Integrity Failure Cascade

Jeff Id is looking into integrity failures in Climate Science. Which reminded me of a job I once did.

Integrity failure cascades are not unfamiliar to me. As a contractor I see a LOT of that.

At one company that shall remain nameless I encountered the following.

1. A poorly designed circuit board that did not follow design rules for its logic components. Lines at least double the maximum length.
2. I pointed this out. Showed the people (managers, engineers) the references.
3. The company men pointed out that the prototypes were working fine and I was just being an “old lady” about the matter. Besides it would cost $100K (because of the burn rate) and one month to do a new spin. Customers wouldn’t like the delay.
4. Ten pre-production prototypes were built and they worked perfectly – boy were they laughing at my unwarranted concern. The rest of my work was excellent so they just wrote off my concern as “engineering perfectionism”.
5. Production started – 90% production failure rate. That is when I left. They wanted me to stay on to work production to get the pass rate up. I declined.
6. Of those that passed production tests 99% failed in the field
7. They lost $3 million on that one and it cost them a lot of customer good will.

LMAO

You can only violate the rules so long until it comes back to bite you.

I think the lack of integrity in climate “science” will follow a similar path. The wheels are already starting to come off. Only big wobbles for now. But it won’t be long before the wobbles turn into collapse.

I will then have another opportunity to LMAO. I’m looking forward to it.

Highly Unusual And Unexpected

This is not about some decline in an economic indicator especially not about the latest trends in unemployment claims. It is about the coming of a quiet sun.

A missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all.

Will we be heading for a period of cooling as we have seen in other periods of a dormant sun such as the Maunder Minimum? No one knows. But it does seem stupid to be shutting down coal fired power plants in the face of that possibility.

They Have Climate All Rapped Up

H/T Insane Clown Posse @ Bunyipitude and Insane Clown Posse II @ Bunyipitude

Below Average

If you have been worried about global warming the latest news will give you some comfort.

Since 1979, NOAA satellites have been carrying instruments which measure the natural microwave thermal emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere. The signals that these microwave radiometers measure at different microwave frequencies are directly proportional to the temperature of different, deep layers of the atmosphere. Every month, John Christy and I update global temperature datasets (see here and here)that represent the piecing together of the temperature data from a total of eleven instruments flying on eleven different satellites over the years. As of early 2011, our most stable instrument for this monitoring is the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit (AMSU-A) flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite and providing data since late 2002.

So what does the graph show? Global temperatures are falling like a rock and are now .02 degrees C below the baseline. Of course if the coming of an Ice Age (or even a Little Ice Age) worries you this is bad news. I have reliable reports that it is rather difficult to grow food crops under ice.

Not Possible

Watts Up With That is looking into complexity and finds prediction in complex situations difficult according to the IPCC.

Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

It all starts from the simple idea that increasing internal radiation reflection (Greenhouse Gas Theory) increases temperature. Fine so far. But there are complications. The climate system is not simple physics. For instance: surface water absorbs energy. And the Earth's surface has a LOT of water. Well the water evaporates and you get clouds. Clouds are very complicated. Sometimes the water vapor precipitates out of the atmosphere and you get rain, or snow, or sleet, or hail. This is part of an energy transport system (heat pipe)in the atmosphere. Clouds also complicate the radiation picture. They reflect from both sides. Which matters day AND night on Earth but only day for incoming radiation. And that is just one aspect of the system. Vegetation varies radiation depending on type and amount.

The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc

Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.

Engineers have always been the biggest sceptics (I prefer the Brit spelling) of the CO2 causes global warming hypothesis.

Engineers spend decades in efforts to match simple deterministic systems to complex environments.

Back in the 80s I (electronics engineer) used to worry about second order effects (deviations from simple laws) caused by the non-linearity of materials. We are now in third order territory with occasional forays into fourth order effects. Climate is like 14th or 40th order stuff. And very non-linear. It is possible (not likely) for 12th order effects to have first order results (chaos).

Is it possible to do decent predictions in short time frames? Maybe. I saw Piers Corbin on Nightline the other day and he has claimed to have predicted much recent weather and predicts a cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Piers Corbyn’s presentation showed the major advances in power and skill now achieved by his Solar-Lunar-Action-Technique (SLAT) of weather & climate forecasting which now includes the ability to predict from months ahead extreme events all over the world and changes in the Jet Stream such as those which caused the West Russian heatwave and the Pakistan super-deluges and floods and marked their ending in mid August 2010. In his presentation Piers showed a film of the double sunspot superfast solar coronal ejection on 14th August and the consequent Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance and the predicted jet stream disruption – See:

http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No31.pdf.

For WeatherAction summer forecasts 2007, 08, 09 and winter forecasts 2008/9 and 09/10 which beat all-comers see:

http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No33.pdf

He seems to be doing OK so far. BTW he is a "CO2 causes global warming" sceptic.



Some urls:
http://twitter.com/piers_corbyn
http://www.weatheraction.com/

And some books:

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Cockroach Infestation

I was reading Watts Up With That about a dispute between Christopher Monckton and John Abraham about some climate issues. But as is often the case the most interesting stuff is in the comments.

Alexander Feht says:
July 14, 2010 at 11:18 pm

I completely understand, why Christopher Monckton felt a need to make an example of a typical reprehensible representative of modern Academia. People like Christopher Monckton make me hope again that not everything is lost yet under the Moon.

And yet… I spent first half of my life battling liars and cockroaches in the former USSR. I would win against any individual liar or cockroach, no sweat. But year after year after year, I was getting more and more convinced that I didn’t want to die in this battle, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of my enemies.

So. I live in a quiet valley now, in Colorado Rockies. Grass is green, air is fresh, sky is huge. But what is this constant swish and rustle coming from the East Coast and from the Left Coast? I know this sound well! There is no escape from the battle: cockroaches are coming.

You can read more by Mr. Feht by clicking on his name above.

As to the cockroaches: they are a self inflicted wound. Keep the place clean, limit the availability of free food, plus the occasional dose of poison and you can at least keep them in check.

So how about this for a campaign slogan:

Poison The Cockroaches In November

But perhaps that is too harsh and would be interpreted as a threat, so as an alternative:

Defeat The Cockroaches In November

See you in November.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

An Inconvenient Question

I missed this video when it first came out. It is reporter Phelim McAleer asking Stephen Schneider some questions. Check out the totalitarian response to an inconvenient question.

And just who is Stephen Schneider? He is the academic who said:

“To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

Ah. So honesty is no longer the best policy. Nice to know where he stands. If he is talking he is lying. Unless conclusively beyond a reasonable doubt proved otherwise.

And Mr. SS has written a book:

Science as a Contact Sport

Evidently the contact has been a bit too much for him.

Schneider is also a member of the Club Of Rome. Here is a bit on The Club of Rome along with a cast of characters.

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

David Rockefeller

Well on to the video.



And these folks wonder why there is a Tea Party movement? It seems like a rational response to their plan for world domination.



Click on the above image and learn how to spread it around.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The War On Coal

Could Climate Alarmists be dupes in the

WAR ON COAL
Consider. When it was global cooling - coal plants were the enemy. Now with warming - coal plants are the enemy. I'm beginning to detect a pattern. Perhaps James "Coal Trains are Auschwitz Trains" Hansen can tell us more.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

You Can't Fool Me

Which was brought on by this comment at Watts Up With That?

Doug S (18:35:46) :

Dr. Curry, I think you did a good job in reconstructing the time line of political and scientific consensus coming together to ignite the warming craze. I believe the nut jobs in the progressive political movement latched onto the CO2 warming theory, recognizing that it could be used to further their goals and the climate scientists unwittingly, in some cases, took them on as allies. Once this partnership became apparent to all of us “stupid ordinary taxpaying citizens, the dummies that pay for the data collection” it was only a matter of time before popular opinion turned against the elite scientists and progressives. I don’t think enough credit is given to the average potato farmer with a solid eight grade education; he may not be college educated but he can recognize a con game when he see one.

And then my response:

The key line in the cartoon is about 2:45 in, “You can’t fool me because I’m too stupid.” Or as Orwell preferred: “Some things are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them.”

We Don't Know What We Thought

After years of getting "it is worse than we thought" from the Climate Catastrophists crowd and their pet scientists it turns out that maybe the certainty is not so certain after all. And wonder of wonders. Error is admitted.

Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.

The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century.

At the time, Mark Siddall, from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, said the study "strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results". The IPCC said that sea level would probably rise by 18cm-59cm [7" to 23" ed.] by 2100, though stressed this was based on incomplete information about ice sheet melting and that the true rise could be higher.

Many scientists criticised the IPCC approach as too conservative, and several papers since have suggested that sea level could rise more. Martin Vermeer of the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany published a study in December that projected a rise of 0.75m to 1.9m [30" to 75" ed.]by 2100.

I guess it is still worse than we thought. So what is the current rate of sea level rise you ask? Some say 2.2 mm a year is a pretty good number. Others like 3.3 mm a year. I have also seen lower numbers. The variation is due to the imprecision of measurement. No matter. Let me translate 2.2 mm a year is 22 cm (8 1/2") a century and 3.3 mm a year is 33cm (13") a century. The people cooking the books (excuse me Climate Scientists) are going to have to do a lot of work accelerating the real world to match their model predictions.



The graph is from World Climate Report which discusses it further.

A New Revelation

We have some new Climate e-mails to peruse. This one is from the fourth pdf. I transcribed it by hand so if you find any errors let me know.

Subject: Re: Fwd: US temperature correction graphic and file
From:Reto Ruedy
Date:Mon, 13 Aug 2007 11:30:24 -0400
To:James Hansen
CC:Makiko Sato , gavin@e-mail, klo@e-mail

Jim,

I did make those calculations (I assume you mean using only GHCN and hand-adjusting only St. Helens and Lihue, in both cases decreasing the trend, eliminating a 1C and .8C step, resp., as stated in our 1999 paper, also using our urban adjustment.

I only held them back because bringing in a new analysis at this time would confuse the situation beyond hope.

As far as global means are concerned, the effect of our cleaningis slightly negative for the pre-1950 period, slighly positive thereafter, the biggest deviations are -.01C in 1922, +.01C in 2006; the change in 1900-1999 (lin. trend) is .01C/century (i.e. without cleaning it would decrease by .01C).

The US trend however is a different story though not surprising: In addition to the change caused by the UHCN modifications (+.30C for the 1900-1999 change as noted in our 2001 paper: +.14 TOBS, +.16 station hist.adj), the other modifications added .08C/century to the trend. So the trend would decrease by .38C.

The deviations for the individual years caused by the cleaning range from -.13 in 1922 to +.37 in 2006. The optical impression this creates when you look at the table of data is totally misleading: the 1998 anomaly just happens to fall below 1C (.93C) whereas 1921, 1931, 1934 are above 1C (1.27, 1,20, 1.37C) !

Reto

It would be real nice to find out what this is about. At first glance it appears they adjust things in a way that adds almost .4°C to the US trend. Is this a valid adjustment? We would need to go back to the station data and then all the various adjustments and corrections to find out.

Think of it this way though. If the trend has been incorrectly adjusted by nearly .4°C a century then the temperature trend is almost non-existent.

H/T Author and Commenters at Watts Up With That

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Taxed Just For Breathing

And by the same group: Hide The Decline

H/T Vanderleun at American Digest via TDPerk at Talk Polywell

Cross Posted at Classical Values

The Glaciers Are Melting

New Scientist seems to have made an error.

IT WAS a dramatic declaration: glaciers across much of the Himalayas may be gone by 2035. When New Scientist heard this comment from a leading Indian glaciologist, we reported it. That was in 1999. The claim later appeared in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report - and it turns out that our article is the primary published source.

The glaciologist has never submitted what he says was a speculative comment for peer review - and most of his peers strongly dispute it. So how could such speculation have become an IPCC "finding" which has, moreover, recently been defended by the panel's chairman? We are entitled to an explanation, before rumour and doubt compound the damage to the image of climate science already inflicted by the leaked "climategate" emails.

Ah yes. The perils of rumor and doubt.

And the defense of speculation? I was under the impression that that was the chief job of the IPCC. Nice to see New Scientist on the job. Let me see if I can come to a proper conclusion: 2009 minus 1999 is about 10 years (more or less). Fortunately they have a crack team checking in to their errors and promptly publishing corrections.

I wonder what else in the IPCC report is just rank speculation? But they are not completely wrong. About 18,000 years ago the location that is now the city of Chicago was covered by a glacier as was much of the North American Continent. And those glaciers are now gone. Some one needs to be held accountable for this global warming.

As a commenter at Bishop Hill paraphrased the New Scientist reaction in his marvelous (to these American ears) British accent:

We are entitled to know why the IPCC used our article based on a false non peer reviewed speculative claim by a some shady Indian glaciologist.

Well I'm an Anglophile. I can hear the accent.

Questionable Code

My friend Luzr at Talk Polywell has analyzed a bit of the code found in the CRU data dump. He has come to the conclusion that

Given this bug, "anomaly .txt files" contain mostly random data....

That is pretty bad.

However, I think an analysis of the situation is in order. Dale Amon and the commenters on his post at Samizdata have done that. Let us start with a few words from Dale.

A second facet of 'Climategate' is the reported shortcomings in the model code base. Part of the document release included source code. In a discussion with Rand Simberg over breakfast in LA earlier this month I heard that some very knowledgeable open source programmers are having a go at it. If half of what he told me turns out to be true, the models used by IPCC are worse than useless.

Yes.

John Costella recounts one of the e-mails between ClimateGate "scientists".

Phil Jones fowards it to Mike Mann:

I got this email from McIntyre a few days ago. As far as I’m concerned he has the data—sent ages ago. I’l tell him this, but that’s all—no computer program. If I can find the program, it is likely to be hundreds of lines of undocumented FORTRAN!

Any computer programmer would know that FORTRAN—a computer language so old that its name is spelt in uppercase, because computers did not have lowercase letters back then—is very efficient at performing mathematical calculations, but very obscure to understand if extensive documentation is not provided throughout the program, and very easy to make mistakes in if the program is not well-structured and well-documented.

So we now know that the Climatic Research Unit had no policies covering the checking of results, data archiving, or anything to control the writing and archiving of computer programs!

No wonder they are unwilling to release the code.

Back to Samizdata. An MMGW (Man Made Global Warming) proponent has this to say:

The reality is that nothing of any substance against the AGW theory has emerged from those emails. Even if you ignore all the CRU work, it changes nothing at all. Virtually every other piece of independent data and work supports the broad conclusions of CRU.

Another comment makes a similar point.

Incidentally the IPCC uses other data and models in addition to CRU, for example from the NASA Goddard Institute. The NASA data and source code is 100% open source and agrees well with the CRU results.

To which there was an excellent reply:

...if other founts of knowledge are consistent with the output of buggy code (as analysed here and elsewhere), what does that say about the quality of the output of those other founts of knowledge?

I'll give two views: (i) those other founts of knowledge are of similar quality of that from the deficient processing by CRU; (ii) we are deficient in knowledge of this 'consistency'.

And if we are deficient in knowledge of consistency, do we really know the relevance (if any, and I have strong doubts about it) of average temperature of the planet?

And there is more:

If you really want a specific example of scientific fraud, then I've already alluded to the Wang case. In order to show the urban heat island effect was trivial, the IPCC case relies on a paper by Jones, which relies on a paper by Wang, both of which rely on the assertion that a set of weather stations in China were selected on the basis that we knew they had "few, if any" station moves or other inhomogeneities. However, we know that this cannot be true, and that the researchers involved must have known it, because it is reported elsewhere that most of the stations have no metadata, and most of those that those that do were moved often very considerable distances.

There is no doubt that a claim was made and was relied upon that cannot be true. The person making the statement could not have seen evidence of it. So far, that might be a simple error. Where it becomes outright fraud comes after it was pointed out to them, when instead of simply responding with a retraction and correction, they first ignored the requests for information (because they were from "sceptics"), obstructed attempts to examine data, and denied there was any problem. A complaint of scientific malpractice was made and investigated, but in defiance of their own procedures the inquiry was held in secret, the accuser not permitted to be involved, or to see the report. There is no public explanation or justification. No defence has been presented. Nothing.

Until now, when we see the climategate climate scientists casting around for possible defences, and coming up with nothing. Kevin Trenberth offers "So my feeble suggestion is to indeed cast aspersions on their motives and throw in some counter rhetoric. Labeling them as lazy with nothng better to do seems like a good thing to do." Tom Wigley, Director of CRU at the time explicitly says that the accusation was correct. "Seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (WCW [Wang] at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect."

That's a direct admission by a Director of CRU and respected climate scientist that the accusation was correct regarding a claim then under investigation as a matter of scientific fraud.

My understanding is that the Wang paper was subsequently withdrawn without explanation.

So what was done about the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) in the data? Climate Skeptic has a few words to say (from 2008).

However, many GISS adjustments for site location and urbanization are negative, meaning urbanization has been reduced at the location since 1900, certainly an odd proposition. In fact, if memory serves, the total net adjustment of all stations in the GISS system is negative for site location and urbanization. I know, from here, the net USHCN adjustment for combined site location and urbanization is negative, adding 0.15F to current temperatures as compared to those in 1900, implying that site location quality has improved over time.

So building a city (a heat source) around a measuring site causes temperatures to decline, thus requiring an addition to correct for the decline? It does tend to strain credulity.

All that is bad enough. But there is worse. The climate models fail on their own terms. The Fatal Missing Atmospheric Hotspot of CO2 Alarmist Theory

Dr. David Evans has written a very good summary of the fatal problem of the climate computer models that claim to provide a good match to the increasing temperatures of the late 20th Century based on atmospheric CO2 concentrations. What the modelers have done is taken a theory of greenhouse gases and added theories of sulfate aerosols, ozone, volcanic aerosols, and solar irradiance to plot the expected temperature changes as a function of altitude in the atmosphere and as a function of latitude over the Earth. In reality, they have tuned the many variables and theories to produce results which they claim are predictive of the land surface temperatures for the period from 1958 to 1999. If these theories are valid, then the predictions of temperatures at various altitudes and latitudes must also be correct.

A series of graphs is then presented showing the model results.

...if the factors modeled are the most important factors pertaining to climate change, such features as the very prominent hot spot near and above the equator at altitudes of 8 to 12 km with elevated temperatures of 1.0 to 1.2C should be measured by balloons equipped with transmitters to send back temperatures measured as the balloon ascends to high altitudes in the atmosphere. There are good records going back to the 1960s with hundreds of balloon flights having the ability to measure temperatures with an accuracy of better than 0.1C.

The graphs of the measurements are shown. Then he goes on to say:

The lower atmosphere, or the troposphere, is relatively uniformly warmed compared to the Santer model results used in the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007. Note that the entire range of variation in the plot with altitude and latitude is much less than in the alarmist model plot. The cooling of the upper atmosphere, the stratosphere, is also less severe and is also more uniform. The hottest warm areas are mostly in the northern hemisphere and only reach up to about 0.3C warmings, not the 1.2C of the models touted as good matches to reality by the UN IPCC. Also, very notably, the major hot spot over the equator and latitudes nearby is missing. This area is largely warmed only about 0.1C and parts of this area are cooled by -0.1C! The warming is at least an order of magnitude less than in the alarmist model at 10 km altitude over the equator!

So, the UN IPCC model result, which is said by them to verify the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming predicts much greater temperature changes due to their greenhouse gas theory in the atmosphere than is observed and the pattern of those changes is very different than that actually measured.

The normal conclusion when models don't match data is that there is something wrong with the models. Evidently the rules for climate science are different. Fortunately the Rulers of Climate Science appear to have taken a fall. And if temperatures keep going the way they have been going the last few weeks they may also be taking a very hard winter.

A Physicist Looks At Climate And Clouds

You can start by looking at the video. Then you can study the slide show [pdf] that goes with the video. And finally you can check out the discussion at Watts Up With That.

Is the physics a done deal? Not yet. There are two or three years of further data and analysis required to give a definitive answer. What we will have at the end is repeatable experimental results to inform our understanding instead of the usual "we have correlation which proves the cause we posit is likely." One of the ways correlation can lead you astray is that it is easy to get cause and effect backwards. i.e. does climate cause the rise in CO2 or does CO2 rise cause climate? Ice cores show CO2 following climate by 200 to 800 years. But not in all cases. Sometimes the rise in CO2 precedes changes in Earth's temperature by a few decades.

And even if clouds/cosmic rays are only part of the answer it will diminish the role of CO2. And there may be other partial answers that further reduce the what we think is the effect of CO2 on climate.

The science is really not settled. In fact science is never settled because new data can upset our old understandings. We will still have to wait 10 to 30 years to see if the revised model predictions (if the CLOUD experiments hold up) match reality. So far the model predictions are not holding up well. At all. One of the reasons is that the PDO and other ocean effects were not included in the models the predictions came from. We can fix that. Make new predictions and then see how they match reality.

We need to get the science on a much firmer basis before we make planet wide bets in the hundreds of trillion dollar rage. Other wise we will be wasting our money.

In the mean time the best course is to invest in lowering the cost of alternative energy and energy storage so the equipment gets deployed on a profit making basis rather than a loss making (taxation) basis. That will do us good even if CO2 has only minimal effects on climate.

I'd like to see more effort going in to fusion as well. I like the Polywell Fusion experiments for a possible quick route to fusion. But there are other routes being investigated. All of them should be pursued with those likeliest to give us a near term answer being pushed the hardest.

You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering

Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained

The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.

And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years

From The IPCC

The IPCC has some interesting things to say about water vapor and clouds:

Recent studies reaffirm that the spread of climate sensitivity estimates among models arises primarily from inter-model differences in cloud feedbacks. The shortwave impact of changes in boundary-layer clouds, and to a lesser extent midlevel clouds, constitutes the largest contributor to inter-model differences in global cloud feedbacks. The relatively poor simulation of these clouds in the present climate is a reason for some concern. The response to global warming of deep convective clouds is also a substantial source of uncertainty in projections since current models predict different responses of these clouds. Observationally based evaluation of cloud feedbacks indicates that climate models exhibit different strengths and weaknesses, and it is not yet possible to determine which estimates of the climate change cloud feedbacks are the most reliable.

The ultimate source of most such errors is that many important small-scale processes cannot be represented explicitly in models, and so must be included in approximate form as they interact with larger-scale features. This is partly due to limitations in computing power, but also results from limitations in scientific understanding or in the availability of detailed observations of some physical processes. Significant uncertainties, in particular, are associated with the representation of clouds, and in the resulting cloud responses to climate change.

Many of the important processes that determine a model’s response to changes in radiative forcing are not resolved by the model’s grid. Instead, sub-grid scale parametrizations are used to parametrize the unresolved processes, such as cloud formation and the mixing due to oceanic eddies.

Cloud parametrizations are based on physical theories that aim to describe the statistics of the cloud field (e.g., the fractional cloudiness or the area averaged precipitation rate) without describing the individual cloud elements. In an increasing number of climate models, microphysical parametrizations that represent such processes as cloud particle and raindrop formation are used to predict the distributions of liquid and ice clouds.

I'm not going to go into all the problems that are indicated by this IPCC explanation.

But let me take up two. First: Electric motors are well understood. There are not 15 models of electric motors. There are not even two. There is one.

Second: The estimate of energy "forcing" from CO2 is 1.6W/m². The estimate for cloud "forcing" is 30W/m². An error of just 5% in how clouds are modeled will equal the CO₂ "forcing". An error of 10% in the cloud models will dwarf any "forcing" from CO₂. But of course given this uncertainty the politicians believe the modelers can tell us what the climate will be like in 100 years?

And don't forget the errors can accumulate. Especially if the feedback is assumed positive (as the models do). There is not (according to the modelers) any feedback that will tend to return the models to a given condition. The models show that deviations are increased and not reduced. So - off 5% for the first year could increase to 10%+ the second year and so on. Suppose the error is only 1%. It could lead to 100% or more errors 100 years out.

Why do I say could? Because the climate is a dynamic non-linear chaotic feedback system. What that means in practice is that a small error in the models could propagate or a large error could be damped out. And we can't predict in advance which is which. Nor can we tell (without comparing the results to reality) which is which.

So how do the results compare to reality? No model that I am aware of predicted in 2000 the flat lining of global temperature that has taken place since then. Have the models improved since then? To be sure. We should collect the latest predictions and see in ten years if they are reasonably correct. No way we should be committing ourselves to hundreds of trillions of expenditures globally until we know for sure we have something that reasonably compares to reality. And even then we can't be sure because climate is a dynamic non-linear chaotic feedback system.

Some people will bring up the precautionary principle: what if something goes wrong? Well what if. If it gets too hot we can cope. After all we already have crops that grow in hot climates. We just change where they are planted. However, as far as I can tell we do not have any crops adapted to grow under ice. And the last ice age lasted 100,000 years with huge glaciers covering North America significantly south of Chicago. (Yup. The glaciers are melting.) So how long do interglacials (like the one we are living in now) typically last? About 10,000 years. And how long has this one lasted? About 10,000 years. We are due.

So if you want to take precautions I'd say prepare for an ice age. In fact thinking about what we can do geoengineering wise to keep the planet warmer would be time well spent. The tipping point we have to worry about is the return of an ice age.

As snow and ice covers more of the land it reflects more energy into space cooling the planet which gives rise to more snow and ice further cooling the planet. And so on until the glaciers again cover much of the Earth.

Now I greatly admire Sarah Palin but there is no way I want to live in a Northern Illinois that resembles Alaska.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

What Is Happening To The Glaciers?

In a study of the glaciers of the Himalayas it turns out - not much.

...we find that the Himalaya glaciers are difficult even for scientists to understand. Most suggestions of rapid melting are based on observations of a small handful of India's 10,000 or so Himalayan glaciers. A comprehensive report in November by senior glaciologist Vijay Kumar Raina, released by the Indian government, looked more broadly and found that many of these glaciers are stable or have even advanced, and that the rate of retreat for many others has slowed recently.

Jeffrey S. Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona, declared in the Nov. 13 issue of Science that these "extremely provocative" findings were "consistent with what I have learned independently," while in the same issue of the magazine Kenneth Hewitt, a glaciologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, agreed that "there is no evidence" to support the suggestion that the glaciers are disappearing quickly.

Another way of Hiding The Decline bites the dust. You have to wonder what the people supporting the "People Are Evil And CO2 is the Proof" position have against evidence?

Check It Out

George Monbiot, one of the staunched supporters of the CO2 causes global warming belief, says that based on the ClimateGate revelations the science needs to be re-evaluated.

It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.

Yes, the messages were obtained illegally. Yes, all of us say things in emails that would be excruciating if made public. Yes, some of the comments have been taken out of context. But there are some messages that require no spin to make them look bad. There appears to be evidence here of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released, and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request.

Worse still, some of the emails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics, or to keep it out of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I believe that the head of the unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the emails should be re-analysed.

Monbiot also had this to say:

I apologise. I was too trusting of some of those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.

There is no certainty that the e-mails were illegally obtained. But that is a a minor quibble.

The point is that the release of this information has rightly or wrongly cast the whole enterprise into a disreputable light. The only way to fix the situation is to:

Do A Climate Audit

Cross Posted at Classical Values

It Is Worse Than We Thought

I'm interested in climate science. Who wouldn't be given the political ramifications? Well I have come across some Russian scientists [pdf] who have scared the heck out of me.

The changes will have very serious consequences, and it is necessary to begin preparations even now, since there is practically no time in reserve.

Yep. No time to waste. It is worse than we thought. Is he worried about warming? No.

For several years until the beginning in 2013 of a steady temperature drop, in a phase of instability, temperature will oscillate around the maximum that has been reached, without further substantial rise. Changes in climatic conditions will occur unevenly, depending on latitude. A temperature decrease in the smallest degree would affect the equatorial regions and strongly influence the temperate climate zones. The changes will have very serious consequences, and it is necessary to begin preparations even now, since there is practically no time in reserve. The global temperature of the Earth has begun its decrease without limitations on the volume of greenhouse gas emissions by industrially developed countries; therefore the implementation of the Kyoto protocol aimed to rescue the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off at least 150 years.

The paper was translated from Russian which explains the inartful wording. From the graphs in the paper I infer it was written around December of 2008. We should know by 2015 or so if the predictions are correct. In the mean time it wouldn't hurt to plan ahead for global cooling. Just in case.

The Hockey Stick Is Broken Permanently

This is a tale of forensics and what appears to be scientific fraud. And wouldn't you know it: climate hysteria. Let me start with the famous hockey stick. It is a graph showing unprecedented global warming at the end of the 20th century. It was the icon of global warming hysteria. The wiki has the graph and a picture of Michael Mann (the discoverer).

You will note that Mr. Mann is holding a section of a tree. Why? Well the hockey stick was developed by analyzing tree rings which are supposed to be a proxy for temperature. This may or may not be true but I'm not going to deal with that question. You can look into that at The Problem With Tree Ring Thermometers.

Steve McIntyre showed that by using the Mann methodology and feeding noise into the computer program that analyzed the tree ring data you get the hockey stick. So the tree rings are irrelevant to the hockey stick.

But that is not too important to the current controversy. What is important is that it has now been shown (since Steve was finally - after years of asking - able to get the data) that Michael Mann cherry picked the data. And in fact with the full data set the hockey stick goes down (Steve prefers to say the results are flat) and not up. Which is rather a surprise given the bias of the analysis.

It started with this post (which references Climate audit):

Mann Cherry Picked The Data

Here is a mirror posting of the Climate Audit post (it is kinda technical):

How Michael Mann Was Found Out

A more detailed look at the revised graph.

UK Climate scientists have some 'splainin to do.

In layman's terms what does it mean? The hockey stick is dead and its development in the first place may have been a scientific fraud for at least two reasons. Bad analysis and data cherry picking.


Books on some other things wrong with climate science:

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don't Want You to Know

The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About--Because They Helped Cause Them

Happy reading!

Cross Posted at Classical Values