No discussion of CO2 measurements, thermodynamics, theory of radiation, etc. please – other than to identify interesting references.
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Climate Audit 
726 Comments
It’s not that these are uninteresting topics – it’s just that the people interested in discussing these topics seem allergic to locating references to act as a focus for the discussion. If they can bring some interesting references to the table, I’ll re-visit this.
Perhaps someone could explain this:
In my (comparatively limited) experience with analysis, if I had a data set that was missing days, or weeks, I was unable to use it. The idea of plugging in data from “similar” periods was unthinkable.
In a lot of the data presented by climate scientists, the sets are missing months if not years.
How can a “crazy quilting” be justified? To me, that was the primary fallacy of Mann, et al.
How about this? An overview of the greenhouse effect by a skeptic-in-good-standing with much credibility:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/06/realclimate-saturated-confusion.html
IMO, this is a good starting point.
#3. No. regardless of its merits, it’s not a mainstream article. Mainstream references please.
Larry,
A science historian writing on thermal capabilities of OCO and the dangers of Lubous’ blog? LOL… Lubous Motl short articles are highly illustrative and enlightening, in addition to the opinions dropped there by the bloggers, who, the same as the people writing here in Climate Audit, have a high IQ (including some AGWists here and there). đ
>> itÂs just that the people interested in discussing these topics seem allergic to locating references to act as a focus for the discussion
Hmmm, the reasons keep changing. I don’t think this reason is that great. For example, in a discussion about the basic laws of science, what reference is possible? Current scientists are not exploring whether the 2nd Law is still valid. Science text books are not online.
In addition, there is little to be gained by a professor in contradicting another professor with the known laws of science. They are judged by how many papers they get published and how many research grants they get.
Steve… I was explaining the cause of hot and cold spots on the Cosmic Microwave Background. It was not about CO2 measurements, thermodynamics, theory of radiation, etc. Ok… Sorry. What about this reference?
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0469%281999%29056%3C4134%3AACLACA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
What exactly is “mainstream”? Something in “the literature”?
There’s a basic problem with that; the subject is far too broad to be covered in a single article. Peer-reviewed articles tend to be very narrowly focused. You’d be spending weeks if not months piecing together enough peer-reviewed articles to cover the basic issues.
I think that’s why nobody’s done it; there’s no research money for a paper that covers what is more properly in the realm of a textbook. Perhaps there’s a textbook out there that’s mainstream, and covers all of the territory, but it’s rather difficult to review that online.
I don’t think this is a doable discussion until someone either 1) pieces together enough “literature” to cover all of the issues, or 2) publishes an online textbook. Neither is likely.
As mentioned in Unthreaded #19, there is an unseasonable, early blast of Arctic air moving into the lower 48. Actually, there are a series of them lined up. One model I saw, that is probably 50/50 in terms of plausibility, has a true Siberia Express (MacKenzie Delta – California version) in place by mid next week. That is the same synpotic pattern that resulted in the Great Freeze of 2007, back in January and February. At this time of year, freezing conditions would be significantly more limited than they were this past Winter, however, some freeze threat would exist for places such as intermontaine valleys in our northern districts, northerly parts of the Sacramento Valley and naturally, all desert areas. Stay tuned. Things could get very interesting during the second half of September.
Steve, I think if you tell us the specific topic or topics on which you’re interested in for collecting the mainstream peer reviewed papers we can focus easier on that topic.
Here is an interesting editorial on climate change: (public policy)
Its interesting to see that not only isnt the science not settled, that the best way to prepare for the changing world is even less settled… (although the stop polluting seems to have the upper hand – even though its likely the least effective strategy)
re: # 7 Najif, Sep 12 3:04 PM,
I defy you to explain (correctly) the meaning of the first paragraph of the introduction of the article you link.
I think I’m beginning to get the idea. The entire scientific publish/peer review process is dysfunctional for anything that is built upon this many basic disciplines, because there’re no handles with which to grab the research and give it a proper shakedown. Building something this ambitious and complex and multidisciplinary one paper at a time is like building a house of cards.
If the IPCC reports were like an engineering report, they’d be a lot more tightly integrated, and you wouldn’t have circular references, and vague and inapplicable references, because there would be a central point of accountability.
It may be a reasonable way to pursue pure science, but it’s wholly inappropriate for public policy making, and first and foremost, this is about policy making (i.e. SPM).
RE #2
Dealing with messy data is a fact of life. If you wait around for perfect data sets, nothing would ever get done. There are a number of very good texts on dealing with these issues. One of the classics is the aptly named “Dealing with Messy Data” series from Milliken and Johnson.
Professionally, I am far less concerned with the way in which missing data has been handled than I am with the cavalier and blanketed approach GISS has taken with applying “adjustments” to the data. Any adjustment warrants skepticism, but post-hoc adjustments that just happen to skew results in the “right” direction must be justified by overwhelming evidence.
For instance, I have yet to see a convincing explanation using algebra, real data, or simulated data for how the time of observation creates a long-term bias in min/max temperature measurements.
RE: #11 – Anyone who has traveled the world knows that the wealthiest, most developed countries have the strictest environmental controls, the greatest diversity of energy sources, the most public transit, the most recycling, the greatest number of organic produce / health food stores, the highest percentage of green buildings, the most expansion of forests and other wild areas, etc. The most gullible people are those who either have not seen the world outside of Western developed countries, or, if they have, were somehow oblivious to things like smoke belching 2-stroke engines, people burning plastic and dung to make street food, massive 10 stack soft coal burning power plants with no scrubbers, slash and burn agriculture, zero middle class, “national parks” that allow farming and widespread hunting, shanty towns built on top of sensitive wetlands, zero recyling (other than the most utterly impoverished individuals picking through piles nonsanitary uncapped 19th century style garbage dumps), fishermen dragging coral reefs into oblivion, etc, etc, etc.
Dave, do you need a technical explanation of the first paragraph or do you want me to say whether the paper is against the mainstream?
>> I think IÂm beginning to get the idea. The entire scientific publish/peer review process is dysfunctional for anything that is built upon this many basic disciplines, … a house of cards.
I agree completely!
>> who has traveled the world knows that the wealthiest, most developed countries
I don’t think one needs to travel to realize the obvious. So, if they were operating in good faith, AGWers would advocate those policies which maximize freedom, which in turn maximizes prosperity, which in turn would maximize our chances of climate stewardship and adaptation. Instead, they advocate those policies which would turn free nations into communist ones, even though the communist states have the absolute worst environmental record. The first thing Gorbachev did after leaving office was join the green movement. So, do they really have the Environment’s best interest at heart?
It’s true that the air quality is often much worse in developing countries, particularly in urban areas.
However, you’re ignoring the fact that we in Canada and the USA emit roughly 10x as much CO2 per capita as the world average. Most of Europe is about 5x the global average. Making everybody rich like us would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a massive amount.
#17 exactly. Pope John Paul once said “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” having the resources individuals can protect themselves and thier property from the “side effects” of global warming.
Steve Moore (#2) considers data sets with missing days or weeks unusable. This got me thinking.  I’m not sure why missing data should be a problem.  I am not saying that the approach taken by Hansen et al to missing data is not a problem, or does not create problems. What I do suspect is that there ought to be a valid way around the missing data.
I sketch an approach to using (raw? corrected?) data without the need to have consistent data records.  Perhaps I’m way off base; criticize freely!
Let’s begin with a Gedankenexperiment.  Assume that the only data we have is a collection of “datums”, where each datum contains (a) a pair of dates, (b) the “temperature”  measured on each of those two dates, and (c) the location (station) making those two measurements. Assume further, just for the purpose of being extreme w.r.t. “missing data”, that no two datums are from the same location. Some pairs may have readings from adjacent dates; others may have readings from widely separated dates; and everything in between.
Given this imaginary data set, build a lower-half n x n matrix M, where n is the number of dates represented by the data. Element M[i,j] contains all datums, if any,  for dates i and j, with i preceding j.
Assuming enough dates and locations, assuming all the data are equally reliable, and assuming whatever bias a datum has for date i is the same bias it has for date j — I admit, these are BIG assumptions — it seems to me that this data matrix is sufficient grist for competent statisticians to infer what temperature trend(s) may exist — even though every location is missing almost all data for that location.
Of course, all the problems of the raw data need to be dealt with: rural vs urban, some geographical areas more heavily represented than others, scribal errors, etc.
Does this make any sense? Could this be a reasonable approach to take with the real data (whatever the “real data” may be)?
re: #16,
I want to see how you’d translate that paragraph into standard english, particularly without having to “cheat”. “Exponential lengthening of material contours”, “Liapunov exponents”, and “chaotic advection” may be mother’s milk to you, but while I’ve seen the term “Liapunov exponent” before I’d hardly claim to know what that paragraph means without having to look up many terms.
re 18:
But that is exactly the point isn’t it: without China and India emitting in 2100 there is no problem. Currently only one sixth of the world population is emitting. The scare is about the other 5 billion (growing to eight billion): So it absolutely doesn’t matter what the current rich world emits in 2100 in the scary SRES Scenarios.
The future problem lies with India and China, who didn’t sign Kyoto.
# 21
Dave,
Uh! You are expecting pears from the elm tree I’ll try: The first paragraph denotes that the positive Liapunov exponents alone for time series (cheating is mine) donÂt indicate stochasticity. Then the authors extend the uncertainty to the stochastic advection (or chaotic advection) in the stratosphere. They claim also that the theoretical perspective is not restrictive because there is an exponential growth in the length of the contours of volumes of matter (again, cheating is mine) in the stratosphere… Mmmh… I’ve always had problems on translating from Chinese.
Here’s an update on “Where’s Waldo?”
OK, sorry, I couldn’t resist. ..bruce..
RE: #18 – You seem to have a poor graps of systems thinking. Here, let me help. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s say we turn BRIC plus ASEAN into Western style systems and paradigms, tomorrow. As noted elsewhere here, for their newly technologized and developed existence, these folks will have to get off the coal and onto diversity. Don’t think about the historical West. Think about where the West is heading. NICs will want to leap frog even that. Or, we could just do nothing, while BRIC plus ASEAN plus others go into a coal bender. Which do you prefer?
What a hell!!! I posted in RC explaining why the Intensity of Solar Irradiance increased since 1960 (in defense of my article) and my message was not published! Besides, they’re laughing on me…
Hi everyone,
I stumble unto a new site that aim to debunk skeptic science.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
I had a good laugh reading into it.
Are you really surprised? No dissent can be recorded on that site.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated….
Nasif Nahle Re: #26,
I have exactly one comment published at RC, and then moments later it was erased into the nothingness of cyberspace, forever. After that, I learned I was banned for life (blacklisted). My crime? I pointed out a fatal flaw in one of GavinÂs arguments on his CO2 thread (I am not allowed to repeat it here either [t-word]). Tisk, tisk, tisk, says the master.
His eyes narrowed while he straightens his suit jacket. He shrugged and said calmly to his wife, ÂIt kinda feels good to be a rebel again.Â
Ian
MattN,
RC = RE (Resident Evil)? đ
Ian,
I thought they didn’t know me, but I think now that as they were “reviewing” my article I was banned from the starting of the topic.
Nice thought at the end of your message… “A rebel again”! đ
My reference:
STEP4_5\SBBXotoBX.f
Does that count?
I think there’s a significant interaction between the gridding algorithms and the blending algorithm that may significantly overweight artic and antartic temperature anomolies.
Here’s my interpreation of the gridding code in STEP4_5\SBBXotoBX.f. Grid cells are equal-area. Longitudinally, grid cells are divided by 40 equally spaced lines of longitude. Latitude lines are then calculated in such a way that each cell has equal area: grid cell latitude lines are farther apart at the poles, and closer together at the equator.
Grid temperature values are then calculated by blending all observation sites within 1200km of the center of the cell. (I haven’t yet examined the blending algorithm).
Consider what happens for the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Base (for which temperature observations have been available since 1957). Because grid cells are long and narrow at the poles, all 40 southernmost grid cells that touch the south pole are directly affected by observations from this site.
Expirimenting with this site (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/ ) yeilds some interesting observations. If you set the smoothing radius to 250km, and view a polar map, you can clearly see the effect of the South Pole observations on all 40 of the southernmost grid cells. Oddly (and I don’t think this is right at all), if the smoothing radius is set to 1200km, the influence of the south pole base also seems to extend into the second row of grid cells. By my calculation, that means that three observation sites control most of the temperature in 80 grid cells. That’s 5% of the earth’s surface, being control by three observation sets, as compared to hundreds of US observation sites that affect only 2% of the grid cells! If the grid orientiation had been rotated 90 degrees, the south pole observation site would have only affected between 9 grid cells.
There would be a corrseponding effect in the arctic as well, although there is no arctic station at the north pole that will exert the same 80 grid-cell influence as the south pole base.
It’s not easy to predict what the overall effect of this is. The South Pole base should predict about 0.5 degree of cooling since 1960, but there are two nearby antarctic sites with an extraordinary +5 degree warming trend from the 50s to 2006. It is worth noting that global warming decreases by almost 20% if the smoothing radius is set to 250km instead of 1200km. The main effect of this, I think, is that it reduces the influence of polar sites by about half (which may still be overweighted by a factor of 4 or more).
The general conclusion I’m leaning to: polar observations are dramatically overweighted. And the polar observation records are relatively short, and highly volatile. Waldo may live at the south pole.
I’m thoroughly bogged down in getting STEP2 to compile on a cygwin system. Linux and python are not personal strengths. But, I’d be very interested in getting my hands on STEP4_5 input files as soon as they become available. And I’d be interested in sharing impressions of any of the high-arctic and low-antarctic observation sites. (And also very interested in an explanation of why the GISS Amundsen-Scott Base observations don’t seem to match Amundsen-Scott Base records from other sources, despite the fact that it’s should have reasonably good siting and equipment for its entire lifetime).
Re: 13
Larry
I have made that point on this blog and elsewhere many times over. We now have a body politic in the developed economies that is making billion/trillion dollar policy decisions, most of which will have either no or directly negative impacts, and which all of which are bound to hit those lowest on the totem pole hardest. All of this on the basis of highly questionable “science” and in order to address a “problem” [the “A” of AGW] that remains to be demonstrated.
Re: 18 and 22
Muddled, thematic, thinking. Pls provide scientifically coherent and verifiable/falsifiable data in support of the [N.B. to date unproven] hypothesis that anthropogenically generated CO2 is the culprit in the “AGW” story line. Until then, Sadlov’s argument in #15 is spot on.
A Letter to the Editor in Sunday’s Portland (OR) Oregonian:
I had no idea CO2 caused cancer.
re 34:
My point is that even if CO2 were causing the problem, it’s not the current rich world that can solve it. It’s the future rich world. (Catch 22). Al Gore is adressing the wrong public.
I would have thought that if CO2 was so good at warming up a planet, then Alan Sugar would have made a “solar” (infra red) heat collector full of CO2 and be flogging it worldwide. Solar collectors seem to all be full of H2O, perhaps this is a clue!
I have tried in vain to find reference to an experiment that proves going from 300ppm CO2 in air to 600ppm actualy does warm up the Air when exposed to appropriate infra red. The only ones I found, showed it did not, or negligible. If you try this question on Real Climate, you just get garbage. I tried the American Institute of Physics, who gave me huge long references to absolutely mind blowing Theory, but they could only come up with experiments that didn’t show any or much warming.
Is there a reference?
Re #38, UK John
John, any links available ?
#18 >> Making everybody rich like us would increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a massive amount
Which would be inconvenient if there was any evidence whatsoever that C02 is a problem. The reality is that all it would do is make it look like there is a bit more animal life, like in the days when the earth was overrun with grazing animals. Besides, Henry’s law says we’re not capable of doubling C02. Live strong, protect the innocent, drink milk, maximize your C02 footprint.
#38 >> I have tried in vain to find reference to an experiment that proves going from 300ppm CO2 in air to 600ppm
hehe, at one point on this blog, I suggested such an experiment. The AGWers are kind of rebelling against the scientific method. It’s a complete rejection of valid science in favor of pseudo-science designed by people to server a political agenda.
Today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal has a piece about Bjorn Lomborg’s new book.
Gunnar are you familiar with transient solutions of differential equations?
>> Gunnar are you familiar with transient solutions of differential equations?
What I used to do is transform the differential equations to the S domain. Then, I’d use the inverse LaPlace to get the time domain solution. I would then plot that versus time, and see the transient behavior.
Apologies if this is well known, but, does anyone know where I can get a copy of
Thanks in advance
Hans,
In fact, in college, I wrote software that would do this programmatically. The user would enter the S domain function, click plot, and it would plot the time domain function. It was a great way to explore the effects. Of course, in the S domain, one can easily determine the steady state value.
Why do you ask?
not allowed here
A very interesting sky here this morning in Northern California. To the East, the clouds from a weak cold front / mid latitude cyclone which came through over night. To the West, lenticular altocumulus (not the mountain wave type, but the over riding cold pool type) indicative of big changes ahead. A hunting buddy once told me, if you see those particular clouds, expect cold weather within 36 hours. I’ve observed that particular bit of folk wisdom to be quite accurate.
This set up would be typical here in early to mid November.
Not wanting to put another thread (where his name came up) off-topic, student reviews of Dr Halpern:
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=543236&page=1
I also came across this post (on a thread referencing the starting of the website above):
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/sci.research.careers/msg00718.html
He sounds like the perfect example of someone who should be 100% involved in research but would prefer to do his research within the safe setting of university tenure. I came across many Dr. Halpern’s in my day – couldn’t teach and didn’t care about his students, yet had the ego and ignorance to say he knew exactly what he was doing and was doing a good job.
rd (27) Andy posted an answer to your question here. You’ll probably have more luck with this kind of question in that discussion.
# 35, # 36, # 37, # 39
Steve Moore, UK John, Hans Erren, Gunnar,
I’ve been doing the experiment every day since my eighteens (approximately). I drink one to two pepsis a day with 5% CO2 per 500 ml. My stomach has not burned since then neither the bottles.
Stuff like this is fairly straightforward in Matlab these days. Ah college…
Mark
RE: #47 – Yep. I’ve come across a few folks reminiscent of him as well. Interestingly, while most of them were in academic settings, a few have been in corporate ones.
Set outside on a warm sunny day with a couple packets of Pop Rocks to boot and the story would be different, however… đ
Mark
RE 47.
I think that says it all. NOW, consider the irony when Halpern tells people to RTFR
read the fricking rules.
His student reads the text. His student follows the text. The text is peer reviewed.
The text is wrong. Halpern admits the text was wrong AND HE STILL grades the student
down.
I found these types in acedemia all too frequently. At some point they realize they
are civil servants. And then they turn on Students in passive agressive ways like
Halpern did.
And now for something completely different:
Looks like Antarctica has somewhat quietly set a new record for ice extent. I wonder why Realclimate doesn’t report on this? They’re all over the Arctic, why not Antarctica?
Oh, that’s right. It doesn’t fit the plan. I’m sure they’ll do what they do best. Ignore it.
Matt, who sez: when it’s unusually warm somewhere, you can darn sure bet its unusually cold somewhere else. That whole “conservation of energy” thing from high school physics class…
Oops. Looks like I forgot to close my link. Sorry about that….
First explosion after 13 min of burning… Second killer explosion 30 min after the first explosion… Shockwave 24 bar*g… Culprit: Methane đ
# 53
I think that teacher is a ship… I was taking the course of Biochemistry with a teacher (female) that used a similar methodology. Most of us renounced to her class and took it with another teacher. She ended with less than 10 students in her class.
MattN,
From the graph, it seems to be cyclical. I’ve read three alarmist news this morning about the expansion of the ozone “hole”, the extinction of species and the retraction of the ice cap in the Northern Hemisphere. I’d like to read respectable news, like the one in the link you’ve posted here, that balanced the continuum on the state of fear.
Glad to be of service Nasif.
I notice that RC has closed a bunch of topics of discussion. Just today as a matter of fact. One being the Arctic Ice Watch entry.
Funny, that….
A recent posting to CA provided a link to Christopher Monckton’s latest paper, “Greenhouse Warming, What Greenhouse Warming?” Recent word searches of both CA and RC for Monckton or the paper title turn up nothing. A Google search reveals no “Press” or TV hits. What am I to conclude about the content of Monckton’s paper?
59, Here:
Click to access moncktongreenhousewarming.pdf
Re: 59
It’s an interesting paper[you can find it at http://www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org].
Monckton is very well informed, nobody’s fool and has a rigourously analytical approach to things. The fact that mainstream media pay no attention to his various papers is merely a reflection of exisiting biases, and says nothing about the value of Monckton’s work.
#18 & #39
I agree with your points in #39, what the author of the NY times article (editorial?) was pointing out, is that its too late to control emissions. That we’d get a better return by spending our capital in preparing for the changes that global warming is projected to have.
I know the air quality in major cities in the 3rd world is horrible, but I think these governments would see a greater public health & safety benefit of reducing, eliminating or even just controlling emissions of known toxic agents – SO2s, lead, carcinogens, etc before CO2. CO2 is after all, plant food. To them global warming is 100 years away, and they’re fighting every day to improve the lives of their citizens NOW. (I know thats naive, but thats what these governments SHOULD be doing)
# 62
I don’t think so, Curtis. They’re trying to improve their profits by sacrificing the lives of their citizens NOW. They’re doing nothing for the health and safety of their citizens. They don’t care about the environment; they do care for fees from polluter industries and higher taxes on gasoline and domestic products.
BTW, the meteorological station at Linares disappeared. It was inside the University Campus and the Faculty eliminated the career on Climatology and Meteorology. If you want to be a climatologist, you have to go to the University of Illinois.
How it should be done. This is a physics paper that includes the code. It is about modeling small IEC Fusion reactors:
Click to access PhD-2007-DietrichCarl.pdf
Re: #47:
TR 017.
Sorry, that should be Re: #43 vice #47.
#65
Thanks for the help. I’m not sure that the linked document is actually TR017, but simply contains a reference to it.
I’ve just put a request into CDIAC at Oak Ridge for it. I’m hoping it can provide some insight into the origins of CRUTEM.
Thanks once again.
RE: #58 – Notice how after I started to post lots of factual data on that thread, and, revealed that fact that I am not some mindless so called “denialist” – the usual suspects shut right up (especially Bloom)? That is probably why the thread is closed. It was time to “move on.” I was being too effective.
Now, for something completely different ……
Will the head honcho of Gaia-sim pull a Lomborg? The signs are there:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/energyEnvironment/Lovelock_Respect_the_Earth_060709.shtml
32 rd September 12th, 2007 at 9:47 pm Don’t forget that one pole is 5×5 land and another is 2×2 sea that doesn’t extend all the way to 90. Besides the fact that the land is all ice. đ AFAIK
Various A richer “polution free” world is a good thing. And one that can probably cope with any ill effects of more CO2. And that’s if you assume in the first place the richer polution free world hasn’t gotten to the technical point where the energy sources no longer create CO2. And that whatever amount of CO2 being made has ill affects, and no saturation point and the models are correct.
# 65
John Baltutis,
Yes, but from the paper we read, “The small number of stations in which discontinuities were identified is likely a result of initial quality control procedures applied to many of the station records…”
The station at Linares stopped on sending data in 1983, and Steve McIntyre noticed it at first sight. I cannot find a plausible explanation for the closing of that station. Perhaps the reason given in the above paragraph from your link was the cause? I’ll close my eyes for not seeing that the initial quality control procedures were not corrected.
I said I was being naive. They’re trying to get industry going – they’re sacrificing their environment for the jobs and future prosperity. They dont see the immediate benefit of controlling emissions of CO2, when they barely control the release of many more much more harmful chemicals. So why not get them to get the toxic stuff first? (if they happen to get some CO2 – great)
68: Now THAT is intriguing. Common sense from that sector?
I would like to ask a question of whoever feels able to give me a reasonable answer.
There is clearly a disparity in terms of the funding levels of say NASA or Hadley Centre and what is being undertaken here but what figure would you put on the ability of being able to set up a fulltime operation to be able to check this data and associated problems and perhaps be able to show the world that the work being done here is serious and neccessary.
Obviously any funding would have to be from a reputable source.
Any answers?
Re #72, jae
Not really. The Government is beginning to panic about what is going to happen to UK generating capacity within the next decade or so, when the current nuclear plants are scheduled to reach the end of their life. They left it as late as they could, then came up with some bogus “public consultation” which they were going to use as justification for licencing some new plants. Unfortunately, the courts threw it out, so they have got to start the process again.
Lovelock doesn’t have a book to sell at the moment, so he appears to be recanting on his “one breeding pair of humans in Antarctica” garbage. I guess he is just sucking up to the Government right now. In the next month or two, we will probably see him appointed to some nice, well-remunerated climate quango or other, like Stern.
I’m reposting the link to
Lecture notes in Physical Meteorology Rodrigo Caballero
School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
I think this qualifies as “mainstream”.
Very interesting Junk Science article here.
75: I don’t get any notes under the “Atmospheric Radiation” chapter in the link you posted. Do you?
77, jae
No. There’s another copy of the notes on the Web somewhere in PDF format that has slightly more radiative stuff, but only figures, no text. I think you have to have a good understanding of Physical Meteorology before you can begin to understand anything else. I’ve just ordered A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation (2nd Ed.) (Paperback) by Grant Petty which was recommended to me some time ago on the Gerry North thread here .
I would suggest undergraduate or graduate level textbooks as a (the?) definition of mainstream science.
# 77
Jae,
You’re right, there is only a note about scattering of SR in clouds:
http://maths.ucd.ie/met/msc/PhysMet/PhysMetLectNotes/node67.html
# 71
Curtis,
NOW I agree. Shhhhh!
A weak hammer blow on “consensus”, but at least a hammer blow:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/317/5844/1505
For our consideration, no CO2, Thermo, or anything else except to say I will make assumptions to eliminate these or to show it is implicit.
Once upon a time Steve McI asked why couldn’t we use just one temperature station to measure GW? I PROPOSE THAT HE WAS CORRECT.
We need a perfectly shaded, fully canopied enclosed, at the equator, remote sensing thermometer. We do not need to worry about all that Thermo stuff since the wet bulb temp = actual temp. The assumption is that humidity is almost always equal to 100% year round. In order to avoid “weather” we have as many as possible at near sea level for redundancy, and any expierencing real time anomolies can be discarded. Also, at or near sea level we get rid of all those gc (gravity constant) problems.
No worry about how the tropics transport the heat to other areas, we just measure temperature increase.
#75. Does this derive 2.5 deg C in detailed steps?
75, never mind whether or not it produces 2.5C (it doesn’t), there are a lot of big pieces missing out of that. Many of the links are to blank pages. Is there another version floating around somewhere?
# 83
Steve,
I know how to get the 2.5 °C (flawed values), but I don’t know about a peer reviewed paper where it had been specified with algorithms, except for this article:
http://sedac.ciesin.org/mva/WR1992/WR1992-sec0.html
I hope it could be useful for what you’re seeking for. Please, tell me if it is what you need.
An MP in New Zealand was recently contacted by a supposed environmental group and asked if she would support the banning of Dihydrogen Monoxide. She said yes and duly wrote a letter to the Minister of the Environment asking for it to be banned.
She was slightly embarrased to discover that she was attempting to ban…………water.
Don’t tell me politicians don’t know what they are talking about!!!
Steve, please revise the page “sec2”.
83, Steve McIntyre
No. However, it’s a solid first step. It provides a solid chain of reasoning to “the higher the colder” for example. It’s not trivial though. It’s notes for a graduate level course in a program leading to a M.Sc. in Meteorology. The textbook for the course is Atmospheric Science, Volume 92, Second Edition: An Introductory Survey (International Geophysics) (Hardcover) by Wallace and Hobbs. Obviously the book is more detailed and covers more subjects than the notes, but the notes don’t cost US$51.35. There is a chapter on radiative transfer in the book that’s not in the notes, but it’s only about 30 pages long. My guess would be that without a background in spectroscopy, it would be too abbreviated to be very useful.
It’s becoming clear, to me at least, that no one source does the whole thing. In fact, I’m not sure that what you want (30-100 pages) can be done at all. Remember someone (Gerald Browning, IIRC) commented when you asked about what it took to understand how you get from doubling CO2 to 2.5 C: “Have you got ten years?” That may be an exaggeration, but I don’t think it’s all that far off.
#85. That does not contain a detailed exposition of the calculations. It’s a summary of what the models say. I know what the models say: I want an exposition of the details that yield the results.
#88. I’m not set on 100 pages. If it takes 1000 pages, that’s fine too.
Folks, please don’t post up references unless you can vouch that they contain the relevant calculations. If you haven’t read the text and you are only aware of it through a google search, please don’t bother posting the citation. I’m aware of the principles of radiation. But they don’t yield 2.5 deg C. without many additional steps. I want the details.
84 Larry,
The whole section on atmospheric radiation is essentially empty and I haven’t found another version that significantly improves on this, which is one reason why I’m buying the book linked in 78. You have to start somewhere though. You can’t understand al the nuances of how radiation interacts with the atmosphere until you understand the rest of the physics of the atmosphere.
Steve,
Here other links to peer reviewed papers that suggest 2.5 °C CO2(2x). The first one emphasizes on Arctic Summer warming:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/310/5748/657?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=2.5+%B0C+doubling+co2&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/276/5320/1818?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=2.5+%B0C+doubling+co2&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
And the following pdf about warming in the Tibetan Plateau:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/rh74k549p9m6x5nc/fulltext.pdf
#91. I do not believe that a Science journal article that is 3-4 pages long can derive all the relevant aspects. HAve you verified that these papers have done the required calculations? If you haven’t verified this, please don’t post things that you know from googling.
Steve,
Before I give up:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/44/15728
Good Night, I’m feeling sick. Perhaps a cold.
Steve, BTW I’m not googling.
Re: #14
“how the time of observation creates a long-term bias in min/max temperature measurements” is a matter of simple arithmetic.
Re: 43
After reading the question I found these sites:
Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center link The HockeyTeam and the surface stations are referenced on this site, Hansen is too I believe (did you know cruise ships volenteer to collect data?) There are also formulas and calculations provided regarding CO2 and the papers they come from.
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Carbon Dioxide page:
link
The climb out of the Little Ice Age has been a long one, perhaps with an upturn currently due to the sun’s influence. The writer of this piece seems to miss the point regarding the time scale of Greenland’s recovery. It’s been quite long.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/14/comment.climatechange
A.
Paul September 13th, 2007 at 3:44 pm asks,
What level of funding would be required to
show the world that the work being done here is serious and neccessary.
I believe that has already been shown at the current funding level.
Re #14,
Mike B,
Regarding time of observation bias, see lots of dataon the topic.
#93. Nasif, that reference is not a derivation of 2.5 deg C witha detailed exposition of the underlying physics of each step.
Steve was it you that put a reference to a 1987 paper with the onedimensional derivation of non-feedback 1.2 deg C? I lost the link but if I remember correctly I saw humidity arguments for positive feedback.
>> show the world that the work being done here is serious and neccessary
If you allow the scientific method to be discarded so that science can serve a political agenda, no amount of funding is capable of overcoming that force.
>> Once upon a time Steve McI asked why couldnÂt we use just one temperature station to measure GW? I PROPOSE THAT HE WAS CORRECT.
I’m shocked that anyone would propose to minimize measurement. There would seem to be many factors that would be missed by this. For example, equatorial temperatures might be significantly affected by equatorial sea currents, which is a form of weather. I mean, sea currents can change, while not implying a change in the thermodynamic state of the earth. The true thermodynamic state is represented by sum of energy values: Jcore + Jcrust + Joceans + Jatmos.
That said, your equatorial measurement would seem to better than the current surface system, especially if the whole equator was covered. 1000 stations, every 24 miles? If the earths’ tilt changed, the climate would presumably be dramatically changed, but maybe the equatorial measurement wouldn’t show it?
I don’t recall saying something like that and it’s not a phraseology that sounds like me. However I certainly did suggest that, if I had to pick measurement priorities for long-term climate change, I’d choose accurate measurement at the sites with the most stable temperature rather than the sites with the most variation.
I know the point you’re driving at but be careful with the nuance.
#13.
Larry, exactly. You’re one of the few readers to catch this theme.
Most academics have no idea of what engineering reports look like and the differences between “accountability” as it pertains to a stamped engineering report and journal “peer review”. Academics delight in tangled webs of scholastic references, where you have to drill deep in the literature to uncover the assumptions; engineers have to weigh each assumption.
104, Steve,
Maybe scientists need to be licensed, for the same reason that engineers and lawyers and doctors are – not because it certifies their competence, but because it give them something to lose.
Most engineers in my field are not licensed (computer and software technology), but we still produce engineering reports under strict standards and controls. In this case the penalty for producing improper or incomplete reports is not the loss of a license, but the loss of a job.
#!05. Now that one thinks about it, consider the term that we often hear “professional” climate scientists – climate science is obviously not a “profession” in the way that law or medicine or engineering is. Being a member of a “profession” imposes obligations and duties and standards and codes of conduct that climate scientists are not presently obliged to adhere to. They are, of course, “professional” in the sense that they are paid to do climate science, and in that sense, the term applies to them as well as to baseball players.
106, if you work in (or for, as an outside consultant) the public sector, you need that license. In an industry that doesn’t require licensure, you can get fired, and pop up somewhere else. Lose your license, however, and you’ll never consult for the public sector again. The rationale, of course, is that the public interest (generally safety) is involved.
Certainly, the public interest is involved with this climate issue. Maybe the people issuing the IPCC reports should be licensed environmental engineers.
>> YouÂre one of the few readers to catch this theme
I think many of us, including myself, wholeheartedly agree with this.
>> Maybe scientists need to be licensed, for the same reason that engineers and lawyers and doctors are – not because it certifies their competence, but because it give them something to lose.
That’s not the reason. A big difference with a PE, like lawyers and medical doctors, is liability for their work. I think it would be great if we legislatively established a “Professional Climatologist” certification. It would require strict dedication to the scientific method, and competency in whole variety of fields, from statistics to atmospheric physics, to electromagnetics to control theory. Government could then award contracts to climate companies to prepare a report, requiring at least 10 PC signoffs. These PC folks would then be personally liable for any predictions.
Where this whole thing falls apart is that the timescales are too large, and even if they weren’t, the liability too great. For example, someone owes norwegians 1 billion dollars. Canadians have to come up $4,700 per taxpayer per year for the next five years!
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=13694
Re #108, Larry
Unfortunately, you will rapidly have the problem of who controls the licensing process. One can imagine a load of big names in the environmental industry, such as Hansen, Mann, etc., being put in charge.
>> big names in the environmental industry
kinda like the “Committee To Keep Organized Crime Out of Atlantic City” included some folks linked to the mafia, eh? In the end, dedication to the SM is the only way. A focus not on degrees or certifications, and not on what you claim, or on what you can write a computer program to spit out, but ONLY ON WHAT YOU CAN PROVE.
As John Goetz noted, most engineers are not actually “professional” in this sense either. However, for an engineer to sign off on certain types of projects, particularly those related to building design, he must be a licensed professional engineer. In fact, in some states it is illegal to title yourself as “Engineer” unless you hold a PE in that state. Every state has different requirements, but in general they are: obtain a BS degree, pass the engineer in training (EIT) exam, work as a professional for some number of years – under the tutelage of a licensed PE for a certain number of years – then pass the PE exam.
The IEEE has actually proposed that the minimum requirements for “professional” status be upped to a MS degree, rather than a BS degree (there’s an online poll for opinions, though it is probably members only). The implication is that engineers are actually considered “professional” throughout much of the industry, even those areas in which I dabble (radar, communicatons). Personally, I’m torn on the issue as I don’t consider myself to be professional in the same sense as a PE, though I do consider myself an engineering professional. If it were required, and I were allowed, to “sign off” on all the proposals, designs and other submissions I make, I would not have an issue. Nothing that I do has legal implications in that regard (i.e. there’s no skyway to fall on your head, though the missle may get through!), so it probably will never be an issue.
The IEEE article on the discussion, btw, mentions a “standard 120 hour curriculum for engineers” that takes, on average, 4.8 years to complete. Most that I know of are actually 130+ (ours was 132.5 I think), though 4.8 years is the average. Being trusted by your peers to not configure the op-amp such that it goes into thermal runaway, however, takes a few more years of dedicated service. đ
Mark
110, environmental engineering is already a licensed discipline. Yes, the content is subject to political influence, but again, as Gunnar points out, the issue isn’t competence, it’s liability. It’s making someone who can be sued and/or delicensed put his stamp on the report, so that he, in turn, makes sure the referenced sections aren’t fast and loose.
Right now, we have people with rather weak science backgrounds assembling the SPM before the fact, and then picking and choosing and ordering the real scientists’ work that makes up the body of the reports to support the preordained conclusions. If the people charged with assembling the SPM had something to lose, they might approach it a little differently.
Apparently this one chaps your hide more than anything! đ
I agree, however that the liability is too high, and the timescales are too long, for any effective policing of credentials. In the end, the result would be nothing more than silencing the voices, which is never a good idea. This is particularly vexing problem in light of the fact that “climate prediction,” in general, is a very subjective area. Engineers are asked to determine things like whether a walkway will fall, or a building will stand, all of which can easily be tested, and accurately simulated – the climate is not easy to test nor simulate (not yet at least). Few engineering decisions are ever based on ill-defined chaotic systems.
Mark
A good friend of mine, someone I went to school with, is an environmental engineer, probably licensed. His liability rests in determining what is and isn’t safe, primarily. He does cleanup, and has to sign off on the work when he’s done. Things like this are easy to license, it seems to me.
As for political motivations regarding licensing, I’m not sure it is that big of a problem (other than my thoughts that it is intractable). Get a certain degree, pass a certain test, work for a certain number of years, then pass another test. Not a whole lot of fudge room there.
Mark
Even with that, there would still be ideological pull, but it beats the current system. For example, imagine that the UN contracted with a large environmental engineering firm, such as CH2M Hill. Anyone familiar with the industry knows that CH2M Hill is a supporter of environmental causes, and if I’m not mistaken, is involved in the carbon credits trade. So not exactly a disinterested party.
Still, this would be a vast improvement over the current setup, because they would have their reputation and their corporate liability (as well as individual liability) on the line. And they know how to write engineering reports, because they write them by the 1000s.
Which is part of the reason I’m torn on the issue.
In my industry, the shame of failure rules. If you fail once, egregiously of course, your credibility is tainted. Fail again, and you’ll never get a chance to lead another project. We are, in a sense, self policing, but it works because there are enough smart folks to catch errors before they become a problem, and anyone tied to a failed program will carry the taint as well. Not so in the academia of climate science. Proof of that is the recent paper purporting to show the robustness of climate reconstructions, in spite of the vast evidence against such a concept. Nobody seems to care that BCPs have been discredited, because still we see them in the literature.
Mark
RE: #105 – Cross training, needed badly. I’d include engineering courses in most science curricula. Also, for getting accepted to grad programs, especially PhD courses of study, real world work experience in some field of engineering as the tie breaker for admissions.
Indeed, one of the reasons that I was accepted into the PhD program at UCCS in spite of being out of academia for 10 years, and not taking the GRE, was due to my industry references that “proved” my abilities.
The list of courses that was posted in another thread for climate science type degrees had a good mixture of relevant stuff, but the basics were intermingled in the climate courses themselves, not as individual treatments. My suggestions:
Linear System Theory (Fourier concepts in here)
Feedback Control System Theory (Laplace concepts in here)
Discrete Time Signal Processing Theory (z-domain concepts in here)
Training in non-linear/dynamic control systems would also be a plus.
Mark
Steve, sorry about the nuance. Your question did not state that, it was a collalary of what you stated in #103, and about how accurate/many measurements would it take. A refence in that thread, if memory serves me, about how many stations and why they were chosen.
Mark T. September 14th, 2007 at 9:19 am,
As an unlicensed non-degreed aerospace engineer I’m against the “where are your papers” approach to quality control in design.
No doubt my case is unusual. And yet my experience is that through experience (starting as a bench technician) and self training I can out design at least 80% of the engineers in the business. I have been given (as a contractor) the ability to sign off on million dollar contracts and ten million dollar projects.
It really has nothing to do with papers. It has to do with the dedication to quality and continuing education.
The most effective weapon in my armament is doubt. Do they give degrees in that?
# 107
About Professional Licences:
I have two official documents, one license that grants me like a scientist and another license that allows me to work like a scientist. We had the option to get a third license from the Academy of Sciences, but we had to fill hundreds of requisites that we didn’t fulfill at the moment of our graduation. Anyway we were allowed to access all books, proceedings, etc. from the Academy.
About peer reviewed works which contain algorithms, data, statistics, etc. about Âdoubling CO2 = 2.5 °CÂ:
I think itÂs almost impossible to achieve the task. I think there is not a paper or treatise in the “mainstream” that includes the whole item. For example, IÂve read many books on thermo, quantum mechanics, climatology, biophysics, Ecology, etc. and I have not found the famous ÂArrhenius ExpressionÂ. And this is merely one formula because if one looks for other famous variables like the Radiative Forcing (F2x), one wouldnÂt find a work explaining the whole stuff, the procedures to obtain the value, etc. It seems all is based on assumptions. When we apply real Engineering procedures to the problem, the hypothesis ÂCO2 (2x) = 2.5 °C crumbles.
# 107
Steve McIntyre,
I agree. Climate Science was incorporated in the careers that were on need of it. Most times one had to take courses aside to get a certification like climatologists. However, the last option was taken only for those from us who were interested on Climate Science. We have to do the same thing with physics, but Physics absolutely is a profession.
118, that’s another issue. What Steve was driving at is that is that regardless of your background and knowledge, you need to be accountable. Let’s be realistic. Nobody understands all of the technical details involved in a project that you’re responsible for.
The boss isn’t the technical expert. He needs to know enough to know when he has competent and honest people working under him, but he can’t know everything. It would be great if we has renaissance men to author the SPM, but if we don’t, we should at least expect people who are more concerned with getting it right, than supporting the agenda.
A license to lose would make that more likely.
Compare and contrast. The hype about the temperature in Greenland with a study on the temperature in Greenland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/14/comment.climatechange
Click to access Box_2002_Greenland_Temperature_Analysis.pdf
122, I said essentially that yesterday. The process just isn’t geared for building something as multidisciplinary as the climate sensitivity up from the ground. I think that is Steve’s complete point.
121, in most states, even if you’re non-degreed, you can still take the exam for licensure. You just have to have more years of experience before you take it.
In aerospace, you’ll never use it, but it’s not as if the door is closed. You can also get licensed outside of your degree. I have PEs in 3 disciplines.
# 126
Yes, Larry; however, I was misinterpreting SteveÂs petition. At first, I thought that Steve was asking for the procedures. After that, I thought Steve was asking for papers mentioning the value 2.5 °C if doubling CO2. Lastly, I think I understood the SteveÂs petition. Now I can assure that the values were assumed, not obtained from observation, or experimentation, not even from the correct algorithms. Climate Science is a multidisciplinary science, I agree; however, there must be lineaments, ethics, homogeneity, etc., which we cannot find in the current state of Climate Science (political-religious stochasticity). đ
Steve McIntyre, Larry, Gunnar, Doc, Jae, Pittman, and other people,
I’m sorry… I think you will agree with me… I think the assumption “doubling CO2 = anomaly of 2.5 °C” is like an idea popping out from my mind and after looking for evidence (or algorithms) supporting that idea. đ
#129,
Yes, I agree. It just speculation by Arrhenius, an otherwise accomplished scientist. But even the best scientists are wrong more than they are right. Arrhenius’s speculation has not been confirmed by actual empirical evidence in over 100 years.
After all, we need Icebergs đ
http://nationalacademies.org/headlines/20070913.html
Follow the links at the bottom of the article.
Gunnar, welcome to physical chemistry. I don’t think Arrhenius was under any illusion that the equation was rigorous or accurate. BTW, he is more famous for the Arrhenius kinetic rate equation, also known as the “erronious” equation. That’s p-chem. If you can hit the broad side of a barn (especially 100 years ago), you’re doing pretty good.
Notwithstanding that, nothing has replace the Arrhenius greenhouse equation to this date, and Hansen used his 3d models to curve-fit an equasion of the form DT = a*ln((c/co) + b(c/c2)^2).
It’s the Sun!!!
http://spaceweather.com/swpod2007/14sep07/jackman.gif
Not googled, ok?
DT = a*ln((c/co) + b(c/c2)^2)… delta T = alpha [Ln (CO2current/CO2standard)] / b (sigma) (T)^3. However, the values alpha and CO2 standard are imaginary values.
RE: #119 – Those 3 curriculum items are familiar territory …. I took those in grad school myself …. đ
RE: #131 – But they just had to spew – “The team said that as global warming adds more icebergs to the Antarctic waters each year”
“The Team” indeed! đ
>> he is more famous for the Arrhenius kinetic rate equation, also known as the Âerronious equation
Yes, that has stood the test of time. In this case, shouldn’t the OCO equation be called the “erronious” one?
>> nothing has replace the Arrhenius greenhouse equation to this date
But isn’t that a logic fallacy? If there is no basic relationship, no equation would ever replace it.
Yeah! If the “team” had not added that paragraph, their work had not been accepted by the “peer reviewers”… đ
I agree. Most of the work I have done is necessarily unpublished, though my current degree effort is changing that (as well as some effort by my past company to market a product that I was helping to develop, but that’s another story that ended with me being where I am now!)
Agreed again, which is why I’m working on yet another degree. My mother swears this won’t be the last, but alas, UCCS does not offer any statistics degrees. đ
Indeed, this is the primary reason design reviews in the engineering world work as well as they do. You’re presenting your argument to an otherwise hostile group of folks with a) more experience, b) more education, c) more smarts and d) even more arrogance than you. They start out doubting, and it is your job to convince them otherwise. It is a difficult, uphill process.
I used to work with several top-notch mechanical engineers that did not have degrees, btw. They (non-degreed engineers in general) are becoming a rarity, however. Kudos for your persistence to get where you are today.
Mark
Indeed, one cannot infer the validity of hypotheses based solely on the absence of alternatives, though alternatives do help for falsification. đ
mark
Could be. I never pursued a PE because they typically only apply to folks that do road work, building design, etc. I am camping with a PE in a few hours, however. I worked with him for 2 years so I guess I meet the CO requirement now. đ
Neither in electrical, at least not the areas I work in. Certainly contract electrical design in architecture would require it, however. Not sure if CO offers different disciplines for PEs, though again, I wouldn’t know due to a lack of interest on my part.
Mark
#119,
And if some student wishes to orient in the direction of applied statistics,
Linear Algebra
Multivariate Statistics
Stochastic Processes
and maybe some book exams,
A. Gelb, Applied Optimal Estimation
C. Rao, H. Toutenburg, Linear Models: Least Squares and Alternatives
A. Jazwinski, Stochastic Processes and Filtering Theory C.
After passing these, try MBH98.
Contract work in the Power Industry requires it. I never did that, but one of my main professors was a nationally known expert consultant to the power industry. I was considering it, but then got a job in the aerospace field.
Larry, 3 PEs? Wow, which ones?
It’s not a logical fallacy to say nothing has replaced it if nothing has.
Me, I’m of the opinion that one guess is as good as another in the lack of plausible alternatives, as long as everyone knows it’s a guess and it’s not too outrageous.
Then again, there’s nothing wrong with adjusting guesses thought to be too high downward or too low upward over time, now is there?
No, that’s not what he was saying. It is a logical fallacy to say in the absence of an alternative, the current hypothesis must be valid. It was based on the implication that he inferred from your statement.
Mark
>> Me, IÂm of the opinion that one guess is as good as another in the lack of plausible alternatives, as long as everyone knows itÂs a guess and itÂs not too outrageous.
Now, we’re getting to the heart of the matter. A scientific equation implies a fundamental physical relationship, like V = IR, or F=MA or F = q( E + v X B).
Quite different from this are sensitivity equations. For example, I could calculate the apparent sensitivity of temperature to Solar Irradiance. The equation doesn’t represent actual physics, since SI doesn’t directly cause a temperature. However, this sensitivity encompasses many different factors, is only applicable to the case in question (for example, in this case, it won’t apply to another planet), and is a shortcut. One cannot derive a sensitivity equation from first principles, like Steve M seems to expect. To gain credibility, a sensitivity equation would have to have lots of data points involving the two parameters.
So, on the one hand, we should not fault AGW proponents for not being able to derive C02 sensitivity from first principles, but on the other hand, one should never confuse a sensitivity equation with the first principles of science. However, when we look at the C02/temp data for the last 100 years, we don’t get any kind of correlation that suggests that there is such a number as C02 sensitivity. Cue for Statisticians… (but I insist, use the real data)
Gunnar, I don’t doubt the approximate validity of the Arrhenius equation; it’s based on the well-proven Beer-Lambert equation (and anything with “Beer” in it has to be right). The questions are, what are the precise constants, and what is left of the effect after feedback? That there is some absorption of IR by an incremental addition of CO2 is beyond any reasonable debate.
But there are alternatives to Arrhenius’ expression based on experimentation and real parameters. The problem is… With your permission, Steve… that those procedures and real parameters doesn’t fit in AGW idea, so AGWists have to resource to pre-assumed values.
Mark, correct. I wasn’t saying that the fact that it’s the best game in town makes it right, just that it’s the best game in town. If you can get the constants correct, it’s probably +/- 50%, but what everyone has to keep in mind, is that the Arrhenius equation doesn’t yield the climate sensitivity, it yields the pre-feedback temperature increase, which is an unphysical hidden variable.
What we actually measure is the juxtaposition of that effect and feedback. And we don’t have a very good understanding of feedback, so the basic pre-feedback effect is effectively impossible to back out from observations.
Nasif, I think I have to slow you down a bit.
The no feedback climate sensitivity is a well established number (1.2 K/2xCo2) which can be derived using straightforward energy balance physics. See eg Nir Shaviv for a derivation:
http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity
Computer models range in sensitivity between 1 and 3 degrees because the are parametrising the different feedbacks on a global scale, see the reference here to a comparative study http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/model_appraisal.pdf
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/tcscrichton.htm
The Ipcc puts the equilibrium sensitivity range 50% (ball park figure)higher than the instantaneous values: so 1.5 to 4.5 due to heat storage in the ocean.
I am still looking for that reference (1987?) that steve showed earlier, which also showed these numbers.
see also here:
http://home.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/howmuch.htm
Re #99
Thank you Jerry B.
#150
Hans what are the units for your climate sensitivity, please?
Degs/mmol CO²? degs/m3 CO²?
Kelvin per CO2 doubling or K/2xCO2
As a doubling of CO2 leads to a reduction of 5.35ln(2) W/m2 (Myhre et al), a climate sensitivity of 1 K/2xCO2 amounts to 0.2697 K/(Wm-2)
I didn’t get the impression that’s what was being said at first nor the was in response…. Well of course, that’s patently untrue. (“no alternative” equals “must be valid”) Sure. đ (But FYI I didn’t make the original statement. I was just commenting that it hasn’t been “replaced”. )
Anyway, it’s well known his was just an estimate, much disputed the next few years after. Still today it seems! đ What is it, delta F = alpha*ln*(C/C sub 0) “If the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.” Um, okay.
Anyone who would like to read more can get On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground at http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
I fear that we’re venturing into snip territory. I’ll say just this: the energy balance part of Nir Shaviv’s paper is rigorous, but the radiation model isn’t. It’s probably close, but it doesn’t take into account reradiation and convection. The first can be accounted for reasonably well with models, the second is a stab in the dark.
That was Boris’ argument. You mean he was wrong?
Yeah well Arrhenius based his calculations on a water vapour infrared spectrum, the measurements by Frank Very that Arrhenius used, stopped well before the main co2 absorption band. His heat balance formulae yield a far too low sensitiviy, which was compensated by a co2 absorption factor of 60%. So we may conclude that the Arrhenius law was a very lucky guess.
Schwartz derives a sensitivity of 1.1 http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf
Here is a debate on James Annan blog, he favours a value of 3
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2007/08/schwartz-sensitivity-estimate.html
Hans, let’s separate a couple of things out. I believe that the form of the Arrhenius equation is more-or-less accurate. The value of the constant is another matter entirely. He didn’t have good spectral data at the time. He couldn’t have possibly calculated the constant with any accuracy. I believe that the basic logarithmic form is more-or-less accurate. The number that you actually multiply the log by remains somewhat elusive for reasons I stated earlier.
A question for you all. Is there an IR emission spectrum of an area of the Earths land and/or ocean from dusk until dawn, correlated with ground temperature, pressure and water vapor pressure?
I know this seems obvious, but I havn’t been able to find one.
What’s interesting about Schwartz v.s. Shaviv is that they used completely different methods to arrive at 1.1 and 1.2 C, respectively. And the Schwartz number is empirically determined with feedback, and the Shaviv number is theoretically developed without.
Could be a coincidence, but it’s a pretty remarkable one.
I know a lot of folks are very very concerned about numbers such as .1 C Seems trivial compared to a guess that has a range of about +/-2.5
Doc,
I recall Australia doing some research on that in the last year or so. If that helps narrow down the research.
Roy Spencer was also looking into that I think.
The above may also be totally off base.
ref: 150 Those where some great links especially the science bits. John Daly had one that was interesting as well.
160: I think that Schwartz has a lot to say, but Steve M didn’t feel it was authoritative enough.
# 150
Hans Erren,
ItÂs not you but a damned virus that I got from I donÂt know where. I got a cold, sorry for the token. Hans, the units are W/m^2:
Delta K = W/m^2 [Ln (ppmv/ppmv)] / 4 (W/m^4*K^4) (K)^3
If you or someone else can explain in detail how to obtain mathematically the value 5.35 W/m^2, I will be very grateful until my cold disappears.
It’s an assumed and wrong value. The units corresponds to the total emittancy; however, it’s not a real value, and many authors from the IPCC and NAS have accepted that the parameter F CO2 2x is an assumed value that can be changed at the will of the modeler.
Problem is unknown feedbacks… Many unknown feedbacks and uncertainties:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10787
That’s the reason by which I told Dr. McIntyre that finding a treatise giving account of the whole process, AS LARRY STABLISHED YESTERDAY, is an almost impossible to achieve task.
What a bothering liquids… It’s a cold… I think đ
Although I’m sure the feedbacks are not the cause of the imprecision, but a poor thermal response of OCO.
Nasif, there are two different equations: one for power (as you are using), and one for temperature differential. The temperature differential one is in terms of CO2 concentration ratio exclusively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect_as_cause_for_ice_ages
I’m respectful towards Dr. Shaviv and towards his work. Coincidentally, his results are closely coincident with my results:
Delta T = 0.423 W/m^2 [Ln (560 ppmv/280 ppmv)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m^2*K^4) (288.65)^3
Delta T = 0.2932 W/m^2 / 5.45425 W/m^2*K = 0.054 K
Copy and paste quickly my post before it get to be wiped out. đ
Larry,
The procedure developed is to obtain the change of temperature (delta T) by doubling CO2. I know both formulas; however, I prefer to rely on algorithms that introduce values that can be obtained by right methods (call them classic procedures), not on assumed values.
The history of CO2 in the atmosphere and the history of the earth’s temperature indicates the sensitivity is between 1.0C to 1.5C for every doubling.
Theory is one thing but we have long experimental data to rely on.
Temp of the Earth over the last 540 million years.
CO2 Concentration over the past 540 million years. (The GeoCarb III line – yellow-orange – from Berner seems to be most accepted.)
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide_png
The temp of the planet 540 million years ago 6.0C warmer than today, CO2 concentration 7,000 ppm or 4.5 doublings.
A trendline of 1.0C to 1.5C per doubling matches up very closely throughout the record (with the last 2.5M years of ice ages (temperature changes of +/-5.0C caused by Milankovitch cycles rather than CO2 changes), the Snowball Earth period of 300M years ago (half of the continents were locked up over the south pole resulting in massive glaciation) and the Eocene Thermal Maximum (Methane releases probably) being the only outliers.)
NOAA has January-August 2007 ranked as the 7’th warmest such period on record ( link ).
If 2007 is to be the warmest year on record, as Hadley predicted , then it better start warming pronto.
# 171
Let’s see, John:
Introducing your numbers:
4 doublings = 16 wouldn’t cause a change of temperature of 6 K, but of 2.58 K, that is 43 percent of 6 K.
The probable partial pressure of 7000 ppmv CO2 would be 0.7599375 bar*m. How much N2, O2, H2O, CH4, were in the atmosphere some 540 million years ago?
BTW, the Cambrian Period was colder than now (median 12 °C vs. 14 °C at present), with a severe glaciation during the Devonian. It seems the higher amount of CO2 was ~1300 ppmv.
Reference: Boucot, A.J, Xu, C. and Scotese, C.R. 2004. Phanerozoic Climate Zones and Paleogeography with a Consideration of Atmospheric CO2 Levels. Paleontology Journal, v. 38, p. 115-122.
# 173
Averaged global “anomalies” for 2007 give 0.315 K. Something is wrong with Media. đ
171
The total insolation was significantly lower 500 million years ago from solar evolution along the Main Sequence, possibly as much as 25% lower (couldn’t find a good reference). That would have an effect on estimating climate sensitivity.
John L,
That is an extremely coherent hypothesis. Eyes Uncovered, Sails Unfurled.
# 175
DeWitt Payne,
Perhaps you are referring to Kelvin-Helmholtz Timescale? It was solved by quantum tunneling, thus the Sun has been shining with the same energy throughout the 4.8 billion years of its existence.
#54: Another small sample statistics news gone unnoticed:
Christy and Spencer are now reporting that their LT series has been lately running slightly too high:
My “back of envelope calculations” indicate that if this correction materializes, the UAH MSU series will likely have negative trend for the last 10 years as the RSS MSU series is already having!
# 175
Dewitt Payne,
Sorry, I forgot to write a reference:
Newman, M. J. and Rood, R. T. Implications of Solar Evolution for the Earth’s Early Atmosphere. Science; 9 november 1977. Vol. 198., no. 4321, pp. 1035 – 1037.
Steve!!! I have the answer for what you’re asking for:
Physics of Climate by Peixoto and Oort. Please, tell me if you cannot find the book.
This week, an official governative conference on climate change opened (and closed) in Italy.
What’s new would you say? Nations like UK are far more advamced, having a minister for climate change and teaching the novel of how mankind is changing global climate in schools.
The conference of course told us of how much Italy is warming, of sea levels rising, of desert advancing, of heat waves death tolls etc.
It was lead by Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, Minister of the Environment and leader of Italian Green Party (leftists environmentalists), and praised on media by Romano Prodi, Prime Minister (who also told of “scientifical consensus”).
What’s strange then? Nothing else than in the rest of West World…
Unless you consider that no scientist was invited, just trade unions, agricultural associations, environmentalists, economists etc. and that released data were wrong or exaggerated, as IPCC-like projections, while human influence is still to be quantified.
Is just me, a little skeptic, to say this?
Not at all.
Franco Prodi, considered the best Italian climatologist, and leader of national scientifical agency for climate studies, and brother of Romano the Prime Minister, told today to the main Italian newspaper the same things: including the one that human influence on climate change / global warming has not been settled (while his brother just two days ago was talking of complete scientifical consensus…).
It seems this conference seems more a way to cover government inaction on real enviromental issues (garbage and water, overall in the South, and pollution, energy, land hurbanisation etc.) and to raise more money to state, not to talk of political interests of Green Party and its leader.
[please, if the last part includes too political phrases, erase just this one and not the entire message]
PS: a similar governative conference was held in Rome in 2005, under the previous governement, but with scientists to debate, and no alarmist/catastrophist claim was made. A Vatican conference, earing both AGW supporters and skeptics of scientifical and political communities, held at the beginning of this year, saw a small victory of “skeptics” (indeed it was very poorly publicised on media). An indipendent scientifical conference held in Erice (Sicily) some week ago, lead by Zichichi (leader of the International Union of Scientists), was strongly critic of AGW and IPCC-like scenarios, and it had no mediatical cover at all.
And they call it “consensus”…
In the meanwhile, in the occasion of Italian-British cultural council to be held in the next days, British embassador began a media campaign (here in Italy) on catastrophical AGW, people’s fears etc. I think I can have something against British Minister of climate change even without being in UK đ
Have you plotted the change of temperature from January 2006 to August 2007?
The graph is based exclusively on data from UAH satellites. Copy it freely for teaching and debate only. đ No signals of GW…
Impassable NorthWest Passage Open for First Time in Recorded History
Oh, except perhaps for the other times.
Change physics, change climate science, change chemistry, change T…, and now they are changing history.
re 79 on ‘A First Look…’ quote the signal from Arctic ice is unequivocable. unquote.
The signal from the Arctic ice says that the ice is melting. It does not specify the cause.
Let’s see…
1. Soot particles cover the ice, making it melt faster.
2. The water entering the arctic is warmer because of, for example, warming further south associated with the albedo drop being measured by satellites (the equivalent of .9 watts/m^2 from 2000 to 2004!). See also the paper on albedo drop of 4 watts/m^2 over a twenty year period. Then contemplate the result this latter input would have — total AGW for the twentieth century is 2-3 watts/m^2 equivalent.
3. Cloud cover over the ice is falling. I don’t know if this is the case — does anyone know of data or a paper? I can speculate on a mechanism — there’s a recent paper on DMS produced by plankton and another on falling primary productivity in the Bering Sea. If something is interfering with the growth of the DMS-producing phytoplankton then the effects could well be what we are seeing.
I like 3. best: I can tie it to the oil sheen/surfactant pollution theory and it amplifies what is an incredibly powerful effect from a tiny input. The CO2 theories are brute force, expecting us to influence a huge mechanism by tackling it head to head as it were. 3. shows a more subtle way we can disrupt the cooling mechanisms.
Richard Sharpe September 15th, 2007 at 8:22 pm,
I discuss the other times like 1903-06, 1940, 1957, and 1977 at: Northwest Passage.
Nice quote from the BBC:
Desperation has definitely set in.
The BBC reported the NW passage as being open in 2000.
re 185:
Nasif, It’s all legit applied physics to me. Where do you see changed physics?
(O know, a dangerous question which may lead to OT replies đ )
# 189
Hans,
1. A colder system heats up a warmer one.
2. Partial pressures don’t affect absorbency/emissivity/total emittance of gases.
3. Gravity doesn’t affect photons of electromagnetic radiation.
4. CO2 k is a constant value (0.2 or higher) (physics say it changes and it is 0.01672 at the current concentration of CO2).
5. Absorptivity of CO2 is now 0.8 or higher (experimentation shows that it is now 0.00092.
6. CO2 doesn’t behave like a graybody.
7. The value F0 can be assumed, not obtained by observation-experimentation.
8. The stratosphere heats up the troposphere.
And so on…
Regarding the NW passage:
http://www.setsail.com/s_logs/deridder/dragon54.html
The next 80 days will be dedicated to enhance pseudoscience as a gift from Mexico to the world. I’m referring to the Universal Forum of Cultures Monterrey 2007. The first themes will be “science and spirituality” and “climate change”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Universal_Forum_of_Cultures
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article2461237.ece
re 190 :
Nasif.
I see a lot of misunderstandings in your post may I invite you to UKweatherworld forum to discuss each of them in an individual thread? In the single tread here the debate will get quickly unreadable, and I think that some of the topics in your reply are not the prime interest of our host.
A robotic Meridian to fly over the poles
Has this to say:
I wonder if it will fly before solar cycle 24 starts? It would be interesting to know if the Greenland ice sheet is going to slide into the ocean.
When 24 cycle starts… we will be really suffering of warm temperatures; with or without GHG. Perhaps the 24 cycle won’t come until some 300 years and we would suffer of another tiny ice age… hah! đ
Hans,
I accept your invitation. Just tell me, on which theme? There are many topics over there.
I got a question, from where you took the radiative equilibrium temperature of Earth? 255.15 K is an unreal value.
Hi Nasif,
Thanks for accepting my invitation to the “duel”.
Here is the climate section at ukweatherworld
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/forum-view.asp?fid=30
I started a topic:
http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=16928&posts=1&start=1
James Hansen 15th September BBC interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/the_interview.shtml
Perhaps you have heard it all already, but for those who are interested.
He sounds very genuine to me. i.e. You get the feeling he truly believes what he is saying. That he is sincere. The person he has managed to fool the most is himself? Who knows how difficult it is psychologically to confront the possibility that you might have been wrong about it all (the cagw) after a 30 year high profile career in it.
It would be like saying that all this work has had no purpose in the end, that can’t be easy. If CAGW was real, he could go down in history as one of the greatest men of modern times, the one who was first to see the danger, and worked day and night to make stubborn people aware of it. And then… all that recognition, fulfillment could be slipping away, if it’s not real. In a way I feel for him. But then again the topic is far too serious to be concerned about his personal tragedy.
When 24 cycle starts we will be really suffering of warm temperatures; with or without GHG.
I’m not so sure 24 will be strong as Dikpati and others predict. Here is Choudri (Dikpati’s thesis advisor) using a similar physical model predicting a 24 35% less than 23.
Click to access 0701527v1.pdf
This also applies to the inventor of the Internet.
Example of improper engineering study.
On a complete aside, I’ve noticed “realclimate” have substantially reduced the number of posts appearing recently, with just the occasional “Friday Round-up”. To be fair, blogging is quite time-consuming, and is difficult to maintain whilst doing other things; although since there are quite a few authors, you figure they would manage better.
Their latest post is not from a high profile climate scientist, but a blogging interested third party (nothing wrong with that of course!) with a critique of the Schwartz paper. The irony of this criticism is one that I hope is not lost on people here.
Why doesn’t Tamino like the Schwartz paper? Because it assumes the temperature history behaves like an AR(1) model plus trend. Apparently, this is an incorrect way to think. Global temperature history, Tamino points out, has complex correlation structure over different scales that cannot be effectively captured by a crude AR(1) model.
Obvious question: apart from “I wonder where that idea might have come from”, I wonder if Tamino would like to assess whether that criticism could also be applied to other papers in the climate science field, or whether such a criticism is only applicable when the conclusions don’t suit the prior worldview?
For what it is worth, I agree strongly with Tamino that the complex scale structure must be accounted for in these statistical analyses. But the Schwartz paper is far from the only paper that suffers this weakness. Why the silence on the others?
Cap-and-Trade Could Cost Average Family $10,800 in Lost Income, Says Economist Arthur Laffer; Proposed Global Warming Policy Likened to 1970s-Era Energy Crunch
RE: #200 – Here, let me describe a “perfect storm” of sorts, during the current century:
– Weak cycle 24
– Overly exhuberent carbon sequestration activities
– One or more wars of mass destruction including multiple ground bursts of silo buster thermonuclear weapons
– Another Pinotubo
– Orbital wobble just right (or, as the case may be, just wrong)
I wonder if the IPCC has looked into how many would die from this? How many extinctions, etc?
#203
Yes, there is something interesting going on. But quite hard to follow (for me, again..)
MannLees96:
(tau was 14 years)
Schwartz detrends data, and obtains tau of 5 years.
And then Tamino:
But I’m here to learn. At first, can anyone explain how to make this plot:
?
I almost shot my soda out my nose when I read a post from Steve Bloom over at bigcitylib’s blog:
http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2007/09/deniers-rediscover-hockey-stick.html#links
“…What the frauditors never seem to pick up on (since they all agree that they’re too smart to be suckered) is that Wegman is an NAS insider and his involvement was intended from the start to give Inhofe and Barton enough to shut them up…”
There is something dark and disturbing about Bloom, Halpern, the anon poster here called “Deltoider” and a few others. This is something even beyond Hansen or even Mann. The mindset is really warped. Warped beyond the point where you can even have a constructive overtly political / polarized debate. They are beyond what most people would consider to be the norm. I used to be part of the hard core eco camp. In some ways, I still pick and choose a few things from that neck of the woods. But under no set of circumstances could I ever have evolved to reach the point of what I am witnessing.
Michael and SteveS,
You shouldn’t be surprised by what you see, and how the argument is shifting. It proves the points that I just made over in “A Second Look at USHCN Classification”. If you think anyone has made a substantial argument with the Mann and Hansen squabbles, think again. It’s a prime example of winning a battle and losing the war.
Steve Sa,
I was just over at BCL’s blog and the tone is 10X blacker than any of the gotcha’s here or most any other place I have hung with “deniers”.
I see humor among the deniers. Irony.
What I see among the warmers is cold blooded calculation.
Just remember Galileo was a denier.
210, there’s something else. There’s anger. There’s seething fury that mere mortals would dare to challenge the orthodoxy. That, topped with righteous indignation that Steve fiddles while earth burns.
These people are scary.
Ross McKitrick sent me an email saying that I was getting nominations in the list of 10 people who are not screwing Canada up: http://101people.blogspot.com/2007/09/last-call-for-your-nomination-for.html . My neighbor BCL will be furious.
I don’t know why they get so angry at me – unlike many critics, I’ve always said that, if I had a big policy job, I would be guided by the consensus as expressed by major institutions. But I would be far more demanding in ensuring that the research was cross-checked and verified and double-checked. Scientists should be responsible for their own details and stop crying Usufruct and the Gorilla if an error is identified. I don’t say that we shouldn’t make decisions until every detail is known. But the opposite also applies – scientists shouldn’t use the “big picture” as an excuse for negligence with details.
M.Simnon,
In the recent past, I’ve presented quotes from a number of prominent alarmists declaring that even if AGW is wrong, it get’s them where they need to be going anyway.
Many of these people take it as a matter of faith that mankind is a cancer on the planet. That anything that can be done to reduce man’s impact on the planet is in and of itself a good thing.
To them, discussing whether increasing CO2 is good for the planet or bad is sacrilidge. Any change, caused by man, is evil. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion.
To them, this is not a scientific issue, it’s a religious issue.
re
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1880
1934
It seems to have slipped again. Am I getting this from the wrong URL? Or is the change at their end.
Was there another correction and I missed the press release?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.txt
now,
year Annual_Mean
1934 1.24
1998 1.24
Then [August 8]
GISS U.S. Temperatures (deg C) in New Order
Year Old New
1934 1.23 1.25
1998 1.24 1.23
I kept all the years here.
http://marginalizedactiondinosaur.net/?p=814
Re 208.
Hey SteveS.. Did you ntice that Halpern dropped his chart of the number of “storms”
Wanna know why?
Re#213, what confuses me is how clueless they are about your views on AGW. They portray you as being on the absolute fringe of “denialists.”
Re#216, indulge me and explain what you’re talking about.
Steve Sa,
A lot of that anger comes from elevating to a moral certainty something which is rather uncertain.
When the rain dance no longer brings rain people lose faith. This is very disturbing. It makes people angry. At one tome so angry that they fought wars (still do actually) over the loss of moral certainty. It is a human phenomenon.
Find out what unbalances a man and I will show you his religion. Me? I hate stupidity. Ignorance not so much.
RE: #216 – Was it the cumulative ACE thing? And the way that ACE / storm made it obvious that the count padders have added shamelessly to the count, the past few years?
Suppose a man goes to the doctor to have his cholesterol checked. His reading is 180, which is below the 200 level where doctor’s start to express concern.
6 months later, the man has his cholesterol checked again, but this time, instead of fasting for 12 hours prior, he eats a medium breakfast. His cholesterol comes back at 205. Not dangerous, but outside the accepted range. His doctor talks to him about it, but the man disregards it since he knows he ate breakfast and wasn’t supposed to. He also doesn’t tell the doctor because he doesn’t want to be reminded of his failure to follow instructions.
6 months later, he gets tested again, this time after eating a very large breakfast with eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, fried apples, etc. His cholesterol comes back at 260. The doctor writes a prescription for Lipitor immediately.
This is the scenario that the pro CO2 AGW crowd seems to base their opinion and rectifications on. The trend is all that matters. Except as many of these blog entries have shown, changing file versions, constantly adjusting data, bad station placement, bad thermometers, SST adjustments due to different measuring techniques, satellite observations that don’t match surface observations, tree-ring divergence issues and so on and so forth, I don’t see how we can tell anything with a reasonable confidence interval that we know anything in particular.
I’m lazy today. Formula for ACE please….
# 219
Steve McIntyre,
The answer is plain: you look for truth, as many of us are looking for. That’s the reason. I’m not writing this because you’re my host, but because I’m going through a similar quandary in my town. IÂm not a celebrity as to scare them; most of my work is basic school work TheyÂre not scared, but angry at me.
No, no 219, but 213… Sorry Steve Sadlov, it’s not for you, but for Steve Mc. It must be the transition zone from warm to cold.
# 221
ACE is for Advanced Composition Explorer managed by NASA. ACE measures particles and energy incoming from the Sun and from Interstellar and other galactic sources.
# 221
Steven,
Here is the link:
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/ACE/
What a polite bunch of bloggers, I missed this when I scanned through. Earlier,
1934
Chymists among ye may want to go and participate in this:
http://rabettlabs.blogspot.com/
Here we go:
TEMPERATURES WILL BE SIGNIFICANTLY COOLER BEHIND THE FRONT AS SNOW
LEVELS DROP TO NEAR 7000 FEET. THE HIGHER ELEVATIONS OF THE SIERRA
COULD SEE A FEW INCHES OF SNOW AS THIS LOW MOVES THROUGH THE
AREA. THERE IS MUCH UNCERTAINTY IN THE EXACT TRACK OF THIS LOW
PRESSURE SYSTEM. THE TRACK WILL BE SIGNIFICANT IN DETERMINING THE
AMOUNT OF PRECIPITATION THE AREA RECEIVES. STAY TUNED FOR UPDATES
FROM THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ON THIS DEVELOPING WEATHER
SITUATION.
This could actually evolve into a dangerous scenario. Generally speaking, most people engaging in mountain activities in California do not consider September to be “winter.” In the past, when we’ve gotten unseasonable early “cold season” weather like this, there have been hikers and climbers caught unaware. Sometimes with deadly results.
227, I don’t see any comments over there, and none really come to mind. He’s got his units completely hosed up, but the concepts are ok. I don’t know if he’s saying anything that isn’t obvious, and I don’t know if he’s saying anything that confirms or denies AGW.
Just talking about bunny boxes.
228, especially if they are convinced that a blast of cold weather is impossible because of global warming. Sooner or later, people are going to die because of that.
# 230
I agree. I’ve been talking about the dangers of trusting on global warming propaganda in every conference that IÂve been allowed to speak on.
#213 Steve
Perhaps they should remind themselves of Usufruct and their Tenure sometime in the future someone else will sit in their seat and have an almighty mess to clean up if they are not good stewards.
David Smith, your NOAA link is to a June-August graph. Do you have a link to a January – August graph or dataset?
John M Reynolds
Nature Newsblog on the World Conference on Research Integrity:
It has to be admitted that this has a higher entertainment value than Jones’ excuses.
Glacier / sea ice data auditing, anyone? How reliable records do we have from the past 150 years?
If you manage to argue to an “alarmist” that the surface temperature record leaves a lot to be desired, they are bound to throw the Glacier / sea ice data at you, insisting it proves catastrophic warming. Glacier / sea ice data also has a strong popular image.
Do we even have enough (older) data to make reliable comparisons with say 1930’s? How do you usually counter that argument?
Re #206
Many of the papers are referring to different thinks but it is ironic that when they find a paper they don’t like they are very quick to pull the model misspecification rabbit out of the hat, despite that rabbit being left firmly in discussions about MBH etc.
I hadn’t spotted that plot. I thought I understood it, then looked more closely and realised it makes no sense. Has he labelled the axes the wrong way around?
Buddenbrook, you raise an interesting question:
To answer these kinds of questions, I go back to the data. Here’s a look at the three major global ice datasets. These are for total ice, Arctic and Antarctic:
As you can see, until modern times and the advent of satellites, there was very little information on the ice. This is particularly true in the Southern Hemisphere, as few ships voluntarily go near the ice pack there, while in the Northern Hemisphere there are a number of cities in areas which are not ice-free year round.
So the short answer is, we don’t have good records of sea ice until about 1979, when global satellite coverage began. And, as you can see from the different records, even with satellites there’s poor agreement between the records.
As an aside, the Antarctic sea ice just set a record … largest ice extent in history.
w.
Willis (#237)
Any explanation?
Re#230, problem is, “unexpected blasts of cold weather” are still used by the AGW hypers.
Here’s an example:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/12/AR2007031200997.html
Prior to global warming, the weather was always 100% predictable.
We knew with 100% certainty what the weather was going to be, weeks in advance.
–end sarcasm mode—
239, that’s called “heads, I win, tails you lose”. I don’t even think they see the logical fallacy in that.
It’s also called “covering all your bases.”
All your base are belong to us!
Mark
Some heavy physics for those interested.
jae, that’s not particularly remarkable. I never thought that there was any doubt about storms being driven by temperature differences. That’s one of Lindzen’s points; that storminess is driven primarily by polar/equatorial temperature differences, which are reduced as the greenhouse effect increases.
#244, Larry, if you are referring to #243, you are mis-representing the gist of the paper.
A borked translation (Japanese to English) from an old video game called Zero Wing. Here’s the wiki on it.
Mark
Gunnar, what, then, was the gist of the paper? It seemed pretty clear that he was stating the obvious fact that all atmospheric motion that isn’t attributable to the Coriolis effect is caused by a heat engine effect. What am I missing?
It is interesting that Steve McIntyre repeatedly uses the phrase “In accordance with the Data Quality Act” in his correspondence with various people in government climate science.
I wonder what other public use of data would not stand if people requested (demanded) that it be “In accordance with the Data Quality Act”.
One thing that comes to mind is the public showing of “An Inconvenient Truth” by any federal agency or representatives thereof, public schools receiving federal funding might be subject to the rules.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/reproducible.html
Inquiring minds would like to know…
The guy is even proposing a way to harness this energy.
#248,
Aren’t you mixing US and canadian laws? If not, you are certainly mixing federal and local jurisdiction. I realize that you are against AGW, but let’s not toss out the US constitution in our zeal. The correct political solution to AIT showings is the complete privatization of all schools, with all students receiving a voucher. Then, if parents object to showing AIT in every class, every day, with homework assignments being to show AIT to every family member and at least 5 other adults, then they can switch their kids to another school.
249, you’ve made the AGW argument moot. Except that would be astronomically expensive to build…
Wall street Journal
Most Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118972683557627104.html
#236, Spence_UK
I think they are somewhat related. One more quote:
IPCC AR4WG1 Ch03:
Heh, lt again. Sorry about that
#239,
Michael,
I always thought that the biggest AGW signal would first be seen in the mid-tropespheric tropics (as explained by Lord Monckton, the IPCC, and McKitrick), and secondly in the poles. If the tropics are in fact creating excess heat energy due to GHGs, than it should be reasonable to see over time an increase in temperatures in the polar source regions. Winters, overall, would be warming in the mid-latitudes due to less frequent passages of continental polar air-masses. El Nino events would be more frequent and more intense, and other tropical oscilations would be enhacned (such as the AMO).
As far as I know there is no tropical AGW signal, and most of the warmth the globe has seen since 1976 can still be attributed to a positive PDO. And while the North Atlantic SSTs remain warm, there has been a definite cooling in the SH. I suppose the next decade will at least decide which way our climate is heading. However, I would still avoid Vostok in August, or the Artic Circle in January. I still find it hard to believe that those 2 professional hikers from Scandanavia beleived that the Artic Ocean is anything but deadly during the darkest months of winter. Never underestimate the power of modern propaganda.
# 220 Jonathan
I have been mulling over your story. Here is my version – any similarity with persons living or dead is of course coincidental.
The Parable of the Doctor and the Jester
A man called Steve went to see his doctor (whose name was Hanson) for a cholesterol check. Dr Hanson said “To get your cholesterol level we just multiply the reading on this machine by 3. The reading is 60, so your cholesterol level is 190”. “Excuse me Dr Hanson” said Steve politely, “but doesn’t 3 times 60 make 180?”. Dr Hanson issued an angry press release, saying that it doesn’t matter what 3 times 60 is, and accusing Steve of being a jester.
Next year Steve went back for another cholesterol check. The level was 180. “Good”, said Steve, and got up to leave. “Hold on”, said Dr Hanson, “your level from last year has now been adjusted down to 160. This shows an alarming increase in your cholesterol. Unless you reduce your carbohydrate intake to below 50% of its 1990 level by 2010, you will be dead by 2020”. “But how was last year’s value adjusted?” asked Steve. “It’s simple, we use the new improved NASAGISSUSHCNSHAPFILNETGORILLA adjustment process” replied Dr Hanson. “Can you explain to me how that works?” asked Steve. “No”, replied Dr Hanson. “Trust me, I’m a doctor”.
RE #250
There is no mix of US and Canadian law or policy, I am in the US and the “Data Quality Act” as referenced is US legislation. Is there a question about the constitutionality of this law? If so, I have not heard of that.
My question is simple, where else may misinformation about climate science be promulgated by the government, where this law may be invoked to attempt to stop it?
Perhaps AIT in schools is a bad example, but of course one could fill reams of printouts with federal regulations implemented in schools at the local level, due to the federal funding they receive.
In any case, and agreeing with you on vouchers, back to the question:
Where else might the Data Quality Act be put to use?
#257. ok, thanks for the clarification.
>> Where else might the Data Quality Act be put to use?
Sorry to be so cynical, but do you really expect an obscure law to make a difference to these people? The period 92-00 saw almost every major area of law violated by the federal government on a regular basis. Both parties have accepted large amounts of money from foreign powers. The federal govt idea of accounting is +/- a billion USD. The prime example of this indifference to the rule of law is Al Gore finally saying “There is no convening authority” which can be translated to “I’m the VP, whatcha gonna do about it?”
Besides, the direction you’re pointing to is adjudication in the courts. I don’t think that works very well.
For those of you speaking glaciers, there’s not a lot of data on them.
Mass: http://www.wgms.ch/mbb/mbb9/sum05.html A very small sample size but more detailed info.
Movement: http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/query.html A larger sample size but less detailed info.
I know English, and I know a bit of Spanish, but I never learned glacier. Is it one of the Scandanavian tongues?
RE: #259 – We had an excellent discussion at Climate Science on that topic. Even had some glaciologists participating. Indeed, sample size is a real challenge with glacier data and characterization. There is still quite a bit that we do not understand. A real area of opportunity for a young, up and coming, researcher or PhD candidate, if I might opine.
Speaking glaciers, ja, Scandanavianis. lol
>> I never learned glacier. Is it one of the Scandanavian tongues?
Yes, you must speak very, very slowly, but remember to let it flow. The tone of voice must be icy cold.
RE: #228 – Latest models now prog snow level at 6500 feet with passage of the surface front. Then we get a few days of persistent cold pool under a cut off low. If it were closer to the winter solstice, we’d have a disasterous hard freeze facing us. As it stands, in much the same fashion that we had weather typical of early climatic fall as early as the end of July, we now face weather typical of late climatic Fall within the next 48 – 36 hours.
the next 48 – 72 hours …
The mysterious 2.5 C figure is used in this Science article. Maybe someone with access to it can check to see if there is a reference, or whether it is just stated as a fact, without a reference, as usual.
Steve Sadlov,
If 1934 cab become colder in 2007, I don’t see why time can’t run backward. Don’t restrain yourself with artificial constructs. NASA doesn’t.
# 183 Nasif…University of Alabama in Huntsville, not
Huntingdon??? Called John Christy about UHI in Barrow etc
just before Katrina rolled in in 2005…No guarding dog,
as opposed to Jim Hansen who’s got some dozen!?.
#264,265
Steve Sadlov..WE=Sweden has an astounding 3 month
pause of bare ground below 1000 m ASL ..Yesterday the
first snowfall of 2007-2008 season was recorded around
areas east of Jämtland’s “StorsjĂśn” Great Lake Beast (cf
Loch Ness) is reported to have said: “I’m not surprised
CAGW is a poppycock”(David Bellamy was credited…)
SMHI reported 1-2 cm but a photo in TV4 News site with
a snowy Mercedes in BringĂĽsen shows some 4-5 cm September
record for Jämtland is 10 cm (SMHI) Last time Jämtland
had September snow was …in 2003, before that 1968, 1952
Do you see a pattern…?? Until it snows every month of
the year in elevations above 200 m almost every year we
still have warming….
#268 Jaemtland=Province…Storsjoen=Lake…Bringaasen=small village
…Surprised Mercedes make the spam filter but they sponsor this
site…?? LOL…
Notice the word “if” and the co2/methane comparison. So, more “perhaps” kind of stuff.
Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
“According to this work, if the PETM was caused by the burning of plant material then climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is more than 4.5F (2.5C) per carbon dioxide doubling. And if methane was the culprit, then Earth’s climate must be extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide – increasing, over 10F (5.6C) per carbon dioxide doubling,” noted Pagani.
Other authors on the paper include David Archer in the Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, and James C. Zachos in the Earth Sciences Department, University of California, Santa Cruz. Citation: Science: (December 8, 2006).
#259
Sam …I see the name HAEBERLI in most references…
BE WARNED…If you drive a 4×4, SUV or “Stadsjeep”
as we say in Glacier Swedish… he has proclaimed that
you should have all the muddy water from flooding
in the world on your doorstep..! (I have the recording
somewhere on this laptop…)From SR P1 Studio Ett 2005
If you call yourself scientist that is one nutty comment
The mass balances of Norwegian glaciers are both up and
down…Precipitation and wind directions …
It seems pretty clear to me if you have an urban area producing warm air, or a change in wind speed or direction that gets more warm air on ice, or that ice gets soot on it or some other way to absorb more sunlight, that ice might uh melt or something….
For Mike B,
Some people in NOAA may apply TOB adjustments by morning, midday, evening, but USHCN does it
by the hour.
There is a station history metadata file at ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn
How accurate it is I cannot say, other than that it has not been updated recently.
ref 270: ÂAccording to this work, if the PETM was caused by the burning of plant material then climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is more than 4.5F (2.5C) per carbon dioxide doubling. And if methane was the culprit, then EarthÂs climate must be extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide – increasing, over 10F (5.6C) per carbon dioxide doubling, noted Pagani.
I wonder if he has considered the sensitivity to the breaching of a major fossil fuel reservoir which leached out onto the ocean surface. He could calibrate by using the SST data (uncorrected) from the NH 1939-45.
Someone was asking about lighthouses and pointing out that their records should be free from UHI. Up to a point, Lord Copper. For a bit of fun, use google maps and look at the middle of Southwold, Suffolk, England.
JF
Let them propose absurdly high climate sensitivities. The higher the sensitivity, the more of a delayed effect is needed to explain why we’re not most of the way there already. They’re painting themselves into a corner.
As I suspected, the mysterious 2.5 C for a doubling of CO2 is derived from climate models, not from any consideration of first principles. The radiative forcing IS derived from first principles (sort of). The history on all this is here (sorry if this has been linked previously).
But the climate models, in turn, are based on adjustable parameters, and the adjustable parameters are based on…
RE: #267 and 268 – I would add that in 45 plus years of life, meaning, 35 plus years of reasonably competent observational capability, I have never witnessed such an early outbreak of Arctic air in this location. This is truly unprecedented.
And just to be fair to AGW, I would not rule out the possibility that the large area of open water near the international date line in the Arctic Ocean may have played a role in setting this up. đ
# 278
Larry, Jae,
… adjustable ideas…;)
To be fair about estimating the sensitivity of temperature to CO2 doubling, the calculations are so complicated that one really needs to use some model to estimate its effects, but even that is not even a drop in the bucket compared to reality.
There are trillions and trillions of molecules in the atmosphere and a trillion, trillion photons of EM radiation streaming from the sun and a trillion, trillion photons of EM radiation being reflected off the earth back into the atmosphere and into space every single second. Those trillions of photons are interacting with the trillions of molecules and the trillions of molecules are interacting with each other a hundred times each second. How can a person calculate what happens if 100 billion CO2 molecules are added to that mix.
One might say if 100 billion CO2 molecules are added to the atmosphere, knowing what we know about how CO2 molecules interact with photons of EM radiation of a certain type, then X should happen.
Then the person would need to be able to say, should X happen, what happens to the other trillions and trillions of molecules in the atmosphere.
Then …
It is really much, much too complicated to use just theory, and much, much too complicated to model.
We could, instead, just use the actual data about what happens when 100 billion molecules of CO2 are added. See actual history of earth’s temperature and actual concentration of CO2 in earth’s history and compare.
# 280
John,
We’re not creating OCO from the void, but transforming some materials and throwing OCO back towards the system from which it was taken by photosynthetic organisms through billions of years. Matter could not be conserved, but energy always is conserved. We are dependent on macroscopic systems and laws for knowing the outcomes of increasing any gas in the atmosphere. There are observations and experiments finished by investigators that have been verified or falsified by many other scientists through many years. The only thing we have to change is to the seizure of climate science. Climate science has many uncertainties that force many failures, and the last situation has been used by a coalition moved by I donÂt know what objectives. I insist, they are trying to change science, history, methodologies, etc. I cannot think in another thing other than solipsism invading science.
Larry September 18th, 2007 at 11:12 am,
The importance of the paper is that a relatively simple thermodynamic model is in good agreement with observation.
BTW the energy density possible with the vortex generator is going to be low.
150 W/m^2 is the energy density at the earth surface the Vortex folks claim. They claim they can recover 1/6th of that. 25 W/m^2. Pitiful.
jae #266 The article says that there is evidence for a 5C rise at the PETM so ‘assuming a climate sensitivity of 1.5-4.5C for a doubling of CO2’ (a la IPCC presumably, it doesn’t actually give a reference for this) directly leads to an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere of 26000-750ppm (the lower the climate sensitivity, the higher the concentration of CO2 you need to give you the temperature rise) but then you have the problem of maintaining such a high CO2 concentration over a very long period of time (170,000 years) with factors such as, it will try to dissolve in the oceans (and they say that this happened with evidence for acidification of the ocean with changes in the depth of the carbonate formation layer). They don’t know however what caused the CO2, where it came from – so the higher the temperature sensitivity to CO2 doubling, the less CO2 you have to explain. The amount of CO2 that you have to explain is so colossal that you only stand a chance of producing the amount you need by known mechanisms if the amount is at the lowest end of the estimate which means that you must have a very high temperature sensitivity.
I would note that this assumes the worldwide 5C figure is accurate, that the global warming of 5C in the PETM is caused by CO2 and also that temperature follows CO2 and not vice versa.
http://rsnz.natlib.govt.nz/image/rsnz_07/rsnz_07_00_0555_0476_ac_01.html
#236,
It seems to be made of detrended deseasonalized monthly GISS and 5 realizations of monthly AR(1) process with a 5-year time scale. n-lag autocorrelation is estimated (unreported method, result is ph(n)), then tau is estimated by th=-n/ln(ph(n)). Compute th until ph(n) is negative. Then plot(n,th), and you’ll get Time Scale (estimated tau) to y-axis and Lag to x-axis.
(Math might be a too powerful tool for them )
..and everyone remembers from Granger’s papers that
AR(p)+white noise = ARMA(p,p)
You might want to look what happens to estimate of tau (as described above) with short lags in that case. But don’t draw any conclusions, and try to avoid math lessons given by Tamino or Schwartz.
as near as I can tell, best gueses.
The HADCrut3 surface temperature plot, updated through August, is here . We’re entering year seven of little net change in global temperature. With a neutral or weak La Nina event underway in the Pacific, that trend should continue through 2007.
David Smith, have you found that NOAA January – August graph or dataset yet, or did you miss my last comment?
And Steve, so you know, your message preview does not work if there are two links. For the above, it gave me “David Smith, have you found that my last comment?”
John M Reynolds
Make that “best guesses and wishfull thinking”.
289
The link and preview pane problem has been known for some time. The work-around is to put a space between the = and ” in the HTML tag. This will let you see the text correctly, but the links in the preview will not work. However, they will work in the posted text.
Re #289 John the link to the report is here . January-August is the fourth warmest per NOAA, not seventh warmest – my error, I picked up June-August (boreal summer) rather than the full year. The point that it is unlikely that 2007 will be a record year still stands, of course.
>> It is really much, much too complicated to use just theory, and much, much too complicated to model. We could, instead, just use the actual data…
This is a rejection of science itself, I guess because science has been perceived to be opposed to the agenda. A kind of distorted philosophy of science that might be called empiricism.
SteveS: Like any other part of the system, of course what we do has an effect. Just to randomly name two of them, agrigcultural irrigation and air pollution. Too bad we don’t really know the exact extent. đ
280 John Lang says: September 18th, 2007 at 8:01 pm We could, instead, just use the actual data about what happens when {some amount} of molecules of CO2 are added.
I’m looking at a chart right now of CO2 on a scale of 260 to 380, lines every 25, with the global mean anomaly on the same scale on the other axis. CO2 is basically flat to 1880. From 1880 to around 1945, it climbs up to the 310 line. Temperature basically does nothing (at least on this scale). From around 1945 to 2005, the CO2 line goes up 3 lines, from 310 to 380. About the time CO2 hits the 335 line in around 1980, there’s an uptick in the temp that’s finally noticable, creating a 25 year uturned blip in what’s basically a flat line over 130ish years. Some would say I’m playing with the scale. I am. To prove a point by putting the relation in perspective. (Or as Gomer Pyle would say “That is some lag you got goin’ on there, yo”)
In general: To kind of repeat what Nasif said. There’s a reason they call it the “carbon cycle” The carbon dioxide comes from somewhere and has somewhere to go back to. So we take it out of oil and put it in the air and sea and plants. So what? It’ll get back somehow.
PETM: Basing future results in the modern world upon what happened (as proxies show) from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum is a stretch. I put not much stock in it. But at least we know where this 2.5C guesstimate is from.
Warmest year: For the sake of sanity, any year within .2 C or maybe even .4 C (if the MOE is +/- .2) of any other year is in a tie. Especially given the recent .2 C correction for the US. There’s no need to discuss what year is which, really, is there?
The article in 252 links here – “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”
It’s pretty clearly targetted towards biotech. This is an interesting observation though…
This too
Preview’s unintelligible. Fingers crossed for the links getting through.
290:
Please use IPCC-speak here. It’s “Best Estimate.”
Interesting that the best estimate is also the lowest estimate.
“There’s no need to discuss what year is which, really, is there?”
Sam, the difference in temperature may not be all that significant in and of itself. The main point is that the temp is not increasing as AWG theory suggests it should since the OCO levels are rising still.
John M Reynolds
No, that’s a sloppy error in the source.
275, Larry:
That’s a very good point. We already have a “lag” of about 9 years. Where’s the heat?
RE: #278 – It has become grim and gloomy here today. There can be no doubt that we shall experience wintry weather before the end of the day. This would be unremarkable if I were writing this sitting in Central Alberta or Orkney, but I am not. I am in California. “Normally” we’d have a climatic summer pattern through Septmber, at very least. Our climatic fall pattern would last into December. Our climatic winter would be through early March. But this year, climatic fall began at the end of July. And now, here, Sept 19, still in astronomical summer, we face late climatic fall weather. Again, this is weather, not climate. However, it has been my observation that, whereas the 80s through mid 90s were “normal” per the above here (upper 30s north), since the mid 90s, there has been a general degradation in weather. The warmth and lack of coastal stratus which used to bless us during early astronomical spring and the first two thirds of astronomical fall has become unreliable. In some years, it is now non existent. Make of this what you will.
ok, SteveS, but it IS just weather. Rest assured that somewhere else, either in air or water, it is warmer than usual. Even though you say “Again, this is weather, not climate”, I’m not sure you beleive that, since you take the trouble to post it here.
# 300
Dear Steve Sadlov,
Would you define that like “climate change” or “weather change”? I couldn’t define it properly like “weather degradation”.
RE: #302 – personally, I view it as a multi decadal scale climate shift. Of course, such shifts are a fact of life. I wonder how much this unmistakeable shift experienced in this region, has been swamped by microsite issues, UHI and sheer psychological “shape shifting” of preceived reality driven by the mass expectation of “Greenhouse-world?” (“Greenhouse: It will happen in 1997”)
Re Gunnar #283
I must admit that I don’t get this anti-statistics hobby horse of yours, Gunnar. Without data, Science is Philosophy (not that there is anything wrong with Philosophy). And once you have data, you’re going to use statistics, whether you call it that or not.
The Scientific Method is at its core iterative:
1. Theory
2. Experiment
3. Analysis
4. Learn
5. Repeat
Like it or not, statistical methods are crucial not just in Step 3, but as R.A. Fischer proved at Rothamsted, in Step 2 as well.
I spent much of my career in Industrial Quality Control and Process Optimization. I long ago lost count of the number of times a PhD pulled me aside to write out a bunch of equations proving that treatment X cannot possibly produce outcome Y. And on many of those occasions, x did indeed cause y. And it isn’t because the PhDs were idiots, it is because the real world was alot more complex than they thought, and that there was plenty of “juice” remaining in Step 4.
I don’t know if increasing anthropogenic C02 causes the earth to get substantially warmer. But I do know that if the average global temperature (as measured, corrected, adjusted, and readjusted) hasn’t increased by 0.7 deg since 1975, nobody would be talking about CO2, or the LIA, or the MWP.
So pardon me while I get back to assessing the gauge capability of the GHCN. All that philosophizing about CO2 may not even be necessary.
ÂThereÂs no need to discuss what year is which, really, is there?Â
John M Reynolds, that comment is that the argument shouldn’t be about the inconsistent statments and press releases on the subject, and endless discussions over which year was the “hottest” or “coldest”. It’s just a bunch of averages of averages of means of samples of adjustments of both tiny and huge areas. The point is statistically, many years are a tie. Why discuss differences in the MOE?
Now, the fact that so many are ties in the margin of error, and that there were years of far less co2 that were just as warm (or just as cold) as others of more co2, that’s what the statistical tie points to, of course. But I wasn’t making that point in that paragraph.
As you can see above that, I do point out the huge (as measured where meaured) rise in co2 levels with the temps graphed on the same scale doesn’t show what you’d expect, and there must be some sort of a huge hidden lag that’s going to be coming along “any day soon now”.
I don’t care what it does, I just see what it’s doing. And it doesn’t look like much.
What that means is another issue on top of that!
304, I agree with you that Gunnar’s jihad against statistics is wrong. However. In my experience in process engineering, I’ve frequently found the exact opposite of what you’ve found; that if your measured plant data conflicts with rigorous mass or energy balances, the data is flawed. You can take it to the bank. There are, in fact, some things from theory that are so simple, and so rigorous that when the theory contradicts the measurements, the measurements turn out to be wrong. Period.
That’s why one of the basic integrity tests that’s done on any processing plant is the mass balance. If the flowmeters, taken together with rates of change from level meters, don’t balance within a few percent, you need to check the meters.
So the truth is somewhere between. You need to test the theory against the numbers, but sometimes you need to check the numbers against rigorous theory, too.
re 294.
The carboniferous era.
Returning C02 to its righful place in the atmosphere, freeing C02 from imprisonment
will return the world to it’s natural swamplike condition.
FREE the C02!
>> I must admit that I donÂt get this anti-statistics hobby horse of yours,
You completely misunderstand me. I’m not at all against statistics in general. I agree with you that statistics are crucial in various stages of the SM, which is 1. Hypothesize, 2. Attempt to Falsify Hypothesis with Experiments, 3. Analyze, 4. Learn, 5. Repeat
However, if you read the post (#280) I was responding to (to be fair to you, I neglected to include the number), you’ll see that someone proposes to skip step 1. This is a new philosophy of science devoid of the SM. To clarify my position about statistics, I quote myself from a previous posting:
I use the word scientific to distinguish between two approaches to trying to determine the nature of reality:
1) using a statistical approach devoid of any knowledge of science. (“wet sidewalks cause rain”)
2) using the scientific method to propose a theory and then actually testing that hypothesis.
Option 1 is a suspicious attempt to shortcut the scientific method. It’s not statistics that I’m against, but using only statistics in an attempt to add credibility to an otherwise indefensible assertion. For example, using only statistics, I can make a case that I am personally responsible for the entire US GDP. Whenever I come to work, everyone else does as well. I must be causing them to go to work. Using only statistics, you can’t prove me wrong. That’s what the AGW case is like.
>> But I do know that if the average global temperature (as measured, corrected, adjusted, and readjusted) hasnÂt increased by 0.7 deg since 1975, nobody would be talking about CO2, or the LIA, or the MWP.
So, is the goal to get people to stop talking about it, or determine if the hypothesis is correct or not?
If everything AGW science says is correct, then we will fry in 2100, and there won’t be any way to fix it. It is AGW marketing that focuses on current warming.
Boris says:
September 19th, 2007 at 9:47 am
“Interesting that the best estimate is also the lowest estimate.”
No, thatÂs a sloppy error in the source.
But we seem to be seeing a lot of “sloppy errors” in the source data (when we can get the source data).
weather to change, or not to change, that is the question
Larry,
You could check for leaks.
312, you’ve never been around a real chemical plant, have you?
313 addendum: That is, a real chemical plant since the 1980s (before that, it wasn’t uncommon to run pipes underground, and a bad balance was frequently the first sign of 1,000,000 gallons of nasty snot in the ground).
Hey! People from the TV were here at my office some minutes ago for an interview on gums distilling from an Acacia tree in Rio Grande, Texas. đ The owner of the tree told the Media it was ice đ Witnesses said that it was a miracle. Other said it was a signal on some kind of imminent catastrophe on the world. I said it was a plague from which the tree was defending against with saponin, hah đ The program will be released tomorrow morning at 7:00 AM… See it and know this scientist (me) on summer dresses. đ http://www.aztecanoreste.com/info7.shtml
#309
Thanks for your clarification of your views on the Scientific Method in 308. Not much separates us.
I wonder how the attendees at the conference would respond to this link from the Media Center at the ESF website:
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/geowissenschaften/bericht-85588.html
Re#282, M. Simon:
ÂThe importance of the paper is that a relatively simple thermdynamic model is in good agreement with observation.Â
The paper is awesome. It explains (in very clear way) a lot of things:
Fig 5a  why GHG effect should be 3-4 times less than according to popular models: convective heat transfer from surface to upper atmosphere is 2.5 times bigger than radiative. By-by violation of second law by GHG effect models based on assumption that Earth surface is in total radiative balance, like in greenhouse where convective and moisture heat transfer is arrested by glass roof. Hello to Idsos empirical estimations of climate sensitivity from CO2 doubling (three-ten times less than IPCC calculated):
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/idso98.htm
Chapter 8.1 Â role of water vapor: transport of latent heat in moist atmosphere makes Lorenz hypothesis of max generation of available potential energy in adiabatic atmosphere equal to max entropy production hypothesis in atmosphere.
Chapter 8.2 explains why net of all feedbacks should be negative to any external forcing in turbulent non-linear fluid system of Earth-Oceans-Atmosphere  poleward heat transfer by atmosphere and oceans is self-regulating mechanism (a la principle of Le Shatelier).
Funny thing, according to MEP principle wind turbines should heat the EarthÂ
The article:
Click to access Ozawa%20etal%20(2003).pdf
I for one must say I’ve never thought Gunnar was anti anything. If I remember, there was a tad bit of misunderstanding about Steve’s motives and the purpose behind the board that were resolved with some rational discussion of the issue. I don’t remember anything about the methods or reasons ever.
319, Maybe I also misunderstood, but I got the distinct impression that he was arguing that science was only theory, and empiricism (such as is being done here) isn’t science. If that’s what he’s saying, he doesn’t understand the basics of science. If not, a clarification would help.
Amazing – once again no use of the banned word “irrigation”
Identification of human-induced changes in atmospheric moisture content – Santer and friends.
You can find the pdf here:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0702872104v1?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=santer&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
#317 the Duke,
I did a short bit on sea salinity called Global Warming Causes.
I present two conflicting reports – global warming increases salinity and global warming decreases salinity.
Basically: if something is changing in the environment it is caused by global warming.
What we are dealing with is not science. It is religious dogma. Instead of the Maker being the first cause we have OCO.
Evidently people have to believe in something. Of the believers the Dobkinites seem to be the least offensive.
Mike B,
I agree with you about the logical possibilities you describe in #316. It supports my point that determining if two variables are correlated or not is hardly dispositive about causal relationships. However, I’d like to point out that in situation 1, the distribution is not equal between a,b,c, and d. My hunch about the distribution is a=5% b=5% c=40% d=50%.
So, I take it from your “nobody really gives a hoot about situation 2” that your answer to my question is:
the goal is to get people to stop talking about it
by making the case that we’re in situation #2. So, boiling down the AGW argument to it’s bare essentials:
premise A: It’s getting hotter these days
premise B: Humans are adding C02 to the atmosphere
conclusion: We must restrict the right of Humans to use energy
Your approach is to say either: 1) It’s not getting hotter these days or 2) The proponents are incompetent.
My approach is that I want to know whether AGW is true or not. If it’s not true, I’d like to avoid a human rights abuse, but if it is true, I’d like to avoid unpleasant consequences with some sort of technological solution, thus avoiding a human rights abuse. My approach is more robust, since if in 2025, temperatures soar, the AGW idea will not be resurrected, at least not in it’s current form. They may then focus on “man is removing oxygen from the environment”, or “man is changing the water cycle” or any number of other half-baked ideas, and no matter what the problem is, the solution will be “We must restrict the right of Humans to use energy”. No matter what, I don’t want to be forced to argue that it’s not getting hotter, or that the proponents are incompetent, since there may well be a time that does warm up, and they may very well get more competent.
Your approach is perplexing to me though, since even in this case, there is no measured correlation between A and B, so we’re in Situation 2.
# 321
Soon, water will be a toxic pollutant… by Supreme Court decree, hah! đ
Kinda like Rabbet?
Larry, I think a fair amount of arguing about the same thing from a different side (convex/concave spoon disagreement) MeI thought what was being said was that ideas that didn’t meet the agenda being focused upon, if those were ignored rather than being tested was science. Something like that. It’s clarified in 308
“ItÂs not statistics that IÂm against, but using only statistics in an attempt to add credibility to an otherwise indefensible assertion.”
And to an extent the rhetorical question in 309 “So, is the goal to get people to stop talking about it, or determine if the hypothesis is correct or not?” (We all know what the correct answer is, I hope.)
But even then I didn’t get 280 as being anything but a brainstorm of rhetoricalness. I didn’t get teh impressiong anyone was suggesting skipping steps in the first place. Not sure.
I’m not sure if anyone’s understanding anyone else! đ
Gunnar,
I think we’re on Situation 2. If someone needs to adjust data to make them agree with his ideas, it is not science.
Re: Dobkinites – I got my electronics confused with my religion.
It should be Bob Dobbs.
Re #6
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitivity/#comment-54373
Re: #2,
Anthony, possibly Grant Foster? (just a guess)
RE8, 9 No I don’t want it to become an “out anybody” thread. But this trend bothers me.
What matters most is that an influential scientific opinion is presented anonymously with implied endorsement by the known scientists at RC. At least with RC, they have the integrity to stand behind what they print by putting their own names to the blog, unlike many.
Currently in science you cannot:
Apply for grants anonymously
Hold a university position anonymously
Teach anonymously
Be a member of a professional science organization anonymously
Publish in scientific journals anonymously
Receive scientific awards anonymously
…and a few others I probably haven’t thought of.
Yet we have publishing science works on the Internet anonymously, and some people are taking such works seriously.
I think scientific works presented anonymously like at RC set a very bad precedent. Along those lines, we have the author of this thread, “UC” who I have no idea who it is. Steve McIntyre has stood for open dialog and accountability, and I think this too sets a bad precedent. Steve what do you think?
There has been no great scientific advance in history that has been the fruit of anonymous work. Be it triumph or failure, if your work is important enough to be considered by others, IMHO, I think you should stand behind it with your name. Just because internet anonymity is afforded to commenting trolls doesn’t mean it should be extended to authors.
In the case of Tamino, according to Bloom, the fact that he is spending time at his profession doing other things he prefers to keep hidden from his employer only lessens his credibility in my mind.
The source of the data is more important than the source of the research. Anonymity or not, facts are facts. However, when you have thousands of research papers coming out, many based on questionable science, it quickly turns into a convoluted mess of diversion and noise. One can disprove the whole lot with one paper, but if it isn’t given the same hype as the thousands of flawed research out there, then it will probably have little effect.
Re: #9,
Joel, you make some good points. I wasn’t thinking and certainly wasn’t intending to be malicious with my guess in post #8, and I agree that Tamino’s blog is sometimes interesting, has made some good points, and the blog owner was cordial to me when I posted some comments previously. I should have showed more respect for someone’s wish to remain anonymous however, my bad. Might as well drop my dumb moniker while I’m apologizing, too.
318: Fascinating paper, I agree. There’s an awful lot of information there. Convection is much more important than radiation.
Why did I suspect that Cryosphere Today was going to adjust down the maximum ever recorded Antarctic sea ice area they found on Sept. 10th?
As soon as I saw it, donÂt know why, I felt like downloading and saving the images. Indeed, barely a week afterwards they are recanting and claiming to have been victims of Âa small glitch in our softwareÂ. The curves have gone down. A comparison of their previous image and the newer one is here: http://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html
Climate may be difficult to predict but at this stage climate scientists are extremely predictable đ Still, the SH sea ice area continues to grow and we may well have a new record, with adjustments and all.
In any case, with so many areas of climate science in need of auditing, IÂm happy to see competent people focusing on the GISS data. I still think that GISS is going to declare this year as the record warmest one. Right now, 2007 is practically tied with their previous record (2005) +0.61 versus +0.62, with 1998 a distant third at +0.57. A warmish fall and theyÂll get their sought-after record. But this is totally at odds with HadCRUT and the UHA and RSS satellite estimates, apart from being very incredible for those of us weathernuts who keep observing temp reports throughout the world as a hobby.
re: 11 Tamino’s seal of approval
It’s even simpler than that — if Mr Bloom knows and blesses him, one must subtract value from the posts. Quite simply, Mr Bloom wouldn’t know any better.
M. Simon, #327: You could call them Dobbitts.
I got that link from the European Science Foundation
http://www.esf.org/ext-ceo-news-singleview/article/world-conference-on-research-integrity-to-foster-responsible-research-318.html
website that Steve had linked in his thread “World Conference on Research Integrity to Foster Responsible Research:” and posted the post you see on that thread. I found it ironic that the same group that was sponsoring the conference would have a link containing such speculative science on its website. Steve M. didn’t see the irony (or perhaps I didn’t explain it properly) and moved my post over here.
I see your point about faith-based science. It’s like the researchers are saying, “we have AGW and it’s becoming a research money tree. Let’s see if we can connect it to our field–the movement of salt in the ocean.”
I can’t get to Lubos’ site anymore. Browser freezes up on opening page. Anyone else having problems like this?
RE: #315 – “se han ganado la credibilidad y fidelidad”
Hmmmmmm…. this is the media we’re talking about here! đ
nope, i still can get in.
Lubos uses google blogspot, which is low priority on the google servers. Sometimes it stalls out, but it usually doesn’t last.
Around 13-SEP, there was another rescaled (to 17M sq-km) image around that after pushing thru 16M sq-km, pulled back toward 16M before rising back up to the 16.28 pre-revision NEW record. So it looks like their time-series fix did more than pull the ’07 maximum down — it also also smoothed out Sep’07! They must have received a lot of feedback about distracting from the arctic records with that pesky SH sea ice growth — definitely yet another candidate for rigorous audit.
re 11: ‘What matters most is that an influential scientific opinion is presented anonymously…’
IMHO, as long as someone consistently uses the same pseudonym, they are not really anonymous. They develop a reputation that we can use to help assess credibility. What does it matter where they work or live (unless they are specifically claiming something untrue)?
In science, the value of ideas should not depend on who is presenting them.
NOTE: 332 refers to 321 …
Re: NEW (or reNEW) Cryosphere record — possible yes, but I suspect it will not make it. The 18.0M in NSIDC for AUG needs to increase by 1.4M to get to relative maximum of 19.4M sq-km in SEP. That would be a big jump for the 79-present period, and a record announcing divergence is unlikely for obvious reasons.
With early fall reaching much of the NH, I would be surprised at a GISS temp record for 2007 — but my suspicion of “the vote counters” making it happen, (which I posted many months ago on another CA thread) it would not surprise me.
Correction: 332 & 333 refer to 329…
Борис – читал проклятый пост.
In addition to the thoughts expressed by Anthony Watts, I would say that anyone who wants to ridicule other people should at least have the courage to do so without hiding behind a pseudonym. Most likely tamino is not going to change attitude, but at least I think we can now put a name and a face on taminoÂs mask.
We know [1] that tamino is a man. He tells us [2] that he was quite alive (and aware) in the seventies, and an educated guess is that he must be around 50 years old today. Tamino is a mathematician by education [3], does not only Fourier [4] but also excel in wavelets [5]. We learn that he writes his own software, and has detailed knowledge about the program WWZ. Through [6] and [7] we learn that his home state is Maine. He has worked at AAVSO for nearly a decade [8], and also link to AAVSO from his weblog.
Now…enter Grant Foster http://www.aavso.org/news/foster.shtml
[1] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/05/05/vanity-fair/#more-245
[2] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/fish-in-a-barrel/
[3] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/pay-it-forward/#more-221
[4] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/02/16/by-request/#more-162
[5] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/01/26/wonderful-world-of-wavelets/#more-141
[6] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2006/12/17/al-gore/#more-71
[7] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2006/12/15/moosehead-lake/#more-70
[8] http://tamino.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/for-the-love-of-it/
John V., most people put this site on the denier side because there is no longer any middle ground in this polarized debate.
ANY questions about AGW = Denier
BTW one of the reasons why UC for example uses a pseudonym is because of the fear of personal repercussions. Same with John A. So I understand why some people choose to use pseudonyms. In the case of Eli Rabett, he’s unfortunately taken advantage of the anonymity to indulge in perverted language – “wanna see some pictures, little girl” – to 15-year old Kristen B, language that I’m sure Josh Halpern’s wife and university would disapprove of.
Re.: #11,
Anthony, I can sympathise, but… wasn’t the t-test published under the pseudonym “Student”?
Personally I’m not that bothered. I can’t stand the standard AGW tactic of attacking the speaker rather than what was said; I’m much more interested in the quality of the content.
I hate when people hide behind silly pseudonyms
jae (#18) I exchanged several emails with Lubo about his site locking up my IE browser. He suggested Firefox which I’ve since downloaded and can successfully access his site without lockups.
Bob
DaVinci wrote in mirror script and in doing so created a cloak. Being ambidextrous and naturally capable of mirror script [something I can relate to] he crucially gave himself coverage/camo in an age when what he was postulating would have got him burned at the stake [in a flash, as it were].
Maybe academic reputations and research grants have become larger than life these days, altough we do not any longer burn people at the stake [akin to running the bulls “sin cojones”]. If that’s not the case, UC or anyone else who has scientific pretentions, posting anywhere, should “de-cloak”.
#42 That would explain why one of us in the “denier” camp would hide behind pseudonyms, but not why someone who parks themselves firmly in the “consensus” camp would do so. The consensus “pseudonymers” are the least likely to be “burned at the stake” reputationally.
History tells us that in extremely divisive times visionary people, who could not normally speak out because their lives or livelihoods might be endangered, take the opportunity to express themselves freely through the use of a pen name or alias.
A few examples: Mark Twain, A Pennsylvania Farmer, Publius, Lenin, etc.
Much scientific experimentation and research down through history has been conducted in secret for obvious reasons. There’s probably more secret or private research going on in our time than ever before, if for no other reason than fields of knowledge are expanding so rapidly due to computerization and because the rewards are potentially so great.
The content of a post is always more important than the name of its author. If a post by an anonymous poster is particularly prescient, we should respect that person’s right to privacy.
#42 tetris
During the Renaissance (Da Vinci) and Reformation (Newton et al), scientists were forced to be secretive because there was no copyright protection. They also were secretive to prevent persecution as you rightly stated. You had two choices, one, you could publish posthumously, which many did, or two, publish your work to prevent a rival from beating you to the punch or prevent an unethical rival from stealing it from you. By the way, Newton was particularly paranoid about having his work stolen.
Today, in a free and open society, anonymity is an unpleasant fact. I use my full name here because I have nothing to hide and happily, my employer would not be upset by me posting at a scientific blog on my spare time. This may not be true for some. There will be those who use a pseudonym for good and proper reasons, but sadly, there are others who choose a pseudonym for mischievous purposes. Better to focus on what is said than who is saying it.
Ian
Re:#318
I suggest you compare the net (up-down) numbers from Kiehl and Trenberth with those of Ozawa et. al. They aren’t very different. The major difference appears to be a higher value for incoming solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere in Ozawa (98 vs. 67 W/m2) resulting in a lower net from the surface. That happens when you subtract one somewhat uncertain large number from another. Nothing new here in terms of energy balance.
Ian McLeod said:
“Better to focus on what is said than who is saying it.”
Your point is dead on. If you don’t want people to know who you are, that is your right and you need not justify that to anyone. What is important is the quality of the argument, not the motives or source behind it.
#23, 38
You may need to replace the ” in the first line, as the blog software used here replaces " with slanting “. Very tedious.
#46
Yes I detrended the simulations. Not sure that was entirely appropriate, but that step didn’t make much difference. The simulations vary widely, from those like Tamino has to those more like your first figure. But none have low values of time scale at short lags cf the observed data.
Post #37 please at least pretend your after the science rather than the man, Steve đŚ
Duke,
From the article you linked:
Change is bad. Something must be done.
The next unstated line of course is – give us your money.
Mikel, #329: I had GISS data until August only, but they showed all 3 years at about 0.61-0.62°C anomaly, so how did you have 0.57°C for 1998 (to have a 0.04°C fall from 8-moths mean to 9months mean, even if September is just at 2/3, 1998 would have needed a much more colder September than it had)? Or you are comparing 1998 12-months value with 2007 8-months one?
Anyway, for NOAA, until August 2007 is just the 4th year on their World records: so, the GISS would really be alone to claim 2007 as the warmest ever (globally, not locally).
Filippo: IÂm taking the average of the monthly anomalies for the available months in each year, which is what you find in the J-D column of the GISTEMP tabledata: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
As for GISS being the only ones in claiming warmth records, donÂt you doubt that they would, as they have done so often in the past (look at their exuberant August +0.61 anomaly for the SH, while the rest showed barely positive figures). With a not-so-cool autumn, I think that GISS are on their way to get a 2nd if not 1st place for 2007 easily (and announce it with all possible fanfare), which is one additional reason why the current auditing efforts could be so valuable.
A record 2007 NASA declaration could trigger a further spending binge of taxpayers money all over the world, especially in Europe.
In a way, I guess itÂs normal for Hansen to more or less subtly introduce a bias in his temperature records, which in effect are the verification step of his AGW hypothesis launched in the Â80s. That could happen with any other scientist. What is a real overturning of the scientific method (not the only one in climate science) is for the rest of the scientific community to ignore how exactly he is carrying out this empirical verification.
Anonymity is generally more usefull for those who are going against the consensus than for those supporting it.
From American Thinker:
Anthony, it also matters that “scientific” opinion not be relayed through dubious sources
like Fox News. But that horse has left the barn already, hasn’t it?
James:
Now that’s scary.
I guess American Thinker believes that there have been no changes in the world that might impact the temperature relationships between different regions in the last few hundred years.
BCL,
You are wrong on two counts.
1) The organization that relays the information is even less important than the source of the information.
2) The only thing “dubious” about Fox is that it fails to follow the hard left line that the other media source adhere to.
should be re 56
>> distinct impression that he was arguing that science was only theory, and empiricism (such as is being done here) isnÂt science. If thatÂs what heÂs saying, he doesnÂt understand the basics of science. If not, a clarification would help
Larry, sorry you got that impression. I think I clarified it in #308
Thought this would provide some amusement:
NASA Scientists Predicted a New Ice Age in 1971
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070919/NATION02/109190067
Although Hansen is not the NASA Scientist referred to above, apparently Hansen wrote the software that was used to make the prediction.
42, semantics. The spectral components are commonly referred to in EE literature as “complex frequency”. I suppose you use i instead of j, too…
Skimming through I can’t find where Schwartz explicitly says anything about ignoring vertical mixing, but the ultimate point remains the same: the rate at which the deep ocean takes up heat is quite uncertain, but has a significant influence on estimates of climate sensitivity.
It should be relatively straightforward to demonstrate this for someone who wants to do the work: take Schwartz’s EBM and add an upwelling/diffusive ocean to it with vertical diffusivity as a free parameter. Determine the climate sensitivity of the model in a 2xCO2 experiment; fix the parameters so it has a CS of, say, 3 C. Per Annan’s suggestion, use the model to generate a simulated temperature trend with noise superimposed, then use Schwartz’s diagnostic (EBM without the ocean model) to see if it returns 3 C or something lower. (For that matter, see if his EBM with an ocean can recover the known 3 C sensitivity.)
I don’t think Schwartz’s method estimates any time response that’s relevant to the climate system: it is not well approximated as having a single response time.
As for climate prediction, you’re right about the 10-year time frame. But not getting shorter time frames right doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of understanding of all important variables (although that is probably the case in reality): much of the short term uncertainty is likely due to initial conditions, not just model misspecification, as Cox and Stephenson noted in Science a few months ago.
There is plenty of literature on the problems with doing seasonal/annual climate prediction, but I’m not too familiar with it. You might want to look at Bob Livezey’s stuff.
49, whatever.
Re#347, The Foster et al letter, combined with Tamino’s post at RC, basically gave away his identity.
Re#348, It’s interesting how the work “skeptic” is almost never used anymore by the AGW crowd. “Denialist” now dominates the rhetoric. It’s not that the “skeptics” have changed their views, just that the AGW crowd feels the need to use harsher language to either convince themselves or others that “skeptics” should be ignored and silenced.
I think what you’re getting at is the s-domain representation, i.e. s = sigma + j*omega. Personally, I spend more time using z-domain since everything is discrete time.
Mark
#338
jae, use the cunning little vixen, Firefox latest
version I’ve also had problems with the reference
frame in IE for weeks, it freezes immediately, Motl
cooling?…He has the comments on a certain Jim
Hansen proclaiming a coming ice age in the Washington
Post dated…July 9 …1971 with an icy You Tube video
If you don’t have it already get Tubesucker or some
other convenient program to save it, it all will be
evidence on Climate Resurrection Day…(CRD) LOL
RE43 MSimon the picture was too small to read the labels, try cropping it to remove all the white space
Anthony,
OK. I’m working on it.
You don’t get it, do you? Long-term equilibrium doesn’t matter. What matters is the time scale when the dominant lag relaxes to 1/e. That’s what allows you to back out the energy input, which gives the climate sensitivity. You can’t infer LTE.
Yes, I think I am missing your point. Climate sensitivity is by definition the long term equilibrium response to CO2 doubling. And it is not correct to diagnose climate sensitivity from the transient response using a single response time.
I would be interested to hear your opinion of the Wigley paper as well. The Douglass and Knox scenario it is addressing is very similar to Schwartz’s model.
Thanks for the useful discussion.
Steve,
The picture did not show up at first from my latest correction so I reposted it. Delete which ever one makes the page look best.
PI,
I believe what Larry is saying is that the shallow earth/shallow ocean time constants are the main determinates of short (100 year) climate variation.
RE 28… Yes.
You mean TMIN seems damped.. Yes… So TMAX-TMIN ( diurnal) looks damped
TMAX is like a reflection of energy. Pretty clean. TMIN is modulated by
a lot of factors that release or delay or resist the release of
accumulated charge.
Re:#47, M.Simon
I think this is the paper Gunnar refers to: Ozawa, et.al.
This thread provides another example of why everyone should use permalinks instead of or in addition to the post number. Right click the post number and select copy link location. Paste that into the link box or HTML tag. Please.
No. Climate sensitivity is the change in energy balance in the atmosphere. It has nothing to do with the long term response of the oceans. The long term response in the oceans is required by the first law of [t-word] to be exactly the same as the atmosphere.
The Schwartz paper uses short term dynamics of the ocean, which in that time scale is one in the same as the short term response of the mixed layer, to infer the way the temperature changes as a function of CO2 concentration. The ocean becomes an analytical tool. But the ocean itself has nothing to do with the definition of climate sensitivity.
Has anyone ever modelled the temperature of the oceans, w.r.t. depth? Do we know why the depths are so cold? It has always struck me as a bit odd that bore holes are always warmer than oceans at each depth. Anyone know a good model?
“Steve Sadlov” is a nom de plume. I have an unavoidable conflict of interest (I work on things that are sold as “Green” products). Therefore I need to distance what I do in the blogosphere, especially on evironmental topics, from my work life out of professional courtesy for my peers and organization. Also, I jealosly protect the privacy of my loved ones. For these reasons, I must maintain anonymity.
Another advantage of a circuit model is that you can use pSpice to do climate simulations.
DeWitt,
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2086#comment-139974
Thanks for the link. I have been using name/date time of post or at least a reference to the author. I like your idea.
What is the value of pSpice?
It has been checked against the real world millions of times. There are multiple versions from different vendors that can be checked against each other. You can give values a range and do Monte Carlo simulations. etc.
Then it become a question of the circuit values not questions of how to do the simulations.
Larry,
I didn’t say that the ocean has to do with the definition of climate sensitivity. I said the ocean has to do with diagnosing the climate sensitivity from the transient response. The oceans determine the rate at which the DT(2xCO2) is approached, not its final value.
When you only have a short piece of the time series, the longer term dynamics of the climate system are relevant in inferring what the ultimate response will be. Two very different climate sensitivities can have very similar transient responses, if you don’t look for long enough. To distinguish between them you do need to know what are the different response times active over the whole of your observation period, not just the fast response times.
The rate at which DT(2xCO2) is approached almost certainly does not have a 5 year e-folding time, if that’s what you’re implying. Try doing an instantaneous CO2 doubling experiment in an EBM+UD ocean with a range of reasonable values for the vertical diffusivity, and look at the e-folding: you’ll get values much closer to what Annan cited in his blog post than to 5 years.
Hold on, M….The Schwartz paper used a linear model of the ocean surface layer to infer heat transferred to it from the atmosphere. The circuit analogies are useless for the atmosphere, because you don’t have lumped parameters, and you don’t have a linear system.
PI, you’re confusing two completely separable things: the greenhouse effect and atmospheric feedback, and the transport of that heat to and from the ocean mixed layer. The climate sensitivity is entirely determined by atmospheric phenomena. It is measured by seeing how the ocean mixed layer responds to it. The ocean in no way determines climate sensitivity.
Larry September 20th, 2007 at 11:02 am,
Larry,
You can add in what ever components are required to get a sufficiently close model. Voltage controlled voltage sources. Voltage controlled current sources. Nonlinear elements, etc. Even custom designed parameterized elements. You can even define a temperature sensitivity for the various components.
As I said the dwgs are only to give an idea – not be definitive.
In any case we are looking to find what the simplest model is that will give results that conform to the actual system.
Ozawa thinks that three resistors and two current sources is sufficient.
A number of years ago, I was stalked by a “gentleman” who was quite upset that I was allowed to maintain my conservative viewpoints.
There are a lot of nuts out there, and some of them are violent.
Larry,
Again, I don’t think we are in disagreement. Please re-read what I wrote:
“I didnÂt say that the ocean has to do with the definition of climate sensitivity. I said the ocean has to do with diagnosing the climate sensitivity from the transient response. The oceans determine the rate at which the DT(2xCO2) is approached, not its final value.”
74, no. You can’t do distributed parameters with a circuit simulator (very easily, anyway), and you can’t handle the nonlinearities that cause turbulence. That’s a whole world of phenomena that’s completely beyond the realm of circuit simulators. You can simulate heat transfer (which is what Schwartz did), but you can’t deal with turbulence. That’s why GCMs are so flaky.
To amplify:
The final (equilibrium) value of the response, equal to the equilibrium climate sensitivity DT(2xCO2), is governed mostly (though not wholly) by atmospheric phenomena like water vapor, lapse rate, and cloud feedbacks. The oceans determine how quickly that value is approached, and therefore how the ECS is inferred.
>> The long term response in the oceans is required by the first law of [t-word] to be exactly the same as the atmosphere.
No, this isn’t correct. I don’t want to spoil this delightful thread by elaborating on thermo, but this really isn’t correct at all. Two different thermodynamic systems.
M.Simon, I see you got the link. I love your first stab at a circuit model. What about the earth’s molten core being a source of heat. It certainly is.
RE74, I don’t think you can use DC circuit analysis, AC analysis seems more relevant. Lots of sine waves going on in climate driving that I can think of. Rotation, sun orbit, modulating solar just to name a couple.
Larry,
Maybe the first thing to do is to define a kitchen sink model that includes as much information as we have.
Run some simulations on it and then decide if a simpler model will give acceptable results. pSpice these days is done with hundreds of elements. Sometimes thousands.
It should be an excellent analytical tool for sorting out what is going on. Each element can be defined based on first principles and observation. You can then hone in on what is important.
I continue to track the unprecedented, earliest outbreak of late fall / early winter weather in California, in at least 35 years:
AN EARLY SEASON PACIFIC STORM IS BRINGING SNOW TO THE HIGHER
ELEVATIONS OF THE SOUTHERN SIERRA NEVADA TODAY. SNOW ACCUMULATIONS
OF 1 TO 3 INCHES HAVE BEEN REPORTED IN YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
ABOVE 9000 FEET THIS MORNING AND NEAR TIOGA PASS AND IS STILL
SNOWING VERY HEAVILY. THE SNOW LEVEL WILL LOWER TO AROUND 7000
FEET DURING THE DAY…AND AN ADDITIONAL 2 TO 3 INCHES OF NEW SNOW
IS POSSIBLE ABOVE 8000 FEET BEFORE ENDING LATER THIS EVENING.
DUE TO IT BEING THE FIRST SEASON SNOWFALL…CRITERIA FOR THE FIRST
STORM WARNING IS CONSIDERABLY LOWER THAN NORMAL WINTER STORM
WARNINGS. THE CRITERIA IS ONLY 4 INCHES IN 12 HOURS AND 6 INCHES
IN 24 HOURS. HIKERS AND CAMPERS ARE URGED TO PREPARE FOR WINTER
LIKE CONDITIONS AND RAPIDLY CHANGING CONDITIONS WITH THIS STORM.
Let us hope that people are being wise about this developing dangerous situation.
“Killer AGW” (hype) vs cold the killer (harsh reality). That is a really interesting allegory, isn’t it? Symbolic of so many things at so many levels, I cannot even begin to get into it. I’d be at it for hours upon hours.
RE: #61 – The climate science orthodoxy seem to believe there are “tipping points” (e.g. MOSFETs) included. I won’t opine one way or another.
pSpice does AC analysis as well.
Mark
Anthony Watts September 20th, 2007 at 11:22 am,
I was assuming AC analysis (at least for the models I was presenting). Which is why I have that variable resistor controlling solar output.
Larry,
As to simulating turbulent flow – you define a function for a resistor that depends on the voltage (the T analog) across it.
As far as a distributed system goes – more Rs and Cs. You can use the output of of a model of a subsystem to feed into the input of another subsystem. The really cute thing is that all your assumptions are out in the open and subject to verification.
A good model will also direct your efforts to first better define the most important elements.
Sorry, that was a bit vague. Here would be examples of some of the purported FETs – release of methane (from permafrost, from the deep ocean), polar albedo changes, continental glacier melt in Greenland, etc. The cool thing is, you can design in different FETs and / or different feedback networks for them. For example, you could make polar albedo a higher gain than say, continental ice melting. Tweak and tune. Develop scenarios. For example, is it possible to confirm or discredit the “Venus syndrome?”
Gunnar September 20th, 2007 at 11:21 am,
I kind of indicated the Earth as a heat source by showing “Earth Sink” as a separate ground. For that to work an equilibrium layer must be defined. If that doesn’t work for you then add another voltage source with appropriate series resistance at that point.
RE: #82 – It can do a nice job of worst case design involving off line switchers fed by either AC mains or the telco DC versions, and fanning out to your typical high power density, low voltage, high current distributions in the typical thorny jungle of analog I/O circuits, clock circuits and of course the inevitable massive SSOs that you get with humongous gate arrays inherent to CPUs, ASICs and memory banks. At turn on, these things feed huge capacitances as well, since the clocks and digital logic need really clean DC voltages with minimal ringing and noise. (What’s even more “interesting” is the witness what can happen when people fail to adequately model with pSPICE or equivalent, prior to deployment. Got halon? LOL!!!!)
M. Simon (#80):
“Maybe the first thing to do is to define a kitchen sink model that includes as much information as we have.”
Difficult to work with. If I were you I’d do the opposite: start out simple, like Schwartz’s EBM, and get a feel for how that works. Then add more components one by one and study what effect each one has. You’ll eventually build up something useful. “As simple as possible, but no simpler.”
re 69
Spice would be cool. Magma tools next?
Interesting point. The folks who work in the nano scale have the most
interesting things to say about the arm wavers working in the global scale
re 81.
MOSFETS wins todays EE metaphor challenge.
PI September 20th, 2007 at 11:47 am,
A “kitchen sink” model would not be difficult to work with. It would be difficult to design.
I don’t see any reason why you could not converge on a useful model by starting with either “too complex” or “too simple”.
In any case the advantage is the usual science/programming idea of divide and conquer. You can isolate elements and determine their value by measurement.
Anonymity is not a problem UNLESS we are being asked to accept someone’s views based on their reputation. In essense this happens a lot at RC. Being anonymous prevents us from examing claims to expertise.
OMG. The cats are off in three directions, again…
Re: 49, 55, 58
“Cloaking” allows people to get away with stuff like Eli Rabett’s. That’s unacceptable. The arguments about DaVinci and Newton don’t apply anymore today. Academics who on the one hand publish in learned journals but who write on blogs using a pseudonym are certainly not straight shooters. If you have good grounds to think your position is solid, why hide?
Re:#28, Steve Mc
It shouldn’t be surprising that the temperature response function isn’t a pure sine wave as the excitation function, daily insolation, isn’t sinusoidal. I never did like (Tmaz + Tmin)/2 as a proxy for mean temperature. Pielke, Sr. wanted to use just Tmax as he thinks Tmin is biased causing trends to be exaggerated. I’d put in the link, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
By “work with”, I mean “fully understand its behavior”. It is easier to start by understanding completely a simple model, then work with more complex systems.
Of course, if you have a complex model you can simply “turn off” most of the components and get something equivalent to the simple model. If you want to start by doing that, fine, but it’s not any better than just starting with the simple model to begin with.
SteveS.
Start a blog for EEs: Circuit Earth.
You know, an analog circuit simulator might just have a better chance of modeling earth’s climate than a digital model. The earth itself is an analog system, as is the sun. The cool thing about analog computers is that feedback is just as easy as rerouting a wire. With programming, it’s trying to enjoin datasets and calculations.
Analog computing was mostly abandoned becuase of its inherent uncertainty errors and slowness, but those may in fact be strengths for a world climate model. Plus you get knobs. You can learn more tweaking a rheostat sometimes than you can spending days looking over code.
The key will be to start out simple, prove a simple set of conditions, and build on it slowly.
RE92 DeWitt – At Pielke’s recent conference I attended, there were a couple of good presentations arguing for using Tmax, they’ll be online soon, will post them when they appear.
Anthony Watts September 20th, 2007 at 12:06 pm,
Yes. An analog simulator fed by an arbitrary waveform generator might be a good place to start.
Let me add that pSpice is easy to use and has lots of (digital) knobs.
PI September 20th, 2007 at 12:01 pm ,
Your approach would be my preferred approach. I was just trying to answer the objection that the simple approach leaves out a lot.
Re: 66
bigcitylib
But’s it’s of course perfectly OK for NBC to hold forth with a prime time screamer about how Greenland is melting all to pieces, in the face of recently published studies that show two key glaciers whose melting was held up as evidence for AGW actually reversing their trends, and that the island’s ice mass balance is stable and possibly increasing?
Or the happless mainstream media holding forth about how the NW Passage being open for a few days in early September is “unprecedented” and, of course, proof positive of AGW, when Amudsen went through in 1904-05, the Canadian RCMP cutter St Roch went through in 1944, and the Russians used that route in 1999 to get a couple of dry docks to the East Coast? Or the same shuttered outlets studiously continuing to ignore the inconvenient fact that Antarctica is refusing to warm up [something not even the IPCC can skate around]?
But Fox News, the Daily Telegraph, the Times and Financial Times of London, the WSJ, the national Post in Canada, the NRC Handelsblad in the Netherlands, the Frankfurter Algemeine, the Neue Zuricher Zeitung, and several quality Aussie and Kiwi newspapers that increasingly refuse to toe the alarmist party line, heavens, heavens forbid…
Analog computers are better than digital? And I suppose vinyl is better than CDs, and vacuum tubes…
Better not talk about vacuum tubes. That’s religion for some folk.
I’m confused about the extent of total warming. There is that 0.6 deg value already attained, but at the same time, even some warmers agree that at least until 80’s, the warming can be explained by solar. So what was the CO2 doing in the meantime?
EW,
There are several issues to consider in trying to understand the relation of temperature and CO2. (1) The radiative forcing of the CO2, which is what is relevant to climate, increases more slowly than the atmospheric CO2 concentrations themselves, so any CO2-induced warming doesn’t go up quite as fast as a graph of CO2 concentration itself would suggest. (2) The climate effects of CO2 (and other) forcings don’t immediately show up in the surface temperature record, due to thermal inertia of the oceans (discussed above): the full effects of, e.g., pre-1980 CO2 will only be visible after 1980. (3) Other factors such as negative radiative forcing from aerosols have cancelled some of the positive forcing of CO2.
To reliably evaluate the relation of CO2 and temperature it is necessary (at a minimum) to closely examine non-CO2 forcings (solar, aerosols, etc.) and to have a climate model that responds realistically to forcings (e.g., with gradual diffusion of heat into the ocean).
To me it translates as “We really don’t know” đ
Why?
EW,
Was that a response to my post (which appears to have been disappeared)?
There are no “calibration curves” that could say how much of this-and-that factor will produce 0.1 deg increase, aren’t they? Tested in some less complex arrangement than Earth?
Steve,
Ok, but since my response to Larry (#60) seems to be gone, let me just say for posterity that I am not confusing the two. I do agree with the rest of Larry’s comment. I hope we can all agree that the value of climate sensitivity is governed mostly by atmospheric feedbacks which occur on fast timescales, and the rate at which that value is approached is governed mostly by longer term climate processes like ocean heat uptake.
Steve,
Ok, but since my response to Larry (#60) seems to be gone, I’d like to just say for posterity in this thread that I am not confusing the two. I do agree with the rest of Larry’s comment. I hope we can all agree that the value of climate sensitivity is determined mostly by atmospheric feedbacks which occur on fast timescales, and the rate at which that value is approached is depends significantly on longer term climate processes like ocean heat uptake.
Re#396, sounds like “unusual,” if not “extreme,” weather…doesn’t that make it consistent with global warming theory? đ
Larry (#420),
CO2 radiative forcing is logarithmic in CO2 concentration (Beer-Lambert law): an exponential increase in CO2 concentration is just a linear increase in forcing. This is the “saturation of the adsorption bands” issue that you may have run across elsewhere.
EW (#421),
You can test it using the physical laws encoded in climate models, but that’s precisely what the debate is about. It’s not too hard to say, e.g., how much warming will be produced by X amount of CO2 directly, but the problem is that there are feedbacks modifying the CO2 forcing as well as uncertain other forcings, uncertainty in the time response of the system, etc. that make it difficult to work out a precise relation that holds in reality.
If your “we don’t really know” response in the other thread was directed at me, I’d say that we do know a lot about the relationship between CO2 (and other forcings) and temperature, but there are uncertainties. We don’t know the strength of the feedbacks, we don’t know exactly the ocean response time, etc. We can estimate the effects but there are error bars.
Anonymity? Is it practical to do anything about it in blogs? Is a control system to be devised? What would it verify?
Perhaps some highly expert people just don’t want to be hassled elsewhere about unintended mistakes in blogs. Anyone believe experts get these matters right all the time? Books are proofed and papers are peer reviewed w/o embarassing the authors. And a lot of lipstick is put on pigs during those processes. Yet errors and sometimes blunders still get through.
It will be better to regard blogs as conversation and judge from what is contended rather than someones claim of authority.
423, absolutely. But what does that have to do with time dynamics? Or isn’t that what you meant by “slowly”?
Test:
Re: #57
The hydrosphere being liquid has relatively much faster mechanisms for conduction, convection, and transport of heat from deeper levels to higher levels than are found within the lithosphere.
Larry,
As I understand it, EW was basically saying that if you look at a graph of CO2 concentration, you immediately wonder “If CO2 causes warming, why didn’t the temperature go up faster than it did?”, since CO2 goes up so much faster than temperature does. But if you look at the radiative forcing of CO2, it hasn’t increased as much, so the comparatively mild increase in temperature makes more sense in that context.
Ok, I had to test that in 426, because it wasn’t showing up in preview. Here’s my challenge to the circuit simulators: draw a circuit diagram that does the equation in 426.
427, but, faster with time, or faster with CO2 concentration? I think you’re saying the latter, which has nothing to do with the Schwartz paper.
423:
Some people say we know a lot. I’m not convinced yet.
Scratch 426; use this:
Larry,
I’m not trying to address the Schwarz paper, I was trying to explain to EW how CO2 and temperature are related. I am saying that CO2 forcing is logarithmic in CO2 concentration, and roughly linear in time (since CO2 concentration is roughly exponential in time, over the last century).
As I understand it, EW was basically saying “CO2 increases exponentially in time but temperature goes up much more slowly than that, how can that be if the latter is caused by the former?” This is part of my attempt to answer that question.
Your deltas are upside down :).
RE: #62 – When you do that, posts that refer to other posts no longer make any sense. Not to solve for it here I just thought I’d note this issue.
Have at it folks:
http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/
If I understand Larry’s point, I think it’s valid. Although, as an EE, it pains me to say it, I think the circuit model, although fun, is really guessing. It might be more robust to write the TD differential equations, transform to the S domain, and do the inverse LaPlace.
DocMartyn says:
September 20th, 2007 at 10:41 am
“Do we know why the depths are so cold?”
Uh, how about the high density of 4 deg C water and the ability for such to flow from the poles and glacier output?
http://faculty.uccb.ns.ca/chowley/chem201/dh20vstemp.htm
I have no idea what the salinity of ocean bottom water is though.
67, they’re asking the wrong question. The question isn’t whether there’s a second compartment, and it’s not even what the second compartment’s time scale is. It’s not even how big the second compartment is. It’s how much heat gets into the second compartment in the time it takes for the first compartment to fill up to (1-1/e) = 63% of capacity.
Larry,
Some seem to claim that “climate” is only land surface temperature (perhaps even on only an annual mean basis). Others that is is the combination of the Atmosphere, Biosphere, Lithosphere and Bathysphere attributes. Also some limits to the time span of interest might easily be included. It would seem that there should be an explicit definition of the word “climate” here at CA as many posters seem to be using grossly different definitions.
Gunnar, what I’m saying is that while a simple dynamic energy balance, such as what Schwartz did, can be represented as a circuit, if you try to do fluid mechanics (that was one of the Navier-Stokes equations), you run into 1. distributed parameters, 2. non-linearity (as in non-linear differential equations with chaotic solutions, not non-linear elements), and 3. 4 dimensions. You can’t make a circuit simulator do that.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water/temp.html
70, fine, but the greenhouse effect is limited to the atmosphere. The climate is something else, entirely. The alleged cause or forcing is the greenhouse effect.
Given the apparent primary frequency interest of “Climate Science” (3 picoHertz to 0.2 pHz), I’d say the reason for the low ocean bottom water temperature is “initial conditions”. đ
Actually rather than “land” surface temperatures, I meant air temperatures 3 to 5 ft above the local land surface (truly rural sites only).
Larry September 20th, 2007 at 2:07 pm,
I would agree with you if the desired result was predicting high frequency responses (hours days weeks) to the system. However, when looking at longer scales that might not be necessary.
Ozawa shows a DC model with 3 resistors and claims that it works well. Adding a few more resistors and capacitors might make it perform even better.
From SteveSadlov’s September 20th, 2007 at 1:46 pm link:
I’ think it is rather less than more. By 200 to 800 years.
Larry, but I don’t think we need to model fluid mechanics. Thanks for clarifying the phrase “non-linear”, that’s been bothering me. Again, I don’t think we need to worry about choas either, since we’re not predicting the weather.
Larry September 20th, 2007 at 12:28 pm,
Analog computers better than digital? Sometimes.
If there are convergence problems with an analog computer they are a real reflection of the system.
In digital computers they could be arithmetic artifacts.
Sometimes analog computers are even faster at giving solutions than digital computers.
I’m working on a fusion reactor. There are so many things going on at once all affecting each other that very rough approximations are the best you can do. The best solution to all the equations is to build and measure. Are simulations helpful? Yes. They can help you spot trends. They can help determine the sign of forced changes. With magnitudes not so helpful. That is OK. Lots of times all you want to know is if I change this in what direction will it affect that. Then you make the change and measure. It is what the early fission reactor designers had to do. You see in a lot of the design books empirical constants. Because in the real world theory only takes you so far.
Re:72
And here I thought that the Greenhouse effect was limited to greenhouses (that would make elimination of greenhouse gases SO much easier).
IMHO, the climate is too complex to do anything but get a general idea of what’s going on. Ya takes yer guesses and hopefully you base them upon something scientifically sound.
Let me see…..
Air warms More quickly. Ocean warms from that More slowly. You can check your guesses short term on the air by looking long term at the ocean. Water is too dense at bottom to really get warmer. Water is a transport.
Something like that.
Well for the CO2/Temp discussion and the circut drawing. Have to figure in how much the CO2 increases in the atmosphere from the T increase in the ocean, Inverse soluability constant.
Good luck with your fusor…
I’d agree generally in that any hope of getting a climate stasis/equilibrium system understanding may prove to be hopelessly naive.
Sorry, one of my earlier posts got garbled (not that anyone reads them but I like to be complete):
If ideas that didnÂt meet the agenda were purposly not being focused upon; if those ideas were ignored, rather than being tested, that isn’t science.
Anonymity. Sheesh, like I want anyone to know I’m Bill Clinton. Gotta have it baby.
But if you have a blog, and you leave around clues, and you upset enough people, they’ll track you down. Not saying it’s right or wrong, but that’s what happens it seems.
Rather difficult to have high powered radars without tubes, isn’t it? Tube amplifiers for amplifying music are often prefered. (My amp goes to 12 btw) A warmer sound from vinal, or is it you can’t scratch out and bust a move on a CD at the club too well? lol
Oh, don’t forget that analog speaker playing your music. Or your clock if it has dials. Abacuss? Slide rule? Maybe not so much. đ
As long as you’re not saying it HAS to cause it in a non-controlled environment with other factors at play.
For example, if “the perfect temperature” is 75 F and it’s 70 F and putting 100 additional ppm ina room caused it to go from 70 to 75 then you’d do that. But what if at the same time, you’re cooking bacon and the grease nullifies that 100 ppm, but also your fan nullifies 50% of the grease so you get 2.5 F instead of 5. So you start baking a cake, and the heat makes the temp go to 75, but somebody opens the door and it drops to 65. So you turn on the ionizer and throw another log on the fire, and it goes to 70. Then you crank up another 100 ppm of co2 and it gets to 75. But then there’s a grease fire, and the temp goes up to 90. You let it burn and then open two windows at opposite sides of the house. And it drops back down to 75.
So, what caused the temperature to be 75 instead of 70, opening the windows?
Larry: have you looked at this paper? Kinda disorganized and rambling, but I think there are some good ideas there.
No more naive than thinking you can know what “the temperature” of the planet is.
The first question to ask of course is “Where?” You can figure out how cold it is in your freezer or your car radiator pretty easily. Or in an 8 ounce glass of water a formica table in a room with no AC or heater going nearby.
The planet, not so easy. The less closed the system, the more meaningless any idea like “What is the temperature” becomes. Unless you just want to know how cold it’s going to generally be on the way to work.
78, I’ve seen it. Not going there. Forbidden subject.
Sam,
“As long as youÂre not saying it HAS to cause it in a non-controlled environment with other factors at play.”
Increased CO2 doesn’t HAVE to cause the temperature to go up, if negative feedbacks are strong or if other negative forcings outweigh the positive forcing of CO2. I am just trying to answer EW’s question about how CO2 concentrations are compatible with the observed temperature record.
Negative feedbacks are possible, but not less than -1. Think about it. If that were the case, the earth would turn into an iceball. You can’t cool by heating.
CO2 MUST cause some heating. Whether it’s measurable or not is a different question. It can’t cause cooling.
Larry,
I didn’t say that the temperature can go down from CO2, I just said that it doesn’t have to go up (in the limit of infinitely strong negative feedbacks). And, in practice, it doesn’t have to go up measurably.
And, as I said, temperature can go down with increased CO2 regardless of feedbacks, if there are negative forcings which outweigh the positive forcing of CO2.
Question: If you had to pick a single spot on the planet from which to observe (and test the hypothesis of) global warming, what location would you choose?
#448. The place with the least annual and interannual fluctuation, wherever that is.
TAC, according to Mann, the “sweet spot” is where the bristleones are in California. You don’t need anywhere in the world but there. Yes, he really did say that.
equatorial tropics where humidity and sun’s intensity are both more nearly constant.
#448. The records of some high and remote observatory. I seem to recall that they record air temperature and probably do it themselves, independently of the weather service.
If the records actually existed I would test those from near the South and North Poles during the last two months of darkness. That should reduce a lot of arguments about albedo, UHI, and asphalt parking lots, station altitude changes, and how fast the trees grew.
Alas, it would probably turn out the polar sensors were set next to the stovepipe of the polar station.
TAC says:
September 20th, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Question: If you had to pick a single spot on the planet from which to observe (and test the hypothesis of) global warming, what location would you choose?
An aquifer water temperature, try the Floridan aquifer. It is global right?
>> Think about it. If that were the case, the earth would turn into an iceball. You canÂt cool by heating. CO2 MUST cause some heating. Whether itÂs measurable or not is a different question. It canÂt cause cooling.
No, C02 could certainly cool. It’s a plausible physical idea. There is no stability problem (no ice ball), since it would be balanced by cooler water absorbing more C02. Far less likely is that C02 warms significantly, since that would be a stability issue.
>> single spot on the planet from which to observe (and test the hypothesis of) global warming
I notice you didn’t indicate the source of the warming.
for obvious source: measure solar radiation, flares, over an extended time period
for c02 based AGW: I’d measure nightime temp profile and concurrent C02 levels in dry deserts, to minimize the effect of water.
Don’t you all get it? Venus is very hot, it has a lot of CO2, and it is called earth’s “sister” planet. QED. đ
Venus. menopause. Spare me your hot flashes
#449-454: Thank you for the suggestions. I was looking for an obvious answer — e.g., the South/North Pole, the equator at 180 degrees West, or something like that — to provide an operational definition. It seems that GISS and CRU can no longer satisfy this need.
I may be on a fool’s errand. As RossM notes, the concept of “global whatever” is likely ill-defined and fundamentally naive. đŚ
I suppose I should know better than to expect the various global tempeature datasets to make sense. BUT
Was just looking at the monthly temps anomolies from NASA and comparing them to Hadley.
…………June July Aug
NASA 0.52 0.59 0.77
HAD.. 0.38 0.41 0.36
BTW – I rounded the Hadley temps to the nearest 1/100th of a degree, apparently they think they can estimate temp to the nearest 1/1000th of a degree (did these guys not get taught sig figs?)
Now my question is, why are the month-to-month changes in anomolies so different? Realizing each organization calculates the initial mean from different time periods – NASA has Aug being 0.17 degrees warmer than July, whereas Hadley had Aug 0.05 degrees cooler than July.
Are they not using the same data??
Am I missing something overly simplistic here?
You’re telling me Venus is hot…and she does it on the first date, too…
Steve McIntyre,
When you moved posts to this thread, did the permalinks change?. I tested all my recent reference links, but I don’t think the posts they pointed to had been moved.
Answering my own question: Yes they do change. The comment number doesn’t change, but unfortunately the page number does. That breaks the link unless you know the page number of the thread to which the comment has been moved. *sigh*
Re:#249, jae
I think there are already devices that do this. They’re called wind turbines/mills/etc.
Re 488.
Jepp! And if you fill an area the size of texas with wind turbines, you can generate enough power to supply the US đ
#20 : Oh Lord ! Monckton meant it funny, but could it be that he believes that joggers leave more carbon in the atmosphere than standard CO2-breathers ?
489:
At least during huricane season.
Re #484 The NASA GISS monthly data is here . It looks like the three months are 0.52, 0.50 and 0.56
Here’s a question. Hadley/CRU acknowledge that UHI has an effect on temperature measurements:
Yet, they do not correct for UHI in HadCRUT3 because ‘The evidence that large scale urbanisation bias in the data is non-zero is not strong enough to justify an adjustment’.
Meanwhile, as we have seen, Hansen et. al acknowledge urbanisation bias exists and have attempted to correct for it.
Who is right?
>> That breaks the link unless you know the page number of the thread to which the comment has been moved. *sigh*
The limitations of canned software. This is the kind of thing I’m trying to avoid.
>> I think there are already devices that do this. TheyÂre called wind turbines/mills/etc.
Hasse, this is actually about vortex engines. A new power generation idea that has a plant that creates an artificial tornado. Seems interesting. It’s another way of harnessing solar power, but on a bigger scale.
>> Monckton meant it funny, but could it be that he believes that joggers leave more carbon in the atmosphere than standard CO2-breathers
He may not have. There is a serious media story quoting scientists about the fact that it may be time to reduce large sporting events, and other exercise, since it causes large amounts of C02. They seriously recommend people being couch potatoes.
Here’s a quick La nina update.
It looks like we’re into a strengthening La Nina, finally. It’s been frustrating for those who use computer models, as the onset has been delayed compared to what the models predicted.
The current sea surface temperature anomaly map for the equatorial Pacific is here . (South America is on the right and New Guinea is on the left.) It shows anomalously cool water spreading across the region.
A profile of the subsurface equatorial water is here . It takes a few seconds to decipher the map. Green and blue are cooler than normal, yellow is warmer than normal. The y-axis is depth while the x-axis is longitude, with the gray areas being land. The Pacific is in the middle of the plot.
What is shows is a lot of cool water beneath the surface in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific, which provides ongoing support to a La Nina. It also shows a lack of accumulated anomalously warm water in the western equatorial Pacific, which is a bit unusual.
Finally, the computer projection is here , with the blue line representing the consensus. The computers project surface cooling well into the winter.
Bottom line: we should see a continuing global trend of flat-to-declining temperatures over the next six months.
>> Venus is very hot, it has a lot of CO2
Of course, Venus is closer to the Sun, has no water cycle to regulate temperature, and gravity is largely responsible for the high surface temperatures. Venus at 97% C02 is nothing like Earth at .035% C02. It is a twin in size only. Venus resembles Earth in size, shape and mass, but differs from Earth in all other aspects. The length of one day is 117 earth days, and with solar irradiance twice that of earth, that’s a lot of heating. Unlike Earth, Venus has no moons and no magnetic field because of its slow rotation; therefore, no solar shield. A lava eruption covered the planet 300 to 500 years ago, adding a lot of heat.
Venus Temp 755 – Earth Temp 285 = 470
How many doublings of C02 would that take? .029 x 2^n = 97, solving for n, n = 11.7. Even if the C02 climate sensitivity is 1 deg, then C02 is only reponsible for 11.7 degrees of the 470. Even with the impossible figure of 3 deg/doubling, it’s only 35 degrees of the 470, assuming my math passes the audit.
SST has been drifting lower lately?
http://ingrid.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom/.ENSO/.Long_x_Time/SST_Anomaly.html
Rwe: 447
“And warm periods in the past, such as the warming in the Greenland region in the mid-twentieth century, were not global in contrast to recent warming, which is.”
I’d like a good working definition of “global” wrt Climate Science so I can understand these folk. (They found Waldo everywhere?)
The weather around here has been perfect the last couple of weeks. Therefore, I’m projecting that soon, the earth will be engulfed in catastrophic good weather. It will completely ruin the economies of all destination resorts, both in ski country and in the tropics. Canadians will stop going to Florida for the winter.
RE: #477 (sarcasm, spoken like Dennis Weaver)Nah ….. 13 or 14K feet, up on top of the Whites, out in the middle of bum____ nowhere off of US-6, between Bishop (home of Mule Days!) and Hawthorne ….. drier than a bone, cold as Pluto in the winter and hot as Hades in the summer …. muuuuchhh better than the danged tropics! (sound of late 19th century, Colt twirler, doin’ his thang!). (/sarcasm)
Gunnar, Your maths is fine, though remember that Venus has 93 times more atmosphere (so 93 times 97/.029 the amount of CO2). That doesn’t actually make much difference to your result. But Ray Pierrehumbert has pointed out that:
# 489
Hasse@Norway,
Nope, fill Mexico with turbines and we’ll have energy for the US. đ
#499, btw, the statisticians will never notice, because the average temperature will still be the same.
RE: #495 – I keep coming back to this thought. Interaction between emerging negative PDO and ENSO.
At the rate Mexicans are coming north, the country will be empty pretty soon anyway.
# 501
The missing point is partial pressures. Partial pressure of OCO in Venus is higher than in Earth.
RE: #496 – Correct me if I am wrong, but, taking into account the carbon cycle and reaction equilibria, wouldn’t there have to be carbon transported to Earth from an external source in order to reach the levels of CO2 seen on Venus?
At which point we’ll all be dead from hypercapnia anyway. We could burn every bit of fossil fuels known to reside on the planet and never even get to the 5% lethality point anyway.
Mark
Partial pressure of OCO on Venus is 88.2 atm*m (Cole 1978. Bradley and Ostlie. 1996. Roberge. 1998), while partial pressure of OCO on Earth is 0.00037 atm*m. The absorptivity, emissivity and total emittancy of real gases are highly influenced by their partial pressures (Engel & Reid. 2007. Sissom & Pitts. 1998).
#507, Segalstad has calculated that on Earth, even one doubling is impossible for man to achieve alone. My point was that the temperature of Venus is hardly due to C02 alone. In addition to the other factors I mentioned, heat is retained by thick sulfuric acid clouds.
Btw, if we wanted to terra-form Venus, how much would the C02 level go down, if we covered 3/4 of the planet with deep oceans? (Pretending for a moment that the oceans would be liquid).
# 507
SteveSadlov,
Yes, Steve. Astrophysicists think that in the long run the Solar System could found a cosmic cloud of acetylene, methane, CO, OCO, etc., that could be moving independently to stars which could change the chemistry of our oceans and atmosphere.
# 510
Gunnar,
Indeed, I think itÂs impossible to maintain liquid oceans on Venus. ItÂs so close to the Sun that the high temperatures would impede the condensation of water vapor, but in higher layers by adiabatic lost of heat, and the solar wind alone would sweep out the water vapor.
In addition, to a dense sulfuric acid layer (which does most of the heat trapping), the CO2 content of Venus’ atmosphere is 250,000 times higher than Earth’s. Now you can get to 250,000 times pretty quickly when the math is in “doublings”, there is no comparison.
BTW, the tables about the influence of partial pressures and change of temperature on the emissivity of real gases show that from 335 K to 555 K the emissivity of OCO increases faintly, and from 700 K on it declines dramatically to inconsequential values. Surface temperature on Venus is 737 K, thus OCO could not be the cause of the high temperatures on the surface of that planet. However, at the OCO high partial pressure on the atmosphere of Venus the emissivity of OCO could be higher than on Earth. There is a paradox in the AGW information about Venus greenhouse effect that consists of a dramatic difference between the atmospheric temperature (260 K) and the surface temperature (740 K). The atmospheric temperature is 36% the temperature of the surface. AGW proposes that the atmosphere heats up the surface hah!
Interestingly, 260 K ((-13.15 C or 8.33 F) is the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus at an altitude comparable to the sea level atmosphere on Earth. What your conclusions are from this data?
>> Indeed, I think itÂs impossible to maintain liquid oceans on Venus.
Ok, but assume that we’ve moved Venus to be in Earth’s orbital plane, exactly opposite earth. After all, we’re human, we can do anything. Ok, now Venus has the same SI as Earth. Then, we obtained huge quantities of water and dumped that onto the planet to create oceans. How much would the atmospheric pressure go down, if we covered 2/3 of the planet with deep oceans?
side note: If the water started out as ice, how much heat energy would it take to melt the ice and boil the water?
side note: Like Saturn, Venus would not be in radiative balance. In fact, we don’t know that any planet is in radiative balance.
The mass of Earth’s atmosphere is 5.3 x 10^18 kg. That’s a lot, but it’s only .378% of the oceans. So, assuming Venus now has the same air/ocean mass ratio, what would the atmospheric pressure drop to, after reaching equilibrium with the ocean?
#514, fascinating.
#515, ahh, I see. That tells me that the effect OCO is negligible, compared to the effect of pressure.
RE: #516 answers #515 ….
Here’s another derivation of the 2.5 C temperature change for 2xCO2 (actually 2.3 C here). This derivation uses statisitcal analyses of the temperature data.
Exactly đ
#515, assuming that this is based on real data, then I guess we can thank the Russians for being so obsessed with sending landers to Venus. They have not only falsified AGW, but perhaps some of our alternatives as well. It seems like even solar irradiance doesn’t affect average temperature much. Perhaps, it only determines the swing around the average? Pressure is the main determinant of the average temperature. This hypothesis is in better agreement with the fact that we have 6+ planetoids receiving a fraction of our solar irradiance, yet maintaining high temperatures.
My intention with #516 was to show that earth is unbreakable by puny humans. I implied it, but Nasif has definitely proven it. Unless we’re going to actually change our atmospheric pressure, earth is unbreakable.
RE: #521 – We are but a miniscule portion of the surface scum ….. and now, for something completely different:
This is the West Coast’s current “subtropical depression.” Look at the cold air moving in from the NNW. For the second time in a week, our highlands face an early winter-like storm. It is unusual but not unprecedented for this to happen in October. For it to happen in September is definitely unprecedented.
#522, right. Did you catch my over extrapolation of our perfect weather?
# 522
The low pressure system is moving towards the southeast coast over Florida. Perhaps it will produce heavy rains upon the area. Perhaps the disturbance will disappear in 48 hours for having an early winter also, or at least a colder autumn from the next Monday on.
#515, Nasif, do you have a reference on that Venus data?
# 525
Of course, here, here , here and here.
AGW’s trick consists of making the people think that the temperature of the surface of Venus is also the temperature at any volume of the Cytherean atmosphere.
re 495 David Smith reports La Nina bringing cold temps next few months.
Delayed onset due to anom. cool West Pacific.
Is it poss that the major seismic events in Sumatra area are
linked to changes?. Prviously David supplied ref to work on
the Drake Passage and paleo temps in the Atlantic. I contacted
the Professor involved, he said he is unaware of any work in
this area. Does anyone know of anyone working on the links:
seafloor changes > ocean current changes > weather changes?
# 597
The only source I know is here. Perhaps youÂll find something that matches with your question.
#474, Picking one place to observe a “global” phenomenon is like picking one place in your house and assuming that place reflects the temperature of the whole house. If that place happens to be next to a window with sun shining in, it is going to look very different than if it is on the wall with an air conditioning vent blowing right on it. Besides the fact that temperature is a terrible measurement to use for AGW, trying to look at it in one place and use it to diagnose what is happening globally is useless.
Steve Sadlov…are you saying that the early fall in California is unprecedented in nearly a miiiilllllllyunnnnn years??? My personal theory is that the PDO is a long period shift related to long term solar features (probably related to N-S polarity asymmetries in the IMF and oceanic heat content distribution), while ENSO is a shorter term measure of solar flux influence.
If you take the GCR theory at face value, the place where GCRs will have the most impact is near the equator where GCR modulation by solar activity will have the highest amplitude from high to low and where nuclei for water droplet formation is the limiting factor in cloud formation. When you also include the oceanic DMSO production rates, it makes the tropical south pacific the perfect GCR-climate laboratory. I don’t think it is a coincidence at all that the shift from El Nino to ENSO-neutral came right as the sunspot activity dropped to nearly zero around the beginning of the year. We had a brief burp of elevated activity this spring that kept us neutral longer than the models predicted, but now that activity has dropped back off to next to nothing the last month or so, we are continuing our slide into la nina. Low sunspot activity means higher GCR flux at the surface, which means more cloud nuclei, more clouds, and less sunlight warming the water.
I would suspect that these types of ocean current influences would be temporary and not enough to affect the overall ocean weather, much less the atmospheric weather, to a great degree. If it went on for a month or so, or if the event was on par with collapsing a mountain or a volcanic eruption, then maybe.
Re: 522
The 7 day weather forecast for the British Columbia South Coast now talks about snow for late next week and lows around -3 C [wind chill -9]. I don’t know when [if ever] that last happened.
Re: 529
If temperature is such a terrible measurement to use for AGW, how come the entire alarmist AGW community uses every real or purported increase in temperature wherever it occurs as proof positive of AGW. This summer’s European temperatures West of Rome/Warsaw were well below seasonal norms [and precipitation well above]. East of that line they were above the norm [both anomalies casued by a shift in the jet stream] but lo and behold the fires in Greece [man-made those] were of course proof of man-made global warming. The relative warming in the Artic basin, plausibly a current and ocean temp driven phenomenon, is of course held up as proof of man-made global warming [the media studiously ignoring the fact that the other pole refuses to warm up].
Also, what Steve S and I have both flagged here and elsewhere about weather anomalies, it’s not just CA we’re talking about but the entire NA West Coast from AK down, so that’s at least one whole side of the proverbial house.
David says: September 21st, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Unless the slide of plates was around one thousand times stronger than the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that could produce a significant change in the tilt of EarthÂs Axis or in the oscillations through the EarthÂs orbital plane.
We here in CO are now into the phase in which we wretch back and forth between cool and warm weather (unseasonably warm today). Soon, probably in the next week or two, it will settle down into the reasonably cool all the time mode. Breck and Copper have both already had their first snows, though not a lot.
Mark
Mark T. says: September 21st, 2007 at 3:14 pm
We haven’t had cloudless days since August to date. However, we are expecting the low pressure system disappear for the next week and few cold weather fronts invading our latitudes. Minima have been lower through September than through the same month last year (60.80 F), but the maxima have been around 89.60 F, that is almost the same than through September 2006.
SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 6 TO 12 INCHES ABOVE 7500 FEET ARE POSSIBLE…WITH OVER
A FOOT POSSIBLE AT THE HIGHEST ELEVATIONS.
SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF SNOW ARE FORECAST. ROADS WILL BECOME SNOW
COVERED AND SLICK…CREATING DIFFICULT TRAVEL CONDITIONS AT
ELEVATIONS ABOVE 7500 FEET OVERNIGHT AND SATURDAY. IF YOU MUST GO
OUT…ENSURE THAT A WINTER SURVIVAL KIT IS IN YOUR VEHICLE.
This is the Heavy Snow Warning that was just posted for Eastern California. “Earliest onset in a milllllllion yearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!” LOL! Seriously, it’s the fricken end of Summer and we’re talking heavy snow warnings. To be fair, NWS call out a return to warmer and drier weather next week. Just as an FYI, in the coastal parts of California, September is “normally” our warmest month of the year (as an aside, yet another mind bender for jae!). Not this year …..
A complete list of events caused by global warming:
Agricultural land increase, Africa devastated, African aid threatened, air pressure changes, Alaska reshaped, allergies increase, Alps melting, Amazon a desert, American dream end, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), ancient forests dramatically changed, Antarctic grass flourishes, anxiety, algal blooms, Arctic bogs melt, Asthma, atmospheric defiance, atmospheric circulation modified, avalanches reduced, avalanches increased, bananas destroyed, bananas grow, bet for $10,000, better beer, big melt faster, billion dollar research projects, billions of deaths, bird distributions change, birds return early, blackbirds stop singing, blizzards, blue mussels return, boredom, Britain Siberian, British gardens change, bubonic plague, budget increases, building season extension, bushfires, business opportunities, business risks, butterflies move north, cardiac arrest, caterpillar biomass shift, challenges and opportunities, Cholera, civil unrest, cloud increase, cloud stripping, cod go south, cold climate creatures survive, cold spells (Australia), computer models, conferences, coral bleaching, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink , cold spells, cost of trillions, crumbling roads, buildings and sewage systems, cyclones (Australia), damages equivalent to $200 billion, Dengue hemorrhagic fever, dermatitis, desert advance, desert life threatened, desert retreat, destruction of the environment, diarrhoea, disappearance of coastal cities, diseases move north, Dolomites collapse, drought, drowning people, ducks and geese decline, dust bowl in the corn belt, early spring, earlier pollen season, Earth biodiversity crisis, Earth dying, Earth even hotter, Earth light dimming, Earth lopsided, Earth melting, Earth morbid fever, Earth on fast track, Earth past point of no return, Earth slowing down, Earth spinning out of control, Earth to explode, earth upside down, Earth wobbling, earthquakes, El NiĂąo intensification, erosion, emerging infections, encephalitis, Europe simultaneously baking and freezing, evolution accelerating, expansion of university climate groups, extinctions (human, civilisation, logic, Inuit, smallest butterfly, cod, ladybirds, bats, pandas, pikas, polar bears, pigmy possums, gorillas, koalas, walrus, whales, frogs, toads, turtles, orang-utan, elephants, tigers, plants, salmon, trout, wild flowers, woodlice, penguins, a million species, half of all animal and plant species, less, not polar bears), experts muzzled, extreme changes to California, famine, farmers go under, figurehead sacked, fish catches drop, fish catches rise, fish stocks decline, five million illnesses, floods, Florida economic decline, food poisoning, food prices rise, food security threat (SA), footpath erosion, forest decline, forest expansion, frosts, fungi invasion, Garden of Eden wilts, genetic diversity decline, gene pools slashed, glacial retreat, glacial growth, glacier wrapped, global cooling, global dimming, glowing clouds, Gore omnipresence, grandstanding, grasslands wetter, Great Barrier Reef 95% dead, Great Lakes drop, greening of the North, Gulf Stream failure, habitat loss, Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, harvest increase, harvest shrinkage, hay fever epidemic, hazardous waste sites breached, heat waves, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, high court debates, human fertility reduced, human health improvement, human health risk, hurricanes, hydropower problems, hyperthermia deaths, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, inclement weather, infrastructure failure (Canada), Inuit displacement, Inuit poisoned, Inuit suing, industry threatened, infectious diseases, insurance premium rises, invasion of midges, island disappears, islands sinking, itchier poison ivy, jellyfish explosion, Kew Gardens taxed, krill decline, lake and stream productivity decline, landslides, landslides of ice at 140 mph, lawsuits increase, lawsuit successful, lawyers income increased (surprise, surprise!), lightning related insurance claims, little response in the atmosphere, Lyme disease, Malaria, malnutrition, Maple syrup shortage, marine diseases, marine food chain decimated, marine dead zone, Meaching (end of the world), megacryometeors, Melanoma, methane emissions from plants, methane burps, melting permafrost, Middle Kingdom convulses, migration, migration difficult (birds), microbes to decompose soil carbon more rapidly, more bad air days, more research needed, mountain (Everest) shrinking, mountains break up, mountains taller, mudslides, next ice age, Nile delta damaged, no effect in India, nuclear plants bloom, oaks move north, ocean acidification, outdoor hockey threatened, oyster diseases, ozone loss, ozone repair slowed, ozone rise, Pacific dead zone, personal carbon rationing, pest outbreaks, pests increase, phenology shifts, plankton blooms, plankton destabilised, plankton loss, plant viruses, plants march north, polar bears aggressive, polar bears cannibalistic, polar bears drowning, polar bears starve, polar tours scrapped, psychosocial disturbances, railroad tracks deformed, rainfall increase, rainfall reduction, refugees, reindeer larger, release of ancient frozen viruses, resorts disappear, rice yields crash, rift on Capitol Hill, rioting and nuclear war, rivers raised, rivers dry up, rockfalls, rocky peaks crack apart, roof of the world a desert, Ross river disease, salinity reduction, salinity increase, Salmonella, salmon stronger, sea level rise, sea level rise faster, sex change, sharks booming, shrinking ponds, ski resorts threatened, slow death, smog, snowfall increase, snowfall reduction, societal collapse, songbirds change eating habits, sour grapes, spiders invade Scotland, squid population explosion, squirrels reproduce earlier, spectacular orchids, stormwater drains stressed, taxes, tectonic plate movement, terrorism, ticks move northward (Sweden), tides rise, tourism increase, trade winds weakened, tree beetle attacks, tree foliage increase (UK), tree growth slowed, trees could return to Antarctic, trees less colourful, trees more colourful, tropics expansion, tropopause raised, tsunamis, turtles lay earlier, UK Katrina, Venice flooded, volcanic eruptions, walrus pups orphaned, war, wars over water, water bills double, water supply unreliability, water scarcity (20% of increase), water stress, weather out of its mind, weather patterns awry, weeds, Western aid cancelled out, West Nile fever, whales move north, wheat yields crushed in Australia, white Christmas dream ends, wildfires, wind shift, wind reduced, wine – harm to Australian industry, wine industry damage (California), wine industry disaster (US), wine – more English, wine -German boon, wine – no more French , winters in Britain colder, wolves eat more moose, wolves eat less, workers laid off, World bankruptcy, World in crisis, Yellow fever
537: you might add “economic collapse” and “more poverty.”
Earth changes ….. and of course, when that happens, the invasion of the rods and greys….. đ
I’ve lost most of my hair due to AGW hysteria, does that count?
Mark
And hypothermia by negative feedbacks đ
532, Tetris
They use temperature because it is easily and widely measured and because it is what they can use to show a “global trend” if they average out all the areas where nothing has changed or temperature has declined. Heat content of the ocean is a much better measure of whether the planet as a whole is warming or cooling, but it is harder to measure comprehensively and we don’t have a long historical record to compare it to.
As for the comment about the west coast being one side of the house, well that is appropriate if the house is the continental US. Think of it this way…if you live in a house in Central Texas with a bunch of windows facing south and you have an Alberta clipper come through bringing a bitterly cold wind from the north. What part of the house do you use to measure the “ambient temperature” of the whole house? Do you do it against the northern windows where the cold wind is chilling things down? Do you do it in the sunfilled room with the south facing windows? Do you do it in the middle of the room at floor level where the cold air is settling? Or do you do it in on the ceiling where the heat from the heater is accumulating? Or do you measure it under the ceiling fan that is spinning to bring the hot air back down from the ceiling and mixing it with the cool air on the floor? You cannot take a complex system with many inputs and outputs and look for a trend at one spot in that system and consider it to be representative of the behavior of the whole system.
Sound like anyone we know?
‘… the privileging of a given interpretive community in defining Âtruth and ÂmeaningÂ; a consensus, group-driven conception of Âreason and ÂauthenticityÂ; a repudiation of individualism; a willingness to invert the concept of Âfree speech until it becomes state-sanctioned speech; the re-framing of Âtolerance as punitive rather than accommodating…’
From: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9863
As far as Venus goes, there’s this abstract:
In other words, Earth and Venus are apples and oranges. And it’s probably true that they can model the GH effect pretty well on Venus, since there is nothing that can cause feedback.
In fact, I suspect that their success on Venus gave modelers a false sense that they could accurately model earth, which is a whole nother planet. Now they don’t want to admit that they were overconfident.
Re:#507
No. The majority of carbon is in carbonate rocks, approximately 100,000 times the amount in the biosphere and over 1,500 times the amount in the ocean according to this article. Venus is sufficiently hot to drive the reaction SiO2 + CaCO3 = CaSiO3 + CO2 all the way to the right.
At the surface temperature of Venus, the IR emission spectrum of the surface is shifted to shorter wavelengths, away from the strong absorption at 15 micrometers. So the atmosphere below the clouds may well be nearly transparent to the surface emission. The radiative transport model of Venus is best described, IMO, by a single layer partially transmitting mirror (the cloud layer) with less than 10% transmission of radiation from the surface. That’s really easy to model in Excel, btw.
RE: #542 – A better side of the West Coast house analogy would be a house that is in North Africa, right at the beach. One side of the house faces the moderating influence of the mediterranean and experiences very minimal swings in temperature as a result. The other side faces inland, and is subject to more of a pure Saharan influence. Look at a profile of “clean” temperature records transecting, for example, from Morro Bay to Death Valley (in an ideal world, where such a thing might actually exist). You’d find minimal variation, diurnally, in terms of differences due to weather changes and seasonally, let alone, on longer scales. In Death Valley it would be the opposite extreme.
RE: #546 – But wouldn’t you, in essence, have to crank the sun way, way up, in order to drive that reaction here on earth? In which case, my question would probably still be answered yes, since the sun will probably not do that in the short term (geological time wise).
# 546
DeWitt Payne,
DonÂt you see that the Venerean surface is warmer than the atmosphere? How do you explain that at 1 bar of atmospheric pressure the temperature on Venus is 260 K? Another case of violation of the second law?
Here is a link:
http://www-star.stanford.edu/projects/mgs/profile.html
The info has been updated by Magellan mission.
Re: 542 and 547
It would appear we are by and large on the same wave length or else we’re all preaching to the converted.
I have argued on this blog and elsewhere, many times over, that what we are trying to understand/decipher [assuming that is at all possible] and then possibly model [assuming that is possible] the most complex, multi-variate, non-linear system known to man.
It follows that ascribing any real or putative change in global temperatures to changes in a minor, albeit crucial, trace gas which in turn is the result of varying output levels around the globe, is complete and utter nonsense [even my dog {very intelligent as dogs go} understands this]. What get’s forgotten in all the flying dust, is that we are talking about an assumed increase of 0.6 C over a century or so. Just the three of us talking with each other over a beer would cause a larger increase in temperature regionally than that [I’m pushing there, .. I know].
Oh, and Nasif, we’re still waiting for you at UK Weatherworld
#537 Sheer poetry…sheer poetry…
get your cheating offsets here:
http://www.cheatneutral.com/
I think global warming is finally having an effect in the San Fran Bay Area. It is raining.
# 552
Did you challenged me, or it was Hans Erren? Do you want to challenge me also? By the way, I’m there under the nick Madmartigan… Madmartigan = Nasif Nahle. đ
Re #553, STAFFAN LINDSTROEM
If you aren’t familiar with it, the source is here. The rest of the site is highly recommended too.
Nasif,
It was Hans. I just jumped in for fun and because we can’t talk about stuff like that here.
#557 fFreddy thank you, now I can throw all my paper papers away
for re-use of course…Well perhaps not as some links seem dead/broken!
I clicked the last one, Yellow feber and that was an Osaka-based
environmental site with amongst other things had diagrams of
some 50 Japanese cities sea-level rise effects…That reminds me
of the probably urban legend that it was a Japanese pine-apple
farmer who was afraid he would get salty water in his pine-apples
and started lobbying…The Swedes were mostly under water in
the Osaka WC in athletics some weeks ago, though…
#556 Nasif…1. Is it possible to watch somewhere
your TV appearance the other day?? I tried but mostly
trailer-like clips came up! They use Real format so
it should be downstreamable!?
2. My nom de plume on UKWW is Severin de Campos…
Found this quote which seems quite apposite:
“In the year 1487 there was a severe storm in Switzerland, which laid waste the country for four miles around Constance. Two wretched old women, whom the popular voice had long accused of witchcraft, were arrested on the preposterous charge of having raised the tempest. The rack was displayed, and the two poor creatures extended upon it. In reply to various leading questions from their tormentors, they owned, in their agony, that they were in the constant habit of meeting the devil, that they had sold their souls to him, and that at their command he had raised the tempest. Upon this insane and blasphemous charge they were condemned to die. In the criminal registers of Constance there stands against the name of each the simple but significant phrase, “convicta et combusta.”
This case and hundreds of others were duly reported to the ecclesiastical powers. There happened at that time to be a Pontiff at the head of the Church who had given much of his attention to the subject of witchcraft, and who, with the intent of rooting out the crime, did more to increase it than any other man that ever lived. John Baptist Cibo, elected to the Papacy in 1485, under the designation of Innocent VIII, was sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and launched forth his terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated bull of 1488, he called the nations of Europe to the rescue of the church of Christ upon earth, emperilled by the arts of Satan, and set forth the horrors that had reached his ears; how that numbers of both sexes had intercourse with the infernal fiends; how by their sorceries they afflicted both man and beast; how they blighted the marriage bed, destroyed the births of women and the increase of cattle; and how they blasted the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, and the herbs of the field. In order that criminals so atrocious might no longer pollute the earth, he appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with the apostolic power to convict and punish.
It was now that the Witch Mania, properly so called, may be said to have fairly commenced. Immediately a class of men sprang up in Europe, who made it the sole business of their lives to discover and burn the witches. Sprenger, in Germany, was the most celebrated of these national scourges. In his notorious work, the “Malleus Maleficarum,” he laid down a regular form of trial, and appointed a course of examination by which the inquisitors in other countries might best discover the guilty. The questions, which were always enforced by torture, were of the most absurd and disgusting nature. The inquisitors were required to ask the suspected whether they had midnight meetings with the devil? whether they attended the witch’s sabbath on the Brocken? whether they had their familiar spirits? whether they could raise whirlwinds and call down the lightning? and whether they had sexual intercourse with Satan?”
From ‘Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
By Charles Mackay’
http://robotics.caltech.edu/~mason/Delusions/epd_witch.html
# 560
Staffan,
YouÂre right; TV-Azteca website is short. IÂve asked to the producers for two DVD copies, one of them when I was interviewed on the destruction of wheat fields and the last one about the Âfrozen tree. As soon as I get the DVDs IÂll upload them to the BioCab website. IÂll tell you when all is ready.
Re#537, A complete list of events caused by global warming.
Hoi Polloi post was decapitated.
For full fun click here:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
and follow the links.
Re Gunnar #301 and Sadlov’s numerous weather titbits, it’s perhaps worth musing on the psychology of reporting weather events. Anyone sceptical of the degree with which AGW is operating, is no doubt expecting or hoping that non-AGW effects will turn out to have sufficient effect to halt and then reverse the recent increase – if we believe HadCRUT3 etc and that’s another active debate – of temperature.
So whilst weather is not climate, climate affects weather (otherwise what would all the AGW alarm be about). If a sceptic is looking for climate cooling she is likely to be looking for early evidence in cooler weather. And of that we have had plenty recently: rotten British summer, Swedish snow in June and September, Antarctica close to maximum ice extent measured since recorded time (which is only 30 years as the Arctic “warmers” fail to note), frost in Queensland, early snow in Sierra Nevada. And I was in Ibiza when they had their coolest August day for 50 years.
But it could just be that an unusual climatic pattern is planting anticyclones and jet streams in different places than usual, so the western sides of continents are feeling cool. And, since this is a balanced blogsite, we must acknowledge the scorching Eastern European summer and the Arctic melting. All these things, and their implications (or not) for climate, are very interesting. To paraphrase the ancient Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting weather”.
Keep watching HadCRUT3 and audit its construction; I never did watch GISS, and nothing I’ve read is going to make me want to start đ .
This is just a thought about the problems of accurate weather measurements because of Urban Heat Islands etc. In this day and age wouldn’t it be possible to construct a weather station which runs on batteries recharged from solar and wind power (while you’re measuring sunlight and wind speed use them!), and radios its readings to a main receiving station? That way they could be placed out in the country where they belong, with only the odd predator to bother them. It is silly having to worry about properly correcting for thermometers placed in bad sites.
That would cost money of course, but apparently there’s billions sloshing around to combat AGW. A cheaper solution, which perhaps Steve M already has in mind, is to establish a minimum standard for weather stations, reject the ones which fail it, and calculate a climateaudit.com temperature index from the good ones (using extrapolation for missing grid cells in the time honoured but not very well documented fashion).
Hansen has some explaining to do. The public deserves to know how he was converted from an apparent believer in a coming ice age who had no worries about greenhouse gas emissions to a global warming fear monger.
This is a man, as Lockwood noted in his message to the Times’ John McCaslin, who has called those skeptical of his global warming theory “court jesters.” We wonder: What choice words did he have for those who were skeptical of the ice age theory in 1971?
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290
Re: 564
See- owe to rich
This summer’s lousy weather west of an imaginary Rome/Warsaw line and the heatin Eastern Europe/Balkans were both due to the same phenomenon, the jet stream comning down unusally low. The resultant lows above Western Europe allowed very hot desert air to well up from North Africa.
As far as the the current relative warming in the Arctic is concerned, it should be borne in mind that sea ice fluctuations are very much more the result of changes in SSTs than in air temperatures. The phenomenon is cyclical and correlates with cyclical fluctuations in ocean temperatures. Neither abnomaly can be argued to somehow provide “proof” for AGW.
My apologies for not mentioning the source, a friend recently mailed me the list and I was not aware of this site. Thanks for the links.
Cheers
HP
567
YES!!! I’ve been saying the same thing. I’m glad somebody else gets that rather obvious point.
Climate change may help rainforests
Coupled climate-carbon cycle models suggest that Amazon forests are vulnerable to both long- and short-term droughts, but satellite observations showed a large-scale photosynthetic green-up in intact evergreen forests of the Amazon in response to a short, intense drought in 2005. These findings suggest that Amazon forests, though threatened by human-caused deforestation, fire, and possibly by more severe long-term droughts, may be more resilient to climate changes than ecosystem models assume.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1146663
I found this article interesting froma data reporting standpoint, as well as how data exclusion can effect results.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V127/N38/rankings.html
MIT misreports it’s SAT rankings.
RE#86,
I never suggested you spoke for the field of climate science. But your stance was pretty damning (or, as I said it, “interesting”). And I should hope that as a graduate student, you will have to produce a publishable article as part of your degree process, in which case you should know a little about what you are talking about.
The name of the author/co-authors should have absolutely NO bearing on whether or not a letter or article receives publication in a scientific journal. It is supposed to be a completely unbiased process. It shouldn’t matter if Mann’s name is on it or not (or if it is replaced by McIntyre).
It would appear that Hansen would agree with 1.5 degree C warming for the next century when he published a study in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences August 15, 2000, 10.1073/pnas.170278997 that downgrades the magnitude of global warming.
In the 2000 work Hansen found that the growth rate of climate forcing from greenhouse gases peaked in 1980 and has since declined from about 5 watts per square meter (W/m2) per century to about 3 W/m2 per century. Further Hansen found that Non-CO2 GHGs are probably the main cause of observed global warming, with CH4 causing the largest net climate forcing. When all forcings, not just positive forcings are taken into account, the net forcing is 1.6 +/- 1.1 W/m2. The IPCC assumes a 4 W/m2 forcing but as the Hansen found ÂMost climate simulations, as summarized by the IPCC, do not include all of the negative forcings; indeed, if they did, and other forcings were unchanged, little global warming would be obtained.” In this study Hansen predicted that “Global warming at a rate 0.15 +/- 0.05 degrees C per decade will occur over the next several decades.” This works out to being 1.5 degrees +/- .5 C.
So, Hansen says that our current warming is mainly not caused by CO2. So where is the CO2 warming that we are should have?
Well, as to Âno warming since 1998 I did make a mistake and read it wrong from my notes, it is since 2001. GISSTEMP has the following global temps for 2001-2006 (J-D): 57, 69, 67, 60, 76, and 65. Anyone want to point out where the warming is hidden in there? Which could also be why the big news was warming was going to start again after 2009. Do not get me wrong, I believe that we have had warming since the LIA. But I do not see accelerated warming that the instrumented direct readings are indicating. The proxies are not showing this accelerated warming.
The IPCC agrees that there are problems with the instrumented and proxy readings for the 20th century and it can be seen here
So either the proxy readings are right and there is something wrong with the way we are doing the direct instrumented readings, or the proxy readings are wrong and we just lost the basis to say anything out of the ordinary is happening now.
Warming in the Antarctic is mainly limited to the Antarctic Peninsula and even then manly in the portion that is outside the Antarctic Circle as can be clearly seen here. The interior of Antarctic is clearly cooling. This is not consistent with any of the GCMs. If the CO2 theory is correct with the sensitivity that is expected by the proponents, then warming should be happening at both poles.
Now as to AR1, the consensus from the IPCC is that AR1 plus the linear trend is good enough. This can be seen in IPCC AR4, where the caption to Table 3.2 says:
So while Tamino can make the claim that linear trend plus AR1 is not the best model, it is an acceptable model and strangely enough, the climate sensitivity it reflects matches the climate sensitivity that has been currently shown though empirical evidence.
You need to read the literature on the change in the Southern Annular Mode before you draw this conclusion.
Boris, Hansen says the warming we are having now is not due to CO2 and the best you can do is say I need to read the literature on the Southern Annular Mode. Why not try addressing all of my post?
Re: 99
Boris
Why is it with you that we others somehow always need to read something more before meeting your standards for concluding anything.
Fact is: best available data tell us that the Ross Peninsula aside, the rest of the Antarctic continent is not warming as postulated by the IPCC models but rather, is cooling. Antarctic sea ice is very close to, or has reached an alltime high since satellite observations bagan. If that’s not enough to upset the IPCC model apple cart, add the satellite and surface data that indicate that temps in the entire SH are going down. No need to read anything more about “Southern Annular Mode”.
Tetris, Boris is doing his standard “go read the literature on ____” thing. It’s a ploy. At first, I thought the troll was honest, and I attempted to explain that debate doesn’t work that way. Then I learned what was really going on. Ignore the troll.
Re#98, it’s conveniently “in the pipeline.”
Re#100, 102, maybe that’s just his way of admitting that the GCMs do a poor job of handling “natural” components.
Re Tetris #567, you say
sea ice fluctuations are very much more the result of changes in SSTs than in air temperatures. The phenomenon is cyclical and correlates with cyclical fluctuations in ocean temperatures.
Thanks, this is fascinating. Do you have any references to the cyclical nature? I should be most interested to know what the period or periods involved are.
FYI:
http://www.openeco.org/
When I was a small child, I got one of those “Ecology” signs – a blown up lower case “e” done in green, and put it on my bike. I dreamt of the future Ecological Utopia. Oh yes, those elder statesmen of the “movement” would have been oh so proud of what a politically correct thinking being I nearly grew up to become. Is utopia a nightmare?
Were pre-war warm years for USA only? I think not.
Here some data from North-East Italy (they are in part from 1920-’30 and not 1930-’40, but they can be good too).
In my city, average rainfall 1920-’30 was 25% lower than last 50 years average (last 16 years average is just 5% lower). Just the years of Dust Bowl…
1921-’50 July average was 1.5-2°C warmer than 1961-’90 one, and even a bit warmer than last years. Summer 1928 was more like 2003 than other recent summers.
Winter 1929 was very cold, but isolated; winters 1920-’21-’25-’28 were all milder than all winters from 2002 to 2006, and near to very mild winters 2001 and 2007.
Re#566, To be fair, it was only Hansen’s program that was used. There is no mention of Hansen’s views at the time. We don’t know what kinds of assumptions, inputs, etc, were used.
It’s far more interesting to see that the co-author with S.I. Rasool was Stephen H. Schneider.
windansea you can use the GISS map generator to make a map. An anomaly map with, say, 1997-2006 compared to 1900-1909 may give you a good indication.
(Note that the GISS maps use a projection that exaggerate the size of the polar regions.)
The paper that Vernon is citing is Hansen’s much discussed, seldom understoood “Alternative Scenario” paper
Click to access 170278997v1.pdf
Of interest to auditors, the quotes attributed to Hansen appear nowhere in the paper, although googling them returns a single link to “globalwarming.org”
The point of this paper was to describe the importance of reducing non CO2 forcings. When put together they are roughly equal to that of CO2. Those forcings, on top of the ever-present CO2 increase, is what is driving the rapid warming of the last few decades. The alternative scenario draws down the non-CO2 forcings since those are the easiest to reduce. That gives us the time necessary to reduce CO2.
Ran across something interesting.
Two years ago there was a correction put in place for the sattelite data http://tinyurl.com/2oudn2
. This came up in a discusion elsewhere. Well it turns out that this was a diurnal correction. More importantly the mahority of the correction seems to have happened in the 21st century as we see here http://preview.tinyurl.com/2qj438 .
So we have a time of day correction that primarily effects data afgter the year 2000.
Do we have the Hansen Y2K error 18 months previously?
And more importantly how many more, and how many more types of data sets have this error?
Alan Cheetham. Hi Alan. I followed some links that led to:
I just wish I could be there, and I mean that most sincerely.
By the way I love your mastery of Access, and Excel. Information collection, analysis, and sharing.
Actually cce, those things are in the report which is where I got the information from. You did read the report?
Actually cce, those things are in the report which is where I got the information from. You did read the report? I found it by google scholar for Hansen and reading most of his works that related to climate.
Mount Ruapahu in Central North Island New Zealand just erupted.
RE 584: ecc;
To quote from Hansen in the report:
“Our estimates of global climate forcings indicate that it is the non-CO2 GHGs that have caused most observed global warming.”
I do not see that says CO2 is half the warming. What it does say is that:
“Fossil fuel use is the main source of both CO2 and aerosols, with land conversion and biomass burning also contributing to both forcings. Although fossil fuels contribute to growth of some of the other GHGs, it follows that the net global climate forcing due to processes that produced CO2 in the past century probably is much less than 1.4 W/m2. ”
Which reads as burning fossil fuels produces CO2 and aerosols which cancel either other out. That leaves only the other GHGs as the source of 20th century warming.
So, ecc, want to try again?
thanks David!
cce here, even from the Goddard/NASA press release, so that you don’t have to read the report itself:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20000929co2.html
http://lvb.net/item/5401
We need more climate catastrophes!
Huge amounts of CO2 on Venus is only part of it. Look at the rest: 92 times the atmospheric pressure, no carbon cycle, clouds made of sulphur, unlubricated crust, no protection from cosmic rays, closer to the sun, incredibly slow (and backward) rotation, has hardly any axial tilt, there’s almost no eccentricity, the atmosphere is only CO2 and nitrogen as well as lacking relative humidity, and 80% of the surface is volcanic, 5 times older, and heavily cratered. Geez, think of how you’d feel if you had to go 117 days between sunrises. Oh, and there’s no moon, just the quasi-orbital asteroid 2002 VE68. There’s really no comparison.
# 584
cce,
Indeed the quotes are there. For example, in the conclusions James Hansen and coauthors say that the main cause of the present global warming are non-CO2 GHGs.
The whole paper talks about the uncertainties of CO2 like the driver of AGW.
#585
Sid,
It is also my understanding that about 1/3 of our GW can be accounted for in the TOB adjustments now being made on surface data. Even more interestingly TOB adjusts the 1930s down about .1C, and adjusts post 1990 data upward about .2C.
Investor’s Business Daily is reporting the following:
I’m no scientist but this casts a whole new light on things. How much money is Soros poised to make on carbon credits and other side “benefits” of the GW industry?
Link: The Soros Threat To Democracy
I would guess that somebody’s figured this out already, so here goes. Assuming a 10 foot x 15 foot room with 10 foot high ceilings, one that’s at 400 ppmv 75 F 25% humidity. How much would it take to raise the co2 to 500?
Soros? Here’s a bit from 2003 about him and some of his ideas about economics:
http://www.brookesnews.com/031512soros.html
Re#593, the zealots would love for another Katrina to help push their agenda. They need “poster child” events.
There are plenty who are less-than-zealot but nonetheless happy with the destruction of Katrina, hoping for hurricanes to form (and bring devastation), etc. It’s quite sick.
If you have:
Door #1 – no more hurricanes – ever (disproving an AGW link)
Door #2 – more hurricanes than ever (encouraging an AGW link)
(you can substitute heat waves, droughts, floods, etc, or any other type of “extreme event”)
…a lot of folks would want Door #2. Being “right” is more important to them than the devastation of areas and people who are just pixels on a TV screen.
I even know people who WANT me to be hit by a hurricane, in a way analagous to God smoting a sinner, just for being “a skeptic.”
Regarding climate sensitivity, here’s an interesting tidbit:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2517868.ece
The article isn’t about CS, but note the third comment from the top:
Looks like Spencer has a paper backing up Schwartz, and Michaels will be coming out with another one shortly. Stay tuned. Tamino is going to be one busy puppy…
Mikel MariĂąelarena- (the post #s have changed, but now start at #335)
It looks like CT has Antarctic ice over 16M sq-km again — a new record, although nothing has been acknowledged? I presume you have as well, but I’ve saved the 19-, 23-, & 25-SEP images to capture the adjusted relative max, short-term decline, and new rise of ice area over this recent period. The archive.web site was not saving the antarctic 365, area, & anom images…
I left off the CT links because Bad_Behavior is swallowing the posts.
RE: #601 – Half of sensitivity “predicted” by GCMs, and, surprise – surprise, the realized global warming is no more than half of what the GCMs were predicting during the early 1990s.
I think it’s about time for unthreaded 21. Firefox is choking on this.
Sam U (#598) My guess is 0.15 ftÂł. This based on adding 100 ppmv to a 1500 ftÂł room or 0.0001 x 1500 = 0.15 ftÂł.
Bob
Oops. 15? = 15 cu. ft.
Bob
# 598
Sam Urbinto,
With people in? If there are people in, how many people? Are there other animals and plants into the room? How many individuals in total, human animals, non human animals and plants?
Models:
Reality:
#608:
This morning, the area between Venice and Treviso was flooded by a strong and vaste thunderstorm.
Official airports stations (the ones used by NOAA as well…): from 9mm to 34mm (1″=25.4mm).
Rural stations (regional official ones): up to 173mm in less than 5 hours; amateur stations over 200m in some case.
So probably it was just a nightmare, nothing really happened…
But if you believe to me, to travellers and to rural stations, maybe you will think about global warming extremisation: well, we were coming from a normal mild and sunny late September week, then we were hit by a strong Arctic front with temperatures well below average and snow above 1500m (and the cold front is still to come – 9meters=10yards).
See the V, pointing right on Venice, when the thunderstorm just passed:
Here Italian Central Alps (despite the site being from Florence, which is far south):
http://firenzemeteo.com/webcam_stelvio.htm
snow still not heavy this morning, but already blanketed above 1700-1800m (Livigno village, down in the page) and should continue all day, tomorrow and maybe Friday too.
EMERGENZA ROSSA: Disagi alla circolazione causa maltempo
Vaste zone della Terraferma allagate [26 Settembre 2007, 09:27]
Ultimo Aggiornamento: 26 Settembre 2007, 09:27
La Protezione Civile e il Comando dei Vigili Urbani sconsigliano assolutamente di muoversi, se non per ragioni di assoluta necessitĂ , nella Terraferma veneziana, stante l’impraticabilitĂ di numerosissime strade, nella maggior parte giĂ chiuse al transito, e molti semafori in tilt, per cui la viabilità è interrotta.
Dai dati Arpav (Agenzia regionale per la prevenzione e protezione ambientale del Veneto) emerge che dalle ore 03 alle ore 06 di questa notte sono caduti sulla Terraferma 173 millimetri di pioggia.
Questo è un dato non solo eccezionale, ma rappresenta un record assoluto.
Tutte le squadre dei Vigili del Fuoco, affiancate dai volontari di Protezione Civile, stanno intervenendo nelle zone di maggiore difficoltĂ .
Torce di Fusina: possibile evento visivo [26 Settembre 2007, 11:09]
Livello di emergenza: Codice Rosso
Data ed Ora della notizia: 26 Settembre 2007, 11:09
La Raffineria di Venezia dell’Eni Spa ha comunicato che, in concomitanza alle forti precipitazioni in atto, stanno provvedendo in maniera cautelativa alla fermata di alcuni impianti della Raffineria. In tali condizioni il livello visibile della torcia di Raffineria potrebbe subire variazioni associate alle operazioni in corso.
Vaste zone della Terraferma allagate [26 Settembre 2007, 09:27]
Livello di emergenza: Codice Rosso
Data ed Ora della notizia: 26 Settembre 2007, 09:27
La Protezione Civile e il Comando dei Vigili Urbani sconsigliano assolutamente di muoversi, se non per ragioni di assoluta necessitĂ , nella Terraferma veneziana, stante l’impraticabilitĂ di numerosissime strade, nella maggior parte giĂ chiuse al transito, e molti semafori in tilt, per cui la viabilità è interrotta.
Dai dati Arpav (Agenzia regionale per la prevenzione e protezione ambientale del Veneto) emerge che dalle ore 03 alle ore 06 di questa notte sono caduti sulla Terraferma 173 millimetri di pioggia.
Questo è un dato non solo eccezionale, ma rappresenta un record assoluto.
Tutte le squadre dei Vigili del Fuoco, affiancate dai volontari di Protezione Civile, stanno intervenendo nelle zone di maggiore difficoltĂ .
Disagi alla circolazione causa maltempo [26 Settembre 2007, 09:02]
Livello di emergenza: Codice Rosso
Data ed Ora della notizia: 26 Settembre 2007, 09:02
La centrale operativa della Polizia municipale ha comunicato che a causa di condizioni metereologiche avverse che hanno avuto inizio nella notte e tuttora persistono, la circolazione in tutto il terriorio del Comune di Venezia è molto difficoltosa.
Vaste zone della terraferma sono allagate.
Tre squadre della protezione civile, coordinate dai vigili del fuoco, stanno operando
Nel corso della mattinata seguiranno ulteriori comunicazioni.
http://www.comune.venezia.it/flex/
http://www.comune.venezia.it/flex/AppData/Local/Emergenze/emergenza_29.html
Daily rainfall in the area is now up to (rural/local stations):
Mestre-Marghera 254 mm (10 inches)
Mira 151 mm
Mogliano 122 mm
Valle Averto: 315 mm
See above the 9mm to 34mm of stations linked to NOAA net…
Well, I guess it is official now… I have been banned from RC.
re 613: oh dear, what was your crime?
Well, first I posted this:
Mr. Chase, this is a distinction without difference. You say he is not stating that CO2 and aerosols cancel each other out, but rather that the process of burning fossil fuels and burning biomass both produce CO2 and aerosols which cancel each other out and that means that means what? The difference is? CO2 and aerosols are not cancelling each other out? No, then what was wrong with the statement. On to point two! Lets really look at what was said, namely that in the future it is likelyto shift towards dominance of CO2. The key word is likely. He does not say it Âwill happen, just that it Âmay happen. What does he say that actually happening is the non-CO2 GHGs are the source of 20th century warming.
I do not see what your third point has to do with what I posted. As of this point there is a theory that CO2 will cause temperature to rise but there has been none. Seems a pretty weak theory if CO2 has gone up 40 percent yet CO2 has caused no warming!
Then you make the unsupported statement:
ÂIt is also worth noting that there has been a reduction in the production of aerosols as of 1970, and as such, the effects of carbon dioxide have been masked to a smaller degree since then. What study do you have that contradicts Hansen in 2000? Please remember this is global not North America and Western Europe only.
Now you state:
But once again I refer to Hansen, who you are challenging who says that the IPCC is not looking at all forcings. Nothing you said all that you did nothing to address what Hansen said, which I have copied below again.
Next you state:
This is very disingenuous yet again. Tamino says that AR1 is not right. The IPCC says it is valid and you try and turn it around to be that I am saying that AR4 is wrong. Please point out where I said that? I believe that I said that the IPCC indicates that AR1 plus the linear trend is valid.
Next you state:
This is a weak attempt at misdirection. The fact is that the instrumented readings and the proxies do not match. The IPCC agrees with this. You are presenting opinion as to why they diverge without the facts to support your opinion.
Next you state:
Which is misleading since the warming is not happening on out side of the Antarctic Pen and there is still is mainly north of the Antarctic Circle. Please note I did not reference the Southern ocean, I reference the land which is cooling. The continent of Antarctica is cooling which does not match the GCM predictions.
You end with:
Yes, let them look at what I am saying. I have facts from studies while you have opinion without the facts to support them. You try to say that warming is by CO2 is not cancelled out by aerosols even though the process that produces man made CO2 produces the same aerosols which negate the CO2.
The fact is that Hansen says there has been no man made warming due to CO2. That it likely that there may be some in the future. If we quite producing CO2 by burning fossil fuels, the we also will stop the production of aerosols, and the net impact is none.
and Mike at RC added this:
And I then responded with this:
If you could point out where I have violated the policy it would be helpful. If the issue is that you do not like the conclusions that I draw from the various studies that I have read, is that not what discussion is for. For example, you say that I am “egregiously misrepresent the findings and views” but I am quoting full text out of his document. In this case Dr. Hansen said that CO2 is not a source of current warming. He also said that the process that man uses to produce CO2 also produces the aerosols which negate the possible warming of the CO2. I do not believe I misunderstood Dr. Hansen on this. Because you do not like the conclusion I drew from this is not the same as saying that I failed to meet the policy.
This is your site, if you do not want me to post here, fine, just say so. You have my email address so. However, saying I am not meeting the policy is not true, in my opinion and reflects your dislike for what I have to say rather than my failure to meet your policy.
Now I can not access the site.
Lubos has a new thread about a paper dealing with GW statistical significance. Comments from statisticians would be illuminating.
LEARN R BY JUST WATCHING
Nine minutes and thirty seconds well spent.
It is heretical to attack religious dogma.
“If our opponent believes nothing of divine revelation, there is no longer any means of proving the articles of faith by reasoning, but only of answering his objections  if he has any  against faith” – Thomas Aquinas
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?
That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275526219598836
#615
I can’t either and I’ve never posted there I think it’s broken so give it some time.
Re 615:
Fascinating — your travails sent me to the Wiki page and hence to the paper on a NASA site. The graph of forcings is illuminating: look at the cooling estimates for forced cloud changes. The error bar is so big it goes off the page! More measurement might well make cloud changes a more important player in global warming than CO2.
There was a meeting chaired by Palle/ on albedo changes. Has anyone seen an open-access site which expands on the presentations? I see Prof Palle/ works in the Canaries — I have seen the Atlantic off Tenerife smoothed for miles by the effluent from Santiago. I bet that’s where his albedo change is coming from.
JF
615: If RC has banned you for THAT, they made another big mistake. Lots of people are watching…
re: 621 Albedo
Where’s the data from the monitoring of past and current Earth albedo? How is it handled by the GCMs? It would seem that satellite data could be used and we could start looking forward rather than in reverse.
Instead of trying to measure the temperature changes of (insert favorite undefined complex system here), why not try to estimate the major components of the Earth’s energy balance? It’d be more fun to watch.
SteveSadlov — Half of what the GCMs predict. Surprise. đ That might be the imbalance between positive and negative forcings with one doing a little more than the other. Then again, it might be mostly from cosmic rays, as the magnetic field’s been losing some strength over the same 100+ years. Or possibly UHI. Whatever….
Larry — #21 sounds like a good idea.
Bob — 15x10x10 should be 1500, .000100 is 100 ppm but what about the volume of the air normally in there, is that part of the calculation? That figure is .15 tho. Anyone else got a calc? I would be curious to see what the temp does in a room adding that. Then maybe spraying some air freshner in there….
Nasif — Let’s say an empty room. We already know the people are going to be contributing CO2 and using O2, and that plants would mainly do the opposite (and grow better!!) I’d just be curious what the temp does without other influences.
PP — WHAT?????? Models don’t match reality? Wow, my world view is shattered. đ
Vernon — I think the RC site is down.
Re #619 “Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros flagship Âphilanthropy, by as much as $720,000”
Hansen was given $250,000 personal no-strings attached money from The Tides Foundation. A reward for years of inconveinent science productioon. Does anyone think Mrs. Kerry would have given Hansen that kind of personal payoff if he wasn’t a political scientist?
RC is odd, they tell me I am banned and then post my comments anyway.
lol
On another topic, good news! We’re able to grow wine in England.
http://www.englishwineproducers.com/midsvineyard.htm
RE 627.. Thats the door knob hittin your ass on the way out Budd.
They are just going to subject you to a ritualistic beating where everybody gets to
attack your last post and you dont get to repond. Civilized bunch.
At some point I thik I might go back on there and just request that they uphold
the comments policy. Read the coment policy. They allow certain people to violate
it with impunity.
Soros Fund Management recently bought 13,000 shares in ExxonMobil, 5,000 shares in Chevron and 432,000 shares in ConocoPhillips, which clearly indicates Hansen’s link with Big Oil.
Back from China Gavin finds it necessary to have a dig at CA and Anthony Watts on RC:
and as usual it´s time to move on and have an eye on the bigger picture:
Hoi.
Gavins comments probably violate the comment policy that they have skewered
Vernon with.
Let me read his comments in full and see if they allow me back on site after
being a bad boy. These guys have no sense of humour. Swirlies for all of them!
Steven Mosher, they’re serious climate bloggers and therefore humor is not one of their strong points, probably.
PS May I say that I always enjoy your funny comments here and on RC while it lasts
Re: #627
Probably not for long. Just about the time the vines have been planted, reached a useful maturity, and the business has changed hands at fabulously high prices, along comes a Maunder minimum. Even Northern France and Germany may be hard put to bring their wine industries through the next fifty years.
Seems to me the Y2K glitch and other oddities/anomalies with their data processing methods are pretty substantive, and a direct result of the “amateur photography” exercise. Unless, of course, Gavin really thinks all the guidelines/requirements for proper station siting and code/data handling are merely for show.
Mark
Nothing substantive, what a joke for them to be saying it.
Oh and of course I meant growing grapes. We’ll see if they keep growing.
Re: Gavin and RC
Yeah remember folks, as it goes for those serious climate bloggers, the proof of “serious climate” is only found on a computer too (a model) and also pictures of all manner of things that are melting (whomever the photographer good or bad is) mean very much to their side.
Sheesh. Gavin is not smart at all IMHO, and on top of it a really rude person and his manner as a moderator of such a public site is terrible.
So …Welcome to the club Vernon! what happened to you, happened me (and to SteveM too)-I wasn’t banned but I was not allowed to reply to anybody on one topic ( this was along time ago about an online “interview” they did on “The Daily Kos”) but everyone else was allowed to say something to me in any way they wanted- my positing name was “justahousewife” he started it and proceeded to make fun of my spelling which wasn’t any big deal at all (and he spelled something wrong in his reply to me!)
Then, he held my reply and they were allowed to make all kinds of SUV/ soccer mom “you are clueless” kind of remarks too me (surfing not soccer and toyota sedan not suv!) It was a long time ago-in the beginning of that site. (The topic SteveM couldn’t reply to was a topic about HIS work.) They also proceeded to tell me I needed to read more, educate myself more and gave me all kinds of links (my husband is am environmental geologist, and they made fun of the field of geology as well..you know “oil company shill” and geologists only study rocks! and all that talk) Sheesh. So I pretty much told Gavin to go jump in a lake.
RE 632. Thanks. the Hilarious thing for me is that NO ONE got my tamino joke.
in the discussion of Taminos AR(1) post, I posted his Linear + red noise
conclusion. Like it was me speaking..
Unfortunately I was found out before people attacked the analysis. That was joke one.
Joke two was “hey I AM TAMINO”
When I tried to explain that I was Tamino in Foster Grants they clearly did not
see the humour in that ( Tamino is Grant Foster ) and excommunicated me.
However, I have more tricks as a jester than they have counter measures.
Including Moo cow morse code. Moo moo MOOOOOO. (dit dit Dah)
Now, It would be a Cool cool thing if “somebody” took Hans Errens analsysis of CRN12 versus 5
and posted it as a respsonse to gavin. Also, ask gavin, DOES HE ENDORSE JOHNV? since JohnV
matches GISS? If so, what’s the need of GISSTEMP?
I respect the man as a scientist. However, he does exhibit certain punching bag characteristics
in the rhetorical area that are reminiscent of the brainy kid who sticks his tongue
to the frozen metal lamppost and says “mmmmm nmmmm m mmm mmm “
That takes courage.
Mark
http://www.fosterfinancial.com/bios.html
Just posted on Gavin’s new thread. We’ll see if they take it:
# SteveSadlov Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
26 September 2007 at 6:05 PM
IÂve been dealing with the PRC for over a decade. There is something in the Chinese / communist mentality which most Westerners fail to grasp. The value of human life / the human spirit is considered much lower than it is in Western cultures and isolated examples elsewhere in the world. In fact, there is a certain fatalism about physical life in the here and now. This leads to an overall destructive mentality. Certainly, the West had its moments in the past. But back in those days decades ago when we were the primary belchers of unmitigated filth, our population was much, much lower. There were large spaces between our cities and the impacted areas were actually pretty small. There is no precedent for what is going on in China now.
RE: #633 – I got long positions on the wine industry in places such as South Africa, Australia, Spain, Thailand and Mexico.
Front page article in today’s Wall Street Journal: … MEDICAL MYSTERY One doctor’s Lonely Quest To Heal Brain Injury After 40 Years, Skeptics Back Hormone Therapy …
… Dr. Stein’s journey shows just how difficult it is to challenge the medical establishment, which often begrudges ideas outside the mainstream. …
… Patients on progesterone had a death rate of just 13% from their head injuries, less than half the 30% death rate of those on standard treatment. And progesterone showed no negative side effects. The 100-subject study was too small to prove that progesterone caused the lowered death rate, but the findings were consistent with animal research. …
If the preliminary results are validated, forty years of fighting the scientific consensus may result in a major medical advance in the treatment of traumatic brain injury.
Climateaudit.org, surfacestations.org , Steve McIntyre, Anthony Watts, and contributors have made significant contributions to the understanding of other issues. Possibly it will take less than 40 years for their contributions to the understanding of reality to be fully appreciated?
638.. What? he’s got them thar degrees.
At least you could do me the frickin courtousy of a chuckle over the frozen metal lampost
wit. Christ.. I get no respect.
They are getting ready to act
640. maybe we need a Blog called “banned on real climate”
I think My free the code thing gave gavin hives… he mistook them for bollocks
and now fancies himself the gordon ramsey of climate science.
RE: #644 – “Phaseout of the interest tax deduction on home mortgages for homes over 3,000 square feet. Owners would keep most of the deduction for homes at the lower end of the scale, but it would be eliminated entirely for homes of 4,200 feet or more.”
These square footages may seem sort of large – sort of “McMansionish.” But it all depends on what you decide to count. We have some friends who live in a home, built in the 1930s (consider the economic climate) in what was then a working class suburb of San Francisco. The home is the type that, when confronted by today’s folks from back East seeking to relo, makes them think twice. The prospect of moving from a beautiful expansive colonial, into a tiny shot gun shack with a flat top roof, is enough to make those wanting to move to that now expensive area think again. Simply put, the home has a one car garage taking up much of the “basement” space (not really a true basement in a sense recognizable to Easterners) not unlike many homes in SF proper. There are claimed to be two bed rooms but one room is really only a den. No family room, a small living room and kitchen that would fit right into many “low end” Mahattan apartments. True square footage is on the order of 975 square feet. Now, here is the thing. In preparing for a very modest expansion, to essentially make the garage an almost-2-car and add a second bed room, the control documents for planning commission approval list before and after square footages. Amazingly, the before square footage suddenly ballooned up above 2000 square feet and the after is only a few hundred sq. ft. below the slope-density limit (3000 square). How can this be? Well, the jurisdiction these friends live in looked at the home, and because there is rat proofing (a thin blown concrete layer) covering the soil in the crawl space behind the garage, the count the entire “basement” footprint (garage included) in their square footage calculation. Count on the federal government to do the same for the purposes of this new progressive home tax.
646.
The key is figuring a way to tax MALIBU … the colony.. without hitting the rest of of coastal
california land owners..
it’s a frickin disaster waiting to happen.. oh wait I watched two or three disastes there.
Fire from the hills, no ground cover.. rain comes.. MUDSLIDE.
Storm surge.. houses 5 feet from high tide. Destroyed.
Who picked up Hollywoods tab? You and me.
It’s utterly retarded. Rebuild new Orleans? when we know its destiny is to be a swamp.
Why?
Over the next 100 years the sea level will rise .5 meter. trust gavin.
Therefore, no new building on coastal property that is below 1 meter at the highest
storm surge from the most powerful hurricane on record…
oh, and if you live there, in 50 years we will condemn your property,
WAAAAA
Re: #646
Any idiot Congresscritter stupid enough to even entertain the thought of such a tax on the square footage of homes must be immediately impeached and laughed out of Congress. Property taxes are already illogical. Residential homes which have the most solar energy efficiency are those which have greater square foootage used for solar gain and passive solar heating and cooling.
Did you know that?
Vernon, welikerocks,
They didnÂt recognize me and I wasnÂt allowed to post there since my first attempt. I was pre-banned from RC since they started a criticism to my work, as if it was a very important. I donÂt care.
#648
I think the good man is after the urban sprawl. If I may – what I’ve read about this from the other side of Atlantic, it seems to me that urban sprawl is usually caused by people fleeing something they don’t like in their previous neighborhoods. Maybe looking for the causes would be more productive.
647: Don’t forget that the land that New Orleans is on is also sinking.
CDC trying to add to the AGW scare…
http://www.kpho.com/news/14214579/detail.html
It’s a tragedy, and a “brain eating” organism doesn’t sound pretty, but how high on the health risk totem pole should this be?
re 649
Nasif
NOAA-SEC is the organisation, which mainly deals with predicting solar storms that can affect wireless communication
http://www.sec.noaa.gov/
Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) is therefore a very logic name change.
lol, fighting climate change. The battle of the century!
50 cents more per gallon gasoline tax? What a surprise, a Democrat in the United States wanting to raise taxes… It’ll never go anywhere, they already grab almost 20 cents for every single gallon of gasoline sold in the entire country from every single oil company!! And then I wonder how much money that is. And what exactly is being done with it! (Which makes it funny when the U.S. Congress talks about “obscene oil company profits”, and talk about a conflict of interest — who exactly are the oil company shills again?)
Forget that. Can you imagine what effect would a tax of 1/6th more per gallon would have on an economy?
On the US and/or world economy. I am aware many other countries tax gasoline at much higher rates. Although I believe most of them don’t actually have much or any gasoline (or natural gas) of their own.
The point is, what exactly would the money do to “fight climate change”? What a crock.
To be fair, it’s not really a tax on square footage. However, the de facto result will be that those with larger square footages would have lower deductions assuming they have mortgages. One quite interesting, possible unintended consequence of this would be that those who now pay AMT due to mortgage deductions may be exempted from paying it in certain situations. Also, of note, the income level required to own a McMansion in the middle of the US is far lower than the income required to own a little shack in urban-coastal California. As a result, you’ll end up with people with quite modest incomes in places like the Midwest and Midsouth, deprived of their mortgage deduction, meanwhile many folks technically considered “wealthy” (but really just upper middle class) by Fed Gov living in the Gold Coast type areas of the country will get a full deduction since the houses they can afford live in are 2500 square ft. max.
# 654
Excuse me Hans, did I say it was wrong? WhatÂs your problem?
# 654
Michael Jankowski,
Naegleria fowleri is an opportunistic amoebaean-flagellate pathogen. It is a free living protozoan that becomes pathogen only when invading mucosal tissues, for example nasal mucosa. As a trophozoite, Naegleria fowleri behaves like a non parasitic organism. When bacteria (food) are scarce or when the ionic density of the environment decreases, Naegleria becomes a flagellated. If Naegleria invades living mucosa he becomes a parasite.
Obviously, the amoeba lives better in tepid waters, but an extra warming of waters would kill them all. CDC has got sick perhaps it was Naegleria? LOL.
Re#644,
How does highway construction – which many people blame as a cause for sprawl – prevent climate change? Social security? Payroll taxes? And what goes to “help the poor pay energy bills” would just offset the price increases the energy companies would have to put in thanks to “a tax on carbon, at $50 a ton, released from burning coal, petroleum or natural gas.” What about their higher grocery bills thanks to the energy taxes – who pays for those price increases?
# 655
Sam,
The last week the Congress in Mexico approved an increase in gasoline taxes of 8% applicable from the next October 1st. Immediately, it provoked a cascaded of prices in all products, before the augment was applied. Chicken, red meat, pork, sausages, eggs, milk, sugar, bread, tortillas, natural gas, LP gas, car parts, cereals, fruits, vegetables, etc. I think the AGW was invented to have a justification for raising prices without raising salaries. The pressure from Media and the public was so high that the president had to Âfreeze up the prices of gas, gasoline, and basic products until January 2008.
By the way, the process of increasing taxes to gasoline is happening in most countries.
Dingell, at 81 years old, probably sees this as his last, best chance to ram some good old fashioned redistribution of wealth down the throats of the electorate. Of course it will whack the middle classes, fail to ameliorate poverty one whit, and perversely increase dependence. However, I don’t believe the “law of unintended consequence” applies in this situation.
Re: #93
David Wratt says:
Yes, and a great many of those most able and eminent scientists in New Zealand and Australia are vigurously in opposition to David Wratt and the IPCC. Their coalition Website has presented the news story:
#98 D. Patterson:
I’m confused by the fact that “top-gun climatologist” Dr. Ian Wilson is an astronomer. Oh wait, maybe it’s the “other scientist” — he seems credible.
Perhaps you and Dr. Wratt are talking about a different group of eminent scientists.
It’s interesting how one peer-reviewed paper can overturn many other peer-reviewed papers “in one fell swoop”, but only if you like its conclusions.
RE: #665 – In England, mid 17th century, there was an oddly similar taxation structure put in place. It was a last attempt to reign in the rising bourgeoisie – i.e. to keep the truly (heriditary, noble) wealthy, wealth, to keep the poor, poor, and to push back on the rising middle class. This led to some pretty bad turns of events, eventually culminating in a compromise of sorts, after the terror of Cromwell. The compromise was flawed, and left loopholes for future similarly structured taxation in overseas colonies. I can see the Lexington Green in my mind’s eye, presently! …. đ
Re: #665
???????
Yes, it is interesting to observe how the various Royal Societies in Britain and New Zealand with the participation of Dr. Wratt do not find it troublesome to overturn opponents’ peer reviewed papers and deny their fellow scientists an opportunity to publish responses. Not unlike Gavin and RC, don’t you think?
At least no one has denied David Wratt the opportunity to respond to critics at CA. Wouldn’t it be nice if the converse were true?
# 665
John V.,
Yeah! A well-done peer reviewed paper can overturn many other “light” peer reviewed papers.
# 665, John V.
What, like MBH98 overturning the Mediaeval Warm Period ?
# 671
John V.,
Oh… Yeah! Here:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/170278997v1.pdf
JohnV,
Now call me simple but if Hansen is right in his 2000 paper ÂGlobal warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario then how does anyone prove there is CO2 based warming by observing the climate?
To quote from Hansen in the report:
ÂOur estimates of global climate forcings indicate that it is the non-CO2 GHGs that have caused most observed global warming.Â
Further, Hansen went on to say:
ÂFossil fuel use is the main source of both CO2 and aerosols, with land conversion and biomass burning also contributing to both forcings. Although fossil fuels contribute to growth of some of the other GHGs, it follows that the net global climate forcing due to processes that produced CO2 in the past century probably is much less than 1.4 W/m2. Â
Which reads as burning fossil fuels produces CO2 and aerosols which cancel either other out. That leaves only the other GHGs as the source of 20th century warming.
That is essentially what Hansen is saying in that paper. You are probably aware that the term “CO2 Equivalent” or CO2e is often used. It represents the total CO2 plus the equivalent effect of other GHGs (CH4, NO2, etc).
The paper does not say that CO2 does not cause global warming. It says that burning fossil fuels releases CO2 and aerosols, and that they negate each other.
I’ve written something like this before, but imagine this. You have a house at 70 degrees F (imagining some kind of impossible house where everywhere in it is the exact same temperature ) but you want at 75. So you add 1000 ppmv (or whatever) of CO2 and it warms to 75 But then you turn on the oven for something and it goes to 80, so you turn on your ionizer and it goes to 70. Then you open the door and it goes to 65. So you turn on your heater until it turns 90, add 1000 ppmv more CO2 and it goes to 92. Then you open your fridge and it goes to 85. You turn a fan and it goes to 80. You open the windows on both sides of the house and it’s 75. Goal!
So, did opening your windows make the house go from 70 to 75? Did adding 2000 ppmv make the house go from 70 to 75?
Get the picture?
Oh, a house that’s 70 everywhere is a lot more likely than a planet that warms all at once everywhere, don’t you think?
No John, one key here is: “the non-CO2 GHGs that have caused most observed global warming” It’s NOT saying that CO2 doesn’t contribute to the process, but that it’s only part of it. Grabbing another key sentence, we get “both CO2 and aerosols, with land conversion and biomass burning also contributing ”
That last sentence is what RP Sr. has been saying quite a bit, for a while, basically.
So we all know that CO2 absorbs IR and participates in “the heat transfer” but as much as humans add to with fossil fuels and the rest, we reduce with aerosols. He knows, I’m sure, it’s a complex system with many pieces. So at the end of the day, what we get is the conclusion:
“1.4 W/m2” That’s the amount CO2 adds to global warming, according to Dr. Hansen at least.
I’m just parsing it, not agreeing or disagreeing with it.
I’d put it this way: “CO2 adds some to global warming, but it is not the only cause.” I don’t know if it could be as far as “it is not the primary cause” because I don’t know the total amount of the forcing.
What percent is 1.4 W/m2, that’s the question.
Note that my house analogy was more towards what Vernon was saying about things cancelling.
Ok, here is hansens latest 2006
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3310_sun.html
NARRATOR: Because greenhouse gases trap heat, when we add to them we increase the heat energy trapped in the atmosphere. Today, the extra energy trapped by manmade greenhouse gases would be enough to run a 100-watt light bulb, placed every six meters over the entire surface of the globe, an extra 2.6 to three watts of energy for every square meter. It’s this extra energy that’s driving global temperatures ever higher.
But it’s now clear to the world’s climate scientists that this greenhouse warming is not the only factor at play. There’s also the cooling from global dimming. The question is, “How big an effect is it having?”
In 2002, NASA launched the Aqua satellite. Onboard was a suite of instruments designed to measure the effect of dimming pollutants on the energy budget of the Earth. The observations from Aqua have enabled climate scientists to make a rough estimate of global dimming’s total cooling effect on our planet.
JAMES HANSEN: Our estimate for the particle forcing is minus-one-and-a-half-watts- per-meter-squared. So that would imply a cooling of more than one degree Celsius.
NARRATOR: In other words, while the human greenhouse effect has produced 2.6 to three watts of extra energy for every square meter of the Earth, global dimming has subtracted about 1.5 watts, so, more than half the warming effect of our greenhouse emissions has been masked by the cooling effect of particle pollution.
“more than half the warming effect of our greenhouse emissions has been masked by the cooling effect of particle pollution.”
If it’s not there, it’s not warming, because it didn’t happen!
That’s just BS spin. It’s like saying all of our cooling effect from particle polution has been erased and reversed 100% by our greenhouse gase emissions.
So what is it, ice cools a warming pan, or a warming pan melts ice?
Is it water cools a warming pan, or is it a warming pain boils water if it gets warm enough?
This is stupid.
AGW dogma bites the dust again:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1143791v1.pdf
678,
O.M.G. Talk about mangling the physics beyond recognition…
Re:#674
That’s a typo right? It should be N2O (N=N=O).
No, NO2. N2O is nitrous oxide, laughing gas. NO2 is nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant.
from the wiki:
Mark
Re NO2 vs N2O
I think NO2 is a toxic and reactive ground level pollutant and contributor to acid rain, and N2O is a major GHG, but relatively non-toxic (it is indeed laughing gas).
So from a GW perspective, I think N2O is the important one.
According to this:
http://www.ghgonline.org/othernox.htm
N2O is the more greenhouse active, and other NOx are beneficial by removing CH4. FWIW.
NO2 (Nitrogen Dioxide) is a hemodilator and it is highly toxic. N2O (Nitrous Oxide) is an analgesic-anesthetic used in surgery, best known as laughing gas. NO2 (Nitrogen Dioxide) is mostly produced by gas stoves, petroleum heaters, internal combustion engines, tobacco smoking, and grain and cortex mills. WhoÂs looking for another GHG better than CO2? Well, I think AGWists could be looking for because CO2 doesnÂt kill immediately, while NO2 upper limit outdoors is 0.053 ppm. Yes, it could kill us all at concentrations above 0.06 ppm. đ
Re#678, Larry:
 Today, the extra energy trapped by manmade greenhouse gases would be enough to run a 100-watt light bulb, placed every six meters over the entire surface of the globe Â
Or, from other point of view, one 100W light bulb per 360 000 cubic meters of atmosphere.
http://www.epa.gov/nitrousoxide/sources.html says that the anesthetic Nitrous Oxide, or laughing gas, is the worst GHG emitted by cars, agricultural soil management, animal manure management, etc. I see now why we are laughing the whole day, hah! We need more Nitrous Oxide in the atmosphere to bring happiness to the world:
http://www.dentalfearcentral.org/laughing_gas.html
The way I’m reading that site, Larry, is that NOx has some benefit, but also results in even more N20. Apparently, they both seem to suck. Btw, when I’ve had nitrous in the past (teeth pulled), it did nothing. Mellowed me I suppose. Much more benefit inside an engine.
Mark
ÂWhen fuels are burned in air, the nitrogen and oxygen are combined together. The products are commonly referred to as oxides of nitrogen – NO, NO2 and are generally known as NOx. These are pollutants that contribute to acid rain and smog, but are not considered greenhouse gases. Nitrous oxide, N2O, also known as laughing gas, is considered a greenhouse gas. Although produced in small quantities, it has a global warming potential about 310 times greater than CO2.Â
ÂN2O is produced by microbial degradation of nitrogen fertilizers. The main source of N2O is agriculture.Â
What is always omissed from description of atmospheric NOx, is that it is main source of fixed soil nitrogen, essential for plantÂs life. The main natural source of atmospheric NOx is lightning during thunderstorms.
There is the irony. Since plantÂs growth is generally nitrogen limited, the best and easiest way to sequester CO2 from atmosphere is to increase antropogenic NOx emissions, which in turn will deliver more nitrogen fertilizer to the soil, which in turn will increase dramatically photosynthesis sequestration of CO2. It is easy to do: just disable three-way cats, cleaning exhaust of our cars. It is as simple as to drill a hole in exhaust header before three-way cat converter. Cat will still destroy CO and HC, but NOx will pass through unabated.
I hope no greenies are reading this 600+ comment of obscure anti-environmental denialist blog, or otherwise we all could choke in smog, to the joy of Mother Gaea.
#686. Nasif, you’re a gas. (That is a 60’s Hippie style compliment.)
Interesting article on Accuweather, see here
Basically confirms what we’ve known, CO2 did not end the last ice age.
Filippo Turturici, your units are off. There is no way any place received 1.5 km of snow in a short period. The units must be mm not just m.
Seems odd to think of “laughing gas” as something present in our atmosphere.
I’m curious why it would have 310 times the potential as CO2… Nasif, any links to spectral data on N20?
Mark
I think he meant 1500 m in altitude, not snow depth.
Mark
Of course I meant altitude! Here we are used to say “above X meters” to indicate snow lower altitude (and in UK weather forums they seem to understand well).
Anyway this morning we had snow down to 800m of altitude on Dolomites Alps (North-East Italy) a pretty rare event even for late September.
# 689
MarkR đ Hey… daddy-o, dig this forum!
# 692,
Mark T.,
Try this one: http://www.infraredanalysisinc.com/c3.htm
The data is complete, but the graphs are too tiny.
Disasterous cooling due to particle pollution from human activities, or anthropogenic global cooling, has been reversed by our carbon dioxide activities! And not only has it been reversed, we’ve also helped green the planet by increasing the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere at the same time. This is a red-letter day for the environmental movement, and we should all congratulate ourselves.
lol
Question: What percent of the effects of “global warming” is that estimated 1.4 W/m2?
Question: Of the cooling caused by airborne particle pollution (APP), how does that equate to the warming caused by ground covering particle pollution (GCPP) (And then land use changes (LUC) and greenHouse gasses (GHG)) ?
Scenario (making up numbers):
Total warming force: 5 W/m2
Cooling forcing due to APP: -2 W/m2
Warming forcing due to GCPP: 3 W/m2
Warming forcing due to LUC: 3 W/m2
Warming forcing due to GHG: 1 W/m2
When Congress enacted the Global Climate Protection Act in 1987, they used “carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, methane and other trace gasses”
The 19 private organizations* that originally petitioned the EPA to regulate regulate Âgreenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles under §202 of the Clean Air Act. listed the following as Âheat trapping greenhouse gasesÂ:
carbon dioxide
methane
nitrous oxide
hydrofluorocarbons
*Case later taken up by Massachusetts as primary.
The organizations were: Alliance for Sustainable Communities; Applied Power Technologies,Inc.; Bio Fuels America; The California Solar Energy Industries Assn.; Clements Environmental Corp.; Environmental Advocates; Environmental and Energy Study Institute; Friends of the Earth; Full Circle Energy Project, Inc.; The Green Party of Rhode Island; Greenpeace USA; International Center for Technology Assessment; Network for Environmental and Economic Responsibility of the United Church of Christ; New Jersey Environmental Watch; New Mexico Solar Energy Assn.; Oregon Environmental Council; Public Citizen; Solar Energy Industries Assn.; The SUN DAY Campaign.
Interesting list, isn’t it?
Re#678, but the AGW crowd will point to that as a scary scenario we’re setting ourselves up for – our C02 emissions heating the ocean, which will slowly heat the deep ocean, which will release vast quantities of CO2, which will cause even more warming to the oceans (and atmosphere), which will release moer CO2, etc, which will cycle as sort of a runaway greenhouse.
698, but runaway greenhouse has never happened before in geological history. This is why it’s so important to the AWG crowd to claim that we’re in record territory. It’s also why the hockey stick is so important to them. If they can’t claim that unprecedented warming is happening, they lose the feedback argument.
This is why they’re so upset with Steve. He’s indirectly undercutting the basis for the runaway scenario.
In fact, let me take that a step further. Of all of the “jesters”, out there, it’s pretty obvious that Steve is the one who is most annoying to them. I think that alone shows just how much the house of cards is built on the tenuous claim that the world has never been warmer.
You know the old saying, “you know you’re over the target when you start getting flak”.
So just how on earth can the extemists ignore all the evidence for many previous warmer periods? That drives me nuts.
Hansen claims he is being swift-boated by critics. Newsbusters scrutinizes his claims and obfuscations.
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/28/nasa-s-james-hansen-claims-he-s-being-swift-boated-critics
RE: #699 – The ancedotal evidence we can derive from geological history does indeed suggest we’ve not ever had a truly runaway heating event. The system may actually be more biased toward falling into rather extreme cooling events. That makes sense, when you look at the energetics of the solar system. Earth wants to be at absolute zero. The degree to which it retains energy from a time constant perspective determine the degree to which energy loss is delayed. An anology in electronics would be a system which fails open and cannot fail short.
I’m surprised the Soros revelation didn’t raise more eyebrows here. Conflict of interest, anyone?
Measuring sea temperature using giant clams?
Has anyone looked at the O16/O18 ratio in the shhells of Giant calms to track the “temperature” of the sea where they grew? It would work nicely in the Southern Oceans. Moreover, August 1945 would show up due to the replacement of St90 for Ca.
Has anyone done this type of thing?
RE: #704 – The general rule here is no politics. Stray far enough over the line, and you too will probably find that your post has been snipped. While I personally detest Soros, and a few other things, I will not comment further.
Pops, I think the slow but steady process of outing Hansen is occurring, and primarily in the political (as opposed to scientific) media and blogosphere. I don’t think you’re going to see it happen primarily here, but it will come out, in a thousand little bits.
He made the choice to be a public figure, and now he’s going to face the downside of that. Not just over the Soros thing (which may turn out to be a tempest in a teapot), but over the Tides prize, and his constitutionally incorrect invocation of the First Amendment. And, of course, his data enhansenment.
>> constitutionally incorrect invocation of the First Amendment
Determined to stay out of here, but what does this mean?
706, I may have stepped over that line, but I think that particularly on the unthreaded, some speculation about political cause-and-effect (as opposed to ideology) should be fair game. I’ll know that I guessed wrong if my comment(s) are disappeared.
Gunnar, I’m flirting with snip by reason of getting political, but since you asked, Dr. Hansen has on at least one occasion gone to the press claiming that his constitutional right to free speech has been denied, because of NASA policy that public communications have to be approved by NASA prior to release to the public. This is a completely incorrect reading of the American constitution, and any amployer, private or public, has a right to control speeking to the media over matters pertaining to employment, especially when on the employer’s time (i.e. NASA can’t control anything that he says at realclimate). He’s also incorrectly claimed to be a “whistleblower”, which if it were true, would give him some legal protection.
#711, Right, agreed. Another “incorrect invocation” would be claiming that someone else is required to pay for one’s expression of ideas, ie using someone else’s property. A normal employer cannot violate free speech by firing someone, since that is their right. Hansen cannot be violated by being fired by NASA, even though it’s agovt entity, since the govt is just a normal employer. The govt would not imprison Hansen for his expression.
This thread length is unprecedented at CA.
I blame the blog admins
At this thread depth, I can’t type directly into the box. It is unbearably slow. I type into a text editor, and then copy. For some odd reason, that’s instant. I think it has something to do with some java script or something that manages the real time preview.
Re# 710.
Gunnar, for a moment I thought that you refer to the part of First Amendment which prohibit the federal legislature to pass law that establish religionÂ
711, right. If Dr. Hansen expresses his opinions at realcliamte, NASA can’t discipline him for that. If Dr. Hansen disclosed confidential NASA data, or some other protected information at realclimate that he had access to by virtue of his position, he could be disciplined, and potentially sued. The right to free speech is not absolute. Never was, never will be.
#705 Doc Martin: I know that certain clam species have been used, but I don’t know if they looked at 1945 Radioactivity inclusions.
Ah, you can say that now, right? đ
To wit Hansen: outside of work he’s free to comment, unless he otherwise disparages NASA, or makes comments in his capacity as a NASA chief scientist, he’s pretty free to talk, right?
Mark
Climate scientists require an isotropic emission signature from gas phase CO2 at 255 K and 400 torr to make their models work.
There are two kinds of emission for the excited bending mode of CO2, stimulated emission and spontaneous emission.
Stimulated emission is coherent with the exciting source, a “black-body” planet – only condensed phases can emit as a blackbody.
Stimulated emission is the primary means of emission in a gas in the radiation field of a blackbody. It’s effect is to change the observed absorption coefficient. It is important to note that basically all of the emission that can come form CO2 is already present in the measured absorption. What is measured is a net absorption, the difference between stimulated absorption and stimulated emission.
Because climatologists require isotropic emission, they can only appeal to the spontaneous emission component, which is a good 18 orders of magnitude smaller than the stimulated emission component. The spontaneous emission signature for CO2 in the earth’s troposhere is negligible.
The emission argument upon which current climate models are based is a fantasy. I suppose this is why Hansen termed one of his models “Wonderland”. Hansen is free to chase the white rabbit down as many holes as he would like, but the rest of us don’t need to hear about it.
Well, I suppose I need some published literature.
Jack Barnett of Imperial College actually did a pretty decent job, and that was published in Spectrochemica Acta.
Everything I’ve said here can be found in Atkins, Physical Chemistry.
There is a good discussion in the text of the relative importance of stimulated and spontaneous emission.
This is really not very complicated.
It is also fairly common knowledge to UV/Vis spectroscopists that the shifted spectrum they observe with fluorescence is due to radiationless decay of the vibrational levels of the excited state. The relaxation is mediated by collisions. Emission from vibrational states at 15 microns is simply not important.
An article about some of Hansen’s funding, Investor’s Business Daily. This can be deleted. It has no bearing on the science.
# 719
Harmon,
Are you referring to saturated states? How could it be on an Âoverheated Earth (33-34 °C above the temperature if Earth was a planet without oceans and atmosphere)?
# 719
Harmon,
I agree; it is about 0.0009.
I quote from the header of this thread:
Larry, jae, John A, read 719, 720, 722, and 723. Then guess why we don’t have an Unthreaded #21. Nasif, Harmon, as was said to me and others on unthreaded #19, shut up already.
The dangers of ‘consensus science’ and dismissal of independent Verification.
Dan Hughes,
The link to “consensus science” didn’t work.
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