Nothing is Obvious

I love the complexity of the natural world. It is utterly amazing to me that scientists ever decoded anything. I remember as a kid "deciding" that I would be a great chemist. But I had no chemicals, so I mixed things that were around me. Mostly I got mud. No brilliant insights, no atomic theory of matter, no complexity about valence electrons. The real world is very complex and very opaque. It takes lots of hard thinking, experimentation, and clever theorizing to make any sense of anything.

Here's a simple example of how counter-intuitive the world is:

The orbit of the Earth’s around the sun is slightly eccentric. The closest point is called the perihelion. On January 4th the Earth is just 147,098,291 km away from the sun. Aphelion occurs July 4th when the Earth is 152,098,233 km away from the sun, a difference of +3.3%. Naturally the power of the sun falls away with distance. Its radiation is 7% weaker in July than in January. Strangely, near surface air temperature for the Earth as a whole is 3.3°C warmer in July than in January. Yes, the surface is warmest when the Earth is furthest from the sun!

I find it funny that the "global warming" crowd is convinced there is a very tight relationship between CO2 and air temperatures. They think CO2 can drive up temperatures. Actually the evidence is mostly the other way around: warmer climate releases more CO2. But don't let such facts cloud the mind of an ideologue!

Climatologists have long wondered why a 1°C increase in temperature at the sea surface relates to as much as a 3° increase in temperature of the upper troposphere. They call this phenomenon ‘amplification’ as if the temperature of the upper troposphere in some way depended on the temperature at the surface and there was a transistor circuit between the two. Hey guys, its the other way round. Turn the telescope round. The presence of a long wave absorber namely ozone, is responsible for this phenomenon. The warming of the upper troposphere results in cloud loss and then, after a little time lag, the surface temperature increases.

In the mid and high zone, cloud is present as highly reflective interlacing micro-crystals of ice that we describe as cirrus and stratus. When the air warms these crystals sublimate. Ice cloud is the dominant cloud of the subtropical region. In IPCC climate science high altitude ice cloud is supposed to warm the surface by enhancing back radiation. But when radiation from the atmosphere increases in winter relative humidity falls. This radiation it is not bounced back by the cloud, the cloud disappears and lets the sun shine through. The surface temperature response is due to the disappearance of the cloud, not back radiation. Oops.

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The $164,000 question is what is causing cloud cover to rise and fall on decadal and centennial time scales.

The answer to both questions lies in the activity of the coupled circulation of the stratosphere and the troposphere at the poles that feeds ozone into the troposphere. The upper troposphere warms or cools depending upon the feed rate of ozone. The feed rate changes over time.

The ozone content and temperature of the upper stratosphere depends in the first instance upon the activity of the night jet at the poles that introduces NOx from the mesosphere. Less NOx means more ozone. The activity of the night jet depends upon surface pressure and the concentration of NOx in the jet depends upon solar activity. In Antarctica, surface pressure has been falling for sixty years indicating a continuous increase in the ozone feed into the troposphere, the second major influence upon the ozone content of the polar stratosphere.

In that the coupled circulation of the stratosphere and the troposphere over Antarctica changes surface pressure at 60-70° south it changes the strength of the westerly winds in the southern hemisphere, cloud cover and surface temperature on all time scales. Stratospheric ozone is wasted above and below the stratosphere, processes referred to as ‘unknown dynamical influences’ in the more respectable polar ozone studies.

These phenomena are the very essence of the Southern Annular Mode, arguably the fundamental mode of global climate variation on all time scales.

One thing is plain. High altitude ice cloud in the southern hemisphere is plainly a reflector of solar radiation. It does not promote warming (positive feedback). It promotes cooling (negative feedback). It’s presence depends upon the flux in ozone in the upper troposphere as governed by processes in the stratosphere. So the UNIPCC climate models are 180° out of whack.

The above snippets are from an article by Erl Happ, a wine maker:

I am a winemaker and grape-grower with a strong interest in climate. I was interested enough to try and discover the common thermal characteristics that are seen in great vineyard locations and did a lot of work with hourly temperature data from around the world. Climate sets the limit on what can be achieved in the vineyard. I became interested in climate change when I noticed the growing season temperature falling in our part of the world, the south west of Western Australia. That set me on a quest to work out why. Soon, it became apparent that parts of the Southern Hemisphere like Antarctica and Southern Chile had been cooling for fifty years or more. My experience in analyzing temperature dynamics for vine sites and working out just how much heat these plants need to bring their fruit to maturity gave me a focus on sourcing data and figuring out what has been happening on a regional scale, both at the surface and in the upper atmosphere. I think there is room for a subject called historical climatology. We can learn a lot just by looking at what has happened over long periods of time. Good data sets are readily available on the net. All one needs is a little curiosity, a facility with spreadsheets and a lot of determination.

Erl Happ's real "job" is wine...

Global Warming Eyed by a Climatological Maverick

Roger Pielke Sr. would reject the label "maverick". He is a climatologist who accepts "climate change" but rebels at the IPCC "global warming" story as being too simplistic.

Here's a presentation he gave while visiting the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada on September 29, 2011. In amongst his slides are these two which, from my perspective, summarize his message:






From the local Waterloo press, TheRecord.com, here is an article written by Brent Davis summarizing Roger Pielke Sr.'s message:

When it comes to the issue of climate change, one leading researcher believes too much attention is being paid to carbon dioxide.

And that focus — touted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others — means that other important factors aren’t being given the consideration they deserve, said Roger Pielke Sr. of the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It’s blinding us to other possibilities,” Pielke told an audience at the University of Waterloo on Thursday night, as he delivered the 2011 TD Walter Bean Lecture in the Environment. “Carbon dioxide shouldn’t be the paramount, overarching variable.”

Now, Pielke is the first to admit that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is a concern. But he says the issue of climate change goes far beyond global warming, and that the negative human impact on climate goes far beyond carbon dioxide.

Land use and changes to land cover, aerosols and nitrogen deposition are key causal factors, or “human climate forcings,” as well, Pielke said.

“The human influence on climate is everywhere.”

Given the complexity of the climate system, global warming isn’t the sole concern. In fact, Pielke argues that various data sets, including upper-ocean heating, don’t show any global warming for the past seven years or so.

And it’s debatable whether extreme weather events are on the rise, he said. Tornado damage in the United States, as a percentage of gross domestic product, is on the way down, and the coastline isn’t being hit any more frequently in the past hundred years by major hurricanes.

Pielke wants to see a different model used for the climate change issue, one that takes global warming and carbon dioxide into account, but recognizes that there are other significant human influences.

He’d like to see key resources such as water, food, energy, human health and ecosystem function used as the basis of an assessment of vulnerability that takes into account the influence of things like population growth, policy and institutional changes and climate variability.

The problems we face in terms of climate are multi-dimensional, Pielke said. All too often, current approaches are a “gross oversimplification of reality,” he said.

And here is an interview of Roger Pielke Sr. on the local Waterloo radio. If you listen you might be surprised at this scientist who is demonized by some as a "climate skeptic". He doesn't fit the simplistic picture that most people have of "the debate" over climate change.

David Orrell on the Art & Science of Forecasting

I love to read about "expert opinion" and "forecasting". One of my favourite reads is Dan Gardner's "Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway". Here is the author's website for the book. And here is my comment on the book.

David Orrell has written a number of books on economics and in particular the failure of economic models to match reality. I especially enjoy his book Economyths. Here is the author's website and the (author's post on his book.

Here is a presentation by David Orrell for the International Institute of Forecasters entitled "Where's the Puck? 2500 Years of Forecasting". It is a nice survey of the history and failings of forecasting:

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Tim Harford's "Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure"

This is an excellent survey of adaptation as a strategy to deal with complex environments in which a top-down rational planning simply can't find solutions. There are many excellent stories, but this one bit speaks to me, a 1960s generation person:

When the US Army faced the 'disruptive innovation' of guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, there was great reluctance to accept that it had changed the nature of the game, making obsolete the Army's hard-won expertise in industrial warfare. As one senior officer said, "I'll be damned if I permit the United States army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war."

That ranks up there with the infamous statement by a US Major "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." as reported by Peter Arnett.

This book is richly illustrated with examples of how an evolutionary strategy can find a solution where managerial dictum or top-down planning fails miserably. Some of the best examples are from business.

He does a very good job of reviewing:

• The disaster of the US invasion of Iraq and how a bottom-up effort by rebellious colonels and captains finally changed the US military tactics off their dangerous track and toward a more successful approach.


• The regulatory failures and coupled risks that led a meltdown in a constrained "sub-prime real estate" market to the globe straddling collapse of financial markets in 2008. He walks the reader through the failure to listen to whistle-blowers and the reluctance to effectively change the banking rules to prevent another catastrophe.


• The mindless simplifications of a greenhouse gas enthusiast compared to the known complexities of trying to identify a proper "green strategy". He walks through a day's choices of "green alternatives" and shows why each and every one was wrong because the underlying reality is far more complex than the simplistic green enthusiast ever could imagine.


• He examines nuclear safety and shows how the various catastrophes were waiting to happen because the systems are designed with too much complexity and coupled failure modes.


• He looks at two big oil rig diasters, the Piper Alpha in July 1988, and the Deepwater Horizon in April 2010. He walks through the failure in design and safety systems. He shows why these were accidents waiting to happen.

I like his discussion of Philip Tetlock who did a scientific study of the ability of pundits, gurus, and consultants to provide accurate predictions of the future. In a previous post I reviewed Dan Gardiner's book "Future Babble" that explores this topic more deeply.

I worked in a company where they paid lip service to the idea that "there is no failure, just a learning opportunity" and that projects, especially in the R&D lab, should expect a high failure rate. But in reality, failures were punished, so creativity was suppressed and lessons really weren't learned. Tim Harford gives a glowing review of Google as a learning environment with adaptive engineering practices, but I'm cynical. It is hard for managers to accept failure. Corporations are always going to get atherosclerosis. The big old successful corporations are always going to fall to the young, rising whippersnappers.

I also worked closely with QA (Quality Assurance) people and watched them play their role. In theory they were the frontline defence against obfuscation and deception on the part of managers and teams that are failing but want to pretend that things are going teckety-boo. The org chart showed them reporting independently right up to the CEO to ensure independent and timely information about project problems. But in reality project managers had a "right" to demand issues first be heard by them and they could muscle most QA auditors into silence. Similarly, I was involved in a ISO 9000 initiative within the company and quickly discovered that most of our "learning organization" capabilities, such as our extensive audited written procedures, were in fact window-dressing. In short: it is hard to build and maintain a truly adaptive organization that uses evolutionary strategies for problem-solving. Humans don't like uncertainty and they love hierarchical organizations. I like the message in Tim Harford's book, but I'm sure it will get more lip service than real implementation.

There is much wisdom in the book, much to learn, I strongly recommend it to everyone. It will open your eyes to the complexity that is out there. It will stun you to realize how badly our engineered "safety systems" have failed. And it will give you an appreciation for a need for more experimentation and a healthy acceptance of failure as the technique for learning.

Jeffrey Kluger's "Simplexity"

This was a fun read complexity, plectics, and chaos theory. There is deep material, just a romp through ideas and people. It is meant for the general reader and it simply acquaints you with new concepts in science.

Here is a taste of the book:

Complexity scientists studying social reform often cite what is known as the hidden Markov model of change, a nod to nineteenth-century Russian mathematician Andrei Markov, who helped quantify the ways different systems -- physical, chemical, numerical -- evolve from one state to the next. Markov stressed that while some variables in any process or model are visible, others are always concealed, though the ones you can't see are inferable from the ones you can. This, of course, is a somewhat self-evident statement of how the world works. A freshly set table full of newly dirtied dishes tells you one has just been eaten. But the principle applies to other, more complex ways too.

Markov-based processes, for example, are critical when you're learning a language or when software engineers are developing speech-recognition programs. Becoming adept at reading and speaking means hearing or seeing just a bit of a word or phrase and being able to draw inferences about what's around it. That's what allows you to scan a page of text quickly and understand whole thoughts from just a glance, or figure out the garbled speech on a bad recording in which many sounds and syllables are inaudible. Distill these probability-based hunches down to algorithms and teach them to a computer, and you have a mechanical brain that can hear and understand spoken speech -- even if it can't yet do it nearly as well as a human brain can. Markov modeling has similarly helped scientists working on such exceedingly complex projects as disease epidemics. And it can also explain social change.

University of Sienna economist Sam Bowles, who heads the behavioral sciences program at SFI, believes the death of South African apartheid offers the best possible example of how hidden markov processes drive politics.

You can see how this is a breezy style that acquaints you with people and concepts but doesn't dawdle in order to instruct. You won't learn any science here, but you will develop an appreciation.

How to Successfully Solve Problems

Here is a talk by the economist Tim Harford. The title of the talk is "Problem Solving in a Complex World" and was given at a June 11, 2011 meeting of the Royal Society of the Arts (see Wikipedia).

Here is the video:



So how do you successfully solve complex problems? His answer: through evolving a good solution, i.e. through trial and error. But, as he points out, people don't like failure. But it is essential if you are going to solve complex problems.

He is currently touring to promote his new book Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.