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Philippe Chantreau at 06:31 AM on 15 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Although this might be an effect more for the layers above the stratosphere. Not sure. -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:31 AM on 15 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Possibly contraction (increased pressure and temp lapse rates)? -
Patrick 027 at 05:17 AM on 15 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
" but the greenhouse effect also has direct effects on the upper atmosphere that may be similar. " No, wait. The total effect of solar brightenning, ozone depletion, and increased CO2,CH4,N2O,etc, are all expected to cool the lower stratosphere more at higher latitudes than at some lower latitudes, although there is some interesting complexity(IPCC AR4 WGI Chapter 9 ? see diagram on p. ?) the changes in north-south temperature gradients are quite similar for the lower stratosphere between CO2,CH4,etc and solar forcing, at least from mid-to-high latitudes - exactly what the direct effect of the greenhouse effect on the stratosphere is besides general cooling...? -
tonydunc at 21:12 PM on 14 March 2009There is no consensus
I have been concerned about Climate change since the late 70's when my brother in law warned me about the dangers of the earth as a heat sink, and a room mate explained work she was doing about the degree of deforestation in th Amazon, Congo and Southeast Asia. When I heard about Mauna Loa I became, as the "deniers" here would call, an alarmist. The main deniers of ACC here all seem to present a reasonable face and continually provide information and links to support their arguments or to question assertions of those that support ACC. But many of their arguments appear to me to be strained at best, and most telling I have yet to see much admission of fallibility. Both John and Chris, and others have made many many observations and provided countless sources backing up their assertions, many of which have not been effectively countered, yet the deniers continue to proclaim their views almost unchanged. I was dissappointed that Chris left one of the discussions because some arguments were brought up to counter his assertions after he left, and I do not know enough to assess their validity. But in every case that he has responded his arguments have been clear and totally supported. the argument that the deniers here are not as critical of sources that object to ACC as they are to sources that support them is extremely important. Also that there is no competing theory. As with the anti evolution debate, there are dozens of competing theories, almost all mutually exclusive. The interest seems to be on proving ACC to be false rather than finding out the truth. Quitman keeps insisting it is a tectonic issue, and all very clear, yet it seems to me that Chris effectively demonstrated that every one of his contentions was not supported by research. that in fact we know the amount of carbon produced by tectonic effects, and it is 1% of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere. I have yet to read anything that Chris or John have written that was factually in error or where their conclusion was not justified. The fact that there are almost no peer reviewed articles that contradict ACC is a towering argument. That does not by itself mean that the consensus is right. It does not mean that there is not a huge conspiracy . But a huge conspiracy on this scale would require some massive fudging of data, or a degree of peer pressure that is clearly not occurring. Certainly in Soviet Russia there was a mass conspiracy supporting Lysenkian genetics. No papers were allowed to be published in scientific journals that did not support it. Yet all the real scientists knew that this was happening, and went along with it because they would face severe penalties if they didn't. I know of no scientist who supports ACC who is "pressured" to do so because of pressure and therefore does not publish valid research data that would counter it. I know of no scientists who refuse to look at research because they are scared it might force them to disbelieve ACC. This does not mean that there are not political pressures to support ACC that distort aspects of how it is presented and that have serious political imperatives. Those should be faced head on and counteracted. Many people on this site have pointed out the obvious and sometimes shameful attempts to bolster anti ACC views that were unscientific. this should not be disregarded. Nor should the funding by right wing and energy based organizations that have an ideological or financial agenda. but there has been sufficient time and thousands of research papers detailing ACC and if it was incorrect in the main then a competing theory that fit all the facts would have emerged. I consider myself an alarmist because there IS a consensus on climate change and almost nothing is being done about it. That is very alarming. There are potential consequences that are indeed catastrophic. ACC is not a problem in isolation. There are innumerable environmental crisis that are happening at the same time, many of which are greatly exacerbated by ACC. Not all are real and not all will be as bad as some predict. I do know that deforestation, certain kinds of pollution, the devastation of ocean life, biodiversity loss, and contamination of various parts of the environment are accelerating. Atmospheric CO2 is accelerating as well. Yet in spite of worldwide political and public consensus, almost nothing is being done that could conceivably have any effect. It is like a car heading toward a cliff, we can see it, but instead of taking our foot off the accelerator and on the brake, we are untying the shoe on the accelerator, so that if we do want to stop we can take the shoe off and press not quite so hard with our bare foot. As Risky puts it, why not just really slow down CO2 production. If we do cut it drastically and it turns out not to be a big problem, we can gear back up very easily. However if we don't, the risks of Greenland melting are quite real. It might not, but it might. There are many who believe that IPCC conclusions are ridiculously optimistic. There are thousands of scientists who are convinced research show significant ACC is happening, and that the consequences could be devastating. So lets cut back to pre 1990 levels for 20 years and see what the research shows then. There are extremists who either don't understand science and therefore make false exaggerated claims. And there are ideologues who believe that they have to overplay their hand to counter the "enemy". But I am in contact with some of these people and none of them believe that they are wrong but are pulling this scam because they will get rich. They all believe they are right, and just want to keep the evil corporation from destroying the planet. On the other hand we do know the tobacco companies knew they were wrong, but lied and obfuscated about cancer as long as possible. We know that Financial companies knowingly lied to all sorts of people. We know the govenrment covered up what companies like Enron and Anderson were doing, and knew that the current financial structure was "toxic". It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that Exxon,and the Heritage foundation would lie, knowingly lie, about ACC in order to keep making huge profits. The idea that the profit motive is what is driving the science behind ACC seems almost ludicrous given recent history and the structure of our economic system. I, however am fully an alarmist, because I think it is possible that the Greenland Ice cap could melt substantially in 50 years. I do believe that there could be a tipping point that affects the Sargasso ocean current or some other currently stable climactic factor in a period of a decade or two. I do believe there are potential consequences that could wreak havoc on our society and on the world. I also believe that there could be solutions that will mitigate the problems. I also believe that nothing serious will be done about the issue until there is some devastating crisis that puts the deniers into shell shock, and that forces action. By then it may be too late to avoid some of the seroius consequences. these polite websites that argue back and forth will seem rather bizarre then. ACC could be wrong. I think it extremely unlikely, and I think that it will be not because it is "wrong" but because there is some other deeper issue that really LOOKS like ACC, just as Quantum relativistic physics really LOOKS newtonian in daily life. the arguments of the deniers (except for Quietman, since he is convinced his theory explains everything) are not consistant systematic theories and are just flotsam thrown to obscure matters. If the consequences were not so serious I would think it was great. but the "debate" is actually causing serious delays in making necessary immediate changes in human activities. it has been the United States for the last 20 years being the lynchpin in stopping concerted efforts to cut back CO2 emissions, and that has allowed China and india and others to increase their CO2 output to US levels, and now they are starting to obfuscate as much as we have. -
tonydunc at 19:29 PM on 14 March 2009There is no consensus
I have spent the last few hours and have ben fascinated by the amount of information on this site. I came to this site because I had ben looking for some scientifically credible source to critique the claims of this article i had been referred to that seemed quite scientific ( the only one I have ever seen that really firt the bill). it turns out that this thread covers that article. Here is one link http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm Hopefully someone here can give me a critique of their specific points. the main being that CO2 could not possibly be a factor in the increasing temperatures, and that increasing temperatures are not of any concern. Increasing temp is due to a gradual readjustment from the "little ice Age" I know some of their points are covered in other threads here, but this seemed the most likely place to put this -
Mizimi at 04:42 AM on 14 March 2009CO2 measurements are suspect
Here is a comparison of geochem vs satellite (AIRS) data on CO2 levels : http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0817/2008GL035022/2008gl035022-op03.jpg -
Patrick 027 at 14:10 PM on 13 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Regarding comment 469: "Aside from those questions, how much multidecadal variability is there in the solar wind?" On that point, my impression is that climate models are able to simulate the little ice age, which suggests that if the solar wind varied with total solar forcing back then the way it does now, setting aside possible nonlinearities in the magnetic field and climatic response that just happen to make it a bigger factor now, then it seems likely that the sun is not contributing a whole lot more (over twice as much, which is minimally what it would take to overcome anthropogenic forcing, assuming high end estimates of solar forcing and near-high end estimates of anthropogenic aerosol cooling, to make solar forcing dominant, and only just barely - anthropogenic effects would still be important, and greenhouse forcing even more so as it would be partly canceled by aerosols in that case, more than is expected) to climate change now than is thought. Same for TSI UV effects on upper atmospheric circulation - it is possible to imagine that there is some aspect of changing atmospheric circulation patterns and regional changes, aside from global average temperature increases, that has some special connection to TSI in UV - and for that matter, ozone depletion has had an effect on SAM (Southern Annular Mode); but the greenhouse effect also has direct effects on the upper atmosphere that may be similar. Directly-radiatively forced effects on the upper atmosphere (above tropopause) shouldn't have a lag time over one year (actually a few weeks??), whereas tropospheric and surface changes and stratospheric changes in response to those changes will have a lag time of over a decade, maybe ... well, it's more than one decade. So if solar forcing has not increased much since 1980... etc. ---- Regarding where I left off on comment 439: Rossby wave propagation properties of the basic state will not just vary vertically. Sloping reflective surfaces can change the horizontal orientation, resulting in changes in the north-south group velocities of waves between incident and reflected, and between incident and refracted... And Rossby waves can be/are refracted and reflected horizontally. The synoptic-scale wavelengths (midlatitude cyclone activity) cannot penetrate far into the stratosphere; The quasistationary Rossby waves (longer wavelengths) can propagate up provided the wind is westerly and not too fast (wavelength dependent). In summer, the winds generally reverse within some distance of the tropopause, becoming easterly within most of the stratosphere by volume (I'm not sure by mass offhand, as density decreases roughly exponentially with height). In the winter, the wind speed generally decreases up to a point but remains westerly up into the mesosphere; a point is reached where it speeds up again with height - this can occur in the lower stratosphere at higher latitudes from the tropopause-level average maximum westerly winds (at high enough latitudes, the average westerly wind increases with height from the surface up through at least the lower stratosphere (Holton, p.407)) - generally maximum winds are reached somewhere near the upper stratosphere/lower mesosphere (by geometric height) and then decrease again (Holton, p.407) - the summer hemisphere has a maximum in easterlies above the stratopause. I started with the idea of Rossby waves described by formulas that I think were derived with assumptions that some things were nearly constant with height and that the basic state horizontal wind shear is not a big factor in the IPV gradient. I'm not sure off hand how a more complete understanding will change the picture. Anyway, climate changes involving increasing horizontal temperature gradients in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (I don't know about upper stratosphere) could change how these waves propagate and thus cause changes to circulation patterns, including positions/strengths/qualities of prevailing westerlies and storm-tracks, by changing wave EP fluxes between the stratosphere and troposphere as well as by changing the storm track activity itself and the Hadley cells, etc. So is this what's happening? -
harmonyfuture at 11:02 AM on 12 March 2009It's the sun
I posted this on what may be a dead end Mars warming story. Could any comment be made on possible chemical reactions resultant from storm activity on the surface of Mars. Excuse ignorance, ignore if stupid. Thanks -
harmonyfuture at 10:56 AM on 12 March 2009Mars is warming
If anyone visits again, could any comment be made on possible chemical reactions resultant from storm activity on the surface. Excuse ignorance, ignore if stupid. Thanks -
roundton at 03:58 AM on 12 March 2009There is no consensus
Hi, Thanks for providing this forum. You write: The consensus position is generally defined as "most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities". I agree that is one consensus view, but I can certainly envisage agreement with that particular statement being combined with a dissenting or agnostic position as to the relative importance of different human inputs. So one could adhere to one consensus position on global warming, but at the same time be a sceptic regarding another position, for instance the view that "most of the global warming in recent decades can be attributed to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases". Would you also regard the latter statement as reflecting a consensus? If so, fine, but it will be a different and smaller consensus than the first one. -
Gord at 22:00 PM on 11 March 2009It's the sun
The Energy Budget Diagrams show 342 w/m^2 for the "Incoming" Solar Energy above the Earth's atmosphere. 67 w/m^2 is absorbed by the atmosphere, 77 w/m^2 is reflected by clouds and 30 w/m^2 is reflected by the surface. This leaves 168 w/m^2 absorbed by the Earth's surface. The AGW Energy Budget Diagrams state that the Solar energy actually reaching the Earth's surface is only "an average" of 168 w/m^2. However, the method they use for their calculation involves representing the spherical earth as a disk. While this calculation is mathematically correct to determine the "average" solar flux through the disk, it does not represent the actual variation in Solar flux. Most of the direct(straight on)absorbtion of Solar energy occures near the equator (even with the Earth's changing axis). The Polar regions absorb far less Solar energy because the energy is received at an angle. Near the equator the Solar flux is measured as high as 1000 w/m^2...which is vastly higher than the 168 w/m^2 average. -------------------- Basics of Solar Energy "Collection of Solar Energy Amount of captured solar energy depends critically on orientation of collector with respect to the angle of the Sun. Under optimum conditions, one can achieve fluxes as high as 1000 Watts per sq. meter" http://zebu.uoregon.edu/1998/ph162/l4.html -------------------- The Oceans have an emissivity near 1, which means that they will absorb just about all Solar energy available and heat up. Boltzmann's Law states: P = e*BC*A*T^4 Where P = net radiated power (Watts), e = emissivity, BC = Stefan's constant (5.67X10^-8), T = temperature Kelvin and A = area ..when rearranged gives P/A = e*BC*T^4 (Watts/m^2) If P/A = 1000 w/m^2 e = 1 BC = 5.67X10^-8 and solving for T we get T = 364.42 deg K or a whopping 91.42 deg C!! On average, the Ocean mean surface temp at the equator is a much lower 29 deg C. Also, the mean Ocean surface temp for the entire planet is about 18.69 deg C. It is very possible that the Sun's heating of the Oceans (which is about 70% of the Earth's surface)can account for most, if not all, of Earth's +15 deg C average temp. -
Gord at 21:29 PM on 11 March 2009It's the sun
There are only two significant energy sources that can directly affect the Earth's temp: 1. The Sun 2. The Earth's molten core. If these two energy sources were elliminated, the Earth would cool to near absolute zero. The Earth's atmosphere is NOT an energy source. The AGW'ers have produced an Energy Budget Diagram (which excludes the Earth's molten core, so I will as well) The Sun is the ONLY energy source in the following diagram. Here is a link to Kevin Trenberth's paper: Earth’s Annual Global Mean Energy Budget http://www.atmo.arizona.edu/students/courselinks/spring04/atmo451b/pdf/RadiationBudget.pdf Look at Fig.7 The earth’s annual global mean energy budget Do you see the amount of Solar Radiation absorbed by surface of the Earth?....it's 168 w/m^2. Do you see the amount of Back Radiation from the Atmosphere that is absorbed by surface of the Earth?....it's 324 w/m^2. Do you see the amount of Surface Radiation from the Earth?.....it's 390 w/m^2. Do you agree that the Sun is the ONLY energy source in this Energy Budget Diagram? Do you agree that the average Atmosphere temp is Colder than the average Earth's Surface temp? Does the Earth's surface radiate MORE energy than it "consumes" or receives from the Sun? Does the Back Radiation absorbed by the Earth's Surface exceed the energy it receives from the Sun? Does the Back Radiation not come from a colder atmosphere? ------------------------------ "Second Law of Thermodynamics: It is not possible for heat to flow from a colder body to a warmer body without any work having been done to accomplish this flow. Energy will not flow spontaneously from a low temperature object to a higher temperature object." http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html#c3 ---------------------- Perpetual motion "The term perpetual motion, taken literally, refers to movement that goes on forever. However, the term more generally refers to any closed system that produces more energy than it consumes. Such a device or system would be in violation of the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy can never be created or destroyed." "Perpetual motion violates either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, or both" "A perpetual motion machine of the first kind produces energy from nothing, giving the user unlimited 'free' energy. It thus violates the law of conservation of energy." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion ------------------ It's pretty clear that AGW violates: 1. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics 2. The Law of Conservation of Energy -
chris at 06:02 AM on 10 March 2009The Mystery of the Vanishing Ocean Heat
HS #32, For whatever reason Nils-Morner is asserting something that is demonstrably untrue. We know how sea levels are measured. We can look at the data directly (see papers in my post #27). People do say things that aren't true in newspaper interviews...or perhaps they're mis-quoted. That's why skeptics preder the science to newspaper articles!Whatever the reason for Nils-Morner stating something that doesn't accord with the facts in a newspaper interview, it doesn't change the reality of the methodology of measuring sea levels. And it's not about "paradigms" "creationists" "warped views" and all those other non-science things you want to pursue in lieu of an argument. It's about the methodologies of measuring sea levels! Perhaps you're less interested in the reality of how sea levels are measured (it's a pretty prosaic subject!)and prefer to hold onto a falsehood from a newspaper article. That's fine.. -
chris at 05:43 AM on 10 March 2009Does model uncertainty exagerate global warming projections?
The fact that Scotese has a very nice paleotectonic site doesn't mean that the temperature sketch that is shown there is a meaningful representation of the Earth's paleotemperature as we know it. A rather better one would be something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png Likewise if we are interested in (i) what the paleoCO2 levels were and (ii) the relationship, between paleoCO2 levels and paleotemperature we would probably want to use some real paleoCO2 data, wouldn't you say? However there isn't any paleoCO2 data in the sketch that someone has presumably created to attempt to fool us (he fooled you and Mizimi and HS, but not the skeptical individuals here). The CO2 curve is a model created to capture the broad changes in CO2 that would arise from knowledge of continental movement, weathering rates, and so on. It has a temporal resoution of 10 million years. It's a very nice model, btw. But it doesn't have much meaning as a source of comparison of paleotemp and paleoCO2, particularly if one is interested in the specific relationship between temperature and greenhouse gas levels in the deep past. Fit for purpose, Quietman....that should be one of the considerations a skeptic applies to data... -
chris at 05:25 AM on 10 March 2009Did global warming cause Hurricane Katrina?
HS you can "get this straight" by reading my post (rather than engaging in contrived indignation and attempted "argument" by hyperbole!). As I said in my post #13, "Gray's assertions about the source of raised SST doesn't accord with the scientific evidence", and I demonstrated the rather straightforward evidence on which my statement was based. You don't seem very interested in the science, and find unsupported assertions and vague insinuations about climate scientists in newspaper articles "compelling". That's fine. -
Patrick 027 at 05:10 AM on 10 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
""laisser-faire"" - Thanks! (I may be able to remember it by thinking 'laser fairy'.) -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:14 PM on 9 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
That would be "laisser-faire" Patrick. Indeed the vast majority of skeptics have little grounding to their skepticism in scientific realities. The real problem I see is that they don't even have a true skeptic attitude. What strikes me the most is the extreme scrutiny applied to all the evidence supporting AGW and the extreme complacency about anything opposing it. When you get "references" like Morano, the OISM, Beck and what not, that pretty much shoots down any possibility of dialog. The (very) few real skeptics I've encountered would not bring up that kind of nonsense, or anything that they did not scrutinize carefully. Perhaps that's why there are so few of them. -
Patrick 027 at 05:18 AM on 9 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
"And of what significance to the conclusions have any 'mistakes' by Mann, etc, yeilded?" Please pardon the grammar. And of what significance have been any 'mistakes' by Mann, etc, to the conclusions? -- Marc Morano most definitely has an agenda. There are a class of people who refuse to accept the science because, from their perspective, either 1. government must be made small (enough to drown in your bathtub - Grover Norquist) and so any problem for which a government solution is a wise choice must therefore not exist; 2. Taxes must always be cut and never be increased, hence a CO2 tax, regardless of the logic, must be opposed in order to 'starve the beast' (so that it can be drowned in one's bathtub); 3. Any 'beliefs' by those on the other side of the political spectrum must be opposed; 4. Government policies will fail (well, of course, if you have no-bid contracts, silence whistle blowers, deprive programs of necessary funding...); 5. Anyone who does not pursue Laizze-Faire (spelling?) ultimately has a communist agenda, doesn't understand and value the free market (I do like free markets, I understand the logic, but they are not 'my lord and savior'); 6. Policies pursued to mitigate cliamte change will hurt the poor (but why should the government do something specifically to help poor people - I thought small-government conservatives were against wellfare); 7. in some cases, God is in charge and humans have no influence over anything; and/or God wants us to add CO2 to the atmosphere to bring about a garden of Eden (that's not what would happen); and/or God is going to destroy the world soon anyway; and/or seeing value in nature is somehow paganism (and yet valuing money is not?); and/or (I'm infering this one) they don't believe in evolution so why should they believe anything else from science (although there are noted exceptions - anti-religious people who accept evolution but are ideologically blinded to global warming; religious people who don't believe evolution but who see our destruction of the creation as a bad thing). -
Patrick 027 at 03:55 AM on 9 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
"Every single anomality can be explained by one of the multitude of climate forcings that cause the various cycles in the climate." ... "The bottom line is where is the proof of AGW?" But most of the warming over the last century can be explained easily by CO2. Where is the proof that other forcings have any effect? Of course these are both over-simplifications. All forcings contribute; some are of opposite sign so the total change in forcing over the last couple centuries or so happens to be about that of CO2 alone. The climate may be more sensitive to some forcings because of spatial-temporal distributions (efficacy) (black carbon on snow), and some forcings may have different specific regional effects (aerosols); but (while solar and ozone effects on upper atmosphere above the tropopause - however, global warming in general may produce some of the same stratospheric circulation changes) there is no convincing case yet that we should expect the response to solar forcing to be amplified by a factor of 2 or 5 or 7 ... relative to that from CO2. --- Any single mistake by Spency, Soon, etc... could be attributed to an honest mistake, but multiple mistakes erring to one side can sometimes raise suspitions - moreover, they are mistakes - thus they are not correct. Obviously, Exxon has an agenda. And of what significance to the conclusions have any 'mistakes' by Mann, etc, yeilded? -
mjp at 13:02 PM on 8 March 2009There is no consensus
I just wanted to post a thanks to all posters. And thanks also to the site editors for leaving both sides free to express their views. Wading through all 131 comments has given me a fair idea of who is dealing with the facts and who is obfuscating and manipulating. Great site. -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:40 PM on 8 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
"There is a large difference between those scientists that do NOT have an agenda making an honest mistake and those "scientists" WITH an agenda being decietful with the evidence and telling lies." Sounds like a perfect definition of Spencer/Christy, or Soon/Baliunas, or Loehle, etc... But of course, your skepticism would never turn its gaze to that side. If that's how you consider Spencer's ridiculous post on WUWT, once again, whatever. Not so sure I'd take your word on any aspect of "reality." Nothing personal, though, just that way of arguing you have. Like when you say you don't know who Morano is, or when you mention the possibility of climate correlation with Mars just before saying that, "of course there's no correlation." You know, I may be younger than you but I know bad faith when I see it. -
Quietman at 09:13 AM on 8 March 2009Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
Philippe There is a large difference between those scientists that do NOT have an agenda making an honest mistake and those "scientists" WITH an agenda being decietful with the evidence and telling lies. Every single anomality can be explained by one of the multitude of climate forcings that cause the various cycles in the climate. The bottom line is where is the proof of AGW? And NO, peer reviewed papers in this particular field have become unreliable and simply unbelievable with their reliance on the CO2 fudge factoring that do not match reality. -
Quietman at 08:17 AM on 7 March 2009Does Urban Heat Island effect add to the global warming trend?
glider Please address your comments. How do we know who you are addressing. Who is cherry picking exactly? -
Quietman at 08:11 AM on 7 March 2009Christmas cartoon on melting North Pole
John M. Once you catch up on reading through ALL these threads you will have your answer. Every item mentioned has been denied here at this site by alarmists. See for yourself. -
chris at 05:43 AM on 6 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
re #65, HS, I've referred to 20 papers in posts #7,#13 and #14. 16 of them are based on real world observational evidence (all except Fung, IY; Field, CB; Kurz, WA; Lobell DB); In some cases they assess comparisons of real world observations with models to assess the extent to which current knowledge is reliably represented. Of course addressing future consequences cannot be done other than by extending representations of current and past observational evidence and knowledge into the future, and however one does this one is "modeling". However, in general I've cited papers describing measurements/observations in the real world (16 out of 20) and included some analyses that address future consequences (models).... -
Patrick 027 at 11:00 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"That might be true (? - something about quantum mechanics) if there were no absorption-line broadenning by doppler and pressure effects"... Actually, any macroscopic material in local thermodynamic equilibrium must have the same emissivity as absorptivity along any path length in any direction at any wavelength; otherwise, I've got some plans for a perpetual motion machine you might be interested in... -
Patrick 027 at 07:08 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
Okay, I skimmed the rest of it. There are some factual points that are true (and some that are true but irrelevant to anything), but the picture they paint is a worthless piece of trash. Forget the science, this is JUNK! -
Patrick 027 at 07:03 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"Of course there is not a particular basis for arguing that the errors are related precisely that way," Actually they must not be that way; given that there is a correct value, the error range is quite sizable in projected changes. Too big, and yet not big enough. -
Patrick 027 at 07:00 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
Some less trivial errors popping up now, such as this: "Greenhouse gases do not emit energy in the same bandwidth in which they absorb energy and thus emissions from carbon dioxide are not absorbed by carbon dioxide." That might be true (? - something about quantum mechanics) if there were no absorption-line broadenning by doppler and pressure effects, ... BUT IT IS MOST CERTAINLY NOT TRUE in the case of atmospheric greenhouse gases and clouds, etc. Height of tropopause: "10-50Km or 6-30 miles above the surface" - NO WAY! WAY OFF! 10 km is a typical midlatitude value, but it never gets even halfway to 50 km (I think it's somewhere around 15 to 18 km in the tropics - around the 100 mb level - see Holton, chapter 12). 50 km is actually about the height of the stratopause. "Sidebar:" Even absolute errors that are larger than projected changes are tolerable because ... well, you know I'll be taller if I stand on my toes than flat on my feet; you essentially only need to know the dimensions of my feet to calculate the difference (perhaps some feedback from posture changes...). Another way of looking at it - suppose the relative error in change is about the same as the relative error in absolute values. 10 % of 288 K would be HUGE, yet a 10 % error in 3 K is not too bad. Of course there is not a particular basis for arguing that the errors are related precisely that way, but ... Aside from that, I can bet what's coming up - greenhouse effect short-circuited by convection. Okay, but models take that into account! Remember it's tropopause level radiative forcing that tends to be important in driving surface and tropospheric temperatures - which are convectively coupled; this does not mean they don't respond to anything. I'm not going to bother with the link anymore; I'm quite sure there's nothing new there. -
Patrick 027 at 06:41 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
(Thus far, no techical errors) - I haven't varified the temperature calculated for no albedo and no greenhouse effect. Actually though, there is some error if they reduced the albedo to zero, because there is some surface albedo and some backscattering to space from clear air. -
Patrick 027 at 06:38 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
"We should note that devoid of atmosphere Earth would actually be a less-cold -1 °C (272 K) because the first calculation strangely includes 31% reflection of solar radiation by clouds (which obviously could not occur without an atmosphere) while ignoring that clouds add significantly to the greenhouse effect. Granted it's kind of a bizarre to include clouds in one half the calculation and not the other but that is the way it's commonly done, so, for simplicity, just stick with ~33 °C." The reason for including the LW effects and not the SW effects of clouds is because what is being discussed in the effect of greenhouse agents via LW radiation. If we really consider what would actually happen with the removal of all greenhouse agents, including SW effects, then yes, the cooling won't be so great, but it would still be enough to cause dramatic cooling by ice/snow albedo feedback. Thus far, no techical errors, but the distinction between a real greenhouse and a radiative greenhouse, and that greenhouse agents do not 'form a blanket' is rather nit-picky and besides the point. Real greenhouses don't have fabric blankets either - they have glass (or some other generally SW transparent material). I don't cover my self with glass when I get into bed in the winter! What they all have in common is that they slow the flow of heat from hot to cold - by inhibiting convection, reducing thermal conductivity, and/or increasing LW opacity - so that a greater temperature difference (between inside and outside, between my skin and the air in my room, between Earth's average surface temperature and the temperature of a blackbody that would emit the same LW power to space) is required to sustain a rate of heat loss to balance a given heat supply (the sun, my metabolism). -
Patrick 027 at 06:22 AM on 5 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
JunkScience is a place where truth goes to die. I haven't looked at the link, yet. But aside from that, I don't see anything in comment 30 that disagrees with my points or chris's or Philippe's or the host of this website, RealClimate, IPCC, The Weather Channel, Scientific American, James Hansen, Shakira (well actually I don't know what she specifically says on the matter but she did perform for Live Earth and one or more inaugural balls), ... etc. -
HealthySkeptic at 16:30 PM on 4 March 2009The link between hurricanes and global warming
Thanks for the assist Mizimi! -
HealthySkeptic at 16:10 PM on 4 March 2009Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
#18 Chris, "It's about the real world WA. It's not about model studies in greenhouses and such like. I've cited a load of papers that assess real world effects in posts #7, #13 and #14." If it's not about "model studies" Chris, why do the multitude the papers you studiously proffer in your posts constantly refer to them? -
Quietman at 02:08 AM on 4 March 2009Climate's changed before
David The Nemesis hypothesis, while nothing more than that, has been proposed serveral times in the past. Just because the crazies have picked up on it and made a cult centered around the concept does not invalidate the idea. But it has been largely abandoned by the scientific community. The mention is in the article, not a peer reviewed paper, by the reporter because of it's popular appeal. I don't have access to their paper as I did for the first reference at PLos One. Regardless of knowing the cause of this cyclicity, it does appear to exist. -
HealthySkeptic at 15:45 PM on 3 March 2009Evaporating the water vapor argument
Sorry Chris, Obviously one first needs a sense of humor to make sense of humor. -
HealthySkeptic at 15:32 PM on 3 March 2009Did global warming cause Hurricane Katrina?
As one of the leading researchers in atmospheric science and someone who has been issuing Atlantic basin seasonal hurricane forecasts for the past 24 years, I find Prof Gray's article compelling, particularly his concluding remarks'- "One reason may be that the advocates of warming tend to be climate modelers with little observational experience. Many of the modelers are not fully aware of how the real atmosphere and ocean function. They rely more on theory than on observation. The warming theorists -- most of whom, no doubt, earnestly believe that human activity has triggered nature's wrath -- have the ears of the news media. But there is another plausible explanation, supported by decades of physical observation. The spate of recent destructive hurricanes may have little or nothing to do with greenhouse gases and climate change, and everything to do with the Atlantic Ocean's currents." -
HealthySkeptic at 14:37 PM on 3 March 2009Did global warming cause Hurricane Katrina?
Chris, Let me get this straight? Are you suggesting that William H. Gray, professor emeritus in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University is a liar? -
HealthySkeptic at 14:35 PM on 3 March 2009What 1970s science said about global cooling
Chris, Boy, you really don't get out much do you. LOL! If AGW is "essentially undeniable", why are more and more scientists (many who work, or have worked, in climatology or associated fields) questioning the validity of the popular hypothesis you support with such religious fervour? Despite your rhetoric and holier-than-thou claims, there simply IS no clear evidence for AGW. If there was, we wouldn't be having this debate. -
David Horton at 11:01 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
Oh dear Quietman, you can find any kind of pattern you like, looking back at any kind of record (just as you can see apparently meaningful figures in melted cheese on toast), but that doesn't mean they are real or have a single "cause". The mentions of "Nemesis" and "Planet X" and UFO believers should give you some inkling that this stuff is suspect. Of course there are all kinds of causes of extinctions of the tens of thousands of species that have become extinct since life evolved on the planet. Volcanic eruptions might have played a role in some times and places, impact of an asteroid is possible I suppose, but for the vast bulk of species variations in climate are undoubtedly the cause. And for most water-based life forms hot and dry is more of a challenge than cool and wet. Dinosaurs may be an exception, but I doubt it. And then there are all the ocean life forms that have become extinct - not much prospect of asteroids and volcanoes affecting them (changes in temperature and acidity yes). Please, forget about Neanderthals, they are a red herring. You seem to be searching for something, anything, rather than accept that (a) CO2 concentrations are rapidly (in paleontological scales) increasing; (b) we know the physics and chemistry that causes the changes this will bring; and (c) the changes, not in models, but in the real world of glaciers and ice caps, droughts, heat records, storms, changes in species distribution and behavior, are already evident and rapidly accelerating. Talk about "natural timetables deep inside the Earth" is just whistling in the dark. -
Quietman at 08:10 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
Sorry for all the typos, I'm diabetic so my eyesight is blurry after eating. -
Quietman at 08:09 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
So the point is that it is cyclic, regardless of cppling or heating, there is a causitive agent that does not include mankind and cold is much worse than warm (evidenced by our own near extinction at H4 in the neandertal paper). -
Quietman at 08:00 AM on 3 March 2009Climate sensitivity is low
CLIMATE SENSITIVITY "The sensitivity of the climate system to a forcing is commonly expressed in terms of the global mean temperature change that would be expected after a time sufficiently long for both the atmosphere and ocean to come to equilibrium with the change in climate forcing. If there were no climate feedbacks, the response of Earth's mean temperature to a forcing of 4 W/m2 (the forcing for a doubled atmospheric CO2) would be an increase of about 1.2 °C (about 2.2 °F). However, the total climate change is affected not only by the immediate direct forcing, but also by climate “feedbacks” that come into play in response to the forcing." "As just mentioned, a doubling of the concentration of carbon dioxide (from the pre-Industrial value of 280 parts per million) in the global atmosphere causes a forcing of 4 W/m2. The central value of the climate sensitivity to this change is a global average temperature increase of 3 °C (5.4 °F), but with a range from 1.5 °C to 4.5 °C (2.7 to 8.1 °F) (based on climate system models: see section 4). The central value of 3 °C is an amplification by a factor of 2.5 over the direct effect of 1.2 °C (2.2 °F). Well-documented climate changes during the history of Earth, especially the changes between the last major ice age (20,000 years ago) and the current warm period, imply that the climate sensitivity is near the 3 °C value. However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in part because it is difficult to model the effect of feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of the feedback can differ according to the composition, thickness, and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have suggested a lesser climate sensitivity." Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, pp 6-7, Committee on the Science of Climate Change National Research Council "Climate models calculate outcomes after taking into account the great number of climate variables and the complex interactions inherent in the climate system. Their purpose is the creation of a synthetic reality that can be compared with the observed reality, subject to appropriate averaging of the measurements. Thus, such models can be evaluated through comparison with observations, provided that suitable observations exist. Furthermore, model solutions can be diagnosed to assess contributing causes of particular phenomena. Because climate is uncontrollable (albeit influenceable by humans), the models are the only available experimental laboratory for climate. They also are the appropriate high-end tool for forecasting hypothetical climates in the years and centuries ahead. However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much complexity as in nature." Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, p 15, Committee on the Science of Climate Change National Research Council Ref: The Real 'Inconvenient Truth' Some facts about greenhouse and global warming - JunkScience.com, Updated August 2007 -
Quietman at 06:54 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
I did not copy the link but I did keep the article: With surprising and mysterious regularity, life on Earth has flourished and vanished in cycles of mass extinction every 62 million years, say two UC Berkeley scientists who discovered the pattern after a painstaking computer study of fossil records going back for more than 500 million years. Their findings are certain to generate a renewed burst of speculation among scientists who study the history and evolution of life. Each period of abundant life and each mass extinction has itself covered at least a few million years — and the trend of biodiversity has been rising steadily ever since the last mass extinction, when dinosaurs and millions of other life forms went extinct about 65 million years ago. The Berkeley researchers are physicists, not biologists or geologists or paleontologists, but they have analyzed the most exhaustive compendium of fossil records that exists — data that cover the first and last known appearances of no fewer than 36,380 separate marine genera, including millions of species that once thrived in the world’s seas, later virtually disappeared, and in many cases returned. Richard Muller and his graduate student, Robert Rohde, are publishing a report on their exhaustive study in the journal Nature today, and in interviews this week, the two men said they have been working on the surprising evidence for about four years. “We’ve tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,” Muller said, “and so far, we’ve failed.” But the cycles are so clear that the evidence “simply jumps out of the data,” said James Kirchner, a professor of earth and planetary sciences on the Berkeley campus who was not involved in the research but who has written a commentary on the report that is also appearing in Nature today. “Their discovery is exciting, it’s unexpected and it’s unexplained,” Kirchner said. And it is certain, he added, to send other scientists in many disciplines seeking explanations for the strange cycles. “Everyone and his brother will be proposing an explanation — and eventually, at least one or two will turn out to be right while all the others will be wrong.” Muller and Rohde conceded that they have puzzled through every conceivable phenomenon in nature in search of an explanation: “We’ve had to think about solar system dynamics, about the causes of comet showers, about how the galaxy works, and how volcanoes work, but nothing explains what we’ve discovered,” Muller said. The evidence of strange extinction cycles that first drew Rohde’s attention emerged from an elaborate computer database he developed from the largest compendium of fossil data ever created. It was a 560-page list of marine organisms developed 14 years ago by the late J. John Sepkoski Jr., a famed paleobiologist at the University of Chicago who died at the age of 50 nearly five years ago. Sepkoski himself had suggested that marine life appeared to have its ups and downs in cycles every 26 million years, but to Rohde and Muller, the longer cycle is strikingly more evident, although they have also seen the suggestion of even longer cycles that seem to recur every 140 million years. Sepkoski’s fossil record of marine life extends back for 540 million years to the time of the great “Cambrian Explosion,” when almost all the ancestral forms of multicellular life emerged, and Muller and Rohde built on it for their computer version. Muller has long been known as an unconventional and imaginative physicist on the Berkeley campus and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It was he, for example, who suggested more than 20 years ago that an undiscovered faraway dwarf star — which he named “Nemesis” — was orbiting the sun and might have steered a huge asteroid into the collision with Earth that drove the dinosaurs to extinction. “I’ve given up on Nemesis,” Muller said this week, “but then I thought there might be two stars somewhere out there, but I’ve given them both up now.” He and Rohde have considered many other possible causes for the 62- million-year cycles, they said. Perhaps, they suggested, there’s an unknown “Planet X” somewhere far out beyond the solar system that’s disturbing the comets in the distant region called the Oort Cloud — where they exist by the millions — to the point that they shower the Earth and cause extinctions in regular cycles. Daniel Whitmire and John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette proposed that idea as a cause of major comet showers in 1985, but no one except UFO believers has ever discovered a sign of it. Or perhaps there’s some kind of “natural timetable” deep inside the Earth that triggers cycles of massive volcanism, Rohde has thought. There’s even a bit of evidence: A huge slab of volcanic basalt known as the Deccan Traps in India has been dated to 65 million years ago — just when the dinosaurs died, he noted. And the similar basaltic Siberian Traps were formed by volcanism about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, when the greatest of all mass extinctions drove more than 70 percent of all the world’s marine life to death, Rohde said. The two scientists proposed more far-out ideas in their report in Nature, but only to indicate the possibilities they considered. Muller’s favorite explanation, he said informally, is that the solar system passes through an exceptionally massive arm of our own spiral Milky Way galaxy every 62 million years, and that that increase in galactic gravity might set off a hugely destructive comet shower that would drive cycles of mass extinction on Earth. Rohde, however, prefers periodic surges of volcanism on Earth as the least implausible explanation for the cycles, he said — although it’s only a tentative one, he conceded. Said Muller: “We’re getting frustrated and we need help. All I can say is that we’re confident the cycles exist, and I cannot come up with any possible explanation that won’t turn out to be fascinating. There’s something going on in the fossil record, and we just don’t know what it is.” -
Quietman at 06:45 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
ps This agrees with earlier work done at Berkeley, from a 2005 article in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Mass extinction comes every 62 million years, UC physicists discover" David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor Thursday, March 10, 2005 -
Quietman at 06:29 AM on 3 March 2009Climate's changed before
David Climate changes ineither direction causes extinction events. But it is a matter of degree. Warming opens up new environments at the same time as it makes existing ines more harsh. What happens is that life follows the environment. If it gets warmer life shifts poleward and colder it shifts towards the equator. This paper might help: Long-Term Cycles in the History of Life: Periodic Biodiversity in the Paleobiology Database Adrian L. Melott* Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, United States of America Abstract Time series analysis of fossil biodiversity of marine invertebrates in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) shows a significant periodicity at approximately 63 My, in agreement with previous analyses based on the Sepkoski database. I discuss how this result did not appear in a previous analysis of the PBDB. The existence of the 63 My periodicity, despite very different treatment of systematic error in both PBDB and Sepkoski databases strongly argues for consideration of its reality in the fossil record. Cross-spectral analysis of the two datasets finds that a 62 My periodicity coincides in phase by 1.6 My, equivalent to better than the errors in either measurement. Consequently, the two data sets not only contain the same strong periodicity, but its peaks and valleys closely correspond in time. Two other spectral peaks appear in the PBDB analysis, but appear to be artifacts associated with detrending and with the increased interval length. Sampling-standardization procedures implemented by the PBDB collaboration suggest that the signal is not an artifact of sampling bias. Further work should focus on finding the cause of the 62 My periodicity. -
Tuukka Simonen at 21:30 PM on 2 March 2009Svensmark and Friis-Christensen rebut Lockwood's solar paper
Here... At the page 3 there is a graph with words: “It may be the sun: a strong anti-correlation between intensity and radiosonde temperatures over the past 50 years. Source: Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 2007.” He only shows the lower part of the graph you have in this page and forgets that the warming trend as well as volcanoes, ENSO and other stuff have been removed. You can even see parts of the numbers of the upper graph since the image is cut without further photoshopping. :D What a douchebag. -
David Horton at 19:20 PM on 2 March 2009Climate's changed before
"So it seems that the most poleward areas were hit hardest, no?" Well no, the hardest hit were those where a shift in climate to hotter drier times led to environmental conditions that large species couldn't cope with. And in addition on the continents whose geography precluded the formation of refuge areas - which is where Africa, straddling the Equator, comes in - whichever way the climate zones move in Africa you are always left with areas that can support megafauna. I am really not sure why you think that cooling conditions causes extinctions unless you think that this means global warming is a good thing. If that is the case you are going to be sadly disappointed. -
HealthySkeptic at 17:17 PM on 2 March 2009The Mystery of the Vanishing Ocean Heat
Chris, Quibbling over semantics is not the same as pointing out scientific errors. Whether or not the IPCC collected or collated the Hong Kong data is unimportant, they used it in their reports. Simply calling Dr. Nils-Morner a liar does not prove your case. If anything, it detracts from it. You talk about "making an effort to establish reality", yet you use the same tactics as the creationists use to defend their warped view of reality... simply dismissing anything that does not match your AGW paradigm and branding as liars any scientists who disagree with you along the way. Shame indeed! -
HealthySkeptic at 16:54 PM on 2 March 2009Misinterpreting a retraction of rising sea level predictions
Chris, LOL! Talk about creative interpretation of the data! Unless there is a clear and continuous upwards trend in a set of data, applying a linear trend to it means absolutely nothing. This sort of misinterpretation is a trap you young players. There is no continuous upwards trend from 2002 to 2007 (which represents 60% of the data). A linear trend of this region is dead flat! If 1998 was such an "anomalous year" why do the values from 2002 to 2007 statistically differ very little from the 1998 value, and how does this fact support a "warming" trend?
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