A place for comments that would otherwise disrupt sensible conversations.
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2040 Responses to "The Bore Hole"
Thomas O'Reillysays
#248 Ray Ladbury – I never said anything like this – “science isn’t worth anything.” – you did. Please do not put words in my mouth. In fact I have saying the complete opposite. You must have missed that. 8^)
Thomas O'Reillysays
#238 Lawrence “Is it any wonder governments are not heeding the scientific advice.”
None at all. The scientific advice is occluded with conflicting advice and uncertainties and a lack of clarity and “disclaimers” of “but I really don’t know, and don;t really want to say what I really think.” Exceptions prove the rule.
btw the +2C figure was a political decision made at the UNFCCC, which is controlled by the governments not the scientists.
Anyone who knows Climate Science will know that a temperature figure as a goal is self-defeating and counterproductive because it is npt definable accurately with CERTAINTY what it actually is, from one ytear, from one decade to the next.
iow it was INTENTIONAL to set such a disputable vague “goal” that could be doubted by all. With no Climate Scientist being able to argue the point until long AFTER the 2C was passed, which is of course too late.
So you will see other comments by me speaking about CO2e ppm MUST be the Yardstick, and nothing else. That’s measurable accurately, it’s rational, it’s clear, and the meaning of what it means is also logically clear.
Why 30,000 Climate Scientists have not screamed their lungs out about this FALSE GOAL since it happened is beyond reason and logical …. they have ignored every Philosophical Principle that underpins all of Science and Mathematics and Logic.
People, including talented and knowledgeable climate scientists, ignore human psychology at their peril. Well, that’s my opinion at least.
Thomas O'Reillysays
# 248 Steve Fish – please provide a link to the comments you are quoting, so everyone can view those in the proper context. After that I will look at your specific comments/questions. Otherwise, I really do not see the point of responding.
I think I have been clear enough. It’s also a comments page, not a peer reviewed paper I am presenting here. So fwiw I do know the difference between “a projection and a prediction” and also a “forecast” and also an “estimate” and also a “budget” figure too already.
Surely you and others are quite capable of looking up research papers on cognitive sciences, psychology, communication, logic, and the notion of counterproductive approaches to problem solving and more. Honestly, I am not offering to be a free educator here, but to ask a couple of questions and make the odd comment fwiw. (I did make an exception in listing the definitions for “Counterproductive” as a help to others who didn’t seem to grasp what a prior comment was about, not sure if it got through.)
To me what I have said is obvious, whether one agrees or doesn’t with my point of view, so a mountain of evidence being cited in papers etc. or another 10 comments being made, will not convince anyone who isn’t really that interested in hearing what’s been said in the first place. human psychology:101 8^)
Thomas O'Reillysays
A few may find browsing the following Papers and Books worthy of their time.
#100 Jim, yes no problems with what you say. The 400ppm CO2 is only an “example”. behind that is all CO2e variations and drivers. eg land use change obviously has an effect on both CO2 and CO2e levels in the atmosphere, even if the dynamics are not necessarily a direct “emmission” of same.
My point is really more about the only way to effectively “monitor” a genuine yardstick or goal is to primarily use atmospheric concentrations. That will capture all the swings and roundabouts far more effectively that say temp increases or actual energy use calculations which are flaky at best.
Ocean acidity changes would be a good secondary yardstick, not too difficult to measure and record over time.
Trying to define what is or isn’t “natural variation” or what the degree of “uncertainty” is from one paper to the next, or estimating what sea level rise will be in 2100, to me seems very counterproductive in conveying the seriousness of the problem. These kinds of specific papers that typically end up with the authors saying “but we don’t really know”, while important from a scientific long term research view, only ever get in the way of definitive action/response by nations.
They leave the everyday Voter and Politician lost at sea without a rudder or a sail. Human psychology research shows that people cannot make any kind of rational judgment on this basis. Therefore, the current reality. Outlier ‘AGW/CC deniers’ simply take advantage of this pre-existing situation to sow their own ideological or religious world views.
Deniers, corporate and political self-interests did not create the situation they use to push their own distorted views. In my informed opinion.
Which is why I question the relevance and usefulness of this paper being discussed by Stefan here. By way of example only. Typically this leads to more of this http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obnubilation and not clarity of awareness or logical thought or judgement about the facts and truth of AGW/CC = counterproductive in my view.
Thomas O'Reillysays
#99 Kevin “and also repurposing RC as pure policy forum.” Kevin I have no idea where you get that idea from. I have certainly not suggested anything of the kind. I have been specically making some comments about the efficacy of this article and the focus on the subject matter, at the expense of what should be clear and consistent but isn’t, 25 years after Rio. And I have given some reasons why I think that is so, and a few “simple examples” being suggested how the emphasis of reporting climate science needs to change.
Which includes the actual words they use in their “published papers” and especially in their Summaries and other public articles about their papers. Not one word have I said about “policy”. I believe I have been very narrow, relevant to the topic, and extremely focused in what I have been speaking about. I cannot control how people misinterpret that. Even when it is Stefan doing it.
Really, it’s not my problem. I made a few comments that I think are very relevant. If others disagree, ok, they disagree. Nothing I can do about that Kevin. People can say whatever they wish. Doesn’t make it true or accurate, but it could be.
Thomas O'Reillysays
#97 zebra, hi. I just made a post on the UV thread which simply lists a number of science papers and related info regarding the issues I have raised. It may not be published, for whatever reasons, and if so, well you’re on your own. Sorry. 8^)
#99 Kevin says “But under “counterproductive” I would class trying to repurpose the climate science community as [full time] communicators”
This is precisely where we disagree Kevin. Very clearly put on your part, with the exception of “full time” which doesn’t belong with what I think or have said.
It is very valid that climate scientists, all scientists, operate and communicate together with their own “scientific jargon” and academic/industry norms. That’s just fine.
But the moment they step out into the public domain they must be effective communicators on an entirely different level, if their work is to be worthwhile and not a waste of their time, energy and effort. Especially in regard to AGW/CC, for obvious reasons I would think.
Some scientists are blessed with a natural ability to communicate with the public. There are many examples of this going back to Albert Einstein himself, and even some Ancient Greeks. Now even if that means that a climate scientist has to do at least a year of post-graduate study on Public Communication skills (written and oral) BEFORE they put their name to a published AGW/CC Paper, then so be it.
In my view their work is usually “counterproductive” today unless they can explain it in a clear way that is “consumable” through an article for the general public, to reporters in the media, and the politicians, plus be able to handle an Interview setting with the media as well. These matters should be a mandatory prerequisite at every University or similar body that hosts AGW/CC research.
This isn’t some brand new outlier extremist idea either. There’s even been articles and papers and talks that have addressed this issue for decades now. No one has listened, nothing has changed despite ongoing failures.
Prof Peter Ward speaks to the issue here, plainly and bluntly, with a PLAN to solve it: https://youtu.be/HP_Fvs48hb4?t=40m35s [a short 4 minutes is all it takes]
One doesn’t need to be a paleontologist or a climate scientist to recognize both the logic and the wisdom of his words, in my view.
But I truly believe (based on my own research, experience and good sense) those that reject this out of hand are a key cause of the “hard problem” over AGW/CC and not genuinely a part of the solutions.
I’d even suggest they are in fact living in denial of the truth of it. This is why the ‘deniers and special interests’ have been so successful for so long at undermining the work of climate scientists. It’s been way too easy to drive holes through it all in the public domain from the get go.
Gregsays
It seems to me that your answer to “What can we say about the effects of climate change on South Pacific tropical cyclones?” is that you have an hypothesis that climate change will intensify them, and some models that back that hypothesis. Maybe it’s a very good hypothesis, and maybe they are very good models. Only time will tell. But at the moment we have zero in the way of any convincing empirical evidence. Zero, zip, nada. If anything, what little data we have is pointing down. So anyone attributing a cyclone to climate change is talking out of their hat, and it doesn’t aid anyone’s credibility to say otherwise. Sometimes you have to acknowledge your limitations.
Thomas O'Reillysays
#5 Chuck Larlham – There you go Chuck, you’ve read the replies yes? Now you’re expected to simply run along after effectively being re-educated to a better way of thinking by the professionals. Nothing to see here. 8^)
Thomas O'Reillysays
#264 Hank Roberts – are you trying to get yourself dumped into the Bore Hole now too Hank? You, you, you cherry-picking plagiarist you! 8^)
Matt Skaggssays
Windchaser wrote:
“I hate to say it, but the inevitable response from “skeptics” will be that the climate science community only regularly blocks new conservative ideas.”
The idea does not have to be “conservative” (not even sure what that means for a scientific hypothesis). For an idea to get blocked and buried, it has to be a challenge to a paradigm deeply rooted in consensus, and upon which many prominent scientists have staked their reputations. Early anthropogenic effects on the climate are the opposite of that, they reinforce the paradigm that GHGs and other human-induced changes can alter the climate to a substantial degree.
‘Science advances one funeral at a time.’ Max Planck
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
That agriculture influences climate is a simple idea that doesn’t challenge a paradigm. Agriculture still influences climate in a big way – in fact provides an important mitigating mechanism while building global food security.
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain. This article reviews abrupt change in simple systems, in a 1-D climate model and in the climate system at multi-decadal timescales.
The acceptance of simple ideas that don’t challenge a paradigm is far from a realistic measure of the progress of complex and challenging ideas.
Rod Bsays
I think this is a welcome exception to the rule. The standard modus operandi is for global warming protagonists and antagonists to trash the hell out of each other so much and so often that it is not given second thought or retrospective. In this short civilized post appear the autonomous natural comments, “clever paid science denial’ and “Science deniers of… global warming… back up their intellectually vacant arguments… ”
It seems that mutual trashing does exist in the publishing arena but is strongly mitigated, which is good.
Salamanosays
Comments #1 and #4 are salient here…
I don’t see much inherent obstruction to publishing this kind of idea in the perceived ‘monolithic’ environment that is claimed to exist in the publishing world.
The ‘mainstream’ view that is claimed to be ‘intently imposed’ is one of humans unassailable influence on the climate system, and that influence leading to self-destructive consequences that require significant remediation.
I do not see how your paper runs contrary this, merely proposing new elements to the running human-forcing narrative (even expanding it). Why would this not get a hearing, even if it’s met with skepticism?
Is there a better example out there where someone truly challenges what is being described (as above) as the monolithic “97%” consensus, and yet does not experience editorial obstruction? I bet Roger Pielke Jr would lend credence to your argument, but ironically he is seen as too “controversial” with his emerging ideas, even as they are often the same ones contained within IPCC reports.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
This is the reality. Complexity theory suggests that the system is pushed past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift. Climate in this theory of abrupt change is an emergent property of the shift in global energies as the system settles down into a new climate state. The traditional definition of climate sensitivity as a temperature response to changes in CO2 makes sense only in periods between climate shifts – as climate changes at shifts are internally generated. Climate evolution is discontinuous at the scale of decades and longer.
In the way of true science – it suggests at least decadal probabilistic predictability. The current cool Pacific Ocean state seems more likely than not to persist for 20 to 30 years from 2002. The flip side is that – beyond the next few decades – the evolution of the global mean surface temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum (Swanson and Tsonis, 2009).
In Michael Ghil’s 1-D model sensitivity in the system is dynamic. Ghil’s model shows that climate sensitivity (γ) is variable. It is the change in temperature (ΔT) divided by the change in the control variable (Δμ) – the tangent to the curve as shown above. Sensitivity increases moving down the upper curve to the left towards the bifurcation and becomes arbitrarily large at the instability. The problem in a chaotic climate then becomes not one of quantifying climate sensitivity in a smoothly evolving climate but of predicting the onset of abrupt climate shifts and their implications for climate and society. The problem of abrupt climate change on multi-decadal scales is of the most immediate significance.
There are approaches to predicting tipping points in a dynamically complex system such as climate – by looking at ‘slowing down’ – but these are in their infancy.
It is the most significant climate paper this century by far.
John Vonderlinsays
Bill,
Wasn’t your “early AGW” theory landing in fertile ground, despite a mainstream agnosticism towards its details? If tiny amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases could be shown to have left a climatological signal thousands of years ago doesn’t that strongly support AGW today and in fact also strongly support CAGW? If a few tens of millions engaged in minimal agricultural and other enterprises started detectably changing our climate, then 7 billion engaged in the present multi-faceted human CO2 volcano surely must be dooming us to an ugly future. My opinion is that you weren’t rocking the boat by singing the wrong song, but rather singing the song the choir leaders wanted to hear, just in a higher register.
With this as my view I’m sure you can understand why I think you did not demonstrate: “Yet, my last 10 years of personal experience refute this claim.”
Paul Matthewssays
If anyone is genuinely interested in the reasons why people are sceptical about climate change they could read my recently published paper on the subject.
I think there is something very wrong when scientists attempt to turn a theory into a religion. Legitimate skeptics cannot be tolerated, so they are transmogrified into “deniers,” i.e., heretics, who must be caste beyond the pale. Or else “re-educated” to recognize the error of their ways.
Mao and his cronies attempted something very similar during the Cultural Revolution by punishing anyone whose thinking was not sufficiently “correct” — and, yes, it was a very successful program, while it lasted. Is that really the way you want to go?
Looks to me like the most interesting comments can be found on the bore hole. Maybe it’s time to consider censoring that as well.
Joe Publicsays
” … we do look at how the fossil fuel industry has funded climate science denial – that is an important part of the picture.”
In the interests of ‘balance’, will the funding of warmist propaganda by Renewables companies & millionaires also be investigated?
MatthewRMarlersays
17 John Cook: We cannot properly understand climate science denial,
Back to my earlier question: Who denies climate science? And as I wrote, why does anyone believe that the water vapor feedback will be positive? (as opposed to entertaining the hypothesis that the water vapor feedback might be positive; or might be negative given the evidence about rainfall increases with increasing temp.) Will you address both belief and doubt equally, or will you take positive water vapor feedback as “true”, and doubt about it as due to a cognitive deficit? Similarly with the apparent 950 year period in the Vostok ice core data: will “belief” that it represents a persistent ongoing process, or “doubt” that it represents a persistent ongoing process be assigned the status as resulting from a cognitive defect?
Rob Ellisonsays
[Response: This might help. – gavin]
I had Googled it – an exercise in labelling that is not terribly interesting and not worth highlighting.
What we have instead is actual civility – in the face of smarmy calumny – supported by diverse sources of leading edge science.
The core concept involves climate shifts at 20 to 30 year intervals. The implications of climate as a dynamical system include dynamic sensitivity at shifts that can result in dramatic change in as little as a decade. It has significance for both near term climate prediction and for policy.
This science seems so well established that it it has a reasonable claim to be the dominant climate paradigm. Yet it also seems to be a difficult idea – a threshold idea in terms of pedagogy.
#17 “scientific research into how ideology biases how people process evidence.”
There is no science of ideology, nor can there be. Ideology is in essence a philosophical concept. One cannot argue that someone else’s thinking is ideologically determined without opening one’s own thinking to the same critique. The opposition ideological vs. scientific cannot be maintained, not because science is “only another form of ideology,” as is sometimes argued, but because ideology is the taken for granted infrastructure that necessarily grounds all subject positions.
In the words of Althusser,
“what thus seems to take place outside ideology, . . . in reality takes place in ideology [….] That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, “I am ideological.”” https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/modules/althusserideology.html
In other words, the claim that some special privilege puts one above ideology and in touch with some transcendent truth is, in essence, what ideology is all about. That certainty is precisely its effect.
And this problem is what lies at the heart of the dispute over climate change especially, as both sides insist that the other is “being ideological,” while in fact both are.
Victorsays
#21 “. . . a firmly established scientific consensus among tens of thousands of accredited active scientific researchers and every single reputable scientific organization on the planet.”
Well, first of all the nature of the consensus is open to dispute, as there is a wide range of views expressed by individual scientists on this matter — and a significant number of scientists are in what you would call the “denier” camp.
Secondly, the consensus of which you speak was formed, for the most part, during the last 20 years or so of the 20th century, a period when there was indeed a strong (apparent) correlation between rapidly increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and rapidly rising temperatures — a correlation that has long since ceased to exist.
If you would want to do a scientific study pertaining to the psychology of climate change, a good place to begin would be an inquiry into the tendency for people to hold firmly onto an established belief, even after it can no longer be maintained. As I put it in a recent blog post, “Once a mindset develops, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to alter.” http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2015/03/occams-razor-double-edged-blade-part-2.html
Matthew R Marlersays
17, John Cook: As Naomi Oreskes describes it in Merchants of Doubt, there is an “unholy alliance” between vested interests and ideological think-tanks.
Two obvious questions.
1. Will you explore the psychological processes by which people glide over the liabilities in her book?
2. Will you explore ALL vested interests, such as the vested interests shared by government scientists and government-funded scientists?
You can guess my bet: people who agree with you will be judged not in need of explanation, but people who disagree with you will be found to suffer from diverse cognitive impairments.
As I wrote to Steve Fish: Likewise, the student will be instructed that the well-understood concepts of equilibrium lead to the derivation of really accurate consequences of CO2 increase; but to point out that high dimensional non-linear dissipative dynamic systems, like the Earth climate, do not have equilibria will be presented as a “motivated” septic (i.e. repeated) denialist trope, or perhaps bought by a rich energy company.
But equilibrium chasms are among the leaps of faith required in between the well-grounded science of CO2 absorption/radiation and the unreliable forecasts (models, etc) of future effects of future CO2 increases. Why would you want to avoid the psychological processes that support the leaps of faith, if your goal is understanding? Maybe I am wrong and you’ll explore those leaps of faith in detail.
Consider the equilibrium/nonequilibrium contrast I wrote about. “Denial” (more properly skepticism) of which claims should be included as “climate science denial”? Assertions of “equilibrium” are empty in high dimensional nonlinear dissipative systems, so which “denialist” scientist suffer the cognitive deficits — those who deny chaos or those who deny equilibrium?
I agree. There still remains the selection of “doubts” that are worthy of explanation via psychological defects, and “doubts” or “beliefs” not so tainted.
This isn’t the place to debate climate science. Leading off with that is clearly trolling. The subject here is the science of climate science denial.
Comment by Marcel Kincaid — 22 Apr 2015 @ 8:47 PM
Clearly – if science is saying that much of what is said in the public square is a ploy to claim the socially valued imprimatur of science without much actual scientific substance – then denial of simple memes superficially in the objective idiom of science is well founded.
The failure to recognise science that is clearly well established is science denial in it’s own right. Something that may be down to either the science of complex systems being intrinsically a difficult idea – challenging reductionist science methods – or in being a groupthink psychology phenomenon. One might easily make a case for either.
I prefer science to psychology – that it is a difficult idea. As Marcia Wyatt put it. ‘Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.’ Yet this difficult idea does have significant implications for climate prediction and policy.
Thomas Fullersays
Excuse me, but why is the red herring not red? And why is the conspiracist wearing a condom on his head?
Thomas Fullersays
Did your long and fascinating conversation with Michael Mann focus on his more recent works, such as Blackhat and Texas Killing Fields, or did you probe his motivation for earlier masterpieces such as Starsky and Hutch and Miami Vice?
Andy Westsays
Stephan Lewandowsky has a very decent series of papers, with various associated authors, on cognitive bias effects. These effects underpin the Lewandowsky / Cook Debunker’s Guide, and likely are also employed as justification for this course per hints within the above intro. However, the series of posts below show how all the main bias effects described in the above papers apply to the climate Consensus, using only Consensus sources / quotes and extracts from the papers themselves. The only way for some to avoid a clash of worldview and reality which would be caused by an acknowledgement that all the above biases do actually apply to the climate Consensus, is to de-emphasize the uncertainties inherent in a wicked system and promote the socially-maintained Consensus as an unquestionable scientific certainty, thereby enabling a platform to also frame skeptics as deniers and deniers as conspiracy theorists, as is evident in this course and in later Lewandowsky papers re conspiracy ideation. This approach can only result in still more undesirable polarization. Acknowledgement of genuine uncertainties and indeed bias effects, will help to reduce polarization and allow the re-entry of a plurality of views, hence also encouraging the more productive advancement of proper science.
Of course I have studied the Clausius-Clapayron relation. It is one of the “equilibrium approximations” of doubtful accuracy (actually, empirically studied inaccuracy) as applied to the climate.
I think comments about personal journeys are most interesting. Over about 6 years I have moved from believing in the consensus to believing that the effects of CO2 have been dramatically over-estimated.
MatthewRMarlersays
27 Radge Havers: MM @ 3
That comment is defensive, unwarranted and suggestive of motivated reasoning in your comments here.
You might be right. As an undergraduate and graduate student, and subsequently as a statistician in behavioral and mental health research, I have studied psychology for close on 50 years now. Among other topics, memory and cognition more generally, social psychology and persuasion, human motivation and “attribution theory” (how people form inferences about the motivations of others.) There is a tradition at least as old as Freud of using the most recent knowledge of motivational processes to explain exactly what I wrote: How people irrationally disagree with me. Freud used it to explain why people resisted his ideas. The grossest public example might have been the group of psychiatrists who wrote in 1964 why Barry Goldwater might be temperamentally unsuited to be president — most unprofessionally because none of them had ever met him. Now you have (or “one finds”) “Dunning-Kruger” cited whenever the evidence relevant to a proposition is patchy or contradictory.
As I have written in comments that went to the borehole (if they are still there), this course depends on accepting as true some statements that I think have little evidence for them. Consider for a moment Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes: that the public health threats of second hand smoke had been greatly over-estimated, and that the public health benefits of banning smoking in public had been correspondingly overestimated, isn’t in much doubt. But denial of those evidence-based assertions does not (yet) make it into the curriculum. Instead there will be study of doubt that the climate sensitivity to the doubling of CO2 is more than 3C; and doubt that the net effects of CO2-induced climate change since 1880 have been harmful to humans, agriculture, or net primary productivity of global vegetation. How about people who continue to doubt that increased temperature will produce increased rainfall? That effect of increased temperature is supported by models and empirical studies (survey by O’Gorman et al.)
My inference about the course will be easily testable: which denials are included for course study? Denials about the “vested interests” of the large (and admirable) body of scientists who depend on federal tax money for their incomes?
MatthewRMarlersays
Good post. Thank you.
Overall, I think the debate over the iris hypothesis is a testament to the efforts the scientific community goes through to evaluate challenges to theories and find ways to improve our understanding of the climate (for instance, see Bill Ruddiman’s post from last week). This is one of the most important reasons I have such high confidence in the scientific process for figuring out how the universe works. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/the-return-of-the-iris-effect/comment-page-1/#comment-628915
Same here. I read occasional claims that some kind of new approach, new paradigm, or some such is needed, but I am looking forward to many more years of “normal” science.
larssays
If I even dare read something containing the phrase “iris effect” I’m afraid I might end up a subject of study over at [An Online University Course on the Science of Climate Science Denial]
Rob Ellisonsays
The fundamental cause of the quasi-biennial periodicity of the QBO is nonlinear resonance of the system to the seasonal forcing that is modulated by the 11-yr solar cycle. For a given nonlinearity, the cycle-length and the amplitude of the QBO depend on the intensity of both the unmodulated seasonal cycle and the 11-yr solar cycle, which may be one of the reasons why the QBO properties in climate vary with time and space.
The entire climate system is resonant – ENSO, QBO, PNA, SSW, Brewer-Dodson, PDO, NOA, etc.
First we construct a network from four major climate indices. The network approach to complex systems is a rapidly developing methodology, which has proven to be useful in analyzing such systems’ behavior [Albert and Barabasi, 2002; Strogatz, 2001]. In this approach, a complex system is presented as a set of connected nodes. The collective behavior of all the nodes and links (the topology of the network) describes the dynamics of the system and offers new ways to investigate its properties.
The QBO and ENSO are significant resonant signals – chaotic oscillators – in the tropical Pacific.
We examine the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influence on the quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) modulation of the cold-point tropopause (CPT) temperatures. An analysis of approximately five decades (in most cases 1950s to near-present) of radiosonde data from 10 near-equatorial stations, distributed along the Equator, shows that the ENSO influence on the QBO is quite zonally symmetric. At all stations analyzed, the QBO has larger amplitude and longer period during La Niña conditions than during El Niño over this total period. We also show that as a consequence of the ENSO influences on QBO periods and amplitudes, the differences between the warmer CPT temperatures during QBO westerly shear conditions and colder temperatures during QBO easterly shear conditions are larger during La Niña than during El Niño for all stations for the entire period considered here.
It is – however – very unclear as to how the obvious correspondences advance ENSO predictability. Which is what seems to be claimed with extraordinarily little justification. Indeed the claim seems to be that ENSO – in all it’s decadal to millennial richness – may one day be predictable despite it’s dynamical complexity. It may indeed but not by webby I predict.
Rob Ellisonsays
I made this comment yesterday – and it seems not to have appeared for some odd reason. It addresses both social values and psychology – so would seem to be eminently on topic.
According to the authors, the massive expansion of energy systems, mainly carried out in the rapidly urbanizing global South, is the only robust, coherent, and ethical response to the global challenges we face, climate change among them. The time has come to embrace a high-energy planet, they say.
“Climate change can’t be solved on the backs of the world’s poorest people,” said Daniel Sarewitz, coauthor and director of ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes. “The key to solving for both climate and poverty is helping nations build innovative energy systems that can deliver cheap, clean, and reliable power.”
Many of the same studies indicate that liberals and conservatives respond to fear-based appeals about climate change differently. Efforts, for example, to link current natural disasters to climate change motivate liberals and environmentalists, but alienate moderates and conservatives.
On a positive note, many studies show that framing climate solutions around technological and economic progress and solutions increases belief in global warming…
In the first study, climate change deniers (N = 155) intended to act more pro-environmentally when they thought climate change action would create a society where people are more considerate and caring, and where there is greater economic/technological development.
The second study (N = 347) replicated this experimentally, showing that framing climate change action as increasing consideration for others, or improving economic/technological development, led to greater pro-environmental action intentions than a frame emphasizing avoiding the risks of climate change.
Most sceptics don’t seem to doubt that greenhouse gases are climatologically active – although beyond that there is considerable room for dissension. Indeed the joke around the John Cook 97% paper was that most sceptics were in the yes camp – based on the definitions used. There are some weird theories out there – but this is hardly restricted to one side. This is a topic in which social narrative has taken on monstrous dimensions.
Moderates might frame reasonable responses to emissions as an N2N strategy – natural gas to nuclear – and as such it is easily sellable to sceptics. That solves some 26% of the greenhouse gas emissions issue – and perhaps a little of the aerosols. Do it wrong and all of the problems humanity faces this century are compounded.
Most of my reading has been peer-reviewed papers and recommended texts (e.g. Principles of Planetary Climate by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert). I often cite them when I post here.
38 Barton Paul Levenson: BPL: You heard it here first, folks! Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature! 150 years of physical chemistry and radiation physics are all wrong!
The actual vapor content of air in the atmosphere is almost never equal to the amount calculated using the C-C approximation. And measured water vapor pressure is almost never equal to the saturation water vapor pressure calculated from the C-C approximation. The idea that “Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature” is a misrepresentation of what I wrote, entirely made up by BPL. All I wrote is that the mathematical relationship does not accurately describe any relationship measured in the atmosphere. If anyone has some evidence that the mathematical relationship is accurate, post it here so I can download it. Is misrepresentation/misquotation one of the cognitive deficits leading to denial?
MatthewRMarlersays
40 Radge Havers: I’d invite you, for example, to check out one of your borehole buddies in particular (the well known single-named troll) and ask youself if that’s really the kind of company you want to be keeping.
I read and write here, at ClimateEtc, and at WUWT. I am little concerned with company and much concerned with recommendations for further reading. Rob Ellison in particular (I do not know if that is to whom you refer), recommended a book by Henk Dijkstra, titled “Nonlinear Physical Oceanography”, which I bought and read much of. I recommend it, and another by the same author titled “Nonlinear Climate Dynamics”. I download and read most papers to which I see links.
But at the end of the day the issue still haunting the political sphere is: is there AGW and should we be concerned about it?
Also, with reference to CO2-induced warming, will any of the proposed remedies have beneficial effects? I am in favor of keeping the debate alive, because there is plenty of evidence in the scientific literature that the warnings of future danger from future CO2 have been exaggerated.
What I wrote is that no model accurately models the distribution of the water vapor in the actual atmosphere. C-C provides the equilibrium water vapor pressure, but the system is never in equilibrium, and the C-C relation almost never accurately represents the water vapor content of the actual atmosphere. I began with this: I forecast that along the way the student will learn that it is “scientific” to have a strong belief in a positive water vapor feedback; but that it is some cognitive defect to have an equally strong doubt. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628999
If we drop the word “belief”, then I maintain that it will be taught that it is a cognitive deficit of some kind to doubt the possibility of positive water vapor feedback, but not a cognitive deficit to doubt the possibility of a negative water vapor feedback, though the evidence concerning the water vapor feedback (including cloud cover changes) is full of holes.
MatthewRMarlersays
38 Barton Paul Levenson: MRM 37: Of course I have studied the Clausius-Clapayron [sic] relation. It is one of the “equilibrium approximations” of doubtful accuracy (actually, empirically studied inaccuracy) as applied to the climate.
BPL: You heard it here first, folks! Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature! 150 years of physical chemistry and radiation physics are all wrong!
46 Brian Dodge: “The fact that all known substances in the two-phase region fulfill the Clausius-Clapeyron equation provides the general validity of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics!”
Accusing scientists of having a (religious) belief in water vapor feedback is equal to saying the faculty of MIT is just a bunch of religious zealots.
It’s a shame that the writers have not quoted accurately what I wrote nor supplied the empirical evidence contrary to my claim. Where has it ever been shown that the (equilibrium approximation) Clausius-Clapeyron relation accurately models the water vapor content any where on Earth for any length of time, such as in the rising warm moist column forming a storm cloud.
Roscoe Shawsays
I’m an atmospheric scientist and I don’t know any of my peers who are “deniers”. All that I know of believe the basics of greenhouse theory and acknowledge that humans are likely contributing to the recent warming.
So I’m puzzled. Who are these “deniers”? What are they denying? Any names? If they aren’t scientists, why do we care?
Rob Ellisonsays
More than one billion people globally lack access to electricity, and billions more still burn wood and dung for their basic energy needs. Our High-Energy Planet, a new report from an international group of energy and environment scholars, outlines a radically new framework for meeting the energy needs of the global poor.
This is a quote that got lost somewhere. It seems at realbias that we don’t want any pesky questioning of shibboleths.
The objectives mentioned above – in relation to the mooted imminent global warming apocalypse – are the highest benefit to cost objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
The same goes for climate and other dynamically complex systems.
We can safely ignore webby’s claim that network math is a dead end. This is after all the webby who went globally blogisperically ballistic with a claim that ice nucleation in the atmosphere couldn’t have a Bose-Einstein distribution because Bose-Einstein condensates happened near absolute zero. In a misguided and vexatious attempt to discredit the authors of a text book on cloud microphysics. He can also predict ENSO by substituting the linked QBO – but can’t explain how to predict the QBO or provide an actual prediction.
Of course linear regression is solvable – but it is an ersatz solution. Triple plus blogospheric unscience – sound and fury signifying nothing. The real problem is much more difficult.
Atmospheric and oceanic forcings are strongest at global equilibrium scales of 10^7 m and seasons to millennia. Fluid mixing and dissipation occur at microscales of 10^−3 m and 10^−3 s, and cloud particulate transformations happen at 10^6 m or smaller. Observed intrinsic variability is spectrally broad band across all intermediate scales. A full representation for all dynamical degrees of freedom in different quantities and scales is uncomputable even with optimistically foreseeable computer technology. No fundamentally reliable reduction of the size of the AOS dynamical system (i.e., a statistical mechanics analogous to the transition between molecular kinetics and fluid dynamics) is yet envisioned.
46, Brian Dodge: Clausius & Claperyon have already done the heavy lifting.
In the dynamic atmosphere, the water vapor content of the air can not be accurately modeled; the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship gives the equilibrium vapor pressure, but not the water vapor content when there is no equilibrium.
Consider the rising column of moist warm air under a growing cumulonimbus cloud; and consider the toroidally shaped surrounding region of descending, dry, cool air. In neither of these regions, each part of a copious energy transport process, is the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship accurate.
in 16 I wrote this: Likewise, the student will be instructed that the well-understood concepts of equilibrium lead to the derivation of really accurate consequences of CO2 increase; but to point out that high dimensional non-linear dissipative dynamic systems, like the Earth climate, do not have equilibria will be presented as a “motivated” septic (i.e. repeated) denialist trope, or perhaps bought by a rich energy company
In response I have received references to the an equilibrium Clasius-Clapeyron result that is inaccurate in the Earth atmosphere almost everywhere at almost all times; and without a link to a single empirical demonstration that the C-C relationship is ever accurate, or an acknowledgement that it is, indeed, an equilibrium approximation.
Is it so hard to understand or accept that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting?
Rob Ellisonsays
The 26◦ N RAPID-MOCHA-WBTS program (hereafter referred to as the 26◦ N program) has thus provided important information about inter-annual, seasonal and shorter term variability of the AMOC but the limited length of the time series has precluded investigation of longer timescales. With the extension of the record to 8.5 yr we now present the first look at multi-year trends in the AMOC at 26◦ N.
The 26 north program is far from my grandiose project.
This seems fairly obvious. The Pacific has it’s own moored array. The significant problem is the length of record. Smeed et al link AMOC to the AMO – which gives clues as to decadal variability. The global spanning resonant system – cyrosphere, aquasphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, bioshoere, heliosphere – is abruptly variable at all scales.
Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low ENSO activity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high ENSO activity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). Red intensity was in excess of 200 – for comparison red intensity during the 97/98 El Nino was 98. It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
Rob Ellisonsays
The other quote I keep loosing at realbias is this from the Breakthrough Institute.
“Climate change can’t be solved on the backs of the world’s poorest people,” said Daniel Sarewitz, coauthor and director of ASU’s Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes. “The key to solving for both climate and poverty is helping nations build innovative energy systems that can deliver cheap, clean, and reliable power.”
It relates to a list of goals from the Copenhagen Consensus – how to most cost effectively spend $2.5 trillion in development aid in the next 15 years.
2 years after the collapse of civilisation apparently.
A comprehensive response – in an abruptly changing system – requires a multi-gas strategy including aerosols, conservation and restoration of ecosystems, enhancing organic content of agricultural soils, etc. This is only possible with continuing global economic development. The other side of the problem is population restraint in the context of better health and education outcomes.
The solutions for carbon dioxide – in both electricity (26% of greenhouse gases) and transport (13%) are technological. This is happening as a result of concerns with emissions – but perhaps primarily in response to higher prices and prospective scarcity of fossil fuels. We have the potential to create a global civilisation worthy of the name this century.
What there is opposing this are narratives of disaster based on poor science and poorer policy – whining because they have lost the ideological war and the moral high ground. So sad too bad.
MatthewRMarlersays
49 Barton Paul Levenson: MRM: Is it so hard to understand or accept that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting?
Is that the closest you can come to admitting that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting? The fact is, that the equations that can be solved do not provide approximations that are accurate enough to predict the climate change engendered by increased CO2 concentration, and are not accurate enough to predict the changes in energy flows engendered by a 1C increase in global mean surface temperature. For cloud effects, even the sign of the response is not known. That is not a criticism of the many fine scientists who have worked on the problems, and are working now; it is a statement of why so much work remains to be done in research and modeling. It is a criticism of people who claim that the knowledge is complete and accurate.
#248 Ray Ladbury – I never said anything like this – “science isn’t worth anything.” – you did. Please do not put words in my mouth. In fact I have saying the complete opposite. You must have missed that. 8^)
#238 Lawrence “Is it any wonder governments are not heeding the scientific advice.”
None at all. The scientific advice is occluded with conflicting advice and uncertainties and a lack of clarity and “disclaimers” of “but I really don’t know, and don;t really want to say what I really think.” Exceptions prove the rule.
btw the +2C figure was a political decision made at the UNFCCC, which is controlled by the governments not the scientists.
Anyone who knows Climate Science will know that a temperature figure as a goal is self-defeating and counterproductive because it is npt definable accurately with CERTAINTY what it actually is, from one ytear, from one decade to the next.
iow it was INTENTIONAL to set such a disputable vague “goal” that could be doubted by all. With no Climate Scientist being able to argue the point until long AFTER the 2C was passed, which is of course too late.
So you will see other comments by me speaking about CO2e ppm MUST be the Yardstick, and nothing else. That’s measurable accurately, it’s rational, it’s clear, and the meaning of what it means is also logically clear.
Why 30,000 Climate Scientists have not screamed their lungs out about this FALSE GOAL since it happened is beyond reason and logical …. they have ignored every Philosophical Principle that underpins all of Science and Mathematics and Logic.
People, including talented and knowledgeable climate scientists, ignore human psychology at their peril. Well, that’s my opinion at least.
# 248 Steve Fish – please provide a link to the comments you are quoting, so everyone can view those in the proper context. After that I will look at your specific comments/questions. Otherwise, I really do not see the point of responding.
I think I have been clear enough. It’s also a comments page, not a peer reviewed paper I am presenting here. So fwiw I do know the difference between “a projection and a prediction” and also a “forecast” and also an “estimate” and also a “budget” figure too already.
Surely you and others are quite capable of looking up research papers on cognitive sciences, psychology, communication, logic, and the notion of counterproductive approaches to problem solving and more. Honestly, I am not offering to be a free educator here, but to ask a couple of questions and make the odd comment fwiw. (I did make an exception in listing the definitions for “Counterproductive” as a help to others who didn’t seem to grasp what a prior comment was about, not sure if it got through.)
To me what I have said is obvious, whether one agrees or doesn’t with my point of view, so a mountain of evidence being cited in papers etc. or another 10 comments being made, will not convince anyone who isn’t really that interested in hearing what’s been said in the first place. human psychology:101 8^)
A few may find browsing the following Papers and Books worthy of their time.
The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v1/n1/full/nclimate1080.html
Improving Communication of Uncertainty in the Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/20/3/299.short
Best Practice Approaches for Characterizing, Communicating and Incorporating Scientific Uncertainty in Climate Decision Making
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AdPelOPsJxUC&dq
Communicating uncertainty: lessons learned and suggestions for climate change assessment
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631071304002822
Communicating the Science of Climate Change: A Mutual Challenge for Scientists and Educators
http://jee.lakeheadu.ca/index.php/cjee/article/view/298
Representing and communicating deep uncertainty in climate-change assessments
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631071304002901
Representing Uncertainty in Global Climate Change Science and Policy: Boundary-Ordering Devices and Authority
http://sth.sagepub.com/content/21/3/275.short
Effectual versus predictive logics in entrepreneurial decision-making: Differences between experts and novices
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088390260800027X
Don’t Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=FSqPBAAAQBAJ&dq
The Brain’s concepts: the role of the Sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02643290442000310
Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0021-9916.2007.00326.x/full
More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=AR_heEqnmXkC&dq
The Neural Theory of Metaphor
George Lakoff – University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Berkeley – Department of Cognitive Science – January 2, 2009
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=1437794
Explaining Embodied Cognition Results – George Lakoff
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01222.x/full
Clinical Implications of Numeracy: Theory and Practice
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12160-008-9037-8
Social Context in HCl: A New Framework for Mental Models, Cooperation, and Communication
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1207/s15516709cog2002_3/abstract
Complementary perspectives on metaphor: Cognitive linguistics and relevance theory
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216608000246
The confidence heuristic: A game-theoretic analysis
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167487094000326
A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378216601000467
#100 Jim, yes no problems with what you say. The 400ppm CO2 is only an “example”. behind that is all CO2e variations and drivers. eg land use change obviously has an effect on both CO2 and CO2e levels in the atmosphere, even if the dynamics are not necessarily a direct “emmission” of same.
My point is really more about the only way to effectively “monitor” a genuine yardstick or goal is to primarily use atmospheric concentrations. That will capture all the swings and roundabouts far more effectively that say temp increases or actual energy use calculations which are flaky at best.
Ocean acidity changes would be a good secondary yardstick, not too difficult to measure and record over time.
Trying to define what is or isn’t “natural variation” or what the degree of “uncertainty” is from one paper to the next, or estimating what sea level rise will be in 2100, to me seems very counterproductive in conveying the seriousness of the problem. These kinds of specific papers that typically end up with the authors saying “but we don’t really know”, while important from a scientific long term research view, only ever get in the way of definitive action/response by nations.
They leave the everyday Voter and Politician lost at sea without a rudder or a sail. Human psychology research shows that people cannot make any kind of rational judgment on this basis. Therefore, the current reality. Outlier ‘AGW/CC deniers’ simply take advantage of this pre-existing situation to sow their own ideological or religious world views.
Deniers, corporate and political self-interests did not create the situation they use to push their own distorted views. In my informed opinion.
Which is why I question the relevance and usefulness of this paper being discussed by Stefan here. By way of example only. Typically this leads to more of this http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obnubilation and not clarity of awareness or logical thought or judgement about the facts and truth of AGW/CC = counterproductive in my view.
#99 Kevin “and also repurposing RC as pure policy forum.” Kevin I have no idea where you get that idea from. I have certainly not suggested anything of the kind. I have been specically making some comments about the efficacy of this article and the focus on the subject matter, at the expense of what should be clear and consistent but isn’t, 25 years after Rio. And I have given some reasons why I think that is so, and a few “simple examples” being suggested how the emphasis of reporting climate science needs to change.
Which includes the actual words they use in their “published papers” and especially in their Summaries and other public articles about their papers. Not one word have I said about “policy”. I believe I have been very narrow, relevant to the topic, and extremely focused in what I have been speaking about. I cannot control how people misinterpret that. Even when it is Stefan doing it.
Really, it’s not my problem. I made a few comments that I think are very relevant. If others disagree, ok, they disagree. Nothing I can do about that Kevin. People can say whatever they wish. Doesn’t make it true or accurate, but it could be.
#97 zebra, hi. I just made a post on the UV thread which simply lists a number of science papers and related info regarding the issues I have raised. It may not be published, for whatever reasons, and if so, well you’re on your own. Sorry. 8^)
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/unforced-variations-march-2015/comment-page-6/
#99 Kevin says “But under “counterproductive” I would class trying to repurpose the climate science community as [full time] communicators”
This is precisely where we disagree Kevin. Very clearly put on your part, with the exception of “full time” which doesn’t belong with what I think or have said.
It is very valid that climate scientists, all scientists, operate and communicate together with their own “scientific jargon” and academic/industry norms. That’s just fine.
But the moment they step out into the public domain they must be effective communicators on an entirely different level, if their work is to be worthwhile and not a waste of their time, energy and effort. Especially in regard to AGW/CC, for obvious reasons I would think.
Some scientists are blessed with a natural ability to communicate with the public. There are many examples of this going back to Albert Einstein himself, and even some Ancient Greeks. Now even if that means that a climate scientist has to do at least a year of post-graduate study on Public Communication skills (written and oral) BEFORE they put their name to a published AGW/CC Paper, then so be it.
In my view their work is usually “counterproductive” today unless they can explain it in a clear way that is “consumable” through an article for the general public, to reporters in the media, and the politicians, plus be able to handle an Interview setting with the media as well. These matters should be a mandatory prerequisite at every University or similar body that hosts AGW/CC research.
This isn’t some brand new outlier extremist idea either. There’s even been articles and papers and talks that have addressed this issue for decades now. No one has listened, nothing has changed despite ongoing failures.
Prof Peter Ward speaks to the issue here, plainly and bluntly, with a PLAN to solve it: https://youtu.be/HP_Fvs48hb4?t=40m35s [a short 4 minutes is all it takes]
One doesn’t need to be a paleontologist or a climate scientist to recognize both the logic and the wisdom of his words, in my view.
But I truly believe (based on my own research, experience and good sense) those that reject this out of hand are a key cause of the “hard problem” over AGW/CC and not genuinely a part of the solutions.
I’d even suggest they are in fact living in denial of the truth of it. This is why the ‘deniers and special interests’ have been so successful for so long at undermining the work of climate scientists. It’s been way too easy to drive holes through it all in the public domain from the get go.
It seems to me that your answer to “What can we say about the effects of climate change on South Pacific tropical cyclones?” is that you have an hypothesis that climate change will intensify them, and some models that back that hypothesis. Maybe it’s a very good hypothesis, and maybe they are very good models. Only time will tell. But at the moment we have zero in the way of any convincing empirical evidence. Zero, zip, nada. If anything, what little data we have is pointing down. So anyone attributing a cyclone to climate change is talking out of their hat, and it doesn’t aid anyone’s credibility to say otherwise. Sometimes you have to acknowledge your limitations.
#5 Chuck Larlham – There you go Chuck, you’ve read the replies yes? Now you’re expected to simply run along after effectively being re-educated to a better way of thinking by the professionals. Nothing to see here. 8^)
#264 Hank Roberts – are you trying to get yourself dumped into the Bore Hole now too Hank? You, you, you cherry-picking plagiarist you! 8^)
Windchaser wrote:
“I hate to say it, but the inevitable response from “skeptics” will be that the climate science community only regularly blocks new conservative ideas.”
The idea does not have to be “conservative” (not even sure what that means for a scientific hypothesis). For an idea to get blocked and buried, it has to be a challenge to a paradigm deeply rooted in consensus, and upon which many prominent scientists have staked their reputations. Early anthropogenic effects on the climate are the opposite of that, they reinforce the paradigm that GHGs and other human-induced changes can alter the climate to a substantial degree.
‘Science advances one funeral at a time.’ Max Planck
‘The new paradigm of an abruptly changing climatic system has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policy-makers.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
That agriculture influences climate is a simple idea that doesn’t challenge a paradigm. Agriculture still influences climate in a big way – in fact provides an important mitigating mechanism while building global food security.
e.g. http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/07/soil-carbon-permanent-pasture-as-an-approach-to-co2-sequestration/
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) defined abrupt climate change as a new climate paradigm as long ago as 2002. A paradigm in the scientific sense is a theory that explains observations. A new science paradigm is one that better explains data – in this case climate data – than the old theory. The new theory says that climate change occurs as discrete jumps in the system. Climate is more like a kaleidoscope – shake it up and a new pattern emerges – than a control knob with a linear gain. This article reviews abrupt change in simple systems, in a 1-D climate model and in the climate system at multi-decadal timescales.
http://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
The acceptance of simple ideas that don’t challenge a paradigm is far from a realistic measure of the progress of complex and challenging ideas.
I think this is a welcome exception to the rule. The standard modus operandi is for global warming protagonists and antagonists to trash the hell out of each other so much and so often that it is not given second thought or retrospective. In this short civilized post appear the autonomous natural comments, “clever paid science denial’ and “Science deniers of… global warming… back up their intellectually vacant arguments… ”
It seems that mutual trashing does exist in the publishing arena but is strongly mitigated, which is good.
Comments #1 and #4 are salient here…
I don’t see much inherent obstruction to publishing this kind of idea in the perceived ‘monolithic’ environment that is claimed to exist in the publishing world.
The ‘mainstream’ view that is claimed to be ‘intently imposed’ is one of humans unassailable influence on the climate system, and that influence leading to self-destructive consequences that require significant remediation.
I do not see how your paper runs contrary this, merely proposing new elements to the running human-forcing narrative (even expanding it). Why would this not get a hearing, even if it’s met with skepticism?
Is there a better example out there where someone truly challenges what is being described (as above) as the monolithic “97%” consensus, and yet does not experience editorial obstruction? I bet Roger Pielke Jr would lend credence to your argument, but ironically he is seen as too “controversial” with his emerging ideas, even as they are often the same ones contained within IPCC reports.
‘Recent scientific evidence shows that major and widespread climate changes have occurred with startling speed. For example, roughly half the north Atlantic warming since the last ice age was achieved in only a decade, and it was accompanied by significant climatic changes across most of the globe. Similar events, including local warmings as large as 16°C, occurred repeatedly during the slide into and climb out of the last ice age. Human civilizations arose after those extreme, global ice-age climate jumps. Severe droughts and other regional climate events during the current warm period have shown similar tendencies of abrupt onset and great persistence, often with adverse effects on societies.’ http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10136&page=1
This is the reality. Complexity theory suggests that the system is pushed past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
Dynamic climate sensitivity implies the potential for a small push to initiate a large shift. Climate in this theory of abrupt change is an emergent property of the shift in global energies as the system settles down into a new climate state. The traditional definition of climate sensitivity as a temperature response to changes in CO2 makes sense only in periods between climate shifts – as climate changes at shifts are internally generated. Climate evolution is discontinuous at the scale of decades and longer.
In the way of true science – it suggests at least decadal probabilistic predictability. The current cool Pacific Ocean state seems more likely than not to persist for 20 to 30 years from 2002. The flip side is that – beyond the next few decades – the evolution of the global mean surface temperature may hold surprises on both the warm and cold ends of the spectrum (Swanson and Tsonis, 2009).
In Michael Ghil’s 1-D model sensitivity in the system is dynamic. Ghil’s model shows that climate sensitivity (γ) is variable. It is the change in temperature (ΔT) divided by the change in the control variable (Δμ) – the tangent to the curve as shown above. Sensitivity increases moving down the upper curve to the left towards the bifurcation and becomes arbitrarily large at the instability. The problem in a chaotic climate then becomes not one of quantifying climate sensitivity in a smoothly evolving climate but of predicting the onset of abrupt climate shifts and their implications for climate and society. The problem of abrupt climate change on multi-decadal scales is of the most immediate significance.
e.g. http://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/#more-208
There are approaches to predicting tipping points in a dynamically complex system such as climate – by looking at ‘slowing down’ – but these are in their infancy.
e.g. http://www.pnas.org/content/105/38/14308.full
There is – btw – a 2007 paper by Tsonis et al that kicked it off.
Well worth reading to give the backstory for the 2009 paper.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/full
It is the most significant climate paper this century by far.
Bill,
Wasn’t your “early AGW” theory landing in fertile ground, despite a mainstream agnosticism towards its details? If tiny amounts of human-generated greenhouse gases could be shown to have left a climatological signal thousands of years ago doesn’t that strongly support AGW today and in fact also strongly support CAGW? If a few tens of millions engaged in minimal agricultural and other enterprises started detectably changing our climate, then 7 billion engaged in the present multi-faceted human CO2 volcano surely must be dooming us to an ugly future. My opinion is that you weren’t rocking the boat by singing the wrong song, but rather singing the song the choir leaders wanted to hear, just in a higher register.
With this as my view I’m sure you can understand why I think you did not demonstrate: “Yet, my last 10 years of personal experience refute this claim.”
If anyone is genuinely interested in the reasons why people are sceptical about climate change they could read my recently published paper on the subject.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17524032.2014.999694
I think there is something very wrong when scientists attempt to turn a theory into a religion. Legitimate skeptics cannot be tolerated, so they are transmogrified into “deniers,” i.e., heretics, who must be caste beyond the pale. Or else “re-educated” to recognize the error of their ways.
Mao and his cronies attempted something very similar during the Cultural Revolution by punishing anyone whose thinking was not sufficiently “correct” — and, yes, it was a very successful program, while it lasted. Is that really the way you want to go?
Oh, and by the way, does anyone here care to respond to this recent Scientific American article on problems associated with the vaunted “p-value”? http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-perturbed-by-loss-of-stat-tool-to-sift-research-fudge-from-fact/
Looks to me like the most interesting comments can be found on the bore hole. Maybe it’s time to consider censoring that as well.
” … we do look at how the fossil fuel industry has funded climate science denial – that is an important part of the picture.”
In the interests of ‘balance’, will the funding of warmist propaganda by Renewables companies & millionaires also be investigated?
17 John Cook: We cannot properly understand climate science denial,
Back to my earlier question: Who denies climate science? And as I wrote, why does anyone believe that the water vapor feedback will be positive? (as opposed to entertaining the hypothesis that the water vapor feedback might be positive; or might be negative given the evidence about rainfall increases with increasing temp.) Will you address both belief and doubt equally, or will you take positive water vapor feedback as “true”, and doubt about it as due to a cognitive deficit? Similarly with the apparent 950 year period in the Vostok ice core data: will “belief” that it represents a persistent ongoing process, or “doubt” that it represents a persistent ongoing process be assigned the status as resulting from a cognitive defect?
[Response: This might help. – gavin]
I had Googled it – an exercise in labelling that is not terribly interesting and not worth highlighting.
What we have instead is actual civility – in the face of smarmy calumny – supported by diverse sources of leading edge science.
The core concept involves climate shifts at 20 to 30 year intervals. The implications of climate as a dynamical system include dynamic sensitivity at shifts that can result in dramatic change in as little as a decade. It has significance for both near term climate prediction and for policy.
This science seems so well established that it it has a reasonable claim to be the dominant climate paradigm. Yet it also seems to be a difficult idea – a threshold idea in terms of pedagogy.
e.g. http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html
#17 “scientific research into how ideology biases how people process evidence.”
There is no science of ideology, nor can there be. Ideology is in essence a philosophical concept. One cannot argue that someone else’s thinking is ideologically determined without opening one’s own thinking to the same critique. The opposition ideological vs. scientific cannot be maintained, not because science is “only another form of ideology,” as is sometimes argued, but because ideology is the taken for granted infrastructure that necessarily grounds all subject positions.
In the words of Althusser,
“what thus seems to take place outside ideology, . . . in reality takes place in ideology [….] That is why those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, “I am ideological.”” https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/marxism/modules/althusserideology.html
In other words, the claim that some special privilege puts one above ideology and in touch with some transcendent truth is, in essence, what ideology is all about. That certainty is precisely its effect.
And this problem is what lies at the heart of the dispute over climate change especially, as both sides insist that the other is “being ideological,” while in fact both are.
#21 “. . . a firmly established scientific consensus among tens of thousands of accredited active scientific researchers and every single reputable scientific organization on the planet.”
Well, first of all the nature of the consensus is open to dispute, as there is a wide range of views expressed by individual scientists on this matter — and a significant number of scientists are in what you would call the “denier” camp.
Secondly, the consensus of which you speak was formed, for the most part, during the last 20 years or so of the 20th century, a period when there was indeed a strong (apparent) correlation between rapidly increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 and rapidly rising temperatures — a correlation that has long since ceased to exist.
If you would want to do a scientific study pertaining to the psychology of climate change, a good place to begin would be an inquiry into the tendency for people to hold firmly onto an established belief, even after it can no longer be maintained. As I put it in a recent blog post, “Once a mindset develops, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to alter.”
http://amoleintheground.blogspot.com/2015/03/occams-razor-double-edged-blade-part-2.html
17, John Cook: As Naomi Oreskes describes it in Merchants of Doubt, there is an “unholy alliance” between vested interests and ideological think-tanks.
Two obvious questions.
1. Will you explore the psychological processes by which people glide over the liabilities in her book?
2. Will you explore ALL vested interests, such as the vested interests shared by government scientists and government-funded scientists?
You can guess my bet: people who agree with you will be judged not in need of explanation, but people who disagree with you will be found to suffer from diverse cognitive impairments.
As I wrote to Steve Fish: Likewise, the student will be instructed that the well-understood concepts of equilibrium lead to the derivation of really accurate consequences of CO2 increase; but to point out that high dimensional non-linear dissipative dynamic systems, like the Earth climate, do not have equilibria will be presented as a “motivated” septic (i.e. repeated) denialist trope, or perhaps bought by a rich energy company.
But equilibrium chasms are among the leaps of faith required in between the well-grounded science of CO2 absorption/radiation and the unreliable forecasts (models, etc) of future effects of future CO2 increases. Why would you want to avoid the psychological processes that support the leaps of faith, if your goal is understanding? Maybe I am wrong and you’ll explore those leaps of faith in detail.
20 Marcel Kincaid: This isn’t the place to debate climate science. Leading off with that is clearly trolling. The subject here is the science of climate science denial. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628853
Consider the equilibrium/nonequilibrium contrast I wrote about. “Denial” (more properly skepticism) of which claims should be included as “climate science denial”? Assertions of “equilibrium” are empty in high dimensional nonlinear dissipative systems, so which “denialist” scientist suffer the cognitive deficits — those who deny chaos or those who deny equilibrium?
Thomas: Mathew and John. I think there are two denial sciences involved here. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628844
I agree. There still remains the selection of “doubts” that are worthy of explanation via psychological defects, and “doubts” or “beliefs” not so tainted.
This isn’t the place to debate climate science. Leading off with that is clearly trolling. The subject here is the science of climate science denial.
Comment by Marcel Kincaid — 22 Apr 2015 @ 8:47 PM
Clearly – if science is saying that much of what is said in the public square is a ploy to claim the socially valued imprimatur of science without much actual scientific substance – then denial of simple memes superficially in the objective idiom of science is well founded.
The failure to recognise science that is clearly well established is science denial in it’s own right. Something that may be down to either the science of complex systems being intrinsically a difficult idea – challenging reductionist science methods – or in being a groupthink psychology phenomenon. One might easily make a case for either.
I prefer science to psychology – that it is a difficult idea. As Marcia Wyatt put it. ‘Climate is ultimately complex. Complexity begs for reductionism. With reductionism, a puzzle is studied by way of its pieces. While this approach illuminates the climate system’s components, climate’s full picture remains elusive. Understanding the pieces does not ensure understanding the collection of pieces. This conundrum motivates our study.’ Yet this difficult idea does have significant implications for climate prediction and policy.
Excuse me, but why is the red herring not red? And why is the conspiracist wearing a condom on his head?
Did your long and fascinating conversation with Michael Mann focus on his more recent works, such as Blackhat and Texas Killing Fields, or did you probe his motivation for earlier masterpieces such as Starsky and Hutch and Miami Vice?
Stephan Lewandowsky has a very decent series of papers, with various associated authors, on cognitive bias effects. These effects underpin the Lewandowsky / Cook Debunker’s Guide, and likely are also employed as justification for this course per hints within the above intro. However, the series of posts below show how all the main bias effects described in the above papers apply to the climate Consensus, using only Consensus sources / quotes and extracts from the papers themselves. The only way for some to avoid a clash of worldview and reality which would be caused by an acknowledgement that all the above biases do actually apply to the climate Consensus, is to de-emphasize the uncertainties inherent in a wicked system and promote the socially-maintained Consensus as an unquestionable scientific certainty, thereby enabling a platform to also frame skeptics as deniers and deniers as conspiracy theorists, as is evident in this course and in later Lewandowsky papers re conspiracy ideation. This approach can only result in still more undesirable polarization. Acknowledgement of genuine uncertainties and indeed bias effects, will help to reduce polarization and allow the re-entry of a plurality of views, hence also encouraging the more productive advancement of proper science.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/06/wrapped-in-lew-papers-the-psychology-of-climate-psychologization-part1/
for second part change ’11/06′ to ’11/08′ and ‘part1’ to ‘part2’.
for third part change ’11/06′ to ’11/09′ and ‘part1’ to ‘part3’.
Oceans seem to have warmed since 2008.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/argo-to-oct-2014.jpg
Energy out hasn’t changed much – in the context of large variability. Warming is up by convention.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/ceres_ebaf-toa_ed2-8_anom_toa_net_flux-all-sky_march-2000tooctober-2014.png
The most obvious source of the added energy is energy in.
http://lasp.colorado.edu/data/sorce/total_solar_irradiance_plots/images/tim_level3_tsi_24hour_640x480.png
Gee – I wonder where that’s going?
25 Barton Paul Levenson:BPL: You’ve never heard of “The Clausius-Clapeyron relation?” You might want to Google it. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628906
Of course I have studied the Clausius-Clapayron relation. It is one of the “equilibrium approximations” of doubtful accuracy (actually, empirically studied inaccuracy) as applied to the climate.
36 Douglas Wise: Post retirement as a biological researcher, I had the time to study the science of climate change in depth. I eventually went from a position of scepticism to one of acceptance of the scientific consensus on the subject. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628921
I think comments about personal journeys are most interesting. Over about 6 years I have moved from believing in the consensus to believing that the effects of CO2 have been dramatically over-estimated.
27 Radge Havers: MM @ 3
That comment is defensive, unwarranted and suggestive of motivated reasoning in your comments here.
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628922
You might be right. As an undergraduate and graduate student, and subsequently as a statistician in behavioral and mental health research, I have studied psychology for close on 50 years now. Among other topics, memory and cognition more generally, social psychology and persuasion, human motivation and “attribution theory” (how people form inferences about the motivations of others.) There is a tradition at least as old as Freud of using the most recent knowledge of motivational processes to explain exactly what I wrote: How people irrationally disagree with me. Freud used it to explain why people resisted his ideas. The grossest public example might have been the group of psychiatrists who wrote in 1964 why Barry Goldwater might be temperamentally unsuited to be president — most unprofessionally because none of them had ever met him. Now you have (or “one finds”) “Dunning-Kruger” cited whenever the evidence relevant to a proposition is patchy or contradictory.
As I have written in comments that went to the borehole (if they are still there), this course depends on accepting as true some statements that I think have little evidence for them. Consider for a moment Merchants of Doubt by Oreskes: that the public health threats of second hand smoke had been greatly over-estimated, and that the public health benefits of banning smoking in public had been correspondingly overestimated, isn’t in much doubt. But denial of those evidence-based assertions does not (yet) make it into the curriculum. Instead there will be study of doubt that the climate sensitivity to the doubling of CO2 is more than 3C; and doubt that the net effects of CO2-induced climate change since 1880 have been harmful to humans, agriculture, or net primary productivity of global vegetation. How about people who continue to doubt that increased temperature will produce increased rainfall? That effect of increased temperature is supported by models and empirical studies (survey by O’Gorman et al.)
My inference about the course will be easily testable: which denials are included for course study? Denials about the “vested interests” of the large (and admirable) body of scientists who depend on federal tax money for their incomes?
Good post. Thank you.
Overall, I think the debate over the iris hypothesis is a testament to the efforts the scientific community goes through to evaluate challenges to theories and find ways to improve our understanding of the climate (for instance, see Bill Ruddiman’s post from last week). This is one of the most important reasons I have such high confidence in the scientific process for figuring out how the universe works. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/the-return-of-the-iris-effect/comment-page-1/#comment-628915
Same here. I read occasional claims that some kind of new approach, new paradigm, or some such is needed, but I am looking forward to many more years of “normal” science.
If I even dare read something containing the phrase “iris effect” I’m afraid I might end up a subject of study over at [An Online University Course on the Science of Climate Science Denial]
http://159.226.119.58/aas/EN/10.1007/s00376-003-0017-4
The entire climate system is resonant – ENSO, QBO, PNA, SSW, Brewer-Dodson, PDO, NOA, etc.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL030288/abstract
The QBO and ENSO are significant resonant signals – chaotic oscillators – in the tropical Pacific.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2247/abstract
It is – however – very unclear as to how the obvious correspondences advance ENSO predictability. Which is what seems to be claimed with extraordinarily little justification. Indeed the claim seems to be that ENSO – in all it’s decadal to millennial richness – may one day be predictable despite it’s dynamical complexity. It may indeed but not by webby I predict.
I made this comment yesterday – and it seems not to have appeared for some odd reason. It addresses both social values and psychology – so would seem to be eminently on topic.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/the-psychology-of-climate-change
Which is the side of the angels?
Most sceptics don’t seem to doubt that greenhouse gases are climatologically active – although beyond that there is considerable room for dissension. Indeed the joke around the John Cook 97% paper was that most sceptics were in the yes camp – based on the definitions used. There are some weird theories out there – but this is hardly restricted to one side. This is a topic in which social narrative has taken on monstrous dimensions.
Moderates might frame reasonable responses to emissions as an N2N strategy – natural gas to nuclear – and as such it is easily sellable to sceptics. That solves some 26% of the greenhouse gas emissions issue – and perhaps a little of the aerosols. Do it wrong and all of the problems humanity faces this century are compounded.
39 Dan:For goodness sake, read the peer-reviewed science re: climate change
Most of my reading has been peer-reviewed papers and recommended texts (e.g. Principles of Planetary Climate by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert). I often cite them when I post here.
38 Barton Paul Levenson: BPL: You heard it here first, folks! Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature! 150 years of physical chemistry and radiation physics are all wrong!
The actual vapor content of air in the atmosphere is almost never equal to the amount calculated using the C-C approximation. And measured water vapor pressure is almost never equal to the saturation water vapor pressure calculated from the C-C approximation. The idea that “Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature” is a misrepresentation of what I wrote, entirely made up by BPL. All I wrote is that the mathematical relationship does not accurately describe any relationship measured in the atmosphere. If anyone has some evidence that the mathematical relationship is accurate, post it here so I can download it. Is misrepresentation/misquotation one of the cognitive deficits leading to denial?
40 Radge Havers: I’d invite you, for example, to check out one of your borehole buddies in particular (the well known single-named troll) and ask youself if that’s really the kind of company you want to be keeping.
I read and write here, at ClimateEtc, and at WUWT. I am little concerned with company and much concerned with recommendations for further reading. Rob Ellison in particular (I do not know if that is to whom you refer), recommended a book by Henk Dijkstra, titled “Nonlinear Physical Oceanography”, which I bought and read much of. I recommend it, and another by the same author titled “Nonlinear Climate Dynamics”. I download and read most papers to which I see links.
But at the end of the day the issue still haunting the political sphere is: is there AGW and should we be concerned about it?
Also, with reference to CO2-induced warming, will any of the proposed remedies have beneficial effects? I am in favor of keeping the debate alive, because there is plenty of evidence in the scientific literature that the warnings of future danger from future CO2 have been exaggerated.
46, Brian Dodge: If a=b, it is also true that b=a; or, from the same reference, “The fact that all known substances in the two-phase region fulfill the Clausius-Clapeyron equation provides the general validity of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics!” Accusing scientists of having a (religious) belief in water vapor feedback is equal to saying the faculty of MIT is just a bunch of religious zealots. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628999
What I wrote is that no model accurately models the distribution of the water vapor in the actual atmosphere. C-C provides the equilibrium water vapor pressure, but the system is never in equilibrium, and the C-C relation almost never accurately represents the water vapor content of the actual atmosphere. I began with this: I forecast that along the way the student will learn that it is “scientific” to have a strong belief in a positive water vapor feedback; but that it is some cognitive defect to have an equally strong doubt. – See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-628999
If we drop the word “belief”, then I maintain that it will be taught that it is a cognitive deficit of some kind to doubt the possibility of positive water vapor feedback, but not a cognitive deficit to doubt the possibility of a negative water vapor feedback, though the evidence concerning the water vapor feedback (including cloud cover changes) is full of holes.
38 Barton Paul Levenson: MRM 37: Of course I have studied the Clausius-Clapayron [sic] relation. It is one of the “equilibrium approximations” of doubtful accuracy (actually, empirically studied inaccuracy) as applied to the climate.
BPL: You heard it here first, folks! Saturation vapor pressure doesn’t increase with temperature! 150 years of physical chemistry and radiation physics are all wrong!
46 Brian Dodge: “The fact that all known substances in the two-phase region fulfill the Clausius-Clapeyron equation provides the general validity of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics!”
Accusing scientists of having a (religious) belief in water vapor feedback is equal to saying the faculty of MIT is just a bunch of religious zealots.
It’s a shame that the writers have not quoted accurately what I wrote nor supplied the empirical evidence contrary to my claim. Where has it ever been shown that the (equilibrium approximation) Clausius-Clapeyron relation accurately models the water vapor content any where on Earth for any length of time, such as in the rising warm moist column forming a storm cloud.
I’m an atmospheric scientist and I don’t know any of my peers who are “deniers”. All that I know of believe the basics of greenhouse theory and acknowledge that humans are likely contributing to the recent warming.
So I’m puzzled. Who are these “deniers”? What are they denying? Any names? If they aren’t scientists, why do we care?
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
This is a quote that got lost somewhere. It seems at realbias that we don’t want any pesky questioning of shibboleths.
The objectives mentioned above – in relation to the mooted imminent global warming apocalypse – are the highest benefit to cost objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus
It is little wonder that you have lost moderates and conservatives.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/networks/
The same goes for climate and other dynamically complex systems.
We can safely ignore webby’s claim that network math is a dead end. This is after all the webby who went globally blogisperically ballistic with a claim that ice nucleation in the atmosphere couldn’t have a Bose-Einstein distribution because Bose-Einstein condensates happened near absolute zero. In a misguided and vexatious attempt to discredit the authors of a text book on cloud microphysics. He can also predict ENSO by substituting the linked QBO – but can’t explain how to predict the QBO or provide an actual prediction.
Of course linear regression is solvable – but it is an ersatz solution. Triple plus blogospheric unscience – sound and fury signifying nothing. The real problem is much more difficult.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full
46, Brian Dodge: Clausius & Claperyon have already done the heavy lifting.
In the dynamic atmosphere, the water vapor content of the air can not be accurately modeled; the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship gives the equilibrium vapor pressure, but not the water vapor content when there is no equilibrium.
Consider the rising column of moist warm air under a growing cumulonimbus cloud; and consider the toroidally shaped surrounding region of descending, dry, cool air. In neither of these regions, each part of a copious energy transport process, is the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship accurate.
in 16 I wrote this: Likewise, the student will be instructed that the well-understood concepts of equilibrium lead to the derivation of really accurate consequences of CO2 increase; but to point out that high dimensional non-linear dissipative dynamic systems, like the Earth climate, do not have equilibria will be presented as a “motivated” septic (i.e. repeated) denialist trope, or perhaps bought by a rich energy company
In response I have received references to the an equilibrium Clasius-Clapeyron result that is inaccurate in the Earth atmosphere almost everywhere at almost all times; and without a link to a single empirical demonstration that the C-C relationship is ever accurate, or an acknowledgement that it is, indeed, an equilibrium approximation.
Is it so hard to understand or accept that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting?
http://www.ocean-sci.net/10/29/2014/os-10-29-2014.pdf
The 26 north program is far from my grandiose project.
This seems fairly obvious. The Pacific has it’s own moored array. The significant problem is the length of record. Smeed et al link AMOC to the AMO – which gives clues as to decadal variability. The global spanning resonant system – cyrosphere, aquasphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, bioshoere, heliosphere – is abruptly variable at all scales.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/tsonis-2009-figure-1.png
Moy et al (2002) present the record of sedimentation shown above which is strongly influenced by ENSO variability. It is based on the presence of greater and less red sediment in a lake core. More sedimentation is associated with El Niño. It has continuous high resolution coverage over 12,000 years. It shows periods of high and low ENSO activity alternating with a period of about 2,000 years. There was a shift from La Niña dominance to El Niño dominance that was identified by Tsonis 2009 as a chaotic bifurcation – and is associated with the drying of the Sahel. There is a period around 3,500 years ago of high ENSO activity associated with the demise of the Minoan civilisation (Tsonis et al, 2010). Red intensity was in excess of 200 – for comparison red intensity during the 97/98 El Nino was 98. It shows ENSO variability considerably in excess of that seen in the modern period.
The other quote I keep loosing at realbias is this from the Breakthrough Institute.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/our-high-energy-planet
It relates to a list of goals from the Copenhagen Consensus – how to most cost effectively spend $2.5 trillion in development aid in the next 15 years.
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consensus
2 years after the collapse of civilisation apparently.
A comprehensive response – in an abruptly changing system – requires a multi-gas strategy including aerosols, conservation and restoration of ecosystems, enhancing organic content of agricultural soils, etc. This is only possible with continuing global economic development. The other side of the problem is population restraint in the context of better health and education outcomes.
The solutions for carbon dioxide – in both electricity (26% of greenhouse gases) and transport (13%) are technological. This is happening as a result of concerns with emissions – but perhaps primarily in response to higher prices and prospective scarcity of fossil fuels. We have the potential to create a global civilisation worthy of the name this century.
What there is opposing this are narratives of disaster based on poor science and poorer policy – whining because they have lost the ideological war and the moral high ground. So sad too bad.
49 Barton Paul Levenson: MRM: Is it so hard to understand or accept that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting?
BPL: Please present your alternative.
– See more at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/04/an-online-university-course-on-the-science-of-climate-science-denial/comment-page-1/#comment-629202
Is that the closest you can come to admitting that the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship is an approximation that has never been shown to be accurate in any natural dynamic setting? The fact is, that the equations that can be solved do not provide approximations that are accurate enough to predict the climate change engendered by increased CO2 concentration, and are not accurate enough to predict the changes in energy flows engendered by a 1C increase in global mean surface temperature. For cloud effects, even the sign of the response is not known. That is not a criticism of the many fine scientists who have worked on the problems, and are working now; it is a statement of why so much work remains to be done in research and modeling. It is a criticism of people who claim that the knowledge is complete and accurate.