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Comments 131001 to 131050:

131001. BestTimesNow at 16:12 PM on 9 January 2008
        Evaporating the water vapor argument
        My video did not include contrails, but the moisture from airplane contrails also causes the daily high to low temperature range to decrease. The daily temperature swing from high to low increased in the few days after 9/11 when all planes were grounded and the upper atmosphere had less forced moisture. http://facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/pdf/jetcontrailsrecentresearch.pdf
131002. Will Nitschke (www.capitaloffice.com.au) at 12:28 PM on 9 January 2008
        1934 hits the top ten!
        The Arctic is 3% of the land mass of the planet. Following your logic does this imply that any reporting of global warming in this region is also of infinitesimal significance globally? Perhaps you can elaborate in this article on why some regions of the planet have infinitesimal significance while others have enormous significance when they are more or less of comparable size? There could be plausible reasons why some regions of the planet have more significance than others, perhaps.
131003. Will Nitschke (www.capitaloffice.com.au) at 12:13 PM on 9 January 2008
        Models are unreliable
        Here is an interesting quote from IPPC's AR4 found in chapter 1: "The strong emphasis placed on the realism of the simulated base state provided a rationale for introducing ‘flux adjustments’ or ‘flux corrections’ (Manabe and Stouffer, 1988; Sausen et al., 1988) in early simulations. These were essentially empirical corrections that could not be justified on physical principles, and that consisted of arbitrary additions of surface fluxes of heat and salinity in order to prevent the drift of the simulated climate away from a realistic state. The National Center for Atmospheric Research model may have been the first to realise non-flux-corrected coupled simulations systematically, and it was able to achieve simulations of climate change into the 21st century, in spite of a persistent drift that still affected many of its early simulations. Both the FAR and the SAR pointed out the apparent need for flux adjustments as a problematic feature of climate modelling (Cubasch et al., 1990; Gates et al., 1996). By the time of the TAR, however, the situation had evolved, and about half the coupled GCMs assessed in the TAR did not employ flux adjustments. That report noted that ‘some non-flux adjusted models are now able to maintain stable climatologies of comparable quality to flux-adjusted models’ (McAvaney et al., 2001). Since that time, evolution away from flux correction (or flux adjustment) has continued at some modelling centres, although a number of state-of-the-art models continue to rely on it." A 'flux adjustment' is where you discover that the model's predictions start to vary so much from the historical record that you have to go in and change the values inside the software to re-fit the model to what's actually happening. Very confidence inspiring. And what does 'a number of' mean? 50%? 20%? 80%? How many of these models are manually fiddled with to get them to continue to work...?
131004. Wondering Aloud at 06:52 AM on 8 January 2008
        It's not bad
        In other words Malaria should be removed from the list. Maybe there are other diseases but Malaria which already exists in the Arctic is not one of the bugs that is likely to increase its range due to climate change so its inclusion here is simply wrong. Other diseases would also have to be evaluated case by case and there are many if not more illnesses associated with low temperatures. I haven't had time to research many of these claims but the few I have researched on the negative side are very doubtful, like polar bears being threatened, which is directly contradicted by the available data. This is an old salesman trick of inflating the number of arguments on your side and minimizing the number on your opponents side. It doesn't impress me and it does the AGW argument more harm than good.
131005. GMB at 11:45 AM on 6 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        We might compare the campaign to restrict industrial-CO2-release to the book of Mormon. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1mFdO1wB08&feature=related No archeological support can be found for the Book Of Mormon. The events within it leave no remnants of the technology, coinage, animals or plants that are talked about within it. Yet the Mormons still go in for this crap. Same goes here. No evidence whatsoever has been found in support of the contention that industrial-CO2-release ought to be restricted. But these alarmists, far worse and more harmful nutters than Mormoms, continue to go in for it anyway. Now French fellow. Do you have that evidence or not? Come up with the evidence or admit you are wrong.
131006. GMB at 09:48 AM on 6 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        "My point Phillipe is that the assumption that warming would cause more economic hardship than benefit is not at all evident from the historical or the archeologic record." Thats totally understating the matter. Don't softpedal these lunatics. The historical and archeological record speaks with one voice on the matter. But its not a question of WARMING VERSUS COOLING. Its a question of whether the extra CO2 will mitigate the natural cooling. The idea that extra CO2 will cause net economic costs is self-evidently ludicrous. And we have to come down on these science fraudsters with extreme predjudice. Don't pussyfoot around with these people WOL. They ARE charlatans. You know enough to know that the warm times are always the good times and the times with good rainfall. Whereas the Cold times are all about extreme weather events and drought.
131007. GMB at 09:43 AM on 6 January 2008
        It's ozone
        This is another case of folks expecting everything to be simultaneous. Since temperature is a reflection primarily of ACCUMULATED joules in the oceans and planet, leading to a buildup of water vapour in the air, there is no reason to ever suspect that the peak of anything else would match to the hour the peak of temperature. Ozone is thought to be a strong greenhouse gas. But thats far less relevant then its blocking potential for UV since that affects joules punched directly into the oceans. So if industrial chemicals were destroying ozone there is the very real potential for less ozone to account for part of the alleged 1978-2000 divergence between solar irradiation trends and global temperatures.
131008. GMB at 08:48 AM on 6 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Oil will go a lot higher. The price will go up soon, often and by large margins. The only thing which might delay this is an American recession which appears to be happening even now. Oil will keep going up because the normal market corrections have been hampered by this science fraud. Since the science fraud that this "global warming" racket involves is part of a wider energy-deprivation-crusade. We would by now be bristling with nuclear power reactors and coal-liquification plants. "Peak Oil" would have been a concept with some predictive value but it would have been nothing that need concern the public since substitution towards liquified coal would have begun many years ago. This Malthusian/Marxist racket, posing as science, though oddly incapable of finding evidence for itself, has already slaughtered people by the millions insofar as it bureaucratised DDT. Over at Tim Lamberts site they are voicing their grave opposition to malaria eradication. This is a poisonous movement and these are very sick sick people. Dude if you knew more than me you'd just explain the diagram. What we see is that its no evidence for anything. It won't even tell you the time period involved. No evidence has been presented that CO2 is cooling the stratosphere. For that we would need to have something similiar that was working over a number years giving enough time for the CO2 level to change. Also we would need something which went out of its way to show both incoming and outgoing absorption. Not just pick out the 15 microns and ignore the other parts of the absorption spectrum. Now have you got any evidence that CO2 is warming anything globally? We've got to have everyone admit they were wrong so we can get this energy production off the ground.
131009. Wondering Aloud at 09:26 AM on 4 January 2008
        It's the sun
        So what is the data source for the dotted blue line? Is it USHCN? Or partially USHCN?
131010. Wondering Aloud at 09:13 AM on 4 January 2008
        Mars is warming
        I haven't seen anything on Jupiter system as a whole that would convince me it is warming to any significant extent, and Pluto is likely caused by orbital eccentricity it has been closer than average to the sun in recent years
131011. Wondering Aloud at 08:51 AM on 4 January 2008
        What does CO2 lagging temperature mean?
        GMB seems someone disconnected from the topic of this post. But, what I still want to know is what is currently happening with the Earth's orbit? What causes the sudden dramatic cool down and is it expected to happen soon? If not, why not? looks to me like the interglacial is due to end at least in terms of the last 4.
131012. Philippe Chantreau at 07:40 AM on 4 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        From reading your posts, it is obvious that I understand these things much better than you, GMB. You should shoulder the money to actually get that paper from AGU, it's not that expensive and you might actually understand something, provided you can focus your attention long enough to read it. I understand your point, WA. There are a lot of unknowns in this issue. The historical and archaeologic records apply to periods during which the human population was a tiny fraction of what it is now and what it will be in 2040. Thus, its usefulness has limitations. For myself, I am skeptical of catastrophic scenarios, but I do not see any reason to believe that there will be more benefit than hardship either. Any change requiring "geographic" adaptation will run into geopolitical considerations that have no comparison in history (esp. for the number of people involved). Furthermore, you don't really know how unlikely the adverse changes you mentioned actually are. There are also other considerations. Oil just hit $100/barrel. How high will it go? With China and India increasing their oil consumption at an enormous pace, what is the chance that other countries that are lagging will ever be able to afford any oil? What will be the price of a barrel in 20 years? Even if reserves are found and exploited in the Arctic, and the shales are sqeezed to the last drop all over the world, is there any possibility that 9 billion people can live like us now for any length of time?
131013. Wondering Aloud at 06:54 AM on 4 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        My point Phillipe is that the assumption that warming would cause more economic hardship than benefit is not at all evident from the historical or the archeologic record. The assumption made above my comment was that warming would have overwelmingly negative impacts. I find that unlikely to say the least. Your counter examples are also regional and focus on inadequate rainfall. To get any net negative economic effect you have to assume that there will be some significant regional changes in rainfall and that the changes will produce negative effects. For example that deserts would expand more than arable land elsewhwere would grow. That is already a mighty long and unlikely string of assume.
131014. cce at 19:37 PM on 3 January 2008
        Ice age predicted in the 70s
        Ice ages cannot be explained without the GHG feedback. The same science that tells us this, tells us we are heating up the planet.
131015. GMB at 16:24 PM on 3 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        "On the other hand, carbon dioxide emits heat radiation to space. In the stratosphere this emission becomes larger than the energy received from below by absorption. " You don't have that information. Certainly not from that graph.
131016. Philippe Chantreau at 15:21 PM on 3 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Really, you don't seem interested in finding out anything that disagrees with your worldview. It is unfortunate, because if you want to refute something, you need to at least read and preferably understand it. All the talk about blackbody and wave length makes it look like you know about radiative physics but in fact you revealed post after post that your knowldege of the subject and scientific understanding in general is rather lacking. You insist on saying that you have refuted stuff that you don't even read, I don't understand that attitude. You rant about the idea of validation, which is almost as ancient as science itself. The first light bending observation in 1918 validated Einstein's theory of General Relativity (even though the observation was botched). Observations validated the calculated existence of Pluto, and countless other space bodies. Advanced microphotography validated the Sliding Filament theory of muscle contraction, etc... Furthermore, I take offense of being called (among other things) an alarmist while I have not mentioned any kind of alarmist belief/scenario/whatever anywhere in this thread (find one if you can). I don't know what you mean by "the inside." I can't even get the Clough and Iacono paper without paying. I can not find any more details than anybody else. The reason why there is heat absorbtion in the stratosphere in those IR wave numbers is because GH gases, in the STRATOSPHERE, RELEASE HEAT TO SPACE. If you had read Dr. Uherek explanation linked in post 19, you would have seen this: "Greenhouse gases (CO2, O3, CFC) generally absorb and emit in the infrared heat radiation at a certain wavelength. If this absorption is very strong as the 15µm (= 667 cm-1) absorption band of carbon dioxide (CO2), the greenhouse gas can block most of the outgoing infrared radiation already close to the Earth surface. Nearly no radiation from the surface can, therefore, reach the carbon dioxide residing in the upper troposphere or lower stratosphere. On the other hand, carbon dioxide emits heat radiation to space. In the stratosphere this emission becomes larger than the energy received from below by absorption. In total, carbon dioxide in the lower stratosphere and upper troposphere looses energy to space: It cools these regions of the atmosphere. Other greenhouse gases, such as ozone (as we saw) and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), have a weaker impact, because their absorption in the troposphere is smaller. They do not entirely block the radiation from the ground in their wavelength regimes and can still absorb energy in the stratosphere and heat this region of the atmosphere."
131017. GMB at 14:36 PM on 3 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        I wouldn't count it as cut and dried that its a cooling signature at all. You look at that graph and it appears on the surface to be immensely clear in what its telling you. It appears to be an immensely user-friendly graph. But this is likely a lie. A skewed snapshot, taken througha prism, tricked out to look like a clear narrative. If CO2 is absorbing "LIGHT" (ie electromagentic radiation) in the stratosphere then it is doing its best to WARM AND NOT COOL THE STRATOSPHERE. That energy goes somewhere. If energy is absorbed in that part of the spectrum it will be reconverted to kinetic energy in Brownian motion as well as radiated out in a fuller spectrum in accordance with the molecules temperature yet allowing for its absorption characteristics. Environmentalists must be thought to be lying or wrong until proved true. Thats the only productive attitude. That is their track record. I see not one scintilla of evidence here that CO2 contributes to Stratospheric cooling on some sort of net basis. Not a scintilla. Its just pretty pictures. In this game your mind can be turned four of five times over contemplating a single diagram such as this. You are on the inside as a certifiable alarmist. You can find out the technical details. Whereas I, as a human, am excluded. Go forth and do your duty.
131018. Philippe Chantreau at 06:01 AM on 3 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        A day is 24 hrs. 3 pm to 3am in the morning is only 12. Once again, you need to read the paper if you want to know all the details. The graph is a nice one glance summary of the findings, but it's not the all paper. It is likely that the people pointing to the CO2 cooling signature know what the graph is about, especially the authors themselves.
131019. Den siste mohikanen at 02:10 AM on 3 January 2008
        It's cosmic rays
        First, the Harrison paper of 2006 state "...Furthermore, during sudden transient reductions in cosmic rays (e.g. Forbush events), simultaneous decreases occur in the diffuse fraction, showing that the diffuse radiation changes are unambiguously due to cosmic rays." http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/07661/EGU06-J-07661.pdf Hence, it is pointless to argue that cosmic rays do not affect cloudiness. The correlation is there on a timescale of hours to decades, and as others have shown, on centennial to billion of years. The mechanism might not be what Svensmark has proposed but it doesn't change the basic fact if he is wrong about that. Secondly, your argument is nonsensical, as what Svensmark and other argue is not that cosmic rays can account for all climate influences. But if he is right - and evidence is piling up that he is - two things follows. 1) the parametrisation in current GCMs are wrong as they fit past temperatures without taking this effect in consideration. Hence they are not reliable as tools for forecasts. 2) climate sensitivity is overestimated by earlier attempts such as Hansens, as one major forcing was not considered when calculating those sensitivity values. What "sceptics" such as me claim is that there is precious little evidence to support the higher estimates on future temperatures as presented by UN (IPCC). And quite a bit of evidence against it. Emission scenarios is, well, rather extravagant, as they include projections of emissions many times higher than todays in year 2100 in spite of our likelhood to develop good alternatives to the ever more pricier fossile fuel (current trends are cutting the cost of renewables at half each decade). Climate scenarios based on these extravagant emission scenarios is then calculated with GCMs that are likely overestimating the response to a particular forcing. In general I would say sceptics accept that the climate warms when we add CO2 to the atmosphere, but we believe its effect will be muted by the climate systems rather than enhanced. I also want to add that I recognise all other environmental (and geopolitical) problems associated with burning fossile fuel and find that a compelling reason to put higher efforts in developing alternatives.
131020. GMB at 16:19 PM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        But they don't say from which to which day? It meaningless if we don't know that. It would be meaningful if we knew it was from 3pm to 3am in the morning. People are very careless with the conclusions they take from things. Unless we know the time period there is nothing to learn from this thing. Its a radically different scenario if this graph is between 1978-1995 or if its 12 hours in mid-summer. You get people saying "Ho Ho look there is the signature for CO2 cooling the Stratosphere" but there is just no such thing unless we know what the damn graph is about. The other thing is if its a heat absorption scale thats a bit odd. Since after all if a molecule absorbs radiation IT HEATS UP. So far the graph can mean nothing. No conclusion can be taken from it. Certainly not that extra CO2 cools the stratosphere.
131021. jimdk at 14:07 PM on 2 January 2008
        Models are unreliable
        Well, here is NASA telling us there is no meaningful comparison of models to observed global temp change "The analysis by Hansen et al. (2005), as well as other recent studies (see, e.g., the reviews by Ramaswamy et al. 2001; Kopp et al. 2005b; Lean et al. 2005; Loeb and Manalo-Smith 2005; Lohmann and Feichter 2005; Pilewskie et al. 2005; Bates et al. 2006; Penner et al. 2006), indicates that the current uncertainties in the TSI and aerosol forcings are so large that they preclude meaningful climate model evaluation by comparison with observed global temperature change. These uncertainties must be reduced significantly for uncertainty in climate sensitivity to be adequately con- strained (Schwartz 2004). Helping to address this chal- lenging objective is the main purpose of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glory mission, a remote sensing Earth-orbiting observatory" http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0477/88/5/pdf/i1520-0477-88-5-677.pdf
131022. Philippe Chantreau at 12:42 PM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        You need to get on Google scholar and do your research, or ask one of your teachers, if you're a student. There is only so much I can do. I assumed that they focused on long wave bewcause that's heat and that's what the graph was about. The d is for day: cooling per cm per day.
131023. GMB at 08:57 AM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        "Colour scale x 10-3 is in units of K d-1 (cm-1)-1" Thats commentary on the selfsame graph but from another link. I copied it the d to the negative 1 looks like a d-1. BUT WHAT DOES "d" MEAN? I think I might be finally able to figure out the implications of this graph if I only found out what "d" means?
131024. GMB at 08:05 AM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Just another thought. Supposing that radiation with a wavelength of 15 microns peaked on a blackbody with a temperature of -18 degrees or so like it appears to in this graph in the link below. http://www.atmos.washington.edu/1998Q4/211/absorption.gif Now I calculated it at -80 degrees but I likely made a mistake. So going with this graph we can see intuitively that this would be a good range to block for the melting of ice. The earths surface may well be giving off this sort of wavelength where the earths surface is ice. So for example when you have a wind blowing and sun beating down on the ice it would absorb, disperse and reflect light. But it would disperse a lot of this light within itself. But its actual surface temperature might be such that its giving off radiation particularly around this 15 microns frequency. Think of the ice at night so as not to complicate matters with what the sun is doing. Its possible that the extra CO2 could be having no effect on the heat budget more generally, or even having a cooling effect, but it could at the same time be having a dissproportionate ice-melting effect in the scenario I'm outlining. We have to dissaggregate the world spacially to see what effects the extra CO2 is likely to be having. It could be cooling things over the oceans at the equator and warming things over a snowy mountain. We don't really know unless we check these things out. Intuitively one might imagine a high CO2 world helping us prevent frost damage even if it was doing nothing to the imbedded energy in the oceans and therefore to cumulative warming.
131025. GMB at 07:42 AM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        You see we don't want to be bigoted or discriminatory about light and colour. We ought to want to see what these gasses do all the way across the spectrum. To take in everything thats done right up to ultraviolet light would mean going down to 280 nanometres. Which means we have to go all the way up to a wavenumber of 37000. The other thing is the graph stops at the ground. But we need to know how things go right down to the bottom of the photic zone in the ocean. Whats happening 15m under the water? So we don't want to be bigots when it comes to greenhouse liquids versus greenhouse gasses. For that matter, if I want to take this principle to its logical extreme, we might wish to know what happens under 5m of ice on a Mountain somewhere. We don't wish to discriminate against greenhouse solids. This graph we are talking about centres itself over the only absorption region for CO2 that is relevant for outgoing. Thats giving us a skewed picture. Take the ozone band for example. Its showing warming in the lower stratosphere. Clearly this is coming from blocking long wave radiation from the ground. And its at that wavelength that is more appropriate than any other for typical earth temperatures. So at that wavelength the CO2 is warmer for the lower stratosphere. But thats not the whole picture along the spectrum. Its all light in my way of thinking. Why have we excluded every last part of the spectrum that would show these gasses blocking radiation from the sun before it gets to where we live or before it lodges itself in the ocean? This is just madness. We are not taking a balanced view. The absorption bands of 2.7 and 4.3 microns are highly relevant to blocking energy from the sun before it hits the ground.
131026. GMB at 06:59 AM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Great stuff. So is there anywhere an extended version of this graph that goes right up to at least a wavenumber of 4000? And the other thing is, whats the time scale of the observations that make up this graph? Is it some sort of instantaneous thing? Like it would be more meaningful if it showed a change in average radiation levels between 1978 and 1995 since presumably CO2 has gone up in that time and under that scenario the higher CO2 effect would be a real standout, at least at the 15 micron level.
131027. Philippe Chantreau at 04:18 AM on 2 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        The colored scale is a heat absorbtion scale, i.e. a cooling scale. The negative part of the scale indicates a negative heat absorbtion, i.e. warming.
131028. BestTimesNow at 23:42 PM on 1 January 2008
        Evaporating the water vapor argument
        I think the water vapor issue is viable, as humans force 37 times more water vapor into the air than CO2 in the US. This ratio could be much higher in other parts of the world. Forced evaporation does have an effect because you are doing it daily, in the most arid parts of the US. Here’s my two part video on it.
131029. GMB at 19:02 PM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        You have to establish yourself as a faithful alarmist to get any information out of those realclimate guys. They aren't in any way the professionals you make them out to be but I do need their specialist information.
131030. GMB at 18:54 PM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Right thanks for that. At first I thought they had screwed it up and that the CO2 thing was mislabelled. But I finally figured out that we need to convert wavenumber to wavelength: http://www.impublications.com/convert.php See if you can find out whats wrong with the labelling. Because on the face of it, it appears to be showing us that CO2 is making a WARMING CONTRIBUTION to the stratosphere. Why is that not right? Look at the Ozone. Higher up it appears to be making a WARMING CONTRIBUTION but in the lower stratosphere a COOLING contribution. I know that souonds wrong for CO2 but look at the scale? The positive scale is highly coloured as is the CO2-region. That main stratospheric-warming(?) band is at around 15 microns or 15000 nanometres. Since if you stick 650 in the converter it spits out 15,384 nanometres. The ozone absorption kicks in at about 1050 and that converts to 9.5 microns. Which is about right for Ozone too. Putting 2700 nanometres into the converter we find that comes to a wavenumber of 3703...which goes right off the scale. But we need to investigate that part of the scale since I showed the extra CO2 ought to be blocking incoming at that level. 2.7 microns ought to be irrelevant to outgoing radiation. 4.3 microns? 4300 nanometres? This converts to a wavenumber of 2325 which is also off the scale and suspiciously so. But note that on the face of it the 15 microns CO2 level appears to be warming and not cooling the stratosphere. And it appears to be achieving next to no effect at ground level. If anything it appears to be slicing what the authors think of as the H2O band in two. Almost as if it was neutralising the effect of water although that might be a natural break in water vapour absorption. There's a solid mild warming from halfway up the troposphere all the way through the stratosphere. It appears to be all the way from about 30 to 200 microns. What could that be? Well it might be direct from the sun???? That is a reflection of a tiny growth in solar brightness. That appears to be the case to me since its attenuating mildly most of the way down. Nothing conclusive can be taken from this. But its a good start to figure out the information we really need. But what I want you to suss out is........ why the 15 microns appears to be making a WARMING contribution and not a COOLING contribution to the stratosphere. Whats wrong with the scaling on the far right? I'll just have to assume its making a warming contribution if I can't find anything wrong with the scaling on the right. Great work anyhow. Thanks.
131031. Philippe Chantreau at 13:49 PM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        As for RC, my experience is that they will not pay much attention to you if what you're asking: - can be found through their search engine - refers to a previous post - is widely explored in the litterature (readily googleable). Also, if it appears that you're not reading stuff they point to, (I linked that graph twice, yet you found it through another channel)sometimes they'll say so, but most likely they'll just ignore you. Those guys all have lives and jobs too and, regardless what you think of their views, they are high level professionals. They have dropped many of my comments/questions, which I found out later were really goofy, so in retrospect I was glad they didn't post them.
131032. Philippe Chantreau at 13:21 PM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        This is the graph that I linked in post # 26 and also post #19. I believe that it was mostly finalized in this paper, although AGU requires a subscription, so I'm not sure: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1995/95JD01386.shtml On the right (color scale) is heat absorbtion in degrees kelvin per cm. On the left, pressure levels (indication of vertical repartition). On the bottom, wave length at which absorbtion occurs. The ESPERE page (link from post #19) has a nice explanation from Dr. Uherek: "Stratospheric cooling rates: The picture shows how water, carbon dioxide and ozone contribute to longwave cooling in the stratosphere. Colors from blue to red, yellow, green show increasing cooling, grey areas show warming of the stratosphere. The tropopause is shown as a dotted line with troposphere below and stratosphere above. Especially for CO2, it is obvious that there is no cooling in the troposphere, but a strong cooling effect in the stratosphere. Ozone, on the other hand, cools the upper stratosphere, but warms the lower stratosphere. Figure from: Clough and Iacono, JGR, 1995; adopted from the SPARC Website" To my knowledge, the way this graph (quite a piece of work if yo think about the maths involved) was done was by analyzing stratospheric composition data obtained from probes and balloons and from the known, lab obtained, spectroscopic characteristics of each of those gases. I could be wrong on that, it's just my thinking and a little reading I did. However, data from the ERBE and ARM programs (remote sensing, mostly) has been used to refine and validate it. ARM also has this paper, which seems to reinforce the idea of water vapor warming feedback: http://www.arm.gov/publications/proceedings/conf10/extended_abs/iacono1_mj.pdf It is an older piece (1992), so you should look at the more recent stuff, to see if the conclusions are still valid (as always).
131033. GMB at 09:25 AM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        I think in this area the scientists are doing an absolute crap job once they go outside their area of specialty. Its as though they've lost their inductive/decductive ability. Or any ability to apply commonsense to anything that they do. Validation is a bad concept. And this overemphasis of peer review is also unscience. Peer co-operation would be a much better idea. But you go to realclimate and the bastards refuse to answer your questions. People are now frightened of being caught out not knowing some tiny detail not related to the main thrust of the argument. So the alarmists and humans both will clam up on you. It should be taken as given that the science worker is only likely to be on safe ground within his own narrow specialty. But since a policy judgement call in this controversy requires one to look at a number of different specialties the current alarmism is incredibly dysfunctional. And also scientists have little advantage over the laity. I mean I can't expect Roger Pielke Senior to get everything right and not to make mistakes. But there you have whole sites waiting for him to trip up on any number of areas not necessarily to do with his core training. Anyway. Here's a Clough and Iacona diagram. What do you make of it? Tell me what you think is going on from this diagram. I have my interpretations of it. But to me the labelling is hard to sort out. So I'm likely to misinterpret things here and so are you I suspect. But tell me what you think you see. http://www.3bmeteo.com/html/images/immaginigiornale/6956_3.jpg
131034. Philippe Chantreau at 09:13 AM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        There are a lot of things we wouldn't have seen in 40 years ago science. Doesn't mean they're all bad. Try to sequence genes without computers, or fold proteins without models. Things change. Science is getting more and more into the issue of complexity, which can't be tackled without modeling. If climate was only about radiation, or chemistry, or fluid dynamics, it would be easy to study. But it's not. That's not to say we have an ideal set of tools. Overall, I believe scientists are doing a decent job with the tools they have, and that they would be foolish not to take advantage of the possibilities offered by those tools. By the way, I had never heard of Clough and Iacono until I looked at the graph on the SPARC page linked in post 26, which I found through a generic Google search (not on scholar). So there is plenty of stuff out there that you can easily find even if you don't know the exact spelling of an individual's name, and even this heavily edited discussion has participated in making you find stuff you were looking for. Kudos to John, his site is doing its job.
131035. GMB at 08:41 AM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        "Validated" is a most unscientific word. Its a new word in the business. You would not have seen it around 40 years ago. It is a symptom of the current UNSCIENCE. Yes abstracts deserve to be read and although my first reaction was that the study was more bullshit-make-believe-modelling it did get me thinking. So this is Clough and Iacono? Actually I've been looking for these guys. Didn't know how to spell their names so couldn't google them. Well that changes things. These guys do in fact do empirical work and I will follow it up. The abstract got me to thinking. I started trying to compare peak wavelengths under theoretical black body situations with the temperatures that matched the peak. And came to the conclusion that two of the three absorption regions that are usually attributed to CO2 would be totally irrelevant for outgoing long-wave radiation on Earth. And yet incredibly relevant for Venus. But I must be making some basic mistake. Because when I did the maths for the 15 microns my answer came out too cold. It came out with -80 degrees celsius when I'd seen graphs on the internet wherein it looks like the peak would be more like -18 degrees celsius so I don't know what dopey mistake I might be making. In any case the 2.7 and 4.3 region just cannot be relevant for outgoing even with a maths mistake of the magnitude described YET THEY COULD BLOCK INCOMING NO PROBLEM. Even with some mistake in my maths I'm sure that would be the case. Clearly I need some peer review here. But this highlights the mistake of people simply categorising everything as LONG WAVE RADIATION. They do so so flippantly and when you do this the armchair inference that CO2 will warm seems unassailable. But bring it down to the specific absorption regions you are going to get an whole different picture. The other thing I would want to find out is what possible effect the extra CO2 is having on the air pressure. To my mind increasing air pressure would be something that would assist warming. But I don't know how large or small the effect of extra CO2 is on air pressure. The best possible outcome for man and nature is if CO2 is warming but only a tiny bit. Like the warmth that the 15 microns and the extra air pressure might be retaining is JUST OVERMATCHING the warmth the the 2.7 and 4.3 regions might be blocking. Overmatching by a small but not a great amount. Hoping for such a thing won't make it true of course. But thats what we would be after since then the best policy option would be IMPOSE NO COSTS.
131036. Philippe Chantreau at 05:59 AM on 1 January 2008
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Even abstracts deserve to be read, they can lead to much other info. Those models that you assert have no validity, actually have been validated and refined over the years through ERBE and the ARM program for example. I suspect that's why they are so widely used in the atmospheric science community. Most of Clough and Iacono's work seems to be published by AGU, which requires subscription, but a lot of other material can be found full text (with data and references) from other sources. ERBE and ARM make a lot of data available, and so does CERES, I believe.
131037. GMB at 13:23 PM on 31 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        No no thats not right. You just haven't come up with any evidence yet. And science fraud is offensive. But you only have the abstract. You don't have the data. And while the loss of Ozone and the extra water vapour shows up in the data, when it comes to the stratosphere cooling, the signature from extra CO2 is not there.
131038. GMB at 12:56 PM on 31 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        No actually I figured it out. Looking at black body radiation we see that for the temperature of the earth...... only the 15 microns is particularly relevant. Since the earth isn't warm enough to generate much in the way of radiation around the 2.7 and 4.3 area. But there ought to be a bunch of incoming at 2.7 and 4.3. And extra CO2 might help block that. I still contend that they are talking about a MODEL and not the actual empirical data. So you are still out of evidence.
131039. Philippe Chantreau at 12:56 PM on 31 December 2007
        Evaporating the water vapor argument
        Good point Kenton. However, for all practical purpose, the carbon/hydrogen compounds locked deep in the crust are not normally available to natural processes. I may not have expressed it very well, but it was in that sense that I said WV from FF combustion constituted a net addition. I assume that you were refering to methane from digestive processes or fermentation. Those and other natural processes have to somehow combine carbon/hydrogen that is available. Geologic events can make a bunch of it so from time to time, but not exactly on the scale allowed by the wholesale extraction and combustion of fossil carbon that we have practiced. I think it was a little bit of a jump from you to conclude that I was merely reinforcing already held beliefs. I am well aware of a number uncertainties in climate science or other sciences. Believe me, it always makes me somewhat uneasy when I have to administer medications to patients and the mechanism of their action is unknown (happens a lot). You should have a difficult time finding a thread where I describe and assert such beliefs. You may not have noticed that I never attempt to forward any doom/gloom message or anything of the sort. However, just like the water vapor oversimplifications make you cringe, some things like "Global Warming on Pluto" as an attempt to explain things on Earth make me cringe too. I do try to keep myself aware of the existing state of the science and I do try to see where the weight of the evidence is leading, which is not an easy task for a layperson. The mess of overpolitization (inflamed by many skeptic "extremist" organizations) and innumerable clumsy or overhyped press releases certainly does not facilitate that task.
131040. Philippe Chantreau at 12:29 PM on 31 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Fiat Lux
131041. GMB at 22:57 PM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        You know what? If its observational my bet is that they would have to be talking about the UPPER stratosphere. These abstracts can be tantalizing and annoying. But if there is something about 15 microns that passes the other peaks by that could throw some light on things.
131042. GMB at 22:45 PM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Actually that is interesting after all. Why are they claiming that 15 microns is where the action is? Why not 2.7 or 4.3? Or whatever the other two CO2 absorption peaks are? Are these guys claiming that the 2.7 or 4.3 absorption peaks are for some reason barely operational? The best case scenario is if CO2 warms but only a small amount. That would be the best dumb luck the human race had in a long while.
131043. GMB at 22:18 PM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Your link looked promising but its meaningless. Since its a model. Hence the word "scheme". The dominant band from longitudinal studies turn out to be a single band for water vapour. Thats real world observations as opposed to your mans modelling. The abstract leaves too much out too conspicuously for that not to be the case. They would need to say from which to which date. They would have needed to have a start and a finish date to see the difference.
131044. Philippe Chantreau at 21:24 PM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        In case someone is reading this and wondering what in the heck you're trying to talk about, stratospheric radiative processes have received attention for a long time. This is from a 1996 german study abstract: "As previously reported, the CO2 15-µm bands are dominant." However, this link has very nice graph (bigger than the ESPERE page) that gives a visualization allowing to better understand the respective roles of the various significant gas significant of the radiative process.
131045. Philippe Chantreau at 12:31 PM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Please keep going, this is getting better by the minute, LOL!
131046. GMB at 07:33 AM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        "The upper stratospheric cooling, as explained by Dr. Uherek is accepted by experts in atmospheric physics, but not by you." As I explained to you. The stratospheric cooling quite clearly comes from extra WATER VAPOUR IN THE TROPOSPHERE. And a small amount of it from a subsequent reduction in Ozone in the stratosphere. The transmission goes: extra solar brightness.....DELAY....buildup of joules in the oceans....DELAY.....buildup of water vapour in the troposphere....DELAY....cooling stratosphere. The spectroscopy will reveal that the missing radiation in the stratosphere is at the wavelengths that water vapour and ozone typically absorb. Not where CO2 absorbs. So your science worker has it wrong.
131047. GMB at 07:07 AM on 30 December 2007
        It's the sun
        I'm checking out biocabs data and I cannot see where the mystery is here? There is no substantial hole where someone needs to plug CO2 into. http://biocab.org/Solar_Irradiance_is_Actually_Increasing.html#anchor_15
131048. Philippe Chantreau at 06:35 AM on 30 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        And you have not shown evidence of solar warming. I've seen trolls before but you're an extreme. Not a single reference to back up any of your assertions in the all thread, yet asking for evidence while it is obvious that no evidence could ever satisfy you. The upper stratospheric cooling, as explained by Dr. Uherek is accepted by experts in atmospheric physics, but not by you. Dude, how could I possibly take you seriously? Keep yelling in the dark.
131049. GMB at 17:58 PM on 29 December 2007
        Empirical evidence for positive feedback
        Have you got that evidence? I tell you there is no evidence anywhere that industrial-CO2-release is BAD for the environment. Every last scrap of extant scientific evidence confirms that industrial-CO2-release is good for the environment. But if you find any evidence or anything that contradicts anything I've said do let me know.
131050. Philippe Chantreau at 16:23 PM on 29 December 2007
        It's not bad
        And if you dig, you find stuff about methane hydrates and the P/T extinction, so it is a stretch to say there is no justification whatsoever of dire predictions. I'd say that it would be as much of an exaggeration than to predict bumper crops on the basis of the existing CO2 fertilization alone.

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