The latest much discussed paper in science journal Nature on global warming is predicting it may get cooler as it gets warmer!
At least that’s my reading of the paper by Harry Bryden et. al. (Vol 438, Dec 1, 2005, pg 655-657) which explains that because of substantially warmer waters at depth near the Bahamas and extending eastward for several hundred kilometres there is likely to be less warm water circulating north to Europe and so winters will be colder. Based on these findings the BBC is suggesting European government should perhaps prepare for colder weather, click here.
I am wondering whether there shouldn’t already be signs of cooling given that according to Harry Bryden et.al. the phenomena is not new with “the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation having slowed by about 30 percent between 1957 and 2004”.
If you are confused, don’t feel alone. I remember being totally confused by the advice from the handsome Jack Hall (played by Dennis Quaid) in last year’s must see Hollywood movie The Day After Tomorrow.
I’ve just re-read a review of the movie:
A climatologist tries to figure out a way to save the world from abrupt global warming. He must get to his young son in New York, which is being taken over by a new ice age.
Crazy stuff!
And today campaigners protested against global warming with ABC Online reporting that:
Thousands of people across Australia are [today] taking part in protests calling on the Federal Government to ratify the Kyoto protocol.
The ‘Walk Against Warming’ is part of an international day of action in 40 countries coinciding with the United Nations climate change talks in Montreal.
Walks are being held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
… “Our scientists are telling us that Victoria’s going to have more drought, less rainfall, more extreme weather and it’s really going to affect our water stores,” Ms Phelan said.
“It’s looking like we’re going to have up to 20 per cent less water by 2050.” end of quote from ABC online
But perhaps the banners should have red “Walk Against Cooling”.
I have previously written that the biggest lie from the global warming alarmists is that it is going to get drier as it gets warmer, click here. The most likely scenario is that there will be more rain and more snow as it gets warmer because warm air hold more moisture.
But maybe it will get drier because it is going to get cooler?
One thing is for sure, the earth’s climate is going to get warmer or cooler. The earth’s climate has always changed – climate change is for sure.
So maybe it is OK for the experts to flip-flop between warming and cooling scenarios? As long as noone suggests we can stop climate change!
………………
For more indepth discussion of the new Harry Bryden et. al. paper, there are other blogs, click here and other blogs, click here and here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
On the other hand the weather tomorrow will be rainy, and then it might not be, so we advise our viewers to take their umbrellas and raincoats because your never know what the weather is going to do.
King Canute felt compelled to instruct his Enders and Dones that despite his omniscience, not even Canute could stop the tide!
But what would Jen and I know? We are hampered with our science degrees – while our critics, unhindered with such necessities accuse us of breathing (emitting CO2).
Phil – perhaps you can help me. I am not sure whether Loius’s last comment was a fallacy:Appeal to Authority or a fallacy:Appeal to Ridicule.
Please have a look here and help me decide.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
No inconsistency at all
Doesn’t mean it would be cooling everywhere !
The Gulf Stream, makes Western Europe (and especially Northern European winters) considerably warmer than they otherwise would be. For example, in January, the temperature difference between coastal Norway and northern parts of continental Canada is approximately 30 °C on average, even though they are the same latitude.
If freshwater melt disrupts and stop the conveyor mechanism which makes the Gulf Stream work it would cool Western Europe.
However the Nature paper doesn’t say it’s all about to end – just gives room for concern. We’re dealing with unknown territory. Indeed the climatologists are even critical of the way Nature is handling the issue ! (read the urls supplied at bottom of Jen’s post).
Interestingly though in a side twist on hurricanes for skeptics “By Gray’s very clearly articulated reasoning on conveyor intensity , there should have been a downturn, not the observed upturn in major Atlantic hurricane activity over the past several decades (in the absence of other—including anthropogenic–influences on tropical Atlantic climate) if Bryden et al.’s results are correct. It will be interesting to see if Gray, and others, will change their line of argument in the face of this new study.” – whoops clang clunk !
And why does it have to get wetter EVERYWHERE as it gets warmer. Have we not learned anything by now. On this simplistic logic alone – the world warms up in El Nino events and eastern Australia gets drier – we know that for fact. So bang goes the argument on simple observation. Should get wetter if it warms shouldn’t it ??
Changing the radiative balance of the atmosphere will have a range of effects at various parts of the globe as circulation patterns get disrupted or modified.
Perhaps we haven’t advanced one iota past Australian average arguments – sigh …
On King Canute and tides – what an interesting example to pick for an analogy – Canute dude should have changed his philosophy from arrogant self-belief in his own abilities and crackpot ideas and seriously studied some science. Canute could have redeemed himself – paid attention in physics and statistics classes and learned that could predict the tide (climate) but he couldn’t exactly predict the exact water level from wave action (weather) at any exact moment. If he had studied tides he might have learned to adapt his position.
I see that King Canute has been mentioned. I think you will find that Canute was the opposite of an arrogant self-believer. Some of his subjects thought he could achieve almost anything but Canute had more sense. His purpose with the tide episode was to show that he was not able to hold them back and so show the people that he had abilities of a mortal.
Dearie me Phil, calling King Canute a crackpot, an arrogant self believer and in need of redemption is pretty defamatory stuff, particularly when there is not one shred of evidence to support your hypothesis.
Wouldn’t have thought you guys would have found that a problem given you guys have produced no arguments against the irrefutable fact that climate change is happening and that CO2 is obviously involved. Vast body of literature advanced in support of. Alternative mechanisms or explanations advanced = zero.
Oh yes Phil,
Climate change is happening and there is nothing we can do about it.
And CO2 is an effect, not a cause.
But Louis surely it is CO2 with all the evidence now presented. What else could it possily be?
Irrefutable fact? Does that mean it cannot be falsified?
That means it is not a scientific theory but a dogmatic belief.
Yea yea all good for the Philosophy Dept – but what else could it be?
Its obvious that climate change is happening, we have just come through a 3/4 year drought (in some places 7) and now the country is green coast to coast and BOM say 50:50 chance above average rain this summer.
It is an irrefutable fact that climate change is happening.
It is an irrefutable fact that the earth rotates around its axis.
These are statements of fact and not scientfic theories.
The theory that emission of CO2 by humans affects climate is a little hard to define. What is climate apart from some gratuitious statement that it is long term weather? We cannot predict the weather accurately and now we are being ordered to accept that CO2 is THE driving force of climate.
Bryden has managed to construct a scenario that fails to consider one key fact that he actually mentions but then ignores because of its inconvenience. THE SPEED OF THE GULF STREAM HAS NOT CHANGED. And the Gulf Stream/Mid Atlantic Current is still, and always was, the primary determinant of western European weather.
Furthermore, the entire system of currents in the North Atlantic are driven by the rotation of the Earth, not some purely speculative crap about changing salinity levels. Given the volumes involved, the entire Greenland Ice Sheet would need to melt in less than 20 years to produce even a marginal change in ocean salinity levels.
It is also a lateral cycle with dimensions of 5000km in Latitude and Longitude, not a vertical cycle with length of 5000km and depth of only 4km. So the only event that might change the flow of this cycle would be a very significant change in the axis of Earths rotation.
And lets get real, if it took half the Greenland Ice Sheet to produce this significant cooling in the North Atlantic then the first thing nature would do in response would be to start restoring the bloody ice sheet. Correcting the “problem”.
Ian,
I recall reading a few weeks ago some commentary in a book about ocean circulation that is relevant here, but I can’t recall exactly where for the moment. Off to Warnboro so I’ll chase it up when I return later today. It’s quite interesting and the author’s conclusion was that the present oceanic circulations are abnormal, which got me interested in it in the first place.
Rog – sample size of one season – irrelevant – the day the 1991 El Nino was announced everyone laughed as it was piddling down in Rockhampton – floods – things change – area went to driest on record almost – longer term is the issue – you think climate change means no variation anymore.
(and for the record I’m grooving on all the green grass at the moment too – feels good in the soul eh?). BTW 50:50 from BoM means could go either way – wish they’d forecast terciles – high, medium or low.
Louis – so what’s causing the change then – any ideas – or is it just “because”. I can see from crazyworld you haven’t a clue how the CO2 radiative forcing stuff works – you’re one hundred miles off the mark – but keep trying – you may get there from first principles yet.
Ian “speculative crap” you say – interesting dismissive tone. Obviously shooting from the hip and with no prior research. Problem with your argument is that it has happened before from paeleo data. And it does turn off rapidly. Some room for concern and let’s ask the researchers to keep measuring. If it stops it doesn’t start up easily. See if these “move” you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming#Shutdown_of_Thermohaline_circulation
Good story on sea shells
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/bigchilltrans.shtml
BUT – see the climatologists – bottom of Jen’s post – actually giving Nature journal some stick for being indulgent and letting things get too sensationalised.
Nature (not the journal now) doesn’t have to “correct” problems. That’s anthropomorphic hopefulness. Nature doesn’t give a toss what happens. Whether we prosper or not – that’s our problem. Most intelligent animals learn quickly not to foul their own nests.
I’m posting the following on behalf of Ender – who has had trouble with my site blocking ‘questionable content’. Here it is:
Ian – as far as I know the Atlantic current that warms Northern Europe is not driven by the Earth’s rotation.
A detailed explanation is here:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/050504_climate_change_pt2.html
and
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/thc/
and
http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/32.htm
The problem is that the Arctic Ice sheet has contracted significantly leading to increased amounts of fresh water reducing the salinity.
Jennifer,
A number of times now you have pointed to the ‘biggest lie’ being that it will get drier as it gets warmer. Every time you have, i have responded that CSIRO work predicts that even though parts of australia may get wetter, the heat will mean more evaporation with a deteriorating moisture balance across much of the country.
Steve
At this post http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/cat_philosophy.html I make reference to a published paper that indicates evaporation rates are not going up. It doesn’t make sense to me that evaporation rates will go up with more cloud cover etcetera. There is also comment at the same post:
“Steve copmments on warmer means more evaporation, NO not necessiarly, an all too common fallacy. You cannot necessiarly say much from average temperature alone. Evaporation depends on solar radiation, dryness of the atmosphere (vapour pressure deficit) and wind. Warming largely at night or increasing humidity, decreasing wind or radiation then evaporation might decrease and seems to be doing so globally.
Direct warming effects and changes in circulation patterns could shift evaporation all over the place at a regional scale.
Decreasing diurnal temperature range a very common observation these days.”
Telling me what CSIRO says without providing references and without letting us know whether you are talking modelled output or empirical evidence … is not very convincing.
You have to ask yourself is the evidence necessarily inconsistent. The evaporation story isn’t really. Simply that “surface radiation” reduced 1961-1990 – most likely reason is sulphate aerosol pollution reflecting radiation back into space. Evaporation levels have recovered somewhat in the 90s as pollution measures improved air quality. What it means is that once and if substantially removed you will have full solar radiation and even warmer temperatures.
While we’re on argument and evidence – we have no evidence presented that stacks up as an alternative hypothesis to explain the wide body of warming evidence being observed with a variety of indicators.
Phil,
1. You have no mechanism to explain the warming or the cooling either – at least not in terms of why the earth moves from ice age to interglacial warm period over what have been ‘fairly’ regular time frames.
2. And have CSIRO modelled in the ‘aerial pollution’ and if so do they still predict higher evaporation rates?
Yes we do – well researched Milankovitch mechanisms – and don’t all into the “regular” trap either (previous references provided). 3 interacting orbital mechanisms and no ice age soon.
CO2 physics (again references previously provided) give us very well understood CO2 physics (and the greenhouse analogy isn’t the way it works – Louis having a field day on this thinking he’s onto something.
I don’t believe CSIRO have modelled in “dimming” as we currently know the phenomenon. However RC (google RC and dimming) argues that it’s probably not overly important in the long run.
Finally on your point one we can argue that we actually know nothing. But I’ll confidently predict next winter will be cooler than this summer so actually do know something and we build from there.
For the Earth to substantially change it’s climate you need either a change in solar forcing, greenhouse gases, orbital alignmnent around the Sun, volcanic dust – or on big geological timescales orientation and position of the tectonic plates.
What else is there?
On a process of elimination we are left with greenhouse gases. Or from knowledge of radiative balance and behaviour working from the other end we derive greenhouse gases.
This is beyond left/right/greenie politics, the economy, being good or bad, what we’d like etc
It’s just physics in the end.
For anti-AGW To have any credibility at all an argument needs to be advanced that says “A completely alternative explanation the current global warming is because ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and the theory of radiative forcing is totally wrong because of ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,”
Pls complete sentence (anyone).
Jen – “1. You have no mechanism to explain the warming or the cooling either – at least not in terms of why the earth moves from ice age to interglacial warm period over what have been ‘fairly’ regular time frames.”
There is a this
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/292/5517/686?siteid=sci&ijkey=wpuSBEw.u9Z6Q&keytype=ref
which is an abstract of a paper that describes some of the possible variations. There is nothing in all of this that precludes AGW making the climate shift dramatically worse as other similar events like supervolcanoes have done in the past.
Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome get more exposure (ex John Ray)
“In 1980 Simon did get Ehrlich to agree to a celebrated bet. Based on his Malthusian views, Ehrlich had “been predicting massive shortages in various natural resources for decades, while Simon claimed natural resources were infinite. Simon offered Ehrlich a bet centered on the market price of metals. Ehrlich would pick a quantity of any five metals he liked worth $1,000 in 1980. If the 1990 price of the metals, after adjusting for inflation, was more than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became more scarce), Ehrlich would win. If, however, the value of the metals after inflation was less than $1,000 (i.e. the metals became less scare), Simon would win. The loser would mail the winner a check for the change in price.
So this would be a subject for Ender’s fallacy analysis url. The logic is that scientist or environmentalist gets something wrong sometime – therefore all everything scientists say and environmentalists say is wrong; or things that scientists say in other areas must be wrong too. Market knows everything.
To this I just laugh and say: Exxon Valdez, Bhopal, cigarettes, asbestos, silicon implants.
Back to Intro to Philosophy 101 with you.
Of course on the subject of betting on climate change it appears that most prominent sceptics won’t take a bet
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2005/06/betting-summary.html
P.S. Ehrlich et al may be right at some point too. Just wrong in the timing. You have to ask yourself – are resources limitless? Depends whether you’re a technological optimist or otherwise. Louis’s job to find more more more. For example despite improved agronomy and plant breeding sugar cane yields per hectare are declining in some areas as soil resource limits are reached.
Incidentally seen the price of platinum lately – getting in more demand, little supply (one hole in South Africa supplies most apparently). And it’s the essential stuff for future fuel cells (as well as catalytic convertor exhausts) – perhaps Louis could be professional and brief us on the issue. Peak Platinum ! Wonder if there’s be enough for all those new shiny Chinese vehicles?
Despite the evidence you continue with your hypothesis that a ‘maybe’ is a fact.
The evidence is utterly compelling. Serious arguments against = zero. Alternate hypotheses = zero.
And the market is about capitalising gains and socialising losses. Pollute the commons !
For the record, Phil, et al, I did a standard Google search on “Atlantic conveyor” and none of the first 10 sites, including Wikipedia, provided any specific data on which the theory could be tested. All of them made the claim that the current was driven by the sinking of dense saline water which then flowed south again. I had to google “Gulf Stream” to get any hard numbers about the volume and velocity of water involved. And they just do not stack up. Will make a more detailed post when time allows.
And Phil, you completely ignored the other statements I made and concentrated on something that you could extract some political spin. Lift your game fella.
Jennifer,
In the thread you linked to in response to my comment, you will find (go down to my second comment) that I have previously posted a link to a CSIRO brochure on evaporation and moisture balance projections.
To quote again and more extensively:
http://www.dar.csiro.au/impacts/future.html
“Evaporation and moisture balance
Higher temperatures are likely to increase evaporation. CSIRO has calculated projections of change in potential evaporation (atmospheric water
demand) from eight climate models. The results show that increases occur in all seasons and, annually averaged, range from 0 to 8% per degree of global warming over most of Australia, and up to 12% over the eastern highlands and Tasmania. The increases tend to be larger where there is a corresponding decrease in rainfall.
The difference between potential evaporation and rainfall gives a net atmospheric moisture balance. In general, Australia has an annual net moisture balance deficit, and our environment is largely moisture-limited.
[my emphasis]
*********When the simulated increases in potential evaporation are considered in combination with simulated rainfall change, the overall pattern shows **decreases** in moisture balance on a **national** basis.*********
The eight-model-average is shown in Figure 5. Average decreases in annual water balance range from about 40 to 120 mm per degree of global warming. This represents decreases of 15 to 160 mm by 2030 and 40 to 500 mm by 2070. These decreases in moisture balance mean greater moisture stress for Australia.
The simulated changes show the greatest consistency in spring. Decreases in spring are greatest over eastern Australia and generally range between 20 and 100 mm per degree of global warming in individual models. Decreases in the western half of Australia range between 0 and 60 mm. Other seasons show less consistency.”
If I seem to be getting lazy in my quotations, its because i have posted it before, and also because it is not as if i am quoting obscure stuff. The references to evaporation could be found in the climate change reports that the CSIRO in conjunction with the Aust govt put out from time to time – found in the ‘science’ section of the Australian Greenhouse Office’s website http://www.greenhouse.gov.au. Surely these reports are the first place one should look to get the overall view of climate change in Australia.
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/science/guide/index.html
Not a long term trend, but I notice that the CSIRO’s observed data show less rainfall in much of eastern Australia over the last 50 years. As Phil says, that’s where most Austrlians live.
All this is enough to successfully argue that calling climate change=drier ‘the biggest lie’ is premature and exaggerated.
Ian – From a industry lobbyist I take umbrage to the term “fella”. I know it’s the standard bluster. So don’t make me call you “Dad”. I consider I gave you very good information for a post that was most deficient on your side – “crap” I remember was the scientific term – you don’t even know my position on the issue do you.
Ian – I found this reference:
http://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/gulf-stream.html
Also I think that the gulf stream is part of the overall current pattern and not the whole of it.
This is from one of the references that I cited before:
“This global current could be said to originate in the seas which ring the North Atlantic —the Labrador, Irminger and Greenland Seas, where the oceans release large amounts of heat into the cold atmosphere. Evaporation, which has been occurring throughout the North Atlantic, is here increased to the point that these northern waters constitute the saltiest waters in the oceans. The concentration of salts results in a denser solution, as does the loss of heat. And this denser water sinks to the ocean abyss, where it begins a slow migration back down the Atlantic and eastward into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There it wells up, having lost much of its salinity. Displaced by colder waters moving under it and heated by contact with warmer flows from above, the formerly deep water rises toward the surface and picks up additional heat along the return journey into the Atlantic.
Unfortunately, the ocean conveyer does have an Achilles heel. And this Achilles heel lies in the Northern Atlantic region where the deep limb of the ocean conveyer originates, drawing warm equatorial waters to replace it. If the cold, salty, dense waters of the North Atlantic somehow failed to sink, then the global circulation could slacken and halt. Currents would weaken and/or be redirected, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the whole biosphere.”
What happened to the Gulf Stream during the Mediaeval Warm Period, when Greenland presumably had much less ice than now? Did it shut down as people are now predicting? If the ice melted then, does it give us a clue as to what might happen if the ice melts again?
I received the following questions from a reader of this weblog:
“I am writing to comment on recent reports about a weakening in the Gulf stream see todays The Australian (click here http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17457834%255E30417,00.html ). I would be interested to know if you consider the following observations to have any validity.
Given that the waters of the Arctic Ocean are becoming less dense. This is claimed to be due to a combination of increased water temperature and dilution of salinity from freshly melting ice. This
means that the downward movement of Arctic water is impaired. Warm
tropical Gulf stream water driven by the wind remains, but the “warming of the Arctic” means that there is an impediment to the Atlantic “conveyor belt.”
My question is this: Is the failure of the conveyor belt an
example of a negative feed back mechanism? Does not negative feedback ensure the long term stability of the earths climate? Are there other known negative feedback mechanisms? Does the failure of the Atlantic conveyor belt mean that the concept of a run away Greenhouse effect (positive feed back) is no longer valid? Do you know if climate models take into account feedback mechanisms?”
Good questions. To what extent does the IPCC modelling take into account feedback mechanisms?
Paul – the BBC show discusses the paleo evidence from forams http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/bigchilltrans.shtml
The scientists interviewed say that that the conveyor has shut down in the past. These of course are not scientific papers but a documentary – someone might wish to chase up the references.
I should emphasise that the cuurent situation is not clear and I’m simply saying we need more monitoring and science on the issue.
Fundamantally the whole point of Global Climate Models are feedbacks positive and negative. These are not statistical models – they are models of physics.
For a reasonable discussion:
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/feedback_mechanisms/
For some piccies:
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter18/neg_feedback.html
The IPCC aren’t suggesting a runaway greenhouse effect. I would interpret such an effect as that the warming would burn off all the biosphere carbon reserves or something like that (although biosphere feedbacks like this are not well represented and there’s another whole 300ppm in sinks). The conveyor is one special mechanism in one ocean – if it were to shutdown – Western Europe would be colder but that’s only regional – the rest of the world is warmer from the simulation modelling. i.e. it’s a regional effect only. If you read the BBC story – the modelling comes up with circulation changes which results in unfavourable rainfall declines in Africa and Asia.
The Younger Dryas
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/arch/examples.shtml
“One explanation is the one involving a thermohaline circulation (THC) shutdown, triggered by a catastrophic discharge of freshwater from Lake Agassiz (figure 2). The consequence is a rapid reduction in northward ocean heat transports, leading to an abrupt cooling over Northern Europe and North America.”
And this from the same paper:
“The onset of sudden aridification in Mesopotamia near 4100 calendar yr B.P. coincided with a widespread cooling in the North Atlantic (Bond et al., 1997; deMenocal et al., 2000). During this event, termed Holocene Event 3 (Fig. 5, below), Atlantic subpolar
and subtropical surface waters cooled by 1° to 2°C.”
I guess you could call this a negative feedback however Europe under an ice sheet and the whole Middle East in drought does not seem to be a desirable outcome to me.
The positive feedbacks of accelerated warming could however overwhelm this effect and still cause a runaway if we are not careful.
Did the MWP happen? And what happened to the ice in Greenland during that time? Surely this is relevant to what is being discussed.
Conveyor Q&A with animations
http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/abruptclimate_faq.html#conveyor_5
Thanks Phil, I understand the theory from a lay perspective, but what happened during the MWP? If we’re worried about warming causing dilution of the North Atlantic, etc, and press articles are talking “catastrophe”, then just a few hundred years ago we had a similar situation, where Greenland was warmer than today, with less ice, so what happened to the ocean conveyor? If it didn’t turn off then, why should it turn off now?
Maybe the Little Ice Age was a result of negative feedback?
Paul – weeellll – I don’t know about MWP and Little Age and the conveyor – all depends on exactly what, where and when I guess. Good questions though. And just found that Dryas is a flower genus .. .. hmmmm.. ..
Time for some research.. .. Oh where are you my sweet lil’ Google.
Press are numb nuts. RC and climate blog guys (Stoat and Annan) themselves were playing it down. Need more data before armageddon. Don’t cancel the trip to England just yet.
This weather station on the southwest tip of Ireland should shows neither heating nor cooling.
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/ireland.gif
Re evaporation and CSIRO projections (Steves comments)
Exactly how was the trend in evaporation calculated for this report. Was it a Pennman Montieth equation run in the model or on model output statistics, or was it some other type of calculation or surrogate. My sources suggest that it is only recently that the GCM modellers are running this calculation. The glossy publications are very short on detail.
>I have previously written that the biggest lie from the global warming alarmists is that it is going to get drier as it gets warmer, click here. The most likely scenario is that there will be more rain and more snow as it gets warmer because warm air hold more moisture.
Suggest those who are interested read “Can aerosols spin down the water cycle in a warmer and moister world?, Liepert et al. Geophysical Research Letters [Geophys. Res. Lett.]. Vol. 31, no. 6, [np]. Mar 2004.” and “CO2-Induced Changes in Interannual Temperature and Precipitation Variability in 19 CMIP2 Experiments, Raeisaenen, Journal of Climate [J. Clim.]. Vol. 15, no. 17, pp. 2395-2411. Sep 2002.”
There is no lie in climate science on this point; the literature speaks for itself. It is well understood that a warmer world leads to a slightly more rapid hydrological cycle, but aerosols can counteract this effect be reducing the short wave radiation at the surface. The primary effect of warming is to increase the atmospheric moisture loadings – in other words more water sits in the air.
A common feature to all climate change simulations is that the distribution of wetting and drying will vary; for example the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere are expected to become very much wetter – as indeed they have this last 100 years – while most subtropical contiental interiors are likely to become drier.
Any attempt to interpret the very slight pan evaporation decline over Australia in the last 20 years as pointing to a wetter globe under greenhouse climate change is extremely premature.
Regards,
David
PS
Louis suggest you read “Increases in greenhouse forcing
inferred from the outgoing longwave
radiation spectra of the Earth in
1970 and 1997
John E. Harries, Helen E. Brindley, Pretty J. Sagoo & Richard J. Bantges, Nature, 410, 355-357.” It provides unambiguous observational proof of the enhanced greenhouse effect.
http://www.john-daly.com/smoking.htm
David,
The attached webs its and its commentary on the comments of others, would tend to indicate that there is a lot more to it than you are suggesting.Not so unambiguous after all.
Malcolm – Have you read this link?
“”Our results provide direct experimental evidence for a significant increase in the Earth’s greenhouse effect that is consistent with concerns over radiative forcing of climate.”
Note the careful wording of the original text. The results were not consistent with `the heating up’ of climate as the media spin put it, nor were they consistent with `radiative forcing’ of climate. Rather they were consistent with concerns over the radiative forcing of climate – an evasive a form of words allowing the researchers an element of deniability – a common practice in greenhouse science papers.”
The wording of the text is standard scientific language. The same would be present in ALL papers.
“As we can see, the differences are only slight, though detectable (thus making them `statistically significant’ – a far cry from being climatically significant). Most of the earth’s radiation escapes to space via the two main radiation windows – wave numbers 750 to 1,000, and numbers 1,700 to 1,250.”
Yes the differences are slight and this is all it takes in the overall energy budget of the Earth. Small changes – large effects. What was he expecting?
John Daly !! come on now .. ..
I knew it wouldnt be too long before the serial blog clogger would rise to the bait. The very mention of the name John Daly and in it comes. What a pathetic attitude. Cant look at the substance of what is being printed and the context,just who might be involved.
Malcolm – I am not sure that that you should be calling Phil a blog clogger. At least what he posts is factually accurate. I read the article and found it to be factually inaccurate.
Here’s another interesting link.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/McKitrick.pdf
Interesting bit about the loss of about half the global monitoring stations in 1990, which coincided with an abrupt jump in average temperature.
Malcolm that’s not very nice. I’m very upset about your unkind remarks and hope you will be nicer to me in the future. BTW how’s the stats going.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N49/EDIT.jsp
Well here is another one to chew on. Now come on, tell me the Idso’s are not real scientists.
Ender,if the previous reference was factually wrong to the extent that it negated the whole article, then pray enlighten me. Further were these “facts” evident at the time ( pre 2001),or have they become evident since.
It may be some days before I check back again as I have a life to live, but I look forward to studying your responses. Cheers.
>Here’s another interesting link.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/McKitrick.pdf
Interesting bit about the loss of about half the global monitoring stations in 1990, which coincided with an abrupt jump in average temperature.
No such loss has occured. The decline simply reflects a delay in transmitting data to GISS. Of course, the surface land record is supported by the independent ocean observations and independent MSU records. Any suggestion that the warming is due to changes in the network is poor science, easily dismissed.
David
Yep – they’re not.
Malcolm of course won’t be back on this thread to defend the point. Just throw a random rhetoric grenade and run.
See the co2science.org article littered with spin arguments of “in fact” and “incredible”. Reading more into the cited articles articles than has been written. Malcolm is totally enamoured with spin.
So we have more junk from another junk spin site. One “notoriously” known for its spin as opposed to well argued “facts”.
Malcolm have you actually read the original articles you’re putting the boot into?
More examples of bigoted attacks such as on your own site
http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm
“Reports dated 17 Feb 2005 said that Barnett and his team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography concluded that warming ocean waters were due to human activity (see Reuters or BBC report). Of course it was based on the notoriously unreliable climatology tool, a computer model.
By the way, Barnett apparently forgot to mention the source of his funding and whether his project was originally proposed on the premise that global warming is real. Small points perhaps but they can cloud a scientist’s perspective.”
I find it incredible you can attack a well known scientist like in a formal web site like your own without having even read the paper or making a serious analysis of what he did – the best you can say is very biased personal “notoriously unreliable” comment. And what is the slur on the source of his funding supposed to mean.
Frankly it’s offensive and utterly anti-science. You ought write him an apology for a such a thoughtless attack.
And I see you are persisting with your stats cherrypicking
http://mclean.ch/climate/recent_temps.htm
Take it to any uni introductory stats lecturer !!
P.S. We’re obviously haven’t progressed the debate one iota – it’s OK to believe anything you like. But don’t talk about “evidence based” as any old evidence will do.
Is there a difference between sides – yep – on the current thermohaline analysis the climatolgists are hosing down any hasty interpretations.
Does anyone distinguish between professional scientists, the green movement and the press. It does matter who is saying what. It is unfair to blur them all together.
David -Did Ross McKitrick falsify those figures? He says it is due largely to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Paul suggest you look at “The Effect of Diurnal Correction on Satellite-Derived Lower Tropospheric
Temperature
Carl A. Mears and Frank J. Wentz, Science Express, 2005.”. This shows that the warming over Russia occurs through the depth of the lower troposphere and has nothing to do with changes in networks.
David
David – I think McKitrick is referring to surface temperatures. Did this reduction in weather stations not happen? The only reference in his talk that relates to this is his own book, Taken by Storm, which I don’t have. Presumably there are more references in it.
Paul – I think David is saying – that in any case, satellite measurements have confirmed a warming over Russia so it doesn’t matter anyway what he says about surface networks.
What on earth are you blathering on about. In the interest of improving the standard of critical thinking abilities evident herein I will try and respond to the best of my ability and interest
“Yep – they’re not”.
But if one does a search on the work done by the Idso’s it is quite extensive. I am surprised you didnt peddle that old canard that some evil energy industry group may be/is still funding them. They are as valid scientists as anyone I have come across just because they don’t suit your criteria doesn’t negate that.
“Malcolm of course won’t be back on this thread to defend the point. Just throw a random rhetoric grenade and run”.
I said I would be back in a couple days but to suit you, here I am sunshine. I had a cancellation.
“See the co2science.org article littered with spin arguments of “in fact” and “incredible”. Reading more into the cited articles than has been written. Malcolm is totally enamoured with spin.”
Well that’s your opinion. I am just trying to find out what is the story, and I am fully prepared to read all sides of the argument without prejudice to any point. The Idso’s have been in the science business for a long time, and I don’t see why their opinions are of any lesser value. They provide the references to the source data, and one can go and read the originals. I have found them to be credible commentaries and certainly of higher order than most journalistic material fed as it is by scientists prejudicial press releases designed more to support follow on grant applications, than anything else.
“So we have more junk from another junk spin site. One “notoriously” known for its spin as opposed to well argued “facts”. Malcolm have you actually read the original articles you’re putting the boot into”.
I don’t recall putting the boot into any ones story, and yes I have read them. Do I get the same interpretation, as you do, probably not.
“More examples of bigoted attacks such as on your own site
http://mclean.ch/climate/global_warming.htm
“Reports dated 17 Feb 2005 said that Barnett and his team from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography concluded that warming ocean waters were due to human activity (see Reuters or BBC report). Of course it was based on the notoriously unreliable climatology tool, a computer model.
By the way, Barnett apparently forgot to mention the source of his funding and whether his project was originally proposed on the premise that global warming is real. Small points perhaps but they can cloud a scientist’s perspective”.
This idiot diatribe just leaves me gasping. First of all I don’t have a site, and secondly I don’t recall ever entering into a bigoted attack as you call it on this subject.
“I find it incredible you can attack a well known scientist like in a formal web site like your own without having even read the paper or making a serious analysis of what he did – the best you can say is very biased personal “notoriously unreliable” comment. And what is the slur on the source of his funding supposed to mean.
Frankly it’s offensive and utterly anti-science. You ought write him an apology for a such a thoughtless attack”.
Again, I find this being attributable to me just amazing, and again I say I DONT HAVE A SITE IN THE FIRST PLACE so what the FfXZY$%^ are you on about Done. Perhaps I should ask, do you read the crap you write before pressing go?.
“And I see you are persisting with your stats cherrypicking
Take it to any uni introductory stats lecturer “.
I did, and they don’t see anything wrong with portraying that data in that fashion. The view is the author isn’t cherry picking, just presenting a data set/series in another form. This happens all the time in the real world involving real issues.
“P.S. We’re obviously haven’t progressed the debate one iota – it’s OK to believe anything you like. But don’t talk about “evidence based” as any old evidence will do.
Is there a difference between sides – yep – on the current thermohaline analysis the climatolgists are hosing down any hasty interpretations.
Does anyone distinguish between professional scientists, the green movement and the press. It does matter who is saying what. It is unfair to blur them all together”.
Again I don’t know what you are dribbling on about with these 3 disjoint sentences as a PS.
I am off to do something more useful.. like planting trees. Merry Xmas
.
Malcolm I apologise for the errant paste in the middle of my response. Irrelevant. Delete my comments from “… boot into?” to “P.S. …….”
Other points stand and your response noted.
>http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N49/EDIT.jsp
Well here is another one to chew on. Now come on, tell me the Idso’s are not real scientists.
Malcom, I’m not sure what you previous post is about, but suggest you read the orgional Science article. In particular on page 1316 note… “Overall, the estimated lags… are small compared to the glacial-interglacial time scales and do not cast doubt on the strong coupling of CO2 and temperature or on the importance of CO2 as a key amplification factor of the large observed temperature variations of glacial cycles.” Cherry picking attempts to use this study to cast doubts on the enhanced greenhouse effect, explicitely contradict the views of the authors.
David
David -I’m still interested in your statement that no loss of weather stations occurred. Do you have any evidence that contradicts McKitrick’s claim?
David,
I dont see anything wrong with the Idso’s interpretation, as the authors of the Science paper make it quite clear that they are talking about the huge times scales of hundreds of thousands of years. It doesn’t negate the fact that the initial period of only hundreds of years, shows that temperature leads the Co2 increase. What causes it to flip the others way is uncertain although there are quite plausible explanations.
I also dont understand what Done was on about. Due to sloppiness on his part, over 60% of his response had nothing to do with me or my post and the rest was either also unintelligble or was just his opinion against mine. Thats life I guess.
>David -I’m still interested in your statement that no loss of weather stations occurred. Do you have any evidence that contradicts McKitrick’s claim?
Paul, stations open and close and I do not have the numbers at hand as to how many are currently recording temperature globally. This number, does, however massively exceed the number which are included in most global analyses (such as GISS), simply because most data is not transmitted electronically in real-time. It is well established that global temperature is such a spatially uniformed field that you only need about 50-100 stations to get an extremely accuracte global estimate.
I care not for McKitrick’s claim about stations closing. They open and close. Suggest you read the caption on Figure 2 (used by McKitrick) which states “the drop off in recent years are because some of the GHCN’s source datasets are retoactive compilations”…. which means that the most recent period contains only a subset of the network because the paper recordings and other source data have not be incorporated. In Australia alone, we have between 1000 and 1500 stations which record temperature, while the US have approximately 10,000, and globally the number is probably of order 200,000.
The real issue has the warming got anything to do with network changes. To this the answer is an emphatic no. All else is smoke screening…
Regards,
David
Malcolm – the issue of the CO2 following the temperature has been addressed before – simply being that an orbital change starts a temperature rise that releases some biospheric CO2 which then feedbacks with increased radiative forcing to produce further warming. If you do not agree that CO2 has this radiative forcing function you would be simply saying that CO2 is a consequence of the orbital perturbation and that’s all. i.e. the CO2 has no role.
I was objecting to the lack of argument by the Idsos – use of words like “in fact” and “incredible” which without argued backup are simply rhetorical. Also reading more into the Science papers than they are actually saying. I see above that David has made a brief reply implying (I suspect) a similar theme. What the press make of the Science papers is not necessarily what the authors are saying. It is important to separate what commentators, green activists, contrarians and climatologists are saying or speculating from the results from what has been actually said or reported in the papers themselves.
There have been a substantial number of posts on the radiative forcing sciences with references given (I can post again if you wish). If you reject this information you may entertain your hypothesis – well personally at least. My exasperation is the content of my last paragraph – why – to what I suggest has been readily discussed at length prior .
I retract again and apologise for my accidental paste of spam in the middle of the post.
David -Forgive me for harping on this topic, but you did emphatically state that the global decrease in GHCN stations did not occur, yet you have not provided any evidence, simply stated that it is not really relevant to whether or not warming is taking place.
I’m not sure what it shows, but it is certainly interesting that a halving in the number of GHCN stations coincides with an increase in average recorded temperature. Aren’t you a little bit curious too?
Personally I would like to know if warming is a)happening, b)due to human influence.
I am a bit surprised that you consider 50 – 100 stations enough to provide accurate global measurements.
The link to over 200 geographically diverse stations, none of which show warming, should therefore end the debate (just kidding).
http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm
I know it’s from John Daly, whose credibility some have dismissed, though I don’t know why. But are the figures wrong?
>David -Forgive me for harping on this topic, but you did emphatically state that the global decrease in GHCN stations did not occur, yet you have not provided any evidence, simply stated that it is not really relevant to whether or not warming is taking place.
Paul, suggest you simply contact GISS who can provide you with a list of the stations which transmitted electronically over the GTS in the past and those whose data which were obtained through other means such as international data exchange some years after observation. This will tell you whether the change is due to station closures or differences between the number of real-time reports recieved versus historical reports. When you find the answer, please share it with us.
I haven’t got the time to do such things for you.
Of course, you will be wasting your time, as the warming has nothing to do with station network changes as evidenced by the warming over oceans, in the radiosondes, in the MSU data set etc.
As I have noted previously, only a tiny fraction of avaliable records are included in the GHCN set, because only a subset of data are transmitted electronically (in many countries recordings are taken onto paper).
David
Paul
Regardless of David’s eventual answer the very good set of Australia’s reference network says a large area of inland Australia is warming, worldwide glacial melt says it is warming, satellite measurements of the troposphere say it is warming, ocean temperatures say it is warming, behaviour of species say it is. Urban heat island stuff has been adequately tested for found irrelevant. If anyone has a contrary view – write it up and get published.
As for poles and Greenland see previous posts this blog a few months ago.
And I wouldn’t think a decrease in station numbers would show that much effect – unless from only one spot – be more worried about coverage and the quality of the monitoring – an issue BoM worry about.
Read this in detail on station numbers
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ghcn/ghcnoverview.html#FIG2
Check out the cross-validation process
http://climate.geog.udel.edu/~climate/html_pages/README.ghcn_clim.html
David – I really don’t expect you to do anything for me, thanks.
Perhaps if you refrain from making assertions you are unable or unwilling to substantiate, we’ll both have more time to pursue other interests.
Phil – Thanks for the link, it’ll take me some time to absorb it.
As far as glaciers go, I’m sure you don’t believe temperature is the only thing that affects them? Aren’t there a lot of glaciers in the world, with only about 10% monitored?
Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice, I believe.
Species movement consistent with a low, long term rate.
There’s plenty of papers disagreeing with AGW.
Do you have published papers, Phil?
Paul –
“Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice, I believe.”
References please
“There’s plenty of papers disagreeing with AGW.”
How about a list of peer reviewed ones.
“Species movement consistent with a low, long term rate.”
Change over decades is not slow. AGW is acclerating climate change giving species no time to adapt.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4399792.stm
http://www.biodiv.org/programmes/cross-cutting/climate/interlinkages.asp?thm=bio
“Aren’t there a lot of glaciers in the world, with only about 10% monitored?”
Because of limited resources there can only be 10% monitored however they are very carefully chosen to be watchdogs for the others in the same region. There is a consistant decline in all but a small minority.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5722/675
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/10/17/glacier.melt.ap/
Phil’s NCDC reference confirms McKitrick’s statement that the number of weather stations dropped by about half in the early 90’s. Obviously you were mistaken to say that this didn’t happen, David.
Ender -I don’t have time to do such things for you, to quote David. Are you suggesting the debate is so one sided that only pro AGW has any credible evidence?
Paul – to be fair give David a chance to respond – he may not have as much availability as others here. Don’t see it as ignoring you.
Paul – I suggest you review the climate change posts this blog – much as to what you seek on Greenland, Antarctica and glaciers have been well answered in the last six months with detailed references. And you might expect Greenland and Antarctica to be responding exactly as they are (for now !!).
As far a papers published disagreeing with AGW I would suggest there are very very few.
In my opinion the single most difficult issue about AGW is the fundamental issue of radiative physics of CO2 in the atmosphere. If you don’t have a good grasp of this at a basic level it’s all probably a leap of faith that can only be proved in 20 years time when the numbers are in. (Oh – and its’ too late to do anything).
The big gap missing in the anti-AGW camp is a congent alternative hypothesis to explain what we’re observing. I wouldn’t be starting on all the issues that are being argued about – dead ends IMHO. So I wonder why it hasn’t been served up?
You will also notice a major difference in style between realclimate and most anti sites. One has detailed arguments and references. The others are typically rhetorical, political and emotional instead of just focusing on the science argument (in general – your mileage may vary etc). This is not the way science is argued.
Paul – No
Phil – Some anti sites may be as you say, but far from all. A lot of “skeptics” do not deny that warming is occurring, either. Some posters at this site seem to have taken a strong position and dismiss any contrary evidence.
I don’t believe the issue is the radiative physics of CO2 at all. The issue is the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, how that changes in response to increased CO2, and what effect this has on temperature gradients. It is impossible to compute the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere, and so it is impossible to predict what the temperature gradient will do. It is possible to predict CO2 induced surface COOLING without violating any laws of physics.
This is just one major uncertainty in the AGW case which never makes it into the public, debate. I have never seem any article in the Adelaide “Advertiser” hinting at any other possibility than climate catastrophe.
Paul – “It is impossible to compute the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere”
No its not. Physicists can approximate quite well the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere. They cannot get it exactly right but close enough.
“It is possible to predict CO2 induced surface COOLING without violating any laws of physics.”
How??
“This is just one major uncertainty in the AGW case which never makes it into the public”
True enough but that is more a reflection of the press than the AGW debate. This is why the site RealClimate was setup. You will find there arguments and analysis of the uncertainty. There is little doubt in the scientific community that human produced greenhouse gases coupled with land changes etc are producing a positive forcing in the atmosphere. Most of the uncertainty and debate is what will happen to the Earths atmosphere as a result of this warming.
OK – breakthrough – we have three classes of antis
(1) nothing is happening – zippo – zilch (or it’s actually cooling since 1998)
(2) CO2 ain’t the cause – it’s natural so emit away
(3) don’t worry – we can handle it anyway – we’ll adapt and/or tech our way out.
Serious reports on climate change always discuss the uncertainties – but of course some uncertainties can also go in 2 directions.
Impossible to compute the fluid dynamics? – would have thought that’s exactly what the climate models are all about – I guess you can only check them in how well or well enough they represent current and historical realities.
Ender – If I could first stress that I am not a mathematician, but am capable of understanding a suitably “hand wavy” explanation of mathematical concepts.
My understanding is that there is no set of equations representing how climate works. This is because of the sheer complexity of climatic conditions. There is something called the Navier-Stokes theory of fluid dynamics, but apparently this can not be expanded to account for climate.
Added to this is the chaotic nature of climate, which makes prediction of future states impossible, which is acknowledged by the IPCC.
The reference to surface cooling is; Essex, Chris (1991). “What do Climate Models Teach us about Global Warming?” Pure and Applied Geophysics 135(1) 125-133.
This reference is found in the McKitrick article to which I linked in a previous post. The article gives a fuller and more coherent discussion of these points then my brief summary, of course.
Phil –
(4)The effect of CO2 is overridden by other forcings
(5)The rate and ultimate level of CO2 emissions is low enough to not cause a problem
(6)The actual effect of extra CO2 cannot be predicted
(7)Extra CO2 and a warmer climate could be beneficial
etc.
Actually I’m a bit hurt to be labelled an “anti”, I prefer to think of myself as a “Seeker of Truth”.
Paul –
(4) like what ? solar, orbital, volcanism – don’t think so…
(5) well we have the SRES scenarios for a variety of growth and technology options – seen CO2 growth rate decreasing lately?
(6) well that’s point eh -where model validation comes in – models aren’t that bad at simulating current climate
(7) more antis than pros as has been well discussed previously this blog – and downside of being wrong is “honey I buggaed the planet – can we rerun that gain pls”
Chaos is sampled for in the runs. Ensembles of runs are made with varying starting conditions. You should see climate as the tide, and weather as the wave height at any moment. Climate isn’t that chaotic in some respects – I predict next winter will be cooler than this summer – want to disagree?
Paul – I am not a mathematician either however I understand that no-one tries to solve these equations but approximated them using computers. The faster the computer the narrower the intervals can be and the closer the approximation. No-one also tries to solve the chaotic equations either just examines certain equilibrium conditions where the behaviour is not chaotic. This can then be applied to reality to see how it goes. This is why no-one can predict what will happen.
Again it is not necessary to understand all about a system to make certain predictions. All physicists knows almost nothing about the wave-particle duality of light however they can design the CD-ROM that is now standard on all computers. No aerodynamicist in the world can predict exactly where the boundary layer will trip from laminar to turbulent flow on an aircraft’s wing as this is a chaotic system as well. however that does not prevent them from designing planes that fly. You can see chaos in motion if you look out the window of a commercial airliner and watch the play of airflow across the wing. Sometimes if the air is moist enough you can see the bounday layer trip between the flow straiteners.
The point is that without a complete knowledge of the Earth atmosphere and using intelligent approximations scientists can make general guesses about future climate. I would agree with you that these guesses are sometimes mistaken for concrete predictions – somthing that the scientists involved never do as they are fully aware of the uncertainties.
If you are a seeker of truth as you claim then you should seek these references before you make these claims
“(4)The effect of CO2 is overridden by other forcings”
This is the generally accepted graph of forcings.
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/info/ipcc.html
As you can clearly see greenhouse gas forcings is not overwhelmed.
“(5)The rate and ultimate level of CO2 emissions is low enough to not cause a problem”
A good site here is Stephen Schnieder’d site
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Impacts/CliImpFrameset.html
or
http://www.publiceyestv.org/research_downloads/worldweatherchanges.pdf
“(6)The actual effect of extra CO2 cannot be predicted”
True enough however as I said before we can make intelligent guesses.
“(7)Extra CO2 and a warmer climate could be beneficial
etc.”
Most studies that have been done have contradicted this assertion as CO2 is only one influence on growth. The others such as nutrients and water will still be the same so will limit any advantages of extra CO2.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/december11/jasperplots-124.html
Phil – You may not think so, but not everyone agrees with you. Also, water vapour, clouds, aerosols, soot. And just to speculate, we are standing on a thin crust floating on a ball of molten rock. Can we be 100% confident this can’t affect climate.
CO2 emissions and SRES scenarios
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we16.htm#n79
This blog is fun to participate in, but hardly the last word in scientific rigour.
The consequences of being wrong about AGW and still going ahead with Kyoto? “honey I buggaed the planet – can we rerun that gain pls”
I urge you to read McKitrick’s paper (previous post) if you have time. It can’t hurt to have more ammunition to hurl at me, at the very least!
Crikey it’s hard to keep up with two of you!
Ender – why isn’t water vapour mentioned in the IPCC technical summary? I understood water vapour to have many times the IR absorbtive capacity of atmospheric CO2. Also, “All forcings shown have distinct spatial and seasonal features intended to give, in a relative sense, a first-order perspective on a global, annual mean scale and cannot be readily employed to obtain the climate response to the total natural and/or anthropogenic forcings.”
The Stanford experiment is interesting. The reporting of it “researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change”, does seem a bit more dramatic than what was actually found, “The three-factor combination of increased temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition produced the largest stimulation [an 84 percent increase], but adding carbon dioxide reduced this to 40 percent”. Still, the point is a good one, and I’m sure we’ll see more results as time goes on.
Ian Castles had a lot more to say about the accuracy of the SRES. McKitrick also. I certainly don’t accept them at face value at this stage. In fact, as my knowledge increases, I’m tending to become more skeptical. But the debate is good to clarify thinking, etc.
Paul – water vapour has always been treated as a feedback rather than a forcing.
This is a really good summary of recent research.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=212
Paul – well I’m most impressed with your cordiality even though we may be debating with some vigour. Ender and I are unused to such civility.
Water vapour does need a special need as Ender suggests. Castles comment on SRES was more about the methodology of economic calculations than the scenarios themselves. CO2 isn’t Jack’s beanstalk – fundamentally if you don’t have the water your bugga-ed. Some areas won’t. Climate change effects won’t nice even and linear. The current world isn’t either. And El Nino makes some areas wetter and some drier. Our current east coast Australian trend is to drier (yes I know it’s raining currently – and good on it).
Also if your forest if at maturity won’t do much so there are papers showing temperate forests in Europe not responding to additional CO2.
Yes – Aerosols and clouds are an issue and under current research.
But equally so should biospheric feedbacks – I’m told we could liberate another 300ppm in permafrosts, tundra, peat bogs and other sources if we’re unlucky.
P.S. Interestingly water plants are CO2 limited – which is why they have emergent parts. Anyway aquarists have spent a lot of time working out how to dose their tanks with a modicum of CO2. Too much and you kill your fish. Anyway you can get spectacular increases in growth and photosynthesis. Plants just pearl O2 bubbles all over their leaves. But it’s sitting in water eh ?
http://www.dohse-aquaristik.de/dupla/england/dupla/produkte.php?showpg=32
I have seen (can’t remember where) that climate may be affected by shifts in the magnetic pole, and occasional reversal. Is this science fiction, or is there a possibility of truth in it? If so, how might this work? Would solar wind be involved? How about earth wobbling (Milankovitch)? Speak to me oh gurus…
P.S. I remember it was very wet and muddy at Agincourt.
A google on the topic suggests everything from not much at all to at a lot. I don’t really know !
Phil -“Ender and I are unused to such civility”
Thanks, but I can get tetchy if my feathers are overly ruffled!
Castles comments on SRES had a direct bearing on the scenarios. The level and rate of economic development in developing countries affects their levels of CO2 emission.
A general comment on feedback. In living creatures, negative feedback is overwhelmingly more common than positive. Otherwise the organism would not exist in a relatively steady state.
I don’t see why the same thing should not be true in the earth’s climate. If positive feedback was a factor, then, given the changes in past climate, positive feedback would by now have caused movement of climate to an extreme position.
OK we’ll start being nasty then 🙂 We’re more comfortable with that.
Yes economic development does have a bearing but you can delimit that I’d suggest with upper and lower bounds – well Ian seemed to infer that when we blogged with him.
Positive feedback. mmmm … past climates have been tad extreme and extinctions have occurred. Then the orbital forcing has slowed it back again. But don’t have orbital mechanism about to kick in anytime soon (geologically speaking).
But this time now is different. We liberating giga-tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel sequestration over 100s of millions of years in a very short period geologically speaking (100-150 years). Historically the Earth has not had 6 billion odd humans all perched on the edge of exposure to drought, flood, storms and heatwaves. With 30 days food supply overall. Every time we have a major climate perturbation in the world these days – many humans get hurt or are even killed. The variation we already have from El Nino is a big problem in its own right.
Davey – try (no warranties given)
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/venus/RevScience.html
http://calspace.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/03_1.shtml
But see
http://www.iceagenow.com/Magnetic_Reversal_Chart.htm
Phil – “If positive feedback was a factor, then, given the changes in past climate, positive feedback would by now have caused movement of climate to an extreme position.”
Which is has done in the past. It takes a pretty extreme perturbation to kick in the positive feedbacks however when they start they really go.
Phil – I meant Paul – sorry
Thanks for the websites Phil. I found them fascinating. Back in the Dark Ages (shortly before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415) I studied at Brussels University, and a certain professor there was much interested in Milankovich cycles. He said that if the Antarctic warmed by even 20C, it would only melt around the perimeter, since it is about -50C in the middle. What would happen would be an increase in snowfall, so locking up more fresh water by thickening of the central ice-cap. I have seen reports that this is actually happening at the moment. Am I being naive?
Davey – have a look at recent climate change posts this blog in archives – lots of really good Antarctica references. For a start
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000985.html#comments
Also
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY
Int. J. Climatol. 25: 279–294 (2005)
Published online 11 February 2005 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/joc.1130
ANTARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE DURING THE LAST 50 YEARS
JOHN TURNER,a,* STEVE R. COLWELL,a GARETH J. MARSHALL,a TOM A. LACHLAN-COPE,a
ANDREW M. CARLETON,b PHIL D. JONES,c VICTOR LAGUN,d PHIL A. REIDe and SVETLANA IAGOVKINAf
a British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK
b College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA
c Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
d Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St Petersburg, Russia
e National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia
f Department of Dynamical Meteorology, Main Geophysical Observatory,
http://south.aari.nw.ru/publication/climate_change/climate_change.pdf
Yes to your comment – you can expect warming edges and more snowpack in the interior. Also and enhanced circumpolar vortex which isolates the middle of continent up somewhat.
Don’t know about 20C though – that’s like “heaps” !