/sci/ - Science & Math

>>12246290
>There are literally thousands of feedbacks, each of which either reinforces or opposes the direct-warming effect of the extra CO2. Almost every long-lived system is governed by net feedback that dampens its response to a perturbation. If a system instead reacts to a perturbation by amplifying it, the system is likely to reach a tipping point and become unstable (like the electronic squeal that erupts when a microphone gets too close to its speakers). The earth's climate is long-lived and stable — it has never gone into runaway greenhouse, unlike Venus — which strongly suggests that the feedbacks dampen temperature perturbations such as that from extra CO2.
This reveals the author's utter lack of understanding of the basics of climatology. The simple fact that climate sensitivity is given as a constant amount of warming per doubling of CO2 should have clued the author in that the feedbacks it represent can't cause a runaway effect. This is because the feedback loop has diminishing returns as the planet warms and blackbody radiation increases. A feedback loop can amplify warming at each step without creating a runaway effect. Yet the author seems to be completely ignorant of this.

>Figure 3: Hansen's predictions to the US Congress in 1988,6 compared to the subsequent temperatures as measured by NASA satellites.
This graph incorrectly baselines the data in order to make it seem like the predictions differ more from the data than they actually do. Pic related. More importantly, it lies about scenario A being "CO2 emissions as they actually occurred" when it represents a scenario with 50% more greenhouse forcing than actually occurred. Scenario B is the closest to reality but is about 10% more forcing than what actually occurred.

The author is either dishonest or doesn't know what he's doing.