Discussion with Pete Ridley #1

{edited Saturday evening}

Recently I've exchanged a couple emails with Pete Ridley, our unlikely connection is on account of mutual blogging regarding that fraud John O'Sullivan, though I haven't taken the time to become acquainted with the particulars of their feud.
[Ridley has reminded me that we had actually met earlier, in the comments section - http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bbc-earth-climate-wars-dr-iain-stewart.html ]

In any event, though Ridley and I agree on our contempt for O'Sullivan, Ridley doesn't accept the scientific consensus among climate experts regarding global warming and what's driving it. 

Not sure why, but lately he's taken to counseling me on the errors of my supposedly gullible scientific establishment loving ways.  In the process I've been pulled into a discussion at globalpoliticalshenanigans.blogspot.com, that has in turn motivated me to use a couple quotes as a vehicle to highlight some of the dishonest tactics used by such folks.

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Ridley writes: In November 2013 you (CC) opined that " .. Colorado experienced its most extreme weather event in recent memory between Sept. 9 and 15.  .. resulting in massive flooding .. Predictably, folks are asking: Is this related to man-made global warming?  That a question that is both easy and tough to answer.  Our climate system is a global heat-distribution engine .. our land, atmosphere, and the oceans have indisputably warmed .. our atmosphere’s moisture content has been measurably increasing.  Given such geophysical realities, it is self-evident that all extreme weather events contain elements of this newly energized climate system.  And that much more of the same must be expected. So in that sense, the answer is easy: Yes .. " (see: http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2013/10/colo-floods-statistics-vs-physics.html). 

That's a lot of conviction from someone with no more than lay understanding of the subject. Despite your efforts in that article to give the impression of a sound understanding of the processes and drivers of the different global climates you demonstrated that your understanding is very limited. {Pete "tells" me I'm wrong, but doesn't show us by confronting my specific claims with contra-evidence.  What's up with that?  

A)   Our climate system is a global heat-distribution engine .. our land, atmosphere, and the oceans … B)   have indisputably warmed … C)   our atmosphere’s moisture content has been measurably increasing.  }

Let me give you an example.
You claimed " .. one result of our society “salting” our atmosphere with greenhouse gases is that the atmosphere’s insulating ability has increased .. More greenhouse gas molecules means catching more heat, so the planet warms.  Since the industrial revolution, society has increased that greenhouse-gas component by about a third, causing the Earth to retain more heat within our climate system than it used to .. ". 

That is pseudoscientific gobbledegook . . .  "

Pete Ridley

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Pete, just calling it "gobbledegook" doesn't make it so. 
It's a simpled-down version for sure - but I think you'd be hard pressed to show what Dr. Barrett would dispute in my admittedly simplistic description.

Does the term "salting" confuse you? 
Do you disagree with the concept of GHGs as an "insulation medium"?
Do you disagree with the description of "Earth retaining more heat"?

Please do justify your ridicule of my description.
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Why resent that I'm familiar with the topic, after all I've been interested in our planet's climate system since about 1970/71 - it stands to reason I understand the basics fairly well.  I also keep getting better at recognizing the difference between a solid argument and one with obvious holes in it and so far the denialist crowd has yet to come up with any rational coherent explanations, and trust me I've investigated many claims as this blog's archive will attest.

The contrarian's entire strategy is based on feeding confusion, misrepresenting the data, attacking scientists and other messengers, all buttressed by an ideologically driven ironclad refusal to accept credible data they don't like. 

Always drawing the discussion away from actually looking at what's going on within our global heat distribution engine and it's implications for humanity's near and distant future. 

I contend contrarian folks act like they couldn't care less about learning - not wanting to know and stalling pro-active action is all their strategy is about. Sadly that Denial Machine will continue winning the political contest and we will continue doing nothing to change - allowing accumulating compounding interest and Earth's geophysical processes to steam roll our complex global society.

Incidentally, about that key component of Earth's insulation against freezing space (read greenhouse gases), here's what's happening to it: 

Pumphandle 2012: Time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide

CarbonTracker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA7tfz3k_9A

That's a lot of extra insulation in a very, very short space of time.

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Ridley writes:"After reading (and understanding) it you should be able to recognise what Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) plots such as those produced by the MODTRAN tool tell us (http://forecast.uchicago.edu/Projects/modtran.html). "

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Pete, how do those plots conflict with my simple description? 

Besides, reading a couple books on a topic may make one familiar with the topic, but grasping the outlines is a far cry from being in a position to pass judgement on the inner-working of full-time practicing experts!  Still that's what contrarians keep tossing out, with their presumptions to knowing better than full time experts.

Time and time again your type believes it's OK to judge complex questions such as ModTran output - stuff that contains complexities and nuances light years beyond our understanding - even if you've read ModTran101.  

That's why we have full-time working experts in our complex society… denying the community of experts seems hubris writ large and an invitation to chaotic collapse !

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As for our global heat distribution engine though it's infinitely complex, it does follow basic easily learned fundamentals.  Here's a wonderful video that gives a nice introduction to the immense interconnected global climate system.  It covers a bit more than climate, although think about it... isn't climate related to everything in our lives in one way or another?

Earth From Space HD 1080p / Nova

mavireck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38peWm76l-U

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Ridley also disputes that anything abnormal is going on in the Arctic using the argument that because climate changed in the past, we should ignore current human driven warming.  But, the evidence say something quite different.

Amount of old ice in Arctic, 1987-2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-BbPBg3vj8

NOAA Climate.gov

Of course Ridley also neglects to tell his audience that over the past ten thousand years Earth has been in a 'climate optimum' where climate swings have stayed within moderate bounds, as opposed to previous radical swings - it's this very 'climate optimum' that allowed complex society to develop {think about that as you look at the CO2 concentration graph shared above}.

Yet Ridley and other contrarians counsel disregard, if not contempt, for how this climate engine operates and how humanity is impacting it.  Even pretending that society can withstand any changes forced on us.

A student of our planet would want to know about the causes of earlier changes and how those relate to the current situation and how humanity's impact is superimposing itself upon those "natural" background patterns.

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You can bet denialists howl and denigrate all of these sources, but that makes me wonder about what's going on in their head when every rational source is seen as an enemy?

   The Discovery of Global Warming   

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change. 

This Website created by Spencer Weart supplements his much shorter book, which tells the history of climate change research as a single story. On this Website you will find a more complete history in dozens of essays on separate topics, occasionally updated.

If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all...

• A GOOD PLACE TO START is the Summary of the history of climate change science.

• For a scholarly preface, look at Methodology and Sources.
• If you are somewhat familiar with the subject, you could select topics from
  the Table of Contents (site map).

• You can print out individual essays using PDF files. These files are for the February 2014 version and will not include more recent updates.

• You can Search the entire text.

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This is the first in a series of 28 informative climate science education videos geared for intelligent interested non-science types.  They are produced by Peter Hadfield who does a good clean job of explaining himself.

1. Climate Change -- the scientific debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo&list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP&index=1

potholer54

Uploaded on Sep 21, 2008A basic look at how climate scientists infer that man-made carbon gases are changing the climate, and how this view is contradicted by other climate scientists who are skeptics.
Peter Hadfield is a former science correspondent with an interest in reporting the facts, not the media hype.

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SkepticalScience.com has become the premier repository of climate studies and information geared toward explaining that science to the student and lay-person in a clear concise manner.  Their articles are followed by excellent on-point discussions that sometimes teach as much as the articles themselves.

Their viewership and recognition from within the professional community attest to SkS's serious approach to explaining the science and they always link back to original sources so that further investigation can be simplified.  

These are reasons why SkS has become the butt end of vicious attacks and dirty tricks including getting broken into and having personal information stolen and shared with malicious intent.

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Another excellent resource is listening to climate scientists giving public talks - one of my favorite venues is UCTV - Perspectives on Ocean Sciences, but YouTube seems to be up-loading more college lectures every day.  Over at Citizenschallenge I feature a few, such as a most interesting 1982 talk by Dr. McCracken regarding the then current state of understand, {also Dr. Parmesan and Dr. Emanuel talks among others}.

The above are good entry level sources for solid scientific information.  

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