Actually, Weather Is Climate
Sure is cold out there, unusually so. By “unusual,” I mean the temperature is on the low end of the observed temperatures from previous winters.
Of course, we don’t have any more than about 100 years of reliable measurements, so it’s possible that the freeze we’re experiencing now isn’t as unusual as we suspect. But, anyway, it still sure is cold.
If you recall, a lot of global warming models predicted it would be hot and not cold, and to risk redundancy, it sure is cold. Does this dissonance between the models’ predictions and what is actually happening mean that those models are wrong?
No. But it sure as ice doesn’t mean that they are right.
Here’s the thing: No matter how cold the winter is, no matter how much snow falls, the global warming models will not be disproved. In technical language, they cannot be falsified by the observations.
Another way to say this is that the winter we’re seeing is consistent with what the models have been predicting. Again — does this consistency mean that the models are right and that the theories of man-made warming are true?
No.
Consistency is such a weak criterion that almost any imaginable theory of climate will produce predictions that are consistent with observations. The term is probabilistic: It means that what actually happens had to have some chance of occurring according to a model. If global warming climate models said, “It is impossible that this winter will see temperatures below X,” and temperatures did, in fact, drop below this threshold, then the models would be inconsistent with the observations. The model would be falsified.
But global warming climate models never make statements like that. They say that any temperature is possible, even if this possibility is low. Certain temperatures have probabilities as low as you like, but they are never precisely zero. (To anticipate an objection: “that number was practically zero” is logically equivalent to “she was practically a virgin.”)
Man-made global warming is just one of many possible theories of climate. Another is the Business-as-Usual Theory (BUT), which states that whatever happened last year will more or less happen this year, and so on into the future.
The winter we’re seeing is consistent with the BUT, which like the man-made global warming theory, never says any temperature is impossible. Further, BUT is corroborated more strongly by this winter than is the man-made warming theory. BUT’s predictions are closer to what we actually see.
“Stop right there, Briggs! You’re making the classical mistake of confusing weather with climate. The global warming models make predictions of climate and not weather. This winter doesn’t mean anything!”
I am not making that mistake, and it is you who are confused. Weather is climate. More specifically, aggregations of weather are climate. Means, averages, and distributions of daily weather comprise climate. That is, climate is a statistical phenomenon and depends for its existence on defining a reference time frame.
For instance, if “climate” is defined as the yearly mean temperature, then this year’s cold winter will produce a yearly mean temperature that is colder than average (as long as the coming summer isn’t abnormally hot: winter, of course, overlaps two calendar years and a hot summer can balance out a cold winter in the yearly mean).
So it is appropriate to point to this year’s frigidity as evidence that the theory of man-made global warming is suspect. If “climate” is defined as the decadal mean temperature, then this year’s cold winter will push the decadal mean lower. And it is still acceptable to point to this year’s winter as evidence against the man-made global warming theory.
Just as it was appropriate when the media trumpeted each and every “record setting high!” as evidence for that theory.
The difference is that one day’s temperature has little influence on a yearly mean — it is just one out of 365 other numbers that make up the average. One day’s temperature is thus weak evidence for or against any theory of climate.
But a slew of months with higher- or lower-than-average temperatures will push that yearly mean higher or lower. A season’s mean temperature is stronger evidence for or against any climate theory than is a day’s.
Back in the 1990s, when the yearly mean temperatures were increasing, this was touted as evidence for the man-made global warming — but those years’ temperatures also corroborated the Business-as-Usual theory. Which theory was better?
For the past decade, we have had a string of years with mostly decreasing temperatures. This is strong evidence against the man-made global warming theory, but pretty good testimony for the BUT. So far, the BUT theory is winning on points (there are other climate theories the BUT doesn’t beat). This doesn’t mean that BUT is true and that the man-made global warming theory is false, but it does suggest that this is so.
You can’t have it both ways. It is a mistake to extol evidence that supports the man-made global warming theory and to cry foul when presented with evidence which weakens that theory.
That so many do this says more about their desires than it does about any theory of climate.
If you recall, a lot of global warming models predicted it would be hot and not cold, and to risk redundancy, it sure is cold. Does this dissonance between the models’ predictions and what is actually happening mean that those models are wrong?
No. But it sure as ice doesn’t mean that they are right.
Here’s the thing: No matter how cold the winter is, no matter how much snow falls, the global warming models will not be disproved. In technical language, they cannot be falsified by the observations.
Another way to say this is that the winter we’re seeing is consistent with what the models have been predicting. Again — does this consistency mean that the models are right and that the theories of man-made warming are true?
No.
Pure baffle gab. The models predicted that temperatures would continue rising as CO2 rose. They haven’t. And it’s not just this year that’s cold, it’s been colder than “normal” for the last 4 years. The models did not predict this cooling. The models are wrong. The warming over the past 20 years is a mere 0.28 degrees C. The theory of AGW has been disproved.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
We should stop pretending we understand enough about what drives climate that we can make definitive statements about it (with the exception of this one).
…..all you say is right and sensible of course but there is another aspect to the conceptual that you might like to ponder.
Just as in considering ecology we have to realise that you can hug a tree but you cant hug an ecosystem, cos ecosystems dont exist as such, they are artifacts of ecologists. So in atmospheric science you cant hug climate, so to speak.
Now this has important implications for the design of testable propositions and thus what sorts of things we can say about things. And I believe this also has something to do with what you are writing about. No??
Actually we have temps after the 1980 time period. We use satellite gathered readings and they have been around only 30 years.
When a “scientist” gives a model or forcast that is wrong, we must toss their offering in the trash.
The 2nd Fact Of Life; “Big things are made of small things. Small things are made of smaller thing, and so on ad infinitum.”
We need a REAL experiment, not a computer model.
Have the AGW nutters use their model to figure out how much CO2 has to be released to bump the Mean temperature x degrees over t period of time.
Then release it. If the model prove accurate, then there is a problem. If it doesn’t, then we will have more observations to fine tune the theory with.
It’s called the scientific method.
Karl Popper in the 1930s made the fundamental assertion that scientific hypotheses –not theories, for which proof exists– must in principle be “falsifiable” by empirical, experimental means. Since “climate study” is akin to botany, necessarily a descriptive rather than experimental discipline, its hypothetical AGW and other contentious theses are not science but “mere opinion”, agenda-driven interpretations of selected data-sets extrapolated by various abstract statistical techniques.
This renders any conclusions by Climate Cultists’ Green Gang of Briffa, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Trenberth et al. an unwarranted Argument from Authority, by Stipulation (“it’s true because we Ascended Masters say it is”). Ya gotta Believe– think of the catastrophic consequences if you don’t! Of course, this begs the question… garbage in/garbage out (GIGO) is no basis for rationally assessing anything. Egregious deceit and outright, willful fraud reduces Warmists’ bleats and squeaks to self-serving propaganda of the worst ideologically biased kind.
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in fact is mathematically and physically impossible. First, as Edward Lorenz’s Chaos Theory showed in 1964, complex dynamic systems (those of three or more interacting variables) are “non-random but indeterminate”, absolutely not amenable to linear extrapolation in any wise.
Second, fundamental Conservation Laws require that all –repeat, all– thermodynamic systems exhibit “entropy”. “Open systems” such as Earth’s global atmospheric envelope will dissipate heat-energy to space; “closed systems” will tend to thermal equilibrium by cooling rather than by warming processes. Disputing Conservation of Energy as naive and very foolish Warmists do accepts Perpetual Motion, makes “flat Earthers” paragons of objective rationality. In fact, since Eratosthenes of Alexandria c. BC 250, no educated Westerner has posited a disk-like Earth, though Islam’s Grand Mufti of Mecca and Medina in 1994 did issue a Fatwa to precisely that effect (Carl Sagan, “The Demon Haunted World”).
On this basis Hansen’s GISS/NASA, the UEA’s Hadley CRU, Rajendra Pachauri’s doltish IPCC, are complicit in a decades-long conspiracy of some 25 – 40 close-knit academic insiders, nihilistic Luddite sociopaths, to erase post-Enlightenment industrial civilization by attacking its crucial energy supplies: Coal, oil, nuclear sources are uniformly attacked as “death factories,” condemning mega-millions to death-eating Statist tyranny on the threshold of resurgent Ice Time solely as an extraordinarily bad-faith totalitarian temptation.
By mid-2010, we suspect than no-one even mildly complicit in Green Gang antics will have published anything respecting their fatuous AGW hypothesis. Quite possibly, none of them will ever rant professionally again.
A very nice explanation of what climate really is.
The irony is that these past ten years could have provided the global warming enthusiasts with the perfect chance to prove their models were valid. It easy to say “Temperatures have been increased and will continue to increase”. That doesn’t really prove anything; if you don’t know anything about weather, best prediction you can make is “The current trend will continue.” On the other hand, in 1999, the global warming proponents should have been able to say “Our model predicts that the current increase in temperatures will reverse and there will be a decrease in temperatures. The decrease will last until 2010 (or whatever year), at which time the upward trend will resume.”
RE: Eratosthenes and the spherical Earth. Plato argued for the earth’s being spherical in the dialogue Phaedo, and it appears in other dialogues, e.g., Republic, Timaeus. Aristotle argued for it as well. Both 4th century B.C.
And never forget in the Spirit of Being WRONG!
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I think that prediction is totally discredited.
jd
Just for the record, did you read the litany of errors on glacier melt that made it into the Warmist Bible, the IPCC’s 2007 report ?
A rather shocking litany of errors & inaccuracies
@1 Terry Gain,
“Baffle gab”? I like it! Reminds me of the original Battlestar Galactica.
Unfortunately, however, what I said was true. Climate models do not predict a single temperature, but a distribution of temperatures. They give a non-zero probability to every (physically possible) temperature, so they cannot be wrong in the sense you mean.
They can be useless. I suggest that this is the word you want.
@2jimP,
Yes sir, it does. In order to be useful, climate models have to make statements about observable facts. Mean temperature, suitably defined, is observable. But the vague pronouncements from many “environmentalists” are not.
@4 Rosinante,
Actually, there have been many “bench” experiments of CO2 and temperature. Nobody disputes the basic physics. It’s the highly complex climate system that is proving difficult to grasp.
@5 John Blake,
I disagree. Any subject which uses probability is, by Popper’s standard, unfalsifiable. That includes nearly all sciences. Really, the only subject that isn’t, is math. And even that rests on untestable, non-empirical statements that must be taken on faith (the axioms).
We’re unlikely to flesh this out here and now. At my site, I have many articles and papers on this subject.
Working Link, I hope
One of the things that is used all the time is the wrmest year on record term. It is a technique used to confuse. We have been wrming for about 800 years and only about 150 to 200 years of records are avilable because the thermometer was not invented before then. As such it is to be expected that the warmest year on record is not unusual at all but expected.
The amount of confusing and outright misleading statements from the AWG crowd is staggering. They issue these statements with no context and then say this proves they are correct. Like when asked Scientists will by and large agree that there is Man Made Global Warming and that is true. What they never ever ask is how much Man Made Global Warming is there and is it something to really worry about.
Man has definitly had an effect on Climate but is that effect even in the realm of concern? There is no argument that Carbon Dioxide is a green house gas. There is however considerable debate on the effectiveness of it. If we are to believe the AWG crowd we have to believe that the Climate is Highly Sensitive to Carbon Dioxide. If this were true then how in the world did the Climate ever recover when there were times when the Carbon Dioxide Concentraions were in order of magnitudes higher than today? The models ignore what must be negative feedbacks that keep the Climate from running away.
It does not matter the source of Carbon Dioxide the Climet will respond the way it always has. If some variable gets too hig another mechanism will counter that effect. It is the only way we could have a survivable climate to begin with. You do not need to be a Scientist to understand this.
Climate is what you expect.
Weather is what you get.
Even a third-grader can understand it. The numbskulls at the IPCC and East Anglia, on the other hand…
It is not possible to model climate. If computer models could do that, they would also be capable of predicting much, much simpler systems like the stock market or the outcome of NFL games with accuracy. The AGW theory has validity as a proposition but makes for a dreadfully poor theory. The value of any theory is measured by its usefulness as a predictor. Thus thermodynamics, Newtonian physics, quantum theory, etc. are useful and widely applied by real scientists, in the real world. But climate science, as should be painfully obvious to all by now, predicts nothing. And I believe that it never will. And even if it were possible to model climate, CO2 concentrations would play a miniscule, even negligant role in the model. So in the end AGW boils down to a religion, that must rely on (often falsified) data and cleverly manipulated computer models for an attempt at creating an aura of scientific pluasibility. And thus the true AGW believer claims that colder temperatures do not in any way void the theory. So if that is the case, how will we know that global warming has ceased? If the world spends trillions on reducing CO2 emissions, and the temperature continues to rise or fall,(since either scenario is ostensibly an outcome of global warming) how will we know that we’ve licked the problem? This is sheer nonsense. Climate science has something to do with climate, but has nothing to do with science.
Oops, one correction, substitute ‘negligable’ for negligent in my last post.
#14 “So if that is the case, how will we know that global warming has ceased?”
Excellent question, but I have another, perhaps more important question. How do we know we haven’t already done enough? What if we are actually creating a new ice age? Will the government have to give tax subsidies so that individual homeowners can purchase coal-fired forges? Could we have a “Cash for Catalytic Converters” program?
Paul, Well put. Your question, which logically follows from my question, would of course horrify most GW adherents. CO2 levels must be reduced! (since CO2 is now a pollutant, per the EPA). Our ‘Green’ future depends on it! As I said – sheer nonsense.
7. The difference is that Plato was making a philosophical argument that turned out to be correct. The experimental proof came over a century later by observing lunar eclipses and making the observation that spherical objects cast circular shadows, while the disk shaped Earth’s shadow would likely be a thin line, rather than a circle. Combine that with observed differences in the summer solstice shadows cast b sticks in different locations, and you get empirical proof of the Earth being round ages before we were able to observe it. But if you want a philosophical argument, you can go back even further to Isaiah (c. 700 BC) saying, “The Lord sits on the circle of the Earth, and hangs the Earth on nothing.”
#18: Mythbuster – Good quote from Isaiah. PAthena’s post brought it to mind for me as well. That verse is extremely interesting. Galileo interpreted “hangs the earth on nothing” to mean the earth is surrounded by air, which Isaiah didn’t really understand. As it turns out, a literal interpretation of the verse was correct and it took several hundred years for science to catch up.
Well, I’m glad that all is clear in YOUR minds.
You do know, don’t you that it is possible that we get a colder winter because the cold air is here, not as much over the North Pole etc and that there is actually a relatively warmer winter happening up there, which indeed happens to be the case.
Anyway, when any of the shrinking glaciers in North America and Iceland start to advance, rather than recede, I’ll acknowledge that global warming in the NH has ceased. Can any of you tell me ONE glacier in the United States, Greenland, or Iceland that has advanced recently? I have been to quite a few, and they all have receded greatly in the last 50 years. That is not to say that we know that CO2 is the main driver of the warming, but it seems logical to me that pouring out into the atmosphere all the CO2 that has been locked in the earth for millions of years, just might have some effect. In the past there is evidence that CO2 followed warming, but if you have CO2 put in “unnaturally,” it would not be shocking if it caused some warming.
Alas, the whole thing as become absolutely politicized, so people look for the answers which suit their politics…and they find them. But it’s nice that you folks are so sure of yourselves. Congratulations.
Actually Washington State’s Nisqually glacier is growing. Must be colder over that glacier than the north pole. Must have a CO2 deficiency in Washington. Maybe the Chinese could step up their CO2 production, you think?
#20: a) glaciers have been receding since the last ice age. b) there is no verifiable link between CO2 emissions from human activity and shrinking glaciers (the glaciers were shrinking long before the industrial revolution). c)There is good evidence that warming causes CO2 levels to rise. CO2 is less soluble in seawater at elevated temperatures and is released into the atmosphere; there is no evidence that it works in the other direction, i.e. increased CO2 as a cause of warming. You have causation exactly backwards. For example: tornadoes cause distruction, therefore distruction may cause tornadoes. Doesn’t make much sense does it?
Dwight,
“Anyway, when any of the shrinking glaciers in North America and Iceland start to advance, rather than recede, I’ll acknowledge that global warming in the NH has ceased.”
Let’s get you to think about the glaciers in the big picture here. Your assertion has no basis in climate reality. There can be cooling temperature trends over a period and melting of the glaciers will continue.
To quote from the article I have linked,
“If you take an ice cube out of a freezer at 0 degrees and put it in a refrigerator at 40 degrees, the ice cube will begin to melt. If you then turn the refrigerator down to 34 degrees and check the ice cube an hour later, it will have melted still further, even though the refrigerator temperature has declined. The declining size of the ice cube in the last hour is not an indication that temperatures rose during that hour, but simply reflects that the lower temperature of the last hour was still warmer than the temperature that existed when the ice cube formed.”
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/24923/Receding_Glacier_Park_Ice_Not_Due_to_Global_Warming.html
Also, the fact that you think that it is ideal for the glaciers to be advancing is a flaw in your reasoning. Who is it that says there is a specific size that glaciers must remain? Who is it that says the temperature of the earth has a perfect level?
The earth was once a much, much warmer place, and it also was a much, much colder place over the course of it’s existence. Climate will fluctuate all by itself, without our help and we can do nothing to change that fact. All efforts on our part as human beings to alter this reality is nothing more than a popcorn fart.
Don’t believe the disaster theories because that’s all they are theories. Ones designed to frighten you to into action, which is an effort to not only control your way of thinking but more importantly your behavior.
#22 Chris wrote: For example: tornadoes cause distruction, therefore distruction may cause tornadoes. Doesn’t make much sense does it?
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No, but hurricanes cause destruction and hurricanes can cause tornadoes.
If you have a closed container of air and add co2, you can readily observe that the air inside will retain more heat. But you seem to know from God knows where, that CO2 in the atmosphere will NEVER make it retain more heat. Evidently, your POLITICS tell you that such a thing could not be so.
I rest my case.
@1 Terry Gain,
“Baffle gab”? I like it! Reminds me of the original Battlestar Galactica.
Unfortunately, however, what I said was true. Climate models do not predict a single temperature, but a distribution of temperatures. They give a non-zero probability to every (physically possible) temperature, so they cannot be wrong in the sense you mean.
They can be useless. I suggest that this is the word you want.
Sorry Briggsy old boy, I usually agree with you but in this instance you are wrong. You should call a spade a spade. The climate models are not merely useless. They are not being used for harmless academic purposes. They are the instruments of mass hysteria. The AGW hysterics keep telling us that their climate models project rising temperatures over time as CO2 rises. And these hysterics claim that we are in dire straits and doomed if we don’t act immediately and reduce CO2emissions. So if none of these models show that temperature would level out for a period of nearly 20 years despite increasing CO2, then these models do not predict what is happening. This is not useless. Useless is something that merely doesn’t work. These models are causing panic and a huge waste of resources. The models are like Obama, Pelosi and Reid. Worse than useless
Tell me again where the glacier went that carved Yosemite Valley? Along the Eastern Sierra even further south than Yosemite are glacial moraines, relicts of a much colder past. In the US Midwest we find evidence of ice ages that occurred on an approximately 300,000-year cycle of warming and cooling.
For any scientist to make a statement that we are experiencing a global warming cycle, it seems to me a sufficient data set would include significantly more data that has been collected across the planet (and observations of other planets). Those data should include not only mere temperature recordings, but also notations of solar output, volcanic action, ocean currents, cloud cover, and I’m not even a meteorologist so I’m only touching on the basics.
Man-made global warming is a hoax, just like the hole-in-the-ozone was.
“I survived Jerry Brown’s Medfly invasion!”
20. Dwight: Thanks for kudos on our ‘knowledge’. We appreciate it. [kidding]. Your personal “observations” of the melting northern hemisphere glaciers is obviously important to you, but right now it just represents a brief snapshot in time and may – or may not – actually be significant. Can you admit we really don’t know yet? After scanning wiki’s “Glaciers” entry – particularly the paragraph on “Ice Sheets” – its obvious to me the ocean levels aren’t catastrophically rising so think we still have time to get this right. Remember, too, Dwight, glaciers are supposed to slowly move. That also includes receding and building up – over time. Time to start thinking for yourself on this issue, like all the rest of the Dwight’s I know.
#24 Anonymous, Lets review. I pointed out that #20 alluded correctly that warming causes increased CO2 levels (well documented), but within the same sentence, #20 postulated that increased CO2 levels might cause warming. One doesn’t follow from the other. My absurd example, that “tornadoes cause destruction, therefore destruction may cause tornadoes”, was an illustration of this fallacy in logic. You write “No, but hurricanes cause destruction and hurricanes can cause tornadoes. Which is akin to me saying tornadoes cause destruction and tornadoes also cause property damage. My point is that the argument that “destruction causes tornadoes” illustrates an inverted causation, which is ridiculous. Property damage doesn’t cause tornadoes either. Your second point is valid in the closed system you describe, provided that the heat capacity of CO2, is greater than that of plain old air. I’d have to drag out the CRC book to verify that. However, climate is not a closed system and I don’t believe it can be shown that the miniscule amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere could have a measurable impact on the overall heat capacity of the planet. At present this is nothing more than conjecture. My politics has nothing to do with my scientific rationale. However, basing a multitrillion dollar tax increase on a very weak theory, bolstered by useless computer models fits my definition of madness. Perhaps you should consider that your own fealty to liberal politics may be indeed clouding your judgement.
The glacier data corresponds to something important.
Talking about global anything when it comes to this is very difficult from the thermodynamic/physics point of view. In these cases local/regional differences predominate. One side of the mountains may have more cloud cover, reflection due to snowfall precipitation, or something else. One side of the mountain may shrink glaciers, the other grow them. Then something else may happen as a result. There are no closed systems here.
Averaging makes as much sense as the average phone number in the phone number data bank. The system is far more complex than that.
Much simpler than the clouds and temperature is the financial system.
The past two days our executive basically declared war on ‘Wall Street’ and banks. The market tanked but not just on banks and formerly high end companies like Goldman Sacks. It dropped everywhere, even on those manufacturing companies not in finance, showing great promise and solid performance. Investor confidence is again down after a marginal recovery.
We all suffer when this happens. Where most of us work management is now more uncertain and will hesitate to expand and make new hires and too many of us are out of work or underemployed already.
Jeez, what do we need to do to get these folks to shut up and let us recover from bad government? We know what to do. We know our jobs and just want the chance to do that. Having failed on every other front they launch an assault on another.
Spindok
“It is statistically appropriate to point to this year’s frigidity as evidence that the theory of man-made global warming is suspect.”
Google “europe cold snap sea surface temperature” and read a bit abut the “arctic oscillation” and what it did in december. There is actually a reason for what the northern latitudes are seeing right now. It’s not a mystery – although you’re quite right, it wasn’t predicted. It also isn’t a general global phenomenon. I’m sitting at the other end of the planet (I’m even upside down), and it sure as heck isn’t cold here right now. Most south-eastern cities in australia are experiencing unusually (and sustained) hot conditions. Adelaide, in particular, is being hammered by a heat wave, with regular daily maxima in the “oh christ it’s hot” zone.
I’d like to see some better journalism on this stuff. This endless “it’s hot over here so the earth must be warming” and “it’s cold over here so you must be wrong” is just tedious. The planet does actually have some well-understood weather patterns. It is possible to make an effort to understand them, and explain what is happening to the pundits.
I actually don’t have a firm “position” on AGW. I don’t think I know enough to be able to declare who is right (and, dare I say it, neither are most people contributing to this thread). But here’s one prediction I’ll happily make:
The upper northern hemisphere is getting a wave of cold air from the north right now, due to unusually high air pressure in that arctic circle – NOT due to an overall fall in the temperature of the atmosphere as a whole. That’s what is causing the unusually cold conditions. Here’s the thing, though – that will eventually change and bring warm(er) air back to where it came from, and the cycle will cause an overall heating of the arctic circle (by which I mean “an overall increase in the heat energy in the atmosphere”). I reckon that will cause an increase in the rate of ice melt this year. I’m not an atmospheric physicist, but that seems pretty obvious to me – so lets see what happens
And I bet William M. Briggs won’t be writing an article about how that confirms the AGW hypothesis.
Marc Shepherd at American Thinker has written a good article about the temperature data fixers.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/climategate_cru_was_but_the_ti.html
The earths Weather / Climate / term of your choice, has been incredibly stable the last 10,000 years. This is not usual for this earth based on ice sample taken from Greenland that record earths weather going back hundreds of thousands of years. We are due for an ice age, and inclement weather, much heavier geologic action, long overdue. But it has little to do with what man does on earth.
It is more related to solar cycles, of which we know little to nothing, and the greater orbit of our solar system through the galaxy and the influences therein.
We have evolved this civilization because we happened to live within this tiny sliver of peaceful geology and stable weather. But this will also come to an end someday, and we can be tossed back to the stone age within a few years of what the earth’s normal geology and weather patterns have normally been. We are incredibly egotistical to believe we are so important the earth revolves around ourselves.
“And I bet William M. Briggs won’t be writing an article about how that confirms the AGW hypothesis.”
Because it won’t. I’m not sure whether you read the article, but you clearly did not understand it. As Briggs argues, ANY hypothesis that makes purely probabilistic claims can be neither proven nor disproven.
Anon #24 (may I call you Anon? I know it’s presumptuous):
The problem with your case are (1) this is not, or shouldn’t be, a legal issue, and (2) you’re wrong.
(2a) Let’s say your little experiment works. Hooray! you’ve proven that a bottle with more CO2 gets warmer than a bottle with less CO2. Unfortunately, that’s ALL you have proved.
(2b) Your closed-system experiment may or may not correspond to what happens in the atmosphere. That’s another question entirely.
(2c) What concentrations of CO2 are you using? The current concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.03-something percent, of which Man’s contribution is an even smaller percent. If your concentrations are not near this amount, your experiment is worthless in explaining anything on the larger planet. It’s worth noting that both Venus and Mars (IIRC) have atmospheres of much larger percentages of CO2, yet one is hot enough to melt lead while one is cold enough to freeze CO2. Let’s see, could there be other factors than the CO2 concentration that influence temperature? (The answer is left as an exercise to the student.)
There are other reasons that your argument is wrong, but I don’t have all day. Note that I haven’t stated that the theory you’re trying to support is NECESSARILY wrong (although I think it is), but that your experiment does nothing to support it. And notice also that no politics were used in destroying your argument – the political arguments re: AGW are all on the pro-AGW side.
Here is a quote from the late Michael Crichton on man’s attempts to manage complex systems:
“Who believes that the complex system of our atmosphere behaves in such a simple and predictable way that if we reduce one component, carbon dioxide, we will therefore reliably reduce temperature? CO2 is not like an accelerator on a car. It’s not linear (and by the way, neither is a car accelerator.) And furthermore, who believes that the climate can be stabilized when it has never been stable throughout the earth’s history? We can only entertain such an idea if we don’t really understand what a complex system is. We’re like the blonde who returned the scarf because it was too tight. We don’t get it.”
Finally, I am old enough to remember the hysteria in the 1970′s over global cooling and the coming ice age. We heard the same warnings then: If we don’t act now, it will be too late! – that we hear now. The same dire predictions were made then as now, i.e., famine, mass species extinction, major shifts of animal migration patterns.
‘Arctic Temperatures LOWEST IN SIX YEARS’ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/23/arctic-temperatures-above-80%c2%b0n-are-the-lowest-in-six-years/
‘According to the Danish Meteorological Institute, Arctic temperatures are currently below 238K (-35.15 degrees Celsius or -31.27 degrees Fahrenheit)
That is more than five degrees below normal (the green line) and the lowest reading since 2004. The slope of decline has also recently been quite sharp, dropping from 252K on January 1, a drop of 14 degrees in 22 days.’
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One commenter above makes the third time I’ve heard Idiocy about the Arctic being warmer because of the cold air being pumped down here. According to that thinking the Arctic would have been a LOT warmer during the Little Ice Age, and frozen over solid during the Midieval Warm Period, which was 2-3 degrees C warmer than the Earth is today.
‘If you have a closed container of air and add co2, you can readily observe that the air inside will retain more heat.’ ~ anonymous.
Anon, take note to the word CLOSED.
The Earth is not a Closed system. Heat energy is lost into space constantly. CO2 can only hold so much and then it also radiates.
Anonymous was me. Sorry, I forgot to sign it.
Regarding the CO2, yes a closed system is different, but I was simply responding to the guy who denied that CO2 could ever cause warming. All other things being equal (and, of course, they never are), more CO2 makes for more retention of heat. Yes, some of the heat radiates away, but less than if the CO2 levels were lower. As to what the scale of heating, or sensitivities, or tipping points, I can’t (and didn’t) say. My only point is that the pure denialists here are as extreme as the believers. People are dying to say, “AGW is hogwash because…” and then give some small slice of the whole global climate thing, sometimes an accurate slice, sometimes not. It’s one thing to say that the AGW people have not made the case for draconian measures to try to control CO2 emissions (I happen to agree that they have not) but it is quite something else to dismiss the whole possibility as absurd. That’s where I assume the politics MAY come in, or just resentment of apparent “experts.”
Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it also forms clouds and the relative heating or cooling coming with increased water vapor is still being studied, and since you have moving variables in many different climate systems, it isn’t easy to figure out.
Otter, can you get it through your apparently thick skull that no one is saying that ALL cooling is caused by arctic air moving down and leaving the arctic warmer. In the LIA, we assume that it was cold, colder, coldest in many places in the northern hemisphere. As a previous poster mentioned, Google arctic oscillation.
Dana H.:
“Because it won’t. I’m not sure whether you read the article, but you clearly did not understand it. As Briggs argues, ANY hypothesis that makes purely probabilistic claims can be neither proven nor disproven”
I didn’t say “proves” – I said “confirms”
Otter:
“The slope of decline has also recently been quite sharp, dropping from 252K on January 1, a drop of 14 degrees in 22 days.”
Which means it has some sort of cause that’s necessarily unrelated to the total heat energy contained in the atmosphere – which doesn’t vary particularly rapidly.
The AGW’ers need to distinguish this better: what they’re hypothesizing is that an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase the amount of heat energy trapped in the atmosphere. That will (indirectly) lead to higher overall temperatures – and (unfortunately) the only way to measure it is to measure atmospheric and surface temperatures. But a focus on temperature means that bozos can point to individual changes and claim that they represent the system as a whole. If something changes rapidly in a month, then it definitely not because the atmosphere suddenly dumped a bunch of energy into space – it’s probably because of something local. In the case of europe and (parts of, but definitely not all of) north america, it’s cold because cold air has been relocated from somewhere else – not because the system as a whole has become colder.
“According to that thinking the Arctic would have been a LOT warmer during the Little Ice Age, and frozen over solid during the Midieval Warm Period, which was 2-3 degrees C warmer than the Earth is today.”
Only if those periods were caused by the same thing that is causing the current chill. A quick google suggests that nobody thinks the were.
Bottom line – energy isn’t created or destroyed. If chilled air is taken from the arctic and used to freeze another part of the planet, the arctic has to be warmed overall – by which (and I repeat myself) the total amount of heat energy in that part of the global system will increase. That won’t necessarily cause a surface temperature rise – it MIGHT be reflected in ice melt (which is a lovely way to sink heat energy).
But I don’t speak for atmospheric physicists. I’m just a guy with an opinion – but that is my humble prediction.
dwight, your need to belittle people proves your worthlessness. As if your arguments didn’t already prove that. Also NOwhere did I say that all cooling is caused by arctic air moving down; in fact I was arguing that your pathetic attempt to claim that the Arctic is Warmer- when the link I provided clearly shows IT IS NOT- seemed to point that way.
But then one has to take into account blind faith in the lying bastards who created the AGW fraud.
See ya next climate thread, jackass!
“…the global warming models will not be disproved. In technical language, they cannot be falsified by the observations”
Then they cannot be proven by the observations either, can they???
Otter #41 My “need to belittle people?” followed by “pathetic
attempt” and “jackass.” Got it. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, eh?
Good grief, just read the responses on the link you posted and you’ll learn a lot. I know it’s more complicated than the black-white scenarios you are comfortable with, but it will give you some sense of the complexity of all the stuff to be considered. I enjoyed the responses because it seems to be a decent mix of knowledgeable people chiming in and many of the responses directly address the thesis of the article here.
Climate is changing. Always has; always will. The argument for me is not whether one day’s temperature or a seasonal average is proof or otherwise. The key thing to me is “show me the science that shows how greenhouse gases affect climate”. Everything else is immaterial. Screeds and screeds have been devoted to debating side issues when there is still one assertion at the core of the anthropogenic climate change theory that has yet to be proven – i.e. that CO2 drives climate change. In my view it has been falsified numerous times, (which means that it is a false presupposition by scientific definition) but no one has proven a causal link between greenhouse gases and climate change.
Well argued. But the only mean weather I know involves snow or rain.
Karl Blake. You are an idiot. I rarely resort to childish insults. However, you have offended me greatly with your idiotic assertion that global warming violates the laws of thermal dynamics. It is foolish assertions like this that are used as ammunition against skeptics.
The Earth’s temperature is at a dynamic equilibrium, between energy radiating from the sun and energy radiating from the Earth (other sources of addition and loss are negligible), and every thing that retains heat or radiates heat changes that equilibrium point slightly. The planet’s radiation to the sky is proportional to temperature. Therefore, if something happens to retain radiant heat, the planet will heat up until the radiant heat balances with the incoming heat.
As for the second law (your point has absolutely nothign to do with the conservation of energy), entropy increases through the heat transfer from hot to cold (ie: from the sun to the Earth and from the Earth to wherever the radiation lands), thus the second law is fulfilled.
A foolish secretary once said we could cool the Earth by painting every roof white. It is a silly and monumental task for statistically insignificant change, but it is technically true. Denying this fact is little better than denying the roundness of the Earth and displays an appalling lack of education. Don’t quote thermodynamics unless you understand it, please.
“Therefore, if something happens to retain radiant heat, the planet will heat up until the radiant heat balances with the incoming heat.”
When I pointed this out during Carl Sagan’s nuclear winter period, I was accused of idiocy myself. Then when I suggested nuclear weapons and a nuclear winter as a cure for global warming, those fearing nuclear winter changed their minds. It wasn’t much of a change, but as our dear leader says, Change is change.
“A foolish secretary once said we could cool the Earth by painting every roof white. It is a silly and monumental task for statistically insignificant change, but it is technically true.”
Actually, it’s becoming a useful suggestion. Round these parts (australia), air conditioning is one of our most problematic domestic consumers of electricity. Meanwhile, we all have heat-absorbing dark clay tiles on our roof. We don’t necessarily have to paint them white, but using a glaze or a paint that reflects heat would actually save actual money (and white obviously has the advantage for the visible spectrum). New scientist (or was it SCIAM?) recently quoted a study that suggested that an average sized house could eliminate 11 tons of CO2 emissions a year that way – which is about the same amount my car emits, so it’s not insignificant on a personal level at all.
Very belatedly I have found this article after being directed to it. It makes for interesting reading but I am afraid does absolutely nothing towards disproving or even throwing into doubt anthropologically induced global warming, or more accurately climate change.
“Sure is cold out there, unusually so”. Well that was an unfortunate start wasn’t it? Climate change is not about what it is like outside at Mr. Briggs’ place. Climate change is about whether the climate “averaged” across the globe is changing. Score one for confusing the issue, score nil for advancing the argument either for or against.
“they cannot be falsified by the observations”. Scientific method is irreducibly linked to falsifiability but most statistical theories are very hard to prove false and climate change is one such and Mr. Briggs’ BUT is similar. (Other contributors have already referred to this.)However climate observations over the last hundred years cast a great deal of doubt on BUT and they do provide a great deal of credibility for climate change theory. In parallel to these supporting observations there is also a credible explanation of why there is climate change – rapidly increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Two for confusion still nil for advancing the argument.
“But global warming climate models never make statements like that” Well that really is the clincher. Fancy a model that predicts a long term trend that does not predict an absolute minimum for any one (year, place, season, whatever). But just a moment I have just realised it does not predict an absolute maximum either. Could Mr Briggs please tell me what absolute maximums or minimums are predicted by BUT? Get real please, this is just nonsense. Three for confusion and still nil for the argument.
“So it is appropriate to point to this year’s frigidity as evidence that the theory of man-made global warming is suspect”. Just what is the frigidity referred to? This statement follows an argument that the climate is made up of many cooler daily readings leading to a “colder” year and then is followed by an argument that the year will have a lowering effect for the decade. Apart from the obvious fact that the temperature as measured in Mr. Briggs’ neighbourhood is not a reasonable guide to global climate, to define climate as either yearly or decadal is simply making a mistake. Looking at decadal averages using an artificial calendar (not one based on some natural division that might be linked to climate) is a convenient way to summarise long term trends but only the non-scientific would suggest that we can characterise climate over such a short time span. Four nil.
“For the past decade, we have had a string of years with mostly decreasing temperatures.” I cannot speak for Mr. Briggs’ neighbourhood but the decade 200-2009 on a global basis was the second warmest since modern human records began. Basically supportive of climate change theory and against BUT. And (see above) decades prove nothing one way or the other. On one point I do agree with the article. The increasing temperatures in the 1990s were not evidence of climate by themselves. But they do when combined with observations over the whole of the 20TH century go quite a way to proving that BUT is false. Five nil.
“says more about their desires than it does about any theory of climate.” This set of arguments by Mr. Briggs demonstrates quite clearly that the ones chasing their desires are the sceptics of not the supports of climate change theory. A series of anecdotes does nothing to show that climate change theory is false. A great deal of scientific observation over more than one hundred years shows that BUT is very likely false. Six nil.
This last point about desires is of course at the heart of the debate. Acceptance of climate change theory leads to conclusions that are irreconcilable under our current definition of what is rational. We all know that it is irrational not to care about the wellbeing of our children and (if you are old enough) grandchildren. But we also know it is irrational not to strive continually for a better material standard of living. Climate change theory says we cannot have both so “therefore it must be wrong” and any possible argument for shoring up our desire to hold onto our current grasp of the meaning of rationality is seized no matter how weak. (Jurgen Habermas has much of interest to say about this view of rationality.)
Because the concept of rationality is fundamental to our human condition, to ask us to change how we define what is rational is about as big a challenge as you can find. It is such a challenge that we will almost certainly do some dreadful damage to our planet before we are prepared to make the change. People such as Mr. Briggs and his supports are only to be expected to be the majority in such a debate.
(And yes it is of course possible to turn this argument around to support Mr. Briggs’ ascription of the desires to climate change supports. Since the 1960s the scientific belief that there is a rational link of human activity to more atmospheric CO2 to global warming has grown up. There is a lot of empirical evidence to support this belief as being a physical fact but there is no such observational evidence to support the rationality of either continually better material living standards or even caring about future generations [although I believe it is rational to have such care]. I believe that it is much more plausible to accuse climate change sceptics of wanting to hold onto their desires.)