House of Eratosthenes

Quote of the week: U.W. Madison Prof. Emeritus Reid Bryson, speaking about global warming, or as it’s cheerleaders have renamed it to coincide better with ongoing evidence, “climate change.”

Reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. “And that goes in the paper as ‘scientists say.'”

The 87-year-old, who founded the department of meteorology at the U.W. Madison, as well as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, concedes that it is indeed getting warmer.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the “Little Ice Age,” he said in an interview this week.

“However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time,” Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

“It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis,” he said. “It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence.”

Interestingly, a lot of scientists are coming out of the woodwork to bluster away about this unqualified yokel — until they figure out that whoever taught those scientists what they know about weather phenomena, were themselves Prof. Bryson’s students. The guy is the freakin’ Yoda of scientific climatology…and he ain’t buyin’ it.

Well, it gets even more interesting than that. Because some climate change skeptics raise some intringuing questions about the recent warming trend itself:

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades.

So says Bob Carter, professor of Marine Geology at James Cook university in Australia. Interestingly, the pro-global-warming tattletale website SourceWatch is mum in Prof. Carter’s case, on what has become an obligatory smear against all climate change skeptics: that he would have been bought-off by the energy industry. There’s no such slur on Carter’s page there. Instead, the onslaught is limited to a quote from the Sydney Morning Herald that Carter “appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community.”

If you know SourceWatch, you know this is virtually a compliment. “He got such-and-such a grant from Exxon” would be the attack of choice; “the whitecoats haven’t let him into their club so we shouldn’t listen to him” is decidedly second-rate, used only when the first-tier smear has been thoroughly evaluated for use, and found not to apply.

Okay, so it seems both of these gentlemen are relatively “clean” and can’t be slandered into irrelevance with gossip about industry-funded research. And they’re both saying we really need to look before we leap onto the whole curtail-carbon-emissions bandwagon, in whatever form we’re propositioned to do so.

But amongst the two of them, it seems there is disagreement about whether it’s getting warmer. How do you explain that?

Well, as Dr. Carter himself pointed out, the disagreement is likely illusory because the two authorities are speaking about different timeframes. But I would like to inspect, also, the definition of “it” we are using when we say “it’s getting warmer.” What it? Seems to me, since the Earth is a three-dimensional object, if it is to be considered as a closed ecosystem and we’re going to start hyperventilating with worry and angst because that three-dimensional ecosystem’s “mean temperature” has been ticking upward, we should be measuring all of it. Which means, you pull up an enormous blender, big enough to accomodate the entire planet. Without adding anything or taking anything away, you grind up the entire planet into a liquid puree — once the temperature has been fully stabilized and distributed throughout the contents, you measure it.

By which time, of course, you’ve destroyed the SUV’s and the factories that are supposed to be causing global warming so you can’t test the theory anymore…besides of which, you probably can’t find a blender that big. But you find a way to do the equivalent. Which would yield a “mean temperature” of nine or ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

You know what?

That’s probably not what scientists are talking about when they say “mean temperature.”

But that’s about the only definition of it that can be produced, with real scientific merit. Nothing else takes into account all of the matter that contributes to the ecosystem. And if you aren’t going to do that, what you’re then going to do is disregard distribution, convection, wakes, currents…all the stuff that climatology is. You would be doing what I suspect our climate eggheads really are doing: Measuring “local” temperature, wherever the instrumentation happens to be, and calling it gobal temperature.

Averaging it out not according to heat density of the surrounding matter, but according to where the readings may be taken.

How far down? Well, you can stop wherever you want, to give the final result an alarming twist that will end up getting your name in the paper. Sea level…a hundred feet above…fifty feet below…if nobody’s calling you on it, you can measure it however you want. So I guess I’m calling the whole notion of a “mean temperature” into serious question here.

And that seems fair, from where I sit. The agent whose readings are going to be most drastically affected by the questions I’m raising, it seems, is sea water. Ya know what? I’m not a scientist myself, but I know water weighs a lot. And every pound of it, can absorb a lot of energy without much temperature variance. If you switch to the metric system it gets really easy: Just a gram of water will tick upward by one degree Celcius, for every calorie absorbed. One degree, in that situation, is a whole lot less than the temperature differential you’ll measure in a gram of — let’s say — sand. Or asphalt, or dirt.

The issue is heat density. Your satellite measures a heat differential over a square kilometer; you have to ask, a square kilometer of what? Peat bog? An empty lot? Water? If water, then how far down does it go? There are a lot of ways you could settle this; most of those methods, the least expensive ones, are going to be utterly invalid, contaminating your entire “model” or experiment. And I don’t see anyone speaking to that anywhere.

But they’ve “proven” an increase of 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit over a hundred years. There. That might be why there’s disagreement about why it’s getting warmer. Meanwhile, the “proof” is there, so I’m supposed to join everybody else, fling spittle around, and panic. Pardon me if I’m a little slow to climb on board.

But anyway. These are just some of the questions I have, assuming that we’re all settled on the notion that global warming is really taking place. Our skeptics aren’t settled on that…and the cheerleader-chicken-littles aren’t settled on it either, for if they were they wouldn’t have renamed it to “climate change.”

Oh, and one other little thing from Bob Carter’s column that bears some emphasis:

As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.

Um, yeah. High time someone raised that as an issue. But I doubt we’re ready for it, because we’re still stuck in the mold of watching movies made by former presidential candidates and calling them “documentaries.”

And, might I add…driving monster vehicles that get about eight-miles-a-gallon to the theaters to see those movies.

See, we like to think we’re treating this “scentifically,” or that if we’re not, at least the “scientists” who are trying to get us all scared and riled up, are doing that. We like to think that. But that isn’t what’s really going on, and deep down I think just about everyone understands that. It’s a fairy tale, and it’s getting more and more popular because the line between “scientist” and “politician” is quickly eroding. That is a climate change that should be capturing more of our attention.

Sounds like you’re pretty much up to speed, Morgan.

As far as the scientists disagreeing, scientists do disagree on things. One good scientist can even disagree on something with another good scientist as well. That’s because scientists come up with theories, and then they devise tests to see if the theory holds.

Here’s the sticky thing — a theory can never really be “proven” — it can only be disproven. What can be done is to show that it holds true again and again in a given set of circumstances. And when this is shown, the theory becomes useful. But all it takes is for one case to fail for the theory to be disproven. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the theory is useless. Often the scientist will then come up with another theory as to why the first theory failed in that case. And then he or she tests that theory. See how this works? (well I’m pretty sure you do, but this is for all the other nobodies besides me that read the blog that nobody reads.)

If the second theory appears to hold again and again, the first theory can then be modified to account for it. But even then they are both still theories.

Another problem that can come up is that a test or series of tests might not be appropriate — and therefore are invalid, for the theory being tested. For example, “did those two ever fit together?” is a valid test to test a theory that CO2 levels are related to temperature changes. However, it is not a valid test to see whether or not CO2 levels cause temperature increases, partly because it might just be the other way around. (Now how do those two fit together and what is the relationship between the curves is a more useful — and, as it turns out, revealing — approach).

There’s another theory based on blackbody radiation theory that predicts that more CO2 will produce warmer temperatures. But it, too, is a theory. A theory which must be tested before we accept it as a useful predictor.

The question you have to ask yourself is… how has this theory been tested? Followed by, are these tests valid to show that the theory holds? And everybody’s favorite followup question is why or why not? Which basically means, “defend your answer.”

At any rate, it turns out that the CO2 –> Warming is a pretty hard thing to test on the scale we’re talking about. About the best we can do, to the extent we can do it, is go back and try to re-construct temperature and CO2 records throughout climatological history and closely observe their relationships. If they match excactly, that’s not very helpful — because it doesn’t hint at what causes what. But if they don’t … if one increase leads the other by any sort of significant amount, then you get an indicator of which one might be the cause and which one might be the effect.

And as it turns out, when we do this, we see that temperature goes up first and CO2 levels follow.

Why?

Well, there’s a theory that says that cold water absorbs more CO2 (and other gasses as well, but we’re talking about CO2 here) than warm water. And in experiment after experiment, this has never been shown not to be the case. So there’s a theory that says that the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is a result of warmer water (mostly ocean) surface temperatures because the warmer ocean can’t hold as much as it had been holding — so it must release it as gas.

Sounds like a pretty good theory. And whenever we dissolve CO2 in cold water and warm it up, it releases some. Like clockwork. Every time. That’s how real science works. Not by “graduate students, political bodies, and comedian’s wives all agree”.

Science is most certainly not about voting.
- philmon | 06/19/2007 @ 11:49
I suppose I should add, regarding the differences in what Bryson and Carter say about whether the earth is warming at all, that you are right about that, too.

It depends on the “it” that they are talking about.

It’s widely accepted in the climatology/geology community that earth’s surface temperatures have been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age (except for Mann and his adherents who claim it was a phenomenon local to Europe — even though there’s plenty of evidence that it was not.

Carter is just bringing up an interesting point, and a valid one. If the increase in temperature we’ve seen in especially the last 150 years is around the same magnitude as the margin of error… this raises the question … how do we know it’s been warming at all? This is not the same as saying it hasn’t warmed. It’s saying “where’s the beef?”. And when we go to give our answers, we’d better make sure we’re comparing apples to apples.

All the different temperature record reconstruction methods might be looked upon as different “fruits” — each valid on their own merits, but each a little different in its results.

Still, if they all trend upward, it’s probably safe to say that “it’s gotten warmer”. But we’d better be careful in saying we’re sure we know by how much. And even more careful in speculating on why….
- philmon | 06/19/2007 @ 21:36
To adress Prof Bryson’s claims, it’s oversimplifying things to say global warming is due to volcanoes (or lack thereof). The main driving factor, particularly over the early 20th century, was the increase in solar activity which steadily rose from 1900 to 1950. Temperatures closely followed solar activity so that when solar levels steadied in the 50’s, so did global temperatures. While a lack of volcano activity may have played some part in early 20th century warming, it’s had little impact on warming since 1970.

Similarly, the correlation between solar activity and temperature ends in the 70’s when a long term warming trend began for the next 30 years. Over this period, solar levels have remained steady. So the two driving causes of natural climate change over the past few millenia, solar and volcanic activity, have very little to do with the last 30 years of global warming.

As for Bob Carter, 1998 was an unusually hot year because it featured the strongest El Nino of the century. Check out CRU’s graph of temperature over the past century – the 5 year smoothed trend clearly hasn’t reversed and 1998 is an anomaly. It’s ironic that he filters out El Nino effects in his satellite measurements but fails to filter them out for his surface measurements.

As for his comment that satellite measurements measure cooling, satellite measurements of lower atmosphere temperatures shows temperature rises of between 0.16°C to 0.24°C/decade since 1982. This range is in agreement with weather balloon measurements that from 1975 through 2005 warmed by approximately 0.23°C/decade and surface temperature analysis by NASS GISS that measure a rise of around 0.2°C/decade after 1975.
- jfoc | 06/20/2007 @ 00:56
Morgan,

Thank you for posting your comments on my Courier Mail article.

A note of explanation regarding the apparent “disagreement” between me and Reid Bryson about whether warming is occurring or not. I doubt that any such disagreement exists.

Whether you observe a warming or cooling trend through a portion of the temperature record is ENTIRELY a feature of the length of time that you choose to look at.

I infer that when Prof. Bryson says that warming is occurring, he is referring to the period of the last couple of hundred years, when the earth has warmed after the end of the Little Ice Age around 1860. I agree with him, as do virtually all sensible scientists.

When I state that no warming has occurred since 1998 or 1979 (depending upon which record you consult), that is equally an incontrovertible statement of fact. How you then USE or INTERPRET that fact is entirely a different matter.

I use the shorter periods not so much to adjudicate on a warming trend (or not) per se, but rather to test the greenhouse hypthesis.

As the public understands that hypothesis, it is that as you increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the temperature will increase. Well, it is crystal clear that temperature hasn’t increased despite the large recent increases in CO2. Hence the greenhouse hypothesis is falsified by such a test.

That’s a bit of a worry given the number of influential people that are running around lobbying for a carbon tax.

Bob Carter
- glrmc | 06/20/2007 @ 01:55
And thanks, all, for your comments. You raise good points.

To make sure my own fuzzy verbiage is clear, meandering as it did from my insomniac fingertips at 1:30 in the morning: This whole “climate change” phenomenon seems to have evolved into a sub-science about how to interpret readings from highly-precise, state-of-the-art instrumentation. Instrumentation that, a relatively short time ago, wasn’t even designed to try to offer the kind of information we’re demanding. Not much more than that, and certainly not so much that one can prognose gloomily that armageddon is at hand based on how those metrics are read.

To state it more concisely, in order to record a temperature variance in the neighborhood of one degree and conclude from that a justification for panic, you have to assume lots of things, and it’s clear the public-at-large has entirely lost track of what all those things are. You’ve got to assume your method of recording these temperatures is flawless or near-flawless…and has been this, for a significant period of time. You have to ignore the laws of entropy. You’re assuming a one-degree variance is a harbinger of future variance on an equal or greater scale. The Second Law of Thermodynamics raises a problematic issue with this. Finally, if you’re measuring a part of an ecosystem, rather than an entire closed ecosystem (as is the case with the deliberately-cockeyed “Freeberg Celestial Blender” analogy), you likewise have to presume your method, and implementation, of drawing the boundary are likewise flawless. By that, i mean the boundary between what parts of the ecosystem you’re measuring, and what parts of the ecosystem that you’re not.

Example: “Global,” used in the context of “global warming” or “global climate change,” clearly refers to that part of the planet that can experience climate, I would have to surmise. The skin. Every inch of it, but only down to a certain depth. And here I have to raise the question: To what depth? Sea level? Or do we not care…are we simply reading surface temperatures over land & sea, counting on things beneath that surface to just kind of work themselves out in a scientifically-consistent and scientifically measurable way.

It must be a relevant question, since we’re constructing models predicting much more of the same over the next century. IPCC Climage Change 2001 Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers, p. 34. There we go, ignoring entropy again! And, in all likelihood, ignoring whatever’s going on under the surface of things; obsessing with the skin.

Well as Phil sometimes says, a model doesn’t test a theory, it expresses the theory. This would explain why the climate models are so screechy and gloom. And it could restore some credibility to those authorities who would like us to pay more attention to the models…if only they were so careful about this distinction. But they’re not. They seem to be in a hurry to sacrifice their reputations to get us in a panic and serve the greater good. It seems they want to show us Magellan maps colored dark-yellow and burnt-orange all over, and let the pro-carbon-tax stampede commence.
- mkfreeberg | 06/20/2007 @ 07:34

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Tuesday, June 19th, 2007