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Comment on How did we get into this? by Chief Hydrologist

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Just so you know that Mama don’t like bad mouthin’ baby Jesus.

I think that Don was suggesting that both materialism and religion was supplanted to a degree by environmentalism. The religious impulse directed to nature rather than a cathedral. I myself am a Slyvan Fundamentalist. We dance naked in forests and hug trees. Splinters are a problem.


Comment on How did we get into this? by Pekka Pirilä

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The real world and human societies are complex enough to contain all kind of processes, among them those described by Don Aitkin. Unfortunately it’s of very little help to list such processes as they are just a few among a huge number of simultaneous and successive processes. In this respect the posting has the same basic weakness as most other guest postings on this site have had. They all are logical (at least in part), they (almost) all describe something that exists, they are written as if the issue described would be decisive and give an essential blow to the mainstream thinking. They are, however, never sufficient to prove that their issue is really of major significance. In most cases the issues are not that important, but often it’s not possible to give strong evidence in either direction.

Thinking “how did we get into this” may be very useful as a source for ideas about, what may happen in the future. Will there be a continuing, if not monotonous, strengthening of environmental movements, or will there be a backlash that goes beyond the present difficulties in formulating internationally acceptable climate policies? This should be an issue that interests those worried about the climate change even more than those that believe that the AGW is not a serious threat.

Comment on How did we get into this? by Pooh, Dixie

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I like this one:
“For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong”. –H. L. Mencken
Or “elegant, easy to understand and wrong”.

Comment on How did we get into this? by James Evans

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Perhaps nuclear weapons are a good place to start, when looking at the causes of the present feelings of imminent doom. During the Cold War we understood that much of life on earth could be wiped out by the pressing of a few buttons. Man’s ability to destroy the planet was inescapable.

This feeling of our awful potential for destruction was echoed in the idea of environmental sustainability – as a society we could destroy ourselves (and much else besides) unless we looked closely at how our current actions might have long-term consequences for our environment.

The current obsession with global warming is just one symptom of this wider idea, which has been brewing for a long time:

“What we need from scientists are estimates, presented with sufficient conservatism and plausibility but at the same time as free as possible from internal disagreements that can be exploited by political interests, that will allow us to start building a system of artificial but effective warnings, warnings which will parallel the instincts of animals who flee before the hurricane, pile up a larger store of nuts before a severe winter, or of caterpillars who respond to impending climatic changes by growing thicker coats.”
Margaret Mead, 1975.

As a species, we have been becoming more and more prosperous. But no amount of prosperity will change the fact that the future is uncertain, and that’s a scarey thought. (Particularly if you don’t belive in a god who will make everything all right for you.)

My own belief is that we humans change what we do, and how we do it, at such an incredibly fast rate that peering into the future to check for sustainability is an activity that requires a great deal of caution (and humility.) What will our needs be in a hundred years? What will we be doing? What will we be producing?

Comment on How did we get into this? by RobB

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Margaret
What an insightful comment you made. I have always felt that religion came about, first, as a means of controlling people (you must be good and do as I say) and, second, because it effectively preyed on people’s fears about death and the possibility of there being nothing afterwards. I am sure this second point is linked to this broader idea of impending catastrophe. The parallels with the CAGW mantra are striking. PS I apologise in advance if these remarks offend anyone with religious faith.

Comment on America’s First Global Warming Debate by Joe Lalonde

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Judith,

Our theories of the past are based on no changes to the planet and that at the planets creation, there was no water. Just chemical soup.

So far all the areas I have looked into differs very differently from this and we had a greater abundance of water that was more concentration with salts due to the increased speed of the planet. This was needed to hold the water to the planet from centrifugal force and inhibited volcanic activity by the shear weight of pressure. The circulation was faster to stir the planets waters as well. The massive craters of meteor impacts were softened by how water can transfer energy and the atmosphere being denser. Ash and gases from volcanic activity then would be suppressed by the ocean weight , keeping gases into a liquid form and making ash a fine muck of burned, crushed rock. This also means that our planet was larger in circumference than today as well.
Gravity is the forward momentum of our solar system which gives us the “bug on the windshield” effect.
The age of dry salts on land is less than a billion years old and is younger as the waters receded.

Comment on A Scientist’s Manifesto by Lyric User

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While scientists might need a manifesto, the climate deniers already have one. It was written by a Norwegian man who cites Lord Monckton as one of his influences.

Comment on America’s First Global Warming Debate by andrew adams

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You’re equating C02 with cyanide – but you knew that.

No, he really isn’t. The point is the logical fallacy in the original argument, which would exist even if CO2 emissions were entirely harmless.


Comment on A Scientist’s Manifesto by curryja

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tt, you misquote me. I have given two different very likely ranges: 0-10C, and when you pushed me to narrow it, i have 0.5-8C. There is a paper on expert elicitation (can’t find it) where climate scientists were asked this question and their very likely answers fell in the range 1-8C.

Comment on Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution by Luis Dias

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Fair enough, it wasn’t my intention.

Comment on Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution by Luis Dias

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I assure you it is not snark. I recognize that feeling all too well and indeed think it is a blessful sentiment. However, we must distrust it, and this paper does transpire the same feeling one gets when reading conspiracy theorist mathematics and numerologies, with “coincidences” and “if we put these equations it all works out!”, etc.. I may be too harsh in this, and it may even prove to be not a terribad hypothesis, but I don’t like the method. If you torture numbers enough, you can make any theory you want about any phenomenon. Curiously this was the main criticism against Mann et al.

Lastly, I have read this paper ever since it was referenced in WUWT which was a full two hours earlier than Climate Etc., but I agree that jumping into commentary did create a bad impression that I didn’t read the paper.

Comment on Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution by Dallas

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Ah, the Dr. S factor. I know it well.

Comment on America’s First Global Warming Debate by Pekka Pirilä

Comment on Week in review 07/22/11 by David L. Hagen

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tt
Cut the *** and return to civilized scientific discussion or find another bridge to hide under.

Comment on America’s First Global Warming Debate by Herman Alexander Pope

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The plot linked to in this post is like the hockey stick. It shows temperature to be warmer in 2000 than in the Medieval Warm Period. That was not true.


Comment on A Scientist’s Manifesto by Tom

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giptis444, “The manifesto comprises a set of positive values which should be “internalized” by all scientists in all disciplines.” Well done; I think. I am not sure where your Bible is from (I for One am very glad to be out from under the Law of the Old Testament), but the verses you suggest may be better understood if we read Galatians; 5:19-21. Now please let us know how our Brilliant Leaders & their Scientists, plan to evolve into their next stage of life. The writer of the Bible suggests we continue, reading from Galatians; 5:20,21. Thank you again for asking, I hope this will help.

Comment on Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution by Alexander Harvey

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Fred,

I return to resonance and these pesky quasi periodic variations. I am afraid that I may not be answering directly but more explaining a viewpoint that looks at the issue olbiquely and then asks how the existence of a resonance would effect how we look at some of your points.

If I manage to explain myself adequately it should be clear that in my view these wobbles are not antithetic to the standard theory, they could even be essential, and that we should not go looking for short term data to explain wobbles that have their origins in the prior couple of decades. A resonance is a sort of temporal teleconnection. A ghost of the past that haunts us.

Back to the wobbles and there causes.

The following seem possible:

1) They are the result of periodic forcings
2) They coincidentally result from other forcings
3) They are an apparence due to resonance and noise
4) They are purely happenstantial.

The implications differ.

Happenstance is a limiting case. The wobbles being just random fluctuations inform us as to the relative strength of the response at the frequency of interest. Their is a tacet implication that longer periods should have at least as strong a response hence a large fluctuation that happened to be seen with a 60 years period would support high sensitivites beyond 60 years.

The presence of a resonance would indicate that we should not take the strength of the response at the centre of the band as being indicative of the response at either longer or shorter periods. In the case of a resonance with a 60 year period it would suggest that the uncertainty in a ~30 year trend (in band) would be larger than otherwise expected but those for 60 years (out of band) would be much as expected. The band width being dependent on the sharpness of the resonance. So we may have the situation whereby we should express extra caution with trends over certain periods e.g. ~30 year and perhaps ~10 year (half of 20). The practical implications of which is that the IPCC WGI were wise to use a 50 year period and would be foolish to use a 30 year period.

A resonance around the 60 year period driven by noise would show up in the records as a spectral peak in standard of wavelet analysis but would lack constancy in amplitude, frequency and phase. In particular phase would not be predictive much beyond a cycle, or less or more depending on the sharpness of the resonance. Cycles would appear and fizzle out only to appear again. This lack of predictive power beyond the near term means that any prediction should be quickly blended into just a greater uncertainty. I think that ENSO, PDO, AMO etc are only predictive out to a minor fraction of their period. A whole period hence one might be uncertain not just to the amplitutde but the sign.

The existence of perceptable periodic forcings could be of enormous practical benefit. I think that a regular beat in paleo-data would cheer a lot of people up as it could help solve time calibration issues.

A precise periodic rocking by around 0.2ºC pk-pk should have some implications not just for the temperature. The AMO is associated with changes in the weather patterns and particularly precipitation. I believe that a period of 64 years in millenial and semi-millenial Nile data records has been detected and judged significant but I have no idea if it is periodic. If it was, it is too far from 60 years to be the same signal. Weere there a truly periodic signal in that data, which benefits from good record taking in that we know which years are being refered to, I can only think that it would have been spotted as this data is highly researched.

The existence of periods of around 60, 20, and 10 years is highly suggestive but you do not have to move those figures from their round values by much before the evocation is lost. The certainty in the 60 year figure from the temperature record is not good, perhaps +/- 10 years (50yr,70yr), this is a direct consequence of the uncertainty in frequency for the 160 year record (being 1/160 per annum). As I read it the paleo-AMO analysis only supports a peak in the 60 year region. I have seen nothing yet to satisfy me that we have a periodic forcing.

The suspected forcings e.g. GISS forcings covering both natural and other forcings do have a spectral peak in the 60 year band. This peak is in the right frequency band and the phase is plausibly correct relative to the temperature response.

I think it is this point were the fuss happens. These are fluctuations that are held to to be forced by some people but not by others.

However the predicted amplitude may be inadequate to explain the historic variance. This could be because there is also a period forcing which just happens to be in phase right now. Or it is just happenstance, or there really is a resonance.

If there is a resonance it implies that any quasi 60 year signal in the forcing would be disproportionately magnified in the temperature response. For instance the 1930s would have been a little warmer than otherwise, the 1960s a little cooler, and things would have perhaps been a little inflated in the 1990s. This is suggestive but far from definite.

A resonance would imply that the current “lull” could be “forced” that is that it is overwhelmingly due to the forcings, and that we should expect a “set back” at the end of any 30 year period of significantly divergent but mostly monotonic warming. To put it another way, that 30 year trends get exaggerated but 60 year trends do not.

It also keeps open the possibility that the relationship between forcing and response is linear. I do not mean a scaling but that additivity holds.

In summary:

The existence of a quasi 60 year damped resonance might explain some of the variance noted in the historic and paleo data as being just the amplification of happenstantial variations in forcings in the 60 year band.

It would imply that we need slightly different statistical arguments when we consider trends in and out of the resonance band.

It would imply that we should expect “corrections” to occur about 30 years out from current actions.

It might imply that the divergence between the models and the historic record is due to a failure to capture this resonance, or that it capures it but from different initial conditions, that we could try to correct for analytically.

That the “lull” was both predictable and the result of warming.

That there is an implication that we should perhaps be a little cautious in believing that any particular 30 year slope had well characterised error bars as an additional amplification needs to be applied to these error bars.

That there are two ways of looking at issues like this. On one hand we can rubbish the whole concept or we can winnow wheat from chaff.

Alex

Comment on A Scientist’s Manifesto by Tom

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I should have writen: “The writer of the Bible suggests we continue, reading from Galatians; 5:22,23. Sorry for my mistake. Tom

Comment on America’s First Global Warming Debate by tonyb

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Pekka

Thanks. Unfortunately the first one is behind a pay wall although I have seen some snippets elsewhere. Will translate the second.

tonyb

Comment on Loehle and Scafetta on Climate Change Attribution by Martha

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As I said, others (on both ‘sides’) have the critique exactly right.

You are exceptionally arrogant, Craig, if you imagine people do not see that your only goal is to show that there is an alternative explanation and that it does not matter to you that the quality of your statistical extrapolation is crap.

Frankly I don’t think you know what you’re doing. If you do, it is apparently more important to you to amuse yourself and have an audience than it is to demonstrate basic technical competence and integrity. I find it disappointing.

And yes – Roy Spencer’s work is what it is and the comparison is a negative criticism.

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