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Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Chief Hydrologist

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Chaos and decadal atmosphere and ocean variability have extensive and wholly reputable antecedents in climate science. Confusing this with Stefan, Mythr and Cotton is ridiculous. But then you are equally ridiculous with your ‘solving’ of climate with one line of algebra, with your constant repetition of absurd personal complaints and drooling xenophobic mutterings. Say something serious and considered or stop wasting everyone’s time.


Comment on ‘Noticeable’ climate change by tonyb

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Webby

You are a smart man. Although I have written about other weather records I keep coming back to CET. Now, there is a reason for this. As Mosh might say ‘go figure.’ Clue: think strongest AND weakest link

tonyb

Comment on Open thread weekend by Chief Hydrologist

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Warming and cooing is the result of energy imbalances at TOA.

d(W&H)/dt = power in – power out

Where W&H is work and heat.

It is as simple as that. Unless you have some idea of how and why this changes – you are talking through your hat – you have nothing more than narratives founded on thin air. Unless you have some actual and real science – and don’t just rattle on about ‘Pope’s theory of climate’ – you have about the credibility of a gerbil.

Comment on ‘Noticeable’ climate change by climatereason

Comment on ‘Noticeable’ climate change by climatereason

Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Pekka Pirilä

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Peter wrote;

Judith,

The key scientific issue is how much is anthropogenic and how much is natural.

I disagree. What we need to knows is: does in matter anyway?

IMO, the key scientific issue is what is the probable impact of GHG emissions in terms of costs and benefits.

As far as I understand, what Peter means, I agree on the fundamental level. It really does not matter, what’s the share of AGW in the past warming, only thing that matters is the strength and consequences of future warming from additional GHG emissions.

Asking what has been the share of AGW in past warming is a different question than asking what’s the climate sensitivity. The questions are related but the data is analyzed in a different ways when it’s used in answering the two questions. When the data is used to understand the natural processes the data is used again in a different way. One of the ways is directly relevant for policy, another for science in learning about the climate system, while the third (attribution) is essential only for the battle and for maintaining animosity.

I have repeatedly been disturbed by the overemphasis given to the details of attribution of past warming in the disagreement between Judith and many other climate scientists. The attribution is a secondary question for the climate science, and for the climate policy. I have the feeling that it has become so focal in the battle just because it’s secondary. Two scientists who agree on the fundamental parts of the science can disagree more violently on secondary issues than on the real issues.

The hockey stick controversy is another example of the same. The hockey stick is of secondary interest, but it’s a good issue to fight about. The misbehavior of some scientists revealed by the climategate has also concerned mainly handling secondary issues. Those scientists feel that they have not falsified real science without understanding that they must follow proper practices also on the secondary issues turned important in the political battle.

Comment on ‘Noticeable’ climate change by Chief Hydrologist

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‘Dittohead:

Someone with strong opinions but lacks the eloquence to express them. He makes his stance known only by agreeing with an eloquent speaker with the same opinions.

Teacher: Class, what do you think?

Robert: The problem is with the tax
accountant lobbyists who demand ever more complicated tax codes to give themselves job security and tax payers headaches.

Herbert: Yeah! What he said.

Teacher: Herbert, you are such a dittohead!’

You forget – I don’t have a clue who Rush Limburger is and don’t give a rat’s arse. What I see is you parroting Bart – not that Bart is anything more than clumsy and incoherent but that’s a big improvement on your efforts.

Clever? Seriously? I think he is thick as 2 short planks. A galah in the idiom.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Katisha

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A common knee-jerk response to the above rather obvious point, has been the claim of “conspiracy theory”.

By some contorted logic, an organization whose employees are selected and funded with a view to advancing the cause of that organization, are said to be “conspiring”. One of these knee-jerkers on a recent CE blog, even absurdly suggested it was beyond belief to think that people in government had meetings to discuss taxation, where ideas like carbon tax might be put forward.

Scientists funded by private organizations are routinely thought to be working to serve their employer’s interests (Big Pharma, Big Oil). But Big Government is orders of magnitude bigger than all of them put together, and furthermore occupies a unique and hugely privileged and ruthless position in society. Yet somehow *its* paid scientists are thought to be immune from similar bias.

Indeed the whole issue here, really, is about natural bias rather than conspiracy. The charge of “conspiracy theory”, is just desperate clutching at strawmen.


Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Chief Hydrologist

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Attribution is fundamental to forming expectations about future trajectories temperature – as is the understanding that temperature changes will not be linear.

‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions.’ TAR 14..2.2.2

This is still the case. ‘Sensitivity’ here is a misguided and impossible chimera. There is a need to fundamentally reframe assumptions and approaches before rational ways forward can be devised.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Steven Mosher

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Since they make the code available and since it is a community model have you taken their suggestion of doing the parametric test.

One of the reasons why we fought so hard to get code released was so that we could do the tests that we thought were important.

So, did you do the test?

simple yes or no. no excuses, rationalizations, or other crap matters to me.

They supply the code. Did you make the change and test it?

Comment on Open thread weekend by Peter Lang

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Stefan, Yes. It seems so obvious, I can’t understand why any thinking person doesn’t reach the same conclusion.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Chief Hydrologist

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‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential. ‘ http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm

Have you run the ‘code’ a thousand times systematically changing the parameters? Do you have new methods of model analysis? Yes or no. I am not interested in cr@p evasions.

Comment on Open thread weekend by Beth Cooper

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Girma, say, that’s a dismal ‘back ter the golden age scenario’
story w/out a twist yer describe, perhaps a new ‘back ter …’
genre of literature yer’ve initiated … Like those grim “1984″
distopia genre we used ter read. (
Bts.

Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Peter Lang

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Pekka Pirila, <blockquote>As far as I understand, what Peter means, I agree on the fundamental level. It really does not matter, what’s the share of AGW in the past warming, only thing that matters is the strength and consequences of future warming from additional GHG emissions.</blockquote> This is a misstatement of what I meant. I'll edit your paragraph to say what I meant: <i>It really does not matter, what’s the share of AGW in the past warming, only thing that matters is the consequences of future additional GHG emissions.</i> You introduced <i>only thing that matters is the strength ... of future warming</i>. Then the rest of your comment is about the <i>warming</i>, not about the <i>consequences</i> of GHG emissions. I say what is relevant for policy is the damages caused by GHG emissions and the costs of policies proposed to deal with the issue; as well as the probability the policies will achieve the claimed results. This is an entirely different matter than projections of the strength of warming. Have I made my point clear now? Could you please acknowledge you have understood my point rather than leave the loop open

Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Pekka Pirilä

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Chief,

Future expectations are determined by the estimate of climate sensitivity or most relevantly perhaps the transient climate response TCR. Checking how the best estimates of TCR are made we see that they are not made trough attribution. The methods used in attribution and in determining TCR are similar but not identical. Doing attribution is technically not a step in optimal determination of TCR.

I understand that many people consider attribution as an essential first step, but I disagree. It would be logical, if the climate issue had been initiated by an unexpected warming that has to be explained, but the climate issue does not originate from that. It’s origins are in the theoretical understanding of GHE (Manabe and Wetherald, 1966, is perhaps most relevant in that) and in Keeling’s measurements of CO2 levels. Therefore we start from knowing that the effect is there, and continue by asking, how strong it will be, when CO2 levels have reached some expected future levels. There’s no explicit place for attribution in my logic.


Comment on Open thread weekend by tempterrain

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Has anyone noticed that the US economy has been doing quite well recently? That’s good for us all of course. Contrary to the optimistic expectations of my more Marxist/leftish friends the GFC of 2008 doesn’t look like bringing about the end of capitalism just yet. My more rightish friends had, or have, their own pessimisms which curiously meant they were in some agreement. This time last year, they were of the opinion that gold was the only safe store of value and were busy buying up gold bars! Not a good idea. My advice, at the time, was to buy tins of beans and soups instead. If things had really turned out quite as badly as they were predicting they would have been of more use than slabs of metal. They haven’t depreciated in value, and would have been still quite edible.

Interestingly, the more rightish of my friends, the ones who regularly emailed me links to financial ‘debt clocks’ ticking away to the hour of our supposed financial doom were the same ones who would accuse me of having a ‘chicken little’ mentality on the climate question.

Not that I’ve ever felt that sky was going to fall in, either climatically or economically. But that’s not to say there aren’t problems,not totally independent from each other, which need to be addressed in both spheres. We, IMO, need to keep clear head, thick rationally, not lose our nerve and have the confidence to expect that progress can be made on both questions. There isn’t any alternative anyway.

Comment on Have U.S. Republicans shifted strategy on climate change? by Pekka Pirilä

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Peter,

I understand your later comment to mean exactly the same I understood your first comment to say.

I understood that this was only the first step in your comment and that you continued to compare the consequences of warming to the cost of mitigation. That your comment presented a two step argument is in no way contradictory on what I wrote on the first step.

I continue to believe that we agree on the nature of the first step.

I did not indicate in either direction, what’s my view on the relative importance on the damages of warming as compared to the cost of mitigation. You indicate clearly your view on that. I’m much less certain.

I don’t agree with those who are sure that the cost of mitigation is trivial in comparison with the damages avoided, but I don’t share your conviction of the opposite conclusion either.

Comment on An energy model for the future, from the 12th century by Peter Lang

Comment on Open thread weekend by tempterrain

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Lolwot,

Sorry but I have to agree with the detractors of wind power, and other renewables, on this one. There simply isn’t enough storage capacity available to make these a viable alternative as an energy source in countries like the UK. The technology to solve that problem is nowhere in sight either.

It may just about, if everyone is determined enough, be possible to get to 20% with renewables. But then the question arises, or should arise, of what about the other 80%? What’s the answer to that? Gas, coal or nuclear? Or what mix of these three?

At the moment there is so much discussion on 20% of the picture that the main view is being ignored.

Comment on An energy model for the future, from the 12th century by Katisha

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It is the establishment pushing solar and wind on the populace. The abbot is once again forcing the populace into a scheme not welcomed by it.

Fits in nicely with the suggestion on the previous blog
http://judithcurry.com/2013/06/28/open-thread-weekend-23/#comment-338470
lolwot | June 29, 2013 at 1:11 pm |
What governments should do is bring energy infrastructure back under state control

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