Quote of the Day, Climate Change and Real Science edition

From Ian Plimer on “Science and the Politics of Climate Change.” This had me pumping my fist and almost shouting “yes!”

We derive scientific evidence from measurement, observation, and experiment. Evidence must be repeatable and collected over and over again. Computers do not generate evidence: they analyse evidence that should have been repeated and validated. On the basis of the evidence and analysis of evidence, an explanation is given. This explanation is a scientific theory and must be in accord with other validated evidence from diverse sources (this is known as the coherence criterion in science). Unlike in law, there is no inadmissible evidence in science. Science is underpinned by practitioners who must be sceptical of the methodology used to collect evidence, the analysis of evidence, and the conclusions based on the evidence. On the basis of new evidence, scientists must always be prepared to change their opinions.

Science bows to no authority , is not based on a consensus, and is in a constant state of flux. No great advance in science has been made by consensus: advances have been made by individuals paddling upstream. If a scientific theory is not in accord with validated evidence, then the theory must be abandoned and reconstructed. It is scepticism that underpins science, not the comfort of consensus.

The theory of human-induced global warming is not science because research is based on a pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored, and the analytical procedures are treated as evidence. Furthermore, climate ‘science’ is sustained by government research grants. Funds are not available to investigate theories that are not in accord with government ideology.

Preach it, Brother Ian!

Excerpted from “Climate Change: The Facts.”

A new book in which I have a chapter: Climate Change: The Facts

Phineas Fahrquar:

I think I shall be ordering this. (Just to be clear, the title is from the linked post. *I* don’t have a chapter in it.)

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

From Steynonline:

…

Climate Change: The Facts has been put together by our friends at the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia, edited by Alan Moran, and features 22 essays on the science, politics and economics of “climate change”.

[It features Mark Steyn on the Mann Hockey Stick debacle,] Joanne Nova on the climate-change gravy train; Britain’s former Chancellor Nigel Lawson on the economic consequences of abandoning fossil fuels; Patrick Michaels on the growing chasm between the predictions of the IPCC and real-world temperatures, Garth Paltridge on the damage such failed forecasts are doing to science, and Donna Laframboise on the damage the Big Climate alarmists have done to the IPCC; professors Richard Lindzen, Bob Carter and Willie Soon on climate sensitivity and factors such as greenhouse gases, natural variability, and the role of the sun…

Oh, don’t worry, Michael E Mann and his “hockey stick” are in the book…

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Tides, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes

Phineas Fahrquar:

Interesting rebuttal to the previous post about the theory that tidal forces affect underwater earthquake eruptions.

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

Inspired by the paper by the charmingly-named Anna Maya Tolstoy discussed here on WUWT, I decided to see if tidal forces affect the timing of earthquakes and volcanoes. Dr. Tolstoy’s hypothesis is that tidal forces affect the timing of the subterranean eruptions … but she has only nine “events” (either eruptions or lava flows) to test her theory. On that thread I said I thought her hypothesis was wrong, but I hadn’t looked at the data.

I figured that IF, and it’s a big if, tidal forces are affecting volcanoes, they’d also affect earthquakes. So I decided to start by seeing if there is a relationship between the tidal forces and earthquakes by looking at as many earthquakes as I could find.

For the calculation of the tidal forces, I started by going to the marvelous JPL Horizons ephemeris. I set the variables as…

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Inconvenient study: Seafloor volcano pulses may alter climate – models may be wrong

Phineas Fahrquar:

This is a fascinating article and yet another potential blow to climate-alarmist fantasies.

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

New data show strikingly regular patterns, from weeks to eons

This topographic map of Earth’s ocean floor in the Atlantic ocean reveals thousands of sub-oceanic volcanoes along the mid-Atlantic ridge. Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6205/32.summary

From The Earth Institute at Columbia University:

Vast ranges of volcanoes hidden under the oceans are presumed by scientists to be the gentle giants of the planet, oozing lava at slow, steady rates along mid-ocean ridges. But a new study shows that they flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years–and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses–apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth’s orbit, and to sea levels–may help trigger natural climate swings. Scientists have already speculated that volcanic cycles on land emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide might influence climate; but up to now there was no evidence from submarine volcanoes.

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Time Magazine’s Jeffrey Kluger writes what might possibly be the stupidest article about climate ever – climate change causes volcanoes

Phineas Fahrquar:

Global warming is like the monster in a bad 1950s science fiction movie: there is nothing it cannot do. Nothing.

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

The stupid, it burns like a magnesium flare.

Excerpt from the article:

Now, you can add yet another problem to the climate change hit list: volcanoes. That’s the word from a new study conducted in Iceland and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. The finding is bad news not just for one comparatively remote part of the world, but for everywhere.

Iceland has always been a natural lab for studying climate change. It may be spared some of the punishment hot, dry places like the American southwest get, but when it comes to glacier melt, few places are hit harder. About 10% of the island nation’s surface area is covered by about 300 different glaciers—and they’re losing an estimated 11 billion tons of ice per year. Not only is that damaging Icelandic habitats and contributing to the global rise in sea levels, it is also—oddly—causing the entire island…

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Al Gore, wrong again – Polar ice continues to thrive

Phineas Fahrquar:

How dare Nature continue to deny The Goracle?

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

Guest essay by Rolf E. Westgard

In his 2007 Noble Prize acceptance speech, former Vice President  Al Gore warned that the “Arctic ice could be gone in as little as seven years.” Last week, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reported:

“The North and South Poles are not melting.” In that report, oceanographer Ted Maksym noted that polar ice “is much more stable than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought.”

That Woods Hole study was confirmed by today’s NOAA  Arctic radar map which shows the Arctic Ice Cap at more than 4,000,000 square miles, larger than on any December 28 in the past five years. Reaching the North Pole requires either a dog sled or a nuclear sub; Al Gore’s cruise ship will stay in the tropics. At the South Pole,  Antarctic ice coverage is at the highest extent since radar measurement began…

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On the futility of climate models: ‘simplistic nonsense’

Phineas Fahrquar:

Should be required reading on the climate alarmists’ beloved computer models.

Originally posted on Watts Up With That?:

Guest essay by Leo Smith – elevated from a comment left on WUWT on January 6, 2015 at 2:11 am (h/t to dbs)

As an engineer, my first experience of a computer model taught me nearly all I needed to know about models.

I was tasked with designing a high voltage video amplifier to drive a military heads up display featuring a CRT.

Some people suggested I make use of the acoustic coupler to input my design and optimise it with one of the circuit modelling programs they had devised. The results were encouraging, so I built it. The circuit itself was a dismal failure.

Investigation revealed the reason instantly: the model parametrised parasitic capacitance into a simple single value: the reality of semiconductors is that the capacitance varies with applied voltage – an effect made use of in every radio today as the ‘varicap diode’. for small signals this…

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