Climate change affecting weather

Pa ElGrande

Akrasia wrote: »

. You're interpretation, that we should disregard the models because they're not perfect is the exact opposite of what they are saying in that link

The computer models are being presented in the media as a fait accompli except that when compared with real data and experience are shown to be completely wrong. You need to acknowledge that fact otherwise you will continue to undermine your own arguments when you continue to cite them.

Akrasia wrote: »

Top Down solutions are the only way we can possibly switch to a carbon neutral global economy in time to avoid disaster.

There need to be taxes on polluting industry, and massive investment (both state and private) in renewable technology and development resources to help poorer countries switch to green technology and mitigate the climate change that is already locked in.

You are an activist for a cause you do not understand. There is no way for me to persuade you to change your mind you will just have to come to your senses in your own good time.


I'm old enough to remember scares like global cooling (I vaguely remember a Dutch couple in Ireland being interviewed on RTE about this topic in the early 80s.). The nuclear winter - I was a member of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) at the time, the acid rain scare that disappeared once Eastern bloc socialist regimes fell, the ozone hole which is still there big as ever, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and now the latest bogeyman: ocean acidification. I am not a disinterested person in environmental matters, but having seen a number of these over several decades I am sceptical enough to not trust people who promise relief by dipping into my pocket. You see how the ozone problem went away after the Montreal protocol. How did this go from being a catastrophic global environmental problem that was going to doom mankind to a non issue overnight, yet the hole is still there 20 years later and will continue forever.


If you want to refute libertarian theory on the current strain of environmentalism that calls for top down control, then here you go.


You are also posting on the weather forum where most of the contributors are broadly in agreement with the theory behind global warming, so you are not going to gain any new converts here, if you want to discuss the science behind behind the weather then this is the place, if you want to promote a political agenda there are other places to do that.

Akrasia

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

The computer models are being presented in the media as a fait accompli except that when compared with real data and experience are shown to be completely wrong. You need to acknowledge that fact otherwise you will continue to undermine your own arguments when you continue to cite them.

The models are not completely wrong. They serve as excellent tools for
Understanding the global climate and they continue to be improved as we learn more.

This is the weather forum. Forecasting uses models too, they're not 100% reliable, but if I was being told to prepare for a hurricane because the models predict one, I could ignore the warning and hope the models are wrong, or I could prepare for a hurricane.

Weather models can say a hurricane is likely in the next few days give or take 24 hours. A climate model gives warnings over decades subject to certain conditions.

You are an activist for a cause you do not understand. There is no way for me to persuade you to change your mind you will just have to come to your senses in your own good time.


I'm old enough to remember scares like global cooling (I vaguely remember a Dutch couple in Ireland being interviewed on RTE about this topic in the early 80s.). The nuclear winter - I was a member of the campaign for nuclear disarmament (CND) at the time, the acid rain scare that disappeared once Eastern bloc socialist regimes fell, the ozone hole which is still there big as ever, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and now the latest bogeyman: ocean acidification. I am not a disinterested person in environmental matters, but having seen a number of these over several decades I am sceptical enough to not trust people who promise relief by dipping into my pocket. You see how the ozone problem went away after the Montreal protocol. How did this go from being a catastrophic global environmental problem that was going to doom mankind to a non issue overnight, yet the hole is still there 20 years later and will continue forever.


If you want to refute libertarian theory on the current strain of environmentalism that calls for top down control, then here you go.


You are also posting on the weather forum where most of the contributors are broadly in agreement with the theory behind global warming, so you are not going to gain any new converts here, if you want to discuss the science behind behind the weather then this is the place, if you want to promote a political agenda there are other places to do that.

Other than global cooling (which was never mainstream) you have listed a series of real environmental concerns that we managed to address through international cooperation and government regulation. The fact that they aren't a major concern anymore is testiment to the power of global cooperation in the face of a common threat. It is not a reason to get conspiratorial and think those crises were never real in the first place.

Pa ElGrande

Akrasia wrote: »

The models are not completely wrong. They serve as excellent tools for
Understanding the global climate and they continue to be improved as we learn more.

The models used to promote CAGW have precisely zero prediction power. They are wrong and will continue to be wrong because the programmers ignore variables they cannot simulate. If the models were to be broadly in-line with real world world data they might have some value as predictive tools, however the longer you run them the further from reality they deviate.

Akrasia wrote: »

This is the weather forum. Forecasting uses models too, they're not 100% reliable, but if I was being told to prepare for a hurricane because the models predict one, I could ignore the warning and hope the models are wrong, or I could prepare for a hurricane.

Weather models can say a hurricane is likely in the next few days give or take 24 hours. A climate model gives warnings over decades subject to certain conditions.

The models don't predict hurricanes, they run simulations based on real time data fed to them and known experience of the forecasters, the resolution only improves nearer to the event but beyond 3 days the resolution rapidly diminishes outside 7 days the resolution is grainy at best. It's easier to be a forecaster when you can look over the horizon and see what is coming all the model does is make the computations faster, the forecaster must still select the correct solution and that only comes through human experience.

Akrasia wrote: »

Other than global cooling (which was never mainstream) you have listed a series of real environmental concerns that we managed to address through international cooperation and government regulation. The fact that they aren't a major concern anymore is testiment to the power of global cooperation in the face of a common threat. It is not a reason to get conspiratorial and think those crises were never real in the first place.

The satellites to monitor the Arctic ice were put in orbit in 1979 to monitor the expansion of the ice cap (they were not promoting global warming back then, though the theory has been around since the 19th century). The nuclear disarmament came about because it became prohibitively expensive for both sides in the cold war to maintain their stockpiles. The use of nuclear weapons is still a potent threat to humanitys well being in 2017, albeit much reduced since the ending of cold war I. There is an arms race under way in south east Asia over the past decade under the guise of space exploration programs (i.e. missile development) and there are proxy wars under way between NATO aligned countries and SCO aligned countries testing new weapons and tactics as well as the disinformation war being conducted by both sides. Why can't there be international agreement to end the wars? Are the wars not testament to global cooperation in the face of a common threat?


Global warming as a political issue is dead in the water and consistently when asked it is at the bottom of voters list of priorities. The political powers are just going through the motions of neutralising it now that the Americans have refused to allocate substantial dollars and the costs and economic disruption are being keenly felt by the voters in Germany and South Australia. Higher priority issues like the looming bond defaults take higher precedence over global warming which is why I say to you if you believe in your cause that you should look towards your own individual actions because no action is going to come from the top.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

Top Down solutions are the only way we can possibly switch to a carbon neutral global economy in time to avoid disaster.

Christ.

Why do you want a carbon neutral economy?

Tell me exactly what you think is to be achieved by pursuing this philosophy?

In numbers, the deduction to be delivered by this carbon neutral economy philosophy to the present existing already miniscule co2 in the atmosphere, 0.04%.

3% of that 0.04% is man made.

Tease it out please. The figures.

Show me the reduction to be made in parts per million made if Ireland switched to electric cars for example.
For the ones contemplating doing it to save the planet, the well intentioned and well heeled, but not terribly well informed.

Now that "global warming" has been quietly but suspiciously dropped in the light of NASA having been discovered massaging historic temperature data upwards to suit the global warming agenda, why is anyone willing to swallow the same mantra that what was responsible for global warming, namely c02, is coincidentally really handy to blame for the catch-all, and far less specific, "climate change" mantra?

Because those who made the original claims know their credibility would be in tatters if they admitted they were wrong and needed to doctor figures to suit their agenda and need continued funding to enable them to continue their "research" ascribing blame and coming up with wild predictions that need to be further investigated, by themselves.

The politicians are caught up in it so deep with carbon taxes no one wants egg on their face now.

History shows that climates do actually change, evolve.

It's not mechanical, it's natural. Prone to change.

Akrasia

I really don't want this thread to turn into another debate on whether global warming is real.

If you don't think AGW is real then you're in disagreement with pretty much every respected scientific and academic body in the world.

If you think you know better then them, why are you wasting your time on here, publish your research and win the nobel prize.

If you think governments are colluding to hide the real science, then go off to the conspiracy theory forum where those opinions belong

This thread is meant to be for discussing how global warming is changing our weather and other related impacts of a warmer global climate.

We can debate specific details on how warm water affects hurricanes for example, but 'its all a hoax' type comments just swamp the thread with useless noise that almost everyone who understands science is already tired of.

Samaris

Of course climates change. No-one has ever disputed this. The problem is that we know what causes the climate to change and none of those impacts apart from basic chemistry and physics of additional aerosols in the atmosphere actually apply at the moment. Milankovitch cycles aren't in the right place (and that is by far the largest driver). There have been no supervolcanos or dramatic extraterrestrial impacts. Yet, conditions are currently right for a change in how the climate affects regions of the world.

If climate never changed, at all, we wouldn't need to be concerned. Climate does change naturally, in response to various drivers, that is how it works due to how the Earth moves relative to the Sun. However, it is the impacts on the Earth caused by these drivers that we're actually worried about. And currently there is no input from natural cycles that could cause the dramatic changes we are already seeing.

Still, the old issue holds true - that no one single event can be attributed directly to climate change. Any single event can happen. Multiple large events outside usual parameters is a warning sign, but the real smoking gun is the continuous slow rise in sea surface temperatures and the known effects that this has on land. Harvey, Irma, Katia and Jose are/have all benefited from unusually warm sea surface temperatures in their regions of development and operation, which likely have increased their intensity, but not necessarily their original rate of formation (effects on formation of hurricanes in this zone has always been a bit of a question mark, but general consensus was "fewer, but bigger", albeit with a degree of uncertainty). We know that increasing aerosols (so-called "greenhouse gases") gives this effect. Models working off basic physics show that. Models of the current physics of the atmosphere, the intensity of the sun, and the landmasses underneath give that result. If there's a car crash and it is proven that there was nothing wrong with the car, no-one else was involved and the road was fine, the obvious answer is to look at the driver, not insist that the road or basic physics has changed.

Forest fires have multiple causes, but as with anything else, if you boost up one causal factor (dryness in areas prone to fire) to well above normal, that is one factor that may already meet fire potential (and one of the most important). Dead brush is another, drainage of land/changes in land use/destruction of soil/deforestation are also underlying causal factors. All of these have generally been changed by human activity in vulnerable areas. Then you just need a spark - be it a cigarette butt, a careless person with a campfire, an arsonist or a lightning bolt. It's a lesser impact, still needs other factors for the most part, but yeah, on balance, climate change probably isn't helping.

Akrasia

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

The models used to promote CAGW have precisely zero prediction power. They are wrong and will continue to be wrong because the programmers ignore variables they cannot simulate. If the models were to be broadly in-line with real world world data they might have some value as predictive tools, however the longer you run them the further from reality they deviate.

You're just wrong

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n9/full/nclimate2310.html?foxtrotcallback=true

The models don't predict hurricanes, they run simulations based on real time data fed to them and known experience of the forecasters, the resolution only improves nearer to the event but beyond 3 days the resolution rapidly diminishes outside 7 days the resolution is grainy at best. It's easier to be a forecaster when you can look over the horizon and see what is coming all the model does is make the computations faster, the forecaster must still select the correct solution and that only comes through human experience.

These 'simulations' are models

They are higher resolution because they are trying to track individual weather events. It is impossible to accurately predict weather months in advance because weather is very chaotic. Climate, is much less chaotic. Its about changes to the underlying mechanisms that drive weather. You can easily model a roulette table to show on average an even distribution of numbers. You would need a model many times more complex to predict where each individual ball is likely to settle.
If a you want to rig the roulette table to bias certain numbers, you can model this too, but again, to show the precise path each ball takes would require orders of magnitude more complex modelling.

The satellites to monitor the Arctic ice were put in orbit in 1979 to monitor the expansion of the ice cap (they were not promoting global warming back then, though the theory has been around since the 19th century). The nuclear disarmament came about because it became prohibitively expensive for both sides in the cold war to maintain their stockpiles. The use of nuclear weapons is still a potent threat to humanitys well being in 2017, albeit much reduced since the ending of cold war I. There is an arms race under way in south east Asia over the past decade under the guise of space exploration programs (i.e. missile development) and there are proxy wars under way between NATO aligned countries and SCO aligned countries testing new weapons and tactics as well as the disinformation war being conducted by both sides. Why can't there be international agreement to end the wars? Are the wars not testament to global cooperation in the face of a common threat?


Global warming as a political issue is dead in the water and consistently when asked it is at the bottom of voters list of priorities. The political powers are just going through the motions of neutralising it now that the Americans have refused to allocate substantial dollars and the costs and economic disruption are being keenly felt by the voters in Germany and South Australia. Higher priority issues like the looming bond defaults take higher precedence over global warming which is why I say to you if you believe in your cause that you should look towards your own individual actions because no action is going to come from the top.

Global warming, like nuclear weapons are an insidious threat. The global scientific community are warning us to act now. Ordinary people don't care about it until it actually affects them, until its too late and the damage is already done. We need political leadership to avert it before it gets to the point when it's too late.

Pa ElGrande

Akrasia wrote: »

You're just wrong

I am 100% correct the models have 0% predictive power.

Testing an astronomically-based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models

See discussion and conclusion (page 19) if you want to jump ahead.

The scientific method requires that a physical model fulfils two conditions: it has to reconstruct and predict (or forecast) physical observations. Herein, we have found that the GCMs used by the IPCC (2007) seriously fail to properly reconstruct even the large multidecadal oscillations found in the global surface temperature which have a climatic meaning. Consequently, the IPCC projections for the 21 st century cannot be trusted.

source

Akrasia wrote: »

Global warming, like nuclear weapons are an insidious threat. The global scientific community are warning us to act now. Ordinary people don't care about it until it actually affects them, until its too late and the damage is already done. We need political leadership to avert it before it gets to the point when it's too late.

There is no global scientific community that speaks with one voice like you claim. You proved this in previous posts where you routinely dismiss scientists that agree with the theory of global warming but do not meet the criteria of your apocalyptic vision of the future, what part of global don't you understand?

Ordinary people who live in cold climates do care, they all have to pay for (energy + VAT) + carbon tax for their home heating, cooking and transport. Astute politicians have long woken up to the fact that implementing the prescriptions advocated is going to eventually collapse their states economies and tax revenues they now have to manage your perceptions while they walk back from the precipice. There is also growing resistance to the erection of more wind turbines across the country especially as they get nearer to urban populations, politicians sense the tide has changed. They will still virtue signal that they are concerned about CAGW for a while yet, but nothing will be done that collapses tax revenue.

Gaoth Laidir

Climate models are useful, however they are far from perfect. I go back to this same chart again which shows how observations have not been keeping up with even the ERC4.5 projections, which go with a peak in CO2-output around the year 2040. This projection is far below the worst-case-scenario ERC8.5 that loves to be quoted on this forum, so a reality check is needed in that respect.

There is obviously some reason - unknown to the models - for this flattening out of the observations below, keeping them barely tracking the bottom members of this ERC. Now the observations will have recovered somewhat in the subseqent years, however if the models are not programmed to take this unknown "force" into consideration, then by 2100 we will be well below its projections.

Climate sensitivity would appear to be overstated in the models as they are now, so future versions should turn out to be more accurate.

Akrasia

Pa ElGrande wrote: »

I am 100% correct the models have 0% predictive power.

Testing an astronomically-based decadal-scale empirical harmonic climate model versus the IPCC (2007) general circulation climate models

That paper is utter nonsense. His theory is that our climate is affected by planetary movements (other planets in our solar system) but he has no mechanism for how they could possibly affect our global climate

If you're gonna dismiss all climate models as 100℅ you shouldn't base that opinion on the word of a man who proposes astrological influence on our climate

There is no global scientific community that speaks with one voice like you claim. You proved this in previous posts where you routinely dismiss scientists that agree with the theory of global warming but do not meet the criteria of your apocalyptic vision of the future, what part of global don't you understand?

There are nationalactionmies of sciences in many countries. Find me one, or a science faculty in any reputable university that does not agree with AGW.

Ordinary people who live in cold climates do care, they all have to pay for (energy + VAT) + carbon tax for their home heating, cooking and transport. Astute politicians have long woken up to the fact that implementing the prescriptions advocated is going to eventually collapse their states economies and tax revenues they now have to manage your perceptions while tQAhey walk back from the precipice. There is also growing resistance to the erection of more wind turbines across the country especially as they get nearer to urban populations, politicians sense the tide has changed. They will still virtue signal that they are concerned about CAGW for a while yet, but nothing will be done that collapses tax revenue.

There are lots of economics papers that show the costs of inaction are higher than the cost of action. This is a global problem that needs global cooperation to solve it.

Turning individuals against each other is just a tactic used by those who want to preserve the status quo.

Pa ElGrande

Akrasia wrote: »

There are lots of economics papers that show the costs of inaction are higher than the cost of action. This is a global problem that needs global cooperation to solve it.

Economic papers based on models with 0% predictive value are just as wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8lCWDeoWzo

Samaris

Akrasia wrote: »

That paper is utter nonsense. His theory is that our climate is affected by planetary movements (other planets in our solar system) but he has no mechanism for how they could possibly affect our global climate

If you're gonna dismiss all climate models as 100℅ you shouldn't base that opinion on the word of a man who proposes astrological influence on our climate

He's actually not 100% wrong, although I suspect he's overstating the amount. Jupiter and Saturn's positions can affect Earth's eccentricity, or at least there's a hypothesis that it does, the "wobble" that causes increased variation in seasonal variation.

Sums up as just that Jupiter and Saturn are big enough and close enough that their gravity slightly tugs Earth out of alignment as they pass each other, although it returns to its usual route once it's beyond their range of effect.

Aha, Nicola Scafetta again, that name's come up before (albeit possibly in the AH thread).

Akrasia

Samaris wrote: »

He's actually not 100% wrong, although I suspect he's overstating the amount. Jupiter and Saturn's positions can affect Earth's eccentricity, or at least there's a hypothesis that it does, the "wobble" that causes increased variation in seasonal variation.

Sums up as just that Jupiter and Saturn are big enough and close enough that their gravity slightly tugs Earth out of alignment as they pass each other, although it returns to its usual route once it's beyond their range of effect.

Aha, Nicola Scafetta again, that name's come up before (albeit possibly in the AH thread).

All planetary bodies affect each other through gravity, even pluto affects the earth by a tiny amount, but gravities strength declines by the square of its distance, so far away objects have very small effects.

Jupiter is 4 times further away from us than the sun is, it's also much much less massive than the sun, (it has 0.0009546 of a Solar mass), so the sun absolutely dominates our orbit, the moon has a way bigger gravitational pull on earth than Jupiter because its way closer.

Rather than Scafetta making up an effect and then using astrology and numerology to explain it, he should have first shown that there actually is an unexplained wobble that needs to be explained, and that this wobble is big enough to affect the energy balance on our planet before coming up with his explanation. (Spoiler: there isn't one astronomers definitely would have noticed, they're a bit nerdy about these things)

Even if all the planets were perfectly lined up, the moons gravity would still be hundreds of times more powerful, and the differences in lunar gravity as it gets closer and further during its normal orbit every 27.3 days would be tens of times stronger than all these planets lined up together.

Samaris

Oh, it is low in terms of effect, but as I understand it, it is there. Earth's eccentricity varies from about e=0.0034 to almost e=0.058 due to the influence of other planetary bodies*, although I assume the bulge has some effect here too. I'll admit that I didn't go into exoplanetary systems all that deeply as it is rather like protesting the Sun for current effects over a thickening atmosphere!

Mind you, I didn't examine Scafetta's actual claims that closely, just working off the basic principle here. It works over thousands of years anyway, so it's not going to be responsible for the last few decades.

Samaris

I think I started a footnote regarding my lack of knowledge about relative draw of the moon and Jupiter, but apparently I or boards ate it.

Interesting to think of the effects of removing certain bodies from the goldilocks set-up we currently have. Like the effects of removing the moon, or would life have formed in the same way if the moon had never been shattered off the earth? Admittedly irrelevant to the current conversation though

Akrasia

Samaris wrote: »

I think I started a footnote regarding my lack of knowledge about relative draw of the moon and Jupiter, but apparently I or boards ate it.

Interesting to think of the effects of removing certain bodies from the goldilocks set-up we currently have. Like the effects of removing the moon, or would life have formed in the same way if the moon had never been shattered off the earth? Admittedly irrelevant to the current conversation though

I've read a few counter factuals about the earth without a moon, and it would be a very different planet. The moon and the earth are tidally locked which took a very long time to happen, but it had the effect of shortening Earth's day to about 10 hours for a full rotation.
A shorter day would have huge effects on global energy transfers so our weather would be very different (thus bringing the topic of vanishing moons back on topic tenuously )

I wonder would a faster day/night cycle be better for life or worse?

Oneiric 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNVZ0ZPfE8s

M.T. Cranium

I can report that I've done extensive number crunches on all available daily data sets going back 200-300 years (primarily the CET, also some locations in North America) to investigate whether there are signals from external sources such as the Moon, large planets in the solar system, or alignments of the Sun with (relatively) fixed sources of gravitational energy such as the galactic equator (these do shift very slowly over time relative to the earth year).

Some day I will post some detailed results on the forum, but suffice it to say that all signals detected are rather small and not large enough to be very useful to forecasting unless perhaps you isolate 30-40 of them and allow the small variations to create a complex composite signal.

The signals, if real and not random scatter, are postulated to be magnetic-based rather than gravitation-based. The tidal values for anything but the Moon are negligible, and the problem with lunar tidal forces on the atmosphere is simply that the atmosphere has no coastlines like the ocean so the waves, while perhaps fairly significant, ripple around without hitting a barrier. There may be interference patterns created. These might be fairly significant and there may be nodal points and lines of relative high or low frequency of travelling waves at times of peak generation. All of the above may be a foundation for some complex computer-simulated forecasting tools, but I don't really have the resources to develop all of that (although I have rough approximations that seem to be non-random).

To give you an approximation of how large these signals are (I should say how small), lunar signals at the best locations in an interference grid are on the order of 2 C deg, 5-10 mb of pressure variability, or 2 to 3 times background precipitation. That is fairly significant but the problem for a science-paper type demonstration is that the effects can be seen to shift around with the earth's magnetic field over long periods and also to display second-order variability. I liken the results to blindfolding darts players and telling them that the dartboard is towards a light they can detect through a blindfold. More darts would hit a wall near the dartboards than far from them but if the light then was allowed to wander around the way magnetic fields do, that scatter would follow the light rather than the dartboard.

Temperature signals associated with Jupiter's synodic year (399 days) have proven to be around 0.6 to 1.0 C deg at several locations. The mechanism for creating this rather small variation is almost certainly a change in solar wind output in sectors of the solar system, and the earth just happens to move through them. I don't see it as being gravitational. But while those numbers sound encouraging, the internal variability is large and predictive usefulness is quite limited. It is about like predicting sunspot numbers for the next 50-100 years, the background cycles are known and you might improve over random knowing the cycles.

Now if there were 30-40 other factors that were smaller, and you could identify all of them and the oscillations that they produced, you might be on the way to cracking a very complex puzzle of atmospheric variability.

By the way, if I didn't already post this, I happen to believe that the human signal in the temperature trends since 1900 is about half of the observed increases but I am rather cautious about how that projects into the future of these trends, I suspect that some projections are too harsh and that additional greenhouse gases may produce only modest further increases.