Climate Change

[schickel]

Just saw this over on AP:

LONDON – E-mails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled skeptics and discussed hiding data — but the messages don't support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by The Associated Press.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by schickel

Just saw this over on AP:

... which I also came here to link, so instead I'll just quote more from the article:

The 1,073 e-mails examined by the AP show that scientists harbored private doubts, however slight and fleeting, even as they told the world they were certain about climate change. However, the exchanges don't undercut the vast body of evidence showing the world is warming because of man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The scientists were keenly aware of how their work would be viewed and used, and, just like politicians, went to great pains to shape their message. Sometimes, they sounded more like schoolyard taunts than scientific tenets.

Scientists are human, too. The difference between science and not-science is/are the measures taken to avoid/minimize/correct/compensate-for scientists' human faults.

The scientists were so convinced by their own science and so driven by a cause "that unless you're with them, you're against them," said Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also reviewed the communications.

Frankel saw "no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very 'generous interpretations.'"

. . .

The AP studied all the e-mails for context, with five reporters reading and rereading them — about 1 million words in total.

One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics skeptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data was destroyed; two U.S. researchers denied it.

The e-mails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method. The University of East Anglia is investigating the blocking of information requests.

"I believe none of us should submit to these 'requests,'" declared the university's Keith Briffa. The center's chief, Phil Jones, wrote: "Data is covered by all the agreements we sign with people, so I will be hiding behind them."

When one skeptic kept filing FOI requests, Jones, who didn't return AP requests for comment, told another scientist, Michael Mann: "You can delete this attachment if you want. Keep this quiet also, but this is the person who is putting FOI requests for all e-mails Keith (Briffa) and Tim (Osborn) have written."

Mann, a researcher at Penn State University, told The Associated Press: "I didn't delete any e-mails as Phil asked me to. I don't believe anybody else did."

. . .

In another case after initially balking on releasing data to a skeptic because it was already public, Lawrence Livermore National Lab scientist Ben Santer wrote that he then opted to release everything the skeptic wanted — and more. Santer said in a telephone interview that he and others are inundated by frivolous requests from skeptics that are designed to "tie-up government-funded scientists."

. . .

Santer, who received death threats after his work on climate change in 1996, said Thursday: "I'm not surprised that things are said in the heat of the moment between professional colleagues. These things are taken out of context."

When the journal, Climate Research, published a skeptical study, Penn State scientist Mann discussed retribution this way: "Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal."

That skeptical study turned out to be partly funded by the American Petroleum Institute.

I'm disappointed by the stance of many companies in a field I formerly worked in -- but people in that field are all human, too, and the risky nature of oil work attracts (* alas *) more than the usual share of folks who are sometimes ... over-passionate about their field.

(The latter is why I'm a firm supporter of laws that require oil companies to take steps to protect the environment from substances which become troublesome when raised from their multimillion-year underground rest to Earth's surface.)

The most provocative e-mails are usually about one aspect of climate science: research from a decade ago that studied how warm or cold it was centuries ago through analysis of tree rings, ice cores and glacial melt. And most of those e-mails, which stretch from 1996 to last month, are from about a handful of scientists in dozens of e-mails.

Still, such research has been a key element in measuring climate change over long periods.

As part of the AP review, summaries of the e-mails that raised issues from the potential manipulation of data to intensely personal attacks were sent to seven experts in research ethics, climate science and science policy.

"This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here."

See above, regarding human faults.

In the past three weeks since the e-mails were posted, longtime opponents of mainstream climate science have repeatedly quoted excerpts of about a dozen e-mails. Republican congressmen and former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have called for either independent investigations, a delay in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of greenhouse gases or outright boycotts of the Copenhagen international climate talks. They cited a "culture of corruption" that the e-mails appeared to show.

That is not what the AP found. There were signs of trying to present the data as convincingly as possible.

One e-mail that skeptics have been citing often since the messages were posted online is from Jones. He says: "I've just completed Mike's (Mann) trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

Jones was referring to tree ring data that indicated temperatures after the 1950s weren't as warm as scientists had determined.

The "trick" that Jones said he was borrowing from Mann was to add the real temperatures, not what the tree rings showed. And the decline he talked of hiding was not in real temperatures, but in the tree ring data which was misleading, Mann explained.

I previously posted about group slang.

David Rind told colleagues about inconsistent figures in the work for a giant international report: "As this continuing exchange has clarified, what's in Chapter 6 is inconsistent with what is in Chapter 2 (and Chapter 9 is caught in the middle!). Worse yet, we've managed to make global warming go away! (Maybe it really is that easy...:)."

Gee, I'd like it if global warming would go away, too. I'd like to keep from changing any of my lifestyle habits. "Change is painful", as I've been told in therapy.

(to be continued)

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Gee, I'd like it if global warming would go away, too. I'd like to keep from changing any of my lifestyle habits. "Change is painful", as I've been told in therapy.

(to be continued)

But trying to deny a truth because its consequences or implications are painful is not the right way to go here. To say that one disbelieves AGW because of what one fears that some people advocate doing about it is to merely hide ones head in the sand.

The correct, adult, rational path is to face the truth squarely and fight against inappropriate responses, political or otherwise, to that truth, not to deny that truth.

- - -

Now, let me clarify what I mean by "truth" about AGW. I'm not claiming that AGW is a firmly established fact like ... um ... gravity, for example. What I mean is that AGW is the best hypothesis yet presented to explain known observations. That it's the best-fitting hypothesis yet presented is what is the truth.

In fact, that's what constitutes scientific "truth" in general: the hypothesis yet presented that best fits the observed data.

Gravity is, actually, such a hypothesis. We don't actually see or otherwise directly sense gravity; we only sense a collection of phenomena for which the gravity hypothesis is the best currently-known fit. An earlier hypothesis, later succeeded by the gravity hypothesis, was that there is a natural "down" direction to which all things are attracted. This hypothesis was consistent with the flat-Earth hypothesis. Both of those hypotheses were "true" as long as they fit the observed data. But in time more observations were collected, and some of them did not fit either of those hypotheses.

If someone can present a better scientific hypothesis than AGW to fit the observed data, that's fine (and welcome!). But AFAIK no one has. Every alternative hypothesis I've read fails to fit all the observed data as well as AGW.

Hypotheses that claim human activities are inadequate to affect climate have been contradicted by the terrible numerical realities that the observed data about quantities of GHG produced by human activity really show that these quantities are sufficient to have a significant effect on Earth's atmosphere and climate. Thus, such hypotheses do not fit observed data and are, therefore, not "true" in either the scientific or ordinary senses.

Hypotheses that claim it is impossible for humanity to do anything to significantly reduce anthropogenic GHGs are contradicted by demonstrations and calculations showing that it is indeed technically feasible for humanity to make significant reductions. Thus, such hypotheses do not fit observed data and are, therefore, not "true" in either the scientific or ordinary senses.

Furthermore, in the latter case these technical feasibilities can be implemented at costs which are much less than the costs that will almost surely be incurred if we do not curb our GHGs (costs which are rarely mentioned or admitted by some AGW-deniers), and without totalitarian political consequences (unless one considers US standards for pollution control equipment on automobiles, for instance, to be "totalitarian", in which case we're speaking different languages).

That's "can" be implemented without totalitarian political consequences; it's not automatically "will" be implemented without such consequences. There are always some people who seek to gain power over other people in ways usually considered excessive. (I've seen examples, on a very mild scale, in other threads of this forum.) But we other folks already have a need/duty/obligation to expose and oppose such efforts; there's no basic difference in that regard for such power-seeking efforts purportedly related to AGW amelioration.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Ernst,

Is there any conceivable evidence that would convince you that AGW is real? If so, what?

Something that withstands even modest scientific scrutiny would be nice. Subjectively-spliced-together graphs of proxy data assembled in order to fit a preconceived hypothesis alas don't qualify, nor do bogus GSM "simulations" whose parameters have similarly been set to keep the models from running amok, and whose error bounds are huge (but deliberately obscured-and-or- understated by the modelers).

In the meantime, are you having any trouble with crafting that Evans refutation I want to see?

Not at all ... believe it or not I actually have other things going on in my life than debating-with-you-as-a-full-time-job.

It is interesting, though, that you've repeatedly touted the "multiple independent lines of evidence for man-made global warming", and as the various legs on your multi-legged AGW stool get demolished you now cling to the very limited radiative-balance data of Evans to make your case. As I've stated, the 2-3 W/m^2 increase in radiative absorption due to elevated CO2 levels is not in dispute ... but the mere fact of slightly increased absorption of sunlight by the lower layer of the atmosphere is insufficient - it's the interaction of that with the climate system that is crucial. Why the hell do you think climatologists spend such huge effort in numerical simulations, and the IPCC devotes so much ink to the matter in the parts of their reports averring a causal link between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and lanbd0use changes and global warming? If radiative-balance were all there is to the argument (or even the most important part of it), the issue would have been settled a half-century ago.

To use language from dynamical-systems perturbation theory (which is in fact what we're dealing with here ... earth's climate system, subject to perturbations in the atmospheric radiation balance), radiation is merely the lowest-order effect in a complex cascade ... to stop with Evans is akin to saying "this fluid-mechanical system is unstable to small disturbance, hence transition to full-blown turbulence follows." It doesn't, at least not automatically.

---------------------

Aside: At this point I feel compelled to check whether you understand the fundamental difference between nonlinear-system forcing and response, by way of a fluid-mechanical illustrative problem. Sorry to have to be so pedantic, but it's important for me to understand whether you are deliberately ignoring that aspect of the problem, or whether you genuinely don't understand it.

Start with 2 identical-sized (say, grapefruit-sized) spheres with equal weight, much greater than the volume of air they displace. One sphere has a surface which is smooth to the touch, the other has a surface as rough as coarse sandpaper (say roughness with average amplitude between 0.1 and 1 mm). Starting at sea-level standard conditions, From the middle of the Bonneville salt flats, I fire each at 100 mph out of an air cannon at an upward angle of (say) 30 degrees. Which travels farther, and why?

(The analogy here with the AGW problem is that the difference in surface roughness provides the external forcing, and the distance traveled is the ensuing response, which results from the interplay of several physical factors, some of which are close-to-linear and others of which are highly nonlinear.)

------------------------------

Lastly your assertion that "the claim that anthropogenic CO2 is responsible for the current warming of Earth climate is not based on climate models" but rather on your now-famous "multiple independent lines of evidence" is highly disingenuous, given the prominence the IPCC gives to the predictions of numerical models - here is an excerpt from their massive 2007 assessment, in the front-and-center "Summary For Policymakers" (SPM) section ...
This is the key excerpt which addresses the alleged link between observed warming and human activity (bold highlights mine):

Warming of the climate system has been detected in
changes of surface and atmospheric temperatures in
the upper several hundred metres of the ocean, and
in contributions to sea level rise. Attribution studies
have established anthropogenic contributions to all of
these changes. The observed pattern of tropospheric
warming and stratospheric cooling is very likely due to
the combined influences of greenhouse gas increases
and stratospheric ozone depletion. {3.2, 3.4, 9.4, 9.5}

It is likely that there has been significant anthropogenic
warming over the past 50 years averaged over each
continent except Antarctica (see Figure SPM.4).
The observed patterns of warming, including greater
warming over land than over the ocean, and their
changes over time, are only simulated by models that
include anthropogenic forcing. The ability of coupled
climate models to simulate the observed temperature
evolution on each of six continents provides stronger
evidence of human influence on climate than was
available in the TAR. {3.2, 9.4}

• Difficulties remain in reliably simulating and attributing
observed temperature changes at smaller scales. On
these scales, natural climate variability is relatively
larger, making it harder to distinguish changes expected
due to external forcings. Uncertainties in local forcings
and feedbacks also make it diffi cult to estimate the
contribution of greenhouse gas increases to observed
small-scale temperature changes. {8.3, 9.4}

• Anthropogenic forcing is likely to have contributed
to changes in wind patterns,13 affecting extratropical
storm tracks and temperature patterns in
both hemispheres. However, the observed changes in
the Northern Hemisphere circulation are larger than
simulated in response to 20th-century forcing change.
{3.5, 3.6, 9.5, 10.3}

• Temperatures of the most extreme hot nights, cold
nights and cold days are likely to have increased due
to anthropogenic forcing. It is more likely than not that
anthropogenic forcing has increased the risk of heat
waves (see Table SPM.2). {9.4}

My Comment: The full-page Figure SPM.4 accompanying the above text has this caption: "Comparison of observed continental- and global-scale changes in surface temperature with results simulated by climate models using natural and anthropogenic forcings". If you continue to read the SPM, it quickly becomes clear the key conclusions and projections are nearly all based on numerical simulations. That`s the "response" issue I mentioned above.... there are lots of independent lines of evidence that the global average temperatures have been rising over the past century (though the magnitude is subject to ongoing debate), but *attributing* that rise to humans rests crucially on numerical models. The temperature proxies allegedly showing an "unprecedented rise" in temperatures over the past 50 years were really the only other line of evidence for *anthropogenic* warming, and the data-manipulation, concealment and destruction shenanigans of Jones, Mann et al in that regard make that leg extremely shaky at present.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Not at all ... believe it or not I actually have other things going on in my life than debating-with-you-as-a-full-time-job.

Your point is well-taken. I've recently been too impatient here and elsewhere.

It is interesting, though, that you've repeatedly touted the "multiple independent lines of evidence for man-made global warming", and as the various legs on your multi-legged AGW stool get demolished you now cling to the very limited radiative-balance data of Evans to make your case.

Evans isn't as limited as you portray it.

The importance of the Evans data is the spectral fingerprints of GHGs. It's not just a matter of matching the overall flux number or radiative balance; it's also, and very importantly a matter of matching the spectrum of the flux changes! THAT is what disproves competing hypotheses that attribute warming to something other than anthropogenic GHGs!

Why do you characterize Evans as "limited radiative-balance data" while ignoring, or at least not mentioning, the most important aspect -- the spectra?

As I've stated, the 2-3 W/m^2 increase in radiative absorption due to elevated CO2 levels is not in dispute ... but the mere fact of slightly increased absorption of sunlight by the lower layer of the atmosphere is insufficient - it's the interaction of that with the climate system that is crucial.

... and the Evans data shows that the observed increase in heat flux (which has something to do with temperature, which in turn is an input parameter in weather forecasts, I've read) has the spectral fingerprints of anthropogenic GHGs. Do you understand the significance of that spectral aspect?

It's like the difference betweeen finding indistinct smudges of some unknown origin, and finding fingerprints that can be traced to a specific person, on a murder weapon.

Why the hell do you think climatologists spend such huge effort in numerical simulations, and the IPCC devotes so much ink to the matter in the parts of their reports averring a causal link between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and lanbd0use changes and global warming?

Because it's important to keep pointing out the predicted future consequences -- 0.7 degree so far doesn't impress some folks.

To use language from dynamical-systems perturbation theory (which is in fact what we're dealing with here ... earth's climate system, subject to perturbations in the atmospheric radiation balance), radiation is merely the lowest-order effect in a complex cascade ... to stop with Evans

... which is not what I've done. I've simply paused there to allow you to catch up ... though my recent goad was uncalled-for.

But if you can't refute the spectral part of the Evans data, and you can't produce a non-AGW hypothesis that explains the spectral data ... then AGW is the last one standing.

is akin to saying "this fluid-mechanical system is unstable to small disturbance, hence transition to full-blown turbulence follows." It doesn't, at least not automatically.

... and that's not what I've said. I know Evans is not the last item. But it is more direct and conclusive than many other items are by themselves, enough to disqualify most competing hypotheses right there. That's why I'm dwelling on it now, and will continue to do so until someone presents a competing hypothesis that explains the spectral data as well as, or better than, AGW.

(to be continued)

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

Aside: At this point I feel compelled to check whether you understand the fundamental difference between nonlinear-system forcing and response, by way of a fluid-mechanical illustrative problem. Sorry to have to be so pedantic, but it's important for me to understand whether you are deliberately ignoring that aspect of the problem, or whether you genuinely don't understand it.

Start with 2 identical-sized (say, grapefruit-sized) spheres with equal weight, much greater than the volume of air they displace. One sphere has a surface which is smooth to the touch, the other has a surface as rough as coarse sandpaper (say roughness with average amplitude between 0.1 and 1 mm). Starting at sea-level standard conditions, From the middle of the Bonneville salt flats, I fire each at 100 mph out of an air cannon at an upward angle of (say) 30 degrees. Which travels farther, and why?

(The analogy here with the AGW problem is that the difference in surface roughness provides the external forcing, and the distance traveled is the ensuing response, which results from the interplay of several physical factors, some of which are close-to-linear and others of which are highly nonlinear.)

The sandpaper-surface will travel farther because it reduces drag. IIRC, the drag reduction comes from disrupting the air vortices that would otherwise form next to the smooth-surfaced ball, instead producing smaller-scale turbulence that carries away less energy than the larger-scale vortices in the smooth case. (Overall, the airflow next to the rougher surface turns out to be smoother than the airflow next to the smooth surface -- depending on the relative scale of roughness, though. "Reynolds number" is somewhere in this vicinity, I think, but I could be mixed up about that.)

(to be continued, but not right away this afternoon)

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

The sandpaper-surface will travel farther because it reduces drag. IIRC, the drag reduction comes from disrupting the air vortices that would otherwise form next to the smooth-surfaced ball, instead producing smaller-scale turbulence that carries away less energy than the larger-scale vortices in the smooth case. (Overall, the airflow next to the rougher surface turns out to be smoother than the airflow next to the smooth surface -- depending on the relative scale of roughness, though. "Reynolds number" is somewhere in this vicinity, I think, but I could be mixed up about that.

Not bad for a fluids layperson ... what in fact happens is that even though the roughness results in a turbulent boundary layer and hence more skin friction ("parasitic") drag, the near-surface turbulence leads to more-effective mixing of high-speed air with the slowed near-surface flow, which allows the boundary layer to "drive" further against the adverse pressure gradient caused by the shape of of the sphere (as soon as one passes the equator of the sphere the pressure begins to rise rapidly in rough accordance with Bernoulli's law) and thus delays boundary-layer separation, leading to a narrower wake and much lower profile ("pressure") drag, which dominates the overall drag equation. Classic example of the lowest-order disturbance being more than compensated for by a cascade of nonlinear effects which lead to a counterintuitive result.

Regarding Evans, I did not intend to slight the very fine radiative-balance work of that study ... I meant "limited" in the sense that it only addresses radiative balance (the lowest-order effect), not the interaction of the resulting forcing with the climate system. The spectral signature clinches the case that most of the increase in radiative absorption is indeed due to man-made GG emissions, but is irrelevant to my ensuing point, namely that this increased forcing is necessary but not sufficient to prove AGW.

And now I must run...I leave you with an editorial cartoon which misses the central scientific issue but is nonetheless amusing:

http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/...ke12112009.jpg

[mdettweiler]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

Are you sure you read those exaggerated sensationalist reports correctly?

AFAIK, no one has alleged that any of the recently-hacked memos says anything about climate models being fudged. If you actually read that, will you please give me a link?

Whether the climate models are fudged or not makes no difference; regardless of their intended veracity, their margin of error is bigger than the changes they're predicting. It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the uncertainty in knowing an electron's position is greater than the diameter of the atom, so thus we have no way of knowing where the electron actually is. The same thing's in play here; the uncertainty in these climate models is so great that all of their predictions are therefore moot.

Quantify "large", please.

See above.

As I posted, the range is range from 1.1°C and 6.4°C and the most likely range is 1.8°C to 4.0°C. Did you happen to notice that all of those figures are above 1.0°C?

No, there isn't.

What there is, is too little scientific understanding on the part of you anti-AGWers. Where's that data that supports your arguments, Max?

Yes, but your apparent disregard for the exact meaning of "large" is just another example that shows that you're using anything you can to justify your preconceptions, _not_ using science to disprove AGW!

Why, exactly, do you use only rhetoric to support your position, not data?

How about the data that shows how the climate models have too much uncertainty to tell us anything?

You'd like that, wouldn't you? Abandoning/ignoring the science, that is.

(1) This is a matter that needs investigating. Debate in forums will not reach the truth; good investigation will.

(2) Even though only one small sector of one type of data is in question, you and the other anti-AGWers keep talking as though a much larger amount was in doubt. It's not. (If you disagree, please present _evidence_ to support your claim!) Your apparent exaggeration of the amount of data that has been called into doubt is typical of your use of rhetoric rather than science to debate.

That's right; you didn't. Yet somehow in your mind an unsupported hypothesis is stronger than a hypothesis that's supported by many lines of independent evidence.

They have been ... for years ... in scientific fora. The _scientific_ debate is over. The public debate going on now in mass media involves those who don't understand the science., and uses rhetoric, not science.

They _have_ addressed it ... in the scientific fora. Al the anti-AGWers are doing is resurrecting, in nonscientific fora, old faulty arguments that have already been scientifically refuted.

Originally Posted by cheesehead

... which just demonstrates your poor understanding of what science is.

Actually, I recently posted links to, and quotes from, sources that _do_ provide evidence "to attribute the cause to human-produced CO2" and other GHGs.

Apparently, the article Ernst posted is from someone who is _not aware_ of the clinching scientific evidence in the Evans paper!

So then how come he's been able to consistently knock down your so-called "clinching" scientific evidence in that paper in the posts since the ones quoted here? It seems that the one thing you're consistently beating around the bush on, that Ernst and I keep bringing up, is that it's not in dispute that the addition of human-produced CO₂ will have a warming effect on the atmosphere. The debate is over whether it's going to have a measurable effect on the climate. So far you've pointed me to evidence that CO₂ has a warming effect, and evidence that the earth is warming, but when asked to produce evidence to show that human-produced CO₂ is responsible for that amount of warming, you refer me to the models--those very same models that have so much uncertainty as to be moot. In the face of such uncertainty, the models will show whatever the scientists making them want them to show--and in this case, it's a stark upward climate trend as a result of human-produced CO₂. But since the model cannot produce usable results in the first place, this "data" is nothing more than another of those rhetorical devices that you've expressed such disdain for. Sure, it can sway the masses of people who don't take the time to examine and understand the science, but it just doesn't hold under scrutiny.

Therefore, if the data on which AGW stands is essentially moot, how therefore is it the "hypothesis of best fit" to observation? Moot data can't support the idea that a hypothesis "fits". We are therefore left with a choice between the non-AGW hypothesis (which, according to you, is unsupported), and the AGW hypothesis, for which all the supporting data is moot. To say that AGW is stronger enough to warrant taking drastic action based on it is a completely arbitrary position.

Max

[cheesehead]

Ernst,

Perhaps you've stated this earlier, and I just can't find it right now, or stated this in different words, but I want to check one of my assumptions.

Is it your position that the AGW side's claimed increase in average global temperature since 1900, the 0.7 degree C figure, is:

(a) larger than the actual increase by 0.7 or more [i.e., there's been no GW at all],

(b) larger than the actual increase by between 0 and 0.7 [i.e., there's been warming, but less than 0.7],

(c) uncertain to such an extent that it cannot be ascertained whether there has been any increase at all,

(d) uncertain to such an extent that its value, though greater than zero, cannot be reliably ascertained to any more precision than that [i.e., there's been global warming, but its magnitude is too uncertain to estimate how much the increase is above zero],

or

(e) other ?

I've been generally assuming your postion corresponds to answer (d), but want to check that assumption.

BTW, rather than have you need to repeat your suspicions about hoaxing and fakery, I'd rather that you presume that all my questions and comments concern data which you agree is reliable, unless otherwise specified.

- - -

Originally Posted by ewmayer

this increased forcing is necessary but not sufficient to prove AGW.

May we have an example of how "this increased forcing is ... not sufficient to prove AGW", and what evidence exists to support the existence of such an example in reality?

I suppose that if the downward heat flux increased, but the upward radiation into space had increased by a larger amount, this would indicate some trouble with the GW (not to mention AGW) hypothesis. But I'm not aware of any evidence (such as satellite measurements) to support that possibility.

So, just how could we have the demonstrably anthropogenic GHGs intercepting and re-radiating enough IR to increase downward IR flux by the measured amount, but the observed global warming is _not_ caused by them? (E.g., where is the heat [to produce the measured temperature increases] coming from besides GHGs, and why isn't the downward IR flux from GHGs causing warming proportional to its magnitude?) And if that hypothesis were true, what sorts of possible, but not necessarily proven, evidence might potentially be found to support that scenario?

Are you claiming that there has actually been found any evidence for a climate effect that is analogous to your cannonball example's "more-effective mixing of high-speed air with the slowed near-surface flow, which allows the boundary layer to "drive" further against the adverse pressure gradient caused by the shape of of the sphere (as soon as one passes the equator of the sphere the pressure begins to rise rapidly in rough accordance with Bernoulli's law) and thus delays boundary-layer separation, leading to a narrower wake and much lower profile ("pressure") drag, which dominates the overall drag equation"? What is it?

[cheesehead]

Max,

I have time for only some brief responses now.

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

It's like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the uncertainty in knowing an electron's position is greater than the diameter of the atom, so thus we have no way of knowing where the electron actually is.

No, that's not a correct summary or application of the HUP.

What the HUP says is explained here: http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08a.htm

It says that the product of the position measurement's uncertainty and the momentum (speed and direction of motion) measurement's uncertainty is always at least as large as a certain number (Planck's constant divided by 4*pi).

I'm not quibbling about the Planck's constant or the 4*pi. What I'm trying to point out is that Heisenberg said the uncertainty in position is inversely proportional to the uncertainty in momentum. We can get very, very precise measurements of a particle's position as long as we are prepared to accept that we cannot simultaneously get a precise measurement of its direction of motion or its speed.

So, "the uncertainty in knowing an electron's position is greater than the diameter of the atom" is simply not true unless you also specify that the uncertainty in knowing its momentum may be as small as the atom's diameter divided by (Planck's constant divided by 4 pi). That is, if the positional uncertainty is very large, then the momentum uncertainty can be very small. HUP is about a tradeoff.

Your "we have no way of knowing where the electron actually is" is also part of your misunderstanding of what HUP actually says. Actually, we can determine where the electron is to high precision, but not simultaneously determine to high precision its speed and direction of motion.

The same thing's in play here;

No, it's not at all the same! The uncertainty in climate models arises from quite different reasons than the uncertainty referred to by the HUP.

How about the data that shows how the climate models have too much uncertainty to tell us anything?

Your attempted application of HUP to show that "the climate models have too much uncertainty to tell us anything" or that "all of their predictions are therefore moot" is, once again, only a demonstration of your lack of scientific understanding. If you actually understood the HUP, you'd never have tried to apply it to a climate model. Your attempt to show that climate models are hopelessly uncertain only shows that you do not understand the real reasons for model uncertainty or their magnitude, and you have no basis for making any claim about climate model errors. You're welcome to come back to this issue when you can show that you actually understand what you're talking about (for example, show us that you understand some real reasons for model uncertainty). Please don't just parrot what you've read without understanding.

So then how come he's been able to consistently knock down your so-called "clinching" scientific evidence in that paper in the posts since the ones quoted here?

He hasn't been! That you think so only demonstrates that you're taking Ernst's word uncritically without understand the real issues. Please don't claim knockdowns that haven't actually happened.

- - -

Oh, and ...

why is it that you keep criticizing AGW-supporting data, but never actually present any evidence to support the anti-AGW position?

Asking questions, presenting unsupported hypotheses, or repeating what someone else has said without understanding it is not the same as presenting evidence. I'm not asking you to refrain from asking questions, presenting hypotheses, or quoting someone else -- I'm saying that although I've asked you for evidence, all you've done is one of the former.

[petrw1]

They came by the hundreds....