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Radical rodent
Asking me to disprove the existence of 2C variations during the Holocene is a logical fallacy. . Nor does the inability to disprove their existence prove that they exist
I enjoyed Bertrand Russell's example of this fallacy. He asked for disproof of the existence of a teapot orbiting the Sun.
" Most of us seem to be of the opinion that there are far larger forces at work influencing the climate "
It says a lot about your lack of education that you can make such statements. Please provide evidence for these larger forces, ; preferably with numbers, formulae and energy budgets.
Aug 1, 2017 at 11:41 PM | Entropic man
Climate Science might have more credibility if you could provide evidence of the science that eliminated all other causes of Global Warming before it was decided to blame manmade carbon dioxide.
Did you enjoy all of Russell's Teapot?
Wikipedia: "Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others."
Well I'm just going to go ahead and do so anyway.
First off, yes, it is trivially true. But the work on chaos theory by Mandelbrot and, particularly, Edward Lorenz, showed that to all practical purposes you really can have spontaneous changes in a chaotic 'system' like climate without an apparent cause.
The real trick is being able to spot quasi-stable systems where the chaos may be sufficiently bounded to allow certain assumptions to be safely made. In a 'valedictory' speech, Lorenz specifically cautioned meteorologists/climatologists to only tackle tractable problems, but his caution has effectively been ignored. The implied apparent triumph of climatologists in fully understanding the earths climate system in the face of chaos appears to have happened at the same time as they concluded that CO2 was the climate control-knob. To do the latter, they need to be able to do the former, which is far more technically challenging. I am more persuaded that they can do neither.
Sorry, Entropic man, but your body swerve of the point is not good enough – it was you who stated that the Holocene optimum was stable for some 5,000 years, with the implication that there was no significant alteration (let’s say, of more than 1K – surely, that should be measurable by the proxies?) in temperatures throughout. I merely asked for evidence of such, and provided evidence that you are probably mistaken.
As for larger forces at work, please note my comment on this thread on Jul 27, 2017 at 9:19 PM (page 4), about a collapsing star some 9 BILLION light years away having a noticeable impact on our upper atmosphere. There will be other impacts from smaller catastrophes, many of which we might well be totally unaware of; this is the sort of territory that Svensmark is exploring. Also, you appear to assume that the Sun is completely stable, which, as we all should know, it is not. We should not ignore the possibility that there might also be fluctuations within the Sun’s output of which we are unaware of, too; whatever, I am sure relatively minor fluctuations could have significant impacts on this tiny planet (one good example being the aurora that can occur over both poles – merely a visible impact, maybe, but still a significant one).
michael hart: good point. Perhaps I was wrong (who knew that could be possible?!)…
… or…
… perhaps not: I did say “…few people…” You appear to be one of those few, though perhaps there are more, now; Lorenz’s logic is certainly sensible enough for me to join you.
Golf Charlie
Radical rodent claims
Thank you for confirming that the burden of proof is on her to provide evidence that these "larger forces" exist and are influencing the climate.
Particularly I would like to see proper physical evidence that these larger forces are sufficient to explain the observed behaviour of the climate system.
Michael hart
Even complex systems have thermodynamic limits. Spontaneous changescan occur, but only within the limits of the available energy.
A chaotic event may cause the system to redistribute energy or shed energy. It is not possible to produce large spontaneous warming events without extra energy. This is why we can be here that the observed warming has a real cause and is not a spontaneous event.
You posted a swath of obfuscation showing it is you who don't understand the problem, now answer the question you have ignored so studiously so far:
EM, do you stand behind the construction of average measured temp 288K minus S_B ideal temp 255K equals 33C contribution of GHG alone, or not?
Quite why you are so hooked onto the “It’s the CO2 wot dun it – especially the yooman-made stuff,” I have no idea, particularly when it is becoming more and more obvious that, despite the CO2 levels continuing to rise, temperatures are not – thus, surely, disproving the theory that it is all the fault of (human-produced) CO2.
Aug 2, 2017 at 10:00 AM | Entropic man
You and your collaborating Climate Scientists have failed to prove that manmade CO2 is the control knob for the earth's temperature. You do not understand what Bertrand Russell said either.
If "Giant Teapot" is substituted for "Carbon Dioxide", Climate Science would be just as scientific.
If Climate Science was based on Scientific principles rather than philosophy and faith in Climate Science, it would not be losing its disciples.
Rhoda
Yes
Aug 2, 2017 at 7:48 PM | Entropic man
Can it be assumed that Climate Science never considered any other possible causes of Global Warming, before deciding it was all down to CO2?
Presumably this is a question that may be raised in any Court Case involving the Hockey Stick.
EM, thanks for the succinct reply.
Now don't you see that the 288K and the 255K are arrived at by totally different methods and comparison between them is not valid? If I wanted to take the 'average temperature' of the Earth to compare with the 255K I would need to take a geometric mean of all points' temperatures. Whereas the 288K is an arithmetic mean and is not expected to be the same.
One upshot of the invalid method is that the oft seen 390 W/M2 is not a real number. It is derived from the arithmetic average temperature, it can't be observed. Another example of slipping between watts and degrees which can ONLY work when everything is uniformly distributed.
Note, I'm not saying that GHGs don't have an effect, but I am saying that the numbers and methods claimed to illustrate the effect are very suspect indeed.
Oh, I can prove it. Even in the absence of GHG or even an atmosphere at all, the same methods do not work for the moon. Until you can make the moon work, don't try the far more complicated Earth.
Radical rodent
You say
Courtesy of Dr Roy Spencer
Radical rodent
You say
Courtesy of Dr Roy Spencer
I understand why you prefer words. It is so much easier to maintain the purity of your climate change denial when you ignore those pesky numbers.
Schrodinger's cat
The discussion has reached the point at which Rhoda denies thevalidity of averages and Rational rodent denies the validity of numbers.
Time to finish, I think.
Aug 3, 2017 at 11:55 AM | Entropic man
"Aug 2, 2017 at 7:48 PM | Entropic man
Can it be assumed that Climate Science never considered any other possible causes of Global Warming, before deciding it was all down to CO2?
Aug 3, 2017 at 1:53 AM | golf charlie"
Can we take that as a "No" or a "Yes" then? Surely some of your advisers can help.
Meanwhile, back at Schrodinger's Cat's Thread, it seems Lapse Rate is the first hurdle failed, with a "divert around to avoid" by Climate Science, and now a refusal to go further.
Well, if you can find the numbers, Entropic man, please provide them – to the best of my knowledge, though, it is only known that there are effects; they have not been quantified, and no way has yet been found to have them quantified. However, by your logic, as there are no actual figures involved in what causes the aurora, these are events that cannot occur, as they can only be seen to be occurring, and no numbers are involved. You do operate on strange logic, Entropic man.
One of the key points of the external forces is that, like the collapsing star 9 billion light years away, they are having a noticeable effect on our atmosphere, yet not all sources of these forces have been, or can be, identified. That, I suspect, you find rather scary, so you retreat into things that you can quantify, and apply arcane formulae to, and feel your smugness oozing through: you’ve cracked it; you know what is happening – it is such a shame you cannot convince anyone else about it, though.
As for Dr Spencer’s decadal mean, I take it that the trend of this… erm… trend… is downwards, as the global figures for July are now +0.28, whilst last year they were +0.37, indicating a drop of 0.09. And you persist in the idea that there is no pause or hiatus…
Good point, GC: we have been side-lined quite successfully. Lapse rate has proven to be quite a big hurdle, and has yet to be jumped.
Aug 3, 2017 at 5:48 PM | Radical Rodent
We haven't even got to the water (vapour) jump yet.
I do get the distinct feeling that poor EM desperately needs a partner (where are you Phil, Russell ATTP?) to withstand the tag team efforts of Rhoda and Ravishing Rattie. R+RR your combined attack is devastating. Remind me never to get into EM's situation.
That would be difficult, Minty, as your mind is not as tightly shut as Entropic man’s. Shame really (no, not you having a more open mind…), but he does show a level of persistence and application that could be admirable were he not quite so fixated on a) further global warming is inevitable and will be this planet’s doom, and b) it is all the fault of we humans producing CO2.
Aug 3, 2017 at 6:48 PM | Supertroll
No one knows how many tag-teams were ordered to decide that CO2 was the planet's only temperature control knob, because there is no evidence.
There is a mass of evidence that the sun affects our climate. As well as historical sunspot counts going back to around 1640 showing a pattern to match some of the recorded features of the climate, associated nucleotide counts in proxy sample also provide such a link.
Many argue that TSI does not vary enough to affect warming or cooling, but within that, the high energy UV content does vary quite significantly. UV is known to have a role in ozone chemistry.
The solar wind varies according to the solar cycle. Very high energy protons and electrons and helium nuclei bombard our atmosphere. These also modulate cosmic radiation. These high energy particles may well trigger chemical reactions and cloud formation in the atmosphere.
The Solar cycle also modulates the amount of cosmic dust reaching our atmosphere. Tens of thousands of tonnes of sub-micron dust enters our atmosphere and remains dispersed for weeks. It can reflect sunlight directly, seed cloud formation and if it ends up in the ocean, the normally iron rich mineral aids phytoplankton growth, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide.
The ongoing gravity tussle between the sun and the major planets, together with the ever changing sine wave of the solar magnetic field must surely interact with the liquid iron core of the earth with an influence on tectonic plate movement, volcanic activity and perhaps tiny orbital effects.
Hubert Lamb set up CRU to start the job of understanding the natural variability of our climate. As a good scientist, he insisted that one must understand the basics before attributing climate change to new influences. Unfortunately, his advice was complete ignored and today CRU knows almost nothing about non-radiative climate effects.
Wow! You kept that under your hat, didn’t you? You were just playing with us, weren’t you? Teasing us with the few threads that you left dangling, before snapping us up! You naughty person! Now, I feel even more of a fool than I usually do. Fascinating stuff, though.
Aug 4, 2017 at 12:08 PM | Schrodinger's Cat
Aug 4, 2017 at 12:22 PM | Radical Rodent
So what other causes of global warming AND cooling were ignored, in order to frame carbon dioxide?
I make no claims about my understanding of physics, but do Climate Scientist sums assume that the heat emitted by the Sun is constant, and that the heat received by the Earth from the Sun is constant?