BBD

"The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"
I have for the first time just read your posts in Zed's Wind Power Discussion thread, you were logical, well informed and polite throughout that discussion. What happened in this thread?

Shub @ Nov 15, 2011 at 12:27 AM,

I know what you mean about what alarmists want to say. Possibly they aren't interested in science, because they think it is already settled. But beyond matthu's summary, I think they are wrong to think that. Climate sensitivity is a linear approximation, which eventually breaks down when forcing becomes large enough. As an example, SB10 very nicely calculate the value of a quantity within the linear regime. However it is not the same quantity as the one estimated by the IPCC to fall between 1.5 and 4.5 K. I'd say that the Z&G findings can be spun out in support of political ideas at either end of the spectrum. IMO, their findings are more consistent with the position offered here.

BBD @ Nov 12, 2011 at 3:10 PM

I hope I've gathered the root of your concern over Koutsoyiannis' work now, so let me try a first comment in response...

The orbital effect (Milankovitch) is a set of periodic perturbations; therefore when spectrally analyzed spikes are expected. If this was the only thing involved in the glacial/interglacial, then presumably a similar spectrum would be found for temperature series. Instead it is found that the series have a fractal character: this needs to be explained. Of course, CO2 and other direct physical effects are very important. But remember also that the earth's climate is not a static system. It is constantly driven by solar energy even in the absence of perturbations; it processes the energy through interacting dynamical processes, before spitting it back out to space again. Therefore dynamical systems theory is applicable.

Behaviours of dynamical systems are often quite unintuitive - for example synchronization. My impression is that Koutsoyiannis is using dynamical systems ideas to try to understand the scaling behaviour seen in the temperature series. I think this is a very reasonable and interesting line to take. The use of simple discrete models (such as the toy hydrology model) is a well-known technique for obtaining qualitative understanding. It can probably be traced back to Poincare. I agree with you that it is crucial to understand the important role of GHGs in climate variation. But to get a clearer picture of how such direct influences play out, I think it is also important to study the kind of general effects that have caught Koutsoyiannis' eye.

Looking at it from a lightly different angle, I'd say that both the mainstream and the sceptics like Lindzen and Spencer approach the issue in a standard reductionist manner. An alternative is to search for arguments of principle (as per relativity). One example is the extremal arguments of Paltridge and others (google maximum entropy production). I'd say that arguments based on dynamical systems theory should be taken in the same vein.

Nov 13, 2011 at 2:14 PM [the zealot:]

Hilary

[much self-important attention-seeking blather 'n insults followed by:]

I think we are done here

======

Nov 13, 2011 at 11:32 PM [hro001:]

For the record, I haven't addressed the zealot directly in a post since the days of his irrational and intellectually dishonest (and very telling) ranting smears against Spencer - at which point, I had concluded that attempting to engage him was an utter waste of my time.

======

Nov 14, 2011 at 1:51 PM [the zealot:]

Hilary

See Nov 13, 2011 at 2:14 PM. We are done here.

======

Nov 14, 2011 at 1:56 PM [the zealot]

Hilary

[Hmmm ... looks he changed his mind! -hro]

======

Nov 14, 2011 at 3:15 PM [matthu]

I guess BBD assumes that every comment on this thread is addressed directly at him.

Sure looks that way to me. Either that or, he's trying to keep up his quantity of posts ... quality - as usual - not so much. Then again, maybe the angry little wannabe-blog-moderator is ... uh ... trying to 'keep me in check', or 'shut me down' ;-)

Philip

One has to be extremely careful with applying HK dynamical analysis to climate time-series. I strongly suspect that DK has over-interpreted his results.

More on another thread perhaps. This one is so choked by the accumulated dishonesty and malice of certain commenters it is no longer a viable venue for serious discussion.

Hilary

If I had been caught out in a blatant, childish lie like this I'd keep quiet for a long time:

I find it mildly amusing that our resident zealot should have failed to notice that I was not addressing him. Yet his knee-jerk wall of pompous arrogance and insults (which some might call classic exercises in projection) - addressed directly to me - strongly suggests that he has very mistakenly concluded that I give even a tinker's dam(n) what his self-exalted opinion might be!

This is absolutely pathetic.

"I strongly suspect...etc"

You cannot just 'strongly suspect' (this or) that based on your strong belief in RF-CO2-blah-blah' IPCC linear paradigm. You'd have to show it formally.

BBD @ Nov 15, 2011 at 7:11 PM

OK, let's pick it up again in a few days, and see what we think.

Philip

Of course.

..
Shub

1/. The IPCC is not the originator of the hypothesis that RF from CO2 is heating the climate system

2/. Nothing, including non-physical approaches by DK and others, has so far answered the two necessary questions:

- if not CO2, then what is causing the modern warming?*

- if it is something else, then why is CO2 not heating the climate system as predicted?

Science doesn't prove things. Science refutes hypotheses. The two questions above have to be dealt with in order to refute the hypothesis that RF from CO2 is heating the climate system.

This has not been done, so the hypothesis stands.

*Weather is stochastic. Climate responds to sustained perturbation (eg from increased RF from CO2). The walk (trend) is not random. Think of it like this: if T rises, then radiative loss to space at TOA increases and T falls unless a sustained energetic imbalance maintains or increases T.

END NOTE

Believe me or not, I managed to break my foot today (fifth metatarsal, quite badly). I'm in plaster, on painkillers, and not up to further chatter this evening.

As I said to Philip, TBC and not on this thread.

BBD - get well soon. Going to hurt for a bit I'm afraid.

BBD

"if not CO2, then what is causing the modern warming?*

- if it is something else, then why is CO2 not heating the climate system as predicted?

Science doesn't prove things. Science refutes hypotheses. The two questions above have to be dealt with in order to refute the hypothesis that RF from CO2 is heating the climate system.

This has not been done, so the hypothesis stands. "

Science does not prove anything or refute anything.
A hypothesis does not stand until it has been tested in such a way that empirical results agree with hypothetical predictions.
You state that unless someone can show exactly what has been warming the planet recently then the hypothesis that CO2 is warming it must stand. This statement is scientifically illiterate.

ZedsDeadBed,

Perhaps with BBD taking a well earned rest and putting his feet up for a while, so to speak, you will be willing to return to your discussion thread?

The IEA strategy report, unfortunately the price is far too expensive for me to purchase and I don't yet have any contacts that will be issued a copy but I wondered, do you have a copy yet that we could peruse as there seems to be very little discussion around the web?

Zed

Thank you. Much appreciated.

Dung

Science does not prove anything or refute anything.

So, what does it do then? Crochet?

A hypothesis does not stand until it has been tested in such a way that empirical results agree with hypothetical predictions.

What?

I'm not in the mood for a pub-bore argument with you about this.

With AGW, the empirical results (accelerating rise in GAT; increase in OHC; accelerating glacial mass loss; accelerating GIS mass loss; accelerating WAIS mass loss; accelerating Arctic ice melt etc) support the hypothesised effects of CO2-forced warming. This is near-universally acknowledged except by contrarians, who have no coherent alternative hypothesis to explain the warming. All they can do is nit-pick and muddy the waters with irrelevancies, as you are doing here.

You state that unless someone can show exactly what has been warming the planet recently then the hypothesis that CO2 is warming it must stand. This statement is scientifically illiterate.

Why?

Oh, dear!

Did Dung forget that the CO2 hypothesis is unfalsifiable?

Dear BBD I do hope your foot improves soon.

Pub bore huh?

What you quoted (a lot of) were correlations between events, CO2 rose at the same time as yadayadayada.Correlation is not causation.
For the CO2 hypothesis to stand (as the only cause of warming) it has to be seen to be true in all situations.
Firstly it is not true at the moment, CO2 is rising and global temperature is not rising hence the famous email from climategate. For about 30 years from the 1940s to the 1970s CO2 rose quickly but temperatures fell .
The ice-core records show many periods where CO2 and temperature do not correlate. Your beloved realclimate have various threads trying to explain how CO2 is the main culprit when as they accept, CO2 did not start the warming in any of the last 7 interglacials. Temperatures rose when CO2 was going down, temperatures fell when CO2 was rising.
At the very least these events prove there is more at work than CO2. I believe that CO2 plays a part in raising global temperatures but that it is not the only factor. I also believe that the relationship between temperature and levels of CO2 is logarithmic.
You are very fond of "current scientific understanding of radiative forcings and feedback" and I believe that at some point that understanding will grow and along with other lines of research (Svensmark and others) we will get the full picture.
Right now we really dont understand enough to say diddly squat.

Dung,

That nicely expresses some of the scientific issues that have puzzled me as well. I put your comments together with mattthu's summary (e.g. at Nov 10, 2011 at 10:57 PM on page 5 of this thread) and ask how best to respond to this combination of certainty and uncertainty. The response I like the most is the one found here. Can I ask: do you also like these ideas, or do you prefer a different approach?

Would somebody care to comment on the following?

It seems that the atmosphere, unlike the land surface, has shown no warming during the crucial period (1978-1997), either over land or over ocean, according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons.

And that all the climate models insist that the atmosphere must warm faster than the surface (in agreement with atmospheric theory).

So ... much more room for doubt (less room for consensus).

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/why_best_will_not_settle_the_climate_debate.html

I am not a scientist or a mathematician and many who write on this blog think I should stay out of this argument. On the contrary I believe that as a highly intelligent man with an analytical mind I can add more than many scientists or mathematicians to the argument.
BBD behaves like a man who has one piece of a jigsaw and claims to know the whole picture. He makes this claim without even knowing how many pieces the jigsaw has.
With a jigsaw you will know the big picture long before the last piece is in place but understanding and predicting climate is more complicated.
You may (in n thousand years) totally understand everything about every factor influencing our climate......except one but if there is just one unknown then you can not understand or predict climate. Is the unknown factor warming or cooling, cyclic or random, strong or weak, frequent or infrequent?
Until we understand everything about our climate then science knows nothing about predicting our climate.
This current period of what will become our history will be ranked as not much more advanced than the stone age.
The true answer to the question "what shall we do about climate?" is "nothing".

Matthu

First I refer you to my post above.

However this is a good example of mathematicians/computer modellers being too close to one part of the picture and also too much in love with their own model.
As I understand it the current hypothesis on greehouse warming implies that if greenhouse warming is taking place then there should be a "hotspot" of warming at (if I remember) about 10km above the surface where temperature rises faster than at the surface. As far as I know such an event has never been observed but it has not put the modellers off one bit.
For me it suggests what I believe which is that the warming effect of CO2 has already plateaued and will have no further warming effect.

Matthu,

It certainly looks to me as if there was a step in '98 with an approximate plateau on either side. I think it is quite easy to give a misleading impression by scaling the vertical axis on graphs. Ole Humlum has an interesting set of comparisons here:

http://www.climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#Comparing%20surface%20and%20sattellite%20temperature%20estimates.

Dung,

Thanks for your reply! IMO, the argument is not about science, so even if you knew nothing about it, I think you should still keep in it. I agree with you that science is unlikely to give definitive answers about the impact of CO2 anytime soon. Despite this, I think that far too many people argue as if the only reasonable approach to the issue is to (A) get the science right, and then (B) decide what to do about it. Both alarmists and sceptics do this.

Alarmists say that the science is "settled", because this means they can move on to (B). No doubt "the science says" that we should do what they would have liked to do anyway. And because it is "the science says", anybody without a deep understanding of it (i.e. the majority) or with a "contrarian" position on it (i.e. the minority group scientists) should be excluded from the political discussions. Because this attitude is so untrue and so unfair, it has ended up damaging many people's trust in science as an institution.

Sceptics, on the other hand, are still interested in the science, like to emphasize the ambiguities and uncertainties, and suggest these imply it is too early yet to move onto (B). I think this is a mistake, because it accepts the alarmist's proposition (science first, then politics), and makes it easier for them to avoid a proper inclusive debate about political objectives. Therefore, I think it is likely to be a better strategy to accept the basic (and largely uncontested) facts about CO2, and on that basis move directly onto (B).

PS: It is quite an interesting experience asking for opinions about Hartwell on green activist blogs. They hate it! It demonstrates that there are indeed alternative ways to respond to increasing CO2.

Philip,
The conundrum you state is somewhat related to the fad/serious issue of the so-called evidence-based policy making. Since human efforts to address any issue or question are almost always reflexive, what such an approach translates to paradoxically, is a policy-driven evidence making. The whole approach of 'science first, policy next' has to be given up.

If a handful of activists characterize such evidence-making activities as 'science', it becomes almost impossible for them to not resort to characterizing their opponents as 'anti-science'.

Completely empirically-driven policy, carried out by a flexible, responsive-to-feedback bureaucracy, is probably a whole order better than scientific prediction-driven policy making.

matthu @ Nov 17, 2011 at 1:10 PM

Would somebody care to comment on the following?

It seems that the atmosphere, unlike the land surface, has shown no warming during the crucial period (1978-1997), either over land or over ocean, according to satellites and independent data from weather balloons.

Yes. Don't cherry pick your start and end points. Don't use sub-30y time-series.

You will get this:

UAH and RSS. Common 1981 – 2010 baseline; annual mean; trend

Which tells a rather different (and much more revealing) story.

Dung

Oh, wow. And people here call me arrogant:

I believe that as a highly intelligent man with an analytical mind I can add more than many scientists or mathematicians to the argument.

BBD behaves like a man who has one piece of a jigsaw and claims to know the whole picture.

Spot the amusing self-contradiction there anyone?

What you quoted (a lot of) were correlations between events, CO2 rose at the same time as yadayadayada. Correlation is not causation.

And this is not sufficient. You have just waved away:

- accelerating rise in GAT

- increase in OHC

- accelerating glacial mass loss

- accelerating GIS mass loss

- accelerating WAIS mass loss

- accelerating Arctic ice melt

And much more besides.

So, as 'a highly intelligent man with an analytical mind [that] can add more than many scientists or mathematicians to the argument' will you please enlighten us?

What is causing the warming?

And why is CO2 not causing the warming, despite the fact that decades of work show that CO2 is increasing the accumulation of energy in the climate system?

Only 'sceptics' insisit that mysterious 'natural causes' are responsible despite there being no evidence for this whatsoever.

Funny, that.

The ice-core records show many periods where CO2 and temperature do not correlate. Your beloved realclimate have various threads trying to explain how CO2 is the main culprit when as they accept, CO2 did not start the warming in any of the last 7 interglacials. Temperatures rose when CO2 was going down, temperatures fell when CO2 was rising.

- no-one argues that CO2 triggers glacial terminations

- CO2 appears to be a fast feedback to Milankovitch forcing (lagging but amplifying the initial effect)

Until we understand everything about our climate then science knows nothing about predicting our climate.

Rubbish. Where in God's name do you get this stuff? Have you no idea how daft you sound?