Mangled Thoughts

Theory

There is no theory of climate, and the AGW claim is nothing less than the claim is a theory of climate. The reason is phsyics and what the universe is. Against Agwers, scientists have been discovering some things but the problem is what the universe. The AGW claim is worse than a trivialisation of fundamental science, it is a rejection of science of Climate for a quick and dirty and capricious story which explains nothing at all. This is territory which belongs to scientists engaged in sound, fundamental scientific inquiry. As opposed to climate, the following quote provides a sharp contrast and, amusingly, contains a remark on the very matter of computers, `computer modeling?, and approximation:

1. A Voice from the Whirlwind
Thunderstorms are intriguing in that scientists have a complete theory for all parts of it, yet the physics cannot be used for computational predictions. This means that climate models do not treat storms, and many other things, from first principles. Instead they use approximations which stand in for physical theory.

The above is from a chapter precis of,The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick. One has a has a reason for commencing with citing the Essex - McKitrick book, which will be set out further on.Having just come across thetitle, here, it is worth pointing out, from the precis,a chapter attends to explaining the nonsense of `computer modelling?. Be sure of it, one will obtain a copy. Some quotes :

3. Theory Versus Models and Metaphors
Our challenge to the reader is that undoing the damage of the Doctrine requires that people be willing to learn the science. This is true even of scientists for whom atmospheric physics is not their specialty. This chapter looks at the differences between theory, models and metaphors. There is no theory of climate, but we discuss what might be involved in developing one. We also introduce the theme of “averaging” as a way of moving up scales of detail, and why this must be done carefully or it can lead to false conclusions. We look at how models function in lieu of a theory, and what their limitations are. Finally we show that metaphors like “the greenhouse effect” and the “global temperature” have served as replacements for both theory and models and further confused the discussion.

Louis Hissink has been attacked in the past for laying out precisely this:

4. T-Rex Devours the Planet
This chapter takes up the theme of averaging in the context of averaging temperatures. There is no physical rationale for constructing average temperatures, nor is there such a thing as a “global temperature.” Average temperatures correspond to nothing in the actual climate system. So what do those famous graphs really show? In this chapter we argue that it tells us nothing useful about the physical world, that it is at best an ill-defined index, and that different but equally-valid methods for producing the index could generate completely different graphs.

This is worth throwing in too:

Chapter 8. Ceiling Fan Gases and the Global Blowing Crisis
Discussion of the “impacts” of global warming follows from the Doctrine of Certainty, but a better understanding of the climate problem makes this discussion problematic. Why don’t we talk about global average wind speed and the global blowing problem? Or global humidity and the global moistening problem? The discussion of impacts reflects an inordinate focus on temperature, whereas climate is more complicated and peoples’ relationship to climate more complex yet.

By `Doctrine of Certainty? belief is meant and asserted as dogma, and it is dogma, not science, is driving the Agwers. The reason for citing Essex and Mckitrick is, Mann is still at asserting the veracity of his Hockey Stick, and Mckitrick and mcIntrye are still on the receiving end of another feature of the AGWers, their habitual abuse of anyone who doesn?t merely say no, but mounts solid reasons why the AGWers claim is nonsense. Tim Dunlop and his fans show not only the talent for it but their ignorance. And smear Louis Hissink and Miranda Divine . That tribe of ignorarmuses really just don?t have a clue as to why Mckitrick?s and McIntyre?s examiniation of Mann?s claims and evidence, such as it was, is so devestating. One of Dunlop asserts the two scientists have failed to demonstrate anything more than skepticism ( not Dunlop?s fan?s expression by the way). Well, this:

On, The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming, the following recommendations are pertinent:

1.

I just finished reading your book “Taken by Storm”. What a great read.!! I was bent over laughing in certain spots in the book. In parts it reminded me of Alice in Wonderland’s, “Who stole the tarts”! In others you had me thinking of a Tolkein, “thermodynamic ring”, casting an evil spell over the sensibilities of those in possesion of it. …I have to imagine that you and your co-author must have received quite the barrage of backlash from the circle of certainty. The tentative nature of science does not appear to be very well understood in these circles.
G.H. (Professor of Thermodynamics)

2.

Brilliant! And: overdue! And: generally precise on the mechanisms which around us produce pseudo consensus on items which are politically sensitive. I have just discovered and finished ?Taken by Storm?? - and I?m now recommending it to almost everyone I know who has a functional brain. Our politicicians should be fired if they haven’t read it by september 11. Aside from the actual debate on climate, you show convincingly the history-proven weakness of the human mind against group think and pathetic, but mediocre authority.
M.K.

3.

I really enjoyed your and Chris’ book. The greenhouse discussion is right on and, I confess, I had not known this. But, to me, the real deal is the Navier-Stokes discussion and the intertwined chaos. I loved that, as some of my work has been on this… Great work.
A.D. [Professor Emeritus of Mathematics]

4.

>”Global warming is happening and if you don’t believe it you’re living in a fantasy land!”, that’s what my grade 12 Chemistry teacher shouted to me. Luckily I believed my dad (a Chemical Engineer Ph.D.) and stuck with my skepticism. Now as a Chemical Engineering student myself, I can judge the data. “Taken By Storm” is a comprehensive and sweeping study guide for global warming.
-P.A.

5.

Once I was a passionate supporter of the Kyoto Accord. Then I read this book. Now I’m a passionate opponent. I even loaned the book to my MLA. The book makes it hard to believe in global warming at all, and even harder to believe the Kyoto Accord will do anything about it even if it’s real. It raises and then smashes every argument there is to promote the accord. The arguments are presented in a logical way that is difficult to accuse of bias or partisanship. It’s not just a different set of statistics, it’s an argument on the validity of any statistics in predicting climate. And when statistics are used, they’re usually right out of the UN’s own reports that led to the accord in the first place.
- D.B.

6.

Carl Sagan once suggested words to chisel on the gravestone of Johannes Kepler: “He preferred the truth to his dearest illusions.” You guys destroyed my own dearest illusion, and I thank you for it.
-D.M.

7.

Thanks for writing this. I’m a biologist by trade and worked in the area of climate and the effect on forest disease…If I had been able to take the time away from work I would have liked to produce a book along the lines of the one you completed. It’s long overdue. You have my warmest congratulations.
-T.R.

8.

Bravo to you both. I got the book for Christmas and finished reading it a couple of days ago. I thought it was very well written and your argument is, of course, correct. I know of quite a few people, in oceanography anyway, who share your view on the models (myself included). Where I stand, you have done a great job and you are to be commended.
Gordon E. Swaters, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Mathematics
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB Canada

9.

I am nearly finished reading Taken by Storm and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I also learned a lot. I have degrees in math and meteorology and have been active in the profession for over 30 years, but many of your concepts and descriptions treated this “old field” in a new and refreshing way. In particular, your descriptions of the meaninglessness of “average temperatures” were superb! Thank you again for your service to climate science.Bravo to you both. I got the book for Christmas and finished reading it a couple of days ago. I thought it was very well written and your argument is, of course, correct. I know of quite a few people, in oceanography anyway, who share your view on the models (myself included). Where I stand, you have done a great job and you are to be commended.

Gordon E. Swaters, Ph.D.
Professor of Applied Mathematics
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB Canada

10.

The monograph by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick occupies a very important place among ?non-orthodox?? publications…Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick have written the most timely (preparations of the IPCC Report-2005 have already started) and very important book…there are many ideas and concrete information in the book which may be useful to start at last productive scientific discussions in those basic scientific journals which did not allow ?dissidents?? to speak before.
Prof. Dr. Kirill Ya. Kondratyev
Academician, Counsellor, Russian Academy of Sciences
Research Center for Ecological Safety
St. Petersbug, Russia

11.

Essex and McKitrick have written a good natured but ultimately serious, well documented, and scientifically careful analysis of how a crisis defying both common sense and normative science engulfed the popular imagination, the body politic, and much of the scientific community. One hopes the message of Taken By Storm can be absorbed before that damage, not due to global warming but rather to the surrounding hysteria, becomes even more painful and wasteful. Dr. Richard P. Lindzen,
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology,
Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

12.

“Taken by Storm” by Chris Essex and Ross McKitrick in a single sitting one recent Saturday. I feel lucky to have found these two clear voices from your great country–Canada. The book conveys a sense of calm (despite the action-packed narrative) and inspiration (knowing that there are still a few caring and honorable scientists out there) — since Chris and Ross have the exceptional ability and courage to clarify the physics of proposed “global warming” by atmospheric CO2 without all the usual watered-down explanations. Yet they really are able to tell it with such great humor, unique insights and helpful summary of where we are in the actual scientific understanding of the key questions to date. So, I strongly recommend this book in case you have not had a chance to read yet.
Chris and Ross are two solid contacts to put on your speed dial when it comes to the sorry politics behind the confusing non-scientific assumptions and claims regarding carbon dioxide and a supposedly disastrous warming world, too often blamed by simplistic thinkers on the hopeless greed of big-bad fossil-fuel industries and CEOs.
Dr. Willie Soon
Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Harvard University

13.

Their arguments are scientifically sound and they make some good points. Both authors are accomplished scientists…all the arguments made about the meaning of temperature and averages are correct. As we always say, however, “given two scientists there are three opinions”. So, Essex and McKitrick will face up to some arguments. I am sure (judging from their writing style) that they will not mind that. I think that this is the great contribution of this book. It offers a different view that is against the mainstream. There is nothing wrong with this. Lets open up a debate and lets see who is willing to participate.

Professor Anastasios Tsonis
Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, Atmospheric Sciences Group
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Comments 1-7 are from general readers, noting, however, 1,3,4 and 7 are by no means lay to science readers.

Comments 8-13 are statements by “published and unpublished feedback from academic and professional colleagues. Unpublished comments quoted with permission. ” To read more, web Taken By Storm home page for the book, They are just a few of the many statements by a glaxay of professors from distinguished universities, for the remaining academic reviews this page of the site. Why point that out? For several reasons:

1. The AGWers, and that inlcudes the media, Fat Aunty Bolshevik Collective, her mudder, The Bolsheviki of Bolsheviks Collective, the newspapers Moa’s Little Red Age, Sydney Smut Moaning Herald, Steve Bracks’ Herald Shoeshine Boy Sun,
The unFinancial Times for anyone who wishes to find out mysteries but not finance and markets and economics, et al, shout `scientific consensus.’ The above list of scientists is but a tiny fraction of the sheer number of scientists who have written papers, signed evidence to the U.S. Congress, rejecting the AGW nosense as just that. It is just one more exampleof scientists who say, AGW/Man Causes Climate Change is not merely a false hypothesis, they say it is rubbish and say so not from dogma but from science.

Science is not run on consenus, it is an endeavour of individuals who are equipped to do it, bother to continue beyond a graduate degree in fundamental science and, all who are scientists, and, in my books, they no longer inlcude who for what amounts to nothing less than the venal motive of grabbing hold of real taxpayer’s money courtesy of politicians and bureaucrats who have made charlatanism highly profitable for each of them: Yes, correct, those who were scientists who have taken up this latest effort in alchemy are no longer scientists ( take note Chris v., noting your degree, and that it is neither Louis Hissink nor I who has missed the point, but yourself and that liar Tim Lambert. Chirs, it is your `argument’ which is rubbish, though you read chemistry- though by ignoramus one intended not you but Lambert and his fan club, which we will touch on).

2. Sneering Dismissal, a la the above medja tribe, the `skeptics…’:

The sneer isn’t against scepticism per se, it is the assertion, anyone who rejects man causes global warming/climate change is now a fool because man causes global warming/climate change is established theory. A layman can have cause to reject the AGW claim for no less a reason, what is entailed, man must be able to manipulate climate in a magical way.

Consider readers:

Co2 is a shade under 4% of elements consituting the atmosphere. The ration of Co2 due to human activity is a miniscule fraction of that 4%, it is in the order of .0000348%,so ridiculously low it is as good as zero. And, Man is supposed to be altering climate on a ratio of a ratio so low that the greater ratio itself, 4% is so trivial that the notion the chemical Co2 is heating up the planet is even sillier than the believing a flea can bite the head of big old tusker of an elephant.At least the flea has a fang.

That’s a layman. Scientists, however, in physics, and the AGWers and their media sycophants sneer at them too, sneer at scientists whose objections are grounded in fundamental science. A layman can rightly pass from skepticisim to convinction the AGW claim is not only false but charlatanism writ in capital letters, while a scientist is doing more than just that. The scientists, and they are not a mere ten, 17, 38, but thousands, have publicly stated AGW is rubbish and have done so not out of dogma but out of science. I can’t, off-hand recollect how many thousands, and one will do a number count from the records to date, but, the numbers who have stated it is nonsense, as a % of the number of working scientists is a very large percentage of scientists. Indeed, the ratio is higher, in the hardest of all sciences, physics.

3. When the sneer fails, then smear.
I don’t listen to the ABC anymore. I used to listen Robyn Williams’ Science Show. It was a light coverage science, from what one can dimly remember. Whatever it once was, it is not a science show, and Robyn Williams is no science commentator, not after this exchange in December 2005:

“Robyn Williams: What do you make of the naysayers then, who say the science is crap - many of them coming supposedly from science itself?”

“David King: Well, I’ve got three categories of naysayers. The first category is the armchair critic, and unfortunately this includes some people who would appear to be scientists who are capable of producing what I would say is very na?ve, scientifically na?ve criticism of the very detailed model of climate change that has been produced since Fourier, the great French mathematician in 1827. There’s a great body of data there and the scientific community has been challenging, each amongst the other, just as scientists do; we’ve all got big egos and we like to say we’re the best and you’re wrong. But there is a point where consensus emerges. Now these armchair critics will fire off a criticism which is wholly irrelevant to the issue, and some of the ! statements I’ve seen in the press since I’ve arrived in Austra! lia are frankly laughable. The second group of critics are lobbyists. These are the same kind of people I would suggest who would argue perhaps in the pay of tobacco industry that cancer has no relationship to cigarette smoking. The third category would be the serious scientists who have been part of that challenging process within the climate science community. Richard Lindzen is perhaps the most famous of these …

By, `The third category would be the serious scientists who have been part of that challenging process …’, Sir david King means, those who believe in AGW but quibble about details or argue about how the chairs are arranged around a table, as the rest of the quote shows:

Yes, and he raised the question of aerosols and water vapour and the complications there. There is no question that Richard raised very good points. The climate science community has been addressing his challenges as scientists do and I believe those challenges have been met. But he?s within the camp, as it were, and challenging and that?s a very proper role for scientists to play.

In other words, according to King a scientist is one who believes the same as he does, in AGW. Full transcript is here.

So, without any ado both King and Williams, both eating at real taxpayers’ expense, have dismissed scientists and science for a mystical belief. The smearing of anyone who doesn’t believe in AGW is plain enough in the above passage. Their smears, in this case dleivered in the sneering mood but still a smear, is the politist of smears. On Monday, we shall continue this, not foregetting the subject of this part of the item on the great chicken gut oracle is Theory, but, until Monday,folks, I have to buzz off. Merry weekending.