continuation of Unthreaded #26
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Climate Audit 
1077 Comments
A quick question concerning the desire for a clear explanation of 2xC02 yields 2.5C warming: Is the mild climate that we enjoyed in the 1980s statistically “normal”, i.e. is it the climate we should expect would persist indefinitely in the absence of accelerating greenhouse gas emissions?
Scott-in-WA,
The IPCC and the computer models would say “Yes”.
Everything in the real world says “Absolutely Not”.
Climate is changing. It always has and always will, even when CO2 is relatively staple. The real climate change deniers are with the so-called ‘consensus view’ who imply that climate will not change if the CO2 concentration remains stable. The AGW crisis skeptics have no qualms admitting that the climate changes.
Julian Flood: I’ve visited your site a time or two. Sorry for my ADD.
Anyway I like your question. Ask not why it warms. Ask why it cools?.
Cooling rates…
4, good point. The handle of the hockey stick is climate change denial.
Err….make that 2.
Terry discussing Susann’s question at #157 of Realclimate on Loehle,
I went to Stockholm and all I got was this lousy hockey stick
Make that Oslo — for reasons no one knows, Alfred Nobel insisted that the Peace Prize be awarded in Oslo, rather than Stockholm like all the science prizes. Of course, this year it is easy to make up reasons it should be distanced from the science prizes…
Ok the lag is only apparent when you see the whole time series. Like I said take a look at two phase shifted (say by pi/4 just so the peaks are displaced a little) cos functions then zoom in to the linear portion, there is no lag per se the two linear sections are both going up. So if that is NOW then you have the two correlated with no perception of lag.
Let’s assume for purposes of argument this is so, that climate changes.
If we are to ask for a clear explanation of how 2xC02 yields 2.5C warming, an explanation that is provided in a form similar to an engineering study, then certain things must be clarified up front:
– A precise definition of “climate” must be agreed upon.
– A precise definition of “climate change” must be agreed upon.
– The time frames over which climate change is thought to occur must be agreed upon.
– The methods used to identify, measure, and document both “climate” and “climate change” must be agreed upon.
There are other important definitons that must be agreed upon before such an analysis could be started in earnest, but these are a few of the basics, I would think.
Two more questions, while I’m thinking about this topic:
Once we have “climate” and “climate change” adequately defined, how would we go about defining “normal climate”?
Given that the earth is some 4.5 billion years old, it seems to me that the concept of normal climate must embody, at the very least, reference time frames that span:
1 year
10 years
100 years
1000 years
10000 years
100000 years
1000000 years
10000000 years
100000000 years
At the state of current climate science, can “normal climate” be adequately defined both regionally and for the globe over each of the listed time frames?
A further related question would be this: if there is indeed such a thing as “normal climate” and “normal climate change”, how do we go about defining “abnormal climate” and by inference “abnormal climate change”?
welikerocks says:
The modern rise in CO2 is what I was referring to with “now” (as opposed to the rebound from glaciation “then”). When we started burning fossil fuels, the CO2 level in the atmosphere (and the ocean and biosphere for that matter) began to rise. Nothing to do with any Little Ice Age at all, which should be obvious because even the BIG Ice ages never got CO2 this high. The lag is a feedback. The current CO2 is a forcing. Easy peasy summer breezy.
Indefinitely? Of course not. The evidence shows that non-anthropogenic forcings are flat for the last half of the 20th century. Who knows how natural forcings may change in the future? Nobody, that’s who.
#2 Jim Clarke:
The “IPCC and computer models” do not claim that climate does not change or will not change without CO2. That’s a classic “skeptic” distortion of the truth. The concern is with the rate of change that modern CO2 is very likely causing.
11:
Look at the outputs of the computer models. They are all predicting a steady rise in temperature, not a natural course of “changing temperature.” They ARE claiming that climate does not change without people and their CO2. Do you really have that much faith in computer models that did not even predict the last 9 years? Computer models? The local metjock can’t tell me with much certainty about tomorrow. So you believe in a computer model with a dozen or more “tuning knobs”: to predict the next 100 years? If so, let me sell you one that predicts the stock market for the next 100 years. I say LOL.
I vote for higher temperatures in the future. I’ve got this farm in northern Canada…
Models don’t attempt to predict natural changes in forcing, but that doesn’t mean that they are saying that those forcings won’t change. They answer the question, what will happen in the future if CO2 keeps rising and natural forcings stay the same?
Your other point is #ss-32.
That seems a very easy claim to verify with data. Do you have any?
Analysis of long thermometer temperature records shows that fastest rate of increase in temperature occured prior to 1950.
The temperature time series for Europe shows a
warming of approximately 0.5°C over the past 245 yr.
The period of most rapid warming in Europe occurred between 1890 and 1950
Gore clearly implied in AIT that climate change and CO2 levels were intimately connected – both currently and historically. In fact, as I recall, he had some snickering remarks for anyone who didn’t agree as such. And since the IPCC and computer models are on Gore’s side, with everything in AIT being supported by science…well… 🙂
Seriously, the IPCC collectively has more sense than to think/say that CO2 is the sole driver of climate change throughout history. But if one takes a GCM and inputs a constant CO2/GHG level from 2007-2100, how much climate change would one see in the results?
Re#12, I agree that the GCMs are off-kilter, but I think the short-term forecast vs long-term forecast comparison is quite misleading and tire of seeing other skeptics bring it up. A long-term (100 yr) forecast which is not accurate over a short-term (9 yrs) for such a dynamic system doesn’t really say much about how good or bad the forecast is. As far as the stock market analogy goes, it’s not unreasonable to assume 10% annual returns averaged over a person’s lifetime, but that doesn’t mean the assumption is poor if the market doesn’t average 10% annually over a 9-yr period. I would assume that you are planning for your future retirement – you must have some sort of basic long-term model for achieving it? Do you scrap that model just because it’s not accurate over a given short period of time? And as far as the metjock goes…well, even the best stock fund managers may not be able to tell you what stocks you should day-trade with tomorrow, but they will do a good job of picking the stocks that produce for an extended period of time.
14
You don’t need complex computer models to do that. Once you assume a CO2 climate sensitivity of around 2.5C/doubling, then you can calculate the result on the back of an envelope.
So the whole thing rests on that unsupported assumption — an assumption which no-one can validate by an ab origine calculation (that’s why there is such a wide range of choices used by the models).
jae, when I moved to Canada in 1981 you could still homestead in the Peace River area – free grant of 64 acres of land. My wife at the time and I seriously thought about it. Oil sands under the land and global warming over the land. Man, did I make a big mistake in not going for it.
Wrong CO2 had a slight positive slope before industrialization.
Hmmm. If it’s “normal”, then I want no part of “below normal”. The lake froze over twice in the ’80s. And I live in the south….
John V., I am curious what your position is concerning Steve McIntyre’s stated opinion that the latest IPCC report is lacking in a clear explanation as to how 2xC02 yields 2.5C, and that such an explanation could be provided in a form similar to an engineering report that would possess the rigor, the precison, the clarity, and the strength of organization that such an explanation ought to have.
Forgive me if you have already stated your opinion in other threads and my question is redundant.
16: Fair enough, but
Where is that sense displayed?
Does climate change without CO2? Of course it does.
Can the current warming be explained by natural causes alone? Very likely not.
It’s not an either-or proposition. Many things can affect climate. Some obvious examples from pre-industrial times include the sun (of course), continental drift, and natural CO2 differences. The “contrarian” position is that CO2 has little to no effect, but the IPCC position is that CO2 is one of many things that can affect climate. At the present, it is very likely the dominant cause of warming.
=====
Scott-in-WA:
It’s been pointed out many times that it is not possible to derive from first principles the temperature sensitivity to doubling CO2. I commented on this on my own site this weekend, so I’ll quote myself to save time:
“A simple radiation balance shows a temperature increase of only ~1.1C. The remaining warming is caused by feedbacks which are much more difficult to quantify without a model. Steve McIntyre knows this but continues to ask for an answer without the use of a model. As some have said at CA, its like asking for the total lift of a Boeing 747 from first principles (no modelling allowed).”
“The point is that Steve McIntyres request for the derivation of the climate sensitivity from first principles is basically impossible. There are two ways to determine the value:
1. Empirically using CO2, temperature, and solar reconstructions;
2. Numerically using computer models;
Another problem with determining climate sensitivity is that it has different values depending on the timescale. There are slow feedbacks (eg. glaciers melting) and fast feedbacks (eg. water vapour).”
The empirical and numerical results that I have seen seem to cluster around 2 to 4 degC for doubling CO2.
#21
Perhaps McIntrye has not read the IPCC report. His opinion is noted though. Models are obviously important here because you guys don’t seem to be happy unless we build a time machine, but the use of paleoclimate to constrain sensitivity, as well as current observations and trends are used as best can be done. LBL codes, and understanding feedback processes, and the known principles of radiative physics are applied as best can be done. The unfortunate truth is, no matter how hard one blogs, is that there are uncertanties (especially with feedback processes, like cloud parameterization) but there is not now any physical plausible way to reasonably accomodate a range outside a 2-4.5 C mark.
Re #2
Actually, everything in the real world says things might be a bit worse than the models are telling us. In fact, the models you bash might be a bit more conservative than you might think, though the general agreement in the actual peer reviewed literature is that the AR4 models are doing a good job. Real-world observations, and not wishful thinking now point to a warming world and feedback processes underway, with nothing explaining it except CO2, but you’re welcome to get the nobel by showing all of the data wrong.
#24
1. Steve M was a reviewer. My guess is he has read it.
2. Time machine, no. Confidence intervals, yes.
3. Given these uncertainties, the question is: how do they propagate through, say, the derivation of the CO2 sensitivity calculation? That’s all I ask. Present the confidence intervals on these parameter estimates, along with the code used to make the calculation. Is that so much to ask? Apparently.
# 26
Not too much to ask, but it is too much to ask me to play librarian when the literature is there. The IPCC itself gives ranges, and confidence intervals, and cites the relevant literature. IF you read those documents, they go through errors and uncertanties. The IPCC report is an assessment of the current state of knowledge, it is not meant to give step-by-step walkthroughs for every subtopic out there; that would cover countless books. Climatologists are doing the best they can, and no, skeptics will not be happy unless they get their time machine- equipped with coffee holders and air conditioning.
Perhaps next won’t be a white Christmas…
Chris: The IPCC don’t give a rats a..s about anything other than “how much A is there in AGW”. Thats what they were set up for and even if someone came up with an alternative theory and could prove it 100% correct they would not be interested, that’s not in their mandate. Governments are also committed to this mandate and they too cannot consider the alternatives without breaking there agreement to the UN/IPCC.
Chris, I know AR4. They talk *around* uncertainty. They paid lip service to statistics. They don’t estimate *robust* confidence intervals. If they did, it would shatter their case. And that’s exactly why they don’t do it. Read what Wegman says in the NAS report. This skeptic will be happy when his recommmendations are followed. If climate scientists just did what they were supposed to do according to their own granting agencies (archiving data and code), that would be a good start. If journals enforced their OWN archiving requirements, that would be a good start. But they don’t.
Your “time-machine” assertion is a fabrication – a straw man. All we’re asking for is due diligence, not black magic. Don’t make things up.
It’s not even that, Chris. It’s the current state of what the IPCC lead authors believe is the current state of knowledge, and in particular, largely their own work, scarcely subject to outside scrutiny. It is but one large package of hypocrisy.
Mark
ahhh yes conspiracy theories…keep it up guys, you just prove more and more there is no science behind a “no A in AGW” position.
And one day, somebody may actually offer up a clear exposition of where these numbers come from. Indeed, it is a nagging open wound for the climate “scientists” that cannot even offer a single reason they use these numbers with nary a derivation. Circular references don’t count, btw.
Mark
Yet another strawman. Are you capable of debate without fallacy? No conspiracies here, Chris, do some research, this is all public knowledge. The IPCC is NOT a scientific body, and only a few authors were responsible for the body of work referred to as AR4. They reviewed their own work on top of it all, and there weren’t nearly as many papers included in the work as you may think.
This is all available right here, Chris. Quit pretending to understand objectivity.
Mark
No conspiracy. Read Wegman. There are good reasons why climatologists have divorced themselves from statistics. They found it too constraining. Dead serious. Read Wegman.
Bender, this guy showed up and commented that Steve probably had not read AR4… failing to realize that Steve not only read it, he was a reviewer. Do you think he’s truly interested in “truth” or simply making waves telling all of us how biased and otherwise unintelligent we are? Forget that most of us don’t even draw open opinions on the existence of A one way or another… no, we’ve inherited just another advocate. At least he’s (suppose it could be a she) not pretending to do science while preaching the advocacy, like some I can think off. I’m sure you know of a few, too, and I’m guessing there’s some overlap.
Mark
#35 was a crosspost with #34
Chris, search CA and you will find a record of 19/20 skeptics admitting that in their opinion A in AGW is significantly non-zero. If you can’t find the table, I’ll post it again. What we’re all struggling with is to figure out how the experts assess their uncertainty on that parameter estimate (not to mention the parameter itself). And by “uncertainty” I don’t mean hand-waving ignorance; I’m referring to a statistically determined “standard error of the estimate” or S.E.E.. Would love to see the SEE. IPCC doesn’t see fit to go that route. Why not? Good question. Read Wegman.
31
So we should just ignore the work of 2500 leading climate scientists? Tell me guys, if they are wrong, what is right?
If you don’t like the facts because of your preconceived notions, that is hardly my problem. It isn’t just IPCC who is in on this conspiracy theory. It is NASA, National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society, U.K. Royal Academy, EPA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, State of Canadian Cyrosphere, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Sciences,
Science Council of Japan, Royal Irish Academy, and many others (e.g. http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619).
I’m sure you guys know more than everyone involved with these organizations, as well as professors in universties and elsewhere. Because there is no counter-evidence yet, doesn’t mean “they won’t accept scrutiny.” Generally, at this point in the “debate” when people have no evidence on their side, they just say 1) we don’t know enough, so we can ignore what we do know 2) those that display the data aren’t considering the “other side.” Unfortunately, there is no “other side” aside from manipulated graphs and shaky evidence. I asked why McIntrye doesn’t take the time to audit papers like Roesch when he goes over other proxy studies, and he said he hasn’t the time. So, all I’m left with is the same nonsense I can find in Durkhim’s swindle video. You want to talk about “talking around?” Go to McIntrye’s TGGWS link on the left, and immediately he switches the topic to the hockey stick and IPCC (what else?). Please, don’t lecture me about the IPCC when I am constantly bombarded with nonsensical manipulated data involving “CO2 makes up a small amount,” “Water vapor is more important,” “but we had a medieval warm period with vikings!” “The sun is doing it!” CO2 lagged in the ice cores!”
Either you have something convincing and can step up to the plate, or there is no use in corresponding with you. Because people are unfamiliar with the literature, that doesn’t mean I need to guide them through how climate sensitivity work is done just to “win an argument.” If you actually have a reason why AGW is wrong or not very likely or what have you, we can go over it (maybe elsewhere so McIntrye’s blog stays on topic), but reminding me that we don’t know everything, and we do need indirect methods because first principles only go so far, and we can only settle for things like “high confidence” because 100% proof doesn’t exist, won’t go too far.
Sure, I am ‘skeptical’ of projections into the future. Do I think they can be stretched enough to accomodate a very minimal CO2 forcing? No. Do I think some magic fairy is going to remove the CO2 or dim the sun by several percent? No. Do I think that science has a lot of work to do to understand clouds or aerosols better? Yes. Do I think D-O events, tipping points, non-linear or chaotic things need to be worked out better? Yes. Do I think proxy work, better understanding of paleoclimate and statistical analysis and agreement on methods needs to improve? Yes. Bottom line- science has uncertainty, but also knows quite a bit. And the policy makers will probably keep hearing the same stuff as more and more evidence cntinues to show AGW and problematic projections and real-world observations– Chris
I liked http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_congress/7_27_06.cfm better.
Chris, could you direct me to what you believe to be the most thorough derivation of 2.5 deg C from doubled CO2? Not a report of a model calculation, but one which includes an engineering level description of the key parameterizations.
The models predict tropospheric warming. It’s not happening. The models are not correctly predicting local ocean warming (Arctic) and cooling (SH), which is happening. Either the model parameters are off, or the formulations are off. If the basic internal climate dynamics are not correctly modeled, this puts the external forcings in error. The CO2 forcing is tightly tied to the aerosol forcing for which there is inadequate data. Solar dynamics and ocean dynamics are areas of active research where the science is not settled.
I believe it was kim that mentioned the importance of considering the opportunity cost of implementing a precautionary principle if in fact A in AGW is lower than what the alarmists suggest.
In response to many of the above comments:
It would have been more precise to add the word ‘significant’ into my comment that the models would not show any climate change if CO2 was held stable, as in “the models would not predict any SIGNIFICANT climate change if CO2 was held stable”.
If the models assume no natural climate change (and only increasing CO2) for the next 100 years, then how can they be verified or supported by hindcasting, unless they start with the assumption that natural climate change was insignificant? Then if we start with the assumption that natural climate change is insignificant, than any significant climate change must be man-made! How do we prove that? We run the models which confirm that the recent warming must be due to humans! How can anyone argue with such a perfectly circular argument?
The statements that natural climate change factors have been neutral for the last 50 years, or that the recent warming can only be explained if increasing GHG’s caused most of it, are mostly true, provided we ignore the biggest natural influence on multi-decadal climate change on the planet. Soon, the AGW community is going to have to come to grips with the overwhelming influence ocean cycles have on the global climate, particularly on 20-30 year time scales.
Here is an explanation from a lengthy post I made on unthreaded #26(#728):
Note that 0.80 degrees is very close to the direct forcing of about 1 degree normally attributed to a doubling of CO2 in the lower atmosphere. As I understand it, the 1 degree assertion is based on a clear sky scenario, and the actual forcing of a doubling of CO2 would be something less than 1 degree due to the substantial cloud cover the Earth enjoys at any given time. So I see 0.80 degrees as the maximum for a doubling of CO2. It is probably less than that.
This is the result we get if we adhere to first principles and steer clear of unsubstantiated speculations about positive feedbacks. It is perfectly in line with everything we are observing in the real world, as long as we strive to observe EVERYTHING, and not pick and choose the observations we wish to highlight/ignore.
Chris,
I would guess that every skeptic on these pages is a member of one or more of the organizations that you listed as supporting the AGW crisis theory. Just because an organization makes a statement, does not mean that every member agrees with it. In fact, I do not believe that any of the organizations you listed actualled polled their membership to find out what the rank and file believed.
Of the 2,500 scientists contributing to the IPCC, only a fraction were climatologists and I am not sure how we can tell they were ‘top’ climatologist or even what that means. Also, there is no indication how many of the 2,500 scientists actually agree with the conclusions of the IPCC. If you wish to believe that all of science is marching in jack-booted lock-step to the AGW mantra, that’s your choice, but it certainly is not the reality.
Finally, in #42 above, I present an explanation for climate change that does not require the use of unprovable positive feedbacks or hand-waving explanations for Antarctic cooling, the simultaneous cooling of both hemispheres in the mid 20th century, the relative lack of mid-tropospheric warming, the lack of any warming over the last 10 years, the rewritting of climate history to eliminate the LIA and MWP, and so on. My explanation fits the observations much better than the AGW explanation, which doesn’t seem to have much more depth than “its warmer now so we must be right!”
The bottom line, however, is that I have no real responsibility to prove anything, because I am not asking everyone in the world to sacrifice and suffer for my cause. If I were, it would be absolutely essential that I present a compelling argument and answer all queries promptly and with solid scientific evidence. If, on the other hand, I respond by personally attacking those who question, withold data, ignore inconvenient observations, rewrite established records to support my argument, appeal to scientific authority and ‘sell’ my case with emotional, exaggerated storylines, then there is a good chance that my ‘science’ isn’t all that compelling…don’t you think?
41
Wrong. See http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap1-1/finalreport/default.htm and corrections to earlier papers like Christy (e.g. Mears and Wentz 2005) or in studies within the AR4.
They are showing polar amplification, and the SH is not cooling, which is happening.. Some places in Antarctica are, which has been predicted with ENSO, ozone depletion, SAM, etc
No, a lot of differences between going over GHG and aerosols forcing. CO2 has a higher level of confidence because the infrared absorption properties are very accurately measured in the laboratory, and its atmospheric concentration is known accurately.
Well, scientists could be wrong that smoking cuases cancer as well. Show me on “first principles” that it does so. Unfortunately, I don’t question the doctors analysis because we don’t know everything about the human body, I stop smoking. What if projections are lower than what will happen, as I think the papers show that I linked? “What if” you pay for an education and don’t get the degree or job you wanted. Maybe you shouldn’t get an education?
#40 McIntrye
I’ll respond tomorrow when I can get on my other computer for more info, but first 1) What do you not like about the AR4 starting on pp. 718 or the NAS 2003 report? What do you not like about RC’s posts on climate sensitivity or CO2 in 6 easy steps? As we’ve noted, there is only so much you can do with basic first principles. Using 5.35 ln (C/Ci) (See LBL codes from Myhre et al 1998) and the forcing-response workout from the TAR and other studies, maybe some paleoclimate constraining (see Royer, Berner, and Park 2007 in Nature), trying to do what we can from observations and ocean heat content, etc is really the best we can do if you want to take away models. I am not familiar with any paper which is going to give a magic formula with feedbacks included. Have you read Spencer Weart’s work on the history of this matter?
Get it published
What problems do you have with the NAS report on feedbacks and references therein? Or are water vapor, the carbon cycle, etc no longer important? Proof doesn’t happen in science, just the evidence we get, see ex. Del Genio on water vapor after the Pinatubo impact
handwaving? So ENSO, Southern Annual Mode, ozone depletion, and other things are no longer important for regional climate changes? I know skeptics love to cherry pick, but just ignoring everything as “handwaving” is a good one
aerosol impact? I mean, as you guys all readily point out, CO2 isn’t the only thing that influences climate, just an important one
This is wrong, see post above
This is wrong, see GISS or other other sites showing temperatures
No one got rid of a MWP or LIA, we just showed the tropics and SH aren’t showing it like Greenland and parts of Europe, and all the evidence show it to be a bit more regional. Also, again, nothing to do with global wamring attribution, so I can minus well say “the sun is doing it today” and you say “you liberals love the sun so much, so you’ll manipulate studies to show a cooler medieval time.”
As for your theory, there are only 3 ways to change climate like we are now: change SW or LW radiation, or albedo. For one thing, where is the evidence for this great changes in ocean circulation pattern causing our warming today, and where is the evidence that the underlying radiative physics behind CO2 (which would only amplify the conditions by your scenario, not “replace” it) is wrong?
I think Chris’s mails are really enjoyable to read. It has been a long time since I last time read any hardcore believers visions.
I just thought to link this site for Chris’s 2500 scientist peer-reviewed IPCC publications claim (congrats to Steve M for his share of the Nobel Price). It might be that the site is all lies and deceive. Made by oil/coal and tobacco industries. Anyway, here it is.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/peerreview.html
I think Chris’s mails are really enjoyable to read. It has been a long time since I last time read any hardcore believers visions.
I just thought to link this site for Chris’s 2500 scientist peer-reviewed IPCC publications claim (congrats to Steve M for his share of the Nobel Price). It might be that the site is all lies and deceive. Made by oil/coal and tobacco industries. Anyway, here it is.
Chris: The IPCC was never intended to be a vehicle for governments to be able to exercise a huge amount of control over their peoples lives (except those who lied about it’s purpose). I believe many people genuinely believed there might be an issue and the IPCC would investigate and come up with some solutions. Since then it has become a bandwagon and those on board can’t jump off, they are protecting their incomes, their families, their carreers, their credibility, their funding streams and some are just protecting the governments that employ them. But most importantly don’t forget the IPCC mandate. I have asked enough questions of my own government to know they have no idea what is going on and just quote the IPCC blindly. They even tell us that they are bound by their UN agreements to quote the IPCC mantra.
I have an open mind but they would rather I live with a closed one. Which do you think has furthered mankind more Chris, the open mind or the closed one?
The hard thing is to disentangle the logic. It seems that Chris is making the following argument. In the past, CO2 rises occurred because of warming temperatures. The initial rise in temperatures was due to some other cause than a CO2 rise. However, when this had produced a CO2 rise, this then caused further warming.
Consequently, to argue that in the past CO2 rises happened after a rise in temperature, and therefore we should not worry, is fallacious. The argument on the present warming is that the current rise in CO2, though it is happening for different reasons than earlier ones, is comparable to them, and will produce a similar rise in warming.
If this is a correct account of the logic, it is a bit like the argument that because I started a car with a handcrank yesterday, this means that starting it with the starter motor will fail. The thing that starts the car is the engine turning over. There are two ways of doing this, either of which will work. It does not matter why CO2 rises initially, the effects of the rise will be the same.
This is why the view that previous warmings preceding CO2 rises don’t logically affect the AGW proponents argument. They fully realize that what started a rise in CO2 in the past is different from what is starting it now. But they believe the effects of the rise will be the same.
What would cast doubt on their argument would be to cite paleo evidence that in the past, when the rise in CO2 got well underway, there was no rise in temperatures. It would also presumably be a refutation of their view if it turned out that, at the end of a warming period, temperatures fell while CO2 levels were either rising or static.
It is hard to see how the argument for CO2 causation of warming could survive either no warming with CO2 rises, or temperature falls with rising or static CO2 levels.
What are the paleo facts on this?
Can anyone say exactly how adding a molecule of CO2 to the atmosphere generates heat?
For example: at the beginning of the Cretaceous 144 million years ago the atmospheric CO2 declined from ~2,000 ppmv to ~1,200 pmmv as the temperature increased ~7C from ~15C to ~22C, and CO2 continued to decline throughout the Creataceous and into the Tertiary from the ~2,000 ppmv to the present ~200+ to 300+ ppmv (Geocarb).
Chris, not to mention all what I would disagree with (still matter of scientifical discussion), you wrote at least two errors: not opinions, not points of view, just errors.
First of all, Antarctica is really cooling unless some place which is not, since at least 1982 (the opposite of what you wrote, despite you too needed some way to justify eventual cooling):
and its sea ice sheet is increasing:
This situation should have been “admitted” even in the last IPCC papers, so I really cannot understand why there is still the legend of Antarctic warming and melting (out of Gore poor science fiction).
More, any explanation could be right (ozone layer, ENSO, random things etc.), but never linked to “AGW mechanics” as previously forecasted.
Saying temperature is rising since 1998, not on a mere statistical trend (which would be anyway irrelevant for the reasons explained below), is just an error too.
You totally forgot measurement theory: even considering only ground stations and not satellite data, you would have differences, on peak years but not only them,
Peter, I think you are in the wrong thread (there is discussion on the CO2 lag elsewhere, but not here except for like 50 posts ago before McIntrye told us not to continue).
But anyway, that is my position except until “that would cast doubt on their argument would be to cite paleo evidence that in the past, when the rise in CO2 got well underway, there was no rise in temperatures.”
One needs to look no further than 1940-1970 to find such a time (or ordovician glaciation), CO2 rose, temps declined a bit. Skeptics use this argument a lot- the problem is other things were also going on which overwhelmed the CO2 inluence; a bit of aerosols, a bit of internal variabilty. CO2 is going to have a warming effect on its own. This is rather basic stuff regardless of what you hear. If something else is going on (aerosols, sun dims, etc) it may neutralize or overwhelm the CO2 and cause cooling since there is only one way to look at forcings: the sum of them all.
You can see here or here for instance on some of the “paleo facts.” There are others like Petit et al. or Fischer et al. as well…This argument is also addressed on many basic “skeptic rebuttal sites” like this or this or this or this where a lot of these other claims (like no trop warming, no warming in last decade) are addressed, and people can keep up to date on what is going on.
#47 Jonde
My problem is not that I am a radical, it is that I have problems with blatant manipulation of evidence like people reading the above studies and saying “Well, CO2 lags temp so it must all be wrong” when they both make it clear that feedback processes are required. Or when it is quite clear a 100 ppmv feedback over 100 years with
cont
Peter, I think you are in the wrong thread (there is discussion on the CO2 lag elsewhere, but not here except for like 50 posts ago before McIntrye told us not to continue).
But anyway, that is my position except until “that would cast doubt on their argument would be to cite paleo evidence that in the past, when the rise in CO2 got well underway, there was no rise in temperatures.”
One needs to look no further than 1940-1970 to find such a time (or ordovician glaciation), CO2 rose, temps declined a bit. Skeptics use this argument a lot- the problem is other things were also going on which overwhelmed the CO2 inluence; a bit of aerosols, a bit of internal variabilty. CO2 is going to have a warming effect on its own. This is rather basic stuff regardless of what you hear. If something else is going on (aerosols, sun dims, etc) it may neutralize or overwhelm the CO2 and cause cooling since there is only one way to look at forcings: the sum of them all.
You can see here or here for instance on some of the “paleo facts.” There are others like Petit et al. or Fischer et al. as well…This argument is also addressed on many basic “skeptic rebuttal sites” like this or this or this or this where a lot of these other claims (like no trop warming, no warming in last decade) are addressed, and people can keep up to date on what is going on.
#47 Jonde
My problem is not that I am a radical, it is that I have problems with blatant manipulation of evidence like people reading the above studies and saying “Well, CO2 lags temp so it must all be wrong” when they both make it clear that feedback processes are required. Or when it is quite clear a 100 ppmv feedback over 100 years with
cont
Or when it is quite clear a 100 ppmv feedback over 100 years with
with less than 1 C rise is impossible, and what we know about isotopic signatures and known fossil fuel emissions. Really, I’m not sure if the argument is supposed to read “CO2 rise is natural today because of temperature rise by something else” or “CO2 didn’t force initial changes then, so it won’t now” but in either case it is bogus. Or we had an El Nino in 1998 which made it a bit warmer, so you get people saying “the last decade didn’t warm because 1998 was warmer.” I guess some misinformation for laymen, but many experts actually take that serious (or pretend they are serious when they give talks or write papers). People who support AGW have done curious things as well. There is a lot (a bit too much) discussion on Mann et al. here. Bad method, and I’ve not kept up with the details on him giving out his data or what not, but clearly not as clean as one would hope. In this site, I don’t think such issues are put into proper perspective: when the corrections for 1934 U.S. temperature were brought up, this became a new skeptical argument to say now is not significant in 20th century context, or it is natural, or everyone in climate is a screw up, or whatever other nonsense they got out of it. RC did a much better job telling people what this meant. RC did not do a good job critiquing the Al Gore movie. This “battle of the blogosphere” is nice and dramatic, and people love it (I do as well), but it isn’t going anywhere in terms of advancing climate science or policy and more often than not leads to a lot of confusion, though both sites are educational.
cont
Sorry, previous post was cut.
I meant, all differences, on peak years but not only them, even considering just ground stations, are
cont
I do not think sea levels are going to rise 23 feet tomorrow night as some who watched Gore might believe; I *do not think* the world is going to end; I do not think this is the worst thing the Earth endured compared to say the PETM or Permian or dinosaur asteroid, and things like the Day After Tomorrow will not happen. I *do think* a geologist a million years from now would view this event like the coming or passing of an ice age, or maybe a significant enough deviation from the Holocene to give it a new name. I am worried about countries in Africa, South America, parts of Asia. I am worried about areas near glaciers which depend on water supplies which are threatened, and low lying coastal areas. I am worried about ecosystems up on mountains, at the poles, and many species which cannot adapt to even very small changes (Talk to a biologist here, not me). In most scenarios I have seen, the U.S. might get some agricultural gain at first, more problems later, Canada will probably be slightly better off, Europes main concerns are in terms of heat waves and sea levels. And low probability-high consequence events like THC shutdown. Other countries such Australia will suffer in terms of rainfall patterns or increased storms or droughts etc. But these countries do have the power to counteract a lot of the problems. The developing world I spoke of will be in a completely different way. Buy Mark Lynas’ “Six Degrees” for some perspective on what may happen, and even if you stop half way through the book where the chapters only go to 3 C higher, you might see my concern.
cont
In this sense, I would prefer the term “alarming but not alarmist” and I hope not a “hardcore believer” because science is about the data that is there, not my personal preference or assumption or what makes me sleep better at night. I am a hardcore beleiver that pepsi is better than coke, I have no hardcore beliefs on topics in science like the realities of evolution or gravity or climate change. Climate Change just happens to be more connected to policy and the laymen than other issues, so naturally it receives more attention and scrutiny. In the real world of science, a joint statement by several scientific organziations, countless papers by NASA or NOAA and other reputable sources, reports by the National Academies or IPCC would be more than enough. You think other things like electron movement in an orbital gets this much study and analysis? No way, but no one questions it seriously because it isn’t very practical for them, for socio-economics, etc. Just a few papers concluding that man activity dominates natural forcings in the second half of the 20th century like Meehl et al (2004); Hegerl et al (2005); Barnett et al (2005); Ammann et al (2007) and others would be enough for a subject lke the electron orbital, but as I said this subject won’t be “bulletproof” until 100 years goes by and we either get disaster, or nothing. There are in betweens in that dichotomy, but if even “business-as-usual” projections are right, we’ll have big problems, and I think there is too much wishful thinking that everyone is wrong.
continued
A lot of it is laymen falling for bad arguments (see the this, this, this, etc) but some experts are giving off crap science (google the Khilyuk and Chilingar 2006 paper or the ch. 4 swindle video with several scientists in that). In real life, I should be able to blog about those all day and they should get an equal amount of attention for the “questionable science” that this place gives Mann et al., but the reality is that the scientific and political world where academics meet no longer takes climate change skepticism too serious, and people that matter are seeing the need for change.
Sorry for the long post, but wanted to get this cleared up. I also apologize for my rather “radical” tone, as well as comments I may have said to McIntrye or others that were out of line, but I do see the issue as a big problem, and I do take it personally when people question the motives of people I know personally, or communicate with frequently.– C
Another cut post…
Would I be able to explain measurement theory?
Since 1998, almost all year measurements are different by less than 0.1°C, with a 0.1°C error range (uncertainty), which means that all measurements different by
Another cut post…
Would I be able to explain measurement theory?
Since 1998, almost all year measurements are different by less than 0.1°C, with a 0.1°C error range (uncertainty), which means that all measurements different by
different by
All measurements different by
If uncertainty is 0.1°C, it means we need >0.2°C difference to have really different measurements: unless they are compatible. And compatibility replaces equality concept in measurements: so, no more and no less, they are the same.
BTW, one stupid question. How current GCMs explain Ice Ages?
I mean, for last 400 thousand years or four glaciations, we have temperature proxies, CO2 proxies, data for volcanic dust deposition in ice of Antarctica (i.e. aerosol proxies), detailed calculations of Earth orbit and tilt, solar emissivity proxies, even proxies for GCR flux.
I assume it would be natural to calibrate GCM climate sensitivity parameters for mentioned forcing factors, such way that GCM would simulate temperature (or CO2, for that matter) of Ice Ages if fed by data from the proxies.
Any papers on the subject?
Chris
after your lengthy explanation I just have one question for you (and don’t point me to IPCC)
the theory says troposphere has to warm more than surface (MT more than LT). If you look at MSU or RSS this does not seem to happen. So either GISS for surface data is wrong or the greenhouse theory is wrong. If we accept GISS (which shows a lot of warming for the past years) actual data of troposphere do not show what models output show. If we accept satellite data, then the warming must be much lower on the surface than what GISS shows and we would have to reject GISS surface data. This is a question I would like to have an answer
It’s not “wishful thinking that everyone is wrong”, it’s just bitter experience of scientists going over the top time-after-time on issue-after-issue. We might have believed that BSE or bird flu was going to wipe us out. Either we dodged the bullet or scientists were overly pessimistic. BSE is actually a good example of scientific behaviour because for years the top scientists had been saying that there was no possible chance that BSE could transfer to humans. Then it was impossible to deny and they all flipped the other way, predicting catastrophe and inventing “prions” which likely don’t even exist. This is what scientists routinely do: They are either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic. You should read “Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds”. It’s not new and there are countless examples in every human endeavour.
On this particular issue we have seen apparently well-qualified people predict a gulfstream shift due to meltwater. Not only was this nonsense, it was based on the basically wrong theory that the gulfstream warmed Europe. See Seager or Wunsch for the non-mythical version. We have seen other scientists blame the droughts in Africa on global warming which was such total nonsense even RC dismissed it. We see Hansen and (few) others predicting ice-sheets sliding into the sea collapse while ignoring that the ice-sheets are ringed by mountains. There are countless examples of loopy scientists predicting disasters while committing basic scientific errors like these. Such foolishness makes a sensible person skeptical.
In climate science there is huge uncertainty and the models are obviously tuned to agree with observations, so saying they can predict anything yet is quite ridiculous. Everything they now correctly show has been a correction from a previous poorer model, because real life impinged. With luck they might manage to predict something in the future but history tells us it will likely it will be on the lower end of temperature range. What you believe depends on how pessimistic you are! And since more pessimism brings more attention, the scientists like to err on that side.
Boris says: The current CO2 is a forcing. And he says:
They answer the question, what will happen in the future if CO2 keeps rising and natural forcings stay the same?
There is no evidence in the geological record for your belief that CO2 just switches to a “force” “now” or whenever you say on a graph of “now”. Your forces and feedback powers for CO2 only exist
in climate models. There is no physical evidence for “now” being “different”. And since when do things ever “Stay the same”. Which is it? You can’t have both: “Stay the same” but “now is different” and then disregard the geological record on top of that? Sheesh.
That’s why the lag in the ice core data matters. What is written in the geological record is that CO2 lags temperature rise. Rise of it follows temperture, and maybe its just “there” following. Because what is written in the geological record is the C02 concentrations have been much higher than “now” and it still got cold. And what is written in the geological record is that CO2 concentrations have been lower then “now” and it still got warm. There is no evidence in the geological record that paints CO2 concentrations as the powerful “force” the AGW promoters say it is “now”.
Chris says: “I *do think* a geologist a million years from now would view this event like the coming or passing of an ice age, ”
Oh I see “Now” is a geological event.
Chris says: CO2 didnt force initial changes then, so it wont now but in either case it is bogus. AND he said : CO2 is going to have a warming effect on its own. This is rather basic stuff regardless of what you “hear”.
There’s that powerful “now” again and it is so power-full it disregards millions and millions of years of geological evidence you can “See” all over the world.
Let’s all chant: Climate change is a choice, now now.
Very important problem!!!
I need your help!
I was looking for RSS data decadal trend (lower troposphere).
RSS site gives me +0.176°C/dec: http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#msu_decadal_trends .
Another site, +0.13°C/dec: http://data.co2science.org/cgi-bin/msu.pl .
A big difference.
Looking at data: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsRSS.html (until 2006, UAH and RSS are almost the same, above all as trends: the site gives +0.14°C/dec for UAH)
I tried to do-it-myself, “manually” and by MS-Excel(R): same results, about +0.14°C/dec (calculating on year means not month, but mathematically should be the same).
Another person on another forum, doing-it-by-himself, had the same about +0.18°C/dec of RSS site, calculating month-by-month.
So, who can help me?
It could be a very important issue.
http://science-sepp.blogspot.com/2007/12/press-release-dec-10-2007.html
“Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.”
Chris: 2500 scientists??? Hardly. Closer to a hundred. Who then carefully selected the papers that they wanted to review. Mostly their own. And from this self selected sample, they then drew their conclusions.
NOBEL PRIZE PEACE IN OSLO transmission on the web from NRK
or SVT …it seems as Mark Lynas/Hard core Green Peace members
and you name it has written the speech…Did I forget James
Lovelock??? Pompous Pompous Pompous AND some things are direct
lies as I see it. Genocide in Darfur is AGW-related that is we who are
rich’s fault…Well I see some parallells in history some
70 years back…difference is now it is not one country, it’s
humanity and we now have 7 years 1 month 12 days 14 hours 12 minutes
and 33,7 seconds to start fixing, repenting our SINS…
#74 …SHOULD BE “…HAVE written…” (The more cooks
the lousier the soup…)
Chris, according to the satellite data, the lower troposphere in the Antarctic has been cooling at a rate of 0.07° per decade since the measurements began, i.e. about 30 years.
It’s the tiny part of the Antarctic (the West Antarctic Peninsula, which extends north of the Antarctic Circle anyway) which is warming that generates the press releases and gets everybody in a huff.
But the models say it should be warming a lot (I guess this counts as a verification of the accuracy of the models then?)
I’m sure, however, that there are some “team” approved hand waving explanations like there were for UHI in the IPCC report…
Wrong. Sigh.
You know, there are also CS estimates based on observations. Just sayin’.
RE#22
The IPCC does admit there is natural variation and doesn’t try to explain 20th century warming up to WWII, widespread 19th century glacial retreat, etc, as being CO2-driven from what I recall.
But as far as GCMs go, they do seem to be pretty much CO2 driven.
Interesting question!
Clearly we have far from perfect quality historic data with which to undertake this exercise.
But despite that, one might hope that serious efforts might have been made to undertake a fourier transform type frequency analysis of the various contributors to the historic as well as the more recent time-record of global temperature. This is not something I’ve come across though (in any holistic sense), in two years lurking and taking an interest in the whole GW/AGW debate. If this is because I’ve missed it, I’d be interested in any references to work in this area. Thanks in anticipation!
Your post makes no sense. It’s different because humans are adding CO2 “now.” That’s pretty different, wouldn’t you say, than CO2 rising slowly as the oceans warm and the permafrost melts?
You might want to look up what a forcing is and what a feedback is.
Re #71
Fillipo, I’ve quickly calculated the trend from the UAH and RSS data (UAH from 12/78 to 10/07, RSS from 01/79 to 11/07):
UAH trend = 0.144 deg C/decade
RSS trend = 0.176 deg C/decade
The differences probably derive primarily from the areal coverage of the “global” means. In both cases, the data are projected onto a long/lat grid, and then an average taken, but not over the whole grid. Some grid cells are quite unreliable and it seems RSS and UAH have different approaches on which to use; RSS average over 70S to 82.5N, whereas UAH average over -82.5S to 82.5N. Given that Antarctica currently has a sizeable cooling trend, effectively eliminated from the RSS assessment, it is unsurprising that the RSS trend is “warmer”.
There is a significant difference between the two measurements in the last few months as well; this is mainly down to an issue with two of the satellites, which are creating a bias. I believe UAH have some code to fix this, but the code is not yet ready for release (it will be v6.0 I think, currently on v5.2?). They provided a press release to say that they are currently overestimating global temp by approx. 0.12 deg C.
Re #81
Oops sorry Filippo about the name typo, got the double letter mixed up!
Not really.
The discrepancy between models and Antarctic data appears to be because of changes in the SAM theorized to be caused by ozone depletion. Further, GCMs are not very good at regional predictions, but do a good job with the global temperature anomaly. This is just another skeptic talking point.
OK thank you Spence.
Filippo, if you want to use a < sign, you need to use the following four characters & l t ; (without the spaces). Otherwise, WordPress thinks you are opening a HTML tag, and eats the rest of your post.
So Boris,
Why don’t you explain away the discrepancy between the troposphere temps and the surface temps for us? Or do you feel like all you have to do to win a point is to assert it? Usually, when one makes an argument that disagrees with another, it is only polite to give evidence that supports your position, and would help the other to see the error of their ways, or, just possibly, allow them to continue the discussion by supplying logic or evidence of their own.
23 77
Boris, here’s what John V (a believer) said in 23:
Boris John V:
The problem is these both represent a circular argument. They both require a belief that the warming is due directly or indirectly to CO2, so that is what they “show”. Surpise!
If you assume that it is due to the sun, with feedback, the CS of CO2 drops to almost nothing.
Boris 83,
Classic “team” explanation: divergence hand waved away by another hypothetical mechanism with no empirical evidence.
And then, to top it off, the old “they don’t get the regions right but they get the sum of all regions right”. to paraphrase, every value is wrong but the sum of every value is somehow right.
Please, show me a GCM which has made a good PREDICTION. The place to start would be a published “prediction” from 10 years ago corresponding with the 2005, 2006 and 2007 data to a statistically significant level of accuracy. actually, don’t bother. If you put enough spaghetti in the bowl, some of it is bound to be in the right place at the right time, just like Dr Mann’s spurious correlations, sorry I mean “teleconnections”… The data fitting exercises they do are nothing special, but trying to project them outside of the “fitting” range breaks a basic engineering principle: do not attempt to model outside of your data range (first-year engineering at my university).
White Christmas? Its just starting to get hot here 😉
If I understand correctly, climate/weather systems are big complicated non-linear things and the nature of such systems can be to look periodic for a while on all sorts or scales, then to jump to something different. Of course periodic forcings such as day/night or summer/winter or Milankovic cycles put some true periodic behaviours on top of that, and we can observe them.
How do the models cope with the chaotic behaviour? Or do they ignore it and just estimate the CO2 rise (from a possibly sloping baseline)?
To observe CO2 forcing don’t we need observations showing that the earth is warmer than it would be otherwise. And don’t we need to guess the ‘otherwise’ first (eg by extrapolating from paleo data)?
Incidentally when I first heard of the satellite record I asked whether they agree with the ground measurements in places where they overlap. I was told ‘yes’ (by John Daly, but we know what his biases were). I’ll ask again in this forum, and add the subsidiary question, do the two agree for pristine sites?
Peter
44 Chris
The reference you cite indicates that the way they were able to “predict warming” was to recalibrate/fudge the satellite data to match expectations.
John V,
When the models get better at predicting the facts in the air, then come back with your climate sensitivites based on them. For example, there is a study out there that says, using their models, that aerosol forcings do a better job of modelling the temp drops in the LIA than does solar forcing. Well, isn’t that convenient for them? Would you call that a circular argument? I would.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/206/4425/1402
Funny too how one of the criticisms of the recent paper by McKitrick say that it would be normal for warming to follow economic activity since aerosols are known to cause warming. Tee hee hee.
OK, I will read Chris’s link in #44 on the subject of reconciling differences.
Maybe I should have said:
Throw enough spaghetti at the wall and some of it will stick with the shape you are looking for.
It’s the computer model equivalent of a million monkeys at a million typewriters
Paul A.
Climate over a billion years is completely unknowable. For isntance, in a billion years, the Earth’s obliquity will have changed to such an extent that the Arctic Circle will cyclycally come down to somewhere around sixty degrees at some points (every 40K years, is my guess). This is due to the Moon’s orbit changing, as it has been doing for billions of years. There is an “arrow of time” in climate. A million years ago Milankovich forcings existed that will never be seen again on Earth.
Paul A.
Climate over a billion years is completely unknowable. For isntance, in a billion years, the Earth’s obliquity will have changed to such an extent that the Arctic Circle will cyclycally come down to somewhere around sixty degrees at some points (every 40K years, is my guess). This is due to the Moon’s orbit changing because of the drag of creating tides on Earth, as it has been doing for billions of years. There is an “arrow of time” in climate. A million years ago patterns of Milankovich forcings existed that will never be seen again on Earth.
All this talk of spaghetti has got me thinking…
Could the “hindcasting” of the GCM’s be bettered by taking a large number of series of smoothed random data and data mining it to select the series which most closely fit the temperature reconstruction? The BBC modelling exercise essentially did this with an enormous number of model runs, discarding the ones they didn’t like, and it would be enlightening to do essentially the same exercise but with random data.
If better matches could be achieved with random data instead of expensive GCM’s it would certainly make a few faces red…
All this talk of spaghetti has got me thinking …
It’s time for lunch.
welikerocks #70, PaulA #79:
A very roughly-drawn pattern over the past 100,000,000 years could be described as follows:
100,000,000 years ago – Temperature and C02 both at significantly higher levels than today with occasional periods of Glacial/Interglacial cycling.
10,000,000 years ago – Temperature and C02 both at significantly higher levels than today.
1,000,000+ years ago – Latest Glacial/Interglacial periodic cycle begins, temperatures trend strongly down.
1,000,000 years ago – Temperature moves up/down within range of the latest Glacial/Interglacial cycle.
100,000 years ago – Start of the latest Glacial, temperature trending down.
10,000 years ago – Start of the latest Interglacial, temperature trending up from bottom of Interglacial range.
1,000 years ago – Temperatures moving up/down within the latest Interglacial.
100 years ago – Temperature trending up within the latest Interglacial.
10 years ago – Temperature still trending up within the latest Interglacial.
1 year ago – Temperature still trending up within the latest Interglacial.
An easy hypothesis to speculate on is that over 100-million year time spans, including the great fraction of the latest 100-million year span, the planet earth is generally predisposed towards significantly higher temperatures and significantly higher levels of C02 than we experience today.
If there is some scientific basis for the above hypothesis, then how one chooses to define “normal climate” may have to depend upon subjective factors, and also upon the particular basis one has for holding one’s own perspectives on the impacts of global warming.
Re 91
I’ve seen the volcanic aerosols thing before. The problem is that we now have good evidence for how much and how long volcanoes affect surface temp. measurements, and there simply wasn’t even a a small fraction of the volcanic activity needed to force the LIA actually occurring. The historic volcanic record is quite complete and easily available on the internet if anyone wishes to check. I have no doubt that aerosols could cause a cooling like the LIA, but in the actual case there is no known source of the aerosols.
Seems we have another undead lumbering by .
Trenberth himself said that the climate models do NOT make predictions because they are not even initialised .
They compare 2 numerical runs with random initial conditions where a single parameter changes , namely CO2 , everything else being equal .
The results are called “sensitivity analysis” .
Therefore it is an utter non sense to talk about “regional variability” .
For obvious reasons the sensitivity analysis doesn’t deliver any skillful image of what can happen on the regional level what even IPCC rightly confirms .
I know of NO other field in science where a theory refuses to be confronted to the only valid ultimate test – comparison of a prediction with a realisation .
As long as it doesn’t happen and as it didn’t happen in 30 years it is likely to never happen, the climate models box in the same category as the tachyons or cold fusion .
R.Pielke has published several papers that show that as far as regional precipitations are concerned , the models don’t even agree on the sign of the variation .
“USA might get some agricultural gain” , “heat waves” on unresolved dimensions … sure , and ridiculousness doesn’t kill .
I don’t know who brainwashed this guy , but it’s a real expert who did the job 🙂
This “unthreaded” thread is a stroke of genius! It’s also a good place for Chris, John V. etc to show what they’ve got. At this time, no one should cast aspersions on Chris/John V’s intelligence or integrity.
Of course, if after 6 months of continuous engagement, they haven’t evolved their views beyond what they read at RC and IPCC reports, it may be time to create another category of “unthreaded–frozen POV” for stutter-postings.
It’s been shown that the TCH has only a minor impact on European climate. So a THC shutdown would be a low probability-low consequence event.
re#83 Boris
One problem is that people still hang their hats on the “regional predictions.” Take for example this proud Nobel Prize winner: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5364617.html:
“…Texas won’t be so lucky.
“A warmer, drier Texas is not very good for agriculture,” he said…The Edwards Aquifer, San Antonio’s main source of drinking water, would be significantly drier.…”
He sounds pretty certain about “regional predictions,” down not only to the state of Texas, but to an aquifer with a total catchment area of 8,000 square miles. It’s relatively rectangular, but to put it into context, it’s the areal equivalent of an 89 mile x 89 mile square!
Ok, so he doesn’t talk numbers, just the direction in which precipitation quantities will go. He’s being qualitative rather than qunatitative in the above quotes, at least. Are there GCM’s which suggest Texas and the Edwards Aquifer will be drier? Sure…but there are also conflicting models, such as the Canadian and Hadley ones circa 2000 http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/LargerImages/OverviewGraphics/SoilMoisture.jpg . The “Union of Concerned Scientists” acknowledges there are conflicting model results of wetter vs drier http://www.ucsusa.org/gulf/gcstatetex_cli.html across Texas.
So we are to accept that “GCMs are not very good at regional predictions,” but when it comes to dire regional predictions, we are supposed to accept the scariest GCM scenarios as the most likely.
72:
Yes, and the reason the models demand the atmospheric values to be 2-3 times greater is that they use the bogus notion that the GHGs are radiating more energy to earth from about 5 km elevation. For some reason, these radiation models seem to forget all about water vapor and just consider CO2. I think this is because they assume that the water vapor effects are “background,” and the CO2 effects will be on top of this background. But I think that’s an improper assumption, because it’s actually cooler where there is MORE water vapor. The hottest spots on earth are in arid deserts. Average and maximum temperatures in July are hotter in Phoenix than over water in the tropics! This doesn’t make any sense, if you use radiative models for GHGs, since water vapor in moist areas is present in concentrations of about 30 times that of CO2. Where oh where is all that radiation from water vapor in the tropics?
From Al’s speech:
Anyone has any idea what study he’s talking about? Anyhow, rather convenient timing to publish the results!
104, there’s a reason why they deal with CO2 and not H2O. It’s a fair assumption that CO2 is well-mixed, and the concentration is pretty much uniform spatially. Water vapor can vary dramatically from one mile to the next. There simply isn’t a good way to model three-dimensional water vapor concentration. This is one of the big holes in the models. Pretty hard to have any confidence that you’re doing water vapor right if you can’t look at its spacial distribution.
#104 jae:
You have found a negative correlation between humidity and *surface* temperature. Does the correlation hold for tropospheric temperature? I don’t know the answer.
Filippo, it looks like you are trying to use the less than and greater than symbols in your posts. This blog uses those as special characters (e.g. the quicktags, but there are others). Just use l.t. or g.t. (the greater than probably worked because there was no previous opening tag, btw).
Mark
#101 Al Fin:
Let me get this straight. Do you expect me to perform some basic research that undermines the IPCC consensus, and thereby changes my views, within the next 6 months? My understanding of AGW has been evolving with the science — what informs your understanding of AGW?
105. I would say LOL, but there are too many people that actually believe this nut. Oh, well, it just hastens the day that proves that Gore has again made an idiot of himself. The AGW extremists are really hurting their cause with this kind of nonsense, since even those who don’t read much about AGW will sense that it is wrong. So, LOL, afterall.
Is that so? I thought that placing the CO2 monitoring stations on the islands or shores occurred due to the very variable CO2 concns over the land (like those wildly differing data summarized in Beck, for e.g.)
Murray Duffin,
They had that one good volcano in 1815, and that was quite enough for them to explain the whole four centuries, and they wonder why we are skeptical.
98 :
“If there is some scientific basis for the above hypothesis, then how one chooses to define normal climate may have to depend upon subjective factors, and also upon the particular basis one has for holding ones own perspectives on the impacts of global warming.”
Yes and right on cue the Goracal speaks:
“”It is time to make peace with the planet,” Gore said in his acceptance speech that quoted Churchill, Gandhi and the Bible. “We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.””
“”We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,” Gore said at the gala ceremony in Oslo’s city hall, in front of Norway’s royalty, leaders and invited guests.”
😉
107:
The linearity of the lapse rate suggests to me that the correlation holds for the entire troposphere. If water is heating the troposphere, how could it help but heat the surface, too?
109:
Well, an awful lot of what Steve Mc, et. al. have done on this blog undermines the IPCC consensus in a big way. Maybe you should read some of this “basic research.” You might also look at the CO2science.org stuff. And Lubos Motl’s blog. And….
Gore is not alone – the climate war drums sound in the UK as well. War economy and strict consumption regulation are invoked by deep-green Guardian, as commented in “sp!ked.”
Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting writes with an obvious gusto:
104 jae
A couple of comments, jae.
I’ve been thinking a little about your dry-is-hot, humid-is-cool theme. I think that there are 3 main reasons, in this order:
1. Cloud cover that comes with humidity, of , herecourse. Deserts get very little cloud cover, so the insolation is high. Humid areas get about 40-60% loss of insolation. This is probably the biggest reason.
2. Precipitation is produced at altitude and is usually quite a bit colder than surface temperatures, so rain cools the air quite a bit.
3. Evaporation. This I believe is the smallest factor. When the sun comes out after rain, the air warms up quite quickly, despite the increased evaporation rate.
There is positive feedback, of course. A hot, dry area will continue to get few clouds because WV condensation is discouraged by both the the lower humidity and the higher temperature. Similarly, in a cool, humid area it is easy to reach the dew point at some reasonable altitude.
You have obviously been thinking about it for quite a while. Does this agree with your conclusions?
Pat said:
You don’t get to have feedbacks for solar warming and none for CO2 warming. Feedbacks are feedbacks.
Phillips sez:
GCMs do not generally make “predictions,” and when they do, as in the case of Hansen 1988, they cannot predict short term interannual variation. Models give estimates for climate sensitivity.
Also, at least one of the two has another admirable trait, the ability to admit that he does not know everything:
Boris 118,
Your understanding seems to have come on leaps and bounds since Post 83, in which you said:
Further, GCMs are not very good at regional predictions, but do a good job with the global temperature anomaly.
Now you say, quite correctly, that they cannot make predictions.
Which to you want? That GCM’s do a good job at predicting the global temperature anomaly, or that they do not make predictions??
118 Boris
I see. Feedbacks are not only possible for CO2, but are required — but no feedbacks allowed for solar. Ummmm….. Pseudo-science raises its ugly head, I think.
Now tell me again what gets deglaciation going for 800 years before CO2 wakes up?
Way to quote mine. Pseudo-science indeed.
Feedbacks are in response to warming, for example more WV in the atmosphere. This applies to both solar and GHG forcing. Your post said that solar climate sensitivity would be high with feedbacks. But those same feedbacks would have to apply to CO2 as well. That’s the paradox of the “Sun did it!” argument. In order for the sun to be responsible you need strong positive feedbacks. Strong positive feedbacks mean that the increased CO2 will have strong positive feedbacks as well.
Milankovitch cycles appear to be the cause of the initial warming rebound from a glaciation
117, Pat. Yes, I generally agree. Clouds are extremely important and may completely overshadow (nice pun!) the evaporative cooling effects. But, then, the energy released in the formation of those clouds has to come from somewhere, and I think it comes from evaporation of water at the surface, which takes a LOT of energy away from the surface. Maybe clouds amplify the cooling effect. My main point is just that I don’t see any way that water can exert a positive feedback, as assumed by the climate models. If water produced a positive feedback, then the tropics should be a LOT hotter than the deserts; whereas, the reverse is true. Water has to exert a negative influence, overall, unless I’m missing something (which is always very possible and why I like to discuss this). The importance of water is in it’s great heat storage ability (twice that of dry air). This is why the diurnal temperature variations are so small in moist areas, relative to dry ones, and why it’s so balmy on a summer night in the South.
They don’t PREDICT the future. They give estimates for what would happen if CO2 is doubled. People confuse it with a prediction because CO2 will double this century.
Why is this so hard to understand?
#121 Pat Keating:
That’s about the worst example of out-of-context quote mining I’ve ever seen.
Boris was saying that feedbacks apply to both CO2 and solar. You quoted a partial sentence to make it seem like he said feedbacks don’t apply to solar. Either you misread what Boris wrote, or you intentionally misquoted him.
122 Boris
Not necessarily. I can think of at least two mechanisms that provide a lot more positive feedback to the solar effect than to CO2, and at least one process that short-circuits the CO2 effect, reducing its climate sensitivity. We won’t want to dilute this discussion with such distractions, though — it’s better saved for a different ‘sub-thread’.
But OK, let’s split the warming response (from deglaciation, say) 50-50 between CO2 and solar and see what kind of fit we get.
#114 jae:
I did a quick search for “lapse rate humidity” and found the following:
http://www.enotes.com/earth-science/atmospheric-lapse-rate
I can’t vouch for the quality of the site, but it states common lapse rates as:
5 degF / 1000ft in “dry” air (RH
Sheesh.
This guy is just not on message.
Have no fear. The pro-AGW crowd will have him smeared on SourceWatch quicker than you can say “Exxon Mobil”.
Convenient Untruths – Deroy Murdock 10 December
Readable overview of the skeptical position on AGW including mention of Steve McIntyre & Anthony Watts.
Everyone discusses CO2 increase and its causes and effects. On those rare moments when a CO2 reduction is talked about the time scales for anything to happen seem to be very long.
However: Over on the CO2 thread at #8 is a graph demonstrating a very close link on an annual basis between rate of CO2 increase and global temperature. Some forecasters are saying solar 24 and 25 are going to be weak and as a result global temperatures may fall sharply. Some talk of another Maunder minimum. Just for the moment let’s assume they are correct. If the CO2/temp relationship is as close as the #8 graph tells us, and global temperatures drop over the next 10/20/30 years, isn’t it possible we could also see a sharp decrease in CO2 at the same time?
And if we did,what would that do to the AGW debate?
And on that note: We are repeatedly being told that we should take action to reduce CO2 emissions even if the AGW science isn’t proved – because the “risk is too great” – On that same basis isn’t there a strong argument for preparing for another Maunder minimum? Here in the UK we are highly dependent on imported food and energy, with a population which is growing rapidly (some forecasts have population doubling in 80 years) – a harsh Maunder minimum would put food and energy supplies here under an impossible strain – It’s easy to imagine society collapsing under such pressures.
I’d welcome thoughts – is it time my family and I thought about moving
south?
On another note, on this dark day for Norway, Roger Pielke Sr seems to have opened up shop again. Without comments this time, but the comments section on his blog used to be dominated by noise from Bloom et al that contributed little if anything.
RE:#8 – 100M it starts to get very interesting. At that scale, you start to encounter very high variation in climate and even atmospheric chemistry. Get out into the 300 – 400M range and it gets downright frightening. The masses argue about a few hundred PPM of CO2, when in reality, there are natural things that could wipe us out over the span of only a few thousand years. More research needs to go toward that and less toward “killer GHG emissions.”
RE: #130 – Imagine for a moment a world of government imposed carbon scarcity. The PPM CO2 is going down. It goes past 300, 200, heading for 100. Then, something natural occurs, be it a Maunder Minimum or other unexpected event. It reaches 90 PPM. Ever read the Sci Fi book “Cities in Flight?” Not the same scenario, but, same result.
Re: 133
I don’t think you’ll have to wait for CO2 to fall. Government-imposed carbon scarcity will produce “Cities in Flight” long before we see any decrease in CO2 levels.
Global dust bowl / fungal spike / die off leads to intergalactic hobodom …
#133 Steve Sadlov:
I doubt we will ever get CO2 below ~250ppm, since doing so would require not just stopping emissions but building sinks on a scale similar to the natural sinks.
130:
Yes. I’m thinking of retiring in some place in Central America!
Spence_UK
Not only did they survive that interglacial, which is a point I have been making forever on the web, but they survived the holocene optimum, when the variation of the obliquity of the Earth moved the Arctic Circle south, making for more direct sunlight at the poles, and longer summers, to boot. Somehow the bears survived that little episode as well, It seems unlikely that the polar ice cap survived summers at that time. The one where it got so warm that mile thick sheets of ice melted in fairly short order. But not Greenland or Antarcica’s ice sheet by the way. Check out the GRIP or DYE-3 boreholes for temps in Greenland for the Holocene optimum.
Here is a graph of Milankovich forcings for one latitude band
Click to access Summer_energy_75S.pdf
138, pedantic point, but the Arctic circle can’t move (neither can the tropics). It’s fixed by the tilt of the earth’s axis.
Has anyone had a chance to look at the potentially landmark paper, “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions.” by David H. Douglass, John R. Christy, Benjamin D. Pearson, and S. Fred Singer?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/117857349/ABSTRACT
I don’t have access, and have only seen the abstract. From the press release at SEPP —
http://science-sepp.blogspot.com/2007/12/press-release-dec-10-2007.html
— it appears to be the “scholarly” write up of the Monckton article earlier this year that shows no CO2 – Greenhouse “fingerprint” in the real world data. Monckton was dismissed early this year as a quack by many. The claim at realclimate, if I recall correctly, was that the error bars of the data was large enough to hide the model fingerprint. I.e., don’t believe your lying eyes.
I know Steve is busy, but I’m hoping someone can provide a critical review of the article. There is no one I’d trust to audit the math more than Steve, so I’m eager for his assessment, if he can get to it.
-Chris Kaiser
#114 jae:
My previous post got cut-off because I used the dreaded less-than character.
I found a couple of sites with lapse rates for dry and wet air (wet air being saturated). Here’s a good link:
http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~aalopez/aos101/wk9.html
The dry lapse rate is 9.8 degC/km
The wet lapse rate is 6.0 degC/km
As I understand it, the relative humidity is generally higher as you go up. In wet areas the wet lapse rate will hold throughout the most of the troposphere. In dry areas, the dry lapse rate will be in effect until an altitude where the relative humidity is 100%. Basically, the difference between the surface temperature and the temperature at a given altitude is larger in dry areas.
I humbly suggest you have a look at the tropospheric temperatures and see if your correlation is still valid.
125
Ok, I scanned it too fast the first time through.
However, show me a modeling study where the solar effects have been multiplied by a factor 3, as CO2 effects have been in many studies.
#26 bender:
Since you brought it up, can you clarify what’s required to be a reviewer?
Ny my understanding you only need to pay a fee and agree not to publically disclose anything from the draft versions.
Is that correct, or do I have bad information?
#142 Pat Keating:
The effect of CO2 is expressed in radiative flux in the models, as is the effect of solar variation. They all get the same feedbacks.
#143–In your understanding all a reviewer has to do is pay a fee and make a promise.—WOW, all the more reason to put all of our collective eggs in the IPCC basket. Great one JohnV
141, John V. ?? I don’t understand what you mean by “tropospheric temperatures.” The surface temperature is also a tropospheric temperature. This temperature normally declines with elevation, as you note, so it gets colder faster as you increase in elevation in dry areas. At, say 5 km, water vapor provides a POSITIVE feedback in moist areas, due to condensation and release of energy. It’s different if you care about 5 km, than if you care about the surface. BTW, I agree that RH increases with altitude, but it is my understanding that the climate models assume that it remains constant. This is absurd, if it is true (need to check again).
#133 Steve Sadlov…Do you have any rule of thumb about Hudson
Bay freezing-over dates?? According to Wetterzentrale it’s a
matter of hours if not already happened..When did it happen
in 2003?? (The last chunks of ice left Hudson Bay in first
week of September 2004…even Environment Canada admitted
that was a record late event….)
No, I think you have to be invited. No fees, thank God, or Al Gore would probably have been a reviewer, too.
John V: One of the things that really intrigues me in all this is that I can give you the a close estimate of the average temperature for a moist location if you give me the average solar insolation and the average absolute humidity. The correlation coefficient (r2) between the product of insolation (at the ground) and absolute humidity is 0.85. I don’t know why this happens, and it only happens for moist locations–all the way from Barrow, AK to Guam.
C’mon John V, you’re reasonable…”IPCC Consensus?” You know there is nothing close to such a thing.
So you’re saying the GCM’s don’t make predictions, just estimates for what would happen under a CO2 prediction. What you cannot see would be my eyes rolling.
And much to your dismay, GCMs don’t simply “give estimates for waht would happen if CO2 is doubled.” GCM’s are run under many CO2 emission scenarios. The IPCC likes to use a 1% annual growth in CO2 emissions for some period of time, but GCMs are run under a variety of CO2 scenarios. Click on the IPCC “scenarios” here http://www.ipcc-data.org/ar4/gcm_data.html at the “Model output described in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (SRES scenarios)” page and note that the models aren’t simply run for 2XCO2.
Nuts: 149 SHOULD say: The correlation r2 between TEMPERATURE and the product of solar insolation and absolute humidity is 0.85.
RE: #136 – this is clearly your blind spot. I sure hope there are not too many people with such a blind spot in positions of authority. One can hope ….
RE: #147 – all over the map. Due to most of the body of water being south of the Arctic Circle, and subject to tremendous weather and climate variation levels versus truely “Arctic” areas.
New Junk Science article (emphsis mine):
I am amazed that a statement so clearly false has gained so much traction just because people think the IPCC said it. In fact, the IPCC said ‘Water supplies stored in glaciers and snow cover will be reduced over the course of the century.’
Which means melting glaciers and snow will result in more water in river flows and increased water supplies. Until of course the glaciers melt completely, at which point they will have no effect on river flows and water supplies (apart from a seasonal effect). Himalayan glaciers are generally cited as where the main impact will occur. The Himalayas have a huge summer rainfall peak. It’s called the Monsoon. Any reduction in summer river flows from glaciers that have dissapeared won’t be noticed because Himalayan rivers are in flood at that time of year.
Philip_B
I ran into a statement like this in a comment at Tamino’s (whose blog I very much enjoy). The best part was the mention of the nuclear capabilities of nearby countries. It is not so much the carrot and stick that bother me, it is the assumption that I am an ass.
John V in comment #141 says:
I guess you are not a meteorologist and you are not used to look at the radiosoundings.
May I suggest a link?
http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
Select the “GIF skew T” type of plot and you will soon see how humidity goes with altitude.
Larry 139,
Look at the graphic. The obliquity of the Earth (tilt) changes on a 40K year cycle. You will see at the bottom of my PDF a graphic which shows it’s variation. During the Holocene optimum was the last time that it had moved to its most southern level. I don’t know orbital mechanics, so I am just taking people’s word on this, but apparently it has to do with the orbit of the Moon as well.
I suppose it would not be that hard to produce a graph of the historic lattitudes of the arctic circle (90 – obliquity) and the tropics (obliquity). I use the term “obliquity” rather than tilt because it will get you where you want to go in google, whereas “tilt” might get you pinball.
In any case, in one billion years (cue Dr. Evil or Carl Sagan) the tropics are expected to be north of the florida line. That is if we have found a credit scheme that will stop continental drift by then.
John V
This is what is known as a simplifying assumption. I do not believe that feedbacks from solar will equal feedbacks from CO2. Solar varies in everything from TSI to UV. Solar can penetrate the ocean the entire photospere, CO2 can only feebly heat the ocean at the surface. How the two can be expected to be comparable is beyond me. What if you have black carbon on snow fields? Is an increase in TSI going to express itself there? What about an increase in CO2? Not buying it. Loehle didn’t buy it, and I would have to see some kind of proof that it was a physical reality, not just a convenient way of making solar fail to fit the climate history.
Anyone who wants to know how accurate Climate Models are need look no further than the Montreal Protocol, remember that one “save the ozone layer, and you will save the world”.
Well the models were wrong, they predicted a return of the ozone by now but now the scentists say that ozone levels will not return to the antartic till 2065.
The ozone hole over antartic keeps getting bigger, but man made ozone depleting chemicals in the atmosphere have decreased substantially. The scientists say that the return of the ozone is being masked by overwhelming natural processes and cooling of the atmosphere.
So thats what you do when your models wrong, just put back the date that anyone might be able to judge whether your model is right or wrong, till you are all dead.
Click to access exec_sum_18aug.pdf
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ozone_record.html
I thought I heard on the radio this morning that a ‘new’ survey of Antartica has shown that the ice sheet there has grown by 2 Million sq miles over the last year and half? Was I dreaming, can’t find any addtion information.
Come on all you deniers. Don’t you know that CO2 absorbs IR? Therefore, the most sensible answer is to ignore the rest of the system and attribute most or all the observed warming trend to CO2. It then goes without saying that the +.7C trend is caused by 100 ppmv CO2, and we are responsible for all of it, and we know the trend will continue. This is going to have disasterous effects upon our environment and so the release of CO2 must be halted and reversed now, at any cost.
The science is setttled, global warming is real. Now is the time for action!
Perhaps someone here could help me, I would like to know exactly how the GCM’s account for the cooling trend during the period 1940-1970.
Sam Urbinto says “The science is setttled”
No scientist would ever say ANY science is ever settled.
Ellis,
For the most part they declare that aerosols caused the cooling. Then they add enough aerosols to their model to get the affect that they are looking for.
roconnell
Urbinto is being sarcastic. Of course it’s hard to tell since his post is indistinguishable from the average alarmist’s.
Re #164: roconnell. Of course you right. And Sam actually agrees with you. If you had been here for a while you would know that he is being ironic in that statement.
157, Paolo: Thanks for the link. Needless to say, I’m not a meterologist, either. Can you provide another link for interpreting the diagram? What is the “normal” variation of relative humidity with altitude? It looks like the diagram shows only specific humidity.
Ellis,
The GCMs account for the coolong of the mid-20th century by blaming human emitted aerosols. (It is always our fault, don’t you know!) This is a hand waving argument for three (main) reasons. 1. We have no measurement of aerosols at that time. Al we can do is guess and make assumptions. 2. There is no agreement on whether human emitted aerosols into the troposphere cause warming are cooling. 3. We do know that human emitted aerosols were mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, yet both hemispheres cooled at the same time and the same (relative) amount.
In essence, the models us the equivalent of a joker in a game of poker. The aerosol effect is proclaimed to be the value that is needed to give the models the appearance of skill, just like a joker is proclaimed to be the value that gives the holder a winning hand.
#145 Gaelan Clarke:
Just because you get to be a reviewer does *not* mean that your comments will be included. Comments which can not be supported with science are left out. Steve McIntyre made many complaints about his comments being left out.
=====
#146 jae:
I can assure you that climate models do *not* assume RH is positive. The atmosphere is divided into layers and each has its own conditions, including water vapour content.
Maybe I should back up on this humidity correlation, and find out what you’re trying to say. If I undertand, you are saying that your negative correlation between temperature and RH means that water vapour is a negative forcing. In your opinion, what are the implications of your correlation? Are you stating that earth would be warmer if all of the air was completely dry?
=====
#157 Paolo M:
Thanks for the link, but I don’t understand the “Skew T” plot. I realize that absolute humidity goes down with altitude, but is it wrong to say that relative humidity generally increases?
=====
#161 roconnell:
Tamino wrote an interesting article on Arctic and Antarctic ice a couple of months ago:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/sea-ice-north-and-south-then-and-now/
=====
#163 Ellis:
Primarily aerosols (“global dimming”).
Just a few points on earlier postings.
1. CO2 lags. These do not prove that CO2 does not warm the Earth, so let’s not say AGW is disproved by these lags. But they almost surely prove that they fail to warm it enough to prevent huge downturns which I presume to be orbital and solar effects.
2. Gore’s stuff about the North Pole ice cap is reasonably credible if this year’s anomaly in September continued to trend in the same way. But because of a probable weak solar cycle 24 I am betting it won’t.
3. Boris asserted that solar and CO2 feedback forcings must be equal. Keating said they don’t. I agree with the latter, as there is no reason why they have to work in the same way (except for albedo changes in ice melts, but surely that’s not all that’s going on).
4. I am soon going to post a model of 150 years’ temperature data, with only 3 free parameters, which does not give CO2 doubling sensitivity in the IPCC favoured 2-4C range. I was hoping Steve would make a separate thread for it, but he hasn’t agreed yet (=reminder there, Steve).
5. I must dispute the notion that all sceptics here are members of the illustrious Met and scientific organizations cited. I think it’s easier not to get brainwashed by being outside those orgs 🙂
Apologies for not having time to link back to those earlier articles,
Rich.
JohnV if I wanted to subtract the anomaly due to volcanoes from 1880 to present, what’s the best source?
Re:163 Newbie?? Aerosols, without ever identifying the source of the aerosols. It’s a plug that works for the LIA too.
#172 steve mosher:
Uh, thanks for asking, but I have no idea.
My understanding is that each volcanic eruption will affect global temperatures for less than 5 years.
I’ve got a feeling this is a trick question. You going anywhere with this?
A number of commenters have made predictions of a weak solar cycle 24.
To any of you making those predictions, what’s your source?
Does your source have a track record of predictions?
144 John V
I don’t think so. For example, GISS Model II uses a fixed irradiance, no solar variation and no feedback that I can see.
Please show me where your statement is true.
Sorry about the tone of my post above if it caused any confusion…. I just thought I’d save all the radical know-it-all pro-warmers some time if I just boiled down their argument to what they’re really trying to say. That way, the assumption / guess / opinion being made that’s put forth as fact doesn’t have to have all that obfuscatory hand-waving double-speak non-statements languge crafted into a few paragraphs. They can just point people to that post. See what a nice guy I am?
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-174823
I’m now waiting for somebody to claim “But that’s not what we’re saying at all, we know there’s more than CO2” Or that I’m babbling nonsense about particulates. Speaking of that:
Jim; aerosols (particulates). Does anyone really know how much of a cooling effect (actually, an IR blocking behavior vis-a-vis albedo) they have in the air at all, much less how that relates to whatever heating effects they have on the ground? I’d say that’s one huge unknown, if you look at the model’s output for each of the radiative forcings, given the margin of error the IPCC uses, they themselves are saying it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Radiative-forcings.svg
And as you can see here, CO2 is only half the story even ignoring everything but the 5 GHG they list (including ozone) And notice the solar irradiance margin they have….
IPCC devotes a chapter to Aerosols: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/160.htm and here’s some model output: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/190.htm
Hidden on this page http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/214.htm#611 it defines what radiative forcing is:
In the context of climate change, the term forcing is restricted to changes in the radiation balance of the surface-troposphere system imposed by external factors, with no changes in stratospheric dynamics, without any surface and tropospheric feedbacks in operation (i.e., no secondary effects induced because of changes in tropospheric motions or its thermodynamic state), and with no dynamically-induced changes in the amount and distribution of atmospheric water (vapour, liquid, and solid forms).
Certainly not the complete picture.
Thanks all, I thought so but just wanted to be clear. I believe it was Gerald Stanhill who is credited with coining the phrase “Global Dimming”. In case anyone was wondering what Mr. Stanhill is saying about the subject now,
And even more damning for the IPCCophiles
So I ask again, how do GCM’s account for the 1940-1970 cooling trend without using the ad hoc assumption of aerosals, and more importantly, how can we rely on estimates, of the unknown future, by models that cannot accurately portray the known past?
NASA Satellite Captures First View of ‘Night-Shining Clouds’
Interesting choice of words, rather than the more neutral “is changing!”
It would seem that the intent is that this is just another example of evil human activity.
#176 Pat Keating:
If the irradiance is fixed, then there is nothing to amplify. The climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is a result of the models, not an input to the models. (It has also been calculated emprically from temperature and CO2 reconstructions). Increased CO2 leads to a change in radiative flux (in the correct frequencies). The net temperature effect is a result of the original CO2 increase and feedbacks such as increased water vapour, decreased albedo, etc.
Similarly, an increase in TSI would cause warming which would be amplified by increased water vapour, decreased albedo, etc.
One difference with CO2 is that it is itself involved in the feedback — as temperatures increase the CO2 levels increase further. I am not certain if this self-feedback is included in the sensitivity to CO2 doubling, but I do not believe it is.
Solar Cycle 25 peaking around 2022 could be one of the weakest in centuries.
The first sunspot just appeared a few days ago, but the cycle is very late in starting and has not yet officially started.
There is also that stupid cylce 20, which was pretty low, and corresponded to the aerosol cooling we see in the temps in the late sixties and early seventies, and the low cycle 23, which corresponds with the halt in the rise of troposphere and ocean surface temps. But these are meaningless. MEANINGLESS! Just like the Maunder minimum had nothing, NOTHING! to do with the LIA. It was caused by the black plaugue, which killed off enough people to cause reforestation and carbon sequestration sufficient, with the volcano of 1815, to cause the LIA. I am not being sarcastic here either, I am quoting the Wikipedia 🙂
171 Rich
Needless to say, I agree with you.
CO2 works via the global temperature. The sun can work locally and therefore provide different forcing. For example, the direct solar radiation absorbed by clouds can disperse/reduce them, and thus change albedo much more effectively than can CO2. The diurnal effects are also different, which can provide different forcing if the effect is non-linear.
Question #1: They don’t
Question #2: Faith
The answer to #2 by no means implies that AGW is a religion, just like model predictions are by know means ‘predictions’. You must think of these things in a more enlightened and compassionate way, or, in other words, irrationally!
Here is our local sounding at 00 UTC
The red line is the vertical profile of temperature from the ground level to 15 km (less than 150 hPa); the blue line is for the dew point temperature. Usually the two lines diverge apart with altitude and you can find the equivalent plot of RH in the bottom left corner. If the two lines are close, the radiosonde is going through a cloudy layer.
In the plot there is also the profile of wind (direction and intensity) in the right side.
The 45° oblique lines are for temperature, from +40°C to -90°C. The dot lines are for the dry lapse rate and the dashed dotted lines for the wet lapse rate.
Seems that the link to that NASA article did not get into my posting.
NASA Satellite Captures First View of Night-Shining Clouds
180 John V
That’s the point, the model includes no variations in irradiance, whereas you claimed in 144 that they were included (“as is solar variation”).
It seems that you are trying to snow me again. This again is untrue — it is an intrinsic part of the model.
170, John V:
That appears to be a logical conclusion, but I have no way of knowing, because water vapor may have a special way of imparting heat to N2 and O2. If not, then yes for the AVERAGE temperature. But there would be one hell of a diurnal variation!
Is saying “CO2 != TEMP+ (or maybe CO2 == Temp+ (some))” the same as claiming the Earth is flat? Is it the same as denying humans have an affect on climate?
Oh, and don’t forget; pretty much everything we talk about has both a time and space component to it (what the climate will be like during January in Oslo, or March in Buenos Aires, or August at Atlanta International Airport, for example)
#181 yorick:
You’re making the (sarcastic) argument that climate science denies the effect of the sun on temperature. That is not the case. Of course the sun affects temperature, as do the greenhouse effect and aerosols.
=====
#182 Pat Keating:
Ah, I thought you were talking about actual changes in the solar output, not the solar radiation reaching the surface. The former is an input to the climate. The latter is primarily an output of cloud formation but also of aerosols. Obviously, it’s difficult to define a feedback term on an output.
#188 Sam Urbinto:
Nobody who knows anything is saying that CO2 is the only cause for temperature changes. That’s a classic distortion. On time scales too short for geologic or orbital effects but long enough to average out ocean cycles, and neglecting non-CO2 GHGs, I suppose it looks something like this:
Temperature = A*log2(CO2) + B*TSI + C*Aerosol
For the anti-AGW crowd, it looks the same except A approaches 0.
But I’m not distorting anything John. Making a generalization. I’m simply asking why it seems most everyone mostly focuses on CO2, when even though it’s modeled at an effect of 50% of the radiative forcing of the GHG (including ozone) it’s not the only (or even major) factor here. Or questioning if 100% of the observed increase is human caused. Why bringing up any questions on these subjects makes one a denier, it seems, in many cases.
Show of hands; how many people here believe the effects of CO2 in the are over-rated and overly focused on? Care to make a percentage estimate of CO2 by itself in the observed +.7 C trend in the global mean temperature anomaly?
I’ll start. Even if the current +.7 C trend is accurate and meaningful (I tend to think that number is a) meaningless and b) understated even if meaningful) the percentage of that caused by CO2 that’s caused by humans is perhaps 5-10% of that.
Then my question would be why aren’t we focusing on the other 90-95% of whatever’s going on. Or is it just the human need to answer questions about everything even if it’s not answerable.
184, Paolo: OK, thanks. Held and Sodden’s 2000 paper on Water Vapor Feedback and Global Warming, which is often cited in connection with climate models, says at page 444:
And on p. 445, he says:
I’m just trying to make sense of this. Does it make sense to you?
This paper derives an estimate of 2.7 deg. increase for 2 X CO2, and the constant relative humidity assumption is critical, as I understand the article.
Hi JohnV.
“Similarly, an increase in TSI would cause warming which would be amplified by increased water vapour,
decreased albedo, etc.”
what is the gain for TSI and Delta TSI? can temp increase
between 1909 and 1940 be explained by C02 and TSI?
#192 jae:
As I understand it, the models often predict constant RH as temperatures increase. That’s different than assuming constant RH with altitude.
=====
#193 steven mosher:
Doubling CO2 (in isolation) causes a radiative imbalance of ~3.7 W/m2. If this results in a temperature increase of 2.5 degC, then a rough estimate for increasing TSI by 3.7 W/m2 would be about 2.5 degC. By the way, that would be a very large increase in TSI.
To me it seems that the combination of increasing TSI and CO2 can explain the early century warming. TSI stopped increasing mid-century and has remained relatively constant since. The warming in the latter part of the century apears to have a non-solar cause.
Sam:
I think they have been looking the wrong and the past ten years of IPCC has been wasted money.
No, it doesn’t. Balance is maintained. Temperatures have to adjust, but balance is maintained.
#196 Larry:
Yes you’re right. I should have said “Instantaneously doubling CO2 (in isolation) causes an instantaneous radiative imbalance of ~3.7 W/m2.” Temperatures would then increase to achieve steady state. That was my next statement. Without feedback, the temperature would increase about 1.1 degC to achieve balance.
197, that’s about all was can say with high confidence, but yes.
That’s my entire problem, John. 1.1 C without feedbacks, feedbacks we’re unsure of. 1.1 or 3.5 or whatever. It’s just a guess, just a rough estimate, just an idea. Not scientific certainty.
#199 Sam Urbinto:
Of course you know that certainty is impossible in science. Keep in mind that the remaining uncertainty in the climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling is skewed toward the high end. The sensitivity is more likely to be 3C (or more) than 2C.
=====
Paolo M:
Thanks for the explanation. Is it the norm for RH to fall with altitude?
=====
yorick:
Thanks for the NASA link re solar cycles 24 and 25.
RE 200. JohnV we need to see that paper DERIVING the 2C or 3C or 64.3C sensivity
Without using GCMs
I’m talking about “certainty” science-style; were we can at least know it’s more than just an indication of a possibility and we can reasonably expect something is true rather than either mainly a guess or conjecture. I can demonstrate a 5 pound ball will be affected by gravity. I can expect that when clouds warm it rains. I can’t show anyone reasonably that 100 ppmv of CO2 in climate causes an observved +.7 C rise in temp with any kind of confidence.
It’s all I’m saying; it’s reasonable to question (or withold judgement) on this issue. I am questioning the people who say that it’s unreasonable. I’m not saying it’s not possible there is a link. That’s just my opinion about what faith I can put into the conclusion and how reasonable it is to have that opinion.
Re 185
Richard,
This stuff is priceless.
In 2003 NASA attributed the “shiny clouds” to the space shuttle exhaust.
They also gave a good overview of the reasons they are “shiny”.
That was apparently not scary enough, so we are now fed another “Polar Bear Drowning” story.
Have they no shame?
Check out the link below:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0522shuttleshine.html
John V,
I wasn’t being sarcastic, I was quoting the Wikipedia. If NASA is right on the predicted solar cycle, we will know for sure within a decade or so. I can wait.
Susanne:
In stopping by a few times over the last few weeks, it seemed that you were getting yourself up to speed for maybe starting your own climate blog. If that is the case, it would seem that the puckishness in this thread (although highly amusing) is too narrow for your purposes?
That said, my vote would be for “Slapshot”.
201
I would settle for a clear calculation of the 1.1C ‘bare’ value of climate sensitivity, not dressed with the feedback. However, one for the full, ‘dressed’ 2.5-3.0C version would be even better, tho’ I think John already said it wasn’t possible.
#201
You *do* know that’s impossible, don’t you? (Silly question. Let the running of the trolls begin.)
John V, respectfully, I believe you are going to need a new paradigm in relation to TSI, as a relatively stable TSI since the middle of the last century does not explain the observed SW radiation at the surface. I direct you once again to Gerald Stanhill’s comments in Eos. In particular, his second table, 11 year running means, clearly shows trends of solar radiation measurements on the surface of the earth. This would clearly have the apperance of being at odds with a steady TSI at TOA, although I in no way doubt you that the TSI has been relatively stable for the past sixty years. I believe this to be a rather large paradox that you may choose to blame on aerosols, but clearly is not, unless of course, aerosol react differently over China than the ROW. It seems to me rather obvious that there is, as to now, some other process effecting insolation at the Earth’s surface, and until that process can be sorted out climate science is going to be at a standstill in explaining the roles of GHG’s.
Bold is mine. Ironically, if TSI marched in lockstep with observed surface SW radiation, it would make the theory of AGW plausible. As it is now stated, the theory does not match observations.
I’ve been lurking for quite a while now but haven’t had anything worth saying.
But, at last, I have a question: What’s going on with the Troposphere? I know that, intially, it didn’t seem to show signs of warming. Then everyone seems to agree that there were problems with the data that needed to be corrected (global drift, etc.). I’ve seen some RealClimate type stuff that claims thet “there is no longer any disagreement” between the surface and tropospheric records. Is there any chance that that is actually the case?
208
I’m not an expert on this, but I understand that they ‘recalibrated’/fudged the satellite data to get rid of most of the problem.
#207 Ellis:
I am not overly familiar with the Stanhill paper. You may be aware already, but Real Climate has a small post about it (fwiw):
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/11/global-dimming-and-global-warming/
207, Ellis: part of your quote:
“So-called greenhouse gases” is an interesting phrase (for me, at least). All gases are really greenhouse gases, in that they store heat. I don’t agree with the idea that 2 X CO2 ADDS 3.7 w/m^2 to the system. If that were true, why doesn’t water vapor in the tropics ADD more heat to the surface than is added by the tiny amount of water vapor in the air over deserts? The whole concept doesn’t make sense, IMHO, even though the Arrhenius type math looks plausible. I think radiation theory is correct in determining the average temperature of the planet. But when you have to postulate some “layer” in the atmosphere where the net radiation balance suddenly changes, that’s a different situation. If such a “layer” exists, it changes by the second, due to solar input and convection. And that layer probably goes from 0 km to maybe 30 km–i.e., it’s a continuum. If there were some definite discrete “layer,” there would be a sudden change in the lapse rate at that elevation, no?
This link came in an email today from family (who live on an island; Ohau so sea level matters to them)
Dissenters Are Left High And Dry In Bali
By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, December 07, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Environment: While global warming alarmists revel in self-importance at their 11-day forum in Bali, dissenting scientists are being shut out and credible charges are leveled that the U.N. has doctored sea-level data.
… Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. According to his June interview with the British Telegraph that was revisited on a Telegraph blog last week, the IPCC might have doctored data to show a sea- level rise from 1992 to 2002.
“”It is a falsification of the data set.””
James M. Taylor, a Heartland Institute senior fellow, says that there are more than 600 scientists in Bali who can debunk the climate change theory. But the U.N. has pushed them to the margins.”All are being censored,” said Taylor.
We have a grudging admiration for the IPCC and the rest of the alarmists who have successfully turned global warming into the bogeyman of the 21st century. Their drumbeat of disaster has put them into a position from where they can shut out and shout down the opposition and not be challenged for it.
It won’t last forever, though. At some point, the public will realize the sky is not on fire and begin to shrug at the believers’ antics. But the everyday man is never safe. Zealots, as they always do, will find another threat to hype, and they will swear that it will be worse than any of the faux cataclysms that came before.
link
paddikj, you’re probably right. In the end, it might be something as simple as “climate wars”, or something a bit more symbolic. I liked some of bender’s suggestions. I was thinking of doing a blog that would acomplish two goals: chronicle my own studies in climate policy and condense the info I read on the “hockey stick” and other science controversies into a reasonable layperson’s/policy wonk’s guide. The guide would link all the relevant documents, seminal posts at both blogs (and other climate blogs) and the related investigations (Wegman, NAS), plus other climate change materials. I will have to see how much time I have to do it. I’m doing a lot of backkground research and think it might be useful for others who are interested in the issue from a policy perspective.
#208, Bill B
I’m no authority and others may correct me. My understanding is that a bona-fide error was found and that after reanalysis much of the disagreement between surface and satellite measurement disappeared. In terms of trend over the past two decades they are about the same. There are still some discrepancies, though, when looking at land or ocean. Also El Nino and volcanic events are more pronounced in the sat record.
The point remains that the GCMs predict more warming in the troposphere relative to the surface. That prediction still fails.
#124 Boris
There are issues difficult for me to understand. One is the rigorous standardized practices required in any industry in the the real world that doesn’t seem to apply to climate science, or at least with respect to climate models.
When did predictions become to be known as projections? Is it a timescale issue? Or is it not unlike referring to gambling as an arbitrary investment return?
Met O doesn’t seem to have a problem with using prediction in their news releases. In fact, I counted no less than seven times the use of the derivative of predict They seem quite confident in their predictions, and that their ‘new and improved model’ is right this time, but we’ll just have to wait until ~2014. In the meantime, policy makers will have a better tool to make decisions for the rest of us.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070810.html
What event or series of events is Met O expecting to take place in order for their prediction of new record surface temperatures after 2009? An unexpected spike in CO2 levels?
Why am I cynical? Because after 25 years of working in both the aerospace and automotive industry working with models, we would never expect to purchase software than gave us bad data and find it acceptable. Why doesn’t ‘Independent Verification and Validation’ apply to climate models?
It appears to me that climate “science” plays by a completely different set of rules than does industry, but then I’m just a dumb engineer, not a climate scientist.
IBD is the source of the famous “Hansen paid off by Soros” lie that I pointed out on another thread. After that piece, I can’t take anything they write seriously. I’d like to see concrete evidence that there were 600 skeptics there who were shut out by the IPCC rather than just claims to that effect. Knowing the politics of the paper and the sources cited in it after a quick google, I am highly suspect of its objectivity on the subject.
Me too.
Thank you John, and if you don’t mind me saying so, you add alot to the CA dialog. Your ability to offer counterpoints to the arguments here are one of the reasons I prefer this blog to RC. I have actually had reasonable success in getting response from the scientists at RC, probably because they sense I am an easy mark, but for the most part the commentors at RC parrot the consensus of the scientist and that really adds no value to the actual progress of discourse. Dissent is important, even dissent from the dissenters. If I knew how to do the smiley face thing, I would insert one there. As to your link, I guess we will have to wait for Gavin to update the post with his actual response to Mr. Stanhill to see.
Now, while I have your attention, I will ask you something which surely you will be able to answer, Stevensons’ screens. If I am in my backyard with a clear sky, why is the temperature under a tree more valid then in the direct sun? I looked up Stevenson screen on wiki and they state that its purpose, other than blocking percipitation, is to block direct heat radiation. Why? Does not the direct heat radiation add to the temperature? I don’t know if I am clearly asking my question, but wouldn’t having thermometers in the open have the added value of telling something of cloud cover and insolation. I realize that the screens have been SOP for a long time, and rereading this comment I am tempted to delete it, however, as they say, don’t ask don’t know. And really, who knew that the study of climate would be intimately tied with Long John Silver?
With respect, I think that comparing academia and industry is like comparing apples and oranges, or at least, tangerines and oranges. The scientific method and the whole academic peer review / journal peer review process is not premised on the profit motive / accountability to shareholders, etc, which tends to set different performance standards than exist in a non-profit organization. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, but that the difference between the two is understandable give the history and nature of both sectors. If you subjected almost any science discipline to the same scrutiny that climate science has received because of the politics of the issue, you would probably find just as many issues with data, etc. at some point in the discipine. That’s just a guess on my part, but I really do think that it has been the politicization of climate science that has brought these issues to light. Without the glare of publicity and the way this has become such a pubic and political issue, these paleoclimate and other climate papers would probably have been subject to the usual attempts at replication, errors would turn up and be retified in subsequent studies, conlcusions would be revised, new avenues of research opened, etc. JMHO. YMMV.
Susann: “Without the glare of publicity and the way this has become such a pubic and political issue, . . .
Yes, the “fire down below” and all that . . .
I apologize in advance . . .
Jayson Blair – New York Times?
Can we take ANYTHING (may I less-than-randomly pick as subject say … AGW?) written in the NYTimes as having any possible rational basis in fact (if I may use the above demonstrated standard of throwing in the babies with their accompanying bathing water?)
I use sometimes perceived port-wing source as ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair
I, too, like an embellished story, for the telling around the campfire, however.
JAE, to make my position clear, I do not believe that the physics of equillibrium apply to the climate. How can a system that is not in equillibrium exsist and yet every point of that system be in LTE? Ah well, I know I am wrong because both sides of the climate change argument seem to agree that this makes sense, but for me I cannot wrap my mind around the concept. I also do not believe that Henry’s Law applies to the flux between CO2 and the ocean, but again am willing to accept that there are people alot smarter than me working on this problem, and if they are willing to look past the fact that Henry’s law explicitly does not apply to CO2 and salt water, than truly, who am I to disagree.
214
As a scientist, I think that the requirements in scientific research are quite different. The researcher is studying new phenomena, and it is valuable even to get half-baked ideas out into the public realm, since they may trigger new ideas in others.
The problem is that people like AlG and Hansen are taking scientific research (and climate modeling is still research and half-baked, a long way from settled work) and using it as if the results are established engineering design data. AlG is a politician, but Hansen should know better.
217 Ellis:
The goal is to measure air temperature. Which was initially, a long time ago, expected to be relatively homogeneous. Direct radiation measurements are also performed for other purposes. Air temperature measurement is supposed to adhere to certain specific site parameters, to eliminate the type of effect you feel going from direct sun (radiation) to shade (mostly conductive from the air). I can tell you from personal experience around my property, finding a thermometer location which is not subject to some kind of bias is very, very difficult.
Re #215 and #216 – We know two that were ignored. You have to realize that the Summary for Policy Makers was not written by 1500 or 2500 “scientists”. The 1500 or so wrote comments on scientific studies. The final report was written by 200 approximate number of lead scientists from the various fields. That does not mean that all 1500+ reports were incorporated or used.
I suspect it is much more apples to apples than you think. There is a strong profit motive involved in academia, given the need for advancement and consulting opportunities. There is also the peer pressure type of “accountability” that is paramount in these institutions. The only BIG difference is that they live in an extremely sheltered environment where they know that they have tremendous freedom to do almost anything they what they want and say what they want, without fear of reprecussions, as long as their peers don’t get too upset (after tenure, of course). I have had government, academic, and industry employment, and the motivations are not all that different.
RE 181:
Yes, spots finally appeared a few days ago – for the first time in a month and a half or so. But, my understanding of the first sign of the onset of a Solar Cycle is the appearance of spots in the high latitudes. the ones I saw are near the equator. If my understanding is correct, we still have a long wait.
Also, it’s my understanding that the longer the minimum, the less intense the cycle.
RE 191:
My hand was up!
I find it difficult to believe so many people can be so misinformed on rather basic issues like trop warming, antarctic cooling, CO2 lags, what “radiative forcing” means, what the models are actually showing, and then to have the nerve to bash scientists at RC who go over such issues. The citations to places like junkscience.com, the broad generalizations like “models show…” is rather disturbing.
The real story is that there is good reason for some Antarctic cooling and accumulation in the interior, but the general trend over the last 50 years or so is warming; it is also *not true* that Antarctica is “expected to” get significantly warmer, and in fact will be rather stable compared to places like the Arctic. Second point is the troposphere IS warming, a bit faster than the surface. Comments like 209 “they fudged the data to correct this” reflect why so much misinformation is out there- read Mears and Wentz (2005) or the NAS report on data analysis. They did not “fudge” anything, they merely demonstrated the technological problems with earlier data from people like Christy and Spencer.
If people cannot get their facts straight, they really have no business telling scientists like Gavin Schmidt that they are wrong.
Re: First View of Night-Shining Clouds
I was listening to “Claire de Lune” when I clicked on your link and enlarged the second image. There are times when science is just plumb beautiful. Let ’em worry that the sky is falling. Nice picture.
Is it remotely possible that our beloved policy wonkette is not cognizant of the many international standards (e.g. ISO 2001) required to be met for testing, for qualifying product and metrology (instrumentation is required to meet NIST standards and bear ‘calibration’ labels indicating same) in ‘industry’, let alone the tax laws and rules of accounting and record keeping (Sarbanes-Oxley comes now to mind) the ‘business types’ are requried to operate under?
What standard of quality are/is climate science required to meet … again (por favor – I may have missed that in the discussion above)?
Not even Sarbanes-Oxley it would appear from the lack of data archiving for auditing purposes (data archiving, if not for auditing by others – what then? You cannot ‘take the data with you’ to the beyond!)
But, again, as a previous poster put it: but then I’m just a dumb engineer, not a climate scientist.
Link for elucidation and maybe edification:
International Standards for Business, Government and Society
**NEWSFLASH**
Maybe there are some standards the climate scientist must meet –
Standard number: ISO 14065:2007
Greenhouse gases – Requirements for greenhouse gas validation and verification bodies for use in accreditation or other forms of recognition
#50 Ooops. Should be retains, not generates.
@Ellis– 217
With regard to measuring local temperature, the purpose of the thermometer is to measure the local air temperature. When you (or a thermometer) sit in the shade, you gain or lose heat only to the air. In the case of a thermometer, it’s temperature equilibrates with the air.
However, if the thermometer is in the direct sun, it also gains heat from the suns rays. This is radiant energy, that does not come from the air. What happens is the thermometer temperature rises above that of the local air by some amount.
So, in direct sunlight the thermometer measures something local, but that something is not the local air temperatures. So, if you want to measure the air temperature, you need a radiation shield.
Sometimes, people also want a measure of insolation; when they do other measurement devices are placed at a measurement station. But using an unshielded thermometer gives the worst of both worlds. You don’t learn the air temperature and you don’t learn the amount of insolation.
Susann– I mostly agree, but the comparison might be rabbits to oranges. 🙂
The two processes are simply entirely different. The only two difficulties I see are:
a) Some academics appear to suggest that peer review can and does catch the types of mistakes it is not designed to catch and worse, in a short time frame.
b) Some other criticize peer review for not catching these types of errors quickly.
Both positions are unreasonable. Of course, the criticism in (b) is hardly surprising when some academics claim (a). If some vocal academics claim peer review ordinarily catches these sorts of mistakes or problems in a short amount of time, why shouldn’t people who have never been involved in the process not conclude that part of the process is somehow broken?
Yes, if you examined a huge number of peer reviewed papers under a microscope, you would find issues similar to what we are seeing. (Though, possibly you might find fewer. When a subject is less contentious, people have a bit more time to review data. Also, in other disciplines, people often collect their own data in laboratories. When results are ambiguous because you took too little data, you can often go back to the lab and collect more data. Also, when you actually collect your own data, researchers don’t need to be concerned they might be scooped by someone who publishes an important major results about hurricanes / past climate based on very similar publicly available data. )
In any case, there may be problems with the way peer review is working in climate science — I don’t honestly know. But what I do know is there are things peer review was never meant to do. It doesn’t do them.
Re 228 etc:
I have mentioned before that I saw a nacreous cloud one night in mid-Atlantic and the next night, in the same area, noctilucent clouds. I have since assumed that one creates the other and that the former (it must have been at 60 to 80 kft) was the detached head of a particularly frisky cunim.
JF
#227
Chris, if you can’t present a convincing argument then maybe you should question you own authority to comment here. Although the troposphere may be warming, it is not warming at the rate that the GCMs predict if well-mixed CO2 were the driver they say it is. The rate of tropospheric warming is 2-3 times too low. That’s quite a bit. What’s wrong? Why do the models diverge from reality?
It’s easy to smear any group by cutting a weak one out of the herd and then committing the logical fallacy of guilt-by-association. Try to rise above that. Pick worthy targets if you’re really that well-informed.
CA is not obsessed with RC. What CA is obsessed with is accountability – something RC scientists have been known to actively avoid.
Susann. Seek equilibrium. Document your journey. It’s not about war, it’s about peace. Show people the way toward reasonableness. Civility is hip.
OK, I read the New Scientist’s report on Mears and Wentz.
BTW, his study in no way supports the ‘related to human effects’ claim.
Is Antarctica warming?
Mears and Wentz data shows the opposite. See CA link.
Chris, you are sliding into the Realclimate practice of citing studies that don’t support your claims.
Zen, and the Hockey Match of Climate Maintenance.
=================================
Susann:
I’m tempted to shoot back, “Well, if not, maybe it should be!”, but I think jae covered the situation better already.
Btw, there is nothing wrong with a “profit” or economic balance sheet kind of cudgel to keep scientists, engineers, theorists, etc. honest. This would certainly apply to the whole AGW=disease, Kyoto Protocol=cure debate, especially since the “costs” of the Protocols are pointedly not analyzed at all by the ipcc: the alleged cure could therefore be worse than the alleged disease, and we would have had no comparable heads-up as to these costs compared to the much balllyhooed net “disaster” of AGW – although the “net” part of this has not been very well established, either, imo. Not much effort has been put into imagining or predicting the potential and likely benefits of GW.
I come from a medical practice background and have been stunned that anyone thinks peer-reviewed articles published in a journal are therefore true or should be accepted as given truth. The peer reviewers of the journal, or the like, usually do a good job at whatever they want to do, but verifying the “truth” of whatever they decide to publish is almost never anything they presume to have done. I’ll bet that not many of the 2500 ipcc scientists would say that that’s what they have done.
Instead, my interpretation of “peer-review” is that the real peer-review starts after the study or article is published, when everyone else who is a peer in some sense, and even their mother, can take a look at the article if they want to and see if it makes sense or works.
In fact, I think that this is exactly what Steve McIntyre and many other alleged “deniers” have been doing. And, again, I see this as the real peer-review.
Re#130, JohnB UK:
Precaution measures for such unlucky cooling event are already done on the next side of the Pond.
To give you an example. US farmers grow corn with average yield of 10 ton/ga. Most recent genetically modified corn from Monsanto already produces about 13 t/ga. For comparison, record-high corn yield in France in killer-hot 2005 was 3.75 t/ga. The only thing UK need to double the production of meat and milk (corn is major component of cattle and poultry feed) and other food stuff is to allow UK farmers to plant GM seeds. Of course, it should be done gradually, to avoid catastrophic food overproduction. As an alternative, surplus grain could be used to produce first-generation biofuels, substituting no less than 10% of UK oil consumption, or agricultural acreage could be halved to get more space for forests and wildlife.
Also, there are plenty of genetically modified agricultural crops optimized for colder climate, and of course for hotter climate.
Another example. Greenhouse grown of soft-skinned vegetables, like tomato, cucumbers, sweet pepper, lettuce. Couple of small municipalities around Toronto and sunny Vancouver produce 2/3 of North America greenhouse vegetables, and are near-monopolistic suppliers of such vegetables to NA market, including sunny California, and exporting it oversea, to Pacific Rim countries for example. Yield for tomato is about 500000 kg/ga per year, thanks for carbon fertilization (greenhouse operators routinely combust NG, cool the exhaust and vent it into greenhouses, rising CO2 concentrations to 750-1000 ppm). BTW, greenhouse baby sweet pepper is incredibly tasty.
Spearheading of AGW is not the only stupid thing EU bureaucracy is doing.
P.S. UK is practically energy independent.
Chris 227
please give any evidence of your claim on this subject.
If you think people are so ill informed here, I would rather say, I’ts you who has no idea about the rate of tropospheric warming with respect to surface. Even if you take RSS, the warming at the surface is much too high compared to troposphere
again 227
junkscience is not my favorite read either. But their list of temperature anomalies for GISS, Hadcrut and tropospheric temperature is interesting. Don’t come to say the graphs there are fabricated, no they are just graphs made of the official data sets. So maybe you could inform yourself about tropospheric warming with respect to surface and the cooling in the troposphere over antarctica. And you will also see, that there is no warming in the tropics.
here ist the link
second try for the link:
Climate Audit linked to on page 2 of this article in The Register.
Chris #227;
Regarding the (lower) troposphere (in the tropics), Christie et al 2007 [1] doesnt seem to agree with you:
“Several comparisons are consistent with a 26-year trend and error estimate for the UAH lower troposphere product for the full tropics of +0.05 ± 0.07, which is very likely less than the tropical surface trend of +0.13 K / decade”
Regarding the Antarctica, even IPCC acknowledges [2] that no overall warming has occurred, even though they express that in a very convoluted way:
“Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show inter-annual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region”
Geotime has a good discussion of Antarctica [3]. Peter Doran is interviewed:
“All the continents on Earth are warming except Antarctica, which could be just a delayed response. Our 35-year trend analysis highlights the heterogeneous nature of the trends in Antarctica, and the models need to catch up to match the mixed signals.”
Geotime also mentions what used to be common knowledge that “most climate models predict that if global temperatures are going to change, the change will be noticed first at the poles”. And indeed. If one looks at IPCC TAR Figure 9.2 [4], it shows most of Antarctica warming in the first decade of this century, and more interesting, cooling around the Antarctic Peninsula and in the adjacent Weddell Sea. In 2001 the models got it exactly backwards from the observed trend, but, as you will probably tell us, all of this doesnt really matter. The models have improved tremendously since 2001, and, in any case, the community has moved on to more challenging predictions…sorry, forecasts. Or is it scenarios?
Anyway, you made at least to bold assessments wrapped in a rather arrogant tone that is very much debatable.
[1] http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2005JD006881.shtml
[2] AR4, SPM page 9. (See also http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch09.pdf)
[3] http://www.geotimes.org/mar02/NN_antarctica.html
[4] http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-09.PDF
#236
Andrey, thanks for that “food for thought”(insert smiley here)
On the energy front we became a net importer of fuel in 2004. 8% of production is based on nuclear stations which are approaching end of life and becoming unreliable – plans to replace are still not fixed.
Renewable energy only contributes around 4%.
So we are already an energy importer in a relatively benign climate.
I read this sort of thing in the Royal Society’s “debunking” of objections to AGW – in fact I think there was a list of several such objections where subsequent research had shown there were actually flaws in the data. And all I could think was to wonder if similar due diligence had been shown to all the data which did appear to support AGW. Because in all seriousness what are the odds that the only flaws and misunderstandings happen to have supported the sceptic’s case…?
Let’s see. We’ve only started to study these Noctilucent clouds. During this short time, these Noctilucent clouds have changed.
Ergo. This change must be caused by climate change.
Anyone else spot the logical disconnect here?
Given the costs associated with AGW abatement. ISO 2001 is not a strong enough standard. The GCM’s should adhere to the full DO-178B.
Thes are the problems i have with Chris’s comments
Assertion with no evidence provided.
Assertion with no evidence provided.
Assertion with no evidence provided.
Then he cites a study without giving the slightest clue that he has read more than the title. He could easily summarize the relevant chart or argument, and save us all a bit of time. Instead, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that he hasn’t read it.
Chris,
Get off of the CO2 lag. Nobody says that it disproves CO2 warming. What it doesn’t do though, is PROVE CO2 warming. Gavin Schmidt, the “scientist”, put his oar in teh water on that one to defend this obvious lie by Gore, for political reasons. When scientists start getting in to politics, they are no longer scientists.. Where in the definition of scientist is the part about promoting an illogical argument? I would think that Gavin’s job would be to straighten out a politician like Gore on such an obvious point. Gavin chose politics.
Compare that with the post #242. Arguments laid out clearly, sources cited. If you have a beef with his logic, he has given you a place to start.
By the way Chris, I am glad you post here. I just wish you would bring up your game a bit.
Lubos Motl has a post on model agreement with observation, or lack thereof.
jae, re 211:
JAE, perhaps the positive feedback of the water vapor in the tropics is overcome by the negative feedback (reflection of incoming radiation) of the low to mid level clouds so often associated with that abundance of water vapor. Is that a possibility?
By the way, I, too, am not convinced that 2 X CO2 ADDS 3.7 w/m^2 to the system. As near as this non-scientist can tell, AGW theory is a classic case of the logical fallacy of begging the question, that is, it is arrived at by assuming the truth of what it purports to prove. To prove that a doubling of CO2 will cause a rise of 2.5 deg C — which amounts to proving that the positive feedbacks overpower the negative feedbacks — AGW proponents begin by calculating that 3.7 W/m2 forcing — a calculation that assumes the positive feedbacks overpower the negative feedbacks.
This, I believe, is why Steve will never get an answer to his request for a non-model derivation of this number. The only way to generate the number in question is to make certain assumptions, and those happen to be the same assumptions they are seeking to prove by the 2 x CO2 = 2.5 deg claim.
Just my impression, FWIW.
Me too. Sort of how some folks think there really was a 2,500 scientist consensus on the IPCC report.
I was speaking of the economic concept of profit motive, but I suppose you could stretch the concept to include a “prestige” or “income” motive. I don’t think it has the same ultimate effect, because while the profit motive encourages efficiency, the “prestige” or “income” motive doesn’t necessarily do so. How many times have we seen an academic put out 5 versions of a paper on the same data, thus padding a CV? That’s the opposite of efficiency.
Careful — do you really want science to be driven by the profit motive? If so, in the end it would produce only what “sells” the most and would be reduced to the shopping network variety and Walmart. 🙂
I think that any science used to formulate policy should be subject to rigorous standards of audit, and that more formal data checking should be performed on such research. There is nothing wrong with the profit motive, but it should stay in the realm of economics. There are other means of ensuring high standards for non-profit orgs, professional bodies, etc,.
@Susann,
Some science is driven by profit motives. These scientists file patents, get funding from entrepreneurs etc. They may also publish peer review articles in parallel.
The result is, these scientists know peer review doesn’t do what other types or reviews do.
On 251,
I knew people were jumping to conclusions when they assumed you thought the profit motive was necessarily bad. 🙂
For the few who are wondering how to make smilies, you type a colon ‘:’ and then a closing parenthesis ‘)’ for the normal kind. The blog software will replace many conventional emoticons with the images.
The Ph.D. and post-doc publication requirements to get a professor position at a top-flight university have escalated immensely compared to decades ago. The same holds true for tenure. And, of course, having your name attached to anything notable (IPCC, for example) certainly helps when it comes to tenure.
#221 >> the fact that Henrys law explicitly does not apply to CO2 and salt water
Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
#231 >> So, if you want to measure the air temperature, you need a radiation shield.
But lucia, wouldn’t you also agree that measuring the temperature in the shade isn’t quite right either, since although you avoid the error of measuring the IR absorption of the thermometer in sunshine, you also avoid measuring the air in sunshine, which is actually what we want to measure.
>> do you really want science to be driven by the profit motive? If so, in the end it would produce only what sells the most
Don’t be naive, it is certainly driven by the profit motive. The only big buyers are the US government funding agencies. The sellers are research sweat shops, previously known as our institutions of higher learning.
255
That’s what the openings at the sides are for. If there is any kind of air-movement/breeze, air that is in the sunshine will move through the ‘hutch’ and be measured.
I’m a little late to a lot of statements. Apologies for being so far behind the conversation…
=====
#209 Pat Keating:
[snip]
=====
#211 jae:
You have made a few references to this magic “layer” where the net radiation balance changes. I don’t believe the greenhouse effect is dependent on such a layer. I think I know what you’re talking about, but please explain.
=====
#217 Ellis:
Anthony Watts would be the right person to ask about Stevenson screens. If the thermometer is not screened, then the temperature would be *strongly* affected by direct sunlight and the colour of the thermometer. It could be like the difference between air temperature and the temperature of a black car parked in the sun.
As far as I can tell, the Stanhill “paper” is not actually peer-reviewed. Eos is more of a newspaper than a journal (http://www.agu.org/pubs/eos.html). I have seen other papers that show global dimming turning to brightening circa 1990.
=====
#225 jae:
In my limited time in academia, I found that most researchers are keen to make new discoveries rather than verify discoveries made by others. [snip]. That’s not a very convincing anti-AGW argument considering the funding available for the “contrarians”. I think it’s better to focus on the science instead of the funding.
=====
#255 Gunnar:
I’m sure you realize that the current US administration is not a big supporter of research or results that support AGW. As I said to jae, it’s probably better to focus on the science.
>> Thats what the openings at the sides are for. If there is any kind of air-movement/breeze
So right off, no wind = temp way too low. But also, as we know from personal experience, as soon as we step into the shade, big drop in temp. As soon as the air steps into the shade, big drop in temp.
What about IR measurement?
#234 Philip_B
#237 Gaudenz Mischol
#242 Michael Hansen
On model lack of fit to relative rate of cooling of troposphere.
The last line of alarmist defense is ad hom attack on John Christy.
Coming soon to a theatre near you.
>> Im sure you realize that the current US administration is not a big supporter of research
I guess you thought I was making an anti-AGW argument with this statement? Hardly, I was just stating the truth about how science is done, and how our once fine universities have long ago switched to consider students as an annoying necessary evil, rather than customers. The university’s real customers are the funding agencies.
And no, a new administration cannot change this, since it is congress that spends money, as you should probably know by now.
bender says:
Evidence?
Is there something that invalidates this report:
Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences. Thomas R. Karl, Susan J. Hassol, Christopher D. Miller, and William L. Murray, editors, 2006. A Report by the Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Washington, DC.
Manufacturing Consenus?
What is John Christy’s estimate of climate sensitivity and how does he derive said estimate?
His comment that CO2 is plant food is not convincing.
However, as pointed out elsewhere in the thread, these ‘recalibrations’ of data always seem to happen after the data show problems with the AGW position. [snip]
Is this “not a big supporter of research?” $9 bil from 2002 to Feb 2007?
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=texttrans-english&y=2007&m=February&x=20070207171758eaifas0.6189997
That’s enough to pay $150k for each of those 5 yrs to 12,000 researchers. Or if every researcher needed a $150k salary and $100k in expenses each year (which would be a top-flight prof with a tremendously expensive workload), that’s enough for 7,200 researchers.
Ever heard of the FACE experiments?
#263 P[snip]
There have been many satellite temperature adjustments, and they have gone in both directions. Table 2.3 (page 43) in the report linked by Boris above (link below) shows the following adjustments for UAH:
-0.03C/decade: Linear Diurnal Drift Correction
+0.03C/decade: Removal of residual annual cycle related to hot target variations
+0.10C/decade: Orbital decay
-0.07C/decade: Removal of dependence on time variations of hot target temp
+0.008C/decade: Non-linear diurnal correction
-0.004C/decade: Tightened criteria for data acceptance
+0.035C/decade: Correction of diurnal drift adjustment
The net adjustment has increased the trend, but the incremental adjustments have gone both ways.
Click to access sap1-1-draft3-all.pdf
Dunno, go ask him. Does he even have one? How does IPCC derive theirs?
Measure temperature. Measure CO2. Find slope of temperature. Find slope of CO2. Divide. Oila, derived.
Mark
re: 259/263
Was the troposphere data being compared to the surface station data? (the data that needs correcting too?)
re: 253 “I think that any science used to formulate policy should be subject to rigorous standards of audit, and that more formal data checking should be performed on such research. There is nothing wrong with the profit motive, but it should stay in the realm of economics. There are other means of ensuring high standards for non-profit orgs, professional bodies, etc,..”
Adhering to the scientific method in the first place would help.
What has the word “science” come to mean nowadays anyway?
Science isn’t a person, place or thing or group, it is a set of protocols or “rules” if you will to explore the world around us and to at least FAIRLY explain to some degree humanly possible a certain process or phenomenon.
I do not have a degree in science, but I certainly can follow the scientific method when I am looking at something. (Go SteveMac Go!) Yet, when you follow the scientific method and disagree with this global warming -THEORY- because some of the evidence claimed to support it , which is not proven into any kind of LAW what so ever, you are called horrible names. Even if you have a degree in science and are considered an expert in a field of science, even if that science pertains to areas of study involved in the GW Theory.
AGW is getting special treatment here and now becoming policy. Many things about the data or the handling of it fly or skirt around the scientific method and also at the same time the word “science” and even “scientist” is elevated to mean something other then it should, which is: a set of protocols and people who follow those protocols… all hail the consensus and all that.
(I don’t even know where computer models fit into all of this)
I just heard a report on the radio this morning about how students from the United States do poorly in the areas of science and math compared to other modern nations yet they rate on self esteem much higher-in other words they do not think they do that badly in science and math. LOL
Boris, #261 you ask for evidence.
I’ve no time to play linkie wars with you. You can download the Douglas, Christy, Pearson & Singer paper from here: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html
When you’re ready to talk facts, not links, let me know.
#260 welikerocks:
That’s just not true. You get called “horrible” names when you cherry-pick data, distort the truth, repeat discredited theories as fact, and ignore the scientific method.
If you “follow the scientific method” and publish your theories or results, then the science can move forward. Subsequent publications may disagree with yours and question the quality of your work (just as you disagreed with prior publications), but that’s how progress is made.
Well, the IPCC derives theirs from theory, models and observations.
But the reason I ask is that the skeptic scientists such as Christy and Ball never really present arguments about CO2’s effect. They simply make assertions. If they are so sure that climate sensitivity to CO2 is small shouldn’t they be able to delineate an argument? I’m not necessarily asking you to argue for them, but it’s just strange is all.
And of course I meant that his argument about “plant food” does nothing to persuade me that doubling CO2 will not cause a rise of 3`C.
257, John V:
Look at the Held and Sodden paper I linked above. I think that’s what they are doing, but I could be wrong. Any help in understanding it is appreciated.
Ohhhh. Thx for that.
jae, thanks for the link. I’m trying to improve my understanding as well.
272, Boris:
Say WHAT? Do some googling, man.
257,
Specifically?
JohnV I understand your objections to what I said. Maybe the perspective I have is slightly different then yours. My husband was working on his masters when the first IPCC report was issued. We have it here in the garage in the box. NONE of his professors discussed it at any length with him and his fellows, but they had to mention it and look at it. They did not think it was worth discussing: too flawed, and the problems contained in them, are still the same problems they have in them fast forward 2007. My husband also was hired by the California EPA out of school; worked there for a little over a year and left to join the private sector because he was so disgusted with fudged data and sloppy science practiced there used to make policy. A lot of skeptics have grey hair (somebody mentioned this before) See my comment on US students. I think the science standards have changed. “Standards” as in the set place where we are all convinced.
“Hockey Team” or “believer”is a horrible name? …compared to shill…do I have to list them all?
Boris,
Here is a suggestion. Why not go over and explain to Lubos why your linked study is correct and the Douglas, Christy, Pearson & Singer paper is wrong? Or you could explain it to us with enough detail for us to understand your reasoning. Explain it, not assert it.
Rich in Az, yes, the places CO2 lives are at 100 percent of the total absorbtion and scattering of radiation transmitted by the atmosphere already. The idea is that whatever that 100% number represents is going to go up due to what CO2 is doing. Or in other words, more IR being absorbed, and (let’s say) 50% of what’s released going downward and raising the temperature more. The models (and looks into the past from papers like Craig’s) helps give us an idea of how to quantify things; how in reality the system is going to operate?
The point being there’s much more for RC to be discussing and looking at, but we see how they are not exactly being critical of everything equally (and that there’s things they won’t discuss). Regardless of what it is.
270: The paper kept coming back “unable to connect” but from Lubos’ description it looks like they are talking tropical tropospheric trends. The uncertainty in the data does not allow a complete evaluation of the models, so I think we can agree that Lubos’ claims are ridiculous.
Of course that it is .
Wanting to ignore the total dependence of the AGW theories on public money , true both for Europe and US , would be to ignore the vital fact that causes that studies are done , models financed , computers bought and politically correct results found .
Of course science has often been funded with public money but generally the politicians and the public neither understood nor cared about general relativity or quantum mechanics .
This is the first time that there is such a massive interdependence between politicians who leaned out of the window so far that they can’t go back anymore and a happy mix of scientists and pseudo scientists who gave them the argument to lean out so far .
Specifically in France and in UK , the heads of state put their personal credibility and their political future on this one particular coin flip .
Nobody would imagine a guy paid by public money coming to Mr Sarkozy (French president) and telling him that his politics is all wrong , his ideas are all wrong , his advicers got him in trouble and that he’ll loose the next elections because unfortunately the scientist team has just proven that the AGW theory was dead .
The climate science is the only field of science where it became impossible or hypocrytical to separate scientific work and results from political strategies .
I have always found ridiculous to the extreme when AGW faithful tried to deviate the argument by inventing giantic private funds secretly feeding anti AGW research .
Of course that those secret teams with huge private fundings don’t exist .
Anybody going in that direction I’d challenge him to take ONLY 10% of the public money , so 700 M$ , and find
a SINGLE scientific team (about 500 top people , staff and material for this amount) doing research and publishing anti AGW scientific papers (for such a team it would be at least hundred publications a year) .
And that only for 10 % of the public funding !
As such a team can’t be found , that means for AGW faithful that it is surely secret .
Of course hundred strongly anti AGW papers backed by runs of multimillion $ climate models a year … it wouldn’t stay secret very long 🙂
Let me guess. Boris is John A’s sock puppet. Snip away.
>> And of course I meant that his argument about plant food does nothing to persuade me that doubling CO2 will not cause a rise of 3C.
He expected you to make the next logical inference all by yourself, which is that the plant kingdom will probably expand to balance out humanity. After all, human C02 output only makes it appear like there is somewhat more animal life than there really is. Perhaps similar to when great herds of animals covered the earth. The overall natural trend is for humans to produce less C02 per capita.
Another overall trend is population stabilization or decline. http://www.worldpress.org/Asia/1979.cfm Even the birth rates in India have been steadily falling and the growth of the middle class will ensure that this trend continues. This touches on yet another assumption of the catastrophic AGW scenario which is contradicted by reality.
>> Let me guess. Boris
I don’t get what’s making you resort to ad-hom?
re: #271, John V., December 11th, 2007 at 10:16 am, says:
The science may move forward but often only with difficulty. The peer review that opinions on this site are subjected to is often more rigorous than the peer review procedure that mainstream articles are subjected to. And, even conventionally peer reviewed studies are not always politely received. My own experience, from more than 30 years ago, has some bearing on the issue.
Peer reviewed articles versus established dogma: Once as an analytical chemist for a government regulatory agency, I was given the task of finding why a chemist’s results on a quality control sample varied from the results reported by most analysts. The automatic assumption was that the analyst had made a mistake, that the official method, (which had been peer reviewed and tested), could not be wrong. My preliminary findings were that the results varied depending upon the dilution factor used by the analyst. The analyst with the “wrong” results had used a dilution that was allowable, but the majority of other analysts had used a dilution that resulted in different results. When I first reported that the analyst was not at fault, that the official method was not perfect, the authorities were not receptive to the idea. I continued to investigate the issue and as a result published a co-authored peer reviewed article in a major analytical journal. My results were never challenged, but considerable effort was required before a cautionary footnote was added to the official method. The hostility I encountered reminds me of the hostility that AGW skeptics often encounter.
Christy, interviewed on CNN about sharing the prize with Gore:
#284 Ad hom?
I’m not attacking Boris. I just can’t believe that somebody intelligent would assert something about a paper he hasn’t read. ‘I haven’t read the paper but Motl’s claims about it are ridiculous.’ I am suspicious that “Boris” is not an intelligent POV, but a device designed to bait informed skeptics. Hey, I could be wrong. I was wrong about TCO. I thought he was a sock puppet too.
No, TCO was just a bulldog.
John A’s?
Mark
#286 My sympathy for the man grows.
289, it was obvious that in that last sentence, he was biting his tongue.
#288 Yes, John A’s. If you want to spark a fight, you throw out some fresh meat and let the dogs go after it. Boris as bait-tosser. It’s not implausible.
Boris, are you for real?
Let’s see:
Theory: Steve M. has an open request for this and none has been forthcoming. It is not in the IPCC report for whatever reason. Must be so obvious everybody overlooked it.
Models: Oh yeah. That’s a winning ticket.
Observations: I already noted how that works, winning ticket number 2. We’ve got a circular argument going on here, since the theory is assumed, but never proved.
Mark
OK, I just figured that since John A’s opinions are so diametrically opposite of Boris’ you may have mistyped the name (lot of John’s running around, too). I agree wholeheartedly, however, about the concept.
Mark
#285 M Jeff:
Your experience demonstrates that over-turning generally accepted science is difficult. It should be. Remember that it has taken years, even decades, for AGW to become a generally accepted fact. 25 years ago it was the new, untested theory that met lots of resistance. As the evidence has accumulated the confidence in its reality has increased. The core IPCC conclusions have moved from “more likely than not” to “very likely” in the last 15 years.
The parts of AGW science that are wrong (and of course parts are wrong) will be resolved with new research. Some of the revisions will support catastrophic problems ahead, while other revisions will refute them. Our understanding will improve.
Perhaps, if we’re *really* lucky, some new discovery will show that the current warming is entirely natural and will fix itself in a few years. Until that happens, the evidence overwhelmingly points to AGW being a reality.
That’s the irony is that it’s the democrats, if anyone, that are undermining science in pursuit of a policy. ‘war on science’ indeed. ‘the science is settled’ means it’s time for scientists to pack up their game and find something better to do. The reality is that you can not adjust or adapt to climate change until you know what it is exactly you’re facing. But, no, Christy is the antichrist. It’s absurd.
NO Sam that can’t be right if 100% is already absorbed that means increased CO2 will not produced increased absorption. So… no warming. The actual mechanism is more complicated but the reason everyone talks about CO2 doubling and not about quadrupling is that even the models don’t show much effect for a second doubling.
Boris,
Here is the paper.
Click to access DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
2 X CO2 —-) (.333333…) X 2.5 deg C.
#292 Mark T:
SteveMc and you both know it’s impossible to calculate the temperature sensitivity to doubling CO2 from first principles. Models are required. Empirical analysis of past temperatures against CO2 concentrations and solar forcings are required (which themselves require models).
I believe it was steven mosher who suggested it was like asking for a calculation of the lift on a 747 without using models. It could also be compared to deriving today’s high temperature from first principles (without a model or empirical patterns).
I give Steve McIntyre credit for cleverly asking a question that seems simple, but is in fact not simple at all. It’s a great way to seed doubt.
—
#293 Mark T:
I assume you are implying that Boris is my sock puppet (since I’m the other John around here). I can assure you that’s not the case.
295, since we’re this far afield (and ripe for snipping), did anyone else notice the parallel between the IPCC ARs and the NIE report? Discuss.
But then…. A X H20 —–) -Y deg C and B X aerosols ——–) – Z dec C
Tsk, tsk. There are several John’s around here, and the other last initial one is John M, whom bender has taken to task as an advocate in the past.
No kidding. The point is that models are based on the observations, tweaked to fit so to speak. Anybody can set up some complex feedback system with some gain parameters and get a fit to the observations. It is a circular argument that is preceded by an unproven assumption there is a forced relationship with substantial gain. Without that assumption, you may just as well use a low-pass FIR with specified lag (in filter terms that means phase) and appropriate gain/attenuation.
Mark
Over at Real Climate Gavin Schimdt explains how they decide what is good science worthy of their attention:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/are-temperature-trends-affected-by-economic-activity-ii/langswitch_lang/bg#comment-75161
“The seriousness of our attention goes in inverse proportion to how the authors spin their results.”
So if spun as a catastrophe, a la non-science of Mark Lynas, it gets serious attention. Ross McKitrick downplays the catastrophe talk in a peer-reviewed journal, but his work must be unworthy. Real Science. Right.
This implies they wait for “the spin” before contemplating the science itself. i.e. They are not acting as scientists but as consensus keepers.
John V,
you asked: “Is it the norm for RH to fall with altitude?”
I haven’t got a plot of a yearly averaged radiosounding but 12, one for each month.
Here is January for the midday sounding:
Of course this plot refers to Northern Italy, but if you look at soundings taken around the world, almost all show that T and Td diverge with altitude.
Moisture doesn’t go up “motu proprio”. In fact high concentrations of humidity remain in the lower troposphere, close to its source. Strong uplifts are needed to carry it up as in the tropical convergence zone or at the boundary associated with the polar front. Outside these narrow zones, the rest of the latitudinal bands has, at a first appoximation, downward dispacement of dry, cold air.
Actually I was thinking John V is John A’s sock puppet too! (And I knew that Mark T was thinking I meant to write John M)
Anyways …
Cease this straw man argument. John V you well know that few here dispute A in AGW < 0. So it is not an existential question, but a quantititive one. List for me the posts where it is argued that GW is entirely due to things other than A.
Take your straw man out to the trash can. Please. Now. You can leave your sock there too.
Reminds me of the old addage about the basic principle of engineering: Cut to suit, beat to fit, and paint to match.
Stupid WordPress tag characters! Change < to > in #305.
Yeah, I’d prefer if WordPress used [] instead.
Mark
304, Paolo:
I’ve noticed this, but can’t figure out why it’s true. One would think HOH vapor would rise rather quickly, due to it’s low molecular weight, cf. other air molecules. What holds it down? Van der Waals forces?
>> WordPress tag characters! Change
Ahh, that’s not WordPress, it’s basic html
309, entropy.
BB code uses []. The question then, is it possible to force WordPress to use BB code instead?
Mark
bender,
You claimed that tropospheric trends were out of whack with models. If you meant tropospheric trends in the tropics, then please be more specific, especially before you accuse me of not being rigorous enough.
Are you for real? Do you have an estimate for climate sensitivity? If so, what is it and what is it based on?
bender:
I often encounter the argument here that the A in AGW should be removed. (Some even argue that the W should be removed).
Do I really need to prefix everything with exactly the right adjectives to be understood? Let a couple of things slide. Relax.
Anyways, if we are *really* lucky it will be *entirely* natural or even mostly natural. Currently the evidence is that the majority of the recent warming is very likely anthropogenic.
Clearly, bender is Steve Bloom’s sock puppet. 🙂
>> is it possible to force WordPress to use BB code instead
It’s naturally treating what we write here as html. The angle bracket is an html reserved character. It has nothing to do with WordPress.
>> I often encounter the argument here that the A in AGW should be removed. (Some even argue that the W should be removed
Don’t forget the argument that the G should be removed. I personally believe in aGw. Others said “no G” (no global spatial average). 🙂
Interesting paper on the possible pseudoscience behind the supposed evils of second-hand tobacco smoke. There’s a lot in common with some of the pseudoscience and politics associated with AGW.
JV says:
“25 years ago it was the new, untested theory that met lots of resistance. As the evidence has accumulated the confidence in its reality has increased. The core IPCC conclusions have moved from more likely than not to very likely in the last 15 years.”
“pushed” is more like it 🙂
and 301:
“Empirical analysis of past temperatures against CO2 and solar forcings are required (which themselves require models)”
There’s the bugger geologically speaking. You can’t look at data in 50 yr or 100 yr tiny timescales(like the CWP) in the past and compare them to the CWP enough to say the words “unprecedented”
What EVIDENCE? Climate Models? Questionable radiative models? Hockeysticks?
er..the word not the words LOL
re: 314
Do you consider the output of a model to be evidence?
Boris,
I crossposted your comment on Lubos blog, but for starters, why is what he says “ridiculous”?
In actual quantifiable terms. Or are you going to assert authority of your sources again. Are you just a cheerleader or do you really understand the statements you make?
Susann: The way it was put made it seem like Soros himself directly gave Hansen some money. Which was not the case. But there is a bit of a link: A fair way to put it would be that the Strategic Opportunities Fund/Government Accountability Project/Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations (which spent about 420 billion dollars in 2006!) provided legal and media advice to Hansen over the issue of officials at NASA ordering him to refer press inquires to the public affairs office and have a public affairs representative at any interviews. Then they credited this “campaign” as responsible for NASA deciding to revist its media policy, which Hansen (and obviously GAP) considered censorship. (123)
They spent a total of 2.5 million on everything done in the OSI-Washington DC office so I can’t tell how much the “legal and media advice” that was provided was worth. (Or if those funds for the advice were part of the 700K for the politicization of science, or the 450K for legal infrastructure for global warming issues.) (145)
Soros funding Hansen? Hardly. Hansen (or his lawyer) getting legal and media advice by the GAP, yes. (Sorry if you already went over this) But there is a link between the two, but there’s no evidence there was anything more than billing time for lawyers and media consultants indirectly provided to Hansen on the issue. And it hardly seems like a big deal anyway. Anything else is simply conjecture.
Source: 2006 Soros Foundations Network Report
Re #314
John V.,
Completely unsolicited snip-worthy observations…
You say earlier
a sentiment I entirely endorse. Yet it is completely at odds with the persona you are cultivating here at Climate Audit. You create havoc by micro-parsing other people’s statements and when things get contentious fall back on ‘Oh I misunderstood your statement.” A lot more letting things slide will cut down on the noise and allow you and the rest to focus on the science and the analysis of the data. Your wry observations such as
don’t have any basis in fact and are a simple projection of your inherent biases. You don’t strike me as an individual the least bit aware of your biases so IMHO the zeal with which you prosecute others for going against your conclusions relegates you to the troll-bin.
Opentemp is a noble effort and I applaud your success at transparent and accessible analysis of the surface temperature data. But that doesn’t excuse the tendentious jibes. Anyone who wants their arguments to be taken seriously needs to keep the POV advocacy in check.
WA; I agree “The actual mechanism is more complicated”. 100% of current absorbtion and scattering with 1745 ppb methane mole concentration is not the same amount as 100% with 3000 ppb.
Overall, forgetting that; what about the chemical interactions between the GHG and non-GHG? What does increasing and decreasing the cabonate or bicarbonate content of the oceans do? How do things act if the increased (non-wv) GHG are encountered by IR first before wv? What if the clouds/particulates block the IR to the lower GHG more or less? How much does an increase in nitrous oxide “push” wv out of the way and take over?
324 , Teresa Heinz, gave Hansen an award. little bit of cashy too. “Heinz Environment Award” 250k. And according to wikipedia also won the Dan David prize this year.
“The Dan David Prize annually gives three $1 million prizes to honor achievements aimed at understanding or affecting the world. There are three categories of prize the Past, Present and Future. The topics vary from year to year. Of the three $1 million prizes, each year the laureates donate 10 percent of the money for 20 scholarships around the world, and 20 scholarships at Tel Aviv University.
The Prizes have been offered each year since 2002, making the Dan David Prize a relative newcomer to the arena of large global prizes.”
The Dan David Prize was founded by international businessman and philanthropist Dan David
-not saying bad or good just saying
The uncertainties in the data do not allow models to be fully evaluated wrt tropical tropospheric conditions, so his conclusion that CS is off is not supported. Of course, I still can’t access the paper in question, so maybe Christy et al have added something new. I have serious doubts, however.
#325 Earle Williams:
I generally try to carefully read what others post. When I’ve misunderstood I generally apologize and try to get back on subject. I certainly don’t try to micro-parse — any examples would be appreciated.
Occasionally I’ll give a little jab, but nothing that even comes close to many of the statements about “the team”.
As for the temperature sensitivity question, it’s been asked dozens of times and the answer is always the same — it’s not possible to answer from first principles. Those who ask already know the answer, so why do they keep asking?
It seems this un-threaded is starting to overheat.
I’ll try to stay out of it for a while.
Boris,
Here is the paper, same as I linked in 296
Click to access DOUGLASPAPER.pdf
Yes, I’m just saying the non-hyped statement is that GAP provided legal and media advice to support Hansen after he said NASA’s information policy on press releases and interviews amount to censorship. The Foundation’s report itself didn’t say how much it cost, what the cost was accounted for under, if there was any cash involved at all, or even if Hansen was directly advised about either legal or media matters. Just sayin’. 🙂
Discussion about the climate sensitivity going on over at Tamino’s blog:
Question: What paper or study (other than the IPCC), states the math or science behind the 3 deg C/CO2 doubling claim?
Has anybody here seen the 61 studies listed in the last compilation? The chart he links to does show the average of all the studies centered around 3C.
About like Readers Digest…
There have been others that have been wrong, too…
Does statiscics fall into that listing of displines?
So they tell us that there isn’t a “single” paper that states this value, but rather thousands of studies that average out to 3C (+/- 1.5C). So either RTFR, or agree with the IPCC and move on…
Btw, Steve Sadlov, the ever-present weather watcher, despite a late start, the CO snow season has kicked into high gear with some fury. Wolf Creek (SW mountains, San Juans) has gotten around 140″ in the last two weeks. It is snowing in COS as well, and the Northern mountains are getting their share, too (over 25% of their seasonal averages). La Nina snow seasons are unpredictable if anything… wait, they all are. 😉
Mark
re: welikerocks, #319, December 11th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
This may be too far off topic for even this unthreaded thread, but speaking of timescales, there is a new possibly significant as yet unpublicized mosasaur fossil being examined in my neighborhood, (which is presently over 500 feet above sea level). Extinction and change are the norm.
RE: #332 – I’ve sort of had my eye off the ball lately. Late fall is turning out to be cold for many and quite snowy for some. Last year we had a somewhat balmy late fall here in the central West Coast, but not this year. Since mid November it’s been pretty chilly, and getting more so now. Getting shots of Yukon air on a fairly regular basis. Doesn’t do squat for snow, y’all are getting it all. Well, I guess that’s the price we pay for great seasons such as 2004 – 2005 and 2005 – 2006. We can’t always expect to have things opening up before Halloween! At least they are open now.
From John V
Very likely what John V? That the sign of the effect is positive? Nobody is arguing that. Does this “Very Likely” assertion include the possibility that CS=1C? I will answer that for you, Yes it does. It includes the possiblility that CS = .1C, it is only about the sign.
From what I can gather, you are of the belief that CS =2.5 to 5C, and that anybody who thinks it is, for example, 1.1 C and logarithmic, is a denier.
>> It seems this un-threaded is starting to overheat.
I for one winced at the unnecessary ad-hom hurled in your direction. Let’s all try to be more civil.
Is this your estimate? How did you arrive at this number?
re: #337, Boris, December 11th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Because I agree with yorick, the number must have been arrived at by consensus.
No: 328 John V:
John, I am curious about this statement. What does it mean to “answer from first principles”? Does that mean to “answer without making untested assumptions”?
That’s settled. The ‘A’, the ‘G’, and the ‘W’ need to be removed from AGW.
Really, JohnV, I’ve only seen one or two people argue that there is no A or W.
Why do you insist on setting up these silly strawmen?
That’s convenient. Keep the super secret error margins large enough so that no matter what the real world produces, you can claim that it is within range of the models predicted.
Re: #221
Decision time: A policy wonk or a policy wink.
Said he with the drip torch. Hey, if you want the heat turned down, quit with the unsupportable propositions.
I was actually thinking Gunnar was yet another sock puppet in a John A puppet show. But his display of “civility” toward Jerry over in Svalgaard Solar Theory has me thinking this can not be the talk of any puppet.
My mistake (if it is indeed a mistake) was an honest one, not an ad hom. [Sometimes you guys really do sound like puppets in a puppet show, you know.]
>> John, I am curious about this statement. What does it mean to answer from first principles? Does that mean to answer without making untested assumptions?
I will answer for John, since we’ve been a bit too testy. No, it means that the relationship in question is not a direct causal one. For example, Voltage causes current to flow, so we can write V=IR. First Principles refers to basic science. However, a sensitivity is an attribute of an object. The object of course follows the laws of reality, but the parameter in question depends on the physical attributes of the object. For example, a car and MPG. You cannot derive what the exact MPG will be for a car by first principles. It depends on too many small variations in manufacturing tolerances, etc.
Similarly, the sensitivity of the earth climate to solar radiation cannot be derived directly from first principles. It depends on the thermodynamic, physical and chemical attributes of the earth, and the details of the sun. The same is true for C02 climate sensitivity. Neither the sun nor C02 directly cause a certain temperature. It is something that should come from empirical data. Hence, I believe John V is correct about this. (Although I don’t agree that Steve M was being devious in the question, I think it’s an honest question about the alleged physics involved)
>> Thats settled. The A, the G, and the W need to be removed from AGW.
Right, a dog exhaled C02, and after the heat of the air was accounted for, it caused localized cooling.
I argue that we need to focus on AGHGE (Anthropogenic Green House Gas Emissions). Then, we stack up AGHGE against all other processes involving GHGs. Then, we view GHGs as a forcing, one of several. Then, we look at feedbacks. Then, we try to answer the question, what is the actual set of impacts of AGHGEs?
yorick:
The “core IPCC conclusion” I was referring to was that AGW is the dominant cause of recent warming.
I’ve never called anybody a denier. I think that anybody who believes their evidence is stronger than the IPCC’s should present it. I came here looking for it. I’ve learned a lot, but not much that has changed my opinion about the core IPCC conclusions.
BTW, logarithmic sensitivity is implicit in defining sensitivity in terms of CO2 *doublings* instead of linear CO2 increases. So you agree with the IPCC summaries on that point at least.
=====
MarkW:
My point was that the prevailing scientific opinion is that AGW is the dominant cause of current warming (as I clarified about 20 posts ago). I’ll try to be more careful with my adjectives. For future reference if I write “AGW” I probably mean “significant AGW”.
Let me clarify the argument here. Lot’s of places to start, so let’s go with temp.
We measure (sample) the air temp (thermometers in the open, in boxes to keep direct sunlight off of them but let in ambiant air, but discount the effects of wind or rain etc) At 5 feet off the ground, and a bottom on the box, that should discount the direct effects of the surface itself on the thermometer. So if all this is true, and the thermometer is correctly sited and calibrated and TOBS is taken into consideration, we get an Tmean of the area for the temperature of the air and assume this is indicative of the general area around the site. We then combine the rural locations, balance them against the non-rural, in a 5×5 grid of randomly situated sites, and come up with an average for the daily temperature / anomaly. We assume the random siting removes any bias in the number of sites and locations in the grid. This is averaged into a monthly mean anomaly of “land temperatures”.
We measure with satellites the surfaces of “the seas” taking this average surface temp of the 2×2 grid as being indicative of the average behavior of that area of water. These are then adjusted to remove any land in the grid, processed to 5×5 to match the land and averaged into a monthly mean anomaly of “sea temperatures”.
We then combine the two, and come up with a yearly anomaly, balanced against a 30 year period. We calculate an anomaly trend. That number is +.7C (5.6 milli/year)
Sound correct and dispassionate so far? I’m trying to be complete without getting too complicated or too vague. And putting in just enough but not too much. Next issue a bit later.
Michael Smith — 339
>>What does it mean to answer from first principles?
Good question. On blogs (and even in real life) this can actually mean nearly anything. For some, even tested assumptions won’t cut it. If you solved the Navier Stokes equations for a fluid dynamics problem, the person asking would ask you to start from the Boltzman equation.
But, in general, “answer from first principles” means solving from some set of equations that is accepted as ‘not an assumption’ in a particular field.
In continuum mechanics, if a GCM solved the full compressible Navier Stokes down the the Kolmogorov scale, using the ideal gas law, applying the first and second law of thermodynamics, and, possibly tracking every raindrop,snow flake or piece of hail using some sort of Lagrangian scheme, and maybe adding in some sort of chemistry equations for any chemical reactions that might occur, this would be solving from first principles. (There is not enough computer power in the world to do this.)
Simplify the boundary layer with a boundary layer parameterization, the solution will no longer be “first principles”. Add a sub model for the average behavior of raindrops? Not first principles. . .
When someone asks you to answer from first principles, it’s generally wise to ask them to tell you what you mean before you begin trying to do it. They may mean something more modest that I described.
Some problems can be done from first principles; some can’t. Correct solutions from first principles are considered beyond reproach. Others are approximate. An approximation may be good or bad, but it must be justified, and the possible deficiencies in predictive powers noted.
347, however, as you intimated, what’s “first principles” is context-dependent; i.e. you don’t need to consider quantum mechanics when designing an airplane. Newtonian mechanics is first principles, or to use your words “beyond reproach” only if you’re not trying to design transistors, or some other quantum-based device (or vacuum tubes, where you have to consider relativity). Whether Newtonian mechanics is “first principles” or not depends on what you’re trying to do.
Alternatively, you can just say that Newtonian mechanics isn’t first principles, but is known to be good enough for a very broad class of engineering problems. It’s a little unnerving to tell people that airplanes are designed according to physics that aren’t rigorous, but that’s about what it boils down to.
309, jae:
Essentially atmosphere is stable and sinking motions are prevalent. The vertical profile in atmosphere are mostly due to dynamical reasons and not to diffusion or radiation. If you think that air goes up only over the Maritime Continent (around Indonesia) and goes down slowly on the rest of the globe, you are not too far from reality.
Caps and inversions are largely distributed around the world and all comes from the bottom, there it remains.
Of course, water itself is a very active player in determining the actual state of the atmosphere, so don’t think of water as a simple addendum.
We’re at the end of the product cycle. No more manufacturing. Maintenance mode. I think this is starting to dawn on the RC ops.
“jae says:
One would think HOH vapor would rise rather quickly, due to its low molecular weight, cf. other air molecules. What holds it down? Van der Waals forces?”
When water is around it will stick to anything. Add a proton and you will get a protonated water cluster with 60 water molecules and one proton. You have dust, you get hydrated dust. Water will form vast hydrogen bonded structures in liquid water at 55 M, using ionspray mass spec you get to see some of these in a gas phase. Water is hardly ever, H2O, in the same way a proton is hardly ever H+.
Give me an “A”:
“AAAAA”
Give me a “G”:
“GEEEE”
Give me a “W”:
“DUBYOO”
What’s it spell?
NOBEL!!!
@Larry 348- Yes. First principles is context-dependent. That’s a reason the question difficult to answer. With regard to AGW, some might really insist on GCM’s computing to atomic level, but I’ve rarely seen anyone mean that. I’m pretty sure I could pull up quotes on one of the threads where someone seems to say weather prediction models shouldn’t use boundary layer theory to model, the……. well, you know….. atmospheric boundary layer. Simulation of the full compressible NS down to the Kolmogorov scale seemed to be the minimum required.
Now, I’ll agree that the boundary layer approximation is an approximation, and a turbulence parameterization is required when the BL is turbulent. However, as a practical matter, I’d guess you either use a boundary layer approximation or you run a model for a week to predict what happens tomorrow (or you do nothing).
So… I’m just going to assume I didn’t understand what was said. (And hey, maybe I didn’t!)
Weather not climate.
meto.gov.uk is currently mentioning heavy rains in Australia, which are providing relief to droughty areas. Perhaps they’re going to have a summer like England’s! 🙂
In late October I mentioned a news article about Piers Corbyn predicting 3 severe gales for the UK. On each of the occasions he predicted, there were in fact some gales, but quite minor. The biggest gale recently in fact came a week after his last, just 2 days ago, 70mph gusts in Cornwall. But even so it wasn’t like the Great Storm of 1703 that he predicted, nor even of 1987 or 1990 or 1998… So, impressive timing predictions, but not good on the magnitude.
Rich.
353, as you said, the scale that you need depends on agreement between model results and experiment; i.e. you can’t be absolutely sure a priori. Interesting conundrum. You can’t know ahead of time what’s “good enough”, so once you’ve determined what is experimentally, can you call that “first principles”? I really don’t think so, myself. I would say that first principles requires quantum calculations for all of the molecules in the atmosphere and oceans. Obviously, that’s not going to happen
351: Thanks, Doc, that makes perfect sense. Water has a lot of unique properties, that’s for sure.
Off-topic question: I’ve been wondering this for quite some time but now I have time and energy to investigfate it… the RE (reduction of error) statistic is well known on this site in peripheral terms, but I have never heard of it outside of climate literature and cannot even find a definition of it using a google search. Can anybody mathematically define this statistic for me (or point me to a good reference)?
@Larry– For a fluids model in a GCM, I would call first principles full solution of the compressible NS everywhere . This would include the atmospheric boundary layer, nearly inviscid upper atmosphere, and the oceans. (I will refrain from speculating about what we do when the air gets so thin we can’t even use NS. We can leave that to the true nit-pickers.)
I don’t consider a boundary layer model “first principles”, but somebody might call it that in some context.
We all know quantum calculations of the whole planet aren’t going to happen.
347: Lucia:
That is right on. Now, if IPCC would do what you say in the last sentence, matters would be a lot clearer. Like true error bars on model runs, instead of a spagetti graph of various model runs.
Re #301 and 305
Guys, guys, guys.
Not only are there a lot of Johns around, but there’s more than one John M. I started commenting here in about April 1996, but alas, interlopers have since appeared. The most recent has added a period to the M, which may have been the one in Bender’s crosshairs. As far as I know, I haven’t been dissed by the Gator.
John V,
I went back and read the AR4 political summary, and I can’t disagree with you. Although I don’t think that AR4 is up to date on the science end any more. I was mixing you up with a guy who used to say 90% confident, and this was a sum of all of the probabilities for all of the positive climate sensitivities.
So Many apologies.
Boris,
1.1C is the CS without feedbacks, as I understand it. On the assumption that the feedbacks are probably mostly negative, given that the climate seems to tend toward glaciation, and has never run away warm over billions of years. It also seems that feedbacks are added to the models by the following logic
“Positive feedback?, might happen, better account for it!”
“Negative feedback? Can’t count on it, better leave it out!”
Also, it seems to be that the models agree with observations more closely when that value is chosen. It is a qualitiative argument, and I won’t try to defend it here.
Just like you say, despite Lubos Motls’ clear expression in quantitative terms, including the methods that were used to calculate the uncertainties, that “they are too large, and his argument is ridiculous”
The difference being of course, that we are both anonymous blog commenters, and Lubos is a world reknowned physicist of the first rank. It seems like, with his credentials, that one should show how he is wrong, rather than just saying it. But I am not the one trying to win people over, I am just trying to understand.
Re:175 (better late than never?)
See http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/papers/hathadh/HathawayWilsonReichmann2002.pdf Using an average of the first 4 methods described I come up with SSN = 93, with a range from 85 to 115. I think Hathaway is now using the idea that there is a 40 year delay in the solar conveyor, and that the SSN of 40 years ago will be the primary driver of this one, the prior magnetic knots having been revitalized by their passage through the deep sun. Seems an unlikely theory to me.
Michael Hansen #242
But good gosh man, the penguins…THE PENGUINS!!!
link
Thanks to all for the clarification of what is meant by “answering from first principles”. Based on what you’ve said, I don’t think Steve is asking for proof of the “2 x CO2 = 2.5 deg C” solely from “first principles”. My interpretation is that he is simply asking for a clear, up-to-date and complete elucidation of all the assumptions and calculations used to arrive at the conclusion. Perhaps Steve will have time to drop in on this thread and elaborate on what he is requesting and whether he expects an “answer from first principles.”
Wow, way back before the intraweb was even popular, let alone this blog. 😉
OK, now, even this was not my point. I was simply surprised that bender chose John A. given John’s fairly often asserted opinions on AGW theory. I missed the connection that bender was making (i.e. bait), and assumed that it must be some other John he was referring to. Once bender clarified, I understood his analogy. The one in particular that was in my head was indeed a John M., though that distinction was only because I had seen bender get a little testy with they guy. Which John I though it could have been was immaterial, since I assumed (incorrectly) that it must have been some other John.
Phew, lots o’ posts about nothing! 🙂
Mark
Du-ohhh!
Did I say 1996? Where’s my hearing trumpet by crackie. Meant 2006, of course.
yorick:
There’s no need to apologize. Us “alarmists” all look the same, as do all the Marks. 🙂 (I’ve mixed up the Marks in previous un-threaded conversations).
Your comments on climate sensitivity treat it as an input to the models. It is in fact an output that arises from running a model with its various assumptions and parameterizations.
I figured either a typo or pure jest (we are the jesters, you know).
Mark
‘net’s been ’round since a’fore ’96 and was fairly popular (even before the WWW in ’91 and Mosaic, ’93) (depending on your job heh) then, but I suppose it depends on how you define popularity…
I’d put it at around ’94 when it started leaving the academic and technical world.
(Licklider came up with the idea of an Intergalatic Computer Network in ’63 and the first four interface message processors were connected in ’69 Then, ’71 email, ’73 ftp. Everything started out at a speed of about 50kbits on modems but supported up to 100kbps starting in ’70)
Anywayz.
John V,
No, I don’t, I just think that models that arrive at a CS of 1C fit observation better. Despite Boris’s constant refrain of there being so much uncertainty we can’t know the models are wrong, I am not buying it. I read Chris’s link in #44 and it came down to “All the models disagree so the satelite and radiosonde data must be wrong, and we will leave no stone unturned until we find the problem with the observation, because 10,000 Elvis fans, er I mean 62 models can’t be wrong.”
It is interesting that they lean so hard on the word “uncertainty”. You should read the link, especially chapter 5. If it gives you a warm fuzzy about the state of knowledge on AGW, I would be shocked. A CS of 1C fits in there quite nicely, I think.
A CS of 1`C would mean slightly negative feedback and would mean that nothing we know of could explain the rebound from glaciation. Possible? Yes, but I definitely wouldn’t characterize that POV as fitting in with observations, especially considering the Mt. Pinatubo response.
Oh, I’ve been waiting for this report by the house oversight committee. Fire away.
Ok, guys. Stop arguing. The AGW problem has been solved:
http://freecarbonoffsets.com/home.do;jsessionid=AC3CA351FE1925A11D5EE0F330FC72BC
I don’t know, I think maybe the fact that the tilt of the Earth 10Ka ago exposed NH glaciers to more direct sunlight at the same time as they glaciers cooked under the heat of the NH summer being during perihelian, and the elipical nature of Earths orbit creating longer summers due to Kepler’s second law had something to do with glaciers melting.
Most of the time the planet, over the past five million years or so, has not emerged from glaciation. Precisely my argument. When it does, it falls back in relatively rapidly. I think that a lot of climate model arguments are circular. For a while, there was even a Wikipedia entry that GCMs had proven that Malonkovich cycles could not have been the cause of cycles of glaciation.
So, given what I said about temperature, let’s continue this trip.
First assumption: The temperature data is accurate.
Second assumption: The temperature data has been combined correctly.
Third assumption: The temperature data from year X can be compared year Y (They both reflect the same quantity)
Fourth assumption: The global mean temperature anomaly reflects the energy balance of the planet.
Fifth assumption: This rise in the energy balance has one or more man-made causes rather than being all or mostly natural variability.
In that case, what are the things that have an effect upon energy balance levels? Then perhaps we can come up with an estimated quantification of the actions, reactions and interactions in the system (Model parameters?) by removing those that cancel. Whatever’s left is (are) the cause(s).
Some to consider are cosmic rays, solar wind, sunspots. Solar output levels. Tilt of the Earth, behavior of its orbit around the sun and its own rotation. Gravitational effects of the moon. Volcanic erruptions. Burning of fossil fuels and the resulting A-GHG and particulates. Behavior of the magnetosphere, exosphere, ionosphere, mesosphere, stratosphere and troposphere, which is controlled by a number of other factors; Lapse rate, specific mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone et al, and how those react to each other and the clouds and particulates and IR at each level. Composition of the bit of Earth absorbing whatever sunlight it gets (dirt, water, ice) and amount of cover over the bit of Earth (from soot to water to concrete to tree canopy to clouds). Ocean heat and chemical composition at the various depths. The heat of the core, the release of materials from the core, and the strength of the dynamo vis a vis back up to the top of the magnetosphere and how that reacts to the extra-Earth effects first listed.
80% of the mass of the atmosphere is troposphere, so it plays a very large part. Here’s how it’s described as functioning:
371 Boris
Well, we know the rebound from glaciation continues for 800 years without CO2, so why not suspect the same mechanism for the whole deglaciation cycle? Let’s try the sun, the biggest source of energy of all in the solar system, instead of fixating on CO2.
Taking a short break out:
Totaling 5*10^18 KG, dry air, of which about 90% is the top 3:
Nitrogen
Oxygen
Argon
Then everything not ~1% or over:
Carbon Dioxide
Neon
Helium
Methane
Krypton
Hydrogen
Nitrous oxide
Xenon
Ozone
Nitrogen dioxide
Iodine
Carbon monoxide
fluorocarbons are not included
Then wet air
water vapor, totaling 1*10^16 KG
Please note almost 100% of the atmosphere is under 100 KM, which makes this fairly interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Atmosphere_model.png
I would be a lot more susceptible to Boris’s arguments re CO2 and ice ages if GCMs could model the LIA without the use of imaginary volcanos. Ok, “undocumented” volcanos.
By the way. I was looking at the Law Dome borehole data, and you know what? It shows an MWP and an LIA. The temporal resolution isn’t great, but the signals seem to be global, since I can’t think of any mechanism that would teleconnect Antarctica with Greenland for hundreds of years that didn’t affect the whole globe. It just looks like more support for Solar to me. If a signal is supposed to be solar, it had better show up at both poles. I am wondering if the GCMs caught that?
GCMs? I doubt they did, Yorick.
John V, #367. I’ve never considered you an alarmist. Not always as clear as you can be but that goes for everyone of course.
I sometimes have a problem with your conclusions themselves (or how you phrase them or their strength) or the weight you give some of the factors, but I agree with what the IPCC said back in 2001:
Back to my missive:
My issue is that for AGW to be true, we have to have the following:
The A portion has to outweigh the non-A portion.
The concept of a G has to be valid.
The W has to actually be happening in reality.
I’m holding off on my conclusions, although I will say:
The A probably does outweigh the non-A.
The concept of a G is less certain, or at least the validity of the application of the way we determine it.
The W may or may not be something true in reality, but can’t be disproven it’s not around that number.
However, even if we take all assumptions for granted, it remains to be seen if anyone can prove all the AGHG put together create/keep more heat in the GE than does land use change and pollution, much less remove all the non-human factors as cancelling each other out in the first place.
So my tentative conclusion is that if I take for granted GW is real (accept that all things considered, the +.7 C is fairly reasonably some kind of indication of warming) and accept that overall the human contribution (land change, particulates, AGHG) provides for at least some part of it over and above what it would be from the non-human factors, AGW is a real thing.
That leaves many issues even then:
What is the percentage +/- of land use change, particulates and AGHG is which part of that +.7C
What is the percentage +/- in the system that CO2 is of the AGHG part of the +.7C
What would the instant halt of CO2 production and reduction from 400 to 300 do to its overall percentage of the temp increase (%CO2 of AGHG –> %AGHG of AGW)
What would it do to the world economy (or any economy) to cut CO2 in the air 25% in a few years that it took 125 years to get to.
What would the instant halt and reduction do to particulate levels and the other AGHG in the system, since one would have to postulate that to do that, an instant halt to all fossil fuel use and all industrial processes creating AGHG/particulates would have to occur
What would such a thing as the end to using fossil fuels and industrial processes creating AGHG/particulates do to the world economy (or any economy)
All this would apply to the other AGHG of course, but it seems CO2 is the only one anyone assumes we can “do anything about”.
Good luck.
SS, from what I have read, SOF awarded GAP $100,000 in 2006 for its work defending whistleblowers. It also awarded UCS (union of concerned scientists) a couple hundred thou and some cell biology group a couple hundred thou for a total of $720,000 in 2006. I have a link to this somewhere on another thread. Apparently, that bastion of fair and balanced reporting, BID, picked up on the $720,000 figure and claimed Hansen was packaged by Soros by up to that amount. It’s clear weasel wording and an attempt at smearing Hansen. GAP received the money after it provided legal advice to Hansen, from what I’ve read. In other words, GAP mentioned having provided legal advice to Hansen in their grant application and Soros’ org SOF granted the money beause of that claim. I’m sure it would look good on the books to have funded the group that advised Hansen and that’s why the org funded GAP. The clear message to BID readers was that Soros either paid Hansen the amount (implying an outright bribe) or used it to “package” him, whatever that means. Given the evidence, that is tantamont to fibbing. 🙂
#376 Pat Keating:
The rebound from glaciation starts for 800 years before CO2 starts to rise. Temperatures also start to drop while CO2 is still rising. Both behaviours are consistent with CO2 acting as a feedback and a forcing. Except for the small minority who do not accept the greenhouse effect (without considering feedbacks), CO2 does force temperature. The only question is how much.
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yorick:
The MWP and LIA, if they were global (I have no opinion), were most likely driven by the sun. It certainly wasn’t AGW (since there were significant anthropogenic emissions), orbital changes (time scale too short), or continental drift (ditto).
The GCMs will only reproduce solar-forced events if the solar forcing input is correct (obviously).
Susann; the stories I’ve read are full of inuendo, half-truths, and spin. Not surprising.
As they said at Newsbusters, “may have received money from an organization funded by George Soros in order to politicize science”
To which my reply is “Yeah, and?”
I’d be interested in seeing the sequence of events (which came first, the chicken or the egg?) but it’s really not very interesting nor based upon any kind of in-depth reporting (mostly op-ed junk that “hasn’t been peer-reviewed”….) 😀
372, Boris, so far that is a “Proposed Report,” whatever that means in DC-speak. I don’t suppose (Henry Waxman) politics has anything to do with this, either, do you? LOL.
381 John V
No, they are consistent with CO2 being the result of warming, not the cause.
You need to show me a mathematical analysis supporting your hypothesis before continuing to make that claim. I know it’s the gospel at RC, but I have never seen anything other than arm-waving. That does not cut it.
Question: I’m looking for Global Land-Ocean Temperature for Global Mean Temperarature as used in Hansen 2006. I’m hoping to get the 2006 data. I know one of ‘all y’all’ not only have the data, but know where it exists on line. So…link? Thanks. (Otherwise tips for the correct search terms would be nice.!)
Lucia, I’d think it would be from the time series for GHCN-ERSST
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/gcag.html
But I don’t know.
Re #385 lucia, here’s the GISS global anomaly table ( link ). See how that compares with the data in Hansen 2006.
Boris,
Maybe you would have better luck hawking that report over at Kos or Josh Marshall’s place. I think Bush should have fired Hansen about seven years ago.
I’m sorry, Sam U, that was in response to your post not SS. Too many S names!
I’m interested in any smear attempts, regardless of the side.
So, yorick, you are in the camp that politicians should interfere with climate scientists’ communication with the public. Good to know.
As for your point about orbital forcings–they aren’t enough to explain the rebound from glaciation.
Thanks David– I’m looking for the actual Hansen data in his figure I’d like to recreate the plot and add a point. To do that, it would be nice to know the figures Hansen actually used in the figure he actually published. (Whether or not they are correct.)
I’ll google with the Climate Audit search. I figure that SteveM’s Articles like “Free the Code” might include a link to Hansen data.
Sam– I think that may be it. (If not, both sets are still very useful.)
If I thought Hansen was a scientist, I would agree with you. He lost me way before he compared coal cars to trains carrying Jews to death camps. He is so invested in the politics that he can’t be trusted on the science any more. Maybe you should read some of his speeches. He left the role of scientific advisor to politicians behind some time ago. And your dismisal of orbital forcings is more circular argumentation based on your belief in models.
Boris #392
Did yorick say that?
No, John, even a non-feedback system can provide the same results. Phase delay does not occur simply due to feedback. You try hard to convince everyone that “climate sensitivity is not the result of first principles” then you go and make this statement which is based purely on first principles.
There you go again. Unproven assertions. Prove it, John, please prove it. Yeah, I know “it’s almost impossible to prove,” but then again, it had to come from somewhere. Where did that come from if you’re so certain it exists?
The other half of that question is “if at all.”
Mark
Hey, it worked! I was trying to use google graphs to graph the law dome MWP and LIA. I am not really sure if they are correct, so please don’t use the graph as a reference, but I created it using their api, and it wasn’t all that difficult.
Google Charts
Before I go to bed and leave this thread on a bad note. How would you feel, Boris, if an oil company executive were placed in charge of reporting all climate data? You might feel the data could possibly be biased? Of course, I don’t get a point of view, I am a denier. Just think about that before you say anything really nasty.
396:
You need a quick refresher in the study of ice ages. No one believed the earliest orbital arguments because they knew the forcing was too small–and it is really tiny for some of the Milancovitch cycles.
jae, what are you, the high priest of denialism?
[snip – please odn’t get involved in fraud discussions. I’ve asked people not to do so.]
Re: Sam Urbinto’s comments
The greenhouse effect is not simply the absorption of IR radiation, but also includes IR emission from the same molecules and degradation of the absorbed energy to heat by collisions warming the atmosphere. To only mention the absorption is misleading. While many discuss how the greenhouse effect warms the surface, a more basic point is that it warms the atmosphere, convection is nowhere near strong enough to account for the observed temperature of the atmosphere.
Points to consider include
1. The CO2 asymmetric stretch at 4 microns is in a region where thermal radiation is low (see the figure Urbinto pointed to). The most significant CO2 absorption is in the bend at ~14 microns, near the peak of 300K blackbody emission
2. The strongest overlaps at 14 microns are with the H2O (that’s dihydrogen monoxide to you) rotational bands. The bands are strong, but the lines are widely separated, esp as compared to CO2 (have to put up a post on that), so water vapor does not completely blanket the CO2 absorption in this region. The figure is at very low resolution so this cannot be seen.
3. Nitrous oxide has an overlap with CO2, but its concentration is about a thousand times smaller than CO2, so it must be taken into account but its effect is much less than CO2.
Yes, you are correct of course — there is plenty of science that is driven by the profit motive and that is fine as far as it goes. Science is not just a tool to produce knowledge for its own sake, but to produce useful knowledge. The profit motive tends to find unique ways to put that knowledge to use creating useful consumables, products, etc. However, if science was only driven by the proft motive, we would lose out so much. There has to be a realm of pure science carried on for its own sake, IMO. Keep profit out of it to keep it pure. That doesn’t mean that it should be sloppy with data, etc. or lack standards. When I was studying science as an undergrad, that importance of ethics and method and data quality was driven home to us. We couldn’t use pencils in our lab notebooks — had to use “biro” to ensure we didn’t “correct” our data. 🙂
The proft motive gave me this lovely laptop and so many other toys and food and the standard of living I enjoy. I don’t think it is necessarily bad at all. However, I’d be short-sighted and ideological if I thought it was the only means of achieving anything worthwhile.
In the medical field, the “double blind” process has been adopted to prevent fraud.
With the “double blind” method, one set of scientists will obtain the raw data. Another independent set of scientists will evaluate the data, but they have no idea what the actual data is about.
How can we implement the “double blind” methodology of scientific analysis for the study of environmental data?
Can a set of unknown data points produce the same scientific results?
Can historical environmental data be with replaced with stock market numbers?
Can historical environmental data be inverted and still be analysed?
Raw numbers are only numbers, and the source or type of data should never matter.
Is it even possible to analyse environmental data using the “double blind” method?
re #417: How about putting that in a link next time?
#414 Eli Rabett. My definition of the Greenhouse Effect is the time delay the atmosphere creates before the ultimate loss of heat energy to outside the Earths atmosphere. With this definition it is clear that the atmosphere, and that includes CO2 is not “creating” any heat or energy. The CO2 (along with any other atmospheric molecule) is merely a kind of buffer which obstructs the path of photons, and redirects the energy at a different wavelength, in turn creating a time delay before the heat energy is lost. No new energy is created.
I would be interested to know of any paper which quantifies the additional atmospheric heat storage capacity (if any) provided by any change or addition of CO2.
Steve: Mark R, it’s completely idle to put forward your own “definition of the greenhouse effect”. Please stick to definitions within the literature. As I’ve said many times, I want to discourage people simply advancing their own theories on phenomena that have been well studied. If you want to comment on published literature on the topic, that’s fine and disciplines the discussion.
Sorry, Conard #419 not #418.
What if climate was dominated by negative feedbacks. Wouldn’t none climatic forcing like convection have larger changes? Richard Lindzen states the only way the gulf stream to stop is if the wind is to stop. I wonder how Milancovitch cycles influences energy distributional through changes in wind patterns.
by Eli Rabbet, #414
Isnt it the reason why AGW does not work over Antarctica?
I mean Antarctica is too cold to emit thermal IR wavelength where CO2 (and WV) GHG effect is working.
re 452:
No Antarctica has temperature inversion, which results in a CO2 emission spectrum and not an absorption spectrum. Adding CO2 increases the outgoing radiation, hence antarctica will be cooling, when radiation is balanced….
You can already drop this one Sam because it is demonstrably wrong .
Proof :
The 3 main drivers of the energy balance are :
– the kinetic , gravitationnal and rotationnal energy of the Earth
– the incoming solar energy
– the energy radiated by the Earth
For simplicity we’ll assume that the first 2 are constant so don’t perturb the energy balance of the planet on the time scales we are considering .
We’ll define the global mean temperature anomaly as the difference 1/T {Integral from 1 to T [1/S Integral over the sphere
of Earth radius of T(x,y,R,t) dxdy]dt} – the same integral over some period T0 of reference that is a constant .
In words it is the time average of a surface average minus some value of reference .
The choice of the period of integration or of the value of reference is actually not important for what follows .
Dimensionnaly this integral difference is a temperature .
Now as the above value is defined for z = R (Earth radius) the corresponding energetical parameter is the energy radiated by the Earth surface .
To do the same comparison with the same periods of reference as those that define the global anomaly , we therefore must compute the difference of radiated energy between the same periods .
For the sake of clarity I stress again that it still implies that the first 2 energy drivers can be considered constant for T (period when I measure the actual temperatures) and T0 (period of reference) .
The Earth surface radiates in a good approximation like a black body .
So the energy radiated by an infinitely small surface in an infinitely small time dt is dE = sigma T(x,y,R,t)^4 dx dy dt
We’ll set sigma = 1 to avoid typing .
So the difference in the radiated energy between the 2 periods will be :
1/T {Integral from 1 to T [1/S Integral over the sphere of Earth radius of T^4 (x,y,R,t) dxdy]dt} – the same integral over some period T0
Because of the high non linearity of the radiation law (T^4) this last difference is trivially uncorrelated to the first (“global mean anomaly”).
There would be correlation only and only if the body was isothermal and the time variations strictly periodical .
I will refrain from farther discussion about approximations and other things that one could do to these last integrals in order to make them computable because it doesn’t change the conclusion .
This result is so obvious and easily demonstrable that it should not be necessary to mention it again .
There are many things that are poorly known or even unknown about the climate but among the things that are not only known but really sure with a (trivial) mathematical proof is the fact that the “mean global surface anomaly” is not correlated to energy balance .
It is actually correlated to nothing physical (like energy , impulsion etc) what leads many physicians to consider that the “global temperature” is unphysical even if it is well defined mathematically as an arbitrary integral of a physical parameter T(x,y,R,t).
“I wonder how Milankovitch cycles influences energy distribution through changes in wind patterns.”
I’d been thinking the same. Imagine the tilting Earth causes a North-South wind to go South-North or vice-versa. You’d see cold regions go hotter and hot regions go colder and no change in radiation is necessary. We see this effect in radiative heat transfer modeling, where the secondary convective effects are usually far more important than the initial radiation – just moving the radiation source slightly can cause convection current reversals quite easily. The odd thing about core samples is that scientists usually assume that the evident cooling/heating events must apply to huge areas when in fact it is more likely to be just a local effect. Notice that a cooling Antarctic and a warming Arctic is entirely consistent with convective changes, but not with radiative changes and apparently there haven’t been ice ages at both poles at the same time. Ok there is apparent evidence that hemispheres have gone cold together but, of course, only isolated spots were tested and it was assumed that the effect applied to the entire hemisphere which is probably extrapolating too much.
GCMs.
How well do these perform in modelling recent climate data, where we have the best, most comprehensive data? I have often wondered about this question.
Here we have an answer and some analysis. The results do not find much if any GCM predictive skill.
This study uses global satellite, balloon, and surface data to evaluate the degree of divergence – predicted versus actual – in temperature change of the atmostphere. The lead author, Dr. David H. Douglass from the University of Rochester, asks ‘Can the models accurately explain the climate from the recent past?’ It seems that the answer is no.
Paolo,
Then how does CO2 and other gases get distributed evenly?
lucia,
So when somebody claims that the GCMs are based on first principles, they aren’t being accurate?
Paolo,
Doc answered my question. Water molecules just don’t behave like other molecules.
So when does this AGW kick in? Its a cold So. Cal this morning. Less than 40° Surf City USA. High school surf competition this morning for my step daughter. Poor kids. Poor me. We are not used to this stuff.
After reading yet another ‘the Arctic is Melting’ news story, I journeyed over to Cryosphere Today to get the latest on the Northern Hemisphere sea ice. I was a little surprised to find that the amount of sea ice supposedly declined slightly in the last weak; not just slowed its rate if increase, but actually declined! I decided to go thorugh each region to determine where this decline was taking place. I was even more surprised to see that nearly EVERY region indicated a decline in sea ice sometime over the last 3 weeks!
Most surprising was the Arctic Basin region which showed the sudden loss of half a million square miles of sea ice right around December 1! How did this happen without any direct sunlight? The Hudson Bay region was one of the few areas not reporting a loss of sea ice during this period, but the anamoly graph still showed the rate of increase falling behind the climatological normals. This also surprised me because I was reading that Central Canada has had one of it’s coldest falls in many decades, with temperatures routinely staying well below 0 (F). Just how cold does it have to be around Hudson Bay to have a ‘normal’ accumulaton of sea ice?
So here’s the question: Are we looking at an actual decline in sea ice, almost simultaneously over the entire Arctic Basin, while the sunlight fades to nothing, or are we seeing a glitch in the measuring.
I’d suspect a glitch in the measuring, given that the last ice extent map showed most of what had melted as frozen as of December 10th.
[Steve – I’m very reluctant to have people advance their own theories or definitions of the greenhouse effect. The main features of CO2 infrared behavior are proven beyond any caviling. If you want to discuss a published article and criticize or endorse things in that article, fine, but please mo personal theories. I don’t have time to engage such theories and, all too often, despite my explicit statements that I’m not responsible for posts here, I end up being held responsible elsewhere for all opinions and theories expressed here or for not commenting on them. jae – if you want to progress your theory, you also have to integrate your opinion within known literature and show exactly what’s wrong with papers that arrived at an opposite point of view.]
Re #437
A blast of warm Pacific air at the end of November with associated strong winds was the culprit. It was related to the system that brought 100+mph to the Pac NW I think. The thin ice that has formed over the last month is very suceptible to break up by such systems.
Check out:
http://www.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp?partner=accuweather&blog=andrews
Scroll down to ‘Freak Arctic Weather’ and ‘Arctic warming’.
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
Shows T anomalies for 1st week December.
Well there are actually not tons of first principles .
– 3 conservation principles – energy , momentum , and angular momentum
– add the equivalence principle and the relativity principle
And that’s about it – 5 first principles .
On a particular note , the quantum mechanics is based on the correspondence principle which is very obscure but well … it works .
Via the Noether theorem we know that conservation laws correspond to symmetries in the relevant equations .
So about everything in physics translates the 5 above mentioned principles in local differential equations whose solution give the states of the studied systems and their evolution in time .
That’s true for everything from Navier Stokes through general relativity .
Now as the GCM say that they respect the conservation principles what is the least what one would ask from a theory , one could say that they are indeed derived from the first principles .
Looking at this claim a bit closer , it is not so sure that they actually RESPECT the conservation principles .
The GCMs don’t solve the continuous equations what would guarantee the conservation laws , they solve discrete equations with certain spatial and temporal steps .
Of course those discontinuous “solutions” depend on the step used while such an artificial and arbitrary parameter can’t impact the conservation laws .
So while a certain discrete solution with a given step may conserve energy , it is not sure at all that they would do so for any step used .
In order to have a reasonable confidence that they do so it would be necessary to prove that the discrete solutions uniformly converge to the continuous solutions or at least that the energy (momentum etc) stays bounded and converges when the step goes to 0 .
Such results exist partly for Navier Stokes but let’s recall that the GCMs don’t solve Navier Stokes and go far beyond the sole fluid dynamics .
That’s why the question about the “first principles” is not a very interesting one .
Of course that GCMs are built on the basis of the first principles .
However it is not proven that they respect them really and even if there may be strong doubts that they do , the problem can’t really be solved because nobody knows the continuous solution of the climate system and nobody ever will what in turn makes the question of uniform convergence undefined .
Jae #430
Jae Steve is right .
However as I could read your post before it was snipped , I’ll give you a direction to look .
Be ALWAYS very wary of averages when you deal with physical phenomenons that are local and non linear .
If Average (X) seems to be correlated to Average (Y) it doesn’t imply anything about X and Y (unless it’s linear)
Dry and humid don’t correlate trivially to hotter and colder .
Actually at the same latitude and under clear skies you will have generally dry is hotter than humid during the day and dry is much cooler than humid during the night .
For explanation look more at latent heat than at infrared photons .
I guess this is the right thread for this question:
I read an assertion at the ‘progressive’ site I hang out at that stated the Eemian Interglacial was only, on average, 1 degree C warmer then today. (Contained within the assertion was that it’s all worse, the worst warming is in the pipeline, and the world is essentially at an end, etc.)
Would anyone have any papers/sites other then wikipedia where I can find proof or disprove the assertion?
Tom: I have done that, but can say no more now.
OK , then you know why Sahara is much cooler than Haiti during a clear night .
If I remember well , this theme was already mentioned (not very long because the orders of magnitude between latent heat and IR
nergy absorbed/emitted by trace gases in the first meters of atmosphere are rather different) at Climate Science , R.Pielke’s site .
So if you have time and patience , go over there and find this discussion .
430: Steve Mc: Fair enough.
I think I have been doing that, but maybe I need to pick specific papers.
Tom V, 436: That latent heat has nothing to do with temperature, until it is released.
437, no, not really. You’ve been completely blowing off the most basic of physics in favor of a completely contrived intuitive approach. In physics, you don’t just see a composite phenomenon, and develop a simple semi-quantitative theory to explain it; you decompose the problem into its elements first. And you don’t just get to declare something (i.e. greenhouse effect = heat capacity) because it makes some specious sense.
See Feynman’s lecture on “cargo cult science”:
http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
439: We will see…
@MarkW — 425
Well… Since I already said the use of the term depends somewhat on context, it depends precisely on precisely what they say, and in what context! And, we’ll also see small words matter. 🙂
I think I’m about to explain the difference with a model being based on first principles and its solutions being obtained directly from first principles. (I’ll use short hand and call the second “solving from first principles”.
GCM’s models are based on first principles, but they are not solved from first principles of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics.
GCM’s certainly certainly rely on conservation of mass, momentum, energy (first law of thermo). (I don’t think they do anything directly with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That gets used in high Mach number flows, but rarely at low Mach number. ) They certainly include well accepted constitutive relations where required: e.g. the ideal gas law, fourier’s law, newtonian viscosity etc.)
In this sense, they are based on first principles irst principles of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics. ( But you didn’t expect they were based on Old Testament scripture or the US bill of rights — which would be first principles of some other field, now did you?)
The problem is: In the atmosphere (and the ocean, and the water distribution system in your home) flow is turbulent. You know flow is turbulent on earth– you fell gusts of wind right? You see storms, right?
Because flow is turbulent, conservation of momentum means “The Navier Stokes Equations” (NS). On earth, we know numerical solutions from first principles require creating a grid that captures all turbulent fluctuations down to the smallest scales. (These scales are might also be called the ‘dissipative length scale’ or ‘the Kolmogrov scales’).
Now… to give you an idea how small these are: Have you ever stood outside in a storm? Can you feel the gusts or variations in the velocity? The reason you can feel them is some of the gusts have length scales about your height! (You can’t feel much smaller ones because they are averaged out over your skin. The much larger ones feel like sustained winds.)
So, taken literally, the term ‘solving from first principles’, requires capturing gusts that are 6ft lin length or even smaller.
That would take such a whopping huge amount of computer power I don’t even need to scour the literature to to know GCM’s don’t dothis. 🙂
So, GCM’s can be said to be informed by or based on by first principles. But first principles themselves tell us we cannot solve this system of equations from first principles using the grid sizes that permit computations.
So, the equations that were initially based on first principles only are parameterized— that is, the system of equations are replaced by approximate forms. In particular, some parameterizations are introduced for some phenomena that are known to have significant effects. (You couldn’t, for example, neglect the phenomena you parameterized and get good results. You need the sub-model to get good results.)
As soon as we introduce the approximations, we have deviated from first principles.
When GCM’s are coded and run, approximate, parameterized equations are solved. So, GCMs predictions are not obtained by solving systems of equations formulated from first principles alone. They use parameterizations.
The between “based on” and “solve from” distinctions matters because when we can solve transport equations from first principles only using no parameterizations and accounting for all relevant physics the results are unimpeachable.
Solutions based on parameterizations informed by first principles are respectable and interesting. Some can give quite accurate results particularly when used in the very specific situations where the parameterization applies. Or, parameterizations could give quite inaccurate results depending on the quality of the parameterization itself or how it is used. (The inaccuracies may be too large to permit us to predict what we wish to predict.)
So, if you recall, Tom said:
The questions about whether or not GCM’s are based on first principles are truly uninteresting. The models are based on first principles, but not solve directly from first principles. Nobody who knows anything would argue about these two things.
So, with regard to your question:
Here’s context: if you ask about parameterizations and someone answers: “Models are based on first principles.”, and you say “but about those parameterizations ” and they repeat the whole “First principles …” thing, the words they choose to utter are true. They are also not an answer; this sort of response is an example of ‘Clintonesque’ evasion of the questions.
If you only ask: “What are GCM’s models based on?” They might say the models are based on first principles: conservation of mass, momentum and energy.” That answer is perfectly accurate, as far as it goes. It’s not particularly evasive. (At a cocktail party, one would rarely volunteer more. Otherwise, one would bore other people sipping cocktails.)
So. I’ve written a blog post long answer. Does this answer your question? 🙂
#395 Pat Keating:
I was a little clumsy with my wording. Let me re-word a little bit:
CO2 lagging is consistent with CO2 rising as a result of warming. It is not inconsistent with CO2 also contributing to the warming.
The global temperature difference between glacial and inter-glacial periods is about 4.5degC (10-11degC at the poles). If I remember correctly, the estimates I’ve seen attribute deglaciation as ~60% solar and ~40% CO2. Regardless of the exact percentages, you have to admit that rising CO2 would contribute something to warming, even if the temperature sensitivity (S) to doubling CO2 is only 1 degC, the effect of CO2 increasing from 180ppm to 280ppm would be ~0.65 degC (14%). If S = 3degC, then CO2’s contribution is ~1.9degC (42%).
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#406 Mark T:
I did not say it was inconsistent with CO2 acting rising due to temperature alone. See my clarification above.
As for CO2 forcing temperature, the non-feedback temperature increase from doubling CO2 is ~1.1degC. That comes from MODTRANS. I don’t think that’s controversial unless you doubt the basic physics of the greenhouse effect (minus feedbacks). As SteveMc said in #430, “The main features of CO2 infrared behavior are proven beyond any caviling”. (To be clear, I’m talking about CO2 without feedbacks — the feedbacks are another issue).
Tom: I’d add the principle of conservation of mass to that list – pretty much essential in fluid calcs. And I find the minimum total potential energy principle to be pretty useful in non-linear systems which is equivalent to the maximum entropy principle in thermodynamics. With the separate minimum energy principal too, ie the 2nd law of thermodynamics, I get 8.
Admittedly, the GCM’s don’t seem to use these either. I’m not even sure if they use Stefan-Boltzmann for the radiation (which of course most other radiative heat transfer software relies on). I say that because of the RC crowd, William couldn’t spell “Stefan”, Rasmus got the equation wrong and Gavin didn’t seem to know it could be used for gray bodies too; thus ignoring all our sterling work in verifying emissivities. It explains a lot about climate models if the modelers themselves seem to know squat about radiation.
I appreciate you clarification, btw. A simple FIR filter (low-pass, high-pass, all-pass) will also provide sufficient phase lag that CO2 could continue to rise after temperature begins to fall.
I.e, the model output is used to determine the sensitivity. This is the same standard circular argument that is offered without proof that such a mechanism indeed exists. A consensus of people that don’t understand system theory and openly admit they have no idea how to model water vapor and clouds, is hardly convincing.
What basic physics? The only basic physics that is proven is which bands of the spectrum that CO2 can absorb.
As SteveMc said in #430, The main features of CO2 infrared behavior are proven beyond any caviling. (To be clear, Im talking about CO2 without feedbacks the feedbacks are another issue).
Besides the appeal to authority, Steve said the features of CO2 infrared behavior are proven, but that does not provide any indication of what happens in the atmosphere and how that can impact temperature. This is where the thermo folks get involved, which is beyond my scope (and the reason I don’t debate the topic… there are arguments for and against, and eventually, one will win). Keep in mind, w.r.t. to the latter comment, I don’t disagree that adding mass to the atmosphere will necessarily increase its heat carrying capacity, but we’re adding other things, too.
Mark
Aw crap… quoted that wrong. The part that begins “As SteveMc said…” and ends “feedbacks are another issue)” should be block-quoted.
Mark
Lucia@441 – it’s an uninteresting question, but nontechnical people are trying to evaluate how bulletproof these models are, and when someone says “based on first principles”, it give the impression that it’s rigorous. To sum up that whole long post, if it’s “based on first principles”, that isn’t the same thing as saying that it’s rigorous. I think that’s the kernel that everyone’s looking for.
Lucia, thank you for post 441. That was very informative.
And after reading that explanation, I have this question for John V. In 442, you wrote:
Does MODTRANS derive that 1.1 deg c from “first principles”?
Actually, based on my understanding (corrections welcome), MODTRANS doesn’t calculate temperatures. It is a program originally developed by the USAF for calculating IR transmission through the atmosphere for IR vision and targeting systems. It’s only a small piece of the calculation needed to arrive at temperature increase, and it contains spectra tables that are questionable.
Just because it runs on a computer doesn’t make it a magic infallible oracle.
Uhh….that’s actually MODTRAN.
JohnV
I guess from your calculations above, that you didn’t finally accept that water vapour feedback should be rather more important than CO2 feedback in the ice-age cycles (if the popular GCM estimates for feedback are to be believed that is). That’s ok – water has funny properties. Amplifying CO2 forcing but not amplifying solar forcing might be one of them. Not so likely but who knows? However you must surely admit that you are trying to flog (albeit in exalted company like Trenberth, Schmidt etc) the rather less obvious scenario. This kind of reasoning has a name – “confirmation bias”. Where’s the data? Need I refer to Lowell Stott’s findings again?
The answer we keep hearing is that “only XX CO2” can make the models work properly. The problem with that is they fail to consider that the null hypothesis is “maybe the answer lies in one of the many factors we don’t understand very well, or simply something we have not addressed” (the latter being unknowns unknowns). Also, “work properly” tends to translate to “gives the result we want” which is inherently biased.
Mark
444, Mark:
That’s also my view.
That is also my view. I am not caviling the main features of CO2 infrared behavior.
Referring back to the discussion of the Douglas et al. paper, on page 8 in section 4.2 they say “There is an enormous ongoing effort to find errors in the observations that would reduce the disagreement with the models.” They go on, but given that, in my view, reality trumps guesswork every time, shouldn’t the enormous ongoing effort be in the direction of getting the models to agree with reality, rather than the other way round?
But, trust me, I’m a real climate scientist!
BTW: To support JohnV this time. That 1 degree C number has been calculated by Lindzen. Lubos concluded the same. Schwartz calculated it too. It’s not controversial.
tpguydk,
Nobody can even agree on the global temp 800 years ago. How anybody can know the temp from the last interglacial to the nearest degree is beyond me. It was almost certainly warmer in Greenland as recently as 5K years ago, by a LOT, by direct measurement, than it is today, and it stayed that way for thousands of years. One might wonder why the polar bears never aren’t extinct, and Greenland’s ice shelf didn’t collapse then.
This is a local temp, and not subject to arguments about the global nature of the rise, because it is measured directly from the ice sheet itself.
Click to access icecores_palaeoclimate.pdf
Check out figure three, the long term one. There is similar data for Antarctica, it hasn’t melted yet either.
454, and Shaviv.
Regarding H2O feedback:
I am definitely not denying its importance. Any temperature increase (regardless of the cause) will probably increase water vapour which will probably increase temperature further. It’s included as an amplifier in any heating — solar, GHG, continental drift, etc. It’s probably the dominant feedback on short time scales, and possibly on longer time scales as well. However, it’s most likely only an amplifier of other temperature forcings.
#455:
Thank you for both the link and the answer, yorick
#423 T J Olson (and others):
The Douglass paper is very interesting. It does seem to demonstrate that the 22 climate models do a poor job of simulating upper troposphere temperature trends. I have a concern with the way the results are presented (of course):
The way the results are presented in the paper it looks like none of the models are even close. It compares the *mean* temperature trends for the 22 models against measured trends. That in itself is fine, but in showing the *range* of outputs it actually shows the expected range of the *mean*. For example, the range of the model trends at 700hPa is 58 to 223mC/decade with a mean of 177mC/decade. The paper plots 147 to 207mC/decade, which is the mean plus or minus 2sd of the mean.
I did a quick correlation between all 22 models and the RATPAC observed temperature trends. Below I plotted the best 3 and worst 3:
Compare this to the published plot reproduced on Lubos Motl’s blog: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html
The range of model trends is still outside the observed temperature trends, but the best models (particularly NCAR-CCSM3) actually do quite well. That’s useful information that the modellers can use to improve some aspects of the models.
Again, I’m not saying the models don’t have problems modelling the tropical upper-troposphere temperature trends. They obviously do have problems.
I find it interesting that many of the same people who dismiss the fact that the US now appears to have been warmer in the 30’s than it is today, by arguing that the US is just one part of the globe, and the fact that it doesn’t show the same trends as the rest of the world is irrelevant.
Are the same ones who argue regarding the MWP, that since the proxies that we have aren’t in complete agreement, this proves that there never was such a thing as the MWP.
#457,
That’s only true if it turns out that H20, is a positive feedback. There are several new studies that find that H20 is a negative feedback.
RE 448. You are correct sir. Also see LOWTRAN.
Basically in order to design better IR sensors and steathier platforms the LOWTRAN, MODTRAN and
HITRAN codes were developed and used.
They were ( are) primarily used in the design phase. USAF would demand a IR signature model
based on say LOWTRAN or MODTRAN. The IR signature of a moving platform is a combination of Aeroheating,
Hot metal, and exhaust ( afterburning and non afterburning) different bands for each of these
I think 3-5micron and 8-12 were the windows we looked at. It’s been over 20 years for me.
Anyway, we would call these models “cookie cutter” models. They would capture gross phenomema pretty
well. But the innacurracies of these models is fairly well documented. Basically, at some point
you actually fly the plane or sensor ( missile) and you correlate the feild test with the design model.
I havent looked at the online version of Modtran. Does it have anything other than a standard day atmos?
Re #448
What do you think is questionable about the MODTRAN spectra?
John V
Do you know what the CAR-CCSM3 gives for CS?
RE: #428 – More adjustments?
RE: #457 – “will probably increase water vapour which will probably increase temperature further.”
No.
Steve, please can we have a thread for the Douglas, Christy… paper.
Preferably with a introductory post from you.
Boris could then offer us more of his expert opinion. He might even read the paper.
The paper can be found at icecap.
@Larry–
Yes. I agree. But, I’m always word-y-er. Also, I think it’s important for people who ask this (or get diverted by this claim) understand precisely why those specific words are a problem. If you don’t know precisely what is said and what it actually means, you can’t know your real question is not answered. I think just saying “Based on first principles” is not enough to help people who don’t know how either “rigor” or “first principles” are used.
By “uninteresting question” I don’t mean it’s a bad question. The problem is I know why MarkW asked that question. I know how the “first principles” argument is being thrown ‘out there.’ Sometimes, that word is thrown around either
a) When modelers create their own strawman question or argument and then argue against the strawmen or
b) When modelers intentionally distort the question that was actually asked in order to answer a strawman. 🙂
BTW, it’s not only GCM modelers who do this. This is a classic problem. I don’t even know if people who argue against the strawmen know they are doing it. I think often they don’t but sometimes they do. ( There are, btw skeptics who also resort to logical fallacies. But, I’m just sticking to MarkW’s issue.)
The truth is: GCM’s are based on first principles. But the actual equations solved contain parameterizations. (There is also a pesky initial condition issue that occurred to me as I am going through two Hansen papers at my blog. ) The parameterizations (and the initial value issue) means the solutions do not not come directly from first principles.
The other truth: Parameterizations can be fine. They are used in many fields, tested etc. They also can break– and quite badly.
Anyway, because I know the “science” part of it obscures things for people who don’t know how transport phenomena are modeled, I’m trying to think of a good non-science analogy. I hope I won’t offend anyone, but I’m going to use the Pope!
Suppose we were arguing whether or not the current Pope’s thinking about AGW is based on the New Testament. Many consider The New Testament a “first principle” from a religious point of view.
Well… I think we can safely say that his thinking is somehow based on the New Testament. Yet, if someone asked
“Is the Popes position of AGW based on the New Testament”. You’d probably say, “Huh?”
One the one hand, the answer is clearly yes. If saying yes seemed to support some other argument, maybe you’d answer that. But… well, so?
Other people could read the New Testament and come up with entirely different answers that would could also be “based on the New Testament”.
Carnac predicts we shall read news stories telling us what the New Testament advises with regard to AGW over the course of the next few months. Some spiritual leaders will disagree with the Pope.
The problem is direct application of the New Testament (or first principles) does not give a definitive answer to AGW. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn’t get any good quotes out of Jesus on this one. Paul didn’t volunteer his views. Neither the Ephisians nor the Corinthians asked.
You need to do construct a bunch of “what ifs” answer them based on the New Testament and then assemble some big complicated kit-and-kaboodle “model” to get “the answer”.
Parameterizations area a bit like “what ifs”. People don’t just pull them out of nowhere, but you can end up with a range of plausible answers, and in the end come up with different answers to the big questions of our day.
So, in this some sense “Is the Popes position of AGW based on the New Testament” is an uninteresting question, because it’s not the right question to get the answer anyone probably seeks. In the same sense, “Are GCM’s based on first principles” is not the right question.
This might be true… I wasn’t drawing any specific conclusions.
That, however, means nothing to me. Nearly all of the AGW claims are supposedly part of “consensus view” which implies they are not controversial, yet here we all are.
Mark
468, that’s a rather good analogy, although I’m sure others are possible (and maybe simpler). Bottom line is that in both situations, you can lay out the case both ways, and come up with credible arguments, even though both arguments are based on that same underlying postulates. If this were a legal case, this would be the kind of case that ends up going to trial, because it’s not obvious a priori how it’s going to pan out. And in the end, when you do take an indeterminate case like this to trial, and a defensible opinion could be written both ways, so it ends up being determined by the judge’s prejudices.
Hence the need to review the evidence with a fine toothed comb, before we end up with a ruling that we’ll regret.
mosher #462
EO/IR sensor modeling has come a long way in 20 yrs. I’ll just leave it at that.
That is astonishingly convenient isn’t it. Any true religious movement works better if one gets to make up stuff as one goes along.
RE 471. Cool. you dont have to flight test the sensors any more? That saves on money.
I’m searching for the last SPIE report I read on the model limitations, but alas google
is not helping this time around. Anyway, I wouldnt be suprised in advances and I would be suprised by remaining
issues.
Notwithstanding, assuming that you have an impeccable radiative model, that’s not the only thing you need to calculate the non-feedback temperature rise. You also have to model the fluid mechanics of the troposphere, because convection is a parallel process to radiation in the troposphere. You can bracket it between two limiting cases; 1. radiation dominating, and 2. convection dominating, and then model radiation the rest of the way out. I don’t know if this has been done in one paper.
Then you have to do feedback.
468, lucia, that was a great post. And I also happen to work with models that model transport phenomena (as in cars, trucks, trains, etc.). They are based on, and validated against, real data, however, they require tweaking and the user can change scenarios based on “what ifs” if necessary.
We do agree on some things!
476: Incidently, Held and Soden’s paper which I linked above discusses this issue under “Radiative-Convective Models,” on p. 445. They also reference Ramanathan & Coakley, 1979, “Climate modeling through radiative-convective models,” Rev. Geophys. Space Phy. 16:465-89. These models come up with 1.7 C water vapor feedback. An important assumption for these models is that relative humidity is constant. That’s why I’ve been asking about this assumption.
RE 473
I don’t recall saying that…less testing is more like it.
@Larry- I refuse to believe anything important happens between 0.01
Shoot! screwed by a less than sigh!
@Larry- I refuse to believe anything important happens between 0.0001 < Kn < 10000. I vote for just neglecting that bit. This will make the math much more beautiful and elegant and also eliminate some ad hoc parameterizations. 🙂
Others if you don’t have a clue what I mean, please disregard. It’s a joke. Larry probably gets it.
Those are assumptions. If the iris effect is real and glacial and inter-glacial period is driven by convention then the negative feed back will be the largest forcing. Simply put heat from the poles goes to the tropics where it is released through the clouds. As I understand there is reason to believe that the tropics have not change temperature much. Simply put the whole climate debate is based on the assumption that the climate is a positive feed back system based on information from ice cores. Is there any proxies that measure tropical temperature during an glacial and inter-glacial period, it would be interesting to find out if the tropics warmed during the glacial period.
Clouds are considered a positive feedback in models. What if clouds a positive feedback when there is snow/ice covered ground then becomes a negative feedback when it get above freezing. Will proxies like ice cores really give you the right answer.
442 John V
Ok, I think we agree a little more today than yesterday.
Perhaps — it’s all guesswork on how much. However, it is worth noting that Hansen’s GISS Model II is so CO2-fixated that CO2 corresponds to about 12C.
What kills me about the GCM arguments re glaciation and LIA and MWP and sod all else is that the GCMs are used to prove the assumptions that are fed into the GCMs. Last time we had this many circular arguments, it was because the “consensus” was that God would only use circles in the orbits of the planets since they were the “most perfect shape”. How many centuries was Astronomy set back?
Instead of insisting that the “uncertainties” show that the measurments must be wrong, despite the diversity of sources, radiosonde, mulitple satallites, why not try to reproduce the observation with the models and see where that takes us. Stupid question, I know.
#482 Pat Keating:
Are you saying that GISS Model II gives a temperature increase of 12C for CO2 increasing from ~180ppm to ~280ppm? Yikes. Do you have a reference?
=====
#483 yorick:
The inputs and parameterizations to the GCMs are at a much lower level than the results, so I think you’re going a little too far here. I suppose your statement could be true in terms of cloud parameterization.
I agree, and I suspect the modellers are trying.
Some effort has to go towards reconciling the differences between the measurements, but I think it’s likely that the true temperatures are bracketed by the measurements from different sources.
(Lucia et al – to display a less than sign, type & < ; — three characters (no spaces) — ampersand, less-than, semicolon
John V
No, I’m saying that CO2 going from around 300ppmv (don’t have the exact value handy) down to 1ppmv corresponds to a GISS Model II drop in temperature of around 12C into an ice age. No reference, unpublished work.
RE: #486 – We’d certainly run into deep trouble at 90 PPMV, if not some higher value.
Hey JohnV do you have any references for the 5.35*ln(co2/co2i) equation? It works nicely for
post 1974. Also, any simple way to pull out the volcanic contribution from the anomaly record?
Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013’
According Professor Wieslaw Maslowski
Here is a project for someone who has got the know how, but first an explaintion:
While discussing what accounted for the differences in temperature between
various planets such as Mercury, Venus and Earth it struck me that we do have a
proxy means to determine whether or not climate change on Earth is affected by
human activity. One of the prime drivers of climate on Earth is the sun for
without it temperatures would be hovering around absolute zero. The IPCC has
claimed that the sun’s variations in output are negligible and therefore not a
variable to consider in climate change.
Our neighbor, the Moon, on average shares the same orbital path and distance
from the sun as Earth. The Moon therefore on average (annual) should receive
the same solar insolation as the earth. Even though the Moon has a 28 day
period of rotation compared to Earth’s 24 hours, the amount of insolation is
the same regardless. The Moon with no atmosphere is said to have the following
temperatures:
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm
Mean surface temperature (day) 107°C
Mean surface temperature (night) -153°C
Maximum surface temperature 123°C
Minimum surface temperature -233°C
Now doing some rough math using the data supplied I get the following: The GAT
for the Moon is – 23 C ( – 9.4 F) and if the GAT for the Earth is 13.9 C (57
F), that means roughly 36.9 C (66.4 F) difference that is attributable to the
atmosphere.
In order to come up with these “mean”, “minimum” and “maximum” temperatures,
someone has taken periodic measurements of the Moon’s surface temperatures and
maintained a data base. Does anyone have access to this data and can we get
someone to run a time series in order to compare the annual change in GAT of
the Moon to the GAT of the Earth? If the changes in GAT are similar showing
coincident peaks and troughs, then solar output is a significant variable. The
amount of change will obviously be different due to the Earth’s atmosphere’s
ability to retain heat, but the timing of the change should be close or show a
time lag due to the flywheel effect.
—————–
Reply from Dr. Pielke:
This paper is relevant to your question.
Click to access Huang07ASR.pdf
Best Regards
Roger
————-
The paper has data from 1972 to 1975. I emailed Mr. Huang to see if there was more available. Waiting on his reply.
If the Moon’s temperatures fluctuate on an annual (year over year basis) average basis then the only source of that fluctuation is the sun. If the Moon’s temperatures fluctuate, then Earth’s must also.
The paper shows a seasonal variation which is due to the orbital influence on
temperature on the Moon due from Earth’s non circular orbit around the sun.
Earth is closer to the sun in it’s orbit in winter, than in summer. As a
result, the Moon’s seasons as it were track the Southern Hemisphere. What is
also extremely interesting is the 1.5 degree K drop in the minimum over the
same period. So in effect, the temperature swing on an annual basis can be 5
degree K. The only reason why the Northern Hemisphere has winter at this point
of the orbit is due to obliquity.
——————
In the meantime I found a potential data set on the Moon’s temperature.
Here we go on the data from Christian Monstein:
http://www.monstein.de/astronomypublications/MoonEnglishHtml/Moon2001V2.htm
Phoenix-2 radiospectrograph at Bleien observatory
http://www.astro.phys.ethz.ch/cgi-bin/showdir?dir=observations
The data is in a gzip file format which I don’t have the program. Now we need some enterprising person who
can crunch the numbers. Any takers????
Re#420, Hans Erren:
Thanks for the graphs. Ive seen them before, but did not connect the dots.
So, why on Earth anyone expect AGW to warm Antarctica? GCM applying average global temperature and global radiative balance to Antarctica?
487 SteveS
Yes. The run was made that way to determine just how big a CO2 factor was built into the model. Incidentally, the average absolute humidity went down to 40% of its modern value.
#486 Pat Keating:
Thanks for the clarification. That’s an unusual experiment though. 300ppm to 1ppm is about 8.2 “halvings”. If the logarithmic pattern for doublings works for “halvings” all the way down to 1ppm (which is probably not likely), then this result would indicate a temperature sensitivity of roughly 12C/8.2 = 1.5C/doubling. That’s actually on the low end.
Did you run Model II yourself? What does it give for doubling CO2 from 300ppm to 600ppm?
=====
#488 steven mosher:
I don’t have a reference for that equation — where did you see it?
It corresponds to a temperature sensitivity to CO2 doubling of 3.7degC. That is, it’s the same as 3.7*log2(C/Ci). (But I’m sure you already knew that).
Tamino did a post that included a way to remove volcanoes from the anomaly record:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/many-factors/
Why are scientists even calling the warming effect of the earth’s atmosphere a “greenhouse” effect? It most decidedly is not. A greenhouse works by preventing heat convection out of the confined space due to glass (or whatever material) panes. The atmosphere warms due to the absorption of radiation, both directly from the sun and by reflected radiation off the earth’s surface. It’s not even a good analogy to say it’s “like a greenhouse.”
yorick, that’s more or less what I asked in #453, but I agree. Stupid question
>> A greenhouse works by preventing heat convection out of the confined space due to glass (or whatever material) panes.
Actually, that’s not the distinguishing characteristic of a greenhouse. It’s merely a necessary pre-requisite. The distinguishing attribute of a greenhouse is that it lets radiation in, but not out. Our atmosphere is like that. It also meets the pre-requisite, since there is no convection with space. By your definition, a brick building could be a greenhouse, since it also blocks convection.
RE 493 Thanks on the tamino post.. I knew I saw it somewhere!
the 5.35 ln…
Click to access global_temp_2007.pdf
but I’m pretty sure I’m doing something wrong. better read some more.
493 John V
1. Yes.
2. I haven’t tried that run yet. I will when I get time. I don’t think the model uses a logarithmic expression for CO2 because it didn’t barf on 0ppm.
494 496
Actually, Gunnar, it is generally accepted that the real greenhouse operates as Jeff A describes, and that IR absorption does not play a significant role. Even the AGW supporters generally accept that.
Random Team paper:
Earths Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications (Hansen et al. 2005)
Various folks. Why would you say water vapor is either a positive or negative feedback? Depends on where it is and what else is around.
Ceteris paribus is a phrase that pays.
Jeff A “Greenhouse effect” is just a phrase. Wikipedia sez
Andrew H Yep, lots of assumin’ goin’ on here. The whole subject is one big one.
Jae Ah, the assumption there’s that a 1.7 C wv feedback being based on modeling the humidity as a constant. So what does that say about the model vs reality?
Mark T. Some things are in such wide agreement as to be undebateable. I would tend to agree 1.1 C is one of them. Doesn’t make it true, but when so many folks calculate the same number… But regardless, it’s it’s an accepted number that can be used as a reference, correct or not; like assuming iid for certain statistical issues, regardless if the reality involves samples that are iid or not. But you make a great point in #451 about the null hypothesis (versus the AGW hypothesis). Regardless on the 1.1, it doesn’t matter, because CO2 it can’t be removed from the forcing and positive/negative feedback aspects of the system on its own anyway, so it’s meaningless.
Tom Vonk You’re missing the point of making the assumptions I think. I’ve already made it clear I doubt the anomany has a meaning even if accurate. I made the assumptions for two reasons; to get to the discussion of what can effect the energy balance and to show that lots of assumptions have to be made to get there. Then the questions would be, if the anomaly isn’t the energy balance, is the anomaly even important, regardless of what’s causing it. And then the debate on what’s causing it becomes moot, anyway. Even if you could figure things out other than by using a model that also makes a lot of assumptions and is far too simplistic a way to look at this all. Your explanation is a better way of what’s obvious about the mass of the entire atomosphere, land and of the planet having its energy balance energy balance from temperature samples of water surface and air. But I don’t know of any other proxy we can use to operate from. So. It’s all we got. (Poor argument, but true. Gotta have something to go on to learn more.)
Eli Rabett I don’t remember saying all there was is absorbtion. I sometimes limit my discussion to the absorbtion bands. You make a perfect point, there’s a lot more going on in the system. Actions, reactions and interactions is what I said. And “specific mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, argon, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone et al, and how those react to each other and the clouds and particulates and IR at each level. ” (If I’ve said wv I mean co2 only absorbs someplace, I retract it.)
CO2 absorbs IR photons that are at the frequency bands of varying sizes centered around about 2, 3, 3.5 and 18 micrometers (At least according to the atmospheric radiation transfer graph Im using). These are the frequencies where molecular vibrations (stretching and bending oscillations) occur. Wikipedia sez elsewhere it absorbs infrared radiation at wavelengths of 4.26 µm (asymmetric stretching vibrational mode) and 14.99 µm (bending vibrational mode)
As far as re-emission, it depends on what its colliding with as to what wavelength it transmits (emits, radiates).
cross sections of electron collisions nist.gov/data/PDFfiles/jpcrd620.pdf
Susann No problem, SS, SU… I didn’t even notice it at first anyway.
#498 Pat Keating:
The models probably use a simplified version of MODTRAN (or similar) to calculate the radiative effects of changing concentrations. The logarithmic temperature sensitivity would come out of this. I doubt that the logarithmic effect works all the way down to 1ppm — it’s most likely valid for a limited range of concentrations.
I think I’ve seen Model II climate sensitivity values of about 4degC for doubling CO2. I can’t find a a reference though.
Do we need to argue about the definition of a greenhouse?
Or the technical page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_greenhouse_%28technical%29
Hansen et. al 1988 says the climate sensitivity of GISS II is 4.2C for a doubling of CO2. I’m looking at this and a followon papers, right now, but I”m trying to find a few numbers to make some figures to support a few comments.
RE 498..Well, there would be a check to make sure it didnt puke on zero.
( he said with no evidence whatsoever)
Can you run it with C02= 280 from 1850 to present?
With no variation in solar, and no variation in aerosals?
Just wondering what the numerical drift is under constant inputs
498, 501, FWIW, I saw somewhere (don’t remember where) that Hansen took the model results and regressed them to an equation with the log of a quadratic. So the model results probably resemble that, though I saw no R^2.
I think the answer is unknowable, if there even is an answer. We just have a model that makes assumptions, and we end up with a non-quantified guess at something too complex to understand with any kind of certainty.
So, some thoughts.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/climate/greenhouse_effect_gases.html
How do you model any of that even? Heck, you take out X and it’s y%, you only have X and it’s z% Anything more than an estimate of “maybe” is not possible. Only the search for better knowledge of what we do understand is possible.
Why would an anomaly of +.7C be anything to worry about? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.
Maybe this is more important to pay attention to. But can we qualify or quantify it?
Sure. Sort of. Turn your oven on to .0056 C per year and leave it on 125 years. How do you feel? Then, Breathe from a bag you just sprayed a can of paint into for 5 minutes. How do you feel?
I am quite aware N2O only has a .15 watts per square meter radiative forcing. And? It still doesn’t change the fact that these are estimates (model or not, who cares), as I’ve pointed out in my link to the modeled radiative forcing graph. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Radiative-forcings.svg
Notice the error bars? What if the RF of CO2 is 1.5, the other gases (minus ozone) 1.0, ozone a forcing in both strat and tropo at ~.75, strat wv .25, land use at .25, aerosols at -.25 and -.25 and irradiance at .5
And this ignores so many things, least of which is WV.
RE: “The enormous ongoing effort to find errors in the observations that would reduce the disagreement with the models.”
I find the assumption that the errors are in the data rather disturbing. In the context of the models, the primary purpose of more and better data should be better testing and hence identification of errors and other problems in the models. More and better test data always throws up far more errors than people anticipate. For software of the size of these models we are talking about hundreds of errors.
506, the fact that they can’t pin down the the percent contribution of H2O to the GHE more accurately than 66-85% (and I’ve seen estimates outside of that range) is kind of disturbing. This is what passes for “settled science”?
Since we are starting to use Einsteins theories … I would like to propose the Climatology Theory of Relativity. The amount of Global Warming is constant regardless of the frame of the Climatologist observer. The Mannian transformations (…sorry Lorentz…) are used to understand the connection between warming and the historical proxies.
#508 Larry:
The reason the effect of water vapour can not narrowed further is because it depends on how you ask the question. The absorption bands for different gases overlap, so there are many ways to ask the question. Do you remove the H2O and leave everything else? Do you remove everything else and leave the H2O? The results are different.
I’d like to see some references for the the “enormous ongoing effort to find errors in the observations that would reduce the disagreement with the models”. Where is the “assumption that the errors are in the data”?
It’s clear that the models are being improved to better match observations. It’s true that the observations are being looked at to make them more consistent with each other.
#499, Pat, I stand by what I wrote in #496. What Sam quoted in 502 is exactly correct. Blocking convection is an attribute of every house, therefore it cannot be a distinguishing attribute of a greenhouse.
>> Even the AGW supporters generally accept that.
Of course, since they originated the distortion. Their argument is hurt by the greenhouse concept.
No, Gunnar, Wiki is wrong on this one. Build two greenhouses, one out of glass, and one out of NaCl, which allows all IR to come and go. Shield the NaCl one with glass to keep the same amount of IR out that the glass greenhouse does. This way you have the same amount of solar radiation going into both greenhouses. You will see no temperature difference between the two, even though the NaCl one lets all the IR back out. The real greenhouse effect is simply a reduction in convection.
It’s clear the models are being retuned to better match past observations.
It’s not clear the models are being improved to better match future observations.
John V, have you read Leonard A. Smith? You should.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/people/l.smith@lse.ac.uk/
duke, I’ve been trying to post a comment on him all day, but for some reason it won’t take. thanks.
bender:
I’ll try to find the time for Leonard A. Smith.
Can you provide a link to a specific paper?
To be fair, new models are more than just “re-tuning” of old models.
John V, it’s gold bars vs. the enitre planet. You can find the time.
My pleasure, bender.
I found this also:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/people/l.smith@lse.ac.uk/publications.htm
@bender– 513
Likely both tuning and real improvements are going on.
John V, lucia,
I agree that they are attempting to improve the models. I’m just spoiling for a fight tonight 😦
Re #518
He has published twice with Hansen. He knows from whence he speaks.
John V, I was quoting from an earlier post.
RE: #25 – Unforeseen negative feedbacks.
Smith, 1997:
http://www2.maths.ox.ac.uk/~lenny/fermi96_main_abs.html
My last word on this is a quote. “Greenhouses thus work by trapping electromagnetic radiation and preventing convection.”
———————————–
Gunnar, I like the analogy of solar radiation warming the things in the building, but then the heat can’t get out. It rather goes without saying that if you have a building where you turn on the stove, the building stops the heat from getting out. It doesn’t matter the source of the heat; if a structure stops it from getting out (more than it lets the outside get in) it stops heat from getting out.
But let’s not postulate that the walls are made of cheese, please!
—————————
Larry, your comment on “66-85%” says it all. Sure, H2O as a gas is short lived. Sure, it’s not as “strong” as CO2. Sure, there’s only 400% more by weight in the atmosphere. Of course water is only the primary absorber of energy on earth in gas liquid and vapor forms and simply moderates the entire system and is a forcing and a negative feedback and a positive feedback. Water, hah, I laugh at it. It has no bearing on climate whatsoever.
——————–
John V, you are correct and incorrect. Most things are different, remove vs only. I believe CH4 and N2O are both the same number if you remove them or leave them (others, I forget). But this is true, if ModelE is correct, about the others http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/
Remove H2O = 64% absorption by the others
Have only H2O = 66% by itself
Remove O3 = 97% absorption by the others
Have only O3 = 7% by itself
Remove H2O and clouds = 34% absorption by the others
Remove H2O and CO2 = 47% absorption of the others
Take away none? WOW!!!! 100%
Take away it all? WOWOWOWOWWOWWWW!!!!! 0%
This is supposed to tell us something?
————–
Jae, you’re forgetting the concept of Ceteris Paribus. Can you be run over in an airplane? Sure, if somebody smuggled a car onto the plane, or if one falls out of another plane above you and lands on top of you in your airplane. Salt, sugar, glass, plastic, whatever.
——————————-
Lucia, CO2 can’t be coupled with a temp trend…..
If it could (for the sake of argument!) a doubling of CO2 would be 2.1C (1880-2005 +33%=+.7C). A 200% would be 4.2C
So what GISS II says is meaningless nonsense. Not science.
YMMV
Thats pretty clear isn’t it Sam?
Treating these data points as x,y pairs shows that it appears that you need an increase in CO2 of around 6-10 ppmv CO2 per decade just to maintain temperature. Let CO2 increase fall to just 2 ppmv CO2 per decade, and temperatures will fall. At CO2 increases of 14 ppmv CO2 per decade and above you get significant warming.
There is probably an equation that expresses that, and I have had a go after brushing up my basic algebra at http://www.wtamu.edu/academic/anns/mps/math/mathlab/int_algebra/int_alg_tut15_slope.htm
The graph I drew crosses the x intercept at -0.16 deg C and the y intercept at 9 ppmv CO2. If my maths is correct, the equation is y = 55x + 9, or x = (y-9)/55 where x is T expressed in deg C per decade and y is ppmv CO2 per decade.
If this is right, then it says that all we have to do to maintain temperatures at current levels is hold CO2 increases to 9 ppmv per decade. If that is right, then it seems that the issue isn’t so much the quantum of CO2 increase as the rate.
On the other hand, if we were to double atmospheric CO2 levels by 38 ppmv per decade (doubling of 380 ppm over 100 years), then the corresponding temperature increase would be 0.53 deg C per decade, or 5.3 deg over the next 100 years. 🙂
504 Steve M
I’m back from a dinner party.
Yes, I can run that, and will do so when I get the chance.
511, 512
A greenhouse has a glass roof which let’s the sun’s energy in, that’s how it is different from a regular house.
The experiment jae describes was carried out by a Brit scientist named Wood, back in 1909 (I think, don’t hold me to that date) and published Proc. Royal Soc.
525: Yes, and the whole troposphere can be viewed as a really large glass greenhouse, except that there is no limit on convection. There is no “trapping” of IR going on. HOH and CO2 are just like the glass in a greenhouse; they intercept the IR, but that has nothing to do with heating the inside of the greenhouse. Convection rules. It really is that simple, IMHO.
Hey John, welcome back!
bender:
I hesitate to ask since you’re “looking for a fight”, but here goes:
1. Gold bars vs the entire world?
2. LA Smith papers to get me started? (“What might we learn from climate forecasts?” seems like a good one)
#529 John V
1. You haven’t seen AIT? Gasp! You ARE John A’s sock puppet. Kidding 🙂
2. theduke already gave you a page full of them. Yes – definitely start with that one.
Cool, I’m remembered here. I’m glad to see some familiar faces. 🙂
Re: Leonard Smith (bender, theduke, JohnV comments)
Interesting quote from one of his recent Nature publications:
Ref: “Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases”, D. A. Stainforth, T. Aina, C. Christensen, M. Collins3, N. Faull, D. J. Frame, J. A. Kettleborough, S. Knight, A. Martin, J. M. Murphy, C. Piani, D. Sexton, L. A. Smith, R. A. Spicer, A. J. Thorpe and M. R. Allen; Nature 433, 403-406 (27 January 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature03301; Received 4 November 2004; Accepted 20 December 2004
Is that tuning?
No. Cherry-picking.
#530 bender:
I did see AIT, once, on video.
I don’t get my science from politicians.
Well, then, you remember the scene where he had the balance with gold bars on one side and the entire planet on the other, suggesting action on GHGs was a moral decision?
Glad to see “The Practice of Science” discussion revived above, since I missed the middle of this un-thread.
My completely unoriginal take, often posted here & at other climate blogs, is that one of the big reasons for the contentiousness of the AGW thing is money – lots of it. Private sector Engineers are accustomed to merciless auditing of their work – if some consortium lays out $100M or more for a refinery or mining operation, it damn well better work. My guess is that the peer-review process in academic research is not nearly as harsh, and academic scientists have perhaps been taken aback by the intrusion of private sector review methods into their “collegial” world (ironic quotation because I spent enough time in academe to witness some unsavory bickering & back-biting).
But I didn’t throw down my 2 cents just to re-state the obvious – I have a few related and long-standing curiousities. I wish I had the time to delve into these, but I don’t, and I don’t have a research background. But it appears that Susann the newly-arrived policy wonk does, so:
Claim: There is tremendous pressure in academe & other public-sector institutions to toe the AGW party line. Dissenters are rewarded with overt hostility and funding cut-offs (my sources: Lindzen, Michaels, Pielke Jr.). Verify, quantitatively if possilble (ie: follow the money).
Hypothesis: AGW has been the growth industry in public-sector science for the last 15 years or so. It has developed a powerful inertia. Prove or disprove, quantitatively if possilble (ie: follow the money).
For the present discussion, I am interested only in how the above-mentioned issues have affected public-sector research, at least as far as can be disentangled from a burgeoning AGW industry in the private sector. For the latter, The Nation’s Alexander Cockburn – whose leftist creds are bullet-proof – smelled a rat, followed the money, and wrote a stinging series of articles last Spring.
Any interest, anyone? (Susann?)
trevor in #29
It ought not to be linear. The effectiveness of CO2 increases falls off exponentially, so if you go from 300 to 400ppm it has far more effect than going from 500 to 600. I don’t know the formula. But temp rises should follow the same pattern unless there are complicated and non-linear feedbacks.
JohnV/H2O feedback
“Its probably the dominant feedback on short time scales, and possibly on longer time scales as well. However, its most likely only an amplifier of other temperature forcings.”
If solar was a forcing in the past then H2O would be an amplifier, by your own logic, which means that if the H2O heating effect is really 3 times that of CO2 then the CO2 effect was minimal in the past (where H2O feedback came first). However, you clearly include or exclude parameters, based only on biased guesses, in order to obtain a “CO2 rules” scenario, aided by a magic water vapour feedback that is important short term but unimportant long term. All the while ignoring Lowell Stott’s real data which disproves said scenario. You then have the cheek to talk about the error bars on other peoples work! Have you ever considered stepping back a bit and actually thinking about things in an unbiased way? That is, be scientific about it!
Actually isn’t our argument here that it’s both input and output – that CO2’s effect on climate is taken as an assumption to feed into a model which then assesses CO2’s effect on climate. One end may be an assumption of mechanisms to set parameters whilst the other may be a set of numbers derived from those assumptions but both could reasonably be described as ways of describing climate CO2 sensitivity.
Re: 42
I’ve thought.
Prudhoe Bay. Let’s say the ice thinning has gone on for ten years. The new area of open water is 460,000 miles^2. I can cover that with 6,000,000 litres of thin oil. Let’s say the initial area needed to start the process was a tenth of that, just the small area of open water that we started with. Then let’s say the process has been going on for ten years. 5 ml of thin oil will still one hectare.
60,000 litres of oil per year. Multiply by a few for thick oil, degradation of oil sheen (very slow in the Arctic I bet) and unknowns.
I wonder how much oil has been getting down the rivers into the Beaufort Sea over the last few years.
More to the point, has anyone sampled the surface layer recently?
So: oil sheen suppresses CCN production, ice warms and thins, becomes vulnerable to shocks. A weather shock tips it over and off goes the ice. Now we must worry about the cloud response. Normally the open water would generate enormous amounts of low cloud and fog. If the CCNs are depleted then this might not happen and the process could continue.
Another illustration of the explanatory power of the Kriegesmarine hypothesis. Maybe someone could run a model?
JF
re #500 by Sam Urbinto
First post from a long time lurker, and probably a stupid question.
A molecule in the atmosphere is transparent to incoming photons at certain frequecies and absorbs photons at others, so an incoming photon can pass through the atmosphere. This photon reaches the surface and is absorbed and remitted at another frequency. This is a frequency that can now be absorbed by the molecule so the photon cannot pass through the atmosphere so it is absorbed by the molecule which emits a photon at yet another frequency which returns to the surface. This is the basis of the greenhouse effect Yes?
But is the Sun not emitting photons at the frequency that the molecules absorb too? Do they not absorb and remit incoming solar photons and not just those reemitted from the surface, in fact would there not be a lot more photons coming from the Sun than from the Earth’s surface?
A real nooby question I’m sure but can someone explain why this does not matter.
It has been already said hundred times but I will say it again : “The only stupid questions are those that are not asked .”
– Partly yes . The beginning is right , the end less so . Once the molecule absorbs the infrared pohoton it generally doesn’t reemit . The process has been explained a bit above . The collisions with other molecules happen much faster than the time to reemit . So the energy won by absorbing the photon is given away fast by collisions to other molecules . There is very little remission . But collisions being temperature , the other molecules warm a bit . This process is called thermalisation of radiation .
– Indeed the Sun does . However the thermal spectrum (a curve that gives the number of photons emitted for every frequence) is very different for the Sun and for the Earth because the Sun is much hotter than the Earth . Most of the Sun energy comes at high frequency and there is very little above let’s say 5µ where the molecules absorb infrared . Most of the energy emitted by the Earth comes precisely at those IR frequencies . So there is more Earth IR photons than Sun’s IR photons . Yet you are of course right for this (small) part of the Sun’s photons that come in at the right frequency the process is exactly the same (thermalisation) . The IR active molecule makes no difference if the photon comes from the Sun or from the Earth .
Thanks, too much wine last night, I hadn’t thought of thermalisation. Are there any figures for the relative emission rates at the absorption bands for the Sun/Earth? Does this change over solar cycles? Is the Earths emmission rate variable depending on surface temperature? If it is mostly the Earth’s re-emission IR that is absorbed then doe… aaargh too many questions, I’m taking an asprin and a rest.
John
538, 539: Don’t forget that about half of the suns energy is in the infrared portion of the spectrum.
In today’s London times.
Scorching decade claims eight of the hottest years on record
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3045976.ece
At the time of posting there are no comments on this Bali-fest article.
Anybody willing to give it a go? Pleeeeese.
So they should use model results with known problems? Perhaps there is disagreement on the simplified ocean issue? Don’t want to read the supplemental information before making this claim?
Perhaps we have different definitions for cherry picking.
The uncertainties are so large that no attempt should be made to fit the models to observations. Nothing is to be ganined there, all is known. If all of the models agree, the satelites and radiosonde must be wrong. I understand now. I love big brother.
re: Greenhouse. But the IR absorption is just that, not prevention of convection. Heat IS lost to space or life would bever have evolved, the planet would be hundreds of degrees all over.
I still contend that it’s a completely incorrect analogy and shouldn’t be used in scientific discussions. You might as well call it the doghouse effect, would be just as correct, meaning not at all.
BTW: Does anyone use the RSS feeds here? I’m not getting anything from them. I used the top level feed links, which should get me all comments and all posts, but nada.
Boris #382
Something I find odd about this statement, and in alarmist AGW assumptions: C02 has a non-feedback cs of 1.1c; the fundamental alarmist position comes about because increasing atmospheric temperature involves positive feedbacks, water feedback, clouds, albedo etc.. Now there doesnt appear to be a special case for CO induced warming: so the past climate should be dominated by net positive feedbacks; in which case there really shouldnt be a problem in rebounding out of glaciation; and we know temperature lead CO2 in these cases. I would think this would count double given that climate must be a non-deterministic system in which the manner in which multiple drivers combine would be unknowable.
So either the climate is dominated by net positive feedbacks; or we dont need CO2 to explain ice age terminations. Boris positions seems to be a case of wanting his cake and eating it.
Any elucidation on this would be much appreciated.
Julian #42
Understood. Hey, it’s Christmas, maybe you’re both right…..
(Insert smiley and sound of sleighbells here)
Either way, if 24 and 25 are both as weak as some are suggesting we
might get to know before too many years are up.
Good luck with your work.
John
509,
It’s not an ill-posed question, you’ve simply proposed that you have to chose between two ill-posed answers. There is an exact answer to the original question.
Absorption and emission rays/bands depend on the atom/molecule . For every different atom/molecule there is a different configuration of absorption/emission spectra . It is not only for IR , it goes all over the frequency spectrum .
The IR has only this of particular that it excites what’s called quantum vibration/rotation states of certains molecules (so not all are significantly IR active) .
Beyond those quantum mechanical effects you have another effect that’s called “thermal radiation” .
Any form of matter radiates thermal radiation which is mostly represented by the Planck’s bell like curve of a black body which gives the frequency on X axis and energy (or number of photons) on Y axis .
The form of this curve depends only on temperature and not on the nature of the matter – high temperature has most photons with high frequence and low temperature has most photons with low frequence .
The Sun’s and Earth’s curve almost don’t superpose – Sun is far right (high T , high frequency) and Earth far left (low T , low frequency) .
Now if you begin to ask more of such questions and are interested in the radiation basics , this board is probably not the best place for learning basics .
I’d suggest to Google a bit and to print out some Wikis or even buy a book and spend some time reading all that in order to not to start from 0 .
Sorry, the above should have been addressed to JohnV 510
539 540
The first part of this sentence is certainly true, but I’m not at all sure that the second part is.
If you compare the IR emission from a 300K body with the IR emission from a 2500K body, the latter will indeed emit most of its energy in the visible, but nevertheless it is so energetic that it will emit a lot more IR than the 300K body (same area, same solid angle). If you don’t believe that, put some numbers into the expression for Planck’s Law.
The only reason I say I’m not sure in the first para above, is that the solid angles are not the same in the question posed.
551, but percentage-wise, it’s small. And that’s what matters comparing the incoming budget to the outgoing budget. The vast majority of the radiation incoming is visible, and most of it gets converted to IR when it hits a dark surface.
Gary Moran #3546
Good luck. You will have to wait ’til Gavin the Mindguard puts out a slogan like “uncertainties!” You will then hear it endlessly repeated without further elaboration.
As for your original statement. It makes perfect sense. I would like to hear an answer too. Not expecting one though.
552
Yes, but the energy converted to IR can only be emitted at a rate determined by the earth’s temperature and emissivity. That’s a pretty slow rate compared with what the sun is doing in the IR.
The only thing that makes the situation uncertain is the fact that the sun subtends a smaller solid angle to an air molecule than does the earth’s surface. Whether that compensates for the higher emission rate is not clear to me.
Re #551
The solid angles aren’t the same, however the earth receives the same amount of energy from the sun as it radiates out. So compared to the outgoing energy the incoming IR is very low.
Re #552
‘The vast majority of the incoming radiation is visible’ is not true, try running a Blackbody calculator to verify:
http://energy.sdsu.edu/testcenter/testhome/javaapplets/planckRadiation/blackbody.html
I am sorry about my “Gavin the Mindguard” quip. This site isn’t the place for that kind of stuff.
546
Is it worth quoting Freeman Dyson again?
Greenland and Magma
http://physorg.com/news116684418.html
Maybe Steve will report.
#546
Sorry this should be: either the climate is dominated by net positive feedbacks in which case we dont need CO2 to explain ice age terminations; or the climate system is not dominated by positive feedback. Boris positions seems to be a case of wanting his cake and eating it.
In fact the whole issue of CO2 cs above approx 1.1 appears to be a misnomer: surely if we accept the IPCC position of 2.5, we are essentially talking about 1.1 direct from C02 and 1.5 from general warming feedbacks which would apply equally to any positive forcing?
#535 PaddikJ:
December 12th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
You are talking about leaving the realm of metaphor and playing real hockey. I’m not sure Susann is up to it. Certainly, if there has been a corruption of public-sector science, it likely happened in the manner you (and your sources) describe. It would make a hell of a public policy paper.
I read the columns by Cockburn at the time. Damning to say the least. He’s a guy who likes a good fight, but I think even he was taken aback by the nasty responses he got.
555
Yes, the balance argument kind of settles the solid angle uncertainty that was in my mind.
558
I think you make a good point. Any non-localized forcing should get the same positive feedback as CO2. The sun is more localized in its effects and may well get more positive feedback than the widely distributed CO2.
552:
Nope.
#536 JamesG:
Let me go through your missive one sentence at a time:
Absolutely. Water vapour is a feedback (amplifier) for all forcings. A 1% increase in solar, on its own, would yield ~1degC warming. Water vapour (and other feedbacks) amplify it.
Your logic is flawed.
If solar warming is amplified by water vapour (which it is), then CO2 warming is also amplified by water vapour. There is nothing in those statements that defines the relative contribution of each. From a basic radiative balance, a 1% increase in solar is *roughly* equivalent to doubling CO2. Check the magnitude of the Milankovitch cycles — a 1% solar increase would be on the high end.
Actually, no. I did not way water vapour was unimportant long term. I said it was *dominant* on short time scales, and possibly on longer time scales as well. The effect of water vapour does not decrease on longer time scales, but other slow feedbacks become important (such as the melting of the ice which defines an ice age).
I have also said that CO2 forcing is thought to be responsible for ~40% — hardly pushing a “CO2 rules” scenario.
Which scenario? CO2 forcing? Water vapour feedback?
Do you have a problem with my critique of Douglas07?
The irony is too much…
snip
555, I don’t download applets. Windows is too vulnerable.
561, notice the units; w/m^2/cm. That’s waves, or photons, not energy. When you correct for energy, it ends up with a lot more w/m^2 in the visible range.
#544 yorick:
You should really use a [begin sarcasm]…[end sarcasm] marker. 🙂
Comparing the models to observations and using the differences to improve the models is valid. Incorrectly comparing the models to observations and concluding that the models are completely wrong (per Douglas07) is, uh, not helpful.
=====
#546 Gary Moran:
A net positive feedback does not mean that temperatures continue to increase. It only means that the contribution from a given forcing is amplified. Using ballpark figures, a 1% solar forcing (more than a typical Milankovitch cycle) would impact ~1degC warming. For the sake of argument, let’s say this is amplified to 2.5degC. That’s still not enough to come out of an ice age. Something has to be responsible for the other ~2degC warming. (Ice age temperature swing is 4-5degC globally, 10-11degC at the poles).
If the feedback terms are large enough to cause deglaciation without CO2, then temperature sensitivity to a given amount of solar forcing is quite large. Since the basic greenhouse physics (minus feedbacks) are well understood, this would mean that present-day CO2 forcing will lead to even more warming than expected.
=====
#547 Larry:
In #508 you said “the fact that they cant pin down the the percent contribution of H2O to the GHE more accurately than 66-85% (and Ive seen estimates outside of that range) is kind of disturbing. This is what passes for settled science?”.
That is, you implied that there was uncertainty in the GHE for CO2 and that therefore the science was not well understood. Since the difference in the estimates is actually due to different ways of posing the question, your statement was incorrect.
=====
#558 Gary Moran:
Yes, the general feedbacks would apply to any forcing. There are only a few forcings that we control though, and that’s the whole point of the A in AGW.
565, no. There exists a unique number that apportions the greenhouse effect correctly between H2O and the other GHGs. If it depends on how the question is posed, all but one of the questions is wrong. Unless you’re into this “many universes” quantum stuff, anyway.
Sounds like Hitchens to me.
#566 Larry:
I disagree. The question has to be asked precisely to get a precise answer. That’s always the case in a complex non-linear system. You’re probably familiar with this Real Climate post, but I think it’s a good explanation:
(Ignore the incendiary first paragraph to get to the science)
564: ?? You have to integrate. try this one.
Ok, John. It depends on what “is” is. How scientific.
Do you agree that if CO2 causes a forcing, then so does HOH? They are both “greenhouse gases.” HOH is present in quantities of more than 25 times that of CO2 in a humid environment. But there is only about 7.5 times as much water vapor as CO2 in the deserts. So, why doesn’t all the extra “forcing” and “feedback” from the extra water vapor make the humid climates WAY hotter than the deserts in the middle of the day?
For info: BBC News is reporting that Hadley Centre claims 2007 will be 7th warmest ever.
See here. Includes a repeat of the claim that 1998 was the warmest, and says that the 11 warmest years are all in the last 13.
Yes just saw that.
My first thought was that the year is not over and this is a cold December.
Secondly, if this is the 7th warmest – doesn’t this indicate a cooling trend rather than a warming trend?
Do these people have any idea how long forever is? A bit longer ago than 1934.
#570 Larry:
It’s analogy time again. This time I’ll use a mass-spring-damper with a natural frequency of 1 Hz. It’s being forced by two inputs with the same amplitude. Input A is at 2Hz, and by itself it causes a 10mm vibration. Input B is at 3Hz and by itself it causes a 5mm vibration. When the two are combined, there is a beat frequency at 1Hz causing resonance. The total vibration is 50mm.
What fraction of the 50mm vibration is caused by input A?
If we consider input A alone, it’s 10/50 = 20%.
If we consider input B alone, it’s (50-5)/50 = 90%.
There’s no “correct” answer to the un-specific question. The system is non-linear so you can not just remove one or the other to determine its net effect.
The best answer is not to pick one or the other, but to give the range.
=====
#571 jae:
Due to its short residence time, H2O is generally considered a feedback instead of a forcing. That is, surplus water vapour (at a given temperature) will precipitate and condense out of the atmosphere too quickly to force temperatures higher. If temperature is raised by some other forcing, water vapour will increase and amplify the original temperature increase.
We’re not supposed to talk about your correlation. If possible, I think you should look at the RSS and/or UAH T2lt (lower troposphere) temperatures and see if the pattern still holds. My *guess* is that once you’re away from the ground, things might be different. That is, I *think* ground-level albedo effects are overwhelming atmospheric greenhouse effects (near the ground only).
#472 Austin Spreadbury:
The BBC news story does not even use the word “ever”, and near the end of the story it talks about the instrumental record going back to 1850. Globally, 1998 was the warmest year.
#474 Larry:
See above about the word “ever”.
#473 StanJ:
An extremely hot 1998 does not make subsequent years a cooling trend. I don’t want to go over it all again, but do a trend on any 10 year period since the mid-1970s and they’re all going up.
—
What’s interesting about 2007 is that it’s not an El Nino year. In fact, La Nina conditions are prevailing, but it’s still very warm. NOAA and NASA have it ranked second (behind 1998).
Cue the complaints about the instrumental record being wrong.
575, nonsense. The real earth doesn’t have multiple solutions. Your abstract model may, but there exists one and only one number that describes the proportion of heat absorbed by H2O and Other GHGs put together. And BTW, Gavin isn’t claiming that it’s nondeterministic, in that link you posted. Uncertain, but not nondeterministic.
Warmest ever? Great! Here is what we know. When the world warms, humans thrive.
Why are these guys economic science deniers?
we migrated to warmer climes. we settled in warmer climes. we thrived in warmer climes. when we get flithy rich we
buy islands in warmer climes. we are not polar bears. Bring on the hot stuff baby.
PS. I recieve no funding from Bikini Designers.
576, want you cake and eat it too, don’t you? Either say that 1998 was the hottest year on record, or say that you can’t call the subsequent years a cooling trend. But not both. That’s cheap rhetoric.
It like trying to praise the 7th runner-up in a beauty contest. The PR guys can find a way to hype anything.
RE: #567 – I have more in common with Peter, although I do agree with the odd rare article by Chris.
Larry:
I’m not saying it’s non-deterministic. The problem with non-linear systems is that, by definition, you can’t add component results to get a composite result. Overlapping absorption bands make GHGs non-linear.
Cheap rhetoric? Cherry-picking single year comparisons to show a cooling trend is what’s cheap. You know that. It’s about long-term trends.
For the sake of argument, let’s say 2010 is an El Nino year and is warmer than 1998. Let’s also say that 2011 through 2014 are cooler than 2010. By 2015, you’ll be claiming that global warming ended in 2010.
Pick a data set (CRU, GISTEMP, NOAA, RSS, UAH) and show me *any* 10 year surface cooling trend since 1980 ((linear trend, not subtracting end-points).
Are there any figures on water evaporation rates from the earth’s surface, including the oceans, as calculated by the models? It would seem to be important to get this right, especially in view of Douglass et al.
John, the water only has to be there for one day to evaluate the scenario I gave. If CO2 can absorb enough IR in one day to cause a “forcing,” so can HOH. As I recall, the average residence time for a water molecule is 8 days. Consider the tropics over the ocean, where the average temperature rarely exceeds 32 C. It’s hotter than that in Phoenix in the summer (34.2 C on a thirty-year average), at an elevation of 339 meters! If folks can’t explain why the scenario I provided above is flawed, then I don’t see how the GHG forcing idea holds water (little pun there).
JohnV
You originally stated “attribute deglaciation as ~60% solar and ~40% CO2”. I realise these numbers are just pulled out of a hat, but if H2O feedback is also important then was it included in the other numbers? If so, what is the real CO2 contribution, without the H2O feedback? 15% perhaps? Was albedo feedback included in the solar number? There are other ice-based positive feedbacks too – are they also in the solar number? Why not google Stott for yourself? It is important after all: From his data, he concluded that while CO2 is important, it clearly couldn’t have brought about deglaciation. AFAIK he is the only person who bothered to check the real data. Dogma was enough for everyone else.
The sun transmitts some of it’s energy in the infrared. So CO2 must block a small portion of this infrared energy. What percentage of the sun’s energy is blocked by increasing CO2. Or is this amount so small that it’s smaller than the error bars?
#584 jae:
Let me ask one more time — check if the correlation holds using the RSS or UAH lower-tropospheric temperatures. I suspect ground effects are overwhelming the greenhouse effect.
587: I don’t know how to do that, as I have to deal with specific locations and I have no data for temperatures above the standard met station measurement level (5 feet?). But if I apply standard lapse rates, the relationships would hold.
582, I never said you can add the effects together. In fact, I seem to remember arguing the opposite with you a while ago. What I said, is that when all is said an done, there is at any set of GHG concentrations, an exact percentage of the GHE that’s attributable to water vapor.
586: See this link for a qualitative look at CO2 absorption.
#585 JamesG:
For the sake of argument, I’ll go with your numbers. Let’s say CO2 by itself caused 15%. That would mean that solar by itself caused ~23%. The remaining 62% is left for feedbacks. The 15% from CO2 is amplified by water vapour, albedo, etc. The 23% from solar is amplified by water vapour, albedo, etc.
What does this show? Solar and CO2 are the *forcings*. CO2’s fraction of the forcing is 15/(23+15) = 40%. Solar’s fraction of the forcing is 23/(23+15) = 60%. The rest is feedbacks, which in broad terms are insensitive to the source of the forcing. Nothing changes.
Regarding Lowell Stott, give me a link. He’s the *only* person that checked the data? That’s ridiculous.
FYI, I don’t know of any *papers* that have claimed CO2 alone caused deglaciation. If that’s what you’re trying to show, you win. As I said before, the papers I’ve seen put the *majority* of the deglaciation forcing as solar. It seems pretty consistent with Stott’s conclusions that “while CO2 is important, it clearly couldnt have brought about deglaciation” (your quote).
So, what are we arguing about? I say CO2 accounts for 40% of the total deglaciation *forcing*. You say CO2 is important.
586: In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sun provides enough IR to saturate all the CO2 in the atmosphere. If so, the IR from the surface doesn’t do anything but slowly go to space.
It looks like CO2 should be less of a forcing than increased solar output. The reason for this is CO2 both tends to impeded IR from leaving the earth, and IR from arriving to the earth from the sun.
As an aside. Some people seem to be dismissing a 0.1% change in the sun’s output as being too small to bother with. Since the sun’s basic output is sufficient to keep the earth’s surface at approximately 300K. A 0.1% increase, all other things being equal, will result in a 0.3K increase in temperature.
0.3K is about half of the increase that has been claimed for the last 100+ years. That’s without any changes in clouds which might be caused by a stronger sun, and it’s without any further adjustments for UHI contamination.
I agree with Mr Mosh. A warmer world is a damn site better than a colder one but then again these idiots are too busy with their doom and gloom to have the brains to think about the advantages and to spend their trillions attempting to use change as a positive notivation. My opinion is that these guys were around when the dinausors died out, they died of doom and gloom.
#572 Hadley centre warmest years. 2007 seventh rank
This statement by the Hadley centre doesn’t really mean much, most of their media statements don’t, its the seventh warmest compared to the 1961-1990 average, which was a cold period.
As they predicted earlier that 2007 would be the warmest year ever! (70% certainty is what they said ) then they have to cover their tracks a bit. You would have done much better having a wild guess!
Also I quite like it when they compare to the 1961-1990 period as average annual sunshine hours have increased by 15%-20% during this period, and in winter by astonishingly 40%. So this more than accounts for any warming, I have written to them, pointing this out, and you can detect them squirming in the replies I receive.
They are always polite, but never say anything other than “CO2 causes climate change”, it is actually quite touching. They even told me once that the Climate of UK would soon be the same as South of France, in my reply I welcomed this but felt that Geography and Latitude might unfortunately intervene.
be clear about the trajectory of this argument. Lead the target.
The fight over the climate science is just the start. It’s the grunt work.
The fight against the “economic science” will be a cluster f**k, to use a technical
term.
I bet there will be no “economic science” consensus. Takers? 50 quatloos
Me too. Also, dying by a cocaine overdose is better than being burned to death.
and death by boredom, bore us?
Here is a dollar.
Go buy some game. Obviously the wit store was sold out when you visited there.
#593 MarkW:
You don’t get to have your own theory of the greenhouse effect. The frequencies from the sun are primarily shortwave (SW). The frequencies from earth are primarily longwave (LW). CO2 is transparent to SW, but not to LW. Therefore, your little theory does not make sense.
Since the outbound radiation from the earth is proportional to the temperature to the fourth power, your calculation for a 0.1% increase in solar output is wrong. The fourth root of 1.001 (a 0.1% increase) is 1.00025. Mutiply this by 300K to get 300.07K. So, a 0.1% solar increase would lead to about 0.07K temperature increase (excluding feedbacks), not 0.3K as you state.
By the way, about half of the warming for the last 100 hundred years (1910 to 1940 warming) is commonly attributed to the sun. The solar pattern breaks down in the last 30 years though.
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#595 UK John:
The choice of reference period makes absolutely no difference on the ratings of years. It’s just an average that is subtracted to get an anomaly. Since the same average is subtracted from every year it only shifts the yearly anomalies up or down together, as a group.
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#598 steven mosher:
There’s no need to be a bully.
I agree that warm could be very nice. If the world got warmer and everything else stayed the same, that’d be great. Heck, I’m a Canadian, I wouldn’t mind a few bonus degrees in the winter.
The problem is that everything else will not stay the same. Precipitation patterns will change. Glacier fed rivers will not run all summer if there are no glaciers.
It’s too bad that we built our cities where the water is now, instead of where it will be after climate change. It’s too bad about all the farms that will be in the wrong places.
I know, I know. None of those things are certain. That’s not my point. My point is that the economic concern is not about warmth; it’s about the other changes that will come with the warmth.
This is what I mean by circular arguments. The implicit assumption is that feedbacks are equal, or perhaps that radiative balance is the only mechanism by which feedbacks operate. To me, this would seem staggeringly unlikely. Solar is so much more efficient at warming water than CO2, which can heat only the thinnest skin, on the order of mm, of the surface, and requires mixing, which is a localized phenomenon too. Warm water sits at the surface, warm air rises away, insulating the ocean from thermal heating from the atmosphere. That is just one difference. What if the Cosmic Ray thing turns out to affect cloud formation by 1/2 of one percent consistently? If a correlation of cosmic ray flux to clouds held up for 30 years, then fell apart, do we dismiss it as chance when it is no secret that clouds are ill-understood and clues are few and far between?
What is the physical rationalization behind the concept that all forcings have equal feedbacks?
I’m just looking for a World, where the temperature is just right, and I don’t mind wrecking the economy to get there.
signed,
Goldilocks
RE: #584 – Add to that issues caused by marine stratiform clouds and cumulonimbus clouds in all regions.
RE: #594 – PG&E now price natural gas and electricity such that only an idiot would not try to conserve until it hurts. This situation is a result of a number of things. Firstly, they stupidly converted all their oil and coal fired generation plants to gas during the 80s and 90s. Secondly they failed to build new nuclear plants. Thirdly they did not build or convince others to build adequate new distribution infrastructure for either power or gas. Fourthly and most importantly, they are now complying with California’s new, draconian GHG laws. As a result we are cold and miserable in the dark, missing last year’s more balmy December. Note that the PG&E conservation schedule is a 10% Y/Y usage reduction in order to get optimal pricing. In order to continue a 10% reduction curve I will have to pursue costly home improvements. Of course, there would be an ROI even without PG&Es upside down price/volume curve and their Y/Y conservation incentives. Nonetheless, the generally illogical nature of all this is, in some small way, converting me to be a strict constructionist Von Mises devotee. At very least, future macroeconomists will view the current era as “interesting times.” Consider the behavior this is driving and its eventual implications for investment flows.
Since I clearly do not understand the whole “Climate Modeling” as evidenced by these recent posts at RC–
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/live-almost-from-agu%e2%80%93dispatch-3/
2 Things—can anyone explain to me what Gavin means, and can anyone point me to Climate Modeling 101?
Thank you in advance.
Don’t know if this has been linked yet, Article on NRO:
CA and Watts are mentioned.
#572
and next year will be the 11th warmest in the last 14. It indicates only that they need more years in their equations of warmth.
Last year 9 of the warmest in ten, 10 of the warmest in 11. It’s media distortion and it help no-one except the media.
WARNING: Inflammatory Content Follows
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An open letter published in Canada’s National Post states, among other things, that there has been no warming since 1998 (link below). Here’s the relevant quote:
“Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.”
(from http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=165020)
This is not a big surprise. Although I like the National Post, they do tend to publish lots of letters and op-eds like this.
The surprising thing is that the oft-referenced Dr. Wegman (of Wegman report fame) signed the letter. Perhaps Steve McIntyre, bender, and other statistics experts could weigh in with their opinion on the warming trend in recent years. Would you agree with Dr. Wegman on this one? Does this affect your view of his impartiality, as it does mine?
—
Here’s a quick reference for the “no warming since 1998” claim:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
Great Lubos Motl climate posts that seem appropriate to this thread:
Ocean Carbon Sinks and Henry’s law
End of the last ice age, co2 innocent
A post on Stephen Schwartz’s calulation of CS of 1.1C
More 1.1C CS stuff
John V
I guess your next remark is going to be that old standby, the oil-shill smear.
John V,#599
Those thing are not just uncertain, they are untrue. And your “second level” concern is based on untrue things.
Of course you can have faith in model outputs, but that doesn’t change the proof of their unskilfulness in forecasting the future state of the climate system!
607
Re your second link, it seems to me that an alternative explanation for deep ocean warming might be underground volcanic activity or other geothermal action on the seabed.
598: Sorry, it was far too early here in lil ‘ol NZ and I hadn’t had my wit quota or my coffee. I have just sent off my request to the government for my new wit quota and boiled the pot. In the meantime I borrowed some quota from a friend: When I die I want to go in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming, like the passengers in his car.
599:
John, you are so busy arguing that you are not learning, anymore. Look at the links provided on this topic. Again, about HALF the energy from the Sun is in the infrared portion of the spectrum, and that includes lots of IR in those portions of the spectrum where CO2 and HOH absorb. Hate to keep repeating this, but you need to face this FACT. See link at 590.
Re John V December 13th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Your analogy doesn’t work because the resonant system that you describe is linear and there will be no beat frequencies. If you inject a non-linearity into this system you can get beat frequencies and this is very well known and understood. It’s called AM modulation/demodulation. There is no range of description needed to build an AM receiver.
What is important is not the amplitude of the swing, but the spectral distribution of energy. The energy out will be equal to the energy in (“energy out” includes damping losses in your example). The spectral distribution of the output energies will be different for different non-linearities but the total spectral energy will always be the same. The “contribution” of each input frequency to the total output can be measured.
Ok. Time for my stupid I-should-know-this-based-on-my-undergrad-degree question quota of the day: What the heck does “it’s in the pipeline” mean? I’m seeing this a lot lately…
614: No such thing as a stupid question. It is my understanding that they are referring to the energy that is absorbed that does not quickly get released. This is primarily, if not all, the energy absorbed by the oceans and other water bodies. The air quickly releases most of the energy it gained during the day at night. Water retains it longer. There are some folks that believe that some of this water-stored energy can be held for years.
#579, Larry, you are absolutely correct. However, I went over this ground with JohnV some months back, and he posted a graph with a trend line starting at the peak in 98, but he still managed to give it an upward trend. I said to myself, “now that is a true believer”.
>> Its about long-term trends.
Saying that is starting a-priori with AGW as the premise. To me, it’s clearly stable temperature until the late 90s, when a very high solar minimum between cycle 22 and 23, a very active cycle 23, a warming ENSO event, and the lack of a volcanoe all combined to cause a step function up. The trend line length is an artifact of the trend line maker, not reality. The only thing we have to explain is an isolated step up in temperature. An isolated input of energy is all we need to explain that.
Re 606
John does the rate of warming exceed the natural rate of warming? Even your ref at skepticalscience shows no anomalous rate of warming.
“In this case, a line of best fit calculates the temperature trend is 0.16°C per decade from 1998 until July 2007. This is a close match to the temperature trend over the last 30 years (0.15°C from 1975 to 2007). So even starting from 1998, we find the planet is still warming at the same rate.”http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm
Pat Keating:
Dr. Wegman has no relationship to the oil industry, so I do not understand your point. You are putting words in my mouth again.
Dr Wegman is supposed to be impartial. The claim that warming stopped in 1998 can only be backed up by cherry-picking the start year and subtracting. Any sort of trend line shows continued warming. GISS and NOAA even consider 2005 to be warmer than 1998 (the difference vs CRU being that CRU ignores the extreme north and south).
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jae:
I saw your link in #590. Here’s a graphic from Wikipedia that shows what we’re talking about in more detail:
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect)
Say you put an small electric heater inside a big Gothic Cathedral. Then your develop a predictive model for the air temperature, but forget to include the heat transfer between the air and the cold walls of the cathedral.
Your model will predict a quicker rise in air temperature than actually occurs. This is because as the air heats, some goes into the cathedral walls. Also, if this is a radiant heater, some of the heat is stored directly by the walls. Eventually though, the walls warm up, and if you turn the heater off, the cathedral walls heat the air. Using a very mixed metaphor, the heat in the cathedral walls is “in the pipeline”.
Other ways one might express the problem is to say that the Cathedral has a certain thermal mass, or if you like time, it has a long response time for heating.
What I’m finding confusing about this is: at least GISS II used a 1000 m deep 8 level ocean model. So, they didn’t “neglect the cathedral walls”. At worst, their walls might be too thin– but the model includes those walls in at least some sense.
611
Paul, I would guess that the remark was not directed at you, but at a later post. But only the author of it knows for sure…….
#599 JohnV,
Do I have to get pendantic with you? The only way your statement could possibly disprove mine would be if you had just proven that the sun produced zero, zip, nada, output in the IR band.
Since you didn’t. I expect you to either
1) Produce such proof.
2) Withdraw your insolent comment and apologize.
JohnV,
The only reason the pattern breaks down in the last 30 years is because of the PDO. We’ve been over this many times in the past.
Your ability to ignore any factor that you don’t want to see is getting better with time.
Did you but this comment at your so-called “wit store”?
Let me see if I have this straight. If I remember correctly, the surface of the sun is somewhere around 5700K. And accordning to JohnV, it has absolutely no output in the infrared band. At least if the chart he presented can be believed.
JohnV, your ability to believe whatever is necessary has reached phd level.
618, John V: Great link. I hadn’t seen it before. It shows well the overlap between OCO and HOH, as well as the relative amounts of IR absorbed by these molecules. Note that water absorbs probably 5-10 times as much IR on a molar basis. When you look at the relative amounts of the two molecules in the air, then water probably absorbs 200 times as much as OCO (in humid areas). Therefore, if 700 ppm OCO can add 4 w/m^2, why can’t 10,000 ppm HOH add at least 14 X 4 = 56 watts/m^2 more in humid areas than in dry areas (I know this is greatly oversimplified).
618
John V
You were clearly trying to discredit Wegman. If past AGW history is any guide, that kind of thing soon gets to the ubiquitous oil-shill smear.
No comment on the supposedly independent Wegman? Hello?
OOps, excuse me, that plot is not on a molar basis. I guess it represents some sort of “average atmosphere.” But the basic argument remains the same. If OCO causes a forcing, then water should also cause a forcing. And that forcing would have to be much greater in humid areas than in the deserts. Which should make the tropics WAY hotter than the deserts. Which is not so.
624 Mark
The solar and earth radiation curves in the graph are probably normalized so that the total energies are equal, reflecting input/output radiation balance.
>> No comment on the supposedly independent Wegman? Hello?
You are confusing “no prejudice” with “no judgement”. To prejudge an issue is to make up your mind without examining the facts. There is every indication that he came into this with no prejudiced opinion, as any intellectually honest person would. After having been exposed to the facts, a rational intellectually honest person would have to follow the evidence.
You are trying to smear him by claiming that he was prejudiced in the beginning just because he later formed an opinion, upon learning all the facts. IOW, after the trial, the judge is supposed to have an opinion. If he remained neutral even after the trial, he would be guilty of either being brain dead or intellectual dishonesty.
Ok, Boris. Fill us in. What’s the poop on Wegman?
631 Larry
See #606 John V
Wegman signed a letter that touts the “global warming stopped in 1998” canard. That doesn’t inspire much confidence in his judgment.
Hans Erren signed it too. Hans, explain yourself.
624, I think the intent of that chart is to show that the respective white areas under the respective curves are the amount absorbed. For the incoming, it’s a relatively small amount. For the outgoing, it’s more than half. The colored parts are what didn’t get absorbed, and mirror-image the total absorption curve.
633, statistically speaking, global warming did stop in 1998.
As I told John V., if you don’t want to live with that, don’t go around in the next breath claiming that 1998 was the hottest year ever. Pick one claim or the other. You can’t have them both.
Re #572
Since this is an audit site and accuracy is important the Hadley centre said the 7th warmest since 1850, not ‘ever’!
100 scientists speak out!
Van der Veen et al consider magma flows creating hotspots to explain some of the Greenland glacier flowing. Hawkeye Jay Radar.
=================================================
!
re 638
yes but if you factor in data uncertainties and model uncertainties bias and confounding effects, there is no discrepency between data and model
642: Well, let’s see:
None of the models predicted an 8-9 year leveling off of temperatures.
All of the models predict more warming in the mid troposphere than at the surface, which did not happen.
Many modelers admit that the properties of clouds and other water-based relationships are critical to the models’ performance, but are very poorly understood.
Nobody seems to have any sense of the error margins for the models.
How on God’s Blue Planet can anyone take these models seriously?
Random points in no particular order.
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Gaelan; some stuff in this post here will illustrate some of what Gavin means (spin). My opinion of course. But a deeper issue is how I can attempt to answer your question for you instead of spining the situation; what is causing “the warming”. Cities, roads, deforestation, and farms mainly, pollution on the ice and disolving in the oceans (offset to some extent by particulates reflecting IR and changing cloud behavior in an unknown ratio), AGHG to some extent (coupled with whatever water vapor is doing at a specific altitude and how the AGHG are acting and reacting). The models attempt to quantify all this. (I’m assuming we all know that water vapor does at times absorb/emit IR, at least the IPCC mentions that in the TAR, forget the specific ref)
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Paul, I certainly want to die screaming in terror like my uncle’s passengers. YMMV
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I’ll comment on Dr. Wegman. He looked at things and drew conclusions. How does not drawing the same conclusions as you do prove (much less suggest) he’s not impartial?
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jae; that chart has one issue; it doesn’t show altitude. What water (or whatever) does one place is not what it does everyplace. Where in the tropics? Where in the desert? 1000 feet up? 1000 meters up? 1 inch from the ground? 10 feet from the ground? So why can’t everyone be correct? 🙂
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Pat, yes, the core is hot (how hot) and releases materials (how much where). So I would certainly look inward from the deep ocean as well as outward from the atmosphere (magma, plates and magnetic field). Of course, as always, these are rhetorical issues, I’m not attempting to quantify things or prove anything. Just things to consider.
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I liked that, John V. We can only control a few feedbacks/forcings. And that’s the A in AGW. That’s why so much talk about CO2; the issue is the same thing that controls it controls the other parts of the system, the CFC, HFC, Methane, nitrous oxide, particulates….. And ignores what I consider the main force (80%?) driving whatever heating is happening; how we use the land. So if AGHG are 20%, what effects do the particulates have? What does reducing fossil fuel use do to that combination of AGHG and particulates? Nice spring analogy. (well, at least I liked it) Only two variables tho. 🙂
But we can’t control the most powerful feedback/forcing, water. So where does that leave us?
Ground effects are most certainly overwhelming the GE. However, once you get higher and the air is cold and dry, what does the CO2 do? Most up or most down?
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Solar. Again. If 100 is needed for equilibrium and it’s been at 101 since (pick year) it clearly can be causing warming without needing to have risen. Heck, if 100 is needed for equilibrium and it was 115 in 1850, it could be falling and still warming things. Anyone care to disprove that might be the case?
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Here’s my cheer! HOH! OCO! HHCHH!
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Why not just plot log trends instead of linear?
Anyways. About the decade warm thing. Just go plot every decade on the 6-5 as I did. Or 4-3 or 1-0. Yawn. Numbers all change.
Both 1966-1975 and 1956-1965 are flat. 1996-2005 is about +.1C per 1 ppmv for the decade (.22C trend and 20 ppmv added over the ten years).
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I always knew you were a dirty commie like me, Sadlov. The workers must control the means of production!
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Mosh. The plants like it warmer too, they migrate to higher CO2/H2O areas in their prefered temp range (and one would imagine sink more CO2 while doing so…) BTW, I think the store is permanently out.
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For the greenhouse effect questions, charts are the easist to see it on, and there are explantions with the graphics:
Simplified basics of the GE
Solar spectrum
Atmospheric transmission
Read also this, which is where the graphs are from:
Wiki entry on the GE
The basic jist of which (part of simplified intro) is:
They then go into a more complex explanation involving convective and latent heat fluxes, which also goes into the atmosphere losing about 6.5C per kilometer of altitude. And
John V #565
this seems to be a rather simplistic numbers game. NH glaciation isn’t just down to global average temperatures, changes in THC must be an important factor, as must the innate variability of climate. It is obvious that in an ice epoch, that there must be some degree of climate instability, the inherent cause of which is probably down to positioning of the continents, this instability can surely work both ways? There appears to be an assumption that feedbacks during an ice age termination can be applied to today’s climate? I find it unlikely that we sit in a precarious balance between two temperature tipping points.
On a similar note alarmists often state that if the climate is as naturally variable as say a Loehle reconstruction, that this simply means there is greater sensitivity to forcing; this seems very flawed to me, and shows a lack of understanding of complex systems.
c’mon jae, if you factor in just the right amount of uncertainty a model’s predictive power is infallible, reality is behaving just the way models say it should
I know this has been linked before somewehere, but as long as we have folks wordsmithing and commenting on motives and bias, I’m wondering what one is to make of an article entitled “2007 data confirms warming trend“, which contains a table that projects that 2007 will be the coldest year since 2001.
John V, is a plateau allowed to be five years long?
MarkW:
I find it amusing and distressing at the same time when *you* claim that *I* have a blind spot to evidence I don’t like. I may have a blind spot but you have tunnel vision. 🙂
Looking back at #593, you said: “It looks like CO2 should be less of a forcing than increased solar output. The reason for this is CO2 both tends to impeded IR from leaving the earth, and IR from arriving to the earth from the sun.”
When reading it the first time I thought you were going for the old CO2 saturation argument (saturated by incoming radiation). I can see now that you weren’t saying that, so I withdraw and apologize.
IMHO, blanket statements like “CO2 should be less of a forcing than increased solar output” are not specific enough to mean anything. They have different units and different variability. A 1% increase in solar is definitely a larger forcing than a 1% increase in CO2, but solar is much more stable than CO2.
In the early part of the 20th century, increasing solar was likely dominant.
Presently, CO2 is likely dominant.
Sam:
Yes, as far as I can tell, this is the heart and soul for the CO2 effects in the models. Now, substitute water vapor for OCO into this little explanation. Then run a model for the tropics and compare it to a run for the desert. Since the greater amount of water vapor in the tropics makes the atmosphere much more opaque than the small amount does in the deserts, you must move that lapse rate even more in the tropics. That should produce a much greater “forcing” by water vapor in the tropics, leading to much higher temperatures. But that does not happen, even though the forcing from water vapor should be many times higher than for OCO. Maybe I’m missing something here, but I sure would like to know what.
Also, they keep calling this a “radiative-convective” concept. Where is the “convective” part? In reality, I think they completely ignore convection, which is the Achilles heel of these “theories.”
Re: #648 “Presently, CO2 is likely dominant.”
Pielke Sr. does not agree.
646: LOL.
We need a new unthreaded. This is like watching a nerf ball fight at the old folks home.
Re #612
Jae, 10% UV, 35% Vis, 55% IR
Some absorption by CO2 and H2O on the incoming solar has absolutely no effect on the GHE since once it’s in the earth’s system it’s part of the energy balance. It makes no difference whether a photon is absorbed in the atmosphere or is absorbed at the surface and subsequently IR photons are emitted from the surface.
647: That’s called spin. If they had left the word “trend” out, it makes sense. Gee, the last few years were warmer. They could also show a downward trend from 1998, if they wanted to. The BBC and allied libs just can’t come to grips with this plateau.
Regarding Wegman and Cooling since 1998:
The argument that it’s been cooling since 1998 is completely invalid. The *only* way to reach that conclusion is by cherry-picking endpoints and subtracting.
Below is a plot of the yearly global temperature anomaly (GISTEMP Land+Ocean) and the trailing 5, 10, 15, and 20 year trends. If warming had stopped since 1998, the trends would be at or near zero.
My concern is not that Wegman has changed his opinion regarding significant AGW. My concern is that there’s no statistically valid way to claim warming stopped after 1998. Dr Wegman, as a statistician, knows this — so why would he sign a letter claiming otherwise?
—
BTW, Larry, you seem to be accusing me of claiming some significance for 1998 as the warmest year. I pointed it out because the original commenter seemed to think it was wrong. For CRU, 1998 was the warmest, but that does not mean much at all.
653: ?? I have no argument with that. I was just pointing out that about half of sunlight energy is in the IR part of the spectrum.
Here’s one for Borus.
Science Lowell Stott 1*, Axel Timmermann 2, Robert Thunell
RE: #679 – They ignore convection, assume that latent heat is emitted lower in the column than it actually is, and that not much of the latent heat goes out into space quickly and completely ignore the cooling effects of precipitation. When you read “H2O is a positive feedback” that should be deconstructed to read “our parameterization assumes that latent heat emission is as with an ideal parcel of air, slowly raised along an adiabatic lapse rate profile, the global average non condensing RH portion acts as a net outgoing IR retardant, the global average cloudiness takes the form of mid to high level stratiforms and acts as a weak lowpass filter to incoming insolation and as a net outgoing IR retardant. The average cloud is persistent and does not precipitate. It does not incur ionizing energy or electrical discharges. There are neither updrafts nor downdrafts in it.”
658, you don’t integrate, you simply multiply by the reciprocal of wavelength. You don’t need to do it, it’s already done in 618.
re: #648, John V., December 13th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Blind spot and tunnel vision possible symptoms of opthalmic migraine. Not unexpected considering the nature of the current debate.
Re #626
That graph is just a cartoon, and while it gives a good overview it’s not possible to make these sort of calculations based on it, you need to use something like MODTRAN. There’s no indication on the concentration of H2O for instance.
Not to get into the battle of the temperature graphs, but isn’t this the portion of the earth’s atmosphere that should warm first and most if AGW theory is correct?
Well, I see my effort to use the “Img” button to embed and image failed. Here is a link to the graph I tried to post:
There is more water vapor in the atmosphere then there is CO2
Atmosphere: 79% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% other gases.
“Other gases” or Variable gases is where those fit in. And water vapor is in a much greater amount within that 1% “other gases” then CO2 is.
Water vapor is the most important (and abundant) variable gas.
And remember the O and the H in H2O
/added for some perspective
And now I see that my effort to use the “Link” button to imbed a link has failed. Well, here is the URL:
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/RSSglobe.html
My apologies for the multiple posts.
Isn’t that exactly what they did, Picked 1998 and 12/07 as the endpoints and made a valid statement.
You might disagree with the significance of the statement, but what is the magic in starting in 1970 or 1850?
662: Larry pay special attention to the integral sign here.
671, BUT you’re only interested w/m^2.
I have to stand corrected by jae, what you need to do is integrate. When you do, there’s more area under the curve in the visible range.
The more important point that everyone (except John V) seems intent on missing is that the IR tail from the sun is in the very near IR, and doesn’t get absorbed anywhere near as much as the longer waves from the earth.
No, but I give up.
I agree with this part.
661 Steve S
LOL! I can tell you, from flying IFR, that there are ‘bumps’ from updrafts and down-drafts when flying into or directly under even a minor cloud.
Re #672
Which is exactly what I gave you, divide both numbers by 2pi if you like it doesn’t change the ratio!
Those numbers are the result of the integration of the whole wavelength range and 0.4->0.7 microns respectively.
As to the relative absorption of near IR I’ve posted about that several times above.
Side note: when you have to start calling BS on each other, it becomes apparent you’re losing your tempers. Why don’t you keep the debate about issues and ideas, rather than what amounts to ad homs? (As much as I hate to bring out the flippant butchering of Latin in trite logical-sounding phrases.) Can we all get some perspective here about arguing matters of OPINION?
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welikerocks, yes, but what does it mean that OHO has 400% more mass in kg in the atmosphere versus OCO? Or the fact that OCO is much more receptive to IR but in relative small bands compared to OHO?
————————–
John V.
Asking about the last 100 years. It’s obvious that OCO levels are up. It’s obvious the global mean anomaly is up. So? The fact is, ALL the AGHG follow the same pattern. What is NOT obvious is if they are all driving each other in some sort of cartel that raises them all similarly, or does something else cause them all to do that? Do you know? I don’t. Situation; I spray a can of paint into the air. Does it stay there?
Your graph — It’s quite clear the trend is up over time. Painfully obvious from looking at it. Ignoring any questions on the meaning of the trend in the first place, is it true that off the ’98 high that it went back down to the level it was in ’90? So the trend is up, but periods between years go down. Why does it do that? Why is the ’98 temp the same as the last data point? Why did the trend go negative from 1896 to 1905? Why was the trend flat from 1956-1965?
I’ll answer my own question; we don’t know.
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This space for rent
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Jae, the reason you’re having a difficult time is that you are trying to conceptualize a massive dynamic chaotic system in flux as a “thing” that can be understood. It can’t. It can be observed. It can be modeled. It’s not a thing (attach battery to wire to resistor to wire to light to wire to battery) that has an expected explainable observed behavior that can have individual parts taken out and stop working. Unfortunate, but we have no way to experiment on it directly, dang the luck.
I was going to make an analogy with figuring out what a computer or a car is doing by looking at its behavior, but both of those can be drilled into and figured out (although some complex interactions in curcuits take a long time to understand from reading the schematics) but ultimately you can figure out how exactly an engine works in every component or how an ALU does math from the behaviors of the registers.
The “problem” with the atmosphere is that water in solid liquid gas form can be a forcing, or a positive or negative feedback. How it does that when is a function of so many factors on its own, even before you start trying to understand and separate the other factors other than water; the land, altitude, wind, the other GHG and non-GHG gasses, amount of IR coming in, and so forth.
So I imagine a big pipe, and ask these questions. Is the gas mixture, pressure and temperatures the same at ground, 1″, 5″, 5′, 20′, 100’….. Up and up. No. Humidity? Wind? How wide is the column, .0001″ or 10 feet or 100 feet etc. What about one column to the other going horizontally? How do you match those patterns?
Anyway, the question is why is the desert a higher temperature than a grassy area the same size? How much heat does sand absorb and how fast does it let it go, and at what frequencies, compared to grass? How much water is there to be evaoprated? How much water is there in the air to hold in/transfer heat/IR? How much vegetation is there to absorb/deflect heat/IR? How is the air mixed and with what percentages of what? How many clouds form? Where are the particulates? How does a lack of plants in the desert affect the amount of GHG in the air — There’s nothing to absorb CO2 or release O2 in the desert. Nothing to stop sand from heating and releasing heat.
This is not a water vapor issue; it’s a total difference in the system.
Now, the models may ignore convection (I don’t know, I’m not a modeller nor am I particularly interested in them) but the principles are easy.
Convective : bulk motion of fluids.
Conductive : molecule by molecule transfer of energy through solid or fluid.
Radiative : electromagnetic waves.
Then you can break down the convection into either free or advective. As wikipedia sez:
Pretty boring and not under much debate, I’d think.
Bottom line; the desert is hotter because it’s different. Why does a block of iron in the sun heat up more than a block of paper? Why can you light paper on fire with a match but not a block of iron?
John V’s all crickets on #668 I see. Maybe those are the data Wegman was going by? Why don’t John V & Borus write Dr Wegman a nice letter asking him why he signed, instead of making presumptions? That’s what Steve M does when he wants to know something.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, TheDuke. But you are correct. I am not up to it – now. Give me a few years. 🙂
#674 bender:
I’ve been away. I assume you meant #667. If so, are you defending the practice of defining a trend by subtracting end-points? That seems out of character. What would you say if Al Gore argued that warming has accelerated by picking 2000 as the starting point?
#667 L Nettles:
You don’t determine trends by subtracting end-points. Even cherry-picking the starting year is frowned upon, but I won’t argue that point. Even starting in 1998, the *trend* is up.
Sam, it looks to me that with your view of the world, there would be no advancement of science at all. You start with a question: “why are the deserts hotter;” and you do your best to explain that. That’s all I’m doing. Is there something wrong with that?
#676 bender:
“Al Gore” should have been Gavin Schmidt” — he’s a better comparison to Wegman.
@JohnV 655– Cover up the years before 1998– the trend is near zero.
I’m not sure what that means, but there hasn’t been much movement since 1998.
# 618
John V.,
Could you express the absorption in terms of W/m^2 instead percentages? Every gas, or greenhouse gas, has a limit even if you say it absorbs 100% of the radiation received by it.
I’m referring to the graph of Michael Smith in #666, John V. How about those dead flat tropospheric temperatures? What do the GCMs say should happen there? And what is actually happening there? And why the discrepancy? You have dodged once. You going to dodge again? You making pretenses at being qualified to judge a giant like Wegman is, frankly, laughable.
Susann, 7:56:
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, TheDuke. But you are correct. I am not up to it – now. Give me a few years.”
That’s the spirit! Believe it or not, I have faith in you.
Just keep absorbing what is available her (and elsewhere).
There was a very interesting op-ed in today’s San Deigo Union Tribune by Cary Lowe. Unfortunately, I can’t find it at their website. His argument is that AG Jerry Brown and the California legislature are now using global warming to seize control over growth and development in California from local authorities. A law has been passed by the legislature, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which has created widespread uncertainty as to what is permissible in land use decisions in California, since the law was passed without detailed regulations. Numerous lawsuits by environmentalists challenging existing decisions have been filed since the passage of the law last year, since no one is clear what the law really says. It’s a disaster.
Yet more evidence that the issues discussed here are of the utmost importance and why the science needs to be audited down to the last decimal point.
Re379, Nevket240:
Ocean acidification, especially it influence on corals, is valid concern, subject to intensive research. Luckily, corals seem to be much more resilient (could it be other way?) than presented by alarmists:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/c/calcification.jsp
# 684
Andrey Levin,
I agree. I was thinking on virus and other pathogens (bacteria and fungus) like the main cause of coral bleaching. We have detected pathogens for corals in dust storms that end at the oceans. I have witnessed red winds, but other investigators have studied black winds coming from Africa and Asia that are deposited in oceans. Here for terrestrial plants, and here for animals (especially celenterates like corals and medusas, and Echinoderms like urchins, sea-cucumber and starfish).
#606
i.e. 1998 is still the warmest year (HadCRUT3).
Least-squares fit to 1998-present data yields a positive slope, yes. But who would make that kind of fit without a model for signal and noise? If you use the T=a*CO2+noise model, where El Nino’s etc are considered as noise, then yes, it is OK to fit a trend. But in that letter those people seem to indicate that this model is possibly very good. Or what do I know, didn’t sign the letter.
Hmm, there seems to be some obsession to straight lines here. Maybe somebody just took the warmest year and noted that it was many years ago. At least it tells you something about SNR in the above equation.
#8,
Normal Climate is at right angles to climate. It is useful therefor to consider normal climate to be an imaginary number.
I’ve heard many times that the response to CO2 is logarithmic, but I don’t think that’s correct. Supposedly it follows from Beer’s law, which is:
A = a*b*c
A = log10(i0/i1)
Where:
A is called the “absorbance”
a is a material-dependent constant called the “molar absorptivity.”
b is the path length (relatively fixed for the atmosphere).
c is the concentration.
i0 is the input intensity.
i1 is the output intensity.
The thing is, despite the name, the absorbance does not determine the amount of energy absorbed. The energy absorbed is determined by the difference between the intensity of the light going in and the light coming out; i.e, i0-i1.
log10(i0/i1) = A = a*b*c
i0/i1 = 10^(a*b*c)
i1/i0 = 10^(-a*b*c)
i1 = i0*10^(-a*b*c)
i0-i1 = i0-i0*10^(-a*b*c)
i0-i1 = i0*{1-[10^(-a*b)]^c}
or, defining k = 10^(-a*b),
i0-i1 = i0*(1-k^c)
(Note, unlike the log, this is well-behaved and equal to zero at c=0 and approaches a limit as the concentration increases.)
Therefore, the change in response for a change in concentration from c0 to c1 is determined by:
i0*(k^c0-k^c1)
(Correct me if I’m wrong, and if I am, I’ll eat a bug. — SCTV)
685 Correction,
Letter:
i.e. they think that the model is not very good.
#687 MJW. Has anyone put those numbers into an atmospheric model to calculate what the retained heat addition would be relative to changes in CO2 level?
#658 Yorick
Yes, what both John V and Boris were trying to do was work out the numbers to explain the change in mean surface temperature: an energy budget view of the climate system; whereas in reality changes in conditions allowed synoptic changes sympathetic to glaciation or vice versa.
roconnell says: December 10th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Sam Urbinto says The science is setttled
No scientist would ever say ANY science is ever settled.
Perhaps the word you are looking for is not “settled” but Colonized.
UN in Bali censored and closed by force interviews by “dissident” ICSC scientifical group:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=prnw.20071213.DC09846&show_article=1
But the UN secretary general, comes from South or North Korea?
MarkR (#689) I assume, if my comment was correct, that the GCMs already use the formula I gave (modified to account for changing CO2 concentrations at different altitudes). I don’t have much faith in the ability of models to predict the climate, but I certainly doubt they make fundamental physics errors.
I am rather surprised that people always talk about the response in terms of a doubling of CO2 (which seems to imply a logarithmic response), but I assume that’s really just related to a doubling of the current CO2 level.
Re#45, Julian Flood:
If marine oil pollution influences nuclei-forming aerosols, the effect should be most visible during WW2, and shortly afterwards.
Currently most of oil ending up in the sea originates from land run-off (1995 data):
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html
BTW, Ive read the hypothesis that ocean oil pollution sewerely affects phytoplankton, which results in reduced oceanic carbon sink.
Susann asks:
Seems like a good idea to me when large sums of money are involved.
Think of a drug company for instance. Are they going to start producing a drug in mass quantities based on an uncorroborated study, with missing data, missing models, with significant factors in the model parameterized because they are not well understood or hard to model, and protocols not well defined?
Profit keeps business at least semi-honest. If they produce a dangerous drug that is not effective they stand to lose a lot of money. Who do we sue if the IPCC is wrong? Who do we go to to get our tax money back?
Who is at risk from wrong projections? Where can I get recourse if the AGW theory is a mistake? Which is why business must be more careful.
JohnV : “What does this show? Solar and CO2 are the *forcings*. CO2s fraction of the forcing is 15/(23+15) = 40%. Solars fraction of the forcing is 23/(23+15) = 60%. The rest is feedbacks, which in broad terms are insensitive to the source of the forcing. Nothing changes.”
This is confused thinking. Only Anthropogenic CO2 is a forcing. Natural CO2 is just one of several positive feedbacks resulting from warming. Yes, additional CO2 causes additional warming (after a long time has elapsed) but it must be secondary to the faster feedbacks – albedo, H2O and others. These faster feedbacks must dominate as long as the solar forcing is still present. Only once the solar forcing ends can you say that the solar induced H2O positive feedback reduces and CO2 then has a greater influence due to residence time. Of course, without human influence, CO2 has only a 10 year lifetime, not the (mythical) 30-100 years ascribed to current CO2. The upshot is that you cannot claim extra feedback-boosted percentages for natural CO2 the way they do with Anthropogenic CO2.
JohnV
sorry if being a pest. Your good self appears to be focused on the BS report known as the Stern Review. when deciding that warming is a disaster for humanity.
I would like to make my position on his work clear. It was not an economic document whatsoever. It is purely a Political exercise.It was designed by Blair & Brown to accomplish a number of things.
1/get B & B off the front pages of the tabloids during the worst of the Iraq affair.
2/it was to be Blairs swansong (high note) & Browns leg up to the Prime Ministership.
It had VERY narrow terms of reference. Why would anyone setup a task such as this and only ask for the downside of an issue. Would not serious people ask for both sides. Especially one as divisive as this. Or maybe that was the idea.
“The science is settled” has now been augmented by the economic arguement.
The Stern review was pilloried by a greater number of economic writers who saw the politics in it, than it was supported.
Only those who wish to pursue a course of “Power to the UN” gave it credibility.
regards.
#273 Sam, (my daughter’s name is Sam)
What does it mean? We don’t know.
Two phrases that should be used way more often around here 😉
I found this paper published in July ’07 (German)
Might mess with a few heads here?
I have no idea if its a good paper. LOL:
“Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2
Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics Version 1.0 (July 7, 2007)” Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschne
The author’s rip into Al Gore and the IPCC a little bit as well.
Link:here for pdf
or this : for html version
Re #273 – Welikerocks – this paper gets mentioned here quite frequently. Our host prefers that we do’t discuss it, however.
Yes, well that should have been #697. Doh!
WLR, the math is beyond me. Not so the discussion of it. It is so dense, only a few can understand it. I’ve read reports that wonder if it isn’t a hoax, an inside quant joke, and I’ve read reports that consider it the definitive critique of the IPCC conception of the Greenhouse Effect. Thermodynamics is wonderful, indeed.
=====================
#699 Thanks. I didn’t know that. Well heck. lol
#701 – no worries. BTW, I like rocks too, but for climbing up (or not, as is becoming more frequent).
#700 kim, thanks too. I get what you mean and yes it is. 😉
Boris says:
The uncertainty in the data does not allow a complete evaluation of the models,
Totally agree.
Models are not designed to “predict” short term interannual variabil—hey, wait a minute, you should know this since you supposedly know how bad models are. Why don’t you know this?
My 705 was in reply to bender’s 681.
Could someone who doesn’t have blind spots explain something to me.
How is it that a disconnect between temperatures and TSI over the last 30 years be proof that the sun has little effect on the climate.
Yet at the same time, the even bigger disconnect between temperatures and CO2 over the last 150 years (and especially the last 10) be proof that CO2 is the major driver of the climate?
It’s only proof that TSI did not cause the recent warming.
To my knowledge, no one claims that CO2 is the “major driver” of climate.
HTH
Tom Vonk says:
You should look at ITER. Not quites as big a public fiasco but the same stuff applies. Just try being a supporter of research on some other more promising route to fusion and see what the ITER believers do. It ain’t pretty. You can show them peer reviewed papers and they will still discount the merits of your case.
I stand currently in mail communication with Dr Gerlich & Dr Tscheuschner who are both well known and competent scientists . Stay tuned .
As Steve , indeed , doesn’t wish this paper to be discussed for its content , I’ll respect that .
I’ll only say one thing – it is rather lengthy and confusing even for a well informed scientific reader .
What I try to understand is what they REALLY meant because several statements seem , let’s say , either dubious or incomplete (especially the quantum mechanical bit) .
ITER doesn’t box in the same category as AGW .
There is neither a UN body going to vacations in exotic places all over the world trying to establish control over any fusion research nor legislations being passed in many countries banning neutrons .
There are neither stupidities rewarded by Nobel peace prizes nor hundreds of articles a day blaming floods , unemployment , cancer , species survival on ITER .
Last but not least you or me are not likely to be affected in our every day’s life by hysterical laws having ITER for object .
Now if you want to say that as there was much public money involved in ITER coupled to a radical green opposition , so the decision making had a strong political content , I of course agree .
However 99,999 % of people don’t care and actually don’t even know what ITER is .
#331 Sam,
Not to worry. Hansen was paid a nice fee by Enron for advice on how to profit from the fear of global warming. Hansen even told them there may be nothing to fear. Enron was hoping to use carbon trading to get it back in the black. Hansen did his best. Just not soon enough.
ITER
Larry says December 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm ,
The rest mass of an electron is .51 MeV. Or 510 KeV. To get relativistic electrons in a tube requires plate voltages on the order of 50 KeV. Or more. I think you were referring to transit time vs light speed.
One thinks of ENRON and if one is wise, one thinks that maybe it’s not such a good idea. 🙂
If science were solely funded and driven by the profit motive, there would be much research that was never undertaken because it didn’t produce any profit. Think about it. There are numerous “orphan” diseases where little or no research takes place now because so few are afflicted and it would cost too much to research and develop treatments. The only basic research that would be done would be along those avenues where a profit might be made. Bad idea.
Boris says: December 11th, 2007 at 6:50 pm ,
What about the Carbon Traders Action Plan? GE is in on that.
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-taxing-to-make-buck.html
Re 58 Andrey Levin
My thoughts on the effects of oil and surfactant pollution are on my website. The WWII temperature blip is plainly seen on SSTs if, as I do, you doubt Folland and Parker’s bucket correction. This last is discussed in a thread on CA somewhere: look at the graph without the correction (there’s a link to one version at the bottom of my global warming page) and be amazed at the jump. If F&P are in error then the Kriegesmarine effect explains the jump nicely. If you look at the temperature record for Valentia you will see confirmation that the bucket correction is not necessarily definitive (polite English speak for ‘wrong’). Calibration using coastal stations should be a fairly trivial task.
A model run using extra sunlight on the oceans as the primary warming driver is well worth trying — if one has the knowledge, computer and time. I look forward to the GCR people doing all the calculations. If their hypothesis goes Tango Uniform re nuclei formation, then all their work will be ready for cannibalisation by a different explanation for the reduction in cloud cover and the decrease in albedo. Waste not, want not.
And don’t forget surfactant, it came as a surprise to me that surfactants have the same effect.
I have sat in a cafe in Ibiza and seen a bay smoothed by the sun oil used by the bathers: the effect is astonishingly powerful.
Re ice melting: there’s a major lot of oil exploration on the east coast of Russia. I wonder what the surface currents do there — maybe they are spreading oil in the same way that the wells at Prudhoe Bay are, decreasing stratocu cover, hence warming the Bering Sea which is getting up into the Chukchi Sea. Unalaska airport might have significant cloud and temperature records.
Honesty compels me to admit that a major name in the anti-AGW camp has politely said that he doubts if the Kriegesmarine effect would be large enough to explain GW. I disagree — after all, he’s just 1000th of a Nobel laureate!
JF
717: you’re kidding. I’ve actually read Cool It! and Lomborg actually accepts a lot of the IPCC’s conclusions!
But because he adds nuance to his work, he’s the new Hitler. Bizarre.
#681 bender:
Those do look pretty flat. Perhaps that’s what he meant.
For completeness, here are the 5-year and 10-year trailing trends for UAH5.2 and RSS3.0 lower troposphere temperatures:
I won’t argue that using the lower troposphere temperatures, the trend is slightly negative *right now*. The low-trend is expected because of the typical El Nino / La Nina cycle, plus the bottom of the solar cycle, but you don’t want to talk about that.
However, I have to admit that there is a way to define a flat temperature trend since 1998.
The question was whether warming has stopped since 1998. The GCMs are a different question. Why the change of subject?
Regardless, I believe the deviation between the GCMs and the measurements are largest in the tropical troposphere. I will assume that the GCMs predict more tropospheric warming than has been observed for the last 10 years.
What are you talking about?
An appeal to authority and an ad-hom in one sentence — impressive.
710:
Great! I, too, find the paper disjointed and confusing.
#695 JamesG:
There is no difference between anthropogenic CO2 and natural CO2. Once in the atmosphere they both have a long residence time and force the temperature. Once it’s in the atmosphere, the forcing is immediate.
I see you disagree with the commonly accepted residence time. I’m not going to get into that.
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#696 nevket240:
Focused seems a little strong. I may have mentioned it once.
Disaster seems a little strong as well, but that’s open to interpretation.
I try to avoid the politics and economics for the most part, because they really get in the way of discussing the science. (I will dip into the subject when anybody claims that warmer can *only* mean better because that’s too one-sided).
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#697 welikerocks:
The “Falsification” paper has been banned from discussion by Steve McIntyre. (Presumably because it is so riddled with errors). Since you brought it up though, here are a couple of rebuttals:
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/10/loons-take-flight-as-halloween-nears.html
http://atmoz.org/blog/2007/07/10/falsification-of-the-atmospheric-co2-greenhouse-effects/
#707 MarkW:
Strawman!
The sun has huge effects on climate. It’s been the primary driver for virtually all past temperature changes. There has been an excellent correlation (and causation) between the sun and temperature for as long as instrumentation has been available.
Until the last 30 years. And that’s what’s odd. Why are the last 30 years different than the preceding hundreds?
Strawman!
CO2 is *a* driver of climate. Only in recent decades has it become the major driver.
—-
Let me repeat the IPCC position one more time:
Many things drive climate. Historically the sun has been the dominant driver, aided by CO2 in the ice age cycles. In recent decades temperature has deviated from what would be predicted from the sun alone. CO2 is very likely the cause of the deviation.
There’s an old saying. When you know you have lost, argue definitions.
I see that JohnV and Boris are arguing definitions.
Let me see if I have the right. The sun has a huge affect on climate, but the fact that it has disconnected in the last 30 years proves that it has had no part in the current warming, that has been going on for over 100 years?
Also while CO2 has only a minor impact on climate change, the fact that it has risen over the last 100 years, while temperatures have gond up and down, proves that CO2 is the only explanation for the current warming.
Thought experiment: flip 1998:2006 temperature readings. Makes 2006 the warmest. Some people would argue against global warming with a negative trend 1998:2006, some would say there’s clearly global warming – last year was the warmest! And some would say that there has been no net global warming since 1998 (?) (Just a thought experiment!)
#655, JohnV, that’s a nice graph, but in the real world, the anomoly was at .78 in april of 98, and has been significantly lower since then. As of Nov 07, it’s only .21, not .6. Either your data is bad, or your averaging it to death.
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
I don’t see that the argument has been won or lost. I see it as pointless to keep putting forward one side’s arguments when people here have rejected that side and its positions. It’s just sparring with no knock-out possible. Just a lot of cauliflower ears. 🙂
710 Tom
Could you indicate which section you are referring to here? I have a good background in QM (my thesis involved QFT) and would like to critique it.
#687 >> The energy absorbed is determined by the difference between the intensity of the light going in and the light coming out; i.e, i0-i1.
What you say makes sense to me, since it implies a thermodynamic relationship (energy-temperature). The absurdity of the other view seems clear, since as you say, it’s not well behaved.
@Susann 715–
I’m all for government spending on some research and in particular on some medical research. (Heck, I’m even for some climate research!)
But, you picked the wrong public funding analogy. Public funding won’t solve the orphan disease problem. The government also doesn’t spend a lot of public funds on rare diseases, and they probably shouldn’t.
Ideally, public money is targeted towards issues that affect many people (or at least issues that have the potential to affect many people). When huge amounts of money are targeted toward helping only a very few, taxpayers considered that wasteful. Why should the government spend loads on many very rare disease and neglect diabetes?
Both climate science and weather forecasting are publicly funded because both grew to serve the public. Climate science originally focused on collecting longer term statistical descriptions that engineers could use to size furnaces and farmers could use to plan when to plant crops or harvest. These activities benefit many people but private companies weren’t going to invest to provide the information. The medical research analog to climate science is much more like studying the effect of diet or exercise on disease; it’s not the study of orphan diseases.
JohnV
“Once in the atmosphere they both have a long residence time and force the temperature”.
Agreed but the question is by how much. If you had read the quote from Stott et al. above, you’d see that the latest data shows that it was likely a minor player. Something that was obvious to many of us. There is a (forced) difference between manmade and natural CO2 though in that one is a forcing for the GCM’s and the other isn’t.
Ask Eli about CO2 residency time: He put me straight about it. The high value is due to the apparent inability of the system to cope with so much of it at one time (model based results of course). No man, no problem – 10 years.
#725 MarkW:
Strawman!
No, it does mean that at all. TSI was increasing until about 1950, as was the global temperature. A significant fraction (perhaps most) of the warming prior to 1950 was likely caused by the sun. I’ve said as much many times.
Since ~1950, TSI has been relatively constant.
In the past, there was a very strong correlation between the length of the solar cycle and the temperature. That correlation is now gone (since the mid-1970s).
Although the sun has been the dominant driver of temperature for a long time, the warming since ~1950 (and particularly since the mid-1970s) is not well-explained by the sun. There is another cause which you refuse to consider.
=====
#727 Gunnar:
The graph in #655 is “GISTEMP Land + Ocean” (as indicated in the title). That’s why it does not match your UAH satellite lower troposphere data.
Re723: John V
Why are the last 30 years different than the preceding hundreds?
James Hansen started measuring tempratures?? 🙂
#732 JamesG:
The GCMs do not treat anthropogenic CO2 differently than natural CO2, other than that anthropogenic CO2 is added. They are well mixed and both cause the same radiative forcing. They are indistinguishable.
Regarding residence time, it’s too late in this un-threaded and I’m not well-enough informed to get into it. Here’s a summary of my understanding, fwiw:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_Residence_Time_png
I’m going to be away for much of the day. If I don’t respond it’s because I’m gone.
“In recent decades temperature has deviated from what would be predicted from the sun alone. CO2 is very likely the cause of the deviation”
Of course H2O feedback was only introduced to the models because they couldn’t explain current warming with CO2 alone. Then they couldn’t explain the dips so they added aerosols.
Susann: I found that link:
California’s Global Warming Law
Above you ask: “Careful do you really want science to be driven by the profit motive?”
Given the article above, my question is: “Do you want the science (which is at best imcomplete) expropriated by authoritarian, no-growth types who will use it to prevent as much development as they can get away with regardless of the benefit to local communities and property owners?
John_v, speaking as a climate sceptic, I appreciate your efforts to keep us honest here. It is good work. Please keep it up.
Mid-70s? PDO shift? 🙂
#733, JohnV, I know. You are cherry picking data sets. Btw, I second Philip_b sentiments in #739
The lagged effect of the sun on the oceans?
THe sun used to be a major driver of climate. But it stopped. Why? Perhaps because we now need to prove that CO2 is the primary culprit.
Gunnar in #741 is correct, John V. You have repeatedly failed to explain the flatline in tropospheric temperatures. It is fatal to your argument. Will you now admit defeat?
JamesG: It’s interesting that despite the fact that CO2 had no impact on the sun’s ability to heat the earth, up to 30 years ago. Now we see the opposite. The sun has no ability to impact CO2 ability to heat the earth.
EVERYONE…LINDSTROEM RURAL MOUNTAIN SERIES 2-4 KM…
1. MT WASHINGTON NH USA …2007 JAN-DEC -2.8C…
1998 -1.1 C (NASA-GISS) TBC (TO BE CONTINUED)
What bender said. The surface temps are suspect.
By the way. I also appreciate John V’s comments very greatly, and always stop for his handle in the threads.
Steve Miloy has an interesting article on models and the costs of “doing something.”
#746,
I am not at all surprised about Mt Washington. I live a couple of hundred miles from there and it has been COLD here since before Thanksgiving(US). In fact, talk about teleconnections:), I have been seeing snow buntings, small white birds with black tipped wings that live on the tundra, for a couple of weeks now. As a rule, we never see them until the coldest bitterest weeks in late Janurary, Early Feb. It has to be very cold north of here to drive those tough little birds this far south this early (IMHO).
The surface temps are suspect.
Seriously~ the temps in So. California are up to 10 degrees below normal right now.. It was in the 30°s F last night and this morning, its only 40 right now. And not a peep from the MSM or the powers that be. My hose is frozen solid. I tried to use it to melt the ice on my car windows.
Trevor says in 82 in the AGU Day 1 thread:
As noted in the Open Letter to the Secretary General of the UN:
“Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the ‘precautionary principle’ because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future.” This really makes sense to me. To really apply the precautionary principle, we should do nothing, but adapt to whatever happens.
The problem with this hypothesis is that it implies a very long lag time and high climate sensitivity to a smallish increase in TSI. Forgetting that past observations don’t show such a lag, if the current warming were due to solar, then much more of the CO2 warming would still be “in the pipeline” with a high sensitivity. In that case, we should be more worried. I’m glad that this does not appear to be the case.
STAFFAN LINDSTRÖM
Explanation in detail please ! Don’t leave us in suspense
re: #715, Susann, December 14th, 2007 at 6:59 am, who says:
A U.S. politician recently opined:
The politician’s statement may have some applicability to the subject of government sponsored research. If government programs operated under the survival of the fittest principle that is prevalent in the free market system, there would be less concern about wasted money. ENRON is gone and officials were jailed. There is no equivalent cleansing force to encourage efficiency in the operation of government programs.
#741 Gunnar:
I showed all of the satellite data when it was brought to my attention, just as I showed the surface data.
=====
#743 MarkW:
The sun is still a major driver, but right now it’s driving the climate to a steady temperature. No increase in TSI leads to no increase in temperature.
You can see the effect of solar cycles in the atmospheric temperature trends above. It’s clear that the sun is able to quickly warm and cool the atmosphere. The underlying solar trend is flat since ~1950 but the temperature trend is not. To me that’s the clearest evidence of the current warming being non-solar.
=====
#742 bender:
That’s a possibility but there are a couple of problems:
1. The temperature rise should be fast at the start (1950s to 1970s) and slow down as a new steady state is approached;
2. This would imply an atmospheric time constant of 30 years or more, which is inconsistent with many other results that show a faster response;
=====
#744 bender:
I have already conceded that there is currently a negative decadal trend in the lower-troposphere satellite measurements. *If* that is what the letter in the National Post was talking about, then the letter is technically correct. The trend is negative using a single data source with an ideal starting point.
There is also a strong positive trend in the surface measurements. There are a few differences in the trends:
1. Lower troposphere temperature responds more strongly to solar cycles;
2. Lower troposphere temperature responds more strongly to La Nina / El Nino;
3. Satellite trends do not include the high arctic (above 82.5N and 70s);
Will you accept the periodic nature of the trends? As we enter the next El Nino and come out of the solar minimum, which way will the trends turn? Is it really valid to state unequivocally that the temperate has been flat since 1998?
=====
#745 MarkW:
I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please clarify.
=====
#747 yorick:
Perhaps.
The surface temperature is a different measurement than the lower-troposphere measurement, so differences are expected. I’m inclined to trust both sets of measurements until they are shown to be wrong. The differences in satellite results (UAH vs RSS) are difficult to reconcile so I think it’s fair to use their mean.
—
Ok, back to work for me…
@John V 720
That’s better. Arguments are much better when you admit the obvious. Otherwise, the response is are you blind?
Look, I believe AGW is happening. But, in reality, no matter what graphs you examine, there is not much of a trend since 1998. The reasons are either:
1) A real trend exists, but it is masked by a known cyclic response, e.g. El Nino/ La Nina. (Note however, that if the cyclic response were fully know and predictable, we could correct for it. )
2) The trend is too small to discern in the variability which we do not entirely understand. (So, we can’t quite correct for it.)
3) There is no real trend in this time frame.
You’re voting for (1). Nevertheless,, based on the time frame of 1998- now, you can’t prove a trend.
Now, as it happens, I think I know where your argument with bender really lies.
I suspect you, John V, consider the trend proven based on years prior to 1998 and it assume “everyone” believes it has moved into “null hypothesis” territory. Because of this , you likely believe the challenge is for bender to disprove an already proven trend. But for you to throw the burden of proof bender, you, he or the audience you are trying to convince, must absolutely, truly agreed the prior trend you believe in is proven.
Otherwise, you really need to fall back to the null hypothesis is “there is no proven trend.”
Now, as I see it, because, you are (for some mysterious reason) assuming that others here agree the trend is proven to exist based on earlier data, you aren’t even trying to prove its existence. (I say ‘mysterious reason’ because you know perfectly well others here don’t agree that trend is proven!)
So let’s look at what is probably the earlier argument. If I’m not mistaken, the proof of the 1960-1998 trend generally rests on data taken in the previous 40 years (pretty much since the late 60s.) The temperatures certainly went up during that period. There really is no disputing that. The question is: is the change statistically significant? Or, is this just a statistical anomolie? So, the contention is:
1) The apparent trend may be nothing more than a statistical anomolie resulting from large scatter in a signal with quite a bit of serial autocorrelation. (Due to cycles similar to El Nino / La Nina, but possibly with longer time scales. There are, after all only 6-7 El Nino/ La Nina cycles in there. The 30s, when CO2 was low, were also hot. The time scale of the oceans is thought to exceed 20 years. So, we don’t have a large number of full cycles in that data.)
2) The apparent trend may be nothing more than the sort of run one can expect in this sort of data even if there are no cyclical variations. (What should the standard deviation be? If this were a quality control process in a factory, you would never to restrict yourself to calculating the standard deviation on the most recent 40 widgets when you know the scatter is larger than that based on the past 100 widgets!)
3) Some of the underlying data are uncertain and have been adjusted upward or downward to correct perceived measurement biases. (The adjustment may be correct, but the fact that is thought to have been required normally is thought to be confirmation of uncertainty in the data.)
If someone thinks the trend from 1965-1998 is not proven, the trendless behavior after 1998 tends to confirm (thought not prove) the previous apparent trend was a statistical anomolie. The argument is: The trend as never proven. More recent data tends to suggest it’s still not proven.
Oddly enough, your argument that you can’t use the post 1998 data to disprove the trend because of the cyclic nature, is precisely the types of argument used to explain why the 1960-1998 trend was never proven in the first place! The cycle and scatter argument cuts both ways and, unfortunately for you, John V, in a purely empirical test, the traditional burden of proof lies on you, not bender!
Zero trend was the null hypothesis in the first place, the skeptic argument has tradition on its side: We assume no trend until proven otherwise.
Of course, you, JohnV, could try to support your argument for a real trend between 1967-1998 using GCM’s or other non-empirically based methods. But as you said:
In my opinion, the case for AGW includes lots of bits of evidence that lean in favor of the theory. I lean heavily in favor of the theory. However, I haven’t seen any individual bit of evidence that is bullet proof.
I don’t understand why people want to defend any individual one as bullet proof, but it appears they do. I actually think the argument is stronger when it is made truthfully: No individual argument is bullet proof. There is still a possibility the AGW is incorrect– of the A part is not so very dominant. But all in all, it seems more likely than not. And finally no I can’t begin to assign error bars to this! (And in fact, when it comes down to it, one rarely assigns error bars to whole theories. Error bars are assigned to individual studies — when possible. When the error bars are infinite, they are not shown.)
(For balance, let me also say I also don’t understand the point in doing all the manipulations in comment 687. The math is all ok, but it’s obvious why taking the log of zero is never a real issue in that system. In experiments to measure absorbance, outgoing radiation equals zero (Io=0) only if incoming radiation is also zero (Ii =0. ) If Io is too small to resolve with your equipment, then you buy new equipment. So, one never tries to take the log(0). One doesn’t even try to take the log(Io/Ii) = log(0/0). The entire issue of radiation is irrelevant when there no incoming radiation in the first place. )
Has a thorough independent audit been performed on Spencer and Christy’s latest UAH MSU research? If so, has the accuracy of the UAH MSU been compared to the accuracy of the RSS research to determine which of the two satellite methods most accurately measures tropospheric temperatures?
# 726
UC,
Not true… 2006 was not the warmer year:
#643 Sam, Thank you for parsing my comments and providing this scientific layman some insight. In a follow up post at RC I was provided with this comment:
I am under the impression from my time here at CA that we do not fully understand the physics of GHG, yet at RC it appears that they have full comprehension of the dynamics of GHG’s.
Am I missing something?
Thank you for your reply, Boris #752. You say:
1. The pathway between sun and ocean comprises many filters, filtering more than one energetic process. Your idea that the pathway can be indexed by something as simple as a total solar radiance index is a bit simplistic, don’t you think?
2. And why is the long time-lag untenable? [“Because the models say so” is not a reasoned argument. As it is the models that are being questioned, such an argument would be circular.]
You see now why I asked for a reply by someobody “informed”? Thanks all the same.
Of course there are a number of people now saying it’s not the sun, or CO2, it’s soot. At least it’s real pollution.
On a side note – Anyone seen this:
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/wethring.htm
“The rise of the Appalachian Mountains may have caused a major ice age approximately 450 million years ago, an Ohio State University study has found. The weathering of the mountains pulled carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, causing the opposite of a greenhouse effect — an “icehouse” effect.”
………………
“In this study, we’re seeing remarkable evidence that suggests atmospheric CO2 levels were in fact dropping at the same time that the planet was getting colder. So this significantly reinforces the idea that CO2 is a major driver of climate,” Saltzman said.
I think I see a tiny flaw in the argument, mind you.
Here’s a simpler one for Boris. How is it that the GCMers and EBMers can say they’ve correctly accounted for the internal dynamics of ocean heating, when the deep ocean temperature data are far more deficient than the land surface data?
#756 lucia:
Thanks for the well-stated comment.
I was not actually using the 1960-1998 trend in any way. I was merely looking at the 1998+ surface temperature trend, which shows a clear, statistically significant warming. When the satellite data was pointed out, I graphed it and admitted a negative trend from 1998 (#720).
Given the known periodic nature of temperatures, with a very strong El Nino / La Nina component, I think a more reasonable choice of starting points would be the last La Nina (1995 or 2000-01). With either of those starting points there is a strong warming trend (0.04 to 0.19C/decade from 2000-01, 0.11 to 0.18C/decade from 1995).
However, changing the starting point to 1995 or 2000-01 is changing the subject. The topic was the letter signed Dr. Wegman and there is no warming trend in the satellite lower troposphere temperature for the period indicated.
I agree with you about none of the arguments being bulletproof. I get lazy and forget my qualifying prefixes sometimes. I *don’t want* significant AGW to be true. I *do* believe there are other possibilities. I *have* been looking for them. I just haven’t found any that are plausible to me.
#763 John V. Another dodge of the fact of the troposhperic temperature record. Just sayin.
The TSI stopped increasing in the 70’s (not that TSI is the only energy coming from the sun).
The surface temperature stopped increasing in the late 90’s.
Obviously the there is a 20 year lag in TSI to surface temperature. Case closed.
#765 MarkW:
Surface temperature? Nope.
An argument can be made that the lower troposphere temperature trend has been flat since the late 1990s, but not the surface temperature. See #655:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-177163
Correct me if I’m wrong, but TSI stands for Total Solar Irrdiation.
I suppose you have a better idea.
It’s possible, but why would the lag time apply to solar forcing and not CO2 forcing? Does the long lag apply to past instances of solar change?
Well, when you repeatedly and erroneously accuse modelers of cherrypicking, groupthink and stupidity why would you expect them to give a tinker’s cuss about your opinion? Go hang with Lubos for all the answers, I guess.
John V, Boris:
MarkW #765 is asking you a question. Give him a reason to re-open the case.
Does anybody have TSI data from lets say 1850 on.. And a method of turn Delta TSI into Delta C.
MarkW (and bender):
From the data I’ve seen, TSI stopped increasing ~1950. Temperatures started increasing in the mid-1970s. Without invoking aerosols or CO2, explain the delay.
If a 0.1% increase in TSI would result in a 0.3K rise in temperature.
If the rise in CO2 that we have seen so far would result in about a 0.5K rise in temperature.
If we have seen a 0.6K rise in temperature over the last 100 years.
Seems to me that 0.8K is greater than 0.6K. Doesn’t leave much room for any large positive feedbacks. Kind of implies negative feedbacks dominate.
And this is without adjusting for any possible UHI or microsite contamination.
The temperature increase of the mid-70’s is dominated by the PDO switch from cold to warm.
Would it were as simple as 765 makes it out to be. Alas…
#770
You misunderstand. The burden is on YOU to disprove the alternative, not me to prove it. I contend that something we don’t understand yet could be a contributing factor. I am uncertain within reasonable bounds of the data. You, in contrast, contend that you are certain of CO2 and certain it’s not solar or anything else. Make your case. And go recruit our friends at RC to help you. On what grounds do you decide what level of delay is reasonable? How have you determined how much “warming is in the pipe”? You say it is so. So prove it.
#773 is a dodge of the question.
Boris, John V:
Admit defeat now, or recruit more firepower from the higher ranks.
# 769
Naam. Read this page below the graph. I included the solar irradiance data from 1600 to date from Judith Lean reconstruction.
#771 MarkW:
The 0.5K from CO2 and the 0.3K from solar, assuming they are correct, are inclusive of feedbacks. You use them to argue there are no feedbacks. There may be a mistake in your logic.
=====
bender:
You take the convenient position of never making any claims or providing any evidence. It’s a nice place to be, but contributes very little.
You have your theory that I will describe as “constant solar forcing in the last ~60 caused increased temperature 20-30 years after the solar forcing plateaued. CO2 and aerosols have little impact on temperatures during this period”.
I have a theory that goes like this:
Solar, CO2, and aerosols all force temperature. In the last ~60 years the solar forcing has been relatively constant. The pattern of aerosol concentrations (estimated) and CO2 increase (measured) seems to describe the temperature trend during this period of relatively constant solar activity.
There’s nothing inherent in the theories that makes yours the null hypothesis. I’ve already explained my position. Explain yours.
—
I’m going out for a while.
Bender #776
You have as much chance of that as you would getting a parrot to explain what it is talking about.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22921996-11949,00.html
Finally, cracking the whip. Thank goodness the “science is settled”.
Just like the Arctic ice, the warmers case is cracking up.
regards.
Re #756
Try reading: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=33755
From the conclusions:
“Consider the null hypothesis that the observed temperature fluctuations and atmospheric CO2 levels are independent: The probability that the hemispheric temperatures would fluctuate purely by chance in such a way to produce the observed coherences with CO2 is exceedingly low. Given that the records encompass more than a century, the probability is so low that one would not expect to see such an event by chance during the age of the earth. The probability of the observed coherence between atmospheric CO2 and changes in the timing of the seasons shown in figure 13 of ref. 2 without a causal connection is similarly low. Consequently one must strongly reject the hypothesis of independence between atmospheric CO2 and temperature. The alternative hypothesis, that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 plus a slight change in solar irradiance are causally responsible for the observed changes in temperature, in contrast, results in test statistics that are ordinary in every way. Because major changes in climate as a response to human use of fossil fuels have been predicted for more than a century (39, 40), their detection can hardly be considered surprising.”
On the same line .
I have never been able to interest myself much for statistical treatements of incomplete time series using some kind of artificial construct called “global mean temperature” GMT .
Whatever the curves show seems to be meaningless when one is interested by the DYNAMICS of the system .
It has never been shown that this parameter GMT represents an adequate metrics for the system’s dynamics .
If anything it has been shown that it is NOT and that the heat content of the oceans would be one much more reasonable (see R.Pielke) .
It’s beyond me why people argue hours about statistical “trends” of GMT when not a single one is able to show a connection/correlation to some real physical process .
Does it imply something for the radiated energy ? No , as I have already shown in this thread .
Does it imply something for the dynamics of multidecadal events that demonstrably influence climate ? No , it’s the local parameters that do .
Does it imply something for the convective transfer ? No .
Does it imply something for the cloudiness or albedo ? No , see multidecadal events .
Does it imply something for the CO2 cycle ? No , the ocean temperature , currents , concentrations and partial pressures do .
Does it imply something for the precipitation quantities and latent heat exchanges ? No , they depends on so many local parameters that I’d need a page to mention them and I’d surely forgotten some .
So what is it useful for if any supposed variation of this GMT may lead to an infinity of very different dynamical evolutions ?
Of course beside of saying that it sometimes gets “hotter” and sometimes “cooler” whatever it may mean (where , when , how long , how much , will it change and where ?) .
I find it symptomatic that AGW faithfull that are unbeatable to analyse “trends” at 0,01 % have never explained why GMT should represent anything physically relevant to represent dynamical evolutions of the system .
I won’t hold my breath though , I know that I’ll never see a physical answer because there is none and certainly none that could be given by GCMs .
Wow. Apply that logic to r-l-g–n, and see where it takes you.
False. I strongly assert that the data are too uncertain to be making the kinds of claims that are being made by sheep like you.
Yeah, skeptics never have to prove anything. How convenient. By your logic, you could run unthreaded to 20,000 posts proffering new theories to be disproved. But where does the evidence lead us? Now it’s my turn to make a statement that you can try to disprove. The past correlation between solar and temp. does not show a substantial lag. I’m not playing the runaround game to disprove your half-spun theories. You got a theory? You support itjust like everyone else has to.
Fine. Now, I contend that something we don’t yet understand will make CO2 warming twice as high as current climate estimates. My statement is supported by as much evidence as yours is. Things we don’t know don’t get to support your worldview anymore than they support someone else’s. Let’s talk about what we do know.
That’s why you never want to answer my climate sensitivity questionsspeaking of avoiding questions. Because whatever estimate you have for CS it’s based on essentially nothing and is hardly better than a guess. Perhaps a statistical expert can explain how to put error bars on a guess. I, for one, haven’t a clue.
I think I’ve had enough of unthreaded for today. Now, there’s some news we can both agree is good, right?
For the umpteenth time. Most serious skeptics do not dispute that A in AGW > 0. The issue is the quantitiative estimate of A. What is the uncertinaty around that bloody parameter? Why is is it so impossible to provide that one, single number?
Now you’re catching on the the central idea behind science.
My theory, Bore-us, is outline fairly succinctly in #784. Note how I pre-empted your #785 in a crosspost. That tells you something. Your lemming lines are becoming amazingly predictable. The same way I pre-empted JEG on Loehle. You guys are sheep. You’ve stopped thinking about what you’re trying to assert. You don’t understand the structure of the argument. Listen to the jester. He’s trying to help you save face.
Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations – dated 14 December 2007 from 100 Prominent Scientists
Boris, here’s someone who knows science a tad better that the heroes of RC explaining how it’s supposed to work:
http://wwwcdf.pd.infn.it/~loreti/science.html
Your proof?
Ah, no. Wide confidence intervals favors my argument and disfavors yours.
Correct. Which is why my argument is strong, and yours is weak.
And dodge the question?
Well as for me , while I don’t dispute the above (whatever the quantity > 0 could be) I dispute that the global mean temperature measures A or climate sensitivity for that matter .
And I certainly dispute that its value is relevant for the future evolution of the system .
Whoops. Parsed too quickly.
Incorrect. This goes to show you don’t understand my argument and why it is so much stronger than yours. You have to prove we are certain. I only have to prove we are uncertain.
bender, although your technical points may be correct, you are filling your posts with childish insults. That’s really distracting and lowers the quality. If you don’t feel someone is getting something, just say so, and bow out.
I am going to throw John V a bone here. Do you know what the number one industry in the backwoods Northeastern US was in the 18th and early 19th century? Burning the forests for potash. I can’t imagine how smokey it must have been for a long time. Of course this also means that the snow fields were covered with soot as well, likely as not.
The midlands of the UK are still called “The Black Country”, on account of the soot that covered everything. I have even been to the “Black Country Museum” were you can still get fish and chips fried in beef tallow, which, if you ask me, tastes like fish ice cream.
RE: #684 – There is a human affecting pathogen called Valley Fever. Not sure if its range extends to where you are, we certainly have it in California. It’s a rare and scary syndrome, with no cure and a moderate fatality rate. It’s a rather fascinating issue, and much can be learned from it, applicable to non human organisms.
781
Of course, the author conveniently forgot the other alternate hypothesis: that they are correlated because the temperature rise was the cause of the CO2 rise.
@JohnV– 763
No, it doesn’t. There is a tiny upward trend if you fit a line. Have you done a t-test on that slope? Try it and see if you get 95% confidence! Or point to a paper where someone showed 95% confidence based on data after 1988 Or just take a piece of paper and cover up the bit to the left of 1998 and look at it. Does that still look like a statistically significant up trend to you? 1999 and 2000 are killers!
One of these days, I need to do the beta test analysis of this… but seriously. You’re just never going to get “t” anywhere near 2 as required to get 95% confidence with less than two decades of data.
Sorry, but those of us who believe AGW is likely are living in “beta error is high” when we only have 8 years of data.
And you showed graphs, and there isn’t any.
Your best argument against Wegman would be either “cherry picking” or “He’d disingenuous because he knows beta error is high for an 8 year span”.
Yes, I agree El Nino’s and La Nina’s exist, but the fact that they do doesn’t mean we can just say that post 1998 data show a statistically significant uptrend.
I’d have to read Wegman’s full argument to criticize him (or not). But there is no statistically significant trend in the post 1998 annual averaged data for anything.
Picking post 1998 may seem cherry picked, but there is also a very valid argument for picking 1998 to test claims. Annual average temperatures after 1998 represent predictions after an important event.
1) People were insisting this was both proven and certain in December 11, 1997, when Kyoto was agreed to.
2) It makes sense to test their predictions using data collected after they made their claim.
3) Annual average results for 1998 is the first year after Kyoto– a very public event. The date 1998 is, not to cherry picked. That’s precisely the first year of data that exist after Kyoto.
2) The data collected after 1997 is not consistent with the claim made by those advocating Kyoto.
In contrast, why do you pick 1950 to test your claim of a trend? Why not 1930? Or 1980? Or…? Can you give as good a reason (or excuse) as the one I gave (or concocted) for 1998? I bet not. (I’m actually pretty proud of thinking to google Kyoto and looking up the date! 🙂 )
Oh, I’ll grant you Wegman could pick some other year– like 1988 when Hansen wrote his first report making his ABC projections. But Kyoto was important and 1998 actually has a plausible enough sounding reason to be selected.
@JohnV–755…
Look back through the thread. Gunnar cited comment 733 and is clearly referring to your choice in picking the start data of 1950; see comment 733. You see cherry picking in 1998; they see it in starting in 1950 rather than say, 1930. What about 1930?
===== **************
With regard to both
1: the temperature rise would not necessarily be faster at the beginning. One can easily assemble a simple one-dimensional system with two major components– air and ocean that experience time dependent forcing. It’s easy to come up with a system where the heat in the “ocean” comes out slowly, such that it shows up a long after the air responds to externally applied forcing..
[I’ve done simple models for hydrogen gas percolating out of resin bead reservoirs in a containers. The beads held the hydrogen, and the air above it was well mixed– but with a small amount of breathing in a container above. In a simplified analysis, the heat and hydrogen are both passive scalars, so they are sort of the same problem. In the utterly simplified system, there are two time constants. One slow (in the beads– which would be like the ocean) one fast like the air above the beads or ocean. The problem was examined to explore how we might fix some potential safety issues by ventilating containers. The simplified problem ends up being an eigen value problem. But qualitatively, it behaves the way bender suggests happens in an ocean/atmosphere system.]
With regard to 2: No, bender’s suggestion would not imply an atmospheric time constant of 30 years or more. The behavior he suggests would require these things:
a) a massive deep ocean that can hold lots of heat (or cold) laying underneath a relatively thin atmosphere. (These appear to exist.)
b) an oceanic time constant of 30 years or more (possibly even much more) coupled with an atmosphere with a short time constant. (These are consistent with values GCM modelers claim. More importantly, the long oceanic time constants is now being given as the reason the GCM’s over predict the CO2. It’s the “heat is in the pipeline” argument. If this argument applies to the earth’s response to CO2. An ocean time constant used to explain how the world responds to CO2 forcing should still exist if the forcing is solar.)
and
c) greater heating sometime in the past. (More than 1 or 2 time constants in the past will do, longer ago is better. Weird oscillations are ideal. With recent reductions could result in heat stored very deep in the ocean. This would take time to diffuse upward, but cause net heating once it got near the surface.)
The only difficulties with bender’s argument I can see are:
1) it is highly qualitative.
2) if made quantitiative, if would only match data if the past forcing included periods of somewhat sustained solar heating that occurred at least 1 ocean time constant in the past, but likely no more than 10 ocean time constants in the past. (For a given set of characteristics of the ocean and atmosphere, different forcing histories will give you the qualitatite behavior I am describing. Some types would never exhibit this qualitative behavior. One and 10 are picked as round numbers. )
3) making aquantitative argument would required some math, quite a bit of physical argument, and quite a bit of data describing solar forcing over the past 10 oceanic time constants.
I suspect no one is going to do this problem because the simplified problem is not particularly enlightening and requires someone to make a range of estimates for vertical thermal transport in the ocean. Publishing it would be difficult for these reasons, and if it’s difficult to publish, it’s likely too much work for a blog post.
But as qualitative arguments go, “it’s in the pipeline” appears to be as good as the argument for why the current temperature rise is due to heat stored in oceans as the RC argument for why CO2 lags temperature in the ice records. (Or have I missed the quantitiative or even semi-quantitative argument somewhere? )
Numerical experiments for the full problem (either to confirm or refute) would require running a large scale GCM over at least hundreds of years using a full GCM. Either way, because people need precise values for solar forcing, volcano eruptions etc over time, the results would be (rightfully) questioned. So, I’m sure that hypothetical ain’t happenin’ on a GCM!
Interestingly, not to make things even worse for the theory I believe in ……though bender himself doesn’t suggest this, bender’s suggestion might result in a drop in the ocean’s ability to entrain C02 as the warmer water moved up from deeper layers to the surface. I’m not sure about this because I don’t know how the absorption of CO2 is explained– but if the surface of the ocean is heavily involved, this argument could be maes. So…. even if the excess CO2 in our current atmosphere didn’t doesn’t come from the ocean, it could result from the newly injected stuff not being absorbed when otherwise it might have been absorbed.
Honestly, I lean toward this relatively simple explanation:
1) We are injecting CO2,
2) There are pretty good physical arguments to expect, all other things being equal, more CO2 traps more heat.
3) There are pretty good physical arguments to expect that if more heat is trapped for any reason more water is evaporated.
4) We aren’t quite sure what the evaporated water does on average, but there are are pretty good physical arguments to believe more trapping is more likely than less. Totally negating the CO2 effect seems implausible, so it appears we are left with either a little heating or a lot of heating.
5) Temperatures have been going up since 1988 when the claim of AGW was first forcefully made There isn’t much of it, and we are in the range of high beta error. So, while we can’t prove anything, failure to reject the null hypothesis doesn’t mean much either. (BTW. I’m betting for 1/2 the rise in AGW is ‘A’. That’s just for the bookies, not real science. Based on science, my guess is “don’t know the fraction”!)
So, though we have little data, what little we have supports the fairly decent physical arguments. (Note, i do not include GCM’s in my list of pretty good physical arguments. I prefer the simple radiative balances like Gerry North discussed. You can see the holes– as far as I can determine, GCM’s as currently constituted, mostly share the same holes. )
If this theory were a coffin, I would hardly call it nailed shut. But, I think the balance is in favor of it. I make similar assessments in engineering.
It does concern me that I read and hear an awful lot of overblown defenses of the theory, claiming outrageous degrees of confidence not only in the theory overall, but in each little plank. Why not admit that the argument in favor of AGW is based on seeing a while lot of planks in place– but note that the planks are kind of wobbly? That’s often the case in science, particularly only a few years after “the experiment” begins. (Bag the Ahrehnnius business. The CO2 wasn’t there yet. The real experiment began when we started pumping in the CO2 into the atmosphere in massive quantities and everyone knows this. That’s why you pick 1950 for the start of your data to test the theory! )
John V.
We are in the same boat here. I can tell you many things that are sound in the criticism of skeptics. Unlike some who lean toward believing AGW is true, I admit it may be false. But, on the balance, I think it’s true despite the many chinks (or heck, missing pieces) in the armor. Do I think it’s certain? No.
As far as I can tell, the higher ranks don’t have any more firepower than JohnV or Boris. All they have is a large collection of slingshots. Lots and lots of slingshots. (That’s actually an argument in favor of their position.)
In about 20 years, the data will either transform each slingshot into guns, or every slingshot will be shown to be nothing more than upside down wishbones. I’m betting they’ll turn into guns, but that is, once again, a bet.
# 769
Stephen Mosher,
Naam. Read this page, data is below the graph. I included the solar irradiance data from 1600 to date from Judith Lean reconstruction. As for the algorithm to turn TSI into change of temperature use the next formula:
deltaT = 15.2 W/m^2(ln [TSIf / TSIi]) / 3.77 W/m^2*K
For example, in 1611 the TSI was 1365.8342 W/m^2 and in 1610 it was 1365.8477 W/m^2, introducing magnitudes:
deltaT = 460.16 W/m^2 (ln [1365.8342 W/m^2 / 1365.8477 W/m^2]) / 0.378 W/m^2*K = -0.0045 (W/m^2)/ 0.378 (W/m^2*K) = -0.012 K
In 2000 the TSI was 1366.662 W/m^2, while in 1611 it was 1365.8342 W/m^2; by the formula we have:
deltaT = 460.16 W/m^2 (ln [1366.662 W/m^2 / 1365.8342 W/m^2]) / 0.378 (W/m^2*K) = 0.73 K
It means that a change of + 0.8278 W m^-2 causes a change of temperature of ~0.73 K. BTW, the TSI has increased 3.67 W m^-2 in the last millennia, which has caused an increase of the mean temperature of ~2.92 °C.
JohnV writes
Sorry JohnV, but the above statement is completely and utterly incorrect. Those two values include no feedbacks.
JohnV,
bender does not have to present an alternative hypothesis in order to demonstrate the flaws in yours.
Lucia ~798,
You’re overlooking the likelihood that the ocean has multiple heat reservoirs that operate at significantly different time constants (i.e. the surface mixed layer and the deep ocean).
——-
Time for UT/28???
Thanks Larry for including the link to the extended version.
I’ve read that Feynman piece before, but once again enjoyed reading it. Hopefully some others around here will read it and actually think about the point he was trying to make.
yorick,
My dad tells stories of how the snow would quickly turn grey because of the soot from all the coal furnaces. This was back in the 50’s. I don’t know precisely how long it took to phase out coal for natural gas and electricity.
lucia,
And the skeptics have lots and lots of slingshots. The number is growing by the year.
Please, read my # 799. Just imagine an increase of 2.92 K in the surface. Oceans as reservoirs of heat have had enough time for maintaining the change of tropospheric temperature going up. The current smoothness in the trends of change of temperature obeys to the slight decrease of TSI through 1994-1997.
May I highlight a piece of the longish #798:
I have been on the lookout for special pleading double-standards for awhile. On both sides. Could someone please explain to me why it is impossible that the filtered sun put the heat “in the pipeline”? And please note that correlative arguments are irrelevant, as attribution requires the complexity of a GCM. If no valid counter-arguments can be made, this is going on the list.
Gunnar #794 You are right. Although it is sometimes necessary to smash an argument in order to convince a bystander that there’s a crack in it
>> Since the outbound radiation from the earth is proportional to the temperature to the fourth power, your calculation for a 0.1% increase in solar output is wrong. The fourth root of 1.001 (a 0.1% increase) is 1.00025. Mutiply this by 300K to get 300.07K. So, a 0.1% solar increase would lead to about 0.07K temperature increase (excluding feedbacks), not 0.3K as you state.
Now John, you have said something like this before, and I remember that you were corrected on it. Your false radiative balance premise is causing you to mix up out vs in. At any moment in time, Energy Out != Energy In because there is nothing in nature that wants to keep internal energy constant.
If a passing star came by so close that it dumped lots of energy into earth, the earth would heat up significantly, and even though the star is long gone, the earth might take several hundred years to cool back down. During the star passage, and the whole cool down time, the earth would not be in “radiative balance”.
#771 >> If a 0.1% increase in TSI would result in a 0.3K rise in temperature.
Mark, I agree with your point, but let’s do a napkin calculation of what a .1% increase in TSI might do.
Atmos = 5.1 x 10^18 kg
Ocean = 1.4 x 10^21 kg
Crust = 2.3 x 10^22 kg
Energy in Atmosphere = 1.49E+24 J (0.02%)
Energy in Ocean = 1.72E+27 J (24.10%)
Energy in Crust = 5.39E+27 J (75.67%)
The Daily Solar Energy on Earth is 1.74E+17 Watts. For a whole day, this is 1.50E+25 J. This is 0.21% of the total in the Atmos/Ocean/Crust (aoc). This is Interesting, since it shows that solar input is large compared to the atmospheric energy.
The high part of the solar cycle seems to last about 4 years (eg 98-02). The earth receives .1% more energy continuously for 4 years.
The extra solar energy input = 0.001 * Daily Solar Energy * 365 * 4 = 2.19E+25 (EsolarMax)
Total new energy = ENERGYaoc + EsolarMax = 7.13E+27
Therefore, if I have my math right, the new Equilibrium Temp = 293.904530.
That’s an anomoly of .9 deg C. Data shows a max of .78 deg C. There is no mystery.
#809, for those of you in Rio Linda, my conclusion from 809 is that AGW proponents are using solar max/min induced temperature changes to make it look like there is some long term trend that needs explaining. As has been amply pointed out, a trend line is an artifact of the trend line drawer’s presumptions.
@Larry– I’m simplyfing for the sake of explaining the two time constant issue.
In the hydrogen created in radioactive containers with resin beads and air case, I did several variations of lumped parameter models with more or less realistic distribution of resin beads. (Some containers, which we could not open, were thought to contain lots of water too. So there were actually three layers: water&beads, fairly dry beads and air.)
You get the same general result: What bender suggests is physically possible for some range of ‘heat capacities’, thermal resistanance etc. If you make a more complex model, you get more fiddle factors. In fact, if we make a 10 layer ocean, and fiddle with forcing enough and searched for the “right” estimate of solar forcing over time, I’m sure I could “prove” bender right if I tried hard enough.
Re #802 Yes. Switch to UT#28 before #27 goes over 1000 and we trip over the critical threshold tipping point of catastrophic hysteretic no return doomsday. Because this weekend is going to be busy.
811, that’s right. You either oversimplify, and run the risk of drawing the wrong conclusion, or you overcomplicate, and end up with too many knobs. And with something as complicated as climate, there’s no happy medium in the middle.
759:
No, RC does not have a full comprehension. They act like they do. I’m not sure whether they actually really believe they do or just pretend they do. But they don’t.
Re #763 December 14th, 2007 at 10:48 am: John V
Enlightening comment John V.
One of the characteristics of humanity is that we arrogantly assume that we “know” pretty much everything about how the world (and the universe) works. However, those of us fortunate enough to have grown old generally, unlike in our youth, have come to realise just how complex the world is, and how little we, as individuals and in total, we really know about it.
Excuse me if I am impertinent, but it seems to me that you must be a young man.
>> Carl Smith says: December 11th, 2007 at 11:15 pm Hmmm it seems some scientists have discovered that there are plasma ropes (think electric cables) connecting the upper atmosphere directly to the Sun – with five hundred thousand billion Joules zapped into the Earth system in just two hours. How much extra heating could this kind of event produce and where?
And since I have my spread sheet out, I may as well answer this one from the solar thread, so I can get back to something productive. Plugging in “five hundred thousand billion Joules” or 5 x 10^14, yields a new equilibrium temp of 293.000000000021000.
So, these plasma ropes are fascinating, especially to us EEs, but in terms of heating energy, they aren’t much.
RE: #684 – Nasif – Valley Fever – the range map in this link is not quite correct in that it underrepresents the range in California – which comes much closer to the coast than shown. Y’all in N.L. also have it. You’ll appreciate this – I get worried when there is a strong monsoon or early fall rains, followed by a dry overall fall, followed by dust storms, followed by more rains. All it would take would be a mutation, and all the sudden, there is a major crisis for all animals, or, all green plants. That’s because this fungus is parasitic, not detritus dependent. Most people naively assume that evolution leads to increasing sophistication, but that is incorrect. For all we know, it could end up being slime world in 1,000,000 CE and there would be nothing we could do to prevent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccidioidomycosis
Can anyone explain how increased CO2 can cause surface heating that exceeds tropospheric heating? Im not saying it cannot and I may well be missing something obvious Im just saying I dont understand how that would work.
>> Can anyone explain how increased CO2 can cause surface heating that exceeds tropospheric heating?
Michael, I agree with you, can’t see how. If the source of the heating is higher up, then that would be the warmest spot, and as the energy spreads out, the temp rise would be significantly less.
yorick say, @#404
Do you have a URL for the source of this? Love to have it for the new “Climate Comedy” section at Climate Audit 101…
Cheers — Pete Tillman
>> Although it is sometimes necessary to smash an argument in order to convince a bystander that theres a crack in it
But there is no reason to smash the arguer.
Peter,
re: 820
You’ll find it in this PDF from Hansen’s website. Link
He repeats it in this PDF from his site. Link
Search for the word crematoria in the PDFs.
SteveSadlov says:December 13th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I’m a member of the same club. Interesting. 😉
#720 – John V.
**Regardless, I believe the deviation between the GCMs and the measurements are largest in the tropical troposphere. I will assume that the GCMs predict more tropospheric warming than has been observed for the last 10 years.**
This paper might have been mentioned before, but Roy Spencer, John Christy, William Braswell, and Justin Hnilo have a new paper out in GRL titled Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. It is a study of clouds in the tropics and how they cycle through 30-60 day tropical rainfall events. As these rain events cycle, accompanying cloud cover varies affecting temperatures.
From the abstract:
“We explore the daily evolution of tropical intraseasonal oscillations in satellite-observed tropospheric temperature, precipitation, radiative fluxes, and cloud properties. The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the ocean-atmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s infrared iris hypothesis of climate stabilization. These observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction.”
If I understand what Spencer, et al are saying, they are claiming that clouds over the tropics have a negative feedback rather than a positive feedback as projected by GCMs. Spencer concludes that if correct, these findings could reduce estimates of future warming by 75%. This paper could also revive Lindzens Adaptive Iris theory.
This paper might explain why the GCMs have been wrong on tropospheric warming in the tropics.
#720 – John V.
Regardless, I believe the deviation between the GCMs and the measurements are largest in the tropical troposphere. I will assume that the GCMs predict more tropospheric warming than has been observed for the last 10 years.
This paper might have been mentioned before, but Roy Spencer, John Christy, William Braswell, and Justin Hnilo have a new paper out in GRL titled Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. It is a study of clouds in the tropics and how they cycle through 30-60 day tropical rainfall events. As these rain events cycle, accompanying cloud cover varies affecting temperatures.
From the abstract:
We explore the daily evolution of tropical intraseasonal oscillations in satellite-observed tropospheric temperature, precipitation, radiative fluxes, and cloud properties. The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the ocean-atmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s infrared iris hypothesis of climate stabilization. These observations should be considered in the testing of cloud parameterizations in climate models, which remain sources of substantial uncertainty in global warming prediction.
If I understand what Spencer, et al are saying, they are claiming that clouds over the tropics have a negative feedback rather than a positive feedback as projected by GCMs. Spencer concludes that if correct, these findings could reduce estimates of future warming by 75%. This paper could also revive Lindzens Adaptive Iris theory.
824
You might want to read that again carefully. I take it to mean that the ice clouds provide positive feedback. (It’s hard to figure out because it has multiple negatives).
Sorry about the double post…
Here’s another quote from the paper that might clear up the feedback question:
The decrease in ice cloud coverage is conceptually consistent with the infrared iris hypothesized by Lindzen et al. [2001], who proposed that tropical cirroform [ice] cloud coverage might open and close, like the iris of an eye, in response to anomalously warm or cool conditions, providing a negative radiative feedback on temperature change. We caution, though, that the ice cloud reduction with tropospheric warming reported here is on a time scale of weeks; it is not obvious whether similar behavior would occur on the longer time scales associated with global warming.
The entire paper is not available as far as I know.
The abstract is here.
Sam Urbinto December 13th, 2007 at 4:33 pm:
I can see we have the makings of a Capitalist International here.
#826, don’t think so. I take it to mean: less clouds means that heat is escaping easier, resulting in cooler temps, which means negative feedback.
bender:
If your position is that the uncertainty is too large to know anything, then I won’t debate that with you. Your biases are clear when you allow alternative theories with no evidence to slide by un-challenged (as long as they support minimal AGW) but attack the generally accepted science vigorously.
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#798 lucia:
I’m sure I’ve seen the t-test for the surface temperature trend since 1998 but I can’t find it right now. I guess I’ll have to let the statistical significance go.
AFAIK, regardless of the thermal mass of a system, the initial response to an input should be the most rapid. Even in a system with multiple time constants the initial response should be fastest. Yes the atmosphere will warm first and the ocean will take longer, but the response to a step input will still have the same basic shape. I’m going to play with this a little bit this weekend to convince (or un-convince) myself.
I picked ~1950 not as the starting point for a trendline, but as the rough date when the TSI seems to have stopped rising.
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#809 Gunnar:
Incoming radiation increases cause temperature increases which lead to outgoing radiation increases until equilibrium is met. Broadly speaking, the outgoing radiation is proportional to absolute temperature raised to the fourth power, so that’s how you estimate the steady state temperature.
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#800 MarkW:
Perhaps we have a different definition of feedbacks. You were talking about temperature rise over 100 years. I said the observed rise over a period that long would be inclusive of feedbacks (at least those which act faster than 100 years, such as water vapour).
If the temperatures are not inclusive of the feedbacks, then the feedback effects are still coming. So, either the feedbacks are included or there’s more warming to come. Which do you prefer?
#815 trevor:
I was saying that I am not convinced that I’m right and that’s why I’m looking for alternatives. I’m not sure how that got construed into me saying that I “know pretty much everything about how the world (and the universe) works”. I’m educating myself and looking for alternatives, but my starting point is different than many others here.
Lets assume the Earths “Thermostat” is the Biosphere.
Vernadsky postulated the biosphere regulates the transformation of energy on the planet.
The Biosphere is devoted to calculations on the fraction of total solar energy used by photosynthesizing organisms to produce biomass. In the context of these calculations Vernadsky argues that it is an inherent characteristic of the biosphere that living matter is distributed on the Earths surface in a way that solar radiation is completely captured. In order to optimize the utilization of solar energy and to create a sufficient surface, green biomass appears in different forms in different biotopes. On land, plants have to develop three-dimensional structures in order to create a sufficiently thick film for optimal use of solar radiation. In oceans, primary production is dominated by phytoplankton because it can easily distribute over the depth of the photic zone.
Arguments against solar variance is on the basis of minimal changes to the overall energy transfer in the sun-earth coupling, however the changes are dominant in the spectra that are transformers of cellular growth i.e. the biosphere attenuation and amplification(and inhibition which is instantaneous).
The total solar irradiance, or TSI, along with Earth’s global average albedo, determines Earth’s global average equilibrium temperature. Because of selective absorption and scattering processes in the Earth’s atmosphere, different regions of the solar spectrum affect Earth’s climate in distinct ways. Approximately 20 – 25 % of the TSI is absorbed by atmospheric water vapor, clouds, and ozone, by processes that are strongly wavelength dependent. Ultraviolet radiation at wavelengths below 300 nm is completely absorbed by the Earth’s atmosphere and contributes the dominant energy source in the stratosphere and thermosphere, establishing the upper atmosphere’s temperature, structure, composition, and dynamics. Even small variations in the Sun’s radiation at these short wavelengths will lead to corresponding changes in atmospheric chemistry. Radiation at the longer visible and infrared wavelengths penetrates into the lower atmosphere, where the portion not reflected is partitioned between the troposphere and the Earth’s surface, and becomes a dominant term in the global energy balance and an essential determinant of atmospheric stability and convection.
Assuming climate models include a realistic sensitivity to solar forcing, the record of solar variations implies a global surface temperature change on the order of only 0.2° C. However, global energy balance considerations may not provide the entire story. Some recent studies suggest that the cloudy lower atmosphere absorbs more visible and near infrared radiation than previously thought(25% rather than 20%), which impacts convection, clouds, and latent heating .Also, the solar ultraviolet, which varies far more than the TSI, influences stratospheric chemistry and dynamics, which in turn controls the small fraction of ultraviolet radiation that leaks through to the surface.
Vernadsky derives an expression for the kinetic geochemical energy of living matter. The kinetic geochemical energy of an organism is related to its mass and its speed of transmission. The latter depends on the size of the organism and the optimal number of generations per day and is normalized to the surface area of the Earth. Vernadsky frequently refers to the geochemical energy in The Biosphere especially to emphasize the enormous biogeochemical potential of microorganisms.
Dickie and Falkowski provide some interesting insights
Or as Makarieva concludes.
And as Dickie shows by analogy
# 817
SteveSadlov,
Thanks for the link, Steve. Yes, we have the Valley Fever in N. L. Ive seen at least two cases of coccidioidomycosis in young women in the last four months when I was called for the identification of pulmonary cavities in biopsy and x-rays from one of those women; one of them was 27 years old and the other woman was 38 years old, and it seems the red wind is the main culprit.
They hadnt been diagnosed with HIV. Apparently they were healthy people until something did not work well with the medical therapy for which seemed to be common colds in the incipient phase of the disease. We havent had red wind this year because it has been raining profusely along the last five years; however, it seems that the spores develop when humid air and precisely during the rainy season.
The other woman, 38 years old died after one year of suffering the disease. The problem was that she was not diagnosed correctly and received medication for Tb when she was affected by the fungal parasite. If we see back to the date when she acquired the spores or the mycelia, the optimal conditions for the dispersal of the fungus were given in September 2005, by the time of Katrina. The other woman acquired the disease c.a. November 2006.
Then, the correlation you have noticed between the dry season and the damp season is plausible.
First, the dry season propitiates the continental and intercontinental dispersal of the fungus through red and black winds; after the dispersal, during the wet season, the fungus spores develop to the pathogenic invasive phase.
Surface Trend Since 1998 (GISTEMP Land + Ocean):
I processed the monthly data from January 1998 through November 2007 through Excel’s Regression package (part of the Data Analysis add-on). If I understand correctly, the trend is statistically significant, but I am not certain of how to interpret the results. Hopefully someone can help:
Regression Statistics:
R square: 0.115
Adjusted R Square: 0.107
Standard Error: 0.159
Observations: 119
ANOVA
Regression df: 1
Regression SS: 0.383
Regression MS: 0.383
Regression F: 15.18
Significance F: 0.00016
Residual df: 117
Residual SS: 2.949
Residual MS: 0.025
Slope:
Coefficient: 0.0198 C/year
Standard Error: 0.00508
t Stat: 3.890
P-value: 0.00016
Lower 95%: 0.0097
Upper 95%: 0.0299
827
Well, your other quote certainly says ‘negative feedback’, so you are probably right.
This is how I parse the part I quoted:
decreased clouds — increased cooling
thus, increased clouds — increased warming,
which is positive feedback.
It sounds like the author confused himself….
And here’s another member of that club!
Tom Vonk December 14th, 2007 at 6:28 am,
My point was not the dimensions of the fiasco but the sociology. i.e. the triangles are not the same size but they are congruent.
LINDSTROEM MOUNTAIN SERIES RURAL OR SOMEWHAT
LESS RURAL …
WARMING TROPICS ….
BOGOTA ELDORADO…DEC 2006–NOV 2007 13.05C
DEC 1997–NOV 1998 13.94C (WARMEST YEAR 1992
THOUGH 14.12C)…RICHARDS SORRY ABOUT
SUSPENSESIAL CLIFFHANGER SO HWGA
MEXICO CITY AIRPORT??? (NASA GISS STILL)
DEC 2006–NOV 2007 16.53C…DEC 1997–NOV 1998
17.74C ….TO BE CONTINUED AND ACCUMULATED…
lol, for those of you in rio linda, chortle.
—————————-
Gaelan: We certainly understand the physics of GHG in the lab or how they act in models. But talking about CO2 is like talking about particles. Or water vapor. Or methane. Or ozone. Or IR. Or clouds. Or cities….
They’re all part of a system, and if they at RC say they know how they act, interact and react in the system, they are stating their guesses as if they were facts, no mystery there. Or perhaps it’s better to say they’ve come to certain conclusions based upon their understanding of the available data, and since they are the experts, their conclusions must be correct. (I guess that leads to since you’re not an expert, you don’t have the ability to understand the available data correctly, so they are trying to bring you to their own enlighted state.) Knowing climate is like knowing how many grains of sand there are in the Atlantic ocean and all associated beaches.
—————————
Lucia, trend, hunh? It’s quite clear there is an upward linear trend in the GHCN-ERSST from 1880. Also, if I plot 1998 to 2006 I get an upward trend also.
That isn’t the issue, here, I don’t think. The anomaly is the same (roughly) both years. So no net change. Now, the temp itself is up and down all over the place of course. So I think the argument is more about the validity and/or importance of the measurement and/or the GHCN-ERSST trend than it is if there’s a trend in GHCN-ERSST or not.
———————-
John V: “No increase in TSI leads to no increase in temperature.” Not true. If all the land we’re clearing and paving is absorbing more heat from the same amount of TSI, then the TSI could stay steady or drop and there could still be a temperature increase. (I’m making the assumption you meant “increase in temperature from TSI”…) Although of course you know I question that the anomaly is meaningful. Temperature may or may not tell us anything about energy balance. Ignore that, let’s just say it’s a proxy that at least gives us an idea if it’s warming or cooling. (If that’s important or not is a different issue, as is the accuracy; which as I’ve said I think is too low. Not important.)
That leaves the issue on the table of what the non-GHG gases, GHG, and AGHG in the atmosphere are doing in respect to clouds and particulates, and how the atmosphere and ocean are interacting. And what the surface of the land and sea are absorbing from the sun, stronger or not.
I have a theory also. They all counteract each other almost perfectly, but there’s just enough of something stronger or something weaker so the overall balance is off a slight bit in the positive as far as temperature is concerned, at least according to what we’re sampling and how we’re sampling it. “Aerosols and CO2” don’t cut it.
———————–
Jae? That “this space for rent” was a joke. It wasn’t directed at you or even at anyone. Sure there’d be advancement of science; I would be looking into hydrogen fuel cells, lithium ion batteries, photovoltaics, crop yield increases, cancer treatment, disease abatement or any number of worthwhile fields of study. In any case, I didn’t say there was no need or use for models to help us understand the climate as well as we can.
Why is a horse not a bicycle? 😀 Really, nothing wrong with wondering. If you find an easy explanation of the water issue you’re thinking of, I’d be interested in reading it, certainly. But just like I don’t wonder why it’s different over the ocean than it is on a mountain at 5000 feet, I don’t really wonder why it’s hotter in the desert. My answer would be deserts are hotter (really, hotter in the day and colder at night) because of the way the sand acts to the sun, the lack of vegetation, the lack of clouds, the lack of water, the absence of materials to shade, the lack of air blockages, the amount of area absorbing a lot of sunlight. I could be wrong, but only considering water vapor is like blaming global warming on black soot or the reaction of ozone.
——————
Wegman. He didn’t SAY that. Wegman signed a letter, along with a whole lot of other folks, all of which seem qualified, and most of whom I’ve never heard mentioned (in other words, not part of “the debate” as far as I know). Ignoring the two possible minor sins of being sloppy or compromising with certain points (you may sign a letter after not reading it well, or you may sign it because you agree with the main thrust of it but maybe not every single point), let’s look at the sentence.
This is the key: “…no net global warming…” Not ‘no trend’. Not ‘warming stopped’. I’m content with phasing. “The current anomaly is the same number as it was at the next highest spot going back in time, 1998, both about +.5C. There has been no real overall rise in the anomaly in 8 years.” “The anomaly in 2006 as it was in 1998” Whatever. The letter did not say warming stopped, nor that there was no trend. Just that we’re now where we were then.
Here’s the entire paragraph:
Staffan Lindstroem,
Did you know that the metereological station in the Mexico City Airport is inside the city ar more than 50 Km from rural areas?
Lucia says,
There are limits to this. Set by such things as the signal to noise ratio of the amplifiers.
In fact the problem with much of our temp data is that the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) although not definitely quantified is known to be rather low due to a number of problems. Station siting. Instrument deficiencies. Instrument changes (i.e. from glass thermometers to semiconductors). Lack of regular calibration. etc.
Sam Urbinto, you clearly pointed out yet another strawman in your last paragraph (which also leads to yet another ad-hominem, i.e. that Wegman’s objectivity is somehow suspect).
Mark
Re #822
Sorry it’s not there, try again.
LINDSTROEM MOUNTAIN SERIES…LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
OVER TO EUROPE … NAVACERRADA SPAIN 1888 M ASL
1945 8.81C…1998 7.47C…2006 7.88C… 2007 6.54C…
SINCE 1941 42 YEARS WARMER THAN 2007 NOT ALL AVAILABLE
THOUGH…
NOW FOR SOMETHING INTERESTING
SAENTIS CH 2547 M ASL 1998 (NASA GISS) +0.23C…
2007 +0.47C (NASA-GISS) WITH SOME 999’S (THE DEVIL
UPSIDE DOWN…???) BUT TU TIEMPO -0.22C ONLY
A FEW DAYS MISSING …GOTCHA HANSEN??!! TBC FOLKS!
Re #843
Both links work for me. Here’s the sentence.
John V 834– Looks like you did the first step. Next, correct for serial autocorrelation. Who knows, maybe you’ll still have significance; t=3.86 is pretty good so there is hope. 🙂 (Bear in mind, based on the El Nino/ La Nina cycles, and our actual annual weather patterns, the serial autocorrelation may be as high as 3 years, or maybe it’s only a few months. You’ve got 9 years of data. So you really do need to do the correction.
I know the response to a step function, JohnV. But why are you forcing a step input on my scenarios? I specifically discussed varying forcings over time, including pre-50s and pre-human variations. So, I am specifically not discussing a step input.
Say forcing had gone like this:
* high (say for a long long time before 60s), then low (60s-80s), then medium (80s-now).
As long as I’m concocting this, let’s say that 60’s hot spell ran so long, the ocean got really nice and warm all the way down. (This is a crock– but go along with this to understand, qualitatively, what I am describing). So, at the beginning of the 70s cold snap, the ocean is warm down to it’s deepest murkiest, most unstirred depths.
During the 70’s the air gets cold. Due to convections with the air, then the upper layers of the ocean get cold. Some convection occurs in the ocean, but, the lower layers are still quite warm because of the previous warm spell. You could draw a little sketch of the temperature profile of the ocean– is cool at the top, and permits some heat transfer up to the air. BUT, because the cool spell only lasts a short while, the temperature in the deep ocean is unaffected. (In fact, you could do a little diffusion time and find the depth that is affected by the 20 years worth of cooling between the 60s and 80s.)
During the 90s, the air gets warm. The upper layers of the ocean are still cold, so they absorb some heat from the air. But meanwhile, the deep ocean is are also still warmer than the upper layers, so heat moves from the deep ocean to the upper ocean. Then, depending on the exact value of the parameters, if the ocean held enough heat from way back into the pre-50s, that extra ocean heat will eventually reach the top of the ocean. The heat will start appearing at the surface.
You really only need a 1 layer ocean and a 1 layer atmosphere to get this sort of qualitative behavior, but if you let me have a two or three layer ocean and let it be big, I can really go to town and this and do almost anything. (That is, provided I can find just the right forcing. I’m not going to find the one I concocted.)
As I said: if Larry forces me to create a multi layer ocean, and we hunt around for a suitable forcing, I can probably “prove” somethign close to what bender wants. (Although, if I did do it, I’d test a while bunch of forcings and report what they all got.)
These things can and do happen. Similar problems are done to explain why, the ground very far from the top of the surface of the earth experiences small temperature swings. (And we can use this to our advantage when designing heat pumps for home heating and cooling.)
#840 SO I SUSPECTED SO MUCH THE WORSE DR GORE
TOO OFTEN IN MEXICO CITY??? “…SUSPENSIAL…”
BETTER SPELLING??!! THANK YOU NASIF! I COULD
ADD TO SAENTIS THAT A CONCRETE AND STEEL
TRANSMITTER TOWER WAS INAGURATED IN 1997 …
JUST A COINCIDENCE …
Lucia says,
The real question is trapping vs blocking. Does the trapping of out go out weigh the blocking of income? This is the great TBD of the whole amplification question. If trapping predominates positive feedback is the order of the day. Other wise the feedback is negative.
We do know that except for switching points (glaciation to interglacial and vice versa) the feedback overall is negative. We also know that the positive feedback even in the switching situation is limited. If only by the limits of earth intercepted solar output.
JohnV.
I found a an online source to supposedly correct for serial auto correlation here:
EALimedep
I can’t vouch for it– but it’s what you want. Now, just hope your serial autocorrelation doesn’t make thing go to hell, and you can decry Wegman for mistatements to your heart’s content! I can’t remember off hand how much the correction matters. I *think* if the integral time scale for your autocorrelation is of 12 months would force you to divide your those 117 degrees of freedom by roughly 10. (That’s because 12 months is about 1/10th your full record. ) But, you might only need to divide by half that much– I can’t remember because, I take lab data. The way I use knowledge of the integral time scale is to make sure I take data slowly enough to ensure there is no serial autocorrelation!)
Fear not though: the one thing we have plenty of at this site is statisticians, and they can surely tell you!
#846 lucia:
I thought auto-correlation would be the issue. I’ll do a little learning and see if I can correct for it. It doesn’t really matter but it’s a good reason for me to dig back into stats.
I understand your scenario now. It is possible to concoct a model to explain almost anything. Is it fair to say that the likelihood of a given concoction may be very low given the limitations imposed by past observations?
I’m in the likely to very-likely camp for significant AGW being a reality, and would lean towards very unlikely for such a convoluted scenario. (I realize the scenario is not yours and that you are only showing it is possible).
Thanks Mark T. And in any case, what does any of this have to do with Dr. Wegman’s skill as a statistician?
First, as I said before, somebody asks you to sign a group letter, you glance at it, seems okay, sign. Or you read it and there’s maybe a couple points that are dicey, but sign it anyway. Or you help write it and are not totally happy with a bit or two but go along. Big deal. Hand waving. But even still, even if he had written this himself, and even if that paragraph was important to his skill and reputation, let’s see.
There are two questions here:
1. Can the claim be made that there has been no net change in the reported global mean temperature anomaly
2. Can you justify using the year 1998 to compare to now?
You can answer both at once. Yes, GHCN-ERSST (for example) has a 2006 anomaly that is no higher than the year it’s being compared to, 1998, the year that previously was the highest anomaly ever. Then we have: There has been no net global warming since 1998 and this is certainly at odds with CO2=warming. It has fallen and risen again, and we’re back at the same .5 we were at 8 years ago.
Could the letter have been more explicit? Sure. Which data set, what you mean by “net global warming” and so on. Is saying “no net global warming” untrue? Nope. Is it purposely misleading or wordsmithed to death to make it almost incomprehensible? Nope. I knew what it meant; absolute values. I can see it. (I know, I know, it’s always about the trend….)
Would it have been better to say something like “Although the trend line for the period 1998-2005 (1998 being the warmest year in the GHCN-ERSST data) for the global mean temperature anomaly has a linear value of .125 C, the absolute values for both years are a statistical tie of about .5 C; it did not get warmer in the period” No. Not better. Why not? They’re not trying to argue with somebody about trend versus values, they’re trying to make their case that the temperature is not continually going up even with more CO2. (IMUO)
Plus that, the letter is not even about the anomaly; this is a policy matter letter directed to politicians. Taking that paragraph out (a supporting paragraph in the body of the essay) and using it is a bit of cherry picking and a red herring. How about the opening and closing paragraphs?
They’re not even arguing there is no AGW or no climate change. Just that there are other more important things to worry about.
John V– It’s possible to concoct a model for almost anything. Obviously, if I were to really try either confirm or dispute this idea, I would need to hunt around for a variety of plausible forcing functions and plausible depths etc. Also, I’m only doing a column, of air, so there are going to be…ehrm… issues. The earth is not, after all a single column of air above water!
But, as a qualitative explanation, for what sorts of things the ocean can do,the 1d model is useful. For the ocean to do what bender suggests it could do, we need some warmer periods back in the past, and we need appropriate physical properties, water depths etc. It was warm in the 30s. But, if it is warmer now, our current warmth needs something in addition tothe 30s warmth.
Strangely enough though, it’s this sort of hunting around that makes me a bit leery of GCM’s. I know the GISS has a 1000Km ocean. The two Hansen papers with scenario ABC don’t say how they initialized the runs! (Or, I haven’t found where they describe that.)
Anyway, the temperature and velocity field in a GCM do have to be initialize somehow; knowledge isn’t perfect. Once those values are set in the model, they affect the results for some period of time. In their manuscript, they say time scale of their modeled mixed ocean layer is something like 20 years and I think that’s the top layer. I think that means that an honest mistakes in the deeper ocean layer temperatures would not show up for 20 years, so none of that would even begin to affect any atmosphere data from 58-78 in the Hansen et al runs. The further down temperatures are wrong, the longer it takes for that “heat” (or cold) to get to the atmosphere.
Also, fiddling with the upper ocean temperatures a bit could help you match stuff in the early portion, but stuff in the lower portions will only affect predictions now.
I doubt if they would have intentionally mis-adjusted ocean temperatures, but… just how well are deep ocean temperature measured at all grid points on the planet? How about the shallow ocean?
I do wish they’d done a full “1958 CO2 levels” run– with the full ocean so we could see that next to A, B, and C. Alas,….they did not. (The control runs with a simplified ocean happen to show heating for the first 50 years after 1955!)
Anyway, in the end, really, I’m much happier relying on stuff from simpler 1-D radiative balances as given by Jerry North.
John V. #634
Interesting choice to go with monthly data to drive up the number of df. What was it Feynman said about who was the easiest person to fool?:-)
Anyway, I wish time series analysis were as simple as snapping a linear trend line down on data with seasonality and autocorrelation, and that may not even be stationary (all of which would violate the assumtions of OLS regression). Cmon, John, George Box and Gwillym Jenkins put that to rest decades ago.
I’d suggest an ARMA model, or perhaps even ARIMA. I’ll try to have a look at sometime this weekend.
In any case, there’s not much for the AGW’ers to get excited about in the surface temp record over the past nine years.
re 634. JohnV here. I’ve posted this a half dozen times. might be of interest
Click to access Red_noise_paper_v3_with_figures.pdf
854, “prewhitening”. Statistical chlorine, as it were. I like it.
848 Simon
We don’t know that — the feedback in an electronic oscillator is positive while its output voltage is moving from one limit to the other. It is not only possible that the overall feedback during the whole deglaciation process is positive, but highly likely, in my opinion.
Whatchawannabet that the reason the GCMs are blowing it on mid-troposphere temperatures is that they all use the flawed radiation theory that seems to have started with Ramanthan in the mid-70s and was reinforced by Held and Soden in 2000? This is the theory that assumes more CO2 makes the atmosphere more “opaque” to IR at a height of about 5 km (i.e., the average elev. where there is more radiation going to space than is “going down”). The opaqueness raises that level, thereby causing a warming (see Soden and Held’s paper linked above for the explanation). Back when Ramanthan, et. al. (and even Soden and Held) proposed this stuff, it was not a big deal, like it is now. Is it possible that so much of the theory is based on an old, maybe flawed, paper that really did not receive much attention or a proper review?
lucia:
The point of doing all the minipulations (besides me just being a show-your-work kind of guy) was simply to save the readers from having to get out paper and pencil to check the result. I assume most here can do high-school algebra, but why make them? I agree one doesn’t take log(Io/Ii) when Ii = 0, I just don’t see what that has to do with the amount of energy absorbed by atmospheric CO2. It’s widely repeated that the response to CO2 is logarithmic; if that were true, then the simple question of the response to no atmospheric CO2 leads to taking log(0).
If my formula for the response to CO2 is correct, I have little doubt that everyone who works on climate models already knows it (if not, I’ll provide an address where they can mail my Nobel Prize). I suspect the belief that the response to CO2 is logarithmic is a misconception of people who know something about the AGW issue, but haven’t thought carefully about the math.
OK FOLKS… MORE SUSPENSE GOTTA DELIVER MORNING
PAPERS FOR 11TH CONSECUTIVE NIGHT/MORNING NORMALLY
3 AT THE MOST SIGN OF COOLING??
Click to access EE2007-ok.pdf
I guess I’m just not seeing what question you are answering with the manipulations.
Here are your variables.
I think if CO2 were the only absorbing gas in the atmosphere (or a bottle for an experiment) and you run the experiment with zero CO2. That makes concentration c=0 for this case. A is expected to be zero, as required for A= a*b*c= a* b* 0 = 0.
Hopefully, if you equipment is good, no energy will be absorbed when you shine light through the air in the bottle. When you measure Io and I1, they should turn out equal I0=I1. So
log(Io/I1)=log(1) = A = 0.
You’ve found A for the path length ‘b’ in your bottle, you know ‘a’ for the gas in the bottle, and you solve to find c=0 when the concentration of CO2 is zero. You repeat for different path lengths ‘b’ and every time you use c=0, you should get A = 0.
You can experiments in a lab measuring io and i1 to learn A as a function of concentration (c), path length (b) etc. You never take a log of zero because you should never measure io=0 unless you mess up your experiment (or do it with i1=0.)
Then, afterwards in the atmosphere, you predict A based on the atmospheric measurements of a,b and c (which can be done using methods other than measuring radiaton.) Based on A=a*b*c, and i1, you then predict io = i1 * 10^-A.
Or, you can write and say
log (Io)= log(i1)-A = log(i1) – a*b*c
Or you can write this any number of ways. But I’m not see where there is any attempt to take the log of zero!
860 jimdk
That is an interesting paper, but I feel unqualified to judge this work. My math is pretty good and I have a fair amount of experience with time-series, but I have never run across this kind of analysis. Has anyone here seen this kind of thing before — to save me some significant effort?
Lucia?
Lucia, I think maybe you misunderstand the point — such as it was — that I was trying to make. I certainly don’t question that Beer’s law applies to the response of CO2 to infrared radiation, or that when properly applied there’s no problem involving taking the log of zero. What I question is the oft-made assertion that the response to CO2 is a logarithmic function of the concentration (and that such a logarithmic relationship is a consequence of Beer’s law). What I attempted to demonstrate is that Beer’s law actually shows the relationship is exponential, given by i0*(1-k^c).
MJW– Yes I was mistified by the point.
The math looks fine; it always looked fine. I just didn’t have a clue why you were doing it! If the point was to ask why use the word logarithmic in the way we sometime hear it used, I wouldn’t use the word logarithmic to describe that relation either. So, assuming you wrote the correct equations (and that’s not my area, but it seem right), I don’t know why people say the amount absorbed is logarithmic in concentration either.
Out of curiosity, do you have an estimate for A= a*b*c currently? Still, clearly if A is greater than 10, adding more CO2 would make little difference, if it’s near zero, then adding could make a lot of difference. Do you happen to know? (I have no idea myself.)
I was thinking today about the relationship between simple energy balance methods of estimating CO2 forcing and simple linear regression as was done in MBH98. It occurred to me that when Michael Mann tried to show the regression relationship between CO2 and temperature he left out some pretty basic physics.
Say we are regressing forcing terms and we are locking for the relationship between the forcing agents and the temperature. What assumption is obviously implicit? The obvious implicit assumption is that the earth has constant heat capacity. While that is quite simplistic I dont have a problem with it. What I do have a problem is he left out the most basic forcing agent of all. He left out the temperature.
Thus a simple regression model might be:
T=k1 * T^4 + K2*log(CO2) + K3*log(dust)* K3*solar+K4
There the temperature T is in Kelvin
Ill try to work out some results.
@Pat– I started skimming. It would take me a long time to digest that paper. It does look mostly statistical. I’m an engineer, not a statistician. I may not be the best person to look at it, but it does look interesting and it at least discusses statistics more or less in language that doesn’t totally lose me. (But seriously, a real statistician might find errors I would overlook).
RE #863
The point you’re missing is that the log relationship arises because the center of the lines are saturated so the increase in absorption occurs at the edges of the absorption bands. If I recall correctly the lines are Lorentzian but it’s been a while since I looked at it I might be wrong.
I thought that CO2 absorption was logarithmic because the percentage of the light absorbed per length is proportional to the amount of gas the light traveled though and the further that light travels the less light there is to absorb. However, in the case of the atmosphere I dont know if this applies because I heard that the infra red radiation in the CO2 absorption band is absorbed to extinction in the first 10 m of the atmosphere.
866 lucia
OK, thanks. I think there are lots of statisticians around CA, so I’ll wait for their elucidation……
Pat,
Actually an oscillator needs some negative feed back (current limits in the circuit – in the power source) or some other limiting function in order to oscillate. Without limits you can’t have oscillation. Limits and energy storage (delay) cause oscillation.
In addition we know that negative feed back predominates because small fluctuations in the normal range do not “rail” the temperature. In addition when the system is railed it damps fluctuations. I don’t think we see that.
As long as the output follows the input (forcings) negative feedback predominates.
John Creighton, the mechanism you describe is correct, but the result of such a mechanism isn’t a logarithmic function, but rather an exponential function (with a negative exponent) for the fraction of unabsorbed photons, and therefore 1 minus an exponential function for the fraction of absorbed photons.
As far as the infrared radiation being completely absorbed in the first 10 meters, I have no idea if that’s true (though I’d like to know), but since the fraction of unabsorbed photons is an exponential function, with a negative exponent, in relation to distance as well as concentration, it approaches zero as the distance increases at a rate determined by the exponential constant. Therefore, at some distance there will be essentially no unabsorbed photons. This distance could, however, be greater than the thickness of the atmosphere. (Of course, the number of photons is actually a discrete number, while the exponential function is continuous.)
Phil:
I have no idea what you’re talking about, so perhaps I am missing the point. On the other hand, it doesn’t sound particularly likely to me that something like that would result in a logarithmic function, so you’ll have to show me the math or point me to an explanation and derivation.
I guess we’re about to see knowledge in the free market v the non-profit
Link
Can original thinkers write accessibly for the mass audience, and will the revenue opportunities drive the direction of research?
Okay, I agree. At a given frequency the incremental forcing due to increasing the CO2 should be negative exponential. However, we should consider the whole band. The following links may be helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_line
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/07/high-pressure-limit.html
http://www.nov55.com/ntyg.html
MJW if no one derives it for you maybe Ill take a swing at it tomorrow. Like you Id be much more convinced now if I see a proof.
lucia:
I wish I did, but haven’t got a clue. Of course, if Phil is correct then the relationship really is logarithmic rather than my exponential version.
On a closely related note, Steve McIntyre has asked for a justification for the temperature sensitivity for a doubling of CO2. I’d like to see something that should be considerably simpler: an accounting of the thermal energy produced directly by CO2. It would include the quantity of photons initially available at the correct energy levels to be absorbed by CO2, the fraction of these made unavailable because they’re absorbed by other GHGs such as water vapor, and of the remaining photons, the fraction that’s actually absorbed by CO2. I assume someone’s done this sort of thing.
John Creighton, thanks for the links.
My problem with Phil’s claim, while merely intuitive, is this: All those spectrum broadening effects seem like they’d only amount to perturbations of the function derived without them. I can’t see how they’d result in a function as different as the log is from the exponential. Particularly since the log seems qualitatively different from the expected function, which I’d expect to equal 0 at 0, and approach a limit at infinity.
MJW. SteveMc doesn’t like speculation about CO2, he was asking if anyone had an actual reference explaining the doubling of CO2 forcing used by the IPCC, but so far no-one has come up with one.
I believe the late John Daly did a simple experiment and calculation for CO2 and heat/energy/radiation. I’ll try to post a link when I find it.
# 877
MJW You mean like a tangent curve?
#854 Steven M
I wonder if that technique could be used for separating temperature effects from moisture effects in tree rings?
SL, #859, ‘Work for Food’ is the best prescription for long life.
=====================================
870 Simon
I’m afraid that doesn’t prove negative feedback. As long as ag &
870 Simon
I’m afraid that doesn’t prove negative feedback. As long as a*g is less than 1, where a is the (positive) feedback coefficient and g is the open-loop gain, the output will follow the input. The positive fb just increases the effective (closed-loop) gain.
@Susann–
Agreed. 🙂
I just think orphan diseases are a particularly pesky problem. If only 3 people a year have a particular problem, and 100,000 have another one and both issues have equal negative outcomes, and only one problem can be solved at a time, governments will tend to spend resources on the problem that affects the 100,000.
Obviously, I’ve framed this in the extreme form, but all other things being equal, the government will spend more on the problem that affects the 100,000. That is, they will unless the 3 affected by the other problem are somehow more important than the 100,000.
Governments can try to encourage research for the 3, but there is a limit to what they can do without spending so much as to cut into finding cures for the 100,000.
The justification for climate and weather research isn’t quite the same as for orphan drugs, because climate and weather affect many.
#881 KIM , are you Swedish?? You used my initials,
which in the Stockholm area (mostly) stand for
“Storstockholms Lokaltrafik”!! Quite sexy company name
if you want to get people to use collective means of
transport… When I passed young ticketseller/controller
lady on Station “Gaerdet” Entrance “Brantingsgatan” (YES
it’s named after the old Swedish Prime Minister Hjalmar
Branting, social democrat AND Nobel Peace Prize winner,
before he died, unlike Dag Hammarskjöld who “got” it
posthumously, she had the sign “sorry, we can’t sell
any tickets at the moment etc” and I could pass without
paying.. Actually she seemed to be reading a novel, or
perhaps Mark Lynas latest…If so, thank you Mark!!
Not many things as sexy as disappearing Peruvian glaciers,
WHICH LEADS TO HUANUCO 1859 M ASL
1998 JAN 22.6C; FEB 23.0C; MAR 23.2C; APR 23.7C; MAY 22.8C
JUN 21.3C; JUL-OCT ALMOST ALL DATES MISSING (TU TIEMPO)
MY ESTIMATE 21.0C AVERAGED…; NOV ONLY 4 DAYS (TT) 22.4C;
DEC ONLY ONE DAY 17TH 24.3C…DEAD END…LET’S TAKE CUSZO
INSTEAD 3248 M ASL 1998 JAN–FEB 160C DIVIDED BY 12 GIVE
13.33C (TU TEMPO) NASA GISS MOST UPSIDE DOWN DEVILS…(999)
BUT 2007 THEY FIX 2006 DEC–NOV 2007 12.01C (FEB,APR,OCT 999ERS…)
TU TIEMPO IS 4 HUNDRETHS WARMER …12.05C!! THESE ARE THE RAW
NUMBERS…ANYBODY WHO CAN COMMENT ON NG HOMOGENISATION OF CUSZO 1950—2007
YOU’RE WELCOME, GOES FOR YOU TOO JIM HANSEN!! NUFF FOR NOW
870: That seems right to me. I’ve always thought that if there was any positive feedback, we would have a run-away system every day!
884 Larry
Yup, and I used an ampersand……..
888 jae
But see 883.
Trevor, thanks for your comment but my skepticism/agnosticism is my own. It reflects my own personal lack of knowledge of climate science and its uncertainties. I would be a fool if I thought my own personal uncertainty and lack of knowledge should be extended to climate scientists. Each climate scientist has to determine for themselves how comfortable they feel about concepts such as AGW, global warming, tipping points, etc. I don’t want to make the mistake of thinking that because I don’t understand well enough that climate scientists don’t understand well enough. 🙂
Ultimately, climate scientists have to make their decisions and take positions on the issues arising from their work. We civilians have to try to choose among them. That’s what I’m trying to do by educating myself so that my own lack of knowledge doesn’t hamper my choosing what position is most reasonable and best supported. The politics add another layer of complication.
870, 888 Pat’s right. It’s stable (though increasingly jumpy) until the positive gain gets to 1. Then it goes cattywumpus.
Re 893, that of course assumes no time lag.
BTW, I scanned some articles related to Bali on MSNBC yesterday. They had one graphic where
they showed all the calamitous melting of glaciers in every continent but Antarctica. The
article explained that figures for that continent were not included in the graphic
because there was no “consensus” on what was going on there. A good example of the
sort of misinformation coming out of the MSM on climate issues.
Susann
“Economic science talk about pseudo-science! Probably vastly more uncertain than climate science,
since so much of it is political from the getgo. ”
Lets take climate science at face value. Lets say that doubling C02 leads to a 2.5C increase
in temps. Let’s take that math at face value.
Question: will C02 double? and when will it double? and what is the trajectory.
more interesting, if climate change impacts economies can douabling actually occur?
or will the climate change damp the processes that cause the climate change.
How does this get modelled? How do the inputs to climate science get modelled?
The SRES. Essentially economic “science” which you disparage. So if you feed a climate model
with the outputs of economic models and if you argue that the former is more accurate than the
latter, then clearly this is GIGO.
Question: the IPCC state a range of something like 2C-6C for warming over the next century.
Is this due to model variability given the same inputs or input variability?
And if it is due to input variability how believable are those ranges given your doubts about
economic science?
A little talk by bender on econometrics would fit nicely here.
Your argument appears to be:
Error bars on climate sensitivity should be widened because we don’t know enough about the deep ocean to be certain that the current warming is not a lagged response to the mid-century solar increase.
But the deep ocean lag theory has the effect of eliminating low values of climate sensitivity. You’ve ignored the fact that the solar increase is small and for it to cause the observed warming you need large positive feedbacks. These feedbacks would apply to CO2 forcing as well. You’ve ignored the fact that a deep ocean lag should applypossibly on different timescalesto all forcings. In fact, you’ve gone out of your way to ignore every single flaw, so much so that you’ve retreated to talking in generalities about how uncertain everything is.
Answer the criticisms of your super deep ocean solar time lag theory or admit it’s bogus and does not widen the estimates for climate sensitivity in any way whatsoever.
“Ultimately, climate scientists have to make their decisions and take positions on the issues arising
from their work. We civilians have to try to choose among them. Thats what Im trying to do by
educating myself so that my own lack of knowledge doesnt hamper my choosing what position is most
reasonable and best supported. The politics add another layer of complication”
The problem with this approach is you have to be an expert on experts. John Christy says X, Gavin Schmidt
says Not X. How do you adjudicate that? Do you count heads? 80 people agree with one; 20 with the other?
Do you look at educational history? age? personal bias. And Can I trust you to be a good expert on experts?
Here is a thought, put the science to the test. Tie the tax to the temperature, as Ross suggests, and you
don’t have to do this hunt for the saints of climate science. Temp goes up, tax goes up. Temp goes
down tax goes down. Suddenly you have a profit motive for getting the modelling done right.. and you
have rewards for getting things right.
# 890, Susann, December 15th, 2007 at 9:36 am, says:
I’ve been a retired civil servant for over ten years, and don’t discount the need for government programs. However, my conceptual bias is that the role of government should be focused on ensuring that the private sector is competitive and honest, not on replacing that sector with less efficient programs.
The communist government of China recently demonstrated its ability to control quality issues, “… During Zheng Xiaoyus tenure as head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1997 to 2006, the agency approved six untested drugs that turned out to be fake, and some drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to state media reports. …” However, in reality the issues are now being addressed more efficiently due to the implementation of some elements of a free market system.
Pb, Hg, As, for example, were high profile issues that I was directly involved with during my more than 30 years with the government, I’m very aware of those and other issues.
Much economic science goes beyond pseudo-science, the Laffer curve is a good example.
In #907, December 15th, 2007 at 11:08 am, I meant to mention that Zheng Xiaoyu was executed for his crimes.
#58
I have asked about and looked for numbers on the amount of oil put in the ocean from tankers and shipping sunk during the Second World War, especially in the North Atlantic. Anyone know? Maybe that’s what caused the cooling from 1940!!!! Got to have a human cause for warming and as explanation for cooling or at least failure of the computer models to explain.
906, I like Ross’ concept, but if you think that interested parties have a reason to fudge numbers now, imagine if billions in revenue depended on it.
No way in hades would we get honest numbers with that fat a carrot dangling out there.
#906, Steven, that’s right. It isn’t easy, is it? The alternatives are to go with your politics, go with whichever side makes the best rhetorical arguments or to just go on gut instinct.
Re 910. You Presuppose that a decision has to be made. I dont have to decide on politics
or on rhetoric or gut instinct. I dont have to decide. I am decidely undecided.
for some the epoche’ leads to Ataraxia, for other’s unrest.
Of course you already know one proviso attached to this — climate isn’t weather, so temperature increases or decreases have to be assessed on meaningful climate time scales. IOW, not on a year to year basis.
You have every right to opt out of the political process, but if you do, you don’t get to criticise it with any legitimacy. 🙂 Regardless, your political representative will decide, and so it seems wise for you as a citizen to try to comprehend the issues as best you can and vote accordingly.
JohnV,
A feedback is a force that either amplifies or suppresses a signal.
The numbers I gave were for temperature rises absent any feedbacks. A positive feedback would increase this number. A negative feedback would decrease it.
Since the actual number seen is less than the no feedback calculations, this strongly implies that the net affect of feedbacks is negative.
Mosher, #906: I responded to a similar post of yours in the Ross thread. Did you see it? It’s at the bottom of this with a little voodoo tacked on:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2494#comment-172753
In the end, it doesn’t really matter why the lead paint was used. It might have been lying around and the business person used it for that reason, unknowingly contaminating the product. It might have been a deliberate decision to cut costs and gain a competitive advantage. Regardless, without regulation, inspection and enforcement, the contaminated product may be used and will potentially create harm to consumers. Consumers have no way of knowing if the product is contaminated. Even with regulation, they won’t be certain, for regulations are only as good as the infrastructure that supports them, and regulations without adequate inspection and enforcement are practically meaningless.
re #912 Susann
If we really understood this we would know what the year to year delta due to A (in AGW) was. If we did, we could tax it. Since we don’t, we can’t.
I’m familiar with econometrics, having studied a bit of it and done a bit of it. There are some branches of economics that are more or less quasi-scientific in their rigor, but as Steve Mc has shown, badly representative and incomplete data being subjected to convoluted statistical techniques does not good science make. 🙂
That man is at it again. http://global-warming.accuweather.com/?partner=accuweather
Hansen says this year is the second warmest after 2005 but he made a minor ‘adjustment error which covers on 1.6% of the earth’s surface. God this guy is a gem.
904 Boris
No, not necessarily. I can think of at least two mechanisms where the positive feedback for solar would be larger than for CO2, because of localization.
Boris #904 says:
1. I’m not arguing that the confidence limits on model predictions should be made wider. I am arguing that they should be computed correctly, and that if this were done, they would be wider. Much wider. The models already predict tropical tropospheric temperature trends anywhere between +0.3C/decade to -0.2C/decade (=cooling!). And this may be a conservative estimate of the true uncertainty on that model output. Tropospheric cooling is consistent with AGW fingerprint? WTF?! What, then, ISN’T consistent with the fingerprint?
2. I’m not arguing that it’s ignorance about any one process that is the limiting factor. I simply gave you one example of MANY where there is some parameter uncertainty. That uncertainty propagates, and we have never once been shown how much net error there is in the back-inference step of residuals attribution to GHGs.
I will accept your “refutation” when you’ve formulated it as I specified and have demonstrated the soundness of your conclusion using the logical framework of a GCM. Your hand-waving isn’t going to convince anyone anything. Unfortunately for you, you fail to understand that the burden of proof is on the one trying to advance a theory. I’m not trying to advance anything. I’m merely asking for robust statistics and transparency in calculations. Regarding oceans and the GCMs, you need to explain why Hansen et al. were surprised by, for example, the AO switch. The models didn’t predict this. Simple question: why not?
It is not a “retreat”. It is your team’s task to calculate how uncertain y’all are on your GHG attibution. Y’all have not done that. I personally do not need to prove anything. It is enough for me to hand-wave to discredit the certainty with which you assert things that you have not proven. YOU are the ones retreating from your responsibility to report confidence levels to policy makers.
It is erroneous of you to think that my contention about uncertainty hinges critically on any one mis-specified process. Error propagates. Do the error calculation and you will find that what you have in your precious GCMs is a house of cards. DO THE ERROR CALCULATION. To date it has not been done. Why? Because y’all know the answer, and the answer does not support the agenda.
Make that, one aspect of solar emissions have not increased much. From which some people have concluded that the changes due to all aspects of solar ouput have changed little.
No, I think something will be done. There is a difference.
RE 915.. theduke! thanks for that WoV clip. Most people dont get how Ross’ tax would actually improve climate science.
Imagine you are company having to pay carbon taxes. And those taxes can vary with the tropopherical
temperature. Climate modelling suddenly becomes a business and the best models are those that can project
temps for the next 1-10 years. And we get an options market as well.
Now susann wories about a whipsaw effect if you tie taxes to the “weather” but she doesnt get how
even this can be damped with the right control system, 10 year goals with yearly adjustments.
proportional navigation.
STAFFAN. care to bet on post 999?
re 929 Steven Mosher
You can start here. There are links in this article that takes one to the actual data.
re 67
I’ve read that sailors on bulk transport ships in WW2 convoys would sleep in their clothes with their boots and life belts near by. Sailors on tankers and epecially munition ships would sleep in their night clothes and make no preparation for sinking. Tankers would burn and leave no surivivors. Maybe the cooling in the 40s came from aerosols formm the bruning tankers and burning cities
re 67
I’ve read that sailors on bulk transport ships in WW2 convoys would sleep in their clothes inluding jackets with their boots and life belts near by. Sailors on tankers and epecially munition ships would sleep in their night clothes and make no preparation for sinking. Tankers would burn and leave no surivivors. Maybe the cooling in the 40s came from aerosols form burning tankers and burning cities
Same to you. If you know how to calculate the error bars for climate sensitivity for GCMs, write it up and submit it somewhere. Otherwise, I fear, you’re blowing smoke.
922, elimination of lead in gasoline was to protect catalytic converters, not people.
China’s regulation on lead in paints is more stringent that the US, by an order of magatude
I believe ( will have to double check).
There is also a new game going down I heard from my friends in china.
When you try to ship your stuff out of China the regulator will shake you down.
Worse than that, your competition will PAY the inspector
to fail your product and THEN destroy the product so that you cannot prove your case.
Pretty slick!
Now, that’s not a practice limited to that particular part of the world. It merely illustrates
the problems with unchecked power
Man, this thread is all over the place, and long. Just wait till the Boss gets back from his conference – snip, snip! I barely have time to skim, but two that caught my eye:
Ahh, Feynman’s famous graduation speech of ’73; a touchstone for those who hold to reality (or at least try to), and then another “gem” from Hansen. The guy gets goofier by the week. How outrageous does he have to get before NASA does something? Should we start a pool?
Don’t have time to dig it out just now, but somewhere I have a piece by Hansen which also invokes the Cargo Cult Science speech, so here’s an interesting philosophical quandry: Does essaying on the dangers of Cargo Cult Science while you yourself regularly indulge in the practice make you a hypocrite squared, or hypocrite once-removed?
Hmmm . . . I’ll leave that one to the logicians.
Re 67 I found no. of ships sunk.
Year Number of vessels Tonnage
1939 221 755,237
1940 1,059 3,991,641
1941 1,299 4,328,558
1942 1,664 7,790,697
1943 597 3,220,137
1944 205 1,045,629
1945 105 438,821
—————————————————-
Total 5,150 21,570,720
I think this is North Atlantic, but I didn’t take a note.
I’m interested that you think the world cooled from 1940. If I look for the CA thread on the bucket correction, I see a sharp warming from 39 to about late forties, then a return to the previous warming rate by a reduced rate of rise up to ’76. The NH, as far as I know, warmed during the period you mention. Quatsino and Valentia records would seem to bear me out. HADCRUG, I believe, is distorted by the bucket correction Could you please explain your reasoning? My reasoning, and explanation, is at floodsclimbers.
(Graphs, with graphs. Numbers make my head hurt.)
JF
#918,927 Mosh I’m avake again…You took 918
Sep 18= Markus Wensby from “Smaaland” but name
from “Vaesterbotten” “Vaennaes by”(Can’t that
damned server configuration include W European
letters??? ON THE FLY so to write…)It’s also
the only date I’ve seen Stockholm inner city in
white…from a hailshower early in the morning some
10 years ago. In accumulated places it did not
disappear until the afternoon though only 2 cm!!
This year it happened Sept 3 just east of Stockholm
Again, only weather not climate…
927 that’s my dear Yvette …who has a namesake
Engstrom in Texas, San Antonio also born 1963 perhaps
and also working with children, That’s why “my”
Yvette fell for me, I’m so childish…ENOUGH…
Steve Mosher did you check NG homogenisation of
Cuszco, Peru?? And NG and TuTiempo Saentis 2007??
Give me some more days and warming “mid lower
troposphere” is history…Hypothesis …
Slouching toward 999. What time is it in Sweden and will LAFFEN STAFFEN wake up in time?
STAFFAN. Smaaland! HA. No one will get our code!
I am still trying to secure a trip to sweden.
So if it works out we can exchange emails through
Steve Mac who is a trustworthy soul. I’ll race you
to post 999.
re 913 Susann at December 15th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
You are soooo correct, let me revise that:
If we really understood this we would know what the year to year delta due to A (in AGW) was. If we did, PERHAPS we could APPROPRIATELY tax it. Since we dont, we SHOULDN’T.
RE 66. well calculate the gallons of oil from that.
Zamboni’s gaining on us. Never make it to 1000.
RE 925. I think we need Susann to explain her current view of a coherent and effective
policy. Then we can do a preliminary design review and throw mud pies at her ideas.
926, Here. Why don’t I get you started:
1. Solar
2. Wind
3. Bicycles
4. Bundling
5. Eat vegan
6. Curly lightbulbs
7. Soy-powered Gulfstreams
8. Tidal power
9. Cold fusion
10. One square of TP
Sound coherent enough?
11. Self Sterilization and abortion
12. Banning Divorce
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours first. 🙂
Here Susann:
Click to access green.pdf
do you visit peilke Jr. site?
Doing nothing is a valid application of the Precautionary Principle.
Kenneth and JohnV Have you guys read this paper: Natures style: Naturally trendy
Timothy A. Cohn and Harry F. Lins
( that’s not a snotty question I just found it in my stack and hadnt gotten to it.)
JohnV I think it might have some bearing on hypothesis testing of temp series. Perhaps
we can get somebody interested in exploring this with us.
JohnV, rasmus at RC has a critique you should also read
re 942. Yes, in the dark the solar don’t work so well no more.
942,
And of course, his evidence is….wait for it….the hockey stick!
RE 946.. I think Rasmus got his hat handed to him on that thread. Just sayin.
That’s the whole point you don’t get, Boris, it’s not his job, it is yours (or whomever offers GCMs as “evidence” of anything). YOU are the one that uses these things as if thy hold some validity, prove they do.
Mark
I think I know a good cause for global dimming during the LIA, aside from the Maunder Minimum. In about the year 1000 the process of making glass with potash was invented. by the middle of the millenia, potash was one of the most important industrial chemicals in the western world. Potash was produced at the time by cutting down broadleaf trees, leaving them in a pile to dry, then burning them. The ash was then boiled with water down to obtain the potash at asheries. Through the middle of the 19th century, when an industrial process for the manufacture of potash was developed which replaced the open burning of trees, millions upon millions of trees were burned in Europe and the Northeast US. If you look at the GISP2 core, you can see that there is a spike in “K+” during this period, which drops off abruptly at about the time of the developement of this industrial process.
In the northeastern US and Eastern Canada, potash was the main cash crop as the land was cleared. In fact, the most profitable time on a farm was the clearing, when the potash could be obtained and sold. The potash obtained from one elm tree, for example, could be sold for enough money to buy an acre of land. For centuries, potash was shipped from the frontiers to ports, where it was sent to Europe. Asheries existed everywhere. This is where the great majority of the old growth hardwood forests of North America went. Up in smoke.
Re#66, Julian Flood:
Take a look at this article:
Click to access IOSC_Issue_2005.pdf
Fig.6 at page 24 is especially telling.
16: yorik: Very interesting post. That’s all true, and I never thought about it’s possible impact on climate.
#921,922 aWAKE again but ordinary job with NO
extra 40% awaiting …Take care of 999 Moshie!!
73’s from SL LAFFEN STAFFEN
I don’t have a position – yet. 🙂
Re #945
If it’s a random walk there’s a very simple test which will prove it.
RE 14:
Interesting idea, Yorick, but I doubt the process had much effect in NA before 1600, because of the small population.
Europe is another matter.
Also, it has been pretty well-documented that the natives often burned forests. Lewis & Clark, for example, mentioned it in their journals. This would add some weight to your idea.
Also also, as a native of the Pac NW, I learned years ago that “Old Growth” is the penultimate stage in the life of a forest, lasting 300-500 years. If fire doesn’t get it, death and decay do. The old growth forests that were in New England in 1600 probably wouldn’t exist now, even if Europeans had never set foot here.
Potash was made in Europe as well. NA potash became important because there was more potash in NA trees than European trees. It seems like the areas of production could be mapped, the time of the burning quanitified from historical records. Surely it could be known how many board feet of biomass goes into the production of a barrel of potash. This could be entered into the models. The ice sheet deposition indicated by the models could be compared against the core.
I think the systematic burning of NH forests for this purpose probably dwarfed any burning by the indians, though they probably burned a lot, it was likely spread evenly over time… Unless the burning started as part of the plains indian horse culture, which only started after the Spanish re-introduced the horse to North America, which puts it at the right time… However, I hate to give the alarmists undocumented aerosols like that.
Rudmann(sp?) has a theory that modern humans are essentially a climatropic species. Period, full stop. That we begin to see anomolous rises in methane early in the holocene, and that the mystery is not the LIA, it is that the next BIA hasn’t started yet. He assigned the onset of the LIA to carbon sequestration from farm abandonment on account of the Black Death in Europe. I don’t buy that one, but it could well be that potash production strengthens his theory.
Staffan and Steven Mosher… Are you Yiddishing? I understand what you vvrite, but I cannot vvrite as you vvrite.
Re #942
Well it changed to 935! Anyway for fun I ran the test on Lohle’s reconstruction and that certainly isn’t a random walk.
lucia, I agree with you that there is substantial but flawed evidence that CO2 is the primary cause of the observed warming. However, I draw the oppposite conclusion. Namely, there is no smoking gun for CO2 driven warming and given the amount of research that has occured, if such a smoking gun existed we would have found it by now, and therefore it’s likely we can’t find the direct evidence of CO2 driven warming, because isn’t the primary driver of temperature changes.
A couple of other points:
It seems to me that forcings can be easily measured at one or more locations and the actual effect on temperature measured and therefore the sensitivity to forcing changes determined (at least locally). Why hasn’t this experiment been done? As Lubos Motl rightly points out physical processes occur locally, not globally.
The widely ignored variable and possibly the most important feedback (although its not only a feedback) is cloud cover. Australia has good data on cloud cover going back over 50 years. There was a clear increase in cloud cover over Australia from 1950 to 1975 and then a similar clear decrease since, about 3% in both cases. The correlation with temperature trends is obvious. Ask any Australian and they will tell you cloudy days are cool and sunny days are warm. What surprised me when I looked into it was the cloudiness = cooler holds for minimum as well as maximum temps in the summer.
Radio climate debated or at least a podcast is coming up tomorrow. FYI Tim Ball vs Andrew Dessler. THey are accpting questions.
@Phil_b 947
The experiments you suggest are being done as we post comments. See ARM.. Radiometers, thermometers, what have you all measuring 24/7
re 945. Not yiddishing, we are teleconnecting.
It’s more like swedelish.
Pat Keating says:
December 15th, 2007 at 12:46 pm
What do you think the effect of oceans storing heating pulses from the sun above Leif’s floor every ~11 or so over 800 years?
Because integrators also add historical value to the output they can appear as a positive feedback if the lag incurred is not taken into account I can conceive of a similar thing happening with climate leading to an apparent greater sensitivity than there really is.
I still remember asking my control theory lecturer an tutor whether adding an integrator can lead to infinite gain I got an answer much like my previous sentence but relating to an op-amp integrating circuit..
Lucia, won’t ARM’s continuing observations provide the emperical demonstration of any ‘magnetosphere-cosmic ray-water vapor-cloud’ effect while CERN provides the mechanisms?
==============================================
Yorick, Mosher, et al: For a good summary of environmental management practices by New World pre-industrial societies, see Charles Mann’s “1491”. Very eye-opening.
951 Jan
I think that idea is an interesting and promising one in a general sense, but I’m a little skeptical of the ocean being the accumulator. The shallow ocean layers, where the absorption/warming occurs, only have a short time-constant (5 years according to Schwartz) and I wonder how much of the heat the deeper levels would get, because of stratification.
Why 800 years? Are you trying to explain the CO2 lag?
“”Most people assume linearity in environmental processes, but the world is largely non-linear: it’s a complex system. An important feature of complex systems is that we dont know how they work. We dont understand them except in a general way; we simply interact with them. Whenever we think we understand them, we learn we dont. Sometimes spectacularly.””
Washington Center for Complexity and Public Policy
Washington DC November 6, 2005
In previous speeches, Michael criticized environmental groups for failing to incorporate complexity theory. Here he explains in detail why complexity theory is essential to environmental management, using the history of Yellowstone Park as an example of what not to do.
link to speech and video
@Kim–
An actual person would have to do some work to either test any proposed mechanism. ARM provides data from measurements. The data are archived made available very promptly– within no more than a day I think. Maybe a week, I’m not sure. But the data are available quickly.
Obviously, it’s up to someone who wishes to test a theory to do the actual data comparison.
Pat Keating says:
December 16th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Actually its more like factoring it in. There has to be a reason for it and I at present have no reason to assume a single time constant for the oceans we don’t even have that with simple capacitors some of which dielectric absorption problems. The waters of the ocean are far more complex in their behaviours. In any case an integrator with a 5 year time constant is still an integrator with a complete decay time of around 25 years which should be sufficient to do some smoothing of the solar cycle. I’l try to model it in octave in the next couple of days.
Everybody keep in mind the low temporal resolution of those ice cores. That’s 800 +/- 600 years for the lag.
Re 67: well, calculate the gallons of oil from that.
Welcome to the climate science restaurant, sir. We are here to please. How many gallons would sir like it to be?
Re 68
Telling indeed, and awe inspiring. But look at the figures you quoted earlier and contemplate what we’re doing now.
Then try and wrap your mind around the surfactant load. I bet surfactant is altering cloud physics as well as reducing CCN production.
May I point out an odd fact: when no-one showed any sign of taking me seriously then I felt reassured. Now I’m beginning to worry. Still, it’s a problem which could be tackled. I see no way we can seriously reduce our CO2 production.
JF
69
Don’t forget that there are large quantities of heavy oil which leak naturally into the oceans from the seabed underneath. I don’t have any figures, but it has to be much larger than that from sunken ships.
957 Jan
Jan, I missed the earlier posts on this topic. Can you point me to the evidence for the higher pulse-densities of heating pulses from the sun?
959 posts…
That’s a full time job to keep up with!
Can Ross or Hans or someone else who signed the Bali letter printed in the National Post please explain the reasoning behind the “no net global warming since 1998” line? I contend the only use of such a statement is deception.
Boris, you’re a day late to the party. See Bender’s comments, particularly his exchange with Lucia.
I am looked for thoughts on this possible falsification of the AGW hypothesis but I am not sure where to post it.
Please tell me where I should post it if this is not the appropriate place.
I am paraphrasing this form this paper: http://www.coyoteblog.com/Skeptics_Guide_to_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_v1.0.pdf
This argument sounds to me like a complete falsification of the AGW hypothesis and should be sufficient to send to the AGW advocates back to their labs until they come up with something better. I assume there are flaws in it which I do not see.
AGW advocates claim that rising CO2 levels will cause the temperature to rise 3 to 10 degrees over the next 100 years. This claim is based on these assumptions:
1) Increasing CO2 levels cause the temperature to rise a little;
2) A small increase in temperature will trigger positive feedbacks that amplify this temperature rise;
3) No significant negative feedback mechanisms exist that will limit this rise in temperature.
The historical record from ice core data shows that CO2 rose rapidly after something (presumably the sun) caused the temperature to rise. AGW advocates claim that the rise in CO2 triggered a positive feedback and that caused the temperature to rise much higher and much faster than it would have if the only effect was the sun.
However, something stopped the CO2 from rising and the temperature leveled off somewhere close to the current temperature. AGW advocates try to explain this by claiming that CO2 reaches a saturation point where further increases in concentration don’t affect the temperature. Unfortunately, the temperature and CO2 concentration today already exceeds the temperature and CO2 concetration in the historical record which means we should have already reached the saturation point and further CO2 emissions cannot possibly induce significant temperature increases in the future.
Sounds too good to be true – where’s the flaw?
AGW activists could come up with a new hypothesis that explains why the saturation point for CO2 is higher today that it was in the past. There could be other processes at work which we do not understand. However, their current hypothesis is clearly false and does not deserve any further consideration at this point in time.
re 962
larry i searched ca, could you point to the post number and thread?
thanks
RE 962. Giving boris reading directions? who elected your ass as GPS of CA.
Hehe. want to race to 999?
Hey JF.. why not calculate the answer? Simply, you are are trying to attribute warming
to oil on the water. Fine. Work the problem backwards. just to get a sense of the limits
RE 961. alright boris, lets hear your argument for net warming since 1998.
1. You can’t quote hadcru since their raw data is not reviewable and the code is unposted.
2. You can’t quote GISS since their code is not compilable.
I’m all ears. Bring your data, bring your code, bring your statistics. Bring the test reports.
bring the certifications.
Boris, can you please explain how increased atmospheric CO2 can cause the temperture increases depicted by this graph:
http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/MSUvsNCDC.html
As I understand it, this is the opposite of the behavior predicted by AGW theory.
Here is a nice sentiment from a brit:
“When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life, the end of life on it,” he says. “This has got to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.”
I belive patrick henry had a response to this nonsense.
#853 Mike B:
The monthly data is necessary when we’re talking about only 10 years. The auto-correlation penalty will be higher. In the end, the result should be the same but more accurate.
=====
#903 MarkW:
Ok, let me take a step back and ask where your 0.3C and 0.5C numbers came from. I thought you were taking them from observations. Are they from something else?
=====
#913 steven mosher:
Would the tax-by-tropospheric-temperature scheme start immediately, based on temperature increases for the last 30 years? Or would we wait 10 years to get new data? If the answer is waiting, then my cynical side says delaying is the new denying.
=====
#933 steven mosher:
I saw rasmus’ critique after I wrote mine. I was happy to see that he had the same problem with the paper as I did. Showing the problems with the models is justified, but comparing to the standard deviation of the ensemble mean (instead of the standard deviation of the ensemble itself) makes little sense.
Before the flames begin, let me state that the models do seem to have a problem with the tropospheric trend. Sure the observations are bound by the ensemble, but it would be reassuring if observations were closer to the middle of the range.
One thing I noticed is that the solar warming fingerprint shows little stratospheric cooling and the GHG fingerprint shows much stratospheric cooling. Observations seem to fit the latter (GHG). I would suspect that ocean-driven warming would be most pronounced at the surface.
Hand-waving argument with no justification:
It almost looks like the tropical temperature profile is a combination of ocean and GHG.
=====
#965 steven mosher:
C’mon mosher.
You’re denying the use of GISS and CRU for surface temperatures now?
#967 steven mosher:
Random quotes from an un-named “brit” now?
You’re feisty today.
In the random quote game, nobody wins.
This thread seems to have a divergence problem. At the top is says 991 comments, and the most recent is 988. Mohel left a little tip, it would appear.
re 987. JohnV if I told you that I had data from unamed sites, and if I told you that this
data showed a cooling from 1998 to present, you would rip me a new one.
You wouldnt believe me for a second. Well, Hadcru is in the same position. No published list of
stations, no published list of data sources, no published code.
HEY, I can do that too. I have stations that show dramatic cooling from 1998 to present.
NO you can’t see the list of stations. NO you can’t see the raw data. and NO you cant see the code.
Hey it’s peer reviewed as well. Two friends looked at it.
If anybody want to serve up Hadcru data they better serve up the stations, the raw data, the code.
otherwise it’s just an appeal to authority.
PFFFT.
Steve: we do have information this year finally on stations resulting from FOI.
#990 steven mosher:
I see your point about CRU. The sites have been listed now though, haven’t they?
I saw Mosher’s data of the significant cooling trend since 1998.
My review? Two thumbs up. Way up.
You have to trust me because I have a really cool nickname.
Earlier, Boris asked if Ross McKitrick or Hans Erren had responded about the claim of no warming since 1998. He was directed to bender and lucia’s comments, but I don’t remember Hans Erren or Ross McKitrick in there. Has anybody asked them what they meant? Did they mean the lower troposphere?
I could try asking but others have much better access.
If Ross or Hans are around, please let us know.
papertiger:
I am inclined to trust you based on your nickname.
I’m thinking of upgrading my own to something catchier. I know better than to ask for suggestions here. 🙂
I think I’ll stick around until we break through #1000.
Hi JohnV.. On the troposphere tax. I’m not entirely wedded to the idea of of troposphere tax as I am
wedded to the idea of controls that are tied to feedbacks. So it could be attached to stratospheric cooling
which is supposed to be an AGW signature. The basic principle is this: If you think controlling carbon
will control Temperature ( or sea level, or whatever) then your best bet
is to measure the effect and adjust the controls.
KYOTO was a grossly stupid control system. And you see what you got. Limits were set for “outyears”
but there was no feedback, no adjustments, there was just KABUKI theater. Signatories increased emmissions
people who didnt sign decreased them.
Assuming that the time constant of the climate is fairly long ( say 10+ years) and steering
it is like steering an oil tanker, I think there is a place for long term goals, and short term
adjustments. Thrashing the controls is stupid and never adusting them is equally brain dead.
Bottom line if you tie the tax to real measurement the modelling will improve.
Pat Keating says:
December 16th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
There is a list here.
Some discussion here
and here
Here I’ve hammered the sunspot number data really flat by passing the data through a virtual Schmitt Triggerkeeping only pulse timing and taking a running average over 20 years.
#995 steven mosher:
I agree, in principle, but the noise in the signal makes the control feedbacks very difficult to define. And the troposphere signal is even noiser than the surface signal. You might need to use a 20+ year trailing trend to reasonable rise above the noise. (Look at my trailing 5-year and 10-year trends in post #729 — that’s less than ideal for corporate planning).
It would be easy to feedback based on CO2 levels since they are easy to measure and relatively noise-free. That could only be an intermediate control in a multi-level control system.
There are many bacteria to which oil is candy. If you don’t believe that, pour some out in a field near you; come back and take a soil sample next year. Bet you can’t find it (unless you bury it deep enough to keep the O2 away. Also, there are oil seeps in the oceans that make 363 million gallons seem trivial.
Ha JohnV. I think Think a multi level control system is something that would be in order.
the effects ( sea level, temps) are going to be noisy. The control ( C02) is less noisy,
BUT it’s gain is somewhat uncertain. The “precautionary principle” amounts to a control
system with a large safety margin that may limit optimal performance.
Something like that
John V.
Certainly a confounding factor is the decrease in ozone, since absorption of incoming UV by ozone is the primary source of heat in the stratosphere. Also, the RSS satelite measurements show little cooling since the mid 90’s, as can be observed by covering up everything in the graph prior to 1995.
Re david Archibald.
Where you part of the group of scientist that where denied the opportunity at the press conferance? Anyway 1998 beeing the hottest year and all. The AGW crowd only considers that a minor setback 😉 And you can easily spin your way out of that by claiming that 2007 was the 12 record year in a row, like the largest newspaper in Norway did….
RE 1013. Banning baby oil on the beaches of bali…
If you look, you’ll find a considerable body of evidence in the history of the Second World War commenting on the extaordinarily freezing, cold, and wet weather that hampered military operations in the Eurasian theaters of war from 1939 to 1945 and perhaps later. In particular, the Soviet offensives in the Winter War of 1940 with Finland, the German military campaigns on the Eastern Front encountering colder winters, and the German military campaigns operating in colder winters and cool-wet summers on the Western Front. The D-Day invasion at Normandy in June 1944 and subsequent operations in July 1944 were remarkably colder and wetter than in other summer time periods. At the time of the events there arose a considerable amount of speculation that the military and naval operations were producing aerosols and disruptions to the seas which resulted in cooling the climates. The aerosols produced by the largest ever tank battle in the Battle of Kursk have been compared to volcanic influences. Naval operations in the Northern Hemisphere have been suspected to be influential in changing oceanic influences upon climates. The Arctic convoys were subjected to extraordinary weather patterns including some apparently extraordinary hurricane force winds. Taken together, it makes a person wonder how such extensive reports of colder conditions in the Northern Hemisphere during the Second World War is now being characterized as warmer/warming?
weather modelling in games. tornados.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKCWJ85fUXo&feature=related
re 978:
Previously 1998 was heralded as “the hottest of the millennium”, as if CO2 has anything to do with that exceptional El Nino temperature, now who was deceptive then? Now we are ten years on and that record is still not broken. Which tells a lot about real climate sensitivity.
1021. I need to turn ModelE into a Xbox360 game. Dr Evil…
I really wish someone would explain to me why you can’t substitute HOH vapor into the “radiative” models. The notion that “residence time” is important seems like arm-waving to me, because there are always plenty of water molecules present. If you DO substitute HOH into the models, then the tropics would have to be one helluva lot hotter than the deserts, which is untrue. Can someone help with this basic question?
The Southern Hemisphere continues to look rather cool as indicated on this 7-day anomaly map . (Note that this type of map projection exaggerates the size of the polar regions, with the large majority of the global surface lying between 60s and 60N.)
The region of Chile near 30S has been anomalously cold for months – either a bad piece of data in the computer program or, I suppose, excessive snow cover in the mountains.
jae 1007
The AGW enthusiasts story is this: In the theory of differential equations, you can solve an inhomogeneous equation by combining a general solution of the homogeneous equation (that involves the internal dependent variables, but not the fixed, external driver, i.e., with the ‘forcing’ set to zero) with a special solution of the inhomogeneous equation, with ‘forcing’.
The AGWers place the CO2 in the forcing column, and water-vapor as an internal variable, dependent on temperature. One can reasonably consider the man-made CO2 as a non-dependent driver. The natural CO2 is also an internal variable dependent on temperature, but it is combined with the man-made as a predetermined input in most models.
996 Jan
Thanks, Jan, you are a gem.
#1005 Hans Erren:
It’s true that 1998 can not confidently be called the hottest of the millenium.
Can you provide some insight into the statement in the letter you signed that there has been no net warming since 1998? The surface temperature (GISTEMP) shows a clear warming trend even starting in 1998 (it’s on the edge of being significant at the 95% level). Does the letter you signed refer to a different temperature series? Thanks.
#1007 jae:
I just wanted to clarify that the water vapour *is* included in the models. I’m not sure what you mean by “substitude into the models”, but it is there. The amount of water vapour varies with weather conditions (in the models) and its effect as a GHG is included.
As I understand it, constant relative humidity a result of the models, not an input. As temperatures change the relative humidity tends to stay the same. That is, absolute humidity goes up.
So, a given change in temperature (for any reason) leads to increased water vapour and an incremental further increase in temperature. In that sense the water vapour does “force” the temperature higher, but only as a “feedback” to the original temperature change.
Sorry if I misunderstood your question and you already knew this.
PS: Maybe you should look at weather balloon temperatures from a few dry and wet locations to see if the lapse rate is similar. Paolo M could probably help locate the data.
Re jae says:
December 16th, 2007 at 5:30
quote quote Down the Drain: 363 Million Gallons
Road runoff adds up every year oily road runoff from a city of 5 million could contain as much oil as one large tanker spill.
quote There are many bacteria to which oil is candy. If you dont believe that, pour some out in a field near you; come back and take a soil sample next year. Bet you cant find it (unless you bury it deep enough to keep the O2 away. Also, there are oil seeps in the oceans that make 363 million gallons seem trivial.unquote
11% vs 50% according to
Oil Pollution of the Sea
by Stanislav Patin, translation by Elena Cascio
based on “Environmental Impact of the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry” which was referenced above.
RE steven mosher says:
December 16th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Hey JF. Work the problem backwards. just to get a sense of the limits
The NA warmed by .5 deg C in a year and a bit. I think we may safely assume that the surface was saturated with oil sheen for a large portion of that year. This will have altered weather patterns as mentioned by D. Patterson
December 16th, 2007 at 6:29 pm. I do not trust the altered SSTs — the raw data shows the jump clearly. So that is the magnitude of the effect we are looking at. Let me think for a bit and I’ll list the problems with working out anything with numbers. There are many unknowns — droplet behaviour, provenance of CCNs, extent of pollution.
I am beginning to have sympathy with modellers — or I would have if they just ran a few simulations of a warming that was happening right on the ocean surface — ignore the prime mover for the moment — and let the numbers fall out from that.
JF
lucia, I was thinking of an expanded version of this experiment, where heat gain at a location is related to possible causes of that heat gain. (Ignore the fact it concludes CO2 has no significant effect. My point was that climate science needs to measure more locally.)
John V.:
If as you said previously, “the GHG fingerprint shows much stratospheric cooling,” does the fact that the surface has warmed significantly since 1998, while, according to the RSS record, the stratosphere has cooled little, indicate the lack of a fingerprint?
1015 posts, new record! Yet, need to fit a trend to confirm.
John V
Read again http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-177748 , more or less the same message as in my message ,
but better writing.
Nasif , I reversed 1998 to 2006 time series. Just to show a series with supposedly no net warming since 1998.
Fitting trends blindly to data is dangerous. Define signal and noise before doing that.
David Smith, I’d say the link underestimates the size of the cool temperature anomalies across Western Australia. Here is the BoM’s max temp anomaly map. Not for exactly the same period. Interestingly the size of the cold anomaly has increased since this weekly map.
RE #1012 Hello John V. My understanding is that constant relative humidity in the upper troposphere is an input into the climate models, not an output. It is a critically important assumption which affects the magnitude of AGW and is discussed in FAR.
Re #1017 Phillip thanks for the link. The SH has been slow to warm as it approaches the solstice – I wonder what the next cold season holds. By the way, in the map projection of #1008 the polar regions (Arctic Ocean and Antarctica) appear to be many times larger than Australia, yet the true difference is that they are only about twice the size of Australia.
Then show me an El nino and volcano adjusted temperature.
To the following
and
and
The right answer is # 867
When dealing with the radiative transfer in the atmosphere , forget everything about Beer-Lambert because there’s nothing logarithmic or exponential .
What does Beer-Lambert say ?
1) That the energy absorbed by a component C along the incident beam direction is proportional to the concentration
2) That the %tage absorbed for a small thickness dx is a constant (important note : nothing depends on y and z)
To 1)
The absorbed energy depends on the distribution of the quantum states of the considered component . If this distribution is constant and independent of the concentration then the absorbed energy will be proportionnal to the concentration .
The distribution is constant if the molecules are in equilibrium . Even if in equilibrium it depends on temperature and pressure .
Neither condition is met in the atmosphere , that’s why Beer Lambert can’t be used f.ex to calculate the radiation leaving the Earth when knowing the radiation emitted by the surface .
To 2)
The result that the absorbed %tage is constant results trivially from the fact that one looks at a monodimensional beam along its incoming direction . As the energy conservation requires that the transmitted energy be equal to the absorbed energy at equilibrium , we have reemission + kinetic energy transfer = absorption (there is no variation of the internal energy because the distribution of the quantum states is supposed constant) .
Now as the reemission and the kinetic energy transfer are isotropic , it is obvious that if we look along the direction of the incident beam , we’ll see much less out than in .
Of course nothing got lost but the missing part was partly transferred to other molecules by collisions and partly reemitted/scattered in directions we are not loooking at .
When the isotropy condition is not fulfilled (f.ex in stimulated emission) , when there is no special direction of an incident beam or if scattering particles are present , Beer Lamber doesn’t apply .
Now when one looks at the atmospheric radiative transfer , the radiation transmitted along a certain direction (what Beer Lambert is all about) is uninteresting because what’s important is the radiation in all directions as well as non radiative energy transfers and particle scattering .
To sum it up , Beer Lambert is irrelevant to what happens in the atmosphere and there is nothing specially logarithmic there .
More specifically the radiation transfer models don’t “integrate” Beer-Lambert along the vertical and along the frequencies because it would be hopelessly wrong .
Boris @ #640 wrote,
Is this letter linked somewhere? I don’t see any link in this Unthread. Thanks.
Hu McCulloch:
Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations
Hans Erren:
Please just give a clear statement about what data you relied on when stating there was no net warming since 1998. Even with your cherry-picked starting date, the trend from the surface is clear.
See post #843 — http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-177917
Since it seems we both agree that 1998 was an anomaly, why choose it as a starting point for a trend?
=====
#1022 Hu McCulloch:
The link is in this comment:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-176977
google-is-your-best-friend “climate letter to un”
re 1021:
Tom you got the wrong end of the stick, the logarithm follows from the absorption intergrated over the IR spectrum which is depending on the distribution of the CO2 absorption bands.
see
Myhre, G., E.J Highwood, K.P Shine and F. Stordal, 1998, New Estimates of radiative
forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases, Geophys. Res Lett. 25, 2715-2718
re 1024:
Of course I didn’t write the letter, I endorsed the letter. And Yes I agree that there is no warming since 1998:
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co2_lt_noaa.R
#1025 Hans Erren:
Ok, so it looks like you were relying on the UAH tropospheric temperature since 1998. Thanks.
Any reason for choosing tropospheric temperature instead of surface temperature?
re 1026. why not surface temps:
1. subject to significant noise.
2. Subject to non uniform sampling ( see brazil versus the US)
3. Questionable data sources ( china)
4. Concerns about siting
5. Concerns about UHI
6. It’s a small part of the globe
Lot’s of reasons.
I think we need a letter for all those scientists who think Micheal
Mann got his latitudes and longitude wrong in his 2007 paper.
Wait, better yet. Let’s start with CA posters.
If you think he got it wrong, do a post. Otherwise defend.
# 1025
Hans Erren the article you referred to can’t be accessed without fee .
However even without accessing it , it is probably irrelevant to the question of Beer Lamber validity and usefullness what was my point .
The graphic using “radiative forcing” and “IPCC , Hansen &Co” shows that whatever the curves may mean , it has nothing to do with Beer Lambert and certainly not with a ratio of monochromatic intensities (or integrations thereof) along a given direction .
As I happen to be familiar with radiative transfer models (specifically SAMM2) they neither use Beer Lambert (because it can’t obviously be applied for reasons already stated) nor any other “logarithmic” empirical relation .
So coming back on topic , Beer Lambert law can’t be used for atmospheric radiation transfer and as people know what they do , they don’t use it .
I am not sure that you really read what my point was because it was certainly not about radiative forcing – it was about Beer Lambert .
I will probably never talk about “radiative” forcing here (integrated over the whole planet in unknown boundary conditions) because it depends on so many fittings and parametrisations in rather complicated numerical models that a straight line on a log-log paper between any 2 arbitrary variables would certainly not impress me 🙂
#1027 steven mosher:
The surface station networks (GISTEMP, CRU) are the only measurement of *surface* temperature that we have. My question was about the choice of lower troposphere vs surface temperatures, not about the choice of networks.
If you think there’s uncertainty about the surface network, consider the differences between the various troposphere networks. Look at the differences in 25 year trends from the various data sets:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/12/douglass-christy-pearson-singer.html
All available temperature measurements have issues. So my question, again, is why choose lower troposphere over surface? I’m not saying there isn’t a valid reason. I’m just curious about the reason(s).
If nothing else, the mass of the troposphere and its energy content are quantitatively far greater than the far smaller subset of the surface samples with all of their sampling and measurement problems within the planetary boundary layer. Consequently, you should expect to find the tropospheric measurements to be more representative of the overall energy content for the greater mass of the atmosphere subject to convective heat transfers.
John V. linking Lubos???
RE 1030.
1. subject to significant noise. ( both hadcru and Giss)
2. Subject to non uniform sampling ( see brazil versus the US) ( both had cru and giss)
3. Questionable data sources ( china) ( both hadcru and giss)
4. Concerns about siting ( both hadcru and giss)
5. Concerns about UHI ( both hadcru and giss)
6. Its a small part of the globe ( land surface record)
The point is that all the data sources have issues. Land, sea, satillite.
By the way, I think the 1998 argument is rather weak ( no warming since) and its
semantically vague and ambiguous.
ANYWAY, to more interesting things. I found this.
http://www.beringclimate.noaa.gov/regimes/
some nice vbasic programs as excell plug ins for DETECTING regime shifts.
Have fun…
No it doesn’t, Hans. You can’t get an observational estimate of CS from 10 years of data.
John V.
Aren’t all the indices listed at NOAA’s page supposed to be surface temperatures? The HadCrut2v script is having “issues”, but the GHCN Land Surface Data* and GHCN – ERSST are available.
Using annual global means, I find the slope are insignificant from 1998-2005 and that’s assuming uncorrelated variations from year to year. (Including correlation would make it more insignificant.)
John, did you post a fit after accounting for correlation for the GISSTEMP data? I haven’t looked at that set. Did your results get Zambonied?
This is rich. So what’s the magic threshold? 30 years?
I found this on Dave Farber’s IP list. Even core Internet routing technology is now being touted as helping to redcie AGW. I suppose that to get funding for anything, one has to tie it to the currently politically untouchable cause but this one does seem very far fetched:
Figure out the time constant on the climate. Get back to me when you’ve done that.
I figure anywhere between 300 and 900 years of instrument data are required to say
anything of substance about the system.
RE 1034.
Boris you can get an estimate from 10 years of data. It’s just a wide estimate.
Since 1998 we havent had any huge ass ( technical term, see wiki) volcanoes. So volcano=0
Since 1998 Solar is a puppy. No Increase in TSI.
Since 1998 Dimming is dimming.
So since 1998 we have C02 and Noise..
C02 went from 366.5 to 381.85 in 2006. Thats supposed to result in a PLUS .22C change in temp.
Temperature did not cooperate, showing instead a .1C change.
Put another way. 1998 C02 was 366.5. temperature anomaly was .53 C
Between 1998 and 2006, we had no major volcanic negative forcing.
Global dimming didnt increase.
The Sun didnt get dimmer.
SO.. theory says that 2006 should be .75C anomaly.
It was .42C
If you want to say that .32C is all noise I am all ears.
Hmm
re 1039
Good summary, I’ll endorse that 😉
#27 is dead. Long live #28.
Steve Mc has put Unthreaded in CA Purgatory. Atone, or be damned!!!
John V: Forcing for 2xCO2 is supposed to be 3.7 w/m^2. You say that the models include water vapor forcing. Well, now, there is about 5-8 g/m^2 water vapor in the deserts in the hot season, and 3-4 times that in humid (including tropical) areas. Now, why don’t the models look at 4xHOH in the tropical areas, relative to the deserts? They do NOT! They ignore water vapor and ASSUME that it is a constant. This is wrong! The deserts are HOTTER than the tropics. A GHG is a GHG. And don’t give me that arm-waving crap about residence time in the atmosphere. Even though water has an average residence time of 8 days, there is ALWAYS a sufficient amount of water vapor to interact, if that really happened. I am appalled that so many adults are addicted to these GCM computer games!
Honestly, Hans Erren has surprised me.
OK…. After more than a thousand posts, do we all agree on anything more than the earth’s climate is always changing?
Nasif, why aren’t you debating at ukww, I still have an axe to grind.
BTW Present warming agrees perfectly with a non-catastrophic climate sensitivity of 1 K/2xCO2.
re 1043:
Desert nights are colder. AGW is about mild winters and warm nights, not about summer heatwaves.
I did not know which thread to put this on , so here. With my many years of troubleshooting process plants I have seen many times that where there is conflict in views of what is happening it arises from flawed logic. Some of the “facts ” I see written about climate really irk me.
Myth 1 # : If there was no greenhouse the earths temperature would be -15C. This is based on an average radiant flux of 250 w/m2. If a sphere is modelled with an insolation of 1395 w/m2 you get 250 as average, but the spatial average temperature is -5.7C. Average radiant temperature for a surface with variable radiant flux is a mathematical artifact not a physical reality. With multiple surfaces there are infinite temperature distributions that have a constant average radiant temperature and in each case the spatial average temperature also varies. You can raise the spatial average temperature without changing the average radiant temperature. For example I have two equal area surfaces at 20C and -75C. The spatial average is
-27.5C and the average radiant temperature is -14.7C. If I transfer heat from the hot to the cold such that now I have 10C and -65C my radiant heat flux is now out of balance. To mainatin my balance of 250 w/m2 both surfaces will rise to 14.8C and
-60.2C . The average radiant temp is now as it was -14.7C but the spatial average is now -22.73, a rise of 4.8C. To do this required no greenhouse, no change in insolation just a transfer of heat from hot to cold. Was it Bertrand Russel that said “flawed logic leads to more interesting results”
While I am on a roll, I read of expectant changes to the temperature of the troposphere. Correct me if I am wrong but this is at 10000m? The temperature of a rising column of air at 10000m depends on its starting conditions. For example dry air at 20C will have a temperature of -77C. The final temperature is a function of the relative humdity at ground level 62%RH will give -53.9C and 81%RH gives -46.6C I assume this is taken into account?
RE 1043
It’s become clear to me that JohnV describes the models he prefers rather than the ones that the IPCC relies on. Hence in John’s “good” model CO2 and H2O are treated the way they should be. There are, in fact, some models that do that but they don’t, of course, predict catastrophic warming.
This rubbishing of the observational data is just rearguard action by RC. At some point modelers worldwide will have to make the models match observations just as they always have, foot-dragging all the way. They will then likely add another anthropogenic factor to make up the shortfall in doom predictions (projections?) – my guess would be soot.
1048:
Gary’s gets it!
1047, Hans:
If this is true, then why isn’t the AGW crowd discussing MINIMUM temperatures? And since HOH is such a strong greenhouse gas, why is it not much hotter in the tropics in tthe summer than, say Salt Lake City, UT?
clouds
How about on clear days?
BTW, because of clouds, I’m wondering if it can really get any hotter in the tropics. Tempertures there might be maxed-out. If it tries to get hotter the water vapor pressure gets so high in the mid troposphere that it just rains and cools things off. Does anyone know where I can see trends for tropical areas?
Latent heat, the desert is bone dry, if you have water around, the incoming energy is used for evaporating available water. That’s why an oasis is cooler than the surrounding desert. The tropics are very humid.
And indeed, the evaporated water forms clouds and rains out thereby cooling the hot surface.
I.e., another good example of NEGATIVE feedback by water.
John V Just exactly how many years (effective time)
have you spent on GISS/HadCRU/TuTiempo/Various National
Weather Institutes…If you had you’d realize that
what we are discussing here hundreths of centigrades
are …little laughable There are so many error
values NOT taken out, adjusted values, raw values but
anyhow adjusted, therefore we somehow “trust” UAH,
COOL John Cristy et al more until, if ever surface
temps are more or less corrected. The thing is that
for surface land temperatures to alter so you can feel it
if you live in a city bigger than 1.000.000 inhabitants
or so … you have to have a cooling of 2C in 5 years to
physically recognize it…GOOD example: Atlanta GA 1957-1961!!
If you’re at NG you can compare “rurals” in MS,AL,GA to
Montgomery 200.000 in the city 460.000 GMA QUITE different
temperature histories, most “rurals” and “urbans” are cyclical
but compare levels….I know this is the SE US “cooling corner”
Coincidentally both Iberian peninsula and SE Europe are cooling
for decades…Mainstream media claim Spain and Portugal are
warming because Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona are doing so, and/or
because wildfires are increasing (still to be proven), it takes
some hours of research and then you “know” better…
Just checked Salamanca (Any songs about it??) And since early
20th century clearly cooling (raw) more if UHI-adjusted for sure
So, John V Real global warming may have ended already in late
1930’s or early 1940’s OR thermometers were just BAD those years??
Still, again hope I’m awfully wrong but as long as so few=NO
world temperature records are broken…Arguments please!
Steve Mc, I’m not sure if you even read this, but…
On the comments RSS feed I only get about 10 comments at a time, exactly 10 actually. And I might get 10 more hours later. Meanwhile probably 60 or 70 comments have actually been posted. And why is my typing sooooo slooooow here?
Steve: Sometimes the typing is slooow especially with long threads. In such cases, I type elsewhere and paste.
This is really quite simple. There’s been warming and cooling since 1998. But it’s not warmer now than it was then. So no overall warming. No net warming. Is this difficult to understand?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
There’s a trend due to the extremes of the shifts, but draw a line from 1998 to the current temp and voila, cooling.
With GHCN-ERSST, ’98 is .49 and ’05 is .51, so one could claim that it got .02 “warmer” from 17 ppmv, right? Except we don’t know if it got warmer; we only know the anomaly reading increased .02 as reported.
And then it went down from 2005 to 2006. Oh well. (If you chart 2005-2006 as departures from 1901-2000 (13.9 C) it goes from a monthly global land and ocean index of .6185 to .5066) Here
Eli, I agree. “If there is a problem wrt radiation it has to do with aerosols and clouds, not gas phase spectroscopy.”
Mosh, when you get ModelE running on the xbox360 let me know. I want a copy of the port!!!! 😀
Man, this is rough.
More fun:
# 1046
Hans,
Because I don’t see any practical purpose on that kind of dialogues if anyway we will disagree and others wont accept a Yodh.
I agree with you on the first part of your assertion but not on the second part. Ill show you why:
The Maugrim formula is deltaT = alpha [Ln (CO2double/CO2sta)] / 4 (sigma) (Tsta^3)
Then, deltaT = 5.35 W m^-2 [Ln (560 ppmv / 280 ppmv)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W m^-2*K^2) (300.15 K)^3 = 3.7 W m^-2 / 6.132 W m^-2*K = 0.6 K
That outcome would be if alpha were really 5.35 W m^-2; however, IPCC authors are in doubt about the sensibility of doubling CO2 and the constant alpha has been diminished several times down to 4.29 W m^2, thus deltaT would be 0.48 K.
But things have not stopped there because they have changed the Tsta down to Tbb 255.15 K, so the new result coincides with the first one emitted by them:
deltaT = 5.35 W m^-2 [Ln (560 ppmv / 280 ppmv)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W m^-2*K^2) (255.15 K)^3 = 2.97 W m^-2 / 3.767 W m^-2*K = 0.8 K, which is the value suggested by you if round it off to 1 K.
However, the reality say
s another thing. Alpha constant is not 5.35 W m^-2, not even 4.29 W m^-2, but 0.423 W m^-2. Thus, the real change of temperature if CO2 concentration doubles, would be:
deltaT = 0.423 W m^-2 [Ln (560 ppmv / 280 ppmv)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W m^-2*K^2) (255.15 K)^3 = 0.293 W m^-2 / 3.767 W m^-2*K = 0.08 K, rounding the cipher off it will be 0.1 K. There is not signals for a catastrophic climate sensitivity of 0.1 K/2xCO2 😉
In response to raypierre at RC, the following comment appears to have been deleted after sitting in the moderation queue. Maybe it will reappear.
Like an incantation – if I say it often enough, I will start to believe it?
The furnace in a house generates heat in equal pulses, but it heats the whole house with a gradual increasing trend. No statistical tricks necessary, it’s the dynamics of large open systems coming slowly to equilibrium. Pistons in a car’s engine fire discretely, but the car accelerates gradually. It’s all about time and space scales of integration of the energy bursts.
With that in mind, can you reformulate your argument, considering the effect of, errr, “solar stuff” on oceans? If there’s additional global heating ‘in the pipe’ I can’t see why you would expect global surface temperature to respond instantaneously to radiative forcing – “up and down and up and down …”. Is this not a straw man that you’ve set up?
I won’t touch the one about the effect of CO2 being all or nothing. You surely agree that this is a quantitative issue of parameter estimation, not a qualitative issue of belief or denial.
Nice audit, by the way. Keep it up.
The second-to-last comment fits in with the tone of discussion on this thread at CA: estimating sensitivity is a quantitative issue that requires mathematical arguments. It’s not a “stupid” black-and-white matter of including vs excluding physics.
Richard Sycamore, you make a great point. You might be interested in my post, #818 (was 809)
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2499#comment-177858
Mosh, why don’t you post your 1039 over at RC? In an appropriate thread of course.
# 1062
Richard Sycamore,
Great! Have you noticed that RC doesn’t deal too much with mathematics and their “algorisms” (algorithms) are twisted to the extreme?
# 1064
Boris,
Perhaps because Steven Mosher is proscribed in RC? I have made two or three attempts on posting there because I was criticized for my really-adhered-to-science articles, but I was not permitted to opine there, even when those were my articles.
#1063
Gunnar, can you tie your #818 analysis to the existing literature for us? Which paper comes closest to including the effect you describe? Do you find the GCMs to be deficient in this regard?
RE 1064. several reasons.
1. I made mistake that I am correcting now. (my climate sensitivity for doubling was a bit high
I had it at 3.7C as opposed to 3C, as suggested on RC)
2. I am looking for complete data on TSI through 2007 and negative forcings
3. I am banned in RC because I posted about gavin’s “drunk” remark about solar scientists.
JohnV was kind enough the other day to point me at Tamino’s data on negative forcing for
Volcanos.. I’m looking for a longer time frame data set there.
The bottomline is that if you compare the warming from 1909 to 1940 with the warming from 1975 to
2007, Somethings squirrely.
# 1068
Steven Mosher,
I don’t know how you make so higher climate sensitivity for doubling CO2. A delta T = 3 °C requires F = 16 W m^-2, which is unreal here and on Venus.
I won’t repeat here the correct procedure; read my # 1061 🙂
The link above got munched. here
Okay, so according to them, the “Global Mean Annual Surface Temperature Estimates for the Base Period 1901 to 2000”
Land: 8.5
Sea: 16.1
Combined: 13.9
Low & high year 1995-2007
2005 +0.6185
1996 +0.2564
Spread .35545
Low & high year 1880-2007
2005 +0.6185
1909 -0.3805
spread .999
“Absolute estimate”
1880 13.7543
2007 14.4660
spread .7117
Both 1998 and 2005 are “warmer” than 2007. Chart out 1995-2007, you’ll find it interesting. All the data points are under .5 but one. Remove the years under .5 trend almost flat. Then remove 2005, trend is down. (Otherwise the trend is slightly under the low of the period (.2564 in 1996) at about .22)
And there you have it.
(December 2007 anomaly estimated at .5)
>> can you tie your #818 analysis to the existing literature for us?
I could try to find the textbook I used on college, but this is equivalent:
http://books.google.com/books?id=WEJjhXierpAC&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144&dq=specific+heat+energy+mass&source=web&ots=xwPT4R62HH&sig=7T0UBGtf_Um8wz70NG71lqwcMKA#PPA145,M1
The section “Thermal Energy Calculations”, E = m x c x DT.
# 1072
Gunnar,
That’s correct. Physics of Wilson shows the formula also:
deltaT = q/m (Cp), clearing q we have:
q = deltaT (m) (Cp).
Hmm. Exactly. The heat storage equation.
Indeed, the simplest formula to know how much energy any substance can “store”. 😉
I re-read the Wiki description of the Greenhouse Effect. Actually, they do a great job of explaining the “radiative-convective” model that is used by the climate models. But, wait, they say:
And I ask, again, how we have a “radiative-convective” model that ignores convection?
No wonder the models are not correctly predicting mid or upper tropospheric temperatures.
It starts with a simplified model that ignores it. Later on they explain more.
Indeed. And guess what? Our atmosphere can store just enough heat to make it about as hot tomorrow as today. You don’t need to consider radiation at all.
1077: Yes, and their idea of “convection” is only lapse rate. That is very simplistic.
#1035 lucia:
I was not able to correct for autocorrelation in the GISTEMP trend this weekend. I haven’t had any luck finding what’s required for the correction. Maybe one of the statistics experts will step and help determine if the GISTEMP trend is significant. Anyone?
=====
#1039 steven mosher:
The GISTEMP trend from start of 1998 to November of 2007 is 0.19C/decade with sd=0.09 (before correcting for auto-correlation). That agrees pretty well with your value of 0.22C change in temp.
You can’t pick a single year and compare its anomaly to the predicted anomaly. The standard deviation for yearly data is ~0.1C. The sd for the difference between 1998 and 2006 is therefore ~0.2C. You’re saying the difference should be 0.22C, but the error bars are +/-0.4C.
=====
#1060 Sam Urbinto:
There is a large yearly variation in temperature and 1998 was an extremely hot year. Is that difficult to understand? If you’re going to draw a line between single years, your error bars have to around +/-0.4C (see comments above to steven mosher). You need to use a trend line to get any real idea about temperature trends.
[Begin sarcasm]
If the game is cherry-picking, I choose January 2000 vs January 2007. The difference is +0.96C. Or all of 2000 vs all of 2007. The difference is +0.33C. It’s clear that the warming has accelerated since 1998.
[End sarcasm]
When you cherry-pick end-points you can reach any conclusion you want. If you add the error bars, the conclusions are all meaningless. That’s why real science is done with trends, not differences.
=====
#1071 Sam Urbinto:
If something changed in 1998, then the trend before 1998 should be different than the trend after 1998. Since the satellite lower-troposphere temperatures were the basis for the “no net warming” claim, let’s look at those:
I fit two linear trends to each data set. The first is pre-1998 (to June 1997) and the second is post-1998 (from July 1999). The trends are:
Before 1998 (to June 1997):
UAH5.2: 0.03C/decade
RSS3.0: 0.10C/decade
Average: 0.07C/decade
After 1998 (from July 1999):
UAH5.2: 0.29C/decade
RSS3.0: 0.17C/decade
Average: 0.23C/decade (+0.16C/decade compared to pre-1998)
So, excluding the anomolously warm 1998, the trend is actually increasing. Even with the satellite data.
I know what you’re going to say. 1999 was a cold year so it’s invalid to start a trend in 1999. That’s probably fair. But then you have to admit that starting a trend in 1998 is also invalid.
For completeness, if I extend the trendlines to include 1998 (breakpoint in June/July 1998) I get the following trends:
Before 1998 (to June 1998):
UAH5.2: 0.09C/decade
RSS3.0: 0.16C/decade
Average: 0.13C/decade
After 1998 (from July 1998):
UAH5.2: 0.20C/decade
RSS3.0: 0.09C/decade
Average: 0.15C/decade (+0.02C/decade compared to pre-1998)
So, even including 1998 the trend is increasing (although the increase is almost certainly not statistically signficant).
#1076, #1078 jae:
Um, I don’t think the Wikipedia simplified description of the greenhouse effect (which is later augmented with a more correct description) is the model used in the GCMs.
The greenhouse effect is not about heat storage.
Have you had a chance to look at radiosonde data for moist vs dry locations? What’s the temperature like a few hundred feet from the surface?
From #818, I learned that the solar energy received by earth in one day is 10X the total energy of the atmosphere. IOW, without the land and the sea, we would fry.
My conclusions: 1) there are significant negative feedbacks 2) the 11 year solar cycle, and the variations in that cycle explain all the temp variation that we see. No mystery. No room for AGW.
RE 1080. Ya JohnV I also made a mistake in the doubling calculation…You pointed
it out before but I didnt gronk it until I went back to the source documents.
My hope was to create a simple model for folks, where one subtracts out the Solar component
and the Volcanic forcing from the anomaly record. That should leave you with C02+ other.
The solar focing by RC accounts and by the data I can lay my hands on is mouse nuts!