Michael--always appreciate the clarity of your thinking and willingness to contribute constructively to public discourse on various subjects.
In this case, however, I'm not sure simplification of the state of our understanding to this degree (sorry) is a helpful contribution.
An analogy: Knowing the specific heat capacity of down and mass of it in your sleeping bag does not lead to even a crude way of modelling the 'temperature rating' users are interested in. The thermodynamics of insulation are dominated by microconvection of air in within the down--a simplification that sets aside convection commits a gross mischaracterization.
In your treatment, modelling the air as a monolithic heat sync ignores crucial evaporative and radiative dynamics. In fact, the thrust of the article you are relying on is to argue that those factors are being overlooked by conventional climate change analyses:
"Therefore, greenhouse gases are indeed playing an important role in altering the globe’s climate, but they are doing so primarily by increasing the speed of the hydrologic cycle as opposed to increasing global temperature."
As to Gray's article, it deserves more scrutiny than you may have given it. It is work published posthumously by friends/relatives without of professional/institutional review. He was working on it a decade after leaving the academy (where his primary interest and achievements were in tropical storms, not climate or atmospheric science per se) and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. I'm being generous to say that this is not an ideologically disinterested organization.
In his later career, Gray's efforts to shoehorn global warming skepticism into his storm system/cycle research agenda was rebuffed by his own colleagues; his funding requests on climate change were repeatedly denied for failing to meet standards of objectivity and rigor. (The onus is on anyone who would accuse those reviewers as being 'brainwashed stooges of the mainstream agenda' of providing at least provisional evidence of such prejudice. Denial of Gray's proposals, alone, isn't that evidence; routine rejection of theoretically flawed/methodologically faulty research is how science works, by forcing researchers to reconcile their new discoveries/theories to previous findings. E.g., Einstein had to reconcile the predictive model of Special Relativity to the prior validation of Newtonian mechanics.)
I readily admit I am no kind of expert in this subject; I haven't any professional training in even an 'adjacent' branch of science, math or engineering. Like you, though, Michael, I have sufficient educational foundation, intellectual capacity and stubborn independence (some might say arrogance) to presume that the subject is accessible to me. Certainly, in this day and age, the materials are readily at hand. The challenge that public knowledge has always posed for autodidacts is we are left to our own devices with regard to curation. Bootstrapping presents a 'don't know what we don't know' conundrum.
My contribution, for what it's worth, is to recommend an impressive 'deep primer' on the relevant science assembled by at https://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/. In my view, the author goes out of his way to eschew agenda-driven pseudoscience coming from all quarters. He is hardnosed about the science and cheeky about the politics surrounding it (starting with his naming of the site).
For my nickel, I find the dash of cynicism he brings to 'the debate' a refreshing palate cleanser we can all use.
Articles at 'Science of Doom' I found relevant to your article are:
"CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Seven – The Boring Numbers" and, as background to that,
Hi Michael, I've been enjoying your blog as well as your contributions to the #COM. I find it all incredibly valuable. Thank you.
While I generally agree with your conclusion that AGW is overbaked, there are a few things missing above. If you are interested in revisiting this I can expand.
Brilliant, but it also made me wonder about another aspect of the question, the heat budget of the planet itself. How solid is that part of the science? With the satellites we can measure atmospheric changes, but I must wonder about our ability to properly measure the heat coming from the fault lines of the tectonic plates.
That's the atmosphere
Now add in the Oceans
Michael--always appreciate the clarity of your thinking and willingness to contribute constructively to public discourse on various subjects.
In this case, however, I'm not sure simplification of the state of our understanding to this degree (sorry) is a helpful contribution.
An analogy: Knowing the specific heat capacity of down and mass of it in your sleeping bag does not lead to even a crude way of modelling the 'temperature rating' users are interested in. The thermodynamics of insulation are dominated by microconvection of air in within the down--a simplification that sets aside convection commits a gross mischaracterization.
In your treatment, modelling the air as a monolithic heat sync ignores crucial evaporative and radiative dynamics. In fact, the thrust of the article you are relying on is to argue that those factors are being overlooked by conventional climate change analyses:
"Therefore, greenhouse gases are indeed playing an important role in altering the globe’s climate, but they are doing so primarily by increasing the speed of the hydrologic cycle as opposed to increasing global temperature."
As to Gray's article, it deserves more scrutiny than you may have given it. It is work published posthumously by friends/relatives without of professional/institutional review. He was working on it a decade after leaving the academy (where his primary interest and achievements were in tropical storms, not climate or atmospheric science per se) and published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. I'm being generous to say that this is not an ideologically disinterested organization.
In his later career, Gray's efforts to shoehorn global warming skepticism into his storm system/cycle research agenda was rebuffed by his own colleagues; his funding requests on climate change were repeatedly denied for failing to meet standards of objectivity and rigor. (The onus is on anyone who would accuse those reviewers as being 'brainwashed stooges of the mainstream agenda' of providing at least provisional evidence of such prejudice. Denial of Gray's proposals, alone, isn't that evidence; routine rejection of theoretically flawed/methodologically faulty research is how science works, by forcing researchers to reconcile their new discoveries/theories to previous findings. E.g., Einstein had to reconcile the predictive model of Special Relativity to the prior validation of Newtonian mechanics.)
I readily admit I am no kind of expert in this subject; I haven't any professional training in even an 'adjacent' branch of science, math or engineering. Like you, though, Michael, I have sufficient educational foundation, intellectual capacity and stubborn independence (some might say arrogance) to presume that the subject is accessible to me. Certainly, in this day and age, the materials are readily at hand. The challenge that public knowledge has always posed for autodidacts is we are left to our own devices with regard to curation. Bootstrapping presents a 'don't know what we don't know' conundrum.
My contribution, for what it's worth, is to recommend an impressive 'deep primer' on the relevant science assembled by at https://scienceofdoom.com/roadmap/. In my view, the author goes out of his way to eschew agenda-driven pseudoscience coming from all quarters. He is hardnosed about the science and cheeky about the politics surrounding it (starting with his naming of the site).
For my nickel, I find the dash of cynicism he brings to 'the debate' a refreshing palate cleanser we can all use.
Articles at 'Science of Doom' I found relevant to your article are:
"CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas? Part Seven – The Boring Numbers" and, as background to that,
"The Earth’s Energy Budget – Part One"
Hi Michael, I've been enjoying your blog as well as your contributions to the #COM. I find it all incredibly valuable. Thank you.
While I generally agree with your conclusion that AGW is overbaked, there are a few things missing above. If you are interested in revisiting this I can expand.
Brilliant, but it also made me wonder about another aspect of the question, the heat budget of the planet itself. How solid is that part of the science? With the satellites we can measure atmospheric changes, but I must wonder about our ability to properly measure the heat coming from the fault lines of the tectonic plates.