Climate change and human responsibility

[Fuzz]

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doom...lls-the-beans/

There’s a top-level oceanographer and meteorologist who is prepared to cry “Nonsense!”on the “global warming crisis” evident to climate modellers but not in the real world. He’s as well or better qualified than the modellers he criticises — the ones whose Year 2100 forebodings of 4degC warming have set the world to spending $US1.5 trillion a year to combat CO2 emissions.



The iconoclast is Dr. Mototaka Nakamura. In June he put out a small book in Japanese on “the sorry state of climate science”. It’s titled Confessions of a climate scientist: the global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis, and he is very much qualified to take a stand.

From the mouth of the 3%? I've been saying for years the models are worthless for long term predictions, so nice to see an expert agree with me. This article is full of sobering information for those of you that think the models are going to tell us our future. Highly recommend reading all of it, but here are a few quotes...

These models completely lack some critically important climate processes and feedbacks, and represent some other critically important climate processes and feedbacks in grossly distorted manners to the extent that makes these models totally useless for any meaningful climate prediction.

I myself used to use climate simulation models for scientific studies, not for predictions, and learned about their problems and limitations in the process.

He projects warming from CO2 doubling, “according to the true experts”, to be only 0.5degC. He says he doesn’t dispute the possibility of either catastrophic warming or severe glaciation since the climate system’s myriad non-linear processes swamp “the toys” used for climate predictions. Climate forecasting is simply impossible, if only because future changes in solar energy output are unknowable. As to the impacts of human-caused CO2, they can’t be judged “with the knowledge and technology we currently possess.”


Key model elements are replete with “tunings” i.e. fudges. Nakamura explains how that trick works
The models are ‘tuned’ by tinkering around with values of various parameters until the best compromise is obtained. I used to do it myself. It is a necessary and unavoidable procedure and not a problem so long as the user is aware of its ramifications and is honest about it. But it is a serious and fatal flaw if it is used for climate forecasting/prediction purposes.

One set of fudges involves clouds.


Ad hoc representation of clouds may be the greatest source of uncertainty in climate prediction. A profound fact is that only a very small change, so small that it cannot be measured accurately…in the global cloud characteristics can completely offset the warming effect of the doubled atmospheric CO2.

File that in the "settled science" pile, I guess.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

I've been saying for years the models are worthless for long term predictions, so nice to see an expert agree with me.

The most important thing bolded. Ignore the rest of the experts, you found that one true voice in the wilderness that ascribes to the same belief as you. Issue settled!

[Fuzz]

Fantastic rebuttal.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

File that in the "settled science" pile, I guess.

Models have always been given far too much credit in their ability to predict, when in reality they are incredibly sensitive to the value of initial variables that in practice are impossible to obtain. Here's an article where they made 40 runs of one climate model, showing significant difference in temperature trends.



To get these differences, all they did was:

With each simulation, the scientists modified the model's starting conditions ever so slightly by adjusting the global atmospheric temperature by less than one-trillionth of one degree, touching off a unique and chaotic chain of climate events.

https://news.ucar.edu/123108/40-eart...te-variability

[Fuzz]

Ya, but then you just average them out, and throw out the extremes, right?

[peter12]

The models' predictions don't matter very much, and shouldn't influence our debate to the extent that they currently do. However, there is enough information now for our societies to start taking precautionary measures that would help us mitigate the effects of climate change.

https://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/climateletter.pdf

[TheIronMaiden]

Predictive models are inherently flawed. However, historic trends have shown pretty compelling evidence of what exactly is happening. Admittedly, I know more about the prairies then the globe generally. A good book on the subject is The New Normal: The Canadian Prairies in a Changing Climate.

[nik-]

Clearly we're stuck on result 28.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by nik-

Clearly we're stuck on result 28.

The simulation hasn't reloaded yet.

[The Fonz]

Thread tweet, linking articles claiming everywhere to be warming at twice the rate as everywhere else:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1179442677210894336

[Fuzz]

The obvious point is that all the places in her tweet are northern hemisphere, and hot air rises, so it makes sense that the north would be warming quicker.

[Ozy_Flame]

So she links a bunch of articles that state this - from various news and media sources, over what I can see as a range of a decade. Most of them also say twice as fast as the global average.

Instead of all these various local media outlets, why can't we just stick to focusing on information directly from institutions like the like the IPCC and and sources that are mostly universally recognized (from a state-to-state level) for sources of climate change information? There's a dearth of scientific institutions, academies and societies that are recognized for thorough study and analysis on the topic.

If anything this Twitter thread - if not being cynical on climate change reporting itself - is conveying as much of a media problem as it is a scientific position one.

[Fuzz]

CBC didn't do any favours by using this incredibly inaccurate line:

Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, with Northern Canada heating up at almost three times the global average, according to a new government report.

I think that was the impetus for her search. "Rest of the world" means everywhere else, which I assume is why she set out to disprove that. Except that's not what the science says. It says it is twice the rate of the global average. Some freshman journalist re-worded it. Lots of different places on earth can warm at twice the global average, but only one place could warm at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Typical scientific journalism though.

[zamler]

In summary everywhere is heating up 2-3x as fast as everywhere else, compound global warming.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The obvious point is that all the places in her tweet are northern hemisphere, and hot air rises, so it makes sense that the north would be warming quicker.

Please tell me this was tongue in cheek

[Mathgod]

https://skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

[Leeman4Gilmour]

I was watching an Alex Epstein speech (author Moral case for Fossil Fuels). If you want to hear his perspective on the climate change argument, it's an easy Google. Anyway, one stat he mentioned and I checked was human deaths caused by natural disaster. Here's a graph:



I feel this gives a bit of perspective to the conversation.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Perspective on what? Talk about unrelated statistics. Is there any explanation to this? Can you think of why all of these things might be affected so as to see the statistics drop like a rock? Could advanced in technology impact the death rates of each data point? Technology gives us advance warning of possible events. Technology allows us to escape from areas affected. Technology allows us to control certain things that would cause some of the death associated with these statistics. Advances in medicine also allow us to prevent death of those injured in such events. This may be one of the worst arguments imaginable in defense of climate science denial.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Leeman4Gilmour

I was watching an Alex Epstein speech (author Moral case for Fossil Fuels). If you want to hear his perspective on the climate change argument, it's an easy Google. Anyway, one stat he mentioned and I checked was human deaths caused by natural disaster. Here's a graph:







I feel this gives a bit of perspective to the conversation.

Wow, this might be the single dumbest thing posted in this thread.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Wow, this might be the single dumbest thing posted in this thread.

Why?

To me it shows that technology has made billions of lives better, fueled by the very stuff that is also a threat to the future of the planet. To what extent is what we are debating, and trying to find viable replacements.