Yet another paper shows that the climate models have flaws, described as “gross” “severe” and “disturbing”. The direct effect of doubling CO2 is theoretically 3.7W per square meter. The feedbacks supposedly are 2 -3 times as strong (according to the IPCC). But some scientists are trying to figure out those feedbacks with models which have flaws in the order of 70W per square meter. (How do we find that signal in noise that’s up to 19 times larger?)
Remember climate science is settled: like gravity and a round earth. (Really?)
Miller et al 2012 [abstract] [PDF] find that some models predict clouds to have a net shortwave radiative effect near zero, but observations show it is 70W per square meter. Presumably, cloud shortwave radiative effect means the sunlight bounced upwards off the surface of the clouds and out into space.
What’s especially interesting about this paper is the level of detail. They test shortwave and longwave radiation, precipitation flux, integrated water vapor, liquid water path, cloud fraction, and they have observations from the top of the atmosphere and the surface. With so much information they can test models against short wave and long wave radiation, to see how well the models are really simulating clouds.
We can also see how four models appear to do well on one parameter, only to invariably fail on another. It is easy to see how a not-so-diligent researcher could “verify” some aspect of each and every model but without testing and comparing all the aspects, these single point “successes” are meaningless.
Critics will say this study was just one year in one region (2006 over the African Sahel) but if global climate models don’t understand cloud microphysics and the radiative effect of the condensed water vapor that covers 60% of Planet Earth, then they can’t predict the climate anywhere. And no, the pretense that predicting climate 100 years in advance is somehow easier than predicting a single year is bollocks… 100 years of climate modeling means adding up 100 years of errors. The errors don’t cancel out, they accumulate.
Even though the models are tested below with one year (2006) as the dotted blue line, the blue bands are envelopes of model outputs for 2001-2010, and we would hope that even if the models got the year wrong, the observations would at least fall within the extremes of the decadal predictions, but frequently they didn’t. Indeed the authors note that the decade itself was not that critical saying “virtually the same results are obtained when the GCM solution envelope is stretched to thirty years.”
The four global models tested are: CM2, HADGEM1, CCSM3 & GISS-EH
H/t to the Hockey Schtick
Fig 4: Envelope of maximum and minimum monthly column integrated liquid water path as simulated
by the four GCMs (light blue shading) for the period from 2001 to 2010, the GCM simulated
value for 2006 (blue dashed line), and observations from the AMF1 (red) for months in year
2006.
If the graphs look a bit complex, just focus on the the red solid line — the observations. The blue dotted line is what the models estimate happened, so it’s supposed to be similar. At the very least, the red line ought to fall within that paler blue band called the decadal “envelope”. Where the red line is outside that band it tells us that the observations were outside the full range of what the models expected during the decade.
These are select quotes from the pre-print. (I’ve replaced many acronyms with their full terms to improve readability).
In the world of climate models, clouds without either liquid water or ice can produce “reasonable estimates” of rain.
“A particular focus was placed on the detailed role of clouds and clear-sky in modulating the cross-atmosphere radiative flux divergence in two global climate models that provided the necessary output to facilitate the analysis: CM2 and HADGEM1. Precipitation flux magnitude and wet-season signal shape were deemed superior in GISS537 EH and HADGEM1, but they display inconsistencies in their depiction of cloud microphysics despite their relative accurate depictions of precipitation. For example, GISS-EH produces clouds that are predominantly composed of ice water, which is why so little liquid water is indicated in Figure 4. Ironically, HADGEM1 produces too few clouds and a miniscule amount of total water, which is to say that there is neither liquid or ice in the clouds, yet the clouds produce a reasonable amount of precipitation.”
Hmm, “grossly underestimate”:
“Of the four global climate models, CCSM3 provided the best estimate of cloud LWP, though it significantly overestimated precipitation, while CM2 produced suspiciously large variability in liquid water path (LWP) and GISS-EH and HADGEM1 grossly underestimated the liquid water path.”
A “potentially severe problem”?
“Production and partitioning of cloud water and ice and the generation of precipitation from clouds seem problematic in all four GCMs considered in this study. Insofar as these characteristics are intricately related to radiation throughput in West Africa it seems that this is a potentially severe problem.”
Errors in long wave cloud radiative forcing (CRF) are “particularly disturbing”:
“Both global climate models [CM2 and HADGEM1] struggled to accurately characterize the surface cloud radiative forcing; they underestimated the SW cloud radiative forcing and produced approximately a zero surface LW cloud radiative forcing. This latter comparison is particularly disturbing because the measured surface LW cloud radiative forcing is significant (~30 Wm-2). Intuitively and quantitatively this is an important omission; when humid and cloudy conditions are present, these two GCMs treat LW radiation as if it were dry and clear.”
Then when the models get something right it’s thanks to an error:
“Looking exclusively at the net surface cloud radiative forcing leads to the conclusion that CM2 is quite accurate in its assessment, but measurements show that this agreement is due to error cancellation…”
Fig 5 Envelope of maximum and minimum monthly column areal cloud fraction as simulated
by the four GCMs (light blue shading) for the period from 2001 to 2010, the GCM simulated
value for 2006 (blue dashed line), and observations from the AMF1 (red) for months in year
2006. The ISCCP observed areal cloud fractions are also plotted (green).
The solid red lines are the observations, the blue dashed line is the models estimate for 2006 and the blue band is the decade envelope for the models. TOA = Top of Atmosphere. SW = Shortwave. LW = Longwave. CRF = Cloud radiative forcing.
Fig -7 Envelope of maximum and minimum monthly averaged TOA and surface cloud
radiative forcing (CRF) as simulated by CM2 (blue shading) for the period from 2001 to 2010,
the GCM simulated value for 2006 (dashed blue lines), and observations from the AMF1 (red
lines) for months in year 2006.
Again, the solid red lines are the observations of cloud radiative effect. CM2 looks “decent” for the net effect, but it only gets a decent estimate because it underestimates the short wave radiation (by up to 70W / m2) and overestimates the longwave radiation. HadGem is “less awful”.
Fig 10 Envelope of maximum and minimum monthly averaged cloud radiative effect (CRE)
for CM2 (left column) and HADGEM1 (right column) for the period from 2001 to 2010 (shaded
blue areas), the GCM simulated value for 2006 (dashed blue lines), and observations from the
AMF1 (solid red lines) for months in year 2006.
Isn’t it time to admit the models don’t work?
ABSTRACT
Continuous measurements of the shortwave (SW), longwave (LW), and net cross-atmosphere radiation flux divergence over the West African Sahel were made during the year 2006 using the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility (AMF) and the Geostationary Earth Radiation Budget (GERB) satellite. Accompanying AMF measurements enabled calculations of the LW, SW, and net Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and surface Cloud Radiative Forcing (CRF), which quantifies the radiative effects of cloud cover on the column boundaries. Calculations of the LW, SW, and net Cloud Radiative Effect (CRE), which is the difference between the TOA and surface radiative flux divergences in all-sky and clear-sky conditions, quantify the radiative effects on the column itself. These measurements were compared to predictions in four Global Climate Models (GCMs) used in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change fourth Assessment report (IPCC-AR4). Reproducing the SW column radiative flux divergence was problematic in the GCMs and SW discrepancies translated into the net radiative flux divergence. Computing cloud-related quantities from the measurements produced yearly averages of the SW TOA CRF, surface CRF, and CRE of ~ -19 Wm-2, -83 Wm-2 and 47 Wm-2 respectively, and yearly averages of the LW TOA CRF, surface CRF, and CRE of ~ 39 Wm-2, 37 Wm-2, and 2 Wm-2. These quantities were analyzed in two GCMs and compensating errors in the SW and LW clear-sky, cross-atmosphere radiative flux divergence conspired to produce reasonable predictions of the net clear-sky divergence. Both GCMs underestimated the surface LW and SW CRF and predicted near zero SW CRE when the measured values were substantially larger (70 Wm-2 maximum).
REFERENCES
Miller, M., Ghate, V., Zahn, R., (2012) The Radiation Budget of the West African Sahel 1 and its Controls: A Perspective from
2 Observations and Global Climate Models. in press Journal of Climate [abstract] [PDF]
So, what have we got in the way of papers for negative feedbacks?
Cloud height?
Thermosphere? (correct me if I am wrong on that one)
Water vapor?
What else, that the models count as positive, is showing up in research as negative?
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Otter, Water vapor (missing hot spot) and clouds dominate the feedbacks so much that everything else could be positive and the effect of these two could neutralize them…
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On that shall I focus, then, and thanks!
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Jo, I understand the biggest negative feedbacks are the lapse rate feedback and direct radiation of surface heat to space via the IR hole (Region where the atmosphere is transparent to IR). The same radiation that produces frost. These reduces the direct effect of CO2 to about 1/5th, This means the positive feedbacks need to multiply the residual warming by over 15 times to reach the IPCC net gain of 3. This is a loop gain of 0.95 which is impossible.
Bob
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At last we are seeing real observation based climate science emerging instead of thumb suck (what we want to see) theory dressed up as reality.
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Great post. The articles are very promising.
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[…] Click here for a good discussion of this article….. […]
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Climate models do unverifiable predictions. I’m sorry, but that’s not hard real-world data. It’s probably me having a thick decade or so, but it seems rather simple to me. Anyone, anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Ferris Bueller?
Pointman
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I’m still trying to work out how climate modelling is being accepted as science. A computer model will only do what it is programmed to do… for the computer to do anything meaningful, you need to first know the science and then program the computer with the correct formulas. One of the first things I learnt about computers was the term GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). I learnt that in the very early days of PC’s and it still holds true today.
When I hear about forecasts/predictions of something bad that might/could/possibly happen 50 or 100 years into the future, given with a level of confidence and a percentage of certainty after taking into account certain uncertainties and uncertain uncertainties and all based on “state of the art” computer models, I don’t see any science in that at all. They use way too many words that just don’t belong in any credible scientific statement.
It’s a pity that research grants are flowing so freely to modellers as it encourages climate scientists to play computer games instead of doing real science. It’s also a pity that all that money is being wasted and nobody is held accountable for it.
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Models are good at letting you identify how big the gap is, between what you theoretically believe to be happening, and what is actually happening.
They are scientific, in that they help you to postulate the characteristics of influencing factors that you haven’t yet identified.
This works well in engineering, where you can insert variables into the model that can be adjusted to cause the output to better approximate the actual observed characteristics. What then remains is to identify what real-world factors, or combination of factors, those variables might represent.
The way that models are being used in climate science is actually arse about face.
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Well said Rereke,
arse about face!
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In engineering – the models are typically dealing with highly constrained systems that involve well understood physics that has already been validated by previous empirical tests.
Completely unlike CAGW climate science.
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The problem with models are actually more fundamental than that. The rules that govern the behavior of the climate are not ‘written down’ or ‘universal’ – they are free to evolve with the climate. New elements and factors keep appearing and old ones disappear and change all the time.
Modeling works well when you deal with something you can ‘box’ and control all the ins and outs and keep running repeat runs of the model and the thing you are modeling to provide convergence in behavior (this is not hind casting btw). Last time I checked we haven’t got a box big enough to put the world in and no way to ‘reset’ it to a previously known state.
Add onto that the very sparse measurements of the climate we are using to initialize these models and its no surprise accuracy cannot be improved over time. Throwing more computing power at the problem will not improve the underlying ‘real’ resolution with respect to the actual resolution of the climate..
To me it just a big excuse to spend enormous sums of money creating the next great ‘climate fortune telling machine’ – anything further out than a few weeks at best is computer based tea leaf reading as far as I’m concerned.
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When predicting future climate – I suspect that randomly throwing darts at a dart board with appropriate weather options stuck on it, could produce more accurate results than current climate models.
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Well said Ex Warmist!
Chuckle 🙂
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Hi Skeptikal,
My position is that all models are still within the perimeter of theory. They are not empirical tests.
You can no more test a theory with a model than you can test a theory with another restatement of the same theory using different words.
It is repeatable, measured empirical observations using calibrated equipment with known sensitivity that is required to test a theory.
Cheers ExWarmist
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[…] http://joannenova.com.au/2012/08/models-get-cloud-feedback-wrong-but-only-by-70wm2-thats-19-times-la… […]
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Up until 5 minutes ago I have been getting a “Forbidden ERROR 403” on this site this morning “curious”
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Exactly the same hear: ‘Error 403 Forbidden’ for quite a while. I flicked an contact email to WUWT to ask whether they could advise any obvious / less obvious reason why. I’m sure this hasn’t occurred previously. Odd?
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I get the same sort of problem early in the morning, my time. But given that I am right at the beginning of the day, I figured that the site was probably doing backups, and blocking all outside traffic.
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Add these three recent studies on clouds, all of which similarly show large negative feedback:
Sun et al 2012
Laken & Pallé 2012
Allan 2011
Perhaps I should send a copy of them to my local MP, who is a Mr Combet.
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Excellent idea. However, you might want to summarise the implications for him. I suspect Combet is not that bright and most likely the articles will end up filed in a round cylinder that sits on the floor.
Labor MP’s are not interested in the science and anything that gets in the way of those taxes (especially dangerous knowledge like real results and empirical evidence) will be discarded. If he did do anything with them it would be to query Steffen who will reassure him with a pat on the head, like a good little boy, that he disregard these findings as “the science is settled”.
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There are “cylinders” that are not round?
Some of the “cylinders” in our office are square with rounded corners, while others are rectangular with similar corner adornment.
Sorry to be pedantic, but if the details are not accurate, the big picture certainly will not be!
Applies to climate science, as well!!
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Thank you Allen.
I have filed that information for future reference 🙂
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Believe it or not Combet was a mining engineer with a degree from UNSW.
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Mining engineers are cool – they really know how to blow things up – awesome.
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And he has never worked a day as an engineer in his life; he has been a union hack since the day he left university.
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Beleive me when I tell you that you DO NOT have to be very intelligent to just pass a mining engineering degree !!!
I often wonder how mines actually function at all given some of the students I have seen !!!
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Ignore typos please. got the flu, and my eyes are sort of watery an blurry.
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Combet is your member Bruce; then how come he lives by the beach?!
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It’s worth a try but remember:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
I would add that the higher the salary the more difficult it becomes. And when an individual is being paid a salary that cannot be matched by any other industry it becomes more difficult still. Now throw in some nice perks and junkets, membership of elite international community and the difficulty level ramps up to infinite.
This is the basis of mans corruptability. And when it comes to climate change, they don’t come much more corrupt.
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There is no need to feel exasperated by the ignorance of climate alarmists.
It is ignorance that is extremely well paid.
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[…] Models get cloud feedback wrong, but *only* by 70W/m2 (that’s 19 times larger than the CO2 effect… […]
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If you evaporate water at an initial pressure (sea level – altitude), and temperature it takes X amount of energy in. If you then condense that same water at a lower pressure (higher altitude) and temperature it releases Y amount of energy. Y will always be greater than X (from the difference in enthalpy of water at the different pressures) so the feedback will always be negative and cloud formation will always be a source of radiative energy.
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Hi gary; this part of your comment bothered me:
I could be wrong but doesn’t enthalpy, the heat energy of a gas, decrease as pressure drops, which is what happens as you go higher in the atmosphere? That should mean Y will always be LESS than X, not greater; or am I missing something?
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As a bog ignorant commercial fisherman, I always said that it was Water that made this planet unique. A triple point juxtaposition in the right orbit and inclination…. Not CO2…. It’s because we have water vapor, that we have the climate that we do… and that water vapor is entirely reliant on the suns energy vaporizing it from the surface… CO2’s effect is so small that it is impossible to measure and its only measurable effect, is on plant growth and vitality.
That was my view 15 years ago when I first found out about this dopey argument…. and it is still my view.
The politicization of science is shameful…. and a lesson we must learn from. That modern democracies can fall afoul of Communist style Lysenko-ism is an obscenity.
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I agree with JH.I leant about the Carbon cycle in high school 45 years ago and nothing has changed.There are a lot of things that effect the weather and climate the Sun the Moon the earths orbit-rotation-axial tilt and how many politicians farted last week.If you look at the Earths 4.5 billion years of climate history it changes all the time,and always will.This whole meaningless argument which has been going nowhere for years is meant to divert our attention from what is really happening in our World,THINK about it people,our influence on the climate is so small it can not be measured accurately in the meantime Amerika and Israel want a war with Iran,the EU is going broke, Amerika is on the verge of a second Civil War,Australia has become a laughing stock our PM(S) is a liar and a thief.Ihe climate debate is a smoke screen.Climate Change is Natural and CO2 is life anything else is just crap
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Three conceits. First that human influence on the world is small. Second that the debate that grips you rips everyone else so much that they don’t notice the momentous events happening around them. I think you will find that even during the Olympic games people could keep up with other events. Third, is your list of important events.
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That word small is relative though isn’t it Gee?
Imagine an all out conflict where every single red button was pushed and we totally annihilated ourselves and most mammals on the planet, set fire to every single fossil fuel deposit-coal beds, oil fields etc- as well as the forests.
What difference would all that make to this planet in the context of its history and future?
In millions of years time, the period of Homo Sapiens, i.e. a few hundred thousand years, wouldn’t even be a mere blip.
If however, we’re talking about an influence that might alter the environment to our detriment, a very solid case can be made that the greatest protection we’ve had from an adverse environment has been our industrialisation, the very thing we’re being urged to slow down by the zealots.
The goal has to be to control the environment, to lessen its impacts on us and whatever it is we value.
Once we master that, and inevitably we will, then we can look at minimising external impacts such as comet strikes etc.
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Thanks for amplifying my point. I agree,throwing around imprecise terms like “small”, and for that matter “influence”, as though they are quantified and well defined is useless in a scientific debate.
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Gee, you’re the one abusing the language, mate.
While at the same time unwittingly projecting your own vainglory on someone else. Typical lefty lack of self-awareness.
The most ancient conceit of all is that humanity is at the center of the world, so the idea that man’s influence is small is the antithesis of primeval conceit.
Secondly, conceit is hubris and hubris causes the downfall of men.
For instance, Labor/Greens were so full of their sanctimonious false compassion that they lured over a thousand poor souls to their doom before they admitted their supercilious immigration policies were killing people by the boatload.
That’s the very worst of conceit. To let other people perish to perserve your vanity. This government’s fate is sealed. That’s how the screw of hubris turns.
Don’t you have any good books or mirrors in your house?
The unexamined life is hardly worth living much less posting in comments online.
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Models dont count..unless they “support” $CAGW$
Measurements dont count…unless they “support” $CAGW$
Gold.
Watch the trolls twist that one..or..just ignore it.. 🙂
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I could run a model for my turbo-charged car which shows that exhaust gas temperatures (EGT) increase when intake air temperature increases. All things being equal, this is true! However, in determining the extent and magnitude of this relationship I would also need to be able to reliably model and quantify the effects of several other variables within the system which also directly affect EGT:
1. size/design of intercooler;
2. ignition timing
3. quality of fuel (octane rating)
4. injector duration (quantity of fuel)
5. level of boost
If I change just one of these variables then there will be a measurable change in EGT, assuming all the other variables remain unchanged. But this is the problem when modelling a complex non-linear system – things are always changing.
So, if we randomly alter these variables a bit every day for a month and on each day at midday drive the car from point A to B and measure EGTs along the way, how easy will it be to show the affect of intake air temperature on EGTs over the month (assuming a 11-16 degree range in midday temperatures during the month)?
Forgive this crude analogy – the point is that it’s not fair to say that EGTs are a direct function of intake air temperature when we know that there are other things going on which also affect EGTs in a significant way. Similarly, it’s unreasonable to say that climate can be measured by a change in gloabl meant temperature anomaly in response to the forcing of man-made emissions of CO2.
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Do the modellers even look at data like this? What’s their response?
It seems to me either they’d be claiming there must be something wrong with the data, or they’re completely ignoring it (which is almost saying the same thing).
If they are claiming the data is wrong, they need to say why. If not, it’s time to remove their craniums from their rectums.
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Some years ago now, there was a play called “Glide Time”. The play involved half a dozen people who worked in a government office, and was was a beautiful send up of government worker attitudes of the time. For example, at one point a phone rings, and a female character picks it up and says “Hello … Mum, don’t phone me now, I am on my lunch break”. You get the picture.
One of the scenes involved a maintenance man who came onto the stage, carrying a clip board. He quietly walked around the stage, looking at all of the desks and filing cabinets, and checking off items on the clip board. While this went on, the play continued, with all of the other characters talking to each other, and the audience laughing at the comments.
Suddenly the maintenance man froze, looking out at the audience, and looked down at his clipboard, and then back at the audience, then back at the clipboard, and then back at the audience again, and while this happened, the other characters slowly stopped talking amongst themselves, and started to look at the maintenance man.
When all was silent, the maintenance man turned around to the face one of the actors and said, “One of your windows is missing”!
Climate Science is a bit like that.
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Any data that contradicts the official IPCC theory is by definition wrong. The science is settled, the debate is over and keeping an open mind is now unreasonable. What’s more it is dangerous as anybody seeding doubts is delaying action on climate and is responsible for the future climate holocaust.
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Sieg heil!
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Sonny,
You forgot to add the “/sarc”
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“The science is settled, the debate is over and keeping an open mind is now unreasonable”. Now that it is all home and hosed, no more money is needed for anybody to investigate the science to support the hypothesis? We can spend it all on something useful, like jaunts to tropical resorts where we all say how well we have done! /sarc
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“The errors don’t cancel out, they accumulate”.
Correct. Any tradie will tell you that if you extrapolate a measurement rather than measure something in its entirety, you merely multiply any error.
Clearly, your average tradie is more knowledgable than your average climatogist climate modeller.
Tradies 1, climatologists 0!
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Ofcourse a tradies error will be spotted within days, or weeks by the consumer.
Climate science predictions are conveniently set decades into the future and are ofcourse protected by legally valid disclaimers. What’s more it’s difficult for any “error” to manifest into reality since reality (temp records etc) are manipulated by those who control them. The game is fixed.
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Actually Twodogs and Sonny,
Any one who uses high powered computer models to extrapolate anything at all can tell you that…like economists, education professionals, health professionals, insurance brokers etc etc….
So I think it is:
The rest of the world (including apolitical branches of science) Infinity
Climate and enviro science 0
Politicians and bureaucrats 0
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Thank you Jo, I am never disappointed when I visit this award winning blog. By the way, Daniel Patrowski of Punch had a whinge about you today in relation to CARING.
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BDS
I went and looked. Not worth the effort. Why did you mention it?
00
So… if the planet warms, for whatever reason, increased evaporation increases the water vapour content of the atmosphere which leads to more surface area covered by low stratocumulus and paradoxically, snow, which increases the albedo of Earth and therefore cools the planet.
Then as the planet cools due the increased albedo of low clouds, evaporation rates fall, lowering the water vapour content of the atmosphere, decreasing low cloud cover, which decreases the albedo of the Earth and the cooling is arrested.
Rinse, repeat cycle ad infinitum and you have rather stable H20-based mechanism to constrain the climate of a planet to within a pretty tight temperature range. Over geological time, shuffle the continents around, throw in a few comets, volcanism, orbital eccentricities and modulate solar insolation and you could loosely model the various different climate regimes of the past.
What AGW theory has failed to show is how a few hundred extra of parts per million of atmospheric CO2 could so perturb the stability of water vapour homeostasis as to result in catastrophically rapid warming. It seems so unlikely a scenario that you have to think there is ulterior sociological causes propping up AGW’s astonishing popularity in urbane western cultures.
For if the warmists were right about water vapour having a positive feedback on warming, then as it warmed, for whatever reason, evaporations levels would increase leading to higher water vapour content, leading to extended warming. On the flip side, as the Earth cools, for whatever reason, there would be less evaporation, less water vapour in the atmosphere and this would amplify the cooling and keep it cool.
Thus, the past temperature record should show that once a warming (or cooling) trend is established that trend should continue on to form a broad plateau (or trough) that can only be interrupted by some kind of powerful forcing outside of the water vapour cycle.
Perhaps that’s what our Climate Commissar, T. Fridtjof Flannery, was alluding to when he said it would take a 1,000 years to cool the planet off from modern warming.
Au contraire! What we see in the past temperature record is a series of peaks and troughs… periods of warming followed quickly by cooler periods. For instance, the MWP peaked quickly and then was followed by a descent into cooler period. The LIA, which bottom about 1830 didn’t stay cool, it warmed into the modern age.
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That’s right wes; it’s as good as it gets; yet the 1/2 glass empty crowd, misery-gutses all, could see death and destruction in a fox terrier’s eyes.
I don’t know, maybe some good will come out of this schmozzle; for me I really hope the ABC get’s a good shake-out or closure; it’s intolerable these days.
The trouble is, if and when the coalition get in the risk is they will either be too pusillanimous to remedy the problem, or go too far in the opposite direction due to hubris.
00
yes – but the fox terrier WOULD really like to eat you.
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Thanks Cohenite. Sometimes I use Jo’s thread to test my layperson’s understanding of a climatological principle knowing that if I got it wrong, I’ll be corrected. I’ll take your comment as a pass.
BTW, I did mention that the only rational explanation for the astonishingly irrational popularity of AGW in the urbane West is some kind of sociological morbidity.
May I present Mattb as exhibit A.
00
Hi Wes,
Some basic human psychological needs (once fed, clothed, sheltered, these get a look in…).
[1] Need to belong, preferably to the “in crowd”.
[2] Need for a Purpose.
[3] Need for the experience that life is meaningful.
[4] Need for a Values system
[5] Need for a Moral system.
[6] Need for an answer to mortality.
So how does belief in CAGW stack up for satisfying the modern, alienated, lost, city dweller who is comprehensively cut off from the basis of natural life, and who does not have to deal with survival reality, and never has had to survive anything.
[1] I belong with the in crowd of those who know the truth about CAGW. I know from my beliefs that I am not a denier of CAGW. I can clearly demarcate the boundaries of my own identity by my identification with the CAGW belief group. I am not alone and I know who I am.
[2] From my belief in CAGW I know that human beings are at the centre of the world, we are both important and powerful, small changes that we make to the atmosphere can devastate the world, by changing our behaviour we can change the world, we can both save or destroy. I am powerful, I am important.
[3] Derived from the above purpose, I live my life with the experience of meaningful actions, I am either saving the world, or destroying it, I have meaningful choices that matter.
[4] I have a value system that is derived from my belief in CAGW, saving the planet from human industrialisation is more important than human liberty, or short term prosperity. My values are clear and easy to articulate.
[5] Derived from my purpose and my values I have a moral system to guide right behaviour. Moral actions are those that will lead to saving the planet, immoral actions are those that will lead to destruction of life on the planet. These principles guide my actions, and all other moral questions are subordinate to these. I know what the right thing is to do at all times. My mind is clear on what is right or wrong – there is no ambiguity.
[6] As a child of GAIA, I have merely borrowed the energy needed for my life, to GAIA that energy will return, blessed be GAIA.
These are the hooks of the “System of Control” that the fundamentalist CAGW belief system uses to capture and maintain belief. Each hook must first be identified, released, and replaced with a viable, grounded alternative before a believer in the CAGW cult can be successfully deprogrammed from that belief system.
Cheers ExWarmist
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“could see death and destruction in a fox terrier’s eyes.”
Mate. you haven’t met that little fella just down the road !! 😉
00
Yes, Wes, when you get a small decrease in Earth’s albedo it can still make seven times more difference to the radiative forcing (and resulting temperature) than the supposed anthropogenic GHG increase over the same period.
Well, a bunch of data sources all show that’s exactly what happened between 1985 and 2000.
We have solved the mystery of global warming. Next global problem please? 😀
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Wes,
You’ve explained a typical feedback circuit that maintains an equilibrium. In a complete naive state, I agree with you. I cannot fathom how an increase in temperature would trigger a positive feedback causing even more heat which would cause more positive feedback etc. There has to be a negative feedback that equals the forcing or we get a runaway. The argument is that the positive feedbacks will decrease in effectiveness until the temperature is stable again but at a higher level. I disagree with this as the system would still be up against the “stops” (high or low) or in a transition between them all the time. Again, this is just my opinion and I do not claim to be knowledgeable about the climate.
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O/T but Jo you’ll love this one http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-15/phillips-climate-sceptic-reborn-a-believer/4199130
absolute drivel!
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I like the third paragraph, Escher would have trouble drawing it. No one denies climate change.
Will be interesting to see how she responds to the cooling temperatures.
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I didn’t think journalism went below fourth rate -I guess this Phillips article proves me wrong.
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.
As possibly MattB’s most strident critic may I say thumbs down to whoever gave him a thumbs down on the above post?
His post merely informs the rest of us of an article on The Drum which would possibly be of interest to us. Further, MattB himself describes the article as “absolute drivel”.
Even more, anybody actually following the link provided and reading the posts there, would find Matt had made a very balanced, reasonable comment pointing out the errors and bias in the article – albeit from a warmist point of view.
That such effort should be rewarded with a thumbs down based entirely on the name of the author is both unfair, and completely negates the entire concept of the thumbs voting system.
.
A thumbs up from me MattB for balance (just don’t get used to it).
[Agree wholeheartedly. Mod Oggi]
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Well said MV. Believe it not MattB, I also gave you a thumbs up and for once am in complete agreement. It was absolute drivel!
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I was reading some of the comments – majority are from the warm toastefarians.
It’s amusing and scary how many people are still asleep!
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You probably don’t think of me as well balanced, truthfully I have friends that would get along with your parents.
I gave you a thumbs up and it might be the first for anything that wasn’t humor.
Nice comment there Mattb.
Good onya.
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And Mattb, Bravo and thank you. I did see your comment last night and sent off a note to mods to the effect of “you gotta give the man points for this”.
🙂
I don’t mind when people disagree with me, but I sure do mind when my taxes are used to prop up poor research, bad reasoning, and inept writing. Thanks for your honest appraisal of Ms Phillips work.
Commenters note: Mattb deserves kudos for this on the ABC site. Go on, he is an honest commentator.
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It bleedin’ obvious folks. Implicit in the fake Trenberth energy budget** is the creation of an extra 40% energy, a perpetual motion machine of the 2nd kind***. The 94.5 W/m^2 is 60 times claimed AGW and has to be got rid of somehow to get correct average temperature.
The exaggerated cloud data etc. are how it is done depending on which fudge factor a particular group concentrates on. This science has been fraudulent since the mid 1980s.
**Assumed black body emission to and from the Earth’s surface and DOWN emissivity at TOA =1.
***The purpose of this extra energy is to get the phony positive feedback by having very high hypothetical evaporation over sunlit ocean; it doesn’t matter what happens in the cloudy bits because the evaporation kinetics are strongly temperature dependent.
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Oh well, I’ll wait for a bit. I’m getting jaded. Every time something like this comes out, I think, “Maybe they have got a point.”
Then after a while, it turns out that someone used a piece of chewing gum instead of a nail, and that the lid on the coffin is coming loose again. And so it will turn out with this. But Its not all bad, as it might add a little to our understanding.
Certainly, there are problems with climate models, and it would be great if they were better. But they get the basics right – its getting warmer. Lets hope this summer in Perth goes against the trend and is nice and mild.
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John. Might be time to visit Tassie. I can guarantee we’ll cool you down at present and we don’t need models to do it! BTW, found those undersea volcanoes yet “that no one knows about”?
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Brookes,
You’ve got to either fish or cut bait. You do neither. And someday that’s going to get you tossed overboard. Put some data where your big mouth is or stay silent.
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The jet stream in Europe is heading far South. Autumn has started a month early. We will get a cold winter again, perhaps viciously cold and stormy..
This is obviously caused by global warming fueled by imaginary extra water vapour conjured out of the aether by Trenberth and Hansen’s neat innovation in modelling.
What you do is increase IR absorption in the lower atmosphere by a factor of 5. Then you assume it is directly thermalised when this is impossible because of quantum exclusion. To even out the temperatures you offset this imaginary warming by imaginary cloud cooling nearly 60 times greater then the final claimed AGW. What this means in the models is that you get vastly greater but entirely imaginary evaporation .
It’s a giant confidence trick and we engineers saw through it a long time ago because we get calculations right every day, not teach students wrong physics top pretend junk science is correct.
And it’s all designed to confuse those of a lefty persuasion who fall for guff like this.
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Nice one KeithH. We need all the Global Warming we can get at 42Deg/S. My footy-damaged ankles are really playing up this year – ever played Fourths at Boyer Oval in August? At least I played half back flank and got a run in an ordinary side.
Anyway, I went over to have a look at Tamino’s Closed Mind today. Our fiend Mr Brookes seems to like it over there. Poor soul.
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Quality work. That is what you get at Tamino. I doubt you commented there Timdot.
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At the risk of re-starting a conversation that went nowhere, how would you know?
My experience with Tamino is that he is well-practiced at papering-over bad logic with mathsmanship.
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Would his comment survive the mods, old-man beater?
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O/T but I think Pickering Post may be under attack after his latest Part IV of the AWU fraud. I can’t access the site now. Also had trouble getting back on here Jo. A 403 error Forbidden thingio kept stopping me.
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Same thing here.
Somebody is playing silly buggers.
KK
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[…] and (pdf) will certainly be of interest you. This is also covered in detail both on Jo Nova and The Hockey Schtick.Given how much emphasis models place on positive feedback in relation to […]
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The coalition also doesn’t seem to care that the models are wrong, or that AGW is a scam, or that CO2 emissions are not causing runaway catastrophic global warming ..
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/coalition-supports-sequel-to-kyoto-protocol-20120815-2495l.html
Coalition supports sequel to Kyoto protocol – Greg Hunt
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Yes, well, this is the Sydney Morning Herald – Australia’s answer to the British Gruaniad (sic).
And the poll was run by that wonderfully unbiased organisation, the World Wildlife Fund, who’s regal patron has said publicly, that all sceptics should be shot.
I will believe the results of the poll when they publish the questions. How do we know that all the questions are not along the lines of: “Do you deny that climate changes? Yes / No”
The sad thing is that the politicians are just too dumb to spot the con.
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Or, I suppose, they are in on it.
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Clouds do indeed rule the climate, but by doing this study in the Sahel, a region with few motor vehicles and almost no industry, they miss the large anthropogenic influence on clouds from aerosols. Aerosols increase both the persistence of clouds and their reflectivity. The net increase in albedo could be as much as 50% (at least in some circumstances), which is huge compared to the claimed (and likely grossly inflated) CO2 forcing.
And I agree with the comments above about models. Models are valuable tools to aid discovery, but model predictions aren’t science.
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Philip Bradley: “Aerosols increase both the persistence of clouds and their reflectivity.” Persistence yes, ‘reflectivity NO!. Sagan’s aerosol optical physics used in oxymoronic ‘climate science’ as a cover for bad science elsewhere, is wrong, badly wrong.
Do what few in ‘climate science’ apparently have ever done, stick your head out of the window and observe real clouds. Do rain clouds, much darker underneath, much higher albedo, have smaller droplets or larger? The answer is larger AND they’re more ‘reflective’.
In 2010, G L Stephens** observed that 40% of low level clouds, those with bimodal droplet size distribution, which constitute most albedo, have on average 25% higher optical depth than predicted for their droplet mean size. Go back in the literature and you have references to such clouds passing 35% less energy than predicted as measured by simultaneous passage of radiometers above and below.
Th ramifications of this mistake are enormous No derived satellite data are safe because the algorithm built into the systems is wrong. This myth of the cloud part of ‘global dimming’ is promoted by Hansen to claim the reason we are not seeing AGW is because the clouds are cooling more, by exactly the same amount. You my friend are being conned by an expert con. man.
**www.gewex.org/images/feb2010.pdf [page 5]
PS This effect is the real explanation of the end of ice ages which starts 2 ky before CO2 rises significantly. Once phytoplankton grow , previously restricted by lack of thermohaline circulation bringing the key Fe nutrient to the tropics, all you need to explain the ‘forcing increase’ currently attributed to GHGs is 3.5% average reduction of cloud albedo by the aerosols. This is the real explanation because fundamental physics means there can be no CO2-(A)GW, another part of the Hansen confidence trick, based on disguising fake physics by the complexity of the models.
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I would be interested to know the complete history of the water vapor/clouds feedback in ‘the models’.
Did it start out as an assumed neutral or negative, but gradually evolve into a positive because that was the best way of turbo-charging the singularly inadequate effect of CO2? Or was it, from the outset, seen as a simple way of boot-strapping the assumed CO2 effects?
[I didn’t know “bollocks” was routine word in Australia, Joanne, or is it a recent import?]
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The root paper in climate modelling is Manabe and Wetherald 1967. They assumed LW UP = SW DOWN, a gross exaggeration but not physically incorrect.
Sometime in the 1980s someone assumed that LW UP = S-VB for a black body in a vacuum. This is plain wrong, indefensible, and gives the claimed positive feedback. I suspect it was deliberate fraud because no professional would have made that mistake
What has happened in the subsequent 25 years or so is that climate science students are taught false science to act as a cohort of cover for the fraud. This is unforgivable.
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Absolutely physically incorrect – it’s utter nonsense to think Shortwave (Light) can heat the land and oceans which it what it takes to get weather.
They take out the direct Heat from the Sun, beam thermal infrared, which is what we feel as Heat because it is, because it heats us up just as it heats up land and oceans. They give its properties to Shortwave which can’t heat matter.
They’ve done this so they can pretend that all the measurements of thermal infrared in the atmosphere are from the backradiating of the upwelling longwave, which is diffuse, waste heat and not direct beam capable of doing work because concentrated.
The AGWScienceFiction fake fisics meme “shortwave in longwave out” is just that, fake. It doesn’t exist in the real world.
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Good outline TON
The high energy Radiation from the Sun has only ONE ENERGY PATHWAY.
DOWN.
It must always be degraded in it’s INTENSITY and capacity to heat an object or do work.
Inbound solar is high energy short wave.
From there it degrades and eventually leaves Earth’s holding bays, ground, ocean and Atmosphere, as low intensity IR – Long Waves.
The Warmer theme that you can store up low energy radiation (Ground Origin IR ) and convert it to high energy – shorter wave radiation
and beam it back to ground is Scientifically NUTSO.
That is the only way to describe it.
Totally Impossible.
All of this “Climate Science” has been done on PAPER or inside the bounds of a COMPUTER and there has never been any associated physical measurement or experimentation.
The only experiment I have ever seen or heard of that closely resembles the CO2 heating meme was done by the TV Programme, The Myth Busters.
It was in true warmer Style, a total scientific FARCE.
Four gas environments were held in simple cubes of plastic sheeting and placed in line in front of 4 heating lamps.
One was normal air, the others included enhanced CO2 environments.
When the lamps were turned on the Plastic environment with the higher CO2 atmospheres showed a minor temperature increase.
Whether by design or error the 4 cubes were very close to each other – so close that the two end cubes were those that received less heat from the lamps.
Yes , there was overlap of heat zones from the lamps which meant that the two middle cubes received heat from two adjacent lamps in addition to its own lamp.
By design or error, not again, the two innermost cubes were the experimental cubes containing higher CO2 levels and surprise , surprise, they also had the highest temperatures.
So Myth Busters has taught a whole generation of budding scientists that extra CO2 will HEAT the atmosphere.
How do you fight this sort of crap?
KK 🙂
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You can’t fight it KK. Jo believes that it is true, as does Dr Roy Spencer, and [snip] Of course, you could be the Galileo to their Church, but it seems unlikely…
[unfounded as in you have provided no proof] ED
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Hi JB
The Myth Busters CO2 Farce.
Four 100 watt lamps sitting side by side aimed at the four targets.
At a rough estimate 70% of each lamp output may have reached the target box.
The targets either side may have received 7% from each adjacent lamp thus substantially boosting the heat ending up in the two middle cubes.
Hardly scientific.
ps It was “checked” by a US professor of chemistry, I think.
Hopeless.
KK 🙂
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JB
I was referring to the fact that the Myth Busters had at least attempted an experiment.
Nobody else seems to have bothered or maybe they aren’t brave enough?
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I don’t think anyone in climate science believes
Indeed it is nuts. And so is believing that serious science presents that.
I sort of thought that radiative transfer theory (which is what just got mangled), being the basis of stellar mechanics, was rather well regarded. It brought us such wonders as the H-bomb for example.
I think you need to read science sites and not political ones like this site.
One can always win arguments with straw-scientists.
And you could not be more wrong about where most of the climate science is done. Models are fun, but they have to be ground truthed. That truthing leads to public admissions of non-perfection. Science as it should be.
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By jiminy
I don’t think you have a clue.
In life it is important for many of us to know where we are going.
If you are one of the sheeple who think that sites like Skeptical Science are trustworthy then that is OK.
No problem.
Many people find life to be quite easy and comfortable to be led by those who are more assertive and cunning.
All the best.
KK 🙂
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KK said,
It’s self evident that you would so believe, KK.
If (as implied by your take on me) you are one of those people whose only experience of science is cut’n’paste and blogmerole then fine – believe you know things.
But there’s nothing wrong with finding out for yourself. You’ll find the sentence I responded to is wrong – just as I said.
Pencils and backs of envelopes are good tools.
Now can I agree with you on something?
I found that it was important to know what was true. To do that, I had to give up the idea that I could let other people do my thinking, and I had to give up the notion of believing I was right. These days I live in a world of provisional belief. Now if you understand what I just said and why, then what on earth are you doing echoing mangled clap-trap?
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By Jiminy,
This site, Jonova, is a great place to learn and be corrected by people whose expertise in many areas of Global Warming Fraud by far exceeds yours.
Your essay above that triggered my response mentioned “radiative transfer theory” sounds very “sciency” and like something straight out of SkSc.
Warmers always use that sort of stuff to hide the fact that they are unable to describe basic mechanisms at work because:
THEY HAVE NO SCIENCE EDUCATION.
Of course the payload was the knife into this site.
FYE I have two science degrees, one of which covered just about every topic of relevance to the Global Warming fraud.
Basic experiment: The Sun goes out for the night and it gets cool here very quickly.
Estimate what temperature would we be living in if the Sun did NOT rise tomorrow, and the day after and so on.
We would be frozen in a day or two.
Spraying CO2 around wont make any difference even while we have the sun.
Playing computer games and science magic by proposing the outward bound ground IR can energise clouds to the extent that they
can heat the Earth with that energy is NUTSO as I said earlier.
Doesn’t matter how you frame it, once this low grade radiation leaves Earth’s surface it cannot come back to haunt us.
KK 🙂
All the best.
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Hi Jiminy
You may like to enlighten us on just what “serious science presents” when it wants us to believe that Human Origin CO2 can
lead to Catastrophic Global Warming.
KK 🙂
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Hee – hee. You must be waiting for me to do this, so here it is.
The IPCC is a body setup by arch radicals like Margaret Thatcher, which does no science but does collate it. It’s worth a read although I have to warn it (IMO) severely underestimates ice loss, and really doesn’t clue one in on the extraordinary number of all time weather records that have been set recently.
(The IPCC has many problems that you need to be aware of: http://www.noconsensus.org/ipcc-audit/findings-main-page.php) CTS
If you like in the raw lectures look at Chapter 5 of the David Archer lectures. here.
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Hi Jiminy
Again we have the warmer response of providing “links” to someone elses brain which seems to have overpowered their own.
If you can’t explain it in your own words then
YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT.
or put another way;
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
🙂 KK
ps Sorry about the CAPS.
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Jiminy asked:
“Then what on earth are you doing echoing mangled clap-trap?”
Perhaps in light of the generally poor attempts by Warmer protagonists to explain things pertinent to our impending doom I was just being frivolous?
btw You still haven’t seen fit to give your explanation of just what mechanism will cause Man Made CO2 induced Global Warming.
KK 🙂
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Hmmmm. Interesting concept. There’s enough on that side of the-it-itn’t-actually-a-debate who might also be confused and I’m damned certain they out-number me. Now you’re claiming they’re frivolic??
Sorry. I don’t hover over the keyboard most weekends, and I won’t be responding to much for the rest of the week – life to live and all that. So you can claim the last word. And I just realised that sort of prevents me from giving you a complete answer. I would have asked, “Why is there supposed to be *a* mechanism?”
(And you first asked why it was catastrophic climate change.)
The warming (observed and latterly conceded by many previous recalcitrants) is really due to the longer retention times of that LW radiation. Joseph Fourier (whose transform you no doubt are well acquainted with) (late 1860s) seems to me to have worked on that basis although I’m not sure what model of energy transfer he had in his mind. Arrhenius had two shots at it, and it’s Arrenius’s figure of +2.1K H2O amplification for 1.6K CO2 warming?? for a doubling of CO2 ( may have the detail wrong) that Evans is popping at.
But that says little about mechanisms apart from that of the warming.
One example would be that with the tropics warming the Hadley cells are expanding and expected to do so more.
And GHGs are not the only mechanism by which man induced change has had an effect. The ozone depletion creates a net heat outflow over the southern polar regions which must of necessity cause poleward shifts in winds during the transition in and out of SH summer. Plenty of people think that is a factor in the very long running series (now three) of step reductions in rainfall over SWWA (Jo will have experienced this). I think that since the first of these occurred before the Hadley cell expansion could have been the main cause that the ozone hole is actually a good candidate. I get yelled at by some folks for proposing it.
Higher temperatures and increased C02 are (in many but not all cases) promotors of grass growth, but even though in many warmer areas vapor levels are rising a bit, temperature rise seems to cause more evapotranspirative demand than can be met, and with C02 now about 30% higher than many plants evolved with it’s not at all clear where they will propagate to – increased effective aridity. This *is* of concern to rangelands cattle grazers for example.
Sea level is rising and the rise is accelerating, or was in 2000 (actually no decent statistical technique can really say whether we should conclude that it’s accelerating right now). I looked at the few long running tidal gauge records and the signature is actually very clear, even without modelling. Easily done. Retrieve the monthly data from PSMSL, remove linear trend and the annual and monthly signals and apply your favourise smoother. Look.
This is an issue for anyone who is coastal. Yes, we can all move inland and yes much of the rebuilding required would have been anyway. But it’s not so in Bangadesh. The country will slowly disappear.
Increased pooling of warmer ocean waters is already causing trouble because warm waters are nutrient poor. Silly things happen. Tuna head south to colder water, and out of their protected breeding grounds, tuna fishermen say, “More fish than ever”.
You see – you’ve heard it all before – I cannot possibly be saying anything you’ve not already heard and rejected. None the less these oft heard facts are … facts.
Sorry. Not a big catastrophe – just an ever-ramping cascade of small issues interspersed with bigger disasters – all happening just slow enough that we in the Lucky Country will continue to think all is well.
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So
Not only is Jiminy unable to explain how or why man Made CO2 induced Global Warming can be made to occur, But.
He has no friends that can do it either.
His style is very, very familiar.
Very reminiscent of someone who is still posting here or was a month or two back.
Kurious
KK
Actually he reminds me of radio broadcasts sponsored by the ABC where all the alarmist spiels keep resurfacing.
Repetition, repetition …
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Starting with ignoring the discussion
An oblique ad hom. Via …
an inference of … could it be? … misrepresentation.
No proof.
And no original contribution to the discussion.
Some would call that denialism encapsulated, KK.
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.
Just thought I’d add this (O/T I know) – but couldn’t resist!
Still singing the same old CAGW song Jiminy and eating the CAGW pollution!
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Dave
A perfect match there.
He also reminds me of Gee Aye and Tristan.
KK 🙂
Just name dropping like he’s a friend of Joseph Fourier, who I think has been in a state of decomposition now for the best part of 180 years.
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Still waiting……
If you can’t explain it in your own words then …..
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Shrug. I pointed you at some reading material because you seemed misinformed about how the basic mechanism of GHG warming works, and based your (what you now you claim to be merely) sarcasm on that misinformation.
“The Warmer theme that you can store up low energy radiation (Ground Origin IR ) and convert it to high energy – shorter wave radiation”. It seems that a well organised summary written by much better writers than me would be useful.
Then you can direct your sarcasm where is belongs.
I have provided lots of my own words and if they get plagiarised, well, caveat emptor.
At least now I know you know who I’m talking about. I both marveled and cursed his name whilst hand coding FFTs on punch cards in a third year engineering maths course that I did for my own interest. It has only been recently when I poked into the history of the greenhouse effect that I realised he was in the chain of reasoning. And again I have something wrong. (I googled just now) The thing tagged in my memory as 1820s that I then retracted was Fourier’s first energy balance model on which basis he proposed that the atmosphere acted as an insulating blanket – in the 1820s.
Below you say,
Is this point at issue? That you reject the idea that CO2 absorbs upward LW?
Or do you accept that and reject the notion that CO2 is warmed by that absorption?
Or do you accept that and reject the notion that that CO2, being part of a mixture of gases, tends to equilibrate with those gases by both mechanical and radiative means?
Or do you accept that CO2 tends to equilibrate and reject the means?
Or do you accept all of that so far?
Then explain your objection.
Are you buying into Angstrom’s erroneous proof that increasing CO2 can have no effect due to saturation of the absorption bands? That’s what radiative transfer theory is about. (And why the myth busters experiment, at best, has limited relevance.)
What about about this issue? When gases absorb energy they express that at the molecular level by a mixture of increased linear motion, rotational and vibrational motion. However the energy enters the gas, at equilibrium, and on average that energy will be expressed through an even distribution of added energy through those modes (three degrees of freedom for linear, three for rotational, and species numbers dependent for vibrational).
If the gas is now required to equilibrate to a lower temperature some of that absorbed radiation will be radiated out, but black box as it must behave, that radiation will be at a mixture of wavelengths.
GHG absorb at very specific wavelengths, and that absorption corresponds to vibrational modes. That energy must be redistributed to other modes and hence the return radiation must be overall at less specific wavelengths and with blurring to the longer wavelengths no matter where it goes.
Is this the issue? It’s an important one and needs to be understood.
All my own words, lack of clarity is my only addition. Now if you would be so kinds as to be specific as to your objections?
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Absolutely physically incorrect – it’s utter nonsense to think Shortwave (Light) can heat the land and oceans which it what it takes to get weather.
They take out the direct Heat from the Sun, beam thermal infrared, which is what we feel as Heat because it is, because it heats us up just as it heats up land and oceans. They give its properties to Shortwave which can’t heat matter.
They’ve done this so they can pretend that all the measurements of thermal infrared in the atmosphere ‘downwelling’ are from the backradiating of the upwelling longwave; which in reality is diffuse, waste heat and not direct beam capable of doing work because concentrated.
The AGWScienceFiction fake fisics meme “shortwave in longwave out” is just that, fake. It doesn’t exist in the real world.
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“Bollocks” is a reasonably recent addition to Australian english, taken from the Poms, I think. In my youth the equivalent “bulldust” or variants of that. Of course there are linguistic variations across Australia, so I’m only talking about Perth.
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May have been a regional thing.
Was not used much in Newcastle.
In some parts of Australia the name Francis is pronounced Frahncis (a as in barn) (Adelaide) but in Newcastle it is Francis (a as in can).
KK
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All computer models start “If…. and end Then ” In between are human inputs and opinions.. Why are we so surprised that models always get it wrong to varying degrees?
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KK.
Rather like an expertise in science fiction then?
Look. Expertise in science is one thing, expertise in conspiracy theory is another. I’m utterly happy to be out conspired.
I like to think that science sounds sciency. That polysylabism is a formal name for the body of theory that you don’t seem to think anyone understands.
And they can only read block caps eh? You may be wrong again.
That would be Physics, chemistry, biology and lot of maths then? But again, I am unaware of global warming fraud science being taught anywhere.
OK that’s all very true and all that – but it’s utterly not to the point. The question is why do we not completely freeze at night? What moderates the heat outflow?
And while we are at it – since you can’t do the experiment – then is it not consistent with the faux skeptic position that it’s not in the realm of science at all?
Climate science is both experimental and theoretical I assure you.
See now – that’s not proof of anything, it’s merely asserting the point of contention as a fact.
But of course CO2 does make a difference.
I reckon that’s not what you said before (which was to contend that the we believe that outbound IR turns back into inbound SW).
You are now wrong on two counts.
1. There is no theory that outbound IR is converted to SW and beamed back to ground. Seriously, if you think such a theory is nuts, then consider that people you accuse of holding a nutty position may not be nuts – ergo, don’t actually hold that position.
2. There is no theory that outbound IR “energises clouds”. Again such a theory is so nutty that even believing that anyone seriously believes is is nutty.
Outbound IR (ie heat) is absorbed by GHGs. In being absorbed the temperature of the GHGs is raised (this is actually a near tautology).
The somewhat hotter molecules will demonstrate that heat either by increasing their velocity, rotating faster, or by changing their internal vibrational modes.
Heated molecules will transfer that heat energy off, either by collisions or by emitting photons (which in their own frame of reference will be the same wavelengths that they absorbed).
Since these photons are transmitted in all directions some will travel back to earth as longwave down.
Not shortwave, longwave.
Not clouds, greenhouse gases.
Not computer games, standard physics.
This basic science is founded on experimental work that goes back to the 1820s.
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“That would be Physics, chemistry, biology and lot of maths then?”
No, leave out the biology (only have Psychobiology in 2nd degree). Add Geology 1 and real world modeling from a real expert in the craft: Neil Molloy.
KK
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Forgot the Thermodynamics.
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Thermodynamics would be part of chemistry in my day.
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Yes Chemistry plus Integrated modelling and thermodynamics of measurable real world operations where models can be immediately
tested and assessed; not like Klimate Muddles.
KK
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So Jiminy
You want to play around and ignore the real issue here.
We both agree that Ground IR does not concentrate in the atmosphere and increase in intensity and I must apologise for my sarcasm in proposing the conversion of IR to short wave somewhere up there.
My frustration is due to the fact that I am at a loss to get any Climate Change Scientist to give me a rational explanation of their main claims.
It is claimed that man made CO2 is going to cause catastrophic temperature increases “next year” although it hasn’t quite started “this year”.
Without resorting to ‘links’ can you explain in your own words, just how this Global Warming by man made CO2 is going to come about?
Can you also fill me in on “Feedbacks and Amplification” wrt CO2 and temp since I never studied these at Uni.
Actually I don’t think anybody ever has.
KK
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See above. And apologies if I mis-cited you using the word”catastrophe”
Sorry. One essay a night is all I’m good for- but well covered in the David Archer lectures which, since I sat through all 24 hours of them, you might at least look at.
But I offer a thought on feedbacks.
I sometimes see people claiming that there cannot be positive feedbacks in the atmosphere since there would be a runaway catastrophe. That’s simplistic. Consider the year 11 example of the Watts steam regulator. Spinning weights which close down a steam valve as they spin faster, and thus through negative feedback, regulate the engine speed. In year 11 we were if instead of closing the valve it opened more then that would be positive feedback and the machine would blow apart. So I built one – waited for the explosion and the damn thing ran out of steam.
In any natural system positive and negative feedbacks operate over limited domains, and often together, a runaway feed back is overwhelmed by a natural negative one, or one runs out of steam.
I don’t think clouds are going to prove to be such strong providers of negative feedback as Evans proposes since, (a) low lying clouds – the ones which are potentially negative feedbacks don’t give much bang if they are increases in thickness of clouds that would be there, (b) they reflect upward LW back down as well as downward SW and LW upward. They may form higher in a warming world and the higher clouds can be positive feedbacks (and cirrus ones definitely are) (c) the water vapor increase required to create extra clods is definitely a positive feedback (anyone remember all that plonking (to use a Dawkins word) “Water is the most important greenhouse gas anyway”?).
I do agree that clouds are a weak point of GCMs – that’s not in dispute at least with me.
Have a nice week.
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Don’t worry about feed backs.
Need to examine cause and effect.
CO2 increases: No measurable effect.
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Well Jiminy
I’m glad to see that at least you have done some science in year 11.
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‘This basic science is founded on experimental work that goes back to the 1820s.’
And which was disproved in 1909, then again a bit later, by Niels Bohr (sp).
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Yeah, and I think I got the 1820 bit wrong. It’s flagged in my memory but it’s really Tyndall I was thinking of and that’s more like the 1860s.
Angstrom is credited with producing (what was later shown to be) an invalid proof in 1900 that the atmosphere CO2 is effectively saturated. But he was wrong.
There’s a Niels Bohr institute has its name against the idea that the lag between CO2 and temperature rises is much shorter than previously believed. (Yes I googled it) Dunno about Bohr junior in this debate otherwise.
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I think you are referring to his brother Angstrom Unit.
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It’s well known in the scientific community that the understanding of clouds is limited. Models differ in the sign of global radiative effect, never mind the magnitude of that change. This is because clouds are extremely complex and there isn’t currently the computer power available to process micro-physical processes within them. Plus the radiative forcing of a cloud depends upon many factors.
Science isn’t a perfect art you know, it constantly develops through time. In most of science the observations don’t fit the models, it tells a scientist that there are other processes to consider and it allows understanding to evolve.
You can’t just pick up on small things like this and suggest that scientists dont know what they are doing. You have no idea what it is to be an academic!
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[…] Controls: A Perspective from Observations and Global Climate Models, Miller et al, 8/2012, read more here; “… GCMs underestimated the surface LW and SW CRF and predicted near zero SW CRE when […]
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