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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Comments 85651 to 85700:

  1. CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket - "Note that 45% of ACO2 has remained in the atmosphere." That is actually quite incorrect. An amount of CO2 equivalent to half the anthropogenic emissions has remained in the atmosphere. Not the individual molecules, but a sum total. This is because the natural sinks (as we don't act as a sink to any significant degree) have absorbed an excess amount of CO2 equivalent to 55% of our emissions. There is no difference to the sinks (especially in the ocean) between anthropogenic and natural CO2, aside from the slight plant preference for one isotope over another. Each CO2 molecule has about the same chance of being exchanged. It's just that the sinks don't match up to the sources, drrocket. By an amount equal to not quite half to what we emit.
  2. Rob Honeycutt at 13:49 PM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Camburn... The problem is that Lindzen is claiming lower sensitivity with very little to no evidence to back it up. In the meantime there are a wide range of other studies that come to a range f results but none of those authors are touting their results as a definitive answer the way Lindzen does. Lindzen is taking aim and firing a gun at the rest of the scientists when he has no bullets while the rest of scientists are busy making real bullets and lack the weapons to fire them.
  3. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    All cranks like to compare themselves to Galileo. There’s a book out there arguing the Moon was intelligently designed by time-travelling humans – the authors compare themselves to Galileo too.
  4. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    dana1981@84: Yes, Dressler, but his paper doesn't agree with observed trends and if you incorporate the error bars, once again, nothing is certain. I found this to be a good analysis of the current understanding: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.80/abstract 3. In addition to better routine observations, underpinning reference observations are required to allow analysts to calibrate the data and unambiguously extract the true climate signal from the inevitable nonclimatic influences inherent in the routine observations.
    Response:

    [dana1981] Firstly, his name is Dessler.  Secondly, your claim about his error bars is nonsense.  Thirdly, even though I only quoted Dessler's, I referenced a number of studies.  Fourthly, your reference pertains to the tropical troposphere 'hot spot', not the water vapor feedback.

  5. CO2 has a short residence time
    Eric (skeptic), 5/14/11, 12:05 PM, CO2 residence Let r = S/M, the ratio of the uptake from the reservoir, S, in a period to the volume in the reservoir, M, at the start of the period. Mean Residence Time = M/S = 1/r in periods. Half-life = log(0.5)/log(1-r) in periods.
  6. CO2 has a short residence time
    Dikran Marsupial, 5/14/11, 4:49 AM, CO2 residence You claim, In fact about 20% of the ACO2 in the atmosphere is shunted into the other reservoirs each year, and that rate of absorption is the same as it is for NCO2. Please supply a citation. You say, That is because the residence time for both ACO2 and NCO2 is about five years. However, as has been pointed out to you, residence time is not what controls the rate of growth or decline of atmospheric concentrations, that is decided by the adjustment time. (1) As pointed out to you on 5/13/11, 2:36 AM, the formula provides 1.51 years if leaf water is included, and 3.48 years otherwise. (2) The fact pointed out is false. (3) The actual definition of adjustment time has nothing directly to do atmospheric concentrations. I provided you the official IPCC definition of adjustment time on 5/13/11, 8:06 AM. You ignored it. It contradicts your unsupported claim. You say, The residence time depends on the volume of the flux of CO2 out of the atmosphere (which is vast, hence the residence time is short). The formula in the TAR and AR4 glossaries is T = M/S, where T is the Turnover Time, aka the Mean Residence Time. M is the volume in the equation, but it is the volume of the reservoir, not of the flux. S is the flux in the equation, but it is a rate not a volume. There is no volume of the flux. You say, The thing you don't seem to understand is that the atmosphere exchanges vast quantities of CO2 with the oceans and terrestrial biosphere each year. However, this is an exchange, with natural emissions approximately balanced by natural uptake, so even though it make residence time very short, it has very little effect on atmospheric concentration. I agree; I don't under gobbledygook. Natural emissions are exactly balanced by natural uptake, as modeled (incorrectly) by IPCC. (It's incorrect because natural emissions follow sea surface temperature, keeping the atmosphere perpetually out of balance as it responds to the long term waxing and waning of the Sun.) (1) The fact that it is in balance, i.e., that E_n = U_n does not make the residence time either short or long. (2) What does determine the residence time is [CO2_air]/(U_n + U_a). It is the ratio of the concentration in the reservoir to the uptake rate. (3) The residence time of each type of gas has a huge, proportional effect on its atmospheric concentration. See the details in my post of 5/14/11, 9:25 AM. On 5/13/11, 20:18 PM [sic], you correctly noted that I had in one place written E_a for U_a.
  7. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Climatewatcher #60 Your points are valid ones. [- snipped-] Strangely enough, I speculated on the accuracy of the Earth's albedo measurement some many threads ago. A 1% error in measurement of the roughly 100W/sq.m reflected is 1W/sq.m - greater than the proposed warming imbalance of 0.9W/sq.m which is now probably reduced by Hansen to 0.5-0.6W/sq.m "Is it the 29.8% in Trenberths recent paper" - could you point me to that paper?
  8. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Camburn #81 - it's 2011. There has been a lot of research on the water vapor feedback since 2007, which I referenced in LI #4. The water vapor feedback is positive.
  9. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Camburn - being consistently wrong doesn't necessarily make a person an idiot, and I never suggested otherwise. In fact I think Lindzen is a very smart guy. But the fact is that he's been consistently wrong. All I did was point out that reality.
  10. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    To the moderator: Please remove this after you have told me how to find a link to my previous posts. I was just reading a paper about two climate models, and the descriptions of the models were dynamic and slab. I want to post the paper to the thread where I was lamblasted for using the word slab to describe a model. Thank you in advance.
    Response:

    [DB] AFAICT, your first usage of the word "slab" occurred here.

  11. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Rob: Yes, he is claiming sensativity lower than other research. But that does not make him wrong, nor does it make him right, as all research at this point is subject to correction. I know there was a thread about h2o vapor etc. The following highlights the ongoing research....two different conclusions. A 2004 report by Minschwaner and Dessler noted an RH decrease, whereas studies by Soden et al in 2005 and Gettlesman et al in 2007 reported a maintenance of MT RH – the issue is not settled. To the extent that the water vapor increases in the MT have not kept pace with temperature increases, the potential for MT warming is diminished. This is extremely important in climate, yet still up in the air per se. There are just a lot of important things that have not been ironed out yet.
  12. Eric (skeptic) at 12:05 PM on 14 May 2011
    CO2 has a short residence time
    FWIW, I practiced with "numbers" on the mac which I installed today. I took the MtC emissions for each year since 1751 from this table: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2007.ems and used a starting amount of 597,000 MtC. I added the amount from the table at that link each year and subtracted the amount : (E3-597000)*EXP(-1*$I$2) where $I$2 is my lambda and E3 is that year's MtC. I picked a target year of 2008 and 818,000 MtC. I achieved the target with lambda of 4.25 which is a fairly steep decay. Finally, I'd like to convert that to a half life number (in years) but I'm not sure how.
  13. Rob Honeycutt at 12:03 PM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    ...And not just a minor contradictory evidence. In some cases wildly contradictory evidence. I mean, Lindzen is not just claiming low sensitivity, he's claiming sensitivity lower than any other research... without providing any solid research or evidence for the claim!
  14. Rob Honeycutt at 11:59 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Camburn... Neither is a complete idiot but one of them is blatantly obfuscating the science. How can anyone claim to believe that climate sensitivity is low (as low as Lindzen claims) when all the other research on that issue turns up directly contradictory evidence?
  15. CO2 has a short residence time
    Stephen Baines, 5/14/11, 01:09 AM CO2 residence time How do you know that 'Anthropogenic' (notice how they use quotation marks) fluxes simply refer to the change in rates that has occurred because pCO2 in the atmosphere has increased and land use changes have occurred. Do you have a citation from IPCC or an IPCC reference? You seem to put a lot of stock in the fact that IPCC put anthropogenic in quotation marks for Figure 7.3. It also wrote "'natural' fluxes". What does that lead you to conclude? In another context, IPCC said, Collins et al. (2002) calculated indirect GWPs for 10 NMVOCs with a global three-dimensional Lagrangian chemistry-transport model. Impacts on tropospheric ozone, CH4 (through changes in OH) and CO2 have been considered, using either an ‘anthropogenic’ emission distribution or a ‘natural’ emission distribution depending on the main sources for each gas. AR4, ¶2.10.3.3 Non-methane Volatile Organic Compounds, p. 214. Here IPCC appears to employ quotation marks because the data are synthetic, drawn from calculated emission distributions. This is a likely reason for offsetting the same words in the caption to Figure 7.3. Between the TAR and AR4, IPCC uses the word anthropogenic 1,799 times (including indices, references, tables of contents), but only in these two instances is it offset quotation marks. Without using quotation marks, IPCC says, About 80% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions during the 1990s resulted from fossil fuel burning, with about 20% from land use change (primarily deforestation) (Table 7.1). Almost 45% of combined anthropogenic CO2 emissions (fossil fuel plus land use) have remained in the atmosphere. AR4, ¶7.3.1.2 Perturbations of the Natural Carbon Cycle from Human Activities, pp. 514-15. In case you might want to start relying on numbers, the first sentence supports the land use change of 1.6 GtC/yr out of a total ACO2 of 8 GtC/yr per Figure 7.3. Note that 45% of ACO2 has remained in the atmosphere. Why the restriction to ACO2? The chart has (8-4.6)/8 = 40% remaining in the atmosphere. Maybe the quotation marks account for the discrepancy. Meanwhile the chart has 0/191.2 = 0% of "'natural' flux" remaining in the atmosphere. You claim to the contrary, When pCO2 increased over preindustrial, there was an increase in net CO2 flux into the ocean. … There is nothing special about anthropogenic carbon. The IPCC graph does not imply in anyway that there is. Why didn't that increase in pCO2 affect both ACO2 and nCO2 since the dawn of the industrial era? Regardless of your rationale, that IPCC treats the flux of nCO2 quite differently than it does ACO2 is inescapable.
  16. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    DB: Yes, we are in a sunspot cycle, But as far as a deep solar minimum?......not even close. Yes, if you look only at sunspots. However, there is a lottttt more going on in the sun than just spots. 2010 was only close to a warm year using GISS data. Other data sources are not nearly as close. The decade of 2001-2010 was warm, but on a climatic basis was certainly not out of the ordinary. Some folks who post here see things as black and white. The actual science is not nearly as black and white if you read papers with an open mind. I guess I don't like the tone concerning Lindzen, just as I would not like the tone concerning Hansen if the same were done to him. Both have made errors, but neither one is a climate idiot.
    Response:

    [DB] "Yes, we are in a sunspot cycle,  But as far as a deep solar minimum?......not even close."

    Sunspots show this:

    Solar

    "Yes, if you look only at sunspots.  However, there is a lottttt more going on in the sun than just spots."

    Uh-huh; how about TSI vs temperature:

    TSI

    "2010 was only close to a warm year using GISS data.  Other data sources are not nearly as close."

    Per the UK Met Office:

    With a mean temperature of 14.50 °C, 2010 becomes the second warmest year on record, after 1998. The record is maintained by the Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit at UEA.

    Earlier this month, in the US, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center announced that the past year is either warmest or equal-warmest on their respective records.

    So HADCru, GISS and NASA say you're wrong.

    Met

    "The decade of 2001-2010 was warm, but on a climatic basis was certainly not out of the ordinary."

    Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46°C above the 1961-1990 average, and are the highest ever recorded for a 10-year period since the beginning of instrumental climate records.

    And per Phil Jones:

    Speaking about the figures, Professor Phil Jones, Director of Research at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia said: "The warmest 10 years in all three datasets are the same and have all occurred since 1998. The last 10 years 2001-2010 were warmer than the previous 10 years (1991-2000) by 0.2 °C."

    "The actual science is not nearly as black and white if you read papers with an open mind."

    Ignoring the crass insinuations you make, and the equally crass responses that spring to mind unbidden, having an open mind doesn't mean letting your brain fall out.  The true skeptic challenges his own ideologies and presumptions before challenging others'.

  17. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    One thing is pointedly clear. The realiability of the underlying data concering the h20 vapor is in need of improvement. All the papers cited verify this. You can pick and choose which paper you want to consider credible as to their determination. But you can not argue that the results have such large error bars that a credible value is achieved. Lindzen has very valid points, based on how he interprets the data. Just as others have very valid points as to how they interpret the data. We have had a flat to declining temp trend since 2001. OHC since 2003 has been dropping. The sun was in a very very strong maxima for the past 40 years, setting records that can be measured. It appears to have peaked in that cycle in the early 2000's. The climatic response of OHC and surface temp show this. The critical issue of AGW will be solved in the next 10-15 years. Either the hypothosis will prevail, or re-examination of it will have to be done.
    Response:

    [DB] "We have had a flat to declining temp trend since 2001."

    Umm, you're forgetting that the "Aughts" were the warmest decade on record, with 2010 leading the way as the warmest year on record.  Despite a quiescent sun (deep solar minimum).  That is indeed perfectly clear.

  18. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW @71, "And it shows that all the temperature data set indicate a trend lower than the 1.8 C per century rate that IPCC identifies as the best estimate for the "Low Scenario"." As you have been informed, you are not comparing apples to apples. Also, continuing to repeat a falsehood doesn't make it true. If you are going to insist on citing the IPCC or attributing stuff to them, then please link directly to where they made that statement, or quote them verbatim, with a link to the relevant section or chapter of AR4. But again, apples to apples please, see Dana's embedded graphic at #59. Regardless, you cannot escape the fact the devastating graphic and observations by Hansen shown at #58. Lindzen is the clear outlier.
  19. Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    This graphic reminds me of a way I've been trying to put the "controversy" into context for a while. I usually point at the imbalanced media coverage and say that to really represent the split, they'd have to gather about 34 climate scientists into one room for a discussion, and out of those 34 only one would be unconvinced of anthropogenic climate change. Wouldn't make for much of a debate, would it? Unfortunately it wouldn't make for a "fair and balanced" segment, just an accurate and informative one. I've also used the same numbers for a "what if you were diagnosed with cancer..." scenario.
  20. Rob Honeycutt at 09:43 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW... Again, please view the trends I plotted at 68.
  21. Rob Honeycutt at 09:41 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW @ 71... "It shows that GISS is the high outlier." I think you need to revisit the definition of "outlier." In statistics that would be a point that lies "very much" higher or lower than other point. Each of these data sets are well within reasonable range of each other.
  22. ClimateWatcher at 09:30 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    64. That's fine - lets throw out the Hi and Low and average the remaining.
  23. ClimateWatcher at 09:25 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    65. See chart in 61.
  24. CO2 has a short residence time
    Stephen Baines, 5/13/11, 12:30 PM, You wrote, pointlessly, The fact that the atmosphere is not now in equilibrium has no bearing on this debate. That is a red herring. You quote me as if I had introduced something irrelevant. I agree, it IS a red hearing, which is exactly why I have no use for it, and why I responded to Dikran Marsupial's vacant charge that I confused residence time with adjustment time. Then you write, The residence time also has almost no bearing on how quickly the CO2 added to the atmosphere will be absorbed by the biosphere. IPCC provides the following formula: Turnover time (T) (also called global atmospheric lifetime) is the ratio of the mass M of a reservoir (e.g., a gaseous compound in the atmosphere) and the total rate of removal S from the reservoir: T = M / S. For each removal process, separate turnover times can be defined. In soil carbon biology, this is referred to as Mean Residence Time. AR4, Glossary, p. 948. (The remark about being Mean Residence Time in soil carbon biology is a litigator's half-truth, intended to give the impression that T is not the Mean Residence Time in all applicable fields.) You might recognize the formula as saying S = dM/dt and dM/dt = M/T. The solution is the exponential, so the reservoir mass, M = M_0*exp(-t/T). This is also the impulse response of the reservoir. So if you put in a slug, M, of ACO2 at t = 0, it will decay according to that formula. Now if you continuously input ACO2, the reservoir will accumulate ACO2 according to the convolution of the input function with the impulse response. The difference between the input function and the amount retained in the atmosphere is your amount that will be absorbed by the biosphere. The residence time, T, has everything to do with the amount absorbed by the biosphere. IPCC shows its estimate of the increase in ACO2 emissions in AR4, Figure 2.3, p. 138. Between 1981 and 2002, it increased at a best fit rate of 1.55%/yr. If we extrapolate that back to 1750, the start of the industrial era. the emissions were 0.15 GtC/yr in 1750, increasing to 10.98 GtC/yr in 2030, and the total emissions over that period is 705 GtC. The amount accumulated in the atmosphere asymptotically approaches 594 GtC (84.3% of the total) for a residence time of 350 years, 247 GtC (35.0%) for a residence time of 35 years, and 36.0 GtC (5.1%) for a residence time of 3.5 years. The last figure, which is the result from IPCC's formula and data, sans leaf water, but it doesn't put enough CO2 into the atmosphere. By never relying on the formula, IPCC gains a handle on ACO2 emissions. It can rationalize the residence time to put just enough CO2 in the atmosphere to match the bulge at MLO. Of course, IPCC doesn't actually rely on equations here. It just declares the bulge to be ACO2. This phony claim by IPCC gives its supporters fits. They stand on their heads to redefine terms or introduce new ones, and safe to say, never with citations. ACO2 does not accumulate in the atmosphere, and there isn't enough present to make AGW work. Pity. CO2 residence time is essential to systems science, and a misunderstood play thing for AGW climatologists. P.S. Re. your post on 5/14/11, 01:09 AM. You are correct enough that "there is nothing special about anthropogenic carbon." But that is my argument. Repeating it doesn't help your position. You need to bring that fact to the attention of IPCC and AGW believers. It is IPCC, not I, that treats nCO2 and ACO2 to substantially different physics. And I've given you all the proof.
  25. ClimateWatcher at 09:24 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    61. This graph is pretty good. It shows that GISS is the high outlier. And it shows that all the temperature data set indicate a trend lower than the 1.8 C per century rate that IPCC identifies as the best estimate for the "Low Scenario". The only addition would be to add the MSU Middle Troposphere which indicate warming trends less than even the 1.1 C per century that IPCC indicates as the lowest possible.
  26. Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    Thanks for the laugh Rob :) OK, not that Albatross...!
  27. Rob Honeycutt at 08:53 AM on 14 May 2011
    Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    Ah yes. Albatross.... One of my favs! ;-)
  28. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW @ 62: the problem with "the warming is in the pipeline" is that were this the case, one might expect an accelerating temperature increase. One "might", but one would be quite wrong. Two reasons: 1. The temperature response to an instantaneous forcing resulting from (say) a slug of enhanced CO2 looks somewhat like a hyperbolic rise towards a maximum (or more strictly, a superposition of several "hyperbolic" rises with characteristic relaxation times). Any "warming in the pipeline" would manifest as a decelerating temperature increase under these circumstances. Of course, the anthropogenic greenhouse forcing is being continually supplemented by continual emissions, and so the temperature response (averaged over rather longer periods than you would likely prefer to consider) is approximately linear. 2. "Warming in the pipeline" is dominated by the slower response elements of the climate system (especially heat uptake into the ocean). These accrue over a long period and so again their contribution will be apparent as a slowly increasing temperature contribution with a decelerating trend. Of course, this is much better assessed using a rather more quantitative modelling as illustrated, for example, the figure in Albatross's post @ 66. Note that the existence of "warming in the pipeline" is not in doubt. It's a fundamental property of the response to enhanced radiative forcing from whatever source, and only requires that we're observing the system at a period that is shortish on the timescale of the relevant response times of the climate system.
  29. Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    Rob, I was making a poor joke...you know, me 'Albatross' suggesting 'gliding' :) I guess even winch launches require burning FFs. Thank goodness I'm an Albatross.... Anyhow.....back to business.
  30. Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    Well, this is interesting. "I’ve read somewhere that about 5% of physicists have serious doubt that we really landed on the Moon. In both cases, science has moved on because the evidence is overwhelming. There was not a magic moment when it occurred, it is different with each person, but without doubt, it has." From the American Geophysical Union site. "Skeptics" really ought to actually read the first few lines of John's post about his dad to understand why the 97-98% figure is important.
  31. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW @59, "This rate, we should observe, is not necessarily abnormal, given that a similar period of warming occurred from 1910 through 1945" Another red herring, not to mention a well used disingenuous argument designed to confuse lay people. Not surprisingly this red herring has been addressed here at SkS. Keep trotting out the myths and we'll keep refuting them. Really, engaing in this behaviour only further harms the already tarnished reputation of the 'skeptics'. And it is not helping Lindzen's already weak case either.
  32. Rob Honeycutt at 08:25 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Here are all the trends plotted. Again, pretty much same basic picture. Heck, pick the one you like best. It's going to be difficult to change and fundamental conclusions about the science based on which data set you use.
  33. Rob Honeycutt at 08:18 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW @ 62... Go to woodfortrees and plot it yourself. Albatross... I remember Tamino's post now.
  34. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    There is another comparison between models and observations, the models are doing just fine thanks....but this line of argument is all just a red herring anyway. Solid blue and red lines are trends from GISS and HadCRU data, dashed lines are IPCC projections included in the TAR. [Source] This is the proper way to compare the models and projections. Looking at rates from ~1980-2010, and comparing those with rates of warming predicted for the various SRES scenarios beyond 2000 is not comparing apples to apples. Anyhow, Dana has addressed Lindzen's claim in his post here, what is being presented here by so-called 'skeptics' are red herrings. This is a no win for Lindzen, but rather than accept that fact, loyal 'skeptics' have to do their best to obfuscate the truth.
  35. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW #60 -
    "OK, but that won't change the fact that warming is taking place at a rate lower than the IPCC best estimate for the "low scenario".
    You misspelled the word "fiction".
  36. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Actually Rob @61, if there is an outlier, stats analysis by Tamino has shown the outlier is the Christy and Spencer's problem plagued "skeptic" UAH satellite product, see also here.
  37. ClimateWatcher at 08:06 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    61. What is the time period of reference? and are the RSS & UAH LT? or are they MT?
  38. ClimateWatcher at 08:04 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    56. Chris - the problem with "the warming is in the pipeline" is that were this the case, one might expect an accelerating temperature increase. Instead, what we find from the CRU data is a decelerating temperature increase. Decelerating to an actual cooling trend since 2001. (see CRU graphic above)
  39. Rob Honeycutt at 07:55 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    CW... I'm not sure how you can deem ANY of the data sets as an "outlier." They're pretty much all saying the same thing.
  40. ClimateWatcher at 07:53 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Do you really believe that Lindzen has it all right, and everyone else has it all wrong? You will note, I only gave credit to Lindzen for #1. On most of the other issues, I took exception or made nuance about the statements at least attributed to Lindzen. 1. The earth hasn't warmed... You completely and totally missed the point. Go back and re-read the post, several times. OK, but that won't change the fact that warming is taking place at a rate lower than the IPCC best estimate for the "low scenario". 4. climate sensitivity is low Well, the lower warming rate from 1. indicates this to be true. But nobody can be sure. Your understanding of this issue is abysmal. Please study more. Start here, but there is a whole, whole lot more to this than what is posted on that page (and certainly more than your minimalist treatment of the subject). You didn't bother to look at the images. What is earth's albedo? Is it the 33% used in the GISS model? Is it 31% cited by Trenberth's first paper? Is it the 29.8% in Trenberths recent paper? How might it have varied over the centuries? What is the outgoing energy from earth? Is it the 232 W/m^2 and rising as measured by satellites? Is it the 230 W/m^2 and falling as modeled by Hansen's GISS model? Is it the 235 W/m^2 assessed by Trenberth's first paper? Is it the 238 W/m^2 assessed by Trenberth's second paper? These differences are more than two times larger than the estimated forcing from a doubling of CO2. If one can't answer what earth's energy budget is, then one cannot even say if there is a surplus or deficit.
  41. ClimateWatcher at 07:25 AM on 14 May 2011
    Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    #58, Albatross: The IPCC fourth predicts the best estimate for the "low scenario" to be 1.8 K per century. Since 1979, GISS, which is of course the high outlier among temperature data sets, indicates a trend of 1.6 K per century. Note the 0.52 temperature trend. Multiply by 100 for a century and divide by the 32 years of the trend and get the 1.6. According to the IPCC definitions, global warming is occurring at a rate less than the best estimate for the 'low scenario'. This rate, we should observe, is not necessarily abnormal, given that a similar period of warming occurred from 1910 through 1945:
    Response:

    [dana1981] You are incorrect.  The warming trend is well within the range of IPCC model projections.

  42. Rob Honeycutt at 07:15 AM on 14 May 2011
    Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    The sheer level of maintenance required for a high performance aircraft engine is astonishing. Even on a new aircraft you can spend $10k a year just to keep it airworthy. Add in any AD's (airworthiness directives) and that number goes up. Then the babysitting you have to do en route and in decent adds a ton of complexity to the already complex flight environment. If aircraft engines were electric motors... all (or most) of that goes away. I know of one incident where the owner of an older twin let his aircraft sit on the ramp too long without operating the aircraft - not long, maybe 6 months - and a small amount of corrosion built up in the cylinders... the aircraft was essentially totaled. An aircraft worth close to half a million dollars... gone. But had those been electric motors... Crap. Sorry. This is WAAAAY off topic.
  43. Models are unreliable
    CBDunkerson 374. Perturbing the THC by jumping on one end and finding the other end rises does not mean that DO events funtion to balance hemispheric temperatures. I see your point that universally higher SST's would contraindicate DO as an explanation for current warming. Bear in mind that the deep water now upwelling is very old. Much of it emerging now began sinking during the Medieval Warm Period as the Vikings sacked England, and some may be 1600 years old. There is a lot of cold salty water in that pipeline that is insulated from warming at the surface.
  44. Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
    "The list goes on and on." Designing the powerplant to maintain power while flying upside down is easier, too ...
  45. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Dana @55, "I'm not really interested, honestly. He clearly didn't read the article, which contains all the necessary info to refute his arguments, so why waste the time?" No worries, I understand. I was wanting to allow you to have the first rebuttal, being the author of the piece and all. From what I have read with Hansen, the observed rate of warming in GISTEMP for 1980-2010 is comparable/in agreement with the values reported in the IPCC. I found this statement (wikipedia, sorry, I'm in a rush): "A temperature rise of about 0.2 °C per decade is projected for the next two decades for all SRES scenarios." From Hansen et al. (2010): "On the contrary, we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15°C–0.20°C per decade that began in the late 1970s." And from RealClimate for 1984-2010: "For the GISTEMP and HadCRUT3, the trends are 0.19+/-0.05 and 0.18+/-0.04ºC/dec (note that the GISTEMP met-station index has 0.23+/-0.06ºC/dec and has 2010 as a clear record high)." And, point 1 @50 is not a score for Lindzen, as you know: [Source]
  46. Stephen Baines at 06:16 AM on 14 May 2011
    CO2 has a short residence time
    DM and I differ in subtle ways in out terminology, but we are saying exactly the same thing. Just to be clear.. DMs "exchange" is what I would call equal and opposite gross fluxes between reservoirs. Gross fluxes are used to calculate residence time of a reservoir - for CO2 about 5 years. A residence time of 5 years implies that 1/5th or 20% of the atmospheric CO2 molecules passes into other reservoirs every year. That 20% is largely replaced by movement of CO2 into the atmosphere from other reservoirs. My "net exchange" is DMs "flux" -- i.e. net movement of material from one reservoir to another. This net movement between reservoirs is what matters for rate of change in the size of the atmospheric CO2 reservoir. The annual net movement of atmospheric CO2 into oceanic and terrestrial reservoirs are half the size of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. That's the atmospheric CO2 increases at only half the rate of anthorpgenic emissions. The bank account analogy is perfactly a propos here. If my income amounts to 20% of my balance per year and my costs amount to the same, I am not going to see an increase in my balance. If I get a new source of income that amounts to only 3% of my balance every year, but I only spend half of that new income, my balance will increase by 1.5% per year. If I lose that income and don't reduce my costs, my bank account will decline slowly as well. Its that simple. Come to think of it. My bank account looks too much like the C cycle for my liking.
    Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] Yes, that is absolutely correct. The reason that the airborne fraction is approximately constant is because we are forcing an approximately first order dynamical system with an approximately exponential perturbation. The result is an approximately exponential increase in atmospheric CO2 with a time constant virtually the same as the perturbation, so if you divide input by output you get approximately a constant value. It is nothing to do with differential absorbtion rates, which as you correctly point out is about 20% for both natural and anthropogenic CO2.
  47. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    48 Camburn Well done rather than defend your point from post 39, you grab the wuwt branch and swing off in another direction. A professionally executed "skeptical" argumentation technique (aka "quick, change tghe subject") often used to mice quickly away from a point if view which can't be defended. Yup. That really worked.
  48. Tracking the energy from global warming
    Tom@137, I have to respectfully disagree with your specific criticism of BP's math (having the sign wrong) though note I'm not agreeing with BP's analysis in general. By way of example, here is a graph of y = x - 10. Note that the function is negative until x=10, and represents a constant positive linear trend: And here is the integral of that function: Note that the value of the integral is negative with increasing absolute magnitude until x=10, after which the absolute magnitude decreases though the actual value remains negative. Also note the similarity in shape to BP's graph, with x=10 being roughly equivalent to 2008. Again, the key to his analysis was how he baselined the anomaly data. As an example if I take my sample function above, and move the baseline down by 10 (y = x), then we see a very different story when we take the integral: >"...definitely shows total incoming energy in 2008 to be less than total incoming energy in 2000." By taking the integral, BP is basically showing the "running total" of energy in the system from t=2000 to the point in question. So his graph is showing that total energy in the system mostly decreasing from 2000 to 2008, and then mostly increasing in 2008 and onwards. Overall his graph shows that energy lost from 2000-2008 was greater than energy gained in 2008 and onwards. This does not contradict the fact that the net anomaly was higher in 2008 than it was 2000.
  49. Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
    Oh dear ClimateWatcher; that’s really poor. It’s tedious to go through your full set of weak logic but a couple of things stand out: 5. water vapour feedback is negative: Your “argument”: ”there are reasons to believe this is so” But we’ve just seen higher up in the thread that you’ve completely misrepresented the science on this. You provided one flawed analysis to support your point, and are now ignoring the multitude of data that completely opposes your assertion, as if you didn't happen to notice it. The evidence indicates rather strongly that the water vapour feedback is positive. If your evidence doesn’t support your “argument”, what’s the point of attempting to maintain the “argument”? Why bother entering the debate at all, if you're simply going to ignore the information you receive that would allow you to come to a reasonably informed decision?? 1. earth hasn’t warmed as much as expected/4. climate sensitivity is low The climate sensitivity is defined as the Earth surface temperature response at equilibrium in response to a doubling of atmospheric [CO2]. We know that one cannot assess climate sensitivity from the earth temperature evolution during a short period (Kirk-Davidoff, ex-Lindzen lab, who Chris G mentions in post @ 14, recently published a paper that reinforces that climate sensitivity is underestimated when using short-term analyses). Lindzen's own flawed analyses have shown the mess you can get into trying to assess climate sensitivity by analysis of short term relationships between temperature fluctuations and TOA outward radiation. If we consider more appropriate time periods that allow the Earth to come closer towards the equilibrium response, the warming is certainly as much as expected. We've warmed by around 0.8-0.9 oC since the middle of the 19th century, while [CO2] has risen from around 286 ppm then to 389 ppm now. A climate sensitivity of 2 oC should then give an equilibrium warming of: ln(389/286)*2/ln(2) = 0.86 oC We know that we haven’t had the full warming from this enhancement of greenhouse gases, since it takes the earth many decades to come to equilibrium with the current forcing resulting from raised greenhouse gases. Likewise we know that a significant part of the warming from this enhancement of greenhouse gas levels has been offset by manmade atmospheric aerosols. On the other hand some of the warming is due to non-CO2 sources (man-made methane, nitrous oxides, tropospheric ozone, black carbon). Non greenhouse gas contributions to this warming (solar, volcanic) are known to be small. Overall, it’s rather unlikely, given the warming since the mid-19th century, that climate sensitivity is less than 2 oC. This is expanded on in more detail in Knutti and Hegerl (2008), in Murphy et al. (2009), in Lean and Rind (2008), in Hansen et al (2005).
  50. Dikran Marsupial at 04:49 AM on 14 May 2011
    CO2 has a short residence time
    drrocket@55 wrote: "If the rate of absorption of ACO2 is only 50% of the rate of emission, that should be true of nCO2 also. " This is incorrect, the IPCC do not say that the rate of absorption of ACO2 is only 50%. They say that the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is about half anthropogenic emissions, but that doesn't mean that half the anthropogenic CO2 emitted each year is absorbed by the biosphere. In fact about 20% of the ACO2 in the atmosphere is shunted into the other reservoirs each year, and that rate of absorption is the same as it is for NCO2. That is because the residence time for both ACO2 and NCO2 is about five years. However, as has been pointed out to you, residence time is not what controls the rate of growth or decline of atmospheric concentrations, that is decided by the adjustment time. The residence time depends on the volume of the flux of CO2 out of the atmosphere (which is vast, hence the residence time is short). The rate of growth of atmospheric CO2 however also depends on the volume of the flux into the atmosphere. To be specific, the rate of increase is proportional to the difference between total emissions and total uptake. This difference is much smaller (about half anthropogenic emissions), hence the adjustment time is much longer. The thing you don't seem to understand is that the atmosphere exchanges vast quantities of CO2 with the oceans and terrestrial biosphere each year. However, this is an exchange, with natural emissions approximately balanced by natural uptake, so even though it make residence time very short, it has very little effect on atmospheric concentration. Our emissions have altered the balance by increasing the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, which increases uptake by the oceans (and it is plant food, so some extra goes into the terrestrial biosphere), and hence the natural environment has become a net carbon sink. That is why the observed rise is only about half anthropogenic emissions. Do the differential equations for a one-box model of the carbon cycle and you will find this is correct.

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