Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

17 August 2013

The Unsettled Science of Global Warming Revealed by the Climate Models

The last 15 or so years of stasis in the global temperatures, is making it very obvious that the settled science we are told is so well-known and so well-executed in the climate models is full of holes.  Yet, Obama and many others claim that 97% of scientists are blind to these obvious problems.  Well no, 97% of scientists are not that blind and that claim of settled science and a consensus on it is hogwash.

Dr. Roy Spencer recently discussed a plot of the early fits and later predictions of 44 climate models for the lower troposphere temperatures for comparison with the University of Alabama Huntsville and the RSS satellite observations.  The plot was provided by John Christy based on data from the KNMI Climate Explorer.  Dr. Spencer's post was entitled Global Warming Slowdown: The View from Space.

The plot of the 44 climate model results for the temperature in the lower troposphere with comparison to the UAH and RSS satellite observations:

The heavy black line is the average of the 44 climate models.  The UAH satellite measurements are in blue and the RSS measurements are in red.  Both the UAH and RSS satellite measurements are now at lower temperatures than any of the 44 climate models predicted.  To be sure, a few models might say that they are still within their expected errors.  However, it is an obvious conclusion that the settled science of climate represented both by the average and by the wide dispersion of the results, is a myth cultivated by a tireless propaganda machine.

It is likely that most of the developers of these models believe in catastrophic man-made global warming due to man's emissions of carbon dioxide from his use of fossil fuels.  That belief is pretty much a requirement to get funding from governments around the world to develop these models.  This must certainly result in a significant bias of the average result of these models.

The UAH lower troposphere measurement has risen compared to the zero baseline temperature only 33% of the rise predicted by the model average.  The RSS lower troposphere measurement has risen only 28% as high as the model average.  Saying that climate science is settled in this case is like saying that the average of 44 models for the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth is 32.1 m/s^2, but those doggone measurements keep coming up 9.8 m/s^2.  Despite that difference, there is a consensus among scientists that the science of gravity is well-understood and settled science!  It is not important whether the gravitational acceleration is 32.1 or 9.8 m/s^2 when we measure out gold for sale!

The settled science is also so well-known that the predicted temperature change in the lower troposphere for 2025 for the highest prediction based on the well-known and settled science is 2.63 times the lowest predicted change.  Even a non-scientist should be able to easily see that this implies a great disagreement in the science between these model-builders.  It implies a large uncertainty about the science the respective models believe they know well enough to try to incorporate into their models.

In fact, there are many uncertainties that are actually known and many others that may well be unknown.  Predicting the future solar insolation is not all that well known.  The effects of aerosols and of blown dust are not well-known.  The factors that change the degree cloud cover and type of clouds over time are not well-known.  These models have a bias toward assuming that radiation transport of energy in the lower troposphere is greater than it actually is.  They underestimate the energy transport effects of water evaporation and of air convection.  They do not understand the cycles in the oceans sufficiently well.  Thermal inputs from ocean vents and volcanoes and from solar wind and electromagnetic field effects are not well-known.  The large numbers of bacteria in the atmosphere came as a recent surprise.  How do they affect solar insolation and longwave IR scattering?  The non-human sources of CO2 are still not well-understood and this affects predictions of natural CO2 emissions over time.  For that matter, the amount of man's CO2 emissions over time and the time that CO2 remains in the atmosphere is not well-known in these climate models either.

So how do these government-funded and coddled global warming alarmist scientists, most of the print media, and the Obama administration get away with claiming that the science of catastrophic man-made global warming is settled?  How can they believe and expect anyone else to believe that 97% of scientists are on-board with this hogwash?

They ought to be laughed at were the consequences not so dire.  But, they advocate so many limits on our freedoms and so much economic damage in the name of this scientifically bogus theory that it is hardly a laughing matter.  What is more, it is very harmful to the respect that real science should be given.

1 comment:

Dan Pangburn said...

A licensed mechanical engineer (retired) who has been researching this issue (unfunded) for 6 years, and in the process discovered what actually caused global warming and why it ended, has four papers on the web that you may find of interest. They provide some eye-opening insight on the cause of change to average global temperature and why it has stopped warming. The papers are straight-forward calculations (not just theory) using readily available data up to May, 2013.

The first one is 'Global warming made simple' at http://lowaltitudeclouds.blogspot.com It shows, with simple thermal radiation calculations, how a tiny change in the amount of low-altitude clouds could account for half of the average global temperature change in the 20th century, and what could have caused that tiny cloud change. (The other half of the temperature change is from net average natural ocean oscillation which is dominated by the PDO)

The second paper is 'Natural Climate change has been hiding in plain sight' at http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html . This paper presents a simple equation that, using a single external forcing, calculates average global temperatures since they have been accurately measured world wide (about 1895) with an accuracy of 90%, irrespective of whether the influence of CO2 is included or not. The equation uses a proxy which is the time-integral of sunspot numbers (the external forcing). A graph is included which shows the calculated trajectory overlaid on measurements.

Change to the level of atmospheric CO2 has had no significant effect on average global temperature.

The time-integral of sunspot numbers since 1610 which is shown at http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_23.html corroborates the significance of this factor.

A third paper, ‘The End of Global Warming’ at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ expands recent (since 1996) measurements and includes a graph showing the growing separation between the rising CO2 and not-rising average global temperature.

The fourth paper http://consensusmistakes.blogspot.com/ exposes some of the mistakes that have been made by the ‘Consensus’ and the IPCC