Discussion > Are Geological Paleo-Climate Records Relevant to The Climate Debate?
EM
It is amazing how different things look when one uses the correct units.
Like using 3º for climate sensitivity when 1.5º - the most recent estimate of the central value -would give an inconvenient result!
Spectator
Martin A: can I nick your comment from Apr 7, 2016 at 7:55 AM? It encapsulates so much of what I have been trying to say for so long, especially: “… that the climate system is evidently complex beyond the capacity of current science and resources to analyse.” And yet conclusions are found so easily, and remedies for the “problem” expounded with such glee. You would laugh, if it wasn’t so tragic.
Radical Rodent
“Galactic Cosmic Ray Gambit”?
I prefer the Agincourt Gambit.
Radical Rodent
Spectator
I have seen calculations for climate sensitivity between 1 and 6.
AR5 puts the probable range of of sensitivities between 1.5 and 4.5. I took the middle of that range, i.e.3.
NASA climate simulations gave a similar range right-skewed distribution with maximum frequency around 3.
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I see nothing to justify your central estimate of 1.5. There are low estimates around this value from Nic Lewis, but he represents the most optimistic end of the range, not the centre.
Entropic man
Martin
I have no idea what effect if any cosmic rays have on climate. Except that anyone who has seen a Wilson cloud chamber in operation can hardly help finding it plausible that high energy charged particles result in the creation of clouds.
I don't think anyone knows. CERN built a big new experiment CLOUD to test what you say anyone can observe in a Wilson chamber. Presumably Wilson chambers don't model cloud formation that well. Results so far seem to be inconclusive. It has I think been shown that GCRs can create very small particles. On another thread Paul Dennis offered to look up some literature about the "growth of small ionisation induced nucleii towards sizes commensurate with CCN's", so maybe there is some evidence. Or maybe not - we would surely have heard of it.
If GCRs do have an effect, it might be visible in present day cloud levels. GCR levels vary with the solar cycle. Do clouds vary according to the cycle too? Of course even if they do, that doesn't prove it is GCRs, but you'd think there would be a signal there waiting to be found.
You are clearly right that a change in one variable need not be associated with a change in another (think of velocity of a falling object). But my understanding is that GCR advocates look for changes in GCR flux in paleo data to explain past climate events, not constant levels. Maybe they need the calculus lesson too.
Raff
This thread was originally about "Geological Paleoclimate records and their possible relevance to the climate debate", but contributions on that theme seem to have ended with Paul Dennis's comment on 30 May that that debate seemed to have reached an end - since then it seems to have become a vehicle for EM, aTTP, Raff, Phil Clark, Spectator and Glebekinvara to ride their particular hobby horses around in ever diminishing circles. As an occasional visitor to this site I was wondering if this is what normally happens? If so I will find a more productive use of my time than contemplating the stuff posted by the above mentioned.
Paleoclimate Buff
Paleoclimate Buff, I thought that this thread might provide some valuable insight. It seems that 2 acknowledged experts have said that no definitive answer is possible, and that is certainly valuable insight. Hopefully it should be possible to avoid further nugatory research.
Whether there is a lot of ongoing research that relies on the assumption that definitive answers are already available, remains to be seen. But this does seem to be an unlit, dead end, dark alley for climate science, to have gone exploring
golf charlie
golf Charlie, you concluded incorrectly before that definitive answers are not possible. And both Paul and I said this was far too strong. In special circumstances and for very short intervals of time (ie not a continuous record) it is possible to achieve remarkable results. My main message was that to appeal to the deep time record for support or denial of the CO2 control was essentially stupid because if we cannot agree about the imediate past with its (relative) abundance of data, how can we ever expect the deep past (with its incomplete preservation and difficulties around time discrimination) to be definitive. Much of the effort here would seem to be done by geologists wanting to be relevant or trendy. Getting research monies by using the climate connection also had a part to play.
Paul's main message seems to have been that the proxies being employed are significantly more complex than most users wish to acknowledge. However, he is not pessimistic, believing that opportunities exist for future rewards, but we are not there yet and getting there will be a long and arduous effort. (I trust I have summerized your position accurately Paul).
Climate science's use of and identification of palaeoclimate is suspect- but we all know not to believe in hockey sticks or statements like today being the warmest for hundreds, thousands or even millions of years, don't we?
Alan Kendall
Dung
This might be relevant to your original question.
Entropic man
Martin A: can I nick your comment from Apr 7, 2016 at 7:55 AM? It encapsulates so much of what I have been trying to say for so long, especially: “… that the climate system is evidently complex beyond the capacity of current science and resources to analyse.” (...)
Apr 7, 2016 at 10:24 AM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent
RR - be my guest; feel free.
Some time back there was a thread with a title something like 'is climate science science?". I had concluded that it is not science. It believes that it is science; it dresses up in the clothes of science (papers, journals, conferences, computer programs) but at its core it is not science.
It is what Richard Feynman called "cargo cult science".
I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call Cargo Cult Science. In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.
Martin A
Continued exponential growth, a "runaway greenhouse effect", looks unlikely for several reasons.
Apr 7, 2016 at 9:50 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
Yes, of course.
As I replied before to another comment, I was just making the point that saying "while temperatures have increased, cosmic rays have remained constant, therefore cosmic rays could not have caused the warming" is a rubbish argument.
Like fat person saying "my weight is continually going up but my meals have not changed, so my weight is obviously is not affected by what I eat" .
Martin A
Martin A
Climate is a system best regarded as an equilibrium. If all the factors affecting it become constant the system moves towards, and then remains at equilibrium.
If one of the factors begins to change, the system will no longer be at equilibrium. It will change for as long as the factor changes. When the factor becomes constant once more, the system returns to equilibrium.
All else being equal constant cosmic rays (if they have any effect at all) would not produce constant change. It would generate an equilibrium.
I know you are not comfortable with analogies, but consider this.
A rocket burning fuel at a steady rate accelerates at a constant rate and keeps changing speed. A car burning fuel at a constant rate accelerates at first, then reaches an equilibrium speed at which friction balances engine power.
From what you were saying, you seem to envisage the climate system behaving like a rocket. This is a mistake. It behaves more like a car.
Entropic man
Alan Kendall, thank you for the correction and amplification!
I await developments, but fear the search is on for 'evidence' of 'Hockey Sticks', rather than developing techniques, and then trying to determine any patterns.
golf charlie
Climate is a system best regarded as an equilibrium. If all the factors affecting it become constant the system moves towards, and then remains at equilibrium.If one of the factors begins to change, the system will no longer be at equilibrium. It will change for as long as the factor changes. When the factor becomes constant once more, the system returns to equilibrium.
Apr 8, 2016 at 12:11 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
You are still struggling with the basics. Climate is a thermodynamically open dissipative system. And that is without even broaching the topic of chaos theory.Try going back to a text book and reading up on the differences between equilibrium and steady-state.
michael hart
Martin A
Maybe even I can describe this mathematically.
Consider variable W, a variable which affects climate temperature in direct proportion.
When dW/dt is constant but not zero dT/dt is also constant but not zero. The constant rate of change in W produces a constant rate of change in temperature .This is the non-equilibrium situation.
When dW/dT=0 then dT/dt=0. As W remains constant, temperature remains constant. This is the equilibrium state.
This would be how cosmic rays would be expected to affect climate. All else being equal, constant intensity would produce a constant temperature.
Entropic man
Michael hart
Perhaps you could explain to Martin A why constant cosmic ray intensity would not produce changing temperatures.
Entropic man
Michael hart
I come into this debate from biology, not engineering The only time a living organism is in a steady state is when it is dead and frozen.
I would not regard steady state as a good description of climate. It is too static.
The climate system is constantly changing locally, even when its overall temperature is constant. Dynamic equilibrium captures its behaviour better.
Entropic man
Perhaps you could explain to Martin A why constant cosmic ray intensity would not produce changing temperatures.
Apr 8, 2016 at 12:56 AM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
EM - You are beginning to sound hysterical.
Do you have information on what the cosmic ray intensity was 10,000 years ago, 1000 years ago, 100 years ago? If not, what reason is there to think that it is constant, other than in the sense that it does not seemed to have changed much very recently? To put it another way, is there any reason to think that the climate/cosmic ray system is now in equilibrium?
To return to what I said before, please explain how the following is possible:
1. Billy Bunter III eats a constant diet of four plates of sausage egg and chips a day, each meal washed down with two cans of Coke, followed by a couple of doughnuts.
2. Billy Bunter III's weight is increasing steadily.
3. Billy Bunter III's increasing weight is not related to his constant daily calorie intake.
Martin A
Regarding EM's hypothesis that "The Climate is a system best regarded as an equilibrium. If all the factors affecting it become constant the system moves towards, and then remains at equilibrium."
Here is what the IPCC has to say ( from the conclusions of WG1- The physical Science)
"We should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.
It is known that components in the system are inherently chaotic; there are feedbacks that could potentially switch sign, and there are central processes that affect the system in a complicated, non-linear manner. These complex, chaotic, non-linear dynamics are an inherent aspect of the climate system. As the IPCC WGI Second Assessment Report (IPCC, 1996) (hereafter SAR) has previously noted, future unexpected, large and rapid climate system changes (as have occurred in the past) are, by their nature, difficult to predict. This implies that future climate changes may also involve ‘surprises. In particular, these arise from the non-linear, chaotic nature of the climate system.
Does not sound much like a system that tends towards equilibrium to me!
Spectator
Martin A
You forgot to mention the energy that Billy Bunter burns to maintain his body temperature, nor the energy he burns in his endless quest for tuck and postal orders.
He does not gain weight because he eats, but because he eats more than he burns.
For him to attain what Michael hart refers to as a steady state and I would refer to as equilibrium, he would need to match his energy input to his energy output.
The Earth's climate system is, as Michael hart described, a thermodynamically open dissipative system. Stripped of the engineering jargon it means that it is like Billy Bunter.
Energy enters the system as solar insolation. It moves around the system and may be stored for a while, then leaves again. If the inward and the outward flow are equal the energy content and the global temperature remain constant. That is what I mean by equilibrium.
Since the tropics are net importers of energy and the poles are net exporters, energy is carried between them by wind, weather and ocean currents. This is why I call it a dynamic equilibrium.
As long as the factors affecting the system remain constant the steady state/equilibrium persists.
When one or more of these factors changes it affects the balance between incoming and outgoing energy, the energy content of the system and its temperature. If cosmic rays behave as Svenmark describes an increase in cosmic rays causes an increase in cloud albedo and a decrease in global temperature.
It does not matter whether the increase in cosmic rays is linear or more complex. It is the change in intensitywhich moves the system out of equilibrium.
I am surprised we are discussing this. For an electron pusher with heat to dissipate from his electronics this should be intuitive by now.
Entropic man
EM I'm not sure why I'm not succeeding in getting across the simple point I have been trying to make.
Let me try another tack.
Suppose somehow, from tomorrow, the level of atmospheric CO2 remained constant at the value it has today. Do you think that global temperature would remain constant from tomorrow also?
______________________________________________________________________--
[A] On a slightly different topic, if a quadratic curve yi (i = 1,2,...N) were fitted to data (xi+ni) (i = 1,2,...,N) consisting of a known quadratic xi (i = 1,2,...,N) plus zero mean independent normal random numbers ni (i = 1,2,...,N) (simulating the CET data, assuming it has a quadratic component), what would be an appropriate measure of the goodness of the fit of the computed curve? sqrt [SUM (yi - xi)^2] ?
[B} To detect acceleration (which is presumably the point of fitting a parabola) wouldn't a more direct test be better, something like seeing if the total change in the first half of the record was significantly less than the total change in the second half?
Martin A
Spectator
Chaotic, in the sense the term is used in complex systems does not mean inherently impossible to predict. It means that the system is very sensitive to differences in starting conditions. Complex systems also tend to switch rapidly between stable states rather than change graduall
Science had become a hierarchy of complexity using different methods.
Level 1 is smple classical physics and electronics. They have few variables and simple interactions between them. Their behaviour can be completely described by simple mathematical equations.
Level 2 sciences like biology have many more variables and their interactions are more complex. They cannot be described by simple mathematics. Statistical methods become necessary.
Level 3 is complex non-linear systems such as climate. They need a further step. They cannot be fully described by mathematics or statistics, but need to be simulated.
Consider the difference between a simple pendulum and a double pendulum.
The future behaviour of a simple pendulum is easily projected by t=2π√l/g.
The future behaviour of a compound pendulum is complex and non-linear. It can only be projected by simulation.
Entropic man
EM
What part of " the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible" do you not understand?
Spectator
EM. On the one hand you write (paraphrasing) that chaotic does not mean impossible to predict, but on the other hand you acknowledge that (again paraphrasing) highly complex systems (like climate) cannot be described mathematically, and so need to be simulated. Pardon my ignorance, but I always was led to believe that simulation does not equate to prediction but might encompass a range of different possible outcomes. The example you use -a double pendulum - only illustrates the inability to predict such systems (except in terms of statistical probabilities).
I thought this was the reason why the IPCC never acknowledges its outputs as predictions.
Your two statements (paraphrased above) appear to me to be incompatible with each other.
Alan Kendall
Diogenes
You refer to a straightforward application of physics to climate as "Micky Mouse pseudoscientists calculations".
This reveals more about your denalism than anything I could say.