The Science of PR and non-Science of Climate Change Denial

Mar 04, 2015 83 Replies

Only in a closed system. The Earth is surrounded by mostly empty space at 4K and is in approximate radiative thermal equilibrium with it and the sun. Trapping a bit more energy with CO2 just increases the surface temperature until a new radiative equilibrium is reached.

No I am not introducing unnecessary abstractions - I am pointing out your mistakes. The crucial thing about the Earths climate is that there is a non-linearity in the energy to temperature relationship that means in effect that there is room for positive feedback(s) without latch up.

The net increase in trapped insolation merely makes the surface warmer as a result of putting more mean free paths in the way of outgoing long wave thermal photons. Akin to throwing another blanket on your bed.

No it isn't. You are "simplifying" by making a gross and crass error. I cannot tell if this is deliberate wilful misdirection or a genuine misunderstanding of the physics and mathematics but for now I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

The forests sinking CO2 is noise in the grand scheme of things.

If they were any good at it the global CO2 concentration would not be rising anything like as quickly as it is. Bush tried to get Keelings funding to record rising CO2 removed but in the end was forced to present him with the National Medal for Science in 2002.

formatting link

Today his son also monitors the declining O2/N2 ratio which is a technically much more difficult measurement requiring 5 sig fig.

When Florida is trashed by rising sea levels or New York inundated then perhaps Americans will take global warming seriously but I am not holding my breath. I fully expect to see deniers for hire insisting that AGW is unproven when the sea is lapping at the White House steps.

Paleogeology and precision astronomical calculation of the insolation allows us a handle on the historical feedback values. It is imperfect but it is plenty good enough to show that the secular changes in insolation at 65N are a reasonable proxy for global temperature even though the changes are much smaller than the delta-T that they produce. IOW there are positive feedbacks that amplify changes in insolation. See for example the review by the AMS as San Diego in 2013 online at:

formatting link

In particular note page 27 eccentricity being the strongest driver.

This is sort of obvious in that warmer water holds less dissolved gas so if the seas warm then they hold less O2 and less CO2. Loss of permanent ice also drives another positive feedback on the albedo.

No they can't. You just claim they might because you hate scientists and will clutch at any straw to deny the scientific evidence.

And back then the sun was a fair bit dimmer which balanced things out rather nicely. Life locked up a heck of a lot of CO2 as limestone and coal during the carboniferous era.

No it doesn't. You have been reading too many dittohead denier websites.

It is easier to do for an entire planet than it is for something sat on your bench. The vacuum of space is a very good insulator.

Nice of you to concede that we might be having an influence. I suppose that *is* genuine progress. I actually think a catastrophic climate failure is rather unlikely I tried to provoke one by adding a huge step increase in CO2 into one of the earlier climate models when allowed to play with it. I couldn't get the oceans to boil.

It depends whether it is dry as well. Californian droughts mean farmers are probably going to be one of the early casualties when the summer snow pack goes completely and the groundwater has been pumped dry.

The models are good enough for the predictions they are making. They may not be perfect and probably never will be but they are good enough to flag up that the business as usual approach will result in some very expensive real estate ending up under water as the oceans rise.

Trouble is that all this will happen on timescales much longer than politicians are able to deal with and so they attack climate scientists because they don't like the message. The old shoot the messenger trick.

Regards, Martin Brown

I'm not making mistakes. I'm fully cognizant of the equilibrium, radiation balance, etc. I consider those as negative feedbacks--losses that rise with temperature--in full force. Without those it runs away, as you just stated.

Bill has often posited doomsday runaway warming feeding on itself, ending life on earth. It's silly.

That is just one of the negative feedbacks to which I've referred, explicitly mentioned as a loss that increases with temperature. That's a negative feedback. Trees gobbling more CO2 than expected as--a result of increased temperature--is another. Just discovered, it can't have been in the models heretofore.

But you're assuming this in isolation. It's true in and of itself, but there are myriad mitigating (and aggravating) phenomena yet to be even explored.

To wit we have the trees behaving in a previously unknown way, in fact opposite to what was thought. Another could be clouds, or myriad others.

We don't know what we don't know, yet the climastrological predictions assume we *do*. But, those self-same models have not predicted and did not predict current temps. They were wrong.

The ultimate backstop is, though, that once upon a time all this carbon was in the air, and the Earth thrived. So it's NOT a disaster.

Oh FFS, AGW posits ~3w/m^2 added farcing[sic] due to anthropogenic factors, that this accumulates, and warms the planet. Can we not say that without getting into the particulars of the alleged magical factors and processes?

That's just one example of where AGW could do some good. Washington D.C. was originally a swamp anyhow, and it pretty much is again.

Oh that's silly. And it's silly to call climate simulation 'science.' Where's the testable hypothesis? The models? That's a giant pile of computerized supposition--the source code's on the web.

Good, we've got nothing to worry about then.

I've done no such thing--why on earth would I waste time on such a boring, useless pursuit? The hysterics are obsessed with it, I don't give a fig.

One of the modelers *himself* told me that cloud uncertainty by itself overwhelmed the alleged anthropogenic fraction, and this after I'd figured it out myself.

Now that's a reasonable, clear assertion. Refreshing. I don't agree, because the many features of a living earth make the fact it's surrounded by vacuum not the point--what matters is how a living planet responds in a hundred different ways, including flora, fauna, albedo, human-kind, agriculture, human behavior (except Bill Sloman, who just uses more), etc. What matters is how the planet modulates its absorption, reflection, and re-radiation, extremely complex processes.

Sorry to say it isn't progress, I've held that view right along. I'm simply being rigorous--many claims are being made that aren't supported by the evidence, and in many cases are contradicted.

When I looked at the source code for one of the models it was, frankly, somewhat of a joke. You've chastised me for oversimplification in discussion, but my license taken can't hold a candle to the models themselves.

I think the ancient history precludes a catastrophe. I certainly believe we're warming, and that CO2 contributes minutely. Other human activities offset or augment (e.g. cities, agriculture, carbon soot on snow, air-borne particulates, dust). We don't know Nature's many responses, and IIRC the models assume static vegetation.

If we truly knew the net of those, then 5 and 10-year old projections would've projected today's actual conditions, cloud models would reliably project the size, density, altitude, reflectance, and location of clouds, etc. But they didn't and don't. I don't know why that's so hard to admit.

It's a DESERT.

Absolutely unsupportable. I was told expressly by one of the modelers they are *not* suitable, that they become decorrelated with observed conditions within a fairly short span, They may

I'd have a lot more respect and confidence in climate-types if they weren't so patently, obviously pushing for a particular result, selectively reporting, and insisting on certitude they can't support.

Bill, Gore, and Obama think we should all be using solar, yet none of them do, and they all consume vastly more fossil fuel than the rest of us.

Cheers, James Arthur

te:

ce a

on

Really?

d.

That hasn't been evident in your choice of words.

Cite? Even one example?

It would have been if I ever had. Sadly, it's your claim that is silly. I h ave pointed out that unchecked global warming could create conditions inimi cal to modern agriculture, which could cause a human population crash, but I've never been silly enough to suggest that anthropogenic global warming c ould end all life

Trees don't gobble up more CO2 as a result of increased temperatures. Tropi cal forests do create more carbohydrate when exposed to more CO2, which loc ks away more CO2 until the tree dies and rots. This was unexpected, but it' s not a large effect. Some carbon capture in vegetation was always in the m odels, just not quite as much as there should have been. Models are always over-simplifications of reality, so it's nothing to get excited about.

Which models? Where?

loop

s,

?

No you can't, because you clearly don't understand what it actually means.

er

t).

ly

What makes you think that this wasn't always in the models. Radiation losse s scaling as T^4 were already in the 19th century models, though they got v ery little else right.

IT

t so

s

s".

il

t
0K
4K.

so

han

the

inty

e

an2013.pdf

o

ittle

ude

d

Where? The only source code that you've talked about is the stuff the came out with the Climategate e-mails and that was a graduate students programmi ng sand-box. It's not the kind of stuff that runs on NASA super-computers.

And climate simulation isn't science. It's a tool used by climate scientist s to test hypotheses.

he

he

).

rly

a

that

nty.

.
,

Sadly, you were both wrong.

r

,

There's nothing complicated about the point that more CO2 in the atmosphere means a higher temperature at sea level. Working out exactly how much high er is tricky - the IPCC publishes estimates that vary by a factor of three from the highest to the lowest, and reality looks as if it is closer to the higher than the lower end, so far.

t has

t.

the

al

Name one.

The models you are talking about came out of the Climategate graduate stude nts sand-box.

ne

t.

d

en making smug pronouncements in their own interest that are annoying.

s

They can and do support it. You don't want to believe them because of the p olitical implications.

m

I certainly don't consume fossil fuel on the same scale as Gore or Obama. N or am I as politically influential.

The practical reality is that we all have to go over to using solar to make much difference, and your individual effort delays climate Armageddon by a few milliseconds. The decision to shift the whole of society over to renew able energy sources (including solar) is a big one, and the actual conversi on will take a decade or more at the very least. We should be starting now, but the denialist propaganda machine has worked well enough to put the dec ision off for about a decade now. The next generation won't thank us for le tting ourselves be suckered.

Bill Sloman, Sydney

No, not silly. The geological evidence is clear that there were past events of rapid climate change, and those were associated with mass extinctions of species. We don't know WHICH species are at risk first, or exactly what form the threat will take,.

Untrue. There's a transition period that will be short compared to evolution times for complex long-lived plants and animals. There's also the possibility that there are built-up reservoirs of some sort that will break down: what if the Sargasso Sea gets too hot, or acid, and all that weed dies at once? Will it change the albedo of the planet, or generate a large pulse of greenhouse gas?

But, that uncertainty could INCREASE the deviation from historic norms, it isn't something that should make you comfortable!

Recall the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times..."

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required