Myth of "Consensus Science" Explodes, APS reverses stance

Yes I did. See:
http://priuschat.com/forums/environ...xplodes-aps-reverses-stance-7.html#post676103

Below, by the way, is the sort of standard text one receives in an email after submitting a scientific manuscript for publication.

Dear ------,

Your manuscript has been received for consideration by ---- for
publication. Please refer to manuscript tracking number MS#-------
in any correspondence with the Editors or Publisher.

We expect to have our internal review completed within the next two weeks.
If your manuscript is selected for further review, it will be sent to two
or more reviewers who are experts in the field. However, if the internal
review board decides not to send your manuscript for further review, we
will notify you by email.

Oreskes published a good follow-up to this issue in 2007:

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?​

 

Millions of metric tons of carbon (cumulative). Source: Oak Ridge.

 

There are many natural CO2 absorbing mechanisms that act as a buffer and help to keep systems in "equilibrium" (I'm not implying this is by design in anyway). These systems include soils, forests, oceans, geologic structures, plants, animals, etc. During the first part of the century as industrial release of CO2 was ramping up, these mechanisms could have been "absorbing" excess CO2 and the total observable atmospheric CO2 percentage would likely not have changed much from previous centuries. Once these "buffering systems" become saturated or overloaded then their capacity to absorb CO2 will decline and excess CO2 will build in the atmosphere (and oceans as it takes longer to saturate this sequestration media) and thus become observable to data collection. Much like a Prius bladder system, these buffering systems can become saturated and become a net carbon source instead of a sink and they will produce more CO2 than they take in. Think of overfilling your Prius tank only to have the fuel puke back out at you.

We must also consider data collection methods and how they have improved over the last 100 years.

 

Scott - you are greatly misrepresenting this. It is hardly accurate to imply that a measly 771 word "essay" by this History professor is a significant piece of scientific work in the field of climatology. This does not equate to a peer reviewed journal article and you know it.

 

His doctorate is in paleoclimatology.

 

Fine. It actually makes my point even more strongly, don't you agree?

 

Tim,

I provided you pictures of the actual screens submission of an essay would give you. If you think Science magazine didn't have someone double-check her work, it just shows your lack of knowledge regarding scientific publishing. From Science:

Education Forum (approximately 2000 words) presents original research and, occasionally, essays on science education and its practice. Unsolicited submissions are welcome.
​

There is nothing at all unsual about 700 word piece published in the Education Forum. Her article was certainly published there as it pertains to education, namely, the education of the public and the consensus issue regarding global climate change.

Here's an excerpt from another Education forum piece, published in June. Is this non-scientific? Do you suppose no one reviewed this?

[SIZE=-1]THE EARLY YEARS:[/SIZE]
Preschool Programs Can Boost School Readiness
William T. Gormley Jr.* Deborah Phillips, Ted Gayer1

Early childhood programs have been heralded by both scholars and decisionmakers as a promising avenue for fostering school readiness (1-4). In the United States, these sentiments have fueled ambitious preschool initiatives from both state and federal resources.

Oklahoma's prekindergarten (pre-K) program has generated attention because it is universal, is based in the school system, and reaches a higher percentage of 4-year-olds than any other state pre-K program. Oklahoma's statefunded pre-K program channels aid to local school districts, which are free to run full-day programs, half-day programs, or both. Federally funded Head Start programs, which are targeted to poor or otherwise at-risk children, and private day care centers are also eligible for state funding if they establish "collaborative" relations with their local school district. The Oklahoma pre-K program has relatively high standards compared with those of other states and offers relatively high pay and benefits to well-qualified teachers. Every lead teacher must have a B.A. degree and must be certified in early-childhood education. Student teacher ratios of 10-to-1 and class sizes of 20 must be maintained. The Community Action Project (CAP) of Tulsa County, whose Head Start program serves the largest number of children in Tulsa, is eligible for state funding. Its teachers meet the same standards as their Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) counterparts and receive similar pay (5).

Here, we estimate the short-term test score gains for children in Tulsa's pre-K and Head Start programs. In August 2006, we administered three subtests of the Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Test to incoming Tulsa students entering pre-K and Head Start programs and kindergarten. The tests were administered just before the commencement of classes by the individual who would be teaching the child that year. About 78% of all pre-K entrants, 69% of all Head Start entrants, and 73% of all kindergarten entrants were tested. The tested students closely mirrored the universe of students, except for the kindergarten cohort, where some differences between the two groups were found (6). While the child was being tested, the parent completed a survey to provide demographic information. Program participation and school lunch eligibility were determined separately (7). The three subtests we used were the letterword identification test (a measure of prereading skills); the spelling test (a measure of prewriting skills); and the applied problems test (a measure of premath skills). These subtests have been shown to be especially appropriate for children aged 4 to 5 and have been used by other researchers studying both at-risk and more diverse groups of children. Woodcock- Johnson test scores at or before school entry help to predict later scholastic achievement (8).

You're the one being disingenous. Oreskes published in Science, possibly, outside of Nature, the most prestigeous scientific publication extant. It is not equivalent to publishing an unreviewed opinion piece in a local newspaper (the route of 90% of the articles that dispute AGW). Had her piece been Opinion-driven, Science would have published it as an Editorial or perhaps Perspective. Instead, like most scientific articles, the Oreskes piece contained reproducible results.

 

Tim, firstly I would like to thank you for being one of the few skeptics that actually tries to bring us real data instead of news hype and political opinions.

I do not think that those graphs do butress your point though. CO2 output prior to the mid 1900s would have been much lower than the mid 1900s to present AND buffering systems should have been at a higher capacity as I stated above. Even without taking buffering systems into consideration, we can clearly see that from the early 1900s+ the CO2 levels have climbed almost exponentially higher yes? The fact that industrial processes have increased exponentially since the early 1900s this kind of makes sense. Maybe I am misunderstanding your point?

 

I don't know what Tim's source it.

But ice-core data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center ( Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center ) show a pretty clear correlation with the industrial revolution:

Carbon Dioxide (CO2)

 

I agree - CO2 has risen much more significantly in the latter half of the 20th C than the first half. But then consider 3 cases as per the thumbnail attached below:
Case A (pre-1945) - minimal CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere yet temperatures rose approximately 0.3 C
Case B (1945-1975) - significant CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere, yet temperatures actually fell by approximately 0.2 C
Case C (1975 - present) - significant CO2 accumulation - though at a slightly lower slope than in case B, and temperatures rose by approximately 0.6 C

The only scenario that strongly correlates with CO2 driving significant warming is Case C. And Case A and B, while certainly not refuting AGW, beg the question as to what other factors might drive climate. Not knowing the answer, we cannot say with much certainty whether, or how much of, the warming in the latter half of the 20th C. is due to CO2.

My bet is on PDO, which does a much better job of tracking to temperature change than does CO2:

 

Sorry - my Case A, B, C attachment is not attaching. Trying again...

 

The scientists tracking the PDO don't seem convinced of its basic predictability, and make no mention of using it as a measure of climate change or CO2.

Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
The "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO) is a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability...Causes for the PDO are not currently known. Likewise, the potential predictability for this climate oscillation are not known.

And the site your picture comes from has not been update since the year 2000.

 

Disingenuous? Sure Scott - you could believe in the absolute primacy of CO2 if you: ignore the importance of other non-CO2 factors such as AMO/PDO, land use/change, ignore solar variability / TSI, etc.; ignore Holocene warming that appears to be strongly linked to solar variability (not greenhouse gas forcing); ignore that temperatures over the past century (and in the current decade) have not moved in sync with CO2 over large spans of decades (see my case A, B, C post); ignore the fact that climate models do represent empirical data very well in many important instances and do not simulate many features of convective or large-scale precipitation characteristics; ignore the well documented deficiencies in the surface temperture record; and ignore satellite temperature readings which do not agree with the less reliable land-based temperature records.

Yep - if you ignore all of that, you might trust the history professor's "essay".

 

Thanks for those stats Tim.

My gut feeling on these cases are as follows:

Case A: Temperatures were on the rise due to other natural factors and as we know CO2 acts as an amplifier and does not neccessarily need to be a primary driver. In this case we may be experiencing the lag time between temp increase and eventual CO2 amplification.

Case B: 1945-1975 was part of the era of "dirty industry" and the added pollutants such as aerosols may have played a part in the "global dimming" pheonomenon and thus reduced observed global temperatures due to a reduction in photon activity at the ground level. This effect was observed from at least the 1960s to mid 1990s right? (Ohmura, A. 1989. "Secular variation of global radiation in Eurpoe", Liepert, B. 1994. "Solar Radiation in Germany", Stanhill, G. 1992)

Case C: As aerosols and soot levels delcine in the atmosphere and CO2 levels continued to rise we see the temperature resume its upward trend.

A recent slowing of that trend and at any other time in our records could have been modified by natural factors such as solar variation, energy distibution systems (water, air etc.), volcanic activity, etc.

We both agree that other "natural" factors are likely main drivers so it is hard to say when CO2 became a major factor but I believe that it is a main factor now that levels are so high compared to recent history.

 

Yes - but is your point that because it is unpredictable it does not influence climate?

As for the PDO table, I don't have anything more current, though NASA has recently announced that PDO has shifted to a cool phase and this is expected to persist for decades.




"The image also shows that this La Niña is occurring within the context of a larger climate event, the early stages of a cool phase of the basin-wide Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a long-term fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes between cool and warm phases approximately every five to 20 years. In the cool phase, higher than normal sea-surface heights caused by warm water form a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and southern Pacific, with cool water in the middle. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific was locked in the oscillation's warm phase, during which these warm and cool regions are reversed. For an explanation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and its present state, see: Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Earth and Space Resarch: Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index . "

As I said, PDO was likely responsible for much of the warming of the late 20th Century, but now it is waning and - surprise, surprise, we are seeing global cooling.

 

We also both agree CO2 is a factor - but what % I don't know - but my sense is maybe it contributes around 1/4 to 1/3 of temp. increase. Not insignificant, but not catastrophic.

As for the aerosol argument, I have heard it before but am not convinced because as I understand it, there is no data that consistently and systematically has measured anthropogenic (or total, for that matter) atmospheric aerosols over time.

I think it is possible aerosols declined during the period as you mentioned. But I think it is more likely that as reductions in aerosols in the US and Europe phased in slowly over time they were likely offset, perhaps exceeded, by those of these and other economies (Mexico, China, India, eastern block countries, Korea, Taiwan, etc).

 

Well, you appear alone in your opinion. The scientists who study and document the PDO make no such claims.
Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)
Ocean Surface Topography from Space-Science
Ocean Surface Topography from Space-Newsroom

About the only person who agrees with you is Joseph D'Aleo (a weatherman), although his agreement is dependant upon using only U.S. temperature and excluding global data.

 

Sorry - here is the more current...

http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/

 

I sort of agree but is there a level where it could become catestrophic? Like a bifurcation point where just a little more CO2 can make large changes in the system?

I agree we are lacking in this area or at least I have not seen a lot of data on aerosol level history. We do have great data on localized areas over short periods of time that we can work with though.

Without a lot of historic data it is difficult to make any real conclusions on the subject. We can look at the data we have and make predictions but I agree it is hard to say definitively what effect aerosols have had on climate overall.

 

So this thread and its incorrect title still stands--despite being phoney and discredited.
I wish newsgroups would pay attention to phoney threads like this, which are planted by people with ideological agendas--mostly right wing these days--I should add.
Delete these threads--to discourage others with agendas.
This nonsense just cheapens a newsgroup. The American Physical Society is a scientific organization of high repute, and they don't like to see their name misrepresented by agenda-ridden ideologues.

Probably the biggest mistake newsgroups make is to have a political forum. This opens the door for wingnut invasion.