OT: It's Come to This...

Right!

So it needs to approximate the real, historical values, giving a false confidence that it *might* also give enough accuracy with future values, in a modified system.

I contend it can not. For reasons previously and exhaustively mentioned.

0.5 degr. C would be fine and useful I guess. But nobody can't guarantee *any* accuracy in future predictions, that's the whole point.

joe

I'm not that old... I guess. :)

Thanks for the summary.

joe

I don't care about who cares. But I do know that reviewing a method alone already can allow for pointing out the errors in it.

The method of building an approximative computer model of reality, adjusting it within a certain range, and then expecting an as accurate output outside the range of adjustment is seriously flawed.

The unfortunate fact is that the more accurate such a model is adjusted within its range of adjustment, the more inaccurate it will be outside that range.

}snip{

Your contempt is my proud. :)

joe

Your claim to be "reviewing" the method is an obvious lie. You clearly don' t know the first thing about climate modelling, and your fatuous claims abo ut how it works clearly relate to much simpler computer models trying to fi t much simpler behaviour.

The "adjustments" or rather the method of construction that lets climate mo dels adequately represent what's happened in recent ice ages and interglaci als spans atmospheric CO2 levels from 180 ppm to 270 ppm. Stretching the CO

2 range to include the current 400 ppm moves it up from 270 ppm in the same proportion as does shrinking it down to 180 ppm for an ice age.

This isn't the stuff that serious flaws are made of.

That's what happens when you try to fit a non-linear single-valued relation ship with an arbitrary polynomial. In general sensible people use physicall y appropriate non-linear relationships to do that job, not arbitrary polyno mials.

Who cares what inflates your irrational (and deluded) self-assurance?

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

James Arthur isn't as dim as you are - few people are - but he gets his ide as about climate science from the same denialist web-sites. He should reali se that this is nonsense being pumped out for profit, paid for by the fossi l-carbon extraction industry, but he's committed to the entirely free marke t, and recognising that anthropogenic global warming was real, and that it needs society-wide collective action to cope with it, would conflict with h is free-market ideology.

talks about a bunch of right-wing physicists who made a similar choice in a n earlier controversy.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

What's "false" about the limited amount of confidence on offer?

Since your "arguments" are founded on the over-fitting of polynomials - whi ch happens to be irrelevant to climate modelling, you are aren't so much "c ontending" as doing irrelevant shadow-boxing.

Only Joey Hey would think that the irrelevant nonsense he came up could con stitute a "reason" and the only exhaustive part of his argument was the fac t that it exposed all the - very little - he knows about the subject.

Nobody can "guarantee" future predictions and trying to be too conservative and too precise has led the IPCC to take sea-level rise less seriously tha n it deserves. It's easy to model how long the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets would take to melt in place, but they aren't going to do that.

At the end of the last ice age, the Laurentian ice sheet slid off Northern Canada into the North Atlantic, where it melted a lot faster.

The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are already sliding into the oc ean faster than they used to, which is why the GRACE satellites tell us tha t they are losing mass, but working up a computer model of what's going on deep under the surface is tricky, and the IPCC was nervous of saying anythi ng about it.

Joey Hey doesn't understand climate models, and he doesn't understand how t hey have to be used.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Sadly, this misses the point. If all the various predicted outcomes are bad , which is pretty much what climate modelling is telling us at the moment, we should be working to minimise CO2 injection into the atmosphere. The unc ertainty does make the cost-benefit analysis more complex, and some really expensive schemes for moving to carbon-neutrality fast may be over-reaction s, but the message that we should aim to get close to carbon neutrality in a decade or so is irrefutable.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Since his "understanding" involves invoking the error of using high order p olynomials to fit short runs of data, which isn't an issue in climate scien ce, his actual preference is for stuff he thinks he understands, rather tha n the more complicated reality he hasn't got a clue about.

One has to wonder what sort of models he is thinking of. It hasn't got anyt hing to do with climate science.

As opposed to carrying on about a class of errors in particular computer mo dels that don't come up in climate science.

The IPCC doesn't climate predictions for 2030 - it's too close, and the wan dering of the ocean currents (which we can't yet predict)have as much effec t as the extra CO2 we are likely to put into the atmosphere.

Here are the predictions they have made for 2100

re-temperature-rise

Depending how much we manage to throttle back CO2 emissions, they go from 1 .5 to 1.7 degrees Celcius of warming (best case) to 4.1 to 4.8 degrees with business as usual.

These might not be accurate enough for you, but they are precise enough to be worrying to anybody with a brain in his head.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Yes, but all you have to do is look 15 years back to see which models correctly predicted today's conditions.

Answer: none of them.

Yes, but that requires being able to weigh, assess, and project certain interactions, a higher level of understanding Bill doesn't have. So, it's futile.

For example, it could get a little warmer, we could have a few more clouds, reflecting more sun--negative feedback--and stabilize. The latter possibility isn't considered; the models can't adequately predict the type, prevalence, effect, and 3-D distribution of clouds.

When I pointed out that possibility years back Bill rejected it, saying there was no evidence of higher atmospheric H20. Some years later, Bill cited higher levels of atmospheric H20 (as a new calamity, of course).

I'm not arguing for any particular outcome, mind you, simply pointing out that the models are not able to either.

Another negative feedback is that if it gets warmer Man will use less fuel heating. Cars are significantly more efficient when it's warmer. Are those modeled? Of course not.

The fossil fuels we're burning today are substantially ancient algae. Algae extract CO2 from ocean water. Which models project algae bio-mass? None, AFAIK. Which models project all the benefits of that, or possible reduction in our fossil fuel use by harvesting algae?

It's massively useful, makes plastics, fuel, fertilizer, even food.

There are a zillion factors, many interactive, poorly understood.

We're being told models which decorrelated from reality over the last few years can extrapolate not only the behavior of the Earth centuries hence, but of Man himself.

It's all kind of boring. The immediate risk to humanity is political, (quasi-ironically mostly from the warmingistas), and it's going pear-shaped.

Cheers, James Arthur

Not strictly true. If you sort the models on the basis of the sea surface t emperatures (which depend on ocean currents which we can predict yet - thou gh the Argo buoys are collecting the data which will make possible, at leas t to some extent further down the line) you can pick uout a bunch that did pretty well.

If you throw in the question of how accurate the predictions need to be to be useful, and the time span over which you want them to be useful, your rh etorical triumph looks even more hollow. The ocean-current-driven variation is dominant over a 15-year period. The Atlantic multi-decal alternation is a gift to the denialists because it makes short-term prediction difficult.

Over longer periods - centuries - this sort of noise averages out, and the long term effects of global warming become more salient. We really don't wa nt to give it time to make real mess of the world, or even for the fossil c arbon extraction industry to dig up all the fossil carbon that's tolerably cheap to dig up.

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James Arthur's level of understanding is just high enough to let him recycl e arguments from denalist web sites. It isn't high enough to let him realis e that this makes him look like a gullible sucker.

His comments about my level of understanding aren't supported by any eviden ce of superior insight on his part - in fact what he posts suggests that he hasn't got any insight of his own, and relies on arguments from right-wing sources which he regards a politically reliable. People who knew more phys ics than James Arthur ever could made the same choice

but had better excuses for their error of judgement.

Far from not being considered, this idea was formalised by Richard Lindzen in a form that could be tested, was tested, and was falsified.

It's a fairly stupid idea. Clouds form in air that is cooling - rising high er in the atmosphere or moving away from the equator - and go away in air that is warming - falling to a lower altitude or moving closer to the equat or. Since there's a finite amount of air, cloud cover stays pretty close to 50% no matter how much water is evaporating from oceans.

Geological history includes some much warmer periods, and there's no eviden ce of wildly different cloud cover back then. This has been pointed to Jame s Arthur before, but he's deeply into recycling the same tired old rhetoric , and doesn't understand quite how stupid this makes him look.

That's not what I said. More atmospheric H20 is a thermodynamically inevita ble consequence of higher global surface temperatures - and I've known that since I did undergraduate chemistry. More water vapour in the atmosphere m ay eventually mean denser clouds (when some of it condenses out and clouds do form) - but it isn't going to change the percentage cloud cover. Water v apour is itself a greenhouse gas - though since if freezes out as ice at fa irly low altitudes, it's not as effective as CO2 or methane

Like I said, James Arthur doesn't understand the arguments. Here he has con fused cloud cover, H20 content and water vapour pressure.

Deceitful nonsense. The same people that subsidise denialist web-sites supp ort the Tea Party, and James Arthur knows that they are right - far-right - enough to suit him. He doesn't care whether the information being peddled is correct - he just has to know that it comes from the right side of polit ics.

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Except that air-conditioning uses more power the warmer it gets, and that a lready dominates domestic power consumption in some areas in summer. A\noth er rhetrocial fizzer.

gae

,

ion

Algae aren't major players at the moment. Half the CO2 we are emitting at t he moment dissolves in the ocean, and ends up in the deep ocean with an 800 year time constant. As the ocean as a whole get warmer, they are going to absorb less CO2. This has been taken into account.

Fertilising the oceans with iron to encourage more algae to capture CO2 is a well-known bio-engineering proposal ( though James Arthur obviously hasn' t heard about it) and there have been a couple of small scale trials (that didn't turn out too well).

But rather better understood than James Arthur thinks.

The current batch of IPCC predictions do cover a range of possible human be aviours - from James-Arthur like head-in-sand to effective collective actio n (which he finds politically catastrophic, probably because the foudning t ax evaders didn't write anything about it).

ed.

James Arthur would think that. He might not be a nitwit, but he's definitel y to the far right in politics, and endorses some very stupid delusions on that basis.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

The models are *so*much*better* now!

All change is always bad. The planet, and life on it, were perfect before technology (bad stuff like fire, farming, electricity) were invented.

Boring, yes. Most of the public, especially in the USA, rates AGW way down on their list of interests. AGW interests me in that it is an ongoing, historical peversion of the scientific process. There's a lot of that going around lately.

More rain and snow would be nice, too. This year looks great in the Sierras, 15 feet of snow at the sierra crest so far. The Great Climate-Change California Drought looks like normal seasonal variation to me.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

On Tue, 29 Dec 2015 09:42:28 -0800, John Larkin Gave us:

This from an asshole who hates NASA.

Do you even know what GOES-R is? Or OCO2?

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They are a bit better. When there's enough Argo buoy data that we understan d the ocean circulation - deep currents as well as the surface currents we' ve known about for centuries - they'll probably be quite a bit better.

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James Arthur being slightly more pig-ignorant than usual, and "remembering" rather less than exactly.

A standard John Larlin trope. He wants to class a anthropogenic global warm ing as a tree-hugger delusion. Tree huggers do want to reverse the rise in CO2 levels, but there's a much larger and more rational crowd who want to r everse it for entirely practical reasons, none of which John Larkin has bot hered to understand.

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If anthropogenic global warming interested John Larkin enough to get his se rious attention, he'd be aware that the scientific case for anthropogenic g lobal warming was as water-tight as a scientific case gets.

In reality, he's happy to let denialist propapganda do his thinking for him , and dim enough not to notice that he's endorsing a heap of low-grade prop aganda being pusehd out by the fossil carbon extraction industry, who are k een to be able to keep on digging up fossil carbon and selling it to be bur nt as fuel for a few years longer.

pg

One of the more intense EL Nino on record is happening right now, and John Larkin talks of "normal seasonal variation"

See page 21. Most El Nino's struggle to make 2.0. 1998 made about 2.2. the current El Nino is already at 2.0 .

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Fire should be outlawed. Contained, or not. Everywhere. (Then no one would need fossil fuels, either. Win-win!)

There sure is. It's like a tulip craze, but by parties in the world-changing business. The level of bias and disinformation from once-reliable sources reminds one of nasty times in nasty places. And of course, reasonable discussion is *not* permissible, nor shalt thou ever question the Sacred Tenets, not even in jest. Things are Much Too Serious for that.

I've never once asserted AGW is or is not factual. It likely is. Whether it's bad, or going to melt all our tires tomorrow is another question.

But it's simply absurd to toss a sack of chicken bones and a sack of tea leaves into a computer, and predict the end of the planet to the exact day. And passing that off as science...

Oh my! It looks like the accelerated global warming since 1970 has been causing Californian droughts since the 1920's!

It's worse than we thought.

Cheers, James Arthur

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Sadly, 15 years is a period over which the Multidecadal Atlantic Oscillatio n makes a maximal difference, while scarcely long enough for anthropogenic global warming to have a significant effect.

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James Arthur thinks he knows enough about climate science to assess my dept h of understanding. This happens to be ludicrous hubris.

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ll

James Arthur illustrates the depth of his understanding by completely mis-r emembering the exchange. Cloud cover doesn't depend on H20 levels in the at mosphere, and it's basic thermodynamics that if the ocean surfaces are warm er, there will be more water vapour in the air. This doesn't mean that ther e will be more clouds (so I wouldn't have mentioned it at the time) but it does mean that there's more energy stored in the atmosphere to drive more i ntense storms, which did come up later in a different context.

Not the kind of change that could be introduced overnight - which wouldn't discourage the Tea Party from advocating it.

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fuel

But as it gets warmer we will use more energy driving air-conditioners, whi ch is modeled.

The most recent IPCC report makes different predictions for a variety of hu man behaviours, ranging from taking AGW seriously to acting like James Arth ur.

This isn't the attitude that James Arthur is claiming that they exhibit.

Most of the perversion of science is done by the denialist camp, whose web- sites which James Arthur and John Larkin cite with rather less scepticism t han they would if they knew anything about the science.

ging

Bizarre idea. The participants in the tulip craze expected to make money b y reselling their tulip bulbs at even higher prices. The people who point o ut that anthropogenic global warming is going on, and suggest that it might be a good idea to slow it down, don't actually have any kind of financial interest in the outcome. Most of them are academics and will keep on gettin g paid until the Republicans decide to dismantled the US university system.

What "misinformation"? You and John Larkin dredge up quite a bit of misinfo rmation from denialist web-sites, but they are misinforming us about the re ality of anthropogenic global warming.

Joey Hey makes the same complaint - except that his idea of "reasonable dis cussion" involves taking his silly idea seriously.

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You may not have denied anthropogenic global warming as such, but you do re fuse to take it seriously. It's undeniably bad, even if it isn't going to m elt any tires tomorrow, or in the foreseeable future.

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James Arthur knows so little about climate modelling that he thinks it's on par with augury and tea leaf reading. He also thinks that it's designed to "predict the end of the planet" which isn't something that anthropogenic g lobal warming could deliver - it might manage to wipe out agriculture as we know it, but predicting when the last farmer would give up - to the exact day - isn't in anybody's job description.

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Any El Nino produces extra precipitation in California

ml

The El Nino that's going on at the moment is unusually intense - 1998 was e xceptional, and got to 2.2 The current one has got to 2.0 already, which is more intense that most, and the indicators are are still rising.

James Arthur and John Larkin live in California but either don't read the l ocal papers, or can't understand what those papers are telling them.

Granting their obvious ignorance of even the simplest aspects of climate sc ience, I'd go for the second option.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Let me jump in here just for a little while:

1. Al Gore points out that AGW is going on etc.
2. Al Gore has e *great* financial interest in carbon certificates.

Just to contradict you a little...

}snip{

joe

}snip{

Think meta. For me it's enough to know *why* they are being used and for what purpose: To scare the hell out of us and to force us into obediently, because pumped up with a sense of guilt, our daily carbon taxes. So people like Al Gore and ex-Goldman Sachs CEO (and therefore very evil), and many more of that kind, can get even filthier rich.

joe

Sadly, you don't think "meta" hard enough.

If you knew the history, you be aware that the history of climate change is founded in a scientific interest in how the heat balance between the sun a nd the earth works. Keeling's measurements of atmospheric CO2 levels starte d in 1958 as pure scientific curiosity, as an aspect of the World Geophysic al Year - 1957-58.

Once we started getting long-period ice core data - the first that went bac k to the previous interglacial seems to have come from Greenland around 198

5 - people started cobbling together climate models that could explain how the earth's climate could flip from ice ages to interglacials - and it beca me progressively more obvious that we couldn't keep on digging up fossil ca rbon and burning it as fuel as if there was no tomorrow.

Once the fossil carbon extraction industry woke up to this, they used the t ried and proven methods for devaluing the science, originally invented for the tobacco business, to minimise the public impact. This got under way in the 1990's, long away the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warm ing had settled down.

The people who dig up fossil carbon are filthy rich, and want to remain tha t way. Al Gore was a Keeling fan long before there was any prospect of maki ng any money out of it, so your "meta" thinking has got the right motive, b ut the wrong villains.

If you could metamorphose your opinions so that they blamed the real villai ns for the real crimes that are going on, you'd look slightly less moronic, but you are regrettably stupid, so there's not much chance of you getting your head straight any time soon.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Do jump out again, preferably into the nearest deep la

Al Gore was pointing out that AGW was going on long before there was any pr ospect of making money out of the idea. His 1992 book "Earth in the Balance "

predates carbon credits by quite a few years.

He has some financial interest now. The people who dig up fossil carbon and sell it as fuel have a much larger financial interest in being able to kee p on doing it, and have paid for most of the lying propaganda that you are too dim to recognise as lying propaganda.

You are trying to contradict me, but since you haven't advanced a counter-a rgument of any substance, you are merely disagreeing, and disagreeing in a way that makes it clear that you don't know what you are talking about, and that you are probably too dumb to realise quite how much you would need to learn before you could make any kind of persuasive argument.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney