Florida officials have passed on through the ranks that, under Gov. Rick Scott's administration, nobody's supposed to use the terms"global warming" or "climate change" in anything, even scientific research. Even (or especially) in the state Dept. of Environmental Protection.
“We were instructed by our regional administrator that we were no longer allowed to use the terms ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ or even ‘sea-level rise.’ Sea-level rise was to be referred to as ‘nuisance flooding.’”
Yes, that's very helpful, thanks, Gov. Scott.
(h/t +George Wiman)
In Florida, officials ban term ‘climate change’
State environmental officials ordered not to use the terms “climate change” or “global warming” in any government communications, emails, or reports.
Well, technically speaking, it'll be one helluva nuisance to live in Miami once it's under water.
Let's be clear that if it happens, it'll be one of the first times (the first?) that any scientific model made an accurate prediction 50 – 100 years into the future.
+Chris Reeve Really? Because I'm pretty sure we've been predicting orbits of planets, eclipses, and the positions of stars in the sky for longer than that.
Do I think the predictions that "water levels will rise 12.78" by 2087" or "the mean surface temperature will increase by 1.96 degrees C by 2065" will be precisely correct? Of course not. Neither do the folk making said predictions. That doesn't mean it's a grab bag as to what direction temps or water level will go.
+Dave Hill Still waiting for the water vapor feedback to show up, so I'm not holding my breath on this particular one.
Well Chris, there's this paper from 2010: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.420.195&rep=rep1&type=pdf
And this one: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/327/5970/1219.short
And this one: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL035333/full
And that was just with a casual search on Google. If you're still waiting for it to show up I'd say that's because you're not paying attention.
There's also this:
http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/09/no-florida-state-government-did-not-ban-the-term-climate-change/
The report made it clear it was an unwritten policy and the fact that they can find old materials from before the ban was put in place using those words in no way refutes the idea that people have been told not to use those words. It's not just one former employee making this claim. It's coming from multiple sources.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/10/florida-denies-official-ban-on-climate-change-and-global-warming
Not sure how it's an "unwritten policy", yet their website mentions those very same words time and again.
I guess it boils down to "can it be proven besides anecdotal evidence?
+Les Jenkins Les, you've turned a very simple comparison of prediction vs observation into an unnecessary investigation obstructed by scientific jargon. This is all you needed to show, and it's very clear on this point that there is no observed water vapor feedback, to date:
https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/XrhLsXKBLQP
+Mark Means Going to the Coral Reef Conservation Program page (http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/programs/coral/), I do see a ref to Climate Change Activities last updated in Nov 2011. http://www.dep.state.fl.us/coastal/programs/coral/climate_change.htm
There is a Climate Change Action Plan there, but it's dated 2010-2015.
So, yes, the words do seem to exist on the site, though they require some drilling in to find. Nothing seems to be being scrubbed; the question remains whether there is/was an unwritten verbal policy on raising the subject in new materials or discussions, which would be difficult to prove other than a variety of people saying that was the case.
The water vapor feedback is a large portion of the "runaway" aspect of "runaway greenhouse". It is quite alarming to me that advocates for AGW appear unconcerned about the failure to validate the model's key claim that increasing CO2 will cause an increase in water vapor, which will in turn create a runaway effect.
The theory clearly states that the equatorial lower troposphere should show the largest concentration of this water vapor feedback.
To date, this has not been observed.
Legislators are 100% within their right to look at the claims of the model, and link their policies to whether or not these claims are vindicated by observations.
If there was an observed water vapor feedback, then the model could have been said to have passed a critical test. But, I think the advocates who want to push forward without this observation are actually getting ahead of the observations.
+Chris Reeve <<<—- This guy is a lunatic with just enough scientific training to spew absolute bullshit using science-y words. He has no published scientific papers. Is working with no school or institution. He's a right wing loon that went nuts when confronted with real science.
+John Poteet John, which part of what I said above is crazy?
(And to correct the record, I vote Democratic, and still support most of what Obama is doing today.)
+Chris Reeve Water vapor feedback is happening and is documented. Your insane AGW denial remains insane.
skepticalscience.com
+John Poteet John, here's what skepticalscience.com says on water vapor feedback:
"How much does water vapor amplify CO2 warming? Studies show that water vapor feedback roughly doubles the amount of warming caused by CO2. So if there is a 1°C change caused by CO2, the water vapor will cause the temperature to go up another 1°C. When other feedback loops are included, the total warming from a potential 1°C change caused by CO2 is, in reality, as much as 3°C."
Notice what they did not say — that water vapor feedback has been observed.
If you go to skepticalscience's page on climate sensitivity at http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity.htm, they point to the two bases for their methodology:
(1) "Climate models have predicted the least temperature rise would be on average 1.65°C (2.97°F) , but upper estimates vary a lot, averaging 5.2°C (9.36°F). Current best estimates are for a rise of around 3°C (5.4°F), with a likely maximum of 4.5°C (8.1°F)."
In other words, the error bars associated with these claims dwarf the claimed changes.
But, the most important point here is that this is based upon models — not observations.
(2) "The second method calculates climate sensitivity directly from physical evidence, by looking at climate changes in the distant past"
This second claim relies entirely upon perfect uniformity over time, as the data necessarily derives from ice cores and other similar approaches. The chart they point to on that page which spans through all of the epochs — notably the Eocene — is incredibly misleading. Most scientists today recognize the Arctic Eocene era & region as anomalous …
"A congruent climate hypothesis remains elusive for the Eocene" (that comes from http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/12/1/pdf/i1052-5173-12-1-4.pdf)
We are talking subtropical warm — trees 35 meters high and crocodiles, which tend to drown when the temperature drops below 65 F! And yet, by today's standards, this environment would have had to somehow survive 3-4 months of yearly darkness!!!
Something does not compute here. We cannot simply assume uniformity, because it leads us to a contradiction.
How is it that the Arctic was once subtropical? Continental drift cannot explain this, as this region never drifted very far. This webpage treats this era as though they understand it, but the fact of the matter is that nobody actually knows for sure how the Arctic was warm during this time period.
Without knowing what actually happened, every claim about it is an act of speculation.
For a review of this anomaly, see https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/AvKcdzMaUmf.
+Chris Reeve It's weird as hell how you credit only the portions of science that you think will agree with you and ignore the AAAS and NASA as if they are junior high schools.
You are not an authority. You're a jackass that cannot accept reality. An increase in water vapor has been observed.
http://www.wunderground.com/climate/extreme.asp
http://acacia.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.pdf/TrenberthSheaHurricanes2006GRL026894.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf
+John Poteet Re: "An increase in water vapor has been observed."
John, you've plainly lowered the bar for success for this model to simply "change." It's really quite difficult to understand how a person might ever falsify the model within the context of these incredibly low expectations. People who expect that scientific models should make accurate predictions are not "jackasses", "lunatics", nor even "right wing loons." Checking on a model's predictions is a necessary, very routine, and almost mundane aspect of science.
A runaway greenhouse makes specific claims about an increase in water vapor at specific altitudes and specific latitudes. These predictions are not simply arbitrary constraints; they follow from the physical processes which you are trying to raise the alarm about. You appear to want to continue to raise the alarm, even when those physical processes are not apparently happening.
What I am noticing, with all three of your links (and in a general sense in conversations online with other advocates), is that there exists an aversion to discussing a side-by-side comparison of model predictions with actual observations on this issue of water vapor feedback. Each time that I bring it up, I am pointed to a wide variety of multi-page scientific papers filled with all sorts of irrelevant information. What is strikingly missing in every case is this straightforward side-by-side comparison of water vapor predictions vs observations for the troposphere.
What you should be doing is explaining why the left side of the diagram below does not match the right side. Anything less than that is evasive, and seemingly designed to create confusion:
https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/XrhLsXKBLQP
The issue is further explained below in a different presentation (note that this is 2 pages):
https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/2MdAnFYErRt
I did not have to dig hard for this information. So, if this argument seems "weird" to you in any way, please understand that it's not because it's the first time that somebody has ever mentioned it. This is, to my eye, the most important criticism that has been lodged against this model that you are advocating for, so I advise that you learn as much as you can about.
Chris, have you considered the idea that you're basing your demands for a side-by-side comparison on an outdated model? Climate modeling is ridiculously complex and the models are revised on a regular basis as we come to better understand how the climate works. Those scientific papers you consider to be full of "irrelevant" data are often discussing the findings of more up to date models.
Back in 2008 NASA put out a press release stating that Texas A&M researchers had confirmed what the models of the time had predicted about water vapor in the atmosphere. (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/vapor_warming.html)
The two pages you post above from "The Skeptical Environmentalist" were published in 2001 for chrissakes. Hey, I bet if you go back to the models we used in the 1970's when the issue was first brought up by scientists you'd find the water vapor predictions back then don't match today's data either.
The previous link to that demanding to know why the two diagrams aren't an exact match doesn't bother to mention what climate model was used for the theoretical prediction side. That said, the two diagrams don't look that dramatically different to me. Yes, the one on the left has more red in it, that doesn't seem to refute the one on the right showing there has been an increase.
There's a pretty good consensus among climate scientists that global climate change is real and is driven in part by the gasses we're pumping into the atmosphere. The fact that most of the people who wrote the rebuttal you linked to aren't climate scientists doesn't do much to lend it credibility. I counted two meteorologists and one atmospheric scientist in the list followed by an Engineer, Geologist, Economist, Chemist and Physicist.
+Les Jenkins Re: "Climate modeling is ridiculously complex and the models are revised on a regular basis as we come to better understand how the climate works."
I understand what ad hoc modeling is, because I've spent a lot of time closely watching astrophysicists and cosmologists tweak their models to try to fit them to observations — an effort that the historical record shows has been going on for more than half of a century by now (!).
What I'd like to clarify is that ad hoc modeling is a completely distinct approach from following the data where it naturally leads. It's an acceptable practice in the sciences today because models do not emerge perfect from their inception. At the same time — and this is a danger which AGW advocates do not generally speak about — there is always a risk that the model rests upon an incorrect foundation, and that there are no minor tweaks to its claims which can bridge to observations.
The job of the consumer of scientific research is to judge which of these two situations the AGW situation is. But, notice that what we are told by your community is that the "time for debate is over" — as if these models should be permitted to be tweaked, but not questioned.
It should be clear that the tweaking will play a part in inspiring the questions; you cannot — in a philosophical sense — be permitted to change your theory as you wish, without taking on added scrutiny.
Re: "Back in 2008 NASA put out a press release stating that Texas A&M researchers had confirmed what the models of the time had predicted about water vapor in the atmosphere."
Okay, again, let's look at what the link you've sent me states:
// article …
AIRS is the first instrument to distinguish differences in the amount of water vapor at all altitudes within the troposphere. Using data from AIRS, the team observed how atmospheric water vapor reacted to shifts in surface temperatures between 2003 and 2008. By determining how humidity changed with surface temperature, the team could compute the average global strength of the water vapor feedback.
“This new data set shows that as surface temperature increases, so does atmospheric humidity,” Dessler said. “Dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere makes the atmosphere more humid. And since water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas, the increase in humidity amplifies the warming from carbon dioxide."
Specifically, the team found that if Earth warms 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, the associated increase in water vapor will trap an extra 2 Watts of energy per square meter (about 11 square feet).
"That number may not sound like much, but add up all of that energy over the entire Earth surface and you find that water vapor is trapping a lot of energy," Dessler said. "We now think the water vapor feedback is extraordinarily strong, capable of doubling the warming due to carbon dioxide alone."
Because the new precise observations agree with existing assessments of water vapor's impact, researchers are more confident than ever in model predictions that Earth's leading greenhouse gas will contribute to a temperature rise of a few degrees by the end of the century.
" This study confirms that what was predicted by the models is really happening in the atmosphere," said Eric Fetzer, an atmospheric scientist who works with AIRS data at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Water vapor is the big player in the atmosphere as far as climate is concerned."
// end
The graph of surface temps vs troposphere temps from The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, by Bjorn Lomborg — the one you discounted as useless because it was 7 years older than your own citation — plainly shows that the troposphere temps can jump around by as much as a full degree C over the course of just ten years. Not to be confused as a trend, this is simply the wiggle.
What you just sent me is a study that spans only five years.
Do you actually agree with the claim of the study that a 5-year study of the troposphere can confirm the water vapor feedback?
Re: "Yes, the one on the left has more red in it, that doesn't seem to refute the one on the right showing there has been an increase."
Again:
A runaway greenhouse makes specific claims about an increase in water vapor at specific altitudes and specific latitudes. These predictions are not simply arbitrary constraints; they follow from the physical processes which you are trying to raise the alarm about. You (also) appear to want to continue to raise the alarm, even when those physical processes are not apparently happening.
The problem that the diagram presents is plainly described in the G+ caption above it:
" EPA’s Greenhouse Gas 'Hot Spot' theory is that in the tropics, the mid-troposphere must warm faster than the lower troposphere, and the lower troposphere must warm faster than the surface, all due to rising CO2 concentrations. However, this is totally at odds with multiple robust, consistent, independently-derived empirical datasets, all showing no statistically significant positive (or negative) trend in temperature and thus, no difference in trend slope by altitude. Therefore, EPA’s theory as to how CO2 impacts [Global Average Surface Temperature] must be rejected. Below is a graphical comparison of their Hot Spot theory versus reality, where reds denote warming and blues, cooling. Clearly, the government's understanding of how CO2 gas traps heat is fundamentally flawed."
(from http://www.scribd.com/doc/224538945/NCA-Rebuttal)
Re: "There's a pretty good consensus among climate scientists that global climate change is real and is driven in part by the gasses we're pumping into the atmosphere. The fact that most of the people who wrote the rebuttal you linked to aren't climate scientists doesn't do much to lend it credibility. I counted two meteorologists and one atmospheric scientist in the list followed by an Engineer, Geologist, Economist, Chemist and Physicist. "
The fact that climate scientists tend to uniformly agree is not because each climate scientist independently came to that conclusion in light of a broad education which covered competing scientific frameworks. The fact of the matter is that the universities teach climate scientists one single scientific framework.
The problem with your claim that outsiders should not be involved is that climate scientists are not to be expected to question their own scientific framework …
" Because they internalize both the paradigms and their employers' priorities and values, scientists, at least in their own eyes, are completely nonpartisan in their work: They don't "get political." They don't think about, let alone challenge, the ideology built into their techniques. Contrary to popular images of scientists as challengers of established beliefs (like Galileo or Einstein), the vast majority of scientists never seek to test their paradigms and do not participate in paradigm disputes. They don't waste their employers' coin by getting caught up in efforts to overthrow existing worldviews or to establish new ones. Instead, they tend to treat the accepted models of reality as reality itself." – Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, p82
The fact that we observe a consensus should not surprise anybody. The universities create this consensus. It is the very reason that our economy is efficient. If we did not train professional scientists to maintain discipline on assigned problems, we would not be able to create large, efficient teams of scientists which can fit into yet larger academic and corporate organizations …
"Beginning physics graduate students must devote an entire year or two of their lives to homework. Indeed, the first part of physics graduate school is well described as a boot camp based on homework. One characteristic of any boot camp is that the subject matter the instructors present in their day-to-day work is not really the main thing they are teaching. Teaching the subject matter is certainly one goal, but it is not the main one. In military boot camp, for example, drill instructors make recruits spend large amounts of time learning to dress to regulation, march in precise formation, chant ditties, disassemble and reassemble rifles, carry heavy backpacks, and so on, yet the main goal of all this is something much more profound: to create soldiers who will follow orders, even to their deaths. Similarly, the most apparent goal of graduate physics courses is to indoctrinate the students into the dominant paradigms, or theoretical frameworks, of physics. But the primary goal is to train physicists who will maintain tremendous discipline on assigned problems." – Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds, p129
History of science is very clear that outsiders play a role at all times in evaluating the claims of specialists. We need this as a check on specialization — which, in the absence of a broad comprehension of science, we can expect to be subject to side effects (like groupthink).
It is far easier than you seem to realize to conjure up historical anecdotes which recount how the most authoritative specialists in a particular era turned out to be wrong. We need only go back to the invention of the maser/laser, when an outsider to quantum mechanics was told by the leading quantum mechanics theorists of the time that the maser/laser was impossible.
Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman has explained in good detail when we can blindly trust expert judgement, and climate science is one of the few disciplines which his criteria points to as a discipline where expert judgment should be questioned as a matter of routine. This has little to do with the theory itself; it follows from the nature of the data.
To see his criteria, see https://plus.google.com/108466508041843226480/posts/JVQtWErjFBW.