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Eclectic at 10:11 AM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Santalives @3 ,
if you were meaning "quis custodiet" . . . then the standard answer is:
"It's turtles all the way down!" ( I hope you remember that oldie.)
Santalives, you appear to have abandoned your old playing ground in the thread: "SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?" Perhaps it would be a good mental exercise for you, if you got your ideas in order there , before you go sighing for fresh worlds to conquer, on other threads. One victory at a time, Alexander.
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Santalives at 09:34 AM on 22 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Eclectic @2. So who is fact checking the fact checkers?
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scaddenp at 05:16 AM on 22 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives. "How serious was the Y2K bug, I would say close to zero, why because this was western government obsession, many counties simply didn't have the money or expertise to do any Y2K remeadation but they did ask the rich countries to pay for it however. "
I agree that there was way too much hype and doom-saying nonsense, but the problem was very real and did affect systems in unexpected ways.
Out of curiousity, how many examples of system-taking down bugs would I need to show you before you admitted that you were wrong?
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blaisct at 03:36 AM on 22 February 2022It's albedo
Rodger @122
Yes, your translation of the LHAC theory is correct. Sorry for the whole apple, it was the only way to answer your question. One point of clarification. The production (flux over time) of hot low humidity air (through the day when the sun is shining) will occur no matter what the albedo of the UHI or cultivated land is, so the change in albedo is not that significant but the change in moisture availability is. The albedo affects how hot, water availability affects how low the RH, and area affects how much is produced over time. The Amazonia study showed this. The psychometric chart in @106 shows the math. In the LHAC theory, hot low RH air has always been a part of weather. Over time, man has changed how hot, how low the RH and how much is produced with UHI’s and new cultivated land. The generation of hot low RH air deals with W-hr/m^3 not W/m^2 and destruction of clouds should be on the same W-hr/m^3 basis.
Correction in @121
At bottom of @121 should read: we get -1.6W/m^2 change in incoming SW [ 342W/m^2*0.8% cloud cover change*(85% *(1-0.05)+(1-85%)*(1-0.15) – (1- 0.31 earth’s albedo)*(1-50% cloud albedo))] -
Evan at 21:12 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives. Please make specific claims from any paper you like, and we will respond. But right now you are just accusing us of being closed minded.
Tell us what point a paper makes that you thinks needs to be clarified. But don't through a paper at us and ask, :"What do you think?"
Be specific.
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Eclectic at 18:37 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
MA Rodger @87 ,
no no no thanks !
Enough of the Koutsoyiannis rubbish, already.
Why should Koutsoyiannis's paper get preference over all those Flat-Earther screeds, those Anti-Evolution screeds, those Qanon screeds, or over that confirmation of Jewish Space Lasers (or was it the UFO's ?). Or of that Faked Moon Landing?
Fair's fair, MA Rodger. You should devote a full week's analysis to every bit of rubbish "out there".
Desist, sir !
Or come back in 2035, after total debunk of all Dreck.
Stop Press. Early announcement by Nobel Committee. First Greek to receive Nobel Prize for physics. Name withheld, pending dissolution of IPCC. Riots in Athens. More to come.
Er, one moment there, MA Rodger . . . I might reconsider my request.
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MA Rodger at 17:32 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @78,
You again express an interest in having Koutsoyiannis (2021) debunked for you. Such a debunk has been offered you in the past (@18 up-thread for instance) but you have failed to take them up. There are many similar papers purporting to overturn the science behind AGW and indeed you brought a second such pack-of-nonsense into this thread in the shape of Seim & Olsen (2020). The large quantity of such sub-standard publication is why a single instance of such a paper does not get coverage ar SkS but if you remain interested in seeing the nonsense within Koutsoyiannis (2021) explained to you, do say so. I am not going to bother debunking it in detail if you are not going to read the result.
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John Mason at 17:12 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Santalives #80
"I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics."
And in the studio tonight, we have an internationally acclaimed marine biologist and a very cross man who are here to debate, "are there fish?"
(wild audience applause and cheers)
That's how silly an idea it is. The role of energy-emitting atmospheric gases was guessed at in the 1820s but not demonstrated, the specific role of carbon dioxide was experimentally confirmed in the late 1850s-early 1860s by two scientists working independently and in different countries and the effect of doubling its concentration on temperature was calculated at the turn of the 20th Century. That calculation is not far from the currently-accepted value.
Today we additionally have a vast wealth of palaeodata and we far better understand Earth's slow carbon cycle, that acts as the planet's thermostat over geological timescales, and into the gears of which we have dropped a very big wrench. -
nigelj at 16:47 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @80
I already said what I think drives people over at WUWT @74. I've amended it slightly here. Imho denialists seem to mostly engage in a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives (often libertarianism) , motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org). There are also the scientific cranks with science degrees who just seem to like to be different and become very stubborn and narcissistic. This is my observation. I suspect you wont like this but its how they all frequently come across to me.
Regarding "Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water by Demetris Koutsoyiannis"
Some of his discussion is interesting and colourful. However a discussion of how to better define climate doesn't much interest me. I said before its pedantry. In no way does such a thing directly relate to or undermine findings that humans are causing a warming effect. And what we are interested in is relativities and rates of change from one period to another. You do not need a precise and perfect definition of climate to measure that. I'm sure you would get what I mean. I haven't the time to study his maths in detail and I'm rusty on some of that but I'm sure its probably correct, but it isn't relevant to the points I've just made. He himself said people will probably regard his paper as useless!
He then goes into a long discussion about water: "This idea is further expanded to establish a linear causality chain of the type: human CO2 emissions → increasing concentration of atmospheric CO2; → increasing temperature → changes in hydrological processes and water balance. This is evident in the popular practice of studying the so-called climate change impacts on hydrological processes. However, this is a naïve idea that does not correspond to physical reality.........Arguably, the fact that the CO2; has been so heavily and repeatedly studied, particularly in paleoclimatology studies (e.g., [49,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]), does not suggest that it is more important a greenhouse gas than water. Here we argue that water is the most crucial element determining climate (e.g., [58,59]), or as put by Poyet [60], “Water is the main player”. We list epigrammatically some of the reasons justifying it: (Abundance, heat storage etc.)"
The fact that water is abundant and a heat store and can be influenced by changes in solar energy and that water vapour is the more abundant a greenhouse gas is not contested or new information, and obviously does not in any way undermine the conventional idea that changes in Co2 is causally linked to increased evaporation which can cause further warming. He has conflated things, and enaged in a logical fallacy by deliberate intent or lack of awareness.
He has to be able to explain how his own theory of water would explain climate warming over the last 100 years. He provides no evidence based causal link to expalin a change in water vapour levels in the atmosphere over the period. But Co2 causing warming and evaporation and further warming explains things perfectly well and is consistent with the evidence.
Don't ask me why, how or when on all the details. I don't have the time for more. I'm giving you the essentials as I see them. To me its all fairly obvious. Think about it. I'm just an interested observer and while I enjoy discussions I dont have all day.
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Eclectic at 16:28 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @82
sorry Santalives, my lengthier (slightly humorous) post got cut off at the knees, while I was slowly composing and typing a thoughtful reply to you. So you get a severely shortened version (phew! for you)
I sincerely hope the moderators can prevail upon the site admin to allow a much longer window before time-out occurs. Can we try for a 90 minute slot?
And no, I don't see that I get any extra-special slack from moderators.
The site is actually very civilized.
You should do well, if you follow the posting rules, and avoid excessive repetition, avoid bullshitting, etc. It might be worth you giving that a try.
What is the central argument at WUWT ?
There are several :-
ABCD , also:-
99+% of climate scientist are incompetent . . . or are fabricating data . . . or are just working to milk grant money from the taxpayer's pocket . . . or are in a grand conspiracy to overthrow the American Constitution and create a communist World Government (to be led by Soros; or by International Zionists; or by Xi JinPing; or by those shape-shifting Lizard People; and so on). Also :-
There is no global warming . . . or it is very slight . . . or if it's big, then it's not caused by humans . . . or if it's big and it is caused by humans, then it will be very, very good for us.
I could give you more, Santalives ~ but I think you get the picture.
Gotta rush. Sorry.
Those High-IQ but science-denying elite at WUWT ? Yeah, very interesting . . . analysis will have to wait for a later occasion.
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BaerbelW at 16:22 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Santalives #80
"I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics."
This would be a fake debate because both "sides" are not equal when there is a scientific consensus on a topic. It just paints a very wrong and misleading picture for people watching such a fake debate on what is basically settled science. This is explained in The Consensus Handbook on pages 8 and 9 and in this sketch from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight show which is as true today as when it came out in 2014!
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Santalives at 14:54 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Eclectic @81, yes it is a lot of fun here, but I think the moderator cuts you a lot more slack than me.
I will ask you the same question as nijelj then
. what would you say is the central argument that sites like wuwt believe?
The next question is why? As I said many of these people are clearly not dummies they have Phd, s they are work at university's, doing and publishing research. I doubt many are well funded as being on the other side of the argument would not pay well.
Moderator Response:[DB] Moderation complaints snipped.
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Eclectic at 14:06 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
from Santalives: < ... it is obvious that the temp has increased, that the sea level rises ...> (unquote)
"You see, my dear Santalives, but you do not observe." ~ if I may slightly misquote Sherlock Holmes ;-)
That's right, it is so ~ but the question is: Why has that happened at a time when (per Milankovitch) the temp should be falling and the sea level falling too !
# The job of scientists is not to marvel at these events, but to discover why they happen. And that's exactly what the scientists have done over the past 100 years or so. And sorry, simply waving your hand and saying "ain't so" . . . is laughable . . . is exactly the sort of thing science-deniers do ( er, not that you are one of those denialists, of course. We take you at your word on that ! ) And you still haven't shown the slightest evidence that the scientists are wrong.
Santalives, it sounds like you have the bug ~ no, not the Y2K bug or the Covid bug ~ but the ABCD bug. (That's "Anything But Carbon Dioxide" ~ a typical denialist plaint, where they accept any causation whatsoever, so long as it's ABCD .)
Lots of fun, here, eh !
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Santalives at 14:06 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Nigelj @79, what would you say is the central argument that sites like wuwt believe? I have spent a bit time reading and a lot of the people on there are clearly not dummies but they simply don't accept the settled science.
On prof Koutsoyiannis, to say his assumptions are nonsensical and dismiss the paper out of hand, certainly does nothing for someone like me trying to learn something and I think plays into the hand of deniers who say the other side won't debate. Evan response was an explanation of the consensus not a rebuttal.
As Evan paper is about what we do and how do we convince people to do it. I have always thought rather than just endless debates 2 steps removed on these websites, why not a TV show where the best climate scientist debate against best deniers on these topics. Especially on the settled science. It would be certainly a lot more interesting the current BBC climate programme that seems to have run out content.
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nigelj at 13:05 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santileves @78, I have followed the global warming issue ever since James Hansens speech that we have hard evidence of a human influence on climate in the early 1990s. I was even a bit sceptical at one point in the early days, but lot of time has gone by and tens of thousands of papers have been published. If we were wrong, it would almost certainly have been found by now.
And if we are wrong, we will have built a lot of new energy infrastructure that we will need eventually anyway because fossil fuels are a very finite resource. So being wrong is not a massive problem and will not bankrupt the world economy, not even slightly. Doing nothing could be a massive problem. The worst case scenarios are very bleak and cannot be completely ruled out.
You have been given some references to proper rebuttal of one of the papers you quoted. Several people have posted comments on the paper by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis. It is not necessary to go through his claims line by line when his basic assumptions are nonsensical.
Regarding y2k I agree there was some degree of hype. But using this to cast doubt on climate science is fairly weak. They are very different issues involving different people. And nobody really knew exactly what would happen after year 2000. When theres even a small chance aircraft could fall out of the sky its better to upgrade the computer chip / change the software.
The basics of climate science go back centuries. Svante Arrhenius did detailed calculations in the 1890s on the effect of industrial CO2 on the climate. He predicted a 5 degree warming in total and 1 degree c of warming in the 20th century. He worked essentially alone. He wasn't paid a fortune for this work. He had long been curious about such issues as what caused climate change. Nobody has been able to scientifically rebut his work, and obviously his prediction for the 20th century has been proven reasonably accurate. Successful predictions are good evidence a theory is on the right track.
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Santalives at 12:33 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@nijelj 69. It is obvious that that the temp has increased, that the sea level rises is ongoing and has been for thousands of years. don't know anybody who does not accept that. Except over at Elecroverse who are pushing move to somehwhere warm and learn how to grow vegetables. God help us if they are right. My skeptism is we seem to have put all our chips down on betting on c02 that produced by man is the source of our problem. Whilst I support the study of that,but we should be constantly asking what if we are wrong? As Eclectic wrote @16 I live in hope that someday, some year, WUWT will uncover some killer evidence that the mainstream climate scientists are wrong. I would have thought that would be hope of this site.
Anyway I seem to getting accused of trolling etc. But I was really hoping to see some proper rebuttal for instance the paper by Prof. Demetris Koutsoyiannis Rethinking Climate, Climate Change, and Their Relationship with Water. There has been no rebuttal of his paper other than no this is settled science. His paper is quite specific in its claims and evidence which clearly goes against the settled science. It's a question of if he is wrong where is his paper wrong.
On the Y2K analogy, I never said it was a scam. The Y2K bug was real and we still have come across it from time to time since. My analogy was trying to express the idea how singly focused we all became on something that was a theoretical problem. This focus was initiated by governments but driven by endless money. Even when we found that it was not of concern for some system at all, companies just pushed on spending money to rip out old systems for new technologies under the excuse of Y2K. We dismantled and tested everything from ATM machines to, microwave trammitters. Dragged out 80 year Cobol programmers (for a 6 figure sum for a few months work),Decommissioned more mainframes than I can remember all to prevent a perceived catastrophe.
How serious was the Y2K bug, I would say close to zero, why because this was western government obsession, many counties simply didn't have the money or expertise to do any Y2K remeadation but they did ask the rich countries to pay for it however. Nothing happened, no power grid failures, no planes crashed, banks didnt collaspe anywhere in the world. I know plenty of coders who still think we were saving the world but for me if I am upfront we all went along for the ride because it was easy to scare the people, the politicians, the CEOs to make a lot of money. Seems to be a lot of similarity to AGW.
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Eclectic at 12:04 PM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Evan @72 , please keep up your good work.
And I was not meaning to imply that engaging with a climate troll would bring them to their senses. Trolls are, by their very nature, impervious to sensible thinking.
As you say, it is all about the unseen audience. The troll is partly aware of that too. Yet IMO the troll's greater motivation is to "act out", to vent his anger. Trolls are angry people. They don't all go to WUWT blogsite to vent their anger ~ well, not full time anyway.
But WUWT is an interesting blogsite ~ the visible tip of an iceberg of angry people . . . angry about occult personal issues . . . crackpots whose conceptualizations are ignored by the wider world . . . conspiracy theorists who find a sympathetic echochamber reassures them of their sanity . . . political extremists who are angry about their slipping status in a changing world (and who complain of their gullible "Leftist" children). There is a certain amount of dog-whistling too . . . but to their credit, WUWT moderators & algorithms are very quick to eliminate any frankly racist comments.
WUWT is a sour, angry site, with a touch of bitterness also. Some of their funding is from a lot of general advertising ~ and to generate many clicks, the editors make sure they frequently throw red meat into the cage for their target audience to snarl over.
(Let me see . . . have I myself vented enough, about WUWT ? Hmm.... )
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John Mason at 11:59 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@nigelj #74 - indeed - and do we not see exactly the same patterns emerging over COVID? I find the parallels remarkably similar, if not identical. Yet away from that hard-core of naysayers most of us get that it is a very serious virus - indeed many of us, me included, have witnessed it taking out friends and relatives. Perhaps that's for another discussion beneath another post, though!
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nigelj at 11:49 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
The y2k issue was clearly a problem for certain types of software and industries, however y2k seemed to be over hyped. From National Geographic. "Countries such as Italy, Russia, and South Korea had done little to prepare for Y2K. They had no more technological problems than those countries, like the U.S., that spent millions of dollars to combat the problem."
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nigelj at 11:41 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Eclectic @72
I do agree with all your views on the denialist trolls and how to respond to them. They are indeed quite interesting and entertaining.
Some people say don't respond or engage with the denialists, because it gives them visibility, but I feel that is a grave mistake. We dont know who is reading comments sections and if the denialists nonsense goes unanswered it may gain traction with middle of the road people reading.I tend to respond to denialists largely with those people in mind.
I tend to often keep my responses short and facts based rather than getting into a long debate, to avoid giving them too many opportunities to spam the website. Especially on general news media websites. However sometimes I will get into a longer discussion if it seems useful or interesting, and its unlikely vast numbers of people are reading the posts and they are not the spamming type of troll. I've noticed that rebuttals can actually create some interesting discussion. The people that say never respond to denialists take themselves a bit too seriously.
Imho denialists seem to mostly embrace a lot of deliberate stupidity, mixed together with political and ideological motives, motivated reasoning, cherrypicking, and a tendency to see conspiracies everywhere. However some just appear naturally quite stupid (eg: JDS over at realclimate.org).
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John Mason at 11:27 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Oh well. I was hoping for a more interesting answer than someone blowing the now thickly-accumulated dust off that very old and now generally long-abandoned denialist talking-point regarding the Y2K coding bug!
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Eclectic at 11:23 AM on 21 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Jonas @1 , thank you for the Nature article, indicating the rather transient effect achieved by debunking/fact-checking misinformation. It was perhaps a tad over-pessimistic. It illustrates a sad amount of frailty in the human mind.
Not quite exactly in the same line ~ but advertisers have long been aware of this problem. Which is why they keep repeating their message over and over again . . . hamburger, hamburger, hamburger. It's not just that they are afraid of the rival advertising from their competitor.
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Jonas at 10:26 AM on 21 February 20222022 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #7
Not a climate article but maybe of interest to the misinformation inoculation bubble here at SkS: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01278-3 (I can't judge quality, but since it's in nature ..).
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Evan at 10:00 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
As an example of what happens when Y2K-like problems are not taken care of, there is the "scaleup" of the Ariane 4 to the Ariane 5 and the software bug that brought down the first flight in flames. Y2K was likely not all scam.
Eclectic@70. Thanks for your comments. It helps to see what connects and what does not. I respond to trolls in the event that a fence-sitter is watching. It is also good practice to formulate defenses when challenged. But I am amazed that so many people stuck it out. It's nice to be part of an active, engaged community. :-) Gives you hope for the future, even though the challenges are great.
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scaddenp at 08:56 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
I think there is something in the Y2K analogy. Experts see a problem and make warning. Coders look at code and go "uh-oh". Large no. of $$ fixing the problem and things went well. Also, doom merchants and the uninformed-but-like-publicity getting lots of media hype. There is some of that with AGW but with both, what the experts said is what is worth noticing. (ie, for AGW, read the IPCC reports).
Was Y2K a real problem, well geez, you just needed a programmer to show you production code and see what would happen to it if not fixed. I was also involved with Y2L, fixing for power stations code and consequences of not fixing there were control systems failing.
Like Y2K, we can minimize AGW by taking action in advance. Unlike Y2K, we didnt start soon enough and we are already coping some major downsides.
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Eclectic at 08:51 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Getting back On Topic . . .
Evan , your Lead Article is excellent and perceptive. Yes, there are so many sociological hindrances & constraints ~ far more formidable to overcome, than the technological ones. Yet we progress. But it is like wading through honey. The pious wish of carbon neutrality by 2050 , is only half-achievable (short of a miracle) . . . but is at least a worthy target to be steering towards. In this regard, the world is still due for many cuts and bruises for the remainder of this century.
The forces of stupidity are still strong ~ coming both from the intellectual troglodytes and the elites. ( I had the pleasure of reading a recent public speech by the eminent emeritus Dr William Happer, on climate. Oh me, oh my. As Professor Carlo Cipolla has pointed out, it is the intelligent but irrationally stupid people who do the most damage in this world. )
Speaking of which ~ leads me back to the observation of the trolls who frequently crop up in the threads of SkS. Evan, I hope you will forgive me for engaging with them. The trolls are a fine example of one of the sociological "push backs" you mention.
At the same time, the trolls provide entertainment & amusement in the comments columns. Remarkable, how they seem to enjoy embarrassing themselves in public. IMO it is their unacknowledged anger issues motivating them. And they are like a child who rushes to the top of a tiny hillock, plants his "flag" and proclaims loudly: "I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascals!"
Should a troll be ignored on his hillock? No, of course not. We should patiently point out his errors/stupidities, and point out that his childish "flag" is in reality just a square of dirty toilet paper. And the exercise does serve to re-illuminate some climate information.
Plus, trolls are interesting to observe, in themselves! At first , the reader thinks: could this just be an ill-informed person who is seeking knowledge? But almost immediately, the aroma of troll emerges ~ however skilfully & subtly he tries to conceal it. Interesting to observe the different levels of skill there ~ the troll is like a classic actor wearing a "persona" mask. Interesting, to observe how the mask slips a bit, from time to time. Or the troll churns through goalposts/arguments ~ so interesting, to see how the troll is a chameleon trying to change colors frequently : or wear different colors at the same time !
But eventually the troll gets tired and goes away (sometimes, after several pages). Or disappears when the Moderator hammer comes down (on the most obnoxiously repetitious trolls . . . in their various sockpuppet forms). Yet the trolls do provide amusement.
( Nigelj , my above comments will perhaps interest you more than they interest Evan. )
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nigelj at 05:56 AM on 21 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives claimed he was a sceptic, not a climate denialist. So I asked him what parts of the AGW theory / consensus he accepted. Presumably if hes not a denialist he much accept at least some parts. He didn't answer. I wonder why that would be (sarcasm)
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Eclectic @66. Yes eclectic it can be enjoyable debating with denialists and similar characters, but I get a bit annoyed with them. Like badly behaved children they sometimes need some verbal punishment.
And they do not appear to apply much scepticism to their preferred sources of information, ironically.
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Evan at 23:42 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Mikel@65 Thanks for your thoughts. We are volunteers here at SkS working hard to connect with people like yourself. There are many objectives of this site. Mine is to educate people like yourself about the science and what is happening so that you can make better, informed decisions.
But I learn from the comments that come back. Keep reading this and other climate sites and please continue to share your thoughts in these comment threads. I read them all and often incorporate ideas shared here in future postings.
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MA Rodger at 23:33 PM on 20 February 2022It's albedo
blaist @121
I had the impression the Order of the Day set out @111 was "small bites" but @121 you appear to be serving up a giant five-course meal.You seem to be proposing a driver of AGW with a mechanism initiated by (1) a decrease in surface albedo due to the spread of urban areas leading to (2) a rise in surface temperature which in turn leads to (3) reduced relative humidity which leads to (4) reduced cloud cover which then amplifies the warming due to (5) a reduction in cloud albedo. Do correct me if I have misunderstood your proposed mechanism.
Yet if this suggestion is to hold water, how does it reconcile with the 'Amazonia report' you cite, Costa et al (2007) which (as you describe) "showed that in despite of an increase in albedo from rain forest to crop/pasture, the temperature increased." And this increase in surface albedo with land-use-change is global and has been on-going since 1700 according to your other citation Ghimire et al (2014) whose Fig 2 is pasted below showing a cooling radiative forcing (inset rising albedo).
So if there is an increase in surface albedo, what is it causing the increasing global temperature and thus kicking-off your proposed mechanism, (1) to (5) above? Why would we be experiencing warming if globally surface albedo has been increasing since 1700? -
Evan at 21:42 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives you ask "... is there a problem here?"
Coming out of the last ice-age cycle temperature rose 5C, causing a sea-level rise of 400'. Temperatures have already risen 1.2C and there is enough carbon in the atmosphere, already, to take us to 1.7C. There is over 200' of sea-level rise locked up in the world's ice.
We know that ice melts when it gets warmer and scientists are witnessind destabilization of the big ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
More carbon -> higher temperatures -> more ice melting -> higher sea-level rise -> problem
This is just one of many problems.
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Eclectic at 19:18 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives @62 , since you mention me, I'll give my 2 cents, too.
The Y2K threat, as an analogy? Love it. Very droll of you.
But no real parallel, at all. And so poster John Mason @61 will still be waiting to see if you express your actual emotional motivation for you doubting the laws of physics. Will Newton's famous apple fall downward, or upward? Gosh, what a problem to solve.
Let me stand back and look at the overall problem. You, as an intelligent inquirer about climate . . . you have of course learnt about the 100,000-year Milankovitch cycles of warming/cooling of this planet. So you know that things have been gradually cooling ( around 0.7 degreesC over 4000 years, until about 1850 A.D. ) . . . which would naturally lead to a new "Ice Age" setting in around 16,000 - 20,000 years in the future.
Except now ~ for the past 170-ish years ~ the planet's temperature has reversed direction, is now going upward a at a rapid rate of knots (geologically speaking). The ocean is warming; the sea level is rising; and the planetary ice is melting rather than increasing.
In fact, the surface temperature is about 1.1 degreesC hotter than the mid-1800's (and it's slightly hotter than the plateau peak of the Holocene era, 5-10.000 years ago ~ according to the expert scientists who study past temperatures).
And the temperature is still rising rapidly ~ because physics. You know ~ Newton, Maxwell, Einstein . . . them guys. So the climate scientists of the past 100 years have predicted it would get warmer, and it's very clearly been getting warmer . . . and is continuing to do so. (Sorry Santalives ~ there's no contradictory observations there ~ and the ice and oceans don't lie to us.)
Climate predictions accurate enough for practical purposes? Check! World continuing to get warmer? Check! Scientists understand the reasons causing it? Check!
Sorry Santalives, but you've struck out: Three Times. And your batting average is still zero. Next innings better, perhaps? Seems unlikely, going on track record.
If you want a stretched analogy, Santalives (but not as stretched as your Y2K analogy) . . . then think about that old joke of the guy who fell off the top of the Empire State Building. Yeah, he was an optimist, saying:- 32 floors and okay so far . . . 45 floors and okay so far . . . 62 floors and okay so far . . .
For me, Santalives, I'm not such an optimist as you are. You, as a skeptic (aka science-denier) want to wait for the clear-cut splat onto the pavement. Me, I go with the scientific evidence, and vote for pulling the ripcord on the parachute [yeah, I know, that wasn't in the original joke . . . but you know what I am alluding to] .
In tally : climate predictions ~ Scientists 1 , Santalives 0 .
And real world observations ~ Scientists 1 , Santalives 0 .
Next innings please.
And a pleasure to talk with you, Santalives. Entertaining !
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Mikel at 19:11 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
I thought this is a very good post from Sks but am very disappointed to see the comment thread get hijacked.
i don't have any good suggestions to make. I feel quite conflicted about various measures which can probably be summed up as the need to end the pursuit of perpetual economic growth and consequences from both success and failure to meet that objective.
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BaerbelW at 17:59 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Santalives #62
I was actively involved in fixing issues related to Y2K and know first hand that there was a lot of potential for things to go wrong if they were not fixed ahead of time, simply because a two-digit year of "00" would obviously be earlier than "99" even though "2000" was in fact later than "1999". Nothing much happened on Jan 1, 2000 because a lot of code had been fixed in the years and months earlier. Apparently you lacked that undertanding then as you lack it now regarding human-caused climate change.
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nigelj at 17:25 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives
So your logic is Y2K was over hyped so climate change is over hyped. Experts have been wrong about some things. That doesn't mean they are wrong about everything. The issues between computer chips and climate science are obviously also quite different. You have posted another nonsensical denialist talking point. Are you going to ignore your doctors advice because doctors have not always got things right?
"So it brings us back to the basic question is there a problem here? So far climate predictions have not really what you call acurrate"
Just blatantly false, unsubstantiated statements. Warming predictions have been quite accurate refer here:
www.science.org/content/article/even-50-year-old-climate-models-correctly-predicted-global-warming
www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/02/another-dot-on-the-graphs-part-ii/
Go away and waste someone elses time. You could find this information yourself, troll.
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Santalives at 16:15 PM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@eclectic 60 and John 61. I am not trying to find the piece of evidence that overturns all climate science, but I am interested in the evidence that proves it.
What motivates me is I have seen this before. In 1998 I was a senior exec in a very large IT firm, the Y2K was just gaining traction and the press were ramping up the rethoric. In late 1998, government steps in and tells everyone to have a Y2K plan, undertake remediation. At this point we actually hadn't proven a problem. I was in charge of 100,s of people spending millions $ a week chasing the Y2K bug. Nobody stopped to ask is there a real problem, we were all making serious money no questions asked. I actually did believe in it for a while, that planes would fall out of the sky, power grids and water supply would collapse and we had to save civilisation as we new it. To cut this short after spending tens of millions $, I realised that the Y2K bug was real, but would have zero impact on anything. In short the reason was date fields in particular YY had zero impact on the code running critical systems. I resigned my job in Oct 99 and I realised we were all a bunch a sheep going along with a consensus and to be honest the money was the thing that kept it all going. I never saw so many 20,year old IT guys buying sports cars at any time in my career.
So it brings us back to the basic question is there a problem here? So far climate predictions have not really what you call acurrate and real, world observations contradictory.
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John Mason at 11:51 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
I guess the thing that interests me, @Santalives, is the motivation. I've read all of your posts in this thread and I'm simply left with that one question: what motivates you here? Genuinely. Like a drowning man in a flooding river you grasp at bits of driftwood bobbing by, when the best advice all along was to stay away from the water because there was a flood coming.
I've also seen a lot of this type of reasoning with regard to COVID 19. Remarkably so, in fact. Is this the bargaining stage of grief? -
Eclectic at 11:49 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives , perhaps I can give you some helpful hints :
If you wish to discover some major flaw in the conventional climate science ~ something which will overthrow the consensus ~ then you will really need to sit down and put on your Thinking Cap.
Since no-one yet has managed to discover any major error in today's climate science, then obviously it will need you to achieve a huge stroke of inspired genius. You will need to think outside the box. Some thunderbolt of deep insightful & groundbreaking discovery about physics will be necessary. Just like Einstein had, when riding that tram in Vienna.
Achieve that, Santalives , and fame and fortune will fall into your lap. The Nobel Committee will award you a small fortune of cash, and the world's fossil fuel companies will give you much bigger bucketloads of money. Very nice !
Yes, it is a bit daunting that for the past 125 years or so, no-one at all has achieved what you are looking for. But that is why you need to make a completely novel approach to such a quest.
Needless to say, you would be wasting your time in searching through the old, established scientific papers . . . or searching through WattsUpWithThat and all the other denialist/contrarian blogs & videos. They have never found anything ~ otherwise, they would already have received all those awards I mentioned. No, you need a fresh start, entirely based on your own stroke of genius.
(btw, if you are successful, then please consider a small ex-gratia payment to me.)
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Evan at 11:35 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalive@57, one of your comments, originally numbered 52, disappeared. I wrote my response (#54), but by the time I posted it responding to your #52 comment, your's was gone. I don't think you did anything wrong, but somehow one of your comments disappeared.
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Eclectic at 10:12 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives, the good Prof. Kilty and some others, have pointed out flaws with the containment and sensor readings situation, plus some heavy hints about why the experiment ~ even if redesigned ~ would be a waste of time.
Speaking of which . . . did you want to try Ball Three ?
Something, anything at all, which disproves the consensus climate science? For years I have been hoping there might be such disproof. Never found any. But perhaps you are the Einstein genius who can discover it? Best of luck with your search !
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Santalives at 10:11 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@Evan 55... What's with vanishing coments?
Moderator Response:[DB] This is a moderated forum. You have made a number of comments here constructed in violation of this site's Comments Policy, which applies equally to all. As a newcomer, latitude was given and allowances were made, but that grace period is over. A comment was removed because the bulk of it was unfounded assertions with no factual backing that amounted to PRATT (points refuted a thousand times), violations falling under the prohibition against sloganeering. A continuance of this behavior will see further enforcement of the commenting guidelines listed in the Comments Policy (a prescription for quality conversations that the vast majority of participants at this venue have do difficulties adhering to).
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Santalives at 09:55 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@nigelj @51. Yes have read the critique and all 130 comments, it's good but for all the faults in the experiment it does not explain how for all 3 gases you get basically the same temperature profile? That's strange. Second why simply not point to an experiment showing the expected results.
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Evan at 09:48 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Yes, my response was also to a now vanished response.
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Evan at 09:46 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
We're running that experiment right now. Is it your suggestion that we continue with this global experiment until the atmospheric CO2 concentration recahes 560 ppm so that we can verify what the climate sensitivity is? Of course, if the world leaders listen to your suggestion, we will then be stuck with 560 ppm CO2, because it ain't easy to remove once it's in the atmosphere.
I vote we rely on the well-developed physics and skip your suggested atmospheric experiment.
By the way, filling a container with air and CO2 is not the same as filling the atmosphere with air and CO2. There are a few differences.
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Eclectic at 09:46 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Oops, sorry Nigelj , it appears that Santalives's reply (@52) has vanished.
But he wasn't really replying to you ~ just raising more rubbish.
Moderator Response:[DB] The missing comment in question was removed because the bulk of it consisted of PRATT (points refuted thousands of times).
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Eclectic at 09:39 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Yes, Nigelj @51 , the good Professor Kevin Kilty's review of Santalives's paper (the paper by Seim & Olsen) was quite damning of the thing. Kilty was being polite, but in essence he said that the Seim & Olsen's paper was crap. Rubbish. Junk science.
It is somewhat amusing that Santalives picked such a piece of rubbish, in trying to show that all the world's scientists were wrong about climate. Perhaps Santalives can be forgiven, since he seems (or pretends) to be so clueless about science and the Greenhouse Effect.
But it is sadly beyond amusing, that those academics Seim and Olsen are themselves so clueless about Greenhouse, that they designed an experiment that was completely useless from the very start.
As you say, Nigelj , even the WUWT mob were blowing raspberries at the paper. Well, half of them were. The other half were so desperate to find anything, however much of a crappy Fail, which they could close their eyes about and pretend was somehow part of the "debate".
But there is a minor mystery ~ who is feeding all this rubbish to Santalives? And why does Santalives (@52) think that anybody could do total atmosphere experimentation in a plastic bag full of CO2 ? (Ah, this is a distinctly amusiing thread ! )
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nigelj at 07:48 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
For information. "Review of Seim and Olsen paper: “The influence of IR Absorption and Backscatter Radiation from CO2…”
wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/18/review-of-seim-and-olsen-paper/
Comprehensively debunked on WUWT. If those guys are debunking the paper it must be incredibly bad! Not sure why Santilves couldn't find this review because it only took me a few seconds. I wonder if he will argue with the review, or move on and just go onto dumping more junk science onto this website?
I think hes a hard core denialist like I originally stated. He mostly doesnt address specific points people raise. He uses all the usual denialist arguments one after the other. Perhaps he could tell us in unequivocal language what aspects of the AGW issue he accepts? What would change his mind? But no, we will probably just get another flood of denialism.
Time to disengage with him. He has all the factual information he needs. People here have done their bit. If he wont accept it that is his problem.
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blaisct at 07:28 AM on 20 February 2022It's albedo
MA Rodger @112
Before I answer your question on whether there is something other than AGW causing global warming. Let me clarify that I am not a skeptic on Anthropical Global Warming, AGW, I firmly believe that man’s activities are causing AGW. The paper Dubal & Vahrenholt expressed doubt that the 20 years of CERES data showed significant evidence of GHG caused AGW and that clouds were the significant factor. How is cloud cover related to AGW? The Skeptical web site seems to be committed to evaluating theories. Here is the answer to your question:
The data I have looked at (below) suggest that AGW is not cause by one thing but a series of interactive events starting with land albedo and ending with ocean/land albedo and relative humidity (not specific humidity) in the middle. You will see (below) that this cycle of events is a known cycle in weather and that man’s activities have interfered with the cycle to cause AGW. For lack of a better name, I will call the cycle of events the “Low Humidity Albedo Cycle”, LHAC. The LHAC cycle back in the 1700-1800 (with low man-made albedo change) was:
Event 1: Over land on sunny days the temperature rises and the relative humidity, RH, drops through the day no matter what the albedo of the land is. How much the RH drops depends on availability of water from liquid water evaporation or plant transpiration. If no water is added to this daily event the specific humidity, SH, will remain constant while the RH drops. With water available the RH does not drop as much and the SH increase. The energy fueling this event (sunny days) depends on the albedo and latitude of the land, the lower the albedo and the closer to the equator the stronger this event. Clouds greatly dampen this event.
Event 2: The air above this land is hot and dryer and it rises all day long, creating a plume of rising hot low humidity air. That plume of air moves with the prevailing winds usually to the east in a circling pattern due to the Corellas effect.
Event 3: This hot low RH air is hungry for water. If this air finds clouds it eats away at them until the air is saturated with water, this process cools the air and raises the SH and RH. If this hot low RH air does not find a cloud it can cool as the pressure drops at the higher altitudes or it can serve as a deterrent to cloud formation. In all cases it reaches saturation.
Event 4: With fewer clouds more sun can reach the earth and warm the land and oceans, this is the final albedo decrease event. This last albedo event is the strongest because the change in albedo in the greatest with no clouds in the way of direct sun light. The warmer oceans store some of this energy and evaporate more water - find cold air and make more clouds.
This natural LHAC cycle of event will remain stable if the albedo and moisture availability remain constant. Let’s take each event and look at its contribution to the total AGW since 1880:
Event 1: Since 1700-1880 man has made some small changes in land use albedo but a large change in the land area. Most of these albedo changes came along with a decrease in moisture availability. UHI’s are most noted, with albedo changes between 0 and 0.2 depending on what the city replaced. I don’t have a source for the average, I will assume 0.05 average albedo change. The urban area has increased to about 3% of the earth’s land mass for all cities. I have no trouble doubling that to 6% for all man-made structures, rural + urban, they all have lower albedos and generate heat. Go to any city at Climate data and you can find the daytime data for temperature vs RH, in the morning the RH is high and as the day progress the temperature rises and the RH drops sometimes to 40% RH or lower, this is a normal psychometric thermodynamic process. Figure 1 is an example of daily RH from Beijing and is typical of most cities (just focus on the day time).
Figure 1
The change in albedo flux of all the earth’s cities is estimated at 0.08W/m^2 (assuming 177W/m^2 sun to the city, 50% cloud cover, 0.05 albedo change, 3% of land mass cities). Even if we make larger assumptions, we still can’t get to the 2.2W/m^2 we are looking for to account for all the AGW since 1880 or the 1.3 W/m^2 in Dubal & Vahrenholt . These cities can have daily temperature rise of up to 8’C. A large part of this temperature rise is due to the psychometric rise, PR, in temperature while the RH drops at a constant energy input (albedo). Looking at temperature anomalies, SH, and RH all plotted together vs time, Figure 2, we see they are all correlated (Temp and SH positively, and Temp and RH negatively).
Figure 2
If PR were not occurring on a global basis the RH and SH would both have a positive slope. Using the psychometric chart in @106 we can get the average temperature rise per % RH of -0.15 ‘C/%RH. The slope of the RH data in (2) is 0.16%RH/decade, for the 40 years of the chart this is 0.6% change in RH, giving a PR temp rise of 0.1’C for the 40 years vs the 0.7’C observed, small but not insignificant. This hot low RH air has no W/m^2 flux as it leaves the UHI; but, the hot low RH air has potential energy gain in getting saturated with water. Let’s add the crop/pasture land albedo changes to the UHI's. Globally the change since 1880 from virgin land to crop/pasture was about 6% with little change in albedo (Global albedo change); but, with low moisture change. The most notable of these changes was the deforestation of the Amazonian rain forest to make crop and pasture land Amazonia report (and @106). Amazonia report showed that in despite of an increase in albedo from rain forest to crop/pasture the temperature increased, the RH deceased, the cloud cover decreased, and the rain decreased. Classic example of psychometric temperature and RH behavior. Most likely all of this global 6% increase in crop/pasture land is producing hot low RH air just like the UHI’s. Combining the UHI and crop/pasture land changes we get 9% of the earth’s land mass producing more hot low RH air than 1880.
Event 2: This hot low relative humidity air rises and goes downwind from the UHI or changed crop/pasture land. The picture from (6) shows the extent of the UHI plume from Chicago, Il.
Figure 3
This is a computer model tuned with real data and calculates the extent of the plume to be 2 to 4 time the area of the UHI. The model also predicts the shape of the plume, rising to where some clouds could be. Using 3 times as the average extent of the plume we now get 27% of the land mass (7.8% of the earth) being affected by plumes like the one in Figure 3.
Event 3: Cloud destruction/prevention is the closest target for the hot low RH plume; but, if clouds are not available the lower pressure will saturate it or it will mix with cooler air. When this plume of hot low RH air increases its RH to 80% it is no longer is a threat to clouds or cloud prevention. Clouds and RH observations are that almost no clouds can form below 60% RH and significant reductions will occur below 80% RH.
Figure 4
Data shown in the figure 4 shows a 41%/decade decrease in clouds over 40 years. Dubal & Vahrenholt Figure 9 show about 0.57%/decade decrease, this data can be correlated to Figure 2 RH data and get 2.7% change in cloudiness/change in RH (R^2 =0.63). Not the best correlation but shows there is a relationship.
Event 4: The reduce cloud cover exposes more land and ocean to the sun. This land and ocean are located in the middle 75% of the earth where the cloud cover is about 50% vs about 60% for the whole earth, also assuming albedo of clouds is 50%. The sun’s flux to this exposed area is the cloud free flux of 342 W/m^2 (1367/4). Dubal & Vahrenholt suggest this energy is split 85% over ocean (0.05 albedo) and remainder over land (0.15 albedo). Using 40%/decade cloud cover for 2 decades of CERES data we get -1.6W/m^2 change in incoming SW [ 342W/m^2*0.8% cloud cover change*(85% *(1-0.05)+(1-80%)*(1-0.15))]. A little greater than the -1.3 W/m^2 observed; but close enough to show that the LHAC theory is plausible. -
Evan at 07:11 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
In the 1850's John Tyndall showed that CO2 in the presence of infrared radiation causes heating.
In the 1890's Svante Arrhenius calculated how much the Earth would warm if we doubled CO2 concentrations.
The value that Arrhenius got using pencil and paper is within the range estimated by current scientists.
This is very, very old science. Well known, well established, the kind of science that is taught in college classes and no longer debated by professional climate scientists.
What is debated, if you want to debate something, is how much warming we can expect for a doubling of CO2.
But the debate about whether CO2 causes warming ended a long time ago.
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Santalives at 06:38 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
@48. So far no one has answered the question, "where is the heating? ". Surely someone by now has done a controlled experiment to show that Co2 can cause warming.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:54 AM on 20 February 2022SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?
Santalives appears to be providing an example of what I comment on @23.
They appear to be powerfully motivated to resist learning. They resist developing the constantly improving common sense understanding of climate science, the consensus understanding. They appear to be motivated to prolong harmful misunderstanding, likely because they fear having to give up developed harmful actions that they benefit from.
Tragically, people like Santalives also behave that way regarding other helpful learning and corrections required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. And people who resist unlearning harmful misunderstandings can be seen to collectively gather, and excuse or adopt each others harmful misunderstanding, in attempts to harmfully compromise leadersip action that seeks or relies on popularity or profit.
