Who should I believe, AGW/ACC advocates, or deniers?

Yep, already been discussed. Also a bit disingenuous to talk about "total" wildfires being fewer than they were 40 years ago, when Western US wildfires have clearly been escalating like, hmmm, well, like a freaking wildfire....



https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-wildfires

 

Still well below historical peak.
Is climate change REALLY the culprit causing California's wildfires?
2017 › 12 › 14 › is-climate-change-really-the-culprit-causing-californias-wildfires
"Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests" by John T. Abatzogloua and A ... area burned across the western US forests." ... (f) "Human-started wildfires expand the fire niche across

 

Thanks for that Jack, here's a link to the original source for the 1926 to 1970 data, in case our Aussie friend wants to pop off about unreliable sources....

https://www2.census.gov/library/pub...onial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p1-chL.pdf

Of course the thing about western wildfires is that either the rains return or the drought eventually runs out of fuel after enough acres have burned.

These fires suck. Parts of the Sierras look like a lunar landscape after these damn things roll through. Not PGE's fault. Not Chevron's fault. These are not due to CO2 ppm levels. Not related at all. Western droughts have been a thing in this part of the world for a long long time.

 

I can appreciate that you try to focus on what the top climate scientists say rather than the politicians, environmentalists and activists. But, when you say something like this you are implying that you focus on the more scientific aspects of climate change and the anthropogenic global warming aspects of it, almost as though your focus is above the fray, so-to-speak. Below I will show you another example that the entire effort is so convoluted with politics that your objective to focus on the science of it is not likely something you are as successful at as you may have led yourself to believe. For the moment, let me ask you this example: what category does William Connolley fall into, in your opinion? He is both an environmentalist and a self proclaimed climate science expert although his professional experience consisted only of a brief stint as a coder and statistician for one Antarctic survey, as best as I can tell.

You will perhaps forgive me for my overly dramatic statement, perhaps, given that The Secretary General of the United Nations warned of, “a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”

And what about our retired 70 year old photographer and jazz arranger - who is he supposed to listen to? António Guterres or Roger Pielke Sr or William Connolley?

I'm certainly not an expert but I do have sufficient formal education to be one should that have been my path in life. Well, not quite, I'd need to add a biology / biochem class, maybe even 3 or 4 would be good.

Unfortunately those days are long gone by and to be honest with you I am struggling to understand how exactly dividing the TSI/TOA/solar constant by 4 is a valid method of proportioning solar flux as an abstract lumped parameter representing a full planet average basis. I have just about convinced myself that this is incorrect, but I need to give it a bit more consideration. Let me just point this out, the geometry used for this is simply that the area of a circle is one fourth the area of a sphere. However, at about 340 W/sqm this is an incorrect calculation because it takes all of the incidental solar flux 100% normal to a disc the size of the Earth. Only the small amount of the planet at the subsolar point is perpendicular to the solar flux and this point is constantly moving in a sinusoidal path all year between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer - landing exactly on the equator only two days a year.

This though, you've kinda lost me here a little bit when you say that you assume there are climate scientists who study the carbon cycle. There damn well better be, hadn't there? The entire AGW premise fails if the fossil fuel CO2 is too small to effect the carbon cycle. The numbers in the carbon cycle graphic would seem to me to make someone without an environmental agenda a bit skeptical. Out of a total dynamic cycle of 120 Gt/y on land and 90 Gt/y at sea, AGW's 9 Gt/y is overloading the Earth's air by 4 Gt/y. I think maybe that Working Group 4 I've been asking for to develop the R&D efforts for breakthrough energy technologies might also want to work on increasing the metabolism of phytoplankton: problem solved. Again, if the science is even accurate enough to support these models that you have claimed don't need to be terribly sophisticated because they are only about 30 year averages. Remind me again if I've not got that right, please. It is not my intent to mischaracterize your position.

For my second example of why this stuff is so mixed up with politics that it is all but impossible to deconvolute I offer the acronym being used to describe the CO2 scenarios. SSP, hmm, I wonder what that stands for I asked myself. And having worked in the US Army and among various Dilbert types in cubicle land covering a wide array of all the disciplines represented in ABET accredited engineering schools I've come to view my ability to guess the meaning of an acronym as above average. Nope, clearly I'm suffering a case of the Dunning-Kruger effect because I had absolutely no clue that SSP stands for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. Nope, I wasn't even close. Given that we've discussed science and chemistry and long term averages between the two of us, I was thinking, hmm, SSP as a model scenario, I guess that must mean something like Steady State Projection or similar. Nope, not even close. You enjoy your faith in politically managed "science." I think I'll continue to enjoy my agreement with Mike Crichton that this is anything but science.

Let me ask you another question - does this report stick to predicting climate? Because going back to earlier points in this thread, this stuff you've quoted here sure does look a lot like more like climate systems rather than just climate.

 

What's a policy maker to do? Whom should he or she believe?

We think in simple terms, such as, what percentage of climate change scientists share your view? What percentage do not?

See, we are wired for democracy, that's all we know, that's all we have, and though you will say democracy has no place in science, but it does in politics, and politics is your partner at least 50% of the time, and from our vantage point, the odds are the larger group has it right.

Oh, they could be wrong, but all we can do is give odds and place our policy bets.

So, which group is the larger group? What is your opinion on that 97% I keep hearing about?

I know you don't want to answer these questions because consensus is not science, as a few on this forum are saying, and that's probably right, I mean, history is replete with authoritative disasters, such as Thalidomide, Vioxx, etc.

However, since the government funds at least half, if not more, scientific research, the question is inescapable and science will be commanded to answer it, whether it likes the question or not.

 

When you say we, such that you are speaking as a policy maker, I do believe I'd like to pause a moment to ask what exactly is your political experience?

 

I'm just taking (what I would assume is) their view, as devil's advocate, noting that there are no qualifications required for congress, (other than age) also noting that I've been following politics since LBJ v Goldwater.

 

Or do as I do and don't pay any attention to either one.

 

I would point something else out. The real conversation is whether the word anthropogenic is accurate, or not. Climate changes. It has, it does, and it will always. The qualifier is how much, if any, can we effect change as a species. And I would suggest that the AGW faithful, also don't agree that climate should change. Evidently, they like it just the way it is, even though folks suffer for lots of reasons because of it.

The vastly more important question is the morality of using the idea that climate does change as a fleecing agent or lever by which some pretty rich folks believe they can force policy to maximize the amount of income they can force out of folks who are afraid because of their marketing, and the associated "guilt" folks feel because of it. This is what liberals charge that organized religion does and criticize them for it. And yet, here these greedy F's are building the same model to shake the people down with. It is quite transparent.

 

why post? Those who will do as you do will do as you do and not waste anyone's time.

 

That would be, in my opinion, the view common to the cynic.

I'm not in that camp, sorry.

 

So, in your opinion, asking the right questions makes you a cynic? That seems enormously convenient.. Ask three basic questions to those who profess their devotion to AGW. What is the global temp supposed to be. What benchmark did they use to derive that temperature, and if that temperature adversely effects the ability to sustain the ecosystems of the planet, why they would still advocate for trying to force climate not to change to maintain it.

Very rapidly, you will find that there are no real answers. And soon after that, you will find that the real conversation being had is exactly as I laid it out. It's an attempt to structurally create income streams that average folks must then tithe to or risk community condemnation. Just like religion. Why? Because they know it works. The entire carbon credit market swap architecture was developed at Goldmann Sachs. Do you really believe they have anyone's best interests at heart?

When poor, frail Gretta was out there crying in public, did you ever notice that she was making bank as she did it? Seems nothing about this conversation is altruistic. The question really is, will the public fall for it, feel the guilt, and pay the freight to assuage said guilt. And all the while, the climate will change around us anyway.

 

I was focusing on your statement:

fleecing agent or lever by which some pretty rich folks believe they can force policy to maximize the amount of income they can force out of folks who are afraid because of their marketing, and the associated "guilt" folks feel because of it.

That's a pretty broad assumption. To assume that is the intent of those who are concerned about climate change, in my view, is a view common to cynics. That is not to say some might be like that, but to make a broad swath negative allegation is what cynics do. Just sayin'.

That is not calling you a cynic, so don't take it personally, it's a commentary on the mindset of the comment .

You do know that one can have opinions other groups harbor, without actually being a member of that group, right? Which is why I chose my words the way I did.

I assume you mean Greta Thunberg? If so, she is a child, I'd cut her some slack. When she hits 20, and if she becomes a real force, and is the same as she is when she was a child, then I'll pay closer attention to what she is saying, and form an opinion. Until then, she's a child.

 

Indeed.

French Doctor Calls “Instrumentalization” Of Greta Thunberg “Irresponsible”, “Moral Error” …Revealing “Neuropsychiatric State To Media Should Be A Crime”

By P Gosselin on 19. March 2019

Laurent Alexandre: “Greta Thunberg instrumentalized by militant extremists“ In a stinging commentary at Le Figaro here, Dr. Laurent Alexandre, surgeon-urologist, a graduate of Sciences Po, HEC and ENA, and co-founder of the Doctissimo website, asserts that teenage Nobel Prize nominee Greta Thunberg is being shamelessly exploited and “is playing into the hands of economic interests […]


German Portrait Of The Thunberg-Ernman Family: Acutely Dysfunctional, “An Infinitely Sad Family History”

By P Gosselin on 26. October 2019

At the German libertarian site achgut.com here, guest writer Ulrike Stockmann writes a portrait of climate activist Greta Thunberg’s family. The title: “The Thunberg-Ernmans: An infinitely sad family history“. Ulrike Stockmann writes a portrait of the Ernman-Thunberg family. Image: achgut.com Stockmann portrait is based on the published book by Greta Thunberg’s mother, Malena Ernman: “Scenes […]

 

She's a child, and those that are exploiting her should know better.

 

William Connelley isn't a climate scientist and he isn't the type of person that I generally rely on for the most accurate information. He co-wrote
one article that I have read out of many over the past 20 years. I like the scientists at realclimate.org who have generally been right. I have read
some of James Hansen's reports plus 1 book by him. He was NASA's top scientist at one time. I think that he has gone a little too far in his
projections of global warming but he seems to know the science very well.

This is not a statement from a scientist, "The Secretary General of the United Nations warned of, “a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse‑gas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk.”

Some of the above is true. The part about, "putting billions of people at immediate risk", is not true and what is meant by risk. The term "risk" is vague.
I do believe that hundreds of millions of people will be seriously impacted by global warming before the end of this century. I am talking about living
with floods, excessive heat, food shortages, drought, the need to relocate to other countries, and this will be directly caused by AGW.
There will be more insect infestations, more disease caused by warmer temperatures, further declines in fish populations, and severe long-term
drought and water shortages in the SW U.S. The Great Plains of the U.S will also experience more drought in the coming decades.

This is a problem from my textbook on atmospheric science. Calculate the equivalent black body temp. of the earth, assuming
a planetary albedo of 0.30. Assume that the earth is in radiative equilibrium. There is a picture of the earth drawn as a 2-dimensional
circle with 50% of the earth receiving sunlight drawn with parallel, horizontal arrows. and the circle has arrows showing outgoing blacbody
radiation that are orthogonal to the surface of the earth. The parallel, horizontal arrows strike at right angles a vertical line going through the
center of the circle. Since the page of the book is in 2 dimensions the circle is the 3-dimensional surface area of a sphere and the vertical
line is the cross-sectional area of the sphere or the area of a circle.

(1-A)S X pi X (Rearth squared) = E X 4 X pi X (Rearth squared) S is the solar radiation incident upon the earth
E is the irradiance of planetary radiation emitted to space or equivalent blackbody radiation
Rearth is the radius of the earth
A is the planetary albedo

E = (1 - A)S/4 .
= 0.7(1365/4) = 239 watts per square meter

All you have to think about is the albedo and the sun's rays coming in at right angles to that area of a circle to know
what the earth's equivalent blackbody temperature is. I am wondering what is meant by equivalent blackbody temperature
= 239 watts per square meter and I think that it means that the earth's surface that faces the sun absorbs all of that energy, not equally distributed along
the surface, and distributes that energy, after thermal equilibrium is achieved, so that the blackbody energy radiated outwards is uniformly 239 watt per sq. meter. The problem it self may have problems with making planet earth into some
idealized, unrealistic solid sphere which it is not and eliminating the atmosphere.
The earth isn't like this, it's surface temperature varies substantially and the
atmosphere is also considered part of the earth when observing it from space. I think this problem is useful in trying to
understand how we come up with an average for 239 watts per square meter uniformly over the earth's surface, which
is not meant to explain what is actually happening, but provide us with an average value for solar radiation absorbed
that we can compare with radiative focings. Both forms of radiation, viewed as vectors, are aligned with other. Climate
science is all about long-term averages involving years and the 239 number is a long term average.


If there are good ideas on how to remove more carbon from the atmosphere
and sequester it for a long time then that would help. You can be certain that
people are working on it. It must not be so simple or else someone would have
come up with a solution by now. Even trees sequester carbon for only a finite
period and then they usually burn down or die and decay.

 

I didn't finish the above problem. The Stefan-Boltzmann law, found by integrating Planck's law for blackbody radiation over all wavelengths,
is given by E = a constant multiplied by the temperature in degrees Kelvin raised to the fourth power.
the constant = 5.67 X 10 -8 W/meter squared/ deg to the fourth, E = 239 watts per square meter
that gives us an equivalent blackbody temperature of 255 degrees kelvin.

 

I should have carried my physics problem from above a step further to illustrate why it is useful. The blackbody radiation emitted by that idealized
earth to me represents an equivalent incident solar radiation that is equal and opposite in energy to the outgoing infrared radiation. Just turn the
direction of the blackbody radiation around by 180 degrees and you have the equivalent incident solar radiation. The two forms of radiation represent
the earth being in thermal equilibrium, ingoing energy equals outgoing energy. This is how to view absorbed incident solar radiation from the perspective
of a climate scientist.

 

Using Wikipedia, Earth's Energy Budget, as a source the average power per square meter absorbed by the Earth's surface in the year 2009 was
163.3 Watts and the average power absorbed by the atmosphere was 77.1 watts. Adding those 2 together yields 240.4 watts.
Those are averages over a long time, the exact amount of time I don't know. The 240 watt number has been verified by satellite measurements.



Earth's energy budget - Wikipedia

The total amount of energy received per second at the top of Earth's atmosphere (TOA) is measured in watts and is given by the solar constant times the cross-sectional area of the Earth corresponded to the radiation. Because the surface area of a sphere is four times the cross-sectional area of a sphere (i.e. the area of a circle), the average TOA flux is one quarter of the solar constant and so is approximately 340 W/m2.[1][6] Since the absorption varies with location as well as with diurnal, seasonal and annual variations, the numbers quoted are long-term averages, typically averaged from multiple satellite measurements.

Of the ~340 W/m2 of solar radiation received by the Earth, an average of ~77 W/m2 is reflected back to space by clouds and the atmosphere and ~23 W/m2 is reflected by the surface albedo, leaving ~240 W/m2 of solar energy input to the Earth's energy budget. This amount is called the absorbed solar radiation (ASR). It implies a mean net albedo for Earth (specifically, its Bond albedo) of 0.306.

 

The earth in the above problem is just like a blackbody because of the fact that we are subtracting out all reflected sunlight falling on
the Earth's surface. After that subtraction of a term that is a variable, A is a function of the characteristics of the Earth's surface, all
incident sunlight is absorbed by the Earth's surface. Obviously, no sunlight is transmitted through the earth.

Definition of blackbody. : an ideal body or surface that completely absorbs all radiant energy falling upon it with no reflection and that radiates at all frequencies with a spectral energy distribution dependent on its absolute temperature. That is the Merriam-Webster definition.

So, planet earth absorbs energy like a blackbody after subtracting out the reflected light, but does it emit light like a blackbody? No.

Earth's surface doesn't have one uniform temperature. However its average temperature is 255 degrees C. when we include the atmosphere.
This average temperature of the earth-atmosphere system is the same as the effective temperature of the earth, 255 degrees Kelvin from my calculation
but others have calculated something less like 252 degrees Kelvin.

A graph of some portion of the Earth's temperature viewed from space looks something like what is shown below.
2 blackbody curves are shown, one at 270 degrees Kelvin and one at 215 degrees kelvin. Planet earth has a deformed blackbody
spectrum that averages out to be something close to 255 degrees Kelvin. The reason for this is that if we could remove the atmosphere
the Earth's surface would average out to be 255 degrees Kelvin and if we include the atmosphere the average temperature must be
the same because the same amount of energy is being absorbed by the sun in both cases.




Effective temperature - Wikipedia

The effective temperature of a body such as a star or planet is the temperature of a black body that would emit the same total amount of electromagnetic radiation.[1] Effective temperature is often used as an estimate of a body's surface temperature when the body's emissivity curve (as a function of wavelength) is not known.

Earth effective temperature[edit]
Main article: Earth's energy budget
The Earth has an albedo of about 0.306.[9] The emissivity is dependent on the type of surface and many climate models set the value of the Earth's emissivity to 1. However, a more realistic value is 0.96.[10] The Earth is a fairly fast rotator so the area ratio can be estimated as 1/4. The other variables are constant. This calculation gives us an effective temperature of the Earth of 252 K (−21 °C). The average temperature of the Earth is 288 K (15 °C). One reason for the difference between the two values is due to the greenhouse effect, which increases the average temperature of the Earth's surface.

 

I neglected internal heat generated by the earth because the amount of internal heat that makes it to the surface is insignificant compared to
sun's energy contribution. Nearly all of the internal energy drives powerful convective currents in the mantle and never makes it to the surface.
Only around 0.1 watt per square meter is left to heat the surface.

Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budge

Estimates of the total heat flow from Earth's interior to surface span a range of 43 to 49 terawatts (TW) (a terawatt is 1012 watts).[10] One recent estimate is 47 TW,[1] equivalent to an average heat flux of 91.6 mW/m2, and is based on more than 38,000 measurements. The respective mean heat flows of continental and oceanic crust are 70.9 and 105.4 mW/m2.[1

 

William Connolley was a co-founder of RealClimate.

 

Don't forget the MEDIA that exploits her while ignoring Dr. Curry who has a science blog.

Meanwhile here is a short sampling of a girl who should be in School.

 

Wikipedia says that he was a member of RealClimate until 2007. I generally look at the authors of all or the articles that I have read
on that site and I can't recall his name ever coming up. I have read many of the articles that appeared during the first 10 years ; probably
around 70% of them. I probably did read some articles authored by him but I don't recall his name. I have nothing against him as a
scientist.

This is form Wikipedia's web page on William Connelley

Background
Connolley holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a DPhil from St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford for his work on numerical analysis.[1] He works as a software engineer for Cambridge Silicon Radio, designing embedded firmware.[2]

Until December 2007, Connolley was Senior Scientific Officer in the Physical Sciences Division in the Antarctic Climate and the Earth System project at the British Antarctic Survey. His research focused on sea ice measurement and modelling, including the HadCM3 global climate model (GCM). Connolley also worked on the validation of satellite data against more direct upward looking sonar observations in the Weddell Sea area.[3][4] He concluded that Bootstrap data produced a better fit than data produced by NASA and that GCM predictions are more realistic than previously thought.[4



Wikipedia's discussion of realclimate.org

RealClimate is a commentary site (blog) on climatology. The site's contributors include climate scientists whose goal is to provide a response to developing stories and a context they feel is sometimes missing in mainstream commentary on climate science and climate change. The forum is moderated, and is restricted to scientific topics to avoid discussion of political or economic implications of the science.[2] RealClimate was launched on 10 December 2004 by nine climate scientists.[1][3]

Recognition
The creation of RealClimate was the subject of an editorial in the scientific journal Nature,[3] and was reported in the "NetWatch" news feature of the journal Science.[4]

In 2005, the editors of Scientific American recognized RealClimate with a Science and Technology Web Award.[5]

In 2006, Nature compiled a list of the 50 most popular blogs written by scientists, as measured by Technorati. RealClimate was number 3 on that list.[6][7]

According to Time, RealClimate is "in line with the Web's original purpose: scientific communication" with a "straightforward presentation of the physical evidence for global warming".[8]