Post by Patrick GoslingPost by The Natural PhilosopherI finally understand what you are driving at. Different use of 'linear'
. I was meaning 'linear' the the description of what - scratching back
at maths lessons - you would probably call a smooth continuous function.
Not a polynomial with exponent of one.
Ah, so you use "linear" to mean "differentiable". This isn't my
terminology, but never mind.
Actually sorry, I know what I am trying to say, but my language and
maths are rusty...
Post by Patrick GoslingPost by The Natural PhilosopherClimate is a fully chaotic system of non linear partial derivatives with
many attractors and overall strong negative feedback.
Can you explain what your interpretation of the words "fully chaotic
system" is?
The concept I was trying to express is that its like the stalled wing on
an aircraft, the airflow isn't 'mostly laminar, with small turbulent
vortices' its full on breakdown of predictable laminar flow, into
totally chaotic behaviour on a large scale over a large time period.
The issue being that when e.g. chaotic turbulence is contained within
bounds, you have some hope of predicting the broad behaviour of the
system using numerical methods. If you get fully turbulent airflow,
prediction of even such a simple system ans a wing in air, becomes
extremely difficult, and what works at one speed may not even work at
another. Cf 'control reversal' in transonic flight etc etc.
Post by Patrick GoslingI know what the usual technical meaning of "chaotic system" is, but I can
see more than one way that someone might consider categorising them into
"fully" vs "not fully", and I wonder which you are considering?
What do you think the non-differentiable partial derivatives are in your
proposed climate model that has the property of being "fully chaotic"?
Much of it lies in the water cycles. E.g, you can add heat to an ice
sheet and it will stay at 0°C for as long as its not all melted. latent
heat etc. Likewise the relative humidity of air that leads to cloud
formation as humidity approaches 100%, with a sudden step change in
albedo and radiation input. Cloud or not-cloud is a fraction of a
percent humidity change that leads to huge changes in incident versus
reflected radiation. Those are the sorts of processes that I do not
believe can be modelled by current climate models. Edge processes.
Whether those are 'not differentiable ' is something you could comment on.
In addition using the other definition of non linear, IIRC around 50% of
the heat lost by the earths surface is lost via convection high into
the stratosphere above most of the carbon dioxide, invalidating simple
linear assumptions made in climate models, that is governed broadly by
(mathematically) true non linear partial derivatives in the Navier
Stokes equations.
In short the whole model of global heat transport is largely one of a
turbulent flow of hot wet air and hot water in the tropics to points
where it can radiate, which are the poles and the stratosphere. Whereas
climate models tend to assume direct radiation to space from the ground.
This is what CO2 affects by and large.
We also know that there are (pseudo) periodic 'oscillations' in warm and
cold ocean currents, and jet streams air masses and the like.
Post by Patrick GoslingThat is, what physical properties of the observable world do they describe,
and what broadly do they look like as equations?
See above. I have no idea what they look like as equations. very
complicated fluid dynamics partials with added gotchas is about as far
as I got. Hence the original question.
How can we say that 'all modern warming is caused by CO2, that is man
made. to a first approximation', when the whole climate mechanism has of
and by itself over the last fifty thousand years been subject to a
massive ice age and series of interstadials, during which time the
continents and volcanic activity have remained broadly constant, as have
CO2, levels?
I know the warmists have erased the mediaeval warm period claiming it
'wasn't global' but global or not, we absolutely know that really large
changes in climate have happened at least locally allowing the rise and
fall of civilisations, post ice age, all apparently while CO2 levels
remained stable.
Which leads me to two points.
Firstly, what affects us as humans is local climate change. Droughts and
famines and floods have been happening since recorded history began, and
earlier. An ounce of local flooding, like the 14th century floods that
wiped out central Europe. (St Mary Magdalene's flood), which killed
thousands and rewrote the terrain completely, is far more a problem than
a pound of 'global warming' . which merely reduces a few glaciers for a
few years.
Secondly, although there are inputs like Milankovitch cycles that are
associated with climate change globally, the actual variation in
temperature from e.g, ice core records does not seem to show just smooth
variations synchronised to these. Ergo one concludes that something else
is going on as well. We know it is not carbon dioxide, because ice cores
show us that at least on fairly long timescales, the variation doesn't
explain the changes.
Ergo, the proposition that climate is in fact a chaotic system with
several different attractors, makes sense of the data. Periods such as
the Younger Dryas may not need to be explained by external inputs: a
chaotic system is capable of a thousand year mini ice age *all by
itself* as it shifts from one attractor to another, triggered by what
might be trivial inputs, or *no inputs at all*.
And if its capable of that, how much more is it capable of a 50 year
period of very mild warming, followed by a 20 year period of almost no
warming at all?
The concern is that we may be chasing a chimera. spending trillions on
the basis that because the only thing we know of that has varied over
the last 50 years is CO2, therefore any temperature change over that
period is caused by it. Not only does it break the rule that
correlation is not causation, we also know that the correlation is
extremely weak.
I.e. the temperature rise from around 1950-1995 (insofar as we can
accurately measure it, but that is another story) is smooth and
reasonably monotonic and correlates well with CO2 rise, but the
temperature in the 21st century does not, despite vain efforts to make
'adjustments' to the record. In crude terms CO2 has continued to rise,
temperatures have not done so nearly as much as the late 20th century
records predicted that they would. If CO2 was the (sole) cause.
Now the response of the warmist has been "so what else is causing it
then?" - my point being to propose that the answer is 'nothing is
causing it, the climate is quite capable of wobbling around by several
degrees for no external reason at all, simply because it is a complex
system of non linear equations with lots of time delayed feedbacks in
it, most of which are negative (i.,e the hotter it gets the more heat is
lost via radiation ) but some of which are not (e.g. the albedo of ice
is much higher than the albedo of open sea - so ice makes the sea
colder... )
Consider a hypothesis. The arctic ice melts, increasing the cold polar
currents which after a few years increase the gulf stream flow warming
the arctic leading to further ice melts, until the arctic is essentially
ice free at which point the Labrador current slows, and a few years
later so does the gulf stream plunging the arctic into a freeze cycle.
The freeze cycle starts to bleed off cold water at its edges now much
further south in warmer climes, restarting the Labrador current.
(Quasi) periodic climate effects are known to happen all over the place
- El Niño/La Ninã cycles, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific
decadal oscillation, itself a combination of other dynamic effects, the
Arctic and Antarctic oscillations...periods of low rainfall, periods of
high rainfall. (seven good years and seven lean years)
And the proposition is that somehow on this massively modulated non
linear climate system you can superimpose a linear effect, rising CO2 -
and get a rising temperature?
If we look at the actual undisputed physics of CO2 as a greenhouse gas,
IIRC the actual figure ought to be that ex of any feedback in the
system, and all other things being equal, a doubling of CO2 would make
plants grow amazingly better and lead to something like a 1 °C rise.
Because 'climate science' was based on the default assumption that, ex
of any other probable cause, any warming *had* to be a function of CO2
increase, when the actual rises seem to exceed the credible results of
CO2, the step was taken of adding a *positive* feedback term that would
multiply the effects of CO2 .
At no stage was it considered that something unknown might be going on,
or that in fact that nothing beyond natural variation of a chaotic
system was going on.
A Cambridge PhD Geologist dismissed global warming of the human kind by
saying that as someone who has studied palaeogeology, if such positive
feedback existed, life could never have developed on the planet at all.
Naturally he was retired and no longer had to keep up a paid position at
a university.
My question in the end is this.
Is there any way to prove that there are enough feedback terms in enough
non linear equations within what we are fairly sure of represents the
climate system to at least show that temperature variations of the sort
of ±2-3°C are *possible* and even *likely* without the need to invoke
external causes?
Because if that can be shown, then, irrespective of whether CO2 induced
climate change exists at all, is greater or less than we believed, and
so on, it becomes *irrelevant in the context of climate change*. That
is, climate change is going to happen - as it always has - whether or
not we do this or that drastic action, so the so called ' precautionary
principle' also becomes null and void. Why waste money on something that
*might* be going to happen, when it wont stop something equally bad (or
good) that is *bound to happen anyway*?
So, what it boils down to is this: If it can be shown by reference to at
least the main parts of the global climate system, that climate is
within an overall negative feedback system still capable of variations
of several degrees centigrade over historical time periods - which seems
to have been the case at least on Europe and the middle east - without
reference to any solar or CO2 variations, simply by dint of there being
long time delay negative feedback loops and a non linear system to start
with - (radiation is T^4 to start with) - comprising a chaotic enough
system to be able to achieve that variation without external inputs,
then no argument for spending money to *stop climate change*, is a
rational response, whereas contingency plans to ameliorate its effects
become far far more relevant.
It seems to me that this is a study that should be done. Urgently.
Unfortunately whoever dose it will lose his job if that is at a
university. Net Zero is now 'too big to fail'
--
"I am inclined to tell the truth and dislike people who lie consistently.
This makes me unfit for the company of people of a Left persuasion, and
all women"