$30,000 Global Warming Skepic Challenge IV

The comments section of this page has filled up and no more comments will be accepted here. This is a real problem for me and I am not at all happy with Blogspot about this. I am stuck with it for now, but it is something I will certainly take into consideration in the future. In the meantime, comments will continue on the $30,000 Global Warming Skeptic Challenge V page.


Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

 

This page is a continuation of the first, second and third Challenge pages. I made this to allow for new comments so they will show up.


Sorry for the trouble

Chris Keating



NEW:  There is now a challenge deadline of midnight (CDT) July 31, 2014 for the challenge. All submissions will be posted with my response no later than the end of the day September 30, 2014.


UPDATE: I AM TRYING TO GET TO EVERY SUBMISSION AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. I HAVE RESPONDED (AS OF 7/2) TO 13 SPECIFIC  SUBMISSIONS (PLUS SOME GENERAL POSTINGS ADDRESSING FREQUENTLY MADE CLAIMS) AND CURRENTLY HAVE 26 QUEUED UP. THE QUICK ONES TYPICALLY DON'T TAKE LONG TO RESPOND TO. THE MORE INVOLVED  ONES CAN TAKE A FULL DAY. PLEASE BE PATIENT AND I WILL DO MY BEST TO RESPOND TO ALL GENUINE SUBMISSIONS. IF I MISS YOURS I WILL BE GLAD TO CORRECT MY ERROR.

I APOLOGIZE IF I DON'T REPLY TO EVERY COMMENT. I HAVE RECEIVED OVER 1000 COMMENTS IN THE LAST FEW WEEKS. THERE JUST ISN'T TIME TO RESPOND TO ALL OF THEM. HOWEVER, I READ THROUGH THE COMMENTS EVERY DAY AND RESPOND TO THE ONES I CAN.

I HAVE SAID THIS MANY TIMES, BUT IT IS WORTH SAYING AGAIN: I AM NOT ASKING ANYONE TO PROVE ME WRONG, OR TO PROVE ANYTHING AT ALL. I AM MERELY PROVIDING A VENUE FOR PEOPLE WHO MAKE A CLAIM TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON THAT CLAIM. IF YOU ARE SAYING MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT REAL AND YOU CAN PROVE IT, I AM GIVING YOU THE CHANCE. IF YOU ARE NOT MAKING THAT CLAIM, THEN THIS CHALLENGE IS NOT FOR YOU.

I NEVER THOUGHT THAT SOMEONE MAKING A SUBMISSION WOULD ACCEPT MY RESPONSE. IN MY EXPERIENCE, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CONVINCE A DENIER TO CHANGE HIS MIND WITH ANY AMOUNT OF SCIENCE, EVIDENCE OR LOGIC. BEFORE I GET INTO A DISCUSSION WITH DENIERS ON CLIMATE CHANGE I LIKE TO ASK THEM ONE QUESTION, "IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO OR SAY THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR MIND?" IF THE ANSWER IS, "NO," THEN THERE IS NO NEED TO PROCEED. I HAVE NEVER HAD ANYONE TELL ME, "YES." IT REALLY DOES SAVE ME A LOT OF AGGRAVATION.

THIS CHALLENGE AND MY RESPONSES ARE FOR PEOPLE THAT HAVE NOT MADE UP THEIR MINDS YET. I WANT THEM TO BE ABLE TO MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION AND PART OF THAT IS TO SHOW HOW INVALID CLAIMS MADE BY DENIERS ARE.


I have heard global warming skeptics make all sorts of statements about how the science doesn't support claims of man-made climate change. I have found all of those statements to be empty and without any kind of supporting evidence. I have, in turn, stated that it is not possible for the skeptics to prove their claims. And, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.

I am announcing the start of the $30,000 Global Warming Skeptic Challenge. The rules are easy:

1. I will award $10,000 of my own money, plus another $20,000 vouched for by The Young Turks, to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring;

2. There is no entry fee;

3. You must be 18 years old or older to enter;

4. Entries do not have to be original, they only need to be first;

5. I am the final judge of all entries but will provide my comments on why any entry fails to prove the point.

That's it! I know you are not going to get rich with $10,000. But, tell me, wouldn't you like to have a spare $30,000? After all, the skeptics all claim it is a simple matter, and it doesn't even have to be original. If it is so easy, just cut and paste the proof from somewhere. Provide the scientific evidence and prove your point and the $30,000 is yours!

This is no joke. If someone can provide a proof that I can't refute, using scientific evidence, then I will write them a check.

But, I am sure I will never have to because it can't be proven. The scientific evidence for global warming is overwhelming and no one can prove otherwise.

Any takers?

183 comments:

  1. I have just noticed something odd...

    Page 1 - 255 comments
    Page 2 - 200 comments
    Page 3 - 158 comments

    What is this issue that is making it impossible to comment on these pages?

    Because if I didn't know any better, I might suspect that you are intentionally cropping the comments to stifle discussion. But I know better, right?

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    1. In fact, I am working the issue to make sure the conversation is not stifled. I do moderate some comments (duplicates, personal attacks, attempts to hijack the blog, spamming, etc.), but I try to keep all open discussion intact. I have identified the problem as belonging to Blogspot, a lesson learned for future reference but I am stuck with them for now. They allow unlimited comments per posting, but there is a limit to how many can be displayed. I have looked at the html code to see if I can find the issue and have added Disqus, also. Disqus seems to help on the pages were it works, but I can't get it to work on all pages. When a page fills, I remove some comments (under the categories listed above) or move some to an archive page for safe keeping. This allows comments that have been made and are not appearing to show up. I then close that page to any more comments and create a new page. Not very satisfactory, but, like I said, I'm stuck with it for now.

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    2. I suppose that I will continue to identify myself as anonymous #2.

      I do trust you to a fairly strong degree when it comes to trying to keep the record accurate. You are not a politician, or a businessman, or an economist.

      I am quite happy that this forum hasn't been inundated with a great deal of frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics on both sides of the issue.

      I hope that the scientific community views what you are doing here with a sense of openness and doesn't decide to tan your hide or to try torch your career over it. They do their best, but they are human, and subject to political forces and pettiness as much as any other group of people. Sometimes being objective is hard when emotions get in the way.

      I think that your opening up the discussion in this way should be considered admirable.

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    3. It actually hasn't been too bad. I have run across 'frothing-at-the-mouth' types and they are not pleasant to have a discussion with. There have been a few times when the exchange got a little heated, but mostly it has been within the acceptable. I want to allow other people to say what they want without fear of censorship. That does not mean I will tolerate someone that tries to bully or intimidate me (see my reply below).

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    4. I don't bring up the possibility about your career above to intimidate you. I bring it up because deep down, I fear that the scientific community can be petty, politically motivated and too quick to crucify someone's career over what an objective person would see as the behavior of an honest inquirer.

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    5. I am retired (by choice) and am financially independent. I live in a wonderful community, have a lifestyle most would envy and have a great circle of friends. I don't have any grant money and fund all of my work myself. So, there really isn't anything anyone can do to me.

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  2. Keating, you are clearly prepared to believe in the mechanisms of publication and peer review within the scientific community, that lead us to 'undeniable evidence' for AGW.

    Why then do you not trust that those same mechanisms would have already informed us regarding the most convincing alternative hypotheses also? How does your own funding and personal judgement help?


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    1. There are several Anonymous' here so I should sign off to avoid confusion. I am the same that commented at July 7, 2014 at 2:41 PM. My line of questioning is the same.

      Mike

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    2. Contrary to claims by deniers, the scientific process examines and review all alternatives. That is one of the reasons it takes so long. It is also one of the reasons there is such a high level of confidence in the results. Many papers are published and presentations made at conventions that are then reviewed by the scientific community and found to have problems. In this manner, we examine all sorts of alternatives and slowly, but very surely, add to our understanding of the science. One of the false arguments deniers make is that climate scientists will only find evidence of global warming because that is what their funding is for. The truth is that climate scientist are in the business of studying the climate. There will be a climate with, or without, global warming and they will be studying it and getting grant money to do that. Their funding does not depend on finding global warming. In fact, if it is found they falsified their research they will not only lose their funding, but any chance of getting funding in the future.

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    3. Sure, so you accept that your 'denier' audience here is largely composed of people without obvious scientific credentials, to whom you would like to "slap around" a little with your prowess. I know you will keep your $30K, but I just think: what's the point of all this? There are all kinds of people in this world that think a whole bunch of stuff that is nonsense, but it would be a brave soul that wanted an argument against the uninformed as a matter of 'principle' on every aspect of that nonsense! The scientific process already naturally keeps out those without the requisite evidence and reasoning ability, even while you sleep...
      Mike

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    4. anonymous #2 again.

      So what happens if the next group of flops and we have a mostly, say conservative majority? What happens if the conservative majority decides not to put any money into climate research? Is it possible that the funding could disappear on a political whim?

      The US is sending astronauts to the International Space Station on Russian shuttles (1).

      Do you suppose that climate scientists could foster enough support and public capital to continue their research? How would they do it? And if they didn't have that public support; if you couldn't get any research grants for that kind of work; what would you do?

      (1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/18/despite-sanctions-russia-is-getting-a-457-9m-check-from-nasa/

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    5. Government funding certainly is subject to political whims. How does that have anything to do with your claims? The truth is, if you falsify your research, you will lose your funding and will not get funding in the future. If funding gets tighter, this will become even more true. Scientists have to produce scientifically valid research, or they won't be working for long. There are lots of example of that happening.

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    6. To Anonymous at 7:30 PM

      This challenge was to allow deniers a chance to provide the proof of their claims. I accept those submissions and am addressing them. If one comes in that is scientifically valid and proves the point, then I will pay the money. It is not my fault that deniers cannot back up their claims. The moral of the story is don't go around saying things you can't back up.

      You put 'slap around' in quotation marks. I sure hope you are not claiming I made a comment that I want to physically assault anyone.

      I am rude to commenters that are rude and engage in bullying and personal attacks. That is one of the strategies of deniers in the public 'debate.' They attack scientists and bully them into leaving the stage so they can then control the public debate all by themselves. When they try it with me, I stand up to them.

      Likewise, when someone is civil, I make my best effort to be civil back. We can engage in a civil discussion of the issue and I have actually tried to be pleasant to some of the worst offenders that have appeared here.

      But, bullying and intimidation will not work on me.

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    7. When people need money, or grant money, or funding, or whatever you want to call it; it tends to make many, not particularly honest. So if you grant me that government funding is subject to political whims; and if a part of the scientific community is interested in one particular form of research, and if the only way they can do that research is by getting funding, and if the only way they can get funding is by kow-towing to the political agenda... is it possible that this can corrupt the science that comes from a particular group of scientists --- because they are all feeding from the same trough of funding? That they go from being ordinarily objective scientists to being merely pets who suck from the teat of whoever gives them money? And even more so when there is a scarcity of funding?

      If it's possible that part of the peer review process is broken... like, if it is widely believed that climate scientist's work can only be fairly reviewed by other climate scientists... but if most other climate scientists are all feeding from the same trough of public funding; is this process generating honest science? Is it possible for the process of peer review to break and not work the way it was originally intended?

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    8. I'll leave a final word here but thanks for the chat. You say that "If one comes in that is scientifically valid and proves the point, then I will pay the money."

      Have you considered that you might not recognise the "one" when you see it? This is not an insult in any way, it is what I mean by you as "a single individual" versus "established mechanisms of peer review in a scientific community".

      By which I mean, what you are really saying with the phrase "scientifically valid and proves the point" is "scientifically valid and convinces me". Can you see what I am trying to demonstrate to you?

      PS. I used "Slapped around" in the sense of debate, as some of these are easy targets. Never meant to imply bullying or such like.

      Mike

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    9. The amount of funding is certainly subject to political whims. I would not even pretend to deny that. But, the award system is designed to be independent of politics and decided on merit. Is it 100% successful? Certainly not. But, it is pretty good and the statement is still true that if anyone gets caught falsifying their research their career is done.

      As for recognizing 'the one', you could always make that objection. However, I reference proven science and research to illustrate the point on most cases. There have been a couple where I dismissed them because of the track history of the individuals involved, but that track history was based on valid science and scientific evidence (go back to my comments about being caught falsifying your research). There is about to be another one tonight or tomorrow.

      If I come across something that cannot be explained with the science and is scientifically valid in its own right, then that will 'the one' and I will have to accept it as proof. I have always stated that I will go where the science leads me. So far, though, the science is certainly leading me to the conclusion that the deniers don't have any science to back them up.

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    10. Dr. Keating,

      This is Anonymous #2 again.

      I cannot ask for a more fair response than that. I too, do not believe that with the way you phrase the question that it will be possible for anyone to prove. You ask if anyone can prove that anthropogenic global warming is true or false; but the answer is probably more complicated than that and exists on a spectrum.

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  3. Anonymous 2, I agree with some of your points about scientific cred, but not with your analogy to flight. This is a difference between science and engineering. The best solution we can hope for in this case ('a plane that flies') is an outstanding scientific paper, containing a method and a series of assumptions, each of which will be subject to scrutiny, and the whole of which will be open to further refining and improvement.
    Mike

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    1. anonymous #2:

      Well, here is the funny thing. The issue of credentials is more general than "scientific credentials" vs "engineering credentials". One can have "scientific credentials" and do engineering, or someone can have "engineering credentials" and do science. The issue with credentials cuts both ways. Isaac Asimov, for instance, had a PhD in Biochemistry. He had no credentials whatsoever in creative writing; he was an amateur author. But the fact that he was an amateur made no difference. He could still write well, despite the fact that he had no credentials in writing, per se'. He even made some money at it.

      Credentials are not a determinant of ability. At worst, they can provide a bare minimum familiarity with a subject. At best, well, we *do* have Nobel prize winners, but I hesitate to mention that because the Nobel prize is yet another credential. I don't have one of those, but... I can quote some people that do!

      Richard Feynman:
      "We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or to describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work, although, there has been in these days, some interest in this kind of thing."

      To support his statement, this is from (presumably grad students?):
      "We didn't read half of the papers we cited, because they are behind a paywall." #overlyhonestmethods

      "The reagent was unavailable in 2002 because nobody wanted to order more and risk being added to a terrorist watchlist." #overlyhonestmethods

      "Blood samples were spun at 1500 rpm because the centrifuge made a scary noise at higher speeds." #overhonestmethods

      Which is funny, because the scientists, the PIs who get the credit for all the science that gets done these days... their time is monopolized with applying for grant money. These days a PI is little more than a glorified manager, whose purpose is the raise the money for the research. The graduate students are the ones who actually do the testing, write the papers, run the experiments; the graduate students do the science. This was the meat that makes up the science that everybody thinks about when they are a kid. Except, you don't always get the credit for your work as a graduate student, and you really are about as disposable as those poor folks who are stuck in minimum wage fast food.

      The only way that a graduate student can be less disposable is if they get a PhD. But even then, they are still disposable! They have to figure out how to get a Post-Doc, as a postdoc, they get to figure out how to raise money like a PI, which is like being an assistant manager in fast food. You are less disposable than those who work for you, but... that's not saying much. :)

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    2. continued from above


      Then if you are lucky you get to become an Assistant Professor. You are never as disposable as you are as an Assistant Professor. You might compare this to a Manager in fast food; but really, I suspect that Assistant Professors are far more disposable even than that. You have to raise money for your research, attract graduate students, produce a copious amount of literature on research in journals that the public cannot afford to read.

      The light at the end of the tunnel, is tenure. Supposedly, at this point no one can fire you. But truly, I have doubts that this is really the case. What happens if you annoy administration? University Administration is certainly politically savvy. Statistically, only somewhere on the order of 0.5% of people who start as undergraduates in science reach this point. But by this point, do you have independent thinking revolutionary scientists; or do you have pets who simply suck from the teat of whoever holds the purse strings?

      If you have the latter, it doesn't take much imagination to see how the unscrupulous, savvy, conniving, and corrupt political mind can take advantage of this whole situation.

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    3. This whole system looks a little feudal if you ask me. It has worked since the 1920s, but I believe that this system is beginning to show it's cracks.

      The University has become so abhorrently expensive that the middle class has been supplementing their education with enormous amounts of debt. You don't have to be a student of dynamics to see that as time goes on, and as school becomes more expensive, only the rich will eventually be capable of affording it. The last time this was the case was the Victorian era.

      You remember the Victorian era... this was the time when Marie Antoinette was misquoted for saying, "Let them eat cake." This was the time when only the rich could afford a decent education. Your average worker was paid pennies on the dollar and the folks at the top of the companies were making millions of dollars.

      We do not want to repeat that. But that is absolutely the direction that we are heading. We do not want to repeat the Victorian era. It was great if you had money, it was a terrible existence if you didn't have money. Just read Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens; that will show you what the Victorian era looked like.

      Of course the good news, is that this whole stack of cards that University administration has been building out of their finances will collapse as soon as people see that they are not getting a return on their investment for the credentials they have been buying.

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    4. My point with all of this is...

      Our system of education for training our best and our brightest.

      ...it is not healthy, right now.

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    5. Our system of research that creates our best ideas and our most powerful technology.

      ...it is not healthy, right now.

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  4. Post 1 of 10

    As individual post length is limited to 4096 characters, and my submittal spans almost 33,000 characters, the entire submittal will be about 10 posts, numbered 1 through 10. Whereas I took care to provide proper links to the research papers I quoted from, this site objects to web addresses it claims contain "illegal characters". In honor of such superior intellect, I have deleted all links from my submittal. After 13+ hours of preparing this submittal, with links to the source papers, provision of those links will require a more intelligent blog engine than this. I am not going to bother, after 1am, to try and construct the attributions in text for so many scholarly quotations as I have included here. I can indeed provide the links, but not on so prissy a forum as this.

    The reason I am posting as anonymous is that according to whatever data this weblog is connected to, I do not own the Wordpress identity I have owned for many years now. The hoops one must jump through to distribute knowledge, sheesh!

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    1. One thing we can agree on is I need a more intelligent blog engine. I am stuck with this one for now, but it will be something to remember in the future.

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  5. A Challenge to Keating’s Challenge
    By William F. McClenney, CA-PG #4430

    The Keating Challenge, as stated is:

    “I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”

    That, of course, would be attempting to prove a negative. But how about this for an even more dramatic challenge:

    “Let’s assume that anthropogenic global warming is occurring, would you still be willing to stake the winner if he/she were to prove that the correct thing to do about it is anywhere from maintaining current anthropogenic GHG emissions to actually increasing them?”

    In addition, I will also present powerful arguments why AGW may not matter at all. So please be certain that we all have the Operating Assumption down pat: anthropogenic emissions of GHGs can cause a positive thermal excursion in earth’s climate. In fact, if I may say so, we had all better hope and pray that this assumption is correct.

    I will be quoting copiously from the peer-reviewed literature, providing links to every paper I can. I will attempt to keep this as brief as possible, however the areas of discussion require you to either already have a solid background in the subjects, or be willing to acquire that knowledge by taking some of the “sidetrips” to other locations where this knowledge may be gained.


    WHEN WE LIVE:

    It would be one thing if we were having this discussion say a few thousand years after the Holocene Climate Optimum, when producing a positive thermal climate excursion might very well rank as a potential problem for humanity. Unfortunately, for the proponents of AGW, the Holocene is presently 11,717 years old as of c.e. 2014. That might be one of the more ominous numbers you will ever encounter. The Holocene Epoch is the 9th interglacial that has occurred since what is known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, or MPT.

    “The emergence of low-frequency, high-amplitude, quasi-periodic (~100-kyr) glacial variability during the middle Pleistocene in the absence of any significant change in orbital forcing indicates a fundamental change internal to the climate system. This middle Pleistocene transition (MPT) began 1250 ka and was complete by 700 ka.”

    During the MPT the period between interglacials went from being paced by the obliquity (or tilt) of our axis of rotation (~41kyrs) to being paced by eccentricity (~100kyrs) which is the variability of our orbit around the sun from near a circle to its most elliptical or “eccentric”. Eccentricity has a second order period of ~400kyrs between each maximum or each minimum. But it is the third orbital variable which comes into play at this exact moment in time, the precession cycle, which varies between ~19-23kyrs.

    Here is when we live. We are presently at one of the 400kyr eccentricity minima. As the MPT is generally discussed as centering around ~800kyrs ago (kya hereon), then it too occurred at an eccentricity minima, as did the Holsteinian Interglacial (also known as Marine Isotope Stage [MIS] 11) which occurred around ~400kya. We are also at the 23kyr node of the precession cyclicity. Seven of the last 8 interglacials back to the MPT, achieved interglacial warmth for about half a precession cycle. And that is

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  6. Post 3 of 10:

    what makes the number 11,717 so ominous. 11,500 is half of 23,000. That means, boys and girls, that we are once again at a possible end interglacial, also known as glacial inception.

    That’s right, glacial inception. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

    SIDETRIP 01:

    The sidetrip above provides extensive documentation relating to the End Holocene debate. Bet you didn’t know it was a debate either. Actually, the debate over the probable length of the Holocene began at the same time the AGW debate did, and from exactly the same data. We will tune in on this debate with Dr. Wallace S. Broecker, arguably the father of modern paleoclimatology, in a question posed as the title of his fascinating paper:

    “The End of the Present Interglacial: How and When?” Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 17

    “Despite the large decline in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation during the last 8000 years, neither sea level nor polar temperatures have as yet undergone any significant downturn. This behavior is consistent with the prediction by Kukla and Matthews (1972) that the Holocene interglacial will terminate suddenly with a jump to another of the climate system's modes of operation. This is what happened at the end of the last period of peak interglaciation. However, complicating the situation is evidence that ice sheet growth during the transition from marine stage 5e to 5d preceded the shut down of the Atlantic's conveyor circulation which is thought to have brought Europe's Eemian to a close.

    “However, it must be kept in mind that the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases may alter the natural course of events.

    “With this new information in hand, three questions come to mind.
    (1) Were previous intervals of peak interglaciation terminated by abrupt global coolings?
    (2) How close are we to the end of the present interval of peak interglaciation?
    (3) Will the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases alter the natural sequence of events?”

    You should be able to guess where this is going. This is by no means a falsification of the AGW hypothesis. It is but the beginning of a powerful argument that either eviscerates or obviates the entire AGW discussion.

    Ulrich Muller and Jorg Pross, writing in Quaternary Science Reviews 26 (2007) sum this nasty little problem up neatly:

    “The possible explanation as to why we are still in an interglacial relates to the early anthropogenic hypothesis of Ruddiman (2003, 2005). According to that hypothesis, the anomalous increase of CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere as observed in mid- to late Holocene ice-cores results from anthropogenic deforestation and rice irrigation, which started in the early Neolithic at 8000 and 5000 yr BP, respectively. Ruddiman proposes that these early human greenhouse gas emissions prevented the inception of an overdue glacial that otherwise would have already started.”

    In 2009 Crucifix and Rougier ask:

    “We will illustrate our case with reference to a debate currently taking place in the circle of Quaternary climate scientists. The climate history of the past few million years is characterised

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  7. Post 4 of 10:

    by repeated transitions between `cold' (glacial) and `warm' (interglacial) climates. The first modern men were hunting mammoth during the last glacial era. This era culminated around 20,000 years ago [3] and then declined rapidly. By 9,000 years ago climate was close to the modern one. The current interglacial, called the Holocene, should now be coming to an end, when compared to previous interglacials, yet clearly it is not. The debate is about when to expect the next glacial inception, setting aside human activities, which may well have perturbed natural cycles.

    “On one side, Professor Bill Ruddiman carefully inspected and compared palaeoenvironmental information about the different interglacial periods. This comparison let him to conclude that glacial inception is largely overdue [4, 5]. According to him, the Holocene was not supposed to be this long, but the natural glacial inception process was stopped by an anthropogenic perturbation that began as early as 8,000 years ago (rice plantations and land management by antique civilisations). On the other side, Professor Andre Berger and colleagues developed a mathematical model of the climate system, rated today as a `model of intermediate complexity' [6, 7] to solve the dynamics of the atmosphere and ice sheets on a spatial grid of 19 x 5 elements, with a reasonably extensive treatment of the shortwave and longwave radiative transfers in the atmosphere. Simulations with this model led Berger and Loutre to conclude that glacial inception is not due for another 50,000 years, as long as the CO2 atmospheric concentration stays above 220 ppmv [8]. Who is right?”

    This warrants repeating: “The debate is about when to expect the next glacial inception, setting aside human activities, which may well have perturbed natural cycles.”

    You see, if the IPCC et al. are right about CO2/AGW, then Ruddiman is probably right: if it were not for AGW we would already be in a now overdue (or due now) glacial. And that makes what to do about AGW a very interesting question indeed!

    Rohling et al (2010) chime in with this:

    Finally, the alignment shown in Fig. 4 (which is similar to that of Ruddiman, 2005, 2007) exemplifies a completely different, more controversial (Spanhi et al., 2005; Siegenthaler et al., 2005), possibility. It has been argued that variability in the planetary energy balance during Pleistocene glacial cycles was dominated by greenhouse gas and albedo related feedback mechanisms, and that the role of insolation was limited to only triggering the feedback responses (Hansen et al., 2008). Hence, the apparently anomalous climate trends of the most recent 2.0-2.5 millennia should also be investigated in terms of changes in these feedback responses due to processes other than insolation, including controversial suggestions concerning man’s long-term impacts from deforestation and CH4 and CO2 emissions (Ruddiman, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007; Hansen et al., 2008). There is support from modelling studies that the relatively minor early anthropogenic influences may have been sufficient to delay glacial inception (Vavrus et al., 2008; Kutzbach et al., 2009).

    It’s not much of a mental leap to realize that stripping a “climate security blanket” capable of preventing or mitigating glacial inception from the half-precession old Holocene interglacial might be inviting the tipping point known as glacial inception. Even if the IPCC et al. are right and Ruddiman is wrong, the question is the same. Remove AGW GHGs etc. from the late Holocene atmosphere and take your chances with glacial inception.

    What you should be able to realize here is that the appropriate response to AGW in the middle of an interglacial might be the exact opposite of what to do at an end interglacial.

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  8. Post 5 of 10:

    Those happy to take their chances with what may be an already overdue glacial and risk glacial inception by reducing AGW/GHGs to whatever late Holocene concentration you prefer, plunk down here.

    What sense does it make to even consider removing trace gases with purportedly the power to perhaps delay or ameliorate glacial inception? Those that just realized being right about CO2/AGW means we may need to do a U-turn on policy plunk down here. We may already have a glacial inception insurance policy aka CO2/AGW.

    You are allowed to change your mind at any time.

    In either the “Do Something” or “Do Nothing” cases, you may wish to consider the following:

    “Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate…..”

    “The onset of the LEAP occurred within less than two decades, demonstrating the existence of a sharp threshold, which must be near 416 Wm2, which is the 65oN July insolation for 118 kyr BP (ref. 9). This value is only slightly below today’s value of 428 Wm2. Insolation will remain at this level slightly above the inception for the next 4,000 years before it then increases again.”

    Sirocko et al (A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception, nature, vol. 436, 11 August 2005, doi:10.1038/nature 03905, pp 833-836)

    In case this was not clear, all we may need do is nothing about CO2/AGW for the next ~4,000 years to perhaps cheat glacial inception.

    In summing up this section, the entire AGW debate might actually be just that simple. GHGs either can or cannot mitigate glacial inception. It is no more complicated or simple than that. Period.

    a) If GHGs can get us over the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?

    b) If GHGs can’t vault us across the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?

    Not falsified, obviated.

    As you might expect, it actually does get worse than you think.


    OBVIATION BY SNR AND GI

    In this section we will look at two essentially insurmountable obstacles to AGW, signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the climatic “madhouse” known as Glacial Inception (GI). Either one obliterates any concern whatsoever related to AGW. The reference standard chosen to represent the absolute worst case of AGW is the IPCC’s Assessment Report 4 (2007)

    SIDETRIP 02:

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  9. Post 6 of 10:

    Your attention is drawn to Figure 10.33 from page 821 of Chapter 10 of AR4. SRES marker series A1F1 is the IPCC’s worst case “business as usual” scenario in which we do nothing about CO2/AGW in terms of the absolute measure of climate change, relative sea level (RSL). The median value of A1F1 comes in at +0.425 meters by 2099, or about +1.4 feet above present day mean sea level ( or amsl). If we use the upper error bar for A1F1 as the ultimate absolute worst case, we get about +0.6 meters (about 2 feet) amsl by 2099.

    So the upper error bar of the worst case “business as usual” scenario from the gold standard of climate science, the IPCC, is +0.6 meter relative sea level rise by 2099. This is the ultimate AGW “signal”, so do take note here.

    Is that a lot?

    Actually, the more intelligent question might be:

    Can we even detect our worst case CO2/AGW “signal” at an end interglacial/glacial inception?

    Which brings us to yet another debate taking place in the paleoclimate community you have probably heard nada about: What is glacial inception like?

    You see, the problem here, of course, is “noise”. Neuman and Hearty (1996) spell it out for us:

    “The lesson from the last interglacial “greenhouse” in the Bahamas is that the closing of that interval brought sea-level changes that were rapid and extreme. This has prompted the remark that between the greenhouse and the icehouse lies a climatic “madhouse”.

    Boettger, et al (Quaternary International 207 [2009] 137–144) abstract it for us:

    “In terrestrial records from Central and Eastern Europe the end of the Last Interglacial seems to be characterized by evident climatic and environmental instabilities recorded by geochemical and vegetation indicators. The transition (MIS 5e/5d) from the Last Interglacial (Eemian, Mikulino) to the Early Last Glacial (Early Weichselian, Early Valdai) is marked by at least two warming events as observed in geochemical data on the lake sediment profiles of Central (Gro¨bern, Neumark–Nord, Klinge) and of Eastern Europe (Ples). Results of palynological studies of all these sequences indicate simultaneously a strong increase of environmental oscillations during the very end of the Last Interglacial and the beginning of the Last Glaciation. This paper discusses possible correlations of these events between regions in Central and Eastern Europe. The pronounced climate and environment instability during the interglacial/glacial transition could be consistent with the assumption that it is about a natural phenomenon, characteristic for transitional stages. Taking into consideration that currently observed ‘‘human-induced’’ global warming coincides with the natural trend to cooling, the study of such transitional stages is important for understanding the underlying processes of the climate changes.” [emphasis mine] Hearty and Neumann (Quaternary Science Reviews 20 [2001] 1881–1895) abstracting their work in the Bahamas state:

    “The geology of the Last Interglaciation (sensu stricto, marine isotope substage (MIS) 5e) in the Bahamas records the nature of sea level and climate change. After a period of quasi-stability for most of the interglaciation, during which reefs grew to +2.5 m, sea level rose rapidly at the end of the period, incising notches in older limestone. After brief stillstands at +6 and perhaps +8.5 m, sea level fell with apparent speed to the MIS 5d lowstand and much cooler climatic

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  10. Post 7 of 10:

    conditions. It was during this regression from the MIS 5e highstand that the North Atlantic suffered an oceanographic ‘‘reorganization’’ about 11873 ka ago. During this same interval, massive dune-building greatly enlarged the Bahama Islands. Giant waves reshaped exposed lowlands into chevron-shaped beach ridges, ran up on older coastal ridges, and also broke off and threw megaboulders onto and over 20 m-high cliffs. The oolitic rocks recording these features yield concordant whole-rock amino acid ratios across the archipelago. Whether or not the Last Interglaciation serves as an appropriate analog for our ‘‘greenhouse’’ world, it nonetheless reveals the intricate details of climatic transitions between warm interglaciations and near glacial conditions.” [emphasis mine]

    From a dozen such Eemian studies from around the globe, Hearty et al (2007) provide on Figure 2 a worldwide range of sea level highstands, predominantly identified at the End Eemian, ranging from +6.0 meters to +45.0 meters amsl. Lysa et al (2001) extend the possible end-Eemian climate noise envelope to +52.0 meters amsl:

    “The Arkhangelsk area lies in the region that was reached by the northeastern flank of the Scandinavian ice sheet during the last glaciation. Investigations of Late Pleistocene sediments show interglacial terrestrial and marine conditions with sea level up to 52 m above the present level.”

    And then there’s Bausch and Erlenkeuser’s (2008) “”critical” climatic evaluation of last interglacial (MIS 5e)”:

    “As has been stated previously on the basis of some of the records from core M23055 (Bauch et al 1996), the main 5e-ss [5e sensu stricto – the authors] of the last warm period in the Nordic seas occurred within the upper part of the MIS 5e interval, and the warmest phase occurred towards its very end (see also Haake & Pflaumann 1989).”

    We are now up to a possible 2 strong positive thermal excursions right at the end of the last interglacial, the Eemian, as it was undergoing glacial inception. Upon closer inspection, that second, stronger highstand itself may have had 11 negative thermal excursions with potentially 8 positive thermal excursions right at the end Eemian:

    “This implies a total sea-level change of at least 6-7 m occurred during the fall and subsequent rise between Units 2 and 3. Besides, this remarkable fall of sea level promoted a renewed input of pebbles fed to the coast, probably trough fluvial incision and erosion of older beach deposits. Our conclusion is that sea level rose and fell repeatedly during the second highstand of MIS 5e, reaching similar elevations a.s.l., and depositing Units 2 and 3 and their various subunits.”

    Their conclusions:

    “Evidence of rapid changes of sea level during the second MIS 5e highstand, comparable to the “sustained MIS 5e highstand” with a duration of 10 +/- 2 ka, has been recognized in a prograding barrierspit system located at La Marina-El Pinet (Alicante). Detailed sedimentological analysis allowed differentiating three orders of sealevel fluctuations.

    “The largest-scaled fluctuation is recorded as the conspicuous erosion surface (IV) and the associated increase in grain size that divides deposits of the second highstand in two morphosedimentary units: Unit 2 and Unit 3. It involved a minimum total sea level variation of 6-7 m.

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  11. Post 8 of 10:

    “These units include eight prograding subunits separated by less prominent erosion surfaces. Petrographic analysis of marine sediments below and above the surfaces revealed that subaerial exposure took place after deposition of each subunit. In our interpretation, the erosion surfaces are the result of repetitive relatively slow falls of sea level followed by rapid sea-level rise. The minimum amplitude deduced for fluctuations is 2 m, which represents a total change (fall and subsequent rise) in sea-water of 4 m. After each fall and erosion the sea level rose to similar topographic elevations. We propose a millennial or submillennial periodicity (∼1 ka) for these fluctuations, and disregard storm surges as a likely generating mechanism. The large magnitude of the repeated sea-level fluctuations suggests a contribution by rapid ice sheets melting and build-up.

    “The smaller-scaled (tens of centimeters) order of oscillations of sea level has been recognized inside the subunits from shifts of the foreshore and uppermost shoreface facies, and a decadal periodicity is suggested.”

    One need take care to process all of that data up to this point. Out of two strong positive pulses frequently reported for the end Eemian glacial inception phase, the second and stronger one actually had “8 prograding subunits”. Interpretation: during the third, final and highest sea level highstand at the end Eemian there were 8 “repetitive relatively slow falls of sea level followed by rapid sea-level rise” of about 4 meters.

    One can only hope that this is sinking in. Somehow, we are going to have to be able to detect an AGW “signal” of +0.6 meters amsl from as many as maybe 8 rapid oscillations hovering between 1 to almost 2 orders of magnitude greater sea level rise estimates (+6.0 to +52 meters amsl) for the end-Eemian. Both large pulses, and the eight sub-pulses within the second large pulse, wildly exceeded anything so far prognosticated by AGW.

    The Eemian, being the next youngest interglacial in the record, is also the best preserved and therefore of the best resolution. Even so, if we take a look at the ends of the other two post-MPT interglacials which also occurred at an eccentricity minima, the climatic “madhouse” picture is just about as grim.

    Consider this contribution from Desprat et al (2005) as regards the end-Holsteinian (MIS-11 to -12 glacial inception):

    “The Marine Isotope Stage 11 interglacial, centered at ~400 ka, appears to be the best candidate for understanding climatic changes in the context of low insolation forcing such as that of our present interglacial. Direct correlation between terrestrial (pollen) and marine climatic indicators and ice volume proxy from deep-sea core MD01-2447 (off northwestern Iberia) shows for the first time the phase relationship between southwestern European vegetation, sea surface temperatures in the northeastern Atlantic midlatitudes and ice volume during MIS 11. A warmest 32,000 years-long period and three following warm/cold cycles occurred synchronously on land and ocean. The end of the warmest period sees the glacial inception…..”

    and this from Pol et al (2010):

    “During the glacial inception from MIS 19 to MIS 18, the low resolution EPICA Dome C water stable isotope record (Jouzel et al., 2007) has revealed millennial variability principally marked by the occurrence of three consecutive warm events (hereafter called Antarctic Isotope Maxima — AIM, following EPICA-community-members, 2006, and noted A, B, C on Fig. 2).”

    SIDETRIP 03: Glacial Inception:

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  12. Post 9 of 10:

    For some this might seem to be a lot of science, but it is also necessary for the record and section argument of evisceration and obviation of the entire climate discussion. Any AGW component of climate change, at such a time as a half precession cycle old interglacial, is most-likely irrelevant. By itself the SNR problem is staggering. The upper error-bar of the worst case IPCC AR4 scenario yields the maximum AGW “signal” of +0.6 meters amsl by 2099. This is the “signal” we are charged to detect from the climatic “madhouse” known as glacial inception. Which has, and could again, consist of from at least 2 (often 3) major positive thermal excursions with perhaps as many as 8 lesser cycles of sea level rise and fall within just the second, last, and strongest major excursion attending the last glacial inception.

    How is it we are to even notice the IPCC-AR4 upper error-bar SRES marker A1F1 AGW scenario, coming in at +0.6 meters amsl, which is ten times (an order of magnitude) less than the lowest estimate of +6.0 meters amsl, for the final Eemian highstand? Want to go apples to apples, +0.6 vs. +52.0 meters amsl rise, AGW clocks-in at just 1.15%, a “signal” almost 2 orders of magnitude lower than the “noise”! Signal Processing experts feel free to chime in here. I don’t know how to detect a future AGW “signal”, the exact characteristics of which we don’t know yet because it hasn’t happened yet, from normal natural end interglacial/glacial inception background climate “noise” levels 1 to nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher, and of which there might be 2 to 8 such.

    This simply cannot be taken seriously.

    Consider that the +0.425 to 0.6 AGW median to worst case scenario is 4 to 6 “tens of centimeters:

    “The smaller-scaled (tens of centimeters) order of oscillations of sea level has been recognized inside the subunits from shifts of the foreshore and uppermost shoreface facies, and a decadal periodicity is suggested.”

    What? Decadal periodicity is suggested for “The smaller-scaled (tens of centimeters) order of oscillations”? Might that include 4 to 6 “tens of centimeters”? And might that not obviate the worst case AGW scenario of 6 “tens of centimeters”? You might want to have a long think about that.



    WITH RESPECT TO THE CHALLENGE

    “I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”

    This, obviously, I have not done, in any way, shape, or form. Instead, I eviscerated, obviated and neutered the entire climate change discussion. Meaning, strictly using the “scientific method”, I just rendered any question regarding “man-made global climate change” utterly moot and trivial:

    1) GHGs either can or cannot mitigate glacial inception. They either have or have not already done so. It is no more complicated or simple than that. Period. Meaning, of course, that removing CO2/GHGs to some policy level might tip us into the next glacial. We only need to make it another ~4,000 years or so until insolation begins to rise again. The only thing in the air that makes that possible is if you and the IPCC are right about AGW/CO2/GHGs. If wrong, then none of that matters. In case you hadn’t noticed yet, being right about AGW/CO2/GHGs actually means we might “skip a precessional beat” like MIS-11 did, and end up with another extended interglacial, if we do nothing about it/them.

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  13. Post 10 of 10:

    2) Is +0.6 meters amsl all you got? I’ll see your +0.6 meters amsl rise by 2099 and raise you tenfold to the lowest estimate of the sea level highstand, +6.0 meters amsl. Notice I did not call…. You consult your AGW hand (the “Gorical”) and you then “see” my raise of +6.0 meters amsl and raise pot to say 21.3 meters amsl, the final MIS-11 highstand resulting from the 3rd and final positive thermal excursion of that interglacial (which, of course, was not instigated by AGW) and call. I lay down my cards. I’ve got a +45.0 and a +52.0 meter highstand flush. AGW cannot beat such a hand.
    3) And you would be the wiser not to try. Because none of this climate change discussion we are having even matters regardless if we are right or wrong about CO2/GHGs/AGW. We are either overdue for glacial inception or we are due now. Whenever the end Holocene finally does arrive, if it is even in our power to let it, we are probably assured of the climatic “madhouse” that is glacial inception. Replete with abrupt, orders of magnitude stronger positive thermal excursions.

    You see, by merely adopting the meme that AGW/CO2/GHG emissions can trap and store heat, for maybe thousands of years if we stop emitting right now, by that same token we might have already obviated glacial inception. And maybe can continue for the next ~4,000 years or so.

    Or might your preference actually be glacial inception?

    Are you now aware how easily the AGW argument can be turned on its head? You see, the far more menacing problem is not if one “can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”, but that “The debate is about when to expect the next glacial inception, setting aside human activities, which may well have perturbed natural cycles.” A decades old debate you have probably heard nothing about, until now.

    The $30,000 question regards proving that man-made global climate change is not occurring. Disregarding that one cannot prove a negative, we can adopt the premise that not only can man-made climate change occur, it may already have prevented glacial inception and could possibly do so well into the future, hopefully the next ~4,000 years or so.

    The AGW meme is therefore reversed, using nothing but the scientific method itself. AGW is real? Fine. OK. Now take the AGW/CO2/GHG “pollution” out of the late Holocene atmosphere so Mother Nature can maybe get on with her, perhaps overdue, if not due now, next glacial inception. And be quick about it!

    “This is why the past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth's temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.”

    Stated famous astronomer Fred Hoyle on CCNet back in 1999 (sorry, the link no longer works).

    In the final analysis, only being right about AGW/CO2/GHGs makes any difference whatsoever. Consider Sole, Turiel and Llebot, writing in Physics Letters A 366 (2007), pp. 184–189:

    “There are different works that relate the CO2 air concentration with temperature changes, supposing that CO2 may [12] or may not drive this temperature increase [20]. In this work ice-core CO2 time evolution in the period going from 20 to 60 kyr BP [15] has been qualitatively compared to our temperature cycles, according to the class they belong to. It can be observed in Fig. 6 that class A cycles are completely unrelated to changes in CO2 concentration. We have

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  14. Post 11 of 10:

    Yeah, that's right, 11 (so far) of 10. See what happens when one opts for a weak blog engine as this one?

    observed some correlation between B and C cycles and CO2 concentration, but of the opposite sign to the one expected: maxima in atmospheric CO2 concentration tend to correspond to the middle part or the end the cooling period. The role of CO2 in the oscillation phenomena seems to be more related to extend the duration of the cooling phase than to trigger warming. This could explain why cycles not coincident in time with maxima of CO2 (A cycles) rapidly decay back to the cold state.”

    In juxtaposition to your challenge to “anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring”, I have proven that if you are right about AGW/CO2/GHGs, you simply could not be more wrong concerning what to do about it/them at the now 11,717 year old Holocene.

    Again, and for the prize, GHGs either can or cannot mitigate glacial inception. Period.

    a) If GHGs can get us over the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?

    b) If GHGs can’t vault us across the next ~4,000 years of glacial inception risk, then why are we having this discussion at all?

    And again, and for the prize again, I bet you didn’t see that one coming…….

    The question is what is such an education worth? $30k?

    I can only hope so…….

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    Replies
    1. Your submission has been accepted (all 11 postings) and I will respond as quickly as I can. There are about two dozen submission ahead of you so please be patient. Your submission is called "$30,000 Challenge Submission - Interglacial" and you can follow my progress on this page here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

      Delete
    2. William,

      I have no idea who you are. But the introduction on the literature interglacial inception is really interesting. (for those of you who don't know what this means, "inter-glacial inception"--> "Within-glacial at-the-beginning"-->"At the beginning of another Ice Age", please correct me if I am wrong in this interpretation) And your argument is damned interesting.

      anonymous #2 again.

      Delete
    3. Hopefully this will clear this up for you. an interglacial is a period between glacials. In post-MPT time, we have spent about 10-15% in the warm interglacial mode, the rest we are in an ice age or glacial. Technically the beginning of an interglacial is not referred to as an "interglacial inception". Technically the end of a glacial is referred to as a "termination". I am not familiar with any specific term applied to the beginning of an interglacial, normally this period called the "termination" and includes the period from the glacial maximum to when oxygen isotope data indicates "parts per mil" (or parts per thousand) that the O18 isotope gets heavier than about 3.5 parts per mil, usually written 3.5 o/oo. I hope that helps!

      Delete
    4. You are mostly right. But the terms Eemian, Holocene, glacial, and interglacial are all wrong. It's all part of a big cycle. The ice cores do not show a continuous record of past climate. There are periods of melt when the climate was much warmer that leave big gaps in the data. The earth has been cooling for 81,000 years, and will continue to do so for another 100,000 years or so.
      www.theiceageishere.blogspot.com

      Delete
  15. The Keating Challenge: “I will award $30,000 of my own money to anyone that can prove, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change is not occurring;”
    A personal note to Mr. Keating on this challenge: You are very cleaver in stating “climate change” in the descriptor of the challenge. What exactly IS climate change? From August to February we undergo SEVERE “climate change” do we not? After all, going from 98 degrees on Aug. 20 to 15 degrees on Feb. 8 is pretty severe, yes? But is man the cause of that? In fact, the fallibility in your challenge is in the term, “man-made” or “man-caused”.
    There are many that will cite increase activity in storms or hurricanes, extreme weather anomalies like tornadoes, floods and droughts but history is filled with documented cases of storms and extreme weather anomalies well before the 19th century and the industrial revolution, but was man the cause of those events? The TITLE of this challenge is “Global Warming Skeptic Challenge” so I will address my submission to this title, “Global WARMING Skeptic Challenge.” If my submission effectively shows, using a purely scientific approach, that man-caused activity is not the cause of global warming, then YOU must show me, using the same scientific approach, how my submission fails your challenge. I will provide evidence and testable and verifiable data along with the sources. In your refutation, YOU must provide evidence and testable data to disprove my submission. I look forward to your reply!
    A PERSPECTIVE TO CONSIDER:
    If I hypothesize that showing popcorn commercials is the primary cause of increases in sales of popcorn at my movie theater, then I should be able to demonstrate, with verifiable data, that the more popcorn commercials I show, the higher my popcorn sales by the same ratio. To claim that it is the cause requires consistent and provable data. For example, if my popcorn sales average $100 per movie with no popcorn commercials, and I show 1 commercial per movie and my sales increase to $110, and then I show 2 commercials per movie and my sales increase to $120, then I can reasonably conclude that my hypothesis might be correct. But if continued data reveals that showing 3 or 4 commercials results in my sales lowering to $115 per movie and then I show no commercials and I sell $130 in popcorn during that movie, then I MUST conclude that the commercials, while possibly helping, cannot be the causal factor of my increase in sales since a consistent correlation is not represented in the continued data.
    This will be my scientific method to Mr. Keating’s challenge! While man-caused pollution can certainly be a CONTRIBUTING factor (just like dumping my bottle of water into a flooding river is contributing to the flooding), it cannot be concluded to be the causal factor!

    ReplyDelete
  16. My “Scientific Method” Challenge to “Man-Caused” Global Warming
    QUESTION:
    Is man-caused pollution, and the additional Co2 emissions produced from said pollution, sufficient in volume as to be the causing factor of global warming and does current data support such a charge?
    Background Research:
    1) An extensive examination of the reports and studies of all man-caused pollution beginning with the industrial revolution which began in the in the early 1800’s and the corresponding industrial booms in the early to mid 19th century. This includes reports of man-caused Co2 in metric tons from various sources, including Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. This research shows, quite clearly, that man-caused polluting mechanisms, i.e. factories, power plants, personal and industrial vehicles, personal and commercial airliners and boats and trains etc. have drastically increased over the last 75 years and the volume of man-caused Co2 emissions is exponentially higher.
    2) An extensive examination of the reports of all temperature data from the NOAA, dating back to 1948 (which is the earliest data we have of Mean Temperatures by the NOAA’s NCDC.) This data will provide mean temperatures for several key locations on the planet that I will use in connection with research point 1) to see if a link of man-caused pollution and increases in temperature is actually occurring.
    HYPOTHOSIS:
    Given the recorded levels of man-caused pollution being produced in recent years, and the corresponding increases in Co2 emissions, and given the assumption that man-caused pollution and the resulting Co2 is the direct cause of increases in global temperatures worldwide, we should see drastic increases in global temperatures in direct relation to the increases of man-caused pollution and Co2 as outlined in the Background Research.
    Testing the Hypothesis:
    I will use data from the NOAA’s monitoring stations in four, historically warm, locations (Phoenix, AZ, Las Vegas, NV, Athens, Greece, and Darwin, Australia) and two stations in historically cold locations (Myggbukta or Danmarkshavn in Greenland and Barrow, Alaska). Note that Australia and Greenland are both islands so that I am examining data in areas surrounded by oceans.
    Test data will be taken from the month of August and the following month of February, going back to August 1948 and February 1949 and ending with August 2013 and February 2014.
    For our hypothesis to be proven correct, there should be a reasonable correlation of increases in global temperatures as it relates to the increase of man-caused pollution resulting in increased Co2 emissions. If no such correlation exists, then the foundation of our hypothesis cannot be founded in the scientific data.

    ReplyDelete
  17. TEST DATA #1: (m) denotes Mean temperature in degrees F.
    SOURCE: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
    AUG 1948: Phoenix = 91.4(m), Las Vegas = 86.7(m), Greece = 83.7(m), Australia = 52.9(m),
    Greenland = 35.1(m), Alaska = 36.0(m) ESTIMATED Co2: 76 mil. metric tons.
    AUG 1958: Phoenix = 92.7(m), Las Vegas = 90.5(m), Greece = 82.9(m), Australia = 51.3(m),
    Greenland = 36.0(m), Alaska = 42.2(m) ESTIMATED Co2: 192 mil. metric tons.
    Co2 emissions SOURCE: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2008.ems

    FEB 1949: Phoenix = 54.7(m), Las Vegas = 41.5(m), Greece = 45.7(m), Australia = 81.0(m),
    Greenland = -8.5(m), Alaska = -6.3(m)
    FEB 1959: Phoenix = 54.0(m), Las Vegas = 47.7(m), Greece = 45.5(m), Australia = 83.6(m),
    Greenland = -11.2(m), Alaska = -8.5(m)

    Does this procedure show a corresponding increase in temperatures as related to the increase in man-made Co2 emissions from 1948 to 1958?

    No, it does not! The estimated Co2 carbon emissions, from man-made, fossil-fuel sources in 1948 was 76 million metric tons. (SOURCE: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.html) In 1958, it had increased to 192 million metric tons. This is an increase of 152.65%! The average temperature increase of the six stations from Aug. 1948 to Aug. 1958 was just 4.94%. However, the Feb. 1948 to Feb. 1958 data reflects a DECREASE in average temperatures by -8.38%! Test data #1 conclusion: While average temperatures did increase in August, the amount of increase did not correspond to the increase in the amount of man-made carbon emissions and the average February temperatures actually decreased.

    TEST DATA #2: (m) denotes Mean temperature in degrees F.
    SOURCE: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
    AUG 2013: Phoenix = 94.6(m), Las Vegas = 89.2(m), Greece = 85.1(m), Australia = 78.3(m),
    Greenland = 43.7(m), Alaska = 39.6(m) ESTIMATED Co2: 9,986 mil. metric tons.

    FEB 2014: Phoenix = 64.4(m), Las Vegas = 57.0(m), Greece = 54.0(m), Australia = 82.8(m),
    Greenland = 18.3(m), Alaska = -6.9(m)

    Does this procedure show a corresponding increase in temperatures as related to the increase Co2 emissions from 1948/1950 to 2013/2014?

    No, it does not! The estimated Co2 carbon emissions, from man-made sources in 1948, was 76 million metric tons. In 2013, it has increased to an estimated 9,986 million metric tons, an increase of 13,040%. Let me spell that out: Man-caused Co2 emissions have INCREASED by Thirteen THOUSAND, Fourty percent since 1948! Of the six stations included in this report, the mean temperature increases, including both August and February data, shows an average temperature increase of just 15.86% But according to the entirety of monitoring stations worldwide, calculating that data month to month, year to year since 1880, the AVERAGE global temperature increase has been 0.11 degrees per DECADE!!!

    0.11 degrees per decade is just over 3/4 of a degree over the last 70 years. The global mean temperature for 2013 was reported at 49.08 degrees. An increase of 3/4 of a degree would equal a 1.55% increase in global temperatures since 1948!

    THE RESULTS:

    Conclusion: Given that the amount of man-made Co2 over from 1948 to 2013 has increased by 13,040% how do global temperatures only increase by 1.55% if man-caused Co2 is the causal effect of global warming? If man were the cause of global warming, a 13,040% increase in supposed “warming causing Co2 pollution” should have yielded a much greater global warming than just 1.55% over the last 70 years! This model was used by former Vice President Al Gore and his now infamous “hockey stick” graph that time and history has thoroughly debunked!

    There may be global warming, there may be global climate change, but with less than 200 years of recorded data over 6,000 years of human history, we cannot BEGIN to accuse the activity of man as having any effect on our planet’s overall climate. Please see my sister article at https://tinyurl.com/ogjqvp5

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    Replies
    1. I already have a submission from you that was just a url (https://tinyurl.com/ogjqvp5). Are you making a new submission or is this part of the original one?

      Your original submission is called, "$30,000 Challenge Submission - CO2 Is Not Dangerous" and you can track my progress on this page here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

      I count 17 submission ahead of you. At my current rate, that will take me about a week to get to you. Please be patient.

      One observation about your comment above, we do not have climate change from August to February, that is weather change. Those are very different and should not be confused.

      Delete
    2. anonymous #2 again:

      Weather --- Represented by the variables that change in the here and the now; Pressure, Temperature, Precipitation, etc...

      Climate --- Represented by the variables that change over the average of time; the same variables, Pressure, Temperature, Precipitation, etc...

      Climate is a more significant phenomenon in the long term; because it changes the average of Temperature and all the other variables over time. But it becomes a more complicated question than simply what temperature was it yesterday.

      Correct me if I am wrong; but there seems to be an inordinately strong focus of the AGW papers on temperature specifically.

      Delete
    3. anonymous #2:

      Also the scaling of time becomes a bit of a wonky issue?

      Which average over time is climate!? Is it an average over months, years, centuries, thousands of years, millions!?

      This issue is far more complicated than the debate usually goes.

      Delete
    4. Your comment about temperature is not exactly correct. The attention is to the average global temperature. This is not weather and that is part of the problem with convincing the public. Someone will point at the weather in one town on one day and claim that proves global warming is not real. All the time, they ignore all of the other readings all over the world over the averaging period.

      As for the time, we try different averaging periods in order to tease out the trend while over-coming the noise of day-to-day (hour-to-hour!) variations in the weather. Even then, all you get is an average for that specific time period. You then have to include it with data from other time periods and find out what the trend is doing.

      This is all well and good as long as you can look at a trendline and explain what is going on. The issue we have right now is that we have a trendline that cannot be explained with any natural processes. It is only when we include man made effects that we are able to explain the observed data.

      Delete
    5. Anonymous #2 again;

      You can only have trendlines over some form of data. That could be empirical data that you've collected from your instruments. Or that could be theoretical data that you have obtained from some kind of a model. I would expect that it would be some kind of a computational model.

      All that a computational model is, is one great big honking mathematical equation. You describe the initial conditions; you define the boundary conditions; then you hit the "go" button and you see what comes out the other end.

      Computational models are very susceptible to their input data. They do something different if you give them different data. If you feed them a bunch of garbage; they will give you a bunch of garbage in return. Unfortunately we are dependent on these computational models, because, without them; we cannot really make predictions or see any trends.

      So I ask again; where is the trendline coming from?

      Maybe I should go to the IPCC website and read the papers that they have over there? I am willing to do that. I just don't know if IPCC produces "good" results, or merely, "highly politicized" results. I have this same questions and suspicions regarding the research that comes out of the Heartland Institute as well. I am afraid that these organizations cannot be trusted.

      Delete
    6. For climate change the trendline is over experimental data collected from numerous sources, including temperature proxies. Contrary to denier claims, AGW is not about models. It is about real data.

      Also contrary to denier claims, the IPCC reports are excellent. They are also some of the most transparent scientific reports every written. They are put together by a team then put out for public review and comment, then all comments and inputs are considered for the final version. The reports are not scientific papers themselves, but they are a scientific text and they have extensive references that are scientific papers.

      Delete
    7. Alright then. I will read what the IPCC has to say. An admission: I started in high school and most of college suspecting that AGW was a real and present danger to civilization. In the later part of college I was turned in the other direction. I noticed that there were a great number of environmental fanatics who had a tendency try and make the people who didn't believe what they did shut up. I became suspicious of this behavior.

      One thing that the highly political eco-minded groups tended to believe, was that we should move to Wind and Solar power. No nuclear, they didn't like nuclear at all for some reason; bad for the environment, or something. Never mind the fact that we dig that stuff out of the ground. So it occurred to me what would happen if we switched completely to wind and solar power. Neither source of energy is reliable like coal or natural gas, or nuclear. We would need to rely pretty heavily on batteries if we wanted electricity at night; or when the wind wasn't blowing. Our electrical grid isn't designed to handle that kind of variability. This could become expensive, fast.

      Never mind what would happen to the price of electricity. Where I live; it costs around 11 cents/kWh. That's with coal/natural-gas/nuclear. If we didn't use those sources, electricity would become more expensive. It's pretty common for some of the noisiest members of the eco-groups to say, "We will just do with less! We won't use as much electricty." Define do "more with less"; this concept honestly scares the bejeezus out of me.

      We know with a pretty high degree of certainty that electricity will become more expensive in a society with pure Wind/Solar. How much more expensive? Will it become so expensive that electricity goes from being part of the average individual's life to being a luxury item? Will it be the kind of thing that only Wall Street Traders and Bankers can afford?

      Give me the Faustian bargain of "Let electricity become a luxury item for the rich" or "Risk increasing the average global temperature by 6 degrees C"; I would take the latter, because it is less likely to be damaging to most individuals here in the US, and in Europe, and in Australia, than the former.

      If you are wealthy; this Faustian bargain looks great! You get to keep all of the luxuries that you've always wanted. You can afford electricity, you might pay more for it; that's fine, just stick some money in an investment somewhere, and you can pay for it, that's fine. The upside to this is that you can say that you are going green!

      If you are not rich. This bargain looks really scary. Because when they say, it's easy to deal with climate change; we can do more with less. If you are poor; you would be the one who is doing with less. They might even take away your electricity, in effect, because you cannot afford to have it anymore.

      If you can offer a different vision of the future of how we derive our energy that is a better deal than the Faustian bargain that I describe above. I am listening. I grew up with the Jetsons, and reading Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, and Greg Bear. A future without electricity for the average person was not a future that I had in mind.

      That being said, I find it highly unlikely that we have been dumping gasses into the atmosphere at an industrial scale without having some kind of an effect on our atmosphere. Can I see that we have an effect on the climate? Sure. Is it going to cause us to broil ourselves? Possibly; but I really doubt it. Apocalyptic doomsayers are irritating in the moment, but they usually turn out to be wrong.

      Delete
    8. This is an example scenario, read it with a sense of humor:

      If we want to get Apocalyptic about climate change; I can get Apocalyptic about something else; something much scarier! There are planetoids and stars that are moving really rather fast in our Universe; some of them can be really quite large. What if, a star many times the mass of our sun were moving in a hyperbolic orbit, that we cannot detect that takes it into a path that has this star collide with our sun. We would be hosed. No, if then, or buts; our solar system would be over; and with no colonies in other solar systems our civilization would be destroyed.

      This scenario that I mention; is it feasible with astrodynamics being that which they are? Possibly. Is it likely to happen in the lifespan of our civilization? I don't know. Now I don't bring this up as too serious an issue; but I really want to continue to be able to afford electricity, and I want my children and my grandchildren to be able to afford it too.

      How much energy would a civilization that was capable of colonizing other solar systems use? Would it be subsistence farming, and trying to be more "natural"? No, probably not. Would such a civilization go back to a political system much like feudalism? I believe they might.

      More seriously, you can be sure that our species will have more, and better technology when more of our members have access to cheap electricity. We might even find some details in physics that allows us to do things beyond our wildest dreams with our limited knowledge of science today.

      Could something I read in a journal convince me that I am wrong. If I interpreted the right scenario that sounded feasible from the data; I would flop on this issue again. Flopping on an issue is politically not an intelligent thing to do (in this congress); but I would rather identify myself with the scientists, not as with the politicians.

      Whether I am right or wrong in my perception about AGW; I want a civilization that is technologically far more advanced in the future that it is now. I don't want it to go the other way. There was a time when the Arabian civilizations were scientifically more advanced than any of the other civilizations. I don't exactly know what happened; but whatever did happen; I don't want that to happen to MY civilization.

      Delete
    9. The Arabian civilizations, by the way, became the Middle East as we know it today. They are not scientifically the most advanced civilization anymore. I don't know what happened. I don't know if the same kind of thing could happen to our civilization. I don't know what political campaign or movement could cause that kind of thing to happen. But a Green party trying to save the would could probably do it. And they wouldn't feel bad about doing it, they could comfort themselves by saying that they saved the world from a great abstract evil even as everyone else is working as subsistence farmers.

      Delete
    10. That being said, thank you; I needed to get that off my chest.

      I am going to go read some IPCC reports now. Dr. Keating seems like an honest fellow, so I will trust his judgement regarding the IPCC on this matter.

      Delete
    11. Oi, I realized I goofed with the logical flow in this description:

      "How much energy would a civilization that was capable of colonizing other solar systems use? Would it be subsistence farming, and trying to be more "natural"? No, probably not. Would such a civilization go back to a political system much like feudalism? I believe they might."

      A subsistence civilization would be more likely to run under feudalism. A technologically advanced civilization would be more likely to be able to handle representative democracy. A democracy is more complicated; and it is harder to keep running. Just ask Ancient Greece.

      Delete
    12. Do I think some of the statements by the environmentalists are too far to the alarmist side? Yes, I do. And, I do not think it is helping anything. I do not foresee the end of civilization. Does that mean we have to stand on the sidelines while we increase human suffering? I don't agree with that, either.

      By the way, I am a big supporter of nuclear power. If it was up to me, we would build twice as many power plants as we currently have.

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    13. anonymous #2:

      I am a big supporter of nuclear power too. There are some safety considerations that make it more difficult to keep it secure. If anyone prefers not to opt for this solution; it is probably because of these safety considerations.

      It's encouraging for me to hear that this is your stance.

      What we really need is a way to store energy, long term, en masse. If someone comes up with a good way to do this... it would solve the entire issue. I would jump on the wind/solar solution in an instant. The person or company that can find a way to store copious amounts of electricity over a long period of time would probably make billions on that solution.

      Delete
  18. FRANK LANSNER PART 1

    Dear Christopher,

    I am: Frank Lansner, chemical civil engineer with focus on biochemistry from Danish Technical University. I have worked the last 16 with software development.

    I have to follow my hunch, and it tells me that you are actually sincere about this challenge. My hunch also tell me that you might not accept a really good presentation of evidence against Human caused global warming, simply because “pro-IPCC” scientists normally don’t.

    But still, your approach here is very personal and different, so who knows, perhaps you are actually going to be open fair and honest. So, I’m curious, and in the following I present to you severe problems for the AGW hypothesis.

    I “know” I won’t see money, so from me this is not about money. I’m interested to see your responses, simply. Am I going to make any impression to you at all? Lets see.

    PROOF 1

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/06/the-original-temperatures-project/

    As explained in this article we have a surprising problem in data when finally it was possible to get hands on original temperature data from original meteorological year books.

    The proof against global warming is NOT that we generally see more cold trended long temperature series from original sources than typical “adjusted” sources. We do, but this is no itself a proof about anything.

    No the surprising proof is as follows:

    For ALL countries analysed using original temperature data (not massively adjusted my “GISS” or “BEST” or similar) it turns out that temperature stations with a location in shelter of air coming from oceans show hardly any warming after the last warm period 1930-50.
    The better the shelter (typically behind mountains, in valleys and similar) the less warming. In some very well sheltered areas it appears to be colder today than during the last warming period 1930-50.

    These findings goes for the areas/continents tested so far in the “original temperatures” project and the RUTI project.

    So, what does it tell us that areas that is located rather near mountains in shelter of ocean air?

    First it raises the question:
    How come “CO2” seems not to work after approx. 1940 without the presence of ocean air? Why cannot CO2 warm such areas? If it was indeed a strong climate driver?

    Well IF CO2 had been a strong climate driver and human addition of CO2 was important we should have seen warming after around 1940 also in the valleys sheltered best from ocean air. But we don’t.
    So here I could end my case, because dangerous CO2-effect already appear wrong at this point.
    I want you to first consider this first evidence just as is. In a real “Earth laboratory” where changes in ocean air temperature “noise” is avoided best possible, there is little or no warming. Sometimes even cooling after the warm 1930-50 period.

    ReplyDelete
  19. FRANK LANSNER PART 2

    But let’s go a little further, simply to understand what’s going on. Why the missing “valley-warming”?

    The Earth surface today is generally warmer than in the warm period 1930-50.

    Coastal temperature stations and mountain stations facing ocean winds also show this warming, but in such stations affected by ocean air we see that the warm-period 1930-50 is not nearly as warm as seen for the valley stations.

    So, the heat measured in valley stations 1930-50 resembles present day heat. But something is preventing this heat to show in data from water-affected stations.

    Water – oceans or deeper lakes – will buffer rapid temperature changes resulting from a new heat balance of the Earth. Water will reduce the temperature change from a changing heat balance. Water will delay the temperature change due to a new heat balance over the Earth.

    It seems that after the little ice age that ended around 1900-20, the rapid change in heat balance around 1930-50 could only be detected in the valleys best protected against “delay-noise” from oceans.

    This is why Valleys do show us the new much warmer heat balance that began around 1930-40, but ocean affected stations don’t.

    Since the temperature of the best sheltered valley stations show same temperature today as 1930-50, then this tell us that the actual heat balance over the Earth today is similar to the 1930-50 levels – before massive human CO2 outlets.

    The warming seen in recent decades over oceans and from ocean affected stations thus appear to be a delayed adaption to the new heat balance that began around 1930-40.
    So falsely it looked in recent decades as if the heat balance due to CO2 was still warmer. But it was just the oceans that were slow to adapt.

    OK, dear Chris.
    Before claiming that you can’t see this when you look up stations in BEST and GISS etc. please be aware that these sources of temperature information often adjusts temperature stations in valleys to look like station data from near by mountain tops, coast, larger cities. And in many cases the 1930-50 data from valley stations are simply just not used.

    Notice that the Majority of for example original Alpine stations (around 90 of 150) are valley stations with little or no heat trend, so its quite a severe action to ignore the valleys at times, see:
    ALPS:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-the-alps-273.php

    HUNGARY:
    Hungary is SURROUNDED by mountains, see original data – and how it is ignored by “BEST”:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-hungarian-valley-271.php

    DENMARK
    In Denmark, only a few coastal stations are really public available, and then the metropol Copenhagen, but, see what original inland data from old books show:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-denmark-and-south-sweden-270.php
    And so on.
    BEST:
    In general, see how treats all data from valleys from all countries analysed:
    http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-best-265.php

    In general it seems that temperature stations in valleys for some reason are very unreliable? According to BEST?

    So in short my proof 1:
    If CO2 had a dramatic effect since around 1950, this should also result in strong heat trend from temperature stations located in the valleys best sheltered from ocean air temperature trends.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Im very sorry, my child danced on the keyboard while im writing... ! one more time the final lines:

    So in short my proof 1:
    If CO2 had a dramatic effect since around 1950, this should also have resulted in a strong heat trend from temperature stations located in the valleys best sheltered from ocean air temperature trends.

    But all over the world we see that the valleys best sheltered against ocean air show little or no heat trend. Sometimed even a cooling trend after around 1930-50 like in the US midwest.

    Kind Regards Frank Lansner

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your submission has been accepted and I will get to it as quickly as I can. There are over 20 submissions ahead of you, so please be patient. Your submission is called, "$30,000 Challenge Submission - Mountain Valleys" and you can track my progress here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

      Delete
    2. Thank you Christopher. A really different approach, very uplifting.

      Your main protest against my proof may very well be that you are not convinced that what I´m saying is simply true, that we have a world wide phenomena with missing heat trend in these valleys.

      But ! The more you dig into these data - and I can help you - you will see that im correect..
      I have much more data than shown above (from Europe, South America, USA, Australia , India, parts of Africa etc. etc.)

      Kind regards, Frank Lansner

      Delete
    3. I have not looked at your submission yet. I will give you the benefit of the doubt until then and assume that what you say is true, the valleys are not seeing the warming trend. My biggest objection to that is that we are talking about 'global warming' and not 'valley warming'. There is nothing inconsistent or unexpected that there will be parts of the world that do not see the same amount of warming as others. In fact, we see the Arctic regions are warming much faster than the tropic regions.

      However, I will examine what you submitted and give you my response to it.

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    4. Yes please do so, thank you, you need to understand WHY it is a severe problem that valleys world wide cannot show this warming. Thats "alpha omega".
      You need to understand that the CO2 effect should not be dependant on water areas present, that it should work without presence of water that reduces the heat signal of the 1930-50 warm period.

      SWEDEN:
      http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-sweden-and-norway-280.php

      I went to a university in Sweden recently to find meteorological year books.
      Sweden is FANTASTIC to analyse because most of the country is in shelter behind the Scandinvian mountain range (typically wersterly winds). Thus the majority of Swedish stations show hardly any warming.
      A huge area with no CO2 effect when not helped much by air from oceans with a deleyed temperature rise.

      Turkey, the same: Almost the whole country consist of valleys. Not much warming there either:
      http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-turkey-269.php

      INTRODUCTION:
      http://hidethedecline.eu/pages/posts/original-temperatures-introduction-267.php
      SUMMARY OF RESULTS (as of jan 2014)
      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/06/the-original-temperatures-project/

      IN the latter there are links to some other results world wide (from the RUTI project)

      I would wish I could show you these things over a dinner etc.. :-)
      But im in Denmark...

      Kind regards, Frank Lansner

      Delete
    5. I wouldn't mind being in Denmark right now.

      Delete
  21. Part 1

    The basic assumption of your question is wrong. You are asking for proof that their isn’t anthropogenic global warming. That isn’t the question.

    The global warming claims have 4 parts:
    1) The global temperature is rising.
    2) The primary or sole cause is anthropogenic activity, primarily releasing CO2 from burning sequestered carbon.
    3) The result of the warming will be catastrophic effects, primarily related to rising sea levels and severe weather (droughts, storms, floods, etc.)
    4) The effects can be mitigated by a change in policy that reduces the release of sequestered carbon as CO2.
    Probably over 90% of scientists would agree the temperature is rising. Measurements show it has gone up 0.5°C in the last 70 years, virtually all of it between 1978 and 1998. An American Meteorological Society 2011 member survey showed 89% believe this to be true. UWash Prof KK Tung’s 2013 PNAS paper did a sophisticated regression that showed the underlying rate was steady for over a century at 0.7°C/century.

    The fears all come from models that the modelers will tell you don’t have enough power to model regional or weather events, have not been critically reviewed (while the code is in the public domain, no one has been funded to review them), work with very incomplete data sets for calibration, and have not been accurate in their projections for periods that have transpired so far.

    Now it gets harder. Even the most famous skeptics will attribute a portion of the warming to anthropogenic effects. Nearly all of Europe and large parts of the Americas and Asia have been deforested. CO2 levels have risen.

    However, in that AMS survey just 52% believe anthropogenic activity is responsible for the majority of the global temperature change.

    Then, will the effects be harmful? First, how much temperature change are you expecting? Less than 1.0°C/century is virtually undetectable. There are lots of theories that it, and an increase in CO2, would be beneficial. Rising sea levels? Read the IPCC report. Insignificant. Greenland at worst is losing 1% of its ice mass per century. Antarctica, if it is losing at all, would be 1% every 2000 years or so. Storms? No model can simulate that. Theories that they would cause more cyclones (hurricanes) have largely been disproven by the very low hurricane activity for the last decade or so. The IPCC reports no correlation. People should wonder where Bill McKibbens gets his information…or maybe he just makes it up.

    34% in the AMS survey said it would be ‘very harmful’. The next category was ‘somewhat harmful’.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The AMS survey found that meteorologists are skeptical of man made climate change, but the climate scientists in the survey responded along the lines of the 97% consensus found in other surveys (including one done by deniers).

      But, this is my challenge so it is not possible for me to get it wrong. It is a challenge to people who are making a claim - that man made global warming is not real and they can prove it. I am merely giving them a venue to do what they claim they can do.

      Delete
    2. Go read the '97%' surveys. They are absurd. They use self-affirming criteria to accepting papers to be included, and use the vaguest of terms to indicate support. Under the criteria of the '97%' virtually all of the leading skeptics (Lindzen, Curry, etc.) are included. I'd be included.

      Humorous note: I was reading a Chinese paper on matrix LED headlight design (a really cool technology, just now becoming available on Audi and MB models), and it started by talking about how climate change is causing the increased user of LEDs in automobiles. That paper would probably have been included!

      Delete
  22. Part 2

    Then there is the policy question. No one has ever produced an analysis that the proposed US polices, the current European polices, or really any policies would have any effect. So far, the policies have primarily exported the CO2 emissions to other countries. But short of a drastic worldwide move toward poverty, starvation, etc. no policy would have an impact.

    There is virtually no funding for any research that doesn’t have some support for AGW theories. It is even harder to get it published. It is fairly easy to show that none of the policies do anything. But that wasn’t your question.

    To show warming is harmful or not harmful would require models that don’t exist. Have removed rising seas and having no way to attack global temperature to storms, droughts, etc., those really can’t be claimed. The next question is whether agriculture will be hurt or harmed. Theories both ways but on a paleo timescale plants have done best with higher CO2 and higher temps. In fact, that is how greenhouses operate.

    Is it anthropogenic? Really hard to tell. Lots of theories. The only way would be to improve the measurements and construct models that handle feedbacks correctly proven by getting correct predictions. A long way off because funding is going to meaningless policies (meaningless except to the crony capitalists who get rich from them) instead of basic research. Clouds are the primary influence, they occur closer to the tropics, and we don’t model them well.

    Is it warming…both historical measurements and all theories seem to indicate that it is. But the observations are that the rate is insignificant with respect to any impacts.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Now, if you want to say there is global warming and it is a problem we need to deal with, I am in agreement with you. Part of this challenge is to highlight how people are denying global warming exists, and that is preventing us from addressing the problem.

    So, no, I don't have it wrong.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You do have it wrong.

      We agree there is global warming and an undetermined portion of it is attributable to anthropogenic activity. However, the amount of warming is an insignificant less than 1°C per century and probably no more than half, and possibly much less than half, is attributable to human activity.

      Maybe you should offer the money the other way: prove the amount of global warming is significant, is primarily anthropogenic, and that the result will be harmful. You will be very disappointed with the result.

      Global warming to date and all empirical trends are for less than 1°C per century, an insignificant and imperceptible change. The amount of that from CO2 is undetermined, and some recent research indicates carbon particulates affecting albedo may be a bigger issue.
      Maybe you should publish why you think a 1°C increase in temperature is a problem or why you think an increase in CO2 levels (so far at a rate of 10% every 20 years) is a problem.

      Delete
  24. I like the direction the conversation is going. My original comments can be seen on page three for anyone interested--I'm the funny guy with the guitar. As, I indicated in previous posts my concern is more for the condition of science than as to whether there is man made climate change. The last comment I left was to request peer-reviewed articles presenting the best evidence. I was a little disappointed that you were unable to provide that, that is not a bad thing mind you or a criticism of you. Instead, it's a reflection of the nature of climate change science.

    My ultimate goal in reviewing these articles is to check methodology. In previous comments on this page, you indicate that falsifying data is a career ender. I don't believe any climate scientist is falsifying data. My concern is that methodologically there can be problems at different levels without interfering with the actual raw data. Again, the sense that I get from recent comments and from the media is that a lot of climate change science is statistic driven, model driven. As I indicated in previous comments Statistics is a tool but it should never replace Science or be the Science or even be evidence. The only question Statistics can answer is whether something is Statistically significant.

    Another problem I have is the idea that because 97% agree something to be true then it must be true. Well, the obvious problem I have with this is that prior to Copernicus 99% of scientists believed the Sun rotated around the Earth, even they had elaborate models as to how this worked which to a certain extent were predictive. That doesn't mean they weren't wrong and one lone person was right. So, if Science were premised on plurality the Copernican Revolution would have never existed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. anonymous #2 again;

      Have you ever seen those models for how "planets" worked back then? They were mathematically some of the most complicated, convoluted equations that I have *EVER* seen. That math was hard! With the modern theory of gravity the math is still hard; but it is much easier than the predictive models were in Copernicus' time.

      They looked a little bit like string theory. How do you take a really smart human being and get their mind working so hard on a problem that it bakes their brains and addles their senses? Have them develop a theory of everything... whatever the time-appropriate equivalent may be.

      Delete
    2. If I were a catholic mathematician living at that time, I might think that the complexity of creation was God's punishment for people having the gall to try and look under the skirt of his creation!

      Delete
    3. Apologies to the catholics in the audience; that was intended to be humor. Maybe it was in bad taste. Apologies.

      Delete
    4. Hey Henry,

      First of all, nice Les Paul. Did you spring for the Gibson or is it an Epiphone? I've always preferred the sleeker necks of the strats, but who doesn't love a Les Paul?

      I really just came to address one issue, though. There is a misconception about what the 97% consensus means. AGW proponents aren't saying, "Climate change is true because 97% of scientists believe so." They are actually responding to a claim frequently made by deniers that such a consensus doesn't exist.

      Deniers need that consensus to not be true in order to make their position more plausible. They claim that there is no evidence for man-made global warming. Of course, if there is no evidence for it, why do so many scientists accept it as fact?

      That forces the deniers to explain why there is a consensus. There are generally two ways that they do this: 1) They assert that there is a massive conspiracy or 2) they assert that all of the world's scientists are simply wrong.

      The problem with the first option is that there is no evidence for it. It's an impossible claim for them to defend.

      The second option is really the basis for Dr. Keating's challenge. If you're going to assert that all of the science on this topic is wrong, then you had better be able to prove it. Show where and why it is wrong.

      That's actually how science makes progress.

      And if we're going to reference the Copernican Revolution, it's important to note why it happened in the first place. The Heliocentric model gradually replaced the Ptolemaic model because it was a better at describing certain phenomena, and (after some improvements by Kepler) it made more accurate predictions. In contrast, climate change deniers have not tried to produce an alternative theory. They're just standing on the sidelines with their arms folded insisting that the science is wrong.

      Well that's fine. Where and how?

      Delete
    5. Eric,

      So the primary purpose of this challenge is to bring out the tin-hat conservatives that believe the Earth is 6000 years old and that the climate scientists are all part of an illuminati conspiracy or some other nonsense? Yeah those folks are annoying. As to my question about how a civilization can go from being scientifically advanced to some offshoot of the darkages; I suppose one way to do it would be with a theocratic government takeover. Sometimes it looks like that is precisely what the tea-party seems to be trying to do.

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    6. Anonymous who said "Apologies to the catholics in the audience; ": no apologies neccessary. Even if you were attacking religion directly, It is perfectly fine to ridicule ideas, especially ridiculous ones. "To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed." -Rowan Atkinson "it is entirely appropriate to ridicule absurd ideas rather than to treat them as serious and give them respect. Only serious ideas based on reason and evidence are worthy of intellectual respect." - Anonymous

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  25. Dr. Keating,

    My monologues are motivated by real concerns that I have surrounding AGW politics. Both sides of the political debate appear to be guilty of generating dubious science. I understand the financial incentives to both sides fairly well. The financial incentives of the scientists is easy, but not publicly very well known. Unless you've been a grad student, you don't know how that works.

    The financial incentives of coal companies, oil companies, and the insurance companies are pretty easy to work out. When a politician like Al Gore starts paying a lot of attention to public opinion about scientific issues; that puts up red flags in my mind. What are his financial incentives? What happens when these companies start giving scientists money to produce data that "they like"? What happens when politicians with-hold money from scientists because they don't like the answer they are getting? How is most of IPCC invested, I don't know... that bothers me. I have seen some of the solutions that they propose, and I think they would bring us back to the pre-industrial period of our civilization. There are ways we could reduce CO2 emissions without jeopardizing our ability to provide electricity for everyone But the Greenies don't really like those solutions. Provide a workable solution that gives us the same amount of energy for cheaper and no coal, or natural gas plants and I would be happy.

    The Heartland Institute? I understand their motivations. Those are easy. And the science they produce looks dubious precisely because of their obvious political motivations. I don't really pay attention to what they put out.

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    1. Certainly part of my effort is to show the climate science is very valid, not dubious. It is interesting you mentioned the financial motives of insurance companies, some of the more rigorously capitalistic companies in existence. The insurance industry supports climate science and is encouraging governments to act on it. Why? They are losing billions of dollars a year due to climate change. They know and they want others to know it, too.

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    2. You mean for weather disaster insurance? If the amount of extreme weather increases, they fear that the risk to them will begin to increase as well? Is there more to it than that?

      There should be a simple solution for that. Just decrease the amount of money that they stand to lose as the risk rates increase. You don't need to start up a brand new carbon credit market to do that.

      Actually, if we were to allow a fairly long term merger from the amount of carbon that we put into the atmosphere now and provide technology into place that these older energy companies could begin to invest in and benefit from; if there were a way to develop the legislation so that no one was left to hang out in the cold over the new change in policy; that would be ideal.

      If the IPCC has already been trying to do that, then I have misjudged the IPCC a great deal. I worry about the Faustian bargain scenario; but if the IPCC is providing something else...

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    3. Insurance companies certainly lose money when there is a natural disaster. The number of billion dollar weather disasters in the U.S. is going up (on an adjusted, constant value dollar basis). This is being repeated worldwide. But, that isn't all. Climate change results in social unrest and that leads to insurance losses. The obvious, simple solution is also the wrong solution - raise rates to cover losses. This leads to diminishing returns are more and more people are unable to afford the insurance premiums and opt out. Then, when they suffer losses without coverage, that leads to increased social unrest. When governments have to step in and pay for losses they are likely to raise taxes to pay for those expenses. None of this works in the insurance company's favor. In their view, the best option is to deal with the problem.

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    4. I think one could argue that both the IPCC and the Heartland Institute are guilty of promoting social unrest in the public with some of the fear-mongering that they have been doing. They would both argue that the fear-mongering is for a good cause.

      The way I see it; we have several well-monied and politically powerful interests butting heads on this issue. Most of the scientists are trying to do their best to produce the best science they can; these poor folks are stuck in the middle of an internal political squabble between different ideals. Because, politically speaking, the scientists aren't, as a group, particularly intelligent (and I include myself in this assessment, this is why politics scare me). Sometimes they can find themselves on the wrong end of the political fallout.

      The IPCC seems to have a simple goal. "Prevent possible disaster by reducing CO2 emissions." How they go about realizing this goal could help prevent an ecological disaster, or they could could conceivably cause an economic disaster.

      The Heartland Institute seems to have a simple goal. "The Oil must flow." This is another kind of truth. At the moment, we need oil. It is cheap energy. Unfortunately, as a nation, we are quite dependent on the stuff. How they go about realizing this goal could conceivably cause an ecological disaster, or they could help prevent an economic disaster.

      Both sides have their own Billionaires who seem to be financing things behind the scenes. The Heartland Institute appears to have the Koch Brothers. The IPCC appears to have Maurice Strong.

      The way I see it; both sides have their own pet scientists, who are stuck in the middle of the political storm, by the way. Both sides have their own lobbyists. The lobbyists often act as marketers both to the public and the legislators. The lobbyists often have no allegiance to the science, they have their political agenda, and it is, in fact, their job to promote that agenda no matter what. The politicians are trying to follow the arguments from all sides, and make the best decisions about the country that they can, while simultaneously running a financial rat race so that they can stay in office.

      Further complicating this situation, is the fact that each and every single one of these agents; which includes the insurance companies, this includes the oil companies, this includes the scientists, this includes the rest of the public, has their own set of ideals; and some of them are already pretty strongly invested in one ideal over another.

      I will point out that total ecological disaster could be terrible. Increasing temperatures could lead drought and this could to failing crop yields. Failing crop yields could lead to famine. The crops, by the way, are the foundation of civilization. Without them we do not have civilization. People need to be able to afford bread.

      I will point out that total economic disaster could be terrible. If we destabilize the economy with a misguided legislative initiative that makes energy far more expensive than before. Cheap energy is the foundation of modern civilization. We move the crops with this energy. Without them we do not have modern civilization. People need to be able to afford bread.

      Total economic victory could mean total ecological fallout.

      Total ecological victory could mean total economic fallout.

      This is not one of those situations where both sides can agree to disagree and hope everything turns out ok. This problem must be solved, somehow.

      It doesn't matter which ideal you have, throwing the opposition under the bus could lead to total fallout.

      If we agree that we have a problem... then what is the best way to deal with it?

      Anonymous #2

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    5. I was trying to be balanced with my treatment of both sides of this issue. I may have failed.

      I am not polarized to either side of this issue. I see both sides of the argument. There are pieces that I am missing, there are pieces that I do not understand, alas, I am mortal.

      I think I see how the pieces are playing on the chessboard. Neither side wants to admit when they are in error. Both sides are playing the political arena.

      I have no idea what the future portends. I hope for a better future. I fear Mutually Assured Destruction of a new form. The hyper-polarization of political issues is dangerous, but for the life of me, I don't know how to fix it.

      Anonymous #2

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  26. Reading some of the posts I'm not quite sure how anyone could prove there hasn't been any warming over the past century. All the data shows an increases; the only way would be an analysis that shows it is natural variation. The KK Tung analysis along this line still shows 0.7°C/century increase, although it is uniform.

    Ditto on proving no anthropogenic contribution. CO2 has been measured for 50 years with a steady increase. With more distributed measurements post-1990 the long standing Mauna Loa number appear representative. There is a clear theory that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. A proof against it would have to model feedbacks to show no net increase. That model would run into the same problems as the models that try to show significant positive feedbacks. Its only hope would be if the model had a better correlation with observed temperatures. However, errors in the temperature measurement, especially before the satellite era (but also during it) probably make that fine resolution difficult.

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    1. Anonymous #2 again:

      Developing a mathematical model that has no net increase or a negative increase in CO2 would be easy. Proving that it is right; that would be hard.

      Here is what such a model might look like, this example will be simple and quite stupid:

      We pretend, for a moment, that we have some model that maps CO2 concentration "c" to Temperature in the atmosphere, "T".

      T = f(c)

      A note on some mathematics:
      dT/dt --> Change in Temperature over change in Time.

      A note on notation:
      T_t = dT/dt
      T_c = dT/dc
      c_t = dc/dt
      .
      .
      .
      ... etc.

      Are these clear enough?

      One might be able to generate a differential equation from this simple, stupid model that looks like:

      T_t = k_1*T_c*c_t

      This would be a simple model generated from the assumption that the Temperature is purely and exclusively a function of the CO2 concentration; where k1 is some kind of a calibration constant for our model; you can call it the CO2 weighting function or anything else that makes you happy.

      There is problem with this model. It's too simple! In nature, there are feedback loops! Temperature is *not* purely a function of the concentration of CO2; there are other Greenhouse Gases. So we have to start over again. We need to make our simple stupid model, but less stupid.

      T = f(c1, c2, c3, ... )

      c1 = "greenhouse gas #1"
      c2 = "greenhouse gas #2"
      c3 = "greenhouse gas #3"

      .
      .
      .

      T_t = k1*T_c1*c1_t + k2*T_c2*c2_t + k3*T_c3*c3_t + ... (more greenhouse gas effects)

      You can see how something like this can quickly get quite complicated pretty quick. And this is just with a 1-dimension linear differential equation! Anyways, you see those k1, k2, k3? These are all weighting constants, they are represented by a simple number, in current form. Even that is probably too simple; like I said, we need feedback loops. In current form; this equation won't give us any feedback loops. Let's wait until this equation becomes more interesting!

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    2. continued

      So we need some simplifying notation because, writing everything out in explicit form gets bad, it gets bad really fast.

      So let's make this easier on ourselves and call the term on the right hand side "Omega". Omega is the sum of all of the contributions of all the greenhouse gases on average temperature. In the literature they change the equation a bit and make it look a little more like this:

      _t = k1*_c1*c1_t + k2*_c2*c2_t + k3*_c3*c3_t + ... (more greenhouse gas effects)

      Notice how it looks worse. They do this because it's technically more rigorous to describe the change in the average of the variables with respect to time. technically means the "expectation value of Foo" -- (read, the average) Rigor is good; but we stated in the paper that it was supposed to be a climate paper. Unfortunately rigor in this case just makes the math look horrible. Let's keep the brackets out and just realize that we are looking at the averaged change in the temperatures over time.

      Now there is something we know; there is something that we "all" know. Trees consume CO2; you have more trees, and they consume more CO2! They love the stuff; and so do other plants! So; how do we account for that? Well. Let's invent an idea called vegetable mass! We will call it Vm.

      Now we say:

      "omega" = c1, c2, c3, ...

      T=f("omega", Vm)

      T_t = "Omega" - km*T_Vm*Vm_t

      Look this is a way for vegetation to effect the global average temperature. This is kinda nice. We have GHGs that have a linear forcing on global average temperature and the vegetable matter takes the stuff away. This is still quite simple. This is still quite stupid. How do we include the effects of vegetable mass when we suspect that there might be a difference between the amount of CO2 absorbed by carrots and the amount of CO2 absorbed by cabbage? It's not the same as the amount of CO2 absorbed by trees! How much CO2 is absorbed by hickory? Is it different from the amount that is absorbed by spruce!? How many different types of trees are there anyways??

      So let's generalize the idea of plant matter and divide it into types, because this is quickly becoming unmanageable. We will call one class of plant matter highly absorbent plant matter; we call anything in this category the things that absorb absolutely the most amount of CO2 of any other class of plant matter. The plants that tend to absorb the most as a function of their mass are called first-order absorbers. We call these Vm1. Then we have second-order absorbers, we call these Vm2; these absorb less than Vm1 as a function of vegetable mass. This is better, this actually makes things much easier. We won't include Vm3 in the equation, because the effect of these things is so small as to be negligible. You see what we did there? This is wonderful. This is called approximation. We have to do it, because even our best mathematics is not perfect.

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    3. Approximation allows us to generalize the concept of shrubs and keep the important shrubs and ignore the ones that aren't doing much. We have to be careful with how we do this; because if we simplify or approximate the wrong thing out of our model; our model loses it's ability to make useful predictions. We want models that make useful predictions. And the buggers are awfully hard to get right.

      Oceanographers say that the oceans are acidifying; the oceans are becoming more acidic because they are absorbing CO2! This is kinda cool; but it means that our equation for temperature is not correct! There should be a term to account for the ocean absorbing CO2. We will call the Ocean's effect "O".

      T = f(c1, c2, c3, ..., Vm1, Vm2, O)

      T = "Omega" - kVm1*T_Vm1*Vm1_t - kVm2*T_Vm2*Vm2_t - kO*T_O*O_t

      That still looks bad; same procedure... kVm1, and kVm2 are just constants that control the rate at which the different classes of vegetation absorb CO2. We want to make this look nicer, so we generalize the effect; the forcing of vegetation as "Vega".

      T = "Omega" + "Vega" + kO*T_O*O_t

      Well, ok, that's easy we just add another term to our little function and... wait a minute! The Oceanographers tell us that the amount of CO2 that the ocean absorbs is a function of temperature!! That's... well... ok; that makes the model more complicated. What this means, folks, is that our constant that represents the rate at which the Ocean absorbs CO2, kO, this little darling is a function of temperature.

      kO = f(T)

      Wait a minute, is that true of all our little constants that we've been treating as being completely unchanging? Our equation just went from bad to nonlinear. This means that our equation that was once a function of only Temperature as a main variable is now a function of Temperature, and the constants can be a function of Temperature. Nonlinear equations do strange things. In fact, there is at this very moment, a Millennium Prize for showing if a unique solution even exists to one particular set of nonlinear equations. If you, or anybody can figure out a solution; or even the existence of a solution to the Navier Stokes equations. Whoever does this will get $1 million.

      This shouldn't necessarily make you rush to try and solve it. Our best and our brightest have been trying for over a century. Nobody has found a solution. Nonlinear terms make an equation go from provably solvable, to not so much.

      So, what happens if we take each of the constants and make them a function of all of the other primary variables in the equation?

      k1 = f(T, Vm1, Vm2, O)
      k2 = f(T, Vm1, Vm2, O)
      .
      .
      .
      kVm1 = f(T, Vm1, Vm2, O)
      kVm2 = f(T, Vm1, Vm2, O)
      kO = f(T, Vm1, Vm2, O)

      This is beginning to look a lot like the Drake equation. That is to say, not useful for making predictions with. But it does illustrate some interesting effects! It's actually because all of these variables are so tightly linked that we begin to see oscillations, loops, feedback loops; both positive and negative. All that it takes to break one of these models; meaning... destroy any predictive capability that it has, is to realize that there are unknown variables that might have effects on the system that you don't know about.

      I think I just showed you that doing this kind of thing is hard. Give the climatologists a little bit of respect. Their politics get a little wonky; but they are trying to produce the best science that they can.

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    4. Anyways, that's enough for now. I do not claim that my process above is completely unique (I honestly haven't reviewed the literature to find out). Maybe I did something clever with the treatment of the vegetation, but probably not, I am sure someone else has probably thought of it.

      My purpose with this was to try and give the non-mathematicians a little bit of an appreciation for some of the thinking that goes behind mathematical modeling.

      Creating a model that does something "mathy" is easy. Creating a model that makes useful predictions is *hard*. But if we keeping hacking away at it, we will hopefully come up with something useful.

      Note to Dr. Keating: Don't treat this as a submission. This is an illustration. But if you want to comment about it and throw stones at my little mathematical glass house; feel free. I am fairly certain it will shatter on contact. I would be interested in what you have to say about the process that I have outlined.

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    5. Arghh! HTML... the brackets for the expectation values aren't showing, I didn't think of that...

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    6. For those that want plots on the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, I recommend the Scripps Institute Keeling Curve website:

      https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/

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    7. To Anonymous and the mathematical model: You are generally correct and that is a good illustration of how complicated it gets. But, I think you left out feedbacks. Some feedbacks are positive (make warming worse) while some are negative (make warming better) and some are both. Water vapor is a positive feedback. As it gets warmer, more water vapor ends up in the atmosphere and water vapor is an excellent greenhouse gas. Clouds, on the other hand, are both. During the daytime, they reflect sunlight back into space, so they provide negative feedback. At night, they trap IR radiation from escaping into space, so provide a positive feedback. How do you incorporate these into the model? And, there are events that affect the climate, but are unpredictable. El Nino has a tremendous effect on the climate world wide. Volcanic eruptions put sulfur compounds and ash into the air that cool the climate. Where do these fit into the model? And, what about solar activity? It isn't a constant, it changes.

      I think all of this illustrates just how difficult modeling is. The fact that models are as good as they are is, in opinion, pretty amazing and a testimony to the hard work of the people involved.

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    8. Anonymous #2 again:

      You are right. I did leave those out. Not on purpose; I just didn't think about them. I was tired and I kind of wrote that whole thing off-the-cuff. My grammar was poor in that explanation, I am sorry.

      The other thing that I didn't mention: Each and every single one of those terms that gets generated in the equation; you have to be able to describe what they are, exactly. And you need to provide arguments for why they are what they are.

      And after you have a model that you are content with. Then you have to solve the thing. We do that with computers because doing it by hand would require several rooms full of people who we call calculators all running the numbers... and making mistakes, so we need the identify and fix the mistakes. That task would be a management nightmare. But, believe it or not, it's been done before.

      Our computers are digital; this means that they only store binary digits; 1s and 0s. Our climate is analog; this means that values for variables, in theory, can be anything between -INF and INF. So we have clever tricks to solve these types of equations on the computer. One of them is something that we call 'spectral analysis'. Sounds fancy, doesn't it? If you ever took a form of calculus where you were doing infinite series expansions with Sine and Cosine; well, that's the basis behind spectral analysis.

      Spectral analysis lets you do something really cool. It allows you to take things that are inherently cyclical; and you mathematically decompose their periods then you can identify what piece is generating what types of forcing; at what frequency it is occurring, and how strong. This theory can also be used for building musical synthesizers; and for doing all sorts of other signal analysis. It is really quite interesting. And anyone can do it. Math, physics, engineering, all of these are a lot like music, art or any other discipline in this sense, that to develop your skill with them just requires practice. Anybody can do it with practice. People will start thinking you are a genius with practice. And they are quite wrong.

      Nature is indifferent to our equations. There is what Nature is doing, then there is what the equations are doing. And they are *not* the same. Even with our best equations that have the most predictive quality that we can muster, they do *not* do what Nature is doing. We hope that they are close. They are, in fact, close enough that we can build engines, that we can build cars that drive, and planes that fly; and rockets that fly without blowing up on accident... sometimes.

      It is hard to design a water-tight set of mathematics to translate that into an engineering system and to manage complexity. Our best engineered systems are a joke compared to the systems that we see in Nature. A cockroach is smarter and far more complex than our best robots. But, we are getting better over time. We can build more interesting stuff over time, so that might act as evidence of the fact that we are getting better.

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    9. "I think I just showed you that doing this kind of thing is hard. Give the climatologists a little bit of respect. Their politics get a little wonky; but they are trying to produce the best science that they can."

      Look, I think your comment is one of the best so far. I know quite a bit about modeling from a financial perspective. However, the beauty about Finance is there tends to be tons of data out there. So a quick stone I can throw at your model is there is probably little measurable data to do anything with it in the first place. Now, this is not a criticism of you or your model, I know you are illustrating a point, which I quoted above. The point I am making is that the problem with modeling is not in the complexity but in the testability, measurablity, predictability along with a host of other issues involved. Ideally, a "good model" is elegant, complicated enough to capture what is going on but not overly complicated so that it isn't workable.

      However, I find it a little bit ironic that you are a little condescending about climate scientist. "they are just doing the best they can," is great when your using positive reinforcement to encourage children but these are grown adult scientists.

      What I suspect from your comment, is that not all sciences are equal. There used to be the term, "Hard Sciences," and "Soft Sciences," where Hard Sciences are the complete realm of objectivity and Soft science allows for a certain degree of subjectivity. To me it seems Climate study falls somewhere in between the two categories.

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    10. Actually, one of the major problems with climate models is the monumentally large amount of data that we have. There is so much data that I am impressed they can get anything out of the computers at all. It takes supercomputers days to process everything they are fed.

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    11. Henry Maldonado,

      Anonymous #2 again:
      "However, I find it a little bit ironic that you are a little condescending about climate scientist. "they are just doing the best they can," is great when your using positive reinforcement to encourage children but these are grown adult scientists."

      I am not being condescending. Academics as a group, and this includes people in physics, chemistry, economics, political science, ..., and all the rest sometimes speak in a language that is only understandable to those who come from an academic background. They are, at the moment, *so* hyper-specialized in their own sub-discipline, that I wonder, sometimes, if everyone understands what those who come from a different discipline is saying. What they speak is English, but it is *not* the form of English that everybody else speaks. This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that we have marketers playing in the middle of the field, using advanced mathematical terminology as a selling point for the pet service or item that they are trying to hawk. I speak using simplistic terms as a means of trying to communicate with everybody who might be reading what I am saying. Yes, it sounds a little bit child-like; and I might very well be incorrectly gauging the level that I should communicate at; I have made mistakes where that is concerned before.

      What scientists do is hard. And sometimes it is possible that what they are doing to be misrepresented. I have my own pet-opinions regarding some highly political issues. I have tried to express some of them in terms that, I hope, others will understand. My opinions have no bearing on what is coming out of the scientific literature. The process for science that we use *will* eventually generate the correct representation of nature, we hope. But there are so many ways that we can collectively shoot ourselves in the foot, in the meantime.

      Even adults need positive reinforcement for what they are doing. It *is* possible for adults to give in to despair; this usually results in suicide. That is an extreme case; but even in the mild day-to-day, people need to know that what they are doing has value. It helps when someone else recognizes it, sometimes it doesn't matter who that is.

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    12. On a political level, people play games with the public perception. It's been happening as long as there has been people. When I see a senator take the pulpit and make some statement about temperatures on mars with absolutely no comprehension of the science of which he speaks. Then he mentions his constituents; and something about coal companies. It is pretty clear to me, without seeing the financial ties, what they probably are, in this case.

      But you know something? It is ok that a senator who never studied science to not understand it. It is foolish to hold that against him. He has other competencies in other areas that he's really a whole lot better at than I am in those same areas that put him in office. I wouldn't want him to hold my lack of skill in the areas that he is good at against me. Is it possible to get annoyed that we think that the Coal companies are padding his pockets? Sure it is. Can we try to vote him out of office? Possibly.

      But here is a question. Are the Coal companies; with the position they are in, are they actually doing anything wrong? What if, the legislation takes a direction that puts the Coal companies collectively out of business; whether that be through a direct effect like physically making burning coal illegal, or an indirect effect; making it so expensive to do business that they cannot cope? Is it understandable that they are trying to do everything in their power to still be able to afford bread? I think it is. If you were in that position, wouldn't you do the same?

      So, is it the senator, or the Coal companies, that is the real problem? I doubt it. So let's stand back and look at how the Coal companies influence legislation. The idea that they *can* influence legislation seems a little bit spooky. Was that the idea that our founding fathers for this country had in mind? I cannot answer that question. But let's continue to look at the strings that pull legislation, because this becomes interesting.

      Our process of producing legislation is a little more complicated than the schoolhouse rock video we were all shown as kids. "I am just a Bill on Captal Hill". Yes we have things called bills that filter through congress and can eventually become laws, if the legislative, and the executive branches decide to put them into law. But where do the Bills come from?

      This is an extra piece of the process that most of us don't really know about. It is public knowledge, but really, who has the time to look at everything that is public knowledge? If it's not directly effecting someone's day-to-day affairs, they generally don't care enough to study it. And our Universities produce specialists; we aren't trained to look at anything outside of our narrow field of specialization.

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    13. -------------------------------------------------------
      The Government Relations Specialists:
      -------------------------------------------------------
      So, I will outline the process of how a Bill is made as much as I think that I understand of it. If you know better, how this works, please outline the whole process as you understand it. Understand that I am not a specialist in this area, I don't really know what the common lingo is that you use for these processes.

      What you have are these things called interest groups. What are they? At their most basic level, they are concerned citizens who are trying to influence legislation. But in this world, we specialize, so these citizens who specialize in this part of the puzzle are called Lobbyists, or Government Relations Specialists as they've taken to calling themselves recently. There has been a lot of ink spilled on trying to make these people look bad, so they find it necessary to change their image. But are they really doing anything wrong? Well, at the most basic level, they are motivated by the same things that everyone else is motivated by. They have families; they have children, they need to afford bread, they want to live good lives. Everyone is influenced by these fundamental dynamics.

      The government relations specialists are not usually self-employed, I would guess that they can be; but I cannot point to any direct evidence for this. For the most part, these lobbyists are employed by a larger financial engine who gives them the money to do what they do. This 'financial engine' can be anything that generates profit, or revenue; even non-profit organizations can influence legislation in the area that the non-profit specializes in. The lobbyists work within a special interest organization; a few examples of these special interest organizations would be like say; the Heartland Institute, or (I would suspect) the IPCC.

      There can be thousands of these organizations all trying to influence legislation simultaneously. These organizations are as diverse as people are. They can be operating for the common good, or they could be vultures trying to make off like a bandit. And it is really hard to tell which is which. I haven't figured out how to do that yet. But before we start trying to identify which is which, going on a Witch-Hunt, remember; these organizations are Super-Super-Egos of people. A benign organization that wants nothing more than to help the greater good can cause more damage to a civilization from the law of unintended consequences, from a cause they support becoming viral -- in meme terminology, than one that is actively being a problem. Witch-Hunts usually only hurt people. Just ask McCarthy. And remember, "Violence is the last refuge for the incompetent." --- Isaac Asimov

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    14. There are interest groups that represent all kinds of ideas. Special interest groups exist for Energy companies, they exist for Financial companies, they exist for, Educational firms. They exist for just about any cause that you can imagine.

      What these groups personally want, in the most basic sense, is easy to understand. They want a better lives for them and their children. What they officially exist for and what they "officially" want is more complicated; and this is where the dynamics of human systems becomes interesting (read: hard to model).

      The interest groups only exist because someone is pulling their purse strings. And at the most basic level, whoever is pulling their purse strings only wants the same thing that any other person wants. A better life for themselves and for their family; they personally want to be respected and loved. You see how this works? The basic motivations are so easy to understand that it is funny. The more complicated ways that people "realize" these motivations are not!

      So how do you influence legislation? Do you have a cause? Check. Do you have money? Check. Can you create an organization for the cause? Check. Can you get the organization to speak to representatives in congress and give money to their cause? Check. It is that simple. And realize that the devil is in the details; the real process is a heck of a lot more complicated than that; and it involves understanding legislation. More than that, it involves understanding what legislation is doing in the short term, and in the long term. If you have ever looked a a Bill, you will notice that it looks like a patch-work quilt. There are a lot of: "strike this phrase", "replace it with this phrase". Trying to understand what that Bill is doing if it gets applied to the code of law is not straightforward and easy. Whether or not you think it should be, is a matter I leave to the reader.

      That means that you need to be able to read Legalese. Legalese should not even properly be called English. It is tech-speak for lawyers. It is as hard to understand as tech-speak for scientists. And the trick to understand it is practice.

      All of this stuff about how to handle a bill... this is what lobbyists do. Some of them network with congressmen; this species of lobbyist is a lot like a marketer. Most of the work in what they do is in trying to read the code of law, and trying to craft a Bill that does whatever they think it should do. They talk to congressmen, they show congress the bill. They can promise Campaign funding if the Bill get's put into law. (There are laws that limit what can be done this way; but they aren't necessarily as limiting as you or I might think they should be) There is a difference between the laws that limit Federal Lobbying and the laws that limit State Lobbying. States can have whatever lobbying laws they think is prudent; so it is different in every state. Notice how complicated this gets? This is how a lobbyist gets their bread. Have a little bit of respect for them now?

      I cannot fault another human being who has the same basic needs and desires that I do for trying to fulfill those desires. The Coal company doesn't want their personal survival put at risk. Neither does the representative on the pulpit. Neither does the government relations specialist. But each and every single one of these agents is operating within their own system. They have limited power. And they have actions that they can take in their own system. What motivates them to take actions that can sometimes hurts the people around them? Fear. They hope for the best, and they try to plan for what they fear is the worst. It is how they plan for what they fear is the worst that can get interesting. That's my theory, at least, and it might be wrong.

      Delete

    15. -------------------------------------------------------
      The Government Representatives:
      -------------------------------------------------------

      What motivates the Senator or the Representative? The same basic drives that drive all other people. The want to be loved, they want to be respected, and they want better lives for their children than they themselves have had. They might be skilled at understanding law, many of them are lawyers. They can understand legalese, but really we could vote a farmer into office, this is fine, this is what our system was designed to do; I bring up law, because most of them seem to have degrees in law. I think I read that some 22% of them had degrees in business or economics. I am not going to track that reference down; or try to verify it's claim, because it is not too important for the point I am trying to make here. See that number as a possibility and not a representation of the complete truth. My point is, our representatives are diverse. Some of them were engineers. I can think one example where one of our representatives made his money selling potato seeds online. That's kinda cool, I think.

      What does a representative need to do to run their business and to earn their bread? They need members of the public to vote them into office. How do they do that? They need to campaign for an election. Ok, how do they do that?! They need money to run a campaign. How much money? I don't know, I tried to get a hold of one once to ask them; and I didn't get very far. But that's ok, because I am not related to one; I am not well connected; and to be honest... I probably didn't try hard enough.

      In some hazy sense, I understand that there is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the DCCC) and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (the RCCC) that you have to interact with somehow. The CCCs monitor and regulate the campaigning piece of politics somehow, (please correct me, if you know better than I).

      Anyways, if you are a democrat, you might be able to get some campaign money from the DCCC; I don't think you can count on getting any money from the RCCC as a democrat; correct me if I am wrong. As a republican, that logic works the same way but reversed order. Another way that you can make money, I suspect, is by finding an interest group whose interests align with yours, or several, and as a group, you can convince the public to put yourself in office. This system; is probably more complicated than this. And I am oversimplifying, again. But this system for the politicans ties in with that of the lobbyists. Representatives are well connected, and after they serve their time in congress they can work as the marketing portion of the Lobbyists. For some, this could be a really big piece of cheese. More money for myself and my children; that sounds great! I daresay that most people would do the same in the same shoes.

      Delete

    16. To be a representative in this system, first, and foremost; you need campaign money. In fact, a great deal of your efforts needs to go into securing campaign money, so that you can remain in office. If you've read some of my posts before, this should look familiar. Professors do this too! Professors need to do research, but to do that research they have to acquire money from grants Representatives need to govern, but to do that they need to stay in office, to do that they need campaign contributions!

      So, if representatives need campaign contributions... how much of their time is spent securing those campaign contributions? 10%? 20%? 70%? I don't know, but it doesn't take much imagination to see that like a professor who cannot do research; if most of a representative's efforts are spent raising campaign contributions, how much of their efforts can be spent on the due diligence of good governance?

      Like the professor, does the representative become little more than a pet who sucks from the teat of whoever gives them money? I observe from a distance, and I wonder.

      Should we be angry at the representative or the professor? I don't think so. They are merely actors in this system, that are trying to create the best life that they can for themselves and for their families. Just like the Coal companies, which are really little more than people.

      If you know better than I how this system works, please tell us. Everything that I have described up to this point is based on my own perceptions from trying to understand our system. If I am wrong in a perception. Please tell me, and tell me why.

      Delete
    17. -------------------------------------------------------
      The Problem with Complex Systems:
      -------------------------------------------------------

      How does one understand the entire scope of how everything works, and how everything fits together? You would have to be a specialist level expert in everything simultaneously at the same time. I don't know of any University that teaches people how to do this. That's ignoring the question of whether or not it could be taught. Studying all of the details of even a very small portion of a select field and understanding it all, for anyone who has ever tried; it feels like drinking from a fire hydrant. Too much information to absorb, too fast to comprehend. We can only take small pieces.

      So, how does one govern a system when you have the important players of the banks, and the economies, and the engineers, and the media, and the accountants, all of these sub disciplines with all of the ways that these systems interact individually and as a group... how do you manage that level of complexity?

      Delete
    18. Let's try and stick with the KISS principle that engineers know and love, for now, and maybe we can move on to bigger things later. Keep it simple, and keep it stupid. These are the attributes of what a solution might look like. Each system is composed of individuals with their own sets of skills, and their own ideas. Each individual will try and use their skills to attempt to make money and provide bread for their small family system.

      Groups of individuals with the same sets of skills will naturally gravitate to one another. These will form like Guilds. The reason for this is simple. It is *hard* to perfect a craft. To do it well, people who are interested in the same craft come together and try to learn from one another. This is important; because there are plenty of skills that you cannot learn from the University. These guilds have their own financial motivations, and their own perspectives from the piece of the big pie that they, as a group, control.


      Delete
    19. People identify themselves first as individuals, and second from the guild they are associated with. Their guild is, in some ways, their extended family. Members in the guild try and look out for the other members in their guild. I bring up the concept of a guild by the way, not because I think the system needs to be brought back, but because I see in my peers, this tendency to identify themselves by their majors.

      This has all sorts of funny sociological effects. One of them being; members of one guild don't have the perspective to see the world from the lens of another guild. The engineers and the physicists view the lawyers with fear and suspicion naturally because they don't see the world from the perspective of the lawyer. And likewise, the lawyers might feel the same way in the other direction, in return.

      This kind of mentality leads to funny interactions, like, one guild getting offended and angry when an obvious member of another guild makes statements about *YOUR* guild. They don't understand, *your* domain! They didn't have the discipline to study it. So the very fact that they make statements about is offensive. The funny thing is that this response is triggered within the group of mathematicians if a physicist proves an interesting theorem. Physics involves mathematics, is it really that hard to imagine that a physicist named Alice might fall into the Wonderland of Mathematics, from time to time? And this happens in *all* fields!

      Mathematics isn't too far removed from physics, or chemistry, or biology, or even music. There are laws that exist between the arbitrary divisions of the guild.

      It is a little unfair to not give someone the time of day and listen to what they have to say, just because they don't study a particular discipline. But this behavior is natural in a world of specialists.

      Some of the most interesting problems are actually cross disciplinary. It because very difficult to solve this problems when the different groups of people are getting territorial about what they define as their turf. It's natural, inner city gangs, and hippos do it too.


      The issue of whether or not something is a Hard science or a Soft science is only important from those in the guild of the Hard science who you identify with. It only alienates those from guilds who don't identify with you. For me it is enough to realize that what the climatologists are doing is difficult. I mostly think about things in the form of analogies, I don't know why it helps me, I just know that it does.

      So here is a damned interesting analogy:

      The human body is one great big complicated system. You have cells that divide, they need energy, specific hormones to communicate with, and other things to do their job; and the cells specialize into a lot of different areas. So, what happens if the cells interacting with their boundary conditions and operating on their own personal constraints get stuck in a position where they have a huge number of resources to work with; but the signals that they are getting from the other parts in the system put them in a position where the must reproduce fast. What happens if they get stuck in this position; because of some breakdown in the system of the body's communication that I leave to the physiologists to more completely describe? Well they just keep reproducing; over and over again. They don't stop. This is one possible mode of a cancer.

      Delete

    20. One might be able to see the economy as one great big system; much like the human body. It doesn't have hormones to communicate; but other things that act like them. Is it possible for some path down the economy's Markov chain to take a wrong term and generate something like a cancer that can kill the host? Can such a thing exist in the economy? If it did, would it be a specialist who could fix it; or would it be a generalist who understands much of the interaction in the system?

      Now don't get political with this idea; I think that would be foolish.

      Delete
    21. Here is another odd idea:

      What if it were possible to fix the health of the system as a whole by starting with trying to fix the health of the smaller systems that make up the whole individually?

      If you know that it is family that drives the individuals who create the whole? Could you fix the system by changing the incentives for the individuals and the larger members in a way that would tend to keep the larger system alive? Maybe?

      Delete
    22. Henry Maldonado,

      "I know quite a bit about modeling from a financial perspective."

      Are you a Quantitative Analyst?

      Delete
    23. You wrote quite a bit and you have quite a few ideas there, so I'm just going to reply here. Here is a report from CNN that came out just today about the issue of Fracking and Earthquakes in Oklahoma. I don't know how long it will still be up but hopefully it is still up by the time you read this.

      http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/07/09/is-fracking-responsible-for-oklahoma-earthquakes/

      Now, the reason I post it in response for you and whomever else is enjoying this discussion is to note the Seismologists assessment of the issue. For me on the scale of 1-10 of objectivity he is up there. Notice, he is not enraged, emotional, charged about his assessment. Notice, he also hints at the limitation of what is understood. Also, notice at the approach to the solution--it isn't political nor does he make political suggestions or statements. As a laymen, to me, he is behaving scientifically.

      Now, the issue of Fracking and Earthquakes is pretty analogous to the issue of Industry and Climate Change. In fact, what is occurring in Oklahoma is of more, much more of immediate concern than Climate Change. To me Climate Change Scientists can learn something from this Seismologist.

      Delete
    24. Anonymous #2 again:

      That is really interesting. I wonder... if we imagine that the Earth's crust is layered a bit like an onion; with the more dense stuff near the bottom and the less dense stuff near the top. (This happens with liquids; I don't know if the same thing happens rheologically) Water has a different density than oil; doesn't it? 790-860 kg/m^3?

      If they are replacing the oil with water... is it possible that you have a situation where you have a lot of water on top of a bed of oil where the oil begins percolating upwards? If you have large movements of liquid mass beneath your crust; that might cause earthquakes? Is that what's happening?

      Delete
    25. If the above theory that I outlined is correct; perhaps the solution would be not to replace the oil with water; but to replace the oil with something cheap that is around the same density as oil. Then again; the theory could be wrong; and this solution would not work.

      I suppose one could try it and realize that you are playing dice with the law of unforeseen consequences...

      Delete
    26. "In some hazy sense, I understand that there is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (the DCCC) and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee (the RCCC) that you have to interact with somehow. The CCCs monitor and regulate the campaigning piece of politics somehow, (please correct me, if you know better than I)."

      After re-reading my monologue, I realized that my description of the DCCC and the RCCC is not quite correct. My language was too loose. The CCCs do not regulate campaign financing. They can provide campaign financing. The best way to describe the DCCC is basically; they are the group that is the Democratic party as an organization. The RCCC is the group that is the Republican party as an organization.

      If anything it is the Federal Election Commission that regulates campaign financing. So the Federal Election Commission prevents the CCCs from doing anything funny with their finances.

      I apologize for the mistake, I should have been more careful about that.

      Sincerely,

      Anonymous #2

      Delete
  27. FRANK LANSNER PROOF 2

    The Basic CO2 Forcing issue

    Its always healthy to take a “birds perspective” of things, just to ROUGHLY get an idea of the situation.

    Normally its believed that CO2 (incl feedbacks) is responsible for around 15% of the Earths Greenhouse effect. It cannot be much more since we live on a planet with a water surface and thus plenty of water in the atmosphere. So water (incl feedbacks) is responsible for the majority of Earths greenhouse effect.

    The whole idea of global warming started because the Earth appeared around 33 K warmer (278 K) than “it should have been” (255K) given the Earths albedo.
    So all greenhouse gasses incl. all feedbacks combined yields roughly these 33 K.

    No news so far, I agree.

    This ROUGHLY leaves around 15% of 33K to the CO2 forcing incl. feedbacks. That is around 5 K. Lets say 6 K to be conservative.

    So as a ROUGH starting point we have around 6 K of warming from CO2 forcing incl feedbacks from CO2 in tha atmosphere.

    Still not much new in this, so lets go a step further.

    If you take a climate model like MODTRAN you will see that the forcing of the entire CO2 concentration (incl feedbacks) is typically around 9 – 10 times the forcing of one CO2 doubling incl. feedbacks.

    So according to typical models, ONE doubling of CO2 should yield around a tenth of the forcing seen from the entire CO2 concentration in the atmosphere incl. feedbacks.

    The entire CO2 concentration should have a forcing that matches roughly 10 doublings.


    So as a starting point – the rough birds perspective – a new doubling og CO2 concentration from 400 ppm to 800 ppm should yield around one tenth of the 6 K warming we have from the entire CO2 concentration.

    So a doubling should yield warming around 1/10 times 6 K = 0,6 K.

    Something is wrong now.

    IPCC suggests 3 K for just ONE new CO2 doubling. That is, today ONE doubling should have an effect incl. feedbacks of HALF the entire CO2 concentration.

    This is a violation of the principle that each doubling has a similar effect.

    James Hansen goes further, he suggests 6 K of forcing from jus ONE doubling of CO2. So one doubling today for some reason should match the effect incl. feedbacks from the entire CO2 concentration.

    Also, some believe that we will have a global temperature rise of 2-4 K within year 2100.
    But hardly any believe that we will have more than 600 ppm in year 2100. (even 600 ppm appear not realistic)
    So with just HALF a doubling, we are supposed to see a 2-4K rise in temperature. This demands arounf 4-8 K warming effect from CO2 incl. feedbacks.
    Again this demands that the next CO2 doubling incl. feedbacks has an effect around 10 times the other doublings incl. feedbacks.

    The point.

    As long as it is NOT explained why CO2 effect incl. feedbacks added to the atmosphere now should have an effect dramatically stronger than the CO2 already in the atmosphere, then any such claim fall.

    You cannot claim that one doubling of CO2 now should have an effect that roughly matches the entire CO2 concentration in the atmosphere without very carefully explaining, documenting and justifying how this should be possible.
    So far this obvious problem is not even mentioned when claiming dramatic forcing from CO2 incl. feedbacks.

    See illustrations and more:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/09/08/working-925-what-a-way-to-make-a-livin-at-agw/

    ReplyDelete
  28. FRANK LANSNER PROOF 3

    Richard Alley: “We can’t explain the size of warming without CO2.”

    While now reviewing many sceptic arguments against CO2 as a dramatic climate driver, lets not forget how surprisingly weak arguments FOR the CO2 effect is.
    And check out how easy it is debunked:


    http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/alley3.gif

    This picture is from a Richard Alley speech with presentations.
    He shows the Vostok ice core CO2 – temperature data. He is NOT (like Al Gore) indicating that we can see CO2 drive temperatures from these graphs, he goes one step further.
    He says that the large differences of temperature on Earth cannot occur without assistance from changing CO2 concentrations.
    And ladies and gentlemen, this “argument” today appears to be the central and fundamental argument for CO2 as a dramatic climate driver.

    So is it true?

    Take a very good look at the Vostok ice data on the picture I linked to. In the upper right corner I have inserted the graphs so one can better see data. I have also inserted a green box.

    The years of data enclosed in the green box actually show a rather constant CO2 level for the years where the Earth changes temperature completely from interglacial to glacial.

    So, the very data behind Richard Alley happens to show exactly that temperature CAN change from one extreme to the other without help from CO2.

    So the very data Richard Alley use to proof that CO2 is a “must” to explain large temperature changes shows the opposite, that nature does this without help from CO2.

    Its not only the last shift from interglacial to glacial that occurs mostly without help from CO2, see:
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/


    The most important “evidence” for the CO2 effect thus simply is not there.

    Kind regards, Frank Lansner

    ReplyDelete
  29. You made the submission on mountain valleys. Is this an additional submission, an addition to the previous submission, or just a comment? I can treat as any of those options, just let me know.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Christopher, please treat them as 3 different,
      1) Mountain Valleys already registered
      and then 2 others from the 2 latest writings today:
      2) "Proof 2" / Basic CO2 Forcing issue
      3) "Proof 3" / Issue with central CO2 "evidence"

      Its quite a task you have started up here, would like to assist, but .. :-)

      Kind regards, Frank Lansner and I hope you can find energy to come through all this.

      Delete
  30. It is certainly a task. I accepted your most recent submissions and you can follow my progress on the submission page:

    http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous #2 again:

      I could see how one's ability to represent the human effects of global warming hinges on your ability to generate an accurate computational model.

      You can document the warming effects with the array of instruments that have been placed around the world. But there is a problem with doing that on it's own. The only way that you can make sense of that rise in temperature is with a set of models.

      dT = "Foo" :: From time0 = "to_foo" to time = "t_foo".

      "Foo" contains "Normal Cyclical Temperature" + "Anthropogenic Component"

      So the only way that you can determine the "Anthropogenic Component" and separate it from the Normal Cyclical component is if:

      (1) You can simulate the climate with the model.

      If you can do (1) then factoring in the amount of CO2 produced by human activity is as trivial as estimating the amount of CO2 generated. CO2 will increase the temperature through screening the IR radiation generated from the solar flux. Depending on your model, that effect could be an implicit assumption. There is nothing wrong with that assumption, if it is right. Is it? It's possible...

      Delete
    2. Actually, I am being a little bit liberal with my use of the term "only". Maybe my imagination is limited, in this regard.

      Is there a way that one can separate the effects of AGW from CGW (cyclical global warming) without a model?

      Delete
    3. Using models is the most efficient way to do it, but not the only way. Climate science is not a model, it is the study of the climate - real, actual events happening in the world around us. If we had to, we could put the data on paper, do experiments, make forecasts and observe the results, etc. and do everything without the computers. It would take much longer and require a lot more work that way, but it could be done.

      Do not confuse the use of models to mean that is all we have. Models are mathematical representations of real events. The events are just as real if we have, or don't have, the models. If the events are real, then there are ways to study them without the models. Much of the research is done without models. Models just seem to get the headlines because it is a topic deniers have been able to fool the public about.

      Delete
    4. Anonymous #2 Again:

      Dr. Keating, in your first paragraph, you had described the process of building a model, by hand; without computers. When I say the model, to me the model is not the thing you run on the computer. It is merely the mathematical description of the global change in temperature; built, based, and predicated upon your assumptions about the climate behavior and your observations. Your assumptions in building the model from the data can be right; this produces an accurate and predictive model. Or, your assumptions in building the model from the data could be wrong; in which case, the model is less accurate. You can build this mathematical description by running data on a computer. That is what the computer is for.

      After you have built this mathematical description on your computer, you can run the model, simulation fashion.

      In your second paragraph; you describe events... in a generic fashion. What do you mean by real events? Do you mean observing the melting of the polar ice caps? Do you mean the loss of polar bears? Do you mean the bleaching of the coral reefs? Do you mean the acidification of the ocean? Temperatures are rising; as are CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We have instruments; we are measuring these events, yes we have data. All of these events are happening simultaneously. I am not sure how can you separate whether or not these events are due to an Anthropogenic component or an ordinary Cyclical component just by looking at them.

      The problem is; without the model, you are swimming in data, you could drown in the details. You need the model to make sense of it all.

      I could easily imagine that there is both an Anthropogenic component and a Cyclical component. I don't know how strong one is in comparison to another. The IPCC reports seem to predict a worst case scenario being a 6 degree Celsius increase by the end of 2100.

      I don't believe the models are all that you have. You have data as well, which you have used to build the models with. That is the scientific method in a nutshell; you have been following it.

      "Models are mathematical representations of real events. The events are just as real if we have, or don't have, the models. If the events are real, then there are ways to study them without the models." -- Dr. Keating

      Yes, there is what Nature is doing, then there is what your model is doing. And they are *never* the same. But our best model produce enough of the effects that we see in Nature that you can make accurate predictions with them.

      However, I am still confused about how you can separate and distinguish the Anthropogenic component from the Cyclical component without an accurate mathematical description of the effect, how can you separate these components without the model?

      Delete
    5. The models are precisely the sore point, aren't they?

      If the models accurately represent what nature is doing; then it is trivial to directly calculate the anthropogenic effect on climate.

      If the models do not accurately represent what nature is doing; then that same calculation may be producing inaccurate results for the anthropogenic effect on climate.

      The only trump card that takes one out of this line of logic is if there is another way that is different from using the models to account for the anthropogenic global warming effect. So what is that other way?

      You cannot individually point at temperatures in a region on the globe and call that climate. Local issues like icebergs falling into the ocean and raising the water level are influenced by the global temperature. But the only way I am aware of that you can separate the average change in temperature into a "natural" component and a "human" component is through use of one or many models.

      I know that you say that casting doubt on the models is a tactic used by climate deniers; but I do not deny that climate is changing. I do not deny that there is, more than likely, some kind of a human effect. The question is... how significant is that effect?

      These models; which are meant to represent a very large system which has many feedback loops, and is intrinsically chaotic in nature, we had better be quite sure that the models are accurately simulating the global climate before flying of the handle and guaranteeing a significant and permanent increase in the cost of electricity around the world.

      An abrupt and significant change in legislation and policy regarding energy in response to these climate issues could have significant financial effects. If we want to use the analogy of the economy as a great big network of springs; small changes in that system can cause perturbations throughout the entire network. A large enough shock-wave in the financial system can cause the springs in the economic system to snap causing significant damage to people's livelihoods and the global availability of credit.

      What is an example of a financial shock-wave? Remember the collapse of the housing market? When that bubble collapsed; one could compare what happened to the financial links between people and institutions a shock-wave.

      If many large businesses employ their workforce on credit until their revenue reports come in; a lack of credit could cause significant unemployment in the entire system.

      That being said; small perturbations are less likely to cause damage. So, if legislation doesn't introduce too many significant changes, too fast; that would probably be ok.

      My point is:

      With legislation...

      Don't do anything drastic. Please?

      Anonymous #2

      Delete
    6. at most that's going to affect pressure and volume ala pv=nrt, and thats going to affect the height of the atmosphere (increasing temperature = higher height and lower particle density). that's not going to change how much co2 is being pumped out or the chemical composition, save some kind of catastrophe, which would be a problem in itself - a catastrophe in itself. how much would it push it? well, due to simply the earth revolving around the sun and being tilted, we have summers of over 100 degree and winters below freezing, and the change is negligable. and CO2 levels are unaffected. this seasonal variability - which is a lot - is already sampled in with the empirical data that's been collected. it's not significant. unless you're talking much higher temperatures - many hundred degrees, where you're going to activate phase changes and additional endothermic chemical processes, and consequently biology as well, in which case, yeah... we'd like to avoid that, if possible.

      Delete
    7. regarding above about models and financial impacts. firstly, in climate change we're not talking about models, we're talking about actual raw data. secondly your concerns about financial impact are overblown and alarmist. and finally, NOT passing legislation that deals with climate change WILL have devastating economic impact. I work in the IT industry, and what you do when you can foresee an impending crisis, whether it's tomorrow or a year down the road or you don't know when it's going to happen, is you take action to prevent it. you don't wait for the crisis. you fix it now so that there is no crisis. it's too late for that. we are already feeling the economic impacts of climate change. it's already hurting the economy. insurance companies are already adjusting their rates. and we're already in a positive feedback loop due to ice loss. like it or not, we have to take drastic measures now, or we WILL pay much HIGHER costs later. that's the economics of it.

      Delete
    8. regarding "climate sensitivity" again...by which i believe you mean feedback loops - positive and negative - increasing temperatures will cause ice to melt, which will:

      a) reduce reflective surfaces (namely, polar ice caps), which would result in keeping more heat trapped in the atmosphere.
      b) which would also mean more water vapor in the air, which is a green house gas
      c) also it just being hotter would mean more water vapor in the air
      d) release stores of methane and other C02, previously covered by ice, both of which are green house gases, into the atmoshpere, further increasing trapping.

      so those are 4 positive feedback sources.

      not all this heat comes from the sun - it's not a matter of production on the earth, it's a matter of trapping. so the question is how much trapping effect is occuring in the atmosphere, and how little reflection effect there is. reflection comes from reflective surfaces, and trapping comes from deflective particles aka green house gases. so those are the two considerations. and there isn't exactly a significant influx or outflux of matter on the earth. a few asteroids here and there, a few satellites launched once in a while, that's it. so we're talking about the amount of reflective surfaces - almost exclusively ice - the question then is how much water is in solid form vs liquid form, and that's a matter of temperature and pressure - and the amount of deflective particles aka green house gases in the air vs on the ground, and that's a matter of physical transport (as in them physically getting moved) and a few basic organic chemistry reactions (such as combustion.)

      and what you have when it comes down to it, failing a catastrophic change in the ecosystem such as a massive plant life extinction or something. is those 4 things i listed, a,b,c,d, plus combustion.

      Delete
    9. There is something really cool about all of this. Very complicated interactions can come out of this system from just a few very simple rules.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

      http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GameofLife.html

      Here is one that you can play with, if you have never seen these before:
      http://psych.hanover.edu/JavaTest/Play/Life.html

      So what's the point? The point is that you take the general idea of a system, you create actors in the system (you define the initial conditions), then you give each of the actors their own simple set of rules to operate with (you give them boundary conditions). When you define the system and the rules that each of the actors live by; when you run the system, you can have emergence. It simply pops out of complex systems!

      Emergence can be seen everywhere! There are simple rules that dictate the growth of trees. They dictate the growth of plants. They dictate the growth of cells. They might dictate the course of cancer. You can see it come out of weather systems.

      The point is that it's not just the mathematics. The mathematics are just what we use to describe the physics. The point is many systems that have actors and non-trivial rules that dictate their interactions have emergence! This should include physical systems, this should include chemical systems, this should include economic systems, this should include geopolitical systems.

      The fact that we see emergence coming out of the climate models actually gives me a little more confidence in what they are saying.

      Anonymous #2

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    10. happyjack27,

      Oi, sorry, I didn't realize that you responded to what I was saying. Give me a second to organize my thoughts again. :)

      Sorry about that, I've been busy reading and writing.

      Anonymous #2

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    11. emergent phenomena, especially of high complexity, happen when there's a good "mix" so to speak of information storage and information transfer/processing, like in the phase boundary between a liquid and a solid. or in conway's game of life. this is not so much the case in a pure gas situation. since gases are compressible fluids so mostly they just mix and there's really not a lot of spatial differentation. i mean there's layers in the atmosphere and clouds and all that (which are perhaps an example of emergence via dffusion and aggregation or something like that), and pv=nrt + sunlight gives you a variety of weather... but besides that, you don't really have the right conditions for a great amount of structural complexity. certainly not like you have in a heated soup of amino acids with intermittent electric jolts.

      Delete
    12. "your concerns about financial impact are overblown and alarmist."

      You may be right, I hope you know that I mean well by them. It would make me really happy to not have the price of electricity skyrocket.

      "NOT passing legislation that deals with climate change WILL have devastating economic impact."

      I don't disagree with you. So what kind of legislation did you have in mind? As long as it doesn't end up throwing too many people and companies under the bus, I am ok with that idea. What types of energy sources should we use, do you think?

      "a) reduce reflective surfaces (namely, polar ice caps), which would result in keeping more heat trapped in the atmosphere.
      b) which would also mean more water vapor in the air, which is a green house gas
      c) also it just being hotter would mean more water vapor in the air
      d) release stores of methane and other C02, previously covered by ice, both of which are green house gases, into the atmoshpere, further increasing trapping."

      The idea of the permafrost melting and releasing copious quantities of methane into the atmosphere is quite spooky, actually.

      [1] Richard A. Kerr (13 August 2004). "Three Degrees of Consensus". Science 305 (5686): 932–4. doi:10.1126/science.305.5686.932. PMID 15310873.

      Anonymous #2

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    13. What I really want is a really good paper with a theoretical derivation that shows exactly what CMIP5 is doing...

      That would be *really* interesting.

      Anonymous #2.

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    14. Actually here is an interesting question...

      What happens to the dayside cloud formation rate as the average global temperature increases by say 6-12 degrees Celsius?

      Anonymous #2

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    15. http://cmip-pcmdi.llnl.gov/cmip5/guide_to_cmip5.html

      Delete
    16. the only energy source there is is from stars. whether its stored nuclear(fission/fusion), chemically(gas/fuel), kinetically (wind/hydro), or radiatively (solar). we know we should avoid chemical ones that increase co2. that suffices to answer the question. any other energy source.

      Delete
    17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

      Delete
    18. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/business/energy-environment/solar-power-begins-to-shine-as-environmental-benefits-pay-off.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

      Delete
    19. the "Price change of PV rooftop system" chart on the wikipedia article is deceptive because it shows dollar amounts on a linear scale. dollar amounts should be on a logarithmic scale since money works multiplicatively (e.g. interest, etc.)

      Delete
    20. happyjack27,

      Thank you! Give me some time, I will read through each of these references that you gave me.

      I found the CMIP5 website earlier, but I had some concerns...

      Anyways, I will just shut up and read, for now.

      Thank you,

      Anonymous #2

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    21. Sorry, I've been wrapped up in some things that last couple days. Let me catch up.

      Anonymous #2 July 10 at 9:20 PM: You spoke about models. Models are mathematical representations of a real world situation. They do not have to be run on computers, but computers make it possible for us to make them more complex and to produce results more quickly. However, climate science is about the climate and not models. Most of the work done is with real world data. The deniers have made a major issue of the models, but that is actually only part of what is going on. The models are actually doing much better that deniers want the public to believe:

      http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/ask/2013/climate-modeling.html

      http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/27/climate-change-model-global-warming

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    22. To Anonymous #2 July 10 at 11:52 PM and Anonymous on July 11 at 6:43 PM:

      You were discussing radiative forcing and climate sensitivity. This is the term describing the heat balance between what comes in and what goes out. If it is positive then more heat is coming in than going out and the temp rises. If it negative the opposite conditions exists and temps will fall. Climate sensitivity is the description of how much change occurs as a result of the radiative forcing. If the sensitivity is low, then there can be a large balance (positive or negative) and there will be only a small change in temperature. If the sensitivity is high then a radiative forcing will result in large changes. Just what our sensitivity is is a subject of great research.

      Delete
    23. To Anonymous #2 on July 11 at 10:01 PM: Clouds are the big wildcard in our ability to make forecasts of future activity. Clouds provide negative feedback during the day by reflection sunlight back into space, but provide positive feedback at night by trapping IR radiation. As the temperature goes up, so does the amount of moisture in the air, but that doesn't mean increasing the moisture in the air will lead to a equivalent increase in cloud formation. So, I think you can see that it is very complicated.

      Delete
    24. "Clouds are the big wildcard in our ability to make forecasts of future activity. Clouds provide negative feedback during the day by reflection sunlight back into space, but provide positive feedback at night by trapping IR radiation. As the temperature goes up, so does the amount of moisture in the air, but that doesn't mean increasing the moisture in the air will lead to a equivalent increase in cloud formation. So, I think you can see that it is very complicated." Dr. Keating

      Yes, the scientists have a *very* difficult set of phenomena to describe. And they have my respect; they really do.

      That's interesting; I would have expected the rate of cloud formation to increase with a higher temperature. But that's not the case? It looks like I need to read more about it.

      Delete
    25. "Here is a hint: It is not because the scientists have some kind of a conspiracy. It is because of how scientists and academic professors are given tenure. More prestige means more grant money, more grant money + prestige leads to tenure. You get prestige by publishing in prestigious journals, like Nature."

      More on this: I suspect the way that this system operates comes from an accident of how it managed to evolve in history more than by design. I haven't found anything that has convinced me otherwise, yet.

      Anonymous #2

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    26. Anonymous #2: I have the same problem with Journals. I am not going to pay $18 for a single article and I cannot afford a subscription to each one (hundreds of dollars per year per journal). An easy answer is the public library. Most libraries can obtain copies of journal articles if they don't actually have the journal.

      And, this is the same reason why they didn't just copy the graph straight from the journal article. That is a copyright violation. But, they can make their own based on the original.

      Delete
    27. Galileo started tenure. He wanted a guarantee that he would not lose his job if his work was unpopular. He was in such high demand he got it. And, now, we have a long tradition of it all. It has evolved into 'publish or perish'.

      Delete
    28. So Galileo started it all... that's kind of funny, actually.

      Anonymous #2

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    29. I remember reading that in a biography on him. It is kind of funny when you think about it. Boy, he was one big trouble maker.

      Delete
    30. Oh, ah, wow, that paper by Dr. Hansen is 1968. Not the 70's.

      Sorry,

      Anonymous #2

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    31. "so the outgoing radiation should be less than, or perhaps a function of the inbound radiation"

      Oi, this is only true "dayside", because "nightside" that logic would be reversed.

      So I would guess that a climate sensitivity parameter that is about 4 *C/(W/m^2) would produce the general effect that the IPCC is so afraid of. 2 *C/(W/m^2) would produce half that effect. 1 *C/(W/m^2) would produce about half of that. 0.5 *C/(W/m^2) would be so low as to be very little of an issue?

      But the IPCC thinks it might be as high as 4.5 *C/(W/m^2)?

      Gaseous water should be a pretty strong effect; right? There is more water on this world than you can reasonably shake a stick at.

      So if you get more water vapour with higher temperatures then that should enhance the temperature further, right?

      Anonymous #2

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    32. But if you have the same atmosphere, and if kFor, the constant for the outgoing radiation on the "dayside" is the same as the kFor constant on the "nightside" then the *only* thing that I can think of that would cause a net change in planetary temperature from this radiation balance over long period of time would be if the lingering radiation on the nightside continued to accumulate over a long period of time.

      I could think of an experiment that could help work this issue with clouds out.

      Let's say that you had a CCD camera that was keyed for a specific wavelength of light, some wavelength that the atmosphere doesn't normally produce. You create a station with this CCD camera and you put a pressure and temperature sensor in the same place as the camera. Then you take a light source that produces the same wavelength as what the CCD camera is meant to detect. Then you would need a clock.

      First you would need to figure out what cloud cover looks like in your data, for day and for night. Then you would need to just keep this thing running; you know, automate the process of data collection.

      But, maybe you wouldn't actually need to do that. Because we have measuring satellites. If they can detect clouds, then that is great; we know that they can detect outgoing radiation. We have ground stations that record the temperature and that have clocks.

      Analyzing the data with some combination of the ground stations and the satellites could tell you roughly what the radiation balance should be, dayside and nightside.

      Hmm... That could be fun... it might just be a data-crunching exercise...

      Anonymous #2

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    33. This is kinda cool. If my math is right, this is 2 hrs and 25 minutes of real time that is covered by the time-lapse in about 4 minutes and 50 seconds. Naturally this fellow didn't record the time. It looks pretty close to midday. at the beginning.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxB_QUnyiug

      It seems pretty clear to me that the water vapour is rising from the ground and condensing into clouds higher up. The "Lapse Rate" assures lower temperatures at higher altitudes, on average (as long as you don't get *too* high). These are the dynamics that lead to cloud formation. There must be a balance equation that those goofy things obey. What the heck is it?

      Anonymous #2

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    34. So it looks like the "IPCC Mean Model" did quite well relative to CMIP3.

      LW -> Long Wave
      SW -> Short Wave

      CRE -> Cloud Radiative Effect??

      LW CRE
      SW CRE
      CF --> Cloud Fraction??
      PR --> Precipitation Rate??

      I see. Table 1 just shows how much improvement there has been since CMIP3.

      For the Mean Model the "Ratio Standard Deviation" looks like the only statistical parameter that seems suspect. I think it means that the standard deviation became higher.

      If so, the standard deviation became higher for the "IPCC Mean Model" when it came to calculating "Net Flux", "Cloud Fraction", and "Precipitation Rate". And all of these parameters seem to have been run over old datasets. I think I understand.

      The Root Mean Square *did* improve for almost all variables.

      There could be many reasons for these types of results. After you create the representation of the model in mathematical form; you need to figure out what the constants are in the equation that you created that represents the model. This is the most computationally expensive part of building the model probably, because if you treat the whole thing as one great big linear equation; the number of parameters in your model might be "M", and the number of data sets might be "N". If N is large (and it usually should be), then you end up with a matrix of size: "MxN".

      We give this matrix the symbol, "A".
      We know that the matrix has a Tranpose, "A_T"
      We have "x", which represents the constants in your linear model.
      We have "b", which represents the Temperature sets from your climate data.

      This becomes an equation:
      A*x = b

      We cannot solve an "MxN" matrix A in this form so we do this:

      (A_T*A)*x = (A_T*b)

      Then we would need to invert the expression. This is the part that is computationally *really* expensive.

      Now let's see what was said in the IPCC report regarding this...

      Anonymous #2

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    35. If Cumulus clouds generally formed in the day and reflected oncoming radiation by the time the day was at it's warmest, then if they generally, usually disintegrated at night; then the net behavior of the clouds would be a negative forcing on the temperature.

      But would it be strong enough to offset the effect from the CO2 radiation balance?

      Je ne sais pas...

      Anonymous #2

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    36. But, what about clouds that form at night as the atmosphere cools?

      Delete
    37. "But, what about clouds that form at night as the atmosphere cools?"

      To be honest, I didn't know that they did that...

      Anonymous #2

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    38. Dr. Keating,

      But, now that you mention that; I could see how it would work physically...

      Anonymous #2

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    39. Anyways, that's enough for now.

      I think I'm going to play with the csound library. See if I can get little synthesizers to work on my computer. That sounds like fun!

      Don't treat *any* of my stuff as a submission. I think that trying to disprove global warming is a fools errand. I might be wrong, but...

      I've already been a way too verbose.

      Anyways, good luck evaluating everything on your queue.

      Anonymous #2

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    40. I think you figured out just how difficult the modeling can be.

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    41. Yep. Modeling large, highly interconnected, and fundamentally chaotic systems is pretty difficult.

      That includes the weather. That includes the climate. That includes the financial backbone of our economy.

      Remember that the "Price of Electricity" can be similar, in this regard, to the "Climate Sensitivity" parameter in the radiation balance equation.

      "Climate Sensitivity" can tweak how high the "Temperature' on Earth can get.

      "Cost of Electricity" can tweak how high the "Cost of Living" can get.

      So while saving the climate, just be careful not to destroy our livelihoods in the process.

      Please?

      Anonymous #2

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    42. I had intended to stop bothering you, but after finding this:

      http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2006/2006_Schmidt_etal_1.pdf

      ... I couldn't resist posting it. This is a *really* good description of the meat behind the models.

      I am starting to develop a healthy respect for James Hansen, and for Gavin Schmidt both.

      Dr. Hansen leans a bit towards the activist direction, but... it seems to be because be believes that we might potentially trigger a Venus like scenario here on Earth. So I suppose that is understandable. Of course, he says that it should happen over a scale of centuries, but still; if it did happen, we would be toast... literally.

      Then there are folks like Richard Lindzen, who doesn't appear to be as concerned about the likelihood of this scenario.

      I also found something that mentioned that many of the models are assuming that the net effect of clouds is a "positive forcing". I won't track it down, but... I thought that it was interesting.

      It would be really interesting to work on one of these models.

      Anonymous #2

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  31. Mr. Keating... my submission on Page IV is to be considered ALONG with the submission in the provided LINK. The reason I resubmitted is due to the fact that you had requested the "Scientific Method" in refuting the premise of "Man Caused Global Warming". I did not want there to be any "loophole" of claiming that my submission was not in the "Scientific Method" format. The submission here on Page IV is purely and undeniably in the proper format utilizing proper scientific methodology. I do reference my linked article which should be used as an additional "Background Research" portion of the submission! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  32. Sry direct link is this one (my submission): http://www.petitionproject.org/gw_article/Review_Article_HTML.php

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have received your submission and will respond to it as quickly as I can. It is called "$30,000 Challenge Submission - Petition Project" and you can follow my progress here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

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  33. MY COMMENT AND YOUR REPLY FROM PAGE 2 WERE:
    Dear Professor Keating
    The widely vaunted premise is that humans discharge Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere thereby causing the earth to heat unusually.

    However, conventional science teaches us that the concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere can be predicted by Henry's Gas Law:

    "At a constant temperature, the amount of a given gas that dissolves in a given type and volume of liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas in equilibrium with that liquid."

    Henry's Gas Law effectively states that the Carbon Dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is wholly dependent on the average sea temperatures.

    Unless we can prove that humans were directly responsible for increasing the temperature of the oceans, there is no possibility that humans have anything to do with the slowly rising concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, whether that rise causes the earth to warm or not.

    The recently experienced slight lift in atmospheric Carbon Dioxide concentration is entirely due to a very small rise in average sea temperatures, which is most probably caused by minor changes in the level of submarine volcanic and tectonic activity. My backup presentation notes on this subject are available at http://www.bosmin.com/HenrysLaw.pdf with a more detailed presentation at http://www.bosmin.com/SeaChange.pdf
    Best regards, BobBeatty@bosmin.com
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    Replies

    Christopher KeatingJuly 6, 2014 at 10:13 PM

    The oceans are heating from the top down, not the bottom up. That is enough to debunk everything you just said.

    My Reply is:
    Traditional science says "hot water rises", so send the cheque.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry, even with that premise, the water would still have to be warmest near the energy source. If it was being heated by volcanoes and hot water vents, the hottest ocean water would be found down deep. In fact, the coldest water is found deep and the hottest is found at the surface. The temperature profile is consistent with heating occurring from above. It is being heated by the Sun and the atmosphere is acting as a blanket to keep the heat from radiating away as IR radiation.

      All you have provided is some statements without any scientific proof that what you say is valid and that it affects the issue of man made global warming, one way or another. Submit scientific evidence to support your claim and I will be glad to consider this a submission, although this issue has already by discussed in other submissions.

      Delete
    2. No. The hottest water is found down deep and is reported to range from 60 to 464 oC at thermal vents. Lava erupting from submarine volcanic vents emerges at temperatures ranging from 700 to 1200 oC. This effect happens spasmodically all along the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The cold water you refer to is replacing the rising hot water as it does in a pot heating water on a stove.

      As you say, the sun also heats the surface water and seasonal variations cause the sun to warm and cool sea surface waters alternately between the two hemispheres. This results in carbon dioxide migrating between the hemispheres each year, as shown on the "saw tooth" NOAA graphs. My calculation shows this migrating flux is around 1.7Gt per year as shown in the "seachange report" referred to previously. However, the underlying up trend in the NOAA graph is caused by a recent slow increase in background heat coming from some of the many possible submarine sources.

      The main flaw in your AGW argument is that the sea has to heat BEFORE there is any increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, as per Henry's Law, so CO2 cannot affect the earth's surface temperature, if in fact it does, until after the sea has heated.

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    3. I have made this a submission. It is called "$30,000 Challenge Submission - Ocean Warming is Due to Volcanoes" and you can track my progress on this page here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

      I will get to it as quickly as I can but there are a lot of submissions ahead of yours, so please be patient.

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    4. Christopher KeatingJuly 6, 2014 at 10:13 PM

      Just a comment, Christopher, you write:

      "The oceans are heating from the top down, not the bottom up. That is enough to debunk everything you just said."

      Well, now-a-days the oceans can do magic. You see, the need to explain how come we appear to have a temperature stagnation these years is attempted by claiming that the temperatures of the 700-2000m layer is warming at least as fast as the 0-700m layer.

      This is something quite... new.. but anything seems possible when we need to explain where all the supposed heat is hiding out.. ;-)

      K.R. Frank Lansner

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    5. Thanks Christopher for adding my submission to http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html If you add the filter "Henry's Law", which is probably the most critical existing science in this discussion - you will find your To Do list shortens remarkably. Best regards, BobBeatty@bosmin.com

      Delete
  34. When human beings extract and burn fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and others, we cause/trigger the release of carbon Dioxide and other heat-trapping “greenhouse gasses” into the atmosphere.

    To get going with my latest finding on this issue; on this “challenge”, greenhouse gases undergo three main steps. To make it simple, let’s start with step 1

    Step 1:

    When gases are released from industries into the air, gases rise up. This rising of gasses occurs because of the process buoyancy, in which indoor-to-outdoor air density is different. Basically, at this stage, it involves greenhouse gases to move from bodies (either from cars, industries, trains etc.) into the atmosphere.

    Step 2:

    It was scientifically proven that the more you rise above the earth surface, the cooler you become. And this temperature almost drops at the rate of about 6.5 ˚C per km of the increased height inside the troposphere. When these emissions get into the atmosphere at their very top altitudes, they separate themselves in layers. These layers are made because of density differences of the gases and their chemical properties. For example, carbon dioxide gas would rise up to the approximate altitude and any other carbon dioxide coming will just combine/join that group right there. And then any other different greenhouse gas like Nitrous oxide will form a different layer that is either above/below that layer of carbon dioxide.

    When all this is done, gases undergo a process called gas-condensation.

    This process involves when gas particles are initiated by the formation of atomic/molecular clusters of that species within its gaseous volume. These clusters are usually small and form more like a dust, but at a very high altitude. When these gases form this dust like a cloud, we currently refer it to as global warming, instead of referring to it as a “gas cloud” because it is responsible of trapping heat between the atmosphere and earth surface.

    Step 3

    In this step, the local portion of the atmosphere on which the gas cloud was condensing forms small particles that actually fall off from that high altitude towards the earth surface. Too bad that it does not reach the earth surface, but at a certain height, these particles actually combine/mix with the surrounding air particles and forms a normal air. The gas-cloud that was forming global warming (acting like an earth heat trapping blanket) does no longer exist, but now it’s part of the cool fresh air surrounding us here.

    Steps are now completed.

    To make it clear, greenhouse gases that are in the atmosphere precipitates out from the atmosphere. It does not stay there for the rest of the time to continue with the warming process. To scientifically prove this, it was proven that there are greenhouse gases that are referred to as a” short-lived greenhouse gases” which are the gases with a shorter atmospheric lifetime because they precipitates fairly quickly from the atmosphere. This is because it was proven that they do not stay there for a long time. It’s only that none of the scientist these days realized about the precipitation of the greenhouse gases that are exhaled into the atmosphere by the people.

    In conclusion to this, we have known that nature itself has a way of controlling the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that after a thick cloud of greenhouse gases that people release from their factories and other machines is in the atmosphere, it precipitates out. Therefore, global warming is not forever. Just for example if the day time is cloudy enough at a specific location, the temperature increases in that region because clouds have trapped in the heat. But after the rain, everything becomes normal. Same applies to the effect on global warming.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Your submission has been accepted and I will get to it as quickly as I can. Your submission is called, "$30,000 Challenge Submission - Greenhouse Gases Are Cleaned Out" and you can track my progress here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/p/challlenge-submissions.html

      Delete
  35. Good luck to you Dr Keating, a worthy (if somewhat onerous) cause.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you. I'm hoping something good will come of all of this.

      Delete
    2. I have to be honest Christopher, this openness and tollerance you seem to show towards people with very different views from your own is so rare. Even though you try to pinpoint that there are no proofs against AGW and so on, your approach so far is both kind and open.

      The thruth is, that if your kind attitude and openness was more normal for the AGW community there would be hardly any disagreements in the debate. there would have been fine dialog and both some "alarmist" viewpoints and "sceptic" viewpoints would have been ditched long ago. There would have been a real "consensus" and a lot of people just enjoying science - and appreciating what ever the outcome of real debate would bring..
      So far you show the way.
      K.R. Frank Lansner

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  36. Mr. Keating, I posted on earlier pages regarding the ice core records and my contention that they do not and can not be continuous records of past climate and are in fact the leftover segments of a much larger glacial cycle. In your response, you stated that the ice core records were not that important, yet you have since posted them in at least one of your challenge responses. So I would like to officially post my submission. You can find my theoretical calculation of past climate that shows cooling for at least the past 70,000 years.
    www.theiceageishere.blogspot.com
    I also offer proof as corroborative evidence, a sea level highstand over the past 100,000 years, at 81,000 years ago. This evidence directly refutes the ice core data as currently interpreted and backs up my claim.
    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/860.abstract

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    1. To be clear, you challenged me to a bet that I could not prove the ice core record does not have some interruptions in it. I view things like that to be attempts to hijack the blog and basically ignore them. I would be surprised if I said the ice core is not important, because it certainly is. As I recall, I said we have other proxies for the temperature other than ice cores. However, as far as I know, the ice cores are our best source (possibly our only source) of CO2 levels in the past. That is because little bubbles of gas get trapped in the ice and can analyze them.

      I will be glad to accept your submission, but what are you trying to do? How does disputing the ice core record relate to the issue of man made global warming today? If you were correct in your assertions (and I am most certainly not saying you are) the best you could do is confuse the issue of paleoclimatology. But, I don't see how that would have any effect on the issue of man made global warming today.

      Delete
  37. This is an actual submission and not an attempt to hijack your blog. To be more clear, I don't believe it is possible to disprove man-made climate change. The average person puts out as much heat as a 100 watt incandescent light bulb. So the mere existence of a single person putting out that much heat over the course of their lifetime would change the temperature of the earth. One gazillionth of one gazillionth of one degree, perhaps. But would that not count as man-made climate change?

    What I am challenging is the assumption that humans, by means of CO2 could significantly change the climate of the earth, and buck the much larger climate cycle of which the ice core records only show a small part (because they are incomplete). I will add to this that in those sections of ice which remain, CO2 is shown to follow changes in temperature by roughly 800 years. The ice core records alone show that changes in CO2 are the effect of changes in temperature and not the cause.

    As to other proxies, I provided you a link to the best of those proxies, "speleothem encrustations from coastal caves on the island of Mallorca" to back up my claim. That proxy data matches what I have put forward as the larger cycle, filling in the gap when the earth was much warmer and the ice sheets were melting away.

    ReplyDelete
  38. Also, you state:

    "If you were correct in your assertions (and I am most certainly not saying you are) the best you could do is confuse the issue of paleoclimatology."

    No Mr. Keating, what I am pointing out is that paleoclimatology is already deeply confused due to a single wrong assumption that ice cores can be used as continuous records of past climate. I am attempting to end that confusion and make sense of it all. Isn't the point of studying past climate to better understand climate of the present and future? Isn't that why ice cores have always been central to this debate?

    ReplyDelete
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    1. You make several bad assumptions. We do not just get a single ice core and be done. Thousands of ice cores are collected and compared to each other to ensure they are consistent. That record is then compared to the record from other proxies, such as cores from the ocean floor, lake bed sediments, coral reef depositions, etc. All of these proxies must be consistent with each other. In other words, we cannot have sea floor cores say one thing and ice cores say something completely different. Your work would have to be able to explain all of that data from different sources that gives the same results.

      But, still, what does any of this have to do with man made climate change of today. If you want to make the claim that past natural cycles shows this is just a natural cycle, that claim has been made and debunked (many times, even). You can see my posting on that issue here:

      http://dialoguesonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/2014/06/naturally-occurring-cycles-are-not.html

      Now, about the issue of CO2 lagging temperature increase. First, you say the ice core data is not good, then you use it as evidence. Which is it? If you are going to claim it isn't any good, then you can't use it as evidence for anything. But, as it turns out, the CO2 record strongly supports the man made global warming scenario. Something triggered an initial temperature increase in the natural cycles of the past. As the temperature increased, CO2 was released and that led to additional temperature increases. But, today, the CO2 level is actually leading the temperature increases. Something is different. The naturally occurring trigger did not occur. Instead, we did. Our efforts were what led to increased CO2 levels, and that led to increased temperature.

      This has all been discussed in previous submissions. If you have anything additional to add that would provide a proof that AGW is not real, I will consider it a new submission. But, I have already received over 50 submissions. Even if you take away the really crazy ones, just about everything you can think of has already been submitted.

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    2. I am well aware that there are many different proxies. But the various ice core records don't even match each other, let alone ocean sediments or anything else. It sounds as if you are trying to fall back on some mythical consensus. If these proxies did match, you would be able to answer my original question. When did the last ice age come to an end? When did that process start? When was the "trigger" pulled as you put it? How long did it last, and when did it end? The various ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland show this to have started anywhere from 18,000 to 11,000 years ago, and occurred over several thousand years, or as little as one year. There is no consensus. Richard Alley claims it occurred over as little as 10 years. Read about it here:
      http://earthsky.org/earth/richard-alley-on-abrupt-climate-change
      A Danish team drilling on Greenland claims it took only one year! Read about that here:
      http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/ECE611464/danish-arctic-research-dates-ice-age/
      Paleoclimatology as it is today is a field of science in total chaos. Its main focus is trying to reconcile why none of its proxy data matches. But now the warmists want to add another level of absurdity and claim that CO2 was somehow the cause of the earth coming out of an ice age.
      The earth did not shoot out of an ice age. It gradually warmed and gradually cooled, and when it was warmer part of the ice sheet melted away. Eventually it cooled enough for new ice to form over much older ice formed at much colder temperatures, giving the illusion of a massive spike in temperature. I have given you a link to the proxy data that proves this, and you have responded with yet more vague answers.

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  39. Iceman/Christopher, just a comment:

    A challenge to the ice cores are the so-called klathrdrates (spelled?) Under a certain pressue ice+CO2 creates this kind of mineral. Then when the cores are lossened during the drilling sudenly pressure falls dramatically and thousands of micro explsions occurs letting some of the CO2 escape.
    Summa: lower layers thus never show CO2 concentrations that matches our day values and can easily give a wrong impression of the situation.
    Im fully awara that there is critic and disagreement on these matters (first metioned by Polish scientis (Ohh what was his name? Jarawowsky or somthing, can look it up) but i have so far not seen a real solid bullet proof argumentation against this problem.

    K.R. Frank Lansner

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  40. Stay out of it, Frank. Mr. Keating called for this fight. He can fight his own battle.

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    1. Actually, I didn't pick this fight at all. The blog is about global warming and the challenge is about man made global warming. Paleoclimatology is interesting and important, but it isn't the topic here and I keep trying to keep the conversation on that topic. While I appreciate your comments and the references you provided, I have to ask (again), what does this have to do with man made global warming?

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    2. Dear Iceman,
      On the volcanic issue I have to agree with you, its gravely underestimated what effects comes from thousands of large volcanues in the ocean.
      And to say how exactly the temperature profile should be - as Keating does - is a simplification because it will vary from place to place, be dependent on currents etc.etc.
      No my points was in short:
      Keatin claims that upper waters are warming most, but hes allies in stead claim that the 700-2000 m layer globally warms at least as fast as the 0-700m.
      So there is simply just a crack in the info... Just wanted to point that out.

      Ill stay out.. :-)
      K.R. Frank Lansner

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