ice age during the Maunder minimum, when sunspots were a rare occurrence on the solar surface.
In the 1990s, Henrik Svensmark from Copenhagen brought the first empirical evidence of this link in the form of a correlation between cloud cover and the cosmic ray flux variations over the solar cycle. This link was later supported with further evidence including climate correlations with cosmic ray flux variations that are independent of solar activity, as I describe below, and, more recently, with laboratory experiments showing how ions play a role in the nucleation of small aerosols and their growth to larger ones. . . . .
 
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Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm


[h=1]An ugly new paper shows why the climate policy debate is broken[/h]By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website. Summary: An important (but fatally flawed) new peer-reviewed paper about climate change reveals much about climate science, the public policy debate, and the role of science institutions in America. Here is a quick look at it and its lessons for us. Do remember you are there to…
Continue reading →
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.

[h=3]3. Global Hurricane Frequency[/h]
global_major_freqjpg.jpg
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.

[h=3]2. Global Tropic Cyclones at 45-Year Low (in March 2015)[/h]
freqjpg.jpg
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.

[h=3]5. “Atlantic Tropical Storms Lasting More Than 2 Days Have Not Increased in Number”[/h]
simplified_tser3_lgjpg.jpg
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

We know there problems due to climate changes, we know that storms/hurricanes are gaining strength and we know climate is changing drastically in areas of the world. There is indeed a consensus there is a problem.

[h=3]5 Hurricane Charts Climate Alarmists Don't Want You to See as They ...[/h]www.climatedepot.com/.../5-hurricane-charts-climate-alarmists-dont-want-you-to-see-...



Sep 5, 2017 - 3. Global Hurricane Frequency. Dr. Ryan Maue/Policlimate. Dr. Maue provides data from the last four decades of hurricane research showing no discernible uptick in the frequency ofglobal hurricanes.
 
Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

The solar/GCR hypothesis is actually one theory, not two.

How Might Climate be Influenced by Cosmic Rays? | Institute for ...

https://www.ias.edu/ideas/2015/shaviv-milky-way


Nir Shaviv. Our galactic journey imprinted in the climate—when Earth's temperature (red dots warm, blue dots cold) is plotted as a function of time (vertical axis) and as .... This inconsistency and indirect evidence for dark matter was also advocated by John Bahcall, who for many years was a Faculty member here at the IAS.

. . . The idea that cosmic rays may affect climate through modulation of the cosmic ray ionization in the atmosphere goes back to Edward Ney in 1959. It was known that solar wind modulates the flux of cosmic rays reaching Earth—a high solar activity deflects more of the cosmic rays reaching the inner solar system, and with it reduces the atmospheric ionization. Ney raised the idea that this ionization could have some climatic effect. This would immediately link solar activity with climate variations, and explain things like the little ice age during the Maunder minimum, when sunspots were a rare occurrence on the solar surface.
In the 1990s, Henrik Svensmark from Copenhagen brought the first empirical evidence of this link in the form of a correlation between cloud cover and the cosmic ray flux variations over the solar cycle. This link was later supported with further evidence including climate correlations with cosmic ray flux variations that are independent of solar activity, as I describe below, and, more recently, with laboratory experiments showing how ions play a role in the nucleation of small aerosols and their growth to larger ones. . . . .

Jack, you yourself posted a link to research indicating that solar activity has fallen to a 100 year low (actually, more like a 200 year low) over the past few decades. Yet the temperature continues to rise. Can you not see that this pretty much scuppers the solar forcing theory?

Edit: And why are you spamming the thread with links that have nothing to do with this topic? It's almost as though you don't want to have a serious conversation about it.
 
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Re: A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm

I will agree there is not a consensus on why, but the solution the right has come up with is....do nothing. That is not a reasonable answer either.

Actually continuing to gather data is a perfectly reasonable step.

Manufacturing imaginary carbon taxes is not a reasonable step but a scheme to line someones pockets..
 
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