Global Warmest defector says, "No smoking hot spot"

:flame::flame::flame::flame::flame::flame:SWEET!!!!!
The truth shall set you ... on fire!

 

Hmmmm, yet another opinion piece bandied about by the deniers as fact. He's an electrical engineer who wrote some code used in carbon modeling. Huh. I guess if you think he's such an expert you must think I am one too. And I say he's wrong. So there!

 

What fight? An electrical engineer is not an expert in a field relevant to climate change no matter how many programs he wrote; he's a scientist wannabee whose opinions on global warming carry no weight.

For the facts of global warming discussed by atmospheric physicists and climatologists see
RealClimate

 

His point 1: Tropical troposphere warming has been thoroughly discussed on realclimate.org. Read that. Model projections do not (yet!) deviate from the data enough to reject the hypothesis that C02 is the cause of recent global warming. So, the main hypothesis of the article is speculation. The signature of C02-based global warming has NOT been rejected based on any test that I've seen.

His point 2 can be neither proved nor disproved.

His point 3, regarding the satellite data, again, read realclimate.org to get a feel for this. The satellites don't measure temperature, they measure IR emissions from oxygen in the atmosphere, for the entire thickness of the atmosphere, from which temperature is inferred, based on a blending of the atmospheric layers. As late as 10 years ago, the satellite record showed no warming whatsoever. And accordingly was rejected. And since that time there have been fixes and adjustments upon fixes and adjustments to the satellite record, all of which have brought the satellite record into closer conformity with the ground-based observations. Sorry, but I'll stick with actual readings off actual ground-based thermometers, no matter how flawed that may seem.

His point 4 is just plain bullshit. Yeah, if some other factor (read: Milankovitch (sp?) cycle) warms the earth, it will release C02 from the ocean, same as warming up a bottle of Coke will release C02 from the Coke. Which way the equilibrium moves depends on the saturation of the gas in the liquid, the saturation of the gas in the air over the liquid, and the temperature.

But in the present, we know that the process is moving opposite to the way he describes. We've increased the C02 in the atmosphere over the liquid, and (at least for now) we're driving C02 into the ocean, despite the small increase in temperature. First, there's no uncertainty that the additional C02 in the atmosphere is man-made. We have receipts: from the statistics of trade, we know that the total burning of fossil fuels (plus manufacture of cement, plus clearing of rainforest) adds more C02 to the atmosphere each year than the net annual increment in C02 in the atmosphere. In other words, the simple accounting for carbon shows that the current increase is coming from fossil fuel burning, with Nature absorbing part of that, not the other way round, as his text would suggest. Second, independent measurements of dissolved C02 in ocean water suggest that the amount of carbon held on ocean surface waters is increasing (along with average ocean acidity). That's a hard thing to average, as ocean PH varies widely, but that seems to be the consensus and it correlates well with the amount of carbon absorbed annually out of the atmosphere.

Nothing here to make me change my mind about anything. And several things that are just clearly wrong on the face of it.

I'll say it again: if you see people scraping the bottom of the barrel, that usually means the barrel is empty.

In short, this guy doesn't know the basic facts about the atmospheric carbon budget.

 

So much tripe, so little food for thought.

 

I understand tripe cooked properly can be quite delicious. Haggis notwithstanding.

 

There's a reason that Hadrian built that wall across northern England... the haggis.

 

Drinking the KoolAid... see this discussion on GISS temperature data. It's a scandal. And this audit shows why the data is severely flawed.



Class 1 - Flat and horizontal ground surrounded by a clear surface with a slope below 1/3 (<19deg). Grass/low vegetation ground cover <10 centimeters high. Sensors located at least 100 meters from artificial heating or reflecting surfaces, such as buildings, concrete surfaces, and parking lots. Far from large bodies of water, except if it is representative of the area, and then located at least 100 meters away. No shading when the sun elevation >3 degrees.

Class 2 - Same as Class 1 with the following differences. Surrounding Vegetation <25 centimeters. No artificial heating sources within 30m. No shading for a sun elevation >5deg.

Class 3 (error 1C) - Same as Class 2, except no artificial heating sources within 10 meters.

Class 4 (error >= 2C) - Artificial heating sources <10 meters.

Class 5 (error >= 5C) - Temperature sensor located next to/above an artificial heating source, such a building, roof top, parking lot, or concrete surface."

 

Of course, faulty thermometer placement! Therefore the arctic ice cap is not really disappearing, and CO2 is not really a greenhouse gas after all. Thanks for sharing.

For the facts of global warming discussed by atmospheric physicists and climatologists see
RealClimate

 

Well seeing as he wrote the program that the climatologists are using to make their predictions, it would have to be assumed that he has enough knowledge to know HOW climate systems interact or else he could not write the programs. Unless he's wring and as such the models he created showing AGW (an impossibility models at best can only show GW) are unreliable.

 

deleted: duplicate post

 

Actually, David Evans did the programming, not the design.


FullCAM

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is the result of collaboration between the two authors. Dr Gary Richards (+612 6274 1926, [email protected]) led the conceptual design and selection of models, and Dr David Evans ([email protected]) provided the modeling and programming services for implementation.
from: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/ncas/reports/pubs/fullcam-usermanual.pdf (6MB download)​

He's an electrical engineer who now works...for the Coal Industry.​

His bio: David Evans: Brief Biography (hosted at Lavoisier.com)​

Lavoisier's Bio:
Lavoisier Group - SourceWatch
In 2001 Australian economist John Quiggin wrote that the Lavoisier Group is "devoted to the proposition that basic principles of physics...cease to apply when they come into conflict with the interests of the Australian coal industry."​

So yet again, we have a shill for the fossil fuel industry writing an opinion column and trying to pass it off as science.​

 

With his background I am really curious why he didn't publish an article pointing out the errors in his programing rather than an opinion piece

 

Perhaps because he has only published one peer-reviewed article, but that was in 1987.

Evans published only a single paper in 1987 in his career and it is unrelated to climate change.
​

He's also got a funny definition of rocket scientist:

Who is 'Rocket Scientist' David Evans? | DeSmogBlog

And the article at the OP of this thread gets thoroughly dissected here:
Deltoid: The Australian's War on Science XV

 

Scott - for someone who has "FIGHT THE SMEARS" as their tagline, you sure like to smear a lot.

 

It is misinformation that gets my goat, and I tend to think of the "Information Age" as the "Mis-information age."

Climate change and risks from tobacco are both issues which have been obfuscated by misinformation.

Chris Landsea, Roger Pielke--you won't find me posting about their backgrounds, because they're qualified in the subject matter.

But a "rocket scientist" who isn't a "rocket scientist" and -- by his own words -- not even a climate modeller, but simply a software engineer -- and who writes opinion pieces full of misinformation about climate change based on his daunting qualifications as a rocket scientist and climate modellor... well, just look (Quote from OP article by David Evans):

"I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.")
​

Quote from David Evans at Desmogblog:

"By the way, I know a heck of a lot about modelling and computers but I am not a climate modeller."

"the term "rocket scientist" means someone with a PhD in physics, electrical engineering, or mathematics (or perhaps a couple of other closely related disciplines), from MIT, Stanford, Caltech, and maybe a few other institutions."
​

When David Evan's bio and the similar articles are also hosted on a site (Lavoisier) beholden to the Australian Coal Industry?

Secretary Ray Evans describes the 90-odd Lavoisier members as a "dad's army" of mostly retired engineers and scientists from the mining, manufacturing and construction industries.
​

Yeah, I'll call BS on that. That's not smear. That's context. Smears are known for being devoid of context.

 

So Scott - when people raise questions about the church / reverend Obama hung out with for 20 years, is that a smear, or context? I doubt I'll vote for Obama, but I think it's a smear. But by your definition, one could call it context.

Anyway Scott, I honestly think you are much better than this. When you attack the argument, not the person, you are pretty persuasive - even to a "skeptic".

 

I don't see how -- by my "definition" -- out of context quotes from Rev. Wright constitute context. Obama's response to those smears constituted context.

All of my posts on Evans are thoroughly linked. I'm not asking anyone to take my word on him. If you think I'm misquoting him out of context fire away. I've laid all my sources out in the open. You can check the sources for yourself.

But Evans himself BEGINS his opinion column by implying he has credentials as a climate and rocket scientist:

I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector...

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
​

How can one not think Evans is a climate scientist after reading the above? Therefore, his purported credentials are fair game for scrutiny.

And, under the mildest scrutiny, they fall apart. He uses a definition of "rocket scientist" that exists as part of specialized Unversity slang for doctoral candidates at few United States universities when writing for an AUSTRALIAN newspaper! He implies that he is a climate scientist when he is an electrial engineer and software programmer. He may have built climate models, but he couldn't design one (as, again, he states elsewhere), another fact one would never guess from the above paragraphs.

I am ready to be shown evidence of Dr. Evans' expertise in climate science at any moment.

Now, if the fossil fuel industry did not have a history of generating misinformation about climate science, then, yeah, you could say my bringing up the Lavoisier group is just a smear.

The Lavoisier Group was established by Hugh Morgan. Hugh Morgan is deeply involved in Australian Mining. He's a former CEO of Western Mining Corporation and Alcoa and has a long history of opposition to environmental regulation of any kind.

The President of Lavoisier is Peter Walsh (Australian politician) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, a former Energy Minister devoted to an unfettered free-market. The vice-president of is Ian Webber, a Director of Western Mining Limited Resources. The secretary of the Lavoisier Group is Ray Evans, another former Western Mining Executive. The Treasurer is Harold Clough, another mining executive.

All of these people stand to lose money if greenhouse gasses undergo stricter regulation.

The Lavoisier Group is the place where David Evans is published repeatedly.

So when Evans crows about his (false) background as a climate scientist and fails to mention his connection to the Austrialian Mining Industry which opposses CO2 regulation, yeah, I call that context.

Call it a smear if you like.

 

Geez Scott - it was kind of a compliment - then you go ranting on and on again.