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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 101201 to 101250:

  1. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    #40: Yooper, you and I apparently misspent our youth in much the same way. Although The Hollow Earth (fact or fiction?) would explain why the Arctic ice is melting -- heat from the internal sun!
  2. Stratospheric Cooling and Tropospheric Warming - Revised
    Nice Article. Two questions: 1)What happens to the thermal IR radiation from the Earth's surface that is absorbed by CO2 in the troposhpere. Is it lost to N2 and O2 via collisional deactivation, increasing the kinetic energies of these molecules? 2)What is the CO2 concentration in the troposphere relative to the stratosphere?
  3. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    the simplest counterargument (one that everyone can understand the logic to) is that if the Earth's orbital decay is sufficient to cause 0.8C/century warming we would have been a ball of ice 2000 years ago
  4. actually thoughtful at 19:21 PM on 18 December 2010
    Renewable Baseload Energy
    Quokka - You have, again, failed to read and/or comprehend my post. I am speaking of solving heating and cooling issues - not microgeneration of electricity. This is the verboten 40% of energy use which no one is willing to speak of. We have the technology, now, to make virtually any/every building a net zero or net positive building. Delaying action locally in the vain hope of an organized centralized response seems at best silly, and it is possibly criminal (how will future generations judge us?) This doesn't mean I am against nuclear or centralized PV/CSP/wind/wave. Rather, all the above, as much and as fast as possible. But you are missing the powerful behavior change that local control over energy provides. When people control the means of (energy) production - they modify their behavior to maximize overall system performance. We find, again and again, that what is missing from the energy markets is information. Information about the true cost of carbon, real-time, actionable information about energy usage, and a sense of control over production. Solving one or more of the information deficits will take us much further down the road to a systemic solution than a nuke plant here or there. In my view, we need a systemic solution, not a different brand of band-aids.
  5. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    a bigger solar disc should have effects on solar eclipses (not being total anymore), and several ancient monuments like Stonehenge should have to be rebuild
  6. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    The irony is there is an orbital change of some sort thats been going on for the last 1000 years that should currently be causing a cooling, cant remember or find the paper someone may know.
  7. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Isn't the Earth-Sun distance increasing due to tidal forces (and to a smaller extent solar mass loss)?
  8. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    The simple counter-argument is that if global warming were due to a decaying orbit, it wouldn't have accelerated rapidly over the past 30 years. It would be an extremely slow, constant rate of warming, not a sudden rapid acceleration.
  9. Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
    I thought the residence time for atmospheric CO2 was verified as about 5.4 years as determined in this article: Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2. Also, in another article: What is the Major Culprit for Global Warming: CFC's or CO2? It's stated that CO2 played hardly any role at all in the global warming since 1950- 2000 and blames it on CFCs. It's also stated that we are facing several decades of global cooling beginning in 2002.
    Moderator Response: See the post "CO2 has a short residence time," and comment over there. For the CFCs topic, comment on that post, not this one. Off topic comments usually are deleted after one warning.
  10. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Rob @36, I did this in 2006 in Eos (the newspaper of AGU). The editor and I had a ball with this one. It was sent out for peer review with one reviewer genuinely unsure what my intent was. It was hacked down from a much longer original. I begin with the observation that enteric methane is included in Kyoto and move on to suggest that therefore the US should call for the inclusion of human respiration CO2 in Kyoto as it would do relatively more damage to creditors like China. The saddest thing I found was that there are 40 nations with total population 750 million (12% world total) and total GDP 370 billion 1995 USD (i.e. 1.1% 2006 world total) where the population respire more CO2 than they release from fossil fuels. I had a couple of follow up emails from folk who appeared to umm bat for the other side and were put out to find it wasn't something they could use.
    Moderator Response: [muoncounter] fixed link See also our Does breathing contribute to CO2 thread
  11. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Re: DSL (38) 1. If the semi-mythical car for the mythical date had a ragtop... 2. Would that be waste heat then from the car's engines? ;) Still think it's Scooter (Phil Rizzuto) doing the play-by-play. The Yooper
  12. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Re: muoncounter (39) Ah, the misbegotten jewels of an ill-spent youth...still have the likes of Graham Hancock and Von Daniken in the ready-at-hand arsenal with the offspring of Howard and Burroughs not far behind...(Pellucidar anyone?). Speaking of tipping one back, don't mind if I do. Febrile mind, here I come... The Yooper
  13. It's the sun
    @TheCaz: in the absence of any evidence that there were similar "uncouplings" in the Holocene, we cannot assume there were. Thus, it's not the sun. It's CO2.
  14. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    #34: "the moon is in the 7th house and Velikovsky's Jupiter will collide with Mars... " Hey, Velikovsky sightings are your beat, especially after you challenged someone over those 'In Search Of' clips.
  15. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Yooper, you've completely failed to take into account the heat and water vapor content of that exhalation. I like to use the Saturday Night analogy. Imagine a car (station wagon, circa 1975) parked out on the cliff overlooking town. It's Saturday night (winter), and the glass windows are rolled up on the car. Normally, the GHG content of the car's atmosphere would be at 280ppm (because Anthony can't usually get a date). However, tonight is special. The atmospheric CO2 and water vapor content inside the car is rising rapidly. Longwave radiation emitted from the surface of the heat engines inside the car is being absorbed more and more by the GHGs, and the radiative pathway is getting longer and longer. The interior of the car begins to heat up. The dashboard figure at the north end of the car begins to melt. The back window, at the south end of the car, begins to ice over--except at the edges, where the car's interior material is soaking up LWR and transferring it conductively into the glass. The car begins to rock in an almost Milankovitchian rhythm. Precipitation begins to drip off of the dome light and other features (after all, the troposphere can't expand in this simulation -- no analogy is perfect). Suddenly, at the tipping point for runaway heating, mitigation occurs! No--it's not what you're thinking. A police officer throws a door wide open, and the car's atmosphere quickly returns to pre-date temperatures. Will the police ever throw our collective car door open, or are we completely . . .
  16. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    My skin is starting to sag and I'm getting shorter. Therefore gravity is increasing. I know my skin and height are good proxies because they are responding as predicted for an increase in gravity. Note that I get shorter at night and my skin doesn't get less saggy during the day, both of which contradict predictions of the decaying orbit idea.
  17. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Daniel... I'm almost ashamed to admit that in response to denier claims I've actually done rough calculations for how much CO2 is exhaled by humans. Suffice to say even that didn't satisfy those whom I was trying to convince. But maybe it had an impact on someone else reading the comments online. //sigh// What's the saying? If you wrestle with pigs you only get dirty, and the pigs generally enjoy it.
  18. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    My pet theory is that the extra air exaled by all of those extra people (try graphing population, CO2 and temps some time) adds to the mass of the Earth. This, coupled with the GHG effect of the literal Anthro CO2, is driving up temps in lockstep with population. Feels good to finally let that out...
  19. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    @ muoncounter: Next you'll be tellin' me that the moon is in the 7th house and Velikovsky's Jupiter will collide with Mars...
  20. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    The writer is relying upon instinct as opposed to empirical evidence. But instinct can be fooled. I have supplied a link to a documentary that looks at climate change issues from an Inuit perspective. More than one elder notes the belief that the planet has shifted on it's axis, and some cite reasons. Insofar as the observation that the sun now sets in a different place, this is explained by the fact that the atmosphere is warmer and thusly refracts the sun's rays differently. There are other examples in this documentary that illustrate the breakdown of instinct's. This certainly doesn't provide an answer to your question John. I do hope it sheds some light though. Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change
  21. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    So Immanuel Velikovsky would be sort of the patron saint of this sound theory. I wonder why all the supposed physical phenomena behind these theories resemble something devised by Ming the Merciless, evil ruler of Mongo. Epistemological hedonism?
  22. It's the sun
    TheCaz, Sorry I pointed you to the wrong section, the paper does go on to detail a solar activity proxy as you discovered.
  23. It's the sun
    The paper goes on to model solar activity based on proxies, and that is the best we can do right now. OK.
    Moderator Response: [Daniel Bailey] Apologies; I thought that the Beer et al quote I cited made that clear. I will try to be more explanatory in the future.
  24. It's the sun
    I read the article, but unfortunately, that figure still does not answer the question, for two reasons: (a) the time scale makes it impossible to see the holocene in detail, and (b) it compares temps with insolation (angle and distance from the sun) and assumes a constant solar activity. I was asking specifically about solar activity (not insolation). But the paper does give something of an answer elsewhere. It says before the launching of satellites, solar activity could not be measured. So that is the answer I was looking for - "We do not know." The paper says the sun has activity cycles, but then assumes those cycles are regular. The author uses this to exclude solar activity variation as causative in the long term. We now know this is incorrect. In fact, the graph at the top of this page shows that solar activity (11-year averages) has varied over the past 130 years.
  25. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    #30: "we'll be there in 80 centuries" It will be sooner than that, I fear. The rate of orbital decay will accelerate as we draw closer, as this theory (if I may call it that) suggests that the sun's gravitational field overwhelms the earth's magnetic field (in previously some unknown way). This is groundbreaking stuff; if this guy is right, he's got a lock on the Nobel (in literature, if not physics). We'll be looking back on 2 or 3 deg C of warming as a pleasant day at the beach. I suggest hoarding large blocks of ice (I hear there's a big one floating off Greenland) as a refuge of last resort.
  26. It's the sun
    TheCaz, Specifically figure 2 panel c appears to be what you are looking for.
  27. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    muoncounter we have T^4 ∝ S ∝ r^2 where S is the solar constant and r the distance from the sun, currently 1 AU; so T ∝ r^1/2. Let call A the constant of proportionality, so T=A*r^1/2. We currently have T=288 K and r=1 AU from which we know that A=288 K/AU. Taking the first derivative with respect to t (time) and noting that dT/dt=0.5 K/century we can easily obtain dr/dt=3.5*10^-3 AU/century. If Venus orbit doesn't change, we'll be there in 80 centuries (8 Kyrs). Forget about the next ice age (and much more!). But ... the IPCC is wrong and in the next century we'll get just another 0.5 °C of warming. Mission accomplished.
  28. It's the sun
    TheCaz, Daniel gave you an example of solar reconstructions for the Holocene in his link to Beer et al, 2006.
  29. It's the sun
    Perhaps what you are trying to say is 'we do not know whether solar activity and surface temps were uncoupled prior to the 1800s because the ability to measure solar activity is not able to be calculated prior to that time.' OK. So that is an answer. But repeating the CO2 data is not what I asked.
  30. It's the sun
    Your new post still does not answer the question. I do not see solar activity represented at all, except for the graph in the main article which covers only the past few hundred years. I understand temps and CO2 are uncoupled, but I was asking about solar activity and surface temps. Is the recent uncoupling unique in the holocene? I do not have the data myself. That is why I am asking the question.
  31. The 2nd law of thermodynamics and the greenhouse effect
    @damorbel: "I think the albedo is also to be found in both the IR and UV bands." Not really. Albedo concerns visible light. I think at this point it's pretty clear you don't know what you're talking about, and that your credibility is shot. Time to use another username!
  32. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    @HR: that is not circular reasoning, but the affirmation that, indeed, many lines of reasoning support AGW. It is not in itself evidence, but rather a declaration that the evidence exists, and that it is plentiful. If you think that is circular logic, that might explain why you seem to have such a hard time grasping the relatively simple aspects of AGW theory...
  33. Renewable Baseload Energy
    Quokka, You are chery picking your renewable energy numbers. According to Wikipedia, in 2009 there was over 9,000 MW of wind installed, more than coal. As the technology ramps up there will be even more installed. Why do you pick an energy source that is not very developed to compare to? This type of cherry picking weakens your whole argument. How should I know when to believe what you post? Since no pilot modular reactors have been built yet (are there plans for one to be built?), it is very unlikely that they would be ready in less than 15 years and more likely 20 or more. They will have to build a pilot plant, run it for several years to test it and then build the real plants. It currently takes 10 years to build a nuclear plant on existing designs. Your 7-10 year projection is not realistic- more propaganda. They will be lucky to have the pilot plant built in 10 years. And who wants the waste in their backyard? Nuclear will probably be part of the solution, but propaganda does not advance the argument here.
  34. It's the sun
    Re: TheCaz (751) Since the Daleks took my time machine back to rescue the Morlocks from the Eloi, from Beer et al, 2006:
    "To date, the only proxy providing information about the solar variability on millennial time scales are cosmogenic radionuclides stored in natural archives such as ice cores."
    Perusual of the various versions of this post, plus the graphs I showed you in My Previous Comment #749 reveal the tight relationship between solar variability, CO2 and temperatures (with temperatures being merely the composite sum of forcings and feedbacks) in the paleo record. The unusual climatic stability of the Holocene: So my questions to you, TheCaz: looking at the record of CO2 over the past 400,000 years or so (here, I'll help with a visual): When did atmospheric concentration jump 40% (which it has over the pre-industrial levels)? At any point? Do you see any uncouplings? Keep in mind that CO2 in the paleo record acted as a lagged feedback to orbital factors and solar irradiance changes. And that it is now acting as a forcing. Or do you have a source for solar activity over the paleo record that materially differs from the information presented in the various iterations of this post, my comments and linked sources? If so, what source is that? Can you furnish a link? The Yooper
  35. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    #27: "If it is due to the orbital decay, it cannot be a new phenomenon, " Ha! Now someone has to work out the orbital decay rate that provides the appropriate increase in radiative forcing -- and project that forward to see how much time we have left.
  36. Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers ice loss: an overview
    The slowdown noted in Murray et al (2010) is for the years 2006-2008 versus 2005 in southeast Greenland. The speedup in this region had a short term peak in 2005. Given the shortness of the data sets not too much can be made of this. In looking at the west coast of Greeland the same trend is not evident. The Jakobshavn was faster in 2006 than 2005. The sppedup indciated for western Greenland had a much greater extent into the ice sheet and in the number of glaciers then in southeast Greeland as noted in the nice colored images of Joughin et (2010) noted in the article above.
  37. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    "I measure the progression of earth's decaying orbit by the surface temperature" He is taking the temperature decrease as a proxy for the orbital decay. More than circular reasoning this is simply a faulty assumption. But let's assume it is correct. In the last century we experienced a rate of warming of about 0.5 °C/century. If it is due to the orbital decay, it cannot be a new phenomenon, it has been going on for millennia. A thousand years ago, then, it was 5 °C colder than now, i.e. we were in the middle of an ice age, the famous Medieval Ice Age. Going a thousand more years back, it was 0 °C on average; here you can clearly see the origin of the iconic snow covered Christmas trees in Palestina. :)
  38. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    This all kind of goes back to what I was saying in the article I did on Why Does Anthony Watts Drive an Electric Car? The more solid the evidence for climate change becomes the more extreme and outside the realm of science the challenges will be. You see that here with the silly claim that the Earth's orbit is degrading. And I think we increasingly see it with people like Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts. Same with Spencer, Michaels and others. Watts' recent irrational post over the difference in the anomaly between UAH and GISS is a perfect example. He's so intent upon finding a problem, because his whole world view is based on AGW being wrong, that he skips very basic, utterly elemental steps, like adjusting for differing base lines. (Sorry, I know that's OT.) And worse, when it's pointed out, rather than saying "whoops, sorry that was a silly mistake on my part" he goes overboard trying to defend his mistake. I think the climate change issue is rising to a new level lately. The science is even more solid than ever. That means there is probably going to be an equal and opposite reaction the likes of responses like these. I predict a whole new series of denier issues are going to start coming to the forefront soon.
  39. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    If the Earths orbit has been decaying and this is causing warming .. wouldn't we expect the Mesozoic to be colder than now ? That would have been tough for the dinosaurs...
  40. The human fingerprint in the seasons
    e wrote: Water vapor has a very short residence time in the atmosphere (about 9 days). This means that any feedback generated during the summer is not going to have a long term impact into the winter. Instead, the feedback will follow proportionally along with the initial warming. Since the solar impact during the winter is greatly reduced, the GHG feedback that goes along with it will also be reduced. The opposite would be true for CO2. Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is the very point that Michael Sweet made back in post 24 and that I tried to re-iterate at 68 and 93. I am very pleased to have it expressed so eloquently.
  41. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    I'm originally from Texas. I'd be mad at you if you weren't... well, sort of right.
  42. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Length of year came to my mind, too. But this dude's from Texas, so you have to put it in terms he can understand. If he were right, they'd be playing high school football in the morning, and his houston texans would start games in the middle of the night, by now. If you can't explain it with football, people from Texas will *not* understand you.
  43. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    Excellent way of distracting the deniers. Lets have more of these.
  44. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    This is clearly wrong, because another, often ignored theory is right. Given the upcoming holiday season, I think it's time that everyone face the fact that global warming is caused by Eurasian Leprechaun Farts (ELFs). The evidence is indisputable. The greatest warming is at the north pole (home to the jolly old ELF himself, and his vast army of worker ELFs). It began coincident with two known changes in ELF behavior, a dramatic increase in population, and a switch in diet to coprolite consumption (which itself may have caused the population explosion -- a very deadly positive feedback). Different camps argue fiercely over which of these is the true, underlying cause, but the fact of the matter is that ELFs are deadly. The scientific impacts of ELFs on the earth's atmosphere as SBD gases (silent but deadly) was proven hundreds of years ago by Arse-nius, and is not really subject to rational dispute. Those who emphatically profess otherwise are merely, so to speak, cutting the cheese. Of course, the nefarious fossil food industry is expending vast sums of money to keep this hushed up. And when they can't keep it up, they try to confuse the common man by recasting the debate in emotional terms as a War on Christmas! Whether it is the increase in Eurasian leprechaun population or the newly found leprechaun delight for their products, the fact remains that any proper solution -- a reduction in coprolite sales and consumption -- will hurt their recent huge upswing in profits from coprolite mining and distribution. Their entire financial empire will crumble if the problem is addressed, as it must be if we are to save civilization as we know it. People need to wake up to this! Admit that ELFs are the problem and curtail the fossil food industry now, before it's too late!
  45. The human fingerprint in the seasons
    HR, Your question is, if GHG feedbacks are a portion of any solar warming, how do we determine whether the fingerprint in question is a fingerprint of CO2 warming and not of the feedback portion of a hypothetical solar warming. Did I understand that correctly? The answer is that this is what the simulations predict. With solar warming, summers should get warmer faster than winters, and vice versa with CO2 driven warming, all feedbacks included. The same goes for all the other fingerprints mentioned. The precise nature of the fingerprint is derived from the models, and observations have been consistent with those predictions. Does that answer your question? If you dislike invoking models, here are a couple things to consider that illustrate why your "40-60% GHG component" calculation is too simplistic for predicting the nature of the fingerprints: Water vapor has a very short residence time in the atmosphere (about 9 days). This means that any feedback generated during the summer is not going to have a long term impact into the winter. Instead, the feedback will follow proportionally along with the initial warming. Since the solar impact during the winter is greatly reduced, the GHG feedback that goes along with it will also be reduced. The opposite would be true for CO2. For the day/night signature, remember that the entirety of the solar influence is exerted during the day, while the GHG feedback effect is spread out somewhat over the full 24 hour cycle. It would take a very strong discrepancy in GHG effect from night to day in order to cancel out the solar fingerprint.
  46. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    But if feels to me like the years are getting shorter. ;-)
  47. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    This argument seems to be similar to another I ran across, that it was space debris causing the warming. Though i don't remember the exact reason they said it was causing the warming. Friction as it entered the atmosphere? Adding mass to the Earth causing the days or orbit to change? Whichever it was there was nothing that could shake them from that belief.
  48. Greenland Ice Sheet outlet glaciers ice loss: an overview
    #17: "... but there are big questions" I'm not sure of the overall value of this small forest of linked papers towards the topic of this thread. At least Murray et al 2010 confirm a period of accelerated ice loss, as shown in this thread's Figure 1: Synchronous acceleration and thinning of southeast (SE) Greenland glaciers during the early 2000s was the main contributor that resulted in the doubling of annual discharge from the ice sheet. We show that this acceleration was followed by a synchronized and widespread slowdown of the same glaciers, in many cases associated with a decrease in thinning rates ... Since the overall trend (again referring to Figure 1 above) is sharply down, can we not interpret the 'widespread slowdown' and 'decrease in thinning rates' as minor contributors to the trend? Some of the other papers linked in #17 refer to accumulation, which is not at all the question discussed here.
  49. Debunking this skeptic myth is left as an exercise to the reader
    #17: Mike, there is some friction in outer space. You can disperse energy by collisions with objects, by tidal heating or, most consistently we are slowed slightly by the light pressure from the Sun. Because we're going around the Sun, sunlight actually strikes us at a slight angle to our trajectory at any point in time. In effect, there is a tiny component of the light motion that is opposite to our direction. This transfers momentum to the Earth, slowing us down. There is also the small light force from the Sun pushing us directly outwards, but that is technically not friction since it doesn't depend on our velocity, but on our position...
  50. It's the sun
    Sorry, but it does not. The question was whether solar activity and surface temperatures were always coupled in the holocene, or whether there were other periods of uncoupling. Your graphs do not contain any data of solar energy output at all. So the question was not addressed in your response. I understand you have preented data comparing CO2 to surface temps, but that is not what I asked.

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