Guest Post: Tony Cox and Jo Nova
Satellite measurements agree with the ocean heat content measurements. As the Earth warms, more radiation escapes to space.
If feedbacks are positive (as the IPCC estimates), then as the Earth warms the amount of energy being radiated to space will shrink (thus warming the Earth even further). If feedbacks are negative, as the Earth warms more energy will radiate away.
Multiple studies show that feedbacks are negative.
Lindzen and Choi analyzed short periods of warming looking for changes in the outgoing long-wave radiation leaving from the top of the atmosphere. The satellite observations show, repeatedly, that as the Earth warms, the climate system shifts and lets more of the infra red or long-wave energy out to space.[1],[2] It’s like a safety release valve. This means that the system has negative feedbacks (like almost all known long-lived or stable natural systems). The changes dampen the effects of extra CO2.
Wielicki 2002 already showed the effect Lindzen further demonstrated in 2009, 2010, and 2011.
As the world warms satellites show the outgoing radiation (red line) increases. More energy escapes from the atmosphere, demonstrating that feedbacks are negative and that model predictions do not match observations. From Wielicki, et al 2002: Figure 1
Lindzen and Choi’s results were the exact opposite of what the IPCC-favored models predicted. But rather than being unusual, their results fitted the pattern of previous papers.
Wielicki et al 2002[3] had already showed that outgoing radiation increased as the earth warmed from 1985 – 1999, and that the outgoing infra red radiation was seven times larger than the models predicted. Wielicki’s results were confirmed by four other groups.[4],[5],[6],[7]
On its own, this one discrepancy between models and observations conclusively shows the models are wrong. There is no disaster coming, the warming effect of CO2 has been exaggerated by a factor of roughly six fold.
With no net amplifying positive feedback there is no catastrophe. Because satellites are recording long-wave radiation leaving the planet, they are effectively assessing the net effect of all forms of feedbacks at once. We can’t tell which part of the system is responsible: clouds, humidity, ice-cover or vegetation, but we know the net effect of all of them together is that when the world’s surface warms, more energy escapes from the planet.
Lindzen and Choi’s publication in 2009 [1] was heavily criticized, but the criticisms were addressed and submitted in 2010 and finally published in 2011[2]. The conclusions remained the same: The models are wrong.
Thanks to WUWT for background info Lindzen on negative climate feedback — where it seems that the Wielicki graph above has been updated since 2002 to account for satellite decay, which reduces the difference between the models and the observations. But as Lindzen points out, the adjusted data still does not fit the models predictions, and yet again, even though this adjustment may be correct, it’s implausible that all the adjustments non-randomly bring the data closer to the models.
[1] Lindzen, R. S., and Y.-S. Choi (2009), On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L16705 [abstract, PDF]
[2] Lindzen, R. & Yong-Sang Choi, Y, (2011) On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications, Asia-Pacific J. Atmos. Sci., 47(4), 377-390, 2011 [PDF]
[3] Wielicki, Bruce A, Takmeng Wong, Richard P Allan, Anthony Slingo, Heffery T Kiehl, Brian J Soden, C T Gordon, Alvin J Miller, Shi-Keng Yang, David A Randall, Franklin Robertson, Joel Susskind, Herbert Jacobowitz [2002] Evidence for Large Decadal Variability in the Tropical Mean Radiative Energy Budget, Science, Vol 295 no. 5556 pp 841-844, [Abstract] [Discussion]
[4] Chen, J., B.E. Carlson, and A.D. Del Genio, (2002): Evidence for strengthening of the tropical general circulation in the 1990s. Science, 295, 838-841.
[5] Cess, R.D. and P.M. Udelhofen, (2003): Climate change during 1985–1999: Cloud interactions determined from satellite measurements. Geophys. Res. Ltrs., 30, No. 1, 1019, doi:10.1029/2002GL016128.
The fact that there is more radiation escaping to space as the Earth warms is a good thing. If it didn’t, the planet would continue to heat to the point where most life could not exist. If a positive feedback did exist then life as we know it would have ceased millions of years ago when CO2 levels were much higher.
Then again, the geological record shows no correlation between CO2 and temperatures, ever.
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Would you characterize the relationship between CO2 and the geological temperature record as negative 😉
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I would characterize the relationship as virtually nonexistent!
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Indeed; at the very best it is a strained relationship. Frank Lansner has done an analysis which shows how scant the relationship is between CO2 and temperature over the geological time span [or a fair bit of the recent period, as far back as the ice cores go, about 450kbya]. Frank finds periods where the 2 variables are often going in different directions:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pdf
Funnily enough this happens in the recent period, over the last century as well, as Joe D’Aleo has shown.
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NASA Science News for March 22, 2012
A flurry of solar activity in early March dumped enough heat in Earth’s upper atmosphere to power every residence in New York City for two years. All this heat has since dissipated in just a few weeks. No positive feedback there then.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
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Wow, so when an object gets hotter it radiates more heat?
Now I get how my toaster works.
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It gets even better when you use climate science in the design of a novel new cooker: http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/ipcc_oven.html
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Actually. my friend Eddy, if you think about it, Earth started out with an atmosphere of mostly CO2 maybe 98% and has been on a one-way trip to a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere ever since, since the sun is cooling (IE inputs in the past were greater). That someone is suggesting that there are tipping points back to where we started is laughable. The system is “Heavilly biased away from CO2”
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bobl says
since the sun is cooling (IE inputs in the past were greater).
I think you meant to say that the sun has recently cooled, hence the end to the warming 1979-1995.
4 Billions of years ago the sun put out less heat than at present, but increasingly warmed as it aged. The CO2 level has been much higher on earth in the past, so AGW theory has it that the high levels of CO2 helped warm the earth, thanks to “the greenhouse effect”.
For some reason AGW theory always ignores the number of Ice Ages when there were very high CO2 levels. The 3 archaean ones including the “snowball earth”, the Ordovician one at 4200 ppm. and the milder one in the Jurassic at over 2,000 ppm.
Someone must have turned the Greenhouse effect off during those times.
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No, I took it he was referring to the “hot early sun” hypothethis, whereby the sun has been slowly cooling over billions of years.
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Should have left that bit out – and yes I was referring to that hypothesis however, the references I am readng now suggest the sun was cooler in the past, therefore I must accept the evidence. I don’t remember even why I included the statement, since it doesn’t seem to have much bearing on the point that our evolution from 98% CO2 down to current levels shows that for all concentrations of CO2 the bias in the system is toward a Nitrogen/Oxygen atmosphere and not away from it. (Otherwise we never would have got to here in the first place)
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I stand corrected, the sun was cooler in the past, However my point is that our ecosystem is heavilly biassed away from a CO2 atmosphere and has “Seen” all concentrations of CO2 from 98% down to 280PPM a tipping point isn’t possible while bacterial and plant life exist on earth. The ONLY way back would be to destroy all plant life and single-celled organisms, by say depleting the atmosphere of CO2.
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bobl, the sun was cooler in the past but the earth had more water. I am convinced that the oceans play a more important role then the atmosphere in setting up earth temperature. with much less landmass to lose warmth it explains the relative stable temperature of the earth with the younger sun:
http://sciencenordic.com/earth-has-lost-quarter-its-water
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Gee, a Hotter surface emits more, who’da thunk!
The laws of Thermodynamics live to see another day – the complicated web of missinformation from climate scientists in trying to deny the all-important laws of Thermodynamics smack of – Well, Denialism!.
Bob
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Yes, but only because the cool surface lost all its heatness heating the hotter surface.
Also, totally in accordance with the rule of equal and opposite reaction, the cool surface also heats the hotter oceans underneath it. However this heatness is undetectable because coolness-induced heatness is more dense than other types of heatness and quickly sinks into the Mariana Trench where it is referred to as “Trenberth’s Travesty”. Kevin’s got his good mate James Cameron scuba-diving to locate it even as we speak.
Don’t laugh!! This is all strictly in accordance with the Stuffedan’-Bullzhit Law of Blueberry Radiation which maintains that:
“All things being equal, all things will be equal.
Except when they’re not.
Which is most of the time, unfortunately.”
I hope this clears the matter up for you.
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I don’t think I’ve ever come across a more succinct summation of CAGW theory. You have definitely added to the body of scientific knowledge with that.
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A History of not good enough.
Here I summarise the criticisms made by the reviewers OF LATER PAPERS AND SOME ASPECTS apply to the earlier IRIS theory paper soundly debunked by just more then a narrow focus on their presented assumptions.
The paper gives insufficient detail of the methods to allow other workers to reproduce them. This is a grade A, fundamental scientific error.
The paper does not address criticisms of LC09 by Trenberth et al 2010, nor Dessler 2010.
The paper studies only tropical processes, (a term that it fails to define) and unsafely assumes that this can be extended to the whole globe. For example the hot spot which is a water vapour lapse has been found *. Lapse rates also vary according latitude so such a study cannot apply a weaker climate sensitivity globally.
* Disputed to be non-existent By Dr Evans – many later studies found the expected moisture hot spot.
They ignore changes that occur over land.
They confuse forcing and feedback. In other words, they assume clouds to be causes, and not effects, of surface changes, and make no attempt to justify this assumption.
Month-to-month variability of the tropics may have nothing to do with climate feedback processes.
Detailed analysis of the “lagged regressions” show deficiencies.
The authors chose time periods for the lags that suit their conclusions and confirmation bias.
The claim to deal with an earth like natural equilibrium of climate sensitivity is not substantiated globally, proven and no data properly correlates correctly with this assertion.
These are damning criticisms.
All valid and over whelming scientific evidence and established data, points to Climate Sensitivity being in the region of 3C – a value that merits serious action of de-carbonisation of the world economy.
———————————
And ross, you still can’t name one paper that shows the assumptions of models about positive feedbacks are right can you? Not one long term observational study. As for “the hot spot has been found”. easy to say. Hard to find. Try naming that paper too. I’ve already debunked all the ones I’ve come across. Was it a wind study, or done by fudging the color scale, did it find the hot spot at the wrong altitude, or only on a short time frame? Worse, did they find the hot post with records taken from a boat? (who cares that it is 10km up?). You’ve turned up with the usual “damning” criticism, yet strangely lacking in the details that matter. Full marks for your PR though. _ Jo
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Which paper has found the “hot spot” ?
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It was one of those invisible ink-written papers… he held a match up behind it to see the writing and voila! Hot spot.
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That’s cos it will largely be another one of RJ’s obscure cut and pastes from somewhere – tomorrow I’ll go look for it if I have time.
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Ross, in the last fortnight the BoM, the CSIRO, and the WMO have all released annual reports which clearly show that, in their collective, vaulted, scientific opinions, de-carbonisation is a complete and utter waste of time, money and effort, and we’re better off planning to adopt to any changes as we go along – as Lord Monckton suggests.
Given that the BoM, the CSIRO and the WMO are all died-in-the-wool warmist cult organisations that people like you have accepted every word uttered from as gospel truth, why are you now turning your back on these unquestioned authorities on climate change?
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Ross,
one other point I need to make as a professional scientist is that the hypothesis defining climate sensitivity, that a doubling of the atmospheric content of CO2 will lead to a global temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius, has not been observed from measurement. This, from first principles of the scientific method, falsifies that hypothesis. It does not matter one whit whether feedbacks, real or imagined, have been misinterpreted, the end result by plotting CO2 vs Global Temperature shows that temperature is NOT correlated with atmospheric CO2 content. (In fact no one seems to have published a plot showing this relationship and then fitted a linear trend to the derived plot; I wonder why).
I should add that much argument in this topic involves the use of statistical significance but I can assure you that using this methodology is not science – merely mathematically sophisticated argument based on sophistry. Climate science, unfortunately, is unable to perform direct experiment to validate its core assumptions, as do the sciences of astrophysics and to a lesser extent, of geology, geography and archaeology. These sciences tend to rely on the peer review system to establish their parochial truths while the hard sciences use physical experiment. In the hard sciences any novel theory is quickly refuted, or falsified, by direct physical experiment. In my area of scientific expertise of mining geology, any hypothesis put is quickly tested by the drilling of holes into the ground to confirm, or falsify, that hypothesis derived from the interpretation of extant physical data.
The point I make here is that if data show a hypothesis to be falsified by being blindingly obvious, then no amount of statistics will reverse that observation. However any intellectual effort that relies on statistical manipulation to support its assertions has to be viewed as no different to the courtroom practice of cherry picking to sway a jury’s decision. Climate science, then, is simply technically sophisticated advocacy, and not science at all.
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Ross’s ‘complaint’ is a cacaphony of recycled AGW fall-back positions.
The main argument against L&C is geometric scaling, that is extrapolating from the tropics to the rest of the globe. This is immensely ironic because AGW sychophants have no trouble extraoplating from homogenised data covering less than 1% of the globe [see Hansen and his Arctic temperatures].
In respect of the tropics L&C say this in appendix 2 of the 2011 paper:
These are cogent reasons for both concentrating on the tropics and limiting extrapolation of energy exchange with the extra-tropics to a factor of 2.
This had been first explained in L&C’s 2001 paper and elaborated by Lindzen’s reply to a comment on the 2001 paper here:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/LindzenRebuttal2002.pdf
Here the specific issue of the “intrusion of extratropical non-convective systems” into the tropics is addressed; L&C say:
Ross has offered nothing to refute that. L&C’s analysis stands and seriously undermines AGW theory.
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I seem to remember Ross James refering to his sources of information as “the many papers which come across my desk”. Too bad he didn’t jot down the reference information of any of them, and just relies on his memory.
Ross, your rambling reminiscences are not exactly convincing — why don’t you try actually referencing some of these “studies” you are always going on about so the rest of us can read and critique them?
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“why is everybody always pickin’ on me”…….
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/lyrics2/nov_charlbrown.html
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Showin’ yer age thar old timer … 🙂
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What about the now 2 peer reviewed papers published by Ferenc Miscolczi. Here is the abstract and link to the second one -.
What he’s found, based on empirical evidence, is that during the period 1948-2008 when CO2 was increasing steadily, there was no measurable feedback at all.
The original 2007 paper can be found in full here-.
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Maybe a bit O/T
If the SST is increasing would that not mean greater evaporation into the atmosphere yet it seems there has been little change in the yearly evaporation rate.
Would it not also mean more rainfall on land.
So if there is more rainfall why is it that south-west Western Australia with its backside stuck out in the intersection of the Indian and southern oceans not be getting more rain than the less it
is currently getting.
What am I missing here.?
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There are always winners and losers and in the midst of the “Flooding rains” it is still possible that the storm tracks wont be over your house, such is the Chaos of weather. Translated: It takes more than just humid air to create rain, a lot of things have to come together at the right place and time in order that the wet stuff makes it onto your roof.
Still you gotta love the news reports that “More extreme weather brought on by global warming” when there hasn’t been any global warming for 15 years. Cause/Effect anyone?
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rukidding,
I read in a CSIRO publication a few years ago that the extensive clearing of the Mallee scrub had lowered the average rainfall by 20%.
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Hi Kevin by Mallee scrub I assume you are talking about the land clearing that took place in the 50’s.The thing is the rainfall for the wheetbelt area over the last century in the south-west shows little if any reduction in rainfall right out to a line from Kalgoorlie to Esperance.It is only along the coast from Geraldton down to Albany that shows a decrease and the weather fronts sweep in from the west so you would think the coast would get more rain
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.
Mallee scrub – what a shocking name for a gum tree, the real name sounds better – eucalyptus polybractea:-
Watch out as this, as it is the new aviation fuel source being sort after by Virgin and QANTAS and being researched by some UNI from the UK? There’ll be huge plantations of them soon all over SW West Australia.
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The bulbous base was called a Mallee root when I was ploughing. It was west of the rabbit proof fence that showed the decline.
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The Perth rainfall data from 1877 to 1914 illustrates that the South West experienced low rainfall during the period. Nothing new.
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Hi Len where did you get your data.
My data from the BOM cross checked with news papers of the time where possible show average decadal rainfall at about 8200mm/decade.From 1970 onwards the average seems to have dropped to about 7700mm/decade.
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A letter to the column Letters to the Editor in this week’s Farm Weekly mentioned the information. I have just rang the originator of the letter. He tells me he obtain the information from a Department of Water file HG 14. It is about the Gnangarra mound. Something about Cumulative Deviation from the yield of water. From 1877 to 1914 it was below average. From 1915 to 1968 it was above average. From 1968 it went below average again.
I was told to google Earl Happ for further information.
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Thanks Len
Can’t see anything on Earl Happ and Perth rainfall in the first couple of Google pages.You don’t happen to have any more specific information to Google.
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Maybe the Water Corporation have something on it. A distant cousin who is employed by the Water Corporation mentioned the lower rainfall in the recent past. I think the point being made is that there has been lower raifall about 100 years ago.
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What is it that keeps the Earths core hot?
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Kevin,
How do we know that the Earth’s core is hot?
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It’s inferred, from the observed behaviour of seismic waves and imagining it’s mostly iron.
Now that might not seem a lot better than modelling, I grant you.
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Then we’re not about to spend trillions on the strength of it and of course pressures got something to do with it as well
Planet Under Pressure
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Maybe the internal pressure is causing expansion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f6hcGJbjL0
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Trenberth’s missing heat!!
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Cheeky sod 🙂
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You, er sorry I mean U.And Th. Its also due to radioactive K, which is why there’s so much argon in our atmosphere. They seem to be the hottest 3 with Th just edging out U for the prize.
None of these are very radioactive (apparently you can sit on a barrel of yellowcake for a week without going over your annual uSv limit) but rock is a pretty good insulator and the Earth has a lot of rock.
‘Pology if you were being rhetorical.
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Acc to Quentin Williams, associate professor of earth sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz , quoted in Sci. American:
“There are three main sources of heat in the deep earth: (1) heat from when the planet formed and accreted, which has not yet been lost; (2) frictional heating, caused by denser core material sinking to the center of the planet; and (3) heat from the decay of radioactive elements.”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-is-the-earths-core-so
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Millions of al gores.
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Joe V.
1. Not disagreed with
2. Unable to be observed, hence not scientific
3. Radioactive decay is unable to explain energy surges.
So ??
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I don’t think we’re suggesting it’s heat from the core that’s the source of increased energy release to space. The crust is rather a good insulator.
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Happy Easter everyone.
Great thread and comments.
I was over at http://www.stopgillardscarbontax.com/ and found this from a couple of days ago. Sorry if it’s already been shared.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC1l4geSTP8&feature=player_embedded
I think one of the general problems we still face, is explaining why this is a bad tax, it has no relevance to climate change, we need more discussion in these forum of action that could be taken (physical mail programs, target weak MPs, etc.).
I’m not sure if anyone on this forum has done the following:
A human generates roughly 1kg of Co2 per day
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/emissions.html#q7
Based on current estimates of population of humanly produced CO2.
Australia generates 8,150,012 tonnes
China generates 488,479,318 tonnes
India generates 427,392,370 tonnes
USA generates 112,057,391 tonnes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/31/world-carbon-dioxide-emissions-country-data-co2#data
Australia total emissions are estimated at 418,000,000 tonnes per annum.
So just breathing in china, India is well and truly over what we emit. I feel that we are an impotent country with emissions … maybe we need to do better.
This then suggests Australia will in no way ever have any impact on the world stage of CO2 abatement – we are too small, and led by a bunch of dummasses.
If only our politician could take their head’s out of their asses for 5 minute and understand that we are a little country (~23 million people), we are not a world stage player.
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Dazza,
“If only our politician could take their head’s out of their asses for 5 minute and understand that we are a little country (~23 million people), we are not a world stage player.”
While it’s always good to keep a sense of your own perspective, you are a big ~23 million. Big enough to make the difference in other peoples wars for instance. However, that’s not say your contribution to world CO2 reduction could be any more than symbolic. But the asses already know that. It’s now the masses that have to catch on and are catching on, thanks to the efforts of Australia’s & NZ’s Best Weblog and others 🙂
The trouble now seems to be, even as the masses are catching on, it’s in a sense too late. Because of the way Parliament works. It would now seem to require all out exposure of the lie (not just Juliar’s) and the intent behind it, to frighten these pollies back to some honesty. But you already knew that.
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“So just breathing in china, India is well and truly over what we emit.”
Then we’d better persuade the Chinese and the Indians to stop breathing. Should we lead by example?
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The purpose of carbon taxation is nothing to do with saving CO2. It’s to underpin the new World currency and to control populations as part of an attempt by the Marxists/Fabians to destroy capitalism and curb population growth.
This new currency, based on the Euro and the stillborn Amero [no cap and trade killed it off] was to have been based on the new tax as an income stream to allow bonds to be sold thus formalising the currency.
The organisation promoting it appears to be Common Purpose, a group which indoctrinates people using rthe CAGW scare. Cameron and Prescott in the UK are allegedly senior. I suspect Russ, Turnbull and Gillard are members too henbce the new tie up between Australian and the EU.
Obama is allegedly involved too but I suspect he is a ‘Manchurian Candidate’. Unlearn all conventional politics. These people want to kill you off.
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“Obama is allegedly involved too but I suspect he is a ‘Manchurian Candidate’. Unlearn all conventional politics. These people want to kill you off.”
Agreed on the Manchurian candidate. Disagree on the killing part. These days what they want is sell you more of their oil and NatGas. All CAGW and green tactics work against all forms of energy except traditional (non-shale) gas and oil.
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Hi Dirk. I agree with you on the ‘killing’ part. As far as I am aware nobody has accused the ‘Regulating Class’ of intelligence, but even they must realise that we can’t continue to fund their lifestyles, through taxation, if we’re dead.
Cheers.
NicG.
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If more radiation is escaping to space, how can it be warming?
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Remember where most of that comes from ?
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Good question, Matt. The planet warmed from the 1970’s until approximately 1997. Since then, the amount of “warming” is so trivial as to fit nicely within the error bars. You may have noticed, assuming you read the post, that the chart covered those years when it was warming. If their was a positive feedback the models would have been validated. Unfortunately for the warmanistas, that did not happen.
Another falsification of the CAGW hypothesis.
Next!
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So is there a graph, Eddy, for the years following 1997 when it hasn’t warmed?
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Hmmm this seems to reveal a fundamental lack of understanding on your part Matt B.
If the suns output (for example) was to double the earths temperature would increase Even though we would be radiating more heat back into space as a result of the surface heating.
Here’s an experiment that even a child can perform at home.
Take a 500ml cup of water. Put it in the oven and heat it to 30 degrees, let it cool at room temperature. measure how long it takes to cool. Repeat for 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 degrees.
You will find that the rate if cooling increases proportionately to the difference between the water temperature and room temperature.
Now consider the earth as a hot body ~ 14deg surrounded by space ~-269deg.
IF IT GETS HOTTER IT RADIATES HEAT AWAY MORE QUICKLY BASES ON FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF PHYSICS MATT B.
Delta Q = C * Delta T.
In matt b terms this means the hotter we are relative to space the more heat we transfer to space. Time to get an education worm.
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Look Sonny boy I know that hotter things radiate more. But (i) I thought it wasn’t getting hotter, and (ii) if it is getting hotter why would the earth radiating more as a result (well duh) be a finding of note from Lindzen?
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Matt B
1. The last decade was the hottest in the last century (I.e it’s hot)
2. More heat is radiating into space (because it’s hot)
3. No statistically significant warming in the last decade.
4. All the while CO2 concentrations have been accelerating upward.
Therefore
CO2 warming via positive feedback through H2O is not observed.
CAGW is falsified.
If you cannot get these basic facts and steps in logic you are an idiot.
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If you have an electric stove, turn a coil on ‘high’ and hold your hand over it as it heats up.
Notice that the hotter it gets, the more heat it radiates? This is negative feedback — the hotter it gets the faster it loses energy and the harder it is to heat it the next degree. It is also stable, because when the coil gets hot enough to lose energy at the same rate it is being brought in by the electric current, the temperature will stop rising and remain stable.
Suppose it was possible to build a stove coil that exhibited positive feedback — that is, the hotter it got, the less energy it radiated away. (I’m not sure how such a thing could be built, but perhaps the climate modelers could help us here?)
Then, the stove would be unstable — the hotter it got, the less energy it would radiate away and so the less energy it would take (from the electricity) to maintain that temperature. Assuming a constant energy input, the temperature would continue to rise without limit (or until the positive feedback mechanism broke down).
Pretty much everything in the natural world is dominated by negative feedbacks — that’s why it is still here. The few things that are (temporarily) dominated by positive feedback, such as avalanches, you want to stay far away from.
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But Bob the water is still getting hotter? I’ve never heard the claim that as the earth gets hotter it would radiate less heat?
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You probably need to look that one up. In physics there is no free lunch, what goes in must come out. It’s called the law of conservation of energy, so whatever energy sources that go into the surface temperture must balance the emission from the surface. If the blanketing is reinforcied with positive feedback, you would expect to see either little change in emission as things heat up, or unstably a reduction in emission as things heat up. As it turns out the emission from the surfce increases at a rate that you’d expect from thermodynamics, implying little or negative feedback.
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Great question mattyb! Boy, I bet it took you a lot of work to come up with that one!
The conventional AGW dogma says this about the sun:
[Leif Svalgaard]
Nicola Scafetta notes this:
Nicola’s link shows this plainly in respect of TSI.
What do you think mattyb? Has that cleared it up for you?
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So what you are saying Cohers is “Look there’s a bear.”
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Yeah, a little teddy bear called mattyb.
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It is REAL SIMPLE Matt. Sine 1997 there has been no doscernable temperature increase. If the temperature is going to increase due to CO2 then there should be less heat radiating into space. Instead, CO2 has risen since 1997, temps have flatlined and more radiation is escaping into space. If the CAGW hypothesis was correct, then, since 1997, the rising CO2 would have caused temps to rise and LESS radiation would be escaping into space!
Get it, Matt? If the hypothesis was correct then temps would be up and less radiation would be escaping into space.
Oh, look! There is a bear taking a MattB in the woods! No, it is just another commenter wiping his intellectual feet of on the site Matt!
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I can’t believe I am reading all this. Has everyone gone mad?
In an equilibrium state the amount of energy leaving the earth is not different when the earth is warmer or cooler (here we are talking about thermometers measurements averaged over multiple sites) if the amount of energy coming in is the same.
If (a very big if) greenhouse gases cause a temperature rise because they are trapping a bit more energy in the system and AT EQUILIBRIUM energy emitted will be the same as energy input from the sun. but this is no different from the cooler equilibrium before the nasty humans input their GHGs.
Yes I know the sun’s input can vary, and the energy lost to space is proportional varies proportionally.
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So if CO2 led temperature all those years ago.
What stopped runaway global warming.?
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In the past when the CO2 was much higher we can hypothesize that there was no runaway warming due to the fact that there were no “cargo-cult” scientists “predicting” it would happen, no clueless media types to regurgitate those “predictions”, and no willing group of zealots ready to embrace the idea.
In other words, in the real world based on the natural laws we understand thus far it couldn’t happen so it didn’t happen. The longer this goes on the more apparent it becomes that it is something that only exists in the minds of some. Which also happens to be the only place where it can happen in the manner they adhere to.
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This statement is false, and a bit confused.
One of the major and obvious negative feedbacks in the system depends on the Stefan=Boltzmann law, which says that energy emissions will increase with the fourth power of the temperature.
In words, what this means that as you make something hotter, it will emit away that energy even harder (double the temperature, it emits 16 times as much energy) to try to cool the object.
This is well known and understood, and the fact that observations confirm this in turn confirms that the planet is warming.
However the system is not limited to a single feedback. The net feedback in the system is positive. If it weren’t, if net feedbacks were negative, you wouldn’t ever be able to warm the planet, and you wouldn’t have this post — there would be no satellite observations confirming that there are greater emissions to space, because the planet would not be able to warm to further at all.
This post highlights an important part of radiative atmospheric physics, but the conclusion is a completely unfounded misunderstanding of what is involved.
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So far, so good.
This statement is simply wrong. A counter-example will show it so:
I just described a system (post #12.4) — an electic stove coil — which follows the S-B law and hence has net negative feedback. The coil’s temperature is trivially easy to increase, simply by increasing the electrical input energy, thus raising the equilibrium temperature where input = output.
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To clarify, what I meant by saying that you couldn’t warm the planet was that you couldn’t warm it without a very strong imbalance — something that hasn’t existed for millions of years. A net negative feedback would have kept the planet in a glacial state (or, as a starting point, an interglacial state). The changes this planet has seen in its climate in the past few billion years would never have occurred with a net negative feedback in place.
The fact that in any almost system you can apply sufficient forcing to overcome negative feedbacks completely misses (and dodges) the point at hand.
You completely miss the point, and don’t address it at all, instead wandering into discussions about how feedbacks can or cannot work.
Increased outgoing radiation is a sign that the planet is warming and nothing more. The following statement is patently false and a waste of everyone’s time and energy:
There is no relationship whatsoever between feedbacks and radiation. Radiation is entirely dependent on temperature, not how the planet got to that temperature. More radiation means the planet is warmer. Less radiation means the planet is cooler.
You cannot make any inference from this about the direction or strength of the feedbacks. None. The entire original post here is grossly flawed and should be withdrawn.
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It seems you’re the one who is confusrd. Net feedback can most certainly be negative. And so long as the effect of the feedback is smaller than the forcing, temperature will go up.
What you’re saying, as far as I can make out, is that feedback can’t be larger than the forcing which triggered the feedback. That may be so, but that does not discount the possibility of feedbacks being net negative but still smaller than the forcing.
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What I am saying, as far as you can make out, you are failing to understand. Go back and read again, this time with a more open mind. The point is fairly simple, as long as you don’t start from the premise that it is wrong.
Argue about what I said, not what you wish I’d said so that it’s easier for you to debate.
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Maybe you’re not explaining yourself clearly enough. Polite conversation requires one to be humble.
now you’re assuming i don’t have an open mind. [snip]
Meaning I’m too dumb to understand simple points? [snip insults]
Easier for me to debate? [snip more insults]
The difference between you and me Spherica [snip], is that I’m quite open and direct when I want to insult a [snip] like yourself.
Whereas you are a coward who hides behind cloaked words like “failing to understand”, “more open mind”, insinuating I can’t grasp “fairly simple points” and claiming to be superior enough to give me advice about debating.
Don’t be such a coward, you’ll feel better for having come out [snip, blunt is one thing, crass is another — Jo]
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you do realise that there is a typo in the link imbedded in your name?
Agree re temperature and radiation being distinct from feedbacks. I think we all might benefit from some sort of flow chart or diagram here. Some things are hard to make sense of with words. For instance;
If temperature is high then more radiation is lost to space than when the temperature is low (interpret high and low however you like) BUT in both states the amount of energy coming into the system is about the same. So what is the outcome?
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Gee,
[Thanks for noticing. Fixed, but not particularly important anyway. 🙂 ]
I understand what you are saying but the problem with the “release valve” theory is that it’s not something you can just broadbrush. The actual quantities and timing matter. You can clearly see that what is being recorded is the outgoing LWR changes as a result of ENSO events, which greatly affect the atmosphere but do not necessarily reflect the temperature imbalance of the system as a whole (including oceans and ice loss). This is the same mistake that Spencer made (or, rather, one of several) in his recent cloud feedbacks paper, by focusing on short-term ENSO events and trying to claim them as a valid model for the system as a whole over longer time frames.
More outgoing LWR during El Niño events simply shows that the atmosphere is warmer. We get that from reading thermometers, too. No one suddenly expects GHGs to completely overwhelm other laws of physics and trap heat beyond all reason.
The observation that on very short time scales a warmer atmosphere emits more LWR is nothing of importance. This only matters if it can be shown to offset the long term, net energy imbalance, and that is not happening.
Pointing to short term ERBE results and screaming “negative feedback! negative feedback!” is akin to saying that the air cools off so quickly at night then that proves that you can’t possibly ever have scorching heat waves in the summer, because there’s a clear negative feedback that will prevent it.
It all comes down to actual numbers, over relevant time frames, representing all aspects of the system, not just atmospheric (only) imbalances over a period of months.
It is no surprise, and no violation of anyone’s understanding of the physics, that a much warmer atmosphere radiates much more energy into space during that time frame. It is the net, long term imbalance that matters, and that is in no way addressed or recognized by this post or by the cited papers.
In the end, this negative feedback is a red-herring. It wants you to uncritically accept that there is a long term net balance based on a very short term view of one extreme instance. It’s like glancing at the ocean at the moment that a wave is receding, and concluding from this that the tide cannot be coming in, because you just saw the water moving away with your own two eyes. It makes perfect sense if you don’t look at the system as a whole, and you instead focus on one or two individual breaking waves instead of the average water level over longer periods of time.
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So Bob (Sphaerica), help me out here. If as you say above “the atmosphere is warmer” just when did that heat as detected by the satellite(s) originate?
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Mark D.
I don’t understand the point of your question. Please be a little more direct. What does the movement of heat around within the system (e.g. ENSO events) have to do with the issue? During an El Niño, the configuration of the oceans are such that the atmosphere is warmer than usual. How does this bear on anything?
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….But when ENSO is in the negative phase (La Nina) it is still called ENSO isn’t it. So then you are confused into thinking that ENSO is always positive, but empirically this is seen not to be the case. 😛
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Balloon,
I said moving heat around (ENSO). That goes in both directions, obviously. When I talked about the positive phase, I explicitly said El Niño. Given this, no, I’m not confused, and I don’t know what point you are trying to make in any event.
Can you point to anything that I actually said that you can demonstrate to be incorrect?
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Yes Bob the ENSO does go in both directions, but you never mentioned the La Nina. In fact no-one did until I mentioned it. There are still some people on this planet that think that just because it is called the ENSO for short that this necessarily means that “El Nino Southern Oscillation” means just that, and is always positive. There is no “LNSO” for instance, it is always a negative phase ENSO. Of course this isn’t the only ocean current to behave in such fashion, and indeed there is heating of the ocean from within, that is to say volcanic / magmatic. In such case it is the Earth that is heating the atmosphere, and not the other way about. None of this is factored in to these calculations. None of this has to do with The Sun, and certainly None of this has to do with CO2.
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Balloon,
Yes, and nothing in ENSO has anything to do with actually heating the planet. It simply involves a difference in transfer of heat to/from the ocean from/to the atmosphere. The temperature of the planet as a whole is unchanged except that, as the original post fails to note, when the atmosphere is warmer during and El Niño event, more energy is radiated into space and the planet is actually cooling faster (or warming less slowly), while during a La Niña the atmosphere is cooler, less heat is being radiated out to space, and the planet is cooling more slowly (or warming faster).
Other than these tangential effects, however, ENSO events do not in any way change the energy of the Earth as a system. They don’t have a source of energy with which to do so. All they do is to shift the energy from the ocean to the atmosphere, or vice versa.
What calculations are you talking about?
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Sphaerica I think you have misinterpreted what the word “feedback” means in “net negative feedback”.
It’s NOT saying the delta_T (change in equilibrium temperature) is negative, since that would imply (as you say) that T2 = T1 + delta_T(dQ) which if delta_T is negative makes T2 less after you have added heat dQ, which would be impossible. The statement was NOT saying the net change after all feedbacks is negative.
IIRC, the term “feedback” is referring to one term in the response equation that is multiplied by the primary response and then added in to the primary response to give final change. The “feedback” is a constant in one part of the formula, not a final result. It’s more like T2 = T1 + R*delta_Q + F*delta_Q, so if F is negative but small (eg -0.1), then it partially cancels some of the increasing temperature of the primary response R, but it does not make the final change negative. So with some negative feedback you can still have T2 > T1 with dQ > 0.
Well it’s something like that. 🙂 I think David Evans’ article here a few weeks ago explained it fairly succinctly. No doubt BobC can put you on the right track too. Basically you have to know mathematically what exactly the jargon means, because sometimes a plain English interpretation is either imprecise or completely misleading.
eg The word “forcing” is also a completely misleading term in climate science. A plain english interpretation would say that the Sun is the only forcing on the climate because it is the only external force acting that the earth cannot alter. But the labcoats don’t use the word that way. They use “forcing” to mean any radiative influence on equilibrium temperature, sourced internally or externally, positive or negative. It wouldn’t be the first time “common sense” has been lacking in climate science, heheh. On the other hand, sometimes common sense just isn’t enough.
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“Feedback” is any mechanism that alters the final result but is itself based on the actual forcing.
“Forcing” is anything that initiates a change in climate.
Semantically, yes, you can argue that almost any forcing is a feedback. The only “real” forcings are changes in solar output, orbital changes that change net insolation (glacial/interglacial transitions) and volcanic activity (that add greenhouse gases or, more usually, dimming aerosols that reduce net insolation).
In terms of the debate here, however, the forcing is any outside influence which is itself independent of temperature. A feedback is any “forcing” that is itself triggered by the change in temperature.
The emission response (quantified by Stefan-Boltzmann) is a negative feedback. If you warm something, it emits even harder trying to cool down.
Lapse rate is a negative feedback.
H2O is a positive feedback (a warmer atmosphere will quickly hold more H2O, and its GHG properties will increase warming).
The net feedback is the sum of these over an adequate time frame. Some feedbacks (H2O, emission response) happen very, very quickly. Others (ice albedo changes, methane and other carbon release, ecosystem changes) occur much more slowly.
You can’t evaluate the entire net feedback until you’ve (a) run the experiment for a few hundred years or (b) model the system to the best of your ability, including all possible factors (not just one apparent, well-understood feedback over a very, very short time frame in extreme circumstances such as ENSO events).
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No, you have it quite wrong I think
Feedback can be positive (increase the effect of the stimulus) or negative, decrease the effect of the stimulus, but for a stable system the loop gain cannot be greater than plus/minus one (otherwise the amplification is greater than the stimulus and the system becomes unstable). To get a multiplication factor of 3 the IPCC is positing a net loop gain of almost +0.7 if I recall correctly, that is every 1 degree increase of CO2 temp results in 0.7 extra degrees, which inturn results in 0.7×0.7 degrees extra rise which results in 0.7×0.7×0.7 after a while this series becomes asymptotic to a value IE 3.
Think though what this means, we are postulating that this system has a loop gain of 0.7! What a radical thought!, With a gain like that the atmosphere is verging on unstable – it should oscillate (ring) for every step change and it will overshoot like crazy. This means that as a cloud comes overhead the temperature should continue to increase for some time before it starts to drop, and it’ll get hotter after dark (not counting wind, and conduction/convection). The atmospheric temperature does not overshoot, implying much less feedback.
What is giving this gain – now we know that the emission takes out about 4/5 IE -0.75 feedback, evaporation and absorption takes up more to give say -0.9 or so negative feedback so the positive feedback (supposed to be mainly water vapour) must then overcome all the negative feedbacks before is can produce a net positive feedback in fact the gain of water must be more than 1.6 to produce a net positive of 0.7 like that. It has to be over unity! Clearly this cannot be. It means that if we put damp air in a black box (at equilibrium) and increase the temp a bit and then hold the outside temperature constant the air in the box would increase in temperature without end. – Absurd, doesn’t happen
Secondly you are wrong about the emission, the warmists are positing that the heat is accumulating in the system IE it is being extracted terrestrially rather than being reemitted leading to an increasing temperature. If this is the case, IE energy is stored in the oceans for example then the emission to space would not rise as predicted as the temperature rises, you cant have the emmission to space AND store it, that would violate conservation. If the emmissions increase according to thermodynamics then there can be no extra energy stored terrestrially and feedback is hence minimal. You CAN test this looking at short term behaviour providing you leave enough time for water to evaporate into the system say over the sunspot cycle. You can also examine the rate of rise of emission to examine the extra thermal inertia ( delay from temp rise to emission ) to evaluate if the water vapour is increasing the time needed for the planet to come to energy equilibrium. You can look a that between the peaks and lows in the sunspot cycle. Either way this demonstrates feedback, if emission tracks temperature closely the feedback, is zero or negative, if not and it overshoots, rings or undershoots them positive feedback is present.
Please make sure you understand the science next time before you support the claim that water vapour makes the net feedback so positive, simply cannot be true. In fact I see no way that net positive feedback can be more than 0.2 given the magnitudes of the negative feedbacks, if it was there would be circumstances already where the loop gain could exceed 1.
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bobl,
Feedbacks: You do not understand how the feedbacks work… possibly because you are looking at it in terms of electrical engineering and applying an overly simplistic mathematical model to the situation. In particular, you are presuming that the feedback depends directly on the initial increment alone, with no influence from the absolute temperature or the individual feedback mechanisms involved. Your model seems to presume zero dependence on the starting temperature and no distinction among the feedbacks involved. This is wrong, and leads you to your incorrect conclusion.
Emissions:
Certainly you can, because the world is not divided into black and white with nothing in between. This is exactly the point I’m trying to make, and the flaw in the original post. You cannot simply make the blanket, unquantified statement that the system is emitting more, therefore there is a negative feedback that overwhelms any warming, without looking at specific, individual quantities over long time frames.
To put it more succinctly, just because the system emits more into space for some periods of time that does not mean that the system will emit all excess energy into space all of the time.
At any point in time, as the atmosphere is warming, it can emit more (but not all) into space and at the same time be accumulating more (but not all) energy in the system. At the same time, there are temporal differences, so you can have periods of time where the system emits the excess to space and loses total energy (El Niño events), and others were it emits far less energy into space than the temperature of the system would imply and so it gains energy at an even faster rate, as well as ENSO neutral periods where it emits more into space than the system did 30 years ago, and yet still not enough to keep from accumulating even more energy.
This happens for the very simple reason that energy exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean is chaotic and uneven, and it is the temperature of the atmosphere, not the system as a whole (atmosphere + ocean) that influences emission to space.
During El Niño events the atmosphere is warmer than normal, and emissions are higher and the system may either cool or simply not heat as quickly. During La Niña the opposite is true, the atmosphere is cooler, and the system will gain heat more quickly than normal.
What matters here is the net, total energy imbalance over a period of many years (which will encompass El Niño, La Niña and ENSO-neutral periods). If you can prove that in that period the system lost exactly the same amount of energy as it gained, and that that period is exemplary for what will happen for the next 100 years regardless of other changes to the system (ice melt, further carbon release, etc.) then you can claim that the long term feedbacks are negative and there will be no warming.
This has not been done, not even close.
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Nocturnal emissions help keep the Earth cool and liveable.
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Let’s keep it simple, shall we? The Earth is heated by the sun. Fortunately, the Earth rotates so we all do not fry to a crisp. You may have noticed that the Earth cools at night? Then, the Earth warms again, cools again and so on. If there were a net positive feedback the Earth would warm more with each day and cool less with each night.
If it weren’t so, if net feedbacks were positive, you wouldn’t ever be able to cool the planet, and you wouldn’t have this enlightening post — there would be no satellite observations confirming that there are greater emissions to space, because the planet would not be able to cool further at all. And you would not be alive to post your mindless, inane drivel.
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Just repeating things that aren’t true doesn’t make them so, does it Eddy? You fail again to recognise that positive feedback need not be runaway feedback. The maths is simple. 1/2 + (1/2)^2 + (1/2)^3…. = 1. That is positive feedback, without a runaway effect. 1 + 1^2 + 1^3 + 1^4… is infinite. That is positive feedback, with a runaway effect. Maybe you don’t understand this stuff?
But I’ll be nice Eddy, and won’t call your writings mindless, inane drivel.
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So a “forcing” of 1 becomes 2 with positive feedback.
But the IPCC models claim that 1 becomes 3.3, with positive feedback.
Glad to see that you are now starting to realize that the IPCC is wrong.
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Gees I’m glad I didn’t go to a lot of trouble with that explanation #3! Because what little trouble I went to was totally wasted on you.
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To clarify this, the IPCC projects (not only through models, but through a wide range of studies, including past climate events, volcanic events, recent observations, and other) that a doubling of CO2 will result in a direct increase in temperature of 1˚C and a further increase due to feedbacks of another 2.3˚C for a net result of (most likely) 3.3˚C (although the actual most expected range is anywhere from 2˚C to 4.5˚C).
To achieve another 3.3˚C cumulative increase beyond the first would require another doubling in CO2.
We are currently on a path to double CO2 from the pre-industrial level of 285 ppm to 570 ppm, raising temperatures by 3.3˚C. Getting to 6.6˚C would require quadrupling CO2 to 1140 ppm.
As such, this is a non-linear situation. The fact that it is non-linear is what keeps it from being a runaway feedback.
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But you see, I simply do not believe these “forcing” calculations for the so called doublings of atmospheric CO2. We are still talking about parts per billion aren’t we here, and yet before the Azolla event there was around 6%, yes SIX PERCENT Carbon Di-oxide in the atmosphere, and yet did that lead to a runaway so called greenhouse event, which boiled away all the oceans, and other doomster scenarios? No it did not. Whither now?
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Balloon,
You don’t understand them because you have not bothered to study them, but you “simply do not believe” them.
Does this sound like a rational and substantive position to you?
BTW, no one is talking about runaway greenhouse effects or boiling oceans (yes, Hansen made an unqualified off-the-cuff remark in a video… that is not a scientific paper, but it is not a position supported by anyone, anywhere). Arguing against that is creating a straw man, a very easy one to knock down, but it accomplishes nothing.
Study the actual feedbacks. Learn about them all, how they work, why science believes they are there, and what the margin for error is. The reality is that at this point in time there are many, many studies from a variety of fields (paleoclimate, observations, and models) that all point to the same general result. For climate sensitivity to be lower than that man would need to be very, very lucky and a large number of studies would have to all prove to be wrong.
One way or the other, however, your “belief” counts for nothing in the discussion. You can believe whatever you choose, but it does not sway anyone else one way or the other.
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Aren’t Ya fed-up with trolling in here yet Sphaerica ?
You assume that others did not read these articles you mention, yet fail to understand that for many of who have taken the trouble to read these pro-alarmist views, we judge that they are mostly unproven and based on enigmatic conundrums, and as such are hokum. Thus the statement that, “I simply do not believe these “forcing” calculations”, is a valid one and with reasonable foundation.
Naturally you avoid the question of the Azolla event, since of course the ramifications of that shoots a myriad of holes in your alarmist arguments. Sadly for you and your self-certainty of climate modelling, James Lovelock has just announced on MSNBC, that nobody (including him) is really sure just exactly how the climate of Planet Earth actually operates.
Still no doubt you will carry on regardless, and yet eventually you too will have to throw in the towel. I do not need to “disprove” anything. It is for the proponents of a theorum to make a convincing proof of their postulations. The Status Quo should not however be changed on the basis of unproven postulations. I can think of numerous allegories, but sadly they are likely to be wasted on such a closed mind as yours.
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Contrary to the way the term is often applied, “trolling” is not defined as “expressing an opinion opposite to my own.”
Calling someone a troll simply because they disagree with you, and you fail to make coherent arguments against their position, is simply a tactic used to avoid the debate.
I cannot help you if you are going to arbitrarily dismiss some aspects of the science as false or fraud. You are welcome to do so. I would hope that other readers would be a little more careful and a little less arrogant about what they accept and what they dismiss.
I did address your Azolla comment. Go back and look. My point was that your Azolla comment was a strawman. You said that it didn’t cause a runaway greenhouse scenario, and of course it didn’t. No one is talking about such a scenario now, so your comment is nothing but a distraction from the actual topic at hand, and is meaningless here.
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Oh dear, but you Sphaerica, ask the same fatuous points over and over again, and yes you are guilty of the same disingenuous behaviour that you accuse others of. So you answered the “Azolla” question then did you? I don’t think so. You didn’t mention the ramifications of that event at all. Whoosh, it went right over your head.
The point about the Azolla event, and it isn’t a “straw man”, is that it took 6% of CO2 out of the atmosphere. When the atmosphere contained that additional 6%, it did not cause a climate change of catastrophic proportions, and yet we are all supposed to be frightened by your doom predictions, based upon simplistic modelling of the effects of a predicted doubling of CO2 from its current low value of less than 0.05%.
In round about 100 years, Man has allegedly added about 100ppm or 0.01% of CO2 to the atmosphere. So the inference is that the amount of so called fossil fuels used so far can be related to that additional 0.01%. Therefore the supposition is that 6% CO2 would be equivalent to perhaps 60,000 years worth of fossil fuels locked up in the Arctic Basin alone.
Just why do you think that the largest oil rig ever built is up there drillinmg right now at the Gull Island site? Is it there to perform some kind of “Straw Man” illusion, so as to help me put one over on some insignificant antagonist on a blog like this? I don’t think so.
Get a grip Sphaerica, you are digging an ever deeper hole for yourself with every post. Why not just admit that you were conned by Gore, Hsnsen, Santer and the rest? It is they who deserve your wrath, not me and the others in here.
End of, so far as I am concerned, in this thread.
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You have attached two meanings to the word “catastrophic”. In your initial question, this meant runaway global warming that boils oceans.
I addressed that by explaining to you that no one is predicting such a scenario.
Now you shift the meaning of “catastrophic” to something less than that, but still not quantified.
This is a major problem with the people who are confused about the science. They ascribe a variety of false predictions to the science, then argue that they can’t be true.
The Azolla event, BTW, is perfectly in line with GHG theory. There is no contradiction there, except for the one that you’ve manufactured (“catastrophic” global warming that boils away the oceans).
It’s pretty easy to win an argument when you create the other side’s position yourself, and argue against that instead of what is actually being said.
But all of this is off topic, and of no importance in understanding the original point, which is that outgoing emissions are governed by tropospheric temperatures, and those in turn vary greatly over short time periods due to ENSO events and other short term, net-zero factors. The important observation is the net change over a long period of time, and the original post above completely misses that fact.
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The problem with all this positive feedback, tropical hotspot, warmist stuff is that if ANY of it was correct, those of us who actually LIVE in the tropics (as opposed to living in more temperate climates) would already be experiencing it.
It took years for architects, designers etc up here to convince CSIRO, ABCB, and even BCQ (a mere 1400 km south of here) of the realities.
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Why do they put the blue sided sarking the wrong way round in the tropics?
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Replying to Kevin Moore:
“Why do they put the blue sided sarking the wrong way round in the tropics?”
A bit counter-intuitive isn’t it.
Short answer is – because that’s what the BCA/NCC says.
The blue side is the vapour/condensation barrier. Vapour & condensation is more likely to occur on the outside, and the outside is also more likely to be porous, eg small gaps, dust particles etc. So – foil is installed in walls with the reflective side facing inwards. The foil will help keep heat in during winter with reflectance (which may not be needed because it’s rarely that cold), and help keep it out in summer by not emitting it from the shiny side. The inside is more likely to stay shiny than the outside.
That’s the theory. My experience is that houses do need a vapour barrier, but some work best when they have no foil or any other insulation. Trouble is, most houses now have air-conditioning, are operated closed, and are very inefficient without insulation. Hence the pink batts scheme, increased ‘R’ values for walls & ceilings.
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I have tested it out with the blue side facing the Sun and the silver side gets too hot to touch. In reverse the blue side is a lot cooler.
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Replying to Kevin Moore April 7, 2012 at 7:19 pm:
“I have tested it out with the blue side facing the Sun and the silver side gets too hot to touch. In reverse the blue side is a lot cooler.”
Yep. If I get the time and some spare cash (haha) I’ll get a second temperature datalogger so I can plot the results over the same period of time. The only solution for clients is to go the extra for Aircell or similar double-sided material.
The value of the blue side as a vapour barrier is questionable. Porosity of cladding and anywhere else in the panel, inadequate fixing and taping, basically renders it useless.
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To protect the installers from reflected glare.
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Hi Martin,
The Tropical IR Iris effect hypothesis — basically that cloud dynamics limit sea surface temperatures in the tropics — would imply that tropical temperatures won’t rise much even if the rest of the globe warms up considerably. (Good news for those of you who live there, should global warming ever start up again.)
The hypothesis (by Lindzen) is based on two observations:
1) When sea surface temperatures rise enough, the cumulus clouds produced by evaporation from the sea become high enough that they reach the strong trade winds in the troposphere and the tops are sheared off into widespread cirrus cover, which then reflects sunlight back to space and prevents it from reaching the sea surface. (A classic example of negative feedback.)
2) Observations of sea surface temperature clearly show that there is a upper cap on tropical oceans’ surface temperatures, as predicted by the Iris Hypothesis.
The Iris effect is strongest in the tropics, but does work to reduce the average temperature of the Earth, since it limits the amount of energy the tropic regions can absorb during the daytime. Most of the arguments against Lindzen’s hypothesis (including all of those that claim to falsify it — for instance what you see on SkepticalScience, and our own Ross James) are based on models. In the meantime, actual measurements (see link above) have verified a cap on sea surface temperatures as predicted by Lindzen, and the described behavior of tropical clouds is easily observed.
It gives you an idea of the ‘quality’ of logic you get at SkepticalScience (and other warmist blogs) that they think that models have falsified measurements.
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Responding to BobC:
Yep – I go along with Lindzden’s the Tropical IR Iris effect hypothesis. Explains why late summer up here was cooler than it could have been; late, then extended wet season = numerous days (rather than the occasional day) of substantial cloud cover in the “dry” tropics. Also the Pacific “warm pool” having an apparent limiting maximum of 30°. Used to be said up here that “if the sea temperature in the South Solomon Sea is above 24° and there is a thunderstorm, then a cyclone is likely to form”. Perhaps needs supplementing following Willis Eschenbach’s paper, eg “If the sea temperature approaches 30° there WILL be turbulence and a thunderstorm.”
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The actual AGW predictions for warming have the tropics warming very little, with the most pronounced warming happening at the poles.
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It is a given that as a black [gray] body warms more radiation is returned to space. The amount of temperature rise a black body has for a given amount of warming is the standard.
If less radiation escapes the feedback is defined as positive If more radiation escapes then the black body feedback is defined as negative.
If the earth were a positive feedback system as defined by all other ranches of science any warming would cause runaway warming.
The climate scientists have simply redefined positive and negative feedback.
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Maybe not new to some on here, but this is interesting
http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/uploads/media/How_natural.pdf
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I’m a bit confused between Wielicki, et al 2002: Figure 1 1993 to 1999 above and the missing energy since 2004:-
http://www.theresilientearth.com/files/images/missing_energy.jpg
The latter 2004 – 2009 situation being the opposite to the above 1993 – 1999 situation i.e. to paraphrase the post heading:-
Satellites show a warmer Earth is [retaining] extra energy 2004 – 2009.
Whereas:-
Satellites show a warmer Earth [was] releasing extra energy to space 1993 – 1999
What’s going on here?
Meehl, Trenberth et al say the extra 2004+ energy has moved DOWN to the 700 – 2000m layer explaining 0 – 2000m OHC here:-
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
So within the space of 16 years, completely contrary energy flows have apparently occurred.
a) How reliable are the satellite measurement derivations?
b) Are the ACTUAL energy flows REALLY known over that 16 year period?
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Hi Richard; Hansen is even more confused about the EEB and OHC as is discussed in these responses to Hansen’s paper on the topic:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/1031292.html
http://landshape.org/enm/rejoinder-to-geoff-davies-at-abc-unleashed/
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Greetings cohenite.
So I’m confused and so is Hansen – at least I’m in celebrated company.
From what I can gather, some 20% of the previously missing energy has been accounted for but Trenberth is adamant that there is still a discrepancy. Hansen in EEB doesn’t think there is or was so what we see is that Meehl, Trenberth et al at NCAR are in disagreement with Mansen et al at NASA GISS.
I don’t think that disagreement is widely known and as the Cox-Stockwell article states:-
What is also not well known I think is that neither posit a physical mechanism whereby GHGs impute heat to the ocean (the “forcing”), they just assume it happens and so does the IPCC who say it’s “likely” but they don’t offer a mechanism either. None exists of course but that is another story.
What I’m getting at (and so are Anthony and Jo to a degree I think) is that a pre-AR4 paper (Wielicki, et al 2002) not only contradicts the models but that the energy flow in it is exactly opposite to the post 2003 “missing energy” that has tied everyone at NCAR in knots but Hansen is relatively unperturbed because he has the “delayed Pinatubo effect” all sorted.
That’s the situation as I see it (messy) but perhaps I’m miss-characterizing it in my confusion (justifiably I think). I’ll leave the last word to Steven Goddard:-
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Someone should let Trenberth know that his missing heat is going into space; he will be so relieved I’m sure.
It is a measure of how twisted AGW theory is that it’s advocates tie themselves in knots applying band-aids over the glaring gaps in the theory; Hansen and his areosols mitigating the transfer of heat to the deep ocean is a classic case in point; I mean, it was only a few years ago that Hansen was claiming that aerosols caused warming.
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There is a “however” however:-
Then “the conclusion” becomes “the fact” in the summary:-
To recap, Hansen’s prior conclusion becomes fact in the summary of his own paper that doesn’t deal with his prior conclusion.
That’s Hansen-Brand science folks.
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Yes the olde soot straw-man. There wasn’t ever any soot until man appeared on the scene was there, oh except for the gigantic forest fires that raged over parts of the planet for weeks and months, out of control. Then volcanism never produced massive clouds of ash and soot, before Humans stalked the Earth, that is the implication. Hansen is either completely ignorant, in which case he is taking moneys under false pretences, or he absolutely knows that he is lying, in which case he is taking moneys under false pretences. Hansen is either an utter fatuous lummox, or even worse a Criminal Fraudster. Please can we let a Judge decide, IN A COURT OF LAW !!!
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Richard C
Hansen estimates in his apocalyptically-bleak book ‘Storms of my Grandchildren’ that it would only take about 20W/sq.m of ‘radiative forcing’ for a runaway greenhouse effect to be triggered, but evidence from paleoclimatology suggests that 500 million years ago the Earth was about 7C warmer than the current temperature of 15C which relates to a ‘radiative forcing’ of 39.33W/sq.m, which means we should all be dead right now. Given that we are not, Hansen is probably wrong.
The whole idea of a self-sustaining positive feedback loop rendering Earth like Venus as Hansen says is demonstrably, scientifically absurd. The bottom line is, negative feedback must predominate in the long-term otherwise climate stability would not be maintained. I think it’s entirely possible for positive feedback to predominate negative feedback, but as I understand, that can only be short-term. As I see it, the IPCC’s number-one most fundamental mistake is assuming that relative humidity stays constant – that’s what all the models assume, allowing water vapour to accumulate in the troposphere – instead of forming clouds and reducing solar incident (i.e. the Iris effect). But even then, should increased water vapour produce net-warming? It has a cooling and heating effect – simultaneously – compare the tropics with the Sahara desert.
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Exactly.
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Well put CHIP, the Sahara – Singapore example is an easily remembered and communicated demonstration of the overwhelming role of water vapour in diurnal warming and cooling.
I would add that although we hear the refrain “a warmer atmosphere holds more water” every time there’s a flood somewhere, my response is – so what? There’s more to it than that, see a description of the different temperature/humidity/updraft/pressure combinations that result in rain in the tropics or cooler climes here: What causes precipitation?
In short, there’s a mechanism and conditions for precipitation from cool airmasses just as there is for warm airmasses and there’s warm air/cold air combinations too. We’ve had big floods in NZ recently not just because of warm moist air coming down from the tropics but because the warm moist airmass has risen up over a cold airmass in a low pressure zone at the boundary between warm and cold air masses. This is described in the article.
The article also supports the modulation effect of the hydrological cycle precluding any build up or predominant positive feedback:-
The new meme is – as with precipitation – to link supposed anthropogenic global warming with heavier snowfall too but snow still requires a warm air/cold air combination as for the recent NZ flooding except that the cold air is colder than for rain, see What causes snow?
Desperate stuff because in 2000 it was Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past and within a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” according to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.
From some accounts you would get the impression that there never was huge floods and heavy snowfalls prior to 1977 and I’m reminded of the recent flooding of the large Thailand floodplain that has Bangkok at its foot. If there never was great floods in past centuries such as the one that occurred recently, how then was the expansive floodplain created in the first place?
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Many extreme events are recorded during the last millennia and if not the evidence of them shows how the rains carved out the rivers, valleys and plains well before man walked on the Earth.
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The Earth has its own thermostat. Our history is ice age to temperate climates and back to ice age. There was never evidence of ice age to cooked Earth.
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Albert, that is very simple and clear isn’t it? It would have been nice if the “masses” had enough common sense and awareness when this circus started to have recognized that and told the alarmists to get stuffed.
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Wot? No ice free earth? I think you’ll find a long, long period of ice free earth before the ice ages started. But maybe the thermostat was broken back then…
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Well yes the Earth was once just a ball of molten rocks, and indeed still is but with a thin solid skin wrapped around it.
Still in the Pleistocene the more common phase was the icy one, and actually the Holocene is only the time since the end of the last big glacial event.
The Human brain and the Human lifespan has a lot to do with the perceived problem of climate variance. For most people living today, depending on when their life started, they will have experienced either a warming, or a cooling, or perhaps both.
If a Human were able to live for a thousand years, then these events would seem normal, and cyclical. However because a Human typically only lives for a time period less than one complete cycle of climate, then it will always appear as though it is getting warmer/colder, and in some catastrophic fashion.
It isn’t all about the “science”, it is largely a problem of Human “perception” and the 60 year view, so far as I see.
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[…] Satellites show a warmer Earth is releasing extra energy to space Share this:ShareDiggEmailRedditPrintStumbleUponTwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. […]
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Hot off the press. The new Nature paper claiming CO2 leads T is based on another form of hiding data: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/07/shakun-redux-master-tricksed-us-i-told-you-he-was-tricksy/
They left out the data showing that over the non-industrial Holocene, as temperatures have fallen, CO2 has risen. This is the last ditch confidence trick of a disgraced science and a journal that has ceased to be scientific.
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I’ve been seeing a few groups going through this paper and all have been reaching the same conclusions, that things were left out, time periods were tailored to try and make the results look “proper” (in other words they had a conclusion they had to make the research fit), etc.
Same shenanigans, just a different paper/set of authors. Why anyone actually interested in what really takes place in nature would consider Nature to be a reliable publication these days is something that could use a research paper itself.
It seems that only those who would accept it without actually reading it find it of any worth.
Of course there is also quite a bit of speculation that a paper like this was needed now in the ramp up to Rio or whatever the next big “who can leave the biggest carbon foot print” get together of the “all the rest of you should not fly, eat decent food, warm or cool your house, drive a vehicle, etc” crowd who just can’t seem to practice what they preach.
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To assess climate sensitivity from Earth radiation observations of limited duration and observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) requires a closed and therefore global domain, equilibrium between the fields, and robust methods of dealing with noise. Noise arises from natural variability
in the atmosphere and observational noise in processing satellite observations. This paper explores the meaning of results that use only the tropical region.
The consequences of such lead to too much noise, incorrect assertion and exaggerated low climate sensitivity aberrant data.
____________________________
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Staff/Fasullo/refs/Trenberth2010etalGRL.pdf
Some of the pseudo science and pet theories mentioned under this thread are an embarrassment to not only Lindzen but also Christy, Spencer and Singer.
It is well known that the earth is gaining heat through the day/night cycle and more energy from the sun is reflected downward. It also needs to be pointed out that this stored extra energy through the greenhouse gas effect radiates in ALL directions – that is to space as well. All data measurements of both in going energy and out going energy indicate global warming. These are not model projections! They also prove that the greenhouse gas effect is a real measurable phenomena.
————————-
REPLY: Ross, you keep repeating that there’s proof of the greenhouse effect – we already know that – most skeptics agree — it only adds up to 1.2 degrees (Hanson 1984). You have no observational evidence for the assumed feedbacks, except models. All your raving “embarrassment” for skeptics is a bluff. — Jo
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http://spinonthat.com/CO2.html
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http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
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I don’t think that is right Kevin; these graphs show that O2 and N2 just absorb much less IR than the ‘greenhouse’ gases:
http://scienceofdoom.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/spectra-h2o-co2-o2-n2.png
N2 and O2 get ‘hot’ mainly through conduction and collisional transfer of energy from the ‘greenhouse’ gases such as H2O and CO2.
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[It’s not a good idea to post your full email address on a blog. I’ve edited it to a safer format. Mod oggi]
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Its not about specific heat Kevin.
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Trenberth and Fasullo, which the persistent Ross links to, is repudiated here:
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf
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Ross #21 you say:-
Please enlighten us as to HOW (i.e. what mechanism?) GHGs impute heat to the ocean?
Ta.
I note that the IPCC hasn’t got a clue, they just take a stab at it:-
So it’s only a suggestion and it’s only likely. No mechanism is found at 5.2 and 9.5. No mention of Peter Minnet’s (RealClimate and also Rob Painting at SkepticalScience) bastardization of conventional cool-skin physics.
Given that knowledge gap, your explanation will be extremely helpful to the IPCC.
BTW, I don’t subscribe to the GHE – warming/cold space paradigm that the “sceptics” you mention (actually luke-warmers on the same side as you) and others namely Lindzen, Spencer, Monckton, Singer, Miskolczi et al do. They are only sceptical of the “C” part of CAGW but not GHE warming.
I (and growing numbers) subscribe to the GHE – cooling/neutral space paradigm i.e. you have another tier of opposition to engage and contend with that you may not have considered. So not only does this group oppose CAGW and CACC, it opposes the entire paradigm that frames those notions.
This just to make plain your task at hand in case you’ve mistakenly assumed everyone opposing here you is of like mind.
Cheers.
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Ross #24 that should have been (getting late here in NZ)
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http://www.spinonthat.com/Spinonthat%20Blog/Blog/217FADEE-3C59-41AD-80FF-560D080EC146.html
”
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Hi Jo
You said…………
Ross, you keep repeating that there’s proof of the greenhouse effect – we already know that – most skeptics agree — it only adds up to 1.2 degrees (Hanson 1984). You have no observational evidence for the assumed feedbacks, except models. All your raving “embarrassment” for skeptics is a bluff. — Jo
___
Sorry Jo. No go. Too many on this thread deny greenhouse gas = global warming at all! Opposite in fact.
—————————-
Lindzen’s results (LC09) are neither robust nor meaningful, as small sensible changes in the dates bounding their warming and cooling intervals entirely change the conclusions. To perform a more robust analysis, experimentation has revealed that simple correlation analysis between anomalies is preferable. Incidentally, LC09 incorrectly computed the climate sensitivity by not allowing for the Planck function in their feedback parameter. For their slope of −4.5 W m −2 K −1 and using the correct equations (section 1), LC09 should obtain a feedback parameter and climate sensitivity of −0.125
and 0.82 K, respectively, rather than their values of −1.1 and 0.5 K. In contrast, the case 4 (Table 1) results yield a positive feedback parameter of 0.6 and a climate sensitivity of 2.3 K. Moreover LC09 failed to account for the forcings in estimating sensitivity. However, it is not appropriate to use only tropical SSTs and TOA radiation for feedback analysis as the transports into the extratropics are substantial. Any feedback analysis must also recognize changes in ocean heat storage and atmospheric energy transport into and out of the tropics which are especially large during ENSO events. While the
tropics are important in climate sensitivity, values of the latter based on only tropical results are misleading.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 37, L03702, doi:10.1029/2009GL042314, 2010
————-
The litany of straightforward errors continues with Lindzen. There is just no credible paper that stood the test of time, scrutiny and opposing argument. Climate sensitivity has never been proven to be this highly flawed low sensitivity argument. The same can be applied to Spencer’s latest highly flawed paper. Being a UAH man he places too much on deriving data from one centric source. Blindly declaring no warming with latest narrow focused short term surface temperature is nonsense.
Ross J.
(You never did answer Jo’s statement: “You have no observational evidence for the assumed feedbacks, except models.”) CTS
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I don’t think that is the case, most points on this thread go to feedback being negative – that’s what the article was about. If the feedback is negative, then the temperature on earth will follow insolation pretty closely accounting for thermal lag in the atmosphere. Any warming will be attenuated by the feedback. That’s what can happen when you apply a forcing to an open chaotic system, instead of a closed – non chaotic system (the original CO2 experiment).
There is no proof at this point that CO2 works as a GHG in an open chaotic system, and quite likely it can never be proven beyond doubt. That doesn’t mean, I don’t acknowledge that CO2 has radiative stop bands, it does, it just means that its not proven they will cause significant heating.
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Space is a near vaccuum, and as such has NO temperature. For there to be a temperature, there must be atoms to excite. Rather than the “greenhouse” effect, shouldn’t we call the mechanism the “Dewar” effect ?
*after James Dewar the inventor of the vaccuum flask.
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Is that true? Don’t physicists think that space has a temperature of 3 degrees?
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John, background radiation temperature is not the temperature of “the space”.
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Why not, Lars?
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Its complicated, but temperature is the vibrational state of matter, and without matter there is no temperature (strictly). Space can however sink radiation. This is not quite the same as having a “Temperature”. You can really only look at is as incoming radiation Vs outgoing.
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Rats! I SO want to make the obvious joke… *sigh*
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The 2.7 K of space is a “color” (or colour) temperature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature
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As Miatello points out,
“The vacuum space is neither cold nor hot, being void of all molecules/atoms (or almost void) and as such has no temperature. Then, you can clearly see the aftermath of Roy Spencer’s wrong idea of ‘cold’ vacuum outer space.”
Alberto Miatello’s Full Paper (PDF)
Further analysis by John O’Sullivan
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But it is not void of radiation. And anyway, isn’t a vacuum actually a sea of virtual particles bubbling in and out of existence?
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But it is not void of radiation?
We know that John, your point being?
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This is repititious crap which has been answered above; is this guy a bot or what?
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Sorry; my spleen is directed towards the Ross James ‘person’ in the comment above, not John Brookes who I know is not a bot because he asks silly questions
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[…] feedback, working under the assumption that they are significant. In the meantime, empirical evidence is suggesting negative feedback. …or taking meticulous
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[…] is the point of highest uncertainty (and indeed it’s not just uncertain, the evidence points towards negative feedback. The models are […]
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