John Clauser’s theory of climate explained.
Some of you will have heard of John Clauser because he was an awardee of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the experimental verification of quantum entanglement. Some of you will have heard of him because the first thing that he did after winning the Nobel was join a climate denial organization and make some rather odd claims about climate science. And some of you will never have heard of him (in which case, feel free to skip this post!).
At no point in his long and, by all accounts, successful, career has he ever published a paper on climate[1]. He has not penned an article, nor even a blog post or a tweet on the topic, and so any scientific basis for his opinions (if any) has been opaque… until recently. In the last few months he has given two interviews in which he goes into to detail about what he describes as a ‘missing element’ in climate science and what he imagines the consequences are for climate change. The first interview was for the Epoch Times (a far right-wing newspaper and media organization affiliated with Falun Gong). The second was a podcast with the somewhat troubled Chris Smith, an Australian journalist. (The material is somewhat similar in each). And more comprehensively, it was repeated in a recent video lecture as well.
And what is this supposed ‘missing element’? Clouds.
Before we get into the details of what is going here, let’s look at some of the stranger claims about climate science he has made:
- The “IPCC and others” use a “cloud-free” Earth. [Odd claim, but simply not true].
- “fluctuation[s] in the cloud cover of the earth that causes a sunlight reflectivity thermostat that controls the climate, control the temperature of the earth, and stabilize it very powerfully and very dramatically, a mechanism heretofore totally unnoticed.” [Clouds as a damping mechanism on climate change have been discussed in detail since the 1960s at least].
- “The power in this thermostat in terms of what you can refer to as radiative forcing, this is how many watts per square meter of surface area are involved, and it is 200 times more powerful than the effect of CO₂, and methane.” [This is at least a quantitative claim, see below for it’s lack of veracity].
- “Interviewer: Are you suggesting that in none of these models the cloud cover is actually included? Dr. Clauser: Indeed” [Again, just not true].
- “They really didn’t mention anything like this in the early IPCC reports.” [Simply false e.g. IPCC First Assessment Report (Chapter 3) from 1990].
- “The two most recent IPCC reports did not discuss clouds” [Totally untrue].
- “It’s [the albedo is] kept the same” [False – for instance here is a paper (Loeb et al, 2020) comparing the changes in albedo in models to the CERES observations].
- “I haven’t talked to any of the modelers” [This is obvious!]
- “The 40 models of the IPCC – most of which came from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies” [Where does this come from?]
Blame Al Gore? or Steve Koonin? the National Academies? or Art Robinson?
Apparently Clauser realized the problem with clouds because Al Gore only discussed a cloud-free Earth in his movie. That isn’t true of course – there are plenty of clouds in the Apollo 17 photo he uses to illustrate the impact of seeing Earth from space and it’s in his description of the Earth’s Energy balance. Possibly the confusion comes from him also highlighting an image from Tom Van Sant (left) that he explicitly states is a mosaic of cloud-free images, but at no point does he indicate that clouds aren’t important! Additionally, Clauser credits Steve Koonin’s book with the notion that no climate models have skillfully hindcast the past century (not true, but I’m not sure what the book does claim – Koonin does not appear to have made such a claim in his presentations AFAICT – let me know in the comments if this needs amending). And finally, he claims that the ‘original’ 2003 National Academies report (a bit unclear what this means) made a ‘whole series of mistaken statements’ about clouds. The only relevant 2003 NRC publication is the “Understanding Climate Feedbacks” report, which is possibly what Clauser is referring to[2], but that mostly makes very sensible recommendations about research priorities in cloud feedbacks and isn’t obviously mistaken in any of its claims. But it turns out that Art Robinson (of the Oregon Petition fame) was his college roommate many decades ago, and so perhaps we don’t need to look much deeper into where he gets his (mis)information.
Clauser-ology translated to recognizable climate science
That clouds affect the climate has been known since antiquity, and their response to climate change has been discussed, analyzed, and modeled in detail at least since the 1970s. Notably, of the two models assessed in the 1979 Charney report, one (from GFDL and Manabe, who was awarded the Nobel in Physics the year before Clauser) had fixed (not zero) clouds, but the second (from GISS and Hansen) had variable clouds. The differences in their cloud feedback (zero in the first case and positive in the second) were the main reason why their climate sensitivity differed (2ºC and 4ºC respectively). It is still the case that variations in cloud feedbacks are the dominant source of variability of climate sensitivity in models (Zelinka et al, 2020).
Clauser’s claim that clouds don’t change in models (no cloud feedback) is only correct for that original 1979-vintage GFDL model, but wasn’t true for other models then or now, or even the 1980s-era GFDL models. Clauser’s other claim, that clouds will change to counter any radiative imbalance, is a statement that clouds are a negative feedback (and indeed a very strong negative feedback). Equivalently, this is a statement that climate sensitivity to increasing forcings (such as CO2) is negligible. But if this were true, it would be impossible to sustain a net energy imbalance for the climate (more energy coming in than leaving). Clouds would change to match any change in the radiative forcing without needing much of a change in surface temperatures. However, not only is there an obvious energy imbalance (as seen by the growth of ocean heat content), it’s actually accelerating Loeb et al., 2022. These observations are incompatible with strong negative short wave cloud feedback – indeed, as the planet has warmed, albedo has gone down – the opposite of what Clauser’s theory would predict. To be fair, the detailed attribution for the trends in SW and LW radiative fluxes over the last twenty years are still somewhat in flux (Schmidt et al, 2023), but not by that much! Also missing is any realization that clouds also contribute to the greenhouse effect (roughly 25% of the total) and so whether cloud changes warm or cool depends very much on where the clouds are (high clouds have a very different effect than low clouds for instance).
Running the Numbers
A lot of Clauser’s confusion can be seen when he starts to get quantitative. He makes a number of specific claims: that the cloud feedbacks are 100 times stronger than the forcing from CO2, but this is wrong in a very fundamental way (feedbacks and forcings don’t even have the same units), and also in how he calculates it (see below). He also confuses radiative forcing (the impact of an instantaneous change in a component) with the energy imbalance at any point (which is affected by the feedbacks and temperature changes). He, however, goes seriously off the rails when he estimates the impact of clouds on the radiation budget. We can measure directly how much solar radiation arrives at the Earth and once you spread it over the surface of the Earth, there is about 340 W/m2. Additionally, we can measure how much of that radiation is reflected (from ice, ground surface, and clouds etc.). It’s about 100 W/m2, implying the average planetary albedo (reflectivity) is about 29%. Clauser however takes that number, removes 80 and 20 W/m2 for atmospheric absorption by ozone (!!) and backscatter to get 240 W/m2, and then assumes that with the average cloud coverage (67%)[3] and a typical albedo for a thick cloud (90%), that the clouds will reflect 145 W/m2. This is totally wrong (since we know that this is much larger than the actual measured total reflected short wave – only 100 W/m2). He is neglecting the fact that half the clouds are on the nighttime side of the Earth (and not reflecting anything), and that [Update 11/19: this is already factored in, thanks to JNG for noticing] cloud albedo depends on cloud thickness (so not all of the 67% will have such a high albedo). Once you factor those things in, you end up with the standard numbers which is roughly half of what Clauser claims.
With respect to the cloud feedback, Clauser uses two end members to estimate the size of the effect. However, feedbacks are measured in (W/m2) per ºC – i.e. how much do they perturb the radiation balance as a function of the change in surface temperature. For instance, the (dominant, negative) Planck feedback is about -3.3 W/m2/ºC (i.e. the upward flux of LW from the surface increases by 3.3 W/m2 for every degree change in surface temperature). A strong negative cloud feedback would have a similar value, though IPCC estimates it to be positive (amplifying) 0.42 [–0.10 to +0.94] W/m2/ºC.
Clauser’s calculation takes two massive perturbations in clouds (from 50% to 75%), estimates the net forcing (incorrectly) as ~54 W/m2, and neglects the change in temperatures that should have generated such large shifts. But we know that total SW cloud radiative forcing is about -45 W/m2, thus a change in cloud cover of 25% (huge!) would imply a perturbation of only(!) ~17 W/m2 (and smaller still if you include the LW effects). However, these changes in cloud cover are absurd and would be way outside the linear regime that feedback theory is based on. Realistic variations in cloud cover are more likely on the order of a few % (interannually, smaller still on climate scales), and so SW effects could conceivably be a couple of W/m2, and with total feedbacks half that, at most (though the devil is in the details). Thus in comparison with the anthropogenic radiative forcing which is now over 2.5 W/m2, it is certainly not ‘100 times’ larger. And we still have to factor in the changes in temperature.
Over the last 20 years or so, temperatures have increased about 0.5ºC, and we have measurements of the global albedo (and SW changes) from CERES. If Clauser was correct, that warming should have been counteracted by an increase in cloud cover and reflected shortwave. Unfortunately, this is the opposite of what has happened – cloud cover, albedo and reflected shortwave have all decreased over that time (Fig 2a in Loeb et al, 2021).
Clouding the picture
So where does this leave us? Effectively, we have an overconfident Nobel Prize winner, who hasn’t done their homework in an area outside their field, who makes very obvious errors, and whose fame is being capitalized on by the forces of denial. Not really an original story (c.f. Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling, etc.), but still a bit of a shame.
[1] His PhD supervisor while at Columbia (1964-1969) was Pat Thaddeus who was a scientist at GISS until 1986, and it’s conceivable that he met Jim Hansen there since they overlapped for a couple of years. But this was before there was much Earth Science research at GISS.
[2] I’ve no idea why he claims this is the ‘original’ report. The 1979 Charney report has a much greater claim to that title.
[3] Cloud fraction is actually a very tricky concept and so this number is very dependent on the methodology – for instance how optically thick does a cloud need to be to count? Some folks have argued that cloud coverage is actually 100% if you include the super thin clouds. Of course, the albedo of the cloud depends on its thickness too.
References
- N.G. Loeb, H. Wang, R.P. Allan, T. Andrews, K. Armour, J.N.S. Cole, J. Dufresne, P. Forster, A. Gettelman, H. Guo, T. Mauritsen, Y. Ming, D. Paynter, C. Proistosescu, M.F. Stuecker, U. Willén, and K. Wyser, "New Generation of Climate Models Track Recent Unprecedented Changes in Earth's Radiation Budget Observed by CERES", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 47, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086705
- M.D. Zelinka, T.A. Myers, D.T. McCoy, S. Po‐Chedley, P.M. Caldwell, P. Ceppi, S.A. Klein, and K.E. Taylor, "Causes of Higher Climate Sensitivity in CMIP6 Models", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 47, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2019GL085782
- N.G. Loeb, M. Mayer, S. Kato, J.T. Fasullo, H. Zuo, R. Senan, J.M. Lyman, G.C. Johnson, and M. Balmaseda, "Evaluating Twenty‐Year Trends in Earth's Energy Flows From Observations and Reanalyses", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, vol. 127, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2022JD036686
- G.A. Schmidt, T. Andrews, S.E. Bauer, P.J. Durack, N.G. Loeb, V. Ramaswamy, N.P. Arnold, M.G. Bosilovich, J. Cole, L.W. Horowitz, G.C. Johnson, J.M. Lyman, B. Medeiros, T. Michibata, D. Olonscheck, D. Paynter, S.P. Raghuraman, M. Schulz, D. Takasuka, V. Tallapragada, P.C. Taylor, and T. Ziehn, "CERESMIP: a climate modeling protocol to investigate recent trends in the Earth's Energy Imbalance", Frontiers in Climate, vol. 5, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2023.1202161
There are several Chris Smith’s:
We’re talking this one, who last year was sacked from Sky News in Australia (Murdoch-owned, our version of Fox News): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smith_(broadcaster)
Not this one (‘Naked Scientist’, UK, rebroadcast in Australia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smith_(science_communicator)
Or this one (also UK): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Smith_(newsreader)
This debate on clouds flashes me back to Lindzen’s IR Iris.
Yes, that got a lot of publicity for years and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how Clauser originally got to thinking that cloud feedbacks were a scientific disproof of global warming
I’d thought of the Iris hypothesis too, and claims that it would somehow prevent warming.
I’m not aware of Lindzen ever trying to square it with the fact that the planet has been much warmer than now in the past, even despite less energy from the sun, so his hypothesis never seemed to fit lots of Earth’s climate history.
Exactly. How often must something be debunked before being laid to rest in its bunk?
Gavin, YouTube ran Clausen’s speech to an almost empty room at the “Church Militant” event organized by Mark Morano.
My takeaway is that he ‘is indeed caught in something of a time warp, as his references lean on what was state of the art in his postdoc day
He also seems to be an object of Cal Tech alumni and Emeriti peer pressure .
Unfortunately, Stockholm Fever is a Thing, and Clause seems happy to lend the luster of his Nobel to the never ending saga of Physicians for Disaster Preparedness, just as Al Gore lends his to anybody who saks politrly.
My takeaway on his presentation is that his physic al intuition is founded on a poor grasp of albedo variability in general and cloud brightness in particular- he told the audience that white cloud tops reflect 90% of the solar energy reaching them back into space.. No mention of scattering at all
His long service at Livermore does more to explain his political entanglement than quantum theory.
He ought to have consulted Mike MacCracken before signing off on what the PR hacks at the CO2 Coalition manifesto, drafted.
Please ardon the fractured spelling above, Clauser included
Couldn’t resist. ardon … ardont … ardent. I did like saks (sacks) asks politely …. ain’t typos fun? Pardon me!
Thanks for working this through. I was asked about this at a talk just two days ago. Not knowing the details, I gave my generic and admittedly snide answer: “Physicists win the Nobel Prize for thinking differently from other physicists all the time and being right once.”
One little bit doesn’t seem right: “He is neglecting the fact that half the clouds are on the nighttime side of the Earth (and not reflecting anything)…” 67% cloud cover on the sunny side of the Earth is still 67%.
[Response: hmmm…. Yes. I’ll amend that. Thanks. – [Response: Gavin]
Dr. John J-G
That is the typical flat earthers, desert walkers, Landcrabs, blind believers in the scriptures, who also hide the the declines, such as the evenings and the autumns. Even flat heaveners, it shows.
How often shall I have to remind the congregation here of this?
This should not need to be said but you presume: it’s not your congregation – you are a commenter like the rest of us – and in fact congregation might not be an accurate descriptor. It’s here by the grace, generosity and hard work of the RealClimate creators and writers.
Your postings are a mixed bag, some of which, if I struggle through the miasma of words, is of interest. But I wish you would not obscure what you have to say with all the excess verbiage.
If you want a congregation, please start your own blog.
You missed the point again Susan Anderson.
Carbomontanus, as an independent reader, I’m also having trouble following your point. Can you speak more plainly, more directly?
Carbo~ It’s quite simple.
This is not a congregation.
It is not your congregation.
You are one among many commenters on RealClimate, which belongs to the good folk who provide this forum. You are not in charge of them, or me, or anybody else here. If you wish to be in charge, you can form your own platform/blog/what have you.
—
Your rococo English, while peculiar, is beside the point. So are your insults.
I can hardly believe that you are so independent Mr Windchaser.
Flat earthers, flat heaveners, desert walkers , blind believers in the scriptures , landcrabs,…
……… am I not direct and clear enough? .
https://climateball.net/but-religion
Dr Schmidt
This is Aristophanes Nephelai, the fameous greek comedy of the “Thinkery”.
They told us in school and showed a “Globus” on tilted axis in a frame.. We really could believe it ande took it as our EXPERIMENTAL ARCHETYP, = Desktop experiment that is telling the truth.
But then the first photos of Real Climate by Hasselblad camera and colour dias film from space, weightless in vacuum came on TV and in the coloured periodicals.
Nephelai became real and obvious on global level, . , and it was later called “The blue marble”.
I am sitting here with Jacob Bjerknes (3rd generation Bjerknes), who can be found on Wikipedia. ,An obvious pioneer in real climate. .
Jacob Bjerknes emigrated and scored very high in California on the Pacific ocean and ENSO, furthering the Bjerknes- exsperimental realisms, namely Bjerknes`water bath that had scored gold in Paris 1886 and later assisted and supported Heinrich Herz on his radio waves, and guided Roalm Amundsen over the North Pole in Umberto Nobiles airship “NORGE” from Svalbard to Nome in Alsaska where they crashlanded…
Jacob Bjerknes could tell the ideal weather and reliable natural wind currents and systems for such a pioneering flight by Umberto Nobiles airship..
Next time, Bjerknes was not asked, thus could not assist Umberto Nobile as he tried again with his next airship ITALIA that fell down on the ices and had to be rescued by the russians.
It was icing. Undercooled water droplet fogs.
Nephelai is important in the real climate you see, and Bjerknes was especially good at it. There is still a Bjerkines- center on climate in Bergen that serves us especially well on the north Atlantic fogs and winds, currents and ices.
We have the DMI.dk still upgoing. They were on Longwave each our, the very best on weather at sea and had it way over to New Foundland and Grønland and to Scilly isles Rockall and to La Corunia in Spain.
Yesterday we had a most phaenomenal HALO situation here in the frosty fogs with low sun. That can only form in the hazy fogs if the water is cristalline, but then it can also come quite down to the ground.,
I have on camera, photos of Halo details in our garden and street where individual coloured particles are seen, by 35 millimeter lens.
Beat that!
Then we are rather inside of the Halo phaenomenon with hexagonal ice prisms trickling slowly down around us under blue sky with sun shining on it.
Ice cristals have many forms and may be assymetric thus orientating parallel on macro level in space when slowly sinking and sparkling in the air.
And then there are further electrostatics among the particles.
Moral:
Nephelai is not just thinkery you see, and should not be left over to denialism and surrealism. , It can now and then be approached by elementary scientific instruments.
But then we must be intelligent and make our choises even among nobel price winners, when trying to find out and tell the truth about Nephelai in all its forms..,
There I can agree by own experience.
You should not be wasting your time writing so many column inches addressing this fool of a man.
You should not even be mentioning his name or give him or his ideas any attention at all?
Tonight Breaking News: Tail wags the dog – again!
Q. “So where does this leave us? ”
A. Exactly where we were yesterday.
[Response: People ask me about things. It’s easier for me to write it down and post it than repeat it ten times for ten different people. – gavin]
“People ask me about things. It’s easier for me to write it down and post it than repeat it ten times for ten different people. – gavin]”
I use the analyses posted here all the time to refute the false claims from Clauser, Soon, and all the others, that appear all the time. I can’t do the analysis myself, so your work is greatly appreciated, and used often.
au contraire … it was much needed and valuable. A recent physics Nobel contains multitudes of support for persuasive lies, and I am deeply grateful to Gavin Schmidt for taking the time and effort.
My recent experience here wrt Philip W Anderson, Gaiever, Dyson et al. included pushback about Clauser and now I know where to go when it crops up.
Lies don’t go away when you ignore them. It is, however, important not to give citations of lies such prominence in the argument that people with shallow attention skills (most people, that is) take the lie for the truth in spite of context.
Everyone should read the recent takedown of Nobel Prize winning “economist” W. Nordhaus of Yale at The Intercept, by Christopher Ketchum. (Sorry, I don’t computer links) He could have titled the article Eco? No. Mist!
Tim Lenton et al. “The Emperor’s New Climate Scenarios” (Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, University of Exeter) is not bad either.
Disinformation may also be referred to as Propaganda.
Interesting. Glad to see the Grantham Institute on the job. Here’s the link: When Idiot Savants Do Climate Economics: How an elite clique of math-addled economists hijacked climate policy. – https://theintercept.com/2023/10/29/william-nordhaus-climate-economics/
The Intercept has attracted some fine reporters, and is paywall-free. Jon Schwartz who used to cover Exxon lies etc. at NYTimes is now there, and very sharp.
Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics is good. The Story of Stuff provides some shocking but enjoyable animated presentations of facts we need to know.
https://www.storyofstuff.org/
I used the more direct word ‘lies’ above.
One of RealClimate’s outstanding services over the years has been providing a serious reply (with numbers) to the many more or less scientific arguments denying global climate change. Somebody has to do it, that’s how science is supposed to work. It’s a big part of what distinguishes science from all other attempts to understand things.
Ned Kelly says
“You should not be wasting your time writing so many column inches addressing this fool of a man.You should not even be mentioning his name or give him or his ideas any attention at all?Tonight Breaking News: Tail wags the dog – again!”
This is presumably based on the idea repeating a lie just spreads the lie and focuses attention on the liar. I think there’s clearly some truth in this. But the news media will repeat lies and there’s no stopping them, and the lie would still move around the internet on platforms sympathetic to the liar.
And people may believe the lie because scientists haven’t rebutted the lie. So I believe on balance its more important to rebut the lies,. and this may require stating what the lie is.
NIGEL: There are much bigger and far worse lies out there than old farts delusions about clouds.
Yes, Gavin has given him far more kudos than the idiot deserves.
That should have been obvious before Gavin typed a single word, and stopped right there.
SPENCER: seeks to fix the world by correcting all the “scientific arguments denying global climate change.”
Please note: John Clauser has NO “scientific argument” denying global climate change. Trash should be ignored. We don’t write a blog post about every claim ever uttered by that other idiot PR whore Monckton.
“Oh but he isn’t a Nobel prize winning Physicist!” comes the retort
It makes not difference – trash is trash – it doesn’t matter why it’s trash.
Wasting your lives arguing about and correcting such things will not solve anything or stop one gram of CO2 going into the atmosphere – it never does.
Let the fools be fools!
But hey, each to their own. It’s your life. :-)
Hi Ned, just to better understand your position… May I ask, do you believe that public perception of Science in general, and Climate Science in particular, is important or not? If not, your position makes sense to me. However, I have a hard time rationalizing a position which some might perceive as somewhat dogmatic. Given the public policy implications, and facing an ongoing disinformation campaign, responding to a Novel laureate would seem quite important to me regardless of his particular specialty.
Jonathon: My answer is — Of little to no importance.
The Public do not get to make the decisions.
The Public do not need to comprehend the Science of a motor vehicle in order to drive one obtain a license or to buy one.
They also do not need to know the Science of a motor vehicle or road making or culverts in order for someone to build a modern freeway on which Joe Public gets to drive.
The Public get to do what they are told and allowed to do.
That’s a Fact – they’re Scientific literacy on EVERY TOPIC is utterly irrelevant, of zero import.
The Public do not get to design or deploy Public Policy either. :-)
The “problem” if you wish to call it that is not in the Science domain.
It is not a Public problem either.
It’s a Social Class problem.
There is Social Class, an extremely corrupted immoral one, that has gained complete control over the levers of Power – in the Western OECD world especially post-WW2.
Climate Scientists just pretend they don’t exist and pretend they don’t already control everything. Climate Scientists foolishly believe if they just produce and Paper, present another IPCC report, everything will work itself out this time.
It’s the domain where Climate Scientists are the one’s suffering severe Dunning-Kruger Effects.
Meaning, simply, they are way out of their depth. As Ray said, they’re in the DK Club but don’t realise it. They got the tiger by the tail and cannot understand why they keep getting bitten all the time.
Scientists (incl Hansen/RC ) don’t get that. The problem isn’t because The Public and the Policy Makers don’t understand the Science well enough …. and if we just explain it better, then all these light bulbs will switch on and everything will be fixed, correct action will be taken.
No. The problem is NOT a lack of scientific knowledge of Joe Public, Policy Makers, nor all these “deniers”
Ignorance of the Scientific Facts is NOT the Problem.
It never has been.
Isn’t this obvious?
[Response: People ask me about things. It’s easier for me to write it down and post it than repeat it ten times for ten different people. – gavin]
Alternatively, you could just ignore them …… or simply say:
“The guy is an idiot, out of his depth, just ignore him.”
Here’s a combined logic and truth test:
How many people have asked you about him since you posted this unwieldy (boring) treatise about his scientific lunacy Gavin?
(smile)
There are bigger fish to fry … stop wasting your (and our) time mate.
FWIW, when Arrhenius first proposed global warming from anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, at the turn of the last century, one of the arguments used against him was that more moisture would mean more clouds, which would reflect enough sunlight to counter heating. This was part of the common (then and now) belief in a natural, or perhaps God-given, “balance of nature” that maintains a sort of beneficent planetary homeostasis. (Sorry, I don’t have the references or patience to look them up.)
Yes, of course that worked out well for the planet Venus.
Dr. Spencer
“More moisture which could reflect enough sunlight to counter heating…”
Yes, that is obvious things here at the bathing sites in the summer. We hate those clouds coming all the time, that cools it again whenever the sun seems to be breaking through. .
But what all, even Richard Linzen seems to forget ,… is chill rain even in the form of hails and iceballs falling down. Especially in early summer after the sun has been warming up enough for a while . They believe that chill is evaportanspirational chill on the ground, especially in Las Vegas where there is hardly any evapotranspiration andnot even groundwater,…. and blame it on the broken water cycle.
They lack the conscept of latent chill that falls down directly from BIG BANG right up there in any direction . even as the sun is shining brightly down on it.
I red occasionally in vulgar German newspapers “Bildzeitung” where it may be extreeme.
It was northwestern Atlantic onland seawind onto the Alps in early july. The Hails were of the size of Tennis balls in Oberbayern, and all the traditional burgeoise red and expensive tiles in Unter and Oberammergau in Bayern smashed.
All the brand new shiny cars Mercedes`and BMWs were further peppered. and full of bowls. Windows also broken. And the costs of all that. . Of real climate and rather latent chill falling down on people in the real climate. smashing all their roofs and their cars. at high costs.
That is Latent chill vertical convectional flow, never mentioned.
That aspect of reality, latent chill flow. in material form in bitties and barrels is a primary reality in the real climate that even makes frequent regional and national cathastrophies that costs private insurance and even federal budgets.
Hailstorms is the extreeme of it in early summer, that also can make great disaster on wineyards and applegardens and further crops.
But robust, intact, natural vegetation with normal fauna seem aquainted to it and take it with elegance.
Later in summer it seems more to melt before it comes down bur remember that there is snow hurricanes atop of the tropical hurricanes with sun right in Zenith, What comes down is no more cool kits and dogs from right under the sun, but long frogs …….. . liquid latent chill cooling water from above in bitties and barrels……… Cooling the extreeme summer temperatures down again.
Discuss also those fameous extreeme events of global chill and how it can be, Ask: where does that convectional latent chill come from.?
It does not come from the northpole you see. It comes from the heavens everywhere rigtht up zenith because the heavens are not flat either,……. as neither the earth nor the heavens are flat as a factory floor with statistics and confidence, in any peoples republic within error bars, invented owned and administered by the experts or the politicians.
It is the deep chill of space, of BIG BANG a relativistic phaenomenon, performing. right for our eyes.
Oh my, Art Robinson! If it weren’t so serious it would be seriously funny. This guy!
GOP candidate asks residents to mail him their pee: If urine Cave Junction, Ore., this congressional candidate would like to hear from you – https://grist.org/politics/gop-candidate-asks-residents-to-mail-him-their-pee/
and it doesn’t stop there: “Robinson is no stranger to the spotlight. His controversial stance on nuclear power published in his energy newsletter in the 1990s, suggesting the sprinkling of nuclear waste from above to build up resistance to diseases, made headlines last year in Mother Jones and the Huffington Post when he was announced as the new GOP leader for Oregon.” & – “he called public education “the most widespread and devastating form of child abuse and racism in the United States,” leaving people “so mentally handicapped that they cannot be responsible custodians of the energy technology base or other advanced accomplishments of our civilization.””
Robinson could give Monckton a run for his money.
But I digress … while it’s amusing to go down these rabbit holes, it is depressing that the resultant alliances bode ill for all our futures. We can hope the far right continues to lose elections by promoting the crazy so we get some necessary work done.
SA. Good comments. Americas public education system seems quite good to me, given how prosperous Americas economy has been, even in these recent troubled times. Surely that is a decent evidence, but some people are too dim witted to see it.
Well, Fig.1 of Loab et al. 2021 seems to tell the essential thing, which probably is the “elephant in the room” mentioned by Clauser: the earth’s heat uptake increase is closely matching the increase of net TOA radiation (due to decreased reflection by clouds and sea ice). It is not due to a reduction in the outgoing longwave radiation (the “heat trapping” phenomenon that one should be expecting from the increase of the so-called “greenhouse gasses” in the considered period). Essentially, the earth’s heat uptake increase is almost entirely coming from a natural effect. This Loab’s Fig.1 also partially contradicts Loab’s own claim in the abstract, that “This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with a decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor”. So, I would say that Clauser may not be a climate scientist, but is substantially right.
[Response: If he was right, rising temperatures would lead to a rise in cloud cover. Temperatures have risen, but cloud cover has actually decreases. How is this ‘substantially right’? – gavin]
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816035
Dear Dr. Schmidt,
Perhaps was Max’ point slightly different.
I noted in previous discussions on this website a reference (Loeb?) presenting data from that it indeed appeared that in last two decades, the EEI might have been caused rather by lower Earth albedo (possibly due to lower cloudiness) than DIRECTLY due to rising IR absorption of the Earth surface radiation (and rising back-radiation from the sky).
If Dr. Clauser thinks that cloudiness has to rise automatically with rising temperatures, he might be wrong.
I pleaded several times for an article explaining in details the complex role of the global water cycle in climate regulation, and the confusion showed by Dr. Clauser might perhaps serve as an additional evidence that there is indeed an unsatisfied demand for a such educational article.
Personally, I would like to hear/read also an answer to another quite recent objection against present mainstream climate science, namely that its models rely on convective parametrization that allegedly does not fit with real atmosphere and causes insensitivity of all available models to anthropogenic disruptions inflicted to global water cycle:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191/full
Could you with your colleagues prepare an article answering such questions circulating in the public concerned by the observed global warming?
Alternatively, you might perhaps find someone who deals with the role of the global water cycle in Earth climate as his/her main topics, and could be willing to draft this article for Real Climate?
Many thanks in advance and best regards
Tom
Toutefois, son état de physicien, ne lui permet-il pas d’avoir un avis sur le climat ? En tant que physicien, ne peut-il pas avoir des bases sérieuses sur l’atmosphère, sa composition et le rôle des gaz qui la compose ?
La physique ne fait elle pas partie des connaissances de base de la climatologie ? Donne t-on un prix Nobel de physique au premier idiot venu ?
[Response: Il peut avoir sont propre avis, pas de question. Mais nous on a le droit aussi de montrer qu’il a tort et qu’il ne connait pas les bases scientifiques. – gavin ]
Even the IPPC reports admit they don’t really know clouds. Look at the 2013 WG3 and the chart of Level of Scientific Understanding.
Then there is the 2021 AR6 WG1 report 8 years later which states:
“Since the last IPCC Report in 2013 (the Fifth Assessment Report, or AR5), understanding of cloud processes has advanced with better observations, new analysis approaches and explicit high-resolution numerical simulation of clouds. Also, current global climate models simulate cloud behaviour better than previous models, due both to advances in computational capabilities and process understanding. Altogether, this has helped to build a more complete picture of how clouds will change as the climate warms (FAQ 7.2, Figure 1). For example, the amount of low-clouds will reduce over the subtropical ocean, leading to less reflection of incoming solar energy, and the altitude of high-clouds will rise, making them more prone to trapping outgoing energy; both processes have a warming effect. In contrast, clouds in high latitudes will be increasingly made of water droplets rather than ice crystals. This shift from fewer, larger ice crystals to smaller but more numerous water droplets will result in more of the incoming solar energy being reflected back to space and produce a cooling effect. Better understanding of how clouds respond to warming has led to more confidence than before that future changes in clouds will, overall, cause additional warming (i.e., by weakening the current cooling effect of clouds). This is called a positive net cloud feedback.
In summary, clouds will amplify rather than suppress the warming of the climate system in the future, as more greenhouse gases and fewer aerosols are released to the atmosphere by human activities.”
Back in 2009 I wrote about the wildly wide span of views of human-caused global warming expressed by physics Nobelists. That range, from utter denial to profound concern, is completely in keeping with the “cultural cognition” research of Dan Kahan at Yale. He found in several peer-reviewed studies that literacy on basic science is highest in people at the two ends of the belief spectrum on climate change: https://revkin.substack.com/i/79691915/cultural-cognition Clauser is at the Ivar Giaever end of the scale.
[Response: Not sure what you are saying here. Neither Giaever nor Clauser have high climate literacy, though both have strong over-confidence in their knowledge. – gavin]
I cannot let this response go unchallenged Gavin. You have completely misunderstood Andy’s point and you have become obsessed with your tribal mentality.
I am a scientist of 40 years standing, I don’t need to be a homeopath to read a homeopathic paper and know it is wrong. In the same way I can read the IPCC report and see the glaring errors in the very first graph presented. To claim that we know the temperature 2000 years ago with the same accuracy as 200 years ago is so blatantly wrong.
Pointing out mistakes is great, and you have done that in most of this article, and what science is all about, but saying they should be ignored because they are not climate scientist is soooooo wrong
Not sure I understand. Here is the very first figure in AR6 WG1 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/figures/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM_Figure_1.png . It clearly shows massively higher error for bars 200 years ago than those it shows for today/
What am I missing?
Try reading my numbers again jgnfld
I’m an idiot…somehow I read 2000 as a date.
That said, I have to ask the question the other way. Why would you expect significantly more error in the various proxies used in the pre-thermometer era (globally) between Year 0* and ~1800? Not my area, but did the various mainly biological proxies change in measurement reliability that much? I’ve certainly never seen a reference to such an observation, but again it’s not my area.
——–
*To the pedants: yes I do know there is no Year 0, It’s a figure of speech.
Jgnfld,
There are many reasons confidence levels 200YA should be better than 2000YA.
For a start, the PAGES2K reconstruction used about 6 times the number of proxies in 1800 as in 0, or 1 if you prefer :-) . This helps by reducing white noise by a significant factor… technically root(n) but most errors are unlikely to be white.
There is also a far better spatial and temporal distribution meaning the reconstruction is more likely to represent the actual paleotemperature. Unfortunately a very large proportion of the modern proxies are tree rings with a fairly dense localisation.
The modern proxies also have the advantage of overlap with thermometer records to aid in calibration.
The big difference however is the low frequency drift problem. Many proxies are great at discriminating changes over short periods of time. How much trees grow season to season, or decade to decade, are often linearly related to temperature (and a few other things) but comparing growth rates 1000 years apart is much more problematic.
This is all fine and I don’t mind the limitations of such reconstructions. I don’t even mind if people shade around them with some sort of meaningless standard deviation haze. The problem arises when you state the shading constrains you to the “very likely“ range, and you compare and contrast that to the high resolution modern instrument recording. This is the sort of deception that irks an experimental physicist.
I chose this graph as it is the poster graph for the IPCC. Andy Revkin rightly pointed out that physics Nobelists had a very wide span of views on human induced global warming. Based on absolutely no research at all, I would suggest the same pattern would exist for all with a high degree of science literacy.
The problem for non-climate scientists when they see a graph like that is that they immediately say “why”. Or for a geophysicist who knows that the sea level was substantially higher 6000 years ago (independent of tectonics), getting told that the temperature now is the highest it has been in XXX,000 years. Again replace Xs with whichever single digit integer you like.
Clauser could very well be wrong in a lot of what he has said, but some of what he says is true. He is right or wrong on each piece of information independent of his background. And he is right to ask questions
KEITH W
I think you should have stuck with your “that literacy on basic science ” point about both ends of the spectrum.
Even so, even if there is validity in the ref paper, climate science is still a expert field in it;s own right ….. yes smart people can “ask questions” — hey they can even write an article and pronounce their own answers — but they are still ignorant fools who don’t wtf they are talking about.
And I repeat they should be ignored completely. Time is of the essence. This is not the time to be running kindergarten for aged delusional Nobel prize winning physicists…. no matter how many stupid people believe him or want answers from Gavin.
What we need people, is more Cowbell.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816170
Dear Dr. Woollard,
You mentioned that 6000 years ago, the sea level was higher than now.
According to Dr. Benestad, the sea level could be perhaps taken as the thermometer for Earth global average surface temperature.
I liked this idea very much
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/a-distraction-due-to-errors-misunderstanding-and-misguided-norwegian-statistics/#comment-815970 ,
however, in view of your assertion, it seems to be contradictory to recent claims that current average surface temperature is the highest in last 100 000 years.
Could you provide me (and other curious readers here on RC website) with source/sources of your information about sea level during holocene?
Many thanks in advance and best regards
Tomáš
Tomas, what do you suppose the thermal response time of the deep ocean is, with respect to the rate of the observed rise in temperature?
Now, what do you suppose that implies for sea level now, versus 6k years ago?
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816284
Dear Kevin,
I am somewhat confused by your question. I was just surprised by Dr. Woollard’s assertion that sea level was higher than now some 6000 years ago. It is why I asked him for the source of this information.
I supposed that if today temperature is the highest in last 100 000 years, as recently claimed in news, and if the sea level is the most suitable “thermometer” showing long-term trends in Earth surface temperature, we should not see any sea level higher than now during this quite long period of time.
In my understanding, Dr. Benestad supposes that ocean volume reacts to absorbed heat basically instantly. I personally also tend to believe that there is no need that the ocean somehow distributes the absorbed heat before its volume changes.
Is it what you asked for, or have I misunderstood your questions?
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomas, you wrote:
I would suggest that that is incorrect–or at least misleading. Surely absorbed heat does affect volume “instantly”, but then heat is only absorbed very near the surface, by a very tiny fraction of the total water mass.
AR6 reported that:
So it’s complex and the equilibration time for the deep ocean to warmer surface temps is very long.
However, I think you were right to be surprised by Keith’s assertion. As far as I can tell, it was erroneous. Per the same AR6 chapter cited above, the last time SL exceeded the present was during the last interglacial, much deeper in the past–“about 129–116 ka,” to be exact. That source estimates it to have been 5-10 meters higher than at present.
Keith Woollard (at 22 NOV 2023 1:33 AM): – “Or for a geophysicist who knows that the sea level was substantially higher 6000 years ago (independent of tectonics), getting told that the temperature now is the highest it has been in XXX,000 years.”
I’d suggest any geophysicist who “knows that the sea level was substantially higher 6000 years ago” on planet Earth is a fantasist.
See the Wikipedia graph of Holocene Sea Level (i.e. last 8,000 years) at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Holocene_Sea_Level.png
Also see the Wikipedia graph of Post-Glacial Sea Level Rise (i.e. last 20,000 years) at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
I draw your attention to the YouTube video titled Sea Level Rise Can No Longer Be Stopped, What Next? – with John Englander, published by the UK The Royal Institution on 30 May 2019, duration 1:18:01. This video is a recording of a presentation by oceanographer John Englander at The Royal Institution, London, on 11 Feb 2019.
From time interval 0:24:24, a graph was shown indicating that the sea level was about 390 feet lower 20,000 years ago (compared with present day), rising unevenly until about 8,000 years ago where further rising was minimal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvqY2NcBWI8
A chart (linked below) shows the relative changes in global average temperature, CO₂ (carbon dioxide), and sea level over the last 420,000 years. The chart is based on the work of Dr. James Hansen and Makiko Sato.
https://johnenglander.net/chart-of-420000-year-history-temperature-co2-sea-level/
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816373
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816390
Dear Kevin, dear Geoff,
Many thanks for provided references!
It appears that Dr. Woollard’s assertion (about sea level significantly higher than now in a such “geologically recent” past as some 6000 years ago ) is incorrect.
As regards my appreciation to the idea of Dr. Benestad (that sea level might be perhaps seen as the best “thermometer” for global temperature on a “climatologic” timescale), I am aware that the global ocean in fact works rather as a differential calorimeter than as a *thermometer”.
Nevertheless, I think that it does not disprove the high value that I ascribe to the idea. I think that the sea level may be indeed an excellent indicator of climate trends, because changes in the ocean heat content matter. Although variable proportion of latent heat (ice melting / ice formation) and sensible heat (water cooling or warming) may result in some irregularities in observed temperature surface temperature trends, I think that the heat content (change) of the entire ocean may belong to most signficant climate indicators / descriptors.
Greetings
Tomáš
Geoff Miell
Did you see where the graph came from?
Copyright
This figure was prepared by Robert A. Rohde from published data, and is incorporated into the Global Warming Art project.
Art!?!?
As an alternative, try this
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0033589486900918
Or this
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/288427056_Early_Holocene_sea-level_changes_in_Oresund_southern_Scandinavia
Or this
https://cp.copernicus.org/articles/16/1187/2020/
Uh, so Keith, help me out here. You take a few cherry-picked locations and extrapolate to the entire global sea level. Yeah, that’s about the level of analysis I expect from you.
Keith Woollard (at 30 NOV 2023 AT 2:02 AM): – “Did you see where the graph came from?
Copyright
This figure was prepared by Robert A. Rohde from published data, and is incorporated into the Global Warming Art project.”
Yep. Keith, did you look to find out who Robert A. Rohde is? He is currently Lead Scientist at Berkeley Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rohde
And oceanographer John Englander presented similar data at The Royal Institution, London, on 11 Feb 2019 (also referred in my previous comment, which it seems to me you’ve conveniently ignored).
And the “alternatives” you’ve offered attempt to determine local, NOT GLOBAL MEAN sea level rise (SLR):
1. Nov 1986 paper by D.J. Searle & P.J. Woods titled Detailed documentation of a Holocene sea-level record in the perth region, southern Western Australia includes these statements:
Really? A 37 year old paper that has no “firm conclusion” for the data for local conditions. I’d suggest that’s not a convincing argument for anything, aye Keith? Oops!
2. Jul 2012 paper by Ole Bennike et al. titled Early Holocene sea-level changes in Øresund, southern Scandinavia includes:
With local “isostatic rebound” and perhaps gravitational effects due to substantial mass loss of regional ice sheets, I’d suggest the Scandinavian region is not a reliable proxy for GLOBAL mean SLR.
3. Jul 2020 paper by Maren Bender et al. titled Late Holocene (0–6 ka) sea-level changes in the Makassar Strait, Indonesia includes (bold text my emphasis):
Eustasy is a term for global sea level and its variations. It seems to me you confuse local with global SLR. Is that deliberate, Keith?
Keith, it seems to me you haven’t read the fine print in any of your “alternatives”. Oops.
But what can one expect from a climate science denier, aye Keith?
So I wrote a long reply to this a while ago but obviously it fell foul of the moderators. I suspect maybe the link to a >300 page atlas may be a copyright issue? Anyway, if anyone wishes to investigate, get the book “World Atlas of Holocene Sea Level Changes” by Paolo Pirazzoli.. If you are clever you might even find a pdf. It is a compilation of more than 800 sea level curves over the last 10KY. There is fantastic spatial coverage except it is relatively poor in the Antarctic. A majority of the studies show the same pattern of higher sea levels about 6KYA. Typically the ones that show the opposite are in areas that were/are still experiencing significant uplift due to deglaciation.
This is the sort of body of work that “climate artists” are trying to change and why not all scientist from differing but overlapping disciplines trust the mantra
So, your contention now is that your now well over 30 year old uncollated and unaligned research has been covered up by “climate artists” publishing in Nature, Science etc. and so present day science is simply based upon a conspiracy of propaganda???!!!
Um, OK. Tin foil should be cheap down at the dollar store about now what with all the sales..
No jgnfld, that is not what I am saying at all.
For a start, the research is collated and aligned, in fact that is exactly what it was designed as.. The whole aim of the atlas was to take the 800 curves and bring them together in a common format in a common temporal range with common scales. The only thing it doesn’t do is try and put a line of best fit through the disparate points like the wikipedia one did.
The wikipedia one is based on a small subset of 8 locations with no indication as to why those were chosen. It is interesting to note that the 8 locations selected by R Rhode are all in the atlas, with similar curves..
This whole conversation is about why some experts from other fields do not agree with the mantra.. I was challenged to show why I believed that sea levels were higher 6KYA. I have provided the evidence, If you think selecting 8 of the 800 curves is the way to go, that is fine, but I don’t.
Keith Woollard (at 5 DEC 2023 AT 9:16 PM): – “For a start, the research is collated and aligned, in fact that is exactly what it was designed as.. The whole aim of the atlas was to take the 800 curves and bring them together in a common format in a common temporal range with common scales. The only thing it doesn’t do is try and put a line of best fit through the disparate points like the wikipedia one did.”
The book titled World Atlas of Holocene Sea-Level Changes by Paolo Antonio Pirazzoli and J. Pluet, was published on 20 Nov 1991 – that’s more than 32 years ago!
Keith Woollard (at 5 DEC 2023 AT 9:16 PM): – “The wikipedia one is based on a small subset of 8 locations with no indication as to why those were chosen. It is interesting to note that the 8 locations selected by R Rhode are all in the atlas, with similar curves..”
The Wikipedia notes on the Post-Glacial Sea Level Rise graph begins with:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
In my estimation, data from a book published more than 32 years ago (i.e. when less data/information was known) is superseded by peer-reviewed scientific papers published later (i.e. 25 through 18½ years ago).
Keith Woollard (at 5 DEC 2023 AT 9:16 PM): – “This whole conversation is about why some experts from other fields do not agree with the mantra..”
It wouldn’t be because climate science threatens commercial interests of “some experts” associated with fossil fuel interests, aye Keith?
Keith Woollard (at 5 DEC 2023 AT 9:16 PM): – “I was challenged to show why I believed that sea levels were higher 6KYA. I have provided the evidence, If you think selecting 8 of the 800 curves is the way to go, that is fine, but I don’t.”
I’d suggest your so-called “evidence” is not convincing. But what does one expect from a climate science denier that provides “evidence” to fit their ideological narrative, aye Keith?
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816811
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816817
Dear Dr. Woollard, dear Geoff Miell,
Thank you both for useful references and for your discussion.
It is my understanding that newer publications comparing and assessing local (isostasy) and global (eustasy) effects having influence on evaluation of past sea level changes give hints that the alleged holocene maximum of the global sea level some 6000 years ago might be in fact an artifact.
Dr. Woollard, if you disagree, could you comment in more detail where you still see discrepancies in the newer data?
Greetings
Tomáš Kalisz
@ KevinMcKinney
Here you are unexperienced in your reply to Thomas Kalisz.
Our teacher in public school measured up exactly 50 milliliters of H2O and 50 ml of Et.OH and mixed together. It gave less than 100 ml together.
And explained that if you take a sack of footballs and a sack of peas or potatoes and mix together, it will not give 2 sacks but less than 2 sacks together..
Because the smaller molecules will enter and fill up the volumes and empty space between the larger molecules.
Well that is a first approximation, but it is more to it also in the van der Waals, electro- magnetic fields with its slime- and glue- forces in the square of space, in the square- liters or R^6 in the oceans and in the chemical glasses.
I came over liquid Metanol CH3OH to be mixed about 50% with water in the lab. Nobody had told, but that mixture got war.m. Probably due to a shrink of volume PdV = TdS where P is osmotic pressure. When it somehow chemically binds and glues-shrinks together more closely footballs and potatoes in a sack, then it will “relax and warm” potential energy set free.
Other examples are SO3 +nH2O that binds severely falls together and heatsw up. But NH4NO3 in water , that cools efficiently as also NH3 +H2O= is used infameous cooling machines. There, Hydrogen bonds in the van derwaals field are rather broke, and the summa volume will expand.
I cannot see quite spontaneously that there is any such potencial energies” between hot and cfold water, alltyhough I cannot deny it either. .
So I tend to believe that Kalisz has rather seen the light here. He does not allways, but he seems interested.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816454
Dear Carbomontanus,
non-additivity of volume and non-zero mixing enthalpy in nonideal solutions is a very interesting part of physical chemistry, I must admit.
I doubt, however, that it may apply to mixing warmer and colder waters in ocean, unless there is a very different salinity therein. As sea water is a relatively diluted solution, differences in salinity between surface and deep waters are quite small, I would rather expect that physical chemistry of non-ideal solutions and/or the rate of mixing in the ocean does play a substantial role in sea level movements.
A technical remark:
NH3 dissolution in water is, as far as I know, quite exothermic. I think that cooling machines with NH3 as their working fluid exploit the high enthalpy of NH3 evaporation.
Greetings
Tomáš
Clauser is a physics experimentalist. Maybe he realizes no controlled experiments are available to verify or falsify so he tossed that one out.
Keith Woollard: ” I am a scientist of 40 years standing,”
;-). Then you are in a good thread. It is about a scientist, who made a fool of himself when he arrogantly assumed that his competency in one field automatically transfers into a brilliance in any other discipline of science.
KW: “[I am a scientist of 40 years standing,] I can read the IPCC report and see the glaring errors]”
You mean like when you saw the problems with Gavin’s, CO2 vs. T-anomaly graph?
KW Jul 4: “ thanks Gavin. I think a better graph to show the relationship between changing CO2 and changing T would be:”
and then you gave a link to a graph that …. removed the signal (the long-term trends in both CO2 and in T-anomaly), and left only the noise (the residuals CO2 and T after their respective trends were removed)
Or perhaps when you disproved the changes in rain patterns in Western and Eastern Australia by remarking that in … some town in Australia …there was no clear trend in rain? And then went on disproving the link between global warming and precipitation, with the statement that in Perth and Sydney you saw no clear correlation between …. local temperatures and local rains!
Which would make ANY sense ONLY, if all local weather was … stationary, i.e. no winds. no movement of air masses, because only then one could even expect to see the local rain being determined by the local temperatures https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/old-habits/#comment-815016
KW: Saying they should be ignored because they are not climate scientist is soooooo wrong
You missed the point. Gavin destroyed John Clauser on merit – by listing numerous and discrediting factual and logical errors in Clauser’s climate claims. That he is not a climate scientist comes ONLY in the context of your side, the climate deniers, routinely using the credibility of Nobel Prize winners from OTHER disciplines, as a proof that their ignorant claims about the climate and climate scientists are valid and deserve respect. A Nobel Prize winner can’t be wrong, even outside their discipline, right?
Scientific credibility, my dear Prof.(?) Woollard, is like a chain – only as strong as its weakest link.
Here, Piotr is teaching again
about Scientifc credibility being like a chain, 0nly as strong as its weakest link.
There might be different diciplines like in sports where the olympic winner in sprint or maraton may not be good or over average at all in dicos spear and weightlifting or swimming.
But there are also allround and average atletics where you will loose if you cannot throw a discos or a spear at all.
Again, I would not recommend Piotr as Decanus Rector or Professor of systematics or meta- physics or epistemology at all.
We have 2 further examples here John Clauser and Ivar Giæver, nobel prices of physics, who I would not recommend as professors or teachers- judges- of general systematics, orders, and behaviours.
But, there are certain co- relations of general IQ performence, where we see some co- relation tendecies between appaenly widely different talents and scills. As when the price winning musician also suddenly showed to be the best blacksmith and the best visual artist & drawer.
(How much can you stretch an iron or a tone before it breaks and at what glow temperature? that is the same principle. )
A fameous 1.st violinist was asked by his colleague on the next seat in the orchestra : “What do you think about Krustschov?”
Answer: “Krustschov? I never played with him!
Such are the extreeme specialists.
And then the question whether Piotr should be employed as Maestro for it all. There we better need the experienced generalist performers on many instruments.
Adding to the comments already sent in your direction Carbomontanus oh great egoistisk leverandør av analfabeter ekstraordinært søppel ….. PUT A SOCK IN IT
Carbo: “the question whether Piotr should be employed as Maestro for it all”
Question all you want – it is your stream of consciousness, after all. You may want to leave my name out of it, though, in case if a casual reader thinks the Piotr in your head has anything in common with me and my arguments.
Being recognized in one area often inflates one’s ego so much that they think their genius automatically extends to any other discipline or endeavor. It usually does not. Michael Jordan wasn’t that great when he switched to baseball. Usain Bolt’s career in soccer went nowhere. And if the genius in one area, cannot recognize their limitations in other areas, then it raises red flags about their credibility of their proclamations in any of these other areas,
A good scientist is first and foremost skeptical toward themselves – if they
see something interesting – they ask themselves: have others noticed it before me, and if the answer is no – then why – is it because I am so brilliant and can see things others can’t, or maybe it is too good to be true: maybe I am missing something. Some of the Nobel prize winners tend to overlook the latter, much more likely, possibility, and make fools of themselves, staining their reputation in the process.
first learns from the others before him, and if they think
are first skeptical toward themselves, before claiming
because there you have to skepticism toward themselves
they replaced humbleness with hubris, and they forgot that before the skepticism towards others. first it has
“I know that I know nothing“
@ Piotr
I would not employ you after that application either.
What you describe is the liturgy in short , probably the way you got it in family heritage from your grandparents from your arbitrary grandmother and here silly”tounge” on how to score as an aspiring immigrant, who were practically analphabetic in the brand new world, on the factory floor.
in uniforms at the assembly line where the earth was flat within error- bars …. on the special macine or ROBOT from the anonymeous experts in plural, where “SCIENCE” is to be produced and rolled out further on the assembly line, from arbitrary natural rubbish and bullshit into a large input on that one and only one large processing machine on the factory floor…
………that will chew it all by coal heated rattling energetic routine and put it out vacuum packed and sterilized , labeled peer rewiewed as “papers” that shall refresh you the better and give you a new personality, called “SCIENCE!” and even “SCIENTIFIC”.
The sins of your grandparents you see,…..are haunting you….. as clearly threatened in the scriptures.
There is a lot of it known in the litterature.
When people are inferiour and cannot do science, they produce and purchase general metaphysics and “science theory”, orders manners and behaviours, boots and uniforms and collective napkins,…. of science instead.
And correct people for not being scientific.
Carbomontanus – The sins of your grandparents you see,…..are haunting you….. as clearly threatened in the scriptures.
Please get this ad hominem delusional pathological trolling sealion outta here. TY
( Don’t you read what he writes in the Moderation Booths before posting it ? )
Keith, I’m starting to worry about your vision. When was the last time you had it checked.?
Of course your vision could be fine and you’re just nuts.
Just by doing a rough measurement of that graph:
2000YA error bar is about .5 degrees C
200YA error bar is about .3 degrees C
Doesn’t that count as difference? It definetely doesn’t imply “the same accuracy”.
Thank you Mev, you are correct and I was wrong, there is a small change..
As accurately as I can measure I get
0.5@year 1,
0.5@500
0.42@1000
0.48@1500
0.43@1700
0.31@1800
To do this I just downloaded the high res image, and then read off the first and last non-white pixel from the appropriate column. Obviously this is not perfect. the image size gives a temporal resolution of less than one sample/3 years so the modern period with the higher frequency will be less accurate.
I really appreciate you pointing this out and I am even more confused now as to what they have done
That’s probably a very strong cue that more study and less negative commenting is indicated.
M: 2000YA error bar is about .5 degrees C
200YA error bar is about .3 degrees C
Doesn’t that count as difference? It definetely doesn’t imply “the same accuracy”.
BPL: You have accuracy confused with precision.
> To claim that we know the temperature 2000 years ago with the same accuracy as 200 years ago is so blatantly wrong.
By chance nobody serious claims that.
I’ve a question and I’ve not been able to get answers.
Reported change = natural change + man made change + measurement errors
I’m told measurement errors are no more, so
Reported change = natural change + man made change
Where are the graphs for natural change and where are the graphs for man made change over time?
A very simple question, but there’s nothing in the IPCC reports.
Given its central to the claims that humans have changed temperature, its very suspicious that the graphs aren’t there.
So my guess is that the man made change is miniscule. If the graphs were produced [either would do], people wouldn’t buy in.
Or if the claim is that effectively all change is man made, then you’ve got a real problem claiming that natural change had stopped. Flat lined.
So those graphs aren’t produced, and you rely on people not asking the right question. You imply that all change is man made. It bigs up the story in other words.
So where are the graphs?
[Response: Climate Drivers (NASA SVS), Bloomberg, IPCC AR5, IPCC AR6, … need more? – gavin]
Who told you exactly WHAT about measurement errors??? Can’t say I know of a single person who does stats/science who thinks measurement contain no errors.
I suspect you are being confused by mathematical regression assumptions one of which is the IV is measured w/o error. While there are statistical methods–labeled “errors-in-variables models”–they are rarely used in practice for several reasons. including simple practicality and ease. You should also know that in a linear model, any error found in the IV measurement ATTENTUATES the coefficient…i.e. the more error in measurement in in IV, the MORE the actual coefficient as measured by normal linear regression is UNDERestimated. This effect is discussed in wiki here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_dilution.
A more rarified problem is that unless one actually collects repeated measures at each level to get a solid unbiased estimate of the value at each level in the regression, you also introduce a bias in any predictions made from any particular set of observations when you include error in the IV but use only the values collected in the regression since the coefficients introduce sample bias. This is related to the notion capitalizing on chance variation in the collected sample.
Do you HONESTLY think statistics pros working in the area are unaware of these issues and that you of all the people in the world have suddenly invalidated all of present-day climate science??? If so, I suggest you disabuse yourself of that notion.
Today is more entertaining than usual here. I have to comment.
jgnfld assumes, draws the conclusion that:
“I suspect you are being confused by mathematical regression assumptions one of which is the IV is measured w/o error.”
LOL too funny.
ON what evidential basis do you “suspect” that, as opposed to the much more obvious evidence to hand that he would not know what a “mathematical regression etc” was if it up and whacked him on the side of the head?
My reading is that either you really are just wanting to massage your ego about how much you know, or you are as dumb and lacking in perception and basic knowledge about “life” as Aden is.
There maybe other possibilities but with much lower likelihoods. :-)
Ned Kelly. I agree that Aden probably wouldn’t know what a linear regression is.
jgnflds response is very technical and is perhaps a bit too technical for the general public. It just needs simplifying a bit and putting in plain language where possible. A definition of a linear regression would have helped.
But at least jgnfld is making an effort to educate, and clearly knows his stuff. I find some of this stuff interesting..I have a design degree, but I nearly did a chemistry degree, and since being retired I have taken a bit more interest in science.
There might be some ego in demonstrating technical knowledge, but its one of the more positive and less corrosive forms of ego.
I believe that Gavin made a good concise response, with his concise list of several links going to graphs and assessments showing the scale of recent natural variation. It probably wont convince Aden, who is probably a hardcore denialist, but it would educate the general public, and especially people who are sceptical but not too stubborn.
It was graphs like that which convinced me the denialists had no real ammunition. Back in the 1990s when I became interested in the climate issue.
I share your concerns and cynicism up to a point. But discussion forums serve various purposes. In the Book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by N Y Hariri he has a chapter on the positive value of gossip. It made me realise discussion forums like this are sophisticated forms of gossip. So I suggest chill out a bit.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816106
Dear Nigel,
Thank you very much for your remark. I must honestly admit that I do not know what IV mentioned by jgnfld does actually mean.
In organic electronics, where I am active last 13 years, these letters serve as an abbreviation for current-voltage curves serving as one of several basic characteristics for semiconductor devices such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).
I am, however, quite sure that jgnfld teaching about linear regression had no connection to electronic devices..
Greetings
Tomáš
Regression models typically assume all independent variables are measured without error.
One random link to this: https://stats.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Applied_Statistics/Introductory_Business_Statistics_(OpenStax)/13%3A_Linear_Regression_and_Correlation/13.04%3A_The_Regression_Equation
In response to Tomas (comment below, if I correctly anticipate how this thing will thread), I’m thinking that “IV” in this context likely means “instrumental variable.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_variables_estimation
But I could be wrong. I’ve learned enough statistical concepts to spot many instances of flagrant statistical abuse, but I’m a stats dilettante–at best.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816276
IV = independent variable
Thanks for the explanation!
I have no other idea about WHAT could possibly lead to someone saying: “I’m told measurement errors are no more”. But then I am not a mind reader.
And it is true that regression assumes the IV is measured without error. I have seen others jump on this point in the past. It is not a pertinent one in almost all cases.
“Or if the claim is that effectively all change is man made, then you’ve got a real problem claiming that natural change had stopped.”
Natural long-term trends usually move pretty slow, so… this isn’t really a problem.
(You get short-term changes that are fast, like volcanic eruptions, but these revert back to the mean pretty quickly. I’m talking about sustained and ongoing changes, like the Earth coming out of the last glacial period. These changes are typically slow.
But we simply don’t see any of the natural forcings changing very much right now. There’s nothing else that can explain the warming. The Sun isn’t being more intense, volcanic activity isn’t dropping in any significant way, etc. ,
Wow! You didn’t look very hard, did you? Lemme guess. Faux News watcher?
Aden: – “Where are the graphs for natural change and where are the graphs for man made change over time?”
See the graph titled “Factors Contributing to Global Temperature Change – Last 10 Years” in the report titled September 2023 Temperature Update by Robert Rohde, published by Berkeley Earth on 11 Oct 2023. Factors include:
* Man-made Global Warming;
* El Niño / La Niña;
* Solar Cycle;
* Hunga Tonga Eruption
* Marine Fuel Pollution Reduction.
https://berkeleyearth.org/september-2023-temperature-update/
Also see the YouTube video titled 5 factors behind the Global Heatwave 2023, and it’s not just El Niño, published 4 Aug 2023, duration 0:11:54.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdvn2pGyOw
The Bloomberg chart is a very direct answer. Here’s the same thing (ends in 2005) in an unpaywalled version.
https://www.fusioncharts.com/demos/datastories/what-is-really-warming-the-world/
This is a good place to start:
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
and this answers your query about the human contribution
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
Scientists give their considerable intelligence, time, and hard work to understanding and increasing knowledge, so please don’t assume they haven’t thought of all the obvious and less obvious questions.
I could wish anybody who comes here to argue and/or claim greater knowledge would look at the well organized and straightforward presentations at the NASA climate site.
Thanks, Susan, for the animation link: https://www.fusioncharts.com/demos/datastories/what-is-really-warming-the-world/. I’ll use it next time I see “It’s not us, It’s the [whatever] stupid” guy (it is almost always a guy … ;-) ), by asking: “Please explain the increasing gap between the effect of [whatever] and the observed temp.”
Also nicely illustrates the just-discussed point that what one does with statistical data depends on what is the question. If you look for the climate change attribution, short term (inter-annual, ENSO, decadal) oscillations are just “noise”, which should be averaged out by using the running average over the time-scale of 30 years. If, on the other hand, you are looking into these short-term oscillations, then the opposite, you remove the long-term (climatic) trend, and try to correlate the residuals.
From the graph it is clear, that GHGs dominate the “climate”, while they do not change enough in the short time to explain the “weather”. The weather is explained by volcanoes (shown in the graph) and ENSO (not shown) as they explain the short-term departures of the observed temperatures from the climatic trend.
Or in other words: when talking about climate change attribution, by NOT smoothing the data out over the climate-time scale you undervalue the importance of GHGs, and overvalue the importance of these short-other factors. I.e., you contaminate climate signal with weather noise.
Quite note, the link was Gavin’s (Bloomberg). It used to be free and is now paywalled, which is why I hunted out a free one. Not sure if there’s a more recent version.
Aden
I would reply otherwise.
By such question, try and frind another area and example on which you can train first on what is natural and what is artificial. Try and find the difference and whether you can see it, and how certain you can tell the difference.
The very NASA project is first of all to find possible life in the universe, that is no secret.
That shows to be especially difficult and they found no “alians” yet. regardless of effort for hundreds of years at least. But they found a great lot of premises for life allmost everywhere in the universe in recent time..
So one of their methods of how to qualify for it at least is to begin where we are and have good empirical access by cheap means.. What is life as such? what is its premises?, and is there life on earth on places where people think that it ought not to be?
They have searched in Antarktis and on Sverresfjell north Svalbard , in Death walley, and in the hot springs of Yellowstone park, and in the deapest oceans, and deep in the rocks, and found quite incredible life that was not known from before..
That approach is fruitful after all. and NASA has learnt us quite a lot and new things about life that way.
Moral:
Do your best all the time to try and have possible experimental access to it rather on your own premises. Then you are more scientific and may get the better answers, even score results that no one were aware of. Many people will hate it but other people will be fond of you and support you.
Those who get scared and upset will begin teaching you the alternatives. That are blocking and inhibiting them from being scientific, so that they rather become surrealists and denialists and end up on crutches in the Party with P, the grand old one..
Being a bit more autentic scientific is our best consumer protection against ending up that way.
Moral 2,
Try not to expect results and answers within coordinate systems and frames of reference and on graphs and even 3D that are phaenomenologically incongruent to the things that you are really looking for. Be aware of what methods can give, and cannot give. The good and the right answers may come from other diciplines and faculties.
Reviewing the bibliography of Australian cardiologist Keith Wollard MD , the closest approximation to an atmospheric science paper I could find was one on hyperbaric oxygen therapy.
I am glad however that he has brought homeopathy into the picture, for he has done a public service b reminding us how closely the arguments of its proponents parallel those of their colleagues in the climate denial business. especially James Delingpole’s:
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2023/11/progress-in-epistemology-breitbart.html
Golly, Delingpole! How dared anyone disturb his delusions with facts?! Shades of Monckton, again. Ain’t we got fun! The TV interview that tied James Delingpole’s tongue: The bellicose Telegraph climate sceptic has complained to the BBC of being ‘intellectually raped’ on Horizon during an interview with Nobel prize-winner Sir Paul Nurse – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/jan/24/james-delingpole-tv-interview [I saw the actual video but think it was pulled from the public domain some years ago]
“Intellectually raped,” was it? I suppose an ‘intellectual pregnancy’ would be too much to hope for.
But I suppose further I really shouldn’t go along with such a piece of trivializing rhetorical rubbish by accepting it as framing device–even in service of snark toward such a nasty piece of work as Delingpole has long shown himself to be.
And here I was worried above in a comment above that I was talking about something–proxies over the past 2 millennia–quite far from my areas of expertise!
“Oh look, aren’t I smart, I used google and found someone else with the same name so it must be you. I will mock you and spell BOTH names wrong”
Doesn’t this whole thread just prove my point? Do you not all see the irony of mocking someone’s background who is pointing out the errors of mocking peoples background?
Please Russell could you re-read my comments with an open mind and maybe you will understand why seemingly intelligent scientists may not 100% agree with the prescribed narrative.. And I suggest you apologise to the medical Keith Woollard and the geophysicist Keith Woollard and in future only comment on what people say, not what you imagine their background is
Google me all you like, but only comment on what you see here
Good point about the multiple Keith Woollards, and a warning to others not to click on his name, as he appears to have associated it with something that looked like it was downloading to me, which may or may not be ominous.
Would you please let us know what discipline comprises your 40 years of scientific experience? The point being made is that even a Nobelist is just a person outside their field. Since you are arguing against your host and the field of climate science (and associated fields), your qualifications should be more than the generic claim of 40 years.
It’s all too easy to make fun, and I enjoyed my time travel to Delingpole. However, your points still lack credibility in the face of Gavin Schmidt’s article, which I suggest you peruse with the same level of attention you expect for your voluntary comments on his and his colleagues’ site here.
Hi Keith.
While Academia, Google Scholar & ResearchGate all found the cardiology paper by your namesake to which I just referred, they found no scientific publications by the Keith Wollard B.Sc. who formed :: GeoCom Services Australia Pty Ltd in 1995,:
” to provide advanced workstation services to the Australasian Oil and Gas Exploration & Production industry.”
who spent the balance of his career as ” a scientist of 40 years standing,” as ” an offshore oilfield imaging customer service rep” and a geophysical “Marine party chief”., and who last .appeared on Watts Up With That in March of this year.
Might that be you?
Please present my condolences to your namesake Dr. Wollard , whom I would not have cited had had I known of The West Australian’‘s report :
https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/prominent-heart-surgeon-found-guilty-of-professional-misconduct-over-fatal-botched-operation-ng-b88924653z
that he’s been “banned from practicing medicine …..for fraudulently obtaining… accreditation”
So Keith Woolard is an earth scientist who worked or works in the oil and gas industry. Good find. No wonder he was so shy about giving details of his credentials.
I wonder if the warming trend has caused him some guilt and unease about his involvement in oil and gas, and a little bit of cognitive dissonance. So easy to resolve the tension by his denying / downplaying that there is a anthropogenic warming problem…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
We should not dismiss Keith’s perspective solely because of his profession…that is logically inappropriate. In any case, there are so many other things wrong with it, that is way down the list!r
Ray Ladbury
“We should not dismiss Keith’s perspective solely because of his profession…that is logically inappropriate. In any case, there are so many other things wrong with it, that is way down the list!r”
Agreed, but please note that I wasn’t dismissing him because of his profession. I was merely trying to understand his motives. Different thing.
Rejoice Keith !
Taylor & Francis’s deep-diving search engine has surfaced you,
however spelled as the fourth author of this contribution to geophysics: :
Cooper Basin workstation data provision – pitfalls and progress
Peter Hough, Dave Cockshell, Witold Seweryn, Keith Woollard & Annette Peters
Australian Society of Exploration Geophysicists
Extended Abstracts Volume 2004, 2004 –
Issue 1: ASEG2004 – 17th Geophysical Conference
“Primary Industries and Resources South Australia (PIRSA) continually aims to facilitate petroleum investment in South Australia through provision of high-quality geo-technical data.
In 1999, expiry of long-held petroleum exploration licences (PELs 5 and 6) over the Cooper and Eromanga Basins of South Australia (Figure 1) provided an opportunity for new explorers to invest in Australia’s largest onshore petroleum province. https://doi.org/10.1071/ASEG2004ab072
Does the scattering of wavelengths that clouds don’t absorb but that CO2 does, increasing the pathlength and probability of absorption enhance the GHG effect of CO2. If one measures the absorbance spectrum of hemoglobin or cytochromeAA3 dissolved in water in a 1cm cuvette vs 1cm of water, then adds equal amounts of a scatterer(milk), then remeasures the spectra, the absorbance peaks increase in amplitude because the mean path length is now longer than 1 cm.
BCD,
Clouds absorb pretty uniformly from 4 to 100 or so microns, while CO2 absorbs most strongly from about 13 to 17 microns. But clouds don’t cover all of the sky, while greenhouse gases do.
I am sure that many of you have looked at the posts of idiot denialists on Realclimate and wondered with envy, “Could I aspire to such a level of idiocy, too?”
Well, the answer is an emphatic yes. Humans have a tremendous, innate ability to be idiots—I’m sure you have seen this while driving on any busy highway. Well, you can extend that idiocy to other aspects of your life by following a few simple steps.
Step 1: Opine about a matter that is well outside your own expertise. Admittedly, this is easier for some people than for other. The ignorance of some people is encyclopedic in breadth. Not only does this mean they have more topics in which they can express their ignorance, it increases the odds that they will discount the value of expertise entirely!
Step 2: Once you are spouting bullshit about a topic in which you are ignorant, you’re well underway, but you’ll need to do more. It really helps if you can become emotionally invested in your bullshit and can convince yourself that the only reason anyone would disagree with you is because they are evil or corrupt or just, plain mean. When they point out your errors, you unleash a Cri de Butthurt, seizing on any slight in their reply—real or perceived—to claim that you are being persecuted. Your emotional response will help you avoid processing their disagreement rationally and keep you from seeing your own errors.
Step 3: Almost there! But now you have to come up with a reason why all the actual experts are wrong, and only you in your glory have the courage an brilliance to call them out. And you have to come up with a reason for ignoring all the evidence upon which the experts base their opinion. This gets more difficult as the evidence and the consensus of experts increasingly goes against you. Claiming that everybody is corrupt or “it’s not real science” is a good bet, but eventually, you’ll be reduced to putting your fingers in your ears and loudly repeating the arguments they’ve already eviscerated.
Step 4: There is one last thing that can trip you up. If you follow the scientific method and start looking for whether your theory’s predictions are realized or start to look at evidence, then maintaining your ignorance-based house of cards is going to be nearly impossible.
Note that above, I pointed out that idiocy is much easier if you start out stupid. However, lack of intelligence is not a prerequisite for becoming an idiot. The fact that no one can be an expert in all fields means that even the smartest among us can probably find some subject where we are ignorant and on which we can become absolute lackwits. In fact, sometimes we can even use our own intelligence to trick ourselves, as long as we trust our own opinions over those of the true experts, react with outrage to any attempt to educate us and reject good scientific reasoning in favor of motivated reasoning. Any one of us can become as idiotic as the climate denialists, creationists and flat Earthers.
Step 4 Note … Dyson. Clauser. Happer. Lindzen. QED.
Important ingredient is massive chip on shoulder, sometimes justified but not a justification for idiocy.
SA. Yes Clauser might have a chip on the old shoulder. I think he might also have a political motive for his scepticism. In one of Clausers interviews he started ranting about the alleged evils of “globalism.” especially in the response to the climate issue so this might lead him to undermine the science and in an idiotic way.
Ray,
ROFLMAO! Reminds me of some of the old MAD Magazine and National Lampoon instruction kits.
Ray Ladbury. Quite right. It makes me ponder motives for the deliberate ignorance.
For example I recall debating the smoking issue online with a very intelligent highly educated smoker and it was staggering the intellectually idiotic things she came out with to try to discredit the evidence of health risks. Addiction will apparently make some people say the strangest of things at times.
There have to be reasons for the deliberate ignorance, the hubris, and the dunning kruger. Addiction might be one. Big ego might be another. Political ideologies. Unfortunately the climate issue seems to involve all of these which is probably why progress is slow mitigating the problem.
And the deliberate ignorance could eventually become real ignorance. Smart people really seem to believe their own BS. Especially the cranks. Maybe the brain gets rewired, and not in a good way.
The oldest tenet in the propaganda textbook is: “And above all else, DO NOT start to believe in your own propaganda.”
I think many of the world’s problems these days can be traced to exactly this cause.
Re: Revkin “He found in several peer-reviewed studies that literacy on basic science is highest in people at the two ends of the belief spectrum on climate change: https://revkin.substack.com/i/79691915/cultural-cognition Clauser is at the Ivar Giaever end of the scale.”
[Response: Not sure what you are saying here. Neither Giaever nor Clauser have high climate literacy, though both have strong over-confidence in their knowledge. – gavin]
I think Andy meant that
a) Some people with good general science literacy accept climate science
b) Other people with good general science literacy do everything they can to reject climate science, and usually make more sophisticated arguments than those at start of Skeptical Science list that get repeated by those of less knowledge.
Giaever got his climate knowledge from a few hours of Googling, but then (like Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer), he helped out Big Tobacco.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/01/04/ivar-giaever-nobel-icon-for-climate-deniers
John, there are many words i could apply to your reading of Merchants Of Doubt .
“Critical” is not among them. After a decade Oreskes and / or Conway remain reluctant to discuss the disconnect between their work and its ostensible sources, or indeed to cite them— as with their reliance on the account Mark Hartsgaard of the Nation Institute published in that noted history of science journal Vanity Fair of the interview Frederick Seitz granted him at age 93.
Good article, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/05/warming200605 – While Washington Slept 2006
The deja vu aspect continues as decade follows decade, and it’s not good. I did not find any reference to Oreskes (I see you only claimed that she relied on it). It covers a lot of the same terrain as Chris Mooney’s Republican War on Science, Jane Mayer’s Dark Money, DeSmogBlog, Skeptical Science, Exxon Secrets, and a number of others delving into the all too obvious campaign to smother the facts by people who for whatever reason pushed fake skepticism. Many of them were tied to tobacco, as was Fred Seitz, who turned later in his life to lending his life record of achievement to the denial industry -“Seitz says he was comfortable taking tobacco money, “as long as it was green.””
John Mashey does much of his own work afaics.
Susan:
When she lectured at the Kennedy school I asked Naomi if she had fact checked Kartsgaard’s narrative , which staggeringly omits mention of Frederick Seitz as President of Rockefeller University , by consulting the university’s archives or interviewing his colleagues or staff. She responded that she had not, and furthermore said that she thought “primary sources” problematic .
She was equally unaware of his fundraising efforts on the university’s behalf, and of what became of the fifty million dollars donated by Reynolds. As Hartsgaards Vanity Fair story parenthetically admits no money for tobacco research was solicited and none was performed. As outgoing President and in retirement , Frederick Seitz directed its administration in support of a program of prion research by the Prusiner research group at Rockefeller University that culminated in this press release :
NOBELFÖRSAMLINGEN KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET
THE NOBEL ASSEMBLY AT THE KAROLINSKA INSTITUTE
6 October 1997
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute has today decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 1997 to
Stanley B. Prusiner
for his discovery of “Prions – a new biological principle of infection”.
While Hartsgaard styles him ” The Forty Five Million Dollar Man” Frederick Seitz in fact earned a rather modest 1% of what he raised in support of the program he championed., for which he was deservedly mentioned in Prusiner’s Stockholm acceptance speech.
I naturally complained to Graydon Carrter, but having Al Gore on the cover of Vanity Fair left scant room within for letters about fair play in the Climate Wars.
Thanks! I think I told you I found dad’s copy of Fred Seitz’s book from his Harvard student years. My impression was that he turned towards climate denial in his later years; he certainly had a rich and honorable career. Your detail is revealing. I mentioned the others because Oreskes, while performing a public service, is not my favorite: I prefer Chris Mooney and Jane Mayer.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on Al Gore. You are more literate and your memory is amazing, but I’m not backing down.
—
footnote: Why are RC response items in Finnish? (might be just me, perfectly functional, but amusing). Vastaa!
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816380
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816388
Dear Susan, dear Russell,
Many thanks to both of you for insteresting references.
As regards the Finnish language use, I only hope that it is not a sign from the moderators that we should FINISH with reading :-)
Greetings
Tom
Susan, there’s no mention of Merchants of Doubt in the 2006 Vanity Fair piece because the book was published five years later.
Someone should tell RC that the Reply tag is now appearing in Finnish :
Peruuta vastaus [sic]
Finnish comes and goes. My list of reliable resources for fake skeptic debunking including following the money is as stated, if incomplete. There’s your wonderful https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/ for an occasional belly laugh on the subject [skipped the diet one], and Willard’s https://climateball.wordpress.com/the-bingo/ [of course, humor can be a great waster of time and energy, a substitute activity for frustration, but natheless …]
0) For context, I strongly recommend the best single book (IMHO) on tobacco industry, by Stanford history Prof. Robert Proctor, “Golden Holocaust – Origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition” (2012, 737p, long, meticulous),
https://www.amazon.com/Golden-Holocaust-Cigarette-Catastrophe-Abolition/dp/0520270169
(book cover from van Gogh) (My review was one of the earlier ones.)
See especially Ch 23. “Penetrating the universities”, pp.418-458, of which pp.445-448 section is “Rockefeller’s Seitz and Lederberg” and also look up “distraction research” (i.e., for good PR, fund interesting, sometimes Nobel-winning research on topics that just never cover smoking:disease) in Index= p.255, 262-73, 423, 453. I’ve met Robert a few times. His research makes heavy use of the resource described next.
1) UC San Francsico’s Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education (CTCRE) started UCSF’s Industry Documents Library, https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu,
which has 90M+ pages from tobacco co’s, but has expanded to include other industries beyond tobacco, typically that “privatize profits and socialize costs, damages, risks” especially related to health.
It’s a terrific research resource, since many of the same people, think tanks, PR agencies, politicians show up there in documents collected as results of tobacco (& other) court settlements. There was much crossover between fossil & tobacco.
I long ago got in habit of checking new-to-me names there, finding for example that Paul Manafort did tobacco lobbying in 1990s.
I had started using IDL by 2009 (when its earlier name was Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, when I was writing https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/crescendo%20climategate%20cacophony%20v1%200.pdf (2010) .
Later, when researching Heartland Institute & SEPP to write https://www.desmog.com/wp-content/uploads/files/fake2.pdf#page=39 (2012), IDL was even more helpful (80 hits for “legacy”), including the lucky find of a decade of Philip Morris spreadsheets of $ to 501(c)(3)s that also did climate denial. See p.39.
2) Search *tobacco* industry section of database:
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco
(Document counts include some duplicate copies and depending on search, sometimes irrelevancies, but generally are internal industry documents that companies would have preferred kept secret.):
“Exxon” 21,116 documents (!) quiz: why that many in tobacco industry docs?
“Ivar Giaever” 44 ” ”
“Fred Singer” 451 ” ”
Frederick Seitz” 790 documents
I haven’t read all of these, but many are Seitz-RJ Reynolds letters, for example and make it clear that Seitz had a long, warm history with RJR especially.
Sept 1978 RJR letter about *PR* implications of funding biomedical research, but go through Seitz, not separate institute.
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=gkbf0048
1986 Letter from RJR Vice Chair to Seitz, signed/returned by him, renewing July 1978 agreement for $65,000/year (sadly, I couldn’t find that document).
https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=zydf0103
(From various estimates, 1980 $1 is $3.65-3.87 today, call that 3.75X, or $244K today.)
3) And just for fun, in reviewing recent book by Dave Lipsky, “The Parrot and the Igloo” (quirky title, but interesting), I slearned how Seitz & Singer got glued together via Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. (I’d known Singer often wrote for Washington TImes, but this tidbit was new to me.)
Lipsky: “But Frederick Seitz served on the advisory board of eight Moon conventions. He’s right there in the program: as chairman, vice-chairman. And S. Fred Singer—who would sacrifice a lot for a good pre-paid air ticket—hit up ten church conferences. As vice chairman, as speaker. It remains among the enduring Reverend Moon achievements. Matchmaking: bringing the two men together. The first time the two denial grandfathers appeared side-by-side in a magazine story. Nature reported the Freds as “luminaries of the organizing committee at the 1983 event. That’s the start for these two names that would enter history together.”
The 1983 Nature article (open access) was https://www.nature.com/articles/306524a0
==
Disclosure: Starting in 2013, I joined the advisory committee for CTCRE, sometimes help the IDL folks, get to attend internal seminars and events, which draw topnotch speakers from around the world. I occasionally give lectures and get to visit labs to see rats breathing stuff you don’t want to.
John please allow me to observe in response to the serious question you pose ”
“quiz: why that many in tobacco industry docs?
“Ivar Giaever” 44 ” ”
“Fred Singer” 451 ” ”
Frederick Seitz” 790 documents”
That PR hacks at RJ Reynolds , like all competent advertising executives , like to bask in reflected fame . Few outside the climate wars much recall nonagenarian solid state Nobelists or Reverend Moon.’science editor , and self-appointed Cosmos Club journal czar S. Fred Singer.
The real world story , as opposed to the published melodrama , may more relate to the repose of Reynolds Mad Men to being denied the power advertise cigarettes on TV .
Hence their diversion of its enormous advertising budget into deodorizing Reynold’s past by funding the future of medical research.
Who sai what to whom at the Century Association remains to be discovered., but as a matter of fact a fifty million dollar bale of hay was delivered to the door of Rock U, whose past and present administration agreed that it smelled more like mony than tobacco and accordingly put it to good use.
John, we should talk, and , in ttthe service of improving the signal to noise ratio of the history of climate science & polemics, compare notes !
Thanks. Here’s a little item on despicable Singer which bears repeating (Dad hated him):
A Note About Roger Revelle, Justin Lancaster and Fred Singer http://rabett.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-note-about-roger-revelle-julian.html
So let’s be clear: 1. Fred Singer is the most unethical scientist, in my opinion, that I have ever met. I said so in the early 1990s, publicly, and I am still confident in the truth of this statement.
I see that Eli had several revelations of his manifold harms, but will desist.
If anybody has time to waste, John Oliver did SLAPP suit from coal magnate Bob Murray with a lovely Busby Berkeley routine in the final minutes[set to start at song [trigger warning, scatological; plenty of substance in earlier part]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN8bJb8biZU&t=1260s
John, your observation that
“The first time the two denial grandfathers appeared side-by-side in a magazine story. Nature reported the Freds as “luminaries of the organizing committee at the 1983 event. That’s the start for these two names that would enter history together.”
Begs the question of why Nature covered the event? Listening to Fred Singer and his employer, Reverend Moon, and the organizing committee was hardly a draw,, but besides the talking heads of Nobelists Wigner, Milliken & Hayek the event featured a presentation by Steve Hawking at the height of his powers -, the Moonies needed some serious talent to offset the cult news headlines that week: the Jonestown mass suicide.
Roger Revelle was not alone in having his arm twisted into cooperation or co-authorship by the persistent and politically wired publicist, Singer’s long service to Moon’s Washington Times culminated in his mildly ironic appointment as Chief Scientist of the Department of Transportation.!
Russell: “John, we should talk, and , in ttthe service of improving the signal to noise ratio of the history of climate science & polemics, compare notes !”
Now, that’s a parley I’d buy tickets for!
It is my opinion that all of this sordid history demonstrates how money is like bullshit. When both are spread around widely, they make things grow. When concentrated in one place for too long, they generate a stench that none can endure. This is true whether the vessel of the concentration is R. J. Reynolds or Jeffrey Epstein.
It’s not immediately clear why you bring up Merchants of Doubt here. Or, for that matter, why Vanity Fair should need to be a “science journal” to run an interview with Fred Seitz. (Who, presumably, our friend Tomas would call a “politician”–though I wouldn’t.)
What I find interesting is that the Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in high achievers when they venture out of their area of expertise.
I don’t have a Nobel but I also don’t believe I am an expert in everything.
Perhaps people who achieve what is supposed to be a supreme award allow it to go to their heads and forget that they aren’t actually an expert in anything else?
I would happily receive a Nobel to disprove this hypothesis.
“Dunning-Kruger” is insider talk (origin, 1999) which means nothing to the people who most need to reflect on why they are doing what they are doing. IMveryHO, like calling people idiots (even if they are), the satisfaction to the self is not worth the loss in communication.
Susan, I’m going to defend Philip’s use of “the Dunning-Kruger effect” to describe someone who, though they may win a Nobel prize for their work in their fields of specialization, aren’t sufficiently competent in the science of climate change to form an expert opinion about it, but are undeterred from forming an incompetent one anyway. And the reason the term means nothing to the people who, as you say, “most need to reflect on why they are doing what they are doing’, is that a specific cognitive bias prevents them from doing so. The Dunning Kruger effect is a concise term for such people:
So, the DKe applies to people like John Clauser and Ivar Giaever, who are certainly not ‘idiots’, but are apparently oblivious to their own cognitive biases. As David Dunning said to Brian Resnick for Vox:
What drives an otherwise-brilliant guy like Clauser to make a public fool of himself in this way? Resnick and Dunning offer speculation about a failure of humility. Humility is a fundamental human virtue, that scientists must embrace to avoid fooling themselves: they have to be willing to be corrected by their scientific peers (the principle of intersubjective verification). They must also acknowledge that, in scientific domains they haven’t mastered, they know only what the consensus of specialists tells them. Humility demands that John Clauser, like any scientist who isn’t a member of the international peer group of working climate specialists, acknowledge that he’s most likely fooling himself. It’s clear from Gavin’s post that he cannot see himself as others see him. “Dunning-Kruger effect” is a pithy label for his specific class of denialist.
MA. IMO the roots of Dunning Kruger syndrome are probably narcissistic personality disorder. This disorder is particularly troubling, because its very nature means its not possible for the afflicted person to admit they are imperfect, so they are unable to accept they suffer from a disorder. Of course NPD is a spectrum disorder and we all have a little bit of narcissism but some people are at the extreme end of the spectrum.
Mal Adapted, your post reminded me of a quote by Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. …”
Mal, this to you as well:
“the satisfaction to the self is not worth the loss in communication.” We all hear you and agree. Anybody who needs to hear it does not. Specialist language and insults do that.
I don’t need to persuade you, but we need others to think, not be offended and stop paying attention.
Susan, you and I are allies in the political fight to cap anthropogenic global warming sooner rather than later. You are well-informed and articulate on fora like the NYTimes and RC, and I’ve long admired your wisdom and eloquence. Please believe I mean no disrespect to you. I’m still going to defend the use of “Dunning Kruger effect” on this comment thread, however.
Gavin’s post is a thorough, expert fisking of John Clauser’s scientific claims about climate. He ends with this:
“So where does this leave us? Effectively, we have an overconfident Nobel Prize winner, who hasn’t done their homework in an area outside their field, who makes very obvious errors, and whose fame is being capitalized on by the forces of denial. Not really an original story (c.f. Kary Mullis, Linus Pauling, etc.), but still a bit of a shame.”
Presumably the post is written for RC readers, without any expectation that Dr. Clauser would even notice it, much less recognize himself. IMO it’s fair to say that regular commenters here are ‘insiders’, who come here to learn about both climate science and its denial. I for one am convinced that, if not for the decades-long campaign of public disinformation by carbon producers and investors seeking to forestall collective intervention in their profit streams, the global economy would be well on its way to net-zero by now. It appears that Clauser is not motivated by cynical self-interest but has let himself be fooled by others who are, and who’ve expertly bypassed his skeptical training and enabled his narcissistic tendencies for their own profit. That leaves me baffled and alarmed, and I want to understand its psychological roots in Clauser and other high-profile scientists, many of them physicists, that exhibit the same behavior. As an ‘insider’ term, ‘Dunning-Kruger effect’ is concisely descriptive, and heuristic: it neatly circumscribes the problem, and suggests avenues for further investigation. Again, it’s why I come here. That’s really all I want to say.
Nigelj, thanks for making the connection between the DKe and narcissism. I happen to have reading about narcissism lately, seeking self-knowledge! I agree there’s a personality factor contributing to the DKe, and that “NPD is a spectrum disorder and we all have a little bit of narcissism but some people are at the extreme end of the spectrum”. I’m just not sure he’d qualify for a clinical diagnosis of NPD. In my observation, many high scientific achievers are on the upper side of the trait narcissism distribution, but their training and discipline usually keep them from embarrassing themselves in public. OTOH, it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated by expert flattery and/or lucrative job offers from professional disinformers. Hell, give me some of that!
By ‘he’ in my last comment, of course, I mean John Clauser.
nigelg,
“…roots of Dunning Kruger syndrome are probably narcissistic personality…”
Quite possibly so, particularly for certain high achievers, but from what I’ve noticed informally, there are some who have been raised to think in certain comforting, dogmatic ways that make them think that they’ve got all they need to know in the world, except maybe in areas where they actually have some expertise– sort of like having lateral thinking blocked.
And people often take their opinions from their social circle, a heuristic short-cut, which can leave them vulnerable to manipulation. I’ve noticed in the past that certain “influencers” wound up their followers by telling them they were being taken advantage of, and to defend themselves by thinking for themselves, i.e., by signing on to the influencer’s agenda.
More bugs in the messy neolithic brain…
The point of my humorous missive above on how to be an idiot is that we, as humans, are all idiots. We are apes who, by an accident of evolution, developed an outsized brain that allowed us to become the dominant (maybe second–ants are doing pretty well) species on the planet, but at the same time can allow us to fool ourselves egregiously when the truth threatens to hurt our feelings.
We have even developed a remedy for the second tendency–the scientific method–but we often resist applying it lest it gore the oxen we hold sacred. The human brain is a tool capable of extracting the most intricate and beautiful truths–even of coming to the brink of understanding the mysteries of the origin of our universe or the entanglement of quantum systems.
But like any other powerful tool, it can result in absurd and catastrophic failure when misapplied–and the more powerful the brain, the more it can weave intricate webs to deceive us. This is why smart people often come up with the stupidest delusions when those delusions protect what they hold dear.
The only protection against such delusion is the scientific method–and the acceptance that none of our oxen are sacred except the truth. The smarter we are, the more we need to remember that as we venture outside our our narrow expertise.
Carbo: “the question whether Piotr should be employed as Maestro for it all”
Question all you want – it is your stream of consciousness, after all. You may want to leave my name out of it, though, in case if a casual reader thinks the Piotr in your head has anything in common with me and my arguments.
Being recognized in one area often inflates one’s ego so much that they think their genius automatically extends to any other discipline or endeavor. It usually does not. Michael Jordan wasn’t that great when he switched to baseball. Usain Bolt’s career in soccer went nowhere. And if the genius in one area, cannot recognize their limitations in other areas, then it raises red flags about their credibility of their proclamations in any of these other areas,
A good scientist is first and foremost skeptical toward themselves – if they see something unexpected – they ask themselves: have others noticed it before me, and if the answer is no – then why – is it because I am so brilliant and can see things others can’t, or maybe it is too good to be true: maybe I am missing something. Some of the Nobel prize winners tend to overlook the latter, much more likely, possibility, and make fools of themselves, undermining their credibility and staining their reputation in the process.
Piotr
“A good scientist is first and foremost,……….”
There are several fameous authors on this Genosse. Letme first mention Francis Bacon. Novum organum with Idolæ mentis.
Justus von Liebig, I borrowed his biography as I had to sell apples to the “biodynamic” shop, Liebig invented mineral fertillizers and founded biochemistery and agrochemistery and took out more patents than Edison, an espesially efficient scientist. My sale went successful after having red Liebigs biography.. I was told in a dream that the shopkeeper was a cheater, smile smile.
In that biography I found the most bloody fierceful slaughter of Francis Bacon that I ever red. And Liebig describing his own and simple method..
Then after having learnt English and come to England Liebig found that the bluddy brittes also have an especially efficient and simple scientific method rather similar to his own, namely “Common sense!”
Beat that!
Moral:
You should not try and teach and administer Common Sense, genosse Piotr. Because that betrays some flat- sculled, rigid, moral pedantery. That I label the worst possible way. namely as “Arbeiter und Bauernfakultät in Greifswald!” that is typical Prussian civil service pedantery & dicipline behind Error Bars in the Scientific., Peoples Republic.
It is intellectual racism and purism on slavery- level, see Aristoteles Metafisica 1 chap 1 on wisdom and experience, on Mastership different from Slavery.
SIR bertrand Russel took a philosophical step further and stated that what happened in European renaissance and scientific revolution was that the Horse of philosophicalo speculation was spent for the waggon of experience. Thus it really took off at last you see, as Carl Popper was not yet even born.
To my special opinion, all that IT and model making in virtual reality does block both wisdom and human experience quite efficiently. the same way that any kind of artificial crutches and consciousless highspeed highprecision ROBOTIC proteses for human work and human talents. talents that rather should be “invested” and consciously trained, not forbidden.
Head and hands and heart and feet and furs should rather sit on the same body you see and not be industrially segregated.,
Then my intense question remains.:
: Is Piotr really any good Maestro or Teacher of Science and of scientific methods? or is he but fighting and badgering juvenile manners of any kind that he “feels”, the inaugurated and adult way, the way he was brought up and educated for himself downtown and in “class” way out there in the colonies?
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/11/clauser-ology-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs/#comment-816477
Dear Carbomontanus,
You know that I appreciate your emphasis on human experience. Nevertheless, I think that with models, it is as with any other tool used by humans: A model can be both “good servant” as well as “vicious master”, depending on what we expect therefrom.
In other words, I think that models can be useful if we treat their results cautiously and critically. Comparing their outputs with other concepts and, first of all, with real life wherever possible and as often as possible may protect from unjustified relying on predictions or projections that may be in fact incorrect.
I think that the best practice in this regard was perhaps demonstrated by Johannes Kepler who dismissed his model presented in Mysterium Cosmographicum in view of its poor fit with precise observations made by Tycho. Should he insisted in the supposed revelation of a “mystery” and therefore dismissed Tycho’s data, he would have hardly ever arrived at the completely different model defined by his fameous three laws of planetary motions.
I think Piotr`s teachings are often correct and helpful – and sometimes perhaps not, because we all are just humans. There is no ground to expect or demand that a smart person must be right in all cases.
Greetings
Tomáš
Kalisz
Keppler is known to have had a real made artificial model called “Mysterium cosmographicum” of the solar system. I have only seen copper stitches of it. Models of models.
Tycho Brahes advice was: ” Young Man, Quit your “Model” Mysterium cosmographicum and rather look out for where the stars are really standing and how they are mooving at any time.. Because, the mathematics that can tell us where the stars really are standing and how they moove at any time, will in any case be the best Astrology (Mysterium?) for the Emperor!”
Further by Tycho Brahe:
“The Emperor has a darkened mind and takes notice of the tiniest things. , he is a nuisance to his environment, and is in sore need for proper court astrology!.”
Then look to what Keppler could do with that at last.
Harmonices Mundi of 1619 that I have had in original in hand in Praha uphill down in the secret library cellar, and further Faximile translation by Max Caspar into German.for PENSVM of philosophy. The best of it for me showed to be book 3 on Music theory, That was directly from Thomascantor Calvisius in Lepzig and Vincenzo Gallilei from Bologna. The only theory of music that I couls ever understand and that could keep up with my musical mind and the modern oscilloscope with Post Apollo scientific devices. On the tones, how and where they stand and how they moove at any time, that will in any case become the best performance to the aurience. and clear up peoples dirty foggy and darkened minds so that tyhe higher spiritual REALIA may occur to them.
(= professional Alchemy from my side)
Keppler then wrote “Epitome astronomia copernicana” about 1621, a shorter and cleaned up version of the planetary laws 1 2 3. Again by secret stolen print at Planc in Linz, heavy Gutenberg print on lump paper issued in unstained Pergament,…sent by horse-carridge and sailboat over to King James 2. with a following script:
“Due to the miserable situation here in Praha, by the belief that Your Majesty is a more harmonical ruler than what we have got here in Praha.”
That second version ofr the planetary laws “Epitome” is probably what Isaac Newton got in hand for reading through the Royal Society and in LATIN , in his own rural parental garden as getting away from the Plague in London. , Where he he swhall have got an apple falling on his head according to rumors, Woke up from his dreams and wrote Principa Matematica.
Kepplers planetary laws lay much more hidden in Harmonices mundi book 5 from some years earlier.
I never had Epitome in hand.
When I look at it, Kepplers 2nd and 3rd law that of the mooving radius vector to the ellipse and square area being constant in any period of time and the cubes to the squares,…… can hardly be modeled the way we make clockworks and model sailboats and airplanes and rolling waggons.
But easily kept and used on mathematical formula level.
That are no models, to my conscepts,
they are pure abstractions directly appliciable to empirical reality that is not modeled.
We have exactly the same situation in the microchosmic sciences where we better take to reality by our naked senses and make good abstractions for understanding it and rather resign on “models” that are mostly in our way and just stupidi- fying.
Last summer I found a really very advanced mechanical model of the copernican system in Kaupanger Sognefjord, Heibergs collections, from 1782. showing Sun Mercur Venus Earth Moon Mars Jupiter Saturn mooving mechanically around the sun in circles and epicycles. An especially fine and advanced model, finely painted also. But totally out of scale and proportions. …………. and took very good photos of it.
Just think of that, a modeled Mysterium Chosmographicum from Kaupanger Sognefjord 1782.
Being a quite good mechanician and modelo maker who has tackled the trickiest cars and motorsaws and consumer devices for dilettants,….I would not think of making any “model” mooving along with Kepplers laws to Brahes accuracy. in proportional scales.
Then same in chemistery with molecules with numeral protons and electrons
Disqualify and resign on those lego models in virtual reality and take to traditional chemical operational devices and materials, invent new ones if necessary, and think rather in terms of abstract functional microchosmic chemical laws.that rule also on macro- visual and measurable scale.
Chemical material functions reactionas and interactions are no superbe swiss miniature mechanical clockworks .however virtual, small, and atomic. Such delusions were also the darkened mind of Emperor Rudolf 2 on Hradcany in Praha, who did study, believe in, and worship such “models” to the detriment of his imperial duties.
. . Look to the real particles, the bubbles and the cristals and their reaql properies that can be measured and used.
Niels Bohr has also commented on it, and Einstein, Both Jews. about why never make believe in, and worhsip models in virtual reality ( 2 Mos Ch. 20 v 4-5).
It stupidifies people wherever representative models cannot be made, and that is for most things not just for the electron and for the theory of relativity.
Deal with reality as it is by abstract understanding ofr it. Set it on abstract formula, say it, write it, learn it, sing it, and do it.
. I am an especially clever and experienced model- maker who can enjoin this on people.
Yes, models are useful in many ways but pleace, they are not the main instrument and praxis of good science.
Today they are rather the very popular practical toys for all those who cannot deliver any valid new results of science, because they hardly get to Nature and to Reality..
Rather be aware that models of it are useful in class and in Kindergarten and on the theater scene…. for reminding, showing, and referring to things.
The model of it is not the thing itself, that rather is to be understood and taken for serious.
You mostly cannot find it or solve it on model- level. Models do quite often stand in the way for your coming to it and finding and understanding it, and being aware of it.
Models are hypnotizing people.,
Cfr The Emperor Rudolf the 2nd. who became a pollution problem to his very imperial court uphill in Praha and further out from there, by his quite fameous, patological addiction to his models..
I repeat….!
We should perhaps discuss Platons cave- parabel , of the worshipers of shadows projections and models of it in their virtual reality, different for realizing REALIA! and that those “models ” are nothing but shadows and misconsceived projections of themselves.
Carbomontanus: “Then my intense question remains.: Is Piotr really any good Maestro or Teacher of Science and of scientific methods? or is he but fighting and badgering juvenile manners of any kind that he “feels”, the inaugurated and adult way, the way he was brought up and educated for himself downtown and in “class” way out there in the colonies?”
CarboGPT, bad news – you have failed* the Turing test AGAIN …
—
*fooling Tomas K. into thinking that you are a real boy doesn’t count – TK would believe anything.
Who needs to talk about a John Clauser’s whacky-non-science when you already have a resident Carbomontanus on hand?
We world needs an explanatory scientific analysis article on what Carbomontanus has said on Real Climate about Climate Science!
Please please do it. :-)
Yes,I believe Ned Kelly needs an explanatory scientifric analysis 0f many things,
but will it interest us all, who learnt that in public school allready?
The contents of the article are
” . “
You’re too generous Richard. :-)
Maybe a slightly pedantic question, but you say about the Planck feedback that “the upward flux of LW from the surface increases by 3.3 W/m2 for every degree change in surface temperature”. Isn’t this actually the outgoing LW flux due to an increase in surface temperature of 1K, rather than the increase in LW from the surface?
[Response: Yes, you are correct. Thanks. – gavin]
Gavin, you might want to reply to The Spectator, as in the most recent number
old editor Charles Moore writes
The ownership of the world’s longest running magazine is once more up for grab, and depending on the outcome of the bidding war , the Emir or Murdoch will likely read it.
Life’s too short to reply to every moron. Mr. Moore should go to the top of a tall building and play with the unsettled science of gravity.