Discussion > Does Climate Science Exist?
Martin A
"Demonising people (literally, in this case) who you disagree with because you seem to have lost the argument shows you up as a peevish whinger."
On BH, a site full of peevish whingers, I feel right at home.
Entropic man
No wish to interrupt a private bun fight but Wiki says a few of things relevant to clouds and Contrails
1 Information
The resulting cloud forms may resemble cirrus, cirrocumulus, or cirrostratus, and are sometimes called cirrus aviaticus. Persistent spreading contrails are thought by some, without overwhelming scientific proof, to have a significant effect on global climate.
2 Theory Contrails are a positive feedback
Aviation Project (AEAP).[6] Global radiative forcing has been calculated from the reanalysis data, climatological models and radiative transfer codes. It is estimated to amount to 0.012 W/m2 (watts per square meter) for 2005, with an uncertainty range of 0.005 to 0.026 W/m2, and with a low level of scientific understanding. Therefore, the overall net effect of contrails is positive, i.e. a warming effect
3 Actuality Contrails are a negative feedback
The grounding of planes for three days in the United States after September 11, 2001 provided a rare opportunity for scientists to study the effects of contrails on climate forcing. Measurements showed that without contrails, the local diurnal temperature range (difference of day and night temperatures) was about 1 °C (1.8 °F) higher than immediately before
4 Excuse for reality being wrong
however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period.
SandyS
Leaving aside albedo effects, I would think that contrails or any other sort of dispersed water droplets are going to seed further cloud formation.
Schrodinger's Cat
Schrodinger's Cat
It was the (cirrus) cloud formation related to contrails and the discussion of +ve/-ve feedack which triggered me to look as my memory of the US flying ban was that the effect was to confirm that contrary to a claim earlier the feedback was -ve. This was a three day experiment giving real not model data. So the seeding should enhance the effect.
SandyS
Can anyone remind me why ZDB was banned?
SandyS
SandyS I remember ZDB s/he once paid me the compliment of telling me I wasn't a complete idiot (although s/he hadn't had the benefit of taking evidence of this from to Mrs. geronimo). I was of course flattered to be thought of a "not a complete "ejeet" as s/he put it.
If you are referring to the egregious behaviour of EM on this thread, could I remind you that we saw the exact same reaction from BBD when he was finally outed as an SkS regurgitator. He went from the voice of reason to abusing everyone and anyone in short order. That's what happens when you feel superior the people you're debating with and it turns out that you're not. You insult them.
In EM's case I've wondered if it was a case of "in vino veritas" because of the swings from reason to abuse. Either way I think he's done his time here, there's nothing more to discuss with him.
geronimo
ssat, I've just read your post of yesterday, (I missed it because I tend to skip EM comments and the replies that they get).
I think that your zero sum idea is a good one. I need to study it in more detail but my initial gut feeling is that it makes sense. GH gases can delay outgoing heat in the atmosphere. They also facilitate outgoing heat in the atmosphere, depending on where in the atmosphere and the orientation of the emitted photons.
Another way of thinking of it is that down welling photons from GHG will encounter absorption, kinetic transfer collisions, re-emission, etc. So will up welling photons from the surface or near surface GHG.
I also like the TOA increased height-increased area point.
I'm very tempted to ask you to go through the whole thing again in a step by step systematic way in order to invite challenge/feedback/ questions. However, I would hope that a lot more people give feedback on this. It is not worth going through the exercise again just for my benefit.
Schrodinger's Cat
It may even be worth starting a new discussion to get maximum interest. I fear that the efforts of the troll may have steadily reduced the visits to this thread, even though it had great potential for this sort of discussion.
Schrodinger's Cat
S Cat
Thanks for reading!
I am unsure if making clearer comments will help as it tends to attract the back-radiation police. The key to this whole hoo-hah is, in my opinion, the assumption there will be an AGW TOA energy imbalance. And I mean assumption. It all comes from the idea that there will be warming of one degree per doubling of CO2. That in turn comes from holding the lapse rate constant during that doubling. CO2 has magical powers but doubling its concentration does not effect the lapse rate? I'd like to see an explanation of why not. And even then 1 deg always struck me as being a little, well, round. So, if we are pulling numbers out of a hat, how about 0.1 degC per doubling?
ssat
Can anyone remind me why ZDB was banned?
Jul 19, 2015 at 4:04 PM SandyS
So far as I vaguely remember
- was repeatedly warned by the Bish they'd be banned if they did not stop whatever it was, but they did not.
- called the Bish a liar (that may have been what they were warned not to do),
Strange character. At one point, openly admitted that their motivation for posting was hatred of other BH posters.
Martin A
That's what happens when you feel superior the people you're debating with and it turns out that you're not. You insult them..
Jul 19, 2015 at 5:38 PM geronimo
A couple of times previously I have posted the following on the observed life cycle of the BH troll. Still seems apt.
1. A CAGW Believer turns up and poses questions/comments (evidently having read something like "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic"). Their knowledge of physics generally seems to have be limited more or less to rote learning. They seem adept at quoting things they have read but their comments don't seem to show any fundamental understanding of the points under discussion. They tend to say things like "go and read some science" - something it is quite hard to imagine anybody who has studied, say, physics or chemistry saying.2. It becomes apparent the Believer seems surprised that the lucidity of their comments has not convinced readers into accepting that their sceptical views are erroneous.
3. The CAGW Believer becomes noticably more and more more prolific.
4. The CAGW Believer starts to show signs of frustration, dropping any pretence at discussing rationally, and turns to mocking people's names or other personal attributes.
5. Finally, the CAGW Believer disappears for one reason or another.
Martin A
Martin A. Pretty much says it correctly. What intrigues me is what triggers what is clearly a meltdown? Another characteristic I've noticed is a desire to stay away from the "big picture" and take solace in it being "complicated" and therefore difficult of the hoi polloi to grasp. EM's ludicrous attempt to complicate Ohm's Law is a case in point - they don't want science to be simple - the very opposite goal of all the great scientists past and present. Anyway I've had my fill of EM now, although I am not convinced the insults didn't come when he was "in vino", because the mood swings seemed odd.
geronimo
Martin A
I couldn't remember either but a lot of his/her posts had high content of the "D" word and other personal insults so wasn't sure if EM was entering similar territory.
Schrodinger's Cat Jul 19, 2015 at 8:28 PM
Once the insults started flying I stopped reading for a while, I spent 24 hours mulling over whether to post the comment about contrails or not. In the end thought it was worth it as it is the only experimental, real world data, we have on clouds and feedbacks; which are negative as it happens.
SandyS
Yes it's a very good principle not to post stuff on the Internet while pissed. Over the last few years several commenters have suggested that that explained EM's variability.
Martin A
Geronimo (Jul 19, 2015 at 4:44 AM), I do not think that Entropic Mann needs any help with that – he seems to manage quite satisfactorily on his own.
As for “denier” – despite the fact that most of the major institutions involved accept that there has been a plateau in temperatures, and despite that there have now been at least 66 papers that explain the “pause”, EM is in complete denial of its existence.
He is also in complete denial that CO2 might not be the demon gas it has been portrayed as; he also denies that any change in the climate can be anything other than catastrophic – then he has the temerity to accuse others of being in denial, haunted by Morton’s Demon! He also has the enormous gullibility in believing that field thermometers can measure tens of thousands of cubic kilometres of seawater to an accuracy of 0.002°C! On this post, the person has exposed himself as an idiot of the first order, and I shall follow Schrodinger’s Cat’s example, and try to resist responding to any more of his vacuous comments.
Radical Rodent
I try to avoid mixing it with trolls but in the absence of any, here are a few observations!
I think they can have different motives. Some are bored or lonely and like to provoke irritation, gain attention and even create a false debate. They do this by challenging or rubbishing the well intentioned comments made by others.
I would guess that some are true believers and set out to disrupt the whole discussion. Many times on BH I have seen very interesting threads completely hijacked.
It is tempting to interact with trolls, to give explanations, or to disagree but it usually ends up as a waste of time and a pointless exercise. If they are ignored, they eventually go elsewhere.
Schrodinger's Cat
EM's ludicrous attempt to complicate Ohm's Law is a case in point - they don't want science to be simple ...
Jul 20, 2015 at 8:05 AM geronimo
I think that was simply an illustration of EM's lack of insight (of which many many examples could be given) in this case, his lack of insight into basic physics.
EM made it clear that he believed that Ohm's law is just an empirically observed approximate relationship with no underlying theoretical basis. His point (erroneous) was that Ohm's law was therefore on a par with the climate science log formula for radiative forcing, derived by fitting a log curve to the numerical output from a handful of model runs over a limited range of CO₂ concentrations.
Martin A
RR. EM was pretty nasty with his "denier" and Morton's Demon stuff but I put that down to drink. As Martin A said the best thing you can do when you're pissed is put the keyboard away (I'm paraphrasing Martin) and resist the opportunity to put out what, in your state, appears to be an incredibly well crafted putdown of your protagonist, which in the cold light of day looks like the ramblings of a nutter. I note EM absented himself from this thread, presumably after reading his posts when sober, (he appears to have started drinking early too, unless he's in another time zone). My guess is he'll steer clear for a couple of months, until he thinks the dust has settled.
geronimo
Geronimo: it isn’t just the personal nastiness that EM has revealed, it is his utter intransigence in refusing to see the evidence in front of his nose, as none of it fits in with the carefully constructed world that exists in his mind. That the only part of the atmosphere over which humanity might have some influence also happens to be the only part of the atmosphere that can have such an impact as to affect global climate despite its negligible presence has to invoke some suspicion with anyone with an element of scientific thinking in their mental make-up. It is this that triggered my own scepticism, eventually leading me from being a “believer” to seeing the whole imbroglio for what it is – a scam of international proportions. That EM cannot see this throws doubt upon any of his logic processes.
Mind you, I have had my suspicions about EM for a while, and have, in the past, recommended that he seek some help, as he does seem to have some psychiatric problems – whether that is me misreading when he has partaken of the wine, or whether he actually is such as a manic-depressive is probably something that we will never know. Either way, I suspect he will be avoiding this site for a while, which will not be a bad thing, for all involved.
Radical Rodent
Just picked up this thread again ...
RR
I think you have to be careful with remarks like "refusing to see the evidence in front of his nose". There's always the danger of an element of "pot/kettle" when your confidence in your own understanding of a subject drags you across the line of what you actually know. (Believe me; I've been there more than once!)
I'm not defending EM (though he is generally better mannered and logical than some); just warning that nothing in climate science appears to be anything like as clear-cut as either side would wish to believe. Long experience of how eco-activists (and other control freaks) operate suggets to me that it is their intransigence that has pushed us into a more intransigent frame of mind than we would want or hope to be in. I know of nothing in the world (and that includes mainstream religious belief) that is as all-fired 110% certain of its own righteousness as climatology. The weirder religious cults come closest. But most reasonable people on both sides accept that climate science is not settled; it's still very much a work in progress; and wild claims by believers and sceptics alike do nothing to help find the answers.
What we do know, of course, is that those driving those claims through the media are not especially interested in finding the answers; their agenda is either financial or political, not scientific.
ZDB was only ever here to be offensive. The number of times it managed to sneak back on board after being banned suggested a very unhealthy mind.
BBD was just plain ignorant and eventually proved it by trotting out, and trying to defend, a howler that an intelligent 15-year-old would have spotted a mile off. I don't think it was his idea; I reckon it came from a "Explaining Climate to Dummies" site, assuming the dummies had never seen the inside of a maths textbook.
geronimo
re your Jul 19 comment. I confess I'm not a complete idiot either. Some bits are still missing but I'm about 97% there and I have every confidence I shall be complete by 2020!
Mike Jackson
I am disappointed, but not surprised, that your cod psychology is of the same standard as your pseudoscience.
Rather than discussing me, you should be discussing ssat''s idea that "AGW is therefore real but with no accumulation of energy."
You can calculate by two separate methods ( temperature rise and thermal expansion) that the oceans are accumulating 3*10^22 Joules/year.
If AGW is a zero sum process, you have to explain where this energy comes from; or repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
Entropic man
Hello again EM.
What's "a zero sum process"? Something you just made up?
The oceans have been warming since time immemorial. Nothing to do with AGW.
Martin A
MJ: good point, and I like to think that it is something that I try to avoid – I have no fear in admitting that I might be wrong, and have no fear of admitting when I am wrong; I also do follow any links (whether I truly understand what might be being said in the link could be questioned, of course…).
Radical Rodent
Martin A
Read the Jul 18, 2015 at 5:48 PM post by ssat. It is his idea.
I know you hate analogies, but think of an electric circuit.
Switch it on at half power. As it warms up components produce heat and transfer it around, some heating faster than others. After a while the temperatures stabilise.
Increase the power and the stability goes away. Temperatures increase and heat moves around until a new stable state is reached with more heat present.
The Earth does the same. Oceans warm and cool as climate warms and cools. The energy content is higher in interglacial periods than glacial periods, and higher again under hothouse Earth conditions.
The Earth's surface is covered with air, water, ice and rock. You cannot only warm or cool one of them since they exchange heat. You end up changing the temperature and heat content of the whole system.
What ssat appears to suggest is that you can warm the system without inxreasing its energy content, which, as you know, is forbidden by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Entropic man
Michael hart
ARGO found the heat.</>