The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet
By Joliphant Posted in Energy — Comments (42) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Hypothesize,, Redo the world Economy,Experiment, Observe, Go back to Hypothesizing
That's the way it goes in science no ?
1.You come up with an idea.
2. Tell everyone either get with the program or die quick and ugly
3. Start looking at the data. See it doesn't fit.
4. Go back to trying to invent some new scare story.
Well it certainly looks that's the way the science was done for global warming and Hurricanes. Everyone remembers the scare stories of monster Hurricanes pounding the coasts and destroying beachfront property all the while the populace cowered in bunkers wondering if they would make it to tomorrow. It was such a big thing more than a few popular novels were written featuring the concept and several movies. Not the least of which is an Inconvenient Truth (Waves at Mr. Gore and his Hurricane up there)
Well it seems that the Idea that AGW would intensify storms is just not so
The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.
The research, appearing in the March issue of Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is all the more remarkable coming from Emanuel, a highly visible leader in his field and long an ardent proponent of a link between global warming and much stronger hurricanes.
His changing views could influence other scientists.
"The results surprised me," Emanuel said of his work, adding that global warming may still play a role in raising the intensity of hurricanes. What that role is, however, remains far from certain.
And again in the New York Times
That work was supported by some subsequent studies, but refuted by others. Despite the uncertainty in the science, hurricanes quickly became a potent icon in environmental campaigns, as well as in “An Inconvenient Truth,” the popular climate documentary featuring former Vice President Al Gore. The message was that global warming was no longer a looming issue and was exacting a deadly toll now.
The models are telling us something quite different from what nature seems to be telling us. There are various interpretations possible, e.g. a) The big increase in hurricane power over the past 30 years or so may not have much to do with global warming, or b) The models are simply not faithfully reproducing what nature is doing. Hard to know which to believe yet.
Wow which do you trust, Nature or the models ???
I am engineer by training and for a long time by trade as well. Our profession had a very pragmatic way of resolving out this problem. NATURE WINS EVERY TIME She is a mean witch and will kill you if you aren't careful.
What I would like to know though is just why are we taking these giant expensive and harmful gambles when we have no good idea what is happening or even why it might be ?
Dr. Emanuel's paper will not be the last word on this topic. That's the point though. You don't make engineering decisions until you have a working knowledge of what you are doing. Redesigning the world's economies is not a scientific decision it's an engineering decision. Anyone who tries to make it needs to thoroughly understand what the consequences of making changes will be. What do we have ? People who are guessing and don't want to admit it.
Crossposted at The Minority Report
She is a mean witch and will kill you if you aren't careful.
Come to think of it, it is apropos for Politics too!
1) Which model of global warming/climate change raises the most contributions.
2) Which model helps shift more power to the government.
"In any technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
-- Richard Feynman
I was supposed to report on some work done by this one resesarch group, in a class where the real reason to go was to eat pizza and listen to talks, and I bluffed my way through it.
I got dinged hard for talking too much about the modeling and not enough about what they actually did.
That's the difference between the hard sciences and Globowarmism: the latter is all modeling and no real science.
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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater
that's the way the science was done for global warming and Hurricanes?
No, here's how the science was done (IPCC TAR, 2001):
In an early use of a high-resolution AGCM, a T106 ECHAM3 experiment simulated a decrease in tropical cyclones in the Northern Hemisphere and a reduction of 50% in the Southern Hemisphere (Bengtsson et al., 1996, 1997). However, the different hemispheric responses raised questions about the model’s ability to properly represent tropical cyclones and methodological concerns about the experimental design were raised (Landsea, 1997). In a similar experiment, the JMA model also simulated fewer tropical cyclone-like vortices in both hemispheres (Yoshimura et al., 1999). Other GCM studies have shown consistent basin-dependent changes in tropical cyclone formation under 2xCO2 conditions (Royer et al., 1998; Tsutsui et al., 1999). Frequencies increased in the north-west Pacific, decreased in the North Atlantic, and changed little in the south-west Pacific. A high resolution HadAM3a simulation reproduced the latter changes, giving changes in timing in the north-west Pacific and increases in frequency in the north-east Pacific and the north Indian basin (McDonald, 1999). Some GCM studies show increases in tropical storm intensity in a warmer climate (Krishnamurti et al., 1998) though these results can probably not be extrapolated to tropical cyclones as the horizontal resolution of these models is insufficient to resolve the cyclone eye. The likely mean response of tropical Pacific sea surface warming having an El Niño-like structure suggests that the pattern of tropical cyclone frequency may become more like that observed in El Niño years (see Chapter 9).
This new result is not out of line with previous findings.
...increased tropical activity is a key selling point of Al's.
And nobody at the IPCC has been trying to shout him down.
You don't win Nobel Peace Prizes and Academy Awards by warning people of reduced tropical activity.
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. - Frank Zappa
And were used to advance mindshare right up to 2006.
Need I remind you of this ?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I might be wrong, but I don't think that was the point.
We have been told for a couple of years that there would be a giant increase in the number and severity of hurricanes hitting the SE US, based on the same models that were also predicting catastrophic global warming; the same models that "An Incontestable Truth" used to make the case for turning the economic and population clock back two hundred years (at least in the case of the "ordinary" people--the very rich could be allowed to buy their way out).
Now, new conclusions are that the hurricane predictions were wrong. You say (or at least imply) that it doesn't matter, the rest is still correct. Only a true believer could claim that such a massive deviation in the results of the very predictions that were used to scare us all silly are "not out of line with previous findings."
As you know, I said the other night that I expected to soon see new claims that current climate phenomena support the global warming theory, after the phenomena occur but without any prediction of them. I suppose the claim that earlier predictions are supported by contrary evidence could be a precursor of that.
Why is it so hard to admit that we don't know all, or even most of the answers, we aren't even sure of what the right questions are, and we don't actually know that the tools we're using to go from the second to the first are valid? Isn't it obvious that the situation precludes us from knowing just exactly what to do, or even of being sure that we should do anything? Particularly if the solution being promoted would result in a sharp decrease in our standard of living?
An old axiom in navigation is that if you don't know where you are, you can't know how to get to where you want to go. Right now, we aren't all even convinced that we want to go anywhere, and we sure don't know where we are, anyway. Let's find out a bit more before we strike out in the wrong direction.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
about hurricanes and AGW - there's a fair bit of that in this extract, and it's the general tenor of the IPCC on the subject.
"We have been told ..." - I hear that a lot, but I rarely see actual quotes. There was much discussion recently about the success annual hurricane forecasts - these actually don't involve AGW at all, and the two most prominent forecasters (Landsea and Gray) are actually often acclaimed by AGW skeptics.
The former head of the Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield was not a skeptic and was incredibly well known for continuously predicting big Hurricane seasons.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
My understanding is that he was known for forecasting the behaviour of existing hurricanes and storms, not future seasons.
He forecast above average Hurricane seasons. He was to Hurricane prediction what Krugman is to recession prediction.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Perhaps somebody else can answer better than I. I don't keep files containing the first and every instance of when I've heard an assertion. MY reference was to what I've heard is contained in "An Incontrovertible Fantasy," which are assertions that AGW would cause hurricanes in the SE US to become much stronger and more frequent, and that it would be soon. Maybe that's not in the movie at all.
But Emanuel did say that (according to today's news report) during the difficult hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005. Now, he has decided that he "has more work to do." I guess so. But is his work to find an error, or to tweak his theory so only the hurricane anomaly is accounted for?
About Al Gore: You may not know him well in Australia, but we are very leery of trusting his word for anything. He made many unsubstantiated claims after he lost the 2000 election, claims that he was cheated out of his victory by vote fraud in Florida. He wasn't. If he had won the majority of votes in his own state, (Tennessee, the state that elected him Senator to take his father's seat in the Senate), he would have won the election regardless of the Florida vote. He couldn't do it because the people of Tennessee had had the time to figure him out. His performance as Vice President was inconsequential. His partisan claims showed him to be a person who would say whatever he thought would be to his advantage.
Gore himself figured out that environmental issues make both news and money. He hitched his star to AGW (Al Gore's Windwagon) to get his name back into the public mind, and to MAKE MONEY. He is personally gaining from carbon credit trading. He is as ethically challenged as Bill Clinton. But because of his "celebrity" status, he has been able to convince many people in this country that AGW is a threat that should be put at the top of the priority list. And the "stronger hurricane" claims were one way he was able to succeed to some extent.
*"Admitting that we don't know about hurricanes and AGW - there's a fair bit of that in this extract,"*
I was speaking a bit more expansively. We don't know much about AGW, neither its existence, its extent, nor its consequences. Period. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding. We're applying inadequate knowledge to an attempt to identify the parameters of an amorphous phenomenon.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
Here's how it seems to work. Let's assume X is something you'd expect from the climate change fanatics, such as "warmer temps" or " increased cat 5 hurricanes" or whatever their latest doom and gloom forecasts.
Then they look at the facts and give one of the following statements.
- If we see X, then that proves global warming.
- If we see the opposite of X, then that proves global warming because it has made the weather unpredictable.
So an unusually cold winter proves global warming just as much as an overly warm winter does.
It's simple!
No.
But Gore and Lovelock, et al, are still saying storms are going to kill millions.
And cutting and pasting a long and opaque piece of bureaucratese from a political document does not tell us how the science was done. It only tells how the political masters of the IPCC are even now playing hide the story.
You're right. And that's the IPCC message. This isn't bureaucratese, though, it's science talk. And what's the point of hiding the story in your main publication?
And I'd still like to see those quotes from Gore and Lovelock - who are anyway scarcely mainstream scientists.
Gore claims New York City will be flooded.
Lovelock claims it is already too late to do anything.
The bottom line is this:
Climatologists have promoted apocalyptic global warming, either by deliberate action or silence, and have received unprecedented funding. The UN put together a political group to edit the science and to make sure the science they quoted matched the political goals of the IPCC.
Gore has gone from ex-political hack to mega-rich climate prophet who cannot be questioned.
We have convinced ourselves to not do anymore serious drilling in the US. We have messed up our food supply with biofuels.
The IPCC, at the least by your own words, has sat around quietly while fear mongers and profiteers have turned the science of climate into a hack political process designed to reduce freedom and raise energy prices.
If the IPCC was serious about being accurate they would publicly tell Gore to lay off, make clear in their communications how little they actually know, and ask that all climate management schemes be halted.
If a weatherman cannot predict with 100% certainty what will happen in your local area over the next 24-48 hours, I think any broad statement about what will hapen in the next 5-10 years should be taken with a big dose of skepticism. Anyone who promises to make the world better if you would only give them money deserves a second look.
Actually, Emanuel's work tends to vindicate models. In is latest paper he begins his discussion with
The findings presented here are
largely consistent with those obtained by direct
simulation of tropical cyclones by global models
as well as by downscaling using regional models
embedded in global models. The majority of such
exercises to date show a decrease in global genesis
rates, as summarized, for example, by Bengtsson
et al. (2007).
His methods are very powerful, but do not seem to contradict previous model results.
The majority of such
exercises to date show a decrease in global genesis
rates, as summarized, for example, by Bengtsson
et al. (2007).
Well why are we trying to stop it again ?
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Sorry, but that ain't gonna happen.
The models are wrong.
They are maps, not territory.
He has simply tweaked the model to try and reconcile it with reality.
It is still a construct.
He is too far in AGW to simply state they have no idea what they are doing.
I knew there was a reason I (heart) Jolli!!
To be fair, it might be read that the NYT is unsure which "interpretation" to believe, a) or b) or ?), but your header is so on the mark that I'll let it stand.
A reasonable "interpretation" of pliny's post is that the models are so inconsistant that nothing can be predicted regarding GW and tropical storms.
Yes, that has been the general interpretation. Not that the models are faulty, just that the association is complex, and not very strong.
The thing about this new paper is that it seems to do what people have wanted for a long time. GCM models don't have the resolution to model developing hurricanes explicitly. Emanuel has embedded detailed hurricane models inside functioning GCMs. This gives a lot of new information, but not a radically different picture.
Wow which do you trust, Nature or the models ???
Re-read the paragraph. That's not what Emanuel was asking. The question was about which interpretation to believe. Here's another piece of Emanuel's response:
And why does that matter? Here's a good, pithy response:
Here's a prominent scientist displaying a clear willingness to weigh different interpretations and follow the evidence, but he gets bashed anyway based on a misreading of what he said.
And opening up his exit from the apocalypse.
He is diong it very gradually and carefully.
The fact is that total cyclonic energy ahs been going down for years. Instead of studying 2004-2005 as the freaks they were, the AGW industry made the false and costly claim 04/05 were the new par values of storms.
A bunch of geeks led by a defeated political hack have the world trembling over temerature changes well within the margin of error. And the geek and his pals become very wealthy promoting the geek's scary stories.
Worldwide ice cover is up, temperatures are down, storms are fewer and weaker, and the AGW models are *rap.
But we are over turning our economies, creating starvation, driving fuel prices up like crazy, and raising insurance premiums over the modern equivalent of scary ghost stories.
I am tired of it.
Between Justice Stevens and Senator Stevens, I have to be careful when I read this site sometimes :-)
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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater
Availbility cascades do not require conspiracies to get garbage responses and invalid theories.
The whole point is that once a particular view on something takes over, all evidence and ideas about the given topic are tainted by the cascade.
AGW will go down in history as possibly the greatest cascade since the return of Christ in 1000 AD, and certainly the greatest secular cascade since the dictatorship of the proletariat.
So far it is a fairly benign cascade, but few people infected with it have reached positions of great power.
We're getting ready to elect an infected President.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it.“--Jeff Cooper. From Bill Coffey's collection of military quotations
Drunken polar bears....
Ralphing onto the melting ice....
He looks kind of Slothlike.
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I missed it by a couple years. It was already a well-known joke and several Boy Scout songs by the time I got there...
"Guns don't kill people...
"...But they sure help!"
-Paul Giamatti, Shoot 'Em Up
...that's the key qualifier. Yes, the physical properties of CO2 are quite well known, and "all other things being equal" an increase in its atmospheric concentration will have the predicted result. But...
..."all other things" can't possibly be equal because there are just too darn many of them (like, an infinite number), and there is no such thing as stasis. And everything is interrelated, so that an increase in one factor may cause a completely unpredictable effect in some other factor.
A good analogy is the economy. The behavior of the economy may seem predictable within a few constraints, but in the final analysis it is impossible to model effectively because the results depend on millions of individual, personal decisions.
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life. - Frank Zappa