FM radio and global warming nonsense

There is a commonly heard argument that the truth must lie somewhere between the sceptic and warmist position and on that basis many intelligent people assume that there “must be something in the warmist argument even if it isn’t all correct”.

On this basis many people think the truth must lie between the 1C warming that you get when considering the warming effect of CO2 and the 6C of  warming the zealots of the religion come up with.

So, what’s this got to do with FM radio. Well, … (deep breath) … FM stands for “frequency modulation” and there are two main ways to convert from frequency to a signal suitable for audio:

A frequency to amplitude converter

The principle is simple: a piece of circuitry that e.g. increase the amplitude the more peaks/troughs per time period. It’s simple, but if there is any noise spikes, each spike appears as another peak/trough which ups the frequency and so almost any noise gets through to the audio. So, unless the signal is almost noise free you will hear noise.

Phase locked loop (PLL)

A phase locked loop works in a very different way. First you start an oscillator at the rough frequency you expect, then you compare the frequency of the two at points where you expect to get a transition** and if oscillator is slow, you speed it up and if fast slow it down. Eventually the two beat together like a dancer to music. But importantly, because the system only looks for “evidence” when and where it expects to find evidence it is very good at locking onto a noisy signal because the model predicts when to look for the information telling whether the internal oscillator is correctly matched to the oscillation in the signal and so it ignores any spurious information and with it most of the noise so that there is much less noise using PLL detection.

In essence these are really just like two conceptual frameworks:

1. Taking the evidence (and noise), drawing the best conclusion based on the evidence (and noise) and hoping it means something.
2. Creating a conceptual model of what we expect to find, looking for evidence that “fits the model” using it only to refine the model to “tune” it to e.g. the frequency or exact value.

The problem with (1) is that in real like conditions there is usually far too much noise and far too much information to process all the raw information from fundamental principles. Taken to extreme, if you only based your decisions on what your sense told you, it would be impossible to open a door without seeing the person was there. Instead, we tend to start with a conceptual framework of what we expect to find and then look for evidence that helps us tune that conceptual framework. E.g. the door bell rings, we look to see if it’s someone delivering something who walks away and from the absence of anyone leaving we create a conceptual model of a person at the door wishing to talk to someone in the house. Of course nothing in the evidence (bell, absence of seeing anyone walk away) actually tells us someone is waiting. In our house leafleters often nip next door so it is not unexpected to go to the door expecting someone (with a concept there is a person at the door) only to find no one.

False realities

The problem with phase locked loops like conceptual models is false locking. On a phase locked loop the problem arises when the oscillator and signal are significantly different and there is much noise present. When the signal and internal osciallator of the PLL have a harmonic relationship, the result is that the signal can e.g. be rising when e.g. the PLL is expecting a rise and similarly because they have a harmonic relationship, there will be similar episodes for troughs causing the PLL to “believe” it is at the right frequency as there is no error signal forcing it to change it will continue to be locked onto the harmonic as if it were the correct frequency.

Take e.g. an internal oscillator at 1MHz and a signal at 3MHz. Each time the internal osciallator rises, the external signal can be rising, then the external signal will fall, rise and then fall again to coincide with the time the internal oscillator falls. The effect is that the PLL sees an external signal which has rises and falls precisely when it expects, and so there is no apparent error and with no error the PLL remains locked to a very different frequency or model or reality than actually exists.

Likewise in global warming. Although far more complicated, the model we choose to adopt to represent reality largely dictates when and where we look for evidence to “tune” this model. So, e.g. if you adopt a static “radiation based” model of the atmosphere, it is almost inevitable that you will attempt to tune it by looking at e.g. radiation balance.

In contrast, one could view the atmosphere as a “dynamic system” … a cooling system constantly in turmoil like a never ending heat engine or boiling cauldron of liquid in which convection plays the dominant role in the transport of heat in the atmosphere. In that case one might spend one’s time look at movement of air, and air densities, and cloud formation due to air movement and see the solar radiation as simply a minor “application of heat” like heating a pan of water.

Another conceptual model might be to view the whole system as “noise” and look for evidence of “signal” and “noise” and use appropriate tools for that kind of model/scenario.

The point is that our choice of conceptual model effects how and where we look for evidence, it affect what evidence we reject to consider because it “isn’t part of the model”. E.g. no one seriously looks at the size of ladies nickers as a potential driver for global warming. More seriously, one could consider the location of the magnetic pole as a possible impact. (The theory is that the currents going around the pole are like a dynamo and the exact position causes changes in the drag and hence flowrate somehow). Obviously if your models are all greenhouse gases and you view “internal” effects of the earth as not affecting the radiative flow, it is simple to dismiss any such “internal” climate change as irrelevant.

Cognitive dissonance

The problem we have as sceptics, is that the human brain is fundamentally “model based”. It has to be … e.g. we have to have a concept of a room in our mind even though we cannot see the room behind us. We have to have the concept of a whole human in our head even though we cannot see the whole body at any one time. We know people are thinking even though we cannot see their thoughts. In short, almost our entire way of thinking is to create a “virtual” reality model which we adjust according to the evidence. We don’t e.g. only accept what we can actually see or hear at any one time like the simple FM receiver.

So, that means humans are superb at dealing with highly complex situations, we can make use of sparse erratic information and from the mearest glance gleam masses of meaning and foresight. Even without consciously being aware, we can predict the behaviour of others from motorists on a road, to children kicking a ball to spouses with headaches.

But because we use “virtual reality” conceptual models, we can “lock” onto models of reality that hang on a very few points of compatibility and ignore a lot more information, which we simply ignore because we don’t consider them as pertinent to our conceptual framework.

An obvious example is the warmists attitude to sunspots. Sunspots aren’t greenhouse gases, they don’t fit the radiation forcing models that the warmists have, therefore they are ignored because they don’t fit i.e. affect the models. Their models don’t predict sunspots as having any causal impact on global temperatures, therefore they do not look for evidence and worse: they reject evidence even where it is available because there is no place for this evidence in their model. Their models look for a particular answer (percentages of greenhouse gases) and because there is no way to fit sunspots into their conceptual model they just simple reject it as a criteria for adjusting their models.

The advantage of the conceptual model … the rejection of spurious information, is also its greatest failing because if the model is so far from reality that the model doesn’t include important facets, then those facets can be totally rejected because they do not fit the criteria the model lays down for being important for consideration under the model.

The conceptual model is fantastic because it predicts what evidence should effect the model, so it allows us to select the few bits of key information out of the mass of information that is available, but that very efficiency of selection is also its biggest flaw because it can also lead us to reject valid evidence which does not fit out (false) conceptual models allowing us to hold false beliefs because of coincidental matches where we look for evidence rather than universal matching of all the evidence.

To put this in human terms, what I mean is that warmist literally cannot imagine a world in which sunspots affect global temperatures, therefore they reject sunspots as affect temperature and as sunspots are not considered this key information is unable to “tune” their model to make it fit the reality  of the real world where there are sunspots.

Not just warmists

But it is not just warmists that share their false reality. To say the real effects of CO2 must be between the warmist and sceptic position is a bit like saying that the real cause of change in animals must be somewhere between Darwinian evolution and lamarkian change (the idea animals physically change within their lifetime and this change is inherited by offspring … giraffes stretch for high leaves, their necks get elongated and this elongation is passed onto their offspring).

These are two very different conceptual models of reality. They interpret the same basic information differently and each then looks for information that will “tune” the model to better represent reality. There is no half way house. In truth evolution is overwhelmingly the main cause of change, (but e.g. antibodies are inherited in a Lamarkian way.) The truth does not lie somewhere between Lamark and Darwinism, it is either one or the other.

So, why do people continue to believe that there are positive feedbacks, it’s just the scale we don’t know.That there must be some truth in the warmist view! Why do they continue to believe the “world is warming” even though the scale of any historic warming is swamped by the noise of instrumentation error and natural variation.

Above all, why do people continue to think “there must be something in the warmist argument”, … that the truth must lie somewhere between what real science tells us can be correct and what they believe must be correct, when the evidence is so overwhelmingly against them?

Why do people continue to think “there must be something in the warmist argument”, when the evidence is so overwhelmingly against them?