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Climate Change: History and Politics

Actually it is you who are misinterpreting what you're reading, even to the point that you contradict
yourself within the same post.
At the top of the post you claim the models predict the surface temperature,
and then you claim the models do not have the resolution to model micro climates.
Well which is it?

Both are true, and are not contradictory.

If they are modeling the surface temperature, that would be inclusive of all of the micro climates,

Yes, inclusive of, meaning an average of. But not necessarily modelling any particular microclimate.

but if they do not have that kind of resolution, then the models must be for the surface troposphere system,

Typical horizontal resolution for current models is 1 degree in latitude/longitude, which is about 70 miles on a side. Typical vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa. An area that large can contain hundreds of microclimates. But it is far, far smaller than the whole surface-troposphere system, which contains tens of thousands of such areas, each of which has over 20 atmospheric layers.

which is what the IPCC says is affected by the changes in CO2.
Everything is affected by changes in CO2. And the IPCC doesn't say otherwise.

One only needs to look at the Radiosonde temperature near the ground.
http://texasstormchasers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-10_16-07-48.jpg
Notice the red temperature plot has a sharp warming to attitude, before it starts cooling as it rises.
This is because the air in the interfacial layer has several other sets of variables.

No, that's because this particular balloon was lofted at 6 AM in December, and therefore ascended through the nocturnal boundary layer: a surface temperature inversion layer that forms shortly before sunset, and dissipates soon after sunrise. If it had been lofted at noon, you wouldn't see that temperature inversion.
 
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Both are true, and are not contradictory.



Yes, inclusive of, meaning an average of. But not necessarily modelling any particular microclimate.



Typical horizontal resolution for current models is 1 degree in latitude/longitude, which is about 70 miles on a side. Typical vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa. An area that large can contain hundreds of microclimates. But it is far, far smaller than the whole surface-troposphere system, which contains tens of thousands of such areas, each of which has over 20 atmospheric layers.


Everything is affected by changes in CO2. And the IPCC doesn't say otherwise.



No, that's because this particular balloon was lofted at 6 AM in December, and therefore ascended through the nocturnal boundary layer: a surface temperature inversion layer that forms shortly before sunset, and dissipates soon after sunrise. If it had been lofted at noon, you wouldn't see that temperature inversion.

You are loosing your own argument,
If you say the models have a vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa (Millibars), assuming they start at sea level,
you are saying they model from the surface to between 800 to 1000 feet, I.E. The Surface Troposphere system.
The models according to your own statement, predict the temperature in a rectangular box
70 miles wide and long, and 1000 feet high.
Yet, You are also saying that having one of two surface stations, with sensors five feet off the ground is
a good representation of the temperature in that space.
Or even worse, there may not be a sensor within several grids, but they average between them.
The problem with this argument is that the lapse rate within the interfacial layer of the atmosphere
is unstable, so measurements just a few miles apart, could be several degrees c different.
It is a bridge too far to expect .001 C accuracy from an environment that can change by an entire
degree or 2 within a few hundred feet.
 
1. John McLean, serial mistake-maker, asks on Bishop Hill if there is an error in a dataset, or if he is reading it wrong. Real scientists look at the dataset and determine it's fine, so John must be reading it wrong.

2. John McLean, serial mistake-maker, alerts Anthony Watts, serial nutjob-panderer, that said dataset might contain an error. WUWT jumps into action without checking the facts, and assumes, without checking, that John Must Be Right. Note that Anthony doesn't care about the truth, only about the allegation.

3. Jack Hays, serial misunderstander, reads Anthony Watts, serial nutjob-panderer, and as usual assumes that everything on WUWT is just as good as peer-reviewed. Jack Hays doesn't read, doesn't care about the truth, and doesn't even care about the allegation. He's just parroting anything and everything he's told by the Ayatollahs of Denierstan.

HotWhopper: How false denier memes are built on quicksand

Mar 25, 2016 Josh
Climate_science_upside_down_scr.jpg


A hilarious possibility but one which Zeke has already said has been fixed or was wrong. Well, that's a relief - these things do tend to happen in Climate Science.
 
You are loosing your own argument,
If you say the models have a vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa (Millibars), assuming they start at sea level,
you are saying they model from the surface to between 800 to 1000 feet, I.E. The Surface Troposphere system.

Apparently you are unaware that the troposphere goes up to 250 hPa. A single layer is inadequate to model the troposphere, even locally, much less globally.

The models according to your own statement, predict the temperature in a rectangular box
70 miles wide and long, and 1000 feet high.
Yet, You are also saying that having one of two surface stations, with sensors five feet off the ground is
a good representation of the temperature in that space.
In temperature trend, they certainly are. And that's still not a contradiction.

Or even worse, there may not be a sensor within several grids, but they average between them.
The problem with this argument is that the lapse rate within the interfacial layer of the atmosphere
is unstable, so measurements just a few miles apart, could be several degrees c different.

But the trends won't be several degrees different. Which is the whole point of using anomalies.

It is a bridge too far to expect .001 C accuracy from an environment that can change by an entire
degree or 2 within a few hundred feet.

The trends shouldn't be that different, which means that the average of those trends will be quite accurate.
 
Mar 25, 2016 Josh
Climate_science_upside_down_scr.jpg


A hilarious possibility but one which Zeke has already said has been fixed or was wrong. Well, that's a relief - these things do tend to happen in Climate Science.

Since you provide no evidence, I will take this post as a tacit admission that you were wrong in the first place.
 
I would say that excellent post could be used in any debate on politics. It is clear that the terrorist threat of refugees if being blown out of proportion, in an attempt to create real fears, real close.

And it's working, Americans appear and some have outright stated they prefer the in migration of undocumented aliens from south of the border over the "gang rapists" and "baby killers" Canada is importing.

In other words they fear people who have been vetted by international aid agencies as terrorists, but are at ease with vagrants who will never even be seen by Homeland Security.

That's the power of politically created fear. The global warming debate is child's play in comparison to the what the political forces at work right now.

That was never better illustrated than when I was watching CNN on holiday in Brazil after the recent Belgian terror attack. Their commentators had the place overrun with jihadis and not a safe place to visit (chucking in the rest of Europe for good measure there). We were at best talking about perhaps 10 individuals involved. Meanwhile over in the US that many people get killed every 8 hours as a consequence of the mad firearms laws there yet nobody bats an eyelid. Certainly nobody here is telling its citizens not to visit the US for fear of being shot, even though that is a far more realistic one !

Go figure
 
Apparently you are unaware that the troposphere goes up to 250 hPa. A single layer is inadequate to model the troposphere, even locally, much less globally.


In temperature trend, they certainly are. And that's still not a contradiction.
Apparently you are unaware that you defined the constants of the modeled space near the surface as a,
"vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa."
If the ground based sensors accurately represented the space modeled, there would not be disagreement
between the other measuring technologies like the satellites and the radiosonde.

But the trends won't be several degrees different. Which is the whole point of using anomalies.
If the measurements of any single station, can vary by several degrees depending on placement,
the trends could be very different. Also they use anomaly measurements to see changes in single stations.

The trends shouldn't be that different, which means that the average of those trends will be quite accurate.
As I have already stated there are many variables in interfacial layer.
The GISS attempts to compensate by using nighttime brightness measurements to offset
urban growth, but that is just a single variable.
 
If the ground based sensors accurately represented the space modeled, there would not be disagreement
between the other measuring technologies like the satellites and the radiosonde.
Of course there would. Satellites and radiosondes measure the upper air, not the surface.

If the measurements of any single station, can vary by several degrees depending on placement,
the trends could be very different.
No they couldn't. Imagine two stations a mile apart. One in the river valley, and one on bluffs above the river. Different temperatures, obviously. But please explain a mechanism whereby the trends of the two could be significantly different. Why should one change more than the other?


As I have already stated there are many variables in interfacial layer.
The GISS attempts to compensate by using nighttime brightness measurements to offset
urban growth, but that is just a single variable.

Actually GISS uses brightness to determine which stations remain rural. That allows them to determine the UHI effect on a case-by-case basis.
 
Of course there would. Satellites and radiosondes measure the upper air, not the surface.


No they couldn't. Imagine two stations a mile apart. One in the river valley, and one on bluffs above the river. Different temperatures, obviously. But please explain a mechanism whereby the trends of the two could be significantly different. Why should one change more than the other?
Satellites and radiosondes measure many levels including the surface troposphere system.
You have already stated the models simulate a vertical resolution is 30 or 40 hPa,
which is 8000 to 10000 feet at sea level.
So again the models are not simulating the surface temperature, but rather the surface troposphere system.

In your analogy, changes between the two could be many factors, changes in local agriculture use.
changes in natural vegetation, buildings, streets, drainage, retention ponds.....ect.
Any number of local factors could change the anomaly temperature by many times the observed changes.
I once visited a friend in Phoenix, and commented on his nice green lawn,
He said he paid extra to have it, but his yard was almost 10 degrees cooler.
I said you mean it feels 10 degrees cooler!, he said no, measured with the thermometer.
The grass transpires quite a bit, and causes local evaporation cooling.
The point is that local changes can cause large changes.
 
[h=1]Sharman & Howarth on the climate debate[/h] Posted on 31 Mar 16 by Paul Matthews3 Comments
Amelia Sharman and Candice Howarth have a new paper out, Climate stories: Why do climate scientists and sceptical voices participate in the climate debate? It’s in a journal called Public Understanding of Science, but ironically, as Ben Pile remarked, it’s paywalled. It might be possible to find it on the Russian pirate site Scihub, but of course if … Continue reading →
 

[h=1]The Philosophy of Climate Change[/h] Guest essay by Leo Smith Introduction I decided to pen this, not because I am a ‘philosopher of climate change’ like the esteemed Rupert Read, whose self styled ‘philosophy of climate change’ is really a thinly disguised justification for Green politics, but because it appears to me that very very few people in the climate…
Continue reading →
 
Kill the Deniers — a government-funded fantasy play where “guns” solve climate issues


This is your brain on government funding (pace Mark Steyn). The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) gave $18k to a theatre group to put on a play called “Kill the Deniers”. Now, lucky us, we can read the e-book. Because the climate debate really needs more guns, hostages, brute force, and threats right?
Well, it does if you don’t have any evidence.
“Kill the Deniers” — All the wit and wisdom of government funded “arts”. Can’t persuade the voters? Shoot their representatives.

The Kill the Deniers e-book is coming:
…writer and theatre-maker whose work sits at the intersection of art and science, [David] Finnigan said Kill Climate Deniers grew out of discussions with Aspen Island Theatre Company’s Julian Hobba.
‘We got really interested in talking about the climate debate, and we were wondering why it was that in Australia the debate had stalled so badly; what is it about this country? And then we moved on to asking what would it take to shift the debate forward again – what would it actually take to generate real political change?’ said Finnigan.
Why did the debate stall? They could have done some research and asked skeptics. Instead…
The answer they came up with (‘though not one that I feel comfortable or very positive about,’ he stressed) was guns.
Subsequently, Finnigan wrote an action movie-style drama in which Parliament House is invaded by gun-toting eco-terrorists. With the Government held hostage, and facing the threat of imminent execution unless she ends global warming immediately, the embattled Environment Minister has no choice but to defend her ideals – one bullet at a time.
Because terrorism is fun, right?
‘It’s a really fun, really action-packed, really over the top hostage drama, and action film genre piece; and hanging from that are some really important questions about the climate debate,’ Finnigan said.
And the play inspires important questions

Questions like, why are Arty types so dysfunctional that they miss the obvious solution to solve their angst, and why are taxpayers forced to pay to amplify that dysfunction?
Here’s the lesson they missed in kindergarten. When the grown ups are discussing a problem, and a point of view is presented in full through TV, documentaries, drama, news, and two-week global junkets with forty thousand people, and yet despite all that more than half the grown ups are still not persuaded – perhaps the message is stupid? Perhaps windfarms don’t slow cyclones, and solar panels won’t stop droughts?
Heretical thoughts for the tribal brain…
Here’s another heretical thought: perhaps emotional artistes are being played by big-money? Let’s explore that idea. What if Big Money was using the fools-for-tools tactic — the smart players are making cashola from carbon trading and renewables, respectively $176b and $300b industries. The Green vested interests are now a $1.5 trillion industrial complex. The clever self-serving players can push predictable fear-buttons in people who are not-good-with-big-numbers, who respond by feeling real angst, frustration and dismay. Those panicking pawns then convert that into shallow expressions of anger and fantasies of control through brute force. When will the government fund this expose?
The fact that their combined intellectual wit thinks “guns” might solve a problem in a science debate, says a lot about their combined intellectual wit. . . .
 
[h=1]Monbiot & Miliband in: the Wrong Trousers[/h] Posted on 08 Apr 16 by Geoff Chambers3 Comments
Just like real climate scientists, we at Cliscep keep our best remarks for private emails between ourselves: For instance, Ian Woolley, à propos of Paul’s recent article on Sharman & Howarth, said: It’s a painful process to watch, though, isn’t it? The slow dawning… the lumbering, plodding research to discover.. what? The bleeding obvious that political … Continue reading →
 
Yucky tasting medicine: You can't do that - only us - sez CEI

At WUWT today, Eric Worrall has written how the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is getting a taste of its own medicine (archived here). The CEI is complaining that they've been issued with a subpoena to produce twenty years of emails and other documents relating to their climate science denial campaigns. You might have heard of CEI, they are the same mob who usually appear at WUWT boasting how they asked for decades of emails from other people. Now the tables have turned and CEI doesn't like it.

In a complete about face, the CEI is now claiming that letting people know what is said in emails is a violation of freedom of speech! The article claims it to be part of "an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate". Wow! (Is that why Chris Horner and the CEI spend almost all their time suing people for emails - to intimidate and stop research on climate?)

Here are just a few of the zillions of previous articles from WUWT about CEI and its email harassment campaigns:
2014: White House Science Advisor John Holdren sued over emails
2014: New FOIA lawsuit filed against the EPA - again starring Chris Horner
2013: This one is about a lawsuit filed by CEI's Christopher Horner wanting emails from the EPA
2012: CEI’s Chris Horner made an FOIA request for correspondence between NOAA’s Dr. Thomas Peterson and Thomas Stocker
About how Chris Horner and the CEI sought emails from a bunch of academics, who called for a RICO investigation into science denial campaigns.
It's what CEI does. Why are they complaining?

LOL. Love the poutrage.
 
Since you provide no evidence, I will take this post as a tacit admission that you were wrong in the first place.

it seems that John McLean was correct.

A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying:
“08/04/2016: An error in the format of some of the ascii files was brought to our attention by John McLean. Maps of numbers of observations and measurement and sampling uncertainties provided in ascii format ran from south to north rather than north to south as described in the data format. This has now been fixed. In some cases, the number of observations in a grid cell exceeded 9999 and were replaced by a series of asterisks in the ascii files. This too has been fixed with numbers of observations now represented as integers between 0, indicating no data, and 9,999,999, indicating lots of data. “



Hadley Climate data has been “corrected” thanks to alert climate skeptic

John McLean writes relative to our previous story on this issue: Friday Funny: more upside down data A few hours ago I received an email from John Kennedy at the Hadley Centre to say that HadSST3 data had been corrected. A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying: “08/04/2016: An error in the…
 
it seems that John McLean was correct.

A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying:
“08/04/2016: An error in the format of some of the ascii files was brought to our attention by John McLean. Maps of numbers of observations and measurement and sampling uncertainties provided in ascii format ran from south to north rather than north to south as described in the data format. This has now been fixed. In some cases, the number of observations in a grid cell exceeded 9999 and were replaced by a series of asterisks in the ascii files. This too has been fixed with numbers of observations now represented as integers between 0, indicating no data, and 9,999,999, indicating lots of data. “



Hadley Climate data has been “corrected” thanks to alert climate skeptic

John McLean writes relative to our previous story on this issue: Friday Funny: more upside down data A few hours ago I received an email from John Kennedy at the Hadley Centre to say that HadSST3 data had been corrected. A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying: “08/04/2016: An error in the…

Greetings, Jack. :2wave:

... "science advances one funeral at a time" from the Comments section of the article. Catchy phrase - I like it! :mrgreen:
 
Greetings, Jack. :2wave:

... "science advances one funeral at a time" from the Comments section of the article. Catchy phrase - I like it! :mrgreen:

Greetings Polgara.:2wave:

Glad you approve.:mrgreen:
 
it seems that John McLean was correct.

A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying:
“08/04/2016: An error in the format of some of the ascii files was brought to our attention by John McLean. Maps of numbers of observations and measurement and sampling uncertainties provided in ascii format ran from south to north rather than north to south as described in the data format. This has now been fixed. In some cases, the number of observations in a grid cell exceeded 9999 and were replaced by a series of asterisks in the ascii files. This too has been fixed with numbers of observations now represented as integers between 0, indicating no data, and 9,999,999, indicating lots of data. “



Hadley Climate data has been “corrected” thanks to alert climate skeptic

John McLean writes relative to our previous story on this issue: Friday Funny: more upside down data A few hours ago I received an email from John Kennedy at the Hadley Centre to say that HadSST3 data had been corrected. A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying: “08/04/2016: An error in the…

Kudos to them for correcting an error, and making it known that they did! :applaud:
 
it seems that John McLean was correct.

John McLean was not correct. He claimed that the NH dataset contained SH data, and that the SH dataset contained NH data. Neither of those claims were true.
 
John McLean was not correct. He claimed that the NH dataset contained SH data, and that the SH dataset contained NH data. Neither of those claims were true.

I guess that's why he was thanked for pointing out their error.:mrgreen:


A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying:
“08/04/2016: An error in the format of some of the ascii files was brought to our attention by John McLean. Maps of numbers of observations and measurement and sampling uncertainties provided in ascii format ran from south to north rather than north to south as described in the data format. This has now been fixed. In some cases, the number of observations in a grid cell exceeded 9999 and were replaced by a series of asterisks in the ascii files. This too has been fixed with numbers of observations now represented as integers between 0, indicating no data, and 9,999,999, indicating lots of data. “​


 
The data read in the opposite direction to that described. Hemispheres were not swapped.
 
I guess that's why he was thanked for pointing out their error.:mrgreen:


A message now appears at the top of Met Office Hadley Centre observations datasets , saying:
“08/04/2016: An error in the format of some of the ascii files was brought to our attention by John McLean. Maps of numbers of observations and measurement and sampling uncertainties provided in ascii format ran from south to north rather than north to south as described in the data format. This has now been fixed. In some cases, the number of observations in a grid cell exceeded 9999 and were replaced by a series of asterisks in the ascii files. This too has been fixed with numbers of observations now represented as integers between 0, indicating no data, and 9,999,999, indicating lots of data. “​



HotWhopper: The HadSST error was an error and has been fixed

The thing is that people commenting here mostly not only did not check themselves, but don’t know what the files being talked about are. The ascii grid output files which contained the error are obsolete. Hadley now produce a netCDF version which do not have these format issues, and are what serious researchers use. So JM’s claim
” the content of those files is wrong, likely due to errors in the program that created these summary files from the SST3 gridded data”
is wrong on two counts. The file content was not wrong, and there was no way that it would have been generated by someone reading the ascii files.

The issues (2 and 3) on observation counts (order and format overflow) were not disputed at any stage, and Hadley has corrected them. As JM said:
“The HadSST3 observation count problems won’t be used by many people, maybe I’m even the first if no-one else has hit the problems.”
 
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