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Comments 111101 to 111150:
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johnd at 06:21 AM on 5 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
I don't know if it has been raised before or not in other threads, but it should be considered as part of the discussion how such events rather than being considered indicators instead form part of a negative feedback system. -
actually thoughtful at 06:19 AM on 5 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
AdrianSmits - can you provide a source for your statement that humidity is reduced (Please realize that "Watts up with that" is not a source)? Can you possibly restate your first point - I don't understand it as written. Thanks. -
cynicus at 06:02 AM on 5 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
Ned, that's an interesting quote. If true would it mean that the whole discussion (about evidence on stronger or more frequent cyclones already being visible in the records) is a straw man because noticeable changes would only appear in the second half of this century? -
J Bowers at 05:42 AM on 5 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
Re. 6 MattJ. I thoroughly agree. -
miekol at 05:24 AM on 5 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
Global warming is settled, the why is not. -
J Bowers at 05:23 AM on 5 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
But, but... "...And I’m going to show you the latest science, which now doesn’t leave the question unsettled anymore this is now settled science, it is now settled science that there is not a problem with our influence over Climate. The science is in, the truth is out and the scare is over.” -- Christopher Monckton. 10/14/9 Minnesota Free Market Institute presentation H/T to Citizen's Challenge -
chris1204 at 00:31 AM on 5 September 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
At 52 years of age and happily married, I've grown immune to foxy nurses - they're nothing but trouble! :-) From what little I know of population behaviour, I find straight lines with identical or near identical slopes rather different from what I'm used to seeing in the real world (even if we're dealing with anomalies rather than raw data). I note the Menne 2010 paper contains graphics for adjusted and unadjusted data - this post shows unadjusted data only. At the risk of demonstrating my ignorance, I'd expect to see at least some error bars or other evidence of scatter in the comparisons of well sited and poorly sited stations. As the current post stands, it really does look as if the maximum and minimum anomalies were extraordinarily small. Consequently, while I didn't 'imply that the USHCN has shown the exact same increase in temperature, for each station, over the period in question,' I did find the uniformity between the two sets of data disconcerting. I believe Menne at al (2010) pretty well said as much if I understood them correctly. -
Colorado Bob at 00:23 AM on 5 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
Heads up - Ice caps in Greenland and West Antarctica melt is not as hard as thought 02 september 2010 door M&C September 2, 2010 by M & C http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tudelft.nl%2Flive%2Fpagina.jsp%3Fid%3D7a6c3d15-1c1e-4869-b378-840a000c6803%26lang%3Dnl -
Argus at 00:21 AM on 5 September 2010IPCC is alarmist
citizenschallenge, Maybe the IPCC itself, has helped to diminish 'its public moral authority', by, among other things, purposely publishing outrageous predictions, even though two expert reviewers and the Indian government adviced them to withdraw the erroneous claim (e.g. the Himalayan glaciers). Recent news: The world's leading climate science body must "fundamentally reform" its organisation and how it operates if it is to regain the public's trust, according to a major review. -
dana1981 at 00:17 AM on 5 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
If by 'greenhouse theory' you mean anthropogenic global warming, that was the entire point of this post. The empirical observational data is matching what's predicted by the models. That's experimental evidence. -
jdsykes at 23:58 PM on 4 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
Given the lives in the balance, it would seem to me that the deniers should be required to prove their allegations that AGW is false, and that their "proof" should be beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all, it is their premeditated obstructionism that will contribute to the suffering of millions. -
lciattaglia at 23:20 PM on 4 September 2010Weather vs Climate: Watch the waves, miss the turning of the tides
Adelady,I wanted simply to suggest that our lifespan ( or what we remember of the past) is not the correct meter for interpreting the meteorological episodes as a proof of the climate change…. My post had the intention to support the previous one (posted by keepingitreal) on waves and tides. -
Ned at 21:08 PM on 4 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
My understanding is that much of the uncertainty about whether AGW will lead to more frequent tropical storms is due to the competing effects of SST and wind shear, both of which will presumably be increased in a warmer world. Higher SSTs tend to promote TS development but higher wind shear tends to hinder it. Thus, different models that emphasize one parameter or the other will give very different results in terms of future TS frequency. See, for example: Knutson et al., 2008. Simulated reduction in Atlantic hurricane frequency under twenty-first-century warming conditions. Nature Geoscience 1: 359-364. Zhao et al., 2008. Simulations of Global Hurricane Climatology, Interannual Variability, and Response to Global Warming Using a 50-km Resolution GCM. J. Climate, 22, 6653–6678. Knutson et al., 2010. Tropical cyclones and climate change. Nature Geoscience, 3, 157 - 163. The latter is somewhat interesting -- it's a review article, with a list of authors covering the gamut from Chris Landsea to Kerry Emanuel. It also nicely illustrates that some parts of this picture seem clear, while others are still very uncertain:Whether the characteristics of tropical cyclones have changed or will change in a warming climate — and if so, how — has been the subject of considerable investigation, often with conflicting results. Large amplitude fluctuations in the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones greatly complicate both the detection of long-term trends and their attribution to rising levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases. Trend detection is further impeded by substantial limitations in the availability and quality of global historical records of tropical cyclones. Therefore, it remains uncertain whether past changes in tropical cyclone activity have exceeded the variability expected from natural causes. However, future projections based on theory and high-resolution dynamical models consistently indicate that greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100. Existing modelling studies also consistently project decreases in the globally averaged frequency of tropical cyclones, by 6–34%. Balanced against this, higher resolution modelling studies typically project substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones, and increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre. For all cyclone parameters, projected changes for individual basins show large variations between different modelling studies.
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Rob Painting at 20:33 PM on 4 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
BP, you have successfully demonstrated that really bad hurricanes/cyclones have a tendency not to travel to the United States, but given that they're not actually born there, not really enlightening. There's actually peer reviewed studies (see @34) that there are more intense hurricanes/cyclones being generated in the last few decades in the tropical regions. So it appears they have a hunkering for more international travel. The PDI kinda looks like a hockey stick too. -
Anne-Marie Blackburn at 20:32 PM on 4 September 2010How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
gallopingcamel #38 Interglacials can last up to 30,000 years. Another glacial is unlikely to happen any time soon because orbital factors are currently too weak to trigger one. On top of that, we're seeing a rise in global temperatures when natural factors should be leading to a slight cooling. This strongly suggests that greenhouse gases are overwhelming the impact of other factors. -
Rob Painting at 20:12 PM on 4 September 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
Chriscanaris @ 63 -"Actually, if you knew anything much about sphygmomanometers and blood pressure measurements, you'd know that there's very considerable variability in readings depending on type of sphygmomanometer" So why the spurious analogy?. @58 your scenario was this: "However, if every sphygmomanometer showed an almost identical rise in blood pressure of, say, 20 mm-Hg +/- 0.5 mm-Hg, you'd be wondering about the validity of the data set." You imply that the USHCN has shown the exact same increase in temperature, for each station, over the period in question. It hasn't. If it had then sure, that would indeed cause the clattering of alarm bells. As to your amended scenario it still misses the mark, for instance:- What was the average of the 100 readings?. Has some form of calibration been carried out on the sphygmomanometers?. What was the mean of the anomaly in the 2nd check up compared to the baseline 1st reading?. But even then it's not valid, Your sphygmomanometers would be in constant use between your visits & therefore would require the same protocols for every use. But even then............. How's this for expanding on your analogy? - suppose you expect having a super hot babe nurse taking the readings will bias blood pressure too high for you (micro site influences). So you compare the small number of readings taken by foxy nurses, and the large number taken by the butt ugly doctors (good/bad stations). Your expectation is not borne out by the results, you're a couch potato, smoke and have poor eating habits, and in the 2nd check up the blood pressure trend is upwards with a virtually no discernible difference between the anomaly trend of readings taken by the foxy nurses and butt ugly doctors (Menne 2010). This is where sphygmomanometersorg. weighs in - they have enlisted volunteers who have photographed the foxy nurses. The photos look compelling, any red blooded male couldn't help but see his blood pressure skyrocket one assumes (me too) but that's not what the data shows. You say it seems a tad too uniform, I say well I'd expect your blood pressure to go up with that kind of lifestyle, but let's wait and see if science can resolve why the foxy nurses didn't bias your readings higher. -
johnd at 20:03 PM on 4 September 2010Carbon dioxide equivalents
Daniel Bailey at 08:09 AM, re "Those giants took many centuries to reach maturity in these poor soils." The soils would not always have been poor, especially if it could grow giant trees. Trees drag a huge amount of essential nutrients out of the soil. In a permanent forestry situation, the foliage, branches and trees that die and fall to the forest floor allow those nutrients to be recycled. However if logging occurs all those nutrients that have been taken from the soil over the life of the tree are permanently removed from the system depleting the natural reservoir of nutrients and thus degrading the soil. Irrespective of what is grown from the soil, unless those nutrients that disappear down the road on a back of a truck are replaced, the system is not sustainable. In farming, the nutrients are generally regularly replaced, and sometimes in plantations, but rarely when natural forests are logged, hence formerly good soil can suddenly become poor soil. -
johnd at 19:10 PM on 4 September 2010Carbon dioxide equivalents
RSVP at 16:06 PM, well managed improved pasture systems are a more efficient form of CO2 sequestration than forestry and will build up the amount of carbon stored in the soil, and keep it there as long as it remains well managed. Governments are looking at providing incentives to allow primary producers to profit from such capturing and storing. -
Rob Painting at 18:32 PM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
Gnbatt @ 6 - How do we know more CO2 is causing warming? and On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connection of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction -
MichaelM at 17:57 PM on 4 September 2010Carbon dioxide equivalents
It would only be sequestration if nothing ever consumed the farm products eg wheat was stored in a mine and never used. Once we consume it we convert it back to CO2. -
gnbatt at 16:58 PM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
forget the model simulations... are there any direct experimental evidence for 'greenhouse theory'?Response: There are several independent lines of direct experimental evidence for greenhouse theory (in fact, there was a detailed blog post on this yesterday). -
johnd at 16:53 PM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
scaddenp at 12:19 PM, read more carefully, you have not grasped what has been written. Solar shortwave radiation provides the energy required for evaporation to occur. IR radiation, heat, can only be emitted after the solar energy has been absorbed by any matter on the surface, transforming the energy from light to heat, the air is then warmed from below by contact with such matter. Without solar radiation first transferring it's energy to any form of matter, such matter cannot emit IR radiation, heat, nor would water have the energy it requires to evaporate. -
johnd at 16:30 PM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Ann at 19:56 PM , what do you mean "more or less" in equilibrium? Seeking equilibrium is totally different to being at equilibrium. An active person seeking to match food intake with energy output is more or less seeking some form of equilibrium. A dead person may be at equilibrium in terms of the same energy input and output, but if not, then certainly at rest. -
johnd at 16:21 PM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Phil at 19:44 PM, rate and equilibrium are closely related. With two opposing forces, in this case incoming energy and outgoing energy, equilibrium will only be found at the point where the energy gained balances the energy being lost. But is equilibrium ever found? In the case of a single location where the length of days and nights vary, and so too the rate at which energy is gained or lost, at what point of any day, or at what day of any annual cycle can the system be said to be at equilibrium? -
RSVP at 16:06 PM on 4 September 2010Carbon dioxide equivalents
TOP said "States like Wisconsin that once were huge forests and now have a lot of worn out farm land " I was driving through farm land yesterday (not Wisconsin) seeing all that is grown... is the use of land for farming also not a form of carbon secuestration? -
chris1204 at 15:32 PM on 4 September 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
Dappledwater @ 59: Actually, if you knew anything much about sphygmomanometers and blood pressure measurements, you'd know that there's very considerable variability in readings depending on type of sphygmomanometer, the size of the cuff, the size of the patient's arms, and in the case of the old fashioned mercury sphygmomanometers, the sensitivity of the doctor's ears as s/he listens via a stethoscope for the sound of turbulent blood flowing through the brachial artery. There's even a direct effect caused by the doctor - some patients get nervous when they see a doctor and their blood pressures come back as high (but show normal range readings with ambulatory blood pressure monitoring). However, it was not I who introduced the blood pressure analogy. The analogy was introduced by omnologos @ 19. I responded to his or her analogy. I note you've raised the issue with omnologos @ 62. I do know the difference between absolute measurements and anomalies. What puzzles me is not the presence of a warming trend regardless of station siting but rather the extraordinary lack of divergence between poorly sited and well sited stations - indeed, in many instances it would seem absolutely no divergence over a number of years particularly in minimum temperatures. To return to the blood pressure analogy (and attempt to make it more valid), let's say I visit 100 doctors on the one day and get my blood pressure checked. I revisit the same doctors a year later and have my blood pressure checked again. If my blood pressure has gone up significantly, I'd expect most of the doctors to come up with a higher reading. However, I'd be very surprised if, say, 97 out of 100 doctors came back with blood pressure readings exactly 15 mm-Hg higher than my initial reading. I'd expect some of the doctors to come back with readings 10 mm-Hg higher, others 12 mm-Hg higher, others 20 mm-Hg, and so forth. I'd expect the anomaly (ie, the rise over the course of the year) to vary from doctor to doctor. However, I'd probably still end up concluding I needed to have treatment for elevated blood pressure. Similarly, I would argue from the data presented that the temperature record argues for a warming trend in the US because of the consistent direction of the anomaly. However, the sheer uniformity of the anomaly seems counterintuitive - hence my reservations about the paper. -
gallopingcamel at 15:32 PM on 4 September 2010How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
Joe Blog (#30), I don't doubt what you say about the importance of continental drift when it comes to the "big picture" of climate over hundreds of millions of years. However, global temperatures were high in the Ordovician but fell sharply toward the end of that era and then rose again in the Silurian. The time scale is too short for continental drift to be a factor and CO2 concentrations remained high throughout that period. So what caused that Ice Age? Shariv postulates that the Earth's movement into a region in one of our galaxy's spiral arms with a high stellar density could be responsible for the late Ordovician Ice Age. Do any of you have a better hypothesis? -
gallopingcamel at 15:09 PM on 4 September 2010How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
Ned (#32) Thanks for the RSS graph. It clearly shows that there is no temperature rise in the last decade in spite of the recent peak due to the summer of 2010. This thread was about the possibility of a plunge in temperature leading into a new Ice age. Let's stop drifting "Off Topic". The current era (Holocene) is technically an Ice Age but we live in a fool's paradise called an inter-glacial period. The Vostok ice cores show that inter-glacials are relatively short, so enjoy it while it lasts. -
David Horton at 14:02 PM on 4 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
Nice work Graham. As with so much else in climate change the burden of proof argument has come to fall the wrong way. If deniers are really going to argue that frequency and/or strength of hurricanes is NOT going to increase with rising temperatures, it should be up to them to explain why this would be the case. I can see no good reason why both intensity and frequency would not increase. Given that hurricanes always occurred with lower temperatures, it is nonsense to suggest that, once given the conditions to start, greater warmth wouldn't, on average, leader to a greater intensity. It also seems to me intuitively obvious that warmer moister air columns are going to be more frequently available to trigger initial hurricane formation. The graphs that Graham and Dappled Water show exactly coincides with others showing the rise in CO2 levels and the resultant effects, beginning around the mid 1970s. Either we are faced with the most astonishing and inexplicable series of coincidences or all of these graphs show the consequences of climate change. And l we also have in this thread, yet agin, the use of figures from the US to try to disprove some obvious outcome of global warming. And even then, whatever else BPs graph shows, it concurs in the recent increase in activity. In thread after thread we are it seems to keep forever being asked to prove that one plus one equals two. -
dana1981 at 13:00 PM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
Thanks Rick. That's covered in the human CO2 emissions rebuttal. It's a cause of the anthropogenic warming as opposed to a consequence of it. -
Rob Painting at 12:28 PM on 4 September 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
Omnologos, sorry you've not improved on the analogy at all. Sphygmomanometers or EKG's still aren't appropriate analogues, the surface temperature record deals with anomalies, not absolute temperature. -
scaddenp at 12:19 PM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Whoops should read: On the other hand you seem perfectly content to dismiss the logical, obvious way of increasing evaporation - more radiation warming the surface. -
Rob Painting at 12:18 PM on 4 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
Whilst hurricane intensity in the US may be of interest to Americans, the US is only some 2% of the Earth's surface, and most of us aren't Americans. What happens if we look at the tropics?, an area making up roughly 25% of the Earth's surface and inhabited by some 40% of the world's population?. It is the region where hurricanes/cyclones form after all.
Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years
Emanuel 2005
"Whatever the cause, the near doubling of power dissipation over the period of record should be a matter of some concern, as it is a measure of the destructive potential of tropical cyclones.Moreover, if upper ocean mixing by tropical cyclones is an important contributor to the thermohaline circulation, as hypothesized by the author, then global warming should result in an increase in the circulation and therefore an increase in oceanic enthalpy transport from the tropics to higher latitudes."
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Daved Green at 11:43 AM on 4 September 2010Hurricanes And Climate Change: Boy Is This Science Not Settled!
ProfMandia , Thanks for the link to the paper I can see their reasoning now and it seems sound . It surprises me that results of papers like these are not discussed more in the general media as they are quite dire examples of what could be in store for the world . -
Daniel Bailey at 11:40 AM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Re: davidwwalters (37)I guess my question now is why CO2 trumps water vapor as the prime greenhouse gas even though there is so much more water vapor in the atmosphere relative to CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Short answer? The concentrations of water vapor in the atmosphere are pretty stable. Variations from background concentration levels normalize within a 9-day period (the residence time of water vapor in the atmosphere). Thus, while there is vastly more water vapor in the atmosphere than CO2, the greenhouse gas effects of that water vapor change little. Also, those effects are played out in the lower troposphere (because temps decline with increasing altitude, extra water vapor precipitates out...and when the freezing point of water is passed, the air gets pretty dry indeed). CO2 concentrations, on the other hand, are rising (about 40% above the interglacial range). And much of their effects occur in the upper troposphere, above the point where water vapor plays much of its King Lear role. Must-see video: Richard Alley AGU talk: CO2 Biggest Control Knob. For more in-depth background on greenhouse gases, global warming & climate science in general, go here. A little bit of CO2 goes a long ways. Hope this helps, the Yooper -
scaddenp at 11:06 AM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
Johnd - still not making sense. I think the drivers for evaporation for warm water is perfectly well understood. I cannot understand what model for warming you are proposing - the some supposed interaction between clouds and wind can change the overall energy balance?? Seriously? On the other hand you seem perfectly content the logical, obvious way of increasing evaporation - more radiation warming the surface. Do accept the more radiation globally warming the ocean will increase water vaour? If not, what is postulated way of saving First law if the increased radiation is not warming the waters. If you are trying to make any sense at all, then please give us physically reasonable model so we can examine, make predictions and compare with reality. -
adrian smits at 11:02 AM on 4 September 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
It seems to me I was reading just last week that an increase in co2 causes a corresponding decrease in air saturation by co2 and therefore removes the warming effect of co2.average humidity has decreased worldwide since the 1940's ,so there might be some truth in that theory.whats up with that? -
RickG at 10:29 AM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
Great post, thanks! How about carbon isotope ratios showing that the increased carbon is anthropogenic? -
scaddenp at 10:01 AM on 4 September 2010New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
"fact" finder - your comment about "fairy tales" is somewhat ironic. However, to have any sensible discussion here, perhaps you would outline what you think is a reasonable process for you to distinguish "fact" from "lie"? Then we might be able to help you sort out a few fictions. -
Ned at 09:06 AM on 4 September 2010Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
Sorry, BP, that's not good enough. What are the statistics for the model? How confident are we that the data you used are actually representative (given that they apparently showed a rather different trend than the actual land surface temperature records)? I'm sure your handwaving argument in your later comment is convincing to you, but that doesn't mean it's going to convince anyone else. That line of reasoning is built on one hidden assumption after another. We can talk about those assumptions, but let's first answer the questions about your regression model. -
johnd at 08:39 AM on 4 September 2010Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
TOP at 23:57 PM, the absorption band chart illustrates very well the role each component plays. It is no coincidence that humans radiate at about 10um which is right in the transmission window. It is also illustrated very clearly that if there was no CO2,then the water vapour alone would allow more thermal energy to be radiated off as the transmission window gradually closed. With CO2 added, the transmission window closes off earlier, so the loss of heat is halted earlier. However it does not overlap the point at which water vapour allows maximum transmission. The only way for CO2 to overlap that portion of the spectrum is for it to change it's properties, or for the properties of water vapour to be altered. The chart represents very well the properties of H2O and the band occupied by water vapour reflects the points at which the changes of state occurs. For the concept of CO2 saturation to apply, the width of the CO2 window would have to either widen or the position occupied on the spectrum shift, something the known properties of CO2 do not allow for. If an analogy helps, water vapour is a sliding window that opens once solar radiation streaming through closed windows heats the room. As the heat increases, the window begins to open becoming almost fully open at about 10um which by coincidence allows us within the room to enjoy a comfortable environment, then as the loss of heat going out the window begins to overtake the heat coming in, the window begins to slide close. However with CO2 present, the final few um of the window opening has already been blocked off so the loss off heat is curtailed a little earlier than it otherwise would have been. -
dana1981 at 08:36 AM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
Composer - thanks and yes, it was deliberate. apeescape - thanks, I fixed the link. -
dana1981 at 08:32 AM on 4 September 2010Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
Okay I see, your point is that the greenhouse effect is dependent upon the thermal radiation from the Earth's surface, which in turn is dependent upon the incoming solar radiation. My initial reaction to that is that total solar irradiance generally only varies by a fraction of a percent, so treating it as constant is a safe assumption. -
kdkd at 08:20 AM on 4 September 2010Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
BP #37 That's a cop out par excellence. If you do a regression model (which you have) then you can not demonstrate its statistical significance without presenting the results of the F test, to show whether it predicts better than chance or not. Seeing as it's a univariate regression you might as well do the statistical significance of the correlation coefficient as well, to show if r is significantly different from zero. If you're not prepared to do an essential part of the job, then don't make the claims. -
RSVP at 07:52 AM on 4 September 2010Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
dana1981 "I'm not sure why you think the CO2 radiative forcing is dependent upon the atmospheric temperature or solar irradiance." CO2 does not generate energy on its own. Even according to AGW it is only a reflector of IR. The amount of energy assumed to come from CO2 according to your ln function only holds IF solar irradiance patterns do not change. But if it does what? CO2 would contributes nothing in a case where the sun shuts down for instance even if concentrations triples or quadrouples. -
michael sweet at 07:47 AM on 4 September 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
Omnologos, Since your post talks about EKG's you have no call to suggest I am off topic. Your analogy is completely wrong. We are talking about measuring a simple result: temperature, not a complicated one. It is simple to measure and, since we are measuring the anomaly, the calibration can be off and still give the correct result. There is no indication that the data has been measured wrongly. You are trying to wish away a clear result. As it has been pointed out several times above, if you visit 100 people for your blood pressure and they all tell you you have a problem, you have a problem. It does not matter if some are not calibrated. The result is clear: no matter how you slice the data you get a strong warming trend. Good sites, bad sites, urban sites, rural sites all show the same warming trend. How can you claim that this somehow indicates that that there is no trend? -
Berényi Péter at 07:39 AM on 4 September 2010Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
#39 michael sweet at 05:47 AM on 4 September, 2010 Since Dr. Hanson has shown here that the warming trend in the rural stations and at very dark stations is the same as at stations that have large urban developments, how can you claim that you have something worthwhile? For once try to think please. Let's suppose (an alternate) Earth had a fairly stable climate with no average surface temperature trend whatsoever. Still, Urban Heat Islands would exist even there. Whenever you drive from the countryside to a city center, you can easily measure a several centigrade increase in air temperature. You can also measure a logarithmic dependence of this UHI effect on city size without referring to history. The only thing you have to do is to visit as many cities as you like multiple times and register temperature differences between centers and surroundings. An order of magnitude estimate of the effect is something like 0.2°C per doubling of city size. As the climate here is not changing, if the population of the same city grows in time, you'd expect the same temperature increase, that is a trend of about 0.2°C per doubling, right? Now, let's suppose population of this alternate Earth is increasing steadily with a fix doubling time of 55 years. Growth rate in different cities may be different, but the average rate would be the same as the global one. Therefore urban weather stations would measure a 0.36°C/century warming trend. Now let's suppose a scientist in this world, call him Dr. James E. Hansen for the sake of convenience, discovers the very same average temperature trend is measured even at rural stations, where local population density is extremely low. I have already mentioned climate is stable in this Earth, therefore in reality surface temperature trend is zero. Still, a global surface warming trend of 0.36°C/century is measured. How can we resolve this paradox? -
apeescape at 07:37 AM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
link to Zhang et al. (2007) has an extra space at the end. -
citizenschallenge at 07:16 AM on 4 September 2010New presentation debunking Monckton's critique of IPCC predictions
factfinder while you're at it, how about a little detail on the following: "Physics is based on Experimental data - not "empirical evidence that > Has Been Shown To Be Caused By Dozens Of Other Causes." What other causes have shown the physics of GHG's to be false? -
Composer99 at 07:04 AM on 4 September 2010Empirically observed fingerprints of anthropogenic global warming
Was the similarity between the symbols used to delineate the level of the rebuttal and the standard symbols for ski trail difficulty deliberate? Good post, by the way. Even at this level, the site does a good job of making things clear for the non-scientist (such as, say, myself).
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