On 3/22/2014 8:08 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 10:10 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 3/21/2014 9:59 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com
<mailto:allco...@gmail.com>> wrote:
2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>>:
On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux
<allco...@gmail.com
<mailto:allco...@gmail.com>> wrote:
The thing I most want to know about RCP4.5 is what RCP
stands
for, Google seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform"
but that
doesn't sound quite right. It must be pretty obscure,
Wikipedia
has never heard of RCP either.
For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction"
I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure
it's
not "Representative Concentration Pathways"?
I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As
I see
we are in a thread talking about climate...
This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to be
in the
minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and technological
perspective.
He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous
discussions.
Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions (Fox News
etc.) and
political tribalism seem to get all of the attention.
- Given the number of climate models and the fact that the majority of them
failed
to predict the climate of the last decade, how confident can we be in
further
predictions?
"Failed" is a relative term
Of course. Here we can't know for sure, so we have to estimate the probability that the
models are correct -- especially given the potentially horrible side-effects of the cure.
and "decade" is too short to constitute climate.
Yes, what constitutes "climate" appears to be:
larger periods than can be observed in our lifetimes but smaller than what can be
observed in the Vostok data.
So what exactly do you mean by "failed".
I mean that, if this wasn't an ideologically charged issue, no reviewer would accept
these models for publication at this point:
http://www.thegwpf.org/judith-curry-disagreement-climate-models-reality/
My view is that they were relatively accurate about some things and not so
accurate about others.
Where they accurate significantly above what a null model would predict, taking into
account the amount of models that have been proposed?
They all include a calculated range of uncertainty.
Funnily, that was never mentioned before it became convenient.
That's simply false. Hansen's prediction in 1980 already included error margins. Every
IPCC report has included uncertainty ranges. In fact it's very annoying to read because
every almost every assertion has "likely" or "probabale" or "very likely" in it.
Have they "failed" if the observed weather is withing the range of uncertainty.
The deniers and obfuscators seize on uncertainty as an obstruction to action, but
uncertainty cuts both ways.
AGW proponents are asking for an incredible amount of power to implement measures that
could cause immense human suffering.
Jim Hansen is asking for power? You're just spreading FUD. NOT implementing any measures
is "very likely" to cause immense human suffering.
It's not so abnormal that people get nervous when there is no tangible evidence that the
models are even correct.
AGW doesn't depend on the accuracy of models. It is observed. It is consistent with the
most basic science. Models are only needed to predict exactly how big the problem will be
- not whether there's a problem.
As for further predictions, it's not as if we have to pick one (or a set)
of these
models and make THE prediction. What we need to do is figure out why they
were
inaccurate in to some vaiables and improve the models.
Ok, and then validate them against reality -- hopefully.
As has been pointed out, the effect of clouds is a major source of uncertainty.
Clouds are generally much smaller than the grid size of GCMs, ~100Km square, and so
it's not practical to directly model them within a simulation.
Where climate scientists aware of this problem when they claimed 100% certainty and
consensus on AGW? Because if they were, they lied to us.
Show me where climate scientists claimed 100% certainty. The consensus on AGW (97% by
count) is that human burning of fossil fuel is increasing CO2 in the atmosphere and that
is raising the Earth's temperature. Consensus on AGW is not the same as agreeing about
every aspect of every model. You're just trying to pick at gaps in knowledge in an
ideologically motivated attempt to discredit the science. Exactly the same thing
creationist try to do to evolution.
The technique has been to use separate models just of cloud formation and
dissipation to determine which GCM state would produce or dissipate clouds.
Those
models are being improved by including the effects of aerosols and
freezing/thawing.
Another source of uncertainty in *weather* is how the extra energy absorbed
due to
greenhouse gases is distributed. How much goes into warming the ocean vs
the
atmosphere? Model projections have to make assumptions about human
activity too.
Right, and all of this is an awful lot of uncertainty when we're dealing with complex
non-linear systems.
How do you know it's "an awful lot"? The models are run with Monte Carlo variation of
parameters precisely to quantify the uncertainty - but you know it's an "awful lot" just
because it's complex and non-linear!?
- With current technology, how much would we have to shrink the global
energy
budget to transition to sustainable sources?
Read Donald McKay's book "Without Hot Air", which is free online at
withouthotair.org <http://withouthotair.org>. He has detailed estimates of
what it
would take for the U.K. to almost eliminate fossil fuel consumption and
still retain
the same standard of living. It takes a lot of change, but it is less per
capita
than, for example, the U.S. war in Iraq over a time scale of a few decades.
Ok, thanks.
Far from me to defend the war on Iraq (by the way). That was another shady business, for
sure.
What would the human impact of that be? This is too serious an issue for
wishful
thinking. Theres 7 billion of us and counting. We need hard numbers here,
that take
into account the energy investment necessary to bootstrap the renewable
sources,
their efficiency and so on.
- What is the probability that a climate catastrophe awaits us vs. the
probability
that an abrupt attempt to convert to sustainable sources would create a
human
catastrophe itself?
What's "abrupt". You're raising spudboy's bugaboo. NOBODY wants to do
something
"abrupt".
They did in my country, and it was disastrous. For a while Portugal was a poster-child
for proponents of similar action around the the globe. Now it's not mentioned so much.
It's just a Faux News scare point. Isn't is obvious that the longer we
wait to
address a problem the shorter will be the time to solve it.
"Only 10 places left, register before it's too late!"
Time scarcity is one of the oldest tricks in the book of manipulation, and a
huge red flag.
Again, I'm all for research and investment in renewable energies. I'm all for letting
people implement these ideas and compete in the open market. I sincerely hope we switch
to viable renewable energy as soon as possible, and I strongly believe that this will
happen easily once the technology is available.
What makes you think it's not available? The problem is it's more expensive than fossil
fuel. But the fossil fuel is only cheaper because it doesn't have to pay for the
consequences of burning it.
I encourage everyone to invest in the research and development of such technology -- or
the implementation, if you believe it already exists. I hope it does.
What I am very suspicious of is requests for more centralised control -- especially
coming on the back of scare tactics. We've seen this pattern over and over and it's
never been good news.
Really? You prefer the good old days when it was every man for himself, or when every
Duke and Baron had his own army.
- Given that environmentalists are claiming that it might even be too late
to
advert disaster, why aren't we seriously considering geoengineering
approaches, as
the one proposed by Nathan Myhrvold, which can be easily and cheaply tested
and
turned off at any moment?
It's being considered just as seriously as any other unproven technology to
address
the problem - which is to say, hardly at all. If we started penalizing
ExxonMobil,
BP, Texaco, and Shell for the cost they are externalizing maybe they'd fund
Myhrvold's scheme.
Ok, we agree here. There are a number of environmental costs that these criminals should
pay for.
I just wonder why a fraction of the billions collected in carbon credits and green miles
and whatever can't be used to fund that research.
Last I saw Portugal was a democracy; elect some people who'll run the country the way you
want.
Brent
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