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Comments 108751 to 108800:

  1. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Berényi - You seem to be claiming that the distribution of water vapor will change to increase IR radiation, providing a strong negative feedback. As has been pointed out, modelled and empirical evidence indicates that the actual climate sensitivity is ~3°C for a doubling of CO2 or an equivalent radiological forcing. That indicates that your negative feedback does not exist, certainly not at the level you seem to be suggesting. As Riccardo points out, atmospheric absorption/emission in these IR bands depends on the integrated total water column. Finally - it seems to me that increased inhomogeneity (which would be required to emit more IR) represents a local increase of order. A global higher IR emission won't have any influence on local order - global IR is an emergent phenomena, the sum of local events. The mechanisms are important; your increased inhomogeneity means lower local entropy, and is not a natural direction for the system to move in.
  2. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    Ned, The IPCC also said this: "A temperature rise of about 0.2 °C per decade is projected for the next two decades for all SRES scenarios." Some may contend that internal variability makes two decades too brief a period to predict for. And clearly, the briefer the period, the more the starting time matters to the trend. But that is not my prediction, but rather the words of the IPCC. And analyzing the results of predictions is how we test theories. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#Model-based_projections_for_the_future
  3. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    archiesteel, Fortunately for us, all of the above trends are completely below the range of the IPCC 'high end scenario': "Best estimate for a "high scenario"[10] is 4.0 °C with a likely range of 2.4 to 6.4 °C" Most of the above trends are IN the range for the 'low scenario': "Best estimate for a "low scenario"[9] is 1.8 °C with a likely range of 1.1 to 2.9 °C" But ALL the measurements are below the 'Best Estimate' of the 'low scenario', which the IPCC describes as the "most optimistic". Hence, my point that warming IS taking place, but at a rate LOWER than even the "most optimistic" per the IPCC. The middle troposphere measurements, which are modeled to contain the "hot spot", and warm at a rate higher than the surface, do in fact exhibit a trend which is completely OUT of range for the SURFACE as modeled by the IPCC "low scenario". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#Model-based_projections_for_the_future
  4. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Berényi Péter what you describe is a feedback mechanism, not a cycle. As for "the same level of atmospheric moisture can give a wide range of IR opacities depending on its distribution", in the wavelength range of interest it's not so. Absorption coefficient depends on the total water column, not on the size of the particles. Scattering, which in general depends on particle size, is irrelevant given the longer wavelength of the EM wave with respect to particle size.
  5. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    ClimateWatcher writes: All less than the IPCC best estimate. Or, actually, right in the middle of the IPCC projected range for 2010.
  6. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    Right with you: 1979 through Aug 2010 least squares fit ( deg C per century to the nearest tenth): RSS MT 1.0 UAH MT 0.5 RSS LT 1.6 UAH LT 1.4 CRU 1.6 GISS 1.7 Had SST 1.4 All less than the IPCC best estimate. MT, where warming is modeled to be maximal, below the significance limit.
  7. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    I'm concerned that this thread is rapidly approaching the danger zone. The ice is pretty thin, but I think doug_bostrom @17 makes an excellent point about what's "practical." Getting back to the topic of the post, "scientific certainty" arguments are obviously not practical, because we're obviously going to have a very long wait before we achieve "scientific certainty" on this question or any other. I fail to see anything "practical" in postponing the possibility of taking action until some imaginary future arrives. The fact that some "skeptics" also supported the invasion of Iraq, or abstinence education, explains why some of us are irked by their demands for scientific certainty, as does the fact that these demands never seem to extend to "alarmist" theories on the effects of climate legislation. But really, all of that's a distraction. Politics aside, it's logically incoherent to demand scientific certainty before action, and to assume that uncertainty about AGW means it'll be much better than we expect, rather than much worse. As such, these stances are inherently impractical. Arguing over politics obscures that point, IMO.
  8. Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
    Ned, I am not familiar with this type of data analysis. I wondered if you could remove the UHI "bias" by choosing countries that have had negative population growth and doing an analysis on them. I checked on Wikipedia and most of eastern Europe, including Russia and Poland, and Japan have had negative population growth for many years. If you showed their warming was the same as areas with increasing population (or the global average) would that show that the UHI effect BP claims was not true? It might be possible to lose population in one area and gain it elsewhere and have an effect, but that would be an extraordinary set of circumstances. Greenland has had population decline and we know how fast it has been cooling there. I thought it was ironic that Poland had negative population growth and BP is from there.
  9. Billions of Blow Dryers: Some Missing Heat Returns to Haunt Us
    Camburn, When I read the linked paper they say on page 7 that they use thermometers to measure the temperature, not models and salinity. Can you say where you find them to suggest otherwise? They state they use only high quality temperature data from direct measurements made at least twice in the same location. Possibly the Wegener study used models?
  10. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Why is it assumed that conservatives would not be concerned with the environment when they basically own it and have a lot more time to enjoy it?
    The short answer is that AGW, along with much of the environmental degradation we see in the world, is a tragedy of the commons.
  11. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    I'm concerned that this thread is rapidly approaching the danger zone.
  12. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    Since there seems to be a bit of confusion on this point, some trends (Jan 1979-Aug 2010): GISSTEMP land/ocean: 1.65 C/century RSS lower troposphere: 1.63 C/century UAH lower troposphere: 1.39 C/century I just went back to the original sources, re-downloaded the data, and checked this. NOAA-NCDC and HADCRUT are also in the 1.6 C/century range.
  13. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Conservatives are "practical," liberals are "idealists?" Here's a short checklist, see how "conservatives" perform in terms of letting the ideal infect the real: - Chlorofluorocarbons - Tetraethyl lead - Abstinence education - Tobacco policy Just to keep things on topic: - Carbon emissions mitigation
  14. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    @ClimateWatcher: "I use January, 1979 to start. The data set starts with December, 1978, but starting with January makes annual comparisons easier." One month does not significantly change the trend, so it really does seem as if your calculations are incorrect. I'll venture so far as to say that, since you clearly have a wrong idea of the current warming trend, the rest of your arguments are tainted by this mistake and need to be adjusted accordingly. In other words, you have failed to adequately challenge the current science, i.e. that the current warming trend is in the range estimated by the IPCC.
  15. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Phila, further to your remarks what we also have enjoyed here (U.S.) versus the Russian Tsarist/PseudoCommmunist/Oligarchy continuum is a system of law favorable to successfully addressing disparities in political power. The rule of law is something many self-professed conservatives here in the United States despise in terms of its outcomes, oddly enough. "Those faceless bureaucrats and their environmental takings," etc.
  16. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    ClimateWatcher, it's simply a fact that the IPCC temperature projections aren't linear over the period 1990-2100. As shown in Rahmstorf 2007, recent temperatures are well within the IPCC model predictions. Here's an updated version of Rahmstorf's graph, showing the comparison between observed and projected temperatures: Observed data are from RSS lower troposphere and GISSTEMP land/ocean (monthly, and 5-year LOESS smoothed). Gray envelope shows IPCC model projections, from Rahmstorf.
  17. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    doug_bostrom "But perhaps "conservative" is another term akin to "skeptic," where original meaning has lost all relationship with our parlance..." Another way to look at it is that conservative is another term for "practical" and liberal "idealist". Since liberals have few opportunities to exert power, they are seen to mess things up less, but given the chance as chriscanaris points out, they do an even worse job. Just a theory of course. There is still hope, I hope.
  18. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    #114 doug_bostrom at 01:30 AM on 28 September, 2010 how will these adjustments manifest themselves? Atmospheric distribution of moisture is pretty fractal-like along a scale of many orders of magnitude from global down to micron sized droplets. Opacity for electromagnetic radiation depends not only on average moisture contents of air, but also on finer details of its distribution. While MEP does not give any direct answer to the question what kind of atmospheric state maximizes entropy production, it strongly suggests the lowest possible average temperature provided there are ways to maintain radiative energy balance other than increasing temperature. Therefore since the same level of atmospheric moisture can give a wide range of IR opacities depending on its distribution, I guess it is enough to adjust its fractal dimension slightly. Not even large scale rearrangement of flows is required, so no radical climate change is expected for moderate increase in well mixed IR opacity. It is not easy to measure these properties, but there is a literature about it well worth studying, for example: WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, VOL. 35, NO. 6, PAGES 1853­1867, JUNE 1999 Multifractal modeling of anomalous scaling laws in rainfall Roberto Deidda, Roberto Benzi & Franco Siccardi WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH, VOL. 32. No 9. PAGES 2825-2839, SEPTEMBER 1996 A deterministic geometric representation of temporal raifall: Results for a storm in Boston Carlos E. Puente and Nelson Obregón It is also impossible to include these effects properly in gridded models (due to their multi-scale behavior), but one can always try to use other representations (like Puente 1996). If we accept the science is very far from being settled, a wealth of exciting directions open up immediately. It is really hard to understand why one would stick to a worn-out paradigm.
  19. A detailed look at Hansen's 1988 projections
    @angusmac: "It is simply that it matches the actual forcings correctly?" No, it isn't. You're trying to find meaning in coincidence, and I'm beginning to wonder where this is really heading to. Are you repeating this fallacious hypothesis over and over again in order to later claim that temperatures are going to level off, as Scenario C suggests? In any case, you've been repeatedly shown why you were wrong, and making unlikely hypotheses isn't going to change that fact. As for me, I've said I needed to say on the subject.
  20. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    chriscanaris Witness by contrast the environmental catastrophe still dogging vast tracts of the former Soviet bloc and its rustbelt industries where no one 'owned' anything and thus felt no sense of responsibility for the world around them. I'd never dream of defending the USSR's environmental practices, but projecting your own assumptions about the value of private ownership onto their society is ahistorical and unreasonable. The statement that people in the USSR "felt no sense of responsibility for the world around them" is an astonishing claim--astonishing mostly because it's so casual. I'd love to know what hard evidence or research it's based on. Anyway, the problem isn't owning or not owning land; the problem is scientifically and ethically comprehending one's place within a larger system. And as adelady notes, the failure to reach that understanding has been pretty universal. I know it's fashionable in libertarian circles to claim that lack of private ownership ruined the USSR's environment--especially among the crowd that argues for selling off our national parks to the highest bidder--but the larger problems, IMO, were ignorance, arrogance, nationalism, quasi-worship of industry, greed, paranoia, and an economic orthodoxy that encouraged magical thinking. (The usual, in other words.) Also: one thing we had, and the USSR didn't, was an environmental movement going back over 100 years (cf. David Stradling's Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers and Air Quality in America, 1881-1951). Perhaps that had some bearing on our respective outcomes, too.
  21. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    ClimateWatcher #37: "Further, it is not founded to speak of saturated CO2 sinks, when the oceans can and will absorb all available CO2" Can and will... but isn't currently. One of the early arguments against AGW by actual skeptics was that the total volume of the oceans would be able to absorb any amount of CO2 which humans released and thus we could not cause an increase in the atmospheric CO2 level. This was found to be false because the RATE at which we are releasing CO2 is greater than the rate at which the oceans can DISTRIBUTE CO2 throughout their volume. Thus, it is totally accurate to speak of sinks becoming saturated... in the short term. If the ocean surface waters were not saturated with CO2 we would not be seeing the increasing atmospheric values we have been. Sure, it will be a different story several thousand years from now... but that's not exactly relevant.
  22. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    archiesteel, I use January, 1979 to start. The data set starts with December, 1978, but starting with January makes annual comparisons easier. There is nothing special about the MSU era, but it does provide the best comparison among all the available data sets. I did not notice a slope value on the WoodForTrees site. Is it there but I am missing it?
  23. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    Ned, It is correct that the MSU channels do overlap: However, reflect that: 1. the amount of overlap (with the strat.) is small 2. The co-located RAOB data tend to confirm the MSU data and 3. the lower stratosphere has not been cooling for the last fifteen years: I do not find it appropriate to speak of acceleration in trends when the all but the most extreme IPCC scenario is modeled to have DEcelerating temperature increases: This is to be expected with the logarithmic decrease in forcing modeled by the IPCC. Further, it is not founded to speak of saturated CO2 sinks, when the oceans can and will absorb all available CO2 and when anthropogenic forces are excluded, CO2 is in IMbalance with the oceans:
  24. A detailed look at Hansen's 1988 projections
    Archiesteel#125, have you ever thought of an alternative scenario that the reason why Scenario C matches the temperature record so well is not coincidence or serendipity? It is simply that it matches the actual forcings correctly? This would mean that we have not accounted for all of the forcings from actual emissions in the 1988 scenarios and that some mechanism would be required to bring the forcings in Scenario B down to near-zero after 2000. Fortunately, Hansen 2000 gives us a clue for a possible explanation for the reduced warming post-2000 and thus a mechanism for reducing the forcings that would otherwise be caused by Scenario B (see Figure 3). Figure 3: A scenario for additional climate forcings between 2000 and 2050. Reduction of black carbon moves the aerosol forcing to lower values (Hansen et al, 2000) The 1988 scenarios only consider CO2, CH4, N2O, CFC11 and CF12. However, it is evident from Figure 3 that the largest anthropogenic climate forcing (due to CO2) could be cancelled out by negative forcings from CH4 and aerosols. Perhaps this is the reason why Scenario C gives good results? If we plugged the negative forcings from Figure 3 into Scenario B it would result in similar forcings to Scenario C. Consequently, Scenario B would be able to simulate the post-2000 temperature flattening that is so well modelled by Scenario C.
  25. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    I took the Chernobyl discussion straight out of Sloan and Wolfendale (linked in the article). "We estimate that the increase in ionization from this [Chernobyl] radioactivity relative to that produced by CR is a factor of ~15 in the immediate vicinity of Chernobyl (50-52.5◦ N, 30-32.5◦ E) and a factor ~3 in the fallout region..."
  26. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    RSVP: Why is it assumed that conservatives would not be concerned with the environment when they basically own it and have a lot more time to enjoy it? I think people assume that conservatives tend not to be concerned with the environment because that's the impression that their real-world actions convey (e.g., hostility to environmental regulation; hostility to the ESA; hostility to the concept of public lands; a tendency not only to oppose climate action, but also to deny warming; and so forth). It's not clear to me why an imaginary paradox should trump decades of clear evidence. If you have a cornucopian or eschatological outlook, and little interest in or understanding of environmental science, then there's not necessarily any contradiction between "enjoying" the environment and despoiling it; it's simply a matter of denying that you're despoiling it, or that it matters. Faced with your alleged paradox, the conservatives of my acquaintance would simply a) deny that pollution and exploitation are occurring; b) deny that pollution and exploitation have negative effects; c) deny that pollution and exploitation have lasting negative effects; d) deny that the negative effects of pollution and exploitation outweigh the economic benefits of growth; e) call me a communist; or f) all of the above.
  27. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    @ClimateWatcher: I don't know about you, but looking at RSS and UAH trends I get 1.8C/century and 1.5C/century, respectively. I think your calculations might be wrong. For a time frame similar to available RSS and UAH data, we get 2.2C/century for HADCRUT and GISS.
  28. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    These are more meta-discussion links, but I've found them useful when evaluating a number of skeptic arguments: Nizkor Project - Fallacies Don Lindsay - A List Of Fallacious Arguments
  29. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    ClimateWatcher, the "MT" (mid-troposphere) trends are misleading because their weighting function extends over both the troposphere, which is warming, and the stratosphere, which is cooling. The RSS lower troposphere trend and the various land/ocean trends are at about +1.6C/century for the past three decades. However, it's inappropriate to extrapolate this rate for the next nine decades. First, there's additional warming "in the pipeline" due to lags in the climate system. Second, the warming is projected to be nonlinear -- due to increasing population, GDP, and energy use on the one hand, and saturating CO2 sinks on the other.
  30. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    Thanks, John, for a nice set of references. On the assumptions that 1) too many people are still ill-informed or uninformed on the subject of climate disruption; and 2) lots of folks prefer to watch videos, rather than read something; :-) I have assembled links to several hours worth of video presentations on various aspects of the subject. These links are available at climate101.wordpress.com, presented in the form of a blog, although the "blog" is fairly static at this time. The objective is simply to have one reference URL that points to lots of video-based info for the basic introduction to climate science and climate concerns. As a resource, it doesn't do the up-to-the-minute thing, but I hope it will be useful for some - especially climate neophytes!
  31. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    There is an important article in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty about how the Russian energy companies are projecting their political power into Europe and "cultivating" politicians who will serve them. It is noted that Russia's LUKoil paid for the translation of Vaclav Klaus's book against climate science and Al Gore. Those Russian energy companies also own a lot of media, and they cooperate with their government's foreign policy. Here is the article, but I would say that this process of "cultivating" politicians is underway not only in Europe, but in the US. http://www.rferl.org/content/Czech_Mate_How_Russia_Is_Rebuilding_Influence_In_The_Former_Soviet_Bloc/2168090.html
  32. The Phony War: Lies, Damn Lies and the IPCC
    The biggest problem with the IPCC is the predictions: "Best estimate for a 'high scenario' is 4.0 °C" Since the MSU era, not even close. "Best estimate for a 'low scenario' is 1.8 °C" Close but no cigar. For all measures ( MSU-MT-RSS, MSU-MT-UAH, MSU-LT-RSS, MSU-LT-UAH, CRU Land/Ocean, GISS Land/Ocean, Hadley SST). In fact MSU-MT-RSS, and MSU-MT-UAH are below even the low end limit of 1.1C per century rate. When was the last time you heard that global warming was at a rate better than even the most optimistic scenario?
  33. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Much better with graphics: I'll be even more interested in how 2010 would look like.
  34. Same Ordinary Fool at 03:05 AM on 28 September 2010
    The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    The four newspapers are: The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal.
  35. A detailed look at galactic cosmic rays
    #10:"I personally wouldn't expect Chernobyl to provide any evidence pro or con." I don't see how low energy alpha or beta radiation could go far enough to ionize any part of the atmosphere. To consider gamma radiation as a factor, you could look at Gamma ray bursts. In March 2003, a large GRB was detected: The burst poured out a thousand trillion, trillion times the gamma rays seen in a solar flare. When measured more than one hour after the burst, the afterglow was still about as bright as a 12th magnitude star. But its not clear at all if this radiation seeds clouds.
  36. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    Some of my favorite resources are: Science of Doom Climate Charts and Graphs (Kelly O'Day's site) Climate Change: An Analysis of Key Questions by Chris Colose The Clear Climate Code project Tamino's page of Climate Data Links AGW Observer, a fantastic compendium of peer-reviewed papers on climate change, by Ari Jokimäki And of course the IPCC AR4
  37. Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
    Oops, I read 'human breathing CO2 emissions' in #33 and assumed you were comparing that fossil fuel emissions.
  38. Hockey stick is broken
    Not to mention Mann et al. (2008) do use ice cores. If ice cores perform so much better (different) than other proxies, I would assume they would mention it. Also, link dump! Gavin's response to MW2010. Martin Tingley's response to MW2010. McIntyre's response to Mann2008. Reply to McIntyre by Mann
  39. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    There is some support for the idea that if people are given ownership of a natural resource they will be less inclined to exploit it unsustainably. I'm not sure how this is supposed to give us comfort when talking about climate change. There's no way to give everybody "ownership" of the atmosphere or the climate. The closest approach to this is marketizing emissions, as in "cap and trade". This approach has worked pretty well for dealing with acid rain. In the US, I do not see a large groundswell of support in favor of "cap and trade" or carbon taxes, or other market-based approaches to emissions reduction. In the absence of such a market-based approach, emissions reductions in the US will probably be driven by regulation, as we now see happening with the EPA. This is, IMHO, a decidedly more inefficient and undesirable approach to reducing emissions. I'm reluctant to contribute to the politicization of threads here on Skeptical Science, so I'm not going to ascribe blame for this shortsightedness. The other problem with RSVP's suggestion that "ownership of the environment" will solve our problems is that, in this case, the benefits of burning fossil fuels occur now while the climate impacts are spread out over future generations. It's hard enough figuring out how to give everyone alive today "ownership" of the climate, without even considering how to extend that "ownership" to people in 2050 or 2100!
  40. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    Like Skeptical Science, The DeSmog Blog is another “go to” website dedicated to setting the record straight about what scientists are telling us about climate change. “Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science” is the DeSmog Blog's motto. To access the DeSmog Blog, go to: http://www.desmogblog.com/
  41. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Obviously the climate has changed radically in the past. The glacial/interglacial cycle is almost entirely driven by Milankovich geometry, which doesn't actually change the mean insolation at all, just its spatial/seasonal distribution. Yet changes to this spatial/seasonal distribution of insolation are sufficient to increase or decrease the global mean temperature by something like 8 degrees C. In other words, the real world doesn't have these "strong negative feedbacks" that BP speculates about. Temperature, precipitation, and circulation can and do change dramatically in response to radiative forcings. Our civilization arose during a time (the Holocene) when conditions have been relatively stable. Relatively minor changes in climate (the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age) were sufficient to have large impacts on societies that experienced them. The probable outcome of projected 21st century carbon emissions would be a much larger forcing than anything we've experienced since the last deglaciation. The "Principle of Maximum Entropy" didn't prevent the Earth's climate from changing in the past, so I see no reason to assume that it will do so in the future.
  42. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    Speaking of David Koch… If you have not already checked out: “Is Nova Catering to Its Anti-Science Sugar Daddy?” I highly recommend that you do so. To access it, go to: http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/09/08/is-nova-catering-to-its-anti-science-sugar-daddy/ BTW: Is NOVA broadcast in Australia and the UK?
  43. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    @RSVP: why do you assume conservatives own most of the environment? That seems like an overly broad statement. First, you have to define "conservative" - considering that the US is to the right when compared to the rest of the world. Next, you have to define how one can own the environment. Owning a piece of land doesn't mean you own the environment, as many environmental phenomena travel across territories. I think it's safer to refrain from making such sweeping generalization, as they rarely turn out to be accurate.
  44. Hockey stick is broken
    Quite why *should* an hemispheric or a global temperature record detail all known regional or local climate variations? Ignorance of the historical record is a significant accusation, I wonder if you can back that up with any more than the suggestion that global temperature series should record local fluctuations? Historical observations of Medieval or Roman (clue in the name) warmth come from small portions of the world (dominantly Europe). If most of the rest of the world showed little temperature change or a change of opposite sign, then the impact of even large local changes recorded in the historical record will be outweighed by the record (not stored in written history, but faithfully recorded by proxies) from the rest of the world. Or are you assuming, incorrectly, that all climate fluctuations must always occur worldwide and be globally synchronous?
  45. We're coming out of the Little Ice Age
    @cruzn246: "Archie, explain it to me." Why should I? You'll only ignore what I say and/or change the subject yet again. You've proved time and time again you're not interested in learning. Here's a hint for you, though: equilibrium is not a "hard thing to achieve" in a system, it's what a system naturally tends to. Also, a thermal equilibrium isn't necessarily livable. Venus is in a thermal equilibrium (i.e. it's temperature is stable), but it's the closest thing we have to Hell.
  46. 2010 Climate Change Resource Roundup
    When someone starts to ask questions, I point to the The Discovery of Global Warming for background. Skeptical Science for depth. If I get the "I'm skeptical", I ask if they understand what that word means, and why the term denier came into use. I then point to Robert Carroll's Site and to Skeptics in general Cheers!
  47. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    BP, assuming that adjustments in radiative pathways from Earth must be made in order for the planet to continue shedding energy in a way that does not ultimately result in a significant increase in surface temperature, will those changes be invisible to us? Energy is conserved and if systems must adjust themselves to dispose of energy in ways other than a previously more efficient particular IR distribution while leaving surface temperatures largely unaffectdd, how will these adjustments manifest themselves?
  48. The Big Picture (2010 version)
    Posted by dana1981 on Friday, 24 September, 2010 at 09:19 AM And those who argue it's just a natural cycle" can never seem to identify exactly which natural cycle can explain the current warming, nor can they explain how our understanding of the fundamental climate physics is wrong. Well, heat capacity of oceans is enormous. If all ocean circulation stopped it would take about five millennia to heat them up by 1°C for the geothermal heat flux through oceanic crust. It also implies if there was a long term 0.8 W/m2 radiative imbalance at TOA (Top of Atmosphere) indeed as it is assumed by some based on model calculations (and neither contradicted nor confirmed by measurements), average ocean temperature would go up by 0.13°C in a century (provided 80% of the excess heat is absorbed by the ocean). That's negligible. Therefore the atmosphere can only warm up by 2-4.5°C on a century scale if a substantial imbalance develops in distribution of heat between hydrosphere and atmosphere. If for any reason a major redistribution of this excess energy occurs during this period, average atmospheric temperature change becomes absolutely indeterminate. This occasional redistribution is what's provided by so called natural cycles. It can also be explained easily how your understanding of the fundamental climate physics is wrong. If overall IR opacity of the atmosphere is increased while everything else is kept constant, surface temperature should go up indeed, that much is true. However, if you keep adding IR opacity to the system, entropy production is decreasing. As the climate system has a huge number of degrees of freedom and it is very far from thermodynamic equilibrium (but has a steady flow of energy going through it), it tends to reconfigure itself to maximize entropy production. In order to do that, it has to both reconfigure circulation patterns and decrease overall IR opacity by making water vapor distribution a bit more uneven on all scales. But on this level the exact mechanisms are not important, the system has enough degrees of freedom to achieve maximum entropy production somehow under any circumstances. And while it is possible to keep overall IR opacity constant by redistributing some GHGs, it will always be one of the major avenues leading to this kind state. Anyway, with the radiation flux output kept constant the lower the radiation temperature gets the higher radiation entropy becomes. Therefore the MEP tends to keep temperature as low as possible (it serves as a strong "negative feedback"). That's fundamental physics (providing a genuine big picture as well).
  49. The Asymmetric War on Climate Change: No Cause for Alarmism?
    The bigest criticism of the IPCC reports that has been substantiated is that it grossly underestimates sea level rise. The estimates in the next report will have to be at least doubled, if not quadrupled. The errors were systematic and all drove the estimate down. People like RSVP and Chris need to point to a specific error in the IPCC report that they can criticize. This underestimation is exactly what the article is describing.
  50. Does breathing contribute to CO2 buildup in the atmosphere?
    muoncounter - As CBDunkerson put it, we're emitting enough CO2 to raise atmospheric levels by 4ppm/year; we're seeing ~2ppm/year increases, which indicates that half is being absorbed by natural sinks, such as ocean acidification. There's actually a series of invited posts on WUWT by Ferdinand Engelbeen regarding the human causes of CO2 increases, the most relevant to this discussion being Part 1 - showing that the CO2 increase is due to our actions. Parts 2, 3, and 4 are also interesting. I'm going to have to compliment Anthony Watts for supporting such a clear series of posts that disagree with some of his base arguments!

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