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kdkd at 07:00 AM on 13 October 2010It's the sun
KL #680 Limitations for accuracy of absolute measurements across different measurement systems and or devices is pretty much universal, although we do an OK job with things like thermometers in the lab these days. Anyway, it's a problem that limits our ability to make conclusions, it's not evidence showing falsification. "The TIMS people also produced an energy balance based on 1361.5W/sq.m which Dr Trenberth said was wrong in spades." Could you explain this in a little more detail please. -
Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
"How would you spend the money collected this way?" - Development/conversion to renewable and carbon-neutral power generation (wind/solar/nuclear, fusion research) [primary expenditure]. - Infrastructure, such as the proposed US East Coast power backbone, making variable supplies such as wind/solar manageable by incorporating spread sites over large areas. - Agricultural subsidies to aid in zone change and pest/invasive species issues. - Conservation work on habitats affected. A major motivation for such taxes, however, would be to penalize CO2 emission, providing an economic incentive for current power companies and industries to individually (i.e., not by state-directed mandates or methods) transition away from CO2 heavy methods, and over to profitable alternatives. -
Bibliovermis at 06:37 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
* Carbon capture & sequestrations (CCS) programs * Alternative energy (e.g. solar, novel fusion) R&D * Subsidizing the implementation of alternative energy generation, both residential & industrial * Rebuilding the electric grids to be capable of handling the mass-distributed generation that the previous point will lead to * etc... Back on topic, a pollutant does not cease being such when its release becomes continuous rather than a tragic incident. -
Berényi Péter at 06:22 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
#166 KR at 06:10 AM on 13 October, 2010 taxes can be applied continuously as the damage occurs Fine. How would you spend the money collected this way? -
Bibliovermis at 06:13 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
BP, You are focusing on acute incidents of pollution to the exclusion of chronic pollution and claiming that chronic pollution does not exist. What insurance company will cover the general health care expenses of a person who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day? -
Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Berényi - Compulsory liability insurance is fine for individual occurrences, like the horrible Hungarian toxic sludge issue. It does not work for ongoing ongoing pollution like CO2, however - taxes can be applied continuously as the damage occurs, whereas insurance payouts require an event. As to apportioning tax liability - we know exactly how much CO2 industries and power generation put out. But this (social structures for imposing costs on polluters) is a bit off-topic. This thread is about the classification of CO2 as a pollutant, in reference to the US, and here CO2 legally falls under EPA guidelines by the very definition of "pollution" under US laws. Regardless of monied interests attempts to redefine terms. -
Berényi Péter at 05:42 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
#162 KR at 02:51 AM on 13 October, 2010 In terms of legal attribution, did you read my post on the subject? Yes. But you still don't get my point. Consider for example the Doñana National Park mass-pollution in Southern Spain, committed by Canadian-Swedish owned Boliden Mineral AB on April 25, 1998. Cleanup cost $270 million so far (taxpayer's money of course), company payed nothing, filed for bankruptcy to avoid a meager $45 million fine. Cases like this abound. The only reasonable way to make those responsible pay full cost of reparations is to impose a compulsory liability insurance policy by law on companies trading in a business prone to wreck havoc on the public. However, the fuzzy attribution scheme you are advocating makes rational calculations impossible for insurance companies, therefore they'd refrain from getting involved. Also, as long as a major power like the US keeps sticking to this legal madness, in this gravely demodularized world it's quite impossible to implement the concept in international law (by a multilateral treaty of course). In absence of such an agreement each state unilaterally introducing these measures only forces companies to move out to countries where they are still allowed to harvest public money. This scheme would have the additional benefit of lifting most of the supervision burden off of government bureaucracies (making them way cheaper for taxpayers and less prone to corruption), since it would be the prime interest of insurance companies to do a full audit then keep monitoring sites like toxic sludge dams for their safety while providing liability insurance. Unfortunately it does not work if anyone can be held liable for anything - even if individual cases can't be causally linked to it. -
CBDunkerson at 03:43 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Setting aside the specific case with the EPA, which set off this whole 'it is not a pollutant' nonsense in the first place.... it doesn't matter. Barring that this is pure semantic flim flammery. BP wants a definition of 'pollutant' where the damage is "immediate and undeniable" (though I think we've seen that some people will deny ANYTHING). Fine. BP likes that definition of 'pollutant' - which just happens to exclude CO2 since he denies the damage it causes. However, any remotely reasonable person must acknowledge that different people sometimes have different concepts in mind when using the same word. In this case it is very clear that others (like say... the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the US Government) have different definitions of the word, which would include CO2. Without a specific frame of reference (e.g. 'for purposes of EPA action') arguing over which definition is 'correct' is completely meaningless. -
Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Berényi - You might also re-read the definition of "pollution" from Encyclopedia Brittanica mentioned in the topic of this thread. That's a language definition, not a legal definition in one country. CO2 is accumulating faster than it can be dispersed/absorbed without harmful effects. Sounds like pollution to me, and I would suggest to anyone without an interest in redefining terms. -
Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Berényi - I would have to agree; lawsuits such as the Comer v. Murphy Oil case you mentioned here are inappropriate. Murphy Oil is far from the only CO2 contributor (just one legally available for Mississippi residents to sue), and singular events (Katrina) are difficult to attribute. That's why I believe that carbon taxes or cap/trade efforts are far more appropriate. There are definite costs involved in agricultural zone shifts, sea level rise, pest migrations (the beetle infestations in Western USA, for example), precipitation changes, etc., and extracting those costs from ALL contributors is really the only fair way to approach the issue. In terms of legal attribution, did you read my post on the subject? In the USA at least, there is significant precedent under the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement for recouping those costs, including attribution of social and statistical harms and costs to the population. One-to-one attribution and liability is not always appropriate - an individual cancer case, for example, might be genetic or due to environmental toxins. But if the statistics show that the majority of cases are due to environmental problems, that is attribution on a group scale. This is what we're dealing with in regards to climate change. -
Daniel Bailey at 02:30 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Re: Berényi Péter (160) So...your position is that you object to the world's biggest emitter of greenhouses gases is finally trying to clean up its act? Pretty contorted logic. The Yooper -
Berényi Péter at 02:16 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
#157 CBDunkerson at 22:23 PM on 12 October, 2010 However, by the definition of the term in the legal documents binding EPA action carbon dioxide IS a pollutant. That particular legal definition found in documents binding EPA is valid for the US of A, especially after that silly Supreme Court decision. However, the last time I've checked US jurisdiction was not extended beyond the internationally recognized borders of said entity yet. So please let the rest of us take our liberty to keep impugning if it is expedient to include carbon dioxide under the same umbrella term as other substances where the connection between polluter and individuals suffering actual damage from said pollution is immediate and undeniable. The legal path taken by the US of A leads to preposterous cases like Comer v. Murphy Oil."The plaintiffs, residents and owners of lands and property along the Mississippi Gulf coast, filed this putative class action in the district court against the named defendants, corporations that have principal offices in other states but are doing business in Mississippi. The plaintiffs allege that defendants’ operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming, viz., the increase in global surface air and water temperatures, that in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs’ private property, as well as public property useful to them. The plaintiffs’ putative class action asserts claims for compensatory and punitive damages based on Mississippi common-law actions of public and private nuisance, trespass, negligence, unjust enrichment, fraudulent misrepresentation, and civil conspiracy."
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Ned at 02:15 AM on 13 October 2010Temp record is unreliable
TIS writes: I think it is a more useful method than all skeptics using satellite only and the AGW crowd using CRU only. I don't know where you get that impression. I tend to use the satellite record if I'm making a point about recent years, and the instrumental record if the topic is longer term. You can find nice examples of comments where I used the satellite temperature record here and here. Note also that if you click on the "Advanced" tab at the top of this page, then scan down to figure 7, you'll see a comparison of temperature reconstructions in which I averaged the various instrumental records to get a "surface" record, and averaged the satellite records to get a "lower troposphere" record. -
Doug Bostrom at 01:32 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Full circle eh, GC? Reality check on "anti-scientific nonsense": Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under the Clean Air Act (PDF) (52 pp, 308K) Technical Support Document for the Findings (PDF) (210 pp, 2.5MB) Beyond its immediate findings, EPA bent over backwards to entertain a vast number of comments and criticisms. I'm willing to bet the word "nonsense" may be found in the compilation of this interaction but more to the point, lots of people devoted more effort than launching a single adjective to attacking the regulation of C02 by EPA, only to be found less than compelling. There are 11 volumes of comments and responses in all, but the key discussions from the perspective of vistors to this site are probably mostly to be found here: Volume 1: General Approach to the Science and Other Technical Issues Volume 2: Validity of Observed and Measured Data Volume 3: Attribution of Observed Climate Change Volume 4: Validity of Future Projections Volume 9: Endangerment Finding -
archiesteel at 01:26 AM on 13 October 2010It's the sun
@Ken: Also, aerosols and land use also had an impact. The forest that once covered much of Europe was more than half gone by 1750. This likely had an impact, even if it was relatively small. I still fail to see what the point is of this entire discussion. -
archiesteel at 01:12 AM on 13 October 2010It's the sun
@Ken: "Looks pretty close to 280ppmv for the last 1000 years or so." I'm sorry, were we only talking about the last 1000 years? I must have missed that in your latest attempt at obfuscation. The point is that climate is not static, and there is no ideal reference point. You still miss the most basic element: the graph you have wasted so much time talking about shows relative values, not absolutes. But please go on imagining, you actually have a solid argument... -
Daniel Bailey at 01:01 AM on 13 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Re: gallopingcamel (155) More of your "anti-scientific" nonsense, I see. The Yooper -
Doug Bostrom at 01:00 AM on 13 October 2010It's not us
Ptbrown31, the shrinking differential between day/night temperatures is entirely implicit in the mechanism of GHGs. You might ask yourself, how could it not be true that more "efficient" concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere could leave evening temperatures unchanged? As to finding papers, you'll find plenty of links by via : Google Scholar -
It's the sun
One more note from the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM) website: " The de-facto redundant, overlap TSI monitoring approach that has provided a contiguous record since 1978 resulted from the deployment of multiple, overlapping TSI satellite experiments. The traceability of this database is at the mutual precision level of overlapping experiments. ... A carefully implemented redundant, overlap strategy should therefore be capable of producing a centennial TSI record with traceability of ~ 500 ppm, providing a useful signal to noise ratio for assessing climate response to TSI variation. • A redundant, overlapping TSI measurement strategy using existing ‘ambient temperature’ instrumentation can provide the long term traceability required by a TSI database for climate change on centennial time scales." They seem very confident in their ability to establish accurate TSI information. And even more confident in their ability to measure changes in TSI. -
It's the sun
I found an interesting comparison at the Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor (ACRIM) site of various TSI's over time, using different satellites:
This states that:
"The results of TSI monitoring experiments are reported on their 'native scales' as defined in SI by the ‘self-calibration’ features of their sensor technologies. Systematic uncertainties in the metrology used to relate their observations to SI caused the ± 0.25 % spread of results during the first decade of monitoring. The tighter clustering of results after 1990 is attributable to dissemination of more accurate sensor metrology among the various experiments and national standards labs. The causes of the ~ -0.35 % difference between the ACRIM3 and VIRGO results and the SORCE/TIM results are not presently understood in this context."
It does appear that different satellites measuring TSI have inter-platform calibration issues, Ken - you are correct in that. I would encourage you to look at that site, though, and consider the work done on composite TSI time series, where this is addressed to some degree.
So perhaps an absolute TSI number is not as fixed as we would like.
A major question here, though: Do the absolute value of TSI, IR radiation, etc., matter? Or can we determine what's having an effect by looking at well established changes of these values? We know the history of TSI changes pretty well over the last 800,000 years, between satellite measurements, sunspot observations, isotopic analysis of ice cores, etc. - the correlation of these measures to absolute values isn't as good as we would like, but the ability to track changes is excellent.
The situation is rather a lot like tracking the carbon cycle. We have a rough idea of total carbon sources (natural and manmade), we have a rough idea of carbon sinks (ocean/vegetation/weathering), but we have a really really accurate measure of how atmospheric CO2 changes, and how that relates to man-made CO2. Thus we can state that man-made CO2 is contributing ~2ppm/year to atmospheric CO2. We know how it's changing.
So, while we may not know absolute TSI as accurately as we like, we know how it has changed, and it's clear that it has not changed in a manner sufficient to account for late 20th century warming.
We know accurately how the inputs to the climate system have changed over quite a long period. We also know accurately how the outputs (temperature) have changed as well. Even the simplest black-box model of climate will then tell us which stick has poked the box inducing those correlating changes. Your "absolute value" issues are really not valid.
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Daniel Bailey at 00:24 AM on 13 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
Re: jadesmith (21) CO2 is a well-mixed gas; it's greenhouse effects takes place primarily well above the surface layer, so any localized concentrations near emitter sources get redistributed fairly quickly. See Comment 1 at this thread for some nice animations showing the mixing effects of CO2 over time. The Yooper -
Ken Lambert at 00:12 AM on 13 October 2010It's the sun
kdkd #678 "The value will decrease if you use it to promulgate your sceptical agenda though - save that for a different post." Is that a banned political comment kdkd? May I only play in this sandpit with you as gatekeeper of pure AGW thought? Regarding TIMS - this illustrates the point that BP has made many times - satellites have high precision but low accuracy. Good for day to day or month on month variation but not for absolute values. The earlier satellites were reading TSI at around 1366W/sq.m - TIMS is 1361.5W/sq.m. Which is right? Now notice how no-one is trying to splice TIMS to the earlier satellites because the TSI would have a huge offset correction yet SLR satellites are being spliced eg TOPEX-Jason with a claimed zero offset due to extensive intercalibration. The TIMS people also produced an energy balance based on 1361.5W/sq.m which Dr Trenberth said was wrong in spades. It does seem strange that while up to date TSI charts are on the SORCE website - the comment on the minus 4.5W/sq.m discrepancy has not been updated since 2005. 5 years seems a long time for the "difference being studied by the TSI and radiometry communities" without some resolution. -
Ken Lambert at 23:53 PM on 12 October 2010It's the sun
archisteel #675 Here is the Wiki chart for CO2 concentration for the last 1000 years and last 400000 years: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png When was it last at 180ppmv archisteel? Looks pretty close to 280ppmv for the last 1000 years or so. Happy to argue on a baseline which gives no warming or cooling of the Earth for any forcing. Warming and cooling in pre-industrial times was caused by Solar variation - output and orbital exposure of the Earth to the sun. CO2 lagged Solar warming as a feedback mechanism on interglacial time scales. Of course at some point warming was arrested by IR radiative cooling and a cooling phase followed. -
muoncounter at 23:44 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
#13: "There should be such caveats in all climate science papers. I'd encourage people to be sceptical about papers that don't know their limitations." Wouldn't it be nice if that rule applied in deniersville? Imagine reading the headline 'Its cooling and Arctic ice is at an all time high!' followed by the caveat: 'readers should recognize that our use of only 3 data points leads to 100% uncertainty in our conclusions'. -
jyyh at 23:35 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
I hope they realized the thing was going to space when calibrating it... anyway an interesting set of data. I actually tried to find the piece from univ library only to find out they put out the papers on a later date. -
adelady at 23:21 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
And then there's all those arguments I've seen elsewhere about more concrete and other urban land use changes increasing local albedo. There may be particular places where there is a definite effect one way or the other, but the graphs in the post tell us that for these researchers and these regions, the swings and roundabouts have apparently balanced each other. -
Daniel Bailey at 22:40 PM on 12 October 2010It's freaking cold!
Re: Tom Loeber I do want to step back and issue a general, heart-felt compliment to you, Tom. Your ideas about noctilucent clouds, tipping points and sudden ice ages is certainly one of the most unique and interesting ideas I've heard in a while. You should really try to present it in a more formal fashion here, with cited sources, etc. I think you'd find a much better, dialogue-based, discussion of what you bring to this table. I would look forward to reading such a presentation. The Yooper -
CBDunkerson at 22:23 PM on 12 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
GC #155: I find it depressing that so many 'skeptics' play semantic games (e.g. ignoring the common usage and legal definitions of 'pollutant' to come up with one which excludes carbon dioxide - which they then argue should be used in place of the legal definition when making legal decisions, insisting that 'acidification' only applies once the pH drops below 7) rather than addressing the actual science. The EPA is going to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 'Skeptics' say they can't because it isn't a pollutant under 'definition XYZ'. However, by the definition of the term in the legal documents binding EPA action carbon dioxide IS a pollutant. So this redefinition nonsense is just a shell game. The relevant definition for the EPA is the definition in the law. That should be obvious. So why do skeptics continue to make an argument that is obviously wrong? -
skywatcher at 22:02 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
HumanityRules... haver you read any academic papers lately? They are liberally spread with uncertainties and caveats, it's part of the job. Can you point out climate science papers that do not indicate uncertainties in results? Uncertainties tend to get filtered out, invariably to the detriment of the paper, when media report on science issues. -
kdkd at 21:57 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
BP #24 (again) My hypothesis is that the urban heat island effect will cause an increased variance of local temperature rather than an increase in absolute value due to decreased heat capacity and reduction of the capacity of vegetation to buffer temperature changes. -
kdkd at 21:49 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
BP #24 Pretty much a duplicate of my post #23, except you seem to be implying that the effect size must be large and significant, whereas I enquire about the empirical evidence that there is an effect, and what it's magnitude is. See how the two approaches differ? Which do you think is more likely to provide an objectively correct answer in the long run? -
Berényi Péter at 21:18 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
#22 adelady at 18:19 PM on 12 October, 2010 If an urban area is always or usually a degree or two above a neighbouring rural area, that's fine. What matters is not whether one or the other is higher or lower, but whether the temperature increase or decrease is similar or wildly different. Keep in mind each urban area started off as a rural one some time in the past. Let's consider two nearby sites, one is urban the other is rural, the urban one being a degree or two warmer, as you say. If trends are the same at both sites all over their history, even if we go back in time until both sites are found to be equally desolate, the would-be urban site is still a degree or two warmer. How can that be? I bet weather is not endowed with precognition, therefore the only remaining possibility is the urban heat island effect has nothing to do with land use, man made structures and the like but people simply prefer natural hot spots for settlements. Is that what you claim? -
Riccardo at 21:11 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
HumanityRules the first impact I see is on solar science. Haigh 2010 and Lean 2000 cannot be both right unless in the former the new phenomenon just happens sporadically. Having said this, I'd invite you to consider the magnitude of the effect. As in my comment #6 above, it's quite small in the visible range and the impact on forcing should not be exceedingly large. Though, it could make a difference (several %, not tens) in the stratosphere where UV is absorbed. -
Riccardo at 21:02 PM on 12 October 2010The first global warming skeptic
RSVP yes, the emission spectrum will be broader too, and that's why it will more easily go through regions with narrower absorption. -
RSVP at 20:48 PM on 12 October 2010The first global warming skeptic
I assume it can be allowed that as the absorption spectrum broadens, so in turn does the emmision spectrum. Angstrom may have been the first, but definitely not the last skeptic. -
JMurphy at 20:42 PM on 12 October 2010It's freaking cold!
Tom Loeber wrote : "2/3 of Peru under state of emergency for cold not widespread enough for you?" Once again, you are caught up in the type of argument/belief where you see only part of the answer (the answer you WANT to see) and ignore everything else. With regard to Peru, you also have to bear in mind that it wasn't simply the cold weather that led to the state of emergency - it was also due to the effects of that cold on a poverty-stricken people who had previously suffered from everything from extreme downpours to extreme drought. The deaths were largely respiratory infections in children, sadly, but such deaths (and, therefore, such a state of emergency) would not have been so widespread in a wealthier country with a more effective health system. Tragic and extreme but not as doom-laden or prophetic as you seem to think - at least, not unless it becomes a regular occurrence in future. You obviously need to become more aware of something you yourself stated previously : "I think more important than depending on hear-say and the like,..." ...and become less keen to be led along too quickly by the rest of that sentence of yours : "...attempt to get a grasp of the data yourself and draw your own conclusions." Drawing your own conclusions has led you to your 'coming ice-age' belief. Why not step back, look at all the evidence (and in more detail at the stories you are using to 'back-up' your assertions), and see what the reality is as it stands at the moment - cold weather, even very cold weather, is still possible (perhaps more likely in certain areas) in a warming world which isn't heading towards an ice-age. Oh, and you would look more credible if you were to post less of your conspiracy-theory/censorship thoughts. -
kdkd at 20:17 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
adelady #22 But theoretically increasing urbanisation can cause an increase (or decrease) in the trend independent of the baseline value. I'd be interested in hearing of experimental work of the effect of concrete surfaces of different sizes on temperature maxima and minima. -
HumanityRules at 19:31 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
Riccardo, I like the caveat. There should be such caveats in all climate science papers. I'd encourage people to be sceptical about papers that don't know their limitations. Polemical point overwith I've got a question about the science. This paper seems to have implications that go beyond the upside down response you describe. I'm speculating below, do you know in what ways this may cause us to reassess some past work? For example all Hansen's model predictions in the IPCC docs rely on Lean 2000. Are we meant to conclude that Lean 2000 is plain wrong? Lean 2000 is cited by 200+ papers according to Google Scholar. This must have an impact on work that looks at change spectra given that these are generally based on snapshots comparing year X with year Y. It's not just the sign of these changes but the magnitudes at different wavelengths that seem important. If as this paper suggests the solar spectrum varies in completely unexpected ways there may be natural variance that are completely ignored in these papers conclusions. -
adelady at 18:19 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
But we're only interested in the trends, not the raw temperatures. These analyses work whether the comparison is from tropical, polar, ocean, urban or rural areas. The trend is picked up regardless of the records averaging around -30C or +25C. If an urban area is always or usually a degree or two above a neighbouring rural area, that's fine. What matters is not whether one or the other is higher or lower, but whether the temperature increase or decrease is similar or wildly different. -
jadesmith at 17:39 PM on 12 October 2010Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
The increase in urban heat is not only by the natural causes in climate change but the Green house gases are the main cause of global warming. The gases like Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are the main hazards to the global warming which are mainly found in the Urban atmosphere than in the less polluted rural areas. Effects of Global Warming -
kdkd at 17:31 PM on 12 October 2010It's the sun
KL #677 Pray please explain your interpretation of the phrase "There remains an unresolved 4.5 W/m^2 difference between the TIM and other space-borne radiometers, and this difference is being studied by the TSI and radiometry communities" from the link that you provided. Personally I feel more comfortable with the empirical surface data, which shows pretty clear anthropogenic warming from multiple angles. If you can explain the TIM/TSI issue in layman's terms (i.e. no jargon) without attempting to overlay your own preconceptions/interpretations on what's happening, that would be useful and valuable. The value will decrease if you use it to promulgate your sceptical agenda though - save that for a different post. -
Riccardo at 16:57 PM on 12 October 2010The sun upside down
Agnostic I'm not in a position to answer to all of your questions properly. What I can say is that the SORCE spacecraft hosts new spectral and the total irradiance monitor instruments, which greatly improve the quality of the data. This, of course, by itself cannot rule out undetected issues with the instruments. The three years period is definitely too short, as Haigh herself says. If scientists have overestimated the solar contribution to warming, it's not just greenhouse gases contribution that need to be re-evaluated; it is the climate history of the last couple of millennia being involved. We are left with speculations. There is nothing wrong in thinking of the consequences of these new finding, albeit with a big "if" as a premise. -
Ken Lambert at 16:53 PM on 12 October 2010It's the sun
KR #674 Here is the link - have a look for yourself. http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm Seems that the Monitoring community has been stumped over this -4.5W/sq.m discrepancy since 2005. -
ptbrown31 at 16:24 PM on 12 October 2010It's not us
Will somebody please post a link to a paper that concludes that an increased greenhouse effect should increase Tmin faster than Tmax. That claim is NOT supported by the papers that are posted here. Instead the papers that are used as references either A) Don't attempt to attribute DTR changes or B) They attribute DTR changes to clouds, aerosols, or land surface changes. e.g Paragraph 15 of the paper cited above Braganza, K., D. J. Karoly, and J. M. Arblaster (2004), Diurnal temperature range as an index of global climate change during the twentieth century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 31 -
kdkd at 16:09 PM on 12 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
GC #155 That's a rather odd comment. You are aware that the EPA has done a rather comprehensive review of the scientific information available, and responded to submissions? So the anti-scientific assertion seems to be incorrect. -
gallopingcamel at 16:05 PM on 12 October 2010Carbon Dioxide - Everyone's Favorite Pollutant
Given that this is supposed to be a science blog I find it depressing that so many of you use the "Clean Air Act" and anti-scientific nonsense published by the EPA in support of your arguments. -
kdkd at 14:30 PM on 12 October 2010It's the sun
KL #673 "Again the absolute values need to be used above a theoretical 'zero' equilibrium to quantify the energy gain or loss from each forcing." You appear to have the concept of a 'baseline' confused - it is not the same thing as a 'theoretical zero equilibrium' whatever that means. This is perhaps the root of the problems you are having with your illogical and confused argument. -
archiesteel at 14:20 PM on 12 October 2010It's the sun
@Ken: "What you don't get is those WMGG were not in theory 'forcing' (warming or cooling) the planet." Of course they were warming the planet, otherwise it would be much colder. The fact that it was relatively stable doesn't mean it had no effect, and in fact temperatures were far from stable pre-1750 (LIA, MWP, etc.) - they simply didn't go as high as the current trend is reaching. Furthermore, concentration wasn't stable at 280ppm, but varied between 180 and 280ppm. Again, the point is moot, as the graph does not show absolute values, but deltas. The fact you continue to claim otherwise shows that, despite using all the trappings of scientific discourse, you struggle to understand some vary basic concepts about the science. -
It's the sun
Ken Lambert - Are you certain of your numbers, 4.5W/m^2? Because looking at the graphed data (sorry, can't get to the original behind the paywall), the difference is on the order of 4-5 mW/m^2, not W/m^2! That's 0.0045W/m^2, just to make it clear. Again, that's several orders of magnitude too small to be the major issue with late 20th century warming. I could be mistaken - I don't have access to the original paper - but the effect appears to be very small. If I'm incorrect, please provide a link to the portion of the SORCE website (I spent some time, couldn't find it) that indicates such a major measurement error. It certainly doesn't appear to be visible in Haigh et al 2010. -
It's freaking cold!
Tom Loeber - The topics of cloud feedback (including noctilucents) and of sudden regime changes in climate are both interesting, and it would be worthwhile to discuss those. I myself have suggested a thread on cloud feedback; unfortunately, I don't consider myself well enough informed on the topic to contribute that myself. Until we have a thread, though, I'm not going to ramble on regarding that topic on an unrelated thread. In regards to localized cold events, the data for the world shows 2010 tied for the hottest year on record. There will always be record highs and record lows occurring - that's the nature of variability. But the data indicates there are far more highs than lows (see this link, which I pointed you to before), showing that the mid-point, the climate, is moving up. Climate reversals: Perhaps there is some chance of a Younger Dryas type event, although that appears to have been a Northern Hemisphere occurrence, not a global one (perhaps a shutdown of the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation?). But given that we don't know exactly why such events occurred, we don't have any evidence to suspect a climate reversal. What we do have is significant evidence and known risk factors for amplification of warming - methane release from permafrost and sea-floor clathrate accumulations, for example. Those would have global effects, not regional. Given what we know, those are significant risks down the line, not reversals.
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