Entropic Mann

I suggest mocking EM's condescension, his delusions, and his general ignorance, rather than his name.

Mockery is a familiar tool of those trying to discredit an opponent. It tends to be used by those who have run out of legitimate arguments. Since you have spent most of the last page discussing me instead of the science, I take it that this thread has run its course.

Feel free to mock my name, my residual dyslexia and the habits of an old teacher. It confirms my opinion that, from the perspective of a neutral observer, I have won.

Martin A

This summarises our problem.

We both have opinions.

Mine can be backed up by mathematics, physics and statistics. They are supported by datasets of temperature, rainfall, ocean heat content ,sea level rise, sea ice and glacier retreat, land ice melt and changes in radiation balance.

Your opinions have no basis in fact. You have been unable to back up your opinions with peer reviewed science, or indeed any credible science.There is a technical term for such opinions. WRONG!

"They are supported by datasets of temperature, rainfall, ocean heat content ,sea level rise, sea ice and glacier retreat, land ice melt and changes in radiation balance."

Temperature: The temperature has risen by 0.8C since 1880 (we think because we're not comparing apples with apples, and for reasons that have never been clear to me the people who hold the temperature records have been tampering with them so we don't actually have the raw data). If you hadn't have been told you wouldn't know it was warmer.

Rainfall. I know of no scientific data that gives us anything to be concerned about by rainfall. The only data I have to hand is a decrease in both frequency and intensity of tropical storms. Do you have references for "dangerous" rainfall?

Ocean heat content. So? It's been warmer one would expect the heat in the ocean to increase. In fact it's increase is trivial and has to be expressed in Joules to scare people.

Sea level rise. Again one would expect that if we are warming, but it's impact as "Mr. Scary" is a little stunted by the fact that sea levels have been rising throughout the Holocene, and there has been no acceleration since 1880, unless you take the "acceleration' identified with obvious glee when we change from tide gauges to satellites. In fact no "acceleration" has occurred since. The world expert on oceans, Dr. Morner says there's no reason for concern. The government of the Maldives has built 11 airports in their island, simultaneously telling the world it is shortly to sink into the oceans.

Sea ice and glacier retreat. Sea ice isn't retreating, as of today it's expanding. Having said that whether it's retreating or expanding there cannot be a useful signal in a data set that is only 36 years old. As for glaciers, that's what they do, advance and retreat, and in any even some are advancing and some are retreating, we just don't get to hear of the advancing glaciers because it doesn't ring with the sensationalism.

Land ice melt has only been measured in the GRACE satellite era, for sure, we are told there has been a reduction in mass, but is it dangerous? 90% of all the ice in the world is in an area of the world which would require an increase of 30C+ to melt the ice. It is scaremongering at it's worst to suggest that this is all going to melt and cause sea level rises of 6M or more.

Radiative imbalance. Which data set are you using for radiative imbalance? As far as Dr. Trenberth and his fellow scientists are concerned the heat we should get from a radiative imbalance is "missing" and it's a "travesty". Quite why a scientist would consider it to be a "travesty" that the world isn't heating is a mystery to me, and you may consider why yourself. ( don't give me that old tosh about the oceans warming while the atmospheric temperatures are static unless you can point to the physics that can explain why the atmosphere warmed between 1880 and 2000 and has suddenly stopped now).

Even if all these so-called data sets indicated warming, there has to be another step to take and that is to imagine that a warmer world would be disastrous. There is no data set for that, it is the output of the IPCC SPMs, and is little more than opinion, certainly not science.

"Mine can be backed up by mathematics, physics and statistics." I don't want to be rude, but the only thing that backs up a theory is empirical data. Moreover this empirical data must be gathered after the theory has been formulated, and the theory can't be changed when empirical data doesn't fit the theory as formulated. In other words the theory will enable you to make forecasts of future behaviour, and if the forecasts are true the theory hasn't been proved wrong. Neither the forecasts nor the theory can be changed post hoc. As a hypothesis the CO2 causes warming which will cause disasters is probably the worst in the history of science; its predictions failing within a few years and the science being continually modified to account for the failure of the predictions (missing heat is in the sea, which, of course to any real scientist would beg the question, "why did it stay in the atmosphere until 1998 and then start going into the sea?").

As for the predictions of temperature increases based on the physics and datasets they are wildly out, so I would caution anyone from assuming that they could talk with authority on the basis that they have the physics and datasets of climate science as their "sword and shield" in the debate.

MJ: "Wasn't "sword and shield" the motto of the KGB?" Might have been but I took it from Tory politician, Jonathan Aitkin who when accused of some misdeeds said he would defend himself (I'm paraphrasing from memory) with the "sword of truth and the shield of fair play" in a libel suit against the Guardian. He lost the libel suit, was subsequently convicted of perjury by a jury of plebs and served time.

I should make it clear that I'm not accusing, or inferring, EM is in the remotest perjuring himself on these pages and also make clear that I am not comparing him to Jonathan Aitken, just using the "sword and shield" metaphor (or is it a simile?).

Metaphor. A simile would say "like the sword and shield". A metaphor asserts that it is "the sword and shield".

diogenes, thanks I now know that a simile is "like a metaphor".

geronimo,

you state that a theory should be judged empirically by checking its predictions against observations. Four questions then:

1) When was the theory that Co2 causes warming first formulated.
2) What was the predicted rate of warming when this theory was first formulated.
3) How much has this predicted rate of warming changed since this first formulation.
4) What has been the observed rate of warming

(1) Fourrier and Tyndallcam up with the idea but the theory was formulated in a paper by Arrhenius in 1896;
(2) The predicted rate of warming for a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere in the 1896 paper was 6C, later reduced to 4C apron 1900;
(3) A doubling of CO2 is now thought to bring about an increase in warming of 3C, so since the original formulation it has halved;
(4) using Arrhenius original calculations we should have seen a TCR between 1.3C and 1.8C, using the IPPC version of his equation we should have seen a TCR of 1.4C. (We are approximately 150 ppm away from the doubling used in Arrhenius' equation, which at current rates of progress means it will be between 50 and 70 years before we get to doubling, and a further 200 years or more before we get to an ECS somewhere in the range 1.5 - 4.5C, the last IPCC report AR5 didn't give a likely temperature increase of 3C, presumably because of the rash of papers using empirical data that are showing lower sensitivities. We have seen around 0.8C increase in temperature since he wrote his paper.

If you want a more empirical attempt at evaluating the impact of CO2 on the atmosphere have a look at Guy Callender's work here.

Both Arrhenius and Callender assumed that the warming would be a good thing for the planet, and they have good reason to think so, because the warmer parts of the planet are the most fecund and pleasant. Catastrophism is a brand new theory with not a single empirical basis in fact.

I'm not sure what point you want to make. It's getting warmer? Who said it wasn't? Some of it is caused by CO2 in the atmosphere? Who said it wasn't? It's not having the effect predicted by the hypothesis and nobody knows why, but even if it was there's another enormous step we need to take and that is we need to believe a warming world will be disastrous, and where's the evidence for that?

The models uniformly show that temperature should have continued to rise beyond 2000, in fact temperatures have remained statistically stable, so there are two possibilities, the physics used in the models is wrong, or the modellers haven't properly modelled the physics of the atmosphere. There is a wide divergence in the models, quite naturally because there are huge gaps in our knowledge of the atmospheric processes. If you make a forecast of an increase in temperature of 0.3C over 10 years (as the Met Office did) between 2004 and 2014 and it is wrong, then your hypothesis is wrong, no ifs and buts, it's wrong. Met office prediction and the scientific method here

If you back a horse to win the Grand National and it comes in a close second try persuading your bookie that because you were nearly right he should pay you out as a winner. If you predict that temperatures will increase and they don't, or they do, but not by the quantity predicted, you're wrong, no ifs and buts, wrong.

Arthur Johnson
1 Usually taken to be Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist that was the first to claim in 1896 that fossil fuel combustion may eventually result in enhanced global warming. I think I read somewhere that the theory actually predates this.

2 Arrhenius suggested a doubling of the CO2 concentration would lead to a 5°C temperature rise

3.From Wikimedia Commons.

Scientists say that doubling pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels will likely cause global average surface temperature to rise between 1.5° and 4.5° C

4 Averaged over all land and ocean surfaces, temperatures warmed roughly 0.85ºC from 1880 to 2012, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
CO2 rose from roughly 240ppm to about 390ppm during that time

Questions for you,
1. What proportion of 0.85ºC is due to natural variation? (I think 100% or as near as makes no difference)
2. Do you think the theory of Svante Arrhenius is wrong as pointed out by Knut Angstrom in 1900? (I think yes)
3 Do you think that CO2 is actually causing any problems currently? (I think no)
4 What do you think is the safe level for CO2 and the safe increase in global temperature? (I think we just don't know either)

geronimo,
yes 280 ppm is the agreed pre-industrial level, I was thinking of the level immediately post iceage. Which in itself is interesting as it is generally accepted that the Average Global temperature was greater at that time.

It looks like Arthur Johnson just made a "drive by" comment.

SandyS: My guess is that Arthur was going to make the case that Arrhenius predicted temperature rises and they were observed, admittedly lower than forecast. Unfortunately he predicted ECS temperatures based on a doubling of CO2, which is almost impossible to prove right, or wrong, and will take some centuries to prove.

Unfortunately for Arthur the hypothesis is that increasing CO2 will cause increased atmospheric temperature. That's the basis for the output of the models for every IPCC report so far, and these outputs have been wrong since 1998. To paraphrase Feynman, if the empirical evidence shows that the models are overestimating the temperature rise you can't say any warming at all is due to CO2 unless you can say why it hasn't warmed, and as he puts it there are "moogles" that have caused it not to warm as much as it did unless you know for certain what the "moogles" are.

He's probably new to the game as well, just like many sceptics are, making assumptions about their prospective antagonists, like many sceptics do, that they haven't thought the problem through, in Arthur's case he probably believes that the sceptical movement - if there is such a thing - is composed of a bunch of right-wing, anti-science, ignorant, bigots, harrying the patient white coated scientists searching for the truth by spreading misinformation. (when the opposite is easily proved to be true. That would certainly be my impression from the MSM and the constant propaganda to that effect. Maybe he asked the questions because he'd assumed sceptics didn't know where the theory came from to show us (me actually) up. Who knows? we'll probably not here from him again.