Conservatives and climate change

[lomiller]

A. Please expand. Link?
B. These cyclic events influence the reading of a weather station thermometer (or a proxy). Yes or no?
1. Rotation of the Earth (surface air warms and cools on a 24 hour cycle).

Please show us which theory suggests the daily rotation of the earth is responsible for long term warming trends.

2. Revolution around the sun (away from the equator, a 365 day cycle)

please show us which theory you are referring to that suggests the earths yearly revolution around the sun is responsible for observed climate change.

3. Pacific Decadal Oscilation

Please who us which published theory suggests the PDO is responsible for climate change of the past 100 years.

5. Precession of the axis (~25,000 years)
5. Periodic changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis (~40,000 years)
6. Periodic changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit (~400,000 years)

These cycles are indeed linked to very long term climate change, unfortunately for your argument they exert a very slight cooling influence.

7. Periodic (?) changes in the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field

Please show us a peer reviewed publication suggesting this is causing current climate change, (or for that matter has ever caused climate change)

8. Passage of the solar system through the galactic plane (225 m.y. cycle) (speculative).

This is strictly a pop-science hypothesis with no documented physical effect large enough to influence the earths climate. Investigations into the proposed physical effect show it several orders of magnitude too small to have any climate effect.

These aperiodic events influence surface air temperatures. Yes or no?
1. Volcanism (Mt. Pinatubo, Tambora)

These would have a cooling effect, so couldn't explain the current warming

2. Cometary, asteroidal impact

No major impact has occured in the relavent timefram so this can't expalin the current warming trend.

3. Mountain building (alters jet stream, exposes new rock to chemical interaction with air
4. Continental drift (alters ocean currents, creates inland deserts in supercontinents, gives ice a platform in Antarctica)
5. Other (e.g., the draining of Lake Agassiz, possibly responsible for the Younger Dryas).

In the last 100 years neither of these has occurred at rates sufficient to cause the current warming trend

5. Other (e.g., the draining of Lake Agassiz, possibly responsible for the Younger Dryas).

There have been no examples of such a massive melt water lake spilling into the ocean in the last 100 years nor would that explain the current warming trend.

 

[lomiller]

I also trust Freeman Dyson's ability (and Roy Spencer's and Richard Lindzen's) to perform relevant calculations, at least as well as Mann or Jones.

What is your basis for this trust?

Dyson has never publish a paper on climate.

Lindzen has barely published anything in the last decade and the last major hypothesis he did try to advance was widely rejected by his peers.

Spencer geometry error in his satellite data is the largest math error to date in climate science. It forced him to retract nearly a decades worth of analysis.

Mann and Jones, in contract have had their work affirmed over and over both by their peers and by investigations by bodies such as the national research council.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Evidence? An alternative hypothesis? Those things would be a good start.

One alternative hypothesis is that several periodic phenomena of varying cycle length, from 24 hours to perhaps 200,000 years, as well as aperiodic phenomena such as volcanism, cometary impact, mountain building, and the opening and closing of channels between continents influence near-surface air temperature measurements of the Earth's atmosphere, that we are currently at some point in an interglacial, that the observed 20th century warming is a rebound from the Little Ice Age, and that the paleoreconstruction of CO₂ levels lags, rather than leads, ocean temperature.

That alternative hypothesis has been falsified.

A. Please expand. Link?
B. These cyclic events influence the reading of a weather station thermometer (or a proxy). Yes or no?
1. Rotation of the Earth (surface air warms and cools on a 24 hour cycle).
2. Revolution around the sun (away from the equator, a 365 day cycle)
3. Pacific Decadal Oscilation
4. 11 year sunspot cycle
5. Precession of the axis (~25,000 years)
5. Periodic changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis (~40,000 years)
6. Periodic changes in the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit (~400,000 years)
7. Periodic (?) changes in the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field
8. Passage of the solar system through the galactic plane (225 m.y. cycle) (speculative).

These aperiodic events influence surface air temperatures. Yes or no?
1. Volcanism (Mt. Pinatubo, Tambora)
2. Cometary, asteroidal impact
3. Mountain building (alters jet stream, exposes new rock to chemical interaction with air
4. Continental drift (alters ocean currents, creates inland deserts in supercontinents, gives ice a platform in Antarctica)
5. Other (e.g., the draining of Lake Agassiz, possibly responsible for the Younger Dryas).

Agree? If no, why not?

Rather than respond to each point in your Gish Gallop it would probably be more instructive to direct you to the resource that I am almost certain answers every single one of your points and does so in the context of the existing peer reviewed literature. After all, teach a man to fish, and all that ... http://www.skepticalscience.com/

I was unfamiliar with the term, so I followed the link. They use insults so often, their insults have names.

The Gish Gallop is an informal name for a debating technique that involves drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly answer every falsehood that has been raised.

The sunspot cycle is a lie? I did not know that. Did you? That the angle that the Earth's axis makes with the plane of it's orbit exerts a cyclic influence on weather is a lie? I did not know that. Did you know that? Look, Bit Pattern (and why hide behind anonymity?), you said that an alternative hypothesis would be a "good place to start", so I offered an alternate hypothesis. Let's start.

What in my list of suggested influences on the Earth's solar energy budget does anyone in this discussion claim does not influence surface air temperature? And "Go read Encyclopedia Britannica" is not an answer. Neither is that link an answer. If you offer a link, please provide one that addresses the specific point. Maybe "Skeptical Science" does somewhere, but so may Encyclopedia Britannica. What I understand from insults is "they have no case". That goes for Mann, Jones, Schneider, and many participants in this discussion.

 

[bit_pattern]

What is your basis for this trust?

Dyson has never publish a paper on climate.

Lindzen has barely published anything in the last decade and the last major hypothesis he did try to advance was widely rejected by his peers.

Spencer geometry error in his satellite data is the largest math error to date in climate science. It forced him to retract nearly a decades worth of analysis.

Mann and Jones, in contract have had their work affirmed over and over both by their peers and by investigations by bodies such as the national research council.

Yup. Classic appeal to authority. I don't "trust" any individual scientists, I do however trust the scientific method and just because someone with the reputation of Dyson has a contrarian opinion it means nothing if it can't be tested in the way that peer reviewed research can.

 

[Furcifer]

No I do not agree. There is no statistical evidence the warming trend has changed, therefor the correct assessment is that it's still warming.

Even though it isn't, it is. Gotta love that logic. That's one of the bigger problems when the change is within the natural variation. I guess we'll see what happens won't we.

 

[bit_pattern]

What in my list of suggested influences on the Earth's solar energy budget does anyone in this discussion claim does not influence surface air temperature? And "Go read Encyclopedia Britannica" is not an answer. Neither is that link an answer. If you offer a link, please provide one that addresses the specific point. Maybe "Skeptical Science" does somewhere, but so may Encyclopedia Britannica. What I understand from insults is "they have no case". That goes for Mann, Jones, Schneider, and many participants in this discussion.

We can file that one under 'half truths". The effect has been quantified and, compared to anthropogenic forcings, the suspot cycle has had a negligible effect. Which is why even now, in the midst of the deepest solar minimum since the Maunder, we are still clocking record annual temperature rises.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-cycle-length.htm

Other studies confirm Lassen's conclusion:

• Kelly 1992 models the effects of a combination of greenhouse and solar-cycle-length forcing and compare the results with observed temperatures. They find that "even with optimized solar forcing, most of the recent warming trend is explained by greenhouse forcing".
• Laut 1998 analyses the period 1579–1987 and finds "the solar hypothesis—instead of contradicting—appears to support the assumption of a significant warming due to human activities".
• Damon 1999 uses the pre-industrial record as a boundary condition and finds the SCL-temperature correlation corresponds to an estimated 25% of global warming to 1980 and 15% to 1997.
• Benestad 2005 concludes "There have been speculations about an association between the solar cycle length and Earth's climate, however, the solar cycle length analysis does not follow Earth's global mean surface temperature. A further comparison with the monthly sunspot number, cosmic galactic rays and 10.7 cm absolute radio flux since 1950 gives no indication of a systematic trend in the level of solar activity that can explain the most recent global warming".

Claims that solar cycle length prove the sun is causing global warming are based on a single paper published nearly 20 years ago. Subsequent research, including a paper by a co-author of the original 1991 paper, finds the opposite conclusion. Solar cycle length as a proxy for solar activity tells us the sun has had very little contribution to global warming since 1975. In fact, direct measurements of solar activity indicate the sun has had a slight cooling effect on climate in recent decades while global temperatures have been rising.

 

[lomiller]

What in my list of suggested influences on the Earth's solar energy budget does anyone in this discussion claim does not influence surface air temperature?

The correct question is whether they can explain the current warming trend, and the answer is they cannot.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Please show us which theory suggests the daily rotation of the earth is responsible for long term warming trends. ..

The point is, we have thermometer readings. These record instantaneous events (someone looked at the level of Hg in a glass tube, etc. and reported what s/he saw). Lots of these provide a planet-wide snapshot of daily weather. Over time, lots more provide generalities we call "climate". We use proxies like isotopes in calcium carbonite to measure pre-instrument-era temperatures. Sampling procedures and the periodic and aperiodic effects make extracting a CO₂ signal from the field measurements a matter of delicate statistics.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The correct question is whether they can explain the current warming trend, and the answer is they cannot.

That's your answer. How does anyone know what the temperature/time profile of the current interglacial was supposed to look like before people started burning coal and petroleum? That CO2 is responsible is a hypothesis. If similar variations have occurred before, the CO2 hypothesis is unnecessary.

 

[bit_pattern]

That's your answer. How does anyone know what the temperature/time profile of the current interglacial was supposed to look like before people started burning coal and petroleum?

Through the wonders of modern science and understanding the forcings that cause the cliamte to change, i.e you can plot solar activity and albedo from volcanic activity, apply that in a model with stable greenhouse gasses and you've pretty much got your answer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9ob9WdbXx0

 

[lomiller]

The point is, we have thermometer readings. These record instantaneous events (someone looked at the level of Hg in a glass tube, etc. and reported what s/he saw). Lots of these provide a planet-wide snapshot of daily weather. Over time, lots more provide generalities we call "climate". We use proxies like isotopes in calcium carbonite to measure pre-instrument-era temperatures.

Yes, but irrelevant

Sampling procedures and the periodic and aperiodic effects make extracting a CO₂ signal from the field measurements a matter of delicate statistics.

No, this doesn't complicate detecting the signal of greenhouse warming at all. There are many such signals specific to greenhouse warming, but some of the most important ones like stratospheric cooling, reduced day-night temperature and amplified warming at high latitudes are all fairly easy to identify in the data.

 

[DC]

That's your answer. How does anyone know what the temperature/time profile of the current interglacial was supposed to look like before people started burning coal and petroleum? That CO2 is responsible is a hypothesis. If similar variations have occurred before, the CO2 hypothesis is unnecessary.

wich warmth periods in the past was led by a rise in CO² and followed by a rise of temperatures?

 

[lomiller]

That's your answer.

And the correct answer

That's your answer. How does anyone know what the temperature/time profile of the current interglacial was supposed to look like before people started burning coal and petroleum?

The same understanding of orbital cycles that along with their effect on CO2 levels explain the major climate changes of the past 1 million years predicts the earth should have cooled for several thousand more years. That you don't understand how these predictions can be made isn't really relevant.

 

[SezMe]

On what grounds did he reject the results?

I hope quoting myself is ok.

He stuck with his ideology rather than the very science he originally endorsed.

 

[uke2se]

lol, and what are the "denialist arguments"?

Sowing doubts on the consensus of AGW for one.

Beats me, I don't know (remember) what the "tenets" of the ACC are, nor do I care. I just read the science. I think your major objection is that I'm not alarmed by what I read.

Which tells me you don't acually read the science despite your insistance that you do. I think you read WhatsUpHisButt and nothing else pertaining to climate science.

I haven't "denied" anything besides unsubstantiated accusations. Someone said Watts "denied" the science and yet he's actively participating in peer reviewed studies. It makes no sense.

He did deny science, and it was shown in this thread that he did. That you can't see it is because you are in denial.

Someone else posted a YouTube video (lolz, just like CT's) and claimed the man said something he didn't say.

More than that was posted.

If I've "denied" anything it's your understanding of the scientific process. Proposing an alternate hypothesis is not "denial" or "anti-science", that's just how science works.

Yet you haven't proposed any alternate hypothesis. One alternative hypothesis has been posted in this thread, and that was falsified years ago. Thus, there is no current alternate hypothesis that stands up to the evidence. That you can't see that is because you are in denial.

I agree with the current "consensus" opinion. I just don't find it "alarming".

Because you don't know about/understand the evidence.

The science is in it's infancy (this is "consensus" opinion) and it will be many more years before we know how the climate is going to react to the increase in CO2 with any accuracy to go above and beyond what we are already doing to curb emissions.

CO2 effects on the atmosphere has been known for about 150 years. Hardly "in its infancy".

It's nice seeing that your objective is to attempt to delay addressing the problem, though.

That isn't "contrarian" or "denial", that's the moderate skeptical view I believe most rational people have.

No, it's contrarian and denial. You're not a skeptic. You show that with every post you make.

I was an alarmist almost 20 years ago

"I was once an evolutionist..."

 

[mhaze]

I did. It's profoundly unsustainable. We don't have enough thorium or uranium to fuel them, even if we come to our senses and reprocess our "waste", which we should have been doing from day 1, since it's (RULE 10) stupid to throw away 9% of the fuel value of your fuel.....

now, jj...are you making things up again?

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last

Most of the 2.8 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity generated worldwide from nuclear power every year is produced in light-water reactors (LWRs) using low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel. About 10 metric tons of natural uranium go into producing a metric ton of LEU, which can then be used to generate about 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, so present-day reactors require about 70,000 metric tons of natural uranium a year.

According to the NEA, identified uranium resources total 5.5 million metric tons, and an additional 10.5 million metric tons remain undiscovered—a roughly 230-year supply at today's consumption rate in total. Further exploration and improvements in extraction technology are likely to at least double this estimate over time.

Using more enrichment work could reduce the uranium needs of LWRs by as much as 30 percent per metric ton of LEU. And separating plutonium and uranium from spent LEU and using them to make fresh fuel could reduce requirements by another 30 percent. Taking both steps would cut the uranium requirements of an LWR in half.

Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium—a 60,000-year supply at present rates.​

Thorium of course, is far, far more abundant than uranium.

As for the argument that "this energy plan is not relevant to the thread on climate change", let's see. One kilowatt hour of power from coal creates about 2 lb of co2. The average nuclear plant produced 12B kw/hr per year, so 20 of them in the first year alone would eliminate 2*20*12B/2000 = 240M tons of CO2. The reduction after the ten years of construction would be 2.4B tons per year.

US CO2 emissions are 5-6B tons per year.....

Wind farms cannot accomplish this. And solar panels can't do it, either. And trying to control peoples' behavior to accomplish it? heheheehe...

So it would appear that my plan, which lowers energy costs both for electricity and automobiles, which uses strictly private sector and capitalist approaches, cuts the CO2 production of the US in half. Meanwhile, all the mean spirited bickering, name calling and insults by resident religiosos of the Warmer faith doesn't accomplish anything at all.

Now, would anyone care to put their Thinking Cap on and estimate the number of new jobs in the heavy energy industries as a result of the private sector building these 240 nuclear plants? Assuming 2000 people are directly employed for four years in building one plant, that's 8-10,000 jobs in the community total. Hence we have a quarter million jobs for the 20 per year. But the projects overlap, since a plant takes longer than one year to build. Total would be 750-1M new jobs for most of the ten year period.

What about after construction? Each plant employs about 500 people, including the effect on the community, that's about 2000. 240 plants would be 500,000 jobs. Permanently.

That's not counting the new jobs in oil shale, methanol production and distribution, and conventional drilling.

 

[mhaze]

Sowing doubts on the consensus of AGW for one.
.....

Doubt, of course, cannot be tolerated. And how to destroy the evil of DOUBT? You must believe, my brethren. Believe with all your heart. And have FAITH in the wise lords and high priests who bring you the TRUEY and SCIENCY TRUTHIES.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I'm not accusing AlBell, mhaze, or Malcolm Kirkpatrick of dishonesty. They may just be repeating an argument they've heard somewhere, without being qualified to evaluate that argument on its merits. I'm just pointing out that the argument they're repeating looks dishonest, and seems downright silly to those of us who are qualified to perform the calculations they're saying we shouldn't trust.

I also trust Freeman Dyson's ability (and Roy Spencer's and Richard Lindzen's) to perform relevant calculations, at least as well as Mann or Jones.

Dyson does not deny the reality of AGW.

Although Freeman Dyson has not actually performed relevant calculations, he is certainly capable of doing so, and I respect his identification of possible contributors to uncertainty in those calculations. Dyson's main argument, however, is that technological and social progress will overcome the AGW that Dyson accepts as real. From Dyson's "Heretical Thoughts about Science and Society", written in 2007:

One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas....

To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year....I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology.

Dyson isn't an AGW denier. He's an AGW optimist, however, because he thinks we can overcome AGW through genetic engineering and social policies such as land management.

Lindzen is an actual professor of meteorology, and is one of the more prominent earth scientists who have expressed vigorous skepticism about AGW. In Lindzen's arguments against the IPCC models, he relies heavily on "the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years". Lindzen is criticizing previous models' underestimation of "internal variability", which has been corrected in more recent models.

Many AGW deniers have interpreted "the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years" to mean the models were wrong, and Lindzen may well have wished to give that false impression. At this time, however, the world-is-cooling-so-the-models-were-wrong interpretation isn't looking very good.

So far as I can tell, Roy Spencer is not qualified to perform the relevant calculations or to criticize them. Spencer's training is in meteorology, and he's best known for gathering satellite data. Spencer is an evolution denier as well as an AGW denier, and he has signed his name to a document whose explicit denial of AGW relies upon religious, economic, and social arguments:

WHAT WE BELIEVE​

1. We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.

...snip...

WHAT WE DENY​

1. ....There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.

2. We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part...

That document is a naked statement of religious belief. Its arguments have no more to do with science than Spencer's advocacy of intelligent design.

I wrote when I first joined the discussion that I am not competent to assess the science. I was a Biology major before I switched to Math. I have only 1 Combinatorics course, two Probability courses and three Statistics courses on my transcript, all long-forgotten. I have no idea how to test time series for statistical significance. I cannot assess the papers on interactions between geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry.

Like you, I am not an earth scientist.

All of my academic degrees are in math, and you may have noticed that most of my remarks in this thread either address claims that have been made about math or quote prominent conservatives who themselves have some modest background in math. Although I have published a research paper related to time series, and I do know some basic techniques for testing statistical significance in time series, I don't claim to know much about statistics. I do have enough background in physics and chemistry to understand the most basic geochemistry and atmospheric chemistry, but I am not qualified to express an expert opinion in those areas.

I can assess the behavior, as revealed in the denial of raw data to Steve McIntyre, the manipulation of the peer review process, and the smearing of critics by the Hockey Team (and it's defenders here).

What would convince me? To start, drop the relentless barrage of insults.
Then, support transparency in research and policy discussions.

Your repetition of thoroughly debunked allegations has contributed to my assessment of your behavior.

It has not escaped my notice that the more prolific of this forum's AGW deniers continue to rely on those smears. I have also noticed the innuendo, distortions, and occasional outright denials of mathematical and scientific facts.

 

[mhaze]

.......Lindzen is criticizing previous models' underestimation of "internal variability", which has been corrected in more recent models......

And it was righteous to immediately respond with anger, protest, ridicule and the Denier label when he made these criticisms against the CONSENSUS, and the orthodox dogma, rather than to thank him for showing errors in the work of the Believers.

....Dyson isn't an AGW denier. He's an AGW optimist, however, because he thinks we can overcome AGW through genetic engineering and social policies such as land management..

Lindzen is an actual professor of meteorology, and is one of the more prominent earth scientists who have expressed vigorous skepticism about AGW. In Lindzen's arguments against the IPCC models, he relies heavily on "the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years". Lindzen is criticizing previous models' underestimation of "internal variability", which has been corrected in more recent models......

You are neither qualified nor competent to assess these individuals as being "AGW Deniers" or not except from the point of view of your own faith and beliefs.

Each Warmer must rely on his internal moral compass, and the strength of his personal faith and beliefs to ascertain whom the Deniers are. Each Warmer may or may not apply the Denier label without qualification, justification, or evidence. The presence of a suspicion that Denier qualities are evident or hidden behind apparently reasonable motives are enough.

Do not, Clinger, risk your Good Standing within the Faith by criticizing the ability of each member to insult to the full capability of a sputtering and incoherent moron. This is called "Warmers Speaking in Tongues" and is a holy and sacred rite.

In summary I reference Dyson, YOUR OWN LINK:

...I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.

Clearly any infidel blaspheming such should be assaulted with the label of Denier by any and all of the Faith who chooses. You, Clinger, may be rightfully accused of backsliding.

 

[BenBurch]

...

Dyson has never publish a paper on climate.

...

Brilliant people operating outside of their fields sometimes do OK, but when such people believe they can overturn the entire discipline they are dipping their toe into, they are almost always about to embarrass themselves.

Rupert Sheldrake for example; If he has a pronouncement on the possible enzyme pathways in plant development, I take notice. If he has a pronouncement on some mystical field that transmits extrasensory perception, I chuckle and turn the page.