Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

[don]

Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Scarcely a week goes by without some scaremongering headline about climate change, premised on apocalyptic conclusions drawn from some computer-generated model. Modeling lies at the heart of the whole vast climate-change industry, one sparked by the big government–backed computer modeling centers in the US and UK. To understand the frail connection between these models and the realities of world climate today and tomorrow, consider the crisis in world travel and aviation prompted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland.


The current eruptions began on March 20; the plume of ash from the larger, ongoing eruptions that began on April 14 led to systematic grounding of international and local European flights, losing airlines billions in revenues and paralyzing the travel industry.


There are very well documented cases from the 1980s of volcanic ash -- ie., microscopic jagged particles of pulverized rock -- bringing jumbo jets over Indonesia within minutes of disaster. The U.S. leaves the airlines to decide whether it’s safe to fly, whereas European governments say Yea or Nay, based on computer models from the Volcanic Ash Center in London and Eurocontrol, an organization that co-ordinates air travel.



But as red ink spread across the airlines’ balance sheets and passengers bunked down for days at hubs like Frankfurt, questions about computer modeling of the extent of the potentially lethal plume became more insistent. Exactly how far had the plume extended? How come monitoring planes were reporting safe conditions in areas the models were identifying as no-fly zones?



Computers at the British Met Office, led by a climate change zealot, which earlier made a national laughing stock of itself for forecasting a 'barbecue summer' last year and a mild winter for this year, produced a stream of maps predicting the ash would cover a vast area, eventually stretching from Russia to Newfoundland. But across almost all of it, there was virtually no ash at all, and none visible to satellites. (It didn’t help that the main monitoring plane was laid up for a paint job.)
'We never understood why a blanket ban had been imposed - something that would not have happened in other parts of the world,' a senior airline executive told The Mail on Sunday..'Safety is always our paramount concern, but this seemed like over caution gone mad. As the days went by without the restrictions being lifted, we became more and more concerned that the policy was based on theoretical models which had little grounding in reality.'



The inherent limitations of modeling were starkly displayed by the experiences on the night of Feb. 28, 2000 when the crew of a DC-8 NASA used for atmospheric research discovered first-hand that ash plume forecasts are not perfect. Here’s how Peter Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor (April 18, 2010) described the incident:

“The DC-8 was en route to Kiruna, Sweden, for the start of a research study of atmospheric ozone over the Arctic. Some 35 hours earlier Iceland's Mt. Hekla volcano had sent clouds of ash and steam soaring to altitudes of 45,000 feet.The DC-8 was cruising at just more than 500 miles an hour at 37,000 feet and some 200 miles north of where the plume was predicted to extend. But the highly sensitive research sensors aboard the craft detected a sudden rise in ash particles and sulfur dioxide. For seven minutes, the craft flew through a tenuous ash cloud some 800 miles from the volcano.


The only visual clue they had: They couldn't see stars in the night sky, a common phenomenon when flying through high-altitude cirrus clouds. Cockpit instruments reported no unusual engine behavior. The crew smelled nothing unusual. And they saw no other visual clues that would tip them off to the presence of volcanic ash. The crew reported the encounter to air-traffic controllers and continued to Kruna.”

An initial inspection on landing disclosed no apparent damage. It was only later, back at home base, that “deeper inspections showed that internal cooling passages had been clogged, with some of the engines' areas of highest temperature showing signs of unusual heat stress. In essence, all the engine's internal parts were coated with fine white powder. The leading edges of turbine blade were pitted. The build-up of heat from clogged cooling passages blistered coatings on several internal components. Moreover, some research suggests that if the plane had encountered the ash in daylight, the crew still might have had no visual clue because the ash could well have been encased in ice ,looking like high-altitude cirrus clouds. The bottom line, from the research team: "The insidious nature of this encounter and the resulting damage was such that engine trending [readings from in-flight instruments] did not reveal a problem, yet hot section parts may have begun to fail [through blade erosion] if flown another 100 hours.”


The plume had spread in entirely unanticipated ways, ways that seem obvious after seeing photographs of the Eyjafjallajökull eruptions. Take a look at both the ground level and satellite pictures of the plume and you'll understand the hopelessness of modeling the peculiar vagaries of the plume: swirls, layering, branching, etc. Every aspect of this well-described incident defies computer modeling and prior turbine design knowledge: the plume was somewhere that would never have been predicted by a model, the ash particles were ice-encased , the expected turbine blade erosion damage didn't show up; the main damage mechanism was overheating.


I called Pierre Sprey, a defense analyst with a background in statistics and a healthy skepticism about climate modeling and he gave a dry laugh. Back in the 1970s Sprey had done some environmental consulting and speedily learned first hand the insuperable difficulties of a seemingly elementary assignment in air pollution: modeling the behavior of a plume drifting downwind from a single smoke stack. “It was a vastly simpler problem than some generalized climate model, but still hopelessly intractable” when it came to predicting the downwind dispersion of the plume and its toxic constituents.



Sprey found, to his surprise, that the useless air pollution models he was dealing with in the early 1970s were actually based on WWII models developed to predict the behavior of chemical warfare weapons being tested by the British at Porton Down back in the 1940s. What emerged with finality from those tests was that there was no knowing where the poison gases might head, and indeed one powerful inhibition against the use of chemical weapons has always been the ease with which, amid a sudden shift in the wind, some act of stupidity by the gassers can end up killing one’s own troops, as unforgettably described by the poet Siegfried Sassoon in his WWI memoirs.


Contrast the demonstrated impossibility of computer modeling the simple downwind dispersion of a plume from a single smokestack or volcano with the mind boggling scientific hubris of trying to model the climate of the entire globe.

Here we start with endlessly faulty data – from instruments parked on urban “heat islands” to severely massaged data bases of daily temperature readings, from sketchy numbers for the vast reaches of the planet where there are almost no readings, to purging of decades of inconvenient data. Then these are meshed with models constructed around bad thermodynamics, baseless suppositions about the hugely dominant heat effects of water vapor and clouds, and hopelessly inaccurate quantifications of carbon uptake by the earth's forests and oceans.



These quack science models are further skewed by the modelers' doctrinaire anti-carbon passions, the vetting of their results by the corrupt bureaucracy of the UN's IPCC, and the dependence of their salaries on the expectations of funding agencies.



Small wonder, then, that the modelers' computer "reconstructions" of the planet's past climate conveniently wiped out the well-documented three century long Medieval Warming Period as well as the subsequent five hundred years of Little Ice Age--nor is it surprising that their terrifying computer prognostications in the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment failed to predict the next decade's absence of any global warming trend at all.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04302010.html

[Ben]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

Oh please...


The argument of the article is:
1) It's difficult to make a computer model to forecast where an ash cloud will end up
2) Therefore computer models are useless

It's commonplace that although short-term events might be unpredictable (such as where the stockmarket will go tomorrow) in the long-term they can be predictable because different forces take over (if the market is P/E of 40, it's going down). It's the same with weather vs climate.
Simple example - it's very difficult to predict what the temperature will be in one week, but I can easily predict than in 6 months we're going to have a phenomenon known as winter.


And then we are provided with the explanation, the whole scientific establishment is biased due to their "anti-carbon passions."

Yes! People with an irrational hatred of carbon have taken over all of our major scientific bodies!


We have to trust scientific consensus all the time. We can't be experts on everything. If you think the scientific community is wrong about climate change but when you get cancer you take the latest in chemotherapy (and you're neither a biochemist or an atmospheric physicist), you're just being inconsistent.

[GRG55]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

Models are models...from plume dispersion to atmospheric macro forecasts most start out life trying to serve a useful purpose. The proponents overstate their capabilities and benefits and opponents denigrate them.

I have some experience with plume dispersion models from early in my career [modelling the S02 plumes from sour gas plant tail gas incinerator stacks] and learned early on that taking away inferences from such models was more useful than trying to take away absolutes...

[c1ue]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

We have to trust scientific consensus all the time.

Several problems with this general statement.

Rather than reply in my own words, I will quote what a recent 'dissident' to the AGW-CO2-Catastrophe clique noted:

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/...t-provocateur/

Judith Curry Says:
April 25th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
We are getting lost in the trees and losing sight of the forest. Process is important, details are important, but lets get back to the big picture question of “does it matter?” Specifically with regards to paleo temperature reconstructions as reported in the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, Briffa/Jones/Wahl thought that it made a significant difference to the report to include the Ammann and Wahl paper and not include the Wegman Report (see the CRU emails), whereas McIntyre agrees (but for opposite reasons). Clearly the field of global paleotemperature reconstructions has not stabilized and can be viewed as rather immature, if the inclusion or not of 1-2 papers makes a material difference. MBH 98 made the first hemispheric paleo temperature reconstruction, and there have been numerous others since, although most use the same proxy records and aren’t particularly independent.

In view of this relative immaturity of the field, the IPCC 3rd assessment report (published in 2001) states:

“New analyses of proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely7 to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely7 that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year”

The are using the phrase “likely”, which implies >66% certainty. An astonishing level of certainty for such a young field that represents a marked departure from what was stated in the 2nd assessment report. It seems that Mike Mann (lead author) has a lot of confidence in his own paper,

In the 4th Assessment Report, we see this statement in the summary for policy makers:

“Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years. Some recent studies indicate greater variability in Northern Hemisphere temperatures than suggested in the TAR, particularly finding that cooler periods existed in the 12th to 14th, 17th and 19th centuries. Warmer periods prior to the 20th century are within the uncertainty range given in the TAR.

The now have increased the confidence level to “very likely”, which implies >90% confidence regarding the temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century being the warmest in the past millenium. They have backed off from some of the claims made in the 3rd assessment report.

In the overall scheme of the confidence levels reported in the IPCC, ”very likely” is very high confidence indeed. This is the same confidence level used for the historical temperature record:

“Globally, it is very likely7 that the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the instrumental record, since 1861″

Few other statements in the IPCC get the “very likely” imprimatur. For example, statements about hurricanes in the last half of the 20th century have the “likely” tag. Now we know a heck of alot more about hurricanes in 1950 than we do about surface temperatures in 1000 A.D.

What possible rationale is there for such a high confidence level in the paleo temperature reconstructions, when this field is little more than a decade old and fraught with controversy?

Last month I had the privilege of participating in the Royal Society Meeting on Handling Uncertainty in Science. Much good food for thought. But of particular relevance here, I provide some notes from the presentation made by Lord May entitled “Science as Organized Skepticism.” He describes science as a landscape of opinion in the early stages of research. With time, some of the bumps shrink, some of the hills grow and coalesce). As things progress two or three main ideas emerge, then one mountain becomes dominant. He says that it is important that the consensus isn’t reached too early, so that lines of investigation aren’t discouraged. He reminds of us of the hazards of the consensus becoming too implacable owing to ideology.

So what has happened in the field of paleoclimatology to so quickly develop a consensus? Some people have argued that a combination of groupthink amongst a very small community, plus gatekeeping (and even apparent bullying) have brought this subject to a premature consensus. Part of the problem is that there is very little funding for this field, so there are few practitioners most of whom are connected through collaborations. The lack of funding exacerbates the problem, since there is minimal funds in the U.S. to collect new proxy data and little research funds to build large research groups.

So the “very likely” consensus developed by this group based on about 15 years of research in developing hemispheric/global analyses is astonishing and indefensible to me. This is a field that needs to encourage new lines of research and bring in some new blood (including statisticians).

The point here is that the consensus is artificial: the science behind many parts of it is immature; the agendas of many of the prominent scientists in climate modeling are pronounced; the costs of going off half-cocked are immense; and the need to act based on a doomsday scenario is not present.

It is noteworthy that Judith Curry is actually of the belief (yes, exactly that word) that human influences do cause global warming.

The Pielkes - Roger Pielke Jr. in particular - make the point that there is every rationale to push forward on sensible alternative energy plans. But even in this area the lemming-like behavior engendered by panic-mongering has led to severe abuses - abuses which not only waste time and money, but could very well derail true progress in the alternative energy front.

A prime example: wind energy

Sounds great, but wind energy is extremely unreliable. As a consequence, every single kilowatt-hour of potential wind energy must be backstopped by a conventional coal- or natural gas- fired electricity generation plant.

Germany's and Denmark's own data show that the net CO2 savings is negative or zero. Browse through some of the postings in 'Climate Change'; follow through to the source data and verify for yourself.

What then is the point of spending billions of euros when no actual CO2 emission decrease is achieved?

It isn't that wind energy is completely useless - there are schemes such as using wind energy to pump water upstream of dams. This scheme for example is likely much more impactful of CO2 emissions as well as energy independence, but of course lacks the immediacy of shoving thousands of gigantic bird killing turbines all over the landscape.

Solar is another example: absolutely solar energy makes good sense for parts of the world, either where the sun is strong (SW US) or where the power grid is poor/nonexistent. But artificial incentives lead to solar investment in places where it makes very little sense: northern Europe comes to mind.

This malinvestment in turn deprives many other potentially better alternatives from forming.

A good friend of mine works in the semiconductor equipment industry and has been offered a prime position in the solar company. I'm working with him now to understand how the solar industry will play out given a range of incentive options - to understand if it is worth making the risky jump to another field.

Still ongoing but an early conclusion is: 30% or more efficiency leads to a viable industry therefore product. 15% (rough present average) does not.

Yet the billions of dollars and euros in incentives are installing 15% to 20% efficiency solar panels all over the world.

[GRG55]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

Several problems with this general statement.

Rather than reply in my own words, I will quote what a recent 'dissident' to the AGW-CO2-Catastrophe clique noted:

http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2010/...t-provocateur/



The point here is that the consensus is artificial: the science behind many parts of it is immature; the agendas of many of the prominent scientists in climate modeling are pronounced; the costs of going off half-cocked are immense; and the need to act based on a doomsday scenario is not present.

It is noteworthy that Judith Curry is actually of the belief (yes, exactly that word) that human influences do cause global warming.

The Pielkes - Roger Pielke Jr. in particular - make the point that there is every rationale to push forward on sensible alternative energy plans. But even in this area the lemming-like behavior engendered by panic-mongering has led to severe abuses - abuses which not only waste time and money, but could very well derail true progress in the alternative energy front.

A prime example: wind energy

Sounds great, but wind energy is extremely unreliable. As a consequence, every single kilowatt-hour of potential wind energy must be backstopped by a conventional coal- or natural gas- fired electricity generation plant.

Germany's and Denmark's own data show that the net CO2 savings is negative or zero. Browse through some of the postings in 'Climate Change'; follow through to the source data and verify for yourself.

What then is the point of spending billions of euros when no actual CO2 emission decrease is achieved?

It isn't that wind energy is completely useless - there are schemes such as using wind energy to pump water upstream of dams. This scheme for example is likely much more impactful of CO2 emissions as well as energy independence, but of course lacks the immediacy of shoving thousands of gigantic bird killing turbines all over the landscape.

Solar is another example: absolutely solar energy makes good sense for parts of the world, either where the sun is strong (SW US) or where the power grid is poor/nonexistent. But artificial incentives lead to solar investment in places where it makes very little sense: northern Europe comes to mind.

This malinvestment in turn deprives many other potentially better alternatives from forming.

A good friend of mine works in the semiconductor equipment industry and has been offered a prime position in the solar company. I'm working with him now to understand how the solar industry will play out given a range of incentive options - to understand if it is worth making the risky jump to another field.

Still ongoing but an early conclusion is: 30% or more efficiency leads to a viable industry therefore product. 15% (rough present average) does not.

Yet the billions of dollars and euros in incentives are installing 15% to 20% efficiency solar panels all over the world.

Nothing like a wee little financial crisis to bring some clarity to the thinking... :-)

Spain Pricks Solar Power Bubble as Greek Fate Looms

April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Spain is lancing an 18 billion-euro ($24 billion) investment bubble in solar energy that has boosted public liabilities, choking off new projects as it works to cut power prices and insulate itself from Greece’s debt crisis.

Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian is negotiating reductions in subsidies for solar plants that would curb energy costs...

[Diarmuid]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

We have to trust scientific consensus all the time. We can't be experts on everything. If you think the scientific community is wrong about climate change but when you get cancer you take the latest in chemotherapy (and you're neither a biochemist or an atmospheric physicist), you're just being inconsistent.

On the usefulness of models - here in an understated clanger from the IPPCs AR4 report which is the basis for, we are told, the need to upend our economies.

The importance of simulated cloud feedbacks was revealed by the analysis of model results (Manabe and Wetherald, 1975; Hansen et al, 1984), and the first extensive model intercomparisons (Cess et al., 1989) also showed a substantial model dependency. The strong effect of cloud processes on climate model sensitivities to greenhouse gases was emphasized further through a now-classic set of General Circulation Model (GCM) experiments, carried out by Senior and Mitchell (1993). They produced global average surface temperature changes (due to doubled atmospheric CO2 concentration) ranging from 1.9°C to 5.4°C, simply by altering the way that cloud radiative properties were treated in the model. It is somewhat unsettling that the results of a complex climate model can be so drastically altered by substituting one reasonable cloud parametrization for another, thereby approximately replicating the overall inter-model range of sensitivities. 4AR, 1.5.2, p. 114.

Unsettling indeed!

[Ben]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

This is a much better article - it has plausible reasons why a consensus might go wrong

However, when I was talking about the scientific consensus behind CO2 induced global warming, I was thinking about something a bit more robust than this single issue of constructing a long-term temperature record. While it is plausible that a false consensus could be formed around a single issue like that, given my knowledge of scientists, I just can't believe they could end up so badly wrong about such an important issue with so many threads of evidence feeding in.

In particular, it's hard to swallow because the core bit of physics behind global warming is so simple.

(Sorry if you are already well aware of the following, but I wanted to start from the beginning)

The Earth is just a black body that absorbs and emits radiation from the sun. If absorbed and emitted energy are balanced, then the Earth's temperature is constant. If absorbed energy is greater then the average temperature rises until a new equilibrium is reached (hotter bodies emit more radiation).
CO2 reduces the ability of the Earth to emit radiation (the CO2 molecule absorbs the outgoing infra-red radiation, and then emits it in a random direction, so roughly half goes back downwards)

I think it's helpful to clear up the various things that get argued about
1. The thesis that the Earth has already warmed
2. The thesis that this warming is due to human activity
3. The thesis that if we continue to emit CO2, the Earth will warm

1. It's nearly certain the Earth has warmed by 1-2 centigrade (I forget the precise figure with confidence intervals) from the 1860s (or at least since the 20th century) when we started proper temperature records. The long-term record as attempted by Micheal Mann is more controversial.

2. It's nearly certain that CO2 concentrations have increased very dramatically since the industrial revolution and that it was due to us. Demonstrating, however, that the warming in (1) was due to this is more difficult. I don't see any reason to reject the IPCC's conclusion that it's pretty difficult to explain the rise in temperature without using CO2 in your climate model.

However, it's a bit of a moot point, since what is most important is (3).

Like I said, the physics which says that increasing CO2 will eventually lead to some temperature rise is so simple that I think it can't be disputed.

Dispute arises over how large the effect is and how quickly it will happen.

The key figure people try to work out is "climate sensitivity" defined as the increase in avg temperature we can expect to follow from a doubling of CO2 concentrations.

They try to work this out from climate models. As Diarmuid, Don and you correctly point out, this is very difficult. There are feedback mechanisms and non-linear effects that can mean small changes in initial conditions have a large influence on the outcome. All we can do is to try our best and try to estimate the uncertainty present in our models.

And there is some kind of consensus. The models tend to cluster around 2-4 centigrade for climate sensitivity.
Importantly, no one thinks there is any serious chance of the sensitivity being under 1 centigrade, and therefore negligible.

As far as I can tell, this is because it's difficult to run away from the basic effect of CO2 reducing the Earth's emissivity. It also seems that no-one has identified any powerful sources of negative feedback that could act to stabilise the climate.

Here's my final point. People like to go on about the uncertainty present in climate modelling, and use it as a reason for inaction. The uncertainty means there's a small chance of climate sensitivity being really large. All those chaotic feedback loops could act to intensify warming rather than dampen it. If you look at the model results for climate sensitivity, many of them have fat tails, indicating and small chance of climate sensitivity being really high. (and no one thinks it's really low). If you start to do a cost-benefit analysis on the outcomes, the small chance of a really bad outcome might even deserve to dominate our calculations.

So, Dairmuid, you're right that maybe alterting how you treat clouds or something drastically alters a climate model, but how is that reassuring?


The point about wind turbines is a seperate issue.
Governments seem to be doing very little about AGW, so I'm not particularly concerned about "hysteria" leading to wasted resources...
All we can do concerning the carbon neutrality of wind turbines is quote figures at each other. I find it very hard to believe wind turbines are carbon neutral because it is a simple matter to work out the life-time energy production of a wind-turbine and the energy used to construct it. Again, I have sources I trust would have debunked wind turbines if it was the case they were carbon neutral. I figures I have heard cluster around a payback time of around 1 year. If you would like to try to persuade me I would be interested.

[c1ue]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

While it is plausible that a false consensus could be formed around a single issue like that, given my knowledge of scientists, I just can't believe they could end up so badly wrong about such an important issue with so many threads of evidence feeding in.

One of the difficulties in having a reasonable conversation on this subject is that both sides gloss over details which are inconvenient.

Has the earth warmed in the last (10 years, 200 years, 1000 years, 20000 years) - the answer is no, yes, no, yes

As this example clearly shows, the 'truth' of any statement on whether the earth has warmed is entirely a time scale issue.

The second part is: even if we assume a time period consistent with 'warmed', is it due in some part to man?

Answer again is yes.

However, some part could mean 1%, it could mean 50%, it could mean 90%. The amount is important as it dictates both how bad the eventual 'peak' temperature will be as well as how much future policies may affect the final temperature.

IPCC purports that the likelihood of global warming being due to anthropogenic CO2 is high - therefore implicitly stating that both the science of climate is mature and accurate. Yet this supposedly mature and accurate science continues to dismally fail in decade long predictions.

The next question after that is: Of the portion of warming which is due to man, how much is due to CO2?

It is at this point where science breaks down and the tribalism begins.

The ACC-CO2-Catastrophe folks say it is almost all (90%+) due to CO2.

I'll leave out the man-made argument though the reality is still that of the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is only a tiny fraction is directly man-made or more specifically fossil fuel derived.

The more relevant issue is that all of the models you mention - none of them have been accurate in any way in the 2 decades since the IPCC started publishing global temperature 'projections' from GCMs (global climate models). You can see the latest update in the 'Climate Change' section - the GCMs faithfully follow in the footsteps of Hansen's doomsday prophecies in the late '80s - i.e. totally off.

That aside, there are also numerous scientists who say that man-made warming is not primarily due to CO2, but CO2 is a significant factor in line with other 'man-made' causes like land use changes, altered local and regional climates due to irrigation/dams/farming, etc.

Is this important? Absolutely because an exclusive focus on CO2 means that if the 2nd hypothesis is correct, the majority of effects are in fact not going to be ameliorated by CO2 emissions controls. And thus the justification for undergoing the undeniable economic impact of CO2 emissions taxes is very questionable.

As far as I can tell, this is because it's difficult to run away from the basic effect of CO2 reducing the Earth's emissivity. It also seems that no-one has identified any powerful sources of negative feedback that could act to stabilise the climate.

As I've noted repeatedly, the 'argument' is that CO2 is a GHG, more GHG = more heat therefore more CO2 must equal a hotter Earth.

In reality this is a lame argument. CO2 levels have been 10x higher or more in the historical record. More often than not, these periods were marked by Ice Ages.

Therefore the idea that the final climate behavior of the Earth is affected primarily by CO2 levels is clearly much too simplistic.

As for negative feedback, again the historical record is clear: without a single documented example of a 'runaway' climate situation due to CO2 or any other influence, the burden is actually on those asserting net positive feedback since it literally never happened before.

You'll note that the REASONS for the above may not be understood, but the effects are quite obvious.

And to return to an earlier point: the IPCC GCM projections which rely on net positive feedback have been wrong and continue to be wrong.

At what point do the GCM creators start modifying their base assumptions implicit in this 2 decade long inaccuracy as opposed to tweaking the parameters to fit 'incorrect' reality?

The point about wind turbines is a seperate issue.
Governments seem to be doing very little about AGW, so I'm not particularly concerned about "hysteria" leading to wasted resources...
All we can do concerning the carbon neutrality of wind turbines is quote figures at each other. I find it very hard to believe wind turbines are carbon neutral because it is a simple matter to work out the life-time energy production of a wind-turbine and the energy used to construct it.

The figures I quoted are directly from the Denmark and German energy utilities.

Both countries are and were heavily invested into the entire 'green' energy concept of wind energy; it can hardly be argued that they are secretly advocating fossil fuels.

The data from these nations is quite clear: wind energy as it is used today is not carbon neutral.

Note that the carbon emissions figures for both nations was excluding CO2 emissions due to construction; the figures are purely just for operation.

Massive wind energy subsidies in Denmark and Germany have NOT led to any significant carbon emissions reductions.

[Ben]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

The next question after that is: Of the portion of warming which is due to man, how much is due to CO2?

It is at this point where science breaks down and the tribalism begins.

You're focusing primarily on problem (2). I'm happy to admit that extracting CO2's responsibility for the last 200 years of warming is a tricky, controversial problem.
I'm far more interested in (3) - if we keep increasing rapidly increasing CO2 concentrations, what is likely to happen to temperature? (what is climate sensitivity?).

(2) and (3) are linked, but it's more than possible to answer no to (2) but to predict large increases in temperature due to CO2 in the future.

There seems to be a strong scientific consensus that climate sensitivity is not close to zero (say under 1 centigrade).

As I've noted repeatedly, the 'argument' is that CO2 is a GHG, more GHG = more heat therefore more CO2 must equal a hotter Earth.

In reality this is a lame argument. CO2 levels have been 10x higher or more in the historical record. More often than not, these periods were marked by Ice Ages.

Well, the greenhouse effect is as I outlined. The Earth is a blockbody radiator. Incoming and outgoing radiation have to balance. If they don't balance, the Earth will move to a new temperature so that they balance. CO2 reduces the amount of radiation emited at a given temperature.

The argument is not more GHG = more heat = hotter earth.
The argument is that more GHG = Earth moves to a higher equilibrium temperature, unless a strong-enough negative feedback can counter the decline in emissivity due to the GHG increase.

If you think the situation with regard to feedback is uncertain, then it might still be prudent to take action. If feedback is roughly neutral or positive then global warming will be very costly. Only if it's negative will we be fine if GHG concentrations continue to increase.

And while we have discovered many potential causes of positive feedback, there don't seem to be so many large sources of negative feedback.

That concentrations of CO2 might have been higher during periods when the Earth was cooler doesn't mean much. The argument is, if other factors are roughly the same, more GHG means hotter Earth. During Ice Ages the Earth receives less radiation from the Sun due to very long-term patterns in its Orbit. This effect can be stronger than that due to CO2.

The more relevant issue is that all of the models you mention - none of them have been accurate in any way in the 2 decades since the IPCC started publishing global temperature 'projections' from GCMs (global climate models). You can see the latest update in the 'Climate Change' section - the GCMs faithfully follow in the footsteps of Hansen's doomsday prophecies in the late '80s - i.e. totally off.

This is interesting. I saw the graph in the forum. One thing to say is that the different lines correspond to different CO2 emissions scenarios, so it's actually one mistake repeated 4 times, rather than lots of models all being wrong.

To be honest, it doesn't seem hard to accept that some unexpected 5 year cooling cycle kicked in, and threw the models off. It's a difficult system to model, even over the 5-10 year period. What most concerns me is what's going to happen in 50 years.

Also, I'm under the impression that IPCC predictions for sea level rise and ice-cover retreat have been significantly exceeded over the last few years. Does this mean that over 50 years the situation is going to be much worse than we first expected?

The answer to both is that 5 years is quite a short time scale for a climate model.

At what point do the GCM creators start modifying their base assumptions implicit in this 2 decade long inaccuracy as opposed to tweaking the parameters to fit 'incorrect' reality?

Quite. My answer is not yet.

As for negative feedback, again the historical record is clear: without a single documented example of a 'runaway' climate situation due to CO2 or any other influence, the burden is actually on those asserting net positive feedback since it literally never happened before.

How can we be sure of this if the long-term temperature record is so suspect?

The data from these nations is quite clear: wind energy as it is used today is not carbon neutral.

Note that the carbon emissions figures for both nations was excluding CO2 emissions due to construction; the figures are purely just for operation.

I just can't understand how they could have used so much energy running some wind turbines. Do you have a theory?

Ben

[c1ue]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

There seems to be a strong scientific consensus that climate sensitivity is not close to zero (say under 1 centigrade).

From what I can tell, there is no consensus whatsoever as to what the actual sensitivity is. It is not a case where some say it is +2.0, and some say it is +1.8 - rather it is a case where some say +2.0, some say +4.0, some say -2.0, some say net zero, etc etc.

Hardly a consensus.

Secondly, as I repeatedly brought forward, the existence of even specific mechanisms for powerful positive feedback have yet to be demonstrated experimentally. Even ignoring the paleo temperature record, this is a problem.

The argument is not more GHG = more heat = hotter earth.
The argument is that more GHG = Earth moves to a higher equilibrium temperature, unless a strong-enough negative feedback can counter the decline in emissivity due to the GHG increase.

As noted above, there is no evidence anywhere in the historical record that the Earth's climate has a net positive feedback behavior. In fact, there is lots of evidence that the Earth has a net negative feedback behavior - the ice core records which show an 800 year lag between temperature increases vs. CO2 increases, as well as between temperature decreases and CO2 decreases, is only one example.

Another example is the 'faint Sun' paradox.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox

Early in the Earth's history, the Sun's output would be only 70% as intense during that epoch as it is during the modern epoch. In the current environmental conditions, this solar output would be insufficient to maintain a liquid ocean. Astronomers Carl Sagan and George Mullen pointed out in 1972 that this is contrary to the geologic and paleontological evidence.^[1]
According to the Standard Solar Model, stars similar to the Sun should gradually brighten over their main sequence life time.^[2] However, with the predicted solar luminosity 4 billion (4 × 10⁹) years ago and with greenhouse gas concentrations the same as are current for the modern Earth, any liquid water exposed to the surface would freeze. However, the geological record shows a continually relatively warm surface in the full early temperature record of the Earth, with the exception of a cold phase, the Huronian glaciation, about 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago. Water-related sediments have been found that date to as early as 3.8 billion years ago.^[3] Hints of early life forms have been dated from as early as 3.5 billion years,^[4] and the basic carbon isotopy is very much in line with what is found today.^[5] A regular change between ice ages and warm periods is only to be found since one billion years.^{[citation needed]}

To be honest, it doesn't seem hard to accept that some unexpected 5 year cooling cycle kicked in, and threw the models off. It's a difficult system to model, even over the 5-10 year period. What most concerns me is what's going to happen in 50 years.

If the models were from scratch, this might be more understandable.

But keep in mind the GCMs are tuned using actual measurement data. Each GCM generation as noted in the graph was inaccurate literally from the year its projection was released.

It has also been noted in other threads in the 'Climate Change' section that this type of inaccuracy bodes poorly for long term predictive powers. For one thing, each year depends on the initial conditions present at the end of the previous year.

If indeed the climate is net positive feedback, then these inaccuracies actually multiply over decades.

Only if the climate is net negative feedback would equilibrium (i.e. steady state predictive power) be present.

The last note is that the actual behavior is even below the projected temperature behavior were all IPCC CO2 emissions recommendations followed. That is what the 'commitment' line is in the graph. It would seem that at a minimum, the GCMs are not working well.

Also, I'm under the impression that IPCC predictions for sea level rise and ice-cover retreat have been significantly exceeded over the last few years. Does this mean that over 50 years the situation is going to be much worse than we first expected?

Arctic ice in the 2003-2007 period was absolutely at below 1979-2000 average. The problem is that since then the ice has recovered - this year actually exceeding the average.

The second problem is that the Arctic has had at least 2 instances in the past 100 years where its ice had retreated:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/0...en/#more-19179

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/03/1...icebergs-melt/

And given this occurred pre WW II - i.e. before the bulk of anthropogenic CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels - it does point out that the Arctic ice behavior is neither unprecedented nor perhaps unusual.

Other anecdotes on Himalayan glaciers (false), worldwide glaciers (0.3% sampled), and Greenland (Medieval Warming period clearly less ice than today) again make the AGW-CO2-Catastrophe view that 'its worse now' and 'disaster is coming' less credible.

How can we be sure of this if the long-term temperature record is so suspect?

The controversy over temperature records isn't in the far paleo space. The controversy only covers the last 1000 years or so - primarily because of the Medieval Warm Period. The MWP is anathema to certain of the AGW-CO2-Catastrophist scientific leaders because there are clear examples that temperatures exceeded those of today. Given that there was NO fossil fuel burning in the 1000 A.D. timeframe (to speak of), it makes the argument that present temperatures are primarily due to anthropogenic CO2 much weaker.

I just can't understand how they could have used so much energy running some wind turbines. Do you have a theory?

I suggest you read the articles more carefully. The CO2 emissions are not due to operation of the wind turbines themselves; the CO2 emitted is due to the additional CO2 emissions from the backup power plants.

A power plant - much as any combustion engine - emits far more CO2 and other 'waste' products when starting up.

As wind energy is highly variable, these power plants are constantly turning on and off.

The CO2 emissions vs. grid efficiency vs. wind energy contribution is a tabular listing of the effects in Germany - while the overall Denmark CO2 emissions data shows that even an energy exporting nation with massive wind power installations still sees no net CO2 emissions decreases.

[Ben]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

From what I can tell, there is no consensus whatsoever as to what the actual sensitivity is. It is not a case where some say it is +2.0, and some say it is +1.8 - rather it is a case where some say +2.0, some say +4.0, some say -2.0, some say net zero, etc etc.

I suppose my first point is as before, for global warming to not be a risk you have to be pretty certain that sensitivity is near zero or negative. Arguing that there's no consensus or that's it's unknowable is hardly comforting. (and if GHG concentrations are rising, you need it to be net negative for this to be the case).

As far as the consensus goes, I had this in mind:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...-figure-1.html

and quotes like:
"Progress since the TAR enables an assessment that climate sensitivity is likely to be in the range of 2 to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C, and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C."
From here: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_.../mains2-3.html


I'm not sure what you mean by "demonstrated experimentally." The best we can do is try to fit models with or without feedback to past data and see how well it fits.

I'm not sure what the problem with the long-term temperature record. I'm under the impression that there have been past periods of very rapid warming. These at least suggest positive feedback periods.

It has also been noted in other threads in the 'Climate Change' section that this type of inaccuracy bodes poorly for long term predictive powers. For one thing, each year depends on the initial conditions present at the end of the previous year.

I suppose it might be the case that climate modelling is bullshit. It's just that I find it hard to swallow. I've met climate physicists. They are not insane. The academic establishment is not irrationally anti-carbon.

Arctic ice in the 2003-2007 period was absolutely at below 1979-2000 average. The problem is that since then the ice has recovered - this year actually exceeding the average.

I don't know much about ice-cover. I can say that last winter was supposed to be one of the coldest in the last ~20 years in the UK, so I'm not surprised it was a good year for Artic ice. This doesn't, however, show that the ice has recovered. It's just part of the short-term oscillations in the system.

I'm not up to date on the Medieval Warm Period Controversy. A couple of years ago I read Mann's responses I found them pretty convincing. Suppose, however, that Mann can't be trusted.
Then, since I can't evaluate the data myself, I'm probably going to believe that what's suggested by the bulk of peer reviewed published science as reported by the IPCC, Royal Society, etc

A power plant - much as any combustion engine - emits far more CO2 and other 'waste' products when starting up.

As wind energy is highly variable, these power plants are constantly turning on and off.

The CO2 emissions vs. grid efficiency vs. wind energy contribution is a tabular listing of the effects in Germany - while the overall Denmark CO2 emissions data shows that even an energy exporting nation with massive wind power installations still sees no net CO2 emissions decreases.

The final point might not mean much - if other sources of CO2 increased then CO2 emissions might have increased despite a large increase in wind power.

Although it's true that when power plants start up they are initially less efficient, but I find it hard to swallow the effect is so large that it cancels the preceeding wind turbine operation.

You'd need to calculate the CO2 released by the back-up power plants and show it was greater than the CO2 released by normal power-plants producing energy equal to that produced by the backed-up wind turbines plus the energy produced by the back-up plants.

[c1ue]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

I suppose my first point is as before, for global warming to not be a risk you have to be pretty certain that sensitivity is near zero or negative. Arguing that there's no consensus or that's it's unknowable is hardly comforting. (and if GHG concentrations are rising, you need it to be net negative for this to be the case).

As far as the consensus goes, I had this in mind:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...-figure-1.html

The IPCC link is a perfect example of what I referred to previously: every single GCM assumed a net positive climate feedback.

If a net positive climate feedback is so obvious, why then is it still unproven?

Neither experiment, nor past/present observation, nor models have clearly demonstrated that climate feedback is net positive.

How then can there be a consensus for something which is so poorly corroborated?

You'll note that I have not said that net climate feedback is fundamentally unknowable nor that realistic climate modeling is impossible.

What I have said is that the state of climate science proclaiming CO2 catastrophe thus far has failed numerous fundamental scientific procedures: its premises haven't been demonstrated in experiment nor in observation nor have falsifiable criteria been put forth.

This is a very different argument than saying AGW-CO2-Catastrophe is impossible. My point is quite simple: if the underlying science is so inconclusive, why then must action be taken now?

The answer of course is always - better safe than sorry.

But taking precipitate action will make millions or even billions sorry:

Increased food prices lead to 3rd world starvation.

Increased energy prices lead to lowered standards of living worldwide.

Wasted money and energy obstructs future range of options.

Over focus on climate change distracts from other areas of equal or greater concern - for example, taxing CO2 doesn't prevent deforestation. It doesn't help with 3rd world lack of infrastructure and education. It doesn't even prevent most of the purported anthropogenic CO2 effects from happening: the consensus also clearly states that most of the damage is already 'in the pipeline'.

The best we can do is try to fit models with or without feedback to past data and see how well it fits.

Models are fundamentally built out of assumptions. If the models all assume a net positive feedback, why then is this assumption not demonstratable experimentally or otherwise?

More importantly, where are the models which actually accurately predict climate behavior?

Because the IPCC ones are doing a terrible job, just as UK Meteorology models were doing a terrible job. Normally failed models are relegated to the dustbin - for some reason in climate science the failed models are claimed to be merely temporarily wrong.

I suppose it might be the case that climate modelling is bullshit. It's just that I find it hard to swallow. I've met climate physicists. They are not insane. The academic establishment is not irrationally anti-carbon.

Whether they are bullshit is a function of accuracy. If the models are consistently wrong over decade plus spans, at what point is the fundamental approach considered wrong?

And you don't have to be insane to continue pushing your life's work. Self interest either financial or academic would lead to the same behavior.

And again, ultimately modeller's motivations don't matter if their models are right. But they haven't been and continue to not be.

I don't know much about ice-cover. I can say that last winter was supposed to be one of the coldest in the last ~20 years in the UK, so I'm not surprised it was a good year for Artic ice. This doesn't, however, show that the ice has recovered. It's just part of the short-term oscillations in the system.

Strange, when the ice is low - it is global warming. When the ice recovers, suddenly you can hear crickets even in non-Arctic regions.

Here is the actual behavior in the last few years vs. the average in the prior period:


The total data set in modern scientific methodology is less than 30 years. Somehow despite clear recorded examples of outlying behavior in the Arctic (i.e. low to no ice periods), any deviation from the short modern record is considered global warming.

The point is still the same: if Arctic behavior is so tied to short term regional behavior - which in turn the IPCC models completely fail to predict, then how can IPCC models be used to accurately gauge future trends?

The final point might not mean much - if other sources of CO2 increased then CO2 emissions might have increased despite a large increase in wind power.

Although it's true that when power plants start up they are initially less efficient, but I find it hard to swallow the effect is so large that it cancels the preceeding wind turbine operation.

You'd need to calculate the CO2 released by the back-up power plants and show it was greater than the CO2 released by normal power-plants producing energy equal to that produced by the backed-up wind turbines plus the energy produced by the back-up plants.

There is plenty of data available beyond the links I've put up in 'Climate Change': here is another covering the Denmark wind energy situation:

http://www.aweo.org/problemwithwind.html

In 1998, Norway commissioned a study of wind power in Denmark and concluded that it has "serious environmental effects, insufficient production, and high production costs."

Denmark (population 5.3 million) has over 6,000 turbines that produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used in 2002. Yet no conventional power plant has been shut down. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants must be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity. Most cannot simply be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises, and the quick ramping up and down of those that can be would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary "greenhouse" gas). So when the wind is blowing just right for the turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price, or the turbines are simply shut off.

A writer in The Utilities Journal (David J. White, "Danish Wind: Too Good To Be True?," July 2004) found that 84% of western Denmark's wind-generated electricity was exported (at a revenue loss) in 2003, i.e., Denmark's glut of wind towers provided only 3.3% of the nation's electricity. According to The Wall Street Journal Europe, the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken reported that wind actually met only 1.7% of Denmark's total demand in 1999. (Besides the amount exported, this low figure may also reflect the actual net contribution. The large amount of electricity used by the turbines themselves is typically not accounted for in the usually cited output figures. Click here for information about electricity use in wind turbines.) In Weekendavisen (Nov. 4, 2005), Frede Vestergaard reported that Denmark as a whole exported 70.3% of its wind production in 2004.

Denmark is just dependent enough on wind power that when the wind is not blowing right they must import electricity. In 2000 they imported more electricity than they exported. And added to the Danish electric bill are the subsidies that support the private companies building the wind towers. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe. [Click here for a detailed and well referenced examination by Vic Mason.]

An installation of wind power equivalent to 19% of Denmark's population needs is quite significant; a failure to reduce the overall CO2 emissions of Denmark's electricity generation is equally a failure of wind energy to its stated purpose of providing cleaner electricity than fossil fuels.

You'd need to calculate the CO2 released by the back-up power plants and show it was greater than the CO2 released by normal power-plants producing energy equal to that produced by the backed-up wind turbines plus the energy produced by the back-up plants.

This is exactly what was done. Please read the link:

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...tions&p=155093

[Ben]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

Neither experiment, nor past/present observation, nor models have clearly demonstrated that climate feedback is net positive.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by confirming net feedback is positive by "experiment." We only have one Earth.

There are two ways of estimating climate sensitivity.

The first is to look at past periods and examine the correlation between radiative forcing and temperature change (radiative forcing is the net change in incoming vs outgoing energy; by decreasing outgoing energy, CO2 exerts a radiative forcing).

The first chart in the link (titled estimated from observation or similar) was based on this method. The method only gives rough results, but as the chart shows, the weight of evidence is that climate sensitivity is positive.

Note, however, that you don't need to assume anything about net feedback. You just see what happens in the past when a radiative forcing is exerted.

The second method is to make a climate model with certain input parameters, then you alter the parameters that affect the climate sensitivity and see what kind of values you get. You repeat the model with a wide range of input parameters, allowing you to assign probabilities to the various values of climate sensitivity. The input parameters are restricted by the requirement that the model can also reproduce past climate observations. (i.e. input parameters that lead to models that don't predict the past climate are given low weight, those that are successful are given a high weight).

They don't just assume that net feedback is positive. They vary the parameters that affect feedback and see if the model can recreate the past climate with these input parameters.

This approach was used to make the second graph, and again, the weight of evidence is that climate sensitivity is positive.

Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...n/ch9s9-6.html

Faced with this kind of evidence, "better safe than sorry" becomes more pressing. Even if we assume this data seriously overstates likely climate sensitivity, it might still be worth acting. In particular, if there's a small chance it's above 4oC. Even moderate global warming can knock a few percent off global GDP. Serious global warming could mean "catastrophe."


Sorry, by "insane" I was being a bit dramatic. I really just meant not receptive to reason.


It's the total data collected by satellites.
I'm very keen not to say when the ice is low that it's global warming, and otherwise say it's just natural variation. I hate it when either side of the debate pulls this kind of trick.

The problem is, if you do proper statistics on the ice levels you find the following:
"Satellite data indicate a continuation of the 2.7 ± 0.6% per decade decline in annual mean arctic sea ice extent since 1978."

Source: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_.../ch4s4-es.html

Maybe there have been some good years since the 4th assessment, but it's unlikely to have reversed the trend statistically.


Thanks for the info on Denmark. I found that quite interesting.
I've heard people planning big wind projects talk about the importance of the dam storage facilities (pump water uphill during peak production, let it down through hydro plants when the energy is needed). Now I understand why.
Personally, more than wind I'd like to see
1. Electrification of transport, better public transport
2. A large building heating efficiency program
3. Lots more nuclear power
(probably can be justified on a peak oil basis alone...)

[Diarmuid]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

Ben,

I was going to let yourself and c1ue hammer it out as the posts to date seem like a fairly civil conversation, maybe a first, for the topic of climate change on itulip ;-), therefore if I am intruding please forgive and say.

You said

There are two ways of estimating climate sensitivity.

The first is to look at past periods and examine the correlation between radiative forcing and temperature change (radiative forcing is the net change in incoming vs outgoing energy; by decreasing outgoing energy, CO2 exerts a radiative forcing).

...
The second method is to make a climate model with certain input parameters, then you alter the parameters that affect the climate sensitivity and see what kind of values you get. You repeat the model with a wide range of input parameters, allowing you to assign probabilities to the various values of climate sensitivity. The input parameters are restricted by the requirement that the model can also reproduce past climate observations. (i.e. input parameters that lead to models that don't predict the past climate are given low weight, those that are successful are given a high weight).

When you say the radiative forcing I presume you are talking about 1st order forcing, correct me if I am wrong?, for a doubling of carbon dioxide the Committee on the Science of Climate Change National Research Council estimate a rise of 1.2 degrees for a doubling of CO2 atmospheric levels.

"The sensitivity of the climate system to a forcing is commonly expressed in terms of the global mean temperature change that would be expected after a time sufficiently long for both the atmosphere and ocean to come to equilibrium with the change in climate forcing. If there were no climate feedbacks, the response of Earth's mean temperature to a forcing of 4 W/m² (the forcing for a doubled atmospheric CO₂) would be an increase of about 1.2 °C (about 2.2 °F). However, the total climate change is affected not only by the immediate direct forcing, but also by climate “feedbacks” that come into play in response to the forcing."
"As just mentioned, a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide (from the pre-Industrial value of 280 parts per million) in the global atmosphere causes a forcing of 4 W/m². The central value of the climate sensitivity to this change is a global average temperature increase of 3 °C (5.4 °F), but with a range from 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C (2.7 to 8.1 °F) (based on climate system models: see section 4). The central value of 3 °C is an amplification by a factor of 2.5 over the direct effect of 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Well-documented climate changes during the history of Earth, especially the changes between the last major ice age (20,000 years ago) and the current warm period, imply that the climate sensitivity is near the 3 °C value. However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in part because it is difficult to model the effect of feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of the feedback can differ according to the composition, thickness, and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have suggested a lesser climate sensitivity."

Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, pp 6-7,
Committee on the Science of Climate Change
National Research Council

below are the IPCC data for projected time lines for a doubling of CO2 levels from today.

Figure 1: Atmospheric CO2 concentrations as observed at Mauna Loa from 1958 to 2008 (black dashed line) and projected under the 6 SRES marker and illustrative scenarios. Two carbon cycle models (see Box 3.7 in IPCC, 2001) are used for each scenario: BERN (solid lines) and ISAM (dashed).

Eyeballing the graph and guesstimating, a 50 year time line for 1.2 degree rise of first order forcing without the postulated feedbacks seems reasonable, all else being even?. First order forcing without any positive feed backs surely does not warrant the radical solutions of carbon reduction being put forth?

Preparations for adaption to changes in climate would seem much more prudent, more cost effective and avoid the obvious pain of increases in the cost of energy imposed on the worlds population imo.

A well known engineering principle is to have a working replacement for a system before you break the existing one. Given the importance of cheap fossil fuels to modern society is it not prudent that so called "green" alternative energy solutions or nuclear infrastructure should be in place, affordable and effective before we begin to countenance dismantling our existing infrastructure?

Regarding radiative forcing and its correlation to temperature change (radiative forcing is the net change in incoming vs outgoing energy; by decreasing outgoing energy, CO2 exerts a radiative forcing)". I would refer you to

Bold added

BOULDER—Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.

To say "the physics which says that increasing CO2 will eventually lead to some temperature rise is so simple that I think it can't be disputed". If we are talking of simple RTE, we must assumes that all else is even, but all else is clearly not even as demonstrated by the missing heat and other anomalies, the climate is a highly chaotic and interconnected system and so further to what has been already said, talking about climate in terms of simply RTE has no relevance to understanding, projecting or predicting climate and hence solutions or mitigations.

i.e. its simple more CO2 more heat - is a logical fallacy of causation imo.

Explanation:
The causation fallacies known as oversimplification and exaggeration occur whenever the series of actual causes for an event are either reduced or multiplied to the point where there is no longer a genuine, causal connection between the alleged causes and the actual effect.

You previously have said

"It's nearly certain that CO2 concentrations have increased very dramatically since the industrial revolution and that it was due to us. Demonstrating, however, that the warming from the 1860s (or at least since the 20th century) was due to this is more difficult.

...

I'm happy to admit that extracting CO2's responsibility for the last 200 years of warming is a tricky, controversial problem."

Would you agree that CO2's responsibility for the last 200 years of warming has not been established without large degrees of uncertainty and that in fact that what has been conveyed to the general public is certainty?

If you accept the problems with modeling as alluded to by previous posts, the various anomalies with regard to the CAGW hypothesis e.g. the missing heat, faint sun paradox etc., and the lack of representation to the public of the uncertainties, one is really left only with trust, with regard to the prudence effectiveness and honesty of solutions currently proposed to mitigate an uncertain problem?

Then one must ask is this trust warranted?

It is my opinion the basis for this trust is not warranted, in light of, misrepresentation of the science in the press and some public bodies (e.g. the recent problems with the IPPC report AR4), the email scandal, the dubious nature and the effectiveness of the solutions being proposed and what appears to be instances of financial impropriety or profiteering from prominent advocates of CAGW.

For opinions such as that which has been expressed, one is called a denier or flat earther rather than try and establish a basis for restoring that trust. I refer one, to comments made recently by Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband in the UK.

[c1ue]

Re: Volcanoes, Weather and Computer Models

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by confirming net feedback is positive by "experiment." We only have one Earth.

There are a lot of ways to confirm - or at least not invalidate - a hypothesis.

For example, if indeed anthropogenic CO2 were indeed the primary driver of climate, and furthermore that CO2's direct effects would be amplified by a net positive response in climate feedback, then there should be both historical and ongoing observable effects due to this.

One example would be temperature behavior in the troposphere. CO2 is not evenly distributed throughout the vertical span of the atmosphere; it is disproportionately represented in the troposphere:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...2211040a0.html

Increasing CO2 levels should increase more in the troposphere, and in turn should contribute to increases in tropospheric temperature levels.

Yet no such temperature changes have been detected.

Similarly while CO2 is more or less uniformly distributed over the Earth, the sources of anthropogenic CO2 are not. Given this - and given the AGW-CO2-Catastrophe assumption that the is anthropogenic CO2 causing temperature changes - there should be clear regional temperature anomalies around all human populated areas (land) vs. areas which experience low to no human CO2 emissions (ocean).

There is no such pattern: (Straight from the default GISS temperature anomaly map generator)

GHCN_GISS_1200km_Anom03_2010_2010_1951_1980.gif

You'll note neither the United States, nor Europe, nor China is anywhere near a 'peak heat' area.

The first is to look at past periods and examine the correlation between radiative forcing and temperature change (radiative forcing is the net change in incoming vs outgoing energy; by decreasing outgoing energy, CO2 exerts a radiative forcing).

This in general is correct, but the Devil lies in the details.

For one thing, the satellite energy readings as well as the ocean heat measurements are showing clear discrepancies vs. AGW-CO2-Catastrophe theory:

the former, the lack of rise in global temperatures in the past decade is due to lower short wave solar radiation - NOT due to decreased long wave radiation which CO2 play in:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/04/...oves-my-point/

the latter, ocean heat content continues to mismatch vs. AGW-CO2-Catastrophe theoretical contributions to energy via radiative forcing:

http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.co...sicsworld-com/

The second method is to make a climate model with certain input parameters, then you alter the parameters that affect the climate sensitivity and see what kind of values you get.

...

They don't just assume that net feedback is positive. They vary the parameters that affect feedback and see if the model can recreate the past climate with these input parameters.

Is this assertion that "net positive feedback is indeed one of the varied parameters when 'fitting' behavior" verified or only to your understanding?

Because my understanding is that the variables changed are primarily those associated with micro-scale behaviors such as friction. See the article I posted:

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...=climate+model

In fact the very link you posted says:

Since observational constraints on the upper bound of ECS are still weak (as shown below), these prior assumptions influence the resulting estimates.

Similarly all of the IPCC models are net positive feedback - at least according to Dr. Roy Spencer:

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/...ate-challenge/

The reason why we keep hearing about how serious global warming will be is that all twenty-something of the computer climate models tracked by the IPCC now have net positive feedbacks.

So the statement that all possible variants of negative and positive net feedback are tested for seems highly unlikely in this context.

The problem is, if you do proper statistics on the ice levels you find the following:
"Satellite data indicate a continuation of the 2.7 ± 0.6% per decade decline in annual mean arctic sea ice extent since 1978."

And again, you've not addressed the points I raised earlier: there are 2 different anecdotal examples where the Arctic had little to no ice: both during the previous warming trend in the 1920-1940 era.

Given that we just went through a warming trend (1979-1999), and the 1920-1940 era hardly compares with the post WW II CO2 emissions profile, it seems odd that suddenly Arctic ice is an indicator of anything other than a highly variable Arctic environment.

1. Electrification of transport, better public transport
2. A large building heating efficiency program
3. Lots more nuclear power

Electrification of transport would be the last step. The entire US grid would need to be upgraded significantly before that could even be contemplated - in fact I've said before that a better short term use for all the alternative energy money would be a conversion of the US electricity transport grid to higher efficiencies - either via superconductors or some other middle step. This would itself save 10% or more of energy usage as well as open the possibilities for electrification of transport.

Heating efficiency also depends on the source of heat. Heating oil is used not just for cost issues, but also for energy density.

As for nuclear power, this is a very hot potato issue. Many of the most rabid AGW-CO2-Catastrophists are equally against nuclear power.

Nuclear power also is very expensive; at least 500 to 1500 nuclear power plants would need to be built to phase out the existing coal/natural gas plants. That's some serious big money, not to mention nuclear waste issues - given that the existing 65 nuclear power plants already have trouble finding places to dump their spent rods.