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How To Be A Global Warming Sceptic

Statistical significance is important to scientists and people that use numbers.

This is all you need to read to understand coolsceptic. He is the best example of a contrarian that embraces points of possible contention, like statistics, but chooses to ignore actual empirical observations.

Consider how all contrarians have a single pet point of discussion, at least one at a time, e.i., the hydrological cycle. But seem unable to look at the entire range of observations.
 
This is all you need to read to understand coolsceptic. He is the best example of a contrarian that embraces points of possible contention, like statistics, but chooses to ignore actual empirical observations.

Consider how all contrarians have a single pet point of discussion, at least one at a time, e.i., the hydrological cycle. But seem unable to look at the entire range of observations.

It's creationism/evolution all over again.
 
Subjective hand-waving. Do the maths. Self-similarity is observed.

"Subjective hand-waving"? Let's stick to English.

Do whatever math you like, you won't find self-similarity, despite your claim to have observed it.

My stochastic model fits very well indeed, as explained in detail by Wunsch.

He explained your model for you? That was kind of him.

Oddly enough, Wunsch's analysis is not widely regarded as definitive, and Wunsch himself has something of a maverick reputation. Relying on one paper by one guy to support your conviction is not sound policy.

http://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org:8080/dspace/bitstream/1912/986/1/Huybers_revised_ms.pdf
Links between the Annual, Milankovitch, and Continuum of Temperature Variability
Peter Huybers & William Curry
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, USA

"Here we show that power-laws scale with the size of annual (1 yr) and Milankovitch period (23,000 and 41,000 yr) cycles. The annual cycle corresponds to scaling at monthly to decadal periods, while millennial and longer periods are tied to the Milankovitch cycles. Thus the annual, Milankovitch, and continuum of temperature variability together represent the response to deterministic insolation forcing. The identification of a deterministic control on the continuum provides insight into the mechanisms governing interannual and longer period climate variability."

(My emphasis)

"Numerous explanations have been advanced regarding the continuum, including stochastic
resonance [11], modified random walks [12], and diffusion [13], but all these models are partial descriptions
of the variability. Ultimately, one seeks a physics of climate from which the temperature
spectrum can be deduced, something analogous with oceanography’s theories for tides16
and internal waves [17]. Further analysis of the continuum is expected to aid in distinguishing the
processes which control climate change."

[12] references Wunsch.

So, like I say, not definitive. Wunsch isn't the only guy working in this field.

I thought the GCMs failure to hindcast the interglacials was well known. Hmm, apparently not.

Only a fool would expect GCMs designed for decades of projection to be used to model processes taking thousands of years. There are specific models for that purpose, and they reproduce observations very well. That was the primary field of climate science until relatively recently, after all, and a lot of people are still on it.

No, that's not the point. It isn't that they run out of control - they lock into one state and then cannot leave it. That is, you can set the model up to force one transition, but after that, it locks in to that position and nothing will shift it out again, due to the positive feedback. The only way to make this happen is to initialise the models in an unstable region - which could never have happened in the first place, if the model was right...

Positive feedback cannot lock a system in place. Think about it.


The albedo feedback and CO2 feedback - even at 3x positive feedback - are inadequate. You need something like 6x, at which point the climate no longer swings around, but locks into one position (hot or cold).

No, it doesn't. Positive feedback amplifies any forcing, be it warming or cooling. Given the feedbacks (which includes water-vapour, let's not forget) at physically reasonable levels, modern models work perfectly well.

"Has turned into a reality" - LMAO - but seriously, if it was all sorted fifty years ago, why did Carl Wunsch write a paper just four years ago pointing out that a stochastic explanation works just as well?

See above regarding the one guy, one paper thing. The more attractive a paper sounds the more sceptically you should approach it. Try to demolish it. Do the math, check references, ask yourself if it makes sense given the wider scheme of things, look up counter-opinions. If it passes muster, add it to the pile. Never hang your hat on one paper or one observation.
 
This is all you need to read to understand coolsceptic. He is the best example of a contrarian that embraces points of possible contention, like statistics, but chooses to ignore actual empirical observations.

Consider how all contrarians have a single pet point of discussion, at least one at a time, e.i., the hydrological cycle. But seem unable to look at the entire range of observations.

(Polite correction : mhaze has any number of pet points at one time, but there is something special about mhaze. That's why the Turing Test keeps popping up in that conection :))

It's a clear give-away when people are driven to multiple arguments about tiny fragments of the big picture to maintain their world-view. I looked into the Truther thing a little while back, and they're pinned down on one frame of one video, or how far an engine component could have penetrated the building and was that one coming out of the other side. Nothing about all the thousands of people down in the streets watching the damn' thing happen. Classic.

On the bright side, they've got a collective Darwin Prize coming to them. With oak-leaf cluster if they've bought Florida beachfront property on margin.
 
What I'm interested in is the nature of GW "scepticism". There are other highly complex sciences that people are happy to accept, but not this one. What makes it so different?

I think that GW Skepticism is in part founded upon "The Little Boy That Cried Wolf" syndrome combined with a suspicion of the trendiness of the proposition. And indeed GW is trendy. There are lots of fundraisers and exhibitions put on by fancy people with fancy names in fancy places at fancy prices per plate of fancy foods that had supposedly no impact upon anyone's moral concerns or the environment whatsover. Write a book about it, line your pockets and walk away while contrary evidence is disproving your writings. Simply explain that your writings were based upon the best evidence at the time, offer no refunds and ride off into the sunset. It's a good gig.

After years upon years of putting time and effort into these causes only to see little or no impact on these pressing issues, people just become jaded and in many cases rightfully so. So much false information has been disseminated about the safety of the foods that we eat, recycling, cutting down trees for paper and various other causes that it is only natural for some people to believe they are being deceived yet again.

There are good arguments on both sides of the GW fence here. Evidence for both arguments is presented and debunked each and every day which of course leads to new arguments and postulations and that is what science is all about.

If you feel that your assessment of the evidence compels you to act upon these arguments one way or the other, that is fine. However when driven to a cause people often overlook contrary evidence to reinforce the cause rather than the science of the matter. If you remain willing to reverse your decision based upon sound evidence that refutes your position, great! That is as it should be.

Of course the proposition that the planet could do nasty things to us because we are doing nasty things to it is a bit pressuring isn't it? Perhaps people are just tired of being feared into such decisions and want to take in more of the debate. Given all the false causes, charlatans, broken promises and turmoil in the world.. it isn't really that difficult to assess the nature of this skepticism.
 
There are good arguments on both sides of the GW fence here. Evidence for both arguments is presented and debunked each and every day which of course leads to new arguments and postulations and that is what science is all about.

It is sad to see the manufactroversy succeed. If your primary sources of information are blogs and magazines this might appear to be the case. If you look into peer-reviewed science articles you will see that the scientific consensus is that AGW is real.
 
As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with AGW.
That is my impression too (I haven't had the time to do more than skim through it). It seems to be saying that Milankovich cycles alone do not explain large, long-term climate excursions such as the Ice Ages.
 
(Polite correction : mhaze has any number of pet points at one time, but there is something special about mhaze. That's why the Turing Test keeps popping up in that conection :))
Yes, better than anyone else here, he exemplifies the OP's GWSceptic, all on his own.;)

I think, however, that Alric was referring to Coolie in this case.

It's a clear give-away when people are driven to multiple arguments about tiny fragments of the big picture to maintain their world-view. I looked into the Truther thing a little while back, and they're pinned down on one frame of one video, or how far an engine component could have penetrated the building and was that one coming out of the other side. Nothing about all the thousands of people down in the streets watching the damn' thing happen. Classic.

On the bright side, they've got a collective Darwin Prize coming to them. With oak-leaf cluster if they've bought Florida beachfront property on margin.
Perhaps they can be persuaded to take Tamino's bet?
 
Yes, better than anyone else here, he exemplifies the OP's GWSceptic, all on his own.;)

I think, however, that Alric was referring to Coolie in this case.

Alric moved on to the general ("all contrarians"), and I never miss an opportunity to point out the special nature of mhaze. Once you get that Turing Test suspicion in your head you just can't shift it ...
 
This looks like a good book for all:

Ice, Mud and Blood

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/ice_mud_and_blood.php

It's virtues are the same as his previous book, the careful documentation of exactly how we know what we know, and less dictation of the conclusions. This is useful, because as we all know, climate is a phenomenon that shows a lot of variability, exhibits patterns in its history, and also has large degrees of uncertainty, phenomena that denialists can seize upon to magnify that uncertainty into a basis for an unwarranted rejection of well-supported hypotheses. So while we can see distinct variations from simple linear uniformity of climate change like the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, that doesn't change the fact that greenhouse gases profoundly influence earth's temperature, and it's clear that CO2 has risen to levels the planet hasn't seen in at least 650,000 years. The past tells us what we can expect in the future, and it's grounds for serious concern. Yes, Turner comes down firmly on the side of an anthropogenic cause for the current trend of global warming, and he explains exactly why, step by step.

If you want just one book, not too thick or too technical, that will give you the intellectual tools to at least understand what the climate change experts are talking about, this is the one. I recommend bringing it to the beach and reading it there — you'll appreciate the rising tide and the ocean beaches a little more, and perhaps regard them with a little more respectful dread.
 
Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004) 1001–1012
Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forcedcontribution to
observedQuaternary climate change
Carl Wunsch

As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with AGW.

agreed. it is a nice paper discussing what long term climate variability would look like without orbital forcing. timescales of many hundreds of thousands of years, not decades.

did someone actually propose an argument that it did, or was it just a random flak citation?
 
Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004) 1001–1012
Quantitative estimate of the Milankovitch-forcedcontribution to
observedQuaternary climate change
Carl Wunsch



agreed. it is a nice paper discussing what long term climate variability would look like without orbital forcing. timescales of many hundreds of thousands of years, not decades.

did someone actually propose an argument that it did, or was it just a random flak citation?
Wunsch was quoted by Coolie here
but you might want to start at post 1455. :D
 
Wunsch was quoted by Coolie here
but you might want to start at post 1455. :D
thanks
It's not the absolute magnitude that matters, it's the shape of the graph. On the ice-age scale (110,000 years or so) there's a long-term stable glaciation with a short-term stable inter-glacial. On the daily (or hourly) scale the hydrological cycle is all over the place. No self-similarity.
...You're wrong, of course. I don't have time to explain why, but I don't have to - Carl Wunsch explains it in great detail, far better than I ever could, in this paper.

wunsch(2004) doesn't discuss self-similarity at all, and CapelDodger's "no scaling from hours to K-years" argument seems spot-on (and again, wunsch (2004) does not delve into short time scales.). the main aim of the paper is to avoid basic (if common) errors of interpreting power spectra, and to give a qualified plug for simple (linear) stochastic models in a field dominated by (linear) deterministic thinking.

so while is it s nice paper, it is not easy to see why it was mentioned in this context.
 
thanks


wunsch(2004) doesn't discuss self-similarity at all, and CapelDodger's "no scaling from hours to K-years" argument seems spot-on (and again, wunsch (2004) does not delve into short time scales.). the main aim of the paper is to avoid basic (if common) errors of interpreting power spectra, and to give a qualified plug for simple (linear) stochastic models in a field dominated by (linear) deterministic thinking.

so while is it s nice paper, it is not easy to see why it was mentioned in this context.
I think the posts before and after that suggest that someone was desperate to bolster his claims about self-similarity and thought that Wunsch's paper would be an ally. ;)
 

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