What Do We Think About Climate Change

[Boston]

interesting that you make use of Christy again
he is pretty clear about his views
this time, next time he will be saying something different
In an interview with National Public Radio about the new American Geophysical Union (AGU) statement, he said:

"It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way."[5]

Christy has also said he supports the new AGU declaration, in which the AGU recinded its previous denials concerning AGW and is convinced that human activities are a cause of the global warming that has been measured,


now I realize that he has also held some detracting views but
isnt the previous exactly what some of the oil and gas industry pundits on this page have been struggling so hard not to admit

[Guillermo]

Originally Posted by Jimbo1490

Getting a paycheck from this or that oil industry group, energy lobby, left-leaning university, the UN, the US government, and environmental group or WHATEVER does not automatically disqualify any expert's work because it does not automatically follow that anyone has abrogated the scientific method in pursuit of an ulterior motive, just because he is getting a paycheck from any of the above.

Or may be even contradictory, as the Pew Center on Global Climate Change has been regularly financed by ENRON and Sun Petroleum Co, i.e.

Cheers.

[Jimbo1490]

I fail to see how the whole AGW alarm hysteria has done anything but help oil companies. Back in the 80's, oil never got above like $12/barrel. I'm sure the oil companies would have liked to manipulate prices upward, but they were apparently powerless to do so. Several US oil companies went out of business or were taken over by European competitors, who are generously subsidized so that they make huge profits no matter what happens on the open market.

But if oil companies had successfully manipulated prices, then they would have been found out and punished. The proof that they did not is that oil prices never went up during their time of crisis, back in the '80's. Instead, big oil just twisted in the wind, with prices hovering at or below what it cost to extract.

Then along comes AGW alarmism. No more new oil. No more new refineries. 'Scarcity mentality' takes hold of the commodity market and Hallelujah! they can pump the same oil at 4 or 5 (maybe even 10 or 20) times the price as it was in the '80's! They don't have to look for more oil (the green s won't let them, hey why fight it?) and nobody can pin any of this on the big oil companies!

For the big oil Co's, Life is good again!

Jimbo

[Jimbo1490]

Christy has also said he supports the new AGU declaration, in which the AGU recinded its previous denials concerning AGW and is convinced that human activities are a cause of the global warming that has been measured,

There is some truth to this, but on the whole, it's not true because you are implying that he now supports the idea of AGW via CO2 and the greenhouse effect, which he does not.

Christy demonstrated how human land use changes have made a real, measurable impact on surface temperatures by altering how and when surface and upper tropospheric air mass get mixed.

He still disagrees with the idea that observed warming is largely due to increases in the greenhouse effect.

Jimbo

[Guillermo]

Let's read Christy himself:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7081331.stm

"The IPCC is a framework around which hundreds of scientists and other participants are organised to mine the panoply of climate change literature to produce a synthesis of the most important and relevant findings.

These findings are published every few years to help policymakers keep tabs on where the participants chosen for the IPCC believe the Earth's climate has been, where it is going, and what might be done to adapt to and/or even adjust the predicted outcome.

While most participants are scientists and bring the aura of objectivity, there are two things to note:

this is a political process to some extent (anytime governments are involved it ends up that way)
scientists are mere mortals casting their gaze on a system so complex we cannot precisely predict its future state even five days ahead

The political process begins with the selection of the Lead Authors because they are nominated by their own governments.

Thus at the outset, the political apparatus of the member nations has a role in pre-selecting the main participants.

But, it may go further.

At an IPCC Lead Authors' meeting in New Zealand, I well remember a conversation over lunch with three Europeans, unknown to me but who served as authors on other chapters. I sat at their table because it was convenient.

After introducing myself, I sat in silence as their discussion continued, which boiled down to this: "We must write this report so strongly that it will convince the US to sign the Kyoto Protocol."

Politics, at least for a few of the Lead Authors, was very much part and parcel of the process.

And, while the 2001 report was being written, Dr Robert Watson, IPCC Chair at the time, testified to the US Senate in 2000 adamantly advocating on behalf of the Kyoto Protocol, which even the journal Nature now reports is a failure.

As I said above - and this may come as a surprise - scientists are mere mortals.

The tendency to succumb to group-think and the herd-instinct (now formally called the "informational cascade") is perhaps as tempting among scientists as any group because we, by definition, must be the "ones who know" (from the Latin sciere, to know).

You dare not be thought of as "one who does not know"; hence we may succumb to the pressure to be perceived as "one who knows".

This leads, in my opinion, to an overstatement of confidence in the published findings and to a ready acceptance of the views of anointed authorities.

Scepticism, a hallmark of science, is frowned upon. (I suspect the IPCC bureaucracy cringes whenever I'm identified as an IPCC Lead Author.)

The signature statement of the 2007 IPCC report may be paraphrased as this: "We are 90% confident that most of the warming in the past 50 years is due to humans."

We are not told here that this assertion is based on computer model output, not direct observation. The simple fact is we don't have thermometers marked with "this much is human-caused" and "this much is natural".

So, I would have written this conclusion as "Our climate models are incapable of reproducing the last 50 years of surface temperatures without a push from how we think greenhouse gases influence the climate. Other processes may also account for much of this change."

To me, the elevation of climate models to the status of definitive tools for prediction has led to the temptation to be over-confident.

Here is how this can work.

Computer models are the basic tools which are used to estimate the future climate. Many scientists (ie the mere mortals) have been captivated by an IPCC image in which the actual global surface temperature curve for the 20th Century is overlaid on a band of model simulations of temperature for the same period.

The observations seem to fit right in the middle of the model band, implying that models are formulated so capably and completely that they can reproduce the past very well.

Without knowing much about climate models, any group will be persuaded by this image to believe models are quite precise.

However, there is a fundamental flaw with this thinking.

You see, every modeller knew what the answer was ahead of time. (Those groans you just heard were the protestations of my colleagues in the modelling community - they know what's coming).

In my view, on the other hand, this persuasive image is not a scientific experiment at all. The agreement displayed is just as likely to do with clever software engineering as to the first principles of science.

The proper and objective experiment is to test model output against quantities not known ahead of time.

Our group is one of the few that builds a variety of climate datasets from scratch for tests just like this.

Since we build the datasets here, we have an urge to be sceptical about arguments-from-authority in favour of the real, though imperfect, observations.

In these model vs data comparisons, we find gross inconsistencies - hence I am sceptical of our ability to claim cause and effect about both past and future climate states.

Mother Nature is incredibly complex, and to think we mortals are so clever and so perceptive that we can create computer code that accurately reproduces the millions of processes that determine climate is hubris (think of predicting the complexities of clouds).

Of all scientists, climate scientists should be the most humble. Our cousins in the one-to-five-day weather prediction business learned this long ago, partly because they were held accountable for their predictions every day.

Answering the question about how much warming has occurred because of increases in greenhouse gases and what we may expect in the future still holds enormous uncertainty, in my view.

How could the situation be improved? At one time I stated that the IPCC-like process was the worst way to compile scientific knowledge, except for all the others.

Improvements have been adopted through the years, most notably the publication of the comments and responses. Bravo.

I would think a simple way to let the world know there are other opinions about various aspects emerging from the IPCC font would be to provide some quasi-official forum to allow those views to be expressed.

These alternative-view authors should be afforded the same protocol as the IPCC authors, ie they themselves are their own final reviewers and thus would have final say on what is published.

At that point, I suppose, the blogosphere would erupt and, amidst the fire and smoke, hopefully, enlightenment may appear.

I continue to participate in the IPCC (unless an IPCC functionary reads this missive and blackballs me) because I not only am able to contribute from my own research, but there are numerous opportunities to learn something new - to feed the curiosity that attends a scientist's soul.

I can live with the disagreements concerning nuances and subjective assertions as they simply remind me that all scientists are people, and do not prevent me from speaking my mind anyway.

Don't misunderstand me.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase due to the undisputed benefits that carbon-based energy brings to humanity. This increase will have some climate impact through CO2's radiation properties.

However, fundamental knowledge is meagre here, and our own research indicates that alarming changes in the key observations are not occurring.

The best advice regarding scientific knowledge, which certainly applies to climate, came to me from Mr Mallory, my high school physics teacher.

He proposed that we should always begin our scientific pronouncements with this statement: "At our present level of ignorance, we think we know..."

Good advice for the IPCC, and all of us."

[masalai]

Guillermo, - - Thank you very much.... Your clarification and objectivity in analysis of human frailty is most satisfactory....

[Frosty]

Mas , what the hell you doing here, come on quick before you go nuts.

[Boston]

you guys are funny

I'm pretty sure Christy was the guy who refused to accept a Nobel

frankly I find Christy's opinion hard to pin down as he has waffled a lot over his career
I seem to remember every time I read his work he is saying something contradictory to something else he has done or said
both in his statements concerning global climate change
and in his willingness to sometimes take and sometimes not take special interest money

there is not much question he has changed his position on global climate change several times

While he now acknowledges that global warming is real and the human contribution is significant, Christy has been a long-time skeptic who previously argued that satellite climate data do not show a trend toward global warming, and even show cooling in some areas. His findings have been widely disputed. Christy now asserts that global warming will have beneficial effects on the planet and that increased CO2 emissions from human activities are a net positive.

Christy was a contributing writer to "Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths," published by Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2002. He spoke at a June 1998 briefing for congressional staff and media, which was sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition.

Competitive Enterprise Institute ( funded by Exxon until 07 )
Source: CEI website, 3/04

Cato Institute ( funded by Exxon )
Source: Cato Institute website 4/04

Independent Institute ( funded by Exxon )
Source: Independent Institute Press Release 7/28/03

George C. Marshall Institute ( funded by Exxon )
Source: Marshall Institute Website (2006)

Heartland Institute ( founding contributor Exxon )
Source: Heartland Institute - HeartlandGlobalWarming.org
( the Heartland Institute presently refuses to reveal its funding sources )

while he refuses to be paid for some things he is deeply involved in a number of industry funded organizations specializing in agnotology
I find this guy really hard to pin down

he admits global warming but refuses to admit clobal climate change
he admits the existence of feed back loops
and he admits humans are causing a rise in co2
he admits he doesnt know what the effects of that rise will be
but he insists we not error on the side of caution
saying instead
its just plant food

so the vast majority of all the stuff you guys refuse to admit
your man Waffles admits
sometimes
then he comes to the same conclusions the agnotologist's do
sometimes
using localized data instead of global
while at the same time insisting we just dont know enough of the science yet
sometimes

Im going to go with "makes no logical sense at all"

if we dont know enough about the science yet, then how can he come to a conclusion
saying dont worry about it
its plant food
then he admits we are raising co2 by .5% each year

regards
B

[Guillermo]

Jim and Thomas,
Have a look at this interesting article:
"Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres"
Ferenc M. Miskolczi
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
From there:
"Considering the magnitude of the observed global average
surface temperature rise and the consequences of the new greenhouse equations, the increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations must not be the reason of global warming."

Cheers.

[Guillermo]

Now someone from my own country:

Anton Uriarte, a professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and author of a book on the paleoclimate, rejects man-made climate fears. "It's just a political thing, and the lies about global warming are contributing to the proliferation of nuclear energy," Uriarte said according to a September 2007 article in the Spanish newspaper El Correo. "There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried," Uriarte wrote. "Far from provoking the so-called greenhouse effect, [CO2] stabilizes the climate." Uriarte noted that "the Earth is not becoming desertified, it's greener all the time." Uriarte says natural factors dominate the climate system. "The Earth being spherical, the tropics always receive more heat than the poles and the imbalance has to be continually rectified. They change places because of the tilt of the earth's axis. And, moreover, the planet isn't smooth, but rough, which produces perturbations in the interchange of air masses. We know the history of the climate very well and it has changed continuously," he wrote. "It's evident that the Earth is a human planet, and that being so, it's quite normal that we influence the atmosphere. It's something else altogether to say that things will get worse. I believe that a little more heat will be very good for us. The epochs of vegetational exuberance coincided with those of more heat," he explained. "In warm periods, when there are more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere - more CO2 and water vapour - climate variability is less. In these periods greenhouse gases, which act as a blanket, cushion the differences between the tropics and the poles. There is less interchange of air masses, less storms. We're talking about a climate which is much less variable," he added.
http://antonuriarte.blogspot.com/
http://homepage.mac.com/uriarte/lista.html


Cheers.

[Boston]

Jim and Thomas,
Have a look at this interesting article:

I was feeling kinda left out so I thought Ild just check it out
as usual I tend to look at three things
the research
the researcher
and the rebuttal
in this case I think it most prudent to note the rebuttal

1. The whole theme of the analysis as something that undermines current AGW practice is wrong. Dr Miskolczi’s modelling is of a gray-body atmosphere (no spectral lines or shapes). No GCM or practical climate study would use such an assumption, or use any gray-body theory due to Milne. A gray-body model is sometimes used for teaching purposes to convey concepts.

2. The paper is presented as a physics-based theoretical analysis. It is based on three fundamental errors: a. Kirchhoff’s Law, which is completely mis-stated. KL says that emissivity equals absorptivity. These are coefficients, which are used with other environment variables (temperature, incident radiation) to determine actual emittances and absorbances (total energy amounts). Dr Miskolczi simply assumes the emittances and absorbances can be equated. b. The Virial Theorem. People who know about this scratch their heads here, because it is a principle which can be important in stars, but applied to Earth just describes the hydrostatic balance of the atmosphere. Dr Miskolczi’s statement is totally mystifying - he says that because of some relation between energies, two fluxes must have a certain relation. No-one can work that out. c. A third equation, (7) in the paper and on this site. Dr Miskolczi has two equations which describe the result of applying conservation of energy to the Earth and the atmosphere, the two entities in his simple model. In the paper he introduced (7) as a third, but never said over what entity or region energy balance was being assessed. In an earlier version of this on-line “proof”, he sought to invoke conservation of momentum instead - a different principle, and very strange in the context. In this latest version, it sounds like it’s back to energy conservation, but eq (7) still makes no sense.

So with the physics not really working so well, he (or Zagoni) says now on this site “Regardsless of the names and laws referred to in their derivation, the equations of Dr Miskolczi given in the points 3.-9. above are original and proved to be valid.”

3. So the proof is now, presumably, held to be empirical. But what does empirical mean here? In the paper, Dr M makes frequent reference to plots of 228 points, which seem to have reasonable regression fits. But what are the points? He sometimes talks of (”selected” radiosonde readings, but there isn’t much detail offerred. And sometimes of simulations, using his code “HartCode”. In this site he assembles the results to prove the main principles, but the claim to their observational nature is somewhat undermined by the fact that he has similar graphs for Mars. It seems clear the results are simulations - how real-world observations fit in is quite unclear.

The key finding, often quoted, is that the greenhouse effect is limited. This result follows from his claim that the optical depth has a theoretical value (about 1.84), so if more CO2 is put into the atmosphere, somehow water is squeezed out. But that theoretical depth is based on a claim that the atmosphere must somehow optimise cooling, which he never justifies. Towards the end of this “proof” site, he lists comments from some of the referees of journals that rejected his paper. I don’t know why; the referees seem to make very strong points. On this particular point, one said: ”The overall concluding statement that ‘the existence of a stable climate requires a unique surface upward flux density and a unique optical depth of 1.841’ makes absolutely no sense at all. An atmosphere can be in stable radiative equilibrium for any LW optical depth, but the equilibrium surface temperature will monotonically depend on the value of the optical depth….” Quite right - the radiative balance can’t remove or add gases to the atmosphere.

regards
B

[Guillermo]

From Holland:

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, took climate modelers to task for their projections of future planetary doom in a February 28, 2007 post on Climate Science. "I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate models are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society. In all regular engineering professions, there exists a licensing authority. If such an authority existed in climate research, I contend, the vast majority of climate modelers would vainly attempt certification. Also, they would be unable to obtain insurance against professional liability," Tennekes said. Tennekes also unleashed on the promoters of climate fears in a January 31, 2007 article. "I worry about the arrogance of scientists who claim they can help solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding", he wrote. "I am angry about the Climate Doomsday hype that politicians and scientists engage in. I am angry at Al Gore, I am angry at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists for resetting its Doomsday clock, I am angry at Lord Martin Rees for using the full weight of the Royal Society in support of the Doomsday hype, I am angry at Paul Crutzen for his speculations about yet another technological fix, I am angry at the staff of IPCC for their preoccupation with carbon dioxide emissions, and I am angry at Jim Hansen for his efforts to sell a Greenland Ice Sheet Meltdown Catastrophe," he explained. Tennekes has also blasted Gore and the UN in the Dutch De Volskrant newspaper on March 28, 2007. "I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting - a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number - entirely without merit," Tennekes wrote. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached. We cannot run the climate as we wish," Tennekes said. "Whatever the IPCC staff thinks, it is not at all inconceivable that decreasing solar activity will lead to some cooling ten years from now," he concluded.

http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/...s-Tennekes.htm

Cheers

[Guillermo]

Interesting debate:
http://www.lindau-nobel.de/publish/M...&type=lectures
Search there for:
Ivar Giaever
Panel Discussion on "Climate Changes and Energy Challenges" with Nobel Laureates Profs. Deisenhofer, Giaever, Michel, Osheroff, Rubbia, von Klitzing, Steinberger (Chair: Prof. Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber)

Enjoy.

[Boston]

it is important to note that no coherent competing theory to global climate change has been brought forward by the detractors of that theory

An Overwhelming Consensus

The most important fact to note when discussing the issue of global climate change is that, for the professional scientific community, the debates about whether global climate change exists and whether human activity is contributing to that change are over. The scientific consensus is now so overwhelming that the only reasonable course of action is to treat human-created global climate change as a fact, and move the debate to what to do about it.

Of course there is still a very small group of scientists who remain skeptical about whether climate change exists and whether humans have caused it, but their number and the strength of their arguments are so insignificant that they should not be interpreted as representing the forefront of their field. The plain fact is that there always is, and always ought to be, scientific dissent about every theory that has been devised. That's how science works - through open questioning and testing of hypotheses.

We don't want to censor the tiny number of dissenting scientists, but we do think that it's very important to place their ideas in context. The immense majority of scientific experts have concluded that the claims of these skeptics are just plain incorrect, not fitting with the huge amount of data on global climate change that has been collected.

Scientific consensus is never a final determination of truth, and we must retain the freedom for scientists to disagree with the current consensus. However, when it comes to global climate change, the issue is what public policy-makers ought to do on a practical level. On a practical level, it's insane to wait for absolutely universal consensus before taking action. We need to work with the best information we've got, and the best information overwhelmingly points to serious, human-induced global climate change.

As much as science works through dissent, it also works through peer review. That means that when one scientist comes up with certain findings, they need to be replicated by other scientists. The process of peer review is what enabled the scientific community to quickly debunk the popular craze about cold fusion energy technology, and it's what prevents scientists in general from simply making outlandish statements about what they believe to be true. Consistent evidence that fits with a hypothesis is necessary before that hypothesis is treated as true.

For this reason, it is inappropriate to claim that one dissenting voice is capable of destroying a theory that has gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community. There are still people who claim that the Earth is really flat, but they can't back up their claims in a peer-reviewed process, and that's why they're not taken seriously. Creation "scientists" too, make plenty of claims, but those claims are not capable of withstanding review by other scientists, and so they are dismissed. When it comes to global climate change, there are dissenters, but they have not been able to come up with significant information that meets the standards of their peers. So, as earnest as these individuals are, we do not have any reason to trust that their ideas are reliable.

[Jimbo1490]

False statements (no competing theory)

Continued appeals to authority (the 'consensus argument)

Continued character assassination (this guy works for blah blah blah)

Hey Boston,

Do us all a favor and go find some tropical tropospheric warming and bring it back. Don't come back until you find some. Bring a bucket of compression while you're at it

Jimbo