14 Jan 2020

Murphy Twin Spin

Climate Change, Money 56 Comments

==> The final installment in my trilogy at IER on “Should We Trust the Climate Models?”

==> The first (which happens to be Chapter 4) chapter released for my book on Money Mechanics for the Mises Institute.

56 Responses to “Murphy Twin Spin”

  1. Bitter Clinger says:

    I wrote this for your second article but didn’t get around to post it. You said it better but I thought to add my two cents worth since I had already written it.

    Now that we are done with Pascal’s Wager and a bunch of antidotal drivel, I would like to point out how it should be done.

    The first step is to figure out whether it is getting warmer or not. Statistical methods cannot be used because as they say on the gold commercials, ”Past performance is no guarantee of Future Results”. You cannot extrapolate statistics that can only be interpolated. CO2 then becomes the driving force for The Climate Researchers to use in the finite element or finite difference models to show the relationship between CO2 and warming but as Dr. Murphy has pointed out; “not very well.” While this is a legitimate technique, the problem is that it did not predict reality. It stunk. The only thing I have ever seen worse is the Obama/Romer unemployment graph.

    What makes it a hoax is that when reality showed no warming of the magnitude predicted after the initial ten years, it was renamed Climate Change, though there is no mechanism in CO2 that would cause the Climate to change. The point is that for a technique to be legitimate it has to work, and their model obviously doesn’t work. They should have kept working on it till it started to accurately predict the real increase in temperature. Not to belabor the point, Svante August Arrhenius first proposed increasing CO2 to warm the planet 150 years ago and his calculations showed that there was not enough carbon to make it work. (he didn’t know fracking or automobiles) I don’t read Watts on a regular basis but I once read an article there where they replicated Arrhenius’s calculations and got good agreement with actual warming which is nothing like what the model predicts.

    The second step if we do agree that the world is going to continue to get warmer is whether it is good or bad. I believe the harm in a warming climate has been greatly exaggerated and the benefits greatly minimized, but then I live in Minnesota. As Arrhenius said, “In periods of Global Warming a million species will die, but they will be replaced by two million. During periods of global cooling a million species will die but they will only be replaced by half a million.” You have twice the chance to be a winner in time of warming than a loser. I have pointed out in the past, a scientist would look at the carrying capacity of the world. The number of people per square mile, based upon temperature and you would see even though there is a lot of variation in warm climates, on average, warm climates carry a lot more people than cold ones. Warming has to be good. Lots of places are warm and have hurricanes, tornado’s, typhoons, droughts, floods, and wildfires but they still have lots of people. These climate catastrophe’s have been with us since biblical times.

    The last step of course is to figure out what to do about it. I say we do nothing. All the ignorant and superstitious jump to this step. As I have stated in the past, I believe in the Fermi paradox. I believe the energy level required to achieve inter planetary let alone inter galactic travel is such that we need not only all the fossil fuel we have but nuclear, solar, wind and Galt’s engine. The Climate Hoaxers would have us live in squalor, filth and poverty because they are cowards, irresponsible, and lazy.

    As my father used to say, “On average in a democracy the people will get exactly what they deserve.

    • Transformer says:

      ‘Now that we are done with Pascal’s Wager and a bunch of antidotal drivel,’

      Well, I suppose it is a shame that there is no antidote to drivel.

      • Harold says:

        An antidote is sorely needed, judging by the above comment.

        There is too much wrong here to go into every point, but this one is worth commenting on after my comment below.
        “The first step is to figure out whether it is getting warmer or not. Statistical methods cannot be used because as they say on the gold commercials, ”Past performance is no guarantee of Future Results”. You cannot extrapolate statistics that can only be interpolated. ”

        The predictions I cited by Mills and commissioned by the GWPF were based on just such a statistical approach. Climate scientists laughed at it, because they immediately recognized that it was inappropriate. The scientists were confirmed right within a year of the predictions being made. In this one instance, Bitter is correct, but has misapplied the criticism to the scientists, when it is the deniers who are guilty of it.

  2. Harold says:

    “In June 2019, Dr. Nahamura published a book (in Japanese) with the provocative title: Confessions of a climate scientist: the global warming hypothesis is an unproven hypothesis.”

    This would be the Nahamura who predicted Norther Hemisphere cooling starting 2015. That has not turned out so well.
    [www]http://www.thegwpf.com/researcher-predicts-cooler-climate-northern-hemisphere-2015/

    This is the thing about climate science denial. A truth-seeker looks at all the evidence and is even handed. A denialist seeks out only those items that support their view and is very lenient on judging those with whom they agree. If failed predictions are to be the criterion of distinction, the alarmists win hands down every time as every denialist prediction has been spectacularly wrong.

    On even-handedness, how does Lindzen stack up against Hansen? In 1989 Lindzen said “.I personally feel that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.” Well, it had already done so by 1999. Hansen was much closer to what happened.

    There are many other failed predictions by the denialists. This one from the GWPF was spectacular.

    [www]https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2016/02/Forecasting-3.pdf

    p15 shows the predictions. The press jumped on it, with headlines such as the Daily Mail “Planet may be no hotter by end on century than it is now.” and The Australian “Planet oveheating, not according to historical records.” “Planet is not overhaeting says professor” from The Times.and many others. The report was worthless because it used inappropriate methods and did not consider the Earth a physical system.. The actual temperatures had exceeded the bounds within 1 year and have got further out ever since, so that is a very quick disproof. Mills had published an actual paper on this, which sensibly omitted any predictions. He was apparently paid £3000 by the GWPF, effectively to add in the predictions to his previous work. He must be regretting that now.

    It is denialism to cite unsubstantiated blog posts as refutations of actual science. It is very easy for a blogger to make up something vaguely common sense that sounds convincing.
    “According to these critics, the reason for the apparently good track record of 17 models analyzed in the Hausfather et al. paper is that the recent, strong El Niño provided a spike in global temperatures that rescued (most of) the models. ”

    Who are “these critics”? James Taylor, a lawyer for the Heartland Institute and Jay Lehr. He got a PhD in hydrology engineering in 1962 and is not a climate scientist, more of a publicist.
    He testified to NY City Council in 2018 that “In 20 years…we will be entering a period of global cooling as a result of the fact that the sun spots are at a very low point, and we could probably look forward in 20 years to, ah, maybe a degree and a half Fahrenheit cooler” There is *no* peer reviewed evidence for this. He also denied that man was contributing at all to warming, thereby denying the greenhouse effect. ““I mean, how impossible it is to think that that little, tiny bit [of CO2] controls the temperature of the planet… it’s absurd. It’s absolutely absurd,”. Argument from incredulity there. This is what is meant by “settled science” The greenhouse effect is real and accepted – it is settled science. We would not have to mention this if people like Lehr, science director if the Heartland Institute, did not dispute it. He had to resign from the National Well Water Association after conviction and imprisonment for fraud. This does not invalidate his claims, but he has provided no evidence for them either.

    We have on the one hand an academic, peer reviewed paper with one conclusion, and a blog post by a political organisation with an obvious agenda by non-qualified authors that says that conclusion is wrong. Which should we believe?

    So Bob is happy to accept the Heartland criticism as valid and endorse it by including it in his article. This is what I mean by climate science denial. The criticism is without foundation, because the so-called pause was in part due to another large El Nino in 1998, flattening the subsequent warming. We can no more ignore the last El Nino than the one before. We must look at the long term trends, which includes El Nino. Temperatures since the latest El Nino have been higher than before, with 2019 the second hottest year on record.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Harold, I’m not upset, I’m genuinely asking: The way you are using the term, are you saying the last article I just wrote should be classified as “climate science denial”? Or are you merely saying that I linked to some examples of climate science denial?

      Are you saying Lindzen is a climate science denier? Or just someone who cites him without at least mentioning his failed prediction(s)?

      Again, tone of voice doesn’t come across in print. I’m just asking the above to see if you have a crisp answer on these, since you are lecturing us about “climate science denial” and its attributes.

      • Mark says:

        “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” (Yogi Berra)

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Harold wrote: “The actual temperatures had exceeded the bounds within 1 year and have got further out ever since, so that is a very quick disproof.”

      Harold can you elaborate? Which of the time series are you talking about, and how has the actual record exceeded the confidence intervals?

      • Harold says:

        Mills uses 2 models. For the HADCRUT4 data, the fitted segmented model has confidence intervals that do not continue to diverge. The temperatures exceeded the upper 95% confidence level within a year (2016) and has stayed there. Mills says ” so that the uncertainty in theforecasts is eventually bounded at 0.463±0.157″ – that is the temperature settles at 0.463 above pre industrial by 2017. So Mills has a prediction by 2020 of 0.306 to 0.62 degrees (95% confidence). We actually had 0.88 degrees for 2019. That is a spectacular fail for a projection of only 5 years.

        The Arima model is essentially useless as the 95% confidence levels diverge and include from 0 degrees to 1.2 degrees warming (compared to pre-industrial average) *by 2020*. If you plot that on a chart of temperatures from 1850 or so it looks rather like one of those diagrams of early expansion of the universe. The uncertainty balloons out from 2015 to 2020 to cover the whole range of the chart and a bit more within 5 years. The actual temperature did stray outside this but has returned within the 95% limits since.

    • Bob Murphy says:

      Harold wrote: “The criticism is without foundation, because the so-called pause was in part due to another large El Nino in 1998, flattening the subsequent warming. We can no more ignore the last El Nino than the one before. We must look at the long term trends, which includes El Nino.”

      Harold, are you agreeing with their claim that if Hausfather et al. had stopped their analysis in (say) 2013, that most of the models being analyzed would have been found to be running hot?

      Because if so, that’s really their point. You don’t need to bring up whether the guy was convicted of fraud, or whether GWPF also ran a study by an econometrician that gave bad forecasts. (Incidentally, I glanced and I think I agree with you, in which case I would say that guy’s model is bad–the same criterion I used with the NASA guy’s charts.)

      I am not saying that I have a better climate model than Gavin Schmidt does. I’m saying the ones he likes have been “falsified” using satellite data, and yet his website is acting like this is a winning confirmation.

      • Harold says:

        “Harold, are you agreeing with their claim that if Hausfather et al. had stopped their analysis in (say) 2013, that most of the models being analyzed would have been found to be running hot?”

        If we stopped at an arbitrary date in the past we would be cherry picking. It makes no sense to say the models would be running hot if it hadn’t got hotter recently. The fact is it did get hotter. the El Nino happened and we cannot just ignore it. To see why we can use Dr. John McLeans prediction. He published a paper about ENSO (El Nino / La Nina) in 2009. Based on his understanding of ENSO, he predicted 2011 would be as cool as 1956. That would be a drop of 0.8 degrees C in one year.
        http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7349

        He later stuck to his prediction, half way through 2011, instead of backing off he stated that as 2011 was not yet over it was too soon to reject his prediction.

        The link is to a site claiming “The realists take on climate change.” here is another chart from them, the original seems to have disappeared, so I can’t say much about its origins.

        [www]https://static.skepticalscience.com/pics/McLean-ClimateRealistsgraph.png

        McLean made such a bold and incorrect prediction because he apparently believed that ENSO was the cause of warming. The temperature did drop about 0.1 degree from the previous year, but that is still a staggering failure. This same thinking is exhibited by Lehr. ENSO is not the cause of warming, but the cause of short term variability.

        I cited the GWPF model to illustrate how bad the contrarian models are and to demonstrate that they get considerable media attention, even though they are worthless. The press is lamentable, but claims that it always hypes warming are wrong.

        So if we are to have an even handed approach to discussing models, we need to point out that those that criticize the alarmists produce models that invariable run very,very cool. It is even-handed to point out that the sources of the information have a track record of being very wrong.

        I did not have to mention the fraud conviction, but I found it fun to do so! I did qualify that it did not invalidate his conclusion. What invalidates it is that he offers no evidence, simply makes an assertion. What makes you wrong to quote it is that it obviously is insufficient to invalidate the Hausfather paper.

  3. skylien says:

    ““.I personally feel that the likelihood over the next century of greenhouse warming reaching magnitudes comparable to natural variability seems small.”Well, it had already done so by 1999. Hansen was much closer to what happened.”

    So who defines that what happened from 1989 to 1999 to be outside of natural variability?

    • Harold says:

      According to the assessments of natural variability described in the literature. See, for example,

      “Long-term natural variability and 20th century climate change” Swanson et al, 2009 PNAS

      “Anthropogenic and natural warming inferred from changes in Earth’s energy balance” Huber and Knutti, Nature Georscience 2012

      “A Significant Component of Unforced Multidecadal Variability in the Recent Acceleration of Global Warming” DelSole, Journal of Climate 2011

      “Assessment of the first consensus prediction on climate change” Frame and Stone, Nature Climate Chande, 2013

      • skylien says:

        In short the climate modells say that… But this is exactly what is in discussion here…

        If I would accept those modells I wouldn’t have asked! What you said above was: Hansen was right because Hansen is right. What kind of arguing is that?

        • Harold says:

          “Hansen was right because Hansen is right.”

          Hansen is not an author on any of those papers. These are in answer to your question about natural variability.

          • skylien says:

            So if A+B disagree, but A and C agree, then A only needs to say he is right because C says so? WTF

            You non-answered that Hansen is right because climate models say so. But you for sure should know that Lindzen doesn’t accept the models as arbiter of this question.

            So no, there is no fact that says Lindzen was wrong.

            • Harold says:

              So several peer-reviewed publications by different authors describe how they determine natural variability. You reject these because, what? It doesn’t feel right to you?

              You claim Lindzen does not accept these, but you provide no evidence for this. Maybe he is quite happy with these papers.

              However, if you claim that whatever temperature we arrive at, no matter how hot, is within natural variability because there is only natural variability, that is a circular argument.

              • skylien says:

                Don’t turn the burden of proof on its head. It was you who claimed those papers prove Lindzen wrong, yet as far as I know Lindzen didn’t change his opinion on the matter. So it is you who has to show me that Lindzen thinks those papers are right!

                “However, if you claim that whatever temperature we arrive at, no matter how hot, is within natural variability because there is only natural variability, that is a circular argument.”

                Have not said anything remotely like this!

              • Harold says:

                “Have not said anything remotely like this!”

                Sorry if I put words in your mouth, but how would you determine natural variability and how would you therefore know if Lindzen was right or not?

              • skylien says:

                Actually the hard truth Harold is, that you can’t! And neither can I, and quite likely they can’t as well. The data to do this (like 1000 years of worldwide top notch temp data) doesn’t exist. And what they are doing is making models with tons of assumptions we don’t know enough (clouds, heat convection, etc the so called feedback – positive, negative, how high… ), and this in a field with huge peer pressure on getting the right result..

                What we can do (as in most fields even where our knowledge is much better), is listen to the arguments of all sides and pick one. You decided to go with “we’re all gonna die”, while I am with the “nah, ‘ll be fine”.

                Well I can let you know why I am with them if you like:
                The main reason actually is that “your” side lies so f*ing much! I believed them! I was on their side, but one day I decided to look into this (something like 2003 around) and then I found out:
                1. Oceans where rising already since 20000 years! They never said that to me before!
                2. There were much higher CO2 concentrations in past in the air with all sorts of temperatures in the past usually temp leading CO2. Whatever the reason for this, I would like to have those things mentioned!
                3. People, so called deniers, aren’t all braindead idiots with no creds paid by the oil lobby
                4. Generally they don’t argue with other people, they try assassinate their character…
                5. So no there is no consensus. BTW whoever argues like that? Science is making arguments, experiments, collecting data, but for sure not doing polls and voting! Not to forget that those 97% figures are bogus anyway. Hell I would be in the 97% as they formulate the questions.
                6. Hansen obviously willing to manipulate (Picking the potentially hottest day for his talk 1988, and sabotaging the AC, WTF!!) I should trust such a guy?!
                7. Manns Hockeystick just makes all variation in the past 1000 years disappear, everything moves now within 2 tenths of a degree, that is nothing! No medieval warmperiod, no little ice age, really? Also coincidentally with the treering data exactly covering the flat part, and the sharp increase is only real temp data. That begs some questions.
                8. They constantly fiddle with past data and revise their temperature graphs, and coincidentally it is always making past temps lower, and more recent ones warmer..
                9. They “hide the decline” (Briffas data) make the “blib” go away…
                10. They do not provide the data and methods from which their graphs are derived (again Mann)…
                11. This movement makes use of the most potent psychological tricks to get power: Fear and Guilt. They tell us that we all gonna die, and we are at fault! That is how you get people in line.
                12. In general, absolutely everything that happens and is bad is because of manmade climate change, nothing ever good comes from it. That the earth greened a lot due to more CO2 is a hated fact!
                13. This movement is a perfect vehicle for socialists and marxists to get their agenda throught the back door, and I think they penetrated it deeply already (see AOC’s green new deal)
                14. As limited as my understanding is of this whole matter, but in my view, if it were like they say, then earths climate system would be very fragile, and as with every fragile system wouldn’t have lasted this long anyway (e.g. hot water holds less CO2 then cold. We have a lot of water on the earth right? More CO2 means warmer seas, means seas release CO2 into the air, that means it gets warmer, again warmer seas release CO2 in the air, etc. The same with methan, warmer temps make frozen methan released into the air, so again warmer temps etc…) So instead of having a positive feedback, I think there is a potent negative feedback at work that comes into play, whatever it is, because systems with positive feedback have the tendency to self-destruct.

                I guess I could go on. So it is not a simple issue.. And even if I devoted my life to this, I probably couldn’t answer it definitely. I know that I am guessing, but I know that you area only guessing as well.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                Skylien can you give more info on this? I don’t know what you’re referring to: “6. Hansen obviously willing to manipulate (Picking the potentially hottest day for his talk 1988, and sabotaging the AC, WTF!!) I should trust such a guy?!”

              • Tel says:

                This is the well known interview admitting air-conditioner sabotage.

                https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hotpolitics/interviews/wirth.html

                That doesn’t invalidate any of the data, but it does provide a window into the mindset of the AGW advocates.

              • Bob Murphy says:

                wow thanks I had never heard that.

              • Harold says:

                On assessing natural variability: “Actually the hard truth Harold is, that you can’t! And neither can I, and quite likely they can’t as well.”

                How does this differ from saying that whatever temperature we reached by now you could claim it was natural variability?

                ” As limited as my understanding is of this whole matter, but in my view, if it were like they say, then earths climate system would be very fragile,”

                I am not sure what you are saying about CO2 and warm water. Presumably you do not deny that warm water holds less CO2, so warmer oceans will release CO2. That science is so settled I do not believe you would question it.

                Given that warm oceans will release CO2, how can you claim that there would not bee a positive feedback?

                ” So instead of having a positive feedback, I think there is a potent negative feedback at work that comes into play,”

                Yes, a warmer Earth radiates more energy to space. That is again very basic science and essentially undeniable. The result is that with more CO2 we get a warmer “stable” temperature.

                Science cannot explain how we get out of an ice age based on Milankovitch cycles alone. Science can explain this if we include CO2 feedback.

                Climate scientists have been explaining for decades how the Earth system is not fragile and contains both positive and negative feedbacks.

                This is not guessing.

                This ties in to your point 2, where science explains that the sun was very significantly weaker in the past, and temperatures were high because CO2 levels were much higher. This is “mentioned” in hundreds of scientific papers and explained on multiple websites, if you wish to find out.

                “They” never said to you before that sea levels have been rising for a long time. You will not get personal updates from all scientists. “They” tell you by publishing their work. Institutions like the Smithsonian try to get the information out to the public. Their web page on sea levels includes this, referring to 26,000 years ago.

                “With so much of the planet’s water tied up in ice, global sea level was more than 400 feet lower than it is today.”

                This has not been a secret and scientists have been trying to tell us about it. “They” have been saying this to you, but you do have to make some effort to listen.

              • Harold says:

                Tel, it is also good to see that the interview confirms that is was Bush Govt that promoted the use of the term “climate change” rather than “global warming”, not the alarmists.

                “We talked to Eileen Claussen, who was in the EPA during Bush I, and she said that there was the [Energy Star] Energy Savers Program, there was a lot that was happening within the EPA, but the one thing she wasn’t allow [sic] to do was to say the words “global warming.”

                Perhaps we can finally put that failed argument to rest. It was not alarmists trying to cover up the lack of warming, it was the administration trying to use less scary terms.

              • skylien says:

                I am not claiming it must be all natural. I am only saying we don’t know. And there models are fill with guesswork, so they likely can’t either.

                Water and CO2:
                I have not questioned how much CO2 holds water at which temp. I am just saying. If CO2 is as strong a driver for global temperature that given those facts, the earths climate as we know it would have likely self-destructed. Either burned up or frozen completly up with basically no way back from either scenario.

                Well, I got my information before from what was in the media, and what we got taught in school. And you kinda feel fooled, if they tell you that rising sea levels prove manmade climate change, when you later find out that it happens already since 20000 years. Etc…

              • Harold says:

                ” If CO2 is as strong a driver for global temperature that given those facts, the earths climate as we know it would have likely self-destructed. Either burned up or frozen completly up with basically no way back from either scenario”

                Do you think this has not occurred to the scientists?

              • skylien says:

                Who knows what they think. I have not seen it discussed. I stopped wondering a long time ago why are certain clearly intelligent people not thinking about X. And yet they not do it all the time.

              • Harold says:

                “Who knows what they think. I have not seen it discussed. ”

                We can get an insight into what they think by looking at what they publish. You may not have seen it discussed, bit it has been discussed at length. They may not be thinking about X, but they are certainly thinking about why the Earth has not burned up or frozen.

              • skylien says:

                Where?

                And be specific, not generic.

              • skylien says:

                Well, thanks for the link. But it doesn’t really explain what I am asking, but at least it discusses the issue though.

                It does state that my questions are serious and need to be answered. In the link it is mainly about the ice albedo effect, and methane is mentioned.

                It should be clear that if you assume CO2 to be a strong driver of earths global temperature, that you need to explain what kind of negative feedbacks stopped it to historically to burn up, or snowball up earth. That is because all three variables have a positive feedback:
                More Co2 -> Higher Temp -> More Co2 etc and vice versa
                More Methane -> Higher Temp -> More Methane etc and vice versa
                Less Ice -> Higher Temp -> Less Ice etc and vice versa

                With all three of them reinforcing each other as well. What counters that is what needs to be explained.

                For sceptics it is easier. They think CO2 just isn’t as important and isn’t a leading driver. It needs to be said that both sides obviously only ASSUME their believe about CO2. No side has absulute proof.

              • skylien says:

                Just look at one source of your link:

                https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/methane-meltdown-the-arctic-timebomb-that-could-cost-us-60trn-8730408.html

                They describe Methane as a Time Bomb! Obviously the question is, why hasn’t this Bomb not gone off by itself in the past? It is not like there wasn’t enough change in the climate throuought millions of years to trigger the bomb including CO2 X-times higher than today, pushing earths climate over a tipping point and keeping it stuck there…

              • Harold says:

                “For sceptics it is easier. They think CO2 just isn’t as important and isn’t a leading driver.”

                It may seem easier, but it absolutely fails as a scientific explanation.

                Without CO2 being a driver AND a result of warming there is no explanation for the past climate consistent with physics as we understand it.

                “It needs to be said that both sides obviously only ASSUME their believe about CO2. No side has absulute proof.”

                No, it is not an assumption. It fits the physical evidence, fits with known physics theory and provides an explanation that is consistent with all other accepted findings in science.

                Absolute proof is never possible. One side has evidence that fits all the facts, the skeptics have no evidence and merely an assertion that CO2 is unimportant. If we take the latter we have no explanation for the past climate.

                This is how science works. Absolute proof is not the goal, but seeking contrary evidence is. None has yet been found for the CO2 hypothesis and no other explanation has been provided.

              • skylien says:

                You are again twisting what I say. I have not said CO2 has no impact…

                Accepted among who? Don’t get in consensus non-science arguments through the back door pls.

                There are facts, and physical relationships. And those can be interpreted in different ways. Don’t claim only one side has the monopoly on interpreting them. I have not questioned any physical law or actual fact.

                Also don’t infer that we had out of the ordinary climate change to be fact. That is not proven, or agreed on by sceptics.

                So you can’t claim sceptics lack an explanation for something which they do not agree on even is there!

                And regarding what is science: How about you convince Phil Jones and Mann about giving out their data and methods of calculation, so that other people actually can review their work?

                Listen, I really don’t like how you argue this matter:
                – You infer that models prove what you say, yet that is not the case and is a matter of discussion
                – You infer because lots of models (all of which working on the same controversial assumptions) prove anything

              • skylien says:

                Pressed “Submit” unintentionally.

                – make up empty claims like “No, it is not an assumption. It fits the physical evidence, fits with known physics theory and provides an explanation that is consistent with all other accepted findings in science. ” and
                “…skeptics have no evidence and merely an assertion that CO2 is unimportant. If we take the latter we have no explanation for the past climate.”
                – you have a tendency to misinterpret what I am saying
                – And basically just generally write that you are right because reasons (consensus, things like models that are in debate..)

              • Harold says:

                This has been mainly about the past climate, so current conditions do not really matter for this. I have been discussion this point
                ” If CO2 is as strong a driver for global temperature that given those facts, the earths climate as we know it would have likely self-destructed. Either burned up or frozen completly up with basically no way back from either scenario.”

                To make a start on how the iceball may end.

                An iceball would be permanent without CO2. The albedo is high enough that the temperature would never get high enough to melt the ice. However, volcanoes would continue to emit CO2 as part of the long term carbon cycle, whereas sinks such as silicate weathering would be largely eliminated. If CO2 was emited at current rates it would take a few million years to build up enough CO2 to melt the equator. This is broadly in line with observations.

                As I understand it, you say you do not think this is the case and CO2 is not the factor. Can you point out how an iceball may end without CO2 warming?

                Far from CO2 warming resulting in iceball or hothouse, it is actyually required to explain why we dot have either.

              • skylien says:

                The way your side argues CO2 works, it can not be the counter that gets you out of a snowball situation. It is reinforcing this trend to snowball or to heat up whatever is happening. Something other needs to drive it so that CO2 can support it if you are right.

                Even your side admits as much. When you look at the ice ages of the last few 100 000 years then it is argued that the Milankovitch Cycle nudges earths climate out of the iceage, and with warming waters CO2 is released into the air which amplifies/drives the warming further. They even say that 90% of the warming happens after the CO2 concentration starts to rise in the air. So they mean 90% is due to CO2 ??

                Now if you look at the temperature variation then you will see that it is about 22 degrees Fahrenheit. That is huge. While CO2 changed between 180ppm the lowest and 300ppm the highest. Now if CO2 is responsible for 90% of that then that would mean about 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Now we went from 280 to over 400, where are the 20 degrees F warming?

                Assumed this is right for the sake of the argument, here comes the real question. So ok, the Milankovitch cycle triggers a warming trend that is kept going finally by CO2. But what stops it? Why would it stop where it stops?
                – It is not like there is no CO2 left in the water to be released anymore.
                – It is not like there is no more ice albedo effect to be reduced and drive warming further.
                – It is not that there isn’t more frozen Time Bomb Methane to be melted and released into the air…
                All three push always in the same direction. Why should it stop where it stops? It is always a runaway situation. I am arguing that there is no stable middle scenario. Either it is a snowball or a hothouse if those factors are as strong as argued. But if there is something that can stop it midway, then there are relatively very strong negative feedbacks that keep the earth from snowballing or hothousing even if it changes between ice age (which is cold, but no snowball) or a climate optimum as we have (LUCKILY) now. Also an ice age is still midway to a full snowball earth. Why does it stop there? And those factors are not understood yet imo. Earths climate is a coupled non-linear chaotic system and therefore long-term prediction of future climate is not possible.

              • Harold says:

                “Why would it stop where it stops?”
                Good question. I just did a comment that has not appeared. It may do so, but my suggestion summarised is.
                1) Radiation to space rises with the fourth power of temperature. This means as the Earth gets hotter it losses more and more energy.
                2) The forcing from CO2 is logarithmic- it is expressed as so many degrees for a doubling of CO2. This means that the forcing reduces the more CO2 is in the atmosphere.

                Both contribute to a new equilibrium rather than runaway feedback.

                I don’t know if this is the whole answer, but it is certainly a reasonable explanation.

              • skylien says:

                I really doubt you want to argue like that. You just said that radiation into space and the logarithmic saturation effect of CO2 set a stop, a LIMIT, to this process.

                In other words low and high points of those last cycles weren’t midway, they were already the maximum and minimum points that those forcings could get you. So more or less as “snowbally” and “hothousy” as possible. At the maximum this means between 280 and 300 ppm CO2s effect wore off (together with all the others). But now we are at 407ppm. If those effects wore off in the last ice ages, then so would they do now. But that is not what is being argued, is it? A runaway effect that follows a logarithmic pattern still goes to the end point, and doesn’t stop short of it, it only slows more and more. Also the temperature curves should follow a logarithmic/slowly levelling off pattern if the warming trends were stopped by radiation into space and CO2 saturation in the last ice age cycles.

                So no, those two points cannot be the answer to my question, and if they were we wouldn’t, actually couldn’t have a problem now according to your own view with more CO2 in the air.

              • Harold says:

                “You just said that radiation into space and the logarithmic saturation effect of CO2 set a stop, a LIMIT, to this process.”

                Not quite. I said this is one way the process would not lead to continual amplification. This is just a broad reason that is simple to understand to explain why things don’t just get hotter and hotter or get stuck in a snowball.

                if you want a mere detailed discussion of how intermediate states are stable or meta-stable, you can find it here.

                https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-3121.2002.00408.x

                The caption under Figure 6 says “Of three possible stable points for Es=1.0, the Earth actually lies on the partially ice‐covered branch at point 1”

                They show that there are stable intermediate positions possible. Is this the whole explanation? No, but it does show that your conjecture that hothouse or iceball are the only stable states possible in an earth type system is false.

                The long term feedbacks of slow build up of CO2 in a snowball and removal of CO2 by enhanced silicate weathering in an ice-free world slowly tip the world out of the hothouse and snowball states.

              • skylien says:

                I am not sure what use it is to refer to the snowball hypothesis. Have you read I closely? It is littered with “may, could, would, might”. Fact is that for the geological facts this hypothesis is trying to answer, there are several other hypotheses trying to explain them as well. And all of them explain some things but not all including the snowball hypothesis or rather have some facts that more or less go counter. And there is no favourite as far as I can tell. At least, as far as I could see, here is no one even claiming that the snowball hypothesis is the consensus view.

                Specifically, for the snowball: It doesn’t explain how this situation actually comes to be about. “Some trigger” like suddenly very low CO2 due to silicate weathering (which as far as I have seen CO2 was always over 4500 ppm up 10 000 or something) is needed. And then to get out of the snowball situation a build up of an insane amount of CO2 of 130 000 ppm (13%) of CO2 needs to happen to arguably get it out of, which is “unreasonably large” (not my words!).

                This theory is not proven at all, and most important, even if it was it doesn’t apply to the last ice ages we were talking about. The only thing I can grant you is that there is at least a theory out there that MIGHT have an answer to the point if it was possible to get out of a complete snowball.

                But as said those processes do NOT apply in the last ice age cycles of the last 3 to 400 000 years, which were cold but nowhere near a snowball. Those do not explain why warming stopped where it stopped at ONLY max 300ppm of CO2. And why cooling stopped where it stopped at 180ppm. As you know each drop in CO2 makes it more potent in affecting the temperature. Which means a drop from 200 to 180 has a much bigger effect on the temperature than from 300 to 280. Or to get an idea. Of the roughly 3°C CO2 contributes to the total temperature increase of all greenhouse gases (30 °C in total, and CO2 is responsible for 10% of it), the first 20 ppm make more than half of it! And above of 280ppm each 20 ppm make roughly a difference of about 0.03°C.

                All those things just do not add up. The snowball theory doesn’t explain the last ice age cycles as well as your other two points above (radiation, and saturation effect of CO2) couldn’t either. Making some broad points that do not address my specific question are moot.

              • Harold says:

                I agree that snowball is not settled science. However, all this was as a response to this comment:

                “” If CO2 is as strong a driver for global temperature that given those facts, the earths climate as we know it would have likely self-destructed. Either burned up or frozen completly up with basically no way back from either scenario”

                I was explaining that there is a way back, that is all, and the only way back we can think of requires CO2.

                So now that is out of the way, how about relatively modern intergalcials?

                By the technical definition we are in an ice age and in an interglacial period, where ice sheets are restricted to the poles and higher mountains. Just for clarity I suggest we use glacial and interglacial as this fits the timescale you describe of 400,000 years. The glacials are often called Ice Ages and that is fine as well, but we need to make sure we are referring to the same things.

                The question is then can we explain why we get a cycle of glacial and interglacial periods.

                The simple answer is that the various feedbacks reach an equilibrium. The conditions remain until something disturbs the equilibrium, altering the feedbacks until a new equilibrium is reached.

                The full answer is to describe the feedbacks and model them to see if they provide a reasonable explanation.

                This has been done to a large extent as described in the literature. We don’t have all the answers, as it always the case with science. Just one example of the many papers is here
                https://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5941/710

                Each one paints a small part of the picture and builds on all the previous observations reported in other papers. There is no “one piece of evidence” that can be pointed to, but a whole interlocking structure.

              • skylien says:

                Nothing is out of the way here, and it also never was in the way in the first place. My main point was never, what could get us out of a complete snowball, but that all those already mentioned interlocked variables which all have a self-reinforcing positive feedback can’t be stopped if your side is right on the way to snowball/hothouse.

                And even regarding the point of being stuck in a snowball situation, I said clearly “basically” which means there might be some unlikely scenarios that might get you back. And frankly, a proposed scenario of over 130 000 ppm from one unproven hypothesis is exactly that. An unlikely scenario.

                But again that is not even my main point and I have made it clear from the start what I am up to. Now I played along following your links etc to see where it gets me. But obviously nothing led to an actual answer, and now you point me to another source, this time behind a paywall. Sorry, I am not going to pay only to see again there isn’t the answer again. Why don’t you just spell it out?

                Whatever in closing I have a link for you as well, and it is even for free:
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2Bw52FjYi4

              • Harold says:

                Thank you for the link. I have watched Curry and now I will watch the whole debate to get a balanced picture of what occurred.

                It lasts 1.5 hours.
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVXHaSqpsVg

                It was a bit rubbish really. Everyone just making tired old talking points, Curry included. I wouldn’t bother if I were you.

                ” but that all those already mentioned interlocked variables which all have a self-reinforcing positive feedback can’t be stopped if your side is right on the way to snowball/hothouse… Why don’t you just spell it out?”

                I have spelled it out. The temperature reaches equilibrium and meta-stable positions, such as the one we are in now. I posted a paper that shows exactly how this can occur in figure 6.

                Th 2013 paper referenced in the Sciencedaily article describes the initial cooling due to Milankovitch then the ice-sheets growing because of the feedbacks. They cover much of the land. The larger the icesheet the less stable it is, resulting significant retreat within a few thousand years triggered by a modest increase in insolation. A critical factor in their analysis was the slow isostatic rebound. This keeps the ice low and ablation high during the retreat. If the earth rebounded instantly we would not get the same cycles.

                They say ” Carbon dioxide is involved, but is not determinative, in the evolution of the 100,000-year glacial cycles.”

                You can read the abstract here. SciHub is a useful tool for seeing paywalled papers but I am not sure about copyright issues with using it.

            • Anonymous says:

              “Why would it stop where it stops?”
              That is a good question.

              I can offer a suggestion.

              Analogy time. I am working this on the fly, so lets see how it might work.

              With no feedback. Imagine a cabin. It has a certain temperature inside. Then we turn on a heater. This will cause the cabin to warm. It will not carry on, but will reach an equilibrium temperature where heat loss equals heat input.

              The positive feedback from CO2 is as if as the cabin gets warmer, the heater gets turned up. This could result in continual warming until it bursts into flame.

              However, depending on the strength of the feedback the cabin may reach an equilibrium temperature, where it does not continue to get hotter and therefore the heater does not continually get turned up.

              There are two factors to consider.

              1)The energy radiated by a body is proportional to the fourth power of the temperature, so the amount of radiation emitted rises quite quickly with temperature.

              Say the feedback is 1 level for each 5C. Heater is turned on to 1, temperature rises by say 5C. The heater goes up to 2. The cabin warms by less than 5C, because the heat loss is greater at the higher temperature. Say it settles on 2.5C increase. The feedback turns the heater up half a level to 2.5. The temperature rises by less than 2.5C and the heater gets turned up by less than half a level. We can see that this will tend towards an equilibrium temperature, even with the feedback.

              2) The forcing is logarithmic – it is expressed as a certain amount per doubling of CO2.
              Considering this factor alone, we cannot start from setting 0 because we cannot double this, so lets say we start with level 1.
              The heater is turned up to level 2.
              The temperature rises by 5C.
              This is a doubling from 1 to 2, so we can say the feedback is 5C for a doubling of level. We are ignoring the increase in radiation losses here.
              The feedback is one level for 5C, so the heater tuns up to 3.
              This is a 50% increase, so the temperature rises 2.5C
              The heater is turned up half a level, from 3 to 3.5.
              This is an increase of 1/6, so the temperature rises 5/6 of a degree.
              Again we see a tendency to an equilibrium.

              Combining these two factors seems a good enough answer to convince me that the temperature does not have to keep rising, even with the feedback.

  4. Tel says:

    On the topic of Money Mechanics, I have not yet gone through your stuff in detail … looks like you are not up to the modern era yet.

    Anyway, I get it with the QE and pumping money (liquidity if you like) into the system, and it’s clear that there’s some correlation between QE and the gains in the US stock market. However correlation does not prove causation, and the question has been going around: what is the real mechanism by which the Fed can boost stock values?

    If people are worried about inflation (and the Fed has promised price inflation at a minimum of 2% but perhaps people are worried about more than 2%) then they buy assets thus bidding up the price of assets. That makes sense … they could buy gold, silver, land, or stocks, or even foreign assets should they expect the Fed will devalue the USD. However, it seems like most of the money is getting herded into US stocks, but why? Is it a consequence of all the index follower clones buying whatever the others are buying?

    More than that, why have hairy companies like Amazon, and Tesla, and stupid We-Work been able to attract such strong investment, in a market where you would expect nervous savers to look for more stable assets than those? Could the Fed have some back door mechanism for picking winners? Is that possible? Why do future unlikely earnings have more attraction than present day reliable earnings? I mean low interest rates mean there is more money in general sloshing around, you would expect it to slosh equally in every direction.

    How does the “Plunge Protection Team” operate … does anyone know that one?

  5. Andrew in MD says:

    Bob, thanks a lot for writing that climate series. I just read all 3 parts. It gave me a much better understanding of how the climate model simulations work than I had previously. For some reason, I had never grasped that the models were actually low resolution simulations of the Earth’s climate. It all makes way more sense to me now. Thank you for that.

    The part that really jumps out at me is how much noisier the real data is than the simulation. It looks like the hindcasting does an okay, but not great, job of following the observed data, but as soon as we get into the forecasting, the mean predicted temperature becomes a lot smoother. But if we know that historic temperatures go up and down, why would a simulation, meant to respond the way Earth does, only ever go up? A good simulation that’s trying to match what happens here on Earth should predict some years will be colder than the previous year. A simulation that has no way of knowing when or why the temperature might go down is not accurate enough for long term predictions. It doesn’t have enough fidelity, resolution, or parameters to reproduce the behavior of Earth’s climate with any confidence.

    Furthermore, the way that simulations work is that the results that are meant to predict further into the future build upon the events that are predicted to happen closer to the present. So as a simulation attempts to predict things further and further into the future, errors from earlier in the simulation necessarily accumulate and the predictions become less and less certain. So anything these models have to say about what is going to happen in 50 or 100 years, given their inability to accurately predict what will happen in 10 years, is of zero practical confidence. It’s basically an educated guess.

    My intuition was that the models were unreliable. Thank you for helping me understand how they’re meant to work and what causes them to be unreliable.

  6. Harold says:

    I wrote a response yesterday – maybe I forgot to submit it. Apologies if it appears twice.

    “A simulation that has no way of knowing when or why the temperature might go down is not accurate enough for long term predictions.”

    I have a simulation that predicts temperatures in USA will be warmer in June than in January. It cannot predict how weather will change up and down in June, whether it will be warmer on the 15th than the 20th or if we will have an unusual cold or mild spell in January. The long term prediction is valid without knowing the short term variation.

    Another example is a rubber ball bouncing down a rocky slope. I cannot predict the short term bounces, but I can predict the general direction of travel.

    Climate models do not pretend to predict the weather, nor the exact timing of short term events like EL Nino. That does not invalidate their ability to predict trends accurately.

    They may or not be able to do so, but this criticism is not valid.

    • Andrew in MD says:

      You’re wrong.

    • guest says:

      “I have a simulation that predicts temperatures in USA will be warmer in June than in January.”

      I have a similar simulation with the same result, but mine is based on the position and tilt of Earth relative to the sun, not aggregated weather data (climate).

      “Another example is a rubber ball bouncing down a rocky slope. I cannot predict the short term bounces, but I can predict the general direction of travel.”

      I have a similar example based on physics that is true no matter how the weather affects the ball; Weather could make the ball fly around the sky for quite awhile, and yet nothing about the weather or CO2 will change the fact that the ball’s general direction of travel will be downward.

      For some reason, the results of climate models don’t seem to factor in known laws, like how clouds form from evaporation and then those clouds cool the air under them.

      Even if CO2 could cause global warming (you can’t aggregate various regional weather data into a single temperature, that’s nonsense), all the water on Earth would prevent it due to cloud formation.

      Besides, not only do socialists that pretend to care about global warming have to concern themselves with volcanoes that would make any effort to reduce CO2 emissions mute, as well as their own claim that CO2 has catastrophically wiped out life on earth well before the Industrial Revolution (thereby making humans in a LESS industrial world more susceptible to being wiped out even without so-called “suicidal” fossil fuels), but there’s also this little problem that has been raging for the past 60 years, and is expected to continue raging for a couple of hundred more years – well past the supposed catastrophic 100-year climb in “global temnperature” to +2 degrees:

      Centralia mine fire
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

      You’ve heard of nothing machines, right? Well that’s like a giant nothing factory, right there, producing nothing but CO2 for centuries on end (as well as wasting fuel and proving just how MUCH fuel Earth has in the first place).

      You lose on the propaganda, socialists.

      • Harold says:

        My comment was to address the specific point here.
        “A simulation that has no way of knowing when or why the temperature might go down is not accurate enough for long term predictions. It doesn’t have enough fidelity, resolution, or parameters to reproduce the behavior of Earth’s climate with any confidence.”

        The examples demonstrate that a simulation or model that does not have the fidelity to reproduce short term variation can nevertheless successfully predict longer term behavior.

        You acknowledge this here
        “Weather could make the ball fly around the sky for quite awhile, yet nothing about the weather or CO2 will change the fact that the ball’s general direction of travel will be downward.” It is not necessary to describe all the short term bounces to describe the direction of travel.

        Therefore this specific criticism of the models is not valid.

        That is the end of that particular point, but I find other aspects of your comment interesting.

        “you can’t aggregate various regional weather data into a single temperature, that’s nonsense”
        Yes you can. It is done all the time. here is a discussion of this at WUWT.
        https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/14/calculating-global-temperature-anomaly/

        Are you suggesting that this is meaningless? Is it meaningful to say, for example, that Africa is warmer than Antarctica?

        “Even if CO2 could cause global warming… all the water on Earth would prevent it due to cloud formation.”

        Point to the science demonstrating this please, otherwise it is a meaningless conjecture.

        “concern themselves with volcanoes that would make any effort to reduce CO2 emissions mute, [sic]” Volcanoes emit about 1% of the CO2 that humans currently are. This is why it takes millions of years for volcanoes to build up the CO2 enough to get us out of a snowball Earth.

        The Centralia mine fire is an interesting story. What was your point?

  7. Bitter Clinger says:

    Speaking of Money Mechanics, I hope that Dr. Murphy will address the property of the federal reserve that when it creates money, as Milton Friedman says by ledger entry, and lends it out, more is owed than created. Simulating the power of compound interest, how much would be owed after 106 years? As I have asked about before from Wikipedia:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_position_of_the_United_States#Foreign_debt.2C_assets.2C_and_liabilities

    “The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP)[a] as of Q1 2014.”

    My question is why the debts are not considered assets? I own tax-free municipal bonds, which are debt to the people who issue them, but on my balance sheet they show as an asset. The power of compound interest is of course a TRUE forcing function.

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