Bishop Hill Houston, we may have a sceptic problem
Nov 4, 2013 Climate: Sceptics ;)
I get a mention in an article in Chemistry World. Written by Philip Ball, the piece considers why (in the author's opinion) so many chemists are sceptics and concludes that its because we all have a contrarian streak.
If I were asked to make gross generalisations about the character of different fields of science, I would suggest that physicists are idealistic, biologists are conservative, and chemists are best described by that useful rustic Americanism, ‘ornery’. None of these are negative judgements – they all have pros as well as cons. But there does seem to be a contrarian streak that runs through the chemically trained, from William Crookes and Henry Armstrong to James Lovelock, Kary Mullis, Martin Fleischmann and of course the king of them all, Linus Pauling (who I’d have put money on being some kind of climate sceptic). This is part of what makes chemistry fun, but it is not without its complications.
It then wonders if the prevalence of scepticism could be "serious".
It's all a bit silly, and the author doesn't seem to have the faintest idea of what the global warming debate is about, but it might be worth a look.
Reader Comments (80)
Disappointing, but not unusual, that geology is not considered by Ball as a branch of science here (only physics, chemistry, biology). I really don't know why this bias exists, but it most certainly does
BTW, the proportion of sceptical geologists is also very high indeed
“Politics is broken.” - Ronald Breslow of Columbia University, 2010, former president of the American Chemical Society
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in synthetic carbon chemistry (Columbia/Harvard), with both Breslow and chemisrtry Nobelist Chalfie being on my defense committee.
You are in illustrious company. Britains best prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was a Chemist.
Found this on WUWT
"Chairman Al says:
November 4, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Dr. Brown has great writing skills and arguments that deserve an audience more influential than the readers of this great blog.
We need as many academics and knowledgeable individuals as possible to respond to the UK government enquiry into AR5.
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/energy-and-climate-change-committee/news/ipcc—tor/
The Committee invites responses, by 10 December 2013, addressing some or all of the following questions:
How robust are the conclusions in the AR5 Physical Science Basis report? Have the IPCC adequately addresses criticisms of previous reports? How much scope is there to question of the report’s conclusions?
To what extent does AR5 reflect the range of views among climate scientists?
Can any of the areas of the science now be considered settled as a result of AR5’s publication, if so which? What areas need further effort to reduce the levels of uncertainty?
How effective is AR5 and the summary for policymakers in conveying what is meant by uncertainty in scientific terms ? Would a focus on risk rather than uncertainty be useful?
Does the AR5 address the reliability of climate models?
Has AR5 sufficiently explained the reasons behind the widely reported hiatus in the global surface temperature record?
Do the AR5 Physical Science Basis report’s conclusions strengthen or weaken the economic case for action to prevent dangerous climate change?
What implications do the IPCC’s conclusions in the AR5 Physical Science Basis report have for policy making both nationally and internationally?
Is the IPCC process an effective mechanism for assessing scientific knowledge? Or has it focussed on providing a justification for political commitment?
To what extent did political intervention influence the final conclusions of the AR5 Physical Science Basis summary?
Is the rate at which the UK Government intends to cut CO2 emissions appropriate in light of the findings of the IPCC AR5 Physical Science Basis report?
What relevance do the IPCC’s conclusions have in respect of the review of the fourth Carbon Budget?
Unless well presented arguments get into the system there is nothing for supporters to work with.
Right enough, it is there on www.parliament.uk. Something for BH participants to get their teeth into.
I find it interesting that most of the sceptics here with scientific training come from fields in which they can work under laboratory or industrial plant conditions. These are controlled environments. One can specify the physical and chemical environment and control the processes involved. An experiment or production run can be completed in a reasonable time.
Unfortunately climate science works with a whole planet. The physical, chemical and energy flow processes can be sampled, but cannot be measured to the level of detail necessary for complete information, so all data comes with confidence limits.
Controlled experiments are not possible, since there is no duplicate planet available. Processes such as insolation, industrial CO2 release or vulcanism are measurable, but not under the control of the experimenter.
Finally, the timescales involved are longer than a typical scientist's research contract, tenure and lifetime.
I would be interested to hear suggestions as to how a chemist or engineer would modify his approach if forced to operate under such constraints.
"I would be interested to hear suggestions as to how a chemist or engineer would modify his approach if forced to operate under such constraints."
Nov 4, 2013 at 11:34 PM Entropic man
Simple. Stop pretending you're psychic. If the real answer is 'I don't know' then the answer you give is 'I don't know'.
jit asks:
'how many climatologists does it take to change a light bulb? (multiple choice)?'
None.
There's nothing wrong with the bulb, it's just that the wind isn't blowing.
TinyCO2
Unfortunately " I dont know." is dodging the question.
The satellite data shows that insolation exceeds outgoing radiation by ~1W/M^2. It also shows increasing absorbtion by CO2, consistent with increasing downwelling IR.
Ocean heat content and sea level continues to increase, icesheets are melting at 500 cubic kilometres/year. The energy required for these processes matches that 1W/M^2.
Minimum Arctic ice extents have been going down at 13.7%/decade since 1979, after remaining stable since the 19th century.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/2013/10/Figure3_Sept2013_trend.png
Through the 20th century global average temperatures rose 0.8C, then the rate slowed in the 21st century.
Worldwide, established temperature and rainfall climate norms are changing.
Our political masters need to know what's happening, so they can make contingency plans as necessary. "I dont know" is a copout.
I ask again, what are the best methods for doing constructive science under the field conditions which constrain climate science. There is considerable measurable ongoing change. Just as a steelworks engineer must learn the operating parameters and quirks of his plant, it is necessary to learn the same about our planet. How should that be done?
Essentially nothing different. Scientific method remains the same, irrespective of the difficulties.
Climate science models do not get a hall-pass denied to other disciplines which also make extensive use of computer models.
Having said that, parading fewer premature conclusions in front of the wider world would seem prudent. Or maybe choose a different career. No one is forced into a career studying the climate.
"I would be interested to hear suggestions as to how a chemist or engineer would modify his approach if forced to operate under such constraints."
A little humility would be in order.
TinyCO2, michael hart, shub,
Disappointing responses so far. I was hoping for something more practical.
For example, I have regularly read complaints that climate science is not sufficiently empirical. What techniques could you use to make it more empirical? What experimental designs would you suggest to answer empirically such questions as:
What is causing the observed energy imbalance?
Where is the extra incoming energy going?
Construct and monitor changes in the energy flow budget for the atmosphere, land, ocean and ice components of the climate system.
What are the direct and indirect effects of increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere?
I'm not looking for vaguenesses about ignorance or humility. One scientist to another, I'm looking for experimental design suggestions.
You said it yourself: "...the timescales involved are longer than a typical scientist's research contract, tenure and lifetime."
Another thing could be to throw the UNFCCC b******t out of the window. Clear your head a little bit.
Huh? You can do 'constructive' science. Pick some observations. Demonstrate that your theory can reproduce the observations. Then predict something that you haven't measured and show that your theory predicts those observations. It isn't hard!
E.g. measure tree rings and predict the temperature in the late 20th century, compare these predictions with thermometer measurements.
Special tip for advanced climatologists: you may not splice thermometer measurements over your predictions in order to obtain the correct visual impression.
"But climatology is the exact opposite. All theory and very limited experiment/observation. Theory is king and its considered rather grubby to look out of the window and notice the 'pause'."
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're not." Yogi Berra.
EM you ask a god question. What would other scientific groups do without the ability to test there theories in the laboratory? Yet you don't seem to have studied the history of science, so I'll remind you. They remain circumspect about a theory until it can be proved in the "laboratory" i.e. in the physical world.. So all theories remain just that until they can be proved, and even then there is a remaining doubt in all theories, with good reason given the history of science.
As an example, if you say that CO2 causes warming and rising CO2 fails to do so you cannot say it's still true because of other factors unless you included the other factors in your original assertion.
I note the claim of 'energy imbalance' is being made. This presumably refers to the increase of 'forcing' from ghgs as their concentration increases. Unfortunately this is the scientific mistake at the heart of Climate Alchemy. The increased atmospheric Radiation Field offsets more of the surface RF giving less net IR transferred to the atmosphere (a few non self-absorbed water bands) or Space (the atmospheric window). In the absence of any other factor, the surface temperature would increase thereby increasing convection and atmospheric warming. However, there are other factors which almost exactly compensate for that warming. CO2 climate sensitivity <0.1 K as we are at the null point of the control system.
"I dont know" is a copout.
Nov 5, 2013 at 12:18 AM Entropic man
EM - in a previous thread you gave a pointer to the following derivation of the logarithmic formula for CO2 "forcing", apparently with a straight face:
http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/eqn%20derivation.pdf
I know you have said that your training was in biology rather than physics but, all the same, had you been a physics teacher, I'm curious to know what grade (and advice) would you have given a 6th former who turned in that derivation as their coursework....?
Martin A: a Radiation Field can do no thermodynamic work. Only the vector sum of RFs can do work.
At the Earth's surface (equal surface and atmosphere temperature) the vector sum of any self-absorbed ghg band is zero. Therefore this derivation of the logarithmic function is empty rhetoric.
No man can serve two masters.
...........
Your 'political' master answers the question. You are not talking science.
You have not posed a science question; check with Matt Briggs - maybe he will help unravel your ethical puzzle.
Entropic man's questions were perfectly reasonable and there is no easy answer to them. There are other sciences where researchers also have problems with long timescales and where the scope for experiments is restricted by variables that they cannot control, e.g. astronomy and geology.
However, I suspect Entropic Man already knows what is wrong with climatology. A few things immediately spring to mind.
1) Dodgy data, as shown by the infamous Hockey Stick and the mysterious revisions to historic temperature readings.
2) Poor statistical methodology.
3) Poorly documented algorithms.
4) Unwillingness to share data and algorithms; attempts to evade FOI laws.
5) Failed predictions by models and a reluctance to openly acknowledge their failures.
6) An unwillingness to give serious consideration to other theories, such as Svensmark's cosmic ray theory.
7) An unwillingness to admit the limitations of current knowledge, e.g. the claim that "the science is settled."
8) The attempts to silence those who disagree with the consensus view, e.g. by "re-defining the peer review process."
The above list is probably incomplete.
AlecM 7:51
EM seems to regard "the IPCC expression ΔF = 5.35 ln (C/C0)" as something that not only is meaningful but is precise, with its coefficient known to a couple of parts in a thousand, and which can be derived by analytic methods. (I had previously come across it as being a fit of a log formula to the results from numerical models for "radiative forcing".)
Overlooking for the moment that the concept of "radiative forcing" is fundamentally flawed, please take a look at the "derivation" in http://www.globalwarmingequation.info/eqn%20derivation.pdf and tell us what you think of it. Then tell us what you think his quoting it says about EM's ability to assess anything to do with the physics of atmosphere and radiation.
Martin A: the formula assumes surface IR (Fg) is black body level and the difference between this and OLR (Fe) is absorbed in the atmosphere; Ramanathan's 'Clear Sky atmospheric Greenhouse Factor'.
In reality, >60% of the surface Radiation Field is annihilated by the Atmospheric RF. The rest leaves by radiation, convection and evapo-transpiration. The IR part is ~63 W/m^2 IR of which 40 W/m^2 goes directly to Space**. For equal atmospheric and surface temperature, there is near zero net CO2 15 micron IR because that band is self absorbed making its surface amplitude black body level. (Shown by MODTRAN, black body down - black body up = zero.)
The reason why Climate Alchemists imagine the surface emits as a black body is because a pyrgeometer pointed to the surface gives ~396 W/m^2 output. However, this is not a real energy flux but a potential energy to a sink at absolute zero.
Therefore, the calculation is based on imaginary physics. Clever people like Pierrehumbert concentrate on the 'CO2-bite' in OLR and indeed, MODTRAN calculates a 'forcing' of ~3 W/m^2 for doubled [CO2]. However, this calculation assumes there in no frequency conversion process in the lower atmosphere which bypasses the CO2-bite. There is and the result is that CO2-AGW is set by the extra impedance of that process, <0.1K.
We've been had.
**Trenberth is reported to privately admit there could be ~60 W/m^2 directly to Space, less IR absorbed in the atmosphere.
A little humility would be in order.
Nov 5, 2013 at 12:31 AM shub
Entropic's delusions of scientific grandeur are in step with his other delusions of AGW.
betapug: Arrhenius was fundamentally wrong and was told so by Niels Bohr.
Nov 4, 2013 at 7:42 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlecM
This above post is of great interest to me for several reason. Can AlecM elaborate on this with a source?
About 50 years ago when I was learning quantum physics at Case Institute of Technology my professor Dr. Martin Klein( no relative) stated that based on the Bohr model a gas does not "heat" when it absorbs EMR. He indicated that the energy that was absorbed was converted into vibrational kinetic action within the molecule but did not change the velocity of the molecule in the atmosphere.( his definition of "heat")
Based on this: one of the supposed key feature of the GHGE is wrong= there is no change in the velocity of the molecules. The atmosphere will not heat up when sun light goes through the gases and some of the various wavelength are absorbed. As we know the kinetic energy of gas molecules is already high enough that they have escaped from the liquid phase of the material. I believe that the triple point of CO2 is about -40 degree C.(correct if necessary) .
After reading several references like Gerlich & Tscheuschner and other in the attach list of reference I came to the concussion that the Hypotheses of the greenhouse gas effect does not exist. The key item mentioned above is that I could not find a credible experiment that proved that the GHGE exists.
I then set up the parameter that would be needed to Test the hypotheses. This is contained in "The experiment that failed, saving the world trillions, proving the greenhouse gas effect doe not exist." The experiment has been reviewed by several Ph.D. both in physics and chemistry. I'll post it shortly for further comment.
List of references:
The paper "Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effect within the frame of physics" by Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner is an in-depth examination of the subject. Version 4 2009
Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Modern Physics
B, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2009) 275{364 , DOI No: 10.1142/S021797920904984X, c World
Scientific Publishing Company, http://www.worldscinet.com/ijmpb.
Report of Alan Carlin of US-EPA March, 2009 that shows that CO2 does not cause global warming.
Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics” by Dipl-Ing Heinz Thieme This work has about 10 or 12 link
that support the truth that the greenhouse gas effect is a hoax.
R.W.Wood
from the London, Edinborough and Dublin Philosophical Magazine , 1909, vol 17, p319-320. Cambridge UL shelf mark p340.1.c.95, i
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
By Alan Siddons
from:http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_hidden_flaw_in_greenhouse.html at March 01, 2010 - 09:10:34 AM CST
The below information was a foot note in the IPCC 4 edition. It is obvious that there was no evidence to prove that the ghg effect exists.
“In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect.”
After 1909 when R.W.Wood proved that the understanding of the greenhouse effect was in error and the ghg effect does not exist. After Niels Bohr published his work and receive a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. The fantasy of the greenhouse gas effect should have died in 1909 and 1922. Since then it has been shown by several physicists that the concept is a Violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Obviously the politicians don’t give a dam that they are lying. It fits in with what they do every hour of every day .Especially the current pretend president.
Paraphrasing Albert Einstein after the Publishing of “The Theory of Relativity” –one fact out does 1 million “scientist, 10 billion politicians and 20 billion environmental whachos-that don’t know what” The Second Law of thermodynamics” is.
University of Pennsylvania Law School
ILE
INSTITUTE FOR LAW AND ECONOMICS
A Joint Research Center of the Law School, the Wharton School,
and the Department of Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Pennsylvania
RESEARCH PAPER NO. 10-08
Global Warming Advocacy Science: a Cross Examination
Jason Scott Johnston
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
May 2010
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the
Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1612851
Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv: 'There is no direct evidence showing that CO2 caused 20th century warming, or as a matter of fact, any warming' link to this paper on climate depot.
Web- site references:
www.americanthinker.com Ponder the Maunder
wwwclimatedepot.com
icecap.us
www.stratus-sphere.com
SPPI
many others are available.
The bottom line is that the facts show that the greenhouse gas effect is a fairy-tale and that Man-made global warming is the World larges Scam!!!The IPCC and Al Gore should be charged under the US Anti-racketeering act and when convicted - they should spend the rest of their lives in jail for the Crimes they have committed against Humanity.
The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance."
—Albert Einstein
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb."
Benjamin Franklin
Not one whit of training in chemistry on my part, but I am still skeptical of CO2 induced global warming. Ice core samples are very clear about climate fluctuations long before human beings started burning fossil fuels. Then there's that pesky global Medieval warming period along with the Maunder minimum little ice age. Something else is afoot here, Watson...
You raise an interesting problem about skepticism, idealism,materialism and science.
You cite Linus Pauling and Fleischmann in the same list and they are clearly opposite.
Linus Pauling opposed Shechtman quasicrystal observation despite the evidences, until his death.
Fleischmann&pons get ridiculed, despite the evidence accumulated and replication of their work (best one was done at CEA by longchampt, but many were less identical but positive)... heinz gerischer, a top German electrochemist who was skeptics, judged that in 1991 there was overwhelming evidence of LENR... and anyone a bit rational would confirm it in private (but deny it in public not to be fired)...
the rest is like for climate AGW (the insult, the journal terrorism, the defunding, the media manipulation), for Linus pauling rejection of quasicrystals (and the insults as quasi-scientist, plus the firing of Shechtman).
Cold fusion have even a Michael Mann and an FOIA.
FOIA of cold fusion is an insider like FOIA (according to IT forensic), was called Eugene Mallove, the manager of publication of MIT who have seen the manipulations to "hide the incline" (who was useless since the calorimetry was to loose to conclude).
in http://www.lenr-forum.com/forumdisplay.php?29-The-Scientific-Community
see
-History-of-MIT-F-amp-P-non-replication-fraud-denouncby-E-Mallove
There is tha same gang of journals, like Nature, science, SciAM who try to enforce the truth...
the mindguard as Groupthink theory says.
in:
see:
-How-Nature-refused-to-re-examine-the-1989-CalTech-experiment
-Nature-policy-on-CF-critic-Oriani-s-paper-dumped-despite-positive-Peer-review
-Calorimetry-quality-comparison-by-Miles
in enea forum
-Report-41-DeNinno-by-ENEA-and-rejection
the result is that despite that terrorism against dissenters, absolutely well described by Thomas Kuhn, Roland Benabou (Groupthink), Nassim Nicholas Taleb (antifragile, history written by the losers, lecturing birds how to fly), lenr is getting industrial
Elforsk, the swedish R&D consortium of electric utilities, is proudly making an article on E-cat reactor, (Elforsk Perspektiv nr2 2013)
National instrument is proudly sponsoring ICCF18 and have invited LENR to NIWeek2012
many companies and startup are working in the domain
beside few institution like US Navy NRL, SRI, ENEA, NASA
see that executive summary on the business situation:
http://www.lenrnews.eu/lenr-summary-for-policy-makers/
the opponent to reality look really like the climatologist of IPCC today, trying to pretend consensus when there is only parrots and ejected dissenters
it is a shame of academic science, of administrated science, of Too Big To fail physics organization.
we need more feudal science, not Big Science... Big science is big groupthink because of big budget and big dependence.
the good news is tha LENR when getting industrial will solve the AGW controversy by making an energetic transition, with cost reduction and CO2 cancellation... We will obbey IPCC without pain...: Soot problem will be solved too.
Entropic man.
"I don't know" is not a cop out, when it's the truth. I'm sure the kings of old were desperate for scientists to solve the problem of alchemy but the pursuit would still have been in vain. Those charged with turning lead into gold were always eager to assure others that a breakthrough was just around the corner. Were medieval patients better off for visiting a medical expert? When they returned home with an infected arm and blood loss, I'm not sure they appreciated that the doctor was doing his best.
There are certainly ways of improving how climate science is conducted but what if we need centuries of data to work out how climate works? What if it's impossible to predict? Saying you can do something when you can't is called lying. Even giving a false impression of confidence when you've never achieved success is misleading.
Being unable to admit ignorance is a sign of a weak personality. It becomes something more sinister when the issue involves life and death.
My formal science education is a B.S. in physics in 1959 - top quarter of my overall graduating class in which physics majors were an insignificant percentage. However, I have maintained my interest in science for many years.
I began to notice the climate change debate in 2006, and decided to do my own investigation as best I could. I very quickly became a skeptic, and the more I investigated the more skeptical I became. Readings have included the book by Singer and Avery, Climate Change in Prehistory by Burroughs, and NASA papers such as Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High. Whenever I reference Singer's book I get the classic "funded by the oil industry" response, clearly indicated a lack of understanding of the scientific process. If you want to dispute a theory you dispute it with science, not a defamatory attempt. I have also been through several of the science courses from TheGreatCourses.com which, although having some excellent content, all too often revert to the CO2 fear mongering at the end, and typically contradict the previously presented science when they do this!
In 2008 I received a solicitation to help fund a website which would present both sides of the arguement. I sent in a donation, and therefore proudly claim to have been one of the founders (and continuing supporters) of the ClimateDepot website.
In the end the sun is having it's say, and the global warming fear mongering promoters will all too soon find out what fools they have been.
Another large group of skeptics are engineers. We use scientific principles and apply them to complex systems. I wonder how the IPCC folks would feel about taking an aircraft's first flight when the computer models and test results are less than 5% correlated.
Before trusting a computer model, we require validation, and even then only use the models in narrow ranges in the validation space.
Yes, AGW has become a pathological science in all its characteristics.
"They remain circumspect about a theory until it can be proved in the "laboratory" i.e. in the physical world.. So all theories remain just that until they can be proved, and even then there is a remaining doubt in all theories, with good reason given the history of science."
geronimo
From a purely scientific viewpoint that approach is sound.
The problem with climate change is that by the time the theory is "proven" the physical world consequences have already happened. It is a bit late to say *OK, its proven", when your coastal cities are disappearing under rising seas. The climate scientists are sufficiently convinced of their theory that they are advocating a precautionary approach, because the "proof" will be the consequences we would all prefer to avoid.
If we were talking about a potential toxin, it would be removed from use until its safety or toxicity were demonstrated. You would not leave it on sale and see how many people die! Yet this is the approach advocated by sceptics of climate change.
There have been two previous cases in which the world responded to an atmospheric problem with a similar level of evidence to global warming.
Ozone depletion measured and linked to CFCs. The Montreal protocol banning further CFC production was a rapid response, which has limited the problem.
Acid rain generated a similarly rapid repsonse , with sulphate scrubbers added to the flues of power stations, etc.
I used to wonder why the response to CFCs or acid rain was so fast and so unanimous, while any response to climate change meets strong opposition.
It becomes something more sinister when the issue involves life and death.
Nov 5, 2013 at 11:17 PM | TinyCO2
That is exactly the problem. Those expecting business-as-usual human activity to trigger significant climate change damage are keen to avoid deaths by taking avoiding action before the damage kicks in.