Hi folks 2 interesting thoughts on climate stuff -
first just info on temperatures which I found in the comments on a piece taking apart John Kerry’s climate catastrophe stuff :
"Chasmsteed
Reply to
bnice2000
August 29, 2023 1:18 am
The Incorrect Use Of Centigrade & Fahrenheit
Centigrade and Fahrenheit scales are Ordinal Data – and cannot be freely multiplied, divided or compared.
Not many people understand that mathematics places limitations on how certain numbers can be manipulated.
There are three kinds of data :- Ratio, Ordinal and Nominal.
Nominal: Is for instance a yes/no question in a survey where Male=1 and Female=0 if the average of the survey is 0.5 we can conclude only that half the population that answered were male and half female or if the average was 0.6 we can conclude (and can only conclude) that 60% of the respondents were male.
You cannot conclude the sample was slightly female – although marketing types do use such expressions. There is no such answer as 0.5 or 0.6 only what the number infers.
Ordinal: Is for instance a question in a survey where a range of answers are permitted, such as “On a scale of Zero to 10 rate the quality of our service where 0=terrible and 10 = exceeded my expectations.
If we get an average answer of say 6.23 – it is meaningless unless we calibrate it against what it meant to respondents.
Even if we were to ask the same question of a competitors’ service and got 6.10, we cannot conclude we are doing 2% better than our competitor (divide one by the other) as we are not necessarily comparing apples with apples.
So you have to be very careful when using Nominal and Ordinal data when you attempt to manipulate them mathematically.
Only Ratio data can be freely manipulated – true numbers that are infinitely divisible.
Unfortunately Centigrade and Fahrenheit scales are in fact Ordinal.
Centigrade being based on the freezing and boiling points of water divided by an arbitrary 100 divisions.
And Fahrenheit being (somewhat clouded by the mists of time) on the freezing of brine and further arbitrary limits and divisions.
Now defined as F° = { C° x (9 ÷ 5) } + 32
Thus if you say something like “what temperature is twice the boiling point of water” :-
You might try 100°C multiplied by two is 200°C – you would be seriously wrong!
Let’s try that with Fahrenheit 2 x 212°F = 424°F wrong again – translate it to centigrade and we get 217.7°C – Oh dear – that does not align with my prior calculation. Why ? – Because we have simplistically applied ratio data mathematics to ordinal data.
All thermodynamic calculations are done in Kelvin which starts at absolute zero (-273.15°C) so it becomes perfectly true to state that an object at 400°K is twice as hot (or contains twice the thermal energy) of the same object at 200°K.
Kelvin still uses the centigrade divisions but that does not cause problems – it could be anything but keeping the same divisions makes conversion simpler.
Now lets go back to the prior question “what temperature is twice the boiling point of water” first we need to know the boiling point of water in Kelvin which is :-
373.15°K = 100°C = 212°F
Multiply by 2, we get :-
746.3°K which converts to 473.15°C (not 200°C by erroneous simplistic calculation) or to 883.67°F (not 424°F by erroneous simplistic calculation) Which are correct (believe it or not).
An example based on a headline – “Antarctic Heating Up 4 Times Faster Than Average” (Sky News August 2022)
If global average temperatures have risen from 15.0°C to 15.1°C “here” and Antarctic temperatures have risen from (say) minus 30°C to minus 29.6°C i.e. 0.4° “hotter” than average “there”
Then the ignorant thermogeddonists claim that “there” has risen 0.4°C while “here” has risen 0.1°C
Therefore temperature “there” has risen four time faster than “here”!
Horsefeathers !
The reality of thermodynamics in Kelvin is that “there” is only 0.14% hotter than “here”.
Such is the scientific nonsense touted by the MSM and swallowed by a scientifically ignorant and therefore gullible public.
If you can’t figure out why “there” is only 0.14% hotter than “here” – welcome to the ignorant chattering masses – take a science course.
So when you find “Climate Scientists” multiplying or dividing the Centigrade or Fahrenheit scales by any factor, there can only be two reasons :-
- They deliberately want to overemphasize (or underemphasise) their findings – which is misrepresentation or fraud.
- They don’t actually understand what they are doing and you should ignore the accolade “scientist” if they are ignorant of such scientific basics.
So a scientist saying that 2°C is double 1°C is talking out of his hat (or somewhere way further south).
Of course, displaying results in Centigrade or Fahrenheit is completely acceptable – but doing thermodynamic calculations in those scales isn’t."
the second is a detailed analysis of the 2023 summer’s weather and its causes - most went straight over my head but also I’m sure John Kerry has never delved into this stuff, here’s a taster:
"State of the climate – summer 2023
Posted on August 14, 2023 by curryja | 241 Comments
by Judith Curry, Jim Johnstone, Mark Jelinek
A deep dive into the causes of the unusual weather/climate during 2023. People are blaming fossil-fueled warming and El Nino, and now the Hunga-Tonga eruption and the change in ship fuels. But the real story is more complicated…
…Conclusions
This Report has provided an integrated look at the global climate from the perspective of the global radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere, components of the surface energy balance, and the internal modes of climate variability driven by atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Recent anomalies are introduced by external forcing from the Hunga-Tonga eruption in 2022 and the change in sulfate aerosol emissions from ship fuels which started in 2015 and was mandated in 2020.
The exceptionally warm global temperature in 2023 is part of a trend of warming since 2015 that is associated primarily with greater absorption of solar radiation in the earth-atmosphere system. This increase in absorbed solar radiation is driven by a slow decline in springtime snow extent, but primary by a reduction in reflection from the atmosphere driven by reduced cloudiness and to a lesser extent a reduction in atmospheric aerosol. Any increase in the greenhouse effect from increasing CO2 (which impacts the longwave radiation budget) is lost in the noise.
El Nino and La Nina introduce strong interannual variability into the top-of-atmosphere and surface energy balances. Against this strong background of interannual variability, there is discernible evidence of the impact of the change in ship aerosols primarily in the mid latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The impacts of Hunga Tonga in the stratosphere are primarily expected to occur in the winter hemisphere, because of cancelling of longwave and shortwave effects in the summer hemisphere.
Global variations in the surface energy budget show anomalous shortwave heating in the mid latitude Northern Hemisphere, which is influenced by the reduction of sulfate aerosols from ship fuel. The eastern north Atlantic is warming from anomalously low turbulent heat fluxes, reflecting weak surface winds particularly in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. In the mid/high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere Oceans, there is strong cooling from surface turbulent fluxes that are associated with strong wind speeds.
In the North Atlantic, a decomposition of the modes of atmospheric circulation patterns shows a confluence of factors that are contributing to the anomalous sea surface temperatures and circulation during summer 2023. The implied positive feedbacks between SSTs and atmospheric circulation in our analysis provide a reasonable explanation for the occasional development and persistence of extreme SST anomalies, as seen in the spring of 2023.
Of direct relevance to Atlantic hurricanes, warming in the midlatitudes of the NH, with possible contribution from reduced sulfate aerosol, has given the northern branch of the AMO+ new life, which had overall been cooling since 2015.
Distorted warming in colder drier areas of the north Atlantic disturbs the vertical velocity patterns, leading to the expansion of the Hadley Cell. The Hadley Cell expansion is consistent with the Bermuda High being fairly far north this year, with intensified dry air over the subtropical oceans. This pattern may support a northward shift of tropical cyclone formation and suppression of low latitude formation."
I hadn’t heard much about the Hunga-Tonga eruption ( probably because this was largely an eruption of water vapour in the atmosphere, I think, and not ash ) and I had heard nothing about changes in ship fuels which cut back SO2 emissions into the atmosphere which appears to have started in 2015 and was mandated in 2020. ( Even more curious is the fact that less SO2 has actually made things slightly worse!)
But from the conclusion above neither are really that important for determining the causes of temperature increases in the summer, and not surprisingly CO2 seems to have had even less of an impact on the summer temperatures:
“Any increase in the greenhouse effect from increasing CO2 (which impacts the longwave radiation budget) is lost in the noise.” 
cheers