Week in review – science edition

by Judith Curry

A few things that caught my eye this past week.

Several papers of fundamental importance:

*Important new paper by Peter Minnett:  The response of the ocean thermal skin layer to variations in incident infrared radiation [link]

*A provocative paper with many implications:  Increased atmospheric vapor pressure deficit  [link]

*Does Surface Temperature Respond to or Determine Downwelling Longwave Radiation? [link]

*Reframing the carbon cycle of the subpolar Southern Ocean [link]  Synopsis [link]

Something new and interesting from Russian scientists. A new approach to local climate dynamics, integrating bifurcation analysis, control theory and climate theory. Start with Section 7 for an overview worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.114

Climate change is altering winter precipitation across the Northern Hemisphere [link]

The influence of weather regimes on European renewable energy production and demand. [link]

Hemispheric Asymmetry of Tropical Expansion Under CO2 Forcing [link]

How predictable were this summer’s European temperature records? [link]

New paleo proxy: The dawning of the age of old aquifers [link]

Changes in atmosphere, not sea ice, behind bizarre winter weather [link]

For years, scientists have tried to pinpoint which volcano caused a spell of global cooling in the 6th century A.D. They’ve finally found the culprit. nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/0

Internal variability and regional climate trends in an observational large ensemble [link]

Good explainer from Zeke on RCP8.5 [link]

Antibiotics Are Flooding Earth’s Rivers.” [link]

new paper reports a 1500-year record of flooding from northwest Britain [link] Periods of frequent flooding lasting several decades are common

The North Pacific pacemaker effect on historical ENSO and its mechanisms [link]

A process study of thinning of Arctic winter cirrus clouds [link]

New Eocene pCO2 estimates from stomata pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/ar

Microplastics appear in considerable quantities in the #Arctic. advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/8/ea

Stefan Rahstorf: The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting and has probably passed the tipping point to its complete demise, causing a long-term sea-level rise of 3 meters. But is that our fault? That has long been unclear, but now a new paper in NatGeo finds: yes, it is. [link]

Prediction of Northern Hemisphere Regional Surface Temperatures Using Stratospheric Ozone Information [link]

A century of reduced ENSO variability during the Medieval Climate Anomaly eartharxiv.org/yp49u/

Inducing Factors and Impacts of the October 2017 California Wildfires agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.102

Understanding negative subtropical shallow cumulus cloud feedbacks [link]

Using a new ice core record, Shackleton et al (2019) found the ocean warming rate during the Younger Dryas interval was comparable to today’s warming rate, challenging an earlier finding that the oceans warmed about 3x as fast during that period. #AGUPubs doi.org/10.1029/2019GL

Policy and technology

V. insightful: Climate change uncertainty from ‘above’ and from ‘below’: perspective from India [link]

Elizabeth Warren’s Green Manufacturing Plan for America [link]

Good overview on the Amazon fire issues [link]

Another good article on the Amazon fires [link]

A Harvard  study found that increased wind power could mean more climate warming than would be caused by the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity. [link]

Experts Say Sea Level Rise May Kill the 30-year Mortgage in Florida miamibeachtimes.com/real-estate/ex

“The United States is the largest source of public funding for clean energy RD&D in absolute terms, investing about $6.8 billion, more than Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom combined” [link] to report

Industry guidance touts untested technologies as climate fix [link]

‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish? [link]

Why climate change is an existential threat to the Middle East [link]

World Bank: tradeoffs among climate policy instruments [link]

Costs for the U.S. to transition to 100% renewable energy [link]

Longterm macroeconomic effects of climate change [link]

Big wind’s big headwinds (challenges to wind energy) [link]

Recycling is in crisis.  Could these innovations be the answer? [link]

How China is feeding its population.  Major innovations [link]

About science and scientists

Must read:  Upgrade your cargo cult for the win [link]

This is very interesting about Will Happer and Princeton scientists, and sociology of climate science: Princeton climate scientists tried to ignore a campus skeptic.  Then he went to Washington [link]

V. interesting essay by Andrea Saltelli:  A short comment on statistical vs mathematical modelling [link]

Sabine Hossenfelder: About peer review and its discontents [link]

Roy Spencer: How the Media Help to Destroy Rational Climate Debate – drroyspencer.com/2019/08/how-th

The twisted way educators are seeking diversity in education [link]

Is science political? The political history of science [link]

Yet another Professor has been fired for tweets, supporting Antifa [link]

“Academics respond to incentives like the rest of us. The moment they start to self-censor out of fear of social and professional ostracism, they cease to do their job properly.” blogs.lse.ac.uk/highereducatio

The shaping of science by ideology [link]

The Bigotry of Environmental Pessimism. quillette.com/2019/08/15/the

The Anthropocene is an idea that needs to go away [link]

130 responses to “Week in review – science edition

  1. “…supporting Antifa…”

    I don’t think he was fired. If he had been, or was kind of fired, I at first thought that was a good thing. But it’s not. He can support anybody I suppose. And so can the right. Being as bad as the cancellers is no answer. Being offended should belong to the left. I think the goal is to be less partisan.

    As for Antifa, I feel sorry for them. And their victims. Someday Antifa members will be adults and have a brain that functions above a certain level. And realize how silly and hurtful they were.

  2. Will you be commenting on the Forbes take down of Prof. Niv Shaviv?

  3. This link doesn’t seem to be working:


  4. The Minnett paper is from last year. Minnett’s theory has been widely trashed on skeptic blogs, which is a good sign the theory is probably rock solid.

    • It is rock solid. It’s a pointless exercise the skeptics pursue with the thermal skin layer. The argument is something can’t. Therefore a welding torch would never transfer heat into water. Thermonuclear bomb, not going to happen. 2/3s of the planet’s surface is a big can’t.

  5. The link to The Guardian article is incorrect – it goes to an accompanying image, not the article itself.

    “‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?”


  6. Several papers of fundamental importance:

    Boy! That assignment will take a while to read.

  7. About the sophisticated modeling showing AGW changing precipitation patterns

    This raises some questions about the process of climate science. How can this finding be refuted? If it can’t be, then it is speculation – not science.

    From another perspective, how many groups will conduct such a project and publish a paper saying that climate change is not altering precipitation? What are the odds of GRL publishing such a paper?

    “Climate change is altering winter precipitation across the Northern Hemisphere” at the AGU Geospace website.


    Discussing “Human Influence on Winter Precipitation Trends (1921–2015) over North America and Eurasia Revealed by Dynamical Adjustment” by Ruixia Guo in GRL, 28 March 2019 – Open access.


  8. The paper on increased “vapor pressure deficit” (lower relative humidity) is intriguing. I wonder how many of the mainstream climate models yield a decreasing relative humidity trend.

    Such a trend should mean less amplification from “water vapor feedback”.

  9. Ireneusz Palmowski

    In a few hours, Dorian will hit the northern Bahamas.

    Last Updated 8/31/2019, 10:00:00 PM GMT+2
    Hurricane Category 4
    26.2 N, -74.1 W
    250 km/h
    306 km/h
    W 15 km/h
    942.00 mbar

  10. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Even today, Dorian may be on the Bahamas, and tomorrow on Florida.

  11. Capital costs, and replacement & disposal costs, have been the big bugaboo with the current generation of grid-scale lithium-ion storage batteries.

    Vanadium-flow redox batteries are now being promoted as the solution to wind and solar’s intermittency issues. Here is an article from Forbes about the WattJoule V-flow battery.


    “The latest technology to emerge is the vanadium redox battery, also known as the vanadium-flow battery. And the best one seems to be from WattJoule, especially because their cost is so much lower than other V-flow batteries.”

    In announcing their decision to close Diablo Canyon by 2025, PG&E’s management in San Francisco claimed that reaching 70% renewable electricity for California by 2030 is doable. But they didn’t say how exactly that goal could be achieved, only that it could be done.

    It would not unreasonable to demand that PG&E do a hard dollar engineering feasibility study to determine what specific steps must be taken to reach 70% renewable electricity for their customers by 2030, including how much grid-scale battery storage must be purchased and installed.

    If the WattJoule V-flow system is the best that will be available throughout the 2020’s, then the 70% by 2030 engineering study should use that system as the cost basis estimating source for California’s grid-scale battery storage requirements.

    What if PG&E says no to such a demand? If that is the case, then the California Independent System Operator (ISO) should to be given direction and funding to perform this study.

    • “what specific steps must be taken to reach 70% renewable electricity for their customers by 2030”

      There is a paper/study by NREL, one of the authors’ names is Denholm, where they look at the amount of storage necessary in order to have a given amount of PV penetration, in California. Google it, very interesting.

      • This is the paper, I think:

        Energy Storage Requirements for Achieving 50% Solar Photovoltaic Energy Penetration in California

        Technical ReportNREL/TP-6A20-66595, August 2016

        Paul Denholm and Robert Margolis, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

        This paper illustrates just how complicated the topic of reaching 70% renewables for California by 2030 actually is. Several of the most important factors that are independent of the costs of battery storage remain uncertain or undecided at this point.

        Section 5, Discussion and Conclusions, pages 29 and 30, summarizes these issues in a way that is highly informative for those who pay close attention to what is happening with energy storage and the renewables.

  12. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Soon there will be a very strong blockade of the stratospheric polar vortex near the Earth’s south magnetic pole.

    A very strong wave occurred in the upper stratosphere within the southern winter polar vortex.

    It is interesting that the average stratosphere temperature abover the southern polar circle is low.

  13. Our results suggest that surface DLR is tightly coupled to surface temperature; therefore, it cannot be considered an independent component of the surface energy budget.

    This should put an end to the cartoon-physics depiction of DLR as the dominant source of power at the surface, exceeding even that of insolation. My colleagues and I have been arguing for decades that DLR is inseparable from ULR and that only the NET heat transfer shown by Kiel and Trenberth is physically relevant. Surface evaporation, mislabeled by them as “evapotranspiration,” is thereby revealed as the dominant surface heat transfer mechanism, consistent with world-wide observations of the Bowen ratio (q.v.).

    • John321s: Surface evaporation, mislabeled by them as “evapotranspiration,”

      What is your objection to the word “evapotranspiration”? I grant you that, in a broad view, it is subsumed by “evaporation”, but “evaporation” by itself leads toward ignoring the importance of the plants in pumping water from ground to atmosphere.

      I agree with your main point, at least as far as beginning to end the “cartoon physics.”

      • My objection is straightforward: relative to oceanic evaporation, evapotranspiration by plants is a minor factor in supplying water vapor to the global atmosphere.

  14. Aquifers– ‘…krypton (Kr) that can reach more than a million years back in time to discover the age of groundwater in the Negev desert in Israel.’

    * folks who are definitely searching in areas that are beyond the reach of the street lamps… Good work…

  15. Tobias Pfrommer

    “Industry guidance touts untested technologies as climate fix” is a misrepresentation. Compare: https://twitter.com/JesseLReynolds/status/1165923082231570434

  16. One of mine:

    Alarmism hides behind a shield of academic journals.

    • YouTube videos are not science.

      Science is where you find it. You do not find any science in peer reviewed consensus, so called, science, they do have consensus and you can not have any science without being skeptic. . New or correct science ideas do not start as peer reviewed science.

      The, so called, shield of academic journals is not any real kind of shield, a real shield has some structure. the shield of academic journals is really no more than a flimsy smoke screen.

      YouTube videos stand on the substance of what they present. This is a new time and science will not wait for peer reviewed consensus.

    • David Hosansky wrote:
      This enabled the research team to identify the amount of average monthly precipitation in specific regions of North American and Eurasia that fell as a result of human impacts on the climate, rather than natural variability.

      “I thought this was quite revealing,” said NCAR senior scientist Clara Deser, a co-author of the study. “Our research demonstrates that human-caused climate change has clearly affected precipitation over the past 100 years.”

      The Roman and Medieval Warm periods did progress the same way as is happening now, due to the same causes without human-caused forcing. This is very clearly a scheme to scam all of us. This is quite revealing!

      You must show actual proof that there is any human-caused climate change. Climate cycles of little ice age and little warm periods are about one thousand years, There are no human-caused forcing factors that have thousand year cycles. Short term correlations are just dumb good luck or dumb bad luck.
      To: NCAR senior scientist Clara Deser:
      Show any actual proof that there is any human-caused forcing factors that have worse outcomes and do not have better outcomes. Models and theory are not proof, I will look for you answer.

      • Pope

        Since you brought up the Medieval Warm Period, it seems the more I look into the evidence of warming in the Southern Hemisphere the more compelling the case is for global warming during this period, at least some warming. There are too many studies in too many locations showing some warming to just dismiss it out of hand.

        Funny how the more one drills down deep into the issues, the more the establishment arguments seem to vaporize.

    • Err. NO.
      a paper can be an ADVERTISEMENT for the science, but the actual
      science is in the data and methods, both of which should be shared
      a Video? I have yet to see a vidoe that includes its data in a shareable way.


      • “…science is in the data and methods, both of which should be shared
        a Video?”

        I read this which is a must read above:


        Which says much of what we think of science, isn’t science. It just looks like science. And it lacks something.


        We are dancing around it. It appears to be a drive. A pursuit. When we say a leader has drive, what does that mean? We can copy them, and get lame results even though we copied them. Most do get those results. 1000s of books are written about it for all the good they do.

        I am here to defend youtube videos as science. Which of course they aren’t but they are winning. So much winning. When you’re blocked by the MSM, Twitter and peer review, make like the intellectual dark web. Youtube and podcast. We know this is correct because youtube is ramping up against skeptics. This is all wrong as conservatives are not supposed to like change but went to alternative means partly because they had to. Liberals are supposed to do change better. But they’ve failed in so many ways, defending their castles. And they locked themselves into a position and the Vietnamese should have taught us something about that during the 1960s and 70s.

        Videos teach. Or indoctrinate. I’d like to think they at times they do teach. Which still isn’t doing science but it’s getting closer. Teaching is telling a story. Or multiple stories. The point is it’s coherent. It’s not a multiplication table or a periodic table unless there’s a story to go with it. The story of the hockey stick isn’t much without the story. I can’t follow half of what our team says about it, something to do with flipping things over and getting the same answer, but the story makes it. Without that, its just boring people speaking a foreign language I don’t understand.

        When public TV isn’t doing fire and brimstone about the end times, they are telling a story about the climate. Fancy dancy publications like NPR that hasn’t going broke quite yet, tell stories of climate scientists.

        So with our stories, what’s the best one we can tell? The scientist on a quest. Which gets back to a pursuit mentioned above. Science is a quest, preferably one with a happy ending. And stories will be told of this valiant quest down through the ages. But you really have to seek. And not listen to all the people urging caution.

  17. from andrea saltelli’s essay: Statisticians appear mired in an academic and mediatic debate where even the concept of significance appears challenged, while more sedate tones prevail in the various communities of mathematical modelling.

    The “crisis” in statistics is focused on the overreliance of practitioners on “p-values” in the assessment of “signification”, “signals”, “statistical significance”, and “significance” in broader senses. I don’t think anyone is “mired”. Pick the most recent issue of the journals I read regularly (Journal of the American Statistical Association, Annals of Applied Statistics, Statistical Science) and you’ll see plenty of evidence of healthy growth.

    Or visit Nature to read this:

    Nature Physics: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0598-1

    Low-dimensional dynamics of two coupled biological oscillators
    Colas Droin 1,2, Eric R. Paquet 1,2 and Felix Naef 1*

    The circadian clock and the cell cycle are two biological oscillatory processes that coexist within individual cells. These two oscillators were found to interact, which can lead to their synchronization. Here, we develop a method to identify a low-dimensional stochastic model of the coupled system directly from time-lapse imaging in single cells. In particular, we infer the coupling and nonlinear dynamics of the two oscillators from thousands of mouse and human single-cell fluorescence microscopy traces. This coupling predicts multiple phase-locked states showing different degrees of robustness against molecular fluctuations inherent to cellular-scale biological oscillators. For the 1:1 state, the predicted phase-shifts following period perturbations were
    validated experimentally. Moreover, the phase-locked states are temperature-independent and evolutionarily conserved from mouse to human, hinting at a common underlying dynamical mechanism. Finally, we detect a signature of the coupled dynamics in a physiological context, explaining why tissues with different proliferation states exhibited shifted circadian clock phases.

    Statistics is thriving as never before.

    I do mathematical modeling and statistical data analysis of non-stationary multivariate biological time series. I also do landscaping and gardening in my yard, largely in honor of my wife. The current intense discussion of the over-reliance on “p-values” strikes me as no more important than the scratches and scrapes that come from yardwork and other kinds of extra-desk labor.

    The essay is superficial in the extreme.

  18. Climate change is altering winter precipitation across the Northern Hemisphere [link]
    The results show that warming temperatures associated with human emissions of greenhouse gases spurred a noticeable increase in wintertime precipitation across widespread regions of northern Eurasia and eastern North America since 1920.
    Total BS! Yes, warming is happening, as expected, after a cold period. Michael Mann lost in high Canadian Court because he had no proof to support that human emissions played a part.
    The results show that warming temperatures spurred a noticeable increase in wintertime precipitation across widespread regions of northern Eurasia and eastern North America since 1920.
    NOTHING in real data points the human emissions as a cause.
    Michael Mann lost to Tim Ball in court because he did not prove the hockey stick. Michael Mann did not prove the warming was not part of the natural cycle that was already expected to cause natural warming. Warming from human emissions of CO2 has not replaced natural warming after every cold period that has ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, happened naturally.
    Warm periods between colder periods are normal natural and necessary.

  19. I wasn’t going to comment, but here it is.
    Apropos of “Upgrade your cargo cult for the win.”

    The general public has some fantasy of “pure science,” and I agree with the author of that essay that honesty is a prime component of good science that is often subverted for a variety of reasons: pressure from higher ups, political and economic concerns, unwillingness to upset the apple cart, etc. But I don’t think we realize how bad it is when we can feed the public almost anything that’s published and then automatically the critical thinking gets turned off and we say, oh, well, now that’s SCIENCE.

    When it comes to vaccine science then we all bow down and worship at the alter of whatever gets published that supports the consensus view, and then, boy, are we ever talking SCIENCE. Yet I’m here to tell you, because most won’t listen to anybody about that and probably not me, either, that most of this is just plain BS.

    I wouldn’t mention this except for the current fervor to make everyone slaves to pharma by eliminating non-medical exemptions to vaccines because, don’t you know, that dreaded plague, measles, has killed two people in the U.S. in the past then year? Yes, look it up. Yes, but … well in 1960, three years before the measles vaccine came out, the death rate from measles was about 0.26/100,000 and that of drowning 3.6/100,000: before the measles vaccine, then, you were 13x more likely to die by drowning than from measles. Still not the black death.

    This isn’t to make light of any disease. Believe it or not, not even an anti-vaxxer wants any child to be harmed. Yet, to be concerned about vaccine safety and to be critical of the current SCIENCE is be painted as the devil’s spouse herself.

    The CDC whistleblower thinks the MMR can cause autism (but he was only being honest and not a real SCIENTIST) and so did Verstraeten in his study that, in a blaze of honesty, found a significant association of thimerosal in vaccines with autism. That was science. That was what they found. That was real. That caused a great deal of alarm. But it took three years to turn it into SCIENCE, and then they published. Here you go, for the briefest review of that affair: https://www.safeminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/GenerationZeroNotes.pdf

    But even more interesting is the Wakefield affair, and the tarnishing of a good scientist– yes, he really was– in the service of SCIENCE. So if you want a taste of what a nasty business vaccine SCIENCE is, then take a look at this:

    As I said, I wouldn’t mention any of this except that we’re descending into medical tyranny, and it’d be nice if a few people spoke up for science.

    • Before I get clobbered, a correction: Verstraeten’s study did not involve the MMR. It involved thimerosal, which was in many childhood vaccines at the time, but not in the MMR.

    • My dog is a slave to big pharma.

      • No, your dog is not a slave to pharma. Your dog is a slave to you, and you can refuse any vaccine you want to.

        In 1905, Jacobson was forced to pay a $5 fine for refusing the smallpox vaccine. Fair enough. Equivalent to about $150 today. For smallpox.

        In 1922 in Zucht vs King it was determined that a smallpox vaccine was required for school admission. But this was in a period when a minority of children graduated from high school and good jobs could be had without a diploma. And it was for smallpox. And mothers stayed home, as a general rule.

        Now, we want to ban children from school for refusing any scheduled vaccine. A low-income family, with two parents working, would be forced to either have one parent stay home or else hire a babysitter/tutor, every year. We’re talking $10,000/year, maybe much more, in lost income or expenses, every year.

        Is this appropriate punishment, or is it just a majority beating up on a minority? After all, we’re not talking about anything as serious as smallpox, and no, measles doesn’t even come close.

        A fine is appropriate, and I’d agree with a reasonable one. Banning children from school in this day and age is far from reasonable.

  20. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Solar wind speed exceeded 700 km / s.
    The speed of the north jet stream is also increasing.
    The hurricane heads straight for Florida and doesn’t turn north.

    • Ireneusz Palmowski

      Last Updated 9/1/2019, 7:00:00 AM GMT+2
      Hurricane Category 4
      26.334° N, -75.38° W
      241 km/h
      296 km/h
      W 13 km/h
      941.00 mbar

    • Ireneusz Palmowski

      A strong geomagnetic storm causes the northern jetstream to accelerate and become parallel.

  21. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Northern jet stream can push Dorian inland.

    • Ireneusz Palmowski

      There are no obstacles for Dorian to continue moving west.

      • Purely out of curiosity I have a question for Judith on this early Sunday morning. I’ve seen models showing a track from here due West and others having the track run up the coast either hitting the Carolinas or moving out to sea.

        What were the factors that you were using in determining at this moment which direction Dorian would take?

        I understand there are more pressing issues for you at this time so if you want to do a post mortem much later is fine. Thanks.

        For Ren. Again just out of curiosity at what appears to be a critical juncture for the path, what probability do you place on the path being more westerly than on on moving up the coast? Thanks.

      • Ireneusz Palmowski

        If you look at the North Atlantic, you’ll see the highs far from the hurricane in the east. This high will not push Dorian north.
        The stream is directed to the British Isles.

      • Ireneusz Palmowski

        Still western direction. Extremely low eye pressure.

        Last Updated 9/1/2019, 11:00:00 AM GMT+2
        Hurricane Category 4
        26.413° N, -76° W
        241 km/h
        296 km/h
        W 13 km/h
        934.00 mbar

  22. Pingback: Week in review – science edition — Climate Etc. – Climate- Science.press

  23. This is from the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is melting article.

    “What Figure 1 suggests is that the winds in this region have varied between easterly and westerly from decade to decade, throughout the 20th century. This is the natural variability associated with ENSO, and is no surprise. But in addition, there is a long-term trend. When averaged over several decades, the winds can be seen to have shifted from mean easterly in the 1920s through 1980s, to mean westerly thereafter.

    The trend in the winds is small, and easily lost within the variability of individual model ensemble members, but it is robust (it occurs in all the ensemble members) and statistically significant. Moreover, we know its cause (at least in the model experiments): radiative forcing. Although these experiments also include radiative forcing changes resulting from the ozone hole, it’s clear that the trend in the winds begins well before ozone depletion begins in 1970s. Thus, the key forcing is greenhouse gases.”

    I now understand how everything is attributed to CO2. If it’s long term and increasing then automatically it’s AGW. Never mind previous warm periods or coming out of the Little Ice Age or we don’t really know the winds for the last 1000 years. If it’s increasing it’s AGW.

    Sounds so GretaAOCesque.

  24. ‘Plastic recycling is a myth’: what really happens to your rubbish?

    Plaxx is interesting but no doubt requires significant energy input. The most energy efficient solution would be to use plastic and wood products (not necessarily viable recyclable products) to incinerate as much waste as possible, using the heat generated to produce electricity, where the profits could be used for carbon capture, scrubbers, etc. We used to do this with ‘dirty’ incinerators. Time to upgrade the technology and go back.

  25. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Last Updated 9/1/2019, 2:00:00 PM GMT+2
    Hurricane Category 5
    26.485° N, -76.5° W
    259 km/h
    315 km/h
    W 15 km/h
    927.00 mbar

  26. Ireneusz Palmowski

    A very long geomagnetic storm.

  27. Ireneusz Palmowski

    On north Pacific jetstream accelerated sharply to the east. His movement will cause hurricanes formation in the Eastern Pacific.

  28. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Last Updated 9/1/2019, 4:00:00 PM GMT+2
    Hurricane Category 5
    26.51° N, -76.672° W
    278 km/h
    333 km/h
    W 15 km/h
    922.00 mbar

  29. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Another hurricane may form behind Dorian.


  31. Convergent human and climate forcing of late-Holocene flooding in Northwest England:

    “Negative NAO appears to drive frequent winter flooding in northwest England.”

    Positive NAO in the winter for floods, and negative NAO in the summer for floods, like this August. But if one looks at the NAO Dec-Jan-Feb mean instead of the daily NAO during the flood period, one is likely to loose the plot.

  32. Leaf stomata are a very promising and hitherto under-utilised proxy for past CO2 concentrations. This linked paper gives an important CO2 proxy measurement in the Eocene (36-54 Mya), a concentration range of only 350-600 ppm. “Only” because this level is much too low to be consistent with CO2 causation of the much warmer climate of that period.


    Here we reconstructed pCO2 using the stomatal densities of a large fossil Lauraceae (laurel) leaf database from ten sites across the Eocene of Australia and New Zealand. We show that mostly moderate pCO2 levels of ~450–600 ppm prevailed throughout the Eocene, levels that are considerably lower than the pCO forcing currently needed to recreate Eocene temperatures in climate models.

    I’m often surprised at how relaxed researchers seem when they publish results that contradict the strong rule mandated in climate science that nothing but CO2 ever changes climate. Whence this serenity? Either they only profess fielty to the CO2-only doctrine and secretly don’t really believe it. Or they are so accustomed to the carbon-only climate theory crashing on like a juggernaut brushing aside any conflicting data, that they can be confident that no conceivable data of any kind could ever refute it.

  33. “Internal Variability and Regional Climate Trends in an Observational Large Ensemble”

    All boondoggle. Indirect solar variability drives NAO/AO anomalies at weekly scales, and with inverse response from the ocean modes. Such that negative NAO/AO drives a warmer AMO and El Nino conditions. If the solar wind had remained as strong as it was in the mid 1970’s the AMO would still be just as cold.

  34. In this Russian paper on climate nonlinearity and bifurcations, I think a mischievous
    translator has mistranslated “emergence” as “emergency”. A link to the Russian original would be useful.

    Emergence: появление
    Emergency: чрезвычайная ситуация

    I wonder if their climate data for St Petersburg which claim a recent accelerated warming include the current record cold summer in much of Russia that has been all over the media (sarc).



  35. Ireneusz Palmowski

    I wonder why Dorian should turn north before reaching Florida?

  36. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Hurricane slowed. Eye pressure is record low. Compassion for the Bahamas.

    Last Updated 9/1/2019, 11:00:00 PM GMT+2
    Hurricane Category 5
    26.7° N, -77.4° W
    296 km/h
    361 km/h
    W 9 km/h
    910.00 mbar

  37. Wong and Minnett (2018) present far-reaching conclusions about ostensible LWIR heating of the subsurface ocean based upon a tortured line of surrogate reasoning and night-time-only experimental data. Changes in cloudiness cannot be convincingly substituted for changes in CO2 concentrations in examining this complex issue. Nor can indications provided by cherry-picked ship-board data wholly unrepresentative of the heating phase of the diurnal cycle be projected beyond.

    Should W&M ever seriously examine the daytime relationship between bulk temperature and surface fluxes recorded by scientific buoys, they will discover that upward and downward LW fluxes are highly coherent, the subsurface temperatures are driven overwhelmingly by cloud-modulated insolation, and that evaporation generally dwarfs the net surface radiation in transferring heat to the atmosphere throughout most of the globe.


      It’s good that they’re highly coherent. Everything is driven by the Sun yes. So by extension also by clouds between the surface and the Sun. But that doesn’t answer the question. Evaporation does a lot of cooling. It makes water such a useful way to cool things. And evaporation can produce water vapor or fairy dust, I can’t recall which one? Which is a GHG that then does what a GHG does right near the surface of the water. Instead of the water vapor being beamed up to a higher elevation by Scotty. Unless perhaps we’re going down the saturation rabbit hole which I don’t think occurs above 50 degrees latitude too often.

      Because something else is big, that doesn’t mean something small doesn’t do something. There.s not much surface ice by volume compared to the oceans total volume. It still does something. Quite a bit I think beyond death spiral graphs being worried about.

      I felt I had a helpful moment when I heard Lake Superior does most of its evaporation in the Fall. Not in the dog days of Summer. There’s your evaporation cooling. Which means that the more it warms up, the more short term water vapor we get in the Fall. I think it’s a negative feedback as it always ices to a great extent. Free reset even with an extra couple of degrees. So cold of Winter, it hammers the joules into the atmosphere to get to ice. Not so cold of Winter, hammers less and takes its time. Since it evaporates less and/or more slowly in the mild Winter, less joules are hammered into the atmosphere? How is my math? The near surface joules tip off whats happening. A milder Fall keeps the near surface joules warmer or at a higher level delaying ice formation. Have I contradicted myself? I am getting old.

    • “Our findings provide an explanation of the mechanism for retaining upper ocean heat content as the incident IR radiation increases. The absorption of increased longwave has been deduced to compress vertically the curvature of the TSL, with a higher gradient forming close to the interface and a lower gradient at subskin depths. The smaller vertical gradient at subskin depths impedes the transfer of heat from the mixed
      layer into the TSL.”

      Clouds are perfectly acceptable as a way of examining changes in skin temperature as a result changes in diownwelling IR – and thus on heat retention at depth in oceans.

      The NASA graphic shows the major energy pathways in the Earth system approximately – if statically quantified. It can be understood as the result of physical processes in a nonequilibrium thermodynamic system. Energy flows in one direction – sun to oceans to atmosphere and out to space. With a feedback loop caused by photon absorption properties of greenhouse gases. There are fundamental physics the lack of which are egregiously misleading.


    • So many words, so little physics…

      Until cross-spectral relationships are determined for heat flow through the ocean skin over the entire diurnal cycle, the most that W&M can claim to have reasonably inferred is reduced night-time conductivity under cloudy skies. That’s a far cry from actual LWIR heating of subsurface layers.

      • They never claim subsurface waters are warmed by long wave incident radiation.

        …Thus, the incident IR radiation does not directly heat the upper few meters of the ocean. This paper investigates the physical mechanism between the absorption of IR radiation and its effect on heat transfer at the air‐sea boundary. The hypothesis is that given the heat lost through the air‐sea interface is controlled by the TSL, the TSL adjusts in response to variations in incident IR radiation to maintain the surface heat loss. This modulates the flow of heat from below and hence controls upper ocean heat content. … – Abstract

      • Here’s my impression about TSL. It’s chemtrails. It signals who not to listen to. You can get me on some science explanation I don’t understand enought to refute. But you can’t make me think you’re worth listening to if you take a TSL, atmosphere can’t make the oceans warmer than they otherwise would be. So the TSL arguments you see at WUWT are marketing failures. But not a lot of people seem to care about that. It’s possible there is a path to winning. TSL is a detour from that path.

  38. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The hurricane moves exactly west at a speed of 11 km / h.

  39. Ireneusz Palmowski

    High up in the Southeast. Dorian will move west.

  40. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Last Updated 9/2/2019, 9:00:00 AM GMT+2
    Hurricane Category 5
    26.621° N, -78.128° W
    278 km/h
    352 km/h
    W 9 km/h
    916.00 mbar

  41. I came across this principle from Ray Dalio.

    I’ve seen this among intellectuals in other fields that seem to adhere to questionable assumptions wrt climate change for fear of looking ignorant:

  42. Pingback: Vesihöyryvajaus kasveilla? | Roskasaitti

  43. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The hurricane is now directed to the WNW.

  44. Ireneusz Palmowski

    The first hurricane in the Eastern Atlantic is forming.

  45. Ireneusz Palmowski
  46. Ireneusz Palmowski

    North of Dorian are the highs. Dorian stopped.

  47. Upgrade your cargo cult…
    An excellent discussion, and despite a few minor cavils with the text, I applaud it as a splendid paean to the apprenticeship… which, I believe, is still extant in Germany.

  48. Let’s see if I can get this right.
    Upgrade your cargo cult

  49. Elizabeth Warren’s Green Manufacturing Plan

    “While much of the debate around the Green New Deal has focused on the path to aggressive reductions in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, the science is clear: even if we reduce America’s emissions so that they are net-zero by 2030, we will still fall far short of the reduction in global emissions needed to avert a climate crisis. To satisfy this global need, we need rapid innovation on par with the space race along with widespread domestic and international adoption of clean, renewable, and emission-free energy technology.”

    She walks up to the answer, and then goes right past it. Net-zero by 2030 for us, not in the next 30 years. Net-zero for the whole world, not in the next 30 years. So we need to get the whole world to net-zero in 12 years. We can’t even build a nuclear plant. Or a backbone power line. Or a pipeline.

    The answer is, we can’t get there. It’s accepting reality. Now what? We try. Or say we are going to try because not one quarter of this will happen in the next 10 years with the amount of money needed. And I what mean will not happen is reducing our total emissions by one quarter. But we can say the reason is didn’t happen is someone else’s fault. And we can run on that for hopefully the next 20 years. It’s a vision like good education. We aren’t getting that either.

    But the real answer is we can adapt. And we can improve some things. Like watersheds and somewhat smart coastal planning and execution.

    What science is clear from the above? The science doesn’t say a climate crisis by 2030. Crisis is not a scientific word. The science isn’t clear about spending money on anything other than on more climate science. And financing that is not climate science though it may be political science.

    The whole thing is disappointing and has little value beyond obtaining votes. She promises redemption that people will never really get.

  50. Climate change causes hurricanes to not devastate Florida. To not really cross onto land. And for hurricanes to just become bored with the whole thing. Donald Trump should have gone to Florida and like Moses willed this thing to stay away. I hope he takes credit for this.

  51. Ocean warming in a warmer atmosphere happens in accordance with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Less heat is lost.

    • If we were to examine in detail the climate models now used as the basis for the IPCC’s projections, in how many different ways would we see ocean-atmosphere dynamics being handled?

      That is to say, how would the physical assumptions differ among the various climate models? How would the physical assumptions be implemented within the software code and/or within the input/output data flows?

      In what ways does an individual run of a climate model differ from other runs of the same model in terms of different physical assumptions, different software code, and different input/output data sets?

      • “AOS models are therefore to be judged by their degree of plausibility, not whether they are correct or best. This perspective extends to the component discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupling breadth: There are better or worse choices (some seemingly satisfactory for their purpose or others needing repair) but not correct or best ones. The bases for judging are a priori formulation, representing the relevant natural processes and choosing the discrete algorithms, and a posteriori solution behavior.” https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709

        It is the a posteriori solution behavior that is the real problem. They pull it out of their arses. Although the former is a bit of a problem as well. Especially in terms of modeling internal variability.


        But this has little to do with atmospheric warming and decreased energy loss from ocean surfaces – in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics.

  52. Vapor pressure deficit? Seriously? The principal “feedback” mechanism for CO2-induced global warming was to have been increased water vapor pressure (i.e. relative humidity, humidity ratio, or whatever you want to call it). Water is the most potent greenhouse gas, with the broadest IR absorption bands, and is present in 100 times the concentration of CO2. Global warming was supposed to have increased that concentration. If, instead, the concentration of water vapor is decreasing, that means that there is no global warming.

    I’m not saying that a decrease in water vapor pressure disproves global warming theory because the latter predicts an increase. What I am saying (and Nick Stokes will throw a fit here) is that a significantly less humid atmosphere shows that the the energy balance of radiation in/out of the earth is actually decreasing, even if air temperature increases slightly.

    The entire global warming premise is that there is an imbalance in the amount of radiant energy delivered to Earth by the Sun and the amount of radiant energy lost by the Earth due to thermal radiation. The difference shows up as an increase in atmospheric temperature, and thus we have the concept of “global warming.”

    That would be true if and only if there were no water on Earth. In that case, the air temperature would be directly related to the difference between incoming and outgoing electromagnetic radiation. The presence of water complicates the situation tremendously. At the very least, it decouples the air temperature (which is virtually always the “dry bulb” temperature) from the actual energy content of the atmosphere. Enthalpy is the correct term for the atmospheric energy content, Nick Stokes (frankly ignorant) objections to the contrary notwithstanding. And the energy associated with the water vapor content of the atmosphere dwarfs the dry air enthalpy. That’s why I have stated repeatedly that if we don’t have both “dry bulb” and “wet bulb” temperature readings versus time, we have no hope of determining whether the Earth system is radiating less energy into space than it receives from the Sun.

    Yet now some “scientists” are stating that we have a [water] vapor pressure deficit due to “climate change”. Well, that can mean only one thing: the world is cooling in a big way. The minuscule temperature anomaly (if there actually is one) from the 1800s reflects a trivial amount of energy difference between incoming and outgoing EM radiation. A big drop in relative humidity reflects an enormous increase in outgoing EM radiation. There is no other way to explain it.

    I have a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. My original specialty was rocket propulsion. I assure you that rocket people know more about energy than anyone else on earth, given that it governs every aspect of rocket propulsion. But a heating, air conditioning and ventilation (HVAC) engineer knows more than any of these climate “scientists.” Ask an HVAC engineer about the First Law of Thermodynamics when considering humid air. You’ll find that the climate “scientists” are like high school dropouts in their understanding of the subject.

    • This echoes my reaction to the paper exactly. Seems to cancel out the positive water vapor feedback

      Re climate scientists’ understanding of thermo: I’ve done my part to educate them with my text (1999) Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans. Unfortunately, the moist thermo treatment in climate models is way overly simplistic. May not matter for weather, but since water vapor and cloud feedback is the name of the climate game, this oversimplification in the models probably has a substantial impact (no way to quantify this, until they put the correct moist thermo into the climate models)

      • curryja : Seems to cancel out the positive water vapor feedback

        from the paper: Apart from HadISDH, datasets showed that the increased saturated water vapor pressure and decreased actual water vapor pressure jointly determined the increases of VPD after the TP. On average, the rate of increase in saturated water vapor was 1.43 to 1.64 times higher after the TP year than before, and the actual water vapor exhibited stalled or decreased trends (fig. S4). Increased air temperature explains the changes in saturated water vapor pressure (fig. S4). The HadISDH dataset indicates a decrease in saturated water vapor because of large spatial gaps in the dataset.

        Actual water vapor increased up til the “turning point” year of 1999, roughly the onset of the “pause”. The increase in VPD was because the actual water vapor pressure was increasing more slowly than the equilibrium water vapor pressure up til 1999..

        The result seems to indicate that otherwise the potential for plant growth (T, rainfall,CO2) has increased faster than the water vapor pressure increase to support that growth.

        If replicated and extended, this might affect forecasts of increased vegetation growth as T and CO2 continue to increase, if they do, but I don’t see any implication for the hypothesized effect of increased CO2 on T.

        I have not been able to acquire the supplemental information yet.

      • curryja: I’ve done my part to educate them with my text (1999) Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans.

        Yikes! It’s almost $100.

        How much do studies of energy flows, such as Forget and Ferrier, affect your overall view?

    • Anybody who calls Nick Stokes ignorant is a jackass.

    • MichaelKelly: The principal “feedback” mechanism for CO2-induced global warming was to have been increased water vapor pressure (i.e. relative humidity, humidity ratio, or whatever you want to call it). … If, instead, the concentration of water vapor is decreasing, that means that there is no global warming.

      It appears that you have not read the paper.

    • Modelers have assumed a constant relative humidity. But models and CMIP opportunistic ensembles have much bigger problems than this. And in terms of energy dynamics at TOA – what matters is total water vapor content. That is atmospheric temperature dependent.

      My null hypothesis is that any series – such as this water vapor deficit result – that shares the ubiquitous pattern of critical transitions is internal variability rather than forced.

      If there is a transition at the turn of the century – it is an outcome of the shift in ocean and atmospheric circulation. With associated changes in shortwave and infrared energy dynamics. This is a problem with multiple dimensions tractable only with measurement of outgoing energy.

  53. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Dorian is now directed by jetstream to South Carolina.

  54. “The dawning of the age of old aquifers’ – brilliant title.

  55. Two of the top three candidates for the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination have now come out foursquare against nuclear power.

    From: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/elizabeth-warren-comes-out-against-nuclear-power

    Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday she would oppose the building of new nuclear plants in America and work to phase out existing nuclear power from the energy mix.

    “In my administration, we won’t be building new nuclear plants,” Warren said at CNN’s climate change town hall. “We will start weaning ourselves off nuclear and replace it with renewables,” she added, saying that she would aim to do so by 2035.

    Warren had previously not taken a position on nuclear power in any of her various climate change plans, including a new proposal she issued earlier Wednesday requiring utilities to achieve 100% carbon-neutral power by 2030 and reaching all-renewable electricity generation by 2035.

    While few Democratic candidates are explicitly cheering on nuclear power, most recognize that it provides more than half of the nation’s zero-carbon electricity.

    However, Warren and other opponents such as Bernie Sanders cite concerns about storing nuclear waste, and the high cost of building new plants, in opposing it.

    Sanders wants to impose a moratorium on license renewals for existing power plants, along with stopping the building of new plants.

    As things are now shaping up, either Sanders or Warren is likely to be the Democrat’s 2020 nominee.

    If either candidate is nominated, voters should demand that a fully comprehensive engineering-level analysis be done that identifies how many new wind and solar farms are needed by the year 2035, how many grid-scale battery storage facilities are needed by the year 2035, plus how much and where the necessary power transmission infrastructure needs to be installed by the year 2035. And all of it at what actual total cost.

  56. Ireneusz Palmowski

    A strong jetstream blow in the North Atlantic will hold Dorian on the East Coast.

  57. A matter previously discussed at Climate Etc. is one of the sujects covered by Professor Bejan in Thermodynamics of heating. He agrees with Makarieva et al. in A critique of some modern applications of the Carnot heat engine concept: the dissipative heat engine cannot exist that the modeling approach in References (25-27, 29-31) listed below is not correct.

    In Section 4. Dissipative Engines, he says:

    The construction of figure 5a was named ‘dissipative engine’ to stress that the atmospheric engine is driven not only by heating from the sun (q) but also by the heat current (input) derived from the dissipator that destroys the power output of the engine. This impression was proven incorrect by the authors of [28], who demonstrated through a clever argument (reduction to the absurd) that a ‘dissipative engine’ that feeds on its own dissipation cannot exist.

    He notes that after the correction by Makarieva et al. was published, additional peer-reviewed papers continued to appear [30, 31] in which the correction was not mentioned.

    Reference 28 is the paper by Makarieva et al., mentioned above, published in 2010.

    See also Reply to comment of Bister and co-authors on
    the critique of the dissipative heat engine∗

    25. Renno, NO and Ingersoll, AP. 1996 Natural convection as a heat engine: a theory for CAPE. J. Atmos. Sci. 53, 572-585. (doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1996)053%3C0572:NCAAHE%3E2.0.CO;2)

    26. Bister M and Emanuel KA. 1998 Dissipative heating and hurricane intensity. Meteorol. Atmos. Phys. 65, 233-240. (doi:10.1007/BF01030791)

    27. Emanuel K. 2003 Tropical cyclones. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. Palo Alto 31, 75-104. (doi:10.1146/annurev.earth.31.100901.141259)

    28. Anastassia M. Makarieva, Victor G. Gorshkov, Bai-Lian Li, and Antonio Donato Nobre. 2010, A critique of some modern applications of the Carnot heat engine concept: the dissipative heat engine cannot exist. Proc. R. Soc. A (2010) 466, 1893-1902. (doi:10.1098/rspa.2009.0581)

    29. Bister M, Renno N, Pauluis O, and Emanuel K. 2010 Comment on Makarieva et al. ‘A critique of some modern applications of the Carnot heat engine concept: the dissipative heat engine cannot exist’. Proc. R. Soc. A 467, 1-6. (doi:10.1098/rspa.2010.0087)

    30. Denur J. 2011 The apparent ‘super-Carnot’ efficiency of hurricanes: nature’s steam engine versus the steam locomotive. Am. J. Phys. 79, 631-643. (doi:10.1119/1.3534841)

    31. Kleidon A. 2016 Thermodynamic foundations of the earth system. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

  58. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Typhoon is approaching Tokyo.

  59. Ireneusz Palmowski

    Typhoon will hit Tokyo.

  60. “”Unfortunately, the most environmentally responsible way is also the most politically difficult,” Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said last year. “If there’s a leader of a country whose people are starving, and they think by injecting some particles in the stratosphere they can feed their people and alleviate suffering, the political pressure to do that is going to be intense.””


    In the article, they indicate what we’ve done and will do with mitigation is pathetic. Good to see an appreciation of reality.

    Lomborg wanted to inject water vapor into the atmosphere with a water squirting climate navy. I think that’s a splendid idea to try out in the ENSO region. Maybe some less fortunate country will fund it.

  61. Once again I see everything to be relevant:

    “Still, killing off theories is simply how science is supposed to work, argue researchers who have been exploring alternative gravity theories. “This is what we do all the time, put forward a working hypothesis and test it,” said Enrico Barausse of the Astrophysics Institute of Paris, who has worked on MOND-like theories. “99.9 percent of the time you rule out the hypothesis; the remaining 0.1 percent of the time you win the Nobel Prize.””


    Trenberth said something like we can’t find the missing heat. It is the theory of CO2 plus water vapor. They can count the mass of the gosh darn universe. Not all the joules on Earth though. Karl said, it’s there. Look. It was there the whole time. They are looking for the Hubble Constant or something like that. We have from 1.5X to 4.5X with 66% confidence. What a failure. They say 5 sigmas from time to time. Sure. They love their hypothesis. Don’t you try to disprove it.

    This is physics. No it’s not. Try to be like this:

    “All attempts to directly detect dark matter and dark energy have failed, however. That fact “kind of leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, almost like the fictional planet Vulcan,” said Leo Stein, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. “Maybe we’re going about it all wrong?””

    And that’s a failure too. But only one tenth as much of a failure as climate scientists have accomplished.

    “Some of these theories can’t make testable predictions, Archibald said, and many “have a parameter, a ‘knob’ you can turn to make them pass any test you like,” she said. But at some point, said Nicolas Yunes, a physicist at Montana State University, “this gets silly and Occam’s razor wins.””

    “Still, “fundamentally we know that general relativity is wrong,” Stein said. “At the very core there must be some breakdown” at the quantum level. “Maybe we won’t see it from astronomical observations … but we owe it to ourselves, as empirical scientists, to check whether or not our mathematical models are working at these scales.””

    • I agree with you to a point.
      “what I’m suggesting is that, quite amazingly, all that we have thought about entropy and how disorder grows has all been because people have been thinking in terms of everything being in a box. If the universe is not in a box, just like Kepler said, we must philosophize about things differently. That changes things totally.”
      But since we are thinking outside the box just consider there maybe ways to think/reason/learn that the human brain can not. How many different ways can a A.I. program be built – Inductive Learning, Transductive Learning, Knowledge-Based, Inductive Learning, Deductive Learning, Feedback-Based Classification, Reservoir Computing… many more if you follow the AI/ML field.

      • AI uses complex algorithms to emulate human behavior – like driverless cars or autonomous robot soldiers. But this is not thinking, learning, reasoning or creativity.

      • No one is building AI to emulate human behavior with the possible exception of the entertainment business and applied social sciences(deep fakes, criminals and state propaganda). I think everyone accepts that Artificial General Intelligence is decades into the future.
        Most all AI developed today is designed to make decisions better and faster than humans. When you think out side the box there are many methods of computation that have no human analogies.
        Recurrent Neural Networks
        Linear discriminant analysis
        Naive Bayes
        K-Nearest Neighbors
        Learning vector quantization
        Support vector machines

        The hot topic in AI/ML today is getting AI to “explain” how it made it’s decisions. Feed a AI/ML program with huge amounts of data (temperatures, pressure, wind speed & direction, humidity, temporal resolutions) and it output a testable forecast and the set of discrete equations ‘discovered’ to produce that output.
        One of several interesting projects that illustrates the possibilities:

      • These are all computers programmed with a set of rules applied sequentially to perform tasks defined by people. It is simply a machine and not a new way of thinking.

        AI word salad doesn’t suggest much deep thought either.

      • View at Medium.com
        DABUS “invented” two items (a new type of plastic food container that uses fractal geometry to change shape and a “neural flame” device used in search-and-rescue missions) without human intervention.

      • “He believes that with larger networks the approach will offer human-like problem-solving and genius-level ideas, impacting on scientific discovery, economics and more. But developers will need to restrict creativity to sensible limits. “The AI systems of the future will have their bouts of mental illness,” Thaler says. “Especially if they aspire to create more than what they know.”

        Using fractals to ‘invent’ nested containers doesn’t pass the sanity test. Neither does believing lawyers and PR spin.

  62. Robert,
    I admire your knowledge of the climate and bio systems but your disdain for A.I. puzzles me. By trying to throw shade on every comment I make I think you diminish yourself. Technology can change reality, science is just a thought process.

  63. Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most respected experts on global warming in the country.
    She’s not Mann so that’s a plus. I noticed her faith in batteries needs a breakthrough. She makes a statement about religion we could call authentic. If she’s disliked by some, at the same time she’s effective with her message. I learned something about local or regional models. But it seems to me that’s an overreach with the results subject to a ton of qualifications. So a city knows how much it will rain there in the future. So it puts up solar panels? No, it adapts. Who can frame a solution? Not the one disagreeing that there’s a problem. If people realize the answer to their problems is adaptation, we win. The renewable people give up.

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