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Post by sigurdur on Sept 19, 2009 3:20:15 GMT
Continuation:
The powers that be that control government was more control, more taxes, etc. The money from government for large scale changes always trickles up to a few. The few that actually control what most people hear etc. It is a sad commentary on people that they can be so easily duped, but I guess it has happened in the past and will happen in the future. Tiz a crying shame tho with the educational opportunities that abound today.
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Post by sentient on Sept 19, 2009 4:53:10 GMT
Sigurder,
I couldn't agree more. As I have surely posted here before, the present iteration of the genus Homo has been found to be 9 times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact.
As you, I am stumped by at least two things, the seemingly obvious drop in the rationality of questioning someone else's reality amidst the most breathtaking unveiling of mankind's knowledge base imaginable, the internet.
As slow as I can type a focused search on say google.scholar.com the impact of the width and breadth of human knowledge is exposed near instantaneously when I hit enter. As opposed to laboriously and painstakingly searching library holdings cards and figuring out just where that was in the stacks. Which was mind boggling even then!
Today, one can astonishingly rapidly vet one idea against another, applying that now unfashionably quixotic notion of critical thinking, looking for that which will quintessentially abrogate your hypotheses (e.g. the scientific method).
I remember distinctly the recitation of the theory of multiple working hypotheses during one of my first undergrad lectures in geology:
You discover evidence of a phenomena or supposed fact. Immediately you construct a table populated with both the hypothesis and its antithesis, perhaps expanding to a table of competing hypotheses and antitheses. The supposition, of course, being that you could be wrong. So you go about gathering evidence, supporting the hypothesis/hypotheses while also vetting the antithesis/antitheses. Each piece of supporting evidence thus vetted going to the credit of its relevant class. At any point you may be asked your opinion of the various versions of reality which you perceive. At any such time, you must temper your response to the weight of evidence. Committing only to certainties when well beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt.
In testing the various iterations of the AGW hypotheses, the end members of the predictions pale in significance to well documented natural noise. At this level, it becomes a signal to noise ratio problem first. If, as I posted just a few minutes ago on the Paleo thread, MIS 11 is the closest orbital parameter match in the recent geologic past, and sea levels topped out there a well documented 21 meters above present, anything below that contributing to either the average maxima or the average overall. Meaning its still in the noise range.
In most sciences, to be considered an anomaly, something must be twice the noise level. Supposedly consensus (IPCC AR4) prognostications of 0.59 meter (1.9 feet) maximum sea level rises only rate at 1/2 to 1/3 the generally accepted 4-6 meters above msl commonly cited for the Eemian, the penultimate interglacial. Excursions up to 20 meters above present msl have been documented for the Eemian in many locales (see recent Paleo. post) and are documented to 21.3 meters in MIS 11. If we use instead, the Gore prediction of 20 feet by 2100 we still fall either equal to the last interglacial optimum and a tad below the MIS-11 optimum. At or below the maximum endpoint of natural noise.
Meaning, of course, that we are not yet anomalous. Our "best and final" at, or within, the natural interglacial noise.
Can CO2 do it? Well it didn't do it on the major ice age/interglacial transition, this much we know. And these puppies average 20C. In the much closer spaced Dansgaard-Oeschger events, which evidence has been found back to 680 million years, the past 24 of them evince no causative relation with CO2. On some of the A class cycles, we find no correspondence at all with CO2. They just warm up every 1500 years or so 8-10C in a few years or decades (read natural noise on the annual to decadal level of how many degrees C?), or about 1/3 to 1/2 of a major transition. The B and C class D-O cycles do indeed show a relationship with the temperature shifts after the warming events, but of the opposite sign. They tend to extend the relaxation to earth's other state, global cold.
At this point, the evidence refutes either a causative or amplifying effect due to CO2. In 2 out of 3 cases, over at least 24 of the most recent abrupt climate change events and relaxations (3 classes), this trace gas might, repeat, might be the ameliorating agent. It does not compare favorably to water vapor in terms of potential. An area I have yet to assess in detail vis-a-vis the ice core data.
So we have these myriad quandaries to resolve. Where are we? We have Al Gore coming in at 20 feet, paling the Eemian temporal highstand, not even grazing the 21.3 of MIS-11, but nonetheless this being a maxima advertised by a former VP, not scientist. The equally advertised consensus scientific view coming in with a less than an order of magnitude AGW signal to recent natural noise.
Not exactly an anomaly.....
We have a hypothesized solar cycle effect and a thermohaline turnover cycle effect so far variously credentialed as causative agents, GHGs having failed the reality tests.
Here, we find the need to find a causative agent for regular, cyclic THC overturning. Area for and which much research and speculation abounds. Ditto for the solar aficionados.
In the final analysis, assuming you are still with me here, is that the weight of evidence does not support a causative role for GHGs. At best a supporting role, in some cases. Or this may be cyclical dissonance. We do not know what makes the noise so large, yet.
And in the signal to noise department, you need an anomaly.
End of story.
Beyond is supposition.
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Post by socold on Sept 19, 2009 12:41:17 GMT
Sentient: The reason that socold etal think that co2 leads temp is because Schmidt, Mann, and all the other rotten scientists have told them so. I have been studying climate change for 30 years. The opinions put out now by what are called "scientists" are really over the top in the sense that they have lost all credibility. They totally ignore geo time scale climate. The sad thing is they just flat out lie and are, so far, getting away with it because most people are too damn lazy to actually read real science. Seeing as Hansen has an entire paper dedicated to the geo time scale and how it's evidence for high climate sensitivity, your whole argument crumbles as the premise is false.
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Post by socold on Sept 19, 2009 12:55:01 GMT
sentient your argument boils down to a very simplistically illogical premise.
Ie you are arguing that X can't cause climate change unless it causes climate change that stands out as an anomaly in the geological record.
That's ridiculous. What about causes of climate change that produce moderate changes compared to the geological record? Are you saying that no such thing can even exist. Your argument sure says that.
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 19, 2009 13:43:47 GMT
<<Snip>> Given the single variable rigidity of Hansen, Gore, Schmidt, Monbiot, Tamino, Socold, Steve, glc et al, I find myself wishing that instead of being at the eccentricity minima, we were at one of the 400ky eccentricity maxima. Because what we could really use right now is a sorely needed species shift to the next iteration of the genus Homo, perhaps one more capable of multivariate processing as opposed to single-variable closed-mindedness, one demonstrably and perhaps stupefyingly incapable of producing massive climate change from the factual base of real, not virtual reality based, known climate change events. A nicely written paragraph - to which I would add that the focus on that single variable is limited to one effect and explicitly disregards complexity of atmospheric physics. You discover evidence of a phenomena or supposed fact. Immediately you construct a table populated with both the hypothesis and its antithesis, perhaps expanding to a table of competing hypotheses and antitheses. The supposition, of course, being that you could be wrong. So you go about gathering evidence, supporting the hypothesis/hypotheses while also vetting the antithesis/antitheses. Each piece of supporting evidence thus vetted going to the credit of its relevant class. At any point you may be asked your opinion of the various versions of reality which you perceive. At any such time, you must temper your response to the weight of evidence. Committing only to certainties when well beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt. This is the scientific process - the disproof of the null-hypothesis. However, the problem nowadays is that the proponents of a particular hypothesis have a tendency to only use the internet and other information sources to find support for the hypothesis not to test the hypothesis nor to support an antithesis. Indeed the hypotheses, assumptions and supporting models are often written in such a way that they specifically avoid any real world testability.
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 19, 2009 13:52:29 GMT
sentient your argument boils down to a very simplistically illogical premise. Ie you are arguing that X can't cause climate change unless it causes climate change that stands out as an anomaly in the geological record. That's ridiculous. What about causes of climate change that produce moderate changes compared to the geological record? Are you saying that no such thing can even exist. Your argument sure says that. SoCold you misstate Sentient's argument which was that in the past high levels of CO 2 did not prevent cooling and rapid increases in temperature took place in the absence of high levels of CO 2. Thus rapid changes in atmospheric temperatures do not appear to be causally related to changes in CO 2 or other GHG (sic) concentrations. Remember the data is accepted as accurate and is from the real world not from parameterized models based on assumptions.
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Post by socold on Sept 19, 2009 14:22:46 GMT
sentient your argument boils down to a very simplistically illogical premise. Ie you are arguing that X can't cause climate change unless it causes climate change that stands out as an anomaly in the geological record. That's ridiculous. What about causes of climate change that produce moderate changes compared to the geological record? Are you saying that no such thing can even exist. Your argument sure says that. SoCold you misstate Sentient's argument He made several arguments. I addressed the key one which centered around recent climate being irrelevant and natural because it is not "anomalous" That was another argument. It is also flawed. You can't conclude co2 rise cannot cause warming just because something else can cause warming. It defies belief that people would even suggest that as an argument. "Forest fires are caused by lightning strikes, therefore they cannot be caused by gasoline"
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Post by hunter on Sept 19, 2009 14:44:54 GMT
Sentient: The reason that socold etal think that co2 leads temp is because Schmidt, Mann, and all the other rotten scientists have told them so. I have been studying climate change for 30 years. The opinions put out now by what are called "scientists" are really over the top in the sense that they have lost all credibility. They totally ignore geo time scale climate. The sad thing is they just flat out lie and are, so far, getting away with it because most people are too damn lazy to actually read real science. Seeing as Hansen has an entire paper dedicated to the geo time scale and how it's evidence for high climate sensitivity, your whole argument crumbles as the premise is false. socold, Are you being deliberately obtuse? The record shows the opposite of what Hansen & pals claim, and you counter that by stating that Hansen says the climate is highly sensitive. The record shows it is not, and Hansen's claims do not change that record. And his obsession with 'tipping points' is getting downright pathetic.
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Post by socold on Sept 19, 2009 15:57:59 GMT
Seeing as Hansen has an entire paper dedicated to the geo time scale and how it's evidence for high climate sensitivity, your whole argument crumbles as the premise is false. socold, Are you being deliberately obtuse? The record shows the opposite of what Hansen & pals claim, and you counter that by stating that Hansen says the climate is highly sensitive. The record shows it is not, and Hansen's claims do not change that record. And his obsession with 'tipping points' is getting downright pathetic. The existence of abrupt climate changes and non-linearity of climate has been acknowledged in this thread. This is evidence that tipping points do exist. The fact that temperature on Earth has fluctuated a lot in the past has also been acknowledged on this thread. This is evidence that climate sensitivity is high. Lets work through why. The data shows that climate was about 2C warmer than present in the Eemian over 100,000 years ago. It's been warmer than that long ago, but lets just stick with 2C warmer for now. Okay so how is 2C warmer possible? A positive forcing would be needed to warm the Earth up to 2C. How much does that positive forcing have to be and what candidates are there for it? According to average results of GCMs which of course show a high climate sensitivity owing to net positive feedback in climate, a 2C warming would require a 3wm-2 positive forcing. But crucially skeptics argue GCM sensitivity is too high and that net feedbacks in climate are negative. Therefore to explain the Eemian warming such skeptics require a far bigger positive forcing. 8wm-2 or more. So we come to the problem of attribution. A 3wm-2 positive forcing is hard enough to explain as this is slightly pushing what solar and orbital variation can provide. An 8wm-2 on the otherhand is in the realms of impossibility to explain an origin for that. And hence this is the reason why geological data supports high climate sensitivity not low.
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Post by icefisher on Sept 19, 2009 21:30:00 GMT
The existence of abrupt climate changes and non-linearity of climate has been acknowledged in this thread. This is evidence that tipping points do exist. The fact that temperature on Earth has fluctuated a lot in the past has also been acknowledged on this thread. This is evidence that climate sensitivity is high. Your standard for evidence is not very high when you cannot tell us what the forcings were. Your argument for 100,000 years ago and a 2c variation which you claim that orbital variations would be hard pressed to explain with low climate sensitivity ignores that we may have approached 2C variation in the past 2000 years apparently without the orbital cycles. I would say you are hanging out there by a thread.
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Post by itsthesunstupid on Sept 19, 2009 21:36:24 GMT
The existence of abrupt climate changes and non-linearity of climate has been acknowledged in this thread. This is evidence that tipping points do exist. The fact that temperature on Earth has fluctuated a lot in the past has also been acknowledged on this thread. This is evidence that climate sensitivity is high. Your standard for evidence is not very high when you cannot tell us what the forcings were.Your argument for 100,000 years ago and a 2c variation which you claim that orbital variations would be hard pressed to explain with low climate sensitivity ignores that we may have approached 2C variation in the past 2000 years apparently without the orbital cycles. I would say you are hanging out there by a thread. Fred Flintstone owned a Hummer.
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Post by Ratty on Sept 19, 2009 21:53:00 GMT
Fred Flintstone owned a Hummer. No, it was a Rocker.
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Post by socold on Sept 19, 2009 23:46:42 GMT
Your standard for evidence is not very high when you cannot tell us what the forcings were. Science can explain the magnitude of the warming through orbital forcings with positive ice-albedo, water vapor, co2 and methane feedbacks. Now what's your explanation? You can have orbital forcings of course, but all those feedbacks you can't use. So what's your explanation for how the planet can warm up 2C? That's even worse for you. Now you can't invoke orbital cycles. You are the one who must explain your claims, not me.
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Post by magellan on Sept 20, 2009 2:54:51 GMT
Your standard for evidence is not very high when you cannot tell us what the forcings were. Science can explain the magnitude of the warming through orbital forcings with positive ice-albedo, water vapor, co2 and methane feedbacks. Now what's your explanation? You can have orbital forcings of course, but all those feedbacks you can't use. So what's your explanation for how the planet can warm up 2C? That's even worse for you. Now you can't invoke orbital cycles. You are the one who must explain your claims, not me. Science can explain the magnitude of the warming through orbital forcings with positive ice-albedo, water vapor, co2 and methane feedbacks.
That is a load of crapA small sampling since AR4: Using the Oceans as a Calorimeter to Quantify the Solar Radiative Forcingtinyurl.com/d7h5deAlternatively, the large non-thermal solar activity variations could be amplified by a mechanism unrelated to the solar irradiance. Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcingwww.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5944/1114Discussion here: (oh, and notice the use of climate models to test it)tinyurl.com/mww44pScientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmospherewww.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/scientists-discover-surprise-in-101025.aspxSvensmarktinyurl.com/kjnzd2Cosmic ray decreases affect atmospheric aerosols and cloudstinyurl.com/nytr2dWeren't we told Lockwood and Frohlich 2007 was the "nail in the coffin" for skeptics and solar links to warming and only CO2 could explain late 20th century warming? The truth is, a change in cloud cover alone can explain virtually all warming, but as they are admittedly poorly understood, and this low level of understanding is input into climate models, GIGO. And just so you know socold, El Nino= decrease in OHC. La Nina= increase in OHC. The difference is the net increase/decrease. As this El Nino subsides, at the end of the day, what will be the result in another 12-18 months? Hmm?
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Post by socold on Sept 20, 2009 11:44:05 GMT
Science can explain the magnitude of the warming through orbital forcings with positive ice-albedo, water vapor, co2 and methane feedbacks. Now what's your explanation? You can have orbital forcings of course, but all those feedbacks you can't use. So what's your explanation for how the planet can warm up 2C? That's even worse for you. Now you can't invoke orbital cycles. You are the one who must explain your claims, not me. Science can explain the magnitude of the warming through orbital forcings with positive ice-albedo, water vapor, co2 and methane feedbacks.
That is a load of crapIt is the only existing and quantified explaination for glacial/interglacial transitions. We know the orbital forcings are far too weak, so a high climate sensitivity is needed to explain it. This backs up my point that a high climate sensitivity is required to explain the climate response to such a weak forcing. There's nothing here mentioning a significant forcing of the Earth's climate. What we have is like I said last post. Current understanding is that climate forcings over the past million years are too weak alone to explain the large temperature variation over this time period. The only credible explaination is overall strong positive feedback in climate, ie high climate sensitivity. The proposed cosmic ray/cloud mechanism is a positive feedback mechanism and the hypothesis there is absolutely that Earth's climate has a high climate sensitivity. The best explaination, really the only quantified one, is this positive feedback is a combo of components such as ice albedo and greenhouse gases. Perhaps cosmic rays-clouds are another positive feedback, but whether that is the case including their magnitude remains to be seen. Lockwood and Frohlich 2007 find that a number solar properties and other proxies including cosmic rays and sunspots are unable to explain recent warming due to the direction in their trends. They don't say there is no solar link, simply that if there is one it isn't in the batch they analyzed, ie it must be some unknown method. If I recall correctly they specifically cite unknown UV effects for example. This isn't however actually relevant to climate changes in the paleo record in general and the necessity for a high climate sensitivity to explain it. Now you confuse me. I thought the skeptic line was that cloud cover is a strong negative feedback contributing to low climate sensitivity. Ie it increases as the planet warms to slow the warming down. I've seen it explained the otherway round, I think as El Nino draws heat up into the OHC measuring area and La Nina draws it down.
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