It’s interesting how the message is spreading. David and I have been arguing for 2 or 3 years that the feedbacks are the key gaping flaw, the critical point in the skeptic’s case. (And see this post last week.) It’s the amplification in the models with water vapor and clouds which is the point of highest uncertainty (and indeed it’s not just uncertain, the evidence points towards negative feedback. The models are wrong.)
Patrick Moore shared emails with David in February 2012 saying: “Yours is the best straightforward explanation of the skeptic’s rationale that I have seen, and thank-you for that.”
And now we see an interview with Patrick Moore in the Washington Times, sharing the meme:
“What most people don’t realize, partly because the media never explains it, is that there is no dispute over whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and all else being equal would result in a warming of the climate. The fundamental dispute is about water in the atmosphere, either in the form of water vapour (a gas) or clouds (water in liquid form). It is generally accepted that a warmer climate will result in more water evaporating from the land and sea and therefore resulting in a higher level of water in the atmosphere, partly because the warmer the air is the more water it can hold. All of the models used by the IPCC assume that this increase in water vapour will result in a positive feedback in the order of 3-4 times the increase in temperature that would be caused by the increase in CO2 alone.
Many scientists do not agree with this, or do not agree that we know enough about the impact of increased water to predict the outcome. Some scientists believe increased water will have a negative feedback instead, due to increased cloud cover. It all depends on how much, and a t what altitudes, latitudes and times of day that water is in the form of a gas (vapour) or a liquid (clouds). So if a certain increase in CO2 would theoretically cause a 1.0C increase in temperature, then if water caused a 3-4 times positive feedback the temperature would actually increase by 3-4C. This is why the warming predicted by the models is so large. Whereas if there was a negative feedback of 0.5 times then the temperature would only rise 0.5C.
The global average temperature has now been flat for the past 15 years, as all the while CO2 emissions have continued to increase. There are only 2 possible explanations for, either there is some equally powerful natural factor that is suppressing the warming that should be caused by CO2, or CO2 is only a minor contributor to warming in the first place.”
Sometimes people ask in comments if we are making any difference and I tell them we are. Silently the message is reaching the layer of intelligent movers and shakers that get things done. Usually it’s invisible, in that the mainstream press doesn’t report the message spreading, though it does report the outcomes — the policy reversals, the skeptical candidates, the falling carbon markets. Because the press didn’t understand the mechanism, the commentators explain it all with other reasons. But ultimately we know that bit by bit, word is getting around that there are serious flaws in the doomsday predictions.
Patrick Moore is one of those people who has earned respect from an influential crowd. The tipping point is just that much closer.
Excellent post. One more thing should be mentioned. Warmists have no well confirmed physical hypotheses which apply to cloud behavior; that is, they have no physical science of cloud behavior. As a consequence, their computer models are jerry-rigged with mere assumptions about feedbacks from phenomena such as cloud behavior. The claims for CAGW that are based on models are based on no science whatsoever.
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The computer models do not do clouds at all. Cloud cover is assumed
to “average out”—as a constant. Any watch of regional clouds through
the weather satellites will soon show this is not the case—the cloud cover
varies seasonally and in other ways with no apparent rhyme or reason.
But, it surely is not “constant” as the models assume.
Christenson, Svensmark and Marsh showed the Cosmic Ray
connection with clouds over a decade ago with some early support from
Shaviv. The CLOUD experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN) in 2010
added heavywieght independant experimental confirmation of Svenmark’s hypothesis.
You can find some good information at thecloudmystery.com with
explanations of the science behind it.
20
Not true. There are hundreds of peer reviewed papers on atmospherics – clouds and water vapour.
_______
Ross J.
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The problem is that “peer reviewed” means little in any science except that the “peer” that did the review did not disagree in any major way with the paper’s conclusions. When you look at Svensmark’s work you can see that “peer” review consistently panned the idea on conflicting theoretical grounds – essentially they had a theory they liked, and they didn’t like Svensmark’s, whihc at least had a decent empirical basis and which was subject to experimental verification, unlike the competing theory.
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Hi Ross,
sophocles says…
You say…
Was it point [1] or point [2] that you claim not to be true?
The fact that “There are hundreds of peer reviewed papers on atmospherics – clouds and water vapour” has nothing to say about the truthiness of the two points raised by sophocles and is a Non Sequitur
Ross – Surely it is the content of those papers (none of which you bring to bear with a link to content) that would matter – not the number of them, or their existence?
WRT point [1] by sophocles above it is supported in the scientific literature with this paper here where the authors point out (my bold)(from the abstract, noting that CF = “total cloudiness”).
WRT point [2] by sophocles above it is supported with multiple lines of inquiry which are summarized at The Cloud Mystery. You may also find the paper here both interesting and enlightening.
The same material is covered in a more accessible form at Watts Up With That – Svensmarks Cosmic Jackpot…
Ross – you have a strange method of arguing – which to my mind is also ineffective.
Instead of simply just claiming that a multipoint statement is “Not True” – which leaves your claim in an empty space of ambiguity. Decompose the statement that you disagree with into it’s constituent parts and deal with each in turn. With each individual response, highlight where the original statement is wrong, and state the type of error, is it logic, a false assumption, a question of evidence or method, etc. Then bring to bear a specific and relevant link to evidence that supports your rebuttal.
Cheers ExWarmist
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But none of them have produced well confirmed physical hypotheses about cloud behavior. If you know of such a hypothesis, please state it in your own words here.
10
For the perspective of a first rate modeler on the lack of physical hypotheses in climate computer models, you will enjoy the work of Jonty Rougier:
http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~MAZJCR/intractable1.pdf
More from Rougier can be found on Montford’s website. The posts are about two weeks old.
In addition, there is a fine survey of standards for models in the top post on Judith Curry’s website at this time. Among other things, it briefly explains the huge methodological difference between physical theory and computer model.
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Hi Theo,
An excellent paper. It has always struck me that climate modelling was a fools errand as the system is mathematically and computationally unsolvable. Claiming to be able to predict the future state of the climate out to 100 years, especially to 1/10th of a degree is pure hubris.
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And you can find a roll of such papers connected by little dashed perforations in your head.
(I’m a sailor)
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“Christenson, Svensmark and Marsh showed the Cosmic Ray connection with clouds over a decade ago”
Refutation:
Aerosol particles affect the Earth’s radiative balance by directly scattering and absorbing solar radiation and, indirectly, through their activation into cloud droplets. Both effects are known with considerable uncertainty only, and translate into even bigger uncertainties in future climate predictions. More than a decade ago, variations in galactic cosmic rays were suggested to closely correlate with variations in atmospheric cloud cover and therefore constitute a driving force behind aerosol-cloud-climate interactions.
Later, the enhancement of atmospheric aerosol particle formation by ions generated from cosmic rays was proposed as a physical mechanism explaining this correlation. Here, we report unique observations on atmospheric aerosol formation based on measurements at the SMEAR II station, Finland, over a solar cycle (years 1996–2008) that shed new light on these presumed relationships. Our analysis shows that none of the quantities related to aerosol formation correlates with the cosmic ray-induced ionisation intensity (CRII). We also examined the contribution of ions to new particle formation on the basis of novel ground-based and airborne observations. A consistent result is that ion-induced formation contributes typically less than 10% to the number of new particles, which would explain the missing correlation between CRII and aerosol formation. Our main conclusion is that galactic cosmic rays appear to play a minor role for atmospheric aerosol formation, and so for the connected aerosol-climate effects as well.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/21525/2009/acpd-9-21525-2009.pdf
More on Henrik and Jacob Svensmark:
Henrik and Jacob Svensmark’s last paper claimed to find a reduction in cloud water content after Forbush decreases (essentially a reduction in cosmic rays hitting Earth during solar flares), and asserted that they had established a global link between cosmic ray activity and climate. Basically, the Svensmarks propose that cosmic rays “seed” cloud cover via ionization, which in turn reduces (increases) the amount of incoming solar radiation received by the Earth, cooling (warming) the climate. Like so many prior incarnations of the cosmic ray idea, the only problem is that reality completely fails to conform to the hypothesis.
Calogovic et al. have a paper in press [doi:10.1029/2009GL041327] at GRL entitled “Sudden Cosmic Ray Decreases: No Change of Global Cloud Cover” in which they explore this and other problems with Svensmark 2009′s ostensible results.
All our tests did not provide any evidence for a response of the cloud cover to Fd events: 1. No significant global average correlation (Pavg) nor median maxima were found in independent analysis of every Fd event for all cloud layers (not shown). The geographical locations where the cloud cover correlates more positively with the CR intensity are different for each single Fd event, an indication of stochastic correlations. 2. Median values calculated for the frequency distributions of the correlation coefficients are all almost zero and independent of the lag time (not shown). 3. There are no indications for regional effects of CR changes on cloud cover. Pavg and median values obtained in the analysis of grid cells corresponding to particular geographical regions (high and low latitudes, grid cells over oceans and land, see details in AM) show no considerable difference in significance. In conclusion, our global and regional analysis does not indicate any significant response of the cloud cover to undisturbed Forbush decreases.
_________
Ross J.
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Hi Ross,
You write…
Which is from this link: thingsbreak which it would be helpful that you add to your post – as otherwise people might conclude that you are a plagiarist.
Thingsbreak is an interesting site in it’s own right, I notice that it has a whole side board of “sceptical science” links – none of which link to any material that is sceptical of CAGW. The scepticism is framed within the progressive mindset. This is a primarily political site – sort of an offspring of thinkprogress and realclimate.
I notice that the writer of “The Way Things Break” has no response to this Paper by Svensmark which has been out for sometime – perhaps he is unable to mount a counter argument.
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Your papers have been somewhat superseded by the CERN experiment.
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Hi Cohenite,
The verdict is it may well add to further understanding and lead to IMPROVED climate models with greater accuracy and Global Warming Temperature projections! It may but some think it is also highly doubtful this new knowledge leads anywhere in certainties that Global Warming projections are affected in any measurable way.
As I said, Clouds and Water vapour play an important role as positive not negative feedbacks and magnify climate sensitivity with CO2 forcing.
_________________________
Cloudy Science Reporting
Thursday, 01 September 2011 10:00 Dr. David Whitehouse
[You do not need to cut and paste the whole article, Ross. The link is sufficient -Fly]
http://thegwpf.org/the-observatory/3763-cloudy-science-reporting.html
_______
Ross J.
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Hi Ross,
Read this link here – this is the link that precipitated my shift from Warmist to ExWarmist.
Prior to reading this post by Steve McIntyre, I was under the impression that climate science was sound in it’s processes, and I believed the standard CAGW line. But what is revealed here is nothing less than scientific fraud. It was a gut wrenching revelation that took me about 6 months to digest, as I found it that hard to believe that I had been duped.
However, within the ranks of the CAGW Climate Science community (as opposed to the sceptical climate science community), the fraud of Amman and Wahl to knowingly misrepresent their results in their 2007 papers (links embedded within this link), results that they knew were contradicted in their own Supplemental Information, goes unnoticed, unremarked, and not dealt with in any way.
The key point to take away from this report is that the climate science community is unable to recognise fraud in it’s own ranks and deal with that fraud and it’s perpetrators correctly – it is in essence corrupt.
What you need to understand is that the intellectual framework in which you dwell has several core failings, they are as follows.
[1] An inability to question core assumptions, – such as…
(a) CAGW Climate scientists implement a valid, and sound scientific process, hence the artifacts that they produce are also valid and sound.
(b) CAGW Climate science is not primarily a method to enable the implementation of a political agenda.
(c) CAGW Climate Science does not proceed from a pre-determined conclusion.
(d) CAGW Climate scientists do not lie, fudge data and results, ignore contrary data, attempt to block the publication of contrary results, or get sceptical editors fired.
[2] An inability to identify errors of fact when they occur and correct them.
I could go on, but basically you have a system of thought that does not allow for self-correction. This is where your whole brittle paradigm will fail as it crashes against the pitiless walls of reality.
The bottom line; CAGW Climate Science proceeds with a broken process that cannot identify fraud or error as it proceeds to produce artefacts that comply with a pre-determined conclusion that is derived from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The artefacts that you have so much faith in are the poisoned fruit of a poisoned tree.
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Ross J you say:-
In respect to water vapour and humidity, how do you explain the temperature/humidity results that Brehmer documents?
Phoenix vs Dallas
Las Vegas vs Knoxville
Death Valley vs Huntsville
Riyadh vs Bogra
All of which can be categorized by what I call the ‘Dry Sahara – Humid Singapore’ syndrome.
The humidity feedback against temperature does seem to be negative Ross.
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Richard,
The issue of water vapour and clouds are far more complex then simply taking regional data and test tube analysis. It goes back to the laws of physics as applied to the earth’s energy budget and the effect of CO2 on holding the energy of the earth’s solar inputs from daytime through the night time process of a 24 hour period.
Science of Doom has many skeptics in polite dialogue on all aspects regarding water vapour, humidity and clouds.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/08/25/clouds-and-water-vapor-part-two/
This subject is most important and a failure to understand water vapour, clouds, humidity and its effect on climate sensitivity can cause one with confirmation bias to quickly draw conclusions that are not really founded on findings by science. True skpeticism will ultimately require you go the hard yard looking at the basic laws of atmospheric physics and all options and papers that are of some reviewed merit and criticism. Important are those who work in the atmospheric physics. Agreeing with any paper must be founded on some court of credibility analysis from you.
Many mistake appeals to authority. But appeal to authority is often misused in such complex arguments. An appeal to authority is always a logical fallacy though it can be an appropriate form of rational argument if, for example, it is an appeal to expert testimony.
_______
Ross J.
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To basically Ross, in response to my challenge here:-
You’ve got nothing.
Your SofD link doesn’t offer anything.
You lose by default Ross.
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You may not agree but I think they have no well confirmed physical hypothesis for anything.
See what I said below.
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Hello Roy
Totally agree.
The CO2 warming theory does not have a leg to stand on.
There is No scientifically credible hypothesis which points to any form of CO2 being any more than a bit player in the retention of rebounding ground IR headed for deep space. The focus on the very small human origin component of atmospheric CO2 is even less credible.
As some sort of observed confirmation of the magical power of CO2 you only have to look at the zones of low atmospheric moisture content.
At both poles, CO2 in the absence of water vapor is unable to retain any detectable heat.
It is just cold there.
The sun is the only source of energy and it is instantaneous, no heat is stored by CO2.
In sandy desert areas near the equator when the sun goes out at the end of the day there is only one thing stopping air temperatures from plummeting; solar energy retained in the sand.
You can’t attribute that overnight “warmth” in the desert to CO2.
KK
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As usual KK, you speak utter I’ll-informed nonsense.
Have you looked at the EPICA and Vostok ice core records? They show conclusively that CO2 is a hell of a lot more than a ‘bit player’…
Also, contrary to what was stated in the article about there being ‘no evidence’ of a large feedback response, these core records show the feedback response to changing CO2 levels is very significant – enough to move us in and out of interglacials (6-7deg C). And this real, literal measurement of gas levels of the past (ie not a proxy) has the added bonus of fully incorporating all natural feedbacks implicitly. Just what the fake skeptics demand – hard evidence. Of course, they couldn’t recognize it if they tripped over it due to ideology. Sadly, time and reality will prove them wrong, to the detriment of all.
10
Of course, should read ‘ill-informed’ blah blah. (damn auto correct!).
10
And the cause and effect is conclusively demonstrated … where?
We can equally argue that CO2 levels change because of prior temperature changes. If you are going to go into “attack” mode, and be rude in your comments (which is against blog policy, by the way), then you better be able to substantiate your comments.
10
Plus your desert example is just rubbish… Without greenhouse gases, the equilibrium night time desert temps would be closer to -15 deg C on a planet with our orbital parameters. The heat energy from the sand is only part of the story. This is science well over a century proven dude.
10
Next you visit your local store, slide open the ice-cream freezer and stick your hand in it for a few minutes. That’s about -18DegC.
Your so called “century proven science” says the radiation from this freezing surface (essentially) bounces off of a CO2 molecule and warms the surface by 33DegC.
Do you see anything troubling with that Matt?
Would you like to experiment with a few bags of party ice from your local servo ($3.50 each) by spreading it across your living room floor and watch that CO2 back radiate the “heat” from the ice and warm your room to a nice cozy 15DegC?
If you don’t want to make a mess in your living room, find an old empty fish tank, fill the base with ice and pop the lid on (breath into it to raise the CO2 level as high as possible if you wish). Let me know how long it takes for the temperature of the fish tank to reach 15DegC.
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And, you have been in a sandy desert area near the equator when the sun goes out at the end of the day, have you? Do tell us where and when.
You see, I have spent a night out in the open in the Sahara, and I can tell you the temperature dropped to below freezing by the early hours of the morning. Not as low as -15C, I admit, but I think you were exaggerating for effect, so I will make allowances.
Oh, and while I am on the subject, the way you get water in the desert is to make a hole, and insert a sheet of plastic with a weight at the bottom, and then add another sheet of plastic to cover the whole thing, also with a weight to cause it to dip over the hole. When the temperature drops, atmospheric water condenses on the plastic. So it must reach the dew point, wouldn’t you say.
So KK’s example was not rubbish at all. And making such claims is starting to make you look like a troll, rather than somebody with something to add to the discussion.
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G’day, Jo. Good article.
I wouldn’t trust the mainstream press to inform us of anything that ‘they’ thought we shouldn’t know. My strong feeling is that we, the public, are just as much, or more, mislead by what is not reported as by the biased or inaccurate information that is reported.
At least one can make a judgement call from personal experience on what is reported, but one can’t make any call on that which is withheld.
I listened to the BBC for two hours a day commuting to work for a dozen years, for example, before I came to know that people sceptical of CAGW even existed for goodness sake. The irony is that I used to see Willis Eschenbach sitting quietly with a beer and a book at my local watering hole, and, much to my chagrin now, realise what an opportunity I missed to discuss something which interests me so much now.
Propaganda by omission is the more dangerous.
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If you really want to understand the opposition, read his book “Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout.” It’s all there. He’s another person, who always asks that vital question; where do you think human beings fit into the environment? Depending on the answer, or the evasions, you know exactly what you’re dealing with.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-environmentalism-turned-to-the-dark-side/
Pointman
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here, here. His book is well worth the read. He balances his approach to environmentalism with a strong rational and logical approach on how people and the environment should ‘fit’ together for each others benefit. Very practically minded. He has a very dim view of the current crop of ‘environmentalists’ – which Greenpeace is currently infected with.
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I’m a bit more quantitative than Moore. I have come to the conclusion there can be no CO2-AGW and the positive feedback via the water cycle is a clever part of the scam.
The former is deduced from two directions. Firstly, the real GHE is probably the reduction of IR band emissivity at the Earth’s surface due to fundamental physical effects [‘band inversion in spectroscopy]. Secondly, the IPCC has failed to include mixing effects in its calculation of RF and experimental data apparently show this means there is no CO2-AGW for >~10% RH.
The latter is because the 40% extra energy put into the system by the stupid heat transfer assumptions, a factor of 5 increase in IR absorbed by the lower atmosphere, gives massively increased evaporation over the hypothetical sunlit oceans with apparently correct temperature by exaggerated cloud albedo as a result of the hind-casting process.
It’s equivalent to having a magnet on the Roulette Wheel to get a biased result, the cleverest part of the fraud. The experimental proof is that for the past 14 years, Total Precipitable Water has been slowly decreasing – the models have failed.
10
You may be interested in Van Andel’s work.
In respect of water vapor slides 10-23 are of interest.
10
By the time the mainstream press reports on something in this time and age, it is well and truly over. It’s an indicator like the “sell the moment your barber recommends to get in the stock market”.
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“Sometimes people ask in comments if we are making any difference and I tell them we are. Silently the message is reaching the layer of intelligent movers and shakers that get things done.”
Australian of the year nomination time.
http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/pages/page4.asp
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I confess that I’ve become something of a heretic. After years of reading and study my position can be summed up by just three points:
1. We really don’t know what CO2 can or cannot do in the atmosphere.
2. Point one is true because, at least up to now, there’s no experiment we can do to find out what it can do. Such an experiment may never be possible but I remain open if it happens.
3. The real evidence says that anything CO2 might be able to do is simply swamped by other factors and isn’t worth the argument over it.
I enjoy examining the minutia of all the theories (at least up to a point). But wait a minute. The world we live in every day is telling us a different story.
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Hi Roy,
Just interested to know, though YOUR thoughts/opinions can be wrapped up in those 3 points, do you reckon that people whose life’s work it is to investigate and report on these things might have moved a bit beyond that? Maybe hey DO know a lot of what CO2 is capable of under different atmospheric conditions etc…. Maybe they, better than you, can write down the limitations of their knowledge, which they are often very open about anyway…
Whatever career(s) you personally have chosen, can you now imagine someone without your background and experience coming and deciding you don’t know what you’re talking about because they’ve read some 2nd or 3rd hand blog information on it. Even though for you, it’s been a life’s work? Imagine the imbalance….
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And perhaps you are simply just relying on an Appeal to Authority fallacy, and actually know less than Roy does?
I notice you offer no evidence to refute any of Roy’s points. All mouth and no trousers, as they say in the UK.
10
“All hat and no cattle” is the way we put it here in the West (US).
10
Matt Bennett,
I’m going to take your comment at face value and answer your objection straight up, no dodges and no hidden agenda.
When you’re forced to make up your mind about something — and we all are forced to do that about global warming — you have three ways to go.
1. You can look at just one argument, piece of evidence, or at some small part of the total.
2. You can try to find the most convincing looking authority on the subject and accept that position.
3. You can look at the whole body of evidence available to you.
Having learned through various life experiences that options 1 and 2 often fail, I go for number 3.
It’s pretty simple.
When I first started looking into global warming it was because I kept hearing that, “…it’s a done deal, no more debate is possible.” That rubbed me the wrong way because I know that in science, that statement is never legitimate to make. So I began looking at all the arguments I could find, pro and con. It seemed pretty clear that the skeptics had the position they could support with sound argument and credible evidence — or more accurately, a credible showing of no evidence to support the global warming position. On the pro side it was evident that they were anxious to hide their data and models, largely unwilling to debate, met in secret and so-on, whereas the skeptics were willing to produce all their work for everyone to see and were anxious to debate openly with anyone.
You can add to that the easily demonstrable falsifying and unjustifiable massaging of data, failed predictions of the heavyweight experts, the personal attacks against skeptical voices and right on down to outright fraud.
All these things tell a tale for those willing to read it.
No Matt, the weight of all the evidence supports exactly my 3 points, not the alarmist viewpoint that something terrible is about to happen and humans are to blame.
My confession of heresy is because I’ve come to believe that though theory says CO2 should provide some warming effect, it’s not at all clear that the theory is demonstrated or even can be demonstrated. This is in direct conflict with Joanne Nova’s opinion and that of many others. And Matt, I make no apology for making up my own mind about it.
I’ll reply to any objection you want to make.
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Hi Roy,
Thanks for your reply. I agree completely that we really only have limited options when deciding what/who to believe. I too, like you, didn’t know what was going on so I decided to investigate as well. I just think the differences come in our investigative techniques. Call it ‘authority’, call it what you like. If my plumber knows a crap-load more (pardon the pun) than I about what’s blocking my loo, I’m going to rely on his opinion about how to solve the problem. Doesn’t mean he’s perfect or infallible, just on the balance of expectation, he’ll address the problem much better me or my cardiologist.
I politely suggest you’re being convinced by far less-than-perfect information when making your decision. That is, of course, for you to work out. Me? I’ll stay with high quality peer-reviewed literature, just like I do in all other areas of work/inquiry….
The outcomes of the last thirty years DO, in fact, measure up very well with prediction, in many aspects are moving faster than predicted.
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Matt, I have a many years of experience dealing with trades and I can tell you that, although I am not a plumber, I have met many plumbers who are not as knowledgable about plumbing as I am. I have also met, and worked with, many electricians who are not as knowledgable about the physics of electricity as I am.That is not a very good argument to use in this forum.
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Matt,
Let me reiterate my second point.
A theory that can’t be verified or demonstrated might just as well not exist for practical purposes. That could change as I indicated. But until it does I have to go with the best understanding I can get. And a theory you can’t verify by observation or experiment isn’t a good guide for policy.
So far there is no observable connection between CO2 in the atmosphere and anything happening or claimed to be happening to the climate (or the weather either). There’s also lots of evidence that the things now being blamed on CO2 emitted by you and me are in reality, quite normal and have happened many times in the past.
The bottom line is this – what does the whole body of evidence show? And it shows fraud, statistical malpractice, cheating, lying, evidence of a political agenda having taken over the science, … … How far do you want me to go on? What it does not show is a link between CO2 and anything.
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Really? Just how do you determine that a given example of peer-reviewed literature is “high quality”, and what are the deciding criteria?
I’ll give you an example:
In my engineering career, I have used a lot of ideas from the peer-reviewed journals. The first thing I do before spending too much money or time on one is to analyze the mathematics in the paper for dimensional consistency — that is, the units on each side of an equation must match. In approximately 25% of peer-reviewed papers, I find that they don’t, and hence I must re-derive all the author’s equations. Not infrequently, I find some of them are incorrect.
That’s my filter for “high-quality” papers. What’s yours?
I’m guessing you just believe what you’re told. That’s OK, as long as nothing depends on your being right — not the usual situation in engineering, nor in current “Climate Science”. Certainly doesn’t give you the authority to lecture us.
It’s not hard to find multiple examples (just within Jo’s blog) showing this to be false. Perhaps you’d like to supply some references?
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Hello World.
Matt Speaks:
“The outcomes of the last thirty years DO, in fact, measure up very well with prediction, in many aspects are moving faster than predicted.”
Can you feel it?
The acceleration in the last part of Matt’s sentence?
Yes, we are ALL doomed , unless of course, you recant, give up the left side of your brain, and side with Him.
As Geoebbels said: “repeat something enough and people will believe it.”
KK 🙂
ps. Beware of the moon-glow. It has mysterious powers to multiply the effect of CO2.
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It always gets back to basics.
I have seen many an instance where some warmist true believer drones on and on about the merits of some paper that posits CAGW as proven fact. The positive feedbacks mechanism that could cause runaway global warming has never been proven, there has never been a correlation between temperatures and atmospheric CO2 content in the history of the planet and the temperatures for the current interglacial peaked thousands of years ago.
What a scam! At least with a televangelist you can get a “warm and fuzzy”!
10
ROFLMAO!
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Eddy,
SEveral aspects of the AGW “debate” caused me, a non-scientist, to be skeptical.
Why do the climate scientists rely on thermometers that are subject to UHI influences? Surely they should be concerned with siting in Category 1 locations so adjustments would only be necessary for relocations if at all.
Why are governments funding only the proponents of the hypothesis and not those who seek to refute it? When governments and corporations seek only one answer rather than the facts we should all be suspicious. When opponents are silenced, sacked and derided we should all be alarmed.
I understand that most politicians are scientifically illiterate and will accept any information that suits their political purpose. However when the Greens start pushing a line I know we are being duped.
Science is important in this instance but so is common sense and logical assessment.
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I think the models exist to get foundation and government grants and to get desired political mandates to plan and control the economies and individual behaviors. That’s why ClimateGate got disregarded and they do not want to know what the real temps are.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-reality-is-ignored-or-disregarded-when-do-we-become-a-state-against-its-people/ is the piece I wrote after Anthony’s announcement prompted me to take a harder look at what else NOAA is pushing and rejecting.
Reality does not matter to these statist schemers living at our expense and wanting to make it a lifetime gig. They have their monopoly on the social sciences and education and effectively in the media to change popular perceptions to reflect their desired outcomes. That’s the plan and they stupidly have said so in that UNGCRP report.
That reference to “international links” has to refer to the Belmont Forum and the Future Earth Alliance that has kept a low profile but includes Australia as well.
They are going to keep having plans for us until this becomes better known all over the West. Plus China too is involved in the Belmont Forum. Probably the ultimate banker watching the rest of the countries that are democratic commit suicide in the name of Sustainability.
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So in that sense the models do work. 🙁
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Speaking of NOAA. does anybody check their tracking of the sunspots?
Solar Cycle Progression
It looks to me as though even their thrice revised (downwards) projections are too high, and that this century’s equivalent of the Maunder Minimum is just starting. I suggest we start stockpiling coal and knitting sweaters. Even the politician’s hot air will not be enough to keep us warm otherwise.
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Yep,
I’m reckoning 2-3 years and even GUSS and HADCRUD won’t be able to keep adjusting temperatures trends upwards. !
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Time to invest in coal and energy supply…
Yes, the low sunspot count has me worried – the relationship to low temps is strong in the historic record, both recorded and socially observed at the time.
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I didn’t think I’d see this in my lifetime but it now looks like the arctic could be ice free in summer within the next ten years. Can you explain that using your ‘cloud feedbacks mean sensitivity is low’ hypothesis?
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And yet the Arctic temp is right on normal .
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
OCEAN CURRENTS !
And Antarctic ice is increasing !
Further, only a moron uses linear extrapolation when talking about possible future climate.
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Arctic ice is melting faster because its foundation “ice” is not on continent. Got it.
Antarctica is a continent and is losing mass – got it.
One new paper 1, which states there’s less surface melting recently than in past years, has been cited as “proof” that there’s no global warming. Other evidence that the amount of sea ice around Antarctica seems to be increasing slightly 2-4 is being used in the same way. But both of these data points are misleading. Gravity data collected from space using NASA’s Grace satellite show that Antarctica has been losing more than a hundred cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice each year since 2002. The latest data reveal that Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate, too. How is it possible for surface melting to decrease, but for the continent to lose mass anyway? The answer boils down to the fact that ice can flow without melting.
The paper mentioned: 1 Marco Tedesco and Andrew J. Monaghan, “An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability,” Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L18502 (2009).
Meanwhile, measurements from the Grace satellites confirm that Antarctica is losing mass 11. Isabella Velicogna of JPL and the University of California, Irvine, uses Grace data to weigh the Antarctic ice sheet from space. Her work shows that the ice sheet is not only losing mass, but it is losing mass at an accelerating rate. “The important message is that it is not a linear trend. A linear trend means you have the same mass loss every year. The fact that it’s above linear, this is the important idea, that ice loss is increasing with time,” she says. And she points out that it isn’t just the Grace data that show accelerating loss; the radar data do, too. “It isn’t just one type of measurement. It’s a series of independent measurements that are giving the same results, which makes it more robust.”
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
_______
Ross J.
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If you look at the ocean temp anomalies you will see that the warmer water from the last few rampant sun cycles has meandered north. This melts ice from underneath not from any warmth from the top. Old Sol is now on holidays and no more heat is expected.
Sol being on holidays changes the pressure patterns and the cold air moves south making America and Europe colder. The melting ice in the arctic regions have been much to the surprise of science uncovering signs of habitation during the last ice age? This would tend to suggest that some of the Arctic is ice free during an ice age.
Putting two and two together, an ice free Arctic would be a fore runner to a colder world.
L.I.A. weather patterns are already being observed.
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I could also mention things such as Ice phase changes, that happen in deep ice at temps below -40C.
It is harder to melt ice from phase 2 than from phase 1 (normal), and the winter ocean current temps would not have allowed much phase 2 ice to form.
Once the solar minimum we are currently experiencing starts to bite (next 2-4 years), I would expect that Arctic ice levels will start to climb appreciably.
I am FAR more concerned about the effect of a 20-30 year COLD period than I am of some beneficial warming coincident with raise CO2 level.
Warm + raised CO2 = VERY GOOD !!!
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Mick,
Wouldn’t be the FIRST time the Arctic has been ice free (even in my lifetime) and probably won’t be the last.
Woopy Doo??
Look out – the end is nigh!!!
Cheers,
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Thanks for your replies. Taking them in order we have: it’s just the weather; the sun did it but it’s soon going to get colder; the sun will fix it – the ice will return; it happens all the time.
I’m not detecting much of a pattern here. Are you guys all on the same page?
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You shouldn’t take the claims of such as Naomi Oreskes at face value — skeptics of government-funded, agenda-driven Climate “Science” are not a monolithic cabal of right-wing, oil industry-funded Neanderthals. That your question suggests you might believe this doesn’t say much for your skills at due diligence.
Climate skeptics are usually intelligent, thoughtful people (often scientists and engineers themselves) who simply observe that the hugely funded push to use poorly done science as an excuse for vastly increasing government power has no real data supporting it.
American President Dwight Eisenhower, in his Farewell Address to the Nation, warned of just this possibility:
That we don’t all suscribe to some “alternative theory of climate” is simply because there currently IS NO successful “theory of climate”. To think that we have to have such a theory misunderstands the nature of science.
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Oh, BTY: Here is a photo of the American submarines Skate and Seadragon rendezvousing in open water at the North Pole during the summer of 1962.
The first icebreaker reached the North Pole in 1977. Since then, Ice breaker trips to the North Pole have been available to tourists for the last 30 years.
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I repeat again..
The Earth’s atmosphere is a temperature regulator. It transfers excess energy from the surface of the Earth to the upper atmosphere. Because the whole thing is defined by the pressure, temperature, volume laws of Kinetic Theory, the total energy transfer is basically a constant (on average around the globe… its a pretty chaotic system)
EVEN IF CO2 did cause some infinitesimal warming, it would be BALANCED IMMEDIATELY by an increase in other energy transfers, eg an increase in convection, evaporation etc
By the way, a tiny increase in CO2 will actually INCREASE the dry lapse rate (by a tiny amount) because the specific heat of CO2 is LESS than that of air.
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That regulator is CO2 BTW. At the moment we are adjusting the regulator and turning the adjustment screw up with a giant man-made screwdriver.
Philips head anyone or is a flat screwdriver?
_______
Ross J.
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.
Ross James:
You say:
Great quote Ross!
A flat screwdriver – it seems you’re up to speed on carpentry as much as you are on climate variations. Maybe Pozi Drive number 2 may suit you better?
Or you could just SLOT your knowledge into a hex drive bit!
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All the builders I know, now use square drive, because it is faster to align the screw with the bit, and it allows the (electric) drill to deliver more torque to the thread of the screw, meaning it goes in faster.
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“That regulator is CO2 BTW”
That’s ABSOLUTE BS! Ross !
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Oh hurrah! Great stuff Andy! Quick tell the scientists they’ve got it all wrong….
Oops, BTW, what’s you internally coherent mechanism for getting the Earth in and out of ice ages?
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And not being content with an Appeal to Authority, you now feel the need to resort to an ad hominem through sarcasm.
And once again I notice that you offer no actual opinion of your own at all, let alone one supported by facts.
You are not very good at this debating thingy, are you Matt?
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Oh poor Matt, there are many things in the past we don’t know.. accept it.
You should head off and learn some kinetic gas theory, energy transfer stuff etc etc.. its not difficult y’know !!
……. once you finish year 10 high school.
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ie. there is an AUTOMATIC CANCELLING FEEDBACK for any change of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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Err … yes there is …
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The positive feedback effect was introduced to explain the rapid change in temperatures when the Earth came out of an ice age. A rise in CO2 (cause unknown) leading to some heat, followed by more CO2 and water vapour from the oceans. From this hypothesis also comes the idea of “tipping points”.
This was where I became a sceptic; you don’t have to have seen a 100mm forged steel shaft bent in seconds to understand positive feedback, but it certainly helps.
Some claim that the ice core evidence shows that the temperature rise happened earlier than the rise in CO2. That is in accordance with known science (solubility of gases v temperature) but it has the weakness that the Warmists will try to alter the records, as they did with the Medieval Warm Period.
It is better IMO that you ask “so what stops the positive feedback”? If a little warming causes more CO2 and water vapour, then they in turn must cause more warming, and so on. If a 100 ppm rise 13,000 years ago caused at least a 7℃ rise in temperature, why hasn’t the same rise in the twentieth century done the same? Or, why hasn’t the temperature rise from 1975-95 done the same? Or why has the rise in CO2 since 1998 not increased temperatures?
You probably won’t get a response, just a change in subject; but you can hope to have planted the seed, except in the tiny minds of the trolls who infest the place.
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Can we have a statistician’s perspective? With linear CO2 increases and a highly variable temperature record, CO2 can only explain a small proportion. Something must explain the variability, as randomness defies conservation of energy. IT MUST BE EXPLAINABLE, and CO2 DOES NOT.
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Patrick Moore seems to confuse feedback with amplification. Phrases like “3-4 times positive feedback” and “negative feedback of 0.5 times” are just wrong. Feedback can cause amplification but can cause many other things. This is where one has to introduce differential equation to explain what is going on and this is where the public at large draws blanks.
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In what sense do differential equations, which are essentially to do with the rate of change of related variables, have to do with positive, neutral or negative feedbacks?
It seems reasonable to describe positive feedback as amplification. How does the term amplification apply to the other two possible scenarios? How would you describe neutral or negative feedbacks?
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Vess,
You have me confused now, lets start at the beginning. If nothing changes then nothing will change no forcing no feed back (+ve or -ve).
If you increase something in this case CO2 (call this a forcing) then this forcing will cause other changes to take place (call this a feed back), other examples of forcing would be a change in output from the sun.
Now onto feed backs, the oft told story of a microphone squealing is the most liked example given but personally i don’t like it…do you know anything about OP amps per chance?
In an op amp the input is amplified so the out put is much bigger however the output is 180 degrees out of phase so what you can do is you can feed this back to the input.
So what happens is this……….the input gets amplified and the output is feed back and because it is out of phase it reduces the size of the input which then limits the size of the output this is known as a -ve feed back.
If however the out was inverted to by in phase with the input then when you feed back the output it will add to the input making the output even bigger, this even bigger output is then feed back to the input making the output even bigger again this is known as a +ve feed back.
So the question is if we “force” the climate to change by adding CO2 what kind of feed back (+ve or –ve) can we expect?
The IPCC have stated that by forcing the climate with an increase of CO2 we will see a very small increase in temperature however this small increase in temperature will cause an increase in atmospheric water vapour (feed back) the IPCC go on to say that this feed back will be +ve (add to the additional warming of CO2)
I hope this clears things up for you, please do not hesitate to ask any questions.
Regards
Crakar
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I get a thumbs down for talking about feed backs in electronic circuits, what dip shit would do that?
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A musician.
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“what dip shit would do that?”
Ross James, Matt Bennett, Mick Buckley & John Brookes perhaps?
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That’s only 4 of them….
Maybe the ghost of Adumb Smith is the 5th?
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Take it as a compliment, Crackar! Since they are mentally incapable of engaging in intelligent debate with you they resort to a juvenile response commensurate with their IQ.
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Here’s more interesting facts for the real deniers. You claim it’s all about human co2 emissions, well look at this.
OECD countries emissions in 1990 11.6 bn tonnes co2 pa increasing to 13 bn tonnes co2 pa in 2010. An increase of 1.4 bn tonnes pa co2 over 21 years.
The non OECD emissions increased by 8.8 bn tonnes pa over that 21 year period.
But the co2 emissions from the non OECD increased by 1.7 bn tonnes pa in just twelve months from 2009 17.1bn tonnes co2 pa to 2010 18.8bn tonnes co2 pa.
Thats 0.3 bn tonnes more than the OECD countries increased by over the previous 21 years.
Now that’s what you’d call an increase in co2, something like super soaring I’d say.
BTW China alone increased emissions of co2 from 2009 to 2010 by 1.1 bn tonnes pa. When will you deniers wake up to your fraud and con of AGW mitigation?
Some say that science is maths, well there’s the numbers. Time the real deniers resorted to simple kindy maths and worked it out for themslves.
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To add to the above REAL FACTS on co2 emissions, here is my source.
http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=90&pid=44&aid=8&cid=CG6,CG5,&syid=1990&eyid=2010&unit=MMTCD
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Huh?
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This comment relates to Vess’ statement about amplification or feed backs.
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Very succinctly put.
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Yes there is a dispute whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I know this is not popular with Jo, and probably not prudent from the political stand point of view of the “denier” camp. I am also aware that the majority of skeptics don’t dispute that assumption.
Me being skeptic through and through, – I am not so sure. I have read enough to doubt that CO2 is at all capable of influencing surface temperatures.
I also agree with AndyG55. “The Earth’s atmosphere is a temperature regulator. It transfers excess energy from the surface of the Earth to the upper atmosphere. Because the whole thing is defined by the pressure, temperature, volume laws of Kinetic Theory, the total energy transfer is basically a constant (on average around the globe… its a pretty chaotic system)
EVEN IF CO2 did cause some infinitesimal warming, it would be BALANCED IMMEDIATELY by an increase in other energy transfers, eg an increase in convection, evaporation etc
By the way, a tiny increase in CO2 will actually INCREASE the dry lapse rate (by a tiny amount) because the specific heat of CO2 is LESS than that of air.”
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I too dispute the assumption, but that does not prevent me from being a strong supporter of Jo and her actions if only because I reject the notion of settled science – on the contrary, a strong political standpoint. Once the new solar minimum kicks in and governments are forced to reverse engines, we should have a bit more opportunity to discuss the finer points of the effects of CO2 on the atmosphere. But now is not a time for backbiting, if it ever was.
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*Sigh*
We hear this claim a lot… “There is no such thing as the greenhouse effect.” Etc.
CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.
Eh?
!!!@#
In a rational debate we attempt as best we can to compile a dictionary of terms, definitions and processes all sides are willing to concede are “correct.” That way we can limit the debate to the germane points which are clearly contested. (Note that individual researchers are welcome to, aye encouraged, to go back re-perform all relevant experiments pertinent to the debate to re-test the basic assumptions once again. But that’s not part of the debate. The debate has to be conducted upon what is believed to be known at this moment in history.)
For instance, all sides of the climate debate have agreed to exclude the possibility that the intervention of spacefaring alien life forms is the cause of the last 150 years of global warming. “The science is settled.”
You never hear of the Alien possibility being discussed in serious climate debates. True, it’s a very remote possibility, but to my knowledge there is, sadly, not a single peer reviewed study into possible alien intervention so it can hardly be discounted completely. Yet, for the sake of getting on with the climate debate we will summarily dismiss the Alien Intervention Theory (AIT) at least until such time as new evidence for AIT presents itself.
Furthermore, all sides of the climate debate have agreed to accept the vast canon of the last 100 years of chemistry and physics as so-called “settled science.” Both sides believe strongly in atoms and molecules, the rules of thermodynamics, strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, electric fields, etc., etc.
Imagine if the climate skeptics brought to the table an alternative theory of physics and chemistry? We wouldn’t be debating climate change, but whether modern thermodynamics explains how a steam engine works.
What’s absolutely shocking is how much the climate researchers – skeptical or otherwise – actually agree upon!
That’s exactly what Patrick Moore has recently grokked on too. Welcome, Patrick!
Of course, Patrick can be forgiven for thinking that the climate debate was about the fundamental rules of thermodynamics. Heck, he can be forgiven for thinking the debate is about whether the earth has warmed over the last 150 years!
No one in Australia or the US who has been only followed the climate debate in the mass media could possible know that the skeptical scientists are NOT skeptical of the well understood thermodynamic chemistry of atmospheric CO2 or that no one challenges the basic “greenhouse” metaphor for how the atmosphere keeps the Earth from being a snowball in space.
But as students of the science behind the climate debate we have no such excuse.
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Wes,
I think you can make a strong argument for Alien Intervention, within the debate. We have certainly seen evidence of them on this blog. My hypothesis is that they are pan-dimensional beings, that we can only perceive though the two dimensional limitations of the written word. Therefore, they can only appear to us as trolls, instead of the higher beings they actually are.
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Hi RW,
I strongly disagree – they instead fall into two camps.
[1] The lower orders who are humans who have willingly become mouthpieces for our alien lizard overlords, and
[2] The higher orders who are emissaries of our alien lizard overlords in human form…
I suspect that you can’t tell the difference between the two (nudges with elbow…)
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Rereke & ExWarmist
Good points.
However, Rereke, pan-dimensional beings would obviously hail out of Calabi-Yau space and the dead give away of their existence would be the presence of a nonvanishing harmonic spinor implying that their canonical bundle is trivial.
So far all the IPPC has as evidence is a couple of computer projections based on Yamal, but Phil Jones seems to have deleted the database while purging Eudora email attachments to avoid FOI requests, so we might never know for sure.
As for more conventional aliens species such as lizard overlords and Daleks, etc. there is a rumour that Lonnie Thompson’s ice core drills hit an unknown metal alloy about 250 metres below the surface in Antarctica. However, a la Phil Jones, the data seems to have been misplaced.
From Climate Audit:
The Truth is Out There!
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Wes,
I bow to your superior knowledge about alien life forms. You obviously have first hand experience.
In fact, your reference to the harmonic spinor is a dead give away. You don’t come across as a troll, so you are obviously clandestine, and awaiting your moment to claim world domination of this thread. But be warned, we are on to you, and I have reported your presence to the Moderators who, as I type this, are waiting with their snippers at the ready.
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World domination?
No. I’m just here for the Earth women and Bundy & cola. We don’t have much of either on my planet. As soon as I’ve loaded the Ford Galaxy with heaps of both, I’ll be off to my home world.
😉
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Wes…
I find this news very concerning – has Lonnie Thompson been physically compromised by a polymorphic, multicellular, spacefaring, vegetable – aka “The Thing”?
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Now, I’ll say this once and i must self-destruct. All GHGs at suffiient concentration cease to be GHGs. I repeat. All GHGs at suffiient concentration cease to be GHGs.
It’s because above that concentration, they enter self-absorption mode, for CO2 ~200 ppmV. What happens next is a new analysis: the GHG switches off the emission in its band at the Earth’s surface [i can describe the mechanism if you want]. Because the Earth’s surface emissivity falls, the temperature rises until increased convection and radiation in the ‘atmospheric window’ takes over.
So CO2 ceases to be a GHG at ~200 ppmV. The GHE is fixed by the first few 100 ppmV of water vapour. Your conventional view of the GHE makes a wildly incorrect assumption which is that the heat source, the Earth’s surface, is unchanged in terms of its radiative capabilities by the atmosphere.
The IPCC claims it emits as if it were a black body in a vacuum. This is so childish as to be mind-boggling. No engineer like me who developed two-colour pyrometers to measure temperatures of flat plates in air accepts it. It’s the ramblings of a set of scientific cretins and anyone who believes in it is also cretin.
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Thank you.
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Thank you, turndoutnice.
So CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
And the Greenhouse Effect is real.
Now we can have a rational talk about when CO2 ceases to be effective as a greenhouse gas and stop confusing the issue about whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas or not.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
Nice is right. Additional CO2 isn’t going to warm the atmosphere by an amount that can be distinguished from the background noise.
But you gotta explain it clearly!
My original point is that when we start with “CO2 is not a greenhouse gas” all we have done is played into the hands of the warmists who love to have the debate misdirected away from the real weaknesses in the CAGW theory.
So instead of saying “CO2 is not a greenhouse gas” we need to explain to people why CO2 is a greenhouse gas that has reached its upside capacity to warm the climate. We need to tell people the secrets that the warmists will never mention… that even the IPCC acknowledges future increases in CO2 can’t warm the planet alone significantly and that’s why the IPCC has focused on water vapour feedback being strongly positive.
The mainstream media has made a point of never correcting the false, but common belief that the CO2 warming effect is a linear relationship — the latest 100ppm of CO2 added to the atmosphere increases the temperature by the same amount as the first 100ppm. Because that’s the way the media paints the picture, that’s what most people believe.
People don’t realise that the whole debate hangs by the single thread of whether water vapour feedback is–
1) strongly positive…or
2) weakly positive…or
3) weakly negative…or
4) strongly negative…
At this point, because the science is highly unsettled, there is no more than a 25% chance of it being strongly positive.
Since only if water vapour feedback is STRONGLY positive is global warming a worry — and there is no more than 25% chance of that — then every well-informed advocate and scientist who has been preaching “the science is settled” is lying through his or her teeth.
If people were told this simple truth the biggest con of the century would blow up overnight.
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.
.
Gee Wes, that comment would fit in perfectly at Skeptical Science or Real Climate.
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I’ve been humbugged!
😉
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CO2 (and most other atmospheric gases) is a greenhouse gas in that it provides atmospheric pressure to form the pressure/temperature gradient that controls the Earth’s temperature.
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Mike,
You write “ice free in summer” but some folks think some smallish area remaining still qualifies as ice-free. What is your notion of this? If not totally ice-free, how low do you think it will get, will it stay there?
Also, what made you change from “I didn’t think” to the “looks like” position. There are many charts to choose from but this one
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
. . . shows ice extent for this week almost exactly as it was in 2007 and 2011. One could argue that ice extent has declined faster over the last couple of months and (might) continue on this path. However, this chart
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
. . . shows that after earlier year higher Arctic temps, there has been for weeks a return to the ERA40 (green line) [data set from 1958 to 2002]. So I don’t see anything here that would make me change positions on this subject. What is it that you see in this situation that I, and others, do not?
—————————————–
Jo,
I agree about the message spreading. I think some of this is a result of spectacular failures of some government’s attempts to push costly green projects. You have helped with uncovering and getting this message out so there is no need to explain. Thanks.
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It should also be noted that ice extent & ice area have geographical boundaries that keep accumulated ice within a narrow range. Neither measure is particularly accurate, and neither one takes into account ice thickness. Ice is removed from the arctic by sublimation, wind, currents, carbon particulates, and, to a lesser extent, by melting. Loss of ice area is offset by the high albedo of open water at high zenith angles.
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This is a United Nations Sponsored mess designed to keep us all on their leash.
IT IS ABOUT TIME AUSTRALIA SECEDED FROM THE UNITED NATIONS.
It is not doing what it was hired for: to do good in the world.
It is a despotic monstrous group of self serving creeps.
KK
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Imagine a committee of Dominic Strauss-Kahn’s lording it over us- fabulous! They would do to the whole world what DSK tried to do to that African-born Hotel maid.
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Hi Winston
From what you read about DSK it may be confronting but it doesn’t last long.
KK
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[…] The meme spreads: Patrick Moore “gets it” […]
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I think the shift in attitudes and the backlash against climate warming science and the scientific elitism of so many climate scientists might be much more deeply entrenched than is yet recognised by even most skeptic commenters.
A few articles ago in a post on this blog, I suggested that scientists, primarily but not limited to climate warming scientists, in their self elevating and arrogant elitism, had shifted almost diametrically from being the “creators” of a better society to being the “accusers” of that same society.
They are now indulging their elitism in accusing and passing their own elitist and personal judgement upon the very society that has so carefully nurtured science for the last three generations and has in many cases handsomely rewarded that same scientific elite for what was seen as their efforts in lifting society to new levels of prosperity.
But in their new self important and elevated arrogance those same scientists are now accusing and passing judgement upon that very same society along with instructions on how that society should behave and act, all based entirely on their own beliefs in their own elitist and vastly superior intellectual superiority over that of the common man in the street.
–
And we ain’t wearing it anymore nor are an increasing number of science based commentators.
—
Example; quote taken this morning from the German, english translation blog P. Gosselin’s “NoTricksZone”. http://notrickszone.com/
—
Today, worldwide, and especially in Germany, a handful of cocksure climate scientists, believing to be all-knowing, are attempting to tell society what behaviour is acceptable and insist their recommendations are “without alternative, that there are no other choices”. We’ve heard that before in history, too – and with tragic consequences.
“The democratic system has to do what it is told, and if it doesn’t, then the people are too stupid or just not educated enough,” Weingart sums up the attitude of these climate scientists, who purport to have a “masterplan” that will lead us to paradise-like conditions.
In Weingart’s view, climate science has abused its position in going far beyond policy advising. They now insist that the rest of the world dance to its tune. Weingart cites examples of humans already being forced to alter their behaviour: carbon trading, changing light bulbs, basing purchasing decisions on climate impact, to name a few.
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Look at this web site.
http://blogs.law.widener.edu/climate/
Careful, your brain may go into overload. And he has an advanced degree! in LAW!
Formerly of the same university that brought you Jerry Sandusky (child abuser) and M Mann (the hockey stick) PSU found no violations for either of these to individuals (I think their ethics is modeled after DR Brown’s.) A recent post of his extols the virtue of Peter Gleick (stole/forged the Hartland documents.)
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Personally, I found this 2-part youtube presentation by Dr. David Evan profoundly concise and clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plr-hTRQ2_c
It’s perhaps the best way to introduce the core debate to friends who are trapped in the shallow media discourse that portrays the dispute as between those who believe the climate is changing and those who don’t.
I’ve actually sat down a few teenagers to watch Evan’s presentation and it far more effectively communicated the true issues to them than written materials alone.
All students of climate change should be required to “attend” Dr. Evan’s presentation.
Take notes. A pop quiz is coming.
😉
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I know this is (slightly) off topic, but this is what Climate Change has come to.
Space in cemeteries is becoming more scarce, so some burial Companies in NSW are offering bush burial in cardboard boxes, just a covered over hole in the ground and no reference as to what is below. Relatives get a GPS location if they wish to visit the site.
However, one thing said in the article was a comment from one operator in Byron Bay (gee, who would have thought) who said this:
This is the link to the article.
The meme is (still) steadily gaining steam.
Tony.
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Then of course there is our highly paid “climate commissioner” that insists that cremations cause mercury pollution. The nice chap at the morgue with the pliers. The fellow that insists that some time this century the planet will develop a brain and a nervous system. Very scientific. That purveyor of fine fake science. Sydney will melt, and the sea level will rise several meters above his house on the Hawkesbury River. Possibly by the day after tomorrow. Tom Foolery.
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Wait until we get Soylent Green
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Tony,
Now, don’t be so quick to diss. 😉
I know of a farmer on the New England plateau with a beautiful spread of windswept granite boulders that’s extremely remote, high altitude and has beautiful views. It’s not much good for anything but a few sheep, but it’s ancient, majestic and has a mystical sense of awe about it. Even the most practical old farm hands are moved by this place. In fact, I think it’s downright spooky there and I feel sure for thousands of years it was a sacred site.
To keep it in the family, the farmer is considering a business plan for “eco-burials” as an option. At 10 to 20 grand a grave, your family can pick a lovely pristine spot overlooking a vast national park and bury their loved one in a natural environment in any way they please as long as it complies with state and fed regulations. Family is welcome to come back to visit and stay at the farm house B&B.
Besides the standard cardboard box, mattock and spade, additional (price upon request) option plans included death metal concerts, cairns, various pagan cremation rituals, orgies and American Plains Indian platform burials. (Sorry, bison are unavailable in NSW due to non-native pest importation regulations.)
In the old days my family were devout Christians and spent a pretty penny on candles, holy water and erecting elaborate tombstones for their dead in the local churchyard.
If the good Buddhists, Druids and nature animists of Byron Bay want to respect their dead with rituals they deem significant and appropriate I say good on them. Cultural evolution provides new business opportunities for wealth creation in the most surprising of places. Even at 1200 meters on a remote boulder strewn hill in New England.
Heck, I’m thinking about reserving a boulder with a petroglyph for me self and me old dog.
10
Wes, you say here:
…and therein lies the reason which will cause this venture to fail.
Tony.
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The real killer for the “positive Feed Back” farce is this Graph of Relative Humidity 1948 – 2008
As the CO2 as read at Mauna Loa goes up the %RH goes DOWN!
YOu can then add in these three graphs. The earth emits low level energy radiation in the infrared range as compared to the sun. This is the energy absorbed by CO2. The oceans, 70% of the earth’s surface, absorb in the visible and ultraviolet range, the range emited by the sun. The wavelengths emitted by the CO2 are the wrong wavelength as well as being low in energy. The recently discovered variations in the ultraviolet wavelengths from the sun would swamp any contribution made by re-emitted energy from CO2.
http://www.udel.edu/Geography/DeLiberty/Geog474/energy_wavelength.gif
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/images/instruments/sim/fig01.gif
http://www.klimaatfraude.info/images/sverdrup.gif
And just for the heck of it the response of ground and air temperature to a solar eclipse in the desert Graph
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Whoa! Patrick, Patrick, Patrick! No dispute. How can you say that? I’ve seen more blog posts on this one topic than on just about any other aspect of AGW (except perhaps how scientists are crooks), and you say there is no dispute. Haven’t you read that gin & tonic paper? Get your act together man! Realise that the army of “skeptics” are fighting on all fronts. Tactically its a very bad mistake to pin yourself down to any one battle – lose it, and the war is over. No, you must fight every fight, no matter how hopeless (undersea volcanoes anyone?), because rather than aiming for victory, you must aim to stave off defeat, and as long as you can point to a few battles (over anything, it really doesn’t matter), then the war isn’t over!
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Well, I’ve always believed CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
I’ve always believed in global warming within various major and minor trend periods (pre-1950 and post 1979 for example).
I’ve always believed in rising sea levels (certainly beginning after the Napoleonic Wars, maybe well before).
I believe Arctic sea ice has been low in recent years at its autumn minimum. I believe it may have been this low in the early nineteen twenties and at other times – but who can say? There have been numerous reports of disappearing Arctic ice in major journals since the 19th century. Obviously, those scares went quiet in the 1970s.
Since the Antarctic, in spite of some very oddly focused spin, has been chockas with ice in recent years, and since it holds about 90% of the world’s ice, I can see why Gore and Flannery are so relaxed about owning Montecito and Hawkesbury real estate.
So, that’s how you can believe that CO2 is a greenhouse gas without wetting the bed!
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JB has nothing to offer and has no interest in having an effective conversation on any topic – don’t feed the troll.
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On this blog there is only one battle front in common. “Show us the evidence”. This is the consistent request of everyone here. Since no one has yet stumped up with the evidence for us to be persuaded by we tend to get involved in the side issues in the meantime.
John – Show us the evidence and you will convince us because ultimately every skeptic here is interested in science and empiricism.
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Dear John. You’re not still denying there are undersea volcanoes are you? In March last year you denied their existence. Were you too lazy to Google as I advised? Come to think of it you did fail to reply. Now don’t be lazy this time, just Google them. Even the AGW revisionist Connelly-edited Wikipedia has some info!
And just to refresh your memory!
John Brookes Comment 55
March 2, 2011 at 2:32 pm · Reply
But Farmer Roger (and I really think you are a troll), if you look at the rise in CO2 its very steady from year to year, implying rather constant volcanic activity. Seems rather unlikely, but we’d better defer to Plimer. Actually wait, its all coming back to me now, they are submarine volcanoes, and there are lots and lots of them that no one has ever noticed before, but trust Plimer, they are there.
Keith H Comment 90
March 2, 2011 at 6:21 pm · Reply
John Brookes @ 55 & Farmer Roger @ 50
“they are submarine volcanoes, and there are lots and lots of them that no one has ever noticed before, but trust Plimer, they are there”.
You really are becoming tiresome with your inane comments John. Don’t you ever check things for yourself? Just Google “Submarine Volcanoes” and it will give you a choice of sites, together with details of 5,000 currently active, lots of pretty pictures and loads of other details. Should keep you out of our hair for a while!
Maybe you should check too Farmer Roger, just to confirm Plimer knew what he was talking about.
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No undersea volcanoes? I’ll give John the benefit of the doubt and hope he never implied that. His comment was a bit garbled, showing more enthusiasm for hipsterish irony than textual clarity.
Heard about that raft of pumice presently floating off the NZ coast? (Probably from the undersea Mount Monowai.) Know how big it is?
Size of Belgium. Really.
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From Jop’s limks on uncertainty:
“Consider the warming from1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites and not corrupted and adjusted land thermometers. Douglass and Christy (2008) point out that, given how much CO2 levels increased in that time, the warming only amounts to what the IPCC scientists predict we should get from CO2 alone, from the direct effect of CO2, and not from the effect of CO2 plus positive feedbacks.
The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.”
So let’s check the current data from UAH:
And what about the trend:
Data from UAH National Space Science and Technology Center
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/
File: tltglhmam_5.4
Time series (uah) from 1978.92 to 2012.58
Selected data from 1979
Selected data up to 2007
Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0142823 per year
Of dear, an error of over 100%: that’s certainly uncertainty, and
certainly puts paid to the 0.6DC fallacy.
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Hi Sillyfilly,
However if we go for the last 14 years we get a slow rise
So the last 14 years have seen warming well below the expected trend, and yet CO2 keeps rising
Implying the CO2 is not the climate driver that it is cracked up to be.
The way to explain the slow down is that [1] CO2 is a greenhouse gas, [2] at 390 ppm, additional CO2 has little impact (i.e. CO2 is saturated in the atmosphere), and [3] feedbacks to CO2 concentration are -ve, further minimising impact.
AGW is barely measurable. CAGW which is dependent on +ve feedbacks does not exist.
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Cue the ambiguous and contradictatory claim that Chinese burning of Australian coal is cooling the planet…………not to be confused with Australian burning of Australian coal is causing catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
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Again, why don’t you answer the question?
What about TSI and the lack of temperature correlation since the 70’s?
We have low TSI, we’ve just been through one of the largest La Nina’s ever recorded and all you give is a blatant cherry pick of the data.
This does not constitute an argument nor induce debate!
Quick question though, what, if not GHG’s, is causing the trend to stay positive, no natural cycle can explain that fact!
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Sillyfilly,
I know you where conversing with Ex warmist but i do seek clarification from you on this topic
You used the following quote
“Consider the warming from1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites and not corrupted and adjusted land thermometers. Douglass and Christy (2008) point out that, given how much CO2 levels increased in that time, the warming only amounts to what the IPCC scientists predict we should get from CO2 alone, from the direct effect of CO2, and not from the effect of CO2 plus positive feedbacks.
The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.”
The above would suggest that there is no effect of the (unproven) water vapor feed back.
you then spear off into the unknown and type this
Time series (uah) from 1978.92 to 2012.58
Selected data from 1979
Selected data up to 2007
Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0142823 per year
Of dear, an error of over 100%: that’s certainly uncertainty, and
certainly puts paid to the 0.6DC fallacy.
So when we do the math we find 0.0142823 per year X 10 (for a decade) we get 0.14C per decade as opposed to the 0.6C per decade (fallacy in your words) but wait on there is a rather large error in the data which makes all of the above pointless which brings me back to your original comment……….it was pointless (as usual)
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Sorry, what is it about this that is not crackers?
Oh sorry, I didn’t apply the Lindzen lower the temperature algorithm, that should make it deniable, perhaps?
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Sillyfilly,
What are you talking about? Lindzen and his temp algorithm?
Your comment did not make sense, i asked for clarification. Get over it or call a Whambulance you big sook.
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http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/solar_irradiance_1611-2001.png
data from
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/lean2000_irradiance.txt
It takes time to heat large amounts of water up.. lag time.
SI has been high since the 1950’s and has stayed high, hence the small gradual warming since the 1970’s
IF YOU KEEP ADDING HEAT >> THINGS GET WARMER !!!
The solar minimum we are heading into will gradually biting, and the oceans will gradually start to cool..
This will cause FAR, FAR more problems than a bit of warming.
If it drops to Maunder Minimum levels, the world is in DEEP doo-doo
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SI has been high since the 1950′s and has stayed high, hence the small gradual warming since the 1970′s
Oh yeah?
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You lot have been crapping on about TSI having no effect on the climate so dont start trying to use it as an excuse now, TSI wont wash, Chinese coal wont wash you need a new cover story to prop up the faith.
So whats the latest story?
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DOH ! You really are a Dopey donkey.. you have highlighted the far right section of the graph I showed at….
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/images/solar_irradiance_1611-2001.png
And YES, while it does go up and down a periodically during the cherry picked time you have shown, it is ALL MUCH HIGHER than the previous 300-400 years.
THANK GOODNESS !!!
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Because it is not TSI that matters. EVE has shown that TSI can remain constant while the mix of wavelengths change.
From NASA
Another NASA Article on a study done by Dr Richard Feynman’s sister Dr. Joan Feynman of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, along with Alexander Ruzmaikin and Dr. Yuk Yung of the California Institute of Technology shows evidence of the 88 year Gleissberg solar cycle and the 200 year de Vries (Suess) cycle in the Nile river water level records.
This is the same thing the graphs showed in my previous comment. Changes in the ultraviolet wavelengths, where “EVE,” (short for EUV Variability Experiment,) shows the sun is at its most variable are the same wave lengths that most effect the energy absorbed by the oceans. Graph
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Two great posts gai!!
One has to wonder if all those people at NASA talk to each other.
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The old mare ain’t what she used to be but she’s hanging there; read this silly on TSI and temperature. Note figures 4-7.
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Sillyfilly points out that Jo says…
Yet I don’t know if you delved into the linked paper by Douglass, D.H., and Christy, J.R.(2008)
Which points out that (my bold)…
You need g to be equal to 2 to match your statements, or half the warming is not from CO2(???). And yet a strong +ve forcing for CO2 is inconsistent with the fact that CO2 and Temperature are not correlated at all in the geological record. I.e. the climate is insensitive to CO2
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From your quote, the authors are inferring global average temperatures from that estimated from data in the tropical latitude band. Wonder what happened to the rest of the globe? No wonder this paper was accepted by Energy and Environment, it couldn’t appear in any proper scientific journal. Richard Lindzen tried the same bizarre statistical approach and look where it got him.
refs:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL042911.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010GL043051.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL049236.shtml
And on TSI, the so-called sceptics (for want or a more suitable title) have been banging on for years that: it’s all the sun, it’s all natural, it’s all ENSO etc etc. The trouble being that the science disagrees! I see the Oreskes study mentioned above, how convenient that Jo bags that scientific study but supports the fraud that was the Oregon petition. One wonders why?
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There was a ‘break‘ in 1998 when the PDO changed from +ve, hot and dry, to -ve, cold and wet; the UAH temperature trend from 1998 is this.
The trend from UAH is -0.00504666 per year from 1998.
UAH trend from 1979 to 1998 is 0.00824292 per year.
The average trend is 0.00319626 PA or 0.032 per decade.
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Carl Brehmer has proved it by empirical experiment in:-
This calls into question climate science’s “contemporary” feedback system whereby the sign of the WV feedback is reversed to become a positive feedback.
The most recent example of the (probably intentional) confusion that exists in the literature produced by a faction of climate science is Dessler 2012:-
Dessler’s feedback system is undefined and not diagrammed. I’ve found it impossible to reconstruct his system with initial process and feedbacks. It’s possible to get 2 different interpretations just by going from Abstract to Introduction. Neither conform to the classical system that Carl Brehmer defines and diagrams.
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Ambiguity is the first step towards lying and deceit.
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Get Carl Brehmer in front of Climatologist Roy Spencer. This guy Carl is a wingnut – Carl Brehmer.
I’ll take Roy Spencer comments over Carl Brehmer any day.
______
Ross J.
(Then you must accept Roy’s published science paper showing Negative feedback’s argument is empirically supported and positive feedback’s are not) CTS
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How you wish to characterize Brehmer is irrelevant Ross J.
I challenge you to refute Brehmer’s multiple observations of negative feedback against temperature from humidity with similar scientific empiricism.
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Good point.
Cheers ExWarmist
10
Carl Brehmer makes far too many assumptions in isolated and decoupled “test tube” analysis and bases his finding on micro regional values.
If you ever get your thinking away from such fringe science fellows and actually understand the complexity of inter-relating various climate inter-actions in the real world you would see clearly such isolated conclusions would not even stand the scrutiny of Linzden, Spencer and Christy.
Go read some decent papers on Climate Sensitivity – you will soon see the fallacy of placing all your set conclusions on such test tube analysis.
________
Ross J.
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Ross J, you dismiss Brehmer’s paper with:-
Wasn’t the object of the exercise to compare “isolated” “micro regional values” (temperature) in the presence of humidity with “micro regional values” (temperature) in the absence of humidity at similar longitudes?
Perhaps you could point us to a paper or even your own reasoning to show how the presence of humidity actually BOOSTS surface temperature (a positive feedback) as observed in climate records and how in dry conditions, surface temperature is unchanged?
What I’m looking for is solid compelling evidence that refutes Brehmer’s finding of a negative feedback from humidity – and please stay away from human perception.
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Global temperatures, if there is such a thing as a “global temperature” and a lot of climate scientists dispute even that, started rising around 1978, around the time of the Great Pacific Climate Shift, the fast switch of the PDO into it’s positive warm phase in 1976 /7. At the time the reasons for this huge change in the Pacific’s climate structure were unknown until the long cycle “PDO” was recognised in about 1982.
–
From 1978 on we had a steady increase in the global temperatures until around 1998, a period of just 20 years.
From 1998 until the present the trend line in the global temperatures is almost flat, That is, there is no statistically valid rise in global temperatures for the 14 years since 1998, a fact that even Phil Jones of the CRU admitted in a BBC interview in 2010.
–
The ENTIRE meme of the catastrophic global warming / climate change belief system is based entirely on just a 20 year long period of rising global temperatures out of the last 34 years, a 20 year long period dating from 1978 to 1988.
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Correction; last line; “a 20 year long period dating from 1978 to 1998”.
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i will never understand the science, but find the debate interesting nonetheless. keep it up.
13 Aug: Climate Spectator: Tristan Edis: How Labor can improve the carbon pricing scheme
Unfortunately when it comes to linking Australia’s emissions trading scheme with schemes overseas, Australia is very much not in control. It was a reckless decision by the government to have virtually no constraint on the use of international carbon credits in the Australian carbon trading scheme. Hopefully the government has realised its mistake.
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/how-labor-can-improve-carbon-pricing-scheme
(AUDIO)13 Aug: ABC Radio Australia: World going backwards on carbon reduction, says geologist
The former Chairman of the Shell Oil Company says a lack of political global will has set back carbon reduction efforts to a dangerous degree.
Lord Ron Oxburgh has been a distinguished Professor of Geology and Geosciences at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Defence Ministry and is a climate change advisor to the Singapore Government…
In 2006 he said the world had only ten years to make real progress towards a low carbon future.
Speakers: Lord Ron Oxburgh, Member of the UK Parliament’s House of Lords
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/connect-asia/world-going-backwards-on-carbon-reduction-says-geologist/998242
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Tropical Darwin last night recorded its lowest overnight temperature (13.6C) on record. Would this be a sign of (a) human-induced global warming (AGW): (b) human-induced global cooling: (c) human-induced global cooling caused by human-induced global warming; (d) just another tick in the box for the null hypothesis of climate (and/or weather)change due to natural variability?
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Back in the mid 90’s it was so cold i could not get out of bed, i eventually did but with my doona wrapped around me. I turned on the TV and sat on the couch shivering and they said it was a chilly 13. something C in Darwin this morning. Now i know this anecdotal evidence is not as good as a model nor can it compete with the mystical mind of a believer but based on my own experiences i would have to say (D).
If i were to put myself in the shoes of a believer i would have to say (A)….no…(C) when in doubt pick C.
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crakar24. I’m struck with the similarities between tbe basis for belief in AGW and what Sir Thomas More says in Robert Bolt’s play “A Man For All Seasons” – “”What matters is not that it’s true, but that I believe it; or no, not that I believe it, but that I believe it.”
AGW is the “hypothesis for all seasons”.
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Excellent post. It all boils down to the question of feedback.
If feedback is positive, as apparently stated in “hundreds of pal reviewed papers”, then there is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the bloated global warming industry.
If the feedback is negative, and this is almost certainly the case, then there no need to impoverish the world economy in a futile attempt to solve a non-problem. Mann, Hansen et alia would justifiably be dumped into the dustbin of history’s famous fraudsters.
There would be no need for so much data manipulation/homogenisation/distortion of the world’s temperature records, as the impact of rising carbon dioxide levels would be seen for what they really are, mostly beneficial: i) plants grow faster and more robustly (CO2 is nature’s own fertiliser), and ii) mild temperature rises are always beneficial to the world economy – if we slipped back to the temperatures of the Little Ice Age 200 years ago, we would not be able to feed ourselves.
So as a scientist, I am pleased to say I am a denier/denialist of positive feedback. But then again, I do not work in a government or quasi-government organisation where my next pay cheque is dependent on: i) toeing the official line, and ii) producing alarming conclusions from benign raw data, which have to be savagely manipulated to achieve these conclusions.
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I pretty sure that most spectroscopic chemists don’t accept that CO2 (or any other gas) has a “greenhouse” effect. The whole concept is totally contradicted by the modern quantum undertanding of atomic structure
10
Agreed and the real answer is surprising. Firstly, the emissivity/absorptivity in the CO2 bands of water vapour/CO2/O2/N2 mixtures becomes independent of [CO2] so there can be no CO2-AGW. Secondly, the dolts in climate science have failed competently to understand the IR physics, imagining that the earth’#s surface somehow radiates IR independently of the GHGs in the atmosphere as if it were a black body in a vacuum.
This is serious dereliction of duty. the real answer is that the GHG band IR from the surface is inhibited by Prevost Exchange [from GHGs in IR self-absorption] reducing emissivity thereby causing temperature to rise. Hence the GHE is fixed by the first few 100 ppmV water vapour. A rider is that the band absorption at TOA is self absorption of thermal IR.
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Jo,
part 4 of Larry Pickering re J Gilliard and the AWU is now up here and already running HOT with plently of hits.
Cheers,
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With regards to feedbacks, there is a relevant recent paper, Dessler 2012, which examines observations of feedbacks over the last 10 years against various climate models.
Therefore the observations match the physical predictions – strong water vapor feedback, smaller positive albedo and cloud feedbacks.
As to the recent lower warming rates, the 15 years mentioned above is both a fairly short time given climate variations such as ENSO and the solar cycle, and begins at a peak El Nino – in other words, both short and cherry-picked. It will be very interesting to see how temperatures evolve over the next few El Nino cycles.
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KR
Very interesting KR; I found it particularly interesting that the best agreement between models and observations was between the models that were dominated by internal variation (the “control ensemble”). The agreement with the ensemble of models “dominated by long term global warming” was significantly worse.
Once again, actual observations fail to support the AGW hypothesis.
And please — ensembles of models do not perform “predictions”. The reason for using an “ensemble” is that you get a different answer each time the model is run. What the researchers are looking for is which models “behave more like” the real world — a totally different thing than “predicting”.
One result of the study is that the models that best match the behavior of the real world are the ones that do not assume the existence of “long term global warming”.
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Ensembles are run because climate is about the statistics of the weather, and because models when run in ensembles provide statistical estimates. If you want exact single-run modeling, you’re predicting weather with initial value computations – and those fail after about a week. Climate modeling, on the other hand, is based on boundary conditions and the long term. (Incidentally, I’m not surprised that internal variation models do a better job for only a decade of data – internal variations will be quite strong over such a short time)
But all of that model discussion is but a side issue. The point I was making is that observations show a strong positive water vapor feedback, with weaker but positive albedo and cloud feedbacks.
Hence when the opening post claims:
…those claims are contradicted by observations. The feedbacks are strongly positive as expected. The opening post, and the “low feedback” meme discussed, are therefore incorrect.
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Simply a repeat of what I said: If the ensemble of models behave “weather-like”, then they may have some things right — if they don’t behave “weather-like”, there is something wrong with them. This holds for all time scales.
The models that don’t assume “long-term global warming” are better at simulating real climates. Your pathetically hopeful wish that they MIGHT do better over a longer time span is just that — wishful thinking, with no evidence to support it.
What you mean, of course, is that — of the two kinds of model ensembles tested — the ones that tested the best included strong positive water vapor feedback. Of course, all the models tested included strong positive water vapor feedback, so that’s not too surprising.
Actual measurements of water vapor effects are not so obliging.
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BobC – Your reference is to “Long-Term Trends in Downwelling Spectral Infrared Radiance over the U.S. Southern Great Plains“, which is _not_ global data – in fact less than 1% of the Earths surface.
There’s a relevant description of arguing the larger science from such a selection: “…the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.”
Global observations indicate strong postive feedback from water vapor, and a weaker but still positive feedback from clouds; not the negative or zero feedbacks asserted in the opening post. The argument of “low feedback” is in fact contradicted by the evidence – when you examine the whole set of evidence.
—
I’m afraid that I cannot take cherry-picked arguments (such as your last post) seriously.
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I assume you’re referring to Dressler 2012 when you say “Global observations”: Then, as Richard C(NZ) has pointed out below, Dressler claims that
So, if there is “strong positive feedback from water vapor” as you claim, what accounts for the net negative feedback Dressler observed?
Nevertheless, it is solid data that you don’t like, so you’re going to ignore it. Brilliant demonstration of the scientific method.
There is nothing in the climate models that would account for water vapor feedback over the US Great Plains area being significantly different from anywhere else over land at middle latitudes. You seem to engage in “the fallacy of incomplete evidence” yourself, in a particularly irrational way, by hoping that wider measurements will somehow erase the data you don’t like. Perhaps we should call this “the fallacy of wishful thinking”.
Wider measurements, however, aren’t coming to the rescue. Quoting from the linked article (which has been described as “quite possibly the most significant water vapor paper in a decade“):
No doubt you’ll dismiss this data like you do to all data you don’t like. No doubt the WV is hiding somewhere the satellites can’t see it — much like the heat supposedly hiding at the bottom of the ocean (it keeps changing, as we develop better measurement methods — global warming heat is clever that way ;-)).
Perhaps you would be so good as to link some of the “global observations” and the “whole set of evidence” that you claim as supporting evidence with bothering to reference any.
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BobC
The thermal radiation given by the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship, perhaps?
Power = emissivity * SB-constant * Area * T^4
Wherein a warmer Earth will radiate more energy to space with increasing temperatures, providing a negative feedback on those temperatures? Any energy balance relationship must include the S-B feedback, and I’m a bit surprised you did not note that.
—
The Vonderharr et al 2005 paper is interesting, however it is based on data still being refined, as NASA states:
I expect various biases and errors to be identified and corrected (such as mixed radiosonde data) – and will hold on concluding anything from this dataset until then. The Beta Test Version NVAP dataset was not released until August 2012 – this month – Vonderharr wrote his paper in 2005.
As to data from just the SE USA – only ~1% of the Earth surface, in an area strongly affected by industrial and power-plant aerosols and regional effects – that, BobC, is a fairly blatant cherry-pick.
10
My apologies – in my previous post I mistakenly stated that the Beta NVAP data was released in Aug. 2012 – it was actually released in late 2011. Only six years after the Vonderharr paper (which used quite preliminary data), not seven.
10
It’s no more of a cherry-pick than using, say, the NOAA GISP2 ice core on the Greenland plateau to show that, in Greenland, the Medieval Warm Period (not to mention the Roman Warm Period and the Holocene Optimum) was significantly warmer than the present. This falsifies the common claim by warmists that Greenland’s current climate is “unprecidented”.
Likewise, the Gero and Turner data definitely proves that, for the US Great Plains, the positive water feedback (predicted by all climate models) is not happening — in fact, the WV feedback there is slightly negative. This is, in fact, proof that current climate models are not correct.
You may choose to hope that the errors are insignificant, and that future measurements will vindicate your choosen beliefs — but it is just that: Unsupported Hope. Blaming your own irrational beliefs on other’s supposed logical errors seems somewhat desperate.
Certainly not enough there to reasonably claim that the “science is settled”, or that civilization needs to urgently commit energy suicide.
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KR
Which observations, exactly, prove the strong positive water vapour feedback?
Personally, I tend toward the view that a positive feedback system is unstable. If 1 gets you 3, then that 3 gets you 9, etc:
CO2 still increasing, temperature plateaued, obviously a negative feedback or a physical limit or boundary, or a more important and over-riding other variable.
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ghl – Positive feedback is only unstable at high gains; positive (and negative) gains less than 1.0 damp out after some amplification. A gain of 0.5 on a forcing, for example, ends up as a series of:
1 + 0.5 (first amplification) + 0.25 (amplification of the 0.5) + 0.125 + 0.0625…
Summing the series gives:
1 / (1 – gain) = 1 / (1 – 0.5) = 2
or an eventual shift of 2 for an initial forcing of 1.
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Gosh, thanks for the tutorial on feedback.
So, to repeat ghl’s question:
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BobC
Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) data directly measuring vertical column water vapor.
Soden et al 2002 – model evaluation, but shows that without the water vapor feedback there is no known physical mechanism matching the observed Pinatubo cooling.
Dai 2005, who discusses observations showing changes in global surface relative humidity are small over 1976-2004, less than 0.6%, although there are significant regional changes. And, given the Clausius Clapeyron relationship between relative and absolute humidity, temperature changes over that period of ~0.5C indicate an absolute humidity increase of about 3.6%.
The NAS report on feedbacks, discussing the physics and data.
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So, unless you believe that the spectroscopic qualities of water vapor do not make it a greenhouse gas (a rather unsupportable claim), there has been increasing total water vapor with warming – and increasing forcing from it.
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KR,
Thanks for digging up the reference. Of course, the quantity of water vapor also affects cloud formation — now if the models could just get within an order of magnitude of correctly modeling clouds, we might find out if the net feedback from WV/clouds is positive or negative.
Oh, the “argument from ignorance” from Soden et al is not particularly convincing. Given the lack of predictive skill of current climate models (not to mention their inability to accurately model clouds, linked above), it is way premature to be assuming that the adjustable parameters the modelers put in MUST be right, because they can’t think of anything else.
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BobC – I find the discussion of various models and their current cloud forcing quite interesting. And rather irrelevant in terms of our future.
Why? Because what matters in terms of climate forcing is not the current values (as in that post), but rather how those values change as feedbacks to forcings. Which is part of what Dessler 2012 measured:
Climate models of various sorts certainly don’t measure everything, or account for everything – and might when matched to observations have cancelling errors (such as the boundary condition models not incorporating short term variations that Dessler evaluated). But if they correctly show relationships, if they allow predictions of what might happen given various emissions scenarios, they might well be worth looking at. Even a zero dimensional model has some predictive value.
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” – George E. P. Box
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Stunningly, I am in total agreement with you here.
Again, nothing I disagree with. So, KR, here’s the $64,000 question:
Given the proper use of models as tools to advance our understanding of various relationships in complex systems, and their current (and perhaps permanent) lack of predictive skill — what convinces you that we should immediately suppress modern industrial civilization (which is what all proposals to artifically multiply the price of energy are) at the certain cost of greatly increased poverty (everywhere, except for the political classes who will be in control) and millions of preventable deaths (mostly in the Third World)?
And, if you claim not to be in favor of this, what the Heck are we arguing about? (And why have you been supporting the forces that DO support it?)
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BobC
Well, BobC, I certainly have no desire to destroy the economy, change the world order, etc etc – I consider those to be complete misrepresentations of my position. And the “political classes who will be in control” sounds like projected fears of “one-world government” that I frequently hear in these discussions, which again is nothing I espouse.
My perception is that unmitigated climate change will be very expensive! That “business as usual” is going to be the most expensive option, the one that does the most harm to our economies, property, and health.
The Institute for Policy Integrity looked at the proposed 2009 Waxman-Markey energy bill, concluding it would have direct benefits (agricultural, health, property damages, etc) 2-8x of costs, not counting effects on ocean acidification or non-CO2 pollutants, making it quite conservative.
See also the German Institute for Economic Research 2005, the article by Nordhaus 2012, or Watkiss et al 2005.
Most economic studies show that mitigating global warming (by putting a price on indirect effects, carbon emmisions, for example) is several times less expensive than trying to adapt to those changes. While there have been studies that disagree, I haven’t seen any of those hold up to examination of their numbers or assumptions.
In my point of view, supported by multiple peer reviewed economic studies – Your position, of doing nothing about climate change, is the one that leads to economic losses, poverty, disruption, and is in general a bad idea. Your outlook is the one that will bankrupt us.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure – and it costs a lot less. I support mitigation as the least expensive, most economically sound approach.
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I’m having trouble believing you’re really this dense, KR:
Just exactly what do you think the result of eliminating cheap energy will be then? It doesn’t matter what you WANT — only what will happen. There is a long history of the effects of price controls — nothing good ever comes from them. Why do you think this will be different? (Or haven’t you bothered to consider that — good intentions are an adequate substitute for knowledge?)
Who said anything about “one-world government”? When you give politicans the power to control what energy you have access to, you give them total control over your life. Exactly how many tyrannies are spread over the world is kind of irrelevant.
Your “perception” is based on an imaginary world — one in which, for example, the Dutch would just let their country be flooded. In the real world, of course, they build dikes (which they are able to do, because Holland is a wealthy country).
Of course climate change will be ‘mitigated’ — the same way it always has been, by adaptation. That you apparently think that people would drown as the sea level rose by a couple of feet per century, or starve as the crop belt moved 50 miles north borders on insanity.
But, effective adaptation requires wealth. You get rid of the wealth (by getting rid of cheap energy) and you make adaptation to climate change much more difficult, even impossible. Then, you are betting everything on the “proof” that mankind can stop climate change by reducing the emission of CO2. Since the climate has ALWAYS been changing — for far longer than industrial civilization has existed — this also borders on insanity.
Of course, as they make clear in the Executive Summary, they accept completely the EPA’s version of climate — that it is totally controlled by making marginal adjustments in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Since the climate has always been changing, and there is no evidence we can stop it, this is a study of an imaginary world with no relevance to the real world.
For realistic studies (which don’t ignore 4000 years of economic history and pretend we can just make up the future), I suggest you look at what has been done at Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center or the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Those studies (like the one you linked) start by simply assuming that Humans can easily stop the climate from changing by making marginal adjustments to our CO2 emissions. Not even the IPCC’s models agree with this — they predict that, to stabilize CO2 concentrations, anthropogenic CO2 emissions would have to be eliminated. To suggest that the cost of doing this (in both wealth and freedom) is greater than the cost of adapting to a temperature change, over the next 100 years, that is equivalent to the change over the last 200 years is completely absurd.
Whose position is that? You are now reverting to strawmen arguments. My position is that we will continue to do what we always have about climate change — adapt to it. The wealthier civilization is, the easier that will be. The more cheap energy civilization has access to, the wealther it will be.
Yes, you propose to limit civilization’s access to cheap energy without any concept of the consequences (including any historical perspective), simply on the basis of your good intentions, with no actual proof that it would even work.
Since you are now reduced to using quotes from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack as support, let me leave you with another:
(Oh, BTY: The current version of Franklin’s publication, The Old Farmer’s Almanack, has predicted a global cooling spell lasting at least several decades. We’ll see how GCMs that discount the effect of Solar activity measure up.)
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BobC – I don’t expect a single action (such as actually accounting for the indirect costs of carbon emission) to fully mitigate climate change. You might look at Pacala et al 2004 – multiple strategies, each of which brings down some amount of GHG emissions.
Adaptation is entirely possible. But it appears adaptation will cost an order of magnitude more than mitigation. Hence I consider you to be following an economically damaging approach. If energy costs go up slightly, but health, food, and adaptation costs go down more (as repeated studies have shown, again see Nordhaus 2010), there’s a huge net win – energy is part of economic costs, but so are food, health, etc.
(Lomborg’s analysis, incidentally, is one I referred to that fail under examination – he looks at costs only, and fails to evaluate benefits. But I’m not going to go into that now, as it’s quite off-topic.)
Enough of that, though – economic theories are about as amenable to discussion as sports teams. It only leads to shouting.
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Back to the thread – the “low/no feedbacks” meme of this thread is quite unsupportable. As temperatures have risen relative humidity has stayed constant (within 0.6% over 30 years), meaning by the Clausius–Clapeyron relation total atmospheric water vapor has risen >3% with the absolute humidity – and there’s the primary positive feedback. Top of atmosphere spectra indicate positive feedback on forcings from both albedo and clouds as well. That’s data, observations, not models or hypotheses. The “low feedback” hypothesis fails to match the evidence.
The predicted positive feedback is real, it has been observed in global data. And when presented with that evidence you have, well, you have changed the subject. To economic theories, ad hominem attributions of evil motivation, models rather than the observations, cherry-picked 1% subsets of data, etc.
I’ve seen no significant evidence from you supporting your claims. Given the quality of the evidence (SE US only – really?), I don’t really expect to; I would have expected your best evidence first, not your worst. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting.
Adieu.
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Of course, there are no ‘benefits’ unless you start by assuming that Mankind can easily control the climate.
You have not and can not provide any evidence for this belief — that we can do something that has never been done in the history of the World — stop the climate from changing. Furthermore, that we can do so by making marginal changes in a trace atmospheric gas. And yet more — we can do this by shutting down industrial civilization without significant costs.
So far, the only justification provided are computer models that can’t model water vapor and clouds correctly and have less predictive skill than simply extending lines on a graph.
The climate has been changing for the entire existence of the Earth. To believe that it would just stop changing now, if only we quit gently pushing on it is a belief bordering on insanity.
I don’t know whether you’re a fool or a knave KR, but other possibilities seem remote.
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BobC – That’s quite a post you’ve made there. The various myths and misinformations you have packed into such a short space include:
* There’s nothing we can do (besides throw our hands in the air)
* The climate’s changed before (i.e., not our fault)
* CO2 is a ‘trace gas’
* CO2 limits will hurt the economy
* Models are unreliable
On the contrary (see here for detailed discussions of most of these):
* Our actions affect the climate – change our actions, change the climate.
* Current warming is orders of magnitude faster than anything in the last half million years – and the forcings causing it are anthropogenic.
* CO2 as a radiatively active gas, one of the major control knobs on temperature, has been driven up by 1/3 so far by our emissions.
* Limiting warming has benefits that are an order of magnitude larger than costs.
* The models are actually pretty good – both in terms of overall effects and regional ones.
The proper term for your last post is a Gish Gallop.
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Well, KR; you are obviously familiar with the technique of a Gish Gallop:
Then, you link SkepticalScience as an ‘expert’ source. I had imagined you to be, perhaps, a retired professor with some actual knowledge of these things, but promoting a failed cartoonist and propagandist to the level of expert? Pathetic.
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KR, if you had been paying attention you would have seen that the topic of Dessler 2012 had been broached at #30 but OK, let’s have a look at it here.
Your D12 quote:-
So in this first instance of the D12 system, the initial process is “climate” and one of the feedbacks is temperature. What exactly is “climate”? We can infer from D12
In this first instance, the initial process is “internal variability” and temperature is a feedback against internal variability.
Next from your quote:-
So now in this second instance of the D12 system, the initial process is “climate variations” and one of the feedbacks is water vapour. What exactly are “climate variations” in the D12 system?
In this second instance, the initial process is dominantly “ENSO” and water vapour is a feedback against ENSO (dominantly)
Those two quotes were from the D12 Abstract so now let’s move on to the Introduction:-
In this third instance of the D12 system, the initial process is “surface temperature” and the feedbacks are:-
Apparently, in this third instance of the D12 system, “temperature” is a feedback against the initial process “surface temperature”.
The necessity for climate science to accommodate a bogus positive feedback from water vapour in their “contemporary” feedback system (contrary to the classical negative feedback – see Brehmer paper #30) has resulted in poor Dessler tying himself (and the unwary) in knots.
Needless to say – in view of the three instances – Dessler does not define nor does he diagram his feedback system because it is internally inconsistent.
[Cross-posted in this thread at CCG]
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Richard C (NZ) – Dessler 2012 examines observations of temperature, atmospheric water vapor, cloud, and albedo forcings: “In this paper, I will analyze the 57 feedbacks over the period March 2000 to December 2010 in response to ENSO…” – which were then compared to models driven by internal variation as well as long term climate models driven by boundary conditions.
The models contain explicit feedback systems (from the physics) with various parameters (set by observations), but the observations are just that – observations of forcing values. And those show positive water vapor (responding to temperature) and cloud (responding to WV and temperature) feedbacks with ENSO forcings.
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Given the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship of atmospheric water vapor capacity with temperature (about 7% absolute humidity for every 1°C rise in temperature for the same relative humidity), claims that total atmospheric column water vapor is not acting in feedback would need to be supported by observations of total relative humidity decreasing with temperature, by perhaps 4-5% over the last 100 years. That has not been observed; relative humidity has (globally) remained relatively flat.
Note that a significant global decrease in relative humidity such as that would have equally significant effects on total precipitation – again, not observed. There have been regional changes (droughts, flooding), but total precipitation
Claims such as Brehmers are flatly contradicted by both the physics and the observations.
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KR, you say:-
Rubbish. They’re not “claims” – they ARE observations.
And re Clausius-Clapeyron, don’t forget pressure.
You say:-
Great, you’ve identified one of the interpretations (just as my “second instance” elsewhere) of what can be inferred from D12 to be the D12 system:
Initial Process – ENSO
Feedbacks – temperature, water vapour (and others)
Clearly you cannot say from this system that water vapour is a positive feedback against temperature.
Until Dessler defines and diagrams his system as do IT developers, Enterprise Architects, Business Process Modelers and (most relevant of all) Systems Engineers, D12 is gobble-de-gook, discussion of his findings is pointless, and his paper is of no consequence whatsoever.
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BTW – Way to go Jo! Excellent and balanced web-site.
I was discussing the lack of amplification evidence with a friend a week ago, and was pointing out that there was no evidence for it, and in fact there is much evidence to the contrary – i.e. that damping exists. Out of the blue he brings up methane amplification, and I find myself seriously lacking on the issues in this area.
Of course, a google search brings up any number of doom-and-gloom scenarios from the normal CAGW sites. However, I was looking for a more balanced discussion.
If the subject of methane amplification (or lack thereof) has been discussed here, could someone point me to it?
Thanks in advance for any help, and thanks for fighting the good fight!
-Walt
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The physics I am developing strongly suggests that when GHGs enter IR self-absorption [CO2 ~200 ppmV], they switch off IE emission from the Earth’s surface in that band, probably the same phenomenon as band inversion in spectroscopy. this is the real GHE. There can be no direct thermalisation because of quantum exclusion.
So, there will be warming from methane up to its self-absorption level, then it stops. Hence there can be no major warming from the destabilisation of methane hydrate.
What you have to remember is that ‘the cause’ has constructed many plausible scenarios designed to advance the Marxist revolution in Western countries and to trot them out to gullible wazzocks on the soft left to get them to parrot these fake ideas.
Honest physics destroys these arguments.
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Thanks so much for the rapid answer.
Do you have a reference to point me to so I could educate myself further?
Cheers -Walt
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The gullible wazzocks (wonderful phrase), also tend to be vegetarian, and so hate the idea of growing meat for food. They want a methane tax on cows, so first need to create the impression that methane is as bad, or even worse, than carbon dioxide.
It always comes back to the money.
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This idea is a month old.
To check the physics get a handbook on Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy and look for self-absorption, also check the same for Atomic Emission S[spectroscopy.
The physics also borrow a bit from Crookes inversion in the solar spectrum
The problem is that it’s physics so far unexplored because it’s buried in HITRAN.
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So external conditions can turn off emissions of an object? Is this behaviour demonstrated anywhere?
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Good question. I’ve been asking the “Slayers” if there is a laboratory demonstration of any unique part of their theories now for several months. So far, nothing. Either the theory predicts nothing different (from standard thermodynamics), in which case why bother? — or it predicts something different, in which case it should be demonstratable.
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That’s exactly it Bob.
We observe nature in action and take note.
The Climate Change supporters say they have theoretical proof that there is another reality which we can’t see and measure.
They are out on two strikes.
1. We do not observe what they claim is happening
(Warming due to man made CO2),
and
2. The theoretical Basis for their claim is totally flawed
(quantitatively man made CO2 cannot influence temperature significantly)
KK
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Good question and I have been wrestling with this in a similar way to Claes Johnson.
If you look at a physics textbook, you will see the S-B equation and you will be told that to get net radiative flux you calculate the difference between the two S-B equations assuming the emissivity and absorptivity for isolated bodies in a vacuum.
But this is to forget that Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation only applies at thermal equilibrium. At non-equilibrium they can be radically different and they can also vary with temperature.
The climate modellers are screwed by this because while the two-stream approximation works in the atmosphere, the errors cancel out, it breaks down at the boundaries.
The fact is, at radiative thermal equilibrium, equal temperature, emissivity and absorptivity are zero: there is zero net energy flux; because of the shield at the back of the detector, what you measure with a pyrgeometer is the temperature radiation field for an isolated body and is not the real energy flux.
Basically the climate modellers have screwed up in a big way.
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hmm, co2 a green house gas, the earth- i see cooling in the daytime and a slow cooling at night because of so called GHGs compared to the moon in the daytime and at night.
In industry co2 make a wonderful coolant, or rather it very effectively takes heat away from a heat source.
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When I see the word “blanket” applied to the atmosphere. I just laugh.
A weird idea of a blanket.. that does nothing when its cold, and takes heat away when its hot. !!
sort of an Anti-blanket…
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