OT: Ping Cursitor Doom

[The Natural Philosopher]

Do you know how first became aware of skeptical science. I had written a technical critique of renewable energy. It was the first time I had lent my real name to anything I had written on the internet.

Imagine my surprise when after I had posted it anonymously as an interesting reference, in a blog site, three people immediately denounced me as 'a well known climate denier whose views had been debunked on Skeptical science many times'

How could they? I was not known by my real name at all. My paper was not about climate change per se, it was about the problems of renewable energy.

Why would they do that?

The simple answer is that they were political activists and not interested in truth, but in promoting a political and commercial view using climate change as a reason and the methodology not of science, but of communist propaganda. I had been denounced, De-platformed. Unable to counter the message, they had simply lied about the messenger. No citation for their claim was ever given,. They relied on people simply not checking up.

I've told this story before. That's when you start to wonder what is really going on. Like the time may late lefty "I am nuclear adviser to Greenpeace" friend assured me that, in fact, there had been post Windscale, a cluster of cancer cases. And he had read that in the New Scientist or heard it on the BBC.

Well Ok what's on the beeb back in the 50s is not easily discovered, but the New scientist is archived. So I went looking and ALL I found was one reference to an article that *predicted* that there would be a cluster of cancer cases using the LNT model. No cluster had actually been found that I could discover, and yet in his mind, his memory was not of a prediction, but of a fact. Its the same with Chernobyl. Most people think that thousands died of cancer, then and later. It was 50 only. Mostly from acute radiation poisoning. Not cancer.

How many have died from Covid 19? From road accidents? From 911? People are crying out to stop lock-down and we are looking at 50,000 excess deaths, but a nuclear accident that killed only 50 people is a disaster great enough to shut down nuclear power for a generation?

He also assured me of a few other things before he died that were news to me. Taylors coffee was the best, memory foam mattresses were the bets, Warburtons crumpets were better than Waitrose's...Apple computers were better than PCs...in every case I discovered that these products were advertised heavily on TV.

I feel sad still for him, he wasn't as bright as he thought he was, but he tried to make up for it by being, as he thought, well informed, but in the end, he was just another useful idiot to the Left.

Oddly he was pretty sceptical about climate change.

People think emotionally, and they are manipulated emotionally. Pride, guilt and fear are the chief tools of the propagandist. "Saving the planet for your children" Bollocks 'This donkey is so sad because no one loves him' Bollocks. He just wants a carrot. "Can you stand by and watch Africans starve" Of course not Bob, have some money so you can send it to people who will use it buy guns and shoot them instead. More humane, in an Auschwitz sort of way...

The *actual* scientific confirmation of the climate change hypothesis is slender to non-existent. None of the model outputs are anything like the measured temperature even after the temperatures have all been adjusted to make them match, the temperature record shows peaks and troughs that are nothing like the smooth onward march of CO2. Whatever is causing them must be having far more effect than CO2, and yet we are assured that 'the dominant factor in climate change is carbon dioxide' when patently, it isn't.

But that is the *assumption* built into the models, Not one of which has come close to even getting the history right, let alone predicting the future. And yet we are supposed to bankrupt society based on their output?

The *impression* most people have, however, is that it's a really crucial issue proved beyond doubt by science. Because they have been told that, over and over again.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Can you for ONCE read what I SAID instead of inventing Aunt Sallys.

I said the models fudge them in. Not that they didn't include them. They dont 'do ' them in the sense that they are not modelled as localised dynamic turbulent structures, but as a '50% cloud cover' sort of object. Its called parametrisations. Turning something too complex to analyse fully into a simplified wet finger estimate.

Example. First time I ever used a computer to model an electronic circuit. I fed in et transistor data sheet numbers, optimised my circuit - it was a video amplifuer that was to produce as fast an edge as possible and got an acceptable result. Then I built the circuit... the top of the waveform was better than predicted. The bottom was ten times worse. Do you know what the Miller effect is? and how a varicap diode works?

The modelling program assumed a constant gain and a constant collector base capacitance. In reality the capacitance is modulated by the output voltage and multiplied by the gain and the gain depended on the actual collector current...so...the model was not worth wiping ones bottom on.

I am sure they are. I am sure the books exist, although he may not have them scanned in.

The point is that that is not a valid criticism.

Actually its becoming very slightly less alkaline. In some places.

I think it may well. If only to force people like you to really *think* about what in reality a measurement is actually measuring, and for example how a few hundred Weather stations that have all had cities grow up around them can be said to represent a true measure of 'average global temperature'

The thermometer on my car last time I took it through London on a winter night read +2 in Surrey, +3 in London, +2 in Hertfordshire and where I live 10 miles from any town, in Suffolk, - 1.

The best estimates of global warmning are less than a degree, to date. And I can show you 4 degrees variation inside 100 miles

The magnolias always blossom a fortnight earlier in Newmarket, than in my garden up a 300' hill ten miles away

I have no idea what you are talking about. I am asking if you would have expected that result. I made no suggestion on anything

I have never claimed that. Cursitor claims that. I don't agree with him. I think they have changed a bit, Why, and what effect they will have are as far as I am concerned completely unknown at this point in time. Historical records from the distant past show that global warming precedes CO2 increases, not the other way around The physics suggest that if you ignore the presumptuous 'positive feedback' bollocks, te effect of CO2 change is a minor second order effect, and if as my geologist Phd BIL states the earth's climate could not have been stable without *negative feedback* then te effect of rising CO2 is less than a wet fart in a desert....

I am not supporting the totality of Cursitors position, I believe him when he says that those are the figures in old books he has seen. I disagree with the conclusion he draws that they are *reliable* measurements of *average atmospheric CO2*. Which is impossible to take in a lab. With 19th century kit.

[The Natural Philosopher]

It wont be any more authoritative if you do.

But skeptical science is simply beneath contempt

[Cursitor Doom]

Indeed it is. But almost worse than that is the fact that it's been politicised. If you question the official narrative you're some kind of Nazi nut-case. Why is that? It's clearly nonsense to suggest such a thing, but not surprising when you remember that the groups promoting AGW are all either Globalist by nature or funded by Globalists. And these are the kind of individuals who do not give a FF about the future of mankind, let alone the planet! Once I was able to consign Al Gore's notorious hockey stick graph to the trash can things started to make a lot more sense. If the Globalists had their opportunity to start again from scratch, they would not have picked on CO2 to focus on. No, they'd have gone with something else - methane perhaps - because the published research on CO2 causing temperatures to rise is utter BS.

[Cursitor Doom]

You're trying to reason with a damn fool. First he claims he's seen my evidence and dismissed it, then he says I don't have any evidence for my claims. I'm glad I've KF'd him. I told him I'm not spoon-feeding anyone evidence on this forum for a load of trolls to have a feeding frenzy over. What I *did* tell him was where to look and how to find the evidence. He wants me to sift though a couple of hundred books and

6 sets of enclycopaedias, scan the documentation and upload it just for him to um and ah over. Why would I even bother?? What would it profit me? That's an extremely time-consuming exercise and I have far better things to do with my time. If you want to learn the truth about AGW there are no short cuts. You have to do your own research and come to your own conclusions. It's costly in terms of time, hassle and money but you won't be able to avoid that by just skipping the hard work and just reading someone else's conclusions which may well be politically-biased.

[Fredxx]

He's been asked several times to post links to them or photograph/scan these documents and put on a sharing site.

First of all he has to di is post his evidence. While he made reference to encyclopedias the information simply isn't there. Put simply he cannot post something that doesn't exist.

I have no idea why you think anyone can peer review non-existent evidence.

[Fredxx]

Quite, after a claim is made it is smart to ask for evidence. If there isn't any it is usual to discount the claim as nonsense or hearsay.

Sorry, the evidence has never been explained and don't see why you think different.

The only bits I have snipped are associated with AGW not with CO2. They are different subjects but I can understand it is easy for some to confuse the two.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think CO2 turned out to be really clever. Its complicated enough that you have to dig really quite deep to see its utter BS, and yet its plausible enough that even pretty educated scientists wont question it! I certainly didn't for *25 years*! It was only when it turned into renewable energy - and electrickery is MY subject, that I smelt a definite whiff of BS. And then when I raised a small cough of concern I was immediately shouted down, as a *climate denier*. I hadn't questioned climate at that point, only the efficacy of renewable energy.

And then it all fell into place as the most plausible explanation. So I spent te next ten years reading up the theories and the arguments and came down slightly to the cynical side of Judith Curry - namely that there may be a small effect, but it can safely be ignored.

And there is definitely a huge whiff of politics, propaganda and profit and not a lot of science in it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yep. 'Received wisdom' is no substitute for hard hours researching data and Doing Sums

Everyone is prepared to refer you to the BS site they got their BS from and expect you to consider it authoritative but heaven forfend you actually do some calculations and come up with an Original Thought. Let alone a Well Reasoned and Calculated View.

That, if it contradicts the Authoritative Source, is dismissed as 'mere political opinion'. Why they never dismiss the Authoritative Source as mere political opinion, is a mystery.

I conclude its all just pure stupidity and Bandar Log "We all say it, so it mist be true" gutless mob rule.

[Cursitor Doom]

His grasp of scientific method is extremely poor. He has no idea of the finer points of quantitive volumetric analysis and he doesn't even seem to have heard of Antoine Lavoisier, much less be acquainted with the fellow's astonishing contributions to the subject. Lavoiser was a French aristocrat who was active in chemistry in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1789 (which didn't end well for him unfortunately). Anyway, the chap was very well off and could afford to have the most exquisite balances and scales custom made for him. I think there are still a few of them surviving in science museums in europe and possibly America as well. The levels of accuracy he was able to achieve by means of his fabulous balances were nothing short of staggering - well into the ppm territory - and this was over

*100 years* before even the first of my "old books" was published. So he understands *none* of this yet expects me to waste my valuable time sifting through a mountain of text books to scan the relevant pages and upload them so he can examine them for himself! And since I obviously can't be bothered to do that just for some anyonymous newsgroup troll, he claims the evidence doesn't exist and I'm making it all up. Is there *anyone* who posts here that would go to that amount of trouble for a complete stranger when there's no money in it? I think well all know the answer to that. He must have an awfully high opinion of himself to seriously believe anyone with any sense would put themselves out to that degree just for his benefit!

[Martin Brown]

The first time anything is done the result can be a bit off.

What is a little more scary is when a highly precise new technique is used by a top tier experimentalist with a single correction (in this case for an imperfect vacuum) being applied in the wrong sense. People refined his method to get a few more digits but made the same systematic error. The error bars got ever tighter around the wrong value...

The speed of light as a function of time with error bars is very interesting. It was not until a new even more precise method came on stream that the systematic data analysis error was uncovered.

BTW can anyone recall the name of the relativity text that had this nice graph in it? I have searched in vain for it. There was a copy in my old school library so it must have been published by about 1975.

[gareth evans]

The speed of light is no longer subject to measurement because it is a defined value.

[Spike]

So where is your data on snapped abattoir workers?

[Spike]

You'll need to prove that.

Perhaps you have your telescope at your blind eye.

It isn't a peer review - you still don't understand the methodology, but I guess the term comes in useful as troll bait.

[Spike]

Being precisely wrong is a risk run by all new scientific techniques.

Exactly. This is the scientific process in action. The original experiment was replicated, and gave the same results. But when a new technique was used which gave a slightly different result, then the hunt was on to find the cause of the discrepancy, which could have been in either of the techniques used.

[Spike]

Bingo!

[Martin Brown]

He is right in the sense that they do not model clouds in detail in the whole world climate simulations - they use a proxy heuristic that works reasonably well instead. Rain clouds with phase changes on rapidly evolving turbulent dynamics are hard to model on their grid scale.

But things have become ever more realistic as supercomputers have more computational power and finer grids. The worrying thing is that as they are now beginning to model clouds in ever greater detail it is beginning to look like the heuristics they previously used understated the warming effect of global CO2 increases going forwards.

Essentially it boils down to the not unreasonable assumption by the climate scientists that they would be virulently attacked by righttard knuckle draggers if they assumed anything that could not be defended fully and in depth.

So their heuristics for cloud treatment are err necessarily more on the side of caution than it looks like reality will actually be.

Clouds are a double edged sword. Thin ones like cirrus that let plenty of light and heat in but stop outgoing radiation fairly efficiently can have a huge effect. Any cloud cover at all greatly slows the overnight cooling as you can see from frosty winter mornings after a clear sky.

The science is clear enough. What to do about it is not.

[Tim Streater]

But without more and more detail about the initial conditions, a finer grid doesn't serve.

[Spike]

In all senses, the finest grid depends quality of the equations used.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed.

There is a fundamental philosophical point here that can be expressed in terms of mathematics and engineering, and that is an understanding of how closely a model of the world can represent the real world.

The philosophy of the general public post the Enlightenment has become one of what I would call rational materialism, on the science side. By that I mean that when doing science, we hold that the world is real, independent of our belief in, or our experience of, it, directly observable by us and it *contains invisible natural laws* which science

*discovers* as *truths*.

This view was shaken to its core by the science of the 20th century. Einstein, faced with the constancy of the speed of light relative to the observer, could only 'save the data' by inventing - not discovering - inventing a system where time and space were no longer the same everywhere or the same for everyone, which completely overturned Newton with a view so radically different, that people didn?t believe in it until measurements showed it was *more accurate* than Newton.

This was I think the first crack in the rational materialist world view, and Karl Popper amplified it by showing that it made more sense - especially in the light of the way science appeared to be progressing, to regard scientific theories as not 'facts' in the 'real world' that science 'discovered' but as *models* *of* the real world, that might or might not be true, but whose truth could *never be established*. At best, they could withstand repeated tests designed to establish their falsity, and what science was, was the collection of models whose falsity could *in theory be established, but never actually had been, yet*. That is, science was not a collection of 'truths about the world, discovered by scientists' but only a collection of 'models that worked,

*so far*'.

Worse was to come, as science and mathematics attempted to desperately find *something* that could be relied upon, one single indisputable fact. The reverse proved to be true. Proof after proof turned up that such things were impossible! Kurt Gödel proved that mathematics and logic could not prove mathematics and logic were true! Turing showed that not only did some problems appear to be insoluble, but you could prove that you couldn't know in advance whether they were or not!

The advance of the digital computer then showed that problems that had been insoluble to date - the solution of non linear partial differential equations for example - whilst it could in theory be attempted, had wildly different outcomes depending on the smallest of deviations in the data. The Butterfly effect. And so what have been known for centuries was formalised into chaos theory.

What has this to do with climate modelling? the first thing is that climate models are *models*, based on a simplification of a problem in order to reduce it to a size that will fit in a supercomputer. These models are in fact non liner partial differential equations - lots of them - of which one, and only one, is the localised effect of a carbon dioxide molecule in terms of radiation absorption and re-emission. How relevant are all the other non linear partial derivatives? Can we

*tell in advance* that we can safely ignore, in this case, clouds on a local scale, without drastically affecting the outcome? And even if we modelled them, how could we tell what they were at a given time sufficiently accurately to not invoke the butterfly effect?

We can't.

All we can do, in real science is to run the models, and see if what they predict comes true.

It hasn't. Not even close.

Climate science is actually in a disastrous mess. The predictions it has made are so far out as to call into question the primary essence of the hypothesis - that carbon dioxide is the single most relevant thing in modern climate change.

Also, in order to make the models fit *historical* climate data, climate modellers found that CO2 alone wasn't powerful enough to account for the undisputed warming between 1970 and 1998. So instead of saying 'well something else is causing it as well', they postulated an extraordinary hypothesis that 'positive feedback was amplifying it', by a factor of up to 5 or more.

The fact that if positive feedback that powerful existed, a cloud passing the sun in outer Mongolia or a volcanic eruption could plunge the earth into a new ice age, or a sunny day in Siberia cause runway global warming, was simply swept under the carpet.

Because the feedback did not just apply to carbon dioxide induced heating. The mechanisms suggested applied to anything that altered any part of Earth's climate. Volcanic eruptions. Extra cloudiness. Less cloudiness. Any small factor could in theiory lead to runaway ice ages or runaway boiling planets. These just didnt happen, and in fact I read a paper where the volcanic eruption at mount pinatubo was measured and its effect on climate

*without amplification* used to 'prove' that te dip in temperatures that occurred was consistent with the albedo change of the earth. All without amplification. Which was then used to show that global warming was consistent again with CO2 increase as long as you *included* amplification!

Sheesh

In reality to achieve global climate stability it is well known that in fact there is an overall massive negative feedback in climate. There has to be. What this is and how this operate is badly understood. One obvious and major player us the T? radiation equation. Loss of energy goes up very rapidly with temperature. But in there also is the water cycle, whereby ocean currents carry heat to the north pole, and clouds carry heat well above most of the carbon dioxide, and also reflect heat back before it even reaches the earth, and this cannot be easily modelled at all, So they don't.

The null hypothesis is to change the basic assumption of climate change. Leaving CO2 out, are the factors we do know about, all the other non linear partial differentials - taken together and integrated into a chaotic system with overall negative feedback, are those enough to cause pseudo periodic changes in climate of the sort we observe? And the answer is yes.

In short, once we remove the feedback that is demonstrably not happening, CO2 has no impact of any noticeable value on climate at all.

So what is causing modern climate change? The chaos mathematics show that what causes the climate to change is probably - climate itself! That is no such things as a 'stable climate' actually exists, or ever has existed, or can be expected to exist in the future,. Climate change will happen whatever we do.

And this is borne out by the holocene optimum the Roman warm period, the Mediaeval warm period, the little ice age, and indeed the big ice ages too.

In the last ten thousand years its been much warmer than today by a significant amount and also much colder. Whilst CO2 has been broadly constant.

These periods have been hundreds of years in length and within them were shorter period fluctuations too. Exactly what you would expect from a chaotic system, Exactly what you would *not* expect from a positive feed back amplified climate system dominated by greenhouse gases.

The facts would seem to be that climate models are not modelling the right things and even if they tried, neither the data collection nor the computing power is good enough to give any more than nonsense outputs.

And climate has always changed anyway, with or without humans.