Wednesday
Oct122011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day
Oct 12, 2011 Climate: solar This is an exciting time for solar physics, and its role in climate. As one leading climate scientist told me last month, it's a subject that is now no longer taboo. And about time, too.
The BBC's Paul Hudson
Reader Comments (73)
Here's Wikipedia: A taboo is a strong social prohibition (or ban) relating to any area of human activity or social custom that is sacred and forbidden based on moral judgment and religious beliefs.
'social prohibition'
'sacred'
'forbidden'
'moral judgement'
'religious beliefs'
All good rational stuff then, this Climate 'science'?
So all us "flat-earthers, creationist luddites", who have been saying "how can you ignore the sun?" and being told "the sun has nothing to do with it", we obviously knew nothing. We were not scientists.
Oh to be a climate "scientist"... the science is settled... and every week it settles in a new place.
Doesn't everyone think, that the admission that solar physics role in climate was considered to be taboo, a particulalry damming reflection on the state of 'climate science'
I wonder if we will be treated to a rerun of:-
"…extremely disappointing to see something like this appear on BBC. It’s particularly odd, since climate is usually Richard Black’s beat at BBC (and he does a great job). From what I can tell, this guy was formerly a weather person at the Met Office. We may do something about this on RealClimate, but meanwhile it might be appropriate for the Met Office to have a say about this, I might ask Richard Black what’s up here?"
Barry Woods: yes, it's a damning reflection.
If the "leading climate scientist" visits this website to observe the impact of his whispered words to Paul Hudson, may he summon up the courage to 'come out'. Come on, out with it man! (Or are you Ms X?) State your views loudly and clearly on the groupthink which seeks to suppress hypotheses challenging the carbon dogma.
Isn't it common ground that solar irradiance was the major forcing for the MWP?
"Taboo Science"; now there's a book title for you.
@Hengist McStone... You can't have your haggis and eat it...
Barry - 'damning' rather than 'damming' - your contribution to this (as in many other blogs) is so valuable, why let simple errors devalue it?
Sol rules!
Who's going to take a moral stand and rightly resign for allowing this to be published?
Andrew
For some three decades, we were sneeringly told that all variables had been looked at, and only the CO2 output of humans could possibly explain any change in climate on a Global scale. This continued through the beginning of this year, when a few large media outlets tentatively noted that despite increased CO2 the global temperature had not risen for a decade or so.
Now, it is all about how "temporary" natural events (many of which have been known for a century or more) like El Nino vs La Nina and Solar Variability have a larger effect. What happened to the "Fact" that they had no effect?
--------------
The first response from IPCC "climate science", which politicians seem to still be using, is that even without more temp increases the past decade was nonetheless the warmest of, oh, the last five or six. Experiment:
1. take an ice cube, put it in a glass. Take temperature of glass. Store at 60-75 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. note how fast the ice melts, and temperature of glass, at 20-second intervals until one quarter of ice cube is liquid.
3. Place glass with cube into an oven at 150 degrees. Note rate of melting and temp of glass at 10-second intervals until ice is one-half melted.
4. return to first (60-75 degrees Fahrenheit) area. Continue measurements as in step 3 until ice cube is three-quarters melted.
Now, will rhe average temp of the glass be higher during step 4 than step 2, even if the direction and rate of temp change is reversed from step3?
Were the rate/amount changes of step 3 caused by increased measurements, and if so why did step 4 not replicate step 3?
At the end of last year the following page at NASA started to get some exposure around the blogosphere then it was removed, I think about 9 months ago and now brings up "Page not Found". The URL is: -
http://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/big-questions/what-are-the-primary-causes-of-the-earth-system-variability/
Worth another read in these enlightened days?
“What are the primary forcings of the Earth climate system?"
"The Sun is the primary forcing of Earth's climate system. Sunlight warms our world. Sunlight drives atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Sunlight powers the process of photosynthesis that plants need to grow. Sunlight causes convection which carries warmth and water vapor up into the sky where clouds form and bring rain. In short, the Sun drives almost every aspect of our world's climate system and makes possible life as we know it.
Earth's orbit around and orientation toward the Sun change over spans of many thousands of years. In turn, these changing "orbital mechanics" force climate to change because they change where and how much sunlight reaches Earth. (Please see for more details.) Thus, changing Earth's exposure to sunlight forces climate to change. According to scientists' models of Earth's orbit and orientation toward the Sun indicate that our world should be just beginning to enter a new period of cooling -- perhaps the next ice age.
However, a new force for change has arisen: humans. After the industrial revolution, humans introduced increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and changed the surface of the landscape to an extent great enough to influence climate on local and global scales. By driving up carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere (by about 30 percent), humans have increased its capacity to trap warmth near the surface.
Other important forcings of Earth's climate system include such "variables" as clouds, airborne particulate matter, and surface brightness. Each of these varying features of Earth's environment has the capacity to exceed the warming influence of greenhouse gases and cause our world to cool. For example, increased cloudiness would give more shade to the surface while reflecting more sunlight back to space. Increased airborne particles (or "aerosols") would scatter and reflect more sunlight back to space, thereby cooling the surface. Major volcanic eruptions (such as that of Mt. Pinatubo in 1992) can inject so much aerosol into the atmosphere that, as it spreads around the globe, it reduces sunlight and cause Earth to cool. Likewise, increasing the surface area of highly reflective surface types, such as ice sheets, reflects greater amounts of sunlight back to space and causes Earth to cool.
Scientists are using NASA satellites to monitor all of the aforementioned forcings of Earth's climate system to better understand how they are changing over time, and how any changes in them affect climate."
For Hengist McStone: Solar forcing was also the cause of the 20th Century warming. it's now reversing fast.
Today's ice data indicate the Arctic is freezing at the fastest ever recorded rate. The 60-70 freeze/melt cycle [driven by the accumulation of dimethyl sulphide and iron in old ice] is turning to freeze and this will also affect the climate of us by making the Northern polar regions much colder by increasing cloud albedo.
I am encouraged. This suggests the BBC is starting to lay in the preparations for a slow and careful turnaround on their global warming policy. It may be that people higher up have seen the future and blanched.
Dr Roy Spencer is "warming" to the task:-
"Our GRL Response to Dessler Takes Shape, and the Evidence Keeps Mounting"
"It clearly shows the large discrepancy which exists between the IPCC
climate models and satellite observations in the way they show the Earth
shedding excess radiant energy in response to warming. This is central
to question of how much warming can be expected from anthropogenic
greenhouse gas emissions, because the less radiant energy the model’s
shed per degree of warming, the more the models continue to warm."
Full comment at:-
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/10/our-grl-response-to-dessler-takes-shape-and-the-evidence-keeps-mounting/
Repeat after me:
1. The Medieval Warm period didn't exist.
<oops.>
2. The Medieval Warm period wasn't as warm as 20th Century.
<oops.>
3. The Medieval Warm period was as warm as 20th Century but was only localised in Northern Europe.
<oops.>
4. The Medieval Warm period was as warm as 20th Century and was global but was caused by solar irradiance.
<oops.>
What next?
Stuck-record:
"It doesn't matter because this time it's different?"
(c) RealClimate.
From the linked article:
We shall have to see. As others have argued, this may be an opportunity to test the AGW hypothesis against measured changes in solar activity. CS24 is unusual. I tend to agree with the suggestion that UV/stratospheric effects explain the recent cold winters, although others argue that the emergent Arctic Dipole is AGW. Don't know. More reading required, as per.
Stuck-record
Ignoring the Schwabe cycle, if TSI doesn't vary much over long time-scales, there's a problem. TSI does not appear to have varied as much in the C20th as once thought. If you are looking for the source of the energy powering recent warming, the sun doesn't fill the bill. Something increased GAT by 0.6C since 1979, and CO2 appears to be the likely forcing. Unless you don't accept the radiative physics, in which case it is hard to argue for TSI as an influence on GAT. TSI is the primary radiative forcing of the climate system.
BBD There is indeed a problem. Something increased GAT by 0.6C or thereabouts between 1979 and 1998; something else has held it more or less constant, or at most dramatically slowed the rate of increase since then, according to taste and when you choose as your start date, and there are any number of competing theories as to what these somethings might be and in which combination. To be candid, I have no idea at all which holds water, and there seems to be very little hard evidence in support of any of them, although there are plenty of extrapolations from flimsy data and circular model-driven arguments. The science is becoming less settled by the minute - truly a nightmare for policymakers.
What I don't yet understand is how the Met Office can be so adamant that "it's the variation in the sun's Ultra Violet (UV) output that's crucial".
Do they have evidence that is so much stronger than the evidence already put forward for the cosmic rays effect? Or are they simply relying on computer models?
Have they submitted their UV theory to rigorous testing along the lines of the CLOUD experiment and the earlier accelerator experiment in Aarhus?
Note that Hudson uses the word 'redistribute' heat -- ie he is saying that the same solar factors which cause cold European winters also cause mild California winters.
I don't see anywhere that he admits that solar can have any more influence than that, though as he points out, to get solar a seat at the table is a huge advance.
I suspect to most laymen, the idea that the Sun does not influence climate is prima facie absurd, and any theory that denies its effects is going to face an uphill struggle for acceptance.
But the AGW fanatics have nailed their colors to the CO2 mast. They cannot now admit a solar influence, and it seems increasingly probable that they can no longer deny one, either.
Green Sand-
Thanks for posting that bit from the NASA website. By coincidence, I was looking for this just yesterday. I brought it up on Revkin's Dot Earth site last year, and Andy Lacis of NASA GISS responded by indicating it was wrong, and should have been cleared by a climate expert before being posted on the website. American Thinker ran before and after articles on this as well.
I still think it is a very concise explanation of the convective heat engine commonly known as weather.
Since the oceans are the huge store of energy controlling the atmosphere, it only takes an immeasurably small transfer of energy from the oceans to the atmosphere to raise the temperature by 0.6C and maintain it there. Where does the energy come from to energise the oceans? The sun? What affects the amount of solar energy entering the oceans? Is it clouds or "greenhouse gases?
Forget CO2, back-radiation and the so-called "greenhouse effect".
Does this news mean that we no longer "have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period"? If so that is excellent news, especially for those who lived in the Middle Ages. Eric the Red won't have to worry about sailing into an iceberg on his way to discover Greenland!
I am encouraged. This suggests the BBC is starting to lay in the preparations for a slow and careful turnaround on their global warming policy. It may be that people higher up have seen the future and blanched.
Oct 12, 2011 at 10:47 PM | Bruce of Newcastle
Must give them time to pull the pension fund money out Bruce!
I don't see this as the start of any turn round by the BBC. Paul Hudson has always been allowed to say a few non-AGW consensus words and he does not produce BBC mainstream news items. He carefully caveats his item with:
and
Piers has a few words to say about it at comment #13.
I think many of you have this wrong. Yes it was bad that climate science denied the effects of solar variability, and yes, they treated people shabbily. But it's a GOOD THING that science is changing its mind - we've had 15 years of science refusing to change its mind - surely this sort of about-turn is what we've all been waiting for? A smallish one, admittedly, but we should be nurturing this small returning flame of scientific method, not criticising it.
Science apart, the biggest barrier to scientists who have pinned their colours to the wrong mast changing their minds is thinking it opens them up to abject ridicule. Our reactions to these small admissions may shape the speed and nature of the collapse of the scam. If we are too harsh on the early adopters, then it could delay the inevitable for another 10 or 20 years.
What's more important to us, as scientific sceptics : the truth, or revenge?
Oct 13, 2011 at 8:20 AM | TheBigYinJames
One wonders what state the "science" would now be, were not for the Internet and Bloggers James!
Australia has just committed economic suicide with the UK trying to follow in its footsteps (though there would now appear to be some back peddling going on as the economy continues to fail).
Your "abject ridicule", in my opinion, should be treated as criminal actions in some cases. The debacle of the F.O.I.A. springs to mind as does the money making of Gore.
That said, it seems to me, on the whole, that it has always been the sceptics that have been better behaved during the past 15 years, as certain blog comment deletions etc have shown. There is still a huge way to go before the CO2 thing is buried!
sparticusisfree
The link in your post over at Paul Hudsons blog:
'They did it here: http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sgg/singh/winners4.html'
Is broken, do you have another source that I could follow up?
I am encouraged. This suggests the BBC is starting to lay in the preparations for a slow and careful turnaround on their global warming policy. It may be that people higher up have seen the future and blanched.
Sadly not true, Paul Hudson has been the most sceptical voice in the BBC for sometime, example was his piece a few years ago about the lack of warming since 1998 which resulted in the Mann to Black email which surfaced in the climategate emails, the rest of the BBC is still warmist to the core.
Had a chuckle 2 nights ago watching an old BBC program on walking in Cumbria, they did an aside on climate change and how it was effecting Cumbria, yes chirps up the local activist the snow used to last for months on the hills and now it melts quickly after it falls. Wonder if he thinks the same after the last 2 winters.
Yes I agree there would now be no turaround in prospect if it wasn't for the resolute actions of the sceptic community, and they should be (and will be, I believe) honoured in their lifetimes and in the history books.
That aside, we are 'winning' to a certain extent (it'll take a LONG time to filter through everywhere) and to carry on the traditions of good behaviour, we should be gracious in our small victories. It's always safer to allow your enemies to save a little face when they are signing the surrender document. Humiliating them just means you sow the seeds more conflict.
Yes, I know, too early to be letting them off the hook, because they aren't all on the hook yet (but it's coming). So yes, keep up the pressure on the recalcitrant ones, the job isn't finished yet. But for the scientists who aren't core, the ones who atre trying to wave white flags a little, let's try to be welcoming. Science is all about history - the culprits will go down as charlatans - that will be their legacy. Science will shake itself off - and we need this generation of scientists - to solve our real problems, the ones that AGW has sidelined or even jeopardised - topsoil depletion, provision of energy, water and food, increasing immunity to penicillin, etc.
The only remaining taboo in climate science is Paul Hudson's taste in ties.
It is good to see science making progress. Why on earth has it taken so long for climate science to consider looking at the sun in more detail?
The only credible defence of computer programme parameters is validation of them by other means. Saying 'we've accounted for the sun so it must be CO2' for 20 years simply isn't good enough.
Let's hope that this reassessment of solar activity and its effect on our climate doesn't inspire some misanthropic Gore-ish clown to suggest that we attempt to propitiate the Great God Sol by increased taxes on our sinful ways and/or some form of midwinter sacrifice to ensure the sun's benevolent reappearance in the spring.
Weren't we here some point during the early Neolithic?
This is how Paul Hudson will be treated by BBC and Met Office colleagues from now on.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fast+show+i'll+get+me+coat&docid=1083022573590&mid=CB1C0EBD6EA3752C498CCB1C0EBD6EA3752C498C&FORM=LKVR4#
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fast+show+i'll+get+me+coat&docid=1083022573590&mid=89FE15AFF490F093A71C89FE15AFF490F093A71C&FORM=LKVR2#
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fast+show+i'll+get+me+coat&docid=1083022573590&mid=8C15FBDA6F479152B83F8C15FBDA6F479152B83F&FORM=LKVR#
Nah, the Beeb has been 'on the mend' since Climategate. I said here at the time, they were 'found out' at the enquiry, but they weren't going to make that conclusion public - public recriminations are not the way the Establishment deals with finding out bad news in this country. Instead there has been a slow creep at the BBC and in governement, retracting away from the hardline CAGW line.
Just compare popular output (Countryfile, Blue Peter, Bang Goes The Theory) now with then. It's hadly ever mentioned now - apart from diehards like John Craven and Monty Don, who just can't let it go.
Also compare the BBC website content, yes Black is still there, but at one time CAGW stories were most of the headlines and stories, now you're lucky if there's one 'renewables/catastophe' story, and it's rarely the headline.
For all the public enquiries and BBC documents on fairness, behind the scenes where the real decisions are taken, the Beeb has been backing away on this for a couple of years now.
@BigYin: I would suggest a period of self-examination, introspection & recrimination would do the "science" of climatology a favour. Before you can make improvements, you must identify & punish the miscreants. It's easy to do, it's the only perfect management science.
@Sebastian, I believe such a period of introspection and recreimination is already ongoing. I just don't believe it'll be conducted in public, as much as I'd like it to be. Science will just quietly move on. Let's help it.
I assum that 'GAT' is what NASA/GISS refers to as 'SAT' (see here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html).
So we are getting our knickers in a twist over an apparent increase in global mean temperature of about 1F when it appears that the margin of error is probably of the order of 2F.Like so many absolutes or averages or means it strikes me as being less than meaningful. As someone once remarked "average temperature is only of use if you happen to live at Average"! The global mean is usually considered to about 14C. As the GISS website says:
On top of that we don't know (or do we) if 14C is some sort of "ideal" or "optimal" temperature for planet earth and if we don't know that how do we know that an increase of 0.6C is good news or bad news?
Do we know whether that 0.6C is accurate and what it represents? Is it a function of the decision to close down the awkward weather stations (ie the ones to hard to get at because they're too far up in the hills — where it's cooler — or in inaccessible spots in the extreme north or south — where it's cooler)? Is the mean the result of increased maxima or increased minima? Has a genuine and honest account been taken of UHI, unlike Jones's 1990 wet-finger-in-the-wind figure of 0.5C which anyone who works in a city and lives in the country will confirm is patently wrong?
I know some of these questions have been asked before. I just think it's perhaps time for them to be asked again.
"Polite" and "political" are the problem, not the solution. Politics will always try to "quietly move on", but science MUST simply face the scientific facts that require a change in the consensus (really, just dogmatic) thinking, and NO ONE in a recognized position of authority and responsibility, particularly in academia (the noisy standard bearers of "peer review", which is just the official defender of the dogma) is doing that simple, HONEST scientific job, whether from incompetence or from moral subornation. There is no greenhouse effect of increasing atmospheric temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide; until that is recognized and admitted by "lukewarmists" and "alarmists" alike, climate science is simply non-functional and dangerous to rely on as science at all. Politics has gotten hold of a deadly snake--false science--instead of a resource both necessary and beneficial to the common welfare, as all of our institutions self-righteously insist. The head of that snake MUST be cut off, the quicker the better for science (but not, of course, for politics, which childishlly demands face-saving for all, right or wrong).
For BBD: the real AGW has probably been Asian aerosols from globalisation reducing the albedo of low level oceanic clouds in the pacific. It's over now because the effect saturates.
Lord Beaverbrook: http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/sgg/singh/winners4.html
Oct 13, 2011 at 8:36 AM | Lord Beaverbrook
is this it?
Harry,
You are arguing that politics in science is the problem - but your solution - presumably the public admission of failure and dishonesty with some sort of humiliating punishment of the guilty - is a political action, not a scientific one. You can't get rid of politics in science by doing more politics.
I know people are angry, with good reason. But what's more important... your catharsis.. or Science moving in the right direction again? If you insist on your pound of flesh, you may just be delaying what we all want - Science regaining its dignity. I don't agree that 'slash and burn' is the only way to do this.
sparticusisfree, Brownedoff
Can you guys follow that link because it will not resolve for me, I have tried it several times with different browsers and still cannot access it.
In fact I cannot access any of the geo.arc.nasa.gov site, perhaps it is down for some reason.
Lord Beaverbrook
Link works for me (Firefox)
"average temperature is only of use if you happen to live at Average"
Indeed! TBH, I’ve never really understood what a global average is, let alone what it represents. Are short-term extremes taken into account? Is a week at -50 more significant than 24 hrs at -60, for instance? Land temperatures are more noticeable to us, but ocean heat content is much more important to climate - is that represented in the global average? Does the GA really mean anything at all?
Anyone who has studied or read the history of physics will realise this is not the first time that UV radiation has undermined a beautiful theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_catastrophe
It is worth quoting Lord Kelvin (1900), "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
............ and comparing that to the IPCC..................
IPCC (2007), "changes in solar irradiance are not the major cause of the temperature changes"
Interesting times lie ahead.
Who will be first to bring forward a 'solar based theory of climate change' to challenge AGW?
Who will be brave enough to overthrow the prevailing orthodoxy in the way that Max Planck did?
http://geo.arc.nasa.gov doesn't work for me either, in Opera and Chrome.
Lord Beaverbrook,
It could be your Name Server, or that of your internet provider. .gov sites are not well resolved by some DNS.
Try:
http://128.102.142.10/sgg/singh/winners4.html
128.102.142.10 == geo.arc.nasa.gov