A theory of global cooling

The article below draws attention to the unfalsifiable nature of current climate science.  Instead of following normal philosophy of science procedures and putting up falsifiable theories, the entire Warmist concentration is on modelling.  The author then goes on to propose a new theory that the globe will COOL and invites other scientists to gather data that would confirm or upset his theory. This seems to be the first bit of real science in the field

The Power of Falsification, Developing a Greenhouse Gas Theory

Anthonie Bastiaan Ruighaver

Abstract

The current culture of  Climate Science, in particular the Basis of  Truth and Rationality, is the main topic of  this paper. The author discusses how the advent of  computer modelling has turned Climate Science into what Sir Karl Popper would have called a pseudoscience. But as Sir Karl Popper also mentioned, even a pseudoscience can stumble on the truth. To illustrate how a return to falsification of  knowledge changes the way we approach science, the author develops a simple theory on how CO2 impacts our climate as a greenhouse gas and suggests how to falsify this theory. If  the falsification of  this theory is not successful, we have found new empirical evidence increased CO2 may actually cool our earth.

Introduction

Scientists often forget that their role is to advance science through developing falsifiable theories. Theories help simplify science and focus it on new avenues of  research. More importantly, theories progress science by encouraging the falsification of  their hypotheses [Helfenbein, et.al. 2005]. In an earlier paper, on information security culture in organisations, the author discussed the concept of  “Basis of  Truth and Rationality” [Ruighaver, et.al. 2007]. In this paper the author will explore this concept in the current culture of  Climate Science, where theory development seems to have been replaced by model development and validation. In particular, the author will look at the value and truth of  the common belief  among climate scientists, and many other scientists, that “CO2 causes Global Warming”...............

 Conclusion

In this paper we have examined the culture of  Climate Science in relation to its Basis of  Truth and Rationale. We have argued that the reluctance to falsify knowledge by developing theories instead of  computer models has had a negative impact. To illustrate that trying to falsify a theory will enrich science, we have developed a simple theory on how CO2 influences  heat transfer and the radiative balance both in the lower layer and the top layer of  our atmosphere. The experiments needed to falsify the hypotheses suggested by this simple theory will provide new empirical evidence that without the formulation of  this theory would likely not have been collected. Hence, the author argues that it is time to change the culture of  Climate Science back to Sir Karl Popper’s vision of  how science should function. Let's start developing theories again and encourage the falsification of  their hypotheses. Let’s try to provide a basis of  truth and rationale by trying to falsify this new theory predicting more CO2 will cool our earth!

Much more HERE




Shrinking fish!

This is a bit of an old chestnut.  Different "experts" give us reasons why animals will shrink in a warmer world while others say they will get bigger.  If we just look to reality, however, we note that there were some HUGE animals, both marine and terrestrial in the (hot) age of the dinosaurs so the prophets of shrinking seem very implausible

Fish could shrink in size dramatically as ocean temperatures rise because of climate change, according to a new study.

When the water gets warmer, cold-blooded fish need more oxygen. However, one of the consequences of climate change is less oxygen in the sea.

These twin effects could combine to stunt the growth of fish, the researchers concluded.

Professor William Cheung, of the University of British Columbia in Canada, who co-wrote a paper about the study in the journal Global Change Biology, said: “Fish, as cold-blooded animals, cannot regulate their own body temperatures.

“When their waters get warmer, their metabolism accelerates and they need more oxygen to sustain their body functions.

“There is a point where the gills cannot supply enough oxygen for a larger body, so the fish just stops growing larger.”

The gills of fish also usually grow at a slower pace than the rest of their body.

For example, as a cod increases its weight by 100 per cent, their gills only grow by 80 per cent.

Such fish compensate for this by breathing faster as they get bigger.

But the fish's need for more oxygen because of the warmer water and the presence of less oxygen in the water – the twin effects of climate change – puts a gradually lowering limit on the effectiveness of this process.

The researchers estimated fish could reduce in size by as much as 25 per cent for each degree Celsius of warming.

SOURCE




Why Houston Flooding Isn’t a Sign of Climate Change

 Roy Spencer

There is no aspect of global warming theory that says rain systems are going to be moving slower, as we are seeing in Texas. This is just the luck of the draw.

In the context of climate change, is what we are seeing in Houston a new level of disaster which is becoming more common?

The flood disaster unfolding in Houston is certainly very unusual. But so are other natural weather disasters, which have always occurred and always will occur.

(By the way, making naturally-occurring severe weather seem unnatural is a favorite tactic of Al Gore, whose new movie & book An Inconvenient Sequel [ currently #21,168 in Kindle] is dismantled in my new e-book, An Inconvenient Deception [currently #399]).

Floods aren’t just due to weather

Major floods are difficult to compare throughout history because the ways in which we alter the landscape. For example, as cities like Houston expand over the years, soil is covered up by roads, parking lots, and buildings, with water rapidly draining off rather than soaking into the soil. The population of Houston is now ten times what it was in the 1920s. The Houston metroplex area has expanded greatly and the water drainage is basically in the direction of downtown Houston.

There have been many flood disasters in the Houston area, even dating to the mid-1800s when the population was very low. In December of 1935 a massive flood occurred in the downtown area as the water level height measured at Buffalo Bayou in Houston topped out at 54.4 feet.

Downtown Houston flood of 1935.

By way of comparison, as of 6:30 a.m. this (Monday) morning, the water level in the same location is at 38 feet, which is still 16 feet lower than in 1935. I’m sure that will continue to rise.

Are the rainfall totals unprecedented?

Even that question is difficult to answer. The exact same tropical system moving at, say, 15 mph might have produced the same total amount of rain, but it would have been spread over a wide area, maybe many states, with no flooding disaster. This is usually what happens with landfalling hurricanes.

Instead, Harvey stalled after it came ashore and so all of the rain has been concentrated in a relatively small portion of Texas around the Houston area. In both cases, the atmosphere produced the same amount of rain, but where the rain lands is very different. People like those in the Houston area don’t want all of the rain to land on them.

There is no aspect of global warming theory that says rain systems are going to be moving slower, as we are seeing in Texas. This is just the luck of the draw. Sometimes weather systems stall, and that sucks if you are caught under one. The same is true of high pressure areas; when they stall, a drought results.

Even with the system stalling, the greatest multi-day rainfall total as of 3 9 a.m. this Monday morning is just over 30 39.7 inches, with many locations recording over 20 inches. We should recall that Tropical Storm Claudette in 1979 (a much smaller and weaker system than Harvey) produced a 43 inch rainfall total in only 24 hours in Houston.

Was Harvey unprecedented in intensity?

In this case, we didn’t have just a tropical storm like Claudette, but a major hurricane, which covered a much larger area with heavy rain. Roger Pielke Jr. has pointed out that the U.S. has had only four Category 4 (or stronger) hurricane strikes since 1970, but in about the same number of years preceding 1970 there were 14 strikes. So we can’t say that we are experiencing more intense hurricanes in recent decades.

Going back even earlier, a Category 4 hurricane struck Galveston in 1900, killing between 6,000 and 12,000 people. That was the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history.

And don’t forget, we just went through an unprecedented length of time – almost 12 years – without a major hurricane (Cat 3 or stronger) making landfall in the U.S.

SOURCE





Big floods nothing new

The recent hurricane in Texas has revived the Greenie claim that global warming has increased the incidence of floods.  But if that's a global effect then it should have recently been seen in Australia too.  But it has not been.  The following academic journal article says of floods affecting the East coast of Australia: "Some of the most extreme events identified occurred in the 19th century and early-to-mid 20th century."


Major coastal flooding in southeastern Australia 1860–2012, associated deaths and weather systems

Jeff Callaghan and Scott B. Power

A new historical database describing major floods and associated weather systems that occurred in coastal catchments, from Brisbane in southeastern Australia to Eden approximately 1500 km further south, is described. In order to produce a homogeneous record of major flood and weather-type frequency we restrict attention to the period 1860–2012, when the region (i) is extensively populated, (ii) has an extensive coverage of meteorological stations, (iii) is extensively connected by telecommunication, and (iv) when there is busy coastal shipping offshore. A total of 253 major floods over this period are identified. A flood is considered here to be ‘major’ if it causes inundation of a river within approximately 50 km of the coast or if there is non-riverine flooding over land near the coast, extending 20 km or more along the coast. All major floods are associated with either (a) East Coast Lows (ECLs) or (b) Tropical Interactions (TIs). Three types of TIs are identified and described. ECLs triggered more major floods than TIs (57 per cent versus 43 per cent), but TIs caused more deaths from freshwater flooding (62 per cent versus 38 per cent) and they tended to cause over twice as many deaths per event (3.6 versus 1.7 deaths/event on average). Some of the most extreme events identified occurred in the 19th century and early-to-mid 20th century. If such events were to occur today they would have catastrophic impacts due to the massive increase in urban development in the study region since that time.

SOURCE



Methane hydrate scare is just a popgun

If there was any life left in this climate change scare story, this latest research should finally see it off.

Clathrate (hydrate) gun hypothesis stirred quite the controversy when it was posed in 2003, as ScienceDaily reports. It stated that methane hydrates — frozen water cages containing methane gas found below the ocean floor — can melt due to increasing ocean temperatures.

According to the hypothesis this melt can happen in a time span of a human life, dissociating vast amounts of hydrate and releasing methane into the atmosphere.

Consequently, this would lead to a runaway process, where the methane released would add to the global budget of greenhouse gases, and further accelerate the warming of the planet.

Limited impact at an Arctic site

This dramatic hypothesis inspired science fiction and scientists alike, spurring the latter to further investigate the sensitivity of hydrates. A new study in Nature Communications has thus found that the hydrate gun hypothesis seems increasingly unlikely, at least for a specific site in the Arctic Ocean that is highly susceptible to warming.

“Short term temperature warming has limited impact on the gas hydrate stability. We show that warming can significantly affect gas hydrates in the seabed only when ocean temperature is constantly rising for several centuries,” says the lead author of the study Dr. Wei-Li Hong of CAGE and currently Geological Survey of Norway.

Hydrate mounds seeping methane for thousands of years

Hong and colleagues reported on an increase of methane flux beneath large mounds of hydrates in an area called Storfjordrenna, in the Barents Sea close to Svalbard.

These gas hydrate pingos are all profusely seeping methane.But according to Hong, even though the area is shallow, and potentially susceptible to temperature change, these seeps are not intensifying because of the momentary warming. “The increase of methane flux started several hundreds to thousands of years ago, which is well before any onset of warming in the Arctic Ocean that others have speculated,” says Hong.

The study was based on measurements of pore water chemistry in the sediments from the area. Pore water is water trapped in pores in soil, and can be analysed to reveal environmental changes in a given area through time.

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************