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Comments 130351 to 130400:

130351. Philippe Chantreau at 16:20 PM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Thanks for the break, Patrick. Rossby wave propagation and transformations are beyond me but I can sense the aeshetic of it and I think I understand why you're into it :-)
130352. Patrick 027 at 16:08 PM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        "Which makes me think that vertical variations such as an increase in S at some level will partially reflect the RV field induced by an IPV anomaly; and that reflection will be in phase with the incident RV field..." By analogy - the ocean, sandwiched between the atmosphere and the crust, is analogous to a fluid layer of finite static stability sandwiched between other fluid layers of near-infinite stability. ______________ ...So, consider, with a basic state IPV gradient in the y direction: 1. the pattern of IPV advection around an IPV anomaly as seen in the x,y plane (which would be qualitatively similar to barotropic PV advection around a barotropic PV anomaly). 2. the pattern of IPV advection about an IPV anomaly as seen in cross section in the x,z plane (or x,p plane or x,q plane - whichever vertical coordinate you want (there are more: log-pressure coordinates, sigma coordinates)). The mathematical details are different and will be altered by variations in basic state, but qualitatively there are essential similarities. Which implies that, setting aside variations of anomaly IPV in the y direction, the pattern of IPV anomaly in x,z will propagate in a way similar to the propagation of IPV or barotropic PV patterns in x,y, setting aside variations in z. SO, now I understand how and in which direction Rossby waves of a given tilt in x,z will propagate vertically.
130353. Patrick 027 at 15:43 PM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Quietman - Okay, there are scientists who don't publish in publically-available forums. (How many of those would be working professionally on climatology? - well I suppose the Pentagon...?) PS I am not actually a scientist (yet). (379)--"It only means that 34 authors agreed with the argument, nothing else." Does anything mean anything else? Taken all by itself I suppose that may be about it, but there's a context there... (377) - "Shows why sea level rise isn't a problem. From that chart it looks like what melted in the arctic has refrozen in the antarctic. I would think it relates to the 2007-08 La Nina (ENSO)." I don't know quite in what way ENSO is connected to that, but sea ice melt and growth has little direct impact on sea level (the little bit it would have comes from the ocean not being fresh water; otherwise it would be none at all). Sea ice has an indirect effect by holding land glacier flow into the sea back a bit (when in the form of ice shelves), and obviously will have other indirect effects via climate (albedo, local surface characteristics, affects on wind/water momentum transfers, ecology...). What affects sea level is melting and/or transfer of ice supported by land/rock to the ocean, and the density of the water (affected by temperature and salinity), and regionally, variations in those and in in the wind. And in the longer term, isostatic adjustments of the crust, and in the much longer term, plate tectonics/continental drift/mantle convection... (and in the much longer term, the chemistry and dynamics of the pre solar nebula ! :) ) And also, the global trend is not zero, from what I've been hearing... (377)- ""those than can, do while those that can't, teach." What about those that can teach? :) PS much of my motivation here is that teaching is a great way to learn; having a potential audience (I'm pretending at least some people are reading my comments :) ) is a great motivation to prepare. (378) - "Patrick Way too much detail. Take a break and look at the links from Arkadiusz Semczyszak and give us your opinion (in brief please)." I think globally sea ice changes have been significant and are worrisome (We've already had a taste of some political ramifications (Putin,etc.)). The explanation quoted by Philippe (374) about Antarctic sea ice is quite interesting - and sounds familiar - did I see it earlier somewhere? - well he said himself that he mentioned it or referenced it earlier... Is some of it related to AO/NAM (and in Antarctica, SAM)? Well, I suppose it could be - some probably is (although without knowing more specifics, there is the possibility that the portion is a negative fraction - ie that an opposite trend would be attributed to AO/NAM - which would mean everything else has to account for over 100 % - just as everything besides aerosols has to account for over 100% of observed warming... (PS I'm not saying - about NAM/SAM - that I think that this is the case; I mention it just to cover the bases). But even if that is, some of NAM and SAM trends are not 'natural' - in that they are anthropogenically-forced. What fraction? I really don't know. I do know ozone depletion would cause an increase in SAM in particular and may have some contribution to NAM (and increased CO2,CH4,etc. could exacerbate polar ozone depletion). I also know that at least some model(s?) have reproduced some increase in NAM as a result of greenhouse gas increases... And I'm still not sure I understand the causal link, but I have found a couple papers (suggested at RealClimate, thanks!) and am part way through the second. The problem is there is this other paper I also found which argued that the proposed mechanism wouldn't work ... BUT I can think of some other mechanisms... And then there's the whole tidal-forcing concept. It's intriguing but I'm skeptical. In case I don't get to it later: It seems more likely, based on the argument put forward, that stronger tides would cause more cooling than weaker tides would cause warming. Also, I saw no mention of the changes in the eccentricity of the lunar orbit, so I wonder how accurate the judgement of periods of several strong tides or lack thereof would be... The idea that variations are big enough over such timescales is hard for me to see - but here are some ideas: changes in area of exposed ocean at high latitudes due to changes in tidal currents that drive ice and icebergs around each other or islands or sea floor bumbs, and affecting ocean mixing via that... AND, driving tidal currents through hydrothermal vents, cooling the vents, thus increasing geothermal heat transfer back into the vents and the ocean (but notice how localized and small an effect that would be)... Other stuff, in brief: CO2 doesn't just go up and down a lot in the bulk of the atmosphere. (You'll find some papers about changes in ~100(?) ppm over hours - well of course, that's under the canopy of a forest, - or maybe in city streets with variations in traffic?? - The point being it's a small volume of air and not climatologically significant, at least not outside of microclimates (and then, only indirectly via effects on plants, etc., I would guess). My understanding is that outside of human activity (or maybe including it), it would take a catastrophic phenomenon to cause CO2 to change as much as it has as fast as it has - at least over the last few decades (even calculating how fast it would appear to have happenned if found in the ice core record (which can smooth out some things) at some later time, it still dwarfs, in terms of sustained rate of change, anything in at least the last ~20,000 years - that includes the end of the last ice age - see IPCC AR4 WGI Ch.6) "Take a break" I did! :)
130354. Philippe Chantreau at 14:50 PM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Actually it means that the paper has been cited 34 times in other articles, I believe. I also believe that it's pretty darn good and indicates that the paper is very relevant to other's research. Not that they "believe" in it. What a strange way to look at it. I do fine in English indeed, although it is my second language. Credulity is something that many would like to lend, and strangely enough, many seem willing to borrow... I like my definition, it is shared by most scientists, and I'll keep using it, that's entirely my prerogative, just like you think it's yours to impart disproportionate weight to non published ideas. I don't know what the heck you're trying to say with the mumbo-jumbo on teaching, professors and what not. I'm still curious to know what journal was Marosz pdf published in. Or was it an opinion piece?
130355. Patrick 027 at 12:29 PM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Actually, L ~= 1/sqrt(1/X^2 + 1/Y^2) because 1/L^2 ~= 1/X^2 + 1/Y^2 PS in case anyone was confused by this, some of what I've written uses Microsoft Excel language: sqrt(x) = square root of x, x^3 = cube of x, etc... The relationship between L and Hp can be simplified to Hp is proportional to L * f/sqrt(S) if AV is approximated by f - which is good first approximation for much large scale motion of the atmosphere. N is proportional to sqrt(S) (for a given p and q), so if AV ~= f, then Hp is proportional to L * f/N which means that L is proportional to the internal Rossby radius of deformation for a height scale Hp. Perhaps also, then, the Rossby radius of deformation might be more accurately given by R is proportional to H*N / sqrt(f*AV) (For a given p and q, a small relative change in p is roughly proportional to a change in geometric height z). And if a gradient wind balance is used, then f may be replaced in the above with f_loc (see last part of comment 349, or Bluestein p.190). (Around a center of cyclonic rotation, the magnitudes of both f_loc and AV will be greater than otherwise, which suggests that for a given height scale, the Rossby radius of deformation is smaller in cyclones than in anticyclones; or for a given length scale of an IPV anomaly, the vertical scale of the induced RV and wind anomalies will be larger in cyclones than in anticyclones. Latent heating during ascent mitigates the dynamic effect of S, so the change in H/L or H/R for cyclones vs anticyclones should be enhanced for cyclones with precipitation.) ---------- (PS the reason for decreasing induced RV anomaly with vertical distance from an IPV anomaly, and the dependence of that relatiohship on S (or N), AV and f, and L, is that vertical stretching or contraction, which occurs with horizontal convergence or divergence, respectively, is necessary (for isentropic vorticity, without latent or radiative heating/cooling and without friction or mixing) to change RV, and horizontal variation in vertical motion in the presence of a nonzero S or N results in horizontal temperature variations that allow a change in RV over vertical distance to be in geostrophic balance or gradient wind balance. See also comments 313 and 319 above. ---------- Notice that the total vertical extent of the whole fluid (atmosphere or ocean) limits how much convergence and divergence of other layers of the atmosphere can adjust to an IPV anomaly at some level. Hence, ** Less total fluid depth might increase the RV anomaly at all levels that result from a given IPV anomaly???) And if an anomaly occurs at an upper or lower boundary, my impression and understanding is that the RV field is doubled in strength (but has half the volume)... Which makes me think that vertical variations such as an increase in S at some level will partially reflect the RV field induced by an IPV anomaly; and that reflection will be in phase with the incident RV field... Would a decrease in S result in a reflected RV field that is out of phase? These are things I have yet to figure out.) ---------- Variations in basic state properties can/will distort the RV and wind fields from the above description (see last "PS" section) (PS for the atmosphere in particular, Holton p.412-419 finds solutions for vertically propagating waves of various kinds (including Rossby (planetary in particular)) which increase in amplitude with height, in proportion to 1/sqrt(basic state density), which makes me wonder if the RV field of an atmospheric IPV anomaly will tend to be stronger above the IPV anomaly than below it?), but they should generally be qualitatively similar. ---------------- PS: Concerning the value of RV at the IPV anomaly (where 'subscript' 0 refers to basic state values and a ' indicates anomaly values): IPV'/g = RV'*S + AV0*S' = RV'*(S0+S') + AV0*S' For a given IPV', RV' may be roughly proportional to IPV'/S if AV0 and/or S' are small. However, under other circumstances, RV' may be between being proportional to IPV'/S and being proportional to Q_*IPV'/[S0^(3/2) * L * sqrt(f*AV^2/AV0)], where Q_ is the vertical thickness of the IPV anomaly itself, in terms of q coordinates. In terms of p coordinates, the thickness, P0, is equal to Q0/S. Of course, S changes at the IPV anomaly, and changes in the opposite way above and below it (although if Hp is much larger than P0 or Hq is much larger than Q0, the S' above and below the anomaly, which decays with vertical distance away from the anomaly as does RV', will be much less than the S' that occurs within the IPV anomaly). One simplication to the math (which was necessary even just to get some of the above relationships) is to assume S' is much smaller than S0, so that S is nearly equal to S0; such is the case with weak anomalies... --------- Anyway...
130356. Quietman at 09:07 AM on 9 January 2009
        Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
        Patrick My point from the very befinning is that the atmosphere does not play as large a role in temperature as the IPCC and the alarmists claim. Every new article I read only confirms that our models are wrong. They just figured out, after 30 years of AGW hype, that the NE part of the US (and eastern Canada) has not warmed and in fact has gotten colder while the west coast warmed. I have come to the conclusion that it's the west coast alarmists hot air that caused the warming effect in the first place. :)
130357. Quietman at 08:56 AM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        ps "Times Cited: 1 References: 34 " It only means that 34 authors agreed with the argument, nothing else. It does not lend credulity.
130358. Quietman at 08:51 AM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Patrick Way too much detail. Take a break and look at the links from Arkadiusz Semczyszak and give us your opinion (in brief please).
130359. Quietman at 08:47 AM on 9 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Arkadiusz Semczyszak Your link: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg Shows why sea level rise isn't a problem. From that chart it looks like what melted in the arctic has refrozen in the antarctic. I would think it relates to the 2007-08 La Nina (ENSO). ps Phillipes definition of a scientist is not correct, just his opinion. Many scientists do not publish papers because they work in the private sector and their research is the property of their employer. His definition is just academic snobbery. We have a saying in my country, "those than can, do while those that can't, teach. Sorry Phillipe, you son't have to speak polish to insult someone, english does you just fine. In Europe and Asia, the term "professor" is used to indicate a scientist rather than a teacher. I would think that you would know this since you said that you spent time in Europe.
130360. chris at 06:57 AM on 9 January 2009
        Does model uncertainty exagerate global warming projections?
        We don't need to address "paleoclimate models" Mizimi. All we are doing here is establishing three things: ONE: The "graph" that HealthySkeptic presented on post #8 is a hopeless misrepresentation of what we know of paleCO2 and paleo-temperature relationships. TWO: That if we address what the scientific evidence informs us on pale-temperature and plaeoCO2 levels, it's difficult to escape the conclusion that atmospheric CO2 levels have had a significant effect on the earth's tmeperature in the past (see data in papers cited in post #13). THREE: That if one is seriously a "skeptic" one should really apply one's skepticism evenly. Raising poorly-relevant "objections" against the scientific evidence while embracing very obvious nonsense isn't very scientific...
130361. chris at 06:28 AM on 9 January 2009
        Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
        Re #21 If you think that there is some pertinent data by the person you mentioned why don't you just supply a reference to the relevant paper(s)? I'm pointing out that rather recently someone else brought up the name Idso on another thread and referred to an article on their website which, sadly, was full of misrepresentations of the science and hopelessly out of date. I described the problems with their "analysis" of the science here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-does-CO2-lagging-temperature-mean.html (see post 36). It's not an abuse to point out that someone seems to be deliberately attempting to misrepresent the science, especially since I outlined some of the flaws in the shoddy presentation of the authors. Is that the same Idso's who's work you are suggesting we look at? We don't know, since you won't tell us! Why be so cagy? If some work of someone has impressed you why not point us to it? Otherwise we have no clue what you are referring to. Can you give us an example with respect to "isolating the variable" that you think is pertinent please? Otherwise I'm not sure what you are referring to here either. I'm pointing out that real world observations of the response of the biosphere to climate changes and other events (like drought, temperature rise, parasite infection) are likely to be more useful in assessing the effects of climate change in the real world, than experiments done in greenhouses (for example) that assess the effects of changing CO2 levels (for example) on plant growth under otherwise optimal conditions (e.g. nutrient and water supply, insolation and so on). In other words what happens under controlled experimental conditions may be of secondary relevance to the real world where changes (CO2 levels, for example) do not occur in isolation....
130362. chris at 06:07 AM on 9 January 2009
        Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
        Re #20 No, "AGW and all it's evidence" is certainly not "FROM MODELS1", and shouting using capital letters doesn't make it true. And you need to explain what you mean by "equilibrium lie" (???) The world did "go on" during long periods with higher CO2 levels than now in the deep past. Obviously these were different worlds back then in which species were adapted to prevailing environmental conditions. The solar output was somewhat reduced too. That's not to say that there weren't catastrophic events resulting in widespread extinctions, and many of these were associated with rapid enhancement of greenhouse gas concentrations that resulted in warming and associated climate change at a rate at which many species were unable to adapt. I've given some exmaples of these here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-does-CO2-lagging-temperature-mean.html (see post 28)
130363. chris at 05:50 AM on 9 January 2009
        Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
        Re #19 That's nonsense Quietman. You clearly know little about science or scientific publishing. A scientific paper is a presentation of observational/experimental data in support of conclusions/interpretations. These may or may not explicitly address a hypothesis. Many papers in the general area of climate and climate change, including many of the papers I cited in posts 13 and 14 are essentially descriptive and don't explicitly address hypotheses, nor are necessarily involved in the promotion of "arguments", although any scientific paper will have interpretations of the data presented (which the reader may or may not fully agree with in the context of the data presented). No one says the papers are "the word of god" (a strange notion!). The scientific literature provides the body of work that informs our understanding of the natural world. And notice that with the bulk of the papers I cited there isn't really an "opposition view". If we measure the CO2 uptake of the oceans then that's likely to be the CO2 uptake of the oceans, and there isn't really an "opposition view"...nor with the measurement of primary productivity following the European heat wave of 2003.....nor with the measurement of the loss of primamry productivity of Canadian forests as a result of beetle infection...and so on. Notice that neither a paper nor its "arguments" have to be "agreed" by the publisher. Of course Einstein would be published today. Obviously nearly 100-years on, he would present his work for publication somewhat differently to the manner in scientific manuscripts were submitted for publication then.
130364. Mizimi at 05:07 AM on 9 January 2009
        Does model uncertainty exagerate global warming projections?
        Yes, we think we know a lot about past atmospheric composition, temperatures and so on in the deep past... but we don't know very much about ocean and air circulation, actual distribution of land mass and how that affected circulation just as a start. There is a lot we don't know about the deep past that directly affects climate which is why, personally, I hold paleoclimate models very very lightly indeed.
130365. Mizimi at 04:57 AM on 9 January 2009
        Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
        #47....just re-read that paper and confirmed that often we see what we think we should see rather than what is there. The paper actually states 0.4kg/m2 increase in WV through the lower troposphere. Which if you assume is 8km deep allows an increase of 400/8000 gm/m3 or .05gm/m3. Air at 15C/~50%RH contains about 5.5gms/m3, so this increase is pretty insignificant and probably less than background 'noise', especially when you consider this is over a 10yr period.
130366. Patrick 027 at 16:16 PM on 8 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        ..."barotropic PV is proportional to AV/H, where H is the depth of the fluid; this is most obviously applicable to a nearly incompressible fluid with a top and bottom such as the ocean, but I think it can be made to apply to the atmosphere if H is taken to be proportional to surface pressure ** - the important thing is that H be proportionate to mass per unit area within a fluid layer"... That last part is indeed the important thing when considering how PV varies with changes in H. However, my impression is that H must be an actual vertical scale to be correctly used in the Rossby Radius of Deformation R, where: external R = sqrt(g*H) / f internal R = N*H / f or is proportional to N*H / f ------------------- "For relatively weak waves, these baroclinic waves, as with the barotropic ones, can be mathematically and qualitatively analyzed as the result of linear superpositions of other waves or an infinite number of point anomalies or finite number of anomalies of finite size, etc." And so one might consider what the vertical cross section of the wind field would be for a given IPV anomaly. (Note that IPV/g = S * AV; S is inversely proportional to mass per unit area in between two isentropic surfaces of a set difference in q; hence, IPV is like a barotropic PV defined for incremental isentropic layers of air (or incremental layers of constant potential density within the ocean - in that case it wouldn't be called isentropic PV, but it would serve the same role in fluid dynamics). ) In a horizontal plane, the wind field of an RV anomaly isolated in both dimensions decreases in strength away from the RV anomaly, being proportional to 1/distance, and is directed in opposite directions on opposite sides of the anomaly; within the anomaly the wind field increases in strength out from the center. An IPV anomaly, when the atmosphere is nearly in geostrophic balance (or else a gradient wind balance)with it, will have induced a column of RV anomaly that extends above and below it. In the horizontal planes, the wind field of the RV anomaly is as described above. In the vertical direction, the RV anomaly and it's wind field generally will decay in strength away from the IPV anomaly - exponentially or roughly so if certain conditions occur (such as some parameters being constant in height or varying in just the right way, some approximations, and also, that the anomaly is relatively weak). Given such conditions, the rate of this decay (inversely proportional to the height scale in pressure coordinates, Hp), is, in pressure coordinates, proportional to the square root of S. It is less for IPV anomalies with larger horizontal extents/wavelengths (the length scale L) and for larger f and larger basic state AV. More specifically, Hp is proportional to L * sqrt(f*AV)/sqrt(S). The Height scale in isentropic coordinates (Hq if it comes up here again) varies the same way except that sqrt(S) would go in the numerator; this is simply because of the geometry of variation in p (pressure) relative to q (potential temperature) implied by S. PS I am using 'q' in place of the greek letter 'theta', which is q in a symbol font; In textbooks you will see q used for other quantities such as quasigeostrophic potential vorticity given in units of vorticity - watch out! PS In the above, L is representative of length scales in both horizontal dimensions - to be more precise, I think it could be given in terms of two orthogonal length scales X and Y as L = 1/(1/X + 1/Y) ?? ...
130367. chris at 10:58 AM on 8 January 2009
        Svensmark and Friis-Christensen rebut Lockwood's solar paper
        That seems rather illogical to me Alec...it lacks internal consistency and doesn't accord with basic physics. Although the most up to date analyses of solar outputs indicates that variation in solar parameters can have made only rather little contribution to the increase in the earth's temperature anomaly during the last several hundred years, let's assume that the sun has actually been important in the manner that you assert. The major increase in the solar output during the last 100 years was during the period around 1900-1940. We could look at the sunspot numbers as a proxy for solar output: e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot If we follow the temperature trend, we see that the Earth's temperature trend apparently followed the rise in solar output pretty much immediately: e.g. http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ or: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/ So there seems to be rather little "lag" in the response of the Earth's temperature to changes in the solar output. Likewise if one inspects Svensmark and Friis-Christensen's "detrended" solar-cycle-tropospheric temperature comparison (see second panel of John Cook's top article), the detrended tropospheric temperature follows the solar cycle rather faithfully with essentially zero lag (in fact, rather oddly, the temnperature change precedes the solar cycle chnge during the period ~1980-1990!). So there isn't a lag. However you are then proposing a massive lag between a solar contribtion and temperature change to account for the rather large temperature rise since the mid 1970's. However, even in that case your "pot of water" analogy is suspect. If you turn the heat up under a pan of water, the temperature certainly takes a while to reach its new equilibrium (hotter) temperature. However the fastest rate of warming occurs immediately after turning up the heat, and the trend to the new equilibrium temperature follows a hyperbolic time evolution. If you were to stick a thermometer in the pan, you would notice that the temperature doesn't sit unchanged for a long period before starting to rise... So on the one hand you're providing apparent real world evidence for a negligible lag between changing solar output and temperature response (the temperature response to the well-established small increase in solar output between 1900 and 1940-ish), and the (rather dodghy) analysis of Svensmark and Friis-Christensen which also shows essentially zero lag between temperature response to changes in solar output..... ...and on the other hand proposing a physically unrealistic huge lag between a solar change and the onset of a temperature response by reference to a false analogy. Notice btw, that there is pretty much no evidence for a cosmic ray flux (CRF) contribution to persistent changes in the Earth's temperature response. Svensmark and Friis-Christensen present solar cycle contributions...there's no evidence that the effects they purport to display are a consequence of CRF...they are rather more likley to be due to total solar irradiance variations which cycle in perfect (anti) phase with the CRF. Notice also that the link to Shaviv and Veizer is to a rather dodgy hypothetical analysis that is rather horribly flawed. In fact Veizer himself has presented data that essentially fatally sinks the hypothetical relationship between the purported cyclical CRF and temperature, by determining that for a large chunk of supposed CRF cycle, the earth's temperature was varying in the wrong direction and was actually responding in step with the atmospheric CO2 concentration: Came, R.E., J.M. Eiler, J. Veizer et al (2007) Coupling of surface temperatures and atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Palaeozoic era; Nature 449, 198-202
130368. chris at 07:37 AM on 8 January 2009
        Determining the long term solar trend
        You really need to consider what "large/small" refers to in context. It's difficult to come up with a meaningful context in which our rate or return of atmospheric CO2 into the atmosphere is not massive: It's massive in relation to the time (100's of millions of years) it took to sequester this carbon in the first place. We're dumping it back in to the atmosphere at a rate somewher around 1 million times faster than it took to sequester. It's massive in relation to the cumulative increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. It's massive in relation to the rate of enhancement of the Earth's atmosphere greenhouse gas concentration. It's massive in relation to the rate of enhancement of greenhouse gas concentrations and forcings compared to recent Earth's history; e.g. glacial cycles of last million years....the greenhouse gas concentrations of the last 10 million years. It's massive in relation to the rate at which natural cycles (largely weathering) can remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere. It's massive in the context of the rate of depletion of a non-renewable energy source...
130369. chris at 07:11 AM on 8 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        You can't analyze the data in that manner Mizimi. See post #101 on the climate sensitivity and its relation to the temperature increase at equilibrium, and the contribution of other factors to the temporal temperature evolution.
130370. chris at 07:02 AM on 8 January 2009
        Comparing IPCC projections to observations
        re #36 Which data are you looking at Mizimi? You should link to the stuff you are describing when you are in the process of attempting to trash it. That way we can establish whether your assertions/complaints have any validity! From my reading the Mauna Loa collection/analysis method is rather careful and gives confidence that it's a true record of the well-mixed atmospheric CO2 levels especially when averaged on monthly and yearly cycles. The method of analysis is defined here, where the raw monthly can be sourced. What specifically don't you like about it?: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html The primary Mauna Loa data can be compared with a completely independent (Scripps group) data set also measured at Mauna Loa. The two sets of data have an average difference of 0.04 ppm and an annual SD of 0.12 ppm. Thus the methods of sample collection, calibrations and analysis seem not to have a significant effect on the local measure of CO2. The Scripps data can be accessed here: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/sio-mlo.html The Manua Loa data can be compared with the CO2 measures averaged over all marine surface sites. These will be slightly out of phase with the Mauna Loa data, but the yearly average is pretty much within ~1 ppm of the Mauna Loa data. That can be accessed here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ and so on... What's your specific problem(s) (no "allusions" please) with these data remembering that our aim to obtain a valid and reliable measure of yearly averaged global CO2 concentrations for understanding our emissions, their accumulation in the atmosphere and their relationships to greenhouse gas forcings and their contribution to the Earth's energy "budget"?
130371. Mizimi at 01:55 AM on 8 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        Chris, the CO2 increase your figures give is 29% resulting in a GMT increase of 0.8 to 0.9C (for 1860/2000) The figures for 1970/2000 show a CO2 increase of 14.8% which yielded an 0.51C rise. If T response is logarithmic to CO2 concentration then we should see a proportionately lower T rise between 1970/2000, and that is not obvious from the figures.
130372. Philippe Chantreau at 12:56 PM on 7 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Sorry, I don't read Polish at all. What journal was this last document published in?
130373. Wondering Aloud at 08:53 AM on 7 January 2009
        Is Antarctic ice melting or growing?
        For Chris I look at your references and am unimpressed. Some are related some barely are, none of them are experiments that could possibly allow me to draw the conclusions you do and few are experiments at all. Instead you won't google a 4 letter name that is unusual enough that I can remember it off the top of my head and is therefore easy to look up. Instead you launch into abuse of the people involved, a rediculous straw man argument. Are their results reproducible? I don't know about Mendacity you seem more informed on that than I, my expertise is mainly scientific method and experimental design. When an experiment that properly isolates a variable repeatedly (reproducible) shows the same result and someone writes a paper that you think disagrees it doesn't mean the experiment is wrong! The most likely problem is on your end, failure to isolate the variable or to realize it hasn't been isolated.
130374. Philippe Chantreau at 07:39 AM on 7 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Arkadiusz, I don't understand what you mean by too small. I told you what I consider a scientist, it is far from being an unusual definition; I'll leave it to you to determine whether or not you meet the criteria. I don' care that much myself, don't take it personally Your link to the deadanimals blog leads nowhere. I had never heard of that site and, at first glance, it looks like a very poor source of scientific information. Why would I get information on polar ice from political blog? The reason I use NSIDC and Cryosphere today is very simple: they have teams who study the ice and compile data all the time. That's what they do. I don't understand why it seems to bother you that I don't go to blogs to get that kind of information. I note, on the other hand, that most of your links are from blogs, even when they are actually leading to the real stuff, like cryosphere today. You ask about the southern hemisphere SI anomaly. There is hardly a trend there, it barely makes it out of the noise, what exactly are you asking? Depending what error bars you use, you could find no trend at all. If I was to show a graph like that going the "other direction" (provided there is one), I can only imagine how summarily "skeptics" would dismiss it. Well, I'm affording myself that same luxury, usually reserved for so-called "skeptics." Climate change has not yet abolished the Southern Annular Mode, as far as I know. Ther is a very small upward trend in Southern polar sea ice. I linked this paper earlier: Author(s): Zhang JL Source: JOURNAL OF CLIMATE Volume: 20 Issue: 11 Pages: 2515-2529 Published: JUN 1 2007 Times Cited: 1 References: 34 Abstract: "Estimates of sea ice extent based on satellite observations show an increasing Antarctic sea ice cover from 1979 to 2004 even though in situ observations show a prevailing warming trend in both the atmosphere and the ocean. This riddle is explored here using a global multicategory thickness and enthalpy distribution sea ice model coupled to an ocean model. Forced by the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data, the model simulates an increase of 0.20 x 10(12) m(3) yr(-1) (1.0% yr(-1)) in total Antarctic sea ice volume and 0.084 x 10(12) m(2) yr(-1) (0.6% yr(-1)) in sea ice extent from 1979 to 2004 when the satellite observations show an increase of 0.027 x 10(12) m(2) yr(-1) (0.2% yr(-1)) in sea ice extent during the same period. The model shows that an increase in surface air temperature and downward longwave radiation results in an increase in the upper-ocean temperature and a decrease in sea ice growth, leading to a decrease in salt rejection from ice, in the upper-ocean salinity, and in the upper-ocean density. The reduced salt rejection and upper-ocean density and the enhanced thermohaline stratification tend to suppress convective overturning, leading to a decrease in the upward ocean heat transport and the ocean heat flux available to melt sea ice. The ice melting from ocean heat flux decreases faster than the ice growth does in the weakly stratified Southern Ocean, leading to an increase in the net ice production and hence an increase in ice mass. This mechanism is the main reason why the Antarctic sea ice has increased in spite of warming conditions both above and below during the period 1979-2004 and the extended period 1948-2004."
130375. Steve L at 04:40 AM on 7 January 2009
        Latest satellite data on Greenland mass change
        #5 - Quietman: post the NASA video!
130376. Steve L at 04:40 AM on 7 January 2009
        Latest satellite data on Greenland mass change
        TruthSeeker -- presuming "this claim" to mean the data described above, you've got it completely ass backwards. Click on the link that John Cook provides in the first sentence. There you'll see that what John is providing is a check of the claims put forward by those arguing that AGW isn't a real problem. This isolated instance and short time scale phenomenon that you feel is confounded with too many other variables is an example of an argument AGAINST AGW. But not only that, the information John provides shows how even the short, isolated, confounded example chosen by deniers actually shows the opposite of what they claim. Talk about grasping at straw!
130377. chris at 02:33 AM on 7 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        I don't see your point Mizimi. If you take the US NASA GISS or UK Hadcrut data, the Earth's global temperature has risen by 0.8 - 0.9 oC since the mid-late 19th century until 2000 (I'm using your end date of 2000, but not your start date of 1800, since I don't think we know quite so well what the temperature was in 1800). In this time the atmospheric CO2 concentration rose from 287 ppm (around 1860) to 371 ppm (2000). An increase of atmospheric CO2 from 287 ppm to 371 ppm will eventually give at equilibrium a temperature increase of around 1.1-1.2 oC within an idealized climate sensitivity of 3 oC of warming per doubling of atmospheric CO2. So even if atmospheric CO2 were to have magically steadied exactly at 2000 levels, we'd still have 0.3-0.4 oC or so of warming still to come if the earth responds exactly as predicted with a climate sensitivity of 3 oC per doubling. So there's nothing that needs reconciling is there? Of course in the real world we have to factor in the effects of atmospheric aerosols, changes in the output of the sun, volcanic eruptions, ocean currents and so on, if we want to address the specific profile of the warming trend over the past century or more.
130378. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 21:31 PM on 6 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        The polish professor A. Marosz has analyzed depth Antarctic sea ice cover. Sorry I find only polish language ( http://ocean.am.gdynia.pl/wydaw/Marsz1_aa2007.pdf), however, I’m proper seeing - even if only figures or tables, especially Fig. 1. (by polish - Rys. 1.) The 1 and 2 column of table - it’s average, 3 columns - it’s standard deviations . I will cite one - finale conclusion, in this paper: The Changes within last 50 yrs was only natural (influence AGW don’t statistic important), if walks about the area shelf and sea ice…
130379. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 20:04 PM on 6 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        It signify walk me about comment - your cites figure http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg - the newest than current_anom_south0325.jpg - What You think about it - It’s La NIna - ENSO, AMO effects ?
130380. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:39 PM on 6 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        Philippe: First: I only cites publications pure scientists, not my working. Both: By ten years I was research the correlations: meteorological conditions - aphids - Entomophthoraceae; together with the scientists from Yakima and federal department for Agriculture in USA)., next a twelve years as adviser for agro-meteorology - if it for You too small - sorry… …but and I don’t understand, why You don’t cites, in your post, this figure: current_anom_south0325.jpg? (f. e. from page: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/008350.htm or http://icecap.us/images/uploads/current_anom_south0325.jpg.) It’s very interesting yet in “this Theme” ! But I think probably not too inconvenient for You, certainly (that for IPCC, I understand, hi, hi, hi…) ?!
130381. Patrick 027 at 16:22 PM on 6 January 2009
        Arctic sea ice melt - natural or man-made?
        1. (as if my numbering scheme makes any sense!) Why the 1/R^2 stuff? The dispersion relation (frequency as a function of wavevector) from Cushman-Roisin, stated in comment 361, was based on a basic state vorticity gradient equal to beta in the y direction ( beta = del(f)/del(y) ), due entirely to variation in f, with basic state RV being constant and zero; there is no basic state wind - Oh, and there is no internal stratification (zero static stability; constant potential temperature (or potential density in the ocean)). The same dispersion relation is found (in Cushman-Roisin - p.89) to apply to a situation with no basic state wind, constant f, but varying underlying topography, where beta (which is equal to the basic state barotropic PV times the depth of the fluid) is replaced with the depth of the fluid times the basic state PV gradient which is due to varying fluid depth. In other words, the propagation of barotropic Rossby waves is the same for the same barotropic PV gradient, (where barotropic PV is proportional to AV/H, where H is the depth of the fluid; this is most obviously applicable to a nearly incompressible fluid with a top and bottom such as the ocean, but I think it can be made to apply to the atmosphere if H is taken to be proportional to surface pressure ** - the important thing is that H be proportionate to mass per unit area within a fluid layer), whether that gradient is due to variation in f or variation in fluid depth - I presume the relationship would apply to any such barotropic PV gradient due to any combination of beta and variable H. A key thing about Rossby waves is that they are quasigeostrophic or at least nearly so. The balance between wind and mass fields is approximated as geostrophic and while it is kept in mind that there is ageostrophic and vertical motion required to keep imbalances from growing indefinitely, it is assumed that the imbalance is never sizable - most of the wind field can be approximated by the geostrophic wind. This is an appropriate approximation for this purpose for much of the atmosphere except at low latitudes and except for small spatial scales and near the surface (Hence, near the equator, the gap in the spectrum of atmospheric waves between quasigeostrophic Rossby waves, and those fundamentally ageostrophic inertio-gravity and Kelvin waves and inertial oscillations, dissappears - and so there are such things as equatorial Rossby-gravity waves). But for Rossby waves to remain in near geostrophic balance, the RV changes induced by advection of PV must be balanced by changes in the horizontal pressure gradient (which in a barotropic fluid, results from variations in H due just to variations in the 'top surface'). With no preexisting pressure variation, there must be divergent or convergent motions, which bring the RV due to conserved PV and the geostrophic RV closer together. Which one budges more is wavelength dependent. For large wavelengths (which have small wave vectors), the same geostrophic RV requires larger winds and also that the pressure gradient extend over longer distances, so that the variation in pressure should scale with geostrophic RV * square of wavelength. The divergence required to accomplish this reduces the resulting RV variation per unit PV variation, thus slowing the phase speeds and reducing the frequency relative to what they would be if AV were conserved. The shortest wavelengths will have much less pressure variation over a wavelength, so that the same amplitude of PV wave produces a larger RV wave; in the limit of shortest wavelengths, AV is conserved. Of course, at that shortest wavelengths, the geostrophic approximation breaks down. IF, however, there is a basic state wind (necessary but not sufficient for some basic state RV gradient), then assuming it is nearly geostrophic, there is a basic state pressure variation. Advection of pressure variation along with PV variation can/will alter the divergence necessary to maintain near geostrophic balance, and thus the dispersion relation, phase speed, and group velocity patterns may be different. PS could the RV wave ever be 180 degrees out of phase with the PV wave? In that case (if it is possible - I'm not sure - maybe if the RV gradient was in the opposite direction as the beta and topographically-caused PV gradients, and there were an easterly basic state wind ???), waves would propagate in the opposite directions as previously described. But even then, some general concepts described in previous comments would still apply somehow. _________ 2. What if there is stratification? - nonzero static stability (which will be designated here as S which is equal to the negative vertical derivative of potential temperature with respect to pressure (or potential density with respect to ... some measure of depth in the ocean): S = - del(q)/del(p). Well, then there is not a wave which doesn't vary at all in height; but a nearly barotropic wave can exist. Such a wave is modified such that (at least setting aside what a basic state wind would imply) amplitude is larger near the surface for topographic waves and smaller near the surface for waves due to variation in f, as decribed in comment 322 above. Pressure systems associated with Rossby waves that are supported by beta would be cold-core lows and warm-core highs; whereas pressure systems associated with topographic Rossby waves would be warm-core lows and cold-core highs. There are also fully baroclinic modes. Cushman-Roision derived a dispersion relation (next comment) for horizontally propagating Rossby waves that reverse phase one or more times in the vertical; a vertical cross section would appear as a checkerboard pattern. For relatively weak waves, these baroclinic waves, as with the barotropic ones, can be mathematically and qualitatively analyzed as the result of linear superpositions of other waves or an infinite number of point anomalies or finite number of anomalies of finite size, etc.; hence, the checkerboard pattern could be thought of as a wave which propagates in the horizontal but is a standing wave in the vertical direction, resulting from two sets of baroclinic waves that propagate in the same direction horizontally and in opposite directions vertically, and turn into each other by reflection from top and bottom boundaries (I think in terms of the RV wave, the reflections are in phase with the incident waves, so that (some of the) RV maxima and minima, but not the vertical nodes, occur at the top or bottom - at least in the case of a fluid layer with definite top and bottom with no overlying or underlying fluids of comparable density ?).
130382. Quietman at 07:56 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        Scientists abandon global warming 'lie' 650 to dissent at U.N. climate change conference WASHINGTON – A United Nations climate change conference in Poland is about to get a surprise from 650 leading scientists who scoff at doomsday reports of man-made global warming – labeling them variously a lie, a hoax and part of a new religion. Later today, their voices will be heard in a U.S. Senate minority report quoting the scientists, many of whom are current and former members of the U.N.'s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. About 250 of the scientists quoted in the report have joined the dissenting scientists in the last year alone. In fact, the total number of scientists represented in the report is 12 times the number of U.N. scientists who authored the official IPCC 2007 report. more. As this topic is consensus, I feel that this is somewhat relavent.
130383. Quietman at 07:48 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        ps educate yourself http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/climate-change-perspective.pdf
130384. Mizimi at 06:43 AM on 6 January 2009
        Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas
        PS: Have you considered the net contribution to the earth's energy budget made by Life? All metabolic processes are exothermic, from whales to bacteria. Even decomposition produces heat. And the source of that heat is the sun. Not IR, but mostly visible light in the green/yellow band, converted by photosynthesis into complex organic compounds which are then metabolised....giving out heat. In addition water vapour is emitted by air breathers ( roughly 60% of metabolic heat is emitted in the form of WV)adding to the atmospheric WV total. And whilst you will no doubt argue that compared to IR it is tiny - it is also iterative.
130385. Mizimi at 06:36 AM on 6 January 2009
        Comparing IPCC projections to observations
        #35 Actually, MLO produces 'raw' data for public access. The tables contain blanks where there are no readings ( eg. instrument failure), data culled from past records to replace 'unacceptable readings', and adjustments when there is an upslope wind from the old plantations at lower levels. So I consider my allusions are justified.
130386. Mizimi at 06:11 AM on 6 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        #99 I'm asking a question. In the 30yrs from 1970 - 2000, the CO2 level rose 14.8% and the GMT rose 0.51C. From 1800 - 2000 the CO2 level rose 67% and the GMT rose between 0.5 and 0.8C How do you reconcile these ??
130387. Quietman at 05:55 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        Re: "If you don't like the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC, take your pick." Ignorance is bliss.
130388. Quietman at 05:52 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        Re: "Climate contrarians aren't big on honest research. They tend to look for very selective data to support their assertions while ignoring the big picture and completely disregarding the wide body of evidence that opposes their pre-determined conclusions." Read the links posted in the volcano thread. The data is not selective, it is the facts about how the earth is currently changing and has always done in the past.
130389. Quietman at 05:48 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        ps Denial of facts will not change them.
130390. Quietman at 05:47 AM on 6 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        NewYorkJ Re: "An argument being made here is that human-induced warming could help prevent the next ice age. That argument might make sense if an ice age was known to be imminent (say, 100 years). Most indications are that it's tens of thousands of years away." The problem with your statement is that it does not recognize the fact that we are already in an ice age, the 4th or Neogene-Holocene ice age. If you read those links you will see that we are slowing down the onset of a glacation.
130391. Patrick 027 at 11:31 AM on 5 January 2009
        Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
        ...(And the amount of energy in those shortest wavelengths is a very small fraction of the total radiant energy flux up or down)
130392. NewYorkJ at 07:14 AM on 5 January 2009
        It's not bad
        A good book on this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/142620213X This book has hundreds of references to objective peer-reviewed studies on the effects of global warming, at each degree C in global temperature rise. Essentially, costs immediately exceed benefits. With each degree of warming, the cost-benefit gap expands greatly.
130393. NewYorkJ at 07:12 AM on 5 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        An argument being made here is that human-induced warming could help prevent the next ice age. That argument might make sense if an ice age was known to be imminent (say, 100 years). Most indications are that it's tens of thousands of years away. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/297/5585/1287 In contrast, human-induced warming is effecting us now and over the next few hundred years, the strongest effects of which will hit us long before the next glaciation. This site has a good list of costs/benefits. http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives.htm A good book on this topic: http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/142620213X This book has hundreds of references to objective peer-reviewed studies on the effects of global warming, at each degree C in global temperature rise. This is better than any indirect speculation. Essentially, costs immediately exceed benefits. With each degree of warming, the cost-benefit gap expands greatly. It may be comforting to hope that a warmer world will be a tropical paradise for Earth's billions of human inhabitants, but that's not the reality.
130394. Patrick 027 at 06:56 AM on 5 January 2009
        Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
        Concerning the breathing of the Atmosphere - (mostly the Magnetosphere) http://www.livescience.com/space/081216-agu-breathing-atmosphere.html If there is a significant impact on surface+tropospheric climate, it would have to be either 1. changes in magnetosphere, ionosphere, or sun itself directly causing changes in radiative forcing via a supposed change in albedo such as by cloud particle nuclei or clear air transmissivity changes ... (how much of that happens and is there any multidecadal trend?) 2. via interaction with the E-region dynamo, driving circulation changes in the ionosphere, which somehow changes circulation in lower layers, perhaps in the way the stratospheric conditions affect the EP flux from waves in the troposphere ... (how much EP flux is way up there and what does it do? ? ?) Because the ionosphere and magnetospere are extremely thin, just too optically thin (except at shortest wavelengths - UV, etc.) to have significant direct effect on the overall energy budget of the atmosphere by changes in infrared radiation.
130395. NewYorkJ at 06:32 AM on 5 January 2009
        There is no consensus
        Quiteman, NewYorkJ: "No one denies that there is cyclical climate change" "You obviously have not been reading the comments at this website. This has come up several times, so I am glad you consider it a strawman. I suggest that you read chris' comments." Which scientist thinks there aren't ice ages, ENSO, etc.? If you're referring to the Chris in the following post, your assertion is demonstrably false. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm "I await proof. I wan't to see at least one prediction that is correct. The only accurate predictions have come from the skeptical scientists (deniers) like the late Rhodes Fairbridge. " Obviously you haven't been paying attention. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm Most contrarians have been so utterly wrong for the past 20 years one has to wonder why anyone would seriously continue to entertain their rantings if one is seeking credible sources in good faith. "THERE IS NO BALANCE, THAT IS EQUILIBRIUM AND TOTAL BS! " Because you say? The CAPS add a nice effect. "CO2 is not warming the oceans, thats why the results don't match the predictions. Parts of the ocean are warming while others are cooling." http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A4.lrg.gif Globally, the oceans are warming. You also don't understand what the models say. The slower rate vs land is predicted by the models. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021592.shtml ENSO creates much of the regional and annual variability. "The warming parts correspond to undersea vulcanism or what the kids call plate tectonics." It's what adults would call a very silly and unsupported assertion. It even made the RC "Most bizarre new contrarian claim" of 2008. "Do the research. Skeptics do! " Climate contrarians aren't big on honest research. They tend to look for very selective data to support their assertions while ignoring the big picture and completely disregarding the wide body of evidence that opposes their pre-determined conclusions. NewYorkJ: "Re: "Yeah, all those scientists follow Al Gore. How silly." "You are crediting the IPCC with something it does not have (scientists). It in fact edits and limits the subjects of any and all papers submitted by scientists and is the reason they are leaving the IPCC." They don't have scientists? Or is it just scientists you don't agree with (which would be the vast majority of them)? http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-annexes.pdf The IPCC, however, tends to be conservative with its predictions - resulting in the conservative common ground that most of its participants can agree upon. It tends to be conservative on sea level rise, for instance, even though real-world observations are showing more rapid melting in the Arctic than they project. "Sorry, but my view of anyone who has not left the IPCC by this point is someone that can not think for themselves. Sheep going along for the ride with what they view as "the winning team". Lots of BS and outright lies fudging numbers and skewing results to get funding. " If you don't like the Nobel Prize-winning IPCC, take your pick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change It's all a vast leftwing conspiracy. Convincing conspiracy theorists is a futile effort. "I strongly suggest that you actually read the skeptical papers that are being derided by Hansen and his cronies. " Hansen must have a lot of "cronies". I've read skeptical studies. There are only a small handful of them that have passed an independent peer review in a reasonably reputable journal, and results have been highly questionable and often later refuted outright. As an example, there are a few studies that made assertions about a potential significant Urban Heat Island Effect. It relied largely on UHA satellite data (managed by 2 "skeptics") that showed little to no warming. The data saw a series of signficant upward corrections which made the studies effectively obsolete. Example: http://www.ssmi.com/papers/mears_science_2005.pdf A discussion: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/ Instead of bothering to scrutinize the satellite record, they just speculated that the surface data was all wrong. As it turned out, the climate contrarians managing the data were all wrong, as usual.
130396. Quietman at 04:13 AM on 5 January 2009
        It's the sun
        John Re: "Skeptic of the Week The award for most skeptic arguments in a single article over the past 7 days goes to: Lowest Sunspot Activity Since 1900 Tied to Temperature Drop Over the Past Two Years? by The Bully Pulpit (5 arguments) " That article acknowledges AGW and makes no skeptical arguments at all. Why did you pick it?
130397. Tom Dayton at 04:13 AM on 5 January 2009
        It's the sun
        John Cook, you might want to include a link to cce's detailed description of the erroneous graph of sunspot rise since 1980 that is used in the Skeptic of the Week article.
130398. chris at 04:06 AM on 5 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        Re #94 It's not obvious what your point is Mizimi. You've quoted lots of numbers, but they can only be considered with respect to specific relationships that address real or potential correlations between the parameters defined by the numbers. It's not clear what you consider the relationships to be, as so we can't really address your point...
130399. chris at 03:57 AM on 5 January 2009
        Models are unreliable
        Don't be silly Quietman. Of course "equilibrium as a concept" applies to natural systems. Of course the 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to living organisms. One needs a basic level of understanding to address these things, but we're only talking about High School level.
130400. Tom Dayton at 03:53 AM on 5 January 2009
        It's the sun
        John Cook, you might want to include a link to cce's detailed description of the erroneous graph of sunspot rise since 1980 that is used in the Skeptic of the Week article.

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