Reposted from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc.

Posted on September 8, 2020 by curryja | 

by Judith Curry

A thought-provoking article  from my new favorite blog, The Ethical Skeptic.

The Ethical Skeptic

My new favorite blog is The Ethical Skeptic.  From the About page:

“It is the intent of this author and purpose of this blog to propose afresh from its beginning, a genuine problem in philosophy. A problem of method-induced creeping ignorance, wrought in the name of science. Until one understands how a philosophical definition or principle can be manipulated for ill intent, one has not really learned it. Such is the nature of ethical skepticism; an applied ability to spot the condition wherein skepticism is employed with the specific goal of cultivating ignorance inside society. In order for us to hone our skills at spotting scientific deception through means of this false skepticism however, it becomes necessary that one approach afresh, many core ideas of philosophy.”

There is TONS of excellent, provocative material on this site, and the lengthy articles are very well written; I encourage you to explore. I was particularly struck by this article on the Omega Hypothesis and its relevance to climate change.

Part of the heat may be coming from beneath our feet

The article that motivates this post is one entitled The Climate Change Alternative We Ignore (to Our Peril).  Subtitle: “When the Earth’s core enters an exothermic cycle, the Earth’s air-conditioning heat pump gets less efficient.”  The preamble:

“Now before reviewing this article I must ask two things of its prospective reader. First, if one finds them self tempted to shift their more-sciencey-than-thou underoos all askew and further then perceives sufficient knee-jerk dissonance coming on to assign me an ‘anti-‘ label – understand that I am a proponent of addressing anthropogenic global warming as a first priority for mankind.

Second, what I am summarizing in very short form herein stems from hundreds of hours of research and literally multiple hundreds of references which I cannot possibly compile into this blog article by coherent sequence – without sacrificing the ability to deliver its core message. This idea is a construct, an idea which aspires to be developed into real hypothesis.

Despite its need for further development and maturation, this argument should not be ignored through our polarization over this issue politically. We need fewer children with scowling faces, and more unbiased thinking adults addressing this challenge.

I am not a climate scientist – however, nor am I carrying anyone’s water on this issue. I do not possess an implicit threat to my career if I say something forbidden or research an embargoed idea. In the midst of my work inside climate change solution development, a number of peripheral observations I have made have begun to bother me greatly. They have caused me to perceive the necessity to formulate and propose another idea. An idea that in my opinion fits the observation base much more elegantly, without forcing and in more compelling fashion than simply the Omega Hypothesis of ‘man is causing it all – no need to look any further’. My point is, that this is an idea which requires a multi-disciplinary understanding of the physical phenomena involved.”

The paper includes nine observations that are ‘inconvenient’ to the 100% AGW hypothesis:

Observation 1 (Inductive-Introduces Plurality) – Fall to Winter CO₂ Rise Exhibits a Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice Pause Which Should Not Exist if All PPM is Generated by Man Alone – Coronavirus Industrial Shutdown only Served to Produce Record CO₂ PPM Increases

Observation 2 (Inductive-Introduces Plurality) – Atmospheric CO₂ Levels Follow Temperature Rises and Are Accelerating – Man’s Carbon Producing Activity is Linear and of Insufficient Slope to Drive This

Observation 3 (Deductive-Introduces Plurality) – Ceres EBAF measures of Earth’s Reemergent Albedo are Higher Than They Should Be – Indicating Earth is Not CO₂-Capturing as Much Heat as Climate Models Require

Observation 4 (Inductive-Introduces Critical Path) – Mean Sea Level is Rising Yes – But MSL Variance Range is Also Increasing (and Should Not Be) – Global Ocean Current Speed has Increased by 15% Over that Same Timeframe

Observation 5 (Deductive-Consilient) – The Schumann Resonance Banding-Amplitude Has Ranged High – While Geomagnetic Moment/Polarity has Weakened/Wandered – All Highly Commensurate with Historical and Recent Global Temperature Increases

Observation 6 (Deductive-Consilient) – Earth’s Rotation is Slowing Faster than Historical – Indicating a Recent-Term But Constant Ferrous Mass Contribution in Phase Change from l-HCP Outer Core to l-FCC Lower Mantle

Observation 7 (Inductive-Consilient) – Recent-Term Rise in Activity of Earth’s Upper Mantle in Terms of Earthquakes and Volcanic Activity Commensurate with Temperature Increases

Observation 8 (Deductive-Critical Path) – Heat Anomalies are Not Entropic – Rather Bear Recurring Mantle-Like Cohesiveness – Heat is Arising Principally from Ocean Conveyance Belts at Mid-Atlantic Rise and El Niño Thermohaline Currents

Observation 9 (Deductive-Critical Path) – Abyssal Oceans are Absorbing More Novel Heat Content per Cubic Meter of Ocean (ΔT-gigajoules/m³) than are Surface Oceans by an Enormous Margin – This is Neglected and Highly Critical Path Climate Science

From the conclusions:

“Now with all of this observation set under our belt, let’s examine the alternative that I believe we must address – out of both ethics and precaution. This alternative is not vulnerable to the easy wave-of-the-hand single-analysis/apothegm dismissals to which so many other climate change alternatives fall prey. This does not serve to invalidate anthropogenic contribution to carbon and global temperatures by any means. But such a reality also never necessitates that mankind adopt complete ignorance either. This construct alternative can be summarized in four points.

1.  The Earth’s core is undergoing extreme exothermic change – shedding high-latent-energy hexagonal closepack (HCP) iron into the mantle where it converts to face centered cubic (FCC) iron.

2.  The exothermic heat content from this eventually reaches the asthenosphere.

3.  Ancient abyssal ocean conveyance belts pull novel heat content from small footprint yet now much hotter contribution points exposed to the asthenosphere – and convey this novel heat content to the surface of the ocean.

4.  Ocean heats atmosphere (or fails to cool it as well as it once did) much more readily than atmosphere heats ocean.”

JC reflections

This post really struck a chord with me.  I have become increasingly interested in the impact of underwater and under ice sheet volcanoes, and their impact on sea level rise, and also the ocean role in the carbon budget.  The Ethical Skeptic has pulled a number of concerns that I have had, along with some issues that I was unaware of, into a coherent hypothesis.

To my mind, this is science at its best, where “new ideas are explored and neither readily embraced nor rejected, but just explored.”  The quote is from an email exchange with Marcia Wyatt about this paper.  In the gatekeeping, speaking consensus to power mode of doing ‘climate science,’ there is a dearth of new ideas, and increasingly these are coming from outside the climate community.

I look forward to reactions.

Postscript

Well, in my so-called ‘retirement’ I have almost no time for blogging.  My company Climate Forecast Applications Network has been keeping me very busy; the last few months have been especially crazy with an active Atlantic hurricane season.

Before hurricane season started, I signed a contract to write a book (no details yet).  The salient point is that I was going through old blog posts having relevant material, and I was reminded of how good Climate Etc. was in the earlier years when I was exploring new ideas (to me), questioning and challenging the conventional ‘wisdoms.’

I haven’t stopped doing this, but I haven’t been blogging about it since my investigations have been for paying clients (and confidential).  And increasingly for my book.  But I do miss the informality and curiosity-driven nature of doing this on the blog.

The Ethical Skeptic has motivated me to at least try to post more regularly about new and controversial ideas about climate change, not to mention the ‘etc.’

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