jpj's Comments
Hello Natey,
your wrote:
> To your credit, you have a more thought-out opinion compared to most others.
> Unfortunately, an opinion based on misinformation is still tainted.
> (snip allegations)
Caveat: since this is no longer a scientific but a political topic, do not just believe me; check for yourself. With that in mind, here's how I convinced myself that catastrophic man-made global warming failed the test of falsification:
Rising global temperatures: With temperature predictions, we are admonished to look not at the short term but at the long term. In its First Assessment Report of 1990, the IPCC predicted that the average rate of increase of global mean temperature would be about 0.3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C). To verify those 0.3°C per decade, I took the sattelite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (http://tinyurl.com/5rhrso), used the years from 1989 to 2011, plotted a graph and calculated the linear trend per decade. Instead of giving you the result, I would encourage anyone who reads this to do this by themselves. The Hadley CRU temperature data, by the way, will give similar results. Just for laughs, you may try and calculate the trend just for the past decade.
Snowfall: All models predicted falling snowcover particularly in the northern hemisphere and during winter, which would have accelerated starting 2000 (see e.g. Boer et al 1992, Essery 1997, Gong and Frei 2005). The Gong and Frei paper (http://tinyurl.com/yermrz8) includes graphs useful for comparison. To do that comparison, I took the readily available weekly northern snow cover file from Rutgers University (http://tinyurl.com/d5vnn2w), filtered for winter weeks (48 to 9) starting in 1999, calculated the averages and plotted a graph. Again, I won't give you the results but suggest anyone here try it for themselves.
Water vapor feedback: To have man-made CO2 warm the globe catastrophically, the effect of just that gas alone would be insufficient. So, all models assume a positive feedback through water vapor, which would create a runaway effect after a cretain tipping point. This positive feedback should be measurable as an increasing infrared opacity. No such increasing opacity is observed (see e.g. Miskolczi 2010). Moreover, if there was such a water vapor feedback, it should have appeared at the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and caused the very same catastrophic warming that is being predicted today. However, these warm periods peaked and then fairly rapidly cooled off.
Troposheric hot spot: A heating of the lower troposhere in the tropics would be a direct outcome of the alleged water vapor feedback. It was presented as a fingerprint for man-made greenhouse-gas warming (originally by Thorne et al 2003). However, the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming.
> Where are you getting your information from? Is it from random blogs and the WSJ opinion pages?
No, I do not frequent blogs such as RealClimate anymore. I found the people there to be insufferably arrogant.
your wrote:
> To your credit, you have a more thought-out opinion compared to most others.
> Unfortunately, an opinion based on misinformation is still tainted.
> (snip allegations)
Caveat: since this is no longer a scientific but a political topic, do not just believe me; check for yourself. With that in mind, here's how I convinced myself that catastrophic man-made global warming failed the test of falsification:
Rising global temperatures: With temperature predictions, we are admonished to look not at the short term but at the long term. In its First Assessment Report of 1990, the IPCC predicted that the average rate of increase of global mean temperature would be about 0.3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C). To verify those 0.3°C per decade, I took the sattelite data from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (http://tinyurl.com/5rhrso), used the years from 1989 to 2011, plotted a graph and calculated the linear trend per decade. Instead of giving you the result, I would encourage anyone who reads this to do this by themselves. The Hadley CRU temperature data, by the way, will give similar results. Just for laughs, you may try and calculate the trend just for the past decade.
Snowfall: All models predicted falling snowcover particularly in the northern hemisphere and during winter, which would have accelerated starting 2000 (see e.g. Boer et al 1992, Essery 1997, Gong and Frei 2005). The Gong and Frei paper (http://tinyurl.com/yermrz8) includes graphs useful for comparison. To do that comparison, I took the readily available weekly northern snow cover file from Rutgers University (http://tinyurl.com/d5vnn2w), filtered for winter weeks (48 to 9) starting in 1999, calculated the averages and plotted a graph. Again, I won't give you the results but suggest anyone here try it for themselves.
Water vapor feedback: To have man-made CO2 warm the globe catastrophically, the effect of just that gas alone would be insufficient. So, all models assume a positive feedback through water vapor, which would create a runaway effect after a cretain tipping point. This positive feedback should be measurable as an increasing infrared opacity. No such increasing opacity is observed (see e.g. Miskolczi 2010). Moreover, if there was such a water vapor feedback, it should have appeared at the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and caused the very same catastrophic warming that is being predicted today. However, these warm periods peaked and then fairly rapidly cooled off.
Troposheric hot spot: A heating of the lower troposhere in the tropics would be a direct outcome of the alleged water vapor feedback. It was presented as a fingerprint for man-made greenhouse-gas warming (originally by Thorne et al 2003). However, the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming.
> Where are you getting your information from? Is it from random blogs and the WSJ opinion pages?
No, I do not frequent blogs such as RealClimate anymore. I found the people there to be insufferably arrogant.
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Do I believe in climate change? Of course I do: the climate has been changing for billions of years. Do I believe in catastrophic man-made global warming, as hypothesized by the IPCC? Can any layman actually judge the science? As it turns out, if the layman can't, it's not science. Let me explain: We know that Einstein's theory of relativity is right not because we all know differential geometry. Einstein made predictions using theory, e.g. that light from stars should be bent by the sun's gravity. His theory happened to be verified by observations, so we laymen can conclude: Einstein was right.
The IPCC's models also made predictions, e.g. about how global temperatures would continue to rise, snowfall would decrease, that there would be a tropospheric hotspot, that there is a positive water vapor feedback to warming etc. None of these predictions turned out to be correct. And that is why I do not believe in catastrophic man-made global warming.
The IPCC's models also made predictions, e.g. about how global temperatures would continue to rise, snowfall would decrease, that there would be a tropospheric hotspot, that there is a positive water vapor feedback to warming etc. None of these predictions turned out to be correct. And that is why I do not believe in catastrophic man-made global warming.
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My problem with this idea is the following: Should a stranger really have the right to interfere with the grieving family of a deceased person and claim the body, and the family members that attempt to obstruct should be punished?
It seems to me that all proponents of this idea have to impliciltly presume at least one of the two following: First, that "opt-out" be as moral as "opt-in". But both rules are mutually exclusive, so only one can be moral. Which one can be answered by asking whom our bodies belong to. Second, you may believe that moral rules can simply be legislated into and out of existance. Of the many points to be raised against this notion let me just state one: if that be so, for what do we still need a conscience?
The solution to the donor organ shortage is not more arbitratry rules by government, but less: destroy the government's monopoly and get government out of people's way who voluntarily find dead-donor agreements.
Lastly, let us not discredit our arguments by name-calling others as "selfish goons".
It seems to me that all proponents of this idea have to impliciltly presume at least one of the two following: First, that "opt-out" be as moral as "opt-in". But both rules are mutually exclusive, so only one can be moral. Which one can be answered by asking whom our bodies belong to. Second, you may believe that moral rules can simply be legislated into and out of existance. Of the many points to be raised against this notion let me just state one: if that be so, for what do we still need a conscience?
The solution to the donor organ shortage is not more arbitratry rules by government, but less: destroy the government's monopoly and get government out of people's way who voluntarily find dead-donor agreements.
Lastly, let us not discredit our arguments by name-calling others as "selfish goons".
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you wrote:
> I’ll try to at least respond to each of your points.
For which I thank you. I wrote:
>> Rising global temperatures: (...) In its First Assessment Report of 1990, the IPCC predicted that the average rate of increase of global mean temperature would be about 0.3 °C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2°C to 0.5°C).
> What you’ve done is select the “worst case scenario” as your standard of proof.
You are IMHO misreading the 1990 IPCC report. What you refer to as "worst case scenario" is what the IPCC called "Business-as-Usual scenario (for the) emissions of greenhouse gases". According to this scenario, given in 1990, CO2 levels should have reached about 393ppm in 2011. This is exactly what they did reach. In other words, the scenario of CO2 emissions I used as my standard of proof is the scenario that actually happened and for which the IPCC had made a prediction of a temperature trand - a prediction which turned to be off by 100%.
>> Snowfall: All models predicted falling snowcover particularly in the northern hemisphere and during winter, (...)
> One decade does not constitute a long-term global average, and a decade-long graph that ends on a year with record high snowfall is misleading at best (...)
Ten years are not too short to establish whether there is a trend or not. The downward trend the models predicted is nowhere in evidence, even if you discount 2011. Nor was it just the winter of 2011 that was "misleadingly" rich in snow: so were the winters of 2003, 2008 and 2010.
> Rutgers does the plotting for us over a longer period of time.
The Gong and Frei paper used the year 2000 as the starting point for the models' snow cover predictions. Snow cover measurements before that date are hardly useful to judge the models' predictive power.
>> Water vapor feedback: (...) This positive feedback should be measurable as an increasing infrared opacity. No such increasing opacity is observed (...).
> It has been measured (see AIRS)
It seems to me that you are mistaking increased IR opacity, which the models predict and isn't there, with increased water vapor content, which the models also predict, Aqua/AIRS did measure, however isn't the point here nor is it contested.
> It is, however, your choice if you choose to believe a thoroughly debunked Physicist’s paper over empiricism.
You are replacing reasoning with name-calling. I am referring to the paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell of 2008, who were encouraged to publish by none other than Piers Foster.
>> Troposheric hot spot: (...) the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming.
> Again, we have short-term observation of this
What Santer tried to show in your cited paper was that if he implied enough large measurement uncertainties into the HadAT2 data, then a hot spot hiding somewhere in the error bars could not be ruled out. I leave it to the readers to decide if this indeed constitutes "short-term observation" of the hot spot. Sherwood at least conceded that direct temperature observations from radiosonde and satellite data have often not shown the expected hot spot. So, instead of using direct measurements he tried to indirectly infer troposheric temperatures from wind measurements. Again, I leave it to each reader himself to judge if that convices him. And by the way: that the HadAT2 radiosonde data showed a relative lack of warming in the tropical troposphere where all models simulated maximum warming is not just my own conclusion; I actually took this wording verbatim out of the US Climate Change Science Program's 2006 final report.
Finally, allow me to thank you for our short exchange and to conclude with a favourite quotation:
"Science thrives on errors, cutting them away one by one. (...) Hypotheses are framed so they are capable of being disproved. (...) Proprietary feelings are of course offended when a scientific hypothesis is disproved, but such disproofs are recognized as central to the scientific enterprise. (...) Pseudoscience is just the opposite. Hypotheses are often framed precisely so they are invulnerable to any experiment that offers a prospect of disproof, so even in principle they cannot be invalidated. Practitioners are defensive and wary. Sceptical scrutiny is opposed." (Carl Sagan)