Recently Judith Curry published a series of articles on the topic of blackouts. Since attempting to prevent such things is my “professional” speciality I’ve spent a bit of time over at “Climate Etc.” recently. Hence I couldn’t help but notice Judith’s article on Tim Palmer‘s new book, entitled “The Primacy of Doubt”. According to Judith:
This book is a physics-intellectual feast. Must read.
Hence I immediately rushed online and bought a copy from amazon.co.uk, which arrived today. A more detailed overview will follow once I’ve had a chance to read the whole book, but leafing through it this evening I couldn’t help but notice this quotation from Richard Feynman at the very start:
Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question — to doubt, that’s all — not to be sure.
My gaze also alighted on the final paragraph of chapter 10 – “Decisions! Decisions!”:
Just as with weather prediction, a cost-loss analysis can help you make a decision about whether to take anticipatory action regarding climate change…
Based on the way we value our own existence in other areas of life, there does indeed seem to be a strong argument that we should act now, uncertainties about future climate change notwithstanding.
But this is ultimately a decision which each of us must make, e.g. in deciding which politicians to vote for.
Of course being a citizen of the once Great British banana republic I don’t get to vote on our next Prime Minister!
I think I’ll go and pass this news on to Judith and her denizens forthwith. Meanwhile here’s a quotation from the back cover. According to Suki Manabe, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics:
[Edit – October 22nd]The Primacy of Doubt is an important book by one of the pioneers of dynamical weather prediction, indispensable for daily life, describing how the approach can be used for prediction in other areas, such as climate, health, economy, and conflict.
I’m still rather busy trying to help keep the UK’s lights on, so I have yet to even begin reading “The Primacy of Doubt” from cover to cover. However here is another brief extract, from the chapter on “Climate Change”:
[Edit – October 25th]We understand these [water vapour, albedo] feedback processes reasonably well. However, there is another feedback process associated with water that we understand rather poorly. This is the cloud feedback process.
Here’s another extract from chapter 6 (page 115):
The question of whether clouds act as a positive or negative feedback on climate change can’t at present be answered unambiguously: indeed, I would say it is the biggest unsolved problem in physical climate-change science.
Watch this space!
“Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question — to doubt, that’s all — not to be sure.”
Climate science is the only branch of science that does not permit criticism or challenge, any dissent is ruthlessly suppressed.
When the IPCC was formed in 1988 its charter specifically deemed anthropogenic climate change to be a fact and the IPCC’s mission was to investigate how to deal with this “fact”.
But who decided that AGW was a fact? To this day no government, scientific organisation or the UN have ever held a conference or investigation to determine the cause of our current warming cycle!
But we are repeatedly told “the debate is over and the science is settled”.
Albert Einstein said “100 experiments can never prove me right, but a single experiment can prove me wrong” meaning that NOTHING in science is ever settled.
So that means AGW is founded on faith, not science and that makes it a religion, a cult where doctrine is beyond challenge.
Balderdash Peter.
See Prof. Peter Cox’s graphic illustration of the similarity between climate science and herding cats from 2014:
Who made that first quote?
If I’ve correctly interpreted your question, Judith Curry.
I looked it up: apparently it was Richard Feynman.
Then I googled for his views on climate change and couldn’t find any.
I truly wonder what he thought about climate change.
Now I’m even more confused, because I stated before the second comment:
“This quotation from Richard Feynman”!
That maybe because I didn’t read the blog before entering the fray… oops!
Jim,
I have no idea about what the cat herder cartoon means and also have no idea what specifically you disagree with about what I wrote.
1. There has never been a debate about AGW.
2. The IPCC charter states that AGW is a fact.
3. In science, a theory can never be proved right, but in climate science the theory can never be proved wrong.
Cheers
If you have no idea what the cartoon means then I suggest that you do more due diligence. It doesn’t seem to be your strong point, does it?
I asked you what the cartoon meant and you just answer with sarcasm and personal attacks. I still have no idea what it means.
I asked you to comment on what I actually said and you just ignore and you refuse to engage.
Jim, I have an open mind and welcome debate on these issues but you rely on ad hominem attacks, red herrings and appeals to authority and not once have directly challenged any specific point I have made.
Did you and/or Neil click the link, watch Peter Cox’s presentation and/or download his slides? Or even read the helpful explanatory extract therefrom?
You have not provided any links to any “data” other than “newspaper clippings” to support your “opinions”. Please do so.
At the risk of repeating myself, in answer to your specific points:
1) Where is your evidence for this assertion?
2) Where is your evidence for this assertion?
3) Where is your evidence for this assertion?
And whilst you’re at it please also respond to the numbered points I raised over at:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2022/10/rewriting-the-arctic/#comment-648873
Thanks in advance.
1. There has never been a debate about AGW.
You said “Where is your evidence for this assertion?”
What an absurd answer Jim, it’s up to you to show me where and when debates happened that were organised by a government, scientific body or UN. But you cant because there none.
2. The IPCC charter states that AGW is a fact.
You said “Where is your evidence for this assertion?”
Here it is….
“IPCC role as defined in the “Principles Governing IPCC Work” is “to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change…”
So from the very start the IPCC mission was not to investigate whether the current warming cycle is natural or anthrogogenic but to “understand the scientific basis of risk of HUMAN-INDUCED climate change”.
3. In science, a theory can never be proved right, but in climate science the theory can never be proved wrong.
You said “Where is your evidence for this assertion?”
Whether it’s hot or cold, rain or drought, snow or no snow or whatever, AGW can never be tested or falsified. From Popper…..
“The Falsification Principle, proposed by Karl Popper, is a way of demarcating science from non-science. It suggests that for a theory to be considered scientific it must be able to be tested and conceivably proven false. ”
It can be shown scientifically that CO2 causes a small amount of warming but the relationship is logarithmic so the temperature response gets increasingly smaller.
To counter this, warmists dreamed up the theory of positive feedback which says that warming causes more evaporation which cause more warming which cause more evaporation etc but it is impossible to test this theory and many scientists believe the feedback could actually be negative because of the actions of clouds.
Without positive feedback AGW is dead in the water.
There is NO repeatable testable science that validates AGW, it’s all theory, models and predictions of doom.
In true science nothing is ever “settled”, the “debate” is never over, challenges to the theory are treated respectfully and consensus is irrelevant.
In climate science, the science is settled, the debate is over, challenges to the theory are ruthlessly suppressed and consensus is demanded.
You may challenge the theories of Newton and Einstein but it is considered heresy to challenge the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
I note you still haven’t provided any links.
1) What an absurd answer Peter. Now you’re qualifying your assertion? Would you like to qualify it further?
2) For some strange reason you left out this bit:
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created in 1988. It was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) to prepare, based on available scientific information, assessments on all aspects of climate change and its impacts, with a view of formulating realistic response strategies. The initial task for the IPCC as outlined in UN General Assembly Resolution 43/53 of 6 December 1988 was to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; the social and economic impact of climate change, and possible response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.
3) It seems you still haven’t read about the IPCC’s cat herding activities?
What’s more there are numerous philosophers of science who quibble with Popper. Including you apparently. I’ve already falsified your “all the top Arctic climate scientists in the early 2000’s were gleefully announcing that the Arctic was in a death spiral” assertion for example.
If consensus is not relevant then what is nomenclature?
I am following the Jim / Peter discussion with interest.
I don’t understand the cat herding cartoon either.
Did you and/or Peter click the link, watch Peter Cox’s presentation and/or download his slides?
[Doug appears to be driving by, commenting without reference to the OP. Hence most of his comment is redacted.
However I will leave this bit here for posterity – Mod]
It’s sad that Dr Tim Ball has passed on, but he correctly called this the biggest scam in history. And it is. It must be defeated and it will be because truth will prevail. Here in Australia I will (by next year) be organising a class action against the CSIRO by major companies that a financially affected by legislation based on the fictitious, fiddled physics of climatology. I will easily defeat any climatologist face to face in a court room.
One thing there is no doubt about is the result of our £1000 bet Jim. Had you not had a problem with the DMI my charity would now have an extra £1000 to spend this year.
Given you were the only person out of many i asked, including some Arctic “experts” with enough conviction to take on a bet back in 2014 on Arctic sea ice extent (though to be fair you only took area, no one was brave enough to bet on extent) i thought you might have done a small piece on the blog regarding it.
Maybe if you had won the bet you would have been more motivated to do a post 🙂
When I have a spare moment Chilly!
At present “moderation” duties are consuming my sadly limited amounts of spare time.
what was the bet?
See: https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2015/05/the-new-normal-in-the-arctic/#comment-208884
Intriguingly Judith has now published an article by Nic Lewis that leans heavily on cloud feedback. However Judith, Nic and 80 odd commenters all failed to draw a connection with Judith’s previous article, until I added a comment of my own to the effect that:
According to Nic:
Here is my own translation of the exchange about PIK:
“ZEIT: And how does this balance change with global warming? Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) recently published a worst-case scenario. It also mentions that by the end of the century, our planet could get so warm that all the clouds will have practically evaporated, and we are doomed.
Stevens: That is nonsense. Put simply, the atmosphere will be cloudy because the air rises. It is hard to get rid of clouds.
Thanks very much for the independent translation Kasia.
Would I be correct in assuming that Die Zeit is rather like a German language version of the once United Kingdom’s Daily Torygraph?
Evidently Max Rauner is being somewhat “economical with the truth” in his article. For example, the “PIK paper” he links to is nothing of the sort. The lead and corresponding author is Luke Kemp from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge. The abstract explicitly states that:
“Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic.”
Needless to say the paper goes on to explore that topic! The nearest I can find to Max’s “evaporating clouds” reads as follows:
That sounds much more like Tim Palmer’s position, described briefly above and in much more detail in his book.
“economical with the truth” is such a pathetic Englishness, the use of euphemism. The Zeit and Max Rauner are lying, just that.
[Image changed, as discussed – Mod]
Peter is now “on moderation”.
5 of his comments which contained no links to any “evidence” for his numerous assertions and have nothing to do with the philosophy of science, Tim Palmer’s book in general or cloud feedbacks in particular have been redacted.
Here is a brief extract from one of them:
“LOL! Needed a good laugh this morning.”
Needless to say Anthony Watts has republished Nic Lewis’s article on his eponymous blog.
Needless to say my hopefully helpful comment is currently “in moderation” at WUWT:
It seems that Max Rauner isn’t the only person who has been writing about Kemp et al. (2022), AKA “Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios”.
According to Burgess, Pielke Jr. and Ritchie in “Catastrophic climate risks should be neither understated nor overstated“:
In their reply Kemp et al. have this to say:
Neither article explicitly refers to cloud feedbacks.
Furthermore Skeptical Science has published an article critical of Burgess et al.’s critique of Kemp et al.:
Shields down Jim! There are others who have dared to question the Obsidian Order too…
Never could have I imagined that the farce could ever – would ever – come to this. But…
Graphique I posted earlier details a “weapon” of type which proves highly effective against “uniformitarianism with Marxist characteristics”….
So you prefer “catastrophism with libertarian characteristics”?
And you still haven’t explained what any of this has to do with Arctic sea ice!