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actually thoughtful at 04:24 AM on 1 July 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
I think the best skeptical argument is the interplay of positive and negative feedbacks. As I understand it, CO2 itself is good for .75-1.0C of temperature increase per doubling of CO2. The consensus "all-in" temperature increase is 3C/doubling. However, in my understanding of the science, feedbacks seem to be the most complicated, dynamic and chaotic of all of the climate related issues. Some feedbacks are both positive and negative (cloud cover). A recent discussion on RealClimate.org highlighted an aspect of the uncertainty: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/02/good-news-for-the-earths-climate-system/ I strongly suspect the 3C figure will turn out to be robust, but I think it is the strongest argument the skeptics have, as the data is not all in, and reasonable doubt can be cast upon ice core records, tree ring data, etc., etc. -
Chris G at 04:20 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
RSVP, KR's comment with regard to the antenna aspect of GHGs took me a second, but then I got the metaphor that just as antennas are sensitive to certain wavelengths, dependent on the length of the wire, and much less to others, gases absorb and emit at specific wavelengths. I'll connect the dots regarding your engine example. Suppose that instead burning fuel in an engine, you simply burned the same amount of fuel directly. Is there any difference in the amount of energy released? None whatsoever. Does the engine's cooling system transport the energy to some higher altitude where it can be radiated off the earth with less impedance? No. Hence, my simplification to just fire. The heat from naturally occurring sources does not simply accumulate; so, it would take a bit of magic to make the heat from manufactured ones to do the same. -
KR at 04:17 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Sorry! John, could you wipe the two duplicates there? I hadn't realized I was running onto the next page! (Doh!)Moderator Response: No problem. Operational detail: If you happen to post just before the comments thread is going to "roll" past the first page of comments, your view will remain on the page you started from but your comment will actually appear on the next page. -
KR at 04:15 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
It's pretty straightforward, RSVP. Gasses aren't perfect blackbodies (nothing really is), and in fact N2 and O2 have pretty lousy absorptivity and hence emissivity (Kirchoff's law) at the IR wavelengths a blackbody would radiate at our surface temperature. They heat and cool very slowly with IR, much as a polished silver surface is a poor absorber/emitter of daylight. CO2 and water vapor, on the other hand, are handy at absorbing/emitting IR in the 4-15 micron thermal IR bands. They both absorb (raising electron states, heating up the molecule both electronically and vibrationally) and emit (dropping electron levels which are pumped by vibrational inputs, losing energy) quite well. When an air mass is losing IR to the surroundings (net output), the CO2 and H2O molecules will be on the whole cooler than the air mass due to radiation, repeated brought back to the air mass temperature through collisional interactions. When an air mass is heated by IR, the CO2 and H2O are hotter than average than the the rest of the air mass, with collisions warming the entire 100% of air molecules. At equilibrium (same coming in as going out) the GHG's will be at the same average temperature as the rest of the air mass. Granted, pure CO2 would heat/cool faster, with a much higher exchange rate with it's surroundings. But the fractional percentage of CO2 and H2O in air provide an energy pathway via IR exchange that would be nearly non-existent otherwise for the air mass. CO2 and H2O (and methane, ozone, etc.) are thereby preferential infra-red interaction molecules (IR antenna), heating or cooling the entire air mass through the net IR exchange - much as the water in your food acts as a receiving antenna in your microwave oven, heating the rest of the food through microwave absorption. -
Doug Bostrom at 04:00 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Clarifying RSVP's remark, the Earth is not "getting hotter all the time because of C02", it's going to become warmer until radiative balance against additional retained heat is achieved at which point temperature will stop trending upward due to the particular system of forcings influenced by C02 and will then dither and possibly trend upwards or downwards due to other causes, as it always has. Not only may we count the beans we have, we may propose removing or adding beans and then calculate how many beans will be available if or when such quantities of beans are actually manipulated. Different hands may reach into the pot and either add or remove beans. The hands we're speaking of here wear gloves marked "anthropogenic C02." Always watch the hands, don't look at the brightly colored scarves being waved about. -
RSVP at 03:52 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Woops Very sorry about that Chris G. It was KR who explains that CO2 acts as an antenna for other gases. -
RSVP at 03:48 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
To Chris G (again) "Regarding #39, Nothing in nature burns? Nothing in nature gets hot? If greater than zero things get hot in nature, what would be the accumulated heat over, say, 4.5 billion years?" Please do not misquote me. I did not say that. I was referring to my cars radiator. An aluminum heatsink with thousands of orifices where air passes through cooling water heated by my engines water jacket. This is Man's invention. So are nuclear power plants, and all other forms of boiler burners etc. These are in addition to the heat that already exists due to the sun warming us as it should. This "small" amount of heat is heating the air which as I said does not emit IR. Now you are telling me that the GHG are acting as an antenna to get rid of this radiation. I am listening. I would like to hear more about this. -
RSVP at 03:41 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
<> Clarifying: Perpetual motion does not exist. Hydroelectric delivers energy. It is not a perpetual motion machine. The guzins being the Sun. The guzouts being Earth cooling. Meanwhile man is tapping into this "machine". The sun continues to shine as always (guzins doesnt change). The guzout is constant (or per AGW now working less efficiently, but this has nothing to do with my clarification). Somehow in this equation, energy is comimg from somewhere, but according to AGW its getting hotter all the time because of CO2. We have left the realm of electromagnetics, quantum physics and are now only talking about bean counting. -
marty at 03:05 AM on 1 July 2010Hockey stick is broken
Ok well for the sake of trying the debate I've posted a question about this on the comments box accompanying the article with a link to the article above. unfortunately I couldn't raise KR's claim about the small difference the inclusion/exclusion of tree ring data makes since I hadn't read it at that point. I would like to see what anyone following the link will have to say. I would disagree about the skeptic tactic bit though since it is a 'tactic' used by science in general. A tiny seemingly peripheral detail like the weird backwards looping about of a planet bought the whole glorious earth-centric universe tumbling down. Cheers. -
Doug Bostrom at 03:01 AM on 1 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
I don't find your remarks persuasive, Daniel. Your entire thesis depends on deriving -more- interpretive detail from a data series you yourself claim has insufficient power to describe -less- detail. That's nonsensical. By the way, Donnelly does not own the term "conservative." It's commonly used in science the same way we might use "circumspection" or other words suggested suitable humility in the face of ignorance. -
KR at 02:56 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Chris G - if you're interested, I found a little bit I wrote on lapse rate, latent heat, thunderstorms, etc, over on "CO2 is not the only driver of climate". This was in the context of a conversation on the relative importance of ground driven convection and latent heat as energy transfer mechanisms, with a background discussion of the (much larger) radiative energy flows. -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:53 AM on 1 July 2010Ocean acidification
CO2 bubbling? A piece of ocean acting like a soda pop? Sorry but that looks like total nonsense at first glance. -
Philippe Chantreau at 02:46 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
"intensely forced convection that is not found anywhere in nature." What a convoluted way to make a false assertion for the sake of argument. Check out these pictures, the convection in them dwarfs any engine cooling system. They routinely contain vertical wind shear in excess of 60 mph. http://www.mesoscale.ws/pictures/structure/ -
KR at 02:45 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Absolutely right, Chris - the distance varies with the number of GHG molecules per unit volume. I was typing quickly (carelessly) there about the lower atmosphere; mean free path length increases as pressure drops. -
barry1487 at 02:43 AM on 1 July 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
Scott Mandia, thanks for the reply. I was under the impression that glaciation took the longer time, and that deglaciation, accompanied by rising CO2 levels, took ~5000 years in late Quaternary ice age cycles*. I'm sure the skeptics I face would soon point this out and the main point would be derailed. * (Again, please correct any misapprehension on my part) -
KR at 02:40 AM on 1 July 2010Hockey stick is broken
marty - an excellent question. Kudos to you for checking additional data sources; many people don't bother. As Tom pointed out, there are a number of different temperature measurements (proxies) listed at the top of the page. I believe the Mann 'hockey stick' is composed of data from ~100 different temperature estimates, including some tree ring data. Mann felt (with some reason) that the later part of the tree ring data set was distorted, possibly due to other influences (drought) on tree growth for those proxies. It doesn't really matter, though, as including/excluding the later period tree ring data doesn't really change the graph by more than a couple percent either way. This is a popular 'skeptic' tactic, marty, which you might see elsewhere - picking a tiny piece of evidence, pointing out issues (correct or not) with it, and using that to claim that a conclusion based on many, independent lines of evidence is therefore invalidated by that tiny piece. -
Chris G at 02:33 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
#37, Umm, no, I don't see a connection between what I said and what you said. Regarding #39, Nothing in nature burns? Nothing in nature gets hot? If greater than zero things get hot in nature, what would be the accumulated heat over, say, 4.5 billion years? #40, Gases absorb and emit at the same wavelengths, specific to each gas. If 97% of the air does not emit IR, it doesn't absorb it either; it passes through unaffected. KR, thanks for the detail. I think got the gist of correcting myself at #34. I'm confident you know this, but I'd think the distance traveled would be dependent on the density of the gas. The density of air diminishes rapidly with altitude; so, I suspect it is a mistake to use a fixed value for distance traveled. -
Tom Dayton at 02:29 AM on 1 July 2010Hockey stick is broken
Marty, read the post at the top of this page. See all the graphs of temperature data from sources that do not include bristlecone pines? -
Peter Hogarth at 02:25 AM on 1 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
daniel at 10:49 AM on 30 June, 2010 Much of this debate is focusing heavily on one Donnelly paper based on data from one area (Southern New England). Let me take a different tack. If we accept that the temporal sampling in Donnelly 2004 on historical sea level is sparse, we have two options. 1) We look for more data to fill in the gaps from other sources, and build up a higher resolution composite. Though there are difficulties with different rates of rise in different regions this process is ongoing and 6 years is a long time in climate research. From what I have read and am aware of in a professional capacity the evidence suggests relatively small changes in sea level over this period consistent with Donnelly (allowing for occasional dramatic localized crustal movements). 2) We also look at the physical effects which cause sea level rise and see if these have changed over the period in question. This might be viewed as “modeling”. Any dramatic sea level variability between or over the temporal range of uncertainty of the samples (as you suggest could hypothetically be present) would be driven by dramatic variability in temperature, land ice volume or hydrological cycle, or some combination. The evidence on past variability in temperature is far denser temporally and spatially and better researched, and is consistent with the published estimates of past changes in sea level (for example see Grinsted on Medieval Warm period). The ice core data which can give not only regional (North and South) temperature proxies but estimates of deposition/loss rates is consistent with this also. Then we must apply this same logic to what is happening now, and look at recent research in other areas of climate related science. Temperature is rising, global ice mass is diminishing and sea levels are rising with both thermal and ice melt contributions. For some more recent overviews and a few more clues on extra data see Church 2008, and Milne 2009 as well as Grinsted linked previously. -
KR at 02:22 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Very true, RSVP - and that 3% is the 'antenna' that the energy of the entire mass of air can radiate IR from. Or receive upon, for that matter. And as the CO2 and water vapor lose/gain energy from IR, thermal collisions with the rest of the air mass spread those effects throughout, lowering or raising the temperature of the entire air mass. -
marty at 02:20 AM on 1 July 2010Hockey stick is broken
I just read an article saying that it was responsible for the hockey stick appearence and wondered if it was true that it makes temperature records have a hockey stick shape. Obviously if there are hockey stick shaped graphs that don't include the tree ring records of bristlecone pine then the article is clearly wrong. The article is on a site called spiked and I was rather hoping that someone knowledgeable about this issue might like to clarify things either here or in a posting to the letters page on spiked. http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/debates/copenhagen_article/9056/ Since I haven't made up my mind about the science I obvioously flit between sites like spiked and this one. I'll have a look at the NOAA site and if it's not too technical I'll see if I can figure it out myself seeing as no one here can just give me a straight answer to what seemed to me a straight question. cheers -
KR at 02:17 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Chris G - latent heat is estimated at ~76-78 W/m^2 (can't remember exact number off the top of my head) from liquid to vapor form; evaporated from surface water and ground moisture. This gets deposited primarily at the condensation point in the lapse rate where clouds form - no energy is deposited by condensation until the bottom of the cloud, when the temperature has dropped enough. Thunderstorms and major convective events (hurricanes) can draw water vapor high into the troposphere and even in extreme cases the lower stratosphere, but generally the energy movement is to the middle troposphere. I wrote something quite wordy about thunderstorms, lapse rates, and the like, in a previous topic, and now I can't find it! Oh well... Given that the IR pathlength is on the order of 10's of meters before absorption/emission events, this certainly moves the heat into the atmosphere, warming it. IR radiation to space occurs when CO2 density and total water vapor (along with total pressure) drops low enough to permit it, in the stratosphere, hence the GW phenomena of a warmer troposphere and colder stratosphere. -
Alexandre at 02:16 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Very nice text. The radio analogy is definetely one I will use when explaining the frequency spectrum to other lay people. -
RSVP at 02:09 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
KR <> As was sited way above, water vapor and CO2 only make up about 3% of the atmosphere. AGW rests on the asumption that the other 97% does not emit IR very well. That is what our engines are warming. -
RSVP at 02:03 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Chris G The engine cools through intensely forced convection that is not found anywhere in nature. -
daniel at 02:03 AM on 1 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
Further quotes from #33 "if I get you right and correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, you're suggesting that it's equally reasonable to pick and draw a series of lines perhaps pointing up and perhaps pointing down between any chronologically linear pair of samples." Well almost, what I'm really saying is that the paper hasn't got a hope of determining the short term sea level trends during 1300-1850 AD. This ties in with what you say next: "That's not as conservative as doing what Donnelly did." You like to regurgitate that word but I wonder if you know why Donnely et.al. used it? It's because they are trying to claim that the centres of their 95% confidence boxes are of a higher likelihood of being where the true paleo record lies. I cautiously agree with them on that, but I can't see how it legitimises their final comparison. If the centres of the boxes were the true paleo sea levels then in an attempt to obtain short term trends from the data (which is tje only valid comparison to make when trying to detect unusual recent uptrends in the last 150 years) you could in principle draw lines between each pair or in other words connect the dots. But then you would have to explain the jump back in time between samples 10 and 9 or explain why the rapid rise in sea level between samples 7 and 8 is not as, or even more alarming, then the recent rise over 150 years. No I won't let them have it both ways. If thier long term trend line doesn't need to cut right through the centre of the boxes then neither do my short term trends. You continue: "As well, doing such a series of arbitrary choices leaves the issue that the entire series must begin somewhere within the region circumscribed by the sample 4 and 11 confidence boxes, meaning that the overall conclusion of the series of choices made to connect individual samples ends up being nearly the same, confined by the beginning and ending samples." Sigh. When will you understand that the important point here is that a lack of certainty in short term trends invalidates any claim that recent rises are alarming. "Meanwhile, it appears that the slope described by the direct recent tidal measurements is inevitably going to be steeper than the sum linear product of whatever combination of ups and downs you might choose to impose on the paleo series..." Same as above "sum linear product" is irrelevant, short term uptrends of similar rate and range are. They cannot be detected by a study of this type. "...and as well covers a disproportionate vertical range compared compared to the paleo series. This suggests to me that attempting to create and insert arbitrary additional information into the series is pointless." No the paleo data covers something like 60-70cm and the recent data covers 30-40cm. Plenty of slack for a similar uptrend and a plateau. " The suite of dating refinements employed by Donnelly I refer to are an example our ignorance, as I mentioned before." You make it sound complicated but as I've outlined before, people who are educated in distant fields to climate science can easily understand a climate science paper. The principle of superposition is simply applying the logic of higher stratum are younger than lower stratum. Using known historical markers from the introduction of different plant species as added refining tools for dating is not complicated. Just becausr you don't understand it doug doesn't mean that I don't. -
KR at 02:02 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
RSVP - Duh, when your radiator heats the air it cools by conduction, convection, and (via heating ALL of the air in that space) heating CO2 and water vapor, which can indeed emit their energy as IR. Come on, RSVP - I've read your posts, you know this stuff! And you know (or should by now) that total waste heat from industrial (and automotive) processes represents 1/10,000 the energy of the CO2 driven radiative imbalance. It has no significant impact on global warming. -
RSVP at 01:59 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Chris G at 00:51 AM on 1 July, 2010 #32 That is a good question, but it sounds like you are implying that hydroelectric power is trapping heat, since you cant get something for nothing. If the net effect is zero, where is the energy from a dam coming from? Are you now saying that dams are causing global warming as well? -
Chris G at 01:57 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Regarding #33, OK, I wondered if you were talking about condensation of water vapor, but I still think you are not considering the wavelengths outside of what the human eye can detect. 'White' just means that all 3 flavors of our cones are highly stimulated, but each flavor of cone is optimally responsive on a fairly narrow band. The human eye is actually pretty limited; we can't even tell the difference between a red-green brown and a blue-orange brown. But, I digress. Clouds don't treat all wavelengths the same; as evidenced by people getting sunburned by UV on a cool and cloudy day. How does the air warmed by your engine cool? Same as warm air has always cooled since the earth was formed; but ultimately, energy only leaves the earth, atmosphere included, through radiative processes. -
KR at 01:53 AM on 1 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
daniel - while the tone on this thread has become quite heated, you have made some extremely strong statements (utter joke) regarding the Donnelly paper. Looking at your initial comments, are you indeed saying that the current rise in sea levels could drop in between the samples Donnelley collected? And that therefore their data is not strong enough? Keep in mind that while there _may_ be space between samples for a steep rise, it would have to be accompanied by an equally steep decline or halting trend to match later samples. And that the samples are independently dated except for elimination of carbon date repeats by physical position ordering - an excellent technique for disambiguation, I would add. Between the multiple species examined, carbon dating, choice of uncompacted site, etc., this is an excellent paper. And hence, it shouldn't be a surprise that some people have reacted strongly to your harsh dismissal of it. As to sample 11 (representing ~8% of the data) - you may have a point there, it looks like they left the younger (eliminated) date box for #11 on the chart. But their fitting appears to use the information from Table 1, and while this looks to be an editing issue, that doesn't seem IMO to affect their calculations or their conclusions. They certainly seem to have used the #11 older date for the curve fitting. And as to how such an error might occur? While editors appear to be inhuman in nature (grrr) they are actually fallible in reality. I'd suggest dropping a note to Donnelly et al and asking whether this is the correct chart. It might be interesting to ask if these samples could be used as date tags, and examine intermediate samples (in some number) to see if there were fossil variances indicating different levels of sea rise (short term variations) - but as it stands, with the data they extracted, the linear mapping with a curve at the beginning of the industrial era is perfectly justified by the data used to generate the trend lines. -
Icarus at 01:44 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Karl_from_Wylie wrote:========================================= "..The message for today, however, is that anyone who tells you that carbon dioxide does not cause global warming, either does not understand the basic science, or is being deliberately misleading." Bias. Increase in Carbon dioxide does not assure Global Warming. There are more variables to the equation. =========================================
Carbon dioxide certainly does cause global warming because if atmospheric carbon dioxide increases then the world will become warmer than it would otherwise be, and this can't not happen (not without changing the laws of physics). It's certainly possible for another forcing to have a cooling influence which counteracts the warming from increased carbon dioxide, such that there is no net warming, but the warming influence of increased carbon dioxide is still there (if it wasn't, then in that situation there would be global cooling). So, there is no valid sense in which increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming. It does, and it has to, regardless of what other forcings and feedbacks are in play. -
Chris G at 01:39 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
I have a tendency to be exacting; so, I've been mulling over the words I used in #32, and I think they are not quite right. I'd think that would be some energy left behind in the air media, and would begin a journey at the point of condensation. If that condensation occurs at 500 feet, then it probably makes little difference whether it started there or at the surface; if it begins at the top of a thunderhead, say near 40,000 feet, then it probably does. Regardless, the amount of water vapor in the air, over the ocean, is largely dependent on temperature (and altitude). The overall effect of clouds, considering high and low altitude, day and night, is still in contention, but water vapor is always a GHG. So, I wouldn't look to a cooling effect of clouds, which require water vapor to form, as a cooling effect greater than the warming effect of CO2 and water vapor combined. -
RSVP at 01:36 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
<> Addressing your comment... The nonlinearity I was talking about has to do with how water vapor "turns opaque" (i.e. reflects white light) on the turn of a dime as per triple state diagram. As far as what I was talking about in terms of waste heat... I am saying that a thermal radiator such as that of my car's engine heats up air. AGW rests on the assumption that 97% of "air" is transparent to IR. This means that it is just as bad a emitter of IR as absorber. So please explain how this warmed up air is suppose to cool? -
VoxRat at 01:35 AM on 1 July 2010Ocean acidification
JC #70 "At a talk last night David Archibald finished by showing a picture of some coral and CO2 bubbling past. " CO2 bubbling past!? That would indicate that the water is saturated with CO2. "What do you make of his claim that coral is resililent to acidification? " It looks to me it's worth the paper it's printed on. Assuming it's not printed. -
daniel at 01:04 AM on 1 July 2010Sea level rise is exaggerated
No I don't have a degree in advanced Geology or a shining track record in paleochronology, but people like yourself just don't seem to understand how irrelevant that is. The debate on these issues is debased by this kind of ad hominem garbage. The details of what the researchers did is all laid out in the paper. Scientists from multiple fields need only read, perhaps suppliment that reading with some supporting material and they can have a thorough and detailed understanding of what has been done. It is a fantasy for you to think that you yourself cannot research the methods of the scientists and critique their papers just because you have not studied it or worked in the field. It is patronising nonsense. You put these people on a pedestal of heavenly heights and praise them as infallible heroes who shall not be questioned..... but that is just not realistic in the slightest. I did not say "pure junk" but "utter joke" and you felt you needed to leap to the aid of researchers who may actually be embarassed by your amateur attempts to dress them up as god like figures. How do you know that they might not agree with me in retrospect? How many times do I need to explain that I was never disputing the quality of the data but referring to the validity of the final comparison of two very different data sets? You have done it again in comment #33 Lets go through that one with some quotes. You said: "I see your point about samples 7 & 8, I'm sure Donnelly would have been happier if they'd resolved better but because they're embedded in the middle of the series their effect is not very drastic; interpretation of those is constrained by the surrounding boxes." Does Donnely et. al. actually say that? At what level of confidence can we say that the true paleo sea level is in the middle of or at the extremes of the boxes? If you want to say that it is closer to the middle you will lose statistical confidence to less than 95% At 95% you can speculate that the paleo sea level may have been at one or the other extremes. This reality is part and parcel of scientific data doug you can't wish it away regurgitating the word "conservative" from the paper. Here's where again you (after having plenty of time to just read what I say and not imagine it) seem to be putting words in my mouth: "As to your problems with multiple date ranges for samples, if you read the text carefully you'll see how Donnelly eliminated date ranges by using methods beyond C14" I'm not disputing the eliminations for samples 1 - 10. But..... look carefully at the graph like I asked you to and you will see that sample 11 has two date ranges assigned. Two boxes, not greyed out lines, but boxes at the same height labelled 11. This is actually in conflict with table 1 which seems to suggest the younger range is rejected. But the researchers can't use the principle of superposition adequately here to dismiss the younger age range for sample 11 because it is still slightly younger than or equal in age to samples 9 and or 10. Either the box assigned to the younger age range is a printing error or the authors neglected to discuss this inconvenient data point in detail. How did such an error occur in the indestructable field of climate science? -
Chris G at 00:51 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Regarding #27(2), When a water molecule evaporates from, say, the ocean, energy is transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere. When the molecule condenses back into rain, and precipitates, energy is transferred back. The net effect is zero. How does this contribute to global cooling? (At what altitude (range) does most precipitation form and is that high enough to significantly affect how readily it is radiated out?) -
Ned at 00:45 AM on 1 July 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
chriscanaris, the report is thoroughly German in other ways, too. The table of contents lists sections hierarchically up to four layers deep. The table of contents & list of figures etc. runs on for 35 pages! -
JMurphy at 00:39 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
NickD wrote : "As a member of the general public, I can assure you I come to this site often, refer other members of the general public to this site as a great resource for laypersons to understand scientific concepts, and I appreciate the explanations provided by John Cook, Kevin Judd, Doug Bostrom, and many others." Hear, hear and seconded. I would also like to add mention in the dispatches to Marcus, Ned, David Grocott and ChrisG, who always have detailed and referenced answers to all the strange theories and assertions that some people post on this site, especially recently. I admire the forbearance of you all... -
Ken Lambert at 00:37 AM on 1 July 2010Astronomical cycles
Peter Hogarth #111 I used this chart: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib_ns_global.jpg which is IPB corrected and seasonal signals removed. Running a linear fit between 2003 and 2009 gives about 2.1mm/year and 2002 to 2010 gives about 2.4mm/yr. It is clear that the 3.0 +/- 0.4mm/year linear trendline is not a good match for the 2002 - 2009 period of Jason 1. The 60 day smoothed line is above the trend for the 2002-2007 period and crosses below it for 2007-2010, with an uptick in the last year or so apparently due to Jason 2. This is clearly a flatter trend for the Jason 1 perod than the 17 year trend line. It sounds like splitting hairs, but according to Dr Trenberth's Table 1 (Aug09 paper 'Tracking Earth's global energy') the total land ice loss accounts for about 2.0mm/year of SLR but only 2-3E20 Joules of heat is required to melt it, while every 0.4 - 1.2mm of thermosteric rise equals about 20-95E20 Joules of increased OHC. So finding more steric rise is the only way to get closer to an energy balance; and more ice melt rise rapidly worsens this energy budget shortfall. Problem is you can't have increased glacier melts and a flattening SLR without reducing the steric component consistent with a flat OHC in the top 700m; and have a TOA energy imbalance of 145E20 Joules/year at the same time. It is indeed a travesty of conflicting data. -
RickG at 00:37 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
RSVP, I assume your water molecules get replaced by other water molecules such that the overall amount of water vapor remains relatively constant (on the average). So water vapor remains relatively constant and global temperature keeps rising? Seems to me you just ruled out water vapor as a cause for GW. -
Chris G at 00:36 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Hopscotching comments here. Regarding #25, OK, so waste heat has to "...go through the CO2 gauntlet..." the same as the energy from the sun after the earth has, in effect, converted SW to LW. The amount of energy in has to be on long-term balance with energy out; so, how much energy does the earth receive from the sun compared to how much industry puts out? The sun's energy is orders of magnitude larger. Yet, somehow waste heat has a larger impact? -
KR at 00:29 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
RSVP - while all sources of heat do feed into the equation, a simple order of magnitude calculation indicates that waste industrial heat accounts for one part in 10,000 of global warming compared to radiative imbalances. So yes, industrial heat does add to global heating, but not enough to matter - not even enough to show up over noise/chaotic daily weather/measurement error/phase of the moon (Joking on that last one, joking! Although I believe lunar irradiance does have some effect...). -
RSVP at 00:24 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Marcus "This potency is further amplified by the fact that the resident lifetime of a single CO2 molecule-in the atmosphere-is much, much longer than that of a single molecule of water. " Two things. 1) I think it was Shrek, not the donkey. So I will admit making a mistake on that count. 2) I assume your water molecules get replaced by other water molecules such that the overall amount of water vapor remains relatively constant (on the average). If so, not sure why this matters? Not only that, it just happens to take energy for this to happen, which is a plus for global cooling. -
chris1204 at 00:21 AM on 1 July 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
I've just opened the previous post tonight and was very pleasantly surprised to find Volker's study which I've just downloaded. Now that's just so thoroughly German (in the best sense of the word) to address the very question I thought nobody seemed to be asking (the carbon cost of making a transition to renewables). I'll be reading it with great interest. Thank you John and Volker :-) -
Chris G at 00:21 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Not to make it 'pick on RSVP' day. But... "...any "transparent" gas..." "...water vapor is transparent and reflects light depending on temperature and pressure..." OK, I might not be getting what you are meaning here, but 'transparent' is a poor term for gasses. Mainly because their transparency is function of the wavelength of the light, not temperature and pressure, btw. Water vapor and CO2 are transparent at some wavelengths and not at others. That's kind of the whole reason why there is a greenhouse effect. "...and non linear. " Right, we know that; it is a log function. (Unless you are talking about how water vapor condenses and precipitates, but that is the part that isn't clear.) "...waste heat is accumulating." Hmm, if the absorption and emission of IR (heat), and hence retention, is negligibly affected by an increase in an IR absorbing gas, like H2O and CO2, what keeps the waste heat from radiating off into space? The only thing that would prevent that would be a greenhouse effect stronger than AGW needs, yet you are arguing that there isn't a greenhouse effect strong enough to let AGW happen. -
RSVP at 00:16 AM on 1 July 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Marcus "your "it's waste heat" hypothesis falls flat on its face-" Not so fast... One thing you can be sure of is that waste heat is entering the atmosphere. (If this were not true, my car's engine would overheat.) And its not just heating the CO2. Its heating all gasses, even those that do not emit IR so well (as per AGW). Similar problems exist for thermal pollution entering our rivers and the ocean. After that, this same heat has to go through the CO2 gauntlet upward, which you adamantly profess has made heat escaping more difficult. Just as can happen with commuter traffic, when the throughput increases, you get a traffic jam. This happens even when the same number of lanes are free. Just imagine if a lane gets closed (this would be the CO2 factor). So, it may be a combination of both effects. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 23:52 PM on 30 June 2010Perth forum on climate change: all the gory details
@Marcus 280 ppmv. Easily accessible (due to warming) and natural sources, eg : detritus of soil - estimated age: at least 1000 - a maximum of 10,000 years (the majority in the polar area, which is the fastest warm feeling) is still currently available quantity is estimated at 600 - 800 Gt C. -
Marcus at 23:16 PM on 30 June 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
Oh, & "imagining" CO2 has no impact is very different from it actually *having* no impact. We know-& can directly measure-the impact CO2 has on outgoing long-wave radiation, & even its natural (non-enhanced) effects totally dwarf any known impacts of thermal pollution by several orders of magnitude. -
Ned at 23:15 PM on 30 June 2010Temp record is unreliable
It seems to me that a lot of the questions people ask about the surface temperature data have been answered, at least in part, by the various "independent" (i.e., non-official) reconstruction tools that have been developed over the past six months. For example, all of the following questions have been addressed: (1) Can the "official" temperature records (GISSTEMP, HADCRU, NCDC) be replicated? [Yes] (2) Does the GHCN adjustment process have a large effect on the surface temperature trend? [Generally no] (3) Does the decrease in high latitude (or high altitude, or rural) stations have a large effect on the temperature trend? [No] (4) Does the location of stations at airports have a large effect on the the temperature trend? [No] (5) Does the overall decline in station numbers have an effect? Don't you need thousands or tens of thousands of stations to compute an accurate global temperature trend? [No, it can actually be done with fewer than 100 stations] There are probably other questions that I'm forgetting. Anyway, here are some handy links to tools that people have put together for do-it-yourself global temperature reconstruction. Many (but not all) of these are open-source, and many are very flexible, so that you can create reconstructions using different combinations of stations to test particular hypotheses. * Clear Climate Code (exact replication of GISSTEMP using Python). * Ron Broberg's blog "The Whiteboard" (replication of GISSTEMP and CRUTEMP) * Nick Stokes's GHCN processor * GHCN Processor by Joseph at Residual Analysis * Zeke Hausfather's temperature reconstructions (no single link, but see here and here) * Tamino * RomanM and Jeff Id * Chad at "Trees for the Forest" If there are others that I'm missing, maybe someone could add links in this thread. -
Marcus at 23:14 PM on 30 June 2010What is Global Warming and the Greenhouse Effect?
OK RSVP, on point (1)-have a look at the above posts-aside from you & Karl, everything here *does* agree with me-so its a pretty fair assumption. This has nothing to do with belonging to a "club", but everything to do with having more than a basic grasp of scientific concepts. (2) if recent warming were the result of accumulating waste heat then (a) there would be some correlation between rising industrialization & rising temperatures (we don't, btw); (b) we'd expect to see the most rapid warming in industrial sites, with non-industrial sites warming less rapidly, if at all (in fact, many wilderness sites-like the Arctic & Antarctic-are warming at a significantly faster rate than urban & industrial sites) & (c) we'd be able to account for every Joule of that energy to *prove* that it was accumulated waste heat. As I've said before, waste heat accounts for as little as 0.01% of all the energy the planet receives (about 13 Terra-watts), as compared to the roughly 180 Peta-watts worth of solar radiation that enters the system from the sun. So, on all 3 of these counts, your "it's waste heat" hypothesis falls flat on its face-& no amount of repeating a dud hypothesis will suddenly make it good.
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