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

Mar 04, 2015 83 Replies

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

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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?

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

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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.

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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.

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Sadly, you were both wrong.

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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.

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Name one.

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

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

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

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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..."

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