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 Distrust mathematical models--it's quantification as camouflage Roy Spencer argues that the reason there seems to be a consensus among scientists regarding "global warming theory" is that 1) most scientists don't actually conduct research on the forecasting models the theory is based on, and so, though they are scientists, are not any more knowledgeable than laypersons regarding this particular theory and 2) scientists are human too, and as humans, fall victim to group think. Spencer points out that the mathematical models used to predict future climate are NOT akin to the forecasting methods meteorologists use to forecast next week's weather. Some important points: Sure, we are good at predicting whether it will rain tomorrow or in two days, but the validity of even short-term weather forecasts shrinks to nearly zero when trying to predict 10 days ahead or more. Climatologists using mathematical models to predict future climate, say, 100 years from now are playing a whole other ball game. The somewhat steady temperature of the earth is hypothesized to occur because of a somewhat constant tradeoff between the energy coming in from the sun and the infrared energy the earth bleeds back out into space. Global warming theory posits that the accumulation of greenhouse gasses throws off this balance, so that the earth traps more heat than it releases, thereby raising temperatures in the lower atmosphere. A problem with global warming theory is that it seems to be overly simplistic. First of all, most people going around talking about "greenhouse gasses" seem to believe that most of these "gasses" are caused by car emissions. Not so. The greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor in the atmosphere, cloud cover, methane, CO2 and a few other things. Contrary to popular belief, 90 percent of the greenhouse effect is dependent upon water vapor and cloud cover. Very little of it has anything to do with CO2 emissions. The problem is, mathematical models that project such trends do so by making horribly unrealistic ceteris paribus clauses ("all else being equal" assumptions), when in reality, all else will not be equal in the future. In other words, it is unrealistic to assume that if CO2 keeps increasing that water vapor and cloud cover will remain the same. Global warming advocates assume that as CO2 increases water vapor will either remain the same or increase, thereby raising temperatures. Spencer thinks that water vapor may react by lessening, thereby balancing things out. The bottom line though is that using mathematical models to predict the future, of anything, is an extremely dubious practice. They are almost always wrong (actually, they are right about the same amount of the time one would expect to be right due to chance alone--no different than guessing). In the recent bestseller Black Swans, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that experts who use modeling to forecast are paid liars. Scott Armstrong, one of the world's leading experts on forecasting methods, is an outspoken critic of global warming, and argues that the forecasting models the theory is based on are in no way scientific. He has also, by the way, issued a $10,000 challenge to Al Gore (who of course never responded), reminiscent of the famous Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich wager. (Also amusing is that the founder of the weather channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud!) Interestingly, a lot of the backbone of global warming theory rests on the famous hockey stick graph from Mann et al., 1998, showing that it is warmer now than it has been in 1000 years. What most people don't know is that in 2006 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report stating that this graph used flawed data. It used tree ring data, which is dubious considering that tree ring size is confounded by amount of rainfall. (Land-based devices used to measure temperatures often fare little better as they are typically installed on buildings, around asphalt and cement, which artificially inflates their temperature reports.) A corrected graph shows that it was much warmer in the medieval period than it is today. The medieval warm period was followed by a little ice age that lasted almost 400 years. That makes the claim that "it is warmer now than it has been in 400 years" a little less alarming. Of course it is if we are coming out of a little ice age! That's a good thing! The little ice age was very hard on people in the 17 and 1800s. Vikings who settled Greenland right after the medieval warm period ended found that it was lush and habitable. When the little ice age started they were all but wiped out by the weather, as Greenland became an ice-covered wasteland. Global warming advocates also seem to assume that it got progressively warmer throughout the 20th century. Not so. It got warmer until about 1940, and then started getting colder until the 1970s (and if car emissions make the earth warmer, isn't it during THIS time that we would most expect to see a sharp increase in temperature?), and then reversed again. Some other points that seem to be unappreciated: A big part of the greenhouse effect is amount of cloud cover, which is in part dependent upon sun activity (a lot of this is probably just natural fluctuation). People seem to assume that most of the CO2 out there is manmade. Not so. Only about 2 percent of it is from car emissions. About 20 percent is from, not car emissions but (can you guess?) manure. That's right. There are so many animals making so much excrement that this causes more CO2 than cars. If you REALLY think we are responsible for global warming you shouldn't buy a hybrid, you should attack factory farming by becoming a vegetarian, for cow farts trump SUV exhaust easily. Furthermore, all of this biofuel nonsense such as ethanol is worsening global poverty and contributing to starvation from places as disparate as Italy to the bread riots in Egypt. Weather makes Earth habitably cool Dr. Spencer's book was a surprise in several aspects. First, I found it to be a very easy read compared with other recent books on climate. He conveys a sense of the complexities involved in unraveling climate forcings and responses, and even if we have them in the right order in current General Circulation Models, without introducing a lot of technical jargon. After having read much on climate and running through the Stefan-Boltzmann greybody calculations of the Earth's expected temperature, I still learned a critical fact about Earth's climate from Dr. Spencer's book. When a convection model by Manabe and Stickler from 1964 includes atmospheric convection into the greybody calculation, the Earth's temperature is expected to be 140 F, or 60 C or 333 K. Dr. Spencer indicates that the Earth's weather systems provide an efficient, self-regulating mechanism of transferring energy from the Earth's surface to the tropopause where it can be radiated away, resulting in sufficient cooling of the Earth's surface to make it a habitable 57 F. When looked at in this light, the contribution from increased infrared forcing due to CO2 and other greenhouse gases, although real, becomes a secondary forcing that is easily compensated by small variations in cloud cover. Indeed, Dr. Spencer's recently published satellite observations of cloud behavior confirm this effect, first put forward by Prof. Lindzen of MIT more than 15 years ago. I found the discussions on technology solutions for replacing fossil fuels to be very thin, but amusing (he introduces a new name for the process of using the output of a fuel cell to electrolyze hydrogen for powering fuel-cells- the perpetual motion machine!). The economic discussions were simple and excellent. Dr. Spencer treads into the return on investment question for Kyoto and similar emission-reduction schemes- all pain for no gain. The discussion of the devastation in Africa caused by banning the use of DDT (based on junk science) can never be repeated enough times. The ban on CFC's to 'save the ozone' and the recent discrediting of the fundamental chemical reaction rates upon which that ban was based could have been included in this chapter. The most important lesson I take away from this book is in the title of this review. Weather cools the Earth's surface by almost 83 F, making it habitable. Every single member of Congress should be required to read this book before even starting to blather about climate change legislation. Sanity at last.... Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by Roy Spencer is a breath of fresh wind. Written by a highly qualified NASA scientist, Climate Confusion examines the current evidence about global warming and the debate surrounding it. Well written for a mass audience and expertly researched and documented, Climate Confusion should be read by all sides of the climate debate. One thing that everyone should note is that their is not massive agreement among the scientific community about global warming. Spencers book is but one voice among many that cries out that we are all being fed a bill of goods by the doom and gloom crowd. He is to congratulated on work well done. Peace to all. A Must Read if you want to understand the furor over climate change Roy Spencer gets to the heart of the debate by focusing on the human, emotional, and religious aspects of those who hold the mainstream view: that climate change is primarily man made, and that it will lead to cataclysmic climate events unless we do something NOW. Like most climatologist skeptics (and there are more out there than you think) he approaches his subject (Climate change) with an appreciation for what we don't know about the science, and a sense of humility that comes from observing the climate in action, rather than through the algorithm of a computer model. Rather than brand his opponents in the debate with some ill motive, he lays out common sense explanations of why the scientific community may have gotten the theory of anthropogenic global warming wrong in a fundamental way. | |||||||||||||
