Yeah, Diogenes, confusion about superlatives is jest the worst thing! Somethin’ I really, really hate. )
Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Beth Cooper
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Peter Lang
Agnostic,
2) the solution cannot be found at a personal level, or by building windmills or driving electric cars. It has to be at the sort of scale that can only be managed by governments.
True. But it can be tackled in one of two ways and not both. One way will succeed the other will fail (as it has done to date and will continue to do as long as that is the way being advocated.
One way is to increase regulation, tax, bureaucracy, big-government and strangle the world’s economies
The other is to reduce regulation, bureaucracy, government and by so doing allow innovation to thrive. Removing the impediments that have blocked development of nuclear power is an example of how reducing regulation could provide an enormous reduction in CO2 emissions and also allow the world economy to improve.
The way advocated by the CAGW Alarmists and ‘Progressives’ is doomed to fail (as it has been doing since the 1992 Rio Conference and was made clear to all but the ideologically blinded at Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban and Rio+20.
On the other hand, reducing the regulatory constraints that prevent us having low-cost low emissions electricity generation would meet the wants of the CAGW Alarmists (reduce emissions from energy) and meet the needs of most people: secure, reliable, cheap energy.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Peter Lang
stevepostrel,
Excellent points.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Arno Arrak
Much discussion of what to do about global warming but no discussion at all about the science and measurement of it. Apparently the existence of warming is a taboo not to be questioned by any right-thinking climate scientist. I will try to explain why this is wrong. First, let us agree that it is anthropogenic greenhouse warming we want to analyze and distinguish from other types of global warming. For that purpose we must analyze what global temperature is actually telling us. And to do that we must understand the the basic laws of physics that control absorption and emission of radiation. There is no question that the greenhouse effect is real. It is due to two greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and water vapor, that jointly keep the temperature of the earth above the freezing point of water. This is not the same as the enhanced greenhouse effect that is due to additional carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. It has been measured at Mauna Loa since 1958 and has been increasing linearly since that time. This being the case, the enhanced greenhouse effect should also be increasing linearly, in step with it, from year to year. But if you look at the global temperature curve you find that this is simply not true. Temperature has increased over the past century all right but by fits and starts and not at any time in step with measured carbon dioxide content of the air. To get a quantitative measure of how much greenhouse warming to expect it is useful to calculate the temperature increase when the amount of carbon dioxide is doubled. Svante Arrhenius was the first to do that and his result was five degrees Celsius. This was too high and modern calculations give about one degree Celsius. But this is not enough to frighten anybody so IPCC is using an ad hoc addition to it – greenhouse effect from water vapor. It works like this: first carbon dioxide warms the air. Warm air can hold more water vapor, this additional water vapor does some greenhouse warming of its own, and we get to perceive their combined warming. Their present calculations put the combined greenhouse effect somewhere near 3 degrees Celsius which is above the 2 degrees Europeans have chosen as their maximum allowable limit. This is the reason for all the mitigation measures, emission control projects, and carbon taxes in the world. But is this true? Lets take the idea of positive feedback from water vapor. If it is true then the amount of water vapor in the air should increase in tandem with the amount of carbon dioxide measured by Mauna Loa. To my knowledge, satellites have not noticed ant such increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is an important parameter impinging directly on the degree of warming to be expected from carbon dioxide. Some of these billions spent on climate study should have been directed at settling this point but nothing has happened and we are expected to take that on faith. But there is worse to come. Ferenc Miskolczi studied the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere when he was at NASA. He came to the conclusion that for a stable climate to exist the infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere had to have a value of 1.86 (30 percent transmittance). To keep it that way, the existing greenhouse gases should compensate any deviations from it by means of a feedback system. In practice, this meant carbon dioxide and water vapor. Carbon dioxide cannot be adjusted but water vapor has an infinite reservoir in the oceans and can vary. This of course went directly against the IPCC idea of positive water vapor feedback and he was severely criticized in the blogosphere. But he found a way to put this to an experimental test. Using NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 he was able to prove that the infrared transmittance of the atmosphere had been constant for the previous 61 years. During that same period of time the amount of carbon dioxide in air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of all this carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. Miskolczi’s peer reviewed article has been out there now for two years and no peer reviewed objections have appeared. Do I have to remind you of the IPCC’s view of peer reviewed science? From Miskolczi it follows immediately that climate models predicting warming from the greenhouse effect are invalid and their predictions of dangerous warming ahead are worthless. And all the laws based on the use such “scientific” predictions as justification for their existence have lost their justification and need to be cancelled. Furthermore, since the enhanced greenhouse effect has turned out to be a non-effect it is clear that no observed warming can be greenhouse warming. With this in mind, lets take a look at global temperature records for the last century. To start with, the first ten years of the century saw cooling, not warming. The early century warming then started suddenly in 1910 and stopped equally suddenly in 1940. There was no parallel increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 1910 which rules out the greenhouse effect as a cause because radiation laws of physics do not permit it. Bjørn Lomborg assigns this warming to solar influence and I agree with him. Forty percent of the century is now gone without any sign of human-caused change. There was no warming in the fifties, sixties, and seventies either while carbon dioxide increased relentlessly. People then were worried about a a coming ice age and newspapers and magazines had articles about it. There has never been any satisfactory explanation of why this rise in carbon dioxide failed to cause any warming for these thirty years, just contorted hypotheses trying to explain it away. One of them blamed smoke and aerosols from war production for blocking out the sun. And by now seventy percent of the century has passed without any human-caused warming. There was no warming in the eighties and nineties either, just alternating warm El Nino and cool La Nina phases of ENSO. Hansen imagined that the 1987/88 El Nino meant global warming had arrived and said so in front of the Senate. There were actually five such El Nino peaks during this period, each one followed by a cooling La Nina. Global average temperature stayed the same throughout the eighties and nineties as shown by UAH and RSS satellites, GIStemp from NASA, and NCDC temperature data. The period came to an end in 1998 when a super El Nino inaugurated the second warming period of the twentieth century. In four years global temperature rose by a third of a degree Celsius and then stopped. A third of a degree is substantial warming if you consider that IPCC only allocates 0.6 degrees to the entire twentieth century. Its cause was the large amount of warm water carried across the ocean by the super El Nino. It, and not an imaginary greenhouse effect was the cause of the very warm decade of the 2000-s. This, and not an imaginary greenhouse warming, is the cause of the very warm first decade of our century. The super El Nino of 1998 is still the highest temperature peak on record. Hansen has claimed a few peaks in the 2000-s higher than that but he is obviously wrong. I checked out his GIStemp and found that all these claimed peaks are erroneous outliers that should be removed from the record This still leaves the Arctic warming to be explained. I am sorry to say, that one is not greenhouse warming either but is caused by Atlantic currents that carry warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. So here is the real global temperature story: there is no greenhouse warming now and there has not been any for a century. And human-induced climate change? Total fantasy that has cost us trillions of dollars for nothing.
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Comment on Philosophical reflections on climate model projections by David L. Hagen
Vaughan Pratt
Re: "next year’s flip of the coin should be independent of this year’s."
Ah, but next year's weather isn't independent of this year's weather because of climate persistence, technically known as Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics. See Koutsoyiannis et al. at <a href="href=itia.ntua.gr" rel="nofollow">ITIA</a>
e.g.,
<a href="itia.ntua.gr/getfile/980/2/documents/2010EGU_ReconHurstPr.pdf" rel="nofollow">Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in paleoclimate reconstructions</a> Markonis, Y., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Hurst-Kolmogorov dynamics in paleoclimate reconstructions, European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2010, Geophysical Research Abstracts, Vol. 12, Vienna, EGU2010-14816, European Geosciences Union, 2010.
With persistence, the natural standard deviation evaluated using Hurst Kolmogorov dynamics is about double that of classical statistics. Thus Hansen's 3 sigma turns out to be 1.5 sigma taking into account the full range of natural variations with persistence.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Arno Arrak
s/b …increase in water vapor with atmospheric carbon dioxide…
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Arno Arrak
Forget
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Beth Cooper
El Nino, fan, Atlantic currents . .. water planet. Hope yer readin’ Arno Arrak’s posting, fan.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Bart R
Tomcat | August 20, 2012 at 2:50 am |
It would be the same as it is every week.
Next question?
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by David Wojick
By the way Agnostic, many skeptics have the calm, measured voice of reason. Perhaps you are not listening. Or if all you can hear is the street brawl, well that is the way of democracy. But in the long run it is surprisingly reasonable. This is a political fight, which the skeptics did not start. Factor that into your analysis.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by P.E.
Jumping Jehoshaphat, man, have you never heard of paragraphs?
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Peter Lang
Robert,
Its great in theory but in the case of CO2 taxes or ETS, impracticable in the real world.
Therefore, why do you advocate a carbon tax given:
1. you can’t say whether AGW will be net good, bad or indifferent, nor by how much
2. You therefore cannot say how much the carbon tax should be if at all
3. You cannot address the practical implementation issues (i.e. it cannot be implemented in the real world, as is clear from this: http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/)
4. it will damage the world economy (i.e. do great harm to peoples’ well-being)
5. it will not make the slightest difference to the climate or sea levels
And most important, there is an alternative that would be a far better way to reduce emissions: http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/17/learning-from-the-octopus/#comment-230021. Why do you not seriously consider that alternative (i.e not just make up silly and irrelevant arguments to dismiss it).
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Bart R
lurker, passing through laughing | August 20, 2012 at 4:37 pm |
“immune to fact “
Well, as fervor is far more commonplace than religion, and avid sports fans, patriots, scholars, fans, artists and human beings of all stripes with or without religion may share it, it’s not really logical to leap from ‘fervent’ to ‘religious’. It’s more like the most irrational possible conclusion.
But entertaining? That I think we can provide. I suggest a game I like to call “Factball”.
The rules are simple, as they’re loosely based on pick-up baseball. You believe I have a team. Frankly, I can’t believe that’s so, but as it’s your opinion, you’re entitled to think I’d let myself belong to an organization or affiliation that would want me, despite all evidence to the contrary. Likewise, you seem to believe I hold to some consensus; my manifold efforts to dissuade such an error have fallen on immu.. (oh, wait, that’s your word).. er, deaf ears.
1. So, you get to name my team. Eighteen to twenty five ‘players’ who have extensively enough made their views known on a wide variety of climate facts — or preferrably active Denizens here — that we could conceivably get to know if they accept or reject facts reasonably.
You also get to name your team, of the same number of players, who share your views on climate; same conditions.
2. I, to make it fair, then get to reject up to half (less one) of your nominees to my team and either trade them to your team (where you _must_ accept them), taking the traded player in their place, or trade them to your team and drop one player from your roster, or simply drop both that player you stuck me with and any one other player on your roster. That way, we can be sure you honestly nominate only serious candidates you believe belong in the debate without ringers or stinkers.
3. No sockpuppets. Sockpuppets disqualify you, as a player can only enter if you’ve named them to a team.
4. Each round begins with you stating a fact of your choice related to climate. To simplify, (preferrably) any topic of a thread on Climate Etc. or within the curriculum on http://prezi.com/_fdaogoswjn1/climate-literacy-online-university-degree-certification/ is always fair game, as is any mutually-agreed topic.
You pitch your fact in a sentence of nine (9) words or less. The fact must be factual, not a speech, rant, thing you know to be a lie or falsehood, and verifiable by evidence, observation and inference. If you submit as fact anything not verifiable by evidence, observation and inference, any sophism, equivocation, ambiguity or fallacy, you forfeit.
5. No swearing, personal insults, insinuations, ad hominem attacks in the strict definition of ad hominem, or gossip. While there’s no penalty for breaking this rule, I thought it’d be a point of principle to include it.
6. Once you submit a fact — preferrably one relevant to the topic in the thread at the time, any nine people from either team can for the next week debate and discuss it.
7. If, by the end of the week at least half of the commenters plus one on the fact from either team (that is, those nominated by you under rule #1 above and not dropped under rule #2 above), have formed a consensus, then we will call those who retain a dispute with the consensus the deniers of the fact. If all but three or fewer commenters agree, then any commenter remaining who denies the fact is immune to fact, and is dropped from the game for future facts.
8. The game ends when one side has fewer than seven players left, at which point they lose.
Do you understand the rules suggested? (I’d suggest Dr. Curry as a referee, but frankly I doubt she’d be interested in the position.)
The point of the game is to assess what the heck team and consensus you think I’m part of, and what you think are facts that I’m immune to.
Are you up to playing?
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Wagathon
<strong>Why are CO2 emissions in the US at a 20 year low?</strong>
It may not be politically correct to mention the reason. But, the reason is totally obvious: <strong>the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.</strong>
And, how have the AGW true believers progressed over the last twenty years of global warming alarmism? They all are mystics now—diviners—lacking any sort of skepticism or objectivity. To them, the scientific method is essentially a big falsehood. Their reality is outside traditional science—i.e., not really of THIS world at all—but, of some OTHER world where their view of things is completely “natural.”
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Tomcat
Gosh, what an upstanding fellow Bart is. Thanks for explaining that, Bart.
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Comment on Learning from the octopus by Vaughan Pratt
<i>Who is talking about “hindcasting the rate atmospheric CO2 to 1750″ in order to arrive at a logical rate of future increase. That would be downright stupid.</i>
If you're saying that climate skeptics find it inconvenient to infer the future from the past, Max, I would accept that. If you're saying something else, you haven't said it terribly clearly.
You also completely blew off my point that technology is growing as fast as population. That makes a <i>huge</i> difference to these projections. You're hiding your head in the sand ignoring that one.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Tomcat
The above incoherent drivel only exposes <i>you</i> as the insane/irrational/dishonest one, slavering over the science being "settled" by courts..
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Comment on Learning from the octopus by Vaughan Pratt
(From a much earlier thread.)
@cd: <i>Since you are not a fan of Ambient, how about initial conditions? What initial conditions did you select for your heat sink calculations?</i>
That's a great question, cd. However the ocean differs from a block of copper in being a liquid, and moreover one that the atmosphere heats from the top. This makes it Fickian hard (almost as good as Fock space, thanks, Webby) to compute. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_laws_of_diffusion" rel="nofollow">Fick's law</a> governs diffusion in fluids, relevant to how fast heat can flow down or cooling can flow up.) Problems worthy of attack prove their worth by hitting back (Hein), and for that one I have not yet begun to fight (Jones, more recently Akin).
I computed 14.5 years by looking only at HADCRUT. I <i>speculate</i> that the ocean contributes much of that, but I have no analysis to back that up. Looknig at HADSST and CRUTEM (the sea and land components of HADCRUT) separately might permit my approach to estimate the proportion attributable to the ocean. But at some point these observational estimates need to be reconciled with models.
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Comment on Week in review 8/18/12 by Tomcat
Robert: If free markets are so fragile that the existence one unowned resource destroys them, then “free markets” have never existed and will never exist.
This and your rantings about alleged worship are soft-headed nonsense. It really isn’t difficult, Robert : markets operate on property rights. So if there are no property rights in X, there is no possibility of a free market in X.
This could either be because government sabotage or negligence has prevented property rights from developing, or because – as with the atmosphere – it does not seem practical.
In effect the atmosphere is owned by government – it decides the terms on which the atmosphere may be used. If it eventually turns out that despite all the bias and vested-interest fraud in government-funded climate science, CAGW is nevertheless true, then schemes such a revenue-neutral carbon tax will need to be considered.
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Comment on Learning from the octopus by Vaughan Pratt
cd and WHT, as this four-deep thread is getting a bit unmanageable I've continued it <a href="http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/17/learning-from-the-octopus/#comment-231229" rel="nofollow">here</a>, indented all the way out. Sorry if this competes with different indentations serving the same purpose.
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