Nir Shaviv, CO2 vs. solar warming
Peter D. Tillman
preponderance of evidence seems to be tilting against the current
climatic warming being mostly anthropogenic. I didn't have a good online
reference to support this impression, so I did some research. I will now
refer you to <http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar>
This site is run by Nir J. Shaviv, a sharp young Israeli astrophysicist
who's been doing some very interesting work on the influence of cosmic
rays on climate.
In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
And CO2 is an excellent whipping-boy for those hoping to sell drastic
anti-industrial "solutions"....
The idea that solar variations drive climatic variations seems, duh,
rather *obvious*. And there have been lots of attempts to demonstrate
this, all vigorously pooh-poohed by the greenhouse-gas (GHG) boys --
browse http://www.realclimate.org/ for examples.
Now Shaviv and colleagues may have a convincing argument. High-energy
cosmic rays ionize the earth's atmosphere, and in turn appear to
influence low-altitude cloud formation: more cosmic rays = more
ionization = more low clouds = cooler climate. This relation has been
experimentally demonstrated by Henrik Svensmark and colleagues at the
Danish National Space Centre, summarized at
<http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults>
Now, the flux of cosmic rays into earth's atmosphere appears to be
modulated by the solar wind, which is in turn modulated by the sun's
magnetic activity (sunspots). More magnetic activity = more sunspots =
stronger solar wind = less comic rays = less ionization = fewer low
clouds = warmer climate. This is exactly the situation for the last
century or so, and Shaviv thinks the solar/cosmic forcing accounts for
about 2/3 of the observed warming to date. This would also account for
the long-puzzling observation that much of the current warming occurred
before %CO2 rose much.
How this will play out with further work is uncertain, but Shaviv's
arguments are pretty convincing -- read them for yourself. Smart guy;
neat site.
You can also get a taste of other scientific opinions contrary to the
"CO2 Consensus" at
<http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc
-39cd20bed2f6&k=0>, a ten-part series that recently ran in the Canada
National Post. Be aware that the reporter got some things confused (such
as the spelling of Shaviv's name!), but the flavor of these scientists'
arguments is pretty decently summarized.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Professional geologist, amateur climatology student
Douhe...@gmail.com
However, I can't resist chipping in an initial response.
I agree that total unanimity and groupthink can be real risk in
science. This is in real risk of happening to the global warming
debate and any diverging opinions should be listened to carefully and
respectfully, assuming it is based on real scientific methodology (and
not just some dodgy White House editing).
I myself tend to be somewhat capitalist/libertarian in nature. While
broadly sympathetic to green concerns, I believe many green activists
to be anti-capitalism, anti-science, with socialist/dirigist leanings
and a general longing for the good ol' days where we all raised sheep
in the countryside and communed happily with the "sacred Gaia
spirit". Those qualities do not make for good public policy, IMHO.
We have actually made great strides in many countries in reducing
"traditional" (non-CO2) pollution. I have never voted for a Green
party and will not do so until they convince me they can run a country
efficiently and are not single issue parties. I would much rather
have the greening of mainstream, business-friendly parties.
However, there are certain things to keep in mind before dismissing
the whole CO2 == bad concerns.
1. We only have 1 planet so we really can't afford to get it too
wrong. Nothing about "sacred Gaia" here. Just plain old common
sense.
2. What may be somewhat tolerable to the earth with about 800-900
million middle class consumers (i.e. all of North America + Europe +
Japan + some others) may not be so tolerable once Asian economic
growth really takes off and most Chinese, and some Indians, have a
car.
i.e. Whatever noxious effects we have right now will get much worse if
newly developed nations fall into our Western consumerism pattern. If
there is no bad effect and this is all a misunderstanding, great. If
there is already some global warming due to CO2 it could get much
worse if the developing nations follow our lead.
I welcome the enrichment of the third world, so we need to find a way
to minimize their (and our) ecological impact as they get more
spending power.
3. It is so very convenient to claim that we are not causing global
warming that we need to recognize that there are strong incentives to
find alternative scapegoats. I am sure the US, Canadian and
Australian governments would jump on the opportunity to fund good
science disproving global warming, so I don't share your concern that
"the voice of reason goes unheard".
4. Many folks seem to believe that CO2 reduction means economic
disaster.
I disagree. Provided it is done intelligently (among other things,
without growing corn for bio-diesel), there is money to be made in
researching and deploying new technology for energy generation, usage
and conservation. Conservation especially seems like a win-win
without obvious losers except for GM and Ford.
Kyoto certainly hasn't been the death of the European economies.
Their weak growth is due to other structural problems and dirigist
attitudes and very much predates the whole global warming debate.
5. Oil won't last forever.
Actually, I find the "peak oil _and_ global warming" camp unwittingly
humorous, as it would seem we could not really have both issues at the
same time. But we are still looking at decades of gradually
diminishing oil reserves, as newly developed nation come online.
Thinking past oil is a good idea.
6. Air pollution, especially with fine particulates, is a serious
killer in large cities. Limiting car and truck use and maximising
public transport has benefits beyond global warming mitigation.
I believe that global warming is real and welcome the growing debate,
though I often disagree with the ecological gloom+doom crowd's claim
to democratic authority and economic cluefullness.
I don't accept the "we do not need to change our ways because China
hasn't signed Kyoto" camp. Northern Americans, including Canadians,
use a disproportionate amount of energy. We need to accept that,
instead of denying the aspirations of the rest of the world.
Cheers
Douhet-did-suck
Tony Williams
> I've bookmarked your National Post article and will read them later.
> However, I can't resist chipping in an initial response.
I agree with all that you have said. I will add a couple of comments:
There are always those - including reputable scientists - who will
disagree with whatever the current paradigm is. That's a good thing,
in that it keeps people thinking outside the box. However, that
shouldn't blind anyone to the fact that the overwhelming majority of
climate scientists believe that human-produced CO2 is the culprit for
the current - and accelerating - warming trend, as reflected in the
IPCC report of a few days ago, which put the probability of that at
more than 90%. And that was signed up to by every national delegation
present, including the USA.
The projected results of a continued warming effect are downright
horrific. We are not talking about a little inconvenience here: the
consequences of the worst-case +6.4ºC warming given in the IPCC report
(on the basis of continued economic growth until 2100, and no effort
to reduce CO2) would threaten the survival of humanity, let alone our
current civilisation. And the main criticism of the IPCC report that
I've read comes from climate scientists who say it is too
conservative, partly because it ignored the results of the most recent
research, and partly because it ignored any research which produced
controversial results which not everyone agreed about.
I hope that they are wrong, but IMO it would only be safe to act as if
human activities had no effect on the climate when the overwhelming
majority of climate scientists agreed. The stakes are too high to
gamble.
Tony Williams
Scales (2007)
The Foresight War (2004)
http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Paul F. Dietz
> In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
> warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
> And CO2 is an excellent whipping-boy for those hoping to sell drastic
> anti-industrial "solutions"....
It's such a shame the evidence doesn't support the cosmic ray
theory, though.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr.jpg
Paul
Robert A. Woodward
That's a rather short period. IIRC, C-14 dating needs adjustment
because of variable rates of C-14 creation. If you use that as an
indicator of cosmic ray density, how does that compare with
estimated temperature variation 1000CE-2000CE?
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
alanm...@yahoo.com
<Till...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
> Some time ago, I made an offhand comment here that I thought the
> preponderance of evidence seems to be tilting against the current
> climatic warming being mostly anthropogenic. I didn't have a good online
> reference to support this impression, so I did some research. I will now
> refer you to <http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar>
>
> This site is run by Nir J. Shaviv, a sharp young Israeli astrophysicist
> who's been doing some very interesting work on the influence of cosmic
> rays on climate.
>
> In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
> warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
> And CO2 is an excellent whipping-boy for those hoping to sell drastic
> anti-industrial "solutions"....
>
> The idea that solar variations drive climatic variations seems, duh,
> rather *obvious*. And there have been lots of attempts to demonstrate
> this, all vigorously pooh-poohed by the greenhouse-gas (GHG) boys --
Here are some more links for you
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~wsoon/myownPapers-d/SPB96-ApJ.pdf
http://star.arm.ac.uk/~ambn/345epb.pdf
http://www.virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
You also might considerer Lubos Motl's site. He's usually
discussing string theory, but sometimes addresses climate
- A. McIntire
Paul F. Dietz
> That's a rather short period.
It is, however, the period containing the strong warming
trend that the AGW theory explains (since this trend is
occuring as the rise in CO2 concentration is accelerating.)
If cosmic radiation explains warming at some other periods
in the earth's history, fine. It doesn't explain the
recent trend that is the one causing all the concern.
Paul
Peter D. Tillman
alanm...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> Here are some more links for you
>
> http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/
>
> http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~wsoon/myownPapers-d/SPB96-ApJ.pdf
>
> http://star.arm.ac.uk/~ambn/345epb.pdf
>
> http://www.virtualacademia.com/pdf/cli267_293.pdf
>
> You also might considerer Lubos Motl's site. He's usually
> discussing string theory, but sometimes addresses climate
>
> http://motls.blogspot.com/
>
> - A. McIntire
Thanks!
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Peter D. Tillman
Unsurprisingly, Shaviv addresses these concerns:
<http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar>
--scroll down to the realclimate link.
He argues that "the catch which neither you nor the proprietors of
realclimate realize is that the energies relevant for low altitude
ionization are way higher than the low energy records either you or they
look at."
He then references his recent paper in JGR, "On climate response to
changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget", which is also
online, and which I haven't yet read. His condensed argument seems
reasonable.
Paul, this truly is interesting stuff. Don't keep the blinders on too
tight.... <g>
It's worth noting here that *Mars* is also in a warming period. Shaviv
doesn't think his cosmic-ray mechanism would work there, but it's a
pretty good bet that industrial CO2 isn't involved <G>. The last article
in the National Post series I linked is on this.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Quadibloc
> It's worth noting here that *Mars* is also in a warming period. Shaviv
> doesn't think his cosmic-ray mechanism would work there, but it's a
> pretty good bet that industrial CO2 isn't involved <G>.
True enough.
However, even *if* cosmic ray effects on the ionosphere *are* the
primary cause of the global warming we have detected...
we know perfectly well that carbon dioxide *is* a greenhouse gas.
Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has known and predictable
results.
And global warming is resulting in massive methane releases from
Russian peat bogs. Time is running out.
We can't change the cosmic rays that are hitting Earth.
We can change our carbon dioxide emissions. They are under our
control.
Since the result of global warming would be a disaster in a crowded
world where people can't migrate across borders, we should be
attempting to prevent this disaster.
And we can reduce our carbon dioxide contributions without reducing
energy consumption.
There's a little something called nuclear power.
Produce lots of energy with nuclear power reactors. While we're
waiting for fusion power, develop the Thorium breeder, so we don't run
out of fuel.
Don't burn stuff to make electricity. Make gasoline from water and
atmospheric carbon dioxide - or atmospheric methane. Use some of it in
cars, sequester the rest as electric cars get developed.
If the cosmic rays keep making Earth warm, build more nuclear power
plants, to power giant automated factories to build swarms of little
flying mirrors!
Ulltimately, the idea is to advance human power, so that we get high
enough on the Kardashev scale to control the Earth's climate, and then
weather, the way we turn up the thermostat, or turn on the air
conditioning, in our residences. Where's the anti-technology bias in
this?
John Savard
Paul F. Dietz
> Paul, this truly is interesting stuff. Don't keep the blinders on too
> tight.... <g>
I'm not. I'm merely pointing out that, according to that plot,
the temperature and the cosmic ray flux are poorly correlated
in the period of recent accelerated warming. As such,
the explanation that changes in cosmic ray intensity is driving
the warming is disconfirmed, regardless of details of the putative
mechanism by which the radiation is to have an effect.
This is a shame, since if cosmic ray changes really *were*
the cause, it might be practical to irradiate the Earth
artificially from space to make up for any deficit. The total
average power of cosmic rays hitting Earth isn't terribly high.
Watch out for excess 14C production, though.
Paul
Paul F. Dietz
> He argues that "the catch which neither you nor the proprietors of
> realclimate realize is that the energies relevant for low altitude
> ionization are way higher than the low energy records either you or they
> look at."
Ok, I have an immediate problem with that. The modulation of the
galactic cosmic radiation is energy dependent, but the modulation
should be *stronger* at lower energies (at sufficiently high energy,
the weak magnetic fields in the interplanetary medium will deflect
the particles only modestly.)
Paul
Peter D. Tillman
"Quadibloc" <jsa...@ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
> Peter D. Tillman wrote:
> > It's worth noting here that *Mars* is also in a warming period. Shaviv
> > doesn't think his cosmic-ray mechanism would work there, but it's a
> > pretty good bet that industrial CO2 isn't involved <G>.
>
> True enough.
>
> However, even *if* cosmic ray effects on the ionosphere *are* the
> primary cause of the global warming we have detected...
>
> we know perfectly well that carbon dioxide *is* a greenhouse gas.
> Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide has known and predictable
> results.
>
Well, it's not that simple. Remember that "correlation doesn't prove
causation". Shaviv has a nice discussion of "how can you prove that CO2
causes warming" in the article I linked upthread.
I'll also note that, in the geological record, CO2 is generally a
lagging indicator of warming. That is, the temp rises first, THEN the
CO2 rises (probably degassed from the ocean, as warm water can hold less
dissolved CO2 than cold).
Granted, the geological record isn't exactly precise, but it's a
suggestive observation.
Anyway, a lot of the things you suggest make sense whether or not CO2
turns out to be a real problem. The early alarmist views of civilization
collapsing if temps rise a bit don't seem to be very likely on closer
examination, thank heavens. But it's very, very important to keep
supporting (real) climate research, because there have been some truly
fearsome climate swings in the past. Basic research is cheap, and will
almost certainly yield some interesting, unexpected, maybe even
practical results!
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Quadibloc
> Well, it's not that simple. Remember that "correlation doesn't prove
> causation".
That's certainly true.
But that seems irrelevant to the global warming debate.
Carbon dioxide is transparent to visible light, and short-wave
infrared radiation.
Carbon dioxide is opaque to long-wave infrared radiation.
The surface of the Earth is cooler than that of the Sun.
Hotter objects emit light with predominantly shorter wavelengths. That
is why an object that is white-hot is hotter than one that is red-hot.
And, as it happens, the temperature range involved corresponds to the
characteristics of carbon dioxide.
Now, if global warming advocates were using correlation to imply that
carbon dioxide is somehow causing 100x or even 10x as much warming as
could be directly deduced from a simple physical calculation - much as
one would use when designing a *real* greenhouse - _then_ I might
indeed be sympathetic to arguments that correlation is being used to
disguise natural factors over which we have no control - and which we
could not effectively compensate for by reducing carbon dioxide
emissions.
John Savard
Paul F. Dietz
> I'll also note that, in the geological record, CO2 is generally a
> lagging indicator of warming. That is, the temp rises first, THEN the
> CO2 rises (probably degassed from the ocean, as warm water can hold less
> dissolved CO2 than cold).
In the geological record we have access to with good temporal resolution
of CO2 emission, there are no cases of abrupt CO2 releases such as
the one we're currently causing.
There is a lag between gradual warming and CO2 releases, but the lag
is shorter than the time scale of the warming (something like 800 years
vs. 6000 years for the end of the last ice age, IIRC). So it's not
correct to infer that enhanced greenhouse effect from the CO2 is not
causing most of that warming. One can only infer that the first 800
years had some other cause.
Finally, doesn't it worry you that warming apparently leads to
additional CO2 release? This could be a positive feedback.
Paul
John Schilling
>4. Many folks seem to believe that CO2 reduction means economic
>disaster.
>I disagree.
And other people disagree that anthropogenic CO2 is a problem in
the first place. If you want to actually *convince* anyone, it
would be nice to see some actual research.
That the environmental movement and its allies have spent so very
much time and money researching the problem, then insisted on a
solution whose consequences they pretty much haven't researched
at all, is part of the reason they have so little credibility
with most of the world. As I've said earlier, it makes it look
like they are presupposing the "solution" and trying to backfit
a "problem" to justify it.
>Provided it is done intelligently (among other things, without
>growing corn for bio-diesel), there is money to be made in
>researching and deploying new technology for energy generation,
>usage and conservation. Conservation especially seems like a
>win-win without obvious losers except for GM and Ford.
And the hundreds of millions of people who want what GM and Ford
have to offer.
Sorry, but no. Corporations are human institutions that are
created to serve human needs and desires. Anyone who argues,
"The costs of my plans fall on corporations, so you don't have
to worry about people getting hurt", is selling snake oil.
>Kyoto certainly hasn't been the death of the European economies.
It hasn't seen the end of global warming, either, so what of it?
It is trivially true that we can afford to not solve the global
warming problem. This tells us nothing about the affordability
of actual solutions.
>Their weak growth is due to other structural problems and dirigist
>attitudes and very much predates the whole global warming debate.
Well, yes, and this is *not* a coincidence. To a first-order
approximation, Kyoto consists of Europe saying to itself, "Well,
we aren't going to be releasing much CO2 over the next decade or
two regardless, on account of our economies are in the crapper,
our coal mines are running dry, and we're about to tie ourselves
to Russian natural gas instead. Let's promise to cut our CO2
emissions by, well, the ammount they are going to fall anyhow,
and see if we can convince the Americans to follow suit. If
they do, their economy goes into the crapper as well (only more
so because they can't get at Russian natural gas) and we're that
much more competitive. If not, they look like Evil Meanies and
we can be all noble and virtuous with our self-sacrifice!"
The result, was a small and temporary dip in CO2 emissions vs
time, with what even its proponents acknowledge is an insignificant
effect on global warming.
Now calculate the economic effects of something Kyoto-esque but
of sufficient magnitude to actually alleviate the problem. And
I do mean *calculate* it, not just express your belief that it
will be small.
>5. Oil won't last forever.
>Actually, I find the "peak oil _and_ global warming" camp unwittingly
>humorous, as it would seem we could not really have both issues at the
>same time.
Careful. The "peak oil" crowd are getting annoyingly loud with all the
humming they have to do as they cover their ears and close their eyes to
the fact that coal can be converted to oil at maybe $25/barrel including
the cost of the coal, and that coal is not going to run out for at least
a century even if we use it for all our oil needs on top of its present
demand.
And in the global warming debate, a century or two is close enough to
forever as makes no difference.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
<Tony.W...@quarry.nildram.co.uk> wrote:
>On Feb 11, 9:51 am, DouhetS...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I've bookmarked your National Post article and will read them later.
>> However, I can't resist chipping in an initial response.
>
>I agree with all that you have said. I will add a couple of comments:
[...]
>The projected results of a continued warming effect are downright
>horrific. We are not talking about a little inconvenience here: the
>consequences of the worst-case +6.4ºC warming given in the IPCC report
>(on the basis of continued economic growth until 2100, and no effort
>to reduce CO2) would threaten the survival of humanity, let alone our
>current civilisation.
Please explain to us how a +6.4C warming over 100 years, would result
in the actual and total extinction of the human race. Please do not
invoke the spectre of an ocean-boiling Venusian runaway greenhouse
effect; we've done the math on that one here in the past, with our
resident professional climatologist, and it really isn't in the
cards.
Otherwise, please tone down the hyperbole. The actual costs of global
warming may be unbearably high, but if you want people to seriously
consider that, you have to tell them what the actual cost are. Crying
wolf doesn't help anyone, and after the last half-dozen or so Imminent
Dooms Of Civilization, that's really all you are doing.
Douhe...@gmail.com
> >disaster.
> >I disagree.
>
> And other people disagree that anthropogenic CO2 is a problem in
> the first place. If you want to actually *convince* anyone, it
> would be nice to see some actual research.
I am not a climate scientist. Are you a climate researcher yourself?
If not, we will both just regurgitate someone else's
research, or opinions, that we find plausible, thank you very much.
Or do you mean you will badger anybody who is
not a climatologist and who does not agree with you?
Where are _your_ peer-reviewed climatology papers, Mr. Chief
Scientist?
> That the environmental movement and its allies have spent so very
> much time and money researching the problem, then insisted on a
> solution whose consequences they pretty much haven't researched
> at all, is part of the reason they have so little credibility
> with most of the world.
Most of the world? Do you mean, a majority, but a slowly shrinking
one, of the US population?
A lot of the rest of the world doesn't share your viewpoint, you
know. Don't believe me, Google it up for yourself.
As I've said earlier, it makes it look
> like they are presupposing the "solution" and trying to backfit
> a "problem" to justify it.
It certainly makes the left happy to bash corporations. And I don't
like the left much either. Doesn't mean there is no problem.
>> Conservation especially seems like a
> >win-win without obvious losers except for GM and Ford.
>
> And the hundreds of millions of people who want what GM and Ford
> have to offer.
Uh, not so many millions want what they have to offer, according to
the stock market capitalization of both
those companies and their ever-sliding market share.
>Anyone who argues,
> "The costs of my plans fall on corporations, so you don't have
> to worry about people getting hurt", is selling snake oil.
Agree 100% with you there. Everyone wants someone else to suffer.
>
> >Kyoto certainly hasn't been the death of the European economies.
>
....
> >Their weak growth is due to other structural problems and dirigist
> >attitudes and very much predates the whole global warming debate.
>
> Well, yes, and this is *not* a coincidence. To a first-order
> approximation, Kyoto consists of Europe....
What makes _you_ an expert on Europe? You live there?
Their lack of competitiveness has little to do with Kyoto. Their real
problem is that they want job security for life in most of Europe
except for the UK, Ireland and some of the Nordic countries. Anti-
capitalism, anti-market, wishful thinking. If there is a problem
somewhere, the state has to solve it for them. That has been this way
since... a long time, way before the whole Kyoto stuff. That is why
I left the place after living there for 10 yrs. As the French riots
show, it doesn't even make the
people on welfare all that happy to be living in some of those
countries.
> Now calculate the economic effects of something Kyoto-esque but
> of sufficient magnitude to actually alleviate the problem. And
> I do mean *calculate* it, not just express your belief that it
> will be small.
Perhaps you can calculate it for me? And I do mean, *calculate*.
With expensive oil, whoever has a good handle on oil economy/
replacement will come out ahead of the dinosaurs: Ford + GM, again.
Re. those 2, that's certainly the market's guess as well, not just
mine and that of those pesky ecologists.
The main benefit of Kyoto, of which I am not even a particularly large
fan, is to get us to start thinking about limiting CO2 emissions.
Assuming
there is a problem, we would be smart to explore possible solutions.
For example, "green buildings" cost somewhat more to build. And a lot
less to run. Without this whole hoopla, we would still be designing
wasteful buildings, even if it didn't make economic sense in the long
run due
to those energy costs.
Does this mean we all need to go out and build 100% green buildings?
Probably not, at least not right away until the technology matures.
And until
climate science is cleared up some more. But we can get started,
especially as it seems to conveniently save money. Same with bumping
up those
lame CAFE standards to higher mileages. Bet you like buying all that
foreign oil, don't you?
>
> >5. Oil won't last forever.
> >Actually, I find the "peak oil _and_ global warming" camp unwittingly
> >humorous, as it would seem we could not really have both issues at the
> >same time.
>
> Careful. The "peak oil" crowd are getting annoyingly loud with all the
> humming they have to do as they cover their ears and close their eyes to
> the fact that coal can be converted to oil at maybe $25/barrel including
> the cost of the coal, and that coal is not going to run out for at least
> a century even if we use it for all our oil needs on top of its present
> demand.
Coal would be fine, for a long time, assuming there was no CO2
problem.
Which is a stretch, from my point of view. You have a different POV.
Fine.
Where are you getting that $25/barrel figure from? Your
*calculations*? Which actual production plants are you referring to?
Personally, I wish was Shaviv right, but right now, his just looks
like a plausible explanation to be looked
into, rather than a proven fact. The vast majority is pretty much
against him. They could all be idiots, but I wouldn't bet on it, yet.
You are willing to make that bet because it fits your world view.
Good for you.
Any serious science needs looking into. The last thing we need is to
chase the
wrong solution to a non-existent problem. There is plenty of money
available for research and Shaviv
would probably be a more worthy, and way cheaper, beneficiary than
subsidizing Midwest farmers for bio-diesel. Wouldn't be as good
at buying votes though.
Plus, and that's the biggest bonus so far, Shaviv will give me
something to needle my buddy with. He was quoting Gore's movie about
not one scientist being in disagreement out of 9000+ papers. Seems a
bit much ;-)
Douhet-did-suck
Tony Williams
>
> Please explain to us how a +6.4C warming over 100 years, would result
> in the actual and total extinction of the human race. Please do not
> invoke the spectre of an ocean-boiling Venusian runaway greenhouse
> effect; we've done the math on that one here in the past, with our
> resident professional climatologist, and it really isn't in the
> cards.
Predicting the consequences of the current warming trend is of course
much more chancy than examining what's happening and why. Nonetheless,
with the aid of the most powerful climate modelling computers
available, some researchers have been projecting the likely outcomes,
depending on how much hotter it gets.
One UK newspaper has been taking a close interest in the climate
change debate and often features it - The Independent. Now I regard
anything that newspapers say with caution, but this one is a quality
paper often voted "newspaper of the year", and is well-known for
tackling serious issues very well. They ran a special issue on climate
change shortly after the IPCC report was published, and it makes for
interesting reading.
First of all, as far as the current situation is concerned, the paper
makes the following points (taken from the IPCC report):
CO2 in the atmosphere: before the Industrial Revolution, this was at
about 278 parts per million. 50 years ago it was at 315 ppm, it is now
at 382 ppm and is increasing by more than 2ppm per year, with the rate
of increase accelerating. The current level of atmospheric CO2 is at
its highest level for about 650,000 years, since when the range has
been between 180-300 ppm. The target talked about by some scientists
and politicians is to stabilise the level at 550 ppm (some think that
would be too high, others think we can't manage that).
Increase in temperature: The IPCC report states that an increase in
CO2 to 550 ppm would cause an increase in average global temperature
of around 3ºC (minimum 1.5º, max 4.5º). The report looks at different
scenarios depending on what action humanity takes to curb CO2
production. The low-end estimate, if we take all feasible measures, is
an increase of about 1.8ºC by 2100 (min/max range 1.1-2.9ºC). The high-
end estimate, if the world economy continues to grow and we do
nothing to stop the current rate of increase in CO2, is for a 4ºC
increase (range 2.4-6.4ºC).
The paper then goes on to give some examples of what different
increases in temperature could mean by 2100, based on current climate
models. Some key points:
+2.4 degrees: an increase of this magnitude would cause rainfall
shifts which would turn the central US states into a dustbowl, from
Texas to Montana. The Greenland ice cap will tip into irreversible
melting (sea level increase about 7m/20-23 feet once it's all gone,
which won't be until centuries later). About one third of all species
on the planet face extinction.
+3.4 degrees: the Amazonian rainforest will disappear in flames,
blanketing South America with smoke and leaving a desert behind it
(the UK Met Office estimates this could start to happen by 2050). The
entire Arctic ice-sheet will disappear each summer, with the North
Pole ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Shortage of fresh
water will become an increasing problem in various parts of the world.
+4.4 degrees: sea level rises will displace about 100 million people.
Much of the sub-tropics become uninhabitable. Deserts start to appear
in southern Europe, triggering mass migration. More than half of wild
species wiped out in the biggest mass extinction since the end of the
dinosaurs. Release of methane hydrates from thawing Siberian
permafrost adds substantially to the global warming gasses,
accelerating heating further.
+5.4 degrees: sea level up by another 5 metres (16 feet) due to West
Antarctic ice sheet breaking up. If these temperatures are sustained
over a long period, then eventually all ice will disappear, causing a
rise of 70m (200-230 feet) in sea levels. The consequences for human
civilisation will be catastrophic, with agriculture collapsing and
only the currently "cool temperate" regions being habitable.
+6.4 degrees - the "worst case" scenario, temperatures this high not
seen for 100 million years: methane hydrates probably released from
warming sub-ocean sediments, accelerating warming yet further. The
oceans lose their oxygen and become stagnant, releasing hydrogen
sulphide which destroys the ozone layer. Humanity reduced to a few
survivors in polar refuges. Most life on the planet is exterminated.
As an illustration, at the end of the Permian period (251 million
years ago) temperatures also increased by 6 degrees unusually rapidly
(which means over a few thousand years). This wiped out 95% of life,
leaving only one large animal species to survive. The rate of increase
we're are looking at now is much, much faster than that, giving life
far less chance to adapt.
These are of course only projections based on our present state of
knowledge, but they're the best we've got to go on for the time being,
so can't be ignored. Something to ponder when considering whether or
not it's worth trying to do something to curb the current rate of
increase in CO2 levels...
Robert Shaw
> As an illustration, at the end of the Permian period (251 million
> years ago) temperatures also increased by 6 degrees unusually rapidly
> (which means over a few thousand years).
Temperatures have changed by around 10 degrees over a few decades
several times, as the earth moves in and out of ice ages.
> This wiped out 95% of life,
> leaving only one large animal species to survive. The rate of increase
> we're are looking at now is much, much faster than that, giving life
> far less chance to adapt.
>
The Permian extinction is more often blamed on the eruption of
the Siberian traps, the largest in the geological record,
which wrecked the environment in several different ways, combined
with a sea level regression.
> These are of course only projections based on our present state of
> knowledge, but they're the best we've got to go on for the time being,
> so can't be ignored. Something to ponder when considering whether or
> not it's worth trying to do something to curb the current rate of
> increase in CO2 levels...
>
Go nuclear. It'll work better than planting trees.
--
Matter is fundamentally lazy:- It always takes the path of least effort
Matter is fundamentally stupid:- It tries every other path first.
That is the heart of physics - The rest is details.- Robert Shaw
Peter D. Tillman
>
> It's such a shame the evidence doesn't support the cosmic ray
> theory, though.
>
> http://www.realclimate.org/images/cr.jpg
>
I just finished reading the realclimate discussion on this --
<http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/thank-you-for-emit
ting/#comment-13470>
(which is annoyingly scattered -- search on Shaviv's name to follow the
thread)
-- and thought he was holding his own nicely. His two most persistent
critics left the discussion, pleading other commitments. Anyway, judge
for yourself: <http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate>
Figs 1 & 3 are pretty convincing, I thought.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Peter D. Tillman
"Paul F. Dietz" <di...@dls.net> wrote:
Here's his response, from the realclimate discussion:
"It's interesting that high-energy particles, which would presumably(?)
be less affected by the shielding of the Heliosphere (magnetic fields),
would have a more marked decrease here. There are of course factors
other than solar activity that could play a role, and furthermore, there
are, according to Wikipedia, some important aspects of the high(er)
energies not quite fully understood. (here he references
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin_limit>:
"A number of exotic theories have been advanced to explain these
observations, of which the most notable is the theory of doubly-special
relativity" [!]) [1]
He's obviously given this a lot of thought, but I'm way beyond my
competency here. Like I said, sharp guy.
Always fun to learn new stuff.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
[1] "Doubly-special relativity -- also called deformed special
relativity or, by some, extra-special relativity... [arose from]
observation of high-energy cosmic rays that appear to violate the
Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit: the so-called Oh-My-God particles.
Extra credit for an sfnal reference; double points for first use. Ain't
astrophysics wonderful?
Aaron Bergman
<Tillman-1A0AA3...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>,
The man is citing Wikipedia as a source? Not exactly a sign of expertise.
Regardless, the number of GZK violating cosmic rays (assuming it's even
greater than zero, something still in doubt) is small enough that it
would have a negligible effect on anything.
Aaron
Carey Sublette
"John Schilling" <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote in message
news:g8d3t2lgjihp7bttg...@4ax.com...
I agree with your comments in general about Kyoto, Europe and global waming
(e.g. nothing is really being done, or planned to address the issue).
However, on the same logic I would say the "peak oil" crowd are pretty much
on the money. It is all very well to say that "coal can be converted to oil
at maybe $25/barrel", or to point out that tar sands in Canada produce oil
for less than this, etc., but to address the post-peak oil decline actual
projects have to be coming on-line at a rate to offset the real decline. The
last time I looked at this there were insufficient prospective replacement
sources "in the pipeline".
Of course the larger point is correct that "peak oil" and "global warming"
are different problems, though related. "Running out of oil" is not a viable
(or even effective) solution to global warming.
Carey Sublette
Paul F. Dietz
> Here's his response, from the realclimate discussion:
[omitted]
Looking at some of the other pages, I see he uses paleo isotope
evidence, and neutron counts, when it suits him. Both of these
are measures of the lower energy cosmic rays, mostly.
But when the cosmic ray/warming correlation doesn't work, he
saves the hypothesis by saying, no, it's the energetic cosmic
rays that make deeply penetrating muons that count.
This second hypothesis isn't ruled out, but he can't consistently
assert it and still use that other evidence.
> [1] "Doubly-special relativity -- also called deformed special
> relativity or, by some, extra-special relativity... [arose from]
> observation of high-energy cosmic rays that appear to violate the
> Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin limit: the so-called Oh-My-God particles.
This is way over the boundary of crankiness.
Paul
William Hyde
<Till...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
A couple of days ago I made a calm, reasoned, elegant reply to
this post. That took a while, and apparently my time was wasted,
for it hasn't shown up (the new google groups is even worse than
the earlier version. If it wasn't free I'd want my money back).
So, since time is at a premium, here's a less calm and far
less elegant reply.
His web page is crap.
But I will try to supply the reason, even if it isn't as politely
phrased
as it was last time.
>[ Shaviv's argument.
>In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
>warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
Right at the start, he is utterly wrong. You will find calculations
of
the effect on climate of CO2 change here:
http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/Arrhenius.html
in a paper written in 1896. And Arrhenius was far from the first
to think about this, as his reference list shows.
So Shaviv's charge that AGW is a "post hoc" explanation for
a warming that already happened is false. The warming was
*predicted* long ago - though obviously Arrhenius could not
be quantitatively correct.
Shaviv should know that. Gotta give him credit for guts, though.
Taking a *successful prediction* of the theory and using it
*against* the theory. "The only reason we think gravity is
bending starlight is that we have no alternative explanation...
Albert who?"
Furthermore, despite his repeated denial, there *are* reasons to
believe that the current warming is due to a GHGs, in combination
with a number of other factors.
As long ago as the 1960s, models showed that warming due to
anthropogenic GHGs would result in a colder stratosphere and
polar amplification. This is just what we see. As long ago
as Tyndall (1860 ish) it was predicted that it would lessen
the diurnal cycle, which we also see. In later years it was
predicted that the principal warming would be at night and
in the winter (this is related to Tyndall's point) and this is
also happening.
Now, a theory that involves greater or lesser amounts of solar
radiation has a few problems with the above. If we are getting
more sunlight then the first order effect would be that days should
be hotter, nights less so. Summers should get warmer, winters less
so.
The opposite of what we see.
And I see no way this theory can account for a cooler stratosphere.
Hansen's 1988 forecast is still looking pretty good. How, Shaviv
should ask himself, can a model which does not include what
he thinks is the dominant reason for GW, make a half-decent
prediction?
So when he says "there is no reason to believe that CO2 is the cause
of the current warming", he deals a killing blow to his own
credibility.
More importantly, Shaviv and friends do not even acknowledge that
these problems exist.
He even brings out the old canard of "scientists were predicting a new
ice age in the 1970s. Now I've disproven this one here in recent
years, and I wouldn't bring it up again, but the web page he cites
*refutes* his claim. Sharp guy, you say?
>Now Shaviv and colleagues may have a convincing argument. High-energy
>cosmic rays ionize the earth's atmosphere, and in turn appear to
>influence low-altitude cloud formation: more cosmic rays = more
>ionization = more low clouds = cooler climate.
Every link in this chain is dubious.
In the lab it has been shown that cosmic rays produce small particles,
true,
but these particles are orders of magnitude too small to be cloud
condensation
nuclei. It is a bit of a handwave to say that they will combine to
form CCNs
in clouds, when they have not done so in the lab.
Clouds are quite complex systems. They both absorb and reflect solar
radiation, and the balance of this depends strongly on the
distribution of
sizes among the cloud droplets. Changing the number and type of CCN
may change both the amount of cloud, and cloud optical properties (or
neither). Clouds also absorb and emit IR and that may also change.
Given that we don't know *anything* about how clouds will change
in response to these so far unseen extra CCNs it is impossible to
tel whether the balance of radiation, solar and terrestrial, will
be positive or negative. Or by how much.
We are also putting vast amounts of other CCNs (real CCNs, that can
be measured and analysed) into the atmosphere. So far they don't
seem to be having that big an effect. Studies on ship tracks (ships
put plenty of aerosols in the area of low cloud formation) so far
show nothing major. The degree to which CNNs are a limiting
factor in cloud formation is not clear. It may be that over most
of the world there are more than enough CCNs, which would
pretty much kill the cosmic ray theory.
Finally, even if this process produces CCNs, and if they affect cloud
optical properties, it still remains to be shown that this change is
significant, and that it agrees with the data we have.
Do you still find it convincing?
> This is exactly the situation for the last
>century or so, and Shaviv thinks the solar/cosmic forcing accounts for
>about 2/3 of the observed warming to date.
If you read his paper, you will see that he got this 2/3 number from
a linear regression.
You reject IPCC, a summary of physically based models (solving
real, experimentally verified, equations) with data which is analysed
ten ways from Sunday using advanced statistics, but a linear fit
to dubious data, involving a process which is light years from being
shown to work at all, is convincing?
>This would also account for
>the long-puzzling observation that much of the current warming occurred
>before %CO2 rose much.
This has not been puzzling for some time. In fact a recent paper
estimates that about a third of the early 20th century warming was
due to GHGs, with the rest a combination of solar and volcanism.
In other words, even if GHGs were constant, we would have had a
warming
from 1900 to 1940. Just not quite as large a warming as we actually
had.
It is sometimes pretended that AGW researchers think of greenhouse
gases, and only greenhouse gases, as agents of climate change.
But they are well aware that climate is affected by volcanism, solar
change,
tropospheric aerosols, land use change, and so forth. Perhaps one day
cloud
change due to cosmic ray variation will be on the list. But not yet.
>How this will play out with further work is uncertain,
Further work would involve determining the properties of the CCN
which *might* evolve from the microparticles produced in the
lab, flying airplanes through clouds to look for them, running
sophisticated cloud models (the kind of model denialists regard
as worthless) to evaluate their effect, analysing historical cloud
data to see if we have recorded such a signal, and finally putting
these changed optical properties into general circulation models
(also despised by denialists) to evaluate the effect of this process
on clouds.
My fearless prediction is that this program will not be completed.
And if it is done, and by some miracle it *does* explain GW, we
will hear no complaints about those "flawed climate models".
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Professional geologist, amateur climatology student
I would recommend, instead of your list, actual books on climate.
For ice ages, I suggest the quite readable "Ice Ages, Solving the
Mystery"
by Imbrie and Imbrie. The final chapter will show, as if it needed
showing
yet again, that scientists were well aware of the AGW problem in the
1970s (The book was published in 1976, IIRC), while the chapters on
the discovery of the ice age and our interglacial will go a long way
to
explaining the press stories of the day.
A general introduction to climate, which I confess I have not read, is
"Is the Temperature Rising:? The Uncertain Science of Global Warming"
by George Philander (1998). Don't get too excited by the title, which
was forced on him by the publisher. I'm told that only the last
chapter
concerns global warming, the rest being an introduction to climate.
If you want to get really serious about critiquing the climate models
used in IPCC, then "An Introduction to Three Dimensional Climate
Modeling" (Second edition, University Science books, 2005) by
Washington and Parkinson, is essential.
Then there is "Physics of Climate" (AIP, 1992) by Peixoto and Oort.
If you like contour plots (and who doesn't?) this is the book for
you. Five hundred rollicking pages jam packed with plots, equations,
and naughty Gypsies. Well, OK, not so many Roma.
Finally, a brief but clear introduction to the physics of clouds will
be
found in "Atmospheric Science, an Introductory Survey" by Wallace
and Hobbs (Wiley, 1977) in, IIRC, chapter five. I hear that a new
edition
of this is coming out soon so whatever you do don't buy this one,
used copies can be quite expensive.
And if you happen to meet Dr Shaviv, recommend these to him.
William Hyde
Shawn Wilson
<Douhe...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1171187477.8...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> 5. Oil won't last forever.
Actually it will. Oil can be manufactured at reasonable cost out of organic
waste, it isn't simply because it's cheaper to pump all the stuff lying
around free.
> 6. Air pollution, especially with fine particulates, is a serious
> killer in large cities.
Only in the 2nd and 3rd world. Pollution (or rather its lack) is a normal
good. When their wealth increases enough pollution control will be
economically justifiable.
> I don't accept the "we do not need to change our ways because China
> hasn't signed Kyoto" camp. Northern Americans, including Canadians,
> use a disproportionate amount of energy.
Well, we also produce a disproportionate amount of the world's goods and
services. They kinda go together...
Shawn Wilson
"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1171475102....@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Right at the start, he is utterly wrong. You will find calculations
> of
> the effect on climate of CO2 change here:
Uh, a model requires verification before it's predictions can be taklen at
face value...
> So Shaviv's charge that AGW is a "post hoc" explanation for
> a warming that already happened is false. The warming was
> *predicted* long ago - though obviously Arrhenius could not
> be quantitatively correct.
And cooling was predicted too...
*I'm* old enough to remember the global cooling and nuclear winter scares.
According to them we are in the beginning of an ice age now...
> In the lab it has been shown that cosmic rays produce small particles,
> true,
> but these particles are orders of magnitude too small to be cloud
> condensation
> nuclei. It is a bit of a handwave to say that they will combine to
> form CCNs
> in clouds, when they have not done so in the lab.
And AGW is really nice in a lab too...
> Clouds are quite complex systems. They both absorb and reflect solar
> radiation, and the balance of this depends strongly on the
> distribution of
> sizes among the cloud droplets. Changing the number and type of CCN
> may change both the amount of cloud, and cloud optical properties (or
> neither). Clouds also absorb and emit IR and that may also change.
Yep, all this stuff we don't know about how the climate cycles energy, but
boy, you are absolutely positive that CO2 is the prime motivator of
everything...
>> This is exactly the situation for the last
>>century or so, and Shaviv thinks the solar/cosmic forcing accounts for
>>about 2/3 of the observed warming to date.
>
>
> If you read his paper, you will see that he got this 2/3 number from
> a linear regression.
Which puts him about a thousand miles ahead of the AGW crowd, who get many
of their numbers by simply making them up...
> You reject IPCC, a summary of physically based models (solving
> real, experimentally verified, equations) with data which is analysed
> ten ways from Sunday using advanced statistics, but a linear fit
> to dubious data, involving a process which is light years from being
> shown to work at all, is convincing?
Yes. The real world, and real world measurements do indeed trump mere
theories.
John Reiher
"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A couple of days ago I made a calm, reasoned, elegant reply to
> this post. That took a while, and apparently my time was wasted,
> for it hasn't shown up (the new google groups is even worse than
> the earlier version. If it wasn't free I'd want my money back).
>
> So, since time is at a premium, here's a less calm and far
> less elegant reply.
>
> His web page is crap.
>
> But I will try to supply the reason, even if it isn't as politely
> phrased
> as it was last time.
It's one thing to post your rebuttal here, but did you post it on Nir
Shaviv's site as well?
That is, are you willing to argue with the man himself? I'll be looking
for your posting on his web site soon...
--
The Kedamono Dragon
Pull Pinky's favorite words to email me.
http://www.ahtg.net
Have Mac, will Compute
Check out the PowerPointers Shop at:
http://www.cafeshops.com/PowerPointers
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Beowulf Bolt
>
> "William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1171475102....@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Right at the start, he is utterly wrong. You will find calculations
> > of the effect on climate of CO2 change here:
[Bullshit from the lying sack of shit Shawn Wilson snipped.]
Hey William,
I, for one, wanted to post to express my thanks for your post. It
provided a lot of enlightening reading on the subject that helped put
Shaviv's claims in better context.
Nevermind the ravings from the moronic troll, your posts on the
subject are always appreciated.
Biff
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"All around me darkness gathers, fading is the sun that shone,
we must speak of other matters, you can be me when I'm gone..."
- SANDMAN #67, Neil Gaiman
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Ash
>> This is exactly the situation for the last
>>century or so, and Shaviv thinks the solar/cosmic forcing accounts for
>>about 2/3 of the observed warming to date.
>
> If you read his paper, you will see that he got this 2/3 number from
> a linear regression.
>
> You reject IPCC, a summary of physically based models (solving
> real, experimentally verified, equations) with data which is analysed
> ten ways from Sunday using advanced statistics, but a linear fit
> to dubious data, involving a process which is light years from being
> shown to work at all, is convincing?
My impression is that people are strongly biased toward these sorts of
simplistic extrapolations because they are simple and very easy to
understand. Combine it with a bias toward whatever side you prefer and
it's easy to believe that an extrapolation any eight grader could bang
out in five minutes is correct, and the extremely complicated analysis
that took an expert in the field six months to carry out must be missing
something important.
I believe that this is a major component behind the acceptance (such as it
is) of Intelligent Design, this strange global warming stuff, and others.
The idea of emergent behavior, that the basic rules can be simple while
producing extremely complicated behavior, just doesn't click for a lot of
people.
--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
William Hyde
> In article <1171475102.987362.96...@k78g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> "WilliamHyde" <wthyde1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> It's one thing to post your rebuttal here, but did you post it on Nir
> Shaviv's site as well?
>
> That is, are you willing to argue with the man himself? I'll be looking
> for your posting on his web site soon...
You won't find it. There are thousands of sceptical/denialist
web sites I disagree with, many far, far, worse than Shaviv's, and I
certainly don't have time to respond to even a hundredth of them.
Shaviv's site was brought up on this group, and I answered it here.
The debate is carried on in the scientific literature, not on web
sites. We have published, as I mentioned on another thread, an
estimate of sensitivity of 1.5-6.1. The complete methodology is given
in the paper and the electronic suppliment.
Shaviv is free to publish his own sensitivity estimate, if
he can explain his methodology more rigorously than
he does on the web site. Or he could present it at,
say AGU next fall. This would be much easier to do
than completing the research program I outlined, by
which the cosmic ray idea might be tested.
Personally I look forward to seeing his calculations.
William Hyde
William Hyde
>
> Nevermind the ravings from the moronic troll, your posts on the
> subject are always appreciated.
Well, that's Shawn, and he will never change. It's only worth
replying to him for amusment value.
I particularly liked the idea that he was following the scientific
literature on climate in the 1970s. Wonder if he will claim that he
was reading "The Journal of Climate"?
William Hyde
John Reiher
"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You won't find it. There are thousands of sceptical/denialist
> web sites I disagree with, many far, far, worse than Shaviv's, and I
> certainly don't have time to respond to even a hundredth of them.
> Shaviv's site was brought up on this group, and I answered it here.
So you're quite willing to bad mouth the man behind his back, but not to
his face.
Hypocrite.
If you truly believed in the scientific method, you'd confront him on
his site, not here in a news group that he may only be fuzzily aware of.
Instead you just pat yourself on the back and say how smart you are,
while not calling the man on his claims and letting him defend himself.
Hypocrite.
This is why some folks don't trust the IPCC and it's sycophants. They
are quite unwilling to beard the lion in it its den and tell him to his
face that he's not a lion, but a weak little pussy cat.
At this point I'm going to plunk this thread as it's nothing more than
self masturbation thread for IPCC wankers.
Beowulf Bolt
>
> This is why some folks don't trust the IPCC and it's sycophants. They
> are quite unwilling to beard the lion in it its den and tell him to
> his face that he's not a lion, but a weak little pussy cat.
In this case the 'den' is the scientific conferences and peer-reviewed
journals where Shaviv is perfectly free to make his case - if he can
produce the evidence and work to defend it. Science is not made by
people arguing in the comments section of websites. Demanding Dr Hyde
do so is an act of moronic arrogance.
> At this point I'm going to plunk this thread as it's nothing more than
> self masturbation thread for IPCC wankers.
Su-u-u-ure you are...
William Hyde
> In article <1171564569.185009.136...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> "William Hyde" <wthyde1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You won't find it. There are thousands of sceptical/denialist
> > certainly don't have time to respond to even a hundredth of them.
> > Shaviv's site was brought up on this group, and I answered it here.
>
> So you're quite willing to bad mouth the man
I did not "bad mouth" him. I showed, via argument
that I supported with references, that the claim that
cosmic rays can explain 20th century temperature
trends is very far from being substantiated, and contradicts quite a
bit of data.
If my tone was harsh, it is because he *really* should know this. But
you seem unable to distinguish between attacking an argument and
attacking a person.
As you show with your next word:
>
> Hypocrite.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
But then, I suspect that a lot of words don't mean what
you think they mean.
>
> If you truly believed in the scientific method,
I would publish in open forums, give talks, write
papers? Oh, yeah, that's what I do.
I would propose hypotheses, experiments, testing?
Heck, I even proposed a reasonable scientific
program by which his theory could be tested. It
woudn't cost more than 0.2% of Exxon's quarterly
profit to fund it, and if the idea proves correct, it
will save Exxon billions and probably win Shaviv
a nobel prize (I want a cut of the cash). Let him
know and he can give them a call.
you'd confront him on
> his site, not here in a news group that he may only be fuzzily aware of.
The issue was raised here, I replied here. This is a discussion
group. I have responded on this group
many times when the latest anti-AGW theory was
propounded. And as long as I have the time I will
continue to do so.
>
> Instead you just pat yourself on the back and say how smart you are,
My, your reading comprehension skills are minimal,
aren't they? Pointing out work that Shaviv really should
know quite well amounts to calling myself smart?
Are you confusing "smart" with "informed"?
How smart I am is an open question. How smart you are is
becoming rather apparent.
> while not calling the man on his claims and letting him defend himself.
He is a scientist. His claims are to be made at conferences and in
the literature. That is where he must defend his ideas. Scientific
progress is not generally made via web site essays or newsgroup posts.
> At this point I'm going to plunk this thread
Don't go away mad. Just go away.
as it's nothing more than
> self masturbation thread for IPCC wankers.
Actually "mutual masturbation" would be funnier, given
the alliteration. And "wankers" damages the humour,
as it is redundant. "IPCC whores" works better, and
also makes the accusation that we're sellouts. You
must learn to refine your invective. Otherwise you
just look like a wanker. See how much funnier it
is when I say it?
You know, I've never thought of Shawn Wilson as an
IPCC wanker before. I learn something new every
day.
William Hyde
Kurt Busiek
> In article <1171564569.1...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> "William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You won't find it. There are thousands of sceptical/denialist
>> web sites I disagree with, many far, far, worse than Shaviv's, and I
>> certainly don't have time to respond to even a hundredth of them.
>> Shaviv's site was brought up on this group, and I answered it here.
>
> So you're quite willing to bad mouth the man behind his back, but not to
> his face.
>
> Hypocrite.
>
> If you truly believed in the scientific method, you'd confront him on
> his site, not here in a news group that he may only be fuzzily aware of.
And the New York Review of Books would shut down, because public
critique is clearly hypocritical -- the only acceptable way to frame
criticism is to the face of the person whose work is critiqued.
What nonsense.
kdb
Quadibloc
> If you truly believed in the scientific method, you'd confront him on
> his site,
Since he is "confronting" global warming pseudoscience in the
*scientific literature*, and is being published in refereed
literature, I think that your objections are unfounded.
Why should legitimate scientists be expected to take the time to deal
with every creationist or antigravity inventor or ancient flying
saucer astronaut theorist or medical quack on equal terms?
It is true that scientists, being an intelligent lot, are likely to
agree on certain liberal values like a free press, free elections,
freedom of religion and so on, but to imply that makes them a
conspiracy is just a demonstration of irrationality.
John Savard
Shawn Wilson
> Well, that's Shawn, and he will never change. It's only worth
> replying to him for amusment value.
>
> I particularly liked the idea that he was following the scientific
> literature on climate in the 1970s. Wonder if he will claim that he
> was reading "The Journal of Climate"?
And you find it odd that someone would read Scientific American, Discover,
and various popularizers of science (notably Isaac Asimov) why?
David DeLaney
>"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> literature on climate in the 1970s. Wonder if he will claim that he
>> was reading "The Journal of Climate"?
>
>And you find it odd that someone would read Scientific American, Discover,
>and various popularizers of science (notably Isaac Asimov) why?
That's not the scientific literature, dear; you don't get "scientific
literature" by looking at words that are written about science any more than
you get 'science fiction' by looking at made-up words that are written about
science. The scientific literature is the peer-reviewed journals, not the
popularizing magazines; Physical Review D, not Scientific American. (You'll
note that the articles IN Scientific American have these things called
"references" that point to where the actual papers appeared. Discover and
Asimov, not so much.)
We find it odd that you think those were 'the scientific literature on
climate', not that you were reading them.
Dave "reads Scientific American, and read Asimov, but doesn't confuse them
with, like, primary sources" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Sea Wasp
You said "scientific literature". "The scientific literature" means
publications in peer-reviewed journals, the serious scientific
publications. SciAm isn't bad, but it isn't a peer-reviewed journal.
Discover doesn't even rate.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Shawn Wilson
> >And you find it odd that someone would read Scientific American, Discover,
> >and various popularizers of science (notably Isaac Asimov) why?
>
> That's not the scientific literature, dear; you don't get "scientific
> literature" by looking at words that are written about science any more than
> you get 'science fiction' by looking at made-up words that are written about
> science.
So you have no specific claims of inaccuracy to make, and are just
attacking the source. OK, so you never took a logic class...
> The scientific literature is the peer-reviewed journals, not the
> popularizing magazines; Physical Review D, not Scientific American. (You'll
> note that the articles IN Scientific American have these things called
> "references" that point to where the actual papers appeared. Discover and
> Asimov, not so much.)
If you had an instance of any of my sources misrepresenting the
scientific literature you might have the beginnings of an argument...
David DeLaney
>On Feb 16, 4:36 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> >And you find it odd that someone would read Scientific American, Discover,
>> >and various popularizers of science (notably Isaac Asimov) why?
>>
>> That's not the scientific literature, dear; you don't get "scientific
>> literature" by looking at words that are written about science any more than
>> you get 'science fiction' by looking at made-up words that are written about
>> science.
>
>So you have no specific claims of inaccuracy to make, and are just
>attacking the source. OK, so you never took a logic class...
?? No, we're trying, repeatedly, to explain to you that you _don't know what
you're talking about_, and don't know the difference between actual science
and pseudoscience, or between the actual scientific literature and websites
that don't represent science or magazines that aren't scientific literature.
It's fairly obvious from what you (keep) say(ing) that you don't realize that
your lack of knowledge on these things is -obvious- to people who _do_ know
what the scientific literature is, and who -do- know how to do science ...
and that apparently you're of the opinion that "all opinions are equally
valid" or some such. Which isn't the case; _informed_ opinions are better
than uninformed ones.
>> The scientific literature is the peer-reviewed journals, not the
>> popularizing magazines; Physical Review D, not Scientific American. (You'll
>> note that the articles IN Scientific American have these things called
>> "references" that point to where the actual papers appeared. Discover and
>> Asimov, not so much.)
>
>If you had an instance of any of my sources misrepresenting the
>scientific literature you might have the beginnings of an argument...
People have been pointing out to you where your sources misrepresent science,
the scientific literature, actual facts, and data for Some Time Now. You're
not listening to them, or are not accepting that they know what they speak of,
or are thinking that they're playing with you, or SOMETHING that's preventing
you from realizing that the facts aren't on your side; personally, I think
it's just that you may never have been taught _how_ to learn stuff, and what
figuring out which of differing claims is supportable involves.
Dave
Shawn Wilson
> >> That's not the scientific literature, dear; you don't get "scientific
> >> literature" by looking at words that are written about science any more than
> >> you get 'science fiction' by looking at made-up words that are written about
> >> science.
>
> >So you have no specific claims of inaccuracy to make, and are just
> >attacking the source. OK, so you never took a logic class...
>
> ?? No, we're trying, repeatedly, to explain to you that you _don't know what
> you're talking about_,
You are TRYING, but all you are actually doing is revealing how severe
your own ignorance is. Case in point- I pointed out the critical
importance of accurate predictions in determining the validity of a
model, and you have universally responded by claiming that the
underpinnings of a theory are what matters, and the predictions are
only secondary.
In other words, none of you have any scientific training worth the
name, not to mention being credulous buffoons. Relativity didn't win
out over Newtonian dynamics because it had a better logical
foundation- they both had impeccable logical foundations. Relativity
won because its predictions were better.
So far AGW has no accurate predictions to its record. The IPCC even
stopped making predictions, and instead relies on 'scenarios'. Why?
Because predictions can be tested and found to be wrong...
AGW 'predicts' warming from increased CO2 emissions. CO2 emissions
have been going up, and so have temps, recently. But before the last
few decades they were going down. That's a direct contradiction of
the model which you blythely shrug off as 'local variation'. Uh,
there no reason the recent three decade warming trend is a 'trend' and
the previous three decade cooling trend only a local variation and not
the other way round.
AGW doesn't capture some pretty large energy movements, which you
ignore.
AGW doesn't explain MOST actual observations of climate, which you
shrug off as 'weather' rather than actual climate, which you claim can
only be observed a century out. Sorry, but if you can observe it a
century out you can observe it a day out. If your predictions only
explain some of the variation in the data, then your model is ignoring
most of the relevant inputs.
Cost-benefit analysis of AGW is nothing but a politically motivated
joke. No one here even dared put any one of them up for real
criticism.
and don't know the difference between actual science
> and pseudoscience, or between the actual scientific literature
Or maybe *I* do and you don't. Tell me what the functional difference
is between a survey article written for an academic journal and an
overview article article written for Scientific American? The answer-
the SA article will be better written and more informative. You
denigrate professional science writers without being able to point to
a single deficiency in what they write. Unlike you I have READ real
journal articles as a professional. I can appreciate the talents of
Asimov or Gould or Sagan (all jen-you-wine scientists in their own
damn right...).
Hell, you engaged in the ridiculous travesty of simultaneously
claiming the untouchability of IPCC climate models AND decrying an
actual prediction of those models because it didn't fit in the tiny
little box you have in your mind for 'global warming' (which must
apparently have no room whatsoever for any positive effect because it
is required to be the source of all evil...).
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> ?? No, we're trying, repeatedly, to explain to you that you _don't know what
>> you're talking about_,
>
>name, not to mention being credulous buffoons.
...and it shows through in pretty much everything you write.
Dave "since you're confusing stuff I wrote with stuff others wrote, and
answering all of it by projecting your own flaws onto us" DeLaney
Bill Snyder
wrote:
>On Feb 16, 8:57 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>
>> >> That's not the scientific literature, dear; you don't get "scientific
>> >> literature" by looking at words that are written about science any more than
>> >> you get 'science fiction' by looking at made-up words that are written about
>> >> science.
>>
>> >So you have no specific claims of inaccuracy to make, and are just
>> >attacking the source. OK, so you never took a logic class...
>>
>> ?? No, we're trying, repeatedly, to explain to you that you _don't know what
>> you're talking about_,
>
>
>
>You are TRYING, but all you are actually doing is revealing how severe
>your own ignorance is. Case in point- I pointed out the critical
>importance of accurate predictions in determining the validity of a
>model, and you have universally responded by claiming that the
>underpinnings of a theory are what matters, and the predictions are
>only secondary.
[etc., etc., bullshit, bullshit . . .]
You're a joke, Wilson. Go tell these lies to your mirror; that's the
only place you'll find anyone fuckheaded enough to believe you.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Peter D. Tillman
"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 11, 12:52 am, "Peter D. Tillman" wrote:
>
> A couple of days ago I made a calm, reasoned, elegant reply to
> this post. That took a while, and apparently my time was wasted,
> for it hasn't shown up (the new google groups is even worse than
> the earlier version. If it wasn't free I'd want my money back).
>
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Sorry you were sandbagged by GG.
Backup, backup, backup! <G>
> >[ Shaviv's argument.
>
> >In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
> >warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
>
> Right at the start, he is utterly wrong. You will find calculations
> of the effect on climate of CO2 change here:
>
> http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/Arrhenius.html
>
> in a paper written in 1896. And Arrhenius was far from the first
> to think about this, as his reference list shows.
>
Here's a history of solar variability and climate change, which traces
this back at least as far as William Herschel in the late 1700s, using
wheat prices in Adam Smith's _The Wealth of Nations_ as a proxy for
climate: <http://www.agu.org/history/sv/articles/ARTL.html>
So we can stipulate that this subject has been puzzled over for about as
long as modern science has existed:
"Fewer scientific problems are so often discussed yet so rarely decided
by proofs, as whether climatic relations have changed over time."
-- Joachim von Schouw, 1826.
And we can also stipulate that, at root, the sun drives all climate.
From the old familiar SF plot-device, if the sun went out, or went away,
it would get cold PDQ.
> So Shaviv's charge that AGW is a "post hoc" explanation for
> a warming that already happened is false. The warming was
> *predicted* long ago - though obviously Arrhenius could not
> be quantitatively correct.
>
Well, Shaviv is explicit in acknowledging that CO2 contributes to
warming. The $64 trillion question is, what's the actual sensitivity? As
you know, the empirically-determined sensitivity (so far) is at or below
the low limits of the model predictions; ie 1-1.5 deg C rise for
doubling CO2. See the parallel discussion at "CO2 sensitivity, was GW
myths", nearby.
My guess is, he's referring to the controversial "amplification" of the
calculated sensitivity value (which isn't clear, to me or many others).
But who knows? His English is a bit fractured.
[snip]
>
> Now, a theory that involves greater or lesser amounts of solar
> radiation has a few problems with the above. If we are getting more
> sunlight then the first order effect would be that days should be
> hotter, nights less so. Summers should get warmer, winters less so.
> The opposite of what we see.
I think you've misunderstood his argument. He's arguing that the
cosmic-ray flux is modulating low clouds. There's a bit more insolation
when the sun is more active (more sunspots), but the amplification (in
his theory) is from the clouds.
[snip]
>
> So when he says "there is no reason to believe that CO2 is the cause
> of the current warming", he deals a killing blow to his own
> credibility.
See above.
[snip]
> >Now Shaviv and colleagues may have a convincing argument. High-energy
> >cosmic rays ionize the earth's atmosphere, and in turn appear to
> >influence low-altitude cloud formation: more cosmic rays = more
> >ionization = more low clouds = cooler climate.
>
> Every link in this chain is dubious.
>
> In the lab it has been shown that cosmic rays produce small
> particles, true, but these particles are orders of magnitude too
> small to be cloud condensation nuclei. It is a bit of a handwave to
> say that they will combine to form CCNs in clouds, when they have not
> done so in the lab.
>
Um. This is exactly the Danish SKY experiment, recently published:
<http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults>. From the Royal Society's press
release:
"Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists trace the growth of
clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei.
These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form.
High-energy particles driven through the laboratory ceiling by exploded
stars far away in the Galaxy - the cosmic rays - liberate electrons in
the air, which help the molecular clusters to form much faster than
atmospheric scientists have predicted. That may explain the link
proposed by members of the Danish team, between cosmic rays, cloudiness
and climate change."
> Clouds are quite complex systems. They both absorb and reflect solar
> radiation, and the balance of this depends strongly on the
> distribution of sizes among the cloud droplets. Changing the number
> and type of CCN may change both the amount of cloud, and cloud
> optical properties (or neither). Clouds also absorb and emit IR and
> that may also change.
>
> Given that we don't know *anything* about how clouds will change
> in response to these so far unseen extra CCNs it is impossible to
> tel whether the balance of radiation, solar and terrestrial, will
> be positive or negative. Or by how much.
>
Yes, this seems (to me) the weakest part of Shaviv et al's argument. For
that matter (with the aerosols, below), the weakest link in the
predictive use of the GCMs (computer models).
> We are also putting vast amounts of other CCNs (real CCNs, that can
> be measured and analysed) into the atmosphere. So far they don't
> seem to be having that big an effect. Studies on ship tracks (ships
> put plenty of aerosols in the area of low cloud formation) so far
> show nothing major. The degree to which CNNs are a limiting
> factor in cloud formation is not clear. It may be that over most
> of the world there are more than enough CCNs, which would
> pretty much kill the cosmic ray theory.
>
> Finally, even if this process produces CCNs, and if they affect cloud
> optical properties, it still remains to be shown that this change is
> significant, and that it agrees with the data we have.
>
> Do you still find it convincing?
I find it suggestive, and worth further research. As we both know, most
of the time the consensus opinion turns out to be right. But basic
research is cheap, and "most" isn't "always". Shaviv's matchup of our
flights through the galactic arms with the greenhouse/icehouse climates
during the Phanerozoic is intriguing -- the conventional explanations
have never struck me as very convincing. This is summarized in his GSA
Today article "Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?", pdf on his
site.
Note that I'm not really defending Shaviv -- he can do that for himself,
and this will sort itself out in time, by the usual self-correcting
course of scientific research. Fun stuff, though, in the meanwhile. I
put this up partly to satisfy wossisname's repeated demands for a
peer-reviewed study saying GW isn't primarily AGW <G>
To his credit, Shaviv is getting his climate research published in
peer-reviewed journals -- most are available as pdfs on his site.
[snip]
> >This would also account for
> >the long-puzzling observation that much of the current warming occurred
> >before %CO2 rose much.
>
> This has not been puzzling for some time. In fact a recent paper
> estimates that about a third of the early 20th century warming was
> due to GHGs, with the rest a combination of solar and volcanism.
>
Do you happen to have the citation handy? Online, maybe? TIA.
>
> I would recommend, instead of your list, actual books on climate.
>
[copies list]
Thanks for the reading list. It's an interesting (and fearfully complex)
topic. I'm feeling my way into it, as is obvious.... <G>
Anyway, whether or not Shaviv's cosmic-ray argument has any merit,
there's *something* going on with the high solar activity, climate-wise:
<http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=371632655&context=set-7215759450
4592593&size=l>
--which is an interesting plot by Chris Christner, from a discussion at
<http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1076> (scroll down to #62)
To my eye, this is as good a match as to %CO2, especially using the
Moberg temp reconstruction. Gerald Browning (climatologist, CSU/NOAA)
had a similar reaction. Comments?
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Professional geologist, amateur(jg?) climatology student
William Hyde
[ reply to Wilson]
Don't worry about arguing with Wilson. He's utterly impervious to
anything of a factual nature.
But it is interesting that he cited Asimov, as I have here a
little book by the very same. Inside, Asimov's second
essay is entitled "No more ice ages?". This essay was
written in the 1960s and is surprisingly up to date. For
example:
"A recent set of calculations indicate that if the Carbon
Dioxide concentration should double, the temperature of
the Earth would rise by 3.6 C."
That's not far from the mean estimate today.
He also addresses the "CO2 fertilization" question. Quite
sensibly, given what we have seen in the 40 years since
this essay was written.
He concludes:
"Therefore, it is possible that the Earth has seen its last Ice Age,
regardless of the Milankovitch cycle or the position of the North
Pole, until such time as the ocean, or we ourselves, can get rid of
the excess Carbon Dioxide once again."
Doesn't seem to be calling for a new ice age, does he?
Not that it matters, as you pointed out to Wilson. I only bring
this up to have Asimov's opinion on record. I tend to forget
just how good he was at these scientific essays - until I read
them again.
William Hyde
dwight...@gmail.com
The Good Doctor is missed. One forgets just how good he was, and how
hard it is to do what he did right. Certainly there is no one in the
current crop of explainers who can do this, although a few come close.
William December Starr
John Reiher <kedamo...@Narf.mac.com> said:
> In article <1171564569.1...@p10g2000cwp.googlegroups.com>,
> "William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There are thousands of sceptical/denialist web sites I disagree
>> with, many far, far, worse than Shaviv's, and I certainly don't
>> have time to respond to even a hundredth of them. Shaviv's site
>> was brought up on this group, and I answered it here.
>
> So you're quite willing to bad mouth the man behind his back, but
> not to his face.
>
> Hypocrite.
>
> If you truly believed in the scientific method, you'd confront him
> on his site, not here in a news group that he may only be fuzzily
> aware of.
>
> Instead you just pat yourself on the back and say how smart you
> are, while not calling the man on his claims and letting him
> defend himself.
>
> Hypocrite.
You're a nitwit. Go away.
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
William Hyde
<dwight.thi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 18, 3:12 pm, "WilliamHyde" <wthyde1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 16, 6:36 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>
> > [ reply to Wilson]
>
> > Don't worry about arguing with Wilson. He's utterly impervious to
> > anything of a factual nature.
>
> > But it is interesting that he cited Asimov, as I have here a
> > little book by the very same. Inside, Asimov's second
> > essay is entitled "No more ice ages?". T
[...]
>
> > Not that it matters, as you pointed out to Wilson. I only bring
> > this up to have Asimov's opinion on record. I tend to forget
> > just how good he was at these scientific essays - until I read
> > them again.
>
> The Good Doctor is missed. One forgets just how good he was, and how
> hard it is to do what he did right.
I learned a bit more about this in recent years, when I had to do some
writing for in-house purposes (not published papers, which are
entirely different and even less fun).
I can write a clear page of explanation. But it takes forever, and
the result isn't a particularly enjoyable
read. Asimov could write this sort of thing almost as
fast as he could type, and the result was a good read,
also.
I hate writing.
Peter Cook had this talent in another field. While it takes
the average writer of comedy at least half an hour (if not half a day)
to write a five minute sketch, Cook would write one in five minutes.
Unlike Dr A, he'd do this with an alcohol-fogged brain.
William Hyde
William Hyde
Well well, another posting no-show. I did save an incomplete
version, which will have to do (IIRC there were more
comments on the solar stuff at the end, but that is
now lost to history).
> >In a nutshell, his argument is that CO2 has been assigned the badguy
> >warmup role by default, in that no one had a good alternate candidate.
> Right at the start, he is utterly wrong.
[...]
> Here's a history of solar variability and climate change,
Sure, that is interesting stuff. But it doesn't affect the fact that
his claim on the web site is wrong. AGW cannot be a post
hoc explanation for a problem that did not yet exist when the
theory was first explored. It is an ad hominem charge on
Shaviv's part.
AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions. That is how
we determine the validity of a scientific theory. He ignores all
this,
presenting us instead with a theory which lacks the ability to
explain, let alone predict in advance, the features that AGW
explains.
>Well, Shaviv is explicit in acknowledging that CO2 contributes to
>warming. The $64 trillion question is, what's the actual sensitivity? As
>you know, the empirically-determined sensitivity (so far) is at or below
>the low limits of the model predictions; ie 1-1.5 deg C rise for
>doubling CO2.
Not at all.
The zero-feedback sensitivity - known from theory, not "empirically
determined" is in that range. But not the real sensitivity. Data
shows that to be much larger. And your last line contains an
apples and oranges comparison. Of course the sensitivity
with zero feedback is lower than model sensitivities. The
models contain feedbacks. The major feedbacks are positive.
>My guess is, he's referring to the controversial "amplification" of the
>calculated sensitivity value (which isn't clear, to me or many others).
There is no real contrversy here.
CO2 in isolation heats the atmosphere, which can then hold more water
vapour, which is itself a greenhouse gas, which heats the atmosphere
further, and so on. A warmer planet means less snow and sea ice,
which
means more absorption of solar energy, which means more warming in
polar regions (which is what we see in the Arctic).
Clouds - we don't know. Could be a negative feedback, as Lindzen
asserts,
could be positive. One thing we do know, it hasn't done much yet.
Other
feebacks doubtless exist.
>> Now, a theory that involves greater or lesser amounts of solar
>> radiation has a few problems with the above. If we are getting more
> >sunlight then the first order effect would be that days should be
> >hotter, nights less so. Summers should get warmer, winters less so.
> >The opposite of what we see.
>I think you've misunderstood his argument. He's arguing that the
>cosmic-ray flux is modulating low clouds. There's a bit more insolation
>when the sun is more active (more sunspots), but the amplification (in
>his theory) is from the clouds.
I used a shorthand above. More clouds means less solar forcing, so I
said "lesser amounts of solar radiation". I should have followed it
with "reaching the surface".
The point still stands, though. His theory predicts the opposite of
what
has happened in global warming. We should have less warming by
night than by day, less in winter than in summer, less in polar
regions
than in warmer latitudes.
And he shows no sign of being aware that there is stratospheric
cooling,
let alone being able to predict it, as AGW did in the 1960s.
[snip]
>> So when he says "there is no reason to believe that CO2 is the cause
>> of the current warming", he deals a killing blow to his own
>> credibility.
>See above.
No, even if what you wrote above was correct, this point would still
stand.
I repeat:
The GHG theory of global warming has made predictions as to the nature
of the warming. Some of these predicitons go back to the 1960s, some
even to the 1860s. And these predictions have turned out to be true.
*That* is a "reason to believe that CO2 is the cause of the current
warming".
That Shaviv claims there is no such reason reveals that he knows next
to
nothing about the field he is working in.
[snip]
>> In the lab it has been shown that cosmic rays produce small
> >particles, true, but these particles are orders of magnitude too
> >small to be cloud condensation nuclei. It is a bit of a handwave to
> >say that they will combine to form CCNs in clouds, when they have not
> >done so in the lab.
>Um. This is exactly the Danish SKY experiment, recently published:
><http://www.sciencebits.com/SkyResults>. From the Royal Society's press
>release:
>"Using a box of air in a Copenhagen lab, physicists trace the growth of
>clusters of molecules of the kind that build cloud condensation nuclei.
Precisely my point. They are not making CCN, but only what they
claim to be the building blocks of CCN. If these things do not
join to produce CCN in the lab, what makes them think that
they will do so in the real world? Even if they exist in the real
world, which has yet to be shown.
Why "Um"? They are saying exactly what I said. But while they
see the glass as 1/20 full, I see it as 19/20 empty.
>These are specks of sulphuric acid on which cloud droplets form.
Um, I don't think they know much about CCN. It's nothing like
so simple.
>> Given that we don't know *anything* about how clouds will change
>> in response to these so far unseen extra CCNs it is impossible to
>> tel whether the balance of radiation, solar and terrestrial, will
>> be positive or negative. Or by how much.
>Yes, this seems (to me) the weakest part of Shaviv et al's argument. For
>that matter (with the aerosols, below), the weakest link in the
>predictive use of the GCMs (computer models).
Clouds are the weakest part of atmospheric models, no doubt.
But these very same weaknesses are in Shaviv's model. Once he
has his extra CCN he has to translate that to cloud somehow. And
criticized though they may be, he will have no choice but to use
the computer models.
So he has all the uncertainties of the theory he criticizes, plus some
very big problems of his own. He is light years from having a
viable explanation for 20th century warming.
> Do you still find it convincing?
>I find it suggestive, and worth further research.
Excellent. So do I. Did I not lay out a program of research in my
previous post?
But is web site is, and I mean this sincerely, a disgrace. Any
scientist
on his funding committee who reads this is likely to slash his funding
considerably.
The cosmic ray-cloud connection may well exist, but it does not
explain 2/3 of the 20th century warming. The pattern we see is
consistent with AGW, not consistent with cosmic rays. I can't
call it "falsified" as he has not made detailed enough predicitions
for that. But it will require several miracles for a theory based
on reflecting greater or lesser amounts of solar radiation to
explain the patterns we see in the warming.
>Shaviv's matchup of our
>flights through the galactic arms with the greenhouse/icehouse climates
>during the Phanerozoic is intriguing
This is based on Viser's data. Long before I heard of any of this I
was
working with geologists who work in Viser's field. Their opinion of
his
data, then? Garbage. They use thin slicing, flouresence testing
(things
you know better than I) to test for diagenesis. He does not.
-- the conventional explanations
have never struck me as very convincing.
Which ones, and why not?
>This is summarized in his GSA
>Today article "Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?", pdf on his
>site.
I read this long ago, but I forgot his name.
>To his credit, Shaviv is getting his climate research published in
>peer-reviewed journals -- most are available as pdfs on his site.
Yes, and his papers, as far as I have read them, are quite a few
cuts above other anti-AGW stuff. If I reviewed them I would
probably let them go forward - though I'd make him be a bit
more explicit at certain points.
[snip]
> >This would also account for
> >the long-puzzling observation that much of the current warming occurred
> >before %CO2 rose much.
> This has not been puzzling for some time. In fact a recent paper
> estimates that about a third of the early 20th century warming was
> due to GHGs, with the rest a combination of solar and volcanism.
Do you happen to have the citation handy? Online, maybe? TIA.
As it happens, one such is:
"Detection of Human Influence on a new, Validated 1500-year
reconstruction"
Hegerl, Crowley, Allen, Hyde, Pollock, Smerdon, Zorita,
Journal of Climate, 15 February 2007.
(My last paper, if things keep on like this ...)
But it was also evident in Crowley's 14 July 2000 paper in Science.
[copies list]
>Thanks for the reading list. It's an interesting (and fearfully complex)
>topic. I'm feeling my way into it, as is obvious.... <G>
The hard part is in determining the feedbacks. Is there a negative
feedback that will cap the warming? There are possible candidates for
such, but if it exists it is mighty tardy in showing itself.
Shaviv's claim, whether he knows it or not, is that there is indeed
such a feedback, but that the cosmic ray induced warming
results in very much what we would expect if there were
no feedback. I regret that I still have not read the "Just So"
stories, but I think if I do they will feel familiar.
>To my eye, this is as good a match as to %CO2,
This sort of thing should not match CO2, as that isn't the primary
driver
for most of the time.
especially using the
>Moberg temp reconstruction. Gerald Browning (climatologist, CSU/NOAA)
>had a similar reaction. Comments?
There are lots of good fits out there. The solar fit of Christiansen
and (?)
in 1990 was huge (r = .95). I put it in my lectures. The
methodology there
was *really* suspect, and there was no causal mechanism. But it was
a great picture. Still on countless web sites, I believe.
Predictions matter far more than retrofitting.
When we measure solar variation there's just not that much there, in
terms
of Watts per square meter output. GHG in modern times, aerosols,
volcanos are far larger. Quite a few of the oscillations in that
curve
are volcanic.
When we attempted to deconvolve solar, volcanic, aerosol over the past
500 years the solar contribution was minimal. And since then
estimates of
solar variability in the past have been cut by 2/3.
William Hyde
John Schilling
<care...@earthling.net> wrote:
>"John Schilling" <schi...@spock.usc.edu> wrote in message
>news:g8d3t2lgjihp7bttg...@4ax.com...
>>>Kyoto certainly hasn't been the death of the European economies.
>> It hasn't seen the end of global warming, either, so what of it?
>> It is trivially true that we can afford to not solve the global
>> warming problem. This tells us nothing about the affordability
>> of actual solutions.
>>>Their weak growth is due to other structural problems and dirigist
>>>attitudes and very much predates the whole global warming debate.
>> Well, yes, and this is *not* a coincidence. To a first-order
>> approximation, Kyoto consists of Europe saying to itself, "Well,
>> we aren't going to be releasing much CO2 over the next decade or
>> two regardless, on account of our economies are in the crapper,
>> our coal mines are running dry, and we're about to tie ourselves
>> to Russian natural gas instead. Let's promise to cut our CO2
>> emissions by, well, the ammount they are going to fall anyhow,
>> and see if we can convince the Americans to follow suit. If
>> they do, their economy goes into the crapper as well (only more
>> so because they can't get at Russian natural gas) and we're that
>> much more competitive. If not, they look like Evil Meanies and
>> we can be all noble and virtuous with our self-sacrifice!"
>> The result, was a small and temporary dip in CO2 emissions vs
>> time, with what even its proponents acknowledge is an insignificant
>> effect on global warming.
>> Now calculate the economic effects of something Kyoto-esque but
>> of sufficient magnitude to actually alleviate the problem. And
>> I do mean *calculate* it, not just express your belief that it
>> will be small.
>>>5. Oil won't last forever.
>>>Actually, I find the "peak oil _and_ global warming" camp unwittingly
>>>humorous, as it would seem we could not really have both issues at the
>>>same time.
>> Careful. The "peak oil" crowd are getting annoyingly loud with all the
>> humming they have to do as they cover their ears and close their eyes to
>> the fact that coal can be converted to oil at maybe $25/barrel including
>> the cost of the coal, and that coal is not going to run out for at least
>> a century even if we use it for all our oil needs on top of its present
>> demand.
>> And in the global warming debate, a century or two is close enough to
>> forever as makes no difference.
>I agree with your comments in general about Kyoto, Europe and global waming
>(e.g. nothing is really being done, or planned to address the issue).
>However, on the same logic I would say the "peak oil" crowd are pretty much
>on the money. It is all very well to say that "coal can be converted to oil
>at maybe $25/barrel", or to point out that tar sands in Canada produce oil
>for less than this, etc., but to address the post-peak oil decline actual
>projects have to be coming on-line at a rate to offset the real decline. The
>last time I looked at this there were insufficient prospective replacement
>sources "in the pipeline".
Where were you looking?
The right place to look, for stuff that's in the pipeline right now, is
refineries being upgraded to handle heavy crude oil. Right now, there
appears to be a surplus of heavy crude production capacity, compared to
heavy crude refining capacity - it's damnably hard to find total figures
for either, but the price behavior of heavy vs. light crude is a decent
indicator.
As long as that's the case, one wouldn't expect to see anybody investing
in more heavy crude production, including tar sands and the like. There's
already more being produced than anyone can use. And one wouldn't expect
anybody to invest in e.g. coal-based synfuel plants, except as testbeds
or strategic hedges, because it would be cheaper to just upgrade existing
refineries to handle heavy crude.
This, *does* seem to be happening. At least, there's plenty of gigabucks
being invested in heavy crude refining capacity, though it isn't heavily
advertised. Lagging demand by a few years, but that's to be expected.
Heavy crude is only a short-term solution, but in the oil industry "short
term" can mean a decade or two. Coal, and possibly shale, are long-term
deals, which I'd expect to see people start exploiting seriously in a
decade or two.
>Of course the larger point is correct that "peak oil" and "global warming"
>are different problems, though related. "Running out of oil" is not a viable
>(or even effective) solution to global warming.
Right. In particular, there's a lot of discussion about "energy" that
completely ignores the fact that there are two almost completely different
energy markets - fixed power, and motor vehicle fuel. Fixed power is all
about coal and natural gas and sometimes hydroelectric and maybe nuclear.
Motor vehicle fuel, is oil.
Global warming, is mostly a result of the fixed power market. Peak oil,
is strictly a motor-vehicle issue.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
>> >4. Many folks seem to believe that CO2 reduction means economic
>> >disaster.
>> >I disagree.
>> And other people disagree that anthropogenic CO2 is a problem in
>> the first place. If you want to actually *convince* anyone, it
>> would be nice to see some actual research.
>I am not a climate scientist. Are you a climate researcher yourself?
>If not, we will both just regurgitate someone else's
>research, or opinions, that we find plausible, thank you very much.
>Or do you mean you will badger anybody who is
>not a climatologist and who does not agree with you?
>Where are _your_ peer-reviewed climatology papers, Mr. Chief
>Scientist?
If we're going to be all stuffy and formal, that's *Doctor* Chief
Scientist.
As far as peer-reviewed climatology papers are concerened, those
are what other people write so that I can read. As are papers on
economics, however much you'd like to ignore the fact that economics
is as relevant to the debate as climatology. I, for my part, write
peer reviewed papers on spacecraft propulsion, so that other people
can read them.
That's what scientific papers are *for*. They are written so that
they can be read, and at the end of the day anyone can know whatever
it is that anyone else has learned. And thus anyone can hold their
very own informed opinion on the subject. They are not, as you would
have it, Badges of Certified Smartness in particular fields, elevating
their authors' opinions above all others.
>> That the environmental movement and its allies have spent so very
>> much time and money researching the problem, then insisted on a
>> solution whose consequences they pretty much haven't researched
>> at all, is part of the reason they have so little credibility
>> with most of the world.
>Most of the world? Do you mean, a majority, but a slowly shrinking
>one, of the US population?
>A lot of the rest of the world doesn't share your viewpoint, you
>know. Don't believe me, Google it up for yourself.
So, I need to write a peer-reviewed paper to justify my opinion, but
it's sufficient for you to wave your hand in the vague direction of
Google?
You've got a nice long rant that I'm not going to dissect in detail
because it's not worth it. You're dead wrong from the very start,
with your premise that only professional climatologists may hold
informed opinions on the subject and the rest of us must believe
what they say.
And you're wasting your time, because in the end the decisions
about what, if anything, needs to be done are *not* going to be
made by climatologists. Not by scientists of any kind, because
making policy decisions is not a scientist's job.
And the people who *are* in charge of that sort of thing, are not
going to simply accept, "a bunch of scientists said so", as reason
for drastic action. You'd be well advised to figure out better ways
of trying to persuade them, because your efforts to persuade me have
been actively counterproductive and I'm a much more sympathetic
audience than the average businessman or politician.
Shawn Wilson
> AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions.
Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful predictions
made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
> That is how
> we determine the validity of a scientific theory.
Yes, it is. And it's why knowledgeable people reject the claims based on
AGW theories- the models haven't been proven in the real world.
> The GHG theory of global warming has made predictions as to the nature
> of the warming. Some of these predicitons go back to the 1960s, some
> even to the 1860s. And these predictions have turned out to be true.
And we can apply those same predictions to the past and it turns out they're
false. IF CO2 caused warming from 1980-now, then what caused the cooling
from 1940-1970? Why wasn't there warming then?
Why was the warming before the cooling period as great as the recent
warming? CO2 levels were MUCH lower then.
> *That* is a "reason to believe that CO2 is the cause of the current
> warming".
No, it isn't. There is still that pesky COOLING period to explain... Solar
variation DOES explain both the cooling and the warming.
> The hard part is in determining the feedbacks.
In other words, the hard part is coming up with a correct model...
> When we measure solar variation there's just not that much there, in
> terms
> of Watts per square meter output.
<snicker>
There isn't much there for CO2 either... You have to keep coming up with
other mechanisims that the CO2 supposedly 'activates'.
> When we attempted to deconvolve solar, volcanic, aerosol over the past
> 500 years the solar contribution was minimal. And since then
> estimates of
> solar variability in the past have been cut by 2/3.
No doubt those estimates were cut by people pushing their pet CO2 models...
Bill Snyder
<ikono...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>"William Hyde" <wthyd...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1172009171....@v33g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
>
>> AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions.
>
>
>Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
>quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful predictions
>made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
Lying dirtbag.
David DeLaney
>
>Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
>quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful predictions
>made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
If you were paying as much attention to their replies as you do to those
you're getting here, I can see why your personal count is still at zero.
>Yes, it is. And it's why knowledgeable people reject the claims based on
>AGW theories- the models haven't been proven in the real world.
...showing you don't know what you're talking about again. You're not
intelligent enough, from what I've seen, to be trying to use that word in
its 'tested' sense... and models and theories CAN'T be "proven" in the
axiomatic-proof sense, and scientists KNOW that - it's part of how and why
science works.
Dave
Shawn Wilson
"Bill Snyder" <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:u88pt2hq5arbau9ur...@4ax.com...
>>> AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions.
>>
>>
>>Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
>>quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful predictions
>>made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
>
> Lying dirtbag.
Just think how much more convincing your argument would be if you had any
actual, you know, accurate predictions to cite...
Shawn Wilson
"David DeLaney" <d...@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in message
news:slrnetprt...@gatekeeper.vic.com...
>>> AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions.
>>
>>Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
>>quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful predictions
>>made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
>
> If you were paying as much attention to their replies as you do to those
> you're getting here, I can see why your personal count is still at zero.
Feel free to cite some accurate preditions then. Something a little more
rigorous than "I expect the current warming trend to continue for a while"
would be nice. You know, something like actual specific temperatures that
AREN'T set 100 years in the future. Last years predictions of this years
temps would be perfect. Actually a series of predictions that are all
checkable for accuracy now would be better.
At any rate I want to see something like "in june of 2006 average worldwide
temps will be X degrees, prediction made as of june 2005".
I do NOT want to see 'predictions' made in 2007 of conditions over the
PREVIOUS 20 years that match the data perfectly. *I* can do that. It's a
trivial exercise in econometrics that has no predictive value whatsoever.
>>Yes, it is. And it's why knowledgeable people reject the claims based on
>>AGW theories- the models haven't been proven in the real world.
>
> ...showing you don't know what you're talking about again. You're not
> intelligent enough, from what I've seen, to be trying to use that word in
> its 'tested' sense... and models and theories CAN'T be "proven" in the
> axiomatic-proof sense, and scientists KNOW that - it's part of how and why
> science works.
"Proven" is your word. I said tested. In the real world models are tested
as a matter of course, and then they're re-tested and tested again, over and
over and over again until they break. Knowing how and where they break
makes for better models for the next round of the game.
What you want is for AGW models to be taken as divinely inspired and not
subject to criticism.
That isn't science- it's a religion.
Bill Snyder
My theory predicts that you'll behave like an addled, egotistical,
willfully ignorant fuckwad; that you'll continue to lie about what
others have said, as in the quote above, while producing no evidence
of your own; and that, as always, you'll be the only one here who
isn't laughing at you.
Joseph Hertzlinger
wrote:
> On Feb 14, 6:19 pm, Beowulf Bolt <abd.al-haz...@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>
>> Nevermind the ravings from the moronic troll, your posts on the
>> subject are always appreciated.
>
> Well, that's Shawn, and he will never change. It's only worth
> replying to him for amusment value.
Shawn Wilson's motto: The world is not only simpler than we imagine,
it is simpler than we can imagine.
My personal opinion is that AGW is a marvelous excuse to have
anti-nuclear activists tarred and feathered.
The only problem is that if we have anti-nuclear activists tarred and
feathered and it then turns out that AGM was a triviality, then my
fellow reactionaries will be blamed. In order to prevent that, we have
to get much of the Left on board so we have to goad them into being
absolutely certain that AGW is an emergency.
Shawn Wilson
>>>>> AGW is a theory that has made successful predictions.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Or, in the real world, has NOT made succesful precitions. I went on for
>>>>quite a while asking people to provide examples of successful
>>>>predictions
>>>>made by climate models, and so far the count stands at- zero.
>>>
>>> Lying dirtbag.
>>
>>
>>Just think how much more convincing your argument would be if you had any
>>actual, you know, accurate predictions to cite...
>
> My theory predicts that you'll behave like an addled, egotistical,
> willfully ignorant fuckwad; that you'll continue to lie about what
> others have said, as in the quote above, while producing no evidence
> of your own; and that, as always, you'll be the only one here who
> isn't laughing at you.
Yes, more ad hominems...
So you're basically admitting here that I'm entirely right- there are no
accurate predictions to present because the theories of AGW are either wrong
or useless.
Mike Schilling
> "Bill Snyder" <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote in message
> news:m96qt2paca3s8c3dl...@4ax.com...
>> willfully ignorant fuckwad; that you'll continue to lie about what
>> others have said, as in the quote above, while producing no evidence
>> of your own; and that, as always, you'll be the only one here who
>> isn't laughing at you.
>
>
> Yes, more ad hominems...
>
> So you're basically admitting here that I'm entirely right- there are
> no accurate predictions to present because the theories of AGW are
> either wrong or useless.
Bill, can you use that thing to pick stocks?
Bill Snyder
Nah, it's only good for predicting the behavior of entities that fail
the Turing test miserably; and contrary to what you might think, a
surprising number of brokers and investors can squeak by.