APS and the Global Warming Scam


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37 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Unusual, unseasonable Arctic weather continues to surprise a few sciencey types. This is current at the Washington Post's "Capital Weather Gang" today: ‘Beyond the extreme’: Scientists marvel at ‘increasingly non-natural’ Arctic warmth.

For those who have been paying attention to unusual weather in the Arctic, and who have integrated the concepts Arctic Oscillation and amplification, background knowledge of variability in seasonal norms is important. No scientist in the thick of these events suggests excursions from the  long-term  norm are wholly due to an anthropogenic effect. So, it is likely that the next five years of Arctic seasons could see a return of 'normal' once this heat excursion is over. 

In other words, the next winter may see a return of the Arctic conditions to the negative cycle of the Arctic Oscillation. What seems like a freakish spike of warmth could just be evidence of the Arctic equivalent of a 100-year flood.

-- what is interesting about this report are the views of Chip Knappenberger of CATO, and Ryan Maue. Maue is nearer to a Judith Curry-ish stance, and Knappenberger is -- or was -- a thoroughgoing 'skeptic.'  On the Yale bingo board, I'd put them under D for doubtful.

Peter's jokey reference to a hot Arctic and a cold Antarctic, resultant from a Heat Goes North concept, was kind of fun.  The actual facts are more fun.  The key concepts here are jet streams and latitudinal "cells."  Hadley, Ferrel, and Arctic cells.

chapter-five-37-728.jpg

jet-streamglobe-2.jpg

-- what seems to have happened in the Arctic is that a 'relaxed' polar jet stream has sort of unblocked incursions  of warm, moist air, and warm oceanic water.  The relaxation looks like this, almost an absence of the polar jet:

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_WS250.png

And leads to leads to anomalous weather like this:

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_T2_anom.png

 

-- in the positive cycle of the Arctic Oscillation the northern jet stream hugs the arctic in a regular embrace, in the negative phase, the jet stream varies north and south in apparent waves:

image2.png

Here's a picture that illustrates the variation of a negative oscillation, followed by the video visualization it was taken from. The difference between a positive and negative phase are clear -- especially the positions at 0:30.

jetstream.jpg

 

Look at the complexity of the system!  The idea of reducing all that to one (yes one!) parameter,  the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is almost ludicrous on it face.  The earth air, land, ocean thermodynamic complex is not some simple closed loop feed back like a thermostat setting determining the temperature of a room.  

In addition there are some physical laws and principles militating against some simple minded Tipping Point scenario in nature. 

There is Lenz Law,  

The direction of current induced in a conductor by a changing magnetic field due to Faraday's law of induction will be such that it will create a field that opposes the change that produced it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenz's_law

There is La Chattlier's Principle

"In chemistry, Le Chatelier's principle (pronounced /lə ˈʃɑːtlieɪ/), also called Chatelier's principle or "The Equilibrium Law", can be used to predict the effect of a change in conditions on a chemical equilibrium. The principle is named after Henry Louis Le Chatelier and sometimes Karl Ferdinand Braun who discovered it independently. It can be stated as:

When any system at equilibrium is subjected to change in concentration, temperature, volume, or pressure, then the system readjusts itself to (partially) counteract the effect of the applied change and a new equilibrium is established."  (snipped from the Wikipedia Article)

There is inertia of mass which opposes any change in the motion. So a mass at rest fights any force that wants to make it change its momentum and a mass in uniform motion fights any force that wants to slow it down or speed it up. 

There are also negative feedbacks in the earth's thermodynamic system that opposes extreme. For example if the oceans are warmed up gradually the will produce lots of water vapor to make clouds that will block the sun from warming the oceans even more. 

Of course there are changes in albedo possible that will promote warming.  For example human agriculture has changed the reflectivity of the land so that more of the suns infra red emission is absorbed.  This will lead to some melting of the ice caps because warm air is being sent to the poles from the tropics and the temperate zone.  But eventually this should increase cloud production which will block radiation from the sun.  So there appears to be some kind of dynamic that tries to maintain the stability of systems.  They are very much akin to inertia.

These are some of the reasons which I have reservations about panic predictions of a tipping point.  Eventually the sun will become hot enough to evaporate the oceans and then we shall surely be past a tipping point an on our way to death and extinction.  The sun increases its radiance about 10 percent every billion years. So eventually the earth will become to hot to sustain life.  It will be all over when the hydrogen in the sun is all fused to helium which when it fuses produces a higher temperature.  Eventually the sun will exhaust is available fuel,  it will expand into a  red giant star which will evaporate the inner rocky planets  Venus, Earth and Mars.  After which it will blow off its outer layers and become a white dwarf unable to sustain life anywhere in the solar system.

But all this death and disaster is a billion years off and by that time we will have become extinct  so we do not have to worry about it. 

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52 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:
1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

 

 

Look at the complexity of the system! 

Yes.  There is a lot I don't know about the Arctic.  I note that my post was almost entirely a guide to gaining an understanding of Arctic weather in 2015-2017 via two essential concepts.  In your response, there was not a single mention of the Arctic nor the concepts.

Look at the complexity of the Arctic!

For those who enjoy an exchange with someone working in this area, an interview with Jennifer Francis from 2013: Is a changing Arctic influencing weather in the mid-latitudes?  She speaks intelligently to the notion of 'tipping points.'

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Scientists often use the term “Arctic amplification”. What does this mean exactly? And how does a changing Arctic affect people living in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere?

Arctic amplification is a term that describes the fact that the Arctic is more sensitive to global temperature changes than elsewhere on Earth. If it gets warmer around the globe, it gets even warmer in the Arctic. It works the other way, too; if it cools around the globe, it cools even more in the Arctic. This is due to a number of positive feedbacks in the Arctic system that enhance whatever changes are happening.

One of the most well-known positive feedbacks is the ice-albedo feedback. As the sea ice recedes in the Arctic Ocean – as it's been doing quite rapidly over the last few decades – it exposes the open ocean to the summer sunshine.

The ice is very white and the ocean is very dark. So instead of reflecting that sunshine back into outer space, with the ice cover having diminished so much, all of the heat energy from the sun goes directly into the Arctic Ocean and warms it. This process is adding energy to the global climate system that otherwise would not have entered the system. It helps warm the Arctic Ocean, which increases the rate of warming in the region.

[...]

There's been research suggesting that the extra heat in the Arctic is affecting the jet stream, which in turn creates blocking patterns in the atmosphere. Could you explain this process?

The jet stream, which is a very fast current of air moving west to east about 10 km up in the atmosphere, is created by the difference in temperature between the mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere and the Arctic. Normally the Arctic is cold and it's warmer in the mid-latitudes. Generally speaking, the jet stream moves faster when that temperature difference is greater.

But as the Arctic has been warming at a faster rate than in the mid-latitudes, this difference in temperature has been decreasing. As this temperature difference has been decreasing over the last several decades, so have the west to east winds in the jet stream.

We know that the jet stream generally takes a wavier path in a north-south direction when its winds are weaker. A warmer Arctic also tends to stretch the northern peaks of those waves farther northward, which also increases the waviness.

The waves in the jet stream control our weather. They generate and steer both the low-pressure areas, which include storms, and the high pressure areas of good weather. When the waves are larger, they tend to shift more slowly from west to east, as does the weather we experience on the surface that’s associated with those waves. It seems like the weather gets “stuck” more often in a particular pattern when this happens.

Taking that to the nth degree, you would expect that certain kinds of extreme weather related to persistent weather conditions would occur more often. Take droughts, for example. If it's dry for a few days in a certain place, it's not a problem. But if it goes on for a few weeks, then it's a problem. The same goes for rain. A typical rainstorm is no big deal. But if it rains for days on end, then we're looking at the possibility of flooding.

So in short, as the Arctic warms, the waves in the jet stream tend to get larger, and as a consequence, the weather patterns associated with them move more slowly, increasing the possibility of having more extreme weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

Is there any way to tie the phenomena of the jet stream shifting to a particular storm, or is that not possible?

You really can't tie it directly to any particular storm. What we do know is that climate change in general is changing the backdrop of all storms. So any storm we have now is working with more heat and water vapour, which gives it more energy and greater rain potential. So you can't say climate change isn't having an effect.

But to look at one particular storm and say that because it's warmer in the Arctic, this particular storm did such and such differently, we can't do that yet. At this point it's all about looking at statistical trends, long-term changes, and how the jet stream pattern and trajectory has been changing over time.

How clearly can you distinguish the role of human influences from natural variation and climate cycles such as the Arctic Oscillation and El Niño?

Our best tools for this task are the extremely complex global climate computer models that use a combination of mathematical, physical relationships and parameterizations to simulate the behaviour of the climate system. While not perfect, they do a remarkable job of recreating past climate behaviour, including natural climate oscillations like the Artcic Oscillation and El Niño. 

The models can be used to simulate the climate system, both with and without human influences to see which best represents the real world. It’s very clear that without including human influences, the models cannot recreate changes in temperatures, precipitation patterns, and many other features that have been observed during the past century.

With regards to reaching a tipping point where we start to see significant changes in the climate, is it something that's foreseeable in the near future, or is it something purely theoretical?

Tipping points are tough because it's hard to define exactly when you've reached one. It's not like falling off a cliff in most cases. A lot of gradual changes can take place. It depends on how you think of a tipping point. Is it something you can't turn back from after you've passed a certain point? Defining that point and when it happens is pretty tough.

I would say, however, that at this point in time we've put so much carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere that we have in a way passed a tipping point. There's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at this point now than at any point in at least the last 650,000 years.

The global temperature of the Earth is far behind where it should be for the level of carbon dioxide we currently have in the atmosphere, which means we've got a lot of change coming our way that we really can't do anything about, even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases today. The carbon dioxide is already in the atmosphere and it takes a long time to decrease naturally. We can't remove it in sufficient quantities to make any difference.

So if you take as your tipping point the fact that we've surpassed a point where even if we stop emitting greenhouse gasses now we won't be able to stop the changes that are heading our way, then you could say we've already passed a tipping point. There's so much evidence out there telling us that changes are happening rapidly in the climate system and that we're only going to see more of these rapid changes.

[...]

Scientists often use the term “Arctic amplification”. What does this mean exactly? And how does a changing Arctic affect people living in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere?

Arctic amplification is a term that describes the fact that the Arctic is more sensitive to global temperature changes than elsewhere on Earth. If it gets warmer around the globe, it gets even warmer in the Arctic. It works the other way, too; if it cools around the globe, it cools even more in the Arctic. This is due to a number of positive feedbacks in the Arctic system that enhance whatever changes are happening.

One of the most well-known positive feedbacks is the ice-albedo feedback. As the sea ice recedes in the Arctic Ocean – as it's been doing quite rapidly over the last few decades – it exposes the open ocean to the summer sunshine.

The ice is very white and the ocean is very dark. So instead of reflecting that sunshine back into outer space, with the ice cover having diminished so much, all of the heat energy from the sun goes directly into the Arctic Ocean and warms it. This process is adding energy to the global climate system that otherwise would not have entered the system. It helps warm the Arctic Ocean, which increases the rate of warming in the region.

Bob, one of the notable feedbacks in the Arctic winter is from the combination of cloud cover and extra moisture in the trophosphere. There is no sunlight at the apex. Extra Cloud cover does not provide a winter cooling in the Arctic. This explains a part of the amplification of warming, in the latent energy of moisture over what is more usually a 'desert' ...

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Of course there are changes in albedo possible that will promote warming. 

Yup. That is one of the variables noted by professor Francis.

Look at the complexity of the jetstream!  

 

Edited by william.scherk
Added note on albedo
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Most of the heat the arctic gets is from the tropics,  brought to poles by convection and the Coriolis force.   Heave cloud cover over the tropics will decrease the amount of heat shipped to the poles.  As it is the poles do not get the full blast of the Sun even in the summer because the heat delivered by the sun is proportional to the cosine of the angle of the Sun's rays to the portion the suns rays contact the Earth.  So in the summer the Sun is vertical over the tropic of (cancer, Capricorn, depending in which summer, north or south).  At the most direct angle the sun makes an angle of 66 degrees  with the polar regions which means the cosine is rather small. 

The region between the Tropics is where most of the heat from the Sun arrives,  not at the poles,  even in polar summertime. 

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Giving focus to the "winter" weather in the Arctic is intriguing in this unusual year. It's a way of slicing just a portion of phenomena out of the picture "climate," to see how much I can comprehend of the meteorology. I put in the didactic notes and figures as an aide-memoire to myself as well as a cue to other readers.

So, if you have got this far in the thread, you will have understood more or less why there is a polar jetstream, and why there are jetstreams at all. You will have gathered that there are two extents of 'wobble and relaxation' in the polar jetstream systems, a phase in which the jetstream hugs the pole more closely, then an opposite loose jetstream -- which wobbles and allows peaks and troughs of a 'wave' to to penetrate deeper in southerly direction, but also deeper in a northerly direction.  

The jetstream relationship to heat transport northward in the atmosphere in the winter months is a physical one. Incursions of warmer sea waters and moist air,  usually blocked by a tight jet stream and concurrent air movements, have been a repeating 'norm' of this polar winter so far. 

For illustration, a sub-set from my usual global map-set visits at Climate Reanalyzer. Reading the preceding days data in visual form can show how the masses of air moved and what they bring -- and give to you a 'mental animation.'

Conceptual integration! 

-- this first one is of temperature anomaly, departure from the average (ie, against a baseline 1979-2000).  NB. -- there is overlap between times of the global mapping product. They are not exactly 'of this moment' ...

 

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_T2_anom.png

 

Then the jetstream winds:

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_WS250.png

 

Then the pressure at sea level:

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_PMSL.png

 

Then, sea-surface temperature anomalies ...

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_SST_anom.png

 

Then surface wind speeds:

GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_WS10.png

 

-- now, if you bear with me for just a bit more of tedious explanation, what does that red form just off Greenland look like to you?

To me it looks like a cyclonic storm, centred on a low pressure area, and it looks to me like it is probably heading north. And sure enough, I checked with my weathermen and it is a hugely energetic storm, and rather a rare kind to hit so far north in wintertime. Since only fifty-three people live in the track of the storm, nobody really gives a shit, but hey. What does it mean to the rest of the Arctic winter?  That remains to be seen.

 

Edited by william.scherk
Cleared away some brush, added logical twist-ties in a couple of places.
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About 120,000 years ago the Arctic was probably warmer  than it is now,  so indicate the ice core samples,  soil deposits,  inferences drawn from plant and animal residues  etc.   The earth flourished and there even came an Ice Age following all that warmth.  Which raises an interesting question.  120,000 years ago humans were not exerting the kind of influence on the climate they are now.  So how did the Arctic get so warm?   Answer:  Some set of natural driving processes.  If such processes existed then,  then why not now?  

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Anyone got any ideas on this?

Courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Another Huge Global Warming Data Scandal

A few quotes (my bold):

Quote

I need to tell you something that you’re not going to see in the Drive-By Media, and it’s huge. In setting this up, I want to remind you why I have spent so much time on the whole subject of climate change and global warming throughout the entirety of this program, 29 years.

It is because that issue, climate change, contains every element of extreme liberalism and socialism that needs to be understood and opposed. Climate change, if they succeed in this, climate change is close to health care in terms of, if you get nationalized climate change, nationalized health care, then you are very close to totally controlling the way people live their lives.

You have succeeded in restricting people’s liberty and freedom in perhaps the greatest way you can. That’s why climate change or global warming, whatever you want to call it, is of such paramount importance to me, because it’s not just a single issue. It’s every wet dream the left has encapsulated in an issue. It has government control, it has tax increases, it has the expansion of government, it has decisions and mandates of what kind of car you can and can’t drive, what kind of food you can and can’t eat, what you can do with your own private property. It would go a long way to eliminating the concept of private property.

I mean, it’s just horrible. And it turns out there’s yet another scandal of totally fake data that was purposely made up and lied about right before the Paris accords that was designed to sway duped nations into spending, wasting millions of dollars in implementing policies designed to stop runaway temperature increases when there have not been any. And the fake data came from the United States. It came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, the people that give you your weather forecast.

It was exposed by a whistleblower in the organization who had seen enough, a scientist named Bates, a Dr. Bates, and he had had his fill of the lies and the distortions. The Daily Mail on Sunday in the U.K. revealed a landmark paper exaggerated global warming. It was rushed through in time to influence the Paris Agreement. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules.

. . .

You couple climate change and health care, and freedom as you have known it ceases to exist. It is that evil, and it is that dangerous. And I’m gratified most polling data today shows that we’re nowhere near a majority of Americans who accept it or believe it or even consider it to be crucial.

It doesn’t stop the media from portraying it is an issue that all the right people agree with, that all the smart people agree on. If you don’t see this, then you’re a denier, you’re a kook, you’re equivalent to people that didn’t admit the Holocaust and so forth.

. . .

You haven’t seen it yet, and I doubt you will see it. I know you won’t see this in the New York Times, and therefore my little tech blogger buddies will never see it. You won’t see it at BuzzFeed, which means my tech blogger buddies will not see it. You will not see this in the Washington Post; you won’t see it on the ABC, CBS, NBC.

. . .

Their climate models said that by now temperatures would be X degree warmer and sea levels would be X centimeters higher. None of it’s happened, and so they have to come up with an excuse for it. They have to come up with a reason for the “pause” in the warming. “The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organization that is the world’s leading source of climate data,” which is NOAA, “rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

“A high-level whistleblower has told” the Daily Mail… This is an American scientist. His name is [Dr. John] Bates, he works at NOAA, and he’s fed up seeing what he’s seeing. He told the U.K. Daily Mail “that [NOAA] breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and [U.K. Prime Minster] David Cameron at the U.N. climate conference in Paris in 2015,” which, by the way, Trump says we’re pulling out of and we’re not gonna live by, and thank goodness for that.

. . .

They made it up, just exactly what happened with the email chains and threads at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. The report that was submitted to scientists and world leaders before the Paris meeting was never subjected to rigorous internal evaluation, the kind that this whistleblower himself had devised. This is the old peer review. They had not run the new report by anybody to let them review it, to make sure that it was right. It was not evaluated. Somebody just wrote it up and submitted it.

. . .

This does not surprise me. I think this whole movement is fraudulent because I don’t think that they can accurately tell us what global temperatures were in the 1600s and 1700s, the 1800s, just not possible. The tree trunk data, tree ring data, ice core, it’s all made-up stuff to be beyond our ability to comprehend. They’re scientists, they wear the white coats, we, therefore, believe them.

The fact of the matter is it has been much warmer previous times on earth than it is today. That cuts against every theory they’ve got about industrialization and burning of fossil fuels creating CO2. But before you even get to that this whole thing is bogus to me because I don’t believe that we human beings are capable of doing what we are being accused of doing.

. . .

You know, ice ages have lasted 10, 20, hundreds of years, and they ended. How did they end? What caused the ice to melt way back when before there was fossil fuel? Way before there was humanity living lives of progress, what ended ice ages? What brought about warming areas when we weren’t doing anything to cause it? The answer is, it’s way beyond our pay scale.

We just simply don’t have the ability to do this. And the evidence is — to show you how inept they are, we supposedly have had a pause — this is how stupid they are, folks. Listen to me, look at me. We supposedly had a pause for 15 years. During those 15 years, why didn’t they say, “See? Our research is working. See? Our suggestions are working. Our reduction of CO2, our elimination of SUVs, our increased usage of the electric car, whatever, is working, we need to do more of this.”

Why did they greet the pause as a problem, instead of looking at it, “Wow, we can say we’re succeeding, we can say that we’re on the right track, we need to double down on the kind of restrictions we’ve already –” They’re so stupid politically they didn’t even realize an opportunity to claim success and credit. They saw a pause as panic city. I’m telling you, folks, this is the biggest bunch of fraud, one of the biggest hoaxes that has been perpetrated on a free people in I don’t know when.

What Rush refers to is this article from The Daily Mail (Feb. 5):

Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

I could wade into the details, but it's always a rehash about data dumps and sometimes a lot of yelling.

Liars who keep lying--but want gobs of money and power--are not credible sources for science. Not to me. Not to Trump or most of his supporters. In fact, these liars who lie corrupt scientists and make them lie, too.

It's a rare day when an insider whistleblower speaks out because he knows the hell that is going to rain down on his head from the fanatics. But when they do speak out, it's up to social media and other "agents of conspiracy theories" :evil: to help it spread. :) 

Michael

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Anyone got any ideas on this?

I was wondering how long before news of it appeared on OL.

That the "Pausebuster" paper was methodologically flawed has been known by people who analyzed it carefully, but this confirms suspicions that there was deliberate shoddiness.

Ellen

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GFS-025deg_NH-SAT1_T2_anom.png

12 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

About 120,000 years ago the Arctic was probably warmer  than it is now [...]  120,000 years ago humans were not exerting the kind of influence on the climate they are now.  

The Arctic may have been as warm some 120,000 years ago as it is during this winter. 

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So how did the Arctic get so warm?

The complexity!

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Answer:  Some set of natural driving processes.  If such processes existed then,  then why not now?

"Some set" and "such processes" is epistemic fudge. The natural triggers, feedbacks, forcings that we understand now were in state X back circa 120k BCE,  may or may not correspond to the complex state Y in the Arctic today. 

In other words, the list of 'natural' components can be invoked as baseline agents against which to measure today's complex factors.

For example, Milankovitch cycles (changes in the Earth's orbit -- eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession), solar irradiation, the changing composition of the atmosphere, including volcanic emissions ... and so on down the list of what can be gleaned about the 120K year ago Arctic.

9 hours ago, The Expert Layman said:

You know, ice ages have lasted 10, 20, hundreds of years, and they ended. How did they end? What caused the ice to melt way back when before there was fossil fuel? Way before there was humanity living lives of progress, what ended ice ages? What brought about warming areas when we weren’t doing anything to cause it?

Interesting questions that deserve a lengthy exploration ... perhaps in my next comment on intriguing Arctic weather.  If you like, Bob, we can gather what we think is known about the past period you raise, the better to compare and contrast with today. The "Polar Hurricane"(or outsized 'polar low') underway allows a close-in look at meteorology -- but this can probably be used to take a very long view. I'll see what I can come up with.

Maybe you can share with the list more of the information bases that inform your grasp of climate-state X way back when.

7 hours ago, Ellen Stuttle said:
9 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kellyh said:

Anyone got any ideas on this?

I was wondering how long before news of it appeared on OL.

For those who don't feel fully informed from a Rush Limbaugh transcript, two things happened at roughly the same time. A retired NOAA worthy, by the name of John Bates, published a guest post  at Judith Curry's blog, and the meaty bits of an incipient 'scandal' were put into the media atmosphere in a column by David Rose in the UK's Daily Mail.

Curry: Climate scientists versus climate data & followup posting Response to critiques: Climate scientists versus climate data
Rose: Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

The original 2015 Science paper by NOAA's Thomas Karl and colleagues: Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus

 

Now, what is important, what are people saying, what are the implications of the Bates publication, what 'officially' or in truth is the sum total scandal and probably reckoning for Karl et al? What is the take-home message? Less important, perhaps, is what informed analysts and critics are saying, those who find some errors and inconsistencies within Bates's story and the Rose piece. 

This is funny:

 

I suggest first starting with the Rose article, to get a sense of of how the Karl paper is framed in the larger narrative. Eg, the sub-heads at the Mail on Sunday:

  • The Mail on Sunday can reveal a landmark paper exaggerated global warming
  • It was rushed through and timed to influence the Paris agreement on climate change
  • America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules
  • The report claimed the pause in global warming never existed, but it was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data

The Bates paper at Curry's blog is long, and there are over 400 comments following it, and the 'response' thread is already at 150 today, so you may not choose to jump in there but at another level of explanation. In which case I can note two options: read the likes of 'responses' such as at Variable Variability (Victor Venema's blog), Zeke Hausfather's article, and several other articles listed below**. In most of them the somewhat inflated and alarmist Rose article claims are dealt with separately to the actual claims and conclusions of the Bates commentary.  We hear from colleagues of Karl and Bates.

The second option is to take a sample of some arguments over specifics between the folks involved in the propagation of the Mail article and Climate Etc article. 

That can mean  building or reading a Twitter list of actors and commentators: Curry, Bates, Hausfather, Rose, Schmidt, Karl colleagues, Bates colleagues.  At my ClimateEtcetera list one can scroll back through the last thirty-six hours of discussion and debate, and follow links to further argument and discussion.

The debate is complex!

twitter_Connectome.png
(Snapshot of a massive zoomable Twitter "connectome" between people in the Climate Wars, explained here. Click image to go to connectome home)

[To a cynical observer of 'climate wars' between the blob Left and the blob Right this flap might seem like a spasm of marketing, with multiple publications taken up by blobs Persuaders and put before the public with third-hand reporting. For a cynic like me, and because of my biases, I make sure I look hard for the 'sides' as they emerge. The best thing about this flap is it uncovers a whole lot of motivated reasoning from both sides. If this scandal is pursued by an federal investigation (I hope within NOAA's internal disciplinary ambit, but if by congressional investigation, oh well), I think that would be on balance a good thing. Although Bates does not make the inflated or mistaken claims of Rose (who is, after all, a journalist, not an actor in the internal NOAA/Science drama), the claims amount to a charge of misconduct. The rest hinges on that charge. So I think the gravity of the claims need to be gravely, or at least objectively examined.]

Here is the AGU with a neutral stance:

Quote

[Update] AGU believes that the merits of the Karl et al. (2015) should be and have been discussed in appropriate peer-reviewed scientific journals. We note that the main results of that study have since been independently replicated by later work. In the meantime, we will continue to stand up for the credibility of climate science, the freedom of scientists to conduct and communicate their science.

The purpose of our posts on this topic – past, present, and future — are to make you aware of this development affecting climate science and scientific data management. We are closely monitoring how this will play out among policymakers and influencers. For example, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology issued a misleading press release. These types of statements by policymakers that attempt to take one study/dispute and blow it out of proportion are both unhelpful and misleading. We will be working with the science committee to demonstrate the scientific consensus on climate change and to encourage them not to interfere with the scientific process.

ORIGINAL POST (4 February): Early today, AGU’s former Board member John Bates published a letter outlining what he believes to be mismanagement of climate science data in a highly-cited scientific paper, “Possible artifacts of data biases in the recent global surface warming hiatus” (Tom Karl, et al. 2015). A story about that letter was also published in The Daily Mail, a daily newspaper published in the U.K.

The implications of these pieces will unfold over time, and many questions remain to be answered. What, if any response on AGU’s part will be constructive is yet to be determined. However, I do want you to know that we are very closely monitoring the situation, have considered the possible implications, and will be sharing any new information or response by AGU with you here. We stand ready to be an authoritative resource for Congress and others on climate science, scientific integrity and data.

I also want you to know that, while climate science knowledge is evolving, these reports do not change our fundamental understanding of climate change. The Karl study updated the NOAA global temperature record, but there have been many other studies, using other, independent global temperature records, that have improved our understanding of the climate system and anthropogenic climate change since then. For example, all independent records now show that the past two years were the warmest years on record.

In addition, I want you to know that AGU remains committed to serving as a leader in data and transparency in science. We have long supported open well-managed data in the Earth and space sciences. As indicated in our position statement, these data are a world heritage and should be treated as such. We co-led the development of the Coalition for Publishing Data in the Earth and Space Sciences (COPDESS), which connects Earth and space science publishers and data facilities to help translate the aspirations of open, available, and useful data from policy into practice. And, AGU has developed a Data Management Assessment Program, which helps data repositories, large and small, domain specific to general, use best practices to assess and improve their data management practices.

I know many of you will have concerns or questions about this news, and I strongly encourage you to share those thoughts with us here, or in an email to president@agu.org.

-- another angle on the kerfuffle brouhaha Climategate 2 is provided by the US House Science Committee.

Objectively, the 'roll-out' of Climategate2 has been devised entirely within the Right blob.  In this era of "fake news," that misleading phrase, Climategate 2 is being treated as crime of the century -- unveiled by a whistleblower -- upon the strength of Karl et al's crimes.

-- of course, thirty hours of  bubbling blob hoopla would eventually cross the connectome to the giant hill of beans that is the New York Times. Sigh.

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

** Ars Technica, Zeke Hausfather, Victor Venema, Bates contemporary at NOAA, Peter Thorne. I will add other arguments of similar stature.

Edited by william.scherk
Grrrrrrammar
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Well,  something made the arctic as warm 120,000 ybp as it is now.  Whatever the causes they were not human induced because humans did not have the means 120,000 ybp to modify climate in any measurable way.  There were no inorganic heat engines then.  Humans were doing hunting-gathering then and not cultivated vast areas of the earth thereby altering the albido of the Earth.  So whatever causes made the arctic warm then, they were not human causes.

O.K. whatever these causes (we are not sure what they are)  were operative then,  could they possibly be operative now? 

The bottom line is that the Earth sea-air-land thermodynamic system is far more complicated than we have the means to mathematically analyze the system thoroughly.  Or putting it another way,  our understanding of the system is crude.  Not only that our best and fastest computers could not handle a theoretical mathematical description with high resolution.  How do we know that.  From the inability to produce high resolution solutions to the Navier Stokes equations which theoretically describes all  chaotic dynamic  turbulent systems.  Navier Stokes assumed Newtonian laws operating on continuous media. So far that is our best description of turbulence and  it is too much (in full generality) for our computers to approximate.

There is a one million $$$$ Millenium Prize for anyone who can come up with a general numerical approximation valid at all scales of resolution that is correct and stable.  Basically we can only solve crude low resolution applications of the Navier Stokes equation, right now. 

The earth sea-air-land system is to tough mathematically speaking for us to handle right now,  so the current climate models  are restricted in two ways:

1.  They work at low resolution in space and time

2.  They only model  sub systems of the sea-air-land complex.  It is a well known fact that modeling the subsystems does not necessarily give one a working approximation to the entire system.  The subsystems interact in subtle ways not captured by the models.

This was discovered when computers were first used to design aircraft (which require a model of turbulent flow).  In the big aircraft companies they modeled the wings, the tail, the elevators, the airflow over the fuselage, the airflow through the engines,  etc.  And they modeled each subsystem rather well.  But when the subsystem models were combined they gave poor results.  As a result there had to be a lot of manual cut and try fiddling to get good designs. It could not be computerized in the entirety.  So geniuses like Kelly Johnson had to use intuition to get successful designs.  The SR-71 Black Bird was as much a result of Kelly Johnson's intuition as it was the result of computer modelling. 

And the same sort of infelicity befalls  computer  climate sensitivity models.  The system is way more complicated than any of the models can handle.

And that is why I cannot take the current IPCC models  as gospel. 

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10 hours ago, a word-cloud of Michael Stuart Kelly said:

MSKwordcloud_Karletal.png

 

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4 hours ago, william.scherk said:

Now, what is important, what are people saying, what are the implications of the Bates publication, what 'officially' or in truth is the sum total scandal and probably reckoning for Karl et al? What is the take-home message?

William,

That the climate scientists are whores who sell their integrity to the highest bidder anyone who will give them a paycheck?

I tend to go with that one.

:evil:  :) 

Michael

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3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:
4 hours ago, william.scherk said:
Quote

So how did the Arctic get so warm?

The complexity!

Quote

Answer:  Some set of natural driving processes.  If such processes existed then,  then why not now?

"Some set" and "such processes" is epistemic fudge. The natural triggers, feedbacks, forcings that we understand now were in state X back circa 120k BCE,  may or may not correspond to the complex state Y in the Arctic today. 

Well,  something made the arctic as warm 120,000 ybp as it is now.

Well, Rush Limbaugh said we don't know, we can't know, so there is that. Somehow his knowledge of state X clobbers the silly scientists who claim specialist knowledge of state Y.

In other words, there was nothing in your response that attempt to answer the question, which leaves it pending. In other words, there is nothing yet brought up about what we think we know about the time in question.  It is an interesting question, and I think I can collect some answers. Maybe you can too. Maybe there is some significant difference between the last such arctic warmth as painstakingly understood, and the present excursion.  

I have explained why I focus on the Arctic -- as I think it is a living laboratory that can return data capable of overturning my present beliefs and understandings. 

Bob, please offer some informed layman explanations of the warm Arctic of 120k BCE when and if you take up a project of answering your and Rush's question in more detail.  Maybe we can push that discussion ahead. I am still going to slice and dice the causes and understandings of seasonal weather anomalies up there as I continue to research.

3 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

[W]hatever causes made the arctic warm then, they were not human causes.

It rings true. But the implication is that similar warming today is likely or probably due to entirely non-human causes. That is the null hypothesis to test, not to accept without further ado. Ipso facto, "whatever causes make the arctic warm today, they are not human causes."  As a Lukewarmer, you do not actually support the corollary contention, unless I am mistaken.

But back to giant climate war hoopla opportunities. The party of "Science Reformed" is having some fun today:

Here is an interesting quote from the man of the hour, John Bates ...

 

C4EEBu8VYAEXg01.jpg

Or not.

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2 hours ago, william.scherk said:

 

Well, Rush Limbaugh said we don't know, we can't know, so there is that. Somehow his knowledge of state X clobbers the silly scientists who claim specialist knowledge of state Y.

In other words, there was nothing in your response that attempt to answer the question, which leaves it pending. In other words, there is nothing yet brought up about what we think we know about the time in question.  It is an interesting question, and I think I can collect some answers. Maybe you can too. Maybe there is some significant difference between the last such arctic warmth as painstakingly understood, and the present excursion.  

I have explained why I focus on the Arctic -- as I think it is a living laboratory that can return data capable of overturning my present beliefs and understandings. 

Bob, please offer some informed layman explanations of the warm Arctic of 120k BCE when and if you take up a project of answering your and Rush's question in more detail.  Maybe we can push that discussion ahead. I am still going to slice and dice the causes and understandings of seasonal weather anomalies up there as I continue to research.

It rings true. But the implication is that similar warming today is likely or probably due to entirely non-human causes. That is the null hypothesis to test, not to accept without further ado. Ipso facto, "whatever causes make the arctic warm today, they are not human causes."  As a Lukewarmer, you do not actually support the corollary contention, unless I am mistaken.

But back to giant climate war hoopla opportunities. The party of "Science Reformed" is having some fun today:

Here is an interesting quote from the man of the hour, John Bates ...

 

C4EEBu8VYAEXg01.jpg

Or not.

There is no doubt that some of the CO2 humans add to the atmosphere will cause some warming. The question is how much.  The Alarmists tell us the doom is waiting for us later this century or the next.  Can that be true?  Well, there was a time when the CO2 loading of the atmosphere was between 4000 ppm and 5000 ppm,  or 12 times the current loading.  Did life end on Earth.  No indeed.  In fact it flourished.  If the Earth supported life at 12 times the CO2 load we have now,  why should we believe  the doom and destruction await us  with a CO2 load of 400 ppm?   It does not compute. 

Have a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

 

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3 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

[....]

Link to MSK's post.

WSS asked:

//quote WSS// "Now, what is important, what are people saying, what are the implications of the Bates publication, what 'officially' or in truth is the sum total scandal and probably reckoning for Karl et al? What is the take-home message?" //end quote//

Michael replied:

//quote MSK//  "That the climate scientists are whores who sell their integrity to the highest bidder anyone who will give them a paycheck?

I tend to go with that one." //end quote//

 

I don't go with that as worded, since it makes the sellout look indiscriminate and simply an issue of money.

There's plenty of money to be had, and money is an inducement, but there's also prestige, and - especially with the higher echelon alarmists - ideology.  The usefulness of climate alarm for political goals isn't hard to see.

Ellen

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53 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There is no doubt that some of the CO2 humans add to the atmosphere will cause some warming. The question is how much.  The Alarmists tell us the doom is waiting for us later this century or the next.  Can that be true?  Well, there was a time when the CO2 loading of the atmosphere was between 4000 ppm and 5000 ppm,  or 12 times the current loading.  Did life end on Earth.  No indeed.  In fact it flourished.  If the Earth supported life at 12 times the CO2 load we have now,  why should we believe  the doom and destruction await us  with a CO2 load of 400 ppm?   It does not compute. 

Have a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

Where did you get that "no doubt"? There is doubt.

--Brant

in my head, Jed

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39 minutes ago, Ellen Stuttle said:

I don't go with that as worded...

Ellen,

I didn't say this to be taken as worded.

When I want to gotcha-proof something, I use a different form of speaking.

Call what I did there rhetorical exaggeration and omission with a dose of sex thrown in for spice.

:) 

In other words, I wasn't presenting evidence. I was engaging in a rhetorical way to state a value-judgment. (When Rand, for instance, called modern art a swamp, she wasn't talking literally about a large body of putrid still water. :) Just like I wasn't saying the climate scientists literally were sex workers. :) )

Rhetoric-wise, I am 100% sure I made my point quite accurately.

But let me state it clearly. I have contempt for sell-outs. And the more someone tries to present a group of sell-outs to me as credible experts, ones who I should follow and take seriously, meaning he gives the dodgy cognitive import of the sell-outs' pronouncements a pass, I likewise lower the cognitive import of my own words in judging the sell-outs.

:)

btw - I suppose I could polish my metaphor to include the toadying for prestige and fear propaganda for political gain you referred to. :) 

Michael

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9 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

climate scientists are whores who sell their integrity

This includes Curry, Karl, Venema, Hausfather, and, er, Bates himself.

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3 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

This includes Curry, Karl, Venema, Hausfather, and, er, Bates himself.

William,

I don't care who it includes.

I don't want a dictatorship of technocrats ruling over the world and treating the human race (minus them and their chosen) as lab rats and livestock. And I don't want a path of lies dressed up as science paving the way.

Michael

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1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

btw - I suppose I could polish my metaphor to include the toadying for prestige and fear propaganda for political gain you referred to. :) 

Michael

Yeah, that's my point, Michael, the motivations other than money.  I wasn't objecting to the whore analogy.

I think it's important to recognize the ideological goal, which is strongly sought by many if not all of the ring leaders.  I think that Karl is one who has an ideological goal.  (He's thick with Holdren.)

 

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Rhetoric-wise, I am 100% sure I made my point quite accurately.

But let me state it clearly. I have contempt for sell-outs. And the more someone tries to present a group of sell-outs to me as credible experts, ones who I should follow and take seriously, meaning he gives the dodgy cognitive import of the sell-outs' pronouncements a pass, I likewise lower the cognitive import of my own words in judging the sell-outs.

I understand and empathize.  I noticed, for instance, just glancing through the material William posted, that he cites Gavin Schmidt, as if Schmidt is a source worthy of any credence.

Ellen

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2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

There is no doubt that some of the CO2 humans add to the atmosphere will cause some warming. The question is how much.  The Alarmists tell us the doom is waiting for us later this century or the next.  Can that be true?  Well, there was a time when the CO2 loading of the atmosphere was between 4000 ppm and 5000 ppm,  or 12 times the current loading.  Did life end on Earth.  No indeed.  In fact it flourished.  If the Earth supported life at 12 times the CO2 load we have now,  why should we believe  the doom and destruction await us  with a CO2 load of 400 ppm?   It does not compute. 

Have a look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere#/media/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png

 

Why the link to a crappy WIKI article infested with PC CChangers?

--Brant

are you afraid of these peoples?

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1 hour ago, Brant Gaede said:

Where did you get that "no doubt"? There is doubt.

--Brant

in my head, Jed

Back in the 19 th century Fourier and Tyndall proved experimentally that atmospheric CO2 will slow down radiation of heat into space.  It is analogous to the action of a blanket.  However there are feedbacks that may mitigate the extent of the warming.  For example, cloud formation which can shade the earth from the sunlight to some extent.  The clouds at high level  increase the albido or reflectivity of the Earth.  Reflected light will not reach the ground to warm it.

So climate modeling really comes down to understanding cloud formation and the feedbacks.  Neither of which is that well understood at this time. Some of the lukewarmers estimate that if we raise the CO2 load to 450 ppm it will increase the average temperature by less than half a degree C. This is a much lower estimate that the Alarmists make.  At these point we do not know for sure, but there is no doubt the CO2 does have retarding effect on the rate what which IR radiation is radiated into space. That part is real.  

 

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6 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Why the link to a crappy WIKI article infested with PC CChangers?

--Brant

are you afraid of these peoples?

No. It had a graph of prior CO2 concentrations.  Look at the historical graph. We used have much higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and the Earth did not turn into Venus. I am a data wonk.  Fear has no place in my thinking.  My first, last and middle concern is facts and logic.  Fear is for the Normal people. I am not Normal. 

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1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Back in the 19 th century Fourier and Tyndall proved experimentally that atmospheric CO2 will slow down radiation of heat into space.  It is analogous to the action of a blanket.  However there are feedbacks that may mitigate the extent of the warming.  For example, cloud formation which can shade the earth from the sunlight to some extent.  The clouds at high level  increase the albido or reflectivity of the Earth.  Reflected light will not reach the ground to warm it.

So climate modeling really comes down to understanding cloud formation and the feedbacks.  Neither of which is that well understood at this time. Some of the lukewarmers estimate that if we raise the CO2 load to 450 ppm it will increase the average temperature by less than half a degree C. This is a much lower estimate that the Alarmists make.  At these point we do not know for sure, but there is no doubt the CO2 does have retarding effect on the rate what which IR radiation is radiated into space. That part is real. 

We're talking about the effect of human-added CO2.

Or we were until you switched.

--Brant

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1 hour ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Back in the 19 th century Fourier and Tyndall proved experimentally that atmospheric CO2 will slow down radiation of heat into space.  It is analogous to the action of a blanket.  However there are feedbacks that may mitigate the extent of the warming.  For example, cloud formation which can shade the earth from the sunlight to some extent.  The clouds at high level  increase the albido or reflectivity of the Earth.  Reflected light will not reach the ground to warm it.

So climate modeling really comes down to understanding cloud formation and the feedbacks.  Neither of which is that well understood at this time. Some of the lukewarmers estimate that if we raise the CO2 load to 450 ppm it will increase the average temperature by less than half a degree C. This is a much lower estimate that the Alarmists make.  At these point we do not know for sure, but there is no doubt the CO2 does have retarding effect on the rate what which IR radiation is radiated into space. That part is real. 

How could they do that without doing that?

--Brant

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