New study on climate change

Madler - I haven't talked to modelers but I have had several email communications with climate scientists who are very skeptical of the ability of climate models to skillfully predict future climate outcomes.

I agree one area of the globe (even as large as the Antarctic - which is a wee bit larger than Poughkeepsie, I might add) is not necessarily proof or denial of AGW, but we all know full well that the "arctic melt" is constantly trotted out as defacto proof of AGW - when reality is that this has not at all been established. The only thing that has been established is that there should be warming at the poles according to the models - which is happening to some degree in the Arctic (but not even that well matched to models - see link p. 11) and is not happening in the Antarctic due to a 35 year cooling trend that has existed since well before the ozone hole was even a problem.

So you can't have it both ways, claiming that the Arctic warming matches the climate models and thus proves AGW and then claim "the real world is very complicated" and this explains why the models aren't working in the Antarctic.

There are plenty of discussions to be found by well qualified individuals that document the severe limitations of climate models.

 

Because it's essentially and emotional argument that attempts to persuade by essentially saying "you can't possibly understand any of this, so don't try. Just accept". That kind of argument doesn't work because a.) what intelligent person would accept that? 2.) It adds nothing to your argument and makes it look as though, failing to have convinced your opponent with logic/evidence, your stating that he can't understand because he's not smart enough.

You had a good enough argument going before that paragraph. I'm simply stating that your position was stronger before adding that last one.

 

Well - I find there is always plenty of emotion in climate change discussions! Anyway, I took no offense. I don't think Madler was trying to insult - after all he said he wasn't smart enough either.

Cheers all!

 

I didn't say that the arctic melting proves AGW. It doesn't, and it can't. You need much, much more than that. (And in fact much, much more than that exists, but that would take a very long time to cover here. And would be unnecessary, since it's been nicely summarized in the IPCC reports.)

All I was doing was correcting two of your impressions. First was the impression that the fact the arctic ice area has "recovered quite nicely" from the 23% loss from Sep '06 to Sep '07 means that somehow the Arctic is back in a state that will make Sep '08 look better. It is not.

Second that the Arctic ice loss can be attributed purely to recent seasonal wind variations, when in fact that was only a small part of the story, the other part being the significant loss of ice thickness over many years.

You cited those as some sort of evidence that "the cooling areas are conveniently ignored by the global warming cheerleaders". In fact, they don't mean what you seem to think they mean.

I stand by the position that no single observation, no matter how compelling, provides anywhere near the consensus required to come to so drastic a conclusion as AGW. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan). Hence the IPCC's extensive compilation of that vast amount of evidence, all pointing to the inevitable and unavoidable, and in the words of the IPCC, the "unequivocal" conclusion of AGW.

Similarly, no single observation, nor any single IPCC referenced result that later turns out to be wrong, can refute AGW. You would need to shoot down a huge number of research conclusions to begin to have an impact on the consensus. It has taken literally decades for scientists, who are professionals in the business of skepticism, to arrive at this consensus.

I think from now on, I won't try to do the work of the IPCC. Anyone who wants to seriously consider this issue should at least read the "Summary for Policymakers & Technical Summary" for each of the three sections, and the "Synthesis Report".

This is especially true for skeptics. They really need to know what they're up against to be in a position to attempt to make a defensible case.

 

Exactly. I tried to be careful there.

Anyway, my point wasn't that TimBikes wasn't smart enough to understand. My point was that no human or group of humans today are smart enough to be able to make a prediction with a small enough uncertainty so that the cited local data would then be able to refute the prediction. It is at too low a level of detail for our current state of modeling, and we have too little data for Antarctica to validate our models against.

 

So much to respond to - I put responses in CAPS above. Caps in this case are not meant to be "screaming". LOL.

 

Madler - my only other point related to this is I would take your comment a step further. I don't think there are humans capable of creating a model with much predictive skill on regional scales either. Globally there may be some directional predictions (i.e., CO2 will increase temperatures all else being equal) but limited certainty. I think any statements to the contrary by the IPCC SPM belie the facts.

 

Having a thin layer of ice when the air is freezing is not a rebound. You cannot claim a rebound until Sep '08 shows more ice cover than in Sep '07. Comparing the ice cover between Sep '07 and Dec '07 means nothing.

"Those" and "they" was referring to your two points about the Arctic. (Too many indirect references.)

As for the Antarctic cooling, that has gotten a lot of attention by climate scientists (do they count as "global warming cheerleaders"?) in many papers since 2002, as well as a lot of press coverage, albeit misleading. See the links in my previous post.

 

Madler - in order to stick to our resolutions to spend less time on these forums I'm going to sign off on this one for now since we are just going back and forth.

Best of luck with the mars rover.

 

Fair enough.

 

I don't dispute that. Most modelers will agree with you.

The IPCC attempted to characterize the uncertainty in the predictive capability as best they could based on the peer-reviewed papers they used. And the range of possible outcomes in the IPCC plots are in fact quite wide.

But I agree with the article that you referenced that even then, the uncertainty may still be underrepresented. A few of the presenters at the AGU a few weeks ago said basically the same thing, which was what the IPCC said about their work wasn't wrong, but that it was represented as being more certain than the researchers themselves felt it was, which made them a little uncomfortable. None however felt that that invalidated the conclusions of the IPCC.

Using models to quantitatively predict the future is fraught with peril. ("It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra) What the models are really good for is seeing how the outputs change when you mess with the inputs, and learning what the salient effects are. When those connections are consistent across many models, that's where the consensus comes from.

We know we're messing with the Earth here, but we don't know exactly what will happen next under whatever assumption you like for future human activities. Of course, we also can't predict the future human activities.

What annoys me is when this lack of predictive capability is used as an excuse for paralysis. <sarcasm>I'm sure that we had a detailed, validated, and trusted predictive model for the social, political, and economic results of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, on which we have spent nearly $500B (!), not to mention the squandering of international trust.</sarcasm>

I would be quite happy if we spent a fraction of that amount on mitigating our CO2 emissions, for which we have much, much more evidence and predictive capability for than any war we've ever engaged in.

The only problem is that we don't have a convenient face to put on the enemy for this war, like a Saddam or Osama. Unfortunately in this case the enemy is ourselves. We will resist that characterization as long as possible. Which may be too long.

Signing off as well.

 

Madler, I really appreciate your comments and contributions to this discussion.
Thank you.

 

Which is huge, sadly. We're all to willing to mitigate a vague risk like terrorism buy throwing a fair amount of ill considered money at the problem. In this case, however, we are not. I think that the perception is coming around, however. As affluence around the world increases we're going to be having a bigger and bigger impact and we've got to acknowledge that and find ways to reduce our per capita impact in a rather large way.

 

Wait a minute, I thought our enemy was Al Gore, no??

 

Let me ask a very easy question. Why all the intense focus on global warming?

Why the web sites, the intense media coverage, Nobel Peace Prize, etc.? There have, and will continue to be, scientific points and counterpoints about the environment. But why is this so "public"?

I am not coming from out of a cave so please avoid the knee jerk answers. Think carefully and then give a reasoned answer, not an emotional answer if possible.

 

Good question. My opinion, in no particular order and not a complete list:

• there are a lot of vested interests (pro and con) that are impacted by the policy implications
• it sells a lot of newspapers
• it supports the idea the people are messing up the planet, which is a message a lot of folks want to hear
• it paints the US as a bad guy (again, a message a lot of folks want to hear)
• people love disaster scenarios (club of Rome/limits to growth, Rachel Carson, Paul Ehrlich, etc.)
• people love to debate (self included)
• people see mankind making visible changes in the environment all around them every day and are truly worried about the future of the planet