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Conventional models assume increasing atmospheric CO2 warms the surface, then apply the feedbacks to the surface warming. But if feedbacks start up in the atmosphere instead, everything changes.
This is a post with big potential. A feedback the other climate models miss?
All the establishment models assume carbon dioxide warms the sky, which leads to the surface warming*, and the feedbacks then apply to the surface warming. It’s in the model architecture, the models can’t do it any other way. But what if the feedbacks don’t wait — what if the feedbacks start right away, up in the atmosphere? What if, say, CO2 warms the air, and that affects humidity and or clouds right then and there? These would be feedbacks operating on tropospheric warming, and they can reroute that energy.
Potentially, this blows everything away. If the energy blocked by increasing CO2 is merely escaping Earth through emissions from another gas in the atmosphere, like say, the dominant greenhouse gas, water-vapor, then could this explain why the effect of Co2 has been exaggerated in the conventional models?
We call this the “rerouting feedback” because when it’s harder for energy to escape to space through the CO2 pipe, this […]
The Earth’s atmosphere is a leaky bucket, with four big holes (and a lot of little ones).
Whole libraries have been filled with talk of a single characteristic emissions layer — a simplistic idea that there is one effective “surface” that radiates to space. It exists in an abstract sense, after sufficient averaging, but it’s a paradigm that doesn’t help us think clearly. In any case, it’s too simple for our purposes in this series. In reality there are many layers that radiate to space, different for each type of molecule that can emit longwave radiation (which means infrared). Then there are the surface and cloud-tops too.
Energy comes in one way but leaves through at least four different paths.
To follow this series you’ll need to understand the concept of four pipes through which energy flows to space. It’s a powerful idea and big advance on the simpler notion of one-pipe-in and one-pipe-out. For those not as familiar with photons and excited molecules, you may want to read the “Background” section at the end of the post first.
For a photon there are a lot of paths to space
Some photons at Earths surface will be at […]
And the series continues, poking another hole in the models, with bigger holes to come.
See the larger version in the post below
What if CO2 caused more greenery, which produced more volatile organic gases, which increased rainfall and changed cloud cover? The models would be blind to it. They’re “supercomputer-complicated”, but miss many of the feedbacks on Earth. The only feedbacks the models consider are ones that occur because of changes in temperature. And worse, it’s not just changes in temperature, but specifically, changes in surface temperature.
If, say, cosmic rays caused a change in cloud cover, or the Sun influenced ozone which in turn caused the jet streams to shift closer to the equator, there are no feedbacks worth mentioning according to the large GCM models. The conventional basic model assumes, is built on the idea that nothing causes changes to Earth’s climate unless it works through surface heating — and the GCMs have the same architecture. Cloud cover does not change ice cover. Ocean currents don’t change cloud cover. Changes in biology don’t change clouds. Only changes in surface temperature changes cloud cover.
It’s a good place to start looking for missing negative feedbacks (though, […]
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And so begins the list of errors. The conventional basic climate model (see post 1 for why it is important, post2 and post 3 for what it is) is based on partial derivatives of dependent variables, and that’s a No No. Let me explain: effectively basic climate models model a hypothetical world where all things freeze in a constant state while one factor doubles.* But in the real world, many variables are changing simultaneously and the rules are different.
Partial differentials of dependent variables is a wildcard — it may produce an OK estimate sometimes, but other times it produces nonsense, and ominously, there is effectively no way to test. If the basic climate models predicted the climate, we’d know they got away with it. They didn’t, but we can’t say if they failed because of a partial derivative. It could have been something else. We just know it’s bad practice.
To see an example of how partial differentials can produce quixotic contradictions in a normal and simple situation, see what happens when they are used with the Ideal Gas Law in this PDF from MIT.
Partial derivatives are useful […]
Read the post to see it properly.
A feast. A feast! For those who want the meat, the math and the diagrams (don’t miss the diagrams). As far as we know, this is the first time the architecture of the basic climate model has been laid out in one place on the Net. This is the most math heavy post this series, but it has to be done, and properly. This is where the 1.2 °C direct effect of doubling CO2 gets amplified to 2.5 °C with fairly basic physics. If the equations are not your forte, look at the “the Establishment Case” below the equations to get some idea why establishment scientists find it mind-bendingly hard to imagine how climate sensitivity could possibly be much different.
For commenters who know there are problems with this model (don’t we all), one of the points of doing this is to get through to the establishment leaders — to speak their language instead of having separate conversations. Of course, for some minds it will not matter what skeptical scientists say, but for other, key people, it will. We would expect seeing the flaws laid out so clearly will undercut the implacable […]
This is the most uncontroversial post ever put on this blog — it’s everything the IPCC would agree with and the key to their unshakable confidence.
This post is for the independent thinkers, the brains that want to know exactly where the famous, core, 1.2 °C figure comes from. That’s the number of degrees that a doubling of CO2 would bring, and it’s a figure that underlies decades of research and the figure that the big models are built around. Here, as far as we know, is the simplest, accurate reference to that reasoning and their maths. We have always assumed the 1.2 °C figure is correct, and focused on questioning the feedbacks that are assumed to drive that base figure up to 3°C (or 6°C or molten-Venus-here-we-come!)
We are not criticizing the estimate here, but this is so key and central to the whole climate-clean-green industry, and the models, it has to be laid out. This is the source of “implacable confidence” among the leading thinkers of establishment climate science. It is long past time that skeptical scientists put these details — warts and all — out in public. Dr David Evans is laying out the foundation […]
For those of you who are die-hard puzzle solvers here to spar about cutting edge research: good news, here’s where we begin the long awaited update to Dr David Evans’ climate research. There are a few surprises, sacred cows, we did not expect we would need to challenge, like the idea of “forcings”.
Government science is stuck in a rut, strangled – trying to capture the creative genius of discovery and force it through a bureaucratic formula, like it can work to a deadline or be judged by the number of papers, or pages, or citations, or by b-grade officials. Blogs are new, but this form of independent scientific research, done for the thrill of discovery, outside institutions and funded by philanthropists, is the way science was mainly done before WWII.
For the first time we are going to explain the architecture of the inner core of the climate models, the small model at the center that the big GCM’s are built around. It is mostly a physics model, and it’s mostly “basic” and mostly right. It’s the reason for the implacable confidence of the establishment in the climate debate. But there are a couple of big problems… […]
Flagging an update (coming) to Big News Part III
Score 1 for open science review, thanks to Bernie Hutchins, an electrical engineer who diligently asked the right questions about something that bothered him regarding the notching effect. We’re grateful. This will improve the model. On the downside, it means we’re slightly less certain of the delay (darn) — the notch doesn’t guarantee a delay as we had previously thought. But there is independent evidence suggesting temperatures on Earth follow solar activity with a one cycle delay — the lag seen in studies like Archibald, Friis-Christainsen and Usoskin is still a lag.
What does it mean? The step-response graph (figure 2 in Part III or figure 4 in Part IV) will change, and needs to be redone. The reason for assuming there is a delay, and building it into the model, rests now on the independent studies, and not on the notch. The new step change will need to be built into the model, and in a few weeks we’ll know how the predictions or hindcasting change. David feels reasonably sure it won’t make much difference to the broad picture, because a step-response something like figure 4, Part IV, explains global […]
Leif Svalgaard claims “TSI has not fallen since 2003”. It’s technically true in a sense, but demonstrably false when discussing 11 year smoothed trends (which is written on the graph he was criticizing). Willis Eschenbach sadly was carried along. This post is in response to an overheated thread at WUWT. Both men owe David Evans an apology.
The fuss is over the big fall in TSI. Leif Svalgaard said it was “almost fraudulent” that we claimed there was a fall in TSI since 2003 since there wasn’t a fall in this dataset. He says: “There is no such drop.” I say, look at the graph below, it’s even in your own data. Svalgaard provided the link to his TSI set, and we’ve included that line in the graph below. It’s the light-purple line. (Has he paid attention for the last ten years?)
In his rush to call it “totally wrong” and to declare “the model is already falsified” he didn’t notice we were talking about a trend in 11 year smoothed TSI, and the fall is evident in whole cycles (but takes some wisdom to find in daily or monthly data). I guess that’s a mistake that could happen to […]
To recap — using an optimal Fourier Transform, David Evans discovered a form of notch filter operating between changes in sunlight and temperatures on Earth. This means there must be a delay — probably around 11 years. This not only fitted with the length of the solar dynamo cycle, but also with previous independent work suggesting a lag of ten years or a correlation with the solar activity of the previous cycle. The synopsis then is that solar irradiance (TSI) is a leading indicator of some other effect coming from the Sun after a delay of 11 years or so.
The discovery of this delay is a major clue about the direction of our future climate. The flickers in sunlight run a whole sunspot cycle ahead of some other force from the sun. Knowing that solar irradiance dropped suddenly from 2003 onwards tells us the rough timing of the fall in temperature that’s coming (just add a solar cycle length). What it doesn’t tell us is the amplitude — the size of the fall. That’s where the model may (or may not) tell us what we want to know. That test is coming, and very soon. This is an unusual […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting (You are here) | VIII — Predictions
All models are wrong, some are useful. That’s how all modelers speak (except perhaps some climate scientists).
The barriers to making a good climate model are many. The data is short, noisy, adjusted, and many factors are simultaneously at work, some not well described yet. Climate modeling is in its infancy, yet billions of dollars rests on the assumption that CO2 will cause catastrophic warming and the evidence that most recent warming was due to CO2 comes entirely out of models. It’s important to focus on the pea:
“No climate model that has used natural forcing only has reproduced the observed global mean warming trend” (IPCC 2007)
It is a crucial plank that modelers say “we can’t explain the current warming without CO2”. Current climate models assume that changes in solar radiation have a small immediate effect and solar magnetic […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model (You are here) | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
Open Science live — The story so far: Dr David Evans is building the O-D notch-delay solar model. It’s a much simpler big-picture approach than Global Climate Coupled Models. They use an ambitious bottom-up system where the models add up every small aspect in every small cell of the Earth’s climate atmosphere and oceans and try to predict everything, but the trap is the errors — small errors in 10,000 calculations add up to big-mush. David’s approach is top-down. He looks at the whole system from the outside, and doesn’t try to understand or predict each individual part. It’s a way of starting at the start — to shed light on the big forces and processes that happen as energy arrives on Earth, gets reflected, or blended, and eventually changes the surface temperature. His model won’t tell us what happens to rainfall in Sudan in 2050, but […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat (You are here). | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
David Evans has analyzed the black box system that is effectively “Sunlight In, Temperature Out”, and found a notch, a delay, and a low pass filter. The problem then is to work out their order and to fill in any other bits needed by the model. This post then, doesn’t have big blockbuster moments (sorry), but these points need to be said.
Energy leaves Earth through a range of electromagnetic frequencies, but the bulk of them can be grouped into three main “pipes”. Radiation either comes directly off the land, oceans, ice and what-not on the ground, or it leaves via the atmosphere. Up in the air, carbon dioxide and water molecules do most of the work sending emissions of infra red to outer space. In the atmosphere, the radiating “surface” is a virtual concept and is effectively at different heights for different greenhouse gases. This is all non-controversial […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? (You are here) | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
Implacably, the discovery of a notch suggests a delay of anything from 10 to 20 years but most likely 11 years. (Don’t miss the delay post — two very big important concepts out in two posts). The big mystery is what could cause such a long delay in the correlation of solar radiation with temperatures on Earth?
David and I spent months wondering “what on Earth” could drive it. There were many possibilities though none of them seemed to be able to respond with the right timing: A resonant slop in ocean circulation could absorb extra energy, but it was difficult to see how the timing would be so tight with solar peaks. Likewise changes in ice or land cover. Then there are lunar cycles of 9 – 18 years, potentially generating atmospheric standing waves, but they were not synchronous with the sun.
Given that marine life can produce […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter | III: The delay (you are here) | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
UPDATE: July 21 Thanks to Bernie Hutchins, David found a problem with the code, which means the notch no longer guarantees a delay. The delay still likely exists (see the other evidence in the references below) but this post, particularly figure 2 needs correction and updating. – Jo
Strap yourself in. The Notch in the Earth’s response to incoming solar energy means that every 11 years (roughly) the solar energy peaks, and at the same time the climate’s response to the extra energy changes. What on Earth is going on?
The thing about notch filters that is hard for anyone who isn’t an electrical engineer to understand is that it appears to start working before “the event” it is filtering out. This is obvious in the step response graph. That’s Figure 2 – which shows what happens where there is a […]
The Solar Series: I Background | II: The notch filter (you are here) | III: The delay | IV: A new solar force? | V: Modeling the escaping heat. | VI: The solar climate model | VII — Hindcasting | VIII — Predictions
This is the first of many posts. It is primarily about the entirely new discovery of a notch filter, which electrical engineers will immediately recognize, but few others will know. Notch filters are used in electronics to filter out a hum or noise. You will have some at home, but everyone seems to have missed the largest notch filter running on the planet.
This post is also about the broad outline of the new solar model. It’s a O-D (zero-dimensional) model. Its strength lies in its simplicity — it’s a top down approach. That solves a lot of problems the larger ambitious GCMs create — they are a bottom up approach, and effectively drown in the noise and uncertainty. This model does not even attempt to predict regional or seasonal effects at this stage. First things first — we need to […]
Behind the scenes a major advance has been quietly churning. It is something I have barely even hinted at. (Oh how I wanted to!)You may have noticed my other half Dr David Evans has been quiet — it’s not because he’s moved out of the climate debate, instead a strange combination of factors has pulled him full time into climate research. Things have been very busy here. He’s discovered something extraordinary, and like all real science, it’s been a roller-coaster where the theory appeared to collapse, and we nearly gave up, but then a new insight would turn out to be more valuable than the version that went before. Other times it all seemed so obvious in hindsight we wondered why no one had done this before. But the answer is that there is a very unusual combination of factors at work — how many people have Ivy League experience in Fourier maths, and electrical circuits and have worked as a professional modeler, software developer, and have an interest in the finer details and theory of the climate debate? Who of the people with this background would also be prepared to spend months working unpaid to investigate a non-CO2 climate […]
[See our one-page version of this whole issue.]
Thanks to Frank Brus, at least one camera is now on YouTube in full, with sound. 🙂 Many thanks to other skeptics who volunteered with other helpful suggestions and ideas: to J.J., Ruth, Jim, and Raymond. Thanks to Steve for info about bit-torrent (at least we don’t have to go there this time).
An excellent talent pool out there. I didn’t even know some people had access to post Very Long Movies on Youtube (1 hour 56 mins.) Some of my favourite points are at the end. Check out the last 15 minutes.
There were two cameras recording at the same time:
View 2 (Front more distant camera)
…
OR (UPDATE) View 1 (Back camera view) closer.
Thanks to Barry Corke for driving hundreds of kilometers with his high tech equipment to record this for no fee at all!
The original post has all the background and information on this video: ABC Doco “UnCut”: Evans, Nova, Minchin and Rose — the full unedited video. Look for the moment when Anna is surprised we agree with CO2 being a greenhouse gas: “How can you be skeptical?” Notice when she […]
UPDATED (Already) Money is grubby thing, but financial independence means freedom. Freedom to spend time writing what a heart believes instead of what an employer demands. (Freedom to follow the most inexplicable whim — like tossing the 9-5 day to debate details of dendroclimatology with people who detest you). I wouldn’t be able to indulge in the luxury of writing this blog if it weren’t for the gold shares that keep food on the table. Next Monday David is speaking at The Gold Symposium in Sydney. (I’ll be in the audience.) Who should go? — only people who don’t want to be poor. I want to see both these independent conferences succeed (The AEF too), I want to share the word about both money and science, and I want to help independent spirits meet up. That’s why I’m giving them both a shameless plug before the article. There is a big overlap between gold and skepticism: skeptical of government science often means skeptical of government money too (see We are all Austrians now). For the pure-science readers here, it may all seem thoroughly odd, but while some will paint gold as a fatuous symbol of pointless wealth – and sometimes […]
Got no evidence? Can’t hold a rational discussion? Just call people names — smear them.
David Evans (my other half) pointed out that anyone who opposed the regulating class gets called a racist sooner or later (see those quotes at the end). Now it’s happened to him. Two weeks after getting a mention of climate “feedbacks” into The Age, he’s being called antisemitic. And on what basis? Wait for it… two years ago, on a different topic, Dr David Evans wrote the word “Rothschilds”. Then those who can’t think, but were keen to do a character assassination, leapt to use their psychic abilities, crack secret codes, and drew on their best kindergarten reasoning to call that “antisemitic”. The essay was about banking history and systematic flaws in our currency system, and there was no mention of any religion or any race. But no matter, it’s just another variation of the pathetic Holocaust denier meme. It’s what a smear-artist does — denigrate speakers to try to stop people hearing their message.
As usual, a lack of evidence doesn’t stop the rabid conspiracy-theory-spotters from writing reams of speculation about something that isn’t there and never was. David has never mentioned anything about […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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