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View 715 Thursday, March 01, 2012

The climate discussion continues.

Climate Debate

I jumped from Instapundit to your link on Lindzen’s piece on the climate debate including the reply of. Couple of items. I noted both in Lindzen’s piece and the consensus physicist’s response to you the reliance on the misnomer "greenhouse gas." As a former academic science editor, I use the presence of that popular term to tell me whether I’m dealing with academics or amateurs. It was demonstrated in the 1890s that greenhouses do not work by trapping radiant heat; they work by retarding convective and conductive currents. A number of articles along the way have pleaded to avoid use of the term. I think the most impactful was by Stephen (Richard?) Lee back when I was first an editor (’73 range). I usually note that academics with a grounding in physics avoid the term. I was surprised to see Lindzen employ it without qualification given that his piece was well argued and his credentials would argue he should know better. That point is for what it’s worth.

This next point is more to the point. Back in the ’74/’75 time frame, I wanted to sign up a book treatment of an argument by a pair of paleo-climatologists who claimed we were soon to be leaving the best sixty-year stretch of weather since the last ice age and would slowly return to Normal Holocene Weather (in caps to emphasize)–ie, more variability, ie, summers both cooler and hotter, winters both warmer and colder, ie, just what we have been seeing for thirty years now. This 1920-1980 stretch even stands out if you study a good long-term temperature chart, especially one with summer highs and winter lows as opposed to just avg annual temp. It seems to me the first duty of any new theory is to explain why it holds better explanatory value than preceding theories do. I have yet to see that attempted with climate change theory in any of its forms. Indeed, the facts that we do have a detailed, multi-source paleo-climate record that shows higher highs and lower lows and the fact that much of the weather of the 20th century was both ideal and anomalous goes without mention. In science publishing back in my day, this kind of omission would not have been allowed.

Charlie Tips

I suspect that Lindzen, like me, has simply succumbed to popular usage and says ‘greenhouse gas’ because nearly everyone understands the concept now. When this debate began, decades ago, Petr Beckmann in Access to Energy did much the same thing: when he first began discussion of the concept of a greenhouse gas he used to add “of course any farmer would say ‘ain’t the way my greenhouse works’, but he used the term. For those who haven’t bothered to chase this down, a real world greenhouse works largely by controlling convective cooling and protecting the plants from wind; there is a “greenhouse effect”, and of course the heat in the greenhouse is caused by warmth from the sun – ie light is absorbed and converted to heat – but that takes place on the ground outside the greenhouse as well. Outside, the heated air rises and is replaced by air at ambient temperature; in the greenhouse that doesn’t happen. For the same reason an automobile with all the windows closed gets very hot inside. That Lindzen uses the term is hardly an indictment of his understanding. He knows how real greenhouses work and what ‘the greenhouse effect’ is; as did Petr Beckmann.

I used to be part of the campaign to retire the ‘greenhouse’ term, but I gave that up as an act of futility.

Your main point is exactly correct. Before AGW and Global Warming and Climate Change became part of a multi-trillion dollar debate, we did have a spate of warnings: that the Earth might be about to return to a more ‘normal’ climate, with more weather extremes. I don’t recall there was a large suggestion that this was due to human activities – indeed the nature of the prediction pretty well precluded that. We had enjoyed the best climate since – ever, and now things were going back to normal. I haven’t really seen anything that analyzes that hypothesis in any detail. It seems overdue.

You asked the wrong questions.

Mr. Pournelle,

I read your article on the unanswered questions regarding global warming that you’ve had for 40 years.

I’d like to sugest that you asked the wrong question(s).

You said:

"… what we knew was well known: that in historical times the Earth has been both warmer and colder than it is now. It was warmer in Viking times until about 1300 after which the Earth began to cool. Since 1800 the Earth’s temperature has risen about a degree a century."

In response, I must ask "How is it known?"

The historical temperatures that you refer to have all been developed via proxy data rather than direct observation. Is this proxy data reliable? That is, does it reflect reality "on the ground" as it were? if it were to be compared to actual thermometer measurements, how close would the proxy come to direct measurement? I ask this (these) question(s) given that:

a. There is no direct (thermometer) measurement of temperature available prior to 1940**(see below); b. Proxy data since 1940 is either unavailable, or does not match thermometer measurements; and, c. It has become evident that various proxies do not agree with one another as to the temperature.

If proxy measures do not agree with each other, how can they agree with (confirm) reality? Is there one single proxy that matches thermometer measurement exactly? Which is it?

If it were stipulated that proxy measures accurately reflect real (directly measured) temperatures, why directly measure the temperature at all? Is the IPCC’s (and others’) use of alleged direct temperature measurements intended solely to obfuscate the actual reality as shown by proxies? Or, is there another reason to rely upon direct temperature measurements rather than proxy data?

**Most skeptics have various reasons to doubt the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis; but, almost unfailingly accept as incontrovertible fact — as you have done — that the Earth has warmed. This, especially with regard to the period since 1860.

If this is incontrovertible fact, I don’t suppose you’d mind proving it. Perhaps by e-mailing me the RAW data upon which the measurements from 1860 to 1940 are based.

I could save you the effort by simply telling you that such data does not exist; but, I don’t expect that you would take my word for it — nor should you.

By RAW data, I mean the actual thermometer measurements, when they were taken, where they were taken, by whom, with what type of thermometer, how precise they were, whether direct comparison between measures is warranted, etc.

Perhaps more important is how the RAW data is compiled. That is, are there thermometer measurements from enough places across the globe to warrant calling the aggregate of the readings a "GLOBAL" average? For example, if one has temperature measures from, say, one-fifth of the Earth’s surface, how does one then calculate the average of the whole? Are the measures randomly distributed? Can the readings from one place be used to assume the temperature in another place?

If you seek out the RAW data, you may find that the questions that you (and others) have asked are equivalent to asking the reasons why the Sun revolves around the Earth.

No matter how many times it is pointed out that the Sun DOES NOT revolve around the Earth, the focus remains on WHY the Sun revolves around the Earth.

e.g.:

I, "The Sun does NOT revolve around the Earth."

You, "Yes, but WHY does the Sun revolve around the Earth."

I, "It doesn’t."

You, "You’re muddling the issue. The question I’m concerned with is WHY the Sun revolves around the Earth."

and on,

and on,

…..

and …..

David Fuhs

Your point about thermometers and the methods of determining temperature echo some I have posed to the Climate Change theorists. I keep getting assurance that we have so many measures that we can have confidence in their averages, once we have cast out the extreme measures, and massaged the data. I never get into such arguments.

My data on whether it is warmer now than it was in 1800 comes from my 6^th grade history book: in 1776, Colonel Alexander Hamilton brought the cannon captured at Ticonderoga by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, and famously transported by Colonel Henry Knox down to Boston, across the frozen Hudson River to General George Washington at Haarlem Heights. Washington survived because of those cannon and was able to escape and counterattack the British (Hessian, actually) forces on Christmas Day after crossing the almost frozen Delaware.

We have almanac records of first freeze and the date of ice breakups, and of growing seasons, for the period between 1775 and 1800, and it is very clear that the Earth was colder at that time. How much colder I don’t know, but I do know that the Thames froze solid enough that markets could be set up on the ice as late as the 1830’s. We know the dates of the last freeze of the Hudson. We have records from across the country, we have records from Europe, and it is just plain clear that it was colder in 1800 than it was in 1900. To know how much colder we would need actual measurements, and there are not so many of them; but we darned well know that it was colder then, not just in the US but across Europe, and Asia, and in Latin America.

Regarding the Viking Warm period, we don’t have records for the Southern Hemisphere, but we do know growing seasons in Europe – monastery records are quite good and give precise planting and harvest days – and in China, where the bureaucracy recorded such matter. We know that Nova Scotia was called Vinland because there were grape vines there. We know that Scotland produced wine. There were diary farms in Greenland, and the Inuit have legends of a time when they lived quite different lives from their present lot. It is just plain reasonable to conclude that it was warmer in 800. We even know when after 1300 things began to change. It got cold. Growing seasons were shorter. Crops failed and land yields fell. This across the entire Northern Hemisphere. The shorter growing seasons continued after the discovery of the New World. The cold continued until after 1800.

In general I reject the notion of an annual global temperature: I doubt it has much meaning, as I have said repeatedly. But even assuming that it does, a study of the actual data, even massaged and smoothed, does not match the predictions of the models.

We are asked to act as if the Earth is in danger unless we spend trillions on remedies to Climate Change. None of the models that predict the dire future we face unless we act now can take the initial conditions of 1900 and show the temperature pattern from 1900 to 2010. If it can’t reconstruct the past, why should we accept its predictions?

The proper conclusion is that we don’t know, but Lindzen is correct: we need to study it more but we need not panic, and we certainly should not bet $Trillions that we understand climate.

I am slowly recovering. My head works several hours a day now. I have been spending my time largely on getting The Legend of Black Ship Island ready to be posted as an eBook. I should be done tomorrow. And I will try to do a large mail  bag tonight.

Had dinner with Niven, and we will restart work on our next book Monday or Tuesday. I will finish my work on Black Ship Island tomorrow and over the weekend.

View 715 Tuesday, February 28, 2012

I will be spending the day on Legend of Black Ship Island. I have been saving some mail for longer and better treatment, but this seems a reasonable time to bring them up. Alas, my contributions will be brief, but the matters are important.

I proposed this http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf as a rational argument for a skeptical position on AGW in another conference, and asked for comments. A physicist who often strongly supports the consensus position replied:

Let me propose some terminology, to make it a little easier to discuss the argument. The people opposing the anthropogenic theory of global warming can be divided into three distinct categories:

*skeptics

*policy critics

*deniers

"Skeptics" are asking legitimate questions about the science.

"Policy critics" criticize the policies proposed in response to global warming, for economic or political reasons.

"Deniers" deny anthropogenic global warming, period, end of discussion.

I’ve notice that, although deniers always claim that they are in fact "skeptics," deniers and skpetics are in fact complete opposites. The key feature of deniers is that they are not even slightly skeptical of any arguments against global warming: they are completely credulous of any argument, no matter how trivially it can be shown to be baseless, that opposes global warming.

Reading through this particular presentation of Lindzen, he starts out by saying that the greenhouse effect is real, and anthropogenic gasses contribute to it exactly as much as non-anthropogenic gasses; he just disputes what the radiative response function is. So I’ll put him in the category of "skeptics" rather than deniers.

In fact, he pretty much dismisses the deniers:

"Unfortunately, denial of the facts on the left [that the greenhouse effect is real], has made the public presentation of the science by those promoting alarm much easier. They merely have to defend the trivially true points on the left; declare that it is only a matter of well- known physics; and relegate the real basis for alarm to a peripheral footnote – even as they slyly acknowledge that this basis is subject to great uncertainty."

So, let’s ignore his loaded vocabulary here (words like "those promoting alarm" and "real basis for alarm" and "sly.") Here’s what he just said:

1. The greenhouse effect is real. It’s well-known physics.

2. By denying this, the deniers are not merely muddying the waters, they are discrediting actual skepticism by turning their case into one that is disdained by real scientists because they are defending propositions that are "trivially" not true).

3. The real scientists (the ones he calls "alarmists"), on the other hand, acknowledge uncertainty.

OK, once we’ve deleted his slanted vocabulary, I’ll agree with these statements.

At no point does he use the words "hoax," "fraud," or "scam," or support people who use those terms. Good for him. Maybe he could call up the rest of the deniers and tell them "hey, just because you disagree with the scientists, that doesn’t mean that they are frauds."

With that said, the presentation shown is one-sided; he presents a case for a value on the low side of the IPCC estimate, and makes no attempt to show any part of the arguments for higher values of the radiative forcing response function. Not unusual, if you see this as a presentation of one side of a debate, but one should never draw conclusions in a debate before hearing the other side.

I then said “And this is the response ?” which brought this reply:

I’m not sure if I understand the question. This is *my* response; I wouldn’t say it is "the" response.

Lindzen’s arguments, of course, has been pretty well addressed; it’s not hard to find good technical analyses if you look for them. I find it a little disconcerting that his conclusions have remained the same but the analysis he uses to support the conclusions keep changing; this (to me, at least) looks uncomfortably like the signature of an analysis crafted to support a pre-existing conclusion, rather than a conclusion that results from a careful analysis.

On the other hand, he does use actual science in his arguments, he agrees on the basic physics (that the greenhouse effect actually does exist, and human-generated greenhouse gasses are part of it) and only disagrees on the magnitude of the response function. And, most notably, he doesn’t accuse scientists who come to different conclusions of "hoax", or "swindle", or "fraud."

So even if he cherry-picks data rather egregiously, I’m good with him.

A good article about Lindzen in _Seed_ a couple of years back, if you’re interested:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_contrarian

My problem is that I still have no answer to questions I asked forty years ago regarding the global warming controversy.

I said then that what we knew was well known: that in historical times the Earth has been both warmer and colder than it is now. It was warmer in Viking times until about 1300 after which the Earth began to cool. Since 1800 the Earth’s temperature has risen about a degree a century. About 1900 Arrhenius did some back of the envelope predictions of what would happen if CO2 levels doubled. Since 1900 the Earth’s temperature seems to have risen at about the rate that it had previously been rising: that is, there is warming, but there has been warming from 1800 when the Hudson and Thames froze solid enough to walk across, and the rate of warming doesn’t seem to have greatly increased so far as we can measure given the accuracy of the data. Some of the warming may well be due to CO2 but there doesn’t seem to be cause for alarm. We do need to continue to study this and develop better measurement tools.

A Bayesian analysis would conclude that it is better to invest in ways to reduce uncertainty than to spend resources on the predictions of the models; there is just too much uncertainty.

I also concluded long ago that cooling was still a possible threat: that the return of the glaciers requires energy to transport the water vapor to the cold areas where it can fall as snow, and this can have a runaway effect. That needs to be watched.

Regarding science and cherry picking: I would have thought that the experimentum crucis was the essence of science, and that’s certainly cherry picking. As I said long ago in my essay on the Voodoo Sciences, novelist need plausibility, lawyers need evidence, but scientists need data and hypotheses that explain all the data: one contrary result (cherry picking) is important. Look at the controversy over whether or not they have found faster than light neutrinos. No one supposes that if we are certain of FTL particles this will not force a revolutionary change in our standard models in physics. It won’t be dismissed as cherry picking.

As to Lindzen not having changed his conclusions over the years, I think I could easily say the same thing about many of the AGW believers. What I find alarming is that Lindzen asks questions about the models and their predictions, and concludes that there is not enough evidence to justify panic: that the best evidence is that the increasing CO2 is not a justification for alarm, and particularly not enough quality evidence to justify spending $Trillions on revising the entire industrial economy. What I get is a sociological discussion about the quality of the debate, and a discussion of Lindzen. I would not think that is a rational scientific discussion.

My conclusion is that Lindzen has the better of it: he has challenged the models and the data, and I do not believe he has been answered.

Relevant to the subject of cherry picking in science

Dark Matter, Vacuum Energy, and Aristotle’s Aether

Aristotle’s aether was not Lorenz luminiferous aether and so was no disproven by M&M. Here is an interesting comparison of the properties of Dark Matter, Vacuum Energy, and Aristotle’s Aether:

http://hylemorphist.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/zero-point-energygroundvacuum-state-vs-real-being-vs-logical-being-vs-nothing/

or in this article

http://www.thomist.org/jourl/2004/July/2004%20July%20A%20Dec.htm

MikeF

Philosophy as I understood it when I was young seems relevant to today’s fundamental questions, but it does not seem often to be discussed by today’s philosophers. I am grateful for my education in philosophy of science from Gustav Bergmann at the University of Iowa when I was an undergraduate, and to the Christian Brothers for my high school introduction to Aristotle. And to Mike Flynn for continuing to remind us that we do not want to lose sight of the relevance of some of the old questions.

A-10

Regarding the A-10, I’m reminded of the Stuka. At the outset of WW II, it was the best close-support aircraft on either side. It was regularly in the news. By the end of the war it had disappeared from the news, just as it had disappeared from the sky. It couldn’t survive in skies with high-performance fighters. It had neither speed, armor, nor armament to outfight the P-51 or the P-38.

I think the same would be true of the A-10 in a war against a "peer" power like Russia or China. It wouldn’t survive against their front-line fighters.

Having said that, the A-10 has been extremely successful in wars against non-peer powers. One of the most effective aircraft used in Vietnam was the A-1 Skyraider, originally developed during WW II as a carrier aircraft. It would not have survived in a sky full of MiG-19s, but it didn’t have to. There weren’t any over South Vietnam. the A-10 is now doing the job the A-1 formerly did.

We may have to fight a "peer" power some day, although I hope not. We are very likely to have to fight non-peer powers in the future, just as we have for the past fifty years. Getting rid of the A-10 because it can’t outfight Chinese J-10 would be foolish. They should be kept around for when they’re suitable, not eliminated from the inventory.

Joseph P. Martino

But no one ever supposed that the A-10 would operate without air superiority, as no one ever supposed that the A-10 would be useful in performing the air superiority mission. I was on the Boeing TFX design team, and we went through that analysis: the kind of airplane that wins dogfights is not the airplane you need for close support of the ground army, or for that matter for local battle area interdiction missions. As it happens the P-47 was useful for both, but its major value was for interdiction. Trainbusting recce/strike missions by the P-47 were a major factor in the conquest of Europe, although the P-47 was designed as an escort fighter. The P-51 with the Rolls Royce supercharged engine proved better at that mission.

The Army neither wants nor can perform the air superiority mission in a peer power war. That’s the job of the Air Force, and USAF is pretty good at it: the spectaculars of dogfighting, and the more decisive but more prosaic mission of taking out the hornet’s nests. You don’t really get rid of hornets by swatting one hornet at a time, but you sure do need a capability for escorting the guy with the Flit through a swarm of hornets. Air superiority takes a combined arms approach just as winning ground forces are those with combined arms capabilities. Give the A-10 to the Army, and give the local interdiction mission to the Army, and leave air superiority to the Air Force.

History has shown that combined arms armies have generally been victorious. That would seem to apply to the air superiority campaign as well. The Warthog is important in ground campaigns, and might well perform the equivalent of the heavy cavalry charge at just the right time in battle – provided that there is air superiority so that the A-10 can perform its mission. 

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320137

How to delete your Google Browsing History before new policy

With just a week to go before Google changes to its new privacy policy that allows it to gather, store and use personal information, users have a last chance to delete their Google Browsing History, along with any damning information therein.

Tech News Daily reports that once Google’s new unified privacy policy takes effect all data already collected about you, including search queries, sites visited, age, gender and location will be gathered and assigned to your online identity represented by your Gmail and YouTube accounts. After the policy takes effect you are not allowed to opt out without abandoning Google altogether. But now before the policy takes effect, you have the option of deleting your Google Web History by modifying your settings so that Google is unable to associate data collected about you with your Gmail or YouTube accounts.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320137#ixzz1nissqAwZ

View 715 Monday, February 27, 2012

I got the final version of Legend of Black Ship Island this morning, and I’ve been working on it all day, which pretty well used up my time. It’s a good story, but I’ve been so bunged up with this bronchitis that I haven’t had a chance to do a real final edit. It’s publishable now, but I can improve it, mostly by inserting a few details here and there. Avalon is a fascinating place, and some of the interactions with the ecology can be complicated.

Tomorrow will be an informative election.

I have found a bunch of open tabs, mostly prompted by mail, which lead to places you may find interesting. I have to clear some of them out because Firefox gets giddy if there are too many open tabs, so I’m just going to dump them. None of them take long to open, and while some of you will find different ones interesting, they were all interesting enough that I kept them open with the idea of writing something about them. I probably won’t get to.

Sing, O Muse, the Wrath of Michelle: Spengler said this before the election. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC04Aa01.html

Spengler speculates on what Richelieu would have made of our wars in the Middle East. http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/02/27/thank-heaven-for-little-ghouls/?singlepage=true

An interesting compilation. One day I may add to it. I need to do an essay on contraception and abortion but it is a delicate subject and requires time. http://io9.com/5887139/what-does-science-fiction-tell-us-about-the-future-of-reproductive-rights?tag=io9-backgrounder

I mentioned this one before, but it is the best summary of the skeptical position on AGW that I know of, and I recommend it. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf

Another climate change exposition: we’re freezing. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming–Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html

I have pointed to this one before on why we are getting rid of the Warthog. http://www.rense.com/general38/a10.htm I have mail warning me about the rense.com site, but I know nothing about it, and the source is irrelevant: the argument is well made.

I won’t close this tab. It needs discussion. But it’s worth looking at if the subject interests you. http://hylemorphist.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/zero-point-energygroundvacuum-state-vs-real-being-vs-logical-being-vs-nothing/

Ditto for this http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/ofer-lahav-dark-energy?fsrc=nlw|newe|2-22-2012|new_on_the_economist

And all of that ought to be enough. I’ll be back in form in a few days. I am recovering. And I’v a mountain of work to do.

View 715 Sunday, February 26, 2012

It has been a long day, and it does seem I am recovering from this upper respiratory infection that seems to be going around. We managed church this morning, and Roberta sang in the choir, and after we went with friends to breakfast, and while it was all tiring I managed it; We even had a walk later. With Sable it’s pretty hard not to take a walk. She considers that an entitlement. Then we discovered that we were out of dog food and I had to go out again. Sable wondered where I was going, and she had an idea where it might be, so I took her along. It’s her favorite place. When we get to the Petco parking area she goes mad to get out of the car. Literally her favorite place. Inside she picked out an enormous bone and talked me into buying it for her. When I was a kid you’d get those for a quarter for a soup bone, but in modern times it’s not likely that any store around here ever sees such bones. This was huge, and will last her for a while, and it’s good for her teeth.

And then it was time for the Oscars. No real surprises on the awards, and none I disagreed with. Clooney and Streep certainly deserved theirs, and of the nominees I have seen I’d have voted for The Artist. But it all exhausted me, and I didn’t get these notes written up.

I strongly recommend http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02148/RSL-HouseOfCommons_2148505a.pdf as about the best rational discussion of CO2 and climate I have seen. It’s reasonably technical but not overly so; and it asks questions. I particularly invite those who believe in AGW to read it and send me your comments.

I actually know that Clooney didn’t win the best actor award, and I thought he dshould have. IN fact I thought that so thoroughly that I seem to have made myself think he had. That’s an odd trick for memory to play on me.