Stephen Schneider, R.I.P. Options

[Omega892R09]

A Eulogy to Stephen Schneider

Remembering Stephen Schneider

Stephen H Schneider - recent talk

Stephen Schneider in 1979

He fought with courage against the illness that was destroying him and at the same time fending of character assassinations from deniers - the usual suspects, one of whom appears to have again stabbed at him when he is gone - that should tell you what sort of person that attacker is.

And before you come on with quotes from Schneider taken out of context then realize I know what that is about and so will you if you bother to study the material via those links.

[tumetuestumefais...]

Almost everything in this science of CAGW is too overstated - in 1979 Stephen Schneider was telling us the CO2 will rise +20% at the end of century and in middle of 21st century "will double".
In fact now we have 2010 and CO2 have risen 13.7% since 1979, 5.5% since 2000. So he overstated the figure - 2.4 times than actually was the reality.
It reminds me the fishermen who show me using their hands how big the fish they caught was to win attention. It is more like an activism than a serious science...

[Omega892R09]

Almost everything in this science of CAGW is too overstated - in 1979 Stephen Schneider was telling us the CO2 will rise +20% at the end of century and in middle of 21st century "will double".

And that quote comes from where?

Taking stuff out of context is a recognised denier trick done by Plimer, Monckton and Lomborg to name but three.

Whatever.

In fact now we have 2010 and CO2 have risen 13.7% since 1979, 5.5% since 2000. So he overstated the figure - 2.4 times than actually was the reality.
It reminds me the fishermen who show me using their hands how big the fish they caught was to win attention. It is more like an activism than a serious science...

And you remind me of the blind man who cannot recognise that he is touching an elephant because he is only holding the tail.

You may well be an exceptionally gifted particle physicist but unfortunately you seem oblivious of the other multiple strands of evidence which support the fact that global warming is real and already creating demonstrable climate change. Explain otherwise the melting of the cryosphere, changing precipitation patterns, migration of species with the extinction of those which cannot.

Myopia seems rampant around here.

[tumetuestumefais...]

And that quote comes from where?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB2ugPM0cRM

[Omega892R09]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB2ugPM0cRM

Just testing that you actually watched it.

So. How far off was he? Orders of magnitude?

There was a post of your some while back where you went on about solar output at the start and made many erroneous statements. Firefighting the many here as I am I am afraid that my health went down before I could reply and then the thread vanished into the background. I have not forgotten it and had a reply worked out in thought. Time is pressing on me again now but I'll be back.

This post has been edited by Omega892R09: Jul 23 2010, 01:16 PM

[tumetuestumefais...]

Just testing that you actually watched it.

So. How far off was he? Orders of magnitude?

There was a post of your some while back where you went on about solar output at the start and made many erroneous statements. Firefighting the many here as I am I am afraid that my health went down before I could reply and then the thread vanished into the background. I have not forgotten it and had a reply worked out in thought. Time is pressing on me again now but I'll be back.

How far off was he?
You're maybe so time pressed Omega you haven't even read my original post:
link to the post where I wrote the actual numbers quite clearly.

Just little about the solar activity. We have long time dispute about this with my friend from BNL who is Hansen's friend and has a very simmilar attitude to the whole issue as you have. (It doesn't mean we aren't friends anymore.)
Now it looks like the sun activity reality is still off lower the latest predictions. From the recent example of SC24 prediction it looks like the NASA is quite completely unable to predict next solar cycle, it looks like their solar model doesn't work at all, and they've had arbitrarily changing their prediction from SC24 maximum at 140 spots in 2010-2011 made in 2006 many times to the latest at half of it in 2013-2014. But the reality looks even gloomier. It quite clearly now looks like SC24 would be at average 50-60 spots maximum in 2014-2015 which means so lower PSI in the important spectres that the whole effect of the anthropogenic CO2 on global temperatures not just would be erased but the cooling is very likely over next at least 15 years. (And note even Bilderberg was already having talks about it this year in Sitges according to leaked agenda). We also now know thank's to the Czech researcher Vit Kremlik the IPCC hasn't any renowned solar scientist on the board at all, not one. So the climatology of the CAGW is clearly unable to work with the real solar science at all and if there are some predictions in this regard they're clearly off reality, prefering their black-box models. Hopefully it will change and somebody would finally start to pay attention to Niroma RIP (who exactly predicted the end of the SC23), Archibald, Svaalgaard etc. Because it is mainly a political problem - We don't know really, how serious the CAGW issue is, I'm quite skeptical about it, but more due to lack of decisive, credible information and the suspicious megalomaniac global socialist agenda around it. If indeed the climate is highly sensitive to the CO2 (which I seriously doubt from available mesurements, but I'm not completely convinced about the opposite), but the solar activity would continue to decline as we see predicted by the people who were unlike the official agencies right about the SC23 end, then the next period of low solar activity can completely mask the CAGW effect and when the solar activity would eventually come back to the levels of the last half of the century (which can be even two, three SC's from now), there could be too late to mitigate CO2 to stop the runoff. On the other hand it can give us needed time to adaptation, mainly the major restructuralization in the energetics needed to booth develop the realy sustainable energy sources (I'm of the simmilar opinion in this as Hansen - 4th generation nuclear R&D is almost only option due to developing population and technology use in the 3rd world and my opinion from the praxis is it would be developed only if there would be deregulation not more regulation applied) which we need anyway and curb the carbon energetics which is unsustainable, polluting, more and more expensive anyway and having unexpected potentially fatal externalities as we clearly see now in the GoM. But politically the real cooling due to the very low solar activity very likely comming which is so scandalously disregarded and downplayed by IPCC and leading climatologists can considerably shaken the public belief in the climatology as a whole and the proposed policies, even some of them are vital ones without regards to if there is CAGW or not could not win the public support. That's why I consider the activist overstatements from the side of the ardent warmistas be so dangerous if one considers the real social and political dynamics and the possible direst consequences.

[Omega892R09]

We also now know thank's to the Czech researcher Vit Kremlik the IPCC hasn't any renowned solar scientist on the board at all, not one. So the climatology of the CAGW is clearly unable to work with the real solar science at all and if there are some predictions in this regard they're clearly off reality, prefering their black-box models.

Arguments about the IPCC having any renowned solar scientists aside, the solar irradiance effect on the atmosphere as GHG levels rise is a well understood area supported by data and logic. Although there may be some value in continuing research into the role of GCRs on CCN formation as the understanding of the science stands at the moment then GHG warming is now firmly in charge and will continue to be such short of any other negating factors that may ensue such as volcanic erruptions.

This issue of GCRs and CCNs, a hobby horse of Svensmark and clearly yourself, has been addressed as this article by the Rabett demonstrates:

Eli can retire: Part III - Svensmark circles the drain

as this excerpt makes clear

Back to Eli's post


Comment (3-36):
Many commenters (0153, 0245, 0509, 0591, 1017.1, 1187, 2953, 3722, 3729.1) claim that temperature is better correlated with solar activity patterns than with greenhouse forcing, some of whom reference researchers such as Svensmark or Shaviv that attribute the mechanism not to solar irradiance but rather solar wind or solar-magnetic flux (2917, 3205.1, 3324.1, 4632, 5058) and interactions with cosmic rays seeding low-lying clouds (0542, 0646, 0798, 1616.1), or length of solar cycles (0543) or sunspots (1219.1).

One commenter (7031) indicates that solar impacts on climate have received scant research attention and are minimized in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007a) and the climate model community, even though the IPCC authors rank the level of scientific understanding of solar-climate interactions as very low. The assumption is that variations in TSI are the only significant solar impact on global climate. The commenter also posits:

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Recent studies have shown strong correlations between solar-modulated cosmic ray fluxes and low-level cloud cover and its subsequent impact on global temperatures. Experimental verification of a cosmic-ray cloud seeding mechanism was recently completed by Svensmark et al. [1997], and the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) experiments at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) over the next few years will provide definitive measurements of cloud seeding by cosmic rays.
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The commenter concludes it is clear that solar variations have much larger impacts on global climate than what is estimated based solely on TSI variations.

One commenter (3446.2) requests that the TSD include a rigorous presentation of sunspot activity and temperature over the past century, and notes objection to the lack of sunspot discussion in Karl et al. (2009). Another (3397) requests more discussion of solar activity as a climate forcer.

Response (3-36):
The contention that cosmic rays could provide the mechanism by which changes in solar activity affect climate is not supported by the literature. Solomon et al. (2007) address this topic, noting that “the cosmic ray time series does not appear to correspond to global total cloud cover after 1991 or to global low-level cloud cover after 1994.” More recent research continues to question the ability of this mechanism to play a significant role in climate change. Pierce and Adams (2009) use calculations to show that potential impacts on clouds from cosmic rays and “conclude that the hypothesized effect is too small to play a significant role in current climate change.” Erlykin et al. (2009) found that the evidence showed that connections between solar variation and climate were more likely to be mediated by direct variation of insolation rather than cosmic rays, and concluded: “Hence within our assumptions, the effect of varying solar activity, either by direct solar irradiance or by varying cosmic ray rates, must be less than 0.07 ◦C since 1956, i.e. less than 14% of the observed global warming.” Carslaw (2009) and Pittock (2009) review the recent and historical literature in this field and continue to find that the link between cosmic rays and climate is tenuous, though they encourage continued research.

The CLOUD experiments at CERN are interesting research but do not provide conclusive evidence that cosmic rays can serve as a major source of cloud seeding. Preliminary results from the experiment (Duplissy et al., 2009) suggest that though there was some evidence of ion mediated nucleation, for most of the nucleation events observed the contribution of ion processes appeared to be minor. These experiments also showed the difficulty in maintaining sufficiently clean conditions and stable temperatures to prevent spurious aerosol bursts. There is no indication that the earlier Svensmark experiments could even have matched the controlled conditions of the CERN experiment. We find that the Svensmark results on cloud seeding have not yet been shown to be robust or sufficient to materially alter the conclusions of the assessment literature, especially given the abundance of recent literature that is skeptical of the cosmic ray-climate linkage reviewed in the previous paragraph.

Therefore the TSD summary of the assessment literature on this issue is well founded: that the lack of a proven physical mechanism and the plausibility of other causal factors make the association between galactic cosmic ray-induced changes in aerosol and cloud formation controversial.