Idiocy from Ed Berry, PhD

What can you even do when climate deniers won't agree to the basic rules of arithmetic??

Ed Berry is a physicist who earned his PhD back in the Mesozoic era. From Caltech, no less. He now lives in Montana as a mountain man, battling long-horned sheep for food, coming into town once a year for saltpeter and a ballot.

Ed is a hard core climate denier. (And, naturally, a hard core Trump supporter.) So hard core he doesn't care when he makes basic, boneheaded mistakes -- because, you know, one never admit error when a bear is charging at you, or someone who understands the science.

Q: How much has atmospheric CO2 increased since the pre-industrial era?

A: That's an easy calculation, right?

pct chg = change/initial_amount = (408 ppm - 280 ppm)/280 ppm = 46%.

That's simple, clearly.... But not in Ed's denier-land. This is from Ed's blog:

30%?? Whoa.... That's just a dumb arithmetic error. It comes from calculating

change/final_amount = (408 ppm - 280 ppm)/408 ppm = 31%

which is obviously NOT how to calculate a percentage change. You and I learned this in 5th or 6th grade. So did Ed. It's a trivial, arithmetic error.

But one that mountain men will not admit to. Ed is so much of an uber denier that he can't even admit to a simple arithmetic error, can't say, Oops!, you're right, let me fix this and go on.

Now, what can you do when a denier won't accept arithmetic?? I have no idea.

It's all part of Ed's Big Misunderstanding -- he writes, "Why human CO2 does not change climate." He's so sure of this, of course, just as he's sure that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is 30%, even though every 6th grader knows better. He's submitted a paper somewhere (he won't say where), and is proud that after 4 months it hasn't yet been rejected. Remarkable!

Sorry, but I don't accept PhDs in physics misunderstanding the basic science behind global warming -- the Earth emits infrared radiation, and the atmospheric GHGs absorb it. Rejecting that is bad enough. But claiming that our HUGE emissions of CO2 aren't piling up in the atmosphere -- somewhere -- that's is just, I'm sorry, pure stupidity. Dumb. Ignorant. Idiotic.

But what can you do when deniers won't accept the basic rules of arithmetic? Where do you even start?? Beats me....

Fulgarite - When Lightening Strikes Sand

Via National Geographic

Obamacare Has Bent the Cost Curve

Data:
monthly health care costs - Altarum Institute
monthly inflation: Fred CPI-U

That Arctic Has Been Astonishingly Warm

This is an astonishing graph:

The Arctic is currently about 17°C (31°F) degrees above normal. The baseline (green line) is the 1958-2002 average. 

If that were happening where I live, today's high would have been 86°F. Normal high (1981-2010) for Salem, Oregon today is 53°F.

Reflecting this, Arctic sea ice has already reached a record low for the year, 2.5% below last year's record low. 

Cool Integral

From KarlMagnus Petersson‏ on Twitter:

In the same way, you can show (I think) that

which is also cool, but not as cool, since "3" is not as cool as "e."

Note: 1/3 < 1/e. This makes sense, since for 0 < x <1, sqrt(x) < cuberoot(x) < fourthroot(x), etc.

Note II: Speaking of e, one of my best friends, a colleague in graduate school (we had the same advisor, and have gotten even closer since), once wrote a paper that contained the number e^e, which I think is about the coolest thing ever published in physics. I wrote about it here for Physics World.

Global Warming in Ursula Le Guin's 1969 Novel "The Left Hand of Darkness"

The science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin recently died (she lived in Portland, Oregon for decades), and since I hadn't read anything by her I thought I better get started. So I picked The Left Hand of Darkness, her breakthrough book published in 1969. She was on the ball, because even then she knew about CO2 and global warming. Here she writes about her fictional planet of Gethen.

Eskichwe rem ir Her hypothesized that the volcanic activity in N.W. Orgoreyn and the Archipelago has been increasing during the last ten or twenty millennia, and presages the end of the Ice, or at least a recession of it and an interglacial period. CO2 released by the volcanoes into the atmosphere will in time serve as an insulator, holding in the longwave heat-energy reflected from the earth, while permitting direct solar heat to enter undiminished. The average world temperature, he says, would in the end be raised some thirty degrees, till it attains 72°. I am glad I shall not be present. Ai says that similar theories have been propounded by Terran scholars to explain the still incomplete recession of their last Age of Ice. All such theories remain largely irrefutable and unprovable; no one knows certainly why the ice comes, why it goes. The Snow of Ignorance remains untrodden.

It's interesting that she associated CO2 warming with the Ice Ages, as science did for a good while back then, I think, while it grappled with understanding the Pleistocene.

More Humor from SpaceX

(Besides the orbiting red roadster, I mean)

"And Yet it Warms"

I think this is hilarious:

Backstory (which everyone should know already).

Ocean Heat Content Reaches Record Highs

We all know by now -- or should know -- that ocean heat content (OHC) is easily the best metric of a global energy imbalance -- about 93% of the trapped heat goes there.

At least, The Guardian has caught on.

The OHC data for 4Q17 are in, and it shows that in 2017, the OHC of the top sixth and the top half of the global ocean both reached record annual values:

In 2017, the heat uptake for the 0-2000 m region -- the top half of the ocean -- was 1.6 W/m² relative to 2016, and its acceleration, in just 12 years of data recording, is 0.039 ± 0.018 W/m²/yr.

Guesses for the New Doomsday Clock Setting?

Update 1/25: The Clock was set forward by half a minute, "amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change," so it's now at two minutes to midnight. Trump has at least 3 more years in office, so if this trend continues the Clock would be at a half a minute to midnight at the end of his first term. The fate of the world might hinge on defeating his bid for reelection (or on his impeachment and conviction -- one can always hope).

"'This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War,'” said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." 

I certainly worry about nuclear Armageddon -- though not as much when I was younger, where for a few years after graduate school I would sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of a night after a dream -- but I don't think climate change will be "catastrophic." Difficult, costly, tragic in some situations -- but not catastrophic. By the 22nd century humans will probably know enough to do responsible geoengineering and prevent the 40 to 60 meters of sea level rise that would otherwise be coming over several millennia. Half of Florida might be gone by then, though. That alone is gonna cost trillions.

--

The Doomsday Clock is currently set to 2.5 minutes before midnight. It's maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and will be reset this Thursday at 10 am ET, 7 am PT, 15:00 GMT. (No adjustment is also possible, as was done last year.) Watch online.

Any guesses on the new setting? I'm guessing 1.5 minutes before midnight, based solely on the fool now in the White House. (He'll probably consider this a positive sign of his worldwide fame.) A substantial jump forward, but still not too close to pure panic.

1.5 minutes before midnight would be the Clock's more dire setting ever. Here's its history:

Climate Models Are Doing Great

After 2017's annual temperatures came in, Gavin Schmidt posted this on Twitter:

Here, historical forcings are used prior to 2000 -- the actual GHG concentrations, volcanic eruptions, etc. After 2000 the comparison uses the old IPCC Scenario A1B -- "...very rapid economic growth, global population that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies." (Truth is, there isn't much of any difference in these old AR4 scenarios by this time.)

Looks equally good with the CMIP5 models.

The model/observation difference varies depending on the particular year (or couple of years), but over the long-term it's looking pretty good.

Certainly good enough to see that we have a big AGW problem on our hands.

Build a Wall....

Doomsday Clock

On January 25th at 10 am ET the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will reveal their annual decision about the hands of their Doomsday Clock: bit.ly/2Dp0wnS. It's currently set at 2:30 minutes before midnight.... I expect that will decrease to maybe 1:30 before midnight...simply because Trump is an ignorant, dangerous idiot.

It's stunning to me that we/Congressional representatives are letting such a clearly ignorant and unthinking man decide, minute by minute, the literal fate of the world.

The world must -- seriously -- I really mean, seriously -- outlaw all nuclear weapons for all time.

I'm not kidding at all. We're 7 billion strong...but never use it.

A Song About the Umpqua Shooting

By Patterson Hood and the Drive-by Truckers, my favorite band for the few years:


I used this song for an op-ed I wrote for the Salem Statesman Journal, published in November.

Michael Mann Has a New Blog

Michael Mann now has a personal blog. (Nothing there yet.) Here's the RSS feed.

Between Twitter, Facebook, RealClimate and now a blog, he must be the most socially connected scientist on the planet. And I see him quoted everywhere these days. And he still co-authors a lot of papers and articles.

Here was his recent rebuttal to an op-ed by Oregon's leading denier, Gordon Fulks.

Why Nikolov and Zeller's Pressure Claim Violates Basic Physics

Nikolov and Zeller claim that planetary surface temperatures are set by surface pressure. Published in a journal indicted for fraud.

They even go so far as to assert that there is no greenhouse effect. Or that it's 90 K, not the usual 33 K we have all seen. (Which, by the way, is a heuristic calculation only.) Hard to keep their claims straight.

This is obviously bull -- but why?

Because N&Z did no science -- they just fit 5 independent data points to a curve of 6 independent data points. Just curve-fitting.

I trust you understand why that's trivially easy to do, and why it's not science.

But they insist they have made a ground-breaking discovery, a la Galileo or Newton.

(That should set your bullshit detector off right there, ringing very, very loudly. See John Baez's Crackpot Index.)

But here's the thing -- their claim isn't even in accord with basic physics.

Their formula for surface temperature as a function of surface pressure, T_s(Ps), implies, for current Earthlike conditions

dT_s/dP_s > 0

where "s" stands for surface.

But this is wrong, for the simple reason that a higher surface pressure leads to a lower surface temperature. And it's not difficult to understand why.

It comes down simply to density and optical path. More pressure means more molecules in the path of incoming sunlight, which means less sunlight reaches the surface, because there is less shortwave (Rayleigh) scattering. From Poulsen et al, Science 2015:

Click to Enlarge

So lower pressure means less scattering of sunlight, so more of it reaches the surface. The surface is warmer at lower pressure. That's not surprising -- though N&Z choose to turn their back on this physics.

And a warmer surface means a higher temperature in the lower troposphere, which in turn means the air holds more water vapor. (See the Clausius-Claperyon equation.) That water vapor increases the greenhouse effect, leading to an even higher surface temperature.

So the idea that pressure somehow creates a higher surface temperature is clearly wrong. Atmospheric pressure does not increase incoming shortwave radiation -- radiation from the Sun. It decreases it.

Naturally (and unfortunately), Nikolov and Zeller have ignored all questions about this on Twitter, as if they think blatantly ignoring these question about the physics will get rid of these inconvenient questions, and their stolid, unenlightening, unphysical curve-fitting will shine through.

This is why they're properly classified as "deniers." Real scientists and real people do not ignore questions, if they're interested in getting at the truth.

If you don't want to be labeled a denier, don't act like one.

Checkmate: how do climate science deniers' predictions stack up? | Environment | The Guardian

Good stuff. Don Easterbrook gets thoroughly raked over the coals:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up

Scientists Link Hurricane Harvey’s Record Rainfall to Climate Change

NY Times: "Two studies of the storm that overwhelmed Houston last summer say global warming made the rain much worse."

Read More...

Daily Record Highs in US Now Far Above Daily Record Lows

From “Daily record highs are vastly outpacing daily record lows in the U.S.” Climate Central, 12/6/17.

Major New Discovery Using the Principle of Nikolov and Zeller

I've made a "major discovery" -- for the five solar system objects considered by Nikolov and Zeller, their Principles show that an object's Global Mean Annual near-surface Temperature (GMAT) is exactly determined by its radius.

And I only used five free parameters. Their model uses six.

😁

Eli Rabbet has a nice post about the games Nikolov and Zeller are playing. Nikolov is all over Twitter proclaiming their "new discovery," which is nothing more than curve fitting with almost no physics involved. ≧ 2 can play at that game.