Geoheresy
The distortion of science for ideological purposes has a long history, and the results are generally ugly.Saturday, December 02, 2006
BLOG Move
As part of the Wandering Hissink's change in domicile arrangements Geoheresy has relocated to a new server and can be read at the following url - http://geoheresy.bigblog.com.au/
One reason is that adding content to it does not count in my ISP traffic volume (its free!).
The second is that this blog's editing pages has become less than useful - so it is time to move on.
As part of the Wandering Hissink's change in domicile arrangements Geoheresy has relocated to a new server and can be read at the following url - http://geoheresy.bigblog.com.au/
One reason is that adding content to it does not count in my ISP traffic volume (its free!).
The second is that this blog's editing pages has become less than useful - so it is time to move on.
posted by Louis Hissink # 11:53 PM
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
MAINSTREAM MEDIA INNUMERACY
My attention was drawn to the latest media reporting that CO2 has increased 2.5% per year since 2000 according to the Global Carbon Project reported here. The source document is of two pages with lots of pretty coloured graphics (presumably on the basis that pictures are equivalent to a thousand words) and available here.
Now they state in Policy Document 5 "That the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.05ppm per year,.." (page 1).
Express this as a percentage we calculate (2.05/1,000,000)x100 = 0.000205% per year.
Or should they have said (2.05/380)x100 = 0.54% per year?
Either way rather much smaller than 2.5% per year isn't it.
Wikipedia states that according to NOAA 97% of atmospheric CO2 is created from natural sources leaving 3% to human activities.
And As of 2006, the earth's atmosphere is about 0.038% by volume (381 µL/L or ppmv) or 0.057% by weight CO2.
3% of 381 ppmv = 11.43 ppmv which is the human contribution
AND
if each year an extra 2.05 ppmv of CO2 is added to atmospheric CO2, then the anthropogenic component is 3% of 2.05, or 0.06 ppmv by definition.
PER YEAR THE ANTHROPOGENIC CONTRIBUTION TO CO2 EMISSIONS IS 0.06ppmv or
0.00000615% of CO2 per year.
Each year we therefore seem to add 0.06 ppmv to 11.43 = 11.49 ppmv
The earth, all by itself, adds, at the current interpreted rate, 1.99 ppmv per year to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Figure it out!
HUMANS - 0.06ppmv CO2 per year
GAIA - 1.99ppmv CO2 per year
My attention was drawn to the latest media reporting that CO2 has increased 2.5% per year since 2000 according to the Global Carbon Project reported here. The source document is of two pages with lots of pretty coloured graphics (presumably on the basis that pictures are equivalent to a thousand words) and available here.
Now they state in Policy Document 5 "That the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 was 2.05ppm per year,.." (page 1).
Express this as a percentage we calculate (2.05/1,000,000)x100 = 0.000205% per year.
Or should they have said (2.05/380)x100 = 0.54% per year?
Either way rather much smaller than 2.5% per year isn't it.
Wikipedia states that according to NOAA 97% of atmospheric CO2 is created from natural sources leaving 3% to human activities.
And As of 2006, the earth's atmosphere is about 0.038% by volume (381 µL/L or ppmv) or 0.057% by weight CO2.
3% of 381 ppmv = 11.43 ppmv which is the human contribution
AND
if each year an extra 2.05 ppmv of CO2 is added to atmospheric CO2, then the anthropogenic component is 3% of 2.05, or 0.06 ppmv by definition.
PER YEAR THE ANTHROPOGENIC CONTRIBUTION TO CO2 EMISSIONS IS 0.06ppmv or
0.00000615% of CO2 per year.
Each year we therefore seem to add 0.06 ppmv to 11.43 = 11.49 ppmv
The earth, all by itself, adds, at the current interpreted rate, 1.99 ppmv per year to CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Figure it out!
HUMANS - 0.06ppmv CO2 per year
GAIA - 1.99ppmv CO2 per year
posted by Louis Hissink # 1:44 PM
Friday, November 24, 2006
The following preface has been lifted from the plasma site and the book will be available after Thanksgiving, so I am told - LH.Preface
In recent years we have read about the “discovery” of black holes, neutron stars, cosmic strings, and such things as dark energy and invisible matter. Anyone who reads Sagan, Hawking, and the other popular astronomy writers can see how complicated and counter-intuitive the concepts of modern astrophysics are becoming. Even so, until recently, I assumed that astronomers and astrophysicists knew what they were talking about.
Now – I’m sure they do not.
It was when astrophysicists began saying things that I, as an electrical engineer, knew were wrong that I began to have serious doubts about their pronouncements. But I agonized over whether those doubts were legitimate. Even though my life-long avocation has been amateur astronomy, my formal background is in engineering – not astronomy or cosmology.
Earning a doctorate in electrical engineering eventually led to my teaching that subject at a major university for thirty-nine years. What troubled me most was when astrophysicists began saying things about magnetic fields that any of my junior-year students could show were completely incorrect.
If astrophysicists were saying things that were demonstrably wrong in my area of expertise, could it be that they were making similar mistakes in their own field as well? I began to investigate more of the pronouncements of modern astrophysicists and the reasoning behind them. This book is an account of what I unearthed when I started digging into this question.
It is becoming clear that knowledge acquired in electric plasma laboratories over the last century affords insights and simpler, more elegant, more compelling explanations of most cosmological phenomena than those that are now espoused in astrophysics. And yet astrophysicists seem to be intent on ignoring them. Thus, lacking these fundamental electrical concepts, cosmologists have charged into a mind-numbing mathematical cul de sac, creating on the way a tribe of invisible entities – some of which are demonstrably impossible.
I have tried to hack a path through these hypotheses, contradictions, and alternative explanations that will be clear and understandable for the average interested reader to follow. The answers to the questions we ask are not stressfully convoluted and arcane – rather, they are logical, straightforward, and reasonable – and long overdue.
I hope your journey through these pages will be meaningful, educational, perhaps exciting, and most important of all, eye-opening.
DES
Reviews:
Scientists Respond
University of Manchester. A well-known radio astronomer and writer, presently at the Physics Department, University of Memphis. He is the author of "Interstellar matters : essays on curiosity and astronomical discovery", and "The invisible universe – The Story of Radio Astronomy” as well as many other books and scientific papers.
“You don't have to be an astronomer to enjoy this book. It's an exciting story about how a small group of physicists, engineers and other scientists have challenged the ‘establishment’ – the ‘big science’ astronomers who are reluctant to listen to anyone outside their own elite circle.” – Lewis E. Franks, PhD,
Stanford University, Fellow of the IEEE (1977), Professor Emeritus and Head of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts (Retired).
“Gravity was the focus of 20th century astronomy. For the 21st century, it will be electromagnetism and plasmas in addition. This forthcoming scientific revolution is presaged by the rapid pace of discoveries about our own star, the Sun, and its total plasma environment, and discoveries about the nature of the interstellar medium." – Timothy E. Eastman, PhD, Head of Raytheon's space physics and astrophysics groups.
He is well known for his work on magnetospheric boundary layers and the initial discovery of the Low Latitude Boundary Layer.http://www.plasmas.org/space-astrophys.htm
“It is gratifying to see the work of my mentor, Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfvén enumerated with such clarity. I am also pleased to see that Dr. Scott has given general readers such a lucid and understandable summary of my own work.” – Anthony L. Peratt, PhD,
USC, Fellow of the IEEE (1999), former scientific advisor to theU.S. Department of Energy and member of the Associate Laboratory Directorate of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is the author of Physics of the Plasma Universe and numerous published papers.
posted by Louis Hissink # 3:04 AM
THE EARTH AND ITS ELECTRICAL CONNECTION
One of the more interesting observations made by a new Australian blogger linked by John Ray here is the fact that from the hours of 3AM to 6AM, when the sun is not shining because its late at night and before dawn, temperatures have not changed for the last 5 years while the maxima and minima have.
AGW due to CO2 increase has to be of a uniform extent globally, so this pre-dawn discrepancy is significant.
Also we learn that Cosmic Rays affect the formation of clouds on the surface of the earth, according to Danish research. And what are cosmic rays? Charged particles in motion, and most of us of a practical nature would call that “electricity”. (Gravitationalists would call the cosmic rays).
Now we learn that NASA scientists have worked out that Jupiter’s auroras are electrical phenomena -
“a new study reports that one of the bright spots in this aurora is the footprint of a continuous electrical exchange between Jupiter and another moon, Europa. In October of 2005, the journal Geophysical Research Letters published a report from a research team headed by Denis Grodent of the University of Liège, Belgium, noting the team's discovery of a short auroral tail linking Jupiter to Europa. The report notes that this footprint is similar to that of Io, but less energetic. Grodent's team based its report on a study of 45 Hubble images of the Jovian aurora showing Europa's footprint and its swirling "tail".”
and
“An electrical interaction between Jupiter and its moons means that the bodies are charged. (As soon as you grant that one body is charged, the other body is also charged in relationship to it). Jupiter is not an island. It stands in a dynamic electrical relationship to the Sun, just as does the Earth. It is now known that charged particles from the Sun, not a terrestrial "dynamo", power Earth's auroras. The same thing can be said of Jupiter's auroras, though this was as contrary to astronomers' assumptions as was the confirmation of the Sun's input to terrestrial auroras. Work by scientists at the University of Leicester in the UK found “a strong correlation between the strength of the solar wind and the behaviour of [Jupiter’s] auroras". But this was "completely the opposite result to the one we were expecting from our predictions".
Of course, what is surprising or illogical from one vantage point may be "reasoning from the obvious" in another.
A: Jupiter interacts electrically with its moons.
B: Jupiter interacts electrically with the Sun, as does the Earth.
C: The planets in the Solar System are charged bodies.
D: The sun has an electric field.
Suddenly the elephant so long "hidden" in the living room of astrophysics is exposed. Since the sun gives off proton storms, and the protons in the solar wind are being accelerated away from the sun, it should have been obvious all along that the Sun is the center of an electric field…
E. Electrical transactions between the Sun, the planets, and the planets' moons are only to be expected in the Electric Universe.
Electrical connectivity is thus confirmed by every level of investigation; it is not just the reason for Io's "volcanic" plumes; it is the reason why Saturn's moon Enceladus similarly spews out icy particles in high energy jets; it is why Europa and other moon of Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus display vast networks of channels that can only be explained as electric discharge scars; it is why the planets have teardrop shaped Langmuir sheaths; it is why Mars, moving on an orbit more elliptical than Earth's, is periodically overtaken by global dust storms and Everest-sized "dust devils"; it is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves; it is why remote comets discharge so brilliantly as they approach the inner solar system; it is why "asteroids" can become comets if their orbits are sufficiently eccentric; it is why comets sometimes break up as they move through the Sun's electric field.”
Source
“It is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves”.
Discharges what to space – Energy? Surely not.
So here we have a clue as to why global climate models are not only inconsistent but totally unpredictable – they assume the earth is an electrically neutral body suspended in an electrically neutral space in which gravitation is the only force.
Consider the fact that the Sun’s charged particles power the earth’s auroras – or in lay terms, moving charged particles is electricity – so when we see the sun at dawn what we do not see is the flow of electricity from the sun to the earth. In fact willy-willy's are now known to have up to 10,000 volts potential difference and we don't see those electrical forces either, just as a vorterx of wind, often capable of causing enormous damage.
And we know that electric currents passing through resistive loads generate heat. So maybe the heat we get from the sun is part radiant and part electrical, and if the sun is part of a galactic electrical circuit, which itself is part of an ever larger one, then any change in the sun’s electric potential would affect the earth too.
And if the earth is part of a solar electrical circuit, which the above data seem to suggest, then the flux of energy, and of course heat, is not factored into any GCM. This is why there is so much scepticism over anthropogenic global warming.
And we thought it was all due to CO2!
One of the more interesting observations made by a new Australian blogger linked by John Ray here is the fact that from the hours of 3AM to 6AM, when the sun is not shining because its late at night and before dawn, temperatures have not changed for the last 5 years while the maxima and minima have.
AGW due to CO2 increase has to be of a uniform extent globally, so this pre-dawn discrepancy is significant.
Also we learn that Cosmic Rays affect the formation of clouds on the surface of the earth, according to Danish research. And what are cosmic rays? Charged particles in motion, and most of us of a practical nature would call that “electricity”. (Gravitationalists would call the cosmic rays).
Now we learn that NASA scientists have worked out that Jupiter’s auroras are electrical phenomena -
“a new study reports that one of the bright spots in this aurora is the footprint of a continuous electrical exchange between Jupiter and another moon, Europa. In October of 2005, the journal Geophysical Research Letters published a report from a research team headed by Denis Grodent of the University of Liège, Belgium, noting the team's discovery of a short auroral tail linking Jupiter to Europa. The report notes that this footprint is similar to that of Io, but less energetic. Grodent's team based its report on a study of 45 Hubble images of the Jovian aurora showing Europa's footprint and its swirling "tail".”
and
“An electrical interaction between Jupiter and its moons means that the bodies are charged. (As soon as you grant that one body is charged, the other body is also charged in relationship to it). Jupiter is not an island. It stands in a dynamic electrical relationship to the Sun, just as does the Earth. It is now known that charged particles from the Sun, not a terrestrial "dynamo", power Earth's auroras. The same thing can be said of Jupiter's auroras, though this was as contrary to astronomers' assumptions as was the confirmation of the Sun's input to terrestrial auroras. Work by scientists at the University of Leicester in the UK found “a strong correlation between the strength of the solar wind and the behaviour of [Jupiter’s] auroras". But this was "completely the opposite result to the one we were expecting from our predictions".
Of course, what is surprising or illogical from one vantage point may be "reasoning from the obvious" in another.
A: Jupiter interacts electrically with its moons.
B: Jupiter interacts electrically with the Sun, as does the Earth.
C: The planets in the Solar System are charged bodies.
D: The sun has an electric field.
Suddenly the elephant so long "hidden" in the living room of astrophysics is exposed. Since the sun gives off proton storms, and the protons in the solar wind are being accelerated away from the sun, it should have been obvious all along that the Sun is the center of an electric field…
E. Electrical transactions between the Sun, the planets, and the planets' moons are only to be expected in the Electric Universe.
Electrical connectivity is thus confirmed by every level of investigation; it is not just the reason for Io's "volcanic" plumes; it is the reason why Saturn's moon Enceladus similarly spews out icy particles in high energy jets; it is why Europa and other moon of Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus display vast networks of channels that can only be explained as electric discharge scars; it is why the planets have teardrop shaped Langmuir sheaths; it is why Mars, moving on an orbit more elliptical than Earth's, is periodically overtaken by global dust storms and Everest-sized "dust devils"; it is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves; it is why remote comets discharge so brilliantly as they approach the inner solar system; it is why "asteroids" can become comets if their orbits are sufficiently eccentric; it is why comets sometimes break up as they move through the Sun's electric field.”
Source
“It is why the Earth discharges to space through sprites and elves”.
Discharges what to space – Energy? Surely not.
So here we have a clue as to why global climate models are not only inconsistent but totally unpredictable – they assume the earth is an electrically neutral body suspended in an electrically neutral space in which gravitation is the only force.
Consider the fact that the Sun’s charged particles power the earth’s auroras – or in lay terms, moving charged particles is electricity – so when we see the sun at dawn what we do not see is the flow of electricity from the sun to the earth. In fact willy-willy's are now known to have up to 10,000 volts potential difference and we don't see those electrical forces either, just as a vorterx of wind, often capable of causing enormous damage.
And we know that electric currents passing through resistive loads generate heat. So maybe the heat we get from the sun is part radiant and part electrical, and if the sun is part of a galactic electrical circuit, which itself is part of an ever larger one, then any change in the sun’s electric potential would affect the earth too.
And if the earth is part of a solar electrical circuit, which the above data seem to suggest, then the flux of energy, and of course heat, is not factored into any GCM. This is why there is so much scepticism over anthropogenic global warming.
And we thought it was all due to CO2!
posted by Louis Hissink # 12:12 AM
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Obnoxiously Persistent Australians
Professor Bob Carter wrote a letter to some very important newspapers who seemed not to have published it. It was posted on CCnet and it is reproduced here for the record.
November 5, 2006
Dear Sir,
Professor Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Climate Centre, has had an epiphany. He writes on BBC News Viewpoint that "It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics". He adds "The language of catastrophe is not the language of science", a truth that has been a long time coming from the UK's climate "professionals".
Professor Hulme shows breathtaking chutzpah, for the view that he is now espousing is closely similar to that long held by thousands of professional scientists around the world. These persons are derogated as "climate sceptics" but are actually agnostic regarding the probability of dangerous human-caused change. They take just the balanced, empirical approach to the climate change issue that Professor Hulme now recommends.
Nonetheless, it is good to have the professor's reassurance that the Tyndall Centre and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are no longer going to support their views of climate change with "a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science".
No more hockey-sticks then?
Bob Carter
Professor R.M. Carter
Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Qld. 4811
AUSTRALIA
Professor Bob Carter wrote a letter to some very important newspapers who seemed not to have published it. It was posted on CCnet and it is reproduced here for the record.
November 5, 2006
Dear Sir,
Professor Mike Hulme, Director of the Tyndall Climate Centre, has had an epiphany. He writes on BBC News Viewpoint that "It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics". He adds "The language of catastrophe is not the language of science", a truth that has been a long time coming from the UK's climate "professionals".
Professor Hulme shows breathtaking chutzpah, for the view that he is now espousing is closely similar to that long held by thousands of professional scientists around the world. These persons are derogated as "climate sceptics" but are actually agnostic regarding the probability of dangerous human-caused change. They take just the balanced, empirical approach to the climate change issue that Professor Hulme now recommends.
Nonetheless, it is good to have the professor's reassurance that the Tyndall Centre and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are no longer going to support their views of climate change with "a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science".
No more hockey-sticks then?
Bob Carter
Professor R.M. Carter
Marine Geophysical Laboratory
James Cook University
Townsville, Qld. 4811
AUSTRALIA
posted by Louis Hissink # 1:12 AM
GREENPEACE AGENDA
I'll probably be excoriated as a typical red-neck mining type but a recent post on John Ray's Greenie Watch from Spiked-online quoted this comment:
Over at Greenpeace, Mark Strutt, who was until recently senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK (he’s now Greenpeace International’s agriculture spokesperson), takes a similar stance. ‘Greenpeace wouldn’t be interested in this sort of thing. We’re looking for reductions in the use of fossil fuels rather than these technologies that in all likelihood would come to nothing.
(reacting to a proposal to mitigate AGW by technology)
WRONG WRONG WRONG! They don't want solutions to global warming, they want to stop the extraction of coal and oil - and that means killing the mining industry.
Those of us who have been in the mining industry for a long time have always viewed Greenpeace's agenda as one of eliminating the mining industry.
Greenpeace must be congratulated on the magnificent job they have done with Global Warming and essentially turned an anti-mining agenda into one of a global nature enlisting the wider community by inventing the specious science that CO2 emitted by humanity will result in a catastrophic climatic disaster.
Greenpeace wants to eliminate the coal miners, the mining and oil industries, and as they have failed to achieve that goal with a direct frontal attack, they instead, in true Fabian fashion, went undercover and resumed the war under the aegis of climate change.
Except that some of us, the climate sceptics, were not fooled by the donning of the sheeps wool to hide the real motive of the environmental movement - the elimination of the mining industry.
If they were successful in achieving that goal, then the future for humanity would be bleak indeed - imagine a close to nature lifestyle worse than the worst of the peasants living in North Korea today.
Greenpeace has but one agenda - the extinction of the world mining industry and the coal industry is but the first step.
What a tragedy so many fine minds have fallen for specious nonesense of AGW.
I'll probably be excoriated as a typical red-neck mining type but a recent post on John Ray's Greenie Watch from Spiked-online quoted this comment:
Over at Greenpeace, Mark Strutt, who was until recently senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK (he’s now Greenpeace International’s agriculture spokesperson), takes a similar stance. ‘Greenpeace wouldn’t be interested in this sort of thing. We’re looking for reductions in the use of fossil fuels rather than these technologies that in all likelihood would come to nothing.
(reacting to a proposal to mitigate AGW by technology)
WRONG WRONG WRONG! They don't want solutions to global warming, they want to stop the extraction of coal and oil - and that means killing the mining industry.
Those of us who have been in the mining industry for a long time have always viewed Greenpeace's agenda as one of eliminating the mining industry.
Greenpeace must be congratulated on the magnificent job they have done with Global Warming and essentially turned an anti-mining agenda into one of a global nature enlisting the wider community by inventing the specious science that CO2 emitted by humanity will result in a catastrophic climatic disaster.
Greenpeace wants to eliminate the coal miners, the mining and oil industries, and as they have failed to achieve that goal with a direct frontal attack, they instead, in true Fabian fashion, went undercover and resumed the war under the aegis of climate change.
Except that some of us, the climate sceptics, were not fooled by the donning of the sheeps wool to hide the real motive of the environmental movement - the elimination of the mining industry.
If they were successful in achieving that goal, then the future for humanity would be bleak indeed - imagine a close to nature lifestyle worse than the worst of the peasants living in North Korea today.
Greenpeace has but one agenda - the extinction of the world mining industry and the coal industry is but the first step.
What a tragedy so many fine minds have fallen for specious nonesense of AGW.
Labels: Climate Change
posted by Louis Hissink # 12:46 AM
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Conclusion:
Real-world measures suggest moderate to strong negative feedback, currently unnamed and un-quantified, mitigates the Earth's thermal response to additional radiative forcing from both human activity and natural variation. Justification for amplification factors >2.5 for unmitigated positive feedback mechanisms is not evident in empirical measures. It is not clear whether any amplification factor should be applied or even what sign any such factor should be. Nor is there evidence to support such large λ values in GCMs. Division of real-world measures continue to exhibit the same surface thermal response derived by Idso for contemporary local, regional and global climate, for ancient climate under a younger, weaker sun and for Earth's celestial neighbors, Mars and Venus.
In the absence of support for amplification factors and in view of their erroneously large λ values it is apparent that the wiggle fitting so far achieved with climate model output is accidental or that these models contain equally large opposing errors in other portions of their calculations such that a comedy of errors produce seemingly plausible results in the short-term. In either case no confidence is inspired.
On balance of available evidence then the current model-estimated range of warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide should probably be reduced from 1.4 - 5.8 °C to about 0.4 °C to suit observations or ≈ 0.8 °C to accommodate theoretical warming -- and that's including ΔF of 3.7 Wm-2 from a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a figure we suspect is also inflated.
The bottom line is that climate models are programmed to overstate potential warming response to enhanced greenhouse forcing by a huge margin. The median estimate 3.0 °C warming cited by the IPCC for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is physically implausible.
Source
Note: Every GCM assumes as a start that doubling CO2 results in a rise in atmospheric temperature.
It might be expressed thus:
Future T = F(CF) - Feedback where F(CF) is the climate forcing and Feedback an innumerable number of factors which decrease the effect of F(CF).
F(CF) has never been determined experimentally - it is at best a GUESS!
This is not science, this is pure junkscience.
Real-world measures suggest moderate to strong negative feedback, currently unnamed and un-quantified, mitigates the Earth's thermal response to additional radiative forcing from both human activity and natural variation. Justification for amplification factors >2.5 for unmitigated positive feedback mechanisms is not evident in empirical measures. It is not clear whether any amplification factor should be applied or even what sign any such factor should be. Nor is there evidence to support such large λ values in GCMs. Division of real-world measures continue to exhibit the same surface thermal response derived by Idso for contemporary local, regional and global climate, for ancient climate under a younger, weaker sun and for Earth's celestial neighbors, Mars and Venus.
In the absence of support for amplification factors and in view of their erroneously large λ values it is apparent that the wiggle fitting so far achieved with climate model output is accidental or that these models contain equally large opposing errors in other portions of their calculations such that a comedy of errors produce seemingly plausible results in the short-term. In either case no confidence is inspired.
On balance of available evidence then the current model-estimated range of warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide should probably be reduced from 1.4 - 5.8 °C to about 0.4 °C to suit observations or ≈ 0.8 °C to accommodate theoretical warming -- and that's including ΔF of 3.7 Wm-2 from a doubling of pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a figure we suspect is also inflated.
The bottom line is that climate models are programmed to overstate potential warming response to enhanced greenhouse forcing by a huge margin. The median estimate 3.0 °C warming cited by the IPCC for a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is physically implausible.
Source
Note: Every GCM assumes as a start that doubling CO2 results in a rise in atmospheric temperature.
It might be expressed thus:
Future T = F(CF) - Feedback where F(CF) is the climate forcing and Feedback an innumerable number of factors which decrease the effect of F(CF).
F(CF) has never been determined experimentally - it is at best a GUESS!
This is not science, this is pure junkscience.
posted by Louis Hissink # 9:03 PM
CLIMATE IN-SENSITIVITY
The Monbiot-Monckton debate continues in splendid fashion and now the climate surrealists are wading in with argumentum ad hominem over climate sensitivity. (One is left to one's own devices to find it in the Surreal Climate site - as the Wandering Hissink does not bother with it).
Preamble
The definition of climate sensitivity is as follows:
In IPCC reports, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in global mean surface temperature following a doubling of the atmospheric (equivalent) CO2 concentration. This value is estimated, by the IPCC Third Assessment Report primarily on the basis of climate models, to be "likely to be in the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C" [1]. More generally, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in surface air temperature following a unit change in radiative forcing, expressed in units of °C/(W/m2). In practice, the evaluation of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from models requires very long simulations with coupled global climate models, or it may be deduced from observations
Source
Climate sensitivity has NEVER been determined experimentally by measurement, so no one really knows what its value is. Considering that this concept is the MOST important issue in the climate debate, one would have thought that its experimental determination would be of paramount importance.
Christopher Monckton has added a second reply to some comments made by one Schmidt on Surreal Climate but with the ad homs deleted as indicated in the following reproduction sent to me by email today.
Commentary on a posting by one Schmidt on a website run by him with, inter alios, two of the authors of the universally-discredited UN graph purporting to erase the mediaeval warm period.
Passage, some substantial, were deleted as merely ad hominem where marked +++ and are not considered. The passages which appear to contain what looks as though it were science are reproduced in Roman face. Commentary is in bold face.
“+++ The two pieces [Monckton in the Daily Telegraph, November 5, 2006, and Milloy at http://www.junkscience.com/] both spend a lot of time discussing climate sensitivity +++ . We have often made the case here that equilibrium climate sensitivity is most likely to be around 0.75 +/- 0.25 C/(W/m2) (corresponding to about a 3°C rise for a doubling of CO2). Both these pieces instead +++ show +++ that climate sensitivity must be small (more like 0.2 W/m2, or less than 1°C for 2xCO2). Our previous posts should be enough to demonstrate that this can't be correct, but it [is] worth seeing how they +++ get these answers. +++ . Any temperature change (in°C) divided by any energy flux (in W/m2) will have the same unit and thus can be compared. +++ ”
“Readers need to be aware of at least two basic things. First off, an idealised 'black body' (which gives of radiation in a very uniform and predictable way as a function of temperature - encapsulated in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) has a basic sensitivity (at Earth's radiating temperature) of about 0.27 °C/(W/m2). That is, a change in radiative forcing of about 4 W/m2 would give around 1°C warming. The second thing to know is that the Earth is not a black body! On the real planet, there are multitudes of feedbacks that affect other greenhouse components (ice alebdo, water vapour, clouds etc.) and so the true issue for climate sensitivity is what these feedbacks amount to.”
“ +++ . Ignore all the feedbacks - then you will obviously get to a number that is close to the 'black body' calculation. +++ Any calculation that lumps together water vapour and CO2 is effectively doing this +++.”
"As we explain in our glossary item, climatologists use the concept of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity because it provides a very robust predictive tool for knowing what model results will be, given a change of forcing. The climate sensitivity is an output of complex models (it is not decided ahead of time) and it doesn't help as much with the details of the response (i.e. regional patterns or changes in variance), but it's still quite useful for many broad brush responses. Empirically, we know that for a particular model, once you know its climate sensitivity you can easily predict how much it will warm or cool if you change one of the forcings (like CO2 or solar). We also know that the best definition of the forcing is the change in flux at the tropopause, and that the most predictable diagnostic is the global mean surface temperature anomaly. Thus it is natural to look at the real world and see whether there is evidence that it behaves in the same way (and it appears to, since model hindcasts of past changes match observations very well).”
The “hindcasts” don’t match observations well: as the article pointed out, there is a large shortfall between observed and projected temperatures, which led the Hadley Centre to divide its projections by three. The article also mentioned evidence on both sides of the case for the oceans acting as a heat-sink to account for the shortfall, and it mentioned Stern’s 84% of projected forcing taken up by the oceans.
“So +++ try dividing energy fluxes at the surface by temperature changes at the surface. +++ , this isn't the same as the definition of climate sensitivity - it is in fact the same as the black body (no feedback case) discussed above - and so, again it's no surprise when the numbers come up as similar to the black body case.”
“ +++ climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept. It tells you the temperature that you get to eventually. In a transient situation (such as we have at present), there is a lag related to the slow warm up of the oceans, which implies that the temperature takes a number of decades to catch up with the forcings. This lag is associated with the planetary energy imbalance and the rise in ocean heat content. If you don't take that into account it will always make the observed 'sensitivity' smaller than it should be.”
“Therefore if you take the observed warming (0.6°C) and divide by the estimated total forcings
“ +++ If you ignore the fact that there are negative forcings in the system as well (chiefly aerosols and land use changes), the forcing from all the warming effects is larger still (~2.6 W/m2), and so the implied sensitivity even smaller.”
“Of course, you could take the imbalance (~0.33 +/- 0.23 W/m2 in Hansen et al., 2005) into account and use the total net forcing, +++ ”
“ +++. Either there are important feedbacks or there aren't. You can't have them for solar and not for greenhouse gases. Our best estimates of solar are that it is about 10 to 15% the magnitude of the greenhouse gas forcing over the 20th Century. Even if that is wrong by a factor of 2 (which is conceivable), it's still less than half of the GHG changes. And of course, when you look at the last 50 years, there are no trends in solar forcing at all. +++ ”
The Monbiot-Monckton debate continues in splendid fashion and now the climate surrealists are wading in with argumentum ad hominem over climate sensitivity. (One is left to one's own devices to find it in the Surreal Climate site - as the Wandering Hissink does not bother with it).
Preamble
The definition of climate sensitivity is as follows:
In IPCC reports, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in global mean surface temperature following a doubling of the atmospheric (equivalent) CO2 concentration. This value is estimated, by the IPCC Third Assessment Report primarily on the basis of climate models, to be "likely to be in the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C" [1]. More generally, equilibrium climate sensitivity refers to the equilibrium change in surface air temperature following a unit change in radiative forcing, expressed in units of °C/(W/m2). In practice, the evaluation of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from models requires very long simulations with coupled global climate models, or it may be deduced from observations
Source
Climate sensitivity has NEVER been determined experimentally by measurement, so no one really knows what its value is. Considering that this concept is the MOST important issue in the climate debate, one would have thought that its experimental determination would be of paramount importance.
Christopher Monckton has added a second reply to some comments made by one Schmidt on Surreal Climate but with the ad homs deleted as indicated in the following reproduction sent to me by email today.
Chuck it, Schmidt!
Passage, some substantial, were deleted as merely ad hominem where marked +++ and are not considered. The passages which appear to contain what looks as though it were science are reproduced in Roman face. Commentary is in bold face.
“+++ The two pieces [Monckton in the Daily Telegraph, November 5, 2006, and Milloy at http://www.junkscience.com/] both spend a lot of time discussing climate sensitivity +++ . We have often made the case here that equilibrium climate sensitivity is most likely to be around 0.75 +/- 0.25 C/(W/m2) (corresponding to about a 3°C rise for a doubling of CO2). Both these pieces instead +++ show +++ that climate sensitivity must be small (more like 0.2 W/m2, or less than 1°C for 2xCO2). Our previous posts should be enough to demonstrate that this can't be correct, but it [is] worth seeing how they +++ get these answers. +++ . Any temperature change (in°C) divided by any energy flux (in W/m2) will have the same unit and thus can be compared. +++ ”
My article was explicit that the units for what the UN calls “lambda” are degrees C per watt per square metre. If Schmidt dislikes the use of these units, he should take the matter up with the UN.
“Readers need to be aware of at least two basic things. First off, an idealised 'black body' (which gives of radiation in a very uniform and predictable way as a function of temperature - encapsulated in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation) has a basic sensitivity (at Earth's radiating temperature) of about 0.27 °C/(W/m2). That is, a change in radiative forcing of about 4 W/m2 would give around 1°C warming. The second thing to know is that the Earth is not a black body! On the real planet, there are multitudes of feedbacks that affect other greenhouse components (ice alebdo, water vapour, clouds etc.) and so the true issue for climate sensitivity is what these feedbacks amount to.”
Climate feedbacks are of course mentioned in my article. Also, the supporting calculations explicitly state that Earth/troposphere emissivity was taken not as 1 (for a blackbody) but as ~0.6 (for a greybody). Schmidt had seen the calculations, because he mentions the “M climate model”, to which the article did not refer by name. Schmidt knew that the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, often called the “blackbody” equation, is in fact capable of representing not only blackbodies (emissivity 1) that absorb and, by Kirchhoff’s law, emit all radiation, but also whitebodies (emissivity 0) that reflect all radiation, and all greybodies in between. Schmidt’s implication is that the equation applies to blackbodies only. A zoologist lifted this unfortunate implication from Schmidt’s blog without verification and repeated it in a UK newspaper, which was obliged to print an article correcting this and other errors on the following day.
“ +++ . Ignore all the feedbacks - then you will obviously get to a number that is close to the 'black body' calculation. +++ Any calculation that lumps together water vapour and CO2 is effectively doing this +++.”
My article, far from ignoring feedbacks, demonstrated that, even if positive and negative feedbacks cancel, the entire 20th-century mean surface air temperature increment can be accounted for. Also, in the accompanying document the official explanation for the discrepancy between observed and projected temperatures – namely, climate feedbacks – is explicitly stated.
"As we explain in our glossary item, climatologists use the concept of radiative forcing and climate sensitivity because it provides a very robust predictive tool for knowing what model results will be, given a change of forcing. The climate sensitivity is an output of complex models (it is not decided ahead of time) and it doesn't help as much with the details of the response (i.e. regional patterns or changes in variance), but it's still quite useful for many broad brush responses. Empirically, we know that for a particular model, once you know its climate sensitivity you can easily predict how much it will warm or cool if you change one of the forcings (like CO2 or solar). We also know that the best definition of the forcing is the change in flux at the tropopause, and that the most predictable diagnostic is the global mean surface temperature anomaly. Thus it is natural to look at the real world and see whether there is evidence that it behaves in the same way (and it appears to, since model hindcasts of past changes match observations very well).”
The “hindcasts” don’t match observations well: as the article pointed out, there is a large shortfall between observed and projected temperatures, which led the Hadley Centre to divide its projections by three. The article also mentioned evidence on both sides of the case for the oceans acting as a heat-sink to account for the shortfall, and it mentioned Stern’s 84% of projected forcing taken up by the oceans.
“So +++ try dividing energy fluxes at the surface by temperature changes at the surface. +++ , this isn't the same as the definition of climate sensitivity - it is in fact the same as the black body (no feedback case) discussed above - and so, again it's no surprise when the numbers come up as similar to the black body case.”
To avoid points like this, my methodology was identical to that of the models on which the UN relies. I used its definition of radiative forcing, its forcing equation and its all-ghg-to-CO2 ratio, all of which are explicitly quoted in my calculations, which Schmidt has seen.
“ +++ climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept. It tells you the temperature that you get to eventually. In a transient situation (such as we have at present), there is a lag related to the slow warm up of the oceans, which implies that the temperature takes a number of decades to catch up with the forcings. This lag is associated with the planetary energy imbalance and the rise in ocean heat content. If you don't take that into account it will always make the observed 'sensitivity' smaller than it should be.”
My article explicitly mentioned, took into account, and gave evidence for and against, the ocean notion.
“Therefore if you take the observed warming (0.6°C) and divide by the estimated total forcings
(~1.6 +/- 1W/m2) you get a number that is roughly half the one expected.”
Using the UN’s CO2 forcing equation, and its all-ghg-to-CO2 ratio, I calculated the 1900-1998 forcing from all ghgs as 1.99wm-2. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation for the Earth/troposphere system as a greybody with dT 0.6C, I calculated the 1900-1998 forcings from all sources as 1.98wm-2. The two values are near-identical, suggesting either the cancellation of positive and negative feedbacks or the ocean notion, or some combination of the two.
“ +++ If you ignore the fact that there are negative forcings in the system as well (chiefly aerosols and land use changes), the forcing from all the warming effects is larger still (~2.6 W/m2), and so the implied sensitivity even smaller.”
Again, I used the UN’s assumptions, which is that all non-ghg forcings are not as well understood as ghg forcings, and that – by deduction from its table of forcings – all non-ghg forcings broadly self-cancel. This point was clearly explained, and illustrated with the UN’s forcings table, in the supporting calculations, which Schmidt has seen
“Of course, you could take the imbalance (~0.33 +/- 0.23 W/m2 in Hansen et al., 2005) into account and use the total net forcing, +++ ”
I cited Hansen et al. (2006), an update making a similar point.
“And finally, you can +++ imply that all the warming is due to solar forcing.”
My article correctly showed that, if one takes 1900 and not 1750 as the start-date for solar forcings, so as to coincide with the 20th-century temperature rise of 0.6C relied upon by the UN, its own table of solar-irradiance proxies shows a base 20th-century solar TSI increment of some 4wm-2, equivalent to about 0.7wm-2 outgoing at the tropopause after allowing for albedo and disc-to-sphere. This is before adding climate feedbacks, for which the UN’s current multiple of base forcing is approximately 2.7 according to Sir John Houghton in a reply to a question from me on the subject. Thus one multiplies the solar forcing by the feedback coefficient to get forcings plus feedbacks – i.e. 1.9wm-2, which is close to the 2wm-2 actually observed. However, the accompanying calculations, which Schmidt has seen, made it very clear that I had assumed, as a base case, no solar forcing above that mentioned by the UN, and that I had compared that case with others, some of which had considered 20th-century solar forcings greater than those assumed by the UN.
“ +++. Either there are important feedbacks or there aren't. You can't have them for solar and not for greenhouse gases. Our best estimates of solar are that it is about 10 to 15% the magnitude of the greenhouse gas forcing over the 20th Century. Even if that is wrong by a factor of 2 (which is conceivable), it's still less than half of the GHG changes. And of course, when you look at the last 50 years, there are no trends in solar forcing at all. +++ ”
My article explicitly addressed the need to apply climate feedbacks to all forcings and said the UN had not done so. See Solanki and Usoskin (2005) for a conclusion that the Sun has been hotter, for longer, in the past 50 years than in the past 11,400 years. Recent papers apparently disputing this have failed to take account of Solanki’s point that it is the combination of the amplitude and duration of the recent solar activity that is exceptional, not the amplitude alone.
posted by Louis Hissink # 5:33 PM
Friday, November 17, 2006
THE QUIGGIN CONVERSION
Australian Keynesian economist Professor John Quiggin has decided that the debate over global warming is over, and has ceased to bother with any argument contrary to his, from what I assume is his newly acquired, stance of conversion to the secular faith of AGW.
I posted a comment (no 119 I think) but as JQ seems to edit his blog, I adopt a precautionary position and copy it here.
John,
In Science there is no debate about facts - the hypothesis is either true or false.
What part of the sentence I just wrote have you difficulty with?
If it's consensus then it is not science and never has been.
So global warming theories are not science but technically sophisticated religion, for which you have fallen, hook, line and sinker.
Australian Keynesian economist Professor John Quiggin has decided that the debate over global warming is over, and has ceased to bother with any argument contrary to his, from what I assume is his newly acquired, stance of conversion to the secular faith of AGW.
I posted a comment (no 119 I think) but as JQ seems to edit his blog, I adopt a precautionary position and copy it here.
John,
In Science there is no debate about facts - the hypothesis is either true or false.
What part of the sentence I just wrote have you difficulty with?
If it's consensus then it is not science and never has been.
So global warming theories are not science but technically sophisticated religion, for which you have fallen, hook, line and sinker.
posted by Louis Hissink # 3:18 AM
Thursday, November 16, 2006
This wasn't gibberish. I got my facts right on global warming
(Christopher Monckton replies to Monbiot's appalling article - and I learnt that George Monbiot is a zoologist, so I was wrong to say he wasn't a scientist in the previous post which I somehow managed to make disappear into the ethernet - I also discovered the Guardian was forced to print Monckton's reply. What is it with the political left that they have to slur and vilify the opponent by ad hominems rather than by ad rem. Is it because they cannot counter an argument with reasoned argument?)
There are many questions about climate change which still need answers, says Christopher Monckton Wednesday November 15, 2006The Guardian
It's a shame that George Monbiot didn't check his facts with me before using his column to describe my two recent Sunday Telegraph articles on climate change as "nonsense from start to finish" (This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong, November 14). He implies that a classically trained peer ought not to express scientific opinions. It's still a free country, George. And at least I got the science right.
George says my physics is "bafflingly bad" and contains "downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish". Yet he himself nonsensically refers to "lambda" as a "constant" in the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation. Lambda is not a constant, and it's not a term in the equation. (my emphasis)
He wrongly states that the equation only describes "black bodies" that absorb all radiant energy reaching them. No qualified physicist would make such a schoolboy howler. Of course the equation isn't limited to black bodies. Its emissivity variable runs from zero for white bodies to 1 for black bodies. The Earth/troposphere system is a rather badly-behaved grey body with emissivity about 0.6. (my emphasis)
He lifted these errors verbatim from a blog run by two authors of a now-discredited UN graph that tried to abolish the medieval warm period. I'd exposed the graph in my articles. Check your sources, George.
He says I was wrong to reinstate the medieval warm period cited by the UN in 1990 but abolished by it in 2001. A growing body of scientific papers, some of which I cited, shows that the warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Check them out, George.
He says I shouldn't have said the Viking presence in the middle ages shows Greenland was warmer than now. The Viking farmsteads in Greenland are now under permafrost, and you can't farm permafrost.
He says I was wrong to say James Hansen told Congress in 1988 that world temperature would rise 0.3C by 2000. Hansen projected 0.25 and 0.45C, averaging 0.35C. Outturn was 0.05C. I fairly said 0.3C and 0.1C. He says my source was a work of fiction by Michael Crichton. It wasn't: it was Hansen's graph.
He says I overlooked the difference between the immediate and delayed temperature response to changing conditions. In fact I expressly addressed it, citing evidence on both sides of the theory that the delayed air-temperature response arises from warming of the oceans.
He says I said the warming effects of carbon dioxide had been "made up". I didn't. I said all were agreed that there was more CO2 around and that we could expect some warming. But there is no consensus on how much.
He says I claimed to know better than the UN's scientists. I'm arrogant, George, but not that arrogant: I said the contrarians were probably a lot closer to the truth than the UN.
Too many facts wrong. Too much argument ad hominem instead of ad rem. Too much ignorance of the elementary physics of radiative transfer and equilibrium temperature.
Still, gie the puir numpty a cigar - at least he spelled my name right.
(Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher.)
Source
(Christopher Monckton replies to Monbiot's appalling article - and I learnt that George Monbiot is a zoologist, so I was wrong to say he wasn't a scientist in the previous post which I somehow managed to make disappear into the ethernet - I also discovered the Guardian was forced to print Monckton's reply. What is it with the political left that they have to slur and vilify the opponent by ad hominems rather than by ad rem. Is it because they cannot counter an argument with reasoned argument?)
There are many questions about climate change which still need answers, says Christopher Monckton Wednesday November 15, 2006The Guardian
It's a shame that George Monbiot didn't check his facts with me before using his column to describe my two recent Sunday Telegraph articles on climate change as "nonsense from start to finish" (This is a dazzling debunking of climate change science. It is also wildly wrong, November 14). He implies that a classically trained peer ought not to express scientific opinions. It's still a free country, George. And at least I got the science right.
George says my physics is "bafflingly bad" and contains "downright misrepresentation and pseudo-scientific gibberish". Yet he himself nonsensically refers to "lambda" as a "constant" in the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation. Lambda is not a constant, and it's not a term in the equation. (my emphasis)
He wrongly states that the equation only describes "black bodies" that absorb all radiant energy reaching them. No qualified physicist would make such a schoolboy howler. Of course the equation isn't limited to black bodies. Its emissivity variable runs from zero for white bodies to 1 for black bodies. The Earth/troposphere system is a rather badly-behaved grey body with emissivity about 0.6. (my emphasis)
He lifted these errors verbatim from a blog run by two authors of a now-discredited UN graph that tried to abolish the medieval warm period. I'd exposed the graph in my articles. Check your sources, George.
He says I was wrong to reinstate the medieval warm period cited by the UN in 1990 but abolished by it in 2001. A growing body of scientific papers, some of which I cited, shows that the warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now. Check them out, George.
He says I shouldn't have said the Viking presence in the middle ages shows Greenland was warmer than now. The Viking farmsteads in Greenland are now under permafrost, and you can't farm permafrost.
He says I was wrong to say James Hansen told Congress in 1988 that world temperature would rise 0.3C by 2000. Hansen projected 0.25 and 0.45C, averaging 0.35C. Outturn was 0.05C. I fairly said 0.3C and 0.1C. He says my source was a work of fiction by Michael Crichton. It wasn't: it was Hansen's graph.
He says I overlooked the difference between the immediate and delayed temperature response to changing conditions. In fact I expressly addressed it, citing evidence on both sides of the theory that the delayed air-temperature response arises from warming of the oceans.
He says I said the warming effects of carbon dioxide had been "made up". I didn't. I said all were agreed that there was more CO2 around and that we could expect some warming. But there is no consensus on how much.
He says I claimed to know better than the UN's scientists. I'm arrogant, George, but not that arrogant: I said the contrarians were probably a lot closer to the truth than the UN.
Too many facts wrong. Too much argument ad hominem instead of ad rem. Too much ignorance of the elementary physics of radiative transfer and equilibrium temperature.
Still, gie the puir numpty a cigar - at least he spelled my name right.
(Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher.)
Source
posted by Louis Hissink # 2:33 PM
Archives
May 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006
