Quick Hits - Aftermath of Climate Gate

Missing Heat Update
Some of you may recall that I commented on NCAR looking for "missing heat" almost two years ago.  Here is a link to that post. Kevin Trenberth and his buddies are still worried about this fictitious heat.  Roger Pielke, Sr., a leading climate expert (to me that means he doesn't rely on computer models), dissects the real issues with Trenberth et al at Watts Up With That.  Here was my original explanation and my views haven't changed in the last two years (this was one of Kristy's favorite):

• "Here is my final explanation for the location of the missing heat. It is in the same place where you guys keep the $20+ billion dollars of hard earned taxes spent on the AGW modeling boondoggle. Vanished, like the proverbial fart in the wind."

Global Warming Now Causes Volcanoes
Well, that is essentially the conclusion in this news article.  Is there anything that doesn't cause or result from global warming?  Well, apparently not.

• "Now that's funny.  I don't care who you are." -- Larry the Cable Guy

Really Quick Hits
How much has your state "warmed" in the 104 year climate record?  You can find out at Watts Up With That.

• Arkansas has COOLED by 0.2 degrees (you couldn't detect this in a room in which you were sitting) during all this global warming. 

Once again, Watts Up With That tells you about the final nails in the coffin on the famous hockey stick graph.

• This is the graph that Al Gore uses to scare school children, and once again, we find it to be a total fiction.

Well, that clears out my feed reader of climate stories.  The bad science is still out there, but "Junk Science" has even moved the global warming stuff to the back burner.  The editor there believes that Climategate was the final bell tolling for the flawed science of AGW.

Vindication

Many of you have personally witnessed me get passionate about why I think anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a hoax.  Secretly, I think Walt, Josh and Zach probably believe I am in serious need of some medication based on the looks I get from them when we have talked about this subject. Well, over the last few days, I have gotten some confirmation that I am not totally out there in the weeds when I discount the "science"  of AGW.  Here it is from Walt's favorite source:  Glenn Beck.

The last few days have felt pretty good for those of us who questioned this stuff. Normally, I think "hackers" are the pretty lowly, but in this case, I will make an exception.

Stupid Human Assumption

Early this week, I experienced another "poke the monkey" episode (see the comment section). This time, my loyal commenter, Josh, sent me a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) article that links global warming with increased incidence of kidney stones (here is press coverage that attempts to explain the journal article). In a previous post (Wanted: Fact Checker), I talked about the seeming lack of rigor in the peer review process at PNAS. I don't think peer review was the problem in this case, but the article does have some serious issues.

The first serious issue that I have with the journal article is well covered at Steve McIntyre's Climate Audit website. Here is the kernal of importance from Steve's site:

• "... it turns out that the current kidney stone dataset is not so good for a variety of reasons. These include undiagnosed, asymptomatic stones, lack of correct documentation of recurring events, or those who just plain don’t go to the hospital. In fact, there could be up to a 35% error in the baseline prevalence of kidney stone disease! See, reconstructing climate records is nothing compared to ascertaining a census of those suffering of kidney stones."

Apparently, we really don't know how many people suffer from kidney stones very well. Since we don't this number now, how will we be able to determine whether a future increase in kidney stone incidence is due to medical science improvements in kidney stone diagnosis or to increased temperature caused by global warming.

The other real issue I have with this sort of study is that it makes the classic assumption of "stupid humans". I don't follow kidney stone medical literature, but from what I can gather, a mean annual temperature above a certain degree (I think it is 13 degrees C) is correlated with increased risk of kidney stones. Basically, where it's hot, there is higher percentage of the population that is diagnosed with kidney stones.

The authors of the study assumed the worst case among the climate scenarios published by the IPCC (SRESa1b) and placed the GCM modeled temperature increases on top of today's instrumented temperature record to get mean temperatures in the future. I have no problem with this except for my well-known objections to GCMs that I will lay aside for now. What we end up with is a greatly expanded "Kidney Stone Belt" in the southern and southwestern U.S.

Where does the "stupid human assumption" come into play? In the press account, we find out the best way to prevent kidney stones is to simply drink more water. The authors implicitly assume that humans will not change their behavior in response to climate shifts. Does that make sense to you? I know if I started hearing about 30% rises in kidney stones among my neighbors, I would start drinking more water. Actually, the response of an individual to this sort of increased risk is "so easy even a caveman could do it."

Finally, an interesting tidbit that came out on Climate Audit: "The SE United States has actually undergone slight cooling over the past century." Isn't that a kick in the pants to the authors? It is cooling in the present Kidney Stone Belt.

Now, if there were just someway to tell me if the authors of this study are looking for more funding of kidney stone research... Ahhh, there it is. "The related cost of the predicted increase in kidney stones would be $900 million to $1.3 billion as the kidney stone belt expands northward and westward from warming, the researchers said."

As my buddy Chip would say, "What ARE the odds!?!"

Crimes Against Humanity?

I received an email recently from one of my grad school buddies (who shall remain nameless) asking the following question:

• "When are you going to write about the article on Drudge about the NASA chief calling for oil company executives to be charged with crimes against humanity? This has so many great angles, government employees calling for citizens to be charged in an international court, a scientist who would rather imprison a voice of dissent rather than argue the scientific merits of his position, the whole tie in with former NASA employees who had a different opinion."

Well, my first response was that this had to be a joke that he was playing on me to get me to post something silly. So, I did a little research on the matter. While it wasn't the "NASA chief" making these claims, it was James Hanson, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Father of AGW Science Scare Tactics. Most people leave off the "Scare Tactics" portion of his title, but I like to be thorough and complete in my writing. Hanson is also the guy that will tell you that he was "censored" by the Bush administration for having to put his NASA related (i.e., government funded) public presentations through the standard review and approval process required for ALL government releases of information. If you read this Guardian article, he doesn't sound at all censored to me. He sounds like a stark raving lunatic.

The email question says it best. A government scientist is calling for trials of the oil company executives for funding research in an area that just MIGHT affect the bottom line of their companies. Are these international trials going to be held in Salem, Massachusetts? Will I (and thousands of other scientists that don't believe that AGW is a big deal) be "invited" to attend these trials or will we just be dragged there and put in the stockade while the world "experts" selected and funded by Hanson's agency determine our fate?

Let's back up a second: High crimes against humanity? I think he is placing these executives and scientists in the same category as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Stalin, Josef Mengele, Pol Pot, Chairman Mao, and the list goes on. Failure to believe in JUNK SCIENCE that tells us that a trace gas will cause all sorts of havoc if we don't sacrifice to the AGW gods is now morally equivalent to genocide in the mind of Hanson (and some others). Someone please tell me that "Dr." Hanson will be back on his meds soon. If not, please tell me that he will be relieved of his duties at NASA before the Bush administration leaves office next January (it should happen TODAY).

Well, Cable (I mean, "nameless"), that is all the energy I have on the subject for now. Perhaps, I will get to write on this again before the United Nations-Tribunal for Deniers of the Significance of Anthropogenic Global Warming (UN-TDSAGW*) assembles in Salem. If not, writing MPU has been a fun ride.

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*Perhaps this acronym will become as common and recognizable as UNICEF, but I sincerely hope not.

Do You Believe in "The Fever"?

Not too long ago, former Vice President Al Gore won an Oscar and shared a Nobel Peace Prize for telling the world that the earth has "a fever" and humans are the cause of it. As a commenter on one of the blogs I frequent pointed out, Irena Sendlar (nominated for the same Peace Prize) rescued 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, but lost out to Al Gore who made a slide show. It is just a little bit ridiculous.

In any case, Gore told us that the fever was caused by things like driving big SUVs, using lots of electricity, and flying around the world on private and commercial jets. My question to you is, does Al Gore really believe this junk that he spews on a regular basis? And if he does, what kind of sociopath does that make him?

I am asking that question in all seriousness. On June 17, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released the latest energy use numbers for Al Gore's family home in Nashville. The numbers show that the family home used 213,210 kilowatt-hours of electricity last year (~10% increase from the previous year). This means that, in an average month, his house uses about 19 times more electricity than the average American home. AND, this is after the Gores spent thousands of dollars in energy efficiency upgrades. (By the way, if you live in an average American home, you use about 11,000 kilowatt-hours in an entire year.)

I don't know about you, but if I really believe something to be true, my actions tend to follow that belief. Sooo, if I were responsible for convincing millions of people that they should feel guilty (and pay huge carbon taxes as penance) for causing the earth's meltdown, I would make changes in my life that reflect that. Here are just a few things I would not do if I BELIEVED the global warming B.S.:

• Use more electricity each month than 20 average American families.
• I would look for some ways to downscale.
  
• Fly in a private jet to attend climate change "summits" in Bali.
  
• Teleconferences are much more carbon friendly to the earth.
  
• Drive around in those fever causing SUVs.
• The Secret Service would have to really justify it for me.
  

On the other hand, I genuinely respect someone like Ed Begley Jr. (although I don't agree with most of the things he believes). Some time back, he was convinced that American lifestyles were harming the planet. So, instead of making a slide show and throwing an Oscar party, he made a LOT of changes. He started recycling everything, installed solar panels and wind generators, modified his exercise bike to charge his solar batteries, and much more. Most people can't afford to do what he has done, but he has put his money where his belief is. More people should do that. I don't know that I would want to hang out at a cocktail party with Ed because I am afraid of the conversation that would ensue when I threw away my napkin, but he does "practice what he preaches."

So, until I see the former VP living the life of Ed Begley Jr., I will think he is a snake oil salesman and/or a sociopath that doesn't care about how his actions affect the rest of the globe. I believe those are the only options left to me.

Return of the Blogi

To anyone who is still dropping by this site let me say, "HOWDY!" I haven't posted for over a week because I just got back from spending that time in the Netherlands with little to no internet connection. I presented a paper on improved control rod reactivity curves for the Annular Core Research Reactor at the 13th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry. The Netherlands was beautiful, and I saw lots (and lots) of wind turbines. They are pretty impressive close up.

I just wanted to post something to let everyone know that the blog had not died. So, I ran across this on the "Watts Up With That" blog:

Greenhouse Calculator

What is it? Well, I am hoping that you will follow the link and calculate the age at which you should die to insure that you don't use "more than your fair share" of the earth's resources and report it back to me in the comments. My magic number is 2.5 years. What this means is that 32 years ago my mother should have put a pillow over my head and killed me in my sleep (anything else would have made her cruel, right?).

The website is targeted at educating 9-13 year olds on their destructive future lifestyles. I am guessing someone with a very low carbon footprint does not have broadband internet access, but that is JUST a guess. Anyway, please chime in with how much past your fair share of living you have gone (mine number is +32). If you don't want to give a differential that might reveal your age, just let me know your age of "responsible" death, whether you have passed it yet, and your thoughts on this type of indoctrination. Uh, I mean, education. I REALLY do hope that this carbon footprint website doesn't lead to increased suicide rates because of ridiculous guilt trips in young, impressionable websurfers out there who ride to school in their parents Hummers, live in Al Gore type of houses, and have big allowances.

Also, even if you have to change your answers, make sure you get to see the greenhouse pig explode. I am pretty sure that it was meant as a real horror show.

Dude, What Are You Thinking?

There is a country song by Dierks Bentley that goes something like "Well, I know what I was feeling, But What was I thinking?" What brought this song to mind? I was reading this article about "Australia's best known expert on global warming" and found out that he thinks that the global warming situation is much worse now than it was just 3 years ago.

As I read his proposed solution to our "problem," I forgot all about the fact that the global temperature has stayed the same (perhaps even cooled) since 1998, so how could it be much worse? Right? I just kept saying to myself as I read further, "Dude, what are you thinking?" In any case, I am going to tell you what he is feeling.

Tim Flannery has proposed that the world should start polluting like crazy. Well, that is a little bit of a paraphrase, but he really does want to use jets traveling across the globe to disperse sulfur into the upper atmosphere. The sulfur would reflect sunlight back into space before it makes it to the surface. Of course, the sulfur will change the color of the sky. And, for those of you who have paid attention over the years, sulfur emissions in the form of sulfur dioxide from various industrial enterprises, including electricity generation from coal, are one of the main ingredients in acid rain. In the U.S., we have even reduced the amount of sulfur that we allow in diesel fuels to limit this sulfur dioxide pollution (and increase the cost of the fuel).

You might think that Flannery has at least modeled the effect of dumping large amounts of sulfur into the upper atmosphere or thought about what burning "extra" sulfur in jet fuel might do to the engines. You would be wrong. Here is a quote, "The consequences of doing that are unknown." However, he is one those "Don't just stand there, do something!" (even if it is wrong or dumb) kind of guys.

Anyway, I promised to tell you what this global warming "expert" is feeling. Dr. Flannery is now beginning to realize that the scientific basis for the cause that he has dedicated much of his professional life is crumbling like a house of cards. He is feeling desperate to justify his existence as a climate scientist and the money he has spent on climate research over the years. So, he feels that he needs to emphasize the urgency of our dire situation.

Well, it's either that or he is just a plain old fashioned kook. I'll leave that for you to decide, but I will tell you that I have made up my mind about Dr. Flannery.

Russ the Barbarian

Over the last 15 years, I have taken the time to read lots of "science" related news stories, opinions, and blogs. Recently, I ran across this peculiar tidbit. In addition to increased (and decreased) El Ninos, increased floods (and droughts), and increased heat waves (and cold spells and blizzards), the phenomenon of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW; or is it climate change now?) will lead to the "barbarisation" of societies. Believe it or not, Mohan Munasinghe, vice president of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made this claim in a recent speech given to Cambridge University.

Munasinghe believes that problems like poverty, damage to the environment, polarization of societies, and terrorism will increase due to climate change, and he claims that these things are already starting to happen. He doesn't explain how, but all of these things will somehow get worse because the temperature of the planet increases by a degree or two. (By the way, I am still looking for the explanation of global mean temperature.) We have cultures that live from the Arctic to the Equator (and everywhere in between), yet somehow all of these ailments come from a very gradual increase in temperature that occurs over the span of a century. In fact, these changes are imperceptible without satellites and a large number of ground stations distributed around the globe (and there are PROBLEMS with the ground station network).

In any case, I went to my Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary to get the definition of barbarian: "Of or relating to a land, culture, or people alien, usually believed to be inferior, to one's own." I guess when you come from a country like Sri Lanka (criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the United States Department of State, and the European Union for human rights violations) as Munasinghe does, then technological advancements in the developed world that help to deliver food and life saving medicines to the world's poor can seem alien. However, I am still struggling with that inferior part. Maybe the inferiority comes into the equation because the Western world is typically NOT considered one of the worst perpetrators of "enforced disappearances" or plain ol' political killings.

This is the part that really gets me about these IPCC folks. The science upon which much of the argument for human causes of global warming (the infamous "hockey stick" figure in Al Gore's movie) has been utterly and completely discredited by McIntyre and McKitrick among others. Now, instead of just admitting that they were wrong, they continue to make these ridiculous claims of catastrophes that might happen if we don't do something right now. Someone needs to let these clowns know that it is time to put down the shovel because the hole that they are digging is already pretty deep.

I just wish that someone with some real political power (I am pretty sure that my "8" faithful subscribers/readers and I don't count on this score) would stand up and tell people that the AGW emperor has no clothes. Until then, I will definitely continue to keep my hands on my wallet whenever I am in the same general vicinity as these IPCC hacks.

Iwo Jima = Global Warming?

I saw this cover of Time magazine a couple of days ago and tried to start framing my thoughts about the serious problem that it represents. I don't think that I have arrived at any real clarity of thought yet, but I will try to present why it is so disturbing to me.

First, the image of U.S. marines planting our flag on top of Mount Suribachi has become a symbol of the determination that we showed as a nation to rid the world of both the European and Asian variants of fascism. The Battle of Iwo Jima has been called some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific theater. About 21,000 Japanese soldiers defended the island while the U.S. forces were in excess of 100,000. The end result was over 20,000 dead Japanese and over 26,000 U.S. casualties (~7,000 dead). The bloodiness of the battle and the difficulties the U.S. forces encountered in taking this small island have been cited as one of the factors that President Truman used in deciding to use atomic weapons against the main island of Japan.

So, there is this theory called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) that says driving an SUV, producing electricity, choosing the wrong pet products, and forgetting or neglecting to recycle are causing a catastrophic temperature increase that will end life on the planet as we know it. There are MANY respected scientists and engineers that believe that there is no crisis. In fact, the reason why most of them don't believe there is a crisis is because when a theory (or model) doesn't agree with reality, you have to choose the reality regardless of how elegant or convenient the theory is.

Now, putting the image together with the theory of AGW, are we being asked to sacrifice our current economy, future prosperity, and, quite possibly, our lives in an effort to "Win the War on Global Warming?" Although I have not read the article, I am going to assume that we are.

I have written on the lack of peer review (Wanted: Fact Checker), the lack of computer model validation (A Nuclear Engineer's View of Validation), lack of critical examination of model assumptions (The Problem of Choice), and just plain ol' bad science ("But where does the HEAT go?"). I am absolutely convinced that AGW theory is being used for at least these two (if not more) things: (1) A method for climate scientists and other scammers to maintain a funding stream that will dry up when the facts see the light of day; and (2) A means of scaring people into giving the federal government and the United Nations more of their money and more control of their lives.

What bothers me about this image is that Time magazine either is being duped into being a tool of the social engineers and environmental wackos, or is willingly producing propaganda that the average American will not investigate further. I find the first proposition highly unlikely, so I am forced to conclude that this magazine has become an outright propaganda organ of a socialist view of the environment. I am not ready to sacrifice my freedoms for a highly suspect view of the environmental damage that I supposedly produce by simply being an average American. However, if Time magazine has their editorial way, I am sure I will soon find myself in the minority.

By the way, if carbon dioxide becomes an environmental hazard in the Environmental Protection Agency (United Nations) sense of the word, then EVERY BREATH YOU EXHALE is now capable of being regulated by some government.

That should give you some idea about what lies at the end of this rainbow: A totalitarian jackpot.

This Is Perfect?

Today (April 14), I went to work with frost on the ground, and yesterday it was below freezing when I got out of bed. I tend to HATE cold weather because, even though I am still young and spry, my surgical scar and joints are more annoying when it is chilly. Added to the annoyance of the cold-induced aches and pains, I saw that several of my neighbors had decided combat the deep freeze last night by placing their bedsheets and blankets over their plants. I thought to myself, "This is THE climatological optimum? This is PERFECT?!?!"

While in that train of thought, I remembered some of the things about the signatures of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) from a book by Patrick J. Michaels (Meltdown). Here are some of the signs of AGW according to Michaels:

--"The warming would be greater in winter than in summer." [This is good to me. It is not as cold. And, what is the difference in the summer between 101 and 102? Hot is still hot.]

--The warming would be greater in the Northern Hemisphere compared to the Southern Hemisphere. [This gets a "Big deal!" from me. I think this is because most of the land is in the North, but I am not sure.]

--"Nights would warm relative to days." [Good. Nights are when it really gets cold anyway.]

--"Warming would be enhanced at high latitudes." [Again, this get a "Big deal!" from me. Who the heck really cares if it -50 rather than -55? In fact, I would bet the people there would be happy for the 5 degrees of AGW on a night when it is -55.]

Some of the other things that happen with a warmer climate are longer growing seasons, increased land that is suitable for agriculture because the growing season is longer, and a "free" fertilizer (the U.S.D.A estimates that crop yields have increased 10% as a consequence of humans putting carbon dioxide into the air). All these things add up to the ability to produce more food for a growing (but stabilizing) world population. What is so horrible about that?

I don't know what is so horrible about any of these things that we would choose to wreck the most productive and energy efficient economies of the world to stop 0.07 degrees Celsius of AGW. However, I am tired of seeing my neighbors' bedsheets in their front yards. Almost anything would be more perfect than that.

****

As a side note, I have added a couple of items to my list of 101 Things About Me.

"But where does the HEAT go?"

I was reminded of a scene from Seinfeld when I read this article on the missing heat of global warming. The scene is one where Kramer and Elaine are sitting in the hallway of Elaine's building. Elaine asks to borrow Kramer's deli slicer and Kramer doesn't want to part with it. After Elaine demonstrates that she has sufficient knowledge to use the darn thing, Kramer frustratedly asks, "But where does the MEAT go?"

Why does the article remind me of this? Well, other than the fact that I can typically relate any life situation back to Seinfeld, I can just hear the Josh Willis (JPL), Kevin Trenberth (NCAR), or pick your favorite global warming believer at NASA saying in fit of frustration, "But where does the HEAT go?" So, I thought I would give them at least three plausible explanations: (1) The heat doesn't exist; (2) The heat is being radiated to space and is of no consequence; or (3) The heat trapped by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is so small it can't be detected by our crude instruments and is of no consequence.

I have asked myself why this article hacked me off so much, and I finally decided that it is the fact that the theory of anthrogenic global warming (AGW) was being treated in this article like it belongs in the big leagues with the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. You can put your trust in these two laws, but I wouldn't bet my Diet Coke much less my farm on AGW.

Let me give you an example. Back in 1911, Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn found that when a radioactive sample undergoes beta decay, the electron that is emitted can have any energy up to some maximum value and that the angular momentum of the reaction didn't add up. Big deal, right? RIGHT! The first item violates the Law of Conservation of Energy, and the second item violates the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Well, this caused a stir until 1930 when Wolfgang Pauli postulated that another particle that we didn't have the technology to detect was emitted along with the electron and this invisible particle carried away the right amount of energy and angular momentum. In 1934, Enrico Fermi (my favorite physicist) wrote the paper that forms the basis for our current understanding of the beta decay process and called that particle a neutrino. A neutrino wasn't physically detected until 1956, but we KNEW neutrinos were there because we could trust these two laws.

Here is the part that really gets me about the article, not only does the ocean not have the extra heat to warm it up that it must have for AGW to be true, the ocean temperatures have cooled since 2003 (but according to the article, that isn't really significant). This means that the oceans are not even getting the heat that they are supposed to get to keep a constant temperature. They cannot even get the DIRECTION of the temperature change right!!!

So, let me get this straight. You can't do the energy balance calculations close enough to get the temperature change to go in the right direction, but you want me to trust you that there is some mysterious missing AGW heat out there that we haven't found.

Here is my final explanation for the location of the missing heat. It is in the same place where you guys keep the $20+ billion dollars of hard earned taxes spent on the AGW modeling boondoggle. Vanished, like the proverbial fart in the wind.

The Problem of Choice (Making Assumptions)

One of my all-time favorite professors once told our class, "ALL models are wrong, but some are useful." He was basically letting us know that as scientists and engineers we are going to rely on models to do our jobs, but we couldn't let the model muddy up what we could measure or observe. The Bohr (or shell) model of the atom is an example of a model that is clearly wrong but extremely useful. This is the model of the atom that you may remember from your high school chemistry class. Many of the problems in high school chemistry, Chemistry 101, and Chemistry 102 can be explained by falling back to the shell model for the electrons circling the nucleus of the atom, but the quantum mechanical description of particle wave functions (and their associated probability density functions) are much more reflective of the true situation at the atomic level.

Besides letting us know that the models themselves could prevent a full understanding of a problem, there was a second pitfall that he wanted to let us know about. This pitfall was the fact that when we choose a particular model to analyze a problem that we inherit all the assumptions built in to the model. This poses a serious problem when the analyst doesn't know or understand the assumptions that are built into the model. It can have a serious impact on the usefulness of any results that come from using the model.

Let's take a short trip back to 1922 to examine the havoc that a model choice can create when an entire field of study allows its assumptions to go unexamined. You remember 1922, right? Here is a quick summary: Prohibition, Al Capone, a HUGE lack of computers, and you had to solve extremely complex differential equations by hand. Well, because like every one else, physicists are lazy, this often caused them to look for short cuts (or assumptions) to simplify solving these tough problems. In most cases, the assumptions we are still taught to make (as of 12 years ago) for solving these problems will yield solutions that match reality quite well.

That brings us back to what happened in 1922. Arthur Milne, a fairly distinguished mathematician and physicist, was working out some of the differential equations for the greenhouse effect. He reached a point in solving the problem that required that the boundary conditions be satisfied, and he assumed an "infinitely thick" atmosphere to make the problem easier. While it is not clear whether or not he had been drinking in spite of Prohibition or if Al Capone ordered him to assume an infinitely thick atmosphere, one thing that is very clear is that all of the global circulation models (GCMs) and other climate models use this assumption with one exception. The one exception is the climate model produced by Ferenc Miskolczi. Miskolczi had noticed the assumption in a series of equations and decided to follow the road less traveled. For all you hippies out there, he questioned the assumptions.

What was the result? A new term popped out in the solution to the differential equations. This new term showed that "runaway" global warming is not physically possible because it contradicts the energy balance equations and models that show runaway temperatures are not reliable. Another result was that Miskolczi had to resign his position at NASA in protest because NASA would not allow his work to be published. His work was finally published and here is an excerpt from his abstract, "The long standing misinterpretation of the classic semi-infinite Eddington solution has been resolved. Compared to the semi-infinite model the finite semi-transparent model predicts much smaller ground surface temperature and a larger surface air temperature. The new equation proves that the classic solution significantly overestimates the sensitivity of greenhouse forcing to optical depth perturbations."

Miskolczi has received some vindication in the last couple of years as research from Brookhaven National Laboratory has presented statistical evidence that the earth's response to carbon dioxide is greatly overestimate. Anyway, I guess that assumptions can make an ass out of more than just you and me.

A Nuclear Engineer's View of Validation

As a nuclear engineer, I use radiation physics codes quite a bit. We use the computer software to model radiation effects experiments, to perform reactor safety calculations, and to complete nuclear criticality safety analysis. For us, the regulatory framework that we operate in requires that we validate the software thoroughly. By validation, I mean we compare the computer modeling results with a real world measurement of those results. In fact, the radiation transport and nuclear physics communities have performed many experiments using simple physical geometries and well-known material compositions designed to be modeled exactly by our computer codes. These are known as benchmark experiments, and I have performed both reactor benchmark experiments and code calculations for comparisons (link).

These comparisons are quite rigorous and quantitative. For instance, our transport codes will predict the benchmark experiments to less than 1% difference for the neutron multiplication factor. When we predict things like radiation doses and particles crossing certain boundaries, we generally don't do quite as well. Those quantities are usually predicted to within 5-20% depending on the complexity of the benchmark. These results allow us to use our software with confidence for problems that are similar in scope (same energy region, similar materials, etc.) to the benchmarks because we have demonstrated that the software code has the appropriate physics and material models.

So, here is excerpt from the abstract of an article: "Using quantitative proxy models of peat and bauxite formation, based upon modern analogues, predictions of the distribution of peats (coals) and bauxites for both the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) and midCretaceous (Cenomanian) have been made using a General Circulation Model (GCM)." After saying to myself, "That's a load of BS!", I decided to write down why this is such a poor way to do computer modeling and why this is NOT validation.

Here is a clause by clause translation of the abstract from BS-ese to English:

• "Using quantitative proxy models of peat and bauxite formation ..." --> I took numbers from somebody's (another graduate student in my research group) model of peat and bauxite formation. I won't tell you where the numbers came from or how that model was constructed because the graduate student is a computer science major and knows absolutely nothing about geology.

• "..., based upon modern analogues, ..." --> We really don't know how these formations develop, we can't observe their formation happening anywhere today, but my collaborator at another university has a guess at something that supports my argument in this paper. Most people will just read right past this clause anyway.

• "...predictions of the distribution of peats (coals) and bauxites for both the Late Jurassic (Kimmeridgian) and midCretaceous (Cenomanian) have been made using a General Circulation Model (GCM)." --> I know we use GCMs to model the atmosphere and oceans and make wild guesses about climate, but I am going to show you where to find coal and aluminum ore using these magic codes. If you bought the load in the first couple of clauses, I bet that I can sell you the even bigger load to finish the sentence.
  

After reading the abstract, I decided not to finish the article. I did read on to find the funding source for the research. This load was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The NERC makes this claim on their homepage, "NERC funds world-class science in universities and our own research centres that increases knowledge and understanding of the natural world."

I will definitely admit to a general bias against climate models because I am unsure how much of what they do is truly science as opposed to computer science. For the sake of discussion, let's say that it is. Will someone please tell me the "world class" aspect of this paper? I KNOW that Sandia does world class science and engineering (examples), so I am pretty sure that I would recognize when something is in that category. If a co-worker brought this to me at Sandia as part of our internal peer review, it would get a "Not Recommended for Publication" rating. Saying this in another way, the article is well below the minimum information (science quota) that I would recommend for publication and is contributing to the decrease that I mentioned in For Starters. The sad thing is that the authors now have this article as a peer-reviewed publication (in the Journal of the Geological Society) on their CVs.

In summary, this article is NOT validation of any kind because the results are never compared to something that we can physically measure. At best, this is a verification that the modeling team writing the article has the same general physics models in their computer software as another computer code that models coal and aluminum ore formation. This is a good example of what Steven Milloy calls "PlayStation Climatology."

To those of you who know me well enough to have pushed my global warming button, I hope that this post on the subject provides an insight into my cynicism or lack of concern about the dire predictions that surface every few days. I don't want to put our collective economic futures in the hands of people that do "science" in this way. I am going to end with a note to Walt and Annie. I think that this is the type of stuff that you guys wanted me to write about. If it's not, leave me a comment and tell me where I went astray and suggestions for other posts.