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Comments 132301 to 132350:
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jimdk at 14:07 PM on 2 January 2008Models 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 -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:42 PM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 08:57 AM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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? -
GMB at 08:05 AM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 07:42 AM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 06:59 AM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 04:18 AM on 2 January 2008Empirical 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. -
BestTimesNow at 23:42 PM on 1 January 2008Evaporating 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. -
GMB at 19:02 PM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 18:54 PM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:49 PM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:21 PM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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). -
GMB at 09:25 AM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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 -
Philippe Chantreau at 09:13 AM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 08:41 AM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 05:59 AM on 1 January 2008Empirical 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. -
GMB at 13:23 PM on 31 December 2007Empirical 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. -
GMB at 12:56 PM on 31 December 2007Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:56 PM on 31 December 2007Evaporating 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:29 PM on 31 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Fiat Lux -
GMB at 22:57 PM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
GMB at 22:45 PM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
GMB at 22:18 PM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 21:24 PM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 12:31 PM on 30 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Please keep going, this is getting better by the minute, LOL! -
GMB at 07:33 AM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
GMB at 07:07 AM on 30 December 2007It'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 -
Philippe Chantreau at 06:35 AM on 30 December 2007Empirical 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. -
GMB at 17:58 PM on 29 December 2007Empirical 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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 16:23 PM on 29 December 2007It'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. -
Philippe Chantreau at 16:09 PM on 29 December 2007It's not bad
What makes you think that the limits on Rubisco Activase will not manifest themselves? How could it be good to shift the ratio of ATP/ADP toward ADP? Since CO2 level is already quite a bit higher, those bumper crops should already start to show up. Examples? Universal benefit? How is it universal? -
Philippe Chantreau at 15:54 PM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Really, all you have is a set of ideas attempting to fit the data you're aware of in a way you like. However, you forget that there is an entire body of research out there that you must invalidate if you are to prove you're right. Santer, Ramaswamy and Schwartzkopf have a lot of research and modeling work on the stratosphere; the modeling of WV effects has been shown to be appropriate by Cess (2005). You must demonstrate all this stuff to be wrong, just saying it is does not make it so. Furthermore, where exactly is the increased solar activity capable of producing the kind of ocean heating we're considering? You talk joules, how are the very small variations of TSI in W/square meter (which could never be actually observed from the surface) converted into so many joules in the very short time during which it was witnessed? "The estimated increase of observed global ocean heat content (over the depth range from 0 to 3000 meters) between the 1950s and 1990s is at least one order of magnitude larger than the increase in heat content of any other component." From Levitus et al (2001). Does it really add up? Is the total energy really there only with the TSI? Is the delay consistent with what is observed? How does one know what the delay is? A delay without physical principles is an awfully convenient fudge factor. Since you're so gung-ho on evidence, I'm sure you have some on all that. Or do I need to just believe you again? I keep an open mind, however. You seem very confident in your theory, so you really should try to have something coherent reviewed and published. I will be happy to look at it then and integrate it to the extent of my abilities. Until then, all you have is an opinion, and as the saying goes, we all have one. Incidentally, your "I'm right you're wrong" comment is kind of moot, since, unlike you, I have not presented any personal theory or opinion. I have instead summarized what I've seen of the research published out there. So your comment should more accurately be: "I'm right and all those other guys publishing articles and studies are wrong." Who I will find more credible, however, is up to me. Usually, I am wary of people going "I'm right, you're wrong." Funnily enough, that's very reminiscent of those religious ideas you alluded to. -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:45 PM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
And why should I bother coming up with some evidence when you don't show any? -
Philippe Chantreau at 14:44 PM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Dr. Elmar Uherek from the Max Planck Institute has thought about this long and clearly and I find his views more compellig than yours: http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/2__Ozone/-_Cooling_nd.html All you have is a funny theory, yet I'm supposed to think it's better thah anything else out there just because you say so? Sorry, no can do. This took me just a minute to find. However, I still had no luck so far with the sweating oceans. I really like your way of dialoguing, though: "Now I'm right and you are wrong." That's funny. -
GMB at 13:51 PM on 29 December 2007Climate sensitivity is low
Do all of these people make the same basic mistakes as Annan? That is to assume CO2-warming with reference to volcanic cooling or solar warming? Annans snapshot of 20,000 years ago is an example of studiously IGNORING the empirical evidence rather than empirically showing anything. We know that glaciations come and go. We also know that the CO2 FOLLOWS AND DOES NOT LEAD the changes in temperature. So for him to grab that snapshot in time was just him filling out a troika of Unscience and non-evidence. Hopefully someone will let me know if any actual evidence is contained in any of the studies. -
GMB at 13:20 PM on 29 December 2007It's not bad
"Those positives and negatives are still pretty much open to speculation, I remain quite skeptical of the "CO2 fertilization" idea in light of the open air experiments conducted so far." 1. Every last open air experiment so far has CONFIRMED the fertilization effect. 2. Open air experiments may appear to be "streetwise" but they are very much likely to UNDERESTIMATE the CO2-fertilisation effect. Open air experiments sound to me like an appalling waste of money. You either control a factor in an experiment or you do not. Piping CO2 into the area isn't going to have the same effect as having the CO2 homogenised in the air. Since the plant is accessing the CO2 at the molecular level and not at the level of little eddies and wisps of unhomogenised CO2. What looks at first like the streetwise simulation on second thoughts appears to be hopelessly unrealistic. And it appears to underestimate the massive and universal benefit of extra CO2. But nonetheless these experiments CONFIRM this universal benefit. They underestimate the benefit but still they confirm the benefit. -
GMB at 11:36 AM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
There is no signature for CO2 warming. And no thats not right. Solar warming won't lead to stratospheric warming. It will lead to stratospheric cooling indirectly via higher water vapour levels and then subsequently lower ozone levels. This is in fact what has happened. You are talking about "SIGNATURES?". Well we know whats happened already. The signature in the stratosphere is such that the build-up in water vapour is robbing energy from the stratosphere. The signature comes from the wavelengths that are missing there. Which are the wavelengths primarily that water vapour absorbs and to a smaller extent the wavelength (speaking of long-wave-radiation) that ozone absorbs. Hence we can deduce that what is behind the cooling is the following transmission method. Really the only transition imagineable if you think long enough and clearly enough about it: INCREASED SOLAR ACTIVITY.....DELAY.....BUILD-UP IN JOULES IN THE OCEAN.....DELAY.....BUILD-UP IN WATER VAPOUR IN THE AIR.....DELAY.....BUILD UP IN HEAT ENERGY IN THE ATMOSPHERE....REDUCTION IN HEAT ENERGY IN THE STRATOSHPERE... So the signature you are talking about is not there. And where you are coming off the beam is you are imagining that this is some sort of instantaneous light-and-air show. So the factor of imbedded joules in the ocean is discounted. As is the factor of TIME!!!! No doubt if the sun starts up a major level of activity all of a sudden the first thing that will happen is that the troposphere and stratosphere will warm. But its what happens over years and decades that counts here. And whats happened is that the oceans have slowly absorbed energy. This leads to more water vapour in the air. This leads to on average a warmer troposphere and a cooler stratosphere. Now I'm right and you are wrong. And we can see that because my broad understanding of whats going on fits what we are seeing. Whereas you are yet to show me where the signature is for this alleged CO2-warming. You are going to have to come up with some evidence fella. Thats the problem with this cult. No evidence. You don't have any evidence. Lets see some evidence. -
Philippe Chantreau at 10:28 AM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
All I can do is repeat what I previously said. Physical laws allow to identify what the signature of a specific cause of warming is. Observations show whether or not that signature is found in Nature. For example, a signature of solar warming would be stratospheric warming, an observable feature (nowhere to be seen however). I don't know what an armchair inference is. If Physics shows that an effect exists, there is no reason to believe that this effect will somehow disappear. Spectroscopy shows the thermal behavior of CO2 and allows to calculate a radiative forcing. If you want to argue that this radiative forcing does not exist because of some reasons, go right ahead. You could also argue that the pressure differential afforded by Bernouilli's principle is just a hypothesis and there is no reason to think that it can make a wing generate lift. By your reasoning, this would have been a perfectly defendable position before airplanes started flying (there was no "evidence" for it). Let's examine the oceans "sweating" idea. I assume that you are knowledgeable enough about what sweating does in humans and used the analogy accordingly. If the oceans are "sweating", they are trying to dissipate heat by evaporation, relying on the thermic loss from the latent heat of evaporation. Why would the oceans do that? Because they have excess heat to dissipate (that's why we humans sweat, whatever the reason of the excess heat). This leads to interesting questions: Where is the excess heat coming from? If the "sweating" process is working, oceans should show a loss of energy, most noticeable at the surface under the form of decreased temperatures. Just like skin temperature drops (significantly) when sweat evaporates. Do sea surface temperatures show anything of the sort? Once the water vapor is released, what happens to it? After all, water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, physics tells us so and it is bound to trap heat, regardless of what you think. Overall thermodynamic balance: if the "sweating" is working, what happens to the dissipated energy? You did not answer the following of my questions: -your credentials? -science worker vs. scientist? -biomass/CO2? -biomass as a bad metric of "better" times? -link between biomass and CO2? -What exactly are net and gross productions? -Scientific work exploring the idea of ocean sweating? -
GMB at 07:38 AM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Right. I just looked at the introduction of your second link. It doesn't even ATTEMPT to find evidence for CO2-warming. It merely assumes and asserts that CO2 has this warming effect. When people keep doing this they are not engaging in science. Rather they are engaged in theology. The spectroscopy is in the armchair inference that CO2 will make a difference on a global scale. We know about the spectroscopy. Thats already in the HYPOTHESIS. It cannot be used as evidence to test THAT hypothesisl. Now before I go to your first link can you tell me if there is any evidence there? -
GMB at 07:24 AM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Do your links make the same mistake that Annan does or not? -
Yves at 05:46 AM on 29 December 2007Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
"That begs the question, what is the cause of the other 48 % ?" The 5.06E+11 are tons of CO2 The (estimated) 2.10E+11 are tons of C which give 2.10*11/3 = 7.70E+11 tons of CO2. So, the net increase in the atmosphere is lower than the "manmade carbon flux". The difference have been taken up by mainly the oceans. "And how can a manmade increase of 7 % be the main reason for a global increase in temperature?" The pertinent figure would not be 7% (btw raised to 26% if C is converted to CO2) but 65/385 = 17%. However such reasoning is still not pertinent since the effect of CO2 is logarithmic and not linear. The preindustrial CO2 contributes to natural greenhouse effect (33°C) and the additional CO2 to enhanced greenhouse effect. -
Philippe Chantreau at 05:02 AM on 29 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
You say there is no evidence that CO2 is warming things up. Although I beg to differ (that's what the links are for), for the sake of the discussion, it can also been said that there is no evidence that the Sun, or anything else is specifically warming things up either. For the Sun, there is actually evidence to the contrary. One can point to a source of warming if one can find a physical feature that constitutes a signature for that source. Stratospheric and tropopause changes are pretty good signatures for increased GH effect. What exactly is the difference between a scientist and a science worker? I am layman myself and would certainly not make such a distinction. You feel confident making it but still do not present your credentials, which, I assume, should include significant scientific background. "Total biomass is largely a function of the presence of CO2." This needs elaboration. My own knowledge of biology indicates that the availability of liquid water is a a much more important factor. Why is total biomass a bad metric? "The human race using a lot of net or gross primary production strikes me as an astoundingly good reason to keep the CO2 coming." Although I have a vague idea of what you might refer to, what do you mean by "production"? What exactly is the link between "keeping the CO2 coming" and the "production"? "You'll find my logic is quite unassailable. And that ought to be sufficient without any further references." Considering you're arguing against physics, I'll say no, it is not quite sufficient. I'll add that this is exactly the kind of argument that "skeptics" find unacceptable. In response to your last question, atmospheric physics suggest that the tropopause would behave in a certain way if there is warming in response to increased greenhouse effect. That behavior was modeled and observations of the actual changes in the tropopause matched the expectations and model results. As for your ocean dynamics ideas, surely, if the logic of it is made of steel, there should be no shortage of researchers using them to try understand oceanic thermal behavior. I would be very interested in having a glimpse of their work, so I don't see why you would withhold links to related scientific work. -
ATekhasski at 18:52 PM on 28 December 2007CO2 lags temperature
birdbrainscan wrote: "What everyone needs to appreciate is that we have fundamental physics and really, really extensive laboratory analysis of the absorption spectra gases alone and in combination, at all sorts of temperatures and pressures. You can look up the raw data on HITRAN at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/hitran/ and you can read the conclusions drawn from this raw data about the greenhouse effect at, e.g. Ray Pierrehumbert's free access draft of his "Climate Book"" I am familiar with this book, it is really a university level physics textbook, under which I mean "entry level". One needs to realize that the explanation of GH effect inherently relies upon so-called "atmospheric lapse rate", to link the height of "effective emission layer" with surface temperatures. One really needs to realize that so-called "lapse rate" must be an average of all atmospheric structures and weather patterns over the whole globe and from ground up to the whole troposphere. One needs to realize that the atmospheric patterns include turbulent boundary layer, global circulation patterns (Hadley, Ferrel, and polar cells), jet streams, hurricanes and other tropical depressions. More importantly, the lapse rate is strongly affected by moisture, which, in turn, is strongly affected by sea temperature. What is more important is that the moisture tends to condense into clouds under certain atmospheric/aerosols conditions. The laps rate ("moisture adiabate") tends to DECREASE with higher moisture content providing a negative feedback. Clouds also provide negative feedback by reducing insolation. Needless to say that all of listed processes occur under strong non-isotropic turbulent conditions, and are way beyond the reach of any direct computer modeling. As result, either a hand-made parameterizations have to be used, or parameterizations of experimental data. Given the spatio-temporal complexity of atmospheric patterns, data from few weather balloons cannot be seriously considered as a good representation of average atmospheric structure. The reference to HITRAN/MODTRAN serves no purpose for this discussion since the code uses a pre-selected fixed MODEL of atmospheric profile. In MODTRAN, there are 84 different models for atmospheric profiles; each gives different result for amount of OLR and surface temperature. So, what would be your selection of models across the globe to include into a global greenhouse model? How objective or subjective it could be? As you see, the "fundamental physics" of absorption spectra or two-stream Schwarzschild equations are not all the sophistications you need to build a model of GH effect and calculate its amplitude. -
ATekhasski at 18:01 PM on 28 December 2007CO2 lags temperature
Actually, Milankovitch hypothesis requires much more than WATTS_PER_SQUARE_METRE. The thing is that GLOBAL year-average solar flux does not change more than 0.1% during those cycles. Climatologists like to plot amplitude of "Milankovitch forcing" at one spot on Earth - at latitude 65N, which does not represent in any way or form the GLOBAL change in incoming radiation. I find this very misleading, especially when the whole talk is about GLOBAL warming. For the Milankovitch to have any effect on Earth, climatologists have to use a hidden assumption that Nothern Hemishpere controls the whole climate by having some sort of "rectifier effect". So far this rectifier has not been identified, and ony speculations exist that it has something to do with more land in NH than in SH, and maybe with Arctic ice having contact with land (Greenland etc). -
GMB at 16:45 PM on 28 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Tell me. Before I go and spend a lot of time on the two studies you linked... Have they made the same obvious mistake that Annan made? I mean are they investigating CO2-warming? Or are they investigating solar variance warming, volcanic aerosols warming, anything but CO2-warming, and making invalid inferences from one to the other? Because you could put up 1000 studies and it wouldn't mean a thing if they didn't have actual evidence for specifically CO2-based warming. -
GMB at 16:22 PM on 28 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
Total biomass wouldn't be a bad metric one supposes. And Total biomass is largely a function of the presence of CO2. The human race using a lot of net or gross primary production strikes me as an astoundingly good reason to keep the CO2 coming. You'll find my logic is quite unassailable. And that ought to be sufficient without any further references. -
GMB at 16:17 PM on 28 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
You cannot find any evidence that CO2 is warming things up. The whole movement is based on running down what the other guy says. No such evidence exists. Which means of course that the effect is not there or its just not strong enough to register. There's wiggle room for a sliver of warming but even me saying this is pure speculation. I don't know how you can have a study for something that isn't there. And these are hardly scientists we are talking about. More like "science workers." -
Philippe Chantreau at 13:54 PM on 28 December 2007Empirical evidence for positive feedback
GMB, do you have cites for your assertions on feedbacks? You're suggesting a large bunch of scientists have it all wrong. If I am to take your word for it, can you show your credentials or own publications? You address John Cook as "you", but he is mainly relaying the core message emerging from the existing body of research. The radiative properties of CO2 are known and there is a considerable amount of published science indicating that these properties are "warming things up" in the way physics would let you expect. Such as in these papers: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2003/2003_Santer_etal.pdf http://www.aos.wisc.edu/~deweaver/lorenz_deweaver_uchange.pdf Only examples, there is too much to list really. Refuting all of it would be quite an undertaking, you haven't really given much details on how that would be done. General ideas are fine but studies and publications are better. Any models exploiting the principles that you mention in post #9? About climate history, you're a little vague. What kind of ranges and timelines are we loking at? Are we comparing anything from the times after Panama closing with before (which would be kind of pointless)? http://marine.rutgers.edu/faculty/rosentha/rosenthal_files/Lear_NADW_inpress.pdf What are you criteria for "better." Total biomass? Human expansion? Are you considering only very recent history (past 2500 years)? If yes, can you substantiate some more? Besides, I could add that comparing our times, during which humans have become a major limiting factor on virtually all components of the total biomass, with times past, during which they were one component among others and going with the flow, might be inappropriate and lead to meaningless comparisons. -
GMB at 12:44 PM on 28 December 2007Neptune is warming
rrrrriiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhttttttt So its one feeble excuse after another. Here we have a general solar system trend and any excuse is enough not to blame it on the sun. Its this static equilibrium light and air model that is to blame here. If you thought instead in terms of accumulating and decumulating joules imbedded in the planet than this levelling of in the suns activity would be immaterial. So long as the sun was strong enough to keep the planets accumulating joules. -
GMB at 12:29 PM on 28 December 2007It's the ocean
"If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling." Thats very weird thinking. The transmission goes like this: 1. Increased solar activity leads to oceanic warming. Leads to more water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming. 2. Increased solar activity leads to less invasion of cosmic rays, leads to less cloud cover, leads to greater oceanic warming, leads to water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming. 3. Increased solar activity, leads to greater momentum in oceanic currents, leads to greater imbedded energy in the oceans via the Stefan-Boltzmann's law. With regards to point 3. Were there some basic change to the "resistance to circulation". If some change in oceanic currents led to a better circulation or less resistance to circulation then you would expect the oceans to accrue more energy and that would eventually have the side effect of greater average global temperatures.
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