Climate debate

View 715 Thursday, March 01, 2012

The climate discussion continues.

Climate Debate

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

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

Charlie Tips

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

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

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

You asked the wrong questions.

Mr. Pournelle,

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

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

You said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

e.g.:

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

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

I, "It doesn’t."

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

and on,

and on,

…..

and …..

David Fuhs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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