Continuation of Unthreaded #23
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Climate Audit 
568 Comments
Jae (from unthreaden#23):
Very interesting research.
One point of interest to add. 71% of Earth surface are oceans, with albedo 0.08. Compare with abedo of forests and dark soil at 0.1, meadows 0.15, savanna 0.18, dry soil and desert of 0.28:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Albedo-e_hg.svg
All in all, it is quite visible that about 80 % of solar energy Earth is adsorbing goes into oceans.
Now, oceans imply high humidity air over the surface, and as such have (as of your research) negative temperature feed back for increasing radiative forcing (solar irradiance, cloud influence, GHG effect, etc.). Naturally, increased radiative forcing does increase total heat energy of sub-surface atmosphere, but it does not directly translate into temperature increase of the air. Globally, water vapor feedback on air temperature should be seriously negative, just because of thermal properties of water vapors. Clouds feedback from increased absolute humidity is not considered, and is negative too.
Exit IPCC water vapor positive feedback. Welcome water vapor stabilizing feedback.
P.S. Quite primitive idea that 80% of heat Earth is adsorbing is going into oceans puts into perspective a lot of things. Such as role of oceans in global climate, share of antropogenic land use patterns, how important land temperature measurements are, where Waldo is hiding, role of ocean algae aerosols, role of clouds over the ocean, etc.
In the previous “unthread” (23) there were two very interesting points.
One stated that, for Mann, there was no MWP outside Europe, but still SW US had very dry eyars.
I wonder then why, if there was no warming in North America, we had around 1000AD:
– mild South Greenland (Viking farmland);
– winter ice free Nova Scotia/St Lawrence Gulf/Newfoundland (Viking settlements);
– Thule culture settlements in Ellesmere island, going so near the North Pole to find almost permnent ice sheet to chunt bears etc.
The other was about the “historical minimum” of glaciers since 7,000 years.
I could accept the definition “historical minimum”, because 7,000 years was pre-historic time. Of course “historic” would not mean “all time”.
But I cannot accept that a scientist is so blind and fanatic.
Are we at 7,000 years minimum? There is not evidence at all: you found forests under there, not simply a retreating glacier.
It means that 7,000 years ago weather was far warm than now: not simply the glacier disappeared, but a forest was able to grow there. And it does not mean that the glacier may have retreated and advanced previoulsy than today, without the climate being warm enough to get a forest there.
Jae, fully agree with you. “Quite primitive idea that 80% of heat Earth is adsorbing is going into oceans puts into perspective a lot of things”
Since about a years now I have been searching for correlation between global temperature and forcings and found none (and certainly not between temp and CO2) but then I realized that ocean heat content is the key. Surface temperature is the result of the very heavy “modulation” by the ENSO so it’s not well suited. The ocean heat content seems to be totally ruled by volcanic eruptions http://virakkraft.com/volcanoheat.ppt
The stratospheric temperature drops in steps a few years after large eruptions which have brought hugh amount of material to the lower stratosphere, so I’m suggesting that this is the main driver of GW. Maybe sulphur or other substances from these eruptions is depleting ozone. This would lead to less absorbtion of UV, lower temp there and higher temp in the troposphere and surface.
It’s a little thin but there is also another interesting observation to be made. The heat content levels off around 1979, suggesting that the roughly 0.5 oC decrease caused by the 1963 eruption is causing the content to stabilize at about 3*10E22 J anomaly, so the other two, responsible for another 1 oC decrease, should then give 6*10E22 J in addition or 8 above the 1995 level, and that’s what happened in 2003. No more increase in ocean heat content nor surface temperature.
The lower stratospheric temp is also slowly increasing and should be back to the 1975 level around mid this century.
Two new AGW scientific heavyweights, Brian Williams and Ann Curry of NBC news, have startling news. Reporting from
Antartica (Mon. 11/5) with a weather baloon being sent aloft, Ann said “it is to measure the hole in the ozone layer caused
by the increase in CO2.” Damn! and here we got rid of Freon when it was dat ole debil CO2 all along.
Is this the thread where I’d ask about a decent graduate Climatology program?
After reading this site for months I’m definately considering it now. My undergrad degree is in physical geography. I do NOT want to study under Mann et. al. Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.
Andrey Levin,
Another negative feedback is the process of evaporation. Evaporation is an Endothermic reaction. ie cooling. If water evaporates from the oceans, then the oceans will cool by a known amount.
So if we take the H2O positive feedback loop theory – the first iteration of the evaporation-loop must produce a small cooling effect on the oceans.
This might partially explain why each year, when the Earth has it’s “global” summer and average global temps go up by a few degrees, we don’t see any +ve feedback loop – because the cooling of evaporation balances out the GH effect of extra H2O vapour.
PS when is the annual “global” temp max ? July?
Boris, I’m a lot more concerned about penguins freezing than polar bears drowning, seeing as how Antarctica is anomalously cold. OTOH, it’s probably a Microsoft plot.
20, never underestimate the evil of CO2. Bad for all that ails you.
Lizi, you get the heat back when the vapor condenses. That’s not a net long-term feedback, just a short-term energy store. What it does do however, is provide a bypass around the radiative heat transfer mechanism in the troposphere, making the greenhouse effect in the troposphere less important.
#7 There was a GISS site where a map would be made for anomolies. You could select tuning period and span. I chose 1930 to 1960 and span of 1900 to 2007. It showed that the largest component of global warming on this basis was the land mass of Antartica closest to the oceans. Otherwise it showed a very small net of (eyeballing) about 0.2 C. DOes this make sense with the many reports that Antartica is in the middle of a cooling trend. Are the areas near the oceans that much warmer than the interior, or is it possible that the currents at the edges of the Antartic continental shelf are warmer?
Steve, one thing that you should keep in mind when moving comments to unthreaded is that they lose all context if the comment that they were in response to stays put. A couple of mine here (8 & 9) are gibberish without their original context, and it would have been better to simply delete them outright.
I’m going to have a lot of fun trying to figure out how we can blame this on global warming.
http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D8SOB4UG0&show_article=1
1, Andre: I agree 100%. The trouble with the oceans is that there is no “dryness” variable, so I can’t get a handle on whether there is any feedback from water vapor. The humidity over the oceans is purely a function of the surface temperature, just like it is over land in December, when there is plenty of moisture. So one can look at a plot of temperature vs. humidity over the oceans and interpret it two ways. The AGW folks will say that the water vapor is causing part of the temperature, whereas, I would say that the temperature is causing the humidity, period. It’s hard to settle the argument with the data. It is intriguing that the absolute humidity in July at all Pacific Coast locations is almost constant at 10-11 g/m3, irregardless of latitude. And temperatures vary by only 2 degrees C. This shows the strong influence of the cool Pacific Ocean.
RE 11. Larry even “IN context” they are gibberish.
Sorry, it was funny I could not resist, but don’t mean it.
Re: 5
I would suggest looking into the University of Alabama Huntsville. John R. Christy, Ph.D. is one of the professors and he seems to be unwilling to only toe the AGW/IPCC party line. He has put out some interesting work.
The School of Atmospheric Sciences can be found here: http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/atmos/admission_requirements.html
RE 15. Cbone. If you hang out here you will see Dr. Christy drop by now and again.
I know. That is part of why I respect him. I’ve been lurking here for a few years now.
#15, thanks a bundle. Also looking at the University of Delaware. I *was* interested in Penn State, but that’s where Mann is…
I could also get a great education from this very site, which I am. Thanks again.
RE: #5 tpguydk
Write to Professor Cort J. Willmott (willmott@udel.edu) at the University of Delaware’s Department of Geography. Tell him your background, what you are interested in studying, and ask his advice.
RE #5.
Dr Curry, while a warmist of sorts, is also a source of good advice.
She’s linked her email round abouts here. Ryan might have an idea or two.
Can anybody help me with a question? Why do so many folks who talk about solar issues and the sun spot cycle seem to ignore the probability of multiple kinds of solar cycles over multiple time periods and the effects of superposition. How can the same people who completely accept Milankovitch cycle superpositions ignore the likelihood that the sun itself probably has cycles over years, decades, centuries, eons, etc. and that the effects caused by such cycles would be subject to changes by superposition?
Since I almost never have an original thought there must be somebody who has already written a paper on this. Can anyone direct me to the right place?
As David Smith reported on last 3rd November, NCEP reanalysis October temperature ranks are:
I was surprised by the global 4th rank: North Pole had to have been very warm in order to dwarf the tropical coolness.
Now RSS data have been published here.
The high Northern latitudines were actually warmer, but the anomaly was not so impressive and many recent months had higher anomalies. Moreover, looking at their map here, the main positive anomaly was in the Atlantic sector and not in the area of the Bering strait. It seems the open waters there were not able to warm deeply the troposphere as October 2007 was one of the coldest month in the last few years.
Just a note people. Keep an eye on the Hadley CETs. It is possible that 2007 will be the warmest year on record for central england. The average for the year thus far is 11.35. The warmest year on record is 2006 at 10.82. It would need november and december to be ave or below for it not to be the warmest ever ever ever.
jcspe,
Try this paper by Clilverd et al. 2006:
Predicting Solar Cycle 24 and beyond
I think it describes exactly what you were asking about.
For a dramatic demonstration of how dryness increases temperatures, compare Fig. 1 in USA comparison5.xls with Fig. 1 in USA comparison6.xls here.
Just noting the RSS satelitte temperature anomaly for October 2007 (+0.091C) is cooler than the October 1979 anomaly (+0.103C).
Stephen, WRT the CET records I may only be 45 years old and I have moved around the country a bit but I think I can say with conviction the weather in England is the same as it has always been! If the people at the Hadley centre seriously try to convince people that 2007 was another ‘hot’ year their credibility will be brought into question, along with the methods they have used to achieve their conclusions. This may not be a bad thing.
I’d be surprised if there are good temperature records going back to 1930 for Antarctica, never mind 1900. Most of the station data starts in the 1960s or later. So where GISS gets data back to 1900 is anybodys guess.
RE: Post #626 in Unthreaded #23
Thanks, Steve. Will do.
#5 tpguydk. I’d avoid Curry. She has been quoted as saying the most politically motivated stuff. Always denies saying it of course, doesn’t deny believing it.
How about Lindzen at MIT
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm
and you could ask William Gray
http://www.atmos.colostate.edu/dept/faculty/emeritus/gray.php
Sometimes her comments are some of the most lucid in here… other times… Personally, the only people I’d truly avoid are those directly associated with RC.
Mark
I recall looking into this once on the GISS website a few years ago. Some brilliant poster over at BA (one of the reasons I tired of the place) told me that most of Antarctica was cooling and it is apparent in the records. This was in 2002-2003 perhaps, and of the 7 stations, only 3 went previous to 1990, all into the 1940s or so. Those 3 all showed significant downward trends, and the others, well, 7-8 years of records is really, really hard to make a trend case either way, though the only one that looked reasonably “up” was the peninsula sticking out into the south Pacific. That guy was such a d…
Mark
Oops, that should read:
Mark
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/comments_about_global_warming/
By John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel.
Warning: some readers could find his post offensive.
Re #12 MarkW
You reference a cow falling from the sky and ask how this can be blamed on global warming.
It was a rehearsal for the scenario to be presented of the whole sky falling in. The cow was a proxy. Already, politicically correct man-made global warming skeptics are starting to refute the falling sky hypothesis. See above at # 34 Andrey Levin, quoting John Coleman:
#23 #27 Paul C is right. 2006 is the hottest at 10.82 but 1949 was 10.62 and 1921 was 10.47. Not much difference, especially if you bear in mind how the stations used in CET have changed over the years (search CA to find more on this). And the hottest summer (June-Aug) is still 1976. If you went out today and the temperature was 0.2 degrees ‘hotter’ than yesterday, would you notice?
Paul C and Paul M. I totally agree. If one bears in mind the problems Anthony Watts found with Stevenson shelters etc in USA, I can’t beleive that these problems are not also in the UK recording network. However, its worth taking a glance at the Armagh records because they are not subject to urbanisation and over adjustment techniques. I have said on many occasion here, it is ridiculous to calculate averages to 2 or 3 decimel places when you can measure only at best to one.
I’ve a little bit of a problem with the Coleman thing, I think he sits on the fence a little, you know, not sure what side he is on 🙂
#28 #32 Yes. I realized the paucity of the records, and that is why I was suprised. If you use this span and get those results, I see a couple of problems. Using one calibration period over the other should be a scaler correction, where the absolute for the anomilies would be the same. It was not, but assume this (I say this because, for this area to be so warm would mean that in the unmeasured or little measured time period it was much much colder than present, and present indications show it is cooling not warming). Global warming goes to an area where the data is scarce and teleconnections show/ are supposed to show cooling. I would say that this invalidates the model.
On the other hand, I used the land option. It could be assumed that it invalidated the land model and that SST’s are the ones that should be used.
Punta Arenas is the nearest temperature record to Antarctica that goes back to 1900 (1888) that I am aware of. It shows a marked cooling trend.
Otherwise, the modellers may well have assumed a colder Antarctica prior to the start of the data record in order to get a fit to their model. I’d ask the modellers that question.
North Sea surge brings flood risk
The Thames Barrier was closed to protect London against a tidal surge
A storm in the North Sea has caused alarm in Britain and the Netherlands, both countries facing the worst flood threat in decades.
Flood defences were put on alert on the entire Dutch coast and flood warnings are in place for the eastern and northern coasts of Britain.
A tidal wave in 1953 killed more than 2,000 people in both countries.
Oil platforms have been closed off the Norwegian coast and gales are expected in Germany and Denmark.
The Dutch transport ministry said this was the first time since 1976 the whole North Sea coast was under alert.
Maritime traffic in Rotterdam was shut off, as the authorities planned to close the giant barrier that guards entrance to the largest port in Europe for the first time since its construction in the 1990s.
One-third of the land mass of the Netherlands is under sea level.
Flood warnings
In Britain, the Thames River and Dartford Creek barriers are being shut down as waters are forecast to surge 1.5 metres (5 feet) above normal sea levels.
UK government warned large areas of Norfolk and Kent coasts were at risk of severe flooding and the Met Office warned of gusts of up to 145km/h (90mph) for the Orkney and Shetland islands in Scotland.
Severe gale warnings were issued in Germany and Denmark, with wind gusts of up to 125km/h (80mph) expected.
In Germany, regions around the Elbe and Elm rivers were under flood warnings.
The North Sea storm affected oil industry in Norway, the fifth largest exporter of crude in the world, with the closure of oil platforms off its coast.
Norway’s oil production of 220,000 barrels per day is expected to be slashed by 10% possibly leading to increases in the price of crude, already at record levels, experts say.
Just a point: the alarm is due to a deep Arctic low pressure getting south, and past major events happened in a notorious cooling era…just to stop speculations about disasters caused by GW.
Model forecasts from Europe, after a very warm “global warming year” (July2006-July2007), are getting closer this november more to Little Ice Age than GW: it will be the second cold snap for Central-East Europe in a week, bringing snow and frost and this time touching West Europe too (temperatures already got below -10°C in Scandinavia-Finaland and Russia) and for the next week it will be likely another harsh cold snap bringing snow and frost on much part of Europe.
Fillipo, I’ve noticed over the last 6 months or so that high pressure systems are sending Atlantic low pressure systems much further northwest than is usual over Europe.
Given these low pressure systems are the main cause of Europe’s anomalous warm temps (versus latitude), You are right to be be concerned about European cooling. And Arctic warming could be directly linked, i.e. warming that previously went to Europe now goes to the Arctic.
And if the high pressure systems represent somekind of feedback, then I would be genuinely worried (if I lived in Europe) because Europe has a serious vulnerability here.
Philip_B: it’s not just they are getting norther than usual (e.g. many famous winters had such configuration) but they are getting weaker too: it is likely to be due to the AMO index (which is just a recent discover, but has given us new evidence of internal forcings in global warming), so without Atlantic zonal flux we are just the “battle camp” between African hot high pressures and Arctic cold low pressures, with the winter incognita of very cold Russian-Siberian high pressures. We can say our climate is getting closer, at least for sharp thermal changes vs. moderate thermal regime, to American-like climate, not to talk about rainfall regime (from well-distributed in time and space to more violent isolate and short phenomena).
“Last year”, Africa prevailed (Nino etc.); “this year” (Nina etc.), ITCZ is very low on latitude, giving open space to Arctic forces, and maybe Siberian ones…
PS: indeed, for next week models seems to suggest the disappearance of Atlantic flux, with an Arctic high pressure in the far north, an Atlantic high pressure in “blocking”, a Russian high pressure in the east (on snow-covered ground and after a new cold front passed, it could bring -20/-15°C very early this year) and finally cold low pressures on Central and Southern Europe.
PS2: of course, between Greenland and Novaja Zemlija there would travel some low pressure, but they would be Arcticfronts and not mild Atlantic air pushed from Newfoundland north to Iceland then Svalbard (blocking high pressure would cut the flow between Greenland and Iceland).
I didn’t know that, interesting.
Re: #45 et al
Has anyone noticed any research which investigates the potential effects of the Lunar tidal forces, tidal changes due to precession of the Lunar apogee and perigee, and the consequent effects upon such phenomena as the PDO
Re: #45 et al
Has anyone noticed any research which investigates the potential effects of the Lunar tidal forces, tidal changes due to precession of the Lunar apogee and perigee, and the consequent effects upon such phenomena as the PDO and the AMO?
There should be some kind of systematic changes to the atmosphere’s climate patterns induced by the tidal forces of the Moon.
Read the Joe Bastardi blog, its interesting
http://ukie.accuweather.com/adcbin/ukie/ukie_joe_b.asp
Philip_B: just to be precise, since we were talking about Europe, I meant of course the ITCZ on West-Central Africa, the one who could interest us.
Newbie question/topic suggestion (forgive my ignorance as I am not a climatologist):
One of the key elements in the global warming discussion is the radiation balance of the earth, the basic equation that incoming radiation = outgoing radiation. Shouldn’t ‘work’ or ‘chemical reactions’ not also be part of the equation? E.g. a hurricane or ocean currents certainly transform incoming radiation into work and thus, can outgoing radiation really equal incoming radiation? Same goes for chemical reactions that take place in the air and that require energy. Any decent information or discussion on this?
#41
Just to clarify, the reason for shutting down the oil platforms and production in Norway is not that
this is a particulary violent or dangerous storm – that perhaps could be attributed to increased AGW by those
inclined to do so.
There are two reasons: One is that for some of the oldest fields, the oil production
has resulted in the sea bed sinking under the platforms, reducing the air gap. Hence when large waves are
forecasted, these two oldest fields reduce their manning and send the rest onshore. The other issue is
that lately faults have been discovered in the lifeboats and their ability to sustain the impact and evade
the platform in storm conditions. Again, production is shut down and people sent ashore when storms are
forecasted. In other words it is in no way related to the storm it self.
#51,
I’m not sure what chemical reactions you are thinking about>
As to work, yes heat imbalances can get air masses moving, but then friction slows them back down. “Work” is a store of energy, but it is a temporary storeage.
Could anyone help with an elementary question? If CO2 stays at its present level, and assuming that it really does have some effect on temperature, is it generally believed that temperature will continue to increase indefinitely? That is, is there any reason to believe that 280ppm is the exact level required for a reasonably stable global temperature, and that our present levels (380ppm isn’t it?) are themselves sufficient to place the planet in runaway mode, albeit slow runaway mode? That is, ever increasing temps.
Or, if this is not so, what is it that limits the increase in temps?
Is there for instance believed to be a curve of temps and CO2 levels, so that 280 gives a temp of one level, 320 another, 380 a third…and so on?
I realize people will have different views about the merits of all this, but what I’m looking for is for someone, if they would be kind enough, either to point me to a mainstream paper where this is covered, or if possible give a quick summary of what the mainstream, ie warming, accounts of this are.
Thanks!
#53
I was thinking about reactions involving O2 and O3 for instance.
Regarding work: yes, it is ‘temporary’ until an equilibrium state is reached, but in case of the earth, the equilibrium is never reached. Not only air currents take place, but also ocean currents. And with the warming/cooling that takes place during day/night or summer/winter, these currents are maintained at the expense of radiation energy.. or aren’t they?
Peter, sorry, there is no theoretical or empirical support for either of your two theories. No “mainstream” paper would or could cover this kind of basic science, for various reasons. The true mainstream of science is that which has been confirmed by the scientific method, and is represented by the first principles or laws of science. A temperature in any system is controlled by the laws of thermodynamics, ie initial conditions, energy coming in, going out, work being done, etc.
So, by definition, no component temperature can be directly related scientifically to the amount of a certain element in the system. For example, the temperature of boats is not scientifically related to the number of life preservers you bring on board.
>> And with the warming/cooling that takes place during day/night or summer/winter, these currents are maintained at the expense of radiation energy
I believe that’s correct. Two forms of energy, Kinetic and Thermal. Some people mistakenly believe that there is only thermal.
>> heat imbalances can get air masses moving, but then friction slows them back down
Imagine a ship in space that spends 1 year accelerating, and then a year decelerating. Chemical energy was converted to kinetic in both years. There was no friction. Similarly, accelerating the same object on earth requires the same amount of energy as in space, plus more for the friction. There is nothing that says that the existence of friction means that kinetic energy is zero, or that all kinetic energy must be converted to heat.
>> Work is a store of energy, but it is a temporary storeage
Work is the amount of energy transferred by a force, not a store of energy at all.
Hi Steve Viddal
‘no relation to this storm’. Then why did they evacuate the platform today and not when it was sunny and calm. Perhaps you meqnt that the relationship between platform evacuation and the weather is more complex than just the energy of a passing storm ?
If CO2 concentrations were frozen now we would still see some warming because of the thermal inertia of the oceans. This is further confirmed by the observed global radiation imbalance and the estimates of climate sensitivity from observations and from climate models. The estimate of warming “in the pipeline” varies somewhat, but 0.5`C is the number I’ve seen in a few places.
Yes, there is a curve of temps based on increasing CO2. Every doubling of CO2 can be expected to cause about 3`C of warming (2`C-4.5`C).
There is likely no “runaway” point and fears of the Earth turning into Venus are wholly without merit.
Peter, don’t let Boris lead you astray. Because of the masses involved, there simply cannot have been any ocean warming at this point.
Atmos = 5.1 x 10^18 kg…( only .37% of the mass of the oceans )
C02 = 2.4 x 10^15 kg…..( only .047% of the mass of the atmosphere )
C02 is only .000171 % of the mass of the oceans, So there is absolutely no way for that small quantity to store enough energy to have heated the oceans. Therefore, the statement
>> we would still see some warming because of the thermal inertia of the oceans.
Is incorrect. Even if we were heating the atmosphere above the average, it would probably take a 1000 years to warm up the oceans.
>> observed global radiation imbalance
big news announcement: Boris just admitted the truth about radiation balance. The problem for him is that without radiative balance, AGW falls apart.
>> there is a curve of temps based on increasing CO2
I also have curves relating boat temperature to the number of life preservers on board.
Oh, yeah. But to us simpletons the math is much simpler. Keihl and Trenberth, whose work is accepted by the AGW bible, I think, says that something like 450 watts is absorbed by the earth, on average, leading to a 33 C rise in temperature for this planet. Now, doubling c02 is supposed to cause an additional 3.7 watts of radiative energy. And that’s 3.7/450 = 0.8 percent increase in radiation, and (33)(.008) = 0.26 degrees rise in temp. for a doubling of CO2.
#54 Peter
Simply stated, the heating of the earth by the sun is on average exactly balanced by the cooling of the earth by radiating heat into space.
Adding CO2 reduces the rate of cooling into space but leaves the amount of heating by the sun the same.
This causes the earth to gradually warm up. Warmer objects cool quicker, so gradually the heat lost to space increases.
Eventually the earth warms up enough such that the rate of cooling is back in balance with the rate of warming by the sun, and the earth stops warming any more.
As Boris says, for CO2 doubling the IPCC report suggests about 3C (including basic feedbacks).
# 59
Boris,
Please demonstrate scientifically for this audit that “…doubling of CO2 can be expected to cause about 3`C of warming (2`C-4.5`C).”
P. S. I can demonstrate scientifically that doubling CO2 can be expected to cause a change of troposphere temperature of only 0.13 °C -0.2 °C.
61, cont. The 3 degree figure that Boris provides assumes positive water vapor feedbacks, which have never been demonstrated, to my knowledge and are a figment of the models. I think I have shown that water exerts a strong NEGATIVE feedback.
UAH released the anomaly for October 2007 = 0.267 °C
#61 Jae
Using your method, if 450 watts keeps the earth at about 250K (if you measure its temperature from space).
0.008*250K = 2K
This is also wrong, because cooling is proportional to temperature to the power 4.
4th root of (1.008*250^4) = 250.5K
But it’s still a bit more complicated than that. And 450W is too high a value for average TSI per unit area.
The correct calculation using a simple representation of the “greenhouse” effec gives a figure of about 1K. That figure excludes feedbacks.
>> heating of the earth by the sun is on average exactly balanced by the cooling of the earth by radiating heat into space.
Nothing in nature says it needs to balance. 1st law reduces to radiative balance only if internal energy is constant, and work is zero, neither of which is true. In fact, several other planets are in obvious radiative imbalance. The idea is falsified.
>> Adding CO2 reduces the rate of cooling into space but leaves the amount of heating by the sun the same.
Wrong in several ways. 1) it only effects the rate of nightly cooling, not the overall amount 2) overall cooling is dominated by the water cycle, so even a 10% change in radiative cooling may only be a .01% change in overall cooling, 3) C02 also effects heating and 4) the quantity is so small in relation that it’s effect is similarly extremely limited
>> The correct calculation
Yes, but this is based on a faulty premise.
Steve, Could you comment on the methodology used by Jim Goodridge in this article: http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/11/04/guest-weblog-co2-variation-by-jim-goodridge-former-california-state-climatologist/ I would like your take on the idea he has presented on the Accumulated Departure method of solar irradiance. This chart if valid would explain much of the current climate cycling and put to rest the idea that CO2 causes climate change instead of CO2 being an effect of climate change.
” If we are to believe that the irradiance and sunspot numbers correlate for the 3 sunspot cycles from 1975 to 2005 them it can be assumed that a correlation for the 1500 to 2005 follows. It is common to think of individual sunspot cycles to be independent events. This was not the case during the Maunder Minimum of sunspot activity from 1650 to 1710 when Earth was in the middle of the Little Ice Age.
The sunspot record needs to be examined in its entirety rather than as individual sunspot cycles. The method to do this is by calculating the accumulated departure from the average of all the sunspot numbers of the entire 500-year index. This reveals the cooling during the Maunder Minimum and the current global warming. The current warming of 15 watts per square meter began in 1935, based on the sunspot record.”
If this is a valid statistical methodology, are there any solar scientists willing to co-author a paper with Goodridge so we can have a balanced insight into the extraterrestial nature of earth’s climate? This would dovetail nicely with Marsh & Svensmark’s Cosmic Ray theory affecting cloud cover. http://www.dsri.dk/~hsv/SSR_Paper.pdf#search=%22Cosmic%20Rays%2C%20Clouds%2C%20and%20Climate%20%22 http://www.aip.org/pnu/2000/split/513-2.html http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn6270
Steve, I’m pretty sure that jae’s number included feedbacks.
Can you provide a reference, please?
69:
Jim kind of steps in it when he says:
This is false. Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere comes from fossil fuel burning. WHen you burn FF, you release CO2 and it has to go somewhere. It goes into the air, the oceans and the biosphere. CO2 has increased in the ocean, so it can’t be coming from a warmer ocean. Furthermore, C12/C13 isotope ratios confirm that the rise in CO2 in from fossil fuels.
67, Steve Milesworthy: OK, I looked it up, and my memory didn’t serve me. Kiehl and Trenberth say there’s an even higher average flux of 492 w/m2 on the Earth’s surface. So, 3.7/492= only 0.0075, and (33)(.0075) = 0.25 degree C increase for 2 x CO2. And I think you are wrong to use the Kelvin calculations, since we are talking about a DELTA temperature of 33 degrees. Even if I give you 1 degree C, it ain’t much after the NEGATIVE feedbacks are considered. Face it, the whole hypothesis is terribly flawed.
>> This is false.
Boris, what you wrote is completely false, but if I respond, I will get snipped, but yours will stay. We’ve been asked to not discuss C02 in that way, so why do you do that?
Re #69 My two cents is that his accumulation method has some physical meaning. Simply put, an increase in irradiance means that the sun is putting more energy into Earth’s oceans. The oceans accumulate that energy. That energy accumulation is shown by a rise in temperature.
However, I think that his “15W/m2” term may create confusion, as that has no physical meaning that I can determine.
Boris doesn’t understand the chemistry and physics of a dynamic system in which there are inputs and outputs. He thinks in terms of a one-way process and draws incorrect conclusions accordingly. The concepts of equilibrium and flow _rates_ are completely lost on any that have never directly evaluated such dynamics, particularly feedback systems.
Mark
Gunnar,
dscott brought up the reference that CO2 might be an effect of the current warming. Such arguments border on the nonsensical, which is probably why Steve McI. doesn’t want them presented here.
And Steve M. has an open request for an actual proof of this. The IPCC simply suggested it based on others’ suggestions which is based on…? We’d all like to see where that original derivation came from. Certainly absence of proof is not proof of absence, but the number came from somewhere.
Mark
>> CO2 might be an effect of the current warming. Such arguments border on the nonsensical
In reality, the C02 is a result of current warming. This effect is not non-sensical, but follows Henry’s Law, which is well past the peer review stage. It has graduated to scientific law. Segalstad has shown that man’s C02 effect is very small. According to his studies, only 4% of the atmosphere could possibly be non natural and that’s a max, since we can’t really distinguish. The flux is so large, that his conclusion is that only .2% of the flux is man made.
As for the ocean, it is not one entity (see #76), and we certainly don’t know that C02 levels have risen, C02 levels vary widely, they are well below equilibrium, Mauna Loa is downwind of equatorial waters which are certainly outgassing C02. From the fact that levels are well below equilibrium, we can conclude that all the atmospheric C02 is in flux, just like water in the atmosphere. It cannot accumulate, just like water cannot accumulate in the atmosphere.
In my mind CO2 is secondary to all the other issues, the issue at hand is the Accumulated Departure method for solar irradiance a valid statistical means of analysis? Is it misleading or useful? Does it meet the standards of science as a method of analysis?
76, I understand that this is snipping material, but I’ll second what you said. It’s a little more complicated than just those things, but you got the big picture concept correct.
Interesting news headline:
Weather Channel boss calls global warming ‘the greatest scam in history
By Our Foreign Staff
Last Updated: 11:01am GMT 09/11/2007
The founder of the The Weather Channel in the US has described the concept of global warming as ‘the greatest scam in history’ and accused global media of colluding with ‘environmental extremists’ to alarm the public.
# The deceit behind global warming
# Climate change is like ‘World War Three’
“It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM,” John Coleman wrote in an article published on ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, which is known for challenging widely published theories on global warming.”
Telegraph UK, november 9th
69, 80, dscott: I am intrigued by this material, but it would help if you could find a peer-reviewed article on this.
61, jae, the overall budget is more complicated than that; it includes cloud albedo, etc. Considerably less that 450 actually reaches the surface. There are breakdowns of the whole budget out on the internet, and in the IPCC report. I remember Lubos having a fairly decent chart. Go over to motls, and search for greenhouse, and you should find it.
82:
Conspiracy theories on the 8’s.
LOL, on IPCC “consensus.”
83, jae, you could email Jim Goodridge on this to ask if he knew of any studies using this methodology. His email is on the article. I personally have not seen this graphic before, this is why I’m asking if the accumulated departure is statistically valid. Any statisticians here that could comment on the method? You know the two biggest liars are politicians and statistics.
84, Larry, I think these guys tried to accomodate all those factors.
# 68
Gunnar,
I agree… The real balance probably will be reached when the Sun turns off, and it is just an assumption because we are immersed in the Universe and imbalances will continue perpetually, speaking in human terms.
88, that’ s it. It’s only 236 that actually involves the greenhouse effect, so roughly half is reflected, and half actually gets to the surface, to be backradiated as IR. That 236 will make the numbers come out right.
90 ???
Yeah, you have to simplify the concepts to the point that you can explain them, but it isn’t as simple as a coke can sitting in the sun.
Mark
# 88
Jae,
Those guys created energy from the nothingness. I don’t know how their paper passed the “peer review” process.
I’ve read your article and it’s reasonable that the water acts like a mitigating factor or a negative feedback. It has a high specific heat and this property gives it the potential of storing energy for longer times than the CO2. CO2 absorbs a very limited amount of energy, and it releases the absorbed energy almost immediately then it has absorbed it. Water absorbs heat and, as it needs more heat to rise its temperature by 1 K, it absorbs more energy. Then it releases or emits the absorbed energy very slowly… Oceans, dew, water vapor, etc., are efficient accumulators of heat. The atmosphere is simply a conveyor of heat.
# 84
Larry,
The Earth’s surface absorbs 356.15 W/m^2 from the incident SIR upon Earth. Water vapor alone absorbs 130.89 W/m^2 from those 356.15 W/m^2 of incident SIR upon Earth. Ciphers from Trenberth’s paper are excessively specious”, but thats what the IPCC loves.
Taken from one of my articles on energy budget:
Total absorbed by the surface: 356.15 W/m^2
Emitted by the surface to space: 181.64 W/m^2
Stored by the surface: 174.51 W/m^2
Absorbed by air from the surface: 19.55 W/m^2
Absorbed by water vapor from the surface: 130.89 W/m^2
Transferred by conduction to land and oceans: 24.07 W/m^2
We learned that set of scales in our class of Ecology some annual epidemics ago… 😉
#85 Boris,
You are more credible then the founder of the weather channel? Wow. And you read this blog too? Can you possibly comment for once with something substantial other then your jibs and jabs- your attempts to debase? Especially since you always target my posts, and I am just a girl. Go ahead I can take it. I happen to think that article is very interesting. I am seeing a trend!
(I won’t hold my breath!)
Did come from the Common Book of Prayer? Do witches float? Do you believe in the Sacred Shoe or the Sacred Gourd?
The founder of the weather channel appears to be presenting a conspiracy theory, that’s all I was saying. Nothing personal to you. But he says AGW is a scam and offers no evidence to support his point of view. I think it’s appropriate to ridicule such unfounded statements, the same way I do when I hear someone say “9/11 was a scam.”
Boris, it is and it isn’t. It depends on which group you’re talking about. Are there serious scientists with serious concerns? Yes. Are there other serious scientists who aren’t buying it? Yes. Are there political snake-oil salesmen claiming that the oceans are going to rise by 20′ this century, and the polar bears are going extinct, and the Greenland ice cap is going to slide into the ocean, and cause the thermohaline circulation to stop, etc., etc., ad nausium?
That’s the hoax part.
The modern increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to FF burning. Not some. Not 50%. It didn’t come from the oceans, though there has been mixing. It didn’t come from volcanoes. The increase in the slope follows the increase in the burning of FF. The evidence is overwhelming.
#102
Actually, it is true that we emit CO2 by burning fossil fuels, and it is true that CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing (“true” meaning “most probable” according to what we know). But it seems that the actual increase in CO2 does not match the amount of CO2 rejected in the atmosphere. So somewhere, somehow, the biosphere has found a way to reabsorb about half of the surplus. Now I challenge anyone to find me a definitive explanation on that one. There are tentative hypothesis, but as far as I know, we have no detailed explanation (meaning with numbers that relate to actual measurements, not guestimates). Now the question one might ask is: if the biosphere has found a way to reabsorb so much of the surplus CO2, and if we give it a few more years, will it find a way to reabsorb “all” of the surplus? Or will it be just the opposite? And again, as far as I know (and I may not be up to date on the subject), we don’t have the answer to that, and yet it’s crucial that we know the answer.
The other thing to remember about those radiation budgets, and, say, the CO2 cycle, is that all those numbers are very tentative, and have huge error bars on them. Given that the fraction of surplus CO2 that comes from fossil fuels is a tiny amount of the total budget, those error bars can become very significant. Again, all we know for a fact is that CO2 measurements show an increase, and that some of it can be attributed to fossil fuels, through isotopic ratios. To go from there to a full attribution (that GW is due to CO2 increase) is a huge step. You can build a very coherent picture where it does. But I gather that you could just as well build a coherent picture where it doesn’t, at least to a significant amount. What is troubling is that most climate scientists are looking in only one direction. Just like with any paradigm, they discard every anomaly as minor and inconsequential. Whenever things go wrong, they always have an ad-hoc explanation. Take aerosols, for example, to explain the 1950-1975 cooling. If that’s not an ad-hoc hypothesis, what is? We know next to nothing about how many aerosols there were in the atmosphere during that period, and how they behaved w/r to incident radiation: absorb it? reflect it? diffuse it? It all depends on their size, their size distribution, their 3-D spatial distribution in the atmosphere, all things that we know nothing about. Yet Jim Hansen just invents a curve of aerosols that happens to mimick the temperature evolution of the 20th century in reverse, plugs it into his model, and voila! Everything is explained!
Excuse the ranting, and I know that we’re drifting off-topic here. I’m trying to debate over at Pharyngulla. Boy, it’s hard to have a polite, civilized discussion!
Wow, I just visited the Spyruloogie or whatever that sight is. Holy crap.
Boris,
take this graph. It shows a steady increase of CO2 from 1750 to 1850, with a constant slope until about 1950-1960, where you get a slope change. The increase from that inflection point to now is roughly 50ppm, which is what the anthro based contribution is for that time period. Now looks like to me that before anthro emissions, CO2 was increasing by some means at a more or less constant rate. Which begs the question, given your statement, when did the natural contribution go to zero and why?
Frank [re:105],
What you are experiencing is the effects of our universities as dogma production factories where “shouting down” your evil opponent who does not share your world view is considered OK.
Uhh, Boris (104). Look at the numbers. The rate of human production is actually a lot more than the rate of increase in the atmosphere. And the rate of increase in the atmosphere is more-or-less linear, while human output is closer to exponential. They don’t track.
This is a subtle point, but even though we’re putting more into the atmosphere than is accumulating, it supports the theory that something else is determining concentration.
Now, go read the [t-word] chaper in your p-chem book, and it will all suddenly make sense.
excuse me “are the effects”
Benthic baloney hoax alert
See http://www.globalwarming.org/node/1267 .
“The author(s) have even made up past contents for the fake journal. There is no Dept. of Climatology at the U. of AZ, nor is there a Daniel Klein or Mandeep Gupta in the U of A directory. … A quick whosis lookup indicates that the site is registered to one David Thorpe of Powys, Wales, in the UK. “
REading unthreaded is like watching old fat guys in an hot oil wrestling competition.
You cover your eyes but you can’t help but peek.
the horror
You want horror go lurk over at Spyruloogie, Farahlunchyga, or whatever that place is.
re 112. that place was scary.
You know I went through a phase where I had to convince everybody
about the truth of evolution. Then I thought. If they can’t see the sky is blue,
why would me getting purple in the face mad make any difference?
Shrugs.
Jaye, what are you talking on? :O
That is classic… now you’ve gone and put a mental image in my head that will forever haunt me. The horror indeed. My guess is that you have a gaggle of people connected to you in some fashion that are forever haunted by similar horrors.
Mark
113, Thank you. It would be oine thing if it affected the price of peanuts in Trinidad, but what people believe about that issue is the most inconsequential thing I can think of. I don’t get people getting so emotional about it. Whatever. GW, otoh, is something that promises to affect all of us in a most severe way, one way or another.
93, Nasif:
Yes. It seems very clear to me that water exerts a negative feedback in two important ways: (1) It takes a lot of energy to evaporate it (and this does nothing to increase sensible heat), and (2) it is less dense than air so it rises rapidly, thereby removing heat from the surface. If you look at Figure 1 in my USAcomparisons5.xls spreadsheeet, you will notice that, if adequate moisture is present, you CANNOT get a one degree rise in temperature without increasing the absolute humidity of the air. And this costs big watts; to go from 24 C to 25 C, you have to evaporate about 1 gram of moisture for every cubic meter of air. This “costs” about 0.69 watts/gram, none of which results in an increase in sensible heat. It drives me nuts how climate scientists can claim a positive water vapor feedback, without any evidence for this. In fact, all the evidence (which is simple) points the other way! The only way I can see that they can posit this is through some magic radiative theory. But if this theory exists, why can’t I find it?
RE 116. It’s funny Larry what I’ve found is that a person’s emotion about an issue
is inversely related to it’s importance IFF that person has no power.
Simply. Take a powerless group:
They dont get enraged about things that really matter. They get enraged about what doesnt
matter.
The reason for this is simple: power without consequence. If you choose a matter of consequence
to fight over AND YOU WIN, you assume responsibility. If you choose a matter of no consequence
and win, you get ego points and no responsibility. The weak fight over scraps.
There is no point in winning a debate about evolution. No consequence. Consequently you will
see people go ballistic in these debates because the debates dont matter. They are NAGS on both
sides.
Real fights: are different. Fewer hissy fits. more steely eyed. Big dogs know this.
#105 >> So somewhere, somehow, the biosphere has found a way to reabsorb about half of the surplus. Now I challenge anyone to find me a definitive explanation on that one. There are tentative hypothesis, but as far as I know, we have no detailed explanation
You are joking, aren’t you? It’s a carbon cycle. What you just said is equivalent to: We took some water from a big lake and inserted it into the atmosphere as vapor. And somewhere, somehow, the earth managed (just barely) to absorb it. We can’t measure the increased humidity like we expected to. Btw, can someone pass the umbrella, it’s starting to rain. There are certainly detailed explanations of the carbon cycle, and Henry’s law is far more than a hypothesis.
#104 >> The modern increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to FF burning. Not some. Not 50%.
#105 >> and that some of it can be attributed to fossil fuels, through isotopic ratios.
And that’s assuming that all depleted C02 is only caused by Man. There are natural causes of depleted C02, so this is a max. Laymans explanation: there is no human signature in man emitted C02, other than the fact that it is depleted of certain isotopes. Sunlight causes certain isotopes. Plants take in this C02, with some being the isotope variety. Plant dies, releases C02 in that ratio. Hydrocarbons are assumed to be very old, therefore, isotopes have decayed back to normal C02. So, the calculation of percentage of human C02 relies on the false premise that man burning hydrocarbons is the only source of normal C02. However, even assuming that, Segalstad shows that it’s a small percentage.
#117, Jae, you are absolutely right about that.
#117 Jae, I’ve been bumped to unthreaded and see you’re discussing that paper. I’m too lazy to try to find the original link. Can you give a link again? Thanks.
#119
Gunnar, I’ve taken enough abuse over at Pharyngulla, I don’t need any more. Did you read what I said? I don’t think so. Read again, and if you want to discuss things, please show some respect.
117, this may be related, dry air heats up quickly as it also cools down quickly. If air is humid, it takes more energy to achieve the same degree temperature rise. The explanation for this is called Enthalpy, total heat. Example a desert has extreme temperature swings from day to night not just because there is no vegetation to speak of, but because the humidity is very low. It might be 120F during the day, but 32F at night. And so for instance 85F in Tampa is not the same as 85F in Boston, the difference being RH. http://www.truetex.com/psychrometric_chart.htm
Umm, this is out-of-the-closet thermo. Prepare for the big snip.
Pharyngula, Jaye, pharyngula. Pharyngula are the set of branchial arcs that appear at certain phase in the morphogenesis of vertebrates that look like the branchial arcs of Selachimorpha (sharks and other cartilaginous fish)… snipped? 🙂
123: dscott: Correct, but what is odd is that the AVERAGE temperature will be higher in the desert, when comparing locations at the same latitude (same solar input) and altitude (no lapse rate effect). That also shows that water has a negative feedback. For details, see here (you have to select “show all posts” to get the whole story).
121: ?What paper? If you are referring to my analyses, see the link in 126.
Segalstad is a coauthor of Jaworowski, and the only thing either have proven is that you can find some scientist somewhere who will say just about anything. Here is the title of seciton 2 of Segalstad’s “paper”:
My prediction is that we will be safe from AGW, but the world will end because we are inundated with Galileo wannabes.
re: Pharyngula. Well I just shot an email over to the University where PZ Myers teaches, but that’s me: a mom with kids. I was disgusted with what I read and told them so. Gave them a link to that Hello Stan area and let them know thousands of people are reading it.
# 129
welikerocks,
Sorry, Who’s PZ Myers? Where did you read and what? I’ve only defined what the pharyngula is… 😦
#130 Sorry! PZ Meyers is the owner of the Pharyngula blog. Its his blog. I don’t like these people teaching kids. I am tired of it really. Drove my oldest daughter out of college. Seriously. She was afraid to say anything out-loud in her classes. She went into real estate. She loved biology, and political science too.
Nasif, the Pharyngula blog was up against CA for “Best Science Blog”. The link to it is there in the topics SteveM’s got up about the contest. Where have you been? 🙂 (actually you are lucky you missed it all-I feel like I need a shower after reading the posts over there)
Welikerocks… Oops! I went without stopping to vote for CA and paid no attention to other blogs. I received a message from JSc who was leaving his place to CA on the contest. I’ve just read his blog… You’re right! It is worst than an epidemic viral gastroenteritis.
I read through some of the older posts at Pharyngula. I’m interested in evolutionary biology and in general agreement with his positions, but the tone is way too vitriolic for me, and I like a vigorous debate. Pharyngula is an interesting study in contrast with CA in how the tone of the blog owner’s posts are reflected in the tone of the comments.
The best from the polls: they are over!
And the outcome: not satisfying, but the decision was salomonic.
So lets get back to business. Where’s the next Waldo?
Regards
Klaus
126, jae, no it doesn’t show a negative feedback, it shows that the means of calculation are inadequate. Firstly, since the closer you get to the tropics, the higher the humidity, the lower the temperature extremes. Hence if you compare temperature readings from a tropical zone against an arid desert zone you would be misled as to the mean temperatures, the highs and lows. Only in grossly misunderstanding the total heat content of the air would anyone think it is hotter in a desert than at the equator. So as a result, if an area is experiencing a drought with low humidity, air temperatures will be higher than normal. It would be very easy to misconstrue Global Warming to CO2 when in fact, the planet was going through a drought or period of deminished rainfall as could be explained by the Orbital Monsoon Hypothesis or even during periods of solar cycle maximum (Cosmic Ray – cloud formation hypothesis).
Averages by their definition use the highest and lowest values, i.e. outliers, in determining the final result. So my example of a desert ranging from 120 to 32 would give you a simple average of 71F. How is such a number relevant to any measure of thermal energy? Even taking a weighted average using hourly readings may give a misleading result of temperature, this is why the mean is used.
131: I do not understand your post.
I am not comparing a tropical zone at, say 10 degrees latitude, with a desert zone at, say, 30 degrees latitude. I am comparing dry versus wet areas at the latitude an.d elevation
Let me try again: I am comparing dry locations vs. wet locations at the same latitude and elevation. You can’t compare a location at 10 degrees latitude and 0 m above sea level with one at 30 degrees latitude and 1000 feet elevation, because the solar insolatioon is not the same and the lapse rate becomes an issue.
Oh, and don’t confuse the issue by talking about enthalpy and diurnal variation, because the climate scientists are obsessed with TEMPERATURE AVERAGES, which is what I’m addressing.
Hey! Jae, take it easy. Critiscism is always good to enhance our observations, OK? 🙂
RE 100 Francois Ouellette says:November 9th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
quote Again, all we know for a fact is that CO2 measurements show an increase, and that some of it can be attributed to fossil fuels, through isotopic ratios. unquote
Have you seen a graph anywhere of the isotopic ratios? I’ve looked without success: I’ve predicted a disturbance in ratios during the period 1939 to 45. Incidentally, I can think of three reasons for changing isotopic ratios — two (well, one and a half to be honest) related to removal of heavy rather than addition of light.
Aerosols: I read a paper recently which states that aerosols act differently — warming or cooling — depending on the albedo of what’s beneath them. I’d not like to have to pick the bones out of that one.
JF
re: 132: Jae’s analysis has merit, in my opinion. I have replicated his estimate of climate sensitivity using winter/summer temperature differences compared with solar insolation (at top of atmosphere) at various locations in the US, and came up with a similar sensitivity value of around 0.1 C/W/m^2. Similarly, Jae has been careful to analyze temperature trends at similar latitudes and altitudes. I concur with his conclusion that water vapor is a negative feedback effect overall in the natural world.
Rubbish. Averages use all values. That’s what average means. Only in climate science does average become the arithmetic mean of the highest and lowest values (of a much larger data set). And yes, I understand the historical reasons for this.
re #5 – query from tpguydk – WHERE TO STUDY climatology?
If I were you, I would email Roger Pielke, Jr, and ask him to forward it to his father, also at the University of Colorado. Until last year, Roger Peilke, Sr, was for many years at Colorado State University. His now dormant blog on climate issues is here. Check it out!
Or better still, get a hold of his textbook:
Cotton, W.R. and R.A. Pielke, 2007: Human impacts on weather and climate, Cambridge University Press, 330 pp. (Amazon.com has made excerpts of it available online from their website.)
Do both and you will know why you can trust his recommendations on where to go to study climate.
I believe Roger Peilke, Sr. is now at CIRES at the University of Colorado. I bet you could ferret out his current email from online sources there. He is less a climate change skeptic than a “let’s follow the best evidence where it goes” kind of scientist.
In short, he’s more like Steve: he wants to get the science done soundly instead of fashionably.
.
Re#100, Francois:
Plenty of information on how exactly biosphere responds to increased atmospheric CO2 could be found here:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/Template/MainPage.jsp?Page=SearchPage&MerchantCode=CO2ScienceB2C
and search for greening in articles
Note, that part of sequestered carbon is going to long-term storage: it is deep roots, undigested part of organics in forest floor, and sank dead phytoplankton.
The only quantitative analysis of antropogenic carbon flux I am aware of is referenced here:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/10/growth-rate-of-.html#more
Particular paper is very inviting for critique, especially it prognosis parts.
Re#103, Larry:
human output (of CO2) is closer to exponential.
Processes of exponential growth do not last long. I would dare to say that it is fundamental law of nature.
Antropogenic emissions of CO2 had near-exponential growth only for 25 years, between 1950 and 1975. Since 1975 (first oil crisis) to the present per capita emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion are stable at 1.1 tC per capita annually:
Click to access Independent%20Summary5.pdf
page 11.
And rate of population increase is falling. Most of experts prognose that world population will peak at about 9 billion at 2050. Surprisingly, such nations as Iran and Mexico already have fertility rate of less than replacement rate of 2.1 child per woman.
re # 108
steven mosher says:
“You know I went through a phase where I had to convince everybody
about the truth of evolution.”
I simply point out that even the most religiously extreme among us KNOWS enough to prove that evolution is a solid logical deductive Truth.
Genetic variability + differential repoduction => evolution of a population
Evolution is no mystery at all! Simply logical and necessary FACT.
So-called “macro-evolution” – where the workings of great expanses of time can only be incompletely accounted for – is where the overly Faithful typically stumble, resulting in “God of the gaps” type of counter-args. In other words, because we can only cite mechanisms, not evidence, there is always room for for an Intelligent Being to do Hid work!
Now, I have strayed from our topic…(SORRY Steve), but I am convinced that there are some fruitful analogs to this argumentative sequence evident in many AGW debates among the lay public. For the moment, I leave these to others.
I know political leaders, like UN chief, are not so honest all around the World…because he cannot have seen nothing of what he talks about, unless he misunderstood the beginning of summer melting with global warming (in this case, it would be worse than not to be honest…).
But, free press in a liberal country should be smarter and make sure of the facts, not being simply a political agency like e.g. old Pravda.
This article is really shamefull: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7088435.stm
Let’s start a journey from the centre of the Earth and move outwards.
We do not know what is at the centre of the Earth, but we think it’s pretty darned hot. Heat flows from hot places to cooler places, so perhaps there is an outward flow of heat. Is it constant? We don’t know fully what causes the heat because of complications like magnetism and inertial drag and friction and magneto effects, to name a few, which might change as the polarity and strength of the magnetic field flips and changes. (We are fairly sure of constant heat generation in terms of thousands of years from radioactive decay of natural minerals).
We’ll journey outwards to land first, then later to sea.
Moving further away from the centre a huge distance, we meet the depths to which drill holes can be put down and temperatures measured. There ain’t no other way to measure deeper temperatures except by extraoplation and models which are fairly unsubstantiated. The deepest drill hole was about 12.2 km, on the Kola Peninsula, north Russia. Several holes were drilled nearby to calibrate near-surface geothermal gradient, which varied from 30 to 68 mW per metre to the power of minus 2.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V72-4FY9M75-2&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F25%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=e17a318263078b8df784550797c8a7e3
Nearby drilling showed that one cound NOT reliably reconstruct palaeoclimate because there were larger local variables, such as rock type, permeability, etc.
A surprising conjecture was
http://en.gtk.fi/Media/in_focus.html?number=9
It can be assumed that at least some of this biomass is in the carbon dioxide cycle.
A few tens of metres below the land surface, we meet a range of temperatures which some have tried to use to reconstruct climate over the last several hundred years. (Personally, I think this is scientific self-flagellation).
So what is the temperature of the globe at the surface of the earth (leaving aside the complication of ice caps and glaciers)? I do not think that is a valid question. The change from day to night, the seasonal changes, the changes in albedo, in vegetation and land use, moisture content of soil and other factors – they are all too confounding.
Moving out, we have the atmosphere in a thin onion-skin model for a m or two above the land. Close enough to be affected by inversions, to be slowed down by frictional drag of wind effects. There have been careful papers that show quite remarkable long-terrm temp differences over altitudes of a m at a time.
Moving up though the onion skins we have the cloudy atmosphere, the stratosphere. It gets colder as you get higher, until you reach the tropopause, which is a nebulous feature whose precise defintion I cannot find. Above the tropopause is the troposphere, where the temperature rises as you go higher. I cannot work out why. Of course, this is all discussing daytime only and mainly at latitudes where most of us live.
Question I. Which part of which onion skin does one select to represent the heat flux of the globe to see if it is warming or cooling? This radial section has layers that are chalk and cheese. And occasional objects like hot volcanos.
Go back a few paras to our outward journey, 40,000 leagues under the sea. When we leave the “land” under the deep oceans, we meet what is usually measured as quite cold water of fairly constant salinity. But, here and there, there is sea-floor spreading and global tectonics that change the shape of the basin that the Earth’s oceans occupy and maybe its temperature. And we are trying to pick up sea level changes of mm per year? Moving out further, we meet a sort of oceanic tropopause, where surface temperature effects are said to be able to penetrate and alter the normal temperature. I don’t know how this magical depth is determined in theory, nor do I know the detail of the temperature profile that physics predict shoud extend from this pause to the surface. This is because oceans have unfortunate currents and mixing. There is also a lot of involvement in the carbonate cycle, through living and dead marine organisms, fixed like coral and mobile like krill.
The deltas of large rivers add bulk to the sea and raise its level. As the level rises, indeed perpetually, isostasy takes place and the continents rise and or fall to adjust their flotation properties to strive for equilibrium, perhaps.
Question 2. What part of the ocean should be sampled, and why, in order to estimate if there is global warming? Do differences in the depths of cooling water intakes of big ships versus small ships add too much noise, like the old buckets were said to do?
Question 3. How can sea level changes be measured if there is no possibility to establish a steady datum point?
Question 4. If the sea level is to rise through heating and thermal expansion, does this not require fairly precisely that all of the water mass, on average, has increased in temperature? How can we know this from the sparse sampling of the ocean deeps where the heat outflow from the earth has not been measured adequately to conclude that it is constant?
We have a complex earth and there is no room for good scientific assertion that carbon dioxide is changing its temperature. Such a puny amount of a minor gas in the presence of such a huge and complex globe? I wonder.
#66 Nasif, as noted by me before, the NH anomaly for
feb 2007 was +0,666 degrees C … JUST happens to be
IPCC AR4 report SPM month…John CRISTY! …
Some statistics: 53 of 115 months since April 1998
(+0,786) have been warmer than Oct 2007 (+0,267), only 12 before
April 1998! (starting Dec 1978)
Since Nov 2002, 33 months out of 60 have been warmer than Oct
this year;…Since Nov 2004 21 out of 36 months have been warmer;
…Since Nov 2005, 14 out of 24…
…Since Nov 2006, 6 out of 12 warmer, average 0,1C roughly
colder 5, 0,04C roughly…huge numbers Ladies and Gentlemen …
The biosphere absorbs a smallish amount. Most of what doesn’t go into the air goes into the ocean.
Boris, just for starters, Google: greenhouse tomato carbon dioxide
Boris
There is a huge portion of the biosphere in the oceans.
#143
“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you are misinformed”
Mark Twain–
RE 144. Shocking? Get real. It was Schlocking.
I don’t know if we’ve established for sure how much goes into the ocean, but I’ll buy that most of the balance does. The important question is what then? It can photosynthesize, it can be converted to carbonates, it doesn’t just build up in solution. That’s where we need to sharpen the pencils, and understand exactly where it’s going, and further understand the dynamics of the uptake mechanisms. Right now, just like everything in climate science, we have widely differing numbers, and a junior-high foodfight over them.
RE 143. Well put. But, I don’t want to turn this into a philosophy of science thread.
Still, I suspect some WVO Quine, or some Thomas Kuhn, or Popper or Rorty or Habermas of the future will
have interesting things to say about this chapter and episode of science.
HI Steffan
The number you quote above are anomalous changes relative to the long term average, I assume. In which case would you like to try the same exercise for other periods. Perhaps the 30’s, 50’s, 70’s, 90’s. It might be as interesting?
Re 152. Thanks. I have thought long and hard last night about a book comparing the two “issues”
That’s a free idea for anyone to steal if they like.
Say thanks if you write it.
RE 157. Commenting on myself.
I wrote:
“Fundamentally there is ALWAYS a tension between observation and theory. ALWAYS and forever.
Given this tension there are three biological responses:
Ignore the observation. Reject the Theory. Pretend the conflict
does not exist.”
This implies three states of being: Ignorance. Confusion. Delusion.
Choose your door.
Negative water vapor feedback in a nutshell.
Excellent work, Jae! I have a criticism but I don’t wish to write it down here.
RE 161. yes. Choose ignorance. Even if you don’t know what you are doing.
delusion takes the most effort. Confusion inflicts the most damage.
That is why Ignorance is Bliss.
There’s another alternative. Cynicism. As in Wally on Dilbert. He’s not ignorant, just jaded. And cynical in a serene way.
Seven Mosher (159) illustrates why irreverent websites such as CA are so critically important these days:
This implies three states of being: Ignorance. Confusion. Delusion.
The modern university: Enter in ignorance, get submerged in confusion, exit in delusion. The modern PC university is all about theory, short on observation. Ideology, or theory, is everything. To make sure you have the right theory, everything but the “correct” one is excluded from campus classrooms.
RE 163. Yes, cyncicsm is next to godliness.
RE 164. Yes you picked my favorities: composer and philosopher.
Pennstate mann and the hockey stick is the eternal return of the same.
I tried to photoshop the picture and put in a more representative stick….
but I suck. There goes my future at the associated press.
Re 165. University.
I tell you a funny story. I think I told it here before. I hope the details match if I did.
Graduate course in Hegel. Philosophy of Mind. I am an undergrad but working with the professor
William Earle. He is a wised assed nasty SOB. I like that. Wiki calls him “richly provocative”
WAAAAA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Earle
Where was I? Ah yes, first day of class. A bunch of new grad students and me. I know Earle, they
don’t. This should be fun.
Earle: we will read Hegel and study his philosophy of mind. Who can tell me what mind is?
EagerBeaver: Well some philosophers think that the mind is just the brain.
(THIS IS GOING TO BE FUN.)
Earle: Is that so?
EB: yes, the mind body is an well known problem and many think that the mind is nothing more
than a brain state or an epiphenoma or….
Earle: do you have a brain?
EB: why yes.
Earle: How do you know? did you read about it in the newspaper?.
Must kill sock puppet
#154: As a half Finn you possibly know that “rutot” means “plagues” in Finnish 🙂
Jean,
Is mrPete half Finn? I think a google map of all the CA regulars would be interesting.
Both current location and origins.
“Complacent” to use a word from the dendros would not come to mind.
Geoff,
The definition of the tropopause: It’s the altitude where the temperature stops decreasing. It stops decreasing for several reason. Above the tropopause convective heat transfer becomes insignificant. But primarily it’s because the upper stratosphere warms from the absorption by oxygen and ozone of incoming solar UV with wavelengths less than ~0.3 micrometers. If there were no oxygen in the atmosphere, there would be no tropopause and no stratosphere. We wouldn’t be here either.
Bill,
Can’t resist the nitpick. It’s either Also Sprach Zarathustra or Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Of course you could write Also Spoke Zarathustra so no one could know whether you mistranslated or mixed languages.
#143/154: There’s condensed discussion of troposphere/stratosphere and conduction/convection at Britanica.
I’ve read that many models tend to under estimate convective heat transfer in the troposphere, and thus over estimate the role of CO2 since it traps heat through a radiative mechanism. I think that it was Linzden who criticized the qualitative diagrams that didn’t show convection at all.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7088435.stm
RE 173.
De wit pain
Me thinks some day I make joke about your name.
Funny story. you havent heard this. First day I am calling roll in Class.
There is no need to do this. There are maybe 100 students, but I like to see if I can
have fun with the names on the spot.
True story. true names. One became famous.
Moshpit: Mr. Burdin? Mr Burdin?
Burden: Here.
Moshpit: Can your parent’s foretell the future?
Burden: no.
Moshpit: then the fact that your first name is Major is a mere coincidence?
This goes on for a while and then I see the name to end all names.
I am frozen.
Moshpit: Miss Pepper.
Miss Pepper: Y…esss.
Moshpit: welcome to the class.
I could not bring myself to say her first name.
Needless to say. I was funnier than her and the romance didnt last.
http://posters.imdb.com/name/nm0007053/awards
True story.
Nuh-uh. It’s “2001, a Space Odyssey” theme. I mean everybody knows that.
so you think you are funny, ha ha.
not
178 refers to 176
Look what you did Dewitt!!
Can anyone confirm/refute the statement below and tell me if it is also true of the models?
“Had the IPCC used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance.”
http://canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
IPCC SPM ar4 global maps use Robinson projection not Mercator.
Click to access AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
Karl998 (the red dot map), uses plate carree (simple lat-long plot)
IMHO claim busted.
Can anybody find a mercator map used by IPCC? Greenland has the same area as Africa on a mercator map, on an equal area map Greenland has the same area as the Arabian Peninsula.
RE: #144
Geoff Sherrington,
A fascinating book by the late Professor Thomas Gold might interest you. It is titled, The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels, Springer-Verlag, 1999 (soft cover edition, 2001).
176, I couldn’t find that claim in that link.
I did read Gold. Although there might be a deep biosphere, there is still the problem of low permeability of deep rock, which yields a hydrocarbon migration speed that is far too low to be a significant contributor to known oil gas an coal deposits for which tested geological and paleo-ecological explanations exist.
re 179: fourth paragraph, counting from the bottom upwards.
re map projections. Mercator claim busted. Equal area request not fulfilled by the simple lat/lon plot. Needs at least a latitude trig adjustment.
From wikipedia
Like many projections, the Robinson has advantages, and like all projections, it has disadvantages. The projection is neither equal-area nor conformal.
Yes, I’m half Finn. Until just now, I never thought about the appropriateness of BOTH halves of my name-background (the one half can’t be ignored, particularly where I live)…
Dad’s side: Holzmann. German for “woodman”.
Mom’s side: Wainionpaa. Finnish for (By the?) Meadow.
Me: Silicon Valley born; a denizen of the world. Might hit every nation before I’m done.
Anyway, I come by all this tree/nature/ecology stuff very naturally. 🙂
Oh…Jean S, my grasp of the language is limited to airport survival, names of a certain world-class cardamom bread, and a few nursery rhymes to be used when bouncing a lil’ tyke on your knee. That’s an interesting meaning for ‘rutot’!
Back to my real world…boy is this place distracting!
Robinson Projection: true, not exactly equal area. But it’s pretty good.
It’s still one of the best compromise projections available. Almost equal-area, almost conformal, and looks “normal” (whatever that is.)
Re 180 – The Russians disagree:
Modern petroleum science
http://www.gasresources.net/
178: There’s another book out there, called Black Gold Stranglehold by Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith that has about the same thesis. I read it and it is indeed fascinating.
DeWitt Payne,
Sprechen sie deutche?
RE: Map Projections
I can’t get the PDF to open via the link Hans provided or at the AR4 website, but I don’t doubt Hans when says it is a Robinson Projection. I agree it is unlikely a Mercator will be found as a base map in the IPCC reports. Philip_B and MrPete are correct that the Robinson is a compromise projection (not equal area, conformal, or equidistant). Although its distortions are the greatest toward the poles, it is not to the degree of the Mercator, as Hans made abundantly clear. Canada, Russia, and Greenland are truer to their sizes, but Greenland is somewhat compressed. Professor Arthur H. Robinson (U. of Wisconsin) was commissioned to create this uninterrupted world projection by the Rand McNally Company in 1961 and it has been used in school atlases, textbooks, and by the National Geographic Society. It was hoped it would replace the Mercator for classroom use.
RE: Deep Biosphere
I won’t venture to guess how Gold’s notions will pan out, but I think the book is thought-provoking, well-written, and very creative. Everything science should be!
I must admit, I’m sceptical about the abiotic origin of fossil fuels, but there is one mystery that has bothered me for a long time. Natural gas is very prevalent almost anywhere you have sedimentary rocks, often at high pressure. Yet over geological timescales NG at pressure would leak away through any gap as small as pinhole. So why is there so much NG under pressure at so many locations? Maybe there is a simple explanation, but I have no idea what it is.
The best description I’ve seen of the biotic origin theory of oil is in Kenneth Deffeyes’ book Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. You only get oil if the organic deposits become buried deep enough below the surface(temperature goes up with depth) for long enough to crack to petroleum, but not so deep as to crack all the way to methane. It’s a pretty narrow range, 7500 to 15,000 feet. Tar sands are oil deposits that have come so close to the surface that the more volatile compounds have evaporated. Oil shale has not been buried deep enough to crack, so isn’t really oil at all.
Nasif,
ein bischen. I took a lot of German classes in high school and college so I can read scientific German fairly well, at least in my field, but I don’t speak very much at all .
I did not wish to introduce an abiotic fuels debate, end of that line please.
It was my concern that a hugely complicated entity, the Earth, has many inaccessible or unmeasured portions. Mischievous people seek to overturn the evolved economic order because of a tiny change alleged in the temperature of a tiny part. The lack of science evident in the AGW argument is amply demostrated by a preference to be qualitative when quantification is needed (please define, not describe, the tropopause); by the setting of artificial “zones of convenience” when a comprehensive view is needed (let’s measure sea temperature only down to X00 m and assume constancy below, or air temperature at 1.5m above the ground); by the use of mathematical analysis that makes ones cheeks ache with laughter; by the climatologists’ great ignorance about the whole earth and its parts; by the use of proxy data that is calibrated by circular argument; and so on for the many other points raised on CA.
In truth, we know so little about whole Earth that a postulated temperature rise of 0.7 degrees a century is completely unexplainable because of the the far greater noise envelope in which it sits and our lack of knowledge of alternative postulates.
It is quite possible that nobody has tumbled onto the real reason why the alleged global temperature has changed 1.5 m above the ground, or “just below” the sea surface. Late insight is not uncommon in complex systems. Early guesses can make fools.
The Russian superdeep drill hole at Kola has books about it. I mentioned it because the temperature, pressure, permeability, seismic interpretation and some other profiles that it found were greatly at adds with preceived wisdom about fundamental Earth Science. Some visionaries had the idea to drill this much deeper hole and they were rewarded with ample new science.
Climatologists, forget perceived wisdom, get out into the uncomfortable real world and learn some real climate by real experiments. The Kola Peninsula is a freezing, inhospitable place, but it did not keep the visionaries indoors.
Weather not climate; report from Ski Club of Great Britain; no doubt the persistent anticyclone near Britain has been helping to drive north winds down into the Alps (with lots of moisture as previously predicted on this site, from the open seas of the Arctic Ocean).
Quote:
———————
On both sides of the pond, the snow is coming down fast and resorts are opening runs unexpectedly early.
Kitzbuhel will open some of its runs on November 10th, six weeks ahead of schedule, and the earliest in its history.
In Canada, some runs have been open in Mammoth since Thursday 8th, in Breckenridge and Sunday River since Friday 9th and in Lake Louise from 10th November.
———————
Rich.
Re # 178 Anna Lang
Thank you for going to the trouble to find and post this reference by Thomas Gold. I worded my little essay badly and did not mean to start another controversy like global warming, with CO2 coming from deep-seated microbes. My point was more that rather interesting discoveries continue to abound and those who say “the science is settled” are non-scientists. I did read the difficult translation from Russian of the several hundred technical pages of the results of superdeep drilling in the late 1980s, loaned out the book and can’t remember the title. It is heavy going, but full of novel information that causes one to think hard.
“The science is settled.”
“The science is settled enough.”
Scientists will rarely state the former, but will sometimes admit the latter.
Policy makers will state the former, when what they really mean is the latter.
Don’t delude yourself into thinking consensus-seeking policy makers are acting against scientific advice. The science may not be settled, but you don’t need it to be perfectly settled to move forward with a policy. “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. Scientists will never admit to a consensus – especially junior scientists. It’s the senior scientists and policy makers job to decide whether a consensus is strong enough to support a policy direction. Sometimes a weak consensus is strong enough. Sometimes it’s not.
There IS scientific consensus on AGW. Question is whether proponents of the consensus are wrong. Not likely, but possible.
Steve: As I’ve said many times, if I were a policy maker, I would be guided by the advice of institutions which have, in my opinion, spoken a “consensus”. It would make me cross that there seems to be a lot of arm-waving but, in a policy capacity, I’d go with the flow. I also agree 100% with bender that it is not “likely” that the consensus on AGW is wrong, but it is “possible”. People should still check the O-rings and carefully weigh how to interpret the aluminum tubes. And even if the AGW consensus is “right”, that wouldn’t prove that Mannian statistics were “right”.
195, bender: well put, but the last line is too sweeping for me. Wrong about what? It is not likely that they wrong about CO2 causing some warming, but I still think it is likely that they are wrong about the amount. Especially until they can produce some coherent physical explanation of their “positive feedback” mechanism. Right now, as far as I can tell, it’s all computer-generated handwaving.
Perhaps my question is a bit off topic — I ask forgiveness since this is my foray into the art of blogging and I am not adept in searching for where to place my question. The record is quite clear that distant-past “data” used by almarmists is not valid; also land surface data for the past century used by alarmists is hopelessly suspect; however, my question centers on satillite data and ocean data. Initially, satillite data showed a slight cooling effect, but due to inconsistent height of the satillites, this data trend needed to be adjusted upward. John Christy accepted this adjustment and the resulting trend was quite flat. The pro-alarmnist sites claim that further “corrections” are necessary on particular satillites and therefore the an upward temperature trend has now been detected by satillites. My first qustion: has John Christy accepted this additional correction? And what do skeptics say about this? Also, alarmnists point out that ocean records confirm that the suspect surface temperature trends are reliable. What do skeptics say about this?
#195 Bender. There is no evidence that CO2 causes any warming or feedback for any. SteveM has been asking for a reference. Perhaps someone has one, but we’ve never seen it.
Also, all the geological evidence is that CO2 has always trailed warming.
Also, there is no incontrovertable evidence that any unprecedented warming has happened.
So where is this probability the Warmers are right. Is it just a weight of numbers thing?
Let me rephrase. It is unlikely that all the computer generated hand-waving is incorrect. But it could be. So we investigate. Audit the GCMs!
Fixed it.
The GCMs have no predictive value. Read Orrin Pilkey’s book “Useless Arithmetic.”
I hear all the time that it is not possible to reproduce the global temp record without CO2, but I completely disagree. All you need to do is give more weight to the PDO and ENSO and less to CO2 and the cooling affects of aerosols. But that does not mean the new GCM would have any predictive value either. We have no way of knowing if the PDO will continue its oscillations in the same 30-40 year phases.
Let’s have an essay contest: “How I lost my faith in the GCMs”.
Boris showing his true colours.
Post on Pharyngula
That is why trees for temperature proxies are very carefully selected so as to be temperature limited. For example, widely spaced trees at treeline are often selected. Then the tree ring temperature signal is compared to the instrumental record.
Pat Frank appears to be unaware of the bulk of research linking tree growth to temperature.
Posted by: Boris | November 11, 2007 8:25 AM
My reply
Boris. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is complete bollocks and you know it. As a Climate Audit regular you will know that the decisive Proxies are bristlecone pine trees and are known not to be proxies for temperature.
The reason the trees are “widely spaced” at treeline is because there’s not a lot of moisture on those sites. That’s why they are a soil moisture proxy as much as anything else.
#201 Bender. Will this do ;):
Also, the trees “are very carefully selected” NOT to conform to a physiological site requirement, but purely on the basis of the fact that trees on these sites have been shown in previous sampling trips to display a certain ring width pattern that correlates to some degree with temperature. The reasoning is purely circular, not at all grounded in an understanding of tree biology. Not at all. The large samples from the 1980s+ are not at all independent of the small samples taken in the 1970s.
snip
Re #204
Citation?
EXACTLY.
Bender and others, I’m about two thirds into reading Bony et al. “How well do we understand and evaluate climate change feedback processes?”, a review article published in Journal of Climate, vol. 19, p. 3445. There is a lot of info there on the current state of the art about the various feedback processes: water vapour, lapse rate, cloud, and surface albedo.
I guess the short answer to the question posed by the title would be: not very well. What is amazing for someone not too familiar with climate research, but with a scientific background (meaning I’ve done actual research in another field), is how disconnected models are from experimental measurements. It’s like two different worlds, and sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. For example, there is a lot of talk about model discrepancies, and you might think that they’re talking about how model differ from actual measurements. But no! It’s about how models differ from one another! This leads to a sort of thinking that if we can get all models to agree with one another, then we will have the right answer. Of course it’s not. We don’t need all models to agree with one another. We need ONE model that agrees with reality. But when you finally get to the comparison between models and measurements, you realize that it’s all over the place. Of course, since models don’t agree between themselves, they don’t agree with actual data either. Or rather, sometimes they agree, sometimes not. Sometimes you get the average right, but the details are wrong, or you get some of the details right, and the average wrong.
In the end, it’s hard to get a feeling that you can trust models to make predictions. Sure, the water vapour feedback is a rather simple phenomenon that you can estimate relatively easily. But there is no such thing as a “pure” water vapour feedback in the actual atmosphere. The air, and the water vapour, keep moving around! Water vapor condensates into clouds and then it’s a totally different feedback.
Now the difficulty of comparing models with reality is compounded by the fact that we have a very limited set of good data. Forget temperature, it’s just not enough. We would need a long time series of data on clouds, the global radiative budget, the troposphere, the stratosphere, and so on. Only recently have we had satellites that can give us such global data. And one of the first findings, when we could measure the global radiative budget, is how much it varied decadally as compared to models. This is still unexplained, although there is always a tendency in climate science, when measurements don’t fit with models, to blame the measurements (as happened with satellite data for temperature). But it’s a chicken and egg situation: we can’t really trust the models unless we can compare them with good data, and we don’t know if the data are any good unless we can explain them with a good model! This is in fact a typical and classic epistemological problem confronting all sciences, over which philosophers have argued for years, but could never find truly resolve, and which some have used to claim that there is no absolute truth in any theory, and therefore anything goes (thousands of pages have been written on that subject, but I’ll stop here).
So we’re not out of the woods yet. My impression and opinion is that we can’t be too confident that models give the right answer. As I’ve said before, you can build a coherent picture of AGW that seems to bring all the parts together nicely. But the uncertainties being what they are, you could as well build a coherent picture where GHG’s do not create much warming. Sure, GCM’S constrain the values of sensitivity to between 1.5-5 degrees, but that, remember, is how GCM’s agree with each others! Since none of them agrees with measurements, the actual answer COULD be outside that range. GCM’s are then nothing but sophisticated ignorance.
What makes it hard for scientists to acknowledge that publicly is that a lot of work and money has been invested in those models. What do you tell funding agencies? Also, in science, you never admit that you’ve lost. There is always improvement. We never go from ignorance to more ignorance. So it would be silly to give up. The problem with AGW is (1) how all this translates into a public debate on policy, and (2) how that debate in turn affects the dynamics of the research process itself. The first part has been studied at large, but I suspect we have not paid enough attention to the second part of the equation, which is itself a feedback process…
Bender I’d appreciate your opinion on that assessment.
Re #204
Orrin Pilkey himself seems to have a strong faith in certain models, such as the “dispensatio” hypothesis of cod population collapse, described in his first chapter. This is a theory, not a fact. Makes me wonder what other theories he’s got that he presents as fact.
There is a very interesting blog called “Overcoming Bias”. This post is particularly interesting, and relevant to the AGW debate.
What Francois says 🙂
Isn’t the basic problem this too: there is no scientific standard for AGW theory? When you test a hypothesis, or assess a condition on Earth- before you begin testing, isn’t it correct that you have to state where that spot is or what the -standard- is that convinces you and me or everyone that you’ve proven to show some “unusual” thing is happening?
And there is nothing in the vast geological record of this Earth we have to use for a comparison here (which geologists see as a HUGE problem)- so how do you set a standard? -so the AGW scientists sort of MAKE UP these “standards” -sometimes with alarming over tones even. Like the past information we do have to set a standard for CO2 they ignore (the lag, the huge amounts in the atmosphere in the past and the ice on Earth still melted, etc) And on top of that most of us know these climate predictors even adjust the data to fit and to “win” the scientific argument known as AGW with the models and hockey stick graphs.
Ask James Randi about testing the paranormal-he has to state his standards before he tests someone or something doesn’t he? He says: “This is what I need to convince me” He must state this BEFORE he tests a paranormal claim. The standard isn’t set after the test is conducted and the data recorded is it? That would be called “moving the goal post”.
AGW is great propaganda-everything can be said and done to convince you its happening. Everything can blamed on it-because there isnt’ anything to compare it to. It doesn’t have “an exact quantity to use for comparison” or IOW a scientific standard.
That’s why “we have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period” too.
OK, I’ll try this again.
Yes, water vapor feedback is an extremely simple phenomenon. I think I have established, beyond any reasonable doubt that the feedback is NEGATIVE (but certainly embrace all contrarians :). You cannot increase temperature in moist areas without also increasing absolute humidity. And that cost watts that do not translate into sensible heat (temperature). And water vapor rapidly rises, due to its low density compared to air, also decreasing sensible heat at the surface. It is extremely simple and clear, maybe too simple. That is precisely why it is hotter in deserts than in moist areas at the same latitude and elevation. I would link my proof again, but that esnips site has been inaccessable all weekend. Maybe due to high traffic.
Re #208
I more or less agree. Myself, I do not have an unshakable faith in the GCMs*. Whereas I think many other scientists do. But the majority of IPCC supporters, I suspect, know that they are not qualified to judge the GCMs, and so are willing to accept a consensus, partly justified by a “precautionary principle”, with the tacit assumption that the GCMers “know what they’re doing”. Still others, like Gavin Schmidt – who clearly understand something about how these models are built and how they perform – seem, to me, to be less self-critical than one would hope. They are so defensive, they seem prone to self-deception, believing that their models are correct, when they are merely functioning as designed.
*For the record, I do have confidence in many complex mathematical models. I do not think that arithemtic is “useless”. But my confidence in those cases is not a matter of faith. It is a matter of objective reason and independent validation.
Every citizen should ask of every scientist what role faith in models plays in their work. I am concerned that AR4 is more faith-based than they care to let on. For a scientist, over-reliance on faith is embarrassing. That’s why I was so encouraged when Isaac Held was participating at CA. I thought we were going to get some answers. Where did he go?
Re: #209
bender, Pilkey holds to a number of theories as reasonable. He even accepts AGW as reasonable. He just rejects firm conclusions based on computer models. He praised the IPCC for acknowledging the uncertainties around their predictions and laments the fact these uncertainties are never mentioned in the media.
As I said before, it would not be difficult to make a computer model that would replicate the global temp record if you only give more weight to the PDO and other oceanic oscillations and use a climate sensitivity of CO2 that is similar to or less than that estimated by Stephen Schwartz at Brookhaven. This lower sensitivity is due in part to negative feedbacks, including the one observed by Roy Spencer.
We recently learned that since 2000 atmospheric CO2 has been increasing at a rate 35% higher than previously thought. This is a tremendous problem for people who hold to a high climate sensitivity. According to the CRU, 1998 is still the warmest year on record even though 2006 was an El Nino year with much more CO2.
How did I do, professor?
208, indeed. I don’t know how this idea ever caught on that models of complex and poorly understood phenomena are to be expected to be “right”, but they’re never “right”. No competent and honest modeler makes that representation. Sometimes on simple systems they can be close enough (i.e. they don’t bother with wind-tunnel testing on commercial airplanes anymore), but the concept of “right” is inapplicable. I see no reason to believe that a set of models that are all over the place, and don’t do a very good job of postdiction has much of a chance in the forseeable future of being “right” in prediction.
And one other thing; an inherent property of models of chaotic phenomena (and the earth’s atmosphere is a turbulent and chaotic system) is that the accuracy of predictions falls off the further in the future you try to extrapolate. So even if you can find a model that seems to postdict for 5 or 10 years, there’s no reason to expect that it can predict 50 or 100 years into the future. All you’re doing with a model is an educated extrapolation. It may be educated, but it’s still an extrapolation. Those are inherently unreliable with chaotic systems, no matter how well you think you understand the underlying phenomenon.
The term “right” will never be applicable. That’s not what models are there for. If they’re “right”, they’re not models, they’re calculations.
Perhaps. On the other hand, it’s never that difficult to post-hoc revise a model and propose a new working hypothesis. Surely you agree that that doesn’t prove the new working hypothesis is correct? (It’s the out-of-sample validation test that matters: future observations or observations taken elsewhere or under differing circumstances. When the model starts fitting those, that’s when you’re really getting somewhere.)
I will make the statement that there is a high propability that the consensus is wrong about a pending AGW crisis. Here are a few of the scientific arguments I use to support my statement.
1. There is no empirical evidence indicating that water vapor is a positive feedback. Indeed, all the real world evidence indicates that it is a negative feedback. This alone invalidates the consensus view.
2. If CO2 is the primary driver of global climate change (outside of Malankovitch cycles or whatever it is the controls the ice age cycles), then multi-decadal global cooling trends would be impossible. The history of climate change indicates that cooling always begins when GHG concentrations are at their relative highest levels, indicating that other factors overwhelm the GHGs, invalidating the primary assumption of the consensus view. There is no historical evidence of a fall in CO2 preceeding or producing a fall in temperatures. There is no known mechanism that would trigger a fall in atmospheric CO2 on the decadal time scales that would be required to produce the observed historical cooling trends.
3. The tendency of the consensus view to support their claims using theory and models as opposed to a detailed correlation with real world data and observation, indicates that their argument is weak. Their constant attempts to try and force the real world evidence to fit the theory is the exact opposite of the scientific method. Since the scientific method is designed to give correct answers, doing the exact opposite has a high probability of delivering and incorrect answer.
Neither Steve or Bender have directly stated why they believe the consensus is likely to be correct, but their statements seem to imply a combination of ‘appeals to authority’ and ‘majority rules’. While such arguments are useful in politics, they are a hinderance to good science. And since we are discussing whether or not a scientific theory is correct, it would be necessary to present scientific arguments to support said conclusion, not political ones.
What particular aspects of the IPCC argument do supporters find scientifically compelling?
To expand on 216, I have to go on to the other question, which is, what it a non-technical policy wonk to make of this? Given the level of controversy and uncertainty, what is a (presumed agnostic, and not agenda-driven) policy maker supposed to do?
The answer is that you have to assemble the best arguments on both sides, and hold a mock trial. You don’t let consensus guide you in a real trial, why should you in this case? What you do instead, is let people who understand the technical issues work in conjunction with people who know how to do rhetoric, to get to the meat of the matter.
And just as in a real courtroom, you leave the polar bears and all the other hysteria and hyperbole at the door.
So I can’t say a priori what conclusion that I’d come to if it was up to me; I’d have to lean on a process guided by experts from both sides of the issue. Any policy maker who depends on consensus as a guiding principle is very likely to end up making an enormous mistake. Which explains a lot of mistakes that have been made over history.
#218
What is the empirical basis for your estimate of this probability? Or is this just a hunch? Myself, I do not appeal to authority, as you suggest. I look at history. Myself, I have no hunch. I sit on a fence. I see only a need for increased accountability in GCM science.
# 190
Philip_B,
Is there an abiotic origin of Natural Gas (NG)? Yes, there is. Through the development of our Solar System methane abounded. Many planets and satellites are loaded on methane, for example Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus (‘Uranus), etc. Recently, Mars puffed out great amounts of methane to its atmosphere. Most of the terrestrial NG was trapped in the subsoil, at great depths when the accretion of the planet occurred followed by the deposit of dust that was suspended in the primitive terrestrial atmosphere. When melted rocks solidified, or when sediments agglomerated, the gas was trapped within them. With metamorphism and infiltrations of carbonic acid, the gas can be released, although it could get trapped into underground caverns until it finds some way out towards the surface.
And Crap, I said “huge amounts in the atmosphere in the past and the ice on Earth still melted” should have been and I meant “still melted and advanced many times over” Like in #218’s point #2.
218’s point there is exactly what I mean about having no scientific standard.
And 219, well said too.
Re #218
Well said Jim Clarke. The CO2-AGW hypothesis has been falsified in my opinion. For reasons you state plus the lack of polar amplification and the lack of troposheric warming.
I say this with a 90% level of confidence. My 90% level of confidence uses the same robust statistcal methods used by the IPCC.
I have all kinds of empirical evidence for his first point. Thirty year average temperatures and humidities for locations all the way from Barrow, AK to Guam. The correlation R2 is 0.98. Moreover, you don’t even need any empirical evidence; it’s evident from basic physics. Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the obvious. Maybe it sometimes takes a simpleton like me to see the obvious.
Re Larry 216:
i.e. they dont bother with wind-tunnel testing on commercial airplanes anymore
From Boeing Multimedia
More than 15,000 hours of wind tunnel time will be logged to develop the 787 at a variety of wind tunnel facilities.
Such cheerleading. Such noise.
jae, I’m referring to the statistical probability that 1000+ of the leading climate scientists are wrong and a very, very few – and their cheerleaders – are right. You should be be happy I’m granting you any chance at all that they are wrong and you are right. Which I am. Audit the GCMs!
LOL. Thank you, your highness. Just think about the implications of my being correct, of which I am 99.99% confident.
225, the 787 is already developed. They’re not wind-tunnel testing to determine the design. They’re just confirming their results, and gathering data for optimization of various routes.
Compute but verify.
Serious semantic question: What’s the threshold of a consensus? 60%? 70%? 90%? 99%?
It seems to me that once more, they’re throwing around qualitative terms masquerading as crisp distinctions.
Err…..quantitative.
RE 225 and 228.
James the wind tunnel is not used for “design” in any meaningful term of the phrase.
The designs are computer driven and computer tested. Still there is that wee bit of nonsense
called optimization. Tweaking.
One way to explain it is this. look at the wing of an commercial airliner. Its basic
shape and size was determined by algorithm.
NOW, look really closely. See those funny little triangle shaped things? The vortex generators?
chances are those bits were added due to tests in wind tunnels or prototype tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_generator
Little bits and pieces.
You can buy them after market and apply them to your wings.
231, this is so typical of technology, where it’s often a thin line between good technology and snake oil:
The latter application being in the same category at fuel line magnets.
Re #227
I would prefer to balance the implications of your “conclusions” against their likelihood of being correct. So, how did you arrive at that estimate of confidence? 99.97%. Wow.
And how has your “model” been received by the climate science community, anyways? What happened when you presented it to them?
#219 Larry, this is the “science court” idea. Easy in principle, not so easy in practice. The problem here is bias. Is the research community as a whole biased towards the AGW hypothesis, and is this bias the result of social forces, like peer pressure. There are indications, a lot of indications, that the community is biased to the point that it is very difficulf for an individual scientist to come up with an alternative theory. These days, people like Svensmark or Lindzen will be dragged in the mud for just proposing alternative views supported by some experimental results. Lindzen’s iris hypothesis is a case in point. He had barely published it that opposing papers were submitted, and magically published in just a couple of months, this in a different journal, where the publication process meant that it took his reply many more months to appear. All the while, Lindzen’s hypothesis could publicly be said to have been completely discredited.
Five years later, what do Bony et al say about Lindzen?
In other words, the hypothesis has been neither proved nor disproved, if you translate this “journal-speak” into standard language, and if Lindzen were indeed right, it would change a lot of things. So despite all the slandering, we do not know yet if Lindzen was right or wrong. But who is trying to prove him right and who is trying to prove him wrong? Didn’t Lindzsen claim that he lost funding support because of his opinions? Now who will dare trying to prove him right, after all that?
It’s all very nice to be a contrarian in the public debate. Democracy and freedom of speech allow that, and we should all be grateful not to live in Stalin’s Russia and disagree with Lysenko. But what are the consequences today of being a “scientific” contrarian if you are a climate scientist? It would seem to me that the slightest evidence that the scientific community has become biased to such a degree (where, for example, funding depends on your scientific/political views) should be enough to raise red flags to the policy makers. There are multiple examples in the history of science where this has led to either catastrophic results (e.g. eugenics), or just an exceptionnally long delay to get a valid theory accepted (e.g. continental drift).
That being said, it’s not because a theory might be wrong that it IS wrong. That’s an easy, but false conclusion to draw, that people here should remember as well. Bias exists on both sides. But bias at the individual level can be a good thing, as it promotes debate, which forces you to eventually back your arguments with “objective” facts. Self-reinforced collective bias is more problematic, and the potential consequences much more harmful. Therefore we should encourage individual bias, we should encourage contrarian hypothesis, not discourage them. By that I mean encourage them at the science funding level. You can’t fund every crackpot hypothesis, of course. So it’s a very difficult thing to do. You want to avoid activist-scientists à la Hansen, yet can’t really stop them without being accused of limiting their freedom of speech, as has already happened. There’s no simple solution. But being aware of the problem is a good start.
Hey — what happened to the comment from TheOilDrum guy?
RE 232.
Its the tornado effect! I understand that the vortex created increases the surface area
of the ignitable substance creating nano technology effects predicted by Nasa years ago.
You can drive on a thimble full of gas for a year!
Webster Hubble Telescope;
Youre ignoring the point:
If you can reproduce, its dead. Its that simple. Cold fusion wasnt killed because somebody did a counter-experiment, but because it couldnt be reproduced.
If I find an old logbook on my attic with measurements done by my late grandfather, I can of course do some statistics on these numbers, and because Im not doing measurements but simply analyzing numbers, anyone, anywhere on the planet, should be able to reproduce my results, my statistics, my graphs, my everything, down to the last digit and pixel. The fact that nobody including Mr. Mann himself hasnt been able to reproduce MBH98 & 99 speaks volumes no matter how you spin it. Yes, there are probably tons of papers also resent ones that cannot be reproduced because of bad methods or sloppy archiving, but thats hardly an excuse.
The burden of proof is on The Team. We dont have to come up with our own reconstructions to prove the existing ones wrong; we only have to show that they are poorly done and/or have no skills.
The same goes for the computer models. Gavin Schmitt, or some other believer, must show that they have skills beyond simple linearization or simple Fourier.
But only is you magnetize the molecules first.
#216, 225, 231
Do you really think Boeing proceeded with their very expensive 787 program without extensive wind tunnel testing before providing performance guarantees to customers? That would be like imposing carbon caps without verifying the accuracy of the AGW concept.
While airflow models have indeed become very good, no good modeler or competent manager commits resources without verifying the accuracy of the models. Even then there are surprises. Vortex generators are added to airplanes in spite of the drag increase associated with them because they correct flow conditions not accurately represented in either wind tunnel tests or flow modeling programs.
As to the use of vortex generators in automobile inlets, their function may well be the avoidance of flow separation from the inlet walls and the resultant choking of flow in the inlet. The 727 center engine inlet is an aeronautical case in point.
RE 236. Engines in a nutshell. Suck; bang; blow. And a couple drops of toulene in the crackcase.
234, you missed an important qualifier. Part of the setup was that I’m a non-technical policy wonk with access to the experts. I never suggested that the “court” be run by the interested parties. In fact you want to specifically make sure that the interested parties aren’t in controlling positions.
The basic point is that as flawed as a court setup may be, it’s the best mechanism we have developed so far to discard the irrelevant, and get to the substance. But dealing with expert witnesses is one of the weakest parts of the court paradigm. Since you aren’t in a position to evaluate the technical arguments, you have to defer to the credibility of the witness.
However, if you’re smart, you can also get some clues about how honest and serious the experts are being by looking at the results of such “nitpicking” as is done on this blog. If there’s a preponderance of evidence of sloppiness, even on the part of what has the outward appearance of a consensus (whatever that is), that’s a hint that you shouldn’t grant them the same credibility that you grant the other side.
This is, of course, an ideal situation, where you have honest and intelligent people attempting to do the right thing. That’s not at all a guaranteed outcome. All I’m trying to say is that it’s more likely to produce a good result than counting noses.
Making policy by consensus is like rule by mob. We have to resist the temptation to believe that that will produce good results. I could list all kinds of consenses that have turned out to be wrong, and even fraudulent. Just yesterday, Mosher was talking about Piltdown man. Is it a good idea to be making policy because the consensus is that Piltdown man is the missing link?
Didn’t think so.
238, umm….it’s a 4-stroke: Suck, squeeze, bang, blow. If it’s a diesel, you squirt at the beginning of the bang.
RE 237. No stu that’s not what larry or I am saying.
You know full well that the basic design is done with analytic tools before the first
scale model hits the wind tunnel. I think our disagreement would be about the fine
line between “design” and “tweaking” Where the former is guided by models that get
the gross effects correct and the latter is Ad hoc fussing about with particulars
using rules of thumb, guided by expertise, and experiments.
Larry? curly? Shemp? what say you.
#8,
Because it is off-topic, along with most of the comments on this page (including #8). Including this one, too.
241, my understanding is that they designed the 777 without wind tunnel testing, and did those tweak tests after settling on the basic shape. Part of that’s due to the improved modeling tools, and part of it’s due to the fact that the design of airframes is so mature that there’s just not that much variation any more (i.e. every new Boeing design since the 737 has been the same basic configuration, as has Airbus, with the exception of the A380). In other words, they are pretty sure that they’ve found the optimum shape, and at this point, its a matter of finessing the details.
Note that I said “commercial”. I’m sure the military craft are still extensively tunnel tested, as they are much more diverse.
Webster Hubble Telescope says “I dont see any pro-active research going on by this ClimateAudit blog …”and continues “… pathetic attempts to criticize something without having any basic models of your own that would demonstrate how you think things will evolve …”.
I think the writer has misunderstood what is the complete process of scientific research. The first step may be a model or a hypothesis which is backed up by some data. If you think you can prove it by calculations etc. that is OK! That is however only the first step, it is not enough that you merely say that you are right. It should be possible to replicate your results. If you are unable exactly to show your data and methods, then your results are invalid. That has happened with Manns reconstruction of the mean temperature for the last millenium. It appears that a lot of supporting studies include the same shortcomings, data or methods are simply lost!!
I think it is just as big research to find out such shortcomings in science as proving a new model. I am very pleased that you have been able to do that. In other words, you have reached the same level as Steve McIntyre.
Regards
Larry Huldén
Finnish Museum of Natural History
bender:
I AM auditing the GCMs. They rely strongly on the assumption of some type of postitive water vapor feedback, which appears to have no explanation, and which I don’t believe exists (at least until someone shows me otherwise). The feedback is negative, not positive.
I should not HAVE to present such a simple thing to the climate scientists. It is shocking that they haven’t figured it out already. It is presented here, and I am waiting for a “climate scientist,” or anyone else to show me where I am wrong. Unless they can, the models are junk science. I’m not interested in submitting anything to the “peer review” system, anymore, because I’m too old and lazy.
The original #8 was most definitely off-topic, but I think it does strike at the heart of the divide. Maybe we need a philosophy of science thread. Oil drum guy gave us a very stark illustration of many of the logical and philosophical errors that are typically made by dilettantes, and the difference between the sides of this controversy, which I think have less to do with differences in scientific opinion as the do with differences in the understanding of the scientific method.
Good topic, just not the correct topic.
How are you auditing the GCMs, when you don’t have the code?
RE 244. On the military side of things… Take the F22 as an example. Prior to Demval you had around
8000 hours in the tunnel. During PAV ( with two actual planes built ) I think there was something like
20K hours. After source selection the hours were about 18K hours. Some of this is devoted to studying
propulsion. on the aero side its things like flutter testing, drag with stores, weapons separation testing.
the basic PLANFORM didn’t change for years, since it was a comprimise of RCS modelling and aero modelling.
Again, guys are confusing the difference between design and implementation.
247, right. But the leap from a 767 to a 777 to a 787 is isn’t that great. It’s seriously hard to tell models apart at a distance these days. They’re all the same basic plane, just in different sizes. So if they have good data on a 767, it’s not that hard to apply it to the 777 since they have good modeling people who understand such things as dynamic similarity and dimensional analysis, etc. Lord help us if Hansen were in charge of that. I think there’s a reason who NASA keeps him out of the flying stuff.
Re: #217
Bender, the model I am proposing could conceivably stand up to all the statistically tests involving past climate, but would still have no predictive value. That is the point. Natural climate variability is far to great for any model to have predictive value 100 years distant. As Roger Pielke says, the claim to predict climate 100 years into the future is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim.
15, you need to go to TQC reeducation camp. It really doesn’t matter what’s a nit and what isn’t, the fact is that they don’t have a reason to exist. Period. With that attitude, you’d last about 5 minutes at a Japanese company.
#248 It’s no use “auditing” the GCM’s. they are in fact audited to a certain extent by the users. It’s easy for posters on a blog to underestimate the competence of the scientists working on the models. They’re not idiots. But when I was talking about confusion in the language used, here is an example from Bony et al., talking about the range of sensitivities to doubling CO2 obtained with different GCM’s:
See, the range doesn’t arise from differences in the processes themselves, as seems to be implied here, but in the different ways we are interpreting and modeling these processes. See the subtle difference? It makes it look like “nature” is the reason why there is a range of sensitivities, whereas it’s our ignorance of nature. If it’s nature, it can make sense to average, or ensemble average, or whatever. If it’s not nature, but ignorance, any sort of averaging is meaningless. Averaged ignorance is still ignorance.
Now consider this other quote about comparison with data:
In other words, absent any way of validating the models with actual data, we resort to comparing models with one another, and if they don’t agree, their differences are what we define as the “uncertainties”. But it has nothing to do with how uncertain the model (or models) are with dealing with reality. That uncertainty is another big unknown, and because we have no way of assessing it, we just sweep it under the rug and pretend it’s not there.
No need to audit. It’s just there in plain sight.
Mann Alert, for those with a sense of fair play.
Michael Hockey Mann, has just performed an appalling kick the little guy job on a little Nevada newspaper.
It is in the latest RealClimate post called find the error. Im sure your comments would be moderated into oblivion on RC, but of course, Michael Mr. Chicken closed the comment section anyway.
The Nevada people would probably welcome words of comfort. They have become the victims of a horrible snob attack.
http://www.elynews.com/articles/2007/11/07/opinion/opinion01.txt#blogcomments
Keep up the good work.
From Volcanism and the Earth’s Atmosphere:
Plate 3 doesn’t appear to be available online, but you get the picture.
Auditing involves more than code. It also involves basic assumptiond, don’t you think. I guess it would be hoot to submit one short paragraph to a climate journal, which explains why there cannot be a positive water feedback (clouds, either). The odds are very poor that it would be accepted, so I’m publishing here. The review system here is much tougher than peer review, in my experience.
Lots of idle talk here; where’s are the critiques?
My esnips stuff seems to be accessible now.
Is that what the NAS report says? No it isn’t.
If you read that thread you’ll see that per and Pat Frank make up things about the NAS report–as if people will not simply go and read it. They also don’t have a problem with Mann or MBH99, but with dendroclimatology as a science. It’s a rather interesting position that they take.
Boris, I don’t think you’re getting the picture. You’re doing all of that within the course of one year. Are you saying, with a straight face, that you can determine the CS with any level of accuracy with a year’s worth of data?
What is the Mann-Kendall tau test (Sneyers, 1990)
It is quoted in this
Click to access UK_climate_trends.pdf
(downloads a 2Mb pdf) Which I am trying to understand.
It does show Waldo but you can only see him when its Sunny!, I have concluded that temperature trend seems to follow and correlate with sunshine hours ( not exactly earth shattering) 2003 was the warmest year on record and also had the most sunshine hours, this has continued with July 2006 being the warmest month on record and also the sunniest, and April 2007 was the warmest April on record and yes you have guessed the suuniest April on record.
I wrote to the Met Office giving my earth shattering conclusion, but they told me climate change was due to AGW CO2 emmisions, but I never asked them that, I just thought that all the extra sunshine might matter.
What do you lot think!
RE 249. Well DUH.
The basic planform and the airfoil are well understood.
a wind tunnel says WHAT?
( allusion only waynes worlds fans will get)
#254 jae: your esnips link asks for a login…
258 – Whoosh.
/I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Boeing’s SS wind tunnel, but the motor on the compressor is something like 33,000 HP. And that’s only to pressurize the tanks for 10 minutes, so they can blow for about 30 seconds. Seattle dims when that puppy starts.
Anybody trying to argue against nitpicking must like fleas.
Ok, I won’t. Instead, let us hear your brief synopsis of how GCMs are constructed and validated then. We’re listening.
In reference to the quote:
I think it is just as big research to find out such shortcomings in science as proving a new model.
#15/Sod says:
Sod…I don’t know occupation you are in, but it is likely not science. As one with over 20 years as an atmospheric science “professional” with number of modest papers to my credit, I can assure you that you are absolutely wrong and have no concept of how science progresses. I would recommend Karl Popper’s “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” as a place to start.
#252, Abstract from “Quantifying the water vapour feedback associated with Pinatubo global cooling” by Piers M. de F Forster, and Matthew Collins, submitted to climate dynamics in June 2003 (at the time I downloaded it):
RE 18: Pennstate Manns little trick
SHORT VERSION: An editor in nowhere nevada wrote a denialist editorial ( not an oscar winning movie)
Pennstate Mann writes a rebuttal. Now, remember that PennState Mann DEFENDED Gore’s
mistakes on the grounds that AIT was “just a movie”. Nevertheless, PennState mann
corrects the math error of the editorialist. Apparently an ocar winnig movie can make
minor error but not a backroads editorialist.
The editor sees his error ( his readers also pointed it out ) He sends an Email to MANN
apologizing for the error and then MANN in Eli Rabbett Form, Posts the guys error on RC.
( pretending he hasnt seen the comments correcting the error, pretending he hasnt received
an email from the guy admitting the error )
HE WANTS TO HUMILATE THIS GUY LIKE HE HAS BEEN HUMILATED.
Are you following?
THEN the editorialist comes onto to RC and says “DR Mann, I already sent you
mail admiting my error, before you made your post.. why are you asking your readers to pound me about
a simple mistake I already admitted to?”
People check time stamps of posts and mails.
MANN CLOSES THE THREAD.
You don’t think trees can be temp. proxies? Interesting.
Somebody hasn’t been paying attention.
Most sane and rational people don’t either. Hardly a surprise.
Mark
The NAS thinks so. A CA commenter who knows more than the NAS, hardly a surprise.
Steven Mosher,
It is Mann’s lack of civility even more than his scientific shortcomings that offend me. I cant respect someone like Mann.
It has gotten to the point that I can no longer post regarding Mann without my utter contempt and disdain for him, professionally or otherwise, comes shining through to the point at which it will get snipped.
Ultimately, ideologues are their own undoing. It is impossible to hide.
Mark
263: I read that three times and still don’t understand what they are saying. I’ll keep trying.
259, woodentop: I’ll fix that, if I can ever get on the *#2&^% site again. Meanwhile, try the link in post no. 156.
Um, I don’t think you’re reading the NAS conclusions properly, and the NAS did not even touch the “divergence problem,” which actually _disproves_ the claim. That the NAS consisted of the same “network” of “professionals” already noted by Wegman as being significantly less than independent is no surprise, either.
Nice try, but again you display your willful ignorance of science resorting to wordsmithing as proof of your case.
Mark
Maybe I am reading it wrong. Let me check:
Nope. Got it right.
Going to watch some football now. Don’t insult me too much while I’m gone. 🙂
Bender,
A few quick points about your comments:
The ability to understand climate change science is not in the sole possession of research scientists working on man-made climate change. There are many types of atmospheric scientists and many more scientists in related fields with the educational background needed to understand the arguments for and against the AGW theory. The Oregon Petition collected over 17,000 signatures of scientists who, very specifically, agreed that human induced climate change did not and would not present a crisis.
Wikipedia describes an attempt to discredit this Petition by Scienticfic American:
Hopefully we can agree that one does not need a Phd in climate science to understand a scientific argument about climate change. Phd’s are not earned by demonstrating a profound knowledge of all things climate, but by contributing a small bit of knowledge to one particular aspect of climate science. Eliminating over 90% of the signators because they do not have Phds in climate science seems rather unfair, particularly since no such filtering is applied when counting IPCC contributors. This analysis also makes the inappropriate assumption that the 4 they could not find, the 5 who did not respond to Scientific American and the one who died, did not agree with the petition.
Even with all the inappropriate manipulation, 11 out of 30 random contacts admitted that they did indeed sign and agree with the petition. How Scientific American then comes to the conclusion that just over 1/3 of 1,400 is 200 is beyond me, but at least they think 200 hundred is ‘respectable’. If they were able to do some basic math they would have realized that their analysis showed 513 Phds signed and agreed with the Oregon Petition. That is 2.5 times more respectable!!!
Now let us apply this bare minimum ratio of 11/30 to all of the signators and you get over 6,230 scientists that agreed with the very specific statement in the Oregon Petition. Now compare this to the number of scientists making up the so called IPCC concensus and we see that we have twice as many scientists in the ‘minority view’! Hmmm…must be that new math! Of course, it is even worse than that because we know that many of the contributors to the IPCC process do not sign on to the IPCC conclusions in part or in total. Some may have even signed the Oregon Petition!
So the best data we have indicates that there are at least twice as many people in the minority view than in the consensus view! While I think this is somewhat amusing, I would not be so arrogant as to claim that climate crisis skeptics truly hold the consensus view, because the best data we have is so incomplete that such a claim would be unfounded. And that is the whole point! For well over a decade, AGW supporters have claimed that the science was settled and the ‘vast majority’ agreed, when there was never any actual data to support their claim. There still isn’t. The whole notion of a consensus is a myth! It is the big lie told often enough that people just accept it as a fact without question.
Secondly, what is with this comment:
An insight is the same thing as a number? Learn something new every day.
Again, you’re wordsmithing by reading way more into it than can actually be concluded from that simple sentence – nowhere is the phrse “proxy for temperature” present. Furthermore, as I noted, the NAS panel consisted of the very people that have been pushing the proxy agenda for years. It is truly not a surprise that they did not outright condemn their use. They’d have to invalidate all the work they’ve been doing for years. To think anything they said that favored their own already pre-conceived notions really holds merit is a stretch.
No kidding, Larry… you have to wordsmith in climate science to have any case, and seeing the dull tool continue to do so surprises nobody.
Mark
So you see why the ingenue, Miss A, seeks counsel?
===================================================
re 18: why use fahrenheit in the first place? The american revolution should have adopted the metric system, like the french revolution did.
Right. We should use Rankine.
Wow! I just had a brilliant number! Maybe I can patent it.
re 264
[audio src="http://nature-downloads.naturesounds.ca/audio/gentle_rain_crickets_preview_naturesounds-ca.mp3" /]
Re #249, #259 Boris or Francois, from your readings on Pinatubo, can you tell how the researchers deconvoluted the Pinatubo effect from the concurrent decline of an El Nino event? Here’s a brief plot which may help explain my question. There were simultaneous cooling events (Pinatubo and a declining El Nino) that affected Earth during the period of study. Both affected temperature and moisture. Was the moisture/temperature decline due to aerosol cooling or due to less physical transport of moisture into the atmosphere from the declining El Nino? The researchers note that the Southern Hemisphere and upper troposphere didn’t behave as the models predicted, which makes me wonder if they were observing intertwined events. Thanks.
RE 272. If not that then gunga galunga
Mark T, Boris is incapable of parsing nuanced language (which scientific language always is).
Boris, I agree with NAS. What I do not agree with is your absurdly simplistic interpretation. Why don’t you drop the qualitiative arguments and try to understand how sensitive the proxy reconstructions are to measurement and modeling error.
Meanwhile, you still need to explain to us why your treemometers are so well-spaced, if it’s not moisture limitation.
I’ll stop there, and deliver the rest of your lecture when you’re back, ready to listen.
Dr Mann may just be very worried . . . since he and the rest of the Team are big supporters of Mr Gore’s mantra that the “Science is settled”, it may have dawned on him we don’t need to send any more money on proving AGW, just doing something about it.
Has he researched and talked himself out of a Job ??
Sorry, couldn’t resist 🙂
In Fritz Langs movie Metropolis 1927, the world is divided into the Head (thinkers) and Hands (workers).
I think many RealClimate regulars view themselves as part of societys Head with a God given right to make the decisions for the rest of us. Our role is simply to obey their orders. I reject this.
With regard to Ely, Nevada, its small. However, Im from small town USA, too. They have a right to be treated with respect. Mann didnt do this.
Fred said
There is, of course, more than one way to skin a cat.
#29 From the odd Moose/Rat/Cat Mosher …I like
your “…evacuted”….
Dr. Mann must indeed be an interesting fellow. In addition to the above he wrote that since Kent “decided to take our ‘discussion’ public anyway” he (Mann) was going to make it a “learning moment” for the people at RC. He wrote a letter to the editor, and it was published! I guess that’s enough to raise anyone’s hackles!!
Btw, the 1st solution to how Kent screwed up the C to F conversion was wrong! and had to be corrected! I love this stuff. Maybe he closed the comments because some bright bulb asked what was wrong with Nature saying 1000C was twice as hot as 500C. He was probably afraid that a lot of his comments might not know. Ha!
Re #33
Insurance anyone?
Francois Ouellette makes some very interesting observations about the models. I’d add that people who work for years on these kinds of large complex software applications develop an intense personal investment in them, which leads to an irrationally optimistic, but nonetheless sincere, assessment of past success and the probability of future success.
And to reiterate one of Francois’ points, as a practical matter, no software application is more accurate than the data available to test it. It is a common misconception that software programming is a relatively mechanical process and all that is required is a full understanding of the problem in order to get a correct result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Software programming is a highly error prone activity and testing is the only reliable way of identifying these errors. If the GCM’s have not been tested against comprehensive accurate data, then they will contain many errors (irrespective of the accuracy of the assumptions build into them).
As far as I can determine, the models are tested against simulated (i.e. not real) data by the same people or groups who develop the models. You might as well test the models against their own output or the output of other models, which in effect is what inter-model comparisons do.
In summary, testing of the GCMs is too problematic to have any confidence in the accuracy of their output.
#274 David, the paper is here.
This is not the case (depending what one means by “accurate”, and “comprehensive”). Boris complains about the length of my comments, but at least I dare to ask over at RC how the models are built, parameterized, and tuned. Seems most of the parameters stem from independent physical measurements. But some are “tuned” as the model runs are compared to real circulation data. Apparently, “many” scenarios are tested. Whether these are “comprehensive” enough is exactly what I’ve been trying to find out by “commenting” (i.e. questioning) in my very inexpert way over at RC. Boris would prefer to take these models on faith than to ask questions about them. To each his own. I learn by asking.
#11 Allen C
After a pro-AGW article appeared in my state newspaper several months ago I wrote to the author in temperate and measured language pointing out the counter-evidence and the CA blog. I got a courteous but decidely pro-AGW reply and the promise to look into “the other side.” I’ve not yet seen an article reflecting the CA evidence, although I have seen some more pro-AGW articles by the same author. Potentially flooded coastline sells more papers than accounts of flawed statistical analysis. I’ve not yet gone back to ask for some better reporting, but that seems to be the only option. Repeated, steady contact with the popularizers to be truly “investigative” will go farther that politicization of the the issue.
RE 21
Warning: The following post is an example of language nitpicking.
That should be “Anybody trying to argue against nitpicking must like lice.” Nits are the eggs of lice. Without nitpicking you end up with lousy science and lousy public policy.
I have yet to decide whether it is incapability, or unwillingness. In either case, the result is the same.
This is one aspect of science that always irks me… we tend to write things in a manner that is easily interpreted incorrectly by others. Lawyers, on the other hand, write thing in a manner that simply cannot be interpreted by any save themselves. Perhaps we should adopt the latter methodology to keep the chaff from reaching incorrect conclusions? 🙂
Mark
Re38 I think its time we make a YouTube video…but it has to be simplified.
Dear Steve and all others,
thanks for organizing this blog as a very nice source of information!
I have a question about CO2 and I apologize for not following the unthreaded posting rules (sorry, I am really bad at rules andt I didn’t know where else to go):
According to the IPCC-model the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increased by roughly 30% in the last 150 years.
Doesn’t that automatically lead to the conclusion, that the sinks in the oceans must have been about 30% smaller 150 years ago and the ocean sources about 30% bigger?
Since the marine sinks nowadays (rougly 92GTC) are almost in equilibrium with the marine sources (rougly 90GTC), this would lead to a massive imbalance in the past, which doesn’t make any sense.
Did I overlook something or is this really an easy way to disprove that model?
All best regards,
LoN
#279 Bender, I don’t believe RC is the best place to ask. I prefer to go to the source. Unless you are in academia with free access to journals, there are nevertheless many papers that you can download from the authors’ sites. Google scholar can easily point you to some good up to date review papers.
So far, all the papers I’ve read on GCM’s are really frustrating. There’s always something missing, some parameter that you don’t know where it comes from, or the sort of language I’ve been alluding to, where you don’t know if they’re talking about modeled results or actual data. Nevertheless, is you are familiar with “paper-speak” (you need to have read, written, and reviewed quite a few papers by yourself to be fluent), you can detect where the results are good, and where the authors are totally baffled.
RC will give you the rosy picture. Reading the actual papers is more revealing.
Like, 2.5 C per doubling, and similar? 🙂
Mark
277, Philip B:
It seems to me that the models HAVE been tested now, and none of them “saw” a 9 year hiatus on temperature rise. So, the gurus are now tuning them to show this “lull” and also show this dramatic uptick in temperature in 2012 or so. Enough time to get all these stupid “warming bills” passed and keep the funding going, I’d guess? It’s a game, and the sensible people are losing, big time. It is just shocking to see so many people swayed by so little evidence. It will be too late when the Big Chill hits (I agree with Sadlov), because once governments pass a tax, it is virtually impossible to go back. How on earth can ANYONE in 2007 believe this much in computer models?
Interesting alternate definition
waldo (after the short story “Waldo” by Robert A. Heinlein which features a man who invents and uses such devices), is a device which, through electronic, hydraulic, or mechanical linkages, allows a hand-like mechanism to be controlled by a human operator. The purpose of such a device is usually to move or manipulate hazardous materials for reasons of safety.
Maybe Climate Science needs something like this to remotely handle hockey sticks and such.
Re #282
I read the primary modeling literature and I find it almost opaque, impenetrable. May as well be reading about Drosophila genetics. Give you an example. I understand 50% of the paper referred to by David Smith – Forster & Collins (2003), on post-Pinatubo global cooling. Unfortunately, you need to understand 110% of the text & in graphics in order to understand the whole paper, judge its merit, and put the result in context. 50% does not get you half-way there. More like 5%.
Really? What’s your evidence?
Chapter 4 of the NAS report:
“strip-bark samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions”
If the NAS finds them to be a valid temp proxy, why would they say they should be avoided as such?
If only they had an “NAS Report for Dummies” that could’ve made it clearer for some folks.
This was a lead article in todays Sydney Morning Herald. How do you counter just plain lies.
286: I read it here somewhere, will try to find it.
#277
An interesting Paper on Climate Models which “challenges the assumption that knowledge producers always are the best judges of the accuracy of their models.”
Myanna Lahsen
Uncertainty Distribution Around Climate Models
Click to access resource-1891-2005.49.pdf
Here ya go, bender.
Folks like Boris would simply assume that they are not the intended target audience; the ‘dummies’ are always someone else.
#291
1. USA Today? Good grief.
2. There is no mentioning there of any efforts aimed at re-tuning the models.
Try again.
293: Do your own homework, LOL.
Kim in #26 said:
I’m curious about this. Can someone expand on this? Is Ms Ababneh seeking counsel?
Why oh why does anyone waste their time on Boris?
jae,
Why oh why do I waste my time on you? You make an unsubstantiated claim then tell me to do my own homework? It’s YOUR homework, buddy. You make the claim, you provide the citation. Last post to you. Meanwhile, why don’t you tell us where Forster & Collins (2203) go wrong and where your work goes right. Homework indeed.
There was some reference to that somewhere; it wasn’t clear who’s idea it was to lawyer up, but she told someone on the phone that under advise from counsel, she shouldn’t share any data or answer any questions.
Odd way to answer a scientific inquiry, but it probably was the decision of higher-ups.
I didn’t see an answer for #6, and I am probably the worst one to try and answer it, because I am not a skeptic (in the sense that was probably meant. Which sort puts me in a tangle because I am a True Believer in rational thought, scientific investigation, and such, which sort of requires me to be a skeptic, particularly when somebody has The One True Answer.
But I digress.
If I understand the true question in #6, the answer is that the biggest problem with satellite data is that we (global, presumptive “we”, I have done nothing in the area) have not been doing it long enough to have a large enough body of data and information to know for sure what is significant and what is not.
Among the things I don’t think “we” know is how well the modern instruments are holding calibration over long periods of time–I seem to recall stories of instruments–expensive instruments at that–that turned out to have errors bigger than the signal they were supposed to report.
LOL, Bender: Why oh why DO you waste your time? I just provided a citation. How can I talk to a professor that way? Because I used to be one, and I know the drill.
bender: give me a link to F&C, and I will check it out. Doubtless, it’s about all that nonsense radiation theory.
jae,
1. What you fail to understand is that I read your, er, “citation” and found that it does not claim what you say it does.
2. The F&C paper is linked in #278. Clearly you’re not following the comments, but are more than prepared to comment yourself. Bad form. Especially for an old professor.
Last post, you lazy troll.
Dear Mr. McIntyre:
http://xchar.home.att.net/tna/birth-order/methods.htm
Long time lurker and second time poster. I am not sure where to post article this to bring it to your attention. I happened to read an interesting summary by a fellow-traveler (positive sense)in the field of scientific replication studies although not related to climate studies. I note that she found many of the same difficulties in her field. I am not sure what value you will find in reviewing this posting. But it seems that climate science is not the only field suffering from an excess of opacity.
Regards,
David Charlton
#6 is OT. Look up a Christy thread and post there.
I have had some history debunking what this McIntyre, McKitrick, Essex team have tried to accomplish.
Not Taken By Storm review
I’m waiting for the knee-jerk response that McIntyre had nothing to do with [snip] book.
Steve: I had nothing to do with the book.
RE53, Larry, along those lines, there is no field calibration available for MMTS sensors only for the display. NWS has a calibration plug to simulate the sensor, and have it read a specific value. But no calibration for the sensor itself, or at least there is nothing published in NOAA literature that I am aware of. They do have a report on issues with measurements reading high though.
Thermistor drift over time is a well known problem.
The fact that NWS relies on the observer to report issues with measurements, rather than having regular calibration seems to lost point to them. For example, in their own publication, Surface Observing Program (Land), NDSPD 10-13, Inspection Procedure Guideline – Surface Observation Sites the word “calibration” is only obliquely referenced.
Re #55
That’s not a “debunking”, it’s a book review.
Why don’t you explain to us how GCMs are built? Explain to us the role that faith plays in your acceptance of these models. No linkies, please. Just answers.
Bender (re #293)
The link is to USA today, but the story is about the peer reviewed article in Nature with quotes from the author of the paper. Since jae could not (freely) link directly to the peer reviewed paper, this is about as good as you can expect. The article says:
The models did not anticipate the natural cooling trend. There is no explanation of why it happened or what controls it, but they have adjusted their model to recognize it and then stop it in a few years (why?), quickly getting their virtual climate back to their scary, global warming scenario. This, of course, is a re-tuning of the model, just as jae indicated.
This is also an example of the constant attempt to force climate reality to fit the climate model. There is no effort to augment the theory to understand and incorporate the ocean cooling and its global climate effects, only the claim that the model will make it go away and it will no longer muddy the beloved virtual projections.
The argument here is that reality is a temporary anomaly that is ultimately inconsequential to the validity of the virtual models!
Oh why did I ever follow Alice through that looking glass?
The el nino model predictions will be an interesting test of the climate models. Australia’s BoM, presumably reflecting the consensus, is predicting a declining la nina through the next 3 to 6 months. While the la nina seems to be strengthening.
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
You sure got supportive comments from the people who read your blog. LOL! You didn’t even bother to delete the ads that were posted. I found your child molestation “joke” interesting. Maybe you should seek professional help if that’s your humor.
Nothing you referenced in your book review/”debunking” (I didn’t see any debunking whatsoever) has anything to do with this website nor Steve’s publications. I’ve never read anything suggestive Steve had anything to do with that book. Just b/c Steve co-authored some papers with McKitrick, now they must be assumed to be cohorts on everything?
But at least you probably doubled your readership by posting here.
NCAR WRF Model Update:
It appears that NCAR is now going to try to run the WRF limited area model in a global capacity (I am assuming it will be the nonhydrostatic version as there are already numerous ill posed hydrostatic pseudo spectral global numerical models). The article stated that there are some problems with boundaries in a limited area model (what did they expect when they used the nonstandard and unstable split explicit numerical method in the interior, fudged the boundary conditions with ad hoc smoothers instead of using the known mathematical theory and stable numerical methods for open boundaries, use different physics tunings in the model that provides the boundary conditions than those in the limited area model, and generate gravity waves from rough unphysical forcings in the interior thatare incompatible with the boundary conditions (as are any small scale storms that are generated in the interior that encounter a lateral boundary). And MMM is surprised that the Bounded Derivative Theory initialization won’t work for a nonsensical numerical model (and thus fudge the generation of the initial conditions)? Shame on them. And have they forgotten that there will be fast exponential growth in the presence of vertical shear in the continuum solution that no numerical model can overcome (except with unphysical explicit or implicit smoothing in the numerical method)? The charade continues.
Jerry
Re #334
Have they? I’ll read the article. But nothing you’ve posted here indicates any re-tuning.
The modelers are well aware that there is unpredictable internal variability associated with terawatt heat engine earth’s climate system. You seem to think this refutes the models. It doesn’t. Are you guys sure you know what you’re talking about? I’m not convinced.
Not. I expect a citation. Authors, year, journal, volume, page numbers. jae was a professor for crissakes.
I understand the argument perfectly well, thanks. What Boris and I want to know is whether it is correct.
Webster Hubble Telescope (#331),
I read the book and although I do not agree with everything in the book, I found the arguments about media mania quite reasonable. If you would like
a more rigorous mathematical discussion about the (poor) quality of the weather forecast or climate models, might I suggest you read the relevant threads on this site. Given that these models have serious problems with both their continuum and discrete approximations, they do not provide a rational argument for anything. And Anthony Watts and Steve M have rigorously showed that there are problems with the quality of the observations and methodology used to produce the hockey stick. If there is AGW, the scientific case is pathetic.
Jerry
#337
Jerry,
Are you referring specifically to:
Smith DM, Cusack S, Colman AW, et al. 2007. Improved surface temperature prediction for the coming decade from a global climate model. SCIENCE 317 (5839): 796-799
bender (#343),
No. I am referring to an article that appeared on the NCAR web site and the upcoming seminar (Wednesday, Nov 15) by Bill Skamarock. Evidently someone at Cal Tech converted the WRF model to a global form and NCAR plans to use an offshoot of that model. I find it curious that the article disppeared so quickly?
Jerry
#334
It is a mistake to suggest Smith et al (2007) represents a retuning of an old model to suit new observations. The old models did not consider internal variability, and this one does. New models require new tuning. Not at all the same thing that you suggest.
If anyone has any examples of retuning to suit new observations, I’d like to see them.
Ref#331
Using a regional/national variant of English appears to be a hanging offence at that blog. I always thought the great strength of English we is use it locally differently but manage to communicate despite the variations in use, precisely because we (probably unconciously, at least for most of us) adapt to these variations. Those who don’t adapt are merely advertiz(s)ing their narrow local perspective.
# 306
LawsofNature,
Dear Steve and all others,
I’ll take the risk… I hope Dr. McIntyre won’t take actions against this humble very young scientist. I apologize, Dr. McIntyre…
If according to the IPCC-model the partial pressure of CO2 has increased by 30% or something in the last 150 years, we would have had a partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 almost equal to 0.00026 atm-m 150 years ago, and we would have a partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 approximately equal to 0.00034 atm-m. A Pp of CO2atm of 0.00026 atm-m requires a density of CO2atm equal to 0.00047 Kg/m^3, which equals a concentration of 289 ppmV. That means that the Total Emittancy of CO2 150 years ago was 0.37 W/m^2, in contrast with the current Ecd that is 0.423 W/m^2. The increase in Ecd would represent only 12.52% not the 30%. The first IPCC mistake is considering that Ecd has also increased by 30% or something worst, by 300% or above (4.81 W/m^2).
The second one resides on considering the oceanic life as something that is static or that the oceanic life is a system in equilibrium, when there are many factors that contribute to the fluctuations on the oceanic biomass, like concentration of dissolved substances, temperature, tides, pathogens, etc. For that reason we have whales and dolphins stranded at beaches almost every year. I’ve read many times that ecosystems are in “perfect equilibrium”, but it cannot be true in this Universe; if it was thus, evolution wouldn’t be happening. The ecosystems have to be in no-equilibrium state so they can grow and evolve (food chains and energy pyramids). The incoming energy to an ecosystem must always be higher than the energy transmitted into the biotic phase. The biotic phase can only reach equilibrium when it becomes into an abiotic phase. 😉
Re:338
Bender, you write:
If they understand there is unpredictable internal variability, why are they so confident they can predict it? They actually think internal variability is quite low and easily overpowered by increasing CO2.
The illustration they sometimes use is that “it is easy to predict a pin ball’s path if you tilt the pin ball machine.” But I’m not convinced rising CO2 will tilt the pin ball machine. If it was going to do that, 2006 would have been warmer than 1998. We learned recently that since 2000, CO2 has increased 35% more than thought. This is a huge problem for the view the climate is hyper sensitive to rising CO2. Reality is disproving the predictions.
The models do not (as far as I know) currently factor in the negative feedback observed by Spencer over the tropics and they are being run with assumptions about CO2 levels that are much lower than reality.
bender (#342),
I looked at the article that you cited and from a quick read it appears to be nothing more than an ensemble hindcast with the CRU global climate model. Given the flaws in any of those models, I do not see that an ensemble forecast is going to solve anything? I also found the comment about volcanic and solar forcing amusing. If a model has continuum and/or numerical errors larger than the perturbations in the forcings, nothing can be said about those perturbations.
Jerry
Jerry
Okay, Bender…Here is the citiation:
Here is the Abstract:
The first sentence is obviously false since previous climate models do not ‘account for’ natural and anthropogenic sources of external climate forcing. They do make assumptions about them, most of which seem to be at odds with what we know about historical climate, but that is another battle.
The rest of the abstract describes how they have TUNED a climate model to recognize the recent cooling of the oceans. They have apparently assumed that this cooling is a product of internal variability, although I highly doubt that they show any proof of this. I am sure that the argument would be that the cooling must be the product of internal variability, because if it is the result of external variability (like a response to an Iris Effect), then our AGW theory would be wrong. Since our theory can not be wrong, we must assume that the observed cooling of the oceans is the result of internal variability! (Take away the circular arguments in AGW theory and you are left with almost no arguments at all!)
It is nice of the modelers to acknowledge this little bit of reality, but on what grounds do they predict that it will soon go away? Are they claiming to understand this so-called ‘internal variability’ in the global oceans? If so, that would be a huge leap in our understanding of the global oceans and should have been the focus of their paper! Since I have not heard of such a momentous leap in our scientific knowledge, I must conclude that the modelers have assumed that the cooling must end in order to preserve their previous model results and protect the AGW theory, and for no other reason.
This whole concept of internal variability begs the question: If this particular episode of ‘internal variability’ is powerful enough to offset GHG global warming for nearly a decade, does it not become possible that other episodes of internal variability were responsible for much of the WARMING of the 1980s and 90s? You can not call it ‘variable’ if it only goes one way.
With every rationalization they make trying to tune the models to reality while preserving the AGW theory, they dig themselves deeper into the basement of their house of cards. ( Nothing like a confusing mixed metaphor to end a very long day! Night all!)
Re Cod… That caught my attention: I thought someone had explained the fall of Grand Banks productivity. I wondered if it was the same as my explanation, but no. Look at the surface currents along the Eastern seaboard of the USA. Surface polluted waters are swept up across the Banks. I would predict — my hypothesis would predict — that fog days on the Banks would have been reducing in number since about 1850, with the reduction most marked since 1945. Warmer surface and fewer breaking waves, less nutrient mixing, plankton changes, baby cod disadvantaged and general falling of productivity. Testable? Maybe. There’s some research just done on falling productivity in the Bering Sea. I hope they skimmed the surface and checked for surfactant and oil sheen.
Re John_UK and his explanation of warming. I paraphrase: ‘it’s warmer because it’s sunnier.’
Yes. Too obvious though, for those who need to spend multimillions on computer models. If you search for the Earthshine project, albedo reduction and Palle (that’s an e acute) you’ll see why the Earth is warming writ in a simple graph — ‘it’s warmer because it’s sunnier.’ (!)
I worry about the new SST measurement systems — stand by for a panic as the new measurements demonstrate that the sky is falling down. Before that happens, I hope someone recalibrates the SSTs using lighthouse data, hopefully invalidating the Holland and Parker correction. I am on record as reading the SSTs as rising at .14 deg per decade.
My journey away from the consensus is on my website — it’s AGW, it’s oil and petrobusiness, it’s not CO2. It’s the Kriegesmarine effect.
Put simply, my hypothesis can be summed up as ‘it’s warmer because it’s sunnier.’
JF
Re #347. Ron Cram, I don’t believe that it’s true that either the increase in CO2 emissions or the growth in CO2 atmospheric concentrations between 2000 and 2006 was “35% more than thought.” The claim comes from Canadell et al, “Contributions to accelerating atmospheric CO2 growth from economic activity, carbon intensity, and efficiency of natural sinks” (Geophysical Research Letters Early edition 25 October 2007), which reports the results of a collaborative effort organized by the Global Carbon Project (GCP).
According to the data used in this study, fossil CO2 emissions increased by 20% between 2000 and 2006, which represents an average annual growth rate of 3.1%. As the IPCC’s A1 marker scenario projects an average annual growth rate in CO2 emissions between 2000 and 2010 of 40%, an average annual growth rate of 3.4%, the claim that CO2 increased more than thought does not stand up. Similarly, the average annual growth rate of global atmospheric CO2 between 2000 and 2006 is put by Canadell et al at 1.93 parts per million: this is at the low end of the projected average annual rate for the 2000-2010 decade in the six IPCC illustrative scenarios, which ranges between 1.9 and 2.2 ppm.
A new Mann.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/ArticleArchives/GlobalWarming.htm
Boris:
Would you faking please stop wasting time of 10 000+ readers of CA on demonstration of your polemic skills?
I’ve never said past reconstructions are gospel and I have plenty of doubts about them. But they aren’t complete junk either, which is what some people seem to be implying.
I have no problems with you asking questions, but your post about free parameters and the multiplication of errors struck me as misleading, primarily because you did not include the fact (as you do here) that the runs are compared against physical observations (seasons, etc.). You have to come up with a valid climate.
Re: #351
Ian, thank you for straightening me out. I thought I was taking the researchers’ statements in the spirit they were being given.
Bloomberg reported: “The rate rose 35 percent more than economic growth had led scientists to anticipate, said Corinne Le Quere, one of the authors of the paper.”
The researchers called the result “surprising,” but the overall numbers were not surprising to anyone who had studied the issue. I wish it was true because it would show more quickly that the climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as once thought and that no catastrophe looms.
Bender, have you looked at climateprediction.net for a primer on GCM’s?
There is an interesting paper about climate forecasting (and scientific forecasting in general) which you can find here (see list of publications).
Re 41: Filippo Turturici
More about the Sad Case of a Flood Disaster Without a Cause
Philip Eden, a respected weather journalist in the UK, and now also a Vice-President of the Royal Meteorological Society, has published his take on the flood scare of the last few days. Sadly his column in the Sunday Telegraph is not available on line, but this is a summary of what he said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Tidal surge on Nov 9th was inevitably compared to the 1953 surge that killed over 300 people because the press releases from the Environment Agency and the Met Office were worded in such a way as to encourage the media to report a surge of similar magnitude. In fact, he says, this surge was certainly one of the 50 highest since 1953 and possibly one of the 20 highest, but no greater claim than this can be made for it. He accuses the agencies of knowing very well that their press releases would be mis-interpreted.
The Met Office warning that panicked the Environment Agency was for a surge of 3m (10ft) but in fact it peaked at 2.1m (6ft), except at Sheerness where it reached 8ft. This location routinely reports higher levels than other areas because of the funneling action of the Thames Estuary.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Philip Eden is not an AGW sceptic, on the contrary he is a committed warmer. However he appears to be one of those honest scientist who are revolted by the way bad science is being used to shape public opinion for political reasons, and he is prepared to say so. For CA readers who are so used the antics of Mann, Hansen, Jones, Thompson and the like, it is reassuring to know that professionals like Eden still exist and have the integrity to speak out when they think it is necessary to do so, even at some risk. Many may not agree with their position on global warming, but at least they are opponents that one can respect.
As a result of this scare, hundreds – maybe thousands – of people were evacuated from their homes in the middle of the night and hundreds of thousands more were caused needless anxiety. Our Minister for the Environment lost no opportunity to claim that we could look forward to many more such events in years to come because of AGW. The Prime Minister presided at a meeting of COBRA, the national emergency committee, and was able to present himself in a good light for the first time in weeks. There have been no reports of any deaths, injuries, damage to property or any other consequences of the surge. No one is asking what kind of model the Met Office used for their prediction or why it was wrong by a factor of 50%. Nor is anyone asking why the press releases were drafted in a way that was apparently intended to mislead.
What did this little fiasco cost? We’ll probably never know but we can certainly look forward to many more such ‘disasters’ in the future unless more scientists have the nerve to speak out as Philip Eden has done. Sadly the majority will probably continue to hide behind that most unconvincing of fig leaves, ‘it would only provide ammunition for the sceptics’.
“usuefull insights” is not logically equivalent to “good proxy for”.
Nice try Boris.
Francois #356 Thanks, I’ve read a fair bit, but more is always better.
Boris, #354 The issue is whether current temps are ‘unprecedented’. The proxies are not “complete junk”, they are simply a little too junky to draw a firm conclusion. As for the GCMs:
Misleading?! If you were misled, maybe that is your own fault. But why don’t you educate us as to what set of scenarios constitutes a “valid climate”. Before doing that though, I urge you to consult the threads on “Exponential growth in physical systems”. Very educational. You won’t see that topic discussed at RC. Which was the purpose of my (inexpert) questioning over there. If you’re so knowledgeable on GCMs why don’t you respond to Gerald Browning’s comments?
Andrey #353 Hopefully there’s some signal being generated amidst the noise. If not, my apologies, to CA and to Steve M. If you don’t like my comments, you can always skip over them. I don’t see that your comment adds to the signal. Looks like more noise to me.
I don’t think it is a waste of time talking with Boris. He seems reasonable enough that he will listen to facts. My “polemic” serves a purpose. If you can’t see that, I would re-read the exchange. The core problem with IPCC is the role that faith in models plays in keeping the house of cards upright. You can’t point at it, however, until you get the scientists themselves to admit it. If my “polemic” is not bringing this point out, then maybe it’s not so “skilled” after all.
Several alarmists are now making the claim that we have 100 months left to start reducing the rate at which CO2 is increasing in order to avoid disaster.
I have 2 questions.
1) Does anyone know where this magic figure of 100 months comes from?
2) Why is it that we merely have to “reduce the rate of increase” in order avert disaster?
Warning, unsupported speculation follows.
These are both marketing arguments having no basis in science of any kind.
They are designed to spark a panic amongst the population (necessary since there has been no science that backs up their position in a long time.)
And it is designed to give them political cover as time goes on.
If for some reason bills are passed, and if this results in a microscopic decrease in the rate of CO2 increase
Then, decades from now, when the currently predicted disaster does not occure, they will be able to declare that:
Their projections still right, increases were decreased, and the disaster was averted.
Re #356
That website does not answer my questions about what, in Boris’s terms, constitutes “a valid climate”. i.e. No details as to what scenarios are chosen for parameterization, or how indicative these are of the whole ensemble population of actual climate scenarios that could be observed at any given time, given ‘exponential growth in physical systems’. That is my question. Given that climate is non-ergodic, how do the modelers cope with this, statistically? At RC they seem to be in denial or ignorance about this problem. In my mind, it is a big problem. I want some climate modeler to address that concern, in case I am off-base. That website considers Lorenz, but does not take the next step of describing how non-ergodicity caused by chaos is accounted for in the parameterization process.
Boris complains that I use too many words to describe the question. His complaint is valid. Still, the question is there.
“The core problem with IPCC is the role that faith in models plays in keeping the house of cards upright”
Um says who? The IPCC is promoting a political ideology with junky science and everything under the sun ( melting ice, hurricanes, bleaching corals, species extinction, warming oceans, snow in Malibu, etc) keep the models in the “upright” up and up column because they “compute” the correct idea: climate change is caused by us selfish humans via our CO2 output, and the wealth of the most selfishy humans needs to be redistributed.
What keeps the house of cards upright basically changes like the weather.
Hey bender. Good morning! Some time ago you gave me a series of lectures on the pitfalls of overfitting. Now, aren’t the climate models the most extreme examples of overfitting that you ever saw?
“Their projections still right, increases were decreased, and the disaster was averted”
exactly and vice a versa-any disaster happens, they were right too.
Re #361, Mark W. says “Several alarmists are now making the claim that we have 100 months left to start reducing the rate at which CO2 is increasing in order to avoid disaster.”
The number keeps getting moved further into the future. It reminds me of repricing of stock options.
Perhaps we could have a collective sidebar link for:
Exponential growth in physical systems. Very educational. You wont see that topic discussed at RC. Which was the purpose of my (inexpert) questioning over there. If youre so knowledgeable on GCMs why dont you respond to Gerald Brownings comments?
But could we call it “Experts views of What’s Wrong with Climate Models”.
Exponential growth in physical systems is not going to ring a bell with the masses (including me).
#363
Can I be any clearer:
faith in GCMs => “consensus”
Re # 255.
“Climate feedback studies have long been focused on the derivation of global estimates of the feedbacks using diagnostic methods that are not directly applicable to observations and so do not allow any observational assessment ( ). Indeed, climate feedbacks are defined as partial derivatives. Although partial derivatives can be readily computed in models, it is not possible to compute them rigorously from observations because we cannot statistically manipulate the observations in such a way as to insure that only one variable is changing. Nevertheless, the derivation and the model-to-model comparison of feedbacks have played a key role in identifying the main sources of uncertainties (in the sense of intermodel differences) in climate sensitivity estimates.”
In other words, absent any way of validating the models with actual data, we resort to comparing models with one another, and if they dont agree, their differences are what we define as the uncertainties. But it has nothing to do with how uncertain the model (or models) are with dealing with reality. That uncertainty is another big unknown, and because we have no way of assessing it, we just sweep it under the rug and pretend its not there.
Francois Ouellette,
I don’t think you completely understood what they were saying. My intepretation is that they take one model and change the parameterization of one process (say clouds) or change the parameter value for that process within the most probably range for that parameter. Then they study the sensitivity of the global temp or something else to the variations. If this is large then the uncertainty for this process and its parameterization is large. In this way the climate modellers can determine the key feedback processes or the largest weaknesses in the GCMs. This is a very useful exersize of course because they can focus more on the weak points and also focus the observations on this process.
Furthermore, I totally agree. Climate modellers are not stupid I think. It is just not easy and doing observations and using them in a sensonable way to validate GCMs is not as trivial as many people here seem to think. By the way, engineering models have the same kind of tuning knobs as climate models. Models used for aerodynamic/hydrodynamic computations in industy are in fact not that different from ocean/atmosphere models used in GCMs.
I agree with bender. In 2005 I estimated the change of temperature for the following months based on the anomalies of the ICR intensity detected by Voyagers 1 and 2 that year and published my forecasting. The graph was published in biocab’s site and I presented it many times in my conferences. I failed on the starting of the projection that I must draw two months ahead considering the time interval that the particles use to cross the distance of 95 AU from the Termination Shock of the Solar System to the Earth. Those particles collide with interplanetary dust and gases, so their journey is delayed and we have not a technique to predict or to know the variability of the speed of the particles with the desired precision. I didn’t used GCMs, feedbacks, etc., to make the projection, but only the observation of nature. Anyway, the projection made based on the intensity of ICR coincides with the records of change of tropospheric temperature up to date. Fortunately, it is a cyclical phenomenon that occurs every 226 million years. The bad news is that the anomaly takes ten thousand years to go away.
This story from the New York Times is pertinent to the onging discussion about the work of the IPCC on this blog.
A pertinent quote in the story:
#368 Bender, I think you’re right in that, in the end, everything in AGW rests on “attribution”. There is apparent warming since 100 years, there is an increase in CO2 (and other GHG’S). Those two statements are almost beyond dispute (although the magnitude of the warming is a bit uncertain, and there are some questions about past CO2 concentrations). Attribution is much more tricky. And that’s where GCM’s come into action. The entire argument for attribution is that there is no other way to simulate the evolution of the climate over the past century without a strong GHG effect, which you can get by “tuning” the water vapor feedback to a rather high value. The Pinatubo paper shows that we have no clear experimental validation of such a high value. So it’s not really a “positive” proof. I think most people, including many scientists who take a position on the issue, don’t realize that fully.
And “negative” proofs are always very dangerous in science. Saying that one explanation is the most likely because we can’t think of any other, even though we can’t really get a clear proof that the said explanation matches the observations, that is very, very weak. In any other non-politicized field, you would never get a “consensus” over that.
In fact, it’s not even a matter of trusting the models or not. The models do their job with the parameters that we give them. It’s just the old rule: garbage in, garbage out.
369:
Looks to me like the models failed the “out of sample” testing for the last 9 years. Does that invalidate them?
There’s not only enough parameters in those models to fit an elephant, you could even make it fly (which is just what they are doing).
I be done seen ’bout everything, when I sees an elephant fly…(from Walt Disney’s movie Dumbo, for you young folks).
371, and the NYT never gets anything wrong. Steve might as well shut CA down. The voice of authority has spoken.
372, precisely. It’s not sufficient that there’s a measured phenomenon, and a model that explains it. There’s an implicit assumption of attribution there. And then the argument devolves into “you don’t have a better explanation”. Now we’re into proving negatives. It’s not that the evidence isn’t somewhat compelling, it’s just that it’s not airtight, as it’s being represented as being.
How can you even posit a positive feedback, when everything points to a negative feedback. Again, in order to increase temperature, you MUST increase absolute humidity (where sufficient moisture is available). That temporarily locks up energy into latent heat and takes away potential sensible heat (temperature). You get it back when the water condenses, of course, but most of this occurs high in the troposphere. Just how do you get this heat back to the surface? Radiation from the clouds? Even if you get some of it back this way, you certainly can’t get it all (half has to go up). Positive feedback from water vapor doesn’t pass the common sense test, especially when nobody has explained the mechanism. Another unfounded “belief?”
I wouldn’t say that models have failed completely. You find lots of papers where some aspect of observational data is compared with models, and a fairly good agreement is found. But then you find just as many papers (or not as many since scientists generally don’t like reporting failures), where agreement is not so good. That is but normal, and that’s how models are gradually improved. In the specific case of the “attribution” problem, it just seems to me that the “track record” of models is not good enough to provide a positive proof. It is a matter of opinion and faith. Whenever scientists are faced with too much uncertainty, their personal (or collective) bias plays a bigger role in their conclusions. If you want to see AGW in the models, you’ll see it. If you don’t, you won’t.
Which gets down to a question that I think needs a crisp answer: what is the purpose of a model? Was the idea ever to predict the future, or were they there to provide insight into mechanisms? Just like with surface stations, I think the climate science bunch are using a butter knife for a screwdriver.
Larry, ergodicity of climate is the screw. 😉
The BBC has no doubts!
369:
There is a way to hold all variables but moisture and clouds relatively constant, so that one can look at the combined effects of these two variables (don’t know how to get down to just one variable, however). See negative feedbacks.doc here. Maybe this is complete baloney, but so far the auditors have been kind.
Whoops – link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
#378 Models are great! There’s no reason not to make models. Models have been of great use in meteorology. If you want to understand climate, which is an incredibly complex system, having a model that, starting from first principles (physical equations), reproduces the main features or the details of climate is a very useful tool. And they’re only getting better. Models are not the problem here.
But you’re right that they were never meant to be predictive tools. There was a lengthy, and quite acrimonious, debate over at Pielke Sr’s blog about whether models are used to make “predictions” or “projections”. But in any case, they are being used to “project” or “predict” what will happen in a situation that has never happened before, ie. doubled CO2 (I know, I know, CO2 was much higher before…). To achieve that, you have to extract from past data the role of that single parameter which is CO2 concentration, amongst a thousand interdependent factors influencing climate. That is much more difficult than it seems. The Bony 2006 paper states it clearly: we cannot, from observations, separate the effects of the various feedback processes. The Pinatubo paper is one such attempt, and the results are far from conclusive. So we are more or less blindly attibuting values to parameters, and, getting results that more or less make sense, place way too much trust in those parameters. Models were not meant to be used that way, and shouldn’t.
bender, I understand what you are saying/doing however I think the IPCC is smarter then that. And as Larry asks in #378: What is the purpose of the model? In this case, the purpose (faith) is politics.
re:378
This page from NASA link for the public “Fidgeting Climate”is pretty reasonable but old. And the surface station data and tree ring data go unchallenged in this overview. The “phenomenon” of “unprecedented” warmth we model and are trying to explain here remember ( in fractions of 1 degree) come from sport’n hockey sticks too.
One other thing about models: the word means different things in different contexts. A statistical model is a mathematical oversimplification that contains no information about physics. A physical model, OTOH, should be constructed from first principles, and failing that, semi-physical correlations. It may involve integration of differential equations, or it may be a static calculation, or it may have some filter algorithm like FIR or IIR to simulate dynamic response.
These are all rather different beasts, but they all come under the label of “model”. And we can’t know for sure what’s exactly under the hood without the code.
# 383
Francois Ouellette,
Yes, models are great and beautiful… when programmed for realistic purposes and taking into account realistic variables and constants.
384
Welikerocks,
From your link:
Yes, climate is stochastic and often it is… ergodic.
One final comment on models: it’s much less likely that if the code is published that someone will find a coding error (though that’s certainly possible) than it is that we simply learn that the model itself is lacking in basic design. I don’t believe that if we can just find and fix any silly misplaced commas that that will make the models bulletproof. Any deficiencies are much more likely to be inherent in the algorithm.
Re 382: woodentop
Nice to see that Gavin is now a spokesman for the BBC as well as for NASA.
376 jae
I disagree with this. The mechanism has been well-explained: the water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas (much more strongly than CO2). If you raise the temperature, it will be further ‘bumped up’ by the extra atmospheric water-vapor and its GHG effect. ‘How much?’ is the question.
There is also the latent heat effect you mention, which is indeed a negative factor, probably at higher wv levels.
# 390
Pat Keating,
Or at saturated state, or at supercooled state.
390:
I think this is a myth. The problem is that the mechanism has been “explained” but cannot be demonstrated. Otherwise, why is it always hotter in Daggett, CA than in Birmingham, AB? People go to the deserts in the winter, but they don’t go to Birmingham.
# 390: You completely left out the effect of clouds which are very significant. Additional water vapor will cause an increase in cloud cover, which generally has a net cooling effect. A net cooling effect would be a negative feedback. There are some exceptions for high altitude cirrus clouds. Each increment of water vapor will have an diminishing ability to absorb heat because of saturation. Any consideration of water vapor feedback must include cloud cover.
You can’t even produce that type of greenhouse effect in a greenhouse by adding water vapor. Of course, you get into the path length issue, but that is an average; and there should still be an effect.
Re #387
Do you have a proof or a reference? Over what time scales?
The first order effect of water vapor and surface moisture is on heat capacity. Higher heat capacity lowers maximum temperature, raises minimum temperature and raises average temperature, all other things being equal. Water vapor greenhouse feedback is a second order effect at best. That doesn’t make it non-existent, though.
beating on an old drum with bad science
The modelers distinguish between (1) water vapor feedback, (2) clouds made of liquid water, and (3) moist convection. It is well-recognized that there are huge uncertainties associated with negative feedback from the latter two effects. It is well-recognized that it matters greatly at what height the H2O is occurring, whether it is (+) or (-). jae’s junk science is a distraction to the good auditing work done at CA. I wish it would stop. It is embarrassing. Post this stuff in an appropriate thread where it can be archived for future consideration, or not at all. Continually reposting this stuff in “unthreaded” opens CA up to accusations that it should seek to avoid.
397,
Amen.
If it is that well-recognized, then we should have some references, eh? If you can’t counter my logical arguments with more than that arm-waving, what can I say?
# 395
Bender,
No, I don’t have “a” proof, but thousands. However, I’ll mention only one to not distract you too much from your analysis on GCMs:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/99/suppl_1/2487
If you canot get access to the Proceeding from the link I can send you a pdf.
The hysteria that Judith Curry, Al Gore etc whipped up over Katrina wasn’t wasted. From the Oil and Gas Journal of 17th September,”Chesapeake officials apparently used the futures market as an effective hedge. “So far this year, we have realized approximately $630 million in gains from our natural gas hedges, and, as of the middle of last week, the mark-to-market gains on our remaining 2007-09 natural gas hedges was approximately $1.5 billion”.
Further in the article,”gas futures fell Sept. 6-7″ “as the hurricane premium evaporated from the market and US inventories expanded.” Al Gore would be jealous that someone else made more from his hysteria than he did. It is heartening though to see sane people take a great lump of money off gullible AGW-believers.
# 400
Thats only one of the thousand reasons by which I consider the GCMs are a waste of time on predicting climate changes. The initial conditions that propitiated the final state could not be the last observed conditions.
Since everything is so “well-recognized,” then bender should be able to provide the long sought basis for the 2.5-3.0 C increase for 2 x C02.
All,
As a mathematical friend of mine stated clearly, “A numerical model is not a mathematical proof of anything.” And as far as I am concerned that is what has caused all of the nonsensical debate. If a climate (or engineering) model started with accurate initial conditions, contained all of the correct forcing for the continuum dynamical system (there is already an assumption that the continuum system accurately describes the fluid of interest), the numerical method employed by the model is accurate and stable, and the numerical method is convergent, i.e.
has resolved all the scales of motion that develop in the continuum solution, then you might be able to call the numerical model result a
demonstration of reality, but not a mathematical proof. Note that none of these criteria are satisfied by any climate model nor most engineering models. Thus they are a shot in the dark and any conclusions drawn are wishful thinking.
Jerry
396, DeWitt: That makes sense. I think that the “greenhouse effect” is primarily a function of heat capacity of the atmosphere, which is what I think you are saying. And CO2 has a 23% lower heat capacity than water, so it stores 23% less heat on a molar basis. Maybe there is a little positive radiative “feedback” from the water vapor but I doubt if there is enough to offset the negative feedbacks that I have described.
OOps, in 405, I meant to say that the greenhouse effect is a measure of the total heat capacity of the atmosphere AND the surface.
jae,
Heat capacity and greenhouse are independent. The effect of added CO2 on the heat capacity of air is insignificant. See here for a more quantitative post on the effect of heat capacity on diurnal temperature range and average temperature. You have to remove the effect of heat capacity (which also varies with temperature) and all other higher order effects like cloud cover from your data before you can use it to make any conclusion on the presence or absence of greenhouse water vapor feedback. Good luck with that!
Jiminy cripes. The greenhouse effect is the greenhouse effect. It’s got nothing to do with heat capacities, and all of that stuff. You account for that separately. The greenhouse effect is the absorption of IR by certain resonating molecules. Period. Now can we put this to bed? This is really tedious listening to all of this “look at me, I’m playing physicist” day after day after day.
Larry: you and bender do not have to read my posts, ya know 🙂
A little diversion from models – an experiment ; Carbon enrichment of a fjord in Norway, absorbing more co2 .
http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news234669
DeWitt: I agree that heat capacity and the greenhouse effect are two separate things. All I’m saying (and maybe in error) is that the greenhouse effect is insignificant, and the temperatures are determined solely (almost, anyway) by the heat capacities of the atmosphere and the surface minus the losses due to water vapor and clouds. As I understand the post that you linked, you show the same thing. My comparisons of deserts and humid areas at the same latitudes and elevations shows the same thing. The greehnouse effect, as commonly understood (i.e, added heat due to radiative flux) doesn’t even exist in a greenhouse, which gets hotter only by limiting convection. I appreciate your patience on this and regret that I’m driving some others to exasperation. I will be quiet and give it a rest now.
Heat capacities don’t determine the equilibrium values of diddly squat. All they determine is the transient response.
391. Nasif: Heh. Boy did I have to look those words up!
Found this at ask.com:
Is it a good example?
” uncertainty in the initial condition”
I DO get that part from your link.
Timescales schimimescales! To infinity and beyond! 😉
Chaotic (complex, multistable) systems may appear ergodic for a while, but then their lack of ergodicity is revealed by an unexpected change in state, such as the emergence of a novel flow. What I want to know is whether the climate system is thought (by GCMers in particular) to behave in this way, and if so, how one can possibly justify tuning to a superficially stable substate (such as a subset of 20th weather/climate scenarios).
If I understand what Gerald Browning has been saying for the last year, then the GCMs are damned. If that is the case, then the role of misplaced faith in propping up the IPCC/AGW conspiracy is critical. Expose that and the house of cards will come down very quickly, of its own accord.
Gavin Schmidt, please reply.
Larry,
Never mind the claptrap alarmists in the middle. It’s the folks at the top that matter. Good arguments directed at the top have far more sway than weak arguments directed at the middle. Think Wegman. Popular opinion is a waste of time.
(Let’s keep the junk in unthreaded, the science in the threaded.)
Larry, read 396.
I disagree with 396, at least as far as raising the average. Heat capacity is analogous to electrical capacitance (here come all the EEs), and doesn’t do anything to the mean.
Re #400
Thanks for the paper, Nasif. This strikes at the heart of my question.
Here is my tentative speculation: nonlinear dynamical systems are capable of much surprise (exponential growth in physical systems). I would not be surprised if the current warming trend were a product of internal variability, as opposed to external forcing. i.e. The current set(s) of tunings are off – optimized for a set of scenarios that are far narrower than the full range of potential variability of the climate system. This is not a statement of belief, but a guess. I would like to see the heavies of the GCM world discuss this in an open forum, because I’m very uncertain. I’ve tried to encourage that discussion at RC and it hasn’t happened, for whatever reason. Sad.
Boris: It’s specifically been said by the experts that bristlecones are good for some things. One of those things does not include as being a temperature proxy. Get over it. You probably want a reference for that. Go find it here on the site or search wikipedia. Or alternately, show me where an expert says they are good temperature proxies.
# 413
Welikerocks,
Yeah! The problem is that when we have “finished” our “overly” stable models some feedbacks change and the model becomes unstable. 😉
Humans burn fossil fuels which creates particulates. These in the air cause a cooling effect.
Luckily for us, this cooling effect is offset by a few things, in a slightly positive manner (overshoot) in short term intervals (tens or hundreds of years), mose so than the cooling that’s created by the particulates and how they interact with the clouds. The amount of heating and cooling in the climate changes where some periods are cooler and some are warmer. We are currently in a trending warmer phase of the cycles.
First, some GHG help to absorb more heat for the IR portion of the sun, which the GHG water vapor moderates back down by using the energy to evaporate the water. So there is a GHG loop which produces and uses energy. Next, these processes eventually result in the particulates being deposited on the ground, which decreases the albedo of snow and ice, causing more heat to be absorbed and melting the solid water, again both creating and absorbing heat. In this process, the behavior of the ocean takes warmer water and that system melts ice giving fresh water, and depositing the heat in the ocean. The oceans also transfer energy and regulate both temperature and GHG concentrations. Lastly, humans build cities and pave roads et al. This often causes the ground to absorb more heat.
So in the net, these processes result in more heating than cooling, and together the system both regulates itself and reduces air pollution from our particulates. Each of the separate pieces of the system interact in various ways, resulting that over time, we have a slight warming trend. As various other actions are taken by humans, the system will again react in various ways, which could lead to more warming, less warming or some type of narrow range dynamic equilibrium that continues to alternate chaotically between warming and cooling.
So, taking no margin of error existing, and an accurate and meaningful mean global anomaly as givens, the observed +.7C trend is what the climate is doing over the last 125 years. No one is sure of what the future holds for the next 125, but if guesses are correct, and nothing is changed, it seems that it would continue to trend up at least short term.
RE: #100 – Does the biosphere tend over the eons to process all the gaseous CO2? Look at the long term trend through the entire geological / paleontological record. Extinctions liberate massive amounts of CO2. These are what have prevented complete depletion thus far. Other drastic events would possibly do so as well (for example, something setting off massive wildfires world wide) at a lower rate. Dr. Doug Erwin would possibly have some interesting insights.
# 418
You’re welcome, Bender. I think we’ll never see that kind of public debate because it is a minefield in which the slightest movement would completely destroy the AGW sand castle. 😉
Some years ago, evolutionary models predicted that humans would evolve to be more and more intelligent bionts (bald humans with flimsy skin). Now we’re seeing other changes in the anatomy of humans (new born children, females and males) that have nothing to do with intelligence! The initial conditions? We don’t know. The future function? We don’t know 😦
RE: #112 – the schtick is that H2O evap leads to more cirrus clouds, ergo, ergo … yet another theory with no proof. The evidence suggests more CuNim, Stato Cum, etc.
392 jae
It is hotter because Daggett is cut off from the effect of cool (and damp) air from the Pacific ocean by the rather high mountain ranges between the coast and Daggett. Birmingham Al is not cut off from Gulf and Atlantic air.
Daggett is hot for the same reason that it is dry: it rarely gets any cool, damp air from the Pacific, and thus has a continental climate.
420 Nasif
I have run GISS Model II with essentially no CO2.
Two things happen:
1. The model predicts/projects an ice age: global temperature drops 12C and humidity drops 60%.
2. After about 30 years, the calculation goes unstable.
I’m going to be on a BBC program http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/podsandblogs live in about 10 minutes.
Which BBC channel? I can’t make heads or tails of this BBC player thingy.
RE: #414 – conduct a detailed scorecard for 5 years of 0 – 168 hour meteo model outputs for the quadrant described by 115W, 125W, 35N and 55N. One falling house of cards, coming up!
I coudn’t find the live feed with Steve either. The few searches I tried failed to find him.
Should be up on podcast eventually tho.
Matt Voroo, an article that may be of interest to you in your solar/climate explorations is this one . It’s a well-written synopsis of the thoughts of those who pursue a defined solar/climate link. As mentioned, I remain agnostic regarding possible relationships between solar cycles and climate cycles but I remained intrigued by the 10 to 14 year cyclic behavior of certain aspects of climate.
Some of us aren’t pod people.
RE: #425 – Not quite. The influence of the Pacific air declines dramatically with each mile inland, even in areas of flat terrain. You can witness this in places such as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the low lands near Monterey Bay, the low lands of the Santa Maria Valley and of course the Los Angeles Basin. Taking the latter, while it’s 68 deg F in Santa Monica on a late July day, in East LA it’s 85. There are no significant topographical barriers between the two communities. What makes Daggett, Baghdad and Dakkar hot is subsiding air, thanks to massive semi persistent high pressure systems in the “horse latitudes.” Yes, the Pacific causes local modification, but it is truly local. When I lived in SF, we had a mini version of this … the Outer Sunset was remarkably more cool and foggy than the Inner Sunset. Again, no topo between the two points.
417, Larry: Capacitor analogy is not bad, but you can’t possibly envision what a big capacitor the Earth is, with all the water, land, and atmosphere.
And of course, subsidence zones dominated by horse latitudes highs are naturally low in moisture … with the slight exception being a very narrow band along west coasts (but compared with Marine West Coast and Sub Arctic, even the coasts in these areas are relatively arid or at best, wet – dry). Further south these near coastal locations are fog deserts, further north they grade into coastal sage scrub and eventually there is a coastal forest strip (NorCal, Portugal, etc). Go inland, hilly or flat, and it gets drier pretty quick. In fact, in places where it’s quite flat for some distance inland, since there is little orographic effect, rainfall is quite low even at the coast. Classic examples of these coastal pockets of aridity – San Francisco (versus areas to the north and south along the immediate coast – SF 20 in / yr, Stinson Beach 30 plus, Half Moon Bay 30 plus), Monterey-Salinas (17″), Santa Maria (13″), El Segundo (12″).
425:
Hot for the same reason that it is dry? Maybe its hot BECAUSE it is dry and there is less water vapor feedback? Where is the “greenhouse gas effect” in Birmingham, then? How can you be so sure? How cool is that air that goes to Birmingham from the Gulf of Mexico or the SE Atlantic Coast? It’s warmer, I think. It’s also very full of the dangerous greenhouse gases (moisture as you move east have any effect?
Another catastrophe in the offing due to global warming:
TAU professor finds global warming is melting soft coral
Whether the time frame is 100 months or 100 years or 1000 years, global warming is such a potent marketing tool for a variety of political and economic agendas, it will be employed as such well into the next ice age.
435 Steve
The rainfall difference between Half Moon Bay and SF is hardly surprising. The former is on the ocean side of some fairly steep hills while a large part of SF sits behind them.
It IS pretty neat, though, to see the fog roll in through the Golden Gate gap in those hills or, further south, watch the fog finally make it over the hills behind HM Bay.
It is surprising that the temperature falls off quite that fast in LA. I wonder if it’s due to the fact that the ocean there is so cold that the cool air is so dense and ground-hugging that it can’t easily get over what little topography there is (or is it the urban island effect?).
436 jae
Warmer than what? It is cooler than the air around Daggett, CA, which is the key point.
#426: Pat, you found almost the same climate forecast of “catastrophic glacial era” of the mid ’70ies it seems.
Sinc, if I am not wrong, one of the suporters of such theory was the same James Hansen we see today at GISS, aren’t we computing on the same models of 30 years ago just adding a supposed CO2 bias?!?
Usually I just clip the nails. Helps for couple of weeks.
An interesting variation on the “spaghetti graph” which makes it look even more like the original hockey stick which it apes, from those evangelical believers at the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457037/html/default.stm
Steve, in order to refute objection of alarmists that you are auditing only their work, maybe you should consider auditing some findings and radical assertions of some skeptics about reliability of ice core records showing CO2 concentrations were between 180 and 280 ppmv in the past. For instance, you could audit E.G. Beck’s paper in E&E http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/180_years_accurate_Co2_Chemical_Methods.pdf. Or explanations of prof Zbignjev Jaworowski http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/IceCoreSprg97.pdf or http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/zjmar07.pdf.
If Beck and Jaworowski are right concerning ice cores – the whole theory of man-made global warming is wrong from the beginning. If they are wrong – is there any better place to refute them than at CA?
Steve: I am one person who has limited time and resources. I cannot audit or verify every climate publication in the world. I’ve mainly looked at proxy temperature reconstructions. Articles such as Beck’s typically prompt criticism at other venues e.g. realclimate, where interested parties can get an opposite view on the matter. Editorially I’d rather maintain focus on discussing mainstream articles relied on for policy purposes. If I had an infinite amount of time and energy, I could perhaps spend time satisfying myself that there are errors in Beck’s work, but I don’t.
That’s IPCC AR4WG1 Report Fig. 6.10.c. IPCC’s endorsement of 2X std of calibration residuals as uncertainties.
As per IPCC Uncertainty Guidance, there is greater than 66 % probability that these are minimum uncertainties. Effect of scaling errors is not discussed, or maybe reduction in the statistical robustness means something like that..
Okay, here is an image claiming to show “modelled” temperatures which are suspiciously close to the measurements, and they “modelled natural only” line that is of course lower. Does anyone know how they did this? From my engineering perspective it looks like they chose a relatively short time period, and fiddled their fudge factors until it got close. for the blue line, it looks like they took the original results and “switched off” their carbon dioxide terms. It is also suspicious that the blue line stops at 2000.
If the figure does not display, it can be viewed here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457037/html/default.stm
439, Pat:
That is the key point. Let’s suppose you are correct that the marine influences are responsible for these temperature differences on both sides of the Rockies. But where is that elusive positive water vapor feedback? It’s still hotter where it is dryer, whatever the reason. It should be hotter where there is more water vapor according to “The Hypothesis.”
It will be almost miraculous if the whiplash doesn’t damage all of science. A hoax on such a grand scale is devastating to the human psyche, and on whom do you think all that pain will be taken out? I’m worried.
=============================
Motives are only relevant in the absence of the data. It does not really matter why they are not archiving data and methods – what matters is they are not archiving data and methods. What would Thompson’s chart from the 2006 presentation look like if we added other ice core measures to the Andean and Tibetan representations of the data? If Thompson can simply aggregate Peruvian and Tibetan ice cores why not add ALaska? If everything is normalized to the local previaling levels of d18O, what is the difference in the mechanism between tropical and extra-tropical generation of d18O that warrants not combining them, especially since Thompson already acknowledges that the Tibetan and Peruvian mechanisms are somewhat different?
Philip says:
It’s also suspicious that their “average” line goes from 1901-1950. What happens to the zero line when we go to 1901 to 2000?
Surface temps not that far above average…
Meanwhile Al Gore is more involved in “green” VC (venture capital) enterprises;
http://www.247wallst.com/2007/11/al-gore-goes-de.html
#442, Ivan, you are absolutely right. I’d be very interested in the answer to your question as well. I’ve spent a lot of time bringing up the same point, was ignored, but I think I know the answer. I can only speculate that it’s related to deep psychological issues. Steve spent a career establishing a non partisan persona. If he had ever appeared to be emotionally predisposed to a certain mining operation, his value as an independent auditor would vanish.
The plain fact is that the sources behind the links you mentioned are so overwhelmingly credibile, that it’s in everyone’s interest to ignore them. Steve’s purpose is not to “refute” AGW, but to audit the claims made by certain prominent AGWers like Mann, Hansen, etc. He doesn’t really care if the hypothesis is right or not (gold in dem dere hills).
And it’s reasonable to assume that once he goes down the path you suggest, he would turn into a true skeptic, a non believer in even the possibility of AGW. He would then lose credibility as an auditor and become the equivalent of a mining company, which is not his strength. We don’t really want that either, since then, we would lose the auditor. Other people can push that point more effectively (if necessary).
#445, jae, you’re right, and your premise is a more fundamental point: The AGW hypothesis, if correct, does not operate on the system as a whole, on the long term average, as if that is a separate parameter of the system. If AGW is operating, it would do so every day, and it would be more or less effective, depending on the amount of GHG’s in that area, at that time. In other words, it should be demonstratable, invalidating the claim that the atmosphere is so complex, that models are the only way to decipher it all.
#445: Philip, same engineering perspective here, and same doubts (and same name even!); not to say, we do not know how they initialised their models, nor if their “natural” models are correct, even not if they input data then made models which fit them in the way they liked, nor they have the right perspective about uncertainty/error range (e.g. in the same BBC pages, a Mann’s-like historical temperature graph grossly misunderstood statistical relevance of data with error range, completely ignoring basics of measurement theory and instrumental/reconstruction uncertanties).
UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon is definetely not a honest person, nor a scientifical educated one: unless what his bilnd eyes may tell him (then tell us), 2007 is being until now almost the coldest year in the warming Antarctic Peninsula (the only Antarctica area warming).
Base Esperanza has so far seen a 10-months mean of -8.1°C, near to -9.0°C record of 1961; July 2007 in this base was the coldest ever, -18.4°C vs. -17.6°C of 1976 previous record.
Marambio is so far living the coldest year ever together with 1980, -12.1°C; July 2007 beats 1976 cold record here too, -23.2°C vs. -23.0°C.
To remember, in the last months Austral Emisphere has gone back to almost 0 temperature anomaly, and Tropical Belt too, after early 2007 peak: now, just Boreal Emisphere is seing a strong warming anomaly (about +1°C); and I am not talking about MSU data, but NOAA-NCDC ones.
For MSU (satellites) data, we could say no warming is happening at all now south of 25°N, while north of 25°N we have just warming but nothing so strong: despite early 2007 peak, light global cooling trend began in 2002 has not been reversed.
I’ve been looking for data showing what percentage of the sun’s output is in the infrared. More specifically those frequencies that are absorbed by the various green house gasses.
If these gasses are capable of blocking outgoing energy, certainly they are capable of blocking incoming energy as well.
I suspect that the percentage of sun’s output that resides in these frequencies is so low that it is less than the rounding error. But I would like to see some numbers that say so.
453: As I recall, about 44% of the total solar energy is in the IR spectrum. I can’t figure out why this seems to be ignored. Of course some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere.
MarkW, it’s certainly more than rouding error:
Integrating under the curve by eye, it looks to me like it’s more than 50%.
#452 looking at the UAH satellite data, Antarctica has a negative trend for both land, ocean, and total of -0.07 (I assume this is degrees per decade) in the lower troposphere.
This doesn’t quite “fit the narrative” of Antarctica warming at an astounding rate (I can only assume that the models say that it should, and the model outputs are reported as if they’re observational data)
Data here: C:\Documents and Settings\mb50619\My Documents\uahncdc_lt.htm
MarkW,
Something like 99% of the energy of solar radiation falls in the wavelength range of 0.2 to 4.0 micrometers with the peak at about 0.5 micrometers. Anything longer than 0.7 micrometers is considered IR. So about half of the sun’s energy is in the near IR. Thermal IR emitted by the Earth’s surface is almost entirely in the range from 4 to 50 micrometers with the peak at about 10 micrometers. There are some water and carbon dioxide absorption bands that affect incoming solar radiation, but overall absorption is much higher in the thermal IR region than the near IR.
#456: indeed here ground station and satellites agree, Antarctic Peninsula is the only continental area to have a warming trend there (it would be as we made an European trend considering just Greece).
#454: about a half of Sun’s incoming output.
But, never remembered (even less by AGW supporters), we have a strong CO2 belt in the stratosphere, which may intercept such output. But, moreover, outside this belt, Sun’s IR is about 400 times Earth’s IR: so, I would say that in any case Sun’s IR should be much greater than Earth’s one.
Re Larry 229:
225, the 787 is already developed. Theyre not wind-tunnel testing to determine the design. Theyre just confirming their results, and gathering data for optimization of various routes.
and Steven Mosher 232:
James the wind tunnel is not used for design in any meaningful term of the phrase … Still there is that wee bit of nonsense called optimization. Tweaking.
From Michael Garrett, Director Airplane Performance Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Larry,
A linear circuit analogy doesn’t work here. Temperature is proportional to the fourth root of the input power. That means that adding heat capacity has a much larger effect on the minimum temperature than it does on the maximum so the average temperature does increase with heat capacity.
454, 455
The GHGs only absorb large chunks of IR out beyond 2u. You have to multiply the sun’s spectrum by the absorption spectrum, and that is also complicated by the fact that the absorption spectrum is dependent on the local air pressure (pressure-broadening).
The biggest cause of loss in the visible region is Rayleigh scattering.
445
I’m guessing, but I suspect that they turned off the CO2 added above the “natural” 280 ppmv level.
I ran the GISS model II without CO2 at all, and the model ‘projected’ an Ice Age (12C colder, water vapor down to 40% of current), before going unstable after about 30 yrs.
446 jae
I don’t disagree that there is a negative effect, short-circuiting the GH effect, from latent heat transport via water vapor.
My point is that your argument is confounded by other, larger factors. The dry areas are hot for much the same reason that they are dry, a lack of cool maritime air.
One can’t logically conclude that watering troughs attract cows — both are there for the same reason, because of the farmer.
460, I’d have to see that actually modeled to be convinced that it actually matters. Remember, the original question was what’s the effect of the heat capacity of changes to the water vapor concentration.
Yes, it theoretically can make a difference.
460 DeWitt
Hardly. Thermal radiative emission from a body is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature, but that’s a whole different thing.
The temperature increase of a body provided with heat is linear, to a first appoximation.
Here the real ciphers (not Trenberth’s ciphers):
1359.02 W/m^2 – 1452.77 W/m^2 is the net incident Solar Radiation upon Earth.
50.01% of the received energy is Infrared Radiation (703.1 W/m^2 from average). From this percentage:
51% is absorbed by the Earth surface (~359 W/m^2).
24% is reflected in the troposphere by clouds (168.74 W/m^2).
14% is absorbed by the air, specifically by the water vapor and dew (98.43 W/m^2).
Carbon Dioxide is almost transparent to the short wave infrared radiation incoming from the Sun.
7% is reflected by the upper atmosphere (49.22 W/m^2).
4% is reflected by ground and oceans (28.12 W/m^2).
From the energy absorbed by the surface, 24% conduces to phase change of water and is conserved by water vapor as latent heat (about 86.16 W/m^2) until the water vapor condenses and suffers phase changes, for example from gas to liquid, from gas to solid, etc., in the high troposphere and the low stratosphere as a consequence of lost of energy which is transferred to other volumes of air and/or to the outer space. The surface retains temporarily 272.84 W/m^2, from which 65.48 W/m^2 are transferred to subjacent layers and/or to other volumes of sand and water by conduction-convection. The energy emitted by the surface to the atmosphere is 207.3584 W/m^2, from which the carbon dioxide absorbs:
á (1 m^2) (5.6697 W/m^2*K^4) (ÄT^4)
…and causes a change of temperature of:
q / mcd(Cpcd)
Notice that the temperature is a factor that influences the sensitivity of carbon dioxide to absorb energy. The higher the surrounding temperature, the lower absorptivity of carbon dioxide. Please, dont start again the tale of the egg and the hen (saturation bands, etc.).
Also notice that the water vapor can get rid of heat to other volumes of air or to the outer space. When it does one thing instead the another one, or both? We don’t know… heh! 😉
# 426
Patt Keating,
You’re right, I got the same output. The reason is probably that GISS model attributes the total “greenhouse” effect to carbon dioxide and dismiss solar irradiance, water vapor, oceans, interstellar cosmic rays, etc. It seems that the model relies on the biased premise that the density of water vapor depends on the concentration of carbon dioxide in the lower troposphere.
465, I think what he’s arguing is that the equilibrium temperature of a point is determined by the balance betweem (T(sun)^4 – T(point)^4) and (T(point)^4 – T(space)^4). If you have diurnal cycling, and the heat capacity dampens that, the net effect will be for the diurnal average to be a little higher. I’m just not convinced that it amounts to a hill of beans when we’re talking about the effect of changing water vapor concentration. One way to look at the effect of T2^4-T1^4 is to recognize that it’s (T1^2+T2^2)(T1+T2)(T2-T1). So the nonlinearity if a function of both temperatures much more than it is of the difference.
463:
Also a lack of moisture to take away the heat. All I know is that I can explain 96 percent of the temperature variation for the months of July and December all the way from Barrow, AK to Guam by considering only absolute humidity, solar radiation and “dryness.” I don’t have to consider marine influences, but maybe they are incorporated somehow.
Why is subsidence affiliated with horse latitudes highs (and its effects – dry and consequently hot, air) such an apparent “no go” zone for so many? This is a scab I must continue to pick at.
470: I don’t think it’s a no-go zone for me. “dry and subsequently hot” sounds right to me.
It seems to me that the cool marine air does exacerbate the problem and cause even more cooling in those areas where it “penetrates” (I know it is hard to picture cooling in Birmingham in the summer, but it is happening. If you consider lapse rate and move a parcel of air which is 19 C in Denver to Birmingham, it would be something like 28 C there, which is hotter than the 26.6 degree actual temperature). As the warm air over the surface rises, it tends to be replaced by the cooler marine air. But to warm this air requires even more evaporation of water and even more heat loss, since you cannot go up in temperature without increasing humidity, in areas where the water is available. However, I wonder how important marine influences are in Dodge City, KS in the summer. If moisture is not available, all the solar energy simply goes into heating the surface and the air above it.
Couple of interesting links:
First at the BBC from John Cristy
And a Southampton University study on the impact of CO2 on trees (which might have some relevance for tree growth):
Rising atmospheric CO2 explains 2652% of the recent delay in autumnal senescence in important forest and crop species
>> Hardly. Thermal radiative emission from a body is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature, but thats a whole different thing.
Pat, thank you! I didn’t have the emotional energy. The temperature of something can only be calculated with 1st law, ie starting with the initial temps of system components, heat transfer coefficients, other heat transfers, and then write differential equations for each component boundary. 20 components means 20 equations with 20 unknowns.
Therefore, there can be no general scientific relationship between amount of C02 and atmospheric temperature. The so called arrhenius equation is like saying that the temperature of my car depends only on how many people get into it.
RE: #471 and 472 – But you have to admit, Keating’s selective reading (completely ignoring the stated fact) is, um, a bit convenient. He is proven wrong by Santa Monica vesus East LA. Heck, he is proven wrong by inner versus outer Sunset! You could shave off all the mountains in California and Daggett would still be wicked hot (just like Dhakkar is, with no mountains between it and the cold Atlantic)
It looks like maximum temperatures peak at about 32-33 C in humid areas; whereas in Daggett and other subtropical deserts they can exceed 50 C. If that doesn’t demonstrate negative water feedback, then what does?
And now for something completely different:
Click to access 200705-03AusIMMcorrected.pdf
Read it and meditate on it. Especially the parts where climate change hazard preparation is discussed. You should end up very, very worried after reading this. Hopefully, it will someday translate to credible action plans. But I doubt it. Such is the fate of the stupid (not anyone here, but the herds who drowns us out with silly noise).
Interesting article by Dr. John Christy on the IPCC’s shortcomings:
BBC Article
Re #473: Julian Williams
That isn’t just a link to John Cristy’s article – it’s a smoldering fuse leading to a great big bomb! I particularly like:
and
Here’s the link again; don’t miss it.
Saw this bumper sticker last night: Preserve the old growth lithosphere. BAN SUBDUCTION!
Doesn’t that just capture AGW? Take a natural process that man is simply not capable of affecting, assign an arbitrary value judgement on the previous state, yet demand political action anyways.
475 Sadlov
Apparently, you have never learned the difference between a Maritime climate and a Continental climate, but prefer to lean on anecdotal ‘evidence’ gleaned from an urban heat-island environment. So much for science!
RE: #481 – So, you believe that with no mountains, Daggett would not be hot? If that is so, then how is it that Dhakkar is hot?
467 Nasif
Yes, it seemed to me that the result is due to the modelers’ initial premise: that all of the temperature change from ice-ages to warm periods is due to CO2. The fact that temperature seems to be driving CO2, rather than the other way round, negates that (but I guess that info was not available when they built the model(s)).
Pat: What parts of the contiguous USA states do you classify as Continental? As Maritime? Where does Scottsbluff Nebraska fall?
482 Sadlov
I assume you are talking about Dakar/Dakkhar in Senegal.
1. The average summer temperature is about 27C, which is not hot, in my book or jae’s.
2. Actually, it’s pretty cool for a location so close to the equator.
As I said earlier, this is the problem:
Burning fossil fuels creates pollution, and the solids from that cause global cooling.
Luckily for us, other processes that interact with that and each other are moderating and even reversing that cooling, things such as how the particles react with clouds, the heat transfer creation/absorbtion involved with when they fall on the ground, the heat transfer creation/absorbtion and release of GHG by the oceans, and the heat transfer creation/absorbtion as the GHG interact with sunlight and each other. On the whole all this interaction has resulted in a pretty stable short-term (decades and centuries) climate.
All in all an excellent system that self-regulates (and self-cleans!), one that happens to be in a slightly warm-trending period. I’m not really looking forward to the next cooling downturn, such as the ones we’ve been seeing since we started using thermometers and satellites, but what can you do, try and regulate the weather system? You’d have to be pretty deluded or egotistical to think we can influence nature like that!
484
Nebraska has to be Continental.
I hope you are not going to tell me that Scottsbluff is warmer than Birmingham, Al in December!
BTW, besides the latent-heat of evaporation effect you discuss, there may also be a thermal-conductivity effect in play for December data. Wet soil will conduct heat much better than dry sand (compare dry fiberglass insulation with wet insulation) and cool faster and deeper in the early stages of winter.
482, 485: Dakar is interesting, in that in the summer the ocean is almost as warm as the air. So it rains like crazy (absolute humidity goes to saturation often).
RE: #485 – I made a boo boo with Dhakkar, I forgot it was actually within the actual fog desert zone, my bad. Forget Dhakkar, instead:
Click to access IDCJDW6094.200701.pdf
How do you account for this? No mountains. 120 miles inland from Perth. (compare and contrast climatology with Perth). This is what you’d have in Socal if LA stopped at I-5, and there were no mountains. The above community is as far inland as the Inland Empire of SoCal, again, with no mountains. Also, I would challenge you to measure summer temps in Santa Barbara County, in the Santa Maria Valley, at the beach, and, where the valley necks down toward Sisquoc. No mountains between beach and neck down point, Santa Maria and Orcutt’s thermal plumes would be inconquential to the more inland measurement point.
482
I don’t necessarily believe that Daggett would not be hot without the mountains.
It appears that the cool ocean air is unable to move very far inland in CA in summer. Your anecdote about E LA and the well-known fact that a low cloud bank tends to sit for hours along the shoreline before midday suggests that (a) there isn’t much on-shore wind, and (b) that the air off the cold Pacific-current is so cool and dense that it can’t move very far up even relatively small inclines without a wind. Daggett is about 2000 ft ASL and a good way from the ocean.
487: No, but I will tell you that it’s hotter than Wilkes-Barre, PA, which is at the same latitude and elevation (almost).
The deal with December is that almost everywhere there is sufficient soil moisture to maximize absolute humidity for a given temperature. The soil is wet, and thermal conductivity is high everywhere. Except a couple of extremes, like Daggett and Phoenix.
BTW – Narrogin gets sea breezes (albeit, strongly attenuated by distance) from directions ranging from NNW to ESE. How can you explain it being hotter than Perth. No mountains between Narrogin and coast.
RE #490 – In SoCal, it is not at all uncommon for the the marine layer to push fog and relatively coole air well inland at night. The high fog will often reach the first range of hills, rimming the LA Basin. It burns back toward the coast as the day progresses. Same deal in the Bay Area. Fog comming in the Golden Gate and through the fog gaps sprawls all over the place, then burns back to coast. Sunnyvale shore can be 85 when it’s 57 at the Marina Green.
I lied just a little in 491. It is warmer in Scottsbluff in July, but slightly colder in December (-3 vs -1, big deal).
Not necessarily. Historically, yes. Inherently, no.
RE; #490 – by the way you are a bit off in your understanding of the marine layer. It is only thin like you say in Spring and Fall (and very, very sporadically, for short periods, during Summer). Normally it’s 1000 feet or better, thickest it actually can approach 4 thou! There is not much topo able to stop it in the LA Basin, Santa Maria Valley or Salinas Valley mouth, or even the Bay Area (where the higher ranges are really more of an elongated mesa form with large, much lower areas between the highest highlands). Here’s another comparison, Moss Landing versus King City in mid summer.
Ever been in Saudi Arabia? Go there and contrast the day/night temps at a location near the water (say a seaport) with one in the open desert in December. If I remember correctly, it was miserable at night near the water and pretty dang cold out on the sand…
RE: #488 – Yeah, I goofed on that one. It’s at the southern sliver of the fog desert, grading into tropical wet dry, sort of like Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta. A bit wetter than Cabo (wabo! – LOL!)
493
I’ve watched the fog roll in at night, both through the Golden Gate gap in the hills and also it eventually gets over the oceanside hills south of SF, near the airport. It’s quite a sight.
However, that is at night and it is during the day that the cooling is needed. Also it rolls in quite slowly, so there isn’t much ‘push’ to get it to Daggett.
I know very little of the Perth area (though I understand it does have hills) and haven’t the time to research it.
Now, time for the real Pandora’s Box regarding Horse Latitudes Highs. What is the origin of the subsiding summer air? But of course, it is the rising air of the ITCZ. After being milked of moisture along the south and west sides of the great Horse Latitudes Highs, it swings around to the east sides and centers. But wait, I thought that it was supposed to be getting sent up toward the poles? Say what? But … there’s more! That subsiding air, which is dry, and, as dense as dry air is capable of being, does indeed give the SW US, Australia, the Sahahara, Saudi Arabia, Mesopotamia and other smaller examples of such places, their summer hellishness. And … there are no clouds to trap the upward radiating IR. Only wimpy dry gasses. To space … to space.
Larry, I do it with pollution causing cooling and the other stuff regulating that cooling, and others with a trace gas causing the warming and the other stuff regulating that warming. What’s the difference?
But of course, at least I acknowledge there’s a system! 🙂
500: and no moisture to produce any negative feedback from evaporation and clouds. Just sun, unbelievably hot sun…
My o my this is a fast thread.
To repeat the link to the interesting description of an upcoming article looking at CO2 uptake by ocean waters, here it is:
http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news234669
What I like is that the good news, substantial ocean uptake and subsequent ocean bottom deposition of CO2 can be expected, is experimental, but the bad news, increased acidification of the deep ocean, is hypothetical. Perhaps the bad news was required to merit publication in this particular journal.
Now, who’s with me for having 1000 post thread quibbling about a single cause/effect relationship? Or how about one on the nuances of proving or disproving pollution and particulates and their interaction with clouds, the sun, snow, sand, ice, water vapor and the ocean as shown “in the models”. We could do it in a circular manner, using vague terms that would make us not even be talking about the same thing!
Nah, nevermind. Nobody would ever do something like that.
Re #478
An earlier comment of mine on spatially distributed co-dependent belief networks doesn’t sound so crazy in light of the Christy interview in #478. Christy gets it right.
“Faith in models” seems to be a recurring theme, found in previous comments by myself, Jean S, Paul Penrose, Philip B and many others. We’re not supposed to talk about faith or GCMs at CA, but how does one avoid the topic?
Steve: bender, we’ve had long running threads on Exponential Systems which pertain to models. I’ve got an old thread on “Truth Machines” as well. It’s just that these sorts of things deserve some threads and I don’t have the time or energy to research it.
Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Readers of Climate Audit,
I have come into possession of a remarkable proxy that provides irrefutable proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Since at this time I am unable to either submit it to peer-review or provide proper data archiving (nor do I want to have McIntyre make it commit R-ikiri) I have instead decided to offer it to some lucky member of the Climate Audit community for purchase by auction. The opening price is US $2 and bids increment by $1. Bidding closes at 12 pm, Eastern Time, Saturday, November 24, 2007. All proceeds to go to the CA tip jar.
Thank you in advance for taking this opportunity to give this priceless scientific artifact the proper care that it deserves.
NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face
Satellite Indicates Regional Warming Variations From Sun During Solar Cycle
Re#476
Jae, you are right about humidity limiting temps in the tropics to 33C. It is really very striking that higher temps only occur when humidity drops.
Re # 329 David Charlton
Thank you for the reference to stats studies in another field. The quote below is particularly relevant to climate science modelling:
Analogy with climate science, in a sense, the IPCC reports are the meta-analyses of the various climate models. We await the gold standard.
It has been my discomfort to read several meta-analyses from other fields, to examine the methodology and to conclude that the final authors are incapable of accounting for directly conflicting strong evidence – because they believe that weight of numbers eliminates contrary observations.
508:
Hmm, they are certainly covering all their bases:
Then
These statements don’t quite fit together, IMHO. Gotta be PC in Boulder, though.
Re #507
Interesting. Is this sort of switching behavior included in the ensemble scenarios to which the GCMs are tuned?
Sudden arctic warmth not predicted by Hansen’s GCM is another topic that RC won’t touch.
Recent trends in Arctic Ocean mass distribution revealed by GRACE
One of the oddities about recent weather has been the apparent reduction in cloud cover over the Northern Hemisphere. Satellites monitor outgoing longwave radiation (OLR). Generally, if the satellite senses excess OLR that means it is sensing the (relatively) warm planet surface while OLR deficiencies are associated with cold clouds.
The current 90-day anomaly map is here . Generally speaking, yellow indicates that above-average cloud cover has been present over the last three months while blue indicates below-normal cloud cover for the period. What the map shows is a predominance of blue (“clear skies”) in the extratropical NH, with excess cloudiness (and possibly precipitation) in the tropical NH regions.
My conjecture is that, if this trend continues, then the NH will see anomalous cooling this winter when insolation is low, just as the Arctic saw anomalous warming due to clear skies this last summer. Speculation. We’ll see.
Two related items of interest (to me) are the current water vapor images for the tropical Western Hemisphere (see here and here ). (First-time viewers may have a hard time interpreting these.) These images show the water vapor content of the upper part of the troposphere. Black and especially brown are cloud-free and dry while white regions are moist and colored regions are rainy.
The images show more tropical dryness for this time of year than I remember ever seeing. And it stretches into the western Pacific. This dryness, just like the absence of cloud cover, aids IR radiating into space.
476, Phillip: I wonder what the climate models do about this. I wouldn’t be surprised if they show temperatures in the tropics which are not possible.
419:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=610
Wilson doesn’t necessarily say they are “good,” but they do respond to temperature, which is the position I have taken.
478:
Done. How can I trust anything Bob Carter says when he is still flogging his “global warming ended in 1998” horse? It’s cruelty to proverbial animals for criminy’s sake.
Okay, to be fair, he does say:
Which should be obvious to everyone and does not support his idea that GW is slowing or stopping or over.
That’s because Wilson knows where to stop short to avoid embarrassment. That the trees “respond to temperature” is not sufficient to make them good proxies, because they respond to other things too, nonlinearly and synergistically moreover. I’m glad that you are being more realistic as to the value of these things as temperature proxies. They’re probably not good enough to be used for splitting hairs, such as the possible difference between the CWP and the MWP.
Which should be obvious to everyone and does not support his idea that GW is slowing or stopping or over.
The question was never whether bristlecones respond to temperature, it was 1. how do they respond, and 2. what else do they respond to?
Well, read Wilson’s post for that information.
Re #521 And (3) how to extract the pure temperature signal when it is embedded in a mixed response with moisture and/or CO2. Which, Boris, is NOT contained in Wilson’s post.
That meaningless statement has no bearing, sheds no illumination on whether BCP’s can be used to reliably determine past temperatures. I would wager that all terrestrial plant life “responds to temperature”. Go ask a lily pad whether it would prefer lots of water with temps around the min or max of its tolerance range or temperatures any where in its tolerance range with no water.
http://www.ostp.gov/html/001207_3.html
Does the Mannomatic, selecting, suppressing and withholding data with intent to deceive, suppressing R2 validation findings etc etc count? Just asking. There must me a way.
523: Wilson sees no evidence for CO2 fertilization effects in the BCP data. He also says (since clicking a link is hard for Larry):
Which sounds a lot like what I said.
Jaye,
Ignore my sloppy wording and read what Wilson says.
and then assume that temperature is the only thing that varies.
re: #527 Boris,
Try looking at comment 25 in that thread (page 610). There Rob clarified what he’d said:
So that’s saying that if you have a GOOD stand of BCPs you’d find that spring – early summer temperature explained about 1/7 of the growth. Is this what you want our economy to be based on? I think 14% is even lower than Pres. Bush’s approval rating. Think about it.
hey go ask the dried up lily pad if the temperature is optimum for growth. 😉
RE: #502, 515, numerous others – So, on the one hand, we have massive CuNim build ups along the equatorward and west sides of the Horse Latitudes Highs. Where the outflows converge there is the ITCZ. Lots of thermal energy being turned into mechanical and electrical energy, and, via the extreme convection, also being carried up as outright thermal flux to and past the tropopause. Not in the GCMs. On the other hand, we have the great other stroke of the compressor, the subsidence in the worlds subtropical deserts and areas on their margins. Here, heat is released at the surface (ever fill up a scuba tank and see how warm it gets) by compression, and, also, due to the characteristics of air parcels in these areas, the sun wickedly heats the surface in the summer. This heat, every night, goes straight to outer space. Not in the GCMs.
Now, for something a bit but not completely different. Let us say for the sake of argument that AGW is disturbing the energy balance. It would not be unthinkable that one of the modes of disturbance would be “faster” operation of these great compressors. They may not, as prophecied by the doom and gloom crowd, grow larger or shift poleward. They may just go faster. Not in the GCMs.
Emission spectra of CO2 and H2O were gleefully compared by the Joshua Halperns of the world. Scary stuff! “H20 is an even scarier GHG than CO2!” cried the spectral lines. Now, let’s see. As the world warms, that means more H20 in non condensed form in the air. Bad, bad GHGs! Scary, scary stuff! Postive feedback … ooooooh! But there is more to this story. Look at phase diagrams of CO2 and H20. Maybe H20 is actually a negative feedback after all.
That’s why 8-12 FlIRs are so damn good.
That’s the problem, the followers of the Sacred Shoe don’t want to think about.
Steve Sadlov: Horse latitudes. Hmm, what happens over water at these latitudes? Where does all the evaporated water go?
# 530
Steve Sadlov,
Frozen water vapor and water vapor was used in my model of Abiogenesis because there was not another option to introduce a negative feedback that we could consider taken from the classic models of primitive atmosphere. Methane would be a disastrous coolant and it is considered on the synthesis of complex organic molecules in the Earth’s primitive atmosphere.
RE: #533 – Proximate destination of the H20 is the ITCZ and western edge of the high. Secondarily it gets sent north – into places such as …. SE/E Asia …. and … the SE US! 🙂
RE: #534 – Indeed, water was, and, is the key to life on Earth!
Interesting BBC article about the supposed bias in science:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7092614.stm
Our host is mentioned about a third of the way down.
Here’s a summary of a recent study that sure bucks the consensus. Brrrr.
#536
It’s rather wonderful how the BBC manages to avoid mentioning any of Steve M’s criticisms of the Hockey Stick by saying “it’s so well documented, there’s nothing new to to say”.
Try searching the BBC site for mentions of CA or SM and you only get an article claiming vindication for MBH (It was plausible!).
Here’s the whole study referenced in 537. It also points out another serious flaw in GCMs. Now is this scientist, and the hundreds of others that Idso references, all “skeptics?”
Forgot the link.
536: I wonder if someone from RC really wrote that.
It won’t end until climate cools. That’s when the media will start looking back (5, 10 years hence) to see if anyone was paying attention when the rest (the consensus) were screaming about 6 degrees in the next 25 years.
RE: #3 – Tell you what, looking at the new spaghetti graph (plus the previous ones), checking out recent verus millenneal time scales, we’ve had it good during from about the time our grandparents’ generation was born and, I would wager, it cannot last much longer. By good, I mean, relatively warm (“warm” for being in an interglacial) with reasonable moisture availability in the mid latitudes and with somewhat damped swings in climate. It’s lulled the masses into a false sense of security. What’s ironic is, eventually, even with even the worst case impacts of AGW, the climate would have, versus current expectations, gone haywire. The saddest thing is, they will blame it on AGW no matter what the root causes end up being.
Bishop Hill,
I’ve also noted the Black Propaganda on my blog. Now we have a new excuse for the BBC’s censored output: “if others reported it extensively, we don’t have to mention it at all.”
It makes you proud to be paying the license fee, doesn’t it?
Nature News
John A: if others reported it extensively, we dont have to mention it at all.
Total cop-out that most people just glaze over. Typical.
Boris: Saying something’s “not as bad” is not saying it’s good, and Dr. Wilson even specifically stated that. It holds no weight. And any visual observation of GHCN-ERSST shows the variability very clearly in the temp (and at the same time quite clearly shows the trend). But the problem is the trend and the current value are about the same, so I think it’s fair to ask “What is it telling us?” and to state that it’s not clear if it’s accelerating. The anomaly’s never been over these values in either direction. So it’s an unknown.
Egads, the it so far appears that the literature supporting a positive water vapor feedback is about as clear as that supporting an increase of 2.5-3.0 degrees C for a doubling of CO2. The logic is something like: modeling proves it so we can use it in the models.
# 535
Steve Sadlov,
Don’t forgetting another key for life on Earth, the CO2.
# 547
Jae.
It’s like Svensmark’s experiment which demonstrated that the nucleons from the ICR act like nuclei that favor clouds accretion. The experiment shows it, but the models don’t, so we trust models, not empirical results. If my PC says it, it must be true. If nature says it… we just adjust the models so they show the cloudiness is due to 101 ppmV of CO2.
BTW, I think that Svensmark’s demonstration is appliable only to the formation of Cirrus clouds.
The Fairbridge curve.
Click to access ICS176.pdf
Steve Sadlov, I thought you might be interested in this as you were a regular contributor on Pielke’s blog (RIP) concerned about a coming deep freeze (you heretic 🙂 ).
Met O (Hadley) says by 2010 global warming will “return in earnest” based on their ‘new and improved’ climate model (which they also had in 2003). That must have been a result of their predicting in January 2007, that 2007 would be the warmest year on record.
If the Fairbridge curve holds true, 2010 may be the beginning of a plunge.
As it is now, all indicators are pointing to ________________.
Watch Solar cycle 24.
http://www.solarcycle24.com
It is simply too weird to be true, so I must be a complete nut. Steve Mc is looking for the basic physics for the 2.5 degrees warming for 2 X CO2. But he should really be looking for the basis for a “positive water vapor feedback,” because this is necessary for the models to get the 2.5 degrees. And the idea of a positive water vapor feedback seems to be supported by only a couple of studies that rely on global climate models (as far as I can tell so far). So we have the situation where hundreds of papers are based on references to two or three papers that are based on climate models that have never been validated. There is no foundation for the stuff. This house of cards has no foundation. It is truly fascinating.
Can’t quit tonight. And while the computer models whisper to the climate scientists that water vapor exerts a positive feedback, the empirical evidence SCREAMS otherwise!
Nasif, #548:
Ah yes, more “consensus” science: he who has the loudest mouth funded by the largest budget gets his verbiage writ large in stone.
Correction: my last post referred to Nasif’s number 545.
#545 Nasif Nahle
Thanks for the link and here’s a quote:
As the second working “had to look” at accelerated warming, to reach a consensus the original sea level rise estimates had to be raised.
So to ensure that the IPCC report contains what you want, just form a working group to look at an extreme version of it, then accept a compromise. This is not science, this is negotiation.
RE: #548 – I presume you may have encountered the work of Dr. Doug Erwin (an early mentor of mine). He’s focussed deeply on species divergence as well as the late Permian extinction. A couple of theories regarding the mother of all extinctions are around the lack of litoral due to Pangea, volcanism, methane “burping” and NEO strike (and subsequent “nuclear winter”). Now what is very fascinating here is that partial pressure CO2 was at an all time low in the millions of years prior to the extinction. Does low CO2 stress phytoplankton and land based photosynthetic life? Does it make such life forms more vulnerable to die off due to other things (such as the theorized “root causes” of the late Permian extinction)? The silver lining – when such events occur, tremendous CO2 is liberated, driving the next species divergence. I am a frustrated would be paleontologist! 😆
RE: #551 – The empirical evidence (especially the sum total paleo climate record including all the parts black balled by Mannomatic and the IPCC’s dominent factions combined with the fossil / geological record) screams about risks that have barely been and are barely being analyzed. While everyone argues about 2.5 deg C and AGW, there are things far, far worse than the worst case killer AGW that would wipe out billions of people, that, even if we had capped GHGs at 1880s levels, would still be almost certain to occur, given enough time. A classic case of barking up the wrong tree. Significantly, Pielke Sr’s risk / hazard analysis approach is precisely what’s needed to stop this nonsense before its too late.
Existential risk and democratic peace
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081804.stm
RE: #555 & 548 – Heretical thought. What if it was determined that it was necessary to guaranty CO2 concentration of 1300 ppm at 3 sigma in order to prevent another late Permian extinction? What would be the ethical thing (or set of things) to do?
Sadlov go look at the graphs I linked on Parker UHI.
# 559
Steven Mosher,
Where is “Parker UHI”? Do you have the link?
555, 558 Steve S
Very interesting speculation.
One would think that there would be flora adaptation and/or culling of the fauna, rather than outright disappearance, but who knows.
Could low CO2 be part of the reason for the expansion of deserts?
RE: Could low CO2 be part of the reason for the expansion of deserts?
Yes.
Nasif..
Use search here. Parker UHI. Select CA search
here nasif
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1718
Steve S, you are not the only one who thinks we may be reading local regional effects due to UHI and land use changes as a global signal, while in reality they merely mask the global trend.
Ice accumulation is an important indicator. While the focus is on Alpine glaciers, the Alps are surrounded by half a billion people. Iceland is a much better place to look at temperate region ice trends. Few people concentrated in small areas. Well studied glaciers for a relatively long period.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1998/of98-031/iceland.htm
The link is from 1998. I can’t find a more recent summary of Icelandic glacial advance/retreat. But there is enough of a signal here to cause me to think the risks are by no means all on the warming side.
Erratum: Please note that prior to 26 June 2000, the mean values added to the land and ocean anomalies were incorrect. These data are now correct. Analysis of trends in the time series would not be impacted by this error since the error involved adding a constant to the entire period of record.
The complete land-sea surface climatology from the Climate Research Unit is described in:
Jones, P. D., M. New, D. E. Parker and S. Martin, submitted: Surface air temperature and its changes over the past 150 years. Rev. Geophys.
This climatology is actually a combination of four separate data sets:
Global land areas, excluding Antarctica, described in:
New, M. G., M. Hulme and P. D. Jones, in press: Representing 20th century space-time climate variability. I: Development of a 1961-1990 mean monthly terrestrial climatology. J. Climate.
Global oceans, 60S-60N, described in:
Parker, D. E., M. Jackson and E. B. Horton, 1995: The GISST2.2 sea surface temperature and sea-ice climatology. Climate Research Technical Note, CRTN 63, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Bracknel, UK.
Arctic sea areas, described in:
Rigor, I. G., R. L. Colony and S. Martin, submitted: Statistics of surface air temperature observations in the Arctic. J. Climate.
Martin, S. and E.A. Munoz: Properties of the Arctic 2-Meter Air temperature field for 1979 to the present derived from a new gridded data set. J. Climate, 10, 1428-1440.
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The Global Anomalies and Index
NOTE: From February 2006 through April 14, 2006, the anomalies provided from the links below were inadvertently provided as departures from the 1961-1990 average. Anomalies are now provided as departures from the 20th century average (1901-2000).
The Monthly Global Land Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Global Ocean Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Global (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (degrees C)
The Monthly Northern Hemisphere Land Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Northern Hemisphere Ocean Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Northern Hemisphere (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (degrees C)
The Monthly Southern Hemisphere Land Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Southern Hemisphere Ocean Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Monthly Southern Hemisphere (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (degrees C)
The Annual Global Land Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Annual Global Ocean Temperature Anomalies (degrees C)
The Annual Global (land and ocean combined) Anomalies (degrees C)
Monthly and annual global anomalies are available through the most recent complete month and year, respectively.
RE: #570 – It’s a good place to monitor due to the fact that it is a relatively isolated land mass with some of the shorter term climate changes buffered by the Atlantic.
BTW, for those of you in NJ, especially near Rutgers:
Click to access Douglas%20Erwin%20Announcement.pdf
It’s always good to tune up one’s understanding of evolution of complex systems.
For the enjoyment of those who have read Tamino’s recent post on how to do a T-Test, skipping over details for the sake of clarity.
As some of you are aware, Tamino did several T-Tests, which rely on a number of assumptions. One of these assumptions the data are normally distributed.
These are plots of the temperature data for VaexJoe, Sweden. I think they are the data Tamino used.
On the left, I plotted the data from 1918-1958; on the right 1959-2001. In the center I show all the data.
Here are the statistics for all the data:
Values are given in 10ths of a degree C.
The mean temperature value is 104.4 (which is indicated as 104 on the histograms.)
The standard deviation is 87.09.
I will let those here
a) Eyeball the plots to decide whether the data appear normally distributed.
b) Eyeball the plots to decide whether the two clearly identifiable peaks are separated more than one standard deviation.
c) Decide whether they believe that 1/2 the data fall within ± 2/3 standard deviation of the mean. (That would be between roughly 50 and 150.)
d) Decide whether they think relaxing the assumption of the normal distribution might, just possibly, change the conclusion Tamino advanced.
e) Make snarky comments about anyone who would use this data to explain how data are analyzed.