A major victory for the blogosphere
The ‘obsession with discussing the science basis’ deserves comment. I wish the IPCC were more obsessed with the science basis. But I agree that fatigue is justified regarding skydragon type arguments about the greenhouse effect and second law of thermodynamics. But that kind of discussion seems to have pretty much disappeared from the main stream skeptical blogs? In the recent thread Skeptics: make your best case. Part II, I don’t recall seeing any greenhouse effect refutations, mainly there were discussions about solar, ocean oscillations, sea level rise and other impacts. Is it possible that the blogospheric discussions on the greenhouse effect (at Climate Etc, Science of Doom, etc) have actually slain the skydragons And John O’Sullivan’s threats of legal action that resulted in my removing the skydragon threads from Climate Etc. – has this resulted in the burial of the skydragons and arguments that there is no warming of the earth and atmosphere from CO2? If so, this is a major victory for the blogosphere.
– Judith Curry
Yeah right…
At STP, one cubic meter of pure, dry air has a mass of 1.29 kg and contains 0.00078 kg of carbon dioxide. How can such a small amount of carbon dioxide absorb enough OLR to cause any heating of this large mass of gas?
Exhibit #1
100000000000000000000000 is 393 ppm, correct? So for each CO2 molecule you have 500 oxygen and 1900 nitrogen molecules, and the oscillations of those CO2 molecules due to the fractional IR spectrum absorption at 2,4, and 15um is not only trapping all the heat, but a very slight change in the molecular ratio to 2:500 and 2:1900 (Co2 doubling) is supposed be the driving force in this system?
Exhibit #2
Back radiation is a complete BS. Atmospheric CO2 has no physical property to cause any warming. CO2 does not retain heat content. CO2 is one of the best ingredients that earth living things have to change the sun’s energy into stored chemical energy. Thanks to CO2.
Exhibit #3
AGW appears the result of political dogma corrupting proper scientific thought. Convenient misinterpretations of basic science in combination with large amounts of confirmation bias have obscured the scientific method. The scientific foundations of the “greenhouse effect” and “radiative forcing” appear baseless.
Exhibit #4
All real physics basics have been changed to fit in with this imaginary The Greenhouse Effect. It is impossible in the REAL WORLD.
Exhibit #5
I get about 500 comments per day here. I couldn’t answer even 10% if I spent all day doing so. The number of insupportable statements on this blog is quite large (a statement regarding runaway greenhouse on Venus is far from the worst). I leave it to the denizens to discuss and sort out.
– Judith Curry
A truly catastrophic change
With regards to the exchange with Nordhaus, IMO the original 16 and the rebuttal written by Cohen, Happer and Lindzen have come out ahead of Nordhaus in this exchange. In the end, it seems to me that Nordhaus is justifying his argument based upon the possibility of truly catastrophic change on the timescale of a century.
– Judith Curry
I think we can bound [climate sensitivity] between 1 and 6C at a likely level, I don’t think we can justify narrowing this further.
– Judith Curry
[T]here is a 33% probability that that actual sensitivity could be higher or lower than my bounds. To bound at a 90% level, I would say the bounds need to be 0-10C.
– Judith Curry
It’s their own fault after all
In extreme cases, entire fields of inquiry can go down a rathole for years because almost everyone has preference-falsified almost everyone else into submission to a “scientific consensus” theory that is (a) widely but privately disbelieved, and (b) doesn’t predict or retrodict observed facts at all well. In the worst case, the field will become pathologized — scientific fraud will spread like dry rot among workers overinvested in the “consensus” view and scrambling to prop it up. Yes, anthropogenic global warming, I’m looking at you!
There an important difference between the AGW rathole and the others, though. Errors in the mass of the electron, or the human chromosome count, or structural analyses of obscure languages, don’t have political consequences (I chose Chomsky, who is definitely politically active, in part to sharpen this point). AGW theory most certainly does have political consequences; in fact, it becomes clearer by the day that the IPCC assessment reports were fraudulently designed to fit the desired political consequences rather than being based on anything so mundane and unhelpful as observed facts.
– “Armed and Dangerous”, as quoted by Judith Curry
I think this particular article goes over the top in essentially dismissing all of AGW as junk science, but I think his perception is correct in that once you start invoking scientific consensus and deniers, you lay yourselves open to the charge of junk science.
– Judith Curry
Scientists Made People Do It
I strongly suspect that people wouldn’t be going after these scientists if they hadn’t made overconfident statements about their research in the IPCC and their research and data were transparent.
– Judith Curry
Scientists Made People Do It.
-willard
As someone who has (unfortunately) been strongly advised to seek the counsel of m’learned friends, I’d be fascinated to know what “overconfident statements” I’d made about my research in the IPCC and what of my “research and data” were not transparent.
– Gavin Schmidt
If someone has personally called you a fraud, did you ask the person why? The accusations of fraud that I have come across in the technical climate blogosphere are mostly from people working in the fields of engineering, regulatory science or medicine, who do not see what is going on in the IPCC assessments as measuring up to the standards in their own fields.
– Judith Curry
So they knew that 93% of interannual variation in CO2 could be explained by natural responses to temperature and soil moisture content, yet they continued with the charade?
I guess it really was fraud after all.
Scientists must account for general public ignorance; not prey on it as has been done with this AGW hypothesis based on the fraudulent misrepresentation of the effect from greenhouse gases.
Actually all of co2 both MM or natural accounts for less than 5% of GH impact. Which gets to the fraud relating to residence time fraud and “compounding” human inputs in the green AGW narrative.
– the technical climate blogosphere [1] [2] [3]
Curry on dragonslaying
I gave the sky dragons a platform, several threads in fact, it didn’t go very well for them as their arguments were debunked. The sky dragon group has been severely marginalized by those threads, which wouldn’t have happened if we followed your strategy.
– Judith Curry
When I have a technical post, there is generally some good albeit limited discussion, but comments invariably want to veer onto broader topics. The greenhouse effect remains of enduring interest. On some of the threads, physical chemists and molecular physicists showed up to provide their insights and clarify understanding. But these misconceptions remain in the dragonslayer group, although that group seems to be shrinking.
– Judith Curry
[T]he atmosphere does not act as a ‘blanket’ reducing the surface infrared cooling to space as maintained by the current GH theory, but is in and of itself a source of extra energy through pressure. This makes the GH effect a thermodynamic phenomenon, not a radiative one as presently assumed!
[…]
Together Equations (6) and (8) imply that the chemical composition of an atmosphere affects average air density through the molecular mass of air, but has no impact on the mean surface temperature.
[…]
Global surface temperature is independent of the down-welling LW flux known as greenhouse or back radiation, because both quantities derive from the same pool of atmospheric kinetic energy maintained by solar heating and air pressure.
– Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. & Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
“An excellent submission for peer 2 peer review”
“Absolutely fabulous.”
“Very convincing”
“Uh-oh.. physics at last. Congratulations.”
“What a wonderful end-of-year present. Dr Nikolov has neatly and convincingly explained what others (e.g. ‘The Slayers’) have been broadly asserting for some time but without, in my opinion, providing an intelligible or convincing argument.”
“I applaud the efforts to help rectify physical inconsistencies in the current GH concept.”
“Nice update to the science debate.”
“Exciting times to live in and WUWT is in the lead in providing a sounding board for alternative ideas. Congratulations.”
“Thermodynamics of an ideal gas. The greenhouse effect is INDEPENDENT of the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
Great.”“Very good and understandable reasoning.”
“This is what I call a “killer” publication.
As the “Unified Theory of Climate” provides us with a great explanation how atmosphhic pressure determines our climate the principal AGW doctrine is completely destroyed by these conclusions”“Could this be Game Set and Match?.
This is the most sensible theory I have heard to explain how the total atmosphere works.”“If this pans out then Nobel Prizes (at least) are in order.”
“Although much of the math is beyond me, this looks to me like an entirely new climate paradigm and is a major game-changer!”
“It’s a very pretty poster. Visually balanced between the left and right sides, and colors are well thought out.”
“Thank you Drs Nikolov & Zeller for this real science. Well done.”
Judith Curry on weak methodologies and important insights
Fred, I reread the Huber/Knutti paper with the intention of starting a thread on this, but I really can’t see any merit or conclusions of interest here. It is a weak methodology that agrees with a bunch of previous studies, so there is no surprising result. I can do a post that tears the paper apart, but since I don’t think this is a very significant paper, i don’t think it is worth the effort?
– Judith Curry
Von Storch refers to Hulme’s analysis as “remarkable.” I agree. In fact I give this paper a “wow.” For those of you wondering when/why I give something a “wow,” it implies that the paper or whatever significantly changes the way I think about something. This does not necessarily imply a belief change, but it changes the way I think about a subject. What is a “wow” for me may not be relevant for someone else. This particular paper provides some important insights, and I really like the phrase and concept of “epistemic slippage.” This paper deserves to be widely discussed, and I look forward to interesting discussion here.
– Judith Curry
I just finished listening to Murry Salby’s podcast on Climate Change and Carbon. Wow. […] If Salby’s analysis holds up, this could revolutionize AGW science. […] While all this is frustratingly preliminary without publication, slides, etc., it is sufficiently important that we should start talking about these issues.
– Judith Curry
Curry on model tuning, part II
The 20th century aerosol forcing used in most of the AR4 model simulations (Section 9.2.1.2) relies on inverse calculations of aerosol optical properties to match climate model simulations with observations. […] Schwartz (2004) notes that the intermodel spread in modeled temperature trend expressed as a fractional standard deviation is much less than the corresponding spread in either model sensitivity or aerosol forcing, and this comparison does not consider differences in solar and volcanic forcing. This agreement is accomplished through inverse calculations, whereby modeling groups can select the forcing data set and model parameters that produces the best agreement with observations. While some modeling groups may have conducted bona fide forward calculations without any a posteriori selection of forcing data sets and model parameters to fit the 20th century time series of global surface temperature anomalies, the available documentation on each model’s tuning procedure and rationale for selecting particular forcing data sets is not generally available.
– J.A. Curry and P.J. Webster, “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster”
1) The authors claim that ‘The 20th century aerosol forcing used in most of the AR4 model simulations (Section 9.2.1.2) relies on inverse calculations of optical properties to match climate model simulations with observations’ and thus claim ‘apparent circular reasoning’. This is incorrect. The inverse estimates of aerosol forcing given in 9.2.1.2 are derived from observationally based analyses of temperature and are compared in Chapter 9 with “forward” estimates calculated directly from understanding of the emissions in order to determine whether the two are consistent. But it is critical to understand that such inverse estimates are an output of attribution analyses not an input, and thus the claim of ‘circular reasoning’ is wrong. The aerosol forcing used in 20C3M (see http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/projects/cmip/ann_20c3m.php) climate model simulations was based on forward calculations using emission data (Boucher and Pham, 2002; references in Randall et al., 2007). Further, detection and attribution methods determine whether model-simulated temporal and spatial patterns of change (referred to as ‘fingerprints’) that are expected in response to changes in external forcing are present in observations. For example, the aerosol fingerprint shows a spatial and temporal pattern of near-surface temperature changes that varies between hemispheres and over time (see Hegerl et al., 2007 section 9.4.1.5). […] These patterns make the response to solar and aerosol forcing distinguishable (with uncertainties) from that due to greenhouse gas forcing. The amplitude of those fingerprint patterns is estimated from observations. Therefore, attribution of the dominant role of greenhouse gases in the warming of the past half-century is not sensitive to the uncertainties in the magnitude of aerosol forcing, or of other forcings, such as solar forcing. […] Thus, Curry and Webster misrepresent the role of forcing magnitude uncertainties in attribution, and do not appreciate the level of rigour with which physically plausible alternative explanations of the recent climate change are explored.
– Gabriele Hegerl, Peter Stott, Susan Solomon and Francis Zwiers, “Comment on Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster by J.A. Curry and P.J. Webster.”
Our overall concerns about the IPCC AR4 attribution statement and uncertainty analysis are best illustrated in the context of the recent publication by Gent et al. (2011), showing simulations of the 20th century climate of the NCAR Community Climate System Model Version 4. Figure 1 [the link downloads the file] compares the results of the CCSM3 (used in the AR4) with the CCSM4 simulations (for the AR5). In spite of using a better model and better forcing data for the CCSM4 simulations, the CCSM4 simulations show that after 1970, the simulated surface temperature increases faster than the data, so that by 2005 the model anomaly is 0.4oC larger than the observed anomaly. By contrast, the CCSM3 simulations show very good agreement with the surface temperature data. The critical difference is that the CCSM4 model was tuned for the pre-industrial period and used accepted best estimates of the forcing data, whereas the CCSM3 model was tuned to the 20th century observations and each modeling group was permitted to select their preferred forcing data sets. The contrast between the CCSM3 and CCSM4 simulations illustrate the bootstrapped plausibility of climate model simulations that influenced the AR4 attribution assessment.
– J. A. Curry and P.J. Webster, “Reply to Hegerl et al.’s Comment on “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster”” (draft)
Abstract. Hegerl et al.’s comment provides us with a further opportunity to emphasize and clarify our arguments as to why the treatment of uncertainty in the IPCC AR4 assessment regarding attribution is incomplete and arguably misleading.
More consistency
Do Judith Curry and Richard Muller disagree?
Below is a joint statement by Judith Curry and Richard Muller:
In recent days, statements we’ve made to the media and on blogs have been characterized as contradictory. They are not.We have both said that the global temperature record of the last 13 years shows evidence suggesting that the warming has slowed. Our new analysis of the land-based data neither confirms nor denies this contention. If you look at our new land temperature estimates, you can see a flattening of the rise, or a continuation of the rise, depending on the statistical approach you take.
-Judith Curry and Richar Muller, mid-November, 2011
Applying our analysis over the interval 1998 to 2010, we find the land temperature trend to be 2.84 ± 0.73 C / century, consistent with prior decades.
– Robert Rohde, Judith Curry, Donald Groom, Robert Jacobsen, Richard A. Muller, Saul Perlmutter, Arthur Rosenfeld, Charlotte Wickham, Jonathan Wurtele, “Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process”, mid-October, 2011
In our data, which is only on the land, we see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down.
– Richard Muller, October 21, 2011
This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
– Judith Curry, October 30, 2011
I mean, what they have done is an old trick. It’s how to lie with statistics, right? And scientists can’t do that because 10 years from now, they’ll look back on my publications and say, ‘Was he right?’ But a journalist can lie with statistics. They can choose a little piece of the data and prove what they want, carefully cutting out the end. If I wanted to do this, I could demonstrate, for example, with the same data set that from 1980 to 1995 that it’s equally flat. You can find little realms where it’s equally flat. What that tells me is that 15 years is not enough to be able to tell whether it’s warming or not. And so when they take 13 years, and they say based on that they can reach a conclusion based on our data set, I think they’re playing that same game and the fact that we can find that back in 1980, the same effect, when we know it wasn’t warming simply shows that that method doesn’t work. But no scientist could do that because he’d be discredited for lying with statistics.
– Richard Muller, October 31, 2011
The Wall St. Journal Op-Ed by one of us (Muller) seemed to take the opposite view with its title and subtitle: “The Case Against Global-Warming Skepticism — There were good reasons for doubt, until now.” But those words were not written by Muller. The title and the subtitle of the submitted Op-Ed were “Cooling the Warming Debate – Are you a global warming skeptic? If not, perhaps you should be. Let me explain why.” The title and subtitle were changed by the editors without consulting or seeking permission from the author. Readers are encouraged to ignore the title and read the content of the Op-Ed.
-Judith Curry and Richard Muller, mid-November, 2011
But I’ve never said you shouldn’t be a skeptic. I’ve never said that.
– Richard Muller, October 31, 2011
Without good answers to all these complaints, global-warming skepticism seems sensible. But now let me explain why you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer.
– Richard Muller, October 21, 2011
Curry has a quiz
How many of these disinformation tactics are used by JC?
3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations.
“Let me say that this is one of the most reprehensible attacks on a reputable scientist that I have seen, and the so-called tsunami of accusations made in regards to climategate are nothing in compared to the attack on Wegman.” [source]
“On comment regarding my comments on Wegman (not the Wegman report per se). The whole host of issues surrounding whether or not he is biased, the plaigarism accusation, and whatever else, are issues that I have not investigated in any detail (and don’t intend to). So my comments on this should not receive any undue consideration; they were made when i thought my mention of the Wegman Report was going to be hijacked by the plaigarism issue being raised at deepclimate. This is last word on that subject, and request that Keith not allow any more comments on this topic of plaigarism.” [source]
6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer.
“Gavin, the post I made in #167 was a summary of Montford’s book as closely as I can remember it, sort of a review. I did not particularly bring in my personal opinions into this, other than the framing of montford’s points.” [source]
7. Question motives.
“Once the UNFCCC treaty was in place, there was pressure on the IPCC to back this up with science. Hence the “discernible” in the SAR. Ben Santer has taken huge heat for that, but look at where the pressure was coming from. The whole UNFCCC treaty wouldn’t make sense unless there was at least “discernible” evidence that this was actually happening.” [source]
8. Invoke authority.
“He is the author of a popular introductory graduate text Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics. He is an excellent lecturer and teacher, which comes across in his podcast. He has the reputation of a thorough and careful researcher. While all this is frustratingly preliminary without publication, slides, etc., it is sufficiently important that we should start talking about these issues.” [source]
9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues except with denials they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion.
“The whole point of my remarks to David Rose of the Daily Mail is that the BEST data has very little to say about GLOBAL temperatures, since it is a land only data set that covers ~30% of the earth’s surface. That is the context for my statements to Rose.” [source]
17. Change the subject.
“I’m hosting a guest post for the authors of two recently published papers, on a topic that everyone seems to want to discuss at the moment: the BEST data set and interpreting the temperature record.” [source]
18. Emotionalize, Antagonize, and Goad Opponents.
People don’t like me saying this, but none are defending me from the label of heretic for talking about overconfidence in the IPCC and concerns about treatment of the uncertainty (which stimulated the heretic label). Which seems to support my dogma argument. [source]
19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs.
20. False evidence.
22. Manufacture a new truth. Create your own expert(s), group(s), author(s), leader(s) or influence existing ones willing to forge new ground via scientific, investigative, or social research or testimony which concludes favorably. In this way, if you must actually address issues, you can do so authoritatively.
23. Create bigger distractions.
A retroactive context
This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
– Judith Curry
As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the BEST data that says there is no lag/slow down in the warming during the past decade or so.
– Judith Curry
Applying our analysis over the interval 1998 to 2010, we find the land temperature trend to be 2.84 ± 0.73 C / century, consistent with prior decades.
– Robert Rohde, Judith Curry, Donald Groom, Robert Jacobsen, Richard A. Muller, Saul Perlmutter, Arthur Rosenfeld, Charlotte Wickham, Jonathan Wurtele, “Berkeley Earth Temperature Averaging Process”
When asked specifically about the graph that apparently uses a 10 year running mean and ends in 2006, we discussed “hide the decline,” but I honestly can’t recall if Rose or I said it first. I agreed that the way the data is presented in the graph “hides the decline.”
– Judith Curry, posted on October 30, 2011
I have dug into my memory. Rose brought up hide the decline in our first interview, in the context of the plot that ends in 2006. He called me back specifically to discuss this and teased the “hide the decline” out of me. The hide the decline discussion was in this particular context.
– Judith Curry, updated on October 30, 2011
Joshua, this whole issue was particularly in the context of discussion of a graph that used a 10 yr running mean.
– Judith Curry, October 30, 2011 at 2:57pm
However, a week later…
The whole point of my remarks to David Rose of the Daily Mail is that the BEST data has very little to say about GLOBAL temperatures, since it is a land only data set that covers ~30% of the earth’s surface. That is the context for my statements to Rose.
– Judith Curry, November 7, 2011 at 9:09am
Curry Quotes 