loafer

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/22/is-catastrophic-global-warming-like-the-millenium-bug-a-mistake/#dsq-content Is catastrophic global warming, like the Millennium Bug, a mistake? By Simon Carr Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - Wednesday, 22 February 2012 at 10:29 pm At a public meeting in the Commons, the climate scientist Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT made a number of declarations that unsettle the claim that global warming is backed by “settled scienceâ€. They’re not new, but some of them were new to me. Over the last 150 years CO2 (or its equivalents) has doubled. This has been accompanied by a rise in temperature of seven or eight tenths of a degree centigrade. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change attributes half this increase to human activity. Lindzen says: “Claims that the earth has been warming, that there is a Greenhouse Effect, and that man’s activity have contributed to warming are trivially true but essentially meaningless.†He said our natural body temperature varies by eight tenths of a degree. He showed a Boston newspaper weather graphic for a day – it had the actual temperature against a background of the highest and lowest recorded temperature for that day. The difference was as much as 60 degrees F. When you double CO2 there’s a two per cent change in the “radiation budgetâ€. Yet two billion years ago, the sun was 20 to 30 per cent dimmer – and the planet’s temperature was about the same. The Al Gore graph showing CO2 and temperature rising and falling in tandem showed that the release of CO2 from the oceans was prompted by warming, not vice versa. He gave us a slide with a series of familiar alarms – melting ice caps, disappearing icebergs, receding glaciers, rising sea levels. It was published by the US Weather Bureau in 1922. And one further element of the consensus: there’s been no increase in temperature for 15 years. He concluded with an exposition of science that, frankly, I didn’t follow. However, the reliability and explanatory power of climate models was satirised convincingly. And I found myself believing – or accepting the possibility – that warming would reduce rather than increase tropical storms. He also said that the IPCC needs “positive feedback mechanisms†to justify anything above a one degree C increase in their predictions. But: “Observation points to small negative feedbacks.†How to explain the procession of eminent opinion leaders – some even in our own Royal Society – who advance the tenets of catastrophic global warming? “It is science in the service of politics,†he said. If Lindzen is right, we will never be able to calculate the trillions that have been spent on the advice of “scientists in the service of politicsâ€.

Thanks. The Three Degrees section appears to contradict the use of 4.2 degrees, vis; Three degrees as the consensus estimate A committee on anthropogenic global warming convened in 1979 by the National Academy of Sciences and chaired by Jule Charney[10] estimated climate sensitivity to be 3 °C, plus or minus 1.5 °C. Only two sets of models were available; one, due to Syukuro Manabe, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 2 °C, the other, due to James E. Hansen, exhibited a climate sensitivity of 4 °C. "According to Manabe, Charney chose 0.5 °C as a not-unreasonable margin of error, subtracted it from Manabe’s number, and added it to Hansen’s. Thus was born the 1.5 °C-to-4.5 °C range of likely climate sensitivity that has appeared in every greenhouse assessment since..."[14] Chapter 4 of the "Charney report" compares the predictions of the models: "We conclude that the predictions ... are basically consistent and mutually supporting. The differences in model results are relatively small and may be accounted for by differences in model characteristics and simplifying assumptions."[10] The 1990 IPCC First Assessment Report estimated that equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling lay between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, with a "best guess in the light of current knowledge" of 2.5 °C [15]. This used models with strongly simplified representations of the ocean dynamics. The IPCC supplementary report, 1992 which used full ocean GCMs nonetheless saw "no compelling reason to warrant changing" from this estimate [16] and the IPCC Second Assessment Report found that "No strong reasons have emerged to change" these estimates[17], with much of the uncertainty attributed to cloud processes. As noted above, the IPCC TAR retained the 1.5 to 4.5 °C, and the AR4 tightened it slightly to 2 to 4.5 °C with a best estimate of about 3 °C. In 2008 climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf wrote, regarding the Charney report's original range of uncertainty: "At that time, this range was on very shaky ground. Since then, many vastly improved models have been developed by a number of climate research centers around the world. Current state-of-the-art climate models span a range of 2.6–4.1 °C, most clustering around 3 °C."[9] Any idea why such a high figure was used, when it contradicted the "agreed consensus"?

Interesting. I wonder if anyone has done a graph showing how estimates of sensitivity to CO2 have changed over the years and whether that trend is likely to continue or reverse?

...you'd be a millionaire.

No, because it is a calculation of correlations between two datasets. Certainly the datasets could be right or wrong, but the paper itself doesn't opine on that. By comparison, estimated adjustments of a subset of variables in a complex climate system and drawing meaningful conclusions on their impact on the future is fictional. Lack of validation of historical models and a complete turnaround on short-medium term forecasts clearly demonstrates that. Or have the models suddenly, miraculously, become accurate? Did I miss that?

That is because we know how much ice there is and we know how much the ice weighs, so it is a comparatively simple mathematical calculation. By contrast, trying to adjust for the relative variables contributing (or not) to possible future outcomes is like trying to drive a car with a blindfold on. It might just work, but it's chuffing unlikely.

Surely the difference is that the adjustment of barometric readings for altitude is a matter of actual mathematical fact, not something which is "estimated"?

"When the data are adjusted to remove the estimated impact of known factors..." Shouldn't this be in the fiction section, then?

As a reminder, my post from the 27th December on the Antarctic Ice Thread explaining how a similar calculation there was less than scary... "To put the 10.4 gigatons of ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet per year into context; 10.4 billion tons of ice is equivalent to 9.43 cubic km. It is estimated that the ice sheet is 25.4 million cubic km. The loss is therefore .000037161% of the ice sheet per annum since 2006. Funny how a gigaton doesn't seem quite so scary suddenly... Full calculation is here; 10.4 gigatons 1,000,000,000.00 tons 10,400,000,000.00 ton loss per annum since 2006 2,000.00 lbs in a ton 20,800,000,000,000.00 lbs loss per annum since 2006 62.40 lbs in a cubic foot of ice 333,333,333,333.33 cubic feet of ice loss per annum since 2006 0.0283168466 cubic metres per cubic foot 9438948866.66667 cubic metres loss per annum since 2006 0.000000001 cubic km to m conversion 9.4389488667 cubic km loss per annum since 2006 25400000 total ice sheet 0.000037161% percentage of ice sheet lost per annum since 2006"

That's exactly what he said, to be fair.

No. I'm the same. Thankfully, Mrs Loafer is as obsessed as me. We're known as Mr & Mrs McCaskill by our friends when the snow comes...mind you, they always ask our advice!

Jolly glad to hear that, old chap. ;-)

http://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfs/accumulation-precipitations/42h.htm This gives a good guide of the snow depths for the SE after the front goes through... Ha! Not very...surely if you have a lampost outside, you are too close to the road... ;-)

I'm guessing, judging by the number of posts, that he might just live under a bridge.

What westward movement - the models have moved it eastwards....?!

Looks like a Kent Streamer...

Interesting - I wonder what their conclusions will be once they analyse the cores and understand how the transfer of warmth via oceanic flows might affect the models.

Ah! YouTube is blocked at my office. Thanks.

G-W - Is there an image missing from your post - all I can see is a blank space and the words "sat measurements of methane the past 10 Novembers.?" I was going to make a joke about it making more sense than most of your posts, but I wouldn't want you to think I was being serious!

Do you mean the models which predicted rising global temperatures which even the IPCC say will not happen for the forseeable? Or do you mean the other models they could have used which will come out with different results?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2012/solar-output-research That the 20th century saw a "solar maximum" and the 21st will see the reverse is interesting. Of course the nasty CO2 makes it largely irrelevant. Apparently. Thank goodness the models are so accurate.

Very interesting - thanks.

As you say, a one sided column, but there have been so many the other way around, including all of Richard Black's output in the BBC. We need objectivity on both sides of the argument and more reliance on science.

The difference is that we know how water flows and we know the exact effect of gravity. Whilst I don't agree with the "you can't possibly predict" views above, I would contend that the margin of error and probability of outcome of climate models is so large as to "lost in the noise", a quote you will recognise from the latest IPCC report.

Forget cold. What on earth would we eat?!