Is global warming even real?

Not all Republicans are idiots interested in profits only. Some can see what is really important, for survival.

 

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The brief video here (and the text there) is worth your time: http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-model-shows-limits-emissions-pledges-19505

To watch the video, click on "video" in top right corner of the main graphic.

 

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Here is an interesting story run by Perth Now... about how the UN has over estimated CO2 impact by over ten times. That climate change is not being driven by human causes.

A former climate modeller for the Government’s Australian Greenhouse Office, with six degrees in applied mathematics, Dr Evans has unpacked the architecture of the basic climate model which underpins all climate science.

He has fixed two errors and the new corrected model finds the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO2) is much lower than was thought.
It turns out the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has over-estimated future global warming by as much as 10 times, he says.

“Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it’s about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is. CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20 per cent of the global warming in the last few decades”.

 

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That bogus article was debunked years ago.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/david-evans-understanding-goes-cold.html

Considering the amount of noise the denialists make about models and their unreliability, it's kind of amusing to see them swallow a minor and invalid tweak of a model as some kind of no-doubt demonstration of anything. The actual researchers in the field got their sensitivity estimates not from model tweaking alone but from field measurements and hypothesis checking and so forth.

 

Whilst you may very well be correct in your assessment, to claim that an 2011 article by Skeptical Science debunks an October 2015 article by Perth Now doesn't stand too good.
However:
The Dr Evans article I mention, is lacking in any real detail, is sensationalized and even appears to be published by a terribly biased writer ( wife or girlfriend ) so it has the credibility of about 4/10 IMO any ways.
Apparently :
"When it is completed his work will be published as two scientific papers. Both papers are undergoing peer review."
which in itself is contradictory in that he suggests that his papers are being reviewed even though he states they are incomplete.

 

Actually that last bold part is wrong. There is every reasons to think they UNDERESTIMATE the effect of Green House Gases, GHG, for two different reasons:

(1) As about half of the Global Warming, GW, does not yet appear in atmospheric temperature rise getting history "right" is proof that the long term effects of GHG are grossly underestimated. The 50% or more of the current GW is "hiding" in the deep ocean, but that can not continue long. It will reappear / surface / in less than a generation.

(2) The GW processes are highly non-linear, with many currently not very significant positive feed back processes (24 are known). Some of them can, and probably will, become more important than CO2. For example of one such:

CH4 is growing in atmospheric concentration, but currently still a small part of the thermal forcing in the equations. A mass of CH4 released at "t =0" is in the first decade (until t = 10 years) produces more GW than 100 times that mass of CO2 does. Furthermore, CH4 is mainly destroyed in reaction with the OH- radical which is produced at a quite steady rate by harsh UV high up in the atmosphere. Until a decade or two ago, the OH- production rate was greater than the CH4 release rate. Thus the CH4 concentration was held low - plenty of OH- radical to destroy it.

Now the "tables have turned." IE the CH4 release rate is greater than the OH- production rate, so there is plenty of CH4 to destroy the OH- radicle. This means any given CH4 molecule will remain in the air longer, before it finds a OH- to react with - destroying both to make mainly CO2 & H2O as "reaction products." The increase in CH4 "half-life" is increasing. The observed rate (measured between 2003 & 2013) is 0.3 years per year. Soon it will be 0.4 years per year.

Thus, if this (increasing living longer and increasing release rate for CH4) continues it will eventually cause more GW that CO2 does. IE this "non-linear term" in the models will dominate the linear CO2 term and the models built mainly ignoring CH4 (or considering that it must remain small) will increasingly underestimate the GW effect of GHGs.

Also it should be mentioned that even a 10 fold increase in the CO2 concentration would make little increase (< ~5%) in the GW as the current concentrations of CO2 (~400ppm) are already blocking the escape of IR in their absorption bands - something like 70% of it. You can only block 100%.
CH4 in contrast is far from "saturation" concentrations. Even if we ignore the fact that as the concentration of CH4 increases, each molecule lives longer and before it is destroyed, blocks more IR, a 10 fold increase in the CH4 concentration would block 10 times more IR trying to escape.

It is these non-linearities and mutually amplifying positive feed backs make any model that does well at "Hindcasting" SERIOUSLY WRONG.
IE such a model UNDERESTIMATES the GW to be expected in the future.

 

Sure it does. It's Perth Now publishing stuff debunked four years ago that doesn't stand.

 

what makes you think Perth Now are publishing the same stuff published 4 years ago?

 

Same guy, same "discovery", same take, same problems,

and a very common pattern in the denialist crowd. They recycle a lot.

 

If you are interested in going beyond the article you read here are links to more detail:

http://sciencespeak.com/climate-basic.html

If you decide to go through this, I would recommend reading the comments also. Of course there are many "way to go" comments but there are also plenty of questions being asked. I have not read the full display myself (yet) but there is some interesting stuff being discussed none-the-less.

 

It makes sense the first time, the gullibility - it's easy to dress up bs in high class techie speak, and people cannot be blamed for taking it seriously. Somebody says "the equilibrium climate sensitivity is 2.5C" and it sounds like meaningful English assertion.

The fifth, sixth, seventh, times? From the exact same source? Like the bear said: you're not really here for the hunting, are you.

I can't resist a sample - right from intro page, bullet pointed, our crusader has spotted a rat:

Surprised? Think that will shoot the whole balloon down, they can't get away with that? Think again: They know what they're doing.

The principle is obvious once you see it: the side that has to explain partial derivatives and the manner in which models incorporating them are empirically checked and evaluated and employed, to the jury (public), loses. The goal there is to have the climate researchers "admit", in public, that all along they've been using partial derivatives. Gotcha.

 

I know you have a mild stroke each time someone does not adhere to your beliefs, but it is an interesting read, if you were inclined to go beyond the informal link page.

 

I wouldn't consider Dr Evans a denialist.
Why and what do you think he is denying?
From what I read he appears to be merely attempting to refine the models currently in use.

 

The consensus view of climate change, which is that the climate is changing and anthropogenic changes are the primary forcing.

 

What is the difference between challenging a consensus view and denying one? ( do you think)

 

I guess what I am really curious about is :
Is it possible for someone to challenge the consensus view with out being labelled a denialist?

 

Certainly it is; but to avoid being taken as a crackpot or a "knee-jerk" denier, you must present scientifically accepted* evidence / support for the contrary POV, not just your opinion.

For example my post 646 is a strong challenge to the accepted POV about global warming modeling. It concludes with:
"It is these non-linearities and mutually amplifying positive feed backs make any model that does well at "Hindcasting" SERIOUSLY WRONG.
IE such a model UNDERESTIMATES the GW to be expected in the future."

I have several post telling the flaws in the IPCC's models.

* Frequently in the past you have presented "evidence" that is in conflict with science. Such as that "gravitational instabilities" cause most of the GW or the distant "great attractor" is the cause, etc. - that does not give an exit from the charge of being both a denier and a crackpot.

 

It's going beyond the informal link page - which I did, to three of those little paragraph sections on the "web page" - that riles. I think that author actually knows better. I detect self-awareness - the vibe is foul.

And it's not really interesting. It's like literary or film insanity vs the real thing - the film crazy is having these weird insights and seeing all this hallucinatory stuff and thinking outside the box and wildly creative, the real one is washing their hands one hundred and eighty seven times a day and mumbling about the Illuminati.

It's just that the bullet point link description was kind of amusing, and I know there are people here who deal with partial derivatives regularly and would get a kick out of it.

You, of course, keep going back for more - must get some kind of satisfaction out of being stroked by that source. Not really here for the hunting, as noted.

Facts, evidence, reasoning, that kind of stuff.

Sure. Bring some facts, evidence, reasoning, that kind of stuff.

 

Challenging a consensus view involves proposing an alternate explanation for an observed phenomena, then doing the work (experimental, metastudies, simulation etc) to demonstrate that it is a better explanation for a phenomena.

Deniers just deny. Their denials are characterized by:
-Cites of fake experts who agree with them. You will often see deniers posting lists of "scientists" who also deny climate change - but often these people turn out to not be climate scientists.
-Logical fallacies. For example, a classic one is that "the climate has warmed in the past without man, therefore this warming can't be man-made." That is akin to claiming that the guy you just murdered died of natural causes because other people have died of natural causes.
-Impossible expectations. Deniers often claim that since every year is not monotonically warmer than the last, that the "models have failed." Since no one claims that every year will be warmer than the last, this isn't a valid expectation.
-Cherry picking. It is trivially simple to find a place on Earth where the temperature has gotten colder over the last 20 years. If you ignore all the other data you can claim that this disproves warming.
-Conspiracy theories. Often when deniers use the above methods and are rebuffed they turn to the conspiracy theory. "Climate scientists are all lying to you - look at this email that PROVES they are trying to deceive the public!"

One common aspect of deniers is that while what they claim may change with time, their denials remain constant. For example, many deniers regularly flip-flop between Type I denial ("the climate isn't warming!") and Type II denial ("OK, the climate is warming, but we have nothing to do with it!") Needless to say, that approach is irrational. The only common theme is denial.

Of course, and a great many scientists have done that. Challenging consensus views is how science advances, and if a better theory was discovered (and could be substantiated) then science would switch to a new consensus view. And believe me, with the trillions of dollars of fossil fuel business at risk if we attempt to mitigate AGW, there would be plenty of impetus to discover such a theory.

 

Thanks for that.. nice post...
so can I accept that :
If one considers climate science to be "understating" the predicted reality they are considered as challenging and not denying. ( re: Billy T accusing current climate science consensus as being denialist)
If one considers climate science to be "over stating" the predicted reality they are considered as denialists. (Re: Dr Evans & ilk)