Al Gullon gives the whole transportation and climate change debate a politically scientific angle.
The following article by Al Gullon appeared in the April/May 2007 edition of the H3B Media publication ‘Thinking Highways’ and is reproduced here with kind permission.
“I hasten to add that it is not ‘another opinion piece’. I put many hours (and my two undergraduate degrees) into an analysis of the IPCC and NASA data on trends in “global warming” and solar radiation. The linked article is my attempt to “vulgarize” the data for the intelligent non-scientists among us.”
Sincerely,
Al
A. C. Gullon, BSc., PEng.
Automobiles+Concepts+Environments
Consulting on Safety & the Environment
Technical Articles & Lectures
Web: www.alsaces.ca
Rule #1 Regleof/deampSYdalalu
“It’s the happy thought that’ll kill ya!”
“C’est la pensée heureuse qui t’tuera!”
The question “why is there another global warming article in Thinking Highways?” was answered just as I finally decided to put my thoughts onto paper. The radio reported on the UK’s “60 per cent by 2050” announcement and the news was not good on two fronts, except for those moved more by faith or photo opportunities than science. Not good, because that grandiose goal ignores both the economic benefits of improving productivity – for every member of human society – and, with respect to the required/expected improvements in fuel efficiency, the iron ‘law of diminishing returns,’ not to mention several past and recent scientific developments. Not good, because of the probability that the pursuit of such a false and unattainable goal will divert material and human resources, in the ITS community as elsewhere, into dead ends (e.g. CO2 payments to governments who have so abused both their citizens and their economy that their productivity is already in decline) at the same time as everyone’s standard of living declines – in tempo with decreasing productivity.
Enough of the ’why’ and now for the ’what’
When the Kyoto Accord and the working methods of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) first came to my attention I was; pensioned off after 23 years as technocrat with Environment Canada, initially very understanding, even sympathetic at seeing the work of the climatologists severely misrepresented in summaries and sound bites prepared by the politicians. Later, when it appeared that at least some of my fellow scientists were pre-misrepresenting their work in order to remain ‘on the list’ for research contracts, sympathy turned to shame and I was looking for ways to disown my science degree. Fortunately I also have an engineering degree to fall back on. Whereas it is the scientist’s job to develop an understanding of what is theoretically possible, including speculating on scale-ups from proven laboratory results, it is the engineer’s job to calculate whether the laws of nature thus revealed can be economically combined to produce useful objects and/or processes which can be (safely) placed at the service of humans. This ‘division of labour’ works well in the private sector but is derailed when politicians arrive, few of whom are scientists and fewer engineers. In whichever country or issue they pay no attention to the engineers and, as in global warming, seem to extrapolate on the scientists’ speculations.
Honest to a fault?
It was in October 1999 that Prof. Dr. Dusan Gruden, now retired but then Porsche’s Director for Environment and Energy, responded to my invitation to bring their message on global warming to Ottawa. As I had heard his presentation at several international meetings, it’s actually a two-part message: firstly, “The combustion of petroleum products by the private automobile contributes an insignificant portion of the global CO2 emissions” and, secondly, “NEVERTHELESS, the automobile industry will continue its ongoing, and fruitful (an average of 1 per cent per year over the past 25 years), efforts to improve fuel consumption.” Unfortunately the emotional controversy surrounding the first part often obscures the second part of the message. The research behind the presentation [Emissions and Air Quality, Lenz and Cozzarini, SAE Publications (with 148 references!)] was carried out by Dr. Gruden’s alma mater, the Technical University of Vienna. Given the ‘facts’ we have been fed by the media, the first part is surprising, at least. Nevertheless it is easily understandable (even by those of us without Dr. Gruden’s academic qualifications) once you realize that true scientists are the most honest inhabitants of this planet. They won’t even let you misunderstand the accuracy of their calculations. They insist on providing what they call an ‘error band’ around the answer. (Unfortunately they can do little about the misquotes and misrepresentations of their work by the mass media – and by the small and large “p” politicians.)
Being precise about imprecision
You ask for the answer to the ‘burning question of the day’ (pun intended) and they don’t give you one answer, they give you three! Translated into everyday English itcomes out something like, “Well, using currently published research on presently known emission sources, our best guess at the CO2 emissions from natural sources is 770 Gigatonnes per year. However, many of the ‘measurements’ are in fact of dubious accuracy so it could be as low as 600 or as high as a number slightly north of 1000.” “What about the automobile?” you say. And they say, “We have some better numbers for total man-made CO2. It’s somewhere close to 28. Say plus or minus 2. And we’ve got some real good numbers for the personal automobile itself. All you have to know really is the amount of gasoline (of each formulation) sold each year and, because it is everywhere subject to taxes, every government keeps a good count. What? Oh, yes. The number is 1.54 … roughly. Plus or minus 0.075.” We can now put the automobile’s role in CO2 emissions in perspective. We will ignore that huge error band (600 to 1000+) for a moment and just focus on the ‘best guess’ 770 for natural emissions to which we will add the maximum amount of manmade (28+2) to get a round number 800 for total global annual emissions of CO2. Within that best-guess total of 800 Gigatonnes/year our automobiles contribute just 1.54. (For the mathematically minded that’s two tenths of 1 per cent.) Somehow the word “insignificant” comes to mind.
0.6 degrees of separation
So, is CO2 even the major driver for the purported Greenhouse Effect? Intrigued by that Porsche presentation I then did some surfing on the Internet for the base IPCC data behind their contention that anthropogenic CO2 was the major driver of the greenhouse effect. I quickly discovered that all the fuss was over a purported warming of just 0.6ºC … over the past century! My first thought was that it was technically impossible to take the earth’s temperature with such precision. However, the next steps proved me wrong on that point. A little more surfing revealed that some scientists were suggesting that small, cyclical variations in the radiation of the sun might be at the root of the observed warming trend. When I put the temperature trendline on a graph with that Solar Cycle (Figure 1) I soon noticed that the small perturbations along the length of the temperature trendline corresponded very well with the Solar Maximums. Whatever might be moving that temperature trendline it was now certain that the technicians manning the weather stations throughout the world were doing an excellent job. An email exchange with the IPCC administration directed me to a downloadable source of the corresponding, century long, trendline for anthropogenic emissions of CO2. When added to Figure 1 it produced a gigantic X through the theory that CO2 was moving the earth’s temperature. The CO2 line rises strongly and steadily right through the mid-century, three decade long decline in the temperature line. Note that this does not disprove the greenhouse effect. CO2 is a minor greenhouse agent, with both water vapour and methane being much stronger. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that either of those took that three-decade long drop in mid-century. So, if not a effect, then what is causing the indisputable rise in global temperature? Before leaving Figure 1 for Figure 2 you should note two things about the Solar Irradiance line. Firstly it does show that mid-century decline. Of almost equal importance it carries the adjective ‘reconstructed’. Although no regular measurements of solar irradiation had been made until 1979, irregular measurements could be correlated with sunspots which have been regularly recorded since the early 1600s. In this way scientists could ‘reconstruct’ the probable annual irradiance levels shown in Figure 1.
A completely credible correlation
However, since 1979 satellite measurements have been made of the intensity of the sunlight reaching the top of our atmosphere and regular measurements have been made of CO2 levels near the surface of the earth and oceans. Those measurements and the magic of the Internet have enabled the construction of Figure 2 which both extends Figure 1 into this century and provides a more accurate and detailed look at the past 25 years. The three block-arrows point to the three maxima marking off two Solar Cycles. The first covers the 1980’s and is the standard length of 11 years. The second, however, is only 9-10 years which leads to a higher minimum and thus a higher average annual energy inflow than in the 1980s. This correlates well with the global temperature line over those two decades. When first assembled the correlation between the temperature line and the, rather irregular, solar radiationline was poor (R=0.2). However, while researching on the ‘net I was reminded that volcanoes can have a lengthy impact on global temperatures and so explored both them and El Ninos. As you can see at the bottom of Figure 2 it was an Eureka moment. Actually several moments, because each of these extreme events locked into one of the aforementioned irregularities, until finally all of them were covered. They are colour-coded so that blue indicates an event which pulls the temperature down in their year(s) of operation and red indicates one which tends to raise global temperatures. By mentally moving the temperature line back to where it would have been without each event one can clearly see that the global temperature line has a great visual correspondence with the solar irradiance line. Although it was not done accurately enough to include in this article I did succumb to the temptation of nudging the numbers in the indicated direction in my Excel spread sheet and then ran the correlation again … and the R jumped to 0.6!
The Wrapup
Now all this is most definitely NOT to say that we should do nothing about the energy consumption of the automobile or more generally the energy consumptive nature of today’s human society. What the environmentalists are forgetting is that engineers, including automotive engineers, are the original conservationists. As a personal example, I shudder every time I see a two tonne SUV with only the driver on board. That, however, is a judgement on consumer choice. The engine in that SUV has a very good efficiency (measured as BSFC) and most SUVs employ very sophisticated controls to deliver emission performance much better than the government requires. The problem is that most SUVs have way too much weight for the load they are carrying. I shudder because they are mostly used inefficiently. We must stop whipping the willing horse. Aided by informed consumers automobile engineers will continue progress on improving both engine efficiency and overall vehicle efficiency. In that manner we will usually find that, instead of paying an exorbitant price for minuscule reductions, we will find that environmental improvementswill actually save us money.
For more information about Al Gullon and his findings, go to: www.alsaces.ca
About the author
Mr. Gullon retired from Environment Canada in February, 1996 to establish ACEs. Immediately prior to retirement he had spent five years managing a program which assisted small business in the development of innovative recycling technology. His work experience includes about a decade each as a motor transport officer in the Canadian military, as the chief of motor vehicle emissions for Environment Canada and, latterly, in various technical management positions with that department. He has separate (by ten years) science and engineering degrees and, in his off-hours over the past decade, has been nosing around in economics.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Paul – So if you look at the final graph carefully you see the red line (avg global temp) starting at the bottom of the division on the left and steadily rising to be at the top of the division on the right. At the same time CO2 has been steadily rising. The are cyclic variations in this steady rise as you would expect from La Nina, El Nino and volcanoes however your author here has neatly laid out the steady overall trend of warming over the last century.
Furthermore the annual average solar irradiation remains constant with sinusoidal variations. The sunspot number is constant as well.
In the short time of 1979 till now there is no evidence from this graph that CO2 changes are not the main driver of recent warming. You cannot see the changes in CO2 because the Y axis has been carefully chosen to be quite large so the ppm variation of CO2 seems flat.
I don’t know where you get your sources but you seem to get everyone but climate scientists to give an opinion. Who’s next the local dog catcher?
Paul – “The CO2 line rises strongly and steadily right through the mid-century, three decade long decline in the temperature line. Note that this does not disprove the greenhouse effect. CO2 is a minor greenhouse agent, with both water vapour and methane being much stronger. Nonetheless, it is hard to imagine that either of those took that three-decade long drop in mid-century.”
Also did this person’s research not uncover the rise in aerosols that reduced the incoming radiation that masked the warming? Perhaps next time he can plot aerosol variations as well.
Ender – I think you know I don’t buy the aerosols masking warming excuse, there was also a strongly negative ENSO.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L14803, doi:10.1029/2006GL028668, 2007
Regional and global trends in sulfate aerosol since the 1980s
Abstract
In the last two decades anthropogenic SO2 emissions have decreased across Europe and North America but have increased across Asia. Long-term surface observations suggest that atmospheric sulfate concentrations have followed trends in sulfur emissions more closely across Asia, than across the USA and Europe. We use a global model of chemistry and aerosol to understand changes in the regional sulfur budget between 1985 and 2000. For every 1% decrease in SO2 emissions over Europe and the USA the modelled sulfate column burden decreased by 0.65%, while over Asia a 1% increase in SO2 resulted in a 0.88% increase in sulfate. The different responses can be explained by the availability of oxidant in cloud. We find that because emissions have moved southward to latitudes where in-cloud oxidation is less oxidant limited, the 12% reduction in global SO2 emissions between 1985 and 2000 caused only a 3% decrease in global sulfate.
Too bad for you, Ender, that the sunspot hypothesis gets a realtime test, beginning now. Solar cycles 24 and 25 will produce minimal activity not seen in two hundred years. Five bucks sez that 2008 will go down as the coolest year since 1997. And temps will keep going down slowly but surely after that.
Ten years from now books will be written on how global warming alarmism afflicted so many otherwise rational and educated people. The sad question is why so many people WANTED man to be responsible for the Earth’s destruction.
“Also did this person’s research not uncover the rise in aerosols that reduced the incoming radiation that masked the warming? Perhaps next time he can plot aerosol variations as well.”
The whole aerosol thing is a contrived excuse to support the AGW curve fitting exercise Aerosols are a more localized impact and between 1945 and 1980, the so-called period of the “Great Aerosol Cooling”, they were a predominantly N. hemisphere phenomenom. Yet if you go to the bother of looking at the cooling patterns split between the hemisperes, you see that the cooling was predominantly a S. hemisphere phenomenom and a very sudden one at that in that the drop in temperatures happened very quickly before 1950. The AGW doomsayers want to pretend this whole aerosol cooling thing from 1945 to 1980, rather than embrace other concepts such as the PDO and AMO teleconnections which they avoid because they blow the AGW theory right out of the water!
Mark you are completely wrong. The cooling between 1940 and 1980 was northern Hemisphere only.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A3.lrg.gif
You can see the Southern hemipshere has steadily warmed.
But the strange thing is that this author thinks that the climate scientists have ignored the things he has been talking about. It’s obvious he has done no research into what Hansen and others have done.
Here are two key assumptions the author has wrong:
“anthropogenic CO2 was the major driver of the greenhouse effect”
No one has ever said that. The Greenhouse Effect is dominated by water vapour.
“volcanoes can have a lengthy impact on global temperatures”
A couple of years at most.
The Sun is not part of the Greenhouse Effect. The Greenhouse Effect is a product of gases absorbing heat radiated from the Earth.
The Sun warms the Earth, without the Greenhouse Effect the Earth would cool very rapidly at night to be almost as cold as the moon.
You can clearly see that the temp has a trend that is upward. This trend is not explained by either volcanoes, El ninos, La Ninas or by TSI.
The author also fails to acknowledge that other authors has explored this exact same phenomena and come to the opposite conclusion (using better methods than “By mentally moving the temperature line back to where it would have been without each event” – that is great science right there.).
The author fails to acknowledge that there are a large number of overlapping factors that all conrtibute (unequally) to global temperature. He fails to acknowledge albedo changes for example.
It’s trival at best
Paul – “Ender – I think you know I don’t buy the aerosols masking warming excuse, there was also a strongly negative ENSO.”
I don’t care whether you buy it or not the point is that between 1945 and 1975 aerosols masked the warming which then rapidly kept up with the rise in CO2. There is also a lag factor of the oceans in there as well.
Post the peer reviewed work that says otherwise – the one you posted covers 1985 to 2000
re: “Solar cycles 24 and 25 will produce minimal activity not seen in two hundred years.”
The jury is still split on SC-24, however there is a consensus prediction for a very weak SC-25.
Nice bet though — not sure the AGW alarmists here will take any of the action. There “one note” song doesn’t harmonize well in a chaotic chorus.
Interesting data on CO2 emissions from privately owned motor vehicles – I had always presumed their contibution to anthropogenic CO2 was much higher.
It seems we’re back to trying to find an affordable, reliable ,technologically feasible, nil-CO2 output alternative to burning coal.
Wonder what that could be?
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23086457-7583,00.html
Ender,
“Furthermore the annual average solar irradiation remains constant with sinusoidal variations. The sunspot number is constant as well.”
Ehem :cough:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/sunchange.png
Ehem :cough:
Andrew, the difference between maximum and minimum TSI is actually quite small, a variation of about 0.05% (see conclusion 25)
http://www.acrim.com/Reference%20Files/Secular%20total%20solar%20irradiance%20trend%20during%20solar%20cycles%2021%E2%80%9323.pdf
It’s not big enough to account for the recent increase in Global temperature.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003…/2002JA009753.shtml
TSI can’t be the reason for the recent warming as it is at it’s lowest level since they started using satellites to record it. It should have been as cold as the late 70’s early 80’s last year.
Mike M, you’re gonna lose your five bucks. And I find it hard to believe that you think your own guesswork is better than the reasoned argument of thousands of scientists.
Nathan,
The link you provided is crap just like your arguments. GISTEMP! As if anyone would believe their data!
Take a look at HADCRUT3 instead (at least both sides of the argument can agree that their results are within reason).
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/hemispheric/northern/
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/hemispheric/southern/
Read ’em and weep.
Ender, please post the evidence (not claims or opinions) that aerosols masked any warming from 1945 to 1975.
If you post model output please provide evidence that the model is accurate and that the model included every possible climate force.
Nathan, who says that TSI is the *only* solar emission that might influence temperature?
Mark, the difference between GISS temp and Hadcrut3 is that GISS temp use more data points (they incorporate areas in the Arctic) and they interpolate more than one data point away (so several data points are used in the interpolation).
You just like Hadcrut because it shows a lower temp.
However Hadcrut3 still supports my argument There is a sudden jump at about 1942, but it returns at 1950, and continues up.
The Hadcley Centre absolutley support the notion of AGW.
Well John,
inform me, what else is there?
Total Solar Irradiance seems to indicate it is the total irradiance from the sun. The total energy received at the top of the atmosphere from the sun.
Nathan,
HADCRUT does NOT support your argument. Make sure you are looking at the middle graphs, not the filtered ones at the top. What do we see?
– For the SH, average annual temperature suddenly drops about 0.4C in 1945 and oscillates about that range for about 20 years. The fact that this occurred suddenly and in the S. hemisphere means its NOT aerosols (or were a whole bunch of coal power plants built in Tahiti in 1945 that I was not aware of?).
– For the N. hemisphere, better yet look at the results for the extratropics (N. of 30N) which is where the bulk of industry was based at the time.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/regional/north_30n/
No cooling whatsoever from 1945 to 1965 and then only a small blip downward (likely due to the Agung eruption at that time).
Face reality Nathan! You haven’t a clue! As to GISTEMP sure they interpolate. Let’s base temperatures in New York on what’s happening in Atlanta 1200 km away. Makes sense to me! C’mon, any comparison to more reliable records such as radiosondes and MSU shows GISTEMP is out to lunch!
Mark, you are wrong. Just jump from 1935 to 1945. There is clearly a slow rise, there was a 10 year deviation from 1935 to 1945 but otherwise it’s just a steady rise.
Both data sets interpolate, Mark. It’s just that the GISS interpolation is different, that’s why they have different results.
You have also completely misunerstood what interpolation means. They don’t base the temp in New York on what is happening in Atlanta.
It doesn’t make sense to you because you don’t know what they are doing nor why. It’s because you haven’t bothered to find out.
Why don’t you read what the Hadley Centre says about AGW, you’ll find they don’t support your thesis.
Both GISS and Hadley support the hypothesis of AGW. They are a lot more reliable than you.
“The Hadcley (Hadley) Centre absolutley support the notion of AGW” Posted by: Nathan at January 22, 2008 02:25 PM.
Excuse me, but the graphs only demonstrate the measured movement in the earth’s av. temperature (N. & S. hemispheres) since 1850.
They do not attribute or demonstrate a cause, let along a human cause.
Nathan
In this case I go with No.3.
interpolate
1. To insert or introduce between other elements or parts.
2. a. To insert (material) into a text.
b. To insert into a conversation.
3. To change or falsify by introducing new or incorrect material.
4. Mathematics To estimate a value of (a function or series) between two known values.
Chrisgo,
The Hadley Centre is a research centre, composed of people. HadCrut3 is the dataset they create.
So, the Hadley Centre supports the hypothesis.
Mark was trying to suggest their data (HadCrut3)doesn’t.
Ender – there wasn’t any warming for aerosols to mask – and there is evidence that aerosols can have a warming effect dependent on altitude.
Nathan, a UK company is producing quite good forecasts based on solar particle flow. When I say good I mean they have now been blocked from taking weather bets with bookmakers and they have a substantial customer base for their forecasts.
And just weeks ago NASA (I think it was), reported that solar magnetic forces appeared to spiral (think worms) and it was uncertain whether these had any impact on Earth’s climate.
John,
Piers Corbyn makes the weather predictions and is quite succesful, as you note.
The magnetic forces measured by the THEMIS probe are the magnetic fields around a pair of Birkeland Currents that, along with many others, connect the earth’s upper atmosphere with the sun. When these currents increase they produce the polar auroras, as first postulated by Kristian Birkeland over 100 years ago.
Bear in mind that no magnetic field can exist in the absence of an electric current – and these currents are routinely measured in mega amperes by satellites (Peer reviewed literature can be supplied). But all electric currents must connect to complete the circuit and in the earth’s case they enter and leave polar regions via the earth’s lower crust and upper mantle.
Electric currents passing through resistive loads such as the earth’s crust generate heat and this heat is most probably the thermal background about which diurnal and short term temperatures occur.
Peer reviewed literature can be searched in IEEE papers on Plasma Physics, Plasma Universe etc, as well as other related scientific disciplines.
papers are here http://plasmascience.net/tpu/papers.html and Z-Pinch phenomena in antiquity would be one to look at.
Here’s a link to an updated Loehle 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies (PDF): http://www.ncasi.org/Publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
There’s much angst about the possible contribution of human generated CO₂ (and lesser extent CH₄) to global warming, but does it matter what the cause, human or natural (solar etc.), if the current av. global temperature trajectory is well within historic precedent?
Nathan writes:
“TSI can’t be the reason for the recent warming as it is at it’s lowest level since they started using satellites to record it. It should have been as cold as the late 70’s early 80’s last year”
This is one of the silliest comments I’ve read, and I shouldn’t have to explain why.
How low will the AGW believers sink – 1940s to 1970s cooling was actually ‘warming?’ Poor old CO2 couldn’t work it’s magic due to aerosols.
IPCC AR4 second draft:
It has been well-established in the scientific literature that the period of cooling that was most evident over North America and Europe between about 1940 and 1976 was largely due to increased concentrations of aerosols (particularly sulphates) released into the atmosphere by industrial processes, such as the combustion of coal. These aerosols lowered the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earths surface, for instance by scattering sunlight. The concentrations of these aerosols have been shown to be highest in the Northern Hemisphere, close to their industrial sources. A paper by David Stern, published in the journal Chemosphere in 2005, showed that sulphurous emissions around the world increased sharply between 1945 and about 1989, since when they have declined markedly. Sulphurous emissions peaked in North America and Europe during the 1970s.
However, over the same period SO2 emissions have been increasing significantly from Asia which is estimated to currently emit 17TgSyr-1 (Streets et al., 2003) and from developing countries (e.g., Boucher and Pham, 2002). “The net result of these combined regional reductions and increases leads to uncertainty in whether the global SO2 has increased or decreased since the 1980s” (Lefohn et al., 1999; Van Aardenne et al., 2001; Boucher and Pham, 2002),
Of course, the above uncertainty was removed for the final draft – why and how I wonder:
However, over the same period SO2 emissions have been increasing significantly from Asia, which is estimated to currently emit 17 TgS yr1 (Streets et al., 2003), and from developing countries in other regions (e.g., Lefohn et al., 1999; Van Aardenne et al., 2001; Boucher and Pham, 2002). The most recent study (Stern, 2005) suggests a decrease in global anthropogenic emissions from approximately 73 to 54 TgS yr–1 over the period 1980 to 2000, with NH emission falling from 64 to 43 TgS yr1 and SH emissions increasing from 9 to 11 TgS yr1. Smith et al. (2004) suggested a more modest decrease in global emissions, by some 10 TgS yr1 over the same period. The regional shift in the emissions of SO2 from the USA, Europe, Russia, Northern Atlantic Ocean and parts of Africa to Southeast Asia and the Indian and Pacific Ocean areas will lead to subsequent shifts in the pattern of the RF (e.g., Boucher and Pham, 2002; Smith et al., 2004; Pham et al., 2005).
How utterly disingenuous – denialist Biggs takes a loaded sweep with zero justification or substantiation, while the denialist Mark identity is still banging on trying to equivalence the northern and southern hemisphere’s behaviour in detail in isolation of the underlying surface. If you haven’t made an alternative calculation with the evolved forcings gentlemen you have no philosophical position. Why play a bogus joker card trying to pretend CO2 works alone. You’re playing wiggle science. 0/10.
Nathan, check again, I was only opposing the false assertion that the difference was zero. Was I right on that point or not?
“There is clearly a slow rise, there was a 10 year deviation from 1935 to 1945 but otherwise it’s just a steady rise.”
Obviously the rise from 1935 to 1945 is inconvenient so let’s just ignore it because it doesn’t fit your pet theory. Oh, and what about the flat trend in the 30N+ record from 1930 to 1987. Don’t like that either. Let’s remove that too from consideration.
Reminds me of the bookshop sketch on Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation album:
Customer: “I don’t like that either.”
Salesclerk: “Alright, I’ll remove it then.”
Customer: “But I can’t read!”
Let us end with another MP quote from The Holy Grail (Graham Chapman to the Black Knight):
“You’re a loon!”
Paul and Ender: Aerosols may have provided some input to the mid-20th century cooling, but it would have been minimal. It was the Pacific Ocean that drove global temperatures down. To verify this, all you have to do is load the data in a spreadsheet and compare the annual HADCRUT3 GL against the PDO on a graph from 1940 to 1980, remembering that PDO data has global warming trends removed. The drop in the PDO was significantly above the drop in global temperatures.
To carry it a bit farther, adjust the annual PDO data for the percentage of the globe it represents. The Pacific Ocean covers one third of the globe. The PDO is calculated for the north Pacific above 20N, so assume for example that the area the PDO represents is 11% of the globe. Multiply the PDO anomaly data by 0.11 and graph it again for 1940 to 1980 with the HADCRUT global temperature data. The drop in the 1940s then rise in the 1970s, with small variations in between, is almost one for one.
You don’t need a GCM to make that comparison.
Paul: I’ll email you the spreadsheet if you like.
Bob,
Not sure if you’ve see this item from Joseph D’Aleo which shows the significant correlation between what the major ocean oscillations such as the PDO and AMO have done and what temperatures have done over the 20th century.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/More_on_The_Great_Pacific_Climate_Shift_and_the_Relationship_of_Oceans_on_Global_Temperatures.pdf
While the IPCC does discuss teleconnections and frames a question as to whether such changes are symmetric or asymmetric, it then just drops any consideration of these phenomena probably because their reality blows AGW alarmism out of the water.
Given that we are due for a PDO shift to cold mode (and we may already be starting to see this), the IPCC won’t be able to ignore this factor for much longer particularly since the sun is going into quiet mode and we are likely to see dangerous global COOLING rather than warming. God help us if we have a major volcano blow (which we are also overdue for).
Bottom line is that the major influences on climate change over the 20th century were driven primarily by solar factors overlaid by the effects of changes in the major ocean oscillations. While CO2 increases may have generated a minor warming, this is offset by aerosol and land use impacts that sum to a minimal anthropogenic impact (and perhaps even a negative one!).
You’re just ranting Luke – the aerosol excuse just doesn’t wash.
Mark – “Given that we are due for a PDO shift to cold mode (and we may already be starting to see this), the IPCC won’t be able to ignore this factor for much longer particularly since the sun is going into quiet mode and we are likely to see dangerous global COOLING rather than warming.”
So what would you suggest we do? Start pumping out as much CO2 as we can? What if you are wrong? You have no evidence apart from a few vague correlations and mechanisms that have no scientific support.
The IPCC does not take notice or ignore anything. It is a body that is set up to review the current state of climate science. If what you say is in the peer reviewed literature at the time of the next report then this is what will be included.
I guess we will see.
No Paul – you don’t close arguments. You have not even got close to formally working it through. All is left hanging. The mark of the denialist. No science. No calculations. Just accusations. 0/10.
Mark – Just google scholar “aerosol cooling early 20th century” and see what the literature says.
Mark, you’re missing the point.
You are assuming that the response of the atmosphere to increases in CO2 should be linear.
That’s incorrect.
You are assuming CO2 is the only driver.
That’s incorrect.
You keep assuming that any other explanation for why the temperature hasn’t trended perpetually upwards is fake.
That’s stupid.
Do you know how to calculate a running mean? Why don’t you do that the Southern Hemisphere data, and maybe use an 11 year mean as that way you’ll remove most of the solar cycle effects. You will see the mean steadily rising throughout the century.
Read some research on it. It’s not hard to find. If you don’t agree, go and publish you own findings and prove them wrong.
Proteus,
That’s a pointless comment. At least back it up.
You’re right Andrew, was just making sure you knew.
C’mon Nathan, just admit it that the notion that the cooling from the 40’s through the 70’s was driven by increased emission of aerosols is just more crap tailored by alarmists to fit the picture they are trying to build. The facts of what actually happened with the temperature reduction in terms of when, how fast and where are totally incongruent with this notion.
Go ahead and believe it yourself if you want to. Just don’t regurgitate it to those of us who believe in emperical proof because we’re not buying any of this alarmist garbage.
“The sad question is why so many people WANTED man to be responsible for the Earth’s destruction.”
I want it because I’m a Marxist.
Oooops, I guess I shouldn’t have said that.
That’s two uses of the gratuitous term “alarmist” by a denialist. How do you have empirical proof when you have 3-4 interacting forcings with a global variable land surface.
“That’s two uses of the gratuitous term “alarmist” by a denialist.”
Filing this under, most hypocritical statement EVER.
Grow up, Luke. This “DENIALIST DENIALIST DENIALIST” approach to dealing with people you disagree with doesn’t cut the butter. Jeez.
Well just waiting for you to complain about the term “alarmist” Andrew – I find it personally offensive. So balls in your court.
Luke, when people stop claiming the earth will literally stop rotating, then I’ll oppose calling them Alarmists. For you, however, I perfer the term “child”.
Well, Nathan, in your own words:
“You are assuming that the response of the atmosphere to increases [or decreases] in CO2 should be linear.
That’s incorrect.
You are assuming CO2 is the only driver.
That’s incorrect.”
Substitute CO2 for TSI.
Regarding aerosols, what does the AR4 claim in Fig 10.26 regarding worldwide sulfur dioxide emissions since 1975 in TgS/yr:
1975: 58
1980: 63
1985: 67
1990: 71
1995: 71
2000: 70
How does this square with the claims being made above?
Proteus, that’s what the author of the article at the top of this post is trying to say. They are suggesting that you can explain the past 30 years by using the TSI. Which you can’t, as there isn’t enough variability in the total output.
I can’t answer your question, I would be guessing.
I haven’t seen a satisfactory explanation for the ‘cooling’ through the 70’s (or rather lack of warming). I am more inclined to think in terms of strange attractors, so there are ‘regions’ of stability that the climate keeps getting pushed out of. So the flat lines we see are those ‘stable’ periods.
posted by Nathan
(explanation for the ‘cooling’ or rather lack of warming)
just like “Global warming” = Climate change.
You gotta love the warmenistas, if for nothing else,
then just for sheer inventiveness to try to defend their crazy beliefs.
The Jonestown brigade had nothing on them!
Mark – “Go ahead and believe it yourself if you want to. Just don’t regurgitate it to those of us who believe in emperical proof because we’re not buying any of this alarmist garbage.”
Just like the emperical proof linking cosmic rays with warming?
You have not provided one reference to anything that could be mistaken for scientific evidence to support your notions that recent warming is:
a) Natural, or when that avenue fails
b) Happening but harmless, indeed beneficial or
c) Caused by anything, and I do mean anything, from cosmic rays to the lizard people at the centre of the Earth that would let rich people getting richer off the hook.
So rather than slinging of at others how about you start referencing your statements with some peer reviewed science.
“The IPCC …… is a body that is set up to review the current state of climate science” Posted by: Ender at January 23, 2008 08:24 AM.
No, that definition is far too broad.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity” – Wiki.
The study of possible anthropogenic forcing is only a recently popular branch of climate science.
For instance H.H. Lamb (1913 – 1997), the greatest climatologist of his day and the first to establish the inconsistency of climate over the centuries was unconvinced of the importance of greenhouse gas warming as he felt that there was too much reluctance to consider the full range of other, natural, causes of change.
Insightful analysis Brett …
You need to make some calculations – you have an increasing CO2 forcing and a slightly increasing aerosol forcing, the latter from the data posted. If the aerosols reflect solar radiation the Earth will warm less and the CO2 greenhouse forcing will be lower, CO2 having less longwave to work with. CO2 does not work alone. At some point one could easily imagine that the CO2 forcing if increasing with concentration would overcome the aerosol dampening.
A bit sophistimuckated for the demanding empirical one-dimensional linearists on the now increasing shrill and religious denialist side but did you think God would give the answer to you on a platter. Spreadsheet wielding linearists may be daunted and find easier to go back to the altar of denial.
And you also have some solar forcing in the first half of the 20th century and volcanic effects in the latter half. The climate models seem to reasonably reproduce the pattern of temperature evolution over time.
Oh yes someone will say – “oh they fitted the result”. Well hokey doo then.
So without some calculations of the integration of the various factors, the denialists will have to wallow in moral and intellectual bankruptcy. No science basis, no thesis and no coherent philosophical position.
(Hey haven’t we done this at least 100 times before?)
Luke!
I could not give a proverbial about either side anymore!
The whole thing, at least on this blog, (I don’t visit any other climate blogs) has became Tom Sawyerish, remember my big brother? Well the same thing here, My peer reviewed scientist can beat your your pear reviewed scientist!
And what makes it even more laughable is the fact, that apart from a very few really knowledgeable people all this emanates from individuals with less than high school knowledge, judging by the comments they make when not quoting some else.
Luke: “the now increasing shrill and religious denialist side”
Excuse me? Certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black!! Who’s predicting world doom from warming when empirical evidence suggests we’re going to be quite alright Jack?!
You have to learn to not swing at wide balls Mark.
Anyway just who is predicting what – given you know tell me?
The empirical evidence before you is empirical. Put a few more years on it before you claim victory. I don’t think linearist philosophy will enlighten you one iota. Empirical evidence suggests the plague is caused by bad air.
Ender: Googling “aerosol cooling early 20th century”, with quotes, returns exactly zero (0) documents. And BTW, the IPCC picks which documents it includes in their reports, ones that agree with their premise of AGW.
Mark: In looking at the Joe D’Aleo paper you provided a link for, I found something in Figure 7 I can’t reconcile. Look at the peak AMO readings. I just downloaded the unsmoothed AMO data again to check but I can’t recreate that graph. The highest MONTHLY AMO readings I can find are 0.635 in April 1878 and 0.624 in Nov 1937. Those aren’t annual means or averages; those are peaks over the 150-year term of the data. But Figure 7 shows annual AMO readings as high as 2.0 deg. Maybe Joe’s using older AMO data, prior to detrending. I don’t know. It appears this data is then “standardized” for comparisons to the PDO and other indexes through the rest of his report. If the original AMO data is in error, the rest of his comparisons are too.
Bob: Not sure of his specific methodology. The shapes of the data curves for the PDO and AMO look correct. My guess is that he may weight the AMO vs. the PDO in terms of estimated overall impact on U.S. climate (which is what he ultimately compares to). He then appears to scale the combined AMP + PDO numbers to align the max and mins with temperature. Would certainly be helpful if a bit more detail on the methodology was shown. However, I believe the outcomes have merit to them.
I think there needs to be much more investigation and analysis on the role played by these major ocean oscillations and their impact on climate. There is a good chance that much of the fluctuation in temperatures we have seen in the 20th century is driven by them. Unfortunately we’ve just come out of several decades where the AMO and PDO have both had positive phases and of course the alarmists have co-opted the resultant warming into their scaremongering position. This also plays into the role of the sun including the impact of cosmic rays. Alarmists have of course tried to discredit Svensmark’s theory based on the notion that solar activity has been mostly static for the past several decades while temperatures went up. However if this warming was driven by the changes to the PDO and AMO then Svensmark’s theories are not necessarily falsified.
In another post I had reported on a calculation I had done based on measured changes to deep upwelling flows off the coast of S. America from the 1970’s to the 1990’s. This calculation indicated that the impact of this change in upwelling was over 1.5 watts per metre squared (oooooo Luke, are you happy now?)if spread on a global basis which is damn significant. The key question then becomes whether such changes in deep water upwelling are asymmetric or not. If they are then they need to be properly accounted for in trying to explain what is driving the surface temperature record. While the AR4 discusses teleconnections, I could not find any conclusion as to how they are accounted for (other than apparently just being ignored).
Mark: I agree that more research needs to be done into the affects of the natural components and their impacts on recent history. There’s no way the predictions can be found reasonable without a complete understanding of natural variability. And right now, we don’t have it, and the GCMs don’t include anything close to it.
Bob Tidsdale – “Ender: Googling “aerosol cooling early 20th century”, with quotes, returns exactly zero (0) documents. And BTW, the IPCC picks which documents it includes in their reports, ones that agree with their premise of AGW.”
Did you try it without the quotes? The IPCC ‘picks’ reports agree with AGW because in the peer reviewed literature such reports out weigh reports that do not agree with AGW 1000 to one or so. It is pretty hard to find anything peer reviewed that is anti-AGW. If you think this is a conspiracy then I will reach for my tinfoil hat. I take it that the scientists that are capable of producing science that is able to pass peer review think that AGW is true and will cause a degree of climate change.
Ender don’t get so enthralled with your peer review. Mann’s hockey stick work was supposedly peer reviewed (yeh – by his lackeys) and it was a piece of crap!
Mark – “Ender don’t get so enthralled with your peer review. Mann’s hockey stick work was supposedly peer reviewed (yeh – by his lackeys) and it was a piece of crap!”
My peer review??? I think that you are referring to the system that has provided the science behind all the technology and medicine that we now take for granted. To think that a system that works for the 99.9% of science that is not climate science however mysteriously breaks down for the 0.1% that is, shows much for the quality of your thinking.
MBH99 has been replicated and confirmed by 6 or 7 subsequent studies. We are not re-opening the hockey stick wars.
I actually agree that inability of the GCMs to represent oscillations like PDO, IPO and AMO are significant limitations. El Nino & La Nina for that matter too. But there are a number of difficulties – do some of these oscillations actually exist or are they statistical artifacts of our small sample size, how do they work – what’s the mechanism – can’t model them if you don’t know, and the impact of including them is unknown – might be better or worse in terms of DOOM-MONGERING. Could really play with extemes.
I don’t know where exactly many of our contrarian friends here are from exactly. But multi-year drought sequences (we have had two in the last 15 years in Australia) rip the guts out of rural economy and have long lasting land degradation effects from either overgrazing or inevitable kangaroo plagues caused by drought migration. When droughts break as they seem to do now – massive flood events cause tremendous erosion on ground made bare. So these impacts are what intersts me more than a wiggle in mean temperatures.
The other issue is that climate modelling seems to be stuck in a rut. How to get to the next level becoming a challenge. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2008/01/why_is_climate_modelling_stuck.php#more
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/12/why-is-climate-modeling-stuck.html
Ender – the ‘hockey team’ always plays with a ‘hockey stick.’
Not bad Luke, so how on earth do we assume we can model climate then, a non-linear, chaotic system.
We can’t, period.
Luke,
The widespread floods in Queensland are not really eroding anything – water at that velocity can’t erode diddly-squat. Prolonged turbulent flow erodes, and for that to happen requires significant topographical relief, which most of Australia does not have (ignoring the Great Dividing Range).
But Lake Eyre will fill up, again, and how do the birds know it’s full? Same thing happens to the Flamingos on the western coast of southern Africa – they know when the inland rivers flow and form lakes from over 1000 km way. Phenomes?
Maybe we don’t really understand it at all.
Whoops. You do, especially climate and its future states obtained from the reading of tea leaves (organically sourced) in sustainable teacups, (Porcelain or China).
Louis if climate is truly chaotic and mega important and so non-linear we would have – off the scale – either baked, frozen, dried up or drained in the last century – we have not.
So been talking to the Nogoa locals have you – do know what the catchment above the dam looks like?
Any idea of gullying in the Fitzroy basin – of course you don’t know.
Measured any ground cover transects over time?
Seen any pictures of cropping at Clermont without contour banks?
Of course not.
And did you notice how clear the flood water is?
Try an intelligent comment for a change Louis.
Luke
I never said that climate was chaotic, I said that it was a non-linear, chaotic system, or a more technical description of turbulent flow, (in terms of physics).
Thes rest of your comment will stand, or fall, on it’s own merits.
Actually my prior comment is not quite right since climate is weather averaged over a period of 30 years, by definition.
So it’s weather that is intrinsically a non-linear, chaotic system. So modelling climate is essentially an averaging of something we can’t really quantify in the first place.
Others would describe that as BS. Me, pseudoscience.
Louis – there are many definitions of climate – the 30 year period is a WMO standard adopted so we can have some meaningful and ongoing dicussions about anomalies as opposed to absolutes. And as you know a 1 degree C sea surface temperature anomaly can represent an El Nino event.
But it is just “a” definition.
There can be others – there is no divine message in the 30 years. Handy and convenient perhaps. Climate is what you expect on average, but weather is what you get day to day.
A non-linear chaotic system shoild if unstable dart off into an extreme mode. Your concern about prediction. The fact that it doesn’t tells us that the chaos is bounded. Indeed the mathematics and physics of GCMs are such that modellers run ensembles (groups of runs – 10 to 50) with slightly different starting conditions which gives a number of runs – and so the chaos space is sampled as a probability distribution. Standard practice. None of the models are attempting an exact forecast of January 27 2050 – they are only trying to provide us with a sample of the future climate, not the exact future climate. Anything else is a misunderstanding of what they are doing.
The fact that a supercomputer can in detail do a passable job of modelling the current global climate, that fronts, circulation systems and so forth all appear and work is somewhat remarkable.
However we still need to do better before I would be satisfied getting into regional detail. I have outlined my concerns above.
“I actually agree that inability of the GCMs to represent oscillations like PDO, IPO and AMO are significant limitations. El Nino & La Nina for that matter too. But there are a number of difficulties – do some of these oscillations actually exist or are they statistical artifacts of our small sample size, how do they work – what’s the mechanism – can’t model them if you don’t know, and the impact of including them is unknown – might be better or worse in terms of DOOM-MONGERING. Could really play with extemes.”
Wow Luke! I think we actually agree on something!
However, can you explain then why we here from far too many politicians and mouthpiece AGW scientists, as well as from most of the mainstream media, that the “Science is settled!”, “The science is in!” , yada, yada, yada.
This dishonesty in terms of presenting the facts and avoiding honest and open debate of these facts is what really gets to me.
Speaking of dishonesty in presenting the facts by AGW mouthpieces, did you see Eli Rabett’s disingenuous attempts to discredit Steve McIntyre and his recent posting assessing the performance of Hansen’s past predictions? Boy did Steve ever get peeved!!
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2648#comments
And notice how NASA has yet again dropped the ball when measuring the global temperature and has been shy about announcing it! Seems they need to focus less on being AGW promoters and more on doing their jobin identifying and reporting the facts.
Mark – yes I did – Rabett is a complete ******!
Well Mark you guys do assume our philosophical position and politics in its entirety. But back to it …
Well I don’t think it’s dishonest – Trenberth has commented to that effect – no cover up has been attempted. Modellers are well aware of the critcisms and working on the issues. Question is – are these issues show stoppers in the big broad brush picture – or more limits to regional downscaling.
Well both Eli and Steve are such shy retiring chaps – I’m sure they can look after themselves. Think how much progress we would make if some more serious research work was done and contrarians got over their morbid fascination with Hansen and Al Gore.
You can sit around and check everything in minute detail – or just do a much better analysis !! And publish it somewhere other than E&E.
“and contrarians got over their morbid fascination with Hansen and Al Gore.”
We’d love to get over our morbid fascination with the likes of Hansen and Gore and other parroting politicians but the mainstream media isn’t letting that happen. As soon as the AGW mouthpieces are muted down and the mainstream media report the true state of mankind’s understanding of the climate system in a balanced fashsion, the better off we’ll all be!
Unfortunately there are too many out there promoting AGW whose livelihood depends on spreading fallacies.
“Unfortunately there are too many out there promoting AGW whose livelihood depends on spreading fallacies”
There is a bigger mob hiding the truth
Mark – “However, can you explain then why we here from far too many politicians and mouthpiece AGW scientists, as well as from most of the mainstream media, that the “Science is settled!”, “The science is in!” , yada, yada, yada.”
The actual physical science of AGW is settled. The nuts and bolts science of the enhanced greenhouse effect, human contribution to it and it’s effect on the Earth’s climate is not questioned seriously in the general scientific community as this has been well accepted long ago from solid scientific work.
The debate is what will be the effect on the Earth’s climate from this warming and what to do about it. Nobody can predict the future however we can decide if we are prepared to take the risk.
“The actual physical science of AGW is settled. The nuts and bolts science of the enhanced greenhouse effect, human contribution to it and it’s effect on the Earth’s climate is not questioned seriously in the general scientific community as this has been well accepted long ago from solid scientific work.”
1 out of 3 – quite shoddy actually. You sure you passed high school?
Mark
a free online textbook on the science of climate and climate change.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.html
Returning the favour . . . .
http://www.coyoteblog.com/Skeptics_Guide_to_Anthropogenic_Global_Warming_v1.0.pdf
Mark – thanks heaps – that saves me a lot of time. I needed a paper that has every denialist ruse argument in the one place. Great stuff. Got any more?
Luke,
if modelling can constrain chaos, then:
1. they have not defined chaos by definition.
2. If it can be modelled then it cannot be chaos.
Think on it.
There are some non sequiturs in the previous post, just in case some here wants to jump in before looking.
Louis
a chaotic system can still have an overall temperature that is measured in some consistent way. The overall temperature of that chaotic system can be forced higher.
Louis – what an incomprehensible comment. The real world constrains chaos within bounds – with no major external influence – does the global climate suddenly chaotically move to another extreme state in your experience? You have no idea do you? Try reading Gleick’s book and report back when you have some clue what you’re on about.
Mark
that reference is to a work by a small businessman in the backwoods of the USA. My reference is from one of the eminent (in the real sense of the word), research scientists involved in climate research.
“CO2 payments to governments who have so abused both their citizens and their economy that their productivity is already in decline”
No, the IPCC proposed a carbon trading scheme, not a tax.
Mark
“My reference is from one of the eminent (in the real sense of the word), research scientists involved in climate research.”
Right! I knew I knew him from somewhere!
In other words, Mark, you’ve got nothing.
“In other words, Mark, you’ve got nothing.”
Don’t equate me with the alarmists!
And thanks for your prized reference. Here’s a good excerpt (pg. 133):
“. . . one has already depleted infrared of those frequencies that are most strongly absorbed by CO2 so when adding CO2 one is adding “new absorbtion” in spectral regions where the absorption is relatively weak. Hence, it takes a large amount of the gas to have much radiative effect.”
Do you understand what that means SJT? It means “no worries mate”!
Classic – I kacked.
But they do also have a great denialist skit showing the fanatical level required.
John, Paul, Mark, and Luke.
Jesus!
“But they do also have a great denialist skit showing the fanatical level required.”
Well I must say, “I didn’t expect that!”
Makes me think are “discussions” are somewhat akin to this:
And not so one sided as this:
Well I guess I’m just getting silly know aren’t I?
“And not so one sided as this:”
Oops! wrong link!
hahaha hehehehe – classic stuff.
Yep it’s us.
ROTFL
I actually did a stint on the weather channel a little while ago given I’m a climate expert.
Luke,
Thought I would catch a few with that. You have described your own thinking processes quite well – effectively constrained chaotic processes – but in your case a bit of leakage occurs with posts here, since most seem to be non-sequiturs which is usually an indication of chaotic thinking.
Louis
you don’t understand chaos, do you? They had an excellent example in the documentary of the book, where a fluid was agitated in a vessel. The behaviour was chaotic, but it was constrained by the container, and it also went through several states where distinct patterns appeared.
The climate is chaotic, but it also lets in a measurable amount of radiation, and re-emits that radiation, at a certain rate. If the rate changes at which the radiation is re-emitted, than the temperature of the chaotic system as a whole will rise, even if you can’t model the whole internal behaviour of that chaotic system.
SJT
A chaotic system ca have a temperature? A chaotic system is an abstraction, so in terms of the absract, I suppose it could. Like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, I too could think of6 impossible things every morning as well.
But seriously, a chaotic system and measuring it’s temperature? A willy willy is a good example and right now scientists are trying to figure out how to measure th electric fields of these things. Biggest problem is that they won’t remain stationary so we can measure things.
It seems climate science has drifted into a virtual reality world disconnected from phyical reality where abstractons and computer modelling have become dominant.
More utter drivel. What a shonk.
Mark – “1 out of 3 – quite shoddy actually. You sure you passed high school?”
Maybe in you strange universe it is one of three however in this one it is the truth. Find me the peer reviewed literature that says otherwise.
“”. . . one has already depleted infrared of those frequencies that are most strongly absorbed by CO2 so when adding CO2 one is adding “new absorbtion” in spectral regions where the absorption is relatively weak. Hence, it takes a large amount of the gas to have much radiative effect.””
Before asking if I graduated high school perhaps you in your wisdom could explain this passage and it’s implications for AGW theory. And before you do you had better google pressure broadening etc.
If a chaotic system is confined, which this one most definitely is, enough samples will give you an average reading that is reliable. People seem to be quite happy with the satellite temperature record.
SJT – “you don’t understand chaos, do you?”
Louis doesn’t understand much. He like to use terms that he thinks no-one else understands, which be does not understand either, until someone calls him on it. He then he switches to something else – I’m betting next week it will be dark matter.
“If a chaotic system is confined, which this one most definitely is, enough samples will give you an average reading that is reliable”
So will a “restricted” instrument input average dynamic fluid conditions. It’s this basis I say ice at the margins is about the most “damped” indicator we have.
Luke and SJT
Whatever makes you think I will respond immediately to your questions posted here on Jennifer’s blog? Do you actually think I sit in front of the computer reading every sentence you post? And I see you both make smart-aleck remarks when your impetuosity is not immediately satisfied. But then neither of you are trained in the scientific method, so I suppose your ignorance needs to be recognised, but not your bad manners.
I have better things to do with my time, but in answer to your post re the Stephan Boltzman Law, of course I accept that theory , along with Planck’s law of black body radiation but using these laws to quantify the energy received by the earth from the is quite misplaced, for it assumes that the only energy from the sun is radiant energy.
And which temperature are you assigning to the sun? The sun’s interior temperature is cooler than the photosphere which is 5800K but when we move away from the sun it’s temperature slowly drops to 3800K (as it should) and then paradoxically it rises abruptly to more than 2 million K in the plasma of the lower corona. So the assumptions of the sun being a black body radiator become somewhat strained with these measurements. (The Paradox of the Sun’s Hot Corona”, by Bhola N. Dwivedi and Kenneth J.H. Phillips, Scientific American, June 1, 2001). As the authors noted – “it is as though you got warmer the farther away you walked from a fireplace”.
But this is the only energy source that seems to be accepted by climate science. Wrong. By far the largest source of energy comes via the ‘magnetic ropes” recently discovered by the THEMIS mission that connect the earth’s upper atmosphere with the sun. As Peratt shows in a peer reviewed paper, http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/downloads/PerattAntiquityZ.pdf, he notes in a description to Figure 2 , page 2 top left-hand, showing an artist’s depiction of the Birkeland Currents flowing into and out of the earth’s atmosphere at high latitude, and that these currents are routinely measured by today’s satellites and have total magnitudes of millions of amperes. And with all electrical currents, they have to join up to complete the circuit and they do so via the earth. Millions of amperes of electric current that are for most time in dark-current plasma mode but which, during aurora activity, increase to lower glow mode to become visible as the brilliant auroras. The THEMIS mission miscalls these Birkeland currents “magnetic ropes”.
What a laugh – the THEMIS mission discovers these magnetic ropes but the plasma cosmologists have known about them for over 100 years ago, with Peratt’s paper published in 2003. Don’t the NASA people read what the IEEE people publish in their peer reviewed journal?
And it is this prodigious source of energy that powers the underlying thermal state of the earth around which secular and longer period radiant energy are modulated.
But this energy input is not even considered in the global climate models.
Further, as Gerlich and Tscheuschner note in their latest revision of their paper, (I referred to their paper and its url elsewhere and not repeating it here), climate analysis basically reduces to a set of equations describing the equations of fluid flow, the Navier-Stokess equations but being non-linear, partial differential equations, which, in general, are impossible to solve analytically. In the case of climate the N-S equations need to be extended to multi-component problems, increasing the complexity of the model. If electromagnetic interactions have to be included, then this leads to the discipline of Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), a set of equations expressing all the essential physics of a fluid, gas and/or plasma. G and T conclude that if MHD is included as well, then the final complexity, even if it were simplified, numerical solutions still cannot exist for climate projections. In other words if the extremely simplified one-fluid equations are unsolvable, then ,many-fluid equations would be more “unsolvable”.
So what are the climate modellers actually modelling? Not the physics of the atmosphere as we know it, but what they think it does in terms of factors that can be used in a computer model. In other words they are dealing with imaginary climates totally divorced from physical reality. And there is no evidence in the literature that the MHD equations contain any factor for CO2.
Rather what seems to have been done is that, in the true Socratic/Platonic tradition, an initial assumption was deemed true, that anthropogenic emission of C O2 causes a rise in the earth’s surface temperature (which is deemed bad) and hence science was deployed to prove this. This method of science is essentially pseudoscience and the principal reason why climate sceptics are so persistent in criticising AGW.
The modelling summaries by G and T (op cit) did not even consider the input of the measured million ampere Birkeland (magnetic ropes) entering into the earth.
And any internal fluctuations of temperature within the earth cannot be attributed to pulses of radioactive decay or plate tectonics (see NCGT papers at http://www.ncgr.org). This leaves the only source capable of modulating the earth’s internal temperature, and thus it’s surficial volcanic activity, as the, hitherto ignored, polar Birkeland currents.
These few reasons are all that is needed to demonstrate why AGW can be totally dismissed as pseudoscience.
Oh as G & T note, on P12, the use of the Stephan- Boltzman and Planck’s laws of radiation have a limited range of validity which cannot be extended to cover the atmospheric problem.
In addition the obsession about the behaviour of CO2 molecules at the molecular domain is pure speculation as no one has the technical ability test these hypotheses. All we can test are the macro models using AIR. This analytical approach is akin to pontificating about the radiative effects of CO2 bubbles in ice cubes, with the assertion doubling the CO2 concentration will affect the thermal properties of ice.
“Before asking if I graduated high school perhaps you in your wisdom could explain this passage and it’s implications for AGW theory.”
It means at current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, the ability of additional CO2 to absorb additional long wave energy is extremely limited since those wavelengths where it can absorb strongly have already been absorbed by water vapour and current levels of CO2. Hence the abiity of additional CO2 to increase the greenhouse effect is extremely limited.
You may want to read this. It might enlighten you.
http://www.junkscience.com/jan08/Global_Warming_Not_From_CO2_20080124.pdf
A comment and a question from the author of the article at the top of the postings.
COMMENT – The posters seem to have passed over what was for me the most convincing point so I repeat it here: “When I put the temperature trendline on a graph with that Solar Cycle (Figure 1) I soon noticed that the small perturbations along the length of the temperature trendline corresponded very well with the Solar Maximums. Whatever might be moving that temperature trendline it was now certain that the technicians manning the weather stations throughout the world were doing an excellent job. … (the) century long, trendline for anthropogenic emissions of CO2 … rises strongly and steadily right through the mid-century, three decade long decline in the temperature line. (BUT!) the Solar Irradiance line … does show that mid-century decline.”
QUESTION – Are the intensity and/or number of occurences of the “Birkeland Currents” posi- or anti-cyclic with the ~11yr Solar Cycle?
Sincerely,
Al
A. C. Gullon, BSc., PEng.
Jennifer,
In the absence of an email address I hope you will intercept this to decide if, and where, you might want to use it. It is a humerous column written recently for Traffic Technology International (a UK trade mag) which conforms well with the adage: If a story is very amusing look for a hidden truth.
Speed Cameras & ISA … and the IPCC?
Over the past couple of years I have been intrigued by reports about the large improvements in traffic safety being achieved by photo-radar in France but, with yearly traffic safety papers of my own from FISITA Barcelona in ’04 through Stuttgart (TTi’s Safe Highways) and ITS London to ITS Beijing last October, I have not found the time to investigate. However, with a ‘free weekend’ between record-breaking snowfalls here in Ottawa (and just wher’n’ell is global warming when it’s needed!) I did so.
And, in the immortal words of that American baseball player, it was “Déjà vu all over again!”
Not only have they committed the same non-science as the ISA advocates (ignoring possible traffic volume changes) but they have also, as with ISA and the IPCC, employed like-minded researchers to evaluate causality and effectiveness. At one point in
Impact du contrôle sanction automatisé sur la sécurité routière (2003-2005)
(http://www.securiteroutiere.equipement.gouv.fr/cnsr/2_documents_page_travaux/306_rapport_csa.pdf ) the authors imply that an observed average speed reduction all across the country was due to the simple announcement by public authorities of the photo-radar program a year before any cameras were on the roads and a full two years before they reached anything approaching a critical mass.
Government officials having research done by a 3C (a conveniently compliant consultant) is no new thing. Way back in the ‘70’s when I was head of vehicle emission control for Canada we had a great relationship with fellow technocrats in the US EPA’s vehicle testing lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We shared not only technical data and reports but also our bureaucratic trials and tribulations. In one of those ‘bull sessions’ they revealed an amusing definition of a consultant which had developed in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s.
In those early days of emission control all of the test equipment had to be developed, and even manufactured, by government engineers and scientists (EPA & CARB) because no one in the private sector had any reason to get involved in such a small market. However, by the early ‘70’s EPA came under political pressure to have some of their research work done by consulting firms (i.e. by “the well-qualified XYZ Co. in my constituency”).
Well-qualified they probably were but no one in the private sector had any test equipment! Depending on the research project they would have to send their staff into government labs to do the testing or, for more remote field work, take government mobile test equipment to the test sites in the project cities.
Thus developed the following definition: “A ‘consultant’ is someone who borrows your watch to tell you what time it is … but first, if he’s a good consultant, he’ll ask you what time you’d like it to be!”
Al Gullon