It’s that time of the afternoon again. After a recent spasm of probity—likely brought on by a transient ischemic attack, or micro-stroke—they’re back to their old, Climate Honest selves.
I’m not entirely clear on who or what Sarah Green is, but from Ms Green’s complicity in the latest regurge of the Magic Majority Meme I take it the answer is: nobody, intellectually speaking.
Still, no amount of mental mediocrity is an excuse for cynically deluding one’s readers, let alone when most of them are climate gullibilists, the only demographic born with even fewer critical faculties than the grant-jonesing lientists they lionize.
If anything, such unfortunates deserve the highest protection from con artists and mountebanks. They are, after all, the most precious and defenseless dears in society.
Yet if you head over to the curiously-incurious hive of softball interrogation that is Reddit’s Ask Me Anything, you’ll come across the spectacle of one Sarah Green (consensuologist, University of the Third Rate) confabulating her ass off with impunity:
To overturn our current understanding of climate, the 3% will need to coalesce around one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better.
Groan. To state what should be—but isn’t—obvious to every single member of Green’s opiated flock:
That’s. Not. How. Science. Works. You. Fucking. Fraud.
But then, what would you expect from these meretricious pseuds? Let’s be frank (because nobody else is): I could have pointed to almost any number of other instances of self-serving disinformation on the Green web, couldn’t I? It seems barely a day goes by without a wave of climagogical crimes against truth.
Oh well. Liars gonna lie (and deniers gonna deny the lies).
Evil, meet banality.
NB If the gods of comedy favor us, CliScep junkie Ken Rice will pop up in the comments below to regale us with what he imagines is a good explanation for his coauthor’s distortions.
In that event, we would ask our readers not to be too harsh on him.
As we’ve discovered the hard way, ATTP (as he’s better known) literally, honest-to-god doesn’t know the first thing about how science works. He’s not feigning confusion; he lives it. You might even say Ken is as much a victim of the climate stultification cult as a ringleader.
Climate Scepticism 
Sadly, the gods don’t favour you and you got me instead. And I’ll only note my amazement at another CliScep whinge at the consensus, 97% or whatever.
The likely effects of climate change are very uncertain and I doubt anyone claims there is a consensus about the details. But do you seriously think that any but an insignificant proportion of scientists who understand radiative physics believe CO2 is a NOT greenhouse gas?
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“ATTP (as he’s better known) literally, honest-to-god doesn’t know the first thing about how science works.”
Ah, but he’s a world renowned expert at modelling accretion disks on his Playstation.
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“The likely effects of climate change are very uncertain”
Yawn. Spare us the denier memes. Are you a Merchant of Doubt or do you spread agnosia for the fun of it?
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“But do you seriously think that any but an insignificant proportion of scientists who understand radiative physics believe CO2 is a NOT greenhouse gas?”
Is that it? You’re assiduously trolling this blog because you purport to believe that there are contributors on here who deny the greenhouse effect?
Please point out one post – just one single post will do – where any contributor to this blog has specifically claimed that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas with the ability to capture and either re-emit or thermalise photons of a specific energy level, thus acting to delay the escape of that energy to space, rather than stating that there are many other influences on climate and that anthropogenic CO2 is unlikely to be the most significant of them.
Go on, surprise us.
There are an unknown number of drivers of the climate, a practically infinite number of feedbacks – especially water vapour which is utterly necessary to the whole AGW hypothesis, but which unfortunately, according to all three current analyses of NASA NVAP data (Ole Humlum, Vonder Haar and Solomon et al to name but three), certainly isn’t increasing and according to Solomon et al ( https://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.abstract ) even appears to be decreasing. Of other feedbacks, not only have we not identified the majority them, but we don’t even know the sign of some important ones. For example, the the sign of the feedback of some types of cloud changes twice every 24 hours.
And then there are cycles upon cycles, the most obvious in play currently being the ~60 year cycle correlating with the North Atlantic Oscillation – currently in its negative phase, a matter that will become uncomfortably apparent to the Warmists very soon now – and the ~1,000 year cycle that was responsible for the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and the concomitant cold periods such as the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age. There are also much longer cycles such as Milankovic.
And here you are, attempting to attribute the whole process of climate change (which has taken place continuously since the Earth gained an atmosphere around 4,000,000,000 years ago and will continue till that atmosphere escapes into space) to the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration of 3% – 4% – the anthropogenic contribution to the CO2 cycle – increase in a change from ~3 CO2 molecules per 10,000 molecules of air to ~4 CO2 molecules in 10,000 molecules of air over a century.
And we won’t bother mentioning such concepts as the logarithmic relationship between the ability of CO2 to capture photons at 15 microns and its concentration, or saturation bands, or the fact that it shares that capture band with water vapour and sundry other GHGs because it will only confuse your brain cell.
What a simplistic, one-dimensional, annoying little troll you are. Not forgetting boring with it.
Oh, and as for “and I doubt anyone claims there is a consensus about the details” perhaps this, courtesy of Roger Harrabin, BBC climate correspondent, might give you pause for thought:
“I remember Lord May leaning over and assuring me: “I am the President of the Royal Society, and I am telling you the debate on climate change is over.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178454
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“To overturn our current understanding of climate…”(Ms Green)
“The likely effects of climate change are very uncertain…”(Raff)
Reminds me of the Abbott & Costello comedy routine: Who is on first.
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Sarah Green writes (or it is attributed to) “To overturn our current understanding of climate, the 3% will need to coalesce around one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better.”
I doubt that this is likely.
1. Climate is not itself coherent. However, I accept that the various factors that go into climate can have coherent theories and demonstrations. Whether any particular coherent theory is the sole, exclusive agent of change is less certain to me.
2. Coherent theories do not compel belief. For nearly two thousand years people have been trying to overturn the Catholic religion. It is designed to be mysterious and incomprehensible.
3. What you have observed is not what I have observed.
4. My observations are that most of the people subscribing to the Consensus did so prior to them having personal observations (sea level rise, global warming). They believe global warming is real, man made and dangerous. It is their Catholicism, the universal faith; heresy is punishable and punished.
I believe it is real, man-contributed and less dangerous than several other urgencies. Certainly less dangerous than rapid decarbonization or almost any other scheme of the far left.
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Hi Michael.
“I doubt that this is likely.”
It’s not likely, and it’s not necessary. One of the myths (and by myths, I mean lies) perpetuated by the pseuds is that scientific explanations can only be overturned by better ones. It seems plausible enough, but it’s bullshit. Scientific ideas are thrown out because they’re wrong, not because someone else’s idea is right (though the two situations often coincide).
Climate is diabolically complex, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for a bad theory of it, or else come up with a less-bad one of our own.
(Not that I’m saying AGW is a bad theory. That’s not the point.)
Could you clarify who you’re addressing (the “you”) in your post, e.g. in your third bullet-point?
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Sorry, Brad, but the sad fact is that Thomas Kuhn long ago demonstrated that is how science has worked historically.
Over 30 years ago I read Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and understood why my professors were teaching what they were teaching and how they were teaching it. (Unlike many other readers, I have always regarded Kuhn’s work as descriptive rather than prescriptive.)
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn
According to Kuhn, professors and administrators of science are keepers of the consensus paradigms. They ensure that all study and research is confined within the bounds of orthodoxy. The prevailing paradigm may be modified to resolve anomalies, but must be guarded to ensure the integrity of “normal” science, the research program that will elaborate the key concepts and theoretical content of the paradigm.
In Kuhn’s view prevailing paradigms (consensuses) are replaced by revolutionary overthrow, never by transition by which a consensus morphs into a new paradigm. (Similar to religious conversion?)
Kuhn’s model of science seems to apply to climatology, although it is not clear how we should measure the consensus. Do we restrict surveys to recipients of research grants intended to elaborate the “normal” science of the prevailing climate paradigm?
Astrophysicists study planetary climates in general, including Earth and they study stars, including the Sun. The climatologist James Hansen, recently retired from NASA, trained as an astrophysicist. Do we include astrophysicists in the survey?
If we take Kuhn seriously, we should be asking: What new paradigm would be incommensurable with catastrophic anthropogenic climate change? (Which is more or less the view critiqued in your article.)
I have been exploring this question by reading more extensively in astrophysics, beyond the work by Svensmark and Shaviv and their colleagues, Veizer and Kirkby.
While Svensmark and colleagues focus on Earth’s climate and Solar modulation of cosmic ray flux, astrophysicists are studying the structure of the local interstellar medium (LISM).
There are at least three potential modulators of cosmic ray flux: Earth-based; Sun-based; and density changes in the stream of cosmic rays flux as the solar system passes though the cloud. Also, the LISM may be wavelike or composed of cloudlets.
A relatively dated sample of work by astrophysicists follows. The research continues as more data accumulates.
Abstract:
The interaction of the heliosphere with interstellar clouds has attracted interest since the late 1920’s, both with a view to explaining apparent quasi-periodic climate “catastrophes” as well as periodic mass extinctions. Until recently, however, models describing the solar wind – local interstellar medium (LISM) interaction self-consistently had not been developed. Here, we describe the results of a two-dimensional (2D) simulation of the interaction between the heliosphere and an interstellar cloud with the same properties as currently, except that the Ho density is increased from the present value of n(Ho )~0.2 cm-3 to 10 cm-3 . The mutual interaction of interstellar neutral hydrogen and plasma is included. The heliospheric cavity is reduced considerably in size (approximately 10 – 14 au to the termination shock in the upstream direction) and is highly dynamical. The interplanetary environment at the orbit of the Earth changes markedly, with the density of interstellar Ho increasing to ~2 cm-3. The termination shock itself experiences periods where it disappears, reforms and disappears again. Considerable mixing of the shocked solar wind and LISM occurs due to Rayleigh-Taylor-like instabilities at the nose, driven by ion-neutral friction. Implications for two anomalously high concentrations of 10Be found in Antarctic ice cores 33 kya and 60 kya, and the absence of prior similar events, are discussed in terms of density enhancements in the surrounding interstellar cloud. The calculation presented here supports past speculation that the galactic environment of the Sun moderates the interplanetary environment at the orbit of the Earth, and possibly also the terrestrial climate.
Zank, Gary P.; FRISCH, Priscilla C. Consequences of a change in the galactic environment of the Sun. The Astrophysical Journal, 1999, 518.2: 965.
Click to access 9901279.pdf
What new paradigm would be incommensurable with catastrophic anthropogenic climate change?
Cosmoclimatology has the potential to revolutionize our view of Earth’s past, present and future climates, with similar power as plate tectonics revolutionized geology.
However, only a small percentage of scientists support cosmoclimatology, mostly astrophysicists.
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“Sorry, Brad, but the sad fact is that Thomas Kuhn long ago demonstrated that is how science has worked historically. ”
Yes, Frederick, that is a sad fact (and kudos for noticing that Kuhn writes historical tragedy, not best practice manuals) but I doubt it’s one that can help us much in foreseeing the manner of death of the climate panic.
The problem with trying to draw a climate-relevant lesson from Kuhn is that his Revolutions occurred in domains where there genuinely was some phenomenon that stood in need of an explanation.
CAGW, on the other hand, doesn’t *explain* anything; it simply makes (ludicrous) threats in the future tense.
Once people cease to take it seriously, they won’t give a rat’s ass about the climate at all. (I’m afraid cosmoclimatologists will have their work cut out for them competing for funding, whatever the merits of their paradigm.)
If you cast your mind back thirty years, you’ll recall an age where the entire planet managed to get by perfectly well with a double-digit number of climate scientists, if that. We only discovered the “need” for a Climate Change Centre of Excellence on every street corner *after* Newsweek announced we were all going to drown thanks to “carbon.”
[C]AGW came from nothing; it overturned nothing; it will be overturned by nothing, and to nothing it will return.
Forget Kuhn. A better analogy to the present “science” is the eugenics panic of the early 20th century.
“We’re all going to devolve into drooling pinheads” has given way to… what? What unifying paradigm replaced eugenics (or cacogenics) as a way of understanding the world?
That’s a trick question, of course. Firstly, it wasn’t replaced by anything more profound than “nah, we’re not.”
Secondly, it wasn’t a “way of understanding the world” in the first place—it was just a febrile nightmare that never materialised, and which people felt rather silly for taking seriously in retrospect.
Sound familiar? 😉
The Science™ (of climate catastrophe) is sometimes compared to the idea of phlogiston, but that’s far too generous. Phlogistonism was infinitely more scientific than CAGWism, because it actually tried to account for everyday observations of the real world. It was the wrong explanation, but its heart was in the right place.
Climate alarmism explains nothing. If it’s a false alarm, then there’s nothing TO explain. When this whole circus is finally put out of its misery it won’t be a Grand Theory of the Earth’s Fluid Envelope and Everything In It that kills it. It will be nothing more than its own null hypothesis which delivers the coup de grace: “no, the world is NOT going to hell and the oceans are NOT boiling and Michael Mann is NOT fit to examine a real scientist’s prostate.”
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To be clear, Frederick, I don’t dismiss Kuhn’s ideas in general; I just contend that they don’t work in a pathological situation like the present case, which nobody can be blamed for failing to foresee. I enjoyed your whole comment; you’ve given me some interesting references to follow up. Thanks
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I agree with most of what you say, based on Charles Mackay’s theses in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
What you are referring to are the popular delusions stoked by the likes of Al Gore.
What I am referring to are scientists who have built and enjoy careers in climatology. Two different crowds.
A potential comparator for the scientific crowd may be continental stasis before the plate tectonics revolution and continental mobility after the revolution took hold. The theory of plate tectonics is incommensurable with prior theories of mountain-building, vulcanism, earthquakes and geothermal phenomena.
Perhaps climate alarmism will simply wear out as Mackay shows was the fate of other delusions. A sustained period of cooling would hasten this process.
But those who make a living from climatology still have to make a living. And they will continue teaching and researching the old theory until they get a better one. That is Kuhn’s insight.
A philosopher might say that scientists in real life are mostly “theory realists”, which may be why we see so many sets of observations fitted to theories instead of the other way round.
In climatology, it is not easy to be an “entity realist” as Ian Hacking and Nancy Cartwright defined the term, because the “entities” such as “radiative energy” and “atmosphere” are themselves abstractions from physical entities such as electrons, photons, atoms and molecules.
As an entity realist, I may be willing to accept that a specific oak tree is real, but question whether or not oak as a species is real. I will surely be cautious if I am told that such and such forest is real either as defined by law or by an ecologist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hacking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity_realism
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“But those who make a living from climatology still have to make a living.”
They’re welcome to drive taxis. What reason would anyone have to keep paying them to climatologize, once the public has lost all interest in 30-year weather trends? There’s no law of conservation in economics (or elsewhere) that requires us to subsidise indefinitely an academic wank of no social relevance.
“And they will continue teaching and researching the old theory until they get a better one. That is Kuhn’s insight.”
I wouldn’t be surprised. And that will be pathological, regrettable and (more to the point) *unscientific* behavior on their part, won’t it? Science will, in a real sense, have broken down because failed scientists are holding fast to a delusion.
Good scientists let go of their pet hypotheses when they’re falsified, regardless of the employment consequences. Science stops dead in its tracks until they do so.
Yet Sarah Green, who is no Thomas Kuhn, mendaciously treats this refusal to learn as perfectly normative behavior; as if they’re following, rather than flouting, the rules of science. It’s not a matter of, “sadly, this is how human nature tends to play out in the grubby real world.” Rather it’s as if *this is how science is supposed to work when science is working scientifically.*
Look at the questions she’s replying to. Credulous minds want to know *how science works*—the rules of the game; how to tell if skeptics are winning or losing, etc.—but the vision she foists on them is how science *ceases to work.*
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So good you’ve got to repeat it:
“The likely effects of climate change are very uncertain”.
Raff, my dear, if they were likely, they would not be very uncertain. Or do we have here a case of Schrodinger’s Climate Effects – simultaneously both likely and very uncertain at the same time until some climate scientist observer intervenes to pronounce judgment, at which point the wave function collapses and we are blessed with the certain knowledge that the effects of climate change are either uncertain or likely.
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My amazement with the 97% endeavours is that they make such a mess of achieving what I would have thought was relatively simple, but then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not easy to get climate scientists to agree to a climate consensus. I’ve never seen a definitive expression of what the consensus IS. The percentage of support would go down with each qualifier. Perhaps when it gets to ‘and will be catastrophic’ a lot of the genuine climate scientists get a bit uneasy and won’t commit?
Dr Lew went looking for sceptics at warmist sites (but not SkS) when sceptical site owners ignored his survey. Perhaps the ludicrous attempts to prove the 97% is because real climate scientists won’t sign up? That first survey didn’t go too well, did it? Have they tried again with a real survey only to crash and burn? So they went looking for a more compliant crowd?
It’s not hard to imagine that there are a lot of peripheral scientists, who know very little about the real climate questions, that have started from the point that CAGW is the only valid position. Wanting to write about the plight of some flora or fauna, means that climate change offers a handy starting point. Why would they NOT include it in their work? It doesn’t mean they can offer anything meaningful on the validity of a consensus.
The way the warmists defend papers like this demonstrates that they can’t separate criticism of technique from a rejection of the truth or not of the results. From Cook et Al it is impossible to rule in or out that 97% of scientists support the consensus. It’s just another in a long line of bad papers.
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“climate gullibilists” classic!
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“To overturn our current understanding of climate, the 3% will need to coalesce around one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better.”
1. There is no ‘current understanding’ of climate. It is a work in progress, at best partial and incomplete, some might even say nascent. It is evolving even as we speak.
2. What Green arrogantly means by our ‘current understanding’ I suspect is our ‘current consensual agreement that we’re right’.
3. So Green thinks sceptics need “one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better”. No, you stupid woman, we just need to point out that your observations don’t even fit your own theory very well at all!
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I realise that I can be rather critical of this site and of some of the authors, but I have always felt that their are decent people associated with this site, even if we might disagree about some fairly fundamental things. However, it is hard to continue believing this if this is the kind of post that people condone. It’s clearly an appalling nasty piece of writing about someone that none of you probably even know (and who happens to be a co-author of mine on a couple of papers). So, is everyone who associates with this site happy to be associated with this post?
A couple of other comments.
1. The comment of mine that BK links to was indeed stupid. That was, however, more because I didn’t read his earlier comment carefully enough before responding. I assumed good faith. That was a stupid assumption.
2. M2, I know Gary Zank very well; we’ve published a number of papers together. I don’t think he is proposing some kind of cosmoclimatological theory of global warming. IIRC, that paper relates to how the size of the heliosphere varies with variability in the solar wind. The heliosphere is a shell of magnetoplasma that surrounds the Solar System. Currently it extends to well beyond the Kuiper belt. However, there may have been an era (millions of years ago) when it was much more compact and only extended to about the orbit of Jupiter. The flux of Galactic Cosmic Rays would then have been much higher than it is now, but there is no evidence to suggest that the heliosphere has changed in the last hundreds or so in a way that could explain our recent warming.
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I think we can safely say (weak confidence) they’re certainly very unlikely. All who disagree, say aye.
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Also, Frederick, yep, you were spot on so thanks for doing the work to unpack this—I think we’d been at cross purposes for a moment there:
“What you are referring to are the popular delusions stoked by the likes of Al Gore.”
Or in Greenspeak, “our current understanding of climate.”
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It’s called kickback ATTP. Of course we don’t know Sarah Green personally and the harsh criticism here is based upon her comments, not upon her as a person. Likewise, she doesn’t know any of us or probably most other sceptics, but she arrogantly presumes she can shoe-horn us all into a manufactured 3% pigeonhole and thence instruct us that in order to ‘overturn current understanding’, we must come up with a theory which ‘better explains’ observations otherwise presumably we shall forever be consigned to ignominy and ridicule on the outer fringes of mainstream science. When reasonable people read this kind of garbage they tend to become less reasonable, more abrasive.
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ATTP:
“However, it is hard to continue believing this if this is the kind of post that people condone.”
You must be disappointed with people. People: they’ll let you down every time.
“It’s clearly an appalling nasty piece of writing”
Shame on me. What was I thinking? Nastiness has no place in the climate debate!
“about someone that none of you probably even know (and who happens to be a co-author of mine on a couple of papers).”
Well, that changes everything. Wait, no it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure the OP even mentions that she was your coauthor.
Why is Green miseducating Reddit users about the basics of science, Ken, and what are you going to do about it?
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Jaime,
That doesn’t change my point, but thanks for responding.
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Hey, I know.
We should each leave a comment at Anders’ blog apologizing for condoning this post.
Oh, wait…
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“We should each leave a comment at Anders’ blog apologizing for condoning this post.”
Unless you’ve been banned I suppose. Anyway, I would Brad, but I’m busy washing my hair today. Some time ago, after a prolonged period on the receiving end of a significant number of intensely arrogant and condescending tweets, I (allegedly) called him a twat.
Nothing he’s written or contributed to since then has made me reconsider my opinion.
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Ahh, I didn’t know the context. Thanks. I don’t specifically remember some lengthy exchange in which I was arrogant and condescending towards you, but it’s possible. If so, apologies for making you call me a twat. On the other hand, if I was arrogant and condescending in 140 characters or less, maybe it was because you appeared to be someone who would end up calling me a twat? six of one…? We can all have excuses for our bad behaviour (although, maybe you don’t regard calling people twats bad behaviour?) That doesn’t suddenly make it acceptable, which is kind of the point.
If people who associate with this site find this post acceptable, then simply own it. Making excuses for it just seems a bit pathetic, and does suggest that one should treat all your complaints about unacceptable behaviour by those with whom you disagree with a suitable pinch of salt.
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The thing is, the greenhouse effect is all you need to accept, and as you say, everyone does. The GHE leads to about 3.7W/m² forcing on doubling CO2. By comparison, the Maunder Minimum resulted in a change of around -0.3W/m² solar forcing and less than -0.5 C change in average annual temperatures.
That difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all you really need to know. There’s a lot of work to turn that difference into physical outcomes, but the core of the consensus is in those numbers.
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Sarah Green wrote “To overturn our current understanding of climate, the 3% will need to coalesce around one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better.” No we don’t (assuming we’re the 3% and that’s not a given), we just have to knock holes in your flimsy arguments. For the past decade we’ve been waiting for you to improve the science case but instead you faff about with voting in a consensus. That speaks volumes.
If warmists want to overturn the consensus that fossil fuels are great, it needs to be a really, realy good argument. The Industrial Revolution got here first and no amount of whinging or show of hands from scientists will displace them. Welcome to the real world where stuff doesn’t happen just because the science says it should.
ATTP, what is your fixation with telling what we have to do and how we should behave?
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Tiny,
I don’t think I did either of these things.
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Brad, as a consequence of ATTP’s request that we should own this post, whatever that means, I would like to claim ownership of this post. Do you mind?
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This post is mine! Mine, I tell you!
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I think we need to arrange a timeshare of this post. I’ll own it a week today for a couple of days.
Raff,
“The thing is, the greenhouse effect is all you need to accept, and as you say, everyone does. The GHE leads to about 3.7W/m² forcing on doubling CO2. By comparison, the Maunder Minimum resulted in a change of around -0.3W/m² solar forcing and less than -0.5 C change in average annual temperatures.
That difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all you really need to know.”
I wonder if you seriously believe this or you are playing fast and loose with the facts. I’ve had this conversation before and I’ll quote you what I said then:
“The observed warming [since 1750] is 0.8C. The warming which can be attributed to well mixed GHG contributing a forcing of 2.6W/m2 is 0.7C. However, the uncertainty in total anthropogenic forcings means that the net anthro radiative forcing may in fact be as low as 1.1W/m2, or as high as 3.3W/m2. The former would require that natural forcings contributed very significantly to the observed warming, the latter would require that natural forcings offset the observed warming fairly significantly (which seems unlikely given what we know about natural variability since 1750)
So basically, even though well mixed greenhouse gas forcing is robustly defined and experimentally ‘confirmed’ by the Feldman et al Nature paper, uncertainty in anthro aerosol forcings still leaves the possibility that not even half of the actual observed post industrial warming can be attributed to anthropogenic factors, in which case natural variability has been seriously underestimated by the IPCC.”
The uncertainty arises from IPCC AR5 re. estimates of the cooling effects of aerosol/cloud interactions and aerosol/radiation interactions. So even though your ‘line by line’ theoretically calculated radiative forcings MIGHT explain all or most of the warming since pre-industrial times, they might NOT, by a long chalk, and then you are forced to accept that natural influences upon global temperature (either positive or negative) have played a significant part in the observed warming since 1750. Thus, the GHE does NOT tell you all you need to know about climate change attribution.
Also, IPCC seriously underestimates the net radiative forcing due to solar variability by simply assuming that solar forcing is directly related to variations in TSI (which varies only minimally, even during a Grand Solar Minimum). Whereas in fact, the effect of solar variability upon climate is far more nuanced and subtle and is probably driven by much larger changes in solar UV between minima and maxima. I won’t even go into the knock-on effects associated with solar-induced changes in ENSO/NAO/AMOC/shifts in the ITCZ etc. and the host of positive and negative feedbacks which result thereof and which feed back into global climate change.
So please don’t come on here and tell us that all we need to know and accept is the greenhouse effect because, in Brad’s words we are not “climate gullibilists”.
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Always fragrant Ken Rice,
you enjoy Brad’s language in the same way Feminist Frequency’s Anita Sarkeesian enjoys the anger and irritation aimed at her. Without it, and similar heated responses, most of your grievances vanish.
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Be my guest! Please, people, form an orderly queue. I’ve got more than enough appalling nasty writing to go round.
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Hmmmm, okay thanks everyone. It seems my initial assumption was wrong. Guess I can change my views when then evidence indicates that they were probably incorrect.
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“I (allegedly) called him a twat.”
Ouch. Apparently that’s a Word of Power in some dialects of English. Where I live it’s just a verb.
http://www.hi-izuru.org/wp_blog/2016/04/strangest-chart-ever-created/#comment-9757
In any case, Anders is to be congratulated—nay, admired and studied by military scientists—for having the lexical clairvoyance to pretaliate by preciprocating your rudeness.
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Oh dear, ATTP is going to toddle off back to the Church of the Climate Gullible without getting the last word.
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Ken,
If people who associate with Sarah Green find her rewriting of the rules of science acceptable, then simply own it.
Avoiding the question, and the entire topic of the OP, just seems a bit pathetic, and does suggest that one should treat all your complaints about off-topic comments and thread-bombing by commenters at your site with whom you disagree with a suitable pinch of salt.
That said, I’ve given up hope of your ever growing the ‘nads to face the question I put to you several days ago:
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Will that be cash or bank transfer, Ken?
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Raff writes “the core of the consensus is in those numbers.”
Agreed. The core of the dis-consensus is the mitigation strategies proposed.
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ATTP asks “So, is everyone who associates with this site happy to be associated with this post?”
Happiness comes in degrees. It is necessary to conform at least somewhat to the blog theme in order to be permitted to post. It is likely that some who are not happy are not able to express so here, same as your blog or any other. It is easy to arrive at a false sense of consensus if you read only one blog. So I go to many.
“2. M2, …The flux of Galactic Cosmic Rays would then have been much higher than it is now, but there is no evidence to suggest that the heliosphere has changed in the last hundreds or so in a way that could explain our recent warming.”
An interesting bit of information. I haven’t proposed a cosmic ray theory but this is certainly an interesting possibility and makes me glad to live in a time of science. I am supposing you refer to Svensmark’s cosmic ray theory.
My comment upthread is more to my caution with regard to sufficiency and necessity; as others here have pointed out, every word written by the Consensus could explain observations more or less, but I am not convinced of the exclusive nature of those explanations, even lacking a contrary proposal for an extremely complex process or system of processes.
I will illustrate with a possibly absurd example.
Every evening my child prays that the sun comes up in the morning, and when it does, her faith in the goddess is strengthened. There’s nothing I can to to persuade her that it is “god” not “goddess” because her observations are that (1) she prayed and waved smoking sage and (2) the sun came up!
To create doubt one must skip a cycle, and observe that the sun comes up anyway and that praying for it is not necessary. Uncouple hypothetical cause from its effect. But how can that be done with climate science? It appears not possible to STOP this or that climate input to see what happens and consequently a simple demonstration becomes impossible.
But back to my daughter, she could easily suggest that someone else prayed for the sun to come up and that it is not necessary for her to pray for it. That’s small progress I suppose. Proving to her satisfaction (not mine!) that nobody needs pray for the sun to come up could be remarkably difficult.
I do not believe that it has been proven, or that it is possible to prove, that global warming is catastrophically dangerous to the global population of humans, that it is mostly human cause and thus within the power of humans to mitigate. It may be so; but the level of proof required is commensurate with the demands being made.
In medieval times, if I remember right, a concept of “trial by combat” existed as a way to determine truth. That concept still exists and these blogs are the tournament grounds. Anything you wish others to believe must be subjected to combat (argumentation).
A problem exists with blogs: The combat isn’t proper, the playing field (blog) is invariably tilted. The nearest possibility is cross-blog combat. You come here and do battle; your merit rises with the grace by which you face your opponents. Of course you cannot “win”, but you don’t need to. You are seriously outnumbered here and yet here is where your grace-under-pressure can be revealed.
Over on “whyevolutionistrueblog” I participated intensely for a day and seem now to be ghosted; nothing I write is posted and yet I seem not to be banned. Why is that? Because I win. There I was the opponent outnumbered a dozen-to-one but answered every question, faced every ridicule, with good grace and civility. In losing I win.
Remember the movie “Gladiator”? The gladiator loses his life; but gains glory and respect while the emperor loses respect even though technically he won the battle. The big example is a man that apparently preached a gospel for only three years but now has about a billion followers, more or less (as to number and what it means to follow); in losing, he won.
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M2,
Sorry, that was actually a responds to Federick.
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ATTP,
I disagree. See, for example, Lockwood et al. 1999. If the sun’s magnetic field doubled over the past hundred years (and increased by a factor of 1.4 since 1964), we get fewer cosmic rays, and if they are responsible for cloud formation (that’s a big if, and it doesn’t have to be wholly responsible), we get fewer clouds, and a warmer climate. Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t think cosmic rays caused all or nearly all of the warming of the 20th century, but I do think that it’s definitely a possibility.
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Thank you for your questions; sometimes I seek brevity and in doing so sacrifice clarity.
Sarah Green writes (or it is attributed to) “To overturn our current understanding of climate, the 3% will need to coalesce around one coherent theory that explains all our observations even better.”
What I doubt (with some certainty) is that it would be sufficient if the 3 percent coalesced around some theory (Svensmark for instance) and the 3 percent all agreed that Svensmark was right all along; and sufficient to compel the 97 percent to overturn their pet theories (which are also not exactly coalesced either).
The realm of religion is instructive. I am unfamiliar with Kuhn but will study it now. Anyway, what religion ever adapted itself to new information? New religions spring up (Lutheran), the old one from which it sprang still exist (Catholicism).
I mean, the theory of interstellar space filled with “ether” still exists with at least one advocate who claims that ether is entrained by earth and that explains the Michaelson-Morely experiment results.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson_interferometer
This relates to my commentary to ATTP that confounders can exist creating the seeming that you have achieved a proof when maybe you haven’t. What you have is an explanation of the result, but not perhaps the only explanation. Occam’s Razor is a suggestion, not a scientific principle.
My comment: “3. What you have observed is not what I have observed.” is simply that no two persons observe the same thing, ever, in any circumstance, with exactness. It is arrogance for Sarah Green to imply that a single set of observations exist and that everyone possesses those same observations and that a single explanation exists that exactly explains those observations and excludes all other explanations. That is very simple minded at best.
But the “you” can be any reader! My observations of the Coleman Dock in Seattle are that the sea level has not risen noticeably. Tide gauges in the area suggest sea level decline but still not noticeable.
So we also have the problem of defining “observation” and “we” and “explanation” and on down the line as if it were all settled language, never mind settled science. It isn’t any of that.
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Michael2:
“But the “you” can be any reader! ”
Ah, got it. Cheers.
In response to your previous comment, which I enjoyed reading:
I can assure you I haven’t moderated a single word by any participant in this thread. I’m viscerally loath to do so, and there would have to be an objectively defensible reason for it, and that reason would *not* depend on the credal affiliation of the offending commenter.
In other words, this is as close as it gets to an even playing field in the climate debatosphere.
You may also have noticed that I appear here as a normal commenter, no different from any other visitor. I’ve never abused my privileges as “ref” (author and moderator) to “play the players.” If I were an alarmist and a coward, that would be the easiest course of action, and it would automatically put opposing players in the futile position of having to “play the ref.” (See: anyone who tries to correct Rachel and ATTP.) But that would be contemptible, and I won’t do it.
The above considerations raise the question, which (your comment suggests) you have yet to ask yourself:
Why is ATTP outnumbered here? There’s no a priori reason why he should be. On the contrary. We denialati are said to be a tiny minority of the population (right?), and anybody on the planet is welcome to comment here, so you would expect this thread to be overrun by believers, ceteris paribus.
I’ll leave it as an exercise to say why it isn’t.
You also console ATTP with the fact that he couldn’t possibly hope to “win” here.
Why not? There’s nothing stopping him. Nothing structural, anyway. The system isn’t rigged against him in any way that I can think of.
It ought to be the easiest thing in the world for him to “win” an argument here.
Just one catch: he’d have to be right for a change.
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M2,
on a shallower note, I’m not sure I agree 100% with your Roman history there Lou. Russell Crowe jugulated Emperor Commodus in the arena. Crowe died of his wounds, but he died second, and was therefore victorious both de facto and de jure, according to the precedent established by Clegane v Martell.
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ATTP,
I must say, this is an interesting new excuse:
“The comment of mine that BK links to was indeed stupid. That was, however, more because I didn’t read his earlier comment carefully enough before responding. ”
Didn’t read it carefully?
Would you seriously have us believe that, if only you’d read it more closely, you would have *contradicted* me? I find that hard to imagine, since my comment was right up your authoritarian alley—e.g. as articulated by your post, immediately above it—and merely echoed the spirit of everything you’d just written.
The most reasonable explanation for your falling into the trap of agreeing with my (parodic) remarks, surely, is that they flattered your (profoundly unscientific) expert-worshipping tendencies.
Your alibi about assuming I’d made the remarks in “good faith,” besides being rather bizarre in light of our prior interactions, is also irrelevant. No matter who had written that comment, or why they’d written it, you should have immediately and instinctively objected to it.
A proper scientist would have.
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Ah if only Ken were a scientist rather than a scientist who wants to be a greenpeace shill… Lots of them around ; one thinks he is a rabbit, another is Michael Tobis
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If only me aunt had bollocks she’d be me uncle.
Tobis is a better class of person than the others you mention, in my limited experience. Am I wrong?
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Jaime, CO2 is not the only forcing, you are right. But it is big, much bigger than that from solar variation. So if you want to favour solar as an explanation for anything, you are in my view, just engaging in GHE denial unless you can manufacture a escape route…
Whereas in fact, the effect of solar variability upon climate is far more nuanced and subtle and is probably driven by much larger changes in solar UV between minima and maxima.
And there it is, your rhetorical getaway car. But ‘probably’? Can you put a number on that probability?
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Brad Keys writes “*Why* is ATTP outnumbered here? There’s no a priori reason why he should be. On the contrary. We denialati are said to be a tiny minority of the world”
I could spend the rest of my life (and probably will) pondering that very thing. Over on ATTP’s blog the counterpart is Richard Tol; routinely abused but regularly puts in his two cents worth.
Over the years I have gradually gained a better sense of just how big is the Consensus and how it is structured. It has rings or layers, a hierarchy. It starts from a kernel or seed, or maybe not; the seed could be imaginary but believed by the inner ring or top layer that instantiate it by the power of their belief.
Under them are the deacons; thousands of activists around the world that do the “grunt work” of proselyting and converting. Operating in parallel and somewhat cooperatively (different motivation, temporarily aligned goals) are the “orders” (think Catholics orders such as Jesuits). Greenpeace for instance that came into existence to stop nuclear testing at Amchitka but is now a solution looking for problems (and financial contributions).
Under them are millions of believers one of whom is my brother. He believes readily that 97 percent of all scientists everywhere believe in global warming, and that IPCC reports are reviewed by ten thousand reviewers (rather than a few hundred each reviewing many reports), it does not motivate to action. He merely believes because… well, I don’t know and I’m not a mind reader.
Whereas I do not feel guilty but actually change such of my lifestyle as is reasonably possible to be more efficient, clean, and less a burden on society.
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BK wrote: “Crowe died of his wounds, but he died second, and was therefore victorious both de facto and de jure, according to the precedent established by Clegane v Martell.”
I sit corrected 😉
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No scientivist that I can think of, Brad, dissociates him/herself from the pranks of Greenpeace. They all deserve a Green death sentence. Not even Tobis, who once blogged that the world needs 5 billion people fewer and has subsequently denied he ever wrote that. Misquoted or something.
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Michael2,
It wasn’t meant to be a Hard Problem.
Hint: the explanation has nothing in common with the equal and opposite phenomenon, whereby skeptics are outnumbered at believalist venues. Don’t make the fallacious assumption of symmetry.
The latter phenomenon is even more easily explained, and will come as no surprise to you after your experience with creationists: they ban skeptical commenters. For the crime of winning.
I know this from ad-nauseam first-hand experience. Empirically, the interval between the first comment they let you post at an alarmist site and the last is inversely proportional to how effectively you advocate climate apathy. (I’m proudly humbled to say that I hold the ban-speed record at at least 2 believalist blogs.)
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Man in a Barrel,
Please remember you are a guest here. Yet all you’ve done in this thread is disprove my claims. Perhaps I was naïve to expect you to engage in good faith. (That’s my fatal flaw—I tend to assume people are as ethical and honorable as me.) Since you clearly have no interest in making a constructive contribution by agreeing with me, I have no choice but to put your comments in moderation for 40 years, or until the Internet no longer exists, whichever comes first.
I should have done this to you a long time ago, but I foolishly ignored that little voice telling me you were nothing but a [moderated] of [moderated].
Oh, and don’t bother screaming “Censorship!” It’s not censorship when there are other means of expression available. (I think I read that in a dictionary. Please see that XKCD cartoon. You know the one I mean.)
You’re still free to say what you like about our comments to, and about, you on this thread, you just can’t do it on this thread.
Harrumph.
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ATTP discussed the consensus paper when it came out with Richard Tol and I, and others. Behind the scenes he used his public display of sympathy toward the paper to gain favour with the Skepticalscience crowd. He was asked about it on a couple of occasions and I don’t ever recall that he gave a straight answer. Today, he is a co-author on one of their papers.
File under ‘Sell your grandma down the river’ drawer in science.
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Shub, that’s interesting.
If ATTP secretly has the brains to grasp how shitty that whole genre of papers is, it would raise his complicity to a whole new level of heinousness.
I’m having trouble imagining it though. 😉
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“Given that I’m commenting on this, I should probably disclose that since I last wrote about this, I’ve started discussing this with some at Skeptical Science and could probably now be regarded as being associated – in some undefined way at this stage – with Skeptical Science. I should add that this is quite recent – I had no association with Skeptical Science when I started this blog or when I wrote about the consensus project before. Of course, some will hate me even more now that this is known but – guess what – I really don’t care:-)”
In seniority and his career ATTP is well ahead of the pack at Skepticalscience. Yet, instead of being a mentor, and offering good counsel, he was content to be allowed to join in their midst. It’s a mid-life crisis of sorts.
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RAFF: “That difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all you really need to know.”
What complete and utter bollocks.
There are a practically infinite number of feedbacks involved, and you post crap like that?
When I called you simplistic and one-dimensional I wasn’t even close to the entirety of your minuscule grasp of the science behind complex systems.
“CO2 is not the only forcing.”
So why did you post “That difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all you really need to know.”
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Wow. There are people that still deny climate. You are all crazy or well paid for it… or both. You should all just shut up and read what Raff or ATTP have to say.
Free Pachauri today! No more climate imprisonments!!!! Jail the real criminals!!!
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Brad Keyes wrote “the interval between the first comment they let you post at an alarmist site and the last is inversely proportional to how effectively you advocate climate apathy.”
An insightful observation.
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Sophia Aragon wrote “There are people that still deny climate. You are all crazy or well paid for it… or both. You should all just shut up and read what Raff or ATTP have to say.”
I do not detect sarcasm so I will take a risk and assume you are serious in your comment.
Earth hosts about 7 billion people. It is nearly certain that somewhere is a person that denies climate, but of course that is only possible if the person has no idea what “climate” means. Climate exists; it cannot fail to exist, even Mars has “climate”.
Perhaps you could introduce me to someone that denies climate.
As to being crazy, it depends on who you ask and what you think it means. If you ask the United States government for whom I worked first as a sailor and then as a contractor, no, I am not crazy.
As to shutting up, no, I won’t do that. I gave this nation the best years of my life to preserve liberty and the First Amendment which includes not shutting up.
Finally, I read Raff, ATTP very carefully, looking for faint signs of skepticism or at least uncertainty by which some conversation can be had. Raff has nothing original to contribute, and neither does ATTP, not on the topic of climate. In the realm of astronomy it is quite a different matter of course; in that realm ATTP is the expert and I am barely an apprentice, a boy scout learning the constellations.
But it hardly matters. The moment you want my money, my light, heat and transportation; then my interest kicks in and I have a right to not shut up. Your vote, ATTP’s vote, John Cook’s vote, is exactly the same as that of a chimney sweep and telling your taxpaying readers to “shut up” is negatively persuasive.
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Michael,
“I do not detect sarcasm”
Ms Aragon is clearly a past master of Poe-faced cheek-tonguing but I dare say the giveaway was her marvelous coinage, “climate imprisonments.” Not that I can exclude the possibility that that phrase will find its way into the Climate English lexicon if we wait long enough, but it got an audible laugh out of me.
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” It is nearly certain that somewhere is a person that denies climate, but of course that is only possible if the person has no idea what “climate” means.”
Then the best place to start the hunt for one of these climate deniers would be your local climate science faculty. Remember, The Guys Who Study This For A Living didn’t even suspect there was a “climate” underwater until the surface stopped warming. For a serious discussion of the tectonic convulsions of Climate English see here.
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Raff says,
“…By comparison, the Maunder Minimum resulted in a change of around -0.3W/m² solar forcing and less than -0.5 C change in average annual temperatures….”
James Hansen of NASA used ocean heat content among other variables to derive his estimate of radiative imbalance. In 2011 Hansen and others revised their 2005 estimate of global energy imbalance from 0.85 Wm-2 to 0.58 Wm-2, based on later data.
Loeb et al and Stephens et al. accepted Hansen’s estimates but for more recent years they revised his figure to 0.5 Wm-2.
Steinhilber and others estimated that there has been an increase of 0.9 Watts per square meter (m-2) in solar power since the Maunder Minimum 400 years ago. This suggests that the increase in solar power since the Maunder Minimum is 80% greater than the total radiative imbalance derived from ocean heat content in 2012.
That implies the radiative imbalance was negative for much of the period between about 1600 and 1850, which would explain the Little Ice Age..
I would not claim that all of the warming during the last 400 years has been caused by the Sun, but it does appear that the increase in solar activity can explain most of the global warming. If we merely applied Occam’s Razor, we would ignore greenhouse gases, except water vapor.
Looking more closely at Stephens et al (2012), what do we find?
“The net energy balance is the sum of individual fluxes [at the top of the atmosphere]. The current uncertainty in this net surface energy balance is large, and amounts to approximately 17 Wm–2. This uncertainty is an order of magnitude larger than the changes to the net surface fluxes associated with increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Fig. 2b). The uncertainty is also approximately an order of magnitude larger than the current estimates of the net surface energy imbalance of 0.6 ±0.4 Wm–2 inferred from the rise in OHC.” [Words in square brackets added.]
In any other branch of any other science, uncertainty ten times greater than the signal would lead to the conclusion that the signal cannot be observed.
We can confirm this by comparing estimates of radiative imbalance with total incoming and outgoing radiation, about 480 Wm-2 (2 times 240 to take account of errors in both directions). Dr Hansen’s estimate of 0.58 Wm-2 suggests a precision of about 0.12%. Given the data and the methodology, to claim such a level of precision is absurd, as Stephens et al. have implied.
To begin, the variation in the Earth’s albedo is not known with sufficient precision to exclude negative feedback from clouds. Palle et al have a new paper on the subject (behind a paywall). The dated reference below is a good overview.
Recall that net incoming is calculated as total incoming minus that reflected back into space, given by the Earth’s albedo, about 0.30. If total incoming is 341.4 Wm-2 and albedo is 0.30, the net incoming radiation is 239 Wm-2 (values for illustration). If albedo changes by +/-1% (to 0.297 or 0.303), then net incoming changes by +/-0.003, to 0.697 or 0.703, giving 238.0 Wm-2 or 240.0 Wm-2.
This means that a one per cent change in albedo would result in a change in incoming radiative energy of +/-1 Wm-2. To produce the level of increase in energy imbalance estimated from ocean heat content (OHC) as reported by Hansen and updated to 0.5 Wm-2 in 2012, would have taken a net decline in albedo of 0.5%.
However, at present observed changes in albedo cannot confidently be measured with such precision and are therefore not used in general circulation models (GCMs) although it is well-known that variations in albedo (and certain types of clouds) are at least as important drivers as CO2.
Most readers are aware that GCM models that are claimed to confirm and project climate change, merely illustrate the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and are therefore tautological. In effect, the outputs are determined by the assumptions as well as the data. Nobody disputes this. As a consequence, the proof of the AGW theory is claimed to be the goodness of fit between model outputs and observations.
I challenge such a claim. First, because the GCMs continue to diverge so widely after more than a decade, when they should have converged. Second, because the models have so many degrees of freedom they can fit any scenario. Possibly with the exception of the real world.
The first and second of these features of GCMs may be related to each other by the fact that the models have thousands of parameters, the values of which are often speculative (guesses).
There is also the problem of drift during computation that results from the numerical methods used to approximate differential equations and to rounding errors related to machine precision. Drift has to be corrected by using reference values, which alone constrains each GCM to obey the global assumptions of its creators.
Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario, has an online lecture on the subject of the computability of global climate physics. His lecture is designed to explain these concepts to non-mathematicians, but may need two viewings.
Believing Six Impossible Things before Breakfast, and Climate Models.
He and Ross McKittrick jointly authored the book Taken by Storm, subtitled, the troubled science, policy and politics of global warming. Dr McKittrick is professor of economics at Guelph University, Ontario. Readers may know of his association with Steve McIntyre.
References:
1.Steinhilber, F., J. Beer, and C. Fröhlich. “Total solar irradiance during the Holocene.” Geophysical
Research Letters 36.19 (2009).
2.Hansen, James, et al. “Earth’s energy imbalance and implications.”Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 11.24 (2011): 13421-13449.
3.Loeb, Norman G., et al. “Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty.” Nature Geoscience 5.2 (2012): 110-113.
4.Stephens, Graeme L., et al. “An update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations.” Nature Geoscience 5.10 (2012): 691-696.
5.PALLÉ, E.; GOODE, P. R.; MONTAÑÉS‐RODRÍGUEZ, P. Interannual variations in Earth’s reflectance 1999–2007. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2009, 114.D10
URL: .http://www.leif.org/EOS/Earthshine_Palle_2008.pdf
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Raff,
“Jaime, CO2 is not the only forcing, you are right. But it is big, much bigger than that from solar variation. So if you want to favour solar as an explanation for anything, you are in my view, just engaging in GHE denial unless you can manufacture a escape route…
Whereas in fact, the effect of solar variability upon climate is far more nuanced and subtle and is probably driven by much larger changes in solar UV between minima and maxima.
And there it is, your rhetorical getaway car. But ‘probably’? Can you put a number on that probability?”
You have completely missed the point of my comment and in doing so illustrated a failure to grasp how science proceeds. You assert – like the IPCC – that the GHE is much bigger than solar. I state that instantaneous line by line forcing associated with greenhouse gases is theoretically a possible explanation for the increase in temperature since pre-industrial times, but that it is entirely possible that natural variability (internal and external) has played a significant role in that net increase. External variability would chiefly be solar and volcanic. I suggest that the effective solar forcing is likely to be in excess of that which the IPCC assumes, probably because of much larger variations in UV feeding back into climate change via a whole host of positive and negative feedbacks (and there is plenty of peer-reviewed scientific literature regards this, if you care to look).
Your response is to suggest that I am engaging in GHE denial and/or looking to manufacture an escape route!
Thank you for providing a classic illustration of how the ‘other half’ (that being the other 97% according to Cook, Lew, Green, etc.) frame their scientific arguments in favour of AGW/CAGW.
I’ll leave you with this:
“If climate change did not exist, it would be necessary for man to invent it.”
[h/t Voltaire]
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Frederick,
Actually I was wrong about the basic idea of the Zank & Frisch paper. It wasn’t so much variations in the Solar Wind that produced variations in the size of the Heliosphere, but the properties of the local Interstellar Medium (ISM). The idea is that millions of years ago the Sun may have been in a denser region of the ISM which would have lead to a more compact Heliosphere and a higher GCM flux on Earth.
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Ken, please remind us: what was the scientific, academic or scholarly purpose of the Consensus on Consensus paper—a paper you condoned by attaching your name as a coauthor?
I know what its political/demagogic function was; Cook, Oreskes and others have been making no secret of it.
What I’m asking about is its *scholarly* purpose.
Or were you planning to reimburse the British taxpayer for the time you wasted on it?
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Jaime you are just repeating yourself. So let me ask again. When you say
Whereas in fact, the effect of solar variability upon climate is far more nuanced and subtle and is probably driven by much larger changes in solar UV between minima and maxima.
What is the probability of your ‘probably’? Also, as you engage unspecified feedbacks to amplify this ‘probable’, yet unknown, solar effect, presumbly you acknowledge the role of feedback in boosting the forcing resulting from increased CO2.
Cat, you doubt that the difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all one needs know. Yes, there are feedbacks and they could indeed magnify this 3.7W or the 0.3W to have more effect. Nobody would be so inconsistent as to suggest that they magnify Jaime’s solar UV forcing but not the CO2 forcing without some evidence. Or maybe they would.
The reason I say it is all one needs to know is that, had CO2 forcing been comparable with the known solar forcing (as opposed to the phantom forcing Jaime prefers) the subject would have remained an academic curiosity. It is the order of magnitude difference that brings scientists together to view it is a problem.
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Raff,
“What is the probability of your ‘probably’? Also, as you engage unspecified feedbacks to amplify this ‘probable’, yet unknown, solar effect, presum[a]bly you acknowledge the role of feedback in boosting the forcing resulting from increased CO2.”
Often, when people employ the word ‘probable’ in an English language sentence, they do so without quantifying the degree of that probability. This is one such case. There are a large number of studies which investigate and find a link between solar UV variability and altered global circulation patterns and hence climate change both regional and global. Hence I say it is ‘probable’ that the primary mechanism involved in solar influence on climate is UV variability.
Now you persist in trying to get me to quantify that probability when, for all practical intents and purposes, it is ‘probably’ not quantifiable. Would you also like me to quantify that last ‘probably’ as well? While we’re at it, how probable is it that your theoretically derived line by line spectral analysis of GHG forcing has been solely responsible for the net rise in temperatures since pre-industrial times?
Re. my “unspecified feedbacks”; I did in fact quote “ENSO/NAO/AMOC/shifts in the ITCZ etc. and the host of positive and negative feedbacks which result thereof” earlier and do not intend to expand upon this. You are welcome to research further the possible mechanisms and exact feedbacks involved.
Why, because I point out a host of possible feedbacks involved with solar forcing, should I therefore “acknowledge the role of feedback in boosting the forcing resulting from increased CO2”? Is there a connection? I acknowledge the POSSIBILITY that positive feedbacks (principally water vapour) may amplify the GHE. I also acknowledge the fact that there is not a lot of empirical evidence to suggest that this is happening. I also acknowledge the fact that there may be NEGATIVE feedbacks via cloud cover resulting from increased CO2 forcing. But anyway, as you have already stated, the basic GHE is ‘all we need to know and accept’, so we can forget about the possible positive feedback from water vapour, can we not, taking your statement at face value? I say this because your 3.7W/m2 forcing due to doubling of CO2 does not include the additional forcing from water vapour; it is purely the theoretical forcing derived via line by line radiation codes for a doubling of CO2.
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Following on, you now contradict yourself by saying that the GHE is not all we need to know:
“Cat,[can] you doubt that the difference, -0.3W/m² to 3.7W/m², is all one needs know. Yes, there are feedbacks and they could indeed magnify this 3.7W or the 0.3W to have more effect. Nobody would be so inconsistent as to suggest that they magnify Jaime’s solar UV forcing but not the CO2 forcing without some evidence. Or maybe they would.”
You also only give consideration to positive feedbacks and go on to seemingly imply that the feedbacks involved are the same for both solar and CO2, which of course they are not. I think you are confused.
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“I think you are confused.”
That’s one way of putting it.
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I have been outed. My name is Michael Mann and I demand counselling,plus a vasectomy.
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Sarah Green’s words were almost certainly just directed at existing Climate zombies in the Church of CAGW to comfort and re-inforce their beliefs
– Those were never intended for you guys to pick apart on a scientific basis
– It’s just part of the Church of CAGW’s “Propaganda and PR, not science” behavior.
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Anyway the most important thing is , we are waiting for Ken to reply’s to Brad’s question set 27 hours ago
I am surprised cos he normally, come back with witty repartee within minutes. I do hope he’s not sick.
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Stew,
I’m quite fine, but thanks for you concern.
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Stew,
I gather you mean the question I’ve been asking Ken since last week…
…but I’d say he’s given his answer. Loud and clear.
Right about now, the SkS kidz will be wondering why they let such an inept ambassador into the cubby-house.
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Jaime, I found this http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/ which discusses the effect of solar variability on climate. There’s lots of ideas and some evidence of local effects but nothing that shows probable cause of global climate change. Any feedbacks are clearly not back to the sun. So feedbacks seems to be once the heat has got in – and will be of the same nature as feedbacks that result from CO2 warming.
So I can’t see from this why “the effect of solar variability upon climate is … probably driven by much larger changes in solar UV between minima and maxima”.
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Yes Brad a perfectly reasonable question you made a week ago.
Are you evading the question Ken ?
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“BRAD KEYES says:
20 Apr 16 at 8:57 am
Ken, please remind us: what was the scientific, academic or scholarly purpose of the Consensus on Consensus paper—a paper you condoned by attaching your name as a coauthor?
I know what its political/demagogic function was; Cook, Oreskes and others have been making no secret of it.
What I’m asking about is its *scholarly* purpose.
Or were you planning to reimburse the British taxpayer for the time you wasted on it?”
—————————————————–
Brad, I think you may be asking the wrong question.
Posit: Ken’s (aTTP’s) real scientific discipline is not well funded these days, and has not been for many years. (That also applies to many science sub-divisions).
Posit: He is ambitious and also a strongly politically motivated person.
Posit: Climate science is currently well funded, and has a very strong political component that aligns with Ken’s political aspirations.
Posit: University administrations love, no, really love, the ability of a faculty member to attract attention and funding. And courses that attract “students”. Even if both are dubious.
(Why else would a self-respecting university science course teach “Astrobiology”? Not even Ken has found any yet. I’m not picking on Edinburgh, I’ve experienced Astrobiology space-cadets first hand elsewhere)
Posit: Ken sees the likes of charlatans like Lewandowsky and Mann being actively lauded and rewarded with grants and promotions for producing utter garbage.
Posit: All of us only maintain the ethics and morals we can afford to. Ken may well have a mortgage.
What was the question?
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Raff, that’s a decent link which shows that NASA takes seriously solar effects upon climate and pinpoints EUV variability as the probable cause. But rather than admit that solar variability may play a significant role in global climate change, past and present, they pull back at the last moment in order to pay homage to the consensus IPCC CO2 theory of climate change by claiming that the effect is regional and limited to changing circulation patterns! They also say that the EUV theory is speculative. Of course it is! That is science. AGW theory is also speculative but has assumed the air of ‘settled science’ because so many scientists have endorsed it, despite the lack of really solid empirical evidence which would justify this mass endorsement.
“”If there is indeed a solar effect on climate, it is manifested by changes in general circulation rather than in a direct temperature signal.” This fits in with the conclusion of the IPCC and previous NRC reports that solar variability is NOT the cause of global warming over the last 50 years.
Much has been made of the probable connection between the Maunder Minimum, a 70-year deficit of sunspots in the late 17th-early 18th century, and the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. The mechanism for that regional cooling could have been a drop in the sun’s EUV output; this is, however, speculative.”
This is the usual cop out, because it has been demonstrated that the LIA and MWP were global events, albeit that the temperature fluctuations in the Northern hemisphere were greater than those occurring simultaneously in the SH. But there again, the NH has very recently warmed twice as fast as the SH, so modern global climate change is not unique in this respect. It has also been demonstrated that the most pronounced fluctuations in temperature (accompanied by shifts in global circulation patterns) during the LIA (1400-1850AD) were contemporaneous with the quietest periods of solar activity and comparable in magnitude to with the change in temp since 1850.
[Refs. Chambers et al, 2014, Orsi et al, 2012]
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They also say that the EUV theory is speculative. Of course it is! That is science. AGW theory is also speculative but has assumed the air of ‘settled science’ because so many scientists have endorsed it, despite the lack of really solid empirical evidence which would justify this mass endorsement.
From what I’ve read, EUV is quite variable but there is very little of it and it is absorbed high in the atmosphere. There are ways proposed in which variation in EUV could affect the climate, nobody has ever measured or observed that – hence it is speculative. The behaviour of CO2 and the effect of increased concentartion in contrast have been extensively measured and understood and is certainly not speculative.
Doubling CO2 results in a forcing of about 3.7W/m². How much variation is there in EUV at the top of the atmosphere? You must have thought about that. Total solar irradiance varies by about 1W/m² at TOA, so 0.25W/m² at ground level, and so EUV must be only a proportion of this. And yet you are happy to consider this miniscule change can be amplified to produce climate changes but not that the order(s) of magnitude grater CO2 forcing might be amplified. Can you explain that contradiction?
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“The behaviour of CO2 and the effect of increased concentration in contrast have been extensively measured and understood and is certainly not speculative”
Pure comedy gold.
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Raff,
“The behaviour of CO2 and the effect of increased concentration” is NOT AGW theory; it is the one piece of solid science upon which the whole shaky edifice rests. Hence AGW theory is still speculative.
“How much variation is there in EUV at the top of the atmosphere?….. so EUV must be only a proportion of this. And yet you are happy to consider this miniscule change can be amplified to produce climate changes …”
Between solar min and max over one cycle, the extreme ultraviolet incident radiation varies by as much as a factor of 100. Hardly miniscule. Also, each photon of EUV is about 10 times more energetic than even UVA or UVB. I’m sure if you were to integrate say, the total EUV over several cycles at a Grand Solar max and compare it to the total EUV impinging upon the upper atmosphere over several extremely quiet cycles during a Grand Solar min, the difference would be very significant indeed.
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Jaime, yes I found that graph too. You are misinterpreting it. TSI varies by about 1 W/m² at TOA, or 0.25 W/m² averaged over the earth. That total includes variation in EUV, or in other words variation in EUV averaged over the earth is smaller than or equal to 0.25 W/m². That is just maths, no interpretation.
The amount of EUV in W/m² is small. Look at the left hand axis – it is not linear. EUV is at around 0.01 mW/m²/nm so over the 100nm range of EUV the total power is 1 mW/m² (mW not W). Even if this inceases by 100 times, it is still only 0.1 W/m². And that is at TOA, so divide by 4 for the whole earth.
…each photon of EUV is about 10 times more energetic
The graph takes that into account, so it is not relevant.
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Raff, I think we are talking at cross purposes. Of course, relative to variations in TSI (which is of the order of 1W/m2), the spectral variation in EUV bands is small (of the order of mW/m2). But my point still stands: the spectral variance in EUV is two orders of magnitude greater than the variability in UVA+B between solar min and max and several orders of magnitude greater than the variance in longer visible wavelengths. That’s what that graph shows.
The crucial point is that the main source of energy input to the upper atmosphere comes from EUV because it is transparent to longer wavelengths which just pass straight through to the lower atmosphere and the surface. These longer wavelengths form the vast majority of the energy received from the Sun, yes, but they are not absorbed in the upper atmosphere, whereas EUV is, almost exclusively. Therefore large variations in EUV will most definitely have an effect upon the energy balance and dynamics of the upper atmosphere. Changes in the upper atmosphere filter down to lower levels to affect climate.
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So I’m confused now. Are you really saying that you think variations in EUV of around 0.1 W/m² can get amplified and cause modern climate change?
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What I am saying Raff is that studies like this http://www.gizmag.com/suns-activity-influences-natural-climate-change/33409/ – among many others – point to a viable mechanism whereby small changes in solar activity can be amplified in the ocean-atmosphere system to produce significant changes in global circulation patterns and quite large changes in regional climate.
What I am saying is that there is an historic correlation between solar activity proxies and climate.
What I am saying is that signals of solar-correlated climate change have been detected as far south as South America and Antarctica, comparable in magnitude to the increase in mean global temperature since pre-industrial times.
What I am saying is that solar activity proxies suggest that the modern grand solar maximum in the second half of the 20th century reveals solar activity to be at its highest in 8000 years.
At the very least, this suggests that the IPCC have wrongly dismissed solar activity as a possible major player in modern global warming and that solar activity may, via indirect effects upon global atmospheric/oceanic circulation, have contributed significantly to the rise in temperatures since 1950 and indeed to the Pause post 1998.
Looking ahead, what I am saying is that, if we look dispassionately at the evidence for a past significant solar influence on climate, the current slowdown in solar activity may mean that NH temperatures especially, will stall over the coming decades, perhaps even decline significantly. If sensitivity to increasing CO2 is as low as some current empirical estimates suggest, this will mean that current climate mitigation policies are hopelessly, dangerously misguided.
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Jaime,
I think you explained it quite well. Solar amplification mechanisms, as they are called, are present and I do think that they can have a significant influence on regional climate (and thus global climate as well.)
A balanced and realistic perspective on this topic, in my opinion of course, is here. I think that solar activity certainly had a significant contribution to 20th century warming, but I don’t know if I would say that it’s the dominant contributor. I am not so sure about late 20th century warming, because certain data sets indicate increasing solar activity and some don’t.
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jap,
Yes, we don’t have enough information to assign solar as the dominant cause of post 1950 warming; likewise, in my opinion, the attribution of most or all of the rise in temps since that time to anthro CO2 is scientifically unsound. Disentangling external forcings from internal forcings (AMO/PDO) is also a challenge and it is entirely conceivable that, even if solar activity did tail off sooner rather than later, surface warming has continued via the influence of internal cycles. In this respect, it will be very interesting to see what happens to global mean temperatures after the current ENSO event.
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What you appear to be saying is that climate is highly sensitive to variations of only 100 mW in solar UV but relatively insensitive to variations 30 times greater in anthropogenic forcing. That seems rather non-obvious, to say the least.
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What seems more counter-intuitive is declaring that annual emissions of fossil fuel carbon which are a tiny percentage of total atmospheric carbon and an even smaller percentage of total carbon sources and sinks are driving climate change, whereas the variability of a star just 93 million miles from earth, 109 times the radius of the earth and 333,000 times as massive, has little or no impact on climate change.
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Jaime,
You do get that it is the net flux from each source that is relevant, not simply the emissions?
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ATTP:
‘You do get that it is the net flux from each source that is relevant, not simply the emissions?’
You do get what the rest of us get: that if this were your sad little blog I’d simply snip your off-topic assertions until you mustered the testicles to respond to the subject at hand, namely…
…don’t you?
Not that I’d publish your response, of course.
I’d probably just redact it holus bolus and substitute “[Dear ATTP, I’m really not interested in going further down this path. Please folks, let’s not turn this into a Ken-Rice-athon. Any further comments from you, Ken, will be deleted if they’re written by you.]”
For bonus points, you could even strive in vain to tell the world the solution to another mystery:
But this is all idle fantasizing, isn’t it, Ken? None of the above would ever happen, because I’m not you (thank Christ) and you’re not me (blame Darwin). You’re just a quivering intellectual eunuch and repeat deserter of your post in the climate wars. Your only talent seems to be the rat cunning to scurry headlong from questions to which you have no answer. And the second one above is exactly that, isn’t it? A trick question. Because every cent of public money that supported this turd of a paper was, ipso facto, embezzled. And if your silence is anything to go by (which it is), you know it.
Thanks for losing, Ken. Better luck next incarnation.
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Jaime, you seem to be impressed by large-sounding numbers. The relevant numbers once you boil that grand-sounding hugeness down to warming potential are 0.1W and 3.7W (for doubling CO2). And you seem to believe that the 0.1 has more warming potential than the 3.7 because it is intercepted higher up in the atmosphere. Can you at least try to explain it?
Brad, you write a lot of words for someone who seems to have nothing worth saying.
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Oh, fuck off, Riffraff. ← There. That close enough to your grade-school reading age?
Smiley-face :-).
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All this solar effect denialism is causing me to get worried and agitated again. Can anyone point me to a new definitive source of solid science, ie someone with an Oscar or equivalent dramatic award, to tell me the truth?
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Ken,
“You do get that it is the net flux from each source that is relevant, not simply the emissions?”
You’ll have to expand upon that rather cryptic sentence in order for me to provide a substantive reply.
Raff. What it boils down to is you place absolute faith in basic 19th century physics transposed to the atmosphere-ocean system at large. I merely point out that Nature might work in far more subtle ways and point to the evidence that indeed Nature does in fact work in far more subtle ways.
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“Brad, you write a lot of words for someone who seems to have nothing worth saying.”
That so, NAFF?
As if you are remotely qualified to have the first bloody clue, you silly, obnoxious little troll.
I’ve come across some pig ignorant pillocks in my time on line (which extends right back to the days of 300/300 and 1200/75 modems, bulletin boards and even acoustic couplers) but you pretty much take the biscuit.
SHOO!
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Catweazle:
“SHOO!”
Now now. That would be precisely the sort of cowardly manoeuvre we don’t want our believalist cousins pulling. We value and cherish the presence of the tiny but vocal handful who have—if nothing else—the courage (or Dunning-Krugerness) to try to defend their idiotic opinions here, in a fair fight.
Likewise, it was careless and intemperate of me to tell Raff to fuck off.
I can’t turn back time, or be fucked hitting “Edit.” But if I could I’d probably use more nuanced language, like “get fucked” or “go fuck yourself”—the operative words being “fuck yourself,” of course, not “go”—lest the riffraff get the impression it’s less than welcome here. Nothing could be farther from the truth, or indeed further.
Debate is the lifeblood of democracy. Even when the other side has zero arguments, it’s still important to go through the motions.
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Jaime, ATTP was just pointing out that it is the difference between your Big Numbers (the net flux) that is important, not the numbers themselves. And the net values boil down to 0.1W vs 3.7W.
For the 0.1W spikes in EUV to have large effects on global temperatures they have to conscript some powerful feedbacks of exactly the type “skeptics” like to say don’t exist for greenhouse gas forcing. That seems like masterful mental gymnastics.
Brad, too many words again. “fuck off” is succinct and at your intellectual level.
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Boom tish.
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Raff, according to Stefan Rahmstorf, an increase of 3.7 W/-2 (from a CO2 doubling) increases global temperature by about only one degree celsius. What we mean when we say that solar amplification mechanisms amplify the solar changes, is that a 0.2% increase in TSI (like that seen since the Maunder Minimum) could result (as it did) in a 0.7% increase in the UV spectral band, which would change the climate.. A doubling of the Earth’s magnetic field over the past 100 years (as did happen) results in fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth. So does a change from a solar minimum to a solar maximum, which reduces annual mean nucleation (cloud formation) rates by 6.8%. Imagine how they would’ve changed from 1900 to now! That could significantly contribute to 20th century climate change.
So, I don’t know where you got that -0.3 W/-2 Maunder Minimum figure, and I don’t quite know what you mean by it. As regards to climate sensitivity, many recent studies indicate a lower climate sensitivity than AR4’s “best estimate”: 3.0 C for ECS.
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Raff,
Why do you persist to draw an imaginary parallel between solar EUV feedbacks and CO2 feedbacks (e.g. chiefly increases in water vapour which augment the GHG forcing from CO2 alone)? The nature of the feedbacks involved is very different, as is the way they operate. Just because “skeptics” say CO2 feedbacks “don’t exist” (minor niggle – sceptics actually say there is not a lot of convincing evidence that they DO exist to any great degree), doesn’t mean that pointing to viable feedback mechanisms which might amplify solar variability is therefore somehow hypocritical or contradictory. Please get real.
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If you want long-term warming, then you need some kind of radiative response. In other words, you need the amount of energy leaving to be largely unchanged (since the amount coming in is unchanged) despite the surface warming. The known physical phenomena that can do this are things like clouds, water vapour (which includes lapse rate) and albedo changes (but these are typically slow). However, these physical processes apply to anthropogenic warming too. So, why is the feedback to EUV-driven warming different to that due to CO2-driven warming and what is it?
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Splitting hairs Ken. The primary feedbacks (positive) involved in CO2 forcing are increased water vapour (as a direct consequence of warming induced by CO2 forcing) and albedo (melting ice sheets). The primary feedbacks involved in solar (EUV) forcing are increased EUV affecting the energy balance and dynamics of the upper atmosphere “which then indirectly changes atmospheric circulation, resulting in increases or decreases in temperature over certain regions”. This mechanism is very different from the major feedback mechanisms incorporated into GCMs used to project future climate change and it is not just short term; it is both decadal and centennial. To expand upon this:
“. . . . changes in wind patterns resulted from alterations in received temperatures, suggesting that a top-down solar influence increased oceanic feedback and may have acted as an additional amplification mechanism. In other words, variations in solar radiation affected the atmosphere, altering the barometric pressure which, in turn, changed the prevailing wind patterns in the upper atmosphere.
In atmospheric physics parlance, these winds are known as eddy-driven jets and a high-pressure increase over the North Atlantic (as evidenced in today’s climate) is often accompanied by a displacement to the south of these winds. This results in a negative effect on the North Atlantic Oscillation (the atmospheric pressure difference at sea level between the Icelandic low and the Azores high), which can produce colder winds and higher levels of snowfall.
As a result, the alteration of these winds changes the way in which heat is exchanged between the oceans and the atmosphere. In the Lund University reconstruction and modeling, evidence is shown that this particular effect was being exacerbated by the amount of solar energy striking the Earth’s atmosphere in direct relationship to the activity of the sun.”
These primary feedbacks may indeed result in secondary albedo, wv and cloud feedbacks, but my point still stands: the main (positive) feedbacks postulated in response to CO2 forcing are different from the main feedbacks involved in solar variability forcing.
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Jaime,
I’m not splitting hairs. This is pretty crucial.
This doesn’t tell me what physical process maintains a higher surface temperature. Unless you have some kind of radiative feedback, the surface will cool back to quasi-thermal-equilibrium. So, as Raff points out, you’re suggesting a high sensitivity to very small changes in one waveband, while suggesting a very low sensitivity to much larger changes in another waveband AND you have yet to describe an actual physical process that could somehow sustain long-term surface warming.
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Ken,
“This doesn’t tell me what physical process maintains a higher surface temperature.”
You left out this part of my quote:
“As a result, the alteration of these winds changes the way in which heat is exchanged between the oceans and the atmosphere.”
As you know, surface air temperatures form a tiny part of the total energy budget in comparison to the oceans. It would only take a very minor change in the way heat is exchanged between ocean and atmosphere to maintain a higher surface temperature.
But if you are looking for direct changes in the radiation budget induced via solar variability, Svensmark’s GCR flux/cloud nucleation hypothesis – previously ‘debunked’ by the IPCC has recently seen something of a comeback and is definitely not ‘down and out’ as an explanation for warming (and cooling) associated with solar variability. Indeed, i think there was a recent paper by a Chinese researcher which suggested that these two mechanisms worked in unison to explain the sensitivity of the global climate to solar activity.
In comparison, AGW theorists keep plugging the same old 19th century radiative physics as an explanation for modern warming (even, astoundingly, ALL of the warming since 1750), conveniently forgetting huge uncertainties in aerosol-cloud feedbacks. Then they go on to tell us that, additionally, hypothesised water vapour feedbacks will amplify this simple ‘well-mixed anthro GHG warming’ to give us a hothouse earth over the coming century.
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I left it out because this still doesn’t explain how the surface doesn’t simply cool back to equilibrium. Long-term warming requires some kind of radiative feedback. This is not one.
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“I left it out because this still doesn’t explain how the surface doesn’t simply cool back to equilibrium. Long-term warming requires some kind of radiative feedback. This is not one.”
I guess NASA must have got it wrong then.
“But the ocean currents move more slowly than the winds, and have much higher heat storage capacity. The winds drive ocean circulation transporting warm water to the poles along the sea surface. As the water flows poleward, it releases heat into the atmosphere. In the far North Atlantic, some water sinks to the ocean floor. This water is eventually brought to the surface in many regions by mixing in the ocean, completing the oceanic conveyor belt (see below). Changes in the distribution of heat within the belt are measured on time scales from tens to hundreds of years. While variations close to the ocean surface may induce relatively short-term climate changes, long-term changes in the deep ocean may not be detected for many generations. The ocean is the thermal memory of the climate system.”
I guess the GDRC are confused too:
“Records of global and, in particular, regional climate show periods lasting from years to centuries during which the climate was systematically different from earlier and later periods. Scientists believe that this behaviour is related to changes in the way the oceans store and transport heat, although the precise causes of these changes are not always clear . . . .
Although more research is needed, there is some agreement among oceanographers that, for the entire area north of 30 N latitude, the ocean’s poleward transport of heat is the equivalent of about 15 watts per square metre of the earth’s surface (W/m2). This can be compared with some 200 W/m2 from direct sunshine, and about 6 W/m2 for what climate change models predict will happen if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doubles. Recent observations, ocean core records, and some modelling results indicate that North Atlantic deep-water formation and its associated ocean heat flow fluctuate substantially over time-scales ranging from years to millennia.”
http://www.gdrc.org/oceans/fsheet-01.html
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ATTP,
I do understand your questions about the radiative feedback in regards to the UV top-down mechanism. A good summary of that specific mechanism is here:
That’s a good explanation for a specific mechanism. But, looking at the bigger picture, does this suffice? Secular variations in solar activity (e.g., 60 years or 200 years) leave imprints on the Arctic Oscillation, North Atlantic Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc. Their patterns are then altered, (e.g., more or less active) which affect regional and global climate. That’s a feedback. But don’t take my word for it. Look, for example, at Nichols and Huang 2012:
It’s that simple, and that’s what we mean. For a more scientific explanation that explains the radiative forcing and feedbacks, I think Salby and Callaghan 2006 would be a good option. From the conclusion section:
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are definitely feedbacks to anthropogenic warming. But just because solar activity has a feedback doesn’t mean that anthropogenic warming has the same one. After all, anthropogenic and solar warming have two very different signals. And, as I pointed out before, there is evidence for a reduced climate sensitivity.
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If you want energy from the ocean to be causing long term surface warming, would you expect
1. Ocean heat content to be decreasing.
2. Ocean heat content to be increasing.
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off-topic.
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According to ACRIM data, TSI varies by 2-3W/m2 over cycles 21-23.
More than sufficient to produce radiative forcing but of course, for long term climate change, it is the secular trend over several cycles that is of interest. In that respect, a recent study found that there was a significant 0.037% upward trend in the ACRIM TSI composite between cycles 21 & 22.
[http]://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-013-1775-9
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Shub,
I don’t really blame ATTP for avoiding the topic. Anything he said in response to the material question:
could be used against him in the halls of academia.
And the secondary question is no less toxic (to his career):
So we can’t expect Ken’s evasions to come to an end any time soon. We’re dealing with a mouse, not a man, here.
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It’s remarkable how some threads balloon and apparently digress from the original topic. I had to look back to remind myself how this got going and I blame Raff! He it was who piped up to justify the 90-100% consensus by saying that the GHE was all you need to know and accept and ‘of course’ “everyone does”.
https://cliscep.com/2016/04/19/dog-bites-man-climate-careerist-in-bald-faced-lie-shocka/#comment-3005
A likely suspect for Green’s ‘coherent theory’ that the 3% must coalesce around if they want to ‘overturn current understanding’ is solar variability which Raff in his infinite wisdom perceived clearly and therefore went on to ‘debunk’ it in a couple of sentences with his 3.7W/m2 vs 0.3W/m2 extremely unsophisticated comparison. Then ken jumped in to defend some of what Raff was saying.
And so here we are!
So Ken, working on BK’s questions above, do you agree that the consensus is so astoundingly high because basic 19th century physics (the GHE) is all you really need to know and accept and that contentious positive feedbacks involving principally water vapour are just the icing on the cake? Is this “the scientific, academic or scholarly purpose of this study, to which you put your name as a coauthor” – basically because all you need to know is simple radiative physics and the ‘fact’ that the radiative contribution from solar variability to long term climate change is vanishingly small in comparison to CO2 radiative forcing?
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‘Just take comments down the rabbitt hole of discussing radiative forcings, so people can’t see we haven’t answered simple questions the blogpost raises.’
.Seems the tactic employed here by our warmist friends.. Jaime you shouldn’t have fallen for it.
I
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Stew, I think you’ve nailed what Ken was trying to do. And I happen to know Jaime was fully aware of it too. As de-facto moderator of the thread I haven’t lifted a finger to arrest their detour into radiative physics because
A. they seem to be enjoying it, and
B. I strongly suspect, from tedious experience, that Ken is not going to answer ‘the simple questions the blogpost raises’ no matter what, even if I make all other discussion verboten. He’d just scurry elsewhere. Unlike a normal person, Ken seems to be entirely unburdened with anything we might call a sense of honor—you know, that tendency to be ashamed of one’s own cowardly acts, particularly if everybody is watching. AFAICT he’s immune to such self-critique.
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“Jaime you shouldn’t have fallen for it.”
Probably not, but after you strip away all the political manoeuvring, the machinations, the vested interests and the host of characters advocating for action on a ‘problem’ which probably doesn’t exist, you are still left with the bare bones of the decidedly dodgy science from which the entire bloated climate change industry takes its original impetus. For me personally, the debate will always be about the science and whether it stands up to scrutiny.
To be fair to Ken though, he didn’t initiate this digression, but he did help to sustain it, as did I.
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Thanks for clarifying that, Jaime. I’d forgotten how it all started. Anyway, knock yourselves out.
I apologize for suspecting Ken of changing the topic to avoid answering the question at hand.
It was an illogical charge anyway, since Ken is perfectly capable of avoiding the question by just… avoiding the question. He doesn’t need an excuse.
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I missed a day or so, so I should catch up on some comments:
Justanotherperson:
What we mean when we say that solar amplification mechanisms amplify the solar changes, is that a 0.2% increase in TSI (like that seen since the Maunder Minimum) could result (as it did) in a 0.7% increase in the UV spectral band, which would change the climate.
That is not amplification. It is just that the narrow UV band is more variable than visible and IR.
On cosmic rays, there was no 20th C trend. Forget them.
So, I don’t know where you got that -0.3 W/-2 Maunder Minimum figure, and I don’t quite know what you mean by it.
I don’t remember where I found the figure, but from your own reference (Lean 2000, abstract and Fig 3) TSI inceased 0.2% from the middle of the MM to today. That is 2.7 W/m² of TSI or 0.7 W/m² averaged across the Earth – and that is all the way from the MM to today. Compared to surrounding dates (before and after the MM) the increase is less than half that, so 0.3 W/m² seems reasonable.
Jaime,
You seem unimpressed by the “19th century” descriptions of the radiative behaviour of CO₂ – was it ever shown to be wrong? If not, where is this odd bias against knowledge coming from?
…pointing to viable feedback mechanisms which might amplify solar variability…
I don’t think you have, that is the issue. EUV apparently varies considerably during the solar cycle so one might expect to see a resulting clear variation in global temperature. Has such an effect been measured?
According to ACRIM data, TSI varies by 2-3W/m2 over cycles 21-23…. More than sufficient to produce radiative forcing but of course, for long term climate change, it is the secular trend over several cycles that is of interest. In that respect, a recent study found that there was a significant 0.037% upward trend in the ACRIM TSI composite between cycles 21 & 22.
What are you proposing is the significance of that ?
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Jaime
You are a filthy denialist for daring to quiblle with the Holy Writ that is pClimate pScience. We have here ample eveidence that even suggesting the investigation of alternatives is akin to heresy, which needs to be stamped out by all the forces of heresy-denial. Fortunately, on this blog, they amount to Raff and Ken. Not too hard to deal with. They should cosy up with Leonardo and think happy, settled thoughts together. On second thoughts, they won’t be happy, but at least they can huddle together and pray for the world to come to its senses.
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I think perhaps this is a good point in the thread to introduce the very informative concept of the ‘Post Modern Mamba’ AKA ‘Clown Dance’ explained in detail here by the much-missed MemoryVault.
Here are the first few paragraphs. It is essential reading for anyone embroiled in a “debate” with certain classes of troll.
The Fallacy of Debating “Post-Modern” Science With Cultists
As regulars know, last week somebody posted a link to an article drawing similarities between the current AGW scam, and the previous “Ozone Hole” fraud. It was a slow day here at the Oz Bar and Grill, so I knocked together a few interesting facts about what ozone is and isn’t; why, in any real sense of the word there is no “ozone hole”; and how, just as with the AGW scam, in the end it had all been about money.
Naturally, like flies to a rubbish bin, this attracted the attention of our resident AGW MMidiot, also know as izen. Far more interestingly however, the article was reposted somewhere else, where it was commented on by unknown persons, who, for the purpose of this article, I’ll call FORM.
FORM’s “rebuttal” was duly reposted here, to which I replied. This too, was obviously reposted wherever, and FORM once again replied, which again was reposted here. This folks, is what is known as the “Post-Modern Mamba” and I’ll explain how it goes. Yes, I’ll get to the lesbians in a minute.
The Post Modern Mamba is a dance routinely performed in AGW Land. It goes like this. A sceptical post is “rebutted” using all the tricks of the trade available to post-modern AGW cultists. They HAVE to use these tricks, since they can’t possibly argue the science. If you doubt this, we’ll take an in-depth look at some of FORM’s answers / tactics in a moment.
The outstanding feature of the Post Modern Mamba rebuttal is that is it all seems so reasonable. That’s because it usually is. At least at first glance. And at least as long as you don’t look too closely at what was being debated in the first place. Close examination usually reveals that the rebuttal, at best, usually only has some passing association with the actual debated subject. Often it has no bearing at all and by sleight of hand is actually about something entirely different.
https://libertygibbert.com/2010/08/09/dobson-dykes-and-diverse-disputes/
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The normal scientific path would be to consider experimental evidence. The climativist way is to do some fake sums and conclude it is not worthy of consideration. If you don’t have the physics worked out in advance, how could it be worthy of investigation? I think some guys around the time of Pasteur and Koch suggested that sort of approach when germ theory was first proposed.
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Perhaps I may have been wrong to use that example, but you completely ignore the better explanation of how the mechanism operates that can be found here or here. I don’t know why this seems so hard for you to understand, but I’ll try again.
As simple as that.
Completely untrue, did you even look at Lockwood 1999? The abstract itself points to the huge significance of the findings:
If the Sun’s magnetic field doubled over the past hundred years, that changes the cosmic ray flux! Are you suggesting that the Sun’s magnetic field doesn’t modulate the cosmic ray flux? If that doesn’t satisfy you, look here or here or here. Gosh, if you want to dismiss cosmic rays like that you’re dismissing a substantial amount of papers I would be happy to show to you. Even the IPCC acknowledges that cosmic rays “enhance new particle formation”.
Thanks for letting me know where that 0.3 W/-2 figure came from.
I know you were talking to Jaime when you said this, but the solar amplification mechanism(s) is evident in things other than the globally averaged temperature (due to the lag time and the enormous heat capacity of the oceans.) See Shaviv 2008 for an excellent summary.
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Dear all,
if you want to bypass pre-moderation limbo, limit yourselves to one link per comment.
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You can get round this annoying feature of WP by enclosing the http part of the web address in square brackets, then the whole thing just prints as plain text!
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Justanotherperson, you quote from Haigh and her computer models (nice to find a skeptic who likes models) but you should know that Haigh is fully signed up to the CO2 hypothesis. So the models didn’t convince her that solar variation is the cause of modern warming. It is a silly idea, just look at the non rising trend on TSI.
As for cosmic rays and magnetic flux, graphs of GCR flux again show no trend. What more do you need?
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Oh, don’t get me wrong that solar activity is the main (60+%) cause of modern warming, though there are studies which point to a rise in TSI in recent decades. It really depends on the data set you use. But I talk about these solar amplification mechanisms because I think the IPCC underestimates solar role in our climate, as I don’t think they include these important feedbacks to solar changes. And believe me, skeptics disregard models so much it’s disgusting. They are critical to our understanding of climate, and they are used for pretty much all climate research. Just because they are flawed doesn’t mean they are useless.
I have looked at what SkS says on this, and while there are definitely peer-reviewed papers agreeing with you, there are certainly papers on my side as well. So, while I have some more papers that agree with me that I could show you if you like, I don’t know how we would determine which of us is correct.
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A solar influence on climate seems like a plausible idea. That doesn’t make it true. If it is as strong as proposed, I’d expect to see lots of evidence of the solar cycle influencing climate/weather. Maybe that exists but I haven’t seen it.
If you have solid evidence of significant recent trends in GCR flux, that would be interesting.
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Absolutely true, and I think your skepticism is precisely what is needed in this debate.
The evidence is there if you look hard enough, but it’s difficult to see in our climate system (as noted above) because of the large capacity of our oceans to absorb heat. If you would like to see the evidence take a look at Shaviv 2008 or this talk Dr. Shaviv gave at NYU in 2014 (go to 25:00 to see what I’m talking about.)
Ok, does this suffice? Beryllium 10 concentrations (which are used as a proxy for cosmic rays and solar activity) have consistently decreased since 1700, as can be seen in Kirkby 2007, figure 6, which I linked to above (also see figure 7, which points to a decreasing trend in Russia.) That means less cosmic rays have bombarded the Earth, and if they are linked to cloud formation, we must’ve also had a decrease in clouds, which would increase albedo and warm the climate. This makes sense because the geomagnetic field coming out of the Sun has doubled since 1900 and increased by a factor of 1.4 since 1964, as I have consistently pointed out.
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I’ll have to read/listen-to Shaviv.
I discussed Kirkby’s CLOUD at Bishop Hill recently. As I remember, the experiment has shown that GCRs create particles but that these are far too small to act as CCNs.
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Here are the most important/relevant papers from CLOUD to our discussion, in my opinion.
The first provides
So, the first doesn’t seem to say that the particles are too small to act as CCNs.
The second (in the last section of the paper) says that
So, it comments on it but doesn’t opine on it.
The third finds that
I don’t think it talks about if particles formed by cosmic rays are too small to act as CCNs.
The fourth doesn’t talk about ions formed by cosmic rays much, but it says this in the conclusion:
So, that doesn’t seem to talk about it, either. I felt like I had heard that somewhere else too, but I don’t know where.
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Forgive me, I should have seen this earlier. This is where we got that. However, the small particles may grow larger and possibly become clouds. That was the focus of
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2/2
Svensmark et al. 2013, (which Shaviv discusses in the video) which states:
So, Svensmark et al. 2013 took the next step, from studies like Svensmark et al. 2007 and Kirkby et al. 2011.
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Justanotherperson, OK I’ll look at Svensmark 2013. I’m interested to see how any increase in CCN caused by GCR compares to other CCN sources.
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Yes, I do agree, but I don’t think there’s been a ton of research done on that.
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I read Svensmark 2013. I’m puzzled why “…the pressure was held a few Pa above atmospheric pressure, and the temperature at around 296 K”. These sound like unlikely conditions anywhere in the troposphere and an odd choice for an experiment trying to see what goes on when GCRs hit the troposphere. Whether they make the result inapplicable to normal pressure/temp at several thousand meters, I don’t know; my guess is yes, but what do I know? I have read no other comment on that, so maybe it doesn’t matter. It is odd, though.
I also don’t understand why such a different scale is used for the two parts of Fig 3. Plotted together the red dots don’t cross the blue dots until 45nm. Again, whether that means something, I have no idea.
The issue of whether any increase in CCNs is significant relative to existing CCNs seems fundamental for anyone wanting to claim that this result means anything. Why are you so keen on the idea if that has never been addressed?
Finally, how does the GCR theory cope with the lack of any temperature response to the Laschamp event 41k years ago
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This is a more technical issue, and though you may correct in your wonderings and speculations, you could email one of the authors about it.
I don’t know if it’s been addressed much. Perhaps I should’ve said that I hadn’t seen much research on it. It may be because we don’t know a lot about where aerosol particles come from, and it’s no wonder, as aerosols are the biggest uncertainty in IPCC climate models.
Do you have a global temperature record for the Laschamp event? If not, then I wouldn’t be too quick to draw any conclusions about cosmic rays, because as Voiculescu and Usoskin 2012 point out, the effect of cosmic rays may have a regional distribution. This doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be significant, but that they may not be significant everywhere across the whole globe.
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I got the impresson listening to Kirkby (CLOUD) that quite a lot is known about CCNs, large amounts of which are organic from forests or from the sea, in addition to anthropogenic ones. Wiki says there are between 100 and 1000 per cubic centimeter, but not under what conditions (but certainly not Sensmark’s conditions).
Do you have a global temperature record for the Laschamp event? If not, then I wouldn’t be too quick to draw any conclusions about cosmic rays,…
Would you say the same to Shaviv, whose lecture I think you linked to? He claims correlations between GCRs and temperatures going back hundreds of millions of years and yet you say at 40k years we don’t know enough about global temperature. And if the GCR flux has only local effects, that makes it rather more difficult for it to change global climate.
Also I don’t see how a Laschamp-like event occurring over several hundred years can have only local effects. Can you explain what you mean?
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There is certainly a lot of progress being made on this, and the sources are being established, but, as Jasper Kirkby says here, the aerosol particle formation is poorly understood, there are tons of unknowns, and I just have not seen a lot of research done on this. You could look further at Svensmark et al. 2013, as figure 2 shows the experiment test results, and by how much the gamma rays increased aerosol production.
That isn’t what I meant. I’m not too concerned about the time period, and what I meant is that in certain regions, the effect of GCRs may not be very significant, and so the absence of correlation doesn’t mean they don’t have any effect. That was Richard Alley’s mistake in his 2009 AGU presentation. And we don’t even have a global temperature past 1850, so I think we know little beyond then. I should’ve made that clearer when I posted that comment. And besides, there is plenty of evidence for a GCR effect on clouds. If there is a significant correlation, which Shaviv has found in multiple studies, that doesn’t necessarily mean that cosmic rays are actually driving climate (as with any correlation), but my logic wouldn’t apply. Why? Because he may be using a temperature reconstruction from an area that has significant effects from cosmic rays, so we may be able to draw a conclusion from that, because it’s unlikely that so many correlations are spurious. Do you see what I’m saying? Because GCRs may not affect the entire globe the same way, it would be imprudent to say cosmic rays don’t affect climate based on one region when there is evidence to the contrary. However, if you do find a correlation, you could be in a region where GCRs have affected climate significantly in the past, so I wouldn’t say, “Oh well, I don’t think we can tell anything from this data because we don’t have global temperature record.” I don’t think, though, that we should be too quick to draw big conclusions, even if there is a significant correlation between cosmic rays and climate.
I agree that that would make it more difficult for GCRs to affect climate globally, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t.
I mean that perhaps in certain regions, for whatever reason, the effect may not be very great. Perhaps there already is a lot of particle formation, and so increasing GCRs doesn’t have much of an effect. I can’t be sure, but like I said, I would encourage you to read Voiculescu and Usoskin 2012, which finds that the effect of solar activity on clouds is there in some “key climate-defining regions”, but also that solar activity’s effect on clouds is not uniform across the globe.
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