14 February 2008

Climate Orthodoxy Is Given Little Respect by Anyone Acquainted with Actual Science

Pity the poor infant science of climatology. Fresh from winning the Nobel Peace(!) Prize, the high priests of climatology return from Oslo to find that back at home, most knowledgeable people do not consider them "real scientists." Why not?
The scientists who interest me in this field are those who can draw on the experience of a lot of people who have come before them. And uniformly in these areas I find scepticism. People who write mathematical models of complex systems for a living tend to find the climate models very unconvincing. Geologists find the arguments very unconvincing. Engineers find the arguments unconvincing. And astrophysicists find the arguments unconvincing.

Why? Well the answers are clear....The climate models seem to be largely driven by over-fitting to a small sample set and positive feedback. The small sample set - at most 30 years of accurate data - might be enough to try and predict one or two years, but 50 year predictions? Ignoring the biggest effect on global warming - water vapour - is surely going to cause problems.

Positive feedback in engineering invariably results in unstable systems - so we have to ask why do most if not all of the climate models rely on it to get doomsday predictions? For the Earth to have survived as long as it has with a stable climate, through major events like ice-ages or volcanic eruptions, there is little doubt that a degree of negative climate feedback is essential.

Geologists will quite happily explain how major climate changes in the Earth are a result of geological changes. Remember that more carbon is trapped in limestone than in either plant life or fossil fuels (or both put together for that matter). Ice ages and volcanic eruptions are all things that will unarguably change the climate. Yet, with the notable exception of the extinction of the dinosaurs, it seems life has happily trundled along through it all. We're the living proof.

Of course, it's also interesting to see changes over shorter time periods. If you go to see the Roman ruins at Ephesus in Turkey, the guide will point out that the harbour is miles from where the nearest sea is today. Sea levels go up and down for many reasons - carbon dioxide not being one of them. Somehow, we survive.___Source

Rather than sitting still, being quiet, and letting the infant high priests of climatology destroy the global economy, many scientists have gotten disgusted enough by the quasi-religious pompous pseudoscientific pretense, to say "enough!"
  • There are no calculations to determinate an average surface temperature of a planet:
  • a) with or without atmosphere,
  • b) with or without rotation,
  • c) with or without infrared light absorbing gases.
  • The frequently mentioned difference of 33 C for the fictitious greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is therefore a meaningless number.
  • Any radiation balance for the average radiant flux is completely irrelevant for the determination of the ground level air temperatures and thus for the average value as well.
  • Average temperature values cannot be identifed with the fourth root of average values of the absolute temperature’s fourth power.
  • Radiation and heat flows do not determine the temperature distributions and their average values.
  • Re-emission is not reflection and can in no way heat up the ground-level air against the actual heat flow without mechanical work.
  • The temperature rises in the climate model computations are made plausible by a perpetuum mobile of the second kind [perpetual motion machine]. This is possible by setting the thermal conductivity in the atmospheric models to zero, an unphysical assumption. It would be no longer a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, if the average fictitious radiation balance, which has no physical justification anyway, was given up.
  • After Schack 1972 water vapor is responsible for most of the absorption of the infrared radiation in the Earth’s atmosphere. The wavelength of the part of radiation, which is absorbed by carbon dioxide is only a small part of the full infrared spectrum and does not change considerably by raising its partial pressure. Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects : : : 93
  • Infrared absorption does not imply “backwarming”. Rather it may lead to a drop of the temperature of the illuminated surface.
  • In radiation transport models with the assumption of local thermal equilibrium, it is assumed that the absorbed radiation is transformed into the thermal movement of all gas molecules. There is no increased selective re-emission of infrared radiation at the low temperatures of the Earth’s atmosphere.___Much More at Source
H/T Icecap and Green Watch

The problem with calling climate modelers "scientists", is that actual scientists generate testable, falsifiable hypotheses within their specific areas of study. Actual scientists operate under the discipline of the scientific method. GCMs (general circulation models)--the omnipotent toys of climate modelers--are not falsifiable. They are not even good enough to be wrong!

Yet, Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain all claim to believe in the proclamations of the orthodox IPCC, to arbitrarily place onerous controls, damaging regulations, and crippling restrictions on the US economy--to placate the "gods" of global warming. Talk about human sacrifice! The EU government is even worse, but then, no one expects any better from an unrepresentative, unaccountable mega-bureaucracy like the EU.

The dullards who remain, fixed in their unmovable belief in CAGW, are the real losers here. At least the members of the orthodoxy are getting tenure, publications, a certain amount of "acclaim", and--a Nobel Peace(!) Prize. The dullard true believers will get nothing whatsoever out of this deal--except drained pocketbooks, loss of jobs, and in the end--incredible disillusionment when the whole cathedral-of-cards comes crashing to ground. C'est la vie.

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4 Comments:

Blogger Snake Oil Baron said...

"at most 30 years of accurate data"

"At most" is right, given all the pictures I have seen of climate stations sitting next to air-conditioning vents and in the middle of parking lots. I can't remember where but I recently saw a series of maps where the measurements were taken for these "hottest years on record" stats. The two big "hot years" just happened to occur when large numbers of Canadian and Australian stations were not being used. Funny how not measuring in the north and south can cause such horrible climate change.

Oh, and in other news, apparently global warming has killed off the Loch Ness Monster.

Now that climate science is turning out to be quackery (the last two years were predicted to be record setting ones for heat and hurricanes - in reality, not so much) every pseudoscience nut is going to milk it for everything it is worth. "You scientists were wrong about global warming and now you are suppressing my theory about the hollow earth"

Thursday, 14 February, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

I agree. The backlash against the failed orthodoxy will probably create a lot of "collateral damage" to genuine scientific research.

Friday, 15 February, 2008  
Blogger SwampWoman said...

It's not so much a science as an income opportunity being hawked by infomercials.

Saturday, 16 February, 2008  
Blogger al fin said...

I continue to be astounded by the creativity of scientists outside of traditional climatology, who manage to get their research funded by claiming a link to "global warming."

It really is quite clever.

But then, journalists and climate grifters have been doing the same thing, so maybe the scientists are only imitating them.

Saturday, 16 February, 2008  

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“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell

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