So your conclusion still stands that the paper “says nothing about predicting colder winters, much less from changes in greenhouse forcings (AGW theory)”, even though you Googled the wrong paper? OK, that’s about on par with everything else we’ve heard from you!
And if you actually read and understood any of Cohen’s more recent work, you’d see the clear evolution of the 1999 hypotheses into the present ones that you’ve been plastering all over the SDMB in some kind of frantic effort to disprove climate science in the hope that no one actually reads them. What he’s saying today is largely what he was saying then, as Kimstu pointed out.
And I still want to know how my summary of Cohen (2014) tells you that I “[haven’t] actually read the papers, something that is obvious when you actually do read”. Funny how you won’t respond to that. Or are you just in the habit of making pompous-sounding pronouncements and hope to not get called out on it? I’ve challenged you to resolve it. Just cite why Cohen’s latest paper that I talked about tells you that I am a liar and that I haven’t read it, and why it’s so “obvious” to you that Cohen is saying something different than my summary. What is he saying that contradicts me? And where is he saying it? Provide the cite.
What makes it even funnier is that Cohen has been saying the same thing for 15 years, and you still don’t get it.
This completely ignores, for instance, studies of Arctic seafloor algal crusts which provide hundreds of years’ worth of data on Arctic sea-ice cover.
Okay. You are now evidently retreating from any specific claims about particular research results on AGW (a good strategy, since you have shown yourself completely unable to defend your claims or even to meaningfully comprehend what the sources you cite are saying) into a demand for a basic-science definition, viz.:
What is meant by “the fundamental principles of AGW”?
It’s like I already know how this conversation goes. wolfpup just refuses to say, but the real winner is always the “here it is”, with a link to nothing.
I leave it up to the masochist still reading here, is this not the definition of woo woo science?
Now Cohen et al, and pretty much everybody else working on climate, knows exactly what the models predict, and that the models are programmed based on theory, and neither the theory, nor the models predict (or project) a future with an increasingly cold and snowy northern hemisphere winter.
Which is why the matter isn’t even that complicated.
The question asked is about the theory, and can anything falsify the predictions made by the theory.
It can be answered in two questions.
What are the predictions of global warming theory?
Did what actually happened match the predictions?
If your theory doesn’t match what happens, it’s wrong. This is basic science.
Nope. You’ve got it wrong. Here’s the crux of the issue, and I hope it can finally get through to you:
Neither a series of unusually mild winters NOR a series of unusually severe winters “would be because of global warming” or “what the theory predicted”.
That is, the theory of AGW does not extend to predicting circulation perturbations like which winters in a particular geographical region are going to be severe and which are going to be mild.
If you, FXMastermind, happened to read a bunch of popular science journalism that gave you the impression that climate science is claiming first that “global warming is causing warmer winters” and then that “global warming is causing colder winters”, well, that’s your problem. I’m well aware that popular science journalism doesn’t do a very good job of presenting a clear and accurate picture of what science is actually saying. But you don’t get to project your confusion back onto the actual science.
And the actual science of climate change has never been saying anything about short-term weather trends other than “here are some features of AGW that could foster warmer winters under certain conditions, here are some other features of AGW that could foster colder winters under certain conditions, and much more work needs to be done to understand how those and other features interact to influence specific weather patterns”.
In other words—and this is important—AGW theory is NOT falsifiable on the scale of the very limited near-term data set you’re trying to apply to it.
Harking back to my previous analogy, just as basic gravitational theory does not conclusively predict whether a falling leaf in a strong gust of wind will be going up or down at any particular moment, the fundamental principles of AGW do not conclusively predict whether a particular series of winters in a particular geographical region of the northern hemisphere will be warmer or colder than usual.
And the answer is clearly no, it’s not. I asked you what your problem, if any, was with identifying “the fundamental principles of AGW” as what’s described in that Technical Summary.
If you can’t answer that question but instead just retreat into vague jeers hoping to intimidate your fellow ill-informed “skeptics” into discounting that description of the science, I think it’s fair to dismiss your response.
And here’s what you’re consistently failing to understand:
Not every observed phenomenon is a meaningful test of a particular scientific theory.
AGW theory did not previously predict conclusively that recent boreal winters in certain regions should be warmer, and it does not now predict conclusively that recent boreal winters in certain regions should be colder.
So it’s not meaningful to use that set of data about recent boreal winters in certain regions to test whether “what actually happened matched the predictions”.
Too bad if your misunderstanding of the science led you to believe that there was a “gotcha!” to be had here, but there isn’t.
Going back to debate some key issues, once more. While the OP is about several things, the only one that has any chance of being debated rationally is the theory.
While I respect Sam Stone, due to a clear writing style and using logic and reason, rather than rhetoric, you can’t elevate the AGW theory to the level of relativity, and at the same time be open to a debate about it.
That is the essence of the theory, that an increase in greenhouse forcing will only result in a warming planet. There is no getting around this, and of course if over a hundred years, or three hundred years, the planet goes back into global climate like was observed, and proved by proxies, that just happened, the LIA era, then most scientific minded people will admit the theory can’t be right. Increasing greenhouse gases alone don’t control the earth’s climate.
So in the sense of “can it be”, there is no doubt. The real question is, “can it be falsified in any time frame that those of us living can know the answer?”. Not the same question. But then there is the next point.
No, this is just not the case. The well established physics of CO2, methane, NO2 and ozone isn’t theory, that isn’t in any way what is up for debate. Certainly some try to debate the CO2 effect, and claim it can’t even physically contribute to warming, but that is another story. The debate usually isn’t over that. I have seen it, but not in any scientific journals, or mainstream science. It seems to be some strange offspring of the denial movement, which also claims it’s all a fraud, based on communist/socialist mentality and blah blah blah blah something, Obama is a liar and the UN wants all our wealth to give to poor people. I have no fucking idea if any of that is true, nor do I care much.
Back to the science.
Which is a logic error, as there is no “basic fact” on the table, but a theory, and one that makes predictions about HOW warming will happen, because the warming can’t be the same as the LIA warming, because that was not due to AGW. This is a critical fact, one handwaved away, or flat out denied. But you don’t get to just deny something in a debate. It doesn’t work like that. You have to have evidence. If somebody claims the warming since the LIA was from AGW, they are laughed out of the room. Nobody believes that.
It’s why theory matters. Nobody who knows anything about climate thinks all past climate change was human caused. In fact, depending on who is claiming it, AGW starts in the fifties, or the 90s, or somewhere in between.
No, that is just false. The obvious and drastic warming since the very cold LIA is not evidence of AGW theory.
Back to the theory, the AGW theory hasn’t been established yet, no matter how much you hear that repeated. It’s not like it’s 50 years after the author of it won a Noble prize. This confusion over what the theory is, what it predicts, what would show it isn’t correct, it’s the basis of the debate.
This is another made up “factoid”, since there is no requirement that those questioning a new theory have to do anything other than point out the flaws and facts that show a theory isn’t correct. The history of science is replete with examples. Nobody had to devise an alternative theory to question the prediction that starlight would actually be changed by the sun’s mass distorting spacetime, so that we would observe light “bending”. If repeated observation showed no bending, that theory would be considered wrong. Or, something would be changed about the theory. Which brings us exactly back to the current issue.
No and just claiming that is a fallacy. Cohen et al didn’t claim any laws of physics are wrong, nor did he say CO2 isn’t causing warming. What they are pointing out, is that the system doesn’t seem to be responding in the manner all the models predict. And that AGW theory does no predict, or explain, a trend of colder winters, with increasing snow. (FYI the increased snowfall that is predicted is for Greenland only, as the theory says higher temperatures there would result in more snow, based on physics)
Once again, just saying something isn’t evidence. If there were no sources, multiple sources, showing a trend of colder boreal winters, you could of course claim that. And in fact, at first many did claim this. They claimed the winters were warming, that it was just deniers making up the colder winter trend. This was a constant refrain each time cold records, and snowfall records were being broken.
No, that is the opposite of science. If you deny the evidence, you explain why.
And, as we have seen, if you can no longer deny it, but then attempt to say “this too was predicted by the theory”, the burden is now on you to explain why your theory predicts both warmer winters, and colder winters.
In this case, since feedbacks from, and observation of, warming NH winters, including a change to more rain, and less snow, is a key issue of AGW theory, it can’t be dismissed or waved away.
If this isn’t happening, then the expected warming feedback loop can’t happen. In fact, as *Cohen et al * theorizes, it would mean the reverse will happen. That the early and heavy snow will result in more cold, a feedback (in fall and winter only) that results in the colder NH temperatures, clearly observed already, by all data.
Now we can’t say it’s actually caused by the open arctic waters, since obviously a colder NH winter trend is nothing new, or even unexpected, due to this having happened many many times in climatic history.
But if it is being caused, that the warming is actually the direct cause, this means AGW is causing colder winters. (remember, not for everywhere, but in large areas)
And if that can be shown with confidence, then the AGW theory has to be changed, because it does not predict this. You can’t have it both ways.
A theory can not predict both ways, this makes it meaningless, in regards to that prediction.
Here’s the part where you go from “somebody making something up”, to “a scientific minded person supporting their claim”.
Just show us the evidence that supports you. I’ve already showed you multiple sources that support what I said. Now it’s your turn.
The IPCC, and pretty much everybody else says what I said. AGW will result in warmer winters, with less snow (except Greenland). This will be most evident in the NH, at high latitudes.
If this does not occur, something else is happening, that we don’t know about. Or the theory is wrong.
Obviously a short term change won’t matter. Which is why 1988-2014 means it’s most likely not just natural changes. Something is causing this.
Once more, just so there is no confusion, show us a source to support your claim. I asked clearly, repeatedly what the phrase “fundamental principles of AGW” means, as in, what do you mean when you use it.
You are simply wrong about this, as you would know if you’d read the Technical Summary that I linked to above as a description of the “fundamental principles of AGW”.
That summary explicitly states that regional winter trends are not conclusively determined by climate models. E.g., this discussion on p. 108:
In other words, the models as they currently stand indicate that AGW is likely to encourage a positive trend in boreal wintertime NAO, which is likely to be associated with warmer wetter winters, BUT NOWHERE IS IT CLAIMED THAT THE THEORY DEFINITIVELY OR CONCLUSIVELY PREDICTS SUCH A RESULT. All your obstinate ill-informed insistence that the theory of AGW is DEFINITELY predicting warmer boreal winters, and that a cherry-picked data set of recent colder winters in certain boreal regions somehow SUBSTANTIALLY CONTRADICTS the theory, when confronted with the actual summary of the science simply melts away like… well… snow.
The trouble with your arguments, FXMastermind, is that you have read some oversimplified popular science journalism and a few snippets of abstracts and conclusions of a few research papers, and jumped from that to a bunch of wholly unjustified conclusions about the state of the science as a whole.
The bullshit you’ve been spouting for many months now that I clearly delineated on many different occasions – along with explanations for why it’s bullshit at the most elementary level – certainly makes you look bad. Referring to the IPCC as “woo woo science” makes you look much worse than bad (I have that one filed away in the archives! :D) And refusing to back up your ridiculous accusation makes you look like you just like making things up: I’ll ask you again for maybe the fifth time: Just cite why Cohen’s latest paper that I talked about tells you that I am a liar and that I haven’t read it, and why it’s so “obvious” to you that Cohen is saying something else. What is he saying that contradicts me? And where is he saying it? Provide the cite. This is just more of your complete bullshit, but I’m more fixated on this one because it implies that I’m a liar.
That’s the end of my conversation with you on this. I continue to await your apology.
But for those genuinely interested in the conversation and curious to know what I mean by “fundamental principles of AGW”, oddly enough Kimstu has no trouble grasping the meaning, and certainly reading the latest publications of the IPCC Working Group 1 for the current summary consensus on the basic science, stated in terms of carefully calibrated language around the levels of confidence we have on the myriad different issues, is a good way of characterizing what we know and how well we know it. But that requires reading and understanding a fair amount of material, and even the Technical Summary and SPM may be daunting to some. So let me suggest a simple definition of what I mean.
Perhaps a useful way to define the scope of the issues is to think of the problem in terms of the hierarchy of climate models as a sort of metaphor. I would suggest that the simplest “model” in principle is just the radiative transfer code approximation for CO2 – surely that is incontrovertible? In real life, the simplest actual models are zero-dimensional energy balance models that basically consider only the earth’s average net heat gain due to GHG-induced imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation. One can then describe an ascending architecture of model complexity that starts to incorporate multi-dimensional radiative-convective principles in terms of both latitude and altitude, then dynamical models that incorporate rudimentary circulation effects, and so on.
The most sophisticated models combine relatively detailed simulations of atmosphere circulation models with those that do the same for ocean systems, producing complex models called coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models – AOGCMs – that simulate a wide variety of climate variables at different scales of spatial and temporal resolution. Like all models, AOGCMs are derived from physical principles, and they’re being extended to still more complete models called earth system models that include atmospheric chemistry and surface ecosystem dynamics.
So where in this hierarchy do we declare the science to be essentially incontrovertible? I suppose it depends on what you’re trying to measure, but in terms of basics like the magnitude of CO2-induced forcing and the most important feedbacks, the energy-balance and radiative-convective basics of all these models are pretty much indisputable. Progressively less certain are the details of all the heat transfer dynamics and consequent circulation system changes, and the more fine-grained the detail, the less certain the predictions. The lower levels of that hierarchy – the basic foundation of all the models – is what I mean by the fundamentals of AGW, and here is the point: this is why complaining about the failure of AOGCMs to predict specific recent short-term changes in the Arctic Oscillation or polar vortex has absolutely nothing to do with the underlying fundamentals.
Pretending that it does is the standard bullshit denialist tactic that appeals to the scientifically illiterate, along the lines of “if you can’t predict next week’s weather how can you possibly predict climate ten years from now?” Well, for same reason that I predict that it will start to get generally warmer around April and May next year, get pretty warm in July and August, and then get cold again in November and December. Because the fundamentals are more predictable than the transient chaotic systems, and because climate is not weather. It’s the kind of denialist bullshit that is right up there with proclaiming water vapor not being a feedback or the IPCC as being “woo science”.
Incidentally, back down to the seasonal forecasting arena, NOAA is predicting a warmer than normal winter this year for the more northerly regions of the US and southern Canada and all of the west coast, and a colder winter in the deep south. Cohen himself is hedging his bets and declining to make a seasonal forecast at this time.
I am! I’m also thankful to you (and certainly to GIGObuster) for doing an excellent job, especially as it’s three jobs in one: explaining the complex parts of the science for people who are well-educated in climate science; explaining it at a simple, basic level for those of us who are not well-educated in climate science; and rebutting the hogwash that comes from anti-science sites.
I have pen-pals who still say, “This last winter saw heavy snowfall in Chicago, so I guess global warming is debunked.” Well…we just came out of a record-breaking hot summer, here in California, so, by their standards, global warming is proven! The key difference is that I know that a single data-point is a really poor basis for demonstrating a trend, so I wouldn’t use such a weak argument! The other guys never seem to get tired of it.
Really cold in Chicago? Yeah…and bloody damn hot in Australia. What part of “average” don’t they get?
And this, at least, is easily accessible to blokes like me who haven’t read classes in climate science.
Anyway, thank you, and please keep up the good work!
I’m going to hazard a guess, based on past experience, that in the preceding wall of text, there is no definition of what was used in the conversation.
No “fundamental principles of AGW” put forth. This is based on the past years of those people who claim “the theory can not be refuted”, refusing to define what they mean by the theory.
Instead, other things (red herrings) will be drug out, and the debate declared won.
If you bothered to actually read that “preceding wall of text” instead of merely “hazarding a guess” about it, you’d see that you’re wrong:
Emphasis added. Modesty forbids my pointing out wolfpup’s accompanying endorsement of my own identification of the “fundamental principles of AGW” with the abovementioned IPCC Technical Summary, of course. So I won’t point it out.
It doesn’t even matter if the debate is switched to “can the predictions of the IPCC report be falsified?” It’s almost the same problem. Is there anything predicted by the IPCC technical summary? Can it ever be shown to be wrong?
The fundamental problem with predicting the future, is that at some point the future becomes the now, and you have to be able to say if the predictions were right, or not.
If this can’t ever be done, then nothing predicted can be shown to be true or not.
While in the recent past, there was pretty much no doubt at all about what NH winter trends were doing, and that they were clear evidence of the “human fingerprint” on climate change, and indeed some still claim this, there certainly is uncertainty now about it.
So much that dozens of papers, and even the IPCC report now includes “a chance” that NH winters might become colder, not warmer.
For those not versed in obfuscation speak, that means the NH winters for some places might get warmer, but the implications for the NH high latitudes is … something. It might get warmer, or it might not.
The SH is also mentioned.
So there will be some implications.
Just try and show that prediction is wrong, I bet you can’t do it.
As for the basics of the enhanced greenhouse theory of climate change, which is actually just one of the many names used, it’s also called the CO2 theory, or the greenhouse theory, and of course Basic global warming theory, they are not complicated, nor is the science involved so hard it can’t be stated in a paragraph.
When somebody used global warming, it’s usually understood what is meant.
So in 1988 Hansen declared the enhanced greenhouse effect had reached the level of a high confidence. This is exactly what is being challenged when somebody talks about the theory being falsified.
It’s not some esoteric super complicated thing that can’t be easily described, no matter how often you hear somebody claim that. It’s certainly not what the 2013 TS is about. It never mentions the theory. But when you see “greenhouse” mentioned, they mean greenhouse gas forcing,
and this means the CO2 increase, unless they are discussing ozone.
