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Falsifiable Climate Predictions?

Puppycow

Penultimate Amazing
Puppycow
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Jan 9, 2003
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I'm wondering what falsifable predictions about the climate have been made on either side of the debate.

Only non-vague predictions that will either be proven true or false in the future.
 
macdoc said:
So crystal ball gazer you want to tell us what the C02 levels will be a decade out :mgbanghead
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You're asking me?
CO2 levels are the easy part, right? They appear to be rising almost linearly with a seasonal sine wave or sawtooth pattern superimposed.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
ETA: longer term graph, note near-linearity of trend
Draw a line through that and extend out 10 years +/- 10 ppm
407 +/-10 ppm
That's my prediction.
I'm not a skeptic of global warming science.
I am a skeptic that anything significant can or will be done about it.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/09/decadal-predictions/

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/...imate-change-is-going-to-be-twice-as-extreme/

assessments are done in risk ranges...take Popper and shove it into the trash bin where it belongs...

:garfield:
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Thank you. I see that these are predictions, but I'm having trouble seeing what facts might falsify them (in my lifetime).

Something within the next 5-10 years would be nice.
 
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I am a skeptic that anything significant can or will be done about it.
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C02 levels hardly count as a climate prediction....it's simply a bet based on a trend continuing.

You are assessing likely outcomes within a certain range based on previous history.

I tend to agree tho we CAN if we choose pump enough S02 up to slow the rate of change significantly.

Can't and won't are very different.

That said the recession knocked the hell out of the C02 trend for the first time.

Sweden HAS knocked emissions down.

Can?? yes, will?? - unlikely:garfield:
 
Ah, Sweden. Bully for them.

I think that cuts like that will be more than offset by growth in developing economies.

Wasn't SO2 the main cause of acid rain though?
 
Does that matter?? It's still less carbon and Sweden had it's day in the growth curve - should others not have the same opportunity...
Developing economies such as China and India are aware of the risk of C02 where Europe and North America was not so even tho developing nations will grow via fossil they also will attempt to reduce the output of AGHG at the same time..

So China has a Climate plan for the very first time and India acknowledges the risk and working cooperatively towards mitigation....that at least sets the stage for the first world to aid their growth with lower carbon technologies. Neither tho will allow mitigation to hamper growth

Yes S02 caused acid rain and it was tackled successfully at less cost than anticipated.

It also was masking AGW
 
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Falsifiable predictions concerning the supposedly strong effect of CO2 on climate do in fact exist.

Just a couple examples, stated in terms that are falsifiable.

A. An increase in CO2 in the atmosphere does not increase cloud cover.
B. Increases in CO2 in the atmosphere may be considered to be cases of "well mixed" gases.
C. The combined effect of cosmic rays and solar magnetic effects does not affect climate.

There are many others, and there are scientists who are currently studying such falsifiable hypotheses.
 
C. The combined effect of cosmic rays and solar magnetic effects does not affect climate.
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You want to explain what that has to do with C02

Talk about a stretch - you cannot prove a negative.

IN addition

A. An increase in CO2 in the atmosphere does not increase cloud cover.
B. Increases in CO2 in the atmosphere may be considered to be cases of "well mixed" gases.
C. The combined effect of cosmic rays and solar magnetic effects does not affect clima
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Would you like to point out where these have been predicted in climate science.....let alone falsified..:popcorn1
 
Beanbag - there are numerous papers...

The cooling period is well reproduced by current (1999 on) global climate models (GCMs) that include the physical effects of sulphate aerosols, and there is now general agreement that aerosol effects were the dominant cause of the mid-20th century cooling. However, at the time there were two physical mechanisms that were most frequently advanced to cause cooling: aerosols and orbital forcing.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

You can chase references from there.

Some areas measured 10% lower solar radiation reaching the surface than others just a few hundred miles away.

One scary aspect is that a number of regions in SE Asia are as high as 23% reduction in radiation reaching the earth recently - inferring that if and when China and India clean up we may be in for another nasty spike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_brown_cloud

Easy to see here

http://files.myopera.com/nielsol/blog/haze_ganges_16dec04.jpg

and unregulated container ships plying the Pacific are dumping thousands of tons of S02 into the atmosphere due to the very heavy sulphur content of #3 bunker oil.
Anthro influences are many and not all are warming....but they still are anthro induced climate change.

it's not a lot of atmosphere we have for our mucking about with...

Picture1-6.png
 
Thanks, Mac. It's a somewhat esoteric subject, and I would have not known where to start looking. AGW searches bring in more general chaff and noise than information.

Beanbag
 
The topic is a bit like 'Falsifiable evolutionary predictions?' though. Of course there are a lot of falsifiable claims behind the climate science, but it's not like there is one simple experiment that could disprove the entire theory.

So, if someone for whatever reason wanted to set out to disprove AGW (and though I don't think there is any scientifically acceptable reason to have that motivation, science does work even if individual scientists sometimes have murky motives) then you would first have to chop AGW up into different pieces, and then attack them using several independent discoveries.

That said, it would be possible to make a single discovery that would render most of the AGW theory moot from a political perspective. For example, if you could show that increased temperature will increase volcanic activity and that this will cancel any warming effect beyond 1 degree Celsius, that does not falsify AGW, but it makes it much less relevant.
 
If increased CO2 is causing an increase in absorbed radiation, we should be able to measure a decrease in outgoing radiation in wavelengths associated with greenhouse gasses. We used our satellites to watch outgoing radiation, and we found this decrease. This is an attempt to falsify the literal definition of the greenhouse effect (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../410355a0.html).

Moreover, as Ben noted, if the increased greenhouse effect is actually having any real impacts, we should see cooling of the Stratosphere. And we do.
 
OMGturt1es said:
If increased CO2 is causing an increase in absorbed radiation, we should be able to measure a decrease in outgoing radiation in wavelengths associated with greenhouse gasses. We used our satellites to watch outgoing radiation, and we found this decrease. ....
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Now how can that be? Re radiation is more diffuse, and at lower energy levels. Radiation from the CO2 molecule, slightly more than half upwards, the remainder downwards. More CO2, more radiation in those bands. You've asserted the opposite was found by the link that does not work.

Less radiation in those bands would be caused by something else, such as water vapor gas absorbing the bands of CO2 and re radiation being at more diffuse spectra. So your statement of the cause and effect is in error, but I'm sure that getting a working link would clarify that.

I agree though with your primary point, which is that measurements of radiative effects certainly do provide falsifiable hypotheses that are testable with respect to the green house effects. Of course this is somewhat different than net radiative balance. But that could be tested in similar fashions and has been. (Lindzen, recently).

Testable hypotheses abound. It is only a matter of the scientists clearly formulating models according to them, and reporting accurately when their tests succeeded as well as when they failed.
 
Merko said:
The topic is a bit like 'Falsifiable evolutionary predictions?' though. Of course there are a lot of falsifiable claims behind the climate science, but it's not like there is one simple experiment that could disprove the entire theory.....
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This is because there is no "entire theory", and that in turn is because there is no "theory", unless you go to vague generalities. But as we scientifically define theory, no. This discussion, the very fact that it exists indicates that we are not to the point of theory (translate: There is no theory) yet.

The OP, and this thread, asks the far more basic and simple question as to whether falsifiable hypotheses exist....
 
OMGturt1es said:
If increased CO2 is causing an increase in absorbed radiation, we should be able to measure a decrease in outgoing radiation in wavelengths associated with greenhouse gasses. We used our satellites to watch outgoing radiation, and we found this decrease. This is an attempt to falsify the literal definition of the greenhouse effect (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../410355a0.html).

Moreover, as Ben noted, if the increased greenhouse effect is actually having any real impacts, we should see cooling of the Stratosphere. And we do.
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Link doesn't seem to work, though I suspect it may be this:
w.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0

"Increases in greenhouse forcing inferred from the outgoing longwave radiation spectra of the Earth in 1970 and 1997"
 
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mhaze said:
Now how can that be? Re radiation is more diffuse, and at lower energy levels. Radiation from the CO2 molecule, slightly more than half upwards, the remainder downwards. More CO2, more radiation in those bands.
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How a CO2 molecule knows which way is up escapes me, but that aside, you're trying to argue from the equilibrium case, which does not currently apply. With AGW we're still in the accumulation of energy phase, as represented by the missing bands in the IR.
 
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