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mspelto at 22:53 PM on 21 April 2011Zebras? In Greenland? Really?
Of course there is no direct measurement of basal melt, however given the flotation relationship. If you know the change in surface elevation of a point over time that is on top of floating ice, and you know the surface melt rate, than any other change in surface height has to come from bottom melt, for areas with low velocity during a specific melt season. -
Bob Lacatena at 22:50 PM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
BP,I do not think "private email" is a proper characterization of correspondence...
Personally, I'm very, very glad that my society values personal privacy more than you do, and I do not think that one checks personal privacy at the door merely by working in a position that receives funding from the government. Being an employee of the government does not turn one into a state-and-people-owned slave-robot. To me, the real travesty here is that some people will quickly abandon rights and freedoms (such as privacy) just to latch onto some pitiful and evil effort to fracture the public's trust in climate scientists. -
Bob Lacatena at 22:37 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
RW1, Let me summarize my understanding of your logic. 1. Your personal calculations about clouds, based purely on Trenberth's "Global Energy Flows" diagram, "suggest that in aggregate the net effect of clouds is to cool rather than warm." (you haven't actually made this case, but it's your main premise). 2. The scientists behind the models admit that the cloud feedbacks are uncertain, vary between models, and provide an important positive feedback (no need to exaggerate this further... leave it at "important"). 3. Your assumption is that since you've "proven" that clouds cool rather than warm, a positive feedback is impossible (despite your lack of understanding of the physics behind how the clouds work on atmospheric temperatures, how they form, and how their formation will be affected by rising temperatures, and the fact that not all clouds are created equal). 4. Completely eliminating all positive feedback from clouds reduces estimated sensitivity from 3.1 to 1.9. 5. You think the reduction is so great that 1.9 isn't a problem -- it's not a dangerously high amount of warming. 6. You discount the fact that the lapse rate feedback might not be as great as estimated, or that CO2 and albedo feedbacks might be greater or kick in sooner than estimated, or that anthropogenic CO2 additions could actually increase with human population growth and expanding industrialization. 7. You discount the fact that other studies point to a climate sensitivity of 3+, which imply that that the cloud feedback estimates are either correct, or that any error is offset by underestimations of other positive feedbacks (or over-estimation of the lapse rate negative feedback). 8. You discount the fact that we've already seen the climate warm by 0.8˚C this century without a noticeable negative cloud feedback, i.e. that the climate is obviously sensitive enough to swing 0.8˚C in a mere 100 years (0.6˚C of that in only the last 30 years) despite your proposed fast acting negative cloud feedback. -
Berényi Péter at 22:24 PM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
I'm terribly sorry for the misinformation. A closer examination reveals that Dr. Schneider has in fact forwarded his student's mail at 10:32 UTC on 12 October 2009 (and not at 22:32 UTC). Otherwise Dr. Trenberth could not reply at 14:57:37 UTC on the same day. BTW someone (conceivably among the recipients) has forwarded the mail to Paul Hudson as well. We do not know which comments were included in that version. Trenberth's message probably not, because Hudson published a few points on his blog at 13:52 UTC, possibly triggered by the incoming mail. However, that mail may have included Michael Mann's comment at 13:00:44 UTC, because both that comment and Hudson's reply refers to Richard Black. -
Alec Cowan at 22:13 PM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
@Berényi Péter #149 Thank you for being so throughly and pretty transparent on the subject. Regarding the second part, we have the actual on-topic in the link to Trenberth's statement -one click ahead from the last link your provided- and his "It is amazing to see this particular quote lambasted so often.". The rest is only linked by your racconto of the supposed chronology, what takes us back again to the question, are the e-mails real? haven't them being doctored or snipped to suit specific advocacies? It is the kind of situation people says "only God knows". If the hacker stepped out and passed a polygraphy, and forensics experts swore they didn't find evidence of doctoring or any change of content, I would start to believe they are real -not that the planet is in a trend of cooling and there's a conspiracy to hide it-. This takes us to the next point: Regarding the first part, I read your words a few minutes after reading this article (in Spanish) in the newspaper. It can be summarized as an appeal court setting that violation of emails are a federal crime and emails are completely equivalent to a epistolary letter, not only in a general quality of them being "private" but specifically protected by the constitution as being "inviolable" what is much more. That is in my country but the countries where the communication took place are not much different about what is legal. The hacker has the constitutional right to not self-incriminate and Trenberth et al had at least the constitutional right to privacy, if not inviolability of any epistorar communication. This bring us at you cloning in #149 the "climategate mistique" of, in your own words, «I do not think "private email" is a proper characterization of correspondence between government employees (or scholars working on government grants) during office hours using their work email addresses,...». A lot can be commented about: if the person hasn't that right, the company or the agency has the right (the "mistique" followed it with "the agencies refuse to show it because they are part of the conspiracy"); what about the parts of messages quoted in other messages coming from private individuals; what if one employee using his own account plot with another employee to burn Mona Lisa, have the agency to pay a milliard dollars to the Louvre because it was "agency time"? This can be going on for ages, but basically the arguments about why the e-mails are not private are like those of ambulance chasing lawyers, the kind of argument with the arguer being immediately benefited by the new rules his argument creates, that is a 30% of Mona Lisa's compensatory damages. -
les at 22:09 PM on 21 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
51. I linked to a video of a talk around the new paper and more on RC where you can find a link to the paper here... -
newcrusader at 22:03 PM on 21 April 2011What was it like the last time CO2 levels were this high?
Dr. Hansen has a new paper out discussing the use of Aerosols, and how they seem to be reflecting a good deal of the light and warming- thus far. Anybody have more to add regarding this? -
Bob Lacatena at 21:57 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
88, BP,Trenberth's 79 W/m2 implies an average cloud albedo smaller than 0.39.
He took his numbers primarily (not completely) from the ERBE and CERES satellites, so they are unlikely to be wrong. I'd suggest that of that 341, since 78 is absorbed by the atmosphere, only 263 is available to be reflected (although this is a gross estimate, since it's more complex than that). If one assumes a cloud cover of .66 then 174 of that 263 is subject to cloud cover. 79 reflected from 174 gives .45, which is well within the ranges given by Hansen 1998 -- even at the upper end. -
Bob Lacatena at 21:42 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
82, RW1,...so the 79 W/m^2 reflected back out is SW radiation.
But you appear later to use this result to compute reflectivity for LW radiation from the ground up. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but as I've said repeatedly... sorting through your swarm of calculations is a nightmare. -
Bob Lacatena at 21:39 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
82, RW1,I don't see how. A watt is watt, regardless of whether it's SW or LW.
!?!?!?!?!????? If you don't get this, you have a huge, huge hole in your understanding. You need to know this. It's critical to everything. As I have said repeatedly, you have a lot of studying to do. One can't even discuss this with you if you don't know why that statement demonstrates a horrible lack of understanding of the system.I'm well aware of all these things.
But you choose to simply ignore them, and focus on the behavior of clouds on a sunny day, as if that is the only way that they operate....they do suggest that in aggregate the net effect of clouds is to cool rather than warm...
You say this, but you have not actually demonstrated it, both because your numbers are unclear, and they contain at least one critical flaw (SW vs. LW distinction), and probably many others.But you are correct in that the issue is more complicated than this, which is why it has to be carefully weighed will all the other evidence.
And yet twice you have ignored my demonstration of the long list of other evidence which points to climate sensitivity being at lease 3˚C, and therefore supports the contention that the models have the cloud feedback right, or at least that the net effect of all feedbacks points to 3˚C, even if the cloud feedback is lower than expected (or negative!). -
Bob Lacatena at 21:30 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
82, RW1,And you're accuse me of exaggerating things.
But my hyperbole is intended to poke fun at your hypoerbole. You've arbitrarily focused on the cloud feedback as uncertain, which is true, but it's not that uncertain, and very, very few people are arguing that it will be negative. The negative lapse rate feedback is also uncertain. What if that turns out to be wrong? The pace and extent of positive CO2 feedbacks are uncertain. What if they're faster, and greater? The pace of future anthropogenic CO2 generation is also uncertain, and with people like you trying to influence the debate, it's unlikely to go down, but very likely to go up. The rate of Arctic ice melt is exceeding predictions and increasing that positive feedback. There are lots of uncertainties. Picking just one from the bunch, and then exaggerating the chance that the error is in the direction that you'd like it to be, is not logical, especially when the aggregate of all uncertainties has more chance of being net positive than negative....a significant area of uncertainty...
Exaggeration, in particular in the wrong direction... it is uncertain both ways, and unlikely to deviate so far from expectations as to make a that large of a difference. I would point out that your cherished 1.9˚C sensitivity, the lowest you claim one could reasonably get, is still dangerously high....on a critical examination of the evidence, data and logic - much of which I've presented here...
To me you've completely failed to present your case, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and think that the failing lies only in your presentation and not your numbers, because as I've already said, trying to sort through your steps is like trying to read a Chinese assembly manual for a nuclear reactor, translated by a Swede into Slavic using a base 9 number system. I hate to suggest it, but perhaps if you went through the numbers again, but in less of a jumble, one could sort out what you are doing, and where you are going. It is almost impossible to see where you have made inappropriate assumptions (such as assuming the cloud reflectivity for SW radiation is the same as for LW radiation) with the way you've written it up. When you introduce a new number, be clear about where you've gotten it. When you come up with a result, be clear about what it represents. Most importantly, when you come up with something that somehow supports your assertions, point it out. Before you even start, state what you are trying to derive. I still cannot figure out which numbers support your position, or how and why, and which ones are just intermediate steps.Is it just a coincidence that...
Is it also it yet another coincidence that...
And what is this supposed to be implying? -
Alec Cowan at 21:18 PM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
@Ken #147 Yeah, Ken! We get it. No need for #148. You are not replying to my #145 as you put there. Regarding #146, change your attitude of trying to bring everything to a King Arthur's set and do either these thing: Please yourself in NOAA's site and Argo. Use the search features in this site to find the many posts and arguments where (total) ocean heat content is dealt. You'll find a lot of figures there. Once selected the proper place, start there a debate about "figures" and invite me to provide there. You don't even need to say it because I'd found it in the recent comments section. Be aware that by doing so you'd loose [erratum in next comment: "lose"] the shield that provides you here the fact of being off-topic so many would reply your comments there, not just me. And that's the crux regarding the tale of comments here (and the second "thing"): It looks like you still don't realize the topic of this post and its comment section: The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on "the lack of warming" which relates to what Trenberth's said and doesn't relate to each instance that can be labeled as a "the lack of warming" and that you can pull out of the hat, no matter it is verbatim, fully figure dependent or whatever. You may say that the planet's atmosphere, hydrosphere and 5 outer metres of the lithosphere have lost some 1022Joules of heat from February 2010 to August 2010, and I'll happily agree that you are lastly being reasonable, but would you be on-topic. I'm afraid not. There's no clearer way to state that you haven't got the topic yet than reading my #146 (The paragraph starting with "So it takes us back to what "the travesty" in Trenberth's meaning might really be...") and reading your reply in #147 calling it all "...don't have any facts to argue and are engaged on a rambling randon walk through the topic". That speaks volumes. Read my next reply to another participant who is much more on-topic. -
michael sweet at 20:33 PM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Are the people who have lost their homes in the unprecedented Texas wildfires also climate refugees? These types of fires were predicted long ago by climate scientists who have warned about the American west drying out due to climate change. There is no proof yet , but that does not mean that the cause is not AGW. Charlie: Provide a link to your peer reviewed assessements. Since it takes about a year for work to be peer reviewed I am interested in your sources for events that only happened 9 months ago. James Hansen has a long record of being right. -
Berényi Péter at 20:12 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
#86 RW1 at 14:29 PM on 21 April, 2011 Trenberth is showing 79 W/m^2 of incoming solar energy is reflected off of clouds back out to space Something does not add up here. Global cloud fraction is more than 0.6 while average incoming shortwave radiation is 341 W/m2. Trenberth's 79 W/m2 implies an average cloud albedo smaller than 0.39. On the other hand it seems to be more than 0.42 (Han 1998, Table 1. pp. 1525). Solution? -
alan_marshall at 19:22 PM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
Here is the text of the email I sent to Tony Abbot after the parliamentary display of his ignorance: Flannery Misrepresented To: Hon. Tony Abbot MP In parliament yesterday, you were quick to stoke the anger of your constituency by using the following remarks by Dr. Tim Flannery: If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet’s not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years. You responded to his remarks by saying: So this is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry …. …. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years. Climate change is an issue which will profoundly affect the world in which your children and grandchildren will live. As leader of the alternative government, you have a responsibility to have at least a layman’s understanding of the science. Regrettably you do not. Otherwise you would have understood what Dr. Flannery was saying. Let me interpret for you. We have already experienced 0.8 degrees C of warming. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time. If the world cut all emissions tomorrow, that CO2 would continue to warm the Earth until the atmosphere and ocean achieve thermal equilibrium. That is the extra 0.7 degrees C of warming that scientists say is “in the pipeline”. So even if all emissions were cut tomorrow, we are still committed to total warming of 1.5 degrees C, and the world would remain warm for centuries until the excess CO2 was absorbed. That was Dr. Flannery’s point. What is the outcome if we follow your lead and to do next to nothing because it “won’t make a scrap of difference”? If we keep emitting CO2, we will keep adding to the ultimate level of warming. The emission reductions pledged at Copenhagen, including Australia’s inadequate response, are not sufficient to hold total warming below 2 degrees C. The projected rise is more like 3.5 to 4 degrees C by the end of the century. Dr. Flannery was making a simple observation that the situation is bad and is not getting better any time soon. Please note that he did not suggest the situation won’t get any worse. If the world keeps emitting CO2 at near current levels, as you propose to do, it will get worse. I suggest you read the copy of Dr. Flannery’s book, “The Weather Makers”, that I sent you for Christmas 2009. If you make the effort to read reputable science, you won’t make the mistake of misunderstanding Dr. Flannery again. Regards, Alan Marshall www.climatechangeanswers.org -
Berényi Péter at 18:58 PM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
#145 Alec Cowan at 23:34 PM on 20 April, 2011 So which one is The Email? As it is not allowed to publish "other peoples stolen private emails" at this site, that question will not be discussed here. I do not think "private email" is a proper characterization of correspondence between government employees (or scholars working on government grants) during office hours using their work email addresses, but ( -Snip- ) Anyway, the thread including Trenberth's travesty was started by Narasimha D. Rao, PhD Candidate at Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), Stanford University, student of the late prof. Stephen H. Schneider, who denounced Paul Hudson, BBCs reporter on climate change to his mentor on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at 18:25:53 UTC in an email for publishing the article titled What happened to global warming? at the BBC site on Friday, 9 October 2009 15:22 UTC. Prof. Schneider elected to forward the message on Monday, 12 October 2009 at 22:32 UTC (14:32 local time) to the Team, encouraging them to "straighten this out" in an op-ed response. What follows is the discussion of this question by various Team members including Distinguished Senior Scientist Dr. Kevin Trenberth. That's the context.Moderator Response: [DB] Moderation complaints snipped. -
scaddenp at 17:45 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
RW1 - it empirical support for models having feedback about right. They do the calculation properly. -
Dikran Marsupial at 17:44 PM on 21 April 2011CO2 was higher in the past
Even with 0ppmv CO2 now the sun is bright enough that a snowball Earth is all but impossible, so the direct comparison wouldn't be valid. The direct comparison would only be valid if we were at the global glaciation threshold now. 500ppmv is clearly not the threshold for global glaciation now, if it were, we would be under a glacier! The drop in TSI of 4% is about 54 W/m^2, three doublings of CO2 would be about 12 W/m^2, so that presumably means that for a global glaciation to happen now, the sun would have to dim by about 42W/m^2 or about 3%. To put that into context, the variation of the 11 year solar cycle is about 2W/m^2 and the difference between glacial and interglacial conditions is apparently about 7W/m^2. -
shoyemore at 16:56 PM on 21 April 2011Announcing Shaping Tomorrow's World
John, your energy, commitment and good ideas never cease to amaze me. Well done. -
trunkmonkey at 15:47 PM on 21 April 2011CO2 was higher in the past
How is it that 4% less TSI in the Ordovician due to a younger sun results in a sixfold increase (500ppm now 3000ppm then) in the supposed CO2 tipping point for glaciation? -
Marcus at 15:17 PM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
Wow cloa513, yet another totally unsupported little rant from you. You care to back up even *one* of your claims with papers from *reliable* sources? ( -snip- ).Moderator Response: [DB] Inflammatory snipped. -
cloa513 at 15:10 PM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
Only if you believe the IPCC models- 5 times wrong- the approach has got to be totally wrong take the physics first thought of add more unproven physics positive feedback effects. Sure human introduced CO2 has a small warming effect but the reductions will have an unmeasureable small effect. Moderator- your cosmic radiation is totally wrong cosmic varies on the solar 11 year cycle. You can't average solar radiation over its cycle you don't average any other factor over 11 years The effect of the sun and cosmic rays adds an enormous basic model effect so CO2 mainly accounts for the tiny change we've had so far and that will slowly increase (logarythmically)Moderator Response: [DB] Discussion of the "CO2 Effect is Weak" belongs on that thread, "It's the Sun" and "It's Cosmic Rays" all belong on their appropriate threads, not here. Really, all of this has been looked into at length; you just have to use the Search function and do a bit of reading to find out for yourself. -
RW1 at 14:29 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
Sphaerica (RE: 81) "Reflectivity for things like clouds are dependent on the wavelength, so right there most of your calculations appear to be invalid" Trenberth is showing 79 W/m^2 of incoming solar energy is reflected off of clouds back out to space. The energy coming in from the Sun is SW radiation, so the 79 W/m^2 reflected back out is SW radiation. "(I say appear, because quite honestly, you present them in such a confused jumble, pulling in numbers willy nilly without clear attribution, that it's given me a headache trying to sort out what you did, and eventually I gave up... I don't have the time to sort through it if you don't have the time to present it with more clarity)" What part isn't clear? The ISCCP data says clouds cover 66.7% of the surface on average. I rounded this up to 0.67. There is 341 W/m^2 from the Sun incident on the Earth, so 67% of that is 228 W/m^2 incident on clouds, 79 W/m^2 of which is reflected away for a net reflectance of 35% or 0.35 (79 is 35% of 228) per m^2 of cloud cover. I then used the same method for the clear sky and subtracted the difference of the weighted averages for the net of 51 W/m^2 (after my slight error correction later in the thread in post 45). -
RW1 at 14:10 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
scaddenp (RE: 83) "How long will you wait with warming trucking along consistent with a climate sensitivity of 3 not 2, before you would be prepared to say just maybe the models are calculating feedback the correct way? 10 years, 30, 60?" Well, I don't agree that the warming we've seen so far is consistent with a sensitivity of 3 C, but that's an issue for another thread. I don't want to delve into that here. -
RW1 at 13:59 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
Sphaerica (RE: 81), "For the life of me, I can't figure out what the point is to all of your calculations. I can mostly follow them, but they're such a convoluted morass of numbers that I can't figure out what the final, meaningful result is supposed to be." The numbers are showing that in the aggregate, additional clouds reflect more energy back out to space than they trap or block from the surface. That for each additional m^2 of cloud cover, there is loss of about 10-12 W/m^2. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. "Again, you are ignoring wavelengths," I don't see how. A watt is watt, regardless of whether it's SW or LW. "as well as temperatures and seasons. Cloudy days in winter are warmer than summer, because of the radiation from the clouds. And as I've already explained, there are different types of clouds, with varying reflectivity. Clouds at night warm the surface while having no cooling effect whatsoever. High clouds made of ice reflect almost nothing, but trap IR." I'm well aware of all these things. The data is globally averaged, so all of these effects (differences between night and day, types of clouds etc.) are accounted for in the numbers. "Finally, all of this is beside the point. No one has ever said that clouds can only warm, or can't reflect inbound radiation. This has all been taken into account, so your efforts to put complex numbers on it looks to me like a very well dressed strawman. What happens going forward depends on what sorts of clouds form more or less in a warmed climate. The question is, will warming generate more low clouds which reflect more than they absorb, or more high clouds which absorb and barely reflect? Your numbers do nothing to address this." Not by themselves - no, but they do suggest that in aggregate the net effect of clouds is to cool rather than warm, which is much more consistent with negative feedback, especially given the albedo hasn't decreased (or has even slightly increased). But you are correct in that the issue is more complicated than this, which is why it has to be carefully weighed will all the other evidence. This is also why understanding the role clouds play in maintaining the energy balance is so important to understanding cloud behavior and ultimately whether or not they primarily act to amplify or attenuate warming. -
scaddenp at 13:56 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
How long will you wait with warming trucking along consistent with a climate sensitivity of 3 not 2, before you would be prepared to say just maybe the models are calculating feedback the correct way? 10 years, 30, 60? -
Charlie A at 13:16 PM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Michael Sweet #17 says "James Hansen says that the floods in Pakistan would "almost certainly not" have occured if not for AGW." In the link you provided to a file on columbia.edu that appears to be from a Jim Hansen e-mail newsletter, Hansen also made the same exact claim for the 2010 heat wave in Moscow, the 2003 heat wave in Europe, and the all-time record high temperatures reached in many Asian nations in 2010. There is peer reviewed literature that says otherwise for at least two of these events. Hansen is first and foremost an activist, and only secondarily a scientist. You linked to one of his work products as an activist.Moderator Response: [DB] Correction: Hansen is primarily a scientist, but one who's research has pushed him reluctantly into activism. -
RW1 at 13:14 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
Sphaerica (RE: 78), "That's a gigantic if. If the moon were made of green cheese, NASA could feed the world." And you're accuse me of exaggerating things. "So you're hanging your hat on the guess that all of the climate scientists in the world got something very, very wrong... just because they admit that it's an area of uncertainty?" Not just an area of uncertainty but a significant area of uncertainty. But far from it, I'm hanging my hat on a critical examination of the evidence, data and logic - much of which I've presented here. Is it just a coincidence that whether or not sensitivity is very high or benignly low hangs mostly on the cloud feedback, and those claiming a high sensitivity are also claiming significant uncertainty for the cloud feedback, while those claiming a low sensitivity are not? Is it also it yet another coincidence that net negative cloud feedback is consistent with how the incident energy on the surface from the Sun is responded to in the system, while positive cloud feedback is not? -
Bob Lacatena at 13:12 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
79, RW1,...some calculations that are directly inconsistent with positive cloud feedback...
For the life of me, I can't figure out what the point is to all of your calculations. I can mostly follow them, but they're such a convoluted morass of numbers that I can't figure out what the final, meaningful result is supposed to be. Could you perhaps bother to actually make a point? Simply saying "clouds will be negative, look I have lots of numbers" doesn't cut it. Exactly what numbers are we supposed to take away from that mess? You also confuse matters by trying to infer things like reflectivity of clouds when inbound radiation is primarily (but not totally) in the visible spectrum, while outbound radiation leans more to LW. Reflectivity for things like clouds are dependent on the wavelength, so right there most of your calculations appear to be invalid (I say appear, because quite honestly, you present them in such a confused jumble, pulling in numbers willy nilly without clear attribution, that it's given me a headache trying to sort out what you did, and eventually I gave up... I don't have the time to sort through it if you don't have the time to present it with more clarity).These calculations are consistent with general observations - that is cloudy days are usually cooler than sunny days.
No, really? I wonder why climate scientists never thought of that.The opposite would be the case if clouds blocked more energy than they reflect away (cloudy days would be warmer than sunny days).
Again, you are ignoring wavelengths, as well as temperatures and seasons. Cloudy days in winter are warmer than summer, because of the radiation from the clouds. And as I've already explained, there are different types of clouds, with varying reflectivity. Clouds at night warm the surface while having no cooling effect whatsoever. High clouds made of ice reflect almost nothing, but trap IR. Finally, all of this is beside the point. No one has ever said that clouds can only warm, or can't reflect inbound radiation. This has all been taken into account, so your efforts to put complex numbers on it looks to me like a very well dressed strawman. What happens going forward depends on what sorts of clouds form more or less in a warmed climate. The question is, will warming generate more low clouds which reflect more than they absorb, or more high clouds which absorb and barely reflect? Your numbers do nothing to address this. Meanwhile, you completely avoided my main point, which is that many, many lines of evidence, including current observations, paleohistory and models, all point to a sensitivity of 3˚C or greater. Every one of those studies argues strongly against your inferred and mainly hoped for negative cloud feedback. You have a large body of evidence that you need to refute with something more than a pile of convoluted numbers. -
Ron Crouch at 12:26 PM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
If you have access you may want to refer to Observational and Model Evidence for Positive Low-Level Cloud Feedback: Amy C. Clement, Robert Burgman and Joel R. Norris (2009).Moderator Response: [DB] For those troubled by access issues, Harvard has an open copy here. -
Eric (skeptic) at 12:02 PM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Moderator, thanks, that answers my question about resettlement. It is targeted towards island nations and other cases with no possible mitigation measures. -
RW1 at 11:47 AM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
Sphaerica (RE: 71), "You love to exaggerate things. The cloud feedback is important, not huge. It's more important if it is neutral or negative, but you've shown no evidence other than that you think common sense says so, while hundreds of climate scientists think otherwise. But even if you proved clouds to be a weak negative feedback, it would reduce sensitivity to anywhere from 1.9 to 3.4 (versus 3 to 4.5), given that 3 is the current best estimate, but also at the low end of the range. Even 1.9 is very, very bad, especially since we're currently taking no action to avoid it." I'm I the only one who has actually read this section in the IPCC report that I linked regarding this? It clearly says the average sensitivity of the model predictions with no cloud feedback drops to 1.9 C. That is greater than half of all the enhanced warming, so I stand by my statement that clouds are a "huge" component. If the cloud feedback is negative, it would reduce the sensitivity significantly. "But first you need to submit some evidence beyond your "plain, everyman logic" to prove that clouds are even a neutral feedback, let alone negative." I have presented quite a bit of evidence beyond just "plain, everyman logic". In case you missed it, I started out in the thread by presenting some calculations that are directly inconsistent with positive cloud feedback, especially given the albedo has not decreased. And many other lines of evidence as well. "And that evidence has to contradict all of this evidence to the contrary. I'm afraid a sensitivity below 3˚C is very, very unlikely." How can they claim a sensitivity of 3 C is so likely when they also claim there is great uncertainty in regards to the cloud feedback, which accounts for more than half of the enhanced warming by their own numbers. That seems like an oxymoron to me. If this were the case, the planet would never, ever cool, no matter what." How do you figure? Surely there are a multitude of other influences other than just water vapor and clouds. "Because water vapor will increase or decrease in the atmosphere fairly quickly in response to temperature. Raise the temperature, raise the water vapor. Lower the temperature, lower the water vapor.". Water vapor is an amplifier of temperature - meaning if the temperature goes up, the water vapor goes up, and then the increased water vapor causes the temperature to go up even more and so forth. This means something other than water vapor is causing the temperature to decrease. "CO2, on the other hand, will stay in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, even if, for example, a large volcanic eruption temporarily lowers temperatures." Yes, I know. I'm quite aware that the added CO2 has a 'permanent' or long-term staying effect unlike water vapor. I don't see how this contradicts anything of mine. Remember, I don't dispute a likelihood of some effect - just the magnitude. "[Why would the same forces that modulate or control water vapor's radiative forcing, not modulate and control CO2's radiative forcing?] There are no such forces for either. This isn't a human designed system with controls and balances. It's nature, and it's (fortunately) got a simple balance to it, and one that should be very hard to shove, but we've found a way to do it." Just stating there are "no such forces" and "a simple balance" isn't even remotely good enough. If you don't know the primary mechanism (or mechanisms) that drive the current energy balance that results in such high stability, you can't accurately predict how the system will respond to any perturbation - anthropogenic or otherwise. -
Don Gisselbeck at 11:44 AM on 21 April 2011Muller Misinformation #4: Time to Act
Maybe it is time to start asking trolls if they are being paid for trolling and if not, why not. There was link “http://imgur.com/QAcJm" on RC purporting to be to a group looking for trolls. -
muoncounter at 11:34 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Eric#22: "why does the total stay the same?" I don't know, but I've seen a number of papers showing less frequent but more intense rainfall events under warming scenarios. Example: Sun et al 2007 ... the shift in precipitation frequency distribution toward extremes results in large increases in very heavy precipitation events (>50 mm day−1), so that for very heavy precipitation, the percentage increase in frequency is much larger than the increase in intensity (31.2% versus 2.4%).Moderator Response: May I draw everybody's attention to the fact that a more extended version of this piece is available on Shaping Tomorrows World. This may not answer all questions raised here, but it goes beyond this brief post which was produced for a 2-3 minute radio broadcast. -
Ron Crouch at 11:25 AM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
As they say, things are going to get worse before they get better. Unfortunately the global economy is so tightly tied to carbon that the addiction won't be broken for some years to come. The Alberta oil sands are evidence of this fact with them being poised to become the largest supplier of foreign oil to the U.S. So much is riding on these oil sands that they have drawn foreign investment from countries such as China and Norway. So far it's been a lot of smoke and mirrors with the environment, but what the hell, people have to have something to put in the tank of the old Hummer. What does it matter if you pollute an entire watershed and destroy the lives and livelihood of the residents of the area. Similar to the phosphate problem of the Lake Winnipeg watershed. Government doesn't get it and are ill prepared to do anything (quite often having been the cause of the problem in the first place) when the kettle gets called black. Anyone interested can view an hour and a half documentary special hosted by Canada's Dr. David Suzuki here. And that is unfortunately the tip of the iceberg. There is still a lot of coal in the ground (860,938 million tons globally) that I'm sure someone would just love to convert to gas, and then there are those oil shale deposits in the U.S. at 301 billion metric tons. Even with alternative sources of energy to drive the economy it will take time to develop the infrastructure to support them and bring them to commercial scalings, especially in the transportation sector. But it can be done, the technologies are there. So hang onto your hats because there is still a steep hill to climb before this roller coaster ride even begins it's decent. The worst part is that this roller coaster ride won't reach the point from whence it began for a very long time to come. -
Eric (skeptic) at 11:25 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
muoncounter, why does the total stay the same? In any case the cause doesn't really matter if the result is the same. The new channels will displace millions of people, far better to deal with it as a certainty but keep in mind that most people don't like being moved proactively for reasons they may not agree with. -
muoncounter at 11:16 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Eric#20: "the Indus merely behaved as it has historically." You can't really tell that from the map you linked. Another opinion: "Total rainfall stays the same, but it comes in shorter more intense bursts." In August 2010, more than half of the normal monsoon rain fell in only one week. Typically it is spread over three months. Professor Sinha remarked: "Rivers just can't cope with all that water in such a short time. It was five times, maybe 10 times, more than normal." --emphasis added As we are learning with warming, it's the abnormal rates of change that make the difference. -
Ken Lambert at 11:07 AM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Typo "random walk" -
Ken Lambert at 11:07 AM on 21 April 2011The e-mail 'scandal' travesty in misquoting Trenberth on
Alec Cowan #145,146 Not a number or reference to any new OHC research in either of you posts Alec. I can only assume that you don't have any facts to argue and are engaged on a rambling randon walk through the topic. -
muoncounter at 11:03 AM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
Bern#14: "the 'skeptic' approach" I like the ones who say 'I can't see it happening, so it must not be real.' In the car/wall analogy, they're driving with their eyes closed. -
Eric (skeptic) at 10:46 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Here's a picture of the courses of the Indus from "The Recent History of the Indus" by D. A. Holmes ($10 from JSTOR) http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/qq51/palmer2/indus-courses.jpg that shows why millions of people were affected - the Indus merely behaved as it has historically. -
adelady at 10:33 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
If we're talking environment / climate change refugees, we have to face the truth about where people live and why they live there. River deltas, low land beside the ocean and flood plains - why do people live there? The land is fertile because of silt deposition. Catching fish is much easier if you live close to the river or the ocean. The reason there _will_ be many, many more environment refugees is because the places that are easiest or best for people to live are the most vulnerable to sea level rise and to flooding from extreme precipitation. And already there are many people dispersing from drought affected lands, including those whose glacier fed water supplies are drying up - South America being a prime example here. In my view the number of affected people is not the issue. The big issue is the year. 2050, 2065, 2040? That is the real question. -
Rob Honeycutt at 10:24 AM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
"{DB} More like ramming speed." Was that Charles and David Koch running the ship? Charles in the chair and David on the drum. (Sorry, couldn't help myself.) -
Bob Lacatena at 09:50 AM on 21 April 2011Clouds provide negative feedback
61, RW1, Somehow I missed this one:Because if a lot of the enhanced warming comes from positive cloud feedback, and the cloud feedback is NOT really positive - but negative (even slightly negative), it is going to reduce the projected amount of warming significantly.
That's a gigantic if. If the moon were made of green cheese, NASA could feed the world. So you're hanging your hat on the guess that all of the climate scientists in the world got something very, very wrong... just because they admit that it's an area of uncertainty? Except that their estimates are not based on guesses, they're based on science. All you've offered to support a contrary view is conjecture. -
Bern at 09:50 AM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
Nick, I rather think that was BKsea's point. :-) Whereas the 'skeptic' approach is more "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Actually, for a lot of them, it's more like "It's not going to be a problem until after I'm dead, so what do I care? I'm making my millions now, whatever it takes!"Moderator Response: [DB] More like ramming speed. -
Tom Curtis at 09:33 AM on 21 April 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
LJRyan @1007, I apologize for my description being confusing. Just to make sure we are on the same page: The plates are perfect thermal conductors, so therefore position and length of the heating elements is irrelevant; The heating elements are such that, plugged into mains power, each draws 480 Watts of power, and with no losses else where, ie, each receives 480 Watts heating (and please note, that is 480 Watts, not 480 Watts/meter^2). Given these clarifications, does your answer change, and if yes, to what? You asked why Surface radiation stops at 480 rather than a higher value. The simple answer is that if Surface radiation goes above 2*S, or AtmUp, or AtmDn goes above S, then the system losses more energy than it gains, and therefore cools. The easiest way to see this is with the spread sheet models discussed some 400 posts backs. Rather than try to find that discussion again, I have done up another spread sheet. Column A is the Step; Column B is S (energy in); Column C is Surf; Column D is AtmUp (energy out); and Column E is AtmDn (recirculated energy). Row three contains the initial values, which for S(Column B) is always 240 in three "experiments" that I conducted. In my three experiments, the initial value for Surf (Column C) was 0 for the first two experiments, and 1000 for the third. The initial values of AtmUp and AtmDn (Columns D and E) where 0 for the first and third experiments, and 500 for the second. The formulas for each of steps 2 to 100 where: In column B: =the value in column B for step minus 1 (=B3) In column C: = the value for column B and the value for column E for step minus 1 (=B3+E3) In column D: = (the value in column C in step minus 1)/2 (=C3/2) In column E: = the value in column D in the current step (=D5) The values in brackets are the actual formulas from my spread sheet for row 4 (the second step). The results for each of the three experiments above on step 60: Column A (Step) : 60 Column B (S) : 240 Column C (Surf) : 480 Column D (AtmUp): 240 Column E (AtmDn): 240 So, regardless of the initial conditions of the Surface or Atmosphere, in this model after a short number of steps the outgoing energy will equal the back radiation will equal the incoming energy; and the surface radiation will equal 2 times the incoming energy. You said equilibrium will be reached without back radiation being absorbed. Well, first note that in this model there must be back radiation because the "atmosphere" has an emissivity of 1 in IR wavelengths. Second, the back radiation must be absorbed because the surface has a blackbody. But even if the surface has an emissivity of less than 1 in the IR spectrum, the radiation from the surface to the atmosphere will be equal to the incoming solar radiation plus emissivity times the back radiation plus (1-emissivity) times the back radiation. That is, the radiation from the surface will equal the solar radiation plus the absorbed back radiation plus the reflected back radiation, which is to say the equilibrium point will be identical, although we may wish to relabel some components of the model. Of course, this result obtains only so long as the emissivity of the surface is not so low that the spectrum of its radiation is not forced into the range of the spectrum to which the atmosphere is transparent. Also obviously, the surface temperature will be higher with emissivity < 1. With respect to the idealized greenhouse model it is the next step in complexity of atmospheric models from a simple grey slab model. It is still inaccurate as a representation of reality, but useful for exploring concepts. I have not yet checked the maths on the Wiki page, and will comment on it as need in the discussion. -
Eric (skeptic) at 09:30 AM on 21 April 2011A Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change
Even if the floods in Pakistan were due to AGW, it is going to be problematic to "preemptively resettle" people at risk. It is far better to install flood prevention because floods also occur naturally, including really large floods A 5000-Year Record of Extreme Floods and Climate Change in the Southwestern United States -
Berényi Péter at 09:18 AM on 21 April 2011Christy Crock #4: Do the observations match the models?
Just to make things clear for everyone. CMIP3 is neither a model nor a collection of models, it is Phase 3 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. We are currently at Phase 5 (Phase 4 was skipped for some reason). There are modelling groups who participate in this joint project.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] This seems somewhat pedantic. It is perfectly reasonable English usage to refer to the collection of models used to compile the CMIP3 simulation archive as the "CMIP3 models", even though the CMIP3 project only archives the results of model runs rather than the models themselves. The archive implicitly defines a collection of models. -
Nick Palmer at 09:05 AM on 21 April 2011CO2 Reductions Will Not Cool the Planet? We Know
BKsea @ #8 The slower you're going when you hit the wall, the less damage you'll do. I think any one in their right mind would take their foot off the accelerator, slam on the brakes and see if there's any anchors in the boot to throw overboard. Use whatever it takes to hit the wall as slowly as possible. -
Marcus at 09:03 AM on 21 April 2011Muller Misinformation #4: Time to Act
BillyJoe, if this site was *really* trying to create some kind of rigid conformity in viewpoint, then do you *honestly* think that the posts by people like BP, HumanityRules, RSVP, John D or Poptech would be allowed to stand? Heck, the moderators even allowed Poptech to rant about his beloved "list" for more than 10 pages-hardly the actions of people trying to silence dissent (though there was something quite hilarious in watching Poptech defend the indefensible-in an increasingly desperate manner). The fact, though, is that Gilles seems to be deliberately trying to sabotage threads by dragging every single discussion back to his beloved "the world can't survive without Fossil Fuels" meme.
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