An even more complex answer

Spencer Weart has commented on my previous post. Since I rather went off topic there, here is a second attempt, hopefully including some new ideas.

Spencer, you wrote: "Apologies to engineers! I only meant to report that people who emailed me and self-identified as engineers (often "experienced" or "retired") were a surprisingly large number of the people who demanded to know why they couldn't find a page on the Web with a simple calculation of greenhouse warming. I don't think they are typical of engineers in general and regret the implied insult. Engineers are great!"

Don't apologise. It gave me an excuse to slag off the mathematicians and the physicists who write the climate models :-)

I wonder if "experienced" is just a euphemism for "retired". I don't like admitting that I am retired, and have even thought of calling myself an "emeritus" student :-) On the other hand, "experienced" could mean that he has learnt from his mistakes. Scientists don't seem to make them, since science is always right!

You continued:
"As you know, I agree with you that computer models are problematic. But I think you deeply undervalue the very important successes they have had in actual prediction. Given that they predict -- not a certainty to be sure -- but a large risk of bad stuff, and that many things outside of climate models point in the same direction, it's shortsighted to dismiss the modelers as fools."

Actually I did not know that you thought that the models were problematical, but even so you are not facing up to the fact that they do not reproduce abrupt climate change. We know that it happens, so the models do not reflect reality. They can reproduce the climate over last 10,000 years, but not the 100 before that when the glacial Younger Dryas switched into the Holocene interglacial. Should I give the models credit for the 10,000 that they can get right, or fail them for the 100 they get wrong in the past and the 100 they are about to get wrong in the future?

I do not consider the modellers to be fools. Most have PhD’s in maths or science. I struggled to get an ordinary degree in engineering. But it is their success which has been their undoing. They are not used to making mistakes, so when they do then they cannot believe it. In engineering, the criteria is whether a design works. In science the criteria is whether the theory explains the outcome. In other words, engineers work using heuristics, rules of thumb, or simple models. That is why they are surprised there is not a simple model for the greenhouse effect.

Scientists build on the success of their predessors. As Newton said “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” When their model does not work, then they just build on a bit more. No wonder there is not a simple model now!

But why did their simple model not ework? The reason is that a mistake was made by a giant of astrophysics Robert Emden. In 1913 he applied the equations for internal solar radiation derived by his brother in law, another giant of astrophysics Karl Schwarzschild, to the earth’s atmosphere. The radiation scheme is based on Schwarzschild's equation. However, we have a planetary atmosphere not a stellar one!

The climate modellers have have been dazzled by the prestige of the astrophyicists such as Eddington, Einstein, Milne and Chandrasekar. But these giants were considering high temperature electronic radiation from atomic plasma at phenomenal pressures, not vibrationsl radiation from molecules at room temperatures and pressures or lower. No-one now considers the fundamentals of atmospheric radiation. They consider that those problems were solved in the dim and distant past.

Spencer, it is not, as you suggests, that I think the models are problematical. It is that they have a fundamental flaw in the way they handle greenhouse gases. Otherwise they are fine. I was informed personally by a professor that if I could see the way the model outputs reproduce the global climate then I would find it difficult to distinguish that form satellite imagery. True? Only an hour later a speaker informed us that the models produce a double ITCZ. It would have been too embarrassing and counter productive to have confronted the professor with the fact that satellites do not show two bands of clouds circling the equator.

If the current model was correct, then it would not produce a double ITCZ, nor would the predictions of warming in the upper troposphere be found to be false by the radiosonde measurement. Philipona would not be reporting that it is boundary layer water vapour that is melting the Alpine glaciers, and there would not have been the gross under estimation of the speed of the melting of the Arctic sea ice. The problem with handling clouds would have been solved, and abrupt climate change explained.

Dr Iain Stewart signed off from episode 1 of his TV program “Earth: the climate wars” saying that in the next episode he would describe how the sceptics won. They have won. They have prevented any action being taken by claiming the models are wrong. The scientists have lost by arguing against them, instead of fixing their models! If they had, then they would have found that the greenhouse effect is more effective than currently believed, and they would have been able to predict the next abrupt climate change.

You concluded:
"Clearly I'm not going to change your mind on this, however."

Dale Carnegie wrote in "How to win friends and influence people" that you can never win an argument. Even if your opponent concedes he will still believe he is correct. We cannot bear to lose face. So no doubt you mind, like mine, has not been changed either, but hopefully I have given you some food for thought :-)

Cheers, Alastair.