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Peter Hogarth at 02:10 AM on 13 March 2010Visual depictions of Sea Level Rise
Argus at 03:22 AM on 12 March, 2010 Have a quick re-read of the report: "Of the records for more than 725 tide-gauge stations, most were too short, too interrupted, and too irregular for use in this investigation." Most (I interpret this as more than half?) of the records were discarded on these grounds. Clearly there were many issues with the data then and the authors do discuss these. However my point was to indicate how far the measurement technology and precision has moved on in 30 years. -
Riccardo at 02:03 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
RSVP, the experiment you propose has not been done for a reason, it would not tell us anything about the greenhous effect on earth. Indeed, in an hypothetical atmosphere with no lapse rate you would not get any greenhouse effect. -
Riccardo at 02:00 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Arkadiusz Semczyszak, there has been no CO2 leading an increase in temperature just because there has never been humans around able to produce it in such large quantities. The only notable exception is the coming out of the earth from the so called snowball state. But anyway, now we are here. If the CO2 acted as a feedback in the past, it means that it is able to trap heat; there's no reason to believe that because now it is emitted by human activities it stops doing his job. If you are not convinced by this simple fact, look at how the concentration of CO2 is related to temperature during, for example, the glacial cycles. Plot one against the other yourself and put current values in the graph. To get to 380+ ppmv temperature should be several degrees higher than we are experiencing today. This rules out that CO2 is now increasing as a response to a temperature increase. -
RSVP at 01:37 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March, 2010 "Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming?" Response: "...Of course, there's no substitute for measurements made in the real world. ..." To nerndt... The right way to prove this would be to compare the cooling profile of a large mass (perhaps a heavy anvil at 100 C.) shrouded within a chamber filled with a controlled gas. The comparison would be made to see the difference in cooling of the mass with air mixed at 250ppm CO2 and another with 350ppm CO2. All "real world" references I have seen of this experiment focus on how the gas with a higher percentage of CO2 warms more than than the one with a lower percentage of CO2, which proves very little since the amount of mass associated with the extra CO2 is miniscule. This is similar to viewing problems of conservation of momentum with an inelastic collision. If two bodies m1 and m2 collide, for instance, the velocities after collision will depend on the masses. In this case, the anvils heat capacity is huge, that of CO2 is tiny. CO2's capacity to absorb energy becomes "saturated" and all the IR goes right through. This is the grand flaw of AGW. Very good question. There is your answer. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:28 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
"What happens when rainfall patterns are disrupted causing problems for food growers, or when plants are ready for pollination too early for the insects that traditionally pollinate them?" The current species of insects and plants have existed for hundreds of thousands of years and survived a much more violent changes. In addition, cold = reduction of species; warm = evolution of radiation. -
Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 01:23 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
1. Never in the history of Earth is not observed (clearly proven) first increase in CO2 concentration and then the temperature rise. Has always been the opposite. Often, the first temperature and then decreased CO2 content. 2. As to the true RF CO2 in the atmosphere, even without Lindzen'a, opinions are more than different. I remember a graph based on the IPCC Fourth Report: http://www.americanthinker.com/Attachment%202.PNG. Currently, most researchers believe that the direct RF of CO2 doubling is up to circa 1 deg C, the rest is very hypothetical feedback. 3. K.E. Trenberth, J. Fasullo, L. Smith, 2005: Trends and variability in column-integrated atmospheric water vapor. Climate Dynamics 24: 741–758, DOI 10.1007/s00382-005-0017-4, fig. 11 - Is parallel to the increase of CO2 content of water vapor - also a greenhouse gas; in the atmosphere. So it is possible to reverse the sequence of events - increase: 1 temperature - 2 water vapor and 3: CO2. 4. "This led to an increase in atmospheric CO2 which caused global warming and a retreat of the glaciers." - It is only a hypothesis, to prove that there is sufficient evidence. Equally, it could be the result of the cause. 5. Conclusion: The data from the Ordovician does not give any evidence both for and against. -
JMurphy at 00:50 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
oracle2world, Pachauri was elected as Chair of a UN scientifc intergovernmental panel (IPCC) because he had been a Director/Governor/Executive/Adviser of many Academic/Scientific/Industrial bodies (and, previously, one of the Vice-Chairs of the IPCC); and because the US didn't like the previous Chair - Pachauri was more acceptable, I suppose, because of his industry and oil links. He is 'qualified to lead', because of his previous experience; he doesn't 'pass judgement' : he represents what the IPCC Panel determines. -
Mikemcc at 00:27 AM on 13 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Ok Miekol, I'm assuming that your tongue is firmly in your cheek, but I'll bite anyway. What cost would you put on this mammoth re-building task? Is it likely to go ahead for the inhabitants of the Maldives, Seychelles, Bangladesh, Micronesia? What highlands do those people have. Each time Bangladesh floods 100s die, thousands suffer from epidemics from contaminated water and millions are made homeless. What happens when rainfall patterns are disrupted causing problems for food growers, or when plants are ready for pollination too early for the insects that traditionally pollinate them? -
oracle2world at 00:14 AM on 13 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The grand pooh-bah of the IPCC (Pachauri) is a railway engineer. If he is qualified to lead the IPCC climate effort, then anyone with a scientific or engineering degree is qualified to pass judgement. I find it completely astonishing that this guest post omits this interesting fact. (And don't bother trying to weasal out of this, there is no shortage of qualified climate scientists available for the post.) But I digress. The petition project is "unscientific" from the get go. And only has legs because AGW enthusiasts constantly harp on "consensus" and the thousands of scientists that endorse AGW. Given this petition project is completely flakey from the get go, I don't know why anyone bothers to spend time refuting it. -
Ned at 23:54 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
RSVP writes: I would also assume that most people "out there" think of global warming as option 3, making it difficult to sustain AGW when, for instance, Venice is getting snow in mid March. I agree that many people probably do believe this. It's a direct result of the way that "skeptic" blogs such as WUWT treat every snowfall and cold-snap as proof that the world isn't warming. In the terms of my options (1), (2), and (3), they're knocking down the straw man (3) and telling their readers that this disproves global warming. In contrast, science-based blogs try to make it clear that the real-world global warming is (2). Of course, in the worst case scenario we won't lift a finger to curtail CO2 emissions. In which case, after a couple of centuries of burning through all the oil, coal, and tar sands we can get our hands on, we'll blow right past Type 2 global warming and into Type 3. By that point, it will be too late. -
Ned at 23:42 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel, let's perform a little thought experiment. Imagine that someone waded through all of your posts and emails, pulled out nineteen words, and used them to claim that you believed X when you actually believe the opposite of X. Then, further imagine that you repeatedly explained that this was wrong, and asked that person to stop misrepresenting you. But instead of politely complying, that person continued to twist your words and claim that you believed something which you clearly do not. People have been told repeatedly here that the way you are using the "travesty" quote is completely wrong. John has some nice posts about this (1, 2) but it's also important to hear how Dr Trenberth himself feels about having his words twisted: ---------------- "Two Sundays in a row ill-informed columns about carbon dioxide and climate have appeared in the Camera. The first by Bob Greenlee (Jan. 3) and the second by Charlie Danaher (Jan. 10). Both misrepresent me and my work, and in particular, quote from one of my e-mails that was illegally stolen: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.' "The quote has been taken out of context. It relates to our ability to track energy flow through the climate system. We can do this very well from 1992 to 2003, when large warming occurred, but not from 2004 to 2008. The quote refers to our observation system which is inadequate to observe Earth's energy flows at the accuracy needed to understand small fluctuations in climate; it does not mean there is no global warming, as is often interpreted by the likes of Danaher. What [it] does mean is that our observing system is not adequate to fully track the energy in ways that allow us to understand and make best statements about the effects of natural climate variability: the La Niña of 2007-2008, and the current El Niño, for instance. "It is absolutely certain that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and produces warming, despite Danaher's wishes. Without carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Earth's surface would be some 32 degrees Fahrenheit colder than it is now. Increased carbon dioxide will increase this warming effect, and both theory and observations are consistent with this fact. The evidence of this happening is widespread and abundant, so that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 was able to state with unanimous agreement from all of over 100 countries that global warming is unequivocal. But global warming does not stop weather from happening, and cold outbreaks continue and are fully expected. It does not stop winter. And it does not stop La Niña from happening and setting up unusually cold regional patterns of weather across the United States and other parts of the world that last a year or two. "To misunderstand the role of weather and natural climate variability the way it is being done is to undermine much-needed actions in limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Global warming is happening. It will continue to happen and the way we are going it will jeopardize the very nature of climate on planet Earth some decades from now. Because of the long lifetime of carbon dioxide, by the time it is so obvious to everyone, it will be far too late to do anything about it. "Americans should be outraged that the Chinese are putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and changing our climate! But by the same token, the Chinese should be outraged that the United States is putting nearly as much into the atmosphere, and historically a whole lot more than any other country, and changing their climate. We try to outdo each other in mutual self-destruction! "Putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions is an essential first step to responsible management of our planet. The United States needs to show leadership on this critical environmental issue." ---------------- That is what Dr Trenberth believes. As a graduate student, I had to work through the 800 pages of his textbook Climate System Modeling, so I'm more than willing to accept that he knows far more about the Earth's climate than I ever will. But even if you think Trenberth is wrong about CO2 and wrong about global warming, that does not justify your allegations that he is being dishonest about his beliefs. It is acceptable to argue that Trenberth's claims about climate science are wrong. It is morally unacceptable to argue that Trenberth doesn't genuinely believe his own statements. The very first item in the Comments Policy on this site says "No accusations of deception. Any accusations of deception, dishonesty or corruption will be deleted. This applies to both sides. Stick to the science. You may criticise a person's methods but not their motives." This isn't my site, but I would have to imagine that after reading his own words on the subject, you would drop the whole "travesty" argument and give Dr Trenberth the courtesy of respecting his statement about what his own opinions are. I apologize for the length of this comment. -
DavidCOG at 23:27 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Excellent response, John. This is one of the Denier talking points that I've not had a good response to - but now I do! :) -
miekol at 23:14 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
So what if CO2 is the cause of warming. Bring it on I say. Providing its not going to poison us then where's the harm? We can only benefit by it. It will turn the Earth into a garden of Eden :-) As a child I loved visiting my uncle's green house. All the luscious plants both vegetables and flowers. I thought then, wouldn't it be wonderful for the whole world to be like this. Now we have the opportunity to make so and feed the whole world :-) The only problem is that coastal low lying land will be flooded. However I don't see it as a problem only an opportunity to engage all the world's unemployed in construction to rebuild on higher land and to turn the coastal cities into Venice's. Providing the existing buildings' foundations are on bedrock there will be no subsidence and new roadways and pavements can be constructed at new levels. The difference between a pessimist and an optimist is one sees problems in every opportunity, the other sees opportunity in every problem ! -
Nick Palmer at 23:04 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Interesting. No-one seems to have commented on, or noticed, my post #24. There has been the usual analysis of the validity of the signatures, their qualifications, how many are Ginger Spice or Donald Duck, how many legitimate scientists signed the petition in comparison to the total number in the US etc etc. These have all been endlessly done to death, yet arguments like these are not going to make a dent in the petition's credibility amongst the general public. They haven't so far, and they probably never will. There are probably now more members of the general public who think that a huge number of scientists, much larger than the IPCC's, disagree with the basic climate science that there ever were. Trying to use the arguments above to destroy the credibility of the petition is a waste of time. My post #24 showed that it is the wording of the petition itself that needs to be consistently, loudly and powerfully attacked. If you actually read the words of the petition (mostly the second paragraph) you should be able to see that even if ALL the signatories had been fully conversant with climate science - understood that radiation imbalance due to increasing CO2 was a major cause; accepted that the globe is definitely warming and that we're mostly responsible - they could still legitimately sign it with a clear conscience, knowing that they had signed up to a scientifically valid statement. READ THE WORDS. There are elements of the first paragraph that are dubious and almost certainly wrong (though not 100% certain) but a casual, and still scientifically knowledgeable, reader could still have signed on the basis that they couldn't agree with all of the petition statement but that they did agree with the most important bit which states that there is no absolute proof that our emissions will lead to catastrophic disruption of Earth's climate - which everyone here should acknowledge is a true statement, if they understand the philosophy behind speaking in a genuinely scientific way at all. Of course, if they had read the accompanying "fake scientific" paper, they would have realised how they were being manipulated to create a piece of propaganda but like most petitions, most would not have researched it deeply. Shine a huge searchlight on the wording of the petition. Give up on the "Ginger Spice/people with inappropriate degrees who don't understand climate science" meme. Tell the public that the petition was designed to sucker real scientists into signing in order to subsequently exploit widespread general ignorance about the philosophy behind "measured uncertainty" in scientific statements, to sway the minds of the public. All those behind the denialist/inactivist/"sceptic" industry care about is increasing the numbers of potentially voting people who give them credence. -
CBDunkerson at 22:41 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
RSVP, if 'most people' thought that item 3 was the case they would be wrong. Every means of measurement we have unequivocally shows that the second case is correct. The globe as a whole is warming... but that does not preclude localized pockets of cooling from time to time. -
stevecarsonr at 22:35 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
What people think is a fascinating subject, made even more interesting by what we think they know about what they think. And what preconceived ideas we think they have about the subject where we want to know what they think. Someone who's a practicing climate scientist in say paleogeology may happily accept a colleague's belief in the attribution of recent temperature changes to CO2. But does he/she understand the subject? Someone who's a practicing climate scientist in stratospheric chemistry may happily accept a colleague's belief in the rise or demise of the medieval warm period. But does he/she understand the subject? Slightly more than the average dentist I'm sure, but in the end, I doubt that any of this is going to convince anyone of anything. - Well, it will convince AGW adherents they are right. - And it will convince AGW skeptics they are right. I find it interesting that many climate scientists do have a concern over CO2 increasing even when (these ones) in their writing don't have such strong conviction about the attribution or forecasts. It makes me think. But that's because I've read their work. If I tell someone else I've read it.. The argument about how many climate scientists buy into something only helps if people feel a trust for climate scientists. And how insignificant the non-climate scientists scientists are only helps if people feel a trust for and resonance with climate scientists Otherwise, the numbers and graphs just seem like fuel for the climate wars. -
ProfMandia at 21:57 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Chris Colose has a great tutorial called Greenhouse Effect Revisited Another good tutorial that is less mathematical is: The Greenhouse Effect & Greenhouse Gases (UCAR) My personal favorite is from theoretical physicist Arthur Smith here: Proof of the Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect -
yocta at 21:44 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
It seems a lot of things started happening in the Ordovician period: first primitive plants colonized land * Volcanoes went rampant *x* Continental submergence *x* [*] http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateWorkbook.pdf [*x*]http://library.thinkquest.org/20886/ordovician.htm -
John Mason at 21:34 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Oops - for "chance" read "change"! Damn this old keyboard! -
John Mason at 21:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Where you say: "Strontium is produced by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." I think you probably mean "Strontium is mobilised by rock weathering, the process that removes CO2 from the air." Sorry if that sounds a bit nit-picky - to me (a geologist) it read as if rock weathering results in an element coming into being!! Instead, Sr is present as a minor element in certain minerals e.g. feldspars, and upon their prolonged weathering it is taken into solution. Interesting piece: here in Mid Wales there are several localities that show the abrupt chance in sedimentary facies marking the transition from shallower to deep-water conditions that mark the end of this glaciation. The Cwmere Formation, mostly black, hemipelagic pyritic graptolitic organic-rich mudstones, represents the time following the major sealevel rise and cut-off from coarse sediment sources. It is an important marker-horizon across Central Wales, as things controlled by major eustatic sealevel changes associated with deglaciation tend to be! Cheers - John -
adrianco at 21:30 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
The OISM is a barn in the middle of nowhere (see the picture on their home page) with a P.O. Box as its address and an important sounding domain name. It has no credibility as an institute, it happens to be in Oregon, thats all. I have a Physics degree, so I could declare myself to be the Californian Institute of Science and Medicine, put a sign on the side of my garage, list all my buddies that have degrees as members and start collecting online signatures, big deal... If you google "oism location" you will find that Google Maps will show you their barn on the map. I've driven in that area (from Crescent City to Grant's Pass) and it's rural mountains on the south border of Oregon. Google "oism debunk" for the many other times the list has been debunked, including attempts to identify anyone on the list. On Facebook 350.org currently has 77,935 fans http://www.facebook.com/350.org and you can verify that there are more real people, and I would claim more real scientists and real climate scientists on that list than the OISM list. -
stevecarsonr at 19:58 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
For nerndt:Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming.. Can someone create a valid scientific experiment to prove or disprove this
" There are 2 parts, and I can only answer one. This is the explanation of how CO2 adds radiation at the earth's surface. For the subject of "global warming" - well, everything else in the climate has to be taken into account. But I think your question is about the first issue - how in the first place does CO2 add heat at the earth's surface? Take a look at CO2-An Insignificant Trace Gas - Visualization What you see there, amongst other concepts, is the longwave radiation leaving the earth's surface - at 390W/m^2 on average, and yet at the top of atmosphere this outgoing longwave radiation is only about 240W/m^2. Where has this longwave radiation gone? It has been absorbed and re-radiated both up and down. This "earth experiment" should demonstrate the reality of the theory of how CO2 adds warming at the earth's surface. -
padruig at 19:31 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
While John Tyndall (1820-1893) gave us the first picture of the effect of the absorption of heat radiation by gases, his contribution should be taken in context. In 1896 Svante Arrhenius published his calculations on a basic heat budget for the earth based on his estimate and projection of anthropogenic CO2 being introduced into the earth's atmosphere. Broadly, the Arrhenius estimates remain valid today well over 100 years later. In his classic 1949 text Radiative Transfer, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar gave us a comprehensive view of the behavior of light radiation passing through a planetary atmosphere and how the gas mixture of that atmosphere would capture some of the radiation and re-release some or all as heat while some would be reflected back into space. A classic journal article that illustrates the contribution of CO2 to climate change must be "Carbon Dioxide and the Climate" by Gilbert Plass (American Scientist, 1956). Dr. Plass describes CO2 sources and sinks and makes salient predictions about their impact to our environment. For this and other contributions, Dr. Plass is considered the 'father' of modern greenhouse gas theory. From Jean-Baptiste Fourier to today we have a mountain of literature and journal articles but none of this in total can counterbalance a passionate "believer" because the "believer" is not constrained by calculus or physics or the aerosol and gas chemistry of our atmosphere. The "believer" chooses to not see the thermodynamics of our cryosphere where the arctic ice cover is now so reduced that German and Russian merchant vessel traffic is free to execute a polar transit cutting thousands of miles of travel off a voyage from Asia to Europe. The general public has been misled to the "belief" that anthropogenic global warming is an issue of public discourse and that in that discourse they can legitimately influence the outcome of changes in the earth's climate when in fact the outcome is influenced by physics and chemistry. If there is a 'problem' it is the in the public view the scope and impact of anthropogenic global warming has been reduced to a question that has a 'single answer'. Unfortunately, science in its essence subdivides any question into smaller, more fundamental questions and in answering those myriad of smaller questions assembles and answer which is a tapestry. -
Riccardo at 19:20 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
neerndt, "the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade." do you mean the solar maximum of the well known 11 years cycle? We're now at a solar minimum, a quite prolonged one indeed. But it does not look like it's going to impact the actual trend that much. -
Dan R at 18:47 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Some earlier work in this field: Press release - http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/earlyice.htm Paper itself - http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/2/109 Seems the argument hasn't held much weight for a few years now. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:25 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel at 17:04 PM on 12 March, 2010 Several hundred words, chock-a-block with specific findings, supported by thirty references to other published works. Surely you did not stop after reading seven words of Trenberth's paper? What part of the rest of the paper leaves you unconvinced, specifically? What's your case? -
RSVP at 18:17 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
One "last" comment... about surveys. I dont think a survey is needed to know what people think. It's not what people think as much as what they are being told in so many way and on a continuous basis. This mass messaging is quite simple. "That the planet is warming due to energy trapped by the additional greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels, and that this is the most convenient truth until proven otherwise by the same folks that have concocted this theory. Your survival depends on this, so please be understanding about all the measures that will be taken." By the way, I did see a new field of solar panels going up. Reminded me of strip mining. An entire mountain was bull dozed. All vegetation removed. -
Doug Bostrom at 18:12 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March, 2010 Also see The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect for more history about how C02 was identified as a substance that can alter the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere. The link points to a chapter of Dr. Spencer Weart's excellent book on the topic. -
RSVP at 18:06 PM on 12 March 2010Watts Up With That's ignorance regarding Antarctic sea ice
Ned I appreciate you answering my question, especially as you diagram the three possibilities so candidly. This helps facilitate the discussion in a meaningful way. As far as comparing options 1 and 2, simply based on the historical evidence of ice age cycles that option 1 is improbable. I would also assume that most people "out there" think of global warming as option 3, making it difficult to sustain AGW when, for instance, Venice is getting snow in mid March. Jeff Freymueller Thanks for your response as well, which coincides generally with Ned. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 17:49 PM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
scaddenp> I don't see why Crowley and Lowery is relevant, could you explain? They just include the Keigwin paper in their data, on seemingly equal footing with some other sources. Jones, P. D., and M. E. Mann (2004), Climate over past millennia, Rev. Geophys., 42, is in about the only volume of Rev. Geophysics I can't access, maybe you could tell me why it is important? -
nerndt at 17:26 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
More data on total slar irradiation. The graph in the link shows the irradiation has been quite a bit higher in the last decade. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html Total solar irradiance describes the radiant energy emitted by the sun over all wavelengths that falls each second on 1 square meter outside the earth's atmosphere--a quantity proportional to the "solar constant" observed earlier in this century. It measures the solar energy flux in Watts/square meter. The data contains six sets of satellite observations: values from NIMBUS-7, from the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM) spacecraft, from the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite (ERBS), from the NOAA-9 and 10 platforms, and from the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite (UARS). Measurements span the periods: NIMBUS-7 16 Nov 78-13 Dec 93; SMM 16 Feb 80-01 Jun 89; ERBS 25 Oct 84-21 Dec 94; NOAA-9 23 Jan 85-20 Dec 89; NOAA-10 22 Oct 86-01 Apr 87; UARS 5 Oct 91-30 Sep 94. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To get to our FTP archive of solar irradiance data, click here. For more information on the various satellies, click on the appropriate hypertext link: NIMBUS-7 UARS/ACRIM II ERBS go to Solar Data Services Home -
nerndt at 17:21 PM on 12 March 2010It's the sun
Total Solar radiation has had a large effect on climate chane based on the scientifc article below: Combine the information below with the closing of the ozone hole in the past 20 years and that in itself could explain all of the global warming from the past 25 years. Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900–2000 global surface warming http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025539.shtml We study the role of solar forcing on global surface temperature during four periods of the industrial era (1900–2000, 1900–1950, 1950–2000 and 1980–2000) by using a sun-climate coupling model based on four scale-dependent empirical climate sensitive parameters to solar variations. We use two alternative total solar irradiance satellite composites, ACRIM and PMOD, and a total solar irradiance proxy reconstruction. We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming. These results, while confirming that anthropogenic-added climate forcing might have progressively played a dominant role in climate change during the last century, also suggest that the solar impact on climate change during the same period is significantly stronger than what some theoretical models have predicted. -
Marcus at 17:14 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
From everything I've read on the subject, though, the temperatures at which glaciation occurred during the Ordovician Era were higher than the temperatures at which similar glaciation occurred during the entirety of the Quaternary Era. -
nerndt at 17:10 PM on 12 March 2010CO2 levels during the late Ordovician
Can someone please give the real scientific explanation why CO2 drives global warming? Correlation does not guarantee cause. Put C)2 in a large glass chamber and measure the change in the rate of heat dissipation compared to nitrogen and it will not alter the rate of heat transferrance. Can someone create a valid scientific experiment to prove or disprove this? Thanks.Response: The first scientific experiment proving the warming effect of carbon dioxide was conducted in 1861 when John Tyndal published laboratory results identifying carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas that absorbed heat rays (longwave or infrared radiation). Since then, the absorptive qualities of carbon dioxide have been more precisely quantified by decades of laboratory measurements (Herzberg 1953, Burch 1962, Burch 1970, etc).
Of course, there's no substitute for measurements made in the real world. Satellites have measured less infrared radiation escaping to space at the same wavelenths absorbed by greenhouse gases (Harries 2001, Griggs 2004, Chen 2007). The authors concluded this was "direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth's greenhouse effect".
In science, the only thing better than direct measurements are multiple sets of independent measurements finding the same thing. Surface measurements also find an increase of infrared radiation heading back down towards Earth, confirmation of an enhanced greenhouse effect (Philipona 2004, Puckrin 2004, Wild 2008, Wang 2009). A close analysis of the downward infrared spectrum finds more energy coming back down at the same absorptive wavelengths of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, thus concluding "this experimental data should effectively end the argument by skeptics that no experimental evidence exists for the connection between greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere and global warming." (Evans 2006) -
gallopingcamel at 17:04 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Tom Dayton (#5), consensus is unimportant in science. I cannot say it any better than the first Einstein quote in (#62). You might claim that there was consensus about the validity of Newton's "Laws of Motion" for almost 300 years until Einstein's theories of Relativity were published. (#63), demeanor is not the issue; it is what these scientists say that determines their credibility. John Cook, you do a good job defending Trenberth but I am unconvinced. On the very first page of the paper you cited, the author states: "Given that global warming is unequivocally happening". I agree that this is slightly better than Bob Watson who assures us that "climate change" is happening. He can hardly be wrong on that one!Response: Trenberth has probably written as many papers as anyone on satellite data of outgoing and incoming radiation - if there was anyone who would know whether the global warming was happening (eg - that the planet is in positive energy imbalance), it would be Trenberth. -
Tom Dayton at 15:41 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
gallopingcamel, once again you have used your perception of people's demeanor in TV appearances as "evidence" against the objective scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change. That is inappropriate for this Skeptical Science site. -
gallopingcamel at 15:18 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
While the number of scientist heads does not matter, the quality of the heads does. Let's consider a couple of prominent scientists who are much quoted on AGW issues. Take a look at Bob Watson defending the IPCC on TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dzb8FljvGGI&feature=player_embedded Professor Robinson expresses complete certainty in a way that shows he does not understand what science is about. Watson could use a lesson in humility and clarity from a great scientist: “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Albert Einstein Here is a quote from Kevin Trenberth (UCAR), October 12, 2009: "We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." This is in sharp contrast to Trenberth's public statements. Albert Einstein has something to say about integrity: "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters."Response: "This is in sharp contrast to Trenberth's public statements"
Actually, Trenberth's "can't account for the lack of warming" theme is expounded in frank, clear detail in the peer-reviewed paper An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth's global energy (Trenberth 2009). This paper is the topic of the email where that quote is taken from. Unfortunately, most people fail to read the full email. Certainly very few people read the paper he was refering to. I would highly recommend reading the paper or at the very least, this summation of the paper and what Trenberth was getting at. -
sammysoul at 14:12 PM on 12 March 2010iPhone app version 1.1 - now with search, image viewer and Twitter!
Phantastic app!!! Just one little thing that should be changed is the format of the bit.ly links. Instead of starting with "www.bit.ly" they should start with "http://bit.ly" instead. That way Twitter will format them into a hyperlink. Right now the links are not clickable in Twitter, which is a bit of a nuisance, especially since we all want for as many people as possible to easily download the app. -
yocta at 13:45 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
RE: 54 suibhne lol, It may seem that way but I don't. I have enormous respect for Paul Ehrlich and James Lovelock... i'm just thinking it just might take a generational change for skeptics to lose their weighting in the mainstream media. -
Ned at 12:21 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
chriscanaris writes: However, I accept that people have the right to ignore me sometimes with serious consequences. Well, one could make the argument that there are some fields where the consequences of ignoring the experts are worse than others. In this particular field, our current policy of ignoring (or worse yet attacking) the experts is likely to lead to increased misery for future generations especially in countries more vulnerable to environmental change, and to a drastically increased rate of extinction worldwide. That said, I agree with you that no group or profession should exist without scrutiny and oversight. The question is, what are reasonable mechanisms for that kind of oversight? Scientists working in universities are subject to the review of their departmental colleagues, tenure committees, deans, external funding agencies, etc. Scientists working for the private sector or for government have their own versions of these. What's unique (and problematic) is the fact that the entire field of climate science is being attacked (not merely "scrutinized") by people who are actively hostile to the fundamental nature of the field as it exists today. I know there are those who are sincerely motivated by honest skepticism or curiosity. But it should be obvious to everyone by now that those voices are far outnumbered by others who are convinced that the whole climate science thing is a scam and everyone associated with it needs to be run out of town on a rail. Near the beginning of his talk at AGU last December, Richard Alley showed an email that was sent to the administration of his university: "Dr. Alley's work on ... CO2 levels in ice cores has confirmed that CO2 lags earth's temperature.... This one scientific fact alone proves that CO2 is not the cause of recent warming, yet ... Dr Alley continue[s] to mislead the scientific community and the general public about 'global warming' ... I await your prompt response confirming that an investigation into ... Dr Alley's activities will ... start prior to the end of this year. (His) crimes against the scientific community, [Pennsylvania State University], the citizens of this great country, and the citizens of the world are significant and must be dealt with severely to stop such shameful activities in the future." Now, the author of that email might be dismissed as one lone and unimportant individual ... except that over the past few years, and increasingly now, these kinds of attacks are becoming mainstreamed in the media and on the internet. Ultimately, in a democracy, "scrutiny" of every profession comes from the public at large. But most people have no direct experience or interactions with climate scientists, and so their views are shaped by the media, blogs, etc. In the current environment, a large and growing fraction of that "information environment" is being shaped by voices that have a gut-level hatred for the entire field and want to see it and everyone working in it utterly destroyed. That's rather different from the normal social oversight that most fields and professions are subject to -
Mike1637 at 12:09 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
I think the question of political affiliation is quite valid. Political influence and interference doesn't just apply to climate science, but many other scientific disciplines as well. Evolutionary Biology. Medical research. The list goes on. While it's true that not everyone can be lumped into the same camp and there are exceptions on both sides, there is a very clear pattern of how certain "sides" of politics treat scientific results that they don't like. -
Tony O at 12:09 PM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
Do we know how thoroughly OISM checked the respondents? Do all of the signatories exist, have the degree stated and are the actual person stated? Can we access the list still? Here id deltoids take http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/05/oregonpetition.php -
scaddenp at 12:02 PM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
Perhaps look at the cites for that paper. Eg Jones & Mann 2004, and Crowley & Lowery 2000. -
chris1204 at 11:59 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
robhon: Being subjected to scrutiny is one thing. Being made the object of a witch hunt is completely another. Well yes, sounds like psychiatry in the Soviet Union. Or the dominance of the Lysenko evolutionary paradigm in the Soviet Union. Or the rejection of Jewish science in Nazi Germany. Power tends to corrupt. Scientific bodies are not exempt from its corrupting influence, whether warmist or denialist. Again, one would hope that appropriate scrutiny by the Courts will protect. -
Rob Honeycutt at 11:40 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
chriscanaris... Being subjected to scrutiny is one thing. Being made the object of a witch hunt is completely another. Don't forget that people like Sen. Inhofe and others are literally trying to get people thrown in prison for practicing science that comes to a conclusions they object to politically. -
chris1204 at 10:47 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
angliss & shdwsnlite I am quite used to having my professional opinions ignored by folk who know much les about my subject than I do. Sometimes it annoys me because I am human. However, I accept that people have the right to ignore me sometimes with serious consequences. Besides, on occasions, my profession (I mean psychiatry) has perpetrated some serious atrocities. Firthermore, I daily read reports by colleagues acting as 'hired guns' for insurance companies - a situation that my professional organisations has singularly failed to address. In the end, oversight by the courts (non-expert judges trained in law assisted by lawyers skilled in evaluating evcidence) has been the only corrective. So to get back on topic, climate scientists need to be subject to scrutiny just like everyone else. -
suibhne at 10:39 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
yocta You seem to have it in for "old guys" remember Beethoven wrote his best music near the end of his life! -
GFW at 09:41 AM on 12 March 2010Accelerating ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland
Some quick math. If you take the current sea level rise as 3mm/y, apply 0.17mm/y^2, and run that out 90 years, you get a total sea level rise of 0.97 meters. So meter scale sea level rise by 2100 is perfectly in line with these observations. -
NewYorkJ at 09:39 AM on 12 March 2010Guest post: scrutinising the 31,000 scientists in the OISM Petition Project
"I am not the only one, for example Gavin Schmidt has a degree and a PhD in (applied) mathematics, I'm sure you wouldn't want to ignore his views. " To be clear, here are Gavin's credentials (from RC): "He received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He serves on the CLIVAR/PAGES Intersection Panel and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate. He was cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and has worked on Education and Outreach with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications. " I think some are missing the main point of this post. No matter which criteria (debatable or not) one uses (stringent or lax), with any remotely reasonable criteria, the resulting numerator / denominator indicates a very small percentage of the scientific community are "skeptics". Those who move the goalposts with a "consensus isn't fact" argument are seemingly entirely oblivious to the main thesis put forth by Petition Project or Inhofe 700 style arguments (focusing on the numerator and ignore the denominator): that there is widespread dissent and a raging scientific debate over the key issues. It's an argument refuted nicely here, but one much of the public buys into. -
Marcel Bökstedt at 09:37 AM on 12 March 2010Medieval Warm Period was warmer
I just looked at the OISM petition project. They present a number of not very strong argument against AGW, one of them being that the Medieval Warm Period was about 1 degree warmer than today. That would in itself not contradict AGW, but lets not go there now. Anyhow, being biased, I would prefer that there was some solid reason for dismissing the claim...:) They quote the paper "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea Lloyd D. Keigwin, Science, New Series, Vol. 274, No. 5292 (Nov. 29, 1996), pp. 1504-1508". I looked at it, and it seems that by using sediment cores he can give some evidence that at least locally, at the "Bermuda rise" in the Sargasso sea, the MWP was indeed 1 degree warmer. Of course that does not prove too much about global temperature, especially since there is a lot of evidence to the contrary which is not mentioned in the OISM advertisment. What intrigues me is that Keigwin's paper is neither mentioned nor contested in the paper by Mann et al. which is the basis for the temperature map above. Is the Mann paper cherry picking and spitting out Keigwin's sediments at this point (which would seriously damage its credibility), or is there some good reason for dismissing Keigwin's results, and painting the Sargasso sea in cool colors on the world map of the year 1000? (There is also a map in fig 2 of the paper that makes it clear that sediment records from the Sargasso have not been used). Or am I just missing something obvious here?
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