Phytoplankton: we have not a clue
Phytoplankton have been proliferating in the North Atlantic when they were predicted to be doing the opposite, and we haven’t a clue why. Nor do we know whether the increase is beneficial or harmful.
Here’s an observation on this from Anand Gnanadesikan, who is an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins.
“What is worrisome,” he said, “is that our result points out how little we know about how complex ecosystems function.”
Here’s blogger Richard Fernandez:
This is important because phytoplankton are the foundation of the food chain.
Conventional wisdom held they should be dying. For years the numbers of phytoplankton were thought to be in decline due to Global Warming…Just as nuclear power and radiation explained everything in the 1950s, in 2015 the usual suspect in all modern mysteries is Global Warming…The way the narrative works is the Usual Suspect is guilty in every case. Things are simpler that way.
I am not a scientist, although I am more science and math literate than most people. But I’ve long been worried about the belief that the current state of computer modeling can deal with some of the most complex systems in nature adequately enough to predict the future or understand how an intervention would actually affect the system in the real world.
Fernandez quotes a work in which the late Michael Crichton has a character explain:
Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather…They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything.
Our very short-time weather prediction is excellent. But chaos theory throws off weather prediction if it’s just a bit beyond a week or so ahead. Weather prediction of that type (which is still relatively short-term) and climate prediction (which is far more long-term) are different creatures from each other, of course. However, the basic idea that we have enough variables and enough knowledge to reliably predict these things—and particularly to be able to intervene productively in them—appears to be a form of scientific and political hubris.
And that is true even without postulating that some scientists or especially government officials have an interest in fudging data or misrepresenting data, a question we don’t even have to consider for the purposes of this post. Even if it’s all on the up and up, how trustworthy would the conclusions be?
[NOTE: I highly recommend the work of Judith Curry, a respected climatologist who also respects some of the doubts of the so-called “AGW skeptics.” Here’s a sample of the sort of thing she writes at her website, which is worth a visit.]
Per Steven Hayward of Power Line blog, the computers used to predict global warming are not all that complex in that if all the variables and data was actually inputed the programs would never stop running. No solution.
You mention chaos (in the mathematical sense) and that lies at the heart of the problem. It comes from trying to approximate many coupled, non-linear partial differential equations with computer routines.
The main problem today is that many “scientists” seem to think that the computer outputs somehow represent reality and are more reliable than the actual measurements. Hence the reason I put the term “scientists” in quotes…they are not operating as scientists; they are operating as politicians.
“they are operating as politicians.”
Or as placard carriers marching back and forth within a cave
I used to go to the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to have lunch with my climbing buddy, a Phd in math from CALTECH. He was using a Cray computer (at the time the ultimate fast computer) to try to find ways to predict weather on a longer term basis than a day or two. He pointed out to me how many variables were at work and how many things there were that they didn’t know. That was in the early 80s and his group was also toying with trying to understand why the climate was now getting warmer as opposed to the stretch of cooling from the 1950s to the late 1970s. The cooling was believed to be the result of “pollution” caused by man made activities. There were some people calling for major changes in our society to combat the “pollution.”
Here’s a sample:
“During the 1970s the media promoted global cooling alarmism with dire threats of a new ice age. Extreme weather events were hyped as signs of the coming apocalypse and man-made pollution was blamed as the cause. Environmental extremists called for everything from outlawing the internal combustion engine to communist style population controls.” My, doesn’t this sound familiar?
The hypothesis was that fossil fuel pollution caused a reduction in heat coming from the sun. But then someone looked at the components of fossil fuel emissions and noticed that CO2 was something that had been shown by the physicist Arrhenius in 1896 to be a “green house” gas that interfered with outward radiation of heat from the Earth. This quickly became the explanation (and their only explanation) for the new warming trend. Even with new, faster computers than the Cray, the modelers have been unable to predict future trends with any reliability. They know that the effect of CO2 alone doesn’t give them what they need, so they have used the concept of “forcings” (water vapor, aerosols, etc.) as the multipliers that cause the warming. Unfortunately for them, these “approximations” (and they are guesses, nothing more) still don’t give their models accuracy.
One of Dr. Curry’s contributions has been to point out how inexact the compilation of global temperatures been. In an exercise where tenths of temperature change count, most temperature measuring stations have environmental issues (new vegetation, new pavement, air conditioning vents, change of location, etc., etc.) that cause gross inaccuracies to crop up in historical temperature changes. So, when the warmers claim they know with certainty that average world-wide temperatures are increasing by one tenth degree per X years, they are simply using inexact data to show what they want it to.
That phytoplankton are increasing in opposition to their theory of global warming is just another example that what they have is still an UNPROVEN theory – some say it more closely resembles a religious faith. Whatever, there is no PROVEN cased for backing away from the use of fossil fuels.
Like others who commented, when global warming first became an issue, I was a bit skeptical of the validity of modeling such a complex problem as climate. I have studied the science, or art, of modeling on a superficial level only, so I reached out to a couple of friends who used it on a professional level. Their response; it is very unlikely to accurately model an environment with so many variables, particularly with so little verifiable data about so many of them.
I recommend Crichton’s novel State of Fear. The watermelons of the al gore tribe, in cahoots with the pickpockets at the un, have two goals. The first is to transfer large sums of money from the West (the Asian nations are not so gullible) to the 3rd world and then through regulations destroy our economies. The second goal is to usher in one world government and universal socialism.
Parker sums up the state of play very well. As other have noted the models stink. I have been involved on the edges of this work for a couple of decades, enough to have heard the political agenda up close as in “well, if we can’t get the numbers on the transportation sector then we’ll just have to get rid of pickups and vans . . . . f&&k them! they’re not our people.” That is pretty much a verbatim quote from one of my betters during a national (U.S.) modeling effort I participated in as the “computer”, the one who balanced sources and uses of energy for the model.
What Dr. Curry is too polite to say is that any “science” where they falsify the data, fudge the models, and punish dissenters is not really a science. But when a failed politician can become a billionaire manipulating tax breaks occasioned by the “science” then every scamster in town will pour in. Ever notice how Algore speaks as if English is YOUR second language?
True enough.
But whenever people tell me that this year or last year “was the warmest year ever!” I have to tell them, FINE. Now where is the independently arrived at evidence?
60% of all time record high temperatures by US state before BEFORE all the “global warming” fuss, before 1960:
https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/number-of-state-annual-high-temperature-records-per-decade.png
This is a grossly inconvenient fact. (Hence, given the resistance of facts to cooperate with the $1.5 trillion dollar theory, the need for the keepers of the data to alter the data, most recently concluded last month by a German geologist, SEE HERE http://notrickszone.com/2015/11/20/german-professor-examines-nasa-giss-temperature-datasets-finds-they-have-been-massively-altered/#sthash.HccTKVmj.mOPRVfjn.dpbs)
Furthermore, we have the super-accurate US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) – some 140 stations isolated and uncontaminated from all urban heat island effects, yielding hourly reports, finds DECLINING recent temperatures:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/
From there, I tell them about the enormous benefits of CO2 to the planet, making it much, much greener over the past three decades (as satellite study shows). This fact was so inconvenient that the IPCCs latest report on effects (“Working Group III”) found the Dutch environmental economist at the University of Sussex (and author of a textbook on climate change economics), Richard Tol, to loudly RESIGN from the IPCC.
Reason? They refused to report ANY benefits from added CO2! He refused to abet the lie!
The benefits to humanity in cheaper cereal food stocks for the poorest of the world’s poor must amount to trillions of dollars in life-time benefits, alone.
But the UNs IPCC sponsored science fraud must continue…. Cui bono?
Not the people.
Orson,
Thanks for the references. Interestingly, allergists have understood the plant stimulating effects of CO2 for a while, acknowledging that there are higher pollen levels now due to more luxuriant plant growth. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075981/, among other sources.
Neo, aside from the general level of scam associated with “climate change remediation measures” (oh, yuck!) there is also the high pressure “gotta do it now, don’t think about it, the car won’t be here tomorrow, just sign the contract” element of all of this, sort of like visiting an automobile showroom, which must satisfy some emotional or spiritual needs of its proponents. Care to comment?
The science behind CO2 which causes some degree of global warming is fairly straight forward. CO2 is a laboratory demonstrable “greenhouse gas”. Fortunately, CO2 blocks outgoing UV radiation on a logrithmic scale so that each new unit of CO2 causes less effect than the previous unit of CO2. By now there is enough CO2 in the atmosphere already that its effect is saturated, meaning that the air is already opaque to the spectrum of light which is blocked by CO2. That means that adding more CO2 has only a small direct effect on the global temperature not the catastrophic effect the warmists claim.
Dennis,
As the UK Hutton Commission said of Saddam’s WMDs, the evidence here has been “sexed-up” to generate alarm.
@ J.J.
Watts Up With That just had a fascinating article examining how supercomputer algorithms for simple mathematical functions could diverge over many repetitions. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if all this “global warming” hysteria was simply due to mathematical errors in calculating T^4th?
snopercod, thanks for the heads up.
I liked this summary from the comments:
“The bottom line is that floating point values and iterative solutions do not mix well together. This problem is well known to Numerical Analysts, but largely unknown by everyone else. Yet this is exactly how the climate models are implemented. As a result, even if the theory is 100% correct, the results in practice are unlikely to be correct.”
The quest for the truth must await the passage of more time and better data.
But there is always this:
It’s my solemn duty to tell you about the impending end of the Earth. Yes, it’s January 27, 2016. That’s the date Al Gore predicted all would be lost back on January 27, 2006. Don’t believe me? Read this: http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2006/01/27/algore_we_have_ten_years_left_before_earth_cooks
🙂
Phytoplankton are plants. They do photosynthesis. Increased CO2 concentrations benefit them, and, I would say, the planet.
I’m working on reviving a checkers program I wrote 35 years ago. An 8×8 grid, 24 pieces, and it is really difficult to create a smart program that can solve this closed system. It has been done, but chess is still unsolved. The climate models involve tens of thousands of data points, millions of variables, and little recognition of variables like solar output and cloud cover. Not surprisingly, these climate models have no predictive value. Yet, policy is based on them. Climate science based on these models is dangerous pseudo science.
It is easy to imagine the next scandal out of Big Climate: multiple model operators discovering the numerical instability of the models and the consequent incoherence of the results.
Lots of full professorships and lifetime appointments there for the lucky guy or gal.
Not a difficult to understand, really. Carbon dioxide is absolutely necessary plant food, and most of plants on our planet evolved in geological periods when its concentration in atmosphere was drastically more abundant. So in our time they are CO2 starved, and any increase in its level will result in more vigorous growth (that is called Libich Law: rate of plant growth is controlled by the most deficient element of available nutrients). Even trees last 20 years are growing faster, and phytoplankton is no exception.
Every problem in hydrodynamic require solving system of partial differential equations known for instability of their solutions. That is why we have weather and atmospheric turbulence, inherently unstable and unpredictable. No physical system with chaotic behavior can be numerically modeled with predictable results: the whole approach is wrong. We have in Russian a name for such politicized pseudoscience: Lysenkoism, after Russian agriculture theorist who destroyed excellent Russian school of genetics by declaring his opponents saboteurs and make them perish in Gulag.
The science behind CO2 greenhouse effect in real atmosphere IS NOT straightforward but intractably complex. It is impossible to directly extrapolate from experiments with 8000 ppm of CO2 to just 400 ppm, that is, less by factor of 20. In real world concentrations of this gas, the greenhouse effect can not be measured, analytically calculated or numerically modeled, it involves quantum mechanical calculations way beyond capabilities of the most powerful modern supercomputers, so it can be everywhere from zero to accepted by IPCC values.
Thank you Donkatsu.
Since I didn’t include links on the greening of the earth through added CO2, and since that point is directly applicable to the OP phytoplankton mystery, let me add some here. (There are many suck links one could add.)
MAP of increasingly greener earth by Ranga Myneni, Boston University http://cliveg.bu.edu/images/greening-earth.jpg
FROM 2013, “How Fossil Fuels Have Greened the Planet” by Matt Ridley in the Wall Street Journal
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323374504578217621593679506
Matt Ridley in this illustrated lecture on the above – about the net global greening – also explains how plants grow better with more CO2 (19 minutes), producing more food – and we are using LESS land to feed the world, and net reforestation is happening in half the world, and species extinction declines are REVERSING because of fossil fuels? Yes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE
“Increasing Carbon Dioxide Levels Causing The Desert to Bloom” http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/2871/20130709/increasing-carbon-dioxide-levels-causing-desert-bloom-study.htm
From 2015, “SATELLITE DATA SHOW THE EARTH IS GETTING GREENER” http://www.popsci.com/new-study-shows-earth-getting-greener
From October of this year, Dr Indur Goklany, “Carbon Dioxide, The Good News” – an in depth report
http://www.thegwpf.org/climate-doomsayers-ignore-benefits-of-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
All of this is tremendously good news for the planet and humanity – and the eco-hysterics and global warming alarmists absolutely HATE THIS! (Here’s example of their BELIEFS, contradicted by findings above, see this slide http://image.slidesharecdn.com/19-141225043955-conversion-gate01/95/sasraimovement-presentation-aimed-at-habitable-earth-51-638.jpg%3Fcb%3D1419505196)
Phytoplankton (and terrestrial plant life) also produces a gas called isoprene. Isoprene is a factor in cloud formation. Which means it cools the planet.
If phytoplankton are growing more abundant rather than dying off, that would be one of the variables that the models don’t account for. Which would figure into why they are so bad at making predictions.
Here’s another wildcard; this past September scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research at the University of Leipzig and from the Institute of Catalysis and Environment at the University of Lyon published a paper announcing a major discovery. The oceans also produce isoprene abiotically. The sunlight acting on the organic material in the few micrometers of the surface film of the ocean (the surface microlayer) also is a source of a large amount of isoprene.
Which means essentially that the oceans produce about twice as much isoprene as scientists previously thought. That’s how settled the science is. They’re still learning basic facts. One of my favorite pastimes is keeping track of how the climate hysterics airbrush the history of their failed predictions with Bolshevik consistency.
If you are into this sort of thing, two sites I can recommend are Watt’s Up With That? by retired meteorologist Anthony Watts and Polar Bear Science by zoologist and (naturally) polar bear specialist Susan Crockford. Watts is sort of the Matt Drudge of climate reporting. He has tons of contributors, and also compiles climate science news from around the globe. Susan Crockford’s little finger knows more about polar bears, and consequently the arctic and conditions that effect polar bears, then Al Gore and the entire editorial staff of the New York Times combined could even imagine. Such as:
http://polarbearscience.com/2015/12/06/paris-climate-change-deal-will-not-stop-polar-bears-dying-due-to-thick-ice-in-spring/#more-69531
“Thick spring ice due to natural causes is currently the single biggest threat to polar bears. Not declining summer sea ice — thick spring ice. That could change in the future but right now, the evidence supports that statement.
…Sea ice models do not address past or future changes in spring ice thickness and predictive models of polar bear survival blame all population declines on summer sea ice declines despite strong evidence to the contrary (Crockford 2015: The Arctic Fallacy). Thick spring ice near shore drives seals to give birth elsewhere because they cannot maintain their breathing holes in the ice (below). This leaves mothers emerging from onshore dens with newborn cubs (above) with nothing to eat at a time when they desperately need food: cubs die quickly, mothers more slowly. Young bears on their own for the first time also die at higher rates than usual…”
J.J. said:
“…Whatever, there is no PROVEN cased for backing away from the use of fossil fuels.”
I second that, in spades. “Green” energy isn’t very green, and is mostly a fiction peddled by rent seekers who want to feed at the public trough.
Recently I was amused to read a story about a village in India that practically rioted over their green, sustainable sources of electricity. Apparently this village never had electricity, and Greenpeace India came in and electrified the place, but the catch was it was going to use solar panels to produce it.
You might think one place solar would work is India, but there’s often a lot of cloud cover. The upshot was this village got all wired up, the villagers were looking forward to the promise of electricity for the first time in their lives, and they’d flick a light switch, and….
Nothing would happen.
Apparently this really upset them, even though they had gone without electricity for eternity. But they had been promised something and they didn’t get it. So they demanded the village be hooked up to the government power grid. They demanded “real” electricity produced by burning good old fossil fuels, not the “fake” electricity Greenpeace gave them.
All in all, unless you’re talking nuclear, “green” energy is something of a nightmare. In places like Britain where they’ve “gone green” by government edict the elderly die in the thousands during the winter because it just isn’t there when they need it, or they can’t afford it. They try to stay warm in their homes by burning books. What “green” sources of energy do best apparently in addition to killing the elderly is kill birds. Incinerating them in the case of the Ivanpah power plant, part of the Mojave Solar Project in California, or chopping them to bits at wind farms. Not that they don’t pose a threat to people of all ages. Pilots flying into LAX complain about the blinding effect of the Mojave mirrors. And then there are the people in England who live near windfarms and fear for their lives because the turbine blades throw off massive chunks of ice during the winter (winters that were supposed to be things of the past according to people I can hardly call scientists at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit, who good Bolsheviks that they are have scrubbed the interwebs clean of their 2001 prediction that by 2011 children growing up in England wouldn’t know what snow was).
You know, if you or I killed raptors or blinded pilots with lasers we’d be in prison. But the “green” energy industry gets away with it.
Electric cars are not zero emissions vehicles. They are remote emissions vehicles. The energy source producing the electricity they need, again unless you’re talking nuclear, is simply out of sight and therefore to your average environmentalist out of mind.
Meanwhile on the conventional automotive front Road and Track tested an Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle from Honda a couple of years back in L.A. When they pulled the probe out of the tailpipe and exposed it to the standard L.A. atmosphere it registered higher levels of pollution. What was coming out of the exhaust was cleaner than the air the testers were breathing. And yes I know the Volkswagen thing might plant doubt in a readers’ mind but I’m still not convinced that electric cars pollute less or produce less so-called greenhouse gasses when you do a full accounting of what goes into their production. And the battery pack only lasts ten years. Good luck selling that used electric car.
All in all, not only is there not a good case to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, there isn’t a case to be made that it’s possible.