Posted on 01/16/2007 5:06:47 AM PST by oldtimer2
Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock
By James Lewis
As a scientist I've learned never to say "never." So human-caused global warming is always a hypothesis to hold, at least until climate science becomes mature. (Climate science is very immature right now: Physicists just don't know how to deal with hypercomplex systems like the earth weather. That's why a recent NASA scientist was wildly wrong when he called anthropogenic warming "just basic physics." Basic physics is what you do in the laboratory. If hypercomplex systems were predictable, NASA would have foolproof space shuttles --- because they are a lot simpler than the climate. So this is just pseudoscientific twaddle from NASA's vaunted Politically Correct Division. It makes me despair when even scientists conveniently forget that little word "hypothesis.")
OK. The human-caused global warming hypothesis is completely model-dependent. We can't directly observe cars and cows turning up the earth thermostat. Whatever the human contribution there may be to climate constitutes just a few signals among many hundreds or thousands.
All our models of the earth climate are incomplete. That's why they keep changing, and that's why climate scientists keep finding surprises. As Rummy used to say, there are a ton of "unknown unknowns" out there. The real world is full of x's, y's and z's, far more than we can write little models about. How do you extract the human contribution from a vast number of unknowns?
That's why constant testing is needed, and why it is so frustrating to do frontier science properly.
Science is difficult because nature always has another surprise in store for us, dammit! Einstein rejected quantum mechanics, and was wrong about that. Newton went wrong on the proof of calculus, a problem that didn't get solved until 1900. Scientists are always wrong --- they are just less wrong now than they were before (if everything is going well). Check out the current issue of Science magazine. It's full of surprises. That's what it's for.
Now there's a basic fact about complexity that helps to understand this. It's a point in probability theory (eek!) about many variables, each one less than 100 percent likely to be true.
If I know that my six-sided die isn't loaded, I'll get a specific number on average one out of six rolls. Two rolls of the die produces 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36. For n rolls of the die, I get (1/6) multiplied by itself n times, or (1/6) to the nth power. That number becomes small very quickly. The more rolls of the die, the less likely it is that some particular sequence will come up. It's the first thing to know in any game of chance. Don't ever bet serious money if that isn't obvious.
Now imagine that all the variables about global climate are known with less than 100 percent certainty. Let's be wildly and unrealistically optimistic and say that climate scientists know each variable to 99 percent certainty! (No such thing, of course). And let's optimistically suppose there are only one-hundred x's, y's, and z's --- all the variables that can change the climate: like the amount of cloud cover over Antarctica, the changing ocean currents in the South Pacific, Mount Helena venting, sun spots, Chinese factories burning more coal every year, evaporation of ocean water (the biggest "greenhouse" gas), the wobbles of earth orbit around the sun, and yes, the multifarious fartings of billions of living creatures on the face of the earth, minus, of course, all the trillions of plants and algae that gobble up all the CO2, nitrogen-containing molecules, and sulfur-smelling exhalations spewed out by all of us animals. Got that? It all goes into our best math model.
So in the best case, the smartest climatologist in the world will know 100 variables, each one to an accuracy of 99 percent. Want to know what the probability of our spiffiest math model would be, if that perfect world existed? Have you ever multiplied (99/100) by itself 100 times? According to the Google calculator, it equals a little more than 36.6 percent.
The Bottom line: our best imaginable model has a total probability of one out of three. How many billions of dollars in Kyoto money are we going to spend on that chance?
Or should we just blow it at the dog races?
So all ye of global warming faith, rejoice in the ambiguity that real life presents to all of us. Neither planetary catastrophe nor paradise on earth are sure bets. Sorry about that. (Consider growing up, instead.)
That's why human-caused global warming is an hypothesis, not a fact. Anybody who says otherwise isn't doing science, but trying to sell you a bill of goods.
Probably.
James Lewis
Also, citing 1998, 1999, 2001 etc., studies or quotes is quite ancient news in the world of Climate Science.
Our sidestreets and alleys are still full of rutted global warming. We need Algore to come to town so's we can get enough hot air to melt the stuff.
Hurricane season prediction is a lot more like climate prediction than weather prediction and hurricane prediction models seem pretty bad. For example, I looked at the December predictions by the Colorado State team headed by William Gray and they're no better than random. Specifically I compared his forecasts with randomly generated forecasts based on historical data and his were worse (larger sum-of-squared-error) than about 50%. For "named storm" predictions, Gray's forecasts were worse than about 75% of the random predictions.
Temps and CO2 track each other quite well.
The issue is not whether variables may track in time. The issue is which is causitive, if either may be said to be, for a third variable may be causing both.
Put simply correlation does not imply causation. Physical capacity to effect change and timing are what establishes the potential for causation.
It is well established that temperture certainly leads CO2 changes where it can be said to have any relationship at all in the paleo record. Thus by no means can CO2 be claimed to be the cause of the temperature change in in those records.
Furthermore in response to your statement as regards the conditions of the last 100-150 years:
But, It is also an undeniable fact that we humans are dumping billions of tons of CO2 in the air and atmospheric CO2 levels have risen quite dramatically over the last 100-150 years.
A rising CO2 levels is virtually irrelavant factor to climate change in that same period.
You are aware, are you not? The total of rise in CO2 across the last 100yrs only amounts to less than 0.05oC direct radiative effect on blackbody temperature.
First the relationship between radiative effect of CO2 and its direct radiative effect is logrithmic, due to saturation of its active spectral lines. The Solar equivalant top of atmosphere measure of radiative effect CO2 is calculated as DF = 5.35 ln(C/C0) wm-2 [Myhre et al. 1998, Geophys.Res.Lett., 25:2715-2718] see also: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
The import of that is that CO2 has less impact on temperature as its concentration increases.
Secondly Due to the overwhelming abundance of watervapor in the atomosphere (about 10 molecules water vapor for every CO2 molecule) and the broadband absorption of IR by watervapor making a very effective IR sponge throughout the IR bands, the effect of CO2 as an IR active absorber at the surface of the earth is ~1/3 of of the potential that it would have if were the only GHG in the atmosphere,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html
"Carbon dioxide adds 12 percent to radiation trapping, which is less than the contribution from either water vapor or clouds. By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the Earth's atmosphere. Freidenreich and colleagues[106] have reported the overlap of carbon dioxide and water absorption bands in the infrared region. Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor."
thus reducing its effect at the surface to only about 1.2 wm-2 for even a doubling of CO2 concentration much less the ~30% increase of CO2 in the last 100 years or so.
The blackbody temperature varies as the 4th root of total blackbody radiation at the surface of 391.28 wm-2 at
T = (F/s)0.25 = (391.28/5.67*10-8)0.25 = 288.22K, (i.e. 15oC)
The net result of which is to that CO2 is one of the least effective controlling surface temperature and only by extreme stretch of the imagination and fantasy to be considered a substantive driver of global climate over the last 100-150 years.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.html
"Carbon dioxide adds 12 percent to radiation trapping, which is less than the contribution from either water vapor or clouds. By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the Earth's atmosphere. Freidenreich and colleagues[106] have reported the overlap of carbon dioxide and water absorption bands in the infrared region. Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor."
Now I haven't indicated one way or the other in this thread as to what I really think about global warming. (I think it is real, but I doubt it will be catastrophic either, and in any event it isn't worth destroying the world's economy to shut down fossil fuel use.) I was just reacting to an argument against climate modeling that seemed much too glib for me. The writer suggested that if you have so much uncertainty in inputs, then we cannot trust outputs -- but it seems arrogant to me to in effect imply that the climate modelers haven't checked the response of their models to changes in inputs, when surely they must have given at least some thought to that. In fact, much of the published literature on the subject is about finding ways of testing the sensitivity of models to changes in inputs. Pinatubo provided a nice way of testing the models' response, since it is a significant global climate event that happened since global satellite data became available. The models proved robust enough to pass this test with flying colors.
There must be something really special about your man if you can stand this stuff! LOL
The models were adjusted post Pinatubo!
Do you know that and equation of order N will pass through N+1 points every time?
That is simple regressional analysis. It WILL get all the points.
The question is what happens between the known point?
Only God knows!
When we are talking about hundredths of degree changes, a single measurement shiftge from Midway to O'Hare could cause massive "misreadings" for US temperatures as a whole (and probably global historic temperature readings) unless they are adjusted appropriately, and what is appropriate is itself subject to guessing.
This important oscillation was discovered in 1891 by S. C. Chandler. This motion, due to the dynamic flattening of the Earth, appears when the rotation axis does not coincide anymore with the polar main axes of inertia. Without any external torque, the total angular momentum remains constant in magnitude and direction, but the Earth twists so that related to its surface, the instantaneous rotation axis moves around the polar main inertia axis. For a rigid Earth, Euler showed that the pole displacement in the terrestrial frame produces a latitude variation with a period of 305 days. However, as the Earth is deformable, and because of the presence of the inelastic mantle, the oceans and the liquid core, the observed period is about 435 days. In space, this motion is a quasi-diurnal mode of which the period equals 1+(1/435) day.
This free oscillation is potentially excited by mass redistribution, in atmosphere, oceans and mantle (due to earthquakes). Those mass displacements produce small changes of the momentum and inertia products, which implies a displacement of the rotation axis by angular momentum budget equation. The problem of the Chandler wobble excitation has been discussed in a large number of papers and it seems today that a large part of the wobble may be due to atmospheric forcing.
That's why we insist, or should, that theories have a successful track record of successful predictions. Retro-dictions like what you mention are interesting, but it's too easy for the retro-diction to be correlated with the models, perhaps so subtly the modelers are unaware of it, but predictions are guaranteed to be independent.
Global warming advocates do not make practically verifiable predictions. But we should insist they do so they can be compared to other models, like my random hurricane predictions. Until they do, we shouldn't take their warnings about temperatures in 2100 seriously.
Does it indicate that titanic natural forces that can literally change the shape of the planet somehow have less impact on climate than a man-made change of 0.00012 percent of atmospheric gasses?
Sorry, but that does not compute. Is the climate changing? Yes. Has the climate ever been stable? No, it never has. In a given timeframe, it is always either getting warmer or getting cooler. There is no quiescent state of climate and forces far beyond our ability to influence or even comprehend are what drives that constant change.
My better half (much better according to the reports) is an Environmental Scientist whose area is water related issues in NYC. She attends too many seminars on the issue of warming. She frequently is asked by friends what the deal is. Her quick answer is that warming is real (she tells them to look at sat-pics of any glacier and compare them to ones taken twenty years ago - something is causing them to shrink). The second part is that nobody has yet confirmed or completely disproved man's involvement.
Global warming and global dioxide emission and concentration: a Granger causality analysisI will note that in 2005 the author (Triacca) came out with another article titled Is Granger causality analysis appropriate to investigate the relationship between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and global surface air temperature? published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology (Volume 81, Numbers 3-4 / July, 2005). The abstract is given below (emphasis mine)http://isi-eh.usc.es/trabajos/122_41_fullpaper.pdf
"We find, in opposition to previous studies, that there is no evidence of Granger causality from global carbon dioxide emission to global surface temperature. Further, we could not find robust empirical evidence for the causal nexus from global carbon dioxide concentration to global surface temperature.
Summary Many time series based studies use Granger causality analysis in order to investigate the connection between atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentrations and global mean temperature. This note re-examines the causal relationship between these variables and shows the inappropriateness of the Granger test to the problem under investigation.
So you figure CO2 can cause temperature to increase in the past.
Sorry, don't fly.
OOPs! messed up a hyperlink, here is the corrected one corresponding to the right URL: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/environment/appd_d.htmlHave you yet read the paper where the 95% comes from? As you know I have and the paper only deals with incoming solar radiation. Thus it is not relevant to the absorption characteristics of outgoing longwave radiation"Carbon dioxide adds 12 percent to radiation trapping, which is less than the contribution from either water vapor or clouds. By itself, however, carbon dioxide is capable of trapping three times as much radiation as it actually does in the Earth's atmosphere. Freidenreich and colleagues[106] have reported the overlap of carbon dioxide and water absorption bands in the infrared region. Given the present composition of the atmosphere, the contribution to the total heating rate in the troposphere is around 5 percent from carbon dioxide and around 95 percent from water vapor."
If anyone is really interested they can pick up the discussion here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1755116/posts?q=1&&page=222#203
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