Saturday 30 January 2021

Heads we're doomed. Tails we're doomed.

Last Tuesday I looked at the Alarmist claim that water vapour/cloud feedback is positive (not neutral or slightly negative, which is what everybody else observes or at least assumes).

Here's a nice book-end to that from phys.org:

As atmospheric scientists, we found in a recent study that thawing permafrost contains lots of microscopic ice-nucleating particles. These particles make it easier for water droplets to freeze; and if the ones in permafrost get airborne, they could affect Arctic clouds...

Without these particles, a water droplet can supercool to about negative 36 F before freezing. When ice-nucleating particles are in a cloud, water droplets freeze more easily. This can cause the cloud to rain or snow and disappear earlier, and reflect less sunlight.


To sum up:

- The first article says slight warming = more clouds = more warming.

- The second article says slight warming = fewer clouds = more warming. Of the two theories, this seems slightly more plausible if their assumptions about these particles getting 'airborne' is correct.

The Alarmists are really hedging their bets here. Can't these people talk to each other and just agree a party line. Maybe the two theories neatly cancel each other out, and it's not an issue? You can find similar sets of equal-and-opposite claims when looking at Killer Arguments Against LVT or UBI, which I find equally infuriating.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

"Can't these people talk to each other and just agree a party line."

Well, no, in the same way as Protestants and Catholics, or Sunni and Shia, can't "talk to each other and just agree a party line."

Graeme said...

Like lots of things in climate science, the evidence either doesn't exist or is contradictory. So the "settled science" must be wrong, mustn't it? Is sea level rise a threat? Are coral islands rising? Are glaciers growing or receding? They still cannot say if clouds are positive or negative. The science is so poor that it cannot accommodate the evidence, such as it is. But the problem is with the evidence, not the science, which is settled.

Unknown said...

G, yup, we live in an era of "policy-based evidence".

Mark Wadsworth said...

Unknown, good points

G, as far as 'evidence' goes, there are too many interdependent variables, the measurements we have are all only mid-points of ranges, not even the best weather forecasters can't explain with any degree of certainty what will happen over the next few days etc that you can pretty much cherry pick anything you like.