I've read your paper Mugwump. Lindzen is essentially carrying out climate attribution for GHGs by using the observed tropospheric warming as a constraint upon the magnitude of the anthropogenic warming signal within the observed surface warming trends. Using 4 models at equilibrium for 2xCO2 from Lee et al. Lindzen infers the expected ratio of warming between the tropical troposphere 300 hPa and the tropical surface. The models vary between a ratio of 2:1 and 7:1, or thereabouts. Then using the current observed tropical tropospheric warming trends he derives a figure for the warming you might expect from GHGs. He derives a value for the 20th C warming trend of 0.4oC. He acknowledges a figure for uncertainty in the tropospheric warming trends and hedges his estimate to a maximum of 0.068oC per decade, up from 0.033oC per deacade.
I think there a few problems with this work ranging from odd erroneous statements, a potentially dubious central premise, poor and incomplete comparisons between observations and models and a general form issue of missing citations that are fundamental to the work.
Here are a few examples:
Strange statement which is simply wrong and misleading:
"Roughly speaking, the warming at Ï= 1 in the tropics is from more than twice to about three times larger than near the surface regardless of the sensitivity of the particular model. This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
Stratospheric cooling is the fingerprint of GHG induced warming which sets it apart from other warming mechanisms.
Is the central premise even valid given the large uncertainties regarding tropical tropospheric warming?
Given the large uncertainties in the tropical tropospheric is it valid to only choose one dataset (no formal citation or weblink!)? What about the other sonde analyses, what about the RSS data and the UAH data? This seems like the biggest flaw.
4 models is not a very large sample given the diversity of GCMs that exist. It would have been good to see a far more extensive set of comparisons to the full range of data. This has already been done of course though (pdf).
So this is not even an original analysis. I conclude: rejection with major revisions (at least from a normal journal).
See here for a discussion of tropical tropospheric trends.
There is also another fairly obvious problem with this work that isn't even discussed by Lindzen. Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly? I think of at least one good reason why this comparison is like comparing apples and oranges.
"Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly?"
Let me qualify that, sorry.
Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the modelled factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly at equilibrium for 2xCO2?
Strange statement which is simply wrong and misleading:
"Roughly speaking, the warming at Ï=1 in the tropics is from more than twice to about three times larger than near the surface regardless of the sensitivity of the particular model. This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
I don't think his statement is misleading at all. He is arguing that the oversimplified schoolboy explanation of the greenhouse effect - Earth heated by visible radiation from the sun, cooled via thermal radiation back into space - is incomplete. In fact, there is so much water vapour at the Earth's surface (particularly in the tropics) that it doesn't radiate at all there. The heated air is convected to an altitude - the characteristic emission altitude or Ï=1 in your quote - at which the atmosphere above is sufficiently transparent to allow thermal radiation, so the Earth looks like a classical blackbody at Ï=1 when viewed from space and the schoolboy explanation applies: incoming solar (visible) radiation is balanced by outgoing longwave radiation at Ï=1.
(the last bit in bold is the piece that is missing from the schoolboy explanation)
Now, adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere raises the characteristic emission level (the altitude at which Ï=1), which in turn makes it colder (since temperature decreases within the troposphere with increasing altitude), and therefore reduces the outgoing longwave radiation (a colder blackbody radiates less).
Since the incoming solar radiation does not change with addition of greenhouse gases (at least not in this simple model) the Earth will now be out of equilibrium (more incoming solar radiation than outgoing longwave radiation at Ï=1), and it will heat up until the temperature at the new higher characteristic emission level is sufficient to generate blackbody radiation matching the incoming solar radiation.
Now, Lindzen goes on to argue (pretty convincingly) based on fundamentals and models that the temperature increase at Ï=1 in the tropics should be 2-3 times that at the surface, regardless of the climate sensitivity. (I suspect that one could actually derive the ratio within a sufficiently simplified atmospheric model that still captured the salient features - but at this point Lindzen is relying on computer simulations). It is this sensitivity independence that is behind his claim that "This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming.", and on face value, it certainly seems like a reasonable claim to me.
This is an important result which overturns much of what we know about the physics of warming, period, not just GHG-induced warming.
I really wonder why he'd publish such seminal work in E&E instead of the scientific literature.
This is an important result which overturns much of what we know about the physics of warming, period, not just GHG-induced warming.
No it doesn't. Climate Scientists have surely understood this for a long time. There are plenty of examples of "schoolboy scientific explanations" that leave out important details. Lindzen is looking for a slam-dunk GHG climate signature that we can measure today without having to rely on GCMs. Maybe this isn't it, but I think the approach is laudable.
I'm disagreeing with Lindzen's statements with regard to how the tropical tropospheric warm comes about. I disagree with his statement about this being the fingerprint of GHG induced warming.
"This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
This is wrong, and continued assertions to the contrary won't change that. Try reading the report I linked to which discusses the different signatures we might expect from different causes of warming. The warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of solar forced warming also. The real fingerprint for GHG induced warming is cooling in the stratosphere. Lindzen ignores this, which is odd, given that he talks about fingerprints. I find it odd that such an inaccurate statement makes its way into a journal.
What about all the other issues with the work? What about his virtual disregard for the uncertainties in the observations? There are substantial disagreements between the satellite and sonde data. What does this imply for his his attribution study? I don't know because he somehow managed to get this published despite ignoring that.
Always good to find out what real science is up to ...
Real Climate recently had a piece on a series of new papers addressing uncertainty and downward biases in the radiosonde data, which postdate Lindzen's paper and which would tend to deflate whatever argument he thinks he has.
Quoted from the last paper:
The new analysis adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that these discrepancies are most likely the result of inaccuracies in the observed temperature record rather than fundamental model errors.
In other words, just like the UAH original satellite "it's cooling, not warming" frumpus several years ago which "drove a wooden stake through the heart of the AGW hypothesis", evidence is building that the data analysis, not model results, is at fault.
Of course, these are papers from the peer-reviewed literature, which I'm sure mugwump will dismiss as being of less value than Lindzen's vanity press piece ...
"Lindzen is looking for a slam-dunk GHG climate signature that we can measure today without having to rely on GCMs. Maybe this isn't it, but I think the approach is laudable."
This is a bizarre statement. Can you qualify this for me? Are you really claiming that Lindzen, in this article, is the first to consider searching for fingerprints we can measure?
Climatologists have already taken this approach by first predicting that nights would warm more relative to the day and that the stratosphere would cool - which has happened in both instances. Lindzen was beaten to it by at least a decade.
Climate Scientists have surely understood this for a long time.
It runs directly counter the the mainstream climate science understanding of the atmospheric physics to claim that such a "hotspot" is a signature of AGW, rather than all, warming.
The point of my previous post, BTW, in case you're too lazy to read the real climate thread, is that increasing work on cleaning up the radiosonde data analysis points to the "missing" hotspot as actually being there all along, within error bars ...
Mugwump,
You went on at length about avoiding "Ad Hominem" attacks in the other thread. And yet you yourself engage in a classic "Appeal to Ridicule", with your repeated assertion that anything that does not agree with Lindzen's analysis is mere "schoolboy" science.
"The mote in thine own eye", and all that.
Bernard J.,
"I certainly concur with you on the self-correction inherent in science."
Skepticism is the essential driver of this self-correcting process.
"I am curious about how you would describe what you perceive as the consensus in current climate science, and how this differs from what you perceive as the current 'momentum' in the institutions responsible for conducting this science."
The physical basis for AGW lies in a very few papers that actually deal with the nitty-gritty of the radiative physics involved. The vast majority of the literature assumes these basic parameters to be true and then expounds on possible scenarios based on models etc.
The institutional "momentum" caused by this consensus can be seen in such places as Barry Brook's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability. As I have commented before this "research" institute takes as a given that climate change is man made, caused by CO2 and dangerous.
The truth is that the RICCS is not a climate science research facility at all but a government sponsored environmental advocacy organization.
"What self-correction have you seen to date, if any?"
Both the non-feedback and w/feedback CO2 climate sensitivity stated in the IPCC FAR are lower than in previous reports. This is progress, if halting.
Both the non-feedback and w/feedback CO2 climate sensitivity stated in the IPCC FAR are lower than in previous reports. This is progress, if halting.
And if it were higher, it would not be progress?
This is the difference between self-correction in science, which follows the data ...
vs. faith-driven belief that science is biased towards a particular result, and that only movement in the direction consistent with that faith-driven belief is "correction".
The point of my previous post, BTW, in case you're too lazy to read the real climate thread, is that increasing work on cleaning up the radiosonde data analysis points to the "missing" hotspot as actually being there all along, within error bars ...
I read the realclimate post. It's another one along the lines of "how dare you suggest our models disagree with the observations, their error bars are so wide they'd agree with any observations..." Unfortunately, the realclimate folks have yet to realize that large uncertainty in the models is is not a virtue.
Insofar as the observations go, please check out the latest: latest, specifically:
Adjusted data from 5S - 20N continue to show relatively weak warming
Here comes an ad hominem, mugwump ... one problem you have is that you are an enthusiastic amateur of climate science suffering from an inherent need to believe that you are smarter than the average scientist who works and publishes in that field. This makes you a sucker for a better schooled (than you) but less honest character, like Lindzen. Also, the scientist you are actually brighter than is also that man, your hero Lindzen.
It's easier for a liar and fool to believe in lies and foolishness mugwump, and Lindzen proves himself - unlike your own good self - to know no shame.
This has been an example of argument ad hominem.
Mugwump,
Are you citing Sherwood et al as evidence that sonde data are inconsistent with models?
Mugwump,
You went on at length about avoiding "Ad Hominem" attacks in the other thread. And yet you yourself engage in a classic "Appeal to Ridicule", with your repeated assertion that anything that does not agree with Lindzen's analysis is mere "schoolboy" science.
Actually, "schoolboy science explanation" was not meant to be derogatory at all. It was just the explanation I received at school. As I said above, I assume climate scientists have all along been aware of the simplifications in the standard explanation.
The warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of solar forced warming also.
In which case the absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of the absence of both solar forcing and GHG forcing. An upper bound on the sum of two positive functions is also an upper bound on each function alone.
The real fingerprint for GHG induced warming is cooling in the stratosphere.
That may well be so. As far as I know Lindzen does not deny it. But I also don't know of any way to calculate the climate sensitivity from the stratospheric/surface temperature ratio (not to say there isn't one).
That's the appeal of Lindzen's tropospheric warming approach: the ratio between the tropospheric temperature and surface temperature is independent of the climate sensitivity (at least if you believe Lindzen's argument; I can't see an obvious problem with it and no one on this thread has offered one). As an old theoretical physicist, invariants are a very natural way to analyze complex physical systems.
When Lindzen has interesting ideas (like IRIS), they get published in reasonable places, but E&E published Schulte, for goodness' sake...
Strangely, despite Lindzen's long campaign against AGW, one person who cautiously still thought the evidence was "equivocal" in the 1990s has long since decided it wasn't, despite seeing Lindzen rather often.
This person is:
--Professor Ronald Prinn, MIT Atmospheric Science, A Lead Author on IPCC AR4. He heads the MIT Center for Global Change Science, which includes ... Richard Lindzen.
I was especially glad to hear him speak last Fall, as he moderated a famous debate between Stephen Schneider and Richard Lindzen in 1990. About 10 years ago, he thought the scientific evidence on AGW was still "equivocal", i.e., Prinn was not one to leap on the bandwagon, and there was yet-unresolved conflicting data like satellites.
See "MIT World, which references a video akin to the talk I heard. He describes changing his mind, i.e., he is *not* equivocal these days. I recommend his video especially for his discussions on uncertainty.
I read the realclimate post. It's another one along the lines of "how dare you suggest our models disagree with the observations, their error bars are so wide they'd agree with any observations..."
No, that's not the claim at all. The point is that three different approaches to correcting for bias in the radiosonde data - by people who have nothing to do with models - have led to datasets which match the models reasonably well. While the uncorrected results did not, error bars or no error bars (which is the basis for Lindzen's and various other people's claims). The fact that three different teams, taking three different approaches to correcting for bias, come up with very similar corrected radiosonde data is cited as giving confidence to the results, and then as an addendum an additional paper was added to the post.
Your handwaving dismissal, coupled with your blind acceptance of Lindzen's result, which has not been published in a science journal, is very telling.
Oh, and you're totally missing the point that if the corrected radiosonde data shows that the "missing hotspot" actually isn't missing at all, then Lindzen's argument is moot, as it depends on something missing that actually isn't.
Are you citing Sherwood et al as evidence that sonde data are inconsistent with models?
I am citing Sherwood et al in conjunction with Lindzen as evidence that our current best estimates of tropical tropospheric temperature trends, and our current best estimates of tropical surface temperature trends, are not consistent with high climate sensitivity.
In which case the absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of the absence of both solar forcing and GHG forcing.
You're missing the point entirely (not surprising). The absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is evidence that global warming isn't happening AT ALL, not for ANY REASON.
The only problem with this is that we have a lot of other evidence of a warming trend. Satellite data. Surface temp data. Changes in glacier coverage, arctic ice cap extent, seasonable migration time in animals, spring green-up in plants, literally hundreds of areas in which observations consistent with a warming planet correlate with our direct physical measurements.
Given all the other data that points to a warming planet, it's not surprising that ongoing work on the radiosonde data shows a downward temp bias, and that correcting for that bias brings things in line with other overwhelming heaps of data.
Note I didn't use the word "model" once.
Are you really claiming that Lindzen, in this article, is the first to consider searching for fingerprints we can measure?
Of course not. But his approach does have a several rather attractive (to me) features:
1) it is independent of the actual climate sensitivity;
2) it does not rely on GCM simulations;
3) it gets a quantitative answer for what the climate sensitivity should be.
I am not claiming these three desiderata are unique to his approach, but they are useful in getting at the truth without getting bogged down trying to model the entire climate.
Oh, and you're totally missing the point that if the corrected radiosonde data shows that the "missing hotspot" actually isn't missing at all, then Lindzen's argument is moot, as it depends on something missing that actually isn't.
umm, dhogaza, you are missing the point. Sherwood et al say:
Adjusted data from 5S - 20N continue to show relatively weak warming
Or, in layman's terms: there's no hotspot in the tropics.
The absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is evidence that global warming isn't happening AT ALL, not for ANY REASON.
No, the absence of a warm spot, in conjunction with Lindzen's analysis, is evidence for a lower upper bound on climate sensitivity. There are two ways to refute this: 1) show the warm spot is actually there, or 2) refute the analysis. Neither are yet to happen.
Mugwump,
I'm rather unconvinced by your interpretation of Sherwood et al. Your less-than-one sentence quote doesn't seem to fairly represent the full sentence or the results and conclusions of the paper.
"The meridional variations of zonally aggregated temperature trend since 1979 moved significantly closer to
those of the MSU (Microwave Sounding Unit) after data adjustment. Adjusted data from 5S-20N continue to
show relatively weak warming, but the error is quite large, and the trends are inconsistent with those at other
latitudes. Overall, the adjusted trends are close to those of MSU for the lower troposphere (TLT)."
Your single subsentence is highlighted.
The abstract goes on:
"The troposphere warms at least as strongly as the surface, with local warming maxima at 300 hPa in the Tropics and in
the boundary layer of the extratropical northern hemisphere (ENH). Tropospheric warming since 1959 is almost
hemispherically symmetric, but since 1979 is significantly stronger in ENH and weaker in ESH (extratropical
southern hemisphere)."
Do you still cite Sherwood et al as evidence for the non-existence of the tropical tropospheric hot-spot at 300 hPa? i.e. The tropical tropospheric hotspot that Lindzen alleges to be non-existent in the sonde data.
But I would urge you to read the paper in full and look at figures 3 and 6. Both of which show the clear existence of a tropical tropospheric hotspot at 300 hPa.
I am citing Sherwood et al in conjunction with Lindzen as evidence that our current best estimates of tropical tropospheric temperature trends, and our current best estimates of tropical surface temperature trends, are not consistent with high climate sensitivity.
But Sherwood uses their fairly decent fit with lat/altitude predictions of 11 different GCMs as evidence that there are still uncorrected errors in the various analyses of the MSU dataset. They also caution that the highest uncertainty in the sonde data, even with corrections, still lies in the latitudes 5S-20N, a fairly big swath of the tropics.
Everything here is consistent with the Real Climate treatment of the problem, and in fact Sherwood is one of the three papers the post is commenting on and they reproduce a figure from the paper.
Indeed, despite your ad hom (harumph) dismissal of the Real Climate post (in which you huffed and puffed about climate model error bars when the discussion centers around the large uncertainty around the DATA, uncertainty totally reflected in the Sherwood paper you cite), Real Climate's conclusion is actually very conservative:
To conclude, the structural uncertainty in the radiosonde data is large, and while these attempts to improve the homogenisation are a step in the right direction, the degree of adjustment is a concern. The bottom line is that the observations may well be closer to the model data than preliminary analyses suggested but that the structural uncertainty remains high. Coming to dramatic conclusions based on any of this remains unwise.
The "dramatic conclusions" being referred to would be that the observations conclusively support model predictions. They don't, but not because of overly large error bars in climate model predictions blah blah - because of uncorrected errors and uncertainties IN THE DATA. Got it, yet???
However, though not conclusive, the three papers are CONSISTENT with the hypothesis that the sonde/model mismatch is due to problems in the data, not the models, i.e. that the "hotspot" isn't really missing at all.
Even more important, mugwump, is that after that post was made, a LATER paper from Sherwood came out, in which they work on further corrections, which increase confidence in the fit with models:
In it they extend the idea mentioned above of using wind shear as a check on the temperature trends and come up with a another new estimate of the changes. This estimate is again much closer to the moist adiabat and the climate models.
It was commentary from Nature (unfortunately apparently no longer available at the supplied URL) that I quoted earlier:
The new analysis adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that these discrepancies are most likely the result of inaccuracies in the observed temperature record rather than fundamental model errors."
In plain language, this commentary in Nature is saying that the "missing hotspot" isn't really missing at all, but rather an artifact of problems with the uncorrected data.
I realize that this will go in one ear, and out the other, but thought I'd give education a chance for once.
Paul H, yes, it's clear that Sherwood is stating that the data is least reliable from 5S to 20N, and that the data there sticks out because it doesn't match well with the sonde trends for other latitudes, nor MSU-derived trends for 5S to 20N (while matching well with MSU-derived trends for other latitudes). Strong evidence that it's due to uncorrected errors.
And their figure 6 shows that despite the "relatively weak warming" mugwump's fond of, mugwump has missed the fact that their overall lat/altitude profile charts (reproduced in the Real Climate post) do still match the combined predictions of GCMs quite well.
There's no doubt that Sherwood would be astonished at the conclusions Mugwump (and the denialists he listens to) draw from his paper ...
Oh, and you also owe us an apology, mugwump, for quote-mining the paper the way you did. For shame.
Mugwump,
What exactly does 'signature' mean? Are there multiple signatures we can look for that would/should indicate a smoking gun one way or the other? It seems that in the absence of a true signature we are left with only models and observations, no?
Hansen recently said on his blog that GCM's rank 3rd in importance when trying to understand our climate. Earths history and real world observations trump GCM's.
I guess a lot of the flak your catching is a result of hansens' main tools running counter to what the models are showing.
Monsoon
No, the absence of a warm spot, in conjunction with Lindzen's analysis, is evidence for a lower upper bound on climate sensitivity. There are two ways to refute this: 1) show the warm spot is actually there
Just to beat you over the head with it ... work done since Lindzen published his analysis in the vanity press, has greatly weakened the argument for its not being there. And this includes the Sherwood paper you quote-mined, in which they argue that their corrections, which they clearly state haven't caught all the problems, brings the sonde data in line with GCM predictions (complete with pretty picture). And their following paper strengthens the case even more.
So, your criteria for refuting Lindzen's work is largely met.
I haven't bothered looking for a refutation of Lindzen's analysis. It's possible that the climate community has largely ignored it.
I guess a lot of the flak your catching is a result of hansens' main tools running counter to what the models are showing.
The flak he's catching is due to his not understanding Sherwood, for one thing, and the flak you're going to catch is for blatant lies like the statement above regarding observations and models.
dhogaza,
Here's the direct quote from Hansens blog:
Our understanding of the Earth's climate, in particular, depends foremost on the Earth's history: how past climate changed in response to changing boundary conditions. I rate observations of ongoing climate change and processes today, processes on the ice sheets, in the oceans, etc., as the second most important source of knowledge about climate change. Climate models rate only third, in my opinion. Models are a tool that helps us understand the other two, i.e., climate history and on-going climate phenomena.
Let me know if you would like the link if you need verification. Am I lying or are you calling Hansen a liar?
Sorry. Pg. 14 is where this part of the discussion takes place if you didnt want to read through the entire thing.
Monsoon
Am I lying or are you calling Hansen a liar?
No, I'm calling you a fucking idiot, because observations agree with current GCMs to a very large extent.
The problem is in no way Hansen's observation (which is like climate science 101), but rather your fucking idiot 101 assumption that available data negates GCMs.
I guess a lot of the flak your catching is a result of hansens' main tools running counter to what the models are showing.
After which you post a Hansen quote which you assume supports your position, which of course it does not. Because observations are not running counter to what the models are showing.
there is so much water vapour at the Earth's surface (particularly in the tropics) that it doesn't radiate at all there.
The atmosphere absorbs 350 watts per square meter of radiation from the surface and 40 W/m2 gets through to space. Your assertion above is just wrong. See:
Ok, seems a lot of excitement happened in my absence. Rather than respond to every comment, let me just point out that Sherwood et al is not at all inconsistent with Lindzen, to wit:
Our 1979 - 2005 trends for 850 - 300hPa in the Tropics are 0.15±0.07 C / decade.
[for those who would accuse me of quote mining, they do go onto say "This is within uncertainty of the roughly 0.17-0.22 expected on the basis of surface trends of 0.12-0.14C/decade (CCSP 2006; Santer et. al. 2005)" but as we shall see below, this statement does not square with Lindzen's analysis which was published after those two cited articles.]
Lindzen says:
However, judging from figure 10 of Thorne et al (2005) a reasonable error bar for the temperature trend would be ±0.07C/decade
(2 times the standard deviation). Thus, it is possible that the upper tropospheric tropical trend might be as large as 0.17C/decade, implying a contribution of 0.068 C/decade to the surface trend - still only about half.
So Lindzen did anticipate Sherwood's adjustments to the tropospheric temperature, but even if you accept 0.17C/decade for the tropospheric warming, you still only get half the surface temperature warming looking at greenhouse processes alone.
Maybe this will be reconciled with further data jiggling. But it may also turn out that Lindzen is right and the climate sensitivity estimates from GCMs are too high.
The atmosphere absorbs 350 watts per square meter of radiation from the surface and 40 W/m2 gets through to space. Your assertion above is just wrong.
If that figure is for the Earth as a whole, it seems consistent with what Lindzen said. He implied no radiation at the tropics. But even with some residual radiation (of course there is *some*, this is a continuous process after all), Lindzen's picture is qualitatively correct: most of the longwave radiation from the surface is absorbed by the atmosphere, not reradiated back to space as in the schoolboy explanation (non-derogatory).
That was an impressive quote mine indeed.
1) it is independent of the actual climate sensitivity;
2) it does not rely on GCM simulations;
3) it gets a quantitative answer for what the climate sensitivity should be.
1. I don't know what this means.
2. There are plenty of empirical analyses of CS. Gergory 2002, Tung 2007 and others. Hansen has one derived from paleoclimate. Empirical estimates are right in line with model estimates.
3. I don't know how it would do this better than other analyses considering Lindzen is choosing
a) a dataset with known errors and known large uncertainties and
b) a region that will have more decadal variability than surface temperatures due to its stronger response to el nino/la nina.
Boris,
1. means that the ratio between the temperature at Ï=1 and the surface is independent of the actual climate sensitivity. So regardless of whether sensitivity is 0.5,1.3,4.5C, the ratio is the same.
Urrgh. Double spaced, numbered lines. Why do some journals insist on that submission format - it's almost unreadable. But I will read when I have time.
I would note from an initial skim that Tung says: "Truly model-independent determination of climate sensitivity has been rare." so I think it is reasonable to get excited over any new approach (Lindzen's approach is not strictly model-independent but he doesn't rely on transient GCM simulations).
Urrgh. Double spaced, numbered lines. Why do some journals insist on that submission format - it's almost unreadable. But I will read when I have time.
... for the very good reason that it's not meant to be "read" (unless this is a submission to a journal that actually prints in this mode, single spaced).
It's meant to be copyedited, and copyediting single and 1.5 spacing is an infuriating exercise! (Not that many manuscripts are traditionally copyedited with red pen nowadays -- and it always seems to be the single-spaced submissions in which there are problems accessing the e-copy and the author's gone on a sojourn for 3 months that one ends up copyediting conventionally.)
And the numbers allow rapid identification/location of editor and copyeditor queries.
It's meant to be copyedited
Ahh. I only review for online journals nowadays. Copyediting in my field went away with the dodo (well, slightly more recently: with the advent of TeX)
Time will tell.
A somewhat weak foundation to build the case that Lindzen's "proven" that the consensus estimates are too high...
Can you explain why this one paper is right and these 61 papers are wrong?
BPL, This has moved to Open Thread, which is why I didn't see your question. But since Barry Brook on his blog drew my attention to your question and then deleted my response, and is now blocking me from posting over there, I figured I'd post it here for you (verbatim):
Those 61 papers claim a climate sensitivity from 0.1C to 9.6C. With all due respect, they can't all be correct. Lindzen's estimates typically fall around 1C, which puts it squarely in the middle of that pack (on a logarithmic scale).
A somewhat weak foundation to build the case that Lindzen's "proven" that the consensus estimates are too high...
Those quotes are not mine. I never said Lindzen had proven anything.
Chris O'Neil,
Here are the central values for sea level rise for each of the assement reports. Feel free to correct me if I wrong.
Please dont ever call me a liar again and an apology is in order.
2007- â¢Based on multiple models that all exclude ice sheet flow due to a lack of basis in published literature,[8] it is estimated that sea level rise will be:
oin a low scenario[6] 18 to 38 cm (7 to 15 inches)
oin a high scenario[7] 26 to 59 cm (10 to 23 inches)
Central Tendancy of 38.5 cm.
2001- â¢Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 metres between 1990 and 2100, for the full range of SRES scenarios. This is due primarily to thermal expansion and loss of mass from glaciers and ice caps (Figure 5e). The range of sea level rise presented in the SAR was 0.13 to 0.94 metres based on the IS92 scenarios. Despite the higher temperature change projections in this assessment, the sea level projections are slightly lower, primarily due to the use of improved models, which give a smaller contribution from glaciers and ice sheets.
Central Tendancy=48 cm
and finally...
1995- Combining the lowest emission scenario (IS92c) with the "low" climate and ice
melt sensitivities and including aerosol effects gives a projected sea-level rise of about 15 cm
from the present to 2100. The corresponding projection for the highest emission scenario (IS92e)
combined with "high" climate and ice-melt sensitivities gives a sea-level rise of about 95 cm
from the present to 2100.
Central Tendancy= 55cm
So to recap:
2007- 38.5cm
2001- 48cm
1995- 55cm
I dont know how else you can interpret that to mean anything other than the IPCC downgrading expected sea level rise estimates???? Can you take THAT seriously? Perhaps we should all think before we talk, no?
Monsoonevans
2007- "exclude ice sheet flow"
Pay attention to that phrase - it is the key to your confusion.
I dont know how else you can interpret that to mean anything other than the IPCC downgrading expected sea level rise estimates????
You're leaving out an important part of the story. Rather than tell you what you've left out, I'm going to ask you to tell us. This will help us judge as to whether or not you actually understand the figures you're posting, or have just cut-and-pasted your logic from a denialist site which has intentionally misled you ...
Mugwump,
Sherwood et al:
"Our 1979 - 2005 trends for 850 - 300hPa in the Tropics are 0.15±0.07 C / decade."
Can you explain what relevance an averaged trend over 850 hPa - 300 hPa has to Lindzen's analysis? Yes, it's clear that the vertically averaged trend is going to be less than the trend at 300 hPa, but what relevance does it have when it's very clear that Lindzen selects the trend at 300 hPa and only 300 hPa for use in his analysis? Lindzen very obviously uses the trend at 300 hPa displayed in his figure 5 and then applies some conservative error bars to provide a wider range of estimates.
Using Sherwood et al's 1979-2005 tropical 300 hPa trend (0.17 oC - 0.23 oC) in Lindzen's framework I derive he following range of trends:
0.068 - 0.092 oC / decade for surface warming caused by GHGs.
The IPCC said that it was very likely that most of the warming since the mid-20th century was caused by increases in GHG concentrations. I see no inconsistency, even using Lindzen's analysis. Also, Sherwood's figure 6 makes the point that models with inherent high climate sensitivity roughly reproduce the observed 300 hPa trends.
I'm not sure what to say. You claim that Lindzen somehow anticipated this adjustment even though Lindzen only examines the standard deviation. The numbers you quoted are only consistent because of your misreading of Sherwood et al's vertically averaged tropospheric trend. I'm perplexed too that you deny the fact you quote mined only to embark on another round of mining. Reading the paper and examining the data in the figures it is clear that Sherwood is inconsistent with Lindzen's quoted trends at 300 hPa between 1979-2005 in the tropics. Lindzen says 0.03 - 0.17 oC per decade, yet Sherwood shows it to be 0.17 - 0.23 oC per decade. In what universe are they consistent?
Using Sherwood et al's 1979-2005 tropical 300 hPa trend (0.17 oC - 0.23 oC) in Lindzen's framework I derive he following range of trends:
I believe you, but I am stumped: where did you get the figure for 300hpa only from?
0.068 - 0.092 oC / decade for surface warming caused by GHGs.
The IPCC said that it was very likely that most of the warming since the mid-20th century was caused by increases in GHG concentrations. I see no inconsistency, even using Lindzen's analysis.
Even if we take the upper end of the range - 0.092C - we get a climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates. We also get at least 1/3 of the recent warming from non anthropogenic causes. A best upper bound on sensitivity of 2 (making the real number more likely to be somewhere between 1 and 2), with at least 1/3 again not due to humans, is a very, very different story from the one the alarmists are spreading.
Reading the paper and examining the data in the figures it is clear that Sherwood is inconsistent with Lindzen's quoted trends at 300 hPa between 1979-2005 in the tropics. Lindzen says 0.03 - 0.17 oC per decade, yet Sherwood shows it to be 0.17 - 0.23 oC per decade. In what universe are they consistent?
Lindzen never wrote 0.03 - 0.17 oC:
However, significant errors were found in the later report that led to the results shown
in Figure 5. Given, the emphasis on errors leading to positive warming trend, it is
intuitively unlikely that further errors will lead to much greater warming, though the
possibility cannot, of course, be ruled out. However, judging from figure 10 of Thorne
et al (2005) a reasonable error bar for the temperature trend would be ±0.07 C/decade
(2 times the standard deviation). Thus, it is possible that the upper tropospheric tropical
trend might be as large as 0.17 C/decade, implying a contribution of 0.068 C/decade to
the surface trend - still only about half.
Had Lindzen really believed in symmetrical error bars, he would have mentioned that a 0.03C (=0.1-0.07) tropo trend would imply an almost negligible surface trend. But he didn't.
Even if we take the upper end of the range - 0.092C - we get a climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates.
It lies within the accepted 3C +/- 1.5C range, not "much below alarmist estimates".
An upper bound of 2C is much below 4.5C.
Dhogaza,
I didn't realize that the IPCC reports were Denialists sites, as that is where I cut and pasted from. I didn't need to go anywhere other than the horses mouth for the 'moving target' sea level rise projections. Nice vulgarity btw. Really serves you well.
And another btw, I do know one of the reasons the projections changed was b/c they came to the realization of there inability to properly account for ice melt. I wouldn't want to have to tell the world that we didn't understand something like that. Get ready for the big revision when they start accounting for the PDO.
a reasonable error bar for the temperature trend would be ±0.07 C/decade...
Thus, it is possible that the upper tropospheric tropical trend might be as large as 0.17 C/decade
"might be as large as" in the context of +/- 0.7 error bars gives a range of 0.3-0.17, just as was written above.
I didn't realize that the IPCC reports were Denialists sites, as that is where I cut and pasted from.
I didn't say the figures were from denialist sites.
I asked you to explain why your use of the figures is dishonest, because I want to see if the dishonest use is due to a mistake of your own, or something cut-and-pasted from denialist sites.
Maybe someone else will take sympathy and explain for you.
Hint: "apples"..."oranges"
Oh, I see you do know ...
I do know one of the reasons the projections changed was b/c they came to the realization of there inability to properly account for ice melt.
So a' < a + b does not support the claim that a' < a. They did not reduce their estimate of sea level rise due to warming, they simply calculated an apple whereas before they computed an orange.
"might be as large as" in the context of +/- 0.7 error bars gives a range of 0.3[sic]-0.17, just as was written above.
Whatever dhogaza. Read the rest of my quote or read the article for yourself. Lindzen was clearly not making any plausibility claims concerning the lower end.
We also get at least 1/3 of the recent warming from non anthropogenic causes.
Exactly what would those non-anthro causes be? Why aren't they warming the upper troposphere?
"I believe you, but I am stumped: where did you get the figure for 300hpa only from?"
Figure 3, Sherwood et al, tropics between 1979-2005.
"Even if we take the upper end of the range - 0.092C - we get a climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates."
No, we get the amount of warming trend that can be attributed to GHGs, according to Lindzen's analysis. Lindzen takes this even further to suggest low climate sensitivity, however, which brings us to an issue that needs to be addressed. How does he do that exactly?
Well (I have to admit I've been reading this bit by bit as I reach new errors), it turns out he's saved the best till last. I'm afraid his analysis on page 946 (top paragraph) is pretty poor. Remember he's trying to calculate climate sensitivity dT/dRF....so if you want to lower climate sensitivity you need to make the numerator small and make the denominator large....
Step 1. Add up the radiative forcings from the IPCC and ignore the negative forcings and dismiss them as being too uncertain.
Step 2. By ignoring negative forcings you can allege that the real forcing is 3Wm-2 and that we should therefore have had 1.5oC - 3oC of warming by now.
Step 3. Use the derived 'real' temperature trend from selective use of tropical tropospheric temperature data to produce even lower temperature trends.
Put it together and what do you get....low climate sensitivity. A figure showing only negative to slight positive feedbacks in the range 0.8 - 1.2 oC / Wm-2.
The selective use of the temperature data was poor, but his random and virtually unjustified removal of all negative forcings is just weird. In summary, this paper sucks. And I have to agree with the earlier description of the green cheese.
Exactly what would those non-anthro causes be? Why aren't they warming the upper troposphere?
Natural variation maybe. [but note that there's no doubt there has to be non-anthro warming causes (or at least non-anthro-GHG warming causes) if you assume a surface trend contribution from anthro-GHGs of 0.092C/decade, since the measured surface trend is 0.13C/decade. (0.13-0.092) / 0.13 = 41% which is where "at least 1/3" comes from]
Natural variation maybe
Of what? What are we missing in our measurements?
The statistically significant trend rules out NOISE, therefore the "natural variation" causing the trend must be forced. What is it? An unknown forcing due to unmeasurable changes in cosmic rays?
Lindzen was clearly not making any plausibility claims concerning the lower end.
So? His upper bound is inconsistent with the 0.17-0.23 range given by Sherwood.
monsoonevans says:
"And another btw, I do know one of the reasons the projections changed was b/c they came to the realization of there inability to properly account for ice melt."
No. You have this exactly backwards. It continues to amaze and amuse me when people come here so proud of their certainty, and then display over and over just how little they actually know.
I'm talking 'bout you, monsoon.
The IPCC AR4 number does include ice melt, because that is what they CAN account for properly. What they removed is the value for increased ice dynamics - ice movement - because they realized that the uncertainty on the UPPER side is larger than they had expected.
IOW, if they had retained ice dynamics, the value would have been comparable to or larger than the TAR value and the upper bound would have been much larger.
This is all explained in the AR4, and was also discussed to death in the months after AR4 was released. Any moderately informed commenter on the topic knows this stuff.
Figure 3, Sherwood et al, tropics between 1979-2005.
Either we're looking at different papers or
1) your eyes are much better than mine. I can't read the scales that accurately.
2) there are no error bars on those plots; where did you get your range?
So? His upper bound is inconsistent with the 0.17-0.23 range given by Sherwood.
His upper bound is 0.17.
The selective use of the temperature data was poor, but his random and virtually unjustified removal of all negative forcings is just weird. In summary, this paper sucks. And I have to agree with the earlier description of the green cheese.
Since you've now admitted to not having read the whole thing, read on. Particularly Lindzen's conclusion. You may want to revise your assessment:
Ultimately, however, one must recognize how small the difference is between the
estimation that the anthropogenic contribution to recent surface warming is on the
order of 1/3, and the iconic claim that it is likely that the human contribution is more
that 1/2. Alarm, we see, actually demands much more that the iconic statement itself.
It requires that greenhouse warming actually be larger than what has been observed,
that about half of it be cancelled by essentially unknown aerosols, and that the aerosols
soon disappear. Alarm does not stem directly from the iconic claim, but rather from
the uncertainty in the claim, which lumps together greenhouse gas additions and the
cancelling aerosol contributions (assuming that they indeed cancel warming), and
suggests that the sum is responsible for more than half of the observed surface
warming. What this paper attempts to do is point the way to a simple, physically sound
approach to reducing uncertainty and establishing estimates of climate sensitivity that
are focused and testable. Such an approach would seem to be more comfortable for
science than the current emphasis on models testing models, large ranges of persistent
uncertainty, and reliance on alleged consensus. Hopefully, this paper has also clarified
why significant doubt persists concerning the remarkably politicized issue of global
warming alarm.
Ahhh. The sweet, sweet sound of reason.
The statistically significant trend rules out NOISE, therefore the "natural variation" causing the trend must be forced. What is it? An unknown forcing due to unmeasurable changes in cosmic rays?
The trend is measured over a very short period (100 years or so), during a significant portion of which the Earth actually cooled. That shows there could easily be longer-term (unknown) natural cycles at play.
But regardless, even the IPCC only (officially) claim at least half the observed warming is due to anthro GHGs. Why don't you ask them what's causing the rest?
But regardless, even the IPCC only (officially) claim at least half the observed warming is due to anthro GHGs. Why don't you ask them what's causing the rest?
Don't have to, they've put it into their report.
The trend is measured over a very short period (100 years...)
But is statistically significant, which means it is "long enough".
While meanwhile the denialist blogosphere exultantly claims that 8 years of statistically insignificant "trend" falsified the IPCC projections ...
And, for the record, Lindzen's conclusion sounds like handwaving bullshit, to me.
But is statistically significant, which means it is "long enough".
Umm, you should learn some math dhogaza. If I gave you 100 years of data sampled from a sine curve with a wavelength of 1000 years, would you have enough data to see the "sinusoidal" trend? (Hint: the answer is no).
The point is, the existence of a "statistically significant trend" does not rule out the presence of longer wavelength natural cycles.
And, for the record, Lindzen's conclusion sounds like handwaving bullshit, to me.
The point is, the existence of a "statistically significant trend" does not rule out the presence of longer wavelength natural cycles.
And, of course, longer cycles do exist, are known about, have been reconstructed, etc.
The problem is that you need to postulate a magic, new, unknown 1000 year cycle which has just poofed into existence at the right time to cause our statistically significant trend.
This is sort of the mother of all handwaving non-emperical nonsense.
It's amazing to me how someone like mugwump, obviously not a totally stupid person, will deny thousands of scientific papers, observations, computations, etc ...
Then put total faith in a paper by a guy who was so demonstrably wrong in his first effort (the Iris Effect), published in a non-scientific paper, built on data which has later been shown to be in error and even after correction of suspect value, etc etc etc.
Gee, mugwump, I don't suppose there's any possibility that your conclusions are driven by ideology, not science, is there?
"Since you've now admitted to not having read the whole thing, read on. "
I have read it, it's pure bunk. I can't understand why you cited it as being a worthwhile read. It wasn't like Schrodinger's cat; somehow in a state of being or not being in a state of pure bunk until I read it. It was pure bunk when it was written, pure bunk when you cited it and pure bunk now.
The two parts of the climate sensitivity calculation used in Lindzen's paper are entirely based upon curious data selections and cherry picked forcings. Why are you implicitly supporting that?
The problem is that you need to postulate a magic, new, unknown 1000 year cycle which has just poofed into existence at the right time to cause our statistically significant trend.
dhogaza, you are completely missing the point. It's getting tiring.
It is the component of the trend *not* due to anthro GHGs that we're discussing. I am not postulating natural cycles for the part of the trend that we can attribute to anthro GHGs. The IPCC accept that such a non-anthro trend component exists. If you already know what's causing it, great - we have nothing left to discuss since right now it is largely beside the point.
The two parts of the climate sensitivity calculation used in Lindzen's paper are entirely based upon curious data selections and cherry picked forcings. Why are you implicitly supporting that?
Because I disagree. The aerosols are a fudge. His data selections are not curious: they were the best available at the time. Lindzen's analysis of the modeling situation is spot-on:
Alarm does not stem directly from the iconic claim, but rather from the uncertainty in the claim, which lumps together greenhouse gas additions and the cancelling aerosol contributions (assuming that they indeed cancel warming), and suggests that the sum is responsible for more than half of the observed surface warming.
Even if the sum is responsible for more than half the surface warming, the fact that the canceling aerosols are essentially unknown makes the whole exercise entirely suspect.
Even if the sum is responsible for more than half the surface warming, the fact that the canceling aerosols are essentially unknown makes the whole exercise entirely suspect.
Or to put it another way, if Lindzen's paper is bunk, what do you make of an entire scientific industry built on an invented negative feedback equal to at least half the known positive feedback?
Occam's razor suggests the negative feedback is bunk, that the climate sensiitivity is actually a lot smaller, and that approaches like Lindzen's will get us the true answer a lot quicker than the current "models testing models" approach (as he puts it).
" His data selections are not curious: they were the best available at the time. "
Simply and demonstrably wrong. The radiosonde data at the time were one of 3 datasets. The radiosonde data was known even then to have issues. Despite this Lindzen selected it and ignored the MSU datasets, I call that a curious data selection. He could have simply covered himself by using MSU as well.
" The aerosols are a fudge. "
So you say, but that's not very convincing.
"invented negative feedback"
"Occam's razor suggests the negative feedback is bunk"
This is pure nonsense. There is actually empirical data showing the existence of radiative forcing due to aersols. It's not just a switch inside models that can be used to fudge results, crikey.
Have a look at the IPCC report on RF due to aersols on page 153.
mugwump:
... climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates. We also get at least 1/3 of the recent warming from non anthropogenic causes. A best upper bound on sensitivity of 2 (making the real number more likely to be somewhere between 1 and 2), with at least 1/3 again not due to humans, is a very, very different story from the one the alarmists are spreading.
There's a limit to the tolerance of most reasonable people for the loudmouthed layperson who persistently sneers at a majority of scientists in any field as "alarmists". Mugwump once again pushes past the limit to sound like a self-impressed fool or (at best) pollyanna or pangloss. Actually I suppose Lindzen plays better as Pangloss, while mugwump's as foolish but more candide.
Dhogaza,
I realize we're getting a bit off topic here so this will be my last post on the issue of the moving target sea level issue with the IPCC.
Essentially what the IPCC did was to use a model in '96 showing certain contributions of ice melt to come up with their projections. Then in the '01 report, they say that there assumptions were flawed in '96 and that improvements were made in accounting for ice melt. Fast forward to the latest report and they just throw the entire thing away because they don't have any real way of determining what effect it has.
That's part of the reason so many people are so sceptical. This authoritative body making such definitive claims when they are constantly having to retract earlier 'facts'.
For, when we take 1 variable away, HUGE changes will occur to any model. As the science gets better, more changes will need to be made and different outputs as well. Example, PDO, AO, ENSO. We know these things have a major impact on the climate already. I wonder if the IPCC is working feverishly to get their models to account for this? Do they know what impact these things have on heat intake? How bout cloud levels? Or water vapor? Get my point. These are huge factors that dwarf human emmissions of GHG's that some people just want to ignore since it doesn't help the 'cause'.
That's part of the reason so many people are so sceptical. This authoritative body making such definitive claims when they are constantly having to retract earlier 'facts'.
Another lie. They never claim these to be *facts*, nor definitive, they're works in progress, the reports and underlying science are very open about the fact they're works in progress, great pains are taken to make clear where the science is felt to be very firm and where it's felt to be much less firm.
Two posts, two lies. Not much point in dialogue.
Example, PDO, AO, ENSO. We know these things have a major impact on the climate already. I wonder if the IPCC is working feverishly to get their models to account for this?
Someone doesn't know what the IPCC does, or is.
Do they know what impact these things have on heat intake? How bout cloud levels? Or water vapor? Get my point. These are huge factors that dwarf human emmissions of GHG's that some people just want to ignore since it doesn't help the 'cause'.
Let's see, there's a fundamental misunderstanding regarding ENSO etc. These just move energy around and have no effect on warming due to GHG over the long term.
Let's see, another lie.
Cloud feedbacks, water vapor feedbacks, other feedbacks, they're not ignored, and I'm sure you know that. Trying being a bit more subtle if you're not going to tell the truth, you'll fool more people.
This is pure nonsense. There is actually empirical data showing the existence of radiative forcing due to aersols. It's not just a switch inside models that can be used to fudge results, crikey.
Sure there's empirical data. But, as the IPCC freely admits in its own summary, the support is not great: the error bars on aerosol forcing are huge and the LOSU (Level Of Scientific Understanding) of the processes are low to medium-low at best.
Aerosols allow the models to have much greater sensitivity and yet still fit the recent temperature record. Do you know of any other scientific field that derives one of its fundamental constants (climate sensitivity) from models in which at least 1/3 of the forcing is essentially up for grabs?
Where I come from that's a recipe for overfitting.
There's a limit to the tolerance of most reasonable people for the loudmouthed layperson who persistently sneers at a majority of scientists in any field as "alarmists". Mugwump once again pushes past the limit to sound like a self-impressed fool or (at best) pollyanna or pangloss. Actually I suppose Lindzen plays better as Pangloss, while mugwump's as foolish but more candide.
Well, you certainly have a way with words, frankis. But save it for someone else. I've been around mathematics, physics, modeling and statistics long enough to know that yes, a large number of climate scientists really don't seem to understand the limits of the techniques they are using. And that yes, the whole field has become extraordinarily politicized.
Simply and demonstrably wrong. The radiosonde data at the time were one of 3 datasets. The radiosonde data was known even then to have issues. Despite this Lindzen selected it and ignored the MSU datasets, I call that a curious data selection. He could have simply covered himself by using MSU as well.
Now I am really getting the impression that there's nothing Lindzen can do to make you happy.
He chose the latest data from peer reviewed literature at the time. The data had already been subject to several rounds of error correction. Even then, he allowed the highest possible tropospheric temperature trend given the quoted error bars. Sure, he did not attempt a synthesis of all the available data, but then as Sherwood shows, that's a big and nontrivial job in its own right.
This kind of selective denigration of someone who is clearly very competent yet dares speak out against the received wisdom of AGW only serves to further strengthen the impression that AGW is now more religion than science.
Uh, Mugwump, there's nothing in your posts here or elsewhere to support your claim regarding your understanding of the relevant fields vs. climate scientists.
Where I come from that's a recipe for overfitting.
For instance your misuse of the word"overfitting" doesn't give me much confidence in your level of knowledge ...
monsoonevans and mugwump, you seem to be approaching this discussion on the basis of an incorrect assumption that casual readers of this blog may be convinced, or at least thrown into doubt or confusion, by what you have to say.
If that is the case, then my I suggest this assumption is incorrect and that you are wasting your time?
I can see no evidence that you seriously believe you might convince dhogaza, BPL, luminous beauty and others that you are right.
Not can I see any evidence either that you are genuinely trying to increase your understanding of climate change and its causes or have anything useful to say about it.
Would it not stand to reason that if casual readers like me (not experts in climate science but looking for illumination) are prepared to invest the time necessary to follow discussions such as this, then they would also have the time and curiosity to go to the relevant papers, IPCC reports and data sources?
In other words, we can and do check to see who is telling it straight and who is cherry-picking the data, misrepesenting and selectively quoting, ignoring relevant research, and so on.
I have a relative who is a senior mining engineer who a couple of years ago told me predicitons of global warming were a hoax.
As I respect his opinion greatly, several months ago when I decided to get serious about educating myself on this topic, I was quite willing to consider the sceptical position.
I now find myself firmly in agreement with the IPCC position.
Partly, this is simply because I have done what I can to review the evidence and the arguments, and they stack up overwhelmingly on the warming side.
However you should know that my doubts over the "sceptical" position have been richly fertilised by people such as you.
Just remember, one lie, one bit of cherry picking, one misrepresentation, selective quote or decision to ignore evidence destroys your credibility.
This is not to say you have no useful role to play in arenas like this.
I have found a wealth of useful information in the replies to your posts.
I am sure I am not alone in this regard.
He chose the latest data from peer reviewed literature at the time. The data had already been subject to several rounds of error correction. Even then, he allowed the highest possible tropospheric temperature trend given the quoted error bars. Sure, he did not attempt a synthesis of all the available data, but then as Sherwood shows, that's a big and nontrivial job in its own right.
Geez, so much bullshit, in so many posts.
No, he didn't allow "the highest possible tropospheric temperature trend" because he used the sonde data, rather than the MSU products. He *knew* when he wrote that that the sonde data is widely regarded to be biased downwards, even by NOTED SKEPTICS LIKE CHRISTY AND SPENCER who have more faith in their interpretation (UAH) of the MSU data than any of the sonde data.
And Sherwood didn't synthesize the data, Sherwood corrects errors in the sonde data that biases it downwards.
Again, nothing you post supports your claim that you understand the underlying fields of physics, math, statistics, etc than professional climate scientists.
*nothing*
"He chose the latest data from peer reviewed literature at the time."
That is wrong, as I said, and further repetition won't make it right. The MSU data was available when Lindzen published this work. It is freely available onlinenow as it was then. So there is no real excuse for not including it. It really would have been very little extra effort to compute climate sensitivity using the two MSU datasets. It would probably take less than half an hour to plot up there data which is in ASCII and derive the relevant trends. In normal scientific journals you'd be expected to do this, or, at the very least, mention that you were being incredibly selective in your choice of data.
Likewise, his exclusion of all negative forcings is perplexing at best. Again, in a normal scientific journal you might be expected to do a sensitivity analysis both with and without negative forcings. You might be expected to say how likely it was that negative feedbacks were "invented" or non-existent.
Finally, given the nature of his result, you might expect some sort of formal comparison to conventional estimates of climate sensitivity both from models and empirically derived estimates.
But that's just what I'd do. I honestly think Lindzen's paper is a really poor piece of work. He is a very competent scientist and his previous work has been excellent. I even think his Iris paper is very good despite the flaws in the hypothesis. Surely you would support these proposed corrections that would go some way towards improving the core of the paper.
It is worth re-iterating at this point that all previous existing empirically derived estimates of climate sensitivity show that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 - 4.5oC. Given this, and given the lengths that Lindzen has had to go to spin a low climate sensitivity from his analysis, it's extremely difficult for me to place any credibility upon claims of extremely low climate sensitivity.
an invented negative feedback equal to at least half the known positive feedback
Sorry, aerosols are not a negative feedback. They are an independent variable. Maybe this thread should be called "educating mugwump".
In normal scientific journals you'd be expected to do this, or, at the very least, mention that you were being incredibly selective in your choice of data.
AND give good reasons justifying that selectivity.
For instance your misuse of the word"overfitting" doesn't give me much confidence in your level of knowledge ...
A feedback with large error bars (eg aerosols) leaves you the freedom to adjust its value at every point in time. In the worst case that constitutes an uncountable number of free parameters. So now lets get to your linked wikipedia definition of overfitting:
In statistics, overfitting is fitting a statistical model that has too many parameters.
Waddya know?
Hey, I guess you've been wrong on nearly every contribution you've made to this thread so why stop now?
Just remember, one lie, one bit of cherry picking, one misrepresentation, selective quote or decision to ignore evidence destroys your credibility.
Apparently not gaz. Lies and misrepresentations and cherry picking on the alarmist side are legion. Tim Flannery, Barry Brook, Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Caspar Ammann, ....
These people have no qualms misrepresenting the science (or even fudging it). Start here if you want an easy introduction to one of the more sordid examples.
There's also plenty of garbage on the sceptical side too, but please don't believe everything (or even a majority) of what the alarmists claim.
Surely you would support these proposed corrections that would go some way towards improving the core of the paper.
If the MSU data is as you claim, I would support it. I am not familiar enough with the state of that data at the time to know whether it was even relevant to Lindzen's argument, viz: what was the tropical temperature trend at 300hpa from the MSU dataset?
Well, for me, this finally did it:
Apparently not gaz. Lies and misrepresentations and cherry picking on the alarmist side are legion. Tim Flannery, Barry Brook, Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt, Caspar Ammann, ....
No credibility ... and I don't mean those listed authors.
Sorry, aerosols are not a negative feedback. They are an independent variable. Maybe this thread should be called "educating mugwump".
Areosols contribute a negative radiative forcing feedback. Happy?
Hmmm...
George Brandis, the shadow Attorney-General, is a little confused about what real scepticism is (ABC's Q & A, 21 August 08).
Oh, and according to George, we're the first generation since the Enlightenment to have jettisoned real scepticism.
I would humbly suggest that the world's scientists are somewhat better than George at leaving their idealism at the door, and that they have a slightly better grasp than he about true sceptical analysis...
Whatever mugwump, although I think you'd perhaps be better off publishing your stuff at Marohasy's or Climate Audit, or in the Oz. How many Lindzen fan-boys would you have created by your efforts on this thread?
Sorry, aerosols are not a negative feedback. They are an independent variable.
Areosols contribute a negative radiative forcing feedback. Happy?
Sorry, the word "feedback" is the problem. It just doesn't belong no matter what else you put in.
Maybe this thread should be called "educating mugwump".
Make that "trying but not expecting to educate mugwump".
It is worth re-iterating at this point that all previous existing empirically derived estimates of climate sensitivity show that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 - 4.5oC.
Paul H, the estimates in Annan's study are not all "empirically derived". His prior (1,3,10) (in his notation) is based on models, and quite subjective although he does argue some prior independence of the final result. Wigley's volcanic eruption based estimates also rely on models, and there's evidence to suggest that the models overestimate the climate response time and hence overestimate climate sensitivity.
In fact, if we are to apply your Lindzen criteria to Annan, why does he use Wigley's results but not even mention Douglass' much lower sensitivity estimates, which were available at the time?
If you look into the original works, an upper bound on climate sensitivity of 2C-3C, with a likely value of 1C-1.5C, seems much more plausible than 4.5C.
How many Lindzen fan-boys would you have created by your efforts on this thread?
I am not looking to create fanbois, frankis. Just to sow some seeds of doubt in the minds of those who have been snowed by the alarmists.
I am under no illusions that I'll convince the likes of dhogaza and chris o'neil, but they (at least dhogaza anyway) clearly don't understand the science; for them it's already a faith-based choice. I am doing this for those who are interested in the science behind the alarmism and who have some capacity to evaluate logical arguments.
Sorry, the word "feedback" is the problem. It just doesn't belong no matter what else you put in.
Take it out then. I know what I meant. You know what I meant. I suspect so did everyone else that cared enough to read the original comment.
Lies and misrepresentations and cherry picking on the alarmist side are legion.
Oh, I get it...
Irony!
There's a lot of that going around.
These people have no qualms misrepresenting the science (or even fudging it).
You, sir, are a liar. Even if I accept your biased and misinformed link about the Hockey Stick, you provide no evidence for the slander that Schmidt or Hansen have "misrepresented" or "fudged" the science. The fact that you make this slur after your first post pleaded for the avoidance of ad him makes you a hypocrite as well. Good bye.
Even if I accept your biased and misinformed link about the Hockey Stick, you provide no evidence for the slander that Schmidt or Hansen have "misrepresented" or "fudged" the science.
Since Schmidt is an outspoken supporter of Mann's hockeystick analysis, he is guilty by association with the ones you accept are misrepresenters/fudgers.
Hansen's latest schtick is imminent ice-sheet collapse but he has very little evidence to support his claims.
The fact that you make this slur after your first post pleaded for the avoidance of ad him[sic] makes you a hypocrite as well.
Fair enough, although in my defense, my comment was in response to gaz's remark:
Just remember, one lie, one bit of cherry picking, one misrepresentation, selective quote or decision to ignore evidence destroys your credibility.
If only that were so...
mugw:
But please, I don't want to get involved in meta discussions - I am interested only in the merits of Lindzen's arguments in the paper I cited.
You can be interested in anything you like but that doesn't necessarily mean you're being rational. If Lindzen doesn't wish to submit his supposed scientific paper to the scrutiny of climate scientists then you need to ask why doesn't he want to. Normally the answer is that the paper is a piece of junk.
So argue away on a probable piece of junk all you like. Just don't expect anyone to think you're acting rationally.
with the ones you accept are misrepresenters/fudgers.
No wonder you don't understand the science, you can't even understand a straightforward sentence.
why does he use Wigley's results but not even mention Douglass' much lower sensitivity estimates, which were available at the time?
Because Douglass and Knox were wrong , which you would know if you actually did any real research.
Since Schmidt is an outspoken supporter of Mann's hockeystick analysis, he is guilty by association with the ones you accept are misrepresenters/fudgers.
Now please remind me, someone, what is/was Lindzen's position on smoking (active and passive) and its association with cancer?
Remind me. Who is/was a misrepresenter and a fudger?
Sorry, the word "feedback" is the problem. It just doesn't belong no matter what else you put in.
Take it out then.
Finally. Like getting blood out of a stone.
I know what I meant. You know what I meant. I suspect so did everyone else that cared enough to read the original comment.
The point was no-one who knows what they're talking about would put the word "feedback" in the place where you used it except as a careless mistake. Anyone who knew what they're talking about would realize their mistake immediately it was pointed out to them. Arguing about it after the mistake was pointed out is proof that you don't know what you are talking about.
Because Douglass and Knox were wrong , which you would know if you actually did any real research.
What that little piece by Douglass shows is that you probably can't use volcanic eruptions to estimate climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, since there's obviously different feedback processes involved in an eruption that yield a negative climate sensitivity.
Kinda blows a hole in Annan's estimate.
Arguing about it after the mistake was pointed out is proof that you don't know what you are talking about.
Not surprisingly, your standards of "proof" are rather too low, Chris.
DK admitted their confused mistake and then ignored the criticism that they get ocean heat exchange wrong. Your definition of "right" is rather too low.
And since Douglass is associated with Singer, who was a smoking/cancer denialist, we can safely throw out his research, correct? What's that? Oh, your standards are different when you agree with someone. Well, why didn't you say so at the start?
DK admitted their confused mistake and then ignored the criticism that they get ocean heat exchange wrong. Your definition of "right" is rather too low.
Oh come on Boris, read it again:
Although we made
certain incorrect statements about the LW radiation, these
were not part of our determination of the parameters. As
to energy flow to the thermocline, as we argue elsewhere
[Douglass and Knox, 2005b, hereinafter referred to as
DK2], this flow is estimated be small and to affect our
lifetime and sensitivities by less than 15%, not by a factor
of three, as claimed.
So their statements about LW radiation were as irrelevant as my incorrect use of "feedback" above. And they didn't ignore the criticism of their treatment of ocean heat exchange. They explicitly added an additional term representing heat exchange and then showed it made little difference (their original model had no ocean heat-exchange component at all). Read more of the details in their response to Wigley's comment.
[Delta Q in their equation (2) is the heat-flux from the surface to the ocean (thermocline), which under the "separability hypothesis" is proportional to the change in temperature, which then allows them to absorb Delta Q into the equation for Delta T but with modified constants (equations (3) and (4)). They then show the modified constants are within the error bars of the original constants, thus validating their ignoring of ocean heat flux in the first place.]
mugwump:
Simple question. Please explain why all observational evidence show that the stratosphere is cooling but the troposphere is warming. Your attempt at deflecting this issue in post #19 (...That may well be so. As far as I know Lindzen does not deny it. But I also don't know of any way to calculate the climate sensitivity from the stratospheric/surface temperature ratio.) is obvious.
One could spend hours debunking D and K, but you're right, they do come up with an arbitrary choice--to use a "tropical ocean" definition for estimating repsonse time, which they don't even argue for ("one could make the case for") Well, cherry pick the depth and temp of your ocean layer whilst dismissing the definitive literature and you can make the response whatever you want.
We r doin teh science!
Mugwump claims I don't know the science, and meanwhile tosses out this defense for his misuse of the word "overfitting":
In statistics, overfitting is fitting a statistical model that has too many parameters.
GCMs aren't statistical models, turkey.
Simple question. Please explain why all observational evidence show that the stratosphere is cooling but the troposphere is warming.
Because the earth is warming due to increases in GHGs. I don't dispute that. Alarmism isn't about GHG-induced global warming per se; it's about how much and how soon.
GCMs aren't statistical models, turkey.
Keep going dhogaza, you're heading for a perfect 10/10.
Well, cherry pick the depth and temp of your ocean layer whilst dismissing the definitive literature and you can make the response whatever you want.
Boris, they don't use those values to generate "any response they want". Those values appear nowhere in their analysis. They just use them to demonstrate that the argument that their analysis "disagrees with widely believed models" depends on how the models are parameterized, and that since the parameterization is not observation-based. their choices are a priori just as plausible.
The fact is, the original Douglass model (even with the heat-flux term) is parsimonious, easily analyzed, and has excellent fit to the post Pinatubo data.
Keep going dhogaza, you're heading for a perfect 10/10.
You're arguing that they are? Denialists make the claim 24/7, scoring 0/10.
"and that since the parameterization is not observation-based. their choices are a priori just as plausible."
It's not plausible to treat the entire ocean as the tropical ocean. Sorry to break that to you.
Basically they said, "hey, if you use the wrong parameters for the ocean, then our analysis looks pretty good." And you find this compelling?
I'm officially bored now, so have a good one.
I've been involved in this climate change debate a long time (obviously under my real name!) and it's been amazing how the sceptics have changed their tune as they lost the scientific arguments.
Back in the late 90s they were arguing there is no cooling (I guess some still are). Then, there was 'there is cooling but it's nothing to do with humans'. Now Mugwump says 'the earth is warming due to increases in GHGs' but is arguing about sensitivity. Seems like classic delaying tactics to me.
I'm also intrigued to know how we can resolve the palaeo record if sensitivity is low.
Basically they said, "hey, if you use the wrong parameters for the ocean, then our analysis looks pretty good." And you find this compelling?
They didn't say that at all. They just didn't need a big ocean lag to fit the data. Their simple model, including a reasonable surface-thermocline flux component, fit just fine.
Now Mugwump says 'the earth is warming due to increases in GHGs' but is arguing about sensitivity. Seems like classic delaying tactics to me.
I've never argued any differently. We don't know what the sensitivity is, and no amount of models calibrating models in a never-ending self-referential cycle is going to change that.
Don't you think it strange that the sensitivity estimate has barely narrowed in 20 years? Our "best" guess is still 3 +- 1.5.
The only thing that's changed in the meantime is an entire generation of alarmists have built their careers on scaring the pants off the public claiming the sensitivity is likely to be at the upper end.
my incorrect use of "feedback" above
and defence of the indefensible. Now we're told that people who know what they're talking about don't realize when they are reminded of things they actually know. According to mugwump, he knew all along that aerosols were not a feedback, despite calling them a feedback over and over again and even after being advised to the contrary. mugwump knowing what he's talking about, yeah he's so believable.
mugwump:
"They just didn't need a big ocean lag to fit the data. Their simple model, including a reasonable surface-thermocline flux component, fit just fine."
So, ignore the fact that their ocean is not physically realistic - it allows them to fit a low sensitivity-low, lag hypothesis to the data, so it must be acceptable.
The denialist world regularly screams in dismay because there are parameterizations in the GCMs - even though they set those parameters with the best available values from real world oservations, or vary them throug a reange or real-world-realsitic values to see what effect that range ahs.
Here, D/K use an ocean flux parameterization that is known to be physically unrealistic, but it allows them to make a low-sensitivity, low-lag curve fit, and you are using the fit as a defense of the physically unrealistic parameterization?
mugwump, get real.
mugwump at 112:
"Paul H, the estimates in Annan's study are not all "empirically derived". "
mugwump at 137:
"We don't know what the sensitivity is, and no amount of models calibrating models in a never-ending self-referential cycle is going to change that."
No, mugwump, not all of the studies in Annan's study are model independent - but several of them are. You know this - you implicityl acknowledged it with your use of "all" in 112.
For you now to base an argument on the idea that sensitivity is only model-derived, as in 137, can no longer be ascribed to ignorance. You've told us you are aware of the studies taht are model independent.
At some point, repeated claims in obvious contradiction to known facts have to be seen to be actively dishonest. mugwump, dude, you're there.
You mean that mugwump ... might ... might ... might ... be a LIAR?
I've just fallen out of my chair in disbelief!
(snicker)
mugwump has devolved into Black Knight territory. I'd call it hand waving, but he has no arms.
I'd call it hand waving...
I think it's another bit of his anatomy he's waving ...
as for the Lindzen paper that started this thread.
If I understand correctly, Lindzen in the final analysis is deriving a delta-temperature, dividing it by a delta-forcing, and using that ratio to find sensitivity.
To get his delta temperature, he is ignoring all the various global data sets of global temperature trends, and instead using only the trop trop temp data - one of the weakest, most problematic, most worrisome data sets we have, one that is characterized by insufficient and patchy data, is known to be subject to errors, and is currently the subject of huge efforts to remove systematic errors from it.
But that trop trop trend is not the surface temp trend he needs for the sensitivity calculation, so he uses the ratio of surface to trop trop warming - a ratio that is itself called into question of the observed trop trop warming is in fact as low as the values he uses - to derive the entire surface temp trend from this spotty trop trop temp trend.
Doing so, applying a problematic ratio to a problematic data set, he gets a surface warming value that is dramatically lower than that observed by all the other multiple independent data sets. So he declares his value correct, ignores all those other surface warming trends derived from multiple independent higher-quality data sets, and uses his low value to derive sensitivity.
That about capture it?
Oh, it's worse, as has been mentioned above, he ignores the MSU data for trop temps, and only uses the sonde data, because it shows less warming. So he cherry-picks to fit his need, and in the process, cherry picks the one which fits your description:
one of the weakest, most problematic, most worrisome data sets we have, one that is characterized by insufficient and patchy data, is known to be subject to errors, and is currently the subject of huge efforts to remove systematic errors from it.
He knows *exactly* what he's doing -lying - which I'm sure is why it appeared in E&E.
mugwump:
These people have no qualms misrepresenting the science (or even fudging it). Start here if you want an easy introduction to one of the more sordid examples.
here is full of bullshit. Its bullshit starts with:
He was able to demonstrate that the way they had extracted the temperature signal from the tree ring records was biased so as to choose hockey-stick shaped graphs in preference to other shapes
MBH98's method gave the greatest weight to "treeline 11", not the maligned Noamer PC1 which contains the bristlecone proxies. Any bias in the MBH98 method was tiny, a fact which was shown by subsequent methods which arrived at very close results to MBH98.
If this is the best you can come up with to suggest that Mann propagated lies and misrepresentations then it's looking reasonably likely that your claim that "These people have no qualms misrepresenting the science" is plain old bullshit.
Here, D/K use an ocean flux parameterization that is known to be physically unrealistic
*sigh*
Please just read the paper. Their ocean flux parameterization was thoroughly realistic.
To summarize: they added a term DQ to the forcing ("D" as in "Delta") to represent the change in heat flux from the atmosphere to the ocean (strictly, to the thermocline). They then assumed that DQ = s DT where DT is the change in temperature and s is a constant (to be determined). So far so good - this is a first-order approximation. There are two parameters to be estimated in DK's model: tau, which is the characteristic response time of the earth (atmosphere/ocean) to a change in temperature, and lambda, the sensitivity.
By adding the heat-flux component to their original model, tau and lambda are simply divided by a factor 1 - lambda s, so no new analysis or fitting is required to account for the ocean flux, just a re-estimation of their two parameters (that's actually really neat).
DK's estimates for tau and lambda under their original (ocean-flux-free) model were 6.8 +- 1.5 months and 0.15 +- 0.06C months. So to get the new values they just need to estimate s. It turns out s is well-studied, and depending on which bit of the ocean you consider has a range between 0.049 and 0.25 (there seems to be a typo in the paper that quotes the range as 0.024 - 0.12).
Since DQ = sDT, the maximum neglected ocean heat flux in their original model is just 0.25 * the maximum value of DT, which was -0.48C. So maximum value of DQ is 0.12W / m2 (the paper quotes 0.25W/m2, but again I can't reconcile that with the equations).
Even taking 0.25W / m2 as the neglected flux, the peak forcing from Pinatubo was 3.4W/m2 so the ocean-flux component is virtually negligible.
Thank you for the defence, Lee, I was just getting around to posting a rebuttal. I realise that I could have been more precise in saying that some of the studies cited by Annan were model independent. Of course, there are studies which Annan doesn't refer to as well.
As for Lindzen's paper, it gets even better than your summary. Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and all negative feedbacks in the denominator.
He actually uses trop trop temp. data to derive a GHG forced surface trend. He claims that trop trop temp. trends won't be affected by lags because they are so separated from the oceans. You can therefore use them to work back to the real GHG induced surface trend, apparently. That assumption aside then, his d T is derived from applying this assumption to the trop trop trends and the modelled trop trop: trop surface ratio.
So his calculation is:
d T (surface GHG warming trend from uncorrected trop trop sonde data) / d RF (no negative forcings)
i.e. crap / crap = lots of crap
#144 was a brilliant post Lee. thanks for this summary.
Chris, Lee, dhogaza, I think you can see that I am perfectly capable of reading the original literature, following the modeling and mathematics, and verifying results to arrive at my own conclusions.
It may surprise you that I genuinely believe the 3 +-1.5 estimate of climate sensitivity to be circular and weak. What I am doing here is trying to point out why I believe that.
You guys have obviously bought into the alarmist message, and are more interested in taking shots at me than you are in the science. That's fine, but I have better things to do than carry on a conversation with you on that basis.
"Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and all negative feedbacks in the denominator."
Sorry, after all the trouble we've had:
Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and in fact all negative forcings in the denominator.
surface GHG warming trend from uncorrected trop trop sonde data
Not true - he accounted for corrections. You keep making these denigrating claims Paul, but the simple fact of the matter is Lindzen used a trop trend of 0.17C/decade, which is at the lower end of the supposedly pure 0.17-0.23 result you quoted from Sherwood (and you still haven't told me how you got those figures).
Of course, there are studies which Annan doesn't refer to as well.
It's a little more serious than that. Annan uses three broad sets of studies, one of which is the disputed volcano work that probably cannot be used to put any bound on 2xCO2 climate sensitivity (I make the 2XCO2 qualification because DK do a nice job of estimating the Pinatubo sensitivity).
Paul, may I suggest you apply at least the same critical eye to the studies supporting the consensus view that you apply to those questioning it?
Paul, I missed that:
"He claims that trop trop temp. trends won't be affected by lags because they are so separated from the oceans. You can therefore use them to work back to the real GHG induced surface trend, apparently."
Gads...
So, a trop temperature that is an amplification of surface temperature, related by a fixed ratio to the surface temperatures - a fixed ratio that is the critical constant in his method - can be used (because it is not at the surface, perhaps) to derive a trend that is not dependent on any surface effects?
I don't quite know what to say...
Chris, Lee, dhogaza, I think you can see that I am perfectly capable of reading the original literature, following the modeling and mathematics, and verifying results to arrive at my own, wrong conclusions.
Yes, we can see that ...
""surface GHG warming trend from uncorrected trop trop sonde data"
Not true - he accounted for corrections. "
Yes true, he quoted the standard deviation which is in no way similar to the biases that have been uncovered since then. Standard deviation present due to variance in data tells you nothing about any potential bias.
"and you still haven't told me how you got those figures"
Sorry, I missed your post #74. Looking at figure 3 (Sherwood et al) with a ruler I was able to determine the extent of the range of the solid lines (been through the reanalysis algorithm the most times). This comes out to roughly 0.17oC - 0.23oC. In the conclusions Sherwood states that the error is likely to be >0.05oC and, indeed, the quoted error bars support this.
he quoted the standard deviation which is in no way similar to the biases...
Yet, muggywumpus keeps claiming to understand the underlying relevant fields - physics, math, statistics- better than the climate science community.
Humorous.
Yes true, he quoted the standard deviation which is in no way similar to the biases that have been uncovered since then. Standard deviation present due to variance in data tells you nothing about any potential bias.
A) So what? The figure he used was within Sherwood's range.
B) It is clear from the paper that Lindzen is using the variance as a guide to the potential size of further systematic corrections, a not unreasonable thing to do in the absence of any other information:
However, significant errors were found in the later report that led to the results shown
in Figure 5. Given, the emphasis on errors leading to positive warming trend, it is
intuitively unlikely that further errors will lead to much greater warming, though the
possibility cannot, of course, be ruled out. However, judging from figure 10 of Thorne
et al (2005) a reasonable error bar for the temperature trend would be ±0.07 C/decade
(2 times the standard deviation). Thus, it is possible that the upper tropospheric tropical
trend might be as large as 0.17 C/decade, implying a contribution of 0.068 C/decade to
the surface trend - still only about half.
You're flogging a dead horse on this one.
Looking at figure 3 (Sherwood et al) with a ruler...
Not the most robust of techniques but I've seen worse :-)
(of course, had I applied such a technique dhogaza would have had one of his acute spasms of derision)
This comes out to roughly 0.17oC - 0.23oC. In the conclusions Sherwood states that the error is likely to be >0.05oC and, indeed, the quoted error bars support this.
Shouldn't it be 0.15C - 0.25C then?
"Shouldn't it be 0.15C - 0.25C then?"
OK, that seems reasonable.
Which still makes Lindzen's selected trop trop trend range only a fairly poor characterisation of the likely trop trop trend according to Sherwood and, of course, the MSU datasets which were available at the time of publishing.
Maybe a better description of Lindzen's central calculation is:
Pretty crap / Total crap = lots of crap
Which still makes Lindzen's selected trop trop trend range only a fairly poor characterisation of the likely trop trop trend according to Sherwood
As I pointed out way upthread (seems like a lifetime ago now), Lindzen never discussed the lower bound on the range so its clear he thought the upper end more likely.
and, of course, the MSU datasets which were available at the time of publishing.
And would have told him what?
I posted links to the data sometime ago. The RSS data are consistent with Sherwood ie. 0.185 oC / decade. The UMd data too lies close to Sherwood with a higher estimate, ~0.2oC /decade. The UAH data is not so close and has more in common with the sonde data i.e. 0.09 oC /decade.
The UMd data too lies close to Sherwood with a higher estimate, ~0.2oC /decade. The UAH data is not so close and has more in common with the sonde data i.e. 0.09 oC /decade.
And Lindzen used 0.17C/decade - at the upper end implied by all datasets. Your objection is moot.
Wow. Lying without regard to reality.
Who do you think you are fooling, muggywumpus?
Threads like this are great for lurkers.
"And Lindzen used 0.17C/decade - at the upper end implied by all datasets. Your objection is moot."
By all datasets? I'm astounded, do you seriously believe that? And if so can you explain to me why a trend of 0.17oC is somehow higher than the trend present in the RSS or UMd data?
By all datasets? I'm astounded
I did not express myself well. By "all" I meant the union over all datasets, not the max. In other words, 0.17 is towards the upper end of a reasonable range of answers to the question "given all the datasets, what would a reasonable trend be if I had to pick one?"
OK, thanks for the explanation. For record, I did consider that you may have just made a mistake in expressing yourself (it seemed rather odd), I should have mentioned that as a possibility.
However, I sense goal posts being shifted, in that Lindzen pretty clearly considers 0.17oC to be a maximum talking about it being "as large as". That is an incorrect statement given the presence of the other data showing a trend which is in excess of 0.17oC.
Even assuming Lindzen was carrying out some form of meta analysis across all data he would still be mistaken. As its patently clear that 2 datasets show warming greater than his "as large as". Unless this kind of analysis allows you to produce a maximum below the median of two of the 5 available datasets, does it?
Bottom line: he should have at least considered this other data. Instead he opted for what Lee coined the most "worrisome, etc.", which later was shown to be incorrect. At which point we've come full circle with no shift on either side. I think that is a good point to leave it.
And if you don't believe that you need to respond, please be especially particular in explaining why you hold this stance.
Why leave it at those two, Bernard J? [rhetorical]
Why leave it at those two, Bernard J? [rhetorical]
We'd need a whole thread to just ask all of the Denialists explicity to respond!
Bernard J, that post is huge. I'd be happy to respond to something specific in it of your choosing, but not the whole thing (I have a day job too).
mugwump writes:
Those 61 papers claim a climate sensitivity from 0.1C to 9.6C. With all due respect, they can't all be correct.
I didn't say they were all correct. I asked why you thought the one paper you cited was correct and the other 61 were all wrong.
Lindzen's estimates typically fall around 1C, which puts it squarely in the middle of that pack (on a logarithmic scale).
Why would you use a logarithmic scale? What's your justification for that, aside from the fact that it makes the mean artificially low?
mugwump writes:
The aerosols are a fudge.
That's an amusingly ignorant statement. Why are they a fudge, mugwump? Why should high-altitude aerosols not reduce the surface temperature?
Can you write the equation of radiative transfer with scattering taken into account? Do you understand why I'm asking about scattering? Do you even know what scattering is?
mugwump writes:
Areosols contribute a negative radiative forcing feedback. Happy?
You don't understand the difference between a forcing and a feedback, do you? "[F]orcing feedback" doesn't make any sense.
I didn't say they were all correct. I asked why you thought the one paper you cited was correct and the other 61 were all wrong.
Which of those 61 papers do you think are correct BPL?
Why would you use a logarithmic scale? What's your justification for that, aside from the fact that it makes the mean artificially low?
Common practice when you have a variable bounded below by zero (I am not the kind of sceptic who thinks negative climate sensitivity is plausible (that's 2xCO2 sensitivity. Other sensitivities - eg to volcanic eruption could be negative as they involve pumping vast amounts of crap into the atmosphere which can cause all kinds of funny things to happen).
Why should high-altitude aerosols not reduce the surface temperature?
I don't dispute that aerosols exist and contribute to the feedback, but you can check the error bars for yourself.
You don't understand the difference between a forcing and a feedback, do you? "[F]orcing feedback" doesn't make any sense.
Read the rest of the thread BPL. That one's been flogged to death by Chris O'Neil and dhogaza. I'll say the same thing to you as I said to them: I am not interested in a debate if you are clearly more interested in taking potshots at me than you are in the science.
I am not interested in a debate if you are clearly more interested in taking potshots at me than you are in the science.
Bullshit. You accused Schmidt and Hansen of "fudging," without any evidence at all, except for guilt by association. And now you complain that someone is taking a potshot at you?
Why debate someone who will simply argue that the published experts in a field are lying and then fall back on a paper that tries to derive sensitivity by looking at a poorly observed area? There's a reason why Lindzen published this crap in E&E. Because E&E publishes crap and not much else--btw, still want to talk about guilt by association? Didn't think so.
Bernard J, that post is huge. I'd be happy to respond to something specific in it of your choosing, but not the whole thing (I have a day job too).
Yes, it is huge, isn't it?
This surely indicates that anyone thinking to challenge a large body of consensus science such as climate science has some serious preparing to do...
For starters why don't you pick the bits that you disagree with?
In all earnestness, if you really are intending to contradict the consensus on a paradigm such as AGW, you should be readily able to respond to John's post. Specifically, you should be able to show how you fulfill all of the criteria required in order to justify your credibility to challenge.
The bits of John's post that you disagree with, I meant.
Specifically, you should be able to show how you fulfill all of the criteria required in order to justify your credibility to challenge.
Like I said it is a huge post. I really can't be bothered reading it in detail (my time is better spent reading journal papers). Could you please summarize what those criteria are?
I don't dispute that aerosols exist and contribute to the feedback"
The ignoramus is still calling it a feedback.
taking potshots at
your pretence of knowledge.
Oh dear Chris. Is Paul H also an ignoramus for calling it feedback? Your continued nitpicking on terminology serves only to demonstrate that you have insufficient understanding of the issues to make more substantial criticism.
But if you really think I am so dumb, go critique this comment of mine. Explain the problems with Douglass' model (with specificity, including a breakdown of the equations and where they are wrong, and a breakdown of their fitting methodology and where that is wrong).
my time is better spent reading journal papers
Considering how many papers without scientific review there is likely to be, you'll need every spare minute you can get for these.
Is Paul H also an ignoramus for calling it feedback?
And where, pray tell, does Paul H call aerosols a feedback? BTW, he corrected himself when he called other forcings feedbacks. Unlike some people, he knows when he's made a mistake.
serves only to demonstrate that you have insufficient understanding of the issues to make more substantial criticism
Yes obviously I should be playing amateur hour discussing a non-scientifically reviewed paper.
I can't believe the lindzen paper is still in play. Its a steaming pile of crap. I outlined part of the reasons above - I just reread it, and find I left out the most critical part.
Lindzen says that trop trop warming is 'the signature' of anthropogenic global warming. In fact - I had missed/forgotten this after my first reading of the paper - his analysis claims that trop trop wrmign is ENTIRELY in response to the anthropogenic component of warming. Quote: " Stated somewhat differently, if we observe warming in the tropical upper troposphere, then the greenhouse contribution to warming at the surface should be between less than half and one third the warming seen in the upper troposphere."
Notice how he inserts that totally unjustified (and totally wrong) clause about 'greenhouse contribution' into his statement?
He then uses the trop trop trend to estimate the anthropogenic component of a warming trend, by taking the trop trop trend - based on really bad numbers, as already shown in this thread - and dividing it by 2.5.
He claims that this calculated value represents the anthropogenic component of surface warming and that any surface warming we see above that is due to non-anthropogenic causes.
The problem, of course, is that amplified trop trop warming is predicted to result from ANY cause of tropical surface warming, due to the moist adiabat. His premise, that trop trop warming somehow isolates anthropogenic contributions to warming, is simple putric crap. And I'm being polite here.
BTW, Paul H said exactly this - much more gently - in the very first response in this open thread. That mugwump continues defending details of this paper, in the face of these serious - damning - methodological problems, says a lot.
Considering how many papers without scientific review there is likely to be, you'll need every spare minute you can get for these.
Actually, I am rereading an unreviewed article as we speak by Stefan Rahmstorf. Familiar with him?
I just noticed something on pages 39-40 that I didn't notice the first time I read it: he calculates a bunch of different climate sensitivities to try and refute some claims by Lindzen, but rather cheats in the calculation (in a manner that would cause outrage if it were perpetrated by Lindzen himself).
Here's the basic idea. Assume additional radiative forcing from doubling of CO2 is 3.7W/m2 (this is relatively uncontroversial - I certainly don't dispute it). CO2 hasn't doubled yet, but it increased by enough over the last century to account for 2.6W/m2 additional forcing. The temperature increased by 0.8C, so assuming it was all due to GHGs, we expect a climate sensitivity of
0.8 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1.1C - not much cause for alarm.
Not so fast says Rahmstorf: the ocean has been sucking up heat at 0.6W/m2 for 10 years (1993-2003). So the actual forcing is only 2W/m2, not 2.6W/m2, which yields a climate sensitivity of
0.8 * 3.7/2 = 1.5C, right at the lower end of the IPCC range.
Then he goes on to subtract another 1W/m2 from forcing due to aerosols (although this can be pretty much as large as you like),to get
0.8 * 3.7 / 1 = 3C, right in the center of the IPCC range
Finally he adds back in 0.3W of solar forcing to get
0.8 * 3.7 / 1.3 = 2.3C
Let's look at that last one again. If 0.3W of the 2.6W are due to solar forcing, then not all the 0.8C rise is due to GHGs. Roughly speaking, only (2.6 - 0.3) / 2.6 = 88% is, or 0.7C. So lets take the aerosols back out, but leave in the solar forcing in. Then we get a sensitivity estimate of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.3 = 1.1C
ie back where we started only now the ocean flux is included.
Now about that ocean flux: is Rahmstorf really claiming the ocean has been sucking up 0.6W/m2 for the entire 20th century? Or maybe forever? That seems very unphysical. The heat is going in because the earth is out of radiative balance. That hasn't been the case for the whole century. Also, presumably the heat has to come back out at some point and be reflected in the atmospheric temperature. Or is he proposing some kind of natural centennial-scale cycle, with the heat being absorbed over hundred of years and then released back over hundreds of years? I doubt he wants to do that, since if we have centennial cycles in the climate system of that magnitude a fair chunk of the current warming may just be natural variability.
So, let's assume heat flux was 0W/m2 at the start and 0.6W/m2 today, so average flux over the century was 0.3W/m2. Then we get sensitivity of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1C.
Not a big difference: without aerosols you have 1C or 1.1C as a "back of the envelope" estimate of climate sensitivity.
Now, what about the aerosols. Like I said, you're pretty free to choose whatever number you want. Want a climate sensitivity of T degrees C? No problem, just solve the equation
0.7 * 3.7 / (2.6 - A) = T
or
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1 / T)
So if sensitivity T is 3C, we need an aerosol forcing A of 2.6 * (1 - 1/3) = 1.7W/m2.
But here's something fun. What if sensitivity was infinite? Add one molecule of CO2 to the atmosphere and the Earth vaporizes in a puff of plasma! We can calculate the aerosol forcing needed for that from our equation:
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1 / infinity) = 2.6W/m2
So an aerosol forcing as low as 2.6W/m2 yields infinite climate sensitivity. Now, clearly that's absurd, but look at the range: aerosol forcing of 1.7W/m2 gives you the iconic IPCC sensitivity claim of 3C. But just 50% more aerosol forcing gives you infinite sensitivity. And aerosol forcing has error bars wider than 50%.
What we happen if we discovered aerosol forcing really was 2.6W/m2 or close to it? Would we conclude (from our models) that climate sensitivity must be nearly infinite? Of course not. We'd look for other explanations of the 20th century temperature trend.
Every climate model has built into it this crazy dependence on aerosol tuning. You can turn that aerosol knob through a pretty small range to get pretty much whatever number you like for climate sensitivity. That's why 3 +-1.5C is still the best guess because it is exactly that: just a guess.
Considering how many papers without scientific review there is likely to be, you'll need every spare minute you can get for these.
then we get:
Actually, I am rereading an unreviewed article as we speak by Stefan Rahmstorf. Familiar with him?
Yes, he's the co-author of the BOOK CHAPTER (not PAPER) you're quoting, one which summarizes existing knowledge, as opposed to a PAPER which extends knowledge (or, in the case of Lindzen's E&E paper, ignorance).
You continue to be wrong in such trivially stupid ways ...
Yes, he's the co-author of the BOOK CHAPTER (not PAPER) ... one which summarizes existing knowledge, as opposed to a PAPER which extends knowledge
Heard of review PAPERS? I've written BOOK CHAPTERS that both summarize and extend, and PAPERS that both summarize and extend, as have most reasonably productive academics.
11/11
You continue to be wrong in such trivially stupid ways ...
dhogaza, your ignorance is only exceeded by your unpleasantness.
"If 0.3W of the 2.6W are due to solar forcing, then not all the 0.8C rise is due to GHGs. Roughly speaking, only (2.6 - 0.3) / 2.6 = 88% is, or 0.7C. So lets take the aerosols back out, but leave in the solar forcing in. Then we get a sensitivity estimate of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.3 = 1.1C"
Can you explain your motivation for removing the warming that you claim is linked to solar forcings yet at the same time leaving the solar forcing in? Surely if you consider solar forcings you should consider solar induced warming also?
You seem to carry this through to the rest of your calculation.
Can you explain your motivation for removing the warming that you claim is linked to solar forcings yet at the same time leaving the solar forcing in?
No. I can't. My bad. They should stand and fall together.
It doesn't much affect the results though: I get sensitivity of 0.8 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1.1C with solar and with the 0.3W/m2 average ocean flux. The equation for aerosol forcing as a function of sensitivity is a little less pretty:
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1.1 / T)
(I think my mistake above was because I got over-excited by the fortuitous appearance of the 1 - 1/T term - that appealed to me)
Then for sensitivity of 3C you need aerosol forcing of 1.65W/m2 (rather than 1.7W/m2). Of course you still get infinite sensitivity for A = 2.6W/m2.
It's really the general range that I am interested in: without aerosols sensitivity looks like about 1C. With aerosols it can be nearly anything you want.
OK, thanks for explaining that.
It's really the general range that I am interested in: without aerosols sensitivity looks like about 1C. With aerosols it can be nearly anything you want.
And I should add that it is interesting the ocean heat flux doesn't change things by much, despite the oft-cited appeals to the oceans. That's consistent with Douglass' Pinatubo stuff (although of course not comparable since we're talking about two different kinds of sensitivity).
His premise, that trop trop warming somehow isolates anthropogenic contributions to warming, is simple putric crap.
This needs to be repeated. Skeptics who claim that the tropical tropospheric hotspot is a fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect reveal their own ignorance.
So, e-mail stefan, educate him, and tell us his response.
Maybe you'll get a job out of your brilliance ...
"What I am doing here is trying to point out why I believe that.
You guys have obviously bought into the alarmist message, and are more interested in taking shots at me than you are in the science"
see also
"traffic report: there is a car going the wrong way down highway 101 "
"**A** car? make that hundreds!"
"father William, i had a dream last night that i became a great prophet and millions of sinners followed me back to the Lord!"
"that's nice, son, let me know when millions of sinners have that dream also"
Actually, I am rereading an unreviewed article as we speak by Stefan Rahmstorf. Familiar with him?
And the mode switches back to ad hom whenever required.
CO2 hasn't doubled yet, but it increased by enough over the last century to account for 2.6W/m2 additional forcing.
It's a minor point, but the 2.6W/m2 is from all GHGs, not just CO2.
is Rahmstorf really claiming the ocean has been sucking up 0.6W/m2 for the entire 20th century?
Of course not. mugwump doesn't seem to realize that the atmosphere has very little thermal inertia.
mugwump might not make such mistakes if he exercised a little skepticism and avoided being sucked in by non-scientifically reviewed papers. Scientific review means exercising a degree of skepticism. No review - no skepticism.
BTW:
Also, presumably the heat has to come back out at some point and be reflected in the atmospheric temperature.
Not exactly. The heat doesn't come back out. The oceans as a whole are just warming up more slowly than the surface.
mugwump seems to have the idea that all the forcings together constitute a budget of sorts, so that if one is revealed to be higher, the rest must be lower. It doesn't work that way. The forcing from doubled CO2 remains about 3.7 W/m2 whatever the aerosol forcing turns out to be. It is determined independently of mugwump's "budget." Until he understands this, he is likely to go on repeating the same nonsense.
mugwump seems to have the idea that all the forcings together constitute a budget of sorts, so that if one is revealed to be higher, the rest must be lower.
You misunderstand. Some contributions obviously are additive, eg CO2 forcing - aerosols. But when you are attributing atmospheric temperature rise to forcing, heat going into the ocean doesn't contribute (at least in the short term). Besides, if you don't do that it only makes the sensitivity lower.
If you don't like the whole approach, lay out your alternative sensitivity calculation for us or take it up with Rahmstorf.
Until he understands this, he is likely to go on repeating the same nonsense.
BPL, I understand fine. You, like dhogaza and Chris before you, have more than amply demonstrated either that you can't follow the science, or that you are more interested in taking potshots at me than in debating the science. I now officially can't be bothered responding to you.
Okay, how about providing a citation that shows that a tropical tropospheric hot spot is the fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect?
To show that AGW can actually make predictions, I'm going to predict that you don't provide one.
Okay, how about providing a citation that shows that a tropical tropospheric hot spot is the fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect
It's a fingerptint of enhanced warming. So you got two choices Boris: either most of that warming is due to GHGs, in which case it is also a fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect, or most of the warming has some other cause, in which case warming from greenhouse gases provides little cause for alarm.
but mugwump, your 201 destroys Lindzen!
"It's a fingerprint of enhanced warming."
It is a fingerprint of ANY warming. But Lindzen says that trop trop warming is from GREENHOUSE effects only, and he uses the low observed value of trop trop warming to say that only a small part of the observed surface warming is from greenhouse effects.
Will you admit now that the Lindzen paper is garbage? Given that you just argued - albeit in a different context - that his central premise is wrong?
Mugwump: Foot. Pistol. Scores!
It is a fingerprint of ANY warming. But Lindzen says that trop trop warming is from GREENHOUSE effects only,
No he doesn't.
and he uses the low observed value of trop trop warming to say that only a small part of the observed surface warming is from greenhouse effects.
Lindzen says trop surface warming caused by GHGs is roughly 40% (= 1/2.5) of trop trop warming caused by GHGs.
So let trop trop total measured warming be T, which is made up of G - trop trop warming due to GHGs - and S, trop trop warming due to other stuff. So T = G + S. Now, since G and S are both positive, we know G <= T. Which means trop surface warming due to GHGs <= 0.4 * T. Lindzen said an upper bound for T was 0.17C/decade, which implies trop surface warming due to GHGs is at most 0.4 * 0.17 = 0.068C/decade, or about 1/2 the total observed surface warming trend over the past few decades.
And even when I join in his amateur hour and do that, he still can't be bothered.
The comment you linked consisted of more snide asides, one point about 2.6W/m2 not being all due to CO2 (which is true, but just makes the estimated sensitivity even lower, so didn't seem to need a reply), and a weird comment about ocean flux that as far as I can tell simply supports what I said in my original post (average flux for the last century is more likely to be 0.3W/m2 rather than the 0.6W/m2 given by Rahmstorf).
one point about 2.6W/m2 not being all due to CO2 (which is true, but just makes the estimated sensitivity even lower
Wrong.
and a weird comment about ocean flux that as far as I can tell simply supports what I said in my original post
Wrong.
(average flux for the last century is more likely to be 0.3W/m2 rather than the 0.6W/m2 given by Rahmstorf).
Irrelevant.
Lindzen:
"Roughly speaking, the warming at Ï= 1 in the tropics is from more than twice to about three times larger than near the surface regardless of the sensitivity of the particular model. This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
Mugwump, he said it, and you've been defending him for 200 posts.
mugwump still hasn't answered the question of 'why half of the surface warming isn't raising the upper tropical troposphere temperatures?'
Why is the centennial average ocean flux meaningful? It has increased from ~0 to currently 0.6Wm^-2. If one wants to understand current conditions why substitute a quantity that reflects only half of it?
mguwump,I already quoted Lindzen at 184.
"Stated somewhat differently, if we observe warming in the tropical upper troposphere, then the greenhouse contribution to warming at the surface should be between less than half and one third the warming seen in the upper troposphere."
And yor defense just highlights the lack of logic in Lindzen's 'method.' If you are correct, then total trop trop warming must be about 2.5 times total surface, warming - or else the components of warming in his equation simply dont add up. If the greenhouse component of trop trop warming is 2.5 times the surface greenhouse warming, then total trop trop warming must be 2.5 times total surface warming - and his entire argument rests on the observation that it is not.
The only way out of this dilemma is to posit that trop trop warming somehow isolates the greenhouse component, so that non-greenhosue warming at the surface is not reflected in the trop trop 2.5 amplification - but you have just argued that it does not, and there is in fact no evidence that it does so.
Why is the centennial average ocean flux meaningful? It has increased from ~0 to currently 0.6Wm^-2. If one wants to understand current conditions why substitute a quantity that reflects only half of it?
Because the calculation is estimating climate sensitivity based on the temperature increase over the entire last century.
As for Lindzen's quote, I guess if he knew he'd be jousting with jesters, he would have said:
"Roughly speaking, the warming at Ï= 1 in the tropics is from more than twice to about three times larger than near the surface regardless of the sensitivity of the particular model. This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming, unless of course you attribute all the warming to other causes, in which case the 20th century temperature increase provides no evidence for GHG impact on climate"
The point is, the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on the surface warming due to GHGs. All you're doing by saying it could be mixed with other warming is admitting the upper bound should be even lower.
mguwump, the logic dosnt make sense:
"All you're doing by saying it could be mixed with other warming is admitting the upper bound should be even lower."
By your agrgument (and it is what Lindzen tried to finesse past the reder) what Lindzen is effectively saying is, 'the models tell us that trop trop warming should be 2.5 times that of surface warming. Here is a data set that says it is not. But I will take the warming I see, assume taht greenhosu warmign should obey taht 2.5x amplificatin even though the data I'm analyzign says there is not tht much amolification, apply the 2.5 multiplier to teh observed warming, and assign all that to greenhouse gas underwarming."
Another way to understand this, is that he says the the ratio is 2.5, but when we look it isnt 2.5, and I will base my analysis on the ratio being much less than 2.5, but I'll divide by 2.5 anyway.
His same logic could and should be applied to ALL surface warming, because trop trop warming does not distinguish caues off surface warming - which would be arguing that his trop trop trend analysis based on shaky data trumps the entire surface temp analysis based on multiple confirmatory data sets, and shows that real surface warming is really only a fraction of the observed surface warming.
Which is nuts, as is Lindzens logic.
Or, to put it yet another way:
"the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on the surface warming due to GHGs."
But trop trop amplified warming is in response to total surface warming, not to some component of surface warming.
Using EXACTLY the same logic and analysis - all you have to do is change the word 'greenhouse' in his analysis to the word'total' - and you get, "the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on total surface warming." But that upper bound is a fraction of observed total surface warming - which tells us that Lindzens analysis is garbage.
The point is, the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on the surface warming due to GHGs
Sorry, no.
The argument you're making actually says that the trop warming gives an upper bound for any surface warming, and it's quite bizarre to claim that a dataset that is poorer by every measure somehow puts limits on a much better dataset.
What Lee said. Must learn to read, think and type faster.
Or, quoting mugwump from 204:
Lindzen says trop surface warming caused by GHGs is roughly 40% (= 1/2.5) of trop trop warming caused by GHGs.
So let trop trop total measured warming be T, which is made up of [total trop trop warming, no matter how partitioned]. So T = G + S. Now, since G and S are both positive, we know G <= T. Which means trop surface warming due to [all causes] <= 0.4 * T. Lindzen said an upper bound for T was 0.17C/decade, which implies trop surface warming due to [all causes] is at most 0.4 * 0.17 = 0.068C/decade, or about 1/2 the total observed surface warming trend over the past few decades."
So, Lindzen's analysis, applied to total warming, says that the upper bound on surface warming is half of observed surface warming. Which simply does not match reality. Lindzen's analysis is logically invalid.
Using Lindzen's partitioning, though, we can also derive that the upper bound on non-GHG warming is also half of observed warming. Using Lindzen's analysis, ANY source of warming is bound to half the observed warming.
All fo this is because Lindzen observes that trop trop amplification is muych less than the 2.5x models predict, but HE DIVIDES BY 2.5 ANYWAY!
Get it yet, mugwump?
All fo this is because Lindzen observes that trop trop amplification is muych less than the 2.5x models predict, but HE DIVIDES BY 2.5 ANYWAY!
Ah, I think I see your point of confusion now. Lindzen is claiming that the 2.5 ratio holds for GHG warming only. In his analysis he explicitly isolates GHG contributions from other contributions in, and I quote:
How warming at the Ï = 1 level relates to warming at the surface is not altogether
clear. It is at this point that models prove helpful. Figure 4 shows how temperature
changes when CO2 is doubled in 4 rather different General Circulation Models (Lee
et al., 2007). The runs shown differ from those that were run for the IPCC in that the
models were simplified to isolate the effects of CO2 forcing and climate feedbacks.
Also the models were run until equilibrium was established rather than run in a
transient mode in order to simulate the past. Thus, they isolate greenhouse warming
from other things that might be going on
So he's not measuring the 2.5 ratio from the data. He's not saying the ratio aplies to all warming. He's deriving a ratio of 2.5 for GHG effects only, without reference to the data.
Now, you may take issue with the derivation procedure (he claims it is robust across several different models etc, but is that enough?), but if you accept the procedure and hence the 2.5 GHG multiplier, his conclusions are valid - there really hasn't been the tropical surface warming from GHGs that we would expect, or conversely, there hasn't been the tropical troposphere warming we would expect (assuming the troposphere trend he used is accurate).
if you accept the procedure and hence the 2.5 GHG multiplier, his conclusions are valid
Sometimes muggywumpy brings a smile to my face.
And, if you accept my procedure, I can prove 1=0, too ...
Why is the centennial average ocean flux meaningful? It has increased from ~0 to currently 0.6Wm^-2. If one wants to understand current conditions why substitute a quantity that reflects only half of it?
Because the calculation is estimating climate sensitivity based on the temperature increase over the entire last century.
It's based on the temperature difference and the forcing difference on the atmosphere. Maybe if you were talking about forcing applied to the ocean, its inertia might be significant but we're not talking about the ocean, we're talking about the atmosphere. mugwump's cognitive failure is a sad consequence of his denialism.
It's based on the temperature difference and the forcing difference on the atmosphere. Maybe if you were talking about forcing applied to the ocean, its inertia might be significant but we're not talking about the ocean, we're talking about the atmosphere.
Ok Chris, show us your calculation and take it up with Rahmstorf - it's his approach (BTW, in case you don't know, Rahmstorf is one of the poster-boys of alarmism, so you're battling your own side here).
Anyway, as I said several times, your continued ad hom attacks and the fact that you completely fail to understand the arguments means you are not worth debating. Say what you like, because I won't be responding.
"(assuming the [upper] troposphere trend he used is accurate)"
Bingo!
Either the radiosonde data are sparse and riddled with instrumental error [true] or the physics of latent convectional heat transfer is wrong.
What would a reasonable observer conclude?
It is somewhat interesting that Lindzen originally proposed the negative feedback of the moist adiabat was so strong it would effectively cancel out the EGE. Now he is reversed course and saying that because [bad data] tells us that the moist adiabat isn't as strong as we expect, the EGE isn't as strong a forcing as we know it is.
More like a wild animal with its foot caught in a trap than an objective scientific reasoning.
luminous beauty, we already went through all that way upthread (the result was a stalemate).
Pretty funny you thinking Lindzen doesn't understand the physics of latent convectional heat transfer. Have you read his papers? Kinda like claiming Einstein doesn't understand relativity.
Anyway, as I said several times, your continued ad hom attacks and the fact that you completely fail to understand the arguments means you are not worth debating. Say what you like, because I won't be responding.
We all understand your and Lindzen's arguments and we all (except for you) understand they resolve themselves in irreconcilable paradox.
Hence your cognitive failure.
Saying you cling to false conjecture when it has been proven incorrect is not an ad hominem. No matter how much it hurts personally to admit one is wrong.
"Kinda like claiming Einstein doesn't understand relativity.
More like Michelson trying to preserve the luminiferous ether hypothesis after his own experiments proved it doesn't exist.
Saying you cling to false conjecture when it has been proven incorrect
Nothing has been proven incorrect. As far as the Lindzen argument goes, Paul H and I argued it to a standoff over whether 0.17C/decade was a reasonable figure for trop trop temp trend, at which point we (he explicitly, me tacitly) agreed to disagree.
The other radio noise over Lindzen seems to have been a product of a misunderstanding which I believe has now been cleared up (namely, the 2.5 ratio applies to GHG forcing only).
As for Rahmstorf (a prominent believer), all I did was follow his argument against Lindzen on sensitivity to its logical conclusion (and correct what appears to be a double counting of ocean heat flux). There have been plenty of baseless criticisms and ad hom attacks, but since none of the critics have offered an alternative sensitivity derivation, mine currently stands.
Then there's Douglass. No-one has countered my summary of his analysis (except with further ad hom attacks, which don't count), so again, my analysis currently stands.
That's one stalemate (on Lindzen) and two wins. 2.5 / 3. I ain't the one clinging to false conjecture around here.
"(namely, the 2.5 ratio applies to GHG forcing only)
It doesn't, does it?
Lindzen explicitly derives the 2.5 ratio for GHG forcing only. That quote again:
How warming at the Ï = 1 level relates to warming at the surface is not altogether clear. It is at this point that models prove helpful. Figure 4 shows how temperature changes when CO2 is doubled in 4 rather different General Circulation Models (Lee et al., 2007). The runs shown differ from those that were run for the IPCC in that the models were simplified to isolate the effects of CO2 forcing and climate feedbacks. Also the models were run until equilibrium was established rather than run in a transient mode in order to simulate the past. Thus, they isolate greenhouse warming from other things that might be going on
mugwump, I read through all 225 posts and you have not defended Lindzen's paper from the scrutiny of Lee, Paul H., Boris, BPL, dhoghaza, Chris et al. Instead of responding to all criticisms, you resort to ignoring their valid points, shifting the goalposts consistently (I'm surprised that you haven't got whiplash from such repeated twisting), and repeatedly using dangerous phrases i.e. "I think that this is perfectly reasonable...", or "If you accept this assumption..." or "It seems that..." Come on, mate. Assume = making and ass out of you and me. Didn't that teach you that in primary school?
Dave's post from way up (#12) still defines you to a tee, and succinctly sums up your case. What exactly are you trying to prove here? Are you that keen to illustrate how logically hollow you are? Your intransigence to accept that you are plainly wrong, and your continued defence of "oh stop the ad hom attacks and I don't want to debate you" clearly illustrates your intellectual immaturity (you do know what ad hom is, right?) and smacks of a loser's last refuge.
A last bit of advice, freely given: Give it up, mugwump - you've lost the war.
Using 2.5x derived as a product of doubling of CO2 run to equilibrium to compare the present situation of 0.4x CO2 increase far from equilibrium is a bit of apples and oranges, don't you think?
That's one stalemate (on Lindzen) and two wins. 2.5 / 3. I ain't the one clinging to false conjecture around here.
hm. you are not trying to count points in THIS discussion with that score?
have i been reading a different discussion?
Oh, good Christ, mugwimp!!
You just admitted a couple dozen posts up that trop trop warming does not isolate greenhouse warming. Lundzen argues that becatar he takes his warming value from greenhouse-only model runs, they somehow isolate trop trop warmingdue to greenhouse only. He is full of crap. Other model runs with different forcinga also show trop trop enhancement. Looking at a model run that leaves other stuff out , and then arguing that real world measurements don't have the other stuff because some model runs didn't include them, is ludicrous.
Trop trop enhancement is predicted no matter the cause of warming. Thgay fact alonge destroys lundzens argument.
namely, the 2.5 ratio applies to GHG forcing only
No. It has been pointed out to you many times that the ratio between surface and tropospheric warming in the tropics is not an artifact of an enhanced greenhouse effect:
Lindzen is wrong, and dead so. He is right that when you run a model and double the GHG forcing, you get a trop hotspot. But as the RealClimate post shows you also get a hotspot with solar increased by 2%.
The upshot is that he has calculated the ratio for any warming, but is claiming that it only applies to GHGs.
Just one of many reasons why no one listens to Lindzen anymore.
mugwump posts:
You, like dhogaza and Chris before you, have more than amply demonstrated either that you can't follow the science,
Oh, and how many radiative-convective models of planetary atmospheres have you written?
or that you are more interested in taking potshots at me than in debating the science. I now officially can't be bothered responding to you.
I can only hope.
The upshot is that he has calculated the ratio for any warming, but is claiming that it only applies to GHGs.
He never claimed it only applied to GHGs. He made no comment as to whether it should apply to other forcings.
But you are in no better position even if it does apply to all forcings. If the data are correct, then the theoretical ratio disagrees with the observed ratio, which implies there must be unaccounted for feedbacks (Lindzen's point).
But as the RealClimate post shows...
Ah yes, the High Priesthood. How could I ignore them? Lindzen has one of the more entertaining comments about realclimate that I've seen:
A characteristic of many of Rahmstorf's arguments is that they are the commonplace of a website, realclimate.org. This website appears to constitute a support center for global warming believers, wherein any criticism of global warming is given an answer that, however implausible, is then repeated by the reassured believers.
(ad hom, freely admitted, but very funny).
Actually, what that RC post spends most of its time obsessing over is whether Douglass et al (not the same paper discussed above) correctly calculates the error bars. Well, forgive me for not taking seriously pronouncements on error bars from people who think they can reliably estimate climate sensitivity using GCMs with near infinite error bars due to aerosol uncertainty.
If the data are correct, then the theoretical ratio disagrees with the observed ratio, which implies there must be unaccounted for feedbacks
Are you serious with this? Who cares about feedbacks THAT ONLY APPLY TO THE TROPICAL TROPOSPHERE.
But I'll alert all the folks living in the tropical troposphere that they'll be fine.
Who cares about feedbacks THAT ONLY APPLY TO THE TROPICAL TROPOSPHERE.
Plumbing new depths...
When a ratio is wrong, Boris, the error could be in the numerator, denominator, or both. So the feedbacks could apply to the troposphere, the surface, or both.
When a ratio is wrong, Boris, the error could be in the numerator, denominator, or both. So the feedbacks could apply to the troposphere, the surface, or both.
Which is why we've been saying that all you're doing is trying to invalidate the surface record with the inferior tropical tropospheric record.
Q. E. effin' D.
show us your calculation and take it up with Rahmstorf - it's his approach
What do mean take it up with Rahmstorf? I agree with Rahmstorf. You're the one who has a problem with Rahmstorf. You take it up with him. Not too clever, this mugwump.
Anyway, as I said several times, your continued ad hom attacks
What a hypocrite.
and the fact that you completely fail to understand the arguments
One of those mugwump facts that should be published in E&E.
means you are not worth debating. Say what you like, because I won't be responding.
Boo hoo hoo.
BTW, for all the realclimate fanbois out there, it looks like they did succeed through their rudeness in goading Douglass et al into a response. In summary, there were good reasons for not using ROABCORE v1.3 or v1.4, and no, they did not underestimate model uncertainty since they required the models to actually fit the surface record before comparing their output to the tropospheric record.
Which is why we've been saying that all you're doing is trying to invalidate the surface record with the inferior tropical tropospheric record.
Q. E. effin' D.
No. Either the data is wrong, in which case no conclusions can be inferred from it, or it is correct and one can conclude that the models are missing something. Lindzen didn't even have to trust the data as it stood - his point was made even with a much larger upper bound. Now, we can debate whether, in hindsight, that bound was even high enough, but the jury is still out on that as far as I am concerned - Sherwood's corrections are awfully complex and need to be vetted first.
Anyway, it is clear I am preaching to the converted and I am tired of it. Just carry on believing. There'll be no more from me.
Mugwump,
Is the surface warming trend, that you and Lindzen quote i.e. 0.13oC per decade, the tropical surface warming trend or the global surface warming trend? Lindzen doesn't say explicitly, so what do you suppose he means?
Also, how representative do suppose the trop trop/surface ratio of 2.5 is of most GCMs? I pointed this out way back in post #1 but it went to the wayside for a little while.
muguwmp:
"Either the data is wrong, in which case no conclusions can be inferred from it, or it is correct and one can conclude that the models are missing something."
no shit, sherlock.
There is a mismatch between the models and the trop trop warming data, which is exactly why so many people have been working on that issue.
But noting that obvious fact is NOT a defense of Lindzen. It is you shifting to a different argument.
Mugwump.
You are no less 'converted' than all of those whom you disparage.
The only difference is that the (trained and experienced) proponents of AGW rather significantly outnumber your (largely uneducated and/or uninformed) side of the debate, and despite your beliefs about the AGW proponents they are a sceptical bunch. And by sceptical I mean in the true sense of the term... Most any of them would just love to be the one to pick the brick out that would bring the climate change wall down, but so far it just ain't so, your finger-counting notwithstanding.
The telling thing is that the only folk who agree with you are mostly academics who have 'gone emeritus', political ideologues, and shills for vested interests. Most curiously, if one looks to the 'non-left wing' groups who should be 'sceptically' inclined but who have vested interested that would be endangered by AGW, one finds that they all take it very seriously...
Try getting a hefty insurance contract against the consequences of warming. Or consider the military stance, in just about any major country, on resource security in the context of climate change. Both groups have their own very clever and very pragmatic bean-counters and scientists, and I think you'll find that they take AGW much more seriously than you.
Doesn't this tell you something?
Oo, and I am waiting with great anticipation for your answer to BPL's question regarding any climate models that you have constructed.
Mugwump,
What do you make of the trop trop/trop surface trend in these examples: model from Sherwood et al (see half way down real climate post) and GISS model courtesy of real climate?
To everyone else, feel free to examine these figures and post up what you make of the trop trop warming trend/ trop surface ratio in these two examples.
Sorry. That should be: what do you make of the trop trop/trop surface warming ratio?
mugwump writes:
Anyway, it is clear I am preaching to the converted and I am tired of it. Just carry on believing. There'll be no more from me.
I wonder how many more statements like this he'll make before he actually pisses off?
I've got a question.
I believe that the lack of recent warming (since 1998, 2000, 2001, whatever.. and I know that this does not mean that GW has stopped), is explained by the AGW proponents as "natural factors (PDO etc.) are temporarily off-setting the positive AGW signal" (please correct if wrong).
If so, doesn't this mean that up to half of the prior warming could be explained by natural factors?
OK, I make the trop trop/ trop surface warming ratio to be 1.6-1.8 in the GISS model. This will alter the amount of warming which can be attributed to GHG induced warming using Lindzen's method. So, we have yet another example of where Lindzen is caught exploiting uncertainty to derive his low climate sensitivity estimate. So, I need to add a further step to my earlier post (#69): Step 3b, make sure that the upper bounds for the modelled trop trop/trop surface ratio are used. This, used in conjunction with the broken sonde data allows you to derive a really small contribution of GHGs to the surface warming.
Using an estimate of the ratio, from GISS, of 1.7 for this ratio and the mid point of Sherwood's corrected trop trop warming trend (0.2 oC per decade) I get 0.11 oC of warming to attributed to GHGs i.e. 90% of the observed trop surface warming (0.11 / 0.13 oC per decade).
Care to comment Mugwump? I should add, I've not really had to go hunting in the extremes of the uncertainty to get this figure. It's derived from fairly reasonable estimates of the parameters involved.
In summary, yes, using this method, and using the extremes of uncertainty in all parameters used you can derive estimates of climate sensitivity which disagree with the vast majority of other estimates.
If so, doesn't this mean that up to half of the prior warming could be explained by natural factors?
Go learn about signal vs. noise.
OK, I don't mind seeing advertising to pay for sites like this. But when the advertising talks to me - AND I CANT FUCKING TURN THE AD OFF!!! - short of turning my computer's soung off, or navigating somewhere else, its a problem. Adn when it keeps repating over an dover and over.... AAaacccckkkk.
dhogaza,
I believe the idea is that the AGW signal is steady and the natural fluctuation is the noise. If the noise can cancel out the signal, then couldn't it also be in addition to the signal?
to try to persuade people to believe things they already believe.
If the noise can cancel out the signal, then couldn't it also be in addition to the signal?
If you're trying to ask if events like El Niño will bump things higher than the signal, yes. That's why denialist efforts to "disprove warming" by starting their analysis at 1998 "work", sorta, because 1998 was artificially high due to El Niño.
Long-term trends derived from statistical analysis is the only game that counts.
IF this story is correct, we're all pretty much fucked:
"Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned Sunday.
And according to one commentary on the research, current models of climate change have not taken this extra source of greenhouse gas into account.
Scientists have long known that organic carbon trapped inside a blanket of frozen permafrost covering one fifth of the world's land mass would, if thawed, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But until now they simply did not have a good idea of how much carbon is actually locked inside this Arctic freezer.
To find out, a team of American researchers led by Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks examined a wide range of landscapes across North America.
They took soil samples from 117 sites, each to a depth of at least one metre, in order to provide a full assessment of the region's so-called "carbon pool."
Previous estimates of the Arctic carbon pool relied heavily on a relative handful of measurements conducted outside of the Arctic, and only to a depth of 40 centimetres (15.5 inches).
The study, published in the British journal Nature Geoscience, found that the stock of organic carbon "is considerably higher than previously thought" -- 60 percent more than the previously estimated.
This is roughly equivalent of one sixth of the entire carbon content in the atmosphere.
And that is just for North America. The size and mix of landscapes in the northern reaches of Europe and Russia are about the same, and probably contain a comparable amount of carbon-dioxide producing matter currently held in check only by the cold, the study said.
And the danger of a thaw is real, note climate scientists.
The Nobel Prize-winning UN panel of climate change scientists project temperature increases by century's end of up to six degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic region, which is more sensitive to global warming than any other part of the planet.
Commenting on the research, Christian Beer of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, pointed out that the climate change models upon which future projections are based, do not include the potential impact of the gases trapped frozen Arctic soils."
So now all the denialists who pretended that the "unknowns" they kepy harping on could only have a downward impact on warming can shift to arguing that it's too late to stop catastrophic warming.
At a minimum these peopel should have the dency to simply shut the fuck up - not just on this issue but on all matters of pubic concern. I'd also urge them to refrain from voting and from breeding.
It seems that the imminent change to the blog setup at Politics and Environment was in the pipeline anyway, but was hastened by several events. I think the outcome will be the same 'quality' of content being posted, but with greater internal capacity for censorship of responding posts.
Which is fine; after all it is Marohasy's blog. Tim certainly has this capacity, and it would be churlish to deny it of anyone else.
The problem is that I rather suspect that the editorial chopping knife will swing rather harder than elsewhere, so anyone attempting to post will not only be queued for moderation, but might not actually get to play on the field.
For posterity's sake it might be useful to keep copies of any reasonable but controversial (for a denialist) posts to the New and Improved P&E, just so the world might know if one was censored with bias.
That's if one cares in the first place, of course...
I'm curious to know what subject(s) precipitated the early change-over. I think that the flak errupting from the clumsy Socratic Irony gaff might have played its part, and I suspect that the silliness that was introduced with the HIV-does-not-cause-AIDS cannard was a much greater embarrassment than Marohasy would have preferred.
I guess that we'll never really know though. And in the end it hardly matters.
In the end the bottom line is that August was not an august month for Their Jen.
I think that my time staring at the train-wreck that is Politics and Environment (how could I have ever thought to refer to it as 'Science and Environment'?) is drawing to a close.
In the last day or so, on just one or two threads, including the fourth instalment of Causal Linkage between Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming, the following alternatives to conventional scientific wisdom raised their heads:
intelligent design
the electric universe
there is no greenhouse effect at all
atmospheric pressure causes the 'greenhouse' warming
gravity 'pushes' at billions of times the speed of light
annual mean global temperature is comparable to local maximum/minimum temperature wrt graphing scales
heating causes comparatively greater cooling through evaporation
water cannot exist as a gas in the atmosphere
humans require mega-doses of vitamin C
and so on, including the persistent 'no evidence for HIV existing or causing AIDS' bollocks.
Frank, I still think that there is fertile ground there for a 'whacky scientific theory' roll-call!
More interestingly, and I mean this seriously, I wonder if anyone has references to studies (especially more difficult-to-find academic grey literature) of the psychology of this peculiar slice of our society? I know that it's been touched upon tangentially several times on Deltoid, especially by John Mashey, but there's serious psychological spaghetti here that I am really starting to wonder about.
I have put my foot into that, well, swamp in the spirit of attempting to understand the scientific and philosophical reasoning that underlies the denialists. More importantly, I sought to intersperse the frequent pseudoscience that is posted with the occasional snippet of what real science I have a firm grasp of. With Marohasy's et al impending fingers on the censor buttons I don't think that it will be possible to salvage even a bare modicum of engagement, but I am still interested in trying to get to the bottom of the resistance to the challenges that we face as a society and as a species.
Or am I just setting myself up for a Promethean punishment by continuing to stick my hand into this sputtering fire?!
Bernard J, IMHO it is psychology, not scientific and philosophical reasoning that causes the "thought" patterns you see. Captured succinctly and brilliantly here.
Arising from having to assess multiple complex systems and threats at differing scales with limited sensory organs. IOW:
we suffer the consequences of poor fit between our inherited natures and many of the constructed environments in organizational society, but that new emerging forms of organization may present us with the opportunities for social relations closer to the ancestral paradigms of our psychology.
Best,
D
"Jennifer Marohasy
Your Politics and Environment Blog with Paul, Jen & Neil.
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Well, it's started.
Hardly the first time I've posted, although it was the first (relatively benign) post to hit the moderation wall. It looks like it's time to keep a copy of everthing I submit - or just give up altogether...
More interestingly, and I mean this seriously, I wonder if anyone has references to studies (especially more difficult-to-find academic grey literature) of the psychology of this peculiar slice of our society? I know that it's been touched upon tangentially several times on Deltoid, especially by John Mashey, but there's serious psychological spaghetti here that I am really starting to wonder about.
Oh, and I meant to add that the Wikipedia entry on Defence mechanisms seems a reasonable starting-off point on some aspects of psychology of denial, along with the reference therein to Heffner's Psychology 101.
Perhaps there are some psychologists looking in that might like to comment.
Well, after waiting all evening and seeing SJT get two posts through, it seems that I am being moderated to the back of the queue, or perhaps to Pluto, on the matter of responding to Gordon Robertson's idea that parties, homosexuality (from an earlier post) and drugs, rather than HIV, cause AIDS.
Perhaps another of the brave folk here who venture into the swamp would care to attempt a link from there to here for me, so that the readers of P&E v2.0 can read my comment:
"I should think the people testing positive should be advised to stop partying, stay away from dangerous sexual practices, and to stop doing drugs."
Another thing about this telling statement: you acknowledge that the 'tests' positively identify something. However, according to the tenor of your paragraph, it is not a virus but rather partying and drugs that are a part of the 'detected' suite.
I acknowledge that you don't specifically mention homosexuality in this sentence, although you have previously expounded on the moral repugnance of this sexual preference, and imputed its causal relationship with AIDS.
But (assuming for a moment that you weren't affronted by gay sex) if, by "dangerous sexual practices", you are referring to unsafe sex, then surely you are speaking of the risk of sexual transmission of disease and the resulting positive testing?
If so, to maintain your stance that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, it would have to be other (apparently cross-reacting) STDs that are then imputed to cause the syndrome, but the problem for you is that these other diseases are also tested for, and their lack of capacity for specifically causing AIDS is also recognised. The absence of cross-reactivity with other STDs is well-known, and all-in-all your moral repudiation of the HIV-AIDS link has an internal inconsistency arising from you lack of understanding of the science.
There's been a bit of editing, as I've picked a few typos after my initial hurry to post, but the tenor remains unchanged.
I wonder if this will encourage them to let it through?
Ho, ho, ho.
Anyone for hockey?
I believe the stick has come out to play again at PNAS (though methinks it never went away).
Apologies for making this the "Science of 'Politics and Environment'" thread, but from that twilight zone of thinking I discovered that the bottoms of the oceans are pooled with CO2:
Good point Graeme I had forgotten about that, of course CO2 at atmospheric pressure goes directly from gas to solid but in the oceans at depth the pressure causes the CO2 to liquefy thus it rains as Graeme said and will actually pool at the bottom of the ocean, this is one of the hair brained ideas for CO2 sequestration, of course no one ever calculates the energy required to compress the CO2 and transport it to the ocean.
Posted by: barry moore at September 1, 2008 03:16 PM
(my emphasis)
I was surprised to find that I could learn from P&E...
Oh, that's right, I can't.
I can imagine though one tubeworm saying to another "it looks like rain tonight..."
Should someone explain solubility to them?
And immediately above Moore's post Graeme Bird explains statistics:
Now this is not to say that statistics OUGHT NOT be useful. Its not statistics that lie. Its the people using it that lie. Statistics per se never lie. Its just that the emphasis on statistics has lead to a bogus heirachy being set up about it.
I'd put reasoning and set theory way above statistics. We never throw any tool away. But it would be good if you really dumb buggers could be taught to think in terms of Venn diagrams. So at least you could prioritise a little bit. Statistics-boy-101 isn't going anywhere if he is fundamentally an idiot.
It must be an interesting matter of history how this statistics-idolatry got going. Wherein an obvious misfit and committed irrationalist like Lambert is actually taken seriously. There must be a real history as to how this inversion of the proper usage of cognitive tools came about.
Every time I've had to learn statistics its like starting from the beginning all over again. Its easy stuff, but hard to retain. And one of the reasons why its hard to retain is that most of it isn't all that important. Like painting innovations after Leonardo and Michaelangelo. Its mining a pretty thin vein and it only really becomes famously important at the end of the process. When you have done all the hard yards getting your data right and working out all the inductive angles.
I always bring in the Master builder analogy. He needs many tools to make the house. Mostly he needs his blueprint and his brains. He never throws any tools away. But statistics is like the final coat of paint. Or the early coat of paint on the micronised model or the drawing of the house you intend to build.
But all these taxeating statistics-boy 101 types leap write in under a position of cluelessness and make themselves feel like experts by going at it with the turgid statistics esoterica and they just make fools of themselves.
Its the same in economics unfortunately. Most of the bigshots in the famous universities ought to be research assistance for the neglected Austrian school. But they wind up running things and making a complete hash of it.
Posted by: Graeme Bird at September 1, 2008 03:15 PM
Or, the shorter version:
"I don't understand statistics."
Having just been guided there by Bernard J, I still having stopped laughing, or is it crying. There's this inglorious piece of what passes for science, too (my emphasis):
However add water and one detects its physical presence quickly as humidity, so I would disagree with the idea that water vapour is actually a gas per se. (Louis Hissink, in discussion with Graeme Bird)
The vapour phase of a compound is not a gas. Hand him a Nobel!
The pile of Socratic irony bullshit over there is sufficient to manure all the gardens of GB for a decade.
It's a bog (British euphemism usage), not a blog!
If anyone wants to keep an eye out, then the above hockey statement refers to "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia" by Mann, Zhang, Hughes, Bradley, Miller, Rutherford and Ni. It's not up at PNAS yet, but see mongabay for a heads up.
"Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia" by Mann, Zhang, Hughes, Bradley, Miller, Rutherford and Ni.
It is gonna be fun watching the 'sceptics' impale themselves repeatedly on that reinforced hockey stick.
It should come as no surprise either that the illuminati at P&S have refuted Mann et al already, on the basis of the mongabay link.
"I would disagree with the idea that water vapour is actually a gas per se. "
well, the use of "per se" here is indicative of idiotic sophistry, per se. See also, "perse", Finnish for buttocks, which may be relevant here.
McIntyre has already claimed it will be refuted, also without having read it.
Our very own muggywumpuss, over at mongabay, dismisses the graphs presented there from Mann et al's paper as being cherry-picked as they end in the El Niño year of 1998.
While the graphs clearly extend beyond 2000 (apparently 2006 according to the paper).
Muggywumpuss, you are such a ftool!
McIntyre has already claimed it will be refuted, also without having read it.
'Refuted' in the ideology-addled mind of the denialist fringe, or refuted scientifically?
And which refuted will help craft policy? That is: which refuted counts?
Best,
D
'Refuted' in the ideology-addled mind of the denialist fringe, or refuted scientifically?
Such a silly, silly question :)
I guess (getting this third hand) part of his argument is that he's unfamiliar with the new proxies, therefore he speculates that Mann has cherry-picked them.
You'd think the world-leading authority on the non-hockey stick would keep up to date with the proxy literature, wouldn't you?
You'd think the world-leading authority on the non-hockey stick would keep up to date with the proxy literature, wouldn't you?
Doesn't he have a racquetball lesson or something?
Ohhhh...I get it: he's not interested in science, only character assassination. Sorry. Slow - merlot.
Best,
D
Did anyone catch the Lamarkian evolution piece on Counterpoint? I almost died laughing at the news that the (oversimplified) peppered moth example is actually Lamarkian and not Darwinian! Apparently it should have taken 'millions of years' for the moths to adapt to industrialisation...
Oh gawd, my sides hurt! And I think I might have broken something when the interviewee, Ross Honeywell, said "...I'm not a scientist...".
Amongst other things, he seems at times to conflate Lamarkian 'evolution' and epigenetics, which is in fact entirely consistent with Darwinian adaptation. He also mentions several examples of apparent Lamarkian breeding experiments which again ignore straighfoward Darwinian explanations.
Heck, we've been experimenting on ourselves for thousands of years, and I have yet to hear that those pesky beards and foreskins have been bred out of our species...
With the caveat of not yet having read his book - if this confused interview is any example, this is yet another case of a non-scientist not understanding the nuances of a field he is attempting to describe.
(Just a note from an outside spectator)
I searched the web to gather data and read discussions on AGW. I wanted to separate the politics from the data to learn the truth or at least be able to make a more informed decision on the subject. I have learned quite a bit (this thread included) but have also now seen that the ugliness of the debate politically has not been lost with those that discuss the science of the matter.
Here are some conclusions on the latter front:
1)Is there no civility? I look for a response of "good point, but have you read the text of ... which counters said argument." Which would then follow a response of "well, it may have merit but it misses key point A" or "hmmmm, I will have to see how that affects the calculations I have read"... et al. Not a response of how so and so has a "cognitive failure" or some other derogatory response.
2) Where has the scientific method gone (overlapping #1)? I see attacks on those that disagree and assumptions about a person or group based on the camp they currently reside ("denialists" or "believers"). It's politics all over again. What's more, I would think all involved would look for a reason to be a "denialist." Being a scientist means being skeptical. A person that brings in criticism should be welcomed and reviewed. This applies to both sides but the perspective, I would expect, would be to find the holes and in fashion #1, factually (or as best possible) disagree or agree.
My honest observation (and I know negative attacks will now fly [see #1]), is that those who believe in AGW will resort to ad hominem attacks much more quickly and with some anger. It gives me pause on believing proponents of AGW even when they make good arguments in tandem.
I thought at times Chris O'Neil and mugwump had very informative "back-and-forth" arguments. But then the conversation would degrade yet again. Alas, mugwump was berated for the wrong reasons and the debate ended instead of enlightening further. In my view, he was ridiculed for having a different opinion and he could not continue the conversation because he would have to defend himself personally rather than on the merit of the argument.
I offer this so that perhaps someone can see how this affects others who are not as well versed as those in this thread. Discussions that continue and offer true review of a hypothesis are what we need. Let's find the truth and take the person out of the debate so that the facts can tell the story.
You can criticize me if you want but you will only further denigrate your argument. I am only a spectator with no dog in this fight.
On a positive note, I thank all of you that offered good sound arguments (both sides) and who helped me learn more about this important discussion.
You can criticize me if you want but you will only further denigrate your argument. I am only a spectator with no dog in this fight.
So Bobbos's words are completely beyond criticism because he proclaims himself to be "only a spectator".
And of course, that's after 5 paragraphs of appeals to GALILEO!!! with not a single concrete fact whatsoever. Why am I not surprised?
Bobbos.
A true sceptic 'tests' the veracity of the results of scientific endeavour, and derives their conclusions from an objective analysis. I think that you will find that the vast majority of professional scientists actually do this.
On the other hand, a denialist is someone who ignores tested data/models/interpretations for ideological reasons, or worse still misinterprets or misrepresents the tested information. Some denialists even promote non-science, either through deliberate obfuscation, through simple ignorance, or very commonly as a consequence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, once again for conscious or unconscious ideological reasons.
Contrary to what you appear to believe, the body of science that supports AGW has been tested by sceptical analysis and review. This is simply how science works, the paranoid conspiracy theories of denialists notwithstanding. A few hours attending any scientific conference or seminar series would demonstrate this to you, because even collegial relationships are no barr to the concerted efforts that scientific colleagues indulge in to pick holes in each others' work. It can be quite torrid at times, but the upshot is that the data are tested and scrutinised far more than the denialists would have the lay community believe.
And if you want a real example of impolite blog 'discussion', have a look at the efforts of the denialists on the politically-motivated blog formerly known as 'Politics and Environment'. You will find a much more rabid cadre of folk there, and overall it's the denialist side that is the rude and potty-mouthed crowd, no matter where on the web you wander. This thread is one example, although anything from the last month is generally typical. Have a search for the thread where Marohasy announced the change of blog host - the HIV denialism there was particularly rancid.
I offer this so that someone who is not well-versed in the timbre of denialist rhetoric understands that in general the AGW proponents are civil and restrained, and although they can be ascerbic and sometimes rude, it is as nothing compared with the denialist side.
Oh, and I do have to note - non-critically of course - that criticism of a person, for whatever reason, does not change the validity nor the invalidity of arguments that might be presented by that person. The criticism itself may be valid or invalid, but the content of an arguement should be assessed on its own merits.
Saying "I don't believe in global warming because I don't like the tone of your voice", whilst it is many things, is not logical, nor is it scientific.
Excellent response, Bernard (as opposed to bi's response which ignores the point that I have claimed more ignorance on this topic than anyone in this thread I have read)! I will take note of everything that you have stated and I do appreciate you taking the time to respond. I honestly want to learn everything I can about this topic (even the demagoguery that you and I referred to). Any debates, etc., and their corresponding URL, is welcomed.
But I do disagree with you one point, and it is simply my subjective view so take it or leave it. The point that the argument should be separate from the person and any "rude" comments. You are correct when you state that any vulgarity should not diminish a true argument. But it gives the perception to a lay person that there is some weakness, intimidation or, worse, inability to communicate with said person... My point is that the debate should be welcomed and and the data reviewed (and re-reviewed). And I will absolutely take you up on seeing those reviews, dissertations, etc. which the denialists continue to deny and any motivating factors.
Again, thank you and hopefully I will be able to debate this topic like those I see in this forum. I now return to my proper place of "spectator."
I said:
So Bobbos's words are completely beyond criticism because he proclaims himself to be "only a spectator".
Bobbos replies:
which ignores the point that I have claimed more ignorance on this topic than anyone in this thread I have read
Wow, this is another cool excuse. Bobbos's words are completely beyond criticism because he proudly proclaims himself to have "ignorance".
Bobbos is ignorant, he is just a spectator, therefore everything he says is sacrosanct. How dare we!
LOL, bi.
You can criticize me all you like... I would never deny freedom of expression. I honestly didn't think I said anything that would give offense and therefore cause criticism.
I only seek enlightenment and was giving my honest observation (which I thought was constructive criticism). You only reinforce what I said in my original post to be true. I do find it strange that I am attacked when I was trying to push for less of this very thing.
But again, I have no quarrel with you. And to state again, feel free to criticize me all you like... (but I do prefer Bernard's method of response)
Bobbos.
Your exchange with Bi is a good example of the actual difference between the AGW proponents here and the denialists elsewhere (or even here on occasion).
I suspect that Bi took your post for concern trolling, because it is in the form of exactly such an oft-repeated vexation. that These are almost always intended to exasperate the AGW proponents, and to make them look 'evil' in the eyes of third parties who don't understand the nuances of discussion of the climate change issue.
Had you posted the same post, but aimed at a denialist, you would in all likelihood have received a rather less civilised response than the one you got from Bi, and it would probably have included a lot of four-letter words and many direct ad hominem attacks. I can think of one denialist in particular who is very free with the accusation of 'filthy lying leftie commie science whore', 'stupid idiot fraud', or various permutations of these and other words.
Yes, it would be nice if all AGW propronents were polite as ladies at a tea party, but this would ultimately result in even more trolling from gleeful denialist ideologues. Given the closeness with which your original post was sailing to the wind, whether intended or not, you probably didn'y even get to first base on the field of insulting exchange.
Remember, at some point even the most patient scientific contributor is going to call out a denialist's idiocy. Either that, or they will simply kill-file the troll, which is probably the politest way of all of telling them that they are recognised for their vexatious intent.
The only problem with this is that the world doesn't easily understand the significance of such a dismissal, unless the person maintaining a killfile periodically advertises that he or she does it. And this is reward enough for most denialist trolls anyway, so you can see that the civility of this and other AGW blogs is well-maintained indeed in the face of the actions of the denying side.
Please read Marohasy, or Bolt, or any of a range of other Denialist sites, and consider carefully the behaviour of the various participants. Deltoid is wimpy by comparison.
Bobbos:
(but I do prefer Bernard's method of response)
And what difference does it make? When you read Bernard's response, you simply ignored the substantial points and continued with your fact-free litany. So why should I bother to hold myself to some ridiculous standard of civility (beyond what I'm already at)?
I honestly didn't think I said anything that would give offense [...] I only seek enlightenment and was giving my honest observation [...] I have no quarrel with you.
Player Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!Sport and repose lock from me day and night!To desperation turn my trust and hope!An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!Each opposite that blanks the face of joyMeet what I would have well and it destroy!Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
Hamlet. If she should break it now!
Player King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguileThe tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps]
Player Queen. Sleep rock thy brain,And never come mischance between us twain! [Exit]
I thought at times Chris O'Neil and mugwump had very informative "back-and-forth" arguments. .. Alas, mugwump was berated for the wrong reasons
Perhaps you also think the tedious mugwump was berated for the wrong reasons by a climate scientist.
Bobbos.
I am curious to know what blogs on both sides of the CC debates you are using as your references, and in particular how you rate each of these various blogs.
I've read your paper Mugwump. Lindzen is essentially carrying out climate attribution for GHGs by using the observed tropospheric warming as a constraint upon the magnitude of the anthropogenic warming signal within the observed surface warming trends. Using 4 models at equilibrium for 2xCO2 from Lee et al. Lindzen infers the expected ratio of warming between the tropical troposphere 300 hPa and the tropical surface. The models vary between a ratio of 2:1 and 7:1, or thereabouts. Then using the current observed tropical tropospheric warming trends he derives a figure for the warming you might expect from GHGs. He derives a value for the 20th C warming trend of 0.4oC. He acknowledges a figure for uncertainty in the tropospheric warming trends and hedges his estimate to a maximum of 0.068oC per decade, up from 0.033oC per deacade.
I think there a few problems with this work ranging from odd erroneous statements, a potentially dubious central premise, poor and incomplete comparisons between observations and models and a general form issue of missing citations that are fundamental to the work.
Here are a few examples:
Strange statement which is simply wrong and misleading:
"Roughly speaking, the warming at Ï= 1 in the tropics is from more than twice to about three times larger than near the surface regardless of the sensitivity of the particular model. This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
Stratospheric cooling is the fingerprint of GHG induced warming which sets it apart from other warming mechanisms.
Is the central premise even valid given the large uncertainties regarding tropical tropospheric warming?
Given the large uncertainties in the tropical tropospheric is it valid to only choose one dataset (no formal citation or weblink!)? What about the other sonde analyses, what about the RSS data and the UAH data? This seems like the biggest flaw.
4 models is not a very large sample given the diversity of GCMs that exist. It would have been good to see a far more extensive set of comparisons to the full range of data. This has already been done of course though (pdf).
So this is not even an original analysis. I conclude: rejection with major revisions (at least from a normal journal).
See here for a discussion of tropical tropospheric trends.
There is also another fairly obvious problem with this work that isn't even discussed by Lindzen. Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly? I think of at least one good reason why this comparison is like comparing apples and oranges.
"Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly?"
Let me qualify that, sorry.
Should we reasonably expect the 1979-present tropical tropospheric trends to correspond to the modelled factored differences between the tropical tropospheric anomaly and the tropical surface anomaly at equilibrium for 2xCO2?
I don't think his statement is misleading at all. He is arguing that the oversimplified schoolboy explanation of the greenhouse effect - Earth heated by visible radiation from the sun, cooled via thermal radiation back into space - is incomplete. In fact, there is so much water vapour at the Earth's surface (particularly in the tropics) that it doesn't radiate at all there. The heated air is convected to an altitude - the characteristic emission altitude or Ï=1 in your quote - at which the atmosphere above is sufficiently transparent to allow thermal radiation, so the Earth looks like a classical blackbody at Ï=1 when viewed from space and the schoolboy explanation applies: incoming solar (visible) radiation is balanced by outgoing longwave radiation at Ï=1.
(the last bit in bold is the piece that is missing from the schoolboy explanation)
Now, adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere raises the characteristic emission level (the altitude at which Ï=1), which in turn makes it colder (since temperature decreases within the troposphere with increasing altitude), and therefore reduces the outgoing longwave radiation (a colder blackbody radiates less).
Since the incoming solar radiation does not change with addition of greenhouse gases (at least not in this simple model) the Earth will now be out of equilibrium (more incoming solar radiation than outgoing longwave radiation at Ï=1), and it will heat up until the temperature at the new higher characteristic emission level is sufficient to generate blackbody radiation matching the incoming solar radiation.
Now, Lindzen goes on to argue (pretty convincingly) based on fundamentals and models that the temperature increase at Ï=1 in the tropics should be 2-3 times that at the surface, regardless of the climate sensitivity. (I suspect that one could actually derive the ratio within a sufficiently simplified atmospheric model that still captured the salient features - but at this point Lindzen is relying on computer simulations). It is this sensitivity independence that is behind his claim that "This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming.", and on face value, it certainly seems like a reasonable claim to me.
This is an important result which overturns much of what we know about the physics of warming, period, not just GHG-induced warming.
I really wonder why he'd publish such seminal work in E&E instead of the scientific literature.
Could it be because it's crap?
The latest denialists' fog bomb is an apparent discrepancy in sea ice data.
Has anyone looked at that?
No it doesn't. Climate Scientists have surely understood this for a long time. There are plenty of examples of "schoolboy scientific explanations" that leave out important details. Lindzen is looking for a slam-dunk GHG climate signature that we can measure today without having to rely on GCMs. Maybe this isn't it, but I think the approach is laudable.
I'm disagreeing with Lindzen's statements with regard to how the tropical tropospheric warm comes about. I disagree with his statement about this being the fingerprint of GHG induced warming.
"This is, in fact, the signature (or fingerprint) of greenhouse warming."
This is wrong, and continued assertions to the contrary won't change that. Try reading the report I linked to which discusses the different signatures we might expect from different causes of warming. The warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of solar forced warming also. The real fingerprint for GHG induced warming is cooling in the stratosphere. Lindzen ignores this, which is odd, given that he talks about fingerprints. I find it odd that such an inaccurate statement makes its way into a journal.
What about all the other issues with the work? What about his virtual disregard for the uncertainties in the observations? There are substantial disagreements between the satellite and sonde data. What does this imply for his his attribution study? I don't know because he somehow managed to get this published despite ignoring that.
Always good to find out what real science is up to ...
Real Climate recently had a piece on a series of new papers addressing uncertainty and downward biases in the radiosonde data, which postdate Lindzen's paper and which would tend to deflate whatever argument he thinks he has.
Quoted from the last paper:
In other words, just like the UAH original satellite "it's cooling, not warming" frumpus several years ago which "drove a wooden stake through the heart of the AGW hypothesis", evidence is building that the data analysis, not model results, is at fault.
Of course, these are papers from the peer-reviewed literature, which I'm sure mugwump will dismiss as being of less value than Lindzen's vanity press piece ...
"Lindzen is looking for a slam-dunk GHG climate signature that we can measure today without having to rely on GCMs. Maybe this isn't it, but I think the approach is laudable."
This is a bizarre statement. Can you qualify this for me? Are you really claiming that Lindzen, in this article, is the first to consider searching for fingerprints we can measure?
Climatologists have already taken this approach by first predicting that nights would warm more relative to the day and that the stratosphere would cool - which has happened in both instances. Lindzen was beaten to it by at least a decade.
It runs directly counter the the mainstream climate science understanding of the atmospheric physics to claim that such a "hotspot" is a signature of AGW, rather than all, warming.
The point of my previous post, BTW, in case you're too lazy to read the real climate thread, is that increasing work on cleaning up the radiosonde data analysis points to the "missing" hotspot as actually being there all along, within error bars ...
Mugwump,
You went on at length about avoiding "Ad Hominem" attacks in the other thread. And yet you yourself engage in a classic "Appeal to Ridicule", with your repeated assertion that anything that does not agree with Lindzen's analysis is mere "schoolboy" science.
"The mote in thine own eye", and all that.
Bernard J.,
"I certainly concur with you on the self-correction inherent in science."
Skepticism is the essential driver of this self-correcting process.
"I am curious about how you would describe what you perceive as the consensus in current climate science, and how this differs from what you perceive as the current 'momentum' in the institutions responsible for conducting this science."
The physical basis for AGW lies in a very few papers that actually deal with the nitty-gritty of the radiative physics involved. The vast majority of the literature assumes these basic parameters to be true and then expounds on possible scenarios based on models etc.
The institutional "momentum" caused by this consensus can be seen in such places as Barry Brook's Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability. As I have commented before this "research" institute takes as a given that climate change is man made, caused by CO2 and dangerous.
The truth is that the RICCS is not a climate science research facility at all but a government sponsored environmental advocacy organization.
"What self-correction have you seen to date, if any?"
Both the non-feedback and w/feedback CO2 climate sensitivity stated in the IPCC FAR are lower than in previous reports. This is progress, if halting.
And if it were higher, it would not be progress?
This is the difference between self-correction in science, which follows the data ...
vs. faith-driven belief that science is biased towards a particular result, and that only movement in the direction consistent with that faith-driven belief is "correction".
I read the realclimate post. It's another one along the lines of "how dare you suggest our models disagree with the observations, their error bars are so wide they'd agree with any observations..." Unfortunately, the realclimate folks have yet to realize that large uncertainty in the models is is not a virtue.
Insofar as the observations go, please check out the latest: latest, specifically:
Here comes an ad hominem, mugwump ... one problem you have is that you are an enthusiastic amateur of climate science suffering from an inherent need to believe that you are smarter than the average scientist who works and publishes in that field. This makes you a sucker for a better schooled (than you) but less honest character, like Lindzen. Also, the scientist you are actually brighter than is also that man, your hero Lindzen.
It's easier for a liar and fool to believe in lies and foolishness mugwump, and Lindzen proves himself - unlike your own good self - to know no shame.
This has been an example of argument ad hominem.
Mugwump,
Are you citing Sherwood et al as evidence that sonde data are inconsistent with models?
Actually, "schoolboy science explanation" was not meant to be derogatory at all. It was just the explanation I received at school. As I said above, I assume climate scientists have all along been aware of the simplifications in the standard explanation.
In which case the absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is a signature of the absence of both solar forcing and GHG forcing. An upper bound on the sum of two positive functions is also an upper bound on each function alone.
That may well be so. As far as I know Lindzen does not deny it. But I also don't know of any way to calculate the climate sensitivity from the stratospheric/surface temperature ratio (not to say there isn't one).
That's the appeal of Lindzen's tropospheric warming approach: the ratio between the tropospheric temperature and surface temperature is independent of the climate sensitivity (at least if you believe Lindzen's argument; I can't see an obvious problem with it and no one on this thread has offered one). As an old theoretical physicist, invariants are a very natural way to analyze complex physical systems.
When Lindzen has interesting ideas (like IRIS), they get published in reasonable places, but E&E published Schulte, for goodness' sake...
Strangely, despite Lindzen's long campaign against AGW, one person who cautiously still thought the evidence was "equivocal" in the 1990s has long since decided it wasn't, despite seeing Lindzen rather often.
This person is:
--Professor Ronald Prinn, MIT Atmospheric Science, A Lead Author on IPCC AR4. He heads the MIT Center for Global Change Science, which includes ... Richard Lindzen.
I was especially glad to hear him speak last Fall, as he moderated a famous debate between Stephen Schneider and Richard Lindzen in 1990. About 10 years ago, he thought the scientific evidence on AGW was still "equivocal", i.e., Prinn was not one to leap on the bandwagon, and there was yet-unresolved conflicting data like satellites.
See "MIT World, which references a video akin to the talk I heard. He describes changing his mind, i.e., he is *not* equivocal these days. I recommend his video especially for his discussions on uncertainty.
No, that's not the claim at all. The point is that three different approaches to correcting for bias in the radiosonde data - by people who have nothing to do with models - have led to datasets which match the models reasonably well. While the uncorrected results did not, error bars or no error bars (which is the basis for Lindzen's and various other people's claims). The fact that three different teams, taking three different approaches to correcting for bias, come up with very similar corrected radiosonde data is cited as giving confidence to the results, and then as an addendum an additional paper was added to the post.
Your handwaving dismissal, coupled with your blind acceptance of Lindzen's result, which has not been published in a science journal, is very telling.
Oh, and you're totally missing the point that if the corrected radiosonde data shows that the "missing hotspot" actually isn't missing at all, then Lindzen's argument is moot, as it depends on something missing that actually isn't.
I am citing Sherwood et al in conjunction with Lindzen as evidence that our current best estimates of tropical tropospheric temperature trends, and our current best estimates of tropical surface temperature trends, are not consistent with high climate sensitivity.
You're missing the point entirely (not surprising). The absence of a warm spot in the troposphere is evidence that global warming isn't happening AT ALL, not for ANY REASON.
The only problem with this is that we have a lot of other evidence of a warming trend. Satellite data. Surface temp data. Changes in glacier coverage, arctic ice cap extent, seasonable migration time in animals, spring green-up in plants, literally hundreds of areas in which observations consistent with a warming planet correlate with our direct physical measurements.
Given all the other data that points to a warming planet, it's not surprising that ongoing work on the radiosonde data shows a downward temp bias, and that correcting for that bias brings things in line with other overwhelming heaps of data.
Note I didn't use the word "model" once.
Of course not. But his approach does have a several rather attractive (to me) features:
1) it is independent of the actual climate sensitivity;
2) it does not rely on GCM simulations;
3) it gets a quantitative answer for what the climate sensitivity should be.
I am not claiming these three desiderata are unique to his approach, but they are useful in getting at the truth without getting bogged down trying to model the entire climate.
umm, dhogaza, you are missing the point. Sherwood et al say:
Or, in layman's terms: there's no hotspot in the tropics.
No, the absence of a warm spot, in conjunction with Lindzen's analysis, is evidence for a lower upper bound on climate sensitivity. There are two ways to refute this: 1) show the warm spot is actually there, or 2) refute the analysis. Neither are yet to happen.
Mugwump,
I'm rather unconvinced by your interpretation of Sherwood et al. Your less-than-one sentence quote doesn't seem to fairly represent the full sentence or the results and conclusions of the paper.
"The meridional variations of zonally aggregated temperature trend since 1979 moved significantly closer to
those of the MSU (Microwave Sounding Unit) after data adjustment. Adjusted data from 5S-20N continue to
show relatively weak warming, but the error is quite large, and the trends are inconsistent with those at other
latitudes. Overall, the adjusted trends are close to those of MSU for the lower troposphere (TLT)."
Your single subsentence is highlighted.
The abstract goes on:
"The troposphere warms at least as strongly as the surface, with local warming maxima at 300 hPa in the Tropics and in
the boundary layer of the extratropical northern hemisphere (ENH). Tropospheric warming since 1959 is almost
hemispherically symmetric, but since 1979 is significantly stronger in ENH and weaker in ESH (extratropical
southern hemisphere)."
Do you still cite Sherwood et al as evidence for the non-existence of the tropical tropospheric hot-spot at 300 hPa? i.e. The tropical tropospheric hotspot that Lindzen alleges to be non-existent in the sonde data.
But I would urge you to read the paper in full and look at figures 3 and 6. Both of which show the clear existence of a tropical tropospheric hotspot at 300 hPa.
But Sherwood uses their fairly decent fit with lat/altitude predictions of 11 different GCMs as evidence that there are still uncorrected errors in the various analyses of the MSU dataset. They also caution that the highest uncertainty in the sonde data, even with corrections, still lies in the latitudes 5S-20N, a fairly big swath of the tropics.
Everything here is consistent with the Real Climate treatment of the problem, and in fact Sherwood is one of the three papers the post is commenting on and they reproduce a figure from the paper.
Indeed, despite your ad hom (harumph) dismissal of the Real Climate post (in which you huffed and puffed about climate model error bars when the discussion centers around the large uncertainty around the DATA, uncertainty totally reflected in the Sherwood paper you cite), Real Climate's conclusion is actually very conservative:
The "dramatic conclusions" being referred to would be that the observations conclusively support model predictions. They don't, but not because of overly large error bars in climate model predictions blah blah - because of uncorrected errors and uncertainties IN THE DATA. Got it, yet???
However, though not conclusive, the three papers are CONSISTENT with the hypothesis that the sonde/model mismatch is due to problems in the data, not the models, i.e. that the "hotspot" isn't really missing at all.
Even more important, mugwump, is that after that post was made, a LATER paper from Sherwood came out, in which they work on further corrections, which increase confidence in the fit with models:
It was commentary from Nature (unfortunately apparently no longer available at the supplied URL) that I quoted earlier:
In plain language, this commentary in Nature is saying that the "missing hotspot" isn't really missing at all, but rather an artifact of problems with the uncorrected data.
I realize that this will go in one ear, and out the other, but thought I'd give education a chance for once.
Paul H, yes, it's clear that Sherwood is stating that the data is least reliable from 5S to 20N, and that the data there sticks out because it doesn't match well with the sonde trends for other latitudes, nor MSU-derived trends for 5S to 20N (while matching well with MSU-derived trends for other latitudes). Strong evidence that it's due to uncorrected errors.
And their figure 6 shows that despite the "relatively weak warming" mugwump's fond of, mugwump has missed the fact that their overall lat/altitude profile charts (reproduced in the Real Climate post) do still match the combined predictions of GCMs quite well.
There's no doubt that Sherwood would be astonished at the conclusions Mugwump (and the denialists he listens to) draw from his paper ...
Oh, and you also owe us an apology, mugwump, for quote-mining the paper the way you did. For shame.
Mugwump,
What exactly does 'signature' mean? Are there multiple signatures we can look for that would/should indicate a smoking gun one way or the other? It seems that in the absence of a true signature we are left with only models and observations, no?
Hansen recently said on his blog that GCM's rank 3rd in importance when trying to understand our climate. Earths history and real world observations trump GCM's.
I guess a lot of the flak your catching is a result of hansens' main tools running counter to what the models are showing.
Monsoon
Just to beat you over the head with it ... work done since Lindzen published his analysis in the vanity press, has greatly weakened the argument for its not being there. And this includes the Sherwood paper you quote-mined, in which they argue that their corrections, which they clearly state haven't caught all the problems, brings the sonde data in line with GCM predictions (complete with pretty picture). And their following paper strengthens the case even more.
So, your criteria for refuting Lindzen's work is largely met.
I haven't bothered looking for a refutation of Lindzen's analysis. It's possible that the climate community has largely ignored it.
The flak he's catching is due to his not understanding Sherwood, for one thing, and the flak you're going to catch is for blatant lies like the statement above regarding observations and models.
dhogaza,
Here's the direct quote from Hansens blog:
Our understanding of the Earth's climate, in particular, depends foremost on the Earth's history: how past climate changed in response to changing boundary conditions. I rate observations of ongoing climate change and processes today, processes on the ice sheets, in the oceans, etc., as the second most important source of knowledge about climate change. Climate models rate only third, in my opinion. Models are a tool that helps us understand the other two, i.e., climate history and on-going climate phenomena.
Let me know if you would like the link if you need verification. Am I lying or are you calling Hansen a liar?
Monsoon
dhogaza
Here's the link anyway. Enjoy.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080804_TripReport.pdf
Sorry. Pg. 14 is where this part of the discussion takes place if you didnt want to read through the entire thing.
Monsoon
No, I'm calling you a fucking idiot, because observations agree with current GCMs to a very large extent.
The problem is in no way Hansen's observation (which is like climate science 101), but rather your fucking idiot 101 assumption that available data negates GCMs.
After which you post a Hansen quote which you assume supports your position, which of course it does not. Because observations are not running counter to what the models are showing.
BoB Carter showed up at RC
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/08/are-geologists-di…
Monsoonevans:
Considering what a liar you are, this is not a difficult choice.
Ooh, a strawman sockpuppet. (As Eli Rabett might say, "what is the point of this stupidic move?")
mugwump writes:
The atmosphere absorbs 350 watts per square meter of radiation from the surface and 40 W/m2 gets through to space. Your assertion above is just wrong. See:
K&T97
Ok, seems a lot of excitement happened in my absence. Rather than respond to every comment, let me just point out that Sherwood et al is not at all inconsistent with Lindzen, to wit:
[for those who would accuse me of quote mining, they do go onto say "This is within uncertainty of the roughly 0.17-0.22 expected on the basis of surface trends of 0.12-0.14C/decade (CCSP 2006; Santer et. al. 2005)" but as we shall see below, this statement does not square with Lindzen's analysis which was published after those two cited articles.]
Lindzen says:
So Lindzen did anticipate Sherwood's adjustments to the tropospheric temperature, but even if you accept 0.17C/decade for the tropospheric warming, you still only get half the surface temperature warming looking at greenhouse processes alone.
Maybe this will be reconciled with further data jiggling. But it may also turn out that Lindzen is right and the climate sensitivity estimates from GCMs are too high.
If that figure is for the Earth as a whole, it seems consistent with what Lindzen said. He implied no radiation at the tropics. But even with some residual radiation (of course there is *some*, this is a continuous process after all), Lindzen's picture is qualitatively correct: most of the longwave radiation from the surface is absorbed by the atmosphere, not reradiated back to space as in the schoolboy explanation (non-derogatory).
That was an impressive quote mine indeed.
1. I don't know what this means.
2. There are plenty of empirical analyses of CS. Gergory 2002, Tung 2007 and others. Hansen has one derived from paleoclimate. Empirical estimates are right in line with model estimates.
3. I don't know how it would do this better than other analyses considering Lindzen is choosing
a) a dataset with known errors and known large uncertainties and
b) a region that will have more decadal variability than surface temperatures due to its stronger response to el nino/la nina.
Boris,
1. means that the ratio between the temperature at Ï=1 and the surface is independent of the actual climate sensitivity. So regardless of whether sensitivity is 0.5,1.3,4.5C, the ratio is the same.
2. Is this the Tung 2007 you refer to?
3. Time will tell.
Sorry. Here's the Tung I'm talking about:
Tung 2007
Urrgh. Double spaced, numbered lines. Why do some journals insist on that submission format - it's almost unreadable. But I will read when I have time.
I would note from an initial skim that Tung says: "Truly model-independent determination of climate sensitivity has been rare." so I think it is reasonable to get excited over any new approach (Lindzen's approach is not strictly model-independent but he doesn't rely on transient GCM simulations).
... for the very good reason that it's not meant to be "read" (unless this is a submission to a journal that actually prints in this mode, single spaced).
It's meant to be copyedited, and copyediting single and 1.5 spacing is an infuriating exercise! (Not that many manuscripts are traditionally copyedited with red pen nowadays -- and it always seems to be the single-spaced submissions in which there are problems accessing the e-copy and the author's gone on a sojourn for 3 months that one ends up copyediting conventionally.)
And the numbers allow rapid identification/location of editor and copyeditor queries.
Ahh. I only review for online journals nowadays. Copyediting in my field went away with the dodo (well, slightly more recently: with the advent of TeX)
A somewhat weak foundation to build the case that Lindzen's "proven" that the consensus estimates are too high...
BPL, This has moved to Open Thread, which is why I didn't see your question. But since Barry Brook on his blog drew my attention to your question and then deleted my response, and is now blocking me from posting over there, I figured I'd post it here for you (verbatim):
Those 61 papers claim a climate sensitivity from 0.1C to 9.6C. With all due respect, they can't all be correct. Lindzen's estimates typically fall around 1C, which puts it squarely in the middle of that pack (on a logarithmic scale).
Those quotes are not mine. I never said Lindzen had proven anything.
Chris O'Neil,
Here are the central values for sea level rise for each of the assement reports. Feel free to correct me if I wrong.
Please dont ever call me a liar again and an apology is in order.
2007- â¢Based on multiple models that all exclude ice sheet flow due to a lack of basis in published literature,[8] it is estimated that sea level rise will be:
oin a low scenario[6] 18 to 38 cm (7 to 15 inches)
oin a high scenario[7] 26 to 59 cm (10 to 23 inches)
Central Tendancy of 38.5 cm.
2001- â¢Global mean sea level is projected to rise by 0.09 to 0.88 metres between 1990 and 2100, for the full range of SRES scenarios. This is due primarily to thermal expansion and loss of mass from glaciers and ice caps (Figure 5e). The range of sea level rise presented in the SAR was 0.13 to 0.94 metres based on the IS92 scenarios. Despite the higher temperature change projections in this assessment, the sea level projections are slightly lower, primarily due to the use of improved models, which give a smaller contribution from glaciers and ice sheets.
Central Tendancy=48 cm
and finally...
1995- Combining the lowest emission scenario (IS92c) with the "low" climate and ice
melt sensitivities and including aerosol effects gives a projected sea-level rise of about 15 cm
from the present to 2100. The corresponding projection for the highest emission scenario (IS92e)
combined with "high" climate and ice-melt sensitivities gives a sea-level rise of about 95 cm
from the present to 2100.
Central Tendancy= 55cm
So to recap:
2007- 38.5cm
2001- 48cm
1995- 55cm
I dont know how else you can interpret that to mean anything other than the IPCC downgrading expected sea level rise estimates???? Can you take THAT seriously? Perhaps we should all think before we talk, no?
Monsoonevans
2007- "exclude ice sheet flow"
Pay attention to that phrase - it is the key to your confusion.
You're leaving out an important part of the story. Rather than tell you what you've left out, I'm going to ask you to tell us. This will help us judge as to whether or not you actually understand the figures you're posting, or have just cut-and-pasted your logic from a denialist site which has intentionally misled you ...
Mugwump,
Sherwood et al:
"Our 1979 - 2005 trends for 850 - 300hPa in the Tropics are 0.15±0.07 C / decade."
Can you explain what relevance an averaged trend over 850 hPa - 300 hPa has to Lindzen's analysis? Yes, it's clear that the vertically averaged trend is going to be less than the trend at 300 hPa, but what relevance does it have when it's very clear that Lindzen selects the trend at 300 hPa and only 300 hPa for use in his analysis? Lindzen very obviously uses the trend at 300 hPa displayed in his figure 5 and then applies some conservative error bars to provide a wider range of estimates.
Using Sherwood et al's 1979-2005 tropical 300 hPa trend (0.17 oC - 0.23 oC) in Lindzen's framework I derive he following range of trends:
0.068 - 0.092 oC / decade for surface warming caused by GHGs.
The IPCC said that it was very likely that most of the warming since the mid-20th century was caused by increases in GHG concentrations. I see no inconsistency, even using Lindzen's analysis. Also, Sherwood's figure 6 makes the point that models with inherent high climate sensitivity roughly reproduce the observed 300 hPa trends.
I'm not sure what to say. You claim that Lindzen somehow anticipated this adjustment even though Lindzen only examines the standard deviation. The numbers you quoted are only consistent because of your misreading of Sherwood et al's vertically averaged tropospheric trend. I'm perplexed too that you deny the fact you quote mined only to embark on another round of mining. Reading the paper and examining the data in the figures it is clear that Sherwood is inconsistent with Lindzen's quoted trends at 300 hPa between 1979-2005 in the tropics. Lindzen says 0.03 - 0.17 oC per decade, yet Sherwood shows it to be 0.17 - 0.23 oC per decade. In what universe are they consistent?
I believe you, but I am stumped: where did you get the figure for 300hpa only from?
Even if we take the upper end of the range - 0.092C - we get a climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates. We also get at least 1/3 of the recent warming from non anthropogenic causes. A best upper bound on sensitivity of 2 (making the real number more likely to be somewhere between 1 and 2), with at least 1/3 again not due to humans, is a very, very different story from the one the alarmists are spreading.
Lindzen never wrote 0.03 - 0.17 oC:
Had Lindzen really believed in symmetrical error bars, he would have mentioned that a 0.03C (=0.1-0.07) tropo trend would imply an almost negligible surface trend. But he didn't.
It lies within the accepted 3C +/- 1.5C range, not "much below alarmist estimates".
An upper bound of 2C is much below 4.5C.
Dhogaza,
I didn't realize that the IPCC reports were Denialists sites, as that is where I cut and pasted from. I didn't need to go anywhere other than the horses mouth for the 'moving target' sea level rise projections. Nice vulgarity btw. Really serves you well.
And another btw, I do know one of the reasons the projections changed was b/c they came to the realization of there inability to properly account for ice melt. I wouldn't want to have to tell the world that we didn't understand something like that. Get ready for the big revision when they start accounting for the PDO.
"might be as large as" in the context of +/- 0.7 error bars gives a range of 0.3-0.17, just as was written above.
I didn't say the figures were from denialist sites.
I asked you to explain why your use of the figures is dishonest, because I want to see if the dishonest use is due to a mistake of your own, or something cut-and-pasted from denialist sites.
Maybe someone else will take sympathy and explain for you.
Hint: "apples"..."oranges"
Oh, I see you do know ...
So a' < a + b does not support the claim that a' < a. They did not reduce their estimate of sea level rise due to warming, they simply calculated an apple whereas before they computed an orange.
Whatever dhogaza. Read the rest of my quote or read the article for yourself. Lindzen was clearly not making any plausibility claims concerning the lower end.
Exactly what would those non-anthro causes be? Why aren't they warming the upper troposphere?
"I believe you, but I am stumped: where did you get the figure for 300hpa only from?"
Figure 3, Sherwood et al, tropics between 1979-2005.
"Even if we take the upper end of the range - 0.092C - we get a climate sensitivity of around 2C - much below the alarmist estimates."
No, we get the amount of warming trend that can be attributed to GHGs, according to Lindzen's analysis. Lindzen takes this even further to suggest low climate sensitivity, however, which brings us to an issue that needs to be addressed. How does he do that exactly?
Well (I have to admit I've been reading this bit by bit as I reach new errors), it turns out he's saved the best till last. I'm afraid his analysis on page 946 (top paragraph) is pretty poor. Remember he's trying to calculate climate sensitivity dT/dRF....so if you want to lower climate sensitivity you need to make the numerator small and make the denominator large....
Step 1. Add up the radiative forcings from the IPCC and ignore the negative forcings and dismiss them as being too uncertain.
Step 2. By ignoring negative forcings you can allege that the real forcing is 3Wm-2 and that we should therefore have had 1.5oC - 3oC of warming by now.
Step 3. Use the derived 'real' temperature trend from selective use of tropical tropospheric temperature data to produce even lower temperature trends.
Put it together and what do you get....low climate sensitivity. A figure showing only negative to slight positive feedbacks in the range 0.8 - 1.2 oC / Wm-2.
The selective use of the temperature data was poor, but his random and virtually unjustified removal of all negative forcings is just weird. In summary, this paper sucks. And I have to agree with the earlier description of the green cheese.
Natural variation maybe. [but note that there's no doubt there has to be non-anthro warming causes (or at least non-anthro-GHG warming causes) if you assume a surface trend contribution from anthro-GHGs of 0.092C/decade, since the measured surface trend is 0.13C/decade. (0.13-0.092) / 0.13 = 41% which is where "at least 1/3" comes from]
Of what? What are we missing in our measurements?
The statistically significant trend rules out NOISE, therefore the "natural variation" causing the trend must be forced. What is it? An unknown forcing due to unmeasurable changes in cosmic rays?
So? His upper bound is inconsistent with the 0.17-0.23 range given by Sherwood.
monsoonevans says:
"And another btw, I do know one of the reasons the projections changed was b/c they came to the realization of there inability to properly account for ice melt."
No. You have this exactly backwards. It continues to amaze and amuse me when people come here so proud of their certainty, and then display over and over just how little they actually know.
I'm talking 'bout you, monsoon.
The IPCC AR4 number does include ice melt, because that is what they CAN account for properly. What they removed is the value for increased ice dynamics - ice movement - because they realized that the uncertainty on the UPPER side is larger than they had expected.
IOW, if they had retained ice dynamics, the value would have been comparable to or larger than the TAR value and the upper bound would have been much larger.
This is all explained in the AR4, and was also discussed to death in the months after AR4 was released. Any moderately informed commenter on the topic knows this stuff.
Either we're looking at different papers or
1) your eyes are much better than mine. I can't read the scales that accurately.
2) there are no error bars on those plots; where did you get your range?
His upper bound is 0.17.
Since you've now admitted to not having read the whole thing, read on. Particularly Lindzen's conclusion. You may want to revise your assessment:
Ahhh. The sweet, sweet sound of reason.
The trend is measured over a very short period (100 years or so), during a significant portion of which the Earth actually cooled. That shows there could easily be longer-term (unknown) natural cycles at play.
But regardless, even the IPCC only (officially) claim at least half the observed warming is due to anthro GHGs. Why don't you ask them what's causing the rest?
Don't have to, they've put it into their report.
But is statistically significant, which means it is "long enough".
While meanwhile the denialist blogosphere exultantly claims that 8 years of statistically insignificant "trend" falsified the IPCC projections ...
And, for the record, Lindzen's conclusion sounds like handwaving bullshit, to me.
Umm, you should learn some math dhogaza. If I gave you 100 years of data sampled from a sine curve with a wavelength of 1000 years, would you have enough data to see the "sinusoidal" trend? (Hint: the answer is no).
The point is, the existence of a "statistically significant trend" does not rule out the presence of longer wavelength natural cycles.
Tin ear.
And, of course, longer cycles do exist, are known about, have been reconstructed, etc.
The problem is that you need to postulate a magic, new, unknown 1000 year cycle which has just poofed into existence at the right time to cause our statistically significant trend.
This is sort of the mother of all handwaving non-emperical nonsense.
It's amazing to me how someone like mugwump, obviously not a totally stupid person, will deny thousands of scientific papers, observations, computations, etc ...
Then put total faith in a paper by a guy who was so demonstrably wrong in his first effort (the Iris Effect), published in a non-scientific paper, built on data which has later been shown to be in error and even after correction of suspect value, etc etc etc.
Gee, mugwump, I don't suppose there's any possibility that your conclusions are driven by ideology, not science, is there?
"Since you've now admitted to not having read the whole thing, read on. "
I have read it, it's pure bunk. I can't understand why you cited it as being a worthwhile read. It wasn't like Schrodinger's cat; somehow in a state of being or not being in a state of pure bunk until I read it. It was pure bunk when it was written, pure bunk when you cited it and pure bunk now.
The two parts of the climate sensitivity calculation used in Lindzen's paper are entirely based upon curious data selections and cherry picked forcings. Why are you implicitly supporting that?
dhogaza, you are completely missing the point. It's getting tiring.
It is the component of the trend *not* due to anthro GHGs that we're discussing. I am not postulating natural cycles for the part of the trend that we can attribute to anthro GHGs. The IPCC accept that such a non-anthro trend component exists. If you already know what's causing it, great - we have nothing left to discuss since right now it is largely beside the point.
Because I disagree. The aerosols are a fudge. His data selections are not curious: they were the best available at the time. Lindzen's analysis of the modeling situation is spot-on:
Even if the sum is responsible for more than half the surface warming, the fact that the canceling aerosols are essentially unknown makes the whole exercise entirely suspect.
" His data selections are not curious: they were the best available at the time. "
Simply and demonstrably wrong. The radiosonde data at the time were one of 3 datasets. The radiosonde data was known even then to have issues. Despite this Lindzen selected it and ignored the MSU datasets, I call that a curious data selection. He could have simply covered himself by using MSU as well.
" The aerosols are a fudge. "
So you say, but that's not very convincing.
"invented negative feedback"
"Occam's razor suggests the negative feedback is bunk"
This is pure nonsense. There is actually empirical data showing the existence of radiative forcing due to aersols. It's not just a switch inside models that can be used to fudge results, crikey.
Have a look at the IPCC report on RF due to aersols on page 153.
mugwump:
There's a limit to the tolerance of most reasonable people for the loudmouthed layperson who persistently sneers at a majority of scientists in any field as "alarmists". Mugwump once again pushes past the limit to sound like a self-impressed fool or (at best) pollyanna or pangloss. Actually I suppose Lindzen plays better as Pangloss, while mugwump's as foolish but more candide.
Dhogaza,
I realize we're getting a bit off topic here so this will be my last post on the issue of the moving target sea level issue with the IPCC.
Essentially what the IPCC did was to use a model in '96 showing certain contributions of ice melt to come up with their projections. Then in the '01 report, they say that there assumptions were flawed in '96 and that improvements were made in accounting for ice melt. Fast forward to the latest report and they just throw the entire thing away because they don't have any real way of determining what effect it has.
That's part of the reason so many people are so sceptical. This authoritative body making such definitive claims when they are constantly having to retract earlier 'facts'.
For, when we take 1 variable away, HUGE changes will occur to any model. As the science gets better, more changes will need to be made and different outputs as well. Example, PDO, AO, ENSO. We know these things have a major impact on the climate already. I wonder if the IPCC is working feverishly to get their models to account for this? Do they know what impact these things have on heat intake? How bout cloud levels? Or water vapor? Get my point. These are huge factors that dwarf human emmissions of GHG's that some people just want to ignore since it doesn't help the 'cause'.
Monsoonevans
The IPCC sea level numbers, an analysis by people who know what they're about.
Another lie. They never claim these to be *facts*, nor definitive, they're works in progress, the reports and underlying science are very open about the fact they're works in progress, great pains are taken to make clear where the science is felt to be very firm and where it's felt to be much less firm.
Two posts, two lies. Not much point in dialogue.
Someone doesn't know what the IPCC does, or is.
Let's see, there's a fundamental misunderstanding regarding ENSO etc. These just move energy around and have no effect on warming due to GHG over the long term.
Let's see, another lie.
Cloud feedbacks, water vapor feedbacks, other feedbacks, they're not ignored, and I'm sure you know that. Trying being a bit more subtle if you're not going to tell the truth, you'll fool more people.
Sure there's empirical data. But, as the IPCC freely admits in its own summary, the support is not great: the error bars on aerosol forcing are huge and the LOSU (Level Of Scientific Understanding) of the processes are low to medium-low at best.
Aerosols allow the models to have much greater sensitivity and yet still fit the recent temperature record. Do you know of any other scientific field that derives one of its fundamental constants (climate sensitivity) from models in which at least 1/3 of the forcing is essentially up for grabs?
Where I come from that's a recipe for overfitting.
Well, you certainly have a way with words, frankis. But save it for someone else. I've been around mathematics, physics, modeling and statistics long enough to know that yes, a large number of climate scientists really don't seem to understand the limits of the techniques they are using. And that yes, the whole field has become extraordinarily politicized.
Now I am really getting the impression that there's nothing Lindzen can do to make you happy.
He chose the latest data from peer reviewed literature at the time. The data had already been subject to several rounds of error correction. Even then, he allowed the highest possible tropospheric temperature trend given the quoted error bars. Sure, he did not attempt a synthesis of all the available data, but then as Sherwood shows, that's a big and nontrivial job in its own right.
This kind of selective denigration of someone who is clearly very competent yet dares speak out against the received wisdom of AGW only serves to further strengthen the impression that AGW is now more religion than science.
Uh, Mugwump, there's nothing in your posts here or elsewhere to support your claim regarding your understanding of the relevant fields vs. climate scientists.
For instance your misuse of the word"overfitting" doesn't give me much confidence in your level of knowledge ...
monsoonevans and mugwump, you seem to be approaching this discussion on the basis of an incorrect assumption that casual readers of this blog may be convinced, or at least thrown into doubt or confusion, by what you have to say.
If that is the case, then my I suggest this assumption is incorrect and that you are wasting your time?
I can see no evidence that you seriously believe you might convince dhogaza, BPL, luminous beauty and others that you are right.
Not can I see any evidence either that you are genuinely trying to increase your understanding of climate change and its causes or have anything useful to say about it.
Would it not stand to reason that if casual readers like me (not experts in climate science but looking for illumination) are prepared to invest the time necessary to follow discussions such as this, then they would also have the time and curiosity to go to the relevant papers, IPCC reports and data sources?
In other words, we can and do check to see who is telling it straight and who is cherry-picking the data, misrepesenting and selectively quoting, ignoring relevant research, and so on.
I have a relative who is a senior mining engineer who a couple of years ago told me predicitons of global warming were a hoax.
As I respect his opinion greatly, several months ago when I decided to get serious about educating myself on this topic, I was quite willing to consider the sceptical position.
I now find myself firmly in agreement with the IPCC position.
Partly, this is simply because I have done what I can to review the evidence and the arguments, and they stack up overwhelmingly on the warming side.
However you should know that my doubts over the "sceptical" position have been richly fertilised by people such as you.
Just remember, one lie, one bit of cherry picking, one misrepresentation, selective quote or decision to ignore evidence destroys your credibility.
This is not to say you have no useful role to play in arenas like this.
I have found a wealth of useful information in the replies to your posts.
I am sure I am not alone in this regard.
Geez, so much bullshit, in so many posts.
No, he didn't allow "the highest possible tropospheric temperature trend" because he used the sonde data, rather than the MSU products. He *knew* when he wrote that that the sonde data is widely regarded to be biased downwards, even by NOTED SKEPTICS LIKE CHRISTY AND SPENCER who have more faith in their interpretation (UAH) of the MSU data than any of the sonde data.
And Sherwood didn't synthesize the data, Sherwood corrects errors in the sonde data that biases it downwards.
Again, nothing you post supports your claim that you understand the underlying fields of physics, math, statistics, etc than professional climate scientists.
*nothing*
"He chose the latest data from peer reviewed literature at the time."
That is wrong, as I said, and further repetition won't make it right. The MSU data was available when Lindzen published this work. It is freely available online now as it was then. So there is no real excuse for not including it. It really would have been very little extra effort to compute climate sensitivity using the two MSU datasets. It would probably take less than half an hour to plot up there data which is in ASCII and derive the relevant trends. In normal scientific journals you'd be expected to do this, or, at the very least, mention that you were being incredibly selective in your choice of data.
Likewise, his exclusion of all negative forcings is perplexing at best. Again, in a normal scientific journal you might be expected to do a sensitivity analysis both with and without negative forcings. You might be expected to say how likely it was that negative feedbacks were "invented" or non-existent.
Finally, given the nature of his result, you might expect some sort of formal comparison to conventional estimates of climate sensitivity both from models and empirically derived estimates.
But that's just what I'd do. I honestly think Lindzen's paper is a really poor piece of work. He is a very competent scientist and his previous work has been excellent. I even think his Iris paper is very good despite the flaws in the hypothesis. Surely you would support these proposed corrections that would go some way towards improving the core of the paper.
It is worth re-iterating at this point that all previous existing empirically derived estimates of climate sensitivity show that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 - 4.5oC. Given this, and given the lengths that Lindzen has had to go to spin a low climate sensitivity from his analysis, it's extremely difficult for me to place any credibility upon claims of extremely low climate sensitivity.
Sorry, aerosols are not a negative feedback. They are an independent variable. Maybe this thread should be called "educating mugwump".
In normal scientific journals you'd be expected to do this, or, at the very least, mention that you were being incredibly selective in your choice of data.
AND give good reasons justifying that selectivity.
A feedback with large error bars (eg aerosols) leaves you the freedom to adjust its value at every point in time. In the worst case that constitutes an uncountable number of free parameters. So now lets get to your linked wikipedia definition of overfitting:
Waddya know?
Hey, I guess you've been wrong on nearly every contribution you've made to this thread so why stop now?
If the MSU data is as you claim, I would support it. I am not familiar enough with the state of that data at the time to know whether it was even relevant to Lindzen's argument, viz: what was the tropical temperature trend at 300hpa from the MSU dataset?
Well, for me, this finally did it:
No credibility ... and I don't mean those listed authors.
Areosols contribute a negative radiative forcing feedback. Happy?
Hmmm...
George Brandis, the shadow Attorney-General, is a little confused about what real scepticism is (ABC's Q & A, 21 August 08).
Oh, and according to George, we're the first generation since the Enlightenment to have jettisoned real scepticism.
I would humbly suggest that the world's scientists are somewhat better than George at leaving their idealism at the door, and that they have a slightly better grasp than he about true sceptical analysis...
Whatever mugwump, although I think you'd perhaps be better off publishing your stuff at Marohasy's or Climate Audit, or in the Oz. How many Lindzen fan-boys would you have created by your efforts on this thread?
Sorry, the word "feedback" is the problem. It just doesn't belong no matter what else you put in.
Make that "trying but not expecting to educate mugwump".
Paul H, the estimates in Annan's study are not all "empirically derived". His prior (1,3,10) (in his notation) is based on models, and quite subjective although he does argue some prior independence of the final result. Wigley's volcanic eruption based estimates also rely on models, and there's evidence to suggest that the models overestimate the climate response time and hence overestimate climate sensitivity.
In fact, if we are to apply your Lindzen criteria to Annan, why does he use Wigley's results but not even mention Douglass' much lower sensitivity estimates, which were available at the time?
If you look into the original works, an upper bound on climate sensitivity of 2C-3C, with a likely value of 1C-1.5C, seems much more plausible than 4.5C.
I am not looking to create fanbois, frankis. Just to sow some seeds of doubt in the minds of those who have been snowed by the alarmists.
I am under no illusions that I'll convince the likes of dhogaza and chris o'neil, but they (at least dhogaza anyway) clearly don't understand the science; for them it's already a faith-based choice. I am doing this for those who are interested in the science behind the alarmism and who have some capacity to evaluate logical arguments.
Take it out then. I know what I meant. You know what I meant. I suspect so did everyone else that cared enough to read the original comment.
Oh, I get it...
Irony!
There's a lot of that going around.
You, sir, are a liar. Even if I accept your biased and misinformed link about the Hockey Stick, you provide no evidence for the slander that Schmidt or Hansen have "misrepresented" or "fudged" the science. The fact that you make this slur after your first post pleaded for the avoidance of ad him makes you a hypocrite as well. Good bye.
Since Schmidt is an outspoken supporter of Mann's hockeystick analysis, he is guilty by association with the ones you accept are misrepresenters/fudgers.
Hansen's latest schtick is imminent ice-sheet collapse but he has very little evidence to support his claims.
Fair enough, although in my defense, my comment was in response to gaz's remark:
If only that were so...
mugw:
You can be interested in anything you like but that doesn't necessarily mean you're being rational. If Lindzen doesn't wish to submit his supposed scientific paper to the scrutiny of climate scientists then you need to ask why doesn't he want to. Normally the answer is that the paper is a piece of junk.
So argue away on a probable piece of junk all you like. Just don't expect anyone to think you're acting rationally.
No wonder you don't understand the science, you can't even understand a straightforward sentence.
Because Douglass and Knox were wrong , which you would know if you actually did any real research.
Now please remind me, someone, what is/was Lindzen's position on smoking (active and passive) and its association with cancer?
Remind me. Who is/was a misrepresenter and a fudger?
Finally. Like getting blood out of a stone.
The point was no-one who knows what they're talking about would put the word "feedback" in the place where you used it except as a careless mistake. Anyone who knew what they're talking about would realize their mistake immediately it was pointed out to them. Arguing about it after the mistake was pointed out is proof that you don't know what you are talking about.
Actually, Boris, they were right.
What that little piece by Douglass shows is that you probably can't use volcanic eruptions to estimate climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2, since there's obviously different feedback processes involved in an eruption that yield a negative climate sensitivity.
Kinda blows a hole in Annan's estimate.
Not surprisingly, your standards of "proof" are rather too low, Chris.
DK admitted their confused mistake and then ignored the criticism that they get ocean heat exchange wrong. Your definition of "right" is rather too low.
And since Douglass is associated with Singer, who was a smoking/cancer denialist, we can safely throw out his research, correct? What's that? Oh, your standards are different when you agree with someone. Well, why didn't you say so at the start?
Oh come on Boris, read it again:
So their statements about LW radiation were as irrelevant as my incorrect use of "feedback" above. And they didn't ignore the criticism of their treatment of ocean heat exchange. They explicitly added an additional term representing heat exchange and then showed it made little difference (their original model had no ocean heat-exchange component at all). Read more of the details in their response to Wigley's comment.
[Delta Q in their equation (2) is the heat-flux from the surface to the ocean (thermocline), which under the "separability hypothesis" is proportional to the change in temperature, which then allows them to absorb Delta Q into the equation for Delta T but with modified constants (equations (3) and (4)). They then show the modified constants are within the error bars of the original constants, thus validating their ignoring of ocean heat flux in the first place.]
mugwump:
Simple question. Please explain why all observational evidence show that the stratosphere is cooling but the troposphere is warming. Your attempt at deflecting this issue in post #19 (...That may well be so. As far as I know Lindzen does not deny it. But I also don't know of any way to calculate the climate sensitivity from the stratospheric/surface temperature ratio.) is obvious.
One could spend hours debunking D and K, but you're right, they do come up with an arbitrary choice--to use a "tropical ocean" definition for estimating repsonse time, which they don't even argue for ("one could make the case for") Well, cherry pick the depth and temp of your ocean layer whilst dismissing the definitive literature and you can make the response whatever you want.
We r doin teh science!
Mugwump claims I don't know the science, and meanwhile tosses out this defense for his misuse of the word "overfitting":
GCMs aren't statistical models, turkey.
Because the earth is warming due to increases in GHGs. I don't dispute that. Alarmism isn't about GHG-induced global warming per se; it's about how much and how soon.
Keep going dhogaza, you're heading for a perfect 10/10.
Boris, they don't use those values to generate "any response they want". Those values appear nowhere in their analysis. They just use them to demonstrate that the argument that their analysis "disagrees with widely believed models" depends on how the models are parameterized, and that since the parameterization is not observation-based. their choices are a priori just as plausible.
The fact is, the original Douglass model (even with the heat-flux term) is parsimonious, easily analyzed, and has excellent fit to the post Pinatubo data.
You're arguing that they are? Denialists make the claim 24/7, scoring 0/10.
"and that since the parameterization is not observation-based. their choices are a priori just as plausible."
It's not plausible to treat the entire ocean as the tropical ocean. Sorry to break that to you.
Basically they said, "hey, if you use the wrong parameters for the ocean, then our analysis looks pretty good." And you find this compelling?
I'm officially bored now, so have a good one.
I've been involved in this climate change debate a long time (obviously under my real name!) and it's been amazing how the sceptics have changed their tune as they lost the scientific arguments.
Back in the late 90s they were arguing there is no cooling (I guess some still are). Then, there was 'there is cooling but it's nothing to do with humans'. Now Mugwump says 'the earth is warming due to increases in GHGs' but is arguing about sensitivity. Seems like classic delaying tactics to me.
I'm also intrigued to know how we can resolve the palaeo record if sensitivity is low.
They didn't say that at all. They just didn't need a big ocean lag to fit the data. Their simple model, including a reasonable surface-thermocline flux component, fit just fine.
I've never argued any differently. We don't know what the sensitivity is, and no amount of models calibrating models in a never-ending self-referential cycle is going to change that.
Don't you think it strange that the sensitivity estimate has barely narrowed in 20 years? Our "best" guess is still 3 +- 1.5.
The only thing that's changed in the meantime is an entire generation of alarmists have built their careers on scaring the pants off the public claiming the sensitivity is likely to be at the upper end.
and defence of the indefensible. Now we're told that people who know what they're talking about don't realize when they are reminded of things they actually know. According to mugwump, he knew all along that aerosols were not a feedback, despite calling them a feedback over and over again and even after being advised to the contrary. mugwump knowing what he's talking about, yeah he's so believable.
mugwump:
"They just didn't need a big ocean lag to fit the data. Their simple model, including a reasonable surface-thermocline flux component, fit just fine."
So, ignore the fact that their ocean is not physically realistic - it allows them to fit a low sensitivity-low, lag hypothesis to the data, so it must be acceptable.
The denialist world regularly screams in dismay because there are parameterizations in the GCMs - even though they set those parameters with the best available values from real world oservations, or vary them throug a reange or real-world-realsitic values to see what effect that range ahs.
Here, D/K use an ocean flux parameterization that is known to be physically unrealistic, but it allows them to make a low-sensitivity, low-lag curve fit, and you are using the fit as a defense of the physically unrealistic parameterization?
mugwump, get real.
mugwump at 112:
"Paul H, the estimates in Annan's study are not all "empirically derived". "
mugwump at 137:
"We don't know what the sensitivity is, and no amount of models calibrating models in a never-ending self-referential cycle is going to change that."
No, mugwump, not all of the studies in Annan's study are model independent - but several of them are. You know this - you implicityl acknowledged it with your use of "all" in 112.
For you now to base an argument on the idea that sensitivity is only model-derived, as in 137, can no longer be ascribed to ignorance. You've told us you are aware of the studies taht are model independent.
At some point, repeated claims in obvious contradiction to known facts have to be seen to be actively dishonest. mugwump, dude, you're there.
You mean that mugwump ... might ... might ... might ... be a LIAR?
I've just fallen out of my chair in disbelief!
(snicker)
mugwump has devolved into Black Knight territory. I'd call it hand waving, but he has no arms.
I think it's another bit of his anatomy he's waving ...
as for the Lindzen paper that started this thread.
If I understand correctly, Lindzen in the final analysis is deriving a delta-temperature, dividing it by a delta-forcing, and using that ratio to find sensitivity.
To get his delta temperature, he is ignoring all the various global data sets of global temperature trends, and instead using only the trop trop temp data - one of the weakest, most problematic, most worrisome data sets we have, one that is characterized by insufficient and patchy data, is known to be subject to errors, and is currently the subject of huge efforts to remove systematic errors from it.
But that trop trop trend is not the surface temp trend he needs for the sensitivity calculation, so he uses the ratio of surface to trop trop warming - a ratio that is itself called into question of the observed trop trop warming is in fact as low as the values he uses - to derive the entire surface temp trend from this spotty trop trop temp trend.
Doing so, applying a problematic ratio to a problematic data set, he gets a surface warming value that is dramatically lower than that observed by all the other multiple independent data sets. So he declares his value correct, ignores all those other surface warming trends derived from multiple independent higher-quality data sets, and uses his low value to derive sensitivity.
That about capture it?
Oh, it's worse, as has been mentioned above, he ignores the MSU data for trop temps, and only uses the sonde data, because it shows less warming. So he cherry-picks to fit his need, and in the process, cherry picks the one which fits your description:
He knows *exactly* what he's doing -lying - which I'm sure is why it appeared in E&E.
mugwump:
here is full of bullshit. Its bullshit starts with:
MBH98's method gave the greatest weight to "treeline 11", not the maligned Noamer PC1 which contains the bristlecone proxies. Any bias in the MBH98 method was tiny, a fact which was shown by subsequent methods which arrived at very close results to MBH98.
If this is the best you can come up with to suggest that Mann propagated lies and misrepresentations then it's looking reasonably likely that your claim that "These people have no qualms misrepresenting the science" is plain old bullshit.
*sigh*
Please just read the paper. Their ocean flux parameterization was thoroughly realistic.
To summarize: they added a term DQ to the forcing ("D" as in "Delta") to represent the change in heat flux from the atmosphere to the ocean (strictly, to the thermocline). They then assumed that DQ = s DT where DT is the change in temperature and s is a constant (to be determined). So far so good - this is a first-order approximation. There are two parameters to be estimated in DK's model: tau, which is the characteristic response time of the earth (atmosphere/ocean) to a change in temperature, and lambda, the sensitivity.
By adding the heat-flux component to their original model, tau and lambda are simply divided by a factor 1 - lambda s, so no new analysis or fitting is required to account for the ocean flux, just a re-estimation of their two parameters (that's actually really neat).
DK's estimates for tau and lambda under their original (ocean-flux-free) model were 6.8 +- 1.5 months and 0.15 +- 0.06C months. So to get the new values they just need to estimate s. It turns out s is well-studied, and depending on which bit of the ocean you consider has a range between 0.049 and 0.25 (there seems to be a typo in the paper that quotes the range as 0.024 - 0.12).
Since DQ = sDT, the maximum neglected ocean heat flux in their original model is just 0.25 * the maximum value of DT, which was -0.48C. So maximum value of DQ is 0.12W / m2 (the paper quotes 0.25W/m2, but again I can't reconcile that with the equations).
Even taking 0.25W / m2 as the neglected flux, the peak forcing from Pinatubo was 3.4W/m2 so the ocean-flux component is virtually negligible.
Thank you for the defence, Lee, I was just getting around to posting a rebuttal. I realise that I could have been more precise in saying that some of the studies cited by Annan were model independent. Of course, there are studies which Annan doesn't refer to as well.
As for Lindzen's paper, it gets even better than your summary. Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and all negative feedbacks in the denominator.
He actually uses trop trop temp. data to derive a GHG forced surface trend. He claims that trop trop temp. trends won't be affected by lags because they are so separated from the oceans. You can therefore use them to work back to the real GHG induced surface trend, apparently. That assumption aside then, his d T is derived from applying this assumption to the trop trop trends and the modelled trop trop: trop surface ratio.
So his calculation is:
d T (surface GHG warming trend from uncorrected trop trop sonde data) / d RF (no negative forcings)
i.e. crap / crap = lots of crap
#144 was a brilliant post Lee. thanks for this summary.
Chris, Lee, dhogaza, I think you can see that I am perfectly capable of reading the original literature, following the modeling and mathematics, and verifying results to arrive at my own conclusions.
It may surprise you that I genuinely believe the 3 +-1.5 estimate of climate sensitivity to be circular and weak. What I am doing here is trying to point out why I believe that.
You guys have obviously bought into the alarmist message, and are more interested in taking shots at me than you are in the science. That's fine, but I have better things to do than carry on a conversation with you on that basis.
"Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and all negative feedbacks in the denominator."
Sorry, after all the trouble we've had:
Not only does Lindzen make dubious choices about the source of data for his delta T he ignores aerosol forcings and in fact all negative forcings in the denominator.
Not true - he accounted for corrections. You keep making these denigrating claims Paul, but the simple fact of the matter is Lindzen used a trop trend of 0.17C/decade, which is at the lower end of the supposedly pure 0.17-0.23 result you quoted from Sherwood (and you still haven't told me how you got those figures).
It's a little more serious than that. Annan uses three broad sets of studies, one of which is the disputed volcano work that probably cannot be used to put any bound on 2xCO2 climate sensitivity (I make the 2XCO2 qualification because DK do a nice job of estimating the Pinatubo sensitivity).
Paul, may I suggest you apply at least the same critical eye to the studies supporting the consensus view that you apply to those questioning it?
Paul, I missed that:
"He claims that trop trop temp. trends won't be affected by lags because they are so separated from the oceans. You can therefore use them to work back to the real GHG induced surface trend, apparently."
Gads...
So, a trop temperature that is an amplification of surface temperature, related by a fixed ratio to the surface temperatures - a fixed ratio that is the critical constant in his method - can be used (because it is not at the surface, perhaps) to derive a trend that is not dependent on any surface effects?
I don't quite know what to say...
Yes, we can see that ...
""surface GHG warming trend from uncorrected trop trop sonde data"
Not true - he accounted for corrections. "
Yes true, he quoted the standard deviation which is in no way similar to the biases that have been uncovered since then. Standard deviation present due to variance in data tells you nothing about any potential bias.
"and you still haven't told me how you got those figures"
Sorry, I missed your post #74. Looking at figure 3 (Sherwood et al) with a ruler I was able to determine the extent of the range of the solid lines (been through the reanalysis algorithm the most times). This comes out to roughly 0.17oC - 0.23oC. In the conclusions Sherwood states that the error is likely to be >0.05oC and, indeed, the quoted error bars support this.
Yet, muggywumpus keeps claiming to understand the underlying relevant fields - physics, math, statistics- better than the climate science community.
Humorous.
A) So what? The figure he used was within Sherwood's range.
B) It is clear from the paper that Lindzen is using the variance as a guide to the potential size of further systematic corrections, a not unreasonable thing to do in the absence of any other information:
You're flogging a dead horse on this one.
Not the most robust of techniques but I've seen worse :-)
(of course, had I applied such a technique dhogaza would have had one of his acute spasms of derision)
Shouldn't it be 0.15C - 0.25C then?
"Shouldn't it be 0.15C - 0.25C then?"
OK, that seems reasonable.
Which still makes Lindzen's selected trop trop trend range only a fairly poor characterisation of the likely trop trop trend according to Sherwood and, of course, the MSU datasets which were available at the time of publishing.
Maybe a better description of Lindzen's central calculation is:
Pretty crap / Total crap = lots of crap
As I pointed out way upthread (seems like a lifetime ago now), Lindzen never discussed the lower bound on the range so its clear he thought the upper end more likely.
And would have told him what?
I posted links to the data sometime ago. The RSS data are consistent with Sherwood ie. 0.185 oC / decade. The UMd data too lies close to Sherwood with a higher estimate, ~0.2oC /decade. The UAH data is not so close and has more in common with the sonde data i.e. 0.09 oC /decade.
And Lindzen used 0.17C/decade - at the upper end implied by all datasets. Your objection is moot.
Wow. Lying without regard to reality.
Who do you think you are fooling, muggywumpus?
Threads like this are great for lurkers.
"And Lindzen used 0.17C/decade - at the upper end implied by all datasets. Your objection is moot."
By all datasets? I'm astounded, do you seriously believe that? And if so can you explain to me why a trend of 0.17oC is somehow higher than the trend present in the RSS or UMd data?
I did not express myself well. By "all" I meant the union over all datasets, not the max. In other words, 0.17 is towards the upper end of a reasonable range of answers to the question "given all the datasets, what would a reasonable trend be if I had to pick one?"
OK, thanks for the explanation. For record, I did consider that you may have just made a mistake in expressing yourself (it seemed rather odd), I should have mentioned that as a possibility.
However, I sense goal posts being shifted, in that Lindzen pretty clearly considers 0.17oC to be a maximum talking about it being "as large as". That is an incorrect statement given the presence of the other data showing a trend which is in excess of 0.17oC.
Even assuming Lindzen was carrying out some form of meta analysis across all data he would still be mistaken. As its patently clear that 2 datasets show warming greater than his "as large as". Unless this kind of analysis allows you to produce a maximum below the median of two of the 5 available datasets, does it?
Bottom line: he should have at least considered this other data. Instead he opted for what Lee coined the most "worrisome, etc.", which later was shown to be incorrect. At which point we've come full circle with no shift on either side. I think that is a good point to leave it.
Mugwump and monsoonevans.
A response to this, please.
And if you don't believe that you need to respond, please be especially particular in explaining why you hold this stance.
Why leave it at those two, Bernard J? [rhetorical]
We'd need a whole thread to just ask all of the Denialists explicity to respond!
Bernard J, that post is huge. I'd be happy to respond to something specific in it of your choosing, but not the whole thing (I have a day job too).
mugwump writes:
I didn't say they were all correct. I asked why you thought the one paper you cited was correct and the other 61 were all wrong.
Why would you use a logarithmic scale? What's your justification for that, aside from the fact that it makes the mean artificially low?
mugwump writes:
That's an amusingly ignorant statement. Why are they a fudge, mugwump? Why should high-altitude aerosols not reduce the surface temperature?
Can you write the equation of radiative transfer with scattering taken into account? Do you understand why I'm asking about scattering? Do you even know what scattering is?
mugwump writes:
You don't understand the difference between a forcing and a feedback, do you? "[F]orcing feedback" doesn't make any sense.
Which of those 61 papers do you think are correct BPL?
Common practice when you have a variable bounded below by zero (I am not the kind of sceptic who thinks negative climate sensitivity is plausible (that's 2xCO2 sensitivity. Other sensitivities - eg to volcanic eruption could be negative as they involve pumping vast amounts of crap into the atmosphere which can cause all kinds of funny things to happen).
I don't dispute that aerosols exist and contribute to the feedback, but you can check the error bars for yourself.
Read the rest of the thread BPL. That one's been flogged to death by Chris O'Neil and dhogaza. I'll say the same thing to you as I said to them: I am not interested in a debate if you are clearly more interested in taking potshots at me than you are in the science.
Bullshit. You accused Schmidt and Hansen of "fudging," without any evidence at all, except for guilt by association. And now you complain that someone is taking a potshot at you?
Why debate someone who will simply argue that the published experts in a field are lying and then fall back on a paper that tries to derive sensitivity by looking at a poorly observed area? There's a reason why Lindzen published this crap in E&E. Because E&E publishes crap and not much else--btw, still want to talk about guilt by association? Didn't think so.
Yes, it is huge, isn't it?
This surely indicates that anyone thinking to challenge a large body of consensus science such as climate science has some serious preparing to do...
For starters why don't you pick the bits that you disagree with?
In all earnestness, if you really are intending to contradict the consensus on a paradigm such as AGW, you should be readily able to respond to John's post. Specifically, you should be able to show how you fulfill all of the criteria required in order to justify your credibility to challenge.
The bits of John's post that you disagree with, I meant.
Like I said it is a huge post. I really can't be bothered reading it in detail (my time is better spent reading journal papers). Could you please summarize what those criteria are?
The ignoramus is still calling it a feedback.
your pretence of knowledge.
Oh dear Chris. Is Paul H also an ignoramus for calling it feedback? Your continued nitpicking on terminology serves only to demonstrate that you have insufficient understanding of the issues to make more substantial criticism.
But if you really think I am so dumb, go critique this comment of mine. Explain the problems with Douglass' model (with specificity, including a breakdown of the equations and where they are wrong, and a breakdown of their fitting methodology and where that is wrong).
Considering how many papers without scientific review there is likely to be, you'll need every spare minute you can get for these.
And where, pray tell, does Paul H call aerosols a feedback? BTW, he corrected himself when he called other forcings feedbacks. Unlike some people, he knows when he's made a mistake.
Yes obviously I should be playing amateur hour discussing a non-scientifically reviewed paper.
I can't believe the lindzen paper is still in play. Its a steaming pile of crap. I outlined part of the reasons above - I just reread it, and find I left out the most critical part.
Lindzen says that trop trop warming is 'the signature' of anthropogenic global warming. In fact - I had missed/forgotten this after my first reading of the paper - his analysis claims that trop trop wrmign is ENTIRELY in response to the anthropogenic component of warming. Quote: " Stated somewhat differently, if we observe warming in the tropical upper troposphere, then the greenhouse contribution to warming at the surface should be between less than half and one third the warming seen in the upper troposphere."
Notice how he inserts that totally unjustified (and totally wrong) clause about 'greenhouse contribution' into his statement?
He then uses the trop trop trend to estimate the anthropogenic component of a warming trend, by taking the trop trop trend - based on really bad numbers, as already shown in this thread - and dividing it by 2.5.
He claims that this calculated value represents the anthropogenic component of surface warming and that any surface warming we see above that is due to non-anthropogenic causes.
The problem, of course, is that amplified trop trop warming is predicted to result from ANY cause of tropical surface warming, due to the moist adiabat. His premise, that trop trop warming somehow isolates anthropogenic contributions to warming, is simple putric crap. And I'm being polite here.
BTW, Paul H said exactly this - much more gently - in the very first response in this open thread. That mugwump continues defending details of this paper, in the face of these serious - damning - methodological problems, says a lot.
Actually, I am rereading an unreviewed article as we speak by Stefan Rahmstorf. Familiar with him?
I just noticed something on pages 39-40 that I didn't notice the first time I read it: he calculates a bunch of different climate sensitivities to try and refute some claims by Lindzen, but rather cheats in the calculation (in a manner that would cause outrage if it were perpetrated by Lindzen himself).
Here's the basic idea. Assume additional radiative forcing from doubling of CO2 is 3.7W/m2 (this is relatively uncontroversial - I certainly don't dispute it). CO2 hasn't doubled yet, but it increased by enough over the last century to account for 2.6W/m2 additional forcing. The temperature increased by 0.8C, so assuming it was all due to GHGs, we expect a climate sensitivity of
0.8 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1.1C - not much cause for alarm.
Not so fast says Rahmstorf: the ocean has been sucking up heat at 0.6W/m2 for 10 years (1993-2003). So the actual forcing is only 2W/m2, not 2.6W/m2, which yields a climate sensitivity of
0.8 * 3.7/2 = 1.5C, right at the lower end of the IPCC range.
Then he goes on to subtract another 1W/m2 from forcing due to aerosols (although this can be pretty much as large as you like),to get
0.8 * 3.7 / 1 = 3C, right in the center of the IPCC range
Finally he adds back in 0.3W of solar forcing to get
0.8 * 3.7 / 1.3 = 2.3C
Let's look at that last one again. If 0.3W of the 2.6W are due to solar forcing, then not all the 0.8C rise is due to GHGs. Roughly speaking, only (2.6 - 0.3) / 2.6 = 88% is, or 0.7C. So lets take the aerosols back out, but leave in the solar forcing in. Then we get a sensitivity estimate of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.3 = 1.1C
ie back where we started only now the ocean flux is included.
Now about that ocean flux: is Rahmstorf really claiming the ocean has been sucking up 0.6W/m2 for the entire 20th century? Or maybe forever? That seems very unphysical. The heat is going in because the earth is out of radiative balance. That hasn't been the case for the whole century. Also, presumably the heat has to come back out at some point and be reflected in the atmospheric temperature. Or is he proposing some kind of natural centennial-scale cycle, with the heat being absorbed over hundred of years and then released back over hundreds of years? I doubt he wants to do that, since if we have centennial cycles in the climate system of that magnitude a fair chunk of the current warming may just be natural variability.
So, let's assume heat flux was 0W/m2 at the start and 0.6W/m2 today, so average flux over the century was 0.3W/m2. Then we get sensitivity of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1C.
Not a big difference: without aerosols you have 1C or 1.1C as a "back of the envelope" estimate of climate sensitivity.
Now, what about the aerosols. Like I said, you're pretty free to choose whatever number you want. Want a climate sensitivity of T degrees C? No problem, just solve the equation
0.7 * 3.7 / (2.6 - A) = T
or
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1 / T)
So if sensitivity T is 3C, we need an aerosol forcing A of 2.6 * (1 - 1/3) = 1.7W/m2.
But here's something fun. What if sensitivity was infinite? Add one molecule of CO2 to the atmosphere and the Earth vaporizes in a puff of plasma! We can calculate the aerosol forcing needed for that from our equation:
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1 / infinity) = 2.6W/m2
So an aerosol forcing as low as 2.6W/m2 yields infinite climate sensitivity. Now, clearly that's absurd, but look at the range: aerosol forcing of 1.7W/m2 gives you the iconic IPCC sensitivity claim of 3C. But just 50% more aerosol forcing gives you infinite sensitivity. And aerosol forcing has error bars wider than 50%.
What we happen if we discovered aerosol forcing really was 2.6W/m2 or close to it? Would we conclude (from our models) that climate sensitivity must be nearly infinite? Of course not. We'd look for other explanations of the 20th century temperature trend.
Every climate model has built into it this crazy dependence on aerosol tuning. You can turn that aerosol knob through a pretty small range to get pretty much whatever number you like for climate sensitivity. That's why 3 +-1.5C is still the best guess because it is exactly that: just a guess.
then we get:
Yes, he's the co-author of the BOOK CHAPTER (not PAPER) you're quoting, one which summarizes existing knowledge, as opposed to a PAPER which extends knowledge (or, in the case of Lindzen's E&E paper, ignorance).
You continue to be wrong in such trivially stupid ways ...
Heard of review PAPERS? I've written BOOK CHAPTERS that both summarize and extend, and PAPERS that both summarize and extend, as have most reasonably productive academics.
11/11
dhogaza, your ignorance is only exceeded by your unpleasantness.
"If 0.3W of the 2.6W are due to solar forcing, then not all the 0.8C rise is due to GHGs. Roughly speaking, only (2.6 - 0.3) / 2.6 = 88% is, or 0.7C. So lets take the aerosols back out, but leave in the solar forcing in. Then we get a sensitivity estimate of:
0.7 * 3.7 / 2.3 = 1.1C"
Can you explain your motivation for removing the warming that you claim is linked to solar forcings yet at the same time leaving the solar forcing in? Surely if you consider solar forcings you should consider solar induced warming also?
You seem to carry this through to the rest of your calculation.
No. I can't. My bad. They should stand and fall together.
It doesn't much affect the results though: I get sensitivity of 0.8 * 3.7 / 2.6 = 1.1C with solar and with the 0.3W/m2 average ocean flux. The equation for aerosol forcing as a function of sensitivity is a little less pretty:
A = 2.6 * (1 - 1.1 / T)
(I think my mistake above was because I got over-excited by the fortuitous appearance of the 1 - 1/T term - that appealed to me)
Then for sensitivity of 3C you need aerosol forcing of 1.65W/m2 (rather than 1.7W/m2). Of course you still get infinite sensitivity for A = 2.6W/m2.
It's really the general range that I am interested in: without aerosols sensitivity looks like about 1C. With aerosols it can be nearly anything you want.
OK, thanks for explaining that.
And I should add that it is interesting the ocean heat flux doesn't change things by much, despite the oft-cited appeals to the oceans. That's consistent with Douglass' Pinatubo stuff (although of course not comparable since we're talking about two different kinds of sensitivity).
This needs to be repeated. Skeptics who claim that the tropical tropospheric hotspot is a fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect reveal their own ignorance.
So, e-mail stefan, educate him, and tell us his response.
Maybe you'll get a job out of your brilliance ...
"What I am doing here is trying to point out why I believe that.
You guys have obviously bought into the alarmist message, and are more interested in taking shots at me than you are in the science"
see also
"traffic report: there is a car going the wrong way down highway 101 "
"**A** car? make that hundreds!"
"father William, i had a dream last night that i became a great prophet and millions of sinners followed me back to the Lord!"
"that's nice, son, let me know when millions of sinners have that dream also"
And the mode switches back to ad hom whenever required.
It's a minor point, but the 2.6W/m2 is from all GHGs, not just CO2.
Of course not. mugwump doesn't seem to realize that the atmosphere has very little thermal inertia.
mugwump might not make such mistakes if he exercised a little skepticism and avoided being sucked in by non-scientifically reviewed papers. Scientific review means exercising a degree of skepticism. No review - no skepticism.
BTW:
Not exactly. The heat doesn't come back out. The oceans as a whole are just warming up more slowly than the surface.
mugwump seems to have the idea that all the forcings together constitute a budget of sorts, so that if one is revealed to be higher, the rest must be lower. It doesn't work that way. The forcing from doubled CO2 remains about 3.7 W/m2 whatever the aerosol forcing turns out to be. It is determined independently of mugwump's "budget." Until he understands this, he is likely to go on repeating the same nonsense.
You misunderstand. Some contributions obviously are additive, eg CO2 forcing - aerosols. But when you are attributing atmospheric temperature rise to forcing, heat going into the ocean doesn't contribute (at least in the short term). Besides, if you don't do that it only makes the sensitivity lower.
If you don't like the whole approach, lay out your alternative sensitivity calculation for us or take it up with Rahmstorf.
BPL, I understand fine. You, like dhogaza and Chris before you, have more than amply demonstrated either that you can't follow the science, or that you are more interested in taking potshots at me than in debating the science. I now officially can't be bothered responding to you.
Okay, how about providing a citation that shows that a tropical tropospheric hot spot is the fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect?
To show that AGW can actually make predictions, I'm going to predict that you don't provide one.
It's a fingerptint of enhanced warming. So you got two choices Boris: either most of that warming is due to GHGs, in which case it is also a fingerprint of an enhanced greenhouse effect, or most of the warming has some other cause, in which case warming from greenhouse gases provides little cause for alarm.
but mugwump, your 201 destroys Lindzen!
"It's a fingerprint of enhanced warming."
It is a fingerprint of ANY warming. But Lindzen says that trop trop warming is from GREENHOUSE effects only, and he uses the low observed value of trop trop warming to say that only a small part of the observed surface warming is from greenhouse effects.
Will you admit now that the Lindzen paper is garbage? Given that you just argued - albeit in a different context - that his central premise is wrong?
Mugwump: Foot. Pistol. Scores!
No he doesn't.
Lindzen says trop surface warming caused by GHGs is roughly 40% (= 1/2.5) of trop trop warming caused by GHGs.
So let trop trop total measured warming be T, which is made up of G - trop trop warming due to GHGs - and S, trop trop warming due to other stuff. So T = G + S. Now, since G and S are both positive, we know G <= T. Which means trop surface warming due to GHGs <= 0.4 * T. Lindzen said an upper bound for T was 0.17C/decade, which implies trop surface warming due to GHGs is at most 0.4 * 0.17 = 0.068C/decade, or about 1/2 the total observed surface warming trend over the past few decades.
mugwump:
And even when I join in his amateur hour and do that, he still can't be bothered.
Wow dhogaza, 12/12 wrong.
The comment you linked consisted of more snide asides, one point about 2.6W/m2 not being all due to CO2 (which is true, but just makes the estimated sensitivity even lower, so didn't seem to need a reply), and a weird comment about ocean flux that as far as I can tell simply supports what I said in my original post (average flux for the last century is more likely to be 0.3W/m2 rather than the 0.6W/m2 given by Rahmstorf).
Wrong.
Wrong.
Irrelevant.
Lindzen:
Mugwump, he said it, and you've been defending him for 200 posts.
mugwump still hasn't answered the question of 'why half of the surface warming isn't raising the upper tropical troposphere temperatures?'
Why is the centennial average ocean flux meaningful? It has increased from ~0 to currently 0.6Wm^-2. If one wants to understand current conditions why substitute a quantity that reflects only half of it?
mguwump,I already quoted Lindzen at 184.
"Stated somewhat differently, if we observe warming in the tropical upper troposphere, then the greenhouse contribution to warming at the surface should be between less than half and one third the warming seen in the upper troposphere."
And yor defense just highlights the lack of logic in Lindzen's 'method.' If you are correct, then total trop trop warming must be about 2.5 times total surface, warming - or else the components of warming in his equation simply dont add up. If the greenhouse component of trop trop warming is 2.5 times the surface greenhouse warming, then total trop trop warming must be 2.5 times total surface warming - and his entire argument rests on the observation that it is not.
The only way out of this dilemma is to posit that trop trop warming somehow isolates the greenhouse component, so that non-greenhosue warming at the surface is not reflected in the trop trop 2.5 amplification - but you have just argued that it does not, and there is in fact no evidence that it does so.
Because the calculation is estimating climate sensitivity based on the temperature increase over the entire last century.
As for Lindzen's quote, I guess if he knew he'd be jousting with jesters, he would have said:
The point is, the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on the surface warming due to GHGs. All you're doing by saying it could be mixed with other warming is admitting the upper bound should be even lower.
mguwump, the logic dosnt make sense:
"All you're doing by saying it could be mixed with other warming is admitting the upper bound should be even lower."
By your agrgument (and it is what Lindzen tried to finesse past the reder) what Lindzen is effectively saying is, 'the models tell us that trop trop warming should be 2.5 times that of surface warming. Here is a data set that says it is not. But I will take the warming I see, assume taht greenhosu warmign should obey taht 2.5x amplificatin even though the data I'm analyzign says there is not tht much amolification, apply the 2.5 multiplier to teh observed warming, and assign all that to greenhouse gas underwarming."
Another way to understand this, is that he says the the ratio is 2.5, but when we look it isnt 2.5, and I will base my analysis on the ratio being much less than 2.5, but I'll divide by 2.5 anyway.
His same logic could and should be applied to ALL surface warming, because trop trop warming does not distinguish caues off surface warming - which would be arguing that his trop trop trend analysis based on shaky data trumps the entire surface temp analysis based on multiple confirmatory data sets, and shows that real surface warming is really only a fraction of the observed surface warming.
Which is nuts, as is Lindzens logic.
Or, to put it yet another way:
"the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on the surface warming due to GHGs."
But trop trop amplified warming is in response to total surface warming, not to some component of surface warming.
Using EXACTLY the same logic and analysis - all you have to do is change the word 'greenhouse' in his analysis to the word'total' - and you get, "the warming at Ï=1 provides an upper bound on total surface warming." But that upper bound is a fraction of observed total surface warming - which tells us that Lindzens analysis is garbage.
Sorry, no.
The argument you're making actually says that the trop warming gives an upper bound for any surface warming, and it's quite bizarre to claim that a dataset that is poorer by every measure somehow puts limits on a much better dataset.
What Lee said. Must learn to read, think and type faster.
Or, quoting mugwump from 204:
Lindzen says trop surface warming caused by GHGs is roughly 40% (= 1/2.5) of trop trop warming caused by GHGs.
So let trop trop total measured warming be T, which is made up of [total trop trop warming, no matter how partitioned]. So T = G + S. Now, since G and S are both positive, we know G <= T. Which means trop surface warming due to [all causes] <= 0.4 * T. Lindzen said an upper bound for T was 0.17C/decade, which implies trop surface warming due to [all causes] is at most 0.4 * 0.17 = 0.068C/decade, or about 1/2 the total observed surface warming trend over the past few decades."
So, Lindzen's analysis, applied to total warming, says that the upper bound on surface warming is half of observed surface warming. Which simply does not match reality. Lindzen's analysis is logically invalid.
Using Lindzen's partitioning, though, we can also derive that the upper bound on non-GHG warming is also half of observed warming. Using Lindzen's analysis, ANY source of warming is bound to half the observed warming.
All fo this is because Lindzen observes that trop trop amplification is muych less than the 2.5x models predict, but HE DIVIDES BY 2.5 ANYWAY!
Get it yet, mugwump?
Ah, I think I see your point of confusion now. Lindzen is claiming that the 2.5 ratio holds for GHG warming only. In his analysis he explicitly isolates GHG contributions from other contributions in, and I quote:
So he's not measuring the 2.5 ratio from the data. He's not saying the ratio aplies to all warming. He's deriving a ratio of 2.5 for GHG effects only, without reference to the data.
Now, you may take issue with the derivation procedure (he claims it is robust across several different models etc, but is that enough?), but if you accept the procedure and hence the 2.5 GHG multiplier, his conclusions are valid - there really hasn't been the tropical surface warming from GHGs that we would expect, or conversely, there hasn't been the tropical troposphere warming we would expect (assuming the troposphere trend he used is accurate).
Sometimes muggywumpy brings a smile to my face.
And, if you accept my procedure, I can prove 1=0, too ...
It's based on the temperature difference and the forcing difference on the atmosphere. Maybe if you were talking about forcing applied to the ocean, its inertia might be significant but we're not talking about the ocean, we're talking about the atmosphere. mugwump's cognitive failure is a sad consequence of his denialism.
Ok Chris, show us your calculation and take it up with Rahmstorf - it's his approach (BTW, in case you don't know, Rahmstorf is one of the poster-boys of alarmism, so you're battling your own side here).
Anyway, as I said several times, your continued ad hom attacks and the fact that you completely fail to understand the arguments means you are not worth debating. Say what you like, because I won't be responding.
"(assuming the [upper] troposphere trend he used is accurate)"
Bingo!
Either the radiosonde data are sparse and riddled with instrumental error [true] or the physics of latent convectional heat transfer is wrong.
What would a reasonable observer conclude?
It is somewhat interesting that Lindzen originally proposed the negative feedback of the moist adiabat was so strong it would effectively cancel out the EGE. Now he is reversed course and saying that because [bad data] tells us that the moist adiabat isn't as strong as we expect, the EGE isn't as strong a forcing as we know it is.
More like a wild animal with its foot caught in a trap than an objective scientific reasoning.
luminous beauty, we already went through all that way upthread (the result was a stalemate).
Pretty funny you thinking Lindzen doesn't understand the physics of latent convectional heat transfer. Have you read his papers? Kinda like claiming Einstein doesn't understand relativity.
We all understand your and Lindzen's arguments and we all (except for you) understand they resolve themselves in irreconcilable paradox.
Hence your cognitive failure.
Saying you cling to false conjecture when it has been proven incorrect is not an ad hominem. No matter how much it hurts personally to admit one is wrong.
"Kinda like claiming Einstein doesn't understand relativity.
More like Michelson trying to preserve the luminiferous ether hypothesis after his own experiments proved it doesn't exist.
Nothing has been proven incorrect. As far as the Lindzen argument goes, Paul H and I argued it to a standoff over whether 0.17C/decade was a reasonable figure for trop trop temp trend, at which point we (he explicitly, me tacitly) agreed to disagree.
The other radio noise over Lindzen seems to have been a product of a misunderstanding which I believe has now been cleared up (namely, the 2.5 ratio applies to GHG forcing only).
As for Rahmstorf (a prominent believer), all I did was follow his argument against Lindzen on sensitivity to its logical conclusion (and correct what appears to be a double counting of ocean heat flux). There have been plenty of baseless criticisms and ad hom attacks, but since none of the critics have offered an alternative sensitivity derivation, mine currently stands.
Then there's Douglass. No-one has countered my summary of his analysis (except with further ad hom attacks, which don't count), so again, my analysis currently stands.
That's one stalemate (on Lindzen) and two wins. 2.5 / 3. I ain't the one clinging to false conjecture around here.
"(namely, the 2.5 ratio applies to GHG forcing only)
It doesn't, does it?
Lindzen explicitly derives the 2.5 ratio for GHG forcing only. That quote again:
mugwump, I read through all 225 posts and you have not defended Lindzen's paper from the scrutiny of Lee, Paul H., Boris, BPL, dhoghaza, Chris et al. Instead of responding to all criticisms, you resort to ignoring their valid points, shifting the goalposts consistently (I'm surprised that you haven't got whiplash from such repeated twisting), and repeatedly using dangerous phrases i.e. "I think that this is perfectly reasonable...", or "If you accept this assumption..." or "It seems that..." Come on, mate. Assume = making and ass out of you and me. Didn't that teach you that in primary school?
Dave's post from way up (#12) still defines you to a tee, and succinctly sums up your case. What exactly are you trying to prove here? Are you that keen to illustrate how logically hollow you are? Your intransigence to accept that you are plainly wrong, and your continued defence of "oh stop the ad hom attacks and I don't want to debate you" clearly illustrates your intellectual immaturity (you do know what ad hom is, right?) and smacks of a loser's last refuge.
A last bit of advice, freely given: Give it up, mugwump - you've lost the war.
mugwump
Using 2.5x derived as a product of doubling of CO2 run to equilibrium to compare the present situation of 0.4x CO2 increase far from equilibrium is a bit of apples and oranges, don't you think?
That's one stalemate (on Lindzen) and two wins. 2.5 / 3. I ain't the one clinging to false conjecture around here.
hm. you are not trying to count points in THIS discussion with that score?
have i been reading a different discussion?
Oh, good Christ, mugwimp!!
You just admitted a couple dozen posts up that trop trop warming does not isolate greenhouse warming. Lundzen argues that becatar he takes his warming value from greenhouse-only model runs, they somehow isolate trop trop warmingdue to greenhouse only. He is full of crap. Other model runs with different forcinga also show trop trop enhancement. Looking at a model run that leaves other stuff out , and then arguing that real world measurements don't have the other stuff because some model runs didn't include them, is ludicrous.
Trop trop enhancement is predicted no matter the cause of warming. Thgay fact alonge destroys lundzens argument.
No. It has been pointed out to you many times that the ratio between surface and tropospheric warming in the tropics is not an artifact of an enhanced greenhouse effect:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposph…
Lindzen is wrong, and dead so. He is right that when you run a model and double the GHG forcing, you get a trop hotspot. But as the RealClimate post shows you also get a hotspot with solar increased by 2%.
The upshot is that he has calculated the ratio for any warming, but is claiming that it only applies to GHGs.
Just one of many reasons why no one listens to Lindzen anymore.
mugwump posts:
Oh, and how many radiative-convective models of planetary atmospheres have you written?
I can only hope.
He never claimed it only applied to GHGs. He made no comment as to whether it should apply to other forcings.
But you are in no better position even if it does apply to all forcings. If the data are correct, then the theoretical ratio disagrees with the observed ratio, which implies there must be unaccounted for feedbacks (Lindzen's point).
Ah yes, the High Priesthood. How could I ignore them? Lindzen has one of the more entertaining comments about realclimate that I've seen:
(ad hom, freely admitted, but very funny).
Actually, what that RC post spends most of its time obsessing over is whether Douglass et al (not the same paper discussed above) correctly calculates the error bars. Well, forgive me for not taking seriously pronouncements on error bars from people who think they can reliably estimate climate sensitivity using GCMs with near infinite error bars due to aerosol uncertainty.
Are you serious with this? Who cares about feedbacks THAT ONLY APPLY TO THE TROPICAL TROPOSPHERE.
But I'll alert all the folks living in the tropical troposphere that they'll be fine.
Plumbing new depths...
When a ratio is wrong, Boris, the error could be in the numerator, denominator, or both. So the feedbacks could apply to the troposphere, the surface, or both.
Which is why we've been saying that all you're doing is trying to invalidate the surface record with the inferior tropical tropospheric record.
Q. E. effin' D.
What do mean take it up with Rahmstorf? I agree with Rahmstorf. You're the one who has a problem with Rahmstorf. You take it up with him. Not too clever, this mugwump.
What a hypocrite.
One of those mugwump facts that should be published in E&E.
Boo hoo hoo.
BTW, for all the realclimate fanbois out there, it looks like they did succeed through their rudeness in goading Douglass et al into a response. In summary, there were good reasons for not using ROABCORE v1.3 or v1.4, and no, they did not underestimate model uncertainty since they required the models to actually fit the surface record before comparing their output to the tropospheric record.
No. Either the data is wrong, in which case no conclusions can be inferred from it, or it is correct and one can conclude that the models are missing something. Lindzen didn't even have to trust the data as it stood - his point was made even with a much larger upper bound. Now, we can debate whether, in hindsight, that bound was even high enough, but the jury is still out on that as far as I am concerned - Sherwood's corrections are awfully complex and need to be vetted first.
Anyway, it is clear I am preaching to the converted and I am tired of it. Just carry on believing. There'll be no more from me.
Mugwump,
Is the surface warming trend, that you and Lindzen quote i.e. 0.13oC per decade, the tropical surface warming trend or the global surface warming trend? Lindzen doesn't say explicitly, so what do you suppose he means?
Also, how representative do suppose the trop trop/surface ratio of 2.5 is of most GCMs? I pointed this out way back in post #1 but it went to the wayside for a little while.
muguwmp:
"Either the data is wrong, in which case no conclusions can be inferred from it, or it is correct and one can conclude that the models are missing something."
no shit, sherlock.
There is a mismatch between the models and the trop trop warming data, which is exactly why so many people have been working on that issue.
But noting that obvious fact is NOT a defense of Lindzen. It is you shifting to a different argument.
Mugwump.
You are no less 'converted' than all of those whom you disparage.
The only difference is that the (trained and experienced) proponents of AGW rather significantly outnumber your (largely uneducated and/or uninformed) side of the debate, and despite your beliefs about the AGW proponents they are a sceptical bunch. And by sceptical I mean in the true sense of the term... Most any of them would just love to be the one to pick the brick out that would bring the climate change wall down, but so far it just ain't so, your finger-counting notwithstanding.
The telling thing is that the only folk who agree with you are mostly academics who have 'gone emeritus', political ideologues, and shills for vested interests. Most curiously, if one looks to the 'non-left wing' groups who should be 'sceptically' inclined but who have vested interested that would be endangered by AGW, one finds that they all take it very seriously...
Try getting a hefty insurance contract against the consequences of warming. Or consider the military stance, in just about any major country, on resource security in the context of climate change. Both groups have their own very clever and very pragmatic bean-counters and scientists, and I think you'll find that they take AGW much more seriously than you.
Doesn't this tell you something?
Oo, and I am waiting with great anticipation for your answer to BPL's question regarding any climate models that you have constructed.
Mugwump,
What do you make of the trop trop/trop surface trend in these examples: model from Sherwood et al (see half way down real climate post) and GISS model courtesy of real climate?
To everyone else, feel free to examine these figures and post up what you make of the trop trop warming trend/ trop surface ratio in these two examples.
Sorry. That should be: what do you make of the trop trop/trop surface warming ratio?
mugwump writes:
I wonder how many more statements like this he'll make before he actually pisses off?
I've got a question.
I believe that the lack of recent warming (since 1998, 2000, 2001, whatever.. and I know that this does not mean that GW has stopped), is explained by the AGW proponents as "natural factors (PDO etc.) are temporarily off-setting the positive AGW signal" (please correct if wrong).
If so, doesn't this mean that up to half of the prior warming could be explained by natural factors?
OK, I make the trop trop/ trop surface warming ratio to be 1.6-1.8 in the GISS model. This will alter the amount of warming which can be attributed to GHG induced warming using Lindzen's method. So, we have yet another example of where Lindzen is caught exploiting uncertainty to derive his low climate sensitivity estimate. So, I need to add a further step to my earlier post (#69): Step 3b, make sure that the upper bounds for the modelled trop trop/trop surface ratio are used. This, used in conjunction with the broken sonde data allows you to derive a really small contribution of GHGs to the surface warming.
Using an estimate of the ratio, from GISS, of 1.7 for this ratio and the mid point of Sherwood's corrected trop trop warming trend (0.2 oC per decade) I get 0.11 oC of warming to attributed to GHGs i.e. 90% of the observed trop surface warming (0.11 / 0.13 oC per decade).
Care to comment Mugwump? I should add, I've not really had to go hunting in the extremes of the uncertainty to get this figure. It's derived from fairly reasonable estimates of the parameters involved.
In summary, yes, using this method, and using the extremes of uncertainty in all parameters used you can derive estimates of climate sensitivity which disagree with the vast majority of other estimates.
Go learn about signal vs. noise.
OK, I don't mind seeing advertising to pay for sites like this. But when the advertising talks to me - AND I CANT FUCKING TURN THE AD OFF!!! - short of turning my computer's soung off, or navigating somewhere else, its a problem. Adn when it keeps repating over an dover and over.... AAaacccckkkk.
dhogaza,
I believe the idea is that the AGW signal is steady and the natural fluctuation is the noise. If the noise can cancel out the signal, then couldn't it also be in addition to the signal?
Poor old mugwump. He doesn't even understand what preaching to the converted means. i.e.
If you're trying to ask if events like El Niño will bump things higher than the signal, yes. That's why denialist efforts to "disprove warming" by starting their analysis at 1998 "work", sorta, because 1998 was artificially high due to El Niño.
Long-term trends derived from statistical analysis is the only game that counts.
IF this story is correct, we're all pretty much fucked:
"Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned Sunday.
And according to one commentary on the research, current models of climate change have not taken this extra source of greenhouse gas into account.
Scientists have long known that organic carbon trapped inside a blanket of frozen permafrost covering one fifth of the world's land mass would, if thawed, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But until now they simply did not have a good idea of how much carbon is actually locked inside this Arctic freezer.
To find out, a team of American researchers led by Chien-Lu Ping of the University of Alaska Fairbanks examined a wide range of landscapes across North America.
They took soil samples from 117 sites, each to a depth of at least one metre, in order to provide a full assessment of the region's so-called "carbon pool."
Previous estimates of the Arctic carbon pool relied heavily on a relative handful of measurements conducted outside of the Arctic, and only to a depth of 40 centimetres (15.5 inches).
The study, published in the British journal Nature Geoscience, found that the stock of organic carbon "is considerably higher than previously thought" -- 60 percent more than the previously estimated.
This is roughly equivalent of one sixth of the entire carbon content in the atmosphere.
And that is just for North America. The size and mix of landscapes in the northern reaches of Europe and Russia are about the same, and probably contain a comparable amount of carbon-dioxide producing matter currently held in check only by the cold, the study said.
And the danger of a thaw is real, note climate scientists.
The Nobel Prize-winning UN panel of climate change scientists project temperature increases by century's end of up to six degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic region, which is more sensitive to global warming than any other part of the planet.
Commenting on the research, Christian Beer of the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, pointed out that the climate change models upon which future projections are based, do not include the potential impact of the gases trapped frozen Arctic soils."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080824/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingcarbon…
So now all the denialists who pretended that the "unknowns" they kepy harping on could only have a downward impact on warming can shift to arguing that it's too late to stop catastrophic warming.
At a minimum these peopel should have the dency to simply shut the fuck up - not just on this issue but on all matters of pubic concern. I'd also urge them to refrain from voting and from breeding.
It seems that the imminent change to the blog setup at Politics and Environment was in the pipeline anyway, but was hastened by several events. I think the outcome will be the same 'quality' of content being posted, but with greater internal capacity for censorship of responding posts.
Which is fine; after all it is Marohasy's blog. Tim certainly has this capacity, and it would be churlish to deny it of anyone else.
The problem is that I rather suspect that the editorial chopping knife will swing rather harder than elsewhere, so anyone attempting to post will not only be queued for moderation, but might not actually get to play on the field.
For posterity's sake it might be useful to keep copies of any reasonable but controversial (for a denialist) posts to the New and Improved P&E, just so the world might know if one was censored with bias.
That's if one cares in the first place, of course...
I'm curious to know what subject(s) precipitated the early change-over. I think that the flak errupting from the clumsy Socratic Irony gaff might have played its part, and I suspect that the silliness that was introduced with the HIV-does-not-cause-AIDS cannard was a much greater embarrassment than Marohasy would have preferred.
I guess that we'll never really know though. And in the end it hardly matters.
In the end the bottom line is that August was not an august month for Their Jen.
I think that my time staring at the train-wreck that is Politics and Environment (how could I have ever thought to refer to it as 'Science and Environment'?) is drawing to a close.
In the last day or so, on just one or two threads, including the fourth instalment of Causal Linkage between Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming, the following alternatives to conventional scientific wisdom raised their heads:
and so on, including the persistent 'no evidence for HIV existing or causing AIDS' bollocks.
Frank, I still think that there is fertile ground there for a 'whacky scientific theory' roll-call!
More interestingly, and I mean this seriously, I wonder if anyone has references to studies (especially more difficult-to-find academic grey literature) of the psychology of this peculiar slice of our society? I know that it's been touched upon tangentially several times on Deltoid, especially by John Mashey, but there's serious psychological spaghetti here that I am really starting to wonder about.
I have put my foot into that, well, swamp in the spirit of attempting to understand the scientific and philosophical reasoning that underlies the denialists. More importantly, I sought to intersperse the frequent pseudoscience that is posted with the occasional snippet of what real science I have a firm grasp of. With Marohasy's et al impending fingers on the censor buttons I don't think that it will be possible to salvage even a bare modicum of engagement, but I am still interested in trying to get to the bottom of the resistance to the challenges that we face as a society and as a species.
Or am I just setting myself up for a Promethean punishment by continuing to stick my hand into this sputtering fire?!
Bernard J, IMHO it is psychology, not scientific and philosophical reasoning that causes the "thought" patterns you see. Captured succinctly and brilliantly here.
Arising from having to assess multiple complex systems and threats at differing scales with limited sensory organs. IOW:
Best,
D
"Jennifer Marohasy
Your Politics and Environment Blog with Paul, Jen & Neil.
Thank You for Commenting
Your comment has been received. To protect against malicious comments, I have enabled a feature that allows your comments to be held for approval the first time you post a comment. I'll approve your comment when convenient; there is no need to re-post your comment. Return to the comment page"
Well, it's started.
Hardly the first time I've posted, although it was the first (relatively benign) post to hit the moderation wall. It looks like it's time to keep a copy of everthing I submit - or just give up altogether...
Bernard J opines:
And Dano adds:
Well, if neither of you have yet encountered the occasional blogger George Marshall's piece on The Psychology of Denial:
our failure to act against climate change then I'd recommend a reading of it.
Oh, and I meant to add that the Wikipedia entry on Defence mechanisms seems a reasonable starting-off point on some aspects of psychology of denial, along with the reference therein to Heffner's Psychology 101.
Perhaps there are some psychologists looking in that might like to comment.
Well, after waiting all evening and seeing SJT get two posts through, it seems that I am being moderated to the back of the queue, or perhaps to Pluto, on the matter of responding to Gordon Robertson's idea that parties, homosexuality (from an earlier post) and drugs, rather than HIV, cause AIDS.
Perhaps another of the brave folk here who venture into the swamp would care to attempt a link from there to here for me, so that the readers of P&E v2.0 can read my comment:
There's been a bit of editing, as I've picked a few typos after my initial hurry to post, but the tenor remains unchanged.
I wonder if this will encourage them to let it through?
Ho, ho, ho.
Anyone for hockey?
I believe the stick has come out to play again at PNAS (though methinks it never went away).
Apologies for making this the "Science of 'Politics and Environment'" thread, but from that twilight zone of thinking I discovered that the bottoms of the oceans are pooled with CO2:
(my emphasis)
I was surprised to find that I could learn from P&E...
Oh, that's right, I can't.
I can imagine though one tubeworm saying to another "it looks like rain tonight..."
Should someone explain solubility to them?
And immediately above Moore's post Graeme Bird explains statistics:
Or, the shorter version:
"I don't understand statistics."
Having just been guided there by Bernard J, I still having stopped laughing, or is it crying. There's this inglorious piece of what passes for science, too (my emphasis):
The vapour phase of a compound is not a gas. Hand him a Nobel!
The pile of Socratic irony bullshit over there is sufficient to manure all the gardens of GB for a decade.
It's a bog (British euphemism usage), not a blog!
If anyone wants to keep an eye out, then the above hockey statement refers to "Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia" by Mann, Zhang, Hughes, Bradley, Miller, Rutherford and Ni. It's not up at PNAS yet, but see mongabay for a heads up.
"Proxy-based reconstructions of hemispheric and global surface temperature variations over the past two millennia" by Mann, Zhang, Hughes, Bradley, Miller, Rutherford and Ni.
It is gonna be fun watching the 'sceptics' impale themselves repeatedly on that reinforced hockey stick.
He he.
Cruel, but fair.
Heh, heh *rubs hands*
Now there's a surprise (not!).
The new Mann et al paper at PNAS is open access.
It should come as no surprise either that the illuminati at P&S have refuted Mann et al already, on the basis of the mongabay link.
"I would disagree with the idea that water vapour is actually a gas per se. "
well, the use of "per se" here is indicative of idiotic sophistry, per se. See also, "perse", Finnish for buttocks, which may be relevant here.
McIntyre has already claimed it will be refuted, also without having read it.
Our very own muggywumpuss, over at mongabay, dismisses the graphs presented there from Mann et al's paper as being cherry-picked as they end in the El Niño year of 1998.
While the graphs clearly extend beyond 2000 (apparently 2006 according to the paper).
Muggywumpuss, you are such a ftool!
McIntyre has already claimed it will be refuted, also without having read it.
'Refuted' in the ideology-addled mind of the denialist fringe, or refuted scientifically?
And which refuted will help craft policy? That is: which refuted counts?
Best,
D
Such a silly, silly question :)
I guess (getting this third hand) part of his argument is that he's unfamiliar with the new proxies, therefore he speculates that Mann has cherry-picked them.
You'd think the world-leading authority on the non-hockey stick would keep up to date with the proxy literature, wouldn't you?
You'd think the world-leading authority on the non-hockey stick would keep up to date with the proxy literature, wouldn't you?
Doesn't he have a racquetball lesson or something?
Ohhhh...I get it: he's not interested in science, only character assassination. Sorry. Slow - merlot.
Best,
D
Did anyone catch the Lamarkian evolution piece on Counterpoint? I almost died laughing at the news that the (oversimplified) peppered moth example is actually Lamarkian and not Darwinian! Apparently it should have taken 'millions of years' for the moths to adapt to industrialisation...
Oh gawd, my sides hurt! And I think I might have broken something when the interviewee, Ross Honeywell, said "...I'm not a scientist...".
Amongst other things, he seems at times to conflate Lamarkian 'evolution' and epigenetics, which is in fact entirely consistent with Darwinian adaptation. He also mentions several examples of apparent Lamarkian breeding experiments which again ignore straighfoward Darwinian explanations.
Heck, we've been experimenting on ourselves for thousands of years, and I have yet to hear that those pesky beards and foreskins have been bred out of our species...
With the caveat of not yet having read his book - if this confused interview is any example, this is yet another case of a non-scientist not understanding the nuances of a field he is attempting to describe.
(Just a note from an outside spectator)
I searched the web to gather data and read discussions on AGW. I wanted to separate the politics from the data to learn the truth or at least be able to make a more informed decision on the subject. I have learned quite a bit (this thread included) but have also now seen that the ugliness of the debate politically has not been lost with those that discuss the science of the matter.
Here are some conclusions on the latter front:
1)Is there no civility? I look for a response of "good point, but have you read the text of ... which counters said argument." Which would then follow a response of "well, it may have merit but it misses key point A" or "hmmmm, I will have to see how that affects the calculations I have read"... et al. Not a response of how so and so has a "cognitive failure" or some other derogatory response.
2) Where has the scientific method gone (overlapping #1)? I see attacks on those that disagree and assumptions about a person or group based on the camp they currently reside ("denialists" or "believers"). It's politics all over again. What's more, I would think all involved would look for a reason to be a "denialist." Being a scientist means being skeptical. A person that brings in criticism should be welcomed and reviewed. This applies to both sides but the perspective, I would expect, would be to find the holes and in fashion #1, factually (or as best possible) disagree or agree.
My honest observation (and I know negative attacks will now fly [see #1]), is that those who believe in AGW will resort to ad hominem attacks much more quickly and with some anger. It gives me pause on believing proponents of AGW even when they make good arguments in tandem.
I thought at times Chris O'Neil and mugwump had very informative "back-and-forth" arguments. But then the conversation would degrade yet again. Alas, mugwump was berated for the wrong reasons and the debate ended instead of enlightening further. In my view, he was ridiculed for having a different opinion and he could not continue the conversation because he would have to defend himself personally rather than on the merit of the argument.
I offer this so that perhaps someone can see how this affects others who are not as well versed as those in this thread. Discussions that continue and offer true review of a hypothesis are what we need. Let's find the truth and take the person out of the debate so that the facts can tell the story.
You can criticize me if you want but you will only further denigrate your argument. I am only a spectator with no dog in this fight.
On a positive note, I thank all of you that offered good sound arguments (both sides) and who helped me learn more about this important discussion.
So Bobbos's words are completely beyond criticism because he proclaims himself to be "only a spectator".
And of course, that's after 5 paragraphs of appeals to GALILEO!!! with not a single concrete fact whatsoever. Why am I not surprised?
Bobbos.
A true sceptic 'tests' the veracity of the results of scientific endeavour, and derives their conclusions from an objective analysis. I think that you will find that the vast majority of professional scientists actually do this.
On the other hand, a denialist is someone who ignores tested data/models/interpretations for ideological reasons, or worse still misinterprets or misrepresents the tested information. Some denialists even promote non-science, either through deliberate obfuscation, through simple ignorance, or very commonly as a consequence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, once again for conscious or unconscious ideological reasons.
Contrary to what you appear to believe, the body of science that supports AGW has been tested by sceptical analysis and review. This is simply how science works, the paranoid conspiracy theories of denialists notwithstanding. A few hours attending any scientific conference or seminar series would demonstrate this to you, because even collegial relationships are no barr to the concerted efforts that scientific colleagues indulge in to pick holes in each others' work. It can be quite torrid at times, but the upshot is that the data are tested and scrutinised far more than the denialists would have the lay community believe.
And if you want a real example of impolite blog 'discussion', have a look at the efforts of the denialists on the politically-motivated blog formerly known as 'Politics and Environment'. You will find a much more rabid cadre of folk there, and overall it's the denialist side that is the rude and potty-mouthed crowd, no matter where on the web you wander. This thread is one example, although anything from the last month is generally typical. Have a search for the thread where Marohasy announced the change of blog host - the HIV denialism there was particularly rancid.
I offer this so that someone who is not well-versed in the timbre of denialist rhetoric understands that in general the AGW proponents are civil and restrained, and although they can be ascerbic and sometimes rude, it is as nothing compared with the denialist side.
Oh, and I do have to note - non-critically of course - that criticism of a person, for whatever reason, does not change the validity nor the invalidity of arguments that might be presented by that person. The criticism itself may be valid or invalid, but the content of an arguement should be assessed on its own merits.
Saying "I don't believe in global warming because I don't like the tone of your voice", whilst it is many things, is not logical, nor is it scientific.
Excellent response, Bernard (as opposed to bi's response which ignores the point that I have claimed more ignorance on this topic than anyone in this thread I have read)! I will take note of everything that you have stated and I do appreciate you taking the time to respond. I honestly want to learn everything I can about this topic (even the demagoguery that you and I referred to). Any debates, etc., and their corresponding URL, is welcomed.
But I do disagree with you one point, and it is simply my subjective view so take it or leave it. The point that the argument should be separate from the person and any "rude" comments. You are correct when you state that any vulgarity should not diminish a true argument. But it gives the perception to a lay person that there is some weakness, intimidation or, worse, inability to communicate with said person... My point is that the debate should be welcomed and and the data reviewed (and re-reviewed). And I will absolutely take you up on seeing those reviews, dissertations, etc. which the denialists continue to deny and any motivating factors.
Again, thank you and hopefully I will be able to debate this topic like those I see in this forum. I now return to my proper place of "spectator."
I said:
Bobbos replies:
Wow, this is another cool excuse. Bobbos's words are completely beyond criticism because he proudly proclaims himself to have "ignorance".
Bobbos is ignorant, he is just a spectator, therefore everything he says is sacrosanct. How dare we!
LOL, bi.
You can criticize me all you like... I would never deny freedom of expression. I honestly didn't think I said anything that would give offense and therefore cause criticism.
I only seek enlightenment and was giving my honest observation (which I thought was constructive criticism). You only reinforce what I said in my original post to be true. I do find it strange that I am attacked when I was trying to push for less of this very thing.
But again, I have no quarrel with you. And to state again, feel free to criticize me all you like... (but I do prefer Bernard's method of response)
Bobbos.
Your exchange with Bi is a good example of the actual difference between the AGW proponents here and the denialists elsewhere (or even here on occasion).
I suspect that Bi took your post for concern trolling, because it is in the form of exactly such an oft-repeated vexation. that These are almost always intended to exasperate the AGW proponents, and to make them look 'evil' in the eyes of third parties who don't understand the nuances of discussion of the climate change issue.
Had you posted the same post, but aimed at a denialist, you would in all likelihood have received a rather less civilised response than the one you got from Bi, and it would probably have included a lot of four-letter words and many direct ad hominem attacks. I can think of one denialist in particular who is very free with the accusation of 'filthy lying leftie commie science whore', 'stupid idiot fraud', or various permutations of these and other words.
Yes, it would be nice if all AGW propronents were polite as ladies at a tea party, but this would ultimately result in even more trolling from gleeful denialist ideologues. Given the closeness with which your original post was sailing to the wind, whether intended or not, you probably didn'y even get to first base on the field of insulting exchange.
Remember, at some point even the most patient scientific contributor is going to call out a denialist's idiocy. Either that, or they will simply kill-file the troll, which is probably the politest way of all of telling them that they are recognised for their vexatious intent.
The only problem with this is that the world doesn't easily understand the significance of such a dismissal, unless the person maintaining a killfile periodically advertises that he or she does it. And this is reward enough for most denialist trolls anyway, so you can see that the civility of this and other AGW blogs is well-maintained indeed in the face of the actions of the denying side.
Please read Marohasy, or Bolt, or any of a range of other Denialist sites, and consider carefully the behaviour of the various participants. Deltoid is wimpy by comparison.
Bobbos:
And what difference does it make? When you read Bernard's response, you simply ignored the substantial points and continued with your fact-free litany. So why should I bother to hold myself to some ridiculous standard of civility (beyond what I'm already at)?
Player Queen. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!Sport and repose lock from me day and night!To desperation turn my trust and hope!An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope!Each opposite that blanks the face of joyMeet what I would have well and it destroy!Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
Hamlet. If she should break it now!
Player King. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile;My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguileThe tedious day with sleep. [Sleeps]
Player Queen. Sleep rock thy brain,And never come mischance between us twain! [Exit]
Hamlet. Madam, how like you this play?
Queen Gertrude. The lady protests too much, methinks.
Bobbos:
Perhaps you also think the tedious mugwump was berated for the wrong reasons by a climate scientist.
Bobbos.
I am curious to know what blogs on both sides of the CC debates you are using as your references, and in particular how you rate each of these various blogs.
Bobbos?
Hello?