On my way back to Mr. Steele's 'Climate Science Horror Series' I came across a YouTube video of Dr. Singer talking to Dr. Dessler's class about Merchants of Doubt. I tell you, talk about another perfect vehicle for continuing my investigation into the mechanics of their fraud, so I made a U-turn, returning Jim to the back-burner.
Starting on that, I spent some time viewing another Dr. Dessler YT video, then another, and another. Particularly his short series explaining the basics of climate science.
They were such a pleasant break from the cynical, infuriatingly dishonest spiel of Mr. Steele or Dr. Singer, that superstar of the Republican/libertarian PR campaign, that I decided to take a break and focus a couple posts on a genuine climate scientist explaining real climate science. The contrast in substance and style is astounding.
Dr. Dessler is an example of how to enable constructive learning, as opposed to dog-chasing-tail debates. With Dr. Dessler's blessing I'm posting this informative climate science lecture - as an example of how serious scientists approach their subject.
For the interested student I have included time-signature notes of highlights.
Starting on that, I spent some time viewing another Dr. Dessler YT video, then another, and another. Particularly his short series explaining the basics of climate science.
They were such a pleasant break from the cynical, infuriatingly dishonest spiel of Mr. Steele or Dr. Singer, that superstar of the Republican/libertarian PR campaign, that I decided to take a break and focus a couple posts on a genuine climate scientist explaining real climate science. The contrast in substance and style is astounding.
Dr. Dessler is an example of how to enable constructive learning, as opposed to dog-chasing-tail debates. With Dr. Dessler's blessing I'm posting this informative climate science lecture - as an example of how serious scientists approach their subject.
For the interested student I have included time-signature notes of highlights.
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The Human Influence of Climate
A.E. Dessler, Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences
Texas A & M University
Jan. 2011 seminar given to the TAMU Petroleum Engineering Department.
Published on Sep 19, 2014 | dessler2
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notes:
Dr. Dessler shares his intention early on:
"What I'm going to try to convince you of is that it's really a much simpler problem than you may be led to believe. You can use freshman physics to convince yourself there's good chance that if we keep emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere we're really going to see very large warming over the next century, and that's my goal…"
0:41 I like to start off with this iconic plot (NASA GISS Global-Avg. Surface Temp Record 1880-2009), it's the global surface temperature record measured by thermometers that are all across the globe…
1:52 As scientists, and you probably all know that, you don't ever rely on a single data set. ... as scientists we want to look for supporting data...
… (for 30 years we've) measured surface temperature from satellites...
2:11 we've been monitoring glaciers for hundreds of years...
2:16 we've been measuring sea ice extent for several decades from satellites...
2:31 we are measuring the temperature in the oceans, this is not the ocean surface temperature... this is the temperature in the bulk of the ocean, down to the depths ... sure enough, ocean temperatures are going up...
2:50 and finally we see that sea levels are going up also...
2:55 key thing here, is that there's multiple lines and evidence...
the data fit together and so you can call this - consilience - this idea that you have lots of different data like puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. If you put a puzzle together you're pretty sure you put it together right, if every piece fits. …
4:00 ...warning unequivocal. Essentially nobody really argues about warming and so I'm not gonna talk anymore about "if" the climate warming, I'm going to assume that we all know it's warming and move on from their…
I'll return to this idea of "consilience" - that we have multiple lines of evidence that fits together ...
... if you look at the skeptics they don't have that, there's no consistent skeptical argument…
There is no coherent alternative view point that explains all the data.
There is no coherent alternative view point that explains all the data.
4:45 ...Climategate ... the East Anglia group that had the emails stolen work on surface thermometers... along with two other groups...
5:45 ...essentially in order for you to believe that scientists are fabricating the warming the conspiracy has to be immense... include all these international centers...has to include people doing satellites ... has to include glaciologist... (oceanographers), has to include all these people…
6:26 ... climate sensitivity, energy in... energy out...
9:08 ... simplest climate model...
10:30 ... add an atmosphere...
13:25 Notice I haven't used any climate models, this is all freshman physics...
13:45 Let's go to the next question let's imagine... adding second atmosphere (getting thicker)...
14:41 Summarizes the difference between the three different types of atmospheres.
15:20 This is why, if you ask a climate scientist if I add greenhouse gas to the atmosphere what's going to happen? The answer is, It's going to get warmer. It's fundamental very simple physics, it's not complicated, it doesn't take a climate model. It takes algebra and sigma T to the 4th...
15:45 (reviews) the general equation describing a doubling of CO2...
16:30 If that's all there were to it, this would be a very short seminar...
16:45 Unfortunately, it's not that simple. There is one more layer of complexity to the problem... feedbacks... albedo... melting ice...
18:30 Calculating the effect of feedback.
19:50 water vapor feedback...
lapse rate feedback...
ice albedo feedback...
cloud feedback...
20:28 How do we know this is right? ...
20:50 Ssatellite measurement of water vapor feedback...
22:40 If Richard Lindzen at MIT was here he would essentially agree with everything I said up till now. Where we disagree is in this one term "cl" (cl=cloud feedback) We disagree a lot on that term but still if you take the world's most credible climate skeptic he would not disagree with anything I've said up until right at this point…
(Incidentally the cloud vapor feedback is Dr. Dessler's area of study. He is an expert!)
24:45 Ice ages offer supporting evidence of climate sensitivity around 2.7°...
25:30 Last ice age we know the planet was about 5 degrees Celsius colder than today...
26:20 … we're not going to stop there, we're going to look at other things. We can also look at the the climate over the last four hundred twenty million years ... co2 and climate basically moving together...
27:05 So again the key thing here is consilience.
Everywhere you look we have a consistent view of carbon dioxide driving the climate …
27:40 How much warming are we going to get over the next century?
28:55 ... this agrees with models but it's not coming from a model... so again you often hear people say climate change is all coming from models. ... (but you don't need models to understand why the warming.)
32:25 okay so now I'll talk a little bit about the skeptical arguments you hear. I think to really understand the climate debate you can't just listen to the main stream view. ...
32:40 Let's start off our forty years ago, 1969 and a memo from Brown and Williamson Tobacco... "Doubt is our product since it is the way of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the best way to establish controversy." ...
33:20 Merchant of Doubt is an excellent book, I would highly recommend it, a very thoroughly documented ...
33:45 ... Tobacco's "Doubt Strategy"
Facts aren't all in
Science can't tell us :
How cigarettes cause cancer
How many cigarettes you need to smoke before you get cancer
Why some smokers get cancer and others don't, and why some non-smokers
get cancer
Why some smokers get cancer and others don't, and why some non-smokers
get cancer.
Scientists don't all agree.
It's effect and correct...
What the doubt strategy obscures is what we do know.
... the epidemiological evidence is really crystal-clear...
... the PlayBook has been used over and over again...
... second hand smoke today...
... ozone depletion...
... acid rain exactly the same arguments...
... vaccines...
... and now climate change...
... the skeptics are using tobacco playbook and they're going to a page by page...
36:25 (Specific examples of) Anti-Consilience... classic lawyer strategy (read Republican/libertarian PR machine.)
36:44 ... a cross-examination of climate science ... (classic lawyer strategy examined)
38:00 (All boils down to Anti-Consilience Arguments)
None of their arguments fit together.
"... again there's no coherent theory... and part of that strategy, if you actually put a coherent theory together and wrote it down it would be trivial to tear it to smithereens. So instead you make an argument that doesn't make sense, make a thousand bad arguments with the idea that there's no way anyone can refute all of them because there are so many of them."
38:18 so who should you believe... as a society we believe in expert opinion...
44:10 Things to remember
*Most of what we know about climate change (manmade global warming) comes from observations and simple physics
*Climate sensitivity 2-4.5°C
* We can expect a few degrees of warming over the next century
*A few degrees of warming is quite significant
We listen to the experts in our lives all the time, and most the time it's not very uncontroversial.
45:15 Questions
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