Discussion > Does Climate Science Exist?
Thank you, Geronimo. With the examples you have given, you have (perhaps unwittingly?) emphasised my point quite well – such behaviour is not what true scientists should indulge in. Perhaps the biggest failing that scientists have is that they are human, and are as prone to all the faults that other humans fall prey to; the only way that this might be countered is by admitting the possibility, recognising the reality, and responding accordingly. As the worst fault could well be vanity, particularly the over-weening variety, as practiced by many in the RS (as well as others, and some on this site, too), it can be a bit difficult to get the protagonist to admit it, and so act to correct it.
Radical Rodent
OK RR - does "climate science" exist? For what it's worth, here is my view.
You could certainly make a list of topics that most "climate scientists" would agree form its basis, in the way you could for, for example, zoology. In that sense some might argue that "climate science" exists.
It's a collection of subjects. Some are real, genuine science. But others are outright pseudo-science.
The physics of gaseous radiation is an example of the former category. Firmly established theoretically and based on precise and comprehensive measurements.
Modelling of climate by GCM's falls (in my view) inherently into the latter, pseudo science, category. Likewise, modelling the dynamics of atmospheric concentration of CO2 (eg the Bern model). Using the output of unvalidated models as if it were reality is not science. "Climate scientists" talk about "experiments" done with climate models, but they are not experiments in the normal sense of observing the physical reality of what happens when something is done. Its practitioners seem to be unaware that there is even an issue here.
For what it's worth, my own view is that 'climate science' exists only in the sense that there are people who style themselves "climate scientists" and who talk about "climate science"' as if it exists as a coherent scientific subject.
For me, the acceptance by its practitioners of pseudo science subjects should disqualify it from being considered a genuine science by anyone outside its circle of practitioners.
There is also the question of the unethical behaviour of some of its leading practitioners but I think the subject can be classified not being a real science without referring to that.
Martin A
"Perhaps the biggest failing that scientists have is that they are human, and are as prone to all the faults that other humans fall prey to; the only way that this might be countered is by admitting the possibility, recognising the reality, and responding accordingly."
It's just an observation, but to me it seemed that scientists in the past were overwhelmed by how much they didn't know, with each step forward opening another do with a thousand unknowns. This made them very humble, no matter what the knew they realised they only knew a little bit of it.
The climate science community don't seem overly endowed with scientists who have that humility and regard any questioning of their primitive belief that they can foretell the future as the utmost impertinence.
geronimo
I think it is made worse by the mind set that individuals originally from a certain discipline (say, for example, atmospheric physics) who self-declare as a "climate scientist" can then dismiss a biochemist who criticises (say, the Bern carbon cycle-model), on the basis that said biochemist "is not a climate scientist".
[For the record, I generally try to avoid such appeals to authority. And there is always a bigger fish...]
As it stands, I see climate science as a science-of-everything, and some might argue that really just makes it a science of nothing. Regardless, a computer model-of-everything is laughed at by people who have real experience of models in much simpler real systems.
michael hart
geronimo, I have in the past often made a private/personal note about my superiors in the scientific circles I have moved in:
When a person of noted ability, competence, and (sometimes) fame sits in an audience, they are frequently very reticent. More fame and/or seniority appeared to correlate with more reticence. It seemed that the greater scientists often knew when to shut up.
Not something 'climate scientists' could generally be accused of.
michael hart
michael hart
I am a great admirer of those who can abide by the French advice: 'never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut'.
It's a gift I pray for frequently though I am probably too old by now to break bad habits.
I agree with your observation; the reverse of which is "empty vessels make most noise". There comes a level above which you no longer need to remind people how clever you are. Either they know in which case it would be pointless or they don't in which case it would be pointless!
Mike Jackson
MJ: I prefer the non-French version: “It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Alas, like you, I have trouble observing that; I only take condolence in the observation that there are others who are even more determined than I to reveal their personal stupidity.
Geronimo: at risk of raising the ire of many others, perhaps it could be that, with many scientists in the past being raised in the Judaeo-Christian ethic, they were more aware that they were but tiny parts of an infinite cosmos, with a far greater entity in control, hence one reason for their humility.
Radical Rodent
Martin A's mum
Martin A clearly does not realised that the total volume of a cave includes air and water.
The comment on the natural logarithmic relationship between CO2 and warming was part of a larger conversation. If you had read the whole sequence you would have realised that it relates to the Radiative forcing equation ∆F=5.35ln(C/Co).
As you know, a log or ln relationship is not linear. In this case each doubling of CO2 concentration produces a smaller increase in the amount of warming than the previous doubling. These are the sort of errors I keep encountering in your comments.
Thanks for referring me to that blog. I found a prediction I made in the Spring of 2014, which is coming true.
Not banned yet
Certainly. The warmest year in the GISS global temperature record to date is 2010, at anomaly 0.60C.corresponding to 14.60C.
I expect 2014 or 2015, possibly both, to exceed that value as a result of the el nino currently forecast for later this year.
The uncertainty in year is due to the uncertainty in onset. If El Nino starts early it may be enough to take 2014 over the top. If it starts later, 2015 will show most of the warming effect.
Note that the both of the most recent large el nino events, in 1998 and 2010, produced new temperature records.
http://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/
Apr 1, 2014 at 12:50 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
As of this date, 2014 is on record at GISS as the warmest year on record and 2015 so far is higher again.
The test of a successful hypothesis is its projective ability. My " climate science" seems more successful in this respect than your world view.
Entropic man
"The comment on the natural logarithmic relationship between CO2 and warming was part of a larger conversation. If you had read the whole sequence you would have realised that it relates to the Radiative forcing equation ∆F=5.35ln(C/Co)."
I got the impression that you didn't know that ln(C/Co) = ln(10) x log(C/Co).
geronimo
Martin A simply seems to have said nothing more about caves than that your analogies are distracting rather than helpful. From that you deduce that he "clearly has no idea of cave structure", something that every eight-year old who has visited Cheddar Caves knows very well. You just make stuff up.
"Martin A clearly does not realised (sic)* that the total volume of a cave includes air and water."
Jul 30, 2015 at 11:12 PM Entropic man
"To use a cave analogy, think of a limestone cave with a flat floor and a domed roof.
The amount of black body radiation is the total volume of the cave,.
The OLR is the volume of air in the cave and the downwelling radiation is the volume of the stalactites."
Jul 4, 2015 at 11:24 PM Entropic man
You are making stuff up again Entropic Man. Water is not mentioned in your cave analogy.
* "(sic)" is journalistic code for "I think the writer must have been pissed when he wrote that, but that is what he wrote".
Martin A's mum
Martin A's Mum
See why we need precise language! Here we are arguing over a minor matter. You are right though,I did not mention water.
Geronimo
I use the simpler form of the radiative equatiion as you use E=IR instead of J/C==C/s * pl/A'
Entropic man
EM don't give me that old flannel, you were given at least three attempts to understand that the radiative forcing equation could be put in terms of log10 and you clearly didn't understand how.
geronimo
EM, you could help me out though. From Ohm's law knowledge of any two values will give you the value of the third because of the simple equation I=V/R.
So here is a my problem delta T = lambda delta F where delta F = 5.35 ln(CO2 now/CO2zero), CO2now is the current CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2zero is the arbitrary start point for calculating the deltaT.
If we agree that the rise in temperature since 1880 is 0.8C and that the CO2 in the atmosphere has risen to 400ppm from 300ppm, could you please pop these values into the equation above and find a value for lambda?
We should be able to do that shouldn't we? Or am I missing something?
geronimo
To summarize, then, we are agreed that “Climate Science” does exist, but cannot be really referred to as a “Science”, though its many component parts, such as atmospheric physics, can, and many of those engaged in such parts could be considered “scientists” or, at least, “scientific”. It seems that it is the over-arching theme of Climate Science where the break with science occurs, as it also incorporates a lot of charlatanism and politics (and there are many who would consider those two words to amount to the same thing), involving mystical invocations and voodoo dolls (which don’t work, by the way – ask anyone who is on my hate list, and can still walk unaided!). One of the major problems for us is that Climate Science has the ear of those in high places, including many senior politicians, and most of the main-stream media, all highly vociferous.
I feel that the “cause” of Climate Science has been taken up or created by the more extreme left-wing elements, in their insatiable desire for power and control, and this is seen as a way to lever in such control on a global scale. It has been shown that it can be done – witness the pillorying of smokers, and the effectiveness of de-chlorinating of refrigerants and aerosol can propellants to “save the ozone layer”, after the discovery of the “hole” over the South Pole (which, as far as I am aware, has not reduced any, after all these years of being saved). It is also interesting to note how any change caused by humans, now, is detrimental; quite why the mooted “changes” would not be similarly detrimental – being human-induced, after all, so the logic must still apply – is a question never raised.
What can be done? As few of us have the same lust for power as the alarmists, and even fewer have the ready access to the MSM, we can only continue in our own, small ways to discuss the problem, and educate those around us. Even if we cannot fully convince a colleague, we can plant the seeds of doubt, and thence the desire to question the many “facts” being poured out of the machine. It is sites like this where we can keep each other informed, and occasionally hone our debating skills (stop laughing!), and it is to sites like this where we can direct others who may want to increase their own knowledge of the subject.
Does that answer your question, Martin A?
Radical Rodent
RR _ Thank you. I'll mull over what you have said.
Martin A
Climate Science does not exist as it has failed to find any signal in the noise of its own discipline despite a 50 year experiment and lavish funding.
ssat
Geronimo
You can only calculate lambda like that once the system has reached equilibrium. Until then you don't get lambda, you get TCR.
Entropic man
EM could you plse amplify that for me. I'm as you well know, a bit thick, and admit it. So lambda isn't a constant, is that what you're saying? It varies? Do you know how? Or why? I really don[t understand how it works and need some help.
geronimo
" You can only calculate lambda like that once the system has reached
equilibrium. "
Is the deep ocean temperature (4C or whatever) an equilibrium temperature under the current 14C? average surface temperature?
Rob Burton
To demonstrate my confusion, here is EM on an earlier post:
"The direct calculation for forcing due to CO2 is ∆F=5.35ln (C/Co)
To derive the temperature change ∆T=lambda∆F , where lambda is the climate sensitivity. A mid range climate sensitivity would be 0.8K/w/m2, equivalent to 3K per CO2 doubling.
Ignoring other effects my own figures give from 1910-1940
∆F=5.35ln(310/290)=0.36
∆T=0.8*0.36=0.29C"
I'm assuming that the rise in temperature between 1910 and 1940 could be described as a transient climate response, and that EM has made the same calculation as Dana Nutti over at SkS. What actually happened however was that the temperature rose, not by 0.29C, but by 0.45C, so there's missing 0.16C which implies one of three things:
1. The 0.16C was a result of some unknown natural forcing;
2. The result was entirely due to the rise in CO2, which means that the value of lambda for this equation was 1.26;
3. No one in the climate science community knows WTF they're talking about.
I would tend to dismiss the 3rd option and replace it with I don't know WTF I'm talking about, but it is confusing. Here we have a TCR being calculated by both EM and Dana Nutti using a value of lambda of 0.8, and above we have a measured, empirical, delta T of 0.8C between 1880 and 2015 showing that to achieve it lambda would have to have the value 0.46.
If ,as EM and Dana Nutti did for 1910 - 1940, we use a lambda value of 0.8 to calculate the temperature rise between 1880 and 2015 assuming 290ppm of CO2 in 1880 we find that the temperature rise should have been 1.4C (approx). So according to the formula for TCR used both by EM and Dana Nutti the increase in temperature between 1880 and today should have been 1.4C and it was 0.8C as agreed by all. So we're short 0.6C of the increase we would have expected using the same method for calculating the TCR as EM and Dana Nutti.
Whereas we had an unexplained warming of 0.16C between 1910 and 1940, we now have an unexplained cooling of 0.6C between 1880 and 2015.
Now either the equation : ∆T= 5.35 x lambda x ln (C/Co) is bollards, or there are massive unknown unknowns driving temperature. Until this week I'd have put money on the ∆T equation being right because it wouldn't seem credible that the entire scientific community hadn't spotted the flaw, but then this week I found out that the entire scientific community was unaware that the data set used by the models to make their forecasts wasn't being compared to the same data set of observations. I still think it's right, but what it actually is saying is that lambda = ∆T/∆F = a constant.
geronimo
Rob Burton
In areas where there are no currents the deep ocean will equilibrate to 4C. Where the thermohaline or other currents are mixing things up it will be warmer or cooler. You won't be able to tell whether the ocean is in equilibrium from the ocean bottom temperatures alone.
The correct test of equilibrium is to measure ocean heat content. Once that becomes constant for a reasonable period, you can regard the system as in equilibrium.
Entropic man
Geronimo
You so sound confused. Give me a while to work through your most recent posts and I'll get back to you.
Entropic man
EM,
You claim your "climate science" about making predictions.
Please list a few predictions that have worked out as predicted.
Thanks in advance,
hunter
geronimo
Methinks you underestimated the amount of short term variability in the system.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and ENSO vary the amount of heat uptake by the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Variations in solar cycles, volcanic activity an industrial aerosol pollution vary insolation. The radiative equations simplify the complex reality to an ideal atmosphere without aerosols, cycles and other short term variability.
The equations also project the conditions expected when the system reaches equilibrium. This will not happen until
1) CO2 concentration become constant.
2) The heat content of land, ice, air and oceans stabilises.
These conditions are unlikely to be met for a couple of centuries yet.
You would therefore expect a calculation such as the 1880- 2015 calculation you quoted to give a figure higher than observed. The calculation projects a 1.4C rise in a future in which
1) CO2 concentration stabilised at 295ppm.
2) the heat content of the system has stabilised.
Neither has yet occurred.
Entropic man
"I don’t want to spoil this Let’s-all-gang-up-on-EM party; while it might appeal to our baser human instincts, it is hardly the ground where those who wish to be scientific – and to be thought of as scientific, as well as being seen to be applying proper scientific reasoning – should be treading."
While I agree with ur sentiments I believe you'll find that the scientific community is far from above acting in a tacky way, just look at Paul Nurse and his predicessors at the RS. It is a it surprising that the ego in chief didn't know how to convert natural logs to 10 based logs.
However your point is well made as others have said there aren't a lot of real science that have to have "science" added to their titles, but in the case of climate science I believe it's a handy catch all for atmospherics, oceanology etc. it's not a subject itself. The scientists with a few minor exceptions get on with their research hoping to improve our knowledge of the physical world.