The rise and rise of Climate Blasphemy

[jreeves]

No numbers were "adjusted upwards." You are looking at the raw data.

The graph for solar irradiance shows quite clearly that we are in the lowest part of the solar cycle. There is no graph for the El Nino phenomena listed, however.

There are ton of factors in the warming of the Earth, you chose only to focus on CO2. That speaks to your agenda, right there.

 

[AllieBaba]

Not only that, but CHina is the #1 producer of it. Not the US. We aren't even close.

 

[Chris]

There are ton of factors in the warming of the Earth, you chose only to focus on CO2. That speaks to your agenda, right there.

No, I have said many times that the Stanford Solar Center scientists believe that the sun accounts for 25% of global warming. Since you are misrepresenting my position, you must be the one with an "agenda."

 

[Chris]

Not only that, but CHina is the #1 producer of it. Not the US. We aren't even close.

Actually China and Taiwan combined are number one, and the United States is close behind. Why would that matter?

 

[Charles_Main]

It matters only because most experts agree no matter what steps we take to reduce our emissions, if places like China and India do nothing, We will have little effect on the over all process.

 

[Chris]

It matters only because most experts agree no matter what steps we take to reduce our emissions, if places like China and India do nothing, We will have little effect on the over all process.

I have said all along that we are screwed.

 

[jreeves]

No, I have said many times that the Stanford Solar Center scientists believe that the sun accounts for 25% of global warming. Since you are misrepresenting my position, you must be the one with an "agenda."

You have stated in no uncertain terms that global warming is caused by human made carbon emmissions. The Sun actually accounts for all warming, even if there is a greenhouse effect, its the sun's heat that causes it. There are a ton of other greenhouse gases. The earth has been warmed and cooled for millions of years. There just aren't any scientific facts to prove that human made carbon emmissions have heated the earth by 0.6 degrees. The earth's temperature has changed by 0.6 degrees many times in the earth's history without human made carbon emmissions. Why has there only recently been an uptick in temperature, when CO2 emmissions have increased by 30% since 1880?

 

[Chris]

You have stated in no uncertain terms that global warming is caused by human made carbon emmissions. The Sun actually accounts for all warming, even if there is a greenhouse effect, its the sun's heat that causes it. There are a ton of other greenhouse gases. The earth has been warmed and cooled for millions of years. There just aren't any scientific facts to prove that human made carbon emmissions have heated the earth by 0.6 degrees. The earth's temperature has changed by 0.6 degrees many times in the earth's history without human made carbon emmissions. Why has there only recently been an uptick in temperature, when CO2 emmissions have increased by 30% since 1880?

CO2 is not the only factor in the earth's temperature, but it is the one that is the most relentless. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for 200 years, and the rate of increase has accelerated in the last 30 years as more countries industrialize. Plus there are other factors such as the reflectivity of ice vs the ocean that will cause the temperature to rise faster as the ice melts.

 

[jreeves]

CO2 is not the only factor in the earth's temperature, but it is the one that is the most relentless. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing for 200 years, and the rate of increase has accelerated in the last 30 years as more countries industrialize. Plus there are other factors such as the reflectivity of ice vs the ocean that will cause the temperature to rise faster as the ice melts.

Your pointless for one you address what you like and assume you can fortune tell by saying that all these things will happen. Due to x and y, without any scientific facts to back up your rhetoric. If CO2 levels have been increasing since 1880 by 30% we would have seen an uptick much sooner than we have. We also wouldn't have had cooling periods if CO2 levels was the driving force behind temperature change. Sorry there is no proof....

 

[Chris]

Your pointless for one you address what you like and assume you can fortune tell by saying that all these things will happen. Due to x and y, without any scientific facts to back up your rhetoric. If CO2 levels have been increasing since 1880 by 30% we would have seen an uptick much sooner than we have. We also wouldn't have had cooling periods if CO2 levels was the driving force behind temperature change. Sorry there is no proof....

CO2 warms the earth. No one disputes that. We have increased CO2 by 39% since 1800. In 30 years or less, we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are warming the earth.

The only question is, How much?

 

[jreeves]

CO2 warms the earth. No one disputes that. We have increased CO2 by 39% since 1800. In 30 years or less, we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are warming the earth.

The only question is, How much?

Not by much, when taking historical data into account.

 

[Chris]

Not by much, when taking historical data into account.

The climate models say the earth will warm between 1.5 and 6 degrees. Because of accelerants like open ocean absorption and the release of methane from melting permafrost, I believe the temperature increase will be on the high side of that estimate.

 

[jreeves]

The climate models say the earth will warm between 1.5 and 6 degrees. Because of accelerants like open ocean absorption and the release of methane from melting permafrost, I believe the temperature increase will be on the high side of that estimate.

Your blessed climate models...


The researchers compared predictions of 22 widely used climate "models" — elaborate schematics that try to forecast how the global weather system will behave — with actual readings gathered by surface stations, weather balloons and orbiting satellites over the past three decades.

The study, published online this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that while most of the models predicted that the middle and upper parts of the troposphere —1 to 6 miles above the Earth's surface — would have warmed drastically over the past 30 years, actual observations showed only a little warming, especially over tropical regions."Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past? It seems that the answer is no," said lead study author David H. Douglass, a physicist specializing in climate at the University of Rochester.

Douglass and his co-authors S. Fred Singer, a physicist at the University of Virginia, and John R. Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, are noted global-warming skeptics.

However, Christy was a major contributor to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and is one of the world's premier authorities on collection and analysis of satellite-derived temperature data, having been commended by both NASA and the American Meteorological Society for his efforts.

"We do not see accelerated warming in the tropical troposphere," said Christy. "Instead, the lower and middle atmosphere are warming the same or less than the surface."

The difference between the climate models and the satellite data has been known for several years.

Studies in 2005 found that improper compensation for temperature differences between day and night was the cause of most of the satellite-data discrepancy, a correction that Christy has accepted.

No explanation has been put forth for the weather-balloon discrepancy.

 

[Chris]

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change
ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2008) — The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To this end, they compare the output of the models against observations for present climate. The authors apply this method to about 50 different national and international models that were developed over the past two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model generation that was used for the very recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and the best models are now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching conventional atmospheric observations," said Reichler. "We can now place a much higher level of confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past."

The many hours of studying models and comparing them with actual climate changes fulfills the increasing wish to know how much one can trust climate models and their predictions. Given the significance of climate change research in public policy, the study's results also provide important response to critics of global warming. Earlier this year, working group one of the IPCC released its fourth global warming report. The University of Utah study results directly relate to this highly publicized report by showing that the models used for the IPCC paper have reached an unprecedented level of realism.

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change

 

[Chris]

Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved
ScienceDaily (May 30, 2008) — Yale University scientists reported that they may have resolved a controversial glitch in models of global warming: A key part of the atmosphere didn't seem to be warming as expected.

Computer models and basic principles predict atmospheric temperatures should rise slightly faster than, not lag, increases in surface temperatures. Also, the models predict the fastest warming should occur at the Tropics at an altitude between eight and 12 kilometers. However, temperature readings taken from weather balloons and satellites have, according to most analysts, shown little if any warming there compared to the surface.

By measuring changes in winds, rather than relying upon problematic temperature measurements, Robert J. Allen and Steven C. Sherwood of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale estimated the atmospheric temperatures near 10 km in the Tropics rose about 0.65 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970—probably the fastest warming rate anywhere in Earth's atmosphere. The temperature increase is in line with predictions of global warming models.

“I think this puts to rest any lingering doubts that the atmosphere really has been warming up more or less as we expect, due mainly to the greenhouse effect of increasing gases like carbon dioxide,” Sherwood said.

Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved

 

[jreeves]

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change
ScienceDaily (Apr. 6, 2008) — The accuracy of computer models that predict climate change over the coming decades has been the subject of debate among politicians, environmentalists and even scientists. A new study by meteorologists at the University of Utah shows that current climate models are quite accurate and can be valuable tools for those seeking solutions on reversing global warming trends. Most of these models project a global warming trend that amounts to about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 100 years.

In the study, co-authors Thomas Reichler and Junsu Kim from the Department of Meteorology at the University of Utah investigate how well climate models actually do their job in simulating climate. To this end, they compare the output of the models against observations for present climate. The authors apply this method to about 50 different national and international models that were developed over the past two decades at major climate research centers in China, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Korea, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. Of course, also included is the very latest model generation that was used for the very recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"Coupled models are becoming increasingly reliable tools for understanding climate and climate change, and the best models are now capable of simulating present-day climate with accuracy approaching conventional atmospheric observations," said Reichler. "We can now place a much higher level of confidence in model-based projections of climate change than in the past."

The many hours of studying models and comparing them with actual climate changes fulfills the increasing wish to know how much one can trust climate models and their predictions. Given the significance of climate change research in public policy, the study's results also provide important response to critics of global warming. Earlier this year, working group one of the IPCC released its fourth global warming report. The University of Utah study results directly relate to this highly publicized report by showing that the models used for the IPCC paper have reached an unprecedented level of realism.

Climate Models Look Good When Predicting Climate Change

All of the models used to forecast climate with regard to global warming are substantially inaccurate and in any event are not sufficiently accurate to provide a basis for decision making.

It turns out that climate is so complex that it is beyond our current understanding, much less our ability to build accurate computer models. Dr. James Hansen, a prominent scientist and leading proponent of human contribution to global warming, summed up the accuracy issue by saying, “The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.”

And, climate may be chaotic and therefore unmodelable, even in theory.

Further, essentially no one disputes that this is the case. There is a "scientific consensus" that the models are inaccurate that is more comprehensive than the consensus that humans are contributing to global warming.

In October 2007 Gerard Roe of the University of Washington led a study published in Science that basically reiterates and validates these points.

"The authors call on policymakers to 'resist the temptation to fix a [CO2] concentration target early on. Once fixed, it may be politically impossible to reduce it.'

Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia University in New York City, said, 'A lot of the rhetoric about climate change has said we shouldn't do anything [about it] because it's uncertain.'

But with this new study, he said, 'we now know that this uncertainty will not go away.'

Experts agree that they can still improve shorter-term predictions of climate change for the next several decades and better forecast how particular regions will fare."


We are left with three facts: the greenhouse effect is real, carbon dioxide emissions have increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution and temperatures have risen about 6° C (1.1° F) during the past century. The rest is speculation, or what I call religion.

Human-driven climate change can amount to not much, be catastrophic, or anything in between, and we simply do not know.

Even more distressing is that there is no way to know if any particular target, such as a 90% reduction by 2050, or the Kyoto targets, will have their intended effects.

Politicians and scientists are essentially dealing with random numbers.

However, no one discusses model inaccuracy because doubt can lead to inaction. And those who follow the gospel according to Al insist that there be immediate action, so that doubt is not to be abided.

(I am in the, global warming is real, camp, however, I believe that facts are important when discussing such an important issue, and the fact is that the models we are using to base political decisions are not up to the task - period.)

From the New Scientist, May 3, 2008 (emphasis mine)

... In a paper in the April edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society he (Palmer) warns that models often share the same biases and blind spots about features of the climate system that are critical for regional forecasts. They cannot reproduce El Niños in the Pacific Ocean, for instance. Nor can they simulate the weather systems that bring drought to the Sahel region of Africa, or the Atlantic storm tracks and blocking high-pressure zones that determine whether western Europe is wet or dry.

Last year, a panel on climate modeling that was preparing the ground for next week's summit concluded that current models "have serious limitations" and that their uncertainties "compromise the goal of providing society with reliable predictions of regional climate change". the panel, chaired by Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University in Claverton, Maryland, dismissed many current regional predictions as "laughable".

But whatever the uncertainties at the local level, the big picture remains clear. Our planet is straying into unknown climatic territory, with consequences that we probably have to accept are almost impossible to predict. ...


From the Royal Society

Following are excepts from "Confidence, uncertainty and decision-support relevance in climate predictions" from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by Stainforth, et al. (remember to take into account that the paper is written in reserved, diplomatic terms):

The reality of anthropogenic climate change is well documented and widely accepted. The media and policy makers are calling out for predictions regarding expected changes to their local climate. Providing direct quantitative answers to these calls is perceived as important for engaging the public in the issue and therefore the task of mitigation. It is also often seen as critical for adaptation and decision making by businesses, governments and individuals. The extent to which these calls can be answered today is unclear, given the state of the science.
There is no compulsion to hold that the most comprehensive models available will yield decision-relevant probabilities, even if those models are based upon ‘fundamental physics’.
Statements about future climate relate to a never before experienced state of the system; thus, it is impossible to either calibrate the model for the forecast regime of interest or confirm the usefulness of the forecasting process. Development and improvement of long time-scale processes are therefore reliant solely on tests of internal consistency and physical understanding of the processes involved, guided by information on past climatic states deduced from proxy data.
The interpretation of climate models to inform policy and decision support must consider at least five distinct sources of uncertainty. Forcing uncertainty captures those things in the future which are considered outside the climate system per se, yet affect it. Initial condition uncertainty captures our uncertainty in how to initialize the models in hand; what initial state, or ensemble of states, to integrate forward in time. Initial condition uncertainty is usefully divided into two camps depending on whether or not the details of today’s uncertainty in a variable are likely to influence the final distributions we estimate on our time scale of interest. Model imperfection describes the uncertainty resulting from our limited understanding of, and ability to simulate, the Earth’s climate. It is also usefully divided into two types: uncertainty and inadequacy. Model uncertainty captures the fact that we are uncertain as to what parameter values (or ensembles of parameter values) are likely to provide the most informative results; here, climate modelling (sic) has a further complication due to choices between parametrizations (sic) themselves, not just the values of each model parameter. Finally, model inadequacy captures the fact that we know a priori, there is no combination of parametrizations (sic), parameter values and ICs which would accurately mimic all relevant aspects of the climate system. We know that, if nothing else, computational constraints prevent our models from any claim of near isomorphism with reality, whatever that phrase might mean. The five types of uncertainty are not independent and basic questions of identifiability and interpretation remain (Smith 2000). The design and interpretation of experiments in the face of these uncertainties are among the grand challenges of climate science today.
For many sources of inadequacy,the nonlinearity of the model suggests that we are unable to speculate on even the sign of that impact.
The model simulations are therefore taken as possibilities for future real world climate and as such of potential value to society, at least on variables and scales where the models agree in terms of their climate distributions (Smith 2002). But even best available information may be rationally judged quantitatively irrelevant for decision-support applications.
First, we must acknowledge that there are many areas for model improvement. Examples are the inclusion of a stratosphere, a carbon cycle, atmospheric/oceanic chemistry at some degree of complexity, ice-sheet dynamics, and realistic (i.e. statistically plausible equivalents of real-world behaviour) ENSO structures, land surface schemes (critical for exploration of regional feedbacks), a grand ensemble-deduced transfer function diurnal cycles, hurricanes, ocean eddies and many others.
Models of such complexity, at high resolution and with suitable exploration of uncertainty are not going to be available soon.
and more at....

http://www.energyendgame.com/DirtySecret.htm

 

[jreeves]

Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved
ScienceDaily (May 30, 2008) — Yale University scientists reported that they may have resolved a controversial glitch in models of global warming: A key part of the atmosphere didn't seem to be warming as expected.

Computer models and basic principles predict atmospheric temperatures should rise slightly faster than, not lag, increases in surface temperatures. Also, the models predict the fastest warming should occur at the Tropics at an altitude between eight and 12 kilometers. However, temperature readings taken from weather balloons and satellites have, according to most analysts, shown little if any warming there compared to the surface.

By measuring changes in winds, rather than relying upon problematic temperature measurements, Robert J. Allen and Steven C. Sherwood of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale estimated the atmospheric temperatures near 10 km in the Tropics rose about 0.65 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970—probably the fastest warming rate anywhere in Earth's atmosphere. The temperature increase is in line with predictions of global warming models.

“I think this puts to rest any lingering doubts that the atmosphere really has been warming up more or less as we expect, due mainly to the greenhouse effect of increasing gases like carbon dioxide,” Sherwood said.

Apparent Problem With Global Warming Climate Models Resolved

Did you read your own post? Note the highlighted section...

 

[Chris]

Did you read your own post? Note the highlighted section...

Yes, we are causing the earth to warm. The glaciers are melting, the poles are melting, and the CO2 level increases every day.

 

[jreeves]

Yes, we are causing the earth to warm. The glaciers are melting, the poles are melting, and the CO2 level increases every day.

Deflection...just admit your wrong scientist can't predict global warming? Even your article admits this fact, hence the highlighted section.

 

[Chris]

Deflection...just admit your wrong scientist can't predict global warming? Even your article admits this fact, hence the highlighted section.

I have a prediction for you. It's going to get hotter.