Jones, Geronimo

"The science is settled"is a phrase I only recall seeing used by sceptics. It tends to be used as a propaganda stick.. Can you produce references of its regular use by scientists?

Unknown unknowns are processes of which we are unaware. In the energy budget approach to climate they would show as energy coming apparently from nowhere or going nowhere. That isn't happening. Despite Geronimo's sarcasm the energy budget accounts for all the significant flows.
There are things not happening at present , such as shield volcanic activity or large impacts, but I'm not sure they count.
As far as I can see the U U s sceptics invoke are figments of imagination with no evidence to support their existence. Show me evidence and I'll consider them. In my past experience, absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, but that's the way to bet.

Falsification? Read this blog, suggesting ten ways by which climate change could be falsified. None achieved so far, but feel free to look for evidence.

http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/is-climate-science-falsifiable/

It is clear that 'robustness' is a well defined and accepted term in analytical chemistry, particularly for pharmaceuticals (see below). Thanks to michael hart for pointing this out.
Apr 4, 2014 at 1:06 PM | Registered CommenterMartin A

Thanks martin. Away from research, I've also occasionally worked manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients. Brand new thermometers had to be calibrated before use. Sometimes when the procedure called for action to be taken at a certain temperature, I had to get a co-worker to read the thermometer too. Then we both signed documentation to record we had done so. In black ink. Not pencil.
Tedious, or what?

Can you imagine certain (nameless) people doing that in climatology? They need to wake up and smell the coffee. When your 'product' has the potential to cause people great harm if not up to standard, then you have to accept and expect higher standards and levels of scrutiny.

I now understand something that has been puzzling me for a long time about EM. He's clearly not been here for the whole debate. Only an idiot, which EM isn't, would try to claim that sceptics have been saying that "the science is settled" unless they'd been somewhere else for the last 20 years. So, no idiot, but maybe a visitor from the planet Zog, unless, of course s/he's a "clever" person who now wants to label sceptics with saying "the science is settled" because it's so embarrassingly stupid in retrospect that, naively, they assume we won't remember whose slogan it was.

Welcome EM back to planet Earth after your sojourn in planet Zog, but don't for one minute assume that because you can travel vast areas of the Universe you've an intellectual superiority to humans.

"Unknown unknowns are processes of which we are unaware. In the energy budget approach to climate they would show as energy coming apparently from nowhere or going nowhere. That isn't happening. Despite Geronimo's sarcasm the energy budget accounts for all the significant flows. There are things not happening at present , such as shield volcanic activity or large impacts, but I'm not sure they count."

No I'm not sure your'e sure of anything unless the cowboys at SkS have approved it for you.

Now why don't you deal with my points about the temperature not rising and the heat not being detectable rather than try to change the subject?

Cue visit to SkS for references. Same as BBD but more polite.

Entropic Man
Isn't up to you to prove that
1 there are no unknown unknowns
2 All known unknowns are identified

Otherwise it is not robust however that is defined, if there are any items in category 2 it is not robust however that is defined. In climate modelling doesn't hidden heat count as a known unknown due to the hidden aspect?

Rhoda, Geronimo, Sandy S

You must know some scientific technique that I do not.

How do you expect me to prove that non- existant unknown unknowns unknowns do not exist? This is an exercise on a par with proving that little green men did not land on my lawn last night.

If, as you claim, scientists have been repeatedly saying that the science is settled, I would expect you to supply many links to published statements. How many have you produced? None! Justify your straw man or retire him.

The heat is not hidden. It has been heating the oceans. You can measure it using the sea level rise due to thermal expansion. You can also calculate the increase in energy content fom the temperature rise measured by ARGO and other systems.
That's two independent lines of evidence, which agree on the size and direction of the change.

Feel free to close your eyes, cover your ears and sing " I see no evidence! " Rationalised denial does not make the evidence go away.

"The heat is not hidden. It has been heating the oceans. You can measure it using the sea level rise due to thermal expansion."

No it hasn't. You of course know full well, EM, though you may choose to forget it, that sea level rise has been going on for a long time before people started blaming carbon dioxide for everything under the sun. Go to Google Scholar and search using "rate of sea level rise." Click on the "images" option and start looking at graphs. You can immediately find plenty of images and sources showing that the rate of sea level rise has not changed significantly.

And, EM, here is a nice short video explaining our current situation, and remind ourselves why the sea levels are gently rising for probably natural reasons.

http://vimeo.com/14366077

Hi EM.

Fair enough old chap.

I must confess that it IS very difficult indeed to locate a directly attributable source for the statement "The science is settled" other than Al Gore. I don't recall Gore being a "sceptic" though.

I did also perform a brief Wiley database search using various terms with no results. Fair of me?

Also I found the quote attributed to an EPA paper shuffler Lisa Jackson in the New York Times from 2010.

However, my skills with the computer are, shall we say, retarded?. There are doubtless many others but I couldn't find anything actually positively implicating a relevant scientist for "the science is settled". Al Gore don't count I guess.....

Cheerio.

A

P.S. Hope this triggers others to perform a more competent search anyhoo...

and I still think you're wrong on the Rumsfeld quote.......

"Rhoda, Geronimo, Sandy S

You must know some scientific technique that I do not.

How do you expect me to prove that non- existant unknown unknowns unknowns do not exist? This is an exercise on a par with proving that little green men did not land on my lawn last night."

1. I don't know why you addressed that at me, it's not my position that you, or anyone else for that matter, should know what the unknown unknowns are in science.

2. While it is true that the oceans are warming, they are warming at a rate very close to zero, 0.003C/annum which in no way accounts for the missing heat, hence the deep ocean theories.

3. I believe Al Gore was the first to use "the science is settled" and it was picked up by other politicians. The sceptics, along with the climate scientists (who had good reason to be scared this would become common belief - why continue funding when the science is settled?), tried to get their voices heard over the political clamour even realclimate had a post on it

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/unsettled-science/.

Notably they used a sceptic article from the WSJ to support their case. It has never been used by sceptics, and, to be honest EM, it makes me wonder where you've been and who you've been listening to, if you sincerely believe the sceptics have said the science is settled, that's the whole basis of the sceptical position the science isn't settled enough to make society changing efforts to mitigate global warming.

4. Here's my kind of science:

I postulate that temperature will rise non-linearly to a rise in CO2 and describe the expected delta with the equation:

TΔ = λ ln (CO2now/280) where TΔ is the rise in temperature λ is the climate sensitivity with a value that's apparently time dependent CO2now is the current density of CO2 in the atmosphere in parts per million and 280 is the density of CO2 in the atmosphere in ppm pre-industrial times.

Now, if, over a period of 17 years CO2 increased in the atmosphere by 20ppm from 380 to 400ppm the postulated formula (around 7% of 280) one would expect to see some increase in temperature. But there hasn't been one.

That still hasn't killed the theory, but clearly something is wrong. In other, less politically charged, science heads would be scratched an calculations looked at to find out what had gone wrong. But a whole political movement is dependent upon it not going wrong so what do the scientists do?

a. Say there's no hiatus;

b. Say there's no hiatus and the heat is going into the oceans (leaving the question hanging as to why it's changed from heating the atmosphere);

c. Say there is a hiatus

d. Say there is no hiatus on the basis of a paper from the SkS site by two unknown and hitherto untried novices who set out to prove there was no hiatus.

And therein lies the problem for climate science - it's too politicised to back away and what we call the "mainstream" is doing what scientists should never do and that's try to prove a hypothesis right with sleights of hand, and sometime downright lies. If a hypothesis is right then it will continually forecast events in the physical world correctly. In physics, there would be a scramble to find what they've missed from the equation. in climate science the equation holds as true and it's nature that's wrong.

Glad to see you back by the way, the blog is better for your presence.

Entropic Man
I would like to point out that I have always claimed that THE SCIENCE IS NOT AND NEVER HAS BEEN SETTLED! Now that we've have cleared that up you say

How do you expect me to prove that non- existant unknown unknowns unknowns do not exist? This is an exercise on a par with proving that little green men did not land on my lawn last night.

Which in a roundabout way confirms that models are not robust because nobody can prove there are no unknown unknowns. I also think that I raised the question of unknown unknowns with you on a different thread, I know that by saying something in science is settled the person claiming that it is doesn't.

So Trenberth's missing heat has been found, confirmed, peer reviewed and the data is available? can you link?

Sandy S

I see no little green men affecting the climate, despite your insistence that they must be there. Curiously, I did once write a drabble on the subject.

“Mr. Watts, Mr. Courtney, tallbloke; thank you for your efforts.” gushed the new World President.

“You discredited climate science. Industry prospered; CO2 levels soared. For 20 years global temperatures remained constant.”

“Your wisdom was applauded by all. Oil companies competed to fund you. Right-thinking conservative politicians heaped honours on you.”

“What a shock when temperatures began to rapidly rise and the greenhouse effect ran away!”

“What chagrin to find you were part of a conspiracy that went even higher than you imagined, revealed when your new masters landed.”

“We had to wait until the climate was right.”, said the Mekon.

On ocean heat content, three to start you.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013EF000165/full

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/full

www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/OHCA_1950_2011_final.pdf

Geronimo

I googled "the science is settled"

The scientists say it is not settled. The sceptics say it is not settled. The politicians are the ones saying it. So much for a PPE degree. Help, we agree!

Your equation is fine, but you are make two assumptions.

1) That warming is instantaneous.

2) That the warming will all show in the land/ocean surface temperature record.

Neither is valid. You need to take account of heat sinks such as melting ice, and cycles such as ENSO which change the relative warming rates of ocean and atmosphere. Have a look at the links I gave Sandy S. You might also like to keep an eye on the current ENSO forecasts.

http://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/

Note that if there were no warming trend El Nino would produce a warm pulse, and La Nino a cold pulse. Instead the 1998 and 2010 El Ninos produced record temperature averages, and the long La Nina produced a pause. The warming trend is still there, but masked by the tendency to La Nina conditions since the millennium.

With another El Nino starting, 2014 and 2015 promise to be interesting. I wish we could make side-bets on the robustness of the pause. I' m expecting new global temperature records and an end to the apparant slower warming since 2002.

Jones

I like talking about the science. Like yourself and Geronimo I get piaaed off with the political bullshit.

EM. "Your equation is fine, but you are make two assumptions.

1) That warming is instantaneous.

2) That the warming will all show in the land/ocean surface temperature record."

I'm making no assumptions at all, we aren't putting CO2 in the atmosphere in pulses at decadal intervals it's a continuous stream of increasing CO2, so once the warming has started like a fire it will stay warm warm from the old coal while the new coal is put onto it. I can see absolutely no reason for the warming to have stopped, nor can I see a reason for the warming to decide to go into the deep oceans when it had been going into the atmosphere for 20 years. And guess what? Neither can anyone else which is why the climate science community is flustered and floundering.

To be honest I doubt we have stopped warming that's not my position at all, because I don't know. My concerns simply put are that we have a group of scientists have convinced politicians that they can foretell the future state of the climate - and they can't. What they say when challenged is that they can't foretell the future but they can make guesses about the possible scenarios, in the same way that you can say the summer will be hotter than the winter. Is that what we get for $100bn of investment?

Let me get something else of my chest. I'm not clever enough to be a scientist, but scientists aren't clever enough to tell us the solutions to problems in another coupled non-linear chaotic system, society. They are calling for mitigation and they have no experience or expertise in the solutions. Huge amounts of money has already been diverted from better causes in an utterly futile attempt to stop global warming - if there is any. As it happens lots of that money has gone into the pockets of politicians and left-wing billionaires and of course into climate science, where times could never have been so good. The latest IPCC WG1 report has already started backing away from the stupid certainty in AR3 and AR4, but the activist scientists in WG2 (do we include our own Richard Betts as an "activist" scientist?) have produced a report saying there will be few benefits from warming, something they couldn't possibly know, because even if I can tell you that summer will be warmer than winter, there's no way I can tell you whether you'll enjoy your holidays, or whether the crops will grow, or whether there will be storms etc. etc, It's fake forecasting by activists and has no place in science.

I'll leave you with what Dr Trenberth had to say about the models that gave us the last dose of panic and mayhem in his Nature blog on 4 June 2007:

"I have often seen references to predictions of future climate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presumably through the IPCC assessments (the various chapters in the recently completed Working Group I Fourth Assessment report can be accessed through this listing). In fact, since the last report it is also often stated that the science is settled or done and now is the time for action.

In fact there are no predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been. The IPCC instead proffers “what if” projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. There are a number of assumptions that go into these emissions scenarios. They are intended to cover a range of possible self consistent “story lines” that then provide decision makers with information about which paths might be more desirable. But they do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. There is no estimate, even probabilistically, as to the likelihood of any emissions scenario and no best guess.

Even if there were, the projections are based on model results that provide differences of the future climate relative to that today. None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models. There is neither an El Niño sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim countries and beyond. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, that may depend on the thermohaline circulation and thus ocean currents in the Atlantic, is not set up to match today’s state, but it is a critical component of the Atlantic hurricanes and it undoubtedly affects forecasts for the next decade from Brazil to Europe. Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors. I postulate that regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models are initialized.

The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it can not work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle. For instance, if the current state is one of drought then it is unlikely to get drier, but unrealistic model states and model biases can easily violate such constraints and project drier conditions. Of course one can initialize a climate model, but a biased model will immediately drift back to the model climate and the predicted trends will then be wrong. Therefore the problem of overcoming this shortcoming, and facing up to initializing climate models means not only obtaining sufficient reliable observations of all aspects of the climate system, but also overcoming model biases. So this is a major challenge.

The IPCC report makes it clear that there is a substantial future commitment to further climate change even if we could stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. And the commitment is even greater given that the best we can realistically hope for in the near term is to perhaps stabilize emissions, which means increases in concentrations of long-lived greenhouse gases indefinitely into the future. Thus future climate change is guaranteed.

So if the science is settled, then what are we planning for and adapting to? A consensus has emerged that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” to quote the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Summary for Policy Makers (pdf) and the science is convincing that humans are the cause. Hence mitigation of the problem: stopping or slowing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere is essential. The science is clear in this respect.

However, the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate. But we need them. Indeed it is an imperative! So the science is just beginning. Beginning, that is, to face up to the challenge of building a climate information system that tracks the current climate and the agents of change, that initializes models and makes predictions, and that provides useful climate information on many time scales regionally and tailored to many sectoral needs.

Kevin Trenberth
Climate Analysis Section, NCAR

Geronimo

Trenberth has it right. Science does the best it can. You work at the state of the art, no matter how incomplete. You don't need a brain the size of a planet either, just a sort of dogged curiosity.

The whole question is becoming moot anyway. Enough people are noticing that change is going on. For them the question is no longer whether change will happen. They are more interested in finding ways to adapt.

Even big business has moved on from lobbying denial to factoring warming into business plans and looking for ways to profit from it.

"Adapt and survive" is going to get a whole new meaning!

EM

Yes, the science is science and it will still be there when all the snake oil (from whichever quarter) has gone.

I know I blather on again and again about this but one way or the other time IS going to tell both you and me and everyone else who is right with all this (it is not weakness for either of us to admit that at least...it can't be any other way...can it?).

I suspect that like me you are in .....hurrmmph....late middle age (do correct if a grossly wrong assumption) and I hope we both live long enough for one or other of us to both go....Ahhhhh....OOOKKAAAAYYY......so it is/isn't a pile of bovine excreta.

A

Jones

A while ago I read "Guns, germs and Steel. This analysed why some cultures arose and prospered at the expense of others. Two weeks ago I read Jared Diamond's other book "Collapse", analysing why, when the going got difficult, some cultures survive and others collapse. The fivev critical factors associated with collapse were environmental damage, resource depletion, changing climate, lack of outside help and the degree of cultural rigidity

Then I read AR5 WGII.

The parallels between past societies such as the Mayans and our own situation was striking and depressing. There was also one big lesson. Societies which survived tended to identify problems early and adapt. Those which disappeared tended to ignore problems or stick to old habits long after they became liabilities.

Guess which way we have been going? There has been a lot of all five factors in play in recent decades. Fortunately there are signs of change. AR5 WG II struck a very different note from AR4. Mitigation is failing, so adaptation and resilience are becoming the priorities.

One of us may indeed live long enough to tell the other " I told you so.", but which one?
We'll probably both be doting soon anyway. :-)

Goodnight.

Goodnight.

P.S. If I'm demented in my dotage however don't bother......................

I am aware of "Collapse" but frankly I can't even catch up on my other three dozen new books in a pile to read first...

But I get yer point.

A

"Adapt and survive" is going to get a whole new meaning!
Apr 5, 2014 at 10:43 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man

Only if you listen to wrong people like Greenpeace and the IPCC.

Back in the real world it will have the same meaning it always did.
Viz: Maintain your sea walls and sea defences properly. Maintain your inland rivers and drainage systems properly. Also build reservoirs to ensure adequate water supply. Don't build on flood plains. Keep a stockpile of salt and grit for when the wrong kind of snow falls in winter. [Farmers don't need telling what sort of crops to grow, they are smart enough to decide themselves.]

There. That wasn't so painful, was it?
Can I have my $100Billion please?

I also think that counts as "robust" advice.