If you have an LJ account, let me know the ID. Most of my entries are closed and if you’re interested in reading more than just that one link, you’ll need to be friended. I made a closed post about the link upthread and Charles (who has an LJ account) responded.

So … if you have an LJ account, lemme know and you can join in that discussion. I’d like to know what your fiance has to say about C14:C12 ratios as that thread never evolved over here.

Thanks for the link. I read the entry on Pandagon that I think you’re referring to. I made this post recently and will make another post on a similarly related topic in the near future (for those of y’all into LJ …)

Heh, you’re welcome. I was being a bit grumpy, but thank you for taking me at face value. I’m glad you found it useful.

It’s very cool to have your livejournal link. I’ll try to drop by there occasionally to read.

Actually, the post you link to shows the wrong feature of sunspot activity. The suggested connection is between the length of the sunspot cycle and the global average temperature. The effective rebuttal (the paper that showed the correlation made some extremely significant errors of calculation and used a dodgy combination of smoothed and unsmoothed data, correcting the data problems causes the late 20th century correlation to largely vanish) can be found here.

Sunspot cycle period does seem to show a substantial contribution to the early to mid-20th century warming, but my understanding is that it is only a partial component (~25%?) of the late 20th century global warming (this estimate is also supported by the general climate models). The other 75% (or more, there seems to also be a cooling trend that is being completely overwhelmed) is believed to be from anthropogenic CO2.

search result:

http://people.uleth.ca/~dan.johnson/sunspots.htm

I think I’ve made plenty of “final posts” already. I will make one that hopefully you’ll like a bit better.

First, just as Charles has thanked me for prodding him to read so much these past few days, I’d like to thank him for prodding me to do likewise. I’m still skeptical, but that’s just me. Just as Charles as prodded me into reading more about climate modeling than I had in a few years, I hope Charles reads about developments in the development of alternative and renewable energy as a cost-effective alternative to non-renewable fossil fuels. Long term my thoughts are that technology and free-market capitalism is going to be what saves us.

Whatever the answer — global warming or running out of fossil fuels — our current behavior is unsustainable and both scenarios will cause dramatic changes in our lifestyles if we don’t change now.

I’ll again repeat this link. There are always ways to cut our energy usage and the last three months have taught me a thing or two.

Actually, I was being unfair. If you’d like to make a final post on this thread, that is okay.

Thanks for the link. I read the entry on Pandagon that I think you’re referring to. I made this post recently and will make another post on a similarly related topic in the near future (for those of y’all into LJ …)

You show no sign of having understood anything that I said other than the bit that supported you position. You don’t seem to have understood why the models “freak out for a hundred years” or why they stop freaking out, or that they don’t freak out if you feed them better initial conditions. Nor do you seem to understand that the models can now be run for a thousand years and end up with correct results for the modern day.

There is another point, which I’m sure you will also not be willing to understand: the models 17 years ago were (for all their problems) correct. Their results (interpreted intelligently) were roughly accurate at predicting the climate change we have seen in the past 17 years (the strictest form of validation possible), and the much better modern models simply confirm the results that could be extracted from the older models.

This is from the 1990 IPCC first assessment report (the full document doesn’t seem to be online, so I am quoting from here):

Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other … scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.

So the models were pretty bad in 1990, and their raw results were obviously wrong, but by massaging the model results in various ways (mostly, by looking at the difference between scenarios, rather than at the specific results of individual scenarios), it was possible to make predictions with them.

Over the past 17 years, the central tendency of those predictions have been shown to have underestimated the degree of global warming, but the actual degree of global warming did fall within the uncertainty range of the predictions.

The models 17 years ago (used intelligently) were right.

The modern models are much better than the models 17 years ago (so you can now try to predict regional climate change, rather than just global trends), but at the gross level, they are simply confirming the results of the models from 17 years ago.

So returning to your comment (first sentence, third paragraph, you asked me to explain how I manage to disagree with anything in your comment. I disagree with just about every line of your comment, so I’m afraid what follows is pretty much a fisking, minus the wit. I consider fisking rude, so I wouldn’t do it if you hadn’t asked me to) :

Climate modeling has a decades-long history of being wrong.

The sense in which this is true is irrelevant, as I demonstrated above with the model based predictions from the 1990 IPCC report.

Climate models have, as you in your own words said, a tendency to “freak out for a hundred years”,

I explained already why this happens, and it is not something that will suddenly start happening in the middle of a model run, so it is irrelevant to predicting the next century.

and as others have said “freeze the oceans”.

This has never been a significant problem with climate models, and is certainly not a significant problem with climate models now. Certainly, if you set up the model inputs incorrectly, you can get nonsensical results. This provides great denialist sound bites, but is completely irrelevant.

While the new models may well be right, I’ll just point out that a broken watch is right twice a day,

This is simply idiotic.

and if they are right, it would be the first time in my entire life.

As I demonstrated above, you are completely wrong here. The models correctly predicted the direction and rough magnitude of global climate change over a 17 year period nearly 20 years ago.

If there’s anything in this post that you can actually disagree with, I’d love to know how you manage to do so.

I’m willing to oblige your request, but after this I’m done arguing with you.

You can try to weasel around them being wrong by saying “They didn’t know” or “They didn’t know enough” or “They’ve gotten much better!”, but the bottom line is they have a DECADES long history of being wrong. If you understood the significance of that, you’d understand the significance of what I’ve said about validating their models against the modern climate.

They didn’t know! They’ve gotten much better!

While that’s true, (used intelligently) they also (17 years ago) correctly predicted the future climate trend of the past 17 years (do I repeat myself? I repeat myself). I understand the significance of that, and I understand the significance of that as validation of the models against modern climate.

I’d ask if you understand the significance of that, but we are done here. I am done discussing this with you, and you are done discussing this here.

You are wrong about the climate models and you have been wrong about them for twenty years. And, unlike the modelers, you haven’t learned anything from your error, and you refuse to acknowledge either that you were wrong then (when being wrong on this was reasonable scepticism) or that you are wrong now (when being wrong on this is unreasonable denialism).

[Moderator hat on: Julie, please don't post anymore in this thread. I don't have the time to continue explaining why you are wrong, and you have had plenty of posts to explain your position. It has been a frustrating discussion, but the material I've read over the past week has been interesting, so thanks for giving me a reason to go read it.]

I’m guessing you don’t read Pandagon.

I understand that many people think the current models are right. I understand that perfectly well. But there’s no evidence that the new models really are any better at long-range — and a century or two is pretty long range - climate forecasting. They might be better, they might even be a lot better, but they might also “freak out for a hundred years”, as Charles said. Do we know that once they are done “freaking out for a hundred years” that the results are really valid?

There’s a scientific history of making doomsday predictions that never come true.

Malthusian Catastrophe

As regards your accusations of some kind of generalised ad hominem attack, I don’t have problems discussing scientific topics with scientists. People with science educations generally understand the limits of science. Lay people tend to be less aware of the uncertainties in science.

I do find it amusing that Algore is such a green advocate, but rather than cut his consumption (like those of us who don’t have his wealth to spare would have to do), he keeps sucking up electricity like a drunk on a payday binge. So I enjoy making fun of him. I’d think that if he really, truly, and deep down, believed what he’s spewing that he’d find his way clear to cut that 22,000 KWH down to something more reasonable. Like, maybe, closer to the 660 KWH I used last month, or the 630 KWH the month before. Don’t you find that just the least little bit suspicious?

the bottom line is they have a DECADES long history of being wrong. If you understood the significance of that, you’d understand the significance of what I’ve said about validating their models against the modern climate.

I think CHARLES understands the significance of that. Do you?

Look, a bad model that got used in the past says a lot about that model. What the proper response to your attacks on old models that are known to be faulty and which aren’t even used anymore? “Yeah, Julie, but you were wrong 20 years ago” perhaps?

The reason you’re not getting the responses you want is that you’re approaching the ridiculous: It’s not clear that you can separate your specific views on what’s being discussed from your overall views of the scientific community at large. It’s a bit like a generalistic ad hominem attack. (and it sort of creeps me out, by the way; I wish you’d stop.)

Climate modeling has a decades-long history of being wrong. Climate models have, as you in your own words said, a tendency to “freak out for a hundred years”, and as others have said “freeze the oceans”.

While the new models may well be right, I’ll just point out that a broken watch is right twice a day, and if they are right, it would be the first time in my entire life.

If there’s anything in this post that you can actually disagree with, I’d love to know how you manage to do so. You can try to weasel around them being wrong by saying “They didn’t know” or “They didn’t know enough” or “They’ve gotten much better!”, but the bottom line is they have a DECADES long history of being wrong. If you understood the significance of that, you’d understand the significance of what I’ve said about validating their models against the modern climate.

I also do have some publications I can share — even one related to energy crises. ;-) I’ll sit down and put together a post a bit later when I have more time.

So all you wanted from me was that I agree that the Levitus climatology is a poor starting point for a numerical climate model, but that if you run a modern climate model for a hundred years, it will eventually correct the bad values in the Levitus climatology and produce something much closer to the true ocean values? Surely that isn’t what you wanted me to admit?

Surely what you wanted me to admit was that:

What is it about running a model for a thousand years (with no flux adjustments) and missing the average ocean temperature by 0.1 C (although they mention that they do worse (0.3 C drift [over a thousand year period]) in the deep ocean) in 1995 that you would describe as the model skewing off in one direction or another? The numerical models of the climate used to always skew off in one direction or another if they weren’t adjusted to stay on target, but that isn’t the case anymore. The models have gotten better.

So the deep ocean temperatures still skew off by 0.03 C per century. There is still a slight tendency of one part of the model to skew weirdly off in the wrong direction (the deep ocean is very slow, so you’d have to run the models for a very long time to get the deep ocean temperatures to self correct).

If all there is left to argue about is how we each conducted the argument, then I think we are definitely done.

I stand by the comment that you seem to think got me into this mess. Until the predictive models are properly validated, which they haven’t been, there is no way to say that the claims of the anthropogenic global warming crowd have been proven.

In a field that has a consistent track record of being wrong (the climate modeling field, just so you know), suddenly saying “Hey, we got it right this time!” isn’t going to cut it. Climate modelers have been saying “Hey, we got it right this time!” for my entire life. If they got it right this time, it’s going to be a first. And if you want to talk about conceding points, I’d like to see you, Charles, and everyone else here concede just that one very simple, very plain, very basic point. That’s a point I’ve been explicitly raising ever since #74.

And I do hold Charles responsible for his behavior. No one else made him decide to act the way he admitted to acting in #86. Had Charles admitted this

Also, I don’t really understand why you think that the fact that the models have improved by huge leaps and bounds in the past 4 decades means that the models can not be trusted now. The fact that some model run in the past produced a frozen ocean has pretty much no relevance to the fact that a model run now can take an approximate ocean climatology, freak out for a hundred years and then stabilize, then run for a thousand years and only miss the ocean temperature by 0.1 C at the end of that 1000 years (other than showing exactly how far we’ve come and how fast…).

this entire fiasco would have ended 70 posts ago. So, neither you nor Charles have any business lecturing me about “conceding points”.

Here is my post from last night on the emissions scenarios question that Julie raised. Its an interesting issue.

—————-

I thought this http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/emission_scenario.html
discussion of the emission scenarios was much more helpful than the
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sres-e.pdf
IPCC summary for policy makers, which does not provide nearly as many lovely charts.

Also, this http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/articles_a/ERCA_a.html
of the plausibility of the emission scenarios with regard to available fossil fuels provides a good answer to the “peak oil” concerns that Julie raised. I sentence summary: yes, many of the scenarios have implausible oil consumption levels, but if you include the substitutability of coal for oil, then most of the scenarios are brought back into the plausible range.

——————-

Sorry for the ugly formating.

For anyone else who is interested:

On the question of the emission scenarios that Julie raised, I’ve been reading around, and I thought this discussion of the emission scenarios was much more helpful than the IPCC summary for policy makers, which does not provide nearly as many lovely charts.

Also, this summary of the plausibility of the emission scenarios with regard to available fossil fuels provides a good answer to the “peak oil” concerns that Julie raised. I sentence summary: yes, many of the scenarios have implausible oil consumption levels, but if you include the substitutability of coal for oil, then most of the scenarios are brought back into the plausible range. The most extreme scenario has implausible but barely conceivable fossil fuel consumption.

The author of those pages, Jean-Marc Jancovici, has some eccentricities to his English (he’s French) but his content seems pretty sound (and heavily drawn from official sources). He is not a research scientist, but seems to have sufficient qualifications to be able to understand the material that he is presenting.

One interesting point that Jancovici makes that is unfortunately under-emphasized in coverage of the IPCC results is that the difference between the high end temperature estimates for 2100 and the low-end estimate is almost entirely a matter of uncertainty in which future we will choose (or will be forced upon us by running out of fuel…), not a matter of uncertainty in the climate models.

Another point which I mentioned earlier is that the correct societal response to the doomsday scenarios of peak oil is to try to get alternative technologies developed before the fuel crisis hits. Surely, a collapsing economy is not the ideal time to be trying to do massive technological conversions. This is the same solution as the scenarios that lead to the low-end CO2 production levels (although those scenarios also require that our alternative fuel sources not be synthetic coal-derived oil, which can solve our “peak oil” problems, but not our anthropogenic global warming problems).

It’s precisely that they used to (still do, so far as I know) veer off in one direction or another that’s the problem. Keeping it on track doesn’t mean it’s right, it means they kept it on track.

This model doesn’t veer off in one direction or another, does it? Maybe you mean something by that other than what I think you mean?

I can’t even parse “Keeping it on track doesn’t mean it’s right, it means they kept it on track.” If they kept it on track so that it hit the correct ocean temperature within 0.1 C, what does it mean to say that they didn’t get it right, just on track? Also, how can you square saying that the models still do veer off in one direction or another with agreeing that the model stayed on track (i.e. did not veer off in one direction or another)?

Also, I don’t really understand why you think that the fact that the models have improved by huge leaps and bounds in the past 4 decades means that the models can not be trusted now. The fact that some model run in the past produced a frozen ocean has pretty much no relevance to the fact that a model run now can take an approximate ocean climatology, freak out for a hundred years and then stabilize, then run for a thousand years and only miss the ocean temperature by 0.1 C at the end of that 1000 years (other than showing exactly how far we’ve come and how fast…).

I can see how experience with climate models 20 or 30 years ago would make you suspicious of climate models in general, but I can’t see why it would prevent you from being willing to reevaluate your opinions of climate models based on the newest climate model capabilities.

I’m also puzzled that you find it creepy that I am arguing with your stated positions, and that I keep asking for your response to points raised in response to your previous points. Do you really find it strange that someone who is arguing with you would expect you to explicitly concede points that should be conceded, rather than just allowing you to drop those points without acknowledging the rebuttals? I’m sorry you find it creepy that I’m arguing with you. I certainly don’t intend to be creeping you out. I’m certainly finding arguing with you about all this fairly frustrating and annoying (if still fairly interesting for what it is leading me to read), but I’m not sure why that would come across as creepy.

Anyway, I have been spending way too much time on this argument this past week, and we seem to be incapable of communicating effectively with each other, so perhaps we should simply end this discussion for now (actually, I’m really interested to see what Geoid makes of the carbon isotope research, but perhaps we should end this other than Geoid posting whatever conclusions he reaches on that subject if he wishes to).

the unproven and unsupportable “anthropogenic global warming” perspective

Except that you think that anthropogenic global warming is “unproven and unsupportable.”

You seem incapable of taking responsibility for your own actions, Julie. You chose to say it; no one held a gun to your head and forced you to type in such an idiotic statement. Nor did anyone force you to link to a fraudulent paper while implying it was peer-reviewed; nor did anyone force you to imply that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists lie about global warming for the money; nor did anyone force you to link to a crank paper about how sunspots control human history written by people who believe in CIA-led UFO conspiracies; etc, etc..

You chose to do all those very stupid things; Charles didn’t make you do them. And your choice to lie about what you’ve said, rather than take responsibility for your own words (i.e., “point well taken, I shouldn’t have linked to that, my bad. Moving on…”), is also your responsibility, not Charles’.

In short, don’t blame Charles for the fact that you’ve been acting like a fool.