CAGW collapses.
Nic Lewis has a post up at ClimateAudit about how the IPCC's own calculations in one chapter about how to calculate transient climate response is at odds with the output of the climate models used by the IPCC.
http://climateaudit.org/2013/12/09/does-...
The first 3 assessments had the range at 1.5 to 4.5. Both limits are based on computer models.
The degree of uncertainty is uniform across the range between the upper and lower limits, so the median and mean are the same and neither has more meaning than any other value between the limits. Including them would only make uninformed people think that they were mentioned for some reason because they were somehow more important.
Catastrophic and Dangerous are unfortunate terms because they trivialize what is certainly a probabilistic complex system response. Some areas – and people – will experience catastrophic effects. “Dangerous” is completely useless. You may equate it with “less catastrophic”, but it could just as well mean “bad” or “not good.”
They are also unfortunate because they implicitly suggest some kind of scale of potential outcomes that range from those degrees of negative to equal degrees of positive. Physics and knowledge from empirical studies on environmental change and the processes that drive weather events both indicate that the potential results of relatively rapid global warming range from less- to more- bad. There is nothing in all of science that suggests an overall net-positive result.
Regardless of what you want to call it, “catastrophic” or “really fcking bad”, denying and/or ignoring AGW can only slide the scale further in the “more bad” direction.
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I’m all about the data. Although one infamous climate scientist would say – and has – that my obsession with data and faith in empirical research is just a way to hide weak math skills. Be that as it may – and, seriously, I’m not trying to avoid the question – but the so-called empirical studies are just lower-dimension models that either explicitly or implicitly assume some sensitivity value.
The empirical studies are appealing because they don’t overwhelm you with variables and because they produce the kind of “real” solutions that people expect from equations. It just seems – to me anyway - that the empirical solutions are pretty-well spread out and, regardless, they carry so much uncertainty that any apparent clustering is hard to read – but that could just be a product of my lame math skills.
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Caliservative –
>>This is another appeal to ignorance; it is possible (and likely, given the correlation) that there is a causal mechanism that they have not yet found, understood or accounted for. <<
No kidding. Everyone knows that the sun is the dominant factor and there is well-established knowledge based on scientific research of how the mechanism works. That knowledge and understanding of the sun-earth climate relationship is what made the discovery AGW possible. It (AGW) explains the facts that the sun (al all other “natural” drivers) cannot.
You need to stop falling asleep in class.
CAGW is a non falsifiable theory and is complete pseudo science. In normal science, if you were this far wrong off your prediction http://polymontana.com/files/2013/07/Gor...
you would adjust your hypotheses. In the pseudo science of climatology you adjust your data http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.c...
@ClimateRealist..."Do you have any source for the C in CAGW, other than from denailists who use it to mock AGW. But AGW is a valid hypothesis"
So let me get this straight. You're advocating we spend billions of dollars fighting NON Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming? Wow, that's frigging idiotic.
Yes I agree with Caliserv, there must be a large positive feedback to cause CAGW or DAGW and that would show up as a tropical tropospheric hotspot, the only hotspot observed was a minor one caused by the 1998 El Nino.
We have now gone 17yrs without a significant temperature rise, climate scientists say that is because CO2 warming has been overridden by natural cycles, so obviously if the warming effect of CO2 is so small that it can be overridden by nature for 17yrs it cannot be large enough to cause either CAGW or DAGW.
The CAGW position is not a scientific position; it was not arrived at through application of the scientific method.
All of the climate sensitivities above the lower end of the range specified by the IPCC require the presence of a large positive feedback mechanism, postulated to operate via water vapor. The existence and strength of this feedback has never been scientifically demonstrated.
The usual argument is that 'nothing else can explain the current warming', which is a classic appeal to ignorance. There are multiple other possible explanations; one of them is that most or all of the warming is contained within the corrections applied to the data, not the data themselves. These corrections have never been repeated by outside organizations, particularly critics, and thus are not scientific.
The recent (it is not current) warming correlates better with solar activity than it does with CO2 concentrations. The CAGW proponents have thrown out the solar connection on the basis of 'it can't be, it's not strong enough', referring to total solar irradiance. This is another appeal to ignorance; it is possible (and likely, given the correlation) that there is a causal mechanism that they have not yet found, understood or accounted for.
The surface temperature record does not agree with the Argo ocean temperatures, the radiosonde data, or the satellite data. If a hypothesis is to be considered validated, and make it's way into the realm of a theory, all experiments must validate the hypothesis; there must be no failures. CAGW does not enjoy that position; to consider it 'true' under these circumstances is evidence of a non-scientific process.
CAGW is a failed hypothesis. In the words of Richard Feynman, PhD, and Nobel Laureate in physics:
“It does not matter who you are, or how smart you are, or what title you have, or how many of you there are, and certainly not how many papers your side has published, if your prediction is wrong then your hypothesis is wrong. Period.”
Do you have any source for the C in CAGW, other than from denailists who use it to mock AGW. But AGW is a valid hypothesis. Global warming is happening
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010...
And we are causing it
http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-c...
And in case anyone thinks that scientists haven't considered natural factors as well carbon dioxide, all attempts to simulate Earth's climate without considering natural and anthropogenic forcings
http://www.grida.no/publications/other/i...
Mister Zedd thinks that realists hate Caliserv's response. Perhaps, but not for the reasons Mister Zedd wants people to think. It can be debunked.
Wrong. Shortly after Svanate Arrhenius published his predicitions, Knut ?ngstr?m did an experiment that seemed to show that the effect of carbon dioxide on temperature was saturated. But ?ngstr?m's experiment was found to be flawed. For one thing it treated the atmosphere like a single sheet of glass. But a better model of the atmosphere would be do consider it as many layers.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
For more information
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
Wrong. Higher temperatures mean more water vapor in the atmosphere.
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/...
Wrong. Other factors, like the Sun, volcanic aerosols, PDO and AMO have been investigated and shown not to be the explanation for the warming. See my third link.
Wrong, although "current" is not a scientifically valid term. The warming over the last 30 years clearly does not correlate to global warming, unless you count negative correlation. And it correlates very well to carbon dioxide.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut...
All wrong. Surface temperatures are increasing and so are the Argo temperatures.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/oce...
Surface temperatures do match radiosonde data
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/gl...
And satellite data
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp...
"Close behind would be dangerous AGW and those who advocate such would be fairly close in opinion to the CAGW believers as far as climate policy." - Those that understand the possibilities or even the probabilities of dangerous levels of climate change should in no way suggest that they would also be an advocate of such change. I know that you say you are a Canadian, but that should not prove to be such an impairment to your proper use of the word "advocate". : )
As far as the DAGW is concerned then I suppose that this can be subjective in nature. Certainly the fossil fuel industries do not consider it to be dangerous when the Arctic Ocean becomes free of sea ice during the summer months. Rather, they see this as a blessing that the loss of sea ice would prove to be beneficial in their ability to exploit the fossil fuels there. The sea ice that prevented them from obtaining these "resources" before. Then again it is dangerous to the rest of us when species, such as the pine bark beetle, are able to extend their ranges to higher latitudes and altitudes than they were able to do so before due their intolerance to the previously colder conditions that existed there. Or even the loss of species that could not adapt soon enough to the rate of GLOBAL warming the planet is experiencing. This would be the more specialized species, assuredly, but a failure to adapt to a warmer climate none the less. Should the warming continue at even the same pace then even the less specialized species will begin to show a rate of failure to survive as well.
As far as your IPCC AR5 and AR4 reports go, this is just another attempt by you to misdirect from what is actually happening. Such as the overall increasing losses to the 1979 mean average of Arctic sea ice extent and volume. Yes, I know. The Arctic region is still very cold during the winter months and this is why I am not surprised to sea ice extent return to near normal conditions in the Arctic Ocean during the winter months. How long this remains to be true, I could only speculate. Then there is also the loss of global glacial mass. Not all glaciers are losing mass now. Again, I cannot speculate for how long these glaciers will continue to gain slightly in mass.
I have never seen you directly deny the AGTW, Ottawa Mike. Only that you are "skeptical" as to how fast or to how much the warming will occur. Using this criteria to classify oneself as a skeptic, then we are all skeptics. Some say faster. Some say not as fast. Some say, "What warming?!?" and some say, "We are entering another ice age!". (I would actually take that last one a little more seriously, if it was not for the fact that we have already put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to mitigate such an event.) Skeptics all, we must therefore be. In words, this alone does not qualify you as a "true skeptic".
What "empirical studies on climate sensitivity" do you have for us, Ottawa Mike? Come, come, my good man. Do not fail to share with us such studies. At least point us in the right direction.
"Getting back to my original question, how scientifically valid is the CAGW position?" Since historical evidence has shown that rapid climate change, even over a few centuries, has proven to be faster than many species could adapt to, then I say the scientific evidence is on the side of the CAGW, given the current policies. You know these policies. "Business as usual" and "We can discuss this later" policies that are in force now.
Thank you for pointing me in the direction of the studies, Ottawa Mike. Allow me time to review them and I will get back to you. Thanks!!!
Caliservative gave a very good answer which is why alarmists will hate it. I think any of the CAGW predictions are politically motivated and have nothing to do with science. They are necessary for pushing a cause, a political cause, that necessitates a transfer of wealth.
I would like to know that too. Why doesn't Climate Science have an illustrative greenhouse experiment to prove their case? I presented this in 2 previous questions : http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?... and http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...
Simply defining the difference between 280ppm, 400ppm, and 560ppm (doubling) in a simple greenhouse would help us understand the true nature of CAGW.
Only in the Bizzaro world of Chris Hayes .
First some definitions. CAGW is catastrophic AGW. The meaning should be clear in that continued CO2 emissions will lead to devastating consequences in the future (which generally means up to 2100 for current policy discussions). Close behind would be dangerous AGW and those who advocate such would be fairly close in opinion to the CAGW believers as far as climate policy.
This question concerns what the scientific basis is to believe in either CAGW or DAGW. I'll propose what I think it is and then you can answer back.
The IPCC has given in its recent AR5 report an estimated range of climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentration as 1.5-4.5C. Note that it no longer has a median or mean likely value unlike AR4 and has also reduced the lower end from 2 to 1.5C. I would suggest the lower end was reduced in response to the many recent empirical studies of climate sensitivity which consistently came in with estimates less than 3C and closer to 2C or lower. I have no idea why they no longer provide a median guess.
One of the things I was wondering was where the high estimate of 4.5C comes from? As far as I can tell, it's solely from computer models. Perhaps there have a been a paper or two using methods similar to the lower estimates but clearly not as many as far as I can tell.
Given all that, does it appear that CAGW and DAGW is firmly based on climate model projections while moderate AGW is based on empirical studies? Getting back to my original question, how scientifically valid is the CAGW position?
