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Comment on A War Against Fire by Jim D

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As far as I can tell, this puts the NOAA scientists in a good light, trying to tell a clearly motivated NYT reporter what the science says and doesn’t say, as opposed to what the reporter wanted the piece to say. This is a common interaction between science and sensationalist journalism. Sensationalist journalism goes both ways, environmental extremism on one side and political extremism with conspiracy theories about AGW science on the other, depending on the news outlet. It means just be wary of the reporting from certain outlets. Better to look at the scientific source itself, if you can.


Comment on A War Against Fire by Steven Mosher

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Nope. Can’t be zero.

Comment on A War Against Fire by Latimer Alder (@latimeralder)

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@ybutt

‘I am not interested in expenditure’

What better reason could there be for ensuring that ybutt or his cronies are never given access to a shilling or a dime of public money?

And how nice to be above such mundane things.

I’m told HM the Queen has the same indifference. She never carries cash but that a footman distributes largesse on her behalf.

Comment on A War Against Fire by Steven Mosher

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Can’t be zero. Can’t be negative.

Comment on A War Against Fire by ...and Then There's Physics

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Unless I’m mistaken, that airborne fraction figure is from a paper that includes James Hansen as an author. If so, they explicitly excluded land use emissions. Land use emissions as a fraction of total emissions has decreased with time and hence doing so means that the over-estimate in airborne fraction is bigger earlier on that it is later on. Hence, that figure does not include all anthropogenic emissions and the apparent drop in airborne fraction could be entirely because of this omission.

Comment on A War Against Fire by Steven Mosher

Comment on A War Against Fire by David Wojick

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Correct, SM, but unfortunately the concept ECS is a bundle of confusions. To begin with it is an abstraction, like the rate of fall of an object in a vacuum. But we do not live in a vacuum so actual rates of fall will vary and may even be negative. If I drop a feather on a windy day it may blow upward. If I drop a bird it may fly upward.

By the same token, CO2 might double while the globe cools. Presumably this does not make ECS negative, just irrelevant. Unfortunately the nature of the ECS abstraction is never specified, as far as I know.

Even worse, if the climate is a far from equilibrium system, a natural oscillator, which seems likely, then ECS simply does not exist, even as an abstraction, unless the abstraction from reality is very great indeed.

The point is that the greater the abstraction is, the less relevant it is to the real situation. So how great is the ECS abstraction? What real processes does it ignore? This is the first question to answer before we take ECS seriously, if we ever do.

Comment on A War Against Fire by Steven Mosher

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Again.

Look guys just because you lost the debate is no reason to hang on to skydragon delusions. Join nic and Judith. Make good arguments about Ecs being in the lower range and show some tactical debate skills. But you guys flat out lost the co2 is not a ghg debate. You lost the second law violation nonsense debate. You can’t show your data on the temperature debate… Jeez for 2016 you should all resolve to work together to chop off the high end tail of Ecs!! There is a modest goal. Show that Ecs must be less than 3.5 that would be some science.

This is not an invite to quote papers. Do some science. Our economy is at stake cause these greens will surely wreck it


Comment on A War Against Fire by David Wojick

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Correct SM, but unfortunately the concept ECS is a bundle of confusions. To begin with it is an abstraction, like the rate of fall of an object in a vacuum. But we do not live in a vacuum so actual rates of fall will vary and may even be negative. If I drop a feather on a windy day it may blow upward. If I drop a bird it may fly upward.

By the same token, CO2 might double while the globe cools. Presumably this does not make ECS negative, just irrelevant. Unfortunately the nature of the ECS abstraction is never specified, as far as I know.

Even worse, if the climate is a far from equilibrium system, a natural oscillator, which seems likely, then ECS simply does not exist, even as an abstraction, unless the abstraction from reality is very great indeed.

The point is that the greater the abstraction is, the less relevant it is to the real situation. So how great is the ECS abstraction? What real processes does it ignore? This is the first question to answer before we take ECS seriously, if we ever do.

Comment on A War Against Fire by David Wojick

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Mosher, the nesting suggests that you are replying to me, not blouis. Who are you replying to? If to me then your reply makes no sense whatever.

Comment on A War Against Fire by curryja

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Agreed that the top policy relevant climate science goal should be realistic clarification of the ‘very likely’ top to ECS. Agree that 3.5C is about right. I suspect that once the climate models start using more realistic aerosol forcing, they will be retuned (or will be wildly too warm relative to observations) and the high values of ECS will disappear.

Comment on A War Against Fire by Sundance (@0Sundance)

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Dear Mr. Seitz,

Have you changed your mind regarding any of your 1990 positions that Judith has cited?

Comment on A War Against Fire by David Springer

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@MatthewMarlor

Mosher won’t get it.

Comment on A War Against Fire by stevenreincarnated

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Stop complaining so much or I will put you in moderation. Oh, never mind, this isn’t my blog. I’ll have to start one and put you in moderation there.

Comment on A War Against Fire by RichardLH

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Not a challenge, merely an observation. The two viewpoints of the same 4D Global Temperature Field closely approximate the true values. One in the quasi-chaotic boundary layer, one seeing the more laminar flow.


Comment on Week in review – science edition by Stephen Segrest

Comment on Week in review – science edition by Stephen Segrest

Comment on Week in review – science edition by Stephen Segrest

Comment on A War Against Fire by Peter Lang

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Judith,

The economists are fixated on ECS, unfortunately

I suggest, economists have been briefed by the climate modellers and so that’s what the economists understand to be a key input ( The climate modellers keep projection smooth curves of increasing temperature as CO2 concentration increase). It seems to me the climate modellers have not seriously considered abrupt climate change (or natural variability such as explained by the ‘Stadium Wave’). The economists can’t model the costs and benefits of proposed mitigation policies unless the climate scientists give them valid relevant information.

Perhaps you could set a goal of educating the climate scientists to:

1. recognise that the climate changes abruptly, always has and always will,

2. Focus on greatly reducing the uncertainties in the estimates of the damage function (net benefit/damage per degree of global warming/cooling). I have no confidence in their projections of increasing damage costs as global temperture increases given that warming has been beneficial to date and life thrived in warmer times when there was no ice at the poles – so clearly there is no persuasive evidence that warming would be catastrophic, but we know for sure that cooling would be catastrophic.

Abrupt climate change:
PNAS: http://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/2
PNAS (definition): http://www.nap.edu/read/10136/chapter/3#14

Comment on A War Against Fire by physicistdave

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AK wrote to me:

You’re wrong. When it comes to climate change, “feedbacks” are a myth: i.e. a loose metaphor intended to incent some action or thought.

IIRC Richard Lindzen once told Congress that “global average temperature” doesn’t actually do anything or have any effect.

Oh, well…………

Look, AK, you quote Lindzen, but he and his colleagues have tried to analyze the feedback effects from various sources. (I myself respect Lindzen, though of course I do not necessarily agree with him on everything.)

If feedback is a myth, why do you cite a guy who takes it seriously?

Of course, everyone on all sides of the debate agrees that different things happen at different places. But, still, it really does seem to make sense to talk about global climate and what affects it, and that requires us to at least try to think about things like feedbacks.

Dave

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