Neven discusses his opinion of lukewarmers in comments of Brigitte Nerlich’s blog post:
Neven May 18, 2015 at 9:12 am
Lukewarmers love to go blah-blah-blah. Take their knitting needles and go blah-blah-blah. “No, I don’t deny AGW, never have, I swear. Shall we talk about it? No, don’t do something. Come here and talk. Blah-blah-blah.â€
But in the end they’re climate risk deniers just like the rest of the lot, whether they be professional lobbyists or greenhouse dragonslayers. And Dana Nuccitelli explains it perfectly in his Guardian blog post. They deny the possibility of climate change due to AGW every becoming a serious risk to human lives and economies, and this lukewarmism is just a tactic to shift the Overton Window to keep delaying any meaningful action or cultural change.
You see, if they were to admit that there is a climate risk, they’d be entering the realm of risk management and that’s where their worldview gets in trouble. They grew up in a wonderful time of progress and limitless possibilities, fighting and beating the commies (RIP, Ronald Reagan). Can’t have a commie comeback, can’t we, cause that’s what this whole lukewarmism thing is about (Groundskeeper Willie is the perfect example, and I’m sure he’ll be here soon ripping his shirt off).
Robert from the IdiotTracker blog explained just why their position is so fake and untenable many moons ago.
So, you must never admit and keep denying there are climate risks, and go blah-blah-blah-blah, and infest the blog of any blogger writing about the term. QED.
I dislike them for the same reasons Jesus disliked the Bible version of them. Because they’re hypocrites playing a sleazy game.
I think he’s telling us Jesus doesn’t like people like us. Not sure how one rebuts that. Either it’s self-rebutting or we better all just plan on hell-fire and brimstone. ‘Cuz that’s the supposed fate of people Jesus doesn’t like.
Neven clearly doesn’t understand risk management. Competent risk management analysis would force closer scrutiny of the probabilities and damage estimates, which are pretty much SWAG, with little emphasis on the S. I wonder if he has even scanned the WG-2 and WG-3 reports.
Risk management does not require maximum effort for low probability but high damage risks. If it did, we would be spending a lot more to try to prevent being hit by a large rock from the sky.
I’ve suggested a new phrase for Brigitte to add to her list- (see her latest blog post for the list)
‘climate hysteria’ or ‘climate hysteric’ – fits Nevin well?
Begin rant:
What meaningful action? I have yet to hear any proposal that could make any difference greater than a tenth of a degree’s worth of damage, in the face of China’s plans to increase fossil fuel use over the next 15 years and the growth of emissions elsewhere in the world.
Neven (whoever that is) and Dana appear to like to pretend that it’s just the deniers and the lukewarmers standing in the way. It seems to me that we could all, (deniers and lukewarmers and everybody) jump on the alarmist bandwagon and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. What are we going to do, invade China and India? Enforce CO2 reductions under pain of nuclear retaliation? Absurd!
I know the way their stupid prayer goes, and it’s absurd as well. If only we’d provide a shining example to the world, everyone would follow. Horse manure. If this is what they think Jesus wants, I don’t care. It still won’t work.
:end rant
“I dislike them for the same reasons Jesus disliked”
I wish Warmers would not use the Lord’s name in vain. It’s enough that I have to experience the normal propaganda everyday, without having to be religiously offended as well as intellectually offended.
Desperate times, I guess.
Andrew
What meaningful action is being delayed? (serious question, I’d love a real answer.) Am I holding up plans to invade China, to stop the expansion of their fossil fuel use over the next 15 years? (answer: I don’t think so.) Is it the deniers and the lukewarmers who are preventing Dana and Neven from enforcing climate law with U.S. aircraft carriers and cruise missiles? (my answer: no.) It’s absurd. There is no meaningful action proposed. No action with any serious possibility of being realized other than Obama’s ridiculous climate plan that will amount to perhaps a tenth of a degree C difference in the final analysis. That’s not meaningful action in my view.
Oh I forgot, but the Jesus thing reminded me, thanks. The ‘shining example to the world’ theory that says if we do the ‘right thing’, everyone else will follow. The green prayer. If you build it they will come.
These people have global warming of the brain, and it looks to me like it’s impairing their ability to think straight.
What meaningful action is being delaying, exactly? (serious question, I don’t have an answer but would welcome one) Is there a plan to get China and India to reduce their emissions over the next 15 years? (not that I’ve heard.) Funny, I thought the great breakthrough negotiation was that China would increase their CO2 emissions as they see fit over the next 15 years.
I don’t see how lukewarmers can be delaying meaningful action in any event. No meaningful action has been proposed, as far as I can tell.
Oh. I ignored the ‘cultural change’ part. Honest mistake, sorry. But scrambling ‘meaningful action’ and ‘cultural change’ together like that threw me. Like talking about love and marriage as if they were the same when they are two completely different things.
Ok. Well, I’d talk about meaningful action. I’m not interested in cultural change, unless somebody can demonstrate that it qualifies as meaningful action. If it’s not meaningful action, it’s just
And I’m told Jesus doesn’t care for that sort of thing.
I suspect the carpenter, Jesus, preferred to whittle while inviting people over here to talk. …
Never did seem to hit all the tropes. Jesus usually doesn’t appear in the list of references, but here a bunch he did hit:
Overtone window reference? Check.
Word denier? Check.
Mention slayers? Check.
Mention lobbyists? Check.
Allude to “world view”? Check.
Ronald Regan? Check.
Mention commies? Check.
I was puzzled by “groundkeeper willie”. That trope appears new to climate invective. This is willie
He’s evidently come out for Scots independence. He expressed disdain for the French in 2004 “Expressing his disdain for the French people, he says to his French class in his Scottish accent: “Bonjoooouuurrr, ya cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys!”[2][3][4] ” I googled but didn’t locate Willie’s position on climate change, but he does mention Scotland oil in his campaign to lead Scotland.
Andrew_Ky,
I’m not sure how the whole “what would Jesus do” thing got started, but I wish it would stop. It’s an appeal to authority without any actual authority.
DeWitt,
Jesus has authority. Just the kind you don’t understand.
We can agree it should stop, that’s for sure.
Andrew
IDK,
turning water into wine – CO2 emisisons?
On the other hand, carpentry meant a certain amount of carbon capture.
And was walking on water a reference to Arctic Sea Ice?
On the subject of religion, will the IEA include ISIS territory in their CO2 emissions surveys?
Neven may not realize it but his rant him look beyond foolish and so close to blithering idiot the difference is not really meaningful.
If Neven is using even one drop of fossil fuel he is particpating in the destruction of the planet.
Hypocrite.
So according to the Prophet Neven, Jesus doesn’t like you if you aren’t convinced that the climate sensitivity number is as high as the Prophet Neven thinks it is?
Just trying to understand this new scientific thinking.
Andrew_Ky,
I did not mean to imply that Jesus did not have authority, but that Neven, for example, is not actually citing Jesus, just using His name as a prop. IOW, It’s still just his opinion.
DeWitt,
I gotcha. If Neven is reading this thread, I hope he’ll consider taking his references to Jesus down. I politely request that he remove those.
If it’s not under his control, I request he stop doing it in future comments.
Andrew
Carrick:
Actually, as I understand it Neven, speaking for warmers, feels the investigation into climate sensitivity is a ruse to avoid what everybody knows really has to be done, whatever that is.
Andrew:
Actually, I suspect that is why he put it up.
R Graf:
Got it.
So knowing what “has to be done” without having the facts to base it on is part of this “new scientific thinking” too.
Maybe I ought to tone down the snark. Now that I’ve gotten it out of my system, to any warmers reading this:
1) I don’t think most deniers or lukewarmers are standing in the way of any substantial solution you might come up with. I’m certain I’m not anyway.
2) Free advice: It’s not productive for you to pretend that (1) is so. That’s not what the problem is. Pretending that (1) is so allows you to ignore the real problem.
3) The real problem in my view is this: You don’t appear to have any realistic, credible solutions.
A) Undertaking expensive, potentially economically disruptive energy infrastructure changes in the face of (uncertain risk due to scientific unknowns like sensitivity and feedbacks) * (uncertain outcome due to the apparent whimsical nature of the ‘shining example the world will follow us’ idea) credible solution. So this follows:
4) Now I am not even really a lukewarmer. I’m a dirty no good gosh darn denier. Gun totin’, conservative, Southerner, the whole nasty enchilada. And yet I acknowledge the possibility that I could be dead wrong about warming. I am open to realistic ideas and proposals of credible solutions to increasing worldwide CO2 emissions in case it turns out I’m wrong.
5) So please. Do everybody a favor. Quit heckling the bystanders. That we’re not on your bandwagon isn’t why you aren’t getting anyplace. The fact that you’ve got no realistic plan to get anyplace is why you aren’t getting anyplace. Go work up a realistic credible plan to decrease worldwide CO2 emissions that won’t screw up the economy of every nation that might try it; a plan for which we can have some reasonable small shred of hope that the majority of countries might conceivably choose to adopt, and get back to me with it.
There.
Aww. Messed my formatting up.
…
A) Undertaking expensive, potentially economically disruptive energy infrastructure changes in the face of (uncertain risk due to scientific unknowns like sensitivity and feedbacks) * (uncertain outcome due to the apparent whimsical nature of the ‘shining example the world will follow us’ idea) != credible solution. So this follows:
…
Sorry about that.
Mark Bofill,
If the climate obsessed had any realistic solutoins at all to offer, it is clear that by now we would have heard about them.
They have nothing to offer except hyterical arm waving and invoking God to justify their sham.
Long before Godwin’s Law was ever created losers in great public arguments would invoke God to justify what they could not rationally or factually justify.
Neven is just a derivative reactionary loser.
I assume Neven was referring to this passage from Revelations
Mark Bofill,
Some steps aren’t very expensive or disruptive. Energy efficiency isn’t. The difficulty is that it might not work– people use less electricity to run their fridge, their bill drops, they buy a new tv or something.
Somethings are just sort of strange. For example: Electric vehicles.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml
Ok. But if the electric energy from the gridwas generated at a power plant, the efficiency in converting coal to electricity is about 33%. So, if we do (0.33*0.62)=0.21 or 21%. That is on the high side of 17%-21%, but they electric vehicles carry inconveniences associated with recharging times.
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal-the-environment/coal-use-the-environment/improving-efficiencies/
Jim’s most recent vehicle purchase was a VW Passat. Great fuel economy. Long enough range to visit relatives in other states.
Lucia,
Ok. I’m not sure I’ve got the concept of ‘no regrets policy’ quite right, but as I understand it a ‘no regrets’ policy is something you’d do anyway. Regardless of the uncertainties, it’d still be a good idea either way.
If this definition is right, then I’ve got no problem with no regrets policies. Energy efficiency, absolutely. No sense in wasting energy, it costs money. Seas are rising, the evidence seems solid enough to me. Not to mention hurricanes do periodically lay waste to coastal areas. If preparing in some reasonable way to deal with instances of that counts as a ‘no regrets’ policy, I’m behind that too. Energy R&D, more nuclear, sure.
Two things though.
1) I don’t see the ‘no regrets’ pathway to avoiding negative outcomes from CO2 emissions. Maybe there is one and I just haven’t heard or understood the case.
2)
Things I’d do anyway aren’t things I’d do specifically to avoid warming…. Ok, I’ve thought that through and that’s wrong. Avoiding risks that might not even be there, nothing wrong with that. I don’t walk around shady sections of town if I can reasonably avoid it, even though there very possibly might be nobody there to mug me at any given time. Sorry. One thing then. 🙂Maybe Neven meant this Jesus……
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium Paperback – 1 May 2001 by Bart D. Ehrman (Author)
Re: Ruth Dixon (May 18 13:14), even nicer in Greek
Apparently we’re not “zesty” enough. But I’d like to see people try to turn “χλιαÏὸς” into “luckwarm”.
lucia:
On the other hand, arguing that something is disruptive is no reason (by itself) not to undertake it.
Think about disruptive technologies. I do not think anybody would seriously advocate we should allow modern smart-phones to enter the market place.
The reason I bring this up is, if you read Robert Way’s arguments, most of the substance has to do with a disruption of lifestyle, but not necessarily a worsening of quality of life.
I think this is the point that other people on that thread were trying to point out—you may have some cost associated with adapting to warming temperatures in the Arctic, but that by itself doesn’t mean that the long-term benefits won’t outweigh the cost of adaptation or the harm from warming temperatures.
A combined cycle natural gas fired power plant is close to 50% efficient. But they’re in the minority. There are possible ways, including gasification, to build a coal fired power plant with similar efficiency. Gasification would have the additional benefit of producing hydrogen, if fuel cells become practical.
Carrick,
I agree with you. I hadn’t thought about the distinction. Should somebody come up with practical nuclear fusion, I’m sure that would be disruptive as well. I’m all for it. 🙂
Lucia –
“Groundskeeper Willie” is what Willard calls Tom Fuller. I assume Neven is following along with that. Why he’s called that I have no idea.
When the Godless lefties invoke Jesus to make a point, you know they are desperate. We already knew that they are disingenuous.
@TP as a revealing new post on this subject that is almost breathtaking for its shallowness, and disrespect.
“Lukewarmerism appears to be a way of attempting to justify a certain policy position, rather than a genuine attempt to develop a position based on a reasonable interpretation of the available evidence. If things go as they have in the recent past, I will be vitriolically told that I’m completely wrong about this, by people who then say things that are entirely consistent with what I’ve just said.”
As this remarkable statement exemplifies mind reading is the first thing you should do to demonstrate your devotion to science and civility. And of course it really helps to understand what other people think. Oh and combine that with turning a blind eye to any faulty methods that resulted in more alarming conclusions that might justify one’s evaluation of the “evidence”. Uniform priors are difficult to explain in a science that isn’t in need of some changes.
It seems indeed Lucia, that the flack for astronomy has taken your correct statements a little personally.
“…to keep delaying any meaningful action or cultural change”
I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that the number of people who wish to bring “cultural change” upon society due to AGW who did not previously believe in the same cultural change before AGW to be exactly zero.
I know this wasn’t the point of the post, but I can’t ignore it. There’s a strong biblical argument which says the concept of eternal suffering is wrong. It seems the idea of a “fire and brimstone” fate for unbelievers may have been created entirely by man.
Mark Bofill
Not “would do anyway” so much as “no or negligible cost”. It’s not clear one would do energy efficiency “anyway”. If energy costs were fairly low and there was no potential AGW problem, there’d be no particular reason not avoid fairly wanton use. Sure, you might want ordinary home economic classes, but some people might prefer to not bother and why would you try very hard to change them?
The only way out of climageddon is nuclear. However, the green movement has shut the door to a cheap solution themselve in the 70’s by starting the anti-nuclear movement. No fossil fuel and no nuclear means expensive alternatives, which hits the poor first and merciless.
Tom Scharf,
Of course. The issue is not and has never been primarily about science or even about projections of future warming. Rather it is a difference of opinion about values, goals, morality, and who controls how people live their lives, now, and especially in the future. Before global warming there was the ‘population bomb’ and inevitable ‘global famine’… combined with an approaching ice age. The diagnosed cure is always the same…. more government control, with the government ‘informed’ by (surprise!) the self-same people who demand change in how other people lead their lives. Only the ballot box can settle the disagreement.
Lucia,
Thanks for explaining the distinction, I see the difference now.
Apologies all for my triple meaningful action comments. I didn’t realize the Blackboard was trying to verify my email address in the first two versions of my remarks. :/
The point about not having a credible solution is very telling.
There is a solution, thorium and conventional nuclear. If the warmers were actually serious they would be pushing nuclear power. They aren’t.
That tells anyone who cares to look into the matter all they need to know.
“the flack for astronomy”
Now that might be a little harsh and overly dismissive. According to kenny’s curriculum vitae, he is engaged in the specialized research on how stars and planets are formed. Not too many are making the sacrifice to go into that unglamorous but potentially essential field of study. Kenny says that if we ruin this world, we will have to turn to scientists like him to bail us out.
Wild eyed greens don’t like lukewarmers. Left-wingers don’t like lukewarmers, right-wingers don’t like lukewarmers, Ken Rice doesn’t like lukewarmers. And now, apparently those who claim to speak for Jesus (including the Pope, for Christ’s sake!) don’t like lukewarmers. The wages of sin, and being right about global warming (which some think are close to the same), are terrible indeed.
Maybe Ruth or Jonathan can give us some local insight. Has the recent UK election result caused the UK green left to go over the edge?
“If energy costs were fairly low and there was no potential AGW problem, there’d be no particular reason not avoid fairly wanton use.”
This is true. Even if one were to claim to fear that AGW is an existential problem, one might not avoid wanton use if the costs were low enough. Take a famous case where the fuel is free. Barack and Michelle take separate planes going to the same state and the dog follows along later, after its nap, on another plane. Of course, the fuel isn’t free. But they ain’t paying for it.
Don Monfort
Does he? I would have though we’d need rocket scientists and aerospace engineers to design conveyance vehicles. We wouldn’t need to create a whole new planet!
Genghis,
“If the warmers were actually serious they would be pushing nuclear power. They aren’t.”
.
I disagree. They are very serious, just not about preserving access to inexpensive energy, nor access to material wealth. They ARE serious about forcing everyone to change ‘the way they lead their lives’. They are serious about establishing ‘global justice’ (AKA, drastically reducing global wealth, and redistributing what is left). They are serious about establishing public control over most private activities. They are very serious indeed, but not about what they claim to be serious about.
Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #136404)
There’s a strong biblical argument which says the concept of eternal suffering is wrong. It seems the idea of a “fire and brimstone†fate for unbelievers may have been created entirely by man.
Which Bible?
“The unbelievers among the People of the Book [Bible] and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell.
” Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.”
I guess the Lukewarmers are the ones saying “the concept of eternal suffering is wrong.”
The Bibles[written by men] certainly do not.
It was from an old inspirational book called In His Steps. A preacher challenges his congregation not to make decisions for a year without asking themselves the old WWJD.
It’s been going since 1896 so I don’t think it’s going to stop. And human beings being what they are, I doubt it’ll stop being used as a political cheap shot either.
I live in TVA land. When I first moved here, power was so cheap that most relatively new homes were heated with resistive panels in the ceiling because that was the cheapest to install and the operating cost was small. It was also not terribly comfortable compared to forced air, hot air being less dense than cold air. Nobody bothered much with insulation either other than a few inches in the attic.
TVA later sponsored insulation programs. That’s when I added another foot of blown in fiberglass in the attic.
Ah, Neven. The Arctic Sea Ice Blog.
The 2 billion plus Hiroshima bombs of heat, updated instantly being made for Lukewarmers specially.
Where should one start?
The man who refuses to update his Arctic graphs leaving us stuck in YOU ARE HERE 2012 calamitous ice loss and 2012 death spirals.
Both have reversed but Neven refuses to show the last 2 years data as he is in Denial.
He then bans a commentator saying that the commentator, a Cincinnatus, is worried by the ice loss “[Thanks for reminding me to ban you. The Arctic holds no secrets for you; N.]” and
“There we go again, accusing scientists of fraud. You have no idea what you’re talking about, but are obviously greatly bothered by the rapid rate of Arctic sea ice loss, and so you have to lie and misinform. A cowardly thing to do, hope your grandchildren never notice; N.] ”
Not a very Christian tone of trying to be nice to people,
Lucia, hard to imagine one process being less efficient than 2 processes as you say, plus you may have missed the energy loss involved in carrying the electricity from the power plant to the electric battery.
Not sure but I feel the loss of power would be extremely significant, possibly adding at least more than 10% to the inefficiency of an electric battery.
Plus costs involved in battery disposal at end of use [? toxic] and in replacing after every 2 years of use.
The EIA says that average electric power transmission losses in the US are ~6%. That puts EV’s dead in the center of the range of gasoline fueled vehicles at 19% overall.
That’s still not entirely fair as there are losses in refining petroleum to gasoline too. I’m still wondering, though, where California is going to get the electric power to run their 3.3 million mandated zero emission vehicles in 2025.
Lucia, if you were an astrophysicist, like kenny, you would know that there are no habitable planets within reach of our puny earth rockets. That’s why kenny decided to specialize in research on planet creation.
He says we already theoretically pretty much know how planets are created. It’s settled science. He is now working on the engineering plans. And rocket science will not be needed. Kenny is going to go with a bridge. Or an ark, if he can figure out how to create an interplanetary flood.
angech, is this some sort of joke?
I get this post is about how people come up with crazy ideas about lukewarmers by listening to sources which don’t actually speak for lukewarmers, so… is that why you quoted the Quran as proving what the Bible says?
They are all books of the Abrahamic religions, Brandon. Did you see where angech said “Which Bible?” Try not to get so freaking emotional.
Thanks Don,
Brandon I just googled
Bible on unbelievers
and Koran on unbelievers
and took two of many dozens of biblical quotes all saying the same thing.
It appears there’s a strong biblical argument which says the concept of eternal suffering is right.
Of course I am happy to take a lukewarm position on this.
We cannot burn in hell for ever as we would just turn into mainly CO2 very quickly.
Here’s an example of disruptive technology.
Snowmobiles not working on thin ice is another one (but I wouldn’t trade my mild winters for one where snowmobiles suddenly become a plausible alternative to my car for winter transport).
Um, no. You don’t get to quote the Quran as proof of what the Bible says. The two are not the same thing. The religious views of Islam are not the same as the religious views of Christianity. Trying to use one as proof of the other is just absurd.
This is like saying there are people who don’t believe the greenhouse effect is real, therefore lukewarmers don’t believe in radiative physics.
“Some steps aren’t very expensive or disruptive. ”
I consider myself more of a “Lomborg-ian” than a lukewarmer. That said, there are steps that, if taken, accomplish both the objectives of warming doom-mongers AND skeptics.
1) Raise awareness and raise the safety standards for workers in coal mines. One reason coal is cheap is that human life is held cheap in many nations, who simply accept mining deaths as a “cost of doing business.” Not to pick on Thomas Friedman’s shining example, but consider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mining_accidents_in_China
If safety standards were raised, and more money spent protecting workers, the price of coal would “necessarily skyrocket” — well, at least rise. Which of course would reduce demand for the sooty-est, sulpheri-est, nastiest energy source on the planet. Leaving CO2 and warming completely aside, this is worth doing. I’d like to think lukewarmers would buy in. Frankly, though, I think the dyed-in-the-wool warmist would “deny” this idea provides any impact at all on the problem they claim to worry about.
2) Commit to nuclear waste sequester and/or reprocessing — Diablo Canyon in particular. If a magic wand could end CO2 emissions tomorrow, the world will STILL be left with the waste from power plants and bomb-making factories of previous decades. If, on the other hand, a magic wand could end the risk of nuclear waste disposal — or better yet, recycle waste into new fuel, then old waste problems would go away AND new nuclear generation facilities could replace coal and carbon-gas burning generation stations. A two-fer. Every dollar for research into “magic wand” solutions of the solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, and unicorn-fart-burning “green technologies” is a dollar NOT spent on nuclear waste disposal — therefore condemning our grandchildren to live with the risks of that waste even if CO2 were to vanish. Isn’t the risk so high, and the reward so great, that all warmists would join this skeptic in advancing such a project? Finish the Diablo Canyon project, and start the next-generation solution? Dr Mann, Dr Hansen, ATTP? {crickets}
3) Get governments out of the flood insurance business. As long as the taxpayers subsidize buildings in tidal zones and river flood plains, beachfront properties and our national river transportation infrastructure will be at excessive risk from rising sea-levels and “global weirding” induced floods. (And ordinary floods, and ordinary hurricanes, etc.) The proper agencies to assess risk, allocate resources, and collect funds to offset future losses are MARKET based insurance organizations. If you believe otherwise, say so. (Then, don’t talk to me about cap-and-trade…) But to really, gradually, move risky activities away from rising sea levels and fluctuating rivers, (in the U.S. at least) phase out FEMA.
Steve Mosher says governments and our societies aren’t taking the steps we know we should be taking to mitigate the risks we’ve already seen realized. He’s right. There are at least a dozen such problems that I would prioritize above CO2 induced climate change, but would, if addressed, affect either CO2 or climate problems as a side effect.
Brandoon must be reading only the vanilla wafer, toned down and politically correct version of the Bible. There are a lot of different versions of the books of Abraham. I can remember hearing what we called hell fire and brimstone preaching, when I used to attend the local Baptist churches, to sing in the choir and to meet clean girls. I googled it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hellfire+and+brimstone+bible&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=hellfire+and+brimstone+quotes&revid=2063555142
Brandoon won’t be able to reply to this revelation, as he is studiously pretending to ignore me. Please excuse him. God is not through with him, yet.
Re: David Young (May 18 16:19), the UK left certainly went over the edge at first, pretty much demanding the dissolution of the electorate and its replacement by a more socially acceptable population. They seem to have calmed down a bit by now.
There has been a resurgence of interest in electoral reform: apparently few of the supporters have done the maths to work out that under most PR systems the likely outcome would have have been a Conservative/UKIP coalition.
The green left is no more upset that the rest of the left, because (1) the Green Party has largely given up on environmental issues these days and principally pushes general leftish politics (in Oxford they campaigned largely on house prices), and (2) there is a consensus among all the main parties to visibly support climate action while actually doing very little about it.
Carrick,
I suspect snowmobiles themselves may have been somewhat disruptive up north not long ago. They changed how far people could move and hunt in the winter and so on.
All books ever written have been written by man. And edited by man. And published by man.
The question is one of purpose by the people who wrote them.
The Evangelical fundamentalist belief is that the Bible is a divine transcription, and that its many authors were in effect automatons under divine control.
The Christian bible most assuredly talks about eternal damnation. From Jesus talking about burning in Gehenna forever to the complicated choreography of doom and salvation of St. John’s Revelation (Apocalypse). Eternal life, heaven, resurrection, and eternal punishment are not clearly outlined in the Bible. Neither is the end time or other chialist theology. It is always a matter of interpretation. Think of a spiritual Rorschach blot test.
‘We develop the concept of “dragon-kings” corresponding to meaningful outliers, which are found to coexist with power laws in the distributions of event sizes under a broad range of conditions in a large variety of systems. These dragon-kings reveal the existence of mechanisms of self-organization that are not apparent otherwise from the distribution of their smaller siblings… We emphasize the importance of understanding dragon-kings as being often associated with a neighborhood of what can be called equivalently a phase transition, a bifurcation, a catastrophe (in the sense of Rene Thom), or a tipping point.’ http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.4290
There are three possible modes of climate change. Equilibrium, periodic and chaotic.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/ghil-sensitivity.png
Climate catastrophe – in the sense of Rene Thom – is how climate works. Means and variance shifts every 20 to 30 years and I doubt whether we have the tools to predict even the sign of the next shift. Abrupt climate change – locally as much as 16 degrees C in a decade – provides serious added impetus to mitigation of destabilising pressures in an inherently unstable system. A comprehensive response involves population and development, multiple gases across sectors, reduction in aerosol emissions and conservation of restoration of agricultural soils and ecosystems.
It does – however – make climate an intractable problem. Small changes in control variables such as greenhouse gases push the globally resonant system past a threshold at which stage the components start to interact chaotically in multiple and changing negative and positive feedbacks – as tremendous energies cascade through powerful subsystems. Some of these changes have a regularity within broad limits and the planet responds with a broad regularity in changes of ice, cloud, Atlantic thermohaline circulation and ocean and atmospheric circulation.
The catastrophic warmers are mostly in mode 1 – the lukewarmers in mode 2. The first gives a high sensitivity – somehow – and the 2nd low. The reality is dragon-kings at ‘what can be called equivalently a phase transition, a bifurcation, a catastrophe (in the sense of Rene Thom), or a tipping point.’
There seem to be quite a few, Brandon:
http://www.openbible.info/topics/going_to_hell
Brandon, don’t let grumpy uncle Don dampen your fire.
Don, emotion is a resource that neither should be conserved nor wasted. Brandon has enough energy and emotion for a whole room. My suggestion would be to resist going in all directions, looking at the path this string has traveled as an illustration. That’s fine, because it’s my weakness as well.
The fascinating thing about climate science is that it’s analysis is of two of the most complex systems that we know of, the Earth’s biosphere and civilization. There is very little off the table in the debate. We are going to need a lot of Brandons to figure this out.
Lucia writes “Not “would do anyway†so much as “no or negligible costâ€.” …wrt “no regrets policy”
That’s much the same as the move away from CFCs as an anthropogenic change to deal with the ozone hole problem. In the scheme of things, there wasn’t a lot of cost involved in that change.
TerryMN, many of the passages I read in your link have nothing to do with the issue. They don’t even talk about hell or what happens after people die. I’m not sure there’s much for me to say about them.
That said, I don’t deny people have translated the Bible in a way which supports the idea of eternal damnation. There are definitely verses that have been translated that way. I just don’t agree those translations are necessarily correct. There’s quite a bit of scholarly writing on the subject.
R Graf, I don’t read his comments, so that’s not a problem.
You see Graf, Brandoon pretends he doesn’t read my comments, so there is no harm. I am just funnin junior. He is a smart kid, but he doesn’t know his limitations and he doesn’t play well with others. Are you new to the climate blogosphere, Graf?
“I know this wasn’t the point of the post, but I can’t ignore it. There’s a strong biblical argument which says the concept of eternal suffering is wrong. It seems the idea of a “fire and brimstone†fate for unbelievers may have been created entirely by man.”
Did we really need to get into this, junior? What compelled you to bring up a point that is mundane and irrelevant, and there is no way in Hell that you can make your case. The usual watch me I’m the smartest guy in the room BS.
You don’t have a copy of the original Bible and you can’t locate one. If you could find one, you couldn’t read it. You are relying on something you read somewhere that was written by someone, who also doesn’t have the original Bible. There is no definitive gold standard original Bible to be seen anywhere, period.
If such a Bible is ever found, it will be a Bible that was created entirely by man. And much to your consternation, it will have a lot of passages that mention hellfire and eternal damnation. God was very strict, back in the olden days.
Myself and Terry pointed to several passages from Bibles that say exactly what you say the Bible doesn’t say, and you just get snippy. It ain’t from your version of the Bible, so it don’t count. Get a freaking grip, junior.
Don, could we reserve this childish tripe for Judith’s blog, where there’s so much noise, nobody would notice you adding to it?
Carrick, tripe is a little strong. But since you are a scholar and usually a gentleman, I will comply with your request.
Carrick,
Thanks.
Thanks, Steve.
Thanks Don.
Getting back to Neven who has made the asinine statement that he has been updating the graphs on his website.
He has a very good number of graphs by the way and his presentation rivals that of WUWT graphs.
I often go there to get a different perspective and undo any bias from the other site.
I usually do this from Judith Curry’s list of blogs where he is number 1 or 2 down due to his site starting with the word Arctic.
However the “update” so called still has catastrophic themes due to his refusal to update past the low point of 2012.
It is this mean spiritedness that characterises so many warmists, preaches to the converted and pushes away any meaningful discussion of the themes of possible arctic warming.
Biblical theme?
Walking on water?
Samson afraid to cut his hair?
Cannot get the right theme.
Perhaps doubting Thomas denying the tree years in a row that things have improved.
I sorry Don. I meant for my thanks to be funny. Looking back it reads more obnoxious than anything else. Not what I was shooting for.
Mark Bofill,
Don’t worry about offending Blackboard regulars. We regularly offend each other. 😉
Andrew
I know you, Mark. It never occurred to me that you were being obnoxious. I preferred to think that you were thanking me for not reacting in kind to the anger and incivility in Carrick’s presumptuous comment. And to our friend Steve’s gratuitous piling on. Now let us get back to taking all this very, very seriously.
Thanks Don! 🙂
wait…
oh, nevermind.
At the risk of diverting this fascinating discussion, I have to share a comment from Anders I just saw which I think is amusing:
This was in response to Joshua saying:
I’ve seen “lukewarmer” defined by people who self-identify as it many times, and it’s always been pretty consistent. Primarily, they believe climate sensitivity is more likely to be in the lower half of the IPCC’s range than the higher half. I guess I’ve just missed all those lukewarmers giving different definitions.
That, or Anders is just really good at misreading things when its convenient.
For a second there, I thought he was going to bring up another strong biblical argument…..that he just couldn’t ignore…..
Brandon,
I actually think the comments at the ATTP (Ken Rice’s) blog are mildly entertaining, and in small doses, can be quite funny, although I have to admit the comment threads there do have a bit of carnival ‘freak-show’ character, and reading them makes me feel more than a little uncomfortable. It’s sort of like watching badly done CAGW porn, which demeans both the ‘performers’ and any ‘observers’ who choose to read the threads. And like badly done porn, the ATTP threads quickly become pretty monotonous and boring; I mean, how many different ways can you say ‘We are absolutely right and all who oppose our desired public policies are utterly evil, corrupt, dishonest, stupid, and deserving of only of perpetual torment’?
Don, I realize your playful tone. I actually seek out and enjoy your comments among the huge CE content. That said, just because the post title has Jesus in it does mean we need to do a Bill Maher bible study.
Without spending a day in Sunday school I still think I know what people mean when asking what would Jesus do.
Neven’s intention is clear: to imply lukewarmers are resistant to accepting science due to their clinging to the bible, which he believes is used as a substitute for religion in the explanation of the world, and thus, he can patronizingly appeal to them under the language of their own doctrine of compassionate belief.
Neven’s tactic is ingenious if his aim was to infuriate both those of religious belief and those of scientific belief regarding climate. But if his aim was to do what Jesus would do, practicing as he preached, he failed. Jesus was the opposite of insensitive. Jesus knew how to influence people by impressing them with his purity and sincerity, with courageous disregard to the perils of utter transparency, trusting in others and gaining their trust.
Neven, not so much.
Thanks, Ron. Sometimes I wonder if anybody at all is benefiting from my humble efforts, with so many claiming they ignore me.
I hate to disagree with my only admitted fan, but I don’t think that neven clown is capable of the complex thought process that you seem to attribute to the little runt. He cites nuticelli and the idiot from IdiotTracker as authorities on character and motivation? That’s rich. He is just preaching to the alarmist choir. And I don’t think he is going to win any points by dragging Jesus into the argument. What was the little clown thinking?
SteveF, the only reason I still read the comments at Anders’ place is I think they can be funny. That’s actually the only reason I read his blogs posts too. Even then, I just have them in my RSS feed so I can skim over them from time to time to see if anything jumps out at me.
To be honest though, I’m considering deleting the feed. The people there disturb me.
I have given up on ATTP. Recent threads are getting more and more troll infested and moderation seems to not even be attempted for them. And then ATTP says that if you think his blog is infested with trolls you should visit WUWT. What a dodge. Someone else is worse than I am. Kindergarten stuff that.
ATTP has put up a post on R.Pielke senior apparently on WUWT and Climate etc as well.
At least every one is half trying to discuss the questions he put up to Gavin..
The unmeasurable OHC and TOA imbalance, if there really is one, is all the rage.
A dilemma
CO2 increase means there should be a warmer atmosphere.
Once this is achieved the radiation imbalance should disappear?
The atmosphere should heat up each day to the level consequent on the CO2 in the air less any cloud albedo effect.
That is way too simplistic way to think of this. If you increase atmospheric CO2 then it acts to reduce the outgoing long-wavelength flux. If there is no other change, then it produces an energy imbalance – we will be gaining more energy than we lose. Returning to energy balance will require that the surface warms, however, it doesn’t have to do it smoothly and instantly. The oceans have a much larger heat capacity than the atmosphere. That means that returning to energy balance will require that a lot more energy must go into the oceans than into the atmosphere (the atmosphere and oceans are linked). The oceans can also modulate the rate at which we warm.
Over long time intervals (decades) you would indeed expect there to be a steady warming trend if we have an energy imbalance (as we have). We don’t, however, expect that to be true on shorter timescales.
@ angech (Comment #136525)
I’m relatively new to this but wouldn’t the imbalance have a more rapid effect over land? As is taught in middle school, marine climates are temperature stabilized by air coming off large water bodies, which have much more heat capacity than land. The further inland the air gets the more that marine influence fades. If the atmosphere was in energy balance then theoretically ocean air would be alternately cooled or warmed by land exactly half and half throughout the year. But if there is an energy imbalance the land, with its low heat capacity, will be a poor sink to counteract the extra energy, and thus the air temperature coming off the ocean should rise more days on average than it falls. Thus, the larger this statistical land temp gain the higher the imbalance. And, the higher the trend of land temp gain compared to the trend of CO2 gain (Keeling Curve) the higher the ECS.
We have the data. Does anyone know if it has been analyzed in the way I mention?
“If you increase atmospheric CO2 then it acts to reduce the outgoing long-wavelength flux. If there is no other change, then it produces an energy imbalance –”
Not actually my statement but by someone with a better degree than I.
I disagree with it and hoped to stimulate some discussion.
I feel the CO2 retains the outgoing flux a bit longer but does not reduce the outgoing flux.
I do not think there is an energy imbalance at any time.
Say we had a greater albedo with volcanoes.
The energy coming in and out remains the same just the energy is reflected earlier and doesn’t heat up the lower layers. There is still no energy imbalance whether the world heats or cools .
Just as Pielke would say, a different number of joules available to heat the pot.
R Graf (Comment #136527)May 23rd, 2015 at 10:26 am
I’m relatively new to this
Seem to be doing a much better job than I do.
The land has a higher temp average [see Spencer on UAH adjustments] but the sea temp level is lower for a much larger surface area. The land does have a higher heating up and cooling down but not because of any imbalance in energy.
angech,
“Not actually my statement but by someone with a better degree than I.”
.
Too bad. I thought you had finally understood why infrared absorbing gases in the atmosphere warm the surface. Oh well.
SteveF ” I thought you had finally understood why infrared absorbing gases in the atmosphere warm the surface.”
We are talking about the temperature of the air at the surface, not the actual surface layer itself?
Green house gases absorb and re-emit infra red which other gases do to a much, much lesser extent.
The gas molecules therefor move faster causing more collisions and heat.
The heat works its way back upstairs by convection and emission.
Once the molecules are in steady state ie settled at the new average level the amount of heat going back out to space is equal to that coming in.
There is no continuous build up of heat in the atmosphere, it plateaus at the new CO2 level.
The air is warmer than it was previously so the surface will warm up.
Your point.
My problem the energy coming in must equal the energy going out at the new balance point.
Being hotter the object should emit more energy.
Hence the the outgoing long-wavelength flux should be increased.
Logic.
But the sun has not become hotter, The joules in are still the same.
The problem to me is that we are looking at an atmosphere layering problem.
In effect the addition of GHG is equivalent to lowering the albedo of the planet making it more of a blackbody than it is and thus increasing its ability to absorb heat.
But black or white body it still has to emit the same amount of radiation back out.
This might manifest as a change in the TOA level if the emitting body has warmer air.?
If one layer is hotter other layers above and below must be colder. The deep sea is still ice cold despite 4 billion years of sunshine
In any case the outgoing long-wavelength flux should not reduce but must be the same as previously.
My way of trying to say you are right but looking for any excuse.
angech,
“My problem the energy coming in must equal the energy going out at the new balance point.”
.
Sure, but you are ignoring the heat capacities involved. The atmosphere has a relatively small heat capacity (maybe equal to 4 meters of water). The ocean surface layer is about 60 meters on average, so about 15 times more thermal mass than the atmosphere. The deeper ocean has vast heat capacity, but warms only slowly to very slowly (decades to many centuries, depending on location and depth). Land areas have considerable thermal mass below the surface, but like the deep oceans, warm only very slowly. There is not going to be a “new equilibrium” established in anything less than a millennium, so it is useless to think about the process as an equilibrium.
Instead, you need to think of it as an energy balance, where rising GHG levels slightly restrict heat loss to space, and so warm the surface…. but at a rate of warming which changes at all time scales as the various heat sinks, with different capacities and different rates of heat uptake, move toward equilibrium. It is a simple accounting of joules: less heat going to space (due to more GHG’s) means heat must accumulate in the various sinks; the size and rates of those sinks limit the rate of surface warming. Yes, given enough time, the system would establish an equilibrium, but since GHG forcing is constantly changing (and will continue to!), there is no possibility of equilibrium being established. All we can do is make reasonable estimates of future warming based on projections of GHG levels, how those GHG levels will restrict heat loss, our understanding of internal system feedbacks due to gradually changing temperatures (atmospheric moisture, clouds, etc), and our understanding of the sizes and speeds of the multiple thermal sinks.
The best estimate for the rate of heat uptake (usually called the ‘TOA imbalance’) is in the range of 0.5 – 0.6 watts/M^2 averaged over the last decade or so, while the current best estimate of GHG forcing is ~2.29 watts/M^2 (~3.1 watts/M^2 GHG forcing less aerosol aerosol effects; IPCC AR5). Average surface temperature has changed by ~0.85 C since the mid 19th century (before significant man-made GHG influence). So the current best estimate of sensitivity based on energy balance is ~ 0.85 / (2.29 – 0.55) = 0.49 degree/Watt/M^2, or equivalent to 1.8C equilibrium increase for a doubling of CO2. People will argue about the details (exactly how much heat is being accumulated, exactly how much warming has taken place, exactly how much aerosol effects have reduced GHG forcing, etc), but the basic accounting is pretty clear. Based on these figures, the warming realized to date (~0.85C) represents only about (2.29 – 0.55)/(2.29) = ~76% or what it would have been save for heat accumulation, and only about (2.29 – 0.55)/(3.1) = ~56% of what it would have been in the absence of heat accumulation and aerosol effects.
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The greatest uncertainty lies in aerosol effects (~ -0.9 watt/M^2, IPCC, AR5), and (no surprise!) this is one of the most contentious factual issues remaining in climate science. Those alarmed by warming and committed to draconian action to reduce fossil fuel use will almost always argue that the estimated aerosol effects are larger than in AR5, implying greater sensitivity, while those more alarmed by draconian measures than by warming will argue that estimated aerosol effects are even smaller than in AR5, implying lower sensitivity.
.
Nic Lewis used Bjorn Stephens’ revised (lower) estimates of aerosol effects to show that the best estimate of equilibrium sensitivity would be quite low (~1.5 – 1.6C per doubling), and that the probability of very high sensitivity (>3C per doubling, and a legitimate cause for alarm, if true) would be miniscule, based on the Stephens results. This naturally caused much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair among the warming concerned, and lead to the odd public disclaimer from Stephens that while he stands by his aerosol estimates, he completely disavows Nic’s analysis based on those estimates; one of the strangest documents I have read from an actual scientist in a while.
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Of course, I don’t expect you will accept much of the above as correct. But I figured I would lay it out for you anyway.
SteveF
“I don’t expect you will accept much of the above as correct”.
Very succinct, for the complexity of the matter. Covered a lot of the territory that I have had trouble in working out the figures involved and ideas
Thank you very much.
Steve,
Very good synopsis. BTW, it’s Stevens, not Stephens. I also thought your ECS was 2.0. Are you 1.8 now? I like the sqrt of pi. And, Brandon S and I agree that we should only use TCR (70 year effect) from now on for the reasons you mention about relevance. Mine is the sqrt of 2. I also like your cheat for making paragraphs on this interface.
.
Care to comment on my using marine effect analysis of land temp data vs SST to derive ECS? Have you ever heard this discussed?
R Graf,
Sorry, My mom selected Stephen’ not ‘Steven’. Hard to get past that.
R Graf,
I don’t have a specific sensitivity value that I am wedded to. The best available empirical data supports a value somewhere under 2C per doubling. But should convincing data that says otherwise become available, I will revise my estimates. Based on everything I have seen, downward revisions in aerosol effects appear likely, so I expect the honest-to-goodness sensitivity value will be somewhere under 2C per doubling, and more likely under 1.8c per doubling.
.
Unfortunately, those estimates put me in the ‘going-to-hell-evil-den!er’ category. Which makes not a bit of difference in how I judge the available data: there is certainly GHG driven warming, but it is, by far, not the most pressing problem humanity faces.
.
The calculation of sensitivity based on differences between warming in different geographical region seems to me fraught with uncertainty. Not something I would rely upon.
Is it even possible that Bjorn Stevens did not realize the implications of narrowing and lowering aerosol effect? Folks at Kenny R’s blog almost decapitated him for neglecting black carbon. I can just see the klimatariat handing him the loyalty oath letter and a signature pen. Then comes out his next work which has “Iris Effect” in its title. I would love to be a fly on the wall at the Max Plank Institute watching this dangerous game with the klimatariat play out. Will Stevens next paper followup on tabu subjects or do you think it will be on the catastrophic effects of black carbon?
R Graf,
Maybe. Stevens is an aerosol specialist. I guess it’s possible he lost sight of the implications of his work. More likely he was perfectly aware of the implications (previous co-author with Nic Lewis), but misjudged the intensity of the maelstrom which inevitably followed. The field is not well, and IMO the best cure is ‘draconian’ public defunding of much of climate science….. more measurements, less modeling….. and most of all, less advocacy.
FWIW, here’s a similar look at climate response from simple correlation with forcing ( NOAA’s GHG index update for 2014 ):
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/TCR.png
In the context of NASA propaganda:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/TCR_NASA.png
And the NOAA GHG index overlaid onto IPCC’s RCP:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/NOAA_RCP.png
( NOAA trace is shifted to a common 2000 to match the different base periods ).
@ SteveF (Comment #136533)
Excellent summary. Thanks.
The followers at Neven’s blog are *hoping* for a large sea-ice melt this year. One commenter says. “Fingers crossed for clear open skies and lots of melt ponds. Enjoy your holiday.” Another says, ” . . . and excited like everyone else seeing our predictions and hunches (however dire) borne out.”
These people aren’t for real.
Say I make a prediction that ISIS is going to come to our town and slaughter all the inhabitants here. I would like to think that someone would take action to stop it from happening – as Neven does w.r.t. CAGW. I would have to accept and expect that my prediction (and sanity) would be questioned thoroughly and deeply – as Neven doesn’t seem to. But I would be mad if I ever *hoped* for it to happen – and madder still if I got *excited* about it.
Many of the biases identified are those with direct financial impact ( oil companies, big government labs, etc. )
But there’s a bias we all may have –
the ‘See, I was right, Told Ya So’ bias.
Seems to me that the insistence on consensus derives from the belief that cultural change IS the solution. Take racism or sexism for example. When the culture is changed the problem is fixed. Likewise, if we all just BELIEVE in catastrophic climate change, then the problem is solved. There is no concept here of economics, side-effects, technology, because such things are irrelevant and actively irritating to culture warriors. Thus they can say with a straight face that we should just shut down all the coal power plants, because it is just a concept to them.
To follow up on Frank’s comments, there are a lot more subsidies for energy than most people realize in this country.
This is a pretty good summary of direct subsidies. I suspect that energy resources such as coal carry a much higher subsidies level when you include the indirect impacts on health and the local ecology.
Just in direct subsidy numbers, alternative energy sources account for less than 20% of all subsidies, and when you include indirect subsidies, it could be as little as 6%.
Anyway, what I wanted to draw attention to is that a major reason why alternative energy sources are not likely to become an economic alternative to conventional ones is precisely because of the large amount of money we’ve sunk into to conventional sources—replacing these conventional sources with alternative ones would amount to throwing away all of that investment.
I think for all of the gesticulations that go on about it, this is really the bottom line here: It’s not an even playing field, and it’s way too late to try and make it an even playing field. In other words, it’s precisely because we’ve invested so much, be it with subsidies or through (what I think is really a minor portion) “pay as you go” users fees, that a rapid adoption of alternative energy sources makes no sense in the US.
That said, the other thing I wanted to highlight (at the risk of tl;dr) is most of the CO2 that is going to enter the atmosphere between now and the end of this century is not going to come from the US. Whether we adopt radical new programs to shift from fossil fuel to alternative sources isn’t going to dramatically affect the outcome of our grand CO2 emissions experiment.
It is in the economically developing countries in Africa and Asia where most of the additional CO2 is going to come from. If we deny this fact and throttle the US and European economies, it will generate a redistribution of wealth (some see this as a worthy goal in itself), but it won’t impact the final outcome on our climate from that excess CO2.
Tying these ideas together, we should realize when we talk about economic development in these third world countries, that they do not have our history of investment in conventional energy sources. The grid is practically absent in many of these regions, and they don’t have the political stability where implementing a grid is necessarily the best direction to go.
What I would suggest is, if there is any place where rapid development of wind and solar energy makes the most sense, it would be in these third world countries. I think it would also have a larger impact on the total CO2 emissions than an equivalent investment in US energy infrastructure.
And I would suggest if you can’t make alternative energy work in places that aren’t politically stable and which don’t have the sorts of infrastructural support for conventional energy sources that we have in this country, then it won’t work anywhere.
Carrick,
It won’t be a redistribution. Strangling the US and European economies will not transfer wealth, it will destroy it. Some, however, see this as a worthy goal.
I don’t see the large investment we already have as a barrier, but rather as a measure of how long it will take for one technology to replace another. As I remember, the rule of thumb is on the order of fifty years. 350.org to the contrary, you simply can’t do this overnight, or even twenty years.
I completely agree that wind and solar are appropriate technologies for the third world. You don’t need reliable 24/7 electricity from a grid to reduce and eventually eliminate burning dung for cooking and heating, for example.
DeWitt, I agree “redistribution of wealth” isn’t the appropriate term. I think I originally used “change in the distribution of wealth” but thought that was too awkward (even if it’s technically more accurate).
The point I was getting at is that our current investment in centralized power comes with the perk that we have a very strong infrastructure for conventional power. So the amount you would have to spend before alternative energy could potentially become economically competitive is larger than it would be in the absence of this infrastructure.
As an example, one issue people in the electrical grid industry like to bring up is the destabilization of the grid that this alternative by intermittent energy source, when connected to the grid, creates.
This is a case where disruptive technology equates to an economically damaging one.
Carrick,
Thanks for your comment. I had not thought that the nature of our grid was an issue. Truth be told, I’m not yet convinced it is, but this is an interesting point to research and consider. Is there some other type of grid that is more amenable to alternative power? If not, are the problems relatively easy to overcome with a different design or are they inherent?
Mark, I’m certainly not an expert on electrical grids, so I’ll point you to what I consider a fairly middle of the road take on the problem located here.
I think the basic points are (1) the issues can be overcome, (2) however it would require additional infrastructure investment besides what is being made to address, and (3) we really need to develop a realistic timeline so that the adoption of the new technologies is done at a sustainable rate.
I would describe the current strategy as throwing money at the problem and waiting for a miracle to occur.
In a bit more detail, as I see it, most of the subsidies are aimed at adoption of the alternative energies at their current technology level with little consideration of how that energy gets distributed, nor with any consideration on how these technologies might need to be modified to improve their adoptability into the existing energy grid system, nor how improvements in design (including installation related details) could further improve the efficiency of these alternative technologies.
DeWitt,
The poor devils living in third world nations might not agree. Why should they focus on developing unreliable, decentralized energy solutions? Whitey got to burn coal and enjoy reliable 24/7 power but not us, eh?
There may be good answers as to why these technologies are appropriate. Perhaps it’s easier, or cheaper, or quicker, or some combination of the above. In which case maybe these technologies are good enough for right now. But it sounds like the argument is that they should get crappy intermittent power because CO2. I don’t see why they’d accept that.
Maybe it’s just me. 🙂
Thanks Carrick.
Mark,
I don’t think it’s the grid per se. It’s the fact that our economy and lifestyle is based on the 24/7 availability of electricity at the flip of a switch. Nuclear fits into that model. Wind and solar, not so much. Whether one could construct an economy with a relatively high standard of living based on intermittent availability of electricity is an interesting question.
Population density plays into the equation somewhere as well. It took the Rural Electrification Act of 1935 to get the electricity availability to be extended to rural areas in the US. I’m not sure you could really call it a grid then, though. That also required increasing transmission line voltage from 2900V to 6900V. The TVA was created in 1933.
DeWitt,
Yes. I was wondering among other things if this was part of what we were talking about.
The link Carrick provided talks about the law of large numbers taking some of the sting (or maybe I should say intermittent-ness) out of the equation, but I suspect there are technical headaches involved that the idea more or less ignores. It’s also interesting to me to ponder if it would be possible to design a ‘better’ grid for alternatives, if we were facing the problem again fresh without consideration for the existing stuff. I don’t know much about the history, your second paragraph is helpful. I ought to go read something about that.
Thanks.
I’m going to go on to say that without deep soul searching, it seems pretty straightforward to me that 24/7 power at a flip of the switch is more valuable, more desirable shall we say, than power only at certain hours or (even worse) unreliable power with unexpected outages. I don’t think this is merely an arbitrary choice of lifestyle. There are only so many hours in the day. If power isn’t available for all of them, some activities will only be possible at certain times. Going in for heart surgery? Best be sure there’s a slot available during powered hours! Or whatever, I’m sure people can think of better examples.
Given this, if I’m convinced CO2 is the issue, I’m pretty sure my first response would be that then nuclear is the answer.
Carrick,
Thanks for the link to the EIA report.
As I read it, renewables (mostly solar, wind, and biofuels) received in 2013 more than 50% of total federal energy expenditures, including both direct expenditures and “tax expenditures”. ($15 billion out of a total of $29 billion). Am I missing something?
SteveF, I see $8.6 billion of $29 billion in federal subsidies being used for alternative energy, or 30%. How dod you get $15 billion?
But this does not include foreign tax credits, which total to about $15 billion. So I used 8.6/(29 +15) ~ 20%.
Edit: Never mind, I was reading the wrong column. If we use $15 billion, and include foreign tax credits for energy, the number is around 35%.
I had found another source that quoted 19% for renewables so I had assumed I was “doing it correctly”, but I’m not sure how they broke it down. I’ll see if I can find the source.
Mark Bofill:
It’s not just a matter of what people accept, it’s a matter of what is practicable. We’ve spent in the trillions on our grid (in current dollars). They don’t have trillions to spend, nor do they have the political stability to ensure that the grid won’t get attacked by insurgents.
Carrick, DeWitt, I agree 100% with both of you. We basically need to do what we are already doing. Contrary to CAGW arguments business as usual is not bad. Number one is avoiding economic collapse by throwing a monkey wrench into things.
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The Tesla Power Wall is admittedly not a revolutionary step, but evolutionary advance is still important. Battery storage at present for home/office solar is hindered not just by cost but by the need for a space to maintain a potentially hazardous item. The Power Wall is more expensive but has small footprint, software controlled self-maintenance and is long lasting. These are benefits to a well-off but busy household. WRT Carrick’s grid destabilization point, self-storage keeps the electricity from passing back to the grid easing the burden on utilities while providing outage-hardened households and businesses.
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The logical steps for the grid is to go nuclear, evolving to higher efficiency nuclear with the promise of eventual replacement with nuclear fusion reactors.
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Until electricity is economical enough to use for heat gas has the most energy per carbon molecule (4 hydrogen : 1 carbon).
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We save the coal and shale for future generations in case CO2 actually is a shield against onset of M-cycle ice age. Or in case of would cataclysm that requires a civilization reboot.
Carrick,
Yes, which is what I meant by cheaper or quicker or easier. I spoke poorly. ‘More feasible’ works too. I get that it makes no sense to build huge coal or nuclear plants when there’s no grid, no money to build a grid, and even if one did it’d be vulnerable given the instability and violence. These reasons could make good sense and might be persuasive, in my view.
Carrick,
Thanks for clarifying. I was not counting any foreign tax credit in the calculation; in any case, the expenditures for renewables are enormous relative to the overall contribution of those sources to total energy consumption.
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One interesting development in power generation is the use of large (giant) low speed (600 RPM) spark ignited piston engines that run on natural gas. When the piston size is very large (nearly a meter in diameter) the thermal efficiency of the engine approaches 40%, and with a steam turbine downstream (recovering exhaust heat) thermal efficiency approaches the best combined cycle gas turbines. The engines generate up to 20 megawatts each, and a generating plant will have 10 to 25 engines operating in parallel. The cost for such a plant is in the range of $1,100 per kilowatt of capacity, and can be constructed pretty quickly. The expected lifetime is >60,000 hours of operation, and guaranteed availability is >97%, with nearly all the 3% downtime scheduled rather than unscheduled. These engines can go from startup to near full load in a few minutes, and can operate at partial load if needed. The plant output is scalable over a huge range without impacting thermal efficiency, because individual engines are run or stopped as needed. So the plant is a nearly ideal “load follower”, but can run at high thermal efficiency. These plants might help accommodate intermittent renewable production with less disruption of the grid.
OT, sorry, but maybe of interest if it hasn’t been noticed before,
John Mashey was sued by Wegman et al for tortious interference in state court in VA, subsequently removed to fed court. See http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/05/19/ed-wegman-yasmin-said-milt-johns-sue-john-mashey-2-million
Case # 1:15-cv-00486 in eastern dist VA.
The suit looks like it was very badly pled and the plaintiffs withdrew it a few weeks after the removal. Mashey links to his motion to dismiss on the blog post referenced above – I don’t think he provides the original complaint but you can retrieve it via PACER if interested enough.
I’m not a lawyer but I think I have enough familiarity with basic procedural stuff to recognize the complaint as a hunk of junk, legally.
No opinion on the substantive issues – I don’t really know the background.
Mark,
It has nothing to do with CO2. You’re letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, otherwise known as the Nirvana Fallacy. They have no electricity at all. Heart surgery is not an issue. They don’t have hospitals to speak of either. Burning dung for cooking is an issue. Besides, even hospitals in the US have standby generators.
Rejecting golden rice, which has been genetically modified to contain beta carotene, in third world countries because it’s genetically modified may be another example of the same fallacy.
DeWitt,
Ok, this sounds reasonable to me.
Carrick wrote: “To follow up on Frank’s comments, there are a lot more subsidies for energy than most people realize in this country.”
The concept of “subsidies” becomes nebulous and subjective in a system where the government raises revenue from taxing business profits rather than sales. As the Obama administration passed the stimulus, the Republican’s asked the CBO (a more reliable organization than the Environmental Law Institute) to compare subsidies for conventional and renewable energy and found that the subsidies were far larger for renewables. Their list of subsidies was far different, partially because they used different standards for defining “subsidy” and partially because the law had changed since the ELI report covering 2002-8.
Carrick,
Reading your comment on subsidies,
I’m not sure I’m reading the information the same. Table ES2 of the executve summary has subsidies by sector and for energy production it shows renewables taking a lion’s share of the 2013 amount. As in coal gets $1.1B, oil & gas get $2.3B, nuclear gets $1.7B and renewables get $15B.
I think your points about energy infrastructure in developing countries are spot on, but I really can’t buy into the concept that renewables are anywhere close to being economically viable in the US. If you look at table ES3 for 2013 energy production, fossil fuels (all coal, natural gas, and petroleum) resulted in 63.9 trillion BTU, whereas non-FF energy production was 17.2 trillion BTU. The subsidy per million BTU of FF was $55 and the subsidy for non-FF was $829. The non-FF category includes nuclear and hydro, two technologies that are not endeared by the green blob. For the remaining, the ‘sustainable’ energy sources, there were 6.6 trillion BTU produced in 2013 with a subsidy of $12.2B, requiring a subsidy of $1,868 per million BTU.
Above, R Graf says:
That’s not actually my view. I certainly think we should look at TCR but not to the exclusion of ECS. I rarely think we should exclude anything from our considerations.
Szilard says:
I haven’t seen enough of the filings to judge how well things are pled (Mashey does a terrible job of laying things out in a clear manner, as usual), but going just by what Mashey says in that article, I wouldn’t believe a word he says. A number of things he says in it are just wrong, while others are simply misleading. And when I followed a couple links, there was plenty of conspiratorial stuff.
If everything Mashey accuses Wegman of were true, it’d be a very bad thing. However, Mashey is not someone who I’d trust to get things right.
Brandon,
“However, Mashey is not someone who I’d trust to get things right.”
.
That is the understatement of the month. Seems to me that for him all truths are nothing more than subjective judgements.
Earle,
I think your numbers are messed up. The production was ~216 billion KWH from solar wind and biomass burning. The federal subsidy was about $12 billion, so the subsidy was ~$12/216 = $0.056 per KWH. There are 293 KWH in 1 million BTU, so if I have done my arithmetic right, the subsidy per million BTU is about $16.40. That is much higher than subsidies for other energy sources, but only ~1% of what you calculated.
Brandon,
Like you, I can’t tell if something is well or poorly pled. (Well, unless the pleading is truly horrible. Those end up circulated at law blogs because they are so hilarious. I don’t see that here.)
As far as I can gather:
*Wegman didn’t like things Mashey and others said and did.
They filed a suite alleging among other things “tortuous interference with a contract”.
*Under certain circumstances the defendant can request a change of venue; Mashey asked for one and got it. (My impression is does not necessarily mean the original venue was “wrong” and possibly suggests it was ok– but that a transfer was aslo permitted and granted. The reason I think the transfer suggests the filing in VA might be ‘ok’, is if VA couldn’t hear the course, I think Mashey’s lawyers would have asked for dismissal on the grounds that VA had no jurisdiction. This is better for the defendants than moving to another court. But I’m not an attorney, so they may tell my my impression is totally wrong.)
* Once the case was moved to federal court, further papers were filed. Among other things,
* Mashey’s attorney argued that the complaint was really a thinly veiled attempt to get around the statute of limitations for libel/defamation. Precedents say that if something is really a veiled attempt to get around a statute of limitations for libel/defamation, the courts still apply that statute of limitations. If so, the claim is SOL barred which means no judge needs to decide who was “right” or “wrong” about anything to do with the allegations of plagiarism, because the clock ran out on that.
* Mashey’s attorney argued with respect to “tortuous interference”, the actions alleged to constitute this offense did not happen in Virginia. The blog posts at Desmog are not the basis for that allegation. Mashey doesn’t live in VA and Wiley is not in VA. So, Mashey’s lawyers say VA doesn’t have jurisdiction. (Whether VA agrees it doesn’t have jurisdiction and whether the Feds would think VA has jurisdiction would be a matter for VA lawyers. But my sense is Mashey’s lawyers may well be correct on this. )
Some other things were filed in the response– commenting on the underlying allegations of plagiarism and NJ law.
In response to that volley from Mashey’s attorney’s, Wegman filed to have the case dismissed and it was. So, it’s over.
SteveF, I know I shouldn’t have, but I skimmed a couple of the PDF files linked to on that page. There is some crazy stuff. For instance, the second page of one has John Mashey say he continues to allege that:
Then discusses several laws he suggests have been broken. This is a guy who explicitly says he thinks there was “an elaborate conspiracy” behind the Wegman Report, all to intentionally deceive pepole.
And it’s not just that John Mashey appears to be a loon. Some of what he says is just mind-bogglingly stupid. The complaint filed for this suit referred to the contract Wegman and others had to do work for on an online encylopedia, saying:
The claim was Mashey and others intentionally tried to interfere with this contract, hence this isn’t just a defamation issue. Regardless of how that argument might be judged, Mashey’s response is just baffling:
Mashey says it is false to say he knew of a contract because he didn’t know any details about the contract, just that it existed. Seriously.
It’s like how he claimed the Wegman Report inverted one of the conclusions in Raymond Bradley’s book. The book said if a formula showing the relationship between two variables could be found, one could then be used as a proxy for the other. The book made it clear no such formula had yet been found, and the Wegman Report said the one variable couldn’t be used as a proxy for the other. There’s no contradiction there, yet Mashey said there was by ignoring the idea behind using words like “if.” Naturally, Deep Climate and others then told everyone the Wegman Report inverted conclusions of Bradley’s work.
I know I shouldn’t bother even skimming this stuff, but it’s fascinating to see how absurd some of these things are. And I find it interesting it’s being argued this is purely a matter of defamation. Mashey knew there was a business contract, and he contacted one party to complain about the other party’s behavior, much of which was unrelated to the party he contacted or his contract with the other party. Mashey also said if the party he contacted didn’t do anything, he’d go to the media with his complaints.
That doesn’t seem like a simple defamation case to me. Since I’m interested in defamation cases, it’s interesting to consider.
lucia, there’s an interesting thing about the motion to dismiss being submitted by the plaintiffs. Under Virginia law, you have to inform the person you’re suing within a year of filing your lawsuit. That didn’t happen here. For whatever reason, Wegman’s lawyers didn’t inform Mashey of the lawsuit until more than a year after filing it.
But because the lawsuit was effectively withdrawn, the dismissal was made “without prejudice.” That means it could be refiled. If it were, it would not be subject to the time limit of the original lawsuit, meaning they would have another year to inform Mashey.
I doubt the lawsuit will be refiled, and I suspect it may have been filed largely for shady reasons (to try to get certain information/harass Mashey), but Wegman does have the option of refiling it.
Brandon,
Ok– interesting. Seems to me that the ‘tortuous interference’ case is weak– but I see how refiling could be a strategy. Also, I don’t actually know what the elements are “tortuous interference” are… so my saying it looks weak should be weighed with that in mind.
The one thing the case does NOT tell us is anything about the merits of any plagiarism accusation. That at this point Mashey and Wegman dislike each other enough to snip and harass? Perhaps.
SteveF,
Fair point. I may have been sloppy with my decimal point management, as I was pretty glib with applying factors of 1000.
I am basing my numbers solely off those provided in the Executive Summary linked to by Carrick at http://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
So walking through it, Table ES2 for just Solar, Wind, and Biomass have subsidies in the Total column for 2013 of 5,328, 5,936, and 629 respectively (in millions 2013 dollars), summing to 11,893.
Table ES3 shows energy production, in units of million BTU. Whoops, I screwed up, it’s trillions BTU. So energy produced by wind (1,549), solar (286), and biomass (4,495) add up to 6,330 trillion BTU. The subsidy per trillion BTU for combined wind, solar and biomass is $1.88 million, or $1,878 per million BTU.
Using the same data source for coal, petroleum and gas gives total subsidy in 2013 of 3,431 million dollars. Energy production was 63,904 trillion BTU. Subsidy for these fossil fuels was $0.0536 million per trillion BTU, or $53.60 per million BTU.
From Table ES4, subsidies for electrical generation were $1,591 million for coal, oil, and gass (COG) and $10,447 million for solar, wind, and biomass (SWB). Using Table ES5, SWB produced 247 billion kwh. COG produced 2727 billion kwh. Subsidy for SWB was $42.296 million per billion kwh, whereas subsidy for COG was $0.583 million per billion kwh.
Using table ES2 and ES3, SWB power is subsidized at a cost per BTU 35.04 times higher than for a BTU from fossil fuel. I presume table S3 includes fuels used for heat generation.
Using tables ES4 and ES5, SWB power is subsidized at a cost per kwh 72.5 times higher than for a kwh produced by fossil fuels. These numbers are strictly for electrical generation.
A company I worked for was threatened with a tortious interference action in VA years ago. I dealt with the lawyers on it so obviously I’m an expert! (j/k).
My reasons for thinking the complaint is junk pretty much correspond to points raised in the motion to dismiss: obvious lack of jurisdiction; how can asserting plagiarism to Wiley be TI; any action is surely against Wiley; lack of specificity in the complaint; failure to timely serve.
But as I am not in fact an expert, could of course be wrong.
Somewhat late, but when the Tin Man Says
He obviously was not there. S. Fred and the gang sure were claiming that banning CFCs was going to cost the world. Folk like Eli said we can do it.
We did.
Does this remind anybunny of something similar going on now
If the basis of the ‘lukewarmer’ viewpoint is consistent with the following statement by Richard Lindzen, then it would appear to me to be based on sound applied reasoning; otherwise the ‘lukewarmer’ position seems as observationally implausible in the face of applied reasoning as the ‘warmist’ position.
John
SteveF,
Thanks much for the easily understood, succinct essay above.
I was also enchanted by your reference to very large low speed natural gas fired reciprocating engines. Are these current products of Man or Waartsala? I ask because the mechanical description seems similar in rpm and cylinder bore to what you find in the stern of the most recent container ships.
Stuff like this makes me wonder if our political systems will ever develop even threshold sensitivity to what it is possible to do today.
Earle,
I really can’t follow what you are calculating; I think you are losing track of units/decimal places.
.
From Table ES2, the subsidies for wind and solar electricity (the truly green electricity sources) totaled US$10.33 billion (1.033*10^10 dollars). From Table ES3, the total electric energy produced by these ‘green’ sources was 1.835*10^9 million BTU.
.
The subsidy for these ‘green’ energy sources was then (1.033*10^10)/(0.1835*10^10) = ~$5.63 per million BTU. It is nowhere near US$1,800 per million BTU… that is a crazy number. If it were correct, then the total subsidy would have been $1,800 * 1.835*10^9) = US$3.3 trillion in 2013. Total Federal expenditures in 2013 were US$6.2 trillion, so more than half of all federal expenditures would have to have been spent on wind and solar subsidies. Obviously not correct.
Eli,
That argument is so weak as to be almost non-existent. Your car air conditioner, your refrigerator, and the A/C in your house run today on halocarbons…. they are just ‘good’ halocarbons which are not fully halogenated like the ‘bad’ halocarbons of old. Still non-flammable, still chemically inert, still excellent refrigerants.
.
You seem to enjoy comparing a golf ball to the Earth and insisting there is a clear parallel because they are both kinda spherical. Well, they are both kinda spherical, but they are not really similar. Neither is fossil fuel use similar to halocarbon refrigerant use. But if it would make you feel any better we could all join hands and sing Kumbaya about the success of substituting a couple of hydrogen atoms for chlorine atoms.
SteveF,
I’m not holding hands and singing. Just sayin. Other than that I agree with your sentiments.
Steve,
That’s the point, the luckcoolers had weak arguments and the luckwarmers the same arguments. For those who did not follow the link
Sound familiar?
Szilard:
Um, no. Accusing people of wrongdoing in the hope of causing harm to their business relations can rise to tortious intereference. For instance, if you spread false rumors to a ex’s employer to get revenge over them dumping you, and they gets fired for it, that could be tortious interference.
It seems pretty clear to me this case could qualify on the arguments (as in, assuming the facts were most favorable to Wegman). Wegman’s case is John Mashey, and others he encouraged, contacted a company Wegman had a contract with in order to falsely accused him plagiarism, threatening to go to the media with their story if the company took no action against Wegman. That seems like far more than simple defamation.
Of course, one doesn’t have to assume all the facts are in favor of Wegman so he may well not have had a case. It’s just not a completely farfetched idea tortious interference was at play. (Of course, that doesn’t address any technical issuess like jurisdiction/statute of limitations.)
I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bit pedantic, but a failure to serve notice of a lawsuit in a timely manner doesn’t speak to the quality of the pleading in the complaint. You can have an excellent complaint yet fail to follow technical guidelines like that one.
lucia, at risk of becoming too pedantic, I have to point out the word is tortious, not tortuous. The former means wrongful in a way giving rise to civil liability. The latter means… twisty 😀
Eli,
Not at all familiar. The empirical evidence for relatively low sensitivity to GHG forcing is quite strong; no luck is needed. Where luck is needed is preserving the case for alarm and draconian measures in the face of mounting contrary evidence. Is the rate of surface warming going to soon jump by a factor of 2 or more? Probably not. Is the rate of sea level rise going to soon double, triple, or more? Very unlikely. Is a catastrophic asteroid strike going to wipe out civilization by 2100? Also very unlikely. I have listened for 40 years to predictions of inevitable doom from Paul Erlich, The Club of Rome, the peak oil nutters, and the rest of the loony doomer cabal. Always certain the end is near, and always certainly wrong. Cries of climate catastrophe are no different: almost certainly wrong.
.
China, India, Russia, Iran, and a host of developing countries are for certain going to continue burning fossil fuels in large quantity, so you can count on atmospheric CO2 reaching well over 500 PPM. The good news is that the impacts are likely to be modest. Those countries are too sensible to listen to you. Get over it.
John Ferguson,
The large bore engines are very similar to those used on ocean freighters, but optimized for natural gas, spark ignited, and connected to an exhaust heat recovery system (steam turbine). Natural gas fired means no sulfur or soot and very little else in the exhaust stream but water and CO2. The combined thermal efficiency reaches mid 50’s….. which is quite remarkable. The capital investment is only about 25% of nuclear plants (per KW capacity), and far less costly than coal or even gas turbine plants. Construction time is comparable to gas turbine plants. I read a report that placed current fully loaded cost from these plants at under $0.06 per KWH. Of course, if the price for natural gas increased, the cost per KW would also increase.
Brandon: This is two non-experts arguing over technicalities, but it’s fun & harmless, so who cares 🙂
Anyway, AFAIK to state a TI claim you would need to show that specific communications from Mashey to Wiley contained information that Mashey knew to be false; that Mahey’s intention with these specific communications was to induce Wiley to wrongfully terminate its biz relationship with Wegman; and that Wiley was so induced, by these communications.
That complaint didn’t plead anything nearly specific enough to meet these standards, as far as I can see. Even if Wegman could point to specific communications from Mashey he would still have to be specific about the other stuff and I can’t picture to myself how he could do that.
The scenario you give isn’t a good analogy, IMO: in that one, the plaintiff can plead a specific, direct, malicious, false inducement leading to an unfair dismissal. In this one, you would need to point to specific Mashey communications which were key (singled out from those of other people who were nagging Wiley at the same time); plead specifically that Mashey’s intention was to interfere with the biz relationship (rather than eg get papers retracted); plead specifically that Wiley didn’t do any diligence of its own on the plagiarism allegations; and that Wiley was wrong in pressuring him to resign in the face of allegations from its customer base.
Again, the complaint as far as I can see doesn’t come anywhere near to meeting the required standards.
Re timeliness: You’re right, of course – guess I was smearing it into my perception that the suit overall was junk, not just the complaint. Mashey’s interpretation that it was a fishing expedition to see if any dirt could be discovered on subpoena seems plausible to me – low-rent stuff, doesn’t make Wegman look very good but maybe he wasn’t driving things.
Like I say, I don’t know anything about the real-world background apart from vague memories of old blog comments. I think I remember Mashey as having dug up records calling into question Salby’s grant performance in the US, which seemed to me at the time to be a reasonable reality-check on the buzz on the skeptic propaganda sites when he was fired from UNSW or wherever.
@ SteveF (Comment #136583)
Excellent summary. If only we had serious research as to why the doomers stick to their beliefs despite the decades of evidence showing them wrong.
Hunter,
As the late Michael Crichton noted, I think it is at bottom tied to irrational fear of the future. If you imagine you can keep the world unchanging, then you have less fear of what changes might bring, so you try to keep the world from changing. What makes “climate change” hysteria so pernicious is: 1) the danger is always claimed to be terrible and inevitable, but too far in the future to be measured or refuted, 2) people of the left, who honestly consider non-uniform distribution of material wealth to be immoral, see projections of catastrophic warming as the perfect justification to force a ‘new world order’, based, of course, on their ideals of ‘economic justice’, and with that new order controlled, of course, by people who share their leftist views, and 3) enviro nutjobs, who find the existence of humanity to be morally objectionable because of its impact on the environment, have embraced global warming because they see in fossil fuel restrictions a path to force humans to ‘stop injuring Gaia so much’. They would no doubt prefer a reduction of 90% or more in human population. But that is a hard sell with the voters, so restricting human economic activity and making people miserable is a worthwhile first step; people, after all, deserve misery for all the damage they do to Gaia.
Steve, remember luckwarmerism is a threefer, low emissions, low sensitivity, low damages. Even if Eli spots you low sensitivity (not saying he does), you got need two more throws of the dice.
Eli,
Tacking “remember” in front of an incorrect claim doesn’t magically turn your incorrect claim into a correct one.
🙂 That might be a powerful consensus building tool right there. Reminding people of things they don’t actually agree on as if they were givens.
Lemme try.
I’m glad we agree Eli, don’t forget to send me those 50$.
Low Forcing:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHGs/dF_GHGs.gif
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/NOAA_RCP.png
Low Sensitivity:
http://climatewatcher.webs.com/Lukewarming.png
The implications for climate sensitivity of AR5 forcing and heat uptake estimates
Low Damages? Well, that presupposes harm to begin with and not just harm, but net harm compared with benefits.
“remember luckwarmerism is a threefer, low emissions, low sensitivity, low damages.”
Warmerism generally, is at least a threefer.
low-high emissions, low-high sensitivity, low-high damages,
plus+ low-high imaginations, etc…
Andrew
Remember, tacking “remember†in front of an incorrect claim doesn’t magically turn your incorrect claim into a correct one.
SteveF,
You’re right, I was again sloppy with my 10^3 math. Whatever the units are, the subsidies are ~35 times greater per unit of green energy compared to that of fossil fuels.
Nevin’s “Lukewarm” vs Jesus’ “Wicked Steward”
Nevin apparently has forgotten or is unfamiliar with Jesus’ parable of the Talents. The third steward buried the one talent he was entrusted with. Jesus rebuked him: “You wicked and slothful servant!” and issued the judgment: “cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” http://bit.ly/1rOYZaa
Climate alarmists advocating burying >10s of trillions of dollars of our resources in the ground are acting far worse than the wicked steward. With Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), Nevin et al. seek to take resources that could help the poor develop, and bury about 10 million times more resources than the wicked steward! (Assuming ~$200/day and a talent = 6000 days wages.)
Szilard, I’m not arguing the pleading is good. I was just addressing a couple points you made. My current impression of the pleading is it was intended as a fishing expedition, and perhaps later as a way of harassing John Mashey a bit. That said, the framework of the complaint seems at least as strong as that of Michael Mann’s in his lawsuit, and that one’s been sustained by multiple judges for two years.
As for the standards, I’m not familiar enough with the law on this matter to know, but did Mashey really need to know what he said was false for there to be tortious intereference? That seems like an unusually high standard, especially given the threats within the communication (if you do nothing, I and others will tell a bunch of people, including the media).
As for my scenario, whether or not it fits the real facts of the situation, it does fit the facts as alleged. That was the point of offering them. You say:
But why? John Mashey wasn’t the only person targeted in the lawsuit. And the argument offered in the lawsuit is Mashey induced others to participate in a campaign with him. Why do you think Mashey’s communication would have to be looked at separately from others who (supposedly) participated in a campaign with him, who may also be targets of the lawsuit?
The communication with Wiley is filled with comments one could argue call for Wegman to be fired. Of course, the pleading couldn’t point to those because they couldn’t gain access to those e-mails until filing the lawsuit. I guess one could argue that’s a weakness of the pleading? I don’t find it compelling though. I can’t say I’m worried much that a viable argument now was weak when it was first made.
Um, no. Wiley could have done all the due diligence in the world. It could have even decided Wegman had done nothing wrong. It might have still felt pressured to fire Wegman. If it did, and that caused Wegman to be fired, that fits tortious interference.
I don’t think there is a good case against Mashey or anyone else, but if Wegman were to file a new lawsuit now, with the material he obtained via this one, I think he’d have a case which could easily survive dismissal. I’d argue it’s stronger than Michael Mann’s case. And who knows, discovery filed against Mashey might turn up enough to let the case go somewhere.
I think it’d be a bad idea to refile though. I think it’d embarrass Wegman too much to be worth it.
Eli,
Well no, lukewarmers need only two things to be correct: the sensitivity is modest, and the emissions of CO2 are below the highest scenario. The highest scenario is absurd on its face…. there is not that much carbon easily available. The low damage is a result of low sensitivity combined with less than absurd assumed emissions.
Eli,
And remember, whatever machinations the climate concerned go through in the next couple of decades, people are not going to stop using fossil fuels, so the climate concerned, and especially advocate CAGW climate scientists, will continue to be judged on whether or not the continuously rising GHG forcing brings on the projected warming (hint: it almost certainly won’t). You should be afraid for the future of ‘climate science’, very afraid.
Regarding Eli’s feeble attempt to define lukewarmers, it’s amazing what happens when you let your enemies define you.
I don’t know any lukewarmer who has ‘pronounced’ on emissions or damages. Well, other than myself. I think emissions will be higher than Eli probably does and that damages will be significant and are worth spending time and resources to mitigate.
I know I’ve said that on threads where Eli has commented. I know I’ve said it on threads that Eli has written about on his blog. I’m pretty sure I’ve said it at Eli’s blog. More than once.
I’m fairly confident that the truth of what he writes is not of primary importance to Eli.
Professor E. Rabbetticus Halpernicus is fooling around on blogs and neglecting his students, again. They need their sleep, Eli. Please get back to your lectern.
Tom Fuller,
You seem to be asking others who are self described luke-warmers what they think is appropriate action. Between the bizarre suggestions of human-hating green loons and doing nothing there are prudent things to be done. If nothing else, we have to recognize that humanity will need vast amounts of energy and continuing access to materials over a very long time, and public policy should be based on that recognition. Here are a few suggestions:
1. Focus research on reducing uncertainty in transient and long term sensitivity to GHG forcing; this involves getting much better data on aerosol effects and heat accumulation in the ocean. This will allow rational estimation of future warming as a function of future emissions. Vast uncertainty encourages poor, wasteful, and even counterproductive public policy, and I find it absurd that we are still being told narrowing uncertainty (1.5C – 4.5C) is nearly impossible. People who say that usually invoke the “precautionary principle”, and IMO that is no coincidence.
2. Develop rational estimates of long term consequences of the warming estimates from 1. (Impacts on sea levels, rainfall patterns, regional temperatures, etc.) These two steps are nothing more than defining the size and scope of the problem, a definition that has to be the basis for reasoned policy. A range of estimates of sea level rise by 2100 between 10 inches and 10 feet precludes rational policy development.
3. Encourage and support research on battery based energy storage. substitution of any “green” energy source, and practical electric vehicles, depends on greatly improved battery storage. Do NOT support boondoggles like the Tesla car… the rich can pay for their toys without public support.
4. Develop thorium based nuclear technology. Develop a sensible approval process for nuclear power stations, including one-time approval of a design. The high cost of nuclear power stems mainly from the bizarre, endless approval process, which
makes nuclear power too capital intensive. Open and use the Yucca Mt depository (and require Senator Reid to live next door).
5. Provide incentives for improved energy efficiency. One of the reasons houses and autos are not more energy efficient is that individuals have a shorter horizon for net benefit from an investment in efficiency than the public; public incentives should be consistent with the scope of future warming and its consequences defined in 1 and 2 above.
6. Eliminate the ethanol fuel requirement and avoid similar wasteful boondoggles in the future. There are lots better ways to spend the money.
Rational public policy is not the same as no public policy. IMO, climate science in general, and even more the field’s ‘green’ camp followers, are doing real damage and adding to long term risks by inhibiting the development of rational public policy. Making decisions based on fear and lack of knowledge, which seems to me the fundamental ‘consensus’ view of desirable public policy for the CAGW cabal, is never going to produce rational public policy.
SteveF,
I haven’t verified this to my satisfaction yet, but I’ve been reading the same thing. here for example. This is a darned shame in my book.
Eli,
Damages and sensitivity are not independent, so they are not separate throws of a die.
Mark Bofill,
Great link, thanks.
Well, it’s a mixed bag on emissions. Yes, emissions have occurred at a rate higher than most scenarios:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/CO2Emissions/TimeBombFig16.gif
.
But it’s not emissions that cause global warming but accumulations, and accumulations have occurred at a LOWER rate than even the low end scenarios:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHGs/dF_GHGs.gif
.
And going forward, there are a lot of reasons to believe future emissions will occur at a lower rate, including:
1. most developed nations have falling CO2 emissions already and
2. global fertility and expected populations are trending toward the low end scenarios.
.
It’s difficult for people to conceive of outcomes based on multiple variables. More likely, they conceive of a fixed world and a single variable – increasing CO2. Hell, even the radiative forcing concept is based on this. But the huge numbers of things will change between now and 2100.
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Here’s one thing that is much more likely and certain than global warming:
http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5564f8e5ecad04692ef69137-1020-870/computing-exponential-growth.jpg
What does that mean for the value of human beings? and for likely influence on human population?
SteveF:
Yes, the same crowd that does not want to offend any of the makers of ANY of the 51 IPCC models, or to bother doing real calibrations of temperature proxies, or seem to care about true ECS because we can never do enough to curtail man’s scare upon the land, accuse lukewarmers of being insincere about solutions.
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I think you have an outline for a lukewarmer’s manifesto, this is if you can herd cats. Speaking of Brandon, I thought establishing TCR as the dominant metric is a great idea he brought up. Since people equate the metric with degrees of warming we are concerned about why not talk about the 70-year metric? Predicting fossil fuel use ocean CO2 uptake, heat uptake, solar variance and sensitivity further out the 70 years is ridiculous. We can’t predict 2 years.
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SteveF, also leave Elon out of the manifesto. I am all for the rich buying toys that demonstrate technology.
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Eddie, the artificial intelligence problem happens to be the single problem that unites Gates, Musk and Hawking.
WRT toys for the rich, mobile phones evolved from doctors and pimps buying car phones in the early 80s.
R Graf,
I have nothing against rich people buying themselves toys, even toys that mainly assuage enviro-guilt about their huge carbon footprints. I just don’t want the public buying those toys for them. I also have nothing against Mr. Musk…. I just don’t think the public should be supporting his business ventures through tax revenue… “take from the poor, give to the rich” is never good public policy.
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WRT general artificial intelligence: Sure it seems logically possible; after all, if you know exactly how a brain functions, you can duplicate it in hardware and software. This poses a potential risk to humanity. Do we really want jealous, angry, or insane robots? (Or enviro-loon robots? 😉 ) Or robots that have a strong sense of self-preservation? Or robots that might independently conclude a person (or all of humanity!) is inconvenient or unnecessary? Those seem characteristics that would be unwise to give to a robot. But I suspect that risk is pretty far away. A more immediate danger is autonomous lethal weapons (http://www.nature.com/news/robotics-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence-1.17611), which may not be so far away.
R Graf,
Were there substantial government subsidies for car phones? I don’t remember any. I do remember that minutes were $0.75 each.
Electric vehicles by the major manufacturers, Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Spark, Ford Focus Electric, etc. are probably being sold at a loss at the moment. That’s yet another subsidy, only from the pockets of buyers of their standard vehicles.
WRT subsidies, I am not crazy about any government tweaks to markets. But compared to a new tax, loan grants to green campaign donors, funding flawed or corrupt research, a tax credit to consumers to choose to develop desired markets is the least bad. How about we call for an end to tax credits in SteveF’s Lukewarmer manifesto but bargain it away when we need to compromise?
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WRT to general energy research, I am not sure of the fact but the DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory claims to have been behind hydraulic fracturing technology but the DOE certainly dropped the ball on nuclear fusion. Again, if we had to compromise about what would be the least bad public expenditure on fusion I would vote for prizes for a technological benchmark’s successful demonstrations.
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Once we agree on the outline I vote for Steve to draft the introduction then we can bid off each section to an individual then group critique and Steve edit accordingly and finish with a conclusion. Then it can be posted as a We the People petition for signatures.
I dunno about dropping the ball on fusion. ITER won’t be finished for another four years or so and it’s still not clear that it will actually work. Every time they scaled up the Tokomak concept in the past, they ran into new problems. And it’s still not an actual power plant. It requires tritium, which will get the anti-proliferation folks in a tizzy. The inner wall will be highly radioactive at the end of its life, so there’s still a waste problem. I’ll be very surprised if an actual fusion power plant is built in my lifetime, presuming that a magical cure for aging isn’t invented.
DeWitt,
“presuming that a magical cure for aging isn’t invented.”
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That is a safe assumption. I agree, practical fusion power is still very, very far away. Thorium and fast breeders are a safer bet for the next century or so.
R Graf,
A lukewarmer manifesto is a nice idea, but I am going to be very busy over the next couple of months. Maybe a group effort would work.
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Lucia, are you interested?
“Maybe a group effort would work.”
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I think the more group participation the better. The way we organize after-prom volunteers might work:
1) Define committees. With prom its 5-10. With this figure 20.
2) Have signup period for committees along with deadline for the committees submission, perhaps 60 days.
3) Have an editing committee (perhaps union of all committees) question any troubling points to be sent back to committee. The originating committees should have final say on their draft.
4) Signing. Perhaps posted as Presidential petition.
5) Publicizing: spread the word about petition through viral email campaign. Contact news and political reps.
DeWitt,
The DOE is sticking with the tritium-deuterium tokamak. I doubt it will work. I feel the same about Livermore’s laser fusion. I have more confidence in Lockheed Martin’s claim but the breakthrough, like all breakthroughs would come from the unexpected effort at the unexpected time. But a prize would help.
I just watched a U of CO sponsored conference on climate denial on C-Span from April. A unanimous panel of experts told the audience that you and I are right wing bible fundamentalists that deny evolution and are being misled by Fox News and the Koch Brothers.
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Penn State physicist Richard Alley , who also advises NOAA, the EPA and the State Dept. (John Kerry) on climate science, explained the blindness to science by the fact that as infants the right-wingers learned that when they passed gas in their diaper that they did not need a change. It was OK. Therefore gas emissions from their cars are OK. NASA’s Michelle Thaller of History Channel celebrity was applauding that comment and went further. Dr Thaller said that as a scientist she has learned to not be fully in belief of any idea. Unlike denier simpletons, she accepts that ideas are subject to reversal with new data. But the CAGW conclusion is absolutely beyond that stage. It has been settled. She referred to peer review process. Dr. Alley added that the National Academy of Sciences settled it in the 1980s, as the country’s impartial and foremost authority, the government’s protector against all science snake oil salesmen of the private sector. Thaller then pointed out that unlike the oil funded skeptics she takes “no money from anyone.”
If anyone has a question for Robert Way of Cowton and Way(2013) he commented on Clive’s blog yesterday here.
RGraf,
If climate kooks are saying that stuff with straight faces they are much worse off than I thought.
If those kooks are the opinion leaders and advisers to our political class, it explains a lot about why our policies are increasingly dysfunctional. That panel sounds sort of like what a Monty Python skit of eugenicists explaining why their hatred of some group they have deemed inferior is justified.
R Graf,
You organize proms? High school dances?
R Graf,
There’s a million dollar prize related to Navier-Stokes.
I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Lockheed Martin’s claim to a breakthrough is notably lacking in data. As a result, I think ITER has better odds of success until there’s more information. Laser fusion is useful for designing bombs. It seems overly complicated as a means of generating power.
On the Lockheed Martin fusion thing, I agree they haven’t provided much in the way of details as to why they think they’ve got this pegged. I base my hope for LM’s fusion on a speculation from experience. I’ve worked places where seemingly simple projects have failed due to various factors unrelated to the technical obstacles, and on the flip side worked in shops that have (IMO) pulled things off I would’ve bet against succeeding. I think the Skunk-Works has tamed the ‘failure due to factors unrelated to technical obstacles’ part.
Boil it down, if it can be done I’d give these guys better odds than most for accomplishing it. I’ve yet to hear anyone claim it simply can’t be done, just that it’s darn hard and we need more time and money to do it, seems the stock complaint.
~shrug~ just speculation though.
SteveF, Yes, I have been on after-prom committees.
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My proposal here is to create a document that can be modified maybe once per 2 years via blog committees. It would provide something to organize around and sign on to. Right now part of the problem is that all of the organization is in the hands of the alarmers. Here is my outline for proposed committees. My aim was to break it down evenly for about 500 words given to each committee.
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1) Paleo Data: Temp and CO2 Proxy Reconstructions, Natural Variance, Ice Ages
2) Temp Data: Hadley, GISS, BEST, UAH, RSS, Argo, TCR/ECS
3) Atmospheric Physics of CO2 and GHGs, RT, clouds, vapor, aerosols
4) Anthro CO2 vs Natural: Emission, Sinks, Projected Peak CO2
5) Ocean Physics: AMO/PDO, AMOC, ENSO, Stadium Wave
6) CAGW: Sea Levels, Droughts, Floods, Storms, Acid Ocean, Biodiversity, Crops
7) Alternative Energy: Efficacy, Polices for Research and Markets
8) Global Policies: Carbon Taxes, Treaties, IPCC, IPCC Models
9) Klimatariat: IPCC Mann, Cook 97%, Ethics (papers to blogs)
10) Politics and Psychology: Cut off of debate, deniers, religion
11) Introduction and Conclusion: Most important points from each topic and overall.
Looking for fusion- which we have been told is “just a few years away” since the 1950’s- is like waiting for Godot.
Someone told me that the way to drive a fusion energy researcher crazy is to put him in a round room and tell him that the secret to fusion is sitting in the corner.
Hunter,
Fair enough. I can’t honestly refute the idea that my speculation is nothing more than wishful thinking. It’s just an abstraction from my experience that certain organizations, suffering from certain … practice idioms, shall we say, will never accomplish objectives that are certainly achievable under other conditions. Never Ever. Do I have a scrap of evidence to support the idea that this is the case for this problem of fusion? Nah, not really. Just speculation or wishful thinking, depends on your priors I suppose.
Mark,
I earnestly wish for a breakthrough in either engineering application or a physics discovery that will give us a way to get endless safe and clean energy that so many dream of. However I have a bad feeling that some corollary of “Faster, better, cheaper: pick 2” applies to nearly everything except politics and religion.
The combination of politics and science has led to massive funding that seems to yield less and less. But I am an optimist. Nothing would please me more for a fusion researcher to find that secret hidden in the corner of the round room.
Hunter,
Do you think it’s a matter of a hidden secret? I always imagined it was a very hard engineering problem, where every time you spend the next iteration of x million dollars and y years you advance a step and discover a new set of problems you hadn’t encountered or understood before. Got your magnetic bottles improved? Great, only now the plasma’s behaving differently, stuff like that.
Heck I dunno.
Edit: I agree with the general principle of ‘good, cheap, or fast, pick two of the three’. The massive funding politics brings also brings IMO other things toxic to progress in most cases. I like to imagine SkunkWorks to be an exception, although since I’ve been running my mouth about them I’ve been reading, and I’m starting to believe that their practices might be optimized to achieve good results specifically in aviation, and possibly not in general. So who knows.
If the ghost of Kelly Johnson is hanging around the Skunk Works, I would put my money on them.
RGraf, you list 11 potential documents. Do you think there are 11 Lukewarmers? 🙂
I think Mosher would counsel that we just accept what the IPCC has written for most of it–without the editorializing.
Tom Fuller,
I’m OK with the WG-1 report itself, not the Summary for Policymakers. Although, as a lukewarmer, I believe that the sensitivity is in the low end of the range and is unlikely to be as high as 3K/doubling. In fact, no more than a 2K rise by 2100 is likely, IMO, if we do nothing. WG-2 and WG-3 are a different matter. There’s much less science and much more speculation in those reports and I don’t accept their conclusions at all.
Here is the Heartland Institute’s position on climate as expressed in letter to the US Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works on March 10, 2015:
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â– There is no scientific consensus on the human role in climate change.
â– Future warming due to human greenhouse gases will likely be much less than IPCC forecasts.
â– Carbon dioxide has not caused weather to become more extreme, polar ice and sea ice to melt, or sea level rise to accelerate. These were all false alarms.
â– The likely benefits of man-made global warming exceed the likely costs.
Here is what this means for public policy:
â– There is no need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and no point in attempting to do so.
■It’s time to repeal unnecessary and expensive policies.
â– Future policies should aim at fostering economic growth to adapt to natural climate change.
Link here.
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I am thinking this is barely lukewarm. But the bigger issue is being a think tank they are a target for vilification. Warmers, including the media (MSM) label them as evil conspiring polluters/deniers. If there is a method for the blogosphere to organically create a counter-consensus this would be hard to be propagandized as the work of a Dr. Evil.
Heartland is not lukewarm because they are not “warmers”.
Heartland is certainly wrong on the first bullet point you cite, R Graf. Every survey of climate scientists I’ve seen show that about 66% of them attribute half or more of the current warming to human causes and pretty specifically to greenhouse gases.
There is a consensus. It just isn’t 97%.
This is my point. There is no group of voice for a Lukewarmer position. Blogs do not have a position that can be cited.
Well, unless there are a lot more lukewarmers than have publicly identified themselves in the climate blogosphere, I’m not at all sure we could muster the competencies required to address the 11 topics you name.
And there are a few topics you’ve left unaddressed–adaptation and mitigation, for example. I could write on alternative energy. If Mac were interested (where’s he been?) he could obviously write on paleo–but he’s never even said he’s a lukewarmer. Our gracious hostess could write on more than one, if she chose, but we don’t want to drag her away from her knitting too much… Mosh for temps? He may have raised more temperatures than CO2, that’s for sure.
Which one are you sticking your hand up for, R Graf?
Potential starting point from the archives…. https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/recapitulation-of-some-lukewarm-beliefs-ideas-and-occasionally-knowledge/
Tom,
The way I read the Heartland point on consensus is that that there is not a consensus on a single coherent explanation of the human role in climate change (and why have we ceded to the climate obsessed their marketing name change from AGW?). Consider how the mishmash of doom-by-CO2 papers have flooded the public space. Many are conflicting in CO2 impacts, many are are over the top (Venus), and many are rent seeking garbage. Or a combination of any of those.
@ Mark Bofill (Comment #136637),
Mark, I meant hidden secret metaphorically, not as if someone had the secret and tucked it away from the rest of the workers.
Yes, it is obviously extremely difficult.
Hiya Hunter! Yeah, but there’s good stuff too. I mean, really–temps have risen, attribution may be vague, but we’re the prime suspect with the candlestick in the library. Maybe it’s equal measures dark soot, deforestation and CO2, but out of those three only one is going to double in the next couple of decades.
Hunter,
🙂 I know you didn’t mean that. I’m sorry if I implied I thought you did.
Sometimes people seem (to me) to interpret the fact that we haven’t come up with a practical implementation in 60 years now in ways I don’t think logically follow, so I like to get to the particulars.
Tom Fuller,
WRT deforestation:
My understanding is that about half of all deforestation took place before the start of the industrial period, and that current net forest area loss is exclusively in South America and Africa; that is not where warming is greatest. Elsewhere forest area is increasing (that is, increasing most everywhere that industrialization is ‘mature’). The trajectory of warming in the pre-industrial period could have been impacted by early deforestation, but I don’t think this is obvious, and its net impact on warming today may be similarly non-obvious.
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The economic driving forces for current forest destruction in the Southern Hemisphere seem to vary (eg. desire for more farmland in Brazil, need for cooking firewood in much of Africa). If we want to reduce forest loss, the obvious (to me!) approaches are 1) stop converting food crops to ‘bio-fules’ where that conversion is near energy neutral (or worse!), which means all of North America and Europe; this will lower global food prices and make additional conversion of forest to farmland less attractive, and 2) give desperately poor people access to something other than wood and dung (eg. kerosene) for cooking. This would save many millions of poor people from the health impacts of wood (and dung) cooking, and give them more time for productive economic activity in place of gathering wood and dung.
Tom,
Soot has been an elephant in the room. And an elephant that is being moved out of the room, gradually.
It could have been moved out much more quickly by clean coal burning technologies being made easily available to third world and emerging world (China and India) power plants. The more rapid reduction of using wood, charcoal and coal for direct home cooking and heating, etc.
Something to consider: CO2 has gone up steadily, but emissions quality has improved with soot reduction. And we have a pause that is extending out. Hmmm…
In addition to BC soot, which is enhanced by SO2 btw, lets not forget that the so-called cooling industrial SO2 aerosol also rains down eventually. Lets see: BC, SOx, NOx and bio-aerosol sounds like petri dish heaven for low-albedo exothermic reactions. One wonders what effects this might have on sea ice and ice sheets. One also wonders if this is one reason for the NH/SH disparity.
IMO, the difference between a luck-warmer(TM Howard, coined here first) and a warmista is the order of responses. For me, it’s #1 air pollution control, #2 adaptation and #3 economically sensible decarbonization. The self-proclaimed “evidence” based alarmist wants decarbonization uber alles without doing a proper risk assessment.
Also, that Heartland manifesto is 100% denier-ville koolaide.
Hunter: IMO (which means it’s unquestionably correct) the pause is 100% ocean circulation. It’s a pause and not a decline because we have merely shifted western industrial air pollution to the Asian brown cloud (ABC, TM Howard). This is not a good indicator of effective emission control. IMO, getting a handle on the ABC is what will restore arctic ice as it’s a leveraged forcing, not a mild diffuse forcing like CO2. TSZ (apologies to Nietzsche)
Howard,
Fortunately we do not have to wonder about soot effect on ice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSJF5FJivIc
Historically it appears that the NH and SH have consistently been our of synch irt ice cover.
I would not accept the term of “luck warmer” except in jest. There is nothing lucky about observing, accurately, that the climate is not cooperating with the alarmist claptrap of the warmistas.
As to the pro-forma knock on Heartland: Why? They happen to be correct and/or reasonable in nearly every point. Certianly more so than any warmist hype site. But they are “right wing” and so must be knocked as a matter of course.
Hunter
Yes. My take is they do not accept that recent warming is caused by greenhouse gases that were added to the atmosphere by mankind. This position is what makes them ‘not warmers’.
Warmers accept that recent warming is due to GHG’s added my mankind. If one is not a “warmer”, they aren’t a “lukewarmer”. They are something else– “cooler” or “no-changers” are neutral terms.
Observing that someone is ‘not a warmer’ is not a “slam”. If our understanding of their position is incorrect, Heartland could clarify. I don’t think they will “clarify” in the direction of saying that their position is that man has added GhG’s and those GHG’s cause a detectable amount of warming.
lucia,
Good point.
CO2 always effects the atmosphere.
Hunter: 1) petri dish demonstrations do not always translate to geologic scales. Estimating the actual order-of-magnitude contribution of aerosol condensation and precipitation to ice melting is not trivial. 2) The climate change mechanisms of glaciations and DO events are quite different from the present anthrogeneric changes that effect climate, so to say that there is always a lead-lag between NH/SH does not mean that the same processes are causing this now. However, dust accumulation spikes are always evident prior to intra- and inter-glacial meltoffs, so perhaps the greater NH sources of mineral dust is similar to NH air pollutants. 3) Heartland is not right-wing, they are Libertarians protecting investments by employing useful idiots to do their bidding.
“petri dish demonstrations do not always translate to geologic scales”
Sure, but ice core tubes and tree ring widths do.
Andrew
Andrew_KY: Tree-rings are pretty thin gruel, however, they are more directly connected to the geology and to past times than a lab experiment. However, ice cores are direct samples of geologic features and when you get enough of them, they directly translate to geologic scales. Perhaps you are not aware, but mining and oil exploration are directly dependent on borehole cores. You wouldn’t be able to spew your ignorant non-sense over the internet if cores did not accurately translate to geologic scales.
“ice cores are direct samples of geologic features and when you get enough of them, they directly translate to geologic scales”
Howard,
Please clarify how many ‘enough’ is, because I was unaware that ice cores had the properties you describe.
Andrew
Do some homework Andrew_KY. There is very little controversy on ice cores and ocean sediments which all line up reasonably well. It’s the Holocene data that’s more questionable due to surface effects and crap proxies. There are hundreds of ice and sediment core papers covering the Pleistocene available on the net.
Read more and post less.
“Read more and post less.”
You sound like Mosher. Now I’m even more dubious.
Andrew
Howard,
It is odd that only Heartland of all the many dozens of think tanks is to be singled out for “protecting investments”.
It must be because the other NGO’s and think tanks have agendas solely based on discerning objective truth and reasonably conveying those truths.
Howard,
On climate blogs, no matter if the blog is CAGW, lukewarmer, or skeptic, you will find many who are impervious to all information and logic. I suggest you not waste your time once that becomes obvious.
Howard 136675 luck warmer registered to Eli 13/2/2015 sorry.
Pause kills cause.
CO2 rise must cause temperature rise relative to CO 2 level virtually instantly, in the sense that the air temp must go up to the level mandated by the CO2 level when heated by the sun daily. Only easy changing confounding factors are the clouds/precipitation and the surface temp of the oceans.
Since there is a pause and CO2 rise has not caused the necessary temp rise there must be feedback mechanisms of cloud / albedo counteracting. This seems so obvious to state and see that I despair when even the lukewarmers here hide their eyes and whistle and look away.
SteveF, can you explain why the air is not heating up each day to the level demanded and dictated by Arrhenius without using natural variability?
Do I have a legitimate gripe.
Hunter: Heartland manifesto was just posted up-thread, therefore the current target. If you have a beef with enviro NGO’s no one is stopping you from blogging till the cows come home to roost.
SteveF: I hear you, thanks.
Angtech: 6/1/2015 beats 13/2/2015, which is a complex-dimensional date outside our Universe. Regarding pause and ignoring SteveF, we don’t know how low the temps might have declined to in the absence of the complex package of anthropodunk forcings +/- fast feedbacks.
In fact, negative natural variation could be masking a very high TCR AGW. Perhaps positive natural variation could be masking a very low TCR AGW.
This seems so obvious to state and see that I despair when even the skeptics here hide their eyes and whistle and look away.
I don’t know if you renember the random walk debate era
Exactly! If there is a TOA radiative imbalance it is being caused by the ocean uptake at least 10X more than land uptake. Therefore, an analysis of the trends of the air temp rise (in summer) or drop (in winter) as air come over continents should give a perfect control. All one would would need to do is data mine for identical weather patterns of near peak summer and trough winter and plot the gradient effect trend through the years.
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Comparing NH to SH because NH has more land is pretty lame when you have data over several continents for a 100 years. This would obviously be computer project. Anyone game? I will let Lucia off the hook on this one. 🙂
Doing an analysis of the tail of the marine effect would have the extra bonus of validating or indicting the infamous historical adjustments and also expose urban heat island effects since both would create anomalies from the expected smooth gradient from marine temp as air warms or cools according to its duration over land, (corrected for cloudiness).
Only a fraction of solar radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere, most of that by clouds, which likely radiate most of it away the same day. Even the stratosphere, which has a low heat capacity and whose temperature profile is controlled entirely by radiation, would take weeks to months to equilibrate to a large step change in CO2. The troposphere has a much higher heat capacity and the ocean orders of magnitude more. The diurnal temperature variation of sea surface temperature, for example, is on the order of 1 degree or less. The equilibration time of the oceans is measured in centuries to millenia. Why would anyone think that a new steady state could be achieved in a 24 hour cycle?
If there is zero radiative imbalance then statistically there should be exactly as many days of the year that the marine effect is cooling air to land as there are days of providing warming air to land. To the extent that ocean air cools land more than it warms would thus be directly proportional to the radiative imbalance.
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To the extent that the marine effect can be plotted to terminate at a Y axis equilibrium temperature, this value will represent a relational observation point of a steady state temperature as if there were no oceans on Earth. To the extent that there is a historical trend of Y value rising one should be provided a direct observational method to calculate the effect of a delta in radiative transfer steady state through history net of ocean uptake. With this trend being delta T one could use the equation for solving ECS by also plugging in CO2 from the Keeling Curve and plugging zero for ocean uptake.
Ron Graf,
Opaque and incomprehensible. Please write down corresponding equations and data.
SteveF and Howard,
Here’s are some other typical tactics on climate blogs:
Don’t answer questions.
Just say your opponent is x and declare victory without resolving any issues being discussed.
Decide opponents must have ESP and tell them to go do homework, but don’t provide any references or specific direction on how/where to do it.
Andrew
My logic is based on comparing the relative heat capacities of the ocean covered portion of Earth with the land covered portion. If the Earth’s surface had a heat capacity of zero theoretically the temperature would immediately adjust to whatever the radiative steady state was. There could never be an imbalance because the only thing that creates the imbalance is the lag caused by heat capacity, mainly of the oceans.
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So theoretically if on average there is radiative balance at the TOA, half of the year it will be out of balance warm and the other half cold. The higher the combined heat capacity of the atmosphere and surface the more buffering or lag in temperature adjustment. Since the combination of land and air has less heat capacity than ocean plus air we have a controlled experiment because all other factors are in the atmosphere and they are shared by both. Therefore if we want to observe a change in forcing we know that forcing will affect the land-air temperature at a faster rate than ocean-air temp exactly proportional to their heat capacities. If a new unknown forcing is introduced to the system we can derive what the new GMST that would produce balance by plotting the difference of the reaction over land vs. reaction over water. Knowing the actual heat capacities of both one simply plots on a graph or equation to zero heat capacity to instantly find the new steady state GMST.
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The only thing confounding this is that the ocean turnover variable in space and time. However, if one has big data, which we do, one can plot the relative change in temperatures as air passes from ocean to coastal stations to stations gradually further inland. There is the variable of wind speed and direction, time of year versus ground temp, but that all can be either crunched by computer of averaged out as a wash if there is enough data.
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So for a thought experiment the Sun suddenly doubled its brightness. One could plot the change in trend of the rate of temp increase of air over ocean vs. the rate of increase of warming over land relative to history to quantify the effect of the forcing change. Then just plot to zero heat capacity and one should have the new TOA balanced GMST projection.
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For ECS (GMST increase for doubling of CO2)
ECS = F2xCO2 ⨯ ΔT / ΔF
where ΔF is corrected for all influence but Keeling Curve CO2 and ΔT is the change in zero heat capacity extrapolated GMST
R Graf,
When it’s summer in the NH, it’s winter in the SH. I don’t see why there should be a positive radiative imbalance half the year and a negative one the other half if the planet has achieved a steady state.
In fact, there’s a negative imbalance for the entire year, as shown by the steadily increasing global ocean heat content.
DeWitt,
Well, the Earth’s orbit is elliptical. It’s gonna get more energy at perihelion than at aphelion. Wait, did I mix those two up? No, that’s right.
R Graf,
In addition to ocean transport of heat, there is a large transport of heat between land areas and ocean areas by the atmosphere, as well as between different latitudes (whether land or ocean). The transport of heat takes place on multiple time scales, further complicating modeling. Solar intensity undergoes a large seasonal change due to Earth’s slightly elliptical orbit (about 12 watts/M^2 change, globally averaged… after albedo is taken into account), further complicating any effort to tie seasonal changes to climate sensitivity. The is no simple “controlled experiment” offered by seasonal variation.
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The system has lots of moving parts. A well constructed GCM (including accurate clouds, ocean heat transport, heat uptake, and boundary layer physics) could theoretically give you an accurate ECS estiamte, but the GCMs are fraught with uncertainties, approximations, and some outright kludges. There are no easy answers. Simple EBM approaches (like what Nic Lewis uses), which do not suffer from the parameter/kludge problems GCMs do, can at least provide guidance on the credible range of sensitivity. With improved (measured!) constraints on aerosol effects and ocean heat uptake, EBMs have the potential to narrow the credible range to where it is good enough to develop rational estimates of the future effects of GHG warming, and then rational public policy can be developed in light of those estimated effects.
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Based on everything I have seen from the ‘modeling community’, I would not count on “first principles” calculations of sensitivity (from GCMs) being a useful contributor to public policy choices any time in the next decade, if ever. (I note that an accurate “first principles” calculation would have very little uncertainty…. an accurate model gives you an answer and that’s that.) But IMO, the modelers are too wedded to the parameterizations and kludges which support claims of high sensitivity to make much technical progress any time soon; they think they know the “right” answer, so it seems unlikely the models will be adjusted to yield any other answer. Constraints on ECS from EBMs could guide the modelers to fix the parameters and kludges, but there seems to be a lot of resistance, since the “right” answer is already widely accepted, in spite of vast model uncertainty, and in spite of contrary EBM estimates. As Richard Lindzen noted long ago, whenever there is a discrepancy between the models and measured reality, them modelers always look for problems with the measurements…. they have the whole process by which models are normally improved upside down.
Mark,
Yes. I have those numbers somewhere but forgot to look. Perihelion occurs in the SH summer, so the larger ocean area in the SH tends to balance things out.
DeWitt,
My point was just that it would be odd for the Earth not to be in radiative imbalance, + for half and – for half the year, given that for half the year we’re approaching perihelion and energy in is increasing, and for half the year we’re approaching aphelion and energy in is decreasing. I’d expect that of any object following the Earth’s orbit.
DeWitt, Yes, the TOA imbalance is defined globally. But it calculated as the sum of all the grid points. Each of these points in my theoretical zero heat capacity extreme example should adjust very fast as there is no lag from previous retained heat.
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Steve, the controlled experiment takes place even in a very complex system. But if you have enough measurements and knowledge of relationships you can factor them into the equation. And you can look for Rosetta Stone points where all the variables are the same but a few and form a matrix of unknowns. My point was that where air comes from the sea onto land most all variables will remain the same except for surface heat uptake (or radiation). The differential of temperature trends between the two should be able to be extrapolated in order to determine a theoretical zero heat capacity trend at the Y axis.
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This is already commonly understood when people point out that the NH is warming faster than the SH. My point is that we can use the data to focus in on the marine effect as a tool to determine, TOA imbalance, ECS, and validation of local temperature recordings. The data analysis does not have to all be on a global scale. Thus the validation methodology itself can be validated by independent analysis done of the marine effect in many localities on the globe.
My proposed computer model would not be a GCM but a complex data analysis “white box.” Its inputs would be all the typical weather station recordings as well as the stations latitude and altitude and distance from shore. The analysis would be to look at local trends over the recorded history for rate of daily temp variation as well as diurnal versus distance from shore.
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If the TOA imbalance is such that GMST is rising one should be able to plot the trend from the coast inward especially on the summer solstice at the higher latitudes when the sea temp is most lagging insolation. So my first historical trend study would be the marine effect on June 20-23 in England and on Dec. 21-24 in Argentina.
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One would expect those locations with the least marine climate and higher latitudes to breaking summer heat records the most if there is a radiative imbalance.
R Graf and Mark,
The change in insolation from the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit is swamped at any given location by the seasonal variation in insolation, even at the equator (the 0 line on the graph). There probably is a global eccentricity signal, but pulling it out of the noise won’t be easy.
R Graf,
There are smart people who do this sort of thing for a living. It’s extremely unlikely that any idea you have hasn’t already been thought of and tested. Rather than speculate on some idea you have, seemingly hoping to get someone to do the work for you, try doing the work yourself. The data you need are probably available if you actually look.
We know there’s a TOA radiative imbalance nearly as well as we know the sun will come up tomorrow. That’s the only way that global ocean heat content can increase continuously while GMST is also rising, even if it isn’t rising as fast as the models predict.
Especially not from global temperature since globally, temperatures are highest in June when global insolation is lowest.
This stands to reason.
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However, things are still not black and white, because,
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we’re still not sure exactly how much OHC has actually increased.
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and the pattern of ocean heating at depth ( Southern Ocean and Antarctic periphery where sea ice has been increasing ) more resembles advective changes than a more uniform increase that I’d expect from radiative forcing.
DeWitt,
Yep, that’s so. Sorry, I see now that I was picking an irrelevant nit.
In fact ( regarding OHC ) the satellite era has the SST for the Southern Ocean actually cooling. There doesn’t seem to be a good correspondence to surface heating mixing to depths.
R Graf,
I expect you are going to be stymied and frustrated when you start writing down equations and code. The system does not lend itself to a description by simple models, at least beyond a global EBM, which is more like a black-box treatment (we don’t care much about the details inside, only the average).
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But more power to ya if you can generate something meaningful.
Andrew_KY: You hit the nail square on the head: It’s hard for you people to have meaningful conversations with those who have adult expectations.
“you people”
As opposed to you trolls, I guess.
Andrew
Gack.
De Witt first.
You can have a SST rise while still in radiative balance.
In fact you have to have it.
Proof.
Have a day with no clouds, or better still a year.
Consequence more heat in ( this also means more heat out)
Radiative balance is zero.
Sea is hotter as it heats up more to reflect the extra heat back.
You and SteveF are referring though to the fact that CO2 is increasing, a different scenario, and aware that this raises the heat of the atmosphere feel that this heat is allowed to siphon off slowly over Millenia into the ocean increasing the temperature of the whole ocean to that of this surrounding blanket.
In this scenario you have to have a radiation imbalance.
You know it is there.
And by your definition this has to heat up the ocean.
It is your assertion that it is the only way OHC can rise that is at fault.
If you do not like the cloud analogy you could just opt for an increase in solar insolation which again , I stress would lead to an increase in SST , OHC but no change in radiation imbalance.
Of course, this look at the more shallow OHC ( 0-700 ) is more consistent:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/graphics/images/Assessment%20Reports/AR5%20-%20WG1/Chapter%2003/Fig3-01.jpg
R Graf
Some overlap of views, sorry.
However doubling the sun’s brightness is not a good argument/thought experiment.
Practically if it did double instantly there would not be anyone around to record any data as we would all be toast.
My view as expressed above is that there is no practical change in radiative balance, the heat that comes in has to go out at the same time. The temperature changes in the oceans and atmosphere and land are a blend of insolation including all forms of sun generated energy, which varies with the sun’s heat and orbit, shadowing from eclipses, and variations in the complex sun eart/moon and other planetary orbits. Also with the albedo which can apparently by affected by aerosols of human and natural causation, clouds, precipitation and finally by the various earthly heat extrusions.
As De Witt points out above, accepting CO2 as causing air warming (correct) the earth has to be in negative TOA imbalance.
I believe Mosher has said it is easy to work out TOA with the data we already have, with or without models. No one does it because in a pause TOA imbalance is implausible, hence ” the missing heat”
angech,
Radiative imbalance is the difference between incoming and outgoing radiation. An increase in incoming radiation creates the same imbalance as a decrease by the same amount in outgoing radiation and vice versa. The same goes for a change in albedo as incoming and outgoing radiation is summed over all wavelengths, not just the thermal IR for outgoing and UV-near IR for incoming radiation. The fact that an imbalance exists is a necessary, but not sufficient condition to show that the increase in ghg concentration since 1850 is a major factor.
De Witt 136699
Thank you for your reply to my question.
I wish to say I did not talk about acheiving a steady state in regard to the oceans at any time and agree that it would take Millenia accepting your conditions.
I did explain why one could expect the atmospheric temperature to be immediately higher than it is given the concentration of CO2.
Do you honestly say that if CO2 is at level x then the temperature can stay lower than temp y, the one it is supposed to be at for CO 2 x ?
That is rewriting the physics books.
No one, not even SteveX, will explain why the temperature is not where it must be according to Arrhenius.
Not next week,year or millennium.
Now.
The laws of physics state heat in fe prom sun, x causes temp y that day, that time, not worrying about heat having to drain off into oceans.
Finally Howard.
An apology, I live in an alternate complex universe called Australia, hence the date confusion. We go day ,month, year, unlike the logical Usa system.
A shame really as you would certainly win with your date in my universe.
I am glad I’m at least out of throwing range of squishy fruits.
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I like DeWitt’s comment best: “Graf, There are smart people…”
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Yes, like M&F and Mann and whoever didn’t think to check CRUTEM until 2012 to find they were double weighting land from the SH.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=6660#comment-7412
Another new nuclear fusion design announced here.
They use one magnetic field to crush and another to contain the plasma.
R Graf,
I wish them success, but history shows fusion energy is a lot more difficult than people think. (‘Fusion is the energy source of the future….. and always will be.’)
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These kinds of optimistic public announcements of likely future success with projects which are very, very difficult are often related to the company needing money. When the venture capital folks are not convinced, they pitch to the public to get investors, or in the hope of getting political support for public funding. That may sound a little jaded, but it is based on long experience.
“they pitch to the public to get investors”
True, but not a bad thing if they are pitching honestly.
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Speaking of honesty, here is an article in “The Week” by smart people, for smart people, explaining climate sensitivity if you want to laugh or cry: http://theweek.com/articles/558645/how-harm-climate-change-could-explode-exponentially-down-road
R Graf,
Yah, that’s an interesting approach, but I don’t think it’s exactly new. I’ve read about these guys before.
Actually, as I understand it, they are using mechanical energy from the pistons to try to drive the fusion. They believe with modern computer speeds they can manage the timing / synchronization of all this so that the wave of energy from the pistons travels through the molten lead and mashes the fuel together strongly enough to overcome the coulomb barrier.
Unorthodox but very interesting. I wish them luck too, but I haven’t seen anything that gives me any particular hope or confidence that that approach will get them there. And I’m a gullible starry eyed dreamer compared to most when it comes to fusion. 🙂
R Graf,
The article is tripe, and reflects just how little the author understands about science. He does, however, appear to understand the role of propaganda in advancing a political philosophy. I don’t fault political hacks for being, well, political hacks. I do fault climate scientists and journal editors for publishing what amount to little more than Schneiderian ‘scary stories’ to advance their policy goals. What is normal behavior for political hacks is dishonest for scientists.
Unfortunately, there are lags ( and leads ) everywhere, some of which feedback into changes in net radiance ( thunderstorm clouds in the afternoons for example ).
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Here is a good quote from ‘The Physics of Climate’ ( Peixoto and Ooort )
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Also, we have a tenuous a grasp on exactly what the TOA imbalance is ( the mean indicates a deficit since 2000, but that’s highly uncertain ).
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Here is the Net radiative balance from CERES data.
The variance in anomalies probably doesn’t do justice to an even greater uncertainty ( imprecision and inaccuracy from angular dependence and other things as well as real variability from clouds and the like ).
R Graf,
Another example of an interesting fusion tech, this time involving implosions to generate fusion and propulsion at NASA: nuclear rocket propulsion. Strictly propulsion though, not for use on Earth in generating power. I hadn’t run across this specific project before.
late to the party.
Since I said it first, and no one has said it better, I’ll repeat myself.
“(The short answer is that we believe global warming to be real and potentially quite serious, but that ‘when offered an over/under bet on 3C sensitivity, we’ll take the under’–Steve Mosher)”
When time permits I should probably expand on this.
Mosher: “we believe”
Sounds religious.
Andrew
R Graf,
You do realize that in your zero heat capacity surface, the temperature will drop to the cosmic microwave background temperature the instant the sun goes below the horizon. One of the few things that Gehrlich and Tscheuschner did in their paper was to calculate the average temperature under those conditions. It’s -115°C for a sphere with unit emissivity.
You could detect the warming of the atmosphere if CO2 were to be doubled instantly. But that’s not what’s happening. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing about 0.5%/year. We can and have, however, detected the cooling of the stratosphere from increased CO2 and less ozone.
There are ~10,000kg of air above every square meter of the surface. That air has a heat capacity equal to about 3m of water. It doesn’t heat and cool instantly.
Andrew_KY,
Do you believe the sun will come up tomorrow? Does that have anything to do with religion or is it experience and judgement?
“Do you believe the sun will come up tomorrow?”
Lucia,
1. Please reprimand DeWitt for asking rhetorical questions. 🙂
DeWitt,
I do believe the sun will come up tomorrow based on the fact that it has done so every day I’ve ever experienced.
If you are trying to compare that belief with things like AGW that are immaterial concepts not accepted by everyone and don’t “come up tomorrow” for all to see, I’d say you aren’t making a very good comparison for sameness.
Andrew
Meh, Steven didn’t say anything meriting this consternation, or whatever this is. What’s with the fixation on the term ‘belief’? Do lukewarmers not have ‘beliefs’ about the magnitude of CS? (EDIT: rhetorical. I thought they did. There, fixed.)
How about ‘opinions’ instead of ‘beliefs’, does a synonym get us around the issue?
“How about ‘opinions’ instead of ‘beliefs’”
Mark,
I think ‘beliefs’ is the correct word to use in Mosher’s case.
Andrew
Sorry, I just think the issue is silly. Is anybody here prepared to suggest that Lucia is a lukewarmer because she has a religious belief in her position? I doubt that, both that it could possibly be so and that anybody would have the temerity to suggest such a thing. It’s silly.
(EDIT: Sorry Andrew, cross post. I’m not with you on that. Normally I’d ask for you to support the idea with evidence, that Steven’s lukewarmer ideas are a matter of religious belief (if that’s actually what you are saying), but I’m not much interested anyway. That’s like arguing about whether or not Kevin Bacon was in the movie Footloose.)
“Steven’s lukewarmer ideas are a matter of religious belief”
Well, he does have a lot invested in Warmer ideas and seems to have more than a scientific devotion to his Warmerism.
Andrew
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I don’t know about judgement ( which has an emotional component ) but experience is a relevant aspect.
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We have a model (earth orbiting the sun) by which we predict.
And we have tens of thousands of daily observations by which we test the model predictions (sunrise and sunset, eclipses, seasons, and other).
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Now to climate.
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We have models making century scale predictions which no one can verify because the experiment hasn’t been completed even once. And there is good indication that climate changes even without external forcing.
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We do have a third of a century of observations of temperature trends somewhere between 0.5K per century and 1.6K per century, so the under in Mosher’s wager seems a good bet but it is still not based on complete, much less repeated experience.
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And recall that it wasn’t that long ago in human history that people did make sunrise a religious event – sacrifice or the sun won’t rise.
DeWitt: “That air has a heat capacity equal to about 3m of water.”
My extrapolation would be very inexact as are the measurements recorded by the stations, and in among many confounding influences. But emerging above all this we clearly recognize a marine climate effect and it is logical that one could extrapolate the elimination of this effect. Once that is done one could simply extrapolate further to eliminate the land effect by assumption that it is proportional to its heat capacity relative the ocean’s. This leaves the heat capacity of the air untouched in the calculation because the coupling effect is preserved when subtracting land effect from ocean effect. The second extrapolation would be removing land effect and coupled air (lower troposphere).
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I realize that zero heat capacity throughout the atmosphere would collapse the lapse rate and give us Moon conditions. My extrapolation is simply to quantify most of the heat sink that would happen within a day or so. Even rough estimating can yield great accuracy when working with Big Data and many known relationships.
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One can presume this has been thought of. Most ideas are already thought of. That does not mean they are worthless. It could be that the preliminary investigation revealed some undesired implications. What if it revealed that the marine effect has not changed to increase warming in late June days in far inland weather stations? What if it revealed the temperature records were highly spurious or unreliable? Could not the investigation have been then thus buried?
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The fact that local historical studies of peak marine effect have not been published might make it more likely to reveal important information.
I made a mistake. The first extrapolation, (from the plot the Marine Effect curve) would provide temp trends as if there were no ocean, just land and air. This extrapolation would be based on recorded historical weather station data. The second extrapolation would eliminate land and coupled lower troposphere heat capacity effect based on physical assumptions of land and air’s capacity relative to the ocean thermocline’s.
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After the trends are established and the actual observed Marine Effect is quantified the first business item would be to check all station data for robustness as well as the effect. Certainly there are weather stations that have already been exposed as badly kept, or having uncorrected or poorly corrected UHI, etc… This could be another independent check.
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Years following major volcanic activity or any radiative anomaly could be validated and quantified by its affect on Marine Effect.
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Once solar, volcanic and aerosol effects have been quantified the remainder would be GHG because this method removes biggest interference, natural variability, which is surely caused mostly by the oceans.
The global TOA radiative imbalance could be studied by looking at the sum of amplitude of Marine Effect in the vernal equinox minus the sum for the same effect during the autumnal equinox of the same year.
Before DeWitt catches this: the comparison of the NH and SH would be a simultaneous check on each other on each equinox to find the difference. The check of the hemispheres against themselves would then be on each subsequent equinox to see their difference — a double check.
We currently have 3600 ARGO floats which make temperature and salinity profile measurements from 0-2000m depth every ten days or so. That makes 360 measurements per day. The system has been in place for more than ten years now. The millionth profile was collected in 2007. The rate of change of ocean heat content is far and away the best measure we have of TOA radiative imbalance. The precision of satellite measurements are about two orders of magnitude away from being able to determine the TOA imbalance. I seriously doubt your surface measurements will be even that good.
“Mosher: “we believeâ€
Sounds religious.
Andrew”
Do you believe that?
#####################
I say we believe global warming is real.
I don’t know it for certain. in fact, I’m certain, that I know few things for certain.
When I say I believe, that means my position could be wrong.
It means I am open to evidence showing otherwise.
long ago when I was a christian if you ask me if I believed in christ
I would say no. I would have said I had faith. which is belief in spite of the evidence or in absence of it.
So do I have faith in global warming? no.
Do I believe in it? yes.
Do I know? no.
Why? because I can imagine evidence that would force me to change my belief.
Belief really doesn’t have anything special to do with religion. One can have beliefs for any number of reasons, including spiritual and non-spiritual ones. That a person believes something doesn’t tell us anything about why they believe it.
On a different note, Steven Mosher says:
Erm. If you had “belief in spite of the evidence or in absence of it,” which is how you defined faith, I think you believed in Christ. I don’t think you can have a belief in Christ yet not believe in Christ.
>.<
“That’s like arguing about whether or not Kevin Bacon was in the movie Footloose.”
Fuller’s Law: Analogies always fail in climate conversations.
Bacon didn’t appear in the remake…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068242/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1
Payne:
I never said that Argo was a bad idea. Any tool that independently confirms the Argo result I am sure would be welcome. It’s not like this is topic that governments aren’t willing to spend trillions of dollars on. If we are so confident we know exactly the whole ocean’s average temperature why are “smart people” arguing for missing heat there?
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I think the answer is the ocean is so variable, poorly and unpredictably mixed, that even measuring the top half of it with 3600+ instruments gives a very erratic annual plot. I would be curious to see if the oceans could be taken out of the equation.
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Marine Effect would not only give a window on radiative imbalance but also on ECS. And it would provide validation tool for individual land stations as well as systems for correcting for UHI.
Tom.
I want you to know this: I hate you. But I mean that in the nicest possible way.
Since Lucia is letting us talk religion… 😉
Jesus asked that we “believe” in Him. Of course, there are different kinds and depths of belief and ways to believe. Science is the thing that moves the mind away from beliefs and towards established facts. If your science starts with “we believe” you have a fundamental unforced philosophical problem and have moved in the direction opposite science.
Andrew
Brandum
“Erm. If you had “belief in spite of the evidence or in absence of it,†which is how you defined faith, I think you believed in Christ. I don’t think you can have a belief in Christ yet not believe in Christ”
Read it again.
If you asked me do I believe. I would have said no. That’s a fact.
I would have said I have faith. That’s also a fact.
And I would have explained the difference, as I did. Also a fact
You dont think I can have a belief and not have a belief.
That’s ok.
I was discussing what I would have said.
Further, Its not a matter of believing and also not believing
The point is two kinds of belief. One which I would have called faith.
In other words the point of answering NO to the question “do you believe?” is Rhetorical.
So read carefully. I did not say I both believed and didnt believe. I described how I would answer questions to Illustrate a difference in particular kinds of belief.
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Well, yes. Argo is a great tool and gives us far more data and coverage than we ever had, with two very important exceptions: the Arctic and the Antarctic.
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Supposedly that will change in the coming years as they’ve got some sea ice accommodating designs coming on line ( though I expect there will still be issues ). But consider what very important hole this has left.
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While tropical and midlatitude waters do store heat near the surface, the bulk of the ocean volume is dominated by polar deep water formation – the very region that Argo doesn’t cover. And even with floats swimming around the polar regions, maximal deep water formation evidently occurs in extremely narrow regions around Antarctica.
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Argo is good an meaningful, but by missing the largest areas of heat exchange ( and by limits of 2000m depth ) may still not be good enough.
Under belief at merriam webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/belief
It seems to me in order of certainly:
“I think so” = “I believe so”. Neither means that one claims absolutely certain. (This is how it would work in testimony in court. )
“X is certain ” , “I am certain of X”, “I have faith in X”. Expresses certainty that x is true. This is stronger than merely thinking or believing X.
So one can “believe or think” “X” but not have “faith” or a sense of “certainty” about x. In otherwords: Belief is contingent on … something. In science that would be evidence.
Faith is not contingent. If you have “faith” you believe regardless of evidence. If the evidence cuts against one’s belief, the faithful would anticipate there is some error in the evidence.
But it’s worth nothing: Faith is sort of belief on steroids. If you have ‘faith x is true’ you also “think/believe it’s true”. At least I think that’s how most people use belief. I don’t think they say “I have faith in x, but I don’t believe in x’.
Mind you: If someone says “do you believe x”. in conversation one might say “No, I have faith in x”. But this has to do with the way conversation works. Sometimes people say “Do you like x”, and someone might answer “No…. (pause). I love it”, stressing.” But really, people generally consider “like” qualitatively similar to “love” but weaker.
Lucia.
Yup.
That is why I put it in the form of a conversation.
Do you believe in x? Nope I have faith. I will believe it
No matter what the evidence says..
Not that hard to understand if your goal is understanding.
Language and conversation is full of these types
Ifuses
Steven and Brandon,
Did you ever experience a couple that can’t help but correct every sentence the other composes, and this dominates their communication but it’s boring for others? Just curious.
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While ignoring my grammar and spelling would you mind giving my Marine Effect analysis idea a critique?
If that’s the case, then why is deep water so much older than surface water? The North Pacific deep water is more than 1000 years older by carbon dating than the surface water.
Lucia:
Yup.
The way I always put it is “faith = belief + trust, which is pretty much what Merriam-Webster says too:
The way I use the words, I would never say “I have faith in X but I don’t believe in it”. I do think it’s possible to trust something without really believing in it though (heuristics and “rules of thumbs” are examples of this—you don’t think the underlying heuristic is true even though you rely on it for your work).
Since this definition area is working towards religious use of words, it makes me wonder what the religious might think of the word, “faith”.
Here is a Catholic Dictionary definition:
“FAITH. The acceptance of the word of another, trusting that one knows what the other is saying and is honest in telling the truth. The basic motive of all faith is the authority (or right to be believed) of someone who is speaking. This authority is an adequate knowledge of what he or she is talking about, and integrity in not wanting to deceive. It is called divine faith when the one believed is God, and human faith when the persons believed are human beings. (Etym. Latin fides, belief; habit of faith; object of faith.)
http://www.therealpresence.org/cgi-bin/getdefinition.pl
That is not apparently an official Catholic definition and is not very satisfying, personally.
I find the reliance on authority to be interesting, however.
So the Catechism is certainly authoritative. And might have a better definition?
Maybe.
Surprisingly there is not one specific objective definition of “faith”. They seem contextual. Here is one that is of some relevance to science:
“159 Faith and science: “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.â€37 “Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.â€38 (283, 2293)
http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catechism/catechism-of-the-catholic-church/epub/index.cfm#
But moral laws once forbade things like autopsies. Some religions forbid blood transfusions, etc.
The most concise definition I could find in the Bible is:
Heb 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
This definition seems relevant in the context of climate concern:
“2.2A strongly held belief or theory: the faith that life will expand until it fills the universe”
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/faith
The Catholic position on faith is interesting: Seeking a balance between faith and reason.
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/arent-faith-and-reason-incompatible
“….Faith tell us more than we could know by reason alone, but it can’t contradict reason. Furthermore, we can use our reason to better understand our faith. In fact, that’s a classic definition of theology: Faith seeking understanding.”
Sorry for the multi-posts. I did not want to make a massive long winded single post.
If it is too many, lucia, just delete as you see fit.
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Well, I am probably out of my ‘league’ wrt oceanography, so I welcome correction.
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I see what you’re saying about age as I found in
this estimate of ‘age’ at 2500m.
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Perhaps instead, it is more accurate to say:
“the bulk of the ocean heat transfer with the atmosphere in the long run is dominated by polar water formation”
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If I leave a pan of cold water in the kitchen, diffusion will settle the water temperature to the average room temperature.
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If diffusion were the only process in the oceans, it would seem to also tend toward the average surface temperature, ~ 15C.
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On the other hand, if diffusion were zero, but polar water formation were the only process, then ocean temperatures would tend toward 0C.
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The fact that the average temperature of the full volume of ocean is significantly closer to 0C than to 15C must mean that the ocean heat loss at the poles is greater than the heat gained by diffusion, no?
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Clearly, the upper oceans ( to 700 m ) store heat on the seasonal cycle ( during the Southern Summer when earth receives more insolation ) and release it during Southern Winter and analogous behaviour with TOA radiative imbalance would stand to reason.
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My point is only that the OCH budget is not yet completely measured by Argo because it is probably missing significant areas of the polar oceans where the process of heat exchange would seem to be greater than diffusion.
TE: “analogous behaviour with TOA radiative imbalance would stand to reason.”
Yes. Thank you for acknowledging the concept. And thank you for building on it by provided yet another differential to validate it, the slight advantage of marine effect in the SH in summer. It would also be a amplified in winter by the same proportion but cooling.
.
On further thought on my earlier postulation, using the marine effect to measure TOA imbalance can be done every day by finding the difference in effect from SH to NH. Also, this is true for each single hemisphere, but lagging exactly half the year. This is so because sea surface temperature continually lags the daily amplitude of insolation by the same average amount. (The lag is about three months which of course is the reason the seasons are shifted 3 months.)
“I’m relatively new to this but wouldn’t the imbalance have a more rapid effect over land? As is taught in middle school, marine climates are temperature stabilized by air coming off large water bodies, which have much more heat capacity than land. The further inland the air gets the more that marine influence fades. If the atmosphere was in energy balance then theoretically ocean air would be alternately cooled or warmed by land exactly half and half throughout the year. But if there is an energy imbalance the land, with its low heat capacity, will be a poor sink to counteract the extra energy, and thus the air temperature coming off the ocean should rise more days on average than it falls. Thus, the larger this statistical land temp gain the higher the imbalance. And, the higher the trend of land temp gain compared to the trend of CO2 gain (Keeling Curve) the higher the ECS.
We have the data. Does anyone know if it has been analyzed in the way I mention?
########################################
Nobody would analyze it that way. give it a go, but nothing will come of it.
Ron Graf, my comment had nothing to do with who Steven Mosher is. I’d have pointed out the same thing had anyone said it. Mosher described having faith as necessitating having a belief. As such, it seemed strange to say he had faith, but not a belief. He had both.
And his response seems to indicate he agreed he had both, but denied having belief purely for rhetorical effect. I think that’s strange, but it is his choice. It doesn’t change my point, however. Under Mosher’s definition (and every other definition I’ve seen) of “faith,” having faith in something requires having a belief in it. That seemed a point worth clarifying.
Carrick:
Me neither. I certainly wouldn’t then turn around and insult a person for failing to realize I answered a question with rhetoric instead of providing a straight answer. That’s like saying, “How dare you fail to understand what I intentionally made unclear? You’re dumb.”
Steven Mosher: “Nobody would analyze it that way. give it a go, but nothing will come of it.”
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Thanks for evaluating my comment on marine effect as a climate analysis tool. Your encouragement comes with a strong qualifier. It’s as if you are saying “I believe your idea but I have no faith in it.” (kidding)
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I realize faith has to do with trust. If an idea comes from authority it is accepted by many on faith even if they doubt the logic. It only stands to reason the reverse is also true.
No Ron. I am telling you to give it a go because failure is a good teacher.
Look there are plenty of bright people in these discussions.
I’ll count you and Brandon as two of the brighter folks.
What I am really hoping for is that guys like you actually try to do something. In this case I think your ideas won’t pan out. But I encourage you to fail. It’s not that hard to understand
f. As such, it seemed strange to say he had faith, but not a belief. He had both.
No I didn’t say that.
I gave you a dialogue that requires you to
Think and interprete
Let me give you another example.
If you asked me
Do you have a motorcycle I would say No….
I have a Harley.
If you asked me do I have a watch I would say no
I have a Rolex
If you asked me do I believe I would say no
I have faith.
Brandon it’s a rhetorical device. It’s a thing you do with language. You can’t get the meaning from the words
No man is an island
Think about that slowly
Brandon further I gave you a dialogue to show you something. I didn’t answer a question with rhetoric. I used a rhetorical Device. I like to use them when you are around. There is a reason for that. Think.
here is another one. But I’ll give you a classic example
that you have all heard and laughed at.
I was at dinner one night with a lady and a literalist walked by.
The next day at work we had the following exchange.
Literalist: Who was that lady you were with?
Mosher: That’s no lady……… ( all together now) That’s my wife.
In this case the device works a bit differently.. but the point is the same. Lucia got it: Faith is a special class of belief ( as I pointed out) in fact so special that you might even say it wasnt belief.
usually when we say believe ( as in science ) it is on the basis of evidence.. but with faith.. well it is often a belief held when the evidence indicates otherwise.
How would a literalist respond to the dialog above?
he asked “who was that lady” meaning who was that female.
The response, plays on the different meaning of ‘lady” which is a female with sophistication.
So a literalist might argue.. ” HEY, lady means female and your wife is a lady how can you say that she is both not a lady and a lady.?” he of course misses the joke.
He misses how we can “mis use” language to make a point..
Now bonus points for the greek name of this device..
dont take arms against a sea of troubles or you’ll never figure it out
Catachresis?
Steven, thanks for clarifications. You complement Brandon and I but you feel we are young and disrespectful of authority, and could benefit from some life lessons. Things are not so easy. If they were somebody smart would have already done it.
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I mostly agree. But I have found it is worthwhile to probe anyway. Sometimes there is a pay-dirt hidden that nobody saw because when everyone was looking there was a house on top of it.
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Brandon, keep probing. Just not necessarily Mosher.
You know a lot about the weather station data. Do you have any insight as why that nobody want to use all of it? I can imagine that weather models already are including wind direction and speed, air pressure, to predict temperatures. So the on-the-shelf weather tools should be able to be re-directed to analyze the robustness of a station’s temperature recording skill.
Semanticus BSicus?
Maybe that is the Latin. Don’t speak Greek. Also, don’t lend to money to Greeks.
Bravo Steven Mosher, you just wrote three comments to explain what I indicated I already understood. It’s particularly interesting because that’s more effort than you’ve put in to responding to any number of substantive points I’ve made on any number of issues. I find it funny you are more responsive the less value my comments have.
I think it’s also funny not long after you called me dumb you then say:
If I’m dumb yet one “of the brighter folks” in these discussions, that must mean pretty much everyone in them is an idiot!
(And yes, I said “rhetoric” when I was thinking of rhetorical devices. It’s very important you correct that.)
Ron Graf,
You may be reading more into Mosher’s comments than is there. If you think there is something to be learned about climate sensitivity by trying a different approach, then by all means you should try it. It matters not at all if you are 18 or 58, trying something new will be instructive for you, even if (as in this case) others doubt there is much chance for success.
Steve Mosher says no man is an island.
From Linked In:
Dave Island
VP Business Development at Radware
Dallas/Fort Worth AreaComputer & Network Security
Previous
Avaya, Zettics, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent Ventures
Education
United States Naval Academy
Dave Island
Retired, but available for non-profit or contract work
Portland, Oregon AreaPublishing
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Oregon Catholic Press, Dave Island Associates, JS Paluch and World Library Publications
Education
The University of Chicago – Booth School of Business
Dave island
IT at Punks Inc.
Greater New York City AreaComputer & Network Security
You see? You can’t trust Mosher!
Man *is* an island.
HaroldW +
“I am an island.” -Paul Simon
Andrew
Somehow, as this wanders farther and farther afield this classic comes to mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU4uaKgCQ9A
Steve, those getting paid to do climate science have an advantage over those us who needs to support the family by other means. I intend to put my idea out further for criticisms and then perhaps try to recruit talent to do it.
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Steven M’s comment is ideally what I would look for from one who is working in the field. They don’t see a problem with the logic or logistics, only the “faith” that any valuable data would already have been mined. Why is this ideal? Because as long as there is not a problem with the logic, it is likely not knowable if it had been already looked at since results that indicated conflict with the consensus dogma would not likely be pursued. Bjorn Steven’s type mistake is not repeated often.
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Another possible rationale for it to have been missed is that climatologist are not usually meteorologists and are annoyed at being confused as being such. Local effects using the entire meteorological data set to validate weather stations temp record would be the intersection of the two sciences.
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A slight bias of one or two degrees at the airport means little to the weather person. They just know it’s normal and don’t need to adjust or compensate. But there is no one better suited to make that adjustment than the meteorologist.
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Once the art of adjustment was been scientifically quantified with modeling it can also be validated, unlike GCMs, since there is a huge data record and tests are all local.
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The beautiful thing about Marine Effect is that it is based on the sum of smaller effects and local situations, all of which must conform to the same principles. Thus, it is fudge proof since if a factor is adjusted it will throw some stations off in a different way than others and validation would fail.
Wow! Mosh has a Harley and a Rolex!
I love no man is an island because unlike other metaphors it is literally true.
Brandon:
‘If I’m dumb yet one “of the brighter folks†in these discussions, that must mean pretty much everyone in them is an idiot!”
No, all that means is that even bright people can have dumb moments. Dont be dumb. See you did it again!
here is the trick, the first rule of reading a text or having a conversation is you try to make sense of what the other person said. It’s easy to take any text and render it meaningless or ambiguous or contradictory. In fact there is a whole school of reading texts devoted specifically to that approach.
You are one of the brightest people here. stop being dumb.
You see how that makes sense?
of course, if you wanted to you could turn it around and say
If you are one of the brightest and also dumb, then everybody else must be an idiot. See how easy that is?
That is a stupid pet trick. No points awarded.
“Steve, those getting paid to do climate science have an advantage over those us who needs to support the family by other means. I intend to put my idea out further for criticisms and then perhaps try to recruit talent to do it.”
the tom sawyer of climate science.
What I am suggesting is that you pick up the brush yourself. team up with brandon. get some focus. slow down your comments.. read more.
try to do some sums..spend a month on it.
If any y’all wants to help paint it’ll cost just one nickel. -T Sawyer
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This first job is to compare the NH and SH records. It’s well known that the SH has run cooler over the last 100+ years. And it attributed to a (negative?) radiative imbalance having a lesser effect on the larger heat capacity of the SH, (having only half the land area as the NH). This is the Marine Effect. And, if the above assumption is correct the trend between NH and SH temps should follow known radiatve forcing, which is the cause of the radiative imbalance. Although ocean current oscillations will muddy the signal the SST records would provide a tool for corrections.
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The point will to be to see if the observed raditative imbalance lies in sync with the currently diagnosed radiative forcing history, including the Keeling Curve. These values are being used in studies like Lewis (2014).
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If it matches it will be a new tool. If it doesn’t match then the current assumptions about SH lag to NH must be reevaluated as well as the temperature record and its adjustments.
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Any takers?!? It’l cost ya just 5 cents.
Steven Mosher wrote: “Faith is a special class of belief ( as I pointed out) in fact so special that you might even say it wasnt belief.”
Actually, that’s rather misleading, to say the least of it:
Faith is not a “special class of belief,” any more than Gobstoppers are a “special class of candy — in fact so special that you might even say” Gobstoppers are not candy.
They are in both cases a specific type.
Think about this slowly:
Harley’s are a species of the genus motorcycle, just as the Rolex is a species of the genus watch, and just as Gobstoppers are a species of the genus candy, and just as bourbon is a species of the genus whiskey.
A species does not and cannot controvert its genus: it is an example of it.
Measurement and classification are (in part) a process of isolating the context and the hierarchy upon which (all) knowledge is built.
This is epistemology 101.
“Motorcycle” is more foundational than “Harley Davidson.”
“Motorized vehicle” is more foundational than “motorcycle.”
Et cetera.
The meaning of a word includes not only it’s distinguishing characteristic(s) but all its characteristics.
Isolating Maker’s Mark from the wider abstraction of bourbon does not suddenly sever Maker’s Mark from its genus. It drills it down, of course. Of course.
To say that faith isn’t a type of belief is to say that genus and species are unrelated.
But, whatever.
Some people are just too funny. Steven Mosher says:
Apparently missing the silliness of his comment. I made a joke about the fact Mosher had called me dumb then labeled me one of the “brightest people.” I went out of my way to indicate it was a joke by using an exclamation mark, something I rarely use, and almost only use in jokes.
So Mosher wrote an entire comment calling me stupid and lecturing me on how I should read things, all because he couldn’t pick up on the fact I was making a joke.
The question is, how will Mosher respond now that I’ve pointed out it was a joke not intended to be taken seriously? Will he admit his mistake, acknowledging he did the very thing he told me not to do?
Ray:
Ah, but Steven Mosher isn’t actually claiming “faith isn’t a type of belief.” He’s just using a rhetorical trick where he refers to faith as not being a type of belief to make a point. Then making fun of people who fail to realize him referring to faith as not being a type of belief isn’t actually meant to be him saying faith isn’t a type of belief.
Just remember, if that seems weird at all, you just suck at reading what people have to say.
Ron Graf, how much benefit do you think there would be in your approach rather than just looking at radiative forcing over the entire globe? I’d be interested in examining the differences between the two hemispheres, but I’ve never found direct comparisons to radiative forcings series to be very interesting. It always seems there’s too many confounding factors to get much from it. That seems like it’d be especially true when looking at the southern hemisphere on its own due to it having far less data to use.
R Graf,
Unlikely you will get many nickels.
I think the people who would have the knowledge and means to do the kinds of analyses you suggest would, if they had the time, do something that they found more interesting and/or likely to be insightful/productive. For example, had I a bunch of time available, I would code up a routine to explicitly correlate sea level change with the Nino 3.4 index (they are on different time bases), and try to remove the effect of ENSO on sea level; this would make any non-ENSO driven change in sea level, and especially any acceleration in the decadal trend, possible to see more clearly (I think!).
What worked for Tom Sawyer is not likely to with people who are very busy and have other things they would prefer to do.
Faith can also be defined as a willful suspension of belief, a refusal to accept the most logical an likely outcome, because it is deemed more productive to act on the in the face of it. (Or is that denial?)
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Brandon, are you saying that you’ve already tried my proposed analysis? Have you compared the yearly delta of SST to LT of each hemisphere and compared their trends? I am sure that others have thought of it too. It is so simple it’s the logical first step. Whatever the trend reveals should be able to be roughly extrapolated until the heat uptake effect is removed completely. Once this is done. The same type of process can be repeated on a local basis on hundreds of locations to bring in error bars.
Ron Graf, I haven’t done the analysis. I’ve just seen plenty of people compare temperatures in general to radiative forcings (whether using land data, ocean data or both). I’m not sure what splitting the analysis into two hemispheres would accomplish. I might be missing something obvious.
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While faith can involve a willful suspension of belief, that happens because you choose to believe in something else.
It is interesting that the faith discussion continues with so little reference to the competing definitions.
I do like Ray’s discussion on the etymology of words and wonder why someone with a PhD in English and much high level experience would work so hard to be so obscure.
I don’t know what is wrong with you people. Why is it that everybody is not aware that Brandoon uses ! to alert you all that he is telling a joke? How else would you know? Try to keep up people.
Ron, I’ll send you a nickel to pay for you allowing Brandoon to do the SH. That should keep him busy for a while.
Brandon, For a thought experiment imagine two planets:
Planet (0) has zero heat capacity at the surface.
Planet (i) has infinite heat capacity and surface temp of 25C (due to internal causes.)
Both planets have Earth-like atmospheres with a low heat capacity (to maintain the lapse rate, DeWitt).
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On planet (0) the surface air temp will adjust to external forcing within hours, only depending only on atmospheric conditions. On planet (i) it will remain close to 25C at the surface day or night, winter or summer. On planet (i) a change in TOA radiative transfer simply results in a TOA radiative imbalance that could remain perpetually while not changing the surface temp. It will be much easier to detect a slight change in TOA radiative transfer on planet (0) because the surface temperature would almost immediately react proportionately.
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Now combine planet (0) and planet (i) as separate hemispheres on the same globe. There would be some spillover effects of (i) to dampen the diurnal and seasonal temperature reactions to the (0) hemisphere. These spillover effects are the same as the Marine Effect. One could diagnose the changes in radiative forcing and/or climate sensitivity directly on planet (0) and by extrapolation on planet (i),(0).
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Since planet (0) is always in radiative equilibrium forcing becomes a known variable and equilibrium climate sensitivity becomes a known constant (or variable if analysis reveals it to be such.)
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What scientists are doing now is trying to guess the heat capacity in a poorly mixed system that is prone to chaotic oscillations. Land’s heat capacity is low making it more sensitive to radiatve forcing and immune from confounding oscillations. One just needs to correct for the chaotic air transfers of heat to and from the oceans, but we have excellent local meteorological records and this dynamic is global in scope but local in effect.
Don, Sorry, people have to apply on their own (standing in single file)! <–note
Faith is a tool like all tools it can be used productively (to suspend unproductive reasoning,) or unproductively, (to suspend productive reasoning).
OK Ron, but you’ll be sorry. Nobody else is going to nickel up.
Ron,
REF: “Faith is a tool like all tools it can be used productively (to suspend unproductive reasoning,) or unproductively, (to suspend productive reasoning).”
That is one of the better comments on faith I have read lately.
Is anybody else having trouble getting to rankexploits.com/musing directly?
I can only get the page to come up when I click on a link on somebody elses blogroll.
It happens at both home and work (to me) so I was curious.
3881 active- Argo flats, 991 of which are grey floats ie suffering from problems making their data unusable.
Floats are supposed to take readings every meter from 10 meters to surface of ocean so SST theoretically and practically available.
Why are they not issued?
Someone said that there are money and device problems meaning the information is getting worse as the replacement of unworkable units (900) a year is hard to sustain
R Graf
A 100 dollar bill on the road?
It cannot be there for someone would have already picked it up.
Re using your method of estimating ECS.
I still do not get the insistence on a radiative imbalance.
Analogy.
I heat a sword in a furnace.it reaches a stable temperature. Heat in heat out equal
I put a coating on it of different material the coating retains some heat in it so therefore the sword underneath has to heat up due to conductivity (SteveF)
Therefore the sword is now hotter than it was before while still taking in and radiating the same heat back into the furnace?
I am trapped by two opposing physical truths.
My gut feeling is that the sword must remain at the same temperature.
This creates a problem for the greenhouse effect or me.
Somehow the heat into the coating, which warms the coating must go back into space without troubling the sword or the whole sword must inexorably heat up over time (radiative imbalance)
As said I find it hard to believe the sword can hold a large quantum of extra heat, ie reach a permanently hotter level, which would involve it having to radiate a large amount of heat back into space, with no change in heat input.
I prefer to have faith in the concept that the heated covering material is the only bit to heat up.
Any real life examples to shake the so far blind faith?
I think I get what you’re wanting to do and why (which may mean I’m totally misunderstanding you) Ron Graf, but I’m still not sure what it’d tell us we couldn’t find in other ways. How much different would the information your approach provides be than if we just did (multi)linear regressions to try to relate temperature to forcings separately for each hemisphere and compared the results?
I think differences between the hemispheres are definitely interesting and worth examining, but I don’t see much difference between taking the “difference” between two series and performing an analysis on it as opposed to performing an analysis on each of two series and comparing them.
I feel like I’m probably missing something obvious.
RickA:
I haven’t had any trouble like that. Are you sure you’re not mangling the URL? If not, I don’t know what could be going on.
Hunter: You nailed it with the link to “I am the Walrus”.
via Wikiconnollypedia:
Lennon received a letter from a pupil at Quarry Bank High School, which he had attended. The writer mentioned that the English master was making his class analyse Beatles’ lyrics (Lennon wrote an answer, dated 1 September 1967, which was auctioned by Christie’s of London in 1992). Lennon, amused that a teacher was putting so much effort into understanding the Beatles’ lyrics, decided to write in his next song the most confusing lyrics that he could.
It pretty much describes every dialogue between Mosher and Shollenberger. I renember the olden days of this relationship when Mosher tried to give KlimateBall advice to young Brandon, who would have none of it. Hell hath no furry like a self-appointed mentor scorned.
Angech
Your gut about the sword not getting hotter is correct. The reason is convection and a temperature gradient (caused by the Second Law) are things we are used to. A microwave oven does not heat by convection. The frequency of the microwaves only gets absorbed by water and a few organics so the wave energy does not get absorbed by the air on the way in and penetrates the surface of the food until colliding with a water molecule to transfer its energy from electromagnetic to kinetic energy.
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The top of the atmosphere is more like a microwave oven in that there is no convection between the planet and space.
Brandon: “How much different would the information your approach provides be than if we just did (multi)linear regressions to try to relate temperature to forcings separately for each hemisphere and compared the results?”
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There may be little difference if the average ocean surface temperatures and level of homogenization are the same. But if not then we want to do the deltas between land and ocean separately for each hemisphere before the regressions. Without looking I would think that the NH oceans are warmer now than the SH due to the reverse of Marine Effect, the hotter land transferring some of its heat to the oceans.
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Theoretically there is just one line and thus one slope for the surface temperature under planet (0) conditions and planet (i) conditions. Both hemispheres are points on that continuous line, the SH closer to planet (i) than the NH. If we determine the slope of that line using the SH and NH as two points we can extrapolate to planet (0) where the TOA radiative balance is always at perfect equilibrium.
Howard, do you happen to remember where that happened? I remember someone (you, I think) mentioning that before, but I can’t remember what the reference was. The earliest interaction I can remember having with Steven Mosher was in the comments section of a post at Climate which became a foodfight.
It was interesting because, as I recall, Mosher had made a mistake in the book he published with Tom Fuller, and when it was pointed out, he defended the mistake on a website. He later realized it really was a mistake and decided to make no effort to correct the record until he was pressured into it. I criticized that. I even stated my view which has never changed: If you make a mistake on a website, you should return to the website when you realize your mistake and correct the record.
The interesting thing was Mosher’s response wasn’t to effectively demand I apply that standard consistently, doing the whole, “But Michael Mann…” thing. Rather than address what he had done, he basically demanded I talk about what other people have done. (In a case of actions speaking louder than words, I’ve severely criticized Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt for the exact same thing, in far harsher terms than I used for Mosher.)
That was about five years ago. I don’t know if we had other interactions before that or not. I’d be curious to see.
Brandon: My earliest recollection was here at the Blackboard. Mosher was telling you to be calculating, cynical and sneaky in your responses to the SkepSci zombies regarding I can’t recall what. People can say many things about you and your blog persona, but you are (IMO) earnest and straightforward to a fault. Mosher didn’t read this obvious trait and kept trying to give you more and more “hints” on his sick and twisted (NB I say this as a compliment to Steven) KlimateBall tactics. You were having none of it and I think was a bit confused why he would want you to play such games. It was quite hilarious for me to read. Even since then, he has had nothing but daggers for you. The funny thing is that for the past year or so, he is now sucking up to the SkepSci zombies and the RealKlimate Comintern.
Brandon: Regarding the timing, it was within a year of your appearance on the blogs. I’ve been reading these things for so long, the years run together. My hair is so gray, I thing Climategate happened yesterday.
Somebody has a bad case of Mosheritis.
Hey Captain Don, it’s all in the game. Steven is always interesting, your a fool to think otherwise. I’m glad to see you have stopped with the unseemly “Animal Mother” debate tactics. Hell, Ma Judy has even managed to neuter little Davy Springer, the Barney Fife of the Marine Corp.
“The funny thing is that for the past year or so, he is now sucking up to the SkepSci zombies and the RealKlimate Comintern.”
Since the BEST crowd took control of Mosher by letting him play scientist, his perspective seems to have changed. Stockholm Syndrome? Just kidding, Steven.
Howie, Howie
I have never said or thought that Mosher is not interesting. If you are referring to the comment above yours, you have misread it. And it wasn’t about you, Howie. Try again. Perhaps you have me confused with somebody else. Or you got some other problems that are more serious.
rankexploits.com/musing
Add an ‘s’: rankexploits.com/musings.
angech,
Nope. I seriously doubt that SteveF said that. The sword is in a furnace, heated externally by the furnace, coated or uncoated. No part of it can ever be at a higher temperature than the furnace temperature. If your coating worked the way you think it worked, it would violate the Second Law. Heat would have to flow from the cooler furnace to the hotter sword. Kirchhhoff’s Law, that emissivity equals absorptivity at the same wavelength, follows directly from the Second Law. Otherwise an object could spontaneously cool or heat and you could construct a heat engine with a single heat reservoir.
The Earth is heated by radiation from the surface of the Sun, which is much, much hotter than the surface of the Earth and subtends a tiny solid angle of the sky, ~60μsr. The Earth, in turn, radiates to space, which is much, much colder than the surface of the Earth. And yes, space has a temperature determined by the cosmic microwave background, thought to be the residue of the Big Bang. The CMB has a perfect Planck spectrum with a temperature of 2.725K.
For your sword example to work, part of the sword would have to be outside the furnace in an environment with a temperature lower than the furnace temperature. Then if you coated the part of the sword outside the furnace with an insulator, the internal sword temperature would increase. OTOH, if you coated the part of the sword inside the furnace with an insulator, the internal sword temperature would drop. But at no time would the internal sword temperature ever exceed the furnace temperature.
DeWitt,
You’re right, I would never say anything like that; I try to stay away from the slayer stuff. I do consider the big bang to be quite speculative; the cosmic background radiation seems to me less than strong support for the big bang.
No confusion Don (or do you prefer little Donnie Monnie Wannie), it’s obvious why the young and earnest Brandon ends up tangling with Mosher over and over and was under the impression from your post that you thought that it was somehow a dis-ease and not an interesting di-alogue.
As far as your former and now muted “animal mother” affectation, the last time I brought that up, Judy axed me off of Climate, etc. so I don’t need to go there again. I’m just glad you now have some measure of self control now that Mommie has you potty trained.
Mosher was telling you to be calculating, cynical and sneaky in your responses to the SkepSci zombies regarding I can’t recall what. People can say many things about you and your blog persona, but you are (IMO) earnest and straightforward to a fault. Mosher didn’t read this obvious trait and kept trying to give you more and more “hintsâ€
Huh. It’s precisely because I read this trait that I gave him advice I knew he could never take.
The same when I tell him to focus.
I could tell him to breathe and he would try his damndest not to.
Ah Brandon has an interesting memory of the author Smith event and no memory of Antarctica.
Mosheritis is a pathological problem for Brandoon. He got the same problem with Richard Tol and Steve McIntyre. It’s not a very difficult diagnosis, howie. Brandoon has been trying to provoke Mikey Mann into suing him. Brandoon has stated that he wants to make a name for himself in the great climate debate. How he would profit from that kind of dubious notoriety, nobody knows. Junior is a smart kid, but he got some f—– up priorities and a massive ego. I been trying to help him see the error of his ways. Poor guy has committed to pretending he is ignoring me, so he has to bite his tongue.
I have no idea what you are talking about with the animal mother BS. You really must have me confused with somebody else. I don’t recall any of your undoubtedly scintillating comments on CE, but if Judith has given you the boot you must really be in bad shape. Try to calm down, howie.
lucia:
Actually, your server makes that correction for us. I didn’t realize that until I was about to say the same thing and figured I should check to be sure.
OT, I suppose, but since it got started upstream, the CMB does appear to be in quite spectacular agreement with the conventional understanding of the Big Bang, i.e., the Hot Big Bang. The theories seem to get more speculative for what preceded it .
Here , Lubos wonders in his unique style why more people doubt that the Big Bang occurred than they do human-induced climate change.
Lubos is surprised lots of people ‘don’t believe’ in the big bang? I’m not. It’s what I would expect.
Lubos and others might be unhappy with my position, but if presented that question, I would like the option to answering “I don’t care” to the “big bang”. While I enjoy Nova specials and find them somewhat diverting… my main thought goes something like “it’s not remotely important whether I make myself familiar with the argument for whether the big bang happened nor need I weight the relative strength of that argument in favor of that theory'”.
In all, I’m happy to take anyone’s word for it– but I wouldn’t argue vehemently against someone who insisted the Universe ‘started’ some other way. I have pretty much zero opinion on whether the Big Bang theory is strongly supported, weakly supported and so on. (And don’t bother providing links where I can learn. The point is: I. don’t. care. I’d rather watch to see what the SCOTUS rules on Obama care, follow the Denis Hastert story and so on. Only so much time in a day.)
Mind you, I have no objection to other people caring, studying the problem, delving deeply and so on. But precisely because I don’t really care about the issue, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that lots of people don’t care. So I’m not surprised that quite a few people answered “don’t believe” in the big bang. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if lots of people are utterly agnostic about that issue. Agnostics presented with a “believe/don’t believe” choice of often pick “don’t believe”. They might prefer “have no opinion” but if that’s not an option, they might pick “don’t believe”. Add to that the number of people whose religion would point to “no big bang” and the number who check “don’t believe” could be rather high.
Hi Lucia,
I think the poll gave plenty of options , though to be fair, Lubos was only referring to the percentage that answered extremely/very confident. Those who refused to answer were only 4% of those polled.
Big bang, small bang, video, or some guys out for a walk. As Hillary says: What difference, at this point, does it make?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8INIH0JfNA8
RB: I’m not sure I would call the “plenty of options”. If we included “refused to answer” numerically, there are 5 options. None of the options permit anyone to express actual “dis/anti belief”.
None of the options are anything like “Extremely confident it’s false”, “very confident it’s false” or “not to confident in my opinion it’s false”.
So of the options provided, the closest option for agnostics and outright disbelievers is identical. That choice is: “not at all confident (it’s true)”.
So.. no. I’m not to surprised that only 21% are either “very confident” or “extremely confident” about the big bang being true (with an ancient universe.)
Good job holding it together Don, glad to see that the Prozac or the Vodka is working. Animal Mother as played by Adam Baldwin (no relation):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hBSGEzpw-8
Lucia: if I was in the ‘don’t care’ or ‘not framed correctly’ camp, I’d have gone with the ‘refused to answer’.
RB,
Fair enough. But polls are given to many people each of whom makes different choices. If presented a quick phone survey and I was answering rather than hanging up, I would have picked “not extremely confident” if I was in the “don’t care” or “not framed correctly” camp. If don’t hang up, I never pick “refused to answer”. I pick the other option that is closest to my view.
I realize not everyone does the same thing– but that’s merely means the poll results about “beliefs” that do not permit people to express outright disbelief are more difficult to interpret.
I have faith the pollster got it right.
😉
RB,
There may well have been a ‘big bang’; I’m just not totally convinced there was. The problems are pretty well known: ever increasing red shift with distance…. suggesting an infinitely expanding universe, but only detectable at great distance never close by, need to invoke unknown/unmeasured/unmeasurable ‘forces’ from ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ (and no convincing explanations even for the existence of these postulated things!) to simulate the measured dynamics of galaxies and galaxy clusters as well as the red-shift for distant light sources.
.
I just suspect that alternative explanations which don’t involve a ‘big bang’ are plausible….. plus I really doubt a) that it matters much, and b) that a definitive understanding of the origin, history, and future of the universe is anywhere near, and may never be. Unlike climate science, astrophysical speculation remains (just as it should) a backwater of science/technology. Few people care.
SteveF,
As Matt Strassler describes, there is very high confidence (‘consensus’) regarding the occurrence of the Hot Big Bang (at t>0) with strongly supporting evidence more than just the CMB. However, where it seems to get more speculative is what preceded it – with various theories competing with inflationary cosmology.
RB,
Or you could take Stephen Hawking’s position: There was no before.
DeWitt,
Agreed, but I believe the more speculative theories address the time 10^-43 seconds or so until the Hot Big Bang.
Also, as far as I understand it, the existence or not of dark matter/dark energy is not related to whether or not there was a Hot Big Bang but more so whether Einstein’s field equations should also include a ‘cosmological constant’.
SteveF,
Dark matter and dark energy may not be the correct way to describe the Universe, but they’re all we have to explain observations at the moment. The Universe is flat to ±0.4%, i.e. the density of the Universe appears to exactly equal the critical density. Baryonic matter accounts for less than 5% of the mass necessary to achieve this density. Galactic rotation curves and galactic cluster dynamics cannot be explained using the density of baryonic matter alone, even if you include neutrinos with a rest mass. The rate of expansion increases with distance. The Universe has not existed forever. A model with a hot Big Bang, neutrinos with mass, dark matter and dark energy can be fit to these observations.
Of course, all models are wrong, but this one seems useful. It’s not necessary to believe or have faith in it to use it.
Dewitt: I thought the ‘flatness’ of the Universe was something that is not explained by the standard big bang model (the Hot Big Bang onwards), but is one that inflation has answers for.
DeWitt,
“Of course, all models are wrong, but this one seems useful.”
.
I agree with the first part, but I fail to see meaningful utility in cosmological theories, especially if we limit ourselves to considering, say, the impacts over the next few billion years or so. It is interesting and mildly entertaining speculation, but I don’t see it as useful. Certainly less useful than model estimated equilibrium sensitivity…. for a system that will never be anywhere near equilibrium…. and that is not very useful.
RB,
Correct. It should be hot Big Bang with inflation.
SteveF,
It doesn’t have to be useful to you to be useful. I suspect it’s useful to astronomers and theoretical physicists.
As far as belief, I saw a poll once that was limited to working physicists and a substantial fraction of them did not believe the Standard Model was correct, i.e. quarks and all that.
Whether it has practical utility or not, the fact that many religious debates involve the Big Bang shows that many people consider it and other ideas about the origins of the Universe to be of significance.
DeWitt
Yeah….. but…
OK, here’s my problem with that. What does “useful” in that sentence mean?
But if ‘belief’ in the “Big Bang” only means thinking that models is “useful” in the sense of explaining things like “some aspects about the red shift of some galaxies”, then one shouldn’t be remotely concerned anyone doesn’t “believe” in it. SteveF thinks it’s deficiencies at explaining other similar observed data are “sufficient” to make its ability to explain “not useful”. Everyone agrees these deficiencies do exist. But someone else might think the explanative value is “sufficient” to be “useful” (at something.)
But as far as I’m aware, ‘Big Bang’ explanation isn’t really used to predict much of any real utility. So… who cares if people disagree on whether the model is “useful”? (Ok.. I may be wrong about it’s ‘utility’… more later.)
By utility: The “model” of heritable DNA underpins GMO, diagnosis of heritable diseases, has helped us identify forensic methods of identifying criminals… and relatives… and so on. These are concretely useful– not just in the sense of “predicting what we might see in future experiments that we do to better understand the DNA model”, but useful as applications of the models to other problems people want to solve.
WRT to big bang, I have to ask: What actually concretely useful things does the “Big Bang” predict? What does it even have a potential to predict if correct? Honest Q by the way. As I wrote before, as far as I am aware, the answer to these is “nothing”. It predicts some other things some physicists are curious about… but all useful concrete applications of physics can be predicted without resorting to actually using the “big bang” model. Do you need to use “big bang” to apply the doppler effect? Nope. Do you need it to believe in subatomic particles? Nope. And so on.
So who cares if anyone “believes” the “Big Bang”? Nothing bad happens if they don’t.
RB:
“Of significance” is different from “useful model to explain observations”, which is also “different from “Model that can be used to make predictions that are useful in the ordinary sense.”
My impression is that in the ‘ordinary sense’ of the word, ‘useful predictions’ are not ‘predictions of as yet unseen observations that, if later observed, could be used to test the model itself.’ That’s required for model testing, but it’s not “utility” in any other sense.
In the ordinary sense, “useful model” means one that “predicts things people who aren’t specifically interested in the model as a model care about”.
A professor of mine attended a talk about cosmology and the Big Bang.
When the speaker was taking Q&A, my professor observed:
‘In science, one likes to have more examples than theories. Here, you are on shaky ground.’
Kinda goes with: Define Universe and give three examples.
Lucia,
As an example, the big quest appears to be about uniting quantum mechanics with gravity. What use this new theory will have is anybody’s guess. But it appears that given the impracticality of energies or accelerator sizes that will be needed to probe at this level, answers may come from finding signatures in astronomical observations.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/view-witten.html
So who cares if anyone “believes†the “Big Bang�
I think the point of the poll was about trying to gauge trust/familiarity with consensus science.
With regards to DeWitt’s comments on the poll concerning the Standard Model, perhaps many of those polled believe that without supersymmetry, it is incomplete .
RB,
Yes. That may be the point of the poll. But you linked to Lubos’s blog and he was making a rather big deal out of people not believing the big bang. And so my thoughts were more focused on his reaction to the polls. I know it’s his area.. but really… if people don’t ‘believe’ it, so what?
I know what ‘the quest is’. My question is not “what’s the quest” nor is it “why bother to study it”. My question is: if people why should anyone care whether the public believes it or not? I don’t see any reason why they should. There is zero consequence to the public not believing it at this point in time.
@Lucia
Of course, it is difficult to predict what utility cosmological physics will have but I am pretty certain we have found practical uses for Relativity, for which E=MC2 is derived from, (like nuclear energy), even though Relativity is most certainly “wrong” (I agree, DeWitt).
.
One practical thing that might come of nailing down the Big Bang would be how to evade the speed of light. If inflation is the correct model the universe most certainly expanded faster than the speed of light. Cracking this nut gets future generations to the stars.
.
Everything we know is based on observation, finding rules and understanding when and why they interact with other rules. One rule is complexity evolves. This means our origin must be the simplest thing possible. Eventually we should know whether half of all our physics could evolve in a micro-second. My bet is that our universe itself is an iteration, each previous universe being simpler than the one following it.
Usefulness of Big Bang theory?
Usefulness of religion?
The same.
People seem to need a reason to exist.
The reason has to start somewhere they can conceive of.
When one says the theory is not useful you are saying that you do not believe in fairy stories.
Fair enough.
But for those who need them, and most of us do, the BBT is quite useful.
Best model for an expanding universe and not enough mass in our area is to conceive of our universe being in the skin of a bubble expanding in a liquid.
The universe is infinitely older than the Big Bang, our particular universe has to expand but local time/matter/ laws of physics do not have to change.
By the way, thanks to those people who engaged on the topic of heating up the earth and whether a true long term TOA imbalance is possible.
Sorry SteveF if I imputed DS stuff in any way, DeWitt’s answer sort of goes with what I am trying to say but you both seem to say that the heat must radiate out, then argue for imbalance which implies heat trapping and build up of energy, particularly if it goes into the oceans.
Cracking this nut gets future generations to the stars.
I don’t think so. The faster than light expansion is the expansion of space itself, but this is still in accordance with the underpinning of Einstein’s theories for speed of light as a limit for anything involving the communication of information.
RB (Comment #136840),
The cosmological red shift, and an ever accelerating expanding universe, which are said to have ‘begun’ with the big bang, are part and parcel of big bang theory. If there exists no clear explanation/measurement/quantification of “dark energy” and “dark matter”, then there are some damned big holes in the whole thing. Seems to me cosmologists tend to say they understand a whole lot more than they really do…. this appears common in observational (rather than experimental) science…. much like, for example, climate science. Worse, it seems to me premature in the extreme to suggest that such science can make accurate predictions; too often ‘theories’ in observational science end up being crafted and contorted to fit already known evidence, which is then claimed to ‘prove’ the theories are correct. When forced to actually make predictions (about things not already known), those predictions have a tendency to turn out laughably wrong.
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BTW, I think Einstein regretted not including a cosmological constant for gravity.
Why so bitter, howie? Was it your bitterness that caused Judith to give you the big boot? It must have been something very bad. Judith ain’t like that. Lighten up, howie. You will feel better about yourself.
SteveF,
The point I wanted to make is that the scientific understanding is of high confidence that early in the Universe, it was hot and dense and extremely small from which it then expanded, and this is popularly called the Big Bang. This is, I believe, distinct from questions concerning the shape and evolution of the Universe – i.e, does it have a critical density that the field equations predict will result in a flat Universe; unlike early theories suggesting an eventual deceleration why is it accelerating etc.
Ron Graf,
That cosmological physics might have practical utility some day does not constitute a reason why anyone “should” believe (or even pay attention to) any theory in cosmological physics now. You and a few others here seem to be wanting to defend “why studying cosmological physics is or might be worthwhile”. It very well may be– and I have no objection to that being studied. But the answer to that question has absolutely nothing to do with the one I’m asking which is: Why in the world should we care that people today don’t “believe” any particular current cosmological model, and in this particular case “The big bang”.
Oh? Does this particular cosmological theory predict we can evade the speed of light? Does anything about the current theory tell us how we can? If the answer is not “absolutely yes” the theory as it currently stand does not hold this type of utility. What you are speculating is that some future theory that might be refined might eventually show us we can evade it and we can use it to do that. But right now: no. No current cosmological model has the utility of “telling us how to build something that permits us to overcome the limitation of the speed of light”.
Angech
But this sense of useful is not the one in the quote above. That was a quote by a statistician (was it Fisher? Someone else?) who was advocating that some models are useful for predicting things of interest. And those ‘things’ weren’t determining if the model itself was useful but whether as yet unseen events would occur. Making people “feel good” is not the sort of “utility” that he was using to justify statistical (or other) models.
Feynman: “When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right .. because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in.”
I suspect this measurement of the CMB was probably in that class.
RB,
Fenyman was absolutely right about the critical importance of “more coming out than going in”. But it is best if that “more coming out” is something “unexpected”, not something that conforms to expected/known results. You know, like Einstein’s relativity equations showing the (shocking!) equivalency of energy and mass. I could be wrong about this, but my suspicion is that most of the cosmological “successes” of the big bang are based on fitting to known observations. Did the big bang theory anticipate the odd orbital mechanics of rotating galaxies? Did the big band theory anticipate and describe “dark energy”? I’m pretty sure it did not. Too many arm waves in cosmology; count me as underwhelmed.
SteveF,
Einstein’s ‘mistake’ which he posited for a static Universe compared to Friedmann’s model showed that General Relativity allows for negative gravity which could only be resolved through observations – in his case by Hubble – and this was again the case for observations made in 1998. Etc, etc, but I must retire from this at this time..
The tipping point for me irt cosmology was when I saw a book for sale at Scientific American showing why modern physics demands some hundreds of parallel universes as the most logical explanation of everything. That is as meaningful as Douglas Adams’ answer to the meaning of everything: 42, But Adams’ book was more fun to read.
I think it may have been this book:
http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Multiverse-Dimensions-Frontiers/dp/0470613521
Dissing Jesus’ disciples is a Classical cause of climate forcing
Not bitter at all Don, I just like to poke the bear once in a while. Glad to see your calming influence dominating our conversation. Also, am glad to notice your evolving views on climate over the years. It’s all good. My final sin at Dame Judy’s was criticizing RUd’s constant adverts to the WUWT tourists for his denier e-books.
We good, Howard. Just having some fun. That Rud can be annoying. I take a shot at him now and then (Judith deletes) over his reminders that he has cut Harvard off, because they hired that beast Naomi Oreskes. As if they are hurting. Rud can just keep all the profits he is making from his little e-books, for all they care. John Paulson recently gave them another $400 million.
On the climate science: I first took notice when I picked my son up from his first day at the fancy pre-school my psychologist wife picked for him. What did you learn today, I asked. He tells me “Nuttin, but you got to change our big cars for little battery ones cause you’re destroying the earth.” Naturally, that got me started off as a denier. A little online research, including a visit to realclimate confirmed my kneejerk reaction.
I was pretty bad. Hate to admit that I recall telling someone that it couldn’t be CO2, because that’s the bubbles in Coca Cola. But I got an open mind and if there is a danger I want to know about it. I had a couple of careers that involved fact finding, including the interrogation of people under pressure. I know a lot more about how the human mind works than does my dear beautiful wifey, the psychologist. So, over the years I have observed and picked the brains of the smart and honest people on various blogs. Lucia is one, and her blog has one of the better casts of characters to learn from. Mosher is good, if you can get him to talk and you can crack his codes, but in the last couple of years he seems to have been infused with too much sympathy/empathy for the consensus crowd. But hey, he might be right. They might be right. The case is not closed.
I still suspect that the part of the consensus climate science dogma that confidently predicts CAGW is largely built on confirmation bias, hubris and self-interest. It would be very bad for the careers of climate scientists, if we found out that CO2 is not a big deal. There’s always Uber.
It just keeps getting better: E.P.A. Takes Step to Cut Emissions From Planes
The only way to reduce emissions from planes is to reduce total mileage/year. So if we can’t fly and our electric car is useless for long distance travel, I guess we’re all supposed to stay home.
DeWitt,
The first step is to make people fly in turboprops instead of jets at about 250 MPH instead of 525 MPH… cuts per-passenger-mile fuel consumption by about half.
.
But better for the EPA is to ban most flights and force people to take buses: (according to Wiki) Volvo Buses Model 9700 averages 0.41 litres per 100 kilometres, or 570 mpg, per seat for 63 seats, about 5 times the fuel economy of jet travel, and 2.5 times the best turboprop. Of course, there would never be any such restrictions on politicians, green activists, climate scientists, or ‘important’ bureaucrats. See, all you have to do is assign zero value to people’s time, comfort, money, and personal priorities, and almost anything can be justified, in the name of Gaia.
.
IMO, the EPA is nothing but a bunch craven green activists. Congress should put them on a very short leash, and remove all authority to limit CO2 emissions.
SteveF,
You’re neglecting the carbon footprint of road building and maintenance. Producing a ton of cement generates about a ton of CO2. Buses, like trucks, are a lot harder on roads than cars. I would have thought that regulating the cement industry would be a higher priority than air travel. About 5% of global carbon emissions each year derive from cement manufacture.
Now the EPA is running directly into the aviation industry’s ability to survive. The action will not be to ration flying, but rather to tax flying. A lot. The climate, as it has done with each and every CO2 obsessed policy, will continue to ignore the true believers. It will be interesting to see how this goes.
Mnestheus (Comment #136877), that was funny. Thanks.
Mosher’s mistake regarding hide the decline and the IPCC report had the benefit of making Arthur Smith overconfident, and he blogged about ‘Where’s the Fraud’ regarding Michael Mann, hoping to point out the skeptics’ errors on Tiljander. He ended up creating a definition of fraud that Michael Mann met, and Smith then became ‘too busy’ to look at the subject, promising to return to it later.
SteveF:
Busses or trains?
Probably it would make more economic sense to subsidize high-speed railways than it would be to regulate airplane traffic.
Carrick,
Have you been following the California bullet train story?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/california-high-speed-rai_n_3005001.html
The current cost estimate is $68 billion in year of expenditure dollars, i.e. much less than generally accepted accounting principles would calculate, and construction hasn’t even started. The current completion date for LA to San Francisco is 2028. There is only one other high speed rail connection in the US, the Amtrak Acela from DC to Boston.
MikeN:
I don’t know if you saw it, but some time after that, Arthur Smith started talking on Judith Curry’s place complaining about how people making accusations against climate scientists like Michael Mann would never make a clear case which could be checked. I responded by pointing out what you refer to, and he responded weakly then disappeared.
I think it was about a year later he showed up at Curry’s place again saying the same thing again. So that time I pointed out both of our previous exchanges, and again, he quickly disappeared.
I don’t know what it is with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still going around telling people nobody will ever make a clear case that could be verified.
Carrick,
My experience with that kind of train is that 1) they make life miserable for the communities they pass through (very loud and disruptive), with lots of eminent domain, AKA confiscated, right-of-ways, 2) they are just as expensive as air travel, and sometimes more, and 3) beyond a certain distance, they waste time relative to air travel. I have been many times awoken late at night by the roar of a passing bullet train… even in a hotel room 4-5 blocks from the tracks.
.
WRT cost, these trains are very expensive to buy and to maintain, and the track maintenance needed to allow reasonable comfort at high speed means that special track adjustment trains must be sent out every night to automatically adjust track height to ~1 mm accuracy. Easy to understand why the California system will cost a lot more than originally expected. I can only imagine the lawsuits.
.
Seems that suicides in Japan are facilitated as well… just jump in front of the high speed train and all your problems are over… terrible mess, and disrupts the train schedule as well. Of course, they try to make this difficult by setting up fences/walls, but it still happens.
.
High speed trains may make sense in a country with a (very!) tight social order like Japan, where the individual is wholly subservient to the many, but it is hard for me to see them being popular in the States.
Just a small point of correction: the plural of right-of-way is rights-of-way. Thank you for your attention and we now return you to meaningful content!
The EPA already doesn’t seem to have any particularly significant political influence .
RB,
Putting aside the very doubtful accuracy of the website you liked to, Mr. Obama has supported just about everything the EPA has proposed, and continues to accept the “friendly lawsuits” which “force” the EPA to do the things green advocates want (you known, they get together and plan the lawsuit WITH the EPA, and agree that the EPA will settle out of court, or put up no counterargument, so that the outcome of the lawsuit is ‘fixed’ in favor of the green loons before it even begins. Reminds me of foxes hired to guard the henhouse. My few personal dealings with EPA staffers have been consistent: they don’t want anything except less industrial activity…. and to save Gaia. They are nitwits.
Earle,
“the plural of right-of-way is rights-of-way”
.
I stand rightly corrected.
SteveF
Putting aside the very doubtful accuracy of the website you liked to …
I see …
which “force†the EPA to do the things green advocates want (you known, ….
I do?
“SteveF
Putting aside the very doubtful accuracy of the website you liked to …
I see …”
RB,
Did you look at the Our Funders Page?
Andrew
Andrew_KY,
Yup, the donors list is an absolute hoot. Not a bit of potential bias anywhere to be seen in that list: all left wing, all “environmentally conscious”, and most actively involved in reducing fossil fuel use, and…. oh yes…. funding other organizations which also promote reductions in fossil fuel use. Yes, their coverage of the EPA’s lack of evidence for surface aquifer contamination is without doubt bias free. Of course, there is another explanation for that lack of evidence: there just isn’t any contamination.
.
On a more serious note: Does RB honestly believe that such a ‘news analysis’ is a credible source of factual information? I suspect he/she does. Unbelievably naive.
Brandon, I read somewhere that he was active in the reviews and comments on reviews of Mann’s book at Amazon.
It was obvious that he didn’t get the result he was looking for.
MikeN, that wouldn’t surprise me, but I can’t say I remember one way or another offhand. There was all sorts of nonsense going on with the review section for that book.
I still say nothing beats the one review my (short) eBook got from Buzz something who openly admitted he hadn’t even read the book. I know a number of people reviewed Michael Mann’s book without having read it, but I don’t think any of them openly admitted to having not read it.
And of course, Amazon has no problem with that review. According to Amazon, it is fine to review a product you have no experience with. I’ve never figured that one out.
Brandon,
As long as a reviewer admits up front that they haven’t used the product/read the book, I don’t think it’s a problem either. When you see one of those reviews, flag it as unhelpful. It will eventually sink to the bottom of the pile. What they need, though, is a new category of not helpful, but worth reading anyway for those occasional gems of humor. Ridiculous products tend to attract those in droves. See for example, the Hutzler 571 banana slicer reviews.
DeWitt Payne, I don’t see how one can “review” a product if they haven’t actually reviewed that product. It seems silly to allow such “reviews” in your review section. What value is added by allowing people with no knowledge or experience regarding something to tell people whether or not it is any good?
Though in this case, the guy didn’t clearly admit he hadn’t read the book until something like a dozen comments later. A person reading his review wouldn’t have been able to be sure he hadn’t read it.
A great discussion on melt ponds at Neven’s at the moment.
He has the idea that the number and size of melt ponds could dictate how much the ice melts each summer.
Seems to be putting the cart before the horse though he is not the only one.
Could someone kindly point out to him that melting causes the melt ponds, not the other way round.
Therefor you cannot use them to predict the melting, only confirm what has happened.
In further chutzpah Wipneus describes a great one day fall in sea ice area at the same time that the DMI sea ice extent graphics shows an uptick in the sea ice extent.
One is certainly wrong, most likely the sea ice area algorithm.
Interesting to watch over the next week.
angech,
A big drop on one day doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t continue to drop at a higher than average rate.
More likely the sea ice area was running a little high and is now back to about where it should be. Satellites measure concentration in individual image pixels, which is then converted to extent, i.e. the area covered by ice with a concentration higher than some specified value, usually 15%. Area is the sum of the area of each pixel multiplied by the concentration of that pixel, again above a specified percentage. Extent can increase while area decreases and vice versa. Obviously, extent will always be higher than area as the concentration at the borders of the ice will always be less than 100%.
There’s also ice volume. As of the end of May, ice volume was higher than last year at the same time. Ice volume is a function of the thickness as well as the area. Until we have the volume data for June, which is posted some time in early July, we won’t know what’s really been happening. Ice volume can be lost in two ways, the ice can melt in situ or the ice can be swept into the Greenland Sea through the Fram Strait, where it will melt. How much ice is swept out depends on air and ocean currents.
Walked on the Fram yesterday in Oslo. Fantastic experience
Only downside the 2012 graphic of arctic sea ice loss.
One would think that they could update the narrative to less sea ice loss.
Did wonder how Wipneus at ArcticSea Ice blog could confidently predict the 300,000 loss in sea ice area two days ahead of it actually occurring.
Is this science, prescience or data construction?
“NSIDC sea ice concentration has dropped substantially today.
That will not be reflected in Cryosphere Today Area numbers until Wednesday when it will drop by a massive 340k.”
The big DMI uptick disappeared as well. Maybe I only imagined it.
When I stare at the bouy tracks, it’s evident that much of the ice since 2000 has been flushed.
.
But how much is normal? Is the Arctic sea ice decline a matter of dynamic oscillation which will reverse? Or is it a matter of ‘Arctic Amplification’ of global warming? May need to live another century to observe.
.
TE,
IIRC, even multi-year Arctic sea ice has a life expectancy of about five years, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if there no ice remaining that was present in 2000. The circulation pattern is such that there is a continual outflow through the Fram Strait. Winds can strengthen or retard that flushing. What interests me is the distribution of ice around Svalbard. Compare June 11, 2012 and June 11, 2015. The ocean circulation pattern is from west to east. Note that in 2012, there was almost no ice on the east side of Svalbard. IMO, that means that the North Atlantic circulation was stronger farther north than in 2015. Unless that changes soon, that should mean less melting and a less forceful Arctic gyre, so more ice should survive the summer. The peak melting rate, which occurs near the summer solstice, is near. So far, ice volume has not repeated the precipitous decline seen starting in May 2010 after the recovery of 2008 and 2009.
Also, the UAH NoPol tlt anomaly is no longer increasing. That would be expected if the AMOC has peaked. We could even see a drop if the cyclic pattern of the last 150 years of the AMO index repeats.
Further update on Arctic sea ice:
The ice extent, while setting record lows for the satellite era earlier this year, now seems to be reflecting the area and volume, which have not set lows. JAXA Arctic extent is now higher than it was on the same date last year and the extent rate anomaly for the last three days is less negative than it’s been since I started keeping track about seven years ago.
Interesting to see.
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Thickness, volume, and percentage MYI all increasing.
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And tend year negative temperature trend for the high Arctic.
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All seem to suggest a phase of ice accumulation?
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4