Nicola Scafetta has a new paper (in long line of papers) on a semi-empirical model which has a better fit than Global Circulation Models (CGM) favored by the IPCC. We ought be careful not to read too much into it, but nor to ignore the message in it about the grand failure of the GCM’s. Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting” With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18* 6 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from. *.[Nicola Scafetta replies to this below, pointing out he uses the “6 major detected astronomical oscillations”, and their phases are fixed. I am happy to be corrected. His model is more useful than I thought. Apologies for the misunderstanding. – Jo]
But Scafetta’s work suggests it’s madness not to pay attention to astronomical cycles, and points to major flaws in the IPCC simulations. Compare the two types of models: Scafetta’s simple model uses [natural astronomical] cycles and assumes there is a connection [there might be, it is speculative] but curve fits to produce predictions**. The unverified IPCC models assume CO2 has a powerful influence (backed up by laboratory experiment, but not backed up with empirical data from the climate) — then the IPCC assume powerful positive feedbacks that more than double the effect of CO2 (without empirical evidence to support those assumptions) and in a sense, curve-fits volcanic, solar, and aerosols to flex the line to match the data. We know the IPCC models don’t work, they don’t hindcast the last 2000 years, and didn’t predict the last 20. It obvious from Scaffetta’s work that we ought be investigating these natural cycles, and that the IPCC models are hopelessly incomplete.
1. The IPCC depends on the claim that their models include all the important forcings. Their attribution claim has always been “we can’t model the recent temperature rise without using CO2 forcings”. This is argument from ignorance, and Scafetta shows just how ignorant it is.
2. IPCC models don’t produce natural cycles. IPCC models are missing important natural forcings (if only we knew what they were). Scafetta takes the thermometer records, and the paleoclimate records, points at natural cycles, some of which are well known and long established, some of which are purely speculative, and shows how the IPCC models do not produce the same natural cycles. If those cycles (or ones like them) have a physical cause it means the IPCC models don’t include those forcings. A monster flaw.
3. Look at the “pause”, the long plateau in temperatures. The IPCC favoured models failed to predict it (von Storch). The natural cycles might explain the flatness in global surface temperatures since 2000. A simple solar-astronomical-model based on these natural patterns outperforms the inadequate, over-rated, billion-dollar-IPCC models. The caveat being that in a chaotic system the true natural cycles may be difficult to discover.
4. Natural cycles may be driven by the orbits of planets and their effects on the sun. This is speculative, but very much worth discussing. According to Scafetta, there may be natural cycles of 9.1, 10–11, 19–22 and 59–62 years. (Several of these cycle lengths also appear in Ian Wilson’s work on a mechanism where lunar tides in our atmosphere may help trigger ENSO conditions). It is believable that the resonant effect of the orbits of planets acts on the solar dynamo, in ways we do not yet know, affecting it’s luminosity and magnetic field, and that these small solar changes are then amplified on Earth’s climate. (See, e.g. Svensmark and cosmic rays, or Lam et al 2013, who found the solar wind may influence Rossby waves and atmospheric pressure.)
5. Monopolistic science funding has taken years to not find the answer. Many research programs and grants have focused on making a CO2 driven model work. How much money have governments spent figuring out role of natural cycles in a climate that has always changed? If governments could tax planets, there might be 23 solar-system coupled climate models, and they might just work a whole lot better than the CO2 ones.
IPCC Climate models don’t match the turning points
I have long said that it was obvious the CO2 theory does not fit the data because the models were not able to reproduce any turning points in our climate. The models don’t explain why the world was warm in the medieval times, cool 300 years ago in the little ice ages, nor do the models explain the shorter 30 year cool periods in the last 150 years either.
Fig 17 (below) shows how climate models (GCM simulations) fail during the last 13 years, overdo the volcanic cooling spikes, fail to reproduce the well known cooling period from 1880-1910.
Fig 17 A reproduction of Fig. 1 in Gillett et al. (2012)with additional comments that highlight the major mismatches between the GST record (black) and a set of simulationsmade with
CanESM2. The figure highlights problems common to all CMIP5 GCMs. From Scafetta (2013a).
Scafetta reviews papers showing records of some natural cycles go back thousands of years:
“Quasi-decadal, bidecadal and 60-year oscillations and other longer oscillations have been detected in numerous records covering centuries and millennia. For example, Jevrejeva et al. (2008) and Chambers et al. (2012) showed a quasi 60-year cycle in the sea level rise rate since 1700; Klyashtorin et al. (2009) showed that numerous climate indexes present a long-term 50–70 year oscillations during the last 1500 years; Knudsen et al. (2011) showed a persistent quasi 60-year cycle in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation throughout the last 8000 years; a quasi 20-year and 60-year oscillations also appear for centuries and millennia in some Greenland temperature records (Davis and Bohling, 2001; Chylek et al., 2012).
Fig. 18 (below) reproduces Fig. 10 in Scafetta (in press) that shows two relatively global climatic indexes since 1700: the global sea level record (Jevrejeva et al., 2008) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) reconstruction (Luterbacher et al., 1999, 2002). The right panels show the multi-scale acceleration analysis (MSAA) of these two records and highlight the presence of a common major quasi 60-year oscillation since 1700. This oscillation is revealed by the alternating green and red colors indicating that the local acceleration of the records varies from negative to positive values, that is, there is an oscillation.”
Fig 18 [A] Global sea level record (Jevrejeva et al., 2008) (left) and its MSAA colored diagram (right). [B] North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (Luterbacher et al., 1999; Luterbacher et al., 2002) (left) and itsMSAA colored diagram(right). In [B] the colors are inverted. Note the common quasi 60 year oscillation since 1700 indicated by the alternating green and red regions within the 30–100 year scales. From Scafetta, in press.
Climate models cannot reproduce the medieval warm period
The blue line represents the newer multiproxy studies of the last thousand years showing the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. For a few years the hockey-stick shaped type of reconstruction was popular and Crowley’s model fitted it. (See the bottom of Graph A). But the Crowley model does not fit the Ljundqvist (2010) nor Leohle (2008) reconstruction (top, Graph A). Scafetta suggests that if Crowley’s model had more sun, less volcano’s, less aerosols, and less CO2, it would fit the Moberg reconstruction with Hadley temperatures from 1850 onwards (see Graph B).
“The climate models that predicted a very small natural variability and that were used to fit the hockey stick temperature records cannot fit the recent proxy GST reconstructions casting doubts on their accuracy. Still recent millennium simulation studies using modern solar models (that is, Wang et al., 2005) are able to predict only hockey-stick temperature graph showing an average cooling from the 900–1300 MWP to the 1300–1800 LIA up to ~0.3 °C, and just half of the empirically measured 11-year solar signature on the climate (see Feulner and Rahmstorf (2010) and IPCC (2007) Fig. 6.14: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-6-14.html).”
Fig. 23. [A] Comparison between the original energy balance model prediction by Crowley (2000) versus the hockey stick temperature graph by Mann et al. (1999) implying a MWP as warm as the 1900–1920 period, and two non-hockey stick recent paleoclimate GST reconstructions (Loehle and Mc Culloch, 2008; Ljungqvist, 2010) showing a far larger preindustrial variability and a MWP as warm as the 1940–2000 period. [B] (Bottom) the volcano, solar and GHG + Aerosol temperature signature components produced by Crowley (2000) model are scaled to fit (Moberg et al., 2005) 1850 by HadCRUT4, which also shows a MWP as warm as the 1940–1970 period. See Scafetta (2013a, 2013b) for more details.
“Fig. 24A shows the proposed solar model versus the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction by Ljungqvist (2010) (black)”
The blue line at the bottom of A is the 115 year oscillation. Fig 24B is the solar model (red) compared to HadCrut4.
Fig. 24. Scafetta (2012c) three-frequency solar model (red). [A] Against the Northern Hemisphere temperature reconstruction by Ljungqvist (2010) (black). The bottom depicts a filtering of the temperature reconstruction (black) that highlights the 115-year oscillation, h115(t), (blue). [B] The same solar model (red) is plotted against the HadCRUT4 GST (black)merged in 1850–1900 with the proxy temperature model by Moberg et al. (2005) (blue). The green curves highlight the quasi millennial oscillation, h983(t), with its skewness that approximately reproduces the millennial temperature oscillation. Note the hindcast of the Maunder and Dalton solar minima and relative cool periods, and the projected quasi 61-year oscillation from 1850 to 2150. Adapted from Scafetta, 2013a.
Scafetta’s solar-astronomical model suggests the temperature will be pretty stable between now and the 2030’s (which, given the dominant 60 year Pacific Decadal Oscilation has been suggested by many including Akasofu). In fig 27 the left graph are the IPCC model projections (depending on how much CO2 we emit). On the right graph are the solar-astronomical model projections — which include CO2 emission “scenarios”.
…
Fig. 27. [A] All CMIP5 model projections versus the HadCRUT4 GST record. [B] The solar–astronomical semi-empirical model, Eq. (13) with β = 0.5, against the HadCRUT4 GST record: a common 1980–2000 baseline and annually resolved records are used in the large figures while the monthly HadCRUT4 GST record is used in the inserts. The figure highlights the better performance of the solar–astronomical semi-empirical model versus the CMIP5 models.
Fig 28 is a close up of the last 30 years and the next few.
Fig. 28. Eq. (13) with β = 0.5 (blue) and the original CMIP5 ensemble mean model (red) against six global temperature estimates (HadCRUT3, HadCRUT4, UAHMSU, RSSMSU, GISS and NCDC), which were baselined with HadCRUT4 from Jan/1980 to Dec/1999. Temperature data from: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov, http://www.metoffice.gov.uk, http://data.giss.nasa.gov, http://www.remss.com/, http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/.
Scafetta draws a mud-map of possible natural factors and their interactions. This is speculation, “possibles”. We need more research.
Fig. 29. Network of the possible physical interaction between planetary harmonics, solar
variability and climate and environment changes on planet Earth.
Adapted with permission after Mörner, 2012, see also Scafetta, 2013a.
“Fig. 26 compares the four CMIP5 ensemble average projections (panel A) and the solar–astronomical semi-empirical model using
β = 0.5 in Eq. (13) (panel B) against the HadCRUT4 GST record: a common 1900–2000 baseline is used. The figure highlights the superior performance of the solar–astronomical semi-empirical model versus the CMIP5 ensemble mean models.”
Fig. 26. [A] The fourCMIP5 ensemble average projections versus the HadCRUT4 GST record. [B] The solar–astronomical semi-empiricalmodel, Eq. (13) with β = 0.5, against the HadCRUT4 GST record: a common 1900–2000 baseline is used. The figure highlights the better performance of the solar–astronomical semi-empirical model versus the CMIP5 models, which is particularly evident since 2000 as shown in the inserts.
Scafetta’s model suggests climate sensitivity is more likely 0.3 °C to 1.8 °C [*between 1 and 2.3 C].
[The smaller climate sensitivity figures apply to the paragraph below]
“The proposed semi-empirical model may produce more reliable projections for the 21st century, which are far less alarmist than the current CMIP5 projections. Under the same anthropogenic emission scenarios, the model projects a possible 2000–2100 warming ranging from 0.3 °C to 1.8 °C. This range is significantly below the original CMIP5 GCM ensemble mean projections spanning from about 1 °C to 4 °C.”
I think Scafetta’s model is useful for showing the public how easy it is to get very different results in climate modeling, and to point out the major flaws in the GCMs. Curve fitting cycles of unknown mechanism is dubious, but not more so than using assumptions of feedbacks for which there is no empirical evidence. It’s all muddy modeling.
Above all, it’s sheer craziness to ignore resonance in astronomical cycles. Tallbloke’s Talkshop has a post on this paper too. Tallbloke’s comments are particularly interesting.
Nicola Scafetta’s site is: http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model.
SPPI has a another earlier related reprint published from July 2013.
REFERENCES
Scafetta, Nicola (2013) Discussion on climate oscillations: CMIP5 general circulation models versus a semi-empirical harmonic model based on astronomical cycles Earth-Science Reviews Volume 126, November 2013, Pages 321–357
*UPDATE: Nicola Scafetta replies
Joanne,
thank you for the nice presentation of my work.
There are only a couple of misunderstanding I would like to clarify.
1) You writes: “Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting”. With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from.”
This is not fully correct. My methodology is very similar to that currently used to predict ocean tided
that make use of up 40 harmonics. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_tides#Tidal_constituents
The methodology is based on the identification of the most relevant astronomical oscillations and then only the amplitudes of the oscillations are fit upon the temperature data. In my case, I use the 6 major detected astronomical oscillations. These are not randomly chosen from an infinite set of possible astronomical oscillations, but are the very major gravitational and electromagnetic oscillations of the heliosphere. Also the phases are fixed by the astronomical oscillations.
As done with the ocean tides only the amplitudes of the oscillations are fit on the data. The phases of the decadal and multidecadal cycles (4 cycles on 6 used) are only optimized on the data because the fitted phase almost identically corresponds to the theoretical ones, as Figure 3 shows. Moreover the phase of the secular and millennial cycles (figure 24) are fixed only by astronomical considerations.
Thus, the only real free parameters are the 6 temperature oscillation amplitudes.
Thus, the good correlation that you find in my graphs (e.g Figure 26) is not due just to curve fitting, but mostly to the fact that the climate presents oscillations synchronized to the major oscillations of the heliosphere.
The model, moreover, is tested on its hindcast ability. The good correlation would exist also by fitting the amplitude just in the period 1850-1950. Also in this case the model reconstructs-forecasts the observed 1950-2013 variability.
2) you write: ” Scafetta’s model suggests climate sensitivity is more likely 0.3 °C to 1.8 °C”.
This is incorrect. That refers to the projected warming range from 2000 to 2100. The estimated climate sensitivity range is between 1 and 2.3 C. (This is an upper limit as explained in the paper).
Beside these two details, your article is a very good summary of my paper.
I am keeping a forecast experiment at my web-site where my model forecast since 2000 is compared against the IPCC GCMs
Nicola Scafetta
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
**I’ve edited this sentence to fit the updated response.
Statistician E P Box put it best when he said “All models are wrong. Some are useful.” This model may be more useful than the GCMs.
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I guess a Statistician may have that opinion. I as an engineer do not. All models are useful. Knowing what is false is useful. Knowing the depth and certitude of what is false is useful. One has a binary of evaluation of so many things and people.
Knowing what is false give one an insight into who understands and who is without a clue. Knowing statistically how right a model is, is used every day by all manner of engineers in creating all the technology that is available at a price so many can afford.
For any natural time varying signal, a Fourier Transform reveals the sum of the frequencies that make it up. Those frequencies are the fingerprints or DNA of the physical and electromagnetic processes that created the signal in the signal. Just as DNA or fingerprints can identify small difference, The frequency components can be correlated to very certain physical processes.
I wonder what percentage of top climate scientist internally really understand what a Fourier Transform is.
What percentage of top EE internally really understand what a Fourier Transform is? 100% of EE’s as it is a requirement to be considered.
What do I know about Fourier Transforms? I used them, programmed them, bench marked them.
As to climate scientists, I have no idea. It seems all is math statistics correlation.
Simply a Fourier Transform is a representation of the sinusoidal frequency components that when summed create a signal that varies with time. As true as the Law of Gravity, every time domain signal is the sum of sinusoidal frequency components. They are an identity.
If one has a history of temperature, one can do a Fourier Transform on the signal and extract the amplitude of the frequency components that sum to make the time history.
A few month’s back I came across an article dealing with that. I lost track of it. I believe from the author of this article.
It is an amazing analysis. One can look at the fundamental frequencies and look to see if they relate to the know cycles of planetary dynamics and solar variations. If the frequencies are modeled can they hindcast previous temperatures. If one can hindcast well, then what is the futurecast.
CO2 models fail totally in hindcast. They also have failed in futurecasting. One can do a Fourier transform on the time hindcast of a model and if the frequency components of know natural cycles are absent. The model is falsified. The model is a joke.
Modeling, testing the model in hindcast. Then using it to futurecast in a manner of speaking.
The above is the exact engineering process at the foundation of all the technology all take for granted and use will very little true understanding of how it works. Not just the basic technology, but the design technology tools, the manufacturing technology and tools. the distribution technology and tools.
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And in understanding ignore the ramifications.
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What about factors that do not occur at regular frquencies?
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I would be very interested in a discussion on the differences, if any between stochastic factors, the Hurst Coefficient and Long Term Persistence as they apply to climate.
This discussion involving Koutsoyiannis is ‘probably’ a good place to start.
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My primary personal use of Fast Fourier Transforms was in creating images by aligning in time multichannel radar channels of complex data. In the time domain of creating an image that would last for several seconds, mostly from an artefact of the recorder in the airplane, there would be random drop outs of data. That would be just like factors not occurring at regular frequencies.
Technically I would zerofill the data. In the olden day when any most supercomputers were somewhat slower than a $300 buck laptop, The fft process, the fft subroutines likes fixed arrays of data. In any case the effect is a reduction in the sharpness of the picture. But really the mathematical effect is that they disappear. They cancel and do not impact the true amplitude of the genuine frequencies.
An FFT is a filter to noise of randomly timed events. Examples of Synthetic Aperture Radar. This was really fun work.
http://watman.com/PASTWORK/IFSAR/
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Mr Watson I am still not sure how this applies to CO2. Since the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is not a sinusoidal occurance I don’t see how a climate model based on accumulation of CO2 can be falsified by a Fourier analysis.
I do understand FT as it is the basis of FT Nuclear Magnetic Resonance which is my area of expertise.
Occurances such as solar cycles may be related to temperature but an FT analysis of this in the time domain simply gives the frequency of the cycle. Doesn’t it?
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Philip,
Yes, that and its amplitude would be all you can get from the FFT. If something is not cyclic the FFT will try to fit it to a sin and cos anyway, sometimes with rather bizarre results. All it does is try to correlate the time domain input with sin and cos. You can combine the two results to get the frequency and amplitude of whatever was in the input.
It can’t deal with random stuff adequately nor can it deal with anything changing in frequency or amplitude during the sampling interval. I used to create examples of its behavior under these circumstances to convince any skeptics about what it could and couldn’t do.
The basic discrete transform can be written in a bout 5 lines of C code. But that takes forever to tun when you want a 4096 point transform. The FFT is very fast but takes knowing what you’re doing so I had the good sense to buy the algorithm from experts (Intel) rather than code it myself. I did write my own windowing functions because what I needed wasn’t part of the commercial package. With the right window function (and a good EE to back you up) you can do some pretty sophisticated emulation of RF hardware. But in the end all it’s good for is isolating and displaying the frequency domain content of the time domain picture you feed it.
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How does finding cycle of temperature that correlate with planatary dynamics and Solar variations cycles? The amplitudes give an indicator of the particular cycle effects. The effect sometimes add, sometimes subtract and sometimes cancel.
I would not expect to find any frequency relationship with CO2 as CO2 is a function of temperature and not the other way around. Ice core data to me proves that with certainty.
But if the models that use CO2 as a driver cannot hindcast then they are bogus. Hindcasting is curvefitting the past temperature record by running the models so it adds up the effects within it over time. The key thing mentioned is that the CO2 models do not
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If a fraction of the billions poured into supporting the false hypothesis that CO2 is the major forcing in climate had been allocated to investigating natural climate and astronomical cycles, we would have a much better picture of how the climate works. ” Scafetta’s work is interesting, but it is difficult to see how his models are any more useful than GCM’s at this stage of development, as both are dependent upon tweaking to arrive at a result approximating reality.
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Do you mean tweaking “after the event”?
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Before, during and after. Actually, “twerking”, flashing the sexy bits to concentrate attention, is possibly nearer the mark. 🙂 As Jo points out, the more the variables are moved to fit the data, the less authoritative the models become.
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So I can look forward to the temperatures dropping in the next few years. Anyone willing to put their money on it?
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Unfortunately, yes.. Warmer would be far better for the world.
As is shown by the MWP and RWP.
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It would be taking candy from a baby.
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/11/snow-falls-weeks-early-in-munich-meteorologist-winter-strikes-unusually-early-and-severely/
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For a guy with a lot to say, you dont seem know the difference between weather and climate
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Like so much of the crap you spout, this is completely meaningless in context.
You opened the conversation by inviting bets on the likelihood of “the temperature dropping in the next few years”.
I’m prepared to wager $500.00 that within five years temperatures will have dropped sufficiently that “global warming” won’t even be a topic of discussion. Whether it is ascribed to “weather” or to “climate” will be meaningless and irrelevant, since it wasn’t part of your original invitation to wager.
So, screwloose, are you going to contact Jo on how you want to set this bet up, or are you going spend the next three threads trying to weasel out of it, or are you going to pull the standard troll trick and try and move the goalposts elsewhere, and carry on as though nothing happened?
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All proceeds of the bet to go to Jo’s chocolate fund, but I want you divvying up your stake NOW – as will I, once Jo lets me know she has yours in hand.
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“I’m prepared to wager $500.00 that within five years temperatures will have dropped sufficiently that “global warming” won’t even be a topic of discussion.” You are on, but I would trust Jo as far as I could throw her. I’ll tell you what, Ill get Tim Flannery to hold my $500 as soon as Ive heard that Jo is holding yours.
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So screwloose, you do not trust Jo who examines evidence and data, but you trust Flim Flannery who has not made a correct prediction in his entire time as head of the Climate Commissariat? Given that Flim Flannery has lost hist $180,000 p.a. part time job, I think that he is probably a bit short of cash and will pocket any money you give him …
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Thanks for the advice Andrew Mcnerd
As long as we dont rely on Jo’s blog or your statistical skills.
The chief scientists advice will do me nicely
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Then start your own blog. Being rude and obnoxious to the host is not very endearing to a long commenting career. Disagreement is one thing. Unfounded and baseless accusations are another matter entirely.
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Could you change your screen name from Unbolt to Unpleasant because that’s what you are. What evidence do you have for suggesting Jo is untrustworthy? On blogs such as SkepticalScience and Open Mind comments like your would get you permanently banned. I wonder if what you have written could be regarded as libellous? Hopefully it is so that Jo can take legal action against you
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And Flannery did so well with that $9M the ALP gave him for geothermal..
ALL GONE !!
Flannery is money sink, and those who have stumped up to support him and his little group of sponges, have done their doh !
Look for him asking for more funds from the gullible in 6 months, despite the fact that nearly all the members of the trough are on high paying Uni jobs
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Ahh, another contribution to Flannery’s next waterfront property. !!
I hope he sends you a thank you card. 😉
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Oh great!… 3 bottles of Grange, thank you very much!
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What hypocrites you people are.
I have been reading posts on here for months and noted the abuse and vitriol you vomit at people like Flannery, The IPCC Dole, the ALP and any climate scientist that happens to be in the news, but when someone crtisies Jo for her oblivious pandering to the Heartland Institute and the right winged nut jobs that waste oxygen in there, you cant take it
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I see you went for the “moving the goalposts” option after I went to bed, screwloose.
Let explain something to you about betting. If you place a bet with the TAB, you are playing by their rules. Bet with Sportsbet, and their rules apply. Bet with an on-course bookie, and their rules apply.
It’s called “house rules” screwloose. I’ve made, and accepted, bets all over the blogosphere, and the almost universally accepted house rules are:
The blog host holds, or otherwise accounts for the wagers,
The blog host remains the final arbiter of who won,
The recipient of the winnings is a third party by way of charity (to avoid gaming laws).
.
Now, screwloose, you came here, to JoNova’s “House”, and solicited for a wager. I took you up on it. Now you want (predictably) to move the goalposts and rewrite the house rules. Sorry screwloose, not on.
You DIDN’T go soliciting for a bet on Flim-Fammery’s new Climate Council website.
You did it here.
You DIDN’T go soliciting for a bet on the Chief Scientist’s website.
You did it here.
You DIDN’T go soliciting for a bet on John
Crook’sCook’s Septic Science website.You did it here.
.
Tell me screwloose, given the almost universally accepted house rules for such wagers in the blogosphere, why did you come here, soliciting a wager on a blog where you totally mistrust the webmaster?
(Sorry Jo, I have trouble with “webmistress”).
I’ll tell you why, screwloose. Because first, you didn’t think anybody would take you up on it, and second, because you had every intention of reneging if they did. Which is precisely what you have done.
And you wonder why people like me don’t take slithering slugs like you seriously.
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Just one final thing, screwloose. You want to entrust your money to Flim Flammery?
You do know, of course, that now that he’s out of the public spotlight, he’s shot through on his wife of almost two decades (and co-author of the books that made him famous), and is shacked up somewhere incognito with an ex drug addict and former prostitute, now “journalist” with the Melbourne Age?
You crypto-climate cultists sure have a way in picking your High Priests, don’t you?
Maybe Flim Flammery should get a seat on the American Geophysical Union’s “Taskforce on Scientific Ethics and Integrity”.
You know, the one chaired by that other High Priest of Climastrology, and bastion of ethical integrity, Peter Gleick.
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Wow, that a lot of typing.
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Wow, what a meaningful, witty, intelligent reply.
Did you do a course on creative writing, or something?
I wish I could write so cleverly.
If I could, I bet I could be a published author.
.
Oh, wait . . .
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My apologies on forehand, but after reading this images appeared in front of my eyes. Jo in a Xena outfit punishing Tim Flannery somewhere in a dark dungeon. 😀
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This weeks troll slander topic is apparently “Heartland”. Last week it was “Conspiracy” The troll world takes their cues from where?
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unbolt wrote:
Jo is absolutely trustworthy, as evidenced by her managing the large amount of money donated by hundreds of people for the Thompsons a couple of years ago. Not that she needs that evidence.
I’m willing to match MV’s $500 bet, as long as unbolt reveals his or her name and the terms are defined properly.
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diogenes2.
Ian Chubb is not a “medico”. He is a neuroscientist.
http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/about/biography-2/
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No way separate people should hold the stakes. If nothing else, open up a joint bank account requiring both signatures to withdraw the money. The addition of a little interest on the $500 can’t hurt either.
But you guys have a more serious problem and that is, who will be the arbiter of whether temperatures are lower or not? Where will the temperatures be measured and by whom? Looks to me like you’re simply headed for a headbutting contest 5 years from now. And that’s the real problem with this climate science nonsense. There is no recognized objective standard for measurement.
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The statement on climate change made by Professor Ian Chubb, Chief Scientist for Australia, will be used to determine the outcome
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Yes Truthspriuker, you got it, Jo would recognise evidence if it got stuck in her nostrils, but Tim is flushed with funds. the public have donated over $1million to is Climate Commission in less than a month
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Sorry, Climate Council. There is even a video for you to watch and maybe make a small donation like I did
http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/
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Here is some of their first releases of evidence
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Screwloose, I would suggest you make your bet more specific. After five years of waiting you don’t want to be arguing with MV over how to interpret the Chief Scientist’s response, which is usually watered down for politicians anyway. You should make a bet over a specific measurement, so it is unarguable.
I suggest the 5 year linear trend of the RSS satellite lower tropospheric temperature for calendar years 2014 to 2018 inclusive.
Whatever you choose, make it objective.
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Thanks for the advice Andrew Mcnerd
As long as we dont have to rely on Jo’s blog or your statistical skills.
The chief scientists advice will do me nicely
135
I have to admit, it was a fair exchange.
Precision, objectivity, and empiricism; nerds live there, but others can visit profitably. 🙂
20
this is the fallacy of the “argument from authority” manifest as ” reductio ad absurdo”.
Your Chief Scientist , like ours, (Prof. Mark Walport) is a medic! He appears to know as much about physical science and climate as ours – that is to say F*** all. But for you it is gospel. Well 45 years practice in medical science has taught me to take their opinions with a large pinch of salt, and always seek a second and third. I can understand your servitude to authority – but to boast about it! Sparticus you died in vain.
230
What was it that you were saying about weather?
41
Bullshit. Unadjusted temperature records will be used.
154
“the public have donated over $1million ”
Now, let’s see…
1 office.
1 phone,
1 fax,
.
And $75,000 into each pocket.
83
And it would be very interesting to see just how much of that $1m came from vested interests such as solar and wind companies.
You know, the ones that only exist because of subsidies on the taxpayer.
103
Chubb is a political siphon, put there by the ALP government.
His opinion on anything to do with climate is so politically polluted as to be meaningless.
Hopefully he will be removed during this period of government.
103
Ummm No. They have pledged $1m. Big difference.
What it does prove though is that Flannery and his cronies do not need to be feeding from the government tit, when true believer activists such as yourself are more than happy to be suckered into paying for their propaganda. Most of the donations came off the back of a successful free advertising campaign undertaken by ‘our’ A(LP)BC. Let’s see how their donations go in 6-12 months time, when the the ALPBC have forgotten them.
Interestingly, your little cut & paste of their ‘release’ highlights some weather events, but mentions nothing about causation. Chalk that little diatribe up to fear mongering.
As for your bet, why bother? The way you troll-on here will see you in permanent moderation soon enough, and you will be forgotten along with the ever growing list of losers who have lost the privilege to comment. In 5 years time nobody will remember a nobody.
120
Ses who? Here was your challenge:
Here is my acceptance:
What the bloody hell do the scripted rantings of a bought and paid for climate stooge have to do with it?
By October 11, 2018, there will be no problems deciding the outcome. You see, screwloose, I’m old enough to have already lived through what’s coming, once before.
When Australians think of crops and crop failures, they naturally think of water, since, for the most part, water (rain) is the limiting factor for successful harvests. However, for much of world, water is not the problem. The overriding limiting factor is length of growing season (the time from last frosts / snow thaw, to first frost / snow fall.
Length of growing season is the limiting factor in most of the worlds great grain baskets – the mid-west of the USA, Canada, parts of China, the Ukraine, and much of Russia. I was only a kid the last time the earth went into a cool spell, but I well remember the mass starvation, the constant images millions of starving refugees, of skin and bone babies, the constant appeals for aid money.
Now we have twice as many to feed.
.
Just one final point, screwloose: The chances of Chubb still being the Chief Scientist come October 11, 2018, are about as likely as me being alive to see it.
Which is virtually zilch.
150
We dont have to wait till then, MemoryFault. The September Data on Spencers website has shown how foolishly wrong you are already. Buy Jo her chocolates now and save yourself the future embarrassment. The Denier game is lost, only the brain dead still buy it.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_September_2013_v5.6.png
———–
unbolt. You need to speak English correctly here as a basic requirement of commenting. This is a science blog. What scientific observation do we “deny”? – Jo
112
How pathetic. Sorry sonny, but noise does not count.
60
“unbolt. You need to speak English correctly here as a basic requirement of commenting. This is a science blog. What scientific observation do we “deny”? – Jo”
So to call someone a denier is not allowed but to refer to the chief scientist of Australia, Professor Ian Chubbin these terms is acceptable?
What the bloody hell do the scripted rantings of a bought and paid for climate stooge have to do with it?
32
What about putting this link on your page, its even from a fellow [snip]. I dare you!!!
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/the-danger-of-hanging-your-hat-on-no-future-warming/
[SNIP the rest as useless. There. I double dare you to post something polite enough that we let it through.} ED.
11
Not sure whether this CO2 hater is Unbolted or Unhinged.
Possibly both.
The real story of CO2 relevance is here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/weekend-unthreaded-17/#comment-1322546
But if he really hated CO2 that much maybe he could buy a tank of pure oxygen and try that,
but only after first reading this link and thinking very very carefully:
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/plants-suck-half-the-co2-out-of-the-air-around-them-before-lunchtime-each-day/#comment-1321691
KK 🙂
10
[SNIP the rest as useless. There. I double dare you to post something polite enough that we let it through.} ED.
Oh please. Just what are the standards of politeness and useful comment on this blog which apply to “skeptics” and non skeptics alike? (And these are by no means the most abusive examples encountered on this blog.
Philip Shehan
October 13, 2013 at 12:33 am
“unbolt. You need to speak English correctly here as a basic requirement of commenting. This is a science blog. What scientific observation do we “deny”? – Jo”
So to call someone a denier is not allowed but to refer to the chief scientist of Australia, Professor Ian Chubbin these terms is acceptable?What the bloody hell do the scripted rantings of a bought and paid for climate stooge have to do with it?
MemoryVault
October 12, 2013 at 11:37 pm
.
Once, some time ago, I was involved with a couple who were very successful in business. They used to argue. One day, after a heated argument over a business matter, the husband turned to the wife, and said – “Anyway, what’s for dinner”?
To which the wife replied – “Shit on a shovel – you want one scoop or two”.
Your posts remind me of that couple, Philip. Lots of shit on a shovel.
Without the slightest hint of substance.
10
From the rules:
You know full well that the pejorative use of the word ‘denier’ isn’t tolerated on this blog, why whinge about it?
00
Thank you Heywood for pointing me to the rules.
They read wonderfully and seem to be honoured here about as much as the fine sounding human rights provisions in the constitution of the old Soviet Union.
01
Isn’t this reference just Nazi avoidance? Dammit I just said it.
00
Emphasis on the ‘subjective’ and ‘People who don’t like that, get their own blog’.
In other words, it’s Jo’s blog, and she makes whatever rules she likes, whenever she likes. Those who don’t like that, or feel that it is an infringement of their ‘free speech’ (it isn’t), can start their own blog and write or comment on whatever they deem worthy.
10
I wonder if Ubolt and Philip also happen to have Russian Blue cat?
01
Heywood, You are right, it is Ms Nova’s blog and she can make and apply the rules as she likes. And I get to call it as I see it.
And if she does not like the fact that I point out that her rules are traduced on a regular basis and that the level of content free abuse here by “skeptics’ makes a mockery of her rules, subjectively applied or otherwise, and that consequently she looks like something of a phony in retaining them while not honouring them, well she can delete this comment and ban me from this blog.
But if she were to do so it would simply serve to indicate that she has very little intellectual integrity and is thoroughly precious. I am counting on that not being the case.
Heywood, unlike many commentators here, I do not go on these blogs to engage in group hugs, back slapping and mutual affirmation of insights from people who think like I do nor do I come in here and post anonymously to engage in abuse of people I identify as idealogical enemies.
I come here to discuss the science, to challenge and be challenged by people who know how to engage in polite and knowledgable disagreement.
Perhaps Ms Nova is simply aware that the participation rate here would plummet here if such rules were enforced as people such as yourself would not bother, and I suppose ratings matter in the blogosphere.
01
Heywood, unlike many commentators here, I
do notgo on these blogs to make a fool of myself.There, fixed it for you.
00
Be careful of the wording of your wager. While I give your prognostication a 50/50 chance of being correct, you say:
And even if your prediction is true, that is not going to stop the believers from talking about it as if nothing has changed. They do that even now. And the IPCC is not going to disappear in the next 5 years.
90
And you are wrong. I have stayed out of the brouhaha you have had with several people as you have conducted yourself in a civil manner. But you have now crossed the line several times.
I come here to read well reasoned and logical thoughts, and even get information about climate change. I do not come here for an echo chamber. Why do I not frequent many alarmists sites? I hate getting my posts deleted for asking questions or pointing out inconsistencies.
None of which has happened to you here. You have turned as abusive, if not more so, than any of your detractors. Yet you still cling to your imaginary high ground.
Then you slam everyone else that has not dog piled on you with a slap that is both uncalled for and unjustified and patently false.
In short, you just proved that every insult directed at you was accurate. Their only problem is that some were prescient.
20
“So I can look forward to the temperatures dropping in the next few years”. By the IPPC’s definition, a few years is weather. According to the IPPC it’s not climate until 30 years have passed if the temperature’s cooling or static, but a 23-year temperature rise is climate. A single event like tropical storm Sandy is climate if it fits the Warmist scary scenario. So as a warmist stooge you interchange climate and weather at a whim because to a warmist the difference in meaning is political and the scientific definition is immaterial. I’m not the one who’s confused.
292
But the temperature hasnt gone up since 1998, so we are half way there already according to you.
122
Unpleasant why are you and the Climate Council pontificating on temperatures in Australia when climate change is considered a global event. And on warmness what happened regarding the predictions that Thursday would be the hottest October day ever in Sydney?
110
Nice to see that you recognise that fact……
90
“But the temperature hasnt gone up since 1998”
According to whom?
Gistemp:
Trend: 0.061 ±0.133 (2σ) range -0.072 to 0.194 °C/decade
NOAA
Trend: 0.037 ±0.124 (2σ) range -0.087 to 0.160 °C/decade
Hadcrut4
Trend: 0.038 ±0.130 (2σ) range -0.092 to 0.168 °C/decade
UAH
Trend: 0.055 ±0.232 (2σ) range -0.177 to 0.287 °C/decade
RSS
Trend: -0.047 ±0.226 (2σ) range -0.273 to 0.170 °C/decade
13
@Philip Shehan
Says you, by your own figures. A figure that says up or down is not up. It is up and down.
Have you ever had a statistics course?
20
I am still in a debate with an AGW alarmist who apparently thinks the current cyclone now hitting India is evidence for global warming.
90
Does he understand trends?
Probably not.
AGW alarmists don’t do science, maths and statistics.
The followers are driven by emotions and their leaders are driven by money, and power.
Ask him what the long time cyclone and hurricane trends are and what the correlation is between CO2 and the trend.
You either get silence or abuse…..
AGW alarmists are more predictable than the weather or the climate.
90
With this guy I am debating it is as Kevin Lohse says. Incidents are made climate. But when you argue that since 1998 there is no significant increase in temperature that is not climate.
71
Trying to reason with a warmist is futile!
Phailin is nothing out of the ordinary as far as cyclones are concerned in the Bay of Bengal.
Some ammo to prove your point but as I said…futile.
20
Thanks! I already “threw this one in his face”:
http://karthikkash.hubpages.com/hub/5-Worst-Cyclones-in-Indian-History
Long before people even spoke about CO2:
“2) Hooghly River Cyclone (1737)
This is the oldest and one of the worst cyclones recorded in India. This cyclone occurred on 11th October, 1737 and took approximately 300,000 lives including both West Bengal and Bangladesh. According the records, about 20,000 ships, barques, canoes, boats, sloops etc. were cast away. Eight out of nine English ships in the Ganges were reportedly lost. Not only people, but cattle as well as many wild animals such as tigers, rhinos and crocodiles in the Ganges plateau are known to have perished due to the cyclone.”
40
So that’s why India haven’t been constructing new coal fired power plants, well, until recently that is. They remember that those Plants caused that terrible Cyclone of 1737.
Tony.
60
Pray, why would one “look forward” to the temperature dropping, whatever that actually implies in your universe?
30
The Oracle, Roy Hogue predicts:
In 5 years temperatures may or may not have dropped enough to give a conclusive determination of who wins the headbutting contest and takes home the $1000 pot. Nevertheless the headbutting will continue unabated and the weather and climate will continue to do as they damn well please, asking no human for permission, much less a preference, while doing so.
MV, unbolt, good luck! 🙂
I did win a small wager with a colleague a couple of years ago over whether the predicted 112 degree F (44.4 C) summer temperature in downtown Los Angeles would materialize or not. It was an easy win but it could have gone either way because weather simply doesn’t ask our permission to do or not to do whatever it wants to do. We had no problem with letting the office manager hold the stakes — it just needs someone honest! The actual high was 109 or 110 (forget which) and that would have been a short term record (maybe 20 years) but not in the longer term (50 – 100 years). Southern California has those Santa Ana conditions in which it can and does get very hot, sometimes unseasonably hot. They don’t mean a thing about climate.
20
Marcia Wyatt and Judith Curry have suggested another modulating mechanism in their stadium waves due to interaction of atmospheric and oceanic circulation.
http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/10/10/%E2%80%98stadium-waves%E2%80%99-could-explain-lull-global-warming.
Are these competing explanations for the temperature record or complementary? Of course one or either could be wrong. It would be interesting to see what a combination of these models reproduces.
51
Complementary. Vahrenvolt opened up public perception, made the discussion of solar impact on climate respectable and highlighted the quality, peer-reviewed research that has been largely ignored/suppressed by the MSM and warmists. Furthermore, the ambivalence of the science in AR5 has allowed reputable scientists to openly investigate solar impact as a respectable line of enquiry. No doubt the usual suspects will be along to give us their half-understood versions of the warmist line.
151
Stadium waves are cool. I was at Subi oval for the Dockers win against Port Adelaide. The wave took a few tries to get started, but then circled the ground several times. The speed of the wave, and the ability to keep it going in the presence of opposition supporters (who are unlikely to join in) are interesting.
52
Gees, you’re on a roll today.
Valium kicked in, has it !!
40
This hypothesis seems quite logical. Our universe is chaotic, but it is influenced by cyclic phenomenon. The movements of planets are cyclic, planets move on orbits, although with different periods. Altogether, the whole systems appears to be in chaos, but individual planets move in an orderly, predicable way.
Yes, Scafetta might be onto something and I think it is worth to follow up on his hypothesis.
130
The problem is he is using hadCRUT to measure performance against.
Sorry but that is not a temperature record!!
therefore his analysis is flawed. his tweeking is measuring adjustments as well as any cycles present.
Maybe have a try against the CET and see what shows up
20
The trouble with CET is that it is a temperature record of a small part of a small island. HadCRUT, whatever you may think of it, is a global datum. Given time and money constraints it is clear why Scaffetta went that way.
30
I understand the limitations with CET Keven but at least it is a temperature record, HadCRUT is not it is a simulation that has been heaverly adjusted.
Remove the adjustments “the cooling in the late 30’s and early 40’s” and the warming in the 70’s from the data or
the conclusions are wrong pure and simple because you have mixed adjustments with the pure record so I am sorry but it becomes an interesting approach but the conclusions are invalid!!
80
As I have said several times.
if you match HadCrud or Guss pre-1970’s..
you are almost certainly … WRONG !!!
41
And if you use that HadCrud or Guss fabrication for analysis purposes, your analysis will almost certainly be incorrect.
21
sorry, wrong word..
incorrect => unrealistic.
11
AndyG55,
Not necessarily. When Scafetta fits a polynomial and subtracts it to normalise the temperature data, he stands a good chance of coping with the “past cooler, later warmer” type of adjustment. He’s really looking for the pattern of high frequency deviation from the new mean after normalising.
00
That might apply if the adjustments were more regular, but they were specifically done to remove the late 1930-early 1940’s peak and the late 1800’s peak.
ie natural variations and cycles have been mostly forcibly removed. Its been flattened, like a pancake.
00
Like a Mannian pancake
00
Donna Laframboise catches a rat:
Quote of the Year: Climate Models Have Problems
“Here in Canada, a national newspaper declared: Science team identifies tipping point in climate change: 2047.
But it was the coverage in the New York Times that was truly remarkable. The story there was 20 paragraphs long.
This was paragraph number six:
The research comes with caveats. It is based on climate models, huge computer programs that attempt to reproduce the physics of the climate system and forecast the future response to greenhouse gases. Though they are the best tools available, these models contain acknowledged problems, and no one is sure how accurate they will prove to be at peering many decades ahead. [bold added]”
“Cigarette packages come with warning labels. So should IPCC reports.”
.
P.S. If you haven’t seen this 17 minute video, via Bishop Hill, do yourself a favour …
Ivo Vegter on green misinformation
70
Ah! Well it was easy to guess this would be the Scafetta news.
Nitpick…
His model doesn’t talk, and Scafetta doesn’t say this either. That quoted range is:
“the model projects a possible 2000–2100 warming ranging from 0.3 °C to 1.8 °C.”
A doubling of CO2 from 285 to 570ppm will happen by 2065 AD if current exponential trend continues.
Based on his model’s performance, what Scafetta actually says about climate sensitivity to CO2 in section 6.3 is this:
So he is skating on the knife-edge border line between lukewarmer climate skeptics and IPCC territory. I think most skeptics are saying even 1.1 net warming is on the high side if the sensitivity is diagnosed empirically, and 1.5 is nearly impossible.
Scafetta is taking the same logically flawed approach as the IPCC. Make a model that claims to reproduce most or all natural factors, then subtract that prediction from the actual temperature record, and whatever is left over must be artificial warming. When the model does not reproduce all natural warming forces this diagnostic method will give too much credit to human activity for warming. The method is only good when the model has accurately reproduced all main natural factors for at least a 5-year running average, and we are not quite there yet.
This is still a good paper because it bridges the gap between the IPCC and… the real world. 🙂
In political terms it “moves the Overton Window” down a few notches – when 1 Celsius degree is vaguely possible, suddenly that 1.5 degrees per doubling doesn’t seem so unthinkable to the warmistas.
Even at 1.5 the proper response is inside the realm of “do nothing to prevent, just mitigate regionally if needed.”
As I said yesterday, Pangburn and Scafetta should work together. Taking the sunspot count, averaging it, integrating it over time, and convolving it with a 1/T^4 radiative cooling response function, is a good physically-based contribution to climate modelling from Pangburn.
I would love to see if Scafetta’s model needs *any* IPCC GCM warming to “fix” it if he used Pangburn’s sunspot method as a substitute for Scafetta’s “h10.4” harmonic component, which represents the sunspot cycle.
81
Andrew, there is a rough empirical measure of the sensitivity factor.
http://oi46.tinypic.com/29faz45.jpg
The graph supports the theoretically expected dependence of temperature on log C02 concentration, and the slope gives a sensitivity factor of 2.035 +/- 0.074 C. or a range of 2.0 to 2.1 C.
This is within the range of Scafetta and the IPCC’s figures but on the lower end of the latter and upper end of the former.
It ignores factors which may have contributed to temperature other than CO2, but as far as Scaffetta and Wyatt and Curry’s work goes and other short term periodic or random forcings such as solar cycles, el nino/la nina events, volcanic eruptions etc which tend to average out over the 150 year timescale, this is not a real problem.
03
The IPCC do not have a good record on climate sensitivity.
In their whole 34 years of existence, they have made ZERO progress in coming up with a value.
30
That’s a great example of chartsmanship, Philip.
It’s such a great technique for “empirically proving” causal relationships that it works with anything. 🙂
Presumably you have no argument against attributing 65% of 20th century warming to USA postage stamp price rises?
Based on the only period for which accurate data is available and using IPCC techniques, the climate sensitivity to postage price is 0.26°C per doubling of postage price. Can’t argue with that, it’s a 90% correlation.
It’s “a rough empirical measure” by your standard.
30
The difference between the relationship between postage stamp prices and temperature and CO2 oncentration and temperature is that I am not aware of any theoretical relationship between the former that accounts for any correlation whereas there is such a theoretical explanation consistent with the observations for the latter.
The theoretical relationship between temperature and CO2 concentration is a couple of hundred years old. The effect of greenhouse gases, including CO2 in warming the planet is mainstream science. The ability of the C=O bond to absorb infrared radiation is known to any chemistry stun]=dent who has ever rin a infrared spectrum of an organic compaound. It is a thoroughly established analystical technique.
Furthermore the dependence of temperature on the logarithm of CO2 concentration is affirmed by the data. The correlation coefficint is 0.91. The maximim possible value for a perfect fit is 1.
You can call this a coincidence if you like but statistical analysis puts the probability of that at less than 0.01 per cent.
02
Philip, While I agree with most of your post, there are two parts to consider. The first is a warming mechanism; the second is what happens to extra energy created by the warming mechanism. If it escapes to space a very short time after its creation, the effect is of less interest. That’s why there are transient climate sensitivities and equilibrium climate sensitivities. The bit that goes towards space is, however, capable of hitting clouds or even just the air, whereupon some of it is scattered, including some 40% that is scattered back to earth again. It’s this folding that people are invoking to lengthen the path length of light and to give it more than one whack at raising temperatures. It’s part of the feedback amplification process that makes a native rise of say 1 deg C closer to 2 or more deg C before the maths are finished. All of this of course depends critically on how long the extra energy hangs around. Given that we go through several degrees most nights to days, part of the system at least responds quite fast.
(Think, if you like, of using a magnifying glass out in the sun. If you focus it properly, it will burn paper. If you shine it on a mirror, the hot spot will be lower temperature because energy leaves the mirror hot spot faster than a paper hot spot. If you had an infra-red reflector like polished molybdenum, pointing back to space, lower again. Which is all very interesting except that under the original magnifier, the concentration of light at the focus comes at a cost of lesser light under the rest of the magnifier, which is easy to see as a shadow around the focus. It’s only a good analogy if you think that CO2 is in discrete pockets of high concentration (as it is likely to be, in part at least). I don’t like analogies much. They have too many distractions.)
10
Geoff understand your point and I do not claim to have any particular understanding of what happens to the energy inside the “black box” of the earth’s temperature system.
Generally speaking if the thermal equilibrium ( energy in = energy out)of the system is perturbed in some way it will readjust to a higher or lower equilibrium state. The basis of AGW is that increasing CO2 concentration will lead to a higher equilibrium temperature. The question of sensitivity is how much for a given amount of CO2.
Presumably those who calculate how much greenhouse gases increase temperatures on planets with atmospheres try to do precisely this. Perhaps they check their theoretical results against the surface temperatures of the moon and the earth.
00
You have missed the point, Phil. You have already recognised you have to ASSUME the independent variable is the SOLE influence on the dependent variable to be able to interpret that scatter plot the way you did. You said it yourself:
“It ignores factors which may have contributed to temperature other than CO2…”
This implies you agree the chart you gave is worthless for diagnosing the existence AND the strength of any warming effect CO2 may have. That’s why I asked about blaming 65% of warming on postage. I’m glad we got there in the end.
You are forced to rely instead upon the hundred-year old relationship proposed by Arrhenius, and I would remind you the popularly accepted figure for that climate sensitivity from CO2 doubling alone is NOT IPCC’s 2 degrees nor even Scafetta’s 1.5 degrees but is only 1.1 degrees. The idea it is any greater than 1.1 relies on feedbacks which are unproven hypotheses.
Then it’s my lucky day. 🙂
The probability is only as real as the assumptions behind the model being tested. If you have an incomplete model (eg no solar magnetic influence on IPCC clouds) and false data inputs (eg GISTemp, eg CO2 before 1960) then your 99.99% confidence reconstruction can still be unphysical, which is what the postage stamp ruse shows. Correlation isn’t causation, and ignorance isn’t strength. But that’s what you’re arguing every time you insist on the high confidence interval being somehow relevant in a model proven years ago to be missing critical factors which CAN explain the temperature rise better than CO2. That is why Scafetta gets a lower sensitivity when he adds a solar magnetic influence.
You can call THIS a co-incidence if you like.
30
Andrew. Don’t think I am missing the point. That’s why I said that the correlation between temperature and log CO2 provided a rough empirical measure. That is it is a first approximation. I said that you could dismiss variables that tend to vary over periods of a few decades as the effects would tend to cancel out over a century and a half.
You cannot so easily dismiss possible contributions that have a net warming contribution over that timescale (eg the claim that there is an underlying warming trend as the earth recovers from the little ice age, or a net cooling effect over that time. If there is some sound reason to expect that there is a net long term warming or cooling effect going on independent of the warming effect of greenhouse gases, I would be perfectly happy to adjust my first approximation accordingly.
I entirely understand that CO2 concetration alone is calculated to directly increase temperature by about 1 degree with doubling of the concentration. The fact that most estimates of the sensitivity factor are higher than this implies that the feedback is a net positive, due for instance to the increase of the greenhouse gas H2O in the atmosphere as the air temperature warms, outweighing negative secondary effects such as increasing cloud cover due to that extra H2O having a shading effect.
All in all in the absence of convincing evidence of a net long term warming or cooling effect independent of CO2 concentration, I will stick with the first approximation, as a rough figure or starting popint subject to modification.
I do suspect that the real figure will turn out to be at the low end of the IPCC range of 1.5 – 4.5 C, that is 2 C will not be far off the mark. I put it no stronger than that.
01
.
Once, some time ago, I was involved with a couple who were very successful in business. They used to argue. One day, after a heated argument over a business matter, the husband turned to the wife, and said – “Anyway, what’s for dinner”?
To which the wife replied – “Shit on a shovel – you want one scoop or two”.
Your posts remind me of that couple, Philip. Lots of shit on a shovel.
Without the slightest hint of substance.
21
EEG [–/\,—/\,——-/\,————–/\,———————————————————–* ]
There’s none so blind as those who will not see.
00
Thank you for the link Andrew, but to save me sitting through 37 minutes can you perhaps point me to the part that gives a net steady rise or fall in global temperatures over the last 150 years discounting the effects of CO2 concentration?
01
Ok Andrew I viewed the whole link which was interesting. In fact I checked the most relevant parts several times to make sure I was getting it right.
The idea is that cosmic rays originating from outside the solar system contribute to cloud formation which has a cooling effect on temperatures. These cosmic rays are modulated by solar cycles. High solar activity means higher solar wind which “blows” the cosmic rays away, reducing cloud cover and increasing temperatures. The solar cycles he is basing this particular effect on is the 11 year solar cycle. So this particular contribution falls into the category I mentioned before:
short term periodic or random forcings such as solar cycles, el nino/la nina events, volcanic eruptions etc which tend to average out over the 150 year timescale, this is not a real problem.
Another timescale for variations of cosmic rays given in the video is that of the relative position of the solar system with respect to other stars in the galaxy, which occurs over hundreds of millions of years. This is far too long to have a noticable effect over 150 years.
Shaviv shows a graph with solar flux increasing over the 20th century, but it is not related to the timescales he has discussed, and he does not explain where this trend comes from. Nor is it clear how this relates quantitatively to increased cosmic rays nor how much the postulated increase in cosmic rays increase temperature.
A graph is presented using these cosmic rays to model the temperature increase for the last century, presumably along with other parameters. This is compared to the results of models arrived at using IPCC forceings, excluding solar. But IPCC models do include solar forcings, although not enough according to Shaviv. But perhaps he means that they neglect his cosmic ray contribution due to solar activity rather than total solar activity.
Shaviv’s fit model fit to temperature is arrived at by letting the parameters assume values that make the fit work. So this is begging the question somewhat.
What Shaviv concludes is that the sensitivity factor will be at the low end of the scale. As I have previously noted the value obtained from the temperature vs log CO2 concentration is also at the low end of the scale at around 2 C.
So I am not sure how much downward adjustment is needed in from the first approximation to accomodate Shaviv’s model. assuming it is correct.
00
Hi Jo,
no one has asked about what “semi empirical” means. I’m guessing they actually don’t know. Maybe a sentence or 2 in the original or maybe someone more motivated than me can insert something. I think a bit of guidance or clarification is needed as some responses suggest that they don’t understand what this means err kevin.
12
No need to project your own confusion onto others, GI. We know you and allow for it.
62
Not sure what the context here is but semi-empirical generally means based on a combination of theoretical understanding and measured data.
30
It means that they will get around to measuring the other half, later !
40
The audio is so good. We should send it to all radio and TV non gov stations. It. Could become a hit.
10
I didn’t know Scafetta was a singing musician too. I hope his albums are better than Silvio Berlusconi. 😉
20
While we are talking about the sun…. here’s some offtopic ToFrOz-bait… 😉
Spain’s sunshine toll: Row over proposed solar tax
The Al Jabeeba journo shows remarkable even-handedness here. They are happy to regurgitate solar industry nonsense such as “We will be the only country in the world charging for the use of the sun” but this is balanced by presenting the government’s sobering justification for the tax. I have no idea if this is a legit charge for “poles and wires” not covered already in Spain by separate rates for network access and usage. Maybe the “access” fee should just be made higher to cover stuff that was expected to be covered by consumption fees. Maybe it is just a government rort to help pay back government debt faster, or to recoup the solar generation subsidies they are paying, who really knows.
The point is that their reasoning is sound.
Spain is discovering the true cost of domestic rooftop solar panels.
31
Very nice work. Too bad the IPCC didn’t do this decades ago and saved us billions, which would have been better spent elsewhere.
32
The IPCC was never set up to do “reality” or “science”.
They were set up the push the CAGW meme, pure and simple.
Avoidance of any real scientific study was therefore mandated by their charter.
52
set up
theto push31
The IPCC do not conduct studies at all. They review the work of climate scientists.
32
But ONLY those climate scientists that back the AGW meme.
52
And where did I say they did any science ?
It is patently obvious that they don’t !!
20
great PeterS. So no sceptism on this. you are adding your consensus vote?
02
Eh?
00
Excellent work! Combined with the latest Curry paper, it is heartening to see real science being done in the area of climate. Perhaps if the “consensus” allows more science, we may get to a greater understanding of the factors affecting climate faster.
20
This science is no more or less “real” than that undertaken by other climatologists. Hansen’s 1981 model used only 3 forcings, solar, CO2 and volcanoes. Since then climatologists have been expanding the complexity, adding more parameters as their research enabled a better understanding of factors affecting climate.
If Scafetta and Wyatt and Curry’s work is verified their mechanisms will be added to the models. And note that neither model discounts the effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
As Scafetta notes: On the right graph are the solar-astronomical model projections — which include CO2 emission “scenarios”.
If his model is correct, it would appear that the effect of CO2 would be lower than with earlier models. As Andrew Mcrae notes, the sensitivity factor according to Scafetta is in the 1.0 to 2.3 range rather than the IPCC range of 2 – 4.5 C.
Wyatt and Curry’s model does not neglect greenhouse gases either:
http://www.news.gatech.edu/2013/10/10/%E2%80%98stadium-waves%E2%80%99-could-explain-lull-global-warming
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1950-2#page-1
The removal of the long-term trend from the data effectively removes the response from long term climate forcing such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
The stadium wave periodically enhances or dampens the trend of long-term rising temperatures, which may explain the recent hiatus in rising global surface temperatures.
“The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,” said Wyatt, an independent scientist after having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 2012
Wyatt and Curry looked at data from 1900. Removing “the long term data trend” means making the green line here horizontal:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:2013/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:2013/trend
The enhancement or dampening they mention is the oscillation about the green line, whether flattened or not. This accounts for the approximately 60 year periodicity about the line, with the peaks and troughs oscillating approximately 0.2 C about the green line. That is why Wyatt expects the current “pause” due to the dampening phase to continue until about 2030, after which an enhancement phase will begin. The long term trend, the slope in the green line that Wyatt and Curry are ignoring in their analysis of their wave is unaffected by these oscillations.
[spelling fixed] ED
01
My apologies to Scaffeta for getting his name wrong. There was a chemist named Scarletti.
00
“The removal of the long-term trend from the data effectively removes the response from long term climate forcing such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases.”
Correction required…
The removal of the long-term adjustments from the data effectively removes the response from long term climate forcing such as anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
11
“This science is no more or less “real” than that undertaken by other climatologists. Hansen’s 1981 model used only 3 forcings, solar, CO2 and volcanoes. Since then climatologists have been expanding the complexity, adding more parameters as their research enabled a better understanding of factors affecting climate.”
More doesn’t always mean better.
“With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
John von Neumann
10
I agree Other_Andy. Care must be taken that you are not engaging in simple retro-fitting of more forcings to make the match look better and looking for a theoretical justification after. But clearly a model using only the three mentioned is inadequate.
01
The high priests told me 20 years ago that “the science is settled”. Seems to me that the more we look the more we find out how much we don’t know.That must be very unsettling for those who claimed to “know it all” back then, meantime my life has gone on as it always has, i.e the seasons come and go and my taxes continue to rise. No change there then.
110
I have always disliked the claim that the science is “settled”. Emprical science is always subject to ammendment and revision or even replacement of one paradigm with another.
What is established to a very high degree of probability (“settled” in sloppy parlance) is the warming of the globe by the action of greenhouse gases.
Continuing research into the multiple factors affecting climate continues, as scientists attempt to answer the questions of when, where and how much. That is how science works. As I note above, neither of these studies abandons the role of greenhouse gases as a significant warming factor.
53
Philip,
I’m not wishing to dispute any of your comments, i am not a scientist, but might i respectfully suggest that “established to a very high degree of probability” is also a bit sloppy and contradictory. May i suggest “maybe, but we just don’t know”. An MSM headline along those lines would have more credibility and in fact be more accurate than the “more certain than ever” headlines that we’re now getting.
61
At the same time, your beloved alarmists, insist the only solution is to stop the future, ban the use of fossil fuel, pay out countless billions to build “alternate” energy sources. Sources that couldn’t power a growing technological/industrial civilization even if they did work but still don’t. Then to tax and regulate the life out of anyone who dares use energy to improve the quality and quantity of his life for his own reason.
All of this to be driven by an unelected unaccountable global governance mechanism populated by wannabe and actual dictators who, jointly, are mass violators of individual rights. Such piffles as the natural right of each individual to own his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness is to be ignored as an irrelevant consideration. All because YOU want to “save the earth” that doesn’t need saving.
This works only if you think working is the extinction of mankind. Which as near as I can tell, you are in complete sympathy.
I know, “you didn’t say that” but THAT is exactly what you mean.
71
“All of this to be driven by an unelected unaccountable global governance mechanism populated by wannabe and actual dictators who, jointly, are mass violators of individual rights.”
Sounds like the UN.
20
Yes.
10
Lionell. Whether or not I think as you claim makes not a scintilla of difference as to what is happening in the real world, which is what I understand the discussion here to be about.
02
Your words: “What is established to a very high degree of probability (“settled” in sloppy parlance) is the warming of the globe by the action of greenhouse gases.”
The so called greenhouse gasses can’t “act” to warm anything without themselves first being warmed by something else. That something else is ultimately the sun. So your claim has nothing to do with (in your words again) “what is happening in the real world”.
Take away the energy from the sun and the earth would soon (geologically speaking) cool to a few degrees kelvin. The greenhouse gasses can’t and won’t stop that from happening. In fact, they will be full participants in the cooling process from the instant the sun is turned off until they fall to the surface as a rapidly solidifying liquid.
50
Lionell, what you write is perfectly correct but I think we both understand perfectly well what I ment by my statement that greenhouse gases warm the globe without specifically mentioning the role of the sun. The temperature is some 33 C higher than it would be in the absence of their effect.
03
“The temperature is some 33 C higher than it would be in the absence of their effect.”
When done using Trenberthian 2D, non-rotational, flat earth mathematics, anyway.
20
Your words: “I think we both understand perfectly well what I ment…”
I see. You don’t say what you mean and don’t mean what you say. Then when you get caught, you claim others must understand what you really meant. Clearly, your intent is not to communicate but to be misunderstood in as many ways as possible. That way, you can always be right because whatever you say you can always claim you were “misunderstood”.
Your words again: “The temperature is some 33 C higher than it would be in the absence of their effect.” and “what is happening in the real world” from an earlier post.
How is this magical 33 c degrees about what is actually happening rather than a regurgitation of what your significant others have written. The magical number is from an erroneous use of radiative physics applied to a false to fact flat earth model of the earth’s weather system. It has nothing to do with what is really happening on earth. It has everything to do with the most monstrous scientific fraud ever perpetrated.
You are intellectually dishonest for not taking personal responsibility to communicate your thoughts as clearly as you can. You are intellectually lazy for accepting the 33 C crap without careful and critical examination. That makes you look like a fraud who is trying to get away with something. Remember? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, … it is a duck!
Start taking responsibility for what you say and the way you say it so as to communicate what you really mean. You get no points for trying harder and failing. As Yoda says: “there is no try, there is only do.”
30
Lionell, once again I am amazed that someone who demands rigour in expression and interpretation can end a contribution with “In the future DON’T assume” after having posted a comment that contains nothing but assumptions about my social and/or political views.
I happen to be a professional scientist and what I am interested in here is discussing the science. That is, what is or is not happening in the physical world according to scientific principles.
That you conflate discussion of science with the holding of certain political or social views further demonstrates that you are something less than the intellectually rigorous thinker you hold yourself out to be. It also demonstrates what psychologists call “projection”.
As a scientist I have been involved in science communication at various levels, from publication in peer reviewed journals and lectures to specialists at international conferences, explaining Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to specialists in other fields (mostly medical practitioners) teaching graduate and undergraduate students, teaching school children and giving lectures to the public at university open days. And have been told I am very good at all these levels of communication.
When communicating with different audiences you allow yourself assumptions as to the level of background knowledge you assume them to have. Assuming too great a level and people will not understand. Too little and you will insult, bore the pants off and waste the time of your audience.
For example, when lecturing to an audience of at an NMR conference you do not feel it necessary to explain that a nucleus can only generate a magnetic field if it “spins”, which you will need to explain at the outset to other groups. (And in both cases you let the issue of what it means for a nucleus to “spin” slide but for different reasons.)
Similarly, I gave the readers of this blog enough credit for knowing without me telling them that theory of greenhosus gases, regardless of the extent to which they may accept that theory, requires a primary energy source and that energy source is the sun.
If you are so dumb that you cannot take that point as understood in a discussion at this level, or think that readers of this blog are that ill informed of the basics of the climate change debate, that is your judgement.
I totally reject your assertion that I did not mean everything I said in any statement I made.
10
Phillip Shehan,
Your 33C is based on a cartoon which has been completely debunked here.
If you want a explanation of the ambient temperature of the Earth that uses a spherical planet, the actual energy from the Sun and a dirnual cycle, then you can go here.
If you want to be shown using publicly available observational data that shows that there is not greenhouse gas effect of CO2 on Venus (or anywhere else), then you can go here.
Just in case you thought actual greenhouses work by “trapping IR” then you can have that knocked on the head by going here.
00
Lionell, that you can nitpick over the fact that I made an assumption that people here would understand that greenhouse gases can only operate as a warming mechanism given the presence of solar radiation while making a series of totally evidence free assumptions about my attitudes ending with;
“I know, “you didn’t say that” but THAT is exactly what you mean.”
Well, you get my drift. Or do I need to spell that out too?
00
Science is about NITPICKING for accuracy, completeness, and consistency with what actually is so. Your statements are neither accurate nor complete nor coherent with reality.
You admit to saying something you did not mean and only after the fact do you claim that you “assumed blah..blah..blah”. This is exact and sufficient evidence that you would say you were “misunderstood” when you are caught making a totally erroneous statement. You wanted to be misunderstood and object to the fact that I understand you much too well.
If you meant what you said, you were saying something not evident in reality: CO2 et.al. is the active agent that warms. If you didn’t mean what you said, you stand convicted of being intellectually dishonest. Then you further attempted to justify your dishonest statement based upon a false to fact flat earth weather model to which radiative physics was misapplied. This leads directly to the conclusion that you are also intellectually lazy.
These conclusions are not “evidence free”. They are based upon the evidence of YOUR words. Neither I nor any of us are mind readers but we can read your words, understand their plain meaning, and apply logic to them. Your words and logic applied to them leads directly to my conclusions.
In the future, DON’T assume. Make absolutely clear what you mean and be prepared to back up what you say without using logical fallacies and scientific frauds.
00
My earlier reply to Lionell was slightly misplaced, appearing above.
I should add that his insistance that my particular view of the science of climate change is based not on the evaluation of the evidence, which has grown over time, but his evidence free assumptions about my political and social outlook hits a bit of a snag given the fact that my political and social views have not substantially changed over the last couple of decades but my view on the weight of scientific evidence in support of AGW has. I have, to put it loosely “changed sides” on the issue of AGW in that period, although as I explain below I do not see a hard boundary here. There was no road to Damascus moment of conversion. I did not wake up with a start one morning and suddenly say to myself: ‘My God I had it all wrong. The “warmists” are right. The “skeptics” are wrong.’ Lionell will no doubt all this far too equivocal.
I have always been and remain a skeptic in the true sense of the word, not just on this particular issue, nor with regard to science alone. My techers at school greatly appreciated my capacity to act a Devil’s advocate in class discussions. Much of my best recieved work in science has been in the overturning of accepted ideas in the literature.
Genuine skeptics can be found who both support and remain unconvinced of the role of greenhouse gases in climate change. And of course there is no hard boundary as for many the question is not whether but how much and do we need to worry about it.
Unlike many here whose opinion on the subject never has and never will change no matter what further evidence accumulates and whose idea of debate involves abuse of those they identify as idealogical enemies on the issue.
I have pointed to the intolerance of the term “denier” here compared with the acceptance of evidence free free personal diatribes against the Chief Scientist. People who indulge in this do not deserve the honourable term “skeptic”. It is a sure marker of those who qualify for the term “denier”.
20
Then prove it. It is clear that while CO2 continues to rise, both water vapor and cloud cover have declined. How then do you explain warming attributable to CO2 when the required positive feedback is not happening?
What is your explanation for Arctic ice melt?
How do you explain the lack of warming in the Arctic?
10
Philip Shehan,
I come from a background in the electrical trade.
I started to frequent sites explaining the Science because I was basically puzzled really.
All the warmists said (and said categorically) that they KNEW the cause, the emissions of CO2.
What puzzled me was that, despite KNOWING this Science, nobody, anywhere, was doing anything about it.
Despite the (seemingly) absolutely overwhelming evidence that they said they had, were they actually immediately stopping the emissions of CO2? Were they even cutting back on them?
Well, no, to both, and in fact, they actually didn’t even blink as China and soon, India, literally doubled those emissions. Was there a concerted effort to stop them doing that?
Well, no, again.
China may actually have taken a hint ….. had WE actually started to shut those hugest emitters down, the power plants.
You could say that there was nothing to replace them with, which is absolutely correct, but if the end result is what we are told, the virtual destruction of Planet Earth, then surely that is of most importance.
The people, the general populace, may actually have got the point to it had those plants been closed, in other word ….. hey this really is serious, so serious that they are doing something about it.
But no, again.
Nothing.
There’s the spin of introducing renewables, and now, everyone is (very slowly) getting the point that they don’t work, and can never replace coal fired power.
Instead, what actually has been done about it?
The ONLY thing has been to devise plans to make money out of it, Carbon Taxes, ETS, CDM, Renewable subsidies.
The only thing that actually HAS been done is to find ways to make money from it.
You people can babble on all you like about the Science. Argue with us. Argue with each other. Argue from authority. Argue through the compliant Media.
Until you actually DO something about it, then all you have is cheap talk.
That’s what I have taken from this.
You are not serious about it. You are so caught up in arguing about the Science, you haven’t bothered to see that nothing ….. of any substance is being done about it.
Tony.
31
Backslider, please supply supporting evidence for your assertions.
What is it you wish me to explain about the arctic ice melt, other than it is consistent with increasing temperatures?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png
TonyfromOz,
First let me note that this is not a scienific question, but briefly, there have been efforts to reduce CO2 emmissions but there has been considerable political opposition including major campaigns conducted by free market think tanks and commercial interests to maintain the status quo.
01
You are the one who claims to be a scientist – you should be up to date with these things.
So, you are telling me that ice is melting in the sub zero Arctic due to rising temperatures? Rising temperatures where exactly?
I could just as easily say that sea ice extent is consistent with the price of cornflakes.
11
Ah! The standard fallback position.
Now how did I just KNOW that would be the response.
And no, they’ve done nothing.
Point me to one large scale coal fired plant in the U.S. greater than 800MW that has closed in the last
twothreefourfivesixseven years.The only ones that have closed have been units smaller than 50MW, most smaller than 20MW, and nearly all of them time expired after 50+ years of operation, replaced lock stock and turbine by Natural Gas fired plants, umm, also CO2 emitting.
China has been bringing on line one large scale coal fired plant each week for the last five years or so. India is following, Germany is following, the Middle east is following, Africa is following.
CO2 emissions are rising, and rising very quickly indeed.
It’s not vested interests as you say that are keeping those coal fired plants open. It’s Governments who nod their head at you lot spouting the Science, and then hearing loud and clear ….. Umm, close those coal fired plants and there will be absolute anarchy, and by the way, when that happens, You … will … lose … the … next …election!
Tony.
31
Backslider, being a scientist does not mean I have every paper or other source of evidence on climate science at my figertips.
I believe I am capable of assessing scintific material if presented to me.
Here is how it works in scientific circles: You made the claim so it is up to you to supply the evidence to support it. Otherwise I am left to hunt for material that may not even exist.
And if it is not rising temperatures, what then is causing the arctic ice to melt?
02
Tony, you asked a political question, you got a political answer.
I am not the only one who thinks that free market think tanks are effective in delaying CO2 mitigation measures.
The think tanks themselves like the Heartland Intitute or the IPA for instance clearly think so, or they would not be devoting so much of their time effort and money to the campaign. And these institutes are not exactly short on people with a great deal of commercial and political nouse.
As I said I do not find the politics of AGW very intersting in comparison to the science and claim no particular expertise in that area. I was thinking of writing more but frankly could not be bothered, not the least as your post contained assumptions I did not accept in the first place.
But the other factor responsible for inaction is simple human nature. People hope for the best or stick their heads in the sand if taking action is hard and they are not suffering imediate impacts. It is no coincidence that people were much more receptive to paying for mitigation when the long drought was occuring, whether or not it could be scientifically attributed to climate change. It concentrates the punters’ minds on the issue. Since the drought ended, they have relaxed. Until the next time.
02
Yes, we had notice a distinct non-correlation between your thoughts and the real world.
21
More evidence UN-IPCC models are incomplete:
Monday, 25 February 2013
Seals help solve deep water mystery
“Until recently only three sources of the deep waters were known – the Weddell and Ross seas and off the Adelie Coast.
The discovery of a fourth source of deep water is critical to our understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to global ocean circulation, and will improve modelling of its response to climate change, says study co-author Dr Guy Williams.
Antarctic bottom water – cold, dense water that sits in the abyssal zone between 4000 metres and 6000 metres below the ocean’s surface – plays a key role in global water circulation and the transport of carbon dioxide to the deepest layers of the ocean.”
10.07.2013
Big Pic: 820-Foot-High Tunnels Discovered Under Antarctic Ice
“The placement of the channels suggests they were formed from meltwater flowing underneath the ice, over land, and into the ocean.
That also suggests water underneath ice sheets pours out into the ocean in focused channels, sort of like under-ice rivers.
The British team will now use its newfound knowledge of the under-ice tunnels to predict how exactly that ice shelf will melt in response to climate change.
Scientists previously thought overland meltwater flowed underneath ice sheets in thin, continuous layers.”
.
All those models? They’re worse than we previously thought. And so is the thesis of man made carbon(sic) global warming.
10
Mr. Scafetta has (an excellent) chapter in Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt and Dr. Sebastian Lüning’s (excellent) book, “The Neglected Sun”. I can’t recommend it too much – it’s very accessible to a lay person such as myself, but also comprehensive enough in what it covers to dismantle the “CO2 is killing the planet” myth. I think it is only available in English on Amazon UK so far, regardless – this is THE essential present for all our (deluded) warmer friends.
21
Yet here Scaffetta agrees that CO2 is having a significant effect on warming the earth.
21
Blast I will get the name right eventually. Scafetta
11
I am pleased to see that Scafetta understands that science is a process and not static understanding of facts as some would have us think. The move to modeled results from empirical and experimentation measurement is most welcome. And the inclusion of some solar effects are most welcome.
However the overall sense is that by mixing the correct cocktail of ingredients we will get the correct outcome. This, IMO, is wrong as there are too many unknowns, and too many natural sporadic incidences affecting our climate. Incidences that defy our abilities to predict them or accurately measure them.
10
Joanne,
thank you for the nice presentation of my work.
There are only a couple of misunderstanding I would like to clarify.
1) You writes: “Scafetta used Fourier analysis to find six cycles, then uses those six cycles to produce a climate model he runs for as long as 2000 years which seems to match the best multiproxies. In terms of discovering the absolute truth about the climate, this is not an end-point way to use Fourier analysis, as it is just “curve fitting”. With six flexible cycle frequencies (plus amplitude and phase) there are 18 tuneable parameters, more than enough to model any wiggly line on a graph, and there are scores of astronomical cycles to pick from.”
This is not fully correct. My methodology is very similar to that currently used to predict ocean tided
that make use of up 40 harmonics. See here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_tides#Tidal_constituents
The methodology is based on the identification of the most relevant astronomical oscillations and then only the amplitudes of the oscillations are fit upon the temperature data. In my case, I use the 6 major detected astronomical oscillations. These are not randomly chosen from an infinite set of possible astronomical oscillations, but are the very major gravitational and electromagnetic oscillations of the heliosphere. Also the phases are fixed by the astronomical oscillations.
As done with the ocean tides only the amplitudes of the oscillations are fit on the data. The phases of the decadal and multidecadal cycles (4 cycles on 6 used) are only optimized on the data because the fitted phase almost identically corresponds to the theoretical ones, as Figure 3 shows. Moreover the phase of the secular and millennial cycles (figure 24) are fixed only by astronomical considerations.
Thus, the only real free parameters are the 6 temperature oscillation amplitudes.
Thus, the good correlation that you find in my graphs (e.g Figure 26) is not due just to curve fitting, but mostly to the fact that the climate presents oscillations synchronized to the major oscillations of the heliosphere.
The model, moreover, is tested on its hindcast ability. The good correlation would exist also by fitting the amplitude just in the period 1850-1950. Also in this case the model reconstructs-forecasts the observed 1950-2013 variability.
2) you write: ” Scafetta’s model suggests climate sensitivity is more likely 0.3 °C to 1.8 °C”.
This is incorrect. That refers to the projected warming range from 2000 to 2100. The estimated climate sensitivity range is between 1 and 2.3 C. (This is an upper limit as explained in the paper).
Beside these two details, your article is a very good summary of my paper.
I am keeping a forecast experiment at my web-site where my model forecast since 2000 is compared against the IPCC GCMs
—–
Thanks Nicola, I will add your reply to the post. – Jo
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
71
Dr Scafetta,
Can you try to replace the component h10.4 in your model with a sunspot-derived metric?
For example, Dan Pangburn has found moderate success in modelling the climate trends as mainly determined by the integral of sunspot count. See his formula on his blog page.
Your H10.4 component basically represents the solar magnetic modulation, but it does not mimic the way heat builds up through a lower albedo at one rate and then dissipates at a different rate through ΔQ∝T^4 radiation, which is how Mr Pangburn has built his solar forcing component. He treats magnetic modulation as primarily an insolation input modulation, not an outgoing radiation modulation. His model tracks climate trends quite well mainly because of this “cooled sunpot count” component, and requires no effect from CO2 at all.
On the other hand he has no way to estimate sunspot activity 5 cycles into the future in the manner that your astronomical model seems to be able to do quite well.
My intuition may be wrong, but if you were to adopt a solar-magnetic component which was either based on the “ak-index” of geomagnetic activity, or on a sunspot integral similar to Mr Pangburns, I think your model would then reconstruct the temperature history quite closely up to the present day without needing any corrective input from IPCC GCMs.
If you ever get time to try this, I’m sure many people here would like to hear what the result looks like, even if it doesn’t work.
Thanks for putting the astronomical influences of climate back into the mainstream where they should be. The work of Nir Shaviv and Henrik Svensmark has obviously shown the effect is real, it is just taking a while for the IPCC crowd to incorporate astronomy into their models.
00
“In my case, I use the 6 major detected astronomical oscillations. These are not randomly chosen from an infinite set of possible astronomical oscillations, but are the very major gravitational and electromagnetic oscillations of the heliosphere. Also the phases are fixed by the astronomical oscillations.”
Nonsense, you are using theoretical beat frequencies, e.g. your 115yr period for solar minimums, which is the wrong figure. The weak solar cycles in Dalton, Maunder, Sporer Wolf etc minimums dating back 1000yrs are on a frequency of 110.7yrs on average, i.e. every 10 solar cycles. There is no basis for a ~60yr Saturn-Jupiter cycle either.
00
Jo it would be helpful if equation 13 referenced in the diagrams is presented. I have looked for it at his site but cannot find it. I don’t fancy paying $39 for access to the paper. Regards
10
I almost included it, so I had the image ready.
The h983 and h115 etc refer to the cycles in years (eg 983 year cycle, and 115 year cycle)…. note m(t) is a CMIP5 model output.
Hows this:
53
My reply is at #24 below.
00
The errors from the GHG and “aerosol” components swamp the terms
00
You say
The evidence to back up this claim comes from comparing the radiative forcings in AR5 with AR4. There are massive changes due to markedly changed methodology. If between the 4th and 5th time of asking there are such large changes (role of methane doubled, halocarbons halved, and aerosols may have changed sign), then it is legitimate to when will the consensus start replicating their previous results.
I compared the figures here.
10
Dr. Scafetta has provided a very visually compelling argument. There is more to be found and much interesting reading on his web site as well.
(repeat from Jo’s post above) http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model_1
11
OT. The debate, is shifting (BBC, Radio 4 , any Questions, 11 Oct 8pm) since the first of the big six energy companies, Scottish & Southern Energy, raised energy prices by 8pc this week, just before the NH Winter.
The public are asking, on this BBC panel show, would the Government consider suspending the Green Tax component temporarily ?
The pollies are divided between blaming the wholesale Gas prices (generally the Con/Dem coallition) and the profiteering of Energy companies (the Lefties ) in a rigged market, but only the public are calling for suspension of Green taxes.
Sceptical views are being aired by the public, on the BBC, but the political class is now united in denial of the most pointless and wasteful contributor, the Green component.
20
The paper seemed interesting at first sight and then I came across this excellent critique of it by Willis Eschenbach:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/23/congenital-cyclomania-redux/
Moreover the paper promotes the idea of there being a significant planetary influence on solar activity, which now increasingly looks like crackpottery.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.5988
The appendix of the paper on TSI records is priceless though.
Overall I would say that Dr.Scafetta is not worth being taken seriously.
20
Unbolt..why make a fool of yourself in public.?
Why would we bother.?
snark and nothing else..is that from the Al Gore training program.?
Up or down..just means CAGW is real in your “mind”. 🙂
CAGW is not falsifiable..but who cares right.?
Glad to see you gave a little bit of penance/money to your cause..!
Any Evidence of that…??
But to go the whole hog..you and your family must stop using cars and get off the grid.
Yes, I realise most Klimate Keyboard Kids dont actually do that..but those peanuts to flannery that you gave(claim)..that should offset all the emissions from you and your family right.?
Bllions spent to tell us that instead of a projection of 2.5 deg-4 deg its now 2 deg -4 deg.wow.. 🙂
And the “usefull idiots” dont worry about that..make lame appeals to authority and even quote flannery..even after all his failed predictions and his error riddled book.
Beyond Parody..
52
>”The unverified IPCC models assume CO2 has a powerful influence (backed up by laboratory experiment……”
What laboratory experiment was that?
Prof John Eggert has gone into this and produced a comparative graph of a verified forcing curve (Leckner at 273K) vs the IPCC forcing curve dF = 5.35 ln(C/Co), which he describes as a “simplification of a simplification”:
http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png
The Leckner curve and others were verified in this paper:
EVALUATION OF EMISSIVITY CORRELATIONS FOR H20-C02-N2/AIR MIXTURES AND COUPLING WITH SOLUTION METHODS OF THE RADIATIVE TRANSFER EQUATION
N. Lallemant, A. Sayret and R. Weber (1996)
See: 3. CORRELATIONS FOR PREDICTING THE TOTAL EMISSIVITY AND ABSORPTIVITY OF COMBUSTION GASES
http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/users/papers/engr/ernesto/brazw/Project/Other/Research/Soot/Lallemant_EmissivityCorrelations.pdf
The IPCC curve was not one of those verified.
30
Those curves seem to indicate that not only is the CO2 forcing log based below 100-200ppm,
.. but that it is also THRESHOLD LIMITED at about 100-200 ppm.
in other words,…
NO AMOUNT OF EXTRA CO2 IN THE CURRENT ATMOSPHERE WILL MAKE ONE IOTA OF DIFFERENCE !!
33
correction, post coffee.
“threshold limited at about 100-200 ppm”
should read,
“threshold limited at some point in the range 100-200ppm”
23
So, as the atmospheric CO2 level slowly climbs, more and more places where the CO2 level used to be nominally below 200ppm, climb above the threshold.
So there really is any heating from assumed back radiation (lol), this gradually stops and there IS NO MORE HEATING once most places on earth are mostly over 200ppm.
This ties in well with measurements of Venus (atmosphere 97% Co2), where the temperature is exactly where it should be relative to Earth’s atmospheric pressure and distance form Sol.
23
“So there really is any heating ”
So EVEN IF there really is any heating….
10
Seriously.. look at that first graph.
From 200ppm upwards, the forcing from CO2 REMAINS THE SAME !!!
NO CHANGE in doubling atmospheric concentration from 200 to 400.
NO CHANGE in doubling atmospheric concentration from 400 to 800.
This makes a TOTAL NONSENSE of any CAGW hypothesis. !!
11
Jo, thanks for the equations #17.1. I think Nicola is on to something regarding the astronomical influences. But what concerns me here is that he is using the mean of the climate models that ARE effectively using fudge factors and the notion that CO2 is virtually the entire driving mechanism for the temperature changes. He then incorporates that mean result and multiples it times a “tuning” parameter beta (to effectively accord the fraction due to CO2) to fit the resulting curve.
I recall somewhere (I think it was in his lectures at the NIPCC) that his solar and astronomical influences could explain about 65% (I think) of his previously work. So is this stuff new? If so my question would be what percentage overall is his beta component term having on his curve fit.
I am not entirely convinced about all of the above but nevertheless he gets marks for at least exploring unknown territory. Notwithstanding of course that Salby says the CO2 we’re seeing is due to temperature change and not vice-versa. Take the integral of historical temperature since 1850 and you can reproduce the measured Hawaii CO2 curve. Pehr Bjornbom has verified that hypothesis mathematically. For those not aware of this see:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/swedish-scientist-replicates-dr-murry.html
Warning! The following is in Swedish and the Google translation is a “dogs breakfast”.
http://www.klimatupplysningen.se/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Rekonstruktion-av-Murry-Salbys-teori.pdf
And of course the Central England Temperature measurements (CET) linear trend since the late 17th Century with virtually no industrialisation of 0.25 deg C per century leaves very little room for CO2 effects.
40
My small model of the CET is still going very well. The CET 2013 average anomaly to the end of September is about -0.2 C, which would put the next point about 0.6 C below last year’s value, which if correct would see the pink curve following the blue prediction line downwards in lockstep. A fair way to go yet, since the CET is a local temperature prone to things like blocking events in a way that a global dataset isn’t. Encouraging though.
I use annual averages so I won’t update until January.
The solar forcing I use is based on the previous solar cycle correlation to temperature, which reflects the solar dynamo but without speculating on a mechanism. The ~60 year cycle is inclded as a sine function (which is similar to Fig 10a of Dr Scafetta’s 2010 paper). And the sensitivity I use is 0.6 C/doubling.
30
You can create a pretty good model of solar vs climate by simply integrating the solar signal:-
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1850/mean:50/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:50/offset:-40/integral/normalise
The CO2 myth is dead.
42
Except, again the use of pre-1970’s HackCrud….
… wherein they dropped a 10 tonne block of ice on the real temperatures.
41
This is what is going on in the atmosphere
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7tfz3k_9A&feature=player_embedded
and this is the effect that it is having on the Arctic ice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ3QUdIxvxg&feature=player_embedded
There is no mystery to it. The correlation is unmistakable.
Meanwhile this is what the sun has been up to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piuKlpJmjfg
…pretty much business as usual. The sun would need to be doing something pretty dramatic to deliver the change to the earths surface energy level that we are measuring.
As for some connection between Earth’s magnetic field and recent deviations in the Artic jet stream, this is just nonsense. The Northern hemisphere jet stream is bulging entire as a consequence of increased air mass overflow from the Northern Hemisphere Hadley Cells into the Arctic high pressure field, this all being driven by the increased energy in the tropical band as the oceans steadily warm.
It is all very simple and anyone can demonstrate these effects with their own model in the kitchen.
Take a large flat pan and fill it to 30mm with water. Place this on an element and set the energy regulator to simmer. After some time observe the circulation patterns set up in the water as it rises in the center and flows outward to the pan rim. Now put a lid on the pan (CO2) and leave for a time. lift the lid and observe the increase of circualtion flow, the flow intensity and the humidity (steam) created. For best effect you realy need to perform this with a ring element around the perimeter of the pan to more accurately represent the earth’s shape with relation to Equator and Polar region.
Give it a go. It is very interesting.
[The first two video graphics are actually very impressive. The northern hemisphere co2 moving graph is nicely done in terms of visual impact. The arctic ice representation is likewise very interesting to watch. What is rather blatantly missing is evidence of causation (not even acknowledging any correlation). ] ED
(I agree that the graphics are very good but the explanations for them are very bad.I have learned a while ago, what was causing the 40% + amount of the multi year ice to be pushed out during winter months from late 1980’s to mid 1990’s that set the stage later on for the reduction of surface ice cover area which is mainly caused by easy compaction of ONE year old ice.It ties in well with the ENSO cycle very well.The Multi year ice amount has been on the rebound for the last 4 years now) CTS
37
Yes, nice video’s. Correlation is not causation.
Your reasoning is essentially “the sun would need to be doing something pretty dramatic”. The sun was doing something pretty dramatic, as it happens.
Arctic sea ice may have more to do with black soot from shipping traffic, or from flow rates of the NAO. In any case, Arctic ice has been low before. Subs surfaced at the north pole in 1959. There’s a cycle in there you’ve forgotten.
80
A lot of the Arctic ice in the summer is also related to the temperature and volumetric flow of the North Atlantic currents feeding the Arctic seas (that returns past Africa toward the equator); this makes a difference on how much the sun will warm the seas in the summer.
Maybe I’ll make a simulation of this and put it on You Tube so BilB will accept it as fact.
People swallow anything, don’t they.
42
Your grasping at straws there, Joanne. You can attempt to make solar activity look dramatic by finding something that changes and focus on that with the implication that this fluctuation causes another, but with the sun the one thing that matters is the solar irradiance. To that end the graph here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
shows that over the last 30 the solar energy delivered to the upper atmosphere varied by 1 watt per square meter. That barely rates a mention as it would not be measurable at the surface, and does not amount to dramatic solar activity.
North Pole Ice Thickness at any time is entirely a matter of chance as the ice at that pole is constantly moving. This is the reasonb why there is no permaent base at the North Pole. So the ice being thin there in 1958 has no meaning at all other than that the USS Skate had an easyu task of it in that year.
27
Ok, Explain the Maunder minimum, the Dalton Minimum, and the little ice age.
31
See above, AndyG55.
Further. It is more about solar irradiance, Solar flares mess up satelites but have little or no effect on the atmospheric energy at the surface. Beyond that the rate of change of Global Warming and its subsequent Climate Change is operating on an entirely different time scale to solar activity both short and long term.
28
Ok, Explain the Maunder minimum, the Dalton Minimum, and the little ice age.
Oh, and btw, the rate of global warming is basically ZERO has been for quite a few years.
http://imageshack.us/scaled/large/690/6k8c.png
51
The irradiance could be perfectly constant, Mister Dimwit, but what matters is how the conditions of what the sunlight falls upon changes
30
Also, different frequencies penetrate and warm differently.
And magnetic fields change, and solar winds, etc etc..
But I’m sure you know all about those things…
21
“So the ice being thin there in 1958 has no meaning at all
Similarly, the ice being thin in 2012 has no meaning at all.
11
So many trolls so little time……
31
“but with the sun the one thing that matters is the solar irradiance.”
And your proof is ????
01
So, which would you prefer to be under for say 3 hours on a hot day?
A 200w green or blue light, a 200w ultraviolet light, or a 200w infrared light.?
01
Bilb,
the first link show a slow CO2 increase in atmosphere that is not generally disputed.
The second link show multi year ice dissipating in the Arctic that again is not generally disputed.
The problem with your post is the lack of explanation for the reduction of Arctic.You say the CO2 increase is the cause but you provide ZERO support for that position.
Here is a link to the NCAR-NSIDC animation with better color guide to show what is happening to the older ice and a probable cause of the reduction of thicker older ice:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif
In just a few years a lot of the older thick ice was flushed out during the winter months.This occurs during the peak years of the POSITIVE ENSO phase that has since dropped off into the negative range,that is being reflected by the slow Arctic ice recovery.The amount of 2,3 and now 4 year ice is growing and that according to the NSIDC:
The LINK will explain further.
The Dirty Little Secret About Arctic Ice
50
Seriously???
1. Now redraw that first link with a zeroed vertical axis.
2. That 3rd video is of the last 3 years.. and is basically SO WHAT !!!
3. The Arctic has always had cycles, always will. It has been nearly gone at least 2 times in recorded Arctic history, when there wasn’t that much CO2
You are not fooling anyone except yourself. !
42
But it’s on You Tube! So it has to be true.
It was put there by people who like other people who don’t think for themselves.
IPCC likes such people very much.
60
You need a little more flesshing out from people with boots on the graound, Brian?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYaubXBfVqo
29
That video is right off the reservation.
70
You take that up with the scientist who performed the research and compiled the presentations, with urgency if you are sincerely put “off the reservation”.
18
Don’t you have some Star Trek reruns to watch or something better to do than pollute blogs?
50
You mean like these science papers Bilb?
New insights on Arctic Quaternary climate variability from palaeo-records and numerical modelling
From the Abstract,
Bolding mine
LINK
=========================================================
or this,
Ice free Arctic Ocean, an Early Holocene analogue.
Abstract:
LINK
============================================================
or this,
Late Quaternary coccoliths at the North Pole: Evidence of ice-free conditions and rapid sedimentation in the central Arctic Ocean
Abstract:
LINK
============================================================
All that time the CO2 level in the atmosphere was below 300 pmmv,yet the Arctic can lose virtually all the summer ice at periods of time in the current interglacial.
You are badly mistaken Bilb.
60
A bit out of date there, bozo !!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
21
and
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2013.png
and
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
20
Straw grasping there, Andy. You can “look” a lot better if you reduce your sample to just one very carefully selected day.
38
You mean like NOW !!!!
On a somewhat chaotic cyclic oscillation, the only point that really matters is NOW and the recent past.
It tells you what is happening NOW.
Not what some evangelistic climate vandal has done to past records.
It is totally pointless to look at the rising arm of the oscillation since about 1960, especially when it has been so thoroughly Hansenised.
Your grasp of REALITY is sadly lacking !!
Off you go and hunt some more magic mushrooms.
21
In your youtube link Bilb is this howler:
LOL,
Dr. Meier from the NSIDC made a short presentation THREE years ago where he states:
LINK
Meanwhile the 1979 to 2013 Arctic ice cover data time frame from the NSIDC is misleading and even dishonest because the the IPCC in the 1990 report posted below to show that we have Arctic ice cover data back to 1967 and 1971 in the chart:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/screenhunter_707-apr-25-06-06.jpg?w=960&h=737&h=737
Quoting from the LINK is this:
The chart follows in the link that covers from 1971-1990 for the Arctic ice cover.
50
And 400ppm CO2 is NOTHING like a lid on a pan.
You live in a fantasy world !!
41
Isn’t it enough to gag you?
Every day I ask myself, how in the world does anybody swallow this GHG nonsense, then I see the BilB’s of the world, and I am not so puzzled any more
41
I spent a few years trying to teach basic maths to low IQ 14 and 17 years olds.
I thought I had left that behind, but some of these guys remind me of those days 🙁
(Hence the manner in which I often respond 😉 )
31
Is being its most active for 9,400 years not dramatic enough for you?
30
water controls the climate, on many different ways; climate has nothing to do with CO2: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/water-vapor-h2o/
40
CTS,
On the rebound? You have got to be kidding.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChABcwItlAE&feature=player_embedded
Explanation?
The CO2 graphic is a compilation from a multitude of sources all of which are listed in the final frames. This is beyond contestation.
The Sea Ice graphic is a time lapse construction from satelite images. This too is beyond contestation.
ENSO?
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soi2.shtml
I fail to see how you can find or demonstrate any correlation here. They are partially connected simply due to the size of the systems But ENSO is definitely not a primary driver of the Arctic ice depletion.
(I am not going to debate with you in the moderating bin) CTS
29
I drove from Newcastle to Liverpool the other day, and a friend of mine drove from Gosford to Sydney.
Our journey coincided for a over half his trip.
Obviously, I caused him to drive to Sydney.
One should also note that the CPI has climbed steadily and could be graphed to show coincidence with CO2, if one could be bothered.
as could population, as could many other things.
Obviously CO2 causes the CPI to grow, and also causes population to grow.
51
.
It has been demonstrated conclusively that both atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and global temperatures, are directly proportional to the cost of a US postage stamp, and inversely proportional to the number of pirates.
Quite apart from the implications for global climate, this proves beyond doubt that the US Postal Service has taken over from where the pirates left off.
60
Atmospheric CO2 concentration also seem to inversely related to the intelligence of the troll population.
Perhaps it is the one species on this planet that truly cannot tolerate slightly raised CO2 levels?
Sadly, it seems to affect the mind first.
11
seem to be…..
01
MV, the evidence for temperatures being caused by USA postage stamp prices is even better than you hoped. 😉
Under IPCC theory the temperature is proportional to the logarithm of CO2 concentration.
If you run the numbers and plot the chart, the temperature also matches a logarithmic relationship to postage prices.
The climate sensitivity to postage price is 0.26°C per doubling of postage price, with 90% correlation.
Where’s my Nobel prize?
20
That’s pretty conclusive…. what happened to Bilbo?
20
Brilliant.
Thanks for the link, Andrew.
10
We will all be living in a “fantasy world” in 50 years at this rate of Global Climate Change and CO2 accumulation. 50 years at the current rate will see Global concentrations of CO2 near the 500 parts per million and global temperatures set to rise above 3 degrees C above pre-industrial times.
This generally accepted to be an unlivable climate with our civilisation as it is today.
210
Fifty years from now people won’t have to listen to this GHG horse sh*t any longer, but you can bet your last dollar that some other leftist nonsense will be there to take its place
41
Maybe – IF there was any reason or evidence to believe climate behaved in some linear manner.
However, since all the observable evidence suggests that climate goes in roughly 30 year cycles of warming and cooling, the probability is that in 50 years we will have been through the 30 year cooling cycle that started circa 2000, and be at the end of the 30 year warming cycle that will begin around 2030.
And yes, Brian, in 2030 the BilBs of the world will be preaching about the coming ice age, and in 2060 it will be Thermageddon once more.
It has ever been thus since Gutenberg invented his printing press.
Before that it was all down to witches.
41
BilB says:
Really? who is Generally?
As for all the other cra P what do you propose we do about it? Be specific.
30
Good question, MarkD.
Rooftop solar PV and solar thermal (water heating) are by far the best low impact methods to address a large percentage of our national emission. And before you say it we are only responsible for our share of global emissions.
The cheapest method for achieving this is to require that all properties that change hands new and old must have a minimum of 2 kw of pv and 3.5 kw of solar thermal. This way the cost is absorbed into the cost of the house and amortised over time via the mortgage. By this method the cost burden is very small and uniform throughout the economy. Secondly there needs to be continued pressure to upgrade as much of the grid infrastructure as is possible to sustainable energy production.
Just get that underway and something very profound will have been achieved, the rest will become obvious over time.
211
“to address a large percentage of our national emission”
ROFLMAO !!!
That post would have to be one of the most ridiculous posts I have ever read.
You really have ZERO idea do you !!
You seriously need to go and do some research into power supply system and stop believing the propaganda of the solar advertising brochures. !
61
Clueless. Utterly clueless!
Tony.
82
Darn it. Beat me to it Tony.
Imagine, every house with solar PV… and then the sun goes down…
20
… and 9 months later.. the population explodes.. 😉
41
So,
with an exploding population because there is no power at night,
reduced CO2 for growing food because we forgot that plants need CO2,
a cooling climate with reduced growing seasons in most northern countries,
etc etc
we can all enjoy the benefits of the next Dark Ages.
Go for it, you cagw kiddies !!
11
Yes, yes yes, I know I have to be carful to not feed the Trolls!
35
Oh, your mummy still feeds you, then !
Or have you graduated to a spoon and pusher?
31
Cmon AndyG55, lay off for a while longer. I want to play with this one a while. He’s obviously young enough, maybe he can be reprogrammed with some truth.
10
Y’see Tony, if everyone is forced into solar PV, everyone pays the feed-in subsidy to everyone else, and we all get really, really rich.
41
Could you please explain, in detail, exactly what this means?
31
I know the question was not asked of me, but here i go anyway.
Which to me suggest the gold plating of the poles and wires we now all have to pay for is just so greenies and the ill informed can all get that warm fuzzy feeling, while the rest of us have to reduce our seasonal heating and cooling.
51
Wrong conclusion, Bob Malloy. The “gold plating” of the grid is entirely to do with pulse demand from air conditioners on hot days. Nothing to do with solar power at all. In fact solar PV reduces the need for the “heavy wiring” and over capacity power generation. What solar power needs is for the grid to be able to flexibly rout power depending need and conditions. This “smart grid” is a matter of energy management rather than heavy (costly) wiring.
25
You really, really, really don’t actually know anything about this stuff, do you?
51
Bilb,
Do you have an aversion to reading or is it just comprehension you lack.
I link to an article quoting energy suppliers, outlining problems intergrating solar into the grid and you who know better pluck air conditioners out of your left nostril, just brilliant.
41
He he….
10
Solar PV you say BilB? Do you know how much energy goes into the manufacture of solar PV?
Solar hot water now that seems sensible.
When do you use hot water?
When does the sun shine?
How much does it cost to create storage?
Do you know what can happen in warm water storage tanks?
As for grid electricity, Tony should be willing to explain Base-Load power. Why don’t you ask him nicely?
Finally, how do you feel about nuclear power?
10
That is all twaddle, MarkD, especially the notion that Tony Abbott can explain anything intelligently at all.
23
Perhaps if you had been on this blog more than 5 minutes, you would realise that Mark wasn’t talking about Tony Abbott at all.
Nice way to reveal your political leanings though, not that they were ever in doubt.
21
Can anything that Bill Shorten can’t. Your new lord and Master… one of the faceless men no less. How does it feel?
31
Use your big boy words and explain why. Not answering questions is bad form.
10
So your solution is that our civilisation should be destroyed now, just in the remote possibility that you are right?
You dismiss the idea that the sun never changes. – Doesn’t know any astronomy.
Dismisses previous warming cycles as never occurring – doesn’t know any history.
Thinks that CO2 controls the Earth’s temperature- doesn’t know any paleontology. metrology, spectroscopy or physics.
You forgot to mention ocean acidification so I will give you the benefit of the doubt on chemistry.
But you are certainly gullible and bordering on hysterical. Your posts are a waste of time.
50
Graeme, previous warming cycles that occured over thousands of years with far lower CO2 levels to today have nothing to tell us about our extremely abrupt CO2 ballon, other than that they produced climates unsuitable to our civilisation and should be avoided.
38
By “CO2 balloon” I assume that you mean the last warming period we had (past tense).
All the temperature records that I have ever looked at do not show, say the last 150 years, to be any different to other warming periods. It looks just the same on a graph and has a quite remarkable regularity.
30
“previous warming cycles that
occuredoccurred over thousands of years with far lower CO2 levels to today …… other than that they produced climates unsuitable to our civilisation and should be avoided.”ROFLMAO again. 🙂 🙂 🙂
The carnival is back in town !
The warmer periods were the most abundant natural periods of the Earth’s history, you dopey clot !!!
Its the cold periods we need to avoid.
Its a pity that CO2 doesn’t help avoid the cold periods, other wise we could ensure continued world wide growth towards prosperity.
Food and energy for all. The very antithesis of the CAGW meme.!
21
Co2 balloon;
00
WTF…. the Victorian Government paid for that crap????……
00
I didn’t take note of the origin of that particular one, however in NSW we had to endure similar adds for ages.
00
Actually that is totally false. They produced environments where civilization flourished. It was the cold snaps in between where civilization fell into dark times.
read your history.
00
At the present rate it will still be EXACTLY the same temperature !!
21
The one new piece of information that you might benefit from is that high humudity suppresses temperature fluctuation, and so temperature records do not necessarily appear as often in a rising atmospheric energy world. what does happen is that seasonal variation diminishes and night time temperatures increase ie the early evening warmth sustains far longer into the early morning.
This high humidity then drives ever more powerfull and destructive low pressure storms, and at the other end far broader high pressure systems that deliver the extremes of heat. The other thing to be aware of is that most weather events happen far out to sea, so we are generally unaware of much of the weather intensity.
28
There has been a REDUCTION in hurricanes and storms over the last several decades.
Try again. idiot !
And really, all this NEW STORMINESS (roflmao) happens out to sea where it can’t be measured. 🙂
Just like the non-existent heat is hiding in the bottom of the ocean where it can’t be measured. 🙂
FANTASY LAND. JUNK SCIENCE !!!!!!!!!
You sir , are a true COMEDY ACT !!
41
Actually, high sea surface temperatures (relative to the surrounding waters, and atmosphere above), are what propagate, feed, sustain and grow low pressure storms. That’s how we can reasonably plot the future path of a cyclone – it will follow the highest SST.
Humidity levels are a consequence, not a cause of all this.
.
Putting the cart before the horse seems to be something of a specialty of yours, BilB.
41
BilB
Do you have a reference paper that explains this miracle?
Ahhh the now infamous Ocean Squirrel-Hole! Hides the heat and now even hides the extreme weather. Brilliant claim. NOT! If we aren’t “aware” of what happens far out to sea, how do we claim to know sea level is rising to millimeter accuracy?
As our newest warmist troll, I was going to TRY to have a discussion with you and not jump on your silly head right away. You are making it very difficult…….But lets see if you answer these questions.
00
But seriously, what sort of MORON thinks that climate is in any way linear except in the very short term.
41
Darn, they really had the pressure up high when they brain-washed you, didn’t they.
It left absolutely NOTHING behind.. !!
Grey cardboard everywhere.
42
Oh look. Another new troll. Have GetUp been recruiting again?
Your little attempt at alarmism reminded me of this cartoon.
Run along and play now, leave the grown ups alone.
42
Good comment, Heywood. And good choice of false imformation cartoon. I suggest that you scan back to the Catalyst of some months back for the explanation of the fallacy of that cartoon.
You are also right that this is not a subject for grown up oldies and the like as they are not the ones who have to live their lives with the awfull mess that the baby boomers have created.
16
Ohhh.. you just marked yourself as an ignorant rebellious know-it-all 11-17 year old.
We had already noted the total lack of education.
Do you watch “Big Brother” for your education, perhaps?
41
Oh yes, the balance of the ABC science department with the good old ‘cold is the new warm’ argument. I wonder if Robin ‘100m’ Williams was involved in that one. I think I’ll pass on revisiting that it, thank you.
Oh those EVIL baby boomers huh? If only I was old enough to be one. Won’t somebody pleeeeaaaaaaassssseeeeeee think of the children. Another line straight from the activist song sheet. Run along now…
71
The ABC.. one step below “Big Brother” in the education stakes !! 🙂
31
BilB…. I found your comments somewhat hard to follow… Youtube links are really not my thing.
Could you please give us a short, concise explanation of the recent decline (and recovery) of Arctic sea ice and the cause of that?
No links please, just your own explanation.
20
“you just marked yourself as an ignorant rebellious know-it-all 11-17 year old.”
Or maybe a first or second year Uni arts student.
21
Calling all Trolls!
Come on and tell us how great solar panels are and how they will save Arctic sea ice or some other nonsense!
The current lot of drones are getting so BORING at this point
41
So, they give Michael the Surrealist a hard earned break and send us Bilbo Baggins….. oh my.
I earnestly await for Bilbo to give a concise explanation of that horrifying Arctic melt…..
31
How did I know that he would not answer….?
10
I don’t know.. I haven’t laughed quite so hard at the total ignorance and incompetence of a troll for quite a while.. maybe since last time Bladders or Michael the surrealist was here. 🙂
21
Agreed Andy. Michael the “realist” is always good for a laugh,but on the other hand it didn’t think it was possible for someone to spout that much garbage as a rule.
10
Local council installed a vast array to power their sustainability operations.
Installed on top floor of multi-story car park that was previously open to the sky.
They included as a benefit, that they would provide shade for cars parked on the roof level.
That’s a benefit in leftard minds. The fact the could have just built a roof at one quadrillionth the cost means nothing to leftards greenfilth.
20
Morning all, I see you’ve been busy through the UK night.
“You are also right that this is not a subject for grown up oldies and the like as they are not the ones who have to live their lives with the awfull mess that the baby boomers have created.”
That’s not climate science, that’s a political opinion advanced by the Left to justify their looting, sorry, redistribution from the hard-working and prudent to the idle and feckless while making sure that sufficient wealth sticks to their fingers to buy the odd beach-front property.
In fact, any increase in storminess would have been noted by the various geo-stationary weather satellite systems. I await with bated breath references to the peer-reviewed literature which supports a view which even the IPCC have disavowed .
50
BilB, as a member of the “baby boomer” generation, may I humbly apologise for leaving you with:
Cheap, affordable, continuous electricity from baseload power stations.
The ability to produce power from coal without polluting the atmosphere with carbon (soot) or sulphur.
Electrified rail.
Safe, affordable, efficient, reliable motor vehicles.
Medicare.
The dole.
Austudy.
Abstudy.
Pensions for the disabled.
Water conservation.
MAP and DAP fertilisers, made out of air and natural gas, which now feed 80% of the world’s broadacre crops.
Television.
Cable TV.
Computers.
Smartphones.
Tablets.
Commercial jet aircraft.
Affordable commercial air travel.
Commercially produced Aluminium.
Lightweight, multi-geared, affordable push bikes.
Barbie dolls.
BMX bikes.
Skateboards and rollerblades.
Skateboard parks.
The Sedgeway.
WiFi and Bluetooth.
Ultrasound and MRI medical imaging.
Heart surgery.
Stroke mitigation and recovery.
Brain surgery.
The ability to mend cut or torn nerves.
Advanced robotics.
Space exploration.
Graphene.
Carbon fibre.
Teflon.
The ability to feed seven billion people.
Lego.
OH&S laws to keep you safe at work.
Labour laws to protect you from unscrupulous employers.
Silly Putty.
Pacemakers.
MP3 players.
Downloadable movies and music.
There’s a lot more, but that will do for starters. None of these things existed when I was born, or they existed but were not available to the general public, because of prohibitive cost. So I guess that makes my generation – the baby boomers – responsible for you having access to ALL of them.
.
But here’s the GOOD news, BilB.
All you have to do is print out the list, and cross them off as you eliminate these nasties from your life.
Off you go – have fun.
150
MV. As one Methusalah to another, 🙂
30
MV. I must admit, I really didn’t know where to start.
I DARE YOU, Bilbo, to dump ALL progress that has come from the “baby boomers”
You should be able to find a cave somewhere, and we will never hear from you again on the internet.
21
Especially #6 on MV’s list !!
10
MV,
As a product designer and manufacturer I love all of these things.
The issue is that from the first born to the last dead of the baby boomers the earth has gone from comfortable sustainability to disasterous over exploitative collapse.
This is measure both of our brilliant success and ultimate obstinate failure.
We as a generation have failed to curb our excesses.
The other list is
McMansions
Truckloads of fast food (the determination to overfeed 5 billion people)
1000 HP supercars
Prolific global holidays
Over exploitation of land
Overuse of chemicals
Overuse of antibiotics
Concentration of wealth into the hands of a few
Concentration of media into the hands of several
Species collapse
Unsustainable resource consumption
Nuclear disasters
Extensive distribution of military style weaponry
Global Warming
Climate Change
There is a sociology experiment where they build a finite ideal environment for mice and populate it with a few mice. At the beginning everything is harmonious. Abundant food, ideal living space, more than adequate resources (straw etc). Mice live in harmony and care for one another. However as the population increases, even accelerates, things become less than ideal rapidly as mice families compete for food and living space. The end is very ugly with mice killing and eating one another. This is the lesson that we have failed to learn. It is the millenium generation that will live out the second part of the mice maze story which the baby boomers have set the stage for.
MV, there is one glaring omission from your list, and that is solar PV panels. There is only one perpetual energy source for this planet and everything on it, and that is the sun. Clearly Nova Folk have a hate on for this as you all somehow see it as cahallenging your idea of continuity of the world as you perceive it to be. The fact is that solar PV simply improves everyone’s standard of living regardless of whether you believe that Climate Change is real or not.
The sum total is that we cannot continue consuming at the level that we are. A rational civilisation would recognise its vulnerabilities and take evasive action to protect itself. This requires advance projection (modelling) and forward planning.
How do you think that we are going with that?
11
I doubt that anybody here disagrees with that. Now the question is: Where do coal and petroleum come from?
Tell us:
1. Do you drive a car or use other modes of transport which consume fossil fuels?
2. Are you hooked up to a coal or gas fired electricity grid?
3 Do you use anything else the production or manufacturer of which is dependent on fossil fuels?
4. Are you a hypocrite?
10
BilB,
I admire the fact that you are completely self supporting by having solar PV.
The $60,000+ you have spent to do this is well beyond the rest of us here, as is the extra $20,000 every 6 or 7 years for the new battery banks you’ll need to be buying, and then having to purchase a whole new system at the end of 20 years, provided it lasts that long, and the 5 or 6 Inverters you’ll be needing. I also admire that you are locked into living in this one house for the rest of your life.
All of this is way beyond the rest of us, who, incidentally are forced to pay for your indulgence.
If you don’t have the above, then dear BilB, you are in fact totally reliant upon grid supplied power, in the main coal fired power, to actually provide the reference for your Rooftop Solar System, totally reliant upon half to two thirds of your power (or more depending upon how small your system is) for your household power.
And if you do have a small grid connected system, how much FIT are you receiving, a cost that WE have to pay for your indulgence.
And it’s your rooftop system that has forced Governments to attempt gold plating of the grid, and we also have to pay for that.
All of this is caused by you and your green religious belief.
And I was wondering is you might be able to explain exactly what ‘Islanding‘ is and just what it means for grid connected rooftop panel owners.
Solar PV improving everyone’s standard of living. What absolute bovine excrement.
You are clueless mate, absolutely clueless!
Tony.
11
TonyfromOZ,
In all of my cluelessness one of my current projects is an “affordable accommodation” design exercise.
This design is spec’d to accommodate 4, have over 60% of its land footprint available for open recreation space, be guaranteed for a minimum 150 year life span, be: fire resistant; flood resistant; deluge proof; hail proof; cyclone and tornado proof, be affordable to people living on the minimum wage rate (Au $15 per hour), and be suitable for all age ranges.
Part of the design includes axactly as I have suggested above, 2kw capacity solar PV and 3.5 kw capacity solar thermal. The extra cost of the solar system is $5000. This extra amount adds $36 per month to the mortgage payment. The output from the system saves the occupants $117 per month in offset electricity costs, regardless of how much extra electricity they draw from the grid. If the $117 per month saved is applied to the mortgage payments this reduces the mortgage term by 5 years and saves the owner $36,000 in interest payments over the term of the mortgage.
So that is $36,000 that each family would have available to spend over a 20 year period on other things in the economy, or put another way 1.5 stimulous cheques per year for 20 years per family.
I have no doubt that you, TonyfromOz, will find a dark side to this, but in my cluelessness I cannot.
12
Oh, and one other thing the solar system on the roof offsets all of the CO2 emissions from the building’s construction (materials included) within 8 years against a building using coal fired grid electricity exclusively. I especially like that part of the design.
13
Just One question first, and a second one a little further down.
Is the rooftop solar system connected to the grid?
And noticing that it is a 2KW system, there is no way known you can run a house 24/7 on that, so it would have to be grid connected.
If so, then half to two thirds of all the electrical power the home consumes is drawn from the ….. coal fired grid.
That solar system is totally reliant upon that grid.
The monetary savings are completely reliant on the huge FIT that I and all other electricity consumers pay.
What you have done is effectively hypocrisy writ large.
And just what do you equate to what you call solar thermal?
Tony.
10
At no stage, TonyfromOz, did I mention a feed in tarrif. The FIT is completely unnecessary. Nor did I mention being disconnected from the grid. These are all preconceptions of your own making.
Whereas it is possible to operate independent from the grid which does require some storage, 6 kwhrs being sufficient, this would be an advanced reqirement and not at all what I am proposing. There are also low solar periods to contend with as well. Cloudy days reduce solar production they do not stop it altogether, but the practicality is that for small systems an external energy source is necessary.
The 2/3.5 system provides all of the background energy requirements of washing, clothes drying, some cooking, pool circulation, daytime refrigeration power, water heating (solar thermal), etc on a managed household basis. There are an increasing number of appliances becoming available to cooperate with such systems.
Your half to two thirds grid power assumption is way off the mark.
Most households use very little power at night, and where they are built specifically to operate on minimal power using LED lighting throughout a 2kwhr storage facility is sufficient to power computers, televisions, lighting, fans, load balance, etc. If the household uses gas for cooking then the grid requirement becomes even more marginal but a 2/3.5 system is too light for that objective.
Zero hypocricy here, this is all real.
23
Hmm, wonder what you mean by
and, umm, where that comes from.
And I wonder where this comes from:
Surely not a gas 25 times more potent than CO2, using coal fired power to pump it to the home.
Surely not connected to the water grid, using coal fired power to make the water fit for consumption, and then pump that water to the house.
Surely the occupant has a job, powered by coal fired power, driving to and from work on roads lit and controlled by coal fired power, shopping in shops powered by coal fired power.
You know, where I read the word sustainable from you guys, that’s always code for paid for by somebody else.
Solar hot water system, a front end subsidy paid for by the rest of us. Solar PV rooftop systems with a front end subsidy paid for by us.
FIT paid for by us.
And your green hypocrites who have that exorbitant FIT say that they they generate equal power to what they consume, (nearly always a lie) so what they claim back at night is only what they have generated during the day. You can’t claim that back. It’s not yours any more. In your money grubbing greed, you sold it to the grid for 7 times and more what the grid has to pay for coal fired power. So having sold it, it’s not yours to claim back.
And you always say that sometime pretty soon, there will be cheap storage. Funny, the cost for that has only gone in one direction, and it’s not the cheaper direction.
You dream your green dream, and expect us to pay for it all, and call THAT sustainable.
And you wonder why we sound angry at times!
Tony.
31
BilB,
Your design,
So everyone lives in a donga, set up for families of 4, or groups of 4 people (single), they work during the day in the fields or factories for the government. Then they walk home to their family. All is provided by the government. No differences between anyone, all are equal.
Where have I seen this design before BilB?
DESIGNER (or paramount leader) BilB, are you part of the proletariat dictatorship, or do you live in a donga?
21
I’m beginning to see the problem. Don’t get out much, do we BilB?
Here is a plan for you.
Take a month off work.
Get in your car, and head over to Perth.
If you live anywhere in the Eastern States, this will involve driving through a few thousand kilometres of – pretty well NOTHING.
Once you get to Perth, turn right and head up to Tom Price.
This will take you through over another thousand kilometres of – pretty well NOTHING.
When you get to Tom Price, don’t turn right into town, turn left and go under the rail overpass.
Turn left down mine access road.
Turn right and follow the signs up to the lookout on Mt Nameless.
Get out of your car and look SSW.
You are looking at the majesty of the Tom Price Iron Ore Mine.
The home of Black Gold, the ore is so dark.
Those vast earth works have been supplying the steel mills of Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China, for over 40 years. And you know what, BilB? There’s enough proven reserves to supply the world for at least another 100 years.
That’s ONE mine, BilB.
On your way here, you passed another mine, with even greater reserves, when you went through Paraburdoo about a 100 kilometres back up the track.
We’ve been mining there for 40 years too, and you didn’t even see it.
Anyway, back to Mt Nameless.
Shuffle your feet about 15 degrees clockwise, BilB.
You are now looking SW at thousands of square kilometres of – NOTHING.
Shuffle another 15 degrees BilB, and will see yet more thousands of square kilometres of – NOTHING.
Go right around in a circle, BilB, until you once more looking at Tom Price.
What did you see? Tens of thousands of square kilometres of absolutely NOTHING.
Understand that you are in the middle of the Pilbara, BilB.
80,000 square kilometres of iron ore, and not much else.
Even the dirt under your feet is 50% iron – we only mine the stuff that’s 62.5% or better.
That’s what the Japanese wanted, when all this started.
The Chinese don’t care.
Get back in your car, drive back to the bitumen, and drive through to the Nanutarra Road.
Turn left and drive to the Coastal Highway.
What did you see? More thousands of square kilometres of – NOTHING.
Drive down the highway, and take the turn-off up to Exmouth.
Gaze in wonder at this magnificent deep-water bay.
Drive around the top and go visit the Cape Range National Park.
Take your snorkel and goggles, and go for a dive on Ningaloo Reef – every bit as impressive as the Great Barrier – and far more accessible.
Understand this area could have a satellite city of a million people now, supplying the Pilbara mines with FIFO workers. That’s what the mining companies wanted to do, 40 years ago. Like Cairns, it would have also become a tourist mecca. The politicians had other ideas.
.
Okay, enough.
When you get back, BilB, come back here and tell us again all about how “overcrowded” the planet is. (By the way, the experiment was with rats, not mice. And they didn’t “live in harmony, caring for each other” – sheesh. They stayed out of each others way. And they didn’t “breed” to unsupportable levels, the experimenters kept adding rats. ). Tell us again how we are “overconsuming”.
Do a bit of reading as well, BilB.
Learn that the world currently produces over 2 kilos of food for every human on the planet, EVERY DAY, enough to feed over 9 billion. Trouble is, around 40% of it spoils before reaching consumers, due to a lack of roads and refrigeration in places like Africa.
.
One last thing, BilB.
I’ve been to these remote minesites, because, amongst other things, I’m an expert on remote power generation. Let me assure you BilB, you will never power anything more complex than a candle-lit wattle and daub hippy commune with PV cells. Ditto for wind power. Get over it.
And the reason PV cells are not on my list, is because the technology is over a hundred years old.
Can’t blame us baby-boomers for that one.
51
Just because it is there, MV, is no reason to dig it all up in our lifetime. The Roman Empire was around for 1500 years and you’re talking about 100 year reserves?
The solar technologies of today are pretty fresh, and fall off the baby boomers plate at the other end.
You’re right in that it was rats and not mice. I was trying to be nice, rats sounded a little provocative.
23
That was just two mines, each with enough reserves for a hundred years – EACH.
And they are two pin pricks on the Pilbara, where there are over thirty such mines in current production.
Vale have similar reserves in Brazil, and Vale, BHPB and RIO all have even greater reserves in North Africa. Steel will have long been replaced with something like graphene in a moldable polymer, before we even look like being down to our last couple of hundred year’s supply of iron ore. Ditto for coal, oil, gas, potable water, and all the other things alarmists like you, are always screaming we’re on the verge of running out of.
As a certain sheik remarked at the Nohopenhagen conflab: – “We didn’t leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones”.
Just over a hundred years ago the most pressing problem facing city planners was how to get rid of all the horse manure. In fact, scientific papers were written, supporting the notion that the finite limit of horse manure extraction defined and limited just how big a city could grow. This was considered immensely important in places like London, New York and Paris.
Today it’s not considered all that big a problem.
21
The horse manure extraction angle is quite a good one. Our motor manure just blows away with the wind. Not gone for ever, though, as it is the process of blowing back in our faces in the form of global warming.
23
Would that be the global warming that isn’t, and hasn’t been for the last seventeen years?
The non-existent global warming that, nonetheless, is melting the polar ice caps?
The undetectable global warming which is currently plunging the NH into its sixth successive record cold winter?
.
Are we talking about THAT global warming, BilB?
30
In your own words, how does that cause global warming?
Do you drive a car?
20
I think that’s what these new yurts of his he is spruiking about are…. no wait…… they are still connected to the durdy coal power grid.
Oh whoopee, I have PV cells, that makes me green!!!!! Thank’s for your contribution dear taxpayer.
30
Yep, just enjoyed a day of watching 29 of them burning 4.2 litres per lap of fuel. Nothing quite like seeing them roaring around a race track for 161 laps over six hours. Marvels of engineering, every single one of them. Thanks for that Baby Boomers!
30
Not a million miles from the method of Inigo Owen Jones:
By now you’re probably wondering what Jone’s solution actually was. Put simply, he believed that cyclical variations in the activity of the sun, visible as sunspots, controlled the earth’s climate, and that these variations were themselves largely determined by the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. If you wanted to know what the weather would be like on 1 January next year, you would calculate the positions of the planets on that day and then look back through the record of weather observations to a time when the planetary positions were the same. If the locations of the planets matched, then so would the weather – more or less. Or perhaps less than more, for what seemed to set Jones apart from other weather prophets were the levels of complexity he added to this basic cyclical system.
It is worth noting that to make predictions with this system you need a very, very long, unbroken series of weather observations. Jones was fond of quoting the opinion of Queensland University’s professor of mathematics that a full test of his theory could not be made without 300 years of data. But that was only the beginning of the difficulties. First, there was some inherent variability in the sunspot cycle that could not be accounted for by the movements of the planets. Hence any prediction had to be backed up by constant study of the sun. Second, Jones claimed that the position of sunspots determined the scope of their influence. So sunspots to the south of the sun’s equator mainly affected the weather in the southern hemisphere, and vice versa. Third, there was a lag effect, caused by the melting of Antarctic ice and the cooling of ocean currents, which moderated the impact of the sunspot cycle. And last, Jones insisted that there was no single climatic cycle, but rather a series of local cycles that had to be studied and understood separately. ‘There is very little correlation between one region or locality and another’, he argued, thus ‘each locality as it has its own climate so has its own sequence’.[21]
So, it was difficult for Jones to make precise predictions. However, it was equally difficult to dismiss them, for any failure could be explained by invoking one of these modifying factors. For Jones, this system was a work in progress, the full power of which would only emerge after many years of observation and testing. But for that to be achieved he needed the cooperation of the nation’s meteorologists.
10
Wow… he sounds like the father of modern climate science….
00
I once worked with a mathematician who told me “give me 6 degrees of freedom and I’ll build you a model that will interpolate any data set you come up with…. extrapolation is a different story”.
10
… and did he work it out with a pencil?
02
Slide rule.
10
Slide rule? What’s that, Mark? 😉
Actually I still have two fairly expensive Pickett & Eckle slide rules I was required to use in college, probably $100 bucks or more between them (1960’s dollars and a pretty dear price for a student paying his own way), sitting in a drawer gathering dust.
Now a calculator bought off the shelf at office depot for $30 or less can do all that and more — with better precision too. The slide rules don’t even make good paperweights. The more expensive one is designed for electronic engineers and has so many scales I can’t begin to figure it all out.
I should donate them to a museum someday — the horse and buggy days of calculation.
10
Jeez Roy,
if I send you my address will you mail me one of them.
Only kidding, but I just love those old things. We had to use them for our trade courses back in the late 60’s, and we thought we were in heaven after those little log books from High School. As Trade trainees, we were issued slide rules, and we had to sign for them as they were V and A items, and we guarded them very carefully as their cost was worth way more than we were paid as trainees.
When I went back to the School as a Trades Instructor, the weapon of choice was a calculator, and because they were all different and they didn’t want the students to have the umm, programmable calculators, all trade trainees were issued Casio fx-100C engineering calculators for ease of standardisation, again all issued and all signed for.
Instructors were given them, and I still have mine here at my desk, used daily, and often times daily. I wish I still had a slide rule though, They were cool.
Tony.
20
Interpolation is a trivial problem that anyone familiar with a little math can do. The problem comes in when you try to interpolate beyond the end of your data. The world of climate science is trying to do exactly that with its models and it provably isn’t working. 🙁
20
You see this foolishness all the time in merchant banking – some fool who thinks they’ve concocted some moving average marvel which can predict future market movements. As evidence they inevitably demonstrate the hindcast skill of their system.
00
Hi Eric…. It just so happens that my lovely wife works in financial markets, particularly currency. One day years ago I was reading a book called “Critical Mass – how one thing leads to another”. Great book, I recommend it. One chapter is called Rhythms of the Market or similar… in this chapter the author explained about how an economist sometime somewhere analysed stock prices (or similar) prior to the 1929 crash. He found some correlation between the logarithm of certain cycle periods and the Fibonacci sequence (that’s from memory, it was something like that). I laughed out loud when I read this, my wife asked what was funny, I explained, she listened intently and then told me that the bank computers were continually monitoring the market for these Fibonacci sequences (amongst other things) because it is now a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t have to be true. If one computer finds the sequence it will trigger a mass selling and you don’t want to get caught by acting late so your computer has to be ready to go if the sequence comes up. Models are not reality but they sure can affect the perception of reality.
00
The whole forcings concept of the GCMs is wrong. The base science for the models is at failure and the result is the failure of the models. Crap.
They need to put good engineering heat transfer models at work with proper ocean/atmosphere heat transfer – which means a new class of models needs to come to play.
GCM models are good for 2-3 days weather forecast, and there they should stay.
Scafetta is looking about history and cycles which is better then GCM models, but first these are dependent on the history data and recognising cycles in it – so the question is how good the history data is, especially with the now ever changing history record and secondly how do we know the cycle will be really complete, or shortened or attenuated etc etc by other factors.
These my two skeptical cents….
00
Well Nova Folk, I’ve presented upthread real data (no modelling or interpretation) on what is happening in the atmosphere and at the North Pole. You can take it or leave it, but understand that no opinion can change the reality of what is happening. I’ve pointed out a key flaw in Scaffeta’s argument on solar influences in that the heat delivery variability to the planet surface is minimal and can be having only a very marginal effect on Global Warming. Having now delved a little more into Scaffetta’s argument I can point out another serious flaw, and that is that he is attempting to draw global conclusions from European temperature records (also a limitation of Bruce from Newcastles’ model). Europe’s temperature is affected by both the Atlantic Conveyor which delivers enough energy from the Indian ocean to raise average European temperatures by 5 deg C, and variations in the Arctic high pressure cell. As a result no results from European atmospheric temperature records can be considered to be representative of global temperature trends. A further flaw in Scaffetta’s argument is in that Global Warming does not mean ever rising temperatures, it means a rising “average temperature”. This will be seen not so much in higher upper temperatures but in higher lower temperatures, and with longer duration. The consequence of this is a drying out of land in areas of moderate rainfall ie most everywhere.
The significance of baby boomers, of whom I am one, is that they were born when the world’s human population was 2.5 billion. They have grown and experienced the world when its population was at a pleasent 3+ billion and in their sunset years occupy most key roles of influence and control most of the earth’s property and wealth when the population is at 7 billion. The boomer’s mentality is locked onto the Earth as it was in the “good years” of the 60’s to the 90’s and are failing to recognise that every index of global stability and sustainability is pointing towards disaster.
For example, as I was driving down to my factory this morning a huge tanker truck and trailer exiting a service station blocked my path leaving me thinking how this related to me. So assuming 40,000 litres at first thought this would fuel my household for a very long time I would have assumed withou thinking about it. Well at 80 litres per week for my wife and myself together, neither daughter has a car yet, that would keep us going for just 9.6 years of fairly conservative driving. So with the global registered vehicle fleet having risen from 50 million vehicles in 1950 to 1 billion in 2010 (20 fold increase) the global fuel consumption is at an astronomical 39 million full tankers per year, and rising,
http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch1en/conc1en/peoplepercar.html
yet we baby boomers (who command most of the roles of influence, still) remember the good times of driving back in the 60’s and 70’s and, in ostrich fashion, base our perceptions and projections upon those memories.
Our world is changing rapidly. It is important to recognise that. The fact is that there is only one Final Climate Eventuality. No amount of blustering opinion will change that, yours or mine. The other reality is that we will know in just a few short decades absolutely without doubt what that Future Global Climate will be like, and we had better have made the right choices now.
24
I am particularly interested in this aspect however have totally missed what you have to say about the North Pole. Were you telling us why the ice melted so much last year or what?
Please give us a concise explanation on what you think is happening, but please without links elsewhere, just your own words.
11
Having never been to the North Pole I rely on the photo evidence and reports of those who have, and this includes satelite imagery. In my own words, backslider, this is what I believe is happening in the Arctic:
The Arctic sea ice is dispersing and melting at a steady rate camparable with the increase in Global Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations. As the old age sea ice reduces the winter ice becomes thinner and breaks apart more easily increasing its melt rate each summer. Further, as the summer ice disintegrates the submerged perma frost in the shallows of the Barents Sea is releasing huge amounts of methane gas. This melt is certain to accelerate.
25
How exactly does an increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations melt ice in the Arctic?
20
Backslider you really do need to do some reading. I suggest that you start here….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
24
No Bilbo…. I want YOUR explanation.
You state:
It could also be comparable with the price of cornflakes. You however assert that for some reason a rise in CO2 has caused ice in the Arctic to melt. I want YOUR explanation of exactly how that has come about. What exactly has happened to cause the ice to melt?
21
Interesting that you mention
So the IPCC in their latest report state that they are highly confident that a methane release is ‘Very Unlikely.
Despite ‘camparable’ not being a word in the English language, I assume you meant ‘comparable’. I am interested as to how one may compare global CO2 levels with NH sea ice extent. We can only assume you mean that their appears to be a correlation between the two, but, as has been pointed elsewhere on this thread, correlation doesn’t equal causation. Maybe you could ‘campere’ the global CO2 levels with SH sea ice extent and see how you go.
20
Clathrates and permafrost methane are two entirely different problems, Heywood. The shallow submerged permafrost is melting much faster than the land based permafrost due to the rising sea temperatures.
Clathrates are at depth and maintained by both temperature and pressure. Rapid release of the Arctic Clathrates of which there are some 13 trillion tonnes is less likely as it would require the Atlantic conveyor current to penetrate deep into the Arctic Ocean, but that is being prevented by huge amounts of fresh water run of from melting ice and permafrost (fresh water being lighter than salt water rides over and forces the warm current to submerge and return towards the south). However once that tussle with the fresh water Arctic region runoff is won by the current (likely to also coincide with a reduction in Amazon freshwater output) the Clathrate release will be very dramatic, and devastating.
The IPCC is being very conservative as they must stay within the bounds of quantitatively proven science.
15
Xiang Gao et al 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 035014
“Permafrost degradation and methane: low risk of biogeochemical climate-warming feedback”
40
Try this one then. But it may have been taken on a movie set in Arizona.
00
Well it’s been more than 24 hours since I indicated I would also take up the bet with unbolt and there’s been no response so I assume he was not serious about it. I’ll give him another 24 hours and then withdraw my offer.
20
[…] Jo Nova notes that solar models beat IPCC models […]
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Scafetta is fiddling around the edges, and his numbers are wrong. Alex S. Gaddes worked out these Solar relationships (and provided exact numerical values and predictions,) in his work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990) I offer this extract from a reply to an individual on another thread.
“To say the time scales involved in Climate variation are ‘decadal’, or ’multi-decadal’ is a ‘base ten’ construct that has nothing to do with the actual maths involved – but is a result of the age of ‘computer modelling’, bearing no resemblance to reality. I am aware of no ‘decadal’ time-frames existing anywhere in the climate workings of the planet. For example, the ‘Sunspot Cycle’ period is 11.028148 Earth years. The Solar Rotation Rate at the Sunspot Latitude is 27 Earth days. The ‘Dry’ Cycles, acting in ‘concert’ and relevant to immediate concern, are 6.75 and 2.25 Earth years in duration. The important Lunar Metonic cycle is 18.61 Earth years.
Note; The Earth year is the time taken for the Earth to orbit 360 degrees around the Sun. (ie. 360 days, 12 x 30 day months.)
Alex S. Gaddes showed in his work, ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (1990), that these (Solar induced) ‘Dry’ Cycles travel longitudinally around the planet from East to West, (thirty degrees/month with the Solar orbit of the Earth’s Magnetic Field,) thus, affecting both Poles simultaneously. The passing of these ‘Dry’ Cycles ( and the ‘Wet’/Normal Periods between,) explain the fluctuations in surface temperature so eagerly grasped upon by AGW proponents as ‘proof’ of impending doom. There is no ‘missing’ heat.
ENSO always was a fantasy – perpetuated in the mid 1970’s from the University of East Anglia and ‘exported’ to Australia, (and other places,) where it thrived under the sacrosanct auspices of the BoM, and their ‘sweetheart’ relationship with the mainstream media.
Many millions of dollars later, the deluded and the fraudsters are found out.
An updated version of the work ‘Tomorrow’s Weather’ (including ‘Dry’ Cycle forecasts to 2055,) is available as a free pdf from dongaddes93@gmail .com
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Lovely cycles Don. What are they? How fdi they work? Are they the product of something other than the outcome of one interpretation of a chosen subset of data?
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I invite you to read the work – and then comment.
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i invite you to provide a mechanism
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For reading, eyes usually work best.
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Graphs showing the reconstruction of the global temperature over the life of the Earth show it was mostly much warmer than today. More detailed reconstructions over the past few thousand years show several warm periods [Late Bronze Age, Roman and Mediaeval] all of which were much warmer than today.
This is a problem if you want to suggest Man is the only factor in determining climate via CO2 so you claim the only data which is valid is that collected ‘since records began’. In the UK this was about 1850, but for global records you can push it to 1900.
Okay, so you can ignore 4 billion years of the Earth’s climate history and say the 100+ years of data is completely representative. There is still a problem – even with only a hundred years there ‘was’ distinct warming from 1910 to 1940 and distinct cooling from 1940 to 1970. 1940 is the year that supposedly Man is first able to affect the climate significantly. The solution is to ‘modify’ the data from 1910 to 1970 and flatten it out.
Now the warming period from 1970 to 1998 stands out.This highly contrived 28 year period of warming is the ONLY support for CAGW. It is even less than the 30 years where a change is considered [by some, when it suits them] to be significant.
The alternative view is the well documented interaction between the Sun and the oceans giving a 60 year cycle of warming and cooling on top of a warming trend from 1800. This gave warming from 1910 to 1940, cooling from 1940 to 1970, warming from 1970 to [about] 2000, and then a cooling trend to 2030.
The question now, considering the Sun’s behaviour, is whether the warming trend from 1800 is still intact.
It would seem that the influences of the Sun, plus the influences of water on Earth [in all its’ forms], and the interactions between the two are sufficient to explain the Global temperature. Unfortunately CAGW pretty much ignores both of these factors. It brings to mind the time when the medical consensus was that blood-letting was a cure for many ailments. If no one looks at any alternatives you can’t be proved wrong!
However 15 years after any rational support for CAGW the
GreedGreen lobby still has most Governments in developed countries doing their bidding. The question is whether they turn away from this before or after their economies collapse!40