Political correctness gone mad?

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OpanaPointer
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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The anti-AGW CTers are dangerous.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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Mostlyharmless wrote: I remain convinced that the observed warming over the last forty years (the period for which we have good satellite data) is real.
Natural variation is the more likely explanation. The established range of natural variation overwhelms any warming over that period. When I was first introduced to this, very complex, issue it was by my good friend who is a paleo climate PHD. As we studied the paleo climate record we found patterns of trends and cycles with a range of variation far greater than any observed recent trends. Moreover, the temperature variation almost always runs independent of co2 concentration. A correlation is not a proof of causation, but a lack of correlation disproves causation. (there is a correlation that co2 concentration follows temperature but not that temperature follows co2 concentration) Dr. Curry has also pointed out the problem of natural variation combined with the great uncertainties that exist.

You brought up many issues in your post of yesterday that could be addressed with separate posts or entire topic threads. Among these are co2 residency times and sea level rise. That is how complex and vast this topic is. There is no simple and concise way to approach it. However, most of your post dealt with the topic of the theory of feedbacks amplifying the very minor warming resulting from increased co2 concentrations. Your post was the first that I have seen the basic conventional AGW hypothesis actually articulated or alluded to by someone other than myself or RF here. I will reiterate it for continuity.

According to the conventional hypothesis, extra co2 causes an imbalance of radiation by impeding out going long wave radiation. This is turn creates a hotspot in the troposphere by the causing the very important and significant water vapor emissions layer to ascend to a higher altitude via evaporation (It is drier above the emissions layer and moist below it). The hotspot accounts for more than 50% of the surface warming predicted by the conventional models.

The problem is that the hotspot cannot be verified by empirical evidence. Radiosondes or satellite measurement have not indicated the existence of a hotspot. Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer wrote:
I am increasingly convinced that the hotspot really has gone missing. ... I believe the missing hotspot is indirect evidence that upper tropospheric water vapor is not increasing, and so upper tropospheric water vapor (the most important layer for water vapor feedback) is not amplifying warming from increasing CO2.


Without the hotspot, the catastrophic AGW theory collapses. Dr. David Evans commented on implications of the missing hotspot.
Hence:
• The ECS (equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of co2 concentration) might be almost zero, is likely less than 0.25 °C, and most likely less than 0.5 °C.
• The fraction of global warming caused by increasing CO2 in recent decades, μ, is likely less than 20%
•The CO2 sensitivity, is likely less than 0.15 °C W−1 m2 (less than a third of the solar
sensitivity). Given a non-ascending WVEL (water vapor emissions level), it is difficult to construct a scenario consistent with the observed data in which the influence of CO2 is greater than this.
Enough for now. I need to hit the sack or will not be able to do what I need to tomorrow.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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RF
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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OpanaPointer wrote:Or it's just accurate and you don't like it.
Well, if its accurate then lets see your proof.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
OpanaPointer
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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RF wrote:
OpanaPointer wrote:Or it's just accurate and you don't like it.
Well, if its accurate then lets see your proof.
Wouldn't do any good. The mountains of evidence so far has been ignored by the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists.
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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"Aristotle, Archimedes, Galileo, Tesla, Faraday, Newton, Pasteur, Einstein, and Edison. Among the greatest scientists in world history. What do they all have in common? Not a single one of them ever wrote about man-made climate change."
-- radio host Mark Levin

"I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than 'climate change.'"
-- Ann Coulter
Mostlyharmless
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

Post by Mostlyharmless »

As an aside from our discussions which I am still enjoying, I gather that there is something out there called social media. Now I am not on things like Facebook, so I cannot comment knowledgeably but I am told that on FB people exchange posts with their "friends". Apparently they tend to have friends who share many of their views, so they quickly conclude that all reasonable people agree with themselves despite, like all of us, having views shared by only a small section of the population.

By contrast, we are a group defined by a common interest in naval history but clearly having sharply divided views on a number of issues, which is much more fun. However, it does leave open the question of what we should call our off topic discussions. I am proposing anti-social media.
OpanaPointer
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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If you haven't seen any furiously argued on topic threads here you've missed quite a bit of interesting information.
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RF
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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OpanaPointer wrote:
RF wrote:
OpanaPointer wrote:Or it's just accurate and you don't like it.
Well, if its accurate then lets see your proof.
Wouldn't do any good. The mountains of evidence so far has been ignored by the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists.
What mountains of evidence? And who or what is an anti-AGW conspiracy theorist? What about the scientific evidence that there is no AGW?

If you have proof of AGW then I would like to see it.

What I do notice is that every time I challenge you to back up your assertions and clichés you avoid answering, as if you have no arguments or evidence to justify your claims.
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
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RF
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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Mostlyharmless wrote: ...., it does leave open the question of what we should call our off topic discussions. I am proposing anti-social media.
Your proposed phrase is ambiguous - think about it.

I don't see anything anti-social about this website off topic area.
Like all forums it has members who are articulate and can state their case. It also has people registered who are less articulate and unable to properly debate the detail of the issues but are genuine in their standpoint. Unfortunately there is a third group with their own agendas to disrupt any proper debate and push their own bigotry, having no respect or consideration for any alternative view.

What I find curious about the AGW matter is that the proof of AGW is so elusive. We have plenty of conjecture about this proof but it still isn't proof. Now as a person interested in science I ask where is the proof? Could it be that the reason why it is so difficult to find proof is that it does not exist?
''Give me a Ping and one Ping only'' - Sean Connery.
OpanaPointer
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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RF wrote:
OpanaPointer wrote:
RF wrote:
Well, if its accurate then lets see your proof.
Wouldn't do any good. The mountains of evidence so far has been ignored by the anti-AGW conspiracy theorists.
What mountains of evidence? And who or what is an anti-AGW conspiracy theorist? What about the scientific evidence that there is no AGW?

If you have proof of AGW then I would like to see it.

What I do notice is that every time I challenge you to back up your assertions and clichés you avoid answering, as if you have no arguments or evidence to justify your claims.
97% of scientists in the field agree with the model. You are wrong. Prove them wrong and I'll listen to your claims. Until then the burden of proof is on you.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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I sure hope that nobody is gullible enough to not question the fake news that 97% of scientists believe in AGW. Even Richard Tol has denounced the 97% claim:
The 97% is essentially pulled from thin air, it
is not based on any credible research whatsoever.
See also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 1514002821

There are two main studies, if you can call them that, that claim to indicate a 97% consensus.

One was a survey. 10,257 scientists were selected (red flag right there!) to answer a survey on global warming. Of these about 7,000 didn't even bother to reply. But of those that replied all but 77 were thrown out because they disagreed with the survey question that humans were causing a significant portion of recent warming or not. Of these 75 or 97% answered in the affirmative.

The 2013 John Cook "study" was even less scientific. Abstracts from ~12,000 papers were read to see if they alluded to climate change. The parameters were so broad and vague that it would include automatically most skeptics in the 97%. A later audit revealed that only 41 of the Approx. 12,000 papers read that human activities were a cause of more than 50% of warming.
Last edited by Dave Saxton on Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
OpanaPointer
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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Yeah, okay.
Mostlyharmless
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

Post by Mostlyharmless »

Dave Saxton wrote:
Mostlyharmless wrote: I remain convinced that the observed warming over the last forty years (the period for which we have good satellite data) is real.
Natural variation is the more likely explanation. The established range of natural variation overwhelms any warming over that period. ...snip ...
I was arguing that the warming was real. The issue of the cause is secondary to establishing what is happening.

The observation of warming just about proves that more energy is arriving at Earth than departing unless an opponent wanted to argue that the deep ocean was being cooled.

The observation that the Sun is not quickly getting brighter on average and the cooling of the stratosphere, strongly suggests that the troposphere is becoming less transparent to infrared radiation. Even if the warming was due to a Vogon installed wormhole from the Big Bang to Earth's Centre, we would not expect a cooling of the Stratosphere.

The difficult problem is estimating how much heating will occur if some forcing is added. I or Judith Curry can just eye ball a trend but that is rather unscientific. The Master of my college who was an economist commented: A trend is a trend is a trend but the question is will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force and come to a premature end?

Thus, we are driven to models of climate. These are very complicated and at the same time very crude. In particular, the cells for the calculation are generally much bigger than those used in trying to calculate the next few days weather and this can produce obvious errors such as the North Atlantic Drift being in slightly the wrong place. The models are crude but they are the best that we have. They don't agree with each other with predictions of the warming of average temperatures as a result of doubling the CO2 concentration varying from 2 K to 4.5 K (those may be old models from CMIP-4 and you need to check CMIP-5 and now CMIP-6).

What seems to be happening as models evolve is that the predictions get more similar as shown in the section entitled “FAQ 9.1 Are Climate Models Getting Better, and How Would We Know?" at page 824 of Flato et al. http://elib.dlr.de/95697/1/Alet-Eyring- ... _FINAL.pdf. There are two interpretations. The isn't science wonderful view is that each model has different crude approximations and as these are replaced by more realistic physics the errors diminish. The cynics will argue that the scientists whose predictions are outliers will feel under pressure to tweak the calculations to bring them into the pack.

Whatever the imperfections, if I had to bet at fixed odds by making a prediction I would bet near the median on 3.25 to 3.5 K warming. Of course real bookmakers would probably want to hedge against rich fossil fuel producers making unscientific bets.

While looking at models, I learnt a new word on Monday “hindcasting”. What that means is using a model developed to match data from 1980 to 2010 for example to predict the climate from 1950 to 1980. This is quite a good tool and the models have actually been used to predict back for a thousand years. Alas, many of the climate changes during history can be correlated with large volcanic eruptions such as Samalas in 1257 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1257_Samalas_eruption and the modellers find modelling aerosols one of the hardest tasks. The one thing that everyone agrees is that the effects are very non-linear because adding an aerosol to a “pristine" atmosphere will cause much more cloud formation than adding the same amount of aerosol to a dirty atmosphere.

Lastly can I comment on the “Hotspot” as discussed by Roy Spencer, who certainly knows about using satellite sensors. The link to human agency is a little odd because this is not specific to such warming. Any warming of an ocean will lead to more evaporation and when the water vapour condenses back to liquid water, it will release latent heat. Spencer is (was?) correct that the models do not estimate the heating correctly although some heating of the troposphere is observed. A 2013 study (Santer et al., Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature, PNAS, 110, 26-33) that claimed some agreement between models and observations notes: “On average, the CMIP-5 models underestimate the observed cooling of the lower stratosphere and overestimate the warming of the troposphere. Biases are largest over the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere.” I haven't looked at the fit of the observations to CMIP-6 models.
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Dave Saxton
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

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Mostlyharmless wrote:A 2013 study (Santer et al., Identifying human influences on atmospheric temperature, PNAS, 110, 26-33) that claimed some agreement between models and observations....
Some agreement? Maybe, kinda sorta? That’s pretty weak in the face of more than ample empirical evidence that it’s not there via direct measurement. I am familiar with the Santer claim. He uses a statistical model. He is saying that there might be a signal hidden beneath the statistical noise.

The missing hotspot is a fatal flaw. It leads us back to David Evan’s observation:
Hence:
• The ECS (equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of co2 concentration) might be almost zero, is likely less than 0.25 °C, and most likely less than 0.5 °C.
• The fraction of global warming caused by increasing CO2 in recent decades, μ, is likely less than 20%
•The CO2 sensitivity, is likely less than 0.15 °C W−1 m2 (less than a third of the solar
sensitivity). Given a non-ascending WVEL (water vapor emissions level), it is difficult to construct a scenario consistent with the observed data in which the influence of CO2 is greater than this.
Entering a night sea battle is an awesome business.The enveloping darkness, hiding the enemy's.. seems a living thing, malignant and oppressive.Swishing water at the bow and stern mark an inexorable advance toward an unknown destiny.
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Herr Nilsson
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Re: Political correctness gone mad?

Post by Herr Nilsson »

IMHO it's not about who's actually right, but the risk that AGW-sceptics could be wrong.

I found this one:

Image
Regards

Marc

"Thank God we blow up and sink more easily." (unknown officer from HMS Norfolk)
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