Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The more background we can develop wrt climate change and how it is studied, the better prepared we will be to digest the IPCC release in a week or so.

The IPCC release will no doubt be in headlines all over the place, and there will be much discussion/argument. Unfortunately few people are trained well enough to tackle these issues on a technical level.

However, on policy everyone will have an opinion. As such, here is the big question (in my mind at least): Whatever turns out to be the amount of the anthropogenic share of global climate change, what can really be done about it? I mean truly, really possible. The hard core advocates of giving up (by going cold turkey on) carbon based fuels are essentially calling for the starvation of billions of people; so, I doubt oil, natural gas, or coal will stop being used.

Seems to me there are two remaining questions that are nearly impossible to answer:
1) what is the balance of the "goodness" of a warmer earth, versus the "badness" of such.
2) given the global nature of adding CO2 to the atmosphere, why would any individual country be expected to make sacrifices if all the other countries do not.

freeto, those are indeed some key issues in the climate debate. Note that they fall into two different classes:

Those that are scientific issues (what can be done? which is a function of: how do things work?)

Those that are fundamentally issues about our relative values / tradeoffs we're willing to make

Add in the uncertainty regarding the former issues, and it's obvious why the latter are so hard.

Decision analysis is a discipline that can be used to address hard, complex problems. In particular, multi-criteria (or multi-objective) decision analysis captures the various goals a decisionmaker has, their relative priorities and how one will measure success on each goal.

With that established, simulation models and other analytic techniques can be applied to evaluate the overall attractiveness of alternative courses of action, including cost-benefit analysis. In fact, MODA also includes doing sensitivity analysis to determine how much it matters if the predictions from simulation models are inaccurate to varying degrees.

BUT ... it all hinges on that initial value model. And coming to anything like a consensus on THAT is going to be very difficult.

Setting aside relative priorities for the moment, what would you all say are the objectives that any climate-related course of action should address?

Examples might include: Preserve bio-diversity as it exists now. Preserve economic stability. Stabilize climate to as close to the current state as possible.

Others?

When we come up with an alternative to oil and a replacement for the internal combustion engine, we won't have to worry about greenhouse gases, global warming, or big wars in the Middle East.

Molon Labe,

I see that you responded here [#2] with the decision analysis/sensitivity analysis kind of discussion I called for in the comment I was composing on your other thread.

This is exactly the kind of analysis that's important, but you don't have to agree on the model ahead of time. You can assign probabilities to the models, and use that as a separate chance node in the decision analysis. Then, as you do the science, you can adjust the probabilities on the models.

China is building something like 30 nuclear reactors in the next 10-15 years. Many other countries are switching to nukes. I think its only in America that we assume carbon is the only source of energy.

Agreed Beard. I think we're coming from a little different perspective tho. I was starting with a value model - c.f. Kirkwood's work, or Keeney & Raiffa's book Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs (available to be read for free online at that link to Google Books)

I've taught this approach a bit & my spouse has done extensive work on national security and other very complex issues using it. Where it's a bit different from decision trees is its emphasis on the idea that hard problems are usually hard because we have multiple objectives which are in tension with one another.

By clarifying exactly how we will measure success on each objective ('evaluation measures') and by using a variety of techniques (such as "swing weighting") to help decisonmakers establish relative priorities among the objectives, the question to be decided comes into much clearer focus.

At that point all the quantitative approaches kick in as alternative courses of action get scored for their overall attractiveness. That can and usually does include e.g. utility curves for each objective so that we don't assume a simple linear relationship between 'more' and 'better' (or 'more' and 'worse', as the case may be).

But yes, sensitivity analysis is key to the whole endeavor and it goes a long way to defusing the objection that the simulation models might not be precise. In most cases they aren't -- but we can tell whether and how much that failing matters to the overall decision.

PD Shaw, I gather that some model excursions strongly suggest that even if we stopped using all fossil fuels today the global climate would continue warming significantly for a decade or more due to feedback effects put in action by our recent past efforts.

However, as Ruddiman and others continue to refine our understanding of climate change mechanisms and rates we will (one hopes) be better able to run scenarios of the sort you are predicting to see what we might expect as a result in the climate over time.

Molon Labe,

I agree that multi-objective decision analysis is the way to look at the problem in the long run. However, I wonder whether there isn't a huge benefit in simply getting people to look at decision-making under uncertainty, expected values, and sensitivity analysis (which is a pretty big, mind-blowing change of framework if you aren't familiar with it already) before throwing them off the deep end into multi-objective stuff.

Suppose you pick almost any plausible single measure: dollars, human lives, world food production, preservation of existing human population habitat, etc. Define conversion factors of the others into that one (which argues for dollars or lives). Then educate the public on single-objective decision analysis.

You can tell people that yes, there's some assumptions built into the collapse of utility into a single objective measure, and there are more advanced methods for dealing with them, but we have to walk before we can run.

Can you find an example where the choice of utility function makes a substantial difference in the outcome of the analysis of global warming?

I haven't studied the issue, but I'm guessing not. The qualitative difference comes from the scientific question of whether excess CO2 is warming the earth pathologically, or preventing an ice age. (Keep in mind that another possibility is that if that ice age weren't trying to happen, we would have cooked ourselves due to human-caused global warming in the middle of the 20th century!)

So, let me go out on a limb, in pursuit of clarity. I will claim that, although some problems are hard because of multiple utilities, this one isn't. In the case of global warming, all the different utilities that people care about are highly correlated, so it doesn't make a huge difference which you pick, to first approximation.

Beard

Freeto [#1],

Your second problem is an example of the well-known "Prisoner's Dilemma". If we work together, we all do better, but if you fail to cooperate, you profit from our sacrifice. Why should any of us sacrifice. So we go down together.

That's a pretty fundamental problem, in general. However, the USA is both the single largest source of CO2 on the planet, and the single largest economy, so we can best afford the sacrifice. If we refuse to cooperate, everyone is else is being quite rational in refusing to cooperate, since their sacrifice will have much less benefit without ours.

However, by taking a leading role, we can make use of our dominant position and bring the rest of the world along. Not by force, but by example.

Thanks guys for the discussion.

First, I want to say that it is heartening for a site such as W.o.C. to take up this issue. I'm sure there are many people out there who would prefer to just role their eyes when they see "Global Warming" show up... especially on a website usually dedicated to confronting terrorism and the US response to it.

What I have concluded is that regardless of the share of human cause, given even modest changes in climate can have tremendous impact and change the course of nations, it is with reason that it is getting attention. Sure, there are always those who will exploit any issue and global climate change is one of them... but that does not mean the issue itself is false.

Beard [#9]: It is my understanding that the US share of CO2 is decreasing as automobile and electricity (often coal generated) use goes up in Asia (China, India.) Looking at the BP annual petroleum outlook, which includes worldwide data on several energy resources, coal use is increasing annually worldwide at a double digit (percentage) rate! As oil becomes harder and harder to find, the logical alternative is coal (converted to liquids, or used to power electric generation to electrify transportation.)

It is unclear to me that the world will benefit from any small changes that the US would be able to implement. Even if the US were to reduce its CO2 emissions by 10% (which would be accomplished probably in the transportation sector), the difference in worldwide CO2 output would change only by about 2%, a difference that may very easily be offset by one years growth in worldwide coal use and automobile purchases in China.

However, the economic cost of 10% reduction in transportation may be drastic for the US. That is because the turnover in automobiles is so slow that the reduction won't be from better MPG but fewer miles, and there is a pretty strong relationship between Americans driving and the health of the American economy. Extremist environmentalists may rejoice at a tanking US economy, but everybody else will be pretty unhappy while they are standing in unemployment lines.

PD [#5]: recommend you look at the growth of coal and oil use in China. The growth rates are very high. The growth of autos in China is phenomenal, and could be GM's salvation (for some reason GM is doing well in China.) I don't blame the Chinese for wanting an American lifestyle and I am not trying to make them out to be the boogey man... but the truth is the US share of CO2 contribution will decrease. Oil and coal run the world, not just the US.

This is the first intelligent discussion of the Global Warming issue I have yet to see. Lets ask a couple of basic questions because I believe the application of Occam's Razor is the right approach.

1. What is the mechanism for the observed warming of the Earth in this local time frame? I believe that the sun is at a peak period of output at this time. "The level of solar activity during the past 70 years is exceptional - the last period of similar magnitude occurred over 8,000 years ago." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation
There are other interesting observations in the article.

2. Is the higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere recently observed really going to add that much to the mean temperature? I think the jury is still out.

3. Are the climate models really valid? Knowing a little of complexity theory I think the answer is not.

Just some drive by observations.

#11: Your questions are good and worth investigating, but I believe the answers have been better worked than you may realize.

Specifically, your Question 2: obviously one of the goals of next week's IPCC report is to give a better understanding of all the relationships. It is not difficult to see the correlations between the industrial revolution, atmospheric CO2, and the change in temperatures and ice worldwide. The question of causality is then raised (i.e., are they correlations without cause?) To my mind it is not whether adding CO2 to the atmosphere cause changes, but to what extent the changes will be.

As for the models themselves, rather than relying on anything such as complexity theory, the best test of validity is empirical. Thus if you follow the links in the original essay you will see that there are short runs of that model, against known climate data, with the obvious goal of testing validity.

Above all else, consider this: if sea levels rise just 1m, and let's say that human activity can only account for half that, and the Sun's activity counts for the other half, we are still left with dealing with a 1m rise is sea level! If you are New Orleans you really don't care about what the cause is... all you care about is that you will have to abandon your home.

Beard, this is an interesting way to frame the issue:

Can you find an example where the choice of utility function makes a substantial difference in the outcome of the analysis of global warming?

I haven't studied the issue, but I'm guessing not. The qualitative difference comes from the scientific question of whether excess CO2 is warming the earth pathologically, or preventing an ice age.

I'm going to go think about the first question a bit. CAN we collapse the issue of climate change into a single objective? Or are there some tradeoffs that won't go away and that matter due to their centrality and their impact on human and other life?

Re: the second point, I'm thinking that rates of impact matter a lot.

Which gets me back to the issue of tradeoffs. I don't mind some economic hit if there is a good likelihood that will prevent a major climate change that would, in and of itself, have major economic implications in the US and around the world.

I'm less willing to take a major economic hit if there is only a small likelihood of preventing that, or if it is likely that we can only have a marginal impact on what happens with the climate.

Good questions. Gonna go think about them a bit more -- thanks for all your inputs, readers. Let's keep working through this important issue together.

I still want to know two things

1) Why was it hotter during the Dinosours time?

2) Why was it colder during the Mamouths time?

No body seems to want to answer these questions but I have a personal feeling that when either or both of those questions are answered we will have todays histeria.

Instead of trying to figure out who to point the finger at maybe our leadership should be working on figuring out which is our immediate future #1 or #2 then put in place the developement of the technologies to insure our survival and thriving when the cycle comes.

Truthprobe:

There are at least three, one of which produces possibly more problems than it solves and in itself relies on limited supplies of a patchily distributed resource. That one is nuclear power.

The other two are ocean thermal (pilot plant built and working in the 1930s!) and space-based solar power, which is based on well-known principles, has several possible engineering solutions and has enormous side benefits.

Even fusion has possibilities - but not the way it's being researched right now. Magnetic confinement necessarily involves enormous facilities. Electrostatic confinement does not, and fusion by this route is in fact being used at the moment, not as a source of power but as a neutron source.

The real solutions have not been funded in any serious way. Wind power, the very worst of the alternative methods, has.

Also consider various conservation methods, and various ways of burning assorted waste for energy. Neither of these can do the job, but they can't hurt!

As for the models themselves, rather than relying on anything such as complexity theory, the best test of validity is empirical. Thus if you follow the links in the original essay you will see that there are short runs of that model, against known climate data, with the obvious goal of testing validity.

This does not test validity of the model. The models are nothing but sophisticated curve fits. The output from Climateprediction.net will serve to illustrate the problem. The "control phase" is where the model is tested "against known climate data". The model runs that fail are of course tossed out before the "double CO2 phase". In the "double CO2 phase" not even the sign of the change is calculated correctly in many of the runs.

C-Low, I've heard that during the dinosaurs time, as all the continents were joined together in Pangea, the global ocean currents (there was just one ocean) kept world weather much warmer.

When continents began to break appart, they interfered such big currents and climate changed.

There is no doubt that there is at least one point, and possibly two points, of no return for CO2 levels ...

And you have a reference for this?

First point of no return; the point at which the major ice sheets start disappearing, decreasing Earth's albedo. The water vapour levels in the atmosphere go up at this point, with effects difficult to predict but almost certainly involving more violent weather.

Reduction of the ice sheets will decrease the Earth's albedo. The increase of water vapor will also increase clouds and may increase the Earth's albedo acting as a negative feedback. The increase in temperature due to greenhouse gasses will have the largest effects at the poles and the smallest effect in the tropics. The Hadley cell is driven by the temperature differences which will now be less and therefore will decrease violent weather.

Second point of no return; CO2 and methane get high enough and the temperature high enough to prevent re-condensation of water vapour in some places; ...

What? Where are you getting this stuff? All things being equal (no feedback effects) the effects of CO2 at double the pre-industrial levels will only raise the earths temperature about 1 degree C. The effect is of CO2 by itself is a decreasing exponential. IOW, the next unit of CO2 will have less effect then the previous one. It is a little like painting a window. The first coat of paint will block a large portion of the light shining through. Each subsequent coat will block a smaller amount of light. At some point adding more coats will do nothing since all the light has already been blocked. We have already reached about 75% of the potential absorption of CO2.

None of the above is in dispute. What is in dispute is the feedbacks. The advocates of AGW hypothesize that the increase temperature will result in more water vapor. Water vapor, as everyone knows, is the stuff that clouds are made of. Cloud formation is poorly understood, some types of clouds increase albedo, others decrease it. There is no evidence that the cloud formation will result in a positive feedback. It seems likely that the feedback will be negative since the Earth has survived for quite a long time, with much higher levels of CO2, without a runaway greenhouse effect.

Opps ... my previous post ended up in the wrong place.

#18

I would describe the status of our knowledge of cloud feedbacks differently. The leading hypothesis regarding cloud feedbacks is that they are positive (cf. Bony et al. Journal of Climate vol. 19 p.3445_ff_ 2006). This hypothesis has not been definitively tested with observational data; nor has it been rejected. But the balance of scientific evidence, based on appeal to well-founded physical reasoning (eg. Maxwell's equations and the Navier-Stokes equation) is that cloud feedbacks are positive.

A runaway greenhouse is generally thought to be prohibited under current terrestrial conditions (Lindzen et al. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences vol. 39 1982) and no major climate model participating in the IPCC 4th Assessment predicts a runaway greenhouse, even for 4x pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide. The lack of a runaway greenhouse, however, does not imply lack of significant damage to human economic systems.

I would describe the status of our knowledge of cloud feedbacks differently. The leading hypothesis regarding cloud feedbacks is that they are positive (cf. Bony et al. Journal of Climate vol. 19 p.3445_ff_ 2006).

This hypothesis has not been definitively tested with observational data; nor has it been rejected.

But the balance of scientific evidence, based on appeal to well-founded physical reasoning (eg. Maxwell's equations and the Navier-Stokes equation) is that cloud feedbacks are positive.

PS I will be gone till early next week.

The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches. That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts... predict sea level rise that can be measured by feet more than inches...

The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is "obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches of sea level rise.

In the past, the climate change panel didn't figure there would be large melt of ice in west Antarctica and Greenland this century and didn't factor it into the predictions... But in 2002, Antarctica's 1,255-square-mile Larsen B ice shelf broke off and disappeared in just 35 days. And recent NASA data shows that Greenland is losing 53 cubic miles of ice each year — twice the rate it was losing in 1996.

On burrowed time here.

AMac,

Changes (other than grammatical or minor editorial changes) made after acceptance by the Working Group or the Panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policymakers or the Overview Chapter.

There is a lot more about this backward process here and here

Greg F --

Blogs like this one provide a wonderful opportunity to people like me (a retired scientist) to get involved in an ongoing debate and it is very disappointing when the debate generates into one of these slanging matches. May I suggest some ground rules for posts:

1. Refrain from personal abuse and swearing,
2. Never attribute ulterior motives to another participant
3. Be patient with people who know less science or maths than you do yourself.

People who consistently break rule 1 and 2 should be issued with a yellow card by the moderator. If they continue they get a red card and are banned from the site.

MBH98 [the hockey stick model's authors] made 5 main warranties: statistical skill, robustness, careful proxy selection, appropriate methodology and relatively even geographical balance. These warranties were fundamental to its acceptance. (My background is in business and I think in contract terms.) All their warranties have been breached. Their reconstruction failed critical cross-validation tests (we have publicized the R2 failure, but it fails others as well); it is not robust the presence/absence of bristlecone pines; the supposedly carefully proxies included bristlecone growth, which specialists say is contaminated by 20th century fertilization; their methodology includes a wildly biased “principal components” methodology (which is not actually a principal components method). The hockey stick is an imprint of bristlecone growth rate and reflects a non-temperature proxy from an isolated geographic region of the U.S.A.

Obligatory disclaimer: I don't know McIntyre's opinions on matters of substance, but whatever they may be, I, personally, believe that anthropogenic CO2 increases and global warming are real phenomena. They raise important public policy issues, where "do nothing" seems to be a very bad option. There is vigorous debate on the nature and magnitude of the forecast changes (with important policy implications). This is to be preferred to a forced consensus.

#21

I have the paper. Would you care to point out where it supports your assertion.

Of course! In figure 1, page 3446, all of the cloud feedbacks (except 1 of 20 or so) have a magntiude greater than 0. Interested commenters/lurkers may check out the paper at:
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/csrl/publications/Hall/Bony_et_al_2006.pdf

References please?

The radiative transfer methods used by climate models are traced to Maxwell's equations in:http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2006/Mishchenko_4.html

The primitive equations used in global climate models (see section 3.1 of http://www.ccsm.ucar.edu/models/atm-cam/docs/description/) are derived from the Navier-Stokes equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_equations

All this science talk is nice, but purely theoretical. China and India will not agree to anything that constrains their growth, and they're where the CO2 action will be for the rest of this century.

One other question: what if global warming is happening and CO2 mitigation won't do squat about it, because GW is mostly due to solar output, reducing CO2 in a "meaningful way" would cost trillions and would trigger world war, or "it's too late". In any case, the policy response is identical: we learn to live with it, or we use one of the "engineering fix" approaches that are occasionally floated. If you're talking trillions to reduce emissions, even big-science engineering fixes don't look so expensive.

One other thing: an underlying theme in many of these discussions is the "punish the US" narrative. The US is the most successful economy, therefore it can afford to be "punished for its environmental sins". Whatever one may personally think of this narrative, it is an obvious political non-starter with voters, even if it may get applause at Davos and plaudits from foreign newspaper editors.

Foobarista #26:

Your second paragraph follows the reasoning that Bjorn Lomberg proposed in "Skeptical Environmentalist." What is the 'best' way to respond to the foreseen trends?

Whether Lomberg was correct or not, exploring the question was enough to get him thrown out of polite society. Some things you just shouldn't do in public.

#26 AMac: And this is why I can't help but be generally bemused by the whole global warming debate. There is a large group of people who hope AGW is some sort of transcendent issue that is beyond politics that can be used to usher in the Age of Aquarius. If you question this, you're an oil-company shill, a satanic capitalist Gaia-hater, or "in denial".

The attempt to censor skeptics is one bad sign, and does AGW advocates more harm than good. Another is the definition of skeptics - which for some reason is a Bad Word in GW circles - is defined enormously broadly to not just include people who question GW or AGW, but the mechanisms of the Kyoto Treaty, as well as guys like Lomborg who accept AGW but argue that there's other ways to spend the world's limited resources.

Foobarista, I am far from being any sort of Luddite. I'm not the only one who thinks that the real solution here is large, really large, investments in the highest of high technology (pun incidental), which also has utterly colossal side benefits - such macro-engineering projects as sunshades with a significant fraction of Earth's area would help mitigate the side effects of increasing CO2, which will increase for a long time no matter what we do.

The primary goal? Large amounts of power from orbit, with very low continuing costs. The secondary benefits? Simply that the primary goal requires a massive and self-sustaining space presence (otherwise the primary is economically impossible) which also makes it possible to deliver enormous amounts of raw materials anywhere we want, including Earth, and gives essentially unlimited living space. And build million-km2 sunshades if we want.

Tertiary benefit? The West could block the Persian Gulf and tell the Arabs to eat and drink their oil. Also, space superiority is the ultimate in high ground - nothing moving at less than aircraft speeds would be safe from orbital assault.

But we still need ground-based carbon-neutral power in the couple of decades this will all take. We know how to do it, except for some engineering development - it's just that nobody currently has the will.

On an earlier point - well, the presumption that a runaway greenhouse is impossible is a gamble. I don't mind the odds - but I do mind the size of the pot.

Finally, a large space presence is the only real defense against a Dinosaur Killer.

Greg F, at the times you are talking about (Carboniferous Era?) the Sun was considerably cooler. We are talking here about timescales comparable (within an order of magnitude) to the lifetimes of stars.

To use a useful shorthand; there is strong evidence that Gaia is struggling to keep itself cool. Evidence includes changes in the balance of plant types, to favour those with a metabolism that can use (and create) lower CO2 levels and therefore drive temperatures lower.

When it is already difficult to keep a critical system stable, it is generally a bad idea to strongly force it in any direction. I would call the global ecosystem fairly critical, wouldn't you?

#26

I agree with you that the censoring of critics does more harm to the global warming/climate change debate than good.

I think, however, that the importance of the science should not be discounted. Your question of to what extent the observed warming is driven by solar variability is one that should be answered by critical application of the scientific method to the existing observations (temperature records) and climate models.

But policies aimed at reducing the climate change due to anthropogenic emissions will be severely hampered if China and India are not included in a meaningful way.

The link you gave to the earlier Winds of Change article is messed up. (It's got an extra http// inserted in the beginning of the URL.)

Thanks,

Tom

[Good catch, Tom--fixed. M.F.]

DtH,
The paper does not support the belief that clouds are a positive feedback, it supports the belief of climate modelers that clouds are a positive feedback. I will state it again, there is no real life data that supports the assertion that clouds are a positive feedback.

Concerning Navier-Stokes see Gerry Browning's post . The resolution of climate models is clearly to coarse. The paper on Maxwell's equations does not support your assertion. The paper discusses the problems with simplifying while still getting useful results. Both problems are intractable at this time. Knowing what equations to use does not in itself solve the problem.

I, personally, believe that anthropogenic CO2 increases and global warming are real phenomena. They raise important public policy issues, where "do nothing" seems to be a very bad option.

Spending trillions on a 'belief' is not a very good option. At this point, IMO, the most important policy issue is public archiving of climate data paid for by the taxpayer. Fundamental to science is the ability to replicate the results, remember cold fusion? Replication is not possible when data sets and detailed methods are not available. Spend some time over at climateaudit, the resistance in the climate science community to disclose data and methods is nothing short of astounding. Behavior like this would be roundly condemned in any other branch of science.

To use a useful shorthand; there is strong evidence that Gaia is struggling to keep itself cool.

Gaia is a religious appeal and has no place in science. The fact is the earth spends most the time in a glacial state. If anything the earth struggles to keep itself warm, not cool.

#33

The paper does not support the belief that clouds are a positive feedback, it supports the belief of climate modelers that clouds are a positive feedback. I will state it again, there is no real life data that supports the assertion that clouds are a positive feedback.

The word belief is odd in this context. Climate modelers have formulated a scientific hypothesis that cloud feedbacks are positive. You and I are in agreement that it has yet to be definitively tested by observations to become an accepted scientific theory.

I can't see the Browning post; can you provide a quick summary as to its refutation of the relationship between the Navier-Stokes equation and the primitive equations? Thanks.

Well this thread seems quite moribund. But, what the hay...

Greg F,

1. There is no conclusive observational evidence that the cloud feedback is negative, either.

2. To quote from the Mishchenko paper: "It is worth emphasizing again that the detailed microphysical derivation of the RTE in Refs. [6,16] leads
quite naturally to the definition of the coherent and diffuse Stokes column vectors, clarifies the physical
meaning of all quantities entering Eqs. (14) and (15) and makes unnecessary the multiple controversial
assumptions of the phenomenological approach." Ergo, he has shown that the RTE (radiative transfer equation) that is employed in global climate models is traceable to Maxwell's equations.

3. I read the Browning post. It said that the primitive equations are ill-posed. It does not claim that they are at odds with the Navier-Stokes equation. That the primitive equations are ill-posed, of course, means that they cannot be easily numerically integrated. That we have weather models with non-trivial forecast skills demonstrates those numerical methods exist and are improving.