Friday, January 17, 2014
The Gallop
Sou | 9:04 AM Go to the first of 114 comments. Add a commentGreig, I allowed the Maurice Newman thread to go way off topic. My fault. Rather than clog it up any further, feel free to comment here. You can post a comment on any aspect of climate science you wish as long as it complies with the comment policy. Others, feel free to comment also.
I've deleted your latest two comments in the other thread, Greig. I would have reposted them here but they didn't have much content.
Sou: Published Saturday 18 January 2014 09:04 am AEDST reset to Friday 17 September to reorder the articles.
Sou: It's been suggested by Greig and Bernard J. that another thread title may be more appropriate. Accordingly I've changed it to "The Gallop" - previously "Greig's Thread" (Monday 20 January 2014)
Sou: The thread is now closed. This thread has run its course several times over. Thank you to all contributors. (Monday 20 January 3:12 pm AEDST)
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ReplyDeleteI encourage everyone to read the Maurice Newman thread. It is essentially about character assassination, first of Newman, and then of me. Notice the unprompted use of abusive language in nearly every post, accusations of stupidity and ignorance, labelling, and outright dismissal of anything that doesn't match exactly with a specific worldview.
ReplyDeleteIt speaks volumes about the way that one side of this political debate has resorted to engaging in a pseudo-religious inquisition, intent on weeding out the heretics, rather than engaging in open discussion that incorporates many views. It is the reason why this issue has polarised at the political level, and prevents the pursuit of rational policy.
Amazingly [sarc] ,you have actually characterized the modus of pseudo-skeptics like the ones Newman clearly uses as sources. Do you understand that?
DeleteI'll show you how Newman has a view that does not match reality, that demonstrates his 'heresy' is nothing more than routine disinformation and well poisoning:
Newman cites Donna Laframboise 'revelation' [amplified by News Ltd outlets apparently] about non peer-reviewed sources in AR4. He directly accuses Pachauri of lying about this, but he fails to note that grey literature was permissible under the guidelines. Pachauri's claims that peer-reviewed science is the basis of the reports is unambiguously true: there are no chapters on observations and physical projections that rely on grey literature for their basis. Why did he not mention that context, Greig?
"In some chapters the majority of references were not peer-reviewed" he claims. So what? Where is the context?
Why would a chapter like AR4 WG3 Ch.13 "Policies, Instruments and Co-operative Arrangements" even need to contain exclusively peer-reviewed science and economics or even some peer-reviewed science and economics?? It's a review of national policies and international agreements that makes extensive reference to those policy documents, and appraisals and documentation of them. It's a document and policy review of what is in place now. Why does Newman not explain that, eh?
"Many lead authors were inexperienced, or linked to advocate groups like WWF or Greenpeace." claims Newman. Lead authors? 'Many'? Newman provides no backing for this. It is an untruth. A handful of contributing authors is not 'many lead authors'.... 'Linked to advocate groups'? As if this in itself is sufficient info to judge their competence or dismiss their involvement! And how 'many' anyway, Maurice? Why does Newman not also mention the 'many' expert contributors employed by petroleum and energy industry transnationals and consultancies who contributed to the mitigation and adaption content?
Newman is the one indulging in pseudo-analysis of the IPCC reports compilation.
He is engaged in a bad-faith smear exercise from the News Ltd bully-pulpit, and it cannot be anything but deliberate. His is not 'open discussion', it's poo-throwing, and the projectiles are very old and dry indeed.
Newman is a polariser seeking to delay and disrupt rational policy. His opinion pieces are unambiguous in intent. Those who understand this have no patience with his posturing, or the posturing of those who think his engagement is credible and substantial.
The debate is "political"? I think on the "warmist" side it's scientific. But there you go.
ReplyDeleteashie, my experience with the "warmists" (your word not mine) is that they are convinced that there is no scientific debate, and the matter is entirely settled. This is illustrated the persistent denial that there has been a pause in warming, and that scientific observations do not match climate modelling (even though the IPCC has already confirmed otherwise). One can only conclude that such unscientific belligerence is ideologically (politically) driven.
DeleteGrieg, back in my youth the creationists would seize on any little disagreement between evolutionists to say that Darwinism was dead because scientists couldn't agree on the truth. There is always debate in scientific areas and both sides of this dispute know it.
DeleteWhat the fake skeptic side choose to ignore is that global warming is a matter of the laws of thermodynamics. There the science is settled. I challenge you to prove those three laws wrong. It is about the physics of energy pure and simple. The effects, the rate of warming, those sorts of things are up for debate. The models, and I suspect you will cherry pick this quote back at me, are by their very nature wrong because there are just too many factors that cannot yet be included. However, they do give us a very good idea of how the global climate behaves. As an analogy, follow the weather forecast, even Anthony Watts will be able to tell you that the computer models they use for day to day forecasting are limited in their predictive ability. Not bad but any curmudgeon can moan that they don't get it right.
I think the strength of comments here has been the result of what looks like your wilful ignorance. There are plenty of sources of reliable information on climate science that you, and I, can access with the click of a mouse. That you act in the cliched manner of a fake skeptic, not checking facts for yourself, challenging others to provide references that we know you will rubbish, is what irritates. The tone of Sou's articles is mocking, because mockery is what the pseudoscientific posts at WUWT deserve.
Finally, scientific ideas have to fit with all the bits of known, established science. Global warming does. The WUWT throng forget that.
Catmando
DeleteAccording to you I am "fake sceptic", I engage in behaviour similar to creationists (God forbid!), I am engaging in wilful ignorance, I am not acquainted with basic climate science, I behave in a "cliche'd manner", I don't check facts, I challenge others for references to their assertions, I deserve to be mocked because the "WUWT throng" deserve to be mocked for apparently forgetting that you think climate science is credible. So do you feel better for having gotten that off your chest?
Now, you say that you think that climate models are wrong by their very nature, they nevertheless tell us how climate behaves (really?), However you seem to be confusing climate models with weather models.
So Catmando, do you have any substantive comment to make on the points I have previously raised regarding climate models? In particular regarding the fact that the IPCC has acknowledged that observation does not match the bulk of current models, stating:
This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.
Considering this, do you think we should be basing current climate change policy on climate models that do not match observation? (yes/no)
... global warming is a matter of the laws of thermodynamics. There the science is settled. ... It is about the physics of energy pure and simple. The effects, the rate of warming, those sorts of things are up for debate.
Agreed. However alarmists confuse the fact that climate change is real, with climate change being bad. The latter is what real sceptics are discussing, yet as soon as we raise the subject we are immediately thrust into a category of denying basic science.
I challenge you to prove those three laws wrong.
See what I mean?
You are still greatly exaggerating the importance of natural variability. Here is more background on models and short-term variability. It's only short, so please read it carefully and consider what is being said.
Delete* * *
alarmists confuse the fact that climate change is real, with climate change being bad
There is no evidence that S is so low as to make BAU emissions a safe policy choice. There is a consilience of evidence pointing to ECS/2xCO2 being ~3C. So when "sceptics" try to pretend that there's nothing to worry about they are indeed denying the scientific evidence and this is rightly drawn to their attention.
Grieg,
DeleteI take it you think that climate change is either neutral or beneficial. Well, that's for you to demonstrate. Seeing the floods here in the UK and the heat in Australia, it is hard to believe that such events are beneficial.
I pointed out the creationist tricks you are using because they are so familiar to me. I didn't say you were one, just using old and hackneyed methods to make points that have been answered so often. It's as if the fake skeptics are deaf.
I lump you in the fake skeptic pile because you don't seem to act as a genuine skeptic does. You don't seem interested in looking at multiple angles and understanding them. To me it is simple, you don't show the qualities that a genuine skeptic has. You are free to disagree with my assessment but having seen the behaviour you exhibit time and time again in fake skeptics in many fields, I feel confident in my assessment.
As for basing policy on climate models, I don't share your lack of enthusiasm for them. On the other hand, they are one of the few tools at our disposal for making any prediction. It would be stupid, criminal even, to ignore what the models do tell us. Pretty much all we would be left with after removing the models would be guesswork. I know which basis for prediction I would rather have.
It would be fantastic to have models that accurately reflect observation. Since economic models suffer the same problem, would you, by analogy, like your mortgage rate decided by guesswork?
BBD,
DeleteI draw your attention to the following:
(2) the explanation for recent slowdown is partly additional ocean heat uptake & partly negative trends in natural radiative forcing (due to solar changes and small volcanic eruptions) which slightly counteract the positive forcing from GHGs; (3) the quantification of the relative magnitude of these causes is still work in progress;
OK, my BS-ometer just went off. So this is saying that the reason for the pause is known, but quantification is a work in progress? Surely quantification and matching with observation comes before the conclusion, not after.
You are greatly exaggerating the efforts of climate modellers to justify their existence. Of course you can plug an infinite number of values to parameters into a simulation and eventually get a match. We might also get a match for current observations by considering a lower climate sensitivity. Which is right? According to Ed, we can decide the answer before we quantify and observe.
There is a consilience of evidence pointing to ECS/2xCO2 being ~3C
Oh so there is "consilience", therefore it is right? My BS-ometer just went off again. It is very widely acknowledged that estimates for climate sensitivity are (and should be) under continual review as more is known and understood about the multitude of feedback mechanisms associated with CO2 forcing. Yet we constantly hear this "the science is settled" response on climate sensitivity.
For a fascinating discussion on this subject and some of the inner workings of the climate science establishment, I recommend reading The Climate Caper, by well respected former climate scientist Garth Paltridge.
There is no evidence that S is so low as to make BAU emissions a safe policy choice. ... So when "sceptics" try to pretend that there's nothing to worry about they are indeed denying the scientific evidence and this is rightly drawn to their attention.
When it comes to policy, there are a multitude of factors to consider from multiple disciplines, scientific, engineering and economic. Policy attempts to incorporate all those factors. So when you hear sceptics suggesting policies that do not involve being panicked into attempting to re-engineer our entire energy technology base, they are not saying there is nothing to worry about. They are saying there is more to worry about than global warming.
"OK, my BS-ometer just went off. So this is saying that the reason for the pause is known, but quantification is a work in progress? Surely quantification and matching with observation comes before the conclusion, not after."
DeleteGrieg, there are plenty of examples of quantification after the conclusion. Directly measuring the strength of gravity came long after Newton.
I take it you think that climate change is either neutral or beneficial.
DeleteChange (whether climate or otherwise) is never universally detrimental nor universally beneficial, and a balance of both.
Regarding heat, it is generally accepted that within a certain bound global warming is overall beneficial (globally) - there is ample evidence that the Earth is a happier and more productive place in warmer weather. So I would suggest that a few degC of warming might be beneficial.
On climate extreme, the IPCC in its latest reports (AR5 and ( href="https://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/">SREX ) are moving away from the assumption that climate change will cause more floods, droughts and hurricanes.
Of course there is an upper bound beyond which global warming will have a net negative impact, and there is an as yet unquantified risk of this bound being reached with BAU practices. It would therefore make sense to implement "No regrets policy" wherever feasible, and certainly to continue to develop new sustainable low emissions technology
I don't give a rats whether you think I am a fake sceptic or a real one, I just cannot understand why you waste your time hurling invective. Does it make you feel better?
Of course climate modelling is a good thing, they can and will be useful in the future. But too much weight is placed on them, when they could so easily be wrong. A better idea is to base policy on the future being unknown, and empowering ourselves for adaptation.
We might also get a match for current observations by considering a lower climate sensitivity.
DeleteWhich would be at odds with the bigger picture derived from paleoclimate behaviour (eg Rohling et al. (2012). It's unwise to hyperfocus on problematic studies trying to estimate TCR/ECS from "observations". They are subject to uncertainty :-) about early temperature data and negative aerosol forcing and extremely sensitive to transient variability in the rate of ocean heat uptake. All things that are considered likely to be factors in the recent slowing of the rate of surface warming.
Speaking of which, and since you are still resistant to the facts, you cannot use a short period of climate behaviour to estimate either TCR or ECS. Natural variability dominates over short time-scales, so they are uninformative about long term trends. But that is what you are doing.
Oh so there is "consilience", therefore it is right?
A consilience of evidence is a strong indication that whatever is being investigated is not grossly misunderstood. It also makes it possible to evaluate the relative merits of outliers, as is the case here.
* * *
For a fascinating discussion on this subject and some of the inner workings of the climate science establishment, I recommend reading The Climate Caper, by well respected former climate scientist Garth Paltridge.
Garth Paltridge. One has to smile. You are dead agin' models, but apparently happy that Paltridge et al. (2009) used the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis which is... model output. There's an informative discussion of the relative merits and demerits of that study here.
There were, and are, no takers for Paltridge's maximum entropy stuff either. His singular take on sensitivity has not gained any scientific traction at all, which suggests that it is mistaken.
Grieg, I chose to term your behaviour, rather than you, as fake skeptic because that is how it appears to me and others who have read your comments. I seem to remember that you classified criticism as character assassination in a comment a while ago. My point is that the behaviour you exhibit is all too obviously unskeptical. You ask questions but seem oblivious to the answers. This is unhelpful. It is not engaging with the science as it is currently understood and it is hard to see how it can be anything other than wilful. Like I said, you may disagree, as is your right. However, to ignore the honest answers of others is wilful ignorance, and I make the assumption that you are intelligent enough to realise that. You use a cliched debating technique that many of us here see through in an instant.
DeleteOn the matter of beneficial or otherwise, I can contemplate changes that would be universally detrimental. A large asteroid strike, of the order of 50km diameter, would probably not be greeted as beneficial by anyone, for instance.
Finally, it is stupid in the extreme to hope that we can adapt in the future when we have a chance to mitigate now. Some things are needed now - better flood defences for example in parts of the UK - which will cost huge sums of money. Lave them in the hope that we can do something in the future is the equivalent of cancelling your home insurance on your semi-detached just at the time when next door catches fire
BBD responds:
DeleteWhich would be at odds with the bigger picture derived from paleoclimate behaviour
which is exactly why I have been making the point that deriving climate sensitivity data from the paleo record is corrupted by the nature of the process driving climate change, and the current circumstance of anthropogenic influence being unique in history. And I agree that other methods of derivation are crippled by uncertainty. I don't have the answer on how to accurately determine climate sensitivity, my point is we should be more sceptical of the values we use now.
On consilience (or consensus), a great deal has been said in the past about how inappropriate consensus is as a concept in science . I raised the point previously about the long-standing consensus on the cause of stomach ulcers, and we all know that turned out to be completely wrong.
On Paltridge, I recommend the book. It doesn't push a barrow for maximum entropy, it is more about defining the current extreme uncertainty in developing a proper quantification of feedback mechanisms, and the inherent limitations in temperature projection methodologies. Paltridge also fires several broadsides into the culture of climate science orthodoxy - who better than a recently retired climate scientist with no professional constraints and strong background in climate modelling.
Catmando writes:
Deleteit is stupid in the extreme to hope that we can adapt in the future when we have a chance to mitigate now.
What makes you think we have a chance to mitigate now? The outcome of the Copenhagen Conference sealed the fate of the world, where developing countries will massively increase CO2 emissions outstripping the developed counties over the next century by an order of magnitude at least. Alternatives to fossil fuels are costly or politically unpalatable. How do you see these issues being overcome?
Lave them in the hope that we can do something in the future is the equivalent of cancelling your home insurance on your semi-detached just at the time when next door catches fire
Actually a more accurate analogy:
Remediation = ripping down the whole house and building it again completely out of non-flammable materials.
Adaptation = installing a fire hydrant out the front of the house,
And please stop discussing fake sceptics and wilful ignorance etc etc, it is utterly pointless.
Greig
DeleteI don't have the answer on how to accurately determine climate sensitivity, my point is we should be more sceptical of the values we use now.
You need to point to errors in the science before you can make this claim and you haven't done that. Argument from false equivalence (stomach ulcers) is a logical fallacy and does not support your position.
You are left with a simple assertion: "I reject the scientific consensus arising from the consilience of evidence but can't back this up".
The discussion remains where it was:
Low climate sensitivity is incompatible with paleoclimate behaviour on all time-scales from ~50Ma of gradual Cenozoic cooling, to hyperthermals and glacial terminations under orbital forcing.
Grieg, you like to use trivial truisms with which to hide your weasle words, don't you...?
Delete"Change (whether climate or otherwise) is never universally detrimental nor universally beneficial, and a balance of both."
The truth is in fact:
"Change (whether climate or otherwise) is never universally detrimental nor universally beneficial, and an imbalance of both."
In the case of the global warming that is in train, if it's seen to the end of a business-as-usual burning of fossil fuel, the resulting climatic disruption will see the end of a goodly portion of the higher taxa on the planet.
And wherever biodiversity is reduced, the "balance" is toward "detrimental". You may beg to differ, but in that case I'd be very interested to see your evidenced argument.
I should also add that Prof Stewart Franks also comes in for some bold criticism for apparently being a "climate science denier". This while Prof David Karoly gets the unambiguous tick of approval. This despite Karoly having been caught red handed making a public statement which is contrary to basic climate science.
ReplyDeleteReference please.
DeleteAsking a climate disinformer for a reference to support one of his fibs is as pointless as asking a science denier to explain global warming or a "slayer" to explain the greenhouse effect.
DeleteThe last time Greig was asked he simply referred to one of Franks papers - which he didn't/couldn't produce a copy of so he probably hadn't read it. And which, from what I understood it to be about, and sadly for Greig, didn't refute what David Karoly said. It was peripheral to the subject.
Oh, Greig also cited two other papers which didn't have anything to do with what David Karoly said.
Bernard J writes: Reference please
DeleteAnd here it is:
Here is the WWF document description
Here is the PDF
This is what Karoly said:
The higher temperatures caused a marked increase in evaporation rates, which sped up the loss of soil moisture and the drying of vegetation and watercourses. This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.
Here is Franks explaining Karoly's gaff
While this may sounds intuitively correct, it is wrong. It completely ignores the known science of evapotranspiration and boundary layer meteorology. That is, when soil contains high moisture content, much of the sun’s energy is used in evaporation and consequently there is limited heating of the surface. However, during drought, soil moisture content is low and consequently nearly all of the incoming radiation is converted into heating the surface. The result is that air temperatures rise significantly.
David Karoly, a Professor of Meteorology at Melbourne University, confused cause and effect with regard to the fundamental basics of boundary layer meteorology.
My comment: It is as very common misconception, and Franks in the above article has also nailed:
Tim Flannery, former head of the Climate Commission,
David Jones is the Head of Climate Monitoring and Prediction Services at the Bureau of Meteorology
Dr Bertrand Timbal, Bureau of Meteorology climatologist.
Even Sou made the error in the Newman thread, but she can be forgiven for not knowing basic climate science. For the above three so-called experts to not know and to make public statements on the subject, is unforgivable.
I'll leave aside the notion that someone who doesn't understand the greenhouse effect is claiming that I can be forgiven for not knowing basic climate science. Unlike Greig, I'm well aware of the limits of my knowledge and I take the time to learn more.
DeleteLet's quote the full paragraph from the Karoly paper. It's an introductory statement summarising a number of different points that are further elaborated in the paper.
During 2002, Australia experienced probably its worst drought since reliable records began in 1910 (Bureau of Meteorology, 2003; Nicholls, 2003). The average Australian rainfall for the nine months March-November 2002 was the lowest ever since reliable records began.This drought has had a more severe impact than any other drought since at least 1950, because the temperatures in 2002 have also been significantly higher than in other drought years (see Table 1 and 2). The higher temperatures caused a marked increase in evaporation rates, which sped up the loss of soil moisture and the drying of vegetation and watercourses. This is the first drought in Australia where the impact of human-induced global warming can be clearly observed.
I don't know what Greig thinks that David Karoly was saying in that quote. Maybe Greig is trying to argue is that evaporation doesn't happen more quickly as temperature rises. It does, provided there is sufficient water there in the first place.
Greig's quote from Stuart Franks is not refuting what David Karoly actually said, no matter what Greig or Stuart will have you believe. Read them both again.
What Stuart is referring to is latent heat vs sensible heat at the surface. It applies to any drought. What Stuart is talking about happens in any drought. What David's paper is discussing is what made the 2002 drought stand out from other droughts. See page 7 onwards for example. There is nothing in the Karoly quote that contradicts what Stuart Franks wrote and nothing in the Franks quote that refutes what David Karoly wrote - contrary to what Franks is alleging.
And if Stuart Franks thinks that David Karoly doesn't understand "boundary layer" meteorology then Franks is just trying to do what Greig did when he wrote "sou can be forgiven..." - denier play-acting at best. Typical denier tactic. Greig (and Franks) are trying to misrepresent what David Karoly wrote in his paper and are just playing denier games.
All of which proves the point that I made earlier.
Stuart s/be Stewart.
DeleteAlso - still no copy of the Franks paper I notice. Greig is hanging onto something a denier claims, which has nothing to do with what David Karoly wrote. Stewart Franks was writing about what makes a drought different to a non-drought. Karoly's paper was about how the hotter world made the 2002 drought different from previous droughts.
For example:
The 2002 drought is associated with much higher temperatures and
evaporation than the other major droughts in Australia since 1950 (Karoly et al., 2003). The high temperatures are part of a 50 year warming trend in Australia. That trend exceeds expectations of the size of natural variability over the period and is likely the result of enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations.
In that article that Greig quoted in the Conversation you'll have noticed that Stewart Franks tries to resurrect another denier meme. It goes something like this. In 2007, during arguably the worst drought ever seen in eastern Australia, Tim Flannery said on Lateline:
DeleteSo even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that's a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we're going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
Deniers like Stewart Franks try to claim that Tim Flannery "meant" that it would never rain in Australia ever again. But read what he actually said. He didn't say that at all. Not only that, but Prof Flannery was absolutely correct in what he said. Not only that, but it was more than two years before that drought broke. Farmers around here ran out of water. Whole towns ran out of water in that extended drought.
When it broke, it broke spectacularly. As you'll recall the floods were so huge that it caused a very marked and temporary drop in sea level. At one stage there were massive record floods over Queensland, all through western Victoria and right across central Australia.
It's that sort of "weather whipsaw" that we'll probably see more of in the future. In the USA the "whipsaw" is being expressed as floods in the north east and drought in the south west.
Anyway, Tim Flannery was prophetic. Before the drought broke, the water supply in Brisbane dropped hugely - to something like only 15% capacity. That's not just a risk of people running out of water, there's a much greater risk of water contamination when levels get so low. Melbourne was similarly close to disaster. And in Perth, now they'd be out of water if not for the desalination plants they use.
This will happen again. I don't know what deniers will be saying next time around. What sort of lies and distortions they'll come up with. But it's typical of science deniers like Stewart Franks.
Sou wrote::
DeleteMaybe Greig is trying to argue is that evaporation doesn't happen more quickly as temperature rises.
As a matter of fact that is precisely what basic hydrology says. Temperature has a near zero impact on evaporation, rather it is driven by humidity. I cannot reproduce the maths here, but I recall Franks posted an excellent summary with diagrams which was discussed at length at Deltoid, although I can't find the thread now.
I know it seems counter- intuitive, but when you think about it, you realise that it is obvious - that temperature is not the principle cause of evaporation. Ask yourself, if you put your laundry out to dry, where will it dry fastest (evaporate): Darwin at 40DegC with 100% humidity, or Hobart at 10 degC with 10% humidity?
It is because it is erroneously assumed that temperature causes dryness that this mistake occurs. In fact humidity is driven by rainfall and wind direction, which is driven by climate variability and in particular in Australia, ENSO.
Stewart Franks writes:
So when Tim Flannery cites the hotter soils as leading to less runoff into our dams and reservoirs, he was not alone in misunderstanding the physics of climate, or in speculating about the role of CO₂ in causing the drought. This does however beg the question, why did we see such a prolonged drought followed by such widespread flooding?
The answer lies in the nature of El Niño and La Niña events. These events are not random, but actually occur in decadal to multi-decadal (20-40 year) clusters, associated with a long-term climate mode known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO (sometimes known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, IPO).
{...}
The mistake that Tim Flannery, as well as the numerous expert commentators made, was that they confused climate variability for climate change.
Greig, your example has a problem when you claim that temperature has no effect: you vary humidity. What if the relative humidity is the same? Ah yes, then temperature does have a very clear effect (and nonlinear, with upward curvature). It does not have a near-zero effect.
DeleteYes Marco, but this isn't a lab experiment, we are talking about climate (actually weather).
DeleteHumidity at a given location is determined by the prevailing winds and the air's moisture content. Increased temperature does not mean increased humidity. Climate processes (eg ENSO) determines humidity.
Karoly's (and others commenters) implied that temperature determines the likelihood of drought. This is incorrect.
Don't be daft. Of course evaporation depends on temperature. The fact that it also depends on humidity doesn't mean that temperature doesn't affect it.
DeleteUsing your analogy, let me ask you this. Where will your laundry dry fastest - Hobart at 10C with 10% humidity or Hobart at 20C with 10% humidity?
That's the relevant question.
Like I said before, Stewart (and you) are comparing drought and non-drought. David Karoly is comparing drought and drought.
David Karoly gave evidence for the drought in 2002 being worse than other droughts. It's because the world is hotter. David Karoly knows very well the impact of ENSO on Australia's weather. Stewart is just playing games there.
But it still doesn't cover what David Karoly's paper was about.
Will there be more water vapour in a warmer world? Of course there will be. Why? It's not just hotter because the world is more humid. The world is also more humid because it's hotter. (I'm not talking relative humidity here, obviously.) Where does the water vapour come from? Mostly by evaporation from the oceans. Why will more water evaporate from the oceans? Because it's hotter.
The point you are misrepresenting is that given there was a drought - it was worse than the same drought would have been without global warming. It was both hotter and drier and David Karoly showed the numbers.
There's a strawman in your quote, too. (Surprise surprise). Stewart's strawman is "speculating about the role of CO2 in causing the drought". I don't see anyone suggesting that CO2 "caused" the drought.
As far as more or less runoff goes, it depends a lot on vegetation. On dry bare hardpacked soils there will be more runoff in an intense downpour than from the same downpour on soils covered by vegetation. Vegetation cover almost always means less runoff than there would be from bare soils, but it does depend on the soil type. In light rain, where there is more time for it to soak into the soil, then it will vary. Eg it will just sink into sandy soils and may have time to permeate heavier clay soils too - though even in "steady soaking rain" that's less likely during a drought because during a drought you don't get much "steady soaking rain". It's either a very light patter or an occasional short-lived downpour.
I would say that Tim Flannery is talking not about a single dump of rain, but of the overall amount of rain that falls during a drought and what happens to the water after it falls. I can't comment on his numbers without looking up references. As far as I know, the biggest problem during a drought is that surface water evaporates from bodies of water that exist as well as from the soil. There would be a lot of surface evaporation of light rain before it got anywhere near a waterway, particularly during a hot drought.
I'd say Tim is oversimplifying in that comment. But it's not a scientific paper in any case. More an example of deniers quote-mining.
(Plants tend to be greedy for water, especially when it's scarce. So they are likely to gobble up a lot of it when they get the chance. Once there is some moisture in the soil, then if plants need more they'll lap up whatever they can get hold of.)
Don't be daft. Of course evaporation depends on temperature. The fact that it also depends on humidity doesn't mean that temperature doesn't affect it.
DeleteAs I have said, temperature has near zero impact (not zero, but very nearly) on evaporation, it is near entirely controlled by humidity. This is basic hydrology.
So you're saying that the clothes would dry just as quickly if they were hung on the line at 10C at 10% humidity as they would at 40C or 30C or 20C at 10% humidity.
DeleteI'm guessing you've never hung out the clothes - and probably never in your life made a cuppa tea, either :)
Stewart Franks made a complete arse of himself at The Conversation in that article when he attempted to attack Tim Flannery. He was forced to retract when he could not substantiate his verballing of Flannery. The details are here.
Deletehttp://theconversation.com/climate-and-floods-flannery-is-no-expert-but-neither-are-the-experts-5709#comment_25619
The only time part of an article at TC has had to be retracted. Needless to say after making a fool of himself, Franks has not been back. He prefers to write for Murdoch where he can be protected from scrutiny.
I see that Greig continues the wordplay. You claimed evaporation rates do not (or near-zero) depend on temperature. You now seem to admit that this was indeed incorrect, but you actually would like to add wind and humidity variability due to ENSO (which, funnily enough, itself has a strong relationship to temperature).
DeleteCSIRO climatologist Wenju Cai debunked Frank's claims re Karoly and Nichols. The details are here.
Delete"[Frank's] paper has been used as ammunition by greenhouse sceptics in the climate wars. The battle over the paper turns on a point of junior high school science -- the dependence of daylight hours on latitude -- which the Newcastle team failed to factor into its analysis."
Dr Cai's team, which includes Bureau of Meteorology scientists, analysed the same dataset but used corrections for latitude. The "trend" vanished. The patchy distribution of data in space and time had skewed the Newcastle team's results, producing a "large spurious trend".
Dr Cai told the HES the correlation between sunshine hours and temperatures was "no news, even to high school students".
Ouch!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/sunshine-claim-clouded-by-dispute/story-e6frgcjx-1225859043744
"As I have said, temperature has near zero impact (not zero, but very nearly) on evaporation, it is near entirely controlled by humidity."
DeleteBollocks.
Having first-hand experience with Hobart's rates of evaporation I can tell you that Sou is correct. For the same approximate relative humidity evaporation is much greater when it's warmer, and significantly more so when there is wind.
This shouldn't surprise anyone as the heat of evaporation comes from the water being evaporated, and moving air reduces boundary layer effects which 'insulate' against evaporation. Ask any builder who uses concrete, mortar or render.
Seriously, buy a clue.
This humidity-not-temperature canard of Grieg's is so silly that I thought I'd have a quick squiz UTFSE.
DeleteAnd oh lookie...
Or here for a clearer image, but unfortunately only imperial.
Seriously Grieg, study the diagrams carefully. You'll see that temperature plays a very important role (greater than linear response, even compared with humidity) in evaporation, and this is with respect to both the temperature of the atmosphere and of the body evaporating, as I intimated above.
DeleteYou should hang your head in shame. As for Franks, who expects some sort of respect because of his job as an engineer, well, my thoughts on that individual are better left unsaid.
Perhaps this should be "The Humiliation of Grieg Thread".
DeleteGreig may be (unknowingly, obviously or he would have said so) be talking about the "pan evaporation paradox", which refers to the fact that in many places around the world, pan evaporation trends were declining even though temperatures are rising. The very fact that this is known as a paradox should be a clue that this behaviour is unexpected. It would be expected that as temperature rises, so would pan evaporation.
DeleteThere are sections on pan evaporation in the IPCC AR5 report, eg page 2-48 onwards, which includes this summary para:
In summary, there is medium confidence that pan evaporation continued to decline in most regions studied since AR4 related to changes in wind speed, solar radiation and humidity. On a global scale, evapotranspiration over land increased (medium confidence) from the early 1980s up to the late 1990s. After 1998, a lack of moisture availability in SH land areas, particularly decreasing soil moisture, has acted as a constraint to further increase of global evapotranspiration.
Sou wrote:
DeleteGreig may be (unknowingly, obviously or he would have said so) be talking about the "pan evaporation paradox",
No, I am not. I am talking about the fact that global warming (absolute temperature) has negligible impact on droughts.
Bernard J wrote: And oh lookie...
Thanks Bernard, the diagram clearly and practically demonstrates basic hydrology relevant to this discussion.
When considering evaporation on land, the average difference in relative temperature between land and air over 24 hours is at most a few degrees, and averaged annually is neglible. So for any absolute temperature between 0 and 100 degF evaporation is completely dominated by humidity and windspeed. Absolute temperature is irrelevant.
Therefore global warming (an increase in average annual absolute temperature) has no impact on evaporation rates. Drought (and deserts) are determined by rainfall, humidity and winds, and such factors are governed by climate variability (eg ENSO).
Global warming does not cause droughts as a result of temperature rise. This is evidenced by the IPCC AR5 and SREX report stating that AGW is "unlikely" to correlate with drought.
In the future,. climate change may change wind patterns which may increase or decrease aridity in certain places, ie impact o climate variability. But that is not what Karoly was saying - his comments in the WWF report were misleading and wrong.
Greig, you're doing it again. You introduced this stupid aridity diversion with the washing line analogy, but you have refused to answer the response, which is up above on this thread. Instead of repeating your assertions, you need to answer the points that are being made. otherwise you are simply doing the Gish Gallop.
Delete1. Answer the washing line example.
2. Explain why the charts put up by BBD are wrong
3. Justify your reliance on Franks given his work at the Conversation was shown to be wrong
You also need to explain why you are referencing the IPCC on this issue while simultaneously disputing its authority on basic radiation physics.
I also note you have disengaged from any conversation related to the "pause." Address the points made there or admit you were wrong, please.
If you do not answer the points rebutting your arguments, but instead continue to make unsupported assertions, you are arguing in bad faith and deserving of all the "character assassination" you act so offended by.
I would ask others on this thread not to engage Greig until he has adequately (in terms of effort) addressed the points above. Don't let him do the Gallop!
Drought (and deserts) are determined by rainfall, humidity and winds, and such factors are governed by climate variability (eg ENSO). .
DeleteScientists disagree. They point to the physically inevitable widening of the Hadley Cells and consequent reorganisation of rainfall patterns.
Zhou et al. (2011) Recent trends of the tropical hydrological cycle inferred from Global Precipitation Climatology Project and International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project data
Which supports J&F09 on widening Hadley Cells:
Johanson & Fu (2009) Hadley Cell Widening: Model Simulations versus Observations
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008JCLI2620.1
And so to Dai (2012).
TL-DR here are the pretty pictures.
Captain FlashheartJanuary writes:
Delete1. Answer the washing line example.
2. Explain why the charts put up by BBD are wrong
3. Justify your reliance on Franks given his work at the Conversation was shown to be wrong
1. I have already answered the washing line example. Again, evaporation correlates with temperature/radiation, humidity, and windspeed. However the temperature component is very small compared to humidity and windspeed. Bernard's diagram illustrates this. The formulas may be found here on page 437. Plug in some real world values, and you get the picture.
2. I am not aware of BBD putting up charts, but happy to respond if you can reference them. BBD and I are at an impasse, because as I have shown the articles he is posting on Cenozoic hyperthermals only demonstrate that GHG feedbacks produce slow warming over millenia. It does not reveal anything about climate sensitivity, or how fast modern AGW rate will be (ie how bad it will be). Therefore climate models may be underestimating climate sensitivity, as suggested by Garth Paltridge.
3. (a) I am not relying on Franks for anything. I have provided explanations and independent references.
(b) Franks did not misquote Karoly (as per the refs supplied), and has correctly identified that Karoly (and others) made a howling error on basic climate change science.
Captain FlashheartJanuary writes:
You also need to explain why you are referencing the IPCC on this issue while simultaneously disputing its authority on basic radiation physics.
I am not disputing anything that the IPCC has stated on radiative physics. The IPCC is disputing it when it states
This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.
Captain Flashheart writes:
I also note you have disengaged from any conversation related to the "pause." Address the points made there or admit you were wrong, please.
I have not disengaged from the discussion.
See quote above from the IPCC. Please note that option (c) explains the pause as model error. This "error" may be "an incorrect assumption for climate sensitivity". I have asked but not received, an alternative suggestion for what the IPCC means by "model error". In conclusion, if I am wrong on this matter (which I am not), but if you insist that I am wrong - then the IPCC is wrong too.
So Flashheart, since I have answered your questions, you should acknowledge that I am *not arguing in bad faith* and not deserving of all the "character assassination". If you cannot bring yourself to do that, then *you are arguing in bad faith*.
Greig wrote: Drought (and deserts) are determined by rainfall, humidity and winds, and such factors are governed by climate variability (eg ENSO).
DeleteBBD writes: Scientists disagree.
No, they don't. I have provided several references to demonstrate that my statement above is basic climate science, based on the established and uncontentious disciplines of evapotranspiration and boundary layer meteorology.
They point to the physically inevitable widening of the Hadley Cells and consequent reorganisation of rainfall patterns.
Indeed they do, and this may be a consequence of AGW in the future (as illustrated by the references).
However this has not yet happened as reported by the IPCC
From Chapter 4 of the SREX:
“The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”
From the IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 on extremes.
In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
“In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated.
Karoly was wrong.
Sou wrote: Greig may be (unknowingly, obviously or he would have said so) be talking about the "pan evaporation paradox", No, I am not. I am talking about the fact that global warming (absolute temperature) has negligible impact on droughts.
DeleteI gave you a graceful way out and you didn't take it. And your weren't merely saying that global warming has negligible impact on droughts, you were arguing specifically that temperature has no impact on evaporation.
Thanks Bernard, the diagram clearly and practically demonstrates basic hydrology relevant to this discussion.
Now you're not just disputing the science, you are disputing engineers and builders. That diagram and 'that diagram' that Bernard linked to showed a clear relationship between temperature and evaporation at a given relative humidity. It also warns builders that in order to manage the drying rate of concrete to avoid cracking, people should "Manage temperatures by choosing low-heat hydration materials and by cooling stockpiles." and should "Verify temperature and drying conditions at the job site—monitor temperature, wind, and relative humidity."
When considering evaporation on land, the average difference in relative temperature between land and air over 24 hours is at most a few degrees, and averaged annually is neglible. So for any absolute temperature between 0 and 100 degF evaporation is completely dominated by humidity and windspeed. Absolute temperature is irrelevant.
This statement wins the "crank" award. Not only are you mainly just repeating your false assertions, it's nuts to define "a few degrees" as "any absolute temperature between 0 and 100 degF". Also, absolute temperature is degrees Kelvin, not degrees Fahrenheit. (Any normal person would consider a diurnal range in many places to be more than "negligible" (The diurnal temperature range at Barcaldine Qld this month typically went from the mid-20s to the low 40s. On Wednesday Jan 1 it ranged from 25.9 to 41.8C. Around 16 degrees. The relative humidity was 39%.)
Therefore global warming (an increase in average annual absolute temperature) has no impact on evaporation rates. Drought (and deserts) are determined by rainfall, humidity and winds, and such factors are governed by climate variability (eg ENSO).
Again, this is just a repeat of your incorrect statement, with lots of "wrongs". Your definition of global warming is limited. Global warming affects a lot of weather, including how extreme a heat wave will get, how many annual frosts occur in a locality (it's dropped a lot here), how warm are the days and nights (days and nights are getting hotter), patterns of precipitation and drought etc etc.
Global warming does not cause droughts as a result of temperature rise. This is evidenced by the IPCC AR5 and SREX report stating that AGW is "unlikely" to correlate with drought.
A straw man. No-one has claimed that global warming "causes" droughts. That has yet to be determined. However it does exacerbate drought and heat waves - for obvious reasons.
In the future,. climate change may change wind patterns which may increase or decrease aridity in certain places, ie impact o climate variability. But that is not what Karoly was saying - his comments in the WWF report were misleading and wrong.
David Karoly provided evidence that the 2002 drought was outside the range expected by natural variation alone. You haven't provided any evidence for arguing otherwise, other than totally implausible statements like your claim that clothes will dry as quickly on a 100 degree Fahrenheit day as they would when the temperature was only 35 degrees Fahrenheit - RH being the same.
Bugger it.
DeleteI just spent an hour responding point by point to Grieg's nonsense that temperature does not affect evaporation and then Firefox crashed.
I can't be bothered to spend any more of my time on the troll, so in summary:
1) It's a straw man to say that "the average difference in relative temperature between land and air over 24 hours is at most a few degrees". Anyone who has walked on the dry sand of a beach in summer will know this, and it this surface heat that evaporates water - as I have previously noted the energy to change liquid water to a gas comes from the evaporating body. And in a world that has warmed on average 4-5 ºC or more there will be higher extremes of heat, and longer periods of heat, and this will directly imapct on evaporation.
2) Temperature affects absolute humidity. Warmer air can hold more water, so increasing atmospheric temperature will increase the amount of water it can hold, which will have a direct impact on evaporation rates.
3) I have cold water and tropical aquaria. Without covers the tropical tanks lose water at a noticably faster rate than the cold water tanks. The humidity in the house is consistent throughout.
4) When I attend dinners with friends, and there is a robust shiraz on the table next to a sav blanc fresh from the refrigerator, the sav blanc has condensation within minutes - evaporation in reverse. This is in a room of consistent humidity and the only difference is the temperature of the glass.
5) Grieg needs to look carefully at the diagram to which I linked previously. Take an example where there is 60% humidity and compare temperatures of 27 ºC and 38 ºC. Consider the evaporation rates of each, and look at how wind speed synergises with temperature. There is much seriously non-zero effect of temperature on evaporation. And this is ignoring the impact of point 2.
I had many further examples and a trawl of the basic literature to help Grieg in his learning but I really cannot be bothered to waste time on him any further. If Grieg thinks that temperature does not affect evaporation the onus is on him to come up with evidence to prove it.
I don't know who is the greater putz - Grieg for his nonsense or me for trying to clean up after him.
Good points Bernard. We're all in luck - to counteract you bad luck with Firefox crashing - I thought I'd closed off comments but hadn't. I'm now doing so.
DeleteI encourage everyone to read the Maurice Newman thread. It is essentially about character assassination, first of Newman, and then of me.
ReplyDeleteI dispute this. Anyway, let's get on with the science. No politics; no character assassination. Let's revisit what seems to be your central claim. You argue:
I never said that GHGs don't cause warming. I said that the assumption that GHG drives T drives climate is fallacious.
This is self-contradicting. If CO2 can drive T, it can change the climate. And this is what the evidence suggests. CO2 appears to be a primary driver of Cenozoic climate. From Hansen & Sato (2012):
CO2 is the principal forcing that caused the slow Cenozoic climate trends. The total amount of CO2 in surface carbon reservoirs (atmosphere, ocean, soil, biosphere) changes over millions of years due to imbalance of the volcanic source and weathering sink, and changes of the amount of carbon buried in organic matter. CO2 is also a principal factor in the short-term climate oscillations that are so apparent in parts (b) and (c) of Fig. 1. However, in these glacial-interglacial oscillations atmospheric CO2 operates as a feedback: total CO2 in the surface reservoirs changes little on these shorter time scales, but the distribution of CO2 among the surface reservoirs changes as climate changes. As the ocean warms, for example, it releases CO2 to the atmosphere, providing an amplifying climate feedback that causes further warming.
The fact that CO2 is the dominant cause of long-term Cenozoic climate trends is obvious Earth's energy budget. Redistribution of energy in the climate system via changes of atmosphere or ocean dynamics cannot cause such huge climate change. Instead a substantial global climate forcing is required. The climate forcing must be due to a change of energy coming into the planet or changes within the atmosphere or on the surface that alter the planet's energy budget.
Solar luminosity is increasing on long time scales, as our sun is at an early stage of solar evolution, "burning" hydrogen, forming helium by nuclear fusion, slowly getting brighter. The sun's brightness increased steadily through the Cenozoic, by about 0.4 percent according to solar physics models (Sackmann et al., 1993). Because Earth absorbs about 240 W/m2 of solar energy, the 0.4 percent increase is a forcing of about 1 W/m2. This small linear increase of forcing, by itself, would have caused a modest global warming through the Cenozoic Era.
Continent locations affect Earth's energy balance, as ocean and continent albedos differ. However, most continents were near their present latitudes by the early Cenozoic (Blakey, 2008; Fig. S9 of Hansen et al., 2008). Cloud and atmosphere shielding limit the effect of surface albedo change (Hansen et al., 2005), so this surface climate forcing did not exceed about 1 W/m2.
In contrast, atmospheric CO2 during the Cenozoic changed from about 1000 ppm in the early Cenozoic (Beerling and Royer, 2011) to as small as 170 ppm during recent ice ages (Luthi et al., 2008). The resulting climate forcing, which can be computed accurately for this CO2 range using formulae in Table 1 of Hansen et al. (2000), exceeds 10 W/m2. CO2 was clearly the dominant climate forcing in the Cenozoic.
Where are the fallacies in this?
If you cannot find a fallacy in this then your assertion is mistaken.
Moving on to hyperthermals, you referenced Hansen et al. (2013) where we find this:
DeleteSuperimposed on the long-term trends are occasional global warming spikes, ‘hyperthermals’, most prominently the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) at approximately 56 Myr BP [12] and the Mid-Eocene Climatic Optimum at approximately 42 Myr BP [13], coincident with large temporary increases of atmospheric CO2. The most studied hyperthermal, the PETM, caused global warming of at least 5°C coincident with injection of a likely 4000–7000 Gt of isotopically light carbon into the atmosphere and ocean [14]. The size of the carbon injection is estimated from changes in the stable carbon isotope ratio 13C/12C in sediments and from ocean acidification implied by changes in the ocean depth below which carbonate dissolution occurred.
Here we have evidence of CO2-forced hyperthermals punctuating long-term climate trends also strongly influenced by CO2. So CO2 is apparently capable of influencing T on geological and millennial timescales.
Which brings us to the present.
I dispute this
DeleteReally? At the head of the thread entitled "Maurice Newman: A Self-Portrait of an Utter Nutter Science Denier ", Sou writes:
In the comments below there is a lot of nonsense being posted by Greig, who rejects the greenhouse effect among other things. He claims to understand science but he doesn't know the first thing about geology or climate. His comments are unadulterated pseudo-science at best. Just as Maurice Newman did a self-portrait of himself as a science denier, Greig has done the same.
I am surprised that Sou did not entitle this thread "Greig's Utter Nutter Denialist Thread". Anyhow, I live in hope that persistent labelling and unsubstantiated invective which cluttered the other thread will cease.
If CO2 can drive T, it can change the climate. And this is what the evidence suggests.
Obviously the evidence *suggests* this. But my point is that we do not *observe* this in the paleoclimate record. We always see
climate/process > T > GHG feedback
And further, the initial processes e.g. continental land mass movement ocean currents, vulcanism, etc dominate the climate change outcome. In the case of the Cenozoic hyperthermals there is a process that apparently causes a very large outgassing of light carbon, which then creates a greenhouse feedback. But how much of that process that caused the outgassing is impacting on temperature/climate. Until we know what that whole process is, we cannot discern any meaningful data correlating GHG feedback with global temperature.
CO2 was clearly the dominant climate forcing in the Cenozoic.
I agree with everything in your quote except for the above last sentence. It should read, "The processes that caused changes in atmospheric CO2 were clearly the dominant climate forcing in the Cenozoic".
This is why I maintain that the assumption that greenhouse theory is based on the process GHG > T > climate is fallacious. It simply isn't what we observe. And this is important because it means we cannot simply use paleoclimate observations to quantify feedback processes and so predict how GHG forcing will impact temperature in the future - the data is fundamentally polluted by unquantified non-GHG processes.
GHG forcing does the heavy lifting, Greig. Whether it came from a volcano, a clathrate or permafrost melt forced by orbital dynamics makes absolutely no difference to the climate forcing it produces. GHG forcing shaped the Cenozoic. GHG forcing creates hyperthermals. GHG forcing is the problem today.
DeleteYour attempt to create a strawman out of initial triggers isn't ever going to work, so you might as well stop it now.
But just this once, for fun, let's take your argument at face value. *We* are the trigger causing the current rapid GHG increase. *We* stand in for volcanism or orbital forcing. *We* are the problem now.
Can you see why your strawman isn't going to do you any good?
BBD, you are still not getting it.
DeleteI am not saying GHG forcing is trivial. I am saying we cannot simply use paleoclimate observations to quantify feedback processes and so predict how GHG forcing will impact temperature in the future - the data is fundamentally polluted by unquantified non-GHG processes. Even if GHGs "do the heavy lifting", you cannot simply ignore the other climate change processes.
In the case of your strawman argument, you are correct in identifying that we face a very different scenario today than we have in the past, since humans are the trigger. That is precisely the reason why we must be cautious in drawing analogies between past warming events and the current one.
I am saying we cannot simply use paleoclimate observations to quantify feedback processes and so predict how GHG forcing will impact temperature in the future - the data is fundamentally polluted by unquantified non-GHG processes.
DeleteI dispute this. Reference? You are arguing from assertion and you are mistaken. It would help if you read the references I post up. For example, from Hansen & Sato (2012). Please read the final paragraph of the quote carefully (I have had to split this comment because it exceeds the 4096 character limit here):
3.2 Fast-feedback climate sensitivity
Fast-feedback climate sensitivity can be determined precisely from paleoclimate data for recent glacial-interglacial climate oscillations. This is possible because we can readily find times when Earth was in quasi-equilibrium with its 'boundary forcings'. Boundary forcings are factors that affect the planet's energy balance, such as solar irradiance, continental locations, ice sheet distribution, and atmospheric amount of long-lived GHGs (CO2, CH4 and N2O).
Quasi-equilibrium means Earth is in radiation balance with space within a small fraction of 1 W/m2. For example, the mean planetary energy imbalance was small averaged over several millennia of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, which peaked about 20,000 years ago) or averaged over the Holocene (prior to the time of large human-made changes). This assertion is proven by considering the contrary: a sustained imbalance of 1 W/m2 would have melted all ice on Earth or changed ocean temperature a large amount, neither of which occurred.
The altered boundary conditions that maintained the climate change between these two periods had to be changes on Earth's surface and changes of long-lived atmospheric constituents, because the incoming solar energy does not change much in 20,000 years. Changes of long-lived GHGs are known accurately for the past 800,000 years from Antarctic ice core data (Luthi et al., 2008; Loulergue et al., 2008). Climate forcings due to GHG and surface albedo changes between the LGM and Holocene were approximately 3 and 3.5 W/m2, respectively, with largest uncertainty (±1 W/m2) in the surface change (ice sheet area, vegetation distribution, shoreline movement) due to uncertainty in ice sheet sizes (Hansen et al., 1984; Hewitt and Mitchell, 1997).
Global mean temperature change between the LGM and Holocene has been estimated from paleo temperature data and from climate models constrained by paleo data. Shakun and Carlson (2010) obtain a data-based estimate of 4.9°C for the difference between the Altithermal (peak Holocene warmth, prior to the past century) and peak LGM conditions. They suggest that this estimate may be on the low side, mainly because they lack data in some regions where large temperature change is likely, but their record is affected by LGM cooling of 17°C on Greenland. A comprehensive multi-model study of Schneider von Deimling et al. (2006) finds a temperature difference of 5.8 ± 1.4°C between LGM and the Holocene, with this result including the effect of a prescribed LGM aerosol forcing of ‒1.2 W/m2. The appropriate temperature difference for our purposes is between average Holocene conditions and LGM conditions averaged over several millennia. We take 5 ± 1°C as our best estimate. Although the estimated uncertainty is necessarily partly subjective, we believe it is a generous (large) estimate for 1σ uncertainty.
Hansen & Sato (2012) cont.
DeleteThe empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity that we infer from the LGM-Holocene comparison is thus 5°C/6.5 W/m2 ~ ¾ ± ¼ °C per W/m2 or 3 ± 1°C for doubled CO2. The fact that ice sheet and GHG boundary conditions are actually slow climate feedbacks is irrelevant for the purpose of evaluating the fast-feedback climate sensitivity.
This empirical climate sensitivity incorporates all fast response feedbacks in the real-world climate system, including changes of water vapor, clouds, aerosols, aerosol effects on clouds, and sea ice. In contrast to climate models, which can only approximate the physical processes and may exclude important processes, the empirical result includes all processes that exist in the real world – and the physics is exact.
BBD,
DeleteI dispute this. Reference?
You are assuming again that all of the science on climate change is settled, and that all matters have been resolved, and all that is required is to cover off with a literature search. Where we differ is that I don't believe (and my general reading, including Paltridge leads me to conclude) that climate science has adequately calculated climate sensitivity, and that all previously devised studies are inherently flawed.
In the case of from Hansen & Sato (2012) is flawed because, the calculations of climate forcing and feedbacks occur over millennia and
The altered boundary conditions that maintained the climate change between these two periods had to be changes on Earth's surface and changes of long-lived atmospheric constituents
The data that would interest us regarding AGW is what would apply to a massive increase in GHGs over the period of only decades/centuries, noting that Earth surface changes (eg changes in albedo) will lag considerably. eg due to latent heat of melting the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps.
There simply isn't anything in the paleoclimate records that matches the situation, and that is why I cannot reference the assertion.
The outcome of this is not that climate sensitivity is necessarily low, it may not be. I am merely pointing out that there is no good reason for us to accept the consensus of 3degC per doubling, and this uncertainty should be factored into policy.
You are assuming again that all of the science on climate change is settled
DeleteNo, I'm not. You made this up.
The data that would interest us regarding AGW is what would apply to a massive increase in GHGs over the period of only decades/centuries
So a substantial and sustained increase in GHG forcing cannot be discussed because it has no precedent? Although paleoclimate evidence shows that when there were substantial and sustained increases in GHG in the past, hyperthermals resulted.
As for speed of emission, you might find Wright & Schaller (2013) interesting. They present evidence that the GHG flux was instantaneous - just 13 years.
If you are interested in the science and the debate then look at the alternative , slow-release hypothesis of Cui et al. (2011).
Both hypotheses are compatible with the well-supported argument that GHG forcing caused the PETM hyperthermal. Neither provides any comfort for those arguing that a very rapid increase in GHG forcing will not result in a hyperthermal.
BBD, these studies reveal that the chronology of the PETM event (both GHG concentration and temperature timescale) remain unknown. So based on the uncertainties that you acknowledge above, that the Cenozoic hyperthermals reveal nothing accurate about the climate sensitivity and the rate of warming in near future (21st century) caused by AGW.
DeleteFor interested readers, here's Cui et al. (2011) in full and a SciAm article about it written by co-author Lee Kump.
DeleteFor a quick overview of the alternative hypothesis, see the press release for Wright & Schaller.
BBD, these studies reveal that the chronology of the PETM event (both GHG concentration and temperature timescale) remain unknown.
DeleteBoth hypotheses are compatible with the well-supported argument that GHG forcing caused the PETM hyperthermal. Neither provides any comfort for those arguing that a very rapid increase in GHG forcing will not result in a hyperthermal.
BBD Neither provides any comfort for those arguing that a very rapid increase in GHG forcing will not result in a hyperthermal.
DeleteAgain, this is only a qualitative argument. That GHGs cause warming is not contentious, the big issue for policy makers is the rate of warming over time (eg during the 21st century). Your references do not reveal that information.
Why don't you just admit that we don't really know (and can't really know from the paleoclimate record) what the rate of warming will be over the next century. Why not acknowledge that?
Because agnosia does not trump consilience of evidence.
DeleteBecause low climate sensitivity is incompatible with paleoclimate behaviour on all time-scales from ~50Ma of gradual Cenozoic cooling, to hyperthermals and glacial terminations under orbital forcing.
You are left with a simple assertion: "I reject the scientific consensus arising from the consilience of evidence but I can't back this up".
Why would anyone accept this as "consilience of evidence" of climate sensitivity applying to 21st century AGW, when the circumstance of "time-scales from ~50Ma of gradual Cenozoic cooling, to hyperthermals and glacial terminations under orbital forcing" are not even approximate analogues of AGW?
DeleteNote: Wright & Schaller (2013) in their introduction acknowledge the debatable issue of whether PETM is a suitable analogue for current warming.
Since this is going nowhere and neither of us are wiling to give ground, perhaps now is the time to agree to disagree? Although that would require you to acknowledge that not all aspect of climate science are fully resolved, and there is still room for questioning and debate on the basis of policy.
Although that would require you to acknowledge that not all aspect of climate science are fully resolved
DeleteGreig - it's time you stopped your false "accusation by insinuation". Just because you don't understand the science well enough (or at all from what I've seen) to know the difference between science that is accepted as "settled" to all intents and purposes and aspects that are still the subject of active research, does not mean that others do not.
In regard to policy, there will often be disagreement in regard to which actions are preferred, but not always. And there is no basis for disagreement of the fact that whatever that policy may be, it has to result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. No reasonable informed person would disagree with that notion.
As others have pointed out, your denialist tactics are old, and easily recognised. They are obvious to any reader who's ever read a creationist "debate" or a climate "debate". You didn't invent them, they've been used for decades by people just like yourself. They might work in the circles you usually move in, but they don't work here.
Sou writes:
Deleteyou don't understand the science well enough (or at all from what I've seen)
your denialist tactics are old, and easily recognised. etc
As advised, I will not pay any attention to posts that persist in name-calling and abuse.
A statement of fact isn't name-calling. Don't be so precious.
DeleteBBD, this entire thread (and it's predecessor) would make a good research study of denier techniques.
DeleteFor example just in this tiny portion, Greig ignored the substance of what I wrote - his false "accusation by insinuation" that he has done on more than one occasion.
Instead he employed the "tone troll" technique. He reverted to tone trolling to distract readers' attention from the fact that he makes things up and twists what people write, beyond recognition.
If anyone were so inclined, they could list all the techniques that Greig has employed here at HotWhopper, and they'd probably have covered a fair proportion of Duane Gish's tactics.
Greig wrote: I am surprised that Sou did not entitle this thread "Greig's Utter Nutter Denialist Thread".
DeleteIt would have been an apt description in retrospect. I'll think about it. I'm also thinking about whether to amend the title to indicate that this thread is filled with excellent examples of denier techniques. I could have anticipated either - eg used your suggestion in anticipation, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt just in case.
The doubt has diminished to zero.
Yup, and I'm about out of patience with Greig, who simply ignores or twists every explanation provided for his serial incomprehensions, misrepresentations and errors.
DeleteIt is clearly established that he has no basic knowledge of physical climatology, radiative physics, paleoclimatology or climate modelling. He mixes the usual grab-bag of stupid denier memes with frantic googling and throws up whatever he can find - obviously unread - in a reactive pretence at learning that fools exactly nobody, staring with me. The cherry on the cake is that he then attempts to condescend. Bad idea, that.
So, TL-DR: an unpleasant combination of idiocy and bad faith. Soon time to pull the plug on this one, IMO.
Greig- I've followed your posts, and you unreferenced assertions of fact or vague hand waving in the general direction of the IPCC do not impress me.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk about scientific observations not matching modeling for example, you never seem to get to the point of "how close is good enough". For example it's easy enough to see that the ensemble mean of CMIP5 is about 0.0125 C high over 2013, while is about about 0.02 low for 1998. Then there's the question of what ensemble means are used for vs individual model runs, and what we're trying to do with climate models in the first place. I see you fluffing by all these issues with rhetoric.
On the Newman point- let me be clear what game is being played. Newman citing Lindzen and one other isn't about actually trying to wade in and determine the truth. It's about what politicians and lawyers call plausible deniability. So long as Newman has any source who is a scientist, he's got cover. He only needs one. That's the world view here. It's the kind of world view that says "I got one lawyer to write an opinion that water-boarding isn't torture...therefor I'm protected from prosecution under the Geneva Convention".
As for "pauses"
1) Pauses are expected and can be found lots of times in the recent past. Even if there were a pause in Global Mean Surface Temperatures....so what? Surely you've seen this chart:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator_2012_1024.gif
2) Energy going into the ocean has no hint of any pause whatsoever.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index.html
And the of course, depending on when you pick your starting point- 1998 or not you get a pause or not. Cherry picking start dates isn't kosher for those of use who wrangle data for a living. Or the question of how long a period you need to show a "pause" is real and not just noisy weather.
And finally the question of whether we just missed a lot of heat up north comes up and Cowtan and Way 2013 makes a fine start at making the case that when you count that missing heat, even the short term appearance to fallible human eyeballs trend from 1998 disappears, giving a 0.12 C/decade increase...just a little low.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract
Of course, then there's the question of understanding how "pauses" might occur.
You can go back to Charney's 1979 report to see that heat can hide in the ocean for a while (pp8-10) http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf
And look at contemporary Analyses from Foster and Rahmstorf, Kosaka and Xie among others to note that such variations are linked to ENSO by and large.... which is quasi cyclic and hence no comfort to anyone. (My earliest reference to the long term averaging out of ENSO comes from Crowley (2000), but I'm sure there are more).
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
Science 14 July 2000:
Vol. 289 no. 5477 pp. 270-277
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5477.270
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years
and of course you can see a nuanced discussion of all this over at RealClimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/the-global-temperature-jigsaw/
You can go back to Charney's 1979 report to see that heat can hide in the ocean for a while
DeleteGreat point. And every "sceptic" will tell you that "the scientists" did not foresee "the hiatus" (that is actually a slowdown in the rate of surface warming). It's worth quoting Charney in full when that meme comes up. There is an online book version which is very easy to reference:
One of the major uncertainties has to do with the transfer of the increased heat into the oceans. It is well known that the oceans are a thermal regulator, warming the air in winter and cooling it in summer. The standard assumption has been that, while heat is transferred rapidly into a relatively thin, well-mixed surface layer of the ocean (averaging about 70 m in depth), the transfer into the deeper waters is so slow that the atmospheric temperature reaches effective equilibrium with the mixed layer in a decade or so. It seems to us quite possible that the capacity of the deeper oceans to absorb heat has been seriously underestimated, especially that of the intermediate waters of the subtropical gyres lying below the mixed layer and above the main thermocline. If this is so, warming will proceed at a slower rate until these intermediate waters are brought to a temperature at which they can no longer absorb heat.
Our estimates of the rates of vertical exchange of mass between the mixed and intermediate layers and the volumes of water involved give a delay of the order of decades in the time at which thermal equilibrium will be reached. This delay implies that the actual warming at any given time will be appreciably less than that calculated on the assumption that thermal equilibrium is reached quickly. One consequence may be that perceptible temperature changes may not become apparent nearly so soon as has been anticipated. We may not be given a warning until the CO2 loading is such that an appreciable climate change is inevitable. The equilibrium warming will eventually occur; it will merely have been postponed.
So BBD, you can't justify your silly claim about the models operating on multi-decadal timescales, so you demand that I do your research for you. And I am the one who is lazy? ROTFL.
ReplyDeleteA bit of background from Ed Hawkins.
And where is your citations for your theories on "low solar activity and possibly increased negative aerosol" - first you have to demonstrate the veracity of those claims before you can leap to conclusions about "sensitivity to radiative perturbation".
Low solar activity.
Aerosols from tropical volcanism, Vernier et al. (2011) Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade
Again you make it clear that you have no interest in real climate science, and are just making stuff up as you are going along to satisfy your preconceived bias.
Again I dispute this.
Greig, in the previous thread you raised the "pause" and when you had the basics of statistical analysis pointed out to you, you responded with this:
ReplyDeleteI do not argue the finer points of statistical analysis, I am not a statistician. Nor am I an exprt in mathematical cliate modelling. Instead I rely on experts, and in this matter I will refer you to the IPCC, who have acknowledged the warming pause and its failure to match climate models, stating: "This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error. "
So suggest you take up the question of arseholes or ignorance with the IPCC.
First of all, I would suggest that if you don't understand the "finer points" of statistical analysis (which, btw, my explanation was not - it's one of the basic principles of statistical analysis) then you don't run around quoting false concepts like the "pause" that are based on misuse of the concept of statistical certainty. If you do want to misuse such concepts, expect to have your ignorance pointed out to you.
Secondly, don't blame the IPCC for this erroneous concept of "the pause" : this concept was raised and promoted exclusively by deniers, with a deliberate and mendacious misuse of the basic theory of statistical significance. The IPCC is merely replying to their lies and bullshit. Primary proponents of "the pause" include Monckton (a birther and Agenda 21 conspiracy theorist who claims to have a cure for HIV) and Watts, through his stupid poster "justthefacts," who puts updated "pause"-related information on WUWT every month. So don't pretend it's the IPCC who are responsible for this malicious little piece of idiocy.
But getting to your IPCC reference, you quote them as saying
could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.
which you clearly don't understand. Their first point (a) is a reference to the "finer points" of statistical analysis (actually "basic principles") that you don't understand. i.e. they are suggesting that the "pause" is a natural consequence of random error.
In my opinion the big mistake the science community have made in response to the deniers bleating about the "Pause" is to treat it as anything except a statistical question. The denialist ranting about the "pause" is based entirely on statistical analysis of a single data series, and everyone knows that statistical analysis of a data series has no relationship to the physical factors driving that series. So instead of trying to explain patiently to the flying monkeys what the sources of internal climate variability are, scientists should just firmly and politely say "No. you can't infer anything about a physical system from a data series that is too short to have any power. Your pause is a statistical artifact and nothing more."
If you still don't understand this, look around you at all the other data series you accept show a trend (e.g. economic growth over short time periods) because you know that statistical significance cannot be tested in short series. Why should temperature be special?
In my opinion the big mistake the science community have made in response to the deniers bleating about the "Pause" is to treat it as anything except a statistical question. The denialist ranting about the "pause" is based entirely on statistical analysis of a single data series, and everyone knows that statistical analysis of a data series has no relationship to the physical factors driving that series. So instead of trying to explain patiently to the flying monkeys what the sources of internal climate variability are, scientists should just firmly and politely say "No. you can't infer anything about a physical system from a data series that is too short to have any power. Your pause is a statistical artifact and nothing more."
DeleteSpot on Captain Flashheart.
I had a tanty about this a few months ago (on Deltoid or Rabbet Run, I think) and I think it was BBD who also said as much at the same time. Too many scientists have earnestly responded by going straight into issues such as differential partitioning into sinks such as the ocean, without reinforcing the fact that such differential movement of heat is what is responsible for the year-to-year noise in the temperature signal in the first place. That way lies only miring and despair because this is exactly what the denialists want to see - it's fodder for more of their straw men claims; a tar baby from which it can be next to impossible to extricate any meaningful rebuttal to the original point.
There is no "hiatus", not in any real sense. It's merely a statistical blip in the surface temperature record, and it's a completely absent phenomenon in the total heat accumulation of the planet that results from the action of excess 'greenhouse' gas. Skeptical Science's escalator illustrates this - and it takes sheer statistical innumeracy or deliberate ideology to avoid it.
Once more, in case any of the Newman-category nutters aren't understanding the point.
I agree. I think it's interesting to examine the reasons why, eg. the temperature series shows an AR(1) auto-regression - why does global temperature have memory? - and those differential heat movement processes might explain that, but that doesn't mean we should get caught out trying to explain a cheap gotcha as if it were a real thing.
DeleteIt's interesting to note that experts and laypeople alike fall for this mistake of thinking that every little random shift in data must have some explanation. If you're building a sophisticated model you want to catch as much of that variation as possible, but if you're looking at a simple aggregate measure statistically - as "justthefacts" does with his tedious posts at WUWT - then to do so is a mistake. If you model an aggregate measure with a simple straight line, you can only talk about it based on p-values, R-squareds and slopes. And this means you can't talk about significance in short sub-sections of the series, unless you have a good prior reason for fixing piecewise regressions. Which there isn't.
It's really frustrating to see experts fall for this trap.
Another way of framing the point that Grieg is so determined to avoid:
Deletehttp://www.skepticalscience.com/trend_and_variation.html
Erm, not Greig per se, but the obfuscators of whom Grieg is but one.
DeleteBernard and Flashheart,
DeleteWhilst you may be completely correct, and the so-called warming pause is just a statistical anomaly, I remind you again of the IPCC statement:
could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error.
So are you saying the IPCC are wrong about (b) and (c)? And what makes you so sure these reasons should be eliminated from our thinking?
Bernard and I both just discussed b and c, greig. You obviously don't understand the difference between a physical model and a statistical analysis. You can use b and c to explain a but that doesn't make the pause true or relevant to the long term trend.
DeleteWhat is going to happen if you focus on the pause is this weird scenario where every year continues to be hotter than the recent average and the long term trend doesn't change but deniialists continue to believe the earth isn't warming. This is an important point, please indicate whether you understand this.
An even weirder possibility is that in a year or two El Niño returns, just after the 1998 record passes beyond the 17 year "pause" window that deniialists love. Then there will be a strange situation of a statistically significant 17 year trend and a non-significant 20 year trend. Do you understand how this can happen?
You are being misled by the denialist sites you read, and you don't understand the ipcc sentence you quote. Additionally, the ipcc sentence is (as Bernard and I also discussed above) not the best way to approach the stats claim being made. Finally, of course, you are spending a lot of time telling bad the ipcc is wrong about thermal physics, so why should I assume you agree with it on this topic?
Please respond accurately and clearly to the technical points raised, as I have done, indicating which parts you don't understand.
Grieg, you are trying to make from the IPCC's statement:
Delete"This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error."
something that it is not saying.
The various options are listed by the IPCC for the sake of scientific completeness. This is not to say that they invalidate the models, or the physics on which the models are based.
Take options (b) and (c) for example, which are to some extent congruent. If there is "missing or incorrect radiative forcing" or there is a "model response error", this does not mean that the underlying trajectory of temperature response is wrong - it simply means that there is a limit to the resolution of response on short spans of time given the known variable on which the scientific inferences are curently based.
The IPCC includes these possibilities because they are thorough, and understand that not all is yet known about climate. The low hanging fruit in the physics have all been plucked: the major factors driving the current change are identified and understood. There is rom for refinement but these will not change the fundamental warming trajectory that is in place.
If the statement had been made by an oncologist, and had been:
"This difference between estimated and observed time-to-death could be caused by some combination of (a) internal physiological variability, (b) missing or incorrect comorbidities, and (c) model response error."
it would not have invalidated the prediction that the patient would die in the near future from his stage 4 mesothelioma.
I fact just a few weeks ago an 'error' in the model response was identified and corrected for. From the paper's conclusion:
"Taking the available observations at face value implies a most likely climate sensitivity of about 4 °C, with a lower limit of about 3 °C. Indeed, all 15 of the GCMs with ECS below 3.0 °C have an LTMI [lower-tropospheric mixing index] below the bottom of the observational range."
The thing to note here is that the correction, if corroborated, pushes the final trajectory away from the case that you're trying to claim by assertion and not from evidence, toward the upper end of the IPCC's earlier assessment. This reflects in part the fact that the IPCC's previous conclusions were based on the conservative nature of some of the participating countries - as the science progresses the chances are that this conservatism will be balanced by more and more of the data... and that the original, fundamental physics will be reinforced rather than overturned by some unforeseen elephant in the room. Rather, the elephant has already been spotted and it's simply that the undergrowth is being cleared to reveal just how big it is.
You're welcome to continue with your claim that the 'real' elephant has not yet been idenitified, but without indicating where it's been hiding (why the physics elucidated to date is trumped by something else) your asserions will only attract impatience, annoyance, and ultimately derision from those who understand the fallacious nature of your arguments.
"...known variables...
Delete"...room..."
"In fact..."
etc...
A few points on the Arrival of Greig.
ReplyDelete1. Greig, if you think that pointing out how stupid Newman is based on his stated opinions is "character assassination," perhaps you should be asking yourself whether you are wise to be holding the same stated opinions.
2. Pointing out that someone is wrong is not character assassination. If I point out that a creationist is wrong about their creationist theories, then I'm not assassinating their character, I'm just pointing out that they're wrong. In the adult world this is considered to be a thing called "debate."
3. This is for Sou: sou, the advent of threads like this at Deltoid was the first sign that Deltoid was being wrecked by trolls. Sometime soon after these threads starting appearing at Deltoid (i.e. about a year after Lambert started creating threads specifically for excessive commenters like Greig) that blog went down the toilet, and became just a series of open threads for trollbait.
I really don't want to see this blog go the way of Deltoid but it is a common tactic of denialist trolls in dealing with places like Deltoid and Hotwhopper. Their purpose is not to debate the science but to make the threads so toxic and complicated that no one reads or comments. They target places like Deltoid because those blogs, like hotwhopper, specialize in criticizing and lampooning the arseholes in the denialosphere. You've recently come to the attention of the flying monkeys, and this tactic is going to be repeated a lot here in the coming months.
Obviously it's not my blog but I would like to suggest that you engage in more proactive management of people like Greig, to ensure that you don't go through a Deltoid collapse. For starters, requiring that he actually answer questions and rebuttals before further posts are accepted, or if you're too busy to babysit people like Greig, then - as happens at Crooked Timber - putting a limit on the number of comments people like Greig can have in one day or one thread. I think Quiggin does this with Jack Strocchi, whose comments can be intelligent and reasoned but are almost always wrong, and who spams Quiggin's comment threads if allowed to.
Just looking at the last Newman thread, for example, it was almost all comments by Greig and BBD and you. This is the first sign of the Deltoid collapse - that people who aren't interested in heavy stoush stop commenting. If every thread turns out like that, they will stop reading (as I did with Deltoid). I don't think you need to censor anyone but getting them to walk away from the keyboard might open the space for others to comment a little more. This, and/or requiring them to engage with rebuttals before allowing continued commenting, would make the debate have more heat and less light [or have I got that aphorism the wrong way round?]
Of course, it's your blog and your rules! Just my opinion ...
"This is for Sou: sou, the advent of threads like this at Deltoid was the first sign that Deltoid was being wrecked by trolls. Sometime soon after these threads starting appearing at Deltoid (i.e. about a year after Lambert started creating threads specifically for excessive commenters like Greig) that blog went down the toilet, and became just a series of open threads for trollbait. "
DeleteAbsolutely spot on. I have no problem with Tim taking a sabbatical but Deltoid has become an embarrassment. By creating those threads, Tim gives a platform to garden variety nutters which they otherwise would not have.
What annoys me even more is that people well educated in climate science spend hours and hours debating with those cranks at a forum which I would imagine would only be read by people who are already familiar with the issues.
What a waste - when they could be more usefully employed debunking cranks at more public forums like newspapers and the online science magazines which are heavily trolled.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteNoticing this quote from Grieg
ReplyDelete"I do not argue the finer points of statistical analysis, I am not a statistician. Nor am I an exprt in mathematical cliate modelling. Instead I rely on experts, and in this matter I will refer you to the IPCC, who have acknowledged the warming pause and its failure to match climate models, stating: "This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing, and (c) model response error. "
I thought I'd add one more point: If you don't know enough statistics and enough about modeling to have a clue what is being talked about, then you are in no position to know whether the quote you pick from a summary text reflects the full meaning, or whether you inadvertently, (or more likely deliberately) chosen something that you think you agree with to wave about.
This is called lawyering: In the courtroom the lawyers can cherrypick and quote mine to their heart's content. They can call expert witnesses and not understand a word they say. They have a sworn duty to advocate for their side of the case, even if they know their side is wrong or guilty as hades.
Since you've admitted you don't have the expertise to check anything, and you rely on what you or others pick from what the experts say- you're simply lawyering- first yourself and then attempt to lawyer everyone else.
Science works differently. Good peer review chucks out papers that ignore prior, contrary references for example....it's the duty of the author to balance being comprehensive and appropriately concise. Avoiding stuff, pal review is the territories of the deniers, and that kind of chicanery just got a whole journal shut down.
What I'm saying in a roundabout way, was what you objected to Sou's implication before-and that your credentials are better than hers...by your own admission you don't know enough. If you don't know enough about science and statistics to check that part of things, if you can only rely on experts....you have no business forming an opinion, anymore than you have forming an opinion about the cancer diagnosis someone near to you received and you've never had Jr. high biology. You have no ability to assess expert opinions because you don't have the base knowledge level. Without that, you have even less business sharing your opinion about surrogates of surrogates and proxies of proxies with the world.
It is in my view a character flaw characteristic of many people who hold the same positions you do for the same reasons. And I have no doubt that what Captain Flashheart has said is true: You are simply a test probe to see if this blog can be taken down. If you enjoy playing commando, I think you'll find that Sou has more smarts and more than enough backbone than to fall for any false notions of fairness to you.
Sou's monitoring of Captain Tony and his internally inconsistent climate buckaneers is a valuable service to those of us who need to know what he's up to, but don't have the patience or time to monitor him ourselves. There are dozens of real topics in climate science to talk about without everyone wasting their time as if everyone of Watt's brain farts should be taken as seriously as a Trenberth publication in Science or Nature.
OK, read the thread as asked. Two words: Gish Gallop.
ReplyDeleteI saw Greig fail to address key points by BBD and Sou (for example, BBD's point about hyperthermals), yet he continued to add more arguments...some contradicting each other. Classic Gish Gallop.
Grieg is clearly an attack dog sock puppet associated with the denialist blogs. Not only is he conversant with all the denialist memes, the terminology and rhetorical methods (gish gallop etc), also the faux "I will defer to the experts", then selectively misquoting these same experts and twisting what they are actually saying. The self contradiction, sometimes in the same sentence, it's all there, standard denialist claptrap.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the suggestion earlier. The best way to avoid this sort of individual taking over the discussion is to force them to answer the specific points raised before allowing them to raise another issue. It may take a bit more work, but nowhere near the work involved with trying to address the multiple issues raised as the discussion spirals out of control.
As soon as the troll attempts to change the subject, warn them to address the specific issue they raised (and answered to everybody's satisfaction) otherwise any subsequent comments will be deleted. This will rapidly put a stop to any thread hijacking.
"Obviously it's not my blog but I would like to suggest that you engage in more proactive management of people like Greig, to ensure that you don't go through a Deltoid collapse. For starters, requiring that he actually answer questions and rebuttals before further posts are accepted,"
ReplyDeleteThis is the only way to deal with the Gish Gallop but it also requires support from more regular commentators who must resist the urge to pile on with their own points in order to reinforce the "no further posts until point x has been addressed" rule. Or acceptance that their posts would also be moderated away until Greig, or other Gish Galloper has responded or gone away.
"This is the only way to deal with the Gish Gallop but it also requires support from more regular commentators who must resist the urge to pile on with their own points in order to reinforce the "no further posts until point x has been addressed" rule."
ReplyDeleteGood point Quiet Waters. I try to hold back these days when BBD, Lotharsson and others hammer away at some of the more serious denialists around the traps, especially when I'm late to the party myself, because I noticed a few years ago that many of those same denialists were getting away with my repeated attempts to press them on specific points by shifting to other conversations. Deltoid is littered with my repeated linkings-back to some of those multiple question series with which I liked to hound the carpet bombers, and I think that I only ever got one decent response - from Ray, who didn't actually address anything directly climatological but who took a good shot at listing his impression of the biggest threats to biodiversity and the biosphere (of course, he could have G00gled that...).
On the matter of Deltoid's decent, I think that the problem wasn't so much that Tim Lambert gave a voice to the denialists per se but that he was swamped by them because of Deltoid's success, at a time when he had other events occurring in his life and probably following on some serious burning-out. I think that Deltoid's impact would have been sustained much longer if Tim had had a couple of assistant moderators - I know that it's always hard to share the reins, but in Deltoid's case I think that lightening the load would have helped maintain the momentum that it had until about the end of 2011.
And when all is said and done, I think the fight pit that it is currently operating as serves several useful functions - it keeps some of the denialati away from other sites, and it's a remarkable record of the depths to which denialism goes. It's also an interesting window into the mind of the cannon-fodder denialatus - even though Tim has been effectively away for more than two years Deltoid's previous status is still such a thorn in their sides that they can't stop from scratching the itch...
"...getting away from..."
DeleteCaptain Flashheart January 18, 2014 at 1:56 PM
Deletecheckitout January 18, 2014 at 3:54 PM
JoeJanuary 18, 2014 at 4:57 PM
DebunkerJanuary 18, 2014 at 8:59 PM
Quiet WatersJanuary 18, 2014 at 9:19 PM
None of these posts have anything to do with climate change and they are somewhat veiled (and in some cases very transparent **) vehicles for ad hominem.
** For example:
Grieg is clearly an attack dog sock puppet associated with the denialist blogs.
etc
If I were to respond to these posts, I would simply be accused of carpet bombing, or Gish Gallop or who-know-what nonsensical psychobabble bullshit you people think is important.
The hypocrisy in these posts is obvious to all. I will make no further comment to anyone attempting to bait me with abuse.
"veiled vehicles for ad hominem" - umm, no.
Delete"If I were to respond to these posts, I would simply be accused of carpet bombing, or Gish Gallop" - again, no. Gish Gallop is when you don't respond. It's when you add more topics before responding clearly to the previous one. It's exactly what you've been doing, and nothing that I've said in my previous post or this post is ad hominem.
Greig - if I were to respond
DeleteBut Greig did respond, and the comments weren't even directed to him. And the comments were very much in the spirit of this entire thread, which was only started because of Greig's gish gallop in the Maurice Newman thread.
In fact, Greig's response here is another example of a gish gallop technique. It's an attempt to distract from and diminish the content comments that he listed.
But these techniques of Greig's don't work on HotWhopper. I and readers here have been exposed to denier techniques for years. We are well aware of them. Tone trolling, distraction, moving onto another topic - thread bombing. All designed to muddy the discussion and turn it into a dogs breakfast.
BTW - I found those comments above very helpful. Thanks, guys.
Greig's comment on the other hand, is already on the list of denier tactics. Tone trolling, red herring, distraction, attempt to belittle others and diminish what they wrote.
By the way, Greig might like to look up the meaning of ad hom. It's not ad hom to point out denier techniques in action.
The main purpose of this thread is to partition out Greig's comments. A side benefit of this thread is that it provides many examples that can be used to illustrate clichéd denier techniques. Another benefit will be that it and the Maurice Newman thread will provide ample justification if i am ever forced to ban Greig from HotWhopper.
" I will make no further comment to anyone attempting to bait me with abuse."
DeleteDiddums.
Contrary to your claim upthread, this is not your thread, it is a thread to which Sou wants you confined. This is a result of your trolling of other threads, and as such this thread is an appropriate venue for the rest of us to discuss your behaviour.
Including your tone trolling...
Grieg,
ReplyDeleteI am a reader of climate blogs. I am not a scientist, nor do I have expertise in statistics.
However I can reach conclusions about many Blog posts by simply noting how the different posters conduct themselves - not least when they make manifestly false ad hominem claims, fail to respond to questions, fail to cite/provide *scientific* sources or fail to meaningfully engage with responses to their posts.
This is not an unfailing method for identifying who is providing coherent arguments based on a mature and balanced appreciation of the facts/science. But neither is it without virtue – for a very substantial number of posters on various sites never even attempt to make a substantive point, while others paint their bias very clearly.
You have now got a thread named after you. Well done! Now what you can do for me, and others like me, is to engage with those who find your argument / claims questionable.
I am convinced that if you and the other posters can patiently go through the exercise of outlining where your disagreements are - and outline for people like me the nature / points of your disagreement - the resulting discussion will do a us all a considerable service.
Those of us who 'lurk and read' are genuinely interested in these matters and I think most of us would find such an exchange of points of view very helpful indeed.
As things stand for me your posts are consistent with either (a) being exactly what you are being accused of, or, (b) hardened by experience to the point where you don’t bother with replying to counter points.
So, here is an opportunity to make your argument. Will you give it a go and write for people like me?
If Grieg does so I trust others will respond in like manner !
Anon123
Hello Anon, I really liked your post, appearing as a polite counterpoint to the off-topic invective and ad hominem from posters like Debunker. As this is my thread I want it to reflect my true nature and hopefully make it valuable to others, so it is my intention to ignore the abuse, and respond only to the issue of climate science.
DeleteCheers, Greig (yes, my real name)
Anon123, I fear you are to be sadly disappointed. Greig, (if that is indeed his real name), has shown himself to be uninterested in a rational and substantive discussion. He is only interested in sowing doubt and confusion. He is so steeped in the methodology of denial that he is beyond help. Nothing you, I or anyone can say will get through to him. Even when all summer ice in the Arctic is gone, he will still be claiming it's natural variability, or some other such nonsense. If indeed the new comments policy is implemented and he is forced to account for, and prove the gibberish he quotes, then I suspect that he will speedily depart this blog, perhaps to reappear in another sock puppet guise.
ReplyDeleteYes Debunker that may indeed be the case.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Greig has explicitly said that he wants this thread "to reflect my true nature and hopefully make it valuable to others". I must, indeed I am obliged, to take him at his word.
You, based no doubt on lots of prior experience, have your doubts.
I will just have to wait and see.
It seems to me that the next move is for either Greig to state a position and ask for counter-evidence - or for someone critical of Greig to state a clear position on some key element that gets to the heart of these matters, so that Greig can reply.
May I just point out to all parties that you might find it helpful to consider the "target audience" here to be people like myself. This might slow things down a bit - but it might also take some of the "history" out of the understandably strong passions that seem to arise all too rapidly.
Indeed this could, just possibly, prove to be helpful all round.
Anon123
Anon123 writes:
DeleteIt seems to me that the next move is for either Greig to state a position
In case it is not clear because of the meandering of the discussion, this thread was started with my contention that recent warming pause has opened the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy. This contention leads directly from the IPCC which has suggested several reasons for the warming pause, including climate model inaccuracy.
The bulk of discussion with BBD has centred on the relevance of a recent study by Hanson and Sato 2012 which purports to demonstrate and quantify greenhouse forcing in the Cenozoic Era, and whether this study accurately quantifies climate sensitivity relevant to AGW in the 21st century. I suggest it does not such thing.
In the Maurice Newman thread this discussion was diverted into an intellectual exercise on possible initial processes for hyperthermal events (I suggested aridity as being a prospect for no good reason, just to make a point), and this descended into a wide-scale lampooning because (a) the idea isn't a part of mainstream climate science so (according to some) it must therefore be wrong (b) many people do not understand hydrology, and (c) certain people apparently do not understand the concept of an intellectual exercise. The condescension and abuse toward me became very loud, hence this new thread.
In case it is not clear because of the meandering of the discussion, this thread was started with my contention that recent warming pause has opened the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy.
DeleteThe discussion meanders because you do not acknowledge your errors. Your rhetorical tactic is to blither on.
You are still resistant to the facts:
"Speaking of which, and since you are still resistant to the facts, you cannot use a short period of climate behaviour to estimate either TCR or ECS. Natural variability dominates over short time-scales, so they are uninformative about long term trends. But that is what you are doing."
Re Hansen & Sato (2012)
I suggest it does not such thing.
Suggest away. Until you demonstrate errors in H&S you are simply wittering.
Somewhat against my better judgment, I'm going to reply here.
DeleteGreig stated his contention is that "the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy. This contention leads directly from the IPCC which has suggested several reasons for the warming pause, including climate model inaccuracy."
Even though your contention that models may produce excessive sensitivity is plausible, one cannot state that model inaccuracy "leads directly" to an argument for excessive sensitivity. This is because sensitivity is only one of very many aspects of model accuracy.
Don, I am not disagreeing, but curious to know what aspect of models (other than the broad concept of climate sensitivity) would be compatible with current observations.
DeleteGreig wrote:
Deletethis thread was started with my contention that recent warming pause has opened the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy.
That's not exactly true. "This thread" was started to partition out Greig's gish gallop from the rest of HotWhopper. And Greig's opening comment in "this thread" was totally and wholly a tone troll, trying to argue that pointing out errors in Maurice Newman's article equated with "character assassination".
Greig may be mixing "this thread" up with his first comment in the Maurice Newman thread, but even there he's not being accurate. This is what he wrote:
Brian Schmidt is yet another alarmist who has failed to grasp the issue fully. This isn't about whether CO2 is causing warming, everyone gets that, even Newman. What is important is whether it will cause dangerous warming in the future - it doesn't matter if its warmer in 2033, its whether it is 2 degC warmer that's what he should be putting $10,000 on (if he really genuine). Am I the only one who gets this?
So Greig wasn't arguing that "climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy". He was accusing Nobel physicist Brian Schmidt of failing to "grasp the issue fully" and asking whether global warming will be dangerous.
Going back to his "orthodoxy" sentence. If one takes the IPCC as "climate orthodoxy" then this is what he is referring to "Equilibrium climate sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C (medium confidence)" (page SPM-11 AR5).
In other words, Greig is "arguing" that ECS is less than 1.5C. He provides no plausible evidence for that. In fact his statement about "opening up the possibility" is wrong in more than one way. The IPCC statement I quoted continues with
"The lower temperature limit of the assessed likely range is thus less than the 2°C in the AR4, but the upper limit is the same. This assessment reflects improved understanding, the extended temperature record in the atmosphere and ocean, and new estimates of radiative forcing".
Those "new estimates of radiative forcing" include those by groups like Otto et al, where their analysis incorporates recent global surface temperatures, so Greig's "Pause" is already allowed for in the IPCC estimates. BTW Otto et al concluded the best estimate for ECS was 2C, Nic Lewis, who also incorporated recent temps, in his analysis was similar.
If Greig is "curious to know what aspect of models (other than the broad concept of climate sensitivity) would be compatible with current observations." he could do a lot worse than, instead of talking too much, he did some listening and reading. He could read up about climate models - and here - and learn more about climate sensitivity.
BTW Brian Schmidt accepts climate science and the comment referred to was reflecting climate science as a whole.
DeleteSo when Greig accused Brian Schmidt of "not grasping the issue fully" it amounts to Greig saying "(climate) scientists don't know nuffin'" and "climate science is a hoax".
It was just another silly and transparent denier tactic. Greig must have just about exhausted his supply of denier memes, but just when you think he has run out - he recycles ones he's already used.
By the way, this comment of Greig's:
Delete"Don, I am not disagreeing, but curious to know what aspect of models (other than the broad concept of climate sensitivity) would be compatible with current observations."
...is a good example of "concern trolling". On it's own it's fine and doesn't signify anything. In the context of all the other comments by Greig, it's quite clear that it's a version of:
"what you write has a lot of merit, but..." or "I agree with what you say, but..." and the "but" is intended to lead readers to question the main contention.
A concern troll takes the general form: "I agree with what you say but I just have one little niggling concern" - which is how this form of trolling got its name.
Often, like here, it's a red herring plus it's an insinuation that "climate models are useless".
In fact, Greig's implied question about climate models has been asked and answered numerous times here and on the other thread. So Greig raising it again is pure unadulterated trolling.
"In case it is not clear because of the meandering of the discussion, this thread was started with my contention that recent warming pause has opened the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy."
DeleteYour contention is at odds with the latest science, as noted above. Ockham's razor would cut in the direction opposite to the one in which you would like to butcher the science.
"This contention leads directly from the IPCC which has suggested several reasons for the warming pause, including climate model inaccuracy."
In your imagination your contention might lead from your interpretation of the IPCC's statement, but in reality the situation is rather different. If you don't understand why a remedial course in logic and scientific thinking would be advised.
My oh My. I can't believe I actually read this and the prior post. Greg is your 'classic' denier troll, and uses all the familar techniques and language. Just take a look at the talk page on Wikipedia, on the subject of global warming and you will see what I mean. I don't think since the controversy of Darwinism has a topic caused so many people to hatefully vent their spleen. It's become a cottage industry!! I find it quite sad that so many deniers have been so captured by their own ignorance and stupidity. It's like many parts of the world have been exposed to an extreme dose of a stupid ray!! There is no point trying to have a rational discussion with these people, their only intention is to disrupt and pour bilious scorn on everyone. Just ban him. Sou, why did you create a whole thread devoted to him, giving his stupidity and outlandish notions even more oxygen? He is probably enjoying his new found 'celebrity' status, bragging to all his WUWT mates. Your blog has already attracted the attention of the WUWT cultists, which is good, since it shows that you are making an impact, but it also means that the WUWT zealots will come en masse, like a zombie horde, seeking vengeful retribution. Don't let them. Just kick them to the kerb. Your blog will be undoubtedly better for it.
ReplyDeleteI'm treating this as a test case, Anonymous. There have been a few good suggestions here for how to deal with people like Grieg.
DeleteDon't worry, I won't be creating a thread every time some idiot asks for one. And I won't be allowing thread-bombing in future either.
If necessary, I'll be able to refer to this thread to justify/explain actions I take in the future - when/if there is anyone else who tries to use HotWhopper to demonstrate common denier techniques. Those actions will not include creating a special thread for xyz denier.
I'm learning as I go, and this is one good lesson for me.
One point I made at Deltoid a long time ago is not to eponymously title troll threads. It's the biggest lungful of oxygen that they can be given.
DeleteIf you must have threads for trolls I'd use something generic such as "StinkingWhopper January '14", or some such. :-)
What a coincidence - Grieg and Peer! Is the "Grieg" monicker a play on words: Edvard Grieg composed Peer Gynt? Thankyou for sparing us words like egregrious, probabilistic combinatorics, foofaraw, ...
ReplyDeleteBack on task.
"This contention leads directly from the IPCC which has suggested several reasons for the warming pause, including climate model inaccuracy."
Goodness me! Climate model inaccuracy being a factor in causing, yes causing, the "warming pause"! The start of the rise of the machines! Stop the presses, I can feel an Anthony special post coming on.
"In case it is not clear because of the meandering of the discussion, this thread was started with my contention that recent warming pause has opened the possibility that the climate is less sensitive to greenhouse forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy."
What warming pause? Do you mean the slowdown in the warming of the lower troposphere? How clever to ignore the warming going on elsewhere. When the next El Nino comes along you'll be able to float/open the possibility that the climate is more sensitive to GHG forcing than is accepted by climate change orthodoxy (97% etc.).
Greig-
ReplyDeleteI had two posts- one devoted entirely to the substance of the current temperature record and another devoted to your manifest character flaws and moral squalor. Are you saying that you'll ignore the first because I posted the second?
That in my view simply demonstrates more of the second. So to refresh- you have no personal ability to actually engage the science, and use any excuse available not to. But since your mission is to disrupt, and you're safely quarantined here, where you can get stomped on to your masochistic hearts content, I'll leave it at that.
Greig,
ReplyDeleteIf that is indeed your name, and you are not in fact a denialist, attack dog troll, then I apologise. (I have always thought the ability to admit when you are wrong is a sign of a maturity. Not that you seem capable of this, even when it has been manifestly shown that you are wrong). This is yet another characteristic of the Denier Troll by the way. They never admit to being wrong, or even the possibility of it.
It is merely that, (as Sou has pointed out on several occasions), you are a text book example of a denialist troll. In all the years I have followed Climate blogs, I have not come across a finer example. You really tick all the boxes (Sou has already enumerated which boxes they are, so I won't bother to repeat them). You have clearly spent a lot of time on denialist blogs, because you have an encyclopedic knowledge of all their talking points in excruciating detail. So, for you to attempt to claim the high ground by pretending to be an objective seeker after truth is preposterous, especially when you employ the self same deceptive tactics you have picked up on these blogs.
If you don't know that you are consciously doing this, or worse, do not know that you are being deceptive, then you really are beyond help. Case in point, your attempt to claim that the discovery of the origin of ulcers invalidates the value of scientific consensus. (This, by the way, is yet another standard denialist meme). For every off the wall hypothesis that turns out to be correct, there must be millions which turn out to be false. Yet you claim that the (very slight) possibility of this happening in the case of climate sensitivity (and based on no other plausible evidence that I can see), invalidates the scientific consensus on the matter. Clearly, logic is not your strong point. You have made this claim a couple of times now and even though this logical fallacy has been pointed out to you, you refuse to accept it and mindlessly keep on repeating yourself. Admit it, this dog won't hunt, and move on. You might gain a little respect if you do. Despite all that has been said regarding the flaws in your various arguments, you have not been prepared to back down on anything, even some of your most egregious comments. Even if we were being charitable, and accepted that some of your arguments had merit, they can't all be correct as some are in fact self contradictory. That you cannot see this, and are not capable of even countenancing that you could be wrong, means that you are not serious about having a rational discussion, let alone having a blog devoted to your flaky ideas. To paraphrase Cromwell, “You have sat too long on this blog for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you”.
Sou, I suggest that at the top of the thread you provide a link to "Gish gallop" for those who aren't familiar:
ReplyDeleteFrom RationalWiki: Gish Gallop
I agree with Don about the link and find the new title both funny and appropriate
Delete
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of this thread was to partition out a denier without banning him outright.
The benefits were that Greig didn't clog up the main board and that I now have more examples of denier techniques in action.
Greig has displayed a doggedness in trying to find data to support his many false assertions. Some may regard that as an admirable trait even though he failed in his attempt.
Others will regard it as evidence of a deep flaw that would not be tolerated in scientific circles. A willingness to consider facts and evidence and let the data show what the data shows is something all good scientists need to do. Greig is not just unwilling, he digs in to his denial deeper and deeper with sillier and sillier claims - even completely inconsistent claims.
As an example, in trying to figure out where Greig got his weird notion that there is no relationship between evaporation and temperature, I came across the pan evaporation paradox. But Greig said he doesn't accept that either. He refuses to accept physics plus he refuses to accept data. Not a good sign.
Greig hasn't given an inch to science in this whole sorry display of denial. With that, and given that Greig is now just repeating his wrong assertions over and over and over again, as I see it this thread has served its purposes and run its course.
Thread closed.