Climate model sensitivity

Glad I am to report that at least one influential non-skeptic thinks that the accepted climate sensitvity to CO2 is very overblown. Skeptical in this case largely refers to Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, and other climatologists who think the IPCC is overly alarmist in it's projections. Oddly non-skeptical conventionally means that you accept the IPCC report. But a little known fact is that you can accept the IPCC report but prefer the lower projected increase in temperature of 1.1K per doubling of CO2. Yes that is allowed - it's called being a lukewarmer. And in that case to be skeptical is to reject the alarmism that appears only in the newspapers but not in the IPCC documents. A sensible position to take in other words.

Anyway, this next bit is lifted wholesale from another blog called MasterResource, run by Mssrs Bradley and Knappenberger and is here to remind me, or anyone else reading this, that mainstream users of climate models distrust them almost as much as the skeptics:

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"Jerry North (Texas A&M) Hints at the Problem

Eleven years ago, when I was director of public policy at Enron, I entered into a consulting agreement with Gerald North, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Oceanography at Texas A&M’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, to tell me what was going on. North was as close as I could find to a ‘middle of the roader’ between climate alarmism and (ultra) skepticism. He is alsohighly decorated.

And this has not changed. North’s own intuitive estimate of climate sensitivity is now 50% below the IPCC’s best guess, and he has been critical of a number of the climate mini-alarms that would make headlines and then fade away (more hurricanes, disruption of the thermohaline circulation, etc.).

But I noticed a Malthusian streak in North, that unstated assumption that nature is optimal, and the human influence on climate cannot be good but only bad–and maybe even catastrophic. Still, North in his emails to me–then and now–was rather blunt about the shortcomings of climate modeling.

Here is a sampling of quotations over the last decade:

“There is no doubt a small ‘sociological convergence’ effect, that tends to work here (individuals and their managers hate to be the outlier). The biggest problem is that doubling CO2 leads to a 1 deg C warming (I think even Lindzen agrees). If water vapor doubles it, we are at 2.0 (Lindzen differs here, but I do not know of anyone else). Are there any other feedbacks? It is hard to dismiss ice feedback, but it might be small. Clouds are positive in most models — I have always taken them to be neutral, but with no substantial reason (it’s just easier that way).”

“I do not think there is enough thinking going on. Just plugging in the numbers or running the simulations. Dick [Lindzen] is clearly right on this one.”

“I believe the ocean simulations are very primitive and quite variable from one group to another. The underlying reason is this: How much of the deep layers of the ocean are really participating in the warming?”

“There are pitifully few ways to test climate models.”

“[Models] sort of fake it (we call it ‘parameterization’). They do it in very crude ways such as if the temperature profile of the atmosphere is unstable, they make the whole column overturn, etc.”

“[The models’ treatment of feedbacks] could also be sociological: getting the socially acceptable answer.”

“I go back to my old position: we need more time, maybe a decade to get a better grip on aerosols, water vapor feedback, cloud feedback, ocean participation.”

“We have only a very loose grip on aerosols.”

“[The models] treat the ocean differently. Somehow, they are fudging the parameters that govern ocean coupling so that they get the right ocean delay to agree with the data in spite of their differing sensitivities.”

But before you call North a radical or tattletale on the ‘consensus’, consider what the IPCC said in the back of their latest assessement of the physical science of climate change:

“The set of available models may share fundamental inadequacies, the effects of which cannot be quantified.”

 - IPCC, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 805.

Is this a trick? Satisfy the science by stating the science–but do so on page 805 rather than in the executive summary where it belongs. It is this sort of thing that Eric Berger–and other open-minded middle-of-the-roaders–are going to find out. And they just might feel a little duped."

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So OK, North leans towards 1.5K as a likely number, rather than the "official" 3K. Actually the official stance is 1.1 to 6K but everyone just takes the middle of the range as if it was a Gaussian distribution  (it isn't - all numbers higher than 1K are decreasingly scientifically plausible as North admits above - but of course the IPCC like the hoi polloi to assume it's a Gaussian). I've no problem believing that many more scientists think the same way as North but they just don't shout about it in the same way as Lindzen because it's just not politically correct to do so. Not everyones tenure is on such a sound footing as Lindzen, and Spencer actually had to resign from NASA in order to state his skeptical views.

I've noticed that Mathusian streak in a lot of the debate though - particularly on Andy Revkins blog. Overpopulation is a problem easily resolved by allowing 3rd world women some education, some independence and the right to work. All of which arrives with prosperity - which in turn is just possibly dependent on cheap, available energy. Ah...there's the rub. As they said on Spiked magazine though, Malthusians have always been wrong about the limits to growth and the real problem likely isn't too many people, it's too many Malthusians.

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The car of the future

A while back I wrote that I didn't rate the internal combustion engine much. Ever since I did a project on gas turbines I've been wondering why the gas turbine car was stillborn. The advantages are so numerous but mainly the idea of using rotary motion rather than converting reciprocating motion is the killer. It makes everything else so much simpler. The pistons in an IC engine are actually based on a cyclists legs.Why then, I've often asked myself, do we push down at top dead centre (TDC) rather than at 10 past the hour as we do on a bike. Actually the answer is probably because it was always done that way, or because of space. I did find out that the new air car by some French inventor does push down at 10 past the hour and increases the efficiency by about 40%. ie as we've seen so often, when you are limited then you are forced to find a solution. That may be the ethos of the idea behind carbon limitations too. After all, high fuel prices in Europe forced the development of small Diesel engines.

Anyway, rather than have minor improvements to fundamentally silly technologies, why not go back to the drawing board? And somebody has:

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=179151

Sweet looking, fast series hybrid using a Diesel microturbine to charge batteries that run an electric motor. Actually it's not so new. Jay Leno has a car with similar technology in his garage from earlier this century. http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/jay_leno_garage/4215940.html 

"The Owen Magnetic. First seen at the auto show in New York City in 1915 ...has a gas engine and an electric generator. 

This drivetrain was the brainchild of George Westinghouse. The engine powers the generator, which creates a large magnetic force field be-tween the engine and drivewheels. There's no mechanical transmission. The driver moves a rheostat through four quadrants — a lot easier than shifting, and grinding, the straight-cut gears of the day — and the car moves ahead progressively, giving occupants that odd feeling you get when you try to push similar-pole magnets against each other. Both Enrico Caruso and John McCormack drove Owen Magnetics." 

And of course electric trains use this drive concept too. However, microturbines weren't available recently. I don't know why; the microturbine is almost an exact replica of the Rover turbine that I tested in 1982 and which was made in 1953. I presume it's the air/foil bearings that make the big difference.

Anyway, "0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds, 150 mph top speed, and an unheard-of* driving range of up to 500 miles on a single tank of fuel, all with ultra-low exhaust emissions that rival any hybrid on the market today"

Somewhere I read about 500 mpg but maybe that's pushing it. A nice target though! We do know that the buses/coaches that use this technology are twice as economical as diesels - and a whole lot quieter, cleaner and smoother.

*Well it might be unheard of in the USA but the new Diesel Jaguar can achieve 1000miles on a single tank - as proven on Top Gear "Basle to Blackpool on a single tank" challenge.

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Beware of fitness fashions; short term gain = long term pain

Oh no, not another skepticism confirmed. It's a bit depressing realising that skepticism about any fashionable idea is usually always justified. Another one I've just read about is high impact aerobics and step aerobics. The unfortunates who did it in the 80's all have arthritis now:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/27/earlyshow/contributors/emilysenay/main3207440.shtml

I'd had an inkling of this because a friend who was a radiologist in the 80's kept saying that joggers and marathon runners were causing a huge upsurge in knee problems. Funny how many people have knee problems isn't it? My own knee pain arose largely from playing football. Though I admit it was mainly people kicking me after I'd dribbled past them but I also have a suspicion I'd screwed my knees up by those ever-odd stretching exercises and the continuous impact pounding. Now that I've largely given up all exercise (apart from walking a fair amount that is) my knee has completely healed. It took a long time mind you, but finally, no longer do I get these sudden, excruciating pains when I put pressure on it.

Isn't it also odd the number of fitness freaks who succumb to heart attacks? My cyclist neighbour has just succumbed too. The conventional wisdom was that exercise was good for the heart. But the heart is a muscle and you can strain it. Good grief, the Queen mother lived to 100 without doing apparently any exercise at all.

The secret then to good health and a long life? Eating well and walking rather than running. Ask the French!

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To be open-minded is to avoid dogmata

Now i'm plagiarizing myself: Judith Curry, author of a few incredibly dubious papers relating hurricanes and global warming and a budding entrepreneur trying to sell hurricane predictions on the back of this hokey science is trying to reach out to the shiny, happy people on both sides of the divide on the conservative (with added wingnuttery) climate change skeptic (ie prove it properly) wattsupwiththat blog and the progressive (in a very loose sense)  alarmist (ie way beyond the IPCC position) climateprogress blog. Good luck with that says I. She might have stood a chance with middle grounders, or even with the shamed and largely silent ivory tower scientists themselves. My comment is below:

"On the plus side, she is against cap and trade too, like most rational individuals. Extremists on both side think the extremists on the other side are evil, deluded or misinformed. Therefore we need to ignore extremism. And that includes those who say that this is a left-wing takeover. Like it or not, this type of self-feeding consensus is normal for science and it has impeded scientific progress in many spheres. Eventually the science is corrected but quite often there are muddy compromises made to align the data with the theory. In most fields of course that doesn’t matter but sometimes it matters a lot because people can be sent to jail and enormous sums of money can be wasted based on the dubious science of a few deluded individuals who thought being dishonest was ok if it was for the greater good.

What is quite clear is that science cannot police itself. However we don’t want to impede science to the extent that form-filling and reviews take all the money. Maybe the only way out is to look beyond the science and see if we can make some headway with win-win energy scenarios.

The left need to stop talking about mythical “action” as if a carbon tax would make any difference whatsoever: It won’t unless the technology to replace coal and oil is here. And the right need to stop assuming that the best solution always arrives by a magical free market invisible hand: In fact we usually end up with well-marketed mediocrity that arrived at the head of the pack by lucky fluke, criminal cunning or shady vested interests.

My own feeling from reading both the information and (lots of) disinformation out there is that there is a future for the following:
- Some nuclear but not the current pieces of crap that were developed to support nuclear weapons and hence rely on uranium enrichment.
- Solar power where there is sun and space and a smart grid system.
- Gas-powered combined heat and power plants (CHP's) that can heat nearby houses and so render 80% efficiency.
- Electric cars that charge up on night-time base load.
- Wind energy to supply a lot of night-time base load.
- Base load backup which makes total sense even for coal fired plants.
- A gradual switch from coal-mining to in-situ coal gasification.
- Lot's of geothermal heating and cooling*
A capitalist system but with a sensibly considered road map might continue to bring worldwide prosperity. The alternative is follow the short-sighted optimism of the wingnuts or the blinkered fatalism of the moonbats."

*forgot that one in the original comment

Now that's my roadmap based on my idea of common sense but there just might be something that comes out of left field and proves me wrong. Like the gas powered plants that sprung up in the UK after coal  miners striked themselves out of a job and the farcical privatization of the nuclear industry (ie nobody wanted it unless the huge decommissioning and waste costs were funded by the taxpayer). We'll see how it really plays out. I doubt a sensible route will be followed but I remain hopeful.

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Green programming

In my tradition of nabbing useful comments - largely as a diary. I've got one from "TheRegister". The original question is why do we need a full copy of Windows in every VMWare virtualization session, ie can't we just share the OS code because 40% of the server is being used up in dealing with this bloat. Well all the obvious answers were there; by using Solaris Zones or FreeBSD Jail then you can but then you don't have Windows. It goes back to the code bloat theme and someone called Captain Thyratron et al  summed it up in a rant:

"Solaris Zones/Containers are pretty good (speaking as a self confessed Solaris fan). Though last time I looked they didn't support migration of a live VM from one machine to another. So pluses/minuses both ways.

Of course, the best thing is to have a self-clustering app that doesn't need something like VMWare to give it resiliance, etc. et. You could run such an app natively on a series of hosts in their nice multitasking operating systems. Now where would I get one of those...

I'm pretty sure that virtualisation is just an excuse for lazy developers to not think about their app design properly. I see developers at my employer doing all sorts of crazy things - e.g. a whole Windows VM just to serve up a 10 page website! Whatever happened to efficiency?

Dear Reg, please can you start a Campaign for Real Computing. Once upon a time programmers were skilled at developing efficient code that ran quick in small amounts of RAM. Now that resources are 'plentiful' the programming community has generally got lazy:

1. VMs where a native app would do.

2. Languages with bloated runtime environments that take forever to load just so you don't have to worry about errant pointers.

3. Apps running as crappy interpreted code in junk scripting languages in browsers just to save the effort of compiling the bloody thing.

4. New thin client technologies that consume vast amounts of bandwidth and give poor results instead of updating perfectly good things like X11.

5. An ever expanding array of app hosting environments (Silverlight, AIR, etc.) that are all 'indispensible' that make machines slow to boot and don't do anything that a carefully written native app couldn't do.

6. Data stored in man readable text when computers learnt to store things as binary a long time ago (come on, who EVER reads XML as the prime means of accessing the data within?).

I wonder how long it will be before data centre managers realise that lazy developers and vendors are costing them huge amounts in electricity, hardware and bandwidth costs?"

So there you have it - and it's true. Bloaty programming has a hardware and energy consumption cost. Ending code bloat is green. Do we really need items 1 to 6? I don't think so. This is why I'm anti code bloat and why someone telling me that throwing hardware at it is cheaper than doing the app right in the first place is plain crazy. It may be cheaper (debatable) but it's wasteful and short sighted.

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The start of the climate climbdown?

Is Judith Curry is the first to desert the good ship "climate catastrophe" on the climateaudit.org blog. Further to the embarrasing leakage of emails from CRU along with the data and code (which they'd reported was deleted), Ms Curry refers to a tribalist culture which formed as a response to politically motivated, industry-funded attacks. Somehow I don't think she'd refuse any funding offered to her from industry, nor do I think she'd imagine her scientific search for truth would be affected by that funding. Of course it's all transparent damage limitation coupled with the selfish desire to be one of the ones left standing if a climate science rout occurs.

Well as a fellow egotist, I also submitted my own comment - repeated below. As a supporter of real rather than the current crop of totally fake environmentalists, and an ardent fan of clean, green technology, and not exactly an ally of the paranoids in the climate debate who see reds under every bed, it's painful to see and say all this but scientific truth and integrity must be upheld even if it turns out not to be helpful in the end to green tech. I've long thought that this climate catastrophist cult was doing more harm than good, not only to the green tech cause, but to science and environmentalism in general. Just how many real issues are being ignored while we focus on the spurious? It's also deeply disturbing that so many scientists are thoroughly dishonest, incompetent and greedy. It shouldn't be though - they are human - just like the economists who were also tripped up by their own hubris. I submit that we engineers also have a disturbing god-complex but that's why we all need a diverse society to flourish with skepticism of all self-promoting "experts". At the end of the day, the facts remain the facts whether we like them or not. And cheating by manipulating your data to support your theory is always wrong, regardless of whether it was well meant.

"Whether politically motived, industry-funded or not, the skeptics were proven correct to be skeptical of the hurricane-warming tribalism which Judith was involved with. The reason there is less biased science now in that field is quite simply that nature didn’t cooperate with the theory. This should have been a lesson that skepticism is not to be regarded as “disinformation” but as the more reasonable fact-based perspective.

In fact the skeptical scientists have not yet been proven wrong in anything – they have merely been sidelined, ignored, defamed as industry hacks or swift-boated by post hoc adjustments of data and incompetent anti-science statistical nonsense such as the Santer et al. 2008 travesty – which was inspired by a particularly illogical realclimate.org webpost by Schmidt; the apparent focus and fount of all climate hand-waves.

It’s the anti-industry academic elitism that really irks though. Industry ultimately funds all this science don’t forget! The only ones in this debate I can respect are those who admit the limitations of the current science, don’t jump to premature conclusions, don’t employ blatant circular reasoning in the gathering of “evidence” and who are glad to say “y’know we were wrong and you guys were right – so thanks”. As welcome as her belated tribalist confession is; all of that is still lacking from Ms Curry and much more so in the case of Schmidt, Mann, Santer, Karl, Jones etc, etc, all of whom seem hell-bent on crippling international commerce purely to further their own careers. Trenberth though I still have hopes for: He was one of the worst of the link-a-natural-weather-event-to-global-warming types but he seems to be reforming, if slowly.

Let the chips fall where they may but if this doesn’t lead to massive re-adjustment of scientific research funding and proper peer- review standards then we haven’t progressed. Science, like industry and finance, clearly cannot police itself."

Oddly, I remember Ms Curry lifting one of my other comments on the Stoat blog - about the wonderful expansion of green tech - almost verbatim for a letter she wrote to an online newspaper.  Like me, it ticks her off to hear people say that no action is being done. Either they are living in a cave or they are just looking for a pointless fight.  The reality is that green tech is exploding. And frankly this is indeed due to the largely over-hyped climate catastrophism. What a dilemma! Is this really what we have to do to get some common sense green tech development? I fear so!

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Peak Oil Baloney

Well there is a peak oil cult currently exemplified by the worriers at theoildrum.com and their latest post, relying pretty much on a correlation between dollar price and US GDP. Hence to them a high oil price equals low GDP. Hence it's basically yet another "doomsday from resource-limits" cult. Well my comment to that is below:

You may be mixing up cause and effect and oversimplifying. Yes GDP is correlated with oil price but that's partly because in a boom more oil is used and in a recession there is a cutback. While I'd accept that a price spike causes a cutback too, the short-term price spikes of 2007 were really caused by over-buying of futures contracts which then corrected the same year. But the reason everyone was buying into oil was because the debt level became unsustainable, the recession was coming, the stock market was diving and the pension fund managers stupidly thought that commodities were a safe haven. Inevitably the speculation corrected and the oil price dropped. The initial price rise from 2001 had of course been caused by the Iraq war and fears of supply.

Of course, we also have the reality that cheap oil allowed globalization by reducing shipping costs which then caused a slump in Western manufacture, so the Western GDP was then propped up only by rising house prices which were in turn based on cheap debt. And of course an economy that depends on house prices to continually rise is doomed to collapse, which is what happened. So it's all a bit more complex than your simple analysis allows for. In other words, correlation is not causation.

Indeed a higher price may actually be better for western economies because:
a) It makes cheap imports more expensive and allows local economies to redevelop their own manufacturing base, which gives real GDP growth from added value, rather than artificial growth from debt.
b) It encourages investments in extraction or gasification of shale oil and extraction of heavy oil, which are both hugely abundant, as even M. King Hubbert [the originator of the peak oil movement] noted, and which in turn ensures a future supply of oil.

Also perhaps a more important correlation is between the price of gold and the number of barrels it buys, which has hovered around 14 barrels per ounce for a century. So it's likely the variance in the price is more indicative of the value of the dollar than anything else.

Lastly, oil is largely used for transportation and plastics so a reduction in oil would not reduce electrical energy output hence it's not quite as drastic as you suggest. There is plenty of coal and gas to keep the lights on and there are also alternatives to plastics which could be used if plastics became expensive. So it's not all doom and gloom! It really depends on how you want to view things!

But there's yet one more aspect that I forgot to mention there. The fact that world oil is bought in dollars means that every country in the world has to keep a supply, so they buy more dollars as the oil price rises. This allows the US to print more dollars without incurring inflation. It's the petrodollar economy that has propped up the USA since the end of the Bretton-Woods agreement and it basically amounts to the rest of the world giving free money to the USA. This willingness for the rest of the world to soak up dollars is why the USA GDP looked so good and why the debt burden didn't seem to matter to all US administrations since Reagan. In their own words, the growing debt was a sign of confidence in the USA and indeed it was. However that confidence is lost if the dollar tanks. That of course would cause all these foreign dollars to be worthless. Hence the rest of the world are partly forced to keep propping up the dollar or lose the value of their reserves. What a dilemma! China, who hold the largest dollar stash, are coping with this dilemma by buying up all the commodities; metals, oil, uranium that they can get their hands on. Basically they will then not have to worry about any dollar crash and may even be the new hegemony in the world - ousting the USA. The Eastern politicians it seems are a lot more clever than their Western counterparts.

Its much more fascinating when you do real analysis rather than just plotting two curves, noting a correlation and dumbly assuming that A causes B or B causes A, rather than C causing both A and B. More false ideas are spread, and even wars happen, because of this fundamental error than by anything else.

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UK Energy Policy

I'm pretty sure that the UK energy policy is based on faith, hope and charity and very little real action. However, in some senses you can argue that a government with a total lack of engineering knowledge should just keep their nose out. Certainly Thatcher's dreams of a nuclear future were confounded by the reality of commissioning and decommissioning costs and it was largely good luck that natural gas came along at the right time. The gas plants though were not only better than coal and nuclear - simpler, more efficient, cheaper - they were pulled from industry rather than pushed by government. That's an important thing to note as it sort of vindicates the "free-market knows best" idea which has been knocked quite a bit. However the real problem with the free market is that it's too free for the criminals and they then gradually take control and ensure that it becomes less free for everyone else. That's where the regulation is needed. If the regulators are criminals too then there's no hope.

I'm convinced that the UK just doesn't have the money for the nuclear expansion they propose - they are massively in debt. Whatever the government says now they'll have to face that reality sooner or later. Sooner I hope.

So what is the real energy direction going to be? Well I'm increasingly finding that it's a lot easier recycling someone else's words when they agree with you. I thought I was such a contrarian that couldn't happen but apparently I'm not so alone. So I dug this out of the comments section of the oil drum. Again I assume it's public domain. I could have reworded it but that would have been pointless and dishonest. It's by the OMGbyWTF anonymous bot:

"The recession is keeping the lights on at the moment. There are a couple of unusual things happening in the UK electricity market at the moment.

The low price of natural gas and large number of CCGT's seem to to be undercutting the price of coal generated electricity, also there are net electricity exports to France as they seem to have a lot of nukes out of service for various reasons.

http://www.reuters.com/article/utilitiesSector/idUSLU26856720091030

http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm

The UK has wasted its North Sea reserves making cheap electricity with no long term investment in alternatives or storage. LNG import capacity has been built fairly quickly and it I don't see the 'gas glut' lasting for very long. I think the UK needs to get its act sorted on several key areas.

Build more natural gas storage facilities.

Improve thermal efficiency in buildings: insulation and move towards heat pumps starting with those on electric and oil fired heating. External insulation and solar water heating should also be considered.

Adopt the Danish model of multifuel CHP systems burning coal, rubbish, biomass and gas whilst providing district heating. Distributed generation running of gassified waste / coal / natural gas / biogas should provide good security and flexibility. Dump the CO2 and waste heat into greenhouses.

Accelerate construction of replacement nuclear reactors and grid upgrades to add more interconnectors with Europe and accomodate more wind power.

Expand and electrify existing railway services.

Look at potential for coal bed methane / gasification of the coal reserves under the North Sea, from a CO2 perspective this may not seem a good idea by this time there should be plenty of empty oil / gas fields to pump the CO2 into.

Build the Severn Barrage, and uprate and expand if possible existing pumped storage sites.

Roll out electric vehicles as they become available."

The only things I don't agree about are a) the nuclear expansion - on mainly cost grounds, and b) worrying about warming from CO2, which in my view is a very overblown hypothesis, though I accept it's politically correct. Using the CO2 for greenhouses or scavenging is however eminently sensible. However all this is cost but no sign of where the money might come from. Stopping the pointless wars would help. Perhaps a Tobin tax? Or just getting entrepreneurs to fund it rather than government. I'm not too happy about that because energy companies are natural monopolies - they really need strict overseers.

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