What About the Sun & Max Planck & Nature?
Posted by jennifer, March 30th, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
David posted the following comment this morning at this blog:
“We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade), and that this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process and is occuring about 10 times faster than the sustained warming at the end of the last ice age.”
And it reminded me of this press release from the Max Planck Institute which is only a couple of years old now.
Titled ‘The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years’ it includes comment that:
“An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades
The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal Nature from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.
I was also reminded of this Max Planck media release when I read page 3 of The Australian on 27th March and a piece titled ‘Beachgoers back latest theory on brighter sun’. This story quotes a Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.
Thanks for those numbers Louis. I said that I hoped that my suspicions about the reason for the differences between the periods of comparison of temperature increases in various parts of the TAR were unfounded, and my reaading of these figures is that my suspicions were indeed unfounded.
Accepting that the following numbers involve spurious precision, the indicated total trend increase in temperature over 3.5 decades from 1970 to 2005 comes to .061 C, while the total trend increase over 5.5 decades from 1950 to 2005 is only marginally lower than this at .054 C. The indicative totals for the period up to 2000 would have been less, but this would not affect the comparison.
I think that it would have been better if the Report had included a table showing the trend changes over the different periods of comparison used in the text in the discussion of detection and attribution, as in your table above. But I withdraw the suggestion (which I always made clear would need to be checked against the data) that the periods of comparison may have been switched in order to enable a stronger-sounding statement to be made.
Ian Castles keeps ranting till he gets what he wants. Castles world ! Thanks for wasting our time until your next whim. But Ian given your critical faculty – why would you accept Louis’s calculations ? You really need to check yourself. You are actually prepared to check Hissink as a source but reject the IPCC on so many matters ? Have you had a personal review of Louis’s own blog. So much shouting for numbers and Castles accepts the first cab off the rank. So much for high and mighty positions about science quality.
Meanwhile the thread was about solar forcing.
Ian,
Thanks for your comments.
There is nothing really controversial with the temperature trends but as Douglas Hoyt has shown on Warwick’s blog, (and which I copied on mine a few weeks ago) the surface temperature data are extremely problematical. The warming shown here which David referred to, is more likely a computational artefact than anything else (p 18 http://www.aig.asn.au/pdf/AIGNews_Mar06.pdf) as well as an artefact from the closing of the rural stations worldwide.
As Douglas pointed out, “So what we have is 5 independent techniques showing a cooling for 1979 and 1995 and one technique (surface thermometers) showing a warming. In normal science, the single outlier is rejected because it differs from the other techniques by more than two standard deviations.” (http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=38#comment-504).
Personally I would not use the surface data sets for this reason apart from the issue that the aggregation of the data into cells is theoretically wrong, plus all the other errors and assumptions for that aggregation.
One final comment needs to be made – all the graphs in the reports use temperature anomaly representations, essentially an arbitrarily chose climate period, (1961 to 1990) as the base mean from which the yearly means are subtracted etc.
The variation in the anomalies is in the range +/- 0.5 degrees Celsius, which is also the precision limit of the devices used to measure temperature. Hence one is led to the controversial conclusion that the mean global temperature, as measured, has not changed over the measuring period and that the computed trends are actually trends fitted to truncated data sets, which always have a trend.
I don’t think this fact is well understood. It is essentially chartmanship to enhance miniscule variations in a variable. I still wonder why anomalies are the preferred means of graphical representation when the global mean should be the correct variable for display.
As for confusion with what you mentioned above, yes, I did get confused especially as one also has two Phils to consider. That resulted in some head scratching, and wondering where I got one interpretation from another.
I might see if I can get CO2 data for the same periods I listed above as well as station number data.
Personally I don’t think the report purposively manipulated the representation of the data you initially suspected, but by not understanding the science, principally because many scientists are extremely poor communicators, policy makers probably got the wrong impressions and this formed the wrong conclusions.
I personally suspect the whole Kyoto thing is a well intentioned monumental foulup. But like a supertanker, once you realise the vessel is steaming in the wrong direction and headed for shallow shoals, it takes abit of time to change course. I think the changes occurring now with PM Blair’s change in attitude to emission goals is an example of this realisation of reality.
Crucially science has not identified all the heat (energy) sources affecting the earth. Atmospheric electricty, whether as short circuits from overload conditions, to electric currents in the air are totally ignored in any GCM’s. One reason these heat sources are not contemplated is because we don’t have any physical senses to percieve them (electric currents) so as far as we are concerned, they don’t exist.
OK, sorry Phil. If Louis figures aren’t right we’re back to tors and I’ll await David’s answer to the simple question I first asked him last Thursday afternoon: ‘David, are you able to say what the net ‘observed warming’ was over the entire 50-year period from 1950 to 2000?’
If you know the answer, Phil, why didn’t you tell us? Instead, you told me that I know the answer, which I don’t. I haven’t rejected the IPCC’s findings. I just want to know what they are.
David said that it would be helpful to the discussion if Louis were to post these figures. I don’t know why David thought that they’d be helpful if we weren’t meant to take any notice of them.
David,
You have made a rather intersting non sequitor in your post above.
I assume my sentence (or paragraph as you call it) “Hence the trend so computed is that produced by fitting a trend to truncated data, and is spurious.”
Is the source of your comment “You then go on to compare individual observations to a trend in the average of thousands of observations. This is statistical nonsense. Go away and google the central limit theorem.”
No other interpretation of your post is possible.
Phil
You were surprisingly rude in your last comment. You can be as persistent as the next commentator at this blog – Ian is at least mostly polite with his persistence.
And Louis provided some numbers and a source. Unless they are incorrect, I don’t understand why you also need to attack Louis in this instance.
Louis – “There is nothing really controversial with the temperature trends but as Douglas Hoyt has shown on Warwick’s blog”
Douglas can show it on Warwick’s blog however when he tried it with real climate scientists on Real Climate he got shot down in flames. I tied him up because he cannot show that air temperature can be transferred to water in the oceans. The 5 independant things are cherry-picked to show what his conclusion is. It is short absolute rubbish. He used dodgy sources where better sources do show warming.
The 0.6 degrees of observed warming is well within the experimental error of the instruments. For gods sake do you think that the scientists involved would publish data and would not know the error of their instruments?
The problem is that if you want to believe that there is no AGW then you can find the evidence to support it if you ignore enough times and periods.
If you want to make heaps of money you can find people to say that there is too much doubt for action. Funnily enough 2 of the major players in the anti AGW case were also prominant in the case against the health problems of smoking. Anyone here want to argue for the benefits of cigarette smoke?
If you doubt AGW then of course there is doubt in the ice cores and oxygen isotopes. In short we do not know what is going to happen.
There is one huge fundamental difference between the AGW case and the contrarian case. The AGW proponents are doing active research, active modelling, and active measurement to try an alert the world to what they believe is a massive problem.
The contrarian case constists in its entirety with the negative, data cherry-picking and casting doubt on research. This activity, which is a order of magnitude easier to get over, is not contributing to the knowledge base of climate science in any way shape or form. Try to think of one prominent contrarian that is engaged in active research in the scientific community and is publishing papers with NEW findings.
Funnily enough all the new information taken as a whole is supportive of the AGW hypothesis. Evidence such as melting glaciers, reduction of sea ice in the arctic, reports of permafrost melting, sea surface temperature rises, Antartic temperature rises, increases in tropical revolving storm mean intensity, rises in sea levels, slowing of the Atlantic Themocline and finally the measured rise global average temperatures.
You can cast doubt and pick at any one of these individually however taken as a whole paints a quite bad picture of future climate. In fact most contrarian arguments are focussing on one without mentioning the others. So lets take the broader view. look at and see what the planet is telling us.
“The AGW proponents are doing active research, active modelling, and active measurement to try an alert the world to what they believe is a massive problem.”
Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.
This is not science.
Louis – “Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.”
And anti-AGWs also believe – this is also not science!!!!
fosbob, your post of March 31, 6.30pm seems to have been ignored in the crossfire. I am interested to find out more about the Dickman Cross. The only reference on my MSN search was this thread and another one you posted to on the egregious John Quiggin’s blog.
Could you post up some more info or a link?
Thanks.
Ender,
Wrong again – we simply reject your AGW belief which is quite different to starting with our own belief “There is no AGW”.
Most of us don’t even think about it (Non AGW) but when the zealous buttonhole us shrieking the end is nigh then we reject it when the evidence contradicts it, as it does.
Every Sunday morning I go out in the sun and meet some crowds browsing markets after church. Today I asked a simple question of a few who had the time to stop and consider our coldest dawn in months, is this place warmer than usual? as we climbed above 2C.
It was not by chance as I overheard numerous folk on previous mornings discussing how undressed they were for the past month. Now you can guess what their answer was today or try the same experiment on your average fellow in the street.
But based on the above I reckon Louis who puts up “Here is the problem – AGW’ers BELEIEVE it.-This is not science” is at best a FW in good old fashioned aussie slang.
Louis – ‘we simply reject your AGW belief”
So you believe there is not such thing as AGW?
Sounds like a belief system to me.
Ender,
People are not warming the planet up by burning coal and oil.
If you think this is a belief, then there is nothing I can do to stop you thinking that.
It was pretty cold in NSW last night with sub zero temps on the higher country – just ask any farmer.
Anyway the horses now have their winter coats, 1st March every year.
Louis – so you believe that humans are not warming the planet with anthropogenic greenhouse gases? And this is not what I think – all people have a belief system.
No Ender,
Warming the planet, all 6E24 Kilograms of it.
Riiight. OK if you insist.
Er, rog; we passed April fools day
>OK, sorry Phil. If Louis figures aren’t right we’re back to tors and I’ll await David’s answer to the simple question I first asked him last Thursday afternoon: ‘David, are you able to say what the net ‘observed warming’ was over the entire 50-year period from 1950 to 2000?’
Ian, I cannot get my hands on the data as I am out of the office and away from home. Louis analyses look in the ball park of what I would have expected. This is also partly why I haven’t responded to some of the queries… though others I simply ignore as they have been answered numerous times already on this blog on in personal emails.
Of course, we all know that trends are sensitive to start/end dates, and it is for this reason that the IPCC reports emphasis changes in temperature over periods and use time series rather than simple trend values. Still, it is telling that the most dramatic warming has occured in association with the strongest anthropogenic enhancement of the greenhouse effect, while volcanism has increased, and the sun’s radiative output shows no secular change during this time.
BTW Louis, do you believe in the Greenhouse Effect? If so, what makes you think it can’t get stronger?
David
David,
I accept the greenhouse effect insofar that it is a physical phase phenomenon of a different phase (H2O)as clouds trapping escaping heat from the earth’s surface. That is, the greenhouse effect is that of a physical obstacle to the radiation leaving the earth. Clouds are essentially suspended water (a liquid phase) which can trap heat.
The problem with the gas AGW greenhouse effect, that forming the basis of the present theory, is that no gas can, in thermal inequilibrium, store or trap heat.
A sealed glass vessel containing carbonated water will show an icreased rise in temperature compared to a similar sealed vessel containing soley water when subject to the same heat source. The common factor is the glass container which stops the energy (heat) from escaping, hence the “Greenhouse” effect. This fact is not denied. All this experiment demonstrates is the different specific heat capacity of CO2, not a greenhouse effect.
However the earth has no glass shell trapping heat but the closest thing to this are clouds.
Mars has an atmosphere of 95% CO2 which and according to the prevailing Greenhouse theory, should have an enhanced runaway Greenhouse effect; it doesn’t. But as Mars lacks water in its atmosphere, it cannot have a greenhouse effect.
Venus is assumed to be an example of the runaway Greenhouse effect but that explanation was never based on experimental data but on Carl Sagans’ need to counter Velikovksy’s heresy of a youthful Venus. I ignore Venus here because of its continued scientific controversy.
I don’t think it can get stronger because the earth with a CO2 atmosphere composition of 0.04% CO2 is warmer than Mars with one of 95% CO2.
David,
as Poirot would have averred, “the facts are inescapaple, non”
>The problem with the gas AGW greenhouse effect, that forming the basis of the present theory, is that no gas can, in thermal inequilibrium, store or trap heat.
This is, well, absurb. Heat makes no sense at the molecule level. It is a statistical property of a volume of gas – in essence a measure of its kinetic energy. The absorption of a photon by a CO2 molecule through the excitation of one of its vibrational modes raises the kinetic energy of the molecule by the same amount. Average across a volume of gas and you get a greater average kinetic energy which equalls a greater average temperature.
>I don’t think it can get stronger because the earth with a CO2 atmosphere composition of 0.04% CO2 is warmer than Mars with one of 95% CO2.
There is one simple test for this. Look at the outgoing longwave radiation spectrum. If the CO2 greenhouse effect has reached saturation there will be no measurable emission to space in its absorption bands. Of course, we all know that the CO2 bands are far from saturated. We also know that the bands are closing a rate which matches that predicted from radiation models (see the Harries paper I have previously referenced).
These issues are elementary physics which has been established for many centuries. What progress can be made on this website when even the very most basic physical properties of a gas are rejected? Who are we kidding that the scepticism being displayed is based on objective science?
David
Thanks David for your excellent posts. It’s good to read a pragmatic voice of reason and professionalism.
David – “What progress can be made on this website when even the very most basic physical properties of a gas are rejected? Who are we kidding that the scepticism being displayed is based on objective science?”
I and others have pointed out these things to Louis almost continuously for 2 years. I have now given up. There is progress however, he no longer uses the atmosphere is not made of glass so therefore it is not a greenhouse argument.
Three cheers to Ender for trying hey
Thats OK bugger, I’m sure we can make an exception for you.
David,
There is no such thing as a statistical property of a gas.
And now for a game of silly buggers!
David,
Look instead at the simple measurments of the temperature of Mars and Earth.
Oh boring. Louis has gone to ground. David got inside his cognitive perimeter and Louis panicked. Probably having a Bex and a good lie down. (Yes that was Bex Joe !).
What would be fun though is for Louis to do a guest post on “Part 1: Why CO2 isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be”, followed by Part 2: “Why anyone supporting AGW is greenie commie scum”.
>Look instead at the simple measurments of the temperature of Mars and Earth.
What about Venus and Earth – one with a very strong greenhouse effect the other with a modest one. Of course, such comparisons are simply silly, and hardly the basis for rejecting 100 years of science.
Of course, the temperature of a planet’s surface depends on the solar constant, the radiation, the planetary albedo, the atmospheric constitutes, etc etc. Prehaps, Louis, you might provide us with a reference which shows the temperature of Mars is inconsistent with the exsistence of a greenhouse effect.
David
David,
Waiting for your explanation for your comment “the statistical property of a gas”.
Louis waiting for your explanatory guest posts as requested by Phil.
Of course we could rename Part A – Moments in a dipoles life.
>Waiting for your explanation for your comment “the statistical property of a gas”.
Until you write your book or paper overturning statistical thermodynamics a response is impossible (this will be worth a Nobel prize, no doubt).
David
Gee you wouldn’t think Louis would be out of ammo this quick.
I went back on my blog to find all the unanswered questions from Louis:
1. The question is “If there was no greenhouse effect the Earth would not be about 33 degrees warmer than if it did not have an atmosphere. Explain how this warming occurs without the action of the greenhouse effect”
2. Biomarkers in oil
3. Measurements of heat flowing from the ground as Louis suggested that the present atmospheric warming was from heat from the ground.
Any answers yet?
I have also caught him saying this:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=25
“# Louis Hissink Says:
January 12th, 2006 at 12:40 am
Ender
I have never ever said the Greenhouse effect was not real. I know precisely what a greenhouse effect is.
So what Mars is further away than earth, and has a thin atmosphere that fact does not alter one whit the fact that CO2 does not trap heat. As I linked on my blog, Nasa thinks Mars has no CO2 in its atmosphere and thinking of melting the Martian Ice caps to generate CO2. But Mars already has a 95% CO2 atmosphere. So why pray tell is CO2 unable to trap the heat it gets from the sun, minimal as that is at that distance?”
Actually if you have a look at this thread David you can see Phil and I have been trying this line for a while.
Yeah Ender I seem to recall that David was present during the earlier discussions when Louis turned feral and went from insistent accusations of blind faith to socialists and genocidal maniacs. Since then Louis has learnt to retreat and keep his own wacky ideas mostly limited to his own fascist blog (unilateral communication, no comments or alternating opinions allowed) – this is safest for everyone, particularly innocent readers.
If he does do some explanatory guest posts, I’m also keen to know where we can expect to find all that abiotic oil.
“Fascist blog?”
Quick someone, brown paper bag time, stinky is hyperventilating again
So obviously ROg supports Louis’s blog .. .. hmmmm