Global warming discussion III

[CoolSceptic]

I think CoolSkeptic is right about this, to approximately the same degree that the RealClimate blog author cited by RealityCheck was right to say "We have heard arguments that so-called 'random walk' [sic] can produce similar hikes in temperature" and to place similar claims about AR, ARMA, ARIMA, and FARIMA models in the historical context of claims about random walks.

Thanks, unfortunately Reality Check and I had a slight miscommunication and we seem to be stuck there at the moment with no hope of progress

ETA: Having reviewed this, I do not think FARIMA and random walks are comparable, since random walks violate the law of conservation of energy, and FARIMA models do not. So it is quite wrong to place them in the same context as there is a key differentiator. /ETA

In other words, those who wish to deny the statististical significance of climate trends will always be able to postulate a statistical model that's capable of such complex behavior that a null hypothesis based upon that statistical model cannot be rejected at customary levels of confidence.

Well, broadly I agree, although I think we can reject some statistical models, e.g. random walks, as being unphysical due to the fact they can drift to unphysically large values. So I think we can constrain the type of statistical model likely, which is what Professor Koutsoyiannis tries to do both from theoretical considerations (e.g. the paper on extremal entropy production above) but also on observational grounds:

Markonis, Y., and D. Koutsoyiannis, Climatic variability over time scales spanning nine orders of magnitude: Connecting Milankovitch cycles with Hurst–Kolmogorov dynamics, Surveys in Geophysics, 34 (2), 181–207, 2013.

Otherwise, I largely agree with your comments.

 

[CoolSceptic]

This is wrong.

It was a quote from DC's original source.

Original source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#cite_note-Survey_Tracks_Scientists.27_Growing_Climate_Concern-111

I didn't quote exactly, but my choice of words comes directly from the source:

Catastrophic effects in 50–100 years would likely be observed according to 41%, while 44% thought the effects would be moderate and about 13 percent saw relatively little danger.

So, I think my quote ("moderate effects") is a fair summary of DCs original source, and not an error.

 

[ideogram]

It is factually incorrect. The fact that you repeated someone else's error is still an error.

And you have spent this entire time doing mental gymnastics to avoid acknowledging error.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

ETA: Having reviewed this, I do not think FARIMA and random walks are comparable, since random walks violate the law of conservation of energy, and FARIMA models do not. So it is quite wrong to place them in the same context as there is a key differentiator. /ETA

Hmm.

ARFIMA(0,1,0) is a random walk.

Even if you define FARIMA so as to exclude ARFIMA(0,1,0), we can still express a random walk as the limit of a infinite sequence of FARIMA models. You are therefore claiming that a sequence of models that obeys conservation of energy can converge to a model that doesn't.

 

[ideogram]

r-j did you see this

r-j did you ever get a satisfactory answer to the question of how much heat is trapped in one CO2 molecule?

 

[Reality Check]

...

The point about miscommunication is that it is important to clear it up otherwise two people will be talking about two different subjects as we were
I stated the facts very clearly: The RealClimate article does indeed refer to random walks.
The fact you pointed out is that the Cohn and Lins paper does not mention the phrase "random walk".

...
We're interested in the rate of entropy production in the context of Gibb's entropy.

From the paper, there is a description of part of the history of statistical thermodynamics:

Later, within statistical thermophysics, entropy has been given an austere and clear probabilistic meaning by Boltzmann and Gibbs, while Shannon used essentially the same entropy definition to describe the information content, which he also called entropy at von Neumann’s suggestion [1]. Despite having the same name, information entropy and thermodynamic entropy are commonly regarded as two distinct notions† . One of the strongest proponents of this view is E. T. Jaynes [2]‡ , who, notably, introduced the principle of maximum entropy as a principle for inference. However, this distinction has been disputed by others: the “information entropy [is] shown to correspond to thermodynamic entropy” [1] and the two become precisely identical, if Boltzmann’s constant is taken equal to unity. Perhaps the fact that the information entropy is a dimensionless quantity, while the thermodynamic entropy has units (J/K), has been a major obstacle to see that the two are identical notions*. But this is an historical accident, related to the arbitrary introduction of temperature scales, which Boltzmann respected, thus multiplying the probabilistic entropy by the constant bearing his name. This has been made crystal clear now [3]† and it has been recognized that, given Shannon’s entropy definition, “in principle we do not need a separate base unit for temperature, the kelvin” and in essence, thermodynamic entropy, like the information entropy, is dimensionless.

This states nothing about what this mysterious "we" is interested in, CoolSceptic .

Demetris Koutsoyiannis has the opinion that the thermodynamic and information entropy are equivalent basically because their units can be made equivalent.

The paper has a real world example of the mean annual temperature of Vienna, Austria that illustrates the problem this equivalence implies - there is no physical source for the thermodynamic/information entropy needed to explain the global warming in the last 35 years if the Sun is the primary supplier of entropy.
An option is to replace the Sun with our CO2 production as the primary supplier of entropy.

 

[macdoc]

Forest and trees...I quite sure the discussion of twigs is fascinating.

No drunkards walk this ...

_{The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report collated from the peer-reviewed literature almost 1200 scenarios of future emissions, each scenario having a different 'story' of how the future might unfold. The scenarios can be grouped according to which of the four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) they are most similar to, based on peak concentration of greenhouse gases. Credit: Image courtesy of CICERO}

Global warming: Dwindling chances to stay below 2°C warming
Date:
September 21, 2014
Source:
Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research (CICERO)
Summary:

Carbon dioxide emissions continue to track the high end of emission scenarios, eroding the chances to keep global warming below 2°C, and placing increased pressure on world leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit on the 23rd September.

more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140921145005.htm

No it's not natural variations.... Yes it's getting warmer and we're responsible...
Moving energy around in the global climate box is just another denier attempt at prestigitation for general amusement however well disguised with wibble and self importance.

 

[a_unique_person]

Enjoyable article by respected computational physicist Steven Koonin in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days back. Link:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565

It's a nice article, and the sort of thing I would expect from a good scientist. I have only one quibble - the feedbacks are highly non-linear and as such climate sensitivity is unlikely to be constant, but otherwise the article seems pretty sensible to me and well grounded. Highlights include:



Of course, no more than one can be right, but it is very possible (in fact very likely) none of them are right.

I'm sure the activists will smear him on the grounds he once worked for BP (doubtless while ignoring the fact that he was a undersecretary for science in the energy dept during Obama's first term), but it's great to see some high profile scientists taking a stand against the nonsense coming out of the highly politicised climate activist community, including the IPCC.

Yet he is quite happy to use the phrase "there is little doubt" more than once. Where is the irony meter on tapatalk?

In fact he ends up saying what I have been saying all along and what scientists are still researching, we are only arguing about the climate sensitivity. That it could be of a very damaging magnitude does not appear to concern him at all. It's like saying that since you do not know exactly what effect smoking could have on your health, they're is no reason to not smoke.

 

[macdoc]

http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565

The usual self interest crap from WSJ from a non-climate scientist formerly employed by British Petroleum and endorsed enthusiastically by CS.

In 2004, Koonin joined BP plc serving as their Chief Scientist

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_E._Koonin

.....no conflict there....nah.

Gets truly tiresome this puerile misdirection.

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by r-j View Post
Science, it's better than hysteria.

the only hysteria was your posts in the Fukishima thread - too bad you didn't apply science sources there.
All this perverse dissection and criticism of RealClimate climate scientists when I see neither r-j nor CS participating in the discussions there. Interesting pairing that...

••••

IF climate sensitivity comes in on the high side that recent papers have suggested....it will be a rough ride for those subject to the rapid change in climate over the 85 years.....for many....it already is

That we are tracking for RCP8.5 might indeed be cause for alarm.

 

[r-j]

r-j did you ever get a satisfactory answer to the question of how much heat is trapped in one CO2 molecule?

Where is that question? It does not show up in a search of the threads.

 

[ideogram]

r-j, your argument about "the Global Warming Theory" still is not a scientific argument.

 

[ideogram]

r-j did you ever get a satisfactory answer to the question of how much heat is trapped in one CO2 molecule?

Where is that question? It does no show up in a search of the threads.

Oh, I thought it was you who asked that question.

Do you know the answer?

 

[DC]

I show evidence that is irrifutable, and nothing changes.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10065538#post10065538

 

[Reality Check]

See? I answered right away, but that isn't good enough.

That is right, r-j - you did not answer the actual question about the actual records that you checked so the answer was not good enough
The original question was: r-j: Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of the 1930's and 1940's for the weather station mentioned in the RealClimate article.
Your answer was the not sourced: "I used the official records from the NWS Chicago."
Which is why I made the question more explicit so that you could cite the actual records as in these questions

It is not dishonest to ask simple questions that you should already know the answers to such as:

1. r-j (8 September 2014): Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of from 1930 to about 1950 (1930's and 1940's) for the weather station mentioned in the [URL="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/new-daily-temperature-dataset-from-berkeley/"]RealClimate article.[/URL]
2. r-j (19 September 2014): Please cite your source for these specific temperatures which you state are from the University station.
3. r-j (19 September 2014): Please cite your source that shows that the University station is the rooftop one that was moved to O'Hare.

 

[Reality Check]

Here's what you find on realclimate and the BEST project for sources.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2

http://berkeleyearth.org/source-files
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/
Good luck finding the NWS records for the University station, Midway and O'Hare in those links.

Great - you confirm that you are lying about reading the records of the weather station in the RealClimate article by stating that you cannot access their sources, r-j !
And of course confirming your lack of reading comprehension: The RealClimate article does not state a source for their data (which is bad).

The "first link" you mention is History of the Chicago and Rockford weather observation sites which has
* University of Chicago Rosenwald Hall 58th St and University Ave from 1/01/1926 to 6/30/1942
* Midway Airport South Terminal Building 6200 South Cicero Ave from 7/01/1942 to 1/17/1980
which looks like the RealClimate article weather station.

 

[Reality Check]

So when I see two of the experts from the BEST project being so publicly wrong,....

So when we see you (so far) lying about these experts from the BEST project being wrong, what are we to think, r-j?

1. r-j (8 September 2014): Please cite the source you used to check the temperature records of from 1930 to about 1950 (1930's and 1940's) for the weather station mentioned in the [URL="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/new-daily-temperature-dataset-from-berkeley/"]RealClimate article.[/URL]
2. r-j (19 September 2014): Please cite your source for these specific temperatures which you state are from the University station.
3. r-j (19 September 2014): Please cite your source that shows that the University station is the rooftop one that was moved to O'Hare.

 

[DC]

I do believe this is significant: China's per capita carbon emissions overtake EU's

interesting . But it seems that this is not consumption based emissions, so import / export not accounted for.

the EU "exported" alot of CO2 emissions by producing in China.

 

[DC]

Enjoyable article by respected computational physicist Steven Koonin in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days back. Link:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/climate-science-is-not-settled-1411143565

It's a nice article, and the sort of thing I would expect from a good scientist. I have only one quibble - the feedbacks are highly non-linear and as such climate sensitivity is unlikely to be constant, but otherwise the article seems pretty sensible to me and well grounded. Highlights include:


Of course, no more than one can be right, but it is very possible (in fact very likely) none of them are right.

I'm sure the activists will smear him on the grounds he once worked for BP (doubtless while ignoring the fact that he was a undersecretary for science in the energy dept during Obama's first term), but it's great to see some high profile scientists taking a stand against the nonsense coming out of the highly politicised climate activist community, including the IPCC.

Enjoyable article about the Koonin article. alot of respected climatologists responded

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...street-journal-downplays-global-warming-risks

 

[Reality Check]

I have only one quibble - the feedbacks are highly non-linear and as such climate sensitivity is unlikely to be constant, ...

The quibble is moot because climate sensitivity relates all changes in radiative forcing, no matter how non-linear any feedbacks, to changes in temperature.
For example see How sensitive is our climate? and How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?

My quibble about the article is that his theme seems to be "there are uncertainties about what is going to happen, so there is no need to worry". He should know that decisions can be made on incomplete information. We do not need to be the proverbial frog in a pot of water and wait until the water is boiling before leaping out .