There is some very active discussion in blogworld about stitching recent solar irradiance records between satellites, which may interest some CA readers.
http://inel.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/royal-society-proceedings-a-lockwood-frohlich/
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/pmod-vs-acrim/
http://icecap.us/
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Lockwood_and_Frolich_Review.pdf
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/07/nir-shaviv-why-is-lockwood-and-frohlich.html
Climate Audit 
230 Comments
In the blogosphere also! RC mentions it in their Friday thingy dealy.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/07/friday-roundup/
The only part I wonder about is why the Royal Society should publish a paper which is criticizing the work of Svensmark without soliciting a rebuttal paper from him to be published alongside?
Blogworld? BlagOSphere? http://xkcd.com/181/
I think the solar data going against measured data in “the last 20 years” might have something to do with changes in measurement stations over that period of time if Mr. Watts’ survey to date is any indication. It certainly does look like we have man-made global warming and it is made by placing measurement locations over parking lots and building roofs, or next to air conditioners, walls of buildings, incinerators and barbecues and/or coating them with infrared transparent latex paint.
At this point I would have little faith in the quality of the surface temperature data collected since the 1980’s and that faith would diminish with each passing year to the present as apparently more stations have been moved to “hotter” locations.
Anybody who has read the output from the royal society will quickly know that their have a overwhelming bias towards AGW; after all their the main source for the BBC.
Also his statement ‘begin to see the rise in global temperatures slowing down’
RE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2123447,00.html
Which we can see is false,
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/CR_data/Monthly/HadCRUGNS_3plots.gif.
I email this point and his reply Statistically irrelevant’; which i found very telling.
#5 It is funny that you talk about the bias of the RSS and the BBC. Since the BBC is currently dealing with a scandal in which they would have pre-arrenged game show.
You’ve haven’t mentioned the scandal involving the Queen and a photoshot; which was based on incomplete information. What proceeded was a headlong retreat followed by rapid finger point and sequels we were mislead govner; as the production company was forced to take responsibility; even though the BBC made the statement. RoySoc please note the BBC will turn on you like a girls in a toilet.
The IPCC rates the ‘level of scientific understanding’ of ‘solar irradiance’ as ‘low.’ For other solar factors it is ‘very low.’ The climate impact of the 11-year solar cycle goes beyond irradiance.
Interesting new paper here:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030207.shtml
Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection
By projecting surface temperature data (1959’€”2004) onto the spatial structure obtained objectively from the composite mean difference between solar max and solar min years, we obtain a global warming signal of almost 0.2°K attributable to the 11-year solar cycle. The statistical significance of such a globally coherent solar response at the surface is established for the first time.
Another interesting paper published next to it:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028668.shtml
Regional and global trends in sulfate aerosol since the 1980s
In the last two decades anthropogenic SO2 emissions have decreased across Europe and North America but have increased across Asia. Long-term surface observations suggest that atmospheric sulfate concentrations have followed trends in sulfur emissions more closely across Asia, than across the USA and Europe. We use a global model of chemistry and aerosol to understand changes in the regional sulfur budget between 1985 and 2000. For every 1% decrease in SO2 emissions over Europe and the USA the modelled sulfate column burden decreased by 0.65%, while over Asia a 1% increase in SO2 resulted in a 0.88% increase in sulfate. The different responses can be explained by the availability of oxidant in cloud. We find that because emissions have moved southward to latitudes where in-cloud oxidation is less oxidant limited, the 12% reduction in global SO2 emissions between 1985 and 2000 caused only a 3% decrease in global sulfate.
The Earth’s magnetic field strength has declined about 5% since 1850, is this taken into account by the theories that invoke variation in solar activity as a significant climate forcing factor?
The Lockwood and Frohlich paper is complete nonsense. They say that ‘all the trends go in the wrong direction’. But if you look at their fig 3 some of the trends go up and then down again! The only relevant data is the actual satellite measurements of TSI (Total Solar Irradiance). They chose to use one (‘PMOD’), because the alternative data (‘ACRIM’) in fact shows a small upward trend!
The trend claimed by L&F (fig 3e) is from 1366 to 1365.9 W m^(-2), a change of less than one part in 10000 over 20 years. This change is much less than the accuracy of the device, much less than the difference between different devices, and much less than the jitter in the data (look at their own fig 1d). And yet, amazingly, L&F claim on page 10 that ‘the trend in averaged TSI is highly significant’!
I cannot understand how this paper got published – oh, yes, I can, it says global warming is man-made, so publish it anyway.
And yet am I wrong to detect a kind of recurring shotgun pattern in these comments? If you want to argue that the surface record is over-warm, fine–but then you’ve just brought the surface warming/troposphere warming ratio in line with agw theory. If you want to use the surface warming/troposphere warming ratio as evidence that agw theory is wrong, fine–but then you have to accept the accuracy of the surface instrumentation.
Likewise with solar warming–if you want to argue that the sun has put out much more radiation than we think, ok–but then you have to accept the surface record. But if you want to reject the surface record, then…why do you need to work so hard to find evidence of increased solar radiation? Don’t agg’s take care of the rest?
In other words, where is the coherent hypothesis to be tested here? Or maybe this is just to ask what exactly are you trying to prove?
As one relatively new to the climate game, the L-F paper raises some basic issues that do not depend on stitching. The paper says “surface air temperature does not respond to the solar cycle”.
Issue 1: How is it possible the Earth does not respond to cyclical changes in solar output?
1A Could it be that there is more to the business of heating than just temperature, like pressure, moisture content, velocity, etc.
1B Could it be that there are strong NEGATIVE feedback mechanisms for thermal forcings?
1C Could it be that the data is a total mess, showing things like AC compressors?
1D If the Earth does not respond to a cyclical signal, why should it respond to any signal? (Does GAIA filter 11Y signals, and not otheres?)
Issue 2: With all the sophisticated signal processing methods available today, why do L-F choose the particular one they did which seems designed to not see cyclical variation? How about some wavelets, or signal to noise so we can see what the detection limits are, or even classical regression?
#9
If you refer to Svensmark theory you are wrong. Since the principal cosmic rays that have an impact on low cloud formation are the muons which are barely affected by the weak magnetic field from the earth. The earth magnetic field mainly influenced the low energy cosmic rays.
Sylvain, the muons are formed in the atmosphere by the cosmic rays, they aren’t the actual cosmic rays. Muons are not stable enough to travel long distances, even at near light speed. In fact, muons formed by cosmic rays couldn’t even reach the earth’s surface if it weren’t for relativistic time dilation. Cosmic rays are mostly high energy protons. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s the interaction of the sun’s magnetic field and the earth’s magnetic field that modulates the high energy cosmic ray flux at low latitudes so any change in the earth’s magnetic field should be a factor in the equation.
#11 mzed…yes, you are wrong in detecting a shotgun pattern. AGW theory is attacked in different ways by different people.
when you say:
“If you want to argue that the surface record is over-warm, fine’€”but then you’ve just brought the surface warming/troposphere warming ratio in line with agw theory.”
is it really your position that an over-warm surface record (which is presently DENIED by AGW believers) EXACTLY brings the surface/tropo “warming ratio” in line with AGW theory? what IS this “ratio”, exactly?
Then you said:
“Likewise with solar warming’€”if you want to argue that the sun has put out much more radiation than we think, ok’€”but then you have to accept the surface record.”
not true-really a false dichotomy. there is nothing about increased solar irradiation which precludes a warm bias in the temperature record.
finally, you said:
“In other words, where is the coherent hypothesis to be tested here?”
as has been stated many times, falsification of scientific theory does not require alternative hypothesis. i think you should know that.
A common practice of those attempting to defend an indefensible hypothesis is to state is “where’s your alternative” as a valid criticism. The validity of the original hypothesis does not rest on the existence of another, it stands on its own merits which _should_ be derived from sound scientific practices.
Mark
#14
Ok for your explanation of the muons, to the exception that the muons are created by the most energetic cosmic rays, so not all cosmic rays becomes muons, and those that becomes muons are the one that help create the low altitude clouds. It has been shown that the earth magnetic field only intercept/reflect about 3% of the higher energy cosmic rays while the suns effect is more important.
For sure Svensmark is more coherent than me in explaining is theory.
#15, #16: I understand that it is being attacked in different ways…I’m just noting that not all those ways are compatible with each other. This means that I can’t take all criticisms of agw seriously, because some of them *must* be wrong, or exaggerated.
I have no idea if eliminating a warming bias in the surface record would bring it exactly in line with agw theory (it is already about in line with the RSS record; it’s the UAH record that doesn’t match up with theory) But let me put it this way–if any correction *doesn’t* bring it down that far, then how does the *correction* refute agw theory? What is the big deal about the (entirely hypothetical) correction? Conversely, if you’re talking about a correction of any significant size, why *wouldn’t* it bring it roughly in line with the predictions of agw? (IIRC tropospheric warming is expected to be roughly 10-40% more than surface warming, but I am pulling that out of the top of my head–for that matter, AFAIK there are cloud and aerosol effects that are not yet understood.)
As for increased solar irradiation vs. the surface record, it *sounds* like you are actually making a positive hypothesis–it *sounds* like you are saying “There is an upward bias in the surface record, but it still records *actual warming*–that can be explained by the sun.” (Note also that this is in fact a theory of *global warming*: it just isn’t a theory of *anthropic* global warming.) Because, if you aren’t saying this–then you’re back to doing nothing more than lowering the surface warming to a level in line with agw theory. You can say “Oh but it might just be the sun”–but it seems like you’re saying more than this: it seems like you’re saying it *is* predominantly the sun!
As for falsification, yes, of course you don’t need an alternative hypothesis to make a falsification. But it is equally true that without an alternative hypothesis, you would not refute agw–you would only have refuted a *specific* agw theory. But that would not refute agw in general! It would merely leave the question open.
The point has nothing to do with “refuting” AGW theory (which is actually still hypothesis, btw), or even some specific version of it. The point is that many of the assumptions made do not pass the falsification stage of the scientific method. Therefore, any conclusions drawn from these original assumptions are at best, inconclusive.
Mark
11:
I’m confused. As I understand it, AGW theory predicts that the lower troposphere will be WARMER than the surface. That is not being demonstrated. Since there is barely any change in the satellite-derived temperature, you would have to adjust the surface temperatures WAY down to be in line with AGW theory. Maybe there’s an irony here, in that those that disclaim any UHI or bogus “adjustments” are makin AGW theory look wrong!
We also have this little problem of an 8-9 year (I’m predicting 9) leveling off of surface temperatures, despite AGW theory and despite “UHI” effects. You have to admit that something’s wrong here…
I meant AGW HYPOTHESIS. Mark T is correct.
Re #18 mzed says “it’s the UAH record that doesn’t match up with theory”
That’s because The Team can’t adjust the UAH record. They can’t “Jones” the data.
And the UAH record doesn’t have surfacestation UHI errors that we are now discovering are far larger than originally claimed.
#19: but is that really the only point that skeptics are trying to make? All too often they seem to be going far beyond this, don’t you think?
(As for theory vs. hypothesis, there are arguments for either term, but I think it is fair to use “theory” to refer to a large set of related hypotheses–as in “string theory”. But we don’t need to get bogged down with this.)
#20: Actually the only set of measurements that don’t support agw (UAH’s measurements) are only 20% lower than the surface record–+.14degC/decade compared to +.17degC/decade, so the correction doesn’t have to be too large to bring them in line. And your “irony” is precisely my point: perhaps sticking with the surface record disproves agw. Ok then, I’m on the side of ClimateAudit: there is a warming bias in the surface record, which needs correcting. Whoops, we just put the surface record in line with agw! Talk about ironic…
And as for UHI effects, if they are entirely responsible for the surface record trend, and yet if the surface trend is currently flat, then you’re right–there is definitely something wrong here!
Really I’m not saying anything that Mr. McIntyre himself wouldn’t agree with 🙂 I think…but certainly not to put words into his mouth!
mzed said:
“I understand that it is being attacked in different ways…I’m just noting that not all those ways are compatible with each other.”
they don’t need to be “compatible” with each other. the premise is false.
next:
“This means that I can’t take all criticisms of agw seriously, because some of them *must* be wrong, or exaggerated.”
excuse me, but that is pretty rich. let me reverse the statement a bit…*i can’t take all aspects of AGW hypothesis seriously, some of it “must” be wrong, or exaggerated*
BTW, you neglected to answer, what IS the “surface/tropo warming ratio”, exactly? a reference would be nice.
your paragraph:
“As for increased solar irradiation vs. the surface record, it *sounds* like you are actually making a positive hypothesis’€”it *sounds* like you are saying “There is an upward bias in the surface record, but it still records *actual warming*’€”that can be explained by the sun.” (Note also that this is in fact a theory of *global warming*: it just isn’t a theory of *anthropic* global warming.) Because, if you aren’t saying this’€”then you’re back to doing nothing more than lowering the surface warming to a level in line with agw theory. You can say “Oh but it might just be the sun”’€”but it seems like you’re saying more than this: it seems like you’re saying it *is* predominantly the sun!”
is so loaded with strawmen, i don’t know where to begin. try starting with what is *said*, not what it *sounds like* i am saying.
Yes.
No. The prediction is that the troposphere will warm faster than the surface. There will still be a negative lapse rate of temperature with altitude, but the absolute magnitude of the lapse rate will decrease. A positive lapse rate is known as a temperature inversion. In fact, the greenhouse effect requires a negative lapse rate. On average, the lapse rate is about -6.5 K/km, but it actually varies a lot with humidity, latitude, and time, and usually isn’t even a constant with altitude in the troposphere. Above the troposphere it gets even more complicated.
Just in case you’re wondering, I have managed to fix the Tiga theme and return things (more or less) to normal – whatever that is.
RE 27.
Thanks John we are tired of anomalies.
#23 “Ok then, I’m on the side of ClimateAudit: there is a warming bias in the surface record, which needs correcting. Whoops, we just put the surface record in line with agw! Talk about ironic…”
Uhm, and also suddenly you have an even larger discrepancy between the C02x2 sensitivity of the GCM:s and the insturmental record. Either way you lose. 😉
#24:
“they don’t need to be “compatible” with each other.”
Sure, I agree. They don’t need to be, and in fact they aren’t.
“*i can’t take all aspects of AGW hypothesis seriously, some of it “must” be wrong, or exaggerated*”
[shrug] Sounds plausible to me–in fact, I suspect some of the agw hypothesis *is* wrong or exaggerated!
“your paragraph…is so loaded with strawmen, i don’t know where to begin. try starting with what is *said*, not what it *sounds like* i am saying.”
But–I haven’t attributed anything to you falsely–I used “sounds like” specifically to avoid attributing anything to you falsely! I’m saying that when I reason out your argument, it *seems to me* (maybe erroneously!) that you are making a positive argument about the role of the sun. Let me put it this way–you said: “there is nothing about increased solar irradiation which precludes a warm bias in the temperature record.” Sure, ok.
But if you’re not also saying “and whatever warming is left over is caused by the sun,” then where does your argument go? Are you simply saying that there is a warm bias in the surface temperature record, and nothing more? Because agw theory doesn’t preclude that, either (which is my point!)
And as for the ratio itself, well, here’s the Wikipedia page as a quick reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
“Climate models predict that as the surface warms, so should the global troposphere. Globally, the troposphere should warm about 1.2 times more than the surface”
#30 — the problem is that climate models don’t “predict” anything. They merely produce scenarios. Think of them as fiction displayed in a non-fiction dust jacket. From a scientific perspective, there is no such thing as an AGW theory. There is only an AGW argument, and only a political one at that.
#29: Eehh, but only with the upper-estimate models and sensitivities (like Hansen’s). It’s easy to think that the upper estimates are off by 20%!
Re #26 – You have the lapse rates reversed. When the temperatures decrease as you go upward – that is actually a positive lapse rate in meteorology.
I agree that it is a nit of semantics, but often the implication is that the hypotheses have somehow, collectively, managed to pass a rigorous attempt at falsification. This is not the case, however, as many of these hypotheses are indeed failing the attempt. I won’t hound the point anymore as it is clear you understand what I’m getting at.
Mark
That list seems to be growing daily. 🙂
Mark
mzed said:
“that you are making a positive argument about the role of the sun. Let me put it this way’€”you said: “there is nothing about increased solar irradiation which precludes a warm bias in the temperature record.” Sure, ok.
But if you’re not also saying “and whatever warming is left over is caused by the sun,” then where does your argument go?”
mzed, i may well be the least intelligent person who ever posts on this blog. but your logic is pretty squishy here.
“warming” could be caused by:
-bias in measuring
-increased solar irradiance
-greenhouse gases
-cosmic rays
-clouds
-persistent weather events (el nino, etc)
-unknown factors
any or all of these factors can have effects, or not. the action of one does not necessarily affect the action of another. no one really even knows how much “warming” has occurred, despite the well-advertised “consensus”.
i never said anything about “left over” warming. you did. and that is only one of your strawmen.
Re #36,
You forgot land use changes. Terraforming.
mzed:
I think I understand your point.
*If* the surface temperature data is contaminated with an upward bias, *then*, you say, a correction to account for this brings it into line with the CO2 -> AGW hypothesis because it more closely matches the projected lapse rate, yes?
However, this would also *reduce* the total amount of warming that has been “detected”, would it not? I have not calculated by how much (frankly, I don’t have either the data or ability to do so) – would you care to estimate how much the surface temperature would have to be “corrected” downwards to make it “line up” with the theory? What percentage of the ~0.8C warming in the surface data would this be, and how much do you estimate that this would affect the climate CO2 sensativity? Even a rough estimate will do (I certainly don’t expect exact figures, but a reply along the lines of, for example, “would reduce detected warming by approximately 20% and reduce climate sensativity to CO2 by 50%” [these numbers plucked out of nether regions and are *not* a suggestion of the real numbers] would suffice).
It certainly seems to me that such reductions would make the climate model projections even more fanciful than they currently are, and would also put a rather large dent in the total warming “detected”, but that’s just a guess. Of course, if this guess turns out to be true, it may be that the “detected” warming in the surface record drops to the point that it is inside the error margins of the data, or at least much closer to them. I leave it you to consider what this might mean to the CO2 -> AGW hypothesis.
26, DeWitt. Thanks. I meant “warm faster.”
23:
Yeah. It’s probably cooling, rather than flat.
My new definition of “Climate Change”: 30% thermometers telling us over time how airport runways act in the weather and 70% statistics and satellites telling us the temperature of the surface of the ocean.
For those of you new to irony, the satellites have a .3 degree margin of error and are 70% of the readings. But they get adusted from 2×2 to 5×5 to match the land measurements, so they are not even pure numbers, they’re calculations. And how long have satellites been around to measure it?
Or as they say,
and
40: Sure, maybe, but–where’s your evidence that it’s actually cooling? The satellites? Nope…
mzed:
You might be right, but the owner of this site is only concerned with getting the pieces right before making any proclamations about the “answer”.
The fact that the consensus establishment is kicking and screaming every step of the way to verify the basic foundation of data used to support scientific conclusions coupled with the intensive public relations scare mongering campaign tends to get folks Irish up. You focus on the peanut gallery is rather pathetic.
Suppose that there is AGW or that certain human activities causes large environmental damage, however, the cause is not the current consensus answer of the models. Say the collective western powers use the wrong answer to respond with no effect at great cost, then the $hit still hits the fan and we have used up available resources to adapt or mitigate.
What is so wrong about getting it right? This is not a dialectic zero sum game.
mzed, personally I’m trying to understand exactly how much weight can be placed on pieces of evidence and to try to verify individual lines of analysis from original data. The only policy that I’ve advocated is one of full, true and complete disclosure of all aspects of climate calculations used in policy arguments. If properly constructed data sets support AGW, so be it.
It’s quite possible that CO2 arguments can be articulated even though (say) Tucson station is a pig’s breakfast. Fine – but that doesn’t legimitize NOAA saying that the USHCN network has been carefully quality controlled, when so many stations don’t meet basic WMO guidelines. Such poor quality control doesn’t disprove AGW – it simply shows poor practice and the need to assess what information can be extracted from stations meeting QC standards. NOAA should have been doing this long ago.
BTW, I’ve asked people for an article or text that provides, in their opinion, the best articulation of the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming. So far the only suggestion is a 1956 article by Plass. I don’t want an article that merely reports GCM output. IPCC itself doesn’t present the argument. I’ve looked at several texts and merely found highly trivial heuristic diagrams. Can you suggest something?
# 42
Mzed,
Perhaps a MODIS records map would convince you about the cooling?
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/usalsta_tmo_2007177_lrg.jpg
# 44
Dr. McIntyre,
There are few papers on the issue you’re looking for. There are many up to date papers showing that physically the CO2 is not capable of doing it.
My recollection from Christy’s most recent (spring 2007) UAH satellite paper in the tropics was a trend of +0.09 C per decade. This is quite a bit lower than the +0.17 C per decade for the surface record in the tropics. Assuming that the lower troposphere has an expected temperature increase that is 1.3 times higher than the surface trend, and assuming the UAH data is correct, then the surface temperature trend should actually be +0.07 C per decade, which is a 60% correction. I don’t know if this size of correction is supported by the surface station conditions in the tropics, since I have yet to see any audits of measurement sites in the tropics.
#45. My interest is in understanding the very best expositions of AGW theory on their own merits, rather than alternative explanations. While I realize that many readers are interested in alternative theories, my own interest right now is more in understanding mainline theories and I don’t want to spend much bandwidth on alternatives.
# 47
Dr. McIntyre,
It would be “almost” impossible to achieve your goal. I have not found a single algorithm from AGW theory developed or released to vindicate the theory. The theorists for AGW have driven a war of graphs and allegations, not of technical procedures. BTW, the algorithms that I apply… Well, do you think they are “alternative” theories? Sorry by the question, if you don’t wish, don’t answer it.
This was mentioned at RC, Myhre et al.
New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1998/98GL01908.shtml
re 49: Myhre only calculates forcing, high climate sensitivity is very dependent on the lower troposphere aerosol fiddle factor.
check
Andronova, N., and M. E. Schlesinger. 2001.Objective Estimation of the Probability Distribution for Climate Sensitivity, J. Geophys. Res., 106, D19, 22,605-22,612 http://crga.atmos.uiuc.edu/publications/Objective_Est_dT2x.pdf data: http://crga.atmos.uiuc.edu/publications/Climate.html
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=932#comment-74073
Sorry, but if you don’t mind me jumping in on this conversation on modeling, I’m looking for some help.
I’m playing around with a computer model using a batch of information (not CO2) and I think I’m pretty close over the last 30 years.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=903337520&size=o
But I’m stuck on volcanic activity. Two things, does anyone have a current accurate list of volcanic eruptions over the last 100 years. I’m looking for date, location, size of eruption. Second does anyone know of any studies that show the aerosol trail off over time of volcanic eruptions.
Thanks.
mzed,
You are wrong in concluding that the various “attacks” on AGW are incompatible.
The fact that there is a warming bias in the ground based temperature network does not preclude the fact that the sun has gotten warmer and cosmic rays are getting blocked.
Both of these facts are used to explain part of the observed warming.
mzed,
The basis behind the the AGW hypothesis is that enhanced CO2 either directly or indirectly is solely responsible for the rise in temperature over the last century or so.
By showing that some of that warming is caused by other things, part UHI and microsite contamination, part warmer sun and it’s side effects, that hypothesis of AGW is invalidated.
#49. I’m familiar with that article. It doesn’t do the job. It calculates the CO2 “equivalents” of other gases – a procedure criticzied by Clough 1995 – but doesn’t derive the results. I’m also looking for something that describes the physics rather than something that reports model results (I’m not saying that models are irrelevant, but I want to understand what’s in the models from the ground up.)
re 51.
Briffa did a study of tree rings and volcanic activity. You’ll see it discussed here.
I looked for his paper a while back, can’t recall if I found it online.
he might have data in the paper or references.
Size of the blast matters, of course, but also direction. Witness Mt St. helens. A shot out the
side of the mountain does get particles high enough.
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/06_2.shtml
Steve M, I’m not sure if this latest offering via Icecap is any use to you:
Click to access Falsification_of_CO2.pdf
At 113 pages it is cetainly the biggest exposition of CO2 physics I’ve seen for a while!
Perhaps some here with physics backgrounds could look at it and let us mere mortals know how good/bad/indifferent it is?
Re # 54: I think you need to look in basic text books. If you think that everything is explained from the ground up in articles and the IPCC report you have the wrong expectations. Is your goal really to try to understand everything about climate dynamics and climate models from the ground up? How much time do you have, 10 years?
# 54
Steve McIntyre,
The paper suggested by Carl Smith in # 56 is supported by the real physics of the atmosphere. Scientists with a background of physics know that the GHG hypothesis is plagued with bad physics and the paper of Gerlich and Tscheuschner makes it clear. Perhaps some of my articles show the algorithms in an uncomplicated way, but the fundaments are the same than those of Gerlich and Tscheuschner because I adhered to the real framework of physics. I don’t like to promote my works, but if you grant me permission I can copy and paste some algorithms from biocab.org.
#36: “any or all of these factors can have effects, or not. the action of one does not necessarily affect the action of another. no one really even knows how much “warming” has occurred, despite the well-advertised “consensus”.
i never said anything about “left over” warming. you did. and that is only one of your strawmen.”
I didn’t say you said anything about “left over” warming–I said “*if* you are *not* also saying [etc.]”–and, as you have confirmed, you are not in fact saying that solar irradation causes any warming right now. So don’t worry, no strawman here 🙂
To say that “no one knows” is accurate but incomplete. We can be fairly certain that it is more than, say, .5C over the last century, and less than 1C.
I agree that all of the factors you listed *can* cause warming. There is some evidence for a role for all of these, but the best evidence is for the role of ggs, and to a lesser degree solar effects. We do still need to understand clouds, and hopefully the A-Train data will be complete within the next couple of years so we can solve this part. (However, I have to say that arguing for “unknown factors” is not a good argument’€”of course there are unknown factors, but the question is, can we explain the phenomena based on what we do know?) Yes, there could be some revolutionary study that proves, for example, that cosmic rays regulate climate more than anything else’€”but until we have one, why should we assume they do?
(I would also agree that we need to understand oceanic oscillations better, though these could be reactive, rather than causal…)
And let me add the disclaimer that I am not a scientist, and in fact I am not really invested in the outcome of the global warming debate. I’m just trying to understand the debate as best I can, and part of that means sorting out good arguments from bad.
#56
You have got to be joking. This paper argues that the greenhouse effect does not exist. This is a novel position. Most sceptics debate the magnitude of the AGW, not the existence of the greenhouse effect itself.
#58, 56. Again, Nasif and Carl, one more time, I’m uninterested right now in expositions purporting to show why CO2 arguments are wrong and I’m not interested right now in articles by skeptics. I’m interested in articles (or texts) providing the best possible explanation of the mainstream theories.
#57. gb, I’ve obviously looked in basic textbooks. If someone thinks that textbook A gives an excellent exposition, that’s what I’m looking for. Textbook A by author X on pages zz-zzz. Houghton’s text, for example, discusses the matter in about 4 lines. I hope that there’s a better exposition than this somewhere. I’ve posed this question over and over and nobody seems to be able to give a straightforward answer. Prior to AR4, I suggested to Mike MacCracken that such an exposition whould be included in AR4 (I for one would like to see the best, most up-to-date exposition) but they elected not to provide such an explanation, apparently preferring to devote space to the fatuous and self-congratulatory history of climate science in AR4 chapter 1, which is of no conceivable use to policy-makers.
#11 mzed says:
Bad data, bad theories, bad models. I think you have conclusively proved that climate “science” is a muddle. i.e. useless. When all sides in an argument wind up arguing against themselves because the Reference Frame of each question is not coherent with the overall “system”.
To sort this out you must go back to the data. Start with how representative of reality? How accurate?
Steve:
Something I’ve wondered about ModelE: There a many different components, e.g., their seven-layer soil aspiration model, but surely some of this stuff is irrelevant. I’ve been a little smoked by Gavin’s insistence that you need “all the physics” to get the result.
Unfortunately, that leaves me with something very difficult to get my mind around. There is just too much stuff happening simultaneously in ModelE. I’d love a clear exposition on what dynamics they put into modelE, what the icing on the cake is, what the meat is…
#25 John,
Blago is a common nickname of the current Governor of Illinois. I’m not sure that is explanatory of anything.
#28 Steven,
We are also tired of forcing. Resistance is the new watch word.
David Whitehouse, in this editorial (which was referenced in one of the pdfs that started this thread), makes a powerful statement, but one that seems conflicting. I’ll quote it below:
Not increasing at the rate it did still suggests a warming trend, which he states is not evident.
Nevertheless, the issue of globally averaged temperature or RF being used as a metric of AGW aside, can somebody provide evidence for this lack of continued warming? Has the warming trend simply slowed, or is it flat … what exactly is going on during the most recent decade?
It is also the first I’ve ever seen from a physics viewpoint. Historically, we’re simply “told” that things work the way climatologists tell us they work. What is the foundation, I wonder?
Steve M., not to lend any credence to such skeptic views, but did you consider that perhaps there is no open exposition of the theory as it is widely used? I.e, perhaps there has been an unproved assumption, and they simply roll with it. If so, then your efforts to find such an exposition may be in vain.
Interesting use of the appeal to authority fallacy, or perhaps the bandwagon?
Mark
From what I’ve seen, it rose to 1998, leveled off for several years, and has since been in decline. Trends over such short periods are meaningless, so it there really isn’t a straightforward answer to the question “what exactly is going on during the most recent decade?”.
Mark
# 60
RichardT,
It’s not a joke, the atmosphere is not a greenhouse. Into a glasshouse, the greenhouse effect is not due to the accumulation of “greenhouse” gases. The gases into a glasshouse are the same gases outside the glasshouse. The greenhouse effect is due to the blocking of heat transfer between the inner environment of the greenhouse and the environment outside the greenhouse, that is, by impeding the heat transfer to the outer environment by convection. The Earth is not a greenhouse and physically talking the Earth is not an isolated system. This means that the Earth can interchange energy with the outer space. There are not “blankets”, glasses, or other systems that could impede the free flux of heat through the components of the atmosphere and to and from the Earth. Think about oceans, not CO2. CO2 absorb heat, but CO2 loses that heat as soon as CO2 absorbs it.
66:
Looks pretty flat to me since 1998, although Jones and the boys are fitting an upward curve to the data during this time. Here’s a better fit, IMHO.
Those are trends after “adjustments,” btw. I need a “rolling eyes” emoticon here… 🙂
Mark
The lower troposphere temperature trend from RSS for the past decade (July 1997 to June 2007) is …
… 0.001C per decade or 0.0001C per year
Since the figures are quoted to three decimal places and the 0.001C number is actually rounded-up to get to 0.001C amount, one has to conclude that the trend is not significantly different than ZERO
Furthermore, the lower troposphere temperatures in June 2007 are 0.76C lower than the peak temperature of April 199 when the record El Nino of 1997-98 was dumping its heat into the atmosphere.
In my mind, that is FLAT.
Of course, these figures have not been adjusted by James Hansen so the warmers try not to talk about these numbers.
# Steve McIntyre
Is this a reasonable high-level exposition of “the higher the cooler” argument?
1. Radiation is emitted to space from various layers in the atmosphere.
2. Extra CO2 increases the opacity of the atmosphere to IR.
3. This means the radiation comes from higher layers.
4. Since the higher layers are cooler, less radiation goes into space than before (proportional to T to the 4th power).
5. Less radiation goes into space but the same amount is being received. The earth is a net absorber of energy and must warm up.
6. This situation will continue as long as the temperature of the higher layers are less than the temperature of the original emitting layers; the amount of warming can be calculated easily if you know the characteristics of the opacity change.
7. It seems reasonable to expect the surface warming will increase a comparable amount to the upper layers.
8. Water vapour feedbacks add lots of complexity.
If so, then (genuine question) what specifically do you want clarifying? I probably won’t be able to answer, but I’m interested to know, and I do have questions myself.
No peanuts from anyone please, I’ve just had my dinner.
# 61
Dr. McIntyre,
It would be fine if all those skeptic opinions weren’t just arguments, but most of them are supported by empirical observations. If we apply physics to the issue, the AGW hypothesis crumbles. That is because AGW is based mostly in assumptions, not in real physics. One example on what I’m saying resides in the twisting of Stephan-Boltzmann formula, you know, the value of alpha. I’ve not find any table of thermal properties of CO2 where alpha of CO2 be 5.35, except for Myhre’s “adapted” formula, which is not supported by the heat transfer discipline. Hence we deduced that it is an invented constant that has not been observed by physicists in real nature or in experimentation. If things run this way in AGW hypothesis, then you’ll never find an AGW argument based on Thermodynamics. I’ve debated with many, many supporters of the AGW hypothesis; I’ve never seen someone presenting a procedure based on real physics data. Models, and that’s their entire basis.
#69. Nasif, again, the focus of this site is examining and verifying theories, not the advocacy of alternative theories. I realize that you have your own theories, which may or may not be valid. But I can’t have this site taken over by people advocating their own theories, as this site ends up being tarred with the weakest of any such advocacies.
#74. NAsif, again, it may or may not be possible to articulate a model. My objective is identify the BEST such exposition. I’m interested in suggestions on what is a good exposition from AGW proponents, I’m not interested right now in skeptic expositions until I have a clear exposition of the mainstream position.
# 73
Steven Milesworthy,
I think that Dr. McIntyre wants you to explain the procedure or procedures by which you’ve deduced the arguments on your message # 73. For example, if you say that extra CO2 increases the opacity of the air to the longwave Infrared Radiation, Dr. McIntyre wants you to explain it on a physics background.
I’d like to see a computer model that can recreate, from first principles, the changing global climate over thousands of years. So far I have not seen any.
re 56 Carl Smith: Thank you for the reference. I hope all bloggers will read it.
re 61: I call to Dr. M’s attention to the line on page 37, of the preceeding — it is impossible to find a book on non-equilibrium thermodynamics or radiation transfer where this effect is derived from first principles.”
I think this is for the reason that all quantitative statements on AGW beyond the trivial arise within the GCM’s, not basic physics. I cannot imagine keeping it a secret even it is just funny book physics.
The link provided in 56 is very interesting. Here is one quote:
Maybe this is why Steve M (and IPCC) has been unable to find a thorough exposition on the physics of AGW.
Here is a BIG problem no one in the AGW alarmist crowd seems to want to address. CO2 levels are rising faster than expected.
Here is another article to confirm the trend.
Yet what is the rate of temp rate increase between the two decades. The graph cited by jae shows much more warming during the 90’s, than during the present century. The first six months of this year has been the second warmest ever, BUT, there has been a moderate El Nino to help drive the temp measurements up. With out that condition, the temps so far would likely be in line with the 21’st century record as it stands. So, there is even more CO2 floating around than predicted, which should raise the planet’s “fever”, but the warming trend seems to have stabilized. What gives?
#38: “However, this would also *reduce* the total amount of warming that has been “detected”, would it not?”
–Correct. Let’s say you can just plug in the difference (probably you can’t), in which case the surface record correction it would take to line up roughly with UAH (but not RSS…) would be -30-35%. In which case we’d be looking at ~.5 warming over the last century, maybe slightly more. I guess that would make for a reduction in CO2 sensitivity of…maybe 20%? These are total estimates, not based on any serious GCMs at all, but you could at least think along those lines…ask a real gcm scientist if you want a better answer 🙂 And remember this is an “all things being equal” answer’€”doesn’t take into account better understanding of things like clouds, for example.
It would apparently make the upper estimates (like 4.5C of warming) more fanciful, but the average expected warming would still be within the range predicted by the IPCC. Though it would also lower the end of the range. Now I guess I can see that it would also reduce the amount of warming attributable to ggs, which would increase the *relative* role of other factors like solar influences. So the next question is, how much would this change the relative proportions of warming attributable to ggs and solar influences? I don’t know the answer to that (yet).
(BTW IIRC actually the surface data and the UAH dataset are *already* within each other’s margins of error, fwiw!)
#43 & #44: yes, in general I support the efforts of CA to criticize and analyze the various parts of the agw hypothesis/theory (and Mr. McIntyre, thank you for your comments). In general, I find them constructive. There’s nothing wrong with “getting it right”’€”have I said anything to the contrary? I just want to sort out the good arguments from the bad, that’s all. (I guess I view the policy questions completely separately from the scientific ones, so most of that rhetoric’€”from both sides’€”just blows over my head.)
So why is my focus on the “peanut gallery” pathetic? I think it’s a very interesting, and possibly influential, record of the public’s view on the debate. Again, I’m not really here to advocate for one side or the other’€”just want to find the best arguments either way.
#46: The surface warming is not +.17C/decade in the tropics–that is the overall surface trend/decade. Still, there does seem to be a problem with the tropics’€”here’s a recent paper (2005, so a little out of date, but w/ J. Christie as a co-author) that indicates only the RSS measurements support tropospheric temperature leading in the tropics’€”see p. 24 for the money charts:
Click to access sap1-1prd-exsum-all.pdf
#53: “The basis behind the the AGW hypothesis is that enhanced CO2 either directly or indirectly is solely responsible for the rise in temperature over the last century or so.”
See, this is just plain wrong. No sensible person or scientist is making this claim. The UN is not making this claim. I certainly agree that co2 is not solely responsible for the past century’s temperature trends!
Mark T., the temp didn’t just rise then level off in 1998, it fell after 1998 back to pre 1998 level, then increased and leveled off. The implication that the GH effect could not act on heat above the pre 1998 at those concentrations.
Matei, I don’t think we can really know ’till we have another 20 years or so of data.
#80. Look, one more time, I do not want to rely on skeptical articles such as the reference in #56. It may be right, but it is not authoritative. I don’t even think that its survey is necessarily very good. For example, Ramanathan had articles in the 1970s which are not discussed. I am only interested in “authoritative” presentations = mzed, any thoughts?
#86. #56 etc
Steve, I’ve just read the link and as a physicist I must confess that I’m now having doubts as to whether or not the natural greenhouse effect is real or not. I’ll need to read the paper through once again but one thing is for sure is that I won’t be using the phase greenhouse gas effect again.
Also at what point did the enhanced greenhouse gas effect change from being caused by carbonic acid to carbon dioxide?
I’m pretty certain that carbonic acid is CO2.
Ah! Of course it’s atmospheric CO2 dissolved in all that water vapour in the atmosphere hence all those positive feedback effects in the GCMs. I must pop out and measure the pH of all that carbonic acid that’s rained down on me over the last month.
#76 Steve M.,
Isn’t an incorrect model part of data integrity? The GCM folks admit that their vertical circulation models are not up to snuff. If that is the case and vertical circulation is critical to getting it right, might that not be an integrity issue?
So far we have clouds – pick a number.
What about vertical circulation being – pick a number?
That all depends upon how you filter it… I’ve seen several varieties and only pointed out one. It also depends upon how the magicians “adjust” the data, but that’s another story.
Mark
I think, aaron, my point was that you cannot tell any trend over such a short period. If you look at the record before adjustments and before any filtering, it rises, falls, rises, falls, yearly, monthly, daily, etc. Saying that anything definitive is occurring over a decade is disingenuous in that respect.
Mark
Steve M.,
Perhaps you should have a look at ‘The Climate Book’ by Pierrehumbert. It is not yet finished completely but you can donwload parts of it from his homepage (uchicago.edu).
re Steve M. Search for papers — Do you want to include classics papers like–
Click to access 1980_Wang_Stone.pdf
Click to access i1520-0469-39-4-879.pdf
Or more recent like–
Click to access adem.pdf
Or Ramanathan review articles —
Click to access FCMTheRadiativeForcingDuetoCloudsandWaterVapor.pdf
or something else entirely?
PS: At 3pm, CA has been offline most of the day. Is there someplace where an email would be useful?
#93. That looks like the sort of thing that I’m interested in checking out.
#94. I’m somewhat familiar with Ramanathan’s papers and have thought about posting on them for some time.
#86: After a lot of reading, I *think* that this is actually a surface phenomenon, rather than anything complicated happening in the atmosphere…more warmth gets trapped in the oceans, and doesn’t get re-radiated very quickly, moderating the dT at the surface. (There also seem to be water vapor and convection phenomena that I don’t understand.) Does that sound right?
#96:
As do I. When a computer model can capture how a thermal rises from a warm surface, cools and eventually produces a cloud, under windy and calm conditions and day-to-night transitions, at various longitudes and lattitudes, at all times of the year, over different topographies, we will have a starting point for studying the effect of “greenhouse gasses”.
That the temperature records need a lot of improving and that the surf/trop divergence is again getting out control (in the tropics, where it most matters, it always was) is clearly shown by the latest June anomalies for the SH. As usual, GISS is the most eccentric of the lot:
– HadCRU: Globally, sharp reduction of the anomaly at just +0.394 C. Small chances of a record 2007, despite Jones’ predictions. The SH shows a June negative anomaly of -0.051 C. A negative monthly anomaly has only happened 3 times since 2000.
– GISSTEMP: Global: +0.49 C, record hottest year so far. SH (only met station data): +0.47 C.
– MSU UHA: Global: +0.22 C, SH: +0.03 C.
– MSU RSS: Global: +0.139 C, SH (-20/-70 lat): -0.203 C.
Granted, the base periods for the anomalies are different but with this sort of differences derived essentially from the same couple of datasets, Steve and others’ auditing efforts are more than justified.
Whatever the case, I consider myself a genuine skeptic, which to me means that I don’t think science can currently explain how the climate system works, let alone account for the dubious temperature records through a set of even more dubious addition of forcings’, IPCC style.
If pressed hard to choose one single, major driver of global temperature changes, I’d be in favour of ocean dynamics, à la Bill Gray. PDO regime shifts alone explain basically all we know about the 20th century temperature history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation
But then again, GHGs and solar effects, among many others, could also have their say in some aspects of this chaotic system. That the current GW hysteria is a joke goes without saying. And probably it will some day be considered one regretful episode for Science as a whole.
Re. warming stasis in the last decade:
Even GISS can hardly hide it: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C_lrg.gif
HadCRU graphs actually suggests an interesting 1945 sort of situation: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual.png
which was even more noticeable before their last adjustment and is still very prominent for their SH plot: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/crutem3/diagnostics/hemispheric/southern/annual.png
Perhaps – but that is more suggestive of a solar impact, as shortwave solar radiation can penetrate the ocean, bu IR can’t.
Yes! 🙂
#98 Mikel,
So Malinkavitch (sp?) cycles play no significant role at all????
What role would they play in such a short time frame Dane? The Milankovich Cycles are thousands of years in length.
Re #33
Ah, the joys of non-intuitive terminology. As an electrochemist I’m very familiar with this sort of thing starting with Ben Franklin assigning positive and negative charge the wrong way so that actual current flow is backwards and it only gets worse from there. When is an anode not an anode? If it’s in a battery, it depends on whether the battery is being charged or discharged.
A clear rigorous thermodynamic explanation is exactly what I’ve been spending a large amount of time looking for myself. As an engineer who has worked with IR temperature sensors, I think it is necessary to explain the nuts and bolts of the thermodynamic theory before being able to claim any meaningful error bands for AGW.
The confounding issues I’ve come across are :
1- Negative feed back by the water vapor heat-pump – the moving of the condensation layer to a higher altitudes as temperatures increase – this is further confounded with the strength of convection currents dependent on temperature gradients and has me convinced that clouds would need to be much better modeled to claim any meaningful error band for AGW.
Much of cloud formation and precipitation is nonlinear to the point of chaos – even lightning strikes induce changes in rain rates. Prediction chaos even on small scale systems is computationally intensive. There are also effects of nucleation triggers such as cosmic rays, dust etc that don’t seem to be controlled for.
2- The interplay of irrigation – a spot check on Wichita I found a historic RH increasing about 5% (I would like to see historical graphs of this (and in other locations) – or just a source of raw data). How can I know that changes in water vapor aren’t totally confounding the CO2 story? (The argument that the water vapor is only in the air for about a week is strange as water re-evaporate as it hits the ground and aquifers really have gone down.)
3- The interplay of the black body radiation and absorption of CO2 and H2O, spectral emission/absorption, and kinetic transfer.
Many of the would be explainers seem to have blackbody and solar radiation confused as being one and the same.
re 95 Try Climate as a problem in physics by Monin and Shishkov
http://eprint.ufn.ru/sellFile.jsp?file=13
Steve, in #61 you said:
I hate to say it, but I don’t think you’ll ever get one. It doesn’t seem anyone’s interested in summarizing anything so people can understand it. They just point out when you make mistakes in the math, or when you discount the importance of some idea nobody can prove the importance (or ever the role) of.
Mark, in #67 you quoted:
I’d agree with that and say those not “on the bandwagon” might disagree on the magnitude of AGW (I prefer “The role and extent of humans in influencing climate change”), but I don’t think anyone can say “There’s no greenhouse effect.” and have anybody believe them that isn’t also unaware there is one. We know there’s a “greenhouse effect”. It’s not really like a real greenhouse, but that’s what they call it. It’s a phrase like “global warming” that doesn’t mean what it means. (in #92, by the way, you are correct. 30 year periods are more like it. There’s a reason the baseline is 30 years, as well.)
Nasif, in #69 you bring the above up, but that’s what they call it. No I don’t particularly like it either. But it is a phrase. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761578504/Greenhouse_Effect.html
sonicfrong, in #81, I like the articles but I wonder sometimes who’s writing these things. In the first quote it has “…CO2, the main greenhouse gas…” Gee, no, it’s not. As far as being the main greenhouse gas blamed for AGW, yes. I wish people could be more specific and correct about things.
mzed, in #83 you mention a few things, but you are correct; trying to discuss this subject and not knowing what part is (and they are usally all lumped together) 1. Science 2. Politics (both government and/or academia) 3. Computer modeling 4. A bad attitude 5. Statistics 6. Other mathematical issues 7. “common sense” 8. “conventional wisdom” 9. Policy (decisions vs implementation) 10. Mixtures of 1 or more of the things above like the IPCC is. 11. And others. You also comment on #53; currently, that is correct; directly or indirectly is pretty much “all”. CO2 is “the problem and the solution” to everything, or at least it’s usually treated (put forth) that way, as I mentioned above. The fact that even the IPCC says land use and aeresols are part of the “global warming”, is also usually ignored in the discussions or op/ed stuff.
DeWitt, #103: LOL, anode! As an electronics type of person, I don’t agree the charges are backwards. The electrons move, the protons are the holes the electrons move through, and those are the charges on them. At least the way we think of them.
Re #93
PierreHumbert is one of the “operators of the outstanding blog” surreal climate.
Nothing like slipping a reference to an unbiased source of information…
Re: #107
But that’s what Steve M. is looking for: a mainstream (i.e., biased) dissertation. What better source than someone from RC?
Sorry for a stupid question. Why air is getting colder with altitude?
And why stratosphere is heating with altitude?:
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter1/vert_temp_strat.html
re: #109
There are two separate things involved. Quite apart from AGW or even GW, air is cooler with altitude because as you get higher in the atmosphere the pressure becomes less so that the air cools according to the ideal gas law: PV = nRT. But also work is done as air rises, giving it potential energy. And to maintain the conservation of energy, the kinetic energy of the gas (i.e. the temperature) must be reduced. But all this is a background situation and true regardless of whether or not GW or AGW is happening.
If there is GW, from whatever cause, then the temperature of the bulk of the atmosphere will rise and the emission of IR will increase. So toward the top of the atmosphere more IR can escape. But the amount of IR which can escape from the earth must balance the amount absorbed by the earth. So, since the surface will be emitting more IR directly into space via the regions where no GHG emits, the atmosphere must make up for it by emitting less into space via the regions where GHGs DO emit. This works out to happen by the outer layers of atmosphere cooling. To say more on the subject I’d have to transgress Steve M’s ban on thermodynamics.
Re #101
So Malinkavitch (sp?) cycles play no significant role at all????
Sorry, I was thinking of much shorter time scales. I don’t know about Milankovich cycles though. If they do cause the glacial cycles, when exactly is the next one due?
Of course in a broad sense the sun is the big, major driver.
#99: Yes, so that’s not really what I meant–I guess I was trying to speak in relative terms. It appears that the troposphere is more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than the surface. This seems to be due to a number of factors, not all of which are clear to me yet.
Re: #111
“Quite apart from AGW or even GW, air is cooler with altitude because as you get higher in the atmosphere the pressure becomes less so that the air cools according to the ideal gas law: PV = nRT.”
The statement “air is cooler with altitude” is incorrect and misleading, because the Earth’s atmosphere is not an “ideal gas” in a laboratory. In reality, the temperature of the upper stratosphere increases as the air pressure decreases exponentially, the temperature of the lower stratosphere is constant while the air pressure decreases exponentially, and the temperature of the troposphere decreases linearly while the air pressure decreases exponentially. See rawindsonde data and compare to the Website:
Earth Atmosphere Model, Glenn Research Center, NASA
http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/atmos.html
“But the amount of IR which can escape from the earth must balance the amount absorbed by the earth.”
No, because of the interactions of the electromagnetic energy and the planetary matter. Planetary matter stores energy until its capacity to do so has reached its limit, and a given electromagnetic energy frequency incident upon the planet is shifted in frequency rather than being exactly matched in quantity by outgoing emissions, reflections, and so forth. Variable imbalances between incident electromagnetic radiation arriving upon the Earth and electromagnetic energy departing from the Earth is normal for a planetary environment composed of matter with variable energy properties and to be expected until the planet ceases to exist. The planet can cease to exist when a Solar nova produces enough radiant energy and particulate kinetic energy to elevate the energy equilibrium of the planetary matter high enough to result in the vaporization of the planet Earth.
Read the reference in #56:
Click to access Falsification_of_CO2.pdf
Don’t follow the physics. But could someone who does offer a view of whether this is legitimate? They seem to be arguing, if I followed it, that for CO2 to produce a ‘greenhouse effect’ is contrary to basic physics. Is there any merit to the paper at all?
The usual explanation, as far as I know, is that the upper stratosphere heats relative to the lower stratosphere because that’s where the ozone layer absorbs the short wavelength (~300 nanometer and shorter) ultra-violet radiation emitted by the sun. There’s also some absorption of infra-red radiation emitted by the earth’s surface and lower atmosphere by ozone’s 10 micrometer absorption band. Why the lower stratosphere is more or less isothermal is less clear, but it may have something to do with being pinned at the low end by the temperature at the tropopause and at the upper end by the beginning of the temperature increase in the upper stratosphere.
Mr. McIntyre: try this:
http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/
This is the complete version of the document whose second chapter I linked to earlier. Click on Chapter 5, and scroll down to page 111-112 to begin reading section 5.4. There you’ll see a list of references that seem relevant–though I haven’t checked them yet. Hopefully they will explain mechanisms rather than just provide descriptive statistics.
Re: atmosphere cooling/warming with elevation
Thanks for explanations.
I still do not get it. Warmer atmosphere should emit more IR into space, yet warmer surface will increase emissivity also (at IR windows). It, actually, means global cooling. And to solve this paradox upper stratosphere is supposed to cool down and emit less, while atmosphere as a whole will warm. B-rrr…
I bet we will have to wait for proper discussion at termo…(self-snip) tread.
BTW, paper of Gerlich and Tscheuschner is magnificent.
115, Peter: That paper is right on target, IMHO. In essence, they are saying that, at normal temperatures, convection and conduction aree the primary mechanisms for heat transfer and that radiation is not very important (at very high temperatures it becomes important). The “ghgs,” including CO2 absorb and hold heat for a period of time, but they do not cause any increases in temperature through radiation. They help keep you (and the thermometer) warm by bumping into you, not by radiating IR. It is a great discussion of what’s wrong with the “greenhouse gas” hypothesis. The whole notion of the greenhouse effect is wrong.
#115, Peter,
I read through the paper of #56 once and think that it’s correct. My take away from the paper is that GHG trapping infrared radiation to raise temperatures violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics [sorry Steve]. Heat a slab of material (the atmosphere) on one side (sunlight hitting the earth’s surface) and cool it on the other(outer space). Then the temperature of the material in the interior of the slab can never be hotter than the heated side, 2nd law, unless you add a heat pump which does mechanical work. The GHS violates this because the claim is that the opacity of the CO2 at IR traps the radiation which in turn heats up the interior above the temperature of the heated side, without a heat pump, a violation of the 2nd law. They’re right, AGW violates basic physics. The examples they give of heating water on a stove are very apt analogies for what happens in the atmosphere.
They also confirm what Dan Hughes has been saying here and on his blog for a while. The results of the models depend entirely on the resolution of the grid that is used to solve the equations. Change the resolution and the output will change completely. Or as they quote von Storch “The discretization is the model”.
Re: #118 Heating of the upper stratosphere is due to the absorption of Solar ultraviolet energy by a layer of Ozone. There is little mixing with the underlying atmospheric layers, so there is little opportunity for convection and conduction to mix and redistribute the energy with those colder air layers.
#120: ? I think the simplicity of your model is causing some confusion…there are lots of “heat pumps”–reflected sw radiation, water vapor convection, etc.
#119: But so far as I understand, greenhouse models are explicitly taking convection into account…it’s even in the Wikipedia article.
#122, mzed
You misunderstand the meaning of “heat pump”. That’s a machine like the compressor on your air conditioner that uses mechanical energy to move heat from the inside of your house where it’s cool to the outside where it’s warm.
Guys
Thanks for the explanation of #56. But this is absolutely flabbergasting if true. Are we really saying that the mechanism which IPCC invokes to explain why CO2 is warming simply does not and cannot happen? That even if CO2 and other GHG levels rose way beyond present levels, like 5 times, it would produce no warming whatever? And that this is just a matter of undergrad level physics? How can such an insane situation have come about? Why was there no storm of protest from physicists all these years?
125: Amazing, isn’t it!
Yes.
Yes, #2.
You’re on a roll…
The same reason the hucksters such as Mann, Schmidt, Hansen and Jones get away with the statistical crap they’ve been pulling for decades now… apathy. Nobody has paid any attention till this point. Nasif has been hinting at this for quite a while, btw.
Mark
#124: No, evaporation is a mechanical process, just like a heat pump. So is reflected sw radiation, really–it’s not anything that the ground absorbs, then re-radiates. It bounces right off (somewhat over-simplified) back into the atmosphere.
Re: #125 Read about the Arrhenius equation, its further versions, the Arrhenius greenhouse law, and critiques by scientists such as Knut à…ngström and others. Compare the Arhennius greenhouse law and the subsequent versions as used by the IPPC and other AGW proponents to the works of Scotese and GEOCARB as depicted in the combined graph:
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
How is it possible to reconcile the Arhennius greenhouse law and its subsequent versions to the reported measurements depicted in the combined graph of Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time?
How is it possible to adequately define (1) a Global Temperature, (2) a Global Average Temperature, or (3) a Global Mean temperature? What must be included in such definitions in order for them to be adequate, and adequate for what purpose?
One graphic from that site is very important.
#128, mzed,
Go study a book on undergraduate thermodynamics and statistical mechanics before making more statements like that.
Re: #56
WRT to the Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics paper, see John Brignell’s 29/07/07 posting: Carbon dioxide exonerated?
#131: Let me put it this way: Richard Lindzen, an accomplished climate scientist, in writing on his Iris Hypothesis, assumes a natural greenhouse effect. Are you saying that Lindzen, too is, wrong, and there is no greenhouse effect? If he is wrong, then shouldn’t Mark T. include him on his list of “hucksters”?
And I’m happy to admit that you know much more about thermodynamics than I do. So, here’s a question: can you ever have air that is hotter than the surface?
#133, sure, if you blow it in from somewhere else.
He’s not trying to peddle intentional lies, the hucksters on my list are. There’s a difference between being wrong about the details of something, and knowing you’re wrong but selling it anyway.
Mark
Re #51,
About volcanic eruptions and their impact on temperature, the Briffa reconstruction can be found at
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/posters/2000-03-TO-mendoza.pdf figure 6. The largest eruption was Krakatau in 1815 (Volcanic Eruption Index – VEI 7). There were 9 eruptions of VEI 5 in the past 600 years, including the Pinatubo of 1992. The latter induced a cooling of about 0.6 °C in its peak year. The effects of the Pinatubo were gone within 3 years, of the Krakatau within a decade. Conclusion: the average effect of volcanic eruptions on temperature over the past 600 years was less than 0.1 °C.
The indirect conclusion is that the effect of human induced aerosols (4 days average tropospheric lifetime, vs. 3 years stratospheric for the Pinatubo) is very low (despite the larger mass/yr) and largely overblown in current climate models…
Cool. Ok, here’s another question: is the warmth from the sun transfered immediately to the earth’s surface (at, let’s say, the speed of light), or does any of it take time to propagate downwards through the atmosphere?
RE 136.
Thanks, I knew it was out there. I hope he finds it helpful
It takes time to migrate upward, as is visible in winterinversion in Ojmjakon and Barrow, the surface cools faster than the atmosphere and the cold pulse slowly moves upwards.
Mzed;
We are talking about electromagnetic radiation, so if you consider the earth’s atmosphere transparent to incoming radiation from the sun, then the transport of energy through the atmosphere is approximately at the speed of light in vacuum.
As you’d probably has noticed, when a cloud blocking the sun disappears, you don’t notice any delay between the sun reappearing and the heat from the sun.
We can’t wait to hear what your point is.
# 133 mzed
you can have air warmer than the surface it’s fairly rare though. There is on spectrograph I saw taken by NIMBUS in the 70s over the Antarctic (?) where the air was warmer. Sometimes here in Sydney, I suspect, it happens too when we get the wind from desert to the west which is still hot when the (natural surface has cooled). This is not a frequent occurrence. More generally what happens the air rises as it warms to be replaced by cooler air thereby keeping the air cooler than the surface beneath it.
#140: I’m not trying to make any point: I’m just trying to understand the thermodynamics. Ok, so you’re saying: *no* solar radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere? None? I’m just trying to clarify. I agree that if “you consider the earth’s atmosphere transparent to incoming radiation from the sun”, then sure, it all propagates at c. So, my question is just: is the earth’s atmosphere actually transparent to incoming radiation from the sun?
Also, I’m still wondering if Richard Lindzen is wrong about the natural greenhouse effect?
#139: Very interesting. But: *how is that possible*? Doesn’t it violate the fundamental laws of thermodynamics? In other words, how could it *possibly be the case* that the surface is colder than the atmosphere? Or are you merely saying that it actually takes time for the temperature differential to propagate through the atmosphere, i.e. for the system to restore itself to equilibrium?
Mzed, you say:
Sure. It happens every night, when the surface cools faster than the atmosphere.
Any other questions?
w.
Re #136
Ferdinand Engelbeen: I think that you have two eruptions confused. Krakatoa exploded in 1883. In 1815 the major volcanic eruption was Tambora in Indonesia. 1816 is sometimes referred to as the “year without a summer” due to the unusually cool weather in Europe. Krakatoa was so loud that it was claimed that the explosion could be heard more than several thousand miles away. Again, there were anecdotal stories of greatly lowered temperatures but I don’t remember any ice core data or tree ring data that showed either volcano’s effect.
Both Pinatubo and El Chichon resulted in first raising and then lowering stratosphere temperatures. This graph is on Milloy’s Junkscience website. It looks like the lower stratosphere responds more to volcanos than El Ninos and the lower troposphere does the opposite. Is there a known reason for this?
Btw, the Junkscience website showed very little lower atmosphere change due to Pinatubo. Do the orthodox AGW theories explain the difference in the way volcanos affect ground station temperatures as opposed to stratosphere temperatures?
Re #103, 106
Franklin, a true genius, surmised that observations of static electricity could best be accounted for if one hypothesized two polarities which he defined as positive and negative. He was able to separate charge from electrically neutral objects by rubbing cat’s fur on an amber rod. He assumed that whatever particles constituted electric charge were rubbed off the amber to reside on the cat’s fur. Thus, he determined that the cat’s fur took up a positive charge while the amber was left with a negative charge. He had a 50-50 chance of guessing right, but it turned out as the science developed, that the charge actually moved from the cat’s fur to the amber rod. So from that time forward, the movable particle that constituted electric charge was assigned a negative polarity.
BTW, the Greek word for amber is: elektron.
Re #144:
1816 was also famously called the “year without a summer” in New England. Actually, there was plenty of summer heat in the Northeast during July and August of 1816. The problem was a devastating freeze June 9-10 which wiped out most vegetable crops from Maine to Rhode Island. Particularly hard hit was the corn crop. The crop was replanted immediately thereafter and was doing fairly well through July and August where precipitation was normal and temperatures on occasion made it well into the 90s. By mid-September the corn crop was described as looking good, although well behind in development. Then on September 29-30 another severe freeze moved across the NE wiping out the second plantings. Famine followed and this singular event was one of the reasons for the subsequent migration of farmers from the NE into the Midwest. BTW, temperatures in the following New England winter, 1816-1817, were generally above normal.
So the name “year without a summer” was somewhat of a misnomer for New England, the appellation stemming from two severe events, both of which fell outside of the period of astronomical summer which falls, roughly, between June 21st and September 21st.
Re: 127,133.
G&T do not exactly claim that GHG radiative effect does not exist. They claim that particular IPCC physical model (radiative balance, average global radiative temperature, etc.) contradicts second law of T. When convective heat transfer role (major one) is incorporated, some GHG radiative effect could take place, yet total heat transfer will be from warmer to colder media, as it should be. Thus surface/atmosphere heat transfer calculation should incorporate convection and evaporation/condensation along with radiative transfer, integrated through Earth surface grid, with special attention to day/night differences. Underlying physical equations, e.i. N-S, are not solvable either analytically or numerically.
BTW, R. Lindzen was talking about severe undermining of convection surface cooling effect for years.
Two interesting points from the paper.
Sun’s irradiation at the Earth orbit contains about 10% UV, about 45% of “visible” light, and about 45% of IR. So upper stratosphere is heated not only by UV, but by solar IR too (with GHG effect leading to sun overheating, LOL)
“…absorbed radiation is transformed into the thermal movement of all gas molecules. There is no increased selective re-emission of infrared radiation at the low temperatures of the Earth’s atmosphere.” P. 92
Sorry for the long post, I would like if anyone could respond.
I’m going to address the Svensmark and Shaviv/Veizer works and demonstrate why they do not stand up to scrutiny, and their own works have been plagued by physical errors. This dynamic trio of scientists (along with a few sidekicks) all seem to self-validate each others papers without addressing the rebuttals by the mainstream scientific community. Now you may be convinced that a paper in 1997 disproved the thousands of others and the now strong scientific basis for AGW but I don’t see any Nobel Prizes floating around to Svensmark and to Shaviv/Veizer, mainly, because they are wrong.
It has been proposed that Earth’s climate is affected by changes in cloudiness caused by variations in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays in the atmosphere. This proposal stems from an observed correlation between cosmic ray intensity and Earth’s average cloud cover over the course of one solar cycle. The correlation between cosmic rays and Earth’s cloud cover over a solar cycle was proposed (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997 {influenced by Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, 1991}) that cosmic rays facilitate cloud formation by seeding or “fueling” the atmosphere with trails of ions that can help water droplets form. Therefore, changes in the Sun’s magnetic field that influence the flux of cosmic rays could affect Earth’s climate. This led to claims that cosmic rays are the main influence on modern climate change. According to these sources, the intensity of cosmic rays varies globally because of changes in the strength of the solar wind, which carries a weak magnetic field into the heliosphere, shielding Earth from low-energy galactic charged particles. Now, changes in cloud cover are important because clouds exert a strong effect on the Earth’s radiative balance and lead to a cooling effect. They published satellite cloud data, which seemed to show that total cloud cover was strongly correlated to the galactic cosmic ray intensity. The cosmic ray bandwagon was jumped on by skeptics once the “output of the sun” argument was shown to be invalid. The cosmic ray argument still poses many problems that the sun argument has but it is still used.
However, the particles observed in these experiments are orders of magnitude too small to be Cloud Condensation Nuclei. Moreover, the focus of these studies is on low clouds over the ocean. Over the ocean, there are enormous amounts of condensation nuclei related to sea salt particles, mineral dust, or sulphur-based matter. For the hypothesis to work, it needs to be demonstrated that increases in Cloud Condensation Nuclei occur even in the presence of lots of other nuclei, that this actually changed cloud cover, that there has been a decrease in cosmic ray flux (CRF), that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing, and that the order of magnitude was great enough to explain temperatures without anthropogenic influence. These cannot be done.
This graph depicts the recent relationship of cosmic rays-
And on Radiative Forcings (IPCC 2007)
What about the Svensmark paper? It has been shown that authors have manipulated the physical data by adding four additional points covering the period of global warming to a heavily smoothed (or filterd) curve, which were only partially filtered or not filtered at all http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/DamonLaut2004.pdf (see the graphs on the page as well).
There are also a few more objections, notably by http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL023621.shtml
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000JGR…10511851K
which are not addressed in Svensmark (2007) which tells me that Svensmark is not concerned with the truth of the subject but rather pushing his point of view regardless of the evidence or what he has to do to his data to make it work.
In addition, Svensmark and Friis-Christensen (1997) and Svensmark (1998) was based primarily on data from the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program that does not represent total global cloud cover but were used in their analysis (Laut, 2003). But the update by the ISCCP shows that the total global cloud cover since 1992 is in contradiction to the hypothesis proposed by the authors. The authors have recently changed their “total cloud cover” to “low cloud cover” which, to me, is curious as higher clouds and middle clouds (which are not influenced by Galactic Cosmic Rays) shield the lower ones a lot of times so satellites cannot see the low-level clouds where there are higher clouds above blocking the view (we look down). Marsh and Svensmark (2003) attempted to “correct” their work to the ISCCP low cloud data but there is no good reason to put in a correction becasue of a gap in the satellites which they proposed was the reason for error. Among several flaws, including arithmetical errors, when the correct data were used the correlation broke down, Svensmark began to use a different measure of cloudiness, justifying this by saying that the new measure made more sense than the original one. Sorry, I don’t see why I should take this seriously.
But deception or not aside, I think the most important point to take is that there is no trend in cosmic rays and so its explanative power for today’s global warming disappears. I accept that cosmic rays are the principal source of ions in the lower atmosphere. Nucleation occurs around the ions because of electrostatic forces, but the conclusions of Svensmark et al. do not follow from this and ignore other factors in forming cloud condensation nuclei and the importance of each type of cloud condensation nuclei. Cosmic Ray Flux (CRF) curves presented by the key cosmic-ray hypothesis proponents (which are few), do not show any trend, yet it has been claimed that CRF is responsible for the most recent warming. Explain this to me? Why does the CRF hypothesis, which necessitates pronounced ~11-year variations, not have pronounced ~11-year variations?
Another point. Nighttime temperatures have been increasing at a faster rate (0.2°C/decade) than daytime temperatures (0.1°C/decade) (IPCC, 2001). This is not explained by a change in solar forcing or cosmic galactic ray flux changes. This alone suggest there is an alternative mechanism behing modern global warming apart from solar activity.
We still run into the problem as well with the cooling of the stratosphere, mesopshere, and thermosphere (which is really undeniable right now).
You can find these results many places:
http://ozone.unep.org/Assessment_Panels/SAP/Scientific_Assessment_2006/index.shtml
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html
K. P. Shine et al., (2003); Baldwin et al., (2007)…I can keep going but I think you should review a few of these sources, as well as the one you provided. This one is a no-win for you. Clearly, the solar and CRF arguments have been destroyed as an explanation for modern-day global warming.
However, you may be more convinced by the latest study which shows that global warming in recent decades has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a increase in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Nir Shaviv now argues that there may be a lag in Earth’s reaction to the Sun because of the thermal inertia of the oceans- this falls apart as well due to the rate of rise of temperatures and the lack of trends heading toward equilibrium. From Lockwood and Frohlich (2007) entitled “Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature.”
It is true Veizer et al., 2000 as well as Nir Shaviv (same names over and over) raised some questions about CO2 being the sole factor behind climate change in at least 1/3 of the Phanerozoic. Of course, their claims are built on the whle CRF argument being valid. They focus on mismatches in the Late Ordovician period (~440 million years ago), and the cool climate of the Jurassic and early Cretaceous, 220’€”120 million years ago. (Although Gibbs et al., 1997 believe that high levels of CO2 in the Ordivician were outweighed by a significant decrease in solar luminosity, yet without that CO2, there would have been a runaway icehouse effect). Moreover, positioning of Gondwanaland could allow high CO2 and glaciation periods to co-exist (also see Crowley and Berner, 2001). The Crowley and Berner study says CO2 has played an important role in long-term climate change, but other factors (particularly in geography, in response to the Veizer study) could cause such conditions. The ice-albedo feedback is an example, as there were no high latitudal ice sheets during the existence of a single mass continent. CO2 models work well with the formation of ice sheets and such.
Here is the Crowley and Berner (2001) study which suggests a strong linkage between low CO2 and low temperatures in the Phanerozoic as summarized in this graph:
You may also notice that antarctic glaciations starting ~30 Mya was likely a response to the sharp declines in CO2, as well as northern hemispheric glaciations less than 10 mya.
From the IPCC 4th assessment report: http://img2.putfile.com/main/6/17800370218.jpg
Of course Shaviv threw in his comments about this article, notably, “it doesn’t match our cosmic ray hypothesis.” But aside from the Rahmstorf objections (which still remain cogent), a follow-up analysis of the same data from Shaviv a year later by Knud Jahnke (Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy), showed no evidence of significant changes in cosmic-ray exposure with a 143-million-year period ‘€” or any other between 100 million and 250 million years http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0504155. Once again, Shaviv has a whole thing on why his criticisms are baseless on his blogs @ sciencebits (and says Rahmstorf is just ignorant). I find it humorous that people dress this as sound science.
When looking at infrared heating elements I found a FAQ, the first question is–
“Does infrared radiation heat the air?
Answer: Water vapor and carbon dioxide particles in the air will absorb infrared radiation. Typically, however, the amount of infrared energy absorbed by the carbon dioxide and water vapor are negligible.” I presume this is based on experiments.
Re # 115 Peter
Reference was made to this paper:
Click to access Falsification_of_CO2.pdf
It is hard going for one who had been out of Uni for 30 years, but there are some interesting ways of expressing simple physics that are given with demonstrations. The German authors have put a new perspective on the global problem for me and I hope that people more mathematically literate than I will wade through the 70 or so pages like I did. The math and physics are from my vintage but so are the differentials of old cars. I stopped at divs, grads and curls, but these maths go further. It is the way the familiar equations are worked in together that makes this, I feel, a rather important contribution. But I am too distant from the field now to be sure.
#149 Well, that paper is hard work, in fact more than 90 pages!
The math (grads divs and curls) looks OK but is not really relevant.
One point they make is that the greenhouse effect is a misnomer.
A greenhouse is not warm because the glass absorbs back-radiation.
It is warm because convection currents are suppressed – the warmed air
cannot get out. But I’m sure I’ve heard that before somewhere.
Unfortunately much of the paper deals with a vetoed topic!
#149 Geoff
I don’t think the maths is complicated. I think they are using it as a cover for a meaningless pile of crud. Pages 80-85 are an excellent example: their logic seems to be “here are some equations that are so scary that they must be true. However, they don’t reference CO2 which must mean that CO2 is irrelevant.”
#150 PaulM
“Greenhouse effect” is just a term. Climate scientist don’t think the effects of CO2 are completely analogous to a greenhouse, nor do they think that radiative transfer is the dominant process in the earth’s atmosphere. These are just two of the paper’s strawman argument.
This is a statistical approach, but that is not an ideal approach. This effect can be better isolated by looking at the summer vs winter temperature.
Summer SI – Winter SI = ~200 W/m2
Summer Temp – Winter Temp = 33 – 7 = 26
dT per dSI = 26 / 200 = .13 T/W/m2
@ dSI = 4 W/m2 dT/dSI = .52
This means that the variation we’ve seen to date is easily explained by natural sources.
I agree, but it’s not just a semantic nit, since words means things. As you obviously understand well, Science moves from
Idea -> Hypothesis -> Theory -> Law
The only way to move it forward are repeated unsuccessful attempts to falsify. It’s still in the Idea phase, since the idea does not pass the first test: non violation of existing scientific laws. Maybe this is why the proponents have made no attempt to falsify. They cannot even provide actual evidence for any of the pre-requisites of the AGW speculative idea:
1) That pre-industrial C02 was low.
2) That C02 accumulates in the atmosphere.
3) That man can have some significant effect on the C02 level.
4) That man can actually measure the global C02 level or the global thermodynamic state
5) That C02 is a climate driver
#147 Andrey Levin:
Thanks for that concise description. Do you really think calculation of a field of thermals ia beyond numerical computation? I would hope that some limited cases at least could be examined.
Yup. The 2nd arrow in the above flow was the “rigorous attempt” I was referring to.
Mark
And your follow up logic seems to be “they only list a bunch of scary equations that I haven’t dug into so they must be wrong.”
Mark
re 152, Gunnar- Jae has brought this up before. Idso looked at this back in 1998. I have started to look at this also, and so far have come up with numbers that are very similar to Idso and Jae. On the coast, the sensitivity is about 0.1 C/W/m2, and about 0.15 C/W/m2 inland. The nice thing about this approach is that it does not rely on accurately measuring temperature changes of less than 0.1 C, or irradiance changes of less than 0.1 W/m2. It also avoids having to enumerate and quantify all feedbacks.
To determine what the Earth’s effective temperature would be without an atmosphere (no GHG’s), has anyone looked at the Moon as a comparison? It receives almost the same solar irradiance as Earth, its albedo is known, and there is no volcanic activity. Some data I have so far is that the Moon’s day side T=107 C, night side T=-153 C, with an albedo of 0.12 (visible or wider spectrum is not specified).
>> can somebody provide evidence for this lack of continued warming? Has the warming trend simply slowed, or is it flat … what exactly is going on during the most recent decade?
I have plotted the global data. There was a peak in 1998 at .78, which has cooled to .22, as of June 2007. So, it has not just slowed, or remained flat, it has cooled .6 deg C since 1998. It probably would have been more, but for some of the biggest solar flare events ever recorded, ENSO events, and the lack of a volcanoe.
Using the surface data now that satellite is available is a clear sign of an agenda. I can think of no valid reason to use an inferior dataset.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
#151 Steve
This makes me a little curious: what do they think the dominant processes are for heat/energy acquisition and loss are?
>> BTW, I’ve asked people for an article or text that provides, in their opinion, the best articulation of the underlying physics by which increased CO2 leads to approx 2.5 deg C warming. So far the only suggestion is a 1956 article by Plass.
There is none, since the AGW idea is not a coherent hypothesis.
Actually, trapped air is only a prerequisite for a greenhouse effect, but not the cause. The greenhouse effect is caused by the frequency shift in EM radiation. I currently (I haven’t read the #56 link yet) believe that the earth has a greenhouse effect, since it too has frequency shifting, and trapped air. I don’t believe the effect is large.
#160 Jan
Let’s put this into context. They feel that it is important to their cause to find a negative answer to the following question on page 13 (item 3 at the bottom):
(my emphasis). Did you think that the climate and weather forecast models are dominated by radiative heat transfer? Do you think thermal conductivity of air is likely to be relevant? Or is convection and advection more important in heat transfer? (hopefully the answers are No, No and Yes.)
Radiation is obviously the only way the earth gets rid of heat. But that is another question.
Chris #148;
Your posting is way to lengthily to address in any meaningful way, but let me just suggest that maybe it is not down to either cosmic rays or Co2 radiation, but a sound combination of the two (and possible other things we haven’t pined down yet)?
The real tragedy is, that Real Climate doesn’t want any money spend in further investigation of the influences of cosmic ray on climate. They were very upset when CERN announced that they would finally go ahead with the CLOUD experiment, which will probably broaden and deepen the knowledge already obtained from the SKY experiment. Real Climate stated that they saw no reason to spend money on a theory not supported by any empirical evidence. That the cosmic ray theory lack empirical evidence is of course a lie, as Real Climate should be aware of the SKY experiment as well as Harrison & Stephenson 2005, which clearly demonstrates empirical evidence for a nonlinear effect of galactic cosmic rays on clouds. Please note the word ’empirical’ and ‘nonlinear’. There are other papers as well. Furthermore: does Real Climate really think that CERN would conduct an experiment they thought would constitute no scientific relevance at all. Of course not.
That aside, you should really stop promoting the whack job by Damon & Laut as anything but a sad example of going after the man and not the ball. The paper was so poorly composed, that it was not really any match for a rebuttal [1] (see also [2] for another point).
Your sad notion that only Shaviv, Veizer and Svensmark promote the cosmic ray link probably shows how fragmented you knowledge is. I could name you 60 top-notch scientists prescribing to the cosmic ray link as a important diver of celestial climate, and the numbers are growing not shrinking.
There are lots of others issues in your posting, but maybe others will take over.
[1] http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/Comments%20on%20Peter%20Lauts%20paper.pdf
[2] http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V7/N41/C2.jsp
Chris #148;
Sorry, I gave you the wrong link above. [1] should have been:
[1] http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Scientific%20work%20and%20publications/resolveuid/d8b316c028870da5dd89ee9c2f448849
I do, however, advise you to also read the ‘wrong’ link.
#163 Steve,
I think I see see the reason for the confusion. Putting it into a larger context introducing all three items we have:
( my emphasis and remark in brackets)
It’s obvious they are talking about how the atmosphere gets warm rather than what it does because it gets warm.
Section 3 of the paper deal in some detail with the various ways that:
they may have missed some but we get the general idea.
Where is the strawman now?
Everyone needs to make sure they understand “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse” are two totally different things. Any encyclopedia will do.
Re#155, Pochas:
“Do you really think calculation of a field of thermals is beyond numerical computation? I would hope that some limited cases at least could be examined”.
I hope that some simplified cases such as thermal balance on clear summer day in tropics (no horizontal wind, no clouds, dry surface) or on cloudless night could be modeled. In fact, before I will see such physical models, I will not consider GHG hypothesis serious.
Average Earth radiative temperature is pure nonsense. Radiative emission is function of temperature power 4, so simple average mean of temperatures around the Earth at night, day, summer, winter, pole or tropics tells you nothing about real flow of heat radiation. It is like saying that some hospital is good because average body temperature of its patients is normal. How many of them are in fever and how many of them are already on ice?
Note that average temperature on the moon is (107C day -153C night)/2 = -23C, or about the same “average” temperature of Earth without GHG effect, widely sited by IPCC. Absence of atmosphere and oceans on the Moon does not matter, it is GHG who makes Earth warmer by 34C to the bearable +15C. Mind bogging…
Re#148, Chris:
Do you know what Cloud Chamber (another name “Wilson Chamber”) is?
Try Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
A rather authoritative presentation of the radiative transfer processes with an interesting discussion concerning especially the saturation phenomenon (aka non linear answer of the system to a variation of a “green gas” concentration) may be found here :
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/06/realclimate-saturated-confusion.html
#166 Jan
The strawman is in the statement I quoted. The relative importance of radiative transfer is of no relevance to the discussion, so why bring it up so prominently?
As to section 3, it is hilarious. Setting aside whether disproving the dictionary definition of a process disproves the process itself:
3.3.4 – claims it describes a “Perpetuum mobile of the second kind”. No it doesn’t; the effect is driven by the massive entropy changes in the sun – the second law is safe!
3.3.9, though really shows where they have gone wrong. They think that half of solar radiation is infrared! Even so, the fact that extra CO2 results in more solar IR being absorbed in the atmosphere is not relevant unless it can be shown to radically change the temperature profile of the earth’s radiating layers – that energy would have been absorbed by the surface anyway. It doesn’t change the fact that the extra CO2 still obstructs outgoing longwave.
I thought that the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s explanation in 3.1.13 was one of the better descriptions, and G&T’s “disproof” of it is wondrous to behold. Essentially their disproof ignores the definition and focuses on the final statement (that GHGs warm earth by about 30C). G&T imply that since measuring a planet’s temperature is “ill-defined”, it must be impossible. So does that mean that you can’t prove Venus is warmer than the earth or that Mars is colder? Obviously there was no MWP or LIA because you can’t measure it.
I think they had too many G&T’s when they wrote this.
Steve Milesworthy;
“G&T imply that since measuring a planet’s temperature is “ill-defined”, it must be impossible. So does that mean that you can’t prove Venus is warmer than the earth or that Mars is colder?”
No, and you new that way before you pressed the submit-button. The reason, of course, is that the difference in max-min temperature for Earth, Mars and Venus is so huge, that no matter how you calculate the average temperature ‘€” or temperature index, as I prefer to call it ‘€” of Earth, Mars and Venus, you would always come up with Mars colder than Earth, and Earth colder than Venus, as long as, of course, you apply the same principle for all planets.
Now, consider the case where planet Earth had a true sister planet, with slightly different number and locations of continents, and a slightly different land/ocean ratio. In this case it would be impossible to tell which planet was the warmer, which planet experienced warming and which planet experienced cooling. The outcome would simply depend on what principle used in calculating the average temperature (index). Furthermore, you could have the case where both planets had the same average temperature, but vastly different weather. This goes to the very core of what Roger Pielke Sr. has been asking all along: how useful is global average temperature anyway in discussing climate? Some go even further to simply state that an average temperature for planet Earth is meaningless in any thermodynamic context. There is a good discussion of this in the notorious Essex paper [1], if you can distract yourself from the various whackjob directed at this paper.
Remember, Steve, NASA and Met Office can disagree up to 0.5 degree on a single year; also consider the huge adjustments frequently applied to the temperature records as documented by Steve McIntyre. So yes, global average temperature is indeed ill defined, and my guess is that the AGW community will start to jump the boat, and talk about other metrics, the minute it becomes clear that global average temperature is going down or not rising fast enough.
Why the AGW community goes gas blue in the face when these points are presented is beyond me, unless this is all about shutting people up, and start spending a lot of money on saving mankind from itself. In that case, I agree, we can’t have any dissidents asking to many questions and making to much noise. That would distract the masses from the true path to paradise.
[1] http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/globaltemp/GlobTemp.JNET.pdf
#145 Ah, this is why it’s so difficult to get a handle on how a PN junction works in diodes and transistors…. 🙂 If you think of it as a material having an excess of electrons in the orbitals, the item would be negativly charged, then it makes a kind of sense. Putting + or – into play is a bit arbitrary, as are the words. So by convention the electrons are – and the protons + We could call the particles that “move” Gorblez and mark them = and the ones that are stationary Lebzorbs and mark them * as long as we understand what they do. (The ground potential is really rather what determines the flow direction. If you think of it that way.) I mean, “spin-1/2 lepton” doesn’t roll off the tongue well…
As far as Franklin, it was the Greeks that knew if you rubbed amber with fur, it left an electric charge that could create sparks on the surface (Of course the terms were different and they didn’t really understand it all that well). It was G. Johnstone Stoney that named the charge “electron” in 1894 (he first thought of it as a unit of charge in 1874) in an article in Philiosopical Magazine. http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Stoney-1894.html Joseph J. Thomson discovered it in 1897 and was awarded the Nobel Price in 1906 for the discovery.
Franklin amoung other things (“kite in the rain” gathering electricity into a Leyden jar in 1752 and the one-fluid model of ‘electrical fluid’) was the co-first to label them positive and negative (first according to Wolfram’s scienceworld site (reference, book (in French from 1773) so I can’t verify with the book if the naming was an arbitrary naming or if the reason is known at all))
Basicially, Franklin said if something had too little of the fluid it was negative and if there was too much of it, positive. Then named them positive (vitreous electricity (glass)) and negative (resinous electricty(water)) as did William Watson, both off of work from Charles du Fay. Watson said a surplus (positive) and a deficiency (negative) of a single fluid which he called electrical ether at the same time in England. So it looks like they got the material holding the electrons wrong, yep.
However, this is a simplification. They were looking at Leyden jars, and didn’t understand where or what everything was. The Leyden jar originally was a glass bottle with some water in it, a metal wire going through a cork, which formed a capacitor when a person completed the circuit by holding it, their hand becoming the outer plate. Watson found it worked better if you coated the outside with metal foil and then connected the wire (or a chain) to a terminator outside the glass. However, originally it was thought the water in the jar held the charge. Franklin and Watson thought the charge was in the glass. They were all wrong, it’s in the dielectric, or in this case, in the conductors, the thin layer along the surfaces that touch the glass. (The water isn’t needed, the inside can also be lined with foil.) So the charge is in the air, not the glass. And it is the electrons in the air. So the reason they got it backwards is not knowing where the Leyden jar was holding the charge and the fact it’s rather an arbitrary distinction (and they didn’t totally understand the “substance” itself).
For more simplification, it’s usually just called ‘conventional current’ no matter if it’s positive moving in the direction of or negative moving the opposite direction. http://www.av8n.com/physics/one-kind-of-charge.htm
To expand on the reasons for this. This temperature that people quote is usually only referring to the thin slice at the surface. This does not reflect the thermodynamic state of even the atmosphere. Even so, Earth is not the atmosphere alone. The Earth system is made up of the components: core, crust, ocean, atmosphere and sun. Thermodynamic energy is always being transferred between components and within components. Just as we have temperature differentials between NYC and Chicago, we have temp differentials in 3 dimensions. By chaotic chance, there could be a moment in time where the surface temperature goes up, although the entire earth might be cooler.
Next, the concept of average is invalid when discussing different components. An average of ocean and air temperatures would be invalid. The only really scientific approach would be to use comprehensive temperature measurements to calculate Joules of Energy.
Along the same lines, it would be invalid to average day time solar irradiance with night time SI.
We would have to know the total energy capacity of the system in order to know if that is growing or shrinking or stable.
What we have is instead the meausred mean anomaly of unknown accuracy for a planetary combination of snapshots of ocean surface at some location and size, and a snapshot of how materials act thermally and how that thermal state is mixing in the air at a particular height in whatever weather is at the thermometer location.
It’s not meaningful anyway. If a section of ocean is 20C and extends down 200 feet, and another is 25C and extends down 50, which is warmer? We don’t know unless we know the width. And even then, if you measure 1 cubic meter of seawater at point B, what does that tell you of the 29 to 222 square kilometers it’s in on a 2×2 grid? Not anything more than measuring the entire area 1 meter deep. So we’re just measuring something and we don’t even know what it is or if it has any importance.
#171 Michael Hansen
I was trying a bit of reductio ad absurdum. Just because it is hard to measure the temperature change does not mean the temperature change does not or has not happened. Referring to it hardly “disproves” the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s description of the greenhouse effect.
It is ridiculous that people are hailing this document as some great insight into AGW lies when it is poorly written and deliberately obfuscated garbage. For example, I challenge anyone to describe, in laymans terms, the relevance of pages 80-85 for example.
#173 Gunnar
True, but the surface temperature record is just one indication. It is coupled with observations of ocean warming and upper troposphere warming. The energy that has warmed the surface hasn’t come from either of these other places.
Funnily enough, that’s essentially what G&T try to do on page 63.
Steve Milesworthy
I give up.
I tried to explain why an average global temperature is ill defined, and nothing else. Nowhere did I dispute the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s description of the greenhouse effect, or anything else about the greenhouse effect, and nowhere did I talked about some AGW lie, or lying, or whatever you can come up with.
Yes I could explain, in layman’s term, the relevance of Essex el al, but given your answer in #175 I will save the efforts for someone who really cares.
Sorry I disturbed you; I most certainly wont make that mistake again.
Obviously, anyone that would read Essex or thinks GAT is either ill defined or will go down (or go down too slow) is a stinking denialist and doesn’t think there’s a greenhouse effect.
#176
I care.
I want to know why so many of the sceptics here uncritically accept this preprint.
#178. Count me out. I’ve done what I could to discourage reliance on this article. AS to your question, there seems to be an absence of a clear mainstream explanation of how doubling CO2 actually translates into 2.5 deg C, working through the physics in 20-100 pages. I’ve repeatedly asked critics for a reference and have little to show for it. One suggestion was Plass 1956; another suggestion was an online work-in progress from May 2007 (Pierrehumbert) – nothing in between. If you can provide a citation to a good clear mainstream explanation, I’d be happy to try to re-focus discussion on such an exposition.
I suggested to Mike MacCracken in the scoping of AR4, long before the First Draft, that AR4 should include such an exposition but they elected not to provide one. The blame for the absence of a clear up-to-date IPCC-reviewed explanation of how increased CO2 leads to 2.5 deg C lies squarely with the WG1 authors.
>> hard to measure the temperature change does not mean the temperature change does not or has not happened.
Yes, the flip side is also true: just because you have apparently measured something, it does not mean that the change in thermodynamic state has happened. Since science cannot occur without using the scientific method, and since we don’t have nearly enough information, we cannot falsify any hypothesis.
>> For example, I challenge anyone to describe, in laymans terms, the relevance of pages 80-85 for example.
Ok, I just read that section. It seemed ok to me, but then we EEs are not frightened by math, especially not Maxwell’s equations. The section makes the point that to actually model the climate, we would need to start with first principles. Although I have been tempted to try, the authors make an excellent point about how truly difficult this would be. We haven’t truly modelled anything, but AGWers are deceiving people into believing that they have.
No one has even tried to falsify the AGW idea by constructing an experiment. We could construct an enclosure that has the correct amount of water and air, along with EM radiation. Then we could raise the C02 level from .033 to .038, and see what happens. In short, we would either validate AGW, or falsify Henry’s law and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. To claim the mantle of scientist, AGW proponents are obligated to attempt this falsification.
It is human conceit to claim that we are modelling the climate. We should be honest with ourselves, before the angels die of laughter.
>> True, but the surface temperature record is just one indication. It is coupled with observations of ocean warming and upper troposphere warming. The energy that has warmed the surface hasn’t come from either of these other places.
How do you know? The laws of thermodynamics state that a warmer ocean cannot help but warm the air. The fact that you refer to surface data when the satellite data is available tells me you that you have an agenda. I find it amazing that anyone would think that the atmosphere is warming the ocean, despite the difference in mass, and contrary to the obvious fact that the sun affects the oceans directly.
The AGW proponents/science deniers have constructed a myth, born of human conceit:
pre-industrial C02 was low
C02 accumulates in the atmosphere
Man alone emits C02
Man can determine the global C02 level by measuring it in one spot
Man can determine the global thermodynamic state by measuring air temps in cities
C02 heats atmosphere
Atmosphere heats ocean
In reality:
pre-industrial C02 varied widely, reaching 420 ppm in 1940
C02 is always in flux, and stays in the atmosphere for only about 5 years
The global C02 level is unknown, and Man’s impact on it is even more unknown
Sun heats/cools oceans
Sun controls Water Cycle
Sun heats/cools atmosphere
Oceans have a big effect on atmosphere
Water Cycle has a big effect on atmosphere
>> Funnily enough, that’s essentially what G&T try to do on page 63
It doesn’t seem that way to me. I suspect that’s what the IPCC did, in order to claim the sun is constant. Steve searching for the science behind the AGW idea reminds me of the mecha in AI searching for the blue fairy.
So, what’s the global exchange rate these days, anyway? 🙂
I thought parts of the Essex McKitrick Andresen paper from #171 parts 3.1.2 and 3.2 pretty interesting.
Again, if a section of ocean is 20C and extends down 200 feet, and another is 25C and extends down 50, which is warmer? We don’t know unless we know the width. And even then, if you measure 1 cubic meter of seawater at point A compared to point B, what does that tell you of the 29 to 222 square kilometers it’s in on a 2à—2 grid? Not anything more than measuring the entire area 1 meter deep.
Anyway, if you want to know what a system that stores energy is doing, you have to know the energy content of the entire system. The unrandom sampling of air and water in minute amounts in various unrandom quantities of the system that we’re doing doesn’t do that. We have a bunch of measurements. And then a bunch of adjustments and models for an ‘ill defined system’ that gives us a number. It’s not the energy content of the system or what that content doing over time. What’s to explain?
#179
I thought the Pierrehumbert book was pretty good at explaining things when I skimmed through. If you want to explore the 2.5 deg C for double CO2, why don’t you play with a 1-d climate model. Their simplicity means you can fully understand what’s going on, whereas the output from a GCM is almost as complex as the real climate.
RichardT, I think you and Steve Milesworthy can contribute more than what your comments indicate. Give us something more substantial. I think the whole concept of the importance of localized warming and its effects versus an averaged global warming and its effects is food for thought. However, I think that Steve M in the past has voiced a major reservation about discussing it on his blog and he may have something (again) to say about such a discussion.
My personal suspicion is that, for the purposes of estimating global temperature, a GCM can be approximated arbitrarily closely by a 1D model and, to a considerable extent, GCMs create a lot of issues that are probably not relevant to the main policy issue.
Can you give me a reference to a detailed exposition of a 1D model that you can recommend? Pierrehumbert’s book has unfinished chapters and I didn’t notice a section on exactly what I was interested in, though there were many interesting sections. Are you sure that Pierrehumbert’s book covers this issue (if so can you give some pages and I’ll look at them closely.)?
There is also an absence of AGW explanation for how atmospheric C02 could be doubled by man, contrary to Henry’s law.
I thought my reading of chapter 10 of the WG1 AR4 report indicated an appreciation of this as general computer climate modeling problem by the IPCC, but without directly addressing it. Maybe next time.
#182. Richard T, here’s what Pierrehumber t says about sensitivity calculations:
Nothing else. So Pierrehumbert does not remotely qualify as a reference. So could you try again? Maybe ask a friend?
re: 178: I suspect most people on this blog do not accept anything, which is why they are here, but listen to all arguments before reaching a decision. My take away is that no part of the physics of climate change is far from the slam dunk some would like us believe. In the good old days these things used to get resolved with actual experiments. In the meantime, I find it valuable to see if a nominally outrageous statements can be shot down. Were they? Not yet, I think.
re 187: The 1980 Wang-Stone article does some of what Pierrehumbert says he is going to do.
#189, I’ll look at it but it is hardly “up to date”.
# 170 Steve Milesworthy
In context shifting from the trigger which I pointed out you have mounted a strawman all of your own and continue with similar argument. I see no reason for, nor anything to be gained from, further discussion with you on this.
Only answers to correctly posed questions are possible .
Ill posed questions can have several answers and some of them might even contradict each other .
The question “By how many degrees will vary the Earth’s temperature when one parameter of the system varies by X%” is an ill posed question .
The reason for it is that nobody thinks correctly about what that “temperature” is .
To very carefully define this term in the climate context it is meant to be :
Integral over a time Tref of (the Integral over the Earth surface of (Temperature (x,y,z,t))) .
This number is mathematicaly defined as long as every T(x,y,z,t) is defined .
Can you get a differential equation containing directly this parameter ?
The answer is a clear NO because the laws of physics are local .
Can you get a complete set of differential equations containing T(x,y,z,t) , solve them and THEN do the integrals ?
The answers are again a clear NO for the second part and a very probable NO for the first .
For those who are familiar with quantum mechanics , I’ll use an analogy .
An energy state is degenerate when for different quantum states (numbers) we get the same energy .
If we take the analogy that the climate is like a quantum system characterised by its average global temperature (GT) defined above then its states are infinitely degenerated .
Indeed as to every GT corresponds an infinity of different local T(x,y,z,t) distributions , we have an infinity of possible different climate states having the same GT .
Now as the dynamics of the system doesn’t depend on GT (proof above) but on the exact state it is in and which is unknown , it is impossible to predict the evolution of GT .
The rational solution should be to ask correct questions instead of irrelevant ones (f.ex what R.Pielke does) .
However if one still wants to waste time on this one , the only way is to apply massive computer power and hope against hope that this infinite degenerescence of temperature states will be a bit reduced through increasing resolution in order to permit some kind of half reasonable statistics .
#171 Michael
Apologies. But I’m afraid I’m of the opinion that E&M is flawed by its biases (though nothing in it is at all comparable with G&T’s reference to “fraud”, “scientific misconduct” and “crime”).
#191 Jan
I’m afraid that the sentence you cited came from a paragraph that doesn’t even make sense, whatever interpretation you feel should be put on it. Every time the paper gets anywhere near to your question in #166 “How does the atmosphere get warm?” they simply invoke Essex & McKitrick to say that the concept is meaningless (eg. p61).
Anyway, I’ve looked at the paper now, so if it comes up in the future I reserve the right to limit any further comment to: “I’ve read it and discussed it, and it’s a heap of manure”.
Steve Mile’s:
According to your posts, you do not have slightest clue what G&T are talking about. Yet you allow yourself to judge their work in such rude and categorical way.
Make no mistake, it is crystal clear for couple of thousand of readers of this blog.
#194
Instead of wasting lots of time on this preprint, why don’t we just wait until it has been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.
As it stands, I strongly doubt the authors even intend to submit it.
#193 Steve
Is there a super abundance of straw over your way?
#194 Andrey
G&T are extremely rude about climate science, so rudeness in return (to them) is entirely justified.
Do you mean that they all have the same opinion of it as me, but they don’t care because it is a good propaganda weapon? If so, I disagree with you most strongly.
Someone said they thought it was important, though they didn’t understand it – which is fair enough. I’ve highlighted a few areas where G&T deliberately avoid or obfuscate the real issue. I think that page 80-85 is a particular area where they have done this and have suggested that if it is so crystal clear it is not beyond someone like you to describe its relevance in laymans terms. It seems to me that the greenhouse effect is hardly going to be easily exposed within an analysis of Maxwell’s equations plus others, but I’m willing as always to listen.
#196 Jan
I’m afraid the straw needs changing as it is too contaminated by manure.
#190 Maybe Chapter 3 of L.D. Danny Harvey’s “Global Warming: The Hard Science” ?
#198. I’ll take a look at it. Danny Harvey’s from U of Toronto. I sent an email to Gerry North asking him for suggestions and I notice that he reviewed this book.
#193. Steve Milesworthy, I’m trying to discourage discussion of G and T and would prefer to discuss instead a mainstream exposition. HAve you been able to identify a decent exposition of the mainstream position?
I thought I did this in #180, but I guess I wasn’t specific enough. You’re comment shows an irrational obsession with AGW and an a-priori conclusion that greenhouse effect is the dominant climate phenomena. This leads you to foolishly question how Maxwell’s equation will explain the greenhouse effect.
Well, this should be completely obvious, but apparently not to you. Climate Science is NOT just about the greenhouse effect. Obviously, any attempt to scientifically model the climate would have to incorporate known scientific laws, like the ones specified on pages 80-85.
Since you seem mystified by this obvious statement, here is an example. During the last solar maximum, there were several solar flare events with record breaking microwave levels. Just as in a microwave oven, intense microwave events would certainly dramatically heat the water laden troposphere, affecting the climate. So, you see, Maxwell’s equations are crucial to any real study of the climate.
Gunnar,
That’s my biggest complaint regarding models and modelers. They admit that there is much that they don’t understand about how the climate works. They admit that they’ve had to dramatically reduce the complexity of their models with regard to reality.
But then they tell us not to worry, because they’ve added parameterizations that completely compensate for not only the parts that they have simplified, but the parts that they don’t understand as well.
Then they will do a hindcast, who’s predictions not only fail to get into the ballpark with reality, but often fail to fit in the same city as reality. But are close enough to prove that the models are able to accurately predict what will happen in the future.
I don’t understand the in-depths on this enough to comment on the paper regardless, I’m guessing, so I haven’t read it. Paper or not, that seems a clear and obvious answer. If the “greenhouse effect” is not all Climate Science is about, we need other equations and scientific laws to explain the rest of the parts that make it up. Do we so far have any first principles or empirical observations to base this off of? I’d guess not. But I really have no idea.
This extrapolation of #203 though, seems obvious and elegant: If we’re talking about a very complex system, answers explaining it will be complex. And therefore, difficult to understand. The simple answers aren’t reality.
However, if this isn’t published, it isn’t anything to argue about. If it becomes published, and therefore a “mainstream exposition” it becomes worthwhile to add it to whatever else is there. Like Steve asks in #203, I’d be interested in seeing something that is currently mainstream exposition.
I’m guessing if nobody is citing anything, there isn’t anything or anything anyone chooses to share. So time to move on….
So as Bob Carter said in part (emphasis mine):
It would be better to focus on development of new technologies, getting real solutions for energy efficiency and reducing pollution, and rigorously vet the science.
Sound like anything worthwhile to do? 😀
Re: #192
Since no one else has bothered to reply to this post, I will: Well said.
>> Do we so far have any first principles or empirical observations to base this off of? I’d guess not. But I really have no idea.
The laws of science are the first principles. They are well known.
>> If we’re talking about a very complex system, answers explaining it will be complex. And therefore, difficult to understand. The simple answers aren’t reality.
It’s not they have oversimplified. It’s that they are ignoring and/or replacing known scientific laws with made up ones. The earth is a complex system, but pages 80-85 cover the basic physics involved.
>> However, if this isn’t published, it isn’t anything to argue about. If it becomes published, and therefore a “mainstream exposition” it becomes worthwhile to add it to whatever else is there. Like Steve asks in #203, I’d be interested in seeing something that is currently mainstream exposition.
The basic laws of science are long established by the scientific method. They are THE MAINSTREAM! Like all real science, the validity does not depend on publication or peer review. These are merely artifacts of the science magazine QA process, and not a part of the SM.
Analogy:
My speculative idea: black and white patches cause soccer balls to return to earth after kicking
G & T: yea, but the law of gravity explains that part
statistician: don’t bother me with G&T, I want an exposition of the theory that b & w patches cause soccer balls to fall
scientist: good look statistician, let me know when you find the blue fairy
I’m still flabberghasted. We have a system, completely dominated by a chaotic fusion reaction a short distance away, gushing EM radiation at the earth, and someone has the ignorance to say in effect:
What do Maxwell’s equations and the other known laws of science have to do with the study of climate? You must be trying to obscure the real issue. Are these maxwell equations peer reviewed?
There are two issues with regard to AGW:
#1 – Is it true?
#2 – Has it been established scientifically?
The second is far more important than the first. I think that Steve Mc would agree with this, which is why his focus is on the AGW advocates’ methods, not on whether GW is man made. The acceptance of a flawed scientific methodology is infinitely more dangerous than the politicization of energy. Inadequate energy production may produce darkness but a bad scientific methodology produces blindness and one that can last for centuries as witness the Dark Ages.
If we take down a bad methodology we not only avoid the short term threats to wealth and freedom that the AGW advocates endorse but we stand to benefit from the application of a sound scientific methodology to human problems in the future.
#206
That is how to phrase the argument!!!! Seriously, clarifies it for me. I’m not (and haven’t been) disagreeing with you. I’m just trying to tell you that until the paper gets published (and/or peer reviewed or whatever exactly else it is Steve considers the criteria for “mainstream exposition”) discussing this paper and what it means is not a focus for him. What many keep forgetting (I think) is that he’s not a denialist, a skeptic or even a scientist. He’s a mineral exploration financing executive who’s been a policy analyst for Ontario and Canada itself, with a BachSci in pure math from U Toronto, and did his graduate work in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford, who started this blog after being attacked for his work on M&M (2005) published in Geophysical Research Letters. He wants to analyze the science, and until it’s published, it’s not science. I think I got that correctly. So all I can say to them is get it peer reviewed and published.
The Dark Ages had nothing to do with a lack of scientific method.
Re 192 Vonk: ditto thank you. A very good point often overlooked in the heat of the battle.
Sorry, my #209 I meant audit not analyze (although I guess you’d have to analyze it first….) 🙂
#210 Of course not, it had to do with an out of control political organization with the supreme power to keep everyone ignorant and poor, which they ruthlessly did, by the sword.
Re 207, Gunnar
I think what might be eluding Steve M is that light itself is an electromagnetic wave, and that historically it was Maxwell himself that made this observation.
For “peer reviewed” exposition, I refer to James Clerk Maxwell, “A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 155, 459-512 (1865). (This article accompanied a December 8, 1864 presentation by Maxwell to the Royal Society.)
>> I think what might be eluding Steve M is that light itself is an electromagnetic wave, and that historically it was Maxwell himself that made this observation.
Yes, I thought this went without saying. Of course, the whole spectrum is important, not just the visible portion.
>> For “peer reviewed” exposition
He published, for communication purposes only. It was considered an hypothesis, since it didn’t violate any known laws. It moved from hypothesis to theory by repeated failed attempts to falsify. After a long time without a successful falsification attempt, it graduation to scientific law. This is the scientific method in action. It would work on a deserted island with no science magazines. The “peer review” process has nothing to do with science itself, or the scientific method, it is merely a QA process for the publication.
Well, my question would be, if I’m talking about a “scientific fact” (on Earth, bowling balls that are dropped fall down unless something else stops gravity from acting upon it, water will boil at about 212 F and freeze at about 32F, m=F/a, that an object will remain at constant velocity unless acted upon by an outside force, etc) what do I need to do but state it?
If you’re looking for a 1D radiative transfer model, the Archer Modtran Site is it. You can vary several parameters like CO2 and methane and calculate the result. Total energy emitted and a graph of the emitted IR spectrum at the selected altitude and viewing direction (up or down) and a plot of various parameters with altitude are produced. If you select save, then a text page can be obtained with much more data in tabular form. The plots in this comment from Hans Erren were produced using data from this site. The emission vs. wavenumber plot is the normal display and the data to produce the emission vs wavelength plot is available on the text page. This won’t get you 2.5 C for doubling CO2, though, even if you assume constant relative humidity. The ‘aerosol fiddle factor’ per Hans Erren ( http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1827#comment-121846 ) seems to be necessary.
And put me in the column of catastrophic AGW skeptics who think the G&T paper is a complete crock in the same category as Velikovsky ( see e.g. http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/gould_velikovsky.html )and not worthy of serious discussion.
Why does the preview pane break down if I try to use more than two href links in a comment?
Re: #195
Why? Will that give it credibility? If you think so, then you ought to check what you’re smoking. New Ideas in Science is as apt WRT to peer review now as it was when published almost twenty years ago.
I’ve posted up an article sent to me by Gerry North on 1D climate models. I’ve asked people to confine their ruminations on physics for the next couple of weeks to discussion of this article. I am specifically uninterested in further discussion of G and T.
#216. DeWitt, the Archer model is not an exposition of how the calculations are done. I’m interested in how people get results.
You’ve certainly asked plenty of questions and quite rudely demanded that others meet a much higher standard of proof than I have seen demanded at any other blog. I must have missed all of the quality input you have provided, because all of your posts that I have read simply demand that others (especially Steve) publish in peer-reviewed papers or do the jobs which we pay millions of dollars for federal agencies to do (audit and maintain an adequate weather station network).
Once you are done here, I assume that I should expect to see you over at RealClimate demanding the same level of proof and scientific honesty that you are demanding of Steve? I would post over there to let them know you are coming, except they don’t allow posts that aren’t the rah rah cheerleading posts you seem to take such exception to here. They seem to only accept posts that agree with them, and anybody questioning their pronouncements is banished to the hinterlands. Why have they escaped your eagle eye for poor science and lack of full and complete proof for their scathing attacks on the science of others? Is it because their agenda is one you agree with, so you give them a free pass?
IF someone wants to comment on Lockwood and Frohlich and/or Willson, fine. Otherwise, please don’t vent or complain.
Steve, that’s fine. but you are much tougher on my general venting than the inverse Lynne Vincenthaven style posts (general kvetching) from the skeptic side. Granted a contrary post is more disruptive. But both are off topic. And heck. Mine are more relevant. And the point is a useful one that is not brought up enough. Why are we even addressing this given that you don’t take a stance, given the silliness of the JAE brew crew. Given that you have not even finished off relevant questions on your claims wrt MBH.
#221. Look, I don’t have time or energy to challenge or correct everything that’s posted here and let lots of things pass. That doesn’t mean that I agree with it. I’ve tried to discourage certain types of discussion – see the commentary on http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1851 . I’d appreciate your not adding to the din.
#218
Maybe you or someone could ask Archer for his code. It seems to produce results quickly, so maybe it’s not too elaborate.
#225
Huh ?
I admit that I didn’t read all of the paper but the pages 80-85 are perfectly correct to the point of banality .
Where did you see that Maxwell’s equations “disprove the existence of microwave oven” ?
I had to read the page 85 twice to conclude that you came to this hallucinating statement by completely misunderstanding the words “One is left with the possibility to include a hypothetical warming by radiation by hand in terms of artificial heat densities .”
In any case you confuse infrared photon absorption with an oscillation of an eletrical dipole in an electromagnetical field what is quite impressive .
In such case ignorance is an understatement .
>> #225 Huh ?
#224, whch post are you responding to?
Re 220, Dr M’s request to move on: Maybe I missed discussion, but my big problem with Lockwood and Frohlich is still this: How is it possible that Earth’s temperature does not respond to a cyclical 11 year driving force? (I am sure it actually does, but they blinded themselves to it.) If there is no response to 11 yr. cycles, why should the effect of any solar driving be observed, (noting the tranformability between frequency and time). Obvious answer: it should not because there is a strong negative forcing feedback.
Now,why doesn’t the same feedback apply to CO2?
>> How is it possible that Earth’s temperature does not respond to a cyclical 11 year driving force?
Yes, you are absolutely correct, since it’s common sense. When the sun rises, the day warms up, invalidating the L&F assertion that the atmosphere doesn’t repond to changes in TSI.
First of all, the paper clearly shows incorrect temperature data. I have plotted the global temperature from satellite data (yes, the oceans are part of the world as well), and the graph does not steadily go up, like Lockwood deceptively shows. In fact, Lockwood has eliminated the 1998 peak. In 1998, it was .8, while June 2007 stands at .22. That’s a .6 deg drop that Lockwood has eliminated. The correct data: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
Contrary to the article in the UK rag, where Lockwood was quoted as saying there was no time lag, he writes here that the time lag is so large, that the “temperature does not respond to the solar cycle”. This contradicts direct observation.
He uses the words of control theory, but does not seem to understand the concepts. He seems to think that “dampening” is equivalent to “smoothing”. Physical systems are not doing computer smoothing. As such, a damped system is certainly still “responding”. No energy is lost. The worst part is the obvious argument switch (in bold). He starts out by referring to the atmosphere, then switches to oceans. Oceans have a much larger time lag than the atmosphere. The fact that the atmosphere does respond to solar variation is confirmed by the increase in temperature from night to day. If there were an atmospheric time lag that prevented the atmosphere from responding to the solar cycle delta of perhaps 10 W/m2 (solar irradiance + positive feedback effects), then it would also prevent the day from heating up.
Lockwood’s assertion about solar activity falling off since 1985 is disproved by direct evidence:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html
The solar data in the paper looks right, but that directly disproves the conclusion that solar activity has declined since 1985. The reality is that it continues to exhibit an 11 year cycle, with 1986 being a minimum, not a maximum.
The crux of what you’re looking for though is the source of his error: They incorrectly use statistical adjustment.
With physical systems, it is incorrect to average daily, yearly or 11 year cycles and consider that to be the input to the system. Consider this charred roast analogy:
Wife: Honey, the roast is charred black, did you cook it at 350 for one hour?
AGW husband: Why, yes, the temperature did AVERAGE 350 for one hour. For 10 minutes, it was at 1500, so I compensated by setting it to 120 for 50 minutes. That’s the same, right?
Well, no! My daily exposure to the sun, averaged over the whole day is very low, and yet I will get a sunburn. Real systems react to current input values, as time goes by. Amazingly, L&F average a solar cycle, and conclude it has no effect. If this were true, it should not get so hot in the summer, since a few months from now, it will be winter, and the input should be considered to be the average of winter and summer.
#225
Sorry and apologies
I was answering a halucinatingly ignorant comment of some Steven Milworth (?) about Maxwell’s equations and the G&T paper where he compared microwave ovens with infrared absorption .
Apparently Steve has erased it thus my answer lost it sense .
Again apologies and I’m stopping commenting this subject .
#226 Allan
This is incorrect. Lockwood argues that the response to the solar cycle may be underestimated.
“Are models underestimating the effect of solar forcing on climate?”
Crooks et al EGU 2003
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA….14600C
#227 Gunnar: Thank you. Yes is is obvious, isn’t it, that the sun heats the Earth, and that at some level fluctuations in TSI must appear as fluctuations in temperature. The reference in #8 by Paul Biggs says the 11y cycle “output” is 0.2. I also agree with your second point, that the average output of a nonlinear system is not the output of the average of inputs. If then follows that long term averages over cyclical components are most likely not the values which produce the average output (unless the noise level is high enough to obscure the signal entirely) which may ultimately doom all non-cyclical climate models. Something is going on, but averaging toward zero frequency is not the way to find it.
#229 Steve Molesworthy: Given the political climate surrounding GW, I think the burden is on anyone whose methods fail to find a solar signal to clearly explain where it went, as a statistical issue, not a modeling issue. L&F had to know how AGW adherents would respond to a paper such as theirs. To believers absence of proof is proof of absence.
>> that the average output of a nonlinear system is not the output of the average of inputs.
#230 Allan, you have expressed a much more elegant way of summarizing what I was trying to say. In effect, they are modelling the earth as a planet that doesn’t rotate, with the sun being 1/4 of it’s actual strength. Their wishful thinking is that the sun is a constant.