Tuesday
Aug022011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Jostling for position
Aug 2, 2011 Climate: solar Michael Lemonick has an interesting article about the role of the sun in climate, inevitably discussing Svensmark's work. This has the feel of further jostling for position ahead of publication of the results of the CLOUD experiment.
[Svensmark's] idea is far from outlandish on a theoretical level, and lab experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva have shown that this can actually happen. Moreover, Svensmark and several collaborators have claimed to see a correlation between the sunspot cycle and cloud cover — more clouds when the Sun is quiet, fewer when it’s acting up.
Update on Aug 3, 2011 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
Lemonick has just posted a correction to the article - he had got the relationship between cosmic rays and climate back to front.
Reader Comments (85)
Interesting point of view.
A solar physicist says
"...we thought we understood it in the past. Our record on this is not very good."
Strange that Lemonick can be exposed to logic and self-criticism like this and not see any wider application.
Then his parting shot ... "...given the consistent strengthening of the greenhouse-gas hypothesis over the past couple of decades..."
A bit like the "mounting evidence for UFOs" eh Michael ? Every year there are new sitings to add to the previous sitings.
Michael Lemonick has written a very poor and illogical article. There is nothing of substance in there. I'm surprised someone who claims to have been a science writer for over 20 years can produce such dross.
Here is a good example of someone trying very hard to dismiss an ugly fact that may destroy a beautiful theory.
'And while climate scientists are pretty sure the problem really is greenhouse gases, they can’t just ignore alternate explanations.'
isn't this exactly what climate scientists have been going since the 70's?
After this unmitigated drivel -
"Scientists have had definitive laboratory proof since the 1800s that gases like CO2 trap heat. They know that greenhouse gases are implicated in episodes of climate change going back millions of years."
- I did not read any further.
"- I did not read any further."
Aug 2, 2011 at 10:01 AM | Masius
That's known as bias confirmation - not wishing to expose yourself to anything which might challenge your personal bias.
ZDB,
Confirmation bias is a very interesting topic and although not the subject of this thread you might want to take it up with Michael Lemonick. Let us know how you get on.
puke.
Michael Lemonick says he lives in New Jersey. Freeman Dyson lives in New Jersey too.
ZDB,
"That's known as bias confirmation - not wishing to expose yourself to anything which might challenge your personal bias"
Presumably your intent to ignore the discussion of science in the article (the point of this blog) and focus on something different you see as important is not 'bias confirmation' on your part?
1. By the exclusion principle, we know excess warming is down to CO2.
2. Because we know the size of the CO2 signal, those proposed other influences can't be all that much.
Is it me, or is that circular reasoning?
"discussion of science in the article (the point of this blog)"
Aug 2, 2011 at 10:59 AM | Varco
If you think this blog's about science then you're living in a dream world. Almost all climate science is studiously ignored here, to focus instead on things like emails and the outpourings of people like Christopher Monckton and James Dellingpole.
Most of the content this winter gone consisted of 'it's snowing, therefore global warming is wrong'. It would be hard to be less scientific than that.
Except by saying "Here's a heatwave in Russia, therefore global warming must be right."
A thought I had recently was that the evidence they have so far presented for dangerous AGW is the absolute best they can gather. William Connolley made thousands of entries to wikipedia which seems like an awful lot of effort compared to the alternative of not fudging numbers or relying on meaningless models.
The wheels could come off this bus pretty fast when you consider that.
a new beautiful example of "measurements don't match the models, therefore the measurements must be wrong":
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/02/aerosol-sat-observations-and-climate-models-differ-by-a-factor-of-three-to-six/
Plus it's written in really unclear English, presumably because the writer was desperately trying not to draw the obvious conclusion...
Michael D. Lemonick has invested heavily in CAGW. So too are the funders of Climate Central for whom Michael D. Lemonick is the Senior Science Writer.
Army Corps of Engineers
Changing Horizons Fund
Flora Family Foundation
Foundation for Environmental Research
George Mason University
Google.org
Island Foundation
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Headquarters
NASA Langley
Northrup Grumman
Peter T Paul Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Family Fund
Saul D Levy Foundation
The David & Lucille Packard Foundation
The Dixon Family Fund
The Robert & Ellen Gutenstein Foundation
The Schmidt Family Foundation
The Winslow Foundation
Turner Foundation, Inc.
University of Tennessee
The reputational damage to these organisations over promoting CAGW would be immense if it turns out that the Sun has a big impact on climate.
Their funding of the promotion of a badly flawed hypothesis would be considered to have been a complete waste of money.
Now when organisational reputation and large sums of money are at stake you can bet that every effort will be made to dismiss any and all contradictory science that challenges CAGW.
That's position that Michael D. Lemonick now finds himself in - he is on the defensive. CAGW needs to protected from ugly facts.
PS I wonder what the D stand for?
@ Fred, Aug 2, 2011 at 11:36 AM:
I read the post you linked to, before coming here.
It is another of those nice papers where the scientists contort themselves - and the language - to say that satellite observations can't be right, because the models surely cannot be wrong.
One thing one can say in praise of AGW apologists/scientists: their minds are capable of twists and turns at a speed and a rate of mental backtracking, corrections, contortions and complications which a normal human cannot hope to achieve.
Could that be what post-normal minds/brains look like?
;-)
Tell us, Zed, do scientists know that greenhouse gases are implicated in episodes of climate change going back millions of years or do they know (as they keep telling us) that greenhouse gases are only implicated in this episode of climate change and all the others were natural so this time it's humanity's fault?
Which is it? You can't have both which is why Masius doubtless stopped reading in case the rest was equally dubious.
Go and lie down in a dark room for a while, dear.
Aug 2, 2011 at 12:03 PM | Mike Jackson
Ignoring all the unpleasantness in your comment, which is pretty well standard on this blog.
You seem to be unaware that without greenhouse gases we'd be in the region of 30 degrees C colder than we currently are. They are sensitve - hence the imortance of not adding to them. Of course greenhouse gases are implicated in past climate change, were you actually under the mistaken impression that that wasn't the case, or that it wasn't generally understood? You heat up the oceans, you get a CO2 surplus, which makes things worse.
Now - why not do something unusual for this blog and provide evidence for your wild claim.
You say that "(as they keep telling us) that greenhouse gases are only implicated in this episode of climate change".
Why not actually provide several sources for the claim you make.
I think you're making it up, and would be rather surprised if you can even find one source for your claim.
"Tis best to not make assumptions." It's also smart.
I'm not sure why Zed even bothers coming here, repeating her lovely hypotheses. I would love to see her provide a measurement study citation for anything she has presented as fact above, but I shan't be holding my breath.
But who needs measurements when you've got models, eh?
I was also particularly drawn to those early statements in the article:
"To be sure, the greenhouse-gas story doesn’t just come out of nowhere. Scientists have had definitive laboratory proof since the 1800s that gases like CO2 trap heat."
I don't think that statement is true. Anyone know what the laboratory proof is?
"They know that greenhouse gases are implicated in episodes of climate change going back millions of years."
I don't think there is any evidence to support that statement and in fact the evidence suggests the reverse is true: CO2 lags temperature and therefore the "cause" is temperature and the "effect" is CO2 concentration changes.
"They know that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels has been building up in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began."
This is true but circumstantial. And the assumption of "pre-industrial CO2" levels ignores all the early CO2 measures using chemical methods.
" They’ve seen the temperature rising, glaciers melting, weather patterns changing. They don’t know all the details, but the story hangs together extremely well."
Er...well no it doesn't and this sounds very like "confirmation bias". We don't understand why all these natural things change in the way they do but lets justs attribute all of it to CO2 anyway. After all, why let real data get in the way of a nice theory?
Aug 2, 2011 at 12:37 PM | ThinkingScientist
Nice. A post of undiluted, utter tripe.
Come on then all you sceptical types - there are at least 3 absolutely massive holes/mistakes in this post.
Let's see some evidence that you really are sceptical, and see if somebody is actually going to correct this comment.
Double points if it's somebody other than BBD, who, although clearly wrong in everything he says and does, does seem to have a little integrity when it comes to challenging rubbish.
Incidentally - Thinking Scientist? Is that a joke? I think my irony valve just burst.
The big problem for CAGWists is that a solar based climate hypothesis of cloud formation would replace the AGW hypothesis, not just sit alongside it in a miniscule way.
You can argue til your blue in the face over the validity of one or both but two competing hypotheses completely changes the nature of the climate change debate because you have two competing outcomes;
1. Do nothing, adapt and prosper.
2. Mitigate your way to massive social and polictial change, and see in response an increase in global poverty.
"Nice. A post of undiluted, utter tripe."
Very childish comment !
"Let's see some evidence that you really are sceptical, and see if somebody is actually going to correct this comment."
Well as you keep telling us you are the smart one [sic] then you show us !
" although clearly wrong in everything he says and does"
Shows the level you debate at !
"challenging rubbish"
Now when I think of you this will be you new title !
Weird no Zebedee links to comedy websites ??
Lemonick: "When the Sun calms down and the Earth’s magnetic field relaxes in response, more cosmic rays get through — and according to Henrik Svensmark and his colleagues at Denmark’s National Space Institute, this turns air molecules into electrically charged ions that spur the formation of low-level clouds, which tend to trap heat."
Svensmark: "During the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds—and a warmer world."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Svensmark#Cosmoclimatology_theory_of_climate_change
Lemonick describes Svensmark as arguing that fewer sunspots = weaker magnetic field = more cosmic rays striking earth = more clouds = hotter Earth. Svensmark says the opposite, i.e., more clouds = cooler Earth.
Or am I misinterpreting them?
I really don't know why I bother to keep up with your mental gymnastics, Zed. You have never provided any checkable reference for any of your outpourings and your HumptyDumpty approach to the use of words (which you have just engaged in yet again) is really becoming quite tedious.
As to unpleasantness .... you really are 'avin' a larf, aren't you? If there is one contirbutor to this blog who can be guaranteed to start off by insulting the rest of us, it's you.
But, since I'm a glutton for punishment ...
There is a general consensus among scientists of all stripes that without certain gases the earth's general temperature would be ~33 degrees C cooler than it is. To infer from this that greenhouse gases (as some people describe them, only partially accurately) are "implicated" in climate change is either a truism (in the strict linguistic sense) or a hypothesis (in the scientific sense). If you don't understand the difference that's not our fault.
Lemonick's claims do not tie in with the general consensus of climate scientists that the late 20thC warming was caused by CO2 while previous warmings were not. This is an important difference since if CO2 was partially the cause of previous warmings then we can expect a cooling period to follow.
Which is it?
As for your comments on ThinkingScientist's post, I might disagree with the details but I don't see as a piece of "undiluted tripe" (presumably that is you not being "unpleasant", is it?) so if you would care to point out where these three "absolutely massive" holes are, I'm sure there are plenty on here who would be pleased to enlighten you.
Politely, if you like.
Aug 2, 2011 at 1:28 PM | Mike Jackson
So - number of actual sources you were able to provide?
Zero.
I rest my case. You made it up.
Aug 2, 2011 at 11:08 AM | Zed'sDeadHead
"If you think this blog's about science then you're living in a dream world. Almost all climate science is studiously ignored here, to focus instead on things like emails and the outpourings of people like Christopher Monckton and James Dellingpole."
If that's your opinion, why do you continuously troll here?
Silly girl.
MB
Would describing ZDB as a trollette be more appropiate, or am I being overly sexist?
ZDB - postings today are poor even for you.
As usual you make assertions as if they are fact:
"You seem to be unaware that without greenhouse gases we'd be in the region of 30 degrees C colder than we currently are. They are sensitve - hence the imortance of not adding to them"
Important how? So that the climate can be controlled to stay static at the 1990 levels that governments have decided, in their massive hubris, represents climate perfection? As if man rules the earth and is not an insignificant blip in its history?
"Of course greenhouse gases are implicated in past climate change, were you actually under the mistaken impression that that wasn't the case, or that it wasn't generally understood? You heat up the oceans, you get a CO2 surplus, which makes things worse."
Worse how? Worse than what? Again - are we talking about the huge arrogance of mankind that we can control the climate and make it serve us - and it mustn't be "worse" than 1990? Many scientists think it would be good for all of us and the planet if matters were "worse". Don't ask me for references. Anyone who has read anything has read them - and of course you have, haven't you?
Greenhnouse gases are indeed only implicated in the sense that we know that they contribute but the sensitivities and feedbacks/forcings and possible causes are extremely poorly understood and Svensmark's work is another interesting contribution. Indeed modelling has shown itself to be abject at understanding these aspects and more empirical endeavours appear to point to the opposite of your "consensus". But best to keep an open mind, don't you think?
There is no need for anyonje here to quote references or sources. You come to this blog to argue your case. Presumably you have read relevant papers and opinions - so has everyone else here and they don't have to jump through hoops to be able to reply to you just because you demand it.
But as usual with you its all indisputable fact and we are all rude, aggressive, insulting heretics.
"If that's your opinion, why do you continuously troll here?"
Aug 2, 2011 at 2:05 PM | Martin Brumby
Isn't it strange how when people's are challenged they're so quick to call 'troll'.
I like to make the time to highlight how flawed, biased and largely idealogical most of what is posted here actually is.
"Silly girl."
And people like you make that job easier by showing once again what a thoroughly nasty place this blog actually is.
And people like you make that job easier by showing once again what a thoroughly nasty place this blog actually is.
And your posts are so polite on the DM !!!!!!!
"Ignoring all the unpleasantness in your comment, which is pretty well standard on this blog."
ZDB, having read your trolling over at the D.M. etc over the last few years, you really are the last one to talk. J.D. over at the Telegraph summed you up perfectly as a #4. Pedant Troll.
Bias confirmation certainly seems to sum you up rather than others here who see the same rubbish printed time and time again! No wonder they skim past it! It seems simple to me, if you cannot take the heat stay out of the fire!
Pop back to Biased BBC and defend the corporation. The guys there seem to like giving you the derision you deserve.
ZDB
Back to the kitchen sink for you.
I take it you go along with Lemonick. Greenhouse gases caused previous warmings as well. Care to cite?
Zeddy baby, while it's true that green house gases undoubtedley keep the temperature of the earth warmer by 33C, it's not clear what effect CO2 has in all that in the historical records. You know, whether it's a major driver, or a minor player. Certainly there is no historically consistent relationship between CO2 and temperature, except for CO2 rising after temperature as the oceans degas.
I'm not a climate scientist but you don't have to be to see that the assertion that the temperature has risen, CO2 has risen, CO2 is a ghg, so it must have caused the rise in temperature, is just that without doing the field work and coming up with a mathematical model of the actual relationship which predicts the actual change in temperature with CO2. There is such a mathematical model the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, unfortunately it doesn't give the "right" answer it only gets us to 1C for a doubling of CO2, so out of the hat has popped the positive feedback theory. This has no mathematical model, which isn't suprising because we're dealing with a chaotic system, with very poor understanding of how it works.
Have a gander at the historical relationship, let me know what relationship you can see from the records, I can't see one, but then we don't know for sure what other forcings were about, or whether it's the sun.
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide_files/image002.gif
From the article:
"Back in the late 1600s and early 1700s, sunspots laid low for about 80 years, in what scientists call the Maunder Minimum. Temperatures were also low: the sunspot lull coincided with a period known as the Little Ice Age. None of this supports the idea that the Sun is responsible for much of global warming,"
Cognitive dissonance much?
I also love it when when you point out how flawed and biased we are. When will this be? I keep waiting for you to "make time" to actually highlight these character defects.
I would love to rectify my defects. I really would. If only you would tell me, Zed, preferably with proper references, where I am going wrong, I would be
eternally in your debtstunned and amazed.ZDB, She came, she saw and the she p*ssed off back to troll over at the D.M./Telegraph, her job here done....such a busy lady!
Don't comment much here but like the slightly crazy people and comments that go one around here but I must admit that one of the main reasons to come to Mr Hills comments is to see how drunk Zeds is today.
Although some times I am aware that she doesn't drink so avoids commenting when sober.
"There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down..."
Life's a real beach sometimes and it does take two to tango.
" ... the greenhouse-gas explanation would simultaneously have to become a lot weaker. That’s hard to imagine. "
Aug 2, 2011 at 9:55 AM | Unregistered CommenterMac
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, it is hard to imagine that something that weak could become weaker still.
hello Miss Zed (surely you cant be married?)
Fact: The correlation between sunspot activity and temperature over recorded history is very close (this is noted in Mr Svesmarks book if nowhere else)
Fact: The correlation between Co2 and temperature is not close, rising Co2 ALWAYS occurs at a minimum of 800 years after temperature rises. However sometimes changes in Co2 happen as much as 2000 years after temperature changes (every study of ice core records backs this up and so does Realclimate).
The argument then becomes one about feedbacks which with all due respect to all the scientists involved, there is no consensus even as to whether the feedback due to water vapour (accepted as the most important greenhouse gas) is positive or negative.
So although ALL SCIENTISTS accept that Co2 does not START warming, they argue that once Co2 starts rising then it has a feedback effect that speeds up warming.
I find it impossible to square that with the empirical evidence.
We are in an interglacial warm period in an ice age. When this interglacial started, the warming happened 800 years before Co2 started rising (undisputed). So here we are probably very late in an interglacial period and Co2 is rising, the feedback theory says that this will cause more warming. The ice core records (you go find em Zed) show the complete opposite is true.
The ice cores record 7 interglacials in the current ice age. The last interglacial ened about 114 thousand years ago with temperatures higher than today and Co2 rising. However temperature suddenly began to fall even though Co2 continued to rise for 2000 years? What happened to the deadly feedbacks, why did they not prevent us returning to ice age?
It is beyond belief that with rising Co2 for 2000 years and 100,000 years of ice age to follow, Co2 or feedbacks had any effect whatsoever. Just to emphasise the point this happened 7 times.
Give uis your science Zed?
Is this really the argument: "Global temperatures rising, every potential cause having been eliminated, all that remains is CO2 therefore the cause must be (man's increasing creation of) CO2".? Exclusion is not proof. Medics work on exclusion, thats why they kill so many people. Does the proposition really become, "Because our understanding is presently so limited, we intend to build global-economy-changing-public-policy on what we know, which may well indeed turn out to be proved wrong"? This exclusion principle might do for rough and ready practical types, but I'm surprised that our mandarins, in their rarified policy-rich atmosphere, are prepared to put up with such logic free stuff.
Bill
Every other possible cause was not eliminated it was ignored. AR7 stated that not enough was known about other factors that might affect climate. A pragmatic response would be to say "we really dont know enough about this to form an opinion". Not the IPCC, if they didnt understand it they ignored it.
RE: Dung
Your comments are spot on and this is one of the laughable explanations still available over at RC. The argument to explain away the 800 year or so lag between temperature and CO2 is:
(a) Something triggers a temperature rise out of an ice age
(b) CO2 increases rapidly and this contributes to global warming, accelerating the warming.
The RC implication is that a small trigger ends the ice age and then CO2 takes over. The problem with this argument is how do you get back to ice age again? If CO2 is so potent at causing the warming we need two things to return to ice age:
(c) A MUCH bigger trigger event or change than that which ended the ice age (it has to overcome all that CO2 GW)
(d) The event/process taking us back into ice age must last for a very long because the return to ice age is very slow. What mystical, unknown force, much, much greater than the huge effects of CO2 GW could this be?
We also have to explain:
(e) Why the lag between CO2 and temperature is the same cause and effect whether warming out of an ice age or cooling into one. Ie temperature always leads, CO2 always lags.
On the other hand I have an excellent theory that expalins the known facts very easily. Temperature changes caused by sun/orbit/rotation changes (otherwise known as Milankovic) cause CO2 to levels to change (solution/dissolution in oceans and bioactivity). No further mechanism is required to completely explain the relationship between temperature and CO2 in ice core data
You a fan of Occam, TS?
That'll never do! :-(
I never liked the RC hand-waving explanation. In overly-simplified terms, if their feedback were true and dominating, the peaks and the troughs of CO2 and temp would have different forms with respect to each other. This is not the case - the CO2 follows the temp with a lag, and the CO2 curve has the same shape as the temp curve at both turning points.
There's also the inconvenient fact that the postulated positive feedback should hold true whatever the forcing (resulting in, in electronics terms, the output being pushed "into the high rail"), however it's claimed that it is uniquely sensitive to a homeopathic quantity of CO2 (0.01%). Doesn't sit right.
But I guess all I was taught in Engineering at Oxford about feedback control could all be wrong, and I wasted all my time doing genuinely hard maths on relatively simple electrical/electronic and mechanical feedback systems.
Re: Mike Jackson
Occam and parsimony!
Re: Fred
"I never liked the RC hand-waving explanation."
I think you are being overly polite. The RC explanation is quite frankly absurd and fails to provide any mechanism for cooling. I find it incredible that the RC sycophants appear to swallow it without thinking.