e) Map v Territory Problem, Statistical Certainty vs Geophysical Realities

. . . since New Year's Eve is upon us, I feel like collecting some of my favorite essays in an effort to summarize my perspective.  

Here are explanatory highlights from two articles that seemed to piss off the big boys.  'How dare a street urchin insinuate himself into their discussion,'  is the message I received loud and clear.  Well I dared because I thought the academic system was about increasing understanding, discussing ideas, finding and nurturing talent, but I've come to realize all those romantic notions belong to earlier more innocent days, back when principles and morality meant something and before the drive for profits and prominence dominated as it does today.  We live and learn.

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I share the key excerpts from two previous articles that look at a couple climate science communication pitfalls that are important and need much more open discussion.  At least if we're concerned with translating science speak into regular people speak.  The "Map v Territory Problem' and 'Statistical Certainty vs Geophysical Realities.'

Exploring the Map v Territory Problem - via the Brown Ocean Effect and Dr. Trenberth

https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2017/12/exploring-map-territory-problem.html

Colorado Floods - statistical certainty vs geophysical realities - 2013

http://whatsupwiththatwatts.blogspot.com/2013/10/colorado-floods-statistical-certainty.html

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Exploring the Map v Territory Problem - via the Brown Ocean Effect and Dr. Trenberth

https://confrontingsciencecontrarians.blogspot.com/2017/12/exploring-map-territory-problem.html

On November 9th, 2017 Dr. Trenberth visited our local Fort Lewis College and was the featured speaker at an afternoon climate change symposium.  

A Distinguished Senior Scientist (in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research), he is a cartographer if you will.  His entire being is about getting the science, the models, the map, as close to representing reality as resources and ability allow.  This dedication has made him among the best in his field of climate studies.  

As a self-taught Earth and climate science enthusiast I’ve been familiar with his work for decades and have learned a great deal from his articles and in past years talks on YouTube and I was glad to finally have the chance to see and hear him in person. …

Reality check, deniable but unavoidable Geophysics of a warming planet

Pumphandle 2016

CarbonTracker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH6fQh9eAQE

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August 31 an outfit called Investors.com under cover of the "Daily Business" wrote an editorial that no one had the guts to put their name behind.  Figures since it's such a perfect example of libelous criminal mischief and intellectual vandalism.  My initial read indicated some 24 talking points to build my case on.
  
I believe all too often timid professionally/politically constrained experts give aid and comfort to such deliberate misinformers by their obsessive public focus on fringe uncertainties -> rather than reminding everyone of the geophysical certainties we are dealing with here.  This latest example of malicious character assassination against Dr. Mann is an example of what such unrecognized seepage has accomplished these past decades.  

Before I begin my slog through that thing, I believe it's important to take a moment to look at the essence of what our planet's Global Heat and Moisture Distribution Engine is all about.  Starting point an unfortunate quote from that editorial:

CNN Newsroom host John Berman asked former National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read point-blank whether climate change had affected the intensity of Hurricane Harvey. 

Read said he "probably wouldn't attribute (global warming to) what we're looking at here. This is not an uncommon occurrence to see storms grow and intensify rapidly in the western Gulf of Mexico. That is, as long as we've been tracking them, that has occurred.” 

{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Read - Navy meteorologist background.}

For the other side of that: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly

Quite frankly it doesn’t matter what I, or some politically terrified official pronounces.  The outside reality is that our planet has begun a radical transition towards a much much warmer climate regime.  Simply because measuring and putting exact attribution numbers on it is exceedingly difficult, doesn't justify ignoring the geophysics unfolding under our noses! 

* Global warming is definitely directly related to that hot Gulf of Mexico waters that fed an explosive intensification of a tropical storm.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that the atmosphere is holding more moisture and making it available for storm systems such as Harvey to collect and dump, while adding energy to the system.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that our Jet Stream has gotten weirder and is currently causing the stalling and reversal of Harvey’s northward movement.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the fact that sea level is rising and thus adding substantially to damaging storm surges.

* Global warming is definitely directly related to the "Brown Ocean Effect" that continued feeding moisture and energy into Harvey and certain other hurricanes after making land fall.

If I’m mistaken it should be simple enough to explain my error in a constructive manner.

If you can’t do that, perhaps you should consider allowing those points to take prominence over nitpicking fringe uncertainties and the struggle for statistical perfection.

Dear Dr. Nielsen-Gammon, re. statistical certainty vs geophysical realities

Dr. Nielsen-Gammon,

I want to start by apologizing, I got carried away and didn't mean to imply that you are part of the climate science denial community - I know that you are not and that I was sloppy, it was an unfair untrue grouping.  However, I also want you to understand the issue I'm trying to define.  

The feeling I get is that your, and the scientific community in general, approach is that it's a dialogue with no sense of urgency, no interest in reaching resolution, the joy of the discovery and all that.  

Instead of gathering information in order to act, it seems like gathering information for the sake of gathering yet more information. 

Seems to me, one of the two strangest parts of our society's entire AGW public dialogue is how it has gotten mutated into this demand for ever greater levels of details - while ignoring the monster in the room we all know about.

What has changed about our basic understanding of Anthropogenic Global Warming over the past two decades?  

Has there been anything of significance - besides ever greater coverage and higher resolution and increasing certainty that we are taking our planet out of the bounds its experienced for millions of years?

To me it seems all you're doing is hand wringing: "man oh man, we gotta get the DPI cranked up another few hundred PDI before the picture comes in HD sharp."

Works great for Evolution - but this "subject" is the health of the biosphere and weather system that we depend on.  It's not just another interesting problem, it's a real future filled with hard consequences.

We are destroying the planet as we knew it not too long ago - you know, the biosphere that we depend on for everything.  What good is spending all our time and energy defining the crisis to exquisite certainty and forgetting to act to avert the crisis?

Sincerely, CC

I am including an article I wrote last autumn, it's another attempt to define this issue.

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Friday, October 25, 2013

Colorado Floods - statistical certainty vs geophysical realities

Colorado experienced its most extreme weather event in memory between September 9th to the 15th. Golden, Boulder and Larimer counties received the worst of it with rain accumulations of sixteen/seventeen inches and more, some areas receiving nine inches on Thursday alone, resulting in massive flooding compounded by destructive run-off from mountainsides of burned-out forests that could no longer hold water.

Predictably folks are asking: Is this related to manmade Global Warming? It's an easy and tough question to answer.

Consider please, our climate system is a global heat distribution engine and our land, atmosphere, and the oceans have indisputably warmed, not only that, 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.

On the other hand,