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Comments 68851 to 68900:

68851. Composer99 at 03:30 AM on 6 December 2011
       Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
       I'd love to say nobody could possibly interpret Mörner's tilted graph as anything but evidence of his creativity in propagating incorrect information, but someone brought up Mörner's claims on Deltoid's December open thread and proved me wrong.
68852. Martin at 03:17 AM on 6 December 2011
       Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
       What was Mörner's position on sea level rise while he was INQUA's president?
68853. CBDunkerson at 03:12 AM on 6 December 2011
       Newcomers, Start Here
       imthedragn, you rely on demonstrably false beliefs and assumptions. That isn't skepticism. Examples; "I take great issue with alarmists who feel they have all the answers as to how much and when." Who are these mythical beings who claim to have all the answers? I'm only familiar with scientists who have said, 'it will be in roughly this range and over roughly this time period'. "30 years worth of observations" Actually, Joseph Fourier first observed the existence of the 'greenhouse effect' in 1824. A bit more than 30 years ago. Even the satellite record is (slightly) more than 30 years... and hardly the only data we have to go on. "they have screamed that NONE of the warming could possibly be natural variability" Pure nonsense. Cite one example of this claim. It doesn't exist. Made up denialist fiction. "But when there was a cooling trend for a few years" The terms 'trend' and 'a few years' are mutually exclusive for any sort of scientifically robust result on global temperatures. Your argument here is the same as saying that if the second day of Summer is cooler than the first then clearly Summer has a cooling temperature trend. Et cetera. You seem to be using a 'gish gallop' of blatantly false arguments. Pick one and follow it to the end. If it turns out to be false that might be a clue that you should be getting your information from someone other than Singer and/or Spencer... both of whom also say that smoking doesn't cause cancer BTW.
68854. imthedragn at 02:39 AM on 6 December 2011
       Newcomers, Start Here
       Although I am not sold on the whole "global warming" thing, I don't consider myself a "denier". I value the opinion of crebible sources from both sides; those being the "alrmist" and "denier" camps. If I am a skeptic, then I am a skeptic of arguments from both sides. I take everyhitng with a grain of salt. I started my quest for knowledge when Fred Singer and Roy Spencer provided me with their arguments. I have been using information from many sources to try to wrap my head around the whole thing. I concede that rising CO2 has and will cause warming. I take great issue with alarmists who feel they have all the answers as to how much and when. 30 years worth of observations and they have screamed that NONE of the warming could possibly be natural variability (I mean c'mon have you seen that hockey stick). But when there was a cooling trend for a few years, that was (and I almost fell out of my seat when I read the opinion) just natural variability.
       Response:

       [DB] "I take great issue with alarmists who feel they have all the answers as to how much and when."

       Your use of the term alarmist is revealatory.  That you yourself do not know something should preclude you from then deciding how much or how little other people know.

       Skeptical Science is about discussing the science of climate science.  It is not about opinions, innuendo or anecdotal recollection.  Please thoroughly familiarize yourself with the Comments Policy and ensure that ALL future comments you make both comply with it and are on-topic to the thread you post them on.

68855. John Russell at 02:36 AM on 6 December 2011
       What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
       @kellybrook #21 The post is about sea level rise around Tuvalu. It is probably the case that the things you mention tend to make the outcome of sea level rise worse, but they won't affect the rate of the rise. As you rightly say, Coral islands depend on living coral to grow; however both ocean acidification and bleaching mean that in the long term the ability of coral to grow will cease. From then onwards the islands will be vulnerable to erosion from the action of wind and waves until a point when it becomes uninhabitable. Clearly the rate of sea rise will influence the timing of this event.
68856. KR at 02:33 AM on 6 December 2011
       What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
       kellybrook - Have you read the topic post? Tuvalu has been experiencing (Becker 2011) 5.1 (±0.7) mm sea level rise per year for the last 60 years, only 10% of which is due to subsidence (from, for example, being "full of holes"). Coral growth cannot keep up with that, and since the 'island' it self (as Tom Curtis points out) is sand on top of dead coral, it won't. That's over 1/4 meter rise in 60 years, on an island that is mostly less than 3 meters above sea level. Of course, if Tuvalu was uninhabited, this particular example would be less interesting. But it is inhabited, and does seem to be suffering some effects from sea level rise. The current and predicted sea level rise will wipe out most of the Pacific atoll islands over the next 100-150 years or so - and Tuvalu has (for better or worse) become an example of that.
68857. imthedragn at 02:27 AM on 6 December 2011
       Newcomers, Start Here
       Getting back to the Mars thing. The amount of sunlight received decreases proportionally to the square of the distance.(reasonable assumptoin?) Mars would receive enough sunlight to make its massive amount of CO2 cause more of a greenhouse effect than it exhibits if there were more atmposhpere for that greenhouse gas to heat through emission of thermal radiation. That further emphasizes my point that the lack of atmosphere diminishes the ability of the CO2 in the upper atmposphere to have much of an effect.
       Moderator Response: I cannot parse your third sentence.
68858. Tom Curtis at 02:23 AM on 6 December 2011
       What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
       Kellybrook @21: 1) Tuvalu consists of several coral atolls. However, people do not live on the coral, but on the islands that form when sand and reef debris form a layer over the top of the coral, killing it. The islands are more or less stable over time, with new reef debris replacing older sediment washed away by waves. However, with rising sea levels, more sediment is washed away with each storm, and the sediment that forms the island starts to be eroded. So, although the environment minister did lament that the Island was "full of holes", that was a consequence of rising sea levels, not a cause of land subsidence. 2) Below is a photo of the main island of Funafuti atoll (Tuvalu's capital): As you can see, the entire idea that the population has been pushed into low lying areas by over population is rather specious. True, areas 1 meter above sea level which were not previously occupied are not occupied, because the other areas 1 meter above sea level which where previously occupied are now full. Can you really think that is the main problem. More importantly, it is not the policy of the Tuvalu government to lower its tide level gauges by 1 mm per 1,000 head of population increase, nor is there a Tuvalu population adjustment in satellite altimetry. Both tide gauges and satellites show rising sea levels at Tuvalu, so without question this is an example of inundation.
68859. imthedragn at 02:22 AM on 6 December 2011
       Newcomers, Start Here
       #142 skywatcher; The fact that one (H2O) precipitates and evaporates and the other (CO2) does not is irrelevant. The infrared is absorbed by any and all GHGs regardless of the mixture of them at any particular point in the atmosphere. The fact that the uppper atmosphere is thinner and dryer is much more important. I concur. CO2 Does indeed dominate in the upper atmosphere. Higher concentrations would indeed make a difference in the absorbtion and re-emition of thermal radiation taking place at a lower point in the atomosphere. The greenhouse effect in the upper atmosphere (and this is merely a belief) is pretty much negligable when compared with what takes place in the lower atmosphere.
68860. kellybrook at 01:49 AM on 6 December 2011
       What's Happening To Tuvalu Sea Level?
       I have a few questions about this post: 1. I don't see any mention of what I understood about Tuvalu, namely, that it is a coral atoll and the coral is growing. I understood one of the main reasons Tuvalu was under threat was actually due to the fact the islands are "full of holes" to quote a Tuvaluan environmental official, due to sand being extracted for building. 2. Leading on from point 1, the population of the island has risen by a third since 1985. If the population had not exploded would the island be in trouble? Would it still be "full of holes", would its people be crammed onto lower lying area's previously uninhabited? Is this not a case of over-population rather than inundation?
68861. Tom Curtis at 00:28 AM on 6 December 2011
       Clouds provide negative feedback
       SC1 @238, there are multiple ways in which clouds can interact to produce feedbacks, both positive and negative. For example, the strength of incoming Short Wave radiation varies in (approximate) proportion to the cosine of latitude. Meanwhile the greenhouse effect of clouds varies in proportion to the surface temperature. Because surface temperature declines only slightly (about 15%-20%) from equator to Arctic, while the cosine of latitude varies from 1 to 0, clouds have a net positive effect in polar regions. Because greenhouse gases reduce the temperature range from equator to pole, that increases the strength of polar cloud greenhouse effect relative to cloud albedo effect, and hence acts as a positive feedback if all else remains equal. The point here is not that this is a major effect (it probably is not), but that the interaction between clouds and radiation is subtle. Another effect, significant in the tropics is the increase in strength of convection cells, resulting in more anvil head clouds. It is not the height of the cloud base, but the cloud tops which determines the greenhouse effect of clouds, so stronger convection in the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone would probably result in a positive cloud feedback. Further, if temperature increases in a region and/or altitude faster than water vapour so that relative humidity falls, the result will be reduced cloud in that region and/or altitude. This effect can result in more high cloud and less low cloud (or the reverse) which depending on the distribution of these phenomena can result in a positive or negative net cloud feedback. Other physical mechanisms exist. So, the problem in answering your question does not lie in deducing physical mechanisms. It lies, firstly in the fact that models do not agree on the properties of clouds, so we cannot look at the models to deduce exactly which physical mechanisms will dominate with regards to clouds. Further, observations are limited in number so that it is difficult to distinguish signal from noise in this instance. While substantial mystery remains about the behaviour of clouds in a warming environment, what can be said is that both the balance of models (see graph in 237), and the balance of physical evidence (see main article) suggest a net positive feedback. That means that summed over a variety of possible cloud reactions, more possible combinations of cloud responses result in warming (models), and physical evidence suggests the actual response is a positive feedback.
68862. Glenn Tamblyn at 23:08 PM on 5 December 2011
       Changing the Direction of the Climate
       TMac57 How long does CO2 last in the atmosphere. Simple answer. Some doesn't last very long, some lasts a bit longer, some lasts longer still, some lasts even longer. Another way of looking at it is that the main place CO2 can go is into the oceans. So CO2 can go into the surface layers of the oceans fairly quickly - decades. Then how fast it can go into the oceans more than that depends on how quickly the surface layers of the oceans mix with the deep oceans - centuries, up to a few millenia. Once the atmosphere and oceans, with all their mixing, are in balance after a millenium or two things stay static until additional processes kick in. Mainly carbonates dropping out ofthe ocean to the sea floor to ultimately be sequestered in subduction zones. And also a slower pump based on the formation of Carbonic Acid in the atmosphere from the reaction between CO2 and water slowly rains out of the atmosphere, reacts with rocks and adds to the carbonate cycle in the oceans. This has a typical time constant of around 100,000 years. So we are looking at processes that remove some CO2 on decade timescales, some on century to millenial scales and some on scales of 100's of 1000's of years. If H Sapiens stops emitting CO2 within a century, 500,000 years from now you will barely even know we were here. Apart from the geological evidence.
68863. Glenn Tamblyn at 22:50 PM on 5 December 2011
       Changing the Direction of the Climate
       On the subject of reversing CO2 emissions, one thought I sometimes fixate on is this: If we put aerosols up into the atmosphere they might shield us from some of the warming for a period. We also need to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere which ultimately needs to involve some aspect of the Calcium Carbonate chemistry cycle. And this needs a power source to fuel the reversal of chemical reactions. So... Could we create a nano-something that we inject into the atmosphere. Its short term impact is to act as an aerosol and have a cooling effect. But its other effect is to use solar anergy to drive chemical reactions in the atmosphere, on the surface of the nano-particle, that grab some CO2 and push it down into the surface carbon cycle, ultimately to be sequestered. If we just keep pumping this nano-something-or-other up there, ultimately we achieve the balance we need. I leave it as a simple exercise for all you chemistry typpes to work out the technicalities.
68864. SC1 at 22:32 PM on 5 December 2011
       Clouds provide negative feedback
       Dear Tom, thanks very much for your quick and informative answer. Indeed I hadn't been aware that lapse-rate forcing had been treated already.
68865. SC1 at 22:20 PM on 5 December 2011
       Clouds provide negative feedback
       Dear All, it would be very informative if Dessler (2010) identified the mechanism by which fewer low-lying clouds would be generated if the water vapour content of the air (plus air temperature) increases. Is anyone aware of such a mechanism being mentioned in a peer-reviewed pulblication?
68866. Tom Curtis at 22:15 PM on 5 December 2011
       Clouds provide negative feedback
       SC1 @236, what you are describing is the Lapse Rate Feedback, a well known negative feedback. Because it is a product of increased specific humidity, it tends to correspond inversely to the Water Vapour feedback, which is positive. That is, if there is a strong water vapour feedback, then the lapse rate feedback is also expected to be strong. Correspondingly, if there is a weak water vapour feedback, the lapse rate feedback is correspondingly weak. As can be seen below, the Water Vapour feedback is stronger than the Lapse Rate feedback, so that the net effect is a positive feedback. Please note that though the tropopause does increase in altitude with a warming atmosphere, this is not due to the change in lapse rate. Water vapour, unlike CO2, is not well mixed so that it is largely confined to the lower half of the troposphere. As such, the lapse rate feedback is negligible, or even slightly positive at higher altitudes (see first link, to the IPCC AR4, for discussion).
68867. Glenn Tamblyn at 21:56 PM on 5 December 2011
       2011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
       Although a completely ice free Arctic may be some ways off, unless there is a significant change in what is happening, or PIOMass has got really wrong somehow (unlikely) a substantially ice free Arctic looks on the cards for 2015/16 Certainly an ice free North Pole. Could make for a great 'photo-op'. Imagine. Cunard schedule all three of their Queens so that in late August they all start a cruise, in 'convoy', from Southhampton, to Iceland, Svarlbad then on to 90N on Sept 15. Picture it: The Queen Mary, Qheen Elizabeth & Queen Victoria, side by side at the North Pole, with footage from a chopper going out to the worlds media and youtube. Now that might put a fox amongst some denialist chickens!
68868. perseus at 21:49 PM on 5 December 2011
       Economic Growth and Climate Change Part 2 - Sustainable Growth - An Economic Oxymoron?
       Here is a link to the full article of Economic Growth and Climate Change on my website. This addresses a wider range of issues, such as if economic growth provides any benefits to society, if we should be focusing on other methods, and how these affect GHG emissions. Note the disclaimer at the start though!
68869. SC1 at 21:41 PM on 5 December 2011
       Clouds provide negative feedback
       Dear all, I wanted to make another observation regarding water-vapour feedback that might not have already been discussed. If the amount of water vapour increases in the troposhere so will the specific heat capacity of the air. The change in temperature of the air as a function of altitude is governed by the adiabatic lapse rate. For dry air this turns out to be about -9.8 Kelvin per kilometre. For air of "average moisture content" (I forget what value this is) the lapse rate turns out be be around -7 Kelvin per kilometre. So I expect this value to decrease. Now, the minimum temperature found in the lower atmosphere occurs at the tropopause. This minimum temperature is a kind of compromise between heating at the Stratospheric ozone layer and the troposheric lapse rate. Any change in the latter will imply that the tropopause occurs at a higher altitude and at a greater (minimum) temperature. This will affect the amount of radiation that can be emitted from the Tropopause in a positive way. A second influence will be that, if a greater rate of condensation occurs due to increased water vapour content this will also increase the temperature of the upper troposphere, thus further enhancing the emission rate there. These effects may not have already been considered in the models. On a different matter: sometimes it is not useful to talk about radiation as though this is the main mechanism of energy exchange within the troposphere. The only radiation that is essentially transferred in the atmosphere is incoming solar radiation and up to 40 W m-2 emitted directly from the near the Earth's to clouds and back again. All other energy is transferred by thermal conduction enhanced by convection (or just convection in the case of vaporization/condensation). This does not make any difference to most of the arguments presented but one can get a clear picture of the situation.
       Response:

       [DB] Welcome to Skeptical Science!  There is an immense amount of reference material discussed here and it can be a bit difficult at first to find an answer to your questions.  That's why we recommend that Newcomers, Start Here and then learn The Big Picture.

       I also recommend watching this video on why CO₂ is the biggest climate control knob in Earth's history.

       Further general questions can usually be be answered by first using the Search function in the upper left of every Skeptical Science page to see if there is already a post on it (odds are, there is).  If you still have questions, use the Search function located in the upper left of every page here at Skeptical Science and post your question on the most pertinent thread.

       All pages are live at SkS; many may be currently inactive, however.  Posting a question or comment on any will not be missed as regulars here follow the Recent Comments threads, which allows them to see every new comment that gets posted here.

       Comments primarily dealing with ideologies are frowned upon here.  SkS is on online climate science Forum in which participants can freely discuss the science of climate change and the myths promulgated by those seeking to dissemble.  All science is presented in context with links to primary sources so that the active, engaging mind can review any claims made.

       Remember to frame your questions in compliance with the Comments Policy and lastly, to use the Preview function below the comment box to ensure that any html tags you're using work properly.

       "These effects may not have already been considered in the models."

       Please use the search function to find a page on models.  Likely any question you may have on climate science has already been addressed on one of the 4,700+ pages here.  Thus, the search function is your friend; use it and the coppers of your pocket [your questions]...and it will line your mind with gold.

68870. Tom Curtis at 20:09 PM on 5 December 2011
       Baked Curry: The BEST Way to Hide the Incline
       skepticsince1988 @99 1) The Earth's climate has a significant annual variability based on a number of factors including the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the 22 year solar cycle which is visible as an 11 year sunspot cycle (among others). As it happens, many of those factors favoured a warm Earth 5 to 10 years ago, but currently favour a cool Earth. In the absence of an over all warming trend, we would therefore expect current temperatures to be significantly lower than they where in the period 2002-2007, and even lower than during the years 1999,2000. As it stands, current temperatures are significantly above those of 1999,2000 and comparable to those of 2002-2007. That is very hard to explain in the absence of an overall warming trend. What Curry is trying to do, by all appearances, is to use the short term variability, which is well known, to get us to ignore the long term trend. What is more, apparently, she is happy to use dodgy data which she should know (as she was on the project that gathered it) was only drawn from Antarctica and treat it as though it was representative of the whole world. That is the sort of behaviour you expect from used care sales men, not scientists. 2) The temperature quoted in Rolling Stone (a US magazine) is probably in degrees Farenheight, and as such only represents about 5 degrees Celsius, ie, the probable temperature difference between temperatures in the nineteenth century and the harshest period of the last "ice age". That is an unprecedented increase in temperature for a couple of centuries, and it is unlikely that such an increase in temperature will be any easier to adapt to then an equivalent decrease, with the difference being we only have a century or so to adapt. Current statistically significant trends are on track with the model based predictions which lead us to expect those temperatures if we do not drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 3) (i) For almost the entirety of my 50 plus years, researchers into fusion power have predicted viable fusion power in 50 years time. That is a clear sign of the folly in predicting future technological development. In the future, research may bring down the cost of renewables so rapidly that fossil fuels become obsolete in very short order. But research may also bring down the cost of extraction of fossil fuels so that price wise, it always has an advantage of RE. We just do not know. Therefore the wise thing to do is to load the dice in favour of renewables with a carbon price. If we get lucky and renewables become cheap very quickly, the carbon price costs us very little. On the other hand, if we are not so lucky, the carbon price will prevent us from making a disasterous mistake. (ii) Eliminating fossil fuels at the end of the century will not save us from the 5 degree temperature increase that we may be heading for. For that, we need to effectively eliminate their use by 2050, and start rapidly decreasing the growth in their use immediately. 4) The short answer is no. It is not true that we are heading for an 80,000 degree decline in temperature. Indeed, even absent fossil fuel emissions we may well have avoided an "ice age" at this stage of the Holocene. As it stands, CO2 levels are rapidly heading towards levels such that the Earth has never had ice at either pole with levels that high. That means the prospect of a future ice age are permanently on hold. Finally, all but your first question where of topic for this thread. If you wish to respond further, please find the appropriate thread or the moderator is likely to delete your further posts as being off topic. The comments policy is your friend. Read it and take it to heart and you will enjoy many discussions on this site. From experience, however, people who think they are above the comments policy are quickly disabused of that notion on this site.
68871. skepticsince1988 at 18:55 PM on 5 December 2011
       Baked Curry: The BEST Way to Hide the Incline
       Hi, nice blog. I have a few questions, if anyone could please comment on, thanks. 1. The point to the warming (or lack thereof) in the 21st century, is that we are constantly reminded that CO2 levels are the highest they've been in a very long time. And CO2 level INCREASES are also at a high point. If CO2 truly controls temp, shouldn't there be MORE warming now, not less? Isn't this the point Curry was trying to make? 2. There are daily global warming TEOTWAWKI articles, r.e. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-change-and-the-end-of-australia-20111003 The above quotes 9 degrees of warming this century, etc. How in the world do you get there with current or past temp trendlines? 3. RE has already exceeded nuclear in the US. PV could reach grid parity in 3 years. Crude production has peaked since 2005. Why does anyone think we will still be burning coal, and running cars on gasoline 90 years from now? 4. Isn't it true that we are in a declining temp trend point of the current Holocene period? A decline that will last for another 80,000 years? Isn't this a much bigger problem than a few degrees of CO2 induced warming?
68872. John Hartz at 16:07 PM on 5 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       @John Cook: The Advanced rebuttal needs a good rewrite!
68873. Phila at 12:53 PM on 5 December 2011
       Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
       Cornelius Breadbasket #1 You inquire why are conservatives so sceptical about climate change? It may be business links or maybe its related to the fact that conservatism is by its very nature opposed to change. So climate change and society changing to deal with it are both resisted. That may've been the initial issue, but at this point I think it boils down to a simple inability to admit being wrong. Granted, some of 'em undoubtedly have a financial incentive to mislead or be misled, but for most rank-and-file conservatives, the problem is more likely that if AGW is correct, they aren't. I don't think you see the same syndrome on the scientific side of the argument. I don't know anyone who accepts the consensus science who wouldn't be relieved to find out it was incorrect or exaggerated. (I also don't know anyone cocky enough to bet the planet's future on that very small chance, natch.)
68874. Gettingwarm at 11:25 AM on 5 December 2011
       Climategate 2.0 in Context - Solar Warming
       Slightly off topic but the way that the Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre are hyping Climategate II calls for creative action. I ask that you go to http://climateaudit.org/ and http://wattsupwiththat.com and ask Steve and Anthony to release all their personal e-mails regarding climate change. Please!
68875. Bert from Eltham at 10:12 AM on 5 December 2011
       Separating signal and noise in climate warming
       All of Science is about signal to noise ratio. The trouble with pseudo scientists and ignorant crackpots is that they cannot differentiate between the two or conveniently ignore the difference. Nearly all of Science is counterintuitive and unless you have studied up to at least a first degree level your 'common sense' will inevitably fail at interpreting what is really going on. Charlatans and con-men have known this for a long time. Otherwise how do you explain the success of many scams on supposedly intelligent victims. What is at stake now is the future habitability of our whole planet. We cannot pick up the pieces after the scam artists have won. Bert
68876. Bob Loblaw at 08:00 AM on 5 December 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       Fred: there are several fundamental principles that you seem unclear on. First of all, radiation transfer through a semi-transparent medium such as the atmosphere is not as simple as a "hot to cold" analogy with thermal transfer. Sphaerica has pointed out that radiation emitted will be in both the upward and downward direction - indeed it is omnidirectional: from a point, radiation will be emitted equally in all directions. When considering a plane (e.g., the atmosphere at a particular altitude), it is convenient to think of the upward and downward fluxes independently, and indeed this is also the typical sort of measurements that are made: one instrument with a 180 degree field of view facing up, and one facing down, to get the downwelling and upwelling fluxes respectively. The amount of IR radiation emitted at a particular altitude is a function of temperature at that point, but the measured flux is not just what is emitted there - it also includes any IR radiation that was emitted at other altitudes and is just "passing through". In general, radiation arriving at a point can be either transmitted, absorbed, or scattered. We can express this as t + a + s = 1. The amounts are typically expressed using Beer's Law, using an optical property called the optical depth. Overall, the principle is that flux at a point is only partly the result of emissions at that point. Conversely, heating or cooling at that point is not the result of the fluxes at that point, but the combination of emission and absorption. To add to this, in the atmosphere there is also energy transfer by convection, either through thermal transfer (usually called "sensible heat") or through vapour transfer (evaporation and condensation energies, called "latent heat"). Thus, to proper look at heating, cooling, and energy transfers, you have to look at it all together (although this does not imply that each individual component can't be discussed in isolation). The class of climate models that put all this together looking only in the vertical (i.e., ignoring horizontal variation) is the 1-D radiative-convective model.One of the very early papers in this area is Manabe and Strickler 1964. One aspect of this paper can be seen in figure 1, where they compare the vertical structure of at atmosphere that only allows radiation transfer with one that also does convective transfer. Here is that figure: The left side shows the radiative-transfer only atmosphere. The series of lines show the model approaching equilibrium from warm and cold states. Note that the lower atmosphere (troposphere) has extremely high lapse rates. This is not a stable condition in an atmosphere where convection can occur - the lapse rates exceed the point where free convection will happen. The right side of the figure shows the model results when convection is allowed - the modeled lapse rate is limited to the observed value. It is fundamental to understand that the observed tropospheric lapse rate is not the result of radiation transfer alone - it is controlled by the rates of convective heat transfer. Also note in figure 1 that the radiation-only and radiative-convective version show much the same structure in the stratosphere - the upper atmosphere is more or less at radiative equilibrium, and the resulting profile is stable.
68877. Johnb at 07:36 AM on 5 December 2011
       2011: World’s 10th warmest year, warmest year with La Niña event, lowest Arctic sea ice volume
       Quote PhilMorris at 05:42 AM on 2 December, 2011 ''And according to Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, the Artic could be ice free by the summer of 2015! Yet I understand that none of the current models assume Artic ice melting this quickly - I've been told that models have been assuming 2040 to 2060 before the Artic is ice free. I suppose models will get updated to reflect what is really happening - and it won't be good news! Also the models assume what is now known to be very conservative estimates of methane release from the permafrost layer. 2100 still seems to be the timeframe for showing what will happen to the planet - maybe 2050 or even earlier should be the goalpost. 2100 is too far out for ordinary people, let alone governments, to feel that consequences may affect them. A 'goalpost' just 40 years out may have a better impact on getting governments to take notice - maybe.'' Perhaps if the maths of compound interest were used it may register. The 6% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions for 2010 just announced if compounded for the next 11 years will mean a doubling of emissions over 12 years. A doubling of GGE in 12 years has to get some level of attention span. We shall experience the consequences long before that short amount of time is up.
68878. monkeyorchid at 00:47 AM on 5 December 2011
       Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
       Excellent work, Sapient Fridge! If everyone who's commented here writes to RT with letters like yours, hopefully it'll knock some sense into them...
68879. Sapient Fridge at 23:52 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
       The Radio Times web sites has a contact link which leads to the E-mail address radio.times(at)bbc.com I wrote to them and asked if it would be possible for them to check the science behind statements like Mr Lawson's before publishing them in future. Asking people to back up their "facts" with science references would quickly stop this kind of misinformation being printed in reputable places such as the Radio Times.
68880. mspelto at 23:36 PM on 4 December 2011
       La Niña reappears: still weak, but expected to slightly strengthen
       The weekly detailed discussions indicate just how much information we gather on this phenomenon. This La Nina appears to be quite similar to the rebound La Nina in 2009. After a stronger winter 2008 La Nina ended, we reentered a weaker La Nina fall of 2008. This ended in the spring of 2009 with the development of an El Nino by summer. That rapid transition was of interest to me because of the extraordinary glacier melt in the Pacific Northwest of North America that summer.
68881. Paul D at 22:42 PM on 4 December 2011
       La Niña reappears: still weak, but expected to slightly strengthen
       Are the current Rhine river levels low (revealing the WWII bomb this week) because of water extraction or because of a lack of rain?? In the South East of England rivers are low and there is a threat of drought next year. Apart from that, it is a warm winter, with insects, birds and plants getting confused. We have had bees and other insects out and about.
68882. les at 22:00 PM on 4 December 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       1140 - Fred "Next time you pass a power station,ask yourself why all that energy from the cooling towers is being wasted as evaporation to the atmosphere? Why is it not fed back to heat the boilers? The answer is that it is" ... The Carnot Cycle - which describes the limits on amount of work that can be extracted between two 'heat' reservoirs at different temperatures. There's no concept of 'low quality' energy! I hope next time anyone passes a power station and wonders about steam evaporating from the cooling towers they actually think of the excellent physics of another of Fourier's generation - and not the dire butchery of physics that continues in the posts of Fred, damorbel etc.
68883. monkeyorchid at 21:38 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
       Does anyone have an email address for the Radio Times? We ought to send some letters in response, then maybe some might get through. However they don't give it on their web site and the email us form requires complicated set-up...
68884. stefaan at 18:19 PM on 4 December 2011
       La Niña reappears: still weak, but expected to slightly strengthen
       Over here in western europe we are also having a very hot summer. Yesterday we had a 'climate manifestation' in Brussel, 14°, while its normally somewhere between 0 and 5°C...
68885. Daniel Bailey at 17:32 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       Santer et al 2011 (discussed here) show that 10 year flat periods can occur in overall warming periods caused by human influence and that at least 17 years is needed to establish a human influence on tropospheric temps. It takes a world-class time series analyst to properly control for exogenous factors to establish significance in time series of less than 17 years, as Tamino does here. If your counterpart doesn't understand significance testing then ask him how he can believe anything at all that anyone tells him, one way or another, about climate science. Or the stock market.
68886. Riduna at 16:56 PM on 4 December 2011
       Not so Permanent Permafrost
       Charlie @ 25 Fig. 2 in this article was taken from UNEP/GRID-Arendal which in turn, as you point out, took it from WWF. The WWF Librarian advises that their graph was derived from Lawrence, David M. and Slater, Andrew G. 2005. A projection of severe near-surface permafrost degradation during the 21st century. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS (32):L24401, doi:10.1029/2005GL025080, downloaded 11/8/2011 from http://www.ggr.ulaval.ca/Cours/GGR-7011/fichiers-7011/Cours/Lawrence,%20Projection%20pmf%20degradation-2005.pdf. “we used the data from Lawrence & Slater, 2005, but created our own figures directly from the data, rather than reproducing the figures from the paper.”
68887. John Hartz at 16:41 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       Daniel Bailey: As soon as I state that a 9-10 year period is stastically insignificant, he will ask me why it isn't.
68888. Daniel Bailey at 16:28 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       A 9-10 year period is statistically insignificant (ask him to show the significance testing he's done on those 9-10 years). Thus there is no deviation or break in the overall trend. 15 of the 17 warmest years in the modern record have occurred in the past 17 years (which cover the warmest decade in the instrumental record).
68889. John Hartz at 14:19 PM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       DB: Our exchanges suggests to me that the Advanced rebuttal needs to be updated to better explain the issues we have addressed in #230 and #231. I'm getting hammered on a comment thread to an article posted on NPR who insists that Figure 7 shows a definite cooling trend over the last 9-10 years.
68890. Miriam O'Brien (Sou) at 14:05 PM on 4 December 2011
       La Niña reappears: still weak, but expected to slightly strengthen
       Thank you for the overview, particularly of how La Nina affects locations around the world. We are enjoying a wonderfully mild spring by comparison with the record hot weather we've had recently in springs this past decade or so (down here in south eastern Australia). The average maximum temperature for November was 26.8C, still 1.5C above the long term average (25.3C), but it has been much hotter in the recent past. Having rains has fuelled so much vegetative growth and gardens are looking luxuriant. The downside is that the extra growth provides fuel for fires. (Hopefully not too many more this summer.) I'm enjoying it while we can. This part of the world is getting hotter and drier overall, so this interval of rain and mild weather makes it a good time to establish 'green curtains' to insulate the house and make other medium term preparations before the next hot and dry spell.
68891. Doug Hutcheson at 12:20 PM on 4 December 2011
       Peter Hadfield addresses the recent email release
       In an attempt to suit actions to words and inform myself better, I have located and downloaded the zip file of the Climategate 2 emails. Working from the 'Read me file - formatted.docx' document, included by the hacker as a kind of guide to the naughty bits in the emails, I have started comparing the selected snippets with the original messages, to get the context. I am not a climate scientist, so much of the technical discussion goes over my head, but I am able to form my own opinion of the degree to which these emails should worry me. So far (and I have not worked through all 5000+), I see only robust discussion and the kind of peer review of papers that leads me to think the final versions are likely to be balanced and conservative in their conclusions. I also note that the vast bulk of the emails in the zip file are password protected and the hacker is unwilling (or unable) to release the encryption key. Smelling a rat, I am entitled to suspect that these locked messages detract from the sensationalism the hacker is trying to purvey. By hiding the raw data and highlighting supposedly salacious phrases that prove, on examination, to be taken out of context, the hacker has lost credibility, in my view. Having performed my own research, I am happy to state that I agree with the conclusions presented by Peter Hadfield in the video posted above. As one of the untrained majority this release of emails was supposed to confront, I find them a non-event and believe that anyone relying on them to support their pet conspiracy theory would do better to spend their time researching the originals as I am doing.
68892. Icarus at 11:30 AM on 4 December 2011
       Temporarily Frozen Planet, Permanently Frozen Objectivity
       How much (if any) of the slight increase in Antarctic sea ice is the product of accelerating glacier outflow due to global warming?
68893. John Hartz at 11:17 AM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       DB: Thank you for providing the information about "temperature anomaly. Can you tell me what reference value or long-term average was used to compute the temeparture anomalies for each of the eight figures in the Advanced version of this rebuttal?
       Response:

       [DB] Typically, if no baseline is specified it is understood that the baseline used is 1951-1980.  However, since the above work goes back to original data any baseline theoretically could have been used (but it's safe to assume that they share a common baseline).  JC would be the one to ask for a definitive answer.

68894. John Hartz at 10:41 AM on 4 December 2011
       Temp record is unreliable
       The Advanced verwion of this rebuttal contains seven graphics of selected temperature anomalies plotted against time. Nowhere in this article can I find a definition of what a temperature anomaly is. Can someone please explain what I am looking at in each graphic?
       Moderator Response:

       [DB] Per NOAA:

       What is a temperature anomaly?

       The term “temperature anomaly” means a departure from a reference value or long-term average. A positive anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was warmer than the reference value, while a negative anomaly indicates that the observed temperature was cooler than the reference value.

       What can the mean global temperature anomaly be used for?

       This product is a global-scale climate diagnostic tool and provides a big picture overview of average global temperatures compared to a reference value.

       Why use temperature anomalies (departure from average) and not absolute temperature measurements?

       Absolute estimates of global average surface temperature are difficult to compile for several reasons. Some regions have few temperature measurement stations (e.g., the Sahara Desert) and interpolation must be made over large, data-sparse regions. In mountainous areas, most observations come from the inhabited valleys, so the effect of elevation on a region’s average temperature must be considered as well. For example, a summer month over an area may be cooler than average, both at a mountain top and in a nearby valley, but the absolute temperatures will be quite different at the two locations. The use of anomalies in this case will show that temperatures for both locations were below average.

       Using reference values computed on smaller [more local] scales over the same time period establishes a baseline from which anomalies are calculated. This effectively normalizes the data so they can be compared and combined to more accurately represent temperature patterns with respect to what is normal for different places within a region.

       For these reasons, large-area summaries incorporate anomalies, not the temperature itself. Anomalies more accurately describe climate variability over larger areas than absolute temperatures do, and they give a frame of reference that allows more meaningful comparisons between locations and more accurate calculations of temperature trends.

68895. muoncounter at 10:37 AM on 4 December 2011
       CO2 lags temperature
       Now this is interesting: A drop in carbon dioxide appears to be the driving force that led to the Antarctic ice sheet's formation, according to a recent study led by scientists at Yale and Purdue universities of molecules from ancient algae found in deep-sea core samples. The key role of the greenhouse gas in one of the biggest climate events in Earth's history supports carbon dioxide's importance in past climate change and implicates it as a significant force in present and future climate. ..."The evidence falls in line with what we would expect if carbon dioxide is the main dial that governs global climate; if we crank it up or down there are dramatic changes" It may be time to reinvestigate that whole 'lag' thing.
68896. Bob Lacatena at 10:24 AM on 4 December 2011
       It's the sun
       950, Tom, For the record he does have a few pages of similar forecasts up to 2055. I just really don't see the point since there's no clue as to what they are forecasts of or how they can be evaluated, let alone of what value they have to anyone, anywhere. Wet... Dry... Wet twice. WTF?
68897. Tom Curtis at 10:06 AM on 4 December 2011
       It's the sun
       Don Gaddes @948, Victoria is part of Australia, but the retrodictions/predictions where for Australia, not for Victoria. Ad Hoc alteration of the prediction after the event to avoid falsification is no reason for confidence in the theory. Defending your father's theory on the basis that he did not have enough information develop an accurate theory impresses still less. Consequently the only information I am interested in from you is, what was the date of the predictions listed by Sphaerica? Where they all, as I suspect, hindcasts?
68898. Bob Lacatena at 09:56 AM on 4 December 2011
       It's the sun
       949, Don,

       Whoever decides to further research and expand this work will be in for an exciting ride.

       Go do it. As it stands now, there is no value or substance whatsoever to the work, and trying to sell something that is ¹/₁₀^th baked is never going to work. Why do you appear to be pleading for someone else to pick this up and finish it? That job falls to you. No one else is going to spend the time, and this site does not exist to help you find someone else to pursue your fantasies for you.
68899. Don Gaddes at 09:43 AM on 4 December 2011
       It's the sun
       Oops, seems like it's now operating,excuse my Paranoia. For Tom Curtis (946) Firstly Tom, you are on shaky ground quoting El Nino and BOM 'records' to me! I think Victoria is still part of Australia? I suggest you read the rest of the Forecast to the end of the century and the accompanying notes (if not the whole work.) (-snip-)
       Response:

       [DB] You were warned here to provide significance testing to support your claims.  Failing that, to provide links to peer-reviewed articles published by working scientists in the field in scientifically relevant papers (in this comment here). 

       The comments that you posted that failed to follow this course of action were deleted.  As will subsequent comments, unless you step it up with the requisite testing and citations.  Nothing you have presented thus far meets those standards.

       Your practice thus far is to employ circular reasoning: 

       "Read the book to see what the book says; questions can be answered by studying the book more."

       A continuation of this course of action is simply wasting everyone's time.

68900. Bob Lacatena at 08:56 AM on 4 December 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       1140, Fred Staples, It's not hard to understand at all. You are simply misapplying what you know, and you can't see that.

       The back-radiation energy from the atmosphere (Trenberth diagram – sink to source) cannot be considered separately from the primary radiation (source to sink).

       Yes it can. They do not "net off." Read the book instead of looking at the pretty pictures.

       ...ask yourself what would happen if the atmosphere and the surface were at the same temperature?

       The atmosphere would cool by radiating half of its energy up into space, and half down back to the surface, which would warm further. You now have an imbalance. The surface would radiate even more up to the atmosphere, which would thus not be able to cool as much/quickly as if it had been left alone, but would then cool further by radiating half of the energy up and out into space, and half back to the surface. In this way both the surface and the atmosphere would cool. This would continue until radiative equilibrium was restored and things returned to their current temperatures, with a surface that is warmer than the atmosphere. No magic required. Now ask yourself: how does the atmosphere know not to radiate energy downward, because the surface is warmer? What if the surface is cooler? How does the atmosphere "know" the difference? What form of magic do you use that science cannot?

       Can you see any supporting evidence to link warming to CO2?

       Pages and pages of it. That you can't is a sign of your ignorance, your inability to understand what you misunderstand, and your unwillingness to look further (look up "cognitive dissonance"). Can you find a single, reputable scientist who agrees with anything you are saying? Or are you alone (with the exception of certain other outlandish characters that visit this particular thread) in your "understanding" of thermodynamics. Let's see, what's more likely... you are right, and the rest of the world's paid, educated scientists are wrong? Or you are missing something, and maybe should put more effort into unlearning what you misunderstand so that you can begin to contribute to a meaningful discussion on the numerous important and worthy aspects of climate science, rather than this nonsense.

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