Global Warming - Moved

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: I'm not sure about the

Message 93233 in response to message 93232

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I'm not sure about the absolute numbers (I can't even tell for sure where I've read it (probably Scientific American):-), but what I recall is that it wasn't about stopping the Gulf Stream but about creating a "short circuit" somewhere on its way.


Yep. The rough idea with the thermohaline-circulation is salinity changes altering water density. Hence increased surface evaporation will alter that and that gives the global warming nexus in the modelling. But the water has to get somewhere near the surface for that. I find it amazing that the superficial leg of the conveyor now has water that was miles deep in the time of Henry the Eighth, say.

Quote:
But what I really intended to say is that "global warming" doesn't mean that it gets warmer everywhere at the same time.


Absolutely. Therein lies a tale .... :-)

The 'original' GW hypotheses from the 1970's were mainly concerned and focused on increased tropical to polar heat transfer. Indeed some variants had an overall lowering of global temperatures ( averaged over all latitudes ) but an increased vigour in the storms, like hurricanes, that generally begin around the equator ( and seasonal for sure ) and move away from there. Personally I reckon this is the origin of the linguistic disconnect/confusion that we now suffer with the phrases 'global warming' and 'climate change' - which currently are ridiculous simplicities ( or are presented as such ) that obfuscate and not illuminate the issues.

FWIW I reckon the current colder weather is about right in the timelines post Icelandic eruptions, much like what is already well documented for prior volcanic events like Pinatubo, Etna, Krakatoa etc.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Sorry I was thinking of Vesuvius in 1944 ( not Etna ). But that is less defined, a World War rather distracted study - plus since Europe was being turned into bomb crater also, then there were other reasons for atmospheric particulates.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Rod
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I think this frames the

I think this frames the problem why these conferences fail

Coal and Cancun

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

mikey
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RE: I think this frames the

Message 93235 in response to message 93234

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I think this frames the problem why these conferences fail

Coal and Cancun

Part of the advantage of coal as a power source is the availability of it, it is EVERYWHERE while oil is not. Coal is mined and although not cheap it is cheaper than oil to obtain and store. Coal DOES produce emissions, as does everything else we use to produce energy. Even solar and wind produce emissions, they just do it in the manufacturing of the parts stage, as opposed to the production of the energy phase. The car that runs on compressed air has emissions, they are just emitted in the compression of the air phase. NO I am NOT saying burning coal is the same, I am just saying that everything has emissions and costs of obtaining the fuel have to be considered. China is expanding at an enormous rate in its citizens coming into the age of using more and more energy. There are places in China that are getting electricity that have no idea what to do with it, how many Countries can say that. Some Chinese people still live in what most of us would call VERY primitive conditions!! In order to bring them closer to the 21st Century and make China a better Country it can't be done at a slow steady pace, it must be done as fast as possible so the nay-sayers don't have a chance to weigh in and ruin everything! Ala the Coastal Communities in Mike Hewson's example. Yes the US has a point, no I do not think it is a valid one in the long run, but switching from one technology to another is far from cheap and today there is not alot of extra money floating around waiting to be invested for things like replacing perfectly good power plants!

Personally I would like to see small nuclear plants, ala submarine or ship size, utilized instead of building something the size of a small island that can supply power to 2 gillion homes! The energy loss in the feeder lines is HUGE and the money to maintain those distribution lines is enormous!! Smaller easier to maintain systems, almost but not quite on a community by community size, is my thought. Yes it does mean that when your local plant is down you will need to be connected to a bigger power plant, but we need to figure out how to reduce the loss in transmitting that energy. That way the bigger ones can be used to power bigger areas without the current loss, providing more reserve without making new plants. Of course that can then produce its own set of problems, but emissions would not be one of them.

Mike Hewson
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RE: Personally I would like

Message 93236 in response to message 93235

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Personally I would like to see small nuclear plants, ala submarine or ship size, utilized instead of building something the size of a small island that can supply power to 2 gillion homes! The energy loss in the feeder lines is HUGE and the money to maintain those distribution lines is enormous!! Smaller easier to maintain systems, almost but not quite on a community by community size, is my thought. Yes it does mean that when your local plant is down you will need to be connected to a bigger power plant, but we need to figure out how to reduce the loss in transmitting that energy. That way the bigger ones can be used to power bigger areas without the current loss, providing more reserve without making new plants. Of course that can then produce its own set of problems, but emissions would not be one of them.


There's a good deal of merit in some 'new' reactor designs, but I'm not sure how well they scale down. The pebble bed reactor is a neat one, where the geometry of the fuel elements obviates 'meltdown' worries. Thorium cycle reactors are being looked at again - the U232 that you might get to make a bomb can't go critical by itself and fuel rod sintering can make extraction nearly impossible, and most of the actinide elements ( the shorter lived 'hot' stuff ) burns off in the core.

I say 'new' but they're not really, most of this technology goes back ~ 40 years. I guess there's been a recent rethink. But of course nuclear = Voldemort to many, and I think the Jane Fonda School of Nuclear Engineering is still issuing degrees.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Beware Wikipaedia on the nuclear energy topic. My casual read shows a few glaring errors and omissions, probably not bias per se .... but with the recent edit wars there on global warming, well ??

( edit ) China is reasonably similiar to say the English Midlands in the 19th century. It's worth mentioning the substantial health cost they are suffering. There are youth arriving at the age of 20 with emphysema from the chronic breathing of burnt coal during childhood. Beijing airport is one of the few places in the world where planes routinely land purely using instrument/radar approaches ( elsewhere generally used for night and bad weather ) in daytime due to the smog. An acquaintance of mine went there with the Aussie Olympic team - none of them could stop coughing or even think straight because of the foul air ....

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Mike Hewson
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I had a look around the

I had a look around the RealClimate site ( ie. AGW Central, midway along the CRU to IPCC policy pipe ) to see what may be different there c/w the ( long ) time since I last looked. Well .... a mixed bag. I recommend to you all to see what the horse is saying, and if any of you have doubts about the veracity of my reporting : you can crosscheck me! See what common view-ability does? Some highlights :

- you can now download the data that CRU had previously prevented disclosure of by court action.

- admission that Dr Jones's acceptance of less than 95% confidence interval in claiming ( temperature rise since 1996 ) trend was wrong. They now seek/prefer 30 year timelines. Mind you that also helps to buffer out the recent cooling trend too. In any case that is basically back to 1980 and before now, so that places even more pressure on the tree/dendritic proxy problem.

- they've published a cumulative error analysis for their models, that is : what is the summed difference b/w what they predicted annually vs. what actually happened ( over about the last decade ). Sobering reading. One very notable example was a +0.06 degree ( Celsius ) trend with an error bar of ~ +/- 1.5 degrees! A so-called trend prediction with an error range of greater than ~ 2000 % of the alleged effect .... wow! Specifically it could ( according to them, within the legitimate ranges they have defined - so please skip the conspiracy theories on this one ) be from -1.44 to + 1.56. This crosses the axis, so becomes a literal coin flip on whether you use the word 'cooling' or 'warming' to summarise/describe. No prizes for guessing their choice .... and they had not previously emphasised another ( model result ) that was for about -0.08 degrees with a similiar error range. It is this sort of statistical trash that gets morphed into popular culture as a 'scientific result'.

- there's a guy, one of the scientists, called 'adrian' I think, who is really quite lucid and factual. Discusses concerns they have about modelling and data validation quite openly. Even slaps some of the ( pro AGW, discussion board ) contributors for misrepresenting/misquoting/selectivity in literature citations!

- you'd be brave to enter the open discussion boards though, unless you're prepared to (a) believe AGW is true and will always say that regardless (b) join in the group head-kicking inflicted on those with even the slightest of 'denial' tendencies. A real hard core GroupThink study - which they now deny as applying to them, as they've discovered others are using that phrase to describe them of course, so they have slipped a case into the policy/mantra to cover that. One thread was even discussing more aggressive moderation policy to exclude those who disagree ( as threads were "being polluted by denier's" ), a 'wall of shame' page to display the 'worst examples of denial' and scoring of posts to facilitate ( a little red-x button on steroids ). They don't seem to have capacity for self reflection ie. attempt to view themselves as others might.

- they've 'officially' banned political commentary, as we only do science here thank you very much, and we will moderate as such. Except not in practise. There is no shortage of such posts, oddly only of pro AGW stance. Evidently deducing danger and thus informing others of the Carbon Evil is a proper scientific role, while not the converse naturally as that has no basis in fact. :-)

- the IPCC has recently mandated that all models must have 'zero discrepancy residuals', a way of saying that the models must fit the data. Alas not specifying which should do the adjusting. The model to the data? Or the data to the model? A cynic might say that is code for 'get your stories straight' ..... :-)

Yet again, I say, this is all their own work as they have disclosed. Do not take my word what-so-ever for a single thing. Go check it out. The real head spinner for me is that they clearly believe these sorts of behaviours, standards of proof etc constitute science.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

mikey
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RE: The real head spinner

Message 93238 in response to message 93237

Quote:

The real head spinner for me is that they clearly believe these sorts of behaviours, standards of proof etc constitute science.

Cheers, Mike.

Did you see the NASA revelation about 'life not as we know it' the other day? Apparently it was all made in the laboratory and not 'discovered' at all and in fact may be not true at all!! Apparently they took a small normal everyday thing and deprived it of a phosphate diet and then started feeding it an arsenic diet and it thrived. Well in the deprivation stage they actually removed stuff, think in a petri dish under an electron microscope, and added the arsenic stuff. Well it turns out their was obvious contamination and there in fact was enough phosphate left that the little creature could in fact not be living but instead be only TOLERATING the arsenic!! Also there was NO peer review of the whole thing before the presentation and no when questioned about the methods and procedures, the original Scientists and presenters have clammed up and are refusing to comment! Sounds like they did NOT learn from the Climate folks problems at all!!
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-critics-nasa-arsenic-bacteria.html?utm_source=ft&utm_medium=twitter

ML1
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RE: RE: The real head

Message 93239 in response to message 93238

Quote:
Quote:

The real head spinner for me is that they clearly believe these sorts of behaviours, standards of proof etc constitute science.

Cheers, Mike.

Did you see the NASA revelation about 'life not as we know it' the other day? Apparently it was all made in the laboratory and not 'discovered' at all and in fact may be not true at all!! Apparently they took a small normal everyday thing and deprived it of a phosphate diet and then started feeding it an arsenic diet and it thrived. Well in the deprivation stage they actually removed stuff, think in a petri dish under an electron microscope, and added the arsenic stuff. Well it turns out their was obvious contamination and there in fact was enough phosphate left that the little creature could in fact not be living but instead be only TOLERATING the arsenic!! Also there was NO peer review of the whole thing before the presentation and no when questioned about the methods and procedures, the original Scientists and presenters have clammed up and are refusing to comment! Sounds like they did NOT learn from the Climate folks problems at all!!
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-critics-nasa-arsenic-bacteria.html?utm_source=ft&utm_medium=twitter

Note how for that example, it is the scientists themselves quickly and strongly questioning the news media frenzy and the original results. Peer review in action, as it should be. And all despite a sensationalist press.

The biggest problem for discussing global warming and its causes is the arbitrary rhetoric and FUD that quickly pollutes any reasoned discussion into a quagmire of senselessness.

Quoting singular examples, you can quote anything you like. Just as you can conjure up anything you like with the Bible Code or Von Danikan or whatever...

One good question is:

Where is the evidence that we can industrially pollute the (very finite) atmosphere with the burning of thousands of years of fossil fuels, and NOT see any changes to the atmosphere and our environment?

Just as with an old fashioned set of balance scales, can we change the weight acting on one side without any visible change?...

It's our only planet,
Martin

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Mike Hewson
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RE: One good question

Message 93240 in response to message 93239

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One good question is:

Where is the evidence that we can industrially pollute the (very finite) atmosphere with the burning of thousands of years of fossil fuels, and NOT see any changes to the atmosphere and our environment?


Well we have seen such changes, and they generally are agreed to be to due to our industrial pollution and other human activities. I didn't think that was contended. I think the evidence is that the world was a cleaner place before about the 1800's, based on good data. Given that we thus don't have a 'no change' data set for the last few centuries ( the trends are clear - 'dirtier' ), then I'm not sure where your question leads. Is that what you meant?

In my understanding the scientific queries in climatology are related to specific cause and effect linkages, relative magnitudes etc in the setting of a complex system which models struggle to predict. My concerns with CRU etc is that I don't see much of the required intellectual attitudes/mechanisms in place that I believe would be needed to make good progress on that. The changes I've seen at the RealClimate site I think indicate the ClimateGate stuff has probably induced some rethink at CRU about their processes - I could be wrong of course!

Please go to these sites and have a good browse. See what they are saying about their own efforts - that way you don't have worry about right wing conspiracies, spin from other parties etc. Judge for yourself.

Quote:
Just as with an old fashioned set of balance scales, can we change the weight acting on one side without any visible change?...


What gives me the real heebie jeebies is stuff we haven't thought of yet, much less with visible/measurable changes. All the more reason to be rigorous in our approach .....

Quote:
our only planet


I agree, and there's been many reasons disclosed since industrialisation began for such care. We have been collectively very irresponsible, and there were already excellent reasons for reducing hydrocarbon dependence before the global CO2 issues were raised. My concerns relate to our response to that, which is why I'm not very forgiving of poor scientific process in this area. I know climatologists are human too, but the CRU group seems to have created most of their own intellectual difficulties ( judging by their own disclosures ) and I'm obviously not happy about that. The issues are too important to accept that.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

ML1
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RE: ... induced some

Message 93241 in response to message 93240

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... induced some rethink at CRU about their processes...

What gives me the real heebie jeebies is stuff we haven't thought of yet, much less with visible/measurable changes. All the more reason to be rigorous in our approach .....

... the CRU group seems to have created most of their own intellectual difficulties ... The issues are too important to accept that.


Is your concern solely with the statistics and methods as used by the CRU?

What is the story if the ENTIRE DATASET from CRU is abandoned and discarded?

My understanding is that a lot of the residual controversy concerns how tree growth data from a particular dataset is interpreted by the CRU... (Just one dataset out of many.) Trees grow at a rate that depends on the type of tree and also for how their environment is favourable or otherwise conducive to growth. A commonly made observation is that the growth rate follows temperature. However, the question is always whether that is always or reliably the case...

What does the CRU data show if you exclude just the 'contentious' data?

Regards,
Martin

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Mike Hewson
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RE: Is your concern solely

Message 93242 in response to message 93241

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Is your concern solely with the statistics and methods as used by the CRU?

What is the story if the ENTIRE DATASET from CRU is abandoned and discarded?

My understanding is that a lot of the residual controversy concerns how tree growth data from a particular dataset is interpreted by the CRU... (Just one dataset out of many.) Trees grow at a rate that depends on the type of tree and also for how their environment is favourable or otherwise conducive to growth. A commonly made observation is that the growth rate follows temperature. However, the question is always whether that is always or reliably the case...

What does the CRU data show if you exclude just the 'contentious' data?


I can tell that you haven't been to their site. It is CRU that is disturbed by it's statistics and methods. I'm just reporting on CRU's own self evaluation. So you should definitely go to the source. You can also check out the accuracy of my reporting of it too, given that you evidently dislike what I say. I really haven't the energy to temper your disbelief :-) :-)

I reckon you're annoyed & upset, like many, because you followed a 'good thought' ( don't crap in your own nest ), got emotionally attached to it and also manipulated via that - and you may not have recognised that - but nature has simply contradicted. A key group of scientists in the field have in my opinion responded very poorly to what is in plain sight, but maybe they are learning. Who can say? Maybe I'll look again in another few years, though I'm certainly not trembling with anticipation for the fall of the next drop of wisdom from that fount. :-) :-)

Are you aware that I've said before ( we've been knocking this thread around for ages ) that I think that AGW is probably true, but that we need to work out it's true magnitude? So I don't have a problem with the AGW hypothesis being proposed, it's crap science I'm objecting too. I'm not some sneaky 'denier' either, pretending to be otherwise. I'm quite conservation minded in thinking and practice. Alot of people DownUnda are, and are baffled by the almost religious 'splitting' ( if you are not with me, you are against me ) that this topic induces - not withstanding alliances with other agendas. Even the worst predictions on the AGW side are still dwarfed by many other problems, which need group efforts to solve - co-operation that should not be prejudiced by a rather lesser matter.

As for what happens if you remove contentious ( or any ) data, then you simply get a subsequent line of analysis that refers to a reduced representation of reality. We're just discussing the same error over and over, nature is telling us something & good science tracks that - poor science discards real signals wherever that leads - and ought not be relegated to the phrase 'residual controversy'.

You're well and truly missing the core issue of the tree ring problem. It's not that they suddenly became 'bad thermometers' by reading spuriously/randomly : they consistently and world wide diametrically disagreed with our 'artificial' thermometers ( which annoyed the CRU guys to the extent that they excluded it, and later were caught fudging that to some depth within their practices ). So to extricate from that you need to think of and study factors that are common to trees world-wide. We have those factors already - temperature and CO2. Given that no one has seen a tree reduce it's growth rate in the presence of more CO2 ( other factors held equal ) then since CO2 has gone UP why have the growth rates gone DOWN as we know they do with reduced temperature? So we either find/invoke another ( not temperature and not purely local ) confounding factor(s) that cause trees to grow less when there is more CO2 OR we query our thermometers. We should do both of course. Maybe the 'quality' of sunlight ( a solar or atmospheric change altering the detailed spectrum as experienced on the ground ) is different, after all photosynthesis is key to plant growth, as they 'eat' light. What we shouldn't do is pretend the issue is minor/trivial, or worse simply discard, since subsequent analysis ( ie. did the temperatures actually go up or down since ~ 1960 ) absolutely depends on it.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) The point of doing world-wide tree ring analysis was to remove the effect of local factors - a one-tree, one-valley, one-region or one-continent points of view - leaving a global signal to examine. That showed a nett slowing of growth in the relevant time periods. Also if you choose to throw out tree ring data altogether ( as a scientific tool ) that thus means for way distant times too - including those medieval times which form the 'colder' baseline for the AGW hypothesis.

Unless one wishes to say that trees as thermometers are crap only recently, but were great a few hundred years ago. Or choosing some other distant proxy measure but rejecting it's use for recent times ( that's been tried too ). We have the golden opportunity of having both 'artificial' and proxy measures present for the same historical period ( recently ), in order to calibrate one against the other ( thus extending utility to other epochs ). Current analysis indicates measuring sticks pointing in opposite directions, certainly not merely requiring some 'residual' adjustment. I think the hype has obscured this with the effect of downplaying it.

This is the level of tangling you get into when you try to recover a bad theory that gets contradicted by data. Some have tossed the data, some have tossed the theory, and some have tossed doing science.

( edit ) Would it help if I pointed you to the parts of the RealClimate site that I'm referring to? It is a big site, but alas I didn't bookmark the parts I'm drawing upon now, when I was browsing at the time ..... :-)

( edit ) Oh I've just realised what you may be thinking! It's not the case that the data is clear just by glancing at it ( well, no climate scientists are claiming that ), with statistics merely summarising some self-evident trend for publication. The data is awfully messy and statistical tools are being used to make sense of it, which is why so many 'proxy measures' like tree rings are being used or sought and tested. So when you examine the AGW ( or any other climate ) claim that is the same thing as examining the statistical issues involved, because the claim is ( currently ) statistically based and lacks an easier verification or refutation. All scientists in the debate, that I'm aware of, are acutely concerned about how to reliably untangle stuff. It's when the discussion 'goes to the streets' so to speak, that things become right/wrong/definite/left/right/black&white/get-stuffed by over-simplification and discarding of earnest worries about the derivation.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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