So, if scientists couldn’t even foresee…
…the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf, how are they going to figure out what’s going on with climate change?
[ADDENDUM: Actually, there were a few lonely voices saying fairly early on that the spill would naturally repair itself. One of them, interestingly enough, was that of none other than Rush Limbaugh (not a scientist, nor does he play one on radio). Another was British geologist Michael Welland, who even managed to specifically mention the oil-eating bacteria in a post that bears full reading, entitled “Alcanivorax borkumensis – oil-eating bacteria, where are you?”
Welland is careful to differentiate himself from the hated Limbaugh, lest he be tarred with the same brush. He writes in a disclaimer [emphasis mine]:
Given that there are hundreds of natural oil seeps in the northern Gulf, spewing out an estimated 70,000 tonnes (roughly equivalent to 20 million US gallons) of oil every year, why do we not see a more oil-polluted Gulf in normal circumstances? One big reason is the natural activity of bacteria like Alcanivorax borkumensis. No, I’m not supporting Rush Limbaugh and his demented and twisted interpretation of facts, but one fact is that natural processes can help in the kind of catastrophe we are facing. But those natural processes don’t have the critical mass to deal with events on this scale – they need help.
Apparently, although Welland was one of the few who was correct about the oil-eating bacteria, he was wrong about that last point—it turns out they didn’t need help.]
Exactly…
The single greatest sin that environmentalists and green-advocates commit is that they consider the earth a static system. All of their “save the planet” rhetoric is based upon keeping the earth the way it IS, as though this is the way it always WAS, with no real acknowledgement that earth is a dynamic engine which is a constant state of flux.
As a dynamic engine, the earth has withstood much more than humans can throw at it and it keeps recovering and regenerating, regardless of the greens’ best rhetorical efforts to make us think otherwise.
A simple fact most people do not know: bacteria are the most abundant form of life on this planet, comprising by several orders of magnitude larger biomass than everything else. And exponential law of reproduction with doubling their mass in half of hour under favorable condition makes them absolutely autonomous. The very notion that they need some help from us is laughable. They colonised Earth a billion year before any other liveforms emerged and can perfectly well exist without them (as a group), and their collective chemical production dwarfs all human industries millions times.
Well, we know what climate change is about. Marx theorized that mass immiseration would lead the proletariat to rise up. That one didn’t work so well. So now they need an imaginary catastrophe to function as a catalyst to revolution for overprivileged trust-fund babies and “studies”-students.
Behold:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/265288/we-must-end-our-addiction-economic-growth-jonah-goldberg
Ah, in a moment of fancy, I’d like to think that video would have old Karl turning in his grave. Many thousands of pages, decades of activism, multiple disasters in countries of every stripe, and it all boils down to…
“We need to get everyone, like, planting little gardens of, like, tomatoes. And then they will can those tomatoes. And stuff.”
So THAT’S what they mean by “Red.”
Pathetic, beautiful poetic justice.
1. So, if scientists couldn’t even foresee…
…the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf, how are they going to figure out what’s going on with climate change?
“If scientists can (can’t) understand X, why do they claim they can’t (can) understand Y?”
Neo, you evaded the above non sequitur, but one false step and you’re in its domain. 😉
2. Though it’s my understanding that eminent scientist Freeman Dyson claims that contemporary climate models are not predictive because they inadequately characterize the response of the biosphere.
Current climate models are inadequate because the variables are nearly infinite. We simply don’t have enough data or historical information to adequately model climate.
Hey, we’re hungry. Thanks for the dinner. Why did you cut us off?
— alcanivorax borkumensis
Stumbley: that right. Or as many of us have been saying for years, a system that is ultimately described by non-linear, multivariable, partial differential equations that cannot be solved in closed form, will always yield responses that are “surprising”.
I still laugh when I recall how 20 years ago, many of these “greens” were adorning their coffee tables with books about chaos theory and the butterfly effect. Apparently, those books were for show, because they never absorbed the knowledge contained within them.
Current climate models are inadequate because the variables are nearly infinite.
The variables aren’t infinite. But…there are a lot of them, and a lot of data that would have to be collected, and computational power isn’t adequate to the task if you did have the perfect model with perfect data.
And some of the data can not be directly observed.
We simply don’t have enough data or historical information to adequately model climate.
This is the real crux of the matter. Much of the historical data is deduced from tree rings or coral growth patterns. But the “hide the decline” calls into question the assumptions about tree rings – if it is positively correlated to temperature increase then there would be no need to “hide the decline”.
And I’ve been giving thought to tree ring data, and to my understanding they are dependent on at least three variables: amount of sun light, the amount of CO2 available, and the amount of rainfall. All three are required for growth, and a relative lack of one will hamper growth. So a drought will look like cooling, even if the skies where clear and it was warm with plenty of CO2.
Sergey’s point is well-taken. There are bacteria that live in the aluminum fuel tanks of jet planes and metabolize aviation fuel. Others live in deep sea vents at the bottom of the ocean, thriving under immense pressure and high temperature conditions. Bacteria are tough.
Exactly. Given the complexity of the phenomena, and the coupling between them (e.g., how do CO2 emissions, cloud cover, and algal blooms interact with each other?), the most surprising result would be a remotely accurate prediction. That would be a shock.
Perhaps most apposite for this point, Lord Kelvin, the greatest physicist of his day (and a far greater scientists than any of these clowns in climatology could ever hope to be), miscalculated the age of the earth by three orders of magnitude — because he didn’t know about radioactive decay. What climatological phenomena are we unaware of?
We chemists treat pure compounds with pure reagents in purified solvents under well-defined atmospheres — i.e., laboratory conditions about as controlled as one can contrive — and we’re surprised all the time.
To think something as flaky as climatology could come within hailing distance of an accurate prediction is laughable. It would be like predicting the DJIA a given day ten years from now. Please.
I laughed out loud at the very pompous Welland who obviously felt obligated to distance himself from Limbaugh by trashing the man. Actually, I believe that Limbaugh has very good sources of information on wide ranging subjects. Besides, I would hesitate to disparage a person who has become filthy rich, and influenced a lot of people in the process, solely through his wits and native intelligence.
Welland did more than “trash” Rush. His was gratuitous verbal violence, an Alinsky tactic that the Right must also adopt instead of hunkering down and accepting/tolerating. Nice guys finish last.
Personally, I find Rush fascinating and brilliant. As multi-degreed, multi-certified as to wisdom, knowledge and competence as I was, a member of the Elites, I was introduced to Rush by my carpenter twenty years ago. I remain grateful.
1. A couple of years ago I thought I’d look at the climate models–and backed off immediately because they’re way too complicated to get my arms around in the time available to me.
2. Nevertheless, my impression (which may be incorrect) is that elementary arguments predict a moderate degree of warming. However, the catastrophic predictions are based on a runaway positive feedback that is much more problematic than the aforementioned elementary arguments.
3. Still, afaic warming is plausible. Plausible enough to warrant reconfiguring our civilization? No way, IMHO. Nevertheless, humanity would be reckless to ignore the possibility of warming (or cooling). We should develop the scientific basis for geoengineering technology that, say by the end of the century, can deal with noncataclysmic changes to the climate.
Rush is not a scientist, but he does possess common sense and he’s a pretty intelligent guy.
physicsguy Says:
April 20th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
I remember seeing a TV show (probably Nova) about chaos theory around 20 years ago. This was before global warming had become a big issue. I remember them talking about weather forecasters plugging temperature or barometric pressure readings (I forget which) into a computer program. It turned out that if they changed the number of decimal places in their data, they would get an entirely different prediction.
Unlike the coffee table people, I remembered that when the global warming hysteria got started.
“REAL” science is always open to critical objections. The idea that a closed cult of pseudo-scientists can predict anything, while rejecting any opposing views, promotes comedy more than truth.
Where is Steve Martin when we need him?
Again, the neo-neocon groupies offer a lot of thoughtful comments. I truly enjoy this little acreage of cyberspace…..
A few highlights:
“… they consider the earth a static system. All of their “save the planet” rhetoric is based upon keeping the earth the way it IS, as though this is the way it always WAS, with no real acknowledgement that earth is a dynamic engine which is a constant state of flux.”
(Progressives are such a drag.)
“… comprising by several orders of magnitude larger biomass than everything else.”
(Bacteria Rule!)
“Well, we know what climate change is about. Marx theorized that mass immiseration would lead the proletariat to rise up. That one didn’t work so well. So now they need an imaginary catastrophe to function as a catalyst to revolution…”
(Nail meet hammer.)
“We simply don’t have enough data or historical information to adequately model climate.”
(Its impossible!)
“… and computational power isn’t adequate to the task if you did have the perfect model with perfect data.”
(If is such a large word and perfect is, once again, impossible.)
“It would be like predicting the DJIA a given day ten years from now. ”
(Impossible 10E12!)
“I laughed out loud at the very pompous Welland who obviously felt obligated to distance himself from Limbaugh by trashing the man.”
(They love to hate Rush, and Rush loves their hate.)
“I was introduced to Rush by my carpenter twenty years ago. I remain grateful.”
(The proletariat are the vanguard of the revolution.)
“It turned out that if they changed the number of decimal places in their data, they would get an entirely different prediction.”
(Garbage in, garbage out.)
“Where is Steve Martin when we need him?”
(Jamming on this banjo.)
Clearly, it gets under Welland’s skin that Rush was also one of the few who was correct about the oil-eating bacteria. So of course, Welland can only imagine that while he came to his conclusions logically, Rush only managed his using a “demented and twisted interpretation of facts”. Mustn’t mess with the narrative that Rush is a big fat liar!
“”The variables aren’t infinite. But…there are a lot of them, and a lot of data that would have to be collected””
I R A
I liked Michael Crichton’s point in his speech about complexity theory. Simply make an acceptable model of how a teenager reacts to being asked to take the trash out.
Complexity theory as i gather, is about pointing out how some things are infinitely impossible to predict by humans because of the triillions of variables that may never behave the same way twice.
All of this was established with the Exxon Valdez and even earlier with the Santa Barbara blow-out.
The beaches that received human intervention up in Alaska were by FAR the last to recover. The cleansers are far, far more toxic than oil — which is FOOD for both fungi and bacteria.
The whole fiasco was a goat rope.
I’m pretty sure *I* said this was going to be another tempest in a teapot back when it happened.
I also predicted the major media outlets would largely ignore the news that nothing much long-term really happened.
Much like Fukashima, this was a “scare story of the month” to be ignored for the most part in terms of any follow-up to see if it was as bad as all that.
Actually, Steve, complexity theory is ABOUT developing that understanding to the point where we CAN make reliable predictions about things.
– Douglas Hofstader –
But at this point, our understanding is limited to the small scale in application, it does not ramp up to the larger scales upon which economies rise and fall, or within which hurricanes shape, form, and strike (the hell with hurricanes, we can’t even deal with tornadoes!), much less what happens in enormous chaotic systems over the course of decades, and even much less still over centuries.
Dr. Petr Vajk had this to say back in the late 1970s. Much of his book is dated, and about space development and industry… but this part, in particular, is still very timely:
J. P. Valk, Doomsday Has Been Cancelled
The problems which plague climate science are multiple, and of different kind. Complexity is one of them; chaotic behavior of coupled system of partial differential equations – another one. But the most glaring gaping hole is that nobody yet posed the theory as a physical problem. Most of so-called climate scientists are just meteorologists and statisticians without real knowledge in planetary physics. But statistical analysis of time series of temperature measurments leads to nowhere without underlying physical theory. There is a contradiction of terms in the notion of “climate change”: climate is a statistics of weather, and application of any statistical method is based on presumption of statistical stability. If climate is changing, this assumption is violated. That is, a valid statistical description of a changing climate is impossible by definition. We compare apple and oranges trying at the same time distingish ones from the others statistically without knowledge to what kind any item belongs – an impossible task. The same problem plagues stock market analysts: they simply have no objective criterion to estimate if their time series belong to the same underlying batch or to different regimes of changing market situations. We know how poorly they do their prognostication job.
I participate in development of a new approach to climate modeling: a relaxation theory of climate change. It is physical rather purely staticstical and is based on assessment of heat balance between 3 main bodies: atmosphere, upper 100 m layer of ocean and the main bulk of ocean water. The main difference with the IPCC approach is there is no assumption of energy balance between incoming and outcoming radiation. (Such balance is at the heart of the theory of “greenhouse effect”.) Actually, this energy balance is valid only at time scale of thousand years necessary for relaxation, that is, establishment of some kind of thermodynamic equilibrium between these 3 heat reservoirs. And thermal inertia of these 3 bodies is very different: the atmosphere has typical period of relaxation of 2 weeks, ocean upper layer – of 30 years, and deep ocean of a thousand years. All short-time fluctuations at a scale of several decades have different physical mechanism of their origin from planetary radiation balance and simply have nothing to do with variations of greenhouse gases content, they are relaxational autooscillations of quasi-periodical type. Moreover, the two main periodicities were derived from analysis of relaxation theory of climate: one with periodicity of 40 thousand years and another with periodicity of 100 thousand years. They are also autooscilatory, but coincide with Milankovich cycles, so 8 known Pleistocene glaciations were not caused by radiation forcing, but simply synchronised by it with inherent cyclicity.
“”The problems which plague climate science are multiple, and of different kind.””
Sergey
The biggest problem seems to me is the emotional attachment of people to the issue of “saving the planet”. A notion based on the absurd premise of what amounts to a left wing marketing campaign, that humans are unnatural creatures whose behavior to the exclusion of all other creatures can cause harm.
How exactly do you harm a planet that is born and continuously shaped out of destruction and cataclysmic upheaval as the very process that determined its makeup that we see?
The problem is really big f****** egos of narcissistic people who are sure they matter more than they do.
SteveH,
That last sentence is absolutely on target, but then again, it sounds like the classic definition of a liberal anyway.
While we’re on this topic, how about we change the name of the IPCC to the Internalional Panel of Narcissistic People with Big F**n Egos(IPNPBFE)?
“”Actually, Steve, complexity theory is ABOUT developing that understanding to the point where we CAN make reliable predictions about things.””
IgotBupkis
Imagine trying to create a reliable computer model to predict the square inch where a thousand pingpong balls dropped from top of the Empire State Building will each end up on the ground. There are mathematical variables to consider. But it is utterly impossible to know them all to any degree of accuracy. And only one of a trillion variables calculated wrong can change the outcome drastically.
Here’s a link to a solar activity website that I click on occasionally. Scroll down to see all the terrific links you can go to from this site.
I love amazing photos of gigantic solar flares and storms. Of course, the sun was conveniently neglected by the silly global warmists. Why? Because it’s too big, like that proverbial elephant in the room. What elephant?
http://www.solarcycle24.com/index2.htm
Rush is not a scientist
Neither was Gregor Mendel.
OB,
Excellent rejoinder. It makes us realize that we all tend to fall prey to the tyranny of credentials (“Hey! Who’s the doctor here?”).
We tend to forget that astute observation can and does come from any quarter and that the value of the observation lies with the fact that it can be tested and re-tested by cynics rather than being valid simply because it stems from a credentialed consensus.
T, it’s worse than that.
Many people with scientific credentials are not in fact scientists, and conversely.
By “scientist” I mean someone who a) defaults to skepticism, and b) uses the scientific method (i.e., iteratively generating a falsifiable hypothesis, using it to predict the outcome of an experiment, comparing the prediction with the experimental result, and modifying or rejecting the hypothesis as needed) to acquire new knowledge. But for the “new knowledge” proviso, experienced auto mechanics, electricians, etc. would qualify, whereas many people who wear lab coats do not.
Cases in point: climastrologists, and recently the jokers who reported the “arsenic-based” bacteria (as well as those sporting lab coats who immediately endorsed that highly improbable claim, which has since sunk without trace).
A lab coat does not a scientist make.
My rock climbing partner in the 1980s was a Phd in math from Caltech. He worked at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder, CO. He was using a Cray computer to try to model weather processes. This was, I suspect, the beginning of climate modeling. He was not impressed with the results because so many things were changing (many variables) that they could not reach any sound conclusions. He eventually wearied of the task and moved on to teaching at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey.
I met a few of his co-workers and they were all quite brainy but with a leftward tilt to their opinions. Since NCAR is still deeply involved in all this, I can only guess that that was the beginning of what we now know as climate modeling. The computer power has increased but the results haven’t because, as pointed out, garbage in = garbage out.
I have a high school classmate who rose very high in the National Park Service (Assistant Superintendent). He is a nice guy, but he and I have had to avoid AGW in our conversations because he is totally indoctrinated in the idea that, somehow, the environment ought not to change, and that the change that we do see is nearly all caused by humans. It is a form of faith (religion) that the Earth is being destroyed by humans. And they can be just as intolerant as any fundamentalist Muslim toward those who don’t subscribe to their faith.