“Who has noticed that the period 2014-2015 keeps on turning up in the debate on greenhouse science?
“That is when greenhouse proponents say the long-delayed global warming apocalypse will start happening. In addition, that general date has turned up in forecasts made by an arch sceptic, and two researchers in the US have forecast that sunspot activity will cease entirely by 2014…”
Mark Lawson, a journalist with the Australian Financial Review, discusses the significance of the year 2015 to both ‘warmaholics’ and ‘skeptics’ in a piece published today in On Line Opinion entitled ‘Activity is Quiet on the Sunspot Front’, read more here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The current phase is not different to the historical, measured record of AGW. It warms and warms, then it cools, then it warms and warms, then it cools. The net effect is it gets warmer. That’s the historical record. That’s what’s going to keep happening, till the limits to the current forcings are reached.
Now it’s only going to start warming in 2014…geez and in the mean time Co2 just keeps on increasing! I smell a rat!!
SJT, you’re assuming that at the beginning of the temperature record the climate was more or less at equilibrium and hence we’re sure of all the relative forcings. Bullocks.
It’s gonna start warming again, really it will, just as soon as the next ice-age is finished!
ROFLMAO!!
“Now it’s only going to start warming in 2014..”
It’s already been warming.
Hasn’t warmed since 1998..
So by 2014, it would have been 16 years with no warming and yet Co2 increasing like mad.
The earth has a temperature y’all!!!
ROFLMAO!!
But SJT if it was warmer when >>Philipona et al 2005 with Sensitivity values [Philipona et al., 2004] of 0.56 and 1.73 W m2 at 500 respectively 3000 meters a.s.l., for a 0.1 g m3 change of absolute humidity at the surface (gradual decrease assumed in the first 4 km), allow to subtract the water vapor forcing from LDRcf,Ts, and hence isolate the part that is just due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases.<<
Doesn’t this mean that they derived a sensitivity factor that is biased high? That if Keenlyside of the Leibnitz Institute of Marine Science is correct that this means ALL the derived IPCC sensitivities have to be redone because it was assumed that the Temperature was in thermal equilibrium, such that they could use temperature rather than a real energy/mass balance. IN fact since they used the time period starting in 1950 when temperatures started, if this cooling trend goes on for years, it can be shown that the IPCC sensitivities are biased high. Of course, instead of being 2.5 +-1.5C for doubling, maybe we will get a 1.5+-.25C, such that more reasonable designs can be attempted rather than a +-60% design.
Al Gore watches the inconvenient news.
This is my favourite youtube video, a must see!
ROFLMAO!!
SJT says “It warms and warms and then cools; the net effect is it gets warmer..to the extent of the forcings.”
The temperature response from forcing as a result of enhanced greenhouse is, and this has a certain fluidity, about 3.5-5.5C increase for a doubling of CO2; CO2 has gone up from 280ppm (ho, ho ho, but we’ll leave that) to about 390 (give or take 30-40ppm regional and hemispherical variation); let’s say 40%; on the temperature effect this should have resulted in a temperature increase since 1900 of about 1.4-2.2C; even the hopelessly compromised GISS gives an increase of .7C; this can be accounted by solar (estimated by IPCC at about .3-.5 over the century) and PDO equivalents, let’s just say oceanic and cynoabacterial effects. Now lucia has this to say about temperature over the last decade;
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-central-tendency-of-2ccentury-still-rejected/
Let’s say over the last 8 years of the 21stC temperature has gone down .25C; so for an increase of CO2 of 40%, we’ve gone down temperature-wise .25C; to make up the predicted forcing for a doubling the range of increase in temperature is now 3.5/10 x 6 =5.83 ( +.25) = 6.08 to 5.5/10 x 6= 9.16 (+.25) =9.42; 6.08-9.42C for the next 60% increase in CO2; that’s an increase over the IPCC best guess for enhanced greenhouse of about 60%; how scientific.
Yes, Lucia pointed out that as each month goes and the temperature doesn’t increase, it means that when the warming does, for it to catch up, the rate of increase must by definition get larger, just to meet the .2C/decade.
Highest to lowest.
They claimed scientific consensus and took the pay.
All leaders of scientific enterprise in the so called free world.
They chose pay when a high school kid could see bullshit.
Ever their choice.
Dear all: I append my exchanges with Barry Brook as abused and truncated by him over at his http://bravenewclimate.com blog. Why do true believers find it necessary to do so much censoring?
After I pointed out that the ineffable Glickson is 4 years out of date with sunspots, Barry responded with: “Tim, I can alleviate your stress about the failing sun and a resulting ice age should this lock in. Should the sun remain bottomed out at the current solar minimum, Maunder or Dalton like, it would take a mere 7 years of additional CO2 to offset the cooling effect. The difference between the peak and trough of the solar cycle is about 0.1C according to the latest estimates – and of course the total solar irradiance is not trending and the hottest La Nina on record (2007-2008) is also occurring at a time when the warming from solar variability is at it’s minimum – which we are in right now.
But based on your record of consistent contrarianism in the face of any argument or evidence, which challenges even Keiran for sheer bloody minded persistence, I suspect you’ll wave your magic hand and deftly ignore this inconvenient factoid too.[citing me:]Tim Curtin said:
Truly, this Blog and Jennifer’s are on diffferent planets Never a truer word spoken!”
I replied: “Barry: Thanks for the compliments. You said: ‘Should the sun remain bottomed out at the current solar minimum, Maunder or Dalton like, it would take a mere 7 years of additional CO2 to offset the cooling effect.’ I replied: “Why has the CO2 that has been building up CUMULATIVELY and continuously since 1958 not already offset the present short-term low sunspots’ cooling effect, when it is supposedly so much stronger? On an historical note, the full data set (NOAA) shows low sunspots like we have had the last year or so when Napoleon was in Moscow in 1812, and again when Hitler’s army was at Stalingrad in 1942 and on retreat to 1945. Let’s hope McCain and NATO don’t try something similar this year!” I should have added that the very year when Sydney & Adelaide had their previous coldest August (1944) was the year that Hitler’s last thrust, Battle of the Bulge, was made possible by the freezing and low cloud covercreated by the low level of sunspots that grounded the Allied airplanes.
Barry replied, sharp and charming as ever:”It has Tim – this is the hottest decade on record, sunspots or lack thereof notwithstanding. Of course natural variability dominates temperatures on the year-to-year timescale, with cumulative CO2 and its associated feedbacks being a strong long-term forcing effect affecting climate trends. But of course you know this Tim, as it has been explained a zillion times in various blogs I know you’ve posted at, so I can only assume you are trolling. Honest sceptical questions are welcomed here and will be answered, consistent feigned ignorance of the type you’ve pushed over the last month, just gets tiresome.”
I responded: “Barry: you are right, the average temp (GISS, not the most reliable source) from 1998 to 2007 was 0.223 oC higher than in 1988 to 1997, while those decades’ average CO2 @ Mauna Loa went up by 17.65 ppm, or 4.93%. The implied sensitivity is delta T/delta C, or 0.012367 oC per 1 ppm. Multiply that by 357 to get the increased temp from a doubling of the average CO2 in 1988-1997 to 715.88 ppm, and we obtain a temperature increase from that doubling of 4.52 oC. When do you expect we will reach 715 ppm with or without Kyoto2? Sincerely, if this calculation is wrong, please explain why (my sources are Wiki and Barton Paul Levenson for the calculation, and CDIAC and GISS for the CO2 and temps)”.
Clearly B was getting a little tipsy, as shown by his inability either to cut and paste or answer the question, so he replied: “Tim, the main issue I have with your calculation is that it doesn’t include the logarithmic relationship of additional CO2 and ignores the lag effect of warming in the pipeline (time taken to heat oceans and for them to start giving up heat, threshold effect of melting ice, time for albedo feedbacks to play out), which is estimated to be a further 0.6 – 2C, depending on the estimate of climate sensitivity. So such a calculation doesn’t really mean much at all”. [none of these have anything to do with the logarithmic effect] As to the question of will we get to 715ppm? Yes on current Platinum Age emissions pathway, and perhaps under a strict emissions reduction (it really all depends on carbon cycle feedbacks), no under a massive transformation (what is needed).”
I replied: “Barry: my calculation EXACTLY exemplifies the logarithmic affect. Do read my Garnaut paper that I sent you for a full account.
You (Barry) also said ‘As to the question of [WHEN] will we get to 715ppm? Yes [non sequitur] on current Platinum Age emissions pathway, and perhaps under a strict emissions reduction (it really all depends on carbon cycle feedbacks), no [another non sequitur] under a massive transformation (what is needed)’. You did not answer my WHEN, WHEN (with or without Kyoto2) will we reach the 716 ppm needed to get 4.52 oC up from 1988-1997?”
Barry’s response was to truncate my above posting thus:
“Barry: my calculation EXACTLY exemplifies the logarithmic affect [wrong, it doesn’t]. Do read my Garnaut paper that I sent you for a full account.[Deleted stuff that has already been covered ad infinitum in another thread – one wonders why Tim never listens to what people say to him and just repeats the same questions?]
This from a professor paid in part by me and ostensibly committed to open inquiry and truth. I had asked him when we could expect a doubling of CO2 from 358 in 1988-1997 to 716 ppm. The great climatologist after expounding on his CV in response to legit questions raised here is clearly so mathematically challenged that he cannot answer the most elementary questions in his chosen field.
What I fail to understand is why Barry simply refuses to write what he feels his posters should say rather than allow them to say what they did say. My long run prediction is that his Blog after only a month will soon exhibit the terminal decline exhibited by Lamberts’ Deltoid and John Quiggin’s where only mutual backslapping comments are allowed. Hooray for Jennifer!
”
I think the record cold temps in Adelaide have obviously frozen Barry Brook’s brain!
ROFLMAO!!
Tim, I read the interchange over at BNC, and was not surprised by Barry’s attitude. I agree with your prediction:
“My long run prediction is that his Blog after only a month will soon exhibit the terminal decline exhibited by Lamberts’ Deltoid and John Quiggin’s where only mutual backslapping comments are allowed. Hooray for Jennifer!”
I would include two other blogs: Real Climate, but even more blatantly Joe Romm’s Climate Progress. RC is bad enough, but Joe Romm’s s just plain climate arrogance. Won’t even allow simple questions.
I just don’t understand libruls insistence on being for “Freedom of Speech” then as soon as they are confronted with facts try to shut down “Freedom of Speech.”
Good on’ya Jenn!
The more the globe cools, the more alarmed the alarmists will become and the more they will ATTACK!
“Yes, Lucia pointed out that as each month goes and the temperature doesn’t increase, it means that when the warming does, for it to catch up, the rate of increase must by definition get larger, just to meet the .2C/decade.”
So she’s saying that natural swings can only oscillations can only work down, but not up? AGW doesn’t have to make it catch up, the periodic swing that is holding it level now, will also cause a jump like the one we saw in 1998. Like I said in the first post, up up down, up up down, up up down. That’s the instrumental record.
Add in to that complex mix aerosols….
“I just don’t understand libruls insistence on being for “Freedom of Speech” then as soon as they are confronted with facts try to shut down “Freedom of Speech.”
Good on’ya Jenn!”
Didn’t you read Jen’s comment. She doesn’t publish a lot of the rubbish people post here. She just publishes it for some other reason. Socratic Irony, apparently. She’s just using you.
“Didn’t you read Jen’s comment. She doesn’t publish a lot of the rubbish people post here. She just publishes it for some other reason. Socratic Irony, apparently. She’s just using you.”
And yet SJT, here you are, day after day, reading this blog, hmmmmm.
“And yet SJT, here you are, day after day, reading this blog, hmmmmm.”
Yes, reading opinions like yours, and wondering why there is there is such a hatred of science.
“wondering why there is there is such a hatred of science”
Hatred of science, no. Hatred of corrupt science YES!
Poor Tim Curtain, he’s getting so old that his poor addled brain obviously forgot about a long commentary exchange, in which Brook provided exactly what Tim was asking (here, and previously, i.e. the CO2 projections) and showed how Tim’s grasp of simple mathematics was… let’s say, lacking. Isn’t it funny how Tim neglected to mention this thread. Oh, ho, ho, Tim, you are such an absent-minded old fellow!
Laugh at Tim’s folly here:
(His pants start coming down at around comment #10 and are down at his ankles by comment #19)
Hilarious stuff!
Here is that pesky link from the previous post:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/15/spot-the-recycled-denial-i-prof-wj-collins/
Remember, comment#10 through 19…
Further to my last, Barry said:
“Tim – do you wonder why I’m forced, at time cost to me, to moderate you and almost no one else? Pointless repetition of discredited arguments – many already patiently answered here, gets old pretty fast. I’ve never not let one of your posts through, [UNTRUE] but I reserve the right to remove stuff that you know has been covered before yet pretend that it is all new again, and point out to the casual reader that you, more than any other poster on this blog by an order of magnitude, play this useless tennis match game. I strongly suggest that this is not the blog for you, as others on this thread have also implied. Happy hunting for a place that will adore your contrarianism, for that is what it is. With that, I cut my losses with you, Tim – good bye]
So much for academic truth. Galileo would have have been lynched had he lived in Adelaide today!
I replied: “Barry: Just keep on writing the comments that make you feel good. You really are as pathetic as you look.”
The point at issue is that Barry Brook is incapable of computing the logarithmic effect of x increase in CO2 against y? increase in temperature. He like Team Garnaut cannot comprehend let alone compute logarithmic trends that even the IPCC accepts are all that matter.
BTW, dear all, do get the latest issue of Quadrant, for an absolutely brilliant article by Ray Evans, far more worthy of a Nobel than Gore’s song and dance routines.
Tim
I posted my review of the IPCC carbon cycle and the result of a accurate mass balance calculation indicates the total anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere is 29.22 ppm, even if we took 1.9 deg per doubling that gives us .00633 deg C per ppm thus the total influence of AGW is 0.185 deg C. No one has challenged my mass balance so either put up or shut up.
Luke I still think you owe me a physics paper based on the fundamental laws which explains the IPCC view on Greenhouse gas warming. I am quite willing to accept a theoretical paper based on an atmosphere containing only O2 N2 and CO2 that should make the analysis a lot easier. Please do not forget to include Beer’s it is pretty important.
Steve M has an interesting thread on climate modeling with a new paper on the subject.
Here’s the citation: D. KOUTSOYIANNIS, A. EFSTRATIADIS, N. MAMASSIS & A. CHRISTOFIDES “On the credibility of climate predictions” Hydrological Sciences–Journal–des Sciences Hydrologiques, 53 (2008).
Abstract “Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.”
Par Frank observes: “In essence, they found that climate models have no predictive value.”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3361
SJT says >>So she’s saying that natural swings can only oscillations can only work down, but not up? AGW doesn’t have to make it catch up, the periodic swing that is holding it level now, will also cause a jump like the one we saw in 1998. Like I said in the first post, up up down, up up down, up up down. That’s the instrumental record.
Add in to that complex mix aerosols…. << for my statement “Yes, Lucia pointed out that as each month goes and the temperature doesn’t increase, it means that when the warming does, for it to catch up, the rate of increase must by definition get larger, just to meet the .2C/decade.”
At 4.5 to 6C, yes, SJT it will need to go up even faster as each month is level or actually decreasing with respect to the base period. You have made a prediction that it will. She did not say they disn’t. In fact what she said as I posted was that to not be falsified at .2C/decade, the temperature has to increase ever faster for each month of flat or negative trending. It implies that she said that they can go up and down. Reread. Or better read what she has to say.
“BTW, dear all, do get the latest issue of Quadrant, for an absolutely brilliant article by Ray Evans, far more worthy of a Nobel than Gore’s song and dance routines.”
Tim, you have a hidden agenda after all!
You won’t get a Nobel or Fields that’s for sure, but an Oscar is well within your reach.
Tim Curtin – if Galileo were alive and well in Adelaide he’d be published in Nature. Stop whinging and start writing !
Barry Moore – I owe you a paper? Howzat? You won’t find your answers in a single paper – perhaps you need a book? Barry if you have a review of the IPCC carbon cycle – get published old mate – no use having a sook on a backwater blog.
Tim Curtin
I had a quick look at Barry Brook’s blog – his hatchet job on Ian Plimer with condescending posts from the usual suspects prompts me to dismiss Brooks blog along with Lambert’s and Quiggin’s for the same reason you put.
Unfortunately Climate Science, along with astronomy, commands enormous amounts of government funded research – somewhich which is not going to disappear overnight despite our efforts.
I’ve recently been able to get a copy of Charle’s Lyells’ journal on his North American journeys two centuries ago and even then the politucal influence of the Whigs on science was in play as Brook and others do today. Lyell was reported elsewhere as arbitrarily deciding when the last ice age occurred and I needed to check the citation for accuracy – it was and more on that later this year.
But Lyell reestablished the Socratists hold on science and public policy during the early 19th century in the UK, and his successors control the political scence in Australia, as well as the education system and the universities.
Much of the debate over climate change centres on the details in the deductions from the initial premise where in fact it has to be focussed on the principles specifically – Arrhenius’ hypothesis and it’s verification.
I’ve noted that the alarmists avoid discussing this topic – and together with the fact that no refereed paper has been found establishing a causal relationship between CO2 and atmosphere temperature confirms the conclusion that the whole thing is pseudoscience.
We can look forward to an increase of personalised attacks on the sceptics by the climate changers in the near future and the steady growth of blog sites like Barry Brooks ios expected.
His title for his blog, ” A Brave New Climate” is obviously a play on Aldous Huxley’s ‘A Brave New World”.
But remember this: “It is dangerous being right about matters on which government is wrong”, attributed to Voltaire. Instiutionalised science is government under another name.
If I remember correctly Brooks’ centre was another plank in the State Labor Govts deliberate funding of AGW as a political issue that helped to further differentiate Labor from the Liberals at the last Federal election.
Brooks was a “political appointment” with a about $1m grant from the SA State Labor Govt, courtesy of RANN as the incoming President of the party, and State Premier
There would be hardly likely to give it to some one who had a healthy level of scepticism, now would they.
The fact that you guys are biting so hard tells me it must be hurting sooooo bad. Hitherto the institutions haven’t blogged back. I heard a rumour that CSIRO and BoM were going to open a joint climate blog soon? Did you hear that too?
This, if confirmed, is not going to help the earth stay cool:
“Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is leaking from the permafrost under the Siberian seabed, a researcher on an international expedition in the region told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.
“The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed,” Oerjan Gustafsson, the Swedish leader of the International Siberian Shelf Study, told the newspaper.”
Actually, I didn’t know that you could have “permafrost” in a sea bed at all, but I am no expert.
Anyway, the basic point is that if significant release of methane from Arctic areas has started, it will be something else the warming sceptics will have to keep deal with. I’m not sure that I have ever read sceptics’s stuff that concentrates on dismissing the role of increased methane.
The (very short) report I quoted from is here:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jyL0h8nTY1z29bAhYBsnFtXcj_RQ
And in any case, I feel it is my duty to again remind people that, increasingly, there is concern about ocean acidification in the next 100 years, regardless of temperature moves.
“Par Frank observes: “In essence, they found that climate models have no predictive value.”
Excatly. Faulty computer games can’t predict the future. What’s surprising is that it takes a scientific paper to get the point taken seriously.
What ever happened to Gaia?
Can it be she’s not?
Or did she leave the kitchen
when it got too hot?
I never believed in Gaia
but she kept the pagans quiet.
Now a little change in temp
and they start a riot.
Tim writes:
“The implied sensitivity is delta T/delta C, or 0.012367 oC per 1 ppm. Multiply that by 357 to get the increased temp from a doubling of the average CO2 in 1988-1997 to 715.88 ppm, and we obtain a temperature increase from that doubling of 4.52 oC.”
This is a linear projection, Tim. You are assuming that the temperature will increase linearly with increased CO2. This is NOT a logarithmic projection, as in the real world case (what Barry is trying to tell you) temperature forcing by CO2 increases linearly with the _logarithm_ of CO2 in the atmosphere. Your calculation also neglects the positive feedback effects of e.g. water vapour, albedo decline, or permafrost melting, which are not captured by your simple linear projection. Your projection is a) not logarithmic, despite your assertions and b) useless.
Just looking at the Tim Curtin Barry Brooks exchange I’m reminded once again that if AGW is certain why do supporters have to lie and obfuscate; Brooks goes on about the increasing rate of CO2 accumulation into the atmosphere; 2 issues are raised here; firstly the proportion of anthropogenic and natural CO2, and 2ndly, the atmospheric life of CO2. These 2 sources are instructive;
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/environment/057304.pdf
Table 3 is the relevant data.
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/glob_c2.pdf
Exhibit 2-1 is relevant
Combining the data from the 2 sources we see that since the start of the IR the increase in CO2 levels of about 103 ppm are 97% due to nature and 3ppm anthropogenic. Furthermore, the absorption by nature of 98.5% of all CO2 means that of the annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions, only 1.5% stays behind in the atmosphere; this was 346 MT in 2004, which is the equivalent of just 0.04% of the total annual CO2 emissions from nature and man combined.
New cause of climate change…oscillations.
I first heard of this article by Tsonis in a Lindzen paper. Lindzen points to this paper as evidence that the Atlantic/Pacific/Enso, etc. when coupled, can account for the present global warming on their own.
http://www.heartland.org/pdf/tsonis_GRL07.pdf
Tsonis et all noted the a coupling of those systems leads to climate change until they suddenly decouple, at which time a new state begins.
In the May 2008 Keenlyside paper, they claim the oscillations are merely postponing the warming. I think they are a bit near-sighted. The oscillations are causing the warming…and the cooling.
Bye, bye AGW.
Cohenite you appear to be confusing totals with changes, or stocks with flows. The increase of 103 ppm is due to the accumulation over ~250 years of that 3,100-3,500 tons of excess CO2 per year, which is caused by the additional CO2 humanity puts out overwhelming the ability of natural sinks to cope with it + natural emissions.
In any one year it may be only an imbalance of 1.5%, but if you put money in the bank at 1.5% interest for 250 years you’ll get a lot more money than you started with, even with simple interest.
Gordon; Bob Tisdale will be pleased about the Tsonis paper.
“In fact what she said as I posted was that to not be falsified at .2C/decade, the temperature has to increase ever faster for each month of flat or negative trending. It implies that she said that they can go up and down. Reread. Or better read what she has to say.”
Look at what happened in 1998.
Luke you have proven once and for all that you have absolutely no credibility whatsoever when challenged directly you just slither away like the slimey little worm you are.
James et. al. guys you are really getting off track I posted a review of the IPCC carbon cycle balance as shown on Pg.514 of 4AR It is pathetically wrong as proven by a simple mass balance caculation but some of the data is reasonable such as the total anthropogenic carbon for the last 250 years is 244 GT 100GT of that is in sequestration thus 144 GT is split between the ocean land and air. Clearly what James is totally oblivious of is the fact that the carbon CYCLES and in fact about 450 GT is removed from the atmosphere each year and replaced with 8 GT of anthropogenic and 442 of natural carbon. Thus the residence time of any carbon molecule is less than 2 years. So what is this 250 year nonsense. Now a simple calcularion yields 2 years at 8 GT = 16 GT as the anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere but the mass balance calculation takes note of the fact that the land and the oceans will reemit anthropogenic carbon after the first absorbtion thus the balance works out at 29.22 ppm anthropogenic total content,
Yes James, I’m confused, and so is the US DOE; we’re all confused except for Hansen and his crew; this really is the nub of the AGW; that human output of CO2 stays in the atmosphere whereas the natural sourced CO2 is all perfectly fluxed out each year in wonderful symmetry which humanity has upset; why would human CO2 accumulate in the atmosphere in some compounding function and not natural CO2? Why wouldn’t natural sinks expand? Why wouldn’t natural CO2 sources increase independently of humanity? The 2 issues which flow from this are the isotopic distinction between human CO2 and natural CO2; and the base figure and historical records of recent and ancient atmospheric CO2. Quite frankly, the AGW has not made a case for either.
cohenite said “Why wouldn’t natural sinks expand?”
they do. For one, crop yields throughout the world are much higher.
I like Roy Spencer’s analogy on CO2 the best because it is easy to visualize (i.e. no gigagtons to imagine). 380 ppmv of CO2 can be considered at a molecular level as 380 molecules of CO2 per million molecules of air. Divide by ten and we get 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of air. Even an AGWer can visualize that…it’s very rare. 38 molecules per 100,000 is .038% of that amount, which is about right for the density of CO2 in the entire atmosphere.
However, the 38 molecules are total CO2, the natural and the anthropogenic. So Spencer has introduced a factor that maybe someone can corroborate. Because of the reabsorption factor, anthropogenic CO2 is added at 0.6% per year. Multiply 0.006 x 38 molecules to get 0.228 molecules per year per 100,000 of air. But, we don’t want partial molecules so we multiply by 5 to get 1.14 molecules per 5 year.
Translation: humans are adding 1 molecule of CO2 to 100,000 molecules of air every 5 years.
OK..the AGW crowd pulls its hair out screaming, “you can’t do that, we’re talking about gigatons per year”. So what? It still breaks down to 1 molecule of CO2 per 100,000 of air every 5 years. Even though we are adding gigatons every year, the overall density of CO2 is about 3/100th of a percent. IMHO…the mistake being made in the AGW camp is that gigatons must translate to a lot of heat simply because the number seems so high.
People might argue that water vapour is only 1% of the atmosphere. However, the action of water vapour is far different than the action of CO2. Heat can only radiate from the surface and its motion is limited laterally. Once the water vapour is heated, it can go anywhere. It can rise and take the heat with it.
Water is replenishable at a far greater rate than CO2 is replenishable. There is literally an infinite source of it. When it rises in clouds, it transports the heat high into the atmosphere, then it condenses and COOLS, falling back to the surface as rain or snow. Then the cycle repeats.
It’s beyond me how such a rare density of anthropogenic CO2 can make a significant dent in the warming of that process.
Hey, Tim Curtin, how’s that letter to Nature coming along?
You claim you have something important to say regarding an alarmist, scientifically fraudulent paper full of statistical gaffes, that will prove it false.
Have you written it up?
Please post it. When Nature rejects it, you’ll have definitive proof that climate science is a fraud, and that you’re smarter than Barry Brooks, too!
As a fan, I can’t wait to see this skewering of pseudoscience, on their own turf!
dhogaza; there are 2 types of pro-AGW bloggers; the first type like James above affect a polite veneer but can become very snippy when their beliefs are challenged; then there are hyenas like you who hang around the back door when they think they can smell blood; go back to your lair at Deltoid.
Gordon; CO2 can’t make a dint in that process, as Chilingar has shown.
Cohenite:
That is a very strange post. Apparently you want to label each CO2 molecule according to it’s source… Why would you bother? We know we are adding very large amnounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, we know the atmospheric CO2 is rising, we have not found any other source of CO2 that could account for this increase… Why would you think it wasn’t the human contribution?
“why would human CO2 accumulate in the atmosphere in some compounding function and not natural CO2”
It’s not only human CO2 that’s accumulating, it’s both. HOWEVER, the reason CO2 is accumulating is because we have exceeded the capacity of the sinks to absorb it – that is humanities fault.
“Why wouldn’t natural sinks expand?”
They do, but they’re not expanding fast enough. Also as the oceans heat they will have lower capacity.
“Why wouldn’t natural CO2 sources increase independently of humanity?”
It does, but we know we have been adding a lot to the atmsophere and we haven’t detected any other source.
Humans have reduced the capacity of natural sinks through deforestation. The replacement of forests and woodlands with grasslands (i.e. agriculture) has reduced the demand for CO2 in those areas.
Actually the last line says it all “AGW has not made a case for either”.
AGW doesn’t make a case for anything, it’s a hypothesis. Plenty of scientists have made compelling cases for the source of the extra CO2 and the base figure for historic levels, you have simply chosen to disagree.
You are basically appealing to some unknown process, while simulataneously ignoring the Human contribution. That’s awonderful method of accounting.
My bank balance went up.. hmmm can’t be my pay… must be some mysterious benefactor putting money in…
NT; I’m going out, but I can only conclude you are being deliberately obtuse; there have been lengthy posts here and on other threads by barry moore, Steve Short and Gavin Robertson, amongst others, which impugn the notion that humans are significantly adding to atmospheric CO2 when compared to natural increase; but, as before, no doubt we’ll end up talking about Beck and isotopes.
Cohenite, if you already knew the answers you wanted, why did you ask?
I’m not being obtuse I am wondering how you balance you bank account… 😉
Where is the CO2 produced by humans going?
Why is the atmospheric CO2 level going up?
Are you appealing to some unknown source?
Again, plenty of scientists have made compelling cases for the source of the extra CO2 and the base figure for historic levels, you have simply chosen to disagree. You have decided that they are wrong and decided that Steve, Gavin and Barry are correct. Not sure why…
“It’s beyond me how such a rare density of anthropogenic CO2 can make a significant dent in the warming of that process.” It clearly is, but not for a lack of trying on our part.
Yeah, NT, I was being ironic in a rhetorical fashion; anyway, here is a source of CO2;
http://www.biokurs.de/teibhaus/180CO2/bayreath/CO2-cycle-e2.pdf
The oceanic source confirmed historically;
http://jgs.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/138/2/183
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Rea_etal_90.pdf
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/abstract/199/1/231
Steve Short has noted a marked differential between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa CO2 tracking.
Barry Moore and Gordon Robertson have done critiques of FIG 7.3 from AR4 to show that the IPCC has no idea where the CO2 is coming from or going to, and there are a number of sources indicating the isotopic differential between C12 and C13 is not a true marker of fossil-fuel sourced CO2.
Cohenite,
Well done you have shown there are other sources of CO2…
But where is all the CO2 humans are producing? Where is that going?
Again I ask for your accounting skills. Someone is putting money in your account, why would you think that the money in the account isn’t from them?
“Steve Short has noted a marked differential between Cape Grim and Mauna Loa CO2 tracking.”
I am sure the people running the stations know this too. It’s not like Steve Short has actually measured the data. Did you find out what the people who do the analysis of that data think?
“Barry Moore and Gordon Robertson have done critiques of FIG 7.3 from AR4 to show that the IPCC has no idea where the CO2 is coming from or going to, and there are a number of sources indicating the isotopic differential between C12 and C13 is not a true marker of fossil-fuel sourced CO2.”
Well good on them, I hope they published the critique. Otherwise it is largely pointless. It’s like claiming to be a great AFL star without actually playing AFL.
However, again this is largely irrelevant. We know we are producing huge amounts of CO2 – where do you think it is going?
The hilarious thing about all those papers you cite as ‘evidence’ of the natural sources of CO2 is that they all appeal to the greenhouse effect and that increasing CO2 leads to an increase in global temps. Does this mean you have finally accepted the greenhouse effect and the enhanced greenhouse effect as real? Doesn’t this contradict the earlier debate we had? You need to keep your story straight.
Anyway these are all proposing geological sources. So, what is your geological source? Remember there is a vast difference in timescale here. You may have made an error bringing geology into the debate, as I am a geologist. No one doubts that CO2 levels have fluctuated a lot over geological time, but we aren’t talking about a geological time frame. We are talking about an increase of 100ppm in just over 100 years, that’s not a geological time frame.
Also volcanoes don’t solely vent CO2 they vent other gases, especially SO2. If volcanoes are responsible for this CO2 spike, then where is all the SO2?
That Beck thing looks like a powerpoint… And he seems to be saying that the excess CO2 is from the polar oceans. True arm-waving.
I thought you were a skeptic. Where are these powers of skepticism? It seems you are only skeptical of AGW science and nothing else.
Cohenite
I checked http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/iadv/
and there is almost no difference between Mauna Loa and Cape Grim.
Gordon, you don’t have to worry about cohenite, he’s a greenhouse connvert now.
See:
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Rea_etal_90.pdf
http://sp.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/abstract/199/1/231
I find you presumption that a composition of 0.038% of something means it’s unimportant a little bewildering. On what grounds do you base this?
Much hilarity; all the papers “appeal to the greenhouse effect and that increasing CO2 leads to an increase in global temps.” From the Zanhnle and Sleep paper;
“Hence surface temperatures can become very low if CO2 is the only greenhouse gas apart from water.”
Hilarious, and you want me to keep my story straight; not to worry; apparently Professor Mann has discovered some new archived evidence to revitalise the Hockey Stick. Good night all.
Cohenite, you are being deliberately stupid, yes?
Seriously they call CO2 a greenhouse gas!!! They are appealing to the greenhouse effect. do you understand English?
No one is suggesting that there aren’t other greenhouse gases, it seems that it is only you and your friends here who are attempting to:
1. Remove CO2 from the list of greenhouse gases
2. Make sure that we don’t know what the source of all the extra CO2 is (don’t know why you would though, as due to 1 you wouldn’t need to)
It’s nuts.
By the way, where’s all the CO2 we produced going??
How’s your bank balance?
NT
There are no things as greenhouse gases.
All the CO2 we produce goes into the oceans at the measured rate of 1:50.
The time lag between an upturn in oceanic insolation and global consequence has been estimated at 4-10 years by researchers.
As solar max of cycle 24 must now be put off to 2013, I’d say 2015 is like drawing to an inside straight.
Good luck with that, swampies.
I am curious. If methane levels started climbing steeper from their already steady climb, do warming sceptics have any answer as to why that should not be a problem? We don’t have the ocean (or its phytoplankton) as a potential sink for that, in the way Steve Short argues for CO2, do we?
Actually steven parts of the ocean floor are thick with methane hydrates and they have been looked at as a potential source of methane recovery for many years. As a side issue one of the explanations for the mysterious disappearances in the Bermuda triangle is that sudden massive releases of methane from the ocean floor decrease the density of the water as the bubbles rise and the ships sink, I saw a TV special where this phenomenon was demonstrated on a fairly large scale model and the ship did sink.
Steven, temperatures in the northern hemisphere during the MWP were similar to now (even Mann now shows this in his new paper).
No tipping point was reached in that scenario so one must wonder why not.
Barry: yes, I am aware of methane hydrates in the seabed, but the question is what would happen if the trapped methane got into the atmosphere (in significant quantities.)
Joel: I also note that atmospheric CO2 was considerable less then. If all the theorising here about CO2 not being a greenhouse gas is wrong (yeah, big call I know [sarcasm]) then higher temperatures than MWP are potentially on the way with a methane release to follow. My question is: do sceptics also deny methane is a greenhouse gas, or do they have some other suggested mechanism as to why its release in large quantities would not cause accelerated greenhouse warming.
NT said…”I find you presumption that a composition of 0.038% of something means it’s unimportant a little bewildering. On what grounds do you base this”?
It’s my opinion based on what Spencer (and Lindzen, Christy, Michaels et al) said about the complexity of the greenhouse effect. Spencer feels the modelers have over-simplified it and overlooked the complex role water vapour plays in the warming. The AGW theory seems to assume it’s simply a matter of black-body radiation from the land and ocean warming the atmosphere, but it’s far more complex than that.
Spencer also says about radiative imbalance, “How do we know there is such a radiative imbalance? In reality, we don’t. The Earth-orbiting instruments for measuring the Earth’s radiative components are not quite accurate to measure the small radiative imbalance that is presumed to exist. That imbalance is, instead, a theoretical calculation”.
Spencer also puts weight in the numbers. 38 molecules of CO2 per 100,000 molecules of air is very rare. He claims we are adding 1 molecule of CO2 to 100,000 of air every 5 years and asks, “do we really believe that such a small influence will have catastrophic effects”?.
His partner John Christy claims the added CO2 ‘should’ warm the atmosphere, but his satellite instruments are not indicating the kind of warming that ‘should’ be expected. We are beginning to learn the role played in the warming by the oceans.
As far as my personal feelings are concerned, my claim is based on nothing more than intuition. I’m not a climate scientist and I don’t think anyone in this blog is one. In fact, I don’t think anyone at RC is a legitimate climate scientist either. So, we’re all speculating based on the research of others.
Steven, I don’t think we’re on the same page. The direct effect of CO2 warming is supposed to be small. No one denies this. Its the feedbacks that cause runaway warming.
If the climate system did get hot in the MWP, this should have been enough to trigger these positive feedbacks such as methane. Especially since the MWP was pretty long in duration compared to the present warmth.
You’re saying we have more CO2 now, but the direct radiative effect is what? 0.2C? It shouldn’t matter if the warming was from the sun or CO2, it should have the same effect on the positive feedbacks. It didn’t.
cohenite….re the whole AGW theory, here’s a good paper:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v3
They agree with what you and Alan seem to be saying that heat cannot flow from a colder body (the atmosphere) to a warmer body (the surface) without external work being done.
I liked the paper right off because it exposed Rahmstorf of realclimate as follows:
***The renowned German climatologist Rahmstorf has claimed that greenhouse effect does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics:
“Some `sceptics’ state that the greenhouse effect cannot work since (according to the second law of thermodynamics) no radiative energy can be transferred from a colder body (the atmosphere) to a warmer one (the surface). However, the second law is not violated by the greenhouse effect, of course, since, during the radiative exchange, in both directions the net energy flows from the warmth to the cold.”
Rahmstorf’s reference to the second law of thermodynamics is plainly wrong. The second law is a statement about heat, not about energy. Furthermore the author introduces an obscure notion of “net energy flow”. The relevant quantity is the “net heat flow”, which, of course, is the sum of the upward and the downward heat flow within a fixed system, here the atmospheric system. It is inadmissible to apply the second law for the upward and downward heat separately redefining the thermodynamic system on the fly.***
Rahmstorf seems confused on a lot of things, as was exposed by Lindzen as well.
Here’s something from the paper questioning radiative heating of the atmosphere from the surface:
***the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection, in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped. Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions.***
They do two interesting analyses of a greenhouse, using a car and a box painted black with a glass roof. With the box, they use two types of glass, one which radiates IR and one that blocks it. The temperatures reached in the box are the same. Their conclusion is that heating in a real greenhouse is due to the lack of air flow.
We know what thats about. Thats the minimum amount of time these vandal-communist filth need to lock in the socialist measures against our hydrocarbons. In fact it will be very cold by then. With a maximum of two years, I would say, bucking the general downward trend.
It will probably be quite wet. And the wet conditions giving us a false sense of warmth even as they are robbing the oceans of accumulated energy.
Put a black pool cover over the diving pool during the day. Albedo-overated is not just a cool name for a rock band. Because this will cool and not warm the diving pool. Since warming is about strata, overturning, and penetration.
“The current phase is not different to the historical, measured record of AGW. It warms and warms, then it cools, then it warms and warms, then it cools. The net effect is it gets warmer. That’s the historical record.”
No thats just you lying all the time SJT. Any of the laity ought to get used to the idea that these people just lie all the time and the science means nothing to them.
“The current phase is not different to the historical, measured record of AGW. It warms and warms, then it cools, then it warms and warms, then it cools. The net effect is it gets warmer. That’s the historical record.”
No thats just you lying all the time SJT. Any of the laity ought to get used to the idea that these people just lie all the time and the science means nothing to them.
“Steven, I don’t think we’re on the same page. The direct effect of CO2 warming is supposed to be small. No one denies this. Its the feedbacks that cause runaway warming.”
Thats utterly impossible. It quite literally CANNOT happen. Since the water vapour feedback is proof of refrigeration of the oceans.
The mistake comes from only thinking about the tail of tropospheric temperature and not the dog of cumulative oceanic energy.
Graeme I think the point that is totally missed when poeple start talking about runaway warming is that as soon as a molecule or aerosol radiates any energy its temperature goes down then the recipient of that energy registers an increase in proportion so they average out. All that takes place is an exchange with zero loss or gain so how can you have an increase in temperature from zero energy gain. To have a runaway you would have to stop the energy from escaping into space which is impossible. As the temperature increases the energy loss escalates in proportion to the 4th. power.
Steven: “but the question is what would happen if the trapped methane got into the atmosphere (in significant quantities.)”
There is still the causation issue the sea bed has to warm significantly for that to happen. Mean time we can keep on looking for means to harvest it.
That all sounds right to me barry. But we can look at the implausibility of the whole racket from a number of angles. And I concentrate on the angles I’m absolutely dead certain of. And since the oceans can lose at least 100 times more thermal energy than the troposphere ever held it makes sense to isolate imbedded oceanic energy as the only source of CUMULATIVE WARMING…….
……The only source of CUMULATIVE WARMING that could outlast a single weak solar cycle.
Hence when these dummies think about cumulative warming via water vapour feedback they are talking about something that quite literally CANNOT HAPPEN.
Hence daydreams about catastrophic warming must rely on notions of primary greenhouse effect alone…… Which itself appears to be 95%bullshit, or alternatively at least 1 and probably 2 orders of magnitude overated…. but thats most likely an angle of implausibility best left to others to explain at the moment.
I’m not a leftwinger and so I prefer to make strident claims where I have the understanding sufficient to do so.
And I can tell everyone with absolute certainty that cumulative warming due to water-vapour feedback, on the basis of a primary change in greenhouse, is just impossible and something that CANNOT happen. Not something that won’t happen but something that CANNOT happen.
To even think it might happen is proof that they aren’t taking an ocean-centric approach. Its a logical error beyond the reaches of any further empirical experience to alter the verdict upon.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
“……..but the question is what would happen if the trapped methane got into the atmosphere (in significant quantities.)…..”
Nothing bad could POSSIBLY come out of such a scenario. See above. What you worried about? Little Yukos sees his first butterfly?
That what keeps you awake at nights?
Have some human feeling man.