Diary, responding to Dr. J.W. Geier (21-10-09) It's not the sun, or bad models.

 

John W. Geier MD, commented at 

Robert Holmes aka 1000Frolly PhD. Conman is, as Conman does.

... 

The main science issue is that the Earth cannot act as its own experimental control.

Computer models of the Earth’s climate reflect the biases and knowledge gaps of the modellers and amplify errors over time.

It is unfortunate that the other terrestrial planets in this solar system are quite different from Earth.

The climate is a holistic function of the stellar flux, atmosphere and distribution of land and ocean on a planet.

september 28, 2021 at 10:53 PM

{ I’ve been busy with chores, so not much going on at my blogs.  Getting an intelligent comment, let alone any serious discussion, is fairly rare, so sometimes there's many days where I don't bother checking my comments folder.  

This morning I found a comment from a couple weeks ago (how the time flies) it was refreshingly coherent, at least against the backdrop of what I usually get, and it offers me something worth discussing. The sort of comment I feel obligated to post and respond it.  

Dr. John Geier's comment fits that bill.  Even if I believe he's being deceptive, and missing the forest for the trees.  Thing is, I imagine he might well be deceiving himself first and foremost.  Which is why I want to try and explain what he's missing, hopefully doing a little better than the time before.}

citizenschallenge responds to Dr. Geier …

With all due respect Dr. Geier, that is nonsense. We know plenty well what is going on within our global heat and moisture distribution engine. Science has been intensely studying our atmosphere since the 1940s - nature is not some trickster and we don't need another Earth to experiment with in order to understand how our Earth's geosphere/biosphere behaves.

Why do you set impossible expectations? 

Reviewing John Cook’s "Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change"

I was surprised to receive an email from John Cook the creator and driving force behind SkepticalScience.com inviting me to review his new book “Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change.”  Having received the challenge, I couldn’t refuse.  An easy to read graphic book that at 164 pages frames important climate science and communication lessons within cartoons, artwork and concise sentences.

It reads to me as a light hearted, inoffensive, easy to comprehend look into the conundrum of conveying climate science facts to folks in a world that’s swimming in disinformation.

John Cook doesn’t shout or agitate instead preferring to explain the well understood science, while offering only fleeting glimpses into the past decades of full blown malicious dirty tricks that the contrarian campaigns against climate science understanding are guilty of.

The Cranky Uncle’s opening chapter is “How did Climate Change get so Controversial?” tells the story of a few corporate funded (Republican) political operatives who were able to completely distort how climate science was presented to the public.  

Earth Centrist, why it matters.

The human spirit keeps us striving.  Making an effort matters.  Lately, I've been telling myself I need to speak up, as in go beyond just writing.  Not an exciting idea for an introvert.  Still, these days there are go-arounds.  I'm old enough to be in total awe at this iPhone of mine.  I mean beyond phone, it's a good camera and mic, texting apparatus, adding machine, compass, internet connection, I mean it's better than Star Trek which was outta this world not that long ago.  

So here it is, my Take #1,  "Earth Centrist" introduction, less than two minutes.  A short overview of why it matters to me.  Spoiler, I'm not big on staring into the screen, besides it's the words and ideas they are trying to describe that are important.  Also, I love where I've been blessed to live and might as well share some of the beauty.  It's prettier than I am, that's for sure.   ;- )

If you're curious about what comes next you might like reading, 

"Peter, why are you an Earth Centrist?"*

http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2019/04/citizenschallenge-why-you-earth-centrist.html

(*Needs some work, but it's a good start.)

"Blue team v Pruitt" update

Here's an update on my Blue Team teaches Pruitt project.

A reminder, this is an outline for exploring the learning opportunities Pruitt's Red Team Blue Team challenge offers for exposing GOP's intellectual dishonesty.  With time I hope to add posts and links to sources explaining all of the listed items.

"Blue team v Pruitt"

 Pruitt, questioning the unquestionable is fine. 

 Now, will you pay attention to the answers you receive? 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Science’s Blue team educates 

Pruitt’s GOP Red team  -  A Rough Outline.

I appreciate this is only an amateur’s exercise, I dare you to do better.  

Heck, I implore you to do better.  Please.

 https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/earths_atmosphere_and_the_setting_sun.jpg

Schooling Pruitt's Red Team about our planet and its climate

I wrote the following column mid December for the Four Corners Free Press out of Cortez, Colorado.  Since then it seems that the GOP doesn’t think much of Pruitt’s Red team Blue team idea and his challenge appears dead.  Still as I explained at Confronting Science Contrarians I believe Pruitt’s challenge is worth exploring, if only in outline.  Beginning with an observation and a pointed question:

Pruitt, questioning the unquestionable is fine. 

Now, will you, can you, pay attention to the answers you receive? 

Science’s Blue team educates Pruitt’s GOP Red team

https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2018/01/science-educates-pruitt-redteam.html

A rough outline for exploring the learning opportunities Pruitt's Red Team Blue Team challenge offers for exposing GOP's intellectual dishonesty.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following column was inspired by a lecture that Kevin Trenberth  gave at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado on November 9th, 2017.  Pruitt's "challenge" happened to jump into the headlines giving this story the hook that had been alluding me for weeks.  Worth noting is that most of what I write here at WUWT and at CSC is intended for readers up to speed on the science and the public dialogue - these columns for the FCFP force me to write for an audience preoccupied with other concerns, which produces a different sort of piece.

==========================

January 2018 - Four Corners Free Press, Cortez, Colorado

Early in December U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told lawmakers he intended to organize a “Red team v Blue team” exercise to debate climate change science.

Pruitt is being willfully blind to the fact that the scientific aspects of global warming have already been thoroughly debated by experts. It’s expected that Pruitt will orchestrate a lawyerly winner-take-all debate. One that’s based on rhetorical trickery and a ruthless disregard for facts.

It’s a shame, since we Americans needs a constructive educational dialogue. A debate where honestly representing your opponent’s arguments and data is as important as honestly representing your own data. One where objective learning is the goal, and where truth matters.

Speaking of honestly representing the science, November 9th Dr. Kevin Trenberth (the distinguished senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and a lead author for IPCC’s Scientific Assessment in 1995, 2001, and 2007, a giant in the field of climate assessment), gave a talk at the Fort Lewis College Climate Symposium explaining what scientists have learned about our planet. It sounded to me like a potential Blue team opening statement.

Since, today climate scientists and the science itself is under attack like never before it’s critical for more citizens to become aware and engaged. That’s why I want to share what Trenberth explained to us, along with some additional science. Information that makes clear what an internally consistent understanding scientists have achieved.

Trenberth underscored that pretty much all scientists agree. As for the few outliers, they are driven by other causes, such as religious and political inclinations. He explained that: “… as a whole the data are of mixed quality and length. If you were to look at one little piece of it you might be able to be skeptical that climate change is happening, but when you put it all together there's no doubt whatsoever that this is happening.”

#7 EM Debate - How about, An Essay Concerning Our Weather?

EM, I've been working with your next sentences and your concern for economy prosperity, (as though that justifies ignoring physical realities).  You got me to thinking how Republicans, and you, are approaching all this from way off in deep right field.  That would be, lost in the financial world as though that's all there was to understand or master about the world we live in.  Me, on the other hand, though I've learned to recognize the reality and need to deal with and accommodate the financial world, I appreciate a higher reality holds sway.

Being a handyman, I'm constantly reminded that dealing with the reality at hand demands remaining skeptical of my own pre-conceptions.  For me it's easy to remain extremely skeptical of the Republican "ever increasing growth and profits" mindset, instead I've found more security (and prosperity) in abiding by down to Earth realities.  Such as, it's not how much you earn, it's how much you spend, and such truisms.  

I bring all this up because I'd like to share an essay of mine, three decades in the writing.  I'm hoping it might help you get Earth's physical realities vs. human economic desires, into a more realistic perspective.  Here I'm reposted it December 17, 2015 version.  Enjoy.
___________________________________________________

Twenty years ago I came across a cartoon by Mike Keefe in the Denver Post that captured an attitude I had found all too pervasive among my fellow Americans: the attitude of entitlement and detached disregard for understanding how our global climate system operates.

It inspired me to write an essay describing my understanding of our planet’s climate system, and it was published in the November/December 1995 issue of the Humanist magazine. Rereading it recently, I noticed some minor errors but the basic story remains as accurate today as it was back then. Since anniversaries are a good time to reflect on history and how far we’ve come (or not), I wrote a twenty year reflection which the Humanist printed in their recent Nov/Dec 2015 issue.  This is a slightly altered version and I've included a many links to further information.

I thank Mike Keefe for the permission to use his cartoon.

I think it’s worth recalling where our understanding of climate change was twenty years ago.  Though there were fewer media outlets back then, they were more objective and for the most part offered straightforward climate science information. After all, it’s not that tough a story to summarize, even if the details get devilishly difficult.

By ’95 we had learned that weather is the product of climate conditions and that Earth’s climate conditions fluctuated. We knew that CO2 and other greenhouse gases were a major regulator of those fluctuations.

At the same time we were also being forced to confront the reality that it was our own burning of fossil fuels and the machines behind our modern marvels and lavish lifestyles that were increasingly belching “gaseous insulation” into our atmosphere.

Reflecting on our failure to appreciate the weather, our weather.

Yup, "our" weather as in, you break it, you own it.   Republicans believe it's okay to deny observable facts - They believe it's their personal "Free Speech Right" to fabricate lies and malicious nonsense, then insist their cynical misdirections are reputable facts. Which they most certainly are not - as any good-faith full spectrum examination makes clear.   They refuse to listen to any corrections and thoughtful explanations, they slander honest, accomplished and respected scientists with hysterical claims, sans all serious evidence.  Since arguing the facts of the matter is a loser for them, they derail discussions with character assassination attempts on all who dare defend climate scientists against the outlandish paranoid machinations of fiction reporters - all this rather than rationally listening to what scientists have to teach.  

Of course, taking our changing global environment seriously does demand changing the way we think and do things.  It demands growing up and recognizing we have a huge population on a warming planet with shrinking resources and we no longer have the luxury of behaving as though Earth was still a limitless cornucopia.  Since I'm still not getting the time I need to write, I want to share an article from last year where I try to describe our failure of vision and curiosity when it comes to addressing humanity's most fateful "geophysical experiment."   (some touch up editing 12/24)

Reposted from 
 http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2015/12/our-failure-to-appreciate-our-weather.html
__________________________________________________________________

Twenty years ago I came across a cartoon by Mike Keefe in the Denver Post that captured an attitude I had found all too pervasive among my fellow Americans: the attitude of entitlement and detached disregard for understanding how our global climate system operates.

It inspired me to write an essay describing my understanding of our planet’s climate system, and it was published in the November/December 1995 issue of the Humanist magazine. Rereading it recently, I noticed some minor errors but the basic story remains as accurate today as it was back then. Since anniversaries are a good time to reflect on history and how far we’ve come (or not), I wrote a twenty year reflection which the Humanist printed in their Nov/Dec 2015 issue.  This is a slightly altered version and I've included many links to further information.

I thank Mike Keefe for the permission to use his cartoon.

I think it’s worth recalling where our understanding of global warming induced climate change was twenty years ago.  Though there were fewer media outlets back then, they were more objective and for the most part offered straightforward climate science information. After all, it’s not that tough a story to summarize, even if the details get devilishly difficult.

By ’95 we had learned that weather is the product of climate conditions and that Earth’s climate conditions fluctuated. We knew that CO2 and other greenhouse gases were a major regulator of those fluctuations because they regulated how much of the sun's incoming heat was retained within Earth's climate system.

At the same time we were also being forced to confront the reality that it was our own burning of fossil fuels and the machines behind our modern marvels and lavish lifestyles that were increasingly belching “gaseous insulation” into our atmosphere.

{3} Evolution of Carbon and our biosphere - Professor Hazen focuses on the element Carbon

This third installment of Considering our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine series will be featuring a second Professor Robert Hazen talk.  In it he retraces the same ground as the previous lecture, but with a focus on the element carbon which turns out to be an outrageously interesting element/molecule worth spending a few moments learning about before moving on to the evolution of our atmosphere.

I believe this sort of background information will enable you to reply more effectively the next time some contrarian stooge tosses you that old standby: "The bottom line is that CO2 is at all-time lows going back five hundred million years."  Those trying to be especially sciencie, will flourish a graph looking like:

 "Ah ha, try explaining that one!"

"Today Earth is CO2 starved!"

And that's were they leave it. 

"CO2 was higher, ergo AGW is a hoax." 

End of argument, nothing else to talk about, all the while deliberately blinding themselves to the reality that atmospheric CO2 is higher than it's ever been during humanity's tenure on this planet.  

For me, it's immensely sad imagining people being satisfied with such a simpletons' one dimensional cartoon image of the physical world we come from and depend on.

The rational approach of the genuinely curious is to ask questions and try to understand what that graph is telling us.  Where did all that CO₂ come from?  What was going on back then?  Why did it peak and then drop, then slightly rise again only to fade down hill again?  How does it relate to today's Earth? Where's that graph from (no citation was offered)?  What does the attached study discuss?  What's the margin of error in that data set? ect. All interesting stuff you need to know about before you begin to have any inkling of what's going on.  That's why we have experts, people who have committed themselves to full time study and reporting back to us regular folks.

Investigating those questions quickly reveals an amazing world of harmonic complexity and fascinating interconnected details most of us are unaware of.  

When it comes to Deep Time, we've discovered all sorts of fascinating facts about how important carbon was in our planet's history and the world we inhabit today.  But the amazement starts well before Earth, though I'll let Dr. Hazen explain it in his talk, "Unanswered Questions in Deep Carbon Research", which I've embedded, with time-signature notes, at the end of this introduction.

First, I want to take a moment on the original comment about extremely high CO₂ levels in the past 600 million years and beyond.  There were good reasons for why those levels were so high and fluctuated the way they did and for how Earth's climate reacted.  

I invite you to consider that graph while reviewing some highlights in our biosphere's evolution.  Stuff that paved the way for the world humanity inhabits today.

{2} Co-evolution of Minerals and Life | Dr Robert Hazen

The goal of this series of posts is to share my own journey of fascinating discoveries that have helped me gain a realistic appreciation for this Earth I inhabit and the climate system that governs the biosphere all of us depend on.  I do this because too many faith-based people have totally disconnected from physical reality, they believe that the constructions of their imaginations have more power that the geophysical reality outside our abodes.  This has led to disastrous choices on many different levels.

If there's any hope to be found in the future it will come from individuals rediscovering the real physical planet we inhabit and honestly assessing how our society and it's runaway population have impacted our planet's biosphere and our future prospects.  

In the first post I shared the NOVA/PBS/NASA video "Earth From Space" which gave a nice overview of our dynamic planet and the incredibly complex web of connections that go into creating our biosphere.  Since I'm convinced an understanding of evolution is key to appreciating the world we inhabit, I'm beginning with some fundamental evolution stories.

I intended to start my review with our atmosphere's evolution, but in working on that post I realized there's an even more fundamental evolution to consider.  In this post will take it down to basic building blocks, namely a lecture given by Dr. Robert Hazen: "The Story of Earth: How Life and Rocks Co-Evolved".  

Incidentally many of the posts in this series will simply be an embedded excellent lecture by a leading authority followed by my time-signature notes on the lecture and further information for the curious and I will keep my opining to a minimum.

You can find the lecture notes and information regarding Dr. Robert M. Hazen and his work below this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08EaPC0zetw

CarnegieInstitution | 57:29 minutes | given February 20, 2014

Published on Jul 29, 2014 - CarnegieInstitution - 57:29 minutes

Dr. Robert Hazen, Carnegie Institution for Science, Geophysical Laboratory

{1} Our Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine

This is the first in a series of posts where I want to explore and describe this Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine that sustains us all.

For an introductory overview I will leave it to the NOVA/PBS/NASA video Earth From Space.  It isn't a complete review of our climate system, it's dedicated to looking at how all the natural forces that surround us come together to create the life sustaining biosphere on our one and only home planet.  Yet, it can't help but review a good deal of information about what's behind our global weather systems.

The documentary is a tour de force of our dynamic planet that I believe every curious student of life ought to watch and try to understand.  It would be wonderful seeing them produce a sequel that does focus on weather patterns and what drives them.  In the mean time I'll share the following video along with notes and appropriate links and time signature for easy reference.  

Please note, if viewing at YouTube you can link directly to a specific section of the video by adjusting the final digits of the url.  12:20 would be =12m20s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU0GhTmZhrs&t=12m20s 

Feel free to copy and share the following notes.

______________________________________________________________________

Earth From Space Full HD Nova 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/earth-from-space.html

Published on Jul 15, 2014

YouTube channel Natural World 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU0GhTmZhrs

The groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth.

Featuring interviews with: 

Waleed Abdalati (NASA Chief Scientist):

Piers Sellers (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

Emily Shuckburgh (deputy head, Polar Oceans Team, British Antarctic Survey

Jeff Halverson ( University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus, Meteorologist)

David Adamec (NASA Scientist)

Gene C. Feldman (NASA Oceanographer)

Charlie Bristow ( Birkbeck, University of London)

Holly Gilbert (NASA Solar Physicist)

Reflecting on our failure to appreciate the weather

Twenty years ago I came across a cartoon by Mike Keefe in the Denver Post that captured an attitude I had found all too pervasive among my fellow Americans: the attitude of entitlement and detached disregard for understanding how our global climate system operates.

It inspired me to write an essay describing my understanding of our planet’s climate system, and it was published in the November/December 1995 issue of the Humanist magazine. Rereading it recently, I noticed some minor errors but the basic story remains as accurate today as it was back then. Since anniversaries are a good time to reflect on history and how far we’ve come (or not), I wrote a twenty year reflection which the Humanist printed in their recent Nov/Dec 2015 issue.  This is a slightly altered version and I've included many links to further information.

I thank Mike for the permission to use his cartoon.

I think it’s worth recalling where our understanding of climate change was twenty years ago.  Though there were fewer media outlets back then, they were more objective and for the most part offered straightforward climate science information. After all, it’s not that tough a story to summarize, even if the details get devilishly difficult.

By ’95 we had learned that weather is the product of climate conditions and that Earth’s climate conditions fluctuated. We knew that CO2 and other greenhouse gases were a major regulator of those fluctuations.

At the same time we were also being forced to confront the reality that it was our own burning of fossil fuels and the machines behind our modern marvels and lavish lifestyles that were increasingly belching “gaseous insulation” into our atmosphere.