Course code: Denial101x, April 2015

From one of the sponsoring, advocacy sites:
Week 1 of Denial101x: 14,000 students from 159 countries

Bob Wilson

 

Careful folks, we're starting to wander into Freds House of Politics stuff.

Bob Wilson

 

Satellites are not cheap and they offer some of the best platforms for global inventories.

Bob Wilson

 

A reasonable rule of thumb:

• $100,000 ~= 1 person per year (inflation may have increased this some)
• $300 m cut ~= 3,000 people cut
• Large NASA center ~= 3,000 people,

Larson B does not operate on a budget.

Bob Wilson

 

This week's lecture is on weather and climate change. Driving in this morning, I was reflecting on:

• ~1400 deaths India heat wave
• Texas flooding
• California drought

As unfair as it might be to blame 'bad weather' on man-made, CO{2} induced climate change, there is a certain poetic justice. People tend to forget the 'bad weather' over time so when it hits, it 'wakes them up.' They want to blame someone and there is this CO{2} included climate change . . .

If you'all haven't noticed, I tie winter, Arctic cold snaps back to reduced Arctic sea ice. This makes sense because the cold air that left the Arctic has to be replaced by other air that comes from warmer regions. So Alaska sees a lot of winter days where it goes over 0 C. It is funny how the predicted loss of polar ice from the models just happens to dove-tail with this weather event. Even good friendly 'Mojo' has noticed the winter cold-snaps . . .

So I'm not above looking a 'gift horse in the mouth.' If severe weather counters to misinformation merchants, too bad. <GRINS>

Bob Wilson

 

It has more to do with attitude. When folks want to discuss something versus throwing firebrands, there will be reasonable responses. Fortunately, Doug does the heavy lifting of 'calming me down' when I get in brick-bat mode. Regardless, the course is aimed at addressing a wide range of opinions and not 'one size fits all.'

The course provides a 'short' answer, the taxonomy, to characterize the problem. But they also provide the relief, information to persuade someone to understanding. So let's start with the more persuasive information followed by the term:

There is no single study or piece of evidence that says "This is man-made global warming or climate change." Rather it is the collection of multiple, independent sources that tell us Global Warming is happening and it is from fossil fuels:

• Temperature records - Berkeley is one I'm fond of but it turns out we find it in all sources including the notorious UAH data. For example Google led me to this: The first half of their data is mostly below 0.0 and after the El Nino year, mostly above. There are more technical details but this is the short version.
• Ground spectral studies - we actually see the CO{2} re-radiation emissions from the ground and one study found the intensity followed the increase in CO{2} level over time.
  
• Satellite spectral studies - we see the spectral distribution of earth from space shows the CO{2} impact and effect on energy flow from the earth.
• Quantify other forcing functions - solar radiance, dust, and orbital effects are measured and understood enough to explain the variations.

If you sign-up for the 'free' course, the first week covers the collections of scientific evidence showing we have man-made, global warming. Each weekly lesson is 3-4 hours long so I'm giving just the bare-bones summary but we can go into more detail if you wish. But there is a term for "GW can be neither proven nor disproven" called "Impossible Expectations."

In math, we have the concept of a 'proof' where we can take the axioms and like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle, rearrange them to make a final picture. But science works on the preponderance of data. So Newton was right when he described physical laws but as we became more aware, it was replaced by Einstein's General Relativity. Within the information Newton had in a pre-industrial world, Newton was brilliant. But Einstein's day advanced to the point where we could look for light being bent by gravity. Do not expect a single smoking gun or denial characters in a Perry Mason moment confessing 'CO{2} is causing global warming.' Get informed and look at all of the evidence.

This one we call "Conspiracy Theories" because it presumes someone is making a lot of money:

So who has more money, "Hockey Stick" Mann or Charles Koch? Conspiracies cut both ways and sad to say, there is empirical data showing an association of former 'tobacco advocates' and today's 'climate deniers.' But Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?​

Yes there are evil people in the world who do dastardly acts. But descending into this black-hole means blinding oneself from reality . . . the facts and data. Still, some people prefer to live in such a fearful world of their own paranoid imaginations. I have/had blood kin who lived in their self-made, hell.

We covered this in one of the other lessons, the relationship between one's 'world view' and:

It turns out that those who most hate regulations and government are most inclined to be a GW or climate change denier. They realize that if GW is a real threat, one they can no longer ignore, it may lead to mobilization of local, state, federal, and UN rules and regulations to mitigate what might be an extinction event.

This is an area of research still going on. The evidence is clear the fossil fuel CO{2} is a major driver of current GW. So try to find ways to stop digging the hole deeper. It turns out the study of GW has also suggested some approaches such as increasing carbon capture by 'fertilizing' ocean plankton and injecting particulates to reduce solar energy inflow. It really is cutting edge stuff.

It isn't an all or nothing problem:

The first step is to do a little reading and research. Understand I knew about CO{2} global warming after the first Venus probes showed why our sister planet is so hot it melts lead back in the 1960s. But there are a lot of subtle aspects I am just learning about . . . not because I want to but the anti-Prius b*stards call us 'green.' They are lying about my Prius purchase motivation which often means they are lying about everything else and especially to themselves. They actually believe their fantasies.

So when a 65 year old man takes a course called Denial 101x, I'm not planning a career change into climate science. It means I am getting ready to answer FUD with facts and data. There is no guarantee it will work but at least I won't be someone else's patsy.

Bob Wilson

 

We know it is accurate because we have the modern era a temperature records. Asking about "2000 BC" is a "Red Herring" because we know GW saw the first upswing in ~1850 but didn't really take off until the 20th century. But this turns out to be an easy problem to research:
https://tools.ceit.uq.edu.au/temperature/index.html

• Select a region of central Texas, ~30 stations - calculate the temperature making a graph
  • keep the line red
  • rename it Texas
• Select a region of Alaska, ~30 stations - calculate the temperature
  • change the line to blue
  • rename it Alaska
• Display both lines and add a trend line for 1900 to 2015
  • Texas temperatures have trended constant
  • Alaska temperatures have trended warmer

• Adjust the trend interval 1900-1979 and they intersect
• 1979-2015 and they cross in the middle
• 1900-1957 about the last time they were parallel
  • The tool lets you fiddle with start and end dates but the longest parallel period I've found is 1903 to 1972. Around 1972, Hansen found CO{2} induced GW was overpowering all other temperature drivers.

Bob Wilson

ps. The tool is not as easy as I would like but it can be mastered in a few minutes. The data can be downloaded to load into excel for better charts and trending lines.