Reply to: Question for the AGW experts

[BlasterBates]

It was about 50-50 the increase in TSI and CO2.

Cheers.

SpringerLink - Climate Dynamics, Volume 17, Number 1

You seem very certain, however there are some prominnent scientists who would disagree.

There are other aspects of climate change which are still uncertain as I have made clear

and further more

How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that

Professor Richard Muller

[EternalOptimist]

You seem to get more sceptics being vocal about how "it's wrong" rather than "we can't tell". The latter seems the stronger scientific argument but is not as attention-grabbing. They seem forced to claim their own science dismisses AGW because the other side is so confident in their claims... again meaning both sides are equally politicised and, in my mind, as bad as each other... the real outspoken ones anyway.

I agree. It's a political football

when you consider all the permutations it's quite staggering really

I was reading one guy who is sceptic, right winger, pro-solar and windmills, pro-IPCC, anti GreenPeace, and also belived in God

and he is outspoken

[Doggy Styles]

CAGW is a bum theory because there is no way of falsifying it.

Every time we hit the point where their predictions were supposed to kick in, they just add another 17 years to the deadline

Like Jehovah's Witnesses.

And possibly scientologists.

[BlasterBates]

When you look at the graph here and include the decline from 1940 to 1970




What you notice is the temperature dropped by 0.3 degrees C, it then rose 0.7, so it is about 0.4 C higher than it was in 1940. Is that really a big change, considering there was a solar maximum, and taking into account the flatness over the last 12-15 years.

The reason why there are so many sceptics is that if the temperature is swinging around half degree up and down, that it would be rather naive to exclude natural variation.

The AGW argument would be more plausible if temperature actually did look like a hockey stick.


How does one explain a 0.6 degree rise between 1910 and 1940, when CO2 levels were well below 350 (in 1955 CO2 levels were 310 ppm:

[d000hg]

You seem to get more sceptics being vocal about how "it's wrong" rather than "we can't tell". The latter seems the stronger scientific argument but is not as attention-grabbing. They seem forced to claim their own science dismisses AGW because the other side is so confident in their claims... again meaning both sides are equally politicised and, in my mind, as bad as each other... the real outspoken ones anyway.

[EternalOptimist]

CAGW is a bum theory irrespective of its popularity, irrespective of any concensus.

CAGW is a bum theory because there is no way of falsifying it.


Every time we hit the point where their predictions were supposed to kick in, they just add another 17 years to the deadline

[d000hg]

you need to understand what the word means.

A sceptic is someone who doubts, someone who will not accept what the big daddy says without compelling evidence. Someone who is not easily swayed without evidence

The word may MEAN that but it doesn't mean that's how those who label themselves sceptics use it.

Just look at BB's posts. He doesn't simply say the evidence is bad, he uses scientific research to try and prove his own point on GW, providing evidence to support this.

So we probably should have warmists, sceptics, and deniers... but it seems most of those who are actually deniers label themselves sceptics since the warmists use denier as a derogatory term.

[BlasterBates]

Really, have you told Blaster? He announces the last nail in the coffin of AGW on a weekly basis, supported by no less an authority then The Daily Mail. ..

Are you suggesting all my citings over the last couple of years are only from the Daily Mail?

Perhaps you need to take note that a few months ago, 33% of the posters believed in AGW and now it's only about 25%.

I wonder why.

The nails are going in, one by one..

[pjclarke]

CAGW is a bum theory because we have no way of disproving it

Really, have you told Blaster? He announces the last nail in the coffin of AGW on a weekly basis, supported by no less an authority then The Daily Mail. Have all the academies, professional scientific associations, and 100% of the scientific literature got it wrong, while The Mail has it right? I'm sceptical.

A period during which the global temperature fell outside the 95% confidence range of the climate models would be strong evidence that they have overestimated either forcings or sensitivity, an alternative and physically plausible natural cause likewise. We have neither. But as Michael Tobis points out , AGW is not actually a theory ....

I claim there is no "AGW theory" in the sense that there is an argument that four colors suffice, or more fairly, that stars follow an evolutionary path based on their mass. AGW is not an organizing principle of climate theory at all.

Hypotheses, organizing principles, of this sort emerge from the fabric of a science as a consequence of a search for unifying principles. The organizing principles of climatology come from various threads, but I'd mention the oceanographic sysyntheses of Sverdrup and Stommel, the atmospheric syntheses of Charney and Lorenz, paleoclimatological studies from ice and mud core field work, and computational work starting with no less than Johnny von Neumann.

The expectation of AGW does not organize this work. It emerges from this work. It's not a theory, it's a consequence of the theory.

Admittedly it's a pretty important consequence, and that's why the governments of the world have tried to sort out what the science says with the IPCC and its predecessors. That tends to color which work gets done and which doesn't, and I think it should. As Andy Revkin pointed out, it may be time to move toward a service-oriented climatology, or what I have called applied climatology. The point is that this amounts to application of a theory that emerged and reached mathematical and conceptual maturity entirely independent of worry about climate change.

So attacks on climate change as if it were a "theory" make very little sense. Greenhouse gas accumulation is a fact. Radiative properties of greenhouse gases are factual. The climate is not going to stay the same. It can't stay the same. Staying the same would violate physics; specifically it would violate the law of energy conservation. Something has to change.

The simplest consequence is that the surface will warm up. That this is indeed most of what happens is validated pretty much in observations, in paleodata, in theory and in simulation. Further, all those lines of evidence converge pretty much about how much warming: about 2.5 C to 3C for each doubling of CO2. (It's logarithmic in total CO2, not in emitted CO2, guys, by the way.) There's no single line of reasoning for this. There are multiple lines of evidence.

[pjclarke]

What about everyone with a thermometer who has observed that the temperature hasn't gone up for the last decade.

Well, those people would have applied for their Nobels in 1978, and again in 1997.



And been shown the door. Third time lucky? ;-)

[Doggy Styles]

you need to understand what the word means.

A sceptic is someone who doubts, someone who will not accept what the big daddy says without compelling evidence. Someone who is not easily swayed without evidence

The greenhouse effect is not in doubt, neither is a gnats fart in a hurricane

Are they smelly?

[EternalOptimist]

I thought the sceptics claimed - just as strongly as the anthropomorphicians - that it wasn't man-made. By your logic, both sides are equally wrong to make such assertions!

you need to understand what the word means.

A sceptic is someone who doubts, someone who will not accept what the big daddy says without compelling evidence. Someone who is not easily swayed without evidence

The greenhouse effect is not in doubt, neither is a gnats fart in a hurricane

[d000hg]

First off, the world is not getting hotter at the moment. But if it were (like it was 12 years ago) the proof would have to include a physics based mechanism which could be tested and checked whilst at the same time ruling out the variables including the unknowns.
Sounds impossible ? yes, how on earth do you rule out things that are ill-understood

thats where the sceptics are coming from

I thought the sceptics claimed - just as strongly as the anthropomorphicians - that it wasn't man-made. By your logic, both sides are equally wrong to make such assertions!

[EternalOptimist]

What about everyone with a thermometer who has observed that the temperature hasn't gone up for the last decade. That's an awful lot of Nobel prizes.

Having said that I have my paper proving that the moon is made of cheese will win. After all, this is the committee that gave El Negro the peace prize!

In fact, your jest is actually not so jesty.


The moon being made of cheese is actually a top notch theory, because it is falsifiable

Aliens on Alpha Centuri is a bum theory because it is unfalsifiable.

CAGW is a bum theory because we have no way of disproving it


These fellows may have good intentions, but they are anti-scientific

[EternalOptimist]

What about everyone with a thermometer who has observed that the temperature hasn't gone up for the last decade. That's an awful lot of Nobel prizes.

Having said that I have my paper proving that the moon is made of cheese will win. After all, this is the committee that gave El Negro the peace prize!

good point, well made.

we have an awful lot of nobel prizewinners

they have a lot of awful nobel prizewinners