……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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.