Climate modeling and decision milestones

[Doogles31731]

I'm glad you've had a change of opinion. The assumptions being made were way off the mark. I belong to no group. I do not have an agenda. I'm curious about all things and I like to get notions straight in my mind. I find that I understand things better if the basics are correct. I like to understand the basics. I have had doubts about the basics of climate science since James Hansen's first proclamations in the 1980s.

I was looking for the answers that came up in response to mistermack's question. I believe it's a very pertinent question, but I'll leave it for others at this stage. I think it happened somewhere between Tyndall and Arrhenius, so I'll be interested to see what other posters come up with. I think an answer will come out of the Wikipedia researcher's story on Climate Change.

Meantime I have provided the link to a 2019 paper above that not only cites a questionnaire providing evidence that many meteorologists have doubts about aspects of climate science, but which also provides evidence that current models do not fit the ice-core temperature trends during the Holocene. The author has created a new model to accommodate that basic data. The source of that data in the reference list was from a 2013 source, but I found a 2018 reference showing a very similar graph when the data from 6 separate Greenland Ice Core Site samples were grouped. So I'm satisfied with that author's basic data.

 

[studiot]

On 2/5/2022 at 2:21 AM, mistermack said:

OK. What is the biggest and best piece of evidence you can quote me, for CO2 causing a warming disaster this century?

There have been too many red points scattered about in this thread, suggesting aurgement from antagonism rather than reason.
So I have cancelled the one placed with this question, which seems a reasonable request to me.

My answer to this would be the same as my answer to others for other climatic questions.

Look to the oceans.

In the oceans you will find lots of measurements of dying coral and acidifiction.

Of course coral does not grow in heavily industrialised areas.

 

Look to the oceans for the other big issues raised in this thread.

Climate modelling is a very young science that was started by the father of climate science Gilbert Walker (1903) so it is worth reviewing his experiences.

Gilbert was a statistician who was enganged to study the Monsoon. At that time it was believed that the monsoon was dirven by a periodicity, though no one had discovered an accurate mathematical model.
Weather was thought to be a local phenomenon and 'climate' was a geographer's classification scheme.
The era was also flush with the accurate modelling of the periodicity of the tides  - a big success story.

Walker assembled the largest data collection system and database ever undertaken by that time, a truly impressive feat and story in its own right.
However he was forced to abandon the local weather cycles theory and nevr found a satisfactory way of predicting monsoons.
In its stead he demonstrated the new idea of a 'global climate'.
This became the beginnings of 'climate science.'

I have not received an answer to this question (sorry for the mispelling)

22 hours ago, studiot said:

Does anyone have an update on this question of whether CO₂ leads or lages temperature change ?

 

Another associated issue is that of what is meant by 'average global temperature' , which must be definable in order to measure a rise or fall.

Time here is a big factor, which Walker was the first to address.

[mistermack]

Somebody asked me earlier what evidence I had that skeptics were driven out of climate science, and new ones deterred from joining. 

My answer is, just read back through this thread. And look at all the negative clicking, and the sheer emotion displayed on a supposedly science thread. How could anyone live with that, working every day in a climate science environment? 

As far as I was concerned, I was stating the bleeding obvious, but thanks everybody, for your ringing endorsement of what I wrote. 

On 2/5/2022 at 2:20 PM, studiot said:

Does anyone have an update on this question of whether CO₂ leads or lages temperature change ?

Studiot, CO2 lags. If you read up on the Vostok ice cores, you wil find that it's always lagged. It's not in dispute, and it would take a monumental fraud to make the data say otherwise, so that won't happen. 

That was the inconvenient truth that Al Gore tried to hide, in his money-spinning "Inconvenient Truth" video. He put the CO2 and Temp vostok graphs up, and simply came out with his notorious "never mind the details" to gloss over the fact that the temperature leads, and CO2 follows, not the other way around. (historically for hundreds of thousands of years)

Even today, if you look at the modern CO2 graph, and the modern temp graph, over the last 150 years, it was temperature rising first, with no significant rise in CO2 till 1950, as has been mentioned earlier in the thread.

Of course, humans are now pumping out CO2 at a prodigious rate, so it's a new ball game. But the basic question of did has CO2 lagged historically, is crystal clear. Yes it has, for hundreds of thousands of years. 

I wouldn't claim that that fact rebuts the global warming CO2 arguments. Unless you are trying to decieve, as Al Gore was. 

[TheVat]

17 hours ago, mistermack said:

So nothing from you then? You don't know, but these people do?  No surprise there then. That's all you get. "these people think so, so you should too". 

 

 

You asked for a quote.  I was agreeable to this, not having time to carry bricks for you and compose a lengthy discourse.  The link provided contained this quote, which reflected my own thinking based on years of following the research:

 

Quote

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming. Carbon dioxide from human activity is increasing more than 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

 

 

NOWHERE IN MY POST was it suggested that "these people think so, so you should too." I offered the summary as a possible path for your own research and followup, in hopes you would see for yourself the vast body of evidence just from this one area of climatology.

 

I reversed one of your downvotes, as I feel the DV option is detrimental to civil discussion. (See Stringy's new thread in feedback)

Edited February 6, 2022 by TheVat
Fixt

[swansont]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

Even today, if you look at the modern CO2 graph, and the modern temp graph, over the last 150 years, it was temperature rising first, with no significant rise in CO2 till 1950, as has been mentioned earlier in the thread.

This was your unsupported claim, so you don’t get to cite it as support for the exact same claim. 

edit: I gave numbers (from https://www.co2levels.org )

“285 ppm (ca 1850) to 310 ppm (ca 1950)” That 25 ppm, or almost a 10% rise

 

[mistermack]

14 minutes ago, TheVat said:

NOWHERE IN MY POST was it suggested that "these people think so, so you should too."

No, but I asked you what YOU thought, and you just replied with a link to somebody else's thoughts, presumably because you thought that they had a persuasive argument. So I don't think I was misrepresenting you at all.

[TheVat]

9 minutes ago, mistermack said:

No, but I asked you what YOU thought, and you just replied with a link to somebody else's thoughts, presumably because you thought that they had a persuasive argument. So I don't think I was misrepresenting you at all.

You were misrepresenting.  My reply began with my two word response reflecting my thoughts: palaeoclimate evidence.  Terse, but a shorthand that was accurately reflecting my thinking which is: palaeoclimate evidence makes a compelling case for anthropogenic GW  driven by a rapid rise in GHGs.  I replied in good faith, but with very limited time yesterday.   You seem to be trying for some ad hominem tack that suggests a brief comment that points to a vast body of  peer-reviewed research can only show the member has no thoughts of their own.  This is a cheap shot, bad faith approach and I will waste no more time with you.

[mistermack]

8 minutes ago, TheVat said:

trying for some ad hominem tack

Certainly not. I was replying to your post as I saw it, there was not even a trace of ad hom present or intended in that. It was the emptiness of the response that I was pointing out. For someone so obviously committed to the climate change cause, who had been following it for decades, it shouldn't have been a difficult question. Fair enough, if you were busy, but there was no obligation to answer. 

[TheVat]

9 hours ago, Doogles31731 said:

 

Apropos of questioning the basics of the data on which climate science and calculations are based, I found a 2019 paper by Scafetta who did just that. You can read his interpretation of the literature yourself and draw your own conclusions. I think that what he says, sounds right, but the paper is of such a nature that it would be hard to summarize. If he’s right, then many of the current climate models need modification and if he’s wrong, then climate science is still too inconsistent.

 

Scafetta (2019; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicola-Scafetta/publication/334746460_ON_THE_RELIABILITY_OF_COMPUTER-BASED_CLIMATE_MODELS/links/5d496ede4585153e5940b019/ON-THE-RELIABILITY-OF-COMPUTER-BASED-CLIMATE-MODELS.pdf) in On the reliability of computer-based climate models. It’s in the peer-reviewed Italian Journal of Engineering Geology and Environment.

The Introduction states “In this short review, I will briefly summarize some of the main reasons why the AGWT should be questioned. A reader should consider that a recent survey among more than 4000 members of the American Meteorological Society (Maibach et alii, 2016) revealed that 96% of the respondents acknowledges that a climatic change is taking place. However, with regards to its physical causes, only 29% of respondents agreed with the claim that 80-100% of the global surface warming observed since 1960 has been induced by human activity. Another 38% claimed that humans were responsible for 60-80% of the observed warming, while 26% claimed that natural climatic factors have contributed from 40% to 100% of it. 6% could not answer and only 1% thinks that a climatic change did not really occur. So, only a minority, probably far less than a third of the US meteorologists agrees with the claim of the IPCC that the totality (100%) of the warming observed since 1870 or 1960 has been anthropogenic. Thus, it is not true that there is a nearly total consensus on the IPCC’s main claims. I will try to explain why so many people with some expertise on this topic are skeptical of the AGWT of the GCMs.”

So it’s not just people with a passing interest who question climate science, but a fair percentage of 4000 members of a Meteorological Society.

This is part of Scafetta’s conclusions, but as I said, you’d have to read the paper yourself. “I have finally proposed a semi-empirical climate model calibrated in such a way to reconstruct the natural climatic variability since medieval times because it includes the millennial oscillation observed throughout the Holocene (Scafetta 2013a; 2013b). I have shown that this model projects very moderate warming until 2040 and a maximum additional warming of about 1.5°C from 2000 to 2100 using the same anthropogenic emission scenarios adopted by the CMIP5 models: see Figures 18-19. This result suggests that climatic adaptation policies, which are less expensive than the mitigation ones, could be sufficient to address most of the consequences of climatic changes that could occur during the 21st century. A major scientific implication of this research is that the climate is significantly modulated by astronomical oscillations which may generate solar-associated forcings different from the total solar irradiance forcing. This eventuality would further suggest that the current models are not reliable because important space weather climate forcings are still poorly understood and not included in the GCMs.”

It's an article that mirrors my concerns as well as those of a high percentage of meteorologists. If any members reject the findings of this article, please present case arguments to substantiate your case.

Nicola Scafetta is the author or co-author of about 70 publications up to 2016.

Scaffetta, the "climastrologist"?  

 

Quote

Scafetta tries to downplay the role of greenhouse gases by making passing comments about galactic cosmic rays and other effects which he asserts climate scientists have underestimated.  However, Scafetta has not supported these assertions in his research.  All he has done is create a simple model in which short-term temperature variations are attributed to various cycles and the long-term global warming trend is attributed to quadratic and linear terms.  Based on the body of scientific evidence, these two terms are mainly due to greenhouse gases (Figure 4).

Scafetta also attributes his two new hypothesized cycles to Jupiter-Saturn and Sun-Moon tidal cycles, respectively, but as in his previous paper with Loehle (in which the 60- and 20-year cycles are also attributed to Saturn and Jupiter), he does not propose a physical mechanism through which these cycles could impact temperatures on Earth.  Thus we are again forced to describe this hypothesis as "climastrology," and since these cycles only explain temperature variability (not long-term trends), they give us no reason to doubt the anthropogenic global warming theory.

Since he has diregarded his own model in predicting post-2000 temperature changes, we have little reason to believe that prediction will be accurate.  Scafetta gives a range of possible surface warming trends from 2000 to 2100 (0.66 to 1.3°C), but does not explain how greenhouse gas emissions changes will play into this range.  The IPCC issues temperature projections based on specific emissions scenarios, but because Scafetta's model has no physical basis, he cannot do the same.  Thus his prediction is based on little more than his interpretation of the body of climate science literature (i.e. overemphasizing the role of cosmic rays on climate), and his reading of the scientific literature is itself quite problematic.

https://skepticalscience.com/scafetta-widget-problems.html

As for polling meteorologists, this strikes me as too much of a "Scoreboard!!" argument to merit discussion from the perspective of scientific evidence.  

Edited February 6, 2022 by TheVat
Fixt

[studiot]

23 minutes ago, TheVat said:

As for polling meteorologists, this strikes me as too much of a "Scoreboard!!" argument to merit discussion from the perspective of scientific evidence.  

Yes I agree this method is poor science.

25 minutes ago, TheVat said:

https://skepticalscience.com/scafetta-widget-problems.html

I have never heard of scafetta before, but I am immediately suspicious of the website posting the refutation you have linked to, because of this staement.

Quote

In his newer paper, Scafetta has taken this curve fitting process several steps further yet.  As in LS11 he uses a model with 60- and 20-year cycles and a linear warming trend, but now he has also added a 10.44- and 9.07-year cycle, as well as a quadratic term. 

With so many parameters in his model (each astronomical cycle has a time and amplitude variable, in addition to the quadratic, linear, and constant parameters), we're reminded of Barry Bickmore's examination of Roy Spencer's efforts to attribute global warming to internal natural cycles.  Bickmore referenced a quotation from the famous mathematician, John von Neumann (h/t Tim Lambert).

With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.

I have done a great deal of curve fitting in my time and one thing stands out.
The lesson that stands out is that the higher the order of the collocating function, the better the fit at the collocating points, but at the expense of the greater the 'wiggle' between those points.
I can even supply many standard textbook references to this effect.

 

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, Doogles31731 said:

I'm glad you've had a change of opinion. The assumptions being made were way off the mark. I belong to no group. I do not have an agenda. I'm curious about all things and I like to get notions straight in my mind. I find that I understand things better if the basics are correct. I like to understand the basics. I have had doubts about the basics of climate science since James Hansen's first proclamations in the 1980s.

I was looking for the answers that came up in response to mistermack's question. I believe it's a very pertinent question, but I'll leave it for others at this stage. I think it happened somewhere between Tyndall and Arrhenius, so I'll be interested to see what other posters come up with. I think an answer will come out of the Wikipedia researcher's story on Climate Change.

Meantime I have provided the link to a 2019 paper above that not only cites a questionnaire providing evidence that many meteorologists have doubts about aspects of climate science, but which also provides evidence that current models do not fit the ice-core temperature trends during the Holocene. The author has created a new model to accommodate that basic data. The source of that data in the reference list was from a 2013 source, but I found a 2018 reference showing a very similar graph when the data from 6 separate Greenland Ice Core Site samples were grouped. So I'm satisfied with that author's basic data.

 

I've decided to suspend judgement for now, that's all. If you cite material from disinformation sites, you must expect people like me to be suspicious. "Watts Up With That" is notorious. 

I presume what you are now referring to is Scaffetta etc. I'll sit that one out, I think. Others seem more au fait with it than I am.  

Edited February 6, 2022 by exchemist

[Doogles31731]

4 hours ago, TheVat said:

Scaffetta, the "climastrologist"?  

 

https://skepticalscience.com/scafetta-widget-problems.html

As for polling meteorologists, this strikes me as too much of a "Scoreboard!!" argument to merit discussion from the perspective of scientific evidence.  

As I said, if Scafetta is correct, then it changes the whole precept, and if he's wrong, then it adds to the inconsistencies in climate science. The Journal he published in was peer-reviewed.

........................................................

On the matter of which came first (a la The chicken or the egg) 

This site shifts the array of figures on a spread sheet I presume and shows that the best correlations between temperature and CO2 concentrations occur when correlations are performed on the CO2 data lagging a year behind the temperature -- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Correlation-coefficients-for-different-values-of-array-shifting-for-CO-2-concentration_fig2_242129349. I have no idea why the graph is upside down.

This site -- http://climatecat.eu/ufaqs/5-why-does-co2-lag-temperature/ shows a lag in CO2 up to hundreds of years after temperature rises, but the author goes on to say that it’s because  the temperature rise releases CO2 from the oceans and then this in turn cause further delayed temperature increases. The hypothesis doesn’t stand up when the temperatures are decreasing.

You be  the judge.

[mistermack]

What interests me, is the situation of the peaks in the graphs. You get a situation where the temperature graph peaks, and begins to drop like a stone. But the CO2 graph continues sharply upwards and doesn't drop for another 900 years (from memory). So you have a 900 year period, where CO2 is still rising sharply, but temperatures are plunging. And it often goes all the way, into a major glaciation. 

900 years of sky-high record CO2 levels, with plunging global temperatures. Hard to match up with a world so sensitive to CO2. And worryingly, we are at a similar stage in the cycle now. Albeit with even higher CO2 levels.

We could be dodging a bullet, with our CO2 emissions. 

[joigus]

 

14 minutes ago, mistermack said:

[...]

My answer is, just read back through this thread. And look at all the negative clicking, and the sheer emotion displayed on a supposedly science thread. How could anyone live with that, working every day in a climate science environment? 

As far as I was concerned, I was stating the bleeding obvious, but thanks everybody, for your ringing endorsement of what I wrote. 

I think most of your negative clicks were due to your comment:

16 hours ago, mistermack said:

I wouldn't dream of muscling in on your territory.

You posted the graph. I commented on it. You have to expect that sort of thing. 

I didn't give you any negative points. I, for one, welcome scepticism. But scepticism, unfortunately, has to be set against a background of different levels of urgency, as well as the position that these claims have in a context of pre-existing scientific explanations, call it widespread consensus. I will not entertain the question of possible hidden agendas or motivations in this consensus. Seems to me that the conclusions are uncomfortable enough for everybody that we it's very difficult to imagine any credible agenda from the so-called "alarmists."

First: The question of global warming is of the utmost urgency. What's a stake is too important to be dispatched with a vague... Hmmm, I have serious doubts about these claims.

Second: There is a context of general agreement between climate scientists that the anthropogenic fingerprint, at the very least, must play a role in global warming. There are paleoclimate signatures of this that @TheVat, I think, has mentioned. The best thing about those little bubbles of air trapped in Antarctic ice is that they provide a next-to-exact sample of what the air was like in different times of history. But: The bulk of the argument is not about models and simulations, it's about measurements and correlations. And those have been done with excruciating detail, as told above.

  

1 minute ago, mistermack said:

What interests me, is the situation of the peaks in the graphs. You get a situation where the temperature graph peaks, and begins to drop like a stone. But the CO2 graph continues sharply upwards and doesn't drop for another 900 years (from memory). So you have a 900 year period, where CO2 is still rising sharply, but temperatures are plunging. And it often goes all the way, into a major glaciation. 

900 years of sky-high record CO2 levels, with plunging global temperatures. Hard to match up with a world so sensitive to CO2. And worryingly, we are at a similar stage in the cycle now. Albeit with even higher CO2 levels.

We could be dodging a bullet, with our CO2 emissions. 

I think it's important to say that there are aspects about climate change that are pretty much model-independent or too complicated to be explained with one particular models with say, 4 parameters. So it's not so much a matter of explaining such and such sequence of years, or even decades, of particularly hot winters or particularly cold summers, as it is to explain the completely --and glaringly obviously I should say-- smooth and consistent rise in global temperatures that goes hand in hand with the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity. There is such a thing as a big picture. Tim Palmer explains this point that you're --rightfully so-- curious about very clearly during a Pi-Institute talk:

https://youtu.be/w-IHJbzRVVU?t=685

(pointing you to the moment when he addresses your question.)

Here's a question --directed to @Doogles31731 that was repeated once, and I think is of great importance:

On 1/30/2022 at 11:21 AM, exchemist said:

So what further experimental data on CO2 are you thinking would be needed?

 

If it was answered, I missed it.

CO₂ absorbs radiation at the typical bandwidth of solar frequencies enough to deserve qualification as a greenhouse gas. You can prove this in a bucket if you want, and then reasonably assume it's not going to change for the atmosphere, because that's just a property of that particular chemical. Of course, what makes matters considerably more involved is that the atmosphere is a much more complicated system and there are many other factors at play, because there are lots of noise effects that muddle things up: continental drift, weathering, ocean circulation patterns, astronomical cycles, to name just a few.

Here's a couple of graphs from another talk given by Dan Britt, under the heading, "let's pretend that short-term climate is driven by..." that addresses the question of why the peaks and valleys are there, while the increasing slope really seems to be telling us something about longer-term trends:

The last graph only takes into account what are believed to be the 4 main factors of climate patterns.

The thick grey line is the human activity line. The correlation factor r=.87 says all you need to know.

It is conceivable that the overall tendency is not a clean linear superposition of the factors --I wouldn't expect it to be exactly that but as a first approximation--. Nevertheless, neither solar-spot cycles, nor volcanic aerosol levels, nor ENSO cycles display that very clear ascending slope that human activity does. It's anthropogenic emissions that give it that character. It must be something emerging from biology. It doesn't fit any stellar cycle that I know of, nor tectonic, nor having to do with ocean regimes. What else could it be? I will resist the temptation to quote Sherlock Holmes once more.

[mistermack]

8 hours ago, joigus said:

I didn't give you any negative points. I, for one, welcome scepticism.

I don't mind negatives at all, I was just referring to it, as an illustration of the kind of bullying that a skeptic would get, if there was one working in climate science today. In reality, most were eliminated more than ten years ago, and nobody in their right mind would go into climate science today, if they were not convinced by the warming argument. Life would be intolerable, and they wouldn't find work.

Anybody who found themselves beginning to question it would be wise to keep quiet, keep their head down,  and say nothing, or get out. 

There is more tolerance for atheism among priests, than there is for skepticism among climate scientists.

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

I don't mind negatives at all, I was just referring to it, as an illustration of the kind of bullying that a skeptic would get, if there was one working in climate science today. In reality, most were eliminated more than ten years ago, and nobody in their right mind would go into climate science today, if they were not convinced by the warming argument. Life would be intolerable, and they wouldn't find work.

Anybody who found themselves beginning to question it would be wise to keep quiet, keep their head down,  and say nothing, or get out. 

There is more tolerance for atheism among priests, than there is for skepticism among climate scientists.

So you say. However I can't seem to find a response from you to my earlier questions: do you have evidence of people being driven out, or of "new sceptics" being deterred from entering the field? Where does this come from? 

And as I said earlier, even the oil companies acknowledge man-made climate change is real: the European ones started to acknowledge the risk at least was real, several decades ago.       

[Doogles31731]

11 hours ago, joigus said:

 

I think most of your negative clicks were due to your comment:

I didn't give you any negative points. I, for one, welcome scepticism. But scepticism, unfortunately, has to be set against a background of different levels of urgency, as well as the position that these claims have in a context of pre-existing scientific explanations, call it widespread consensus. I will not entertain the question of possible hidden agendas or motivations in this consensus. Seems to me that the conclusions are uncomfortable enough for everybody that we it's very difficult to imagine any credible agenda from the so-called "alarmists."

First: The question of global warming is of the utmost urgency. What's a stake is too important to be dispatched with a vague... Hmmm, I have serious doubts about these claims.

Second: There is a context of general agreement between climate scientists that the anthropogenic fingerprint, at the very least, must play a role in global warming. There are paleoclimate signatures of this that @TheVat, I think, has mentioned. The best thing about those little bubbles of air trapped in Antarctic ice is that they provide a next-to-exact sample of what the air was like in different times of history. But: The bulk of the argument is not about models and simulations, it's about measurements and correlations. And those have been done with excruciating detail, as told above.

  

I think it's important to say that there are aspects about climate change that are pretty much model-independent or too complicated to be explained with one particular models with say, 4 parameters. So it's not so much a matter of explaining such and such sequence of years, or even decades, of particularly hot winters or particularly cold summers, as it is to explain the completely --and glaringly obviously I should say-- smooth and consistent rise in global temperatures that goes hand in hand with the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activity. There is such a thing as a big picture. Tim Palmer explains this point that you're --rightfully so-- curious about very clearly during a Pi-Institute talk:

https://youtu.be/w-IHJbzRVVU?t=685

(pointing you to the moment when he addresses your question.)

Here's a question --directed to @Doogles31731 that was repeated once, and I think is of great importance:

If it was answered, I missed it.

CO₂ absorbs radiation at the typical bandwidth of solar frequencies enough to deserve qualification as a greenhouse gas. You can prove this in a bucket if you want, and then reasonably assume it's not going to change for the atmosphere, because that's just a property of that particular chemical. Of course, what makes matters considerably more involved is that the atmosphere is a much more complicated system and there are many other factors at play, because there are lots of noise effects that muddle things up: continental drift, weathering, ocean circulation patterns, astronomical cycles, to name just a few.

Here's a couple of graphs from another talk given by Dan Britt, under the heading, "let's pretend that short-term climate is driven by..." that addresses the question of why the peaks and valleys are there, while the increasing slope really seems to be telling us something about longer-term trends:

The last graph only takes into account what are believed to be the 4 main factors of climate patterns.

The thick grey line is the human activity line. The correlation factor r=.87 says all you need to know.

It is conceivable that the overall tendency is not a clean linear superposition of the factors --I wouldn't expect it to be exactly that but as a first approximation--. Nevertheless, neither solar-spot cycles, nor volcanic aerosol levels, nor ENSO cycles display that very clear ascending slope that human activity does. It's anthropogenic emissions that give it that character. It must be something emerging from biology. It doesn't fit any stellar cycle that I know of, nor tectonic, nor having to do with ocean regimes. What else could it be? I will resist the temptation to quote Sherlock Holmes once more.

Joigus, I'm extremely impressed by that 0.87 correlation between real and predicted temperatures using just 4 variables. Do you have a hard reference to that work apart from what I imagine was a video. That's the sort of result that impresses me. 

I'd also be curious to know if they could arrive at a climate sensitivity figure using that model.

[joigus]

26 minutes ago, Doogles31731 said:

Joigus, I'm extremely impressed by that 0.87 correlation between real and predicted temperatures using just 4 variables. Do you have a hard reference to that work apart from what I imagine was a video. That's the sort of result that impresses me. 

I'd also be curious to know if they could arrive at a climate sensitivity figure using that model.

Erm... I'm assuming you know correlation doesn't depend on the number of variables involved in the linear regression. Not even on the number of measurements. The number of measurements is used to build the confidence interval --those error bars that Swansont was talking about. Correlation is just the mean <xy>-<x><y> for two variables x and y, so it can be interpreted to represent a measure of how much measurements of two variables cluster around a line.

Once we agree on what correlation is, maybe it would be time to go to "hard" references. Or maybe you will teach me new aspects of it I didn't know. Either way, I find the discussion interesting.

This constant appeal to "hard" references, TBH, doesn't impress me. I can give you plenty of references --in my specialty, which is not climate science, I admit-- for articles that were peer-reviewed and abysmally wrong, if you're interested. Others that were rejected and dead right. Of course the wrong ones have been kindly forgotten, and the right ones --sometimes published in so-called obscure journals--, elevated to the standard of "seminal papers." It's when scientific results permeate to the scientific communities, and different cross checks are conducted, that we can start talking about scientific consensus, and a well-established scientific idea.

[swansont]

On 2/4/2022 at 1:35 AM, Doogles31731 said:

If 156 Wm-2 is reaching the surface and near-surface temps are measured 4 feet of the ground, then each 1 degree C in the shade equates to 156/33 Wm-2, which equates to 4.7 Wm-2 per 1 degree C at the surface.

If you had looked at the Stefan-Boltzmann law, you would see that radiated power is not linearly proportional to temperature - it depends on T⁴. Your use of a linear relationship is incorrect. The number is wrong (except at some specific temperature, where it will be approximately correct), and the idea that a power will have a constant relation to a temperature change is also wrong.

On 2/6/2022 at 3:25 AM, Doogles31731 said:

 

The Introduction states “In this short review, I will briefly summarize some of the main reasons why the AGWT should be questioned. A reader should consider that a recent survey among more than 4000 members of the American Meteorological Society (Maibach et alii, 2016) revealed that 96% of the respondents acknowledges that a climatic change is taking place. However, with regards to its physical causes, only 29% of respondents agreed with the claim that 80-100% of the global surface warming observed since 1960 has been induced by human activity. Another 38% claimed that humans were responsible for 60-80% of the observed warming, while 26% claimed that natural climatic factors have contributed from 40% to 100% of it. 6% could not answer and only 1% thinks that a climatic change did not really occur. So, only a minority, probably far less than a third of the US meteorologists agrees with the claim of the IPCC that the totality (100%) of the warming observed since 1870 or 1960 has been anthropogenic. Thus, it is not true that there is a nearly total consensus on the IPCC’s main claims. I will try to explain why so many people with some expertise on this topic are skeptical of the AGWT of the GCMs.”

So it’s not just people with a passing interest who question climate science, but a fair percentage of 4000 members of a Meteorological Society.

 

I don't understand - this says that 93% of the members agree that at least 40% of the warming is anthropogenic, and only 1% disagree that climate change is occurring.

How is that to be equated with questioning climate science?

Also, it would be nice to have a reference for the cited IPCC claim. Because what I found from the IPCC is "The report shows that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900"

https://www.ipcc.ch/2021/08/09/ar6-wg1-20210809-pr/

And the graph I posted earlier shows that we've warmed about 1.3-1.4ºC since then, so the IPCC does not claim "totality" 

Lastly, meteorologists study weather, not climate, so while they are better equipped to understand many of the arguments involved, the fact that about a quarter of them put the contribution possibly as low as 40% (for all we know, they could think it's 59%) isn't the denunciation that it's being portrayed as.

Seeing as we've seen a few instances now of Scafetta playing fast and loose with the verifiable facts, perhaps you should be placing less trust in their unsubstantiated claims.

[mistermack]

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

And as I said earlier, even the oil companies acknowledge man-made climate change is real:

I acknowledge that man-made climate change is real. That's just an empty phrase, unless you put a quantity on it. As is so much climate propeganda. The oil companies are just there for the money. If an empty phrase gets them brownie points, they will happily comply. In the end, the public needs oil. And the public pays the bills, not the oil companies. So long as the same rules apply to all the oil companies, nothing much will hurt them. 

[exchemist]

29 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I acknowledge that man-made climate change is real. That's just an empty phrase, unless you put a quantity on it. As is so much climate propeganda. The oil companies are just there for the money. If an empty phrase gets them brownie points, they will happily comply. In the end, the public needs oil. And the public pays the bills, not the oil companies. So long as the same rules apply to all the oil companies, nothing much will hurt them. 

And my earlier questions? Let me repeat them for the the third time:

Do you have evidence of people being driven out, or of "new sceptics" being deterred from entering the field? Where does this come from? 

[mistermack]

6 minutes ago, exchemist said:

And my earlier questions? Let me repeat them for the the third time:

Do you have evidence of people being driven out, or of "new sceptics" being deterred from entering the field? Where does this come from?

I didn't respond directly, because it's a silly question. What sort of evidence do you imagine has been measured for that sort of thing. I did ADDRESS the point a day ago, in this post : 

On 2/6/2022 at 2:26 PM, mistermack said:

Somebody asked me earlier what evidence I had that skeptics were driven out of climate science, and new ones deterred from joining. 

My answer is, just read back through this thread. And look at all the negative clicking, and the sheer emotion displayed on a supposedly science thread. How could anyone live with that, working every day in a climate science environment? 

As far as I was concerned, I was stating the bleeding obvious, but thanks everybody, for your ringing endorsement of what I wrote. 

 

[swansont]

On 2/6/2022 at 9:26 AM, mistermack said:

Somebody asked me earlier what evidence I had that skeptics were driven out of climate science, and new ones deterred from joining. 

My answer is, just read back through this thread. And look at all the negative clicking, and the sheer emotion displayed on a supposedly science thread. How could anyone live with that, working every day in a climate science environment? 

As far as I was concerned, I was stating the bleeding obvious, but thanks everybody, for your ringing endorsement of what I wrote. 

What goes on in this thread has almost zero impact on people going into climate science. They can simply not visit the site. It's pretty easy to do. Billions of people don't visit this site every day.

If one is to enter the field, they would have to learn the science and assess the data. But that's true of any science. I fail to see how being required to become competent at your job can be characterized as a deterrent to going into that field.

What "negative clicking" and "sheer emotion" are you referring to? 

 

16 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I didn't respond directly, because it's a silly question. What sort of evidence do you imagine has been measured for that sort of thing.

If you agree that the data doesn't exist, how can you claim that it's happening?

[exchemist]

47 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I didn't respond directly, because it's a silly question. What sort of evidence do you imagine has been measured for that sort of thing. I did ADDRESS the point a day ago, in this post : 

 

Not a silly question. If you make a factual claim, it is not unreasonable to ask for evidence in support. There could be case histories reported, e.g. upheld claims for unfair dismissal, newspaper reports, causes célèbres in the right wing blogosphere etc. Or you might have personal knowledge of people to whom this has happened.

But in fact it is just supposition on your part - you've made it up, in other words.

 

[mistermack]

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

Not a silly question. If you make a factual claim, it is not unreasonable to ask for evidence in support. There could be case histories reported, e.g. upheld claims for unfair dismissal, newspaper reports, causes célèbres in the right wing blogosphere etc. Or you might have personal knowledge of people to whom this has happened.

It's a very silly question, if you think I'm going to mine the internet for such examples. My post was clearly worded as giving my opinion. You're free to disagree, and you can certainly do hours of internet searching to rebut it if you like. But for future reference, my post are my opinions, and if there is supporting documentation, I will list it with the post. 

I feel like that's stating the obvious, but never mind.