Re: OT: sea level 'rise' hmmmmm....

Jonathan Kirwan wrote:
On Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:33:36 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


[...]

It's not that I am saying all AGW proponents are in that same boat, it's just that there are too many who IMHO (and that of others) seem to be out of line.

Hell, I'm out of line far too often. Don't hold me against the
science, though. The one thing that really makes me feel like
punching someone, and I don't mean it literally, is when they won't
WORK FOR THEIR OPINION. I don't care a whit if someone completely
disagrees with conclusions -- even conclusions that whole truck loads
of scientists have arrived at through decades of time necessary to
allow a proper consensus to take place. So long as they put in the
appropriate level of work on their part.


Well, that, plus everyone should be open to admitting "I was wrong".


Mörner is an example of someone I'd say has a right to express an
opinion, even if (frankly) I think it isn't very sound. He's put in
effort and no one can take that away from him. But let me add a note
of caution on this point:

Einstein insisted that the universe wasn't expanding or contracting,
modified his own theories, because of unsettling conclusions that were
obvious to him without it, to include a fudge factor to "make it so."
Einstein also refused, to the very last moment, to accept Heisenberg's
and Dirac's and Schrödinger's approach to quantum mechanics, despite
the unique successes their particular perspectives had in not only
explaining earlier experimental results but also in predicting,
literally out of whole cloth, new particles that wouldn't be seen for
decades -- including specific masses and behaviors (I'm thinking of
mesons, in particular, here.) This illustrates the problem of the
opinions of just one person, no matter what other contributions they
may have also made. It's part of why consensus is important and it's
why time is required, as well, to allow it to develop carefully.

And Mörner is not even Einstein.


However, he is a guy whom the IPCC has used as a scientist. There must be a reason why they did. When someone who has worked in a scientific, political, industrial or whatever group has second thoughts about that and wants to discuss his concerns I take that very seriously. Similar to whistle blowers who need to be taken seriously because they would hardly stick their neck out if there wasn't (in their opinion) something seriously amiss.


Point here being, consensus is roughly the best we've got going right
now regarding climate science.

Although the first papers did occur in the mid to late 1800's, they
are few and far between and for at least five decades afterwards were
largely ignored because of a badly designed experiment by Angstrom or
his assistant. It wasn't until WW II that interest was renewed
seriously in how the atmosphere attenuated various wavelengths and
that folks actually discovered things like pressure broadening. In
addition, around that time some new instrumentation was developed that
could actually monitor the tiny fractions required to 'see' what CO2
was doing. Not only Keeling's design, but also Lovelock's (which
could monitor in parts per billion and was used to investigate world
wide air current flows for the first time [factored into weather
prediction, which was also a new field that people were interested
in].) So although some basic physics was understood, it was only in
the late 1950's and 1960's that data started pouring in. One needs
data AND theory, you know. Anyway, interest in the stratosphere
increased with the desire for SSTs and the US engaged some studies,
which resulted in worries about CFCs, but also began to learn more
about the various layers within the stratosphere and circulation at
that level. Plus, some of the first papers on aerosols and 1D
estimations of the effects of additional CO2. So by the early/mid
1970's, we were seeing some new thinking stimulated by real world
data. It wasn't until the late 1970's that satellites began to be
cheap enough to consider putting up for some further climate studies
and the very first one to monitor the sun went up, I think, in
November of 1978. Then there was the discovery of the ozone hole
(first observed by a British researcher in Antarctica in 1981? I
think, but he held back his observations because he believed that NASA
must have known about all this with their expensive satellites and
decided it must have been his own fault) around 1985, when the error
in the software was discovered and the data re-examined. Then U2
flights in the stratosphere over Antarctica confirmed the early 1970's
work of Mario Molina and FS Rowland from way back in late June of 1974
and the specific chemistry processes they (and others) predicted.
(Hearings in congress in the late 1980's about that.) Around this
time the very first inklings of the ability to begin to pull together
the data and theories into global models allowed the IPCC to actually
try their hand at a consensus and we got our first report from them --
quite conservative, it turns out.

So we are roughly just two decades post that era. In that time,
compute power has dramatically grown (33MHz PCs going now to 3GHz PCs
and at much less real cost, to boot.)

Well, you get the idea. Things are moving very fast. Even in just
the last few years there have been dramatic improvements. For
example, we now have a long enough track of solar insolation from a
variety of satellites (see PMOD site) that we can pretty much lock
down the fact that the sun isn't a significant contributor to the
changes seen of late. Cloud parameterization is very much better, as
well. Grid sizes have greatly shrunk, land shapes such as gorges and
mountains and so on have been added, upper air flows have been studied
and added to the data bases for theoretical analysis and calibration,
and on and on.

It takes teams to process all this and to consider various arguments
and arrive at crafted conclusions. One person is overwhelmed. Unlike
things such as planetary motion, where one can ignore almost all of
the real forces involved with impunity and reduce the problems to
something one person can manage alone, climate science has a great
many profound influences operating in non-linear combinations and so
many of them cannot be ignored that no one person is up to the sole
challenge of it. One of the reasons why GCMs are developed, in fact,
is to work them not just forward, but also backwards, to see how they
predict. What are the odds that some large collection of various bits
of known physics (coupled to parameterizations from measurements
around the globe today) could predict regional cooling and warming
events, if they weren't "skillful?" You know the dangers of
extrapolation beyond the end of a curve, just using simple
mathematical-only models! VERY DANGEROUS and quite unlikely to be
skillful beyond the range of data supplied to them, unless the
mathematical model is a REAL REFLECTION of the situation. For
example, it would be appropriate to use an exponential model for an RC
decay. Given some data, one could reasonably predict (extrapolate)
outside of the data range. But what if you didn't know anything about
the curve and just picked a "linear fit model" instead? Might be okay
close-by to the data... but it would soon fail horribly. GCMs help
test out the physical understanding like this. If they can be used
backwards in time and are skillful at predicting events and if they
can be used forwards in time and are skillful at predicting ahead of
time, too, then that helps you gain some confidence. Pinatubo, for
example, was one such test -- and successful in many regards for the
models at the time. Anyway, that's why there are GCMs. To help us
test out the physics we think applies and help test out the domains we
believe they apply to. One gains a measure of additional confidence
in them when they are more successful at their _extrapolations_, taken
long ways backwards.

Anyway... there it is. I'm out of line a lot, myself. But abstract
yourself away from the visceral reactions to individuals' comments and
remember that human emotions have nothing to do with nature, which
remains immune and inert to our desires, anger, wishes, and so on. If
I say something demeaning to another, that's all it is. Just an
emotional comment, perhaps designed to goad them into better behavior.
It has nothing whatever to do with the science knowledge or with
nature, other than human nature. The fact that lots of people are
upset and express it publicly on various sides of this has NOTHING to
do with nature or the actual science knowledge. Just as the fact that
William Shockley was abusive to others doesn't change the results of
his work, not one iota.


Many of the major scientific contributors and inventors were a bit eccentric. Well, so were a lot of great artists.


Just because Osama bin Laden may, let's say, express his own personal
support for the election of one presidential candidate over another ..
I'm sure you'd realize well that such a statement would have nothing
whatever to do with either candidate. No one can control what bad
people say or care about. Doesn't change anything, though. It can be
hard to separate one's visceral reactions and the abuse some folks
dish out, perhaps unfairly, from the science knowledge. When people
are dead wrong and obstinate about it, it can make anyone angry. When
people are just plain mean-spirited, it can also make anyone angry.
But don't confuse/conflate the two sources of anger. Getting angry
doesn't mean anything much. It's just a symptom, but it says very
little about the cause. For argument's sake, if I say something to
make you angry, that's my fault. But it's no fault of climate
scientists. Just because I happen to feel convinced now of many of
their conclusions and am also a bona fide ass, none of that has
anything at all to do with these conclusions I agree with. It just
means I'm an ass, that's all. (Hopefully, I won't be too much of
one.)


No, you are a great contributor IMHO. And with style, someone who doesn't fly off the handle when opinions differ.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.
.

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