Shub

What a load of diversionary waffle.

I don't like people playing tricks.

I don't like people who don't answer simple questions. It's usually evidence that they are being tricky.

Does RF from CO2 heat the climate system? (Y/N)

The answer you asked for, is in the previous post.

Shub

Under sustained pressure, you did eventually admit to the existence of a greenhouse effect. So you do accept the radiative physics. I'm glad to hear it, because for a while I wasn't sure. This would have been an impediment to reasoned debate.

But you remain agnostic about what will happen if RF from CO2 increases:

So, the greenhouse effect takes place, yes. What is that going to do "to the system?" I don't know the answer.

Well, what do you think it might do?

You accept that there is a greenhouse effect, so presumably accept the physics underpinning it.

I dislike proceeding like this, but it is necessary. One step at a time.

Does RF from CO2 heat the climate system? (Y/N)

"what do you think it might do?"

The answer to this question is present in your previous replies.

You have provided the answer I asked for, in your replies as well.

Thanks.

Shub

A straight answer would be appropriate now. Your characteristic evasiveness will be raising eyebrows.

I think it may be a bit late to rescue your credibility, but you should do what you can.

BBD

I've given you my honest answer. I don't think there is a simple answer to your question and if there indeed is, I don't know of it.

Shub

The honest and simple answer is: yes.

To disagree with this requires the rejection of a very substantial body of work no-one else has shown to be wrong (where are the rebuttals in the literature to Ramanathan, Hansen, Charney?).

You betray bias and a lack of learning here. I hope it has been duly noted by others.

You betray the same kinds of things too.

Rather than indulge in tit-for-tat, why not address the disagreement?

You reject a very substantial body of work no-one else has shown to be wrong (where are the rebuttals in the literature to Ramanathan, Hansen, Charney?).

On what basis?

Dude,

You have become the perfect caricature of a warmist. Continually framing arguments to trap opponents into positions where they can be billed as "denying" this or that "accepted basic physics" or wisdom, and the like.

Shub

If BBD's caricature is sticking to known theorums and science, and trying to address that, then it's not a bad thing, surely?

Talking of cliches, it might be worth pointing out that when BBD tries to address the science, you wriggle very hard to avoid doing so. People might read something into that...

no zbd, I am not 'wriggling hard'. The game he is playing is just a variant of the 'we know it will warm up, but we don't know how much' question.

Only he is trying to say: 'if you don't know how much, you are denying Ramanathan, Hansen etc'.

Look at the mode of operation: who discusses science like that?

Everytime anyone has taken out some time and offered a perspective, BBD can only come back with evasions. He has done that on this thread too.

If BBD's caricature is sticking to known theorums and science, and trying to address that, then it's not a bad thing, surely?

Perhaps, but not necessarily. It depends on which theorems (sp!) and science he is sticking to.
It appears that he has adopted Trenberthian science, the branch that says "global warming is man-made because the IPCC says so and I should know because I wrote that chapter and it's time you all believed me".
I don't think science works quite like that.
The climate has consistently changed over millennia marginally affected by human activity, more so by a large number of other things. A group of scientists (not a majority and as we see from a number of recently published papers not a consensus either) claims that "this time it's different".
The sceptic's response is "fine, but it's up to you to prove that not up to us to prove it isn't".
And BBD's question on the RF of CO2 (what's with all these initials? not everyone knows off the top of their heads what RF and OHC and MMM and TLT are!) is the equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife?" Whichever answer you give your opponent scores a point.

"A group of scientists (not a majority and as we see from a number of recently published papers not a consensus either)"
Oct 17, 2011 at 11:49 AM |Mike Jackson

Mike - this is quite simply incorrect. There have been two different peer-reviewed papers examining the consensus view amongst climate scientists, Anderegg and Doran. They used different methodologies and arrived at the same figure, 97%. How, in your mind, that's not a very clear majority indeed, is beyond me.

As for the rest of your comment, you don't seem to understand how science moves forward through falsification. Theories like Relativity and Evolution aren't proved. They are put forward, and demonstrated to be compatible with known science and evidence. Those that question them, try and falsify them. Failure to do so, tends to suggest that they are more likely to be correct. As this process continues, then they become adopted as working theories.

This is exactly what has happened with Evolution, AGW and Relativity. Until they are falsified, or a better theory is put forwards with fits even more closely, we treat them as 'correct' and can base decisions upon them.

Your idea that AGW isn't 'proved', betrays nothing more then your ignorance of science.

Shub

no zbd, I am not 'wriggling hard'.

Oh dear. I think I can hear some sniggering in here.

The game he is playing is just a variant of the 'we know it will warm up, but we don't know how much' question.

The last time global average temperatures were a bit higher than the present was the Eemian. It was between 1 - 2C warmer.

Mean sea level was 5m higher. About 1m is thought to have come from the Greenland ice sheet. The other 4m from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

So I think all this dickering about 'how much' warmer is rather beside the point.

But that's all you've got. Waffle, evade, distract, waffle...

When you appeared on this thread, I brought up Hansen & Sato (2011). This provides several empirical estimates of climate sensitivity derived from paleoclimate behaviour. H&S get a value of 3C for a doubling of pre-industrial levels of CO2. Very close to the median modelled estimate.

Even if both results are a bit high, this does not mean that there will not be very serious problems ahead. Only someone biased and poorly informed would argue that.

As I tried to explain upthread, the current divergence between global TLT and the MMM is far more likely to arise from thermal intertia (OHC increase) which current measurement systems are simply not adequate to capture.

I sense that you did not grasp this, which is a shame.

Come on, Zed!!!! Nobody wanting to retain any credibility cites Doran. Even their own report shows in the space of one page the contortions they had to go through to get that 97%.
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf
Go read it for yourself. 97% of the 2.4% who responded? Come on! What sort of fools do you think we are.
Anderegg is just as bad. The idea that because I've published more papers than you makes me more of an expert than you is so fatuous it beggars belief that anybody still quotes it.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/52/E188.full

Scientific merit does not derive from the number, productivity, or prominence of those holding a certain view—truth by majority rule or oligarchical fiat. The history of science is replete with views (e.g., a geocentric universe or the immutability of species) that were widely held, held by the most prominent of men, and wrong. Here, we do not have homogeneous consensus absent a few crackpot dissenters. There is variation among the majority, and a minority, with core competency, who question some underlying premises.

My knowledge of the scientific method is probably as good as yours (since you don't tell us what your scientific qualifications are I've no way of knowing). The principle is simple: you want to overturn the current paradigm, you prove your hypothesis. I'm well aware of science moving forward through falsification. So falsify the understanding that climate variation has happened over millennia without needing the input of CO2 to do it. Don't say "this time it's different" (or more likely: "it must be CO2 because our models don't work without it") and then demand that everyone else falsifies that particular hypothesis which is essentially what you are asking for.
Furthermore any counter-hypothesis that is proposed, or any paper which questions any part of the received wisdom, is immediately howled down. The debate currently going on between Spencer and Dessler is a case in point. Nobody with any sense has suggested that Spencer is yet another "final nail in the coffin ..." but it is a useful contribution to the debate, as is Svensmark's work on cosmic rays. Spencer raised questions which Dessler was so desperate to rebut he didn't even read the paper properly and got himself tied in knots.
Calm down, people. If there are alternative possibilities can we try to look at them objectively? Answer: apparently not!

Mike

Are there peer-reviewed rebuttals of the Anderegg and Doran papers? No. Are there peer-reviewed papers out there which say consensus amongst climate scientists is something significantly different from 97%? No there aren't. In fact, do you have any evidence for your claim that there is not an overwhelming consensus amongst climate scientists? No you don't.

This seems to be your approach. Make claims for which you have no evidence, if somebody points out that you are not correct, and provides you with the evidence for this, then you try and pick some form of minor hole in the evidence. In your mind, this not only constitutes a rebuttal, but also justifies you in concluding that your original position, for which you have no evidence, is correct; because the one, for which evidence exists, hasn't been 'proved'.

AGW theory is in complete accord with our understanding of past climate change. Nobody is arguing that anything is different this time. Why on Earth are you saying that they are?

The only people arguing against the evidence of millenia are those like you, who seem to be trying to claim the CO2 is somehow no longer a greenhouse gas, or whatever it is you claim. If you're going to try and claim that everything has suddenly changed, then you need to provide evidence, so we can see if it can be falsified.

Once again, you have none.

Mike

My knowledge of the scientific method is probably as good as yours (since you don't tell us what your scientific qualifications are I've no way of knowing). The principle is simple: you want to overturn the current paradigm, you prove your hypothesis.

You are trying to argue against the current understanding. Not Zed; not me. You. Your reasoning is back-to-front. You are the one who needs to do the falsification. Or at least to find some. You should not let Jo Nova do your thinking for you.

"The last time global average temperatures were a bit higher than the present was the Eemian. It was between 1 - 2C warmer.

But sea level was higher ...blah...etc etc"

At once, this establishes to me, that this is no more a discussion of science.

I have played these games a long back. I know the standard tricks. "When the temperature was high last time, the sea level was higher" - go and peddle this alarmist bullshit to someone else. Not to the Bishop Hill audience (not because you and me are super smart, but because we've seen these arguments before and they don't convince).

Anyone who cannot parse the language of the climate and geography literature into present-timeframe relevant terms should not be allowed to pollute the climate debate.

Secondly, you introduced Hansen and Sato 2011 in the thread, not because I appeared, but because that is the latest paper you've happened to have read. Secondly, throwing empirical estimates of climate sensitivity cannot answer for why global climate models cannot capture all aspects of present-day change. I asked you to confront that issue first - something you still haven't done.

So, I'll ask again: if the circulation models encapsulate all physical realities as we understand them today, why cannot they reproduce present-day change? Why do we find them making up stuff, after the fact? ("the heat has gone into the ocean" What a load of crap!)

Any other branch of science, claiming the level of certainty as they do (or are represented as doing) and simultaneously dissembling the way they have, would have cringed with shame.

zed,

You ought to ashamed of peddling Doran and Anderegg.

Shub

I'm talking about actual studies. You are talking about 'standard tricks', 'alarmist bullshit', 'polluting the climate debate', 'making stuff up', 'dissembling' etc.

In other words, you are ranting.

Secondly, throwing empirical estimates of climate sensitivity cannot answer for why global climate models cannot capture all aspects of present-day change. I asked you to confront that issue first - something you still haven't done.

More 'Shub-logic'.

The empirical estimate has nothing to do with the modelled estimate. I specifically make this distinction above. It simply provides evidence that the modelled estimate is probably about right.

Then I went on to explain the likely reasons for the divergence between observations and the MMM. You described this as 'a load of crap'. On what basis?

Clearly your claim that I 'still haven't confronted' this is not just mistaken, it is a deliberate falsehood. So now you are being abusive and dishonest. It's deeply unimpressive.

Anyone who cannot parse the language of the climate and geography literature into present-timeframe relevant terms should not be allowed to pollute the climate debate.

Oh, the irony. You couldn't make it up.

BBD
So what you are saying is that climatologists can claim that while the climate has changed for millions of years (as it has) all of a sudden in the latter half of the 20th century this bit of warming is different from all the previous ones and I have to accept that or disprove it.
I don't think so.
If you want me to believe that this time is different then it is up to you to provide the evidence. It is not up to me to try to prove it isn't.

Zed
I don't need a peer-reviewed paper to debunk Doran. Their paper does it quite well on its own.
They send out 10,000 requests. 3,000 reply so we are into self-selection already. Then they have to whittle it down to 77 before they can get their 97%.
So 75 scientists out of 10,000 is a consensus, already.
Aye, right.
And if I used Anderbegg's method to prove anything I'd be laughed out of the room, as he should have been.
But if you want to believe....

Mike

So what you are saying is that climatologists can claim that while the climate has changed for millions of years (as it has) all of a sudden in the latter half of the 20th century this bit of warming is different from all the previous ones and I have to accept that or disprove it.

I've already explained that you have this backwards. You want to challenge the current scientific understanding. Therefore you need to show where it is wrong. Not the other way around. This is very basic stuff. If you can't, don't expect to be taken seriously, because you won't be.

This Jo Nova meme is really poisonous stuff. It calculatingly locks people out of rational discourse. For example, you can persist in believing whatever makes you happy. You can remain in self-imposed ignorance by refusing to read. You can make whatever illogical demands for proof you like.

What you cannot do is re-write the physics underpinning the climatology underpinning the problem with CO2.

That, you are stuck with. My best advice would be to start reading. You have unparalleled access to everything from the primary literature to pop-sci, all on-line, right here, right now. It is a shame not to use it.

But by buying into JN's false logic, you are imprisoned by it. Locked out of rational debate and the improved understanding it brings. That is very, very sad.

Earlier on, you said:

"- energy is accumulating in the oceans (as predicted)"

Could you please provide any references for papers that did this? Thanks.

Secondly, you said, at the beginning, that it is "about the physics". It is not.

It is about the admissibility, and the type of evidence in the context of the changes that are being discussed. Secondly, it is about what practices are allowable given that 'the hypothesis' in the climate debate, is now fixed. Thirdly it is about the nature of climate models, and the admissibility of model ouput in an argument from first principles. "Physics" is involved, but the real question is a more general one - it is about the standard and rigour of our scientific practice.