CapitalistImperialistPig

I may have mentioned that a local group of climate skeptics, including a number of my former colleagues, invited me to their meetings. I resisted for a bit, but their leader insisted, so I attended a few meetings and got in their email lists. The first meeting didn't seem promising - the leader was out of town, and the restaurant proposed for the meeting had gone out of business, and one member suggested that Michael Mann should be murdered. Nonetheless, I did go to a later meeting when they had found another restaurant, had an excellent breakfast of Huevos Rancheros, and learned a lot about the currently popular reasons why AGW could not be right. Of course a relationship begun under such promising circumstance could hardly have been expected not to run into some headwinds eventually. The leader was a big fan of Bond cycles, for reasons that were not to become clear to me for a long time. He kept urging me to read a paper by Bond, for reasons that it took me a long time to ...

In recent weeks I've attended meetings of a local climate skeptics (denialists) group and of a pro climate action group. The AGW skeptic group was heavily populated by former colleagues of mine, and they were very polite and friendly despite my skepticism of their facts and reasoning. I've been invited back to talk about my point of view. I'm not under the illusion that they are likely to be persuaded by anything I say, but I figure its worth the effort just to find out what their reasoning is. What I would really like to know is how they wound up believing what they believe. Nearly all are technical people with a background in meteorology, but mostly not in atmospheric radiative transfer. I also attended a climate action group meeting. I'm pretty sure they are right on the facts, have a sound approach (a carbon tax with rebate), and a sensible action plan. I'm also pretty sure that they are wildly unrealistic about the prospects for action. They seem to be...

The fantasy world occupied by the global warming deniers becomes ever more ridiculous. Seven countries in Africa and Asia set all time temperature records in the past two months. People in the countries involved are used to high temperatures, but I would be surprised if the death tolls are much lower than in the great European heat wave of 2003, which killed 30,000. We may hope that the end of El Nino means that the recent run of record global temperature months may be over, but all the evidence suggests that this year is but a hint of what's to come. Meanwhile, Arctic ice cover continues to plummet, and is currently a couple of standard deviations less than it was at a comparable time in the record setting year of 2007 (and about four standard deviations below the historical mean.) For the committed crackpot, though, facts are a minor nuisance. The important thing is the will to believe what you want to believe.

I suppose that it is no surprise that the modern climate denier shares a lot of political DNA with the various anti-scientific campaigns of the past: the relativity deniers, the evolution deniers, the ozone hole deniers, and the AIDS deniers. Joss Garman has a nice story on the parallels between the anti-relativists of the early twentieth century and the anti-AGW crowd today. I especially like this Einstein quote: "This world is a strange madhouse. Currently, every coachman and every waiter is debating whether relativity theory is correct. Belief in this matter depends on political party affiliation.” So wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his one time collaborator, the mathematician Marcel Grossmann in 1920. More from Garman Jeroen van Dongen of the Institute for History and Foundations of Science at Utrecht University in Holland, writing in a recent edition of the journal, ‘Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,’ describes the effectiveness of the movement that g...

More on lapse rates of planetary atmospheres. Consider the following one-dimensional thought experiment. Let the surface be at temperature Ts and the elevated radiating level of the atmosphere be a temperature Te Put in the numbers for the Earth and you get that the lapse rate in the lower 11 kilometer is greater than the adiabatic lapse rate - so the bottom ll km of the atmosphere is convectively unstable - which drives tropospheric lapse rates toward adiabatic. Make xi0 much smaller, and the radiative lapse rate would be less than the adiabatic lapse rate, in which case the atmosphere would be stable and subadiabatic. This simplified model is developed (with all the detailed steps) in Richard P. Wayne's Chemistry of Atmospheres ppg 44-56 in my second edition copy. More accurate results from detailed computer models show the same pattern: Radiative equilibrium sets the table, convection smooths the curve when adiabatic rates are exceeded.

Lubos and Goddard seem to be confused about the role of the adiabatic lapse rate in planetary atmospheres. In particular, they seem to consider it sort of a law of nature. That’s the case only in a very limited way – the adiabatic lapse rate is rather a limiting condition: if the lapse rate becomes super adiabatic, then convection will occur. Nothing special will occur if the actual environmental lapse rate is less than the adiabatic lapse rate. The fact that the environmental lapse rates in the Terran, Martian, and Venusian atmospheres are all decidedly subadiabatic (on average) ought to be a clue as to that fact. Isothermal and even temperature inverted hunks of atmosphere are common, even near the surface of the Earth. If an adiabatic or semi-adiabatic lapse rate is not some sort of consequence of the ideal gas law, then what does cause it? It’s caused by the fact that the atmosphere is heated from the bottom and cooled mainly from the top, and that is in turned caused by the...

Eli has been applying the rabbety art of kickboxing to some dolt named Goddard. This miscreant, writing at one of the many branch campuses of Climate Stupid, had suggested that Venus was hot not because its atmosphere was opaque to IR but because it weighed a lot. Naturally, the kind of dunce who comes up with these ideas never stops to consider the application of his notion to planets like Jupiter, Saturn, etc, much less doing any of the radiative transfer calculations. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I saw that Lubos had bought into this nonsense. Oh dear! This is algebra and a little calculus, subjects Lumo probably mastered before he was toilet trained. This is our old friend Stefan’s law. The temperature at the surface of the planet is 735 K and that surface is probably a fair approximation to a black body (but in any case, a body of known emissivity). The planet as a whole radiates with effective radiating temperature 220 K, meaning that its net emissivity is abo...

I suppose there is a sort of Anna Karenina principle for scientific error: every correct scientific argument is the same, but every erroneous argument is erroneous in its own way, but there are some general strategies: put in some correct stuff, put in some related equations but at the critical moment equate some things that aren't actually equal or derive something from an inappropriate equation. Above all, though, make your argument complicated, so that it's really hard to see exactly where you went wrong. In this last respect I can't say that ex-Professor Motl's Post is a model, because he's really quite clear in his argument and it's pretty obvious exactly where he goes off the tracks in his calculation of climate sensitivity. Of course he does emit a lot of smoke after that point, but it's way too late too hide the dirty deed by then. To set the scene, let's remember that CO2 causes planetary warming by increasing the outgoing impedance to radiativ...

Lubos and Moncton demonstrate the simplest way to criticize their enemies, just make shit up . Lying is the cheapest form of argumentation, and one almost universally practiced by the climate skeptics.

Alex Tabarrok reports: John Tierney relays today what seems like a very sensible idea from economist Ross McKitrick, tie a carbon tax to the temperature. If the temperature rises the tax goes up, if the temperature does not rise (as McKitrick, a climate change skeptic thinks) the tax will stay at a low level. Temperature of the troposphere would be measured by satellite at the equator and averaged over a period of time. After claiming that everyone ought to agree, he predicts that those concerned about anthropogenic global warming won't. After the comments accumulate he comes back with: Addendum: As predicted most of the objections (in the comments) are from climate change proponents. In essence, they argue that the problem is so serious that we must act before the evidence is in. . . I read every critical comment to that point (and made some) and that is not an honest reporting of the objections posted. The most frequent objections were that (a)Because climate lags CO2 waiti...

Skepticism is not only normal human behavior, its also crucial for science and any sort of analytical thinking. Given that, it's probably unsurprising that normal skepticism sometimes turn into cranky denial of that which has been well demonstrated. For a scientist, Feynman said, the most important thing to be skeptical about is your own theories. That's the step that so few of the hard core denialists can manage. Their skepticism is just another manifestation of their blind faith. There is a continuum for denial, from total wacko to slightly overenthusiastic skeptic. There really are some who claim to believe the Earth is flat. In the US, a huge percentage of the population doubts evolution. There still are a few scientists who doubt relativity and a lot who find conventional quantum mechanics unacceptable. At bottom, denial is usually the manifestation of unwillingness to doubt our own prejudices. For such people, evidence is almost beside the point. Does Darwin cast...

Tyler Cowen post a thoroughly uninteresting note of climate science , and hordes of denialists descend on his comment thread like flies on ****. It's tedious enough to drive a climate scientist (and me, for that matter) nuts. The same old half-baked objections, misunderstandings, and lies ( "CRU "cleaned" the data and has never revealed its methods. Would you ever release a paper without revealing your methods? This was known before, but now there are emails talking about "hiding" data and "tricks" to manipulate the data. If you trust their methods now, you would have to be crazy. " - a casual glance at Ar4 refutes that one). All of them refuted again and again. The only thing I learned from the comments was what an absurdity RP jr. is. He feigned outrage at the scandal of climate data sets not being "independent" because, gosh, they almost all used the same global weather station data!

It's fun to see how bad bad writing can be, this promised to go to the limit. ...................Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard There is a certain awful fascination to reading Gerlich and Tscheuschner. One hundred fifteen pages of incoherent nonesense. An example from their attempts to disprove greenhouse effect claims: In his popular textbook on meteorology Moller claims: In a real glass house (with no additional heating, i.e. no greenhouse) the window panes are transparent to sunshine, but opaque to terrestrial radiation. The heat exchange must take place through heat conduction within the glass, which requires a certain temperature gradient. Then the colder boundary surface of the window pane can emit heat. In case of the atmosphere water vapor and clouds play the role of the glass." Disproof: The existence of the greenhouse effect is considered as a necessary condition for thermal conductivity. This is a physical nonsense. Furthermore it is implied that the spectral tra...

Eli Rabett , who clearly has a masochistic streak, has undertaken the task of cleaning the Augean Stables of Gerlich and Tscheuschner , which some moronic editor has actually published. Among other nutjobbery, G & T claim that a greenhouse effect - any greenhouse effect - is incompatible with the second law of thermodynamics. If true (and of course it isn't) this would be bad for the second law, since greenhouse effects obviously exist and are huge in the case, for example, of Venus. I know that guys like Bill Gray and Lindzen are not quite stupid enough to buy this crap, so why doesn't it bother them to be on the same ship of fools? The legions of denial are not small, but they certainly believe a whole lot of very ridiculous and mutually contradictory things. I guess the guys who think they are victims of a conspiracy aren't bothered by the fact that most their travelling companions happen to be nuts, even by their standards. And Eli - you might need a bigger spoon...

Latest proofs that AGW can't be real 1)Temp drops below freezing at 51 degrees North latitude !!!! 2)7% of Earth cooled very slightly during the most recent decade !!!! What will science discover next? Snow in Michigan!?

I'm not one to listen to Sean Hannity, but I did catch a bit of his show on XM during a drive today. The subject was the Shroud of Turin, claimed to be the shroud Christ was wrapped in but demonstrated rather conclusively to be a fourteenth century fake. the interesting part to me was that the Catholic Church, which did sent a bit of the fabric out for Carbon 14 testing a couple of decades ago (which demonstrated the age and fakery) now refuses to let skeptics view the Shroud. Less interesting, but even more predictable, are the responses of the defenders of the Shroud, who grasp at implausible straws even as the Church continues to try to hide the fraud. Very remniscent of the behavior of the deniers of Anthropogenic global Warming.

An AGW doubter well known to many of us notes that his point of view is not much shared: ...We are so tiny, in fact, that we are almost like those who believe that the Moon landing was shot in Arizona and the world is flat... but fails to draw the obvious lesson. More interesting to me was his reproduction of a denialist bumper sticker making much of the so-called global ice anomaly. This is an amusingly obtuse combining of the Arctic and Antarctic ice anomalies, which river dwellers love because it has recently been in positive territory. Cherry pickers must pick cherries while they may, of course, but the dynamics of the North polar sea ice and that of the South are so different that the conflation is quite preposterous. I guess that it may impress those who aren't aware that the Antarctic is mainly occupied by a continent, whereas the North pole sits in an ocean.

Our friends along that river in Egypt (dee Nile) are all hot and bothered about the imminent prospect of global cooling. The Winter of 2007-2008 has indeed been a cool one, and January of 2008 had the smallest global temperature anomaly since February of 1994. February of '08 was also chill - aside from 1/09, you need to journey through deep time all the way back to 2000 to find another month so relatively cold. The people who found the evidence of global warming to be wanting have been quick to sieze on this as proof of whatever alternative theories they like - sunspots, cosmic rays, aliens. The more conventional climate scientists note that temperature statistics are noisy and that the 2007-2008 la Nina now appears to be quite strong, with the current value of the multivariate ENSO index the lowest since the 1980's. A look at the graphs of the Hadley monthly temperatures shows that the monthly data is indeed noisy and that while current temperature are low by the standard...

Andrew C Revkin, writing in the New York Times , has a well balanced piece on the recent global cold spell. January was a cold month by recent standards, and the whole winter saw some unusual cold outbreaks. The climate skeptics who think every snowstorm disproves global warming were quick to sieze on this: “Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way,” read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Some of the same propagandists are trying to use the moment to promote their own theories of climate: solar cycles, cosmic rays, whatever. Cooler heads, including some skeptics, say it's too early to say. One robin doesn't make a summer, and one snowstorm (or even a few cold months) don't make a climate trend. Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and commentator with the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, has long chided environ...

One plausible road to climate catastrophe would be a rapid rise in sea level. The IPCCs most recent report estimated a maximum sea level rise of a couple of feet this century, but put in a huge caveat: meltdown of Antarctica and Greenland was not figured in for lack of adequate data. Data is trickling in, and the signs are ominous . Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates. It has become much more plausible that the century's sea level rise might be measure in meters rather than inches. This would be catastrophic for several countries and devastating for coastal cities in much of the world. Note to denialists everywhere: clap harder.