Global Cooling

[burningquestions]

Show me ONE example of computer modeling that was ever accurate.

Show me one example of computer modeling that predicted the weather accurately for one month.

[geekster]

Some background information. Not meant to show anything in particular, it is simply informational content, Part I

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/08/ ... art-1.html

And an interesting bit of history (on geological timescales)

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/10 ... t-savanna/

[dr.placebo]

Show me ONE example of computer modeling that was ever accurate.

Show me one example of computer modeling that predicted the weather accurately for one month.

First, computer modeling is used all the time in a variety of fields. The reason that it is used is because it gives useful results. I don't think that you meant to be categorically against computer modeling, but if you did then I suggest that you become more familiar with the field before rushing to judgment. A quick introduction is at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_modeling

Second, the state of the art does not allow weather to be modeled for that long a time, and it seems likely that we will never get there. But if you want to jump to saying that climate cannot be modeled, then I must disagree. As a simple analogy, it is not possible to accurately model the exact shape of a stream of water running down a hill; the flow is too chaotic. But it is possible to model the more general effects of flooding in a watershed, despite being unable to model the individual contributions. The reason is that for many physical systems the relative uncertainties do not add up, they average out.

None of this should be taken as advocacy of a blind belief in modeling, computer or otherwise. To be useful models must be tested against real and relevant observations.

[geekster]

Today's example of "man made global warming". Temperature data from Kathmandu, the only GHCN station in Nepal and important for regional averages for the Himalayas. The raw data show a slight cooling trend. GISS has applied a progressively increasing "adjustment" to turn a cooling trend into a warming trend. There is no such warming shown in the input data so they manufacture it and continue to refuse to explain their reasons or methodology for these "adjustments". The raw data starts unadjusted in the 1960's and ends up being adjusted upwards by over a whole degree by the 1980's. Why? And why is the amount of adjustment constantly increased over time?



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/11/m ... -in-nepal/\

[can't sit still]

All the climate researchers seem to believe that they are aware of,, and measure ALL of the energy inputs to Terra.
"The electric charges travel down magnetic flux tubes that have recently been discovered. These "electromagnetic funnels" are several kilometers wide and allow electric currents to flow directly from the Sun into the polar regions, "
"The power generated by electric currents in auroral storms is far greater than anything that human beings can create with every coal-burning, oil-fired, or water-driven means combined."
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2010/ ... 812sun.htm

[can't sit still]

The U.S has some pretty cold areas;
http://iceagenow.com/Record_Lows_2010.htm

[dr.placebo]

Yes, the US has had some record lows. And twice as many record highs in the past decade.

[can't sit still]

We both posted anomalies. It doesn't prove much. I have no argument with climate change. It's AGW that I contest.

[dr.placebo]

I was just trying to expand the field of anomalies to something that might suggest a trend. It seemed like an improvement to include record maxima as well as record minima, and to show six decades instead of one partial year. Proving something takes significantly more evidence, of course.

I think that one should not dismiss the ability of humans to screw up their environment. Here's a link to an interesting recent article by Tamino that points to a recent "global cooling" effect that seems quite plausible. It is a cooling trend due to sulfate aerosols for the 1940-1975 period, not valid since roughly 1975, but it still has some points to make about anthropogenic effects, both cooling and warming:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/ ... l-cooling/

[can't sit still]

Keep them coming doctor. There's no room in my house for absolutism.
BTW, did you read the PDF that I posted in survival. It's a doozy. I haven't had time to analyze it. I might look for truth but, all I really ask is a minimum of chaff.

[can't sit still]

The cooling idea is starting to catch on a bit;

Dunno

[dr.placebo]

The video has a lot wrong with it, but I'll stick to the first 2 minutes.

The statement is made that there is an ice age every 11,500 years. Wrong. It's more like 100,000 years for the major cycle, and there are plenty of minor perturbations, but there is no regular 11,500 year cycle. See:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/heading ... ce-age.htm

As for the "Solar Retrograde Cycle", alleged to take place every 179 years, it's not there, and climate change is damn sure not due to the motion of Saturn and Jupiter. Yes, they are big planets, but they are far away and do not have a significant influence of the earth's energy balance.

The question is asked of the audience about whether they believe everything that the government says or that the media says. Of course you should not! But there is no reason at all to believe anything that some crackpot with a slide deck is presenting unless said crackpot has some damn good evidence. This one does not.

Let's be real skeptics, the kind that demand evidence of all parties, "mavericks" included.

[can't sit still]

I didn't actually watch past the part "do you trust your GOV ? I wonder if the book he's pushing has as much junk science.
I think that the real focus should move to the sun, rather than terrestrial weather.

[can't sit still]

Geekster, have you seen this paper on the thermosphere?
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... rmosphere/

[dr.placebo]

There was a post regarding The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (TVMOB) some time back, and I called him a twit. I was too kind. In written testimony before Congress on 6 May 2010 TVMOB made a number of false or misleading statements that made it into the public record. We now have a written response from 21 leading climate scientists that is a detailed refutation (note: not a refudiation) of TVMOB's statements:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-response.pdf

It also has some concise statements of current climate understanding, so it's worth a read. For a briefer summary, see:

http://climateprogress.org/2010/09/21/l ... cientists/

[can't sit still]

A good read on climate change;
http://yubanet.com/scitech/First-of-its ... oceans.php

[can't sit still]

New data on cooling / warming. "If solar activity is out of phase with solar radiative forcing, it could change our understanding of how processes in the troposphere and stratosphere act to modulate Earth's climate.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z11hwD7Zhi

[dr.placebo]

The solar radiation anomaly detected by satellite is important because it is precisely this kind of weirdness that leads to better science.

That said, it is way too early to jump to conclusions, and the past data associating solar activity minima with cooling is not to be discarded. My personal guess is that we will find out that the solar behavior is more complex than current models, but that improved models will not be completely reversed from current ones, just a bit more accurate.

[can't sit still]

I can't disagree with that. Accuracy is all that I ask for.
Just in case that we don't have enough variables, here's some news;
http://yubanet.com/scitech/IBEX-finds-s ... undary.php

[geekster]

Hal Lewis' letter of resignation from the American Physical Society

Hal Lewis: My Resignation From The American Physical Society
Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
E-mail Print PDF

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

http://thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-l ... ciety.html

[dr.placebo]

Citing a scientist who does not believe in the human contribution to global warming is just one cite. I prefer a statistical approach.

But if you like individual cites, here is a quote from another eminent scientist on an issue where he lacked objectivity:

On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous.

Dr. Edward Teller
-- sometimes known as the father of the H-bomb

[can't sit still]

I won't argue with your premise. BUT, this is a bullshit statement by Teller. Some reactors are dangerous and some reactors are not dangerous.

[Isotopia]

The irony of the letter is that he cites a prominent physicist that once ran the laboratory I currently work at. Pief Panofsky was indeed a titan among scientists of his time. I suspect that he'd be... chagrined to learn of his colleague's letter because I know for a fact that he saw global climate change as a challenge as looming and as potentially dire as the nuclear weapons he spent his life trying to rid the world of.

[geekster]

CO2 radiative forcing overstated. Must be decreased by 65%

http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content ... ing-cut-65

Joyce E. Penner, et al

Basically the gist is that there is no way to predict warming or cooling with the currently available information.

[quote]That not withstanding, the report is clear—CO2 does not account for even a majority of the warming seen over the past century. If other species accounted for 65% of historical warming that leaves only 35% for carbon dioxide. This, strangely enough, is in line with calculations based strictly on known atmospheric physics, calculations not biased by the IPCC's hypothetical and bastardized “feedbacks.â€

[dr.placebo]

Is the CO2 forcing overstated? Maybe yes, maybe no. I say bring out the data and let them battle it out.

Two points of annoyance for me:

1. The article is behind a paywall. Given that the research was paid for by my taxes (which I don't regret), then I think that I should be able to see the results.

2. One article does not, by itself, carry much weight. Given the amount of noise in the system (and the debate) one should use diverse sources.


Also, about the Teller quote I used above. Just to be clear that Teller was a very good physicist who could make some truly wacko claims (like using nukes to mine the tar sands in Alberta). He was also the model for Dr. Strangelove.

[Isotopia]

Not to mention the fact that Teller was the primary consulting physicist behind Reagan's Star Wars debacle.

Instead of speaking ill of the dead I'll just say that I'm glad he's no longer around to whisper into anyone's ears.

I'm sure Robert Oppenheimer would agree.

[Ugly Dougly]

Is the CO2 forcing overstated? Maybe yes, maybe no. I say bring out the data and let them battle it out.

Two points of annoyance for me:

1. The article is behind a paywall. Given that the research was paid for by my taxes (which I don't regret), then I think that I should be able to see the results.

2. One article does not, by itself, carry much weight. Given the amount of noise in the system (and the debate) one should use diverse sources.

They're also clearly trying to sell a book with a definite point of view. They're not going to provide anything that conflicts with it.

[Ugly Dougly]

Some reactors are dangerous and some reactors are not dangerous.

The contents are always dangerous.

[can't sit still]

Dougly, that's also true of the gas tank on your car.

[geekster]

As expected, global sea surface temperature anomalies have begun to plummet in response to La Nina conditions in the equatorial region:


Global Anomaly


NINO3.4 Anomaly


Currently we see what amounts to the strongest negative ENSO condition since 1955-1956


ENSO Index

Arctic sea ice is currently growing at an amazing pace. Ice measured at 30% concentration is higher than at any time since 2005. 15% concentration depends upon whose data set you are looking at. Once set has the same, greatest since 2005 and approaching 2003 levels while the other data set has it bunched up with 05, 06, 08, and 09.

We will see how global sea surface temps hold up over the winter.