Post by icefisher on Nov 2, 2012 22:00:42 GMT
Couple of issues there. First, I don't trust politicians or economic models because the honest politician gets voted out when he calls it how he sees it leaving only the dishonest politician willing to cut taxes, spending and regulation and pretending all is hunky dory behind.
There is a whole lot buried in that statement. Let me take it piece by piece.
First, I have experience in economic models. I don't trust them much either. Why? The reason I don't trust them much is there are variables that we do not understand well.
In fact other types of modeling I am familiar with like Climate Models have exactly the same problem. What controls clouds, what controls the sun, how does the sun interact with the earth besides total watts? Obviously its a lot more than watts, in fact Steve, if it that was not the case, climate models would not work with CO2 either.
Ignroing other stuff when we know they have an effect, like ruling out solar variation, is like doing an economic model and ignoring inflation.
Gee we don't know how it works so lets just ignore it! This is the real genesis of the hockey stick. Smart guys pointed out the model is ignoring stuff that caused variation in the past, since there is no explanation for that lets cast doubt on past variation instead! Made to order science! Science so stretched scientists are in effect reading tea leaves and giving interpretations of what they say.
Economic models will always go wrong because people can react to economic models and take advantage of their flaws (eg. increasing their borrowing more than anyone could imagine because credit is cheap). Physics, though, doesn't care for people's perceptions and expectations.
So you think the destruction of economic models is evil anthropogenic intent to subvert them? LOL! Now that has to be black helicopters on a world wide scale!
I will assume thats not the case and what you meant to say is people can make free choices but physics does not provide free choice. I am not going to get into the philosophic difficulties of that view but its probably mostly wrong. People react to real needs. Food, shelter, love, etc. Better understanding of those can lead to better economic models.
At his point in time, based upon success vs failure, my experience says economic models work better than climate models. Of course that doesn't mean they always work. Like an asteroid strike screwing a climate model, economic models can be betrayed by unforeseen systemic problems, like failing to foresee the consequences of new investment vehicles that have become hugely attractive for moving money around in an economy. Since I have worked in auditing some new fad areas myself. I can appreciate Greenspan's comments that one cannot expect that regulators would have been any smarter than investors, nor would they necessarily have identified the problem sooner.
These are not real differences. Its about incomplete knowledge and incomplete experience.
Second, honest politicians get voted out? Hmmm, clearly a good liar has an advantage. Like any con man a trusting personality goes a long ways in achieving the evil aims of the con man. But that does not rule out an honest man appealing to the electorate. In fact, thats why I voted for McCain, I thought he was being far more honest. Mitt Romney is making a lot of mileage on Obama's unfulfilled promises while unilaterally pushing through legislation to get the republican's backs up after promising to reach across the aisle. His excuse is that fight needed to be fought! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
I think its more about failing to till common ground. Something the honest guy can do if he is a good leader and a good communicator and has promised to reach across the aisle.
Basically extra CO2 will cause warming unless something else prevents it (such as volcanic aerosols, pollution, low solar activity, temporary natural variability) cos the physics says it will. So it was warming, it is still warming and it will warm.
I disagree with that. Certainly I could be made to agree with it if somebody would fill in some blanks adequately. The four blanks I have trouble filling in are
1) equating surface radiating temperature to climate temperature. Fact is they are practically never even close so where does the idea come from when you average them they are identical?
2) what is the real equilibrium temperature of the planet? SB equations say albedo does not affect equilibrium temperature.
3) convection is capable of changing the temperature of the bottom of the ocean all by itself without radiation.
So why should it be considered only a feedback?
The ocean is on average is about 10 degreesC cooler than the near surface climate. I find it fascinating that the average temperature of the ocean is almost exactly what the equilibrium temperature of the earth would be if albedo should not used to estimate the earth's equilibrium temperature. It seems to me that the average temperature of the atmosphere could be very close to the same equilibrium as the ocean.
Then we have Mark Serreze tell us that a cooler stratosphere, due to a lack of ozone rotates back to the surface (presumably via convection) and cools the surface (or at least I guess the near surface climate-confusion has a way of compounding itself)
4) is the solar heat pump model. The solar heat pump model suggests that a planet with an atmosphere of gases without radiative properties (transparent to all frequencies of light) would have convection to warm it and practically nothing to cool it.
Almost certainly the atmosphere would be near uniform in temperature and that uniformity would extend to very near the ground, like inches away.
So what I am getting to with this example is your claim that CO2 would cause warming if nothing else prevented it.
I could potentially agree that adding CO2 to a planet without an atmosphere would warm the surface (though it apparently does not on Mars so there is a bit more to it).
But if I had a bucket and the bottom of the bucket was 0degC and I fill the bucket halfway with 60C water, the bottom of the bucket will warm to close to 60C. If I then fill the bucket to full with with 30C water, then the bucket bottom will cool back to about 45C.
So it can also be said the 30C water will warm the bucket bottom from empty by nearly 30C.
When we talk about the greenhouse effect we are talking about an empty bucket but CO2 is not the only matter in the bucket. I see no support for the idea that the near surface climate would not be affected purely by convection in the absence of greenhouse gases, though I can agree that this distinction may or may not apply to the radiating surface of the real surface, which we don't measure.
Second, the snow issues in the UK relate more to businesses cutting cost with unrealistic expections. The night Heathrow got closed down I was flying into Gatwick and travelling with colleagues who were taking another flight at the same time to Heathrow. My flight was a bit delayed, but fine. My colleagues were stuck for 2 days. I drove back via the M25 passing very close to Heathrow - there wasn't much snow on the roads. Basically at the time Heathrow were owned by a Spanish company, Ferrovial, who don't understand snow.
Like Met season predictions didn't matter a whit! One has to wonder what the damned organization is good for in the first place if nobody important pays any attention to it!
Since the Met found it necessary to drop out of the seasonal prediction game it must have affected more than a Spanish company and air travelers. If not then it just might be true the organization isn't good for anything climate/seasonally related.
Seems to me the message is clear. . . .climate prediction is not ready for prime time.
The truth is economic models actually do work but without 100% reliability. Political ones tend to seldom work because as you say they are the product of a lying politician. However, the economic studies commissioned by businesses do work more often than not. That of course does not mean that asteroids never blow them up though.
In fact Steve, that political advocacy point is something one can use for some general rule making about models of complicated systems in general.
Any model you didn't personally contract for and pay for is probably a model that advocates stuff to somebody else's benefit other than your own.
In my view having a healthy respect for the truth of that leads righteously to healthy skepticism. Fortunately the weather service has done a good job. One can expect politicians to try to gain ground on that respect.
There is a whole lot buried in that statement. Let me take it piece by piece.
First, I have experience in economic models. I don't trust them much either. Why? The reason I don't trust them much is there are variables that we do not understand well.
In fact other types of modeling I am familiar with like Climate Models have exactly the same problem. What controls clouds, what controls the sun, how does the sun interact with the earth besides total watts? Obviously its a lot more than watts, in fact Steve, if it that was not the case, climate models would not work with CO2 either.
Ignroing other stuff when we know they have an effect, like ruling out solar variation, is like doing an economic model and ignoring inflation.
Gee we don't know how it works so lets just ignore it! This is the real genesis of the hockey stick. Smart guys pointed out the model is ignoring stuff that caused variation in the past, since there is no explanation for that lets cast doubt on past variation instead! Made to order science! Science so stretched scientists are in effect reading tea leaves and giving interpretations of what they say.
Economic models will always go wrong because people can react to economic models and take advantage of their flaws (eg. increasing their borrowing more than anyone could imagine because credit is cheap). Physics, though, doesn't care for people's perceptions and expectations.
So you think the destruction of economic models is evil anthropogenic intent to subvert them? LOL! Now that has to be black helicopters on a world wide scale!
I will assume thats not the case and what you meant to say is people can make free choices but physics does not provide free choice. I am not going to get into the philosophic difficulties of that view but its probably mostly wrong. People react to real needs. Food, shelter, love, etc. Better understanding of those can lead to better economic models.
At his point in time, based upon success vs failure, my experience says economic models work better than climate models. Of course that doesn't mean they always work. Like an asteroid strike screwing a climate model, economic models can be betrayed by unforeseen systemic problems, like failing to foresee the consequences of new investment vehicles that have become hugely attractive for moving money around in an economy. Since I have worked in auditing some new fad areas myself. I can appreciate Greenspan's comments that one cannot expect that regulators would have been any smarter than investors, nor would they necessarily have identified the problem sooner.
These are not real differences. Its about incomplete knowledge and incomplete experience.
Second, honest politicians get voted out? Hmmm, clearly a good liar has an advantage. Like any con man a trusting personality goes a long ways in achieving the evil aims of the con man. But that does not rule out an honest man appealing to the electorate. In fact, thats why I voted for McCain, I thought he was being far more honest. Mitt Romney is making a lot of mileage on Obama's unfulfilled promises while unilaterally pushing through legislation to get the republican's backs up after promising to reach across the aisle. His excuse is that fight needed to be fought! Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
I think its more about failing to till common ground. Something the honest guy can do if he is a good leader and a good communicator and has promised to reach across the aisle.
Basically extra CO2 will cause warming unless something else prevents it (such as volcanic aerosols, pollution, low solar activity, temporary natural variability) cos the physics says it will. So it was warming, it is still warming and it will warm.
I disagree with that. Certainly I could be made to agree with it if somebody would fill in some blanks adequately. The four blanks I have trouble filling in are
1) equating surface radiating temperature to climate temperature. Fact is they are practically never even close so where does the idea come from when you average them they are identical?
2) what is the real equilibrium temperature of the planet? SB equations say albedo does not affect equilibrium temperature.
3) convection is capable of changing the temperature of the bottom of the ocean all by itself without radiation.
So why should it be considered only a feedback?
The ocean is on average is about 10 degreesC cooler than the near surface climate. I find it fascinating that the average temperature of the ocean is almost exactly what the equilibrium temperature of the earth would be if albedo should not used to estimate the earth's equilibrium temperature. It seems to me that the average temperature of the atmosphere could be very close to the same equilibrium as the ocean.
Then we have Mark Serreze tell us that a cooler stratosphere, due to a lack of ozone rotates back to the surface (presumably via convection) and cools the surface (or at least I guess the near surface climate-confusion has a way of compounding itself)
4) is the solar heat pump model. The solar heat pump model suggests that a planet with an atmosphere of gases without radiative properties (transparent to all frequencies of light) would have convection to warm it and practically nothing to cool it.
Almost certainly the atmosphere would be near uniform in temperature and that uniformity would extend to very near the ground, like inches away.
So what I am getting to with this example is your claim that CO2 would cause warming if nothing else prevented it.
I could potentially agree that adding CO2 to a planet without an atmosphere would warm the surface (though it apparently does not on Mars so there is a bit more to it).
But if I had a bucket and the bottom of the bucket was 0degC and I fill the bucket halfway with 60C water, the bottom of the bucket will warm to close to 60C. If I then fill the bucket to full with with 30C water, then the bucket bottom will cool back to about 45C.
So it can also be said the 30C water will warm the bucket bottom from empty by nearly 30C.
When we talk about the greenhouse effect we are talking about an empty bucket but CO2 is not the only matter in the bucket. I see no support for the idea that the near surface climate would not be affected purely by convection in the absence of greenhouse gases, though I can agree that this distinction may or may not apply to the radiating surface of the real surface, which we don't measure.
Second, the snow issues in the UK relate more to businesses cutting cost with unrealistic expections. The night Heathrow got closed down I was flying into Gatwick and travelling with colleagues who were taking another flight at the same time to Heathrow. My flight was a bit delayed, but fine. My colleagues were stuck for 2 days. I drove back via the M25 passing very close to Heathrow - there wasn't much snow on the roads. Basically at the time Heathrow were owned by a Spanish company, Ferrovial, who don't understand snow.
Like Met season predictions didn't matter a whit! One has to wonder what the damned organization is good for in the first place if nobody important pays any attention to it!
Since the Met found it necessary to drop out of the seasonal prediction game it must have affected more than a Spanish company and air travelers. If not then it just might be true the organization isn't good for anything climate/seasonally related.
Seems to me the message is clear. . . .climate prediction is not ready for prime time.
The truth is economic models actually do work but without 100% reliability. Political ones tend to seldom work because as you say they are the product of a lying politician. However, the economic studies commissioned by businesses do work more often than not. That of course does not mean that asteroids never blow them up though.
In fact Steve, that political advocacy point is something one can use for some general rule making about models of complicated systems in general.
Any model you didn't personally contract for and pay for is probably a model that advocates stuff to somebody else's benefit other than your own.
In my view having a healthy respect for the truth of that leads righteously to healthy skepticism. Fortunately the weather service has done a good job. One can expect politicians to try to gain ground on that respect.